Dashing Devil Omnibus 2: Books 4-6, page 77
He flashed the hooked finger hand signal for ‘Insight’—Mindy’s designation for this mission—then tapped the side of his head.
Hope blinked, then said over the mental comms, ‘Oh, apologies everyone… I didn’t even realize I was blocking it out.’
Boyd decided that it being a subconscious effort was worse than if she’d done it deliberately. That meant it was more likely to crop up at an inopportune time. He also decided that now wasn’t the time to broach the subject.
Hope would be with him during the mission, and he couldn’t block out Mindy’s connection, even if he wanted to—not that he’d ever want to, he quickly amended that thought.
‘You are such a little shit!’ The Mindy in his mind narrowed her amethyst eyes at him.
‘No problem,’ Boyd said over their telepathic channel. ‘I was just about to go through one more briefing before the operation begins in earnest.’
‘The last guests just passed the detection grid. They will arrive in five minutes,’ Mindy commented, likely picking up the thought from whoever was manning the location’s sensor grid.
‘Good timing,’ Boyd replied. ‘I’ll keep this brief. Phase one was Tinker hijacking the Channel sister’s grav sled via a drone so we could capture and replace them with Cloak, Dagger, and Insight.’
Boyd used the mission designations for Raev, Silvie, and Mindy respectively.
The Channel sisters were bound and sedated in the back of the Osprey. The three had been sent by their father in the hopes that they would catch the eye of some of the influential people in attendance, but truthfully dreaded the affair. They would wake up in a cell back in Glorith City. Their faces appeared in several of the ‘parties’ Tinker had footage of.
They had been chosen because it was clear from their profiles that they weren’t expected to participate in conversations that would require knowledge of details that could get the infiltration team caught. That, and because of how close they were, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if the three of them stayed together.
Mindy could cover any gaps from there.
Boyd took a breath he didn’t need to before continuing the mental explanation.
‘Phase one was considered a success once the infiltration team entered the building under their assumed identities and we moved on to phase two. During phase two, the infiltration team will attempt to ascertain the location of any Changed for rescue, as well as having Hammer identify the Powered threats present. Hammer has moved into position and will continue to call out any suspected Powered individuals to assist with their identification.’
‘Hammer is in position,’ Hope reported brightly, ‘though my part doesn’t come until later.’
‘So far, we’ve identified five of them. Blue-coat black-shirt has an energy shell,’ Silvie started with the brighter blue first. ‘Green suit is a big, strong looking physically enhanced Powered, while beige suite blue-shirt is a telekinetic. Beige suit two can light candles with his mind, and hottie in red can scream really loud…’
Silvie paused, then added, ‘I don’t know what hottie in green can do. Has she thought about it yet, Mindy?’
‘No, she hasn’t,’ Mindy replied, being the one who had determined their Powers after Boyd had directed her towards those he could see. ‘Which in my experience usually means that it typically isn’t very useful—that, or it is embarrassing, so she doesn’t want to think about it.’
‘That or she’s the most dangerous of them all and has trained to keep from thinking about her abilities to account for people like you,’ Boyd warned.
Assumptions got people killed.
Mind Mindy rolled her eyes at him. ‘I’ll check again, but after what I picked up last time it seems unlikely… Kuh-he! Yeah, no. She’s bored and wants to go home, use some designer drug she’s hooked on, then invite one of the guys she’s stringing along to come rail her for a bit while she’s high. Not much of a threat there. Oh… her hands vibrate. Kuh-he… that’s her Power. She uses it for sex and little else.’
‘Still think Ms. Vibrator is the most dangerous one here, Big Guy?’ Raev asked with wry amusement.
Boyd could just picture the way her six gloriously fluffy tails would be swaying merrily behind her. ‘I didn’t… that is, I… Ugh. Never mind.’ He gave up as the others joined Raev in a good laugh.
He continued once it died down. ‘Unfortunately, that means there are no Heroes in attendance tonight. While this means Davis is more likely to give final approval for phase three, the mission will not have the impact we had hoped. But at least we’ll be able to save some people, paint the Ascended in a bad light, and the arrests we make will lead to more.’
‘It’s a wonderful first step, my Lor… my love,’ Hope assured in response to the disappointment in his tone. She almost slipped up and called him by the name she’d picked out for their bedroom play.
‘Yes. Yes, it is,’ Boyd agreed wholeheartedly.
He also wanted to cover for the embarrassment he sensed from his angel, so he moved the conversation along before Raev had a chance to make an amused comment he sensed building on their Bond.
‘But we got sidetracked,’ he continued. ‘Phase three will begin once the location of any Changed has been confirmed or once one of them is exposed to danger.’
‘Phase three is the fun part,’ Silvie interrupted in an excited cheer.
Boyd smirked, phase three was the fun part.
‘For phase three, Overwatch will deploy drones to drain the guest’s grav sleds of their power. Hammer will smash their way in and create a distraction, engaging with any Heroes present. Cloak and Insight will move to secure the Changed and escort them to safety. Dagger will defend the Changed and wait for a call from Hammer or targets of opportunity to begin removing threats.’
‘Now that sounds like a party!’ Raev sounded much more enthused.
‘Phase four will commence when the Changed are secured and the Powered neutralized.’ Boyd pressed on before everyone got distracted again. ‘It’s the round-up phase. We aren’t expecting much resistance, but Dagger, Cloak, and Hammer will move under Insight’s guidance to arrest the unpowered present—starting with any damn fools that try to run into the Wild Lands when they realize their grav sleds are dead.’
‘Grav sled approaching for landing,’ Tinker cut in.
Boyd sensed she was only half focused on the mission brief as she kept a close eye on the many sensors and drones she had already started moving into position.
A sleek red grav-sled—an expensive sports model Boyd recognized from his identification training as worth the annual income of several middle-class families—came into view a moment later. It prepared to land on a wide balcony just off of the ballroom. This must be the VIPs the folks inside had been waiting for, as everyone else had landed on a paved strip on the other side of the building.
The guests of honor had arrived fashionably late and received preferred parking.
Boyd hoped that meant what he thought it meant. He flicked his Black Flame Vision back on as the grav sled settled down on its landing struts. From the grav sled stepped two figures that shone brightly in his augmented vision, and a smile formed on his face. One was nearly as bright as Silvie—a large-framed man who burned with golden-yellow energy. The other was a slight framed woman, who burned with a cyan-blue light at about Raev’s intensity.
‘An S-Ranked male and an A-Ranked female are our VIPs,’ Boyd sent over the mental comms as he flicked the dark fire from his eyes.
He couldn’t see the regular landing area on the other side of the building or into any of the windows of the ballroom from his current vantage point. If he could see them, they might see him, after all. But he had a clear view of the balcony the late arrival had landed on.
‘Perfect,’ Boyd’s smile took on the devilish cast he was no longer as concerned about restraining. ‘We have our Heroes. Tinker, please report to Davis that Unbreakable Atlas and Crystallize out of Vigilantia are the guests of honor for this little shindig. Include that I am confident we can successfully make the arrests.’
‘I also just overheard the event manager’s thoughts in regards to bringing the Changed into the ballroom,’ Mindy added. ‘There are three Changed: a boy with dog features; a girl with floral features; and, a young woman with… I think she’s a duck? Avian features. They are drugged, unable to move or use their Powers, but still responsive to stimuli… made safe to move by standard employees.’
After a moment his darkest love added with a slight growl that rarely graced her voice, ‘For the record… it’s okay if someone slips up and puts a little too much force into a punch headed for the event manager.’
‘Noted.’ Boyd grimaced, knowing that it took a heinous soul to draw Mindy’s growl out. ‘Include everything but the event managers punch-ability in the report to Davis, then send the drone. Let me know as soon as we have approval for phase three.’
‘Drone away,’ Tinker said a moment later.
The outer detection net around the mansion in the mountains would pick up incoming our outgoing signals, so his tiny inventor had programmed one of their stealth drones to fly out beyond the compound’s sensors before sending Davis their report. It would then carry his reply back to them.
Boyd tried not to think about Granny’s idea to add a ‘glitch’ that would cause the stealth features to fail on the way back through the compound’s sensor net unless it received a positive reply. If that were the case, the drone would undoubtedly be destroyed, and the message lost—meaning they could argue they never received the order, if Davis should direct them to stand down.
If Boyd had happened to smile and nod when the elderly AI had suggested the idea to him, it was for a completely unrelated reason.
‘Hammer deploying,’ Boyd declared over their mental comms a while after Unbreakable Atlas and Crystallize walked into the ballroom.
It was clear that they were the ones most of the guests were here to see.
He leaped from his ridge to another below it, keeping his wings tight so his profile was as small as possible. After two steps on that ridge, he was back in the air on the way to one of the patches of darkness that would serve as his shadowed path to the building.
‘On your six,’ Hopewing sent back, although he had all of his Bonds pulled wide open so had a general sense that she was behind him without her needing to say it.
‘Drones are on their way,’ Tinker stated a little tightly. She wasn’t nearly as nervous about this mission as she had been with the Last Dragon, but she was a worrier by nature.
Things changed once the supposed ‘Heroes’ walked into the room. The guests who garnered a medium level of influence immediately started moving towards them as an unofficial queue formed. The Heroes would be expected to greet the most influential at some point during the party to pay their respects.
Unbreakable Atlas was a fairly big deal. He was an S-Ranked member of Vigilantia’s Triad who boasted about being indestructible with his S-Ranked durability and high-end A-Ranked strength. Crystallize was an A-Ranked combat support from the same team who provided mid and long-range offense to the pure brawler that was Atlas. They made a great team and had eight years of glowing reviews and distinguished service to show for it.
Any there who had only a little influence knew better than to approach the Heroes right off the bat, although there would likely be a segment at the end in which they would sign autographs or otherwise meet the ‘little people’ who had been invited. If a guest didn’t know where they fell, they were in the last group.
Boyd reached the building without being detected and stuck close to the windowless foundation as he rounded it to reach the ballroom. While the guests were excited to rub shoulders with the moderately famous Hero duo, their presence excited Boyd for a very different reason.
Vigilantia was not one of the cities controlled by the Fundamentalists. Like Glorith, it was a fairly progressive city with only about a third of its citizens supporting the ideals which boiled down to ‘Powers are bad, Changed are worse’. The majority of Vigilantians actually supported Boyd; his last approval rating out of the city was just under sixty-two percent.
This meant that it would not be hushed up. Even better, Atlas and Crystallize would not have their citizens’ support during their trials. There would be a media circus that would make their arrests serve as a larger blow to the Ascended than if it were the Blonde Buffoon himself.
‘Cloak and Insight moving into position,’ Kitsune called out.
The Changed had been brought up and placed in cages on a stage at one end of the ballroom. For a while, they had more or less been ignored, though a few guests came over to gawk from just in front of the stage. Then, Atlas and Crystallize had moved to the stage and the big man started giving a speech about how it was every Powered’s responsibility to remove Changed from their society.
Boyd didn’t hear it, though, as he moved into a position from which he could launch into the building. This only took a few seconds, but apparently Boyd didn’t miss anything worth hearing. He deployed as soon as the boy with dog features was removed from his cage and placed off to the side of Atlas just before the man’s speech came to a head.
Davis had approved the mission in the end, but he had ordered them to confirm malicious intent before acting. Boyd figured he had at least a minute before the boy was in any real danger. He was certain that Atlas’s speech would become quite impassioned just before he started beating the child to death. Boyd had only to wait for the cadence or volume of what seemed to be a canned performance from Atlas’s delivery.
‘Dagger in place. Ready,’ Silver sent back in her most professional tone.
She was nearly as thrilled as Hopewing to be running their first mission now that what was once an inseparable trio was back together again, but it was tempered by the fact that a terrified child was probably certain he was about to die.
“And such filth as this have no purpose…!”
Boyd heard Atlas rant before taking a deep breath. ‘Breaching,’ he rumbled over their mental comms.
Chapter 23
Dashing Devil leaped again, his powerful legs throwing him over thirty feet into the air, with a hard flap of his wings sending him higher still. He smirked at the shocked faces of a well-dressed portly man and his trophy wife, or escort, on his arm who had been gazing out one of the floor-to-ceiling arched windows. Apparently, they didn’t want to witness what was about to happen on the stage.
They would probably like being arrested even less.
Both dropped their wine glasses as Devil reached the zenith of his jump and wound back to throw the ten-foot spear he was carrying. The glasses shattered, splashing their rich red contents across the marble floor, just as his wonderfully crafted spear driven by his now S-Ranked strength punched a hole through the armored glass that was probably rated for bullets and maybe A-Ranked punches. Glass could only get so tough.
The spear flew on to bury itself in the stage, forming a barrier between the Changed and Atlas who had turned and taken his first step towards the poor canine Changed. Devil was quite proud of the throw and pleased with the penetrating power Tinker had worked into the weapon. Another strong flap of his wings sent him toward the now-compromised armored glass.
Kicking all three of his propulsion packs to full power and lancing out with a punch just to the side of the hole his spear had made, Devil snapped his wings in tight against his back to protect them, before crashing through the window. He wasn’t too worried, though—Hopewing would heal any rips, tears, wounds, or broken bones his reckless entry might cause.
One of his pauldrons caught as he created a much larger hole in the armored pane. This would have sent him spiraling through the air to land in a sprawl if his wings hadn’t shot out to stabilize him. They flared to bring him to a stop just in front of the crowd that had gathered before the stage.
“Sorry to crash your exclusive soirée,” Devil rumbled to the room at large, though he kept his glare locked on a very confused-looking Atlas.
He gave the other Hero—make that the Powered Criminal—a devilish grin. “But don’t worry, I’m here to bring a whole new kind of entertainment.”
“Dashing Devil?” Atlas’s voice contained the confusion that showed all over his face. “What are you doing here?”
He had a thick brow but was otherwise decent-looking. The man had a strong jaw, but his square chin jutted out a little too far for most modeling agency’s preferences. Beady brown eyes shifted about in his attempt to figure out what was going on.
“Oh,” Devil smiled, maintaining a non-combative stance, “I heard you liked beating defenseless Changed to death.”
Rustling feathers behind him announced Hopewing’s arrival, followed by the soft click of her suit’s slight heels as she landed smoothly behind him.
“We thought we would come and see how you liked it when the Changed can fight back,” Devil continued.
“Huh?” The big man’s mouth hung open for a moment after his muddled grunt.
Devil watched as the man remembered he wasn’t supposed to leave his mouth hanging open and snapped it shut. The big demon scanned his opponent. Atlas was in his Hero suit, wearing armor not all that dissimilar to Devil’s, though made to appear as if it was carved from large gray stone slabs.
A suit like that sent a certain message—this Hero was strong but simple. Atlas had yet to take on a ready stance, despite having a large spear implanted in the stage a few feet away from him. The combination told Devil that he wasn’t the brains of the operation.
Crystallize, who stood a little further back on the stage, was a slight woman a little shorter than Silver. Her suit did its best to accentuate her petite frame. She wore a skin-tight pale blue suit under strategically placed crystalline armor segments.
Unless Devil missed his guess, the clear armor pieces literally magnified the modest chest and hips they covered.
Her bleach blonde hair was up in a high ponytail, her blue eyes highlighted with the perfect application of makeup, and her thin lips made to look fuller with pink lipstick. Devil knew from the profile he had assembled on her that she played the airhead in the public eye—much like Silver did, and likely for the same reasons—but he saw calculations running behind those ice-blue eyes as she glared back at him.
