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And Grue?  I cast a glance backward.  He’d dropped out of the air where Shatterbird had been flying, landing on a rooftop a distance below.  I could see him struggling to his feet.

Ow.

“Go, go!”  Trickster screamed the words.

Hang on, just gotta wake someone up first.

So are they just leaving Grue behind? Is Genesis supposed to come pick him up?

Our mounts leaped down into the same gap where Shatterbird had fallen.  We made the usual zig-zagging descent down, leaping from wall to wall, and landed on either side of Shatterbird and Genesis.

Oh hey, there you are.

So is Shatterbird getting captured so Regent can do his thing and take control of her?

If so, that’s a good choice of a shogi piece.

“Your call,” Trickster said.  “Three, two, one!”

Grue leaped from the edge of the roof.  In that same instant, Trickster swapped him with Shatterbird.

Hm, I suppose that might at least cause Shatters to hit the wall. Or get turned around, depending on how this works.

Wait, what if Trickster were to teleport her out of her costume? The costume is how she’s flying, so that would result in her falling towards the ground.

Also Grue would end up in a pretty glass dress on top of his regular costume (Trickster can’t teleport Grue out of his costume because he doesn’t have line of sight to Grue’s skin, making it an uneven swap where Grue would have both outfits), so that’s neat. It might be upside down, too.

She tumbled for a second, got a grip with her flight, and then steadied.

Aw.

So why did plan A require her to be ahead of the other two?

Then Regent hit her with his power.

Oh! Range considerations!

Shatterbird flew into the corner of the roof, was thrown off-balance and tipped into the gap between buildings.

Hell yes.

Wait, how is moving her body involuntarily affecting her flight, considering she’s using her brain to do that? Did Regent mess with the nerves in her brain? Can he do that?

“You up for this, Grue?” I asked, “I could do it.  My plan, and I was first to volunteer.”

So whatever it is, it’s something both of them could do. Something to do with the decoys, I guess?

“No, you can’t run fast enough with those burns.” Grue replied, as he hurried to the side of the rooftop furthest from the Nine.  He glanced down. “Trickster, I’m ready!”

Ah, alright.

“Just need an opportunity,” Trickster said, watching the incoming members of the Slaughterhouse Nine.  They were closing a little too fast for comfort.  Sirius had arrived, and we were all getting saddled.

Is Trickster going to replace Grue with someone? I don’t see a benefit to that, though.

Bitch, Sundancer and I on Bentley, and Regent, Trickster and Ballistic on Sirius.  At Regent’s orders, Sirius moved to Grue’s side.

Hmmm. Is it going to be something to compensate for the lack of enough dogs?

“Sooner than later!” Grue said.

“Do you want to die?” Trickster asked.

He’s just a little impatient at times. Though I guess there might be an advantage to going sooner here?

“No, but I’m willing to break something!”

So are they switching Grue and Shatterbird, resulting in Grue falling from the sky?

Again, I don’t see the benefit to that, but it sounded like Plan A relied on Shatterbird being ahead of the other two, so maybe this is their way of setting that up?

I crossed my fingers, watching intently.

I think Genesis is about to return and cut them off with some awesome form.

Two ways this could go for the final phase of our plan.

Well, three ways.  But I was hoping the third possibility -my team getting caught and slaughtered- wouldn’t happen.

Yeah, let’s try to avoid that one. So is one way that Genesis returns in time, and the other that they’re forced to run?

The first way this could play out was that Shatterbird’s flight over the buildings would make her faster than Crawler or Siberian, who had to climb or circumvent the obstacles.

That sounds unfortunate.

When I’d brought this up during the meeting, assuming it would happen, it had been Tattletale who pointed out that I was maybe underestimating how fast Crawler and Siberian could be.  She was right.  Despite her ability to fly, Shatterbird was falling behind.

Yeah, Siberian’s pretty quick and can burst through the obstacles, and Crawler’s no slouch for his size.

Which meant we went with plan B.

Maybe the B stands for Badass?

We’ll see.

Grue used his darkness to form a dozen false-images of shadow-shrouded silhouettes on nearby rooftops.  I did the same with my bugs, but mine were animated, moving.

Grue could do that too, but probably not as precisely or multitasking…ly.

We’d have to run pretty damn soon.  There were seven of us, but only two dogs.  It was less than ideal.

Seriously, Genesis, where are you? Why’d you go and dissolve?

I’d tried to get Bitch to bring another dog, but she didn’t feel any of the others were trained well enough to bear riders.

That’s fair.

The remaining members of the Nine charged, Shatterbird rising from her position to fly straight for us, barriers of glass surrounding her.  Siberian carried Jack and Bonesaw with leaping bounds, while Crawler headed for us.

Well, that’s terrifying.

Jack wasn’t folded over her shoulder anymore.  He was standing, holding her hand, a wide smile spread across his face.

That is probably very bad.

He said something, some exclamation, without dropping his grin for a second.

And Shatterbird?  I looked through the rubble that had been cast over the street around the building.  She was lying on the ground, struggling to her feet.  The glints of glass shards sparkled for a hundred feet around her.  I quickly tossed my binoculars aside.  They’d be a liability if she attacked us, now.

Oh yeah, don’t want parts of them entering your regular oculars.

Here was the gamble.  We’d hurt them, injured their pride, we’d maybe killed Mannequin and we’d incapacitated Cherish.  If Ballistic had been on the ball, he would have blown Cherish to smithereens.

Hmm. You know who hasn’t done much in this battle? Hack Job. With his teleports, he could’ve been a major threat, though I’m aware his range is probably significantly smaller than line of sight.

As it was, a stray bullet wouldn’t cut it.  Bonesaw’s known talents included the ability to raise the dead.

I know, right? She’s so talented! ❤

It wouldn’t stop them, of course.  The only ones that explosion might have hurt were Shatterbird and maybe Mannequin, if he’d survived Ballistic’s attack and slipped around through some other angle.

Yeeah.

Ideal world, it would also slow down Siberian.  More realistically, I was hoping that they’d get pissed, and they’d get sloppy.

“slow down Siberian” is a hard phrase to process, much like “dry spot in Brockton Bay”.

I chanced a quick look through the binoculars.  Crawler was stampeding towards the site of the explosion, Cherish was still prone on the ground, bleeding out from Trickster’s sniper fire, and I couldn’t make out the others.

Hm. Lost/blurry visuals. That’s bad.

Wait, no.  I could see rubble shifting as Siberian shrugged it aside.  It was enough debris that Crawler would have been hampered, but even with her hands tied up in holding her teammates, she cast the chunks of concrete and brick aside with the same sort of ease that I might walk through a pile of balloons.

I don’t think walking through a pile of balloons is always as easy as it sounds, but fair.

She shook her head, and her hair fanned out behind her, draping partially over Bonesaw, who was riding her piggy-back.

This arrangement is still adorable.

Trickster rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck and adjusted his hat.

Heh. “Well, that was a nice morning workout.”

“Don’t waste time,” Grue growled.  “Do it.”

Oh boy, what next? Sounds like they’ve got a big finisher ready.

By the way, is Genesis on her way back in a more battle-ready form yet?

“Times like this call for a certain flourish,” Trickster said.  Trickster withdrew a small remote from his pocket and depressed the button. 

Boom?

The rooftops the other two teams had been situated on virtually shattered with the explosions.  The bazooka rounds had also carried a small collection of plastic explosives.

Boom.

Since Trickster’s team had only needed the sniper rifle, their case held a hell of a lot more.

Part five done.  Baiting the hook, reeling them in, then hitting them as hard as we could.

Nice work! Now did that actually work?

Not someone who couldn’t heal.

Oh, yeah, that also excludes Lung.

I could see her thrashing, trying to stay aloft even as her concentration faltered.  The brown recluses were insurance of a sort.  If we happened to take out Bonesaw, it could mean Shatterbird was out of the equation as well.

Maybe!

The darkness Grue had generated around the rooftop disappeared all at once.  Grue and Ballistic crouched at the far corner.  Canceling the darkness was a signal.

It doesn’t sound like a good one. Retreat?

The mannequins hanging from the first rack disappeared, replaced by the two boys.

Ohh.

That’s their use! And canceling the darkness makes it so Trickster can have line of sight to them.

Grue and Ballistic disentangled themselves from the metal frames and hurried to our side. 

Trickster and Regent appeared soon after the other frame was up.  I could see Siberian on the rooftop. 

Did Trickster just use his power on himself? I guess that’s a thing he can do.

They’d escaped just in time to avoid being caught in a melee with her.

Yikes, that would be unpleasant.

Even if they wouldn’t be cut to shreds, I wasn’t sure they would survive if Shatterbird detonated that case of rocket launcher rounds with a shard in the right place or a large enough impact.

Eesh.

“Bitch,” I spoke.  “The boxes!”

Bitch was sliding off of Bentley’s back, opening the first metal box and stretching out the contents.

Oh right, I suppose it wouldn’t make sense for them all to have explosives given how it turned out they wanted to use them.

So, whatcha got?

The case was a piece of camping gear I’d noticed ages ago, when I’d first been buying things for my costume.  A watertight case for luggage with a metal frame inside that campers could stretch out to use as a drying rack for clothes and towels.

…nice. How does it help here?

We didn’t have luggage inside.  No, the box held parts of the mannequins I’d been using for costume design.

My question still stands.

Strung together with silk, two mannequins dangled from the frame.

Bitch adjusted the way one mannequin hung and headed over to set up the other case.

The one use I can think of is as decoys, but we’ve already got the bug decoys and the shadow decoys, neither of which needs a skeleton.

My bugs had reached Shatterbird and started attacking her.  Brown recluses, capsaicin, wasps, hornets and bees.  I’d never attacked someone like this.

Even Lung didn’t have to feel the capsaicin on his dick.