This city has just about exhausted its charms.

It'd be nice to find out what's going on, but self-preservation comes first. They vanish to the middle of nowhere, usually a good response when there's radar to get under.

And when she has a moment to herself, she takes another look at the note.

The note is just that one letter. Not even any way of telling which way is up, so which letter is indeterminate. Presumably it'd mean something to the teammates of the cape she got directions to.

Very suspicious. But simple enough to leave it behind, if the cape proves worthwhile.

Yeah, this isn't really what one does if trying to avoid being suspicious.

In any case. First she needs a new set of drone armor. The last was utterly obliterated.

Giving the tinkers downtime is kind of boring for the others but it's something they're used to.

Ellie may be able to get her tinker powers cooperating. If the archer one throws a technology at her but doesn't cooperate with building it because her drone armor isn't an arrowhead at all, maybe one of the other tinkers can come up with a different approximation of the same design. It takes some luck since the others have their own limits, but it happens more often than never.

Then this set will be that much better than the previous iteration.

It's kind of silly how arbitrary the tinkers get, and it's interesting to see the way they can patch each other's problems when used in concert.

They aren't more arbitrary than other powers. Licit can make force fields in pyramids or cubes but not triangular prisms. But yes. Kind of silly.

The official story on Boston is that they have no hope of covering up the leader of the Protectorate very visibly blowing up a bunch of buildings. They've blamed the Butchery on the Nine, and since Legend hasn't been seen since they're assuming he's dead. So the Siberian or the Keres is now probably also the Butcher.

The clones didn't spread far enough or do enough damage to get much play in the main narrative, but the information is there for people following it closely.

Heh. Maybe that will make people more reluctant to engage her with lethal force.

She doesn't much care that the clones are not a bigger story. Notoriety is not a motivating factor for her. Jack may be slightly put out, but that's not really her problem.

Jack's pretty happy about the Nine getting credit for killing Legend. That's as big as news gets, and it's mostly not wrong. They totally could have killed him. The trip's a success even if not as much of one as they deserved.

So, next target?

Probably going to lie low for a bit longer. They'll get a massive response if they do anything on the scale of Boston any time soon. More likely somewhere without a lot of capes, and they can just vanish after leaving the victims very entertainingly positioned.

(She has some time yet before the deadline.)

That's fine. She's heard of a potentially interesting cape off in this direction. Perhaps they can wend that way?

That happens to be the same city as a noncombat cape who could pretty easily find them. If any given object might have been observed by someone who can see things' future, they'd be treading on eggshells the whole time. Maybe in a few weeks when they aren't the talk of the country.

She'll take that chance, even if Jack doesn't want to. She'll go by herself, then.

"Are you coming back?"

"I'm beginning to think that I shouldn't bother."

"Really. Why not?" A rhetorical question, of course.

"You are less interested in entirely exterminating the opposition than you lead me to believe. And you have exhibited the preference that I not collect very powerful capes."

"If you mean Legend that was more a case of prioritizing the Butcher trick than an actual preference against it."

"Regardless."

And the bit where he killed capes rather than let her do it. And the bit with letting someone stall for time to rescue her allies. But it'd be so boring if she were too powerful.

"Understandable. Of course it occurs to me that if you wanted to leave the Nine, I know where there are some powerful capes you might want to collect."

"As do I."

Prism split, two copies blink out of that fight, remaining body splits with Spree and attacks with Sundancer, keeping a non-metal brute for resistance to getting knifed.