Chapter Thirty-Eight - A Perfectly Reasonable Escalation

Things didn’t settle down.

The few times Emily had seen a mask fight, it had been something like a highlight reel, or some distant shaky-cam video taken from someone with a common sense deficiency who was too close to the fighting for their own good.

Those fights usually ended suddenly and quickly.

Intellectually, she knew why. Whomever struck harder first would usually take their opponent out of the fight. The exception was usually when the one striking second had a power that could negate the attack, then things could get messy.

She had never seen a fight with this many masks in it before. She was sure it existed, but she hadn’t paid all that much attention to the world of masks and powers.

This fight wasn’t ending quickly at all.

Fabien danced around the edge of the battlefield, between Wrap Up and the others. The way he moved Wrap Up’s chains around with flicks of his sword and by dancing around them was nearly perfect. Emily doubted that she would have known they were enemies if she didn’t know beforehand.

Black Shield was working hard to kick off Trinity from her legs. She kept stumbling around as Cheatah shoved her shield and darted around her to try and grapple the hero down.

Hindsight looked around himself, jumped to his feet, then decided that being elsewhere was the better part of valour. Glamazon screamed something at him, and it didn’t sound like a compliment.

Teddy, meanwhile, was fighting with Fabien. The bear roared and swiped at the rogue-ish man. Emily knew she was holding back a little, and at a glance, it was clear that Fabien’s few strikes against her were meant to be shallow pokes. Wrap Up was causing more trouble, his chains tangling Teddy up even as he tried to bring them back around to catch Fabien.

“Alright,” Emily said. She had an idea of what was going on.

Glamazon was stomping away from the fight in her direction, looking pretty displeased about everything that was going on. Emily refocused on the heroine. “Family Menagerie: Teddy,” she muttered.

She felt herself growing a little, her coat strained a bit at the back, and her pants felt tighter. Hopefully she wouldn’t look too foolish, there were a lot of phones aimed their way, she knew.

“You!” Glamazon said.

Emily held back the urge to look over her shoulder. Glamazon was very clearly talking about her. “Glamazon,” she said.

“You caused this mess,” Glamazon said.

Emily wasn’t about to argue that. The woman was right. The fight was her fault. Though, to give credit where it was due, Athena was probably helping. The owl-girl was giggling to herself next to Emily, eyes flitting from one fight to another.

“What do you want to do about it?” Emily asked. “I’m not a front-line fighter. Nor is At--Owlwatch here.”

Glamazon stopped, her mouth opened, then it closed again. She glanced back. The fight was actually winding down. Black Shield was on the ground, hands raised above her in a defensive stance while two of Trinity sat on her chest and a third one ran circles around the woman, arms raised in triumph.

Cheatah was panting nearby, still eyeing the woman on the ground.

On the other side, Teddy was stumbling towards Wrap Up while Fabien rolled out of the way. The rogue stood up and looked around, and for a moment his eyes locked onto Emily’s. He nodded, then saluted with his sword raised next to his forehead.

“Oh no,” Glamazon said. “Wait! He’s running!” She flung a trio of brilliant balls towards the running villain.

Emily’s breath caught as she saw Cheatah spin around. The woman could move faster than Fabien could, that was her entire power. He wouldn’t be able to escape if she...

Then Glamazon’s explosions went off, and Cheatah flinched back.

Fabien had managed to weave his way through the three. He darted into the crowd by the edge of the parking lot, people scrambling away from him, but not so quickly that he couldn’t use the crowd as cover.

“Got you!” Wrap Up shouted.

Emily whipped around to find Teddy flopping onto the ground, caught up entirely in his chains.

She scowled. “Sisterportation, Ursa Minor.” She didn’t know if using Teddy’s hero name would work until a grizzly landed on the ground before her and shook itself so that her fur puffed out.

Wrap Up’s smile faded as he realised that all eyes were on him. “Uh,” he said. The many chains hovering around him lowered, some of them gently wrapping themselves back around his arms and torso, as if he was aware of every clink and clang they made.

“Are you done?” Emily asked him with the same tone she’d use on one of her sisters.

“Yes?” he said, rather meekly.

Emily nodded, then turned to Glamazon. “Now, the question, Glamazon, is if you’ll do the right thing.”

Emily had no idea what the right thing to do in this situation was, but maybe Glamazon had a better idea than her, so she didn’t see any harm in throwing it back at the woman.

Glamazon glared at Emily, then her eyes twitched to the people on the sidewalks and the cars still paused in the middle of their commute to stare at what was going on. Some honking in the distance hinted that others weren’t so happy with the traffic jam they were creating.

“We’re waiting until backup arrives,” she said.

“And then what?” Emily asked.

Glamazon crossed her arms. “Then we’ll see. Cheetah, can you escort Black Shield to the middle of the parking lot? Wrap Up, you’re joining her.” Glamazon sniffed. “Boss, want to keep an eye on them too?”

Emily nodded. “Bandit, keep two of you close to them. Owlwatch, Ursa Minor, stay close, just in case.”

“Yeah Boss, no worries,” Teddy said. Her voice in Grizzly form was a terrifying, deep rumble.

“Got it, Boss,” Athena said. She smiled, smug and pleased with herself. She... had kind of earned it. Emily suspected that a lot of the paranoia that had gotten the others to act had been fed by Athena’s power.

The two that Emily had accused of being villains were ushered to the middle of the parking lot, with Emily’s sisters forming a cordon around them. Glamazon stomped off to go find Hindsight who was hiding nearby.

In the meantime, Emily found herself with nothing to do except wait for her beating heart to calm down. That wasn’t happening as quickly as she might have hoped. The HRF was on their way over, and there was still a good chance that they’d ruin all of Emily’s not-so-carefully laid plans.

In the meantime... she walked over to Cheatah’s side. “You, ah, you did good,” Emily said.

Cheatah blinked, then smiled. “Thanks,” she said. The woman was a few years Emily’s senior, maybe as old as her late twenties. It added a little layer of awkwardness for Emily to work through. “So, you have a team going on?” Cheatah asked.

“Pardon?”

Cheatah gestured to her sisters. “A team? With the, ah, kids?”

“Oh,” Emily said. “Yeah, I guess. We have another member, he’s older. Well, my age. Not a front-line person. Um. We might have another person joining us soon.”

“That’s nice,” Cheatah said. “It’s not my place to say anything, but... they seem a bit young to be doing this kind of thing, you know?”

“A little, I guess,” Emily said. She imagined that employing a bunch of pre-teens to do her work wasn’t a great look. “I’m mostly trying to keep them out of trouble.”

“Right,” Cheatah said. “Just hope you’re watching out for them. They seem like nice enough kids.”

“You, ah, clearly haven’t spent much time with them,” Emily said.

Trinity chose that moment to start singing a song of her own devising whose entire lyrics were “We kicked your butts, your butts were kicked,” repeated over and over again in an annoying sing-song. At least she harmonised with herself really well.

Sirens sounded in the distance, and lights flashed. Cars that had been parked around to stare started to move ahead, likely worried about the size of the ticket they’d get if the police found them clogging the road up while emergency services were trying to get closer.

The first vehicle to arrive was an Eep with the roof off. It was the black and green of the HRF, and the moment it bounced up onto the curb a figure jumped out of the passenger side and landed in a crouch on the parking lot.

She stood slowly, then scanned her surroundings before swiping her hand across the bottom of her nose. “What in the goddamn is happening here?”

Emily swallowed as a very annoyed Melaton stomped onto the scene.

***