I turned around in a tight swirl of voltage, and came back in at the same speed.

Bulldozer was just turning to gape in astonishment when I swept past him, and his upper body blew into the air in a fountain of gore and lightning, definitely interrupting the Wrecker and Thunderball in their own orgies of destruction.

“Holy Shit!” Wrecker blurted out, the shadowy blur of a lot of eldritch power on him, holding up his new Wrecking Bar and watching his long-time pal’s body, cooked from the inside out, fall back to the ground, plop down and bounce around uselessly. “You killed them! You killed them both!” he howled, completely uncaring of how hypocritical his words were.

Sounded plenty bloody shocked I could do that, too.

For just a second I was standing there in mid-air, clearly visible to them, crackling with voltage. Then I moved again.

They had a lot of power, especially on the defensive side. There was a spark of silver, a sizzling of Banefire, and Thunderball and his spinning chain and ball were nailed to a tree, my Spear buried in his face, and a totally blinding blast of lightning filled his skull with the Wrath of the Widow in the Web, and a whole lot more.

I withdrew Function, and chopped sideways as I turned around to face the Wrecker. Thunderball’s empty skull flew off as his charred neck let it go, his smoking corpse falling to the ground.

“You, you can’t DO that!” the Wrecker protested in horror, lifting up his Bar of enchanted steel. “They promised us power! Power ta get revenge on you, and everyone who looked down on us!”

He was looking around frantically, probably wondering why the power of his buddies wasn’t flowing into him. He gawked when he saw the streamers from vivic flame rising from them, and followed them back to the ominous hum of Function.

“Not again,” he whispered, his eyes going wide. “Not again!”

My arm didn’t flinch as his eyes focused on my Spear, and the railgun load went into the front of his skull in a flash of enhanced magic, and exited the back without slowing too much, enough to drive right through the corpse of a tank, keep on going into the ground, and bury itself probably a hundred yards along underground.

His lips worked, but he had no brains to think with, and his healing factor was not working. I flicked up in front of him, and sliced across as he was frozen there, unable to respond.

His head flew into the air, and the discharge knocked his body flying. His smoking head soon joined it on the ground.

Function withdrew promptly, and I stashed it behind me. “If you are alive, I am coming for you. Hold on,” I said with Voice, and I began to move as voltage crackled.

-------

“Thank you for this,” Guardian whispered, as I finally stood up from the last of them, laid out on the road, and drew a blanket with the Canadian maple leaf over the pieces of his body.

One hundred and sixty-two dead soldiers and forty-seven wounded, thirty-three who would have died if I hadn’t been here with Healing magic. Healing Lightning had dealt with broken bones, bruises, internal bleeding, and the like, and Mass Regeneration was taking care of those who’d lost limbs or organs. They’d be right as rain come tomorrow.

“Miss MacKenzie,” I greeted her neutrally. I’d met her once when her husband came down to confer with Reed on some of the principles that their suits worked on. “It is nothing.” I reached back for Function, and snapped it out to length again. The soldiers all backed away from the ominous hum of its length as I turned my eyes towards the corpses of the four dead men.

“Soldiers of Canada,” I said with Voice, and they all perked up instantly, even the wounded ones who were slowly regenerating. “If you value the lives of your comrades, and you want their lives to mean something, this is the story you are going to tell.

“These creatures came down out of the north and rampaged savagely and without restraint. You heard nothing from them except savage calls. One attacked with clawed hands, one with horns, one with a club, and one with a spiked ball and chain. They killed without explanation, and without a care.

“You will not say they were men under there, or more men will come looking for the power they gained. Do you understand this? If you let this story spread, more men will come crawling into the north, seeking the power they had, and all that happened here, will happen again.

“Am I understood, soldiers of Canada?!” I demanded of them.

The words were quiet and loud, but I marked every single soul there agreeing with me, be it out of fear for the crackling thunder in my voice, gratitude for having saved their lives, or agreement with what I was saying.

It was enough for the Mass Geas to lock down their tongues and ensure none would break the story. If the stories were disjointed, that was only reasonable with the magic at play. There would be enough common elements to hold it together.

Heather MacKenzie opted to keep her mouth shut as I turned on her. “You will tell your husband the same thing. You will not identify these men, and you will not acknowledge that they were human at all. They were beasts, mystical things of the Northern woods, bothered and disturbed by fools.”

Heather slowly nodded. “I will make sure I am the first to speak with him, if I have to punch them all out,” she agreed carefully, working the arm and collarbone that had been shattered by a glancing hit from Thunderball’s ball and chain, and which I’d Healed back to normal.

I zipped up to the dead Wrecking Crew, and chopped off Bulldozer’s head coolly. Vier stacked the corpses of the four men up together, I drove Function down right through all of them, and I put up a metric fuckton of voltage to send them off.

There was no smell, because vivus and I were basically atomizing them with the pure power I was sending into them. Their blood, bodies, and uniforms disintegrated under a whole lot of Wrath, Heavenly and Primal, while vivic fires stole across the ground, cleaned up after them, and began to burn on the skulls that still had flesh attached to them.

I dropped the skulls, the Bar, and Ball and Chain into my Masspack for later use. “I’ll clear off the road before I go.” I cracked my knuckles and started to move.

Superspeed and telekinesis make for pretty fast brute force labor. Being the practical sort, I just chopped off all the branches as I cleared the downed trees. Someone would come by and take the free firewood or mulch, I was sure.

I myself could not tell that story. If someone asked, I would simply refer them to the soldiers. They could lie grandly and openly, and I could not. I could mislead artfully, and I would speak no names. The Wrecking Crew was going to die unknown and unmourned, if I could help it at all.

------

“Hey, Sama, I have a report on the Canadian Incident,” I informed her after I Teleported home when no one could see me.

“Go on,” she said shortly. I wouldn’t be calling her up if this wasn’t relevant to her. I knew better.

“The Wrecking Crew went up into the North and somehow convinced the Great Beasts to empower them. Avatar-level power, strength equal to the Juggernaut, far more powerful than they once were.”

There was a moment of silence, and then a very cool, “The Great Beasts, huh...”

“I hope I’ve locked down the story. If we are lucky, there’ll be no news that the Great Beasts are empowering people who go up there and beseech them for strength. It’ll just be random mystic entities stirred up by idiots and going on a rampage.”

“Good job. I’ll take it from here.”

And that was that. We hung up together, I got back to work, and I had no doubt that something cataclysmically bad was going to happen to those Great Beasts, and Headmaster Cassandra herself might be swinging by to make sure the story that got out didn’t lead back to them.

The Wrecking Crew wouldn’t be seen any more, but I had no doubt there were other muscle-guys up and coming who’d take on the name ‘in their honor’ and continue the blue-collaresque tradition they had started.

Also, I had to tell Mr. Hill about this. He was going to be very disappointed in them, and he’d probably do some poking around to find whoever clued them in and sent the Crew up north...

===========

Time Passes...

“Hey, Matt. Good to see you again.” I shook his hand warmly, and we both took seats. He knew I didn’t need to eat or drink save out of politeness, and the tiniest of gestures was enough to wave away something. “What’s up that you need to sit down with me?”

It was an interesting feeling here. Felicia and him had a relationship that had been going on for a couple years, which meant he and I did. He used her for special jobs that required a subtle hand and sometimes absolutely ruinous consequences for white-collar criminals, and they were on-again, off-again as far as romance went. Naturally she came across as far more mature than her actual age, and Powered often looked far younger than they were, anyway.

Still amused me that part of me was sleeping with my lawyer. Lawyers. After all, Jennifer Walters worked here, too...

“We have a dissuasion problem before us,” Matt began, immediately segueing over into non-legal matters. Legal messages he could just send me briefs on, or texts, and I’d get back quickly. Multi-tasking was totally a thing I could do. “It’s related to Alderstein.”

I slapped my forehead. “Wonderful. How so?”

“There’s been moves against some of the companies either buying products that include patented parts, or those companies actually making the parts. These moves are coming in from multiple levels, from boardrooms to the sales floors, even engineering departments and production managers. They include blackmail, intimidation, bribery, and extortion, among other things.”

“No deaths yet?” I asked for clarity, as that would have immediately triggered something.

“Not that we know of. These people are moving very subtly.”

“How were you alerted?” I asked calmly.

“Are you familiar with the Black Cat?” he asked me carefully.

Don’t smile, don’t smile... “Yes,” I confirmed.

“I employ her services regularly. She has an excellent intelligence network in certain areas, especially corporations and the underworld. She works largely with the women there, I believe.”

She did. She had completely co-opted the girls working the topless bars, building off Mr. Hill’s grimly defensive reputation among them, and had even arranged special training classes for them to get into secretarial and dispatcher positions in a lot of firms.

Her number one weapon was the Marks she gave them. A lot of those women were none too bright, and a sudden +4 to Intellect and a telepathic link to a virtual femme fatale goddess was more than enough to push them into very eager service.

More than a few of them had married up in life pretty well, too.

Her Marked were held down in their own Markspace. Technically, they were now part of mine, but Felicia’s Mark generally stayed closed and shut, and we didn’t chat much, the intelligence network she had built up literally across the world humming and keeping her informed of lowlifes pulling shit. She just loved pulling back, or guiding some of her readier girls into pulling subtle moves that did the job.

Sama and Briggs’ Marked tended to be among the elite of humanity, not down among the normal folks. That didn’t mean they didn’t have normal folks among their Marked, as they certainly did, but to qualify for their Marked, the first thing they were looking for was Good people, and the second thing was those who wanted to improve themselves and had ambition. Normal folks who just wanted to get on with their lives were not often Marked, and probably happy not to be Marked.

Felicia had much looser standards on who she would recruit, and since she could Geas in loyalty, and they could feel and appreciate her Duty in return, the breadth of what she was building had improved and slowly grown.

It was also a true Allegiance, if they dared to Swear an Oath. Not many did, as they had to be ambitious enough to do so, but those who did were definitely some of her go-to people for special tasks. Low-end Powered, not able to come to much... but enough to be useful, and to contribute, and to better themselves quietly.