Chapter Sixty-One - An Invitation for Heroism

When Jezebelle got a call from the Boss, she expected... well, something like an invitation to patrol, or maybe just an opportunity to chat.

What she wasn’t expecting was to have the Boss seethe through the phone, sounding like Jezebelle’s own mother that one time she found out that Jezebelle had skipped a day of school to spend time with her then-boyfriend.

The Boss was angry in a way that filled Jezebelle with more than a little bit of trepidation.

Once she explained what was going on though, Jezebelle couldn’t help but understand.

Someone had literally kidnapped one of the girls and was holding them in a creepy warehouse. Worse, the girl wasn’t the only one who’d been kidnapped. “So, let me get this straight,” Jezebelle, now Glamazon since she’d obviously shown up in-costume, said. “You’ve been... reforming this villain?”

“He’s not a villain,” Owlwatch said. The little owl-themed heroine looked utterly disgusted at the idea. “He wishes he was that scary. No, he’s a slightly-dark rogue at best. Nothing scary about him.”

“Uh-huh,” Glamazon said. “So, you’ve been reforming him?” she asked again.

The Boss sighed. They’d decided to meet at a bus stop a block over from the location that the Boss knew--somehow--that her little companion was. “He’s not a bad sort. A bit lazy, and sometimes a little... well, he’s a boy, but I don’t think he deserves to be raked through the dirt just for being somewhat on the villainous side.”

“Aren’t you the one that raked Wrap Up through the coals?” Glamazon asked.

“That was different,” the Boss said, without answering to the obvious hypocrisy. Glamazon sniffed, but it really wasn’t the time for that. She would have loved to have that debate with her fellow heroine, but it was obvious at a glance that the Boss was just barely holding it together. Her costume looked like she’d dressed in a hurry and she was fidgeting nervously.

When Glamazon arrived a couple of minutes before, it was to find the Boss pacing with a gaggle of her brats sitting around in the bus-stop. There were two of the racoon pests, the bear pest, the owl pest, and one other who hadn’t been around last time Glamazon had run into the group. Judging by the labcoat and the (admittedly quite cute) ears, she was another one of the Boss’ group of strange animal-themed masks.

There was something up with that. Maybe one of them had a power that allowed others to gain animal traits? It was the only thing that made sense to Glamazon as an explanation for why so many of them had those.

It wasn’t unheard of for a mask to have something animal-ish about them, but this many on one theme was stretching credibility to its limit.

She bet it was the bear girl who had a secondary ability that let others get in touch with their inner-animal or something in exchange for a boost to some skills. Or maybe it was the Boss’ own power that let her do that? That would make her a powerful force-multiplier on any battlefield.

“Okay,” the Boss said. “This is the plan. Bandit, you have the gun?”

“We’re using guns?” Glamazon asked.

Then Bandit--who Glamazon was certain was a clone-maker--pulled out a large gun from one of her dollar-sign bags. It looked like it weighed half as much as the girl and laying barrel-down reached up to her waist.

“What the heck is that?” Glamazon asked.

The little racoon-themed bandit raised the gun up and grinned. “It’s a toaster!”

“We’ll be using it to breach the base,” the Boss said. “That’s the first step. We break in.”

“What’s the second step?” Glamazon asked.

The bear-girl replied with a vicious grin. “We stomp in and eat them all for being inferior villains,” she said. Her child-like roar would probably have been cute if Glamazon wasn’t aware that she could turn into a giant bear without a moment’s notice.

“We don’t have much of a plan,” the Boss admitted. “We’re going for shock and awe, I think. Break in, secure Bandit and our... friend, then leave. Not all of us are going in though, not at the start.”

“Okay?” Glamazon asked.

The Boss nodded. “Ursa Minor will be going in first after Bandit blows open the entrance. Glamazon, do you think you could send in some of your sparkles too? I think they’re meant to be distracting, right?”

Glamazon nodded. “Then I head in?”

“No, you stay behind,” the Boss said. Glamazon bristled. She knew she wasn’t as tough as the bear, but come on. “One of Bandit will be going in as well. The rest of us will stay out here until the entrance is cleared out and made safe. Maple here, who is new enough that she doesn’t have a heroic identity, will be providing us with equipment.”

“She’s a gadgeteer?” Glamazon asked.

The girl, Maple, nodded. She was half-hidden behind the Boss’s legs, only peeking at Glamazon with one eye. “I, um, can make bombs and stuff.”

Any amount of cute sympathy Glamazon had for the obviously shy girl evaporated.

“I think we should have you focus a little more on utility items for now,” the Boss said.

Maple nodded. “I made these,” she said as she reached into her pockets. She pulled out a set of devices that all looked more or less the same, with an earphone in the middle and some wires around it. It looked like a kid’s arts and crafts project gone wrong. “They’re quantum-entanglement communicators.”

“Quantum-entanglement?” Glamazon asked. “As in, they each have a set of linked tunnels going between them? As in, unbreakable communication?”

The girl blinked. “The wires are all tangled up, so yes?”

The Boss picked one of the communicators and shoved it into her ear. Owlwatch did the same. “Hello? Hello!” the Boss said.

“I can hear you even without one of those,” Ursa Minor said.

The Boss rolled her eyes. “They seem to be working. Good job, Maple.” She patted the girl on the head, which had all the others looking momentarily quite jealous. “Alright, we should head out. Bandit, you know your part. We’ll hide nearby. Once the door’s down, Glamazon, blow up the interior, then Ursa Minor can clear it. Bandit, you go in with her while another you stays with us.”

“Got it, Boss!”

A couple of minutes later Glamazon found herself half-hidden around a corner, wondering where she’d gone wrong in life, while a pint-sized bandit-dressed kid fired super-sonic toast at an armoured door.

“It’s open!” the girl called out, her voice clearly relayed through the device jammed into her ear.

Glamazon stepped out of hiding and flung a brace of her glowing spheres into and through the doorway. Some bounced, others rolled, and a few others simply detonated right away, filling the entrance area with sparkling lights that would disorient and distract.

Then Ursa Minor charged across the space, her sprint turning into a weird four-legged gait a moment before she slipped into the door and turned into a roaring grizzly bear.

“Bandit, what’s going on in there?” the Boss asked.

Glamazon actually envied the girl’s calm. For someone running such a shoddy operation, the Boss was cool as a cucumber, with the resting face of someone she’d rather not pick a fight with.

“It’s full of mooks and goons!” Bandit shouted unnecessarily from right next to them. So, the clones shared senses? That... made some sort of sense, Glamazon supposed. “Oh, they have guns.”

There was a clatter of gunfire, and the girl huffed. Then another Bandit appeared next to her. “Wait, let me try again,” a new Bandit said before she took off sprinting into the base.

“This might be a bit beyond us,” Glamazon said.

Heroes were strong, sure, but guns were a whole other level of scary. Judging by the ugly look on the Boss’s face, she thought so too. “Maple, do you think you can make anything to help?”

Maple gasped, then started to pull things out of the pockets of her lab coat. In under a minute, she had a small device that was humming ominously. “It’s a jammer!” she said proudly.

“For their communications? That’s useful,” the boss said.

“Huh? No, it jams their guns.”

There was a distinct lack of gunfire, Glamazon noticed.

“Well... okay then,” the Boss said, entirely unphased by how not-possible that was.

“Boss! The big dumb bear’s done making a mess of everything, and I’m out of tape!” Bandit called out.

The Boss and Glamazon shared a look, then both of them jogged over to the entrance. Within, they found a panting grizzly bear in an open room, standing atop a shivering pile of men and women in distinctly mook-like uniforms with their arms raised, and Bandit’s clone was there, lamenting over an empty roll of duct tape. “We might need to call someone about this,” the Boss said as she took in the bullet-hole covered walls.

***