Purity was probably the strongest single cape on the Empire Eighty Eight roster: very rapid flight, some degree of toughness, and lasers that could level buildings in seconds. The fact that she hadn't killed those three punks only meant she had the fine control to match her power.
The fact that I had a clear line of sight to her meant that she could probably kill me with a thought.
I felt swarms gather, on me and in the underpass, responding reflexively to the pulse of terror I felt, and fought to control them before she noticed. She floated the six feet between her and the pile of groaning bodies, slowly enough that I had time wonder if it was an intimidation tactic, or if she just never walked anymore, or...
"Where is Bakuda?"
Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried as if I were right there next to her.
One of the thugs started stammering, another looked to be out cold, and the third was starting to crawl away when a white whip-crack flash left the asphalt beneath her spider-webbed with cracks. Make that two of them out cold — my insects could feel that she was still breathing. No idea how Purity had managed to crack pavement without killing her.
"What about Oni Lee?"
Further stammers, punctuated by another laser blast.
"Useless."
She turned, floating slowly out from the other side of the underpass. She hated the ABB — of course she hated the ABB. They were a rival gang, they were a pan-asian gang, Empire Eighty Eight were white supremacists, she had an existing personal feud with Lung and Oni Lee both... of course she was looking for them. And not finding them, if she was beating up thugs in the street for information...
I reached out, taking the swarms that had assembled in the underpass in response to my flush of fear, pulling together a swarm in front of her, to buy time to talk to her.
A blinding blast tore right through it, shattering a lamppost on the median which collapsed in a shower of sparks. The whole row of street lights flickered brightly, and then went out, leaving the street to be lit by the waxing moon above and her own cold light.
Instant response. Precise aim. Lethal force.
So, I wasn't going to be walking my vulnerable body out in front of her any time soon then, was I.
I reformed the swarm, denser, shaping it into a vague likeness of a person with their hands up. I mouthed the words, willing the swarm to follow along "You want the ABB?"
No way to make out an expression on her face when everything glowed like that, but I thought that might be her narrowing her eyes. Her right hand stayed up, glowing more brightly than the rest of her body.
"You know where to find Bakuda or Oni Lee?"
"Armory, distribution center — yes. The leaders... not yet." The words sounded odd to me, barely understandable.
"Why would you give them to me?" The hand was slightly lower, and she was facing almost directly away from my actual location, floating high enough she could almost touch the ceiling of the underpass, but I wasn't feeling much safer.
"My father."
At that her hands dropped, and she nodded. The ripple in the light of her face might have been a blink. "I am sorry for your loss. They are a cancer in the city."
I choked back hysterical laughter. For being arguably the strongest superpowered skinhead in the city, she was pretty polite about it. And it wasn't as if I could disagree with her goal of destroying the ABB, though I seriously doubted she'd be on-board when I got around to taking on the E88.
"Where?"
I paused, debating a moment. The drug warehouse would be a bigger earner, but it could be shut down. The armory, on the other hand, almost had to be involved in any response that ABB made. If I was going to watch whichever one survived the night, trying to find new locations, new people...
"A warehouse, near the docks. I'll show you. Harbor and Pine, in half an hour?"
She nodded, and vanished upward in a streak of light.
I released my swarms, twitching with relief. E88 was on the list — but ABB came first. And while the enemy of my enemy might not be my friend, in this case? She was definitely a force to be reckoned with.
And... how had I even noticed her blinking, from here? Had the adrenaline unlocked my ability to see and hear through my bugs?
I focused, trying to look at the crumpled ABB thugs and...
Ohgod.
No, it definitely still hurt to try that. It still hurt a lot. I made my blind way back toward the bus stop, trying to make my rendezvous with Purity, trying not to pass out from the concussion or the spiky pain.
The bus ride took me back to the right part of town, and I sipped shallowly from my water bottle, trying to breathe deeply and evenly despite the pain. I didn't even have a watch — and if I had, I couldn't have checked it while I couldn't see — but I thought I wasn't too late. I found a quiet alleyway, and put a dense person-shaped swarm of bugs up on top of one of the buildings at the corner of Harbor and Pine, visible from where I huddled across the street when I opened my eyes.
A falling star resolved into Purity, who abruptly stopped, just hovering in place, one foot above the roof surface and ten feet from my swarm-person. Insect woman. Bug clone. I was going to have to think of a better name, wasn't I?
And that kind of distractibility was probably the concussion, again. Had she said something? I shook my head, trying to clear it, and was rewarded with a nauseating sway in perspective. My swarm's head shook with it.
"Where is the warehouse?" Again, her voice carried impossibly clearly.
"Two streets over, one down — I'll show you. Ten people inside it tonight: two with shotguns, I think, on the back door. One in what I think is an office, also armed. The rest on the warehouse floor, naked, working." I extended myself, feeling my way through the building more carefully.
"Drugs with the workers, money with the manager — that would be the usual pattern."
Money? Money would matter to me, eventually. Lisa's gift couldn't last forever — might not even last long enough. And robbing from the ABB had a lot of appeal to it. I made my swarm-clone's head nod in response, then dissolve into a twisting rope of bugs flying toward the warehouse, pointing the way. Purity followed after, and I waited until she'd cleared my line of sight before walking closer to the warehouse myself. I had my bugs touch down and pool on the roof of the building next door, then form a target symbol on the front wall of the warehouse.
Apparently, that was clear enough because the front wall of the warehouse ceased to exist immediately afterward. The chunk of wall I'd put the symbol on remained intact, and that swarm reformed into a loose cloud. Others filtered in through the back.
An enormous concrete dust cloud roared up as Purity floated forward, periodically lashing out with blasts of light. I felt the locations of the people within the building, drew swarms in targeting shapes on the air before Purity, using the way I could just feel the relative positions of the bugs on the ABB members and the few I'd put on Purity to let me position the other swarm into a perpendicular disc along the line between the glowing villain and each target. Another swarm felt through the office, identifying stacks of bills, and tiny teams of bugs began ferrying them out through the chaos and across the street.
Purity caught on quickly, and less than a minute after her dramatic entrance, the ABB were all down. None dead, though falling debris had left one with a nasty headwound. The restraint was... odd. Fear of Protectorate response? A feeling that the unpowered members of the ABB weren't worth a serious effort? A simple dislike of killing?
She descended, not walking among them, but close, turning a few over and shaking her head at what she saw.
Eventually, she rose into the air again and settled on the roof of the building across the street. I formed a swarm-clone to meet her there, and pointed to the pile of bills.
"Theirs. Waste not."
She nodded. Something I thought might have been a scowl, from the tone of her voice. "I'd rather have gotten Oni Lee."
"Bakuda."
She shrugged. "Her too. The armory?"
My swarm clone shook its 'head'. "I want to watch. Find more. Tomorrow?"
She scooped up an armful of the bills as sirens began to sound in the distance. "This ought to take down most of their distribution for a few weeks: most dealers only have a few days worth of drugs on hand. It'll make a difference. Tomorrow, on top of the old Transatlantic Shipping Building, ten pm?"
"Done."