2103:11:04:16:45:04

  Darkstar looked at his computer screen, watching his junior do a near-incoherent version of her written report. So much so he doubted she’d been the one writing it in the first place. Seemed like he might have to have a talk with Snorkel again…

  “-cut my zip-ties and got the hell out of there,” Acute Puncture said. She was one of eleven blacked-out silhouettes on Darkstar’s screen. The other ten belonged to other members of the Jannacht team sent to Charm, as well as the management of the New York branch responsible for setting up and financing the operation.

  “And right on time too,” the junior villain continued. “Doubt Blazin would’ve let me go, not without some burns to remember him by at least. Did get a cool toy out of it though.” She flipped something in the air and snatched it up.

  Though it was made invisible by the filter they applied to the meeting, Darkstar knew it was a thumb-sized metal cylinder with the ability to block sound in a small area around the object. If Darkstar had to guess, it was a device of Tin Knightus, an Acolyte like Bizz-Buzz and a maker specializing in sound. It wasn’t a terribly valuable or useful device – at least, not on its own – so management decided to let Acute Puncture keep it. A memento of her outing, even if it ended in failure.

  Not that he blamed his junior. If it was Bizz-Buzz alone he might have, but Crowsong was by all accounts as experienced as a minority-age vigilante could be. And well-trained too, capable of turning a common weapon-based master power into a versatile arsenal. Likewise, Jester had great versatility and a super sub-power as well if the reports of her wrestling Drake Blackflame were true.

  So no, Darkstar wouldn’t blame her, but that didn’t mean he would do nothing. She should learn from this, which he doubted she would on her own – the girl was difficult to motivate at the best of times.

  “Thank you, Puncture,” Soliloquy, the one to head the new Charm chapter, said. “You can discuss your extra training with your mentor when he arrives. And please, next time write your own report.” Acute puncture flinched. Seemed like Soliloquy was onto her as well. “For now, you and your colleagues are dismissed.”

  Eight screens vanished, leaving Darkstar with Soliloquy, Ritual Master and Terragua.

  “Does this change anything?” Ritual Master asked.

  Soliloquy muted his microphone for a moment, no doubt concentrating focusing on his power. “No,” he said. “The outcome is, in fact, preferable to the alternative. Had Crowsong and her sidekick not intervened, we would’ve wound up with a dead junior, as well as a dead Acolyte.”

  The dark silhouette of Ritual Master leaned back. “That was not what you predicted before.”

  Darkstar’s fist clenched involuntarily. The head of New York was not a merciful person.

  Soliloquy remained calm, however. “My powers are many, but its ability to augur is lacking. Especially when other augurs are in play.”

  “Hm,” Ritual Master said. He remained quiet, weighing the situation. “Very well. Hindsight is 20/20, as always. Proceed as you deem fit.” He vanished from the screen, followed soon after by his second, Terragua, leaving as well.

  Darkstar let out an undisguised breath of relief. “Thank God that’s over.”

  Soliloquy laughed at his former sidekick. “No need to be dramatic. The man’s stern, not a monster. You can stop checking your bed every night for sigils.”

  “Easy for you to say – you’re already in Charm,” Darkstar returned.

  “And you believe that’s out of his reach, hm?” his former mentor joked – at least, Darkstar hoped it was a joke. “Finished packing yet?”

  “I’ll do it the day before. Not like I have much to pack,” Darkstar said. He was pretending to be a broke college boy, here on government-backed scholarship. No need for anyone to know it was the Jannacht sponsoring him, and paying more than a little extra as well.

  “Excited to return?” Soliloquy asked. Darkstar groaned in response, causing Soliloquy to chuckle. “Oh please, not even a little bit?”

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  “You just had to pick Charm, didn’t you,” Darkstar accused.

  The silhouette shrugged. “We needed a place on the west coast, and Charm’s a better place than most. Lax heroes, divided rogues, only local villain groups – not counting Magistry, of course. The city doesn’t even have much in the way of heavy hitters. That it is your hometown is just another benefit atop many.”

  All that was true enough, except, “I wouldn’t be so sure. It only seems like there’re no heavy hitters because nobody has bothered to hit hard enough.”

  “Like who? Peakstar?” Soliloquy snorted. “Don’t let your bias control you.”

  Darkstar clenched hands into a fist for a moment before immediately letting go. His old mentor’s confidence was grating, but not unearned. And perhaps it was true he was letting his bias get to him; when he left Charm, the use of his powers was unskilled, and thus every fight difficult and often bloody. Now, he was one of New York’s harder hitters. If the villain capital of North America offered could not hold him down, how could Charm?

  “I guess we’ll see,” Darkstar said. He checked the time. “How are the negotiations going?”

  “Poorly,” Soliloquy stated bluntly. “Motorgang is not the exception. Numbers Room, Dusk Bandits, Dead Hive; none of them are eager to talk, and whenever we do, they come with accusations. And Magistry has refused altogether.”

  “Grounded ones?” Darkstar asked.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

  “Sabotage?”

  “Augurs, I suspect. There are many rogue augurs in Charm – some openly advertising their services, some hidden in the background. But it seems they are not welcoming our entry into the city.”

  “Not even one friendly?” Darkstar asked. It was surprising – they normally had great relations with augurs, be they in-house, affiliates on retainer, freelancer groups or solo’s preferring contract-by-contract dealings.

  “There were two, in fact,” Soliloquy said. “But in my brief interactions with them, they seemed highly suspicious. That, and since we’ve never met face to face, I couldn’t use my powers to its fullest extent.”

  Darkstar grimaced. Soliloquy had weird limitations like that. Sometimes, depending on how he phrased it, his power could reach across mountains and seas – though those were rarely directly harmful to their targets. Other times, a wall or even earplugs was enough to shut him out.

  “As for Syndicate augurs,” Soliloquy continued, “they too have hit upon anomalies. Precog-to-precog interference, naturally, but also blind spots, tracking failures, black boxes and even faults in data interpolation.”

  That didn’t bode well, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Darkstar checked his watch again. “Anything else to discuss?”

  Soliloquy snorted. “Eager to get rid of me?” He teased, then shook his head. “Go and enjoy your last days in New York. We’ll speak tomorrow.” And with that, his once mentor vanished from the screen.

  Darkstar closed VideFeed and opened his browser, returning to what he’d been watching before the meeting. It was a discussion panel on the CAS – short for Charm Announcement Service, the city hall-funded media and news platform.

  He rewound the live feed back to where he left off.

  “The reason behind the attack is still being investigated, but the evidence so far indicates that Bizz-Buzz caught two villains fighting in the trainyard, one from Motorgang and one from the more recent arrivals in our city, the Jannacht Syndicate. They then-” he quickly closed the browser, cutting off the Guardian spokesperson.

  If that was how the government decided to spin this, he doubted he’d get any information he didn’t already know.

  Not that he blamed them. Letting people know that the Acolyte had run off on his own and got himself nearly killed as a result was not the kind of news anyone would want public, and likely violated one privacy law or another as well. Besides, he had long gotten used to heroes twisting the truth to defend their own.

  He navigated his way through his folders and opened the collated report one of Jannacht’s augurs made using those of the Acolytes, Guardians, Charm’s Department of Law Enforcement, among others.

  The descriptions of the fight and their cause were much clearer here, but Darkstar didn’t care for that. No, he focused instead on the immediate aftermath of Drake’s defeat.

  Blazin had been the head of Motorgang since before Darkstar was born, which meant he’d been their leader for over twenty years at least. That was an impressive feat for such a collection of unstable villains, requiring a kind of smarts previous heads lacked.

  Which made it difficult to square with what he did that night. Not him letting the vigilantes and Acolytes go – that much was common sense, common enough for even the mad to understand. No, what interested Darkstar was Blazin burning down half the trainyard.

  The reports suggested it was simple a fit of passion that made him destroy a vital part of his own infrastructure. A consequence of his discussion with the vigilantes, where something was said that tickled his fancy in just the right spot.

  But that was too easy, and based not off of an augur’s own investigation, but off of the reports they managed to collect from the other organizations. And as the saying goes: garbage in, garbage out.

  No, Darkstar feared something else behind Blazin’s fit of passion. He suspected a cunning intellect behind the fa?ade of a madman, and thus a cunning act behind the fa?ade of emotion.

  Motorgang was an old gang, one that had always made its home in The Hub and Northside’s poorer districts. For all the drugs they peddled inside Charm, it was the transportation side of their business that was the real core of their being.

  They’d inserted themselves in that market since their beginning, even directly aiding in the construction of its infrastructure in both the physical sense as well as the non-physical through their connections throughout North America’s heart. While their influence in Portside was practically non-existent – same as the other gangs – goods didn’t flow out of there without passing through The Hub, even if it was just for storage before being shipped off by sea to the next city.

  Burning part of that network down – if only a small part – didn’t square well with that knowledge. It would make their affiliates more wary and lead to resentment, something they couldn’t afford with a gang war right on their doorstep.

  The only thing that made sense is that he somehow knew the angle of attack the Jannacht were taking.

  It wasn’t by accident that the Syndicate had targeted Motorgang territory first and foremost. Taking over local infrastructure was a basic part of any armed conflict. Supplies needed to come from somewhere, after all – it was why Acute Puncture was there in the first place. So, for Blazin to head off the attempt was smart.

  The manner in which he did was not. The only reason he could think of was that Blazin hadn’t just figured out the supply point and time the Jannacht used to smuggle things into the city, but also the people they’d subverted from under their control. And if they’d found one, they would find others as well.

  But again, why burn it? Capture was what one usually did with enemy supply. Not destruction, and certainly not the destruction of property from those not even involved. Was it a message to their other clients – willing or no – that working with the Jannacht got you more than a slap on the wrist? An act of collective punishment against their business partners?

  That seemed… excessive. Especially so early into their brewing conflict; alienating one’s allies before the true war started was so incredibly stupid it hardly needed to be said.

  In other words, they were the actions of a madman.

  Darkstar sighed and closed his laptop.

  Just like his older sister – or was it younger now? –resurfacing, there was no finding logic in the chaos. It was just another headache, another issue he’d deal with once he got to Charm.

  But for now, there was a going-away party he had to deal with.