4,5&6

Those plans lasted only until I passed by the fridge and my stomach growled loudly.

I took some time, made myself an omlette and toast, and ate something for the first time in almost eighteen hours.

It was amazing what one could forget when one had an interesting new toy to play with. I headed out the door, paused, then headed back into the kitchen once more and prepared myself a few sandwiches. I then proceeded to fill up a backpack with everything from the aforementioned food to bottles of water, spare clothes and a first aid kit.

Most of these things were there out of an abundance of caution, but then again, I had somewhat of a paranoid streak and while I was unlikely to end up in the middle of a cape battle every other day, Worm had given me the impression that treating this world as if that were true was warranted.

I unlocked the car's door remotely, grinning as it chirped. My very first car. All it had taken was ending up here.

I hopped in, then began to drive out of the car in a random direction. I had no idea where I was going anyway, so I might as well take this as a chance to take a look around town. If I ended up in one of the worse areas, I could always turn around.

Shade was flying somewhere above me and would join me once I was out of the city.

Up there in the sky, he was utterly impossible to see unless one knew his exact position.

That would change once he got down between buildings. He'd still be invisible and nearly impossible to see or target accurately, but people could catch glimpses of him and not immediately dismiss them as figments of their imagination. If that happened, they would likely call in the Protectorate and wouldn't that set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Brockton Bay was simultaneously far better and far worse than I had expected. I was heading further inland, through the downtown area, which seemed relatively normal.

Far more run down than the cities I was used to, closer to Sri Lanka or South Africa than Germany of England, but it didn't have any bombed-out skeletons of buildings or any visible damage from recent cape fights.

It would probably be far worse closer to the Docks or the Boat Graveyard, but I would be avoiding those, thank you very much. The Empire at least was comprised of heavy hitters that attacked directly. Enough of them could sucker punch opponents, but not in the same way Oni Lee of the Azn Bad Boys could.

That particular cape was one who's power level I had no true gauge of.

His ability to produce a clone while the original died shortly after allowed him to create a nigh unlimited number of copies of his various pieces of gear. That wasn't so much a problem when it came to his knifes, but his functionally infinite supply of grenades meant he had technically had enough explosives to level the city. Well, it would take some time, but he could get there. The real question was how quickly he could teleport, the frequency determining his potential damage output.

Some fanfics had painted horror scenarios where he could chain blinks together with hundreds of clones appearing in mere seconds when he decided to take the gloves off. That Oni Lee would have me utterly screwed.

My only canon example of his power had not made clear the major limitations on his power. Canon Oni Lee had been fighting in a stash house belonging to his gang and not used any grenades, likely to avoid damaging the gang's property.

The kamikaze bomber trick was canonically something he did, but it had only been mentioned in passing.

It all came down to his blink's frequency. He had ended up taking a bullet to the leg when Taylor had started to point out his blinks due to the bugs he took with him.

Apparently, when he teleported, he could not teleport faster than an ex-military sniper took to react and take aim.

Based on half remembered driving and biology lessons, humans had a reaction time of around a second, probably a little less given the man's training.

Actually, chances were that, given how long he took to teleport, that his teleport delay was the amount of time he needed to reorient himself after the sudden change in position.

Maybe he could teleport in random directions when pressed, or straight up for that matter, or maybe he couldn't. That was something that would likely come as a very unpleasant surprise if it did happen.

At the end of the day, all I could do was do my best and hope and pray he hadn't been holding back during his one known fight.

Just as I had that unpleasant thought, I nearly crashed the car. My power had just given me new options. One was a perfectly mundane Hummingbird. Pretty, but easily the weakest creature to date.

The other. Was. Everything. I could now create a custom creature wholesale. There were some limitations, but I couldn't get into it right now unless I wanted to get into an accident for real.

The rest of the way out of town, I focused on the road and paid attention to everything but the power burning in my chest. Getting distracted now would not be a good idea.

Eventually, I got out the city. I spent another hour driving down random and increasingly smaller roads, getting further and further from civilization. I made sure to note down each turn I made as otherwise this method of navigation would have gotten me hopelessly lost. Eventually, I saw a small clearing a few meters from the road, pulled over and let Shade back out. He'd been able to keep up with me in the city, but when I wasn't stopping every few hundred meters for a traffic light.

"Fly up and scout he area. If there's anyone around me, come back down and shake your head.

As he left, I grabbed my backpack, locked the car and headed out into the clearing. From here, I could see the clearing extended far beyond what I had been able to see before. Perfect.

I headed out there because I was almost impossible to see from the road there. By the time I reached that area, Shade had completed his survey and landed in front of me, nodding.

"That mean it's clear?"

Nod.

"Thank you. Please take up a regular patrol route and warn me if someone comes within your sigh."

As Shade shot off, I climbed up onto a rock and looked down onto a clear patch of grass.

I spread my arms dramatically, as though I were summoning a creature from the depths of hell while chanting and brought forth the Deathgripper.

One second, there was a clear patch of grass, the next a horrifying creature straight out of a horror movie was sitting there. The head somewhat resembled a badger with an overbite and a pair of massive razor-sharp tusks that protruded forward like lances.

It walked forward on scythed forelimbs resembling those of a preying Mantis' and clawed hindlegs. A pair of batlike wings were folded on its back while a tail with a nasty looking stinger dragged behind him.

I grinned, my teeth showing in an expression that likely looked slightly unhinged.

"Can you breathe fire? Try it on that clear patch of dirt" after all, there was no reason to start a forest fire.

What came out however, was a bolt of bright orange liquid that melted the ground it struck and sending up plumes of smoke.

Acid. That would be incredibly lethal and be quite hard to use without killing. If things came to a head, it would kick ass.

"Show me your stinger."

The lethal implement suddenly hovered in front of my face, making me Jump back in surprise. It gleamed in the sunlight, looking as if it could punch through steel. A viscous liquid dripped down onto the rock at my feet.

"What is that stuff?"

The dragon made a shrugging movement with its wings.

"Yeah, that one is my bad. Does it hurt your enemies if you pump it into them?"

Nod.

"Will it kill them?"

He shook his head, then nodded.

"Does it depend on random chance or is it dosage dependent? Nod once for the former and twice for the latter."

Two nods were my response.

"What does it do if it isn't at a lethal dose? Nod when I have the right option. Necrotic? Soporific? Neurotoxic? Paralytic? Dis …"

He nodded when I mentioned the paralytic.

"Alright, can you properly understand what dose is required to achieve each outcome?"

He nodded in affirmation in response.

"Good. Only use the lethal setting when explicitly ordered by me."

Casting wishful gazes over him, I dismissed him. He really had been magnificent, but I had something more pressing to deal with. My custom summon.

I could feel the different options brim with possibility.

A custom hybrid akin to Frogger, but also capable of wielding elemental energies.

An elemental animal called an Animental using powerful breath weapons.

A construct made from one of various materials in the shape of any mundane animal who's powers could vary greatly based on what they were made from.

A custom Magical Beast based on a mundane animal and enhanced to wield a single magical spell.

Lastly, an intelligent weapon capable of enhancing its attacks with various mystical effects.

Each of these was fantastic, but for me they represented one single thing. An chance to cover my weak points. I had two big ones. The first was the standard Master weakness of being extremely squishy, only being as durable as a normal person and lacking a Blaster's ability to put down suppressive fire, a Striker's powerful close combat abilities and a Thinker's excuse to stay well away from any fighting.

My other big weakness lay in the limited number of summons. I could only use them once a day and then I had to keep them with me. I might already be at eight summons, but I could only use each a single time per day. Not even per fight, per day.

I was already down to my as of yet unnamed Colibri and my as of yet uncreated unique summon as standby creatures and only Shade was physically present.

Frogger could be devastating if his mobility were combined with Explosive Finish, but that was trick that I could not rely on to carry me through a single fight if I had more than one opponent to beat.

What I needed was a summon that could stay with me and did not need to be dismissed when I moved. As cool as the Magical Beast would have been, the only thing that could have made me choose it over my choice was a healing power, which it didn't have. The intelligent weapon, in the meantime, required me to actually be good with the weapon. Should they have had some kind of high power anti-armor ability, they would have been the obvious pick, but they lacked that.

Therefore, I'd been free to pick myself up a fantastic construct creature.

Inky the unimaginatively named ink construct took the shape of a tiger, appearing first in a graffiti like state on the rock in my shadow, then she slowly pulled herself upwards and outwards into three-dimensional space, the tiger's feline body seemingly constructed of liquid shadow, flowing and shifting as I watched. She came up to slightly above my waist, around the size of a normal Siberian Tiger and was almost twice as long as I was tall if you included the tail.

The sheer coolness factor of having a pet tiger had only been a small part of my decision.

Each type of material granted the constructs made from it a special power. Gemstones could split up into smaller subunits. Forcefields could become nigh invulnerable if they didn't move. Bone creatures could explode into a tornado of bone fragments at will and then reconstitute. And so on and so forth. Ink's special power? They could turn into drawings, hiding on walls as graffiti or on skin as tattoos.

Inky could stay with me twenty-four seven, only leaving for a brief moment whenever her time ran out until I resummoned her a few moments later.

That feeling of vulnerability, that knot in my stomach, eased. For the first time, I had a creature that would not be wasted when I summoned it.

Speaking of, I gained yet another summon, called a Pansage. It was not particularly powerful in direct combat, but it had the fantastic, incomparably useful ability to grow a bush on its head who's leaves could reduce fatigue when eaten.

For the first time, I did not immediately summon one of my creatures, instead using Material Extraction on the vegetation covered monkey. A bundle of leaves manifested in my hand. I ate one and the slight fatigue that had accumulated since waking up, twelve hours ago.

These were absolutely going to come in handy when I needed to skip out on sleep. I loved my rest far too much to use these regularly, but they could really come in clutch.

The information on proper processing that came with my Material Extraction also supplied a series of recipes from a simple tea to lemonade and a fancy punch, cocktail and iced tea. I'd be making those just for the hell of it when I got home. I'd always loved cooking and cooking with magical ingredients … ho boy, I would have to pick up a lot of ingredients on the way back.

One more use occurred to me at that point. I could use them to try and bribe Armsmaster. I wasn't sure if his homebrew extra-strength energy drink was canon or fanon, but even if it was something I'd read in a fanfic I hadn't quite remembered, it definitely fit his personality. Convincing him that things were safe would be a chore and take forever, but I was not above buttering people up with food.

I turned back to Inky.

"Please turn into tattoo form and paint yourself across my toro. Then we can experiment with the exact look"

She flowed through my t-shirt and, after a brief feeling of coldness, I didn't feel her anymore. I pulled of my shirt and glanced down at the feline figure sitting on its haunches on my stomach. No, this would not do!

After almost a quarter of an hour of using the ink construct's power to move while painted, I was finally happy with the result. Her tail sat on my left side above my hip and reaching near my midline, then flowing round my back where her hindlegs and back half of her torso were located, her front half flowing across my chest until her head sat on my shoulder, the tip of her nose reaching a couple of centimeters past the point where my collarbone ended.

I got dressed, called Shade back down and turned to head back to the car, then stopped and turned around to look at the hole created by the acid. Nope, I could not leave it like that.

"Inky, please manifest, throw some dirt over that hole, then return to tattoo form, in the look we just created. In the future, always take that form as a tattoo unless otherwise specified."

We waited for a few minutes while she followed my orders. I took the time to eat a sandwich and use the box to store the Pansage leaves I had stupidly been holding in my hands the entire time.

The drive back to Brockton Bay was quite uneventful. I did get lost once, but fixing that was a matter of minutes.

I spent the rest of the day shopping for ingredients for my Pansage drinks, making said drinks and using the aforementioned drinks to stay awake till eight in the evening.

I'd had jetlag in the past and it had absolutely sucked if I failed to push myself to stay awake till the time I would normally go to sleep. Death lag? Jet lag was a sufficiently descriptive phrase and was less likely to earn me weird looks. Not that I intended to talk to people about this, but still.

I set my alarm for 7 am and laid down on my bed with a grin. Tomorrow morning, most of my summons would have come of cooldown and I would really be able to experiment with all my skills.

-----

The original Quest gave out mundane 0-point creatures every 10 chapters and I've decided to use this rule as well. However, the original had chapters of roughly one thousand words, while mine tend to be a bit longer, so I'm just going to stick with getting one every ten thousand words.

New creatures this chapter

Colibri from IRL as a member of the Strisores family (Strisores - Wikipedia)

Pansage from Pokemon (Pansage (Pokémon) - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia)

The next morning, I was all smiles. No, that was a lie, no one was ever that happy in this world. But I was happy. I'd finally somewhat come to terms with my situation and I had also regained most of my summons. Dragon and Pansage were still on cooldown for another four hours, but I didn't really need them at the time. Even if it came down to an emergency, I had Inky now. Smiling, I patted my left shoulder, where her head was located.

As Attero Dominatus, a power metal song by Sabaton, was blasting out of the speakers on my phone, I stood in the kitchen, making an omlette while singing along, of tune.

I plopped down on my table and reached for my kindle, then realized I didn't have it in this world. Hell, I didn't even know if amazon was a thing here.

… I put it on my mental shopping list, finished eating and headed downstairs.

For the second time, I reached out to one of my creatures not using the normal gentle grasp to pull them out into the world but using the power of material extraction. The mental projection of the Crimson Indrik came apart, leaving a pale shadow behind as it went on cooldown. The materials themselves spun within the mental image of my menagerie, each faintly hinting at the possibilities they offered.

I reached out for the antlers and skull, pulling them into reality on the workbench before me. Deep red bone attached to a bleached white skull sat there, not obviously strange or supernatural, but still subtly wrong, being to large and the color was wrong.

As I thought how to best use them, I absentmindedly summoned Frogger on to my shoulder. He was now in his constellation form, each of his feet glowing brightly as each joint consisted of separate star. The rest of his body also held quite a few stars but mostly looked like someone had cut a Frogger shaped hole in reality and allowed one to see the night sky through them. A nebula hung in his skull, making it seem like his brain was visible. Even as I watched, several comets zipped through him and disappeared out of my field of view. I stroked his head and, instead of the usual soft fur I touched what felt like cool marble. It was still as yielding as his flesh had been before, I could feel skin giving slightly as I touched him and I could feel the bones beneath, but he was definitely no longer obviously a living animal. Whether or not that would fool Panacea or Tattletale, I didn't know.

I'd just have to make sure not to run into the former until I had at least a somewhat good standing and avoid the latter entirely. Or maybe just briefly visit her and offer to off Coil in exchange for her getting the hell out of town and never coming back. Come to think of it, maybe I could do just that? Their base was in a building titled Redmond Welding, if I dropped of a letter inside and offered her the chance to be free of Coil in exchange for the location of his base, that might work. After that, well, I could try and go after him by myself, but that was still pretty risky, so I decided to take a page out of the man's own playbook. Playing my enemies against each other.

Coil was planning to plunge the city into chaos until he and his puppet gangs were the last remaining power, seize control of the PRT and rule from the shadows. I didn't know how he planned on dealing with the ABB, they had managed to earn the ire of every other gang in town and gotten their asses kicked, but the Empire had been defeated by revealing their identities to the world and watching them panic. Leviathan had helped things along, sure, but that had been the first step in his plan.

If I knew where his base was, I could send letters to each of the Empire members with a full accounting of his scheme, his civilian identity and power. Some would ignore it, see it as a threat, others think it a trap, but some would begin to scheme. And eventually, either someone would kill the bastard or accidentally blab to the PRT and either way, Coil would be gone. Arrested by the PRT or murdered by the Nazis, I didn't really car so long as he was out of the picture.

Once that was done, I could try and focus more on the world at large and use my metaknowledge. Cauldron would then be my biggest worry, but they relied heavily on Contessa and Clairvoyant, neither of whom could see or account for me.

It all came down to how I started my work here. Get rid of Coil, hopefully free Dinah or prevent her from being kidnapped in the first place. Kill Leviathan if I got something that would let me kill him directly, keep the vital people alive if I didn't. After that, either train up or go after the Slaughterhouse directly. After that … I'd see how far I'd managed to push back the end of the world. Then, then I'd do everything I could to get stronger and create plans to finish of Scion, Zion, the Warrior, whatever else one could call him.

I shook my head as I looked down at the skull on the workbench. My tendency to overthink everything often resulted in me going of on long mental tangents instead of focusing on the job at hand, namely turning this thing into something useful. Material Extraction suggested a few different helmet designs, but they would make me look like some kind of savage and were also weaker than my metal slime and someone could easily grab onto the horns mid fight. My Hunter knowledge on the other hand had the less practical suggestion of mounting it on the wall. I decided to just go with that. An hour later, the head hung at the end of my workshop opposite the door, polished bone and horn gleaming. Taking a few steps backwards out of the door, I grinned. It looked fantastic.

Next up, I dismissed Frogger and summoned the Colibri. It was incredible, deep blue feathers glinting in the light. I'd seen a collection of stuffed ones at the museum that used to be the house of Charles Darvin and a live one briefly while on holiday, but never this close.

It hovered in front of my face, wings blurring up and down so quickly they seemed to disappear. I held out my hand and it landed, so light I could barely feel its weight. I gently stroked its head, feeling the tiny feathers shift and move under my fingers. It was fragile, so incredibly fragile, leaving me afraid it would be injured by even my slightest touch. Pulling my other hand back, I held the bird up to my face.

"You shall be … sapphire" I hadn't taken the time to name all of my summons and likely would never get around to it. With my ever-expanding roster, keeping up would be quite the chore and I didn't really have a proper emotional connection to all of them either. Shade had been my very first, Frogger had been my first that I could pet and Ferro was going to be a mainstay of my kit for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, Sapphire had been named because I simply found him fascinating. The Deathgripper and he Crimson Indrik were, at the end of the day, not going to be out for very long. For the moment, they were combat summons, nothing more.

That reminded me, I needed to check on something. I summoned my Flickerbat, which immediately shook its head, nodded, then shook it again.

"Welcome back, Shade" I grinned. As it turned out, I did actually summon the same creature every time, so I could give standing orders and have them followed even once the twenty four hour time limit was up.

"Come with me and resume your position on overwatch. Please warn me if there's trouble. Stay cloaked."

The two of us headed up the stairs to my bedroom, where I opened the skylight to let him out.

That reminded me, I needed to buy a few go pros or the local equivalent.

I headed back to my workroom, only pausing long enough to grab a glass of water, bowl and a bag of sugar. My other creatures started out fully satiated, but Sapphire was a Colibri, which had a stupidly high metabolism and needed to eat nectar near constantly. Therefore he was highly unlikely to last the day. I put maybe a couple of tablespoons of sugar in the bowl, then added water until it was fully dissolved. Just pure sugar water was probably not going to be to healthy long term, but Sapphire wouldn't be here long enough for that to matter.

While the small bird was hovering above the bowl, drinking and being adorable, I returned to the workbench. I used Material Extraction on Ferro, receiving a large bottle of slime. When I said bottle however, I meant a long, tall metal vessel where the outer layer simply consisting of solidified slime. My power told me that it could be used to make high technology items as it could be shaped using magnetic fields and electric currents for small scale circuitry and the like. It could also be stimulated using a slightly different method to make an extremely tough yet flexible material. Sadly, this general overview of possible uses did not come with any of the technological knowledge of building the other parts of the high-tech items. In other words, this was going to get sold to the first tinker I ran into.

I froze as the next creature came in. A fairy. Oh no, this was not good. This was really bad. Fairies were not the nice and cuddly beings akin to Tinker Bell shown in modern media. They were incredibly dangerous, tricking people into being stuck in their realm, kidnapping children, …

I really, really should have checked the creature's description before panicking. Fairies in mythology were dangerous beyond belief. This was not a fairy from those stories. My fairy looked like Tinker Bell, was considerably less smart, only possessing an animal like intelligence and was overall fairly unassuming. However, she would easily fit through air vents and the like.

The Fairy was accompanied by two powers. My first new power let me summon my creatures as babies, which would help with the cuteness factor but would rarely be used.

My second power was both overwhelming and unassuming. I could, at will, stop physically interacting with my summons, phasing through them harmlessly. It would never be used outside of a very specific set of circumstances but when it was used, it would be the thing that saved my ass.

I realized something now. I now had three stealthy creatures that could be used for infiltration. Heading upstairs and out to go buy some gear, I began to scheme.

----

We should finally start to see some action next chapter.

New Creatures this chapter:

Fairy from Harry Potter (Fairy | Harry Potter Wiki | Fandom)

I'd spent most of yesterday shopping for gear, netting myself a large cache of small, broadcast capable cameras and earpieces capable of picking up signals from up to half a kilometer away, perfectly fitting with my summons roaming range as well as a trench coat and fabric supplies.

I'd spent today making myself a costume, infusing the trench coat with metal slime goop and then hardening it. I'd made a few mistakes with the electric current, resulting in a few blackened spots, but those were pretty hard to see on the dark fabric. The outfit was completed by a flat cap and a mask that covered most of my face. I remembered reading about a conversation between Green Lantern and the Flash once where they talked about the various methods of concealing one's identity. Hal Jordan had scoffed at the idea that his tiny domino mask could be less effective than that of Kyle Rainier, the newest of Earth's Green Lanterns, who's mask covered his face from his upper lip to his hairline.

I'd chosen to go with one in Rainier's style. It was funny what one thought about in situations like this, really. At the end of the day though, this was not my costume's final form. Once I got my hands on more summons, I could make a proper costume and I'd always have Ferro waiting in the wings if things went south. I'd also changed Inky's tattoo form so that she now flowed down my right arm, my closed fist now looking like the head of a roaring tiger. It wouldn't do for someone to connect the tattoo to my civilian life. Besides, having a visible tattoo in my as of yet unnamed cape persona that Wyatt Reyes, unemployed civilian, lacked would provide an extra layer of anonymity.

Gazing out across the street my stomach was a roiling knot of fear and anxiety. A couple of skinheads were loitering on the car park in front of an unused looking office building.

Shade had been roaming around for hours and apparently, this was the only place where these guys had been consistently. In addition, civilians had been avoiding this are for a long time as well, indicating that they frequented this area. Add in the fact that people had been come and gone several times, talking to the people in front strongly indicated that the building was inhabited by the Empire. The building was still perfectly serviceable but did not look like an actual company was still using it. There was no sign or even a small plaque next to the mailbox to indicate who owned it, I'd made sure of that using a pair of binoculars.

A small tablet lay on the roof in front of me, three different feeds, one from each of my current summons except Inky. Three short range radios sat in front of me, each tuned in to a different wavelength. Each of my creatures had, Frogger, Shade and the Fairy had an earpiece tuned to one of these wavelengths and the volume turned all the way down taped to them. Maybe someone could pick them up, but I'd made sure to give each of them a set of preset commands with individual words attached to these orders. Even if someone was listening in, they wouldn't get much.

I picked up the one linked to Shade.

"Distraction"

Shade would now drop out of the sky, knock over some trash cans in the alley bellow me and head back up, all while cloaked. Right on cue, a loud clattering sound reached me from bellow. As the gang members jumped in surprise and turned to look my fairy shot across the road and landed on the opposite roof. Sadly, the celestial theme wasn't the best in terms of stealth, but it sufficed given that right now, no one was looking up. Besides, few enough people paid as much attention to things above him as they did to ground level.

As I watched her land, a new summon became available. A friggin Phoenix. Not only that, but it was big enough to be ridden and could carry me through the sky with each.

Sadly, there was no way I could summon it right now, a gigantic flaming bird was the very antithesis of stealth but goddamn, unless I died tonight, I would be heading out first thing in the morning to try that out.

I watched on the monitor as the Fairy inched her way through an air vent from the roof and into the building. It took her several minutes to get a look at what looked like a stash room. Part of me had expected something akin to a dragon's hoard, drugs cash and maybe a few jewels thrown in for good measure piled high in the middle of the room. That was obviously not he case. Several clear boxes of neatly packaged pill bottles dominated one corner of the room, probably manufactured after hours using Medhall facilities. A large safe sat in a different corner, presumably containing most of the valuables. Crap.

Fortunately, plenty cash sat on the table in the third corner. Seemingly, someone had been in the middle of packaging the cash into nice, neat bundles and left halfway through. Seemingly even gangsters had set hours. The fairy began to slowly unscrew the grate upon my order and started transferring the cash to the vent. Getting into the safe would be difficult, but I had an idea. However, I needed to first set up the supplies for my other plans. I didn't just want to deprive them of money and drugs, I also wanted to screw with and humiliate them. That took nearly ten minutes but having Shade available for that helped. His method of camouflage, namely bending light in the visible spektrum around himself, meant he could not have hidden the fairy with his body, but was perfectly capable of transporting black or dark grey electronics across the street without being seen.

The final problem was getting Frogger across. I was tempted to just say "screw it" and have Shade carry him across and hope no one looked up, but then again, he wouldn't be around long so I could risk having him in his normal form. Shade was currently also in his constellation form, but he didn't shine while cloaked. In the end, I decided to go with the plan of summoning him normally. I gave him his orders verbally while he was still physically next to me and then sent him across. A few minutes after that, thing got heated.

Frogger had managed to shove himself between the wheel that was used to open the safe and the safe itself. Apparently the Empire wasn't a fan of newer safes with digital locks. Then I detonated him.

A brief test with Sapphire yesterday showed that my Explosive Finish power produced pure force, a powerful shockwave centered on the place the creature had been as opposed to the fiery blast I'd expected. After a few seconds, I sent the Fairy back towards the room to take a look. The ground was cracked beneath the safe, which was ever so slowly tipping over until it crashed to the ground. I saw that the wheel had been torn of, but the safe was still looked. Good luck trying to get your stuff back jackasses. Sadly, I wouldn't be getting anything either, but I'd already stolen a bunch of stuff lying around and hidden them in the air vents to be retrieved later. Now was the time to pull a different stunt. Amongst the stuff I'd sent over with Shade had been a 250 ml bottle of Deathgripper acid I'd harvested using material extraction, which she now poured all over the interior of the room. There wasn't enough to completely melt everything, but it was enough to thoroughly ruin everything.

In the meantime, I reached down and hit a button on a remote lying next to the radio.

A Song began to play. At first it was just vaguely threatening instrumentals, but then the volume suddenly doubled as the song began in earnest.

"Ich hab Rassisten schon immer verachtet, fremde Kulturen aus einer anderen Sicht betrachtet …" Multikulturell by the German Dark Metall Band Nachtblut. The title meant "multicultural" and the lyrics, well, … if I were a Nazi under who's ass a friggin bomb had just gone off, that song would be the very last thing I wanted to hear.

Everybody I could see was jumping around, swearing and generally acting like chickens with their heads cut off. Precisely one guy had kept his wits around him and was frantically calling someone on his phone. The video cameras I had had my Fairy spread throughout the air vents recorded every bit of the chaos.

I sat up there for a few minutes, watching someone enter the saferoom and throw up their hand in shock as they saw the devastation. He reached for a half molten pill bottle only to yank his hand back with a cry of pain as the acid started to eat into his flesh.

In the meantime, a car pulled up and a man wearing something I recognized as an SS uniform and skull mask got out. That had to be Krieg, right? There was nothing in canon about what he wore, but the SS uniform was common in fanfiction and it fit him, particularly as I knew every single one of the other E88 capes' costume except his and none of them wore that. Plus, he was from Germany originally and a hardcore Neo-Nazi who truly believed in the cause, unlike Kaiser or Hookwolf, who used it as a rallying point or an excuse for violence, respectively.

He headed inside, then froze as he finally noticed the blaring music. Just as it so happened, he was standing right beneath a camera when he realized what the lyrics were and started swearing. When I posted that video on PHO later, I could subtitle a whole five minutes worth of footage with just "very bad words".

Krieg stormed through the building snapping at everyone and everything, until he saw the saferoom and froze in shock, then let loose another set of vile insults.

A new power briefly made itself known as I watched. I was now a fantastic animal trainer. Which was actually pretty useful, the ability to train my creatures instead of having to give exceedingly detailed orders when I wanted them to do something.

Krieg was slowly calming down and ordered the skinheads now clustered around him to find the sound speakers.

In the meantime, my fairy had pushed the loot deeper into the air vents so it wouldn't be seen when they grabbed the cameras and loudspeakers, which were placed right behind he grates, then I dismissed her. I could leave it there and retrieve it later. The electronics had been purchased with cash, wiped down to remove my fingerprints and anything my creatures had left behind would disappear when they did, I wasn't particularly worried about leaving them behind.

As far as E88 was concerned, someone had snuck through their base, placed electronics everywhere without being noticed and bombed their valuables using a corrosive substance.

After disconnecting the electronics, I headed down the fire escape, which was located on the opposite side of the building from the Nazis. Just before I exited the alleyway on the opposite end of the block, I removed my mask and cap and hid them in my backpack. Now I looked like just a random guy in his early twenties wearing a trench coat during a chilly early Spring night. Once I reached my car, another two blocks away, I drove home and immediately downloaded the footage onto my laptop.

Editing the clip together took another five hours and it was morning by the time I finished, but it was worth it. The clip came out to around six minutes, the exact length of the song. I'd removed the song from the audio track of the individual clips and then underlaid the whole video with the song once in its entirety instead of the random snippets involved. Then I added a crudely drawn picture of an eagle with its head shaved a swastika tattooed on its check spinning in a circle, trying to get at a loudspeaker tied to its back.

The video itself was utter chaos and showed the so-called "defenders of the white race"'s , I think I threw up a little in my mouth just thinking that, incompetence in clear and excruciating detail. Kaiser would hit the roof when he found out about that.

I'd give it a couple of days, then see if I could contact Tattletale and get the location of Coil's base and then send that information along with a warning to Kaiser. Maybe the added pressure of needing to deal with whoever had embarrassed his gang would spur him into action or maybe it wouldn't. Either way the Empire would not be able to reuse that safehouse for a while due to how much attention it had gotten and it had to have lost a fair bit of resources in the safe when I'd poured acid over it. Come to think of it, I should have just melted it open and ransacked it, then blown it. Ah well, lessons learned and all that.

Even if I had achieved precisely nothing against the Empire with this stunt, I'd gotten some experience working in the field and tweaking a bigot's nose was always a good deed even if all it achieved was annoying them.

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New creature this chapter

Phoenix from Ark Survival (Phoenix