Summus Proelium

Pencil was down. He was down. I couldn't believe it. The actual shock of what had just happened hit me a moment later and I staggered backward until my back hit the wall. Then I slid down to a seated position with my knees up, staring at him in disbelief.

That lasted for just a second before the cold realization of how stupid I was being washed over me and I immediately scrambled that way while grabbing a set of stay-down cuffs. I immediately snapped them onto his wrists, securing his hands behind his back. But I wasn't satisfied with that. Not by a long shot. Instead, with the help of a little purple boost, I quickly ripped most of his left sleeve and tied it into his mouth so he couldn't speak any verbal commands for any embedded tech he might have. Given I balled some of it up inside his mouth, that would also hopefully stop him from activating anything hidden in his teeth. Meanwhile, his right sleeve was torn off and used to tie his ankles together as well as I could.

And no, I still wasn't satisfied with that. And looking around, I spotted some scotch tape laying near one of the broken filing cabinets. It wouldn't do for holding his arms or legs, but for this bit, it might be enough. At least for now. I grabbed the tape and used the entire roll on his hands. I taped his fingers together so he couldn't snap or make any special motions or gestures to activate other Touched tech.

After another moment of thought, I took his shoes off, just in case he had some teleportation tricks or something else nasty in there too that he could set off with his toes. And on that note, I found another roll of scotch tape and used that on his feet to keep those toes straight.

Yeah, maybe I was being paranoid with all this. Maybe it would've been fine just to drag him out like that to find the others. But I could just picture him waking up partway through that, snapping his fingers, and disappearing. After everything that had just happened, I absolutely wasn't going to risk that. Before he could even start to recover from slamming his face into the floor and knocking himself out, he was handcuffed, gagged, bound at the ankles, and had his fingers and toes taped up too much to make any complicated gestures or motions with them. And I was still taking a moment to think if there were any other easy ways I could reduce his mobility or eliminate the chance of him pulling some piece of shit trick out his ass to escape.

It was while I was thinking about that and squinting around the room anxiously that I finally remembered what he had said about cameras. Oh, thank God I hadn’t gone with my instinct to rip my helmet off and start hyperventilating. I had no idea if he was telling the truth about us having an audience, but it wasn't something I wanted to risk.

I couldn’t exactly stand around looking for cameras either. Not with everything that was going on. I had to let the others know where I was and get Pencil to someone who could properly contain him with something other than a single set of cuffs, ripped cloth, and scotch tape. So, reaching down to grab the unconscious bastard by the ankles, I started dragging him out of the room. Which only served to remind me of the pain in my shoulder from where he had cut me. Thankfully, it wasn’t that deep, but pulling this bastard around really wasn’t fun. About halfway to the door, audibly panting and grunting the whole time after everything I’d just been through, I thought to say something for the maybe-audience who could still be seeing and hearing all this. “I know what you’re thinking, it’s not really him. It’s a clone, or a robot, or something like that. Something that’s gonna screw us all over because of course the bad guy has to escape. It’s Pencil, he always escapes. He must’ve put some sort of high tech Mission Impossible flesh disguise mask on someone else and convinced that poor schmuck to pose as him while the real Pencil retreated or something, right?”

By that point, I had started pulling the man by his ankles again and made it to the doors. I had to find the way up to the--wait, the forcefield. Feeling like an idiot (and realizing that everyone watching, if they existed, probably thought I was too), I put a hand against the door. Sure enough, the shield appeared. Great, just great.

Hanging my head, I slowly turned to look at the unconscious body at my feet while a low groan escaped me. “Do I have to go dig around in his pockets? Oh God, I really don’t wanna doooo thaaaaat…” My voice turned to a slight whine of disgust, before I heaved a heavy sigh and did just that, very carefully. “Never, ever let anyone tell you guys that being Star-Touched is glamor--awww there’s crumbs he has crumbs! Eww.”

Yeah, maybe I was playing it up just a little. Partly because I wanted to reduce the tension and fear now that Pencil was… well, basically contained even if I didn’t want to jinx it by thinking those words too loudly, and to take away the aura of terror and mystery he’d cultivated for so long. That was why I’d made a point of making the fucker knock himself out with tied-together shoelaces, and it was why I was playing up how gross and crumb-filled his pockets were. It took away the mystery, it made him seem like just some guy. That was what he deserved to be remembered as while he was locked up on Breakwater forever. Or wherever they could shove him and throw away the key after getting rid of all his extra tech. Everyone who ever watched this needed to see that he wasn’t some evil demon. He was just an asshole with a trick.

I did manage to find some sort of keyfob in his pocket in the process of all that. On the front of it was an image of a shield, along with a single button. Part of me immediately said that was a trick. But on the other hand, I doubted he expected anyone to actually get far enough to root around in his pockets. Maybe if he was planning on dropping it somewhere so he could laugh when someone tried turning the shield off and just managed to set off some bombs he had planted or something?

No, I didn’t think so. He probably would’ve found a way to let me ‘find’ the remote then so I’d think I could turn off the shield and end up hurting myself or killing everyone else. Especially toward the end there, when he’d been getting desperate. He never used this thing as a trap, which told me it wasn’t one.

I started to press the button on it before catching myself. Instead, I found a bare piece of his finger that wasn’t covered with tape and used that to press the button. Just in case he’d rigged it to do something bad if someone other than him activated the thing.

Thankfully, it worked. With a briefly rising hum of energy, the shield vanished.

I was planning on saying something else to the audience before going through the door. But just then, in the instant that the shield went down, Paige’s voice slammed into my ears through my earbud so suddenly, unexpectedly, and loudly that I literally jumped, jerking backward in a way that had to be visible wherever those cameras were.

“--to you right now! We’re trying to track the--”

“Poise!” I managed while shoving myself back up. Grabbing Captain Useless Sack Of Murderous Potato--no wait, potatoes were good. Sack Of Murderous… Turnips by the ankles once more, I started moving again, shoving the door open. “I’m okay! I’m alright, where are you guys? I’ve got--uhh…”

“Paintball!” Paige had managed to collect herself as I decided how much to say right then. The obvious relief in her voice actually brought a slight blush to my face. “You’re okay. You’re--you’re okay. Wait, what’s--”

“I have Pencil,” I reported, while looking around the empty, foreboding-looking, L-shaped hallway I’d found myself in right after leaving that other room. It looked like something out of a horror movie, honestly. Hell, the lights were even flickering. There were a couple doors to the right, and as I continued down the hall, I found the elevator around the bend to the left.

“Wait.” That was Alloy. “What do you mean, you have Pencil?”

Dragging the bastard in question to the elevator, I hit the button to go up. “I mean he’s unconscious and tied up right now, but we’re about to head your way now. Err, what floor are you on? What’s happening? Is everyone--I mean…”

“We got split up from the Minority,” Paige informed me. “But last we saw, they’re okay. We were looking for you and… and there were a lot of things between us and you. But you’re really okay?” Her voice caught a bit then, softening just a little. Not enough for most people to catch, but I heard it.

“I’m alive and he’s unconscious,” I managed after giving the man’s motionless form another look. “He’s about as secure as I can get him right now. Guess you didn’t catch the broadcast.” I heard her start to ask what I meant by that, but pushed on. “I’m bringing him up to you on the elevator if you just--” In that moment, the doors in front of me dinged and whooshed open. Which allowed me to see the six different masked figures inside, all pointing guns at me. None of them seemed happy to see me holding what I was going to guess was their trussed-up boss by the ankles.

“Oh,” I started, sounding exhausted even to my own ears, “I really should’ve--”

Once again I was interrupted. That time, it came from the loud bang of something slamming down on top of the elevator they were in. All six men twisted around to look up, just as the hatch was torn open. A figure dropped right into the middle of that pack. I had time to hear several gunshots, cries, the snap of multiple broken bones and various thuds as things hit the walls of the elevator repeatedly.

Then, as quickly as it began, there was silence. Those half-dozen men lay in crumpled heaps, while Paige hopped over the last of them, darted out of the elevator, and grabbed me in a tight embrace. It was almost painful. “You’re okay,” she breathed out, clearly convincing herself of that. “You’re alright.”

Releasing one of Pencil’s ankles (No way was I going to risk the piece of shit magically disappearing just because I took both hands off him), I returned the embrace. “Did you really just jump down through an entire elevator shaft just to kick their asses for me?”

“I slid down on the chain,” she shot back, finally releasing me after another moment so she could look at the unconscious figure. “You fought him… you beat him.”

“It was a whole thing,” I replied with a grimace. “He said he broadcast it, so it’s probably out there. I just--” Taking in a long, deep breath before letting it out, I settled on, “What about everyone--all the patients?”

Crouching next to Pencil, Paige examined him briefly. “They’re okay. Scions came out of the woodwork as soon as he took you, doing everything they could to keep us busy. Lots of Touched-Tech toys. They were really pulling out all the stops. I…” Whatever she had been about to say, the girl shook it off while straightening up. “We need to get him into custody. That’s what matters right now. Before he wakes up--” Her foot lashed out backwards to collide with Pencil’s face as he started to jerk upward out of nowhere. “--again.” Reaching down to grab the shoulders of the once-more unconscious man, she gestured. “Grab that side. I told the others to wait up there.”

Together, the two of us carried our prisoner onto the elevator, shoved the unconscious figures of his followers out, and then rode it upstairs. My thought had been to take it to the lobby and carry him out to the cops who had to be arriving by now, but Paige informed me that the lobby was full of Scions people in a fight with those very same Stars and Shields. It was a whole thing, apparently. The point was, taking Pencil there was probably a bad idea. We needed to get him to where others could help keep him contained until this whole situation was settled. That was in the VIP area where the remaining building guards were holed up. Let the others deal with getting the rest of the building under control. We would go to the most secure area, lock this fucker down as tightly as we could, and only hand him off directly to Caishen or someone like that. Pencil--Nick--was the real prize here. Him and--

“Where’s Cup?” I finally realized, even as we were stepping off the elevator to join the others. Trevithick was already throwing herself at me to squeeze somehow even tighter than Paige had, and Qwerty was doing the same thing but to the side of my face as he landed on my shoulder. I had to drop the legs I was holding so I could return Wren’s hug with one arm and reach up with my other hand to gently squeeze the squirrel-bird. “Hey, guys. I’m okay. I--it’s okay.”

“We don’t know where Cup is,” Alloy informed me a bit tersely. She was looking around the waiting room area where Paige and I had come up, as though expecting either the Fell-Touched herself or an army of their psycho troops to jump out from behind a couch or chair any second. “And if you’re right about Pencil broadcasting your fight with him, they’ll know you have him now.”

“So they’ll be coming, just like those six did,” I agreed. “Which means we need to get somewhere safe. Or at least as safe as we can get in here. What about the Minority?”

Sierra was the one who answered. “There were some nasty types coming up a rear stairway. They went to help deal with that while we escort you and your new prisoner behind secure lines. Well, as secure as they get in here, anyway. I don't know how the hell they managed to get this many people in here, but it's been a bit of a war zone.”

Trevithick’s head bumped up and down. The poor kid looked exhausted and worn out. They had clearly been through a lot while I was busy. “There's so many of them, and they keep coming.”

“This is ridiculous,” I announced, even as I reached down to grab Pencil’s ankles. “How do they have so many guys willing to throw themselves into this? I know there's a lot of disturbed people out there, people who just want to hurt and kill. But really? They've got enough friends to bring a small army into this place?”

“Define small,” Hobbes muttered. She was favoring one arm noticeably, where I could see a cut in the reinforced protective suit she was wearing. “All I'm saying is that if that cocksucker could pull out this many friends to help him pull this off, he must’ve been doing a lot more recruiting than anyone knew.”

“Soooo many,” Qwerty agreed. “First I thought they were just changing clothes and coming back to trick us, but I keep labeling them and they keep showing up with more that aren’t labeled!”

“And we still don’t know where he stashed his sister,” Calvin pointed out. “Who knows how many guys he’s got watching over her.”

My head shook while we hurried across the waiting area and toward the back hallways leading into the VIP section. “Pretty sure he wouldn’t trust most of them to do that. I sure as hell wouldn’t. He’ll have her somewhere he knows is safe. Or as safe as it could be. Maybe not even in the building, I dunno.”

By that point, we had reached the doorway leading to the area where everyone was holed up. Two uniformed security guards with heavy duty guns were standing there behind a makeshift barrier made of tables and chairs. When they saw us, and who Poise and I were carrying, they quickly slid the front two tables aside and beckoned us through into the room beyond. “Holy shit,” one of them started, “is that really him?”

My head bobbed. “Yeah, it's him. Which means we’re probably gonna have company soon. Unless the people downstairs can get the building under control first.” Even as I said that, I was looking around. The door into my parents’ room was right there in sight. There were also another four or five security guards and a dozen or so nurses and doctors.

“Doubtful.” That was Wobble, as he and the rest of the Minority came jogging in through one of the other doors. I felt a tiny bit of the tension in me relax when I saw Raindrop with them and she gave me a short, subtle nod before her eyes shifted toward the door into our parents’ room. They were okay.

Wobble continued as they came to a panting stop. “It’s pretty heavy down there. We managed to get a message out, but--holy fuck is that…”

“The guest of honor,” I confirmed flatly. “He’s been compromised. And by compromised, I mean you can hit him and he’ll feel it. Just ask Poise. I’ve been trying to make sure he can’t trigger anything or escape when he wakes up. But his fans are gonna be swarming the place as soon as they figure out where we are.” Even as I said that, I was already grimacing. “Maybe we should find another spot. Or I can make a hole in the wall and we can get everyone out of here.”

“You’ll never make it,” one of the doctors put in. “Not with the patients. They’ll try to wander off, or struggle because they don’t understand what’s going on. They won’t--even the conscious ones can’t be moved easily. And trying to go through a hole in the wall and all the way to the ground? It won’t happen.”

“Not to mention all the bad guys with guns out there,” Style pointed out. “The best move is to hole up in one spot like this. It’s easy to defend this area, there’s only a couple ways in and out and they’ve got troops watching both of them.”

Reluctantly, I nodded, taking a look at everyone once more. The Minority people had clearly been through the wringer as well. And the guards didn’t look much better. None of them--none of us-- were in any state to charge for the exit. The safer option was to hunker down, guard the two ways in here, and wait for help. Hell, maybe whoever had shot those other guys in the head would show up to pitch in. I still didn’t know what was up with that. Unless Pencil had done it himself to serve as camouflage. But that felt wrong.

Either way, we had to get ready, because this situation wasn’t over yet. That swarm of heavily-armed fanatics Pencil had somehow managed to recruit would be coming for us. I just hoped we could hold out until reinforcements showed up.

Honestly, how had me catching Pencil turned out to be only the beginning of this night?