4.06

Über and Leet, those costumed clowns, were the next problem. Über, with his jack-of-all-trades power, charged. I wanted distance, but Grue? He stepped right up, disappearing into a cloud of his freaky darkness. Über stumbled out, all clumsy one second, pulling off some fancy kick the next. Weird as hell.

My bugs were trickling in. A few useful wasps from a nearby nest, but mostly just pathetic stragglers. I held them back, forming a small swarm. Couldn’t risk going bug-less if Leet pulled some crazy invention.

Speaking of, Leet pulled out an old-school bomb, but it looked… off. Fake. Regent, with his weird body-jacking power, made him drop it. Boom went the bomb, but it was a baby explosion. Über went flying, though.

Tattletale, always one to get under people’s skin, started in on them. Mocking their failures, their pathetic web show, everything. Leet, bless his heart, claimed their mission was “worth it”. Spreading the word about video games, or some nonsense. Tattletale, not one to hold back, told him straight up that people watched them to laugh at them, not with them.

Über tried to calm Leet down, but Tattletale was on a roll. Called them out for being useless, a guy who’s good at everything but still manages to fail, and a Tinker whose inventions only work once and then blow up in his face.

“I could demonstrate,” Leet threatened.

“Please don’t,” Tattletale quipped, “Geek ash is hell to get out of a costume.”

More banter. Regent chimed in, calling them clowns. Leet, finally fed up, got blasted by Grue’s darkness. Tattletale kept at it, claiming even Über was laughing at him. Über, loyal idiot, said Leet was his friend.

Leet, voice cracking, threw another fake bomb. We scattered. My bugs attacked, but they weren’t doing much. He pulled out two more bombs, but Regent tripped him up. He slammed into a door, hard.

He pulled out a sword. A damn video game sword. Regent and Tattletale mocked him some more, because why not? He lunged, tripped, and the sword vanished.

I took my chance, snapping out my baton. Hit him in the hand, then the leg. He went down. I pressed the baton to his throat. Grue showed me the right way to do it, blocking the artery instead of the windpipe.

Leet struggled, making awful noises, but eventually went limp. I searched him, took his weird backpack, his antenna, his belt. The others brought over a tied-up Über.

“Now to find Bitch and the money,” Tattletale said.

Then, a voice. Mechanical, hissing. A woman in a similar costume, but with a gas mask and red goggles. Bakuda. Former ABB, now apparently working with these two?

She bowed, then dropped to her knees, gripping the roof’s edge. Said she learned from their mistakes. Turns out, she was still ABB. In charge, even. And she’d hired these two losers cheap.

Storage locker doors opened. Dozens of them. ABB goons poured out, armed to the teeth.

“Get them!” Bakuda screamed, pointing at us.

We were so screwed.