Chapter Text
She had made a poor job of hiding the damage, or maybe she hadn't even been trying to hide it at all, because her face mask was hanging around her neck. Even in the minimal lighting, as she grew closer he could see the dark spots and drips of bruises and blood on her face and blood that had matted in her light hair.
Tommy’s jaw dropped, and he could hear miniscule gasps from the other two in the room. "What happened to your face?"
Niki waved off his concerns, bringing her goggles up to her forehead and making Tommy wince at the red circles around her eyes and the only bit of skin that wasn’t bruised or bloodied on her face. "Nothing of your concern right now. What we need to focus on is the fact that the heroes are coming into the district soon, within the next forty-eight hours, in fact, because they'll ruin all of this."
"But...did they do that to you?"
Niki's usually warm eyes took on the steel that a bullet might have. "And that is why I'm concerned about them coming in and finding this operation. We have to leave as soon as possible and make sure they don't find any evidence we, personally, were ever here."
Tommy gulped, and End-All took the opportunity to stutter out, "So...what do we do?"
A mischievously sly grin slowly spread its way across Niki's face.
"We let them think they've won."
She poked a hand at the table with the map on it and began to explain, tracing the blueprint of their warehouse with a black-painted, blood-spattered fingernail. "We leave just what they think they need here, and take what will help us with us. We take any identification of who was working here with us, maybe leave a few sheets of useless cryptic codes and jargon here and there, make it seem like we’ve forgotten those. There are no heroes with the power of a photographic memory, so all we have to do is rig the place to blow."
Tommy smiled. Stinger would love that.
And Niki was apparently thinking along the same lines as him, because when Stinger leaned forward, the intrigue in his eyes visible even through his opaque one-way goggles, she turned to him. “Stinger, can you rig the place?”
Stinger laughed. “How much fire do you want in the explosion?”
Niki giggled before sobering a bit. “As much as you want, but enough that nobody innocent gets hurt.”
Stinger leaned back in his chair as he grinned maniacally, stretching his arms out and letting his other two mechanical ones on his torso stretch out too, just for effect. “So, more theatrics than anything, but enough so that everything we need to get destroyed gets destroyed. Got it.”
“Where do I come into the operation, Nyx?” End-All asked, adjusting their black-and-white face mask with lanky fingers.
“You’re our getaway driver, so to speak,” Niki said in response, using the end of her brown, charred cape to rub at some dried blood on her cheek before dropping it and pointing to End-All’s towering figure. “You’re in charge of getting Shroud and I out of here with the documents while Stinger gets all his explosives ready and rigged. How many teleports can you manage? We don’t have too many supplies still here, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”
End-All laughed. “How many do you need?”
Tommy smiled, cracking his knuckles. “I can carry most of ‘em, Ni- Nyx. How many boxes are there?”
Niki glanced at him. “I already moved all of the breakable stuff-”
“Good,” Stinger interjected, looking bored as he fiddled with the grabbers on his mechanical arms, still reclining with his chair tilted back on two legs, feet propped up on the table. “Shroud would’ve broken ‘em.”
“Oi, shut up, man. You explode everything,” Tommy mumbled.
It’s not that he was wrong, exactly. Tommy wasn’t the most careful of people on a good day.
“Boys.”
One word from Niki was all it took to shut the two up from another of their infamous bickering sessions.
What? It was how they bonded! Besides, the two of them had only really argued once, and that was when End-All had been kidnapped by the mafia a few months ago, Niki was away investigating, and the two of them were stuck at headquarters together with no company other than each other and their anxiety for their friend. And who could blame them for needing to blow off some steam? End-All had gotten kidnapped by the bad mafia, the really bad one, the one that kidnapped powered people(especially teenagers like Tommy, Stinger and End-All were) and made them fight to the death in an arena. Y’know, that bad one.
It had ended happily enough, anyway. Tommy had gotten to capture plenty of pricks who thought kidnapping innocent people to put in an arena was a good idea and leave them to the police. Him, Niki, and Stinger had taken care of the ringleader themselves.
They were sure to leave End-All the final blow, though, because no matter how weak they were from their ordeal at that moment, it was their right.
“As I was saying, I already moved all of the breakable stuff to the Syndicate’s headquarters, and Mockingbird and Kydoimos will meet us there to organize the rest of the stuff.”
The legs of Stinger’s chair thudded to the ground. “The Syndicate? We’re fucking…we’re working with them? I thought you didn’t like their methods, Nyx,” Stinger said, almost in what Tommy would describe as an accusatory tone if he didn’t know how much the other boy respected Niki and her judgement.
Niki sighed, closing her eyes as she braced her arms on the table and leaned into it. She stayed there for a moment before looking back up, looking as though she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. “I’m going to say three things to describe our relationship with the Syndicate right now. One, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and two, keep your friends close-”
“And your enemies closer,” End-All finished. “Sun Tzu, The Art of War.”
“Exactly,” Niki said, nodding approvingly at the tall, hooded figure standing adjacent to her at their little table. “And right now, us and the Syndicate have a common enemy in the heroes and the mafia, and we have negotiated. As long as we can try to get along and as long as the heroes and mafia are a threat to both of our operations, we will remain…tentative allies.”
“And probably spy on each other,” Tommy muttered.
“Ooh, can we?” Stinger asked. “That’d be fun, I’d like that.”
“Wait, Nyx, what’s the third thing?” Tommy realized, glancing up to Niki.
Niki sighed. “They are the ones who initially found End-All a few months ago.”
End-All flinched, their head nearly hitting the single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. Tommy reached up and gently placed a hand on their cloaked, shuddering shoulder while Stinger stood up, nearly knocking his chair over as Niki continued speaking.
“They offered to temporarily house our operation when they learned of the heroes closing in and…seemed concerned about our well-being after the…ah, incident with the mafia. They wanted to check in, and I couldn’t refuse. So, for the moment, we are staying there, and that is where End-All will be teleporting me and Shroud while Stinger rigs the warehouse.”
“Um…” End-All stammered, fidgeting with their hands. “Where exactly… is their HQ? I kinda need to know where that is before I, y’know, teleport there.”
Niki let out a light laugh, dissipating a bit of the tension in the room, but not all of it. “I’ll take you there on the first trip, but the rest is up to you, got it?”
“Okay,” they replied, visibly relaxing and shoulder falling beneath Tommy’s hand as he squeezed their shoulder and then removed his hand before looking back over at Niki.
“So, Nyx, am I gonna be going on that first trip with you an’ End, or will I stay here and help Stinger get this place ready to blow?”
Niki chuckled, scratching at the coagulated blood on her face. Stinger handed her a cloth, and she started to scrub at her cheek before responding. “You’ll be staying here and helping Stinger prepare the detonations, yes, but you will also-” she said, cutting off Tommy’s cheer of joy at the prospect of getting to play with explosives, “also, be taking the most useless, cryptic-looking documents you can find and putting them in a fireproof box for the heroes to find.”
Ooh, that sounded fun too. Nothing like screwing with a bunch of stuck-up heroes to have a great day.
“Kay, so when are we starting? I wanna blow things up,” Stinger complained. “I have a lot of ideas.”
“Are you using colors this time, Stinger?” End-All asked, perking up a little, red-and-green goggles glinting in the harsh light of the single lightbulb.
“I was planning on it!” Stinger said, leaning back again to stretch before picking up his black mask off of the floor. “Any suggestions?”
“Uh, first, you might wanna wash that mask or use a different one, you don’t know what’s been on this floor-”
“Significant amounts of blood and bodily fluids, dirt, ash, different kinds of drugs we were investigating, dynamite, various explosives, ink, and soda from that one time Shroud thought it was a good idea to drink Coke during a meeting and spilled it.”
“I…” Tommy snickered as End-All struggled for words at the list Stinger had recited all in one breath. “I stand corrected, I guess. And can you try and use green and blue, along with, like, the normal explosion colors? I think that’d look pretty cool.”
“Sounds like fun, bossman,” Stinger said, a mad grin spreading across his face before he looped his mask over his ears. “I’ll get on it.”
Niki chuckled again as Stinger ran out of the room and into the darkness of the warehouse, obviously barely able to contain his excitement. “Hey, End-All, could you go and make sure he doesn’t blow anything up too early?”
They laughed. “Yeah, I’ll go do that. Maybe he’ll let me pick out the specific chemicals this time, he never lets me do that.”
They walked out the door, following the sound of a clang and an “ow, fuck,” coming from the darkness and the echoing “I’m okay!” from Stinger that came from it, shutting the door gently behind them.
Niki sighed, turning away from the door and staring Tommy right in the eyes. “Tommy, are you sure you want to do this?”
Tommy crossed his arms. “I’ve been sure for the last few months, Niki. I’m not gonna fuckin’ back out now.”
She sighed again. She does that a lot. “Tommy, can you grab the first aid kit? I just want a few bandages and some hydrogen peroxide for my face.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tommy mumbled, reaching up to a shelf behind him and beckoning at the white box with his fingers, waiting until he felt a little string connect to his finger and it floated down to his hand. He set it on the table and opened it, looking up to see Niki's fond but exasperated eyes. “What?”
“You’re tall, Tommy, you could have reached that yourself,” she scolded lightheartedly before bending over to the box and setting a half-used, bloodstained bottle of hydrogen peroxide on the table. “Remind End to bring this with them on one of the trips, I’d hate to leave it behind.”
“But Summoning it is more fuuuun,” Tommy said, reaching behind him and Summoning the plastic bag of cotton pads, as if to prove a point.
Niki huffed out a laugh as she doused one in hydrogen peroxide, wincing when she touched it to a cut on her jawbone. “What do you say, movie night after this?”
“Long as I get to pick this time,” Tommy said, smiling as he peeled the adhesive off of a bandage and handed it to Niki. “The ones you pick are always either really dark or, like, for little kids.”
Niki plastered the band-aid on her jaw, directly over the cut(she’d had a lot of practice) and laughed. “For the last time, Avatar: The Last Airbender is not just for little kids! It’s a good show with cool characters. Besides, at least I don’t always pick the same movie.”
Tommy frowned, pouting. “ Up is good! You just won’t admit it!”
Niki giggled as she wiped at another cut. “Not when you’ve seen it eighty thousand times, but I put up with it because I love you. Anything for my little brother.”
Tommy looked away, trying to pretend he wasn’t blushing as he toyed with his goggles and mask where they were hanging around his neck. He yanked them up before shoving his hood on and attaching the little hooks to his goggles. “You always pull that fuckin’ card.”
Niki giggled, pulling up her own mask and fixing her goggles on her face, light pink hair glowing like a beacon in the light of the lightbulb. “Because it’s funny!”
Tommy grabbed the first aid kit and rounded the table to the door behind Niki as she rolled up the blueprint and map on the table. He reached to open it, but was interrupted by a crash and the door slamming open in his face to a sweaty, panting Stinger.
“Stinger? What’s wrong?” Niki asked frantically. “Where’d End-All?”
Stinger looked up at them, lenses of his goggles retracting into the frames to reveal his scared, dark honey-brown eyes. “The heroes,” he said, heaving for breath. “They’re here.”