June 11th 2013, 11:11 AM
Nicator smelled gasoline fumes, roasted cloth, old sweat. Someone had clearly been living there; a mattress had been obtained for the bed. But the room was empty.
“I’m sorry - this is the last place the tracker lead -”
She ignored Melissa.
Damn, damn, damn.
Victoria slowly walked up the stairs leading to her own apartment. The war was over. She’d called in her two mercenaries, and explained the details of the plot - that she was planning to become a Count and she wanted some extra muscle while she was working on it, plus potential jobs as Knights if they wanted them, and then they and Jim had done their bit of fighting, and then they’d checked in on Jacobin - well. He’d be a fine prize, gift-wrapped.
She reached her apartments on the top floor, unlocked the door, entered, locked it behind her. Removed her armor slowly, piece by piece. What was the next step? The rebel had evaded her and she needed to find him, but she also had to learn how to manage Steelmind. She needed him on her side until she needed him dead, but...
And for once she realized - it was finally true. That wasn’t the next step, and the tension left her shoulders as she slowly relaxed, untightening muscles she hadn’t realized she’d tightened, and she relaxed and sat down. The second superhero she’d asked to know about.
Luminosa, a little bundle of tightly-wound secrets - and, behind the glowing mask, one of the most important players of the game. How many of her secrets did Steelmind know? How many of the secrets that he knew would he share?
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Royal Intelligence’s file bombarded her with data. Full videos of her in action, fighting and celebrating victories, air-dropping food supplies she had stolen from various counts - video going all the way back to the 80s and before, back when the Tyrant was still plotting the invasion and she was just a local superhero, back when she protected the city instead of attacking it. No significant changes in MO this last year, which was good news for the Ilderia faction.
It included her backstory, the version that everyone knew: mad scientist gives people superpowers to protect her little country which has no other supers, makes three themed vaguely after the classical elements with wood substituting for earth, turns herself into her fourth test subject, discovers that transmuting her flesh into living light means she’s not the same person and no longer has tinker powers (even though this was after Minerva’s first death and so she really ought to know better) - then she gets backstabbed by Greenrose who’s upset that she got the powers she did, the other two are killed in the invasion, and then the invincible Luminosa wastes her considerable talents stopping muggers.
“Powers include flight, invulnerability, teleportation, laser blasts, energy draining, superhuman senses…” Their estimates of the amount of energy she could channel were laughably inadequate. Or - a moment of doubt struck her - were they? Ilderia’s records had said that since Luminosa could channel her energy blasts from any point in her body, she could detonate all her current matter in a blast eighty times the strength of Hiroshima while still teleporting her core to safety. But the Tyrant had to know that. A shame they hadn’t been able to persuade her to spill her secrets back when they were first plotting the rebellion...
“Weaknesses unknown.” Weaknesses redacted, that meant. She knew perfectly well that the Tyrant knew Luminosa’s weaknesses.
They didn’t trust her at all. Not surprising, but disappointing; she’d been hoping he’d be more of a fool. Everything useful about Luminosa had been redacted before she got the files. She kept on reading; there was an enormous amount of raw data available, reports that were individually uncensored, which generally painted the picture of someone whose only weakness was that she recharged her battery very slowly.
That, at least, they had left in.
“I’ll need to talk to her,” she said.
And then smiled. For the first time since she’d arrived in Novapest, it was a real, happy smile.
“Finally.”