Chapter Thirty-Five - Regroup, Recoup, Revenge

She watched them go, then cursed. "D-dammit!" she growled. They'd taken the orb, they--

Emily gasped, her focus shifting to her sisters. Teddy was getting up, her big bear head shaking off any lingering pain.

Trinity was... fine? The girl was bouncing on her feet, one of her rushing over to help Emily back up to her feet, the other was staring down in the direction the villains had run off to.

And Athena-- "Athena!" Emily gasped. She stumbled over to Athena who had slumped just a few feet to Emily's side. Her hands ran over the girl and came away bloody, and instantly, Emily's mind jumped to the worst possible conclusion.

"I-I'm okay, Big sis," Athena said. "Just... ouch."

Emily licked her lips, finding them dry and chaffed. "No, it's--"

"Boss," Athena said. "It's okay? Don't panic, please?" Her eyes were wide as she stared up at Emily. That snapped her out of it.

Healing. She could do healing. Pressing her hand atop Athena's head, she applied some Healpats. Those had been enough to heal small bruises before, and help scab over cuts. It wasn't strong healing, but it was better than nothing.

"Urgh, Boss," Teddy said. "We going after them?"

Emily glanced up, but the villains had, predictably, run off already. "No," she decided. "We'll get them later. We need to regroup. Where's Aurora?"

"Uh," Teddy said. She swayed her head left and right, searching, then her big bear shoulders shrugged.

She hadn't really covered what to do if they got too separated. But Aurora was one smart cookie. Probably the smartest of her sisters, truth be told. She would figure out what to do. "Okay. Okay, yes, let's regroup."

She didn't have a mind for handling this kind of thing. It was too much. Too sudden. She just wanted to sit down and not be here.

"Boss?" Teddy asked.

She swallowed. She could wallow in self-pity later. There were more important things to do right now. She could feel that crushing, squeezing feeling of anxiety in her chest trying to constrict the air out of her lungs already, but that was also a worry for later. She could do this.

"Let's move," she said.

"Where to?" Athena asked. She was wincing as she touched her little wounds. They were all small punctures. Like someone had gone after her with a dozen needles. What kind of power was that?

"Home. I mean, our home base," Emily said.

She shifted and looked up at a strange sound. Something was humming in the air far above the city. A drone? Of course the HRF would have things like that.

She pointed to the thing that had knocked Teddy down. "Grab that, and let's get out of sight," she said before running to the side of the road. Her sisters followed her, and soon they were huddling in the cover of an alley.

The HRF was probably acting like a beehive that had been given a swift kick. They'd be on their highest alert and searching the city for the villains. For them. She wasn't sure how well they'd done in covering their tracks, but she could imagine the heroes finding something they had missed and tracking them with it.

She checked over the device that Teddy had grabbed. It was small, plastic, with some electronics within. She couldn't make heads or tails of it, but maybe Maple could? She pocketed it for later, in the same place she'd hid the orb.

The loss of that stung her, but she looked past it.

For now, running.

They kept to the alleys where they could, and when they couldn't, they broke into random homes and shops along the way and hid while HRF patrols drove by, lights scanning the streets and searching. The further out they made it from the HRF's HQ, the fewer patrols they found.

She... could have done much better.

There was so much that she could have done, actually. She had Maple. Why didn't she had more noisemakers? She could have them on delayed fuses, or set to go off with a remote detonator. Something to send the HRF running off in different directions.

Why hadn't she found a better way to store the orb? Or stuck something to it to track it? Was that even possible?

She was trying not to distract herself with self-incrimination as they continued to skulk about and sneak through the city.

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Soon enough, they were on the edges of Saint Arie, then they were crossing that gap and slipping out of the Endgame entirely. She idly noted that the Endgame had gained half a metre in the time they were in it. The biggest increase in such a short amount of time yet.

They waited there.

First, she didn't want to lead the HRF back to their base where Maple was probably waiting peacefully and minding her own business. If the heroes tracked them to there, then it would be hard to run.

She had things in go-bags, but a lot of those had been opened up and were a little disorganized. Really, she should have stashed some things around, in case they had to go on the run.

More things she could have done better.

Second, she was worried about Aurora.

Sisterportation would take another while to be reusable, and she was afraid that the moosegirl might get herself in a lot of trouble between now and then.

So, they found a spot in the woods, just a little ways from the edge of the Endgame, and waited. It was a long, quiet wait. In that time, she looked over Athena's cuts and checked up on Teddy.

The holes weren't all that deep, fortunately. It seemed like that one villain hadn't been trying to hurt Athena too much. Teddy was fine. Her bear-like constitution meant that just a few pats on the head and she was good to go.

Emily had been hit too. She knew she was hurting. There were going to be bruises, but she'd kind of entirely ignored the slow trickle of blood along her sides. The same kind of puncture wound that had hit Athena.

"Who were they," Emily asked after a long silence.

"Villains," Athena said. "At least three of them."

"Three?" Emily asked.

The owl-girl nodded. "The gadgeteer, the one with the needle power, and another that made fire. The fire wasn't from either of the others."

"Did you meet their eyes?" Emily asked. She was grasping at straws a little.The fight, if it could be called that, had been fast. Started and over in just a minute or two. Athena's powers were dangerous, but they took time to work.

Athena nodded. "I did. But it was hard. He was wearing a mask. Um, I didn't get too much from him. I think he was scared?"

"Yeah, I almost ate him," Teddy said.

That was... a fair point. It would be normal to be afraid while trying to ambush someone, and Teddy had been quick to appear and charge the gadgeteer down. A massive grizzly running at someone had a way of making the heart pump a bit faster.

"Did we get anything else from them?" she asked.

"Oh!" Trinity said, raising two hands. "They had powers from the Endgame. I saw it, while they were running away. I think they have the same Minor Shadow Blend as I have."

That was good to know. "Nicely spotted," Emily said. That meant that they were in the Endgame for a little while, at least. "Will.... they just win, now?"

"Probably not," Athena said. "If they Endgame didn't end the moment we got the orb, then there's probably something else to do with it."

"What?" Emily asked.

Her answer was a shrug. "Maybe the Endgame will tell us?" Athena tried. "Now that the villains have the objective, the rules will probably change a bit."

"Let's hope so," Emily said. She hugged herself a little. It was chilly out, and... maybe she was very stressed, even now that she felt safer and further away from the trouble. The disappointment of being so darned close and then having it all ripped away was still gnawing at her though.

Then she felt little arms wrapping around her, and she started. Athena was hugging her. And it wasn't long that Teddy and Trinity joined in.

She laughed, just a weak chuckle, but... yeah, this did feel nice.

And then, stumbling out of the woods while making less noise than she might have expected, came Aurora.

"Aurora!"

"Hey," the biggest of Emily's sisters said. "So, that's where you all went. What happened?"

Emly felt some amount of weight pulled off her shoulders. There was still a lot to figure out, but all of her girls were safe. "Let's go see Maple, then we'll figure it out. Were you followed?"

"Don't think so. I waited around to see, but no one spotted me. There are some drones over the HQ, but they're not moving too far out," Athena said.

"Okay, good. Let's get to cover, then."

Regroup, recoup... then revenge.

***

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