Chapter Thirty - Scouting by Night

They spent the night scouting, for a certain definition of the word. Emily was just happy that they made it back without being caught.

Still, it hadn't been a fruitless endeavor. She'd gotten the opportunity to walk all the way around the base that the HRF were occupying. Not from too close, but from near enough to make out some details.

They didn't have a good idea of what the guard patrols were like, or how many people were in the building, but she now knew that there were at least four heroes on the outside at all times, and maybe four more within.

Eight heroes.

She doubted her ability to take on more than one. Actually, she doubted her ability to take on one hero at all.

With her sisters, of course, it was doable, but... best to avoid it at all costs.

She had noticed that several of the guards, heroic or otherwise, touched the sides of their faces before talking to no one in particular. So, they were definitely wired up to some sort of communications network.

The big vans parked out front, with several antenna and high-tech looking gizmos seemed to point that way as well. There was a lot of technology on display, and she bet that some of it was gadgeteer-made.

She worried that they might catch her or her sisters, but so far they hadn't seemed to notice.

Her scouting extended into the night, so much so that she had to rely on Athena's night vision to get her and the others back to their own base of operations. That, or risk flashlights in the dark, but that felt like a silly risk to take.

Once they were back and safe, Emily got to see the results of Maple's hard work over the course of the day.

It was all laid out on a table before her.

"This, ah," Maple began before hesitating. She was holding up a zipline... thing. Its body was made from a hairdryer that had been cracked open and turned into something like a crossbow. "It shoots this into walls."

Emily had imagined something cute, like a toilet plunger or... something. Instead, Maple raised the payload arrow of her makeshift zipline. It was a piece of rebar with several long, serrated blades sticking out of it at an angle.

"It goes fast, and hard, and I made sure it can go into concrete," Maple said.

Which meant it could decapitate just as easily, but Emily decided not to think about that too hard.

"This is a cloak of invisibility," Maple said. "For hiding."

The cloak was the blanket off of the largest bed in the house, which... Emily would miss it when it would get cold, actually. It was covered in stars made of folded tin, as well as lots of wires. "How does it work?" Emily asked.

Maple blinked, then showed a remote control crudely sewn into the side. "You turn it on." She did so, and... the blanket and half of Maple, turned invisible. "The stars absorb the light."

Emly was positive that made no sense, and also certain she didn't want to know. The use for it was pretty obvious all the same. They'd be able to hide beneath from across the road while waiting for Trinity to do her thing.

"This is a camera," Maple said. "For Trinity, and this plays what's in the camera."

Maple raised... well, a camera. It was removed from its casing, so it was just the lens and part of the PCB. Her other hand held a fishing camera tied to a few large batteries in a bright green tackle box. The screen was sticking partway out of a hole cut into the side of the box. A lot of duct-tape had been used there.

Emily took the box and looked into the screen which showed her... herself, from the point of view of the small camera Maple was holding. "Wait, where's the battery for the camera?" she asked.

Maple pointed at the box Emily held. "They're all in there."

"Ah."

"This is the machine to signal," Maple said. She showed off a pair of little brass devices. One was a multi-coloured bicycle ringer with a few wires attached, the other was the bells of those ringers next to a piece of brass.

She 'rang' one of them, and the noise came from the detached ringer on a bar.

"I see," Emily said. There were two ringers, so she presumed that one would go with Trinity, the other with Aurora and Teddy.

Stolen novel; please report.

"I made two sets," Maple said.

Emily nodded. That way she could recall Teddy and Aurora, when the time came for it.

"And I made these instead of bombs," Maple said. If she sounded a little pouty... well, Emily was okay with that.

There were three noisemakers. All of them stuffed inside of cute, rather grungy, teddy bears. "These make noise?" Emily asked.

"Mhm!" Maple said. Then, with sudden violence, she twisted the neck of one of the teddy bears around. Emily noticed Teddy flinching to the side, then they all flinched as the teddy bear started to make an unbelievably loud wailing noise.

It was an off-tune fire alarm, at once high-pitched, but with a sort of warbling scream in the back that sounded like... like a man on fire.

"Okay, enough!" Emily shouted, her fingers shoved into her ears. She blinked when the noise left, it felt almost physical. "Yeah, that... that will grab some attention."

Maple smiled. "What?"

It took a minute, and some healpats, to get everything back in order, but soon enough Emily and her sisters were ready... Only it was the wrong day, so she forced them all to take showers, then got all of her sisters to bed early, especially Maple who'd exhausted herself with day-long tinkering.

The next day was the big day.

So, they whittled the day away, took some naps, ate a bit, played board games, and Emily fussed over her plan over and over again until she had every last, minute detail down.

Teddy and Aurora had their own set of instructions, Maple was going to stay at home again. Emily was a bit worried about leaving her alone, but she also deeply understood when Maple said that she liked being alone sometimes.

The poor little introvert was cursed with so many siblings. Loud, loud siblings. Emily's heart went out to her.

The majority of the planning, of course, centred around Trinity. Her part was the big part. Breaking into the enemy base, sneaking around, trying to figure out the layout and maybe, if they were lucky, they could steal whatever the goal of the Endgame was.

They left the house at half-past nine, just as the sun was fully gone and darkness took over. Fortunately, there was an almost-full moon out, and that provided enough light to see by, even if the occasional cloud slid past and pitched the world in darkness.

They had dressed in dark blues and blacks, to better blend into the night. Baseball caps from a convenience store, bandanas found laying around the house they'd occupied. Emily felt like a real thief as she led her merry band out towards the heroic base.

Once they were close, they slowed down, waited for a patrol van to pass, then darted into a building where Aurora unlocked the door to let them in.

Then, they waited. Emily regretted not bringing something to distract her sisters, but they kept quiet enough for a while. When midnight was close, she squinted out a window and nodded as the heroes switched shifts. It was time.

"Teddy, Aurora, head out. Go around, then give me the signal once you're in place," Emily said.

She gave them both good-luck hugs and then watched them head out.

It was just her and Trinity's two bodies now. They moved up onto the roof and laid out the blanket to hide beneath, stringing it between an AC unit and the roof's parapet with some convenient zip-ties. Emily activated it and was happy to see that it hid the spot well.

The ringer in her pocket made a little 'ding-a-ling' and she tensed, then a second one. The girls were in place and ready.

Grabbing the zip-line launcher, she carefully aimed it across the gap, then fired.

Soon, a line was drawn between them and the base, just over a window with a wide sill that was slightly angled downwards from their position.

She grabbed the ringer and pressed it in. The signal for Teddy and Aurora to start.

They did just that a moment later, the sound of the noisemaker carrying clear into the night and alerting the heroes at the base of the building.

"Alright," Emily said as she turned to Trinity. "No pressure... but it's all on you now."

***

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