The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

I grabbed the last one and munched it away with a scowl. "You liked them in a box," I accused Spider-man.

"I liked them with a fox!" he retorted, and I could see his wink through the mask.

And then the high-rise across the street from us blew up, sending fire and glass shards and remnants of furniture and walls out into space for long, spiraling falls. Kind of an interesting end to the moment.

"Crap!" He had excellent reflexes, and shot out a web-stream precisely centered to the densest clusters of falling rubble and glass, sticking them all up and making a controllable cluster out of them. They fell in an arc into the building below us as people scattered, and could be dropped safely once they were out of the way. I was sure the taxi and bus below appreciated the difference.

Okay, I had totally not been expecting that, so it was not why I was sitting there. I really was sitting on one of the main drives waiting to see if there was some police activity I could glom into via my Vaccine phone... which I hadn’t shown him, either.

I got up, leapt lightly, and without effort crossed the entire street and sidewalks in so doing, hitting the side of the building right by the freshly gaping hole, latching on with sparking fingers, and swinging into the fire inside. I had the Ritual of the Fiery Heart active, blessed be my skinflint Patron, so the smoke and fire wouldn’t bother me or my clothes in the slightest.

Not being hampered like a normal firefighter, I moved through the ruins of the place, looking for signs of life. The fire alarms were going off like mad, and people were moving to vacate the building, often in their pajamas.

I pulled out the Heat Sink sphere from my Masspack and held it out before charging it up.

With a crackle, the Runes on it lit up, and it began to suck in the fires for thirty feet around it. I strolled through the apartment, streams of fire bending around and coming to the sphere’s glowing crimson Runes and vanishing, leaving behind rapidly cooling ash, burn marks, and some smokey protest that they hadn’t gotten any real fun.

The door to the apartment was blown out like the interior walls, but the Heat Sink had made sure the fire wouldn’t spread.

The guy in the home office, however, not so lucky. He’d died when the bomb went off, blasted right through the wall and into the neighboring one, denting it badly before a support post stopped him. His shirt, pants, and tie were totally charred away, and his face and front were seared and ravaged meat.

Spidey swung up to the window of the room after getting the debris out of the way. “Anyone home?” he asked rhetorically, and then saw the dead man. “Ulp!” he corrected himself, and hurriedly looked away.

“Not seen many fire-blasted corpses?” I asked him, as I moved right to tampering with the crime scene. I patted the corpse’s pockets, finding nothing but change. I looked at the ring on his hand, which wasn’t normal, some stylized sigla I was unfamiliar with. “You know this symbol?” I asked Spidey, who reluctantly came over and took a closer look, trying not to look at the burned meat on the guy.

“No, not familiar. Greek variant of something, maybe?”

“Can you find his wallet?” I asked, dropping the guy’s hand. “I’m going to look in his office. Look in his bedroom, he probably dropped it and his keys on his stand.”

“Why do we want those?” Spidey asked, even as he moved to where I was pointing. “Oh, and how did you put the flames out?”

“Alchemist. I deployed a Heat Sink.”

“Wow, that sounds really useful!”

“Well, it’s not webslinging, but it has its moments.”

“Webslinging is definitely the coolest!” He was back in a minute with the battered wallet and a set of keys. “One Eustace Coombs, living here. Age 37.”

“He works at Adlerstein and Associates,” I remarked, holding up a sheet of paper with the firm’s letterhead on it.

“That mean something?” he had to ask.

“They are the lawyers handling stuff for the Fantastic Four.”

“Really?” He was going through the cards in the guy’s wallet. “Here’s a club I’ve never heard of. Swanky part of Queens, too.” He held it out for me. “That’s the symbol on the ring, right?”

I looked at both. “That’s a Hindu name, basically means Rajah’s Rest. It’s probably a high-end titty bar and brothel.”

He looked embarrassed I’d even said that.

“Give me his key chain.” I slid another box out of my Vest, and took the keys he held out. There were six of them. “Car door. Car ignition. House key. This looks like a simple lock key. This is a door key, and this is to a safety deposit box.” I looked around carefully, pushed some shattered and burned boards and debris out of the way, and lifted up a very battered satchel case. “Lawyer. Has to have a briefcase.”

“Used to be a nice briefcase,” Spidey mumbled, as I inserted the simple key and it popped open. I didn’t need the key, but it had reminded me that the briefcase existed and probably wasn’t destroyed.

I pulled out the papers within, and began to flip through them very quickly as Spidey loomed over my shoulder. “Uh, wow, you’re reading them fast,” he said, as I flip-flip-flipped through them rapidly.

“We don’t have a lot of time. Put the wallet and keys back where you found them.” A bit alarmed, he dashed off to do so and was back in seconds, while I continued going through the paperwork.

“Anything?” he asked, as I closed the files, stuck them back in the briefcase, made sure there were no hidden slits or anything, and then put it back under the boards.

“Some accounting irregularities... they are tax lawyers.”

Red Eyes slowly rose, and I noticed him turn in the same direction my eyes went. “Uh, I think we might have some trouble coming...” he started to say.

“We were seen entering, and you netting the stuff.” I rose quietly, pulled Function out of its sheath, and spun it in my fingers. “Four in the corridor, and two hanging outside,” I Said, and they could all hear me. “You gonna sit out there and wait until we come out to beat on you, or are you coming in to us?” I asked them, waving Spidey to cover the hole in the wall.

“They’re outside? They are!” he exclaimed, as two men in black pajamas with scarves worn around their heads swung into the room, the climbing claws on their wrists scraping on the cement. Steel hissed as it slid quietly out of scabbards.

Two of the men outside swung around the sides of the blasted doorway, throwing knives I batted away negligently, coasting forwards into them and flicking Function out.

Whapwhap. I could have broken concrete with those blows. The two men’s eyes rolled up as they dropped like they’d been poleaxed.

Mr. Parker behind me had responded to being threatened with swords by promptly webbing the two men to the floor, dodging one sword, grabbing it with his fingers, parrying the other, and then flicking his hands out. Unable to roll with the blow due to their stuck feet, both men’s heads snapped back, and they fell rather awkwardly.

The other two killers came in, swords already drawn, and ran right into Function, up to a meter long and parrying both cuts absolutely.

The discharge of electricity as I didn’t move at all to their attack compounded their surprise with sudden unconsciousness. They dropped to the ground, almost on top of the first two.

“Uh, who are these guys?” Spidey asked, looking at them.

“These are Hand ninjas, your martial arts assassin guys. Wait for it...”

There was kind of a poof, and their bodies started to crumple, as if burning at a superfast rate internally. He gawked as in thirty seconds, them, their clothes, and even their weapons were reduced to a mound of powder.

“That is entirely freaky. They just kill themselves if they fail?” he stared.

“Yes and no. Let’s go.” I swung out of the hole in the side of the building, waving a piece of paper inside which swirled up the dust and ash, and conveniently hid the Pass without Trace I conjured up to hide our tracks and trail. A good forensic examiner might recognize the remains of Hand guys, however.

“Where to?” Peter asked, heading up the side of the building with fluid ease, while I sort of sparked my way up after him. He flicked out a web with a grin, yanked on it, and cleared ten floors almost instantly.

People were watching on the ground, and the fire trucks were definitely on the way. Everyone had seen the fire, and it had definitely been there, but they’d find the site of it pretty cold.

“Hey, you people below,” I Called down to them. “There are the remains of six Hand ninja in that room. Tell the firemen Dynamo was in there, and not to enter the room before the police get there. I’ve taken care of the fire, but there’s a dead man in there, so it’s definitely a crime scene. Oh, and make sure you aren’t under the rubble when Spider-man’s webs let go, alright?”

Voice of the Mage was so useful at times.

I made it to the top of the building, where Peter was waiting smugly for me. “I see you can stick to stuff, too! It looks a little... slow?” he asked pointedly.

“Yes, yes, smug little order Arachnida that you are,” I groused, my eyes sparking. “I do much better with a running start instead of this hand stuff.”

“It takes a lot of practice,” he agreed patronizingly. “The timing of the leaps to really go fast takes some work.”

“Skittering. More stuff to practice. Just what I need,” I sighed with a toss of my head. “Whatever. You up for some breaking and entering?”

“Uh, when you put it that way...”

“Oh, we’re not going to break anything. Oh, wait. I’m sorry, are you up for some detective work?”

He looked around carefully. “I, uh, have to be careful about when I get home...”

“How careful?”

“Um...”

“Do you have a curfew or something?”

“Ummm!”

“Do you need to call them or something?” I sighed and fished out my phone.

“You’ve got a Vaccine!” His eyes popped through his mask.

“Well, yeah. Oh, right, you can’t buy them here. Well, I’m sponging off the Tribal Consulate network, so this works totally fine. I’ll learn your phone number if you punch it in, but you can call from here if you want to.”

He looked very torn about what to do. “What, uh, are you planning to do?”

“I’m going to Alderstein and Associates, and I’m going to find out what else this guy was working on, perhaps the original documents.” I gave him a look. “Tax documents. Many numbers. Much boring. Very safe to skip, hopefully no Hand ninjas and firebombs. Of course, in the morning it’ll either be swept up by the cops or swept under the rug by the firm, so it has to be tonight.”