Four lithe girls in Chinese-style tiger masks materialize out of the dark shadows of the Man in the White Coat's lab. Three of them have metallic wings that glint in the harsh lights of the main operating theater.
<We will be going to war soon. Do you have the last set of wings ready?> the Daughters speak in unison.
The Man gestures to a mass of wickedly-sharp metallic feathers on the table. <Right here. I've no doubt that they will be as successful as the others.>
The girls move up to inspect the wing harness. After a moment, they nod as one. The wingless Daughter pulls down her black shirt to let the device line up with her spine. The other three set it in place and activate it -- its barbs sinking deep into her flesh and fusing with her spine. The other three shudder as they share the sudden pain, but it quickly fades as their healing powers take care of the wounds.
A few minutes pass as the newest winged Daughter asserts control over her wings, then tests it out. The Man in the White Coat watches on with rapt interest. <You will be quite the force to be reckoned with,> he says with admiration as the four Daughters test the range of the wings' movements.
<I wish you the greatest of success on your war,> the Man says as the four step toward the shadows. <I've no doubt about your upcoming victory. Once you're done, come see me. I've several future business proposals for you to consider.>
The Daughters of the Tiger nod once, then fade away into the shadows.
==============================
Bronwyn and Alexis's comms beep. "We are successful. We are ready to begin," comes Shayera's dispassionate voice.
Alexis looks at their comm, before replying to Shayera. "Okay. Sometime in the next half hour, a food delivery should be dropped off. A few minutes after that, a van will come up, someone will grab the food and head off to the base. That van is our best entry point to avoid detection," They tell everyone. "...be careful and avoiding killing blows. Remember, if any of the Legion goes down, the cluster and then the rest will know they've disappeared." There's a tired quality to their voice as they speak.
"Could you ask for some coffee, Bronwyn? Okay, be ready. They'll be here soon enough." Alexis says, keeping an eye on the building.
Bronwyn conversely had her attention directed to the deli counter, where an old CRT TV hung up on mute displaying a local channel. It had just gone to breaking news, as the Defenders were currently rallied to the bay. A cruise ship had been hijacked by cybernetically enhanced bears that were apparently holding the crew and passengers as hostage. It was mostly unusual because it was first sort of 'normal' Halcyon event that she could recall happening in nearly a week.
After a few more minutes, an EZ-Dine marked car pulled up, a woman dropping off a large parcel of foods with different spices, took a picture of them all, then hopped into her car and drove off. It just stayed there for a couple of minutes, before from around the corner, a gray van cruised down to pull into the same spot as the other delivery. Someone in a black hoodie and combat pants and boots stepped out towards the food, waving some kind of electronic wand over it all.
"It's time," Alexis said.
What do they do?
"We'll tail them," Shayera's voice comes in over the comm.
The Daughters fan out, staying low and in the shadows above the streetlights as they follow the van to its destination.
The Daughters follow the van, as the sunlight is starting to dip for the evening, ensuring that they stayed within the shadows. It moves fast though, and soon it actually gets onto the highway. It takes two exits after that before doubling back, and like Alexis had informed them, soon came to the opposing side of the building, stopping in front of a ramp to an underground garage.
By this time, Mercy has gotten onto the roof - truly Mercy, as they wear their new armor for the first time, a sleeker and more heroic looking version of the old powered armor. They carefully peek down above the lip of the roof where the van is heading in. "We have one chance to slip in undetected," They tell the Daughters and Bronwyn. "Be careful."
Mercy slides down a drainage pipe slowly, rolling down onto the walkway and keeping themself pressed to the wall. The garage door gate has rolled open and the van is heading inside. Keeping to the corners Mercy shuffles as quickly as they can, making it inside and keeping out of sight and low.
One of the Daughters slips into a shadow as the garage door starts rolling up. Inside the underground garage in a darkened corner the Daughter appears, remaining shrouded and hidden. She keeps her enhanced senses alert for sensors or tripwires before moving any further in.
The remaining Daughters stay outside, out of sight but ready to slip into a shadow and support their sister.
One... two... now!
The second a gap appeared where all eyes were turned away, Bronwyn sprinted, covering the ground in scant seconds before sliding to a safely hidden stop.
The group slips in together undetected, managing to stay within the shadows and avoid the sensors and cameras. They continue to follow the van deeper within as it goes down the parking level. Three floors down, it stops and backs up to a doorway, the driver and their partner getting out and ducking inside.
As the stealthy trio approach, careful and quiet as they go along, they can see that the doorway is guarded on the inside by two of the same kinds of soldiers they had fought in the old factory - the Legion. Taking them out would be fairly trivial with their element of surprise and power sets, but Alexis' warning about how knocking them out or killing them would alert their cluster was still fresh in everyone mind.
Alexis' whispers through the comms in their helmet. "There's one more parking level down. That's where they have the base set up." There's another rampway leading further down that's been sealed with a metal link gate. "Most likely there will be half a dozen mobile units, so the terminal will be secured in one of them."
They gesture between the gate and the doorway that seemed to lead to the stairwell. "Those are the easiest access points. Which way should we go?"
"Stairs are almost as bad as elevators for getting caught in. Wing, you score the gate, we'll peel it back."
"We don't need to be that obvious. Cutting the gate may trip an alarm," the Daughter says as she steps into a shadow and appears in a darkened corner on the other side.
Staying shrouded in the shadows of the lowest level, the Daughter keeps her senses alert for the terminal Alexis mentioned. "Stay patient. We shall open the gate once we're sure it's safe to do so," she whispers over the comms.
The Daughter slips in without the others, Mercy reaching out to her briefly before she vanished. "Be careful," They warn her. The Daughter appears on the other side, down to the last level of the parking garage.
Eight different large trucks have been set up down here and opened up to create a defensible base of operations, with areas for sleeping, areas stocked with a hefty amount of weaponry and Triakosian armor, a monitoring station where she notes several video feeds on her penthouse, the school, and the current super fight happening out in the bay. The Legion is patrolling around down here, a tireless watch that would be tricky to penetrate without the use of powers.
Around the center of the base, she can see the puckish Hokori and the lace dress wearing Pokora with some folding tables set up with their take out. Eating with them is two members that are unfamiliar to the Daughter - a stocky black woman with her hair pulled back in a puffy tail, along a rail-thin man of South Asian features who is prodding at the container of rice that he's eating from.
"How much longer do you think we have to wait?" The other woman asked Pokora, who paused as she sipped some soup from a spoon before responding.
"Not long now. Once the army's fully occupied the city, we'll be called to action. Until then, we wait for the call," She tells her, pointing to the hefty briefcase between them. "Until then, just enjoy being on stand by."
"As opposed to being fully benched like Wrath," Hokori added with a smirk. "Oh, I've never seen them so mad before. But that's what happens when you lose a fifty million dollar tank to your pride..."
The Daughter can see a switch on the wall that appears to lift the chain gate at the top of the ramp, though judging by its design doing so would be very noisy.
What does she do?
The Daughter remains where she is, watching from the shadows. Their mind works quickly, and come up with a plan.
A Daughter appears from the shadows next to Alexis and Bronwyn after a few minutes of waiting. She quietly whispers to them what they've seen in the level below. "The gate will be noisy. We will create a distraction."
The Daughter still watching studies the video feeds or listens to other reports, trying to identify the location of other members of the Legion not within the compound.
The other two Daughters then take off from their hiding spots, flying to those locations where the Legion are. Then they eliminate the duplicates stealthily, putting their bladed wings to lethal use. They materialize from the shadows, striking swiftly before the Legion could react.
The Daughter in hiding watches their response.
Alexis is anxious and twitchy. Angry and sick to their stomach. So when the other Daughter showed up, they were ready to leap into action, to not think and to go off. But they still had to wait. They'd been patient for too long. They had to try and do something now!
So when the Legion started to react, they did as well, sliding forward towards the guarded stairwell door, trying to time their strikes as they were having those brief freezes to knock them out. Bronwyn would get a good look to see the Legion, when struck hard enough, evaporating into a fine blue mist and their weapons falling to the floor.
"Let's go!" They tell them in a whisper, rushing into the stairwell and vaulting the steps downward!
The Daughters above take off to locate the locations of the video feeds, and fly off to two other locations. One is right by the waterfront, looking on at the battle starting to wind down on the cruise liner, though a cybernetically enhanced giant tentacle wraps around the vessel, adding another level to that crisis. But there's a quartet of the Legion situated behind a billboard, observing and with one sniper watching. It's trivial for the Daughter to take them all out without warning.
The other Daughter finds a closer team of six that has just finished loading up some armored transport from a warehouse, sending it on its way just as she emerges from the shadows to eviscerate them!
Within the operations base, the Triakosia are definitely made aware of the sudden attack on other Legion clusters as all of the Legion pause for a fraction of a second as they get information from their peers. The Legion then starts to sweep the area as a precaution while the other members discuss the sudden event. "Who's taking them out?" Pokora asks.
"No idea, but if they're able to take them by surprise and finish them off that quickly..." Hokori says while observing the last bits of footage from the cameras before the assaults cut them off. "Check for instructions from headquarters."
The Daughter down at the gate watches as Pokora picks the case and presses a fingertip to a reader for two seconds, before it pops open and she has access to the information. As she focuses on her quarry though, a flashlight from one of the Legion sweeps across the shadows she's hiding in, before honing in and revealing her presence!
As that Daughter is about to have her presence announced, from the stairwell, Mercy opens the door and gets ready to fight, cutting off the second point of entry!
The Daughter watching Pokora blurs into action, covering the distance and snatching the open suitcase from her while sweeping the blunt edges of her wings at the Triakosian.
The other Daughter with Alexis and Bronwyn steps into the shadows and appears right behind the Legion members who no doubt start reacting to the first Daughter. Her blades slash at the duplicates with lethal force.
Bronwyn's mouth thinned, unhappy with lethal force even against the duplicates where it was less, well, permanent. But before she could talk through how easy it was to tell what was a duplicate and what was an original, there was other lethal force she needed to take care of first.
Reaching into her pouch, she pulled out a little countermeasure she'd been thinking of ever since Alexis had gone over Superbia's powers - a bag of loose scrap metal - nuts, bolts, and fragments that made for an extremely painful set of projectiles, but that should have to be disintegrated one piece at a time...
As the Triakosia scramble to defend themselves against this sudden attack, Pokora yells as she finds the suitcase being snatched from her, avoiding any potentially stunning blow from the Daughter's presence. She pulls what looks like a broken rod of glass out of her sleeve, bringing it close - and the Daughter suddenly finds herself with a whole glass rod sticking out of her arm, restored by the woman's power!
Her partner kips up to come to her aid, but gets pelted suddenly by a hailstorm of metal bits that force him to hold back. He snarls and reaches out with one hand to try and touch her, but can't reach her in the chaos of the moment. "You think you can just attack us without consequence?!" He shouts in anger, as he lashes out wildly. His powers disintegrate everything he touches, as he turns one of the vans blocking his way to Bron into a scatter of sand!
Mercy tries to step in and help, but is blocked by the two other Triakosia members. "Nice armor. Kind of a rip-off on us," The black woman says as she fires a pulse pistol at them. Her partner, the tall and lanky man, tries to grab onto them and they both occupy the hero.
As the Legion reorientates themselves in the wake of the attack, they focus on the second Daughter here, working as a regimented unit to try and pin her down without causing further damage to their equipment.
Outside, the two Daughters are playing clean-up of events, when from the sky, a sudden crack like lightning erupts in the cloudless sky. They turn to look up and see it tear itself open, as dozens of crescent shaped ships poured out from an inky blackness. Their hawk-like eyes caught amongst them one figure floating in the middle, her gown floating around her as she raised up her staff. They would recognize her as the Sorceress Selene, as she seems to be directing this invasion of Halcyon City!
The expressionless tiger mask on the Daughter shows no sign of discomfort when the glass rod materializes in her arm. Keeping hold of the suitcase computer, she simply backs into the nearest shadow and fades away.
She reappears in a nearby shadow away from the fighting. Ignoring the burning pain from the glass rod, the Daughter focuses on the computer with her shared technopathic power. Thinking more in computer code than human thoughts, she thrusts her mind into the Triakosian OS, pulling data files and dumping them into the small but powerful hard drive she carries.
Taking a quick step back, Bronwyn grabs for the next van herself, wrenching a tire from its wheelwell before sending it rocketing along the floor to take out Superbia's knees!