“What a mess,” Felix muttered to himself, staring down the street.
“It really is,” Victoria said at his side. “Security teams are actively expanding the perimeter. Ioana is leading the way down the center towards the prison. They’re working with standard Rules of Engagement.”
“Remind me to put in weapon, armor, and supply caches throughout the city in our buildings. In fact, let’s buy buildings just to do that. If we had people stranded out here, this would have been the time it could have helped them,” Felix said.
“I’ll coordinate it with Kit and Lily,” Victoria said immediately.
Mentally Felix called up the war-net map and then reviewed it. The map was filled with dots. Blue, Red, and Green.
Blue was obviously their own people. Red were known locations of combatants. Green were noted refugees or holdouts operating in areas.
The Legion security dots were gradually, slowly, expanding through the city. They were taking the city back block by block.
Armored cars and Wardens were acting as the mechanized backbone, providing the hardened center that could soak up attention.
Suddenly Felix was quite happy he’d had the number of Wardens and Armored cars increased dramatically.
“Mm. Everything seems like it’s going in the right direction. I want to step off to the side for a second and check up on the other operation. Think you can play goalie here for a bit and keep people busy? Or at least out of my way?” Felix asked, turning to look at Victoria.
She nodded her head and rapped her knuckles against his breastplate. “I can do that, Felix. Just keep an ear out if I start calling for you.”
“Right, right,” Felix said. Waving his hand at her he took several steps towards a planter that put him out of line of sight from the street.
Felix then focused in on his war-net map, filtering out everything else from his mind. Multiple windows popped up in front of him as he opened up a number of items with a thought. Flipping through several maps, he found the one he wanted.
It was on a secure channel on the war-net, and buried under a clearance wall that only allowed him, Kit, and Lily to see it.
Eva, Miu, and a Fixer Kit sent along were in the process of infiltrating the guild of Heroes in Tilen. They’d been dropped into location from a portal. It opened up directly onto the roof of the guild.
Kit had dropped them there behind a screen of illusionary empty space. Kit literally was shielding them from being spotted while holding open a portal at the same time in case they needed to get out immediately.
Need to reward her. She’s putting in the work lately. Pavlov would be proud of me.
Clicking into the cameras that each of the three were wearing he checked each one. He wanted to get a better view of the situation.
Settling on Eva’s viewing frame, he found he could see most of what was going on.
Miu was holding what looked like a penlight and was drawing circles on the roof over and over. The same circle repeatedly and endlessly.
Felix watched for a moment before pinging Lily with a screen-capped image of the action. The attached was only “What?”
He figured it’d get his point across enough. If she saw it in time.
Chances were she’d probably see it much later since she was working the PR angle right now.
Switching back to the live view from Eva he couldn’t really tell if there was any change. Deciding not to sit there and wait, he flipped to the camera for Ioana.
He got a view of a street, with manned barricades at the end of it. Ioana was storming down towards them at a dead sprint. Behind the barricade were men and women in colored jumpsuits on the other side. They’d armed themselves and were clearly resistant to surrendering and being taken into custody.
In fact, one of them threw a Molotov cocktail that burst into liquid fire out in front of Ioana.
She simply ran through it and burst out the other side.
Felix waited for a few seconds more as Ioana leapt over the barricade.
It was long enough to watch a sword swing into view from the side and cleave someone’s head from their shoulders, before he switched again.
Don’t need to watch a snuff movie right now. Enough of that on Reddit.
Grunting, Felix disconnected from the war-net. He closed almost everything down to a base desktop level and then opened up a web connection.
He tapped into the live broadcasts on the internet and flipped to the news. He wanted to know how the coverage of the event was being handled, and if he needed to do anything more. He trusted Lily implicitly, but he would never be anything if not paranoid.
The player paused for a moment and buffered the feed.
“—ing to help everyone in the city,” said Lily as the screen popped open in front of him. “I know our CEO is on the scene himself and working to bring order to the situation. Our entire goal is to bring peace and order to the city.”
She looked amazing. She normally didn’t go all in on the makeup and dressing to accentuate her looks, she was a bit of a natural beauty, but she’d clearly put in the time for this one.
“Ah. That’s a relief to hear, though I wonder, is it really Legion’s place to do this? This almost seems like something more suited to the national guard. In fact, most would say you’re acting the part of a private military company,” said the newscaster, then pointed the microphone back at Lily.
“It isn’t our place to be here. We don’t deny that and regret our involvement. The moment the government, national guard, or a federal agency shows up, we’ll be happy to turn over everything to them. We’re a company with a security team, not a military force.
“Right now we’re acting as an emergency stop-gap measure. A relief group to provide aid and safety. The governor could not be found when we started to ask around to find out what was going on. The rest of his people were sitting on their hands waiting for help to come to them rather than seeking it when we finally got a hold of someone,” Lily said. Her tone was pleasant, even if her words were acidic.
There was no mistaking that as Legion’s spokesperson, she was laying the blame squarely at the feet of the local government.
“We stepped in because no one was doing anything, though we did get permission first from the lieutenant-governor. We’re acting well within the limits that were given to us, and are holding to the very letter of the law,” Lily concluded.
“Of course. That makes sense,” the newscaster said, looking into the camera. “We’ve also received word that the Heroes guild won’t be able to assist as they’re currently combating the Villains who caused this situation.”
Lily laughed with a silken voice at that, drawing the attention of the newscaster and the camera back to her.
“The Villains didn’t cause the situation. The situation was caused when the guild decided to put a prison in the middle of Tilen. Right next to a power plant no less. One need look no further than who made that zoning happen to find responsibility,” Lily said, and left it at that.
The question that everyone would ask who saw this broadcast would be the same.
Who was responsible for this situation then? Who approved that jail?
Most would find fault with either the local government, or the heroes guild, or both. No one else could have allowed the prison.
Perfect. There’s no reason she would bring that up unless she could implicate the governor and lieutenant-governor.
Felix grinned and then turned off the monitor. That was more than enough already.
Half of taking power was eliminating whatever power base would support the official. The other half was the speed with which you could do it and hold the purse strings.
There was no second place in politics after all.
In this case, support was the constituents. A governor was of course an elected position, whose power base was built off of voting blocks.