Chapter Forty-Seven – Buzzing

Teddy was buzzing on the inside, and a little bit on the outside too. When was the last time they’d gone and out beaten up some deserving villains? It had been… at least since Rattles, right?

That, and she was still kind of annoyed with the villains that had stolen the Orbject from them. That fight had been humiliating!

She hadn’t been ready for it, and then the villains had basically just flung her back like it was nothing. She knew that she was strong enough to win that fight, too. So it just wasn’t fair. This time, she’d show them. She’d be the one doing the ambushing!

“Is everyone ready?” the Boss asked. They were at the door at the back of the little office thing they’d taken over across the street from the warehouse the other villains were in. “Once we’re across the street, we might not have a lot of time for bathroom breaks.”

Teddy patted her tummy. She wasn’t full of poop or anything, so she was ready to fight! Though… “Do we have snacks?”

“Did you save any from the vending machine?” the Boss asked.

“I ate those,” Teddy said.

“In that case, no. We’ll go grab something to eat right after.”

Trinity raised a hand. “One of me needs to pee!”

“Then go,” the Boss said.

There was a bit of a delay before they could all head out, but that was fine. It let Teddy bounce on the spot a bit to unlimber herself. She was going to be doing lots of exercise in a moment and the people on TV always said that stretches were important before doing that kind of thing. She didn’t feel very flexible though, but that was alright. She was a bear, not a monkey.

Once Trinity was back and they were ready to go again, Teddy took the lead. Last time they had gotten past her and hurt the Boss and her sisters. This time wouldn’t be like that.

“Stealth on,” the Boss said as they made it to the sidewalk. They looked both ways, then darted across the street while holding each other’s hands, all in one big bunch, with Minor Shadow Blend on and their Maple-made ponchos held tight. They probably looked like a bunch of legs and heads bobbing by, which was neat.

She wasn’t sure if she was fond of stealth, but she… well, she didn’t like admitting it, but she knew that she wasn’t strong enough to take on every hero out there at once… yet. It would come soon enough if she continued to work on it, but it would be a while. One day, she’d be the bear that could stand against an entire army!

The moment they got to the other side, they darted into the alley, and the Boss moved a hand out from under her stealth poncho to gesture them down. “Okay, the plan… uh, Aurora, Teddy, you’re our front line. We need to go in and hit the villains hard. Trinity, I want you to scout ahead if you can? We don’t know if they have traps or not.”

“I’ll set them all off!” Trinity said.

“I… yes, okay, as long as you don’t get hurt from it,” the Boss said.

“Maple, Athena, stay with me and one of Trinity at the back. Maple, we might need you to check for traps and stuff like that, okay?”

“Okay.”

The Boss nodded, then reached over for the door. “Ready?”

Teddy grinned. She was totally ready. She smacked a fist into her palm, then settled into a wider stance to charge in as soon as the door was opened.

Aurora did the honors, unlocking it with a power and then tugging it open. Within was a smaller room, with coat hooks on the walls and lockers to one side. It smelled like a factory, dusty and metallic and a bit greasy. It was a good smell, she thought.

“No alarms yet,” Emily muttered. “Trinity? I mean, Bandit. Sorry. Codenames from now on, girls.”

“Got it, Boss,” Teddy said.

Trinity slipped in, head turning this way and that as she looked for any obvious traps. Nothing exploded though, so Teddy followed her in a moment later, her mental finger on the mental trigger to turn into a bear, but there wasn’t anything to bear at yet.

There was another door just a little ways into the room. Trinity moved up to it and pressed her ears to its surface for a while. “I don’t hear anything,” the Trinity with the Boss said.

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“Then we move in deeper,” the Boss replied.

Easy enough! Aurora opened the next door just a crack, and Trinity poked her head in while Teddy stood on tippy-toes to see into the passage. It was darker, only… it wasn’t entirely dark. There was a light on deeper in the room that cast a soft, orange-yellow glow across the entire space. The light was just a bare bulb hanging off one wall, the wires of it taped in place.

It looked kind of cobbled together, though Teddy wasn’t any sort of expert in electricity stuff.

“There’s some trash in the corners, but that’s it,” Trinity said.

“Alright, I guess we move in,” the Boss said.

They did just that, opening the door up a little more and stepping in. Then Maple gasped and squeaked out a quick “Wait!”

Trinity paused, but even as she did, a small piece of tin foil flipped up from the trash pile on one side. There was a faint buzz noise from deeper in, the kind of thing that Teddy might have ignored as a normal factory background noise, only it was obviously something that they’d set off. “Oops?”

“I think that was a trap,” Maple said.

Teddy glanced back to the Boss to know what to do next, but her big sister just chewed on her lower lip. “We keep going? Keep an eye out for more.”

“Okay,” Trinity said.

They didn’t find anything else like that in the rest of the corridor, but about halfway down, Trinity stopped next to a door and pointed at it. “Voices,” she said.

Teddy felt her ears twitch. She couldn’t hear voices yet, but there was definitely something rumbling in there.

“That’s a generator,” Maple muttered.

“Get ready to use the thing you made to cut the power,” the Boss said. “Everyone, flashlights ready, just in case.”

There were nods all around, but Teddy just made herself ready to use Summon Glow. It would be tricky to be a bear and hold a piddly little flashlight at the same time.

Aurora opened the door up very slowly, and Teddy snuck closer to listen in. This time she could make out the voices, at least two of them talking to each other.

“–alarm go off again?” said the first, a woman’s voice, probably.

“I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t retrigger it right?” That was a man, and Teddy was pretty sure she recognized it too. That was the gadgeteer they had fought!

“Or it got triggered by a rat again?” the woman asked.

“Maybe. Want to go set it up again?”

“No.”

“You’re not doing anything better.”

“Waiting here is what I’m doing, and it’s better than doing chores for you,” the woman replied. Teddy could get that. She didn’t like chores either.

Too bad these were Villains that had decided to annoy her, otherwise she might feel a bit of sympathy for them.

Peeking over Trinity’s head, she could make out that the door opened to a small landing that went out for a few feet, then down a wooden staircase. The room below was lit a lot better, and ever since they’d opened the door, the sound from the generator was a bunch louder.

There was a creak as someone, probably that gadgeteer, started to climb the stairs.

Teddy looked back to the Boss. The Boss caught her eye, then sighed. “Take him out, if you can,” she said.

Teddy’s grin was so strong it made her cheeks hurt to grin it.

She jumped forward, gently pushing Trinity aside, then lunged down the stairs just as the gadgeteer’s head came into view.

He barely had time to blink before Teddy let go of her human shape entirely. “Round two!” she shouted on the way down.

There was a rush of warmth and a stretching sensation that pulled at her bones and skin, but in a nice way. It was like undoing the top button of her pants after eating a whole lot. Then she was big. Fur rippled out across her arms, her claws bit into the wooden steps, and her weight hit the stairs with a thump that made the railing rattle.

The gadgeteer yelped and tried to scramble backward, but stairs weren’t designed for running from bears on.

Teddy hit him like a truck made of powered by the will of the people. “Revenge!” she shouted right in his face.

Then the air started to feel a lot like how rubbing a balloon on her head felt.

***

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