Alya kept us updated as Crow crawled her way through the open window, making her way through the three-story townhouse. With Alya guiding her to her first target, she went up, climbing a staircase to find a goon sitting in a bedroom, looking out a window. She approached silently, merging with the shadows until just before she reached him, stepping out to attack.
With barely any sound at all, she hit his shadow with a feather, which locked him in place. Then she wrapped her cloak around his head, covered his mouth with her hand, and wrapped her arm around his neck, pulling back with a significant portion of her strength. The man tried to shout and make noise, but the feather in his shadow kept him still, and Crow would just hit his shadow with more when the time was running low, all the way until he passed out.
Once the goon was limp, she quickly restrained him with zip ties. After taking a moment to confirm that no one was rushing up to find out what had opened, she slowly began to move, first out of the bedroom and then down the stairs to the second floor, pausing at the stairwell down the first. Alya informed both Crow and myself that the two remaining on-duty guards were both standing close together, watching the street out one of the front windows. It was honestly pretty surprising they hadn't spotted us, only the darkness of the alleyway saving us.
She sat there in the darkness, crouched at the stairs, listening to the distant voices as she waited for an opportunity. After nearly ten minutes, one of the guards slapped his cohort on the shoulder before turning away and leaving him behind. He casually made his way through the interior and out of the back door, pulling out a pack of cigarettes as he walked. Carefully, slowly, Crow followed behind him, forced to step out of the shadows as she did, following him out the back door. She quickly used the same tactic she had used before to take the smoker down, wrapping him up and muffling him as she choked him out. When he was out, she quickly zip-tied him as well, before stepping back inside the building and into the shadows.
As she worked, I was silently cheering her on, deeper in the alleyway, listening to Alya's play-by-play, desperately pacing back and forth. I was ready to smash in and help her at the drop of a hat, but she was doing a fantastic job.
Unfortunately, the odds were stacked against her since, according to Alya, all three of the off-duty guards were in the basement, watching a TV surrounded by various stashed weapons, as well as their own. They had been more spread out a few minutes ago, but as Crow was waiting for the on-duty guards to separate, they had all sat down together.
Still, she had one more target active left, so once the smoker was down, she slowly moved her way through the house. She, unfortunately, had to walk through a few well-lit areas. Still, with only one target and Alya there telling her where he was looking, she simply waited for him to scan the street before pushing into the room, locking him down with her feathers before wrapping him up tight. Once that was done, she had Alya deliver a message.
"She doesn't think she can do this part alone," she whispered. "She is unlocking the front door for you, so come in quietly."
"Tell her I am on my way, but that I'll be coming from the back," I warned.
I quickly walked to the edge of the alley, studying the house and chewing my lip. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but part of me was worried that someplace with so many weapons stored would have secondary watchers spread over the street, so simply walking across the road was a no-go. Instead, I looked up and let out a long breath before whispering the activation phrase.
"Goodbye."
The stored teleportation spell triggered, and suddenly, I was far above the house, nearly three hundred feet, hopefully well beyond anyone's line of vision. I then carefully activated my boots, summoning a semitransparent barrier that I could touch down on and jump up off of. With the split second that gave me, I looked back down, spotted the house Crow was in, and then whispered the activation phrase again, teleporting back down. Only now was I behind the house, standing in the small backyard.
I stood there for a moment, a little shocked at how easy that had been. The idea had been floating around in my head for a while, but I had held back because I wasn't sure how it would work. Now, having done it, I realized I would probably be doing it a lot more, which meant I needed to get more spell storage crystals, so I wouldn't be wasting my emergency teleports every time I wanted to do it. Being able to teleport up and come back down exactly where I wanted would be extremely useful, especially when responding to Empire ambushes and the like.
I slowly made my way to the back door, dropping a silent knockout spell to the zip-tied goon to keep him out, I stepped inside to find Crow waiting, though I walked around her to knock out the other goon.
Once I was done, I gestured for her to lead the way, following after her as we headed down into the basement. Slowly, we descended, spotting our three Empire gang members immediately, facing away from us and watching TV. Their weapons were nearby, ready to be picked up and carried back upstairs when their break was over.
Rather than do anything complicated or impressive and risk them having time to pick up those weapons, Crow nailed each of their shadows to the couch, and one by one, I dropped a knockout spell into each of them. Within just a few seconds, they were all unconscious.
"That… went pretty well," I said, nodding as I reached out, Crow giving me a high five. "Nicely done with the first three."
"It… was actually fun," She admitted, a frown audible in her voice. "I've missed sneaking around, I think. Your cloak makes it so I always have the darkness buff cranked to eleven, so I've been skipping stealth usually, but…"
"With the right tools, we could make you a real force to be reckoned with," I admitted with a frown. "To be honest, the fact that you don't have a knockout wand already is kind of dumb on my part… We can fix that though."
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She nodded, and together we looked around. Now that we weren't distracted by our targets, we could see that there were several wooden crates, a few plastic in army green, as well as several more ammo containers. One by one, we popped off the tops of the boxes and crates, looking through each of them. Some were filled with carefully cut foam inserts, holding AR-15s or assorted pistols, while others were filled with shredded straw-like stuff and filled with AK-47s. There were rifles, pistols, shotguns, and ammo for all of it. We even found two boxes of grenades, though they were old enough that I questioned the sanity of anyone dumb enough to use them.
To be clear, it was not thousands of weapons, it wasn't a US army depot or something. In total, there were maybe forty to fifty firearms of various sizes and levels of legality, as well as a decent stock of ammo. Still absolutely insane that it was just sitting in a normal-looking house in the city, but not an arsenal to arm an army. There was also a good amount of equipment, like armored plate carriers and the plates that fit inside them.
"I am so glad we found this before they could use it," I said, shaking my head. "This is… holy fuck, it could have been bad."
"Chances are there is more than one of these around the city," Crow pointed out. "We need to be on the lookout for more."
"Yeah, we can prioritize these sites when we aren't fighting the capes," I agreed readily. "With any luck, we can pull out their teeth before they start kicking up too much trouble."
Crow gave me a look that told me she thought I was dumb for even suggesting that, and I could tell right through her cloak. The gang was most likely filled with people who had their own weapons, and there was likely no way we could grab everything before they started moving weapons around or spreading them out. They would make things more difficult, and it wasn't a question of if, but of when.
"Well, either way, all we can do is try and keep up with them, keep them from running rampant," I said with a shrug. "If we work them down enough, eventually, we will be able to stomp them flat. Then, once that happens, I want to make a few more guardian patrol teams to keep watch over their territory. Then, once everything has calmed down, I can focus on taking down the Endbringers."
"Woah, woah, slow down there, cowboy," Crow said, shaking her head. "One thing at a time. I know you're powerful, but you're still only human. Let's focus on our current issue before you start trying to kill the potentially unkillable forces of nature. How are we going to destroy all this crap?"
"... I have an idea, but help me move these guys to the backyard first," I said, lifting up two of them easily before noticing that Crow hadn't moved. "What?"
"What are you planning?" my partner asked, focusing on me. "I know that tone, I'm not sure if I like it or not."
"Well…The whole point of this is to rattle some cages, right? Get their attention and make it impossible for them to ignore us?" I asked, watching Crow give an almost reluctant nod. "Good, then I know exactly how to do that."
Crow finally relented and grabbed the last goon, and in short order, we moved all six gang members out of the house. We then spent about twenty minutes dragging the guns and anything else we wanted to be destroyed upstairs.
"Okay, go fade back to the alleyway," I said with a confident nod. "Time for me to make a statement."
She nodded and quickly melded into the shadow while I stepped out of the front door. I walked down the front steps and down the front walk, where I stopped, reached in my jacked, and pulled out an iron-enhanced acorn. After a moment of examining it and adjusting it with druidcraft, I held the seed in my fist and it into the ground just about a foot deep. Once I was sure it was secure, I turned and walked out into the street before finally turning to face the house.
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before raising my staff into the air.
The house shook as seven circles appeared ahead of me, all interconnected by a single, much larger circle. Inside each smaller circle were two separate arcane symbols, slowly spinning as I chanted. Finally, when I finished the chant, hundreds, then thousands of tendrils erupted from the circle, draining my mana at an expeditious rate. To keep from running out before I was done, I slowed the process down, forcing the spell to flow slower. It would take a more significant mental toll, but I could handle it.
The tendrils sank into the house and slowly began to remove every bit of metal inside. Copper pipes, brass fittings, iron nails, steel latches. The fridge crumpled and liquified at the same time that the silverware began to meld into a blob. Soon my magic latched onto the real target, the guns, ammo, and other equipment. Again, I stiffly controlled the magic, forcing the guns not to melt but just slightly crumple and deform.
Pieces of the house began to fall apart, windows cracking and siding sliding off to the ground, as all the metal I could grab was dragged out of any hole it could find or make, rolling, flowing, or dragging to the front walkway. There, a good amount of it flowed into the hole I had just punched through the brick front walk.
I grit my teeth, and with one spell flowing through my staff, I cast a second spell with my other. It hurt, like a dull throb in my skull, pulling my focus like that, magic running through my body in ways that it was certainly not used to.
From the ground grew a tree, infused with the metal I had pulled from the house. I pushed the iron acorn to its limits with my high-level druidcraft, allowing it to absorb the metals and grow. No longer just a slightly altered version of an oak tree, it was now a fully living metal tree, growing more and more, pushing up from the ground while its roots spread deep. Metal leaves began to grow from the branches, the trunk pushing higher and higher as I fed it mana and metal.
The bullets and partially crumpled guns came next, dragging and tumbling across the ground before fusing into the tree trunk, making it very obvious where a good chunk of the metal this tree had come from.
The tree grew more, stretching up into the sky until it was the size of a fifty-year-old tree, wide and sturdy. Behind it, the house began to crumble and collapse, shaking the ground as more metal poured out of it, the last bits and baubles pulling free. By the time I was done, the house was nothing but rubble, and the tree was starting to bear its seeds. It wasn't acorns, though, and none of them were actually viable seeds either. Instead, as the tree matured, Stars of David hung down from its branches.
It was a living metal tree, reinforced and protected by magic, which would grow and drop Stars of David. All along the trunk were bullets, casings, pistols, rifles, and shotguns, all slightly crumpled but still wholly recognizable, fused into the living metal of the tree trunk.
"Fucking hell, Arc… Yeah, I would count that as a statement," Crow said, having stepped out of the shadows to stand behind me.
I smirked, before I wobbled slightly, Crow coming up behind me to catch me, though I wasn't really about to collapse. That had taken a lot out of me, but not that much.
"C'mon, I can already feel people looking at us," I said, shaking my head. "Let's keep moving, I can bring us home in a few minutes. Just need to catch my breath."
Crow nodded, putting my arm around her shoulders and helping me walk, both of us heading into the alley, my golems following after us. We kept moving, crossing alleyways before sitting down on a set of old concrete stairs. A few minutes later, I teleported us back to the forest, leaving the city behind.
