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[b]All Tandems | Bank
June 19, 2021[/b][hr]Tandem was not having a good time. Most of the time having multiple trains of thought was great – planning was so much easier when you had three times the minds to work with and bounce ideas off – but then there were the situations where having three minds was decidedly less fun. Being on the verge of total breakdown, the panic from each mind feeding into and amplifying that of the other two, was definitely fell into the less fun category. 

Even so, her panic itself was the last thing on any of Tandem’s minds right now. Even as tears stung her eyes and the force of her hyperventilation made her chest ache, Tandem forced her panic down to the back of her minds. It was just background noise. Something, she [i]couldn’t[/i] afford to think about. Right now, she [i]had[/i] to focus on the situation at hand, as hard as it might be to do so. 

Right, she had plans for this sort of thing, lots and lots of plans. Even when things as minor as keeping her breathing under control felt insurmountable to her, Tandem could always fall back on her plans. Plans meant a degree of safety. As long as she could plan, she had a measure of control, even when things were totally out of control. 

What was the first step? Manage her clones – that was always the first step. Letting them just stand around dumbstruck was a bad idea, and teleporting them around randomly wasn’t much better. She needed to keep herselves moving, far enough from each other that they’d be difficult to injure all at once, but not so far apart as to limit her mobility. Done. 

What came next? Finding the hostages, they were the priority here. 

Rapidly shunting her bodies between floors, Tandem spent only a fraction of a second in any given room, skipping them entirely if they didn’t seem likely to hold the hostages, or she saw signs that the mercenary capes might be present – just enough time to verify that the hostages probably weren’t there, before moving onto the next floor. As fast as she was going, she thought there was a decent chance she’d miss the hostages entirely and have to do a second sweep, but even so, she felt this was the fastest method of searching. 

In the end, her concerns about needing to loop back turned out not to be unfounded. On what she figured must have been pretty close to the top floor, she found the hostages, huddled up near the centre of the room. It was obvious Blackburn had been here – hostages aside – from the puddles of liquid metal spread throughout the area. Tandem had seen quite a few of Ironside’s puddles on her way up, but even compared to some of the other areas of the building, this seemed like a lot. 

The moment the hostages noticed her they immediately began begging her to leave in hushed whispers, and in an instant what meagre resolve Tandem had managed to build up crumbled as she was thrown back into the place she spent her every moment trying to avoid. 

Tandem had thought about hostage situations [i]a lot[/i] over the past 5 years, but on some level, the concept still didn’t make much sense to her. If you had a hostage, hurting or killing them would only serve to drive down the value of that hostage and more importantly it would make it far more difficult for people to negotiate with you in the first place. It was seemingly in the villain’s best interest to never hurt a hostage, but at the same time, if you never hurt a hostage then the threat wouldn’t hold any value. 

To Tandem, the whole idea of hostage-taking seemed like a poorly thought out plan at best, one that didn’t make any logical sense if you thought it through to its conclusion, but at the same time she knew it worked because people weren’t logical under pressure. People made stupid decisions when they panicked, and so the threat worked. She knew that much all too well.

Before Tandem’s thoughts could spiral any further, she was snapped out of them by a horrible shrieking sound, a sudden surge of adrenaline snapping her back into reality as her three sets of eyes locked onto the massive humanoid construct that she had to assume Kintsugi had created. Tandem hardly had time to register the creature’s arrival, let alone to take stock of its features, before it charged at her, just barely managing to dismiss the clone it targeted before that clone was annihilated. 

Though she honestly couldn’t say when, apparently at some point while she’d been out of it, Tandem had thrown up – the half-digested instances of the nutrient smoothies she had to drink, coating the insides of her masks and dripping down the front of her costume. Tandem hardly gave it any thought, only sparing a fraction of a moment to inventory the worst of the mess. 

She’d fucked up again. She should have kept her mind on the plan rather than freaking out. Should have searched and secured the area once she’d found the hostages. Instead, she’d spent however long freaking out over nothing, and now she was paying the price for it.

The urgency of the situation the only thing keeping Tandem from slipping back into breakdown mode, she began desperately trying to piece together a plan for dealing with the Kintsugi’s construct. She was almost certain it was physically a lot stronger than her, not to mention more durable, but at least as far as she could tell it didn’t have any good options for attacking all of her bodies at once, not unless she brought her clones together for some reason. As much as she thought the idea of trying to slot powers into generic catchall categories, right now it really seemed as though she was up against a ‘generic brute’ type, at least until she could figure out more about the power that created it.

First thing first, she should try to debilitate the construct from a distance. To start with, Tandem tried conjuring up a sheet of paint directly above the concrete man. While the thing did have a head, it didn’t seem to have a face or any sensory ‘organs’ that Tandem could make out, even so that didn’t necessarily mean it didn’t ‘see’ through its surface or something, and even if it didn’t, it cost her basically nothing to check. At the same time that she was trying to blind the construct, another instance of Tandem set about creating a large puddle of lubricant, stretching the floor between the construct and the third Tandem whom the construct appeared to be targeting. 

A moment was all it took for Tandem to determine that neither tactic would be effective against the construct. 

Covering the creature in paint did little more than make the thing more colourful. There was still a chance it was detecting its surroundings by something like sound or touch, but in all likelihood, it was using a more esoteric, power-based method, in either case, even if she could find a way to cripple its senses it probably wouldn’t be worth the time it took to figure it out. 

As for her attempt to trip the creature up, either it was too heavy for it to be easily slipped or whatever mechanism it used to move its body also prevented it from slipping. Tandem briefly considered giving ball bearings a shot but decided not to for the time being; it might work, but it was a lot harder for her power to clean up and might end up catching her allies or the hostages if they needed to move.

With her initial probing attempts having failed to find an opening, Tandem switched instead to trying to use physical barriers to control its movements, rapidly constructing piles of sandbags, bricks, and other such materials from within her inventory in the creature's path. Unfortunately, this too failed to restrict it to any meaningful degree, the living statue simply ignoring the obstructions at best and at worst creating dangerous showers of shrapnel as it barrelled right through them. Tandem quickly abandoned that idea.

Feeling as though her attempts at restricting the construct weren’t helping, Tandem decided to switch to the offensive. Provided the concrete it appeared to be made of wasn’t reinforced by Kintsugi’s power, she felt pretty sure she could do some damage if she hit it with her manhole cover, but with the way the construct moved around, that was a pretty big if. You’d think a creature that big and literally made of stone would be less agile than it was… What else was there?

…

Immediately after dismissing one of her clones to avoid yet another charge from the monster, Tandem created a replacement clone directly behind it, the new clone reaching out to grab onto the constructs arm. It was hard to tell just by looking at the thing, but depending on how exactly Kintsugi’s power created the constructs it was possible they were made up of multiple smaller parts, in which case she might be able to simply shunt those parts off into her inventory. 

The Tandem felt her stomach drop the moment it touched the concrete man, and the other two visibly flinched when their other received the constructs backhand, getting hit hard enough to be flung back several paces by the blow. Tandem had thought she’d gotten used to the experience of being maimed or dying, but it turned out that it was a whole other story when she wasn’t the one inflicting it on herself. 

While the injured Tandem writhed in agony, the two watching Tandem’s observed that in a single attack, the construct had almost certainly broken a lot within their counterpart. They almost reflexively dismissed the injured clone, if only to end the pain, but held off – the constructs focus still appeared to be on the crippled Tandem and this was too good of an opportunity to pass up for comfort. 

Pushing as much of the pain of the injury onto another Tandem, the injured one forced herself back onto her feet, even as the construct closed what little distance it had created between them. Meanwhile, the final Tandem instance adopted a stance as though she were about to throw a fastball, though she held nothing in her hand. She just needed to hold it still for a second, and then she could end this.

Just as the construct had taken the last step and was about to bare down on the injured Tandem, something that was somehow far larger than it came hurtling through the window, seeming to home in on the construct before in the blink of an eye the newcomer had grabbed and thrown the Kintsugi’s creation out of the newly opened up hole in the wall. The whole thing happening so fast, that even with three pairs of eyes watching it happen, it still took Tandem a second to comprehend what had happened. Bird guy had just taken out in a second the enemy that Tandem had struggled to do exactly nothing to for the better part of a minute.

[color=7ea7d8]"I-Is...Is everyone alright...?"[/color]

Her teammate's voice snapped Tandem out of her daze. She was not in fact alright, but that didn’t matter right now. 

Tandem had been panicking during the fight, but it’d been an almost useful sort of panic, one that left her relatively clearheaded and let her focus on what needed to be done. Now that the adrenaline was beginning to fade, however, Tandem found herself rapidly reverting to a far less controlled sort of panic. She needed something to focus on. 

Right, the hostages. 

Tandem took a moment to replace her clones, first the badly injured one, followed shortly by the one she’d been using to take on the brunt of the injured one’s pain. The new instances didn’t hesitate before setting about their task, quickly moving to obstruct all entrances and exits to the room, save for the massive hole in the wall, with various materials from her inventory. Only once that was done did Tandem begin running around trying to systematically remove each and every one of the many metallic puddles that filled the room, shunting the stuff into her inventory. 

A buzzing in her ear briefly startled Tandem before she realised it was just the comms device she’d been given. It was Keystone on the other end, and Tandem was particularly careful to actually listen to the thinker’s advice. Using containment foam on the waypoints would have been a great idea, if she’d actually had any, and it would have been a game changer against the Kintsugi construct. If only she actually had any. 

Tandem recalled back to when she’d requested to receive several gallons of the raw containment foam fluid, and had been offered the grenades instead. She’d rejected the offer at the time, thinking at the time she might be able to strong-arm the Protectorate into giving into her demands if she did, but in hindsight her stubbornness had been really stupid. 

Also, on the topic of the comms devices, Decree had contacted her earlier asking to be told if she found the hostages, hadn’t she? Not that it really should have mattered. Tandem should have been in contact with her teammates from the get-go, especially for important things like having found the hostages or putting them in danger, but the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. Yet another way she’d fucked up. 

Having left it in her inventory for quite some time, Tandem was able to activate her own comms device with preternatural ease, though it still took her a moment to actually remember the process for doing so. 

[color=938787]“Um, this is Tandem. I’ve located the hostages somewhere near the top of the building… Bird guy is also here. I’ve put barricades up in front of the entrances, but I can remove those if anyone needs to get in. There are a lot of Ironside’s puddles in here, but I’m removing them now.”[/color]

Tandem couldn’t manage to keep the shaking out of her voice and she spoke fast enough that she would likely be somewhat hard to understand, but right now she couldn’t afford to stress about minor details like that. To an outside observer, Tandem would not appear to be in a good state, while any sign of injury had vanished along with the only injured clone, Tandem somehow managed to appear exhausted even through her mask and costume, her breath uneven and her shirt covered in the now crusting remains of when she threw up on herself, shivering violently in the aftermath of the adrenaline spike. 

[color=938787]“Are you able to start flying people down to safety.”[/color] Tandem addressed Muninn. She didn’t bother turning off her comms device, it was probably better if their teammates knew what they were doing or at the very least that Keystone was able to point out any bad ideas she had. [color=938787]“Also, to any people not currently being carried down, I need you to watch the puddles and warn me if anything happens… please.”[/color]

With that, Tandem turned her full attention back to clearing out Ironside’s waypoints as fast as possible.