Helena Burnley vs Professor Endtimes - Part Two: Retaliation

                Helena Burnley, star agent of the Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes, limped her battered body into the police station. She was fairly sure that none of her bones had snapped, miraculous as that was having survived a helicopter crash the previous afternoon, but her body certainly felt like it couldn't be any more broken if it tried. Quite why it would ever try to be more broken is something Helena had yet to address. Her face was sporting some swelling around a nasty looking graze, she was able to walk only asymmetrically due to her bruised and twisted joints, and her back felt like someone had replaced all of her vertebrae with balloons made of sharpened, heated steel. In short, she'd had better mornings.
                "Agent Burnley!" Came Commissioner Harmon's voice as soon as Helena’s rear-end had hit her chair. It rang through the office accusingly, as if being Agent Burnley was a crime in and of itself. "My office, now."
                Helena’s body wasn't a supporter of further motion. It had been staunchly against the motion required to get itself into the office in the first place, but Helena had overruled it selfishly. After everything she’d put it through the previous night, it felt like a few minutes of sitting down and not being fired at by a military helicopter had been earned. Like everything else capable of independent thought in the world, however, it was about to learn that life isn't fair. Despite its protestations and pain, Helena made it get up again.
                "You wanted to see me, sir?" Helena asked for appearances’ sake as she entered the office and closed the door. Commissioner Harmon was standing to one side of his desk, his arms folded and an unlit cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth.
                "I did. It was mostly to see if you were still alive, but now that we've confirmed that: WHAT IN THE HELL WERE YOU DOING!" His rage had been poorly hidden to start with, but now it was more obvious than a tanker truck trying to conceal itself behind a weasel.
                "I was... trying to steal a transmitter mast. It's a part of the Stunner's plan to-"
                "To get herself killed?” the commissioner finished for her. She wanted to correct him because that hadn’t been her intention at all, but he had already continued. “Damn it Burnley, you're supposed to be keeping the town safe, not tearing it to shreds and crashing into public parks!” He had a point there; she’d never been ordered to destroy the town. “Innocent people could have died. It's going to take months to put everything back in order and repair the shopping centre, cost millions in damages, the military's equipment usage-"
                "I realise that, sir, but it would have been fine if someone hadn't called in the godforsaken military on m-, er, The Stunner. How did they even get there so fast? They must have been waiting for me. Who authorised that?" Helena asked, hoping to distract the commissioner from his rage by steering the conversation towards aerial support-force logistics and authorisations.
                "The mayor did, and I'm not going to say he's wrong when an unlicensed pilot takes off in the middle of the city in a civilian aircraft, and then tries to use it for heavy freight over a populated area." It seemed that the commissioner had found a way to hold onto his rage.
                "The Stunner is my case! He had no right to get involved or act without my consent. I am only safe if I know that no-one else is calling the shots against The Stunner over my head." Helena tried, changing tactics.
                "Then that means you're not safe at all. I'm pulling you out before you get yourself killed or destroy anything else.” He closed his eyes and turned away. “This was a mistake."
                "No you aren't, sir, and no it wasn’t. I’ve had a message from Endtimes.” The commissioner turned back again. “I think he had someone rescue The Stunner from the wreckage and take her back to the-" she stopped herself before saying ‘cannery’. Details like that could be overheard and leaked. Instead she went with "hideout."
                "That was the message, you mean? Rescuing you?" He asked, missing the point.
                "No sir, he said he was impressed and would be in contact." She left out the ‘Get well soon’ part. Somehow she felt like she owed Endtimes that little piece of personal privacy, having dragged her away from the simultaneous dangers of burning to death and drowning.
                "A message which gives us nothing, then. You do your best to destroy half the city and bring me a message which contains nothing?" The commissioner was disconcertingly blind to the implications of the message. Helena couldn’t help wondering how much pressure the mayor had been putting on him; he couldn’t have been thinking clearly.
                "It's a way in. He wants me on his side. We just need to be patient." Helena pointed out.
                "Patient? You're testing my patience already Burnley... but you may be right. This is the best lead we have had on Professor Endtimes; the first actual contact, although it could still be a hoax. Either way, I think it would be for the best if The Stunner laid low whilst she recovered, don't you? If Endtimes is impressed enough to promise further contact then there’s no need to cause any more mayhem for the time being." He phrased it like a suggestion, but it felt like an order.
                "Yes, sir." Helena accepted. She wanted to say no. Her plans were building momentum and although she'd missed out on a critical component of her super Stunner, she could try again to-
                Helena stopped herself again. What was she thinking, actually trying to build and use the thing? ‘Focus Helena. You have Endtimes' attention now. Cool it.’
                “Since you’re working The Stunner case you’ll be taking charge of the crash-site investigation and clean-up. Dismissed.” Commissioner Harmon told her, sitting back down at his desk and losing himself in paperwork.
                Helena dragged her ravaged body back to her desk and fell, more than sat, into her chair.  She knew that the uniformed officers all had their eyes on her, which was natural she supposed. If someone walks in looking like they’ve just survived a horrific helicopter crash, especially the night after a horrific helicopter crash, it’s going to raise questions. Questions like ‘Were you involved in a horrific helicopter crash last night?’. Those sorts of things can carry insulting undertones, however, similarly to ‘You look tired!’ or ‘Are you sure you’ve ever slept? Because you look awful.’, so it was likely that such questions would not be voiced.
                In the midst her pondering about what the other officers might feel a little too awkward to say, Helena booted up her PC and got to work on organising the clean-up of the park. Midway through assembling a full inventory of items to be salvaged from the crash site, she was forced to stop herself. This information was not available to the Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes yet; it was The Stunner’s knowledge, not Helena’s. She deleted the file from her computer and put her head into her hands, quickly snatching it up again and swearing because she’d put her hand directly onto the swelling. This, too, caused her neck to cry out in pain on account of her mild whiplash, and so she swore again even louder.
                “Everything alright, Agent Burnley?” Asked Officer Dunner worriedly, hurrying over to Helena’s desk. He was holding a cup of coffee and a croissant.
                “Yep.” Came Helena’s strained reply. It wasn’t very convincing.
                “With respect,” he started, in a manner which suggested the follow-up would seem anything but respectful “you look like you should be in hospital. What happened to you?”
                ‘Trust people who like you not to worry about insulting you.’ Helena thought.
                “I had an accident on the job. It’s confidential, Gary, sorry.” She said, not strictly lying but scarcely covering the truth. “I’m alright though, so don’t worry. Just a bit… tender.”
                “If this is ‘tender’ then never let me see ‘injured’. Anything I can get you?”
                “Thanks, but I’ll be fine. You can arrange the clean-up crew for the crash site in Jellin’s Park though; it’s a Stunner site so I’m supposed to be overseeing the operation and the crime scene.”
                “No problem. I’ll get logistics sorted.” He said with a nod.
                “Thank you.”
                Officer Dunner scurried away and Helena reluctantly made arrangements to visit the scene of the crash. ‘Maybe’ she thought to herself ‘I can make a case for requisitioning the transmitter tower as evidence and get away with it this time.’
 
                The following day, once the Jellin’s Park wreckage had been documented and removed, statements taken from the witnesses and local ducks, and the groundskeepers given time to mourn the defilement of their grass, Helena was sat back at her desk. Her body was little better than the previous day, but the stares from the rest of the force were beginning to taper off. Her eye sockets had taken on a deep purple colour, which was very close to Helena’s chosen shade of eye shadow, although the extent to which it was applied rendered it more of an eye eternal-night-time. She’d chosen a blouse to match.
                All at once the phones in the office erupted into the shrill screeching of harpies, the individual rings offset against one another to create the aural equivalent of a flan thrown through a thresher. It was deafening; an assault on the police station with high-pitched tones, synthetic bells and novelty ringtones.
                "Someone answer the phones and shut this noise up!" Commission Harmon bellowed from his office doorway. Agent Carmichael was immediately on the case, punching one phone hard in the receiver then spiralling around to elbow-drop another. Agent Porter ran towards the telephone exchange box in the server room to sever the connections. Helena simply picked up the nearest receiver.
                "Agent Burnley, Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes." She said professionally into the mouthpiece as silence fell around her.
                "'Ello darlin'." A voice incapable of pronouncing g's or h's replied. "I've got an offer you can't refuse."
                "No thank you." Helena told him bluntly, proving him wrong immediately.
                "That's a shame, that is. A real shame for Agent Kattuh 'ere." The man didn't have a glottal stop so much as a glottal military blockade.
                "Agent Katter you mean?"
                "Don't get clevah wiv me. Or you'll lose your introductory offer of 10% off the Agent's body. Perhaps it'll be his hands. Perhaps his head. Maybe a leg?"
                "What have you done with him?" Helena demanded, the joviality in her voice stripped away by threats of amputation. Just once she wanted to answer the phone without having people’s limbs offered to her.
                "'e's in a safe place. Well, maybe safe's a bit much. He's exactly where I want 'im to be. And you're gonna listen to me or 'e'll be in pretty bad shape. I want a mill in unmarked notes, you're gonna release Gatekeeper, and you're gonna burn all your information on Professor Endtimes." The voice instructed presumptuously.
                "Where are you?"
                "You can find me in the abandoned airfield at the Frederick Montgomery memorial airport. Midday."
                Helena checked the time; it was already 10.10. There was no way she'd have time for a coffee break before setting off on the mission.
                "Prove to me that you have Agent Katter."
                "No.” He said bluntly, cutting off that avenue of investigation. “You'll be 'ere with my money, or you’ll never see ‘im again."
                The line went dead.
 
                The Frederick Montogomery memorial airport had lain abandoned for nearly a decade, forced into irrelevance when the larger and more exciting Metropolitan Airport for the Handsome had opened up. Despite the name, it was still blighted by the same wretchedly hideous public, but their money flowed freely and made them somehow more attractive.
                Agent Lisa Carmichael sped the jet black saloon car of the ministry along the road, tyres squealing as she swerved around the civilian traffic, and mouth spewing a stream of profanities at no-one in particular. They were largely unrelated to her present situation, but they made her feel more at home.
                “At least try to stay on our side of the road.” Helena pleaded of the maniac behind the wheel.
                “No time for that! Agent Katter’s in danger!” Lisa replied unconvincingly. She was smiling far too much for Helena to believe she was doing this out of genuine concern for Agent Katter. “If these other morons don’t want to crash then they’ll get out of my way.” She added with logic less robust than a toilet roll curtain in a hurricane.
                Helena liked Lisa Carmichael, for reasons which were never clear to herself let alone sufficiently defined to relay to anyone else, but she didn’t agree with all of her operational choices. For example, if Helena had been in control of the vehicle then she would have made at least some effort not to drive on the pavement.
                Whilst she wasn’t the first choice of partner, Commissioner Harmon has insisted that the pair of them leave immediately to save Agent Katter. He’d been in conniptions when Helena had urgently announced the nature of the call, spraying chunks of chewed cigar around the room as he barked out orders. Agent Porter was to trace the call, Officer Jones was to ready an extraction team to be called in on Agent Burnley’s orders, and Helena was to take bulldog Carmichael on a rescue mission.
                “That’s our exit ahead. Looks like it’s been closed off; there are barriers, so we’ll have to stop and-” Helena tried to instruct, but she was too late. Agent Carmichael accelerated, ploughing the car through the cones and barriers in a spray of fluorescent splinters and crushed plastic, laughing all the time.
                “Barriers can’t stop me!” she declared proudly, as if it had taken some measure of skill not to avoid the bright orange obstructions.
                “Evidently.”
                The roadway led a wide, sweeping curve around the airport, offering a view of the old runways in the distance, abandoned to nature. The once-pristine tarmac was now painted with a patchwork of scrubby grass, stubborn weeds, and faded white lines, with wide expanses of overgrown grassland to either side. It was the perfect location for a villainous scheme; no wonder this kidnapper had chosen it.
                The derelict terminal building loomed ahead, shabby and unclean from ten years of neglect. The wide, windowed frontage was smeared and murky, posters hung limp and torn from the billboards, and to call the information displayed on the signs out-dated would be a grave understatement. Even the parking charges seemed to be a relic of the past, hitting levels of mere extortion, rather than the contemporary industry standard of the driver’s first born child and a moderate sized mortgage. Thankfully, Helena had no intention of parking in the long stay and would therefore not face re-possession of her flat. Agent Carmichael was largely of the same mindset, although it was becoming increasingly clear that she had no intention of stopping the car at all, be it in a car park or elsewhere.
                At blistering speeds, the car tore past the entrance to the airport.
                “What are you doing!? We need to get through to the runway!” Helena exclaimed, watching the entrance zip past her window.
                “That’s where I’m taking us!” Agent Carmichael said with a grin. The road curved away again on the far side of the terminal building, but no attempt was made to turn the steering wheel and follow it. Instead, the car bounced and jolted up the kerb with an unsettling crunch, and burst through the chain-link fence separating the public from the airfield.
                Four tyres skidded on the soft grass as Lisa turned the wheel, drifting around in an aggressive turn to face towards the runway. Vast muddy skid-marks stood as evidence of the urgency of justice, and Helena’s spiking heartrate stood as evidence to her confidence in her colleague’s driving.
                “You’re going to flip it!” Helena screeched, clinging onto the door handle and staring wide-eyed as the scenery whipped past. Ahead, Helena could see something reflecting the sunlight brightly back at them. It looked like a structure of some sort.
                “Yes! I can launch the car at the kidnapper that way! Good thinking!” Lisa agreed enthusiastically.
                “It wasn’t a suggestion! Do not flip the car!” Helena was wearing her serious face.
                “Fine.” Agent Carmichael agreed grumpily. Unfortunately, her honesty was put into question as the highly persecuted wheels of their car slammed side-on into the rough edge of the runway tarmac.
                Up into the air they soared, Lisa still grinning gleefully and Helena’s face a combination of regret and anxiety. They managed a half rotation in the air before the roof crashed onto the tarmac, crushing the roof of the vehicle and shattering the windows as it slid across the runway. Shrieking and grinding, the saloon finally scraped itself to a halt with Lisa still attempting to rev the engine, until it guttered out and stalled. A trail of paint and broken glass littered the tarmac behind them.
                Helena hung dazed and confused from her seatbelt. She had still been in a moderate degree of pain from the helicopter incident, so enduring a second vehicular crash in only a few days was not what she’d been hoping for. Whilst trying to piece together how to express herself sufficiently angrily to Agent Carmichael without disrupting the operation, her door was torn open and a pair of thick but surprisingly delicate arms pulled her free.
                Agent Carmichael herself didn’t seem to have been fazed by a little light concussion or traumatic impact. In fact, she seemed more alive than ever.
                “Let’s get moving! I think I see Katter over there in that glass house.” She said, itching for action.
                “Urgh. A glass house? What? Where’s the captor?” Helena asked, standing up with a hand clutched to her head.
                “Yes, a glass house, and no idea. In that order. But when I see him he’ll get some.” Her fists were already clenched, ready to unleash some extreme justice wherever needed, and probably in several places where it wasn’t needed at all.
                Helena limped behind Agent Carmichael as they headed towards the glass house at the far end of the runway. Inside, something dark was visible and motionless; she hoped they weren’t too late.
                As they neared their target, they saw that the man on the phone had been telling the truth; the dark shape inside was indeed Agent Katter, his arms and legs tied to the four corners of a patio window frame, leaving him suspended in mid-air. Through the far wall someone else was visible though, another man standing pressed against the glass as if waiting for something.
                “Hold on, Lisa; I think someone else is there.” Helena said, laying a hand on Agent Carmichael’s arm and trying to calm her.
                “Agent Katter!” Lisa bellowed with the subtlety flash flood, attempting to attract the captive’s attention.
                “Who’s that behind him though?” Helena asked urgently. “Be careful, it’s probably a trap!”
                “I’ll get to him, don’t you worry.”
                Hearing them, the man behind the glass stepped out and around the corner, now marginally more visible than he already had been through the spotlessly clean panes of the glass house. His chinless face was covered in an untidy layer of stubble, his white decorator’s coveralls were spattered with grey, brown, and black flecks, and his boots looked like they’d been used as plaster trowels. He held a large rock in his hand.
                “Surprise, ladies!” He announced optimistically. It was definitely the voice from the phone.
                “I said I’ll get to you, sit down and wait for your turn.” Agent Carmichael told him.
                “I was supposed to be ‘idden. You’ve ruined the surprise.” he said, peeved that his lacklustre hiding place had been discovered.
                “You were standing behind glass, it kind of exists to be seen through.” Helena pointed out, not unsympathetically.
                “You think you can tell The Glazier about glass?! Hah! I’ve forgotten more about glass than you’ll ever know.”
                “Right. Fine. Maybe write it down next time.” Helena said, in no mood to humour him regarding how impressive his glass knowledge was.
                While they were talking, Lisa had been edging closer to the glass house and The Glazier, flexing her fingers and warming up her pummelling arms.
                "One more step and Katter gets it!" The Glazier shouted at Agent Carmichael, holding the rock high. Helena's finger itched on the trigger of her revolver, his knees standing there invitingly, just begging for a good shooting. He'd even put tradesmen's knee pads on to make the target stand out.
                "They always say that people who live in glass ‘ouses shouldn't throw stones, but we'll see what ‘appens if ya throw a stone from the outside." It was cumbersome, but referential and genuinely threatening. Helena and Carmichael were forced to allow it as pre-battle banter.
                "No-one has to get hurt here, Glazier." Helena reached out soothingly, dropping ‘The’ from his name to sound more personal and companionable.
                "Do you know what ‘appens when a whole glass ceiling falls onto a person, agents?" The Glazier continued regardless.
                "It hurts? The same as any other heavy object? Probably cuts you if the glass is broken, too.”
                "Oh.” The Glazier said with disappointment. “Ya do know. A yes would've been fine. In any case, I'll stone ‘im unless you do as I say. Drop the money on the floor and get back in your car."
                "I don't want to get back into a car which is on its roof." Helena directed the end of that statement towards Agent Carmichael, who still had the ghost of a proud smile on her face.
                "Well you're gonna stand next to it and not look, then." The Glazier revised.
                "Drop the money Lisa." Helena instructed.
                "I don't have it."
                "What do you- where is it?"
                "At the station. We weren’t going to pay him anyway so what was the point in bringing it along?" Lisa answered with a shrug.
                "You don't 'ave my money? Looks like Katter's getting a stoning then." The Glazier said with equal parts anger and enthusiasm.
                It was a strangely biblical threat, but Helena knew herself that biblical threats were as menacing as any other. In her smooth, practiced way she drew her revolver and fired at the Glazier's kneecap. There was a dull thud and a crunching sound, but he stayed standing.
                "Ha! Thought you could get me with your signature move eh, Burnley? Bulletproof glass kneepads." He smiled smugly, patting at his knees. He was impervious to Helena’s tried and tested method of criminal apprehension. The villainous underclass was evolving, and she’d either have to evolve with them or go extinct.
                Unfortunately for The Glazier, Agent Carmichael had taken the opportunity to rush forwards, and she wouldn’t be punching for the knees. Or at least, not exclusively for the knees.
                In a snap reflex, The Glazier pitched the rock at Agent Carmichael, catching her high on the skull and knocking her out warm. She would never be out cold on account of her burning desire to punch everything all the time.
                Helena raised her revolver and fired a few more rounds into the Glazier's kneepads to get his attention again.
                "Next one will be higher, Glazier. Get on the ground." The playfulness had left her voice.
                "You wouldn't kill me."
                "You just bludgeoned an agent of the ministry with a rock; don't tell me what I wouldn't do."
                The Glazier looked surreptitiously at the sky then back to Helena.
                "You wouldn't even hit me." He said sourly, before suddenly swinging his arm in front of his chest. A small pane of double glazed EverClear glass strapped to his forearm reflected a beam of blinding sunlight into Helena's eyes. She reeled away, putting a hand over her face, and heard the sound of the Glazier's footfalls running along the runway.
                "Get back here!" She shouted after him, but he very rudely ignored her. Blue and purple after-images from the dazzling sunlight stained her eyes, making it impossible to aim her revolver for the moment.
                Helena dashed over to Agent Carmichael. Her head was grazed and bleeding from the impact but she was regaining lucidity.
                "Are you alright, Lisa?”
                "It takes more than a rock to keep me down." She replied, and Helena had seen nothing to refute such an assertion. She hauled Agent Carmichael to her feet.
                "Save Katter but be careful! If you shatter the walls then it'll rain glass shards onto him. I'm going after The Glazier."
                “Got it. Leave something for me to batter.”
                Helena took Lisa’s request under consideration and sprinted up the runway after The Glazier. Being covered in heavy panes of glass did nothing for his mobility, rendering his pace rather pedestrian at best. Since Helena was still recovering from a traumatic helicopter crash, however, her pursuit was not at blistering speeds either, and she hobbled after the villain as if auditioning for the role of a hunchback with a limp. In double time.
                The low-speed chase finally came to a head as Helena closed in on The Glazier. He wasn't far from the control tower, and Helena didn't trust how directly he was heading towards it. Her vision now cleared of the blinding afterimages, she raised her revolver and loosed another round at him whilst ‘running’, which rang off the tarmac and gave him cause to halt for a moment.
                "I won't give you another warning shot." She warned him.
                "That's fine. You've got none left in the chamber. Didn't count your shots very well did ya?" He gloated, turning to face her.
                Helena cursed. He was right.
                "I don't need this to shatter you." She told him, holstering her revolver.
                "Shatter me? Please, I am shatterproof. Years of working with the gods' own nectar of finely crafted glass have given me an understanding of it which you could scarcely imagine. Glass is the window to the soul. Behind dirty or misted glazing lurks a wretched soul, and yours is basically opaque."
                "That's a bit melodramatic, isn’t it?"
                "You don't know the ‘alf of it! I was once ignorant like you. But then, one day, I took a job glazing an expensive restaurant in central London. The people there were powerful players, the types who traded away their ‘umanity for money. The price of a meal could ‘ave covered my glazing costs and still left enough for me to overcharge on materials twice over.
                I moved among them in full view, and none even looked at me. I said ‘ello, I said excuse me, and I was ignored. I didn’t belong there, and they made it all too clear.
                My anger at their ignorance made me sloppy, and I cut myself on a piece of radioactive double glazing. Stumbling and bleeding, I shouted for help, and saw the snobs around me doing nothing but looking on with disgust. They didn’t care that I was wounded, and they wouldn’t help because I was beneath them; not worth the time it would ‘ave taken to ‘elp me bandage my wounds. I staggered on, but when I fell face down into a pot of radioactive window putty my fate was sealed and I knew that I ‘ad to take my vengeance on them all. No more was I “A” glazier, I had become “The” Glazier." He relayed, fists clenched in anger at the memory.
                "They were definitely heartless but you don't need to turn to a life of crime because people were rude to you." Helena assessed fairly. She wasn’t sure why an expensive restaurant would be getting re-glazed whilst there were diners in the building, but chose not to question it.
                "Pah! You're one of them. I can tell because you pronounce your t's. You’ll get no mercy from me, Burnley. I'm gonna cause you a world of window-pane."
                "Then I'll add that to the CHARGES against you" Helena's repartee was instant.
                "Erm, what?"
                Helena realised too late that she'd made her pun by combining her electrical alias and police work together. It was a crude amalgamation of wordplay which only made sense if someone knew she was both an agent of the ministry and The Stunner. She needed to think fast to cover up her mistake.
                "You know, how glaziers charge you for their work with additional panes. Overcharge you in fact. God, keep up!" She tried. It was the best she could do on such short notice, and acting like The Glazier was the fool in the situation would shift attention away from herself.
                "Pathetic!" Anythin' you 'ave to explain like that is a mug's game." The Glazier derided, crouching into an aggressive posture. "Let's see 'ow ya like my putty strike!" As he lunged forwards, Helena saw that wet window putty was dripping from his clenched fists, flowing between his fingers like improperly stored porridge. He feinted with his left, Helena jerking her head away, but followed with an uppercut from the right, catching her under the jaw and depositing a lump of grey adhesive horror under her chin. As she staggered backwards, he grabbed the top of her head and pushed it down, until her chin was glued to her neck and chest. His attack completed, The Glazier hopped back and gloated.
                “Ha! I PV-C you’re having some trouble there!”
                Helena pulled and jerked against the putty but it was holding fast, implying far too many similarities between her face and a window frame. Stuck like this, she was unable to stare at anything but the ground, so unless The Glazier planned to slither over to her, she needed to act fast. With a pained groan at moving her injured body unnaturally, Helena leaned her torso backwards until she could see ahead of herself, arms stuck out straight forwards as a counterbalance and looking like a distressed armchair. She took a few deep, enraged breaths.
                "I am going to break you." Helena said with that particular kind of calm that can only be achieved when anger passes through rage, blasts past fury, bypasses apoplexy, and settles down to a good old calculated, premeditated hatred. With her jaw secured to her chest, speaking caused her head to move up rather than her jaw to move down. This only made her angrier.
                "What are you gonna do to me, eh?” The Glazier mocked. He was having a wonderful time at Helena’s expense.
                Helena pawed at the ground, scraping a foot backwards across the tarmac and testing her grip.
                "Are… you gonna charge me down? I knew you were a mad cow but that's a load of bull! Ahaha!"
                Roaring as best she could, Helena charged at the Glazier. Amused and interested, he stood his ground but braced his arms in front of himself, both fists loaded with window putty once more. Helena's feet slapped against the old tarmac, accelerating her towards the laughing window-fitter and spraying tiny loose stones to either side. As she drew near to the point of impact she tucked her head into the putty as hard as she could, bracing herself against it. Windmilling her arms backwards hard, she slapped The Glazier's hands out of the way and crashed her head into his sternum.
                The Glazier’s back hit the tarmac runway heavily, driving the wind from his body and leaving him gasping, sucking for air and clutching at his chest. To one side, Helena was cumbersomely trying to get back to her feet and establish her balance, her head spinning from the impact on her existing wounds, and her chin still firmly stuck down. Far from a victorious agent of justice, she felt rather like a potato stuck in a coffee cup.
                “You’re under arrest for kidnapping, holding an agent of the ministry against their will, assault, and for doing this to me you utter prick.” She said, rubbing at the sides of her head with both hands.
                “Urk… uugghh…” The Glazier responded. Helena decided that it constituted a full confession, although to the casual observer it sounded more like a man trying desperately to breathe and finding himself unable.
                Helena placed one hand under her chin as far as the putty would allow and pushed it upwards, using the other to help keep her chest down. Stretched pillars of putty pulled at her skin and did nothing good for the condition of her blouse, straining to keep itself together and refusing to let go at either end, but finally Helena was able to tear her head up from her chest with a ripping sound she didn’t much want to think about. Her neck was grateful to be able to stretch out again, but her chin did not appreciate the dangling beard of putty it had acquired.
                Free from her sticky shackles, Helena looked up just in time to see a window handle fly into her forehead. The handle had been assisted in its break for the skies by The Glazier, who was back on his feet and running towards the control tower once more. As Helena recovered from yet another heavy blow to the cranium she heard the determined clunk of a thick steel door slamming shut, such as one might hear when someone locked themselves in a control tower.
 
                The Sun was at its zenith, scorching through the glass house and overheating Agent Katter. If he stayed in there much longer then he'd leave a tough, dry version of his old self, like some kind of law-enforcer jerky. Even his slicked hair was beginning to look crispy.
                Agent Carmichael, ever cautious, considered Helena’s advice not to shatter the glass. She thought it was all very well and good fussing around with looking for a door, but any time she spent searching was time that Agent Katter was overheating and in danger. She knew, however, that Helena would ask a lot of boring, awkward questions if she came back and found the glass panes broken. It was a real conundrum.
                Lisa turned up the runway and saw Helena standing around talking to the Glazier again. She used her mouth too much and her fists too little, in Agent Carmichael’s opinion.
                “Can you hear me, Katter?” she asked. There was no acknowledgement. Lisa pressed her face into the glass pane, shading her eyes with her hands to better see inside. Agent Katter had clearly been beaten; swelling and bruising covered his face, blood stained his torn white shirt and ripped suit, and his shoes were scuffed all over. Dangling by his ankles and wrists, he looked like a handsome but abused ragdoll.
                Agent Carmichael’s anger surged back to the surface, not that it was ever particularly deeply buried. Spinning back to check on Agent Burnley she saw that The Glazier had drawn her into combat. That was the final straw; if everyone else around here was allowed to solve problems by hitting them then she wasn’t going to be left out.
                Lisa turned her head mechanically to either side.
                “Nope, can’t see a door.” She announced to no-one in particular, and then launched a haymaker at the glass wall in front of her. A dull, thudding impact was overlaid with a muted crash, and a network of cracks started to spread in front of her.
                Lisa had never really thought of glass as being particularly creaky before; it generally sounded smashy if it made any noise at all. Therefore, she regarded the creaking, cracking glass panel with some suspicion. Suspicious objects were potential threats in her line of work, and threats needed to be hit until they went away. Such was the rationalisation to which Agent Carmichael subjected herself before whamming her hand into the glass a second time.
 
                Helena's fists, in contrast to those of her partner, were no match for a steel door. On some level she had known that to be the case before she slammed and punched them against the control tower entrance, but it took genuine experimentation for her to accept it. The Glazier had locked himself inside, and unless he was just ignoring Helena’s knocking, he'd fled up the stairs already.
                Tarnished metal looked impassively back at Helena, feeling no remorse for protecting someone like The Glazier from justice. It was a true neutral, a mercenary for the hire of anyone who held its key. All locks were notoriously fickle in that way, their loyalties shifting from key holder to key holder, their duty abandoned if the lock was not engaged. Helena didn't trust them, but was forced to rely on them regardless to protect her home, and to shield her dignity when she was in the bathroom.
                Whilst wondering over what sanctions she could put in place to ensure that locks always assisted the forces of justice in the future, Helena heard the crackle of a loud-speaker system.
                "Ah, the air traffic control tower. It's tall, it's strong, and its control room up here is made almost entirely of glass."
                Helena's heart skipped a beat, then beat twice rapidly to make up for the shortfall. The Glazier had wanted to be up there the whole time.
                "It didn't take much to remove the flat panes up here y'know. Installing the lenses was a challenge for even a skilled Glazier like me, but here they are, in place."
                Backpedalling to see what the maniacal tradesman was up to, Helena stared upwards at the control tower. The Glazier had indeed replaced the window panes of the tower with focusing lenses, but she was struggling to think of a reason why. Steel shutters were closed over the panels facing the sun.
                "Let's see how you enjoy the midday sunlight through the glass house agents." With a mechanical grinding, the steels shutters clattered their way up, allowing the full light of the sun to spill into the control tower. Channelled by the lenses, it was focused into a single beam which shone out through the front, directed towards Agent Katter’s glass prison. The intense light blasted into the earth, wild grass erupting into flames by the side of the runway.
                "When the sun moves by a degree or so you'll be fried! At 12.19 the beam will be directly over the glass ‘ouse and Agent Katter’ll be nothing but ashes.” The control tower speakers buzzed and crackled The Glazier’s unkind intentions to the whole airport, amplifying his cackles.
 
                Broken fragments of glass lay around Agent Carmichael’s feet in a vandal’s snowfall. Not taking Helena’s advice entirely to heart, she’d punched her way into the glass house and left a spray of cubic pieces in her wake. True to Helena’s concerns, however, long shimmering channels had spread through the glass, winding their way onto the roof and stretching to grasp long fingers around the perimeter of the house. A similar creaking to that which Lisa had mistrusted earlier was once again filling the air around her, and when she saw the cracks over her head, like vines bereft of a competent gardener, she began to feel some sense of urgency in getting Agent Katter untied.
                The Glazier had secured Katter in place using long, thin strips rubber window seals, and they were highly resistant to Agent Carmichael’s favoured approach to untying knots: yanking at them until the cord snapped. With every tug Lisa gave the glass house shook a little, the glass let out a series of disconcerting creaks and clinks, and the cracks grew, but Agent Katter remained resolutely restrained. Once she’d thoroughly tired herself out in futile attempts at snapping elastic, Agent Carmichael rested her hands on her thighs and bent over, panting. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed something sparkling to one side of the runway, glinting and reflecting from the few glassy surfaces she’d left unpunished.
                Outside, the field around the runway appeared to have caught fire. This in itself was a fairly trivial concern to Agent Carmichael, who had no fear of flames or burning. She should have been terrified of them, obviously, but she operated under the assumption that she could probably punch any flame hard enough to extinguish it, and allowed that belief to reassure her. What really did concern her, though, was the laser beam of intense sunlight which seemed to have caused the fire in the first place. Lasers were, by definition, made of light, and despite a great many attempts to do so, punching light had always eluded Agent Carmichael’s capability.
                As the cracks creaked and spread above her, and the laser beam slothfully inched its way towards her, Agent Carmichael was forced to begrudgingly admit that perhaps she should have chosen a course of action which didn’t involve drastically weakening the structure in which a hostage was shackled. It was especially true in this case since she also had to be inside the structure for a considerable time to free the hostage, and there was a large amount of fire outside which could only weaken the glass further. Eclipsing both of those worries, however, was her frustration that Commissioner Harmon had forbidden her to carry a knife these days, on account of what he called ‘The Human Rights Violation Incident’. She made a mental note to call him a hypocrite, since rendering her incapable of cutting through Katter’s shackles in such circumstances was a violation of her human rights. Specifically, the right to not be buried in razor shards of glass and then burned.
 
                Flames swirled high into the air, spreading across the grass and swept into a vortex by the wind. To make matters worse, Helena was fairly sure she could see fractures in the glass house; trusting Lisa had not been her finest move, but there were more urgent matters to attend to now. The beam of light was shining strong onto the burning ground, and if left unchecked it would sear across the glass house in a matter of minutes, melting Agents Carmichael and Katter in moments, if the fire didn’t get them first. Of course, neither of those threats would be a problem if the glass shattered and eviscerated them first. There were far too many perils here for Helena to keep track of.
                Quickly snatching the radio from her belt, Helena barked orders for an emergency extraction team to get on site and tackle the blaze before it was too late. In the meantime, she had a laser beam to stop. Preparing to battle a super-villain who was threatening a restrained agent with a giant laser beam was ministry training 101.
                Agent Burnley ran back to the door and hammered against it with the butt of her revolver, but The Glazier was still determined to hide inside his tower, and receiving guests was the last thing on his agenda. Running out of options, Helena looked towards the lock. The keyhole was narrow, a modern design which didn’t offer much scope for quick picking. Desperate times calling for desperate measures, she reloaded her revolver and took aim at the keyhole. Helena turned her face away into her shoulder, scrunched her eyes shut tight, and fired.
                The loud crack of gunfire was joined by a teeth-chattering reverberation from the steel doorway and the sound of a bullet ricocheting into tarmac. The lock still held strong, but now there was a bullet-sized dent which had distorted the keyhole. Far from opening the way, Helena had simply made it far harder for anyone else to unlock the door from the outside.
                Resigned to the fact that she wasn’t getting inside, Helena ran back along the runway and stopped facing the glass house. The fire was closing in, as was the beam of light, and she had little faith in her recovering body to be able to run back and pull both Agent Carmichael and Agent Katter out of the flames.
                Helena turned back to the control tower for a final attempt at cutting off the beam.
                “Pull the shutter down and come out with your hands up, Glazier!” she screamed.
                There was no response from the speaker, nor any sign of The Glazier at the window.
                “This is your last chance!”
                Still nothing. The Glazier almost certainly couldn’t hear her, but that was no excuse as far as Helena was concerned. If he was going to lock himself in a sound-proof tower then it was his fault when he missed his warnings.
                Helena raised her revolver up at the tower, aiming for the foremost window pane, and fired.    Glass burst forwards as the tension in the lens was released, and rained down on the runway, coming to rest in irreparable pieces on the disused tarmac to the sound of a giant wind-chime being thrown through a window. Helena covered her face with her arms to protect her eyes from any bouncing shards, only tentatively peeping through the gap when everything seemed to have settled down.
                The beam of light was shining no longer, but the grass still burned. Without such an intense source of heat at its centre, however, the fire was spreading more slowly. Helena dashed as quickly as her body would allow back to the glass oven, hoping that there was something she could do to help.
                Hot air was drifting over on the breeze as Helena arrived, smoky and thick. Breathing was difficult enough after battling The Glazier and running along a runway twice, and so smoke inhalation was an unwelcome prospect.
                “Lisa!?” she shouted into the smoke with what little breath she had.
                “Helena?” Agent Carmichael queried unnecessarily in reply. “Did you get The Glazier?”
                “He’s locked himself in the control tower, but I’ve stopped the laser beam.” Helena answered, pressing forwards through the smoke and into the glass house. Heat assailed her immediately, over and above the intensity of the fires outside. She felt broken glass crunching underneath her feet and saw the extensive cracking in the walls and roof.
                “Jesus. How is this still standing?! We need to get Katter out now!”
                “Trying. I can’t get him untied.” Lisa said, grateful that very few of the boring questions had come out thus far. She looked up at Helena.
                “Don’t bother, just drag the frame out.” Helena ordered.
                “Can’t. It’s held in with putty or something.” Agent Carmichael told her. Helena knew first-hand how difficult it would be to overcome that much adhesive.
                “Then we need to cut the cords.”
                “I can’t. Harmon took my knife, remember?” Lisa said with renewed aggreivement, looking up at Helena for the first time. “Did you grow a beard?”
                “There’s broken glass everywhere! Just use that!” Helena pleaded incredulously, ignoring Lisa’s question.
                Agent Carmichael said nothing very loudly. Leaning down, she snatched up a palm-sized shard of broken pane and sliced carefully at Agent Katter’s rubber bindings.
                “Hang on, I won’t be able to carry him. I’m still ruined from…” She stopped herself. She couldn’t say the crash. “… my accident the other day. Let me cut the last few cords and you support him.”
                Lisa silently dropped her piece of glass and placed her arms on either side of Agent Katter’s ribcage while Helena took a glass blade of her own. The heat was still rising in the glass house, burning the skin on their faces and making the glass in Helena’s hand slick with sweat. All in all, the situation would be described as sub-optimal in the operational report.
                A loud creak vibrated its way through the glass house and Helena sliced with renewed vigour. She was growing more and more suspicious that Agent Carmichael had not been entirely delicate about gaining entry.
                With a ping of elastic the final binding was severed and Agent Katter’s full weight fell into Agent Carmichael. Dragging his feet through the sea of broken glass, Lisa pulled the unconscious hostage to freedom, and Helena limped closely behind through the smoke.
 
                Sitting on the runway a safe distance away, Helena and Lisa checked Agent Katter’s pulse, rolled him into the recovery position, and then watched the fire burn. A few minutes after their escape the cacophonous sound of a glass building collapsing swept across the runway, a noise which few people would be privileged enough to hear in their lifetime without a significant investment.
                “What about The Glazier? Do you think he’s escaped?” Lisa asked nonchalantly.
                 “I haven’t seen him leave the tower, but he might have snuck out while we were in the glass house. Everything went suspiciously quiet after he activated the beam, but I couldn’t break through the door and I had to get back to you two. When the backup team arrives we’ll cut our way in and apprehend him, or search for him if he’s run.” They had both inhaled far too much smoke to be able to run after a fleeing perpetrator right now.
                “Think we should rough him up a little before he gets to the station? Looks like he did a real number on Katter.” The nonchalant attitude that Agent Carmichael had adopted was still going strong, even during suggestions of police brutality.
                “No, Lisa. That’s illegal. And immoral. He’ll get what’s coming to him.”
 
                As it transpired, The Glazier had already got quite a lot of what was coming to him. It had all come to him very quickly as well; every step a little quicker and harder than the last until he landed just inside the control tower door at the bottom of the staircase.
                When the extraction team finally arrived, they cut the door off its hinges and found a distinctly poorly-looking Glazier in a bundle. He was alive, but looking worse for wear since his tumble. The official report stated that he must have been startled when the lenses were shot out, causing him to stumble and fall down the staircase. Blood stained his coveralls and there were several suspected broken bones, but his knees were still perfectly preserved and safeguarded by his bulletproof kneepads. If only he had used his powers for the manufacture of protective equipment, rather than firing lasers at agents of justice, the world could have been a better place.
                Once The Glazier had been picked up, he, Agent Katter, and Agent Carmichael were all transported directly to St. Saint’s Hospital, situated on a hill overlooking the city. Many questioned the practicalities of locating a place of emergency medical treatment not only at the top of an elevation but well-outside of the city itself. Few of them ever received any answer.
                After the fire had burned itself out, Helena spent the afternoon on site with the extraction and clean-up crews, picking through the ashes to gather evidence from the shattered glass house and scan for any other signs of The Glazier's activity. The extraction team were remarkably restrained when presented with the putty dangling from Helena’s chin, making only a handful of ‘Captain Puttybeard’ jokes and suggesting no more than twice that she shave with some of the glass fragments. The patio window frame which had been used to restrain Agent Katter was taken away of analysis in the lab, and the glass was double-bagged, ready for transport to the nearest kerb on bin day.
                Aching, tired, and burned, Helena was deposited back at her flat by the uniformed officers. She took a long shower, trying every product she owned in order to remove the window putty from her flesh, and crawled into bed. The day had not been kind to her or her fellow agents, and she feared that there would be more sorrow to come.
 
                Commissioner Harmon called early the next morning and instructed Helena to meet him and Agent Carmichael at the city library immediately. Agent Katter had been briefly lucid during the night and provided some details of his capture to the uniformed officers, but soon fell back out consciousness like freshly jammed toast onto an unclean floor. The Glazier was still too much of a mess to interrogate and potentially would be for weeks. In order to make progress, the ministry had to investigate the old fashioned way; scrabbling in the dirt for evidence and hoping for the best.
                The city library was a grand name for an unimpressive building. Dozens of racks of books lined the modest structure, with genres ranging from discarded thrillers to unwanted crime procedurals to never-opened classics. Although the walls were covered in brightly-coloured posters toting how fun it was to spend time at the library, it had been the site of a foul crime which wasn’t fun for anyone; the kidnapping of Agent Julian Katter.
                Helena entered through the automatic sliding doors and arrived in the children's section, a veritable sea of youthful heroes either taking down strangely timid and inept criminals, or saving the world from decidedly accommodating evil wizards. To her left was a trolley full of books for sale, most them the third or fourth volume from a collection which no-one had any intention of finishing. Or even starting.
                Commissioner Harmon and Agent Carmichael were already waiting for her, waiting just beyond 'Historical Fiction', opposite the impressively full 'Linoleum Hero/Heroine' section.
                “Good morning, sir. Agent Carmichael.” Helena said with formality.
                “Agent Burnley.” Commissioner Harmon acknowledged. Lisa nodded.
                “What do we have then?” Helena asked.
                "Well, from what he's told us, Agent Katter was enticed into the library by a borrow-one-get-one-free offer advertised on a sandwich-board outside."
                "That's a damned fine offer, I might have fallen into the same trap myself." Helena said understandingly.
                "Agreed, but think about it? How could any library possibly sustain such an offer? It was too good to be true, and Agent Katter should have realised that. Instead, he was ambushed here, in classic fiction, and struck with a hardback copy of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’. Stunned but still on his feet he took another blow from ‘Bram Stoker's Dracula’ and staggered over here” the commissioner recounted, taking a few steps to his left “into cookery. A two-pronged attack from ‘Tapas for One’ and ‘Budget Food for the Bedwetter’ took him to the ground, but he was still able to crawl well-enough to give us one last fitting clue that it wasn’t an accident; he made it into the crime section.” The agents and commissioner stepped up to the shelves marked ‘Crime’. “But it was here that... that he was badly beaten until unconscious with ‘The Complete Works of Agatha Christie.’" He finished with barely restrained sorrow and held a hand out to indicate the bloodied book on the ground.
                "Poirot you rat!" Agent Carmichael shouted with a bestial wail, seething at the betrayal. Without a moment’s hesitation she fell to her knees and unleashed a devastating flurry of blows on the tastefully bound weapon, fists thudding solidly into the dense prose. Commissioner Harmon lunged downwards and hooked his arms under her armpits.
                "We all hate Poirot but keep your mind in the job!" he shouted, struggling to pull the furious agent away from the book.
                “This doesn’t sound like the work of The Glazier. There would have been at least one window or window fitting accessory used.” Helena observed astutely, picking up on the subtle pattern of behaviour by which these criminals were typified.
                “Agreed. Someone else was working with him. Someone who was able to incapacitate Agent Katter and smuggle him to The Glazier without being noticed. Someone so unassuming and silent that Julian didn’t notice him coming or put up a fight.”
                “You don’t think that it might be…” Helena trailed off before adding any actual information to her statement.
                "I do think it might be. In fact, I’d put money on it. This must have been the work of The Librarian, put up to the task by Professor Endtimes."
                The Librarian was a civil servant who’d gone rogue after reading a book on the effects of radiation which had, by freak chance, happened to be radioactive itself; ironically, the resultant villainous tendencies were not covered in any way by the text. Not much was known about her, but she’d been implicated in dozens of silencing attacks across the city. Anyone found talking too loudly in the street would hear a bone-chilling ‘tch’ in their ear, before having their mouth sealed shut with a label maker. The Dewey Decimal on the label corresponded to books about acoustics, which most officers interpreted to be a hint about silence. Despite how boldly she operated in the open, she was always able to slip away unnoticed, leaving nothing but a muted victim and the faint smell of tweed.
                Ever since she’d started operating, The Librarian had been taunting the Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes, sending them late notices every time she struck. Initial concerns that she was calling them her ‘late’ victims prompted the lab technicians to test the labels for poison, but it seemed that the pun was benign; for the time being, at least.
                “He’s gone too far this time.” Agent Carmichael weighed in angrily. “Striking out at the ministry is playing with fire.”
                “I… I have to agree. This is different to Endtimes’ behaviour in the past, from what little we know of it. Shedder’s Garden Centre of the Damned was a trap, but he’s never directly targeted our agents like this before.” Helena assessed.
                Commissioner Harmon sighed heavily. “Something has made him either angry or confident. Or confidently angry. This was a message.”
                “It was a declaration of war.” Agent Carmichael added dramatically, trying to sensationalise the news and stir up some anger in her colleagues.
                “Do you think it was the, er, the operation against The Stunner at the Stubbing Shopping Centre?” Helena asked reluctantly.
                Commissioner Harmon scowled, and angrily leafed through a Sherlock Holmes anthology by way of answering.
                “We’ll gather what evidence we can from the weapons here and try to find something which will help track down The Librarian. There must be a way of luring her out.” Helena said, changing the subject lest Commissioner Harmon tear a book in half.
 
                Helena left Lisa in charge of organising the forensics team and cataloguing the weapons whilst she herself searched the rest of the library for other clues or evidence of The Librarian’s presence.
                The counter was an obvious place to start, since The Librarian could easily blend in with the staff there. Her aggressive shushing techniques might have raised eyebrows, but only impressed ones behind horn-rimmed glasses which have been lowered to the tip of the nose. With meticulous care, Helena leafed through the files of registered users in search of anything suspicious, but only turned up the usual raft of late fees and book-soiling charges.
                Approaching footsteps caught her attention.
                “Burnley. A word.” Commissioner Harmon said, beckoning Helena to join him as he walked towards the corner of the building. Helena left the files open on the counter and followed him. Together, they took seats in the children’s soft-play area, on a pair of bright prime-coloured foam chairs. Their knees were high-up by their ears, but that gave them an additional measure of privacy.
                “If it really was the... heavy handed approach to dealing with The Stunner that Endtimes has taken offence to then we need to take him down soon, before he gets any more of our agents.” Harmon said softly, idly turning a crayon in one hand and his unlit cigar in the other.
                “Does this mean that the operation is back on?” Helena asked, attempting not to sound too eager but doing a pretty poor job of it.
                “It does. How is the case again against the Stunner looking?” Harmon asked pointedly. He wasn’t known for his round edges at the best of times. He thought he’d accentuate his point by putting the cigar back in his mouth.
                “No evidence of where she went after the crash.” Helena said uncertainly, as the commissioner gripped the crayon between his teeth. His unbroken gaze implied he shouldn’t be questioned. “We can give the order to monitor other, similar transmitter masts around the city, but there’s no solid understanding of her motives yet. Nor is there any indication of where she’s hiding out.”
                “Good.” He spoke through the wax. He’d realised his mistake immediately, of course, but didn’t want to show weakness in front of Burnley. Instead, he owned the decision and rolled the crayon side-to-side between his teeth like he did with his cigars. “The mayor wants to up the pressure still. He’s livid that after all that commitment of resource she still managed to escape the crash site. It’s taken all the clout I have to keep him from coming to you directly, but I fear that grace may have started to wear out.”
                “Noted sir.” Agent Burnley replied, desperately trying to maintain eye-contact. It was obvious that they both knew he had a crayon in his mouth, but neither of them mentioned it. He held it there in his teeth like a challenge, daring her to question him and his authority.
                Instead, silence fell. Neither of them made a move to acknowledge or correct the crayon situation, and so his authority was affirmed.
                “Good.” He said finally. “Dismissed.” The elephant in the room had remained firmly ignored. “Oh, and Burnley?” he added as Helena started to walk away. “Good work getting Katter back safely.”
                Helena nodded, tried not to notice the bright green wax all over the commissioner’s teeth, and continued her hunt through the library files.
 
                DNA from The Complete Works of Agatha Christie was a perfect match to that found on The Librarian’s label-making assaults, which was the first piece of definitive evidence that the ministry was on the right trail. Also found at the scene were threads from a tweed blazer, which carried the distinctively pedantic and judgemental scent which lingered after every silencing. It would be possible for the lab technicians to identify the source and supplier of the tweed, but that would take time. Unfortunately, true to The Librarian’s previous record, there were no other clues of her presence. She was an enigma, stored away so meticulously that no Dewey Decimal record would ever locate her.
                Sat back at her desk in the station, Helena reviewed every piece of information she had on The Librarian, scant as that collection was. As disconcerting as the late notices were, and as unpleasant as labelling people in the street could be, the ministry hadn’t focused much attention on her until recently. When the alternative was to capture the kind of criminal who’d wear through everyone’s towels, the kind of vagrant who’d take over a garden centre, or the sort of low-life who’d swap the labels on all the caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee in the city, The Librarian always came up as a low priority.
                Helena cursed the ministry for ignoring the case for so long. Even the most unassuming of criminals was a significant danger, especially if Professor Endtimes got involved, it seemed.
                Leaving her righteous rage about prioritisation to one side, Helena had to work out a way of getting to The Librarian. There were no eye-witness accounts which could provide a useful ID because of the eternally bland appearance that The Librarian favoured; it allowed her to melt into the shadows every time. That in turn meant that locating regular haunts like libraries would be of little help, since she would look like every other staff member. The ministry would just end up arresting every librarian they found, and they couldn’t resort to that; not again.
                If they couldn’t send the ministry out to find The Librarian, then they’d need to bring The Librarian out to the ministry. Clearly, that was a highly risky strategy; her stealth had already been proven, as had her impressive hand-to-hand, or possibly hand-to-book, combat skills. She was a dangerous criminal, not to be underestimated. And her capability in blending into the background meant that extra vigilance would be required when staking out the site of any ambush the ministry set up. But those were solvable problems; this was the only way they were going to catch her and get to Professor Endtimes.
                Luring The Librarian into an ambush meant that the ministry would need bait. What did The Librarian want? What was her motivation? Helena puzzled over these questions as she flicked through the case reports. Her attacks seemed almost random, popping up all over the city with no discernible pattern other than proximity to libraries. Whether this was because she hid out there, among the civilian librarians, or because there was some other special connection, no-one had been able to determine. Her victims too, were seemingly random, with no correlation between ages, places of work, gender, eye colour, or even choice of breath mint. The furthest the original investigation had got was to conclude that The Librarian’s violence was likely just focused on people with loud voices.
                Helena looked at the list of victims to see if there was anything which had been missed. John Murk was a 43 year old retail assistant, attacked nearby to the ‘Worst Quality, Best Value’ store in which he worked. He’d just finished his shift and popped into a few shops when he was attacked in the street, mid-phone-call. Teri O’Gulio was 16, attacked whilst she was talking with friends after a studying session. Maria Hamilton, 28, was caught after picking up some ‘bits’ in town for her young child. The list went on and there was nothing common between them except walking through a shopping district.
                Staring at the list of victims and nearby libraries, Helena willed something else to jump out at her, something to give her a lead. What linked a retailer on the phone after shopping, a student talking after studying, a young mother, and all the other victims?
                Slowly, like scum building up around an unwashed bathtub until it forms a solid, tangible ring, a thought started to aggregate in Helena’s mind. It clung to the sides of her brain, coalescing into a slimy mass of concepts and until it left a grimy tide-mark of comprehension. They’d all been to the library!
                The victims hadn’t mentioned it, presumably because they were all embarrassed about being not only able but actually willing to read, but it all fit. John had popped in on his rounds of the shops, probably to borrow a book about forcing people to buy things they don’t want. Teri must have been studying in the library with her friends, or at least the people who pretended to like her. Maria had gone in to get a story book for her child, not considering him or her to be worth the investment of actually buying a book. ‘Or perhaps they were just getting through so many that she wanted to make use of a worthwhile public service’ Helena corrected herself, concerned that she was getting heavily judgemental about these victims in her excitement.
                So why had The Librarian singled them out in particular? She would surely be happy that people were using the library system, even if Helena’s personal experience with librarians would lead her to quite the opposite conclusion. On quite a roll with her thoughts, another idea came to her. John had been on his phone when he was attacked, and probably had been on the same call whilst in the library. Teri and her friends were probably causing a horrific racket whilst studying. And Maria? Helena thought hard about it. From her recollections of Maria when taking a statement, the woman had come across as a loud-mouthed idiot. She was probably just shouting out the title of every book she saw or something. Helena’s judgemental thoughts had reared up again, but she didn’t bother to correct them. This was what she’d been looking for, a connection that gave The Librarian a motive.
                Helena leapt to her feet with wide-eyes and shouted out in excited triumph.
                “The Librarian is trying to maintain the silence in libraries!”
                The other inhabitants of the office turned and stared at her, apparently not blown away with her fantastic journey of logic that ‘a librarian is trying to do one of the things for which librarians are employed’. Pushed back down into her seat by the force of unimpressed stoicism pulsing from the uniformed officers and other agents, Helena took the considered action of blushing and returning to her papers hastily. It didn’t matter what she was doing with them, just as long as it was something and she didn’t have to be the centre of attention any more.
                Still quietly excited, even if she couldn’t show it to the office any more, Helena had found a way to draw The Librarian out; she’d have to make a lot of noise in the library and avoid being label-gunned long enough to capture the villainous custodian of books. It was a simple enough thing in principle, but it would also require a heavy presence of agents to cover all the avenues of escape, and that meant it would be difficult to keep the operation inconspicuous. The Librarian was sharp, and she knew her way around getting late notices into the station, so she’d probably recognise many of the officers. Having a large number of ministry personnel around would just spook her into hiding, especially since she’d participated in the attack on Agent Katter. There was no way she’d take this bait from the ministry, and with such low chances of success the ministry would never get approval from the library services to cause a disturbance in one or more of their branches. Foot-traffic through libraries was low enough without the threat of a police shootout in the middle of the ‘Historical Modern Contemporary Classics’ section.
                Having the police force terrorise a library was out of the question, but, Helena thought, there was someone who could do it with impunity. This was a case for The Stunner. She almost felt guilty for looking forward to it.
                Leaping up from her desk, then composing herself and walking calmly, Helena knocked on Commissioner Harmon’s door.
                “Enter.” He commanded.
                Helena strode into the room, closed the door gently behind herself, and took a seat facing the commissioner’s desk. White daylight gave the room a cold brightness, not unpleasant but also not extremely welcoming. Realistically it was simply well lit, without any extraneous emotional connections.
                “What is it Agent Burnley? A lead on The Librarian?” the commissioner asked brusquely.
                “I think so, sir. I believe that The Librarian was making her attacks based on people who had talked loudly in libraries shortly beforehand. She is trying to attain silence in all of the city’s libraries, but has gone mad with her obsession.”
                “Interesting theory, but it doesn’t bring us any closer to an arrest.” Commissioner Harmon said guardedly.
                “It could, though. It tells us what makes The Librarian tick and what we can use to lure her out. We can trap her, sir. All we have to do is cause a disturbance in the library and draw her out.”
                “And how do you propose that we do so?”
                “I don’t propose that we do it, sir. The Stunner is going to lure out The Librarian. I don't know how just yet, and I know you won't want too many details, but it's going to happen."
                "Don’t be ridiculous, Burnley. If the Stunner can do it then so can the Ministry. Acting outside of our jurisdiction on a case like this is unacceptable. The Stunner is not an agent." Commissioner Harmon snapped.
                "The ministry can't do it, sir. We need to make a huge disturbance in a library which is not the PR we need right now. And the Librarian will know if we're there in a heavy presence, she's too smart for that. If I go in as The Stunner she won't suspect anything, I will just be someone else trying to muscle on her turf."
                "Don't tell me what my agents can or can't do Burnley! You might be the best but arrogance is not becoming of you. You think that it's impossible because you can't find a solution but I don't recall being consulted on the matter. Did you even mention this to anyone else?" he asked, crushing a cigar between his de-waxed teeth.
                "With respect sir I haven't had time." Helena tried.
                "You have been at your desk all day." He shot it down.
                "Yeah but I only thought of the plan a minute ago."
                "And you immediately disregarded the ministry, decided the Stunner was going to take it on and came here to tell me about it?" The commissioner’s anger was rising.
                Put like that, it did feel a bit silly. But Helena knew she didn't need any more consultation on the matter. She had this and he should trust her.
                "Sir I know this will work out for the best. The ministry gets The Librarian, The Stunner gets more attention from Endtimes and the scourge of the library isn't our fault. It's a triple win."
                "Except that the Stunner makes a mockery of us again, catches the woman we couldn't, and then gets away. We need more than that Burnley! We're better than that damn it and we can't shield your alter ego forever. Putting it in a high profile case like this is too much."
                "Do you have a better idea?" She snapped. He should have been supporting her. She’d taken on this assignment to get to Professor Endtimes on his orders, and now he was blaming her for it being difficult.
                “You would do well not to forget whom you are addressing, agent.” He threatened. Helena’s nostrils flared, she breathed heavily and she remained silent. “You are an agent of the Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes, you are under my command, and you are not going to use this undercover alias of yours as a free pass to take the law into your own hands.”
                “I’m only trying to do what makes sense, sir!”
                “What makes sense is for the mayor not to call in the air force against you again! Find another way of doing this. That is an order. Dismissed.”
                “Commissioner, I can-“
                “Dismissed, Agent Burnley.”
                Helena practically threw herself from the chair and stamped out of the room.
 
                This was an injustice the likes of which Helena could scarcely comprehend. She was presenting the commissioner with solutions to all of their problems and he had thrown it back in her face, even having the audacity to accuse her of humiliating the ministry. Her! The star agent who had taken down legions of super-villains with nothing but a revolver and a knowledge of the anatomy of the leg. Her heart was jumping up and down, stamping its feet and trying to escape her chest. Her veins bulged and billowed with raw, liquid fury. Her stomach growled angrily. No, not angrily; hungrily. Helena looked across at the clock and convinced herself that it was lunch time.
                Snatching her lunchbox up from her bag without a word to anyone else, Helena stormed her way into the break room and sat down at one of the thin, linoleum-coated tables. Half of her being wanted to chew angrily, but the other half wanted to draw lunch time out as long as possible; that’d teach the commissioner to question her loyalties.
                Rabidly tearing off large chunks of bread, lettuce and corned beef, then spending upwards of five minutes chewing each mouthful, Helena mulled the situation over. With every bite she swallowed she calmed down a little, allowing her to objectively assess and address how she could satisfy her operational objectives, prevent the mayor from launching an airstrike at her, and keep the commissioner happy.
                At the full-sandwich point, Helena had concluded unequivocally that she had been right regarding the ministry getting involved in luring out The Librarian; she would immediately notice that it was a trap and flee the scene. She was also forced to concede, however, that Commissioner Harmon had a point regarding both The Stunner evading the ministry’s grasp again, and Helena’s own safety being compromised by the mayor’s newfound predilection for aerial warfare. She still thought he should have been more supportive, however. Getting over that upset would require at least one more sandwich and probably a plate of brownies. The solitary apple and slightly overripe banana in front of Helena would not cut the mustard on that front.
                Taking a bite from her apple, Helena saw Agent Porter enter the break room with a Tupperware full something orange. It might equally have been curry or pasta, or perhaps some kind of misguided risotto, but either way she feared that the microwave would soon begin its siren song, preparing to fill the room with the overbearing aroma of someone else’s leftovers. Before she could get up and slink away, however, he approached her.
                “Hey Helena. Mind if I join you?” He asked brightly. Helena wanted to say that she did mind, very much in fact, but she suspected that was just the lack of a decent dessert talking. In any case, she couldn’t very well tell him to go away.
                “Of course not.” She said, meaning a full two-thirds of those words.
                “How’s your recovery going? The bruises seem to be fading at least, and you’re not so inflated anymore.” He dropped a fork on the table and crossed to the microwave. It would soon begin.
                “Yeah not so bad. Recovering as well as can be expected, really.” She answered amid the beeping of microwave buttons.
                “As well as can be expected from a helicopter crash isn’t exactly the height of healing.”
                Helena chuckled despite her lingering anger. “No, but here we are.” A low humming filled the room as Porter’s mystery meal prepared to infuse the room.
                “Good work getting Katter back, by the way. I’m impressed that you held it together and didn’t just execute The Glazier.”
                “Can’t just go around shooting people, even if they are criminals.” ‘Which is exactly why we don’t let Agent Carmichael carry a gun’ she added to herself.
                “Depends how actively they’re trying to melt agents of the ministry, in my opinion.” Agent Porter said emotionlessly as he sat down opposite Helena.
                Helena shrugged.
                “Any leads on Professor Endtimes from him?”
                Helena shook her head. “Nothing yet, but I don’t think he’s in a condition to be saying much of anything right now. We know who helped him capture Katter though.”
                “An accomplice?” Agent Porter sat up a little straighter “Who is it?”
                “The Librarian. Lured him in with a borrow-one-get-one-free and then clobbered him with Agatha Christie.”
                “Poirot can rot.”
                “Yeah, tell me about it.”
                “I’ll bet it was him who committed the murder on the orient express you know. Just wanted to make himself look big.” The smell from the microwave was beginning to drift over. It didn’t offer any assistance in determining the nature of Agent Porter’s meal, aside from suggesting that it was not, in fact, edible.
                “Probably yeah. But back on the subject at hand, I’m trying to think of a way to ambush The Librarian. Thing is, I think I’ll need to do it as The Stunner.”
                Agent Porter looked around the room nervously at the mention of The Stunner.
                “This probably isn’t the best place to be mentioning names like that.” he said softly. “Anyone could be listening.”
                “Fair point. Anyway, I’m thinking that if there’s a noisy disturbance in the library then it’ll be the perfect bait. I need a way of making so much noise that The Librarian can’t resist it, but it also needs to not be obvious that the ministry is involved. If she knows there’s a trap waiting for her she’ll slip away again; you know what she’s like. That’s why I think you-know-who should do it.”
                “Well if it’s noise you want then it’s a shame you can’t recruit DJ Disaster. He’d have the walls shaking in no time.”
                Helena looked Agent Porter dead in the eye. She’d been a moron.
                “Of course! You’ve mentioned him before, the guy who sets up illegal raves in basements and robs people, right?”
                “It’s a bit worse than that. He started off as a run-of-the-mill crap DJ with a big mouth and poor taste in music, you know the type, but somehow found a way to get even worse. Apparently the backwards baseball cap and the baggy trousers weren’t enough of a statement. It seems that at some dive of a gig or other he accidentally span a radioactive dance anthem record and gained the power of hypnotic beats.” Agent Porter told her, giving the highlights of DJ Disaster’s case file.
                “Hypnotic beats? I’ve missed that bit somehow.” Helena said with a confused frown.
                “It’s pretty mental. He organises an underground event and then uses his hypnotic tunes to bring legions of ravers under his control. They all drop their valuables and file out into the streets, then make their way home. By the time they snap out of it he’s snatched everything and fled. The ravers rarely realise of course, and they all leave him positive reviews on rate-my-DJ.com. He even gets repeat bookings.” He told her, shaking his head.
                “Wow. That’s… we need to take him down.”
                The microwave beeped.
                “We’re trying. It’s been tough to track him down though, since all the witnesses were hypnotised to forget any distinguishing features. Add to that the fact that they all see him in the dark, or under disco lights at best and we get nothing solid. The drinking doesn’t help either.” Agent Porter said with a sigh as he crossed to the microwave.
                Helena leaned back in her chair and thought about DJ Disaster whilst Agent Porter retrieved his ‘meal’ from the hot box of smells. She couldn’t believe that DJ Disaster hadn’t immediately occurred to her. Not only did it mean she’d missed something, but it meant that Commissioner Harmon had been right to question her. Her anger at herself for that embarrassment would require yet another dessert.
                DJ Disaster was the perfect source of noises which would offend a librarian. Couple that with the fact that he was likely to be illiterate, and that made him the perfect tool to draw The Librarian out.
                “He sounds like brilliant bait.” Helena summarised.
                “Yep. Just a shame you can’t call him up and book him.” Porter returned with this Tupperware of suspicious material and sat down again. A waft of odorous horror threatened to overtake Helena’s consciousness, but she resisted.
                “You literally just said that his hypnotised ravers book him for events.”
                “Oh, well they do, but they fill in a form at the club.” He explained.
                “That must be some heavy hypnotism.” Helena said unsurely. Form filling wasn’t generally the sort of thing ravers got up to.
                Agent Porter shrugged. “That’s radioactive hypnotic beats for you.” He offered simply before shovelling another forkful of the indeterminate ‘food’ into his mouth.
                Helena drummed her fingers on the table and lost herself in thought whilst Agent Porter smuggled the biohazardous material into his stomach. If The Stunner could get DJ Disaster to play in a library then The Librarian would surely have something to say about it.
 
                The Stunner's outfit was laid out on the bed, a deflated parody of the identity it embodied. Fresh from the shower, a perplexing move to make before dressing in a heavy leather and rubber suit, Helena looked down at it with involuntary excitement. There was something about stalking through the shadows, hiding from the real world, and pursuing her own agenda that thrilled her; even more than finding a cheesecake on sale at the supermarket.
                Once she’d pulled the cargo trousers on, zipped up the tight-fitting jacket and fastened the gloves, she was comforted by the outfit hugging all around her. As she lifted the mask onto her head she felt calmed and relaxed, finding the feeling of being completely concealed and anonymous, even in full view, to be an unexpected high which she hadn't realised she'd missed.
                She snuck out of the flat through the fire escape and crouched low to avoid being seen as she descended the external staircase. The evening was still in its infancy, darkness teething itself against tall buildings and enclosed spaces, and so Helena was in a bind when it came to remaining unseen, especially in costume. In hindsight, she wished that she had just got changed at the cannery. Electing that pursuing a mistake would be foolhardy, she turned around and re-entered the flat.
                After a quick change back into civilian clothes, she prepared to leave the flat via the more traditional doorway method, but paused again. Professor Endtimes clearly knew that the Stunner had made Daubenton's cannery her headquarters, and that meant he had monitored her going in and out. If he saw her now going in as Helena Burnley then her cover would be blown.
                If he had followed her to the cannery then it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility, of course, that he already knew that she used this flat as well. But then why had he not left a note for her here? Without knowing how much the professor knew about her twin identities she had to be especially careful. The night would not be as trivial as she had hoped.
                An hour later, darkness had finally broken through adolescence and made it to full blown twilight, and Helena felt safe enough to exit her flat. This time, she was sporting a thick, shape-masking hoody, her head deep in the maw of the hood, hands thrust into her pockets, and shoulders hunched. If someone had distilled the image of an untrustworthy teenager into its barest, most fundamental parts, then Helena would have been the mirror of it. The large duffle bag around her shoulders contained The Stunner’s outfit and other miscellany she might need like a torch and a bottle of water; hydration was important, whatever the form of exertion.
                Walking in loops around the pools of illumination cast by the streetlights, clinging to back-alleys and shadows as far as possible, and generally not following any of the advice she’d received as a girl regarding walking alone at night, Helena wound her way towards the Daubenton’s cannery. She felt no fear when walking through these areas, since she spent much of her life stalking through them in pursuit of some villain or other. Besides, chances were that if she met someone, she was going to be the scarier of the two.
                The street of the cannery was as deserted as ever, as if the cannery was so abandoned that nothing else was permitted to inhabit a wide radius around it. Like a thief, which technically she was after the affair with The Apologiser at the bank, Helena skirted her way to the hole in the fence and ducked inside, looking all around herself for any sign of surveillance or pursuit. She knew that she’d never be able to see anyone in the darkened windows of the surrounding buildings, but couldn’t put her mind to rest unless she looked anyway.
                Inside the cannery, the familiar scent of old machinery, dust, and decaying bat food swirled into her nose, kicked up by her footfalls. Still taking care to stick to the shadows and avoid standing in front of any windows, Helena crept through the musty interior until she reached the old office. Stepping inside, Helena placed her bag down gently and flicked on the light switch.
                After a few seconds of delay, a clicking and plinking sound preceded an electrical hum and the room was cast in a yellow light. Looking immediately out of place was a dark shape on the sofa, exactly where she’d awoken a few days ago, after being rescued by Professor Endtimes. The shape wasn’t large enough to be a person, not even a child, but it sagged slightly into the cushions as if it held a respectable weight. On the small table next to the sofa was another note, almost identical in appearance to the one she’d had before. Professor Endtimes’ people had been here again.
                Tentatively, Helena crept across the room and picked up the note.
                ‘A token of respect and a recovery present. There’s much more where this came from if you keep up the good work. All the best, Professor Endtimes.’
                It gave nothing away, but it proved that Endtimes was definitely still interested; interested enough to try to buy her. Helena only hoped that she’d not left his gift waiting too long. If he’d got her a puppy, for example, then the outlook would not be good.
                Helena placed the note back down and looked at the dark shape. It was a package of sorts, wrapped in a black velvet sheet of some kind, like a criminal Christmas present waiting quietly on the sofa. Helena briefly considered whether Professor Endtimes might be Santa, but decided that she had never heard of Santa getting a doctorate, let alone a professorship, and therefore that it was unlikely. She then decided as a corollary of that thought that she needed to get more sleep.
                With a careful hand she reached out to the package and pulled gently at the velvet covering with her fingers, unfolding and sliding against itself almost without friction. She was taken aback by how fine the velvet was; clearly the professor was a man of fine tastes, or he at least stole from classy establishments. The cover unravelled several times, the merest whisper of sliding fabric escaping as it opened out, until something long and coiled tumbled onto the sofa cushions. It was like a rigid snake or compartmentalised worm, wound into a curve but in short, discrete, straight sections. At one end it thickened into some kind of handle, and at the other it tapered into a point.
                She gently lifted the bulk of the coil into her hands and ran it through her fingers, feeling cold, cylindrical pieces arranged end-to-end inside some kind of tightly woven black webbing, with thin strands of silver running through it. Taking the handle in her right hand she allowed the rest of the coil to fall to the floor, realising that she had been presented with a whip; a whip made from batteries. A thick black button on the handle caused the length of the whip to spark into life, cracking and discharging angrily at the floor.
                Helena stared with wide-eyed wonder at her new weapon, mouth hanging open in joyous disbelief. For a moment she forgot she was being groomed by a criminal mastermind whom she was trying to bring to justice. Stepping back, she flicked her wrist and cracked the impressive weight of the whip forwards into the sofa, landing the blow with a satisfying thud. She wheeled the string of batteries over her head in a circle and unleashed a devastating blow on a decrepit old computer in the corner of the room, cracking the case and causing a cave-in of obsolete electronics.
                Her heart was giddily bouncing off the inside of her chest cavity as she thought about all the justice she could dispense with such a weapon. Being lashed with a string of batteries was, by itself, a reasonably terrifying prospect, but adding an electric shock to the equation would really make her foes take notice. The Glazier’s stupid knee pads wouldn’t have stood a chance if she’d been wielding this whip. In fairness to herself, the battery sledgehammer was similarly brutal in terms of blunt trauma plus electrocution, but this whip was a welcome expansion to her armoury.
                Eager to roam the streets for trespassing super-villains and test out her new toy, Helena got changed into The Stunner’s outfit again, the bending and tugging required to do so reminding her of her injuries; she was healing, but she ached. Once dressed, she hooked her new whip onto a belt loop, and lifted the velvet cover up again. On closer inspection, there were clasps on the corners at one end. The Stunner unfolded it fully and held it in front of herself, smirking. Now that she had both a whip and a cape, nothing could stand in her way.
 
                The Stunner’s patrol stitched a complex pattern through the streets and rooftops, aiming for nothing in particular but keeping an appraising eye on everything she saw. She hunted for any slight movement of the shadows, any murmured puns drifting on the breeze, any signs of a brightly coloured outfit. Her cape billowed behind her, impractical in most instances but offering an extra means of breaking up her shape when she wanted to stay concealed. The Professor’s gifts were truly offering her appreciable aid.
                Among the chicken-wire fences, window shutters and warehouse doors of the industrial sector of the city, flyers adorned any surface to which adhesives would cling. There were calls to arms from several revolutionary groups, advertisements for a few short-term loan companies, and billings for hundreds of clubs, underground parties and raves. The Stunner was sure that there were more club-nights running than there were people in the city; it was no wonder that DJ Disaster had been able to operate unchallenged for so long.
                It was a long shot, but there was a chance that these flyers could provide a lead on where DJ Disaster might be found. Helena had searched through the discussion on rate-my-DJ.com earlier in the day but found nothing useful; it seemed that this dance hypnosis was powerful indeed.
                Working her way slowly through the alleys, streets and, in some cases, wheelie bins, The Stunner examined each of the flyers in turn. With a jump of excitement she saw ‘DJ Disaster’ on a poster for the ‘Penumbral Phase-Trance’ event at nearby corner shop, but it was dated three weeks in the past. It seemed that these guerrilla publicity teams did not take their social responsibility to clean up after themselves particularly seriously.
                As the night wore on, there were several more out-of-date near misses, but no solid leads. Electing to retire to bed before she rendered herself useless for the day ahead, The Stunner headed back to the cannery, saddened that she had not been blessed with an opportunity for whipping, but optimistic that she’d find someone to shock in the near future.
 
                The next few nights followed a similar pattern, with The Stunner stalking through the streets and raking through the impromptu billboards for signs of DJ Disaster. During the days, Helena worked the library circuit, attempting to track down any missed leads which might help the ministry get closer to The Librarian, and setting up covert surveillance on whichever libraries she could. She also investigated DJ Disaster’s club appearances, touring the ‘venues’ he’d used as nocturnal brainwashing hovels. It seemed that he worked a large network of otherwise quiet locations, returning to each one after a period of several months, in and amongst taking on his private bookings. There was no indication on whether or not he appeared at birthdays or weddings.
                A knowledge of DJ Disaster’s primary haunts gave focus to The Stunner’s moonlit tours of the city. She picked out the basements and warehouses within her territory and walked a loop of them, keeping an ear trained for colon-thumping bass and squealing synth. Within a week of starting her loop, The Stunner finally made a breakthrough, when she saw a slow trickle of fluorescent revellers making their way through the streets. Following the small groups of drunken dancers, the trail of discarded glow sticks, and the smell of poorly laundered spandex, The Stunner saw them all converging on the ‘Burlington Unrefined Milk’ warehouse.
                The Stunner scrabbled her way to the roof of the warehouse, feeling the tell-tale vibrations which reverberated up the walls. A dull, rhythmic thudding of deep bass juddered the flat roof under her feet, and flashes of neon disco-lights glowed from the handful of skylights in front of her. This was definitely one of DJ Disaster’s venues; she remembered it well on account of sniggering at the Burlington Unrefined Milk company’s acronym on its logo. Her target was here, and that meant there would finally be some action. Eagerly, she flexed her fingers and felt for the handle of her whip. ‘Soon’ she thought to herself.
                She stalked over the roof and crouched down next to one of the skylights. Surveying the interior of the warehouse from her skylight vantage point, The Stunner was assailed by flashing and strobing from the room below. Through grimy panes which had never felt the touch of a cleaner’s squeegee, she saw a dance floor heaving with a few hundred neon clad ravers, many with glow sticks or drinks in hand, brightly coloured plastic glasses on their faces, and ludicrous luminous legwarmers rising up their calves. Pulsing and thumping together in unison, the swirling and undulating sheets of colour were strangely entrancing. Even without experiencing the full effect of DJ Disaster's acoustic hypnosis, The Stunner felt strangely compelled to join the amorphous blob of trance and techno psychedelia. She shook herself back to attention and forced herself to remember what happened last time she had let her attention lapse. The Apologiser hadn't been smart enough to restrain her properly; a lucky break, but she wasn't going to risk repeating that experience.
                Although they hadn’t been designed to open, the skylight panels were an inviting prospect for entry; a way to avoid being spotted at the door and an opportunity to exact some kind of small revenge against The Glazier. Revenge over and above the severe blunt trauma he’d suffered as a result of falling down the stairs, that is. On balance, however, The Stunner was forced to concede that the fire escape doorway which led onto the roof, one of the worst places to go to in the event of a fire, was a better prospect. This was almost solely because it offered a way down which wouldn’t break her ankles.
                Softened, rotting wood and a rusted lock made for unimpressive security, thwarted by The Stunner’s boot as it crashed through the door. The sounds of crashing and splintering were lost among the pounding music which flooded out when the door fell, creating a reverberation in The Stunner’s chest which rivalled her own heart. She pulled her mask closer over her ears as if it might dampen the noise more effectively that way, and strode into the fire escape.
                Any emergency lighting which had existed in the dank stairwell had long since given up, leaving The Stunner to tread a slow descent through the darkness towards the cavernous dance floor. Stenches of mould and damp hung in the air, giving it a thickness which put most custard to shame. Quite apart from his plans to rob these people, the ministry would be able to punish DJ Disaster heavily for the inadequate fire escape route maintenance of his venue. In the event of a blaze, the current choices were either to burn to death, or to take a mould-stricken staircase up to the roof and burn there instead, only with a greater chance of respiratory infection in the meantime.
                Each step The Stunner took rang with a metallic clang, the steel frame of the staircase shivering after every pace. Without realising it, the Stunner began to synchronise her steps with the beats of the music, drumming a new percussive line over the bass which threatened to collapse the ageing building. By the time she was at the bottom, she was so ingrained with the rhythm that she tried to make her steps on the level ground keep matching the music, leading to a strangely choppy stride which made her legs immediately tired. The burning sensation in her thighs snapped her out of the dance trance, but the fact she’d been taken in a second time concerned her greatly. If at all possible, this would need to be a quick strike.
                Strobes and coloured disco lights bled through the cracks around the door into the body of the warehouse. The Stunner stood close to it and paused for a moment, formulating a plan in her head. She would sneak in, disappear into the crowd as quickly as possible, and then dance her way over to DJ Disaster. Very few of her plans to date, as either Agent Burnley or The Stunner, had necessitated ambulation by dance, and so she was understandably nervous. Anything could happen on a dance floor when someone looked out of place, and the last thing she needed was undue attention whilst out of reach of the DJ. Without an alternative, however, it was just a risk she’d need to take.
                Wrapping a single gloved hand around the handle, The Stunner pulled the door open and allowed the next increase in volume to wash over her. Blinding disco lights arced wildly around the room, shining briefly into The Stunner’s eyes and dazzling her as she entered. The beats pounded on, pulsing up her legs and reverberating through her chest like the interior of a drum. By the time her vision had returned and she’d shut the door, it was too late.
                The fire escape was on the opposite side of the dance floor to DJ Disaster’s booth, from which he loomed high over the revellers like a man atop a cliff-face of terrible life choices. The full sea of fluorescent dancers stood between her and him. Even if she’d had a boat worthy of those treacherous waters it would still have been a perilous journey, but The Stunner was without hull, paddle, or the element of surprise. She was standing alone and exposed, enough of gap between her and the dancers that she stood out like a beacon of black in a flood of day-glow clothing.
                “GET PUMPED FOR THE STUNNNEERRRR!”DJ Disaster boomed over the mic. His voice was electronically altered to sound like a robotic wrestling announcer. The crowd cheered, as crowds will do for literally any statement made in an emphatic tone of voice, and turned to face her. The music still assailed her from the towering speakers scattered around the room, many of them mounted to the pillars which supported the ceiling.
                “SHE WANTS TO CRASH OUR PARTY! ARE YOU GONNA LET HER, MY NEON ARMY?!”
                Cheers roared up again, challenging the already impossibly loud music for sheer obnoxiousness.
                “SHE’S HERE TO SHUT US DOWN! TO SHUT DOWN DDEEEEEJJJAAAAAAAYYYY DISASTEEEERRR! BUT WE WON’T LET HER, WILL WE PARTY PEOPLE!?”
                This time the cheers morphed into screams, and the music changed tone, the beats sounding watery and soft. They trickled into the ear and seeped into the brain, which was still being hammered into submission by thumping bass.
                Covering an ear with one hand, The Stunner fumbled in one of her many pockets and produced a pair of round, disc batteries coated in foam and fluff. She desperately stuffed them up her mask and into her ears, hoping to damp down the music enough to shake its effects off.
                “GET HEEEERRRRR!” DJ Disaster intoned, waving one hand in circles above his head and bobbing to his own music.
                What had been a group of ravers only moments before was now a neon legion, braying and panting, screaming and enraged, preparing to take The Stunner down on the orders of their master of ceremonies. Bundles of glow sticks became clubs and projectile weapons, string vests were torn into garrottes, and a few people prepared to give her a damn good scratching with their house keys. Their eyes feral and mouths contorted by hateful wails, the legion started to charge.
                There was no way that The Stunner could face down that many people on her own, regardless of how tired from a night of dancing they were. She snatched her whip up and cracked it hard in front of herself, allowing it to sparkle with electricity at the apex. The hypnotised dancers, less capable of critical thought than abused circus animals, ignored the threat and kept on coming. The Stunner began to run.
                The warehouse was wide, enough so that the dance floor had not reached the walls completely, and so there was gap around the edges for The Stunner to dash for. She escaped the grasps of the raver vanguard, but like a tidal wave of offensive colours they started to collapse the space in front of her, flowing out and heading her off. Without slowing, The Stunner lashed out with her whip and caught a burly, green-vested man in the ribs, the jolt seizing up his body and throwing him sideways into the crowd. Like improperly installed fencing in a high wind, a wall of people fell through each other, and with a hint of guilt which lost itself in a scream of adrenaline, The Stunner used a fallen woman as a step to leap over the crowd.
                “DON’T LET HER KILL OUR JAM! I NEVER THOUGHT I’D C-D’S KINDS OF AGGRESSION IN MY CLUBS!” He punned. The Stunner smirked in mid-air, knowing that she was starting to scare him.
                Her boots collided with a pair of skinny shoulders, crumpling them downwards and creating a soft landing. Without hesitation a dozen hands grasped and grabbed at The Stunner, many of them jerking away again as the whip bit out. Howls of pain interspersed the screams of blood-rage and occasional whoops along with the melody. The Stunner dropped a shoulder and barged further through the crowd, neon bodies flying into each other.
                In the back of her mind, The Stunner lectured herself against hurting innocent people unnecessarily. She had to get through the throng, and she needed to make it to DJ Disaster, but these people were hypnotised. They didn’t deserve to be hurt for that. Unfortunately, the front of her mind was leading the way, and that was the part of her mind which was armed.
                The battery whip whirled into the air, shocks sparking out at the people it passed by and pushing them back. Whosoever didn’t respect the zone of exclusion her whip created felt the cruel bite of a high-velocity battery wherever it connected. Across a carpet of fallen, hypnotised dancers, she made progress forwards.
                “STOP HER RUNNING! MAKE HER WALK-MAN!”
                The contrivance of that pun jarred The Stunner for a moment, but she pressed on, flailing her weapon and charging for the DJ booth. It was nearly in reach now, but that meant that the ravers had no space left to back away. Instead they squashed up together, forming a wall of people.
                The DJ booth was double head-height, and she’d never be able to scale it directly without getting pulled down by the neon legion. But if she had a stepping stone, of course…
                With a quick flick of her wrist, The Stunner whipped the nearest man in the stomach, curling him over in two. From almost a standstill, she leapt forwards, used his back as a springboard, and bounced up to the edge of DJ Disaster’s vinyl tower.
                She caught herself with her arms, hooking both of them over the lip so that her chest was pressed against the edge and she was hanging by her armpits. Sweaty hands grabbed at her feet and ankles as she dangled, yanking at her and desperately trying to keep her away from the DJ. He stood in front of her at the decks, a mixture of shock and anger on his face. At least, on what was visible of his face. An oversized box cap encased the top of his head, resting atop a pair of chunky black sunglasses. He was wearing a cyan and magenta shell-suit which could not possibly have suited anyone. Ever.
                Upon realising that she was temporarily stuck, DJ Disaster wasted no time in snatching up a vinyl record and smashing it against the wall. Now clinging to a jagged black blade he closed in on The Stunner.
                “Get ready for my equaliser, Stunner.” He said hungrily, hoping that she had a sufficient knowledge of audio mixing to understand the pun.
                The Stunner kicked and jerked with her legs but the grip of a dancer possessed was not to be broken so easily. DJ Disaster raised the broken record up above her.
                “Don’t do something you’ll regret, DJ.” The Stunner told him stonily.
                “I don’t do requests.” was the best he could manage by way of reply, before swinging shattered edge downward.
                The Stunner let go with her arms, allowing herself to drop onto the fingertips of her right hand. Her right arm screamed at catching her whole body weight, plus that of the dancers pulling at her from below, but it held. DJ Disaster’s blow failed to make contact, leaving him to topple forwards over the edge of the booth. He caught himself before falling, but he was within reach of The Stunner’s free hand, which took a vice-like grip on his bare arm. DJ Disaster tried to push back from the edge and stand up, but The Stunner was pulling him back downwards. If he was going to get securely back into the booth, then he’d need to pull her up at the same time.
                Stuck at the edge of the booth, the middle link in a chain of people, The Stunner heaved herself upwards with her right arm and DJ Disaster down with her left. The fingers around her ankles began to slip and loosen as the DJ desperately hauled against the weights pulling him over the edge, and with a sudden jerk The Stunner’s boot tore free of the fleshy shackles which held it. DJ Disaster fell backwards into his chair, and The Stunner rolled forwards over the edge of the booth, landing painfully on the decks. The needle scratched against his hypnotic record, and the music stopped.
                The sudden silence shocked everyone in the room. On the dance floor below, the ravers stood dumbly still. DJ Disaster caught his breath whilst collapsed over a chair, and The Stunner tried to dislodge a mixing desk from her rear end.
                The DJ was first to compose himself, extracting his shell-suited body from the chair and clambering back to his feet.
                “You’re in deep treble now.” He said with mystical disc jockeying tones. From a bag at his feet he produced a short stick with tens of cassettes dangling from its tip, all of them tied on by their magnetic tape. Learning his lesson about hesitation in delivering the final blow, he swung the weapon immediately around in a horizontal arc, directly at The Stunner’s head.
                With lightning reflexes, The Stunner flicked an arm towards DJ Disaster and fired a stun dart into his sternum from her wrist. The flail still connected in a mass of plastic impacts against The Stunner’s skull which sent her sliding off the mixing desk, but the DJ himself was now dancing to another, altogether jerkier rhythm on the floor.
                “Ow!” The Stunner complained, clutching the side of her head with one hand. “What was I… oh, yeah. No treble for me, DJ. I had a bass up my sleeve.”
                “Arrghk” was the less-than-witty response from DJ Disaster, but he was unfairly handicapped by the significant voltage being applied to his chest.
                The Stunner stood over him and cut off the power to her stun dart. She could feel blood running down the side of her head from the flail, and took a deep breath to calm herself.
                “Consider this a warning from The Librarian. She appreciates a bit of peace and quiet around her libraries. Get too close, and she will silence you.” The Stunner snarled into his ear. Her message delivered, she turned around and lifted the hypnotic beat track from the mixing desks. Looking DJ Disaster dead in the eye, she snapped it in half and cast the pieces aside.
                “Screw you.” DJ Disaster wheezed. “I play whenever and wherever I want.”
                “I’m sure she’d love to see you try. What are you going to do when you can’t hide behind a herd of brainwashed morons?”
                “Ha! You think I need them? I’ll bring her libraries to the ground!” He spat back, with surprising confidence for a man incapacitated.
                The Stunner crouched down until her face was practically pressed into the brim of DJ Disaster’s ridiculous box cap.
                “Keep telling yourself that, karaoke man.” She slapped a Dewey Decimal book label onto the side of his face and then leapt back. “I’d better be making tracks.” She mocked.
                “You’ll pay for this. Both of you will pay.” The DJ promised, laying on his back like a humiliated tortoise.
                “I wouldn’t be the first person to pay for the service of shutting you the hell up.”
                “Pah. Sleep well, Stunner. It could be the last night’s peace you ever have in your precious libraries.”
                “Whatever.” She said, preparing to hop back over the parapet of the DJ booth. “Oh, and before I forget, The Librarian said something else. She says your beats aren’t even that good.”
                Before waiting for DJ Disaster’s aggrieved response, she leapt over the edge, into the stunned and docile crowd, and dashed for the exit.
 
                “Seriously, are you in an underground boxing society or something?” Officer Dunner asked incredulously, standing next to Helena’s desk with two cups of coffee and a bag of pain au chocolates.
                “Yeah. You should see the other girl.” Helena smirked back. She wasn’t confident that she could adequately explain away the clearly cassette-shaped bruises and cuts on the side of her face, but Gary wasn’t the type to pry too deeply.
                “I guess it’s classified again, right?” he said resignedly as he placed one of the cups down.
                Helena nodded.
                “Well please at least try to look after yourself. It seems like this Stunner case is one hell of a rough ride.” He offered out the bag of pastries, and Helena took one gratefully.
                “Thanks Gary, I will do. How’s the library surveillance coming along?” She asked, changing the topic away from her cranial trauma.
                “Not so bad ma’am, but nothing to report. We’ve not caught sight of The Librarian still, nor any too-good-to-be-true book offers.”
                “Keep at it. This is the best shot we have at getting justice for Agent Katter.” Helena said encouragingly.
                “Will do. But honestly, are you all right? Seems like you’re taking a lot of blows to the head. Have you even had any medical attention?” He seemed determined to enquire about Helena’s wellbeing, as if repeated impacts against the skull could be dangerous.
                “I’m fine, Gary. How are you?”
                “I’m not bleeding from the scalp so I’ll say… pretty well. Best get back to work though; I’m trawling through last night’s reports at the moment. I don’t know what went on, but we’ve had a lot more than usual overnight.” He said, sounding like he really didn’t want to be doing paperwork at all.
                “This could be something useful. Keep me informed.” Helena said enthusiastically. She was certain that many of them would be reports of another strike by DJ Disaster, this time with sightings of The Stunner. As long as some of the whacked-out ravers remembered at least something, she’d be able to go back to the mayor with a lead on The Stunner, and forge a link between her and DJ Disaster. Her plan was starting to come together.
 
                Helena spent the morning anxiously waiting for Officer Dunner’s update and nursing the new aches starting to materialise in her body. If it achieved nothing else, then her legacy as The Stunner would certainly improve her core strength and how well she could take a punch. It was a couple of hours until the report finally reached her.
                “Agent Burnley? We’ve had sightings of The Stunner.” Gary said excitedly.
                “Where?” she asked urgently, having rehearsed the question in her mind hundreds of times. It turned out that the number of ways to ask a single-word query was incalculably large.
                “In an industrial estate, not too far from the Daubenton’s cannery where she took out Iron Can. It was an old warehouse owned by Burlington Unrefined Milk, but there was something else going on there. She was gate-crashing one of DJ Disaster’s raves!”
                “Still in-fighting with other super-villains then? I guess she always has been territorial like that. What do we have, specifically?”
                “Well, not loads. The eye-witness accounts are garbled like always from DJ Disaster sets. Between the drinking and the hypnosis… well it’s all sketchy. The consistent factors are a female, mid-thirties, slim build, wearing a dark rubber and leather outfit. It all matches up with the previous descriptions, but the real clinching factor is all the wounds.”
                Helena’s face dropped, and not just because her age had been mis-identified by nearly a decade again. She got the distinct impression someone had pulled the plug out at the bottom of her stomach.
                “The wounds?” she asked, disconcerted.
                “Yeah. A lot of these reports are coming out with electrical burns, heavy bruising, the odd fracture. By the sounds of it she cut through the crowd like jelly. No-one’s really sure why though. She just seems to have gone on a rampage.”
                Silence was all that Helena could manage at first. She’d known she was hurting people, but she’d had no choice. At least, The Stunner had told herself she’d had no choice. Being reminded of it like this now that the trance was broken made her feel sick, even more so than the chronic head pain.
                “No ideas at all?” she finally replied. “There must be a reason. She wouldn’t just assault people for the sake of it.”
                “None of the reports can offer a motive.” Gary said sadly.
                “But it doesn’t fit with her previous behaviour. She’s only attacked other villains.”
                “There was the mortgage advisor in the bank job, though, remember? After she took down The Apologiser she stunned that woman who tried to stop her making off with the cash. Stole her watch.”
                “That’s only because the advisor was trying to ste- I mean, was probably trying to stop her getting away.” Helena caught herself.
                “Maybe that’s what all the clubbers were doing, but it’s only speculation. Either way, The Stunner has still assaulted a bunch of innocent people. She’s getting bolder.”
                “I just don’t-” Helena started, but she gave up. “Whatever. I hope we’ll find a decent motive, because the crime doesn’t make any sense at the moment. Do we know what happened with DJ Disaster?”
                “Nope, same as ever. Everyone was home, or half way there, before they snapped out of whatever hypnosis he gets them under. We sent a team over there right away, but there’s no sign.”
                “A team’s already been in and this is the first I’m hearing of it!?” Helena snapped.
                “DJ Disaster is Agent Porter’s case.” Officer Dunner said defensively. “There was no time to go through both of you, anyway”
                “Fine.” She tried to calm herself, but everything was so frustrating. She’d got carried away as The Stunner and now she looked like even more of a psychopath. “Please just… keep me involved. If we can get anything on The Stunner at all…”
                “Understood, ma’am.” Gary replied quietly, offended by Helena’s outburst, before taking his leave.
 
                Late that afternoon, whilst Helena was putting together a report for the mayor on The Stunner, Agent Porter approached Helena’s desk.
                “Do you have a moment, Agent Burnley?” he asked. The look on his face told her that she had as many moments as necessary.
                “Sure thing.” She replied. “What’s this about?”
                “We’ll talk in the commissioner’s office.”
                The pair of them entered the office and closed the door, each taking a seat on one side of the desk. Commissioner Harmon stood in his favourite place by the window, cigar hanging out of his mouth and several more over-chewed cigars laying on the floor around him.
                “This was found at the scene of DJ Disaster’s gig last night.” Commissioner Harmon said calmly, offering a small plastic evidence bag forwards to Helena. She took it, and recognised the book label The Stunner had slapped on the DJ’s face the night before.  “We know that The Stunner was there, but it would be quite a coincidence for The Librarian to have appeared too.” His tone dropped into restrained anger. “What’s going on, Burnley?”
                “I have a plan, sir. We can get The Librarian and DJ Disaster in one move.” She said simply.
                “Keep talking.” Commissioner Harmon said as a warning.
                “DJ Disaster believes that The Librarian planned last night’s attack on him, so he’ll want revenge. He’s going to retaliate, and probably at one of her libraries. When she finds out that the silence is being broken she’ll come out of hiding and try to stop him, which is when we strike. It’s perfect.”
                “Except that The Stunner, once again, operates under our noses and gets away with it.”
                “No, sir. She was seen at the gig so she’s linked to The Librarian and DJ Disaster. If everyone believes that she’s operating with The Librarian then she’ll be linked to Professor Endtimes. Then, the mayor’s holy fury can come down on that case, and we get all the support we need to take him down.” ‘Assuming he spends a lot of time airborne’ she added to herself, still sore about the aerial combat of which she’d been a victim.
                “Until, of course, The Librarian is questioned and tells us she has had nothing to do with The Stunner.” Commissioner Harmon challenged.
                “I disagree, sir.” Agent Porter said. “All of Professor Endtimes’ villains have been tight-lipped. It won’t be so much of a stretch to believe that someone like The Librarian won’t speak about accomplices either. We can spin it that way to the mayor even if she does deny it.”
                Commissioner Harmon sighed heavily. “If it’s the best shot we have at catching The Librarian then do it, but I will warn you now that The Stunner will not receive special treatment, especially with so many witnesses at DJ Disaster’s gig. Whatever he kicks off at one of the libraries will come back on her too. If you’re brought in, then you’re on your own.” He allowed his words to sink in whilst chewing on a cigar. “Now what do you need from me?”
                Helena, Agent Porter and Commissioner Harmon talked at length regarding the necessary arrangements for capturing The Librarian and DJ Disaster. The number of officers at each library, the minimum distance for a stakeout, how to avoid being seen by The Librarian, and a comprehensive map of the nearest public toilets were laid out and scrutinised, ready for deployment that evening. Nothing could be allowed to stand in their way, and nearly the whole of the city’s branch of the ministry was tasked with some aspect or other of the case.
                Once the plans had been laid, Agent Porter and Helena left Harmon’s office, emerging into the otherwise desolate station. They’d been talking so long that nearly everyone else in their own office had gone home for the evening.
                “Thanks for having my back in there.” Helena said to Agent Porter sincerely. “It’s good to know that you trust me.”
                “We’re both just trying to get justice for Katter, and if your plan means we take down DJ Disaster then so much the better. I’m not going to pretend that what you’ve done as The Stunner doesn’t bother me, but… well what’s done is done. We need to make the best with what we have.”
                “I just hope we can pull it off.”
                “Me too. Night, Helena.” He said, turning away and making to leave.
                “Night.”
 
                A steady trickle of water flowed down the cold, concrete walls of the basement. It was seeping in from somewhere around the ground-level window, where the years of neglect had allowed the sealant to wear away. Trailing onto the ground, it was forming a small, brown puddle at the edge of the room and expanding into the tide marks left by its ancestors from rainstorms past. The council had been notified months before that the window needed maintenance, and that there would be serious structural and health dangers from allowing the water leak to continue, but nothing had happened yet. No-one seemed to care about libraries anymore; no-one except The Librarian.
                This singular obsession with book repositories was why DJ Disaster had spent much of his night rigging up a new set of super speakers in the basement of the city library. It was the largest among meagre equals, and therefore the best statement to make. He wouldn’t be bullied or intimidated by anyone. He’d be stunned, assaulted, made to fall off his chair, and labelled as ‘Children’s Fiction’, but he wouldn’t give in to fear.
                In the couple of days since The Librarian’s unprovoked attack via her lapdog The Stunner, DJ Disaster had worked tirelessly (or, until he was tired) to orchestrate his vengeance. Flyers had been pasted up on every nearby street advertising his special event, speaker systems had been rebuilt and juiced up, and he’d made sure to wear as much thick rubber as possible underneath his shell-suit in case The Stunner reappeared. Seeing how much water was leaking into the basement around his electrical equipment, he was all the more pleased by that decision.
                As soon as the clock struck eleven pm, he opened up his most ambitious set to date; a new work of art he liked to call ‘The Wakeup’. It was four hours of thumping, pounding, hammering, driving, crushing, drum and bass, with melodies tuned to the resonant frequency of a modestly-sized, council owned, civic service building. The kind which might, perhaps, contain books.
                His speaker towers buzzed into life with a squeal of feedback, looming twice as tall as the DJ himself with cones the size of lorry tyres. Standing at his booth, mixing decks powered up and ready, he moved the needle into place and set the records running. Quietly at first but growing louder, electronic riffs whispered their way from the speakers. They swelled and dropped, rose up and cascaded down, each one leaving a cadence of anticipation in the air. DJ Disaster pulled his headphones over both ears and slid the volume dial upwards, turning the stream of music from a trickle, to a flow, to a torrent. The bassline started kicking, shaking the floor slightly with every beat and matching the tempo of his heart. The DJ slid the dial further.
                All around him the city would wake up to the rhythms he had chosen. They were roused from their slumber and forced to take notice of him and his grand plans. As the music grew ever louder and more anti-social, a smattering of people took to the streets, searching for the source of the ominous racket, and closing in towards the city library. From the shadows, one figure in particular crept purposefully towards the building, the faint aroma of tweed and label-glue following each silent footstep. Whenever another bystander came too close or spoke too loudly, they found their mouths sealed shut with strong adhesive; there was already enough noise going on.
 
                The Stunner lurked in a secluded corner, masked from streetlights and headlights in the shade of two tall buildings, just behind some bins. It reminded her of the hypothetical alleyway in which she'd fictionally committed the manslaughter of her made-up ex-boyfriend. Theoretical memories and speculative nostalgia flowed over her for a moment, but found themselves washed away by the storm.
                She checked the time; 11.15. DJ Disaster had been booming under the library for fifteen minutes, but still there was nothing coming through on the police radio regarding The Librarian. No sightings. Of course, there were still plenty of pasta recipes being exchanged, discussions over the cacophony erupting at the city library, and reminders that they’d been briefed not to enter yet. The Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes had received intelligence that a disturbance at any library would stand a chance of drawing out The Librarian. Each of the despatches which had been left staking out the libraries were anxiously scanning every avenue of approach. But there had been nothing yet.
                Patiently, The Stunner squatted and leaned on the bins, sheltering from the rain underneath a polythene cape she'd made to cover her beautiful velvet number. Years of stake outs and surveillance work had prepared her for this, enabling her to wait for the perfect moment. As soon as The Librarian struck the radio would explode with excitement, and it would be The Stunner’s time to act.
 
                Tweed, horn-rimmed glasses and sensible pumps inched their soggy way to the leaky basement window. Water was still disappearing inside, draining the puddle slightly more slowly than it formed. It enraged her, but she could use the extra anger to help take down the shell-suited monstrosity currently ruining the peace in the basement. A certain silent rage came naturally to The Librarian, empowering her to unleash merciless silencing and a very active form of passive aggression, but to engage in sustained combat with a brutish DJ required some old fashioned adrenaline.
                Knowing the cracks, curves, and finger-holds of the window better than most people know their national insurance number, The Librarian gently swung the window open a little at a time, so that the water didn’t splash too much. It was only once she’d finishing draining that she realised the DJ wouldn’t have heard it anyway.
                Streetlight glinted from the lenses of her glasses and from the murky window as she clambered through the entrance into the basement. It was subtle, even in the darkness of the night, but not subtle enough to go unnoticed by the surveillance operative hidden inside a nearby post box. With a crackle, he radioed to the other agents and officers waiting a safe distance away; it was time.
                Inside the basement, The Librarian walked silently by force of habit. DJ Disaster was bouncing and dancing to himself, headphones locked over his ears, box cap resting above his headphones, and ego resting well above even that; certainly much higher than it had any business in being.
                Beads of water rolled off The Librarian’s tweed under the vibration of the speakers, falling noiselessly and shattering on the concrete floor. With one dripping arm The Librarian un-holstered her label gun and armed it with a fresh canister of ink. The DJ had his back to her, moving around a lot more than she liked and generally causing both a nuisance and a scene. It just wouldn’t do, not in her library. She couldn’t think what had possessed him to try such a thing in one of the buildings under her protection; this was an unprovoked attack of nuclear proportions. All she knew was that this man, more so than any other she’d met, was in need of silencing.
                With a sixth sense for someone approaching his booth, maybe with a song request for him to agree to and then ignore, DJ Disaster span around just in time to see The Librarian lunge forwards. The DJ raised his arms in a last ditch attempt at self-defence, but he was too slow.
                “This is long overdue!” The Librarian sneered, rapidly firing a string of labels and sealing DJ Disaster’s mouth tightly shut.
                DJ Disaster, a man who felt the need to hear his own voice even whilst sleeping, was apoplectic at this development. He grabbed the slender guardian of books by the arms and tossed her backwards before feeling at his incorrectly classified mouth. The Librarian had even more agility than he’d credited her with, landing on her feet and rebounding straight for him again. Crouching, he drew the cassette flail out of his duffle bag and swung it brutally at The Librarian in a single smooth motion. The blow struck, sending The Librarian into graceless spin to land back first on a stack of records.
                Pain surged through her face and her back, but what hurt The Librarian most was that the cassettes used against her had been borrowed from one her libraries months ago and never returned; she could still see the labels on them. Boiling blood pulsed through her limbs. He was going to pay for that.
 
                The Stunner leapt from her hiding place and slunk purposefully through the darkened streets, keeping herself out of sight. The radio was going crazy over the news coming from the library and at every major road junction she saw more officers and agents racing to converge on the Librarian and DJ Disaster. Remembering what Commissioner Harmon had told her, that she would find no help if spotted by the police force, she redoubled her efforts to remain unseen. The plan was coming off without a hitch so far, but it would be disastrous for something to go wrong now.
                Whilst the rubber in her suit had been chosen exclusively for its insulating properties, removing the danger that she’d electrocute herself in the middle of a fight, it also provided ample protection from the rain. Running between pools of shadow often involved going through pools of water, but the splashing puddles found her legs to be perfectly impermeable. Part of her mind wondered how she ever got by without rubber trousers in the past, but the rest told her to get a move on. She’d had to wait far enough away that the police presence wouldn’t detect her, which meant that she was even more pushed to make it in time.
 
                DJ Disaster was frantically trying to load another record into his second decks when The Librarian pulled her hands from her jacket, library cards sharpened to razor edges slotted between her fingers. With practiced deftness and alarming speed she flicked her hands rapidly at him, sending the cards shredding through the air in his direction, one-by-one. The DJ yelped as sharpened plastic sliced through his shell suit and lodged in his flesh, but still managed to push the needle onto his new hypnosis mix.
                The music blaring from his speakers gradually morphed into something else entirely, somehow sounding watery and soft but pulsing heavily inside the listener’s head. Outside of the library, the officers rushing the building slowed their charge and eventually stopped, looking puzzled at one another with empty eyes. They were sure they’d come here for a reason, but all they could think of was to sway and bounce to the rhythm, and perhaps drop their valuables on the ground if the situation called for it. Even the neighbours of the library, who had been doing their very best standing-around-passive-aggressively became harmonious, starting to actually enjoy the beats which had held them away from sleep.
 
                Another police vehicle screamed its way down the road, sirens wailing and throwing up waves of the dirty water which had puddled at the side of the road. The Stunner threw herself behind a bus stop, partially to avoid a heavy splashing and but mostly to remain obscured. Her radio was informing her that DJ Disaster had remixed another hypnotic beat and was inconveniencing the lightning-fast strike which had been planned on the library. Officers were still on the premises, but they were now milling around, entranced in the entrance. Placing their phones on the ground was not exactly the hammer of justice which had been intended. As much as she hated herself for admitting it, The Stunner was relieved that DJ Disaster had bought her more time.
                Along the street she ran, tucking into the shadows whenever she heard a police car, and trying not to think of what might be happening to the innocent officers who were under DJ Disaster’s spell. Before long, she came to the rear entrance of a dark, rectangular building.
 
                The Librarian flinched at the change of tune. Considering himself safe enough to do so, DJ Disaster pulled one of the business cards from his back and used it to slice through the labels over his mouth. After a great, thirsty gasp for air, he smirked.
                “Once my speakers collapse the library, it’ll be a real floor filler. Glad you could make it here to encore-age me.” He gloated, believing his assailant to be stunned. This belief, like so many of his, proved to be false.
                The Librarian’s hands moved like lightning, pulling an open copy of ‘A History of Smotherings’ from her back pocket and slamming it into DJ Disaster’s face.
                “Silence in my library! You thought your little disco tune could draw me in? I feel only revulsion at any noises other than softly turned pages. Your racket is the perfect way to get hit-erature.” She seethed, pushing the pages harder into the DJ’s head. “My glasses could never be low enough on my nose to adequately articulate my disdain for you.” It was the most cutting insult that The Librarian could conceive, and she was sure it would cripple him. With her other hand, she snatched the records out of his decks and dropped them on the ground, returning the library suddenly and deeply into silence.
                Above ground, the police strike force swam groggily back to reality. They became acutely aware of the shouting voices over their radios and the glow sticks they’d managed to find from somewhere that only their subconscious minds knew, but elected to progress with the mission as planned. Extra illumination be-damned, they were going to get The Librarian. She had nowhere to run this time.
               
               
                The Stunner nimbly scaled the external wall, dangling from window frames and cracked brickwork, until she reached the roof. In front of her was her prize, the modestly sized but still perfectly adequate radio transmitter tower of a local pirate radio station. It lacked the raw power of the repeater mast atop Stubbing shopping centre, but it would be enough for the Super Stunner, and pirate radio purveyors were unlikely to report the theft. With the bolt cutters she’d deposited on the roof on one of her nights roaming for DJ Disaster’s club, she liberated the mast from its mounting points. Lashing lengths of pre-prepared rope around various intersections of the support frame, she lowered the mast carefully to the ground. Every now and again she heard distant sirens flooding towards the library, but she knew they were all far too pre-occupied with DJ Disaster and The Librarian to investigate any reports of a trespasser on the roof of a supposedly empty building. It was probably just punk kids or vandals, nothing heinous.
                Back on the ground, The Stunner dragged her mast over to the hired van she’d parked outside the station earlier in the day and hauled it into the back. Between the assumed name, the chain of bogus credit card details, and the colourful description she’d given to the hire company, the investigation against The Stunner could provide several important leads to the mayor without any risk of actually catching her. If anyone had even seen her up there, that is. The engine roared into life, rain streaked in diagonal tracer-lines through the headlights, and the police radio barked news of the successful capture of both DJ Disaster and The Librarian. The Stunner breathed a relaxed sigh, followed by a hearty chuckle, and headed back to the Daubenton’s cannery with her loot. She was a genius. She knew it, and Professor Endtimes would know it too.