POV: wayne
Summary
Wayne decides that fighting someone fair is completely unfair. His dueling cane connects cleanly with Getruda's skull — and the wound knits over in seconds as she taps Feruchemical healing. Of course they gave her gold too. She blurs across the warehouse floor; he throws up his own speed bubble in time to catch her, and they fall into a side-by-side beating that smarts on both sides, ended only by mutual wincing and a discreet top-up from each of their metalminds. *Annoying woman.*
She tries his accent again, badly — *yoer* — and asks him to say *my*. He snaps at her to stop. Internally he resorts his ethics: he was born with his powers, like a decent person; she stole hers off other people. Some things you take, some you don't. Wax's unused pocket watch was fair game; the watch Lessie gave him was off-limits. People's *souls* — what Hemalurgy takes — are *way* off-limits.
They circle. He stops time briefly to watch a stray bullet's sparks drop in slow motion off a truck nearby. Marasi and the conners can manage the men with guns; this *very-much-not-at-all-clone-of-him* is his problem. Getruda dances back grinning and admits she has been waiting for this for years. She was *built* for him. Made to kill him. Once she's done, she means to wear his hat and carry his scent. *Do you hafta be weird too?*
Then her face falls — *what's he doing here?* Wayne edges around to see. The hero has arrived. Wax stands at the head of the constables, mistcoat tassels swirling, shooting wantonly into the enemy ranks. Now that Wax is here, all is right. Wayne decides Getruda is as good as defeated and goes back to work, bull-rushing her, taking an elbow into something sharp under her sleeve — metalmind, or spike, hard to say — and twisting her into a wrestling lock from behind. Cane across the throat, knee in her back, he chokes her until her metalminds bleed dry healing the suffocation. *You can't skip wrestling holds, mate. If you want to brawl properly, you've got to know how to win on the ground.*
A figure in fine clothes drops in beside them — the Sequence — and tells Getruda he is *disappointed* in her by name, then turns the gun on Wayne. Wayne releases the hold, dodges into a finishing roll because who doesn't like a nice finishing roll, and comes up inside a fresh speed bubble over Marasi and a wounded constable named Mathingdaw.
Marasi still wants to pull out — *this isn't what we're trained for.* Wayne looks back across the room: the Sequence is mid-order, pointing toward the exit; Getruda is on her feet and running for it. They're winning. Marasi points out the slow-moving bullets in the air some of Wax's Pushes are missing — the enemy has at least a little aluminum. Why so little, Wayne wonders aloud; Miles Hundredlives used to come stuffed with the stuff. Because, Marasi reminds him, this lot were planning to be captured today and didn't want valuable aluminum kit melted down for the treasury.
Wayne's gut tells him the Set crew will scatter if held — they've already got their newsworthy incident — and pulling out with wounded would be brutal. Marasi agrees: hold the line, on the condition Wax handles the Coinshot. Across the room, Wax appears to be guiding a stray bullet sideways with three pointed fingers, into a gangster sneaking up on the constables. Even Wayne notes that's a bit much.
Marasi shouts the order across: *We can handle these. I need that Coinshot dealt with.* Wax nods, fires; the Sequence dodges straight up, smashes through the ceiling out into the Bilming sky, and Wax launches after him through the broken skylight. Getruda runs out the front; the smarter gangsters slip out wherever they can; Wayne hops out to draw fire so Marasi can plant another Allomantic grenade that freezes a knot of stragglers.
The rest is cleanup. As Wayne throws a final bubble over two crawling wounded heading for the cover of a truck, he wonders, mid-thought, whether anyone has warned Wax that the Coinshot can throw those duralumin-class super-Pushes. He decides his friend will figure it out soon enough.