Cenotaph (Worm) (Complete)

[notes]

Cenotaph:

Calling Card: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [Interlude: C]

Introductions: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [Interlude: V]

Intermediaries: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [Interlude: E]

Coordination: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [Interlude: M]

Misconceptions: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [Interlude: J]

Misdirections: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [Interlude: R]

Cataclysm: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [Epilogue]

Timeline.

Thread limit reached; ToC for 6.4 and following at thread two.

Clean and complete version up here; if you prefer the contemporary audience reactions, read on.

Sequel up here; clean and complete version of that here.

AN: Thanks go out to the helpful mod who added the (Worm) tag to the thread!

 

[notes]

Calling Card 1.1

"You're saying I shouldn't take the credit," I said.

“I’m saying you have two options. Option one is to join the Wards, where you’ll have support and protection in the event of an altercation. Option two is to keep your head down. Don’t take the credit. Fly under the radar."

My head was swimming – normally, I'd be getting up for my morning run less than four hours from now. Normally, I wouldn't be up this late. Of course, normally I didn't nearly die half a dozen times in the last thirty minutes, trying not to get eaten. Or barbequed. By a dragon, or as close as makes no difference. When I started out tonight, I wanted to... break up a mugging, maybe. Something helpful, sure, but something safe. Ish. Starting a death-feud with the whole ABB, unless I joined the Wards? That was not the plan. I'd thought about joining the Protectorate, maybe, but not nearly enough to just say 'Yes.' Being able to just... get away had kept me sane over the last few months, and Wards always had someone watching them. That might save my life, if Oni Lee went after me... but could I live that way? For the rest of my life?

I shook my head, searching for the words, and winced as a wave of dizziness shot through me. Was it the adrenaline crash? Or had I been hit harder than I'd thought, earlier?

"I..."

Armsmaster raised a gauntleted hand, and turned slightly to the left, before turning back to face me.

"I need to go. Looks like Empire 88 is making a move on the Merchants again. Look – I don't think there's a good third option for you, long term. Lung can't let this slide, but he's not crazy enough to start a war with the Protectorate. And you're not even hinting you'd like to join the Wards."

I shrugged, and then winced as my shoulder twinged.

"It's a lifetime commitment."

He smiled, more brightly than I'd expected. It made him look friendly, and even handsome – briefly. "To those of us who take it seriously, yes." He dropped a card on the ground in front of me. "I can hold the details of the press release on Lung for 48 hours. Call in sick tomorrow, costume up, and call that number. I can arrange a ride-along. You'll do a patrol or two with some Wards. You don't have to join... but you certainly don't have to choose blindly."

He turned, and dropped out of sight. As I bent to pick up the card, I heard the soft roar of his motorcycle start up, then doppler into the distance. The card was printed on heavy stock, with a matte finish, and had nothing but a phone number printed on it.

276 762 7837

I was tired, bruised, and slightly singed. There was at least a half-hour of jogging before I could make it home, and then I'd have to be up again in a handful of hours. But... it could have gone much, much worse. As I realized I wouldn't be going to school tomorrow, I even mustered a grin. Not a bad night's work.


AN: The italicized lines that start it off are taken from 1.6 of Worm, and immediately precede the point of deviation. Instead of giving a quick answer, Taylor gets dizzy and Armsmaster interrupts... and things change.

 

[notes]

Calling Card 1.2

I never liked lying to my father. There was a lot I didn't tell him: my lack of friends, the bullying, the way I blamed myself for my mother's death, how I'd been starting to avoid school altogether. And the superpowers. I didn't tell him about those either. Losing Mom had been... bad. For both of us. I didn't want to burden him with things he couldn't fix, but I didn't like lying to him, so I just didn't talk about some things. A lot of things, actually.

Which is why, when I all but skipped out the door with a smile on my face and he called after me "Have a good day at school, honey!", I didn't bother to correct him, and just waved a "You too!" back.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd smiled on my way to school. And neither could he. But he hoped, desperately, that my life would get better somehow, and I could give him that hope at least. For today.

And while joining the Wards would mean talking to my Dad about most of things we never talked about, ripping the scab off of wounds that hadn't yet begun to heal, and locking myself into an organization that might combine the regimentation of a barracks with the pointless, vicious, drama of middle school, that wasn't a decision I had to make today. Today, today I had a good excuse to skip school. Not out of fear, or anxiety, or pain… but to be a hero. To work with other heroes.

And that was reason enough to smile.

I found quiet alley between two abandoned warehouses, and swept the surrounding area with my bugs. No one was watching, so I changed into my costume, pulled out the card, made a call from a nearby payphone (the numbers spelled A-R-M-S-M-A-S-T-E-R – cute), listened to a recorded message stating "Your Protectorate Patrol will be with you shortly" (followed by some tinny music) and then went for high ground.

Eight minutes later, a young man in dark red and silver dropped onto the roof of the building where I was standing, followed by a neon blur that resolved into a woman in some kind of high-tech looking spandex, with computer-chip-like lines that pulsed softly, and then dimmed.

Aegis, current head of the Brockton Bay Wards, and Battery, one of the Protectorate heroes. Flight, strength, and toughness on the one hand, and invulnerability, superspeed, superstrength, and magnetism on the other. And here I was with my bugs. And pepper spray. And... nothing to say.

Battery tilted her head toward Aegis, who spread his arms "I'm Aegis, this is Battery. Armsmaster asked us to take you along on a patrol and talk to you about life in the Wards, but he didn't exactly give us a lot of details. You're?"

I shook my head. "Hadn't picked a name yet."

Aegis whistled. "Your costume looks expen-sive. Usually, a cape picks a name and then builds a costume around that."

I looked down. "I made it."

He laughed. "Maybe we should call you Taylor?"

My face froze.

"I mean, unless your superpower really is making clothing, we probably won't call you Tailor." His voice lowered "That isn't your power, is it?"

I flushed, and was again grateful for my full-face mask. "No." A flood of insects surged up my legs, gathering along my arms as I raised them. "I do insects. And spiders have silk. But have you ever tried find a bug-themed name that doesn't sound villainous?"

Aegis laughed again, and there was muffled snort from Battery. "Well, maybe we'll come up with a name on the way. You have any movement tricks?"

"Mostly, I run."

He nodded, lifting slightly off the roof and drifting north at a walking pace toward the adjoining building. "We'll take it easy, then. Walk, talk about the Ward life, thwart anything we see that needs thwarting..."

I followed, Battery a silent presence at my back.

··· --- ···​

​

Aegis turned out to be chatty enough for the three of us. Maybe that's just how he was, maybe he was trying to make me feel welcome. If so, it was working. I'd make the occasional 'mm-hmm' noise while he talked about the food (cafeteria, but good cafeteria), the salary (well, college fund), and the medical package (world-class). He was starting to discuss good lunch options in the area (and none-too-subtly trying to steer us toward a taco truck over falafel), when he paused. I focused, feeling all the disparate insects in my range that I'd been half-paying attention to, moving them about, feeling for the people in the area, looking for running, or fighting or... nothing. Normal foot traffic on the street we were paralleling, people in shops and apartments.

He waved me over, and pointed into the alley beneath where I could feel two people leaning against the concrete wall of a dilapidated apartment building, next to a badly torn chain-link fence. Another waited at the alley's mouth. As I reached the edge of the roof, I looked four floors down.

ABB, by the gang colors and the complexions.

He waved me back from the edge, and spoke softly. "Drug dealers. The PD can clear them out, but hey – can't exactly show you a day in the life without some action." He smiled until Battery whapped him on the back of the head.

"We'll go in first and take them down. You keep an eye out for runners. Join us afterward. We'll debrief over falafel; talk about what we did and why."

She stared at me until I nodded, and then the lines on her suit started glowing. Five long seconds they grew brighter, while I desperately reached out my senses, identifying concentrations of bugs in the area, feeling the people within my range, trying to notice those with bugs on them, or add a bug or two to those without. Suddenly, she all but vanished, throwing herself over the side faster than I'd ever seen anyone move. From the bugs on her, I could feel her pushing off the underside of one of the fire escape landings, jumping straight down, as if falling wouldn't be fast enough. Aegis flew after her, diving to ground level. By the time he reached them, Battery was again standing still and one of the dealers was on the ground, retching, with a pistol crumpled like wastepaper beside him. The other was running for exactly as long as it took Aegis to fly by him and smack him on the back of the head. He pinwheeled down, and slumped – limp and unconscious. So fast. And strong! So that's what the Protectorate was like in a fight. Scary, but reassuring too.

I focused my attention again, feeling my bugs, trying to sense any of them on people who were suddenly running. As I started clambering down the fire escape, I found two. The one at the alley's mouth, probably the lookout, broke into a dead sprint. Someone else, on the dirt lot on the other side of the chain link fence had also gone from lounging to rapid movement, though in his case it was more like a slow and wheezing jog. I only had a handful of bugs on each of them, and but even the sprinter would take several minutes before he could clear my range – unless there was a car waiting. With the directions they were running... there. A small park, with a pond, and trees carefully trimmed clear of the power lines. A drifting haze of dragonflies swept in front of the sprinter, and the double handful of spiders that was their cargo leapt onto him, skittering under his clothes and biting – no venom. He shrieked, and fell to the ground, rolling about. The other saw, and then turned to cut through the space behind a restaurant. A tidal wave of cockroaches boiled out of an overstuffed dumpster in reply. He was swarmed under, and promptly fainted. As I reached the last landing before the street, I frowned.

Someone running, in the building across the street. And behind him, wind – coming through a door left open. Fleas and roaches swept the abandoned apartment as I turned to look: the open window was six stories directly above where the two captives lay groaning while Aegis cuffed them. I vectored more bugs onto the runner, building up a more detailed picture. A young man, with a duffel bag. And in the apartment he'd left behind, fleas and cockroaches found... dust. And small vials. Enough to guess why he ran. I tracked his progress, mapping the building with my insects: stairs, leading to a fire exit on another side of the building. I gathered a dense swarm above it while I dropped to the ground and walked over to Battery – Aegis was twirling a third set of handcuffs around one finger.

I should probably start carrying those. But until then, I'd have to improvise. The one who'd passed out was easy – he didn't even notice as spiders began coccooning his hands together. The other one was a little more troublesome. I only had the spiders biting him when he moved – you'd think that'd be a clear enough message to stay still, but it wasn't. And it wasn't like I wanted to hurt him: so far, he'd gotten what was basically a dozen mosquito bites. I couldn't even be sure he'd noticed the bites – he might just be rolling around trying to get the spiders off him – and I didn't really want to escalate to using venom. Unlike Lung, he wouldn't regenerate. So, something that would get him to stay still, without really hurting him... I reached out. There. The buzzing of a swarm of bees the size of his head six inches from his face did make him freeze up, and after that it was easy to start webbing his hands together.

Battery turned to me. "First time out?"

"Second."

She nodded. "It takes a bit, before you can just jump in. Training helps."

I blinked.

Aegis spun the cuffs. "There was a lookout at the mouth of the alley. Could have picked him up, didn't have to – why Battery put you on him. I could have gotten him, or Battery's more than fast enough to have done all three… but she didn't want to leave you out."

I tilted my head. "He's down and bound, over there." I pointed through the building. "And the lookout for the escape through the fence is... there." I pointed again.

A piercing shriek and thud announced that the runner from the stash apartment had exited the fire door and found out what it's like to have a mass of bugs half again your weight fall on you. He managed to knock himself out by headbutting the wall trying to thrash his way clear, so I started right in on binding him and continued "And the one who was trying to escape with this place's stash is just around the corner."

The cuffs lost momentum and dropped.

Battery, as expressionless as ever, grunted "Show me."

I hunched my shoulders and began walking, sorting the swarms I'd gathered at each runner. The useful bugs I separated out, to join the swarm I had on me as I passed nearby; the rest I scattered. The one runner still awake did try to move, but sat right back down again, hyperventilating, after I had a single bee land on his nose.

Aegis cuffed the stash runner and opened the duffel bag, closing it and slinging it over his shoulder with a low whistle.

Battery nodded, and followed me to the next closest, the fat one behind the restaurant. "Spider silk?"

I nodded.

Aegis used his last pair to cuff him too, smiling. "Second time out? What was the first one like?"

I thought about that on the way over to the last one. "Scary."

Battery smiled as she cuffed him, the kind that didn't show teeth. "Lung was brought in last night."

Aegis' smile did show his teeth. "That's a story you're going to have to tell me over a drink."

Battery's glare could have chilled ice.

"A perfectly non-alcoholic beverage. Fruit juice, possibly. While we enjoy a nutritious lunch." I'm still not sure how Aegis managed to deliver that in a respectful tone and with a straight face, but he did. Practice, probably.

I'd raised my eyes, and had even cracked a smile, secure in the knowledge that my mask would hide it. If this is what being a Ward was like, maybe I would think about joining after all. Sure, they were probably putting their best foot forward, but I could work with Aegis. And while both Battery and Armsmaster seemed pretty serious, they also seemed... reliable. I raised my head to look at the cloudless sky, and saw a cape on a building across the street from the park we were in. She leapt down, black cloak billowing, and floated more than fell. Landing lightly, she crossed the street beneath the arch formed by branches and power lines and stood over our final prisoner. I ran through the list I'd memorized from the wiki. From her outfit, she'd have to be... Shadow Stalker.

 

[notes]

Calling Card 1.3

I raised my head to look at the cloudless sky, and saw a cape on a building across the street from the park we were in. She leapt down, black cloak billowing, and floated more than she fell. Landing lightly, she crossed the street beneath the arch formed by branches and power lines and stood over our final prisoner. I ran through the list I'd memorized from the wiki. From her outfit, she'd have to be... Shadow Stalker.

"All this way, and it's over before I get here?"

Aegis turned to face her. "You're off your patrol route."

"Nothing happening. Thought I'd get some action, see the fresh meat." She toed the cuffed ABB lookout at her feet. "No action left, looks like." Her mask – a woman's face, frozen in a stern frown – jerked toward me. "I'm Shadow Stalker." There was something about her, the way she moved, the way she spoke, the way she loomed over me that made me feel nervous. Threatened. A power? She didn't have a power like that – that the wiki knew about, anyway. The ability to make herself and the things she was carrying insubstantial, and a crossbow with tranquilizer darts. Even so, I felt swarms gathering in the park, in response to my sense of threat. I had to consciously disperse them, something that was... hard. Like trying to smile and look calm, when all you wanted to do was cry. Or hit something. What was she doing to me?

Aegis stepped in. "Hasn't picked a name yet. We've been using 'New girl', 'Bugs', and 'Tailor'."

"Tailor?"

"She made her own costume. Not her actual superpower."

The mask turned to me, and I hunched, looking at her feet. What was it about her? "Well, Tailor – if you do join up we'll have a locker for you. And maybe you'll even learn how to fight."

Aegis chopped his hand down.

"Right, patrol, black marks. I get it." She ghosted out and leapt, a slow floaty jump that took her four stories up and thrice that in distance, departing the park in a different direction than the one from which she'd come.

He turned to me and shrugged. "Some of the Wards are friendlier than others. She's... pretty much at the low end on that." He paused, and glanced behind him – a PRT armored vehicle had pulled up, and Battery was pointing out the locations of the other cuffed criminals. "So!" He clapped his hands. "Tacos?"

···---···​

We were sitting on a roof with some benches with Battery in the middle. The tacos had been... nice. I'd eaten on the other side of the of little building that housed the stairwell – a full face mask didn't really leave me many options for eating but taking it off, and nice as they'd been, I wasn't ready for that.

Battery had taken losing the fight over what to have for lunch the same way I'd seen her take everything: without any sign of disturbance. She had, however, spent the last two minutes explaining to Aegis why a flyby punch to the head was an unnecessarily risky takedown to use on anyone not a Brute.

I shivered when she turned to me. "You're not in the Wards yet, so I'll hold off on the negative criticism." I stifled a chuckle as Aegis wiped his brow in an exaggerated fashion. "You fought as a Master fights: with your minions rather than your person. Wise. But a smart enemy will look for you, and try to bypass your swarms. Have you considered decoys? Screening off enemy vision with clouds of bugs?" I shook my head. "It's also worth having an option if it does come to hand to hand. Are you prepared for that?"

I pulled the can of pepper spray out. "It's not much, but..." She nodded. "It's a start. Anything else?" I showed her one of the EpiPens, and she nodded. "Smart. Accidents happen, and people die... but you can minimize them. Disabling – if possible – is best. Maybe a tazer. Foam, if you join us. And tools: restraints, communications..." I swallowed, remembering how much easier last night would have been if I'd had a cell phone, if I could have called in support instead of trying to take on Lung alone.

Aegis broke in "Easy there. Expert advice is just one of many benefits of joining the Wards." He dropped his voice to a stage whisper: "Whether you want it or not." His voice returned to its normal firm and open tone. "Seriously, though – you with us?"

I shook my head. "It was... nice. Patrolling. But I need to do some talking first, to my family and... Armsmaster said he could hold things 48 hours. Can I check in tomorrow?"

Aegis grinned. "There's a standard tour of the Protectorate facilities. We can at least make sure you get a private one, get to meet a few of the others."

Battery stood, a smooth, controlled movement, and faced me. "Make the best choice you can for yourself. I will say that this has given purpose to my life. Meaning. And even unexpected happiness." Her voice never wavered from the even tone that was all I'd ever heard her use, but her words seemed... heavier than usual. The circuit board lines on her suit started to glow. I searched for words, but after several seconds the lines flashed, and she was gone, cutting northeast in a blur of speed.

Aegis clapped me on the shoulder. "See you tomorrow." He rose into the sky, and then flew off in Battery's wake.

I changed in the stairwell, and started walking home. Dad... if I joined the Wards, I'd have to talk to him about it. My steps slowed, and I drifted toward the Boardwalk. Dad wouldn't be home yet.

···---···​

I spent several quiet hours walking alongside the ocean, letting the vastness of it sink in. Putting things in perspective. Joining the Wards would change my life. And... what was it about my life right now that I didn't want to change? School was a daily exercise in humiliation. Joining the Wards would mean transferring, or maybe dropping out and using tutors. Either way, I wouldn't have to deal with Emma, Sophia, or Madison on a daily basis. And it's not like I had anything I was doing out of school that I'd lose – practically all I'd been doing since I triggered, school aside, was planning on how to be a hero.

Dad.

It always came back to Dad. Ever since Mom died... a lot of things had changed. For the worse. And if I joined the Wards... active capes died, and heroes died more often than other capes. The more you stepped up, the more you put yourself between innocents and the monsters out there, the more likely you were to die doing it. Some villains would go for the kill, others for something worse. And there were always the Endbringers. Dad would worry about me. A lot. And he wouldn't be wrong, either – this would be dangerous. And it's not like I had one of the big powers: no flight, no invulnerability, no regeneration, no force field. I could die. I could have died last night, against Lung, easy. One good hit, or a directed blast of flame...

I shivered. But I couldn't stand by and do nothing either. Maybe last night I'd saved one group of villains from another, but the ABB did target children – usually for induction into the gang. And they did kill people. Knowing what I did then, even with how outclassed I was, could I have snuck away?

No.

So I was going to be a hero, then. While I lived. If that was settled... if that was settled then I'd need to tell Dad sooner or later. And this way, maybe, I'd have some support. Maybe even some friends, in the Wards. I'd settle for not having constant bullying, anyway.

I turned toward home. I wasn't really sure how the conversation with Dad would go, but maybe that would be a good thing. We'd gone a long time without talking about anything meaningful, tiptoeing around each other's fragility. This would be another change, but maybe this change didn't have to be bad.

I approached the house as dusk fell, saw my father's silhouette in the window. Tuna 'Surprise' again, probably. I smiled. Not everything needed to change. I checked the mailbox, and found the usual junk mail, bills... and a letter addressed to Ms. Taylor Hebert in elegant calligraphy. I opened it, put the junk mail in the recycling bin, and then tucked the bills under my elbow while I started to read.

Dear Ms. Hebert,

You probably never wanted to be famous for the locker incident, but – in Brockton Bay at least – the name 'Taylor' and the word 'locker' will always mean you. That's lucky in a way – I wouldn't have been able to thank you so quickly otherwise. I hope you found my choice of gift appropriate!

Yours,

B

Battery? She'd seemed distant, and intensely focused on the job. And... the locker incident. Fuck. I hadn't protested at being called 'Tailor', hadn't wanted to hint that I had any reason to care about the joke, but had I flinched? Did she have super-senses to go with the super-speed and super-strength? And I guess Shadow Stalker had mentioned lockers... had I twitched at that reference? Was that enough for her to crack my secret identity? And she just came out and wrote me? And she would have had to courier the note, or hand deliver it – three hours from posting to delivery was definitely not normal postal service. Was... was that some kind of politeness? A friendly warning?

I was hyperventilating.

I took a deep breath and stopped. No need to scare Dad by coming in panicked. Deep breath. In... and out. She mentioned a gift... was there a package I'd missed? I turned back toward the mail box.

A sudden sense of heat and pressure behind me. Flying.

And then darkness.

 

[notes]

Calling Card 1.4

Darkness.

Blurry. Like looking through a kaleidoscope. An endless crash of noise. Hard to think. Can't move! Tried to blink.

Couldn't.

Darkness.

···---···​

Drifting.
Pictures, sounds, rushing by.
Focus.
"... not acceptable." A voice. Female. "She's not one of ours yet, and we're not starting a war over this."
An office. Windows? Too bright.
"Director." Male? Angry.
"Think of the city as a whole. If I pull assets to hit ABB, Empire Eighty-Eight will have a free hand. I'm not telling you not to make Bakuda a priority target, I'm telling you this office can't make her the sole target."
"Dragon volunteered. Give me one week..."
"There will be another Endbringer attack in about a month, and we will need every suit she can stockpile before then. You know this, and she should..."
Fuzz.

···---···​

Voices, talking past each other, talking over each other.
"... scary, you know? Could have been any of us. I wouldn't blame you if..."
"... not her body. And I can't fix brains. If you'll..."
"... not break up with you over something we both knew...."
"...for the consultation. We'll revise our diagnoses and..."
"... certainly cleaned my clock. Who even robs banks..."
Cacophony.
Blurring.

···---···​

Awakening? Focusing?
"... Didn't want you here, Thomas."
"Your city is about to boil over."
"The gang problem is..."
The sound dissolved into chaos and edges sharpened, spun and snapped into clarity. A tall thin man, standing next to a short stocky woman, both silhouetted against massive window with a view of the Brockton Bay skyline.
Picture splintered.
Pain.
Darkness.
Dreams.

···---···​

A voice. In the dream? Outside?
"... victim first time I met you. Trigger doesn't change that. Should've known your place. Might not have killed both your parents if you had."
Anger! Tried to sit up. Couldn't. Footsteps.
Blinked. My eyes, open!
...Sophia? Walking away. Hospital room?
"Just how the world works."
Through the door.
Too heavy to keep eyes open.
Sleep.

···---···​

I dreamed of my parents.

With dawn, I woke.

 

[notes]

Calling Card 1.5

"... may include headaches, and problems with your memory, judgement, coordination, and balance. Additionally, you..." I tuned out the doctor. I'd been out for a day and a half. It could have been longer – weeks or months. Or I could have never woken up, or woken up crippled. That I was up and about already was due to Panacea, who was worthy of her name. She might not be able to fix brain issues, which was why I was getting a lecture on concussion symptoms right now, but she could fix just about anything else short of death... and it was a lot easier for doctors to treat patients in otherwise perfect health. Better than perfect, actually: I felt fantastic. Physically. Like I could run forever, or touch the ceiling with a jump, or contort myself into those half-remembered yoga poses. I didn't even need glasses anymore. She'd really gone all out.

I suppose a villain killing the family of a hero struck a nerve with her: Fleur's murder had destroyed any chance of the New Wave movement going national and driven her uncle into retirement. Unmasked heroes were almost nonexistent today, if you didn't count the ones like Weld who couldn't disguise themselves. It might have started out of concern about the authorities, or a sense of style, or even as a homage to the old depictions of capes before there were real capes. But today, heroes wore masks out of fear, fear for themselves... and fear for their loved ones.

Dad.

The doctor had told me that it would be perfectly normal for me to feel nothing yet, or to feel too much to function, or to swing between the two states, or to feel too little. Since that advice covered every possibility, I wasn't sure that it was even meaningful, let alone helpful. What kind of qualifications did you need to be a PRT doctor anyway? Wouldn't he have spent his education studying medicine, and not psychology? The whole lecture was probably ripped straight from the pages of a self-help book.

He'd also said that I'd probably be avoiding the subject for a while, so maybe he did know a few things about grief.

Eventually he stopped talking and left me alone to rest.

I lasted maybe five minutes before I got up – the combination of being brimful of physical energy, and badly needing something, anything, else to think about made lying in bed intolerable. There were some PRT sweats left out for me, and I was glad to get out of the hospital gown. Five minutes wandering the hallway taught me two things: the PRT base was a maze, and there were regular checkpoints. There were scanners and keypads and probably things I didn't see, but whatever criteria they had, I was confined to a short run of hallway and my room. The view was nice, at least, although probably every room on the floating base with a window also had an ocean view.

Reaching out with my power showed bugs scattered here and there: enough to map out where someone had spilled food and not cleaned it up, not enough to show the whole base. Trying to 'listen' through my bugs only brought on a blinding headache, and a brief snatch of conversation.

"... copier's broken again, so..."

I guess even heroes had paperwork. I went back to my room to get water and some tylenol, which the doctor had thoughtfully left behind, and lay down to close my eyes and wait for the pain to go away.

The few bugs in my vicinity gave warning that someone was approaching – two someones. I opened my eyes: Gallant, in his gunmetal and silver powersuit, and Clockblocker in his skin-tight white suit decorated with clocks. I sat up on the bed. Clockblocker leaned against the door by the wall, while Gallant stood just inside the room.

Gallant started it off. "I am sorry we don't have a familiar face for you to wake up to – that's just how the patrol schedules shook out, and we're the ones off duty and here. We can't quite let you have the run of the base until you actually join the Wards, but we didn't want to have you treated anywhere less secure." He shrugged, apologetically. His voice was rich and soothing, and he sounded like he actually cared. Probably why he'd been assigned this duty.

"And you're here to get me to sign up?"

"It was suggested to me. I'm not sure that's the best course of action." He spread his hands. "Please don't misunderstand – I don't want to discourage you. You did well in what we've seen of you. But you've just been through hell. Take some time to find your balance, to grieve, to figure out who you are and who you will be. We'll be here when you're done."

Clockblocker snorted. "What he's trying to say is, join the Wards today, and you'll be confined to base and in therapy for a month. Take the same month and spend it on a beach somewhere sunny, and you'll get the same effects – but you'll enjoy it a lot more." He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. "And if Piggy ever asks, we tried really hard to get you sign up this very minute."

"Director Piggot is a woman with grave responsibilities, and deserves our courtesy and respect both." The words were stern, but laughter danced in his tone before he grew serious once more. "Hitting you with a hard sell the minute you wake up doesn't sit right with me."

Clockblocker seamlessly continued "And this goofus feels he has to live up to his name all the time." Gallant punched Clockblocker's arm.

I looked back and forth between them.

"Do I even have a choice? I mean, I'm not sure if I'm going into the foster system, or to a relative, or what?"

Gallant spoke "I do not know, and it is likely that no one yet knows. Your choice to join the wards would give you some leverage there... but that cuts both ways."

I nodded. "Then, before I am confined to base, I'd like to visit my mother's grave. It's..." The words wouldn't come.

They glanced at each other, and Gallant nodded. He stepped to the side of the door and held it for me while Clockblocker started down the hall.

···---···​

Annette Rose Hebert​

1969-2007​

She taught something precious to each of us.​

I looked down at the stone, then looked at the empty plot next to the grave.

Then I looked away.

It was a beautiful day. Blue sky, almost cloudless, not really warm yet but enough sun to make you think it was. Better weather than we usually got in April. Two kids my age wearing black were picnicking in front of another gravestone fifty feet away, a bright checkered blanket spread on the ground, seated as if the gravestone were the third person at the lunch. Gallant and Clockblocker were standing maybe a hundred yards away under a tree, keeping an eye on me.

Was it wrong that I still didn't feel anything? That this still didn't feel real?

I looked at the stone, and sat down.

I'm not sure how long I sat there. The world felt frozen in time, like the sun had reached its height and just... stopped. That it would never go down, that I'd be sitting there on that patch of green, green grass when the world ended, and even after, floating through the Void on a tiny chunk of rock after Behemoth shattered the Earth, or however the inevitable end went down. Like the Little Prince on his asteroid.

Mom had read me to sleep with that book.

I cried.

···---···​

Some time later, a shadow fell across me and I started and looked up. The girl who'd been picknicking. Dirty blonde hair in a tight ponytail, green eyes, black sweater, and dark jeans. Carrying a lunchbox. She reached out a hand to help me up, and I stood, wiping away tears. "Sorry for your loss."

I blinked.

"I'm Lisa. And you're Taylor, of course." She held out the lunchbox to me. I took it, wondering what the hell was going on. It was surprisingly heavy.

"You saved our asses, a couple of nights back, and it cost you. A lot." My brain was slowly rebooting, running through the possibilities.... "Tattletale?"

"Sshh!" She winked, grinning. "I'm in disguise." I looked around, saw the boy who'd been eating with her talking to Clockblocker under the tree, and whirled back, reaching out to gather swarms.

"Relax. He's over there asking for an autograph."

"He what?"

"If you ever get to know his sense of humor, you'll understand why Clockblocker is his all-time favorite hero." Her grin had never wavered – a narrow, vulpine expression just this side of a smirk. "Besides, they may play for the other team, but they're not enemies."

I sat back down, bewildered.

She sat down with me. "Most of us capes, most of the time, are playing the biggest, funnest version of tag ever invented. And then when the Endbringers show up, we stop playing and get serious. Don't get me wrong, there are psychos on both sides like Shadow Stalker..." I held back a flinch. "... and Lung, but sooner or later they end up in the Birdcage. Or dead."

"So, look. Take this as a partial thanks from someone whose life you saved. Take it as proof you made a difference with what you did. And if nothing else, take it from someone else who's been there: cash is freedom for you right now." I opened the lunchbox to find banded stacks of twenties and hundreds, labeled with amounts. Ten thousand dollars?

She stood, dusting herself off. "Look, if we cross paths and you're after us – the Undersiders play hard. But if not, if you ever want to talk, just let me know."

I sat there, thinking, while she collected the young man with curly black hair and left the cemetery. I could have shouted, signaled Gallant and Clockblocker, but... I didn't want a fight here.

What did I want to do? I looked at the stone, and at the empty plot beside it again.

I could go to the Wards. Training and support, companionship, and a worthy cause... but the Protectorate wasn't quite as shining as I'd hoped. Sophia had a place there, and that was probably one of the reasons the school administration kept ignoring what she'd done to me. Gallant – and he did seem to be truly gallant – had been given orders to push me into signing up as a Ward as soon as I woke up. He hadn't liked it. I didn't either, and I liked less what it said about how they operated. Still, most of the heroes I'd met so far had seemed... decent, and that said something about their organization too.

Tattletale had all but invited me to join the Undersiders. She'd been friendly when we'd first met, and while she thought I had saved them from Lung, he would have definitely killed me if they hadn't shown up when they did. And the Undersiders, or at least Tattletale (Lisa couldn't possibly be her real name), had seemed... decent. But while the Undersiders might treat it all as a game, Lung and Bakuda weren't playing around. And besides... I'd wanted to be a hero, not a villain. But did I have any other choices?

I tapped my fingers on the lunchbox. Freedom, Tattletale had called it. If I were free to do anything, absolutely anything, I wanted... what would I do right now?

Put like that, the answer was simple.

 

[notes]

Interlude – Carlos

Adaptability was always his greatest strength. People heard ‘Aegis,’ and thought ‘invulnerable’; saw him lift a dumpster or fly, and thought ‘yet another Alexandria package.’ The truth was that he was just as easy to hurt as anyone off the street – but he was far, far harder to cripple or kill. He could see through his skin after taking a faceful of acid, or respire through an exposed liver after his lungs had been ripped out. He’d done both before, at need, and healed up afterward in days. The same sort of total redundancy and body control enabled his feats of strength – nothing people hadn’t done before, to lift a car off their child… but nothing they could do at will, either. He didn’t try to correct the misapprehension – it was usually good to be thought invulnerable and incredibly strong. And sometimes, the advantage worked the other way: most Alexandria package capes, once you got past the invulnerability, were all too human. Find a way to wound them, and they were out of that fight at the very least. Alexandria package capes often died in the first fight that wounded them. Usually to an Endbringer. More than once, the belief that if he was wounded he was out of the fight had saved Carlos’ life. More than once it had saved his teammates’ lives.

Nor did that adaptability stop with the physical. He led the wards because he was the oldest – simple as that, with no regard to aptitude or inclination. The Protectorate had weighed the benefits of a safe – well, safer – trial leadership run for each of its Wards against the benefits of optimally led Ward teams, and had opted for the former. He couldn’t argue with the results in his own case. Forced to lead, he had adapted. Saddled with responsibility, he had become responsible. Charged with enforcing discipline, he had found self-discipline. Tasked with charming new recruits, he drew on memories of his more charming friends and made himself… friendly and accessible.

‘Charming’ was hard to pull off. Probably part of why he still didn’t have a girlfriend.

He’d worked hard to reshape himself into a good leader. He might not be able to match Armsmaster’s relentless focus or Miss Militia’s calm assurance, but he’d done what he could. To teach his Wards how to explore the limits of their power, find the limits of their own body, and get up again. To make a difference that was never large enough, and keep trying. To let them remain children, instead of child soldiers. And, above all, to bring them home so they could grow up to be heroes.

And now this.

He’d gone over the mission a dozen times in his head already. If he’d known that Taylor had been involved with Lung’s capture, would he still have picked an ABB corner to hit? It had been a perfect recruitment mission, a well calculated blend of excitement and routine. Show them a fight against real villains, and you might scare them off. Show them how a Ward patrol usually went, and you’d bore them off. Should he have bantered over that cuffed but conscious thug? The Book said no; his internal simulation of Dean said yes… and right then, he’d been focused on getting her signed up for the Wards. He sighed. And if he’d known her name, he would never have made that joke about her tailoring her own uniforms. Too close to the truth. Too close for her to tell him not to use it, either, without drawing attention to it. Had it been his fault?

Director Piggot had said, repeatedly, that there was no proof that this was targeted at a Ward recruit, that Bakuda had had a pattern of random bombing before Lung had reined her in, and that Bakuda would have to be crazy to go after Ward families because the Protectorate would simply destroy her afterward. Carlos could see the sense in it, but logic wasn’t much help. Multiple Ward families were already planning extended ‘vacations,’ and all of them were asking for more protection.

He’d spent the last two days playing eye-in-the-sky for a relentless series of raids on ABB properties and dealers, and the sweep had yielded dregs. Nothing useful. From all that could be found on the street, none of their illegal businesses were earning. The low level members had taken off their colors and vanished into the crowd, and the lieutenants were hiding in a basement somewhere. Or a shallow grave. Maybe they were expecting the backlash from hitting a Ward recruit, maybe they were laying low while the power struggle to replace Lung got underway – impossible to know.

Carlos finished entering a report on his most recent late-night raid: three paragraphs that boiled down to ‘no result’ (not counting the 18 single-item blanks on the form), phrased in the Protectorate-approved format. Who knows, maybe in that mass of empty detail was something one of the Thinkers could pick up on, and make tomorrow’s raids successful. He shook his head, sent the report off, and opened the file on the girl at the center of this mess. Woke this morning, possible concussion. Signed out of the medical wing by Clockblocker. And then, nothing.

He leaned back, fingers drumming on the desk before him. The paper trail shouldn’t stop there – officially. As a practical matter, Dennis had raised the skill of avoiding paperwork to an art. His paperwork was never on time, but never quite late enough to evoke disciplinary action. Under the circumstances, a documentation gap there was normal – expected even. Another issue, another day, and he might just have chosen to raise it at the morning briefing.

Tonight, he got up and made his way to the center of the dome that served as Ward territory deep beneath the PRT headquarters. The movable walls were currently configured to have that space as a break area, and at this hour there were only four Wards there. Missy was sitting in a chair reading a book (Nancy Drew), her feet tucked up under her, and tilted at an angle where she could see Dean over the book’s edge, or hide behind it if necessary. John was sitting on the couch, playing a game on his phone, but he too had half his focus directed at the main table, where Dean and Dennis were playing to their audience. Carlos paused at the edge of the room, listening: a mock-serious argument about whether the Wards would settle next month’s patrol rotations with a powers-allowed game of Jenga or one of poker. He grinned. Vista knew better than to believe them, and Browbeat… needed easing into the group anyway. This kind of gentle inclusion had Dean’s fingerprints all over it.

“Dennis? A word.”

The bickering duo broke up, Dean seamlessly settling down next to John and pulling up a fighting game on the big screen. Carlos and Dennis entered a small side room, Carlos shutting the door behind them.

“I checked the file on our guest.”

Dennis smiled. “And nothing? Piggy grabbed Dean and me, asked us to rush her into the Wards. Didn’t want to do anything on comms where it’d be recorded, so I just… waited to file anything until I could talk to you in person.”

Aegis frowned. Dennis was next up to lead the team, and he might go very far indeed if he learned from the experience – his ability was of astounding power and flexible utility both. While it’d never been tested, it was believed that he could lock down even an Endbringer with a touch, and that same touch made for effortless nonlethal captures, or could preserve dying teammates for medical attention, or… the applications were limitless. In the hands of someone brave and idealistic, with leadership talent, that kind of power marked you out for command of a major city’s Protectorate team. In the hands of an irreverent kid who thought rules were just noise, well – it made for an awful lot of paperwork. Most of which got dumped on his team leader. Like now.

To be fair, learning when to stand up for your team despite pressure from above was one of the lessons that a term leading a Ward team was designed to teach. And Carlos himself would have disagreed with that decision… but he would have seen the reasoning behind it. And Dennis should have too.

“If we keep her alive, we can fix whatever wrong we do her now.” He paused, and looked at the redhead until his eyes dropped briefly.

“Not that I’ll fault you for wanting to look after her, but do understand that Director Piggot had the same goal. So tell me what you did with her.”

“She wanted to see her mother’s grave…” Carlos winced. “So Dean and I took her out there, kept watch. Just sat there, talked to some other mourners. One of them wanted my autograph.” Dennis grinned. “After that, we dropped her off at her aunt’s with the promise to pick her up tomorrow.”

The screeching noise of metal crumpling interrupted him. Aegis released the table and stood. “She doesn’t have an aunt.”

 

[notes]

Introductions 2.1

Ten thousand in cash wasn't much money, in some ways. Not enough to leave Brockton Bay and live somewhere else. Not enough to cover college or a boarding school. Not enough to replace the things I'd lost in the house – books, a computer, clothes, furniture. Not enough to replace the house itself.

And nothing could replace Dad.

But it was enough to buy me some clothing to replace the PRT sweats I'd been wearing, a rucksack, a space blanket, a supply of trail food, some groceries, a notebook, pens, and a large bottle of tylenol. It was enough to pay for a week at a run-down extended-stay hotel in the Docks area – the kind of place that asked your name, but didn't ask for an ID or credit card to check it. And it was enough to get an unlimited bus-pass for the rest of April.

And that was enough for what I had in mind.

Just knowing that I had an alternative to going back to the Protectorate, going into therapy and foster care, had been enough. I'd felt for an empty house with a spare key hidden under a rock or a flower pot, explained that my aunt would be home soon, waited for the Wards to leave my radius, and then gone on my shopping expedition.

In a fit of optimism, I'd picked up a new set of the straps and lenses I'd found necessary in making my old costume. The explosion had burnt it away, or perhaps it was sitting at the Protectorate headquarters, neatly folded. Either way, it was beyond my reach for now, and though assembling the spiders necessary to reweave it would take time, it wasn't as if my to-do list had much else on it right now. Practice using my power. Reweave my costume. Find a way to thank those who'd given me this chance: Panacea, Gallant, Clockblocker, and Tattletale.

And, right there at the top, end every last gang in Brockton Bay – starting with the ABB.

I wasn't going to just start a fight. I'd learned that while a head-to-head confrontation could go very badly for me, ambush was worse. Lung was far more dangerous cape than Bakuda in a fight – he'd stood off whole Protectorate teams. Had fought an Endbringer solo, once, which was once more than anyone not named Scion or Eidolon should survive trying. But dangerous as Lung was, Bakuda had done much worse to me and mine, striking from ambush.

Fine. I could learn from that. I'd find a way to do the ambushing, in the future. And for when I couldn't control that... Battery had given some good tactical criticism, on that day, and I'd take it to heart.

All of that would start with finding the ABB, though. I spared a moment of regret for the resources the Protectorate had: Thinkers, access to undercover police agents, surveillance equipment... they probably knew exactly where I needed to start. But going with them would have meant a month or more of sitting back. Of hiding behind other people. And I was done with that.

It would also have been a month with Sophia. I was pretty sure I hadn't dreamt everything of what I'd seen and heard before I woke. And while listening through my bugs gave me a blinding headache, it was definitely something I could do while awake too. But whether or not the things I thought I'd seen or heard through my bugs was real – and parts of it were pretty strange. Hearing some, but not all voices in color? Was synaesthesia a concussion symptom? – I'd seen Sophia with my own eyes, heard her with my own ears. And when I'd tried to leave, I'd found the doors of the medical wing locked against anyone without the right ID, the right iris scan or handprint or whatever.

And that meant Sophia was a Ward. Too young to be anything else. And while everyone knew the Wards all went to Arcadia, I had to wonder if that was just some expert misdirection on the Protectorate's part. Were there other Wards in my school? Had they known about the bullying? Condoned it? Participated? I ran through the list of the other Wards in the city, but no one at Winslow leapt to mind. At least Emma and Madison weren't part of it – there were only two female Wards active, and Vista was too young and too short to be either of them. That made Sophia Shadow Stalker.

No wonder I'd felt threatened when I talked to her.

Lisa... Lisa had helped when I needed it, badly. I owed her. I even liked her, the two times we'd met. But she thought of this as a game of cops and robbers. Maybe that's how it really was, to her. I'd lost too much to treat it as a game, and the thought of trying made me feel sick to my stomach.

I shook my head. After my afternoon shopping, I'd spent yesterday night going all over town trying to find the the ABB, starting with sitting down in a McDonald's in ABB territory, feeling out the buildings for blocks around with my bugs. Four times I'd found prospects: someone who carried a pistol stuck in their waistband, a group of young men shaking an individual down for money – petty thugs, basically. I'd tagged them with bugs, tried to follow them as they moved around the city, hoping to find their boss.

Bus routes were not designed for rapid surveillance, and I lost them every time.

On the bright side, busses were a pretty inconspicuous way to get around. Hood up, face down, wearing drab and baggy clothing, and curled in on myself, I looked like someone with nowhere to be and nothing worth taking. And if I just sat in the back of the bus, reaching out, changing routes to crisscross the part of the city claimed by the ABB as their turf, sometimes I'd recognize one of those bugs I'd set on my targets when the bus route by.

Once, the bug was still on the target. The other times, I'd had to reach out through the area, trying to find the same people again, see who they were with... and repeat the process of tagging and following. It was slow, uncertain, and tedious work, and at the end of it I didn't even have half a dozen locations put down in my notebook.

Three places that might be drug corners, or might just be apartments. One small business: a hole in the wall restaurant, perhaps a money-laundering front, or maybe just a place with good food. A warehouse was the biggest find: there were some innocent explanations for ABB presence in the other places – everyone had to sleep and eat. But there weren't a lot of innocent reasons for there to be a dozen mostly-naked people in a mostly empty warehouse.

Not even the obvious one – they were all standing up and working at bagging something.

That would be the place to start today I thought, pushing the remnants of an omelette around my plate. Finding a cheap diner with all-day breakfast near where I was sleeping had been a godsend: the ABB did more business at night, and that meant I had to be up then too... and I liked having a hot breakfast when I woke up. Even if I was waking up mid-afternoon.

I hadn't been sleeping well – might be the concussion, or maybe it was the dreams.

The waitress bustled by, leaving the check, and I glanced up in surprise: I'd told her I'd be eating until four. The clock said 3:57 already. The way I kept spacing out probably was the concussion. Thankfully, when I reached out to feel the world around me through my insects, I didn't have the same problems concentrating.

At least I thought I didn't.

If I spaced out, sitting on a bus while trying to conduct surveillance, or lying in bed setting spiders to weave a new costume before I slept, would I even notice the lost time?

Concussions sucked. And I couldn't keep munching this much tylenol forever – my liver would give out first.

Six hours later, I was wincing in pain. Careful effort had turned up a few more borderline locations for the notebook, places where people from the warehouse had gone, possibly on ABB business, possibly off the clock... and one major prospect: when the gunmen watching the warehouse had been relieved, they'd moved as a group to an auto repair garage where they'd stored any weaponry less concealable than a pistol. There were multiple sealed cases that my insects couldn't get inside, but the ones left carelessly unlatched had rifles, shotguns, and even grenades, along with a wide variety of things heavy, sharp, or both, and a staggering amount of ammunition. My efforts at listening in had yielded a lot of boasting about whose 'bitch' was the hottest and the beginnings of a low, pulsing headache; my one abortive effort at looking in had shown me a lot of Army Surplus labels and stars. Lots of stars. I couldn't see right now through the pain, and I was fairly sure my eyes were crossed beneath my lids. Every few seconds, it felt like someone was hammering a bright white spike through one or the other of my eyes, about five inches into my brain. The angle of the spike kept changing slightly, and there wasn't any pattern to it so I couldn't even brace one side of my head for the pain.

On the upside, I could apparently use my insects to catch a bus while blind by feeling the area out, and I'd made my way back to the warehouse to try and trace another gang member to a fresh location. Slowly. With a lot of wincing.

If Bakuda were helping equip them, black market grenades would be the least of the explosives the ABB had available. Would she let them use any of her creations? Could I even tell them apart from other explosives? Or non-explosives, actually? Were the warehouse and garage booby-trapped?

I absent-mindedly caught a new bus, trying to follow in my elliptical way one of the ABB toughs who'd left the warehouse ten minutes ago. The hood was a lifesaver – no one even noticed my eyes were closed when I boarded the bus, head down, and swiped my pass. I might need to get sunglasses if I was going to regularly blind myself trying to see through my bugs. Another ice-pick stab of pain – they were down to about once a minute now, but damn if each one didn't hurt just as much as the first time. I felt through the rucksack with my bugs, past the spare water, the space blanket, the dried food and the lunchbox – if I had to abandon my rented room, I'd be ready! – before deciding against another dose of tylenol.

One more, and I'd be risking liver damage. Advil apparently made things worse if you had a concussion, and I wasn't going to risk a serious painkiller like this. Nor would I risk talking to a doctor, and probably getting a quiet seaside vacation with the Wards.

In more immediately lethal risks, Bakuda could probably make an explosive that fit in – and tasted like – my coffee creamer. I decided that I'd assume she was prepared, and trapping everywhere the ABB had a presence to hell and gone until I knew otherwise. I was the most junior cape in Brockton Bay by a mile, the one who knew the least about how to fight, how to prepare, how to survive. I could be pretty sure she wasn't tuning her traps to explode when insects passed by by the fact that none of the places I'd found were currently smoking holes in the ground, but I'd have to be careful about using large swarms.

And I'd have to be downright paranoid about doing anything in person, instead of from a few blocks away.

There!

The one I'd been following had joined up with two other teenagers. One male, the other female. They were walking together, slowly. I got off the bus at the next stop, and started paralleling their course from two blocks away, gradually ambling closer.

They stopped beneath an underpass. I moved toward a position from which I might see them and took a look – with my eyes, not my bugs – but all I saw was another white flash.

No pain, though.

Huh.

While I was trying to figure that out, I saw a woman, glowing white too brightly to look at directly, raise a hand from which shot three corkscrewing beams so bright that they left purple afterimages across my vision. I blinked, and the next image was of the three teenagers lying crumpled at the foot of a concrete wall with about half of a stylized ABB tag spraypainted on it.

Purity.

 

[notes]

Introductions 2.2

Purity was probably the strongest single cape on the Empire Eighty Eight roster: very rapid flight, some degree of toughness, and lasers that could level buildings in seconds. The fact that she hadn't killed those three punks only meant she had the fine control to match her power.

The fact that I had a clear line of sight to her meant that she could probably kill me with a thought.

I felt swarms gather, on me and in the underpass, responding reflexively to the pulse of terror I felt, and fought to control them before she noticed. She floated the six feet between her and the pile of groaning bodies, slowly enough that I had time wonder if it was an intimidation tactic, or if she just never walked anymore, or...

"Where is Bakuda?"

Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried as if I were right there next to her.

One of the thugs started stammering, another looked to be out cold, and the third was starting to crawl away when a white whip-crack flash left the asphalt beneath her spider-webbed with cracks. Make that two of them out cold – my insects could feel that she was still breathing. No idea how Purity had managed to crack pavement without killing her.

"What about Oni Lee?"

Further stammers, punctuated by another laser blast.

"Useless."

She turned, floating slowly out from the other side of the underpass. She hated the ABB – of course she hated the ABB. They were a rival gang, they were a pan-asian gang, the E88 were white supremacists, she had an existing personal feud with Lung and Oni Lee both... of course she was looking for them. And not finding them, if she was beating up thugs in the street for information...

I reached out, taking the swarms that had assembled in the underpass in response to my flush of fear, pulling together a swarm in front of her, to buy time to talk to her.

A blinding blast tore right through it, shattering a lamppost on the median which collapsed in a shower of sparks. The whole row of street lights flickered brightly, and then went out, leaving the street to be lit by the waxing moon above and her own cold light.

Instant evasion. Precise aiming. Deadly force.

So, I wasn't going to be walking my vulnerable body out in front of her any time soon then, was I.

I reformed the swarm, denser, shaping it into a vague likeness of a person with their hands up. I mouthed the words, willing the swarm to follow along "You want the ABB?"

No way to make out an expression on her face when everything glowed like that, but I thought that might be her narrowing her eyes. Her right hand stayed up, glowing more brightly than the rest of her body.

"You know where to find Bakuda or Oni Lee?"

"Armory, distribution center – yes. The leaders... not yet." The words sounded odd to me, barely understandable.

"Why would you give them to me?" The hand was slightly lower, and she was facing almost directly away from my actual location, floating high enough she could almost touch the ceiling of the underpass, but I wasn't feeling much safer.

"My father."

At that her hands dropped, and she nodded. The ripple in the light of her face might have been a blink. "I am sorry for your loss. They are a cancer in the city."

I choked back hysterical laughter. For being arguably the strongest superpowered skinhead in the city, she was pretty polite about it. And it wasn't as if I could disagree with her goal of destroying the ABB, though I seriously doubted she'd be on-board when I got around to taking on the E88.

"Where?"

I paused, debating a moment. The drug warehouse would be a bigger earner, but it could be shut down. The armory, on the other hand, almost had to be involved in any response that ABB made. If I was going to watch whichever one survived the night, trying to find new locations, new people...

"A warehouse, near the docks. I'll show you. Harbor and Pine, in half an hour?"

She nodded, and vanished upward in a streak of light.

I released my swarms, twitching with relief. E88 was on the list – but ABB came first. And while the enemy of my enemy might not be my friend, in this case? She was definitely a force to be reckoned with.

And... how had I even noticed her blinking, from here? Had the adrenaline unlocked my ability to see and hear through my bugs?

I focused, trying to look at the crumpled ABB thugs and...

Ohgod.

No, it definitely still hurt to try that. It still hurt a lot. I made my blind way back toward the bus stop, trying to make my rendezvous with Purity, trying not to pass out from the concussion or the spiky pain.

The bus ride took me back to the right part of town, and I sipped shallowly from my waterbottle, trying to breathe deeply and evenly despite the pain. I didn't even have a watch – and if I had, I couldn't have checked it while I couldn't see – but I thought I wasn't too late. I found a quiet alleyway, and put a dense person-shaped swarm of bugs up on top of one of the buildings at the corner of Harbor and Pine, visible from where I huddled across the street when I opened my eyes.

A falling star resolved into Purity, who abruptly stopped, just hovering in place, one foot above the roof surface and ten feet from my swarm-person. Insect woman. Bug clone. I was going to have to think of a better name, wasn't I?

And that kind of distractibility was probably the concussion, again. Had she said something? I shook my head, trying to clear it, and was rewarded with a nauseating sway in perspective. My swarm's head shook with it.

"Where is the warehouse?" Again, her voice carried impossibly clearly.

"Two streets over, one down – I'll show you. Ten people inside it tonight: two with shotguns, I think, on the back door. One in what I think is an office, also armed. The rest on the warehouse floor, naked, working." I extended myself, feeling my way through the building more carefully.

"Drugs with the workers, money with the manager – that would be the usual pattern."

Money? Money would matter to me, eventually. Lisa's gift couldn't last forever – might not even last long enough. And robbing from the ABB had a lot of appeal to it. I made my swarm-clone's head nod in response, then dissolve into a twisting rope of bugs flying toward the warehouse, pointing the way. Purity followed after, and I waited until she'd cleared my line of sight before walking closer to the warehouse myself. I had my bugs touch down and pool on the roof of the building next door, then form a target symbol on the front wall of the warehouse.

Apparently, that was clear enough because the front wall of the warehouse ceased to exist immediately afterward. The chunk of wall I'd put the symbol on remained intact, and that swarm reformed into a loose cloud. Others filtered in through the back.

An enormous concrete dust cloud roared up as Purity floated forward, periodically lashing out with blasts of light. I felt the locations of the people within the building, drew swarms in targeting shapes on the air before Purity, using the way I could just feel the relative positions of the bugs on the ABB members and the few I'd put on Purity to let me position the other swarm into a perpendicular disc along the line between the glowing villain and each target. Another swarm felt through the office, identifying stacks of bills, and tiny teams of bugs began ferrying them out through the chaos and across the street.

Purity caught on quickly, and less than a minute after her dramatic entrance, the ABB were all down. None dead, though falling debris had left one with a nasty headwound. The restraint was... odd. Fear of Protectorate response? A feeling that the unpowered members of the ABB weren't worth a serious effort? A simple dislike of killing?

She descended, not walking among them, but close, turning a few over and shaking her head at what she saw.

Eventually, she rose into the air again and settled on the roof of the building across the street. I formed a swarm-clone to meet her there, and pointed to the pile of bills.

"Theirs. Waste not."

She nodded. Something I thought might have been a scowl, from the tone of her voice. "I'd rather have gotten Oni Lee."

"Bakuda."

She shrugged. "Her too. The armory?"

My swarm clone shook its 'head'. "I want to watch. Find more. Tomorrow?"

She scooped up an armful of the bills as sirens began to sound in the distance. "This ought to take down most of their distribution for a few weeks: most dealers only have a few days worth of drugs on hand. It'll make a difference. Tomorrow, on top of the old Transatlantic Shipping Building, ten pm?"

"Done."

 

[notes]

Introductions 2.3

The rest of the night had been a bust. No one from the ABB that I could detect had come by to look at the wreckage, though an awful lot of police had. Around about two in the morning I'd given it up and gone back to my cheap little hotel room, had a hot shower, and laid myself out on the bed. I reached out to the spiders I'd been gathering in the crawlspace, and continued work on my costume. I also tried working on that 'speaking' trick: I had vivid memories of Purity putting a bar of white fire through my swarm-clone's chest, and had decided that – even after my armored costume was ready – I was going to be doing as much of business as possible remotely. So there was an hour, maybe more, of weaving while the spiders and insects in the crawlspace did their best rendition of the Disney movie songs I'd grown up with. (I'd always loved the Cinderella dress-making scene; it was just my luck that when I finally got to live the dream, it wasn't with cute woodland creatures but spiders. Spiders who couldn't reliably hit the high notes.)

Once I started yawning uncontrollably, I had them switch to lullabies.

Somewhere in the transition between 'Hush little baby' and 'Sandman' I think I spaced out and then fell asleep – when I got up around noon, I was a little further along on the costume than the last part I remembered working on.

After another breakfast at that diner, I had a few challenges to sort out. On the one hand, my rucksack was now bulging with loose money, and frankly that was more weight and bulk than I wanted to be carrying around. On the other, I'd planned – to the extent I'd planned anything – to spend a week at least mapping out the ABB before starting any fights, and that had just gone out the window.
Impulsivity was one of the symptoms of a concussion, wasn't it? I'd be glad to have this head injury over with, if only so I could stop second-guessing myself.

Regardless, that meant I needed to prepare.

···---···​

A shopping expedition yielded a collapsible baton, several bottles of pepper spray, a taser and several boxes of spare cartridges, and (at the shopkeeper's advice) a combat knife that could also function as a crowbar.

It said a lot about how safe parts of Brockton Bay weren't that, when I told him I was worried about the streets lately, the storekeep didn't bat an eye at the size of my purchase. He even threw in a whistle, a book on knife fighting, and a half hour on the range with the taser and dummy ammunition. I found that while my aim was pretty bad, as long as I had a bug on the target, I could point directly to that bug and that was a pretty good substitute for actual aim. The old guy was pretty nice about the whole process, telling me how I reminded him of his grand-daughter, and offering advice on what I should do if I did get in a fight.

Rule 1: run away if possible.

Rule 2: if not possible, go all-out, and then run away.

Good advice, both parts. He also turned out to be a major fan of Dauntless. (Armsmaster was 'a good man, but Dauntless was born in the Bay, and he'll do right by us when it's his turn to lead.') His opinion of Miss Militia couldn't have been higher (his actual comment was that, once I grew up, I couldn't find a 'finer example of womanhood' upon which to base my conduct. I couldn't really tell (and didn't want to ask) if he admired her for her patriotism, her use of all kinds of guns, her work as a hero, or if seeing a woman in camo just worked for him.

Besides, I could let him babble a little. His granddaughter hadn't graduated high school – some turf war between Allfather and the Marquis, back in the day. Wrong place, wrong time. He still had the skull of the minion who'd shot up her car mounted on a plaque in the back room: the Marquis was old-fashioned about how he enforced discipline, and had strong views about involving innocents. ('A real gentleman, he was… not like the villains nowadays. A personal apology when he delivered the skeleton, and then my son won the lottery the week after – still not sure how he fixed that. Didn't make up for losing Jessica, it didn't, but he had class, he did. Still wish I'd had the guts to try and shoot him when he was standing on my porch, of course, not that it would have done any good.')

A stop at an outdoor store yielded a fuller supply of camping equipment: a sleeping bag, a tarp, a space blanket, a water filter, some more trail food, some layered clothing... I wasn't planning on going camping, but I was acutely aware that anything I left in my room might not be there when I got back. That my room itself might not be there when I got back. Realistically, I knew the odds were low, but I felt a lot more comfortable knowing that I was carrying everything I needed with me. With that much weight loaded into my pack, I was grateful for the straps and internal frame – the rucksack I'd gotten there two days ago had been a snap purchase, but it was apparently the right tool for the job.

Another stop at a pawn shop yielded an old mechanical pocket watch – missing my appointment tonight would probably be hazardous to my health, and I needed a timekeeper I could read while functionally blind. Either that, or I needed to figure out how to reliably see through my bugs without crippling myself, and it was a lot simpler to just get a watch than solve that problem.

I even bought a couple of prepaid cell phones. I had a lot of bad memories about cell phones, but Battery was right: if I'd been able to call the Protectorate, that first night when I found Lung...

···---···​

Arranging everything so that I could move and had ready access to anything I might want on short notice – the self-defense tools, water, food, phone – took a good twenty minutes back in my room.

That left the money problem.

With what I'd seized from the ABB stash-warehouse, I now had more money than I could comfortably carry around. Literally: too much loose paper, not enough space in my backpack. I reluctantly decided I could cache some of it here, some of it out in the city, and I'd definitely carry an emergency fund with me. I set my insects to sorting the bills out into piles. I had to glance over from time to time, since the bugs couldn't exactly tell bill denominations apart, but it was a pretty quick process, even with most of my attention on weaving more of my costume. I started bundling the cash into packages of approximately equal value that would fit in ziplock bags.

My bugs found something odd at the bottom of the Alexandria lunchbox: a piece of paper, ripped from a spiral-bound notebook. I reached out a hand to the cockroach-spider team ferrying it over to me, read the note, and then reread it: two telephone numbers, one labeled 'Lunch!' and the other 'Bank.'
I folded it and tucked it away into a pocket of my rucksack. Maybe once I was waking up a little earlier, I'd see about lunch. And what kind of bank could I use anyway? I wasn't technically 'wanted', that I knew about anyway, but something told me the Protectorate would be trying to get me off the streets at the first opportunity, and opening an account would mean giving the bank my information.

Maybe after I had a good fake ID, I could do something... but then again, what bank wouldn't blink at a teenage girl bringing in a duffel bag of cash to deposit? And they wouldn't be wrong to worry: technically, taking the drug money was still theft. Not the ABB was going to file a police complaint over the loss, and since they'd already been trying to kill me before I took it, it wouldn't even put me in any extra danger.

With ziplock bags of cash stashed inside the air vents of my room, behind some loose brickwork on a building two streets from the diner (sensing nearby bugs was a surprisingly efficient way to find safe nooks or crannies to stash things in a city), and a couple of other places convenient to the bus routes, I made my way to the garage armory I'd refrained from hitting last night. Well, more precisely, I made my way to a coffee shop two blocks away, where I picked up some hot chocolate and quiet seat in the back while I felt through the garage.

Two hours of waiting later, the lone guard opened the door to two young men. (An exchange of "ABB forever" after the knocking suggested that either the gang had heard of passwords, but not really thought very much about how they worked, or that that was just how they said hello to each other.) I reached out, trying to listen in, and for my pains caught fragments of conversation and some literal pain between my ears.

"... got hit last night, so..."

".... them tonight?"

"Naw – first we gotta..."

"... like I'd argue with her."

"... extra security there anyway..."

The parts I'd missed were where I was getting a headache instead of sound; it felt like I was somehow straining myself. Like I was doing it wrong. Maybe like I was lifting with my back instead of my legs. Or maybe like I was trying to see one of those magic eye pictures, and all I was managing to do was go cross-eyed in the process. The pain might be making my analogies worse.

Regardless, I'd heard enough to know I'd like to follow these two. They were going somewhere important enough to rate extra security. If I was very, very lucky, then the female they didn't want to disobey was Bakuda. I had no illusions about how dangerous she could be in a fight: if I found her, she'd have explosives enough to fight a small war on hand. On the other hand, she hadn't exactly fought me, and turnabout would be not only fair play... but just.

And satisfying.

Absentmindedly, I bugged the two gang members, the car they were using, and the one guarding the armory just for good measure, and started walking toward the nearest bus stop.

···---···​

Several hours on the bus later, I'd tracked them down to a midrise apartment complex, maybe twenty years old. Not the kind of place with a doorman that you heard about in New York, but not the kind of outright slum that the ABB tended to favor. The two thugs were sitting in the manager's office, playing cards with the door open so they could watch whoever came or went through the lobby.

By the time I had to leave to make my appointment with Purity, the puzzle had only grown, and I let my thoughts dwell on it while I caught the crosstown bus. The tenants who came and went were mostly – but not entirely – Asian, sure. But they all looked like they worked for a living. The ABB members I'd seen at the warehouse, or the armory, or on the streets... even if they weren't wearing their colors, they fell into recognizable types: young men or women, walking down the street with more bravado than sense, looking for a fight or a customer; older men or women, in their twenties or thirties, herding the younger ones with sharp words and occasional blows to the back of the head; a handful of people so calm they looked tranquilized, with thousand-yard stares and at least three concealed weapons. The way they grouped together, the way they oriented on whomever was the big cheese in the group, the way they walked together – all distinctive, all recognizable, if you were looking.

And, for the tenants, all wrong. They nodded to the thugs when they went out or returned, and they had the characteristic fear of the low rankers for those higher in the ABB... but otherwise, they looked like working citizens. I followed a few of them out of curiousity, and they'd led me to... businesses. A grocery clerk, a waitress, a manicurist, a gas station attendant... it didn't fit. Sweeping their apartments hadn't yielded anything either. I hadn't been able to get through all of them yet, but every one I'd found had been... relatively neat. Lived in. People with their families. No guns or weapons or drugs, just... people. A third of whom weren't Asian by any stretch of imagination! And the ABB didn't recruit non-Asians. Just didn't. Lung had a thing about that.

Of course, Lung was in jail right now. Maybe Bakuda was branching out?

I stepped off the bus, found a quiet bench, and checked my watch. Three minutes to go. I formed a swarm on the roof of the building, shaping it into a column, and then into something like a crude imitation of a person. The legs weren't really separate, and the arms kept collapsing back into the mass when I tried to gesture, but it looked something like a modern artist's interpretation of a human sculpture. Made of living insects.

I cautiously reached into it, for hearing and then for sight, and was surprised. The strain was there; the pain... wasn't. What was different?

The question would have to wait, because that's when Purity made her entrance.

"The armory, tonight?"

I guessed whatever reservations she had about doing business with a stranger apparently made of insects had been assuaged by giving her the stash warehouse yesterday – anyone who hurt the ABB was alright in her book. I didn't really have room to criticize that, considering. I shook off the distraction, and replied.

"Yes. It's inside the closed Perfect Autobody, on seventeenth just before it crosses Clipper street. It had one guard when last I checked, but I've seen as many as five there at a time if they're cycling guards for the warehouse through."

"You're not coming?"

I'd thought about it going along, but shook my head. She had more than enough firepower for the both of us. I'd stick to surveillance.

"Maybe a lead on Bakuda. Not sure yet. Want to keep up the stakeout, see if they react. Can you give me forty minutes before you kick the doors in?"

Purity nodded.

"I'll look for you here tomorrow at nine. Good hunting."

She rapidly dwindled to a moving star among the others in the sky. Flight looked really fun. And fast.
And convenient.

I sat down to wait for the next bus.

···---···​

Fifty minutes later, I was occupying myself by sweeping through the rest of the apartments in the building. Still nothing – just people and their families. If it weren't for the two ABB sitting in the manager's office, I'd have written this off entirely. Everything here felt legitimate. (And the one time I'd tried to actually 'look', I'd reintroduced my brain to irregular stabbing pains.) But whatever was here, the ABB wanted extra security here after they lost their warehouse.

Extra security? I hadn't even found any security aside from those two bozos!

The wail of sirens rose in the distance; the direction told me that Purity had just hit the armory. One of the thugs started, and then took a cell phone call (it was amazing what you could tell about what someone was doing with a fly on or around a few of their major joints – something like a wireframe animation of a person), and then headed down to the basement.

By the building directory, that was just where the mechanicals and the maintenance office were… of course. Where else would you hide a workshop in a residential building? As quickly as I’d shifted my attention downward, I felt it – a wide space, crammed with various tools and components. Bakuda’s workshop – one of them anyway.

And it was occupied.

 

[notes]

Introductions 2.4

The insects I had could feel one person, moving about the workship with quick, erratic, jerks.

Bakuda?

I massed swarms in the ventilation shafts, trickled them into cracks and corners, under chairs and behind equipment. It was all I could do not to drown the workshop in a tide of chitin. I’d told myself this would be surveillance alone, but if that really was her… I forced myself to unclench my fists – my knuckles were white. Instead, I stood from the bench, and stretched, and forced myself to walk toward a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. Anything to keep from jumping up and down, or grinding my teeth, or otherwise being noticed.

The thug was knocking on the workshop door downstairs; the one inside paused, then moved to a table.
Then toward the door.

I took a seat in a booth in the back, and pretended to study the menu. My backpack was beside me, the Tylenol already out. I had to know. I reached out to see, to hear…

A different sense of strain, a dizzying perspective, kaleidoscope spinning… settling. No pain.

An asian woman, slight, wearing glasses, straight black hair tucked back in a neat ponytail.

“Yes?”

“The garage was hit, mistress – the E88, again.”

Bakuda! It had to be.

“Then we’ll get our revenge tomorrow. Don’t disturb me for anything but an attack on this building or my next guest, understand?”

The reply wasn’t so much a ‘Yes’ as a grunt, followed by a bow and backing away.

My attention followed her as she reentered her workshop and closed the doors. I looked through the room, looking for a weakness, some information, something. I needed to know if she’d stay here; if she’d move again soon. I sent the waiter away with a perfunctory order for tea and hot noodle soup, my mind searching all the while for a tactic, an opportunity.

Tomorrow night I could bring Purity in again, and with Lung locked up, she could face Bakuda and Oni Lee both, and still be favored for victory. But I’d lucked into finding Bakuda this once – if she hadn’t requested additional security, drawn on a pool of soldiers I happened to be watching, would I have ever searched this apartment building? Would she stay in the same place tomorrow, or would she move? Would the attack on the garage force her to move? I needed to know more, and I turned my attention from the Tinker tinkering with her devices to sweep the whole workshop.

What I found was a set of tables, with various devices in various stages of assembly – I couldn’t begin to tell you what they were, but they looked less like the Hollywood version of a mad scientist’s lab and more like a metalworking shop had taken over a chemistry classroom. But on one table in the back, there was a man. Strapped down and gagged, but alive and staring in terror.

Bakuda spent a good ten minutes tweaking some of her devices, and lingering over one that resembled a vest more than anything else. Was she planning on launching a wave of suicide bombers? Eventually, she strolled back to him, caressing his face almost lovingly with her bare hand before donning a pair of surgical gloves.

“Park Chan-ho… awake at last. You’re an experiment – well you’re all experiments, but you get to be awake for this part of the process! One of the fun things about neurosurgery is that you don’t really need painkillers – the brain’s what you use to feel pain elsewhere, and it’s not really set up to notice when someone’s cutting into the brain itself.”

She chuckled – a light, musical sound – as her deft hands suited action to word, making a small incision behind his left ear, before peeling back skin and skull to reveal the brain beneath.

The soup arrived just as I’d lost any desire to eat.

“What I want you to understand is that while brain surgery like this is child’s play – I am brilliant, after all – my particular specialty is explosives. And that is exactly what I will shortly be inserting into your brain. Usually, I give this speech after the fact, but there’s always someone who thinks I couldn’t possibly have done… this.”

She plucked a small grey capsule from a tray to her right, and began inserting it into the brain, carefully shoving away brain tissue with her fingers, before getting something that looked like an enlarged dentist’s pick to poke it in a little further.

“Proving that my word is good is always satisfying, but it can be a trifle… wasteful. I’m hoping that having you awake for the procedure will make you more understanding of the fact that you have in fact just joined the ABB. It’s an organization with excellent opportunities for talent to rise, provided you do precisely… as… I… say.”

She punctuated each of those words with a twist and a shove.

“There! Now we just have to do a little calibration, and then stitch you back up.” Her voice was low and smoky, rich in tone… and wholly inappropriate to the weeping terror of the man on whom she was operating.

“You see, I’m a big believer in management by fear. What you need to know, now that you’ve joined up, is that if you fail me… you will certainly die. You also need to know that if you don’t excel, you might die. It may be fast, or it may be very slow indeed – each of the bombs I implant is just a little different. They might blow you to pieces, or liquefy you, or mutate you, or freeze you outside of time, or simply leave you alive in a wholly unresponsive body for decades! This is part of that wonderful blend of certainty and uncertainty necessary to inspiring proper fear, don’t you agree? Lung taught me so much. Oh! Don’t think too harshly of your coworkers, who invited you to dinner tonight – they already have their own bombs implanted. And don’t think about being a martyr – young Park Jihoo had his operation this afternoon, and the rest of your family will be similarly treated before you are released.”

She smiled.

“I wouldn’t make you bring your own family in – that would be inhumane. You will, however, invite me to visit one of these days, perhaps tomorrow, and you will provide me space to work. You will even find excuses to invite others by so I can ‘recruit’ them… or you will die. Your family will die. Your friends will die. And you will find a way to help the ABB rise, and you will do as you are told or… but why repeat myself? I see by the fact you’ve pissed yourself that you think you understand. It will do for now. For future reference… the next time you do that in my presence will be the last.”

Well, that explained the apartment complex of otherwise law-abiding citizens above her. I used my bugs to check for scars – I couldn’t get everyone in the building on short notice, but a spot check said she had total coverage of the building. Even the infant I checked had a scar there. And it also implied that she kept on the move, following her recruits to where they lived and using them to bait new victims in… and that meant Bakuda might not be here tomorrow night.

The lights in the restaurant flickered, and went out. My attention immediately focused on my own person, and I began gathering swarms closer to me. I slid under the table with my backpack, and felt around for my tazer.

No one had come in, and the customers and kitchen staff were acting bewildered. No one was approaching the front. No one at the back. My awareness expanded outward – similar scenes of confusion everywhere I could feel.

The power had simply gone out for these blocks, maybe more.

I settled back into my seat, and returned my attention to Bakuda’s workshop, with a fragment keeping track of what was going on in my own surroundings.

She’d moved away from her victim, and was again fiddling with what looked like a grenade taken from a tray of other grenades, apparently wrapping wire around the ovoid, with periodic pauses to adjust whatever lay inside with some combination of a screwdriver and soldering iron.

The mere fact she’d spent more than a minute on it said that, whatever it did, it did a lot more of it than a grenade would.

I thought about launching an assault, but a bomb-focused Tinker in her workshop? I had hordes of bugs.
She knew I controlled bugs. If she didn’t have a bug bomb that could exterminate insects by the neighbourhood-full, it would only be because she thought I was already dead. And… she might stay a full day here.

I’d wait. I’d wait, and I’d watch, and I’d come back tomorrow night with Purity and put Bakuda down. If she tried to leave before then, I’d have to choose between trying to follow her – and risk that whatever she normally did to keep from being followed would kill off my insects – and trying to take her by surprise.

Besides, she had to sleep sometime.

I could wait for my chance. It burned, to know she was right there, that she’d killed Dad, and that she thought she’d gotten away with it… but it would burn worse to blow my best chance at her. I would wait.

Minutes ticked by, while I sipped my tea. The restaurant staff had taken the outage in good cheer, bringing out candles and using their gas stove to keep the hot soup and tea coming. They were actually doing pretty good business right now, as a candle-lit beacon of normalcy in the blackout around which people gathered. Someone out front had apparently dug out some kind of three-stringed banjo, and was playing – not brilliantly, but to a lot of cheering. The part where the ice cream store next door came in and offered all their ice cream half price after the first half hour with no sign of power returning hadn’t hurt, either, and the convenience store down the street had also brought their perishables by, and it looked like some individuals were also bringing down whatever they had. At least two people had borrowed time on the gas stove to heat something they’d brought, before taking it out front. Distant sirens told a story of places dealing with the crisis less happily, but here? Here you had a feast, with people eating on credit (with the phone lines so jammed, credit card processing was functionally down) and a kind of community potluck festival was developing.

There were people literally dancing in the street.

Feeling the bugs on the people out there while they danced was almost mesmerizing – I’d been tagging people for as long as I’d been in range, and while I probably didn’t have everyone in my range tagged, I certainly had a lot of them. Feeling the way they moved, the way the crowd eddied and flowed, the way the dancers matched the rhythm of the musician, the way a young mother across the street on the third floor opened her window, and swayed and twirled with a two year old on her hip, the way a grandfather who’d dragged a chair up to the storefront tapped his pipe in rhythm… sound and motion blended together wonderfully.

Or… I could call in the Protectorate. People at the other tables were using their cell phones to check on friends and relatives, and if most calls were getting busy signals, a few were getting through. A location on Bakuda ought to bring a massive response as soon as it could be organized. Given what was going on in the city, that might be an hour or two… but still faster than waiting until my next meeting with Purity. I’d been so focused on the fact that the Protectorate wouldn’t approve of my trying to get Bakuda, wouldn’t permit me to do anything meaningful any time soon, that I hadn’t thought much about what they could bring to the table.

For all the gang presence in Brockton Bay, the Protectorate was still the most formidable single force – and it could draw reinforcements from across the country as needed, including several of the most powerful capes alive. E88 had survived decades of Protectorate manhunts by virtue of its deep bench: it regularly boasted a dozen or more capes on its roster, drawing white supremacists from across the nation and even the world to its banner. Every time one quit or was put away, another emerged. The ABB was only a few years old, and had survived almost wholly on Lung’s personal reputation: he was quite capable of fighting ever other cape in Brockton bay solo if the fight dragged on long enough, and while he could be beaten… he healed. His foes usually died. To date, no organization had been willing to go all-in against him, and anything less would only temporarily discourage him, at best.

Without Lung, the Protectorate probably could crush the ABB outright – and would be glad of the opportunity. They could focus on Empire Eighty Eight, then, or maybe clean up some of the minor players that had sprung up over the last few years.

Those minor players ranged from the loosely Protectorate-aligned New Wave to Faultline’s purely mercenary crew to the Undersiders themselves. There were usually one or two other villain-led gangs, but they never lasted. Coil – who knew what Coil was doing, or even if he were actually a cape. The running theory was that he was some kind of Tinker; his men were known for their professionalism and their laser guns both. The Merchants had only survived this long because literally every other power in the city had better things to do than squashing them – someday, that would change.

I roused from my musings as I noticed that two people were headed down to Bakuda’s workshop – I’d felt the car they’d come in press through the crowd on the street, felt them exit the car and enter the apartment building, but hadn’t paid them any particular mind until they turned down the stairs.

Two men. I focused my attention more closely, as Bakuda opened the door. A thin asian man in a black bodysuit, bandanna around his neck like he’d watched too many Westerns, wearing a lot of knives. And behind him… Lung.

Well, fuck.

 

[notes]

Introductions 2.5

Lung’s presence changed everything. The Protectorate wouldn’t start an open fight with Lung on the loose, particularly with whatever Bakuda and Oni Lee had done to disrupt the city. The power outage that had inspired the outpouring of community spirit before me couldn’t have been an accident; the sirens I’d heard in the distance wouldn’t have been for blackout issues. There would have been bombs, and bomb threats, all over the city – and then Oni Lee would have gotten Lung out of restraints and into the fight, and after that…

The Protectorate might have taken serious casualties tonight already. The PRT surely had. They could both call in reinforcements, and they would be looking to avenge this… but right now, they’d be scattered all over the city, reacting to whatever Bakuda had done, trying to limit the loss of life.

Purity might risk it… but the most she could hope to do is drive Lung off. Hit him hard enough, fast enough, before he became unstoppable… and he’d simply retreat to heal. Pursue him, and unless you got him fast, you just prolonged the fight until he could win it outright. Could I convince Purity to bring in the rest of the E88? It would be elegant – doing extraordinary damage to both gangs with one ploy.
But… the white supremacists would have done that on their own, years ago… if they thought they could pull it off. Start a bigger fight against Lung, and he just scaled up faster.

He wasn’t invincible – he’d been captured earlier through the use of poison, and luck. A lot of luck. If you got basically every cape in the city together, and kept up indirect pressure and occasional skirmishes… maybe. But how likely was that? The Protectorate, E88, New Wave, Faultline, Coil, the Undersiders, the Merchants… all of them going after Lung at once?

I’d have better luck trying to kill Lung in his sleep with butterflies than putting that coalition together.

They were talking.

“… hope you’re pleased with the extraction.”

“It served. The vest?” Lung’s voice was a low rumble.

“The one you requested for Oni Lee? Here.” Bakuda gestured at the vest. Lee silently picked it up and donned it, rearranging some of his knives for better access.

“Lee. Tomorrow, go among the Empire 88, and kill. No less than six places – a threefold price for Purity’s insult. If Kaiser or his lieutenants fight you, kill all you can, withdraw, and tell me where they are.”

Oni Lee nodded, and departed. I guess he could get away with multiple suicide bombings with his teleportation and short-lived clones, and with a Bakuda-designed vest… the casualties would be horrible. And E88 would respond, would have to respond: this would mean war in the streets. I tagged him automatically – I had no idea how I’d stop him. If I could stop him. Regardless, finding him would be the start of anything I could do.

“The grenades?”

Bakuda clasped her hands, washing them nervously. “Not yet ready – making something the idiot footsoldiers can use has its issues, and…”

“When?”

“I’ve been implanting bombs into people, giving us new recruits, and working on the big one you asked for, and that’s all taken time, that and engineering your escape. But the first batch will be ready tomorrow!” Her voice rose sharply as she pointed at the table, where a few modified grenades nestled next to the unmodified ones.

“Acceptable.”

The silence that followed dragged on endlessly, Bakuda fidgeting and Lung still as stone.

Bakuda cracked. “I took care of that bug girl who rotted your crotch off!”

I had done what? Hot tea flowed through my nose, and the next few moments were spent spluttering.

“You did what?” Lung’s voice remained perfectly steady, uncaring.

“She was trying out for the Wards, and they used her real name in front of one of our soldiers –”

I couldn’t see that Lung had changed expression, but Bakuda cut off.

“… your soldiers. Look, the thing is, I found out where she lived, and I blew her the fuck up.”

“I wished to hurt her.”

“She didn’t deserve you – she wouldn’t have put up a fight, she was a coward. That’s what she was famous for, among the kids her age: being the kid who was bullied so much her name was a punchline and an urban legend, the story kids used to scare each other with at sleepovers, the one with the locker full of tampons and the girl who freaked out so bad.”

This was a lot more personally insulting than what I’d expected to overhear.

“She was no threat. She won through a trick. I wanted vengeance.”

Bakuda was gesticulating wildly by now. “Even if you had sought her out, she’d just skitter away from a confrontation like the insects she used. Like the insect she was! I didn’t think you’d want to fight her!”

Skitter? Insect?

“I squished her, and then broke you out of jail! I thought you’d be grateful! What she did to you…”

“I will heal. Could you?”

“What?” Bakuda’s expression of bewilderment lasted all of five seconds before a backhand knocked her to the ground.

“She was mine.” His voice, which had up to this point never varied its pace or tone, warmed slightly as a hint of eagerness crept in. “That is reason enough.” Technically, his bared teeth could have been called a smile.

The look of mixed hatred and terror on Bakuda’s face, as she lay on the ground... I was starting to see what she’d meant when she told her victim that Lung had taught her all about how to rule through fear, with a mix of certainty and uncertainty. She was in her workshop. From what I knew about her, she had to have explosives there that could cause extreme damage to Lung, or lock him down for a time, or both. A Tinker with her specialization, in a position of trust, on ground she’d prepared… she might be one of the few capes living who really could kill him. And she wanted to do just that, wanted badly to lash out in response. Instead, she took this abuse. Because he scared her that much.

Honestly, I could see where she was coming from there.

Lung’s face relaxed back into its usual distant contempt, and he laid himself out on the only bed there.
Either he thought threatening to kill a woman was foreplay, or he just didn’t care if Bakuda had to sleep on the floor tonight. Bakuda went back to the tray of normal grenades, and began painstakingly modifying one in order to add it to the tray of finished product.

The good news was that they thought I was dead. The bad news was that if he learned I was alive, Lung would consider it a matter of personal honor to fix that. That would make him determined. That would make him relentless. That would make him… predictable. I could use that, or try to use that, at least. Better than crossing my fingers and hoping he doesn’t find out on its own: Lung with the drop on me was a fight that could only end one way.

First things first, though – tomorrow was shaping up to be a slaughter. Was there anything I could do about it? Oni Lee was beyond my range already, and I somehow doubted the busses were running normally. Hell, given the crisis, and chaos, and emergency response issues, it would be hard to search the city even if I’d had my own car. I wouldn’t be tracking him down before tomorrow.

Fine – focus on what I could do. Eavesdrop on Lung and Bakuda, I guess. Not as useful as you might think, at least so far. Nothing convenient about their forwarding address, or secret weakness, or anything like that: just a masterclass in how to rule through fear. Not exactly helpful unless I wanted to run my very own criminal organization.

What did that leave me? I could walk away for tonight – I’d literally have to, to make it back to my room at that hotel. The ABB thought I was dead right now (and I silently blessed whomever at the Protectorate had had that bright idea). So: I could continue to provide recon support to Purity. I could probably even bring most of the Brockton Bay Protectorate down on a target… once. After that, foster care and Ward time. With Sophia.

That was the safe play. Problem was, I didn’t want to do it. While I’d been tracking Bakuda, she’d been breaking Lung out. I hadn’t been fast enough, and everything I’d prepared for dealing with Bakuda wouldn’t work against Lung. Even if they split up, the only way to guarantee he wouldn’t pull her out of the fire… would be to find someone who could beat him or stall him, and if I could do that I could just go after them together.

The two thugs watching the lobby came down, and carried Mr. Park upstairs. Letting Bakuda keep at it meant letting her continue to implant people with these bombs, use them to ensnare their friends and family… giving her a wholly disposable army to use the bombs she was modifying. The Protectorate could fight the capes. No one was prepared for widespread civilian suicide attacks. Sure, the Triumvirate would come in, and Dragon, and probably Myrddin and Exalt and Chevalier while we’re talking about it. But the casualties would still be staggering. Best case, Brockton Bay would become a war zone.

Worst case... she was apparently working on a ‘big one’. I thought back to pre-cape history. Bakuda was a genius with explosives. With a big enough bomb, she could hold the city hostage. She could hold other cities hostage. Mutually Assured Destruction. With enough hostages, could the ABB take the city, stand off the Protectorate?

Probably not forever – Protectorate Thinkers, Tinkers, and Strangers could disarm her bombs, and the precogs could probably see it coming before she finished it. But… she was crazy enough to try it. And I couldn’t let that happen.

Oni Lee, on his own, was a vicious killer. Lung, on his own, was a two-bit gangster… unless you fought him. Then, he was as strong as he needed to be. Bakuda was the problem – she was the one who could make the ABB more than a street gang. Tinkers: the weakest capes without resources. With them, they could do damn near anything within their theme, and many things outside it.

She was the one who had to go first, and her devices with her… and insects don’t eat metal.

I left cash for my meal – and a substantial tip – and stood up, shrugging my backpack on. Those were good reasons for what I was about to do. Heroic reasons. And they mattered. They just weren’t the only reasons. Deep in my gut, where I’d been numb, there was a coal of anger.

She thought I wasn’t worthy to face Lung? That I’d just skitter away from a fight? That she just had to bully me hard enough, and I’d fold? She’d killed my father because she thought I was a punchline?

She didn’t get to win, not tonight.

Not ever.

I made my way through the celebrating crowd outside the restaurant, head down, anonymous beneath my hood. The guy with the three stringed banjo was still going strong, and an audience had gathered around him. The rest of the crowd swirled with conversation and movement, small children running to emptying vats of ice cream for more, older people exchanging greetings and gossip. With all the insects I’d been gathering, with everyone I’d tagged, it was easy to read the flow of the crowd and weave through it without breaking stride. I approached the apartment building…

… and passed on. With what I had planned, I wouldn’t need my physical body there.

I felt through the swarms, gathered others from the area, sorted through for which kinds of bugs I wanted to use… and acted. Swarms filtered in through the air vents, as quietly as I could manage. Lung was trying to take a nap, and Bakuda was bent over a table, fiddling with another grenade. Neither reacted for a very long minute. I had a pretty constant flow of insects coming in from the outside, through the vent system. Another major swarm was waiting outside the door, clinging to the ceiling and waiting to drop. This was as good a chance as I’d get.

I moved for Bakuda first. She didn’t notice until the column of insects was halfway up her calves, at which point she shrieked, throwing up her hands and stumbling deeper into the workshop toward Lung, trying to brush them off. I had the flying insects lift off and spread out in a buzzing, humming cloud that ruined visibility. Lung was on his feet, flames dancing around his fingertips – I’d held off on attacking him to try and delay the point where he’d just win outright. Bakuda ran to him, and hid behind him. I kept the insect cloud in the air, and the creeping carpet on the ground, following her… but slowly enough for her to reach him before being engulfed.

“You failed.” He cleaned her face with his flame, and it blistered as the insects fell away, stunned or dead. The survivors crawled away to join the curtain of insects that formed a cylinder around Lung – just over arm’s reach from him. Bakuda just glared out at my swarms from behind him, but stayed as far away as she could.

This wouldn’t hold Lung up for long, and I’d blown my best chance at swarming Bakuda under by letting her reach him. I’d been delaying attacking him, trying to slow his power from taking effect, because we both knew that after he got going, there was nothing I could do to hurt him. Hell, just getting in this fight was probably helping his regeneration along, so he’d probably be healthier after it than before. This kind of slow start was apparently A-OK with him.

It was fine with me too – keeping both of them trapped in the back of the workshop for just a little bit longer was all I’d been aiming for anyway.

Trying to use a Tinker device was normally an exercise in frustration: they were designed by and for people who didn’t respect the laws of physics, let alone common sense. But, every so often, a Tinker designed something for the unwashed masses, and then they had to make it usable by mere normals. Bakuda’s modified grenades should clear the room, and in a workshop just filled with explosives, well… it would ruin whatever she’d been working on, even if they probably weren’t volatile enough to chain-detonate. Might kill her too. If she hadn’t killed Dad, I might even have cared. Wouldn’t be long now: another of my swarms had just engulfed the tray. A little effort and…

Huh.

Pushing the lever and pulling the pin apparently took more force than my insects could muster. That… might be a problem.

I reversed my steps and broke into a jog. Some of the reinforcements were directed to cling to the lintel above the door above the manager’s office, in case those two thugs made trouble. And in the workshop… I’d need to buy time.

I formed a swarm-clone a good ten feet from them, where it would be only vaguely visible through the buzzing cloud of insects, and spoke through it.

“She did better than you managed, Lung. Still sitting down to pee?”

He snarled. His face was animated, his eyes alive, and his voice caressed the word “Motherfucker” when he spoke. The flames flickering around his hands were getting more intense, and his nails were visibly longer and more metallic.

I pushed my body into a sprint, shouldering the door to the lobby open and breaking directly for the stairs, taking them two at a time. I was in the stairwell before the two thugs watching the lobby were on their feet, and by the time I’d reached the basement they were thoroughly occupied with trying to wrestle with the twelve pounds of bugs apiece that had dropped on their heads.

The bugs were winning.

I tried to open the door – deadbolt!

The swarm clone turned its ‘head’ to Bakuda. “You thought I’d skitter away? I’ll show you skitter.”

So witty dialogue wasn’t my superpower – I was trying to get them talking, buy some time. Something.

Anything.

Lung, unfortunately, had his own ideas about clever ripostes, and they involved screaming and lunging with fire trailing from his claws. The swarm clone dissolved under his assault and a lot of the flying insects died. I reformed my decoy in another part of the workshop, with the operating table between it and Lung. He promptly ripped the table in half on his way to my clone, which he also promptly ripped in half.

Bakuda had opened a desk drawer by the bed, and pulled something the size of a breath mint out which she promptly threw into the flying mass of bugs closing on her. A deafening WHUMP later, everything within five feet of where it had been was gone, and I felt a strong, brief, suction from there through the rest of the bugs. She moved through the gap to one of her worktables at a sprint, and started grabbing things off of it; I had bugs crawling on her in an effort to distract her. The plan hadn’t called for stinging or biting – just distraction – and I hadn’t brought the more vicious types along in any real quantity. I swore I’d have some seriously venomous bugs along next time, even if I shouldn’t need them. Just in case.

Fun fact: deadbolts take a lot less effort to shift than grenades, and one of my swarms came through. I opened the door, and reached down. The carpet of insects met my hands with the first two of the grenades they were ferrying my way, with the rings tied to each other with silk. I squeezed the spoons and pulled them apart. One ring popped out; the other jerked but stayed in.

Lung’s head snapped around, eyes focusing on me despite the screen of bugs blocking any normal sight between us. I underhanded a grenade forward, pulled the other’s pin and launched it in too. I barely slammed the door on the fireblast he’d launched my way. I formed swarm clones around each grenade and tried to re-bolt the door with another grouping, while another group climbed all over Bakuda and a fifth tried to keep the sightlines blurry and buzzing. I ran for the stairs; my second clone shambled for Bakuda who was readying something that looked like a can of beans; the first clone moved toward Lung and got eviscerated for its trouble.

That just left him holding the grenade when it went off.

The rumbling knocked me off my feet as I hit the ground floor, and I had to crawl-scramble back to my feet before exiting the lobby. Whatever had happened down there, I’d lost a lot of bugs, including all the ones I’d had on Bakuda. I swept them through, and found wreckage and pieces, but it was hard to form a complete picture since they kept registering intense heat and then dying.

I hadn’t really thought I’d get Lung anyway.

I’d made it outside, and kept to a steady jog. The moon was brighter for the blackout, and my feet beat a steady tattoo on the pavement to the erratic accompaniment of further explosions in the distance behind me. For so many months, my runs had always led me back to Dad. That wasn’t going to happen, not ever again.

But, for the first time since I’d woken up on that hospital bed, I could think of him, see him in my mind’s eye, that weary smile and the way he'd look at me over his glasses... and not flinch away.

It really was a wonderful night.

 

[notes]

Introductions 2.6

I woke with a smile on my face. I got up and showered, humming. The spiders in the crawlspace weaving sections for my costume hummed along, and when I found my toes tapping I noticed that the spiders were tapping along too. I dressed and pulled the curtains – the sun was shining in through the window, and life was good. Not perfect, of course. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my father’s headstone set beside my mothers, but I could imagine that event now.

I’d dreamt of my parents last night. Dancing together – well, what my mother called dancing, given her two left feet. Holding each other, and swaying, eyes half-closed. And when they looked over to me they smiled. Dad had never been the same after Mom died, and for all the way they would just hug each other in public had embarrassed me at the time, now… now I smiled to think of it. To think of them. I had no idea if there was an afterlife – though some theologians were citing Glaistig Uaine as definitive proof – but I liked to hope they were together again. Happy again.

And now I was crying and laughing both.

Saturdays had been the best day of the week for me for almost a year and a half, simply because I wouldn’t be going in to school. Today was shaping up to be an unusually good Saturday. There were still problems to deal with – Oni Lee had a rampage planned, and I was probably at the top of Lung’s to-kill list – but there was also an enormous sense of release. Of completion.

I lay back on the bed and kicked my legs idly.

I could actually join the Wards now. There were a lot of things I wanted to do: ABB was still a major power, and I hadn’t begun to touch E88, but somehow the idea of a month off wasn’t intolerable any more. I could use the training and practice, too. It hadn’t even been a week since I’d first gone out, and I knew I was a novice at this. I could be better. I’d have to be. Even the idea of dealing with Sophia didn’t sting as much as it had before – I guess Lung had recalibrated my idea of what fear was. The idea of Sophia trying to bully me just made me grin, with extra teeth.

There was still the issue of whether she’d deliberately given my name to the ABB or not – most Tinkers had minor Thinker powers associated, and even those that didn’t were perfectly capable of adding two and two and getting Pi… but I bet the Protectorate had all kinds of lie detectors available. If she had, well – the Birdcage was a terrible place. If she hadn’t, putting her through a serious interrogation session would just be a harmless prank.

The smile widened.

There were other things I had to do, a different list. One of thanksgiving. Several people had gone out of their way to help me pull this off. Without Panacea, I’d still be in a hospital, or dead. Without Gallant and Clockblocker’s willingness to bend the rules for me, I’d be in a padded room somewhere with a PRT psychologist, unable to do anything. Without Lisa’s gift of money, I wouldn’t have seen a chance to get free. Even Purity had helped, though her motives weren’t exactly pure: without her repeated use of overwhelming force, would Bakuda have called in that extra security? And that was the break that led me to her. That let me get her.

I was smiling so hard it hurt.

Purity, I had a meeting with tonight. At the very least, I could warn her – through a clone, and from a safe distance – that someday, I’d be coming for the E88. Surprising her just didn’t seem like a fair reply for the trust she’d extended, for the condolences she’d offered. And Lisa – somehow I thought that I wouldn’t have many chances to thank her after I joined the Wards. The heroes, I could thank afterward.
Well! There’s today’s plan. Tomorrow, the Wards.

I thought about rolling over to dig through my backpack, but instead pulled a small swarm in through the crack in the floorboard and had them undo the toggles on one of the side pockets of my backpack – I usually left it unzipped for just this reason. Actually lifting it to the bed would take a lot more bugs than I’d brought in, but if I linked a thread of silk to it like so… I jerked my hand across my chest, and then held it up to catch the cellphone. Having a bug on what I was trying to catch made things… simple. Like trying to touch your own nose. I repeated the trick with the cellphone battery and let my bugs clear away the silk while I fitted one into the other. A small team of flying bugs presented me with the slip of paper I’d found, and I dialed the number labeled ‘Lunch!’

“Taylor?” She sounded as if she’d been asleep.

“Lisa! I know the note said to call you for lunch, but I was thinking brunch. Waffles, and bacon – you know the Waffle House down by the boardwalk? See you there in… an hour?”

“What?”

“Great!”

I hung up. A lesson from happier days with Emma: assume they’ll get out of bed to do something, don’t give them a chance to say no, and they will show. Of course, they might be late… but in this case, that just meant more pancakes for me while I waited. And you know what? I could live with that.

···---···​

​

The Waffle House was one of the few restaurants open this morning – plenty of others were still dealing with the loss of refrigeration from the still ongoing power outages, but they were famous for their disaster response planning, and a generator was buzzing in the back. Not even Endbringer attacks (well, Simurgh excepted), would shut down one of their restaurants for more than a few days, if that.

Accordingly, it was bustling with noise and people. I’d gotten there first, as expected, and was busy finding out whether waffles were best with butter and syrup, or strawberries and whipped cream (provisional answer: more testing required!) when someone sat down in the booth with me.

Not Lisa – a man. Young, tall, very dark skin, chiseled jaw… and fit. Cornrowed hair. His voice, when he spoke, was deep and even. “I’m a friend of Lisa’s. Call me James.”

I blinked.

“Well, any friend of Lisa’s – want some waffles? I’m buying.”

While he studied the menu, I thought. Why would Lisa have sent someone else? Was she called away for some urgent heist, or something? My prepaid cellphone still had the battery in, and I had insects on it: I would have felt it if it had vibrated. She hadn’t called. So… why would someone like her surprise me with a strange young man?

Was this a blind date?

He ordered an omelette, with lots of extras and a plate of bacon, and then steepled his hands and looked me in the eye.

“We’re on a limited buddy system after last night.”

I nodded. Not a blind date, thank goodness. And if he’s part of the Undersiders, that would make him… Grue. Probably. “I saw the blackout.”

He nodded back. “All kinds of rumors on the streets. Bakuda tried to kill Lung in jail, but he broke out instead…”

I shook my head. “That one’s false.”

He blinked, and we paused while his omelette and bacon arrived, and another waffle arrived for me.

Between bites, he continued. “The official word is that Lung and Bakuda had a fight for leadership of the ABB – Lung won, but Bakuda’s a sore loser. If that’s not it…” he looked at me for a bit.

Lisa slid in beside him, and he moved over to make room for her.

“Taylor! You’re looking… surprisingly well.” She had deep circles under her eyes, but the smile was real. She promptly flagged down a waiter, asking for a pot of coffee and a stack of pancakes. A stack happened to be coming off the grill right then, and she was served less than a minute later.

Five minutes of quiet eating later, the discussion resumed with Lisa asking why I’d asked for brunch.

I shrugged. “Celebration? To say thanks? The money you gave me made a difference – gave me an alternative.”

Lisa squinted a little, before smiling widely. “So you got Bakuda!”

I smiled, and James glanced back and for between us.

Lisa elbowed him and said “Well, that tells us which rumors to believe. The one where E88 has gone to war with the ABB?”

“Kind of. I pointed Purity at some ABB targets – which reminds me, their drug warehouse had a lot of cash and should I call that ‘bank’ number? I thought a fight might weaken both of them.”

James nodded. “Smart.”

Lisa waved a hand in the air. “The Number Man is a really good banker, and very discreet. Call the number; he’ll take care of you. The one where Bakuda set off bombs all over the city as a distraction, and then Oni Lee broke Lung out?”

“I think so.”

“The one where Lung blames everything on ‘Skitter’?”

I blinked. “I guess I see why thought I called myself that.”

“The one where you took off his right hand?”

“I threw one of Bakuda’s explosives at him, he caught it.”

“The one where you took off his dick?”

“Spiders.”

Lisa clapped her hands over mouth, trying and failing to suppress a laughing fit. James’ face didn’t move a millimeter – though I did feel him cross his legs.

“He’ll regenerate!”

At that, James did react: one eyebrow rose. Lisa had her face down on the table, pounding it with her fist. Me? I was mortified, and failing to shrink out of visibility. After a bit, she straightened up.

“I think we’ll just assume the one where he wants you dead more than anyone else in the world is… also true. The one where you wiped out the whole ABB with more bombs?”

I blinked. “What?”

Lisa sobered up. “If that wasn’t you, then… Bakuda had a deadman switch.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know yet… no one really knows yet. Between the bombs she set off to cut power and create disruption, the way most of the ABB went pop!, and the collateral damage from both of those… thousands, at least. The ABB has almost ceased to exist as an organization, as far as anyone can tell. But Lung’s alive, and Oni Lee has spent the morning tearing up E88 territory, so…”

Thousands? Dead? I should have thought. Of course Bakuda would have a deadman switch: if she was implanting bombs in her subordinates, she’d have to make sure they didn’t simply kill her in her sleep. And… how many had she implanted? Gang members, sure, but also random civilians. The conversation with Mr. Park hadn’t taken more than a few minutes, and that was with her lingering over it to explain everything, to make him fear her more. Had she wanted hostages? Agents to place her other bombs for her? An army? How many could she have gotten to? The spot checks in that apartment complex had shown scars in the right place on everyone I’d checked.

The explosions I’d heard behind me as I made my escape hadn’t just been leftovers from her workshop cooking off. And that was just one property.

I stood up.

“Please excuse me for a moment.”

I walked to the bathroom, not even seeing where I was walking, and preceded to bend over a toilet and throw up the morning’s worth of waffles and syrup. Then I dry heaved for a while. Eventually I felt a hand on my hair, pulling it back out of the way.

Lisa.

“It’s not your fault, you know. She made the bombs, she set them up to go off if she died.”

I shook my head. “It was obvious that she’d do that – she had to. If a real hero had beaten her… they’d take her alive. Bring in Tinkers to take them out, disarm them. Everyone would still be alive.” I’d wondered if the Protectorate let the big gangs be because they thought the price of taking them out was just too high. Now I wondered if they had been right. So many dead, because… because of what I’d done.

A pause, while Lisa kept brushing loose hairs out of the way.

“If you’d waited, she’d have more bombs in more people by now, right?”

I thought about Mr. Park and his son… and the fact Bakuda had planned to have the ‘rest of his family’ implanted by morning. “Some.”

“You stopped this early – kept it from getting worse. And you’ve been at this for what, less than a week now? You’ll get better.”

Better? I’d been careless, and people had died. I’d learn. And next time? I wouldn’t let things get this far. I stood up straight, hands fisted beside me. Lisa turned my head, checked each eye, and then stepped back.

“After you.”

I walked out of the bathroom to find James looming in front of the door and an ‘out of order’ sign, arms crossed. He fell in with us as I returned to the table and sat down. Lisa tapped James on the shoulder, and then spoke.

“I think you need some time to think. We’ll do lunch again soon.”

She looked at me, smiled a little, then nodded once and turned toward the exit. James lingered a moment.

“Two things. They hit your family? They had it coming. All of it. And what you did – it’s a rumor, now, but that’s a still lot of rep. Use it.”

I blinked. “Rep?”

“Reputation. What people know will happen if you throw down. The more rep you have, the less you need to prove it.”

I tilted my head.

“You think I work out just for fun? Every time I walk home, the E88 idiots think ‘wait for someone easier.’ You paid for this. Use it.”

He nodded at me, and turned to go after Lisa.

I sat there, a cup of coffee in my hands, and let my thoughts drift. What he’d said… it fit with Lung and Bakuda’s idea of how fear was born of certainty and uncertainty – the certainty of loss, uncertainty as to the form it would take – but turned that understanding to a better purpose.

Maybe ten minutes later, maybe twenty, the waitress came by with the bill. She winked at me, and underneath the bill I found a wrinkled pamphlet on how to deal with bulimia, inscribed with ‘We’ve all been there! ♡’

I tipped her anyway.

···---···​

​

I hadn’t really done anything in the afternoon. I’d spent it walking up and down the Boardwalk, often down on the beach itself, looking at the ocean and thinking. Six days ago, I’d gone out to try and be a hero. Now? Thousands dead and injured. Dad, dead. Set against that… Bakuda, also dead. Most of the ABB, dead. Was that what being a hero was like? Trying to make a difference, and then trying to live with how far short you fell?

My thoughts weren’t really going anywhere, and most of the time I was just wandering in a daze. I had clear memories of skipping stone after stone out into the ocean, of watching some teenagers play volleyball, of sitting by while a stocky girl played fetch with her three dogs. Each of those moments might have been minutes; each of those moments might have been hours.

Night fell, and my steps led me to the old Transatlantic Shipping building. It was locked, but mostly that didn’t matter when you could open it from the inside with a swarm clone, or pour the tiniest insects in the area into the keyhole to move the tumblers. Still needed a file or something to turn the lock, but I’d had one of those deep in my backpack next to my toothbrush. Looking at the crushed insects on this one, I put it in one of the ‘tool’ pouches, and made a note to get another one for grooming. Maybe I would have had to worry about alarms, normally, but with the building empty for a Sunday and the power still mostly down it wasn’t a real issue.

I made my way up the stairs to the roof access door, and then sat on the landing one floor down, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. This was as good a place to wait as any, and better than most, since I’d be alone. And for the meeting itself, well… Purity probably wouldn’t waste time destroying the building since she’d already seen that her beams didn’t do anything to stop me reforming swarm clones as necessary. I gathered extra swarms on the roof anyway.

Watching the clock in school had been a brutally slow way to pass time. Having insects on the hands of my little mechanical watch meant I always knew the time as soon as I thought about wanting to know it. I thought it was going to be a slow hour waiting for Purity.

It was.

8:59 and she landed; I formed a swarm clone.

“What’s the target for tonight?”

My clone shook its head.

“No target.”

“The lead on Bakuda?”

“Found her last night. Your strikes made her call in extra security – I followed them right to her.”

Purity’s soft light rippled oddly – making out facial expressions was really hard without any contrast, but that might have been a smile.

“All those explosions?”

I winced.

“She kept the gang’s loyalty with implanted explosives on a deadman switch. With her gone… boom.”

Purity was perfectly still for almost a minute, head lowered, before she spoke again.

“Lung? Oni Lee?”

“Wounded – but he’ll heal – and sent to tear up E88 territory respectively.”

“We need a way for you to get in touch with me when you find them.”

My clone’s head wobbled back and forth.

“I don’t know what I’m doing next. I wanted to tell you thanks… and to tell you that, someday, I mean to come for Empire Eighty Eight too.”

Another change in the light around her face.

“I can’t say you’d be wrong to fight them.” Her voice was slow, reflective.

“Them?”

“I quit two years ago. H–They wanted power, to make a bigger difference. I thought what we were doing was making things worse. So I went off on my own, and fought the gangs.”

As far as everything I’d ever read went, Purity was still E88’s heaviest enforcer. Two years?

“But not E88.”

“It’s… hard. To fight people you’ve fought beside, people you’ve had drinks with. And there have always been other things to do. Like the ABB.”

I couldn’t really disagree with the end of that.

“I’ve spent over a year, harrying them every chance I got. I was starting to worry that nothing I did would make a difference. This… this made a difference.”

I wasn’t really sure how I was supposed to feel about that. On the one hand, I knew exactly how that felt: I really wanted to feel like I was making a difference. That it hadn’t all been a waste. On the other hand, I was being praised by a white supremacist for indirectly causing the deaths of a few thousand Asians.

Purity moved her foot in the loose gravel of the roof for a bit.

“There’s a number written there – call it to reach me. And… thank you.”

With that, she vanished upwards, one star among the others.

I climbed to the roof and went out on it. Another corner of my backpack had my notebook, with all the notes on the ABB members I’d been tracing. I added the number to a new page, put it back in the backpack, erased the number in the gravel and lay down spread-eagled on the roof, with my hood for a pillow.

There were a lot more stars visible tonight than I was used to.

I looked up at them for a very long time.

 

[notes]

Interlude – Victor

Skill alone was pointless. Those who lacked skill thought it would solve their problems. Those who had it knew better. With a gun or in hand to hand, Victor knew no equal – and if he ever did meet his better, he’d take their skill for his own as well. Nor were his skills restricted to combat: he could sail a boat, snare a rabbit, or stitch a wound (to name just three possibilities) with an equal degree of skill. There were were tricks available to him that he was convinced no human had ever tried before: very few people managed to spend a lifetime at parkour and a lifetime at judo, let alone a lifetime at marksmanship, and a lifetime as an aerialist as well. But Victor had all those skills, and could blend them and others in ways never before seen.

Not that he generally did – after all, skill wasn’t the point, and simplicity had a virtue of its own. Skill without purpose, without judgment, was meaningless. Take Uber, the parahuman closest to himself in power. Their powers weren’t quite the same: Victor needed time with a skilled person to acquire their skill and retained a fraction of it permanently while Uber instantaneously acquired whatever skill he could imagine… for as long as he concentrated on it. Uber, literally, could do anything he set his mind to.

Anything.

What he chose to do with this unbounded power was run the 214th ranked YouTube channel, starring Leet and himself as they reenacted video game scenes… badly. He made no difference in the world. He wasn’t even making money! No, the only thing honorable about Uber’s life was his loyalty to Leet – and Victor honored that in him. It was a dog’s devotion to a man-child unworthy of it, but it was a pure gift given unstintingly… and unwisely.

Victor had learned young that, ultimately, only your own kind could be trusted to help you – and not all of those. After he’d gained his powers, he’d done all he could to repay those who’d helped him. To help those who needed help. To clear out the wrong kind. To make a better world. And when the call had come for him to go to Brockton Bay, he had gone. Empire Eighty Eight was the greatest gathering in North America dedicated to the cause; a summons meant you were being called up to the big leagues.

In a year, he had proven himself. There were more powerful superhumans in the Empire, Purity foremost among them. There were more ruthless ones – Hookwolf came to mind. But Kaiser did not rule through power or fear alone, nor because his father had been Allfather. Kaiser ruled because he knew how to lead: how to inspire loyalty and command obedience. And Kaiser had seen the same potential in him. Kaiser had gone out of his way to arrange a betrothal for him to one of Heith’s many cousins, and then to arrange a second betrothal to Ophelia after Isolde died. It brought Victor, quite literally, into the Imperial family.

Victor was sensible of the honor involved. It meant that Kaiser thought that, with time and after Kaiser died, Victor might lead the Empire. It also meant that Kaiser thought that Theodore would not, after all, rise to the occasion. This was likely true – but Victor knew what it was to have a father who would not teach you how to be a man. The man Theodore might become would have to be of his own making, for the flaws in Theodore that disgusted Kaiser were of Max’s making. It was… unworthy.

The Empire was not. That which Allfather had built and Kaiser expanded, bore study and respect. The Empire had survived the Protectorate, the Slaughterhouse 9, and the many, many, gangs that had tried to establish themselves in Brockton Bay over the years. And Max had even built a successful pharmaceutical company along the way, almost in passing – his talent as a leader was undeniable. His personal life, however, was disastrous on almost every level. As a male, Victor could understand the appeal of Fenja and Menja very well indeed: blonde, tall, athletic, and twins. But a man ruled his desires, not the other way around. Nor had the damage stopped with his dysfunctional home life: Victor remained convinced that Max’s interest in the twins cousin to – and raised by! – his first wife had been part of what had split Purity off, and she hadn’t left alone. Even so, Max persisted in believing that Purity would return any week now in exchange for renewed purpose.

However chaotic his personal life became, his strategic judgment was real: for over a year, Kaiser had restrained his people from making war on the ABB. “They will destroy themselves” he had said. “We need only wait” he had said. And he had been right. Bakuda was dead and the ABB crippled in an internal power struggle. Victor could respect that judgment, and learn from it – just as he studied Max’s mistakes and learned from them. His marriage to Ophelia would be founded on clear communication and shared effort, not fickle lust or illusory love. He would be the man his father had not been, the man even Kaiser was not. With time, he might even be the man the Empire – the world – needed.

To get there, though, he’d have to survive the next hour. E88 had expanded aggressively into the confusion, taking corners and territory. The dealers and whores who’d served the ABB fled before the Empire’s soldiers, cowards without the enforcers to stiffen their spines – within a week, E88 would own that territory, and the people and income that came with it. And with the ABB gone, it would be time to settle with the Merchants. Or perhaps Coil. With both gone, Brockton Bay could begin to fulfill Allfather’s vision of a pure city, one whose example would inspire the world. And with the Protectorate focused on disaster relief, there were only two who would contest the Empire’s claim to ABB territory.

Lung. And Oni Lee.

Three times on Saturday Oni Lee had struck at E88 properties, causing havoc and death. The second time, Hookwolf had been present. Essentially invulnerable to grenade or knife, he had forced Lee to run, and pursued him until Lung in turn had ambushed Hookwolf. Hookwolf, to his credit, had withdrawn immediately, before Lung became dangerous enough to rampage throughout E88 territory. With the ABB strategy revealed, Victor had picked out the next most likely target, assigned additional protection, waited for Oni Lee to strike… and watched as Lee slaughtered them. It had grieved him to do it, for protection must flow down even as loyalty went upward, but soldiers were made for battle. The information they had purchased with their lives had informed Victor’s choice of this next battlefield. A cavernous factory now used only for storage, with a maze of shelving constricting access and sightlines at ground level but great windows on the third story, it would force Lee to come into melee to kill the E88 soldiers defending it – and come he would.

And the bait would be all the more irresistible for Lee, for Victor himself would be there. Twice before had they fought hand to hand, matching the skills Victor had taken against Lee’s speed and clones. Once, one of Lee’s clones had disemboweled Victor while he snapped its neck. He’d started wearing a breastplate after being left for dead like that. Once, Victor had disoriented the real Lee with a temple strike and pulled the pin of one of his grenades... and Lee had survived anyway, somehow removing his harness and teleporting clear of the blast in time. Lee’s reflexes were the fastest Victor had ever seen, Cricket included, but he’d stopped wearing his grenades wired to his harness after that. After losing his eyes to the shrapnel, Victor remembered his first sight being a look up at Othala, his head in her lap, seeing the worry on her plain face, and realizing for the first time how deeply she cared.

This third time should pay for all.

Already this morning, Lee had struck a different site, still within uncontested E88 territory. Perhaps Lung hoped to halt the move on what had been ABB turf? Regardless, it hadn’t been properly defended, and people had died. Victor had planned even for that, and there had been a map put up on the wall of every E88 site last night, with this very location circled in red. Far too obvious a trap… except for the fact that Lung and Oni Lee were animals, both of them. Lee would come, and Lung would be waiting somewhere nearby.

If Oni Lee kept to his pattern from yesterday, he’d strike sometime in the next forty-five minutes. Given the long corridor formed by shelves two stories high, he could only come from one of two directions, north or south. Victor stood up from the floor and slipped into a Tai Chi moving meditation, leaving his attention everywhere and nowhere, all his concentration in the moment as he flowed through the forms. An endless time later, something drew his attention – someone walking quietly on concrete.

North, then.

Victor turned to face the northern end of the corridor, hands clasped behind him.

Lee looked him in the eye, and gave a deathshead grin.

A moment.

Victor drew his pistol from his belt holster a beat slower than Lee’s knife emerged and then fired a single shot at Lee’s scuttling charge, hitting the shoulder. He then dropped the pistol, spinning into a low sweep kick aimed behind him. Another Lee stumbled and gave ground, his intended stab only slicing along Victor’s bicep before glancing off his breastplate. Victor rose and followed with a rapid combination to the solar plexus and throat, temporarily incapacitating this Lee. Victor leapt forward in a roll, coming up facing back at the two Lees coming toward him around the one clutching his throat. The one with the wounded shoulder puffed into a blinding cloud of ash covering half the distance between them, and Victor instantly launched a spinning backfist.

Nothing.

Coming around, he saw a grinning Lee erupt from the smoke and met it with an uncoiling spinning kick that caught it on the chin, snapping its neck and creating another ash cloud, this one enveloping Victor. The rotation from the kick gave him a glimpse of another Lee behind him, knives flickering out from his fingers, and Victor bent backward into a back handspring, felt a knife skip off the stomach of his breastplate and another trace a line of fire along his left calf as it came up. The handspring transitioned seamlessly through a cartwheel into a front handspring and from there into a dead run. He skidded to a stop twenty feet later, and turned to watch the ash cloud disperse.

And Lee walked right out, still smiling, knives sheathed, a grenade in one hand. There. After three clones with knives, Lee goes to grenades. Like clockwork. Of course, just because Victor knew it was coming didn’t mean he could stop it – Lee was living proof that keeping it simple was lethal. He backed up into the shaft of sunlight slanting through the western windows and kept retreating. This was what he was gambling everything on.

Lee closed the distance to ten feet, stepped into the sunlight, eyes glancing up and to the left before he pulled the pin and leapt forward. Victor immediately turned to his right and underbarred through the shelves, hitting the ground running, while the rippling explosions of a dozen daisy-chained claymores thundered from the roof of the building next door. Five seconds later, a dull thump announced the death of the remaining clone.

Planning. Preparation. Judgment.

Skill alone was never enough to be victorious.

 

[TheSandman]

One interesting bit with future Purity interactions is that (unlike Kaiser) she actually is a believer in all that racial bullshit. She left because he was a manipulative cheating douchebag, not because of an ideological rift. This will cause some problems for any potential quasi-friendship when Taylor figures that out.

I also note that Grue isn't sharing his real name, while Tattletale is providing hers. Bit of contrast in their attitudes toward the recruitment attempt, I guess.

As a meta note, I think this feels the most like Wildbow's writing out of any of the Worm fics currently running here. Not sure if I can identify exactly why it does, but it does give me a good feeling about this one going forward.

 

[mc2rpg]

I also note that Grue isn't sharing his real name, while Tattletale is providing hers. Bit of contrast in their attitudes toward the recruitment attempt, I guess.

Click to shrink...

IIRC Lisa isn't Tattletale's real name. Tattletale and Regent both came up with fake names when they left home.

 

[katreus]

Yeah, Tattletale's real name is Sarah Livsey. I really like this fic as well so looking forward to more.

 

[TheSandman]

IIRC Lisa isn't Tattletale's real name. Tattletale and Regent both came up with fake names when they left home.

Click to shrink...

You know, I'd completely forgotten that.

Still, it's at least the name she answers to in public. Unlike "James".

 

[notes]

One interesting bit with future Purity interactions is that (unlike Kaiser) she actually is a believer in all that racial bullshit. She left because he was a manipulative cheating douchebag, not because of an ideological rift. This will cause some problems for any potential quasi-friendship when Taylor figures that out.

Click to shrink...

Half the fun is in setting up enough dominoes that no one's sure which stack will tumble next.

As a meta note, I think this feels the most like Wildbow's writing out of any of the Worm fics currently running here. Not sure if I can identify exactly why it does, but it does give me a good feeling about this one going forward.

Click to shrink...

Thanks! WB is a formidable example, and this piece is yet another learn-by-imitation effort.

Yeah, Tattletale's real name is Sarah Livsey. I really like this fic as well so looking forward to more.

Click to shrink...

More's coming. Glad it's being enjoyed.

 

[Robo Jesus]

More's coming. Glad it's being enjoyed.

Click to shrink...

And I thank you for that, as you've written something quite interesting here. ^_^

 

[Teal_Thanatos]

Glad this has it's own thread, enjoying it.

 

[SolipsistSerpen]

Oh good, I was following this quite intensely and now I don't have to wade through the ideas thread for updates.

As a meta note, I think this feels the most like Wildbow's writing out of any of the Worm fics currently running here. Not sure if I can identify exactly why it does, but it does give me a good feeling about this one going forward.

Click to shrink...

This one and, for some reason, Bug on a Wire one feel the most like Worm to me. That one a bit more like early Worm and this one like a hair later-- it gets darker a bit faster than canon, but that's fine. Of course, I notice that these both have insect controlling Taylor so perhaps powers really do shape a character, but I think it's more that both have Taylor cleverly applying limited powers strategically, among other things.

 

[notes]

Intermediaries 3.1

Sunday had been… pretty quiet. I’d spent the day at my mother’s grave sitting crosslegged on the grass letting the April sun warm me a little, looking at the empty plot next to her. It’s not like there was a body left to inter, anyway, and I’d have to pick some kind of cenotaph for him sometime. Right now, the city was enough of a mess that waiting seemed appropriate.

Less than a week ago now, I had set out to be a hero. To take all the misery, all the bullying, and make it worthwhile… somehow. I’d thought nothing could be worse than what I faced at school. I’d been wrong.

Badly wrong.

Yesterday morning, I’d thought I’d join the Wards today. Now, I wasn’t sure if they would take me. Or even if they should. I’d killed Bakuda, deliberately. Partly in simple revenge for my father, partly in an effort to keep the ABB from using what she’d already created.

That part had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams… and nightmares. She’d had a deadman switch on her, and countdowns for bombs all over the city had been set in motion with her death.

I still didn’t know the magnitude of what I’d set in motion. News reports were fragmentary, but the radio this morning said there were over 700 confirmed deaths from all causes over the past few days, with many more in critical condition or missing, and the total expected to rise substantially over the days ahead. The major highway interchange was in pieces, and multiple power substations had been bombed in Bakuda's attempt to distract from Oni Lee's breakout attempt. One of her big bombs had blown a dam about forty-five minutes upstate, and she’d done something fancy with the timing of when the turbines had gone up that had caused a cascading power failure throughout the state and into parts of the neighbouring ones. Another one had pretty much leveled City Hall. It could have been so very much worse: in the hours before dawn on a Saturday morning, most of the targets she'd chosen – presumably for maximum casualties and chaos – were as deserted as they'd get. Even the loss of power was well-timed: it was out for most of the weekend, and most people just stayed home and ate their pantry down a little.

Some of the misses were still nightmarish. There was a playground in Harbour Park that was now apparently encapsulated in a bubble of frozen time. The effect hadn't caught anything but the squirrels and a family's cat, and local kids were already making a game of trying to throw stones into it... but it was clearly planned to be an act of startling cruelty.

And not all of her bombs had missed. Studio, the most popular nightclub the Boardwalk, had been pretty packed when Bakuda's attempt at ‘improving’ a disco ball had gone off. Almost everyone had gotten out alive, but most were blind and it looked like the survivors would all be deaf. Similarly, a number of houses in neighbourhoods throughout the E88 part of the city had gone up in flames (or in one memorable case, ice) with lethal results for the families sleeping within.

The aftermath had gone about as well as one could hope. Some had gone out to loot, but a rapid Protectorate response was credited with dispersing small crowds before things got out of control. A lot of people had broken out the candles and some of those had started fires, but the Bay's Fire Departments had done very well indeed. I think they'd only actually lost people to Bakuda's take on a firebomb, and they weren't really equipped to deal with normal napalm anyway.

Power was already back pretty much everywhere, with the exceptions being areas covered by the substations which needed to be rebuilt, and even those were expected to be replaced by the end of the week.

The world had had a lot of experience in disaster recovery, since Behemoth appeared, and this could be taken in stride.

Mostly.

Information was scarce enough about what the government was doing: I didn’t begin to know what was going on in ABB territory, or whether Lung and Oni Lee were still at war with E88, what the lesser gangs were up to… that kind of information would take legwork. I could do that. I’d done it before, to find Bakuda, and I could do it again now. The problem…

The problem was that I wasn’t sure about what I wanted to do.

The last time I left this cemetery, I'd gone forth with the idea of cleaning up all the gangs in Brockton Bay. To try and keep others from losing their fathers, and to make that change a monument for my own. The fact that the ABB was so badly hurt was proof that I could break the gangs. My mistake had been my failure to anticipate Bakuda. I hadn't known enough when I acted, and it had cost people their lives.

So. I needed more information.

I could get that.

What else did I need? Right now, I had the Protectorate and Lung both looking for me, and both of them knew enough to look for me out of costume. I'd evaded them so far, but I couldn't count on that luck lasting forever.

I laughed, bitterly.

My luck over the last few years had been terrible. No – no relying on luck. I'd make my luck instead.

I hadn’t even noticed myself standing. I’d set my own affairs in order, and then… and then we’d see. Today, I hadn’t helped with the search and rescue… because I wasn’t sure what where I’d end up after I was found, but I was sure it would start with custody – protective or otherwise. That was the first thing to fix.

I produced my phone, inserted the battery, and made a call.

Two rings later, precisely, someone picked up.

“Ms. Hebert – or do you prefer Skitter?”

Someone who knew my name. Were they watching me? Was he a Thinker with some kind of power over numbers, including phone numbers? Had he traced my call somehow, in seconds?

Or had I simply dialed a phone number given only to me?

“The Number Man?”

“Yes.”

“Ah… Skitter, I suppose. I have some cash I would like to deposit.”

“Quantity?”

“Ah… about a duffel-bag full?”

“Trusting.”

Something in his clipped disapproval rubbed me the wrong way.

“If I can’t trust you, I shouldn’t deposit anything. If I can…”

A pause.

“Interesting. Place the bag behind the Dockside Marriott at 9 p.m. – we’ll arrange pickup.” With that, he cut the connection. I removed the battery, and headed off at a steady walk to retrieve the caches I’d made only three days before – and to get a duffel bag.

···---···​

I had tried to count the money while packing it away, just in case, but there were well over ten thousand bills involved – and I was only confident of that because I figured out how many inches a stack of a hundred bills was, and then counted inches. I had no idea how much money I had, but I did know how many pounds of money I had: about 40.

I left the bag where and when I’d been instructed, tagged it, and settled down on a distant bench. I gathered swarms back where the bag was – just in case. At least if the Number Man took it, I’d still have the lunchbox emergency fund. Not a minute later, the bag lifted and moved. I looked through one of the denser swarms, positioned on a nearby rooftop, and saw a sharply dressed woman lift the bag and carry it around the corner. I attempted to shift my viewpoint to the swarm with an angle into that alley and had a brief moment of double vision before it resolved into a clear view of a completely empty alley.

Huh. Well, that probably wasn’t a random thief.

A quick phone call confirmed that he’d received the funds.

“Now that I have some funds on deposit… can you recommend a good lawyer?”

···---···​

Monday morning found me in an enormous conference room, looking at the box of pastries and the pitcher of icewater, my back to floor to ceiling windows with a magnificent view of both the skyline and the bay itself. I felt terribly out of place in my hooded sweatshirt, windbreaker, and jeans… but that’s where my appointment had directed me.

I’d spread out my awareness almost instinctively while I waited, though this high up I could feel the way my range was smaller at ground level. I’d been playing around with sensing people, testing my fine control by using individual insects, and it turned out the mosquitos provided a sense of where people were in the area, and a sense... of flavor, I guess you'd call it. The ability to see and hear through my insects had been tremendously useful, if unreliable – I still couldn't tell if the headaches which occasionally accompanied my efforts were from the concussion, or whether I was doing it wrong somehow – but I was pretty sure that I didn't want to learn how to smell through my swarms, so I stopped trying. There were other games to play, like sending an insect out of my range with instructions to return. Pretty pointless, but fun – like throwing a tennis ball against a wall, blindfolded. The time passed quietly, and after about half an hour the conference room door opened.

In walked a man in a perfectly tailored suit, right down to the burgandy pocket square that matched his double-Windsor silk tie. His face in profile looked tailored too: Hollywood good looks, smooth and symmetrical enough that it looked fake. The scar on the other side of his face didn't so much break the symmetry as explain it: a good surgeon could fix most things. Whatever left that was apparently beyond merely human skill.

"Skitter?" he asked. He had a nice smile: professional, but warm enough that it felt like he really meant it.

"Yes."

"Quinn Calle. What can I do for you? I have to say, while it's not unusual to get a referral, it is unusual for a parahuman with a profile as low as yours to need the kind of services we provide."

I shrugged. "I'd rather not have the Protectorate looking for me."

He nodded. "Entirely reasonable. Why don't you tell me about why they are looking for you, and we'll see what I can do. It will, of course, be completely confidential."

I laid out the events leading up to my father's death and my departure from custody. I had to give him credit, he didn't even bat an eye, nor did his easy smile so much as waver. He did, however, ask a question.

"So why not join the Wards? From what you've said, they're looking for you to keep you safe, not put you away for good."

I shrugged. "Four reasons. I don't want to end up in foster care – that's a legal issue, and you're a lawyer."

He nodded. "Family law isn't my specialty, but the firm does have experts in it."

"What is your specialty?"

His smile widened, just a bit. "Parahumans. It has its risks, but it's quite a fascinating field."

I nodded. "The second reason is all those bombings. They're my fault."

He leaned back slightly. "Really? All the news reports are blaming that on Bakuda."

"She had a deadman switch on her creations. And I killed her."

He blinked, once. It was... almost reassuring to see that he could be surprised.

"I don't think it will come as a surprise to you to know that much of my work for parahuman clients deals with criminal matters. Under these circumstances – your age, your father so recently murdered, your own substantial injuries, the concussion... I could all but guarantee an acquittal for you. Without considering any question of self-defense – you were in fear for your life at the time?"

"More from Lung. I mean, Bakuda was trying to kill me too, but Lung's... scarier."

He nodded. "That just makes it easier."

"It's more than that – the money I used for your retainer? While I was looking for Bakuda, I found an ABB drug warehouse, and, well…"

He paused. "And you want to keep it?"

"When Tattletale gave me the money at the cemetery, she said cash was freedom. Mr. Calle, if I couldn't afford you... I wouldn't have a choice. I could hide, but if I were ever caught I'd go straight to the foster system, and into the Wards."

"Which you don't want to do. What are the other reasons for it? You were happy to try out for them, earlier."

"Shadow Stalker. I know who she is, and she knows who I am. She bullied me at school... for years. I ended up in the hospital because of her. She gave my real name to the ABB – maybe accidentally, maybe not."

At that, he rocked back, fingers tapping madly.

"That's... a serious set of allegations. And would demand delicate handling. Do you have evidence for it?"

"Beyond my own testimony? Not really. The letter Bakuda sent me, which indicated how she'd found out, burned in the explosion. And the locker incident – I didn't see who shoved me in, but I know who was behind it."

"What about how you found out her identity? That's something that will influence how the Protectorate approaches this – they don't like anyone unmasking their capes."

"She gloated over me while I was recovering from my concussion on the Protectorate base. Said if I'd known my place, maybe I wouldn't have killed both my parents." Funny, how I could say that and not feel anger towards her. I didn't feel much of anything, actually. Just a sort of calm distance, as I recalled the episode.

"Both?"

"My mother was maybe trying to reach me on her cellphone when she died in a car crash. No way to know if it made a difference, but it was something Sophia liked to use to hurt me – talking about phones, flashing theirs, talking about their parents…"

One eyebrow rose.

"One of the things I'd like you to do once you've figured out how I can legally keep clear of the Wards is to make sure they discipline her. Prison would be nice. I always wondered why the school authorities didn't come down on her."

On the other hand, I was trying to ruin her life right now, so maybe this is just what I felt like when I was really angry.

"That... I can't guarantee. The Protectorate hates bad PR, and this qualifies – but that means I know that they will react, not how. Worst case, they'll want to buy your silence somehow."

I smiled. "I'm not sure they could afford it."

"All right. And your fourth reason?"

I paused, and steepled my fingers. "I'd like to take some time to myself. To think. And maybe to do some things that I need to do, first."

He looked at me, mouth briefly open, and then licked his lips.

"Clear enough. Anything else I ought to know about your preferred living circumstances, negotiating limits, or other goals?"

For the next two hours he probed me on hypotheticals from how I'd like to live to how I'd get an education to what kind of services I could offer as a rogue. I had no idea whether or not he could do what I'd asked him to do, but it was a good indication of competence. The meeting closed with him explaining that he'd be back in touch in shortly, and that he thought there would be grounds for a talk with the Protectorate soon after.

Hopefully, that would keep me from being chased by the Protectorate.

That just left the one who would kill me if he caught me.

Progress.

 

[Lunekiller]

This is still my favorite of the Worm stories. A tiny butterfly causes a terrible storm. Glad to see it in a thread, and to see Quinn Calle.

 

[Spectrum]

Nice. She at least seems to be thinking vaguely rationally at this point now that things are hopefully cooling down for her. (Haha this is Worm yeah right)

I know it would be remarkably harder to write and probably less interesting given all the things you've already set up, but it's probably viable at this point for Taylor to enter the Wards...in another city. Just cut ties with Brockton Bay entirely.