Weaver Nine (Worm Fanfic (AU))

[Thinker6]

Okay. Here we go. This is a Worm fanfiction called Weaver Nine. First chapter originally posted here. An edited first chapter and new chapters will go in this thread.

Index:

Prologue - 1.1

Slash - 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

Allies -
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4.1
3.4.2
3.4.3
3.4.4
3.5.1 and 3.5.(-1) Bonus File
3.5.2
3.5.3
3.6
3.7
3.8
3.9
...

For later chapters, see Thread 2

For a polished, improved version of the fic, see fanfiction.net here and ArchiveOfOurOwn.org here. The ArchiveOfOurOwn link lets you conveniently download it in ebook format.

Author's note explaining the story: this is an alternate universe fanfiction in which (Taylor and Jack were born in each others' places).

 

[Thinker6]

Weaver Nine

Prologue 1.1

1987

"That's my answer, King. I was never your Queen."

I stood above his body. There was no need to confirm his death with my eyes. My insects had engulfed him in a writhing clump of biomass that had grown larger and larger as the fight progressed. My thousands of antennae and feelers had felt it when his breathing slowed and stopped, when his heartbeat shuddered to a halt, when his body fell unnaturally still. A riot of sensory data far more precise than my human senses.

But for once it felt right to look with my own eyes. My enemies never saw me in person, didn't even know that there was a person behind the swarms. They thought I was a force of nature, a mind living in the swarm that spoke through the buzz of insect wings. They fought a futile battle against my insects, and were killed by my insects in return, while I hid in safety a quarter-kilometer away. But this man, my 'leader', had been the only one to hurt me, Taylor, the human. Stealing me from my parents, forcing me into his Slaughterhouse, taking me as his Queen. For that, I had come to witness his end in the flesh.

Ah. It seemed that King was the type of brute whose body's special resilience expired in death. Good. My insects expanded his wounds into wide gashes, working their way under his skin. My swarm would devour every scrap of flesh, reduce the bones to shavings, scatter them to the winds until nothing remained. To die in battle was too good for him. It was more fitting for him to simply disappear. Besides, it wouldn't do for any of the less sympathetic members of our group to catch on to what we had done, and I wasn't taking any chances.

I studied Harbinger. He was sprawled on the pavement, breathing heavily, still clutching his bloody knives. Staring at the body. Despite his skill at close quarters combat he had been hard-pressed to restrain the brute while my swarms did their work. I had blocked King's senses by covering his eyes, ear canals, and skin, then worked around his unnatural toughness by dumping poisons in his eye sockets and nostrils to bypass the blood-brain barrier, suffocated him by coating his lungs with slick secretions and silk webbing, all while Harbinger's best knives managed to open nicks in his flesh precisely over arteries, killing him again and again and again until he finally died.

Harbinger raised his eyes to meet mine. "Fifty two," he said.

"The collateral damage?"

"Yes."

As always, his count was precise. Fifty two was the price to be rid of our 'leader'. The number of people King had touched in the last twenty four hours, the number of people who had just been been poisoned and suffocated and stabbed in their sleep as King's power used them as voodoo dolls to spirit away his wounds before it permitted even a scratch to appear on his skin. Many capes could match King in brute strength, but Harbinger was one of the very few who could deny King the barest moment of skin contact that would let him sentence his opponents to certain death.

I wanted to feel something. I repeated the number to myself. Fifty two. Fifty two people. I wanted to believe that I hadn't done it simply to save myself, that I had also done it to save the hundreds, thousands of people that King and his Slaughterhouse would have killed in the future. I tried to make myself believe it. So I was putting it to the test.

If I was really an altruist, if I deserved to feel pride for the lives I saved, I should also feel regret for the lives I ended. I should see their lives as more than just a distant, meaningless number. Fifty two people. My swarm had seen every single one of them when they had been alive. We had been lying low lately, pretending to be normals. I had watched as King gregariously clapped his arms around his new drinking buddies at a bar, as he shuffled past fifteen people as he made his way through a crowded subway car, as he innocently brushed against the tired looking couple dressed in business casual as they got off the bus. I tried to bring them to life in my mind, to imagine how they had gone about their days, how they had loved their families, to see some value in their hopes and dreams that I had killed...but I saw nothing. Faint impressions of their faces in my mind's eye, pale shadows, no feeling at all.

It was useless. The three years King had kept me as his Queen were a whirlwind of slaughter that blurred together in my memories. A never-ending progression of attacks and retreats, hours spent planning assaults on strongholds, minutes spent frantically pulling together spur-of-the-moment improvisations, always plotting breeding programs for my swarms and weaving more costumes for our ever-changing roster. New strategies, new tactics, never able to afford a single loss, always needing a victory or at least a retreat we could walk away from. Drawing out 'heroes' with flashy confrontations and then using my swarm to follow them back to their homes and families, directing the rest of our Nine in surgical strikes to negate their powers and kill them - or for 'heroes' who had hurt us, not-so-surgical strikes to make them suffer before their deaths. Taking hostages, rich businessmen and dirt-poor drug addicts alike, by planting parasites and worms in their guts, threatening to have them burrow out and let them bleed to death in front of their families, making them commit crimes and bring the spoils back to pad our wallets. I wanted to believe that I had once been able to feel the difference between one life and two, ten lives and twenty, fifty two lives and fifty two hundred. But if I ever had, I had deadened it completely as a matter of survival.

Never mind. It didn't matter. Even if I couldn't feel anything for them, even if lives we saved and ended were nothing more than numbers, the simple fact was that King and his Nine were a mobile disaster area that ruined everything in its path, my own life included. He needed to die, no matter the cost.

That was the epiphany I reached as we had planned the coup. When your goal is truly important, big enough to change the world, then your need for success is absolute - and everything else is secondary. The epiphany gave me a refreshing clarity of purpose. Just ignore all the minor optimizations, ignore the temptation to get too clever and maneuver yourself into a trap, ignore the collateral damage. In exchange you get pure freedom and creativity, the ability to use anything and everything you can imagine to reach your goal.

It was the only way to beat someone like King. We needed dozens of factors to be perfectly aligned, and each one had to be paid for with a cost in blood. King couldn't be allowed to be suspicious, so we had to follow his orders up to the last moment, no matter how bloodthirsty. He had to be isolated, away from anyone he could touch to instantly heal his wounds. A rare occurrence for such a gregarious man. He had to be away from the rest of the Nine, who would defend him or who respected him enough to alert the ones who would. He couldn't have had even an instant of skin contact with any of the Nine in the last 24 hours - for me or Harbinger it would be a death sentence, and the other members would be alerted that King was under attack the moment his power redirected wounds onto their bodies. He had to be kept away from any means of escape. Not an easy task when his speed and strength let him chase down normal humans with ease, jump off rooftops, and even plow through the walls of some buildings; and he was a master tactician who was fully aware of his limitations and was wary of entering any place he couldn't freely leave. He had to be positioned perfectly for our first strike - cords of spider silk wrapping around him before he could react, a swarm of the proper insects to block his senses with ample reinforcements nearby to replace those he killed, Harbinger in range to disarm him and block his escape, and me hidden out of his conceivable attack range, accounting for anything he could throw as a projectile.

Once all these absolute necessities had been accounted for, the number of opportunities were vanishingly small. We had waited three months before Harbinger finally gave the signal. My old self, before I had my epiphany, would have felt regret. She would have wished she could have optimized even more. If we had waited an hour longer, the fifteen people from the subway could have been spared. If we had waited two hours longer, the couple from the bus could have been spared. Perhaps if we had waited for another day, for another place and time, we could have reduced the cost to thirty lives, or twenty, or ten. Though if we waited we might have lost the opportunity and never gotten another chance at all...

My new self didn't feel any regret. We won. We chose a goal, chose the costs that mattered and the costs that didn't, and we won.

Now my swarm had finished its task. The skin and flesh from the body. the blood on the ground and Harbinger's knives, had all been fed to a legion of roaches and beetles that were dispersing into our surroundings. The last threads of clothing had been buried deep underground, the bone shavings scattered into the sewage system.

Harbinger had watched my work intently, waiting until the last fragments were gone. Now he stood and stretched. "That went well." he said. He was almost smiling.

"Yes. Yes it did." My own smile was radiant. For Harbinger to show even that small hint of pleasure...our shared victory had been something special.

"They'll come after us now." he said. "Without King to protect us with hostages. What next?"

And with that I was adrift. I had spent every free moment of the last three months focused on single goal, a single anchor to tether my thoughts. I had spent precious little time thinking about what would come after. A few stray, half-remembered fantasies of how I wanted to change the world. I had plans for the immediate future, of course. The next steps to deal with the Slaughterhouse. Screamer and Psychosoma could be convinced to join me. Nyx, probably. Crimson and Breed loved King too much to forgive his death, they'd have to be killed. Gray Boy was already disposed of, the necessary first step of our rebellion. I'd managed to find a rare cape who was even more psychotic and overpowered than he was and lured him into her path. Harbinger...

There was the problem. Harbinger had been my best ally, and he would be the greatest asset for what I wanted to do. But without the right incentive he would use his new freedom to leave the group and set off on his own.

It was because of his power. Our enemies thought his power was skill at close-quarters combat, perhaps boosted with a minor dose of combat clairvoyance or precognition. They were wrong. His power was perception, to see the world as numbers. It made him overly precise, methodical. Faced with anything concrete he was almost impossible to beat. He would perceive, calculate, optimize, see the possible paths his enemies could take and see his own paths to seal them off. But anything abstract, fanciful, incomplete - for him, they didn't even exist. You couldn't convince him to follow you with a half-formed dream.

I would try anyway. I spoke, haltingly, trying to put my dream into words.

"For now, we keep the group together. Keep moving, keep recruiting, stay strong, stay ahead of the authorities and the vigilantes who'll come after us for the bounty. Stay under the radar for a while. No more fucking slaughters, no recruiting by force, it's like sending out an invitation for them to hunt us.

"In the long-term, I...can't say exactly. I have a goal, one worth working toward. To change the world for the better. I can't say exactly how we'll do it. Not yet. I'm sure the idea is there, it's close, I'm just on the edge of seeing it.

"It's...it's a sense of what's wrong with this world. With capes. This endless game, it's all we do and it's all so pointless. Capes against capes, killing, defending, taking revenge, earning money and reputation from normals or stealing it from each other. It's like we haven't learned a single lesson from the wars the normals fought with armies for thousands of years before us.

"The game attracts capes because they're good at it. They have an instinct for it. You and I, we're the best, so we're the most tempted. It's what the bastard loved most of all, pushed us into it every fucking minute of the day and dragged as many people as he could into the mud with us. But I won't accept it. I won't accept that this game is what powers are for."

"'What powers are for'?" said Harbinger. "You think there's a purpose for parahumans? A designer with a purpose you want to follow?"

"No. No, I don't know if there's a designer and if there is I don't care about his purpose. If the designer is like the bastard and loves to watch us squabble in the mud, then fuck him. I won't accept that it's the best we can do."

"What do you want to do, then? What's the goal?"

"I told you, I can't say exactly. I can see its...outline, its shape. To make the world a better place. Not in the cliche way the 'heroes' do, saving lives and all that. I mean changing how we live in a fundamental way. We've got these fantastic powers but the grandest plan any governments can think of is to throw capes at their neighbors to shift a few pointless borders around. It's the same with business, they've kept the same products, the same markets, the same economy. Hell, why is there still an economy at all? Look at the capes in India and Pakistan. They had the right set of powers to make an unlimited amount of rare earth metals, but they lost it because they were too busy slitting each others throats. It's insane.

"We're the only ones who can see it because we're outside the system. We've got kill orders on our heads so we don't have to care what government owns what patch of land. It's not just us. There are so many like us who have the power to change the world and the system threw out like trash. We can use them. We can get them back on their feet, get them to work together, give them the right direction.

"Look at you. The bastard made you fight hand-to-hand all the time since you're better at it than anyone and he likes watching people get their faces beat in. But that's the most useless way to use your power. Are you really going to change the world by punching people in the face one at a time? You could do so much more if you didn't fight at all. Whatever Greenspan does at the Fed you could do ten times better. With your power you could own the fucking stock market, you could be a billionaire who moves millions of lives with a sell order and builds the infrastructure for a new world."

"I see your points. I wouldn't mind sitting back from the front lines." said Harbinger. "I'm not seeing any big picture. The goal you want to achieve."

"I know. I know. Fuck. Look. We don't know what we'll want in ten years, twenty years. Nobody knows. It's too big for us to see right now.

"But we both know one thing. We're the best. We've done amazing things together, and that was when we were working for a bastard playing a shitty game. Now we can choose whatever game we like. I want us to collect the power, build the infrastructure, so we can aim at goals on the worldwide scale. And I'll tell you how we'll do it.

"You'll handle the tactics. I used to think that was my strength. Multitasking with my swarm, directing my allies, finding the right combination of powers to kill our enemies. I'm good at that, yes. But you're better. It's your kind of problem. Given these tools and those constraints, optimize it, find the solution. That's what I want you to do."

"I'll do the strategy. I've always had something extra that you didn't. Creativity, bringing something new into the world that didn't exist before. Weaving armor out of spider silk, breeding skin parasites to tag capes so we can track them down when they escape, putting bugs in their brains to do psychosurgery. More than tactics to kill our enemies. Strategies to make them irrelevant, to turn capes who would have hated us into new recruits.

"That's what I want us to do. You'll think within the box to find the best path, I'll expand it to hold new worlds we never dreamed of. Stick with me and I promise we'll create an amazing new world."

Harbinger tilted his head, regarded me carefully. After almost a full minute of silence, he spoke. "Tempting. I'd like to see what we can do if we really cut loose."

"You're in?"

"I won't commit to anything I can't see. If I don't like where we're going, I'll leave. But for now...I'm in."

I smiled. "Good."

"And I might have some ideas of my own."

Now my smile was radiant. "Very good."

We walked back to the rendezvous point side by side.

 

[Thinker6]

Weaver Nine

Slash 2.1

2011

"Dad. I'm going out again tonight."

Jacob Hebert leaned against the wall of the alley, fiddling with his cell phone in one hand and a butterfly knife in the other. "Yeah. Like I told you. For cape stuff."

A nice euphemism. He grinned at his new friend.

"Dad. Dad. Yes, I understand but-no, I'm not 'springing it' on you Dad. You know what I-....yes, yes but Dad, listen. I know you don't like me going out alone, but I'm careful. My power keeps me safe. I don't have to get close up in a fight. If I do it right then no one will even know I was there. Like last time. Nothing happened to me, I was fine.

"I saved a boy's life, Dad. I saved him from being shot up with drugs, addicted, enslaved, whatever nasty shit those Merchant fuckers were going to do to him that civilized people like us can't even imagine. Pardon my language. Don't you think that counts for something?"

"Yes, Dad, you're right. It is dangerous. I could get hurt. I could even die. It's still worth it. I went out for one night and I saved one life already. If I die today then it's an even trade. I won't die, though. I'll build up my skills, I'll find friends to cover my back, and we'll clean up the trash in this city until it's safe again for people like us."

The girl beside him nodded approvingly.

"Look, Dad. I have to do this. You know why. It's not about you or me. It's about Mom." He paused. "I know you don't want to think about it. You want to forget about the pain. It was so pointless, it didn't need to happen, it never should have happened.

"But I can't forget it, because I can't forget her. Mom was special, Dad. For anyone else death would have been the end, but she give me one last gift. The trigger event that gave me my power. That's why I can't stop thinking about her. Mom is always with me, Dad, every minute of every day.

"You can't ask me to throw her gift away. When you tell me to stay home and pretend I'm a normal human being living a normal life - what you're telling me is that Mom's death was pointless after all. That she really did die for nothing. Please, Dad. She gave me this power and now it's my responsibility to use it the way she would have wanted. To help people, to save lives, to save other families from the pain we went through."

"...okay. Thanks. Yes, I'll be careful. I promise. I'll tell you all about my adventures. If I won't be back in time for bed I'll give you a call...I love you Dad. Bye."

He hung up, adjusted the domino mask on his face, and turned to his companion.

"Eloquent speech, Jack Slash. Did you rehearse it?" said Rune.

"It's the same thing I told him before," said Jack. "He's a worrier. I'll have to convince him every time."

"Don't you find it irritating?"

"No." said Jack. "He thinks I'm going out alone, and he's right about the danger. I'm glad he cares about me enough to make me work for it."

"Good. Honestly, I'm getting sick of high school kids who join the Empire to get away from their parents. It's such a cliche. We can only carry the cause so far on the backs of disaffected teenage rebels."

"Hah. You get a lot of them, I imagine."

"Tell me about it. You'll see at your initiation. Shall we go?" She adjusted her rune-lined cloak and gestured down the alley. They started off together, walking toward the outline of a warehouse several blocks away.

Rune continued in a put-upon tone. "I keep telling Hookwolf we need to reach a wider audience. All he cares about is how the kids hold up in a brawl. That's all well and good for the Empire, but I'm the one who has to deal with the kids treating me like I'm their best friend just because we're the same age. Trying to win points with me by pulling stupid stunts to prove their loyalty to the cause. Then trying to win points with their buddies by being the first guy to bang the cape chick." She shuddered. "Honestly. They get in my face boasting about how badass they are, and I'm just thinking: am I supposed to respect you? You were lucky enough to have parents who care for you and you're throwing them away because you have a problem with authority. How far are you going to rise in our organization with that attitude? You'll never be more than a foot soldier."

Jack nodded. "My sympathies. I hope you don't lump me in with them because of the little demonstration I have planned for my initiation tonight. They're the ones I need to impress. After our fearless leader, of course."

"No, no, it's fine. I'm just ranting. It's good to have someone I can really talk to for once. It must be nice to have parents you can rely on for that. A parent, I mean. Sorry."

​

>> "Good girl," said Hookwolf. He clapped Rune on the back, his eyes less on her and more on the bad guys she had crushed. She bristled. She wasn't his pet dog-​

<<​

​

Jack hummed thoughtfully. "I understand. I'm thankful for my family. I imagine the Empire provides more of a commander-and-soldier relationship. Taking care of you the same way they keep their weapons well-oiled."

"Exactly right. I know I'm supposed to tell you the Empire is your new family, but it's good that you have someone on the outside to fall back on for support." She paused. "Don't get me wrong, they're all good people. The veterans are good guys, I'll introduce you, and Hookwolf and his lieutenants look out for me when they can. We're just stuck in a military mode because that's what it takes to win the war with the gangs. Things will calm down as soon as we finish mopping them up. It should only take a few months now that the ABB is dead and we don't need to worry about the balance of power anymore. We'll go ahead and crush the Merchants, the Undersiders, the rest of the riffraff. Then we can switch to the politics and business side of things, recruiting for influence instead of brute force. Not that I've seen it happen myself, but I hear that's what it's like in the Gesellschaft."

Jack smiled. "I see you have it all planned out. I'm glad to be joining the winning team, then. Ah, speaking of taking care of your weapons." He reached into his jacket and handed her a smooth black shape. "Your taser. I appreciate it. My power isn't the best for a takedown without leaving a mark." He looked down at their captive.

Sophia Hess was prone, gagged, arms and legs tied with thick cords to a metal frame hovering a foot above the ground, kept afloat by Rune's telekinetic power. Sophia glared at Jack as best as she was able.

"I don't think she's appreciating our heart-to-heart conversation." said Jack.

"No?" said Rune. "No sense of mitfreude?"

"No." said Jack. He stopped and crouched, looking Sophia in the eye. "Not content with taking Emma away from me, are you? You're drooling at the idea that I've made another friend for you to fuck with. I won't let you. From now on you're nothing more than the raw material for my initiation."

He withdrew a small device from his pocket, pressed a button. Sophia clenched her teeth, hissed as a humming sound filled the air. Jack waited until she finally gave in and let out a yelp of pain before relenting.

"That's neat. Where did you get the shock collar, Jack?" said Rune.

Jack grinned. "A pet shop. I figured it would be appropriate for keeping a bitch in line."

"I didn't think they sold ones that hurt humans."

"True. It took some creative wiring to get the current high enough to discipline a bitch as big as her. It was worth it, though. She was on her best behavior while we waited for you to show up."

Rune laughed. "That's great. I didn't realize you were an inventor. Are you sure you're not a tinker?"

"No. Just ordinary human ingenuity."

"Damn. Nice work, anyway. You'll have to show me how it works later. Let's go, we shouldn't keep Hookwolf waiting." They resumed their walk, their prisoner floating behind them.

"I've been waiting for us to get a tinker," Rune continued. "Everyone else is lucky enough to have powers that protect them in a close quarters fight. Wind shields or bullet-dodging reflexes or being a giant fucking wolf made of swords. If I can get a good suit of power armor then I can convince Hookwolf to let me get in close quarters too. I can end a fight in an instant by touching a bad guy and levitating him by his clothes. Nothing says 'surrender' like the threat of your friend being dropped from a hundred feet in the air." She regarded Jack for a moment. "I suppose we'll be working together as long-range artillery types. Any ideas, Jack?"

"Ideas?"

"For how to use our powers together. You're an intellectual type, you must have thought about it."

​

>> Rune hated herself for blushing as she asked Crusader the question, hated herself even more for having deluded herself about his affections. She could already see it on his face. "I'm not interested in little girls," said Crusader, and-​

<<​

​

Jack turned to study her. Rune was the youngest cape in the Empire. She was clearly enjoying playing the role of the experienced veteran - mentoring the new recruit, judging his mindset, testing his intelligence and his potential on the battlefield. But she was also a teenage girl. One who had a power and an Empire affiliation that set her apart from the rest of society, and who was now speaking with one of the few boys her age she could see as an equal. He had impressed her with his attitude and skills. Now she was hoping for his approval in return.

"Of course," he said at length. "I've thought about how well we'll fit together ever since we met." He was rewarded with a slight widening of her eyes, a flinch as she ducked her head to hide her expression, momentarily forgetting that she was wearing a mask. He smiled.

"I'll start with the obvious." said Jack. "When we take cover you'll make a barrier with slits for me to slash through. When our enemies take cover you'll levitate me on a platform to give me a line of sight to cut them down."

She nodded. "Yes, good. I did that once with Stormtiger when his air currents weren't enough to get him to high ground."

"Next idea. You can reshape the things you levitate, can't you? When you lifted a chunk of pavement the other day you were turning it into a shield."

Rune turned to Jack, her eyes bright. She touched the brick wall of the building they were passing by. With a sharp cracking sound, a chunk of ten bricks separated from the wall and hovered in the air. In the span of a few seconds, fissures grew between the bricks until the mortar broke apart and the individual bricks were set free. They spun end over end, whirling around each other in an elaborate dance.

"Beautiful," said Jack. He watched the dance for a minute, then reached out and touched a brick as it floated by. "My power works as long as I'm touching a knife, even if I'm not the one swinging it. I had Dad help me test that one. If you build a thirty foot long sword and levitate it to help me swing it, then..."

She sighed. "I can make the sword, but my power has a speed limit. If I could move things faster then I'd throw knives at the bad guys instead of dropping cars on them. This is as fast as I can go." The bricks reconfigured themselves into a line, forming a mock blade that swept through the air making lazy slashes at an imaginary opponent. As an afterthought Rune had them swipe at their prisoner's face, making Sophia flinch as the bricks stopped a inch short of breaking her nose.

Jack smiled. "Ah, but we can work with that. I've found that my power works even if the force of the slash comes from gravity. We'll stand the sword on its handle and let it fall under its own power. With a three ton sword the edge will have enough force to break through the walls of a building, and I can project it halfway across the city. A siege weapon. Imagine the look on the face of that shitstain Squealer when she brings out her next tinker truck and we cut it in half right in front of her eyes.

"That's only the beginning, Rune. I haven't found any limit to the number of blades I can use as long as I'm touching them all at once. With your power you can be a weaponsmith, make me a gauntlet from a single piece of metal joined with a hundred razor blades. I won't need to slash, I'll gesture and a crowd of our enemies will turn into a fine red mist."

​

>> Rune staggered back, wide-eyed, pulling chunks of the floor into the air to block Cricket's whirling sickles. The woman was crazy! Was this what she called a spar? They had to learn to be ruthless to their enemies, true, but Cricket's eyes were gleaming with nothing more than bloodlust directed toward the nearest target-​

<<​

​

Jack stopped. He couldn't see Rune's reaction behind her mask. Was he pushing it too far? "That will be more for intimidation than everyday use, of course." he said. "When we take the city we'll make sure the PRT knows what we're capable of. They won't dare show their faces to interfere in our business."

"Very good." said Rune. "I was right. You are an intellectual type, thinking ahead to see the big picture. I can make you weapons like that, but you'd probably do better asking Kaiser." She paused. "Your power works well with a lot of us, actually. We have a lot of capes who make knives. Me, Kaiser, Crusader's ghosts. Maybe Night counts, if you close your eyes. Oh, do you think...?"

Rune chuckled.

"What is it?" said Jack.

"Do you think you can use your power on Hookwolf? I'm imagining you putting an Empire banner on him and riding him into battle like a war horse."

Jack laughed. "I don't think he'd like the idea. I appreciate the thought, though."

"Ah, speaking of whom." said Rune. They arrived at the edge of the warehouse in front of a high wall topped by barbed wire. Rune tapped two corrugated sheets of metal that were leaning against the wall. The sheets flipped and hovered in the air in front of them. Rune and Jack each stepped onto a sheet and were ferried over the wall. Rune floated their prisoner over as well, flipping Sophia upside down at the halfway point so that her face nearly grazed the barbed wire. Sophia gave out a muffled cry. Jack gave Rune a smile, then turned to face his soon-to-be superiors.

The capes stood in front of the loading dock of the warehouse. A large man in a tiger mask with his bare chest decorated with metal chains, a woman with a metal cage around her face and a pair of sickles at her sides, a wolf-masked man idly shifting his right hand back and forth between human flesh and a massive metal claw. Stormtiger, Cricket, Hookwolf. The other capes he'd met on his first night out, the ones who had offered him a place in their Empire.

"Hello, sir." said Jack.

"Welcome back, boy." said Hookwolf. "This is the nigger you told me about?"

"Yes, sir. Sophia Hess."

Hookwolf leaned over to look at her. Sophia glared up at him and spat an unintelligble curse from behind the gag.

"A troublemaker. Still sure about this demonstration of yours?"

"Hah. She's a bitch like that, sir. I'm looking forward to it," said Jack.

Hookwolf nodded. "Good. Come inside, then. Kaiser is waiting."

------
Author's note: I don't know why my headcannon has loquacious!Rune in it. I suppose she becomes less articulate when she is in a fight.

 

[Z000]

Clap
Finally a fic where Sophia get a shock collar
Jacob don't like people stealing his friend

 

[mc2rpg]

The Taylor part was pretty good, but your Jack Slash was absolutely amazing. Seeing a Jack Slash that isn't focused on just roving around killing things will be very interesting.

 

[DeAnno]

This was the Taylor!S9 fic I was waiting for, and then it was ALSO the young Jack Slash fic I didn't even know I wanted. Awesome stuff so far.

The amount of little things you include here really shows, the detail is great. Taylor being called "Queen", Danny being lied to, the emerging fanon intellectual Melissa, Shadow Stalker being captured in the background, even Jack musing about riding around on Hookwolf. All the little touches really came together well.

 

[rumblestiltsken]

Nit-pick - you can't pass the blood brain barrier through the nostrils without a drill.

Maybe the nerve endings of the olfactory bulbs are accessible, but they won't still have flowing CSF around them at that level. It would be the same effect as stinging a nerve.

Certainly large toxin proteins can't cross the BBB (the data is currently out on nanoparticles), because if they could a person would die whenever they got a nasal infection.

 

[Keres171]

Wonder if Taylor joined Cauldron or stayed in a "good" version of the Nine.
Anyway the story is great and your Jack Slash is a nightmare fuel villain protagonist. He makes you feel sorry for Sophia.

 

[Thinker6]

Thank you for your comments!

Nit-pick - you can't pass the blood brain barrier through the nostrils without a drill

Click to shrink...

Hmm. You are right, that seems to be a common medical opinion about delivering drugs through the nostrils. I changed it to include the eye sockets which might be more permeable.

Some drugs are still put in the nostrils so it might have some validity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insufflation_(medicine) . If that fails, my explanation is that Taylor is working off of the 1987 level of scientific knowledge. Hmm, but she would have tested her methods in advance. Well, maybe she could use bugs to dump packages of industrial-strength acid into his nostrils to destroy the nasal membranes and make a path for the poison. Of course with King's power you would need an acid strong enough to overcome his Brute rating, and then you would have to wait until all 52 of his victims had their nasal membranes burned off before his own would become damaged and you could administer the poison. And an acid like that would destroy most poisons so you would have to wash out the acid first. A very clunky poisoning route. I guess the lesson is that King's power is a terribly effective defense. I never understood how Jack Slash and Harbinger beat him so easily in Worm, I imagined him as more of a badass.

 

[violetshadows]

I really was hoping Jack would take Taylor's role, since she was taking his. Plus it'll be amusing to see who Jacks really playing for; I can't imagine him working with the E88 anymore than he did King.

 

[Z000]

feel sorry for Sophia.

Click to shrink...

i don't feel sorry for Sophia, every time i read Worm i wanted to rip her head of and dump it into an incinerator

 

[Peanuckle]

Didn't expect to see Jack Hebert. I like it.

Don't know what to make of him joining the E88 though. He doesn't really strike me as a nazi, or as having enough racial hate to join a group for it. Maybe he just wants them to help him ruin Sophia?

 

[Z000]

Sophia steal his best friend, try to bully him along with other thing, so of course he would try to get revenge

 

[Draconas]

I never understood how Jack Slash and Harbinger beat him so easily in Worm, I imagined him as more of a badass.

Click to shrink...

Assuming he still suffers the injury for a split-second before transferring it, this.

1. Have Harbinger point a knife at the bit of King's brain responsible for motor control from a distance.
2. Have Jack Slash extend the blade into King's brain.
3. Have Harbinger keep the knife on target as the injury is repeatedly healed and reapplied too fast for King to do anything except topple over.
4. Bury King so you can dance on his grave.

If it just goes straight to his victim without affecting him, he wouldn't notice the invisible edge until he keeled over dead anyway because it wouldn't do anything to him until then.

Edit:Another possibility is they had Jack Slash cut enough of a mountain off that he couldn't dig himself out before he suffocated, with Harbinger figuring out how much that was.

The man's actually deceptively easy to kill as long as you don't mind about all the other people dying.

 

[phaseroid]

His communication power works on capes. Who has the most capes he can get to that can do what they want?

 

[Thinker6]

Assuming he still suffers the injury for a split-second before transferring it, this.

1. Have Harbinger point a knife at the bit of King's brain responsible for motor control from a distance.
2. Have Jack Slash extend the blade into King's brain.
3. Have Harbinger keep the knife on target as the injury is repeatedly healed and reapplied too fast for King to do anything except topple over.
4. Bury King so you can dance on his grave.

If it just goes straight to his victim without affecting him, he wouldn't notice the invisible edge until he keeled over dead anyway because it wouldn't do anything to him until then.

Click to shrink...

That's a good idea. I guess it depends on interpretations of the powers. I had assumed that King wasn't injured by weapons at all - weapons would pass into his body but he would still function normally - and that he could feel his wounds being passed on to others so that he would be warned of attacks. After all, if he couldn't feel the wounds being passed on then he would never know when he was running out of voodoo dolls to protect him.

Also, I didn't think Jack could simply extend the knife to pierce his targets. I thought he could project the force of a knife while it was slashing but that he couldn't simply add force to the edge of a stationary knife. In that case he couldn't use super-fast blade extension and retraction. He would have to slash repeatedly, each time hard enough to pierce King's skull and brain and hit the proper spot. Harbinger could aim it but I don't think that people with baseline human strength like Harbinger and Jack could swing that hard. Unless it was a special tinker-made knife. Of course the above assumes that King's skull is as easy to break as a baseline human's. In my story I have assumed that King's Brute rating meant that only a very fine knife could do as much as nick his flesh, let alone his bone. But the Worm canon is ambiguous. Maybe Wildbow meant for King to be the kind of Brute who had high physical strength but had a baseline human's damage resistance and had to rely on his power for defense.

 

[Draconas]

That's a good idea. I guess it depends on interpretations of the powers. I had assumed that King wasn't injured by weapons at all - weapons would pass into his body but he would still function normally - and that he could feel his wounds being passed on to others so that he would be warned of attacks. After all, if he couldn't feel the wounds being passed on then he would never know when he was running out of voodoo dolls to protect him.

Also, I didn't think Jack could simply extend the knife to pierce his targets. I thought he could project the force of a knife while it was slashing but that he couldn't simply add force to the edge of a stationary knife. In that case he couldn't use super-fast blade extension and retraction. He would have to slash repeatedly, each time hard enough to pierce King's skull and brain and hit the proper spot. Harbinger could aim it but I don't think that people with baseline human strength like Harbinger and Jack could swing that hard. Unless it was a special tinker-made knife. Of course the above assumes that King's skull is as easy to break as a baseline human's. In my story I have assumed that King's Brute rating meant that only a very fine knife could do as much as nick his flesh, let alone his bone. But the Worm canon is ambiguous. Maybe Wildbow meant for King to be the kind of Brute who had high physical strength but had a baseline human's damage resistance and had to rely on his power for defense.

Click to shrink...

Then Jack Slash could cut the side of a hill so King would be buried in an avalanche and suffocate before he could break free. Harbinger could tell him how much was needed and where to cut.

As long as you don't care about killing the people he's touched and stay away from him, he's deceptively easy to take down. Still pretty hard, just not as hard as it sounds.

Plus, Jack Slash has been shown to cut through crowds of people, so I don't think the extended edge suffers suffers impediment nearly as much as a normal knife. Presumably he just needs to be able to make a small amount of damage with the real knife, and it's just that the extended edge is never slowed down by mass.

 

[Daemir Silverstreak]

Well, this most certainly has my attention. You're ability to capture intent and emotion in the written word is spectacular.

 

[Thinker6]

Then Jack Slash could cut the side of a hill so King would be buried in an avalanche and suffocate before he could break free. Harbinger could tell him how much was needed and where to cut.

As long as you don't care about killing the people he's touched and stay away from him, he's deceptively easy to take down. Still pretty hard, just not as hard as it sounds.

Plus, Jack Slash has been shown to cut through crowds of people, so I don't think the extended edge suffers suffers impediment nearly as much as a normal knife. Presumably he just needs to be able to make a small amount of damage with the real knife, and it's just that the extended edge is never slowed down by mass.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, it really seems like Jack's power should let him cut through things with more effectiveness than a normal slash of the blade, doesn't it? Whether it is the normal way the power works or by using some clever trick like using his power to rapidly extend-and-retract the blade that you came up with (a vibro-blade?). He is the type of person who would figure out tricks like that very quickly.

But somehow he never seems to do things like this in canon. His slashes were blocked by Skitter's armor just like any other blade, for example. People in the story said he could cut through whole crowds, but I don't think we ever directly saw him doing it. They might have meant that Jack could extend his slash to hit the whole crowd, but that it would still only carry the original force and cutting ability of the knife, rather than working like a lightsaber and really cutting through the crowd. Still very effective against a crowd but not an instant kill.

So, I'm not sure which way I will take that issue in this story.

 

[Draconas]

Yeah, it really seems like Jack's power should let him cut through things with more effectiveness than a normal slash of the blade, doesn't it? Whether it is the normal way the power works or by using some clever trick like using his power to rapidly extend-and-retract the blade that you came up with (a vibro-blade?). He is the type of person who would figure out tricks like that very quickly.

But somehow he never seems to do things like this in canon. His slashes were blocked by Skitter's armor just like any other blade, for example. People in the story said he could cut through whole crowds, but I don't think we ever directly saw him doing it. They might have meant that Jack could extend his slash to hit the whole crowd, but that it would still only carry the original force and cutting ability of the knife, rather than working like a lightsaber and really cutting through the crowd. Still very effective against a crowd but not an instant kill.

So, I'm not sure which way I will take that issue in this story.

Click to shrink...

Actually I more meant a physical knife will eventually lose momentum, causing it get stuck halfway through. That's why you swing from a bit away to do things like chop wood as opposed to just set the blade against the wood and push, since it lets you build up more momentum. It's possible his projection doesn't lose momentum, making it capable of cutting all the way through anything that the knife can make a decent go at.
Although rapidly extending and retracting the blade is a good idea.

 

[Mr SP]

I'm confused about this Jacob. As a (subconscious) telepath, isn't white superiority literally something he cannot see? And offering a black girl to the nazis just seems... out of character? compared to the Jack we have in canon.

Also, major disconnect between downright evil white supremacist Jacob and vicious psycho hero Taylor.

Of course, between the part where Taylor is "dead" - er... unless Jacob isn't Taylor's kid and I totally failed that spot check - and that Sophia is a cape, I was expecting a role reversal where suddenly Jacob kills Kaiser or Hookwolf just to prove he can, then releases Sophia, and maybe the Weaver 9 appear, and then things devolve into wild frenzy of carnage where the E88 gets crippled. And the ABB got the same treatment with less deceit. I don't understand why it would be called "Weaver 9" unless they're in the first chapter, or Jacob gets recruited in the first chapter.

 

[rumblestiltsken]

Hmm. You are right, that seems to be a common medical opinion about delivering drugs through the nostrils. I changed it to include the eye sockets which might be more permeable.

Click to shrink...

Feel free to ignore me, just being pedantic. If you want pedantic, then eyes are also pretty useless. Long way between the eyeball and the brain.

There really isn't a good way to pass the blood-brain-barrier without penetration, which is why it is effective as a barrier.

If you simply wanted to avoid the liver detoxifying everything, then the nasal mucosa could be used to avoid the first-pass effect, but so could any route of administration that wasn't swallowing the toxin.

I honestly can't think of an insect based method of delivering toxin more effectively than just "sting sensitive spots" or the old choke-a-roo. Which we know can take down high level brutes.

If you want hard accuracy, just say something like "into his nostrils to access his blood stream directly." Nasal mucosa is very vascular and fragile.

 

[Materia-Blade]

Its too little to really say anything about this story unfortunately. It has an interesting premise and your writing is good. That's pretty much all I got. Groundwork. Do you actually have somewhere you intend to go with this or was this more of a, "Hey you know what would be neat?" sort of story? Jack Slash is obviously evil-ish making Skitter/Weaver her usual good self in some way or another. Unfortunately its been oh... 87 to 11... carry the two... 24 years? (My age -2 curiously) Canon appears to be happening in one way or another with these two switched. It looks like Taylor hasn't done a damn thing. Certainly hasn't changed the world.

I'm disappointed in her.

 

[The last wolf]

Idea seems interesting enough, and is quite refreshing compared to most of other fics.

Watching for now.

 

[Thinker6]

I like a lot of the discussion people have been having about the motivations of the characters and the direction of the story. It is interesting. Thank you!

Its too little to really say anything about this story unfortunately. It has an interesting premise and your writing is good. That's pretty much all I got. Groundwork. Do you actually have somewhere you intend to go with this or was this more of a, "Hey you know what would be neat?" sort of story? Jack Slash is obviously evil-ish making Skitter/Weaver her usual good self in some way or another. Unfortunately its been oh... 87 to 11... carry the two... 24 years? (My age -2 curiously) Canon appears to be happening in one way or another with these two switched. It looks like Taylor hasn't done a damn thing. Certainly hasn't changed the world.

I'm disappointed in her.

Click to shrink...

I like this comment. You are right, this is setting up the groundwork. There's hopefully a reason why the world appears as it does, and a place the story is going. It'll take a few chapters to get there, though. I'll see how far I can take it.