"I swear to god, Lisa," I snarled, quietly. "I am going to beat you stupid with a frying pan for this."
Lisa—Tattletale—just grinned the same stupid foxy grin as always, albeit maybe, maaaaybe, with a tinge of sheepishness to it. The blood from her nose was smeared down the side of her cheek, and stretched oddly with her expression.
"Relax, Skitter." She said, with that same stupid smugness, and a severe lack of any sort of nasal quality to it despite the punch she'd taken. "They were totally going to try to kill us anyway."
'They' were a gang we, in theory, had been trying to reach out to in Cambridge. They called themselves the Delta Staid, despite not really being a delta of anything or all that staid. I seriously wish people actually thought about their names more deeply. They were only five parahumans, and about forty regular humans strong, but that was part of the point.
"Just," I said slowly, starting my rant, while continuing to harass the goons and direct my friends with my insects. "Because they were going to try anyway, doesn't mean you should have opened that big mouth of yours and started spilling their secrets. I mean, seriously? That last one was over the line."
"Yeah," Tattletale cringed a little. "Maybe. It was funny though!"
I paused.
"Yeah, okay, it was kind of funny." I smiled behind my mask, stifling a chuckle. "But it was still over the line."
"Got him!" I heard, and saw through my bugs, Regent cause one of the Delta's parahumans to electrocute his comrade. It was actually a pretty nice move, just the right twitch, at the exact right moment, to change the current away from Brian and into Periwinkle. With their main defense down, this was going to thankfully get wrapped up quite soon.
He was probably going to be gloating about that for weeks. Ugh. I'll have to get Aisha to distract him. Then again, he was probably only doing it to get a rise out of me. Maybe I should try to put him off balance. Hmm…
"That should be good enough," I heard Parian murmur. I let my spiders scurry away at her announcement, and watched a tapestry come to life as all the silk I'd sown around the room suddenly danced into a form. A form that conveniently wrapped up the last of the goons, and two of the parahumans—Surge and Swallow. I was pretty surprised those names hadn't already been taken, honestly.
"Excellent." I stood up from behind the bar counter and slid over it. "Now that you're the only one left standing, Hounder, let's get back to what I was saying."
"Fuck you, bitch!" The blaster shot another orb at me, which flew straight into the ground. The really sad thing about this was Hounder's ability relied on his physical muscles to control his kinetic balls' direction. Regent could no-sell him in his sleep.
"Hounder, listen." I didn't speak very loudly, even with my insects adding to my voice, but the other parahuman immediately shut up. Most people would if they felt a tickle at their throat and turned to see a dozen black widows lining their shoulders. "Listen carefully, because I'm not going to say this again, okay?
"I was going to do this differently, but now that you tried to kill us, you only have two options at this point." I held my forefinger into the air. "One, you get… heated again, and I'll dispose of you.
"Or two," I said, flicking a second finger, "You give me the information I want, and we don't have to do anything nasty."
"Th-the… y-you…" Hounder gulped audibly, still staring wide-eyed at my widows. I hadn't really shown off my deadlier insects to this group until now, so I guess he was shocked by the sudden threat of death.
Maybe he just had a fear of spiders. I don't know. Tattletale probably did, but if she knew what was good for her, she'd keep her trap shut. I wasn't completely kidding about that frying pan, and she'd have known it.
"The info, if you please?" I tapped the counter, causing a thump to echo in the bar. The place had pretty good acoustics, I had to say.
"T-the… the back, c-computer…" Hounder was starting to shiver, but still pointed to door behind the bar counter. "P-password's…"
"Disneyland?" Tattletale blinked, before walking into the indicated room, muttering. "Seriously?"
"Good." I nodded to Brian, who obliged with an aspect of Swallow's power and knocked out Hounder with a blow to back of the head.
"Now, I'm sure the rest of you were listening in just fine." I visibly caused my head to scan the room, catching the eyes of the rest of the Delta Staid that were still conscious. It was about presentation, really. Even if I didn't need to physically move to actually 'see' them, I wanted them to see me see them. "Unlike Hounder, who is a useless moron, you get three choices."
"One," I held up my finger again. "You stay in the Delta Staid. You dust yourself off, lick your wounds, and move on. Trying to eek out an existence, same as always. I don't particularly recommend this option, and I'll tell you why, but I'm still leaving it in the open.
"Two," I continued, while letting some of my bugs start traveling towards me, slowly. "You leave town. Hell, you might as well just leave the state. Drop everything unimportant, grab all the money you can, and just run like a bat out of hell. Because, you see, the Undersiders are not just here to meet and greet the other gangs of Cambridge. We're here to stay, my friends.
"And that gets into the third option, which is to join us. I hope I don't have to explain the benefits of this option. I like to think the results of my endeavors would speak for themselves. If you're under our banner, there will be a lot of changes from other gangs, but I can assure you that a lot of it will be for the better."
At this point, I had every bug in the bar circled around me. I stepped forward, and had my bugs move away from my feet as they touched the floor, only to merge back as I took another step again. Again. Presentation, Taylor, I reminded myself.
"I'll give you a little time to think, until my associate is back, but this will be a onetime offer." I spoke solemnly as I stared at my real target for this speech. I really, really wanted to hook this one. I'd had Tattletale run me through any scrap of data we could find on her. I needed to be scary, but controlled. Not hard, but the real selling point was that I needed a little bit more flair for the dramatic—not really something I thought I had too great a handle on, honestly. It tended to come off as somewhat cheesy.
But then, even that can be trumped by just how scared some people are of bugs.
She didn't look scared though. Omni, another name I was surprised wasn't already taken, blinked owlishly at me behind her domino mask. She looked… awkward, almost. A newbie, so new in fact she barely had a decent costume put together despite being a tinker.
And that was the rub. A tinker. Despite all our expansions, we had yet to actually pick one up, and Omni looked to be quite the prize. As far as what most people seemed to be aware, her specialty looked to be in incorporation of tools. Like a Swiss army knife, but less knife, toothpick and whatnot, and more like laser rifle, shielding device and jetpack. Except, from what Tattletale had put together, that was either a ruse, or Omni herself didn't understand her specialty. What Tattletale had guessed was that she was more like a tinker version of Accord. The greater the complexity of the device, the more in tune she was to create it. The only real limitation of it might be the cost of the materials would be increasingly large the bigger the creation got.
It was like a dream come true—if I could get her to join, anyway.
I'd been staring at her intently for a minute by this point, to which she'd been returning my gaze in equal measure, barring a few erratic blinks. I couldn't quite place the expression on her face. I'd like to say that she at least wasn't put off by my delivery, but I was never one for the dramatic—which Tattletale said Omni seemed to like—so I couldn't be totally sure.
"Got it!" Speak of the devil, Tattletale popped out of the back, swinging the chain her USB was connected to. "We're good to go."
"Then the time has come to make a choice." I scanned my captive audience again. Some were looking down, shaking or otherwise, some were staring at me with a wide range of different emotions, and a handful, of course, weren't even conscious. The latter didn't really matter, they were only a handful of goons. Omni was my main objective here, with maybe Periwinkle or Swallow also being a possibility. Surge would be unlikely to be interested, and I didn't even bother with Hounder for a reason.
"Choose carefully, you're no—"
"I'll join!" Omni practiced jumped, and likely would have if she wasn't wrapped tightly in Parian's bindings. "Please, let me join! Oh, holy crap, that was cool. How do you store your insects? Or, I mean, you must have a number of huge number of spiders to have crafted that suit, how did you prep the silk? And clean it. Maintenance must be important to keep its durability, right? Can you control them finely enough for them to weave for you, or do you just make it with your hands—oh wait, you must have really fine control given how you were walking and talking like that, right? Oh geez…!"
I paused, blinking for a second as Omni continued to ramble on, before shooting a glance at Tattletale—who, unhelpfully, just shrugged.
"Dear god, shut up." Swallow, the only one without her hands bound, slapped both of them to her face, groaning. "You stupid motormouth! I can't stand you! Just get out of here so I don't have to hear you ranting anymore!"
Omni quickly turned to Swallow, and just smiled. "But isn't it exciting, Molly? This is a really big gang, and they're trying to recruit us! They must have so many resources, and… and well, stuff! Stuff to mess with! You like stuff, right?"
I sighed as my recruiting effort turned into something decidedly less dramatic and serious as Omni, who turned out to be called Liza—and wouldn't that just get confusing—babbled on to her best friend Molly about how amazing this all was, while the latter tried to continually shut her up—to no success at all.
In the end, though, all three of them—plus thirty of the goons—did join, so I guess it was a success. Sure, they'd need to be vetted, but Tattletale loved that process, or so she told me.
One step to conquering Cambridge down, I suppose?
Basic point: Dinah says nothing. Taylor cuts no apparel. Does not surrender, and instead… expands. She's got a world to save, after all. These are the voyages of the Brockton Bay Undersiders, exploring new cities, recruiting new minions, and generally just goofing off because there's a time for seriousness, and that's just about never (says everyone but Taylor, as they try to get her to relax).