Chp.10: Diffused
Writ found that the three Empire capes they had captured were surprisingly good company. Sure, it was mostly her talking to them, which had started wearing thin quickly, but they did have the excuse of being bound, foamed, and gagged, so she supposed she could forgive them.
"You don't have to worry about Rune, by the way," she offered. "She's already been sent to a juvenile centre. Hopefully they'll be able to fix some of the damage that being around you all has caused."
It was a lie. Rune hadn't been moved anywhere yet, but if the expected escape attempt succeeded Piggot didn't want Rune being freed too.
The PRT Director didn't even want to have them moved because of it, but there was public pressure mounting to get Krieg and Alabaster into the Birdcage as soon as possible and so she had been forced to order it.
Once they were far out of the city Crusader would be separated from them and taken to a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, but it was deemed safer to keep them all together for now.
Writ shifted the paper of her seat as she lounged to the side, idly making the large spheres of paper float around in a slow circle.
"I heard that Nazis have a hard time in the Birdcage, you know. Turns out villains are still American."
Krieg was completely stoic, keeping his eyes shut and his breathing calm, but Alabaster glanced at her for a moment and she knew he was thinking about the numerous capes in the prison who would be capable of killing him.
She unfurled a bit of paper from one of the spheres and manipulated it into little humanoid figures, then made one of them turn into a blob and envelop the other.
Once she moved it back off the previously human paper had been turned into a skeleton.
"Acidbath is rumoured to be a block leader," Writ commented as the figures merged back into the ball.
There was a double knock on the roof, the signal that they were entering the area where Dragon had identified the E88 would strike.
Writ sat straight and moved the majority of her paper seat in front of her to form a thick, spiked shield. She forced herself to relax her body, even as her senses were on high alert, and ignored the way that Krieg had opened his eyes and was looking around.
The minutes passed slowly but Writ kept her focus until eventually there was a loud crashing noise, then a screech as the armoured van came to a quick halt. Gunshots started up, as well as more crashes, then the rear door of the van was ripped off of its hinges. Hookwolf peered in, the metal of his head glinting in the light.
"Bad doggy," she said, then launched the four spheres right into his face. They impacted with a crunch and she used the moment to dart out into the open, held aloft by her paper. Hookwolf quickly recovered, whirling around to face her, but she was already out of reach.
Writ took a moment to glance over the battlefield, checking on who was fighting.
All her team members were engaged, but Victor and Othala were missing on the E88 side. Purity, Night, and Fog were not there, of course. The married couple hadn't been seen in months, while Purity was trying to rebrand herself as a hero.
Writ had already had a chat with the ex-villain about staying on the correct path, and reminded her that while she was the second strongest Blaster on the east coast she couldn't blast anything if she couldn't see. The paper wrapped around her head had delivered the point properly.
Piggot had been furious, docking her pay and even forcing her to make a private apology, but Writ knew the message had been understood even if it had shot the potential of her joining the Protectorate.
Writ jigged right to avoid the door that Hookwolf had thrown at her.
"Bitch!" he roared. "I'll fucking rip you apart!"
"I suppose I do vaguely resemble a newspaper," she replied, morphing a sphere into a large chain and looping it around his back leg.
The other three took his remaining limbs and hoisted him into the air, then started to pull on his limbs. Hookwolf shifted his blades, however, and shredded one of them before she could pull it back.
He thumped back to the ground and turned towards her, but she took remains of her sphere and swarmed it around his face, obscuring his vision.
The other spheres turned into large cubes and began hammering at his body, knocking him side to side and off his feet. He let out another scream of fury as he groped around for the other door to throw at her.
She took the opportunity to draw two of her nearby caches towards the fight then send them flying towards the giantess twins.
Assault and Battery were good, but there was only so much they could handle. Fenja saw the oncoming projectile and dodged in time but Menja didn't, crashing to the ground as the paper wrapped around her legs and tripped her.
Writ was still bludgeoning Hookwolf, and while it hadn't hurt him it had kept him occupied and disoriented enough that he hadn't managed to regain his footing.
She hauled Menja into the air and left her dangling, and once again Writ cursed her inability to really deal with Brutes. Still, it left only one giant for her teammates to handle.
She turned her attention back to Hookwolf when he finally started to think. He had formed a metal helmet without any holes and used it to push away her flurry of paper, then quickly dashed away from it before jumping into the air towards her.
"You broke Stormtiger's legs!"
"He was running," she said, easily moving out of the way. Hookwolf landed on a rooftop, spun, and jumped at her again.
"You murdered Cricket!"
Writ stiffened, anger blooming in her veins, and drew all her nearby paper into a great mass to catch the Nazi. She surrounded him with it and kept it pressed against him even as he tore it apart, then lifted him high into the sky.
"You've ended hundreds of innocent lives, then complain when someone finally finishes one of your own?" she cried, furious.
Writ launched him down as fast as she could, pushing with gravity, and Hookwolf impacted into the road with a rumbling crash. She lifted him back into the air, quicker this time.
"Fathers." Another crash. "Mothers." Another. "Children." She drove him down face first this time, burying him up to his haunches.
"I could kill every last one of you and still sleep well at night," Writ hissed, uncaring that he probably couldn't hear her, as she began to worm tiny shreds of her paper through his blades, searching for a soft body beneath it.
She had to stop when Menja, freed from her bindings, struck at her with her spear.
Writ barely dodged it, drawing higher into the air, but the giantess instead grabbed the incoherent Hookwolf and turned tail.
Her sister had picked up Victor and Othala, both injured, as well as Kaiser, whose armour was singed. Dauntless had obviously been aiming well.
Writ floated back down, still hyperfocused from the adrenaline pumping through her veins, and checked on the transport van. Krieg had got free, having been closest to the door, but Crusader and Alabaster remained securely locked up.
Armsmaster jogged up next to her for the same reason, then sighed when he saw one of the prisoners was missing.
He called Assault over and asked the pair of them to start moving the prisoners before jogging away.
"Two out of three isn't bad, considering the track record," Assault commented as they carried the pair to a new van."Plus they'll spend a while licking their wounds." He glanced at Writ. "Especially Hookwolf."
"He got to me," she replied, acknowledging the point.
"We heard. You, uh… thanks for the assist on Menja."
She considered him for a moment, then relaxed her stance, thankful he was shifting the topic.
"I do what I can, Assault, as do you. Besides, Battery would mope around if you got hurt."
He laughed cheerily.
"Yeah, puppy is surprisingly puppylike."
Writ went to reply but stopped, horror settling in her stomach as the loud drone of the Endbringer sirens started to sound. It was, thankfully, the alert for a different city, then a few moments later the specific code identifying which monster was attacking played.
"Khepri again. After barely two months," Assault said, his voice sombre. No doubt he was thinking back to Las Vegas.
Writ was too, but as the memory of green eyes played through her mind, she knew it was for an entirely different reason.
()()()()()()()()
Taylor stilled, her unwillingness to show any weakness warring with her lack of information.
"What do you want from me?"
Eden considered her for a moment.
"You will have a purpose."
"One where I'm not human?"
Eden leaned towards her, one hand reaching out to cup Taylor's cheek as the Entity's inhuman eyes roamed over her face.
"I had to name the others myself." Her other hand reached up to match the other, Eden's gaze becoming almost reverent, her expression softening.
"But you've already been given one, Khepri. Look at you. Fierce. Determined. Strong because of your weaknesses, strong enough to kill Zion. Even now you look for an escape, a way to fight, a way to live."
Eden drew back, blinking her eyes a few times.
"You will be perfect."
"Perfect?" Taylor asked, against her own will.
"Yes. It will hurt."
()()()()()()()()()()
Thursday...Tuesday...basically the same thing right? I'm just going to stop guessing when I get chapters out from now on, because life things. I'm on holiday for two weeks though, so hopefully (knock on wood) I'll have an increased posting rate.
Thank you Evil Atlas and BurnNote for betaing, as always, and thank you everyone else for reading.