Capsid 4.4

School on Friday was different. I'd noticed it from the first moment I stepped on the bus, but it wasn't until I settled into my usual seat in Mrs. Knott's computer lab that I was able to put my finger on the surreality of it all.

I was a secret superhero, finally, after months of suppressing my powers and making plans and preparations. I had even taken a cape name. The concerns at school had always seemed petty to me, but now the hostile glares and muttered insults were like the movements and machinations of my bugs. Sometimes annoying, even dangerous, but ultimately... small.

And all it had taken for me to stop giving a shit about other people's opinion of me was to watch my mentor murder a man in cold blood. That had put things into perspective.

I really should have asked Alex to kill Oni Lee sooner.

I nearly laughed at the stray thought, as horrible and morbid as it was. Maybe Alex was good for more than just recalibrating my sense of proportion, after all. He did tell me, shortly before the disaster, that I was better than this bullying bullshit. For the first time, I actually had something to be proud of. A victory. It wasn't much, and I already had one huge regret, but the knowledge that I could actually do things steadied me, like a rod of iron in my back that wouldn't let me slouch and cringe anymore.

I felt good. I'd almost forgotten what that was like.

My newfound glow of confidence started paying off right away. Missing out on a few days of classes meant that even the normally sedate computer class, my strongest subject, was fairly hectic as I completed the day's assignments and the past week's classwork for partial credit. I was more able to push aside my normal anxieties and focus on my work.

Learning was a skill in and of itself, according to Alex, who had lectured me yesterday when we were trying to convince my dad we'd been studying parahumans all this time. Alex had gone over a method to study efficiently, which he called 'distributed practice.' Apparently, trying to focus for several hours straight and cram information all at once wasn't very effective—not that I was really surprised to hear that, nor was I surprised that this was the first time I was hearing about a supposedly more effective study method, despite spending so much of my life in Brockton Bay's so-called education system.

Instead of cramming, Alex had me create crude flashcards from my notebook with all the parahuman classifications on them, and then had me write a brief definition and their PRT-assigned level of priority in a battle on the backs of the cards. We drilled with the flashcards for a few minutes, prioritizing the ones I got wrong, then took increasingly longer breaks in between to do other things before returning to the cards. It was remarkably effective.

I busied myself trying to implement the new study method by taking notes that could be translated into flashcards later, and flipping through the more difficult ones periodically whenever there was a lull in the lecture. It helped keep my mind off my surroundings for most of the day, until Math class with Mr. Quinlan. The geriatric teacher had decided to step out fifteen minutes before class ended, and precedent dictated that he wouldn't be back anytime soon, if at all. Emma apparently decided that was her opening to confront me directly.

"So, you actually decided to show up," Emma said, her words dripping with hostility.

I looked up from my math homework to see Emma standing in front of my desk, looking down her nose at me. She was wearing an expensive green jacket, no doubt connected to her vaunted part-time modeling gig, and her red hair was done up in an elaborate knot that would have looked ridiculous if I'd tried it. Naturally, she pulled off the look flawlessly. She was one of those girls that could have worn a burlap sack and made it work, and that helped give her free reign to break every social code and get away with it Scott-free.

I still hated her for all that, of course, but spending the last few days with a shapeshifter who changed faces like he changed shirts had really driven home to me just how arbitrary appearances were. They were still important, but only because shallow people made them so. I just couldn't bring myself to be as intimidated or jealous of Emma's looks, anymore. I idly wondered how she would react to knowing I had powers.

"Did you go deaf, or is this just your normal stupidity at work?" Emma drawled, filling the silence.

At this point, I could have gone back to stonewalling her and hoped she went away, but as soon as that default option presented itself, I decided against it.

Fuck it. I was in a good mood, and I wasn't about to let Emma ruin it. I decided to take a leaf from Alex's book and act as though Emma was an annoying housefly buzzing around my head.

"Is there a point to this?" I asked with bored indifference, returning my attention to my homework.

"I just wanted to tell you that this little stunt you're pulling, running scared to the teachers? It's not going anywhere. You're a failure. You're a nobody. You have no friends, you have no job, you can't even be bothered to show up to school half the time. Why would anyone believe you over people who are actually making something of themselves?" Emma said with venomous, haughty contempt.

In spite of my determination not to let her get to me, my heart sank a little.

So that's what this was about. Apparently, Emma's parents had let her know ahead of time that the school was calling a meeting. I wasn't surprised at all. Her dad was a lawyer, so there was always a plan in place. Maybe even this confrontation was her way of trying to unnerve me before the conference.

I scoffed at her. "Fuck off, Emma. You don't have the slightest idea what I've been doing lately. Get a clue before you try insulting people."

At that, I gathered up my things and stood from my desk, doing my best to loom over Emma in turn. I was a fair bit taller than her when I actually stood up straight, and I noticed a slight widening of her eyes right before I deliberately pushed past her, making her stagger slightly.

It was such a petty little power play, no different than the least of the offenses Emma and her cronies had inflicted on me countless times, but I still couldn't help the huge smile on my face as I strode out of the classroom. Pretending to be an arrogant asshole like Alex was actually a lot of fun. It felt liberating. No wonder he did it.

Of course, I knew I was going to pay for that act of defiance one way or another. Every time I'd thought I had nothing left to lose, Emma and her sycophants had done their damnedest to prove me wrong. Maybe this time she'd accuse me of bullying her, which was warped enough to be par for the course, but that didn't change the warm glow of happiness I felt at defying my chief tormentor.

The consequences would come due eventually, but at least they wouldn't come due today. Math was my last class, and even though it still wasn't technically out yet, the odds that Mr. Quinlan would return in the last five minutes and get me in trouble were effectively nil. I went straight home, and my mood improved even further when I changed out my school backpack for my hero backpack to go meet Alex.

This was going to be the first time I'd patrol the city primarily in costume alongside Revenant. The rationale he'd outlined in our planning session the day before was that without the threat of Oni Lee, there was much less need for stealth, since we were far faster as a unit than Bakuda, whose Tinker power didn't make her any more mobile than a normal human. Since she was trying to snap up parahumans, we could wear our costumes to essentially advertise ourselves as bait. It would probably cost us the element of surprise, but my bugs and Alex's senses would be on high alert for any bomb-slaves or Squealer's plane. If those failed to give us enough warning to counter an ambush, then Alex claimed to have developed some kind of anti-aircraft countermeasure, and to prevent traps from being planted in our way, we would vary our route.

With my preparations done, I sent Alex a quick text that I was on my way, and took the next available bus to our designated meeting spot, Prescott Park. It wasn't large by any means, more of a glorified overgrown yard with old trees, but it was still a convenient and discreet spot to change into costume, which was no small consideration. In addition, the park and the dumpsters from the restaurants and food stands clustered around were teeming with a whole ecosystem of bugs, perfect for gathering an initial swarm.

As the bus approached, I felt Alex enter my range. As seemed to be his habit, he'd beaten me to the meeting spot. A few seconds later, though, I jerked in surprise when a second anomaly entered my range as the bus turned onto the park street—a large, confused muddle that my power could vaguely sense, but which seemed too complicated for me to grasp control over.

I focused, trying to hone in on what the thing was, but I couldn't make out much of anything besides the fact that it was very much not bug-sized. I tried accessing its senses, and although I couldn't tap into any of them beyond a very primitive sense of touch and vibration, that was enough to get a more understandable outline of the creature.

The general shape of the head and body instantly reminded me of the bearded dragon lizards that Mr. Obodzinsky, my middle school science teacher, had kept in his classroom. On closer inspection, though, it was much larger, almost as long as my arm, and it had no legs. Its stubby tail was tipped with a conical stinger that reminded me of an oversized wasp abdomen, and there were small wings pressed flush against its body. The wings were shaped like a bumblebee's, but they were fleshy and seemed to have an internal skeleton, like a bird's wing. It was digging, using its hard snout and the pointed, insectile mandibles on its lower jaw to break up soil and move through it with wriggling, undulating motions like an earthworm, occasionally using its wings and tail to shovel excess dirt out of the way.

"What the fuck?" I muttered under my breath, rubbing my temples to ward off the incipient migraine.

I decided that in lieu of being able to control the lizard-worm-bee thing, I'd meet up with Alex before I investigated. Belatedly, it occurred to me that this thing matched the description of one of Leet's biotinkered minions that Alex mentioned the other day.

I considered sending my bugs after it, but the creature wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. The soil was too hard and damp for it to dig through at more than a snail's pace.

The bus reached its stop near the park entrance and I disembarked, using my bugs to scout out for a private place to change into my costume and hide my backpack. Once that awkward transition was out of the way, I jogged over to where Alex was waiting. He was in the guise of a tall, heavily-muscled man with rough, thuggish features that were a mix between Asian and European. The disguise reminded me of Lung, and that made me a little uncomfortable.

"Hey, Alex." I greeted him.

"Hey, kid. Anyone else around?" he asked, not even bothering to disguise his original voice or accent.

"No, you're good to change," I replied.

When he did so, I decided that I would never get fully accustomed to the image of his outer layer shredding itself apart and molding into a new appearance. It was disgusting, but thankfully very brief.

"You ready to get started?" Revenant asked breezily.

"Not yet. There's something nearby I want to check out. I think it might be the snake-bug monster Leet made," I said, gesturing in the direction of the creature.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Use your bugs to kill it before it gets away!" Revenant said impatiently. "That fucking thing is so venomous it nearly put me out of commission. What do you think it would do to a normal squishy human?"

"Hold on," I said, raising my hands. "It's not hurting anyone. I think it's underground. My power... it almost registers as something I can control. I don't think we have to kill it."

Revenant crossed his arms. "Standard PRT policy is to destroy all Tinker-engineered bioweapons as quickly as it can be determined they weren't made out of people. They have that policy for a reason, Arachne. I don't care if you want it as your own personal minion, it's dangerous."

"I'm not saying I want to keep it, necessarily," I said defensively. "I'm just saying, I think I can control parts of its biology. At least, the parts of it that come from bugs. It's really interesting. Besides, didn't you say Leet's monsters had human DNA in them?"

"Yes, but he didn't make them out of living people, he just used samples of human DNA in whatever bullshit idiot-savant process he used to engineer their genomes. It's not a human, and it never was a human, so you might as well kill it now and be done with it," Revenant said stubbornly.

"That's not the point," I said, starting to grow a bit irritated myself. "It feels really complicated. I think it might be smart enough to, you know, think like a person. I think it would be smarter than a dog, at least."

I tactfully didn't mention that the point of comparison I was using for the complexity of the thing's brain was Revenant's own impossibly convoluted mind. Even though his brain seemed to be infested with the same controllable substance that made up the rest of him, his brain's workings remained a mystery to me, unlike my simple, almost mechanistic bugs, which my power gave me an intuitive grasp of.

Revenant groaned in exasperation. "Oh, please. This is ridiculous. Stop trying to turn every little thing into some kind of moral quandary. I know you're not a vegetarian, Arachne. So what if that thing might be smarter than a dog? So are pigs, and that doesn't stop you from eating bacon."

"That's completely different," I said heatedly. "Pigs are natural, and they're raised to be eaten. That thing was made by a Tinker, and Über said they were kept as pets. What if it's tame?"

"Irrelevant," Revenant said dismissively. "Bottom line, that thing is dangerous, it nearly turned me into a quadriplegic, and I'll kill it myself if you aren't willing to."

"I'm not going to tell you where it is until we agree on what to do with it," I warned.

Revenant walked past me, in the direction I'd pointed at before. "Doesn't matter. I can find it by smell and hearing, just like I can sense that you still keep that lunchbox full of money inside your backpack, even though you said you'd hide it. That's pretty careless of you, by the way."

I flinched slightly at his words. That had stung, more than I cared to admit.

After a frustrated pause, I hurried to catch up to his fast, striding pace. "I have to keep it with me. My dad went through my stuff, you know, and homeless people pick over every nook and cranny in the Bay."

"That's no excuse. Use your ingenuity. If that money is still in your backpack tomorrow, I'm going to confiscate it," said Revenant.

"Don't change the subject," I said, flustered. "This isn't just about the monster, or the money. You can't just keep killing things as the solution to all your problems!"

That gave Revenant pause. He stopped in mid-stride, sighed heavily, and turned on his heel to face me. "I should have guessed that's what your squeamishness was really about. All right. Fine. Now is as good a time as any to talk about the elephant in the room."

I lifted my hands in an exaggerated, exasperated shrug. "What's there to talk about? Killing should be your last resort, not your first and only resort. It's as simple as that."

"It's really not," Alex said, his tone flat and precise. He raised his hand, and for a moment I thought he was flashing me a rude gesture, but instead he started counting off on his fingers for emphasis. "Killing in self-defense. Killing in defense of others. Killing in a time of war. Killing out of necessity. Killing for no reason at all. Those all get treated very, very differently. Some of them get you called a hero. Others get you called a monster. And make no mistake, Oni Lee was a true monster."

I averted my eyes from him. "I know that. It's not just Oni Lee, though. You killed Lung, too. That's two people you've killed in less than a week. How are you okay with that?"

"Are you really going to argue that my killing of Lung wasn't justified? You saw what he did to me. He was burning me alive." Revenant spat venomously.

"I don't—" I began, but my voice caught in my throat. "I wasn't there at the end. You never told me what happened. I don't know if you had to kill him, or if you could have just taken the opportunity to capture him or run away."

Revenant went as still as a statue, and for a few moments, the only sound was the faint noise of the city filtering through the trees and underbrush. A sick feeling coiled in my gut, the creeping dread that I'd made a terrible mistake, said something that I couldnt take back.

"...There's no one else to tell, and there's no proof I can offer," Revenant said with excruciating slowness, maintaining uncomfortable, unyielding eye contact with me. "But for what it's worth, if I hadn't killed Lung, I would have died. That's the truth, and that's all you need to know. I won't say another word about it. Are we clear?"

I hesitated. I had no idea whatsoever if Alex was lying. I'd seldom been so uncertain of anything in my life. He had every motive to lie, but he could also be telling the truth, at least as far as he saw it.

"I understand," I said quietly. "I won't talk about Lung and Oni Lee anymore. There's no changing what happened. I just want to know one thing, though—when we find Bakuda, if we can find her, are you going to kill her, too?"

"She's killed people too, Arachne. Tortured them. Not as many as Oni Lee, but she deserves to die as much as anyone." Revenant said darkly.

In a moment of clarity, I could see the way we were talking past each other. I seized on the epiphany and said, "That's the difference. That right there. I'm not asking whether she deserves to die, I'm asking, will you kill her too?"

If Alex gave me the wrong answer here, I knew I wouldn't be able to continue our strange little partnership, as surprisingly painful as the thought was to me. It wasn't just that the informant said Bakuda had a dead-man's switch, it was the whole approach of killing someone, assassinating someone, in and of itself. This was a critical moment, and I suspected Alex could sense it, too. There was a term for it, right on the tip of my tongue. I remembered it just as Alex started to speak.

An irreconcilable difference.

"Anything can happen in the heat of battle... but if you want me to avoid killing her unless it's to stop her from killing someone else, then I will. Even if that means she escapes. I hope you're ready to take on the responsibility of all the people she kills afterwards if that happens, Arachne," said Revenant, fixing me with his icy glare.

I stood a little straighter, and put all the steel I had into my voice, trying to convince myself as much as him. "I won't let that happen."

Revenant broke eye contact and gave a small chuckle. "Good answer."

At that small expression of humor and approval, the tension broke, and I was able to relax my stiff shoulders and breathe. I hadn't really expected Alex to relent, but I was fervently grateful that he did.

"All right. Let's keep looking for her, then." I said, trying not to sound as relieved as I felt.

"Ah-ah, not so fast," Revenant said, crossing his arms expectantly. "Seriously, were you hoping I was just going to forget all about Hax after our little heart-to-heart?"

"Hacks?" I echoed uncomprehendingly. "As in, hacking a computer?"

"Hax. H-A-X. That's what Über nicknamed the little bootleg Pokémon. It's nerd-speak for winning a game through unfair luck or cheating. Appropriate, considering the damn thing somehow kept dodging me. Now, unless you have a good argument for why I shouldn't smash that abomination into paste, I'm going to get right to it," said Revenant, resuming his walk in Hax's general direction.

"At least let me try working with it first," I said, holding my ground.

Revenant looked back at me with narrow, scrutinizing eyes, sighed, then shrugged. "Fine. But if she flies off somewhere again, I'm telling the PRT it was all your fault."

I smiled slightly at Alex's teasing, then frowned. "Wait, it can fly? How? The wings seem too... stubby."

Revenant snorted. "The word you're looking for is vestigial, and to be honest, it's more like glorified leaping, but for fuck's sake, don't let your guard down. I can't use you as a Bakuda-radar if you're dead."

"I'm so touched by your concern," I deadpanned.

The pair of us made our way through the park and closed in on a Chinese restaurant on the corner of an intersection. There was a chain-link fence blocking off the partially-paved back alley, but Revenant's lockpicking skills had the padlock open in less than a second, and he let us in.

Unfortunately, there was a large, rusty green dumpster directly above where my power was telling me Hax was, adjoined by a smaller blue trash barrel that contained a truly unbelievable amount of used cooking oil.

"Do you mind moving that?" I asked, pointing at the dumpster.

Revenant grumbled unhappily, but he did as I asked, shifting the dumpster off to the side with an incredible racket and exposing a hole maybe seven or eight inches wide, with loose dirt piled up all around it. The slope of the alley and shelter of the dumpster had kept off yesterday's rain, so the patch of bare earth was still somewhat dry. Nothing moved or was visible inside the burrow, but I knew Hax was down there. It—she?—had stopped moving when we had approached. I could sense her biology reacting, her heart rate speeding up and her body flooding with the same agitation hormones a wasp possessed.

I squatted down on my haunches, trying to peer further down into the hole.

"You are not sticking your hand down there," Revenant said flatly.

"I wasn't going to—" I began, but was interrupted by the back door of the restaurant opening. A thin Asian boy in a kitchen smock who didn't look much older than me froze in surprise at the sight of us, then blurted out something that sounded like Chinese.

To my bafflement, Revenant replied to him in what sounded like the same language, speaking with a curt, direct tone. The boy startled and give a half-nod, half-bow as he quickly stepped back inside, pulling the door shut as he went.

"You, uh. That's a new one," I said, completely nonplussed. "What did you say to him? I had no idea you spoke... whatever language that was."

"Mandarin is the most common first language on the planet, so I know the basics," Revenant said with a dismissive wave, as though I was being foolish for even raising the point. "I told him we were conducting hero business and to go back inside. Now don't take your eyes off that burrow."

"She's not going anywhere. I could feel her moving around from five blocks away," I reminded him, rolling my eyes.

"I saw that." he groused.

Returning my attention to the creature in question, I tried to use my power to urge her to come out of the hole. She squirmed as if uncertain or uncomfortable, but remained where she was.

I tried a different tack, accessing what I could of her endocrine system. I couldn't have named the hormones and their feedback loops if I tried, but my power gave me an implicit understanding of the most insect-like parts of her biology, from various substances marinating in her brain to the fiendishly complex venom in her stinger. I set about trying to soothe Hax, rendering her placid.

"Uh, Hax? You can come out, I'm not going to hurt you," I said awkwardly, feeling like a dog owner calling out to a mistrustful puppy.

Inside the nest, I could feel Hax turn around and cautiously approach. I just barely saw the tip of her snout from the entrance, then after a pause, she scooted further and turned her head to look out the hole at me.

I was not prepared for just how alien her appearance would be up close. Her pupils were slit, but horizontally instead of vertically. A forked, pale pink tongue darted out between the chitinous mandibles on her lower jaw and quickly tasted the air before retreating back into her mouth. Tentatively, her head emerged from the hole, but when she caught sight of Revenant, she flinched in surprise, made a noise like a coughing hiss, and squirmed backwards into the burrow at top speed, despite my best efforts to stifle her fear and keep her calm.

"Aww, I think she remembers me," Revenant said in an obnoxiously fake cheerful voice.

"If she does, I can't really blame her for reacting like that," I muttered, casting an aside glance at Revenant, who I could tell was smiling unrepentantly behind his mask. I fished around inside my armor's storage compartment for the granola bar I'd stashed there in preparation for long, grueling hours of walking the city streets. I tore off the wrapper and placed the bar down at the entrance of the burrow, though I had no idea if she would like granola or understand the gesture.

"I think I've seen enough," I said, standing straight. "Could you put the dumpster back, Revenant? I don't think Hax is a threat to anyone right now. She's too afraid. I think I could work out some kind of crude control or communication with her, like the whole Pavlov thing, but she can't be part of my swarm. Not yet, at least. Let's leave her be for another day."

Revenant shoved the dumpster back into place with another clattering cacophony, then turned to me and said, "You're going to catch a lot of flak from the heroes of they ever find out you're trying to repurpose Leet's abandoned Tinkertech in your off-time. I'm not gonna tell them, but I'm just saying."

"What they don't know won't hurt them," I said airily.

Revenant barked out a laugh. "Sure, as far as they know. Come on, we have a terrorist to catch."

At my disapproving stare, he added in a droll voice, "Ugh… A terrorist to catch and nonlethally detain until such time as the lawful authorities can arrive and handle the situation. Happy?"

I put my hands on my hips in the classic superhero pose and nodded with exaggerated approval, eliciting another chuckle, then we set out to case the city. Perhaps it was just the part of town, but it was amazing how much people went out of their way to avoid the two of us on the streets. I had no idea whether that was because they thought we were villains, or because they knew I was a hero and Revenant was a rogue working with me. Probably a little of both, at least.

During our intermittent conversations, I asked Revenant about it, and he pointed out that the alignment of the cape likely didn't factor into it at all, since either kind of cape was going to draw fire in gang territory. I had to concede the point, there.

We continued our search in a broad loop coming back towards Prescott Park, and it was sunset by the time we were nearly back where we started. I was hungry, footsore, and frustrated that we hadn't found a single thing.

All that fled in an instant when I felt the familiar, distinctive pulse crossing through my swarm almost simultaneously, a wave of distant, compressed air.

"Explosion," Revenant said sharply, the same instant I said "Bomb."

We exchanged a look. Bakuda hadn't come for us after all. She was busy going after someone else.

I was up on Revenant's back in a flash, and we were soon tearing across rooftops, heading into the north end of the city and the source of the explosions. The Trainyard.

My heart hammered in my chest. It struck me as we charged off to meet the explosions that I might actually die today, and that might not even be the worst thing that could happen to me.

An involuntary shiver raced through me, and I clung to Revenant just a little more tightly.

A/N
Things seem to be going pretty well between Alex and Taylor, don't they? We'll see if that lasts.

Coming up next time, the thrilling final confrontation with Bakuda will commence with Regent's interlude chapter! How has Bakuda changed from canon? What's she been up to? Keen observers may have already caught the clues!