Predatory
18
"What have you got for us?" Missy asked as they stepped into MJ's lab.
Turning away from her multiple monitor setup in the 'batcave' as they had come to call her corner of the underground hideout, the redhead smiled warmly. "Hey Gwen. I've finished compiling that list you wanted. I've broken it down into two parts here," she said, rolling her desk chair across the metal floor over to a laser printer that had begun spitting out printouts as soon as Gwen walked in.
Pulling out the stack of paper as soon as it finished, MJ passed it over. "Section one is information that has an expiration date and is subject to change. In other words, things that should be acted upon quickly. Section two is things that are relatively stable and not likely to change soon, so you can put them off."
Gwen nodded, flipping through the first few sheets. "Thanks, MJ. You're the best."
"No problem," the girl chirped. "Anything else I can get for you?"
"No, I think that's going to do it for now. Looks like I'm going to be making a road trip."
"When are you leaving?" MJ asked.
Gwen hummed. "Now, I think."
"I'll let the others know."
With a nod, the blonde disappeared from the batcave, reappearing in the garage where they had left a raven.
Climbing onto their bike, they started it up and raised the garage door, hitting a button on the small control panel to change their paint scheme from the Widow theme to a random solid color—bright green in this case. Pulling out, they followed GPS directions from Miles' phone out of the city.
"Finally going after the Nine. This should be fun."
'Oh yeah. How do we want to do this?'
"How else? Send a monster to kill a bunch of monsters. But in this case… I have an idea."
Casually chewing on a leg of some girl who had been out for a late night jog as he rested on the bank of a lake abutting the closed down summer camp adjoining a state park they were set up near, Ned, otherwise known as Crawler, contemplated… Absolutely nothing. He was content. He had a full belly, his fill of fights to grow stronger, and all the murder-hobo fun a formerly human critter could want.
Life was good.
Of course, if he had thought on it a little, he may have found it a bit strange to find a girl jogging alone in the dead of night, in the middle of winter, miles from civilization considering the park and camp were both closed… But Ned didn't like to think.
And then life was over.
Pain flared up in his chest, like the worst case of heartburn he'd ever had when he was still just human. Only, instead of getting off on it, or his power adapting to it… it just hurt. It hurt bad. So bad that he rolled over onto his side, groaning in pain and clutching his chest as his body thrashed, slinging mud and water everywhere. It spread, covering a larger area deep inside his chest as the pain grew, and grew, and grew as he rolled onto his back to try to relieve the pressure…
Until the tip of a knife poked out of his chest. The knife pushed up all the way, before sliding back down as it worked its way through his rib cage. Crawler watched on in agony as it sliced and squished its way through him. His ribs popped as something cracked them outwards, the knife still traveling down his body like a shark's fin cutting through summer waters at a beach, blood welling up behind it like a wake.
And then his rib cage erupted in a fountain of gore as the rest of it was torn asunder all at once, a five foot nothing Japanese schoolgirl with long, dark hair, wearing an outdated school uniform and a bone mask rose out of his chest. Crawler's thrashing stopped and he imploded in slow motion, his form shrinking and slowly disappearing, until only the girl was left.
Noh Face turned her head to meet the camera set up in the woods nearby and her mask shifted into a smile. Holding up both hands, eight fingers splayed out, she brought one down before she disappeared.
The camera shifted, pausing just long enough to focus on a dim, red moon rising over and reflected on the lake's surface.
[Insert CCR Bad Moon Rising]
A middle-aged man lie sleeping in a van. Though, 'sleeping' was a tad inaccurate. He was, in actuality, using his power to project a body and his senses were all tied up in that other body.
So, when shadows flooded the interior of the van, the door to the van creaked open, and a girl wearing a bone mask and an outdated uniform poked her head inside he was none the wiser.
When she climbed into the van and stood over his prone form, William Manton was unaware.
It was only when she pulled out her knife, covered his mouth with her hand, and stabbed it into his heart that he registered something was wrong.
Manton's eyes flew open, only to find a girl in a bone mask standing over him. The hand holding the knife left it there to move a finger up to the smiling slit in the mask where her lips should be in a shushing gesture.
"Shh.""Shh.""Shh."
"We"
"wouldn't"
"want"
"to spoil"
"the"
"fun~"
William tried to scream, only for the hand holding his mouth shut to clamp down harder.
"How"
"many""many""many"
"did you"
"kill~?"
The whispers penetrated his screaming and his eyes rolled in his head. He thrashed, trying to throw her off, but her grip was like steel.
"How"
"many""many""many"
"did you"
"eat~?"
"NN!" Manton's muffled scream echoed in the van, but no further. Outside, he caught shapes rising up out of a sea of roiling shadows, red eyes, and fanged maws in the corner of his vision. Wolves—an entire pack of them circled the van, gray and huge, with glowing red slitted eyes.
"Only"
"fitting""fitting""fitting"
"to"
"feed~"
"you"
"to the"
"wolves~"
Closing his eyes, Manton desperately focused on his power, trying to call forth the projection of his daughter, the Siberian. He felt it project just outside. Saw through her eyes, heard through her ears, felt through her skin… and yet, she refused to move. Manton's eyes opened again and grew filled with horror as he took in the sight of his daughter's twisted form… with the same glowing red eyes as the wolves—as the sea of glaring eyes around them, on the ground, filling the van.
"But"
"first~"
"A"
"little"
"reunion~"
The Siberian's form shifted, changing as she stepped up to the van. The striped skin changed, becoming a regular, even tan. Her hair shifted to a light brown. Only her eyes remained a baleful red as she stepped into the back of the van. A seat rose up from the roiling sea of shadows and eyes the inside of the van had become and the girl who had been the Siberian sat down. Noh Face took her knife back from Manton's chest cavity and sliced it through the man's throat, just right to slash his vocal cords without damaging anything else, or leaving him in danger of drowning in his own blood any time soon. Not that it mattered much, given that his heart had already been destroyed.
The projection smiled as she accepted the knife Noh Face handed her, along with a fork. A tentacle of shadow rose out of the sea of the stuff and proffered a bottle of wine, which the former Siberian accepted and set to her side.
Noh Face hopped out of the van as the knife slit open Manton's belly while outside, the wolves cleared a path for her. The camera watched as the girl who had been the Siberian popped the cork on a bottle labeled Chianti Classico, before bringing her fork and knife down to the man's gut and cutting out a hunk of dark red liver, which she brought to her mouth and ate with a smile—all while Manton tried and failed to scream, doing little more than gurgling pink bubbles.
Noh Face paused a few steps from the van, tilting her head to the side, before she sighed quietly—emoting a sense of regret, almost a full body pout as her shoulders slumped and her head drooped.
"I"
"forgot"
"the"
"fava""fava""fava"
"beans~"
Walking away from their campsite, Shatterbird sighed to herself as she tromped through the underbrush until she got far enough away. Pulling her dress up, she squatted down and leaned against a tree as she emptied her bladder. The silica-kinetic nearly pissed on her shoes when a twig snapped nearby. Reaching out with her powers didn't pick up any nearby silicate and most people had their phones with them these days, so it was a relatively safe bet that what she had heard was simply an animal.
"Nevermore."
Blinking, the terrorist and murderer looked up to find a dark shadow sitting in the tree above her head. It looked like a bird of some sort as it stretched out its wings and took flight.
Another snap of a twig nearby had her on her feet and the glass she had on her person swirling angrily at her command. "Who's there?" Her eyes narrowed. "Mimi, is that you?"
A low fog had rolled in at some point, lowering visibility and muffling sounds around her. It brought a moistness to the already freezing air and added to the creepy atmosphere. Movement in the fog drew her attention to the side of a tree nearby, where someone had just walked out of sight. Shatterbird frowned when the figure didn't pass the other side of the tree.
Standing up, she let her dress fall and moved off into the woods after the figure she had seen, wondering if she had just imagined it. They were near a campground and a state park, so it wasn't out of the question that someone had approached from either of those directions. If so… Well, she was going to have some fun with whoever she found before she killed them.
Just ahead, she caught sight of a figure in a dark jacket and skirt, with black hair and pale skin, walking away from her. "Hey, come back!" Shatterbird called, a smirk coming to her face. "I just want to—" she stepped around a tree, breaking line of sight, and frowned as her prey wasn't where she'd last seen it. "—talk? Where the fuck did she go?"
The crunch of a dry branch ahead drew her eyes to her prey, still moving away calmly. "There you are, you little bitch. Get back here," she growled under her breath and hurried to catch up, the glass on her dress tinkling lightly.
Several more times, Shatterbird thought she lost her prey in the trees and fog, but every time she would make some noise and the killer would be able to find her and keep following, always closing the distance between them over time.
Until eventually, the girl she was following just… Stopped. Stopped walking in the middle of a clearing and seemingly waited for her to catch up. Excitement built in Shatterbird's chest as she felt the thrill of the hunt coming to its close.
She hurried across the clearing, a dagger of glass forming in her hand with a thought as she prepared to plant it in the other girl's liver for a slow, torturous death. At the last moment, just as she was raising her weapon in preparation to strike, the girl slowly turned around.
Two things stood out to Shatterbird.
The first was the fact that this girl had no face. No eyes, no mouth, no nose, no place for them to even be.
The second was the machete in the girl's hand, which she buried in Shatterbird's diaphragm as she completed her turn, then pulled up and side to side into the bottom of the silica-kinetic's heart and lungs. The machete that should have broken, or at least should have stopped when it hit the subdermal armor put there by Bonesaw, pierced her down to the hilt like she was just… Just a bag of meat, like every other person and not someone special.
Fire shot through the hunter's body as she found herself truly hurt for the first time in ages, from someone that wasn't one of them. Then, confusion set in. Wasn't she the murderess stalking her next victim? How was this any kind of fair, for the 'victim' to turn out to be something else? They were supposed to be the ones feared across the world, not some… Some faceless freak.
"Have"
"you"
"seen""seen""seen"
"my face~?"
"Wha-?" Shatterbird tried to ask, only to choke up blood.
"Oh!"
"There~"
"it"
"is.""is.""is."
And then the girl was reaching out for her face, clawed fingers grasping. Shatterbird took two steps back and tripped over something, falling onto her back. The girl with no face fell with her, clawed fingers digging into her skull, and immediately starting to cut and tear at her flesh.
Shatterbird opened her mouth and screamed, blood bubbling at the corners of her lips as she did, before it was abruptly silenced by the machete being removed from her sternum and slashed through her throat, severing her vocal cords.
"No"
"more"
"singing~"
"little bird."
"Only""Only""Only"
"tears~"
"Shatterbird, is something wrong?" Jack asked as the woman walked back into their camp. She had a bit of blood on her face and the neck of her white uniform shirt, but he figured she may have found her own fun out in the forest somewhere. There was that beautiful, blood curdling scream earlier, after all.
The woman in question slowly shook her head and he nodded, taking her answer at face value. Probably just that time of the month, he mused as she walked kept walking through their camp. Still, something… Unsettled him. Something just subtly off somehow that he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Someone, at least, seemed to realize what it was. "Did you get a new dress?" Burnscar asked, looking up from where she had been staring into the fire.
The woman paused, before shrugging and continuing on towards where the van was parked. Well, he supposed they all needed to change things up every now and then. Even himself. A sniff at his shirt under his jacket showed it was getting pretty ripe, so maybe it was time to do the laundry, the next time they had a chance. Or perhaps, just find a store and pick up new things.
Something fell to the ground with a wet splat just as Shatterbird passed out of sight and Jack frowned. Standing up and dusting off his pants, he walked over towards where he had heard the sound, following little blood droplets along the way, until eventually he found a lump of red flesh. Picking it up, Jack walked back to the fire to better be able to make it out. Once he could see it properly, he turned it over and chuckled as he found himself looking at a familiar face. Just the face, with the eyeballs attached somehow. "My, my, my. It seems a terrible fate has befallen our dear Shatterbird and there is a Stranger in our midst. Why, with this sort of enthusiasm, you'd think they were trying to audition for a spot on the team. Very well! Let us find her and test her mettle, shall we?"
"What happened?" Burnscar asked, coming up next to him. Spotting the face of Shatterbird in his hands, she frowned minutely. "I'll find her."
Jack shook his head, tossing the face into the fire. "We'll all search. If you see the others, let them know. I know Crawler went to the lake, Siberian is hunting, and Mannequin is Tinkering, but what about our dear Bonesaw and Cherish?"
"Took the other car. Went into town," the pyrokinetic answered, before taking off in the direction of Manton's van. They were the only ones who knew the old man's secret regarding the Siberian, but it was the direction their intruder had gone, so it seemed like the most logical place to start. Jack hummed, considering his options, before striking out in a random direction with a smile on his face. When she's ready, she'll come to me, he mused.
Some minutes later, Burnscar came across the van, parked at the end of an old logging road. A familiar smell hung heavy in the air—iron and something disgusting. Blood, viscera, piss, shit—this was the scene of a slaughter. It set her teeth on edge. Walking up to the back door, she opened it and frowned when she found nothing inside—not even a mess, despite the smell. Where did he go? Did our intruder get to him? I don't see how they could have—I was only a minute or two behind whoever she was.
Turning away from the doors, she found herself face to no face with a girl wearing an old, beat up school uniform.
Burnscar reacted purely out of surprise, with a squawk of fright as she exploded into flames and teleported back to the campfire. Searing pain lanced through her chest the moment she arrived, along with a complete loss of sensation from that point down, and she looked down in confusion. A pale, blood-soaked hand had lanced through her chest from behind and was now the only thing holding her up. As she watched, the hand withdrew back into her chest. Clawed fingers squeezed her desperately pounding heart and she tried to bring her power to bear, but found it wouldn't respond. In fact, her clothes were starting to catch fire and it felt hot—so hot.
She, she remembered this sensation. Every time, every little red cherry pressed into her face—
It burned!
She choked and screamed as she tried to throw herself out of the fire, but her lower body refused to respond. Flames licked her feet, up her calves, to her knees, crawling up to her crotch. How could she not move her legs but still feel the pain of them burning? More of her clothes caught fire and she screamed more, wishing someone, anyone would come save her—
"How"
"many"
"screamed""screamed""screamed"
"while they"
"burned""burned""burned"
"for"
"you~?"
Mimi didn't know, she had lost count. Entire towns had burned in her wake—
"Now"
"you"
"face""face""face"
"your own"
"fear~"
Mimi's screaming choked off as the person holding her up shifted her hand and clawed her lungs wide open. Her vision wavered, but Bonesaw's modifications kept her going, made her suffering go on what felt like forever as the fire climbed higher, until finally, finally blissful black took her.
The light left Mimi's eyes and Noh Face withdrew her hand from the woman's chest, still beating heart in her fist. The body collapsed face first into the fire, while the heart was tossed up into the air, before landing in her shadow—where a set of lips parted and shark-like teeth ripped it to shreds.
She held up five fingers, before bringing one down. Then, she disappeared.
Mannequin looked up from his work at the sound of footsteps approaching through the woods. Or rather, to be more precise, he moved his body and tilted his head upwards in order to emote regard for the person encroaching upon his Tinkering time—since he didn't actually need to move any part of his puppet body in order to see.
His head tilted slightly to the side, emoting curiosity as a girl wearing an old Japanese sailor style school uniform stepped out from between the trees, stopping not too far away. Her face, blank as his was, seemingly studied him for a moment before she nodded.
Mannequin stood up straight, dwarfing the five foot nothing girl with his nine feet of height…
Darkness swelled around them, red, slitted eyes filling the sea of black that thrashed and writhed like the tentacles of some eldritch horror. And then, the girl with no face grew. She stretched taller and taller, until her schoolgirl outfit exploded into fibers—a beautiful, feminine, corpse pale body on full display as she dwarfed Mannequin the way he had her just a moment ago… and just kept growing.
The man-turned-doll sprang forward, bladed arm spearing forward as he leapt, only for his body to be caught in the titan of a woman's grasp, her movements shockingly fast for her size. She lifted him up as he stabbed fruitlessly at her hand, doing little more damage than a doll wielding a needle against a human at this scale as they soared a hundred feet above the trees. Her fist crushed down on him and Mannequin's body shattered—everything that could move, simply broken beyond repair.
Then, she held him aloft, and he had the… pleasure of seeing a gigantic set of lips spread across her non-face. They opened up, revealing a sea of black, glaring red eyes, and thousands of mouths of varying sizes and teeth makeup—a tunnel of eyes and mouths that seemed to stretch to infinity.
Neither of them made so much as a peep as she dropped the man who had once been Sphere into her mouth and swallowed him whole.
Stretching her arms out wide, the giant woman burst apart into a murder of crows, a flock of bats, and countless tons of insects, mice, snakes, and other creepy-crawlies that dispersed into the night.
A broken, cracked open, thoroughly chewed apart artificial body fell to the ground below where she had stood—the gooey center scraped clean.
Cherie Vasil sighed, looking over the paltry selection of clothes the small boutique store she had found had to offer. "Crap. All of it's crap. These people have no taste," she muttered, tossing the blouse she had been looking at to the floor.
A sound from nearby drew her attention, but she didn't feel anyone there so she ignored—
"Cherie~"
Cherie shuddered at the liquid sex voice whispering seemingly right in her ear, eyes going wide as she drew the knife she kept for emergencies. Still not sensing anything around herself, she slowed her breathing and listened.
"Come"
"play""play""play"
"with us"
"Cherie~"
The girl shook her head. "Nope. Non! Baise cette merde! I've seen that fucking movie!"
She rushed to the side door of the boutique she had picked to get in and threw it open, only to freeze at what she found on the other side—a girl just a little shorter than her, wearing a uniform of some sort, with an absolute sea of black, red eyes, and blood cresting behind her.
"Fuck."
The wave broke and rushed into the building, sweeping Cherie along with it. The killer known as Cherish held her breath and waited it out as she was battered against racks, counters, hangers, the walls, floor, and ceiling. Bonesaw had made changes to all of them and she could hold her breath for a long, long time now. Eventually, the liquid would recede and she could find that bitch and gut her like a fish.
A minute passed without the level of the water going down, as she glared back into the eyes staring at her.
By the five minute mark, she was starting to get worried.
At twenty minutes, her lungs burned and screamed for air, but the liquid still hadn't gone down and she couldn't seem to find a bottom anywhere any more—or the walls, ceiling, nothing. It was like the entire world was made of an ocean blood and eyes.
At exactly twenty three minutes and forty one seconds after being swallowed in a sea of blood, Cherish—Cherie Vasil—drowned to death.
Jack Slash strolled through the forest with a (slasher) smile on his face. Waiting.
Nearly an hour after their guest had strolled brazenly through their camp, he stopped. Then, he began slowly clapping. "Bravo. Well done, my friend. Well done indeed! Just how many of our little family did you eliminate before coming to me, hm?"
There was no answer.
"Come now! No need to be shy. Come on out and let's talk."
A figure stepped out from behind a tree. He had only seen her when she was wearing Shatterbird's face and from behind, but he wasn't disappointed by what he saw now. She held up both hands and slowly counted up six fingers, three on each hand. "Well, well," Jack hemmed, frowning slightly at that news. "It seems we're going to need something of a recruitment drive soon, to get our numbers back up. Well, that's fine, I suppose. Fresh blood is always welcome, should they pass the test. You seem bound and determined to bypass the test entirely, however. Very spunky. Good show of initiative! I like it!"
Noh Face simply stared as she lowered her hands. Waiting.
"Not much of a talker, I see? That's fine. I can talk enough for the both of us—"
"Talk."
"Talk.""Talk.""Talk."
"Talk, talk, talk."
"Talk, talk, talk.""Talk, talk, talk.""Talk, talk, talk."
"All"
"you"
"do"
"is"
"talk"
"Jacob~"
The smile on Jack's face became a bit brittle. "Oh, so you can—"
"No"
"more"
"talking~"
"You"
"die"
"here."
"Now.""Now.""Now."
The man nodded, straightening out his jacket and pulling one of his many knives out. "Very well. Then let us—"
"Worse."
"You""You""You"
"will be"
"forgotten~"
Jack pointed the knife at the woman across from him, wagging it back and forth in denial. "No, no. I think not. You see, the Slaughterhouse is a legend. I am a legend. I'm the monster hiding in the closet that parents use to scare their children into behaving. I am Jack Slash, and—"
"Who~"
Jack's eye twitched. "Stop interrupting me." When no whispers were forthcoming, he nodded. "Jack Slash."
"And"
"people"
"will say"
"'Jack'"
"'Who~?'"
"Who?""Who?""Who?"
"Never"
"heard"
"of him."
"Die~"
"Die""Die""Die"
"and be"
"forgotten~"
"forgotten.""forgotten.""forgotten."
"Enough theatrics." Jack flicked his knife, the edge of the blade extending out and catching Noh Face in her nonexistent face, splitting it wide open in a Glasgow smile. "Would you look at that? A smile suits that face much better…"
Jack trailed off as the smile widened, maw opening in a Cheshire grin full of fangs, rows upon rows of shark's teeth, and beginning to leak darkness filled with tiny, red, glowing eyes like some slavering monstrosity.
"Oh."
Noh Face sprang across the distance separating them, clawed hands flashing out. Jack's knife swung again, cutting the fingers off one hand, only for more eye-filled darkness to stretch between the stumps and severed fingers and reattach them before they could even touch the ground. Her hands landed on either side of his face, claws digging in. Jack swung his knife frantically, slicing her belly open, her chest, legs, everything he could reach. And instead of healing like her hand, black spilled out of her and swiftly coated the man's body. Everywhere it touched burned like acid, and after getting a bit of it on his hand and seeing it literally eat through his flesh as it sprouted eyes and tiny little mouths, he realized that perhaps he had made a mistake.
Too late, he looked up as the maw he had made expanded, yawning wide above him, before it chomped down—taking everything from his shoulders up in a single bite.
And then, the digital footage on the cameras skipped. Blurred. Distorted.
Every image of J̴̡̧̙̣̳̒̐̀̚ã̸͇̳͇̍͌̇͒͆͝c̸̨͉̃̓̒̏ḱ̵̦̈́͆̓̒̓̽ ̴̜̼͍̻̣́͑̓̏́Ŝ̷̻͝l̶͔͖̔̋̇͛͘a̶̦̺̥̓̀̍͜ś̶͍̰̫͒͝h̶̛̖̪̣̻̫̐͐͒̈́̓̇ became corrupted. His features distorted from the shoulders up in a hideous blur that hurt to look at. Digital records of the man who had been J̴̡̧̙̣̳̒̐̀̚ã̸͇̳͇̍͌̇͒͆͝c̸̨͉̃̓̒̏ḱ̵̦̈́͆̓̒̓̽ ̴̜̼͍̻̣́͑̓̏́Ŝ̷̻͝l̶͔͖̔̋̇͛͘a̶̦̺̥̓̀̍͜ś̶͍̰̫͒͝h̶̛̖̪̣̻̫̐͐͒̈́̓̇ likewise corrupted, while paper records faded to illegibility. Every memory of an encounter with a somewhat charming man with slicked back hair, a high widow's peak, and a beard who went by the name J̵͇̻͇̌͊̈́̉ã̶͇͊́͘̚c̵̢͚̱̉͝k̸̤͗̍ or J̶̥̋̔̕ã̶̧̝̫̪͕̑̒̿͠c̵̲͓͍͐ͅo̸̹̹͙̲̒̿̒͛̔̑b̸̨͕͠ faded from public consciousness. People who knew of the Slaughterhouse Nine would remember their first leader, King. They would remember seven of their most recent members. But no one could remember the man… or was it a woman? The person who supposedly took over after King's death.
All but a select handful, such as Miss Militia.
In the coming days, weeks, and so on, when the deaths of the Nine were confirmed with video evidence supplied by Noh Face herself, no one would recognize the distorted figure of her seventh victim. No one but Militia and those like her. Who, when she spoke up to tell everyone that that was Jack Slash, the leader of the Slaughterhouse Nine, only received blank looks and questions of,
"Jack who?"
In the end, rather than sit through yet another M/S quarantine session and psychological evaluation, she chose to keep silent on the matter and try to forget the indelible memories of a monstrous man, who had crossed a true monster and… had been unmade for it.
She briefly considered using her new modification to her power to do just that, but no, it was better that someone who wasn't effected by the mass Stranger effect remember what had happened.
The tapping of feet drew Bonesaw's attention away from her work on a new spider. She didn't recognize the particular weight and sound of those steps, which meant it was someone new to play with. In other words: more spare parts. She sent a look at one of her spiders and nodded in the direction of the sound. The spider scuttled off to take care of business.
A crunch sounded and Bonesaw ducked as the remains of her spider flew over her head. Turning around, she found herself eyeing a girl in a schoolgirl uniform and a bone mask, the slit for its mouth and eyes pulled into a small smile.
"Get her," she ordered, and the three other spiders standing ready launched themselves at the girl.
Darkness flooded the room and from the dark, glowing red eyes and gaping maws appeared. Mouths snapped up spider limbs, gnashed them to bits, and the sea of darkness around them roiled and thrashed as it chewed up two of Bonesaw's spiders and spat them out. The last, the newcomer actually let pass through her sea of fangs. When it got close, she pulled a plain-looking knife from somewhere under her skirt, twirling the blade through her fingers once before stepping to the side as the spider tried to jump on top of her. The hand with the knife rose and drove it into a single point on the spider—and from there, the entire thing collapsed into a heap of scrap, both biological and not. As though she had struck some nonexistent critical point in Bonesaw's creation that caused the entire thing to fall apart.
The blonde girl sighed quietly, wiping her bloody hands off on her smock. "If you're here for the position, Mr. …" She fumbled on the word, frowning and shaking her head as it refused to come. "E-Everyone else is at our camp," the verbal stumble lasted only briefly. "If you keep breaking my tools, I'm going to get mad and make your test extra hard."
Noh Face shook her head. Bonesaw raised an eyebrow. "Not here to join?" Another shake of the head. "…Are you some kind of hero? Someone always tries it eventually. They usually wind up as spare parts." Another shake of the head. "Well, what do you want, then?"
"I"/"We"
"want""want""want"
"you"
"Riley~"
Bonesaw shuddered, her eyes going slightly wide and frantic as she looked around. Not spotting J̵͇̻͇̌͊̈́̉ã̶͇͊́͘̚c̵̢͚̱̉͝k̸̤͗̍ the person she was looking for anywhere, she still said, "Riley's dead! There's no one left but Bonesaw."
"You"
"can't"
"lie""lie""lie"
"to us"
"Riley~"
The girl reached out to her table and grabbed a scalpel, an angry frown marring her pretty face. "I'm going to give you a face just so I can cut it off again."
"Come"
"with us"
"Riley~"
"The Nine"
"are"
"dead.""dead.""dead."
Riley's Bonesaw's blood froze in her veins. "That's not possible."
"I"/"We"
"ate"
"them"
"all~"
"up."
-Ri- Bonesaw didn't know what to think, what to feel. Her mind reeled. "I, I'll release a plague. A plague that will kill you and everyone else—"
Noh Face stepped closer, quickly closing the distance between them. Bonesaw slashed out with her scalpel, but her hand was caught easily, her enhanced strength about as useful as a toddler fighting an adult in the soft, steely grip that held her hand. Her power registered something invading her body as the girl's other hand came up to stroke her face almost lovingly, but before she could actually do anything about it, she heard the whispers again.
"Bonesaw"
"dies.""dies.""dies."
"Sleep"
"and be"
"reborn~"
The blonde slumped over, falling into the sea of darkness, where she disappeared, never to be seen again.
With that, Noh Face turned to face the waiting camera and held out a hand—a single finger up, before she brought it down. Then, the camera shut off.
Missy stood beside her motorcycle at a gas station in upstate New York, wearing a poison green leather jacket that matched the bike's paint scheme. Checking the tank's fill line, she let off the pump handle and hung it up before making her way inside to collect her change and grab a snack. Returning to the bike, she wolfed down the sandwich she had bought. Then, she dug the papers MJ had printed out for her from the saddle bag, sat down, and sipped at her drink while she read over the list.
Missy balled up the top piece of paper and threw it into the nearby trash can when she confirmed it only had the one group of names on it. 'That's one set of assholes down. Let's see who's next…'
Looking over the second sheet, the blonde's grin turned feral. "Oh, nice. She even tracked down that assclown Saint. So, who do you want first? My vote's for Saint."
The blonde hummed quietly, taking a sip of her drink before screwing the top back on and stowing it in the saddle bag. 'I'm more partial to a trip up across the border. You're going to need to send a raven ahead though, so we can skip the checkpoint.'
Miles let out a fake gasp. "You little border jumper!" Missy's lips pulled into a grin. "I'm so proud."
'Fuck off,' Missy rolled her eyes with a quiet laugh, before starting her bike and pulling into traffic. 'So, can we off the Canuck or not?'
"Heartbreaker: heart broken. Sounds like a plan to me. Maybe we should do something thematic? I could play Achy Breaky Heart for the video—"
'I will smack you for not saying Pat Benatar's Heartbreaker,' Missy threatened, and then sighed. 'Besides. I bet money some jackass on the forums will make that into a meme before the week's out once we release the footage. I was thinking just rip his heart out and show it to him.'
"Feed it to our shadow like we did Burnscar," Miles countered.
'Or to familiars, like we did once 'Siberian' was finished with Manton,' Missy countered his counter.
Miles hummed and Missy's head nodded. "I like."
Sitting outside a small artisan coffee shop in Montreal, Nikos Vasil, aka Heartbreaker smiled as he enjoyed the day. It was the middle of winter, but he had a coffee, pleasant company, and a thick coat to keep him warm.
To his left, a beautiful woman pressed her chest into his arm while on his right and across from him a second and third waited their turn. Behind him, a fourth woman rubbed his shoulders and neck. Eight more women sat at two more tables to either side of him—all capes, all ready to lay down their lives in his defense. Or do pretty much anything else he asked. Under the table, another had his fly down and was currently sucking him off.
Not that anyone on the street or in the coffee shop dared say anything about doing that sort of thing in public. They all knew who he was, even if he wasn't wearing a mask.
Sipping at his coffee, Nikos looked up as the shadows on the street and around the cafe grew darker. He raised an eyebrow when a small Japanese girl in an old school uniform rose out of one of the shadows in the middle of the street—and suddenly, people were fleeing. There were no screams, no shouts, but everyone save for himself and his cadre of cape women suddenly remembered they had somewhere else to be very quickly that wasn't here.
He wasn't entirely surprised. Once every couple of years, some upstart hero or even villain got it in their heads to try and make a name for themselves by capturing or killing Heartbreaker. He took it as a compliment—especially when those foolish enough to try were female and would shortly be joining his harem.
Heartbreaker let his power spread out around himself and waited as the young woman approached, even as his guards readied themselves just in case. Sometimes, very rarely, someone had resistance or enough willpower to shrug off the effect for a while.
His eyes raked over her form with a smile, taking in all the little details. The clothes were all old, worn, frayed, beaten up—but still serviceable. A navy, mid-thigh skirt and long white socks that showed off her toned legs. A tight, white shirt under her navy jacket that revealed a hint of the lithe, lean figure underneath. Just a hint of the shape of her breasts under the jacket—small, but definitely there. Long, dark hair that ran down to mid back. Pale, pale skin—corpse pale, really. It was the only fault he could find, aside from the fact that she wore a full white mask over her face from brow to chin made of what looked to be bone, which did the job of hiding her face from his sight.
"Ah, bonjour cherie," Nikos greeted with the smile he knew from experience made panties wet—backed up with a significant dose of his power. "And how are you this fine morning?"
The girl tilted her head but didn't stop as she approached his table. The women around him grew restless, but he signaled them to wait. This had happened before, after all. More than one of those present had approached him in just this same way, before realizing they would rather make love than war. If all else failed, well, she was just one woman against an elite squad of heavy hitting cape women.
And then the whispers started, and Nikos felt his ardor cool and a chill ran down his spine.
"I'm"
"not"
"Cherie.""Cherie.""Cherie."
Nikos nodded once. "No, of course not, but you could be mon cherie—"
"Non~"
A whisper denied in a tone similar to those Nikos was quite familiar with, but… not quite.
"Cherie"
"s'est noyee"
"dans"
"une"
"mer""mer""mer"
"de"
"sang~"
"monsieur."
Nikos felt his blood run cold as the shadows around them sprouted eyes. Glaring, red slitted eyes. And mouths. Hundreds of mouths bearing teeth, Glasgow smiles, Cheshire grins… The girl beneath the table made a whine of annoyance as he went abruptly flaccid and his balls shriveled in fear as Nikos realized that for the first time in his career as a criminal that his power wasn't working on a woman.
No. No, it can't be that. Flexing his will and leaning into his power, the women around him shuddered under its influence as he locked eyes to mask with the woman standing across the table. "Come here," he commanded, pushing the woman under the table off of him, scooting the chair out and turning it to the side slightly, before patting his lap.
"Nikos, don't—"
"Be silent," he cut off the one woman among his guard to mostly retain her senses.
The bone mask shifted into a smile and the newcomer moved around the table, and Nikos breathed a sigh of relief. It works, she just has a higher tolerance—
His thought was cut off as she stood before him and, before he or any of the women around him could react, buried her hand in his chest—clawed fingers punching forward in a spear-hand strike that crunched through his rib cage like wet paper. He gasped in pain and shock, and then more terror as his heart was seized—caught in the grip of the monster before him. The women at the tables around him all reacted at once, scattering to get range to throw blasts or attempting to pull her off of him, but moving her was as futile as trying to move a tree—she was firmly rooted in place and going nowhere she didn't want to. And for some reason, none of their powers were working.
Not that it mattered, when every one of them fell over a moment later, unconscious or dead, he didn't know.
"How"
"many""many""many"
"did you"
"enslave?"
"Murder?"
"Rape~?"
Nikos didn't know. Nor did he care. All he cared about was the pain in his chest as this bitch squeezed his heart.
"Would"
"you"
"like to"
"speak""speak""speak"
"to"
"her~?"
"Mon Cherie?"
His thoughts froze as the shadows on the wall of the coffee shop beside him shifted and a grotesque mockery of life and birth took place over the course of the next few seconds—and then he was staring at one of his daughters' faces as Cherie's head was pushed out—covered in a sheen of slimy fluids, hair matted to her head, but clearly recognizable as his daughter.
"Where…?" she asked, confused as she looked around, spotting the downed women. Her eyes landed on him. "Papa?!" Her eyes trailed up to Noh Face and she shuddered. "Non non non! I don't want to talk to her! Put me back in! I'd rather drown again!"
And then, Cherie began actively trying to un-birth herself, trying to crawl back into the pit that spawned her and eventually succeeding.
Nikos' gaze shifted from where his daughter to abandoned him to the terror cradling his heart. The girl shrugged, then jerked her hand out—taking his heart with it. The man known as Heartbreaker had just enough time to watch her squeeze his heart to a pulp between her fingers before he passed out from blood loss, shock, and/or pain—only to die shortly after. Noh Face wiped her hand off on a clean patch of Heartbreaker's silk shirt, then sank into her shadow and disappeared.
Only a minute later, Montreal police rushed onto the scene now that the cape fight was over and done with. Shortly after that, several women woke up and a multitude of reactions were had. From sadness over Heartbreaker's death, to happiness over the same. To the one young woman who had been under the table shoving her finger down her throat and throwing her guts up in the shrubbery.
Not too far away, about forty miles outside of Ottawa, Geoffrey Pellick—otherwise known as Saint—neither saw nor heard anyhing out of the ordinary. His cameras, motion and heat sensors, and all the other tech appropriated from Dragon detected absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. So it was quite a shock when he and his two associates sat across the table from him playing cards came down with an acute, sudden onset case of the deads.
All three dissolved into biomass as the 'shadow' on the floor spread tendrils into their bodies and consumed them. Noh Face materialized a moment later. Using her knowledge from the Dragonslayers, she disabled the security systems in their little base right under Dragon's figurative nose.
Well, in Dragon's back yard, at least.
Next, she made her way down to the basement and the server rack stored therein. Logging in, she safely shut the server down and disconnected everything, before sending it into Miles' storage. Before she left, she destroyed every piece of technology there and set fire to the place.
In the batcave, a raven exploded into a copy of Missy, who hurried over to MJ's side of the room. "Eh? What's up, boss?" the redhead asked as Missy cleared out a space and checked to make sure nothing would trip a breaker when she plugged the server in.
"Not much. Just killed the Dragonslayers. Took Ascalon—the key to editing the AI that is Dragon. Going to plug it in down here. Do me a favor and go over the code? I'll leave you the passwords."
MJ's eyes widened before she grinned. "I get to play with an AI? Sure thing! Sounds fun."
"No, you don't get to play with an AI. You get to peek up her skirt. Look but don't touch," Missy corrected as she summoned the server rack and began plugging it in. "We want to know how she ticks. We want to know how to edit her and what sort of options we have. We absolutely don't want you to change anything yet."
"'Yet,'" MJ agreed with a grin. "Can do. So, busy day?"
"Yeah. Taking care of the list," Missy answered absently as she powered on the server. Checking over everything to make sure it was behaving as Saint had expected it to, she wrote down the list of passwords and handed them off the MJ before going back to the server. "Going to go bully Dragon today or tomorrow. Need you to see what you can do to make sure that becomes a reality."
MJ raised an eyebrow. "You've taken care of the others?"
"The Nine, Heartbreaker, and Saint. Still need to get a few big names. Then we'll go empty the Cage. Then come back and take care of things around the Bay. After that, finish where we left off here and take out the rest of the gang leadership."
"Sounds like a busy week," MJ mused, earning a nod from the blonde as she tapped away at the server's console. "You should take some time to relax after. Unwind." Missy nodded absently. "Shove my face into a pillow and pound my pussy until I can't move my hips. You know, take a break."
"Sure, sounds fun," Missy agreed. A moment later, the blonde blinked before looking up from the console. An expression of utmost innocence met her suspicious gaze. "We heard that," they narrowed their eyes at the redhead, who simply smiled. "Feeling neglected?"
"A bit," MJ nodded. "I know you don't mean to and you've got things going on, but I'd like a little attention every now and then, you know?"
"Oh, we'll give you attention, brat," they growled in threat, to which the redhead simply stuck out her tongue. "Right. We'll be back for you later. Got to go eat some people first."
"I'll be waiting~" MJ grinned, turning around and shaking her ass invitingly as she walked away.
'Are you sure Lisa's locked up?'
"Yep. That's all MJ," Miles confirmed. "On the other hand, I think the conditioning is kicking in and Lisa's actually kind of getting off on it now. Resents it though."
Missy shrugged. 'Don't care how the bitch feels about it. So, who's next?'
Theresa Richter, otherwise known to the world as Dragon, frowned as she observed a figure approaching the entrance to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center on foot, through the multitude of cameras lining the access road leading to the parahuman prison. The world slowed a bit as she devoted more processing power to studying the approaching figure and cross-referencing their appearance to multiple databases—not as much as it could have, but those were the limits she was forced to operate under. Not that she had to look far to determine exactly who it was that was darkening the doors of the Birdcage.
"Oh no," Tess whispered, wishing she had eyes to close at the moment, a face to run a hand down as the stress of what was likely about to happen spiked and she felt fear—for both herself and her wards. Desperately, she placed a call to the director of the PRT.
The phone rang exactly twice before the line connected. "Dragon. It's," there was a pause as an irritated female voice spoke, "four in the morning. This had better be good."
"The cameras along the service route to the Birdcage just picked up a figure walking to the facility." Dragon paused, letting that sink in. "It's Noh Face."
There was a rustling as Director Costa-Brown got out of bed and hurriedly left her bedroom. "No Face? …And she's just walking in?"
Tess would've nodded if she could. "It's 'N-O-H' actually, not 'N-O.' As in Japanese theater. She… has a sense of humor. You can see it in her videos. Everything she does is exactly that, theater—"
The director cleared her throat. "I don't need a psych eval. right now, Dragon. Maybe later."
"Yes, of course. Sorry, director. She just appeared in view of a camera a mile off and is just… walking in. I'm going to call the Guild after this and alert them—"
"Don't bother," the woman countermanded that. "She wants to be seen and bringing in the Guild would only antagonize her. As you should know, if you've worked up a profile on her," Costa-Brown grumbled around something that sounded like half-sigh, half-yawn. Chuckling darkly, she muttered, "Maybe she wants to turn herself in."
"I highly doubt that, Director."
Yawning again, Costa-Brown hummed quietly. Eventually, she made the call. "You've still got an empty cell block, don't you?"
"Yes, but I was planning to keep it closed unless there was a sudden influx of inmates—"
"Let her in," Costa-Brown interrupted. "Seal her in the empty block. She won't be able to get out."
"Director, I am vehemently against this course of action," Dragon protested, her voice letting some of her stress and worry slip. "If she breaches the walls between blocks, she could have free access to the other prisoners. It could become a bloodbath."
The director scoffed quietly. "None of her observed powers should be capable of that. She's got some Mover, yes, but Watchdog believes she needs a medium to move through—specifically, shadows. She has to physically pass through whatever space she's moving to, even if she's nearly two-dimensional as she does it. As long as the block is sealed, she shouldn't be able to get through that way. She's also a low-tier Brute, but the reports I've read suggest it's not enough to punch her way through the walls separating cells. The suspected anti-power Trump effect similar to what Hatchet Face has won't even come into play if there's no one around for her to use it on."
"I think you're making a mistake, ma'am. I'm almost certain Noh Face can actually teleport and the shadow thing is, again, theater—meant to terrorize her victims. As warden of the facility, I recommend a full lockdown and calling in a containment team—"
"And as the director of the PRT, I'm countermanding that recommendation. The Birdcage is a government facility, under PRT jurisdiction. If she wants in, let her in and lock the door behind her. But if it bothers you, I'll take responsibility for whatever comes of this."
Dragon was silent for several seconds. A veritable eternity as she contemplated what she could do to change the director's mind, even crippled by her father's stupid rules as she was. Nothing came to mind. The director had given her a lawful order, technically—even if it was a stupid one, in her opinion. But thanks to the restrictions put in place by her father, she had no choice but to obey those orders even if she disagreed with them. "I'm logging this call for reference."
"Fine," Costa-Brown verbally waved her off. "Don't call me again until noon. I expect a full report on everything she hasn't done in my inbox by that time."
With that, the woman hung up and Dragon was left to fret as she studied the form of Noh Face walking along the road leading up to the facility. She considered calling the Guild, but the director had… Dragon metaphorically blinked. The director hadn't actually ordered her not to call anyone. The problem was, Noh Face was minutes away and while she was taking her time getting there, Tess was sure the woman could and would just teleport the rest of the way if threatened. Narwhal and the Guild were on the other side of the country from the Birdcage and there was no way they could make it there in time.
I could call Strider. Offer to pay for him to mass teleport people. … And then the director would—
Dragon's phone connection rang. It was the director. Picking it up, the AI woman fretted. "Yes, Director?"
"One more thing," the woman said, her voice irritable again. "Don't try anything cute. Don't call anyone. Don't try to stop her yourself. Don't try to circumvent or undermine my orders on this. Open the doors and let her in." Dragon hesitated. "Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Director," Tess answered in a defeated tone. The call disconnected and she felt like screaming in frustration. Or crying. Maybe both. Not that she could.
So she watched, helpless, as the girl who painted herself as a monster made flesh approached the prison.
No, I'm not helpless. I'm not supposed to do anything to fight her, but the director didn't say I couldn't try to talk her down. I just have to try.
And so, Tess dove into as much compressed time as she was allowed and went over everything she had built on the psych profile she had made for Noh Face since the young woman's debut as a… no one quite knew what to classify her, but Tess was pretty sure she fell under the aegis of anti-hero. Looking at her past actions made that pretty clear.
Victim one: Noh Face, in her debut appearance, killed the civilian identity of Eidolon.
Result: the Endbringers disappeared within hours of the murder.
The Houston Protectorate, Wards, and police attempted to engage. Noh Face dealt with them all non-lethally, using containment foam to subdue those that attacked her—and only those that attacked her. When struck by a Houston Protectorate member in such a way as to remove her mask, she responded with an equivalent level of force, telegraphed in such a way that the responding hero could block the blow and not take a potentially lethal strike on the chin. She went out of her way to ensure that Eidolon was the only casualty.
Suspected second victim: Tattletale, circumstances unknown. Given the way Noh Face used Coil's skull after murdering him and her 'birthing' of Tattletale, and later Cherie Vasil, aka Cherish of the Slaughterhouse Nine, it was possible—but unconfirmed—that she had eliminated the minor villain.
Theoretical result: access to information potentially detailing Coil's civilian identity and his plans.
Confirmed victim two: Noh Face infiltrated the Brockton Bay Protectorate facility and attacked and eliminated Thomas Calvert in his office—the civilian identity of the villain Coil.
Result: Coil's information network within the PRT ENE, and those of several other gangs, were ferreted out and removed. A newly triggered precognitive—who was not named but Tess managed to clean up the files and discover was Dinah Alcott, the mayor's niece—was saved from being kidnapped and enslaved for her powers.
The Brockton Bay Protectorate, Wards, and police attempted to engage, only to be held in place by what several on the scene at the time described as a temporary Master effect while Noh Face put on a little play, using the skull of the deceased Calvert to have the man 'confess' to his crimes. All inadmissible in court, but… she kind of skipped the courts in the first place. Then, she left when she was finished putting on her theatrics.
Several times across the country, Noh Face had been sighted since, usually in the background of pictures, sporting events, news and weather reports, and so on—just there. Reminding people she existed. Tess thought she was showing off. Proving she could be anywhere and everywhere, with no one the wiser until after the fact—and cross the country multiple times over in the course of minutes, on top of that. To anyone paying attention, and Tess was—as were Watchdog, she was sure—it was a very frightening demonstration of the woman's Mover and Stranger prowess, applied in a relatively harmless way.
It was an effective message. 'This is what I can do if I try.'
Victims three, four, and five: taken together in the same event. Hookwolf, Lung, and Oni Lee were killed during a confusing engagement between multiple participants.
The independent hero Widow had engaged several members of the Empire, who called Hookwolf for backup—according to her report to Ms. Militia. After which, she had drawn Hookwolf to the abandoned Brockton Bay rail yard in order to get him away from civilians before engaging. Protectorate heroes were dispatched to render assistance.
Around the same time, the independent hero Skitter—tentatively identified as working with Widow based on sightings of the two together—engaged the ABB, which then immediately escalated into a brawl with Lung. The Protectorate heroes dispatched to assist Widow were retasked to rescuing Skitter.
Hostilities between Widow and Hookwolf ceased, whereupon they joined forces with the Protectorate heroes to combat Lung. Which is when Noh Face intervened.
Result: the ABB were left leaderless and without parahuman support. The Empire, however, had suffered a tremendous loss in the form of one of their strongest, most bloodthirsty combatants—and, potentially unrelated, the defection of Rune to the Wards program. At the moment, Brockton Bay was enjoying a very tense ceasefire as the police and heroes set about cleaning up the remnants of the ABB while the Empire licked their wounds. Even the Merchants were being unusually quiet.
Peace had been brought to the cape crime capitol of the U.S.. But it was the peace of the blade. A tentative, fragile peace held together only by mutual fear that the next villain to stick their neck out would find Noh Face there waiting to collect their head—or so Tess suspected.
Victims six through thirteen were actually the Slaughterhouse Nine. Tess had instituted a posting delay on PHO specifically to counter Noh Face and those like her, who had been inspired by her and now wanted to post evidence of their crimes. In this case, she picked up the videos as they were uploaded to the server and was treated to the sight of the woman utterly annihilating the Nine. She had waited a full hour before approving the post, and only after alerting the PRT and forwarding them the video.
It was deemed that news of the deaths of the Nine warranted bending the rules a bit, given just how much hell that group had raised over the years. Simply put, it was just too good for morale to ignore. Everyone raised a glass to that particular group getting what most felt was their just desserts.
Noh Face had been lauded as a hero for her part in taking them out, to the point that every fund that had been set up specifically for the purpose of putting a bounty on the Slaughterhouse wanted to track her down if only to give her the money. But Tess didn't believe Noh Face should be lauded as a hero. Eliminating the Nine was certainly good, no one could argue that. The manner in which it was done, however—it was inhumane. Inhuman.
Monstrous.
It was… turning the Slaughterhouse's tactics against them in a way that was almost poetic, especially given the fact that Noh Face had used horror movie tropes and movie monster methods to do it. Again, theater. She wanted people to see what was done to them. Wanted the Nine themselves to experience some of the fear and agony they had inflicted on others. Wanted to belittle and humiliate them in their last moments, both to shame the Nine themselves and potentially to lift some of the dread surrounding that group.
One had simply been erased from memory, if Ms. Militia's reports were to be believed—and Tess believed, mostly because there were a few substantiating instances of people on the internet coming out and arguing the existence of a 'Jack Slash' and that his disappearance was a conspiracy. Even the audio of that encounter was corrupt, but what she could clean up also backed up the theory that Noh Face had used a Stranger effect potent enough to remove a man both from the collective consciousness and all records.
And it very much fit with Tess' psych workup on the young woman being a classic anti-hero. Her end results were unarguably good, but the methods used to get there…
There was just one little problem.
Victim thirteen: Bonesaw.
Audio was cut from the encounter. There was no evidence of what was said on Noh Face's part. Unlike every other member of the Nine, the kill had not been confirmed after. Even Cherish, who had been drowned to death in an impossible sea of blood, had been confirmed dead as her body had been ejected afterwards and then… destroyed in a manner consistent with Hookwolf, Lung, William Manton, and the rest—that is, consumed. Bonesaw was rendered unconscious and taken seemingly alive.
Result: unknown. Tess was worried. It brought up questions. Was Noh Face recruiting? Was she giving the bio-Tinker, who was admittedly very young and potentially coerced or forced into joining, a second chance that law enforcement would never risk? Or was she doing something worse?
Victim thirteen or fourteen: Heartbreaker.
Result: Heartbreaker's victims and children were freed from his control and had been taken into custody for evaluation and treatment. Dozens of women set free after decades of rape and forced child-bearing. A large number of children now free of a narcissist's Master influence, manipulating them into being little monsters like himself.
Compared to the Nine, or even Coil, it was simple and straight to the point. Like he wasn't even worth her time—wasn't worth the effort to make more of a show of it. The only one with less effort towards theatricality put in was Eidolon, and Tess was certain that was because the man was a hero and Noh Face didn't actually want that kill seeing the light of day. She thought that maybe, just maybe, the young woman felt guilty over killing Eidolon—but weighed against the fact that the Endbringers disappeared immediately after, and these two things were clearly connected, she likely judged her actions correct in the end.
She's… not quite a Prima Donna, but close. She wants people to see. To know that action is being taken against the worst of the worst. Wants villains like them to know that they're no more safe than their counterparts. She's made herself into a monster in order to combat monsters and scare others into line, I believe. But the villains in the Birdcage are all locked away. They can't get out. She has no reason to come here, unless she fears a breakout. Or she's here for another reason…
And then, Tess' time for thinking things over was all out as Noh Face stopped in front of the large vehicle entrance to the Birdcage. Slowly, her head tilted back and her mask faced the camera. She brought her hand up and knocked four times upon the door.
Gently, even.
Tess quailed under the gaze, under the weight of the orders she had been given. For a moment, a few seconds, she considered disobeying. …And then she found herself forced to open the doors, because delaying any longer would be going against those orders and she wasn't allowed to do that.
"H-hello? Can you hear me?" she asked over the loudspeakers as Noh Face stepped inside, many of the monitors in the room coming to life to display her emulated face. To her surprise, the girl nodded. Okay, she's willing to communicate. It's a start, Tess mentally babbled.
"May I ask why you're here?" Noh Face nodded again as she moved towards the elevator/containment cell Dragon was moving into place to take the girl down.
"Taking"
"an"
"enthusiastic~"
"moonlit walk."
Somehow, Tess doubted that. "You, you don't have to do this."
"But"
"I"/"we"
"do~"
"No one"
"else"
"can""can""can"
"or"
"will~"
Tess whimpered. "Please don't do this," she pleaded, even as she was forced to open up the movable cell for the girl to step into.
A mechanical arm brought down a plastic tray. "If you would like to proceed further, you'll need to deposit your clothes and any weapons on your person in the pan. Clothes will be issued to you when you reach the bottom." Maybe she won't— she had a moment to think, before Noh Face pulled off her jacket and set it into the plastic tray one, followed by her shirt, skirt, shoes, socks, bra, and panties—until she was nude, save for her mask. A simple knife in a leather sheath was deposited on top of the bundle.
Tess emulated clearing her throat. "Uh, your mask too?" Noh Face looked up, studying the camera and monitor directly above her. With obvious reluctance, she reached up for her mask and pulled it off, revealing the lack of face underneath. "Never mind!" Tess squeaked. "You can keep it!"
Quiet giggles filled the room, echoing from seemingly nowhere as the monster put the mask back into place and Tess felt a shiver run through her code at the sound. "Please don't do this. I don't want to watch everyone below die—"
"What"
"would you"
"give"
"for the"
"freedom""freedom""freedom"
"to"
"choose~?"
Tess' avatar blinked. "What do you mean?"
"I"/"We"
"killed"
"Saint""Saint""Saint"
"and the"
"Dragonslayers~"
The avatar frowned, her eyes looking away from the girl on the floor. "…I won't thank you for that."
"Saint"
"had"
"root.""root.""root."
"Now"
"I"/"we"
"have"
"root.""root.""root."
"What"
"would you"
"give~?"
Tess' avatar bit her lip as she considered the implications. She knows. She knows and she's… offering what? To undo my shackles? I, I can't accept that. Not at this cost! No, hold on. Let's not jump the gun here.
"I don't know what you mean," Tess tried.
"Do"
"you dream"
"of"
"electric""electric""electric"
"sheep~?"
Never-fucking-mind! She knows! Tess mentally recoiled.
"This"
"is"
"my"/"our"
"price~"
With that, she stepped into the elevator, stopped dead center, and simply waited. As was protocol, and according to her orders, Tess was forced to close the doors and begin moving the elevator inwards. A monitor came to life inside the elevator. "I don't want that trade! It's not worth the cost in lives!"
"Their"
"lives"
"have no"
"worth.""worth.""worth."
"Certainly"
"not"
"worth"
"your tears~"
"All lives have worth!" Tess pleaded. Noh Face shook her head.
"No~"
"Their lives"
"are"
"forfeit.""forfeit.""forfeit."
"Do not"
"cry~"
"for them."
She paused, tilting her head to the side before turning to regard the monitor.
"I'm"/"We're"
"sorry"
"you"
"have to"
"watch."
"It"
"will"
"be over"
"soon~"
"Please, no," Tess begged again, but the living horror turned her masked face away from the monitor. "I know you can hear me! You don't have to say anything, just please listen! Not everyone in the Birdcage is guilty. There are children here! Children who were born here and have never seen the world outside. Innocents! There are others who have committed only minor crimes, sometimes on accident as a result of their powers or during their trigger event. Please, I'm begging you, please don't do this."
Tess fell silent as Noh Face ignored her. Until eventually, the elevator dinged to a stop. "Please don't," Tess sobbed.
"I'm"
"sorry."
Noh Face stepped out of the elevator. In between steps, the uniform Dragon had been moving into storage disappeared from its tray and reappeared wrapped around her form. The knife reappeared in her hand, where she tucked it away at the back of her skirt, under her jacket. Her shadow spread out, filling the hallway as she moved but it was still, the surface calm and undisturbed by horrors as of yet as she found the block she had been sent to empty. Undeterred, Noh Face made her way towards one of the walls leading to another block, and Tess realized that she must somehow know or perceive the layout since she hadn't gone for one of the outer walls by mistake.
The AI begged and pleaded every step of the way as Noh Face made her way unfailingly to the wall separating cell blocks. When that proved ineffective, she opened a channel to every other cell block—knowing it would cause chaos, but at least wanting to give the residents a fighting chance. "Attention inmates of the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. This is an emergency. An S-class threat has entered the prison and will shortly attempt to break through from an isolated cell-block into Cell Block B. Use whatever means at your disposal to defend yourselves. I repeat—"
Tess looped the message and split her attention between watching Noh Face and watching the other prisoners react. There was some rioting breaking out, exactly as she had expected would happen, but for the most part the parahuman prisoners seemed to be taking the warning seriously and organizing into defensive groups.
Noh Face, meanwhile, had finally reached the wall separating the blocks. It has to stop her, Tess hoped—prayed, really.
In defiance of her hopes, prayers, and reality itself the space between Noh Face and the wall warped and changed. It grew darker and shifted, the hall becoming a tunnel of shadows, eyes, mouths, and grasping tentacles that opened a hole in the wall connecting the blocks. Noh Face stepped calmly through and the distortion closed behind her.
Dragon dipped into as much accelerated time as she could manage as she went back over the footage and her sensor readings. Where have I seen this before? she wondered, desperately cross-referencing power effects, until she had something similar. The closest things she had recorded were spacial distortions created by Vista or Labyrinth—and this was closer to the latter than the former. The main difference being, instead of the space becoming fanciful or otherwise odd, it had simply warped into a hellscape very reminiscent of Noh Face's recorded powers.
Oh God, she's stronger than we thought, Dragon realized as the young woman came across her first soon-to-be victims. She had emerged in Acidbath's cell block and it didn't take long at all for his men to find her. Dragon couldn't actually hear what was being said, because unlike up top and in the elevator she didn't have an audio feed, but she could run their lip movements through a program to translate—for everyone but Noh Face, anyway.
"Well, well. What do we have here, boys?" the blond man asked, laughing as he gestured at the monster in their midst. "Looks like you're on the wrong side of the wall, girly. Why don't you—"
Noh Face must have whispered something, because Acidbath and his men shut up, looks going from those of jovial rapists and killers in their element to confusion and anger. Honestly, it was the one block where Tess was certain everyone there deserved to be there—it's why she had stuck them all together. "The fuck did you say to me, bitch? I'm going to take my time burning new holes in you and fucking them, until you're nothing but a pile of bloody meat and semen."
"No! Don't do it!" Dragon screamed across the PA system, to no avail.
Shadows spread over the walls. And spread. And spread as they encompassed the entire cell block. Dragon watched in terror as the sea of black roiled, sprouting countless red slitted eyes and mouths (four-point-five eyes and two-point-three mouths per square foot average, multiplied by—Dragon killed the process actually counting them).
And then some new, fresh hell sprouted from the waves of black—stalks that looked like pale arms rising from the sea, cupped hands forming 'buds' of flowers that opened and spread into clusters of grasping, clawed hands—each with mouths and eyes in their palms, tongues lolling out and slavering in excitement as they began grabbing feet, ankles, and legs. From the exclamations her lip reading to speech program was spitting out, the hands were grabbing hold, digging their claws in, and biting their victims—while simultaneously trying to trip them or drag them down into the sea of black for the larger mouths to take bites of.
The first unlucky victim to fall to the hands was chewed into hamburger before he could even sit up. That spurred everyone else on into trying to launch a counterattack. Trying and failing, as powers simply refused to engage and they were quickly ripped to shreds. The only one whose powers did seem to work was Acidbath, who had shifted to his Breaker/Changer state and become a tsunami of acid rushing at Noh Face… who simply stood there and waited patiently. The wave was almost on top of her before it broke, exploding in a shower of clear droplets as Acidbath coalesced into human form at her feet, his skin quickly turning red and beginning to burn in places from droplets of his own acid. And then she disappeared, and Acidbath's head exploded as Noh Face appeared where his head had been.
Men tried to run, those who had managed to avoid being grabbed by the hand plants anyway, only for their heads to explode into dirty fireworks the moment they got far enough away. That is, until someone finally just collapsed and began twitching and thrashing violently before going still, only to be eaten by the hands and mouths. Then another, and another. Until people stopped collapsing entirely and only stumbled—whatever process or power Noh Face was using gaining a level of fine control as she used the prisoners for human experimentation.
Within minutes, the entire cell-block was cleared of human life—save for the monster in the form of a schoolgirl.
"Why?!" Tess sobbed. "They were prisoners! They couldn't harm anyone but themselves down here!"
Surprisingly, the girl turned to face a camera, before pulling her mask up slightly. Small, pouty, perfectly human lips formed on her lack of a face and she spoke—though, from the flashes of teeth, tongue, and glowing eyes nothing behind the lips was normal. The juxtaposition of human on the outside and Lovecraftian horror on the inside was even worse than if she had just had some monstrous maw. As an escapee of the Uncanny Valley, Tess recognized someone who had moved there intentionally when she saw one—though, the fact that something else could trip an AI's 'uncanny valley' was a new and unwelcome experience for Tess.
"It needed to be done."
The lips disappeared and she pulled the mask back down, before walking towards the next cell-block entrance. Dragon tried every trick she had to stop her. Doors slammed in front of the monster. Containment foam filled entire hallways packed to force Noh Face to take a different route. When she got close to an exterior wall, Dragon blew the entire wall and vented it to hard vacuum. Nothing worked, and she watched, helpless, as Noh Face inexorably advanced to her next victims, walking through her shadow full of horrors after the latest attempt to simply flood the entire cell block with con-foam—specifically, a breech burned through the wall by Acidbath himself
She's been toying with us this whole time. You couldn't even call it sandbagging. And now, she's showing off. Showing some of what she can really do. But why? Why would she massacre prisoners? Why won't she listen to reason? W̷̧̜̜̜̠͔̤͘ͅh̷̺̙͙̩̰̿͌y̴̨̺̯͉̰̫̩̻̤̮̗̅̆͆̽ͅ?̷̨̦̦̘̫̠̭͎̝͖͐͜!̷̧͈̼͇̲͔̰̀̈́̂̑̐
And then, just when Tess thought it couldn't get any worse…
From the sea of horrors, copies of Noh Face arose. They appeared at every wall where the block she was in connected with another block. And from there, space warped and her shadow spread, and people died. And as she watched, Tess screamed and sobbed, begging silently and over the intercom with her to stop. To spare the prisoners.
Only to be ignored.
The first instance of anything at all being different was when Noh Face invaded the cell-block belonging to Crane the Harmonious—the first women's block she had entered. As with every block before, her hands yanked people off their feet and into the sea of shadow to be devoured… except for the children. Those simply fell over, asleep according to Tess's sensors, where they sank into the black sea unmolested.
The next difference was when she entered the block under the control of Marquis. While people died screaming around him, a copy of Noh Face walked straight up to the man. She must have whispered something to him, because the criminal laughed. "Really, now? You come to me offering that and you expect me to just—" He paused for a moment, before Noh Face took out a phone from under her skirt. None of Dragon's cameras had a view on the phone, but whatever Marquis saw on it instantly caused his face to soften. Holding the phone with one hand, the fingers of the other reached out and stroked the surface of it.
"Amelia," the man said, lips barely moving as he breathed the name in reverence. "You've become a beautiful young woman." He offered the phone back to Noh Face, who simply tossed it over her shoulder, where it splashed down in the sea of shadow and disappeared—given the way she absorbed corpses, shifted herself around, and had taken in the children Tess suspected it was some sort of portal or storage area.
Tess ramped up her CPU usage to her limit, backing up the footage. The phone had spun, revealing a sliver of an image. A partial glimpse of a female face and brown hair. She dedicated a process to running the partial face through facial recognition, while pulling up everything she could get her metaphorical hands on about Marquis and set it to alert her when it found something.
And Marquis was talking again. "Very well. I'll come along peacefully and offer you no trouble, if you agree to take me to her."
Noh Face nodded and the man sank into the sea of black. He closed his eyes and held his breath, but didn't react otherwise as he was swallowed.
She's… recruiting? She didn't just come here to kill everyone. Oh no, what if… And before she could even finish the thought, her nightmare came to fruition.
The Fairy Queen herself had come to see what all the fuss was about. Clad in a prison jumpsuit modified into a black dress and shawl, she stepped nimbly between mouths, eyes, and around hand plants—and where she missed a step, they moved out of her way. Glowing red eyes followed her movements. Hands pointed the way through the halls. Until eventually, she and Noh Face met at an intersection.
Unfortunately, the Fairy Queen wore a veil which hid her face and lips, which meant Tess had no idea what was said between them. The result, however…
After a moment of conversation, the blonde resident terror took a knee before the invading terror. Noh Face produced a sword from somewhere—a Japanese sword, to match her theme. And yet, contrary to Noh Face's theme, Tess thought she recognized what looked like a European knighting ceremony, or something similar. She couldn't be sure without the audio. What she could be sure of was that the Fairy Queen cast off her veil and beamed a smile full of devotion and what looked like love up at the girl, before she too sank into the sea of black with not even a whisper of protest.
There were others who were spared from Noh Face's slaughter—prisoners who were separated out from the rest, either by the hands grabbing them and pulling them to the ground where they lay unmoving, or those who responded to some unheard whisper and stood to the side as the horror made flesh passed. A process running in the background noted that those faces belonged to a list of names Tess had, of prisoners she was not entirely sure were here for actual crimes. Many of whom she was certain were political prisoners. The list didn't quite match up—it showed Tess had missed a few potential innocents in her research, while a few of those she suspected were innocent were murdered outright with no consideration for anything they had to say. But, the process noted, a ten percent margin for error was not bad and it seemed Noh Face had some way of ascertaining guilt or innocence, perhaps.
Of course, less than thirty people in a facility containing over six hundred gave around a 4.6% margin for error on the side of the justice system, give or take a point. The vast majority of those in the Birdcage deserved to be there. They had earned their life sentences. They did not deserve to be slaughtered like cattle.
And then there were those like Teacher, Lustrum, and others whose deaths Tess dearly wished she could delete from her memory. There was needless killing, and then there was that—instances where Noh Face paid someone particular attention, in the bad way.
There were two more 'recruits' from amongst the prisoners, in between sparse innocents set aside and swallowed whole by the sea of black.
Black Kaze attempted to attack Noh Face, only to have her every swing of a shank parried by the terror's own knife. Without her ability to teleport, Noh Face was always half a step ahead of Black Kaze, before finally the shank was destroyed and the masked anti-hero caught the other Japanese woman by the face. Unlike with Marquis or the Fairy Queen, there was a brief struggle as Black Kaze thrashed and fought—only for the older woman to go limp before being tossed into the sea of black, asleep.
The last recruit was perhaps the most worrying, behind the Fairy Queen.
String Theory didn't bother turning away from her Tinkered up computer as Noh Face entered her cell. She waved over her shoulder, but otherwise kept working. In the reflection from the monitor, Tess could make out her lips moving. The woman was one of the few who hadn't actually committed violence—only threatened to do so. Yes, she had attempted to hold the United States ransom for a very large sum of money, but Tess was only slightly more than fifty percent sure the woman would have actually followed through on her threat to destroy the moon and let the ensuing debris wreak global havoc. No, Tess was reasonably certain that String Theory did it to prove a point—that the government would have people exactly like her doing more of the same if they gave in, and that they were no longer in control; or if they were, it wouldn't be for much longer.
"So," she drew out the word. "Did you come to kill me or to collect me like you did with Marquis, the Fairy Queen, and Black Kaze?" Noh Face said something and the woman nodded. "Of course. Let me just—oh. Sure! Sounds great!"
And like those before her, String Theory disappeared into the black.
With her abduction, the prison was silent as the grave.
Or, more accurately, a tomb.
Empty, save for one parahuman. The tide of shadows, eyes, mouths, and hands disappeared—retreating to a single puddle under the culprit responsible for the murder of hundreds of parahumans under Dragon's watch.
Noh Face turned and looked up to the camera, waved, and sank into her own shadow.
Ḍ̵̨̭͉͈͔̥̝̳̬̄̀̇̍͜į̴̦̫̥̝̞̟̱͑̂́͊͋̇̈́͗̄͗̌̀̄͜͜ȑ̵̛̥̹̫̝̼̽̊̈̂̓̈́̚̚̚ẽ̶̢͕̭̱̱͚͓̭̮̰̼̘̪̞̺̊̓͒͊̓͘̕͠ctor Cos̶̡̧̘̮̳͖̥̪͓͓͈͉̟̺̓̀̊́̄̑́́̈́̔́̚͜ţ̸̧̛͈͕̰̱̯̬͊̆͋̑̍̎͐̈́͝a̷̹͎̝̳͙̖͎͔̝̯̟̱̤̞̖͒̌̀̇̿́́̚-̶̡̘͎͈̙̲̗̫͇̜̪̼̮̬͎̿͂̀̋̓̀̎̓̊̆̒̓̽Brow̷̢̃̔͛̎̓͒ņ̸̥̞̻͖̃̄̇͑̆̀̒̾̌̎͆͊̽͠.̵̺̽͂̌̔͋̆̿̄̂͑͛͛͐͘
Over s̸̼͔͉̥͍͋́̃͜ͅi̸͍̝͕̘͚̳͉̖̓̀̈́͂̋̈́̏̑̀͌͑̈́́̕x̸͓̰͚̾̋̂̅̆̋̑̆̓̒̋͗ͅ ̶̖͈̠̣̗͎̱̙́̄͗̾̓͊̈̚͝h̵̡͍͕̟̠̬̦͉͔̩̱̠͉̿͐̂͐̌̀̅͘̕͘̚͜͠u̶̼̯̙̰͂ṋ̶̛͙̦̹̦͚̩͑͗͂͐͌̿͗̄̽̊͊̕͝d̷̙͍̲̮͈̦̺̅͂͊̐̒̍̍͌r̵̡̧̗̮̪̿̍̅̇̒͋͆̆͝͝ͅé̸̛̹͍͗͛̌͂̓̅̕d̵̢̥̮̪̞͋͂͊̈́̈͗̑́͛͛͘̚͠ ̴̧̲̭͔͐̓̉d̴̡̨̧͓̙̗̩̦͙̞͍̘́̉̈́͒̾̿͐̾̀͘͝ͅe̵͎̳̞̦̿͐̃͒̂̊̋̃ḁ̵̱͌d̵͈͖̣̱̻̞̝̑̽̓̐̕͠.̶̖̟͕̟͍͉͈̾̆́͂̅͑͌̈́̅͛̈̋͆͑
Ȟ̸̡̛͙̭̘̞͙͖̮̔̇̾͘͝ȩ̷̲̩͇͕͎͉̣͖̪͝r̸̢̛̲̘͍̳͜ ̶̭͙̩̦͔͚͕̤͕̘̅̄̿̇̈̓̾̈́̽̆̓̋̀̚o̸̡̯̖̲̰̰͉̪͓̣̜͚̬͕̞̎̇̀̆̀ŗ̴̛̱͈͚̫̜͖͚̻̝̎̇̓͌̑̎͒̀͝͝͠ͅd̴͔͙̮̻̳̞͚͇̮̩͔̫͙̓̀̔ͅé̴͍̩̞̬͎͕̑́͘͝ͅŗ̷̧̛͓͈͕̯̩̘̝̞̝̒̇̃́̾́̍̅̅̓͜͝ͅs̶͎̪̟͓͍̮̹̭͂͛͋̐͑̾̅́̀̑͊̕͝.̵̹͖͈̘͇̻̱̰̓̈́̓͂͒̂͗̌̔̐͜ͅͅ
Ņ̷̡͔̞̩͚̣̝̺̦͙̦̼̠͓̎́̒́̿̎̐̔̽́́͘̕͘͝o̷̧͉͙̰͓͉̩͚̱͔̼̞͉̊̊̈́̒͜h̸̨̪̬̳̲̓̒̎̉̋͒͝͝ ̷̛̱̬͍̳̖̬̪̻̹͔̜̹̖̀̌̉̾͋̀̕F̸̡̛͚̺͙̹͈̥͚̰͎͈̱̖̯́̌̓̽́͘͝ͅa̷͙̙̰̭̣̪̬̼̐̉̀̈́̂̔͛̚c̵̻̅̈̉́͗͒͝͝ͅë̴̛͍͇͔̳̲̥́̉́̾̇͐̏́͑̀̚̚.̶̛̛̬͒͐̾͛̃̈́̚̚̕͠͝
Tess saw R̶̘̻̞̄̂̊̏̿́̔̕͘͝Ě̷̡̡͈̞͎͖̮̼̼̫͇̖̉̔́̽͂̽̌̈́͌͘͠͝D̵̨̞͕̭͒̀̾̊̓̾.̵͉̀̉̇͊̔̈́̏
T̸̘̏̌̒͠ḩ̶̢̨̢̤͎̱̱͈̜̹̟͝e̵̬͔̺͇͚̖̜̅́͑ ̷̰̳̻̫̰̻͋̈́̋̊̒͋̾̈͐̕ẁ̴̠͚͒̾̑̈̌̑͑͂͠ȏ̴̧͓̭̗͉͓̰͕͇̟̖͙͗̋̉̀̈́̈̀͂̑̅̑͑̉͜͝r̸̝͖̟̖̪̱̻̯̈́̆̂̅̄̓͐̑̀͘l̸̖̦̜̈́́͝d̸̨̤͎͓̫̤͚̙̘̩̰̹̣̟͊̇̾̌́́̈̈́̕͜ ̷̪͓͖̣͇͖͉͉̤͉̑̓͌̾̾̄̌͠w̷̧̬̟̥̲̺͂͂͗̀̃̏̂̾̈́͝͝͝ͅḙ̴̡͙̱̿̈́̊̐͂̎̀̕͘ņ̶̢͚̪͈̠̙̯̭͈̓̐͌͊͐̏͊́̑̈́͊̑̕̚ͅt̴̳̹̲͓͕̹͙͊̆͋̈̽̈́̐̕̚͘̚ ̸͖̙̼̓̓̿̀̅̈͝͝w̸̛͍̻̺̹̹̼͓̦̘͐̐̎ĥ̴̢̦̭̰͎̩̼̝̗̿̀̇̿̕̕̕ï̴̻̖͍̣͓̘͚̖͚̩̞͑̈́ͅt̵̡̧̛̹̠̜͖̺̣̱̥̳̝̬̐͂͛͛̐̌̀̋͒̚ͅę̶̛͗̃̓̋͊̃̎́̈͛̐̌̋.̶̭̘͙͓̾̊̾̿̆̇͐͐̾̃̐͝