Taylor quickly went over every little tool she had sequestered near the spine of her armor. EpiPens, chalk dust, gloves and then settled over the pepper spray. Lung had, to her disbelief, jumped from the ground and reached maybe three quarters up to her location on the roof of a two story building.
Lung's hands, still on fire, were the first thing to show up, gripping the edge of the roof hard enough to bend the material that covered the roof's raised lip. His hands were quickly followed by his head and torso as he hauled himself up. He looked like he was made of overlapping knives or spades, smoldering yellow-orange with the low temperature flame. There was no skin to be seen, and he was easily seven or eight feet tall, judging by the length of his arms and torso. His shoulders alone were three feet across at the very least. Even the one eye that he had open looked metallic, a glowing, almond shaped pool of liquid-hot metal.
Taylor aimed for the open eye. But before the pepper spray could fire off, Lung stilled, and jumped right off the roof and landed in a heap on the ground. Taylor looked at the fallen villain in disbelief, then at her can of pepper spray with suspicion, then back at Lung, then skittered towards the opposite end of the rooftop. She'd need to climb down to escape, but climbing down would just get her closer to Lung.
With little other choice, Taylor increased the number of bugs now attacking Lung who had swiftly gotten up.
His fire was still burning and warding off most of her bugs. She decided to gather her most venomous bugs and surround him, while she thought of a new plan. Whatever his issue was with her pepper spray, it wouldn't keep him away for long. He'd just need to get close enough to start throwing fireballs or any other attacks with a range larger than her spray can. For all she knew, Lung would have no more issues with pepper spray once even his eyes are covered.
Taylor figured she had just one final card to play. Attack Lung with her less useful bugs enmasse to make him increase the flames surrounding him. Then take a shot with the spray can and throw it in his face. With any luck, the can would blow up and Lung would get a face full of whatever had scared him away. The bugs moved to die at her command, even as Lung started to just walk away. Taylor stood there with her arm raised and the can ready to throw as Lung tried to slink off, not taking his eyes off of her general direction as he almost speed walked backwards.
Only for the foot that he tried to put on the ground,to go right through it. His other foot followed suit as the dragon man started to sink into the concrete like quicksand.
Taylor tried to look around for whichever cape had joined their battle. A block from her position, she found a group of people in costumes, standing behind a building riding what felt to her bugs like large lizards. For a moment she suspected that one of them was the cape responsible for the situation, but none of them even had a line of sight to where Lung was. That was when she noticed the hole in her mental map she had created of her environment using her bugs. She looked up and behind her, to the spherical region about 15 ft above her that her bugs could simply not enter. And then she saw him.
He wore blue-green skintight suit, with a heavy hood and cape built in and sleeves that draped over his hands. One hand still raised, aimed towards where Lung had just disappeared. The interior of his hood and sleeves were filled with a soft green light. And once Taylor saw him, she felt stupid for not noticing him before. The man brimmed with power. Whether it was his aura, or just his reputation that even Taylor was aware of, once she saw him, she couldn't look away from the strongest human this side of Scion. And he was looking right at her.
Eidolon descended down to the roof, then glided down the roof towards Lung. The villain had been trying hard to escape from the concrete pulling him in, the strength of his efforts increasing with time. But as Eidolon moved closer towards the villain, the speed at which the concrete sucked him in increased to match his efforts. A proximity based power?
Lung was almost waist deep into the ground by the time Eidolon reached him. Taylor could feel the moment Eidolon dropped his "no-bugs" power from around him and reached a hand towards Lung's forehead, passing unharmed through the fire surrounding the villain. Balls of fire erupted from the villain, but it didn't even make Eidolon blink.
A sizzle of hot metal attracted Taylor's attention, and she saw molten metal flowing from where Eidolon's hand touched Lung, cascading down over the increasingly large concrete prison that trapped him, to settle around the two capes in a pile. Lung screamed as his skin seemed to melt off even as Lung's power replaced it almost as fast. Eidolon didn't react to his screams, except for putting another hand on Lung's head, increasing the pace at which the metal-like substance that made up Lung's enhanced body flowed off his body and collected near Eidolon's feet in an increasingly large pile.
The bugs tracking the four capes who were watching from a distance left Tayor's range, and she decided to move too. By the time Taylor climbed back to the ground, the pile grew from a puddle, to the size of a dog, and then to the size of a small car. All the while, Lung kept sinking into the ground until only his head remained above ground looking like a misshapen Halloween decoration made up of knives and spoons and twice the size of a regular human's head.
She wondered if she should just leave as Eidolon clearly didn't need her help. But he most likely had just saved her life, and she was a hero now, not a thief who'd slunk away into the night. So she decided to wait as the hero continued to do what looked increasingly like police brutality to the villain.
-line break-
I had arrived in the city slightly after midnight with the main objective of collecting information regarding the canon characters, mostly to confirm that I really was in the canon universe, and not some AltPower fanfic, an Alternate Universe, or some crossover world. I had already confirmed the roster of capes in the city, and found that every named character that should be here was here.
The time after that was mostly spent hanging around the dock under a Stranger power and two Thinker powers to look for violence in the nearby area. And then I just decided to plan my future moves, occasionally disturbed by the small crimes which still registered as violence to my senses.
When the battle finally started, I took a moment to make sure everything still fit the canon scene and rerolled my powers until I got a flight ability. Moving up a distance that I gathered should be outside Skitter's range, I rerolled until I got an ability to slightly push other life forms away from me. Only then did I approach the roof where one of the few capes that could potentially kill a Triumvirate.
Luckily, it was just in time for Lung to pull himself up the roof and freeze on sighting me floating calmly in front of him. Not going to lie, it was extremely thrilling watching this big fish in a small pond flip from "I'll kill you" to "Oh, crap!" when I had yet to even do anything.
Part of me expected him to attack and give some justifications to his "Dragon of Kyushu" reputation, but Lung was more pragmatic than that and tried to retreat. I probably would have let him, arresting Lung had caused nothing but problems for Brockton Bay, if I hadn't seen his "scales".
It didn't seem particularly well designed, if at all, and given that at this size he would've been creamed by Bitch's dogs, nor particularly strong. Lung's strength relied more on regenerating from injuries than not taking damage to begin with. But it was still some alien metal, or likely alloy, that got transported to Earth Bet from some shard space probably through a dimensional hole inside Lung's head.
I wanted some.
Focusing on powers that were good for capture, I quickly rolled a short range geokinetic power and trapped him. I had to drop my bug repellent power, trusting that our audience wouldn't suddenly decide to get a head start on killing Triumvirates, and after I landed the flight power was also discarded. Lung was still on fire, trying to melt his restraints off, so I had to pick a power that'd make me fireproof. The first acceptable power gave me the ability to absorb the lifeforce of anyone I touched, for some reason, it also gave high fire resistance.
Finally, as I reached close enough to touch him, I used a striker ability to cut the scales off of Lung, then used the geokinetic ability to collect it behind me. It was a balancing act, the effort I put into restraining Lung and in collecting the materials, so he wouldn't be able to escape.
The whirring sound of a bike engine attracted my attention towards Armsmaster reaching our position. It had taken him longer than I expected, possibly because since I had stopped a battle taking place on the rooftops, Armsmaster had a slightly harder time finding Lung. The hero jumped off his bike, took a look at me and Lung, seemingly analyzed the situation, and then faced away from me.
Oh, right. He's facing Skitter. I almost forgot about her. Though perhaps I shouldn't call her that, she's yet to take that name.
"Is she an enemy?" asked Armsmaster brusquely.
"Not to my knowledge, no. I found her fighting Lung. So you did get my message, then?" I replied.
Armsmaster turned back to inspect my work with Lung as I stopped my impromptu mining.
"I did. And I would have preferred if you said more than 'I sense a great disturbance in the Bay. I'll come and have a look.'"
"I would've if I knew anything for certain. As you can see, I got slightly sidetracked" I answered even as I started pulling Lung out of the ground.
Sometime ago his regeneration rate seems to have been overtaken by the damages I did to him and whatever venom the insect bites must have put into him. The villain was out cold by now.
"So you'll be staying in the city?" Armsmaster asked as he got closer to examine the mined metal. He didn't sound very pleased.
"I will. For only a short while hopefully. Though you might want to keep my presence in the city a secret. Villains tend to behave.. erratically when they learn i'm close by."
Armsmaster brightened at that.
"I.. see. So Lung's capture?"
"I'd need you to take credit for that. Assuming that our young friend here has no issues with it."
Suddenly his focus shifted to Skitter.
"I've not heard of you before. You are?" He asked.
"I don't have a name yet. It's uh, just my first night out."
"Well, you should know that Lung has two very dangerous subordinates. A bomb tinker and a teleporter called Oni Lee. If they hold a grudge, things can be very unsafe for you."
"Oh, okay. You can keep my name out of it if you could? Not that I have a name yet. Like I just said. You can just not mention me."
"That's a very wise decision." Armsmaster complimented her, and gave her his number in case she needed any help.
"I'll also try and smooth things over for your stay in the city. And a PRT van should be on its way to collect the material, " he said to me.
With the bribes given, the hero rode off with his freshly tranquilized capture into the… sunrise? Sure, sunrise.
Luckily for Armsmaster, I had healed Lung of his worst injuries as we talked. But just in case,
"Do you know that amount of insect attacks would have mutilated most capes?"
"Yes, I did. But he's a regenerator. I was very sure that he'd recover."
"Oh, he would have. If Armsmaster hadn't just tranquilized him six ways from Sunday. Luckily for the both of you, I had healed his crotch from where your spiders had bitten his dick off."
Skitter stepped back at my frank words and I rolled out a new power that worked similar to a close range force field like Manpower, but didn't activate it yet.
"Am I going to be in trouble?" She asked.
"No, no harm done. At least not this time. It's your first night out, and one of the first things you'll learn is that you won't be working alone. Even if you're the lone wolf types, you'll be working with the PRT who actually arrest the villains you defeat, or the police for non cape criminals.
You'll need to learn how to communicate things, like the best way to not disturb evidence, or the possible long term effects of your powers on the criminal, or how it would interact with other parahuman abilities.
It's not something I liked doing when I was young. And the large fraction of capes that are still young don't like doing it either. But regardless of your field, people and the drama that comes with people is unavoidable no matter where you go."
Ah, look at me. I became 20 years older in just a day, and now I'm sharing my elderly wisdom.
"You'll learn these things in time. About your power though. How long is your range? And how many insects can you control?" I ask, hoping she'd try less conventional methods like communicating, and talking things out. At least, I could hope.
"It's about 3 blocks, in either direction. And I haven't yet reached an upper limit of the number of insects."
I stayed quiet for a bit, like I was considering something. So she continued talking.
"About back there. Thanks for saving me. I think he really would have killed me if you weren't there."
"Hmm. There's this villain team I'm hunting. Tinker focused, so hard to put surveillance on them. Possibly a hostage situation, so I really need more information before I attack them. I think your power would be very suitable for information gathering. Want to help me with it?"
Taylor looked taken aback by the abrupt request.
"Think about it. Send me an email on this id by tomorrow. We can talk later then. Do you want me to drop you somewhere?"
After dropping Taylor off somewhere I couldn't bother to remember, I got back to my search.
#- line break —- - - -
Miss Militia was still at work despite the late hour. She had only just finished some paperwork and had decided to check up on her personal projects. Over the years she had gotten invested in several people she had saved from one thing or another, but felt that the underlying problem that led to them being in danger had not gotten solved.
Children she had saved from abusive foster parents would just go to another foster home and any possible abuse would not be noticed until they got in danger again. Women she had saved from getting assaulted because they had to walk through a dangerous area late in the night because of their job would still be forced to go through those areas at those hours. Kids who were being pressured to join a gang but she was able to convince them otherwise would still keep getting press ganged.
So Miss Militia tried to check up on them when she could.
She didn't find anything unusual happening in the locations she was interested in, but she did receive news that would affect all of them.
"Eidolon is already here? I thought when he said 'I'll come over' he meant maybe the next week or at least the next day. Not in the middle of the night." She asked even as she made another call.
"He is being unusually cagey. This is not the proper protocol at all. Hiding information, especially from me, the leader of the local protectorate can be very harmful."
Armsmaster was usually mostly personable. But when he felt agitated, he had this way of stating perfectly logical statements in a way that you could only define as 'whining'. Her response was delayed as the other call connected.
"Yes, Robin. I know it's late. Yes. No, it's not an emergency yet. But it'd really help if you could come in. No, it won't take long. 30 minutes at best. Okay, here's the summary. Armsmaster has captured Lung. Yes, really. There's a van on its way to escort him. We need you to get to him, recon the area as they travel, hold the ground if attacked. Yes, I usually wouldn't call you. Something weird is going on. I'll tell you when you get here. And remember to put on your anti-stab suit."
She sent Armsmaster's latest location to Velocity, and updated the PRT officers en route about Velocity, and only then could she reply to Armsmaster.
"Well, he's just got here. I'm sure he'll update us when we can actually sit down to have a meeting about this enigmatic 'disturbance'."
She stays focused on Armsmaster's progress until there's an alert from another officer that Eidolon was here. She checked on Armsmaster again, he was almost here, and informed him of Eidolon's presence.
Eidolon walked in soon after, looking annoyed and rather drenched. He nodded to her with a curt "Militia". She wondered about how he became drenched since there are no hydrokinetic capes in the city nor did it rain in the last few hours, and decided to just ask him.
"I forgot that your city has an aquifer." he replied even as steam started sizzling off his costume, drying it slowly. It was probably tricky to dry your clothes without giving yourself a cold.
His reply surprised a chuckle out of her, though he intently moved towards a computer terminal. She didn't know what he needed, but Eidolon did not have a user account on their server, and would only be able to access the information available on guest accounts.
Why were you even under the ground?" she couldn't help but ask.
"Whatever I'm looking for in this city, it is not above ground. At least not yet."
His fingers worked fast. Pulling up windows and pop ups every moment. He typed something in a search bar, then picked up a blank sheet of paper. Instead of looking for a pen, Eidolon waved his hand over it and words appeared. He picked up the paper, said "Got to go" and then flew out of a window.
Thomas Calvert woke up in his bed at 33 Randall Drive. It was times like these that he felt the safest. In another timeline, he was at his base, planning how to take best advantage of Lung's capture. It was a system he had perfected in the past year to make the best of the time he'd spend sleeping. In the timeline where he stayed awake, he'd plan exactly what he'd do when he woke up. And if he found something too urgent to wait, he'd forcefully wake his sleeping body to send the relevant orders before going to sleep again.
Fortunately, that wasn't necessary as Lung's removal from the city's ca[e scene was something he had extensively planned for. So it happened that Coil woke up refreshed at 6 am. A few minutes later, he walked into his living room and found Eidolon sitting on his sofa.
He was leaning back with his legs spread in front of him and a laptop resting on his legs and him occasionally pressing a key.
"Come, take a seat." He says without even looking up, and in the other timeline Coil starts running for a car with every intention to leave the city first and ask questions later.
Any other day he would've tried to find out if this was an impostor of some sort. But last night Tattletale and Top Grade had confirmed that it really was the real Eidolon showing up in a distant city with no rhyme nor reason.
So Thomas Calvert took a seat. He had to find out how much he knew.
"Take a look at these pictures. And tell me what you know." Eidolon asked as he turned the laptop towards him.
He did know something. But he took a moment, trying to decide how much Coil would know, and how much Thomas Calvert would.
"A villain group, right? Decently powerful. Nomads or something?" He hedged.
"Or something." Eidolon agreed. "They're Simurgh bombs. And you're going to help me disarm them before they destroy the American government."
Well, shit.