By the time I got home from school I couldn't help but feel like the day had been a bit of a disaster, one train wreck after another. Sophia, then Emma and even Taylor coupled with the most boring lessons of my life. Why was helping people so damn hard here? I couldn't make sense of Taylor, from what I remembered a large part of her desperately wanted friends, but she got so angry at me for trying to help. If it wasn't for Invictus thrumming beneath the surface, I'm sure I'd be feeling doubts or, more likely, be tearing my hear out in frustration. The black-haired girl had fled the classroom as soon as Gladly had dismissed the class, a few minutes before the bell as usual my memories supplied me, hands gripped to her backpack and head down.
I only saw her later, coated in cranberry juice and fuming as she strode away from the school before the end of lunch break. I'd tried to get her attention but she either hadn't seen me or she'd just ignored me, I was leaning towards the latter.
Perhaps worse than that, I found myself worrying about the feelings seeing Sophia and Emma had created. I knew they weren't good people, hell I knew that they were downright awful; a bullying campaign was bad by itself but one that went to the extent that theirs did on Taylor? My own experience was tame compared to that. They had made her trigger and I vaguely remembered a line from my first life, that triggering was caused by a parahuman's 'Worst Day'. So why did I feel such pity for them? It twisted around my hearts and rested around my throat. Invictus could push it aside like it wasn't even there but I knew it was. Was it because I had some idea what had made them what they were today? It didn't matter, I decided, they made their choice; if they could be redeemed then great, fantastic even. But that wasn't my job, and I wasn't sure they even deserved it. Remembering the general story structure of Worm there was one thing I knew though; I would save Taylor Hebert. Save one person first, then move on to more. My will surged and locked, unassailable, there was nothing else to it.
Luckily, the opening of Worm was the bit that I remembered the most about. Unluckily, my new eidetic memory didn't cover Kieran's memories, nor Myles' before the… merge. I had a feeling that I would forget any more than I had, but the murkiness remained and they didn't snap back into full focus to match the memories of the last day. What I did remember was that the night after Taylor had something poured over her at school, she made her debut as a hero and ran face first into a Lung chasing after a small-time group of villains. I couldn't remember their name.
So tonight, I would have to join her. How exciting! I didn't think that I wanted to join the Wards, the PRT and the Protectorate gave off some very bad vibes from what I could remember but it seemed like the first step to improving Taylor's chances was to help her fight the gangster dragon. Crazy right?
The bit that got me really excited though was that I got to create a super suit. Did anyone else just here Frozone?
That's why, a few minutes after I got home, I was stood standing in front of the slightly dirty bathroom mirror without a shirt on. I knew that I had gotten taller and broader at the shoulder, but I hadn't thought to check for any further changes but now that I took the time to look, I could definitely see them. Myles had never been an attractive guy, but he'd never been unattractive either; apart from his sharp, steel-grey eyes, you wouldn't have been able to pick him out from a crowd. Although we had been nearly 16 years old, the baby fat still hadn't fully left his face and he'd never been dedicated enough to maintain an athletic looking body. In fact, it could've been said that he was bordering on overweight.
Now however, a much stronger jawline had emerged with semi-prominent cheekbones on my face. That combined with my body now being tightly packed with muscles, although not bulging like a bodybuilder, they were still prominent and defined enough to be noticeable. Especially when I hadn't realised to go out and buy baggier clothing again, this time many sizes up. Not nearly so drastic a change that I was unrecognisable from the boy before, but now I could fully understand why my classmates had been staring at me. Damn if I didn't look good though, not finding it in myself to regret the repercussions that could come from these changes as I admired myself in the mirror. Can you blame me? I'd never looked so good in either of my lives!
After a good five minutes of definitely not flexing at myself, I got onto the main reason I was there. Choosing a costume. Reaching for my powers, I ignored the passive Invictus and, from what my memories were telling me, the Alexandria Package powers to the more active one. Power thrummed invitingly beneath my fingertips as the world lit up with new information, energy on a fundamental level was prevalent in most everything; and beyond that I could see the potential in all the matter around us. This sense passed beyond just my sight too, like my hearing it spread over at least a few blocks in every direction. I looked down at myself in wonder, I could see the field that gave me my strength and invulnerability (and the thing I was most excited to test, flight). Weirdest of all was how this didn't seem strange to me, like all of this sheer power was the most natural thing in the world even though I hadn't accessed it until then.
I couldn't help it, I cackled. Psychokinesis on an unimaginable scale, in other words, Unlimited Powah! Okay that's enough of that. I raised my hands in front of me, maybe a foot between them, facing them towards each other. Focusing on the space between them, I exerted my will, imagining the smallest fireball I could, barely an ember. With a flood of power a horizontal column of fire burst into existence, far too hot and thick it burst past my hand and slammed into the bathroom wall leaving a dark scar of charcoaled concrete and the smell of burning. I yelped and cut off the flow but the damage was already done, where before there had been an unmarked (or as close as you could get in the Docks area of Brockton Bay) wall there was now a near perfectly cylindrical hole surrounded by burnt concrete. I didn't think concrete was meant to be able to burn.
No idea how I was going to explain that to Aunt Nessa.
I sighed deeply before moving onto the far more important test. I focused again, this time on the air over my skin with the image of a plain black skin-tight suit layering itself slowly, slowly, slowly over my hands. Sure enough, between one blink and the next something black appeared just as I had imagined it. I could tell just by looking at it that it wasn't actually made of any physical material, just energy hovering over my skin. But around it shimmered a haze of heat like looking near the horizon in the desert and I just knew that it was burning far too hot.
Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I concentrated deeper than I ever had before, envisioning the heat dropping away from the material and dissipating harmlessly. What felt like hours later, I felt the tickling sensation of the heat trickle away and I opened my eyes to see the last few vapours of steam floating away before disappearing. I waited a few more minutes, before poking a finger gently into an unmarked bit of the wall next to the new hole. When nothing happened, I let out a relieved breath. Huh, I just realised I didn't need to breath anymore. That felt odd.
Once it felt safe, I gingerly grabbed hold of the energy in my mind and stretched it, watching it roll down my forearm, over my elbow and continuing up. Soon I was covered from just below my chin all the way down to my wiggling toes in a featureless, seamless suit. Cosy.
The suit itself was so dark it didn't seem to reflect the bathroom lights at all. Manoeuvrability seemed to be completely unhindered, I noted as I stretched out my arms and shoulders and did some squats and jumping jacks. The colour wasn't very me though, I did want to at least mildly heroic and a jet black supersuit didn't exactly fit the image. With nary a thought, the suit shimmered into a light-grey bordering on white while it spread up and around my head. When it reached my eyes I blinked, I could see through it and was confronted in the mirror with a featureless face. That was creepy and far too close from the images of Mannequin I had seen online.
I thought about what to do for a few minutes, this my first costume and I didn't want to mess it up looking like a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine. I liked the colour though…
Shrugging, I added gold lines down on my arm running down each shoulder and ending in a semi-circle on the back of my hands. The point at the top of each shoulder joined up in a circle over my collarbone. From the very centre of the circle at the front, I ran a finger down my chest and the line of gold followed it, flowing like a stream. I split it over my belly button and they continued down to my feet and made the same semi-circle on the top of them. On the opposite side of my collarbone, on my back, I ran a line up my neck and the back of my head, ending in a horizontal circle that ran around my skull and rested above where my eyes would be. Speaking of my eyes, I opened up the suit over them but had a glowing gold shimmers of energy cover them instead. Finally, I draped a plain white cape over my shoulders, attaching it at the point the circle around my collar met the lines running up my arm. Content enough with my appearance, I let it disperse and stepped out of the bathroom.
As I looked out my window at the darkening sky over the Bay, I found myself anticipating my first supernatural excursion. Watch out Brockton Bay, here I come. I stopped to glare down at my desk and the small pile of paper on top of it.
As soon as I've done my homework.
xOx
Have you ever heard that line about wishing you were a bird so that you could fly? Yeah, I could totally back that up. It was awesome. There weren't any other words to describe the feeling of moving through the air on your own power, floating above the city and your troubles with a cape billowing behind you. Truly the most important use of my power was creating a slight wind to blow my cape. Shut up.
Moving swiftly on, it hadn't taken me long to finish my homework with help of a super brain. A brain that had been remarkably uncooperative so far, I knew that it had given me eidetic memory and an improved thinking ability but I knew there was more that it could do. Yet every time I tried reaching for it, it slipped through my fingers like sand.
Once I had finished my schoolwork, I had used the remaining hours trying to think out how I wanted this night to go. Kieran's memories told me that someone was going to turn up during or after the fight, possibly multiple people and possibly having observed Taylor and Lung duking it out. The problem was that I wasn't sure how much I wanted to reveal.
Either of my abilities would be enough to easily deal with Lung, at least I thought so. But as my struggles to create the suit I was wearing showed, my control was definitely not where I wanted it to be and in the middle of a fight I didn't trust myself not to slip. No, safer to stick to the more common Alexandria package that shouldn't draw too many questions and, as my mind thought back to a newly burned hole in my bathroom, hopefully wouldn't accidentally wipe Brockton Bay off the map.
Finally, I had been stuck thinking about what to do with Lung himself. I wanted to kill him. I could feel that unarguable truth burning hotter than his flames had on my back, from deep in my core I wanted that man, that filth dead. Flashes of a burning home and a rampaging dragon crashing through it, people screaming, my parents screaming –
Invictus roiled and lashed and tranquillity came with only a slightly shuddering breath. I needed to look into that, I felt that with some more practice I could use it more passively and stop this from happening. I much preferred the peace to, to that.
But could I do it? He couldn't hurt any more people if he was dead, couldn't enslave any more women or leave anymore children parentless. But, at the thought of killing a man, my hands shook. It felt like I was teetering on a knife's edge, one push away from becoming someone, something else. And it would be so easy. Who could stop me? The PRT? They couldn't stop anyone if their lives depended on it, if they could then maybe this place wouldn't be such a shit hole. Yet as I thought about, watching the life drain from that murderer's eyes I felt a deep sense of unease. Questions that I didn't know if I wanted answered rose up. Who am I really? Who am I going to be?
No, I wasn't going to kill anyone tonight. I wasn't ready to stain my hands and end a life. Not yet. It was there, some few hundred feet above the ground, looking over the city that I decided that I wanted to be a Hero. A proper one, not just one playing a larger than life game of cops-and-robbers. I wanted, no, I would be a hero. I felt Invictus flood through me like blood in my veins, strengthening me with purpose and unbreakable will.
From up here, you really couldn't tell that it was such a hell hole, no gangs up here, no graffiti or violence or apathy. Just me, the wind and a beautiful view.
It didn't last of course. Sometime near one in the morning I saw and felt a jet of flame go off in the Docks, clear in the dark of the night. Even without my super vision, I could see the gleaming metal of a partially transformed Lung standing in the street; with it however I could see a slim black and grey figure, not even attacking just hiding on the top of a building while small insects darted in and out from the half draconic figure. I grinned, found you!
I burst into motion, leaving a sonic boom in my wake. Neither Lung nor Taylor noticed, I could tell from their body language that Lung was either too loud or they were too focused on each other. It took no more than a few seconds for me to sink down behind the black and grey figure of Taylor, touching down on the raised edge of the roof silently.
"Are those bugs biting his dick?" I ask incredulously, modulating the sound waves to mask my voice, and taking a moment to take in the sight of a bloody Lung flailing around half covered in insects, especially his eyes and crotch. Hearing a voice a few octaves lower than normal come out of my mouth was odd.
As soon as I spoke Taylor whipped around, giving me a full view of yellow tinted lenses and a full cover bug themed mask. It's seriously impressive how she managed to do that in her room with no outside help, it looks creepily realistic. I could almost imagine the mandibles twitching at me.
Turns out that surprising someone in a fight is a bad idea. Not a moment after I spoke a small swarm of bugs flew into me, trying to bite and stab into me. Not a single one did of course, just bouncing harmlessly of my field-covered skin. Before I could say anything an almost physical wall of sound passed over us as Lung roared, setting himself alight and burning the critters on and near him to ash.
"Do you mind?" I ask, slightly amused, waving a bug covered hand to gesture at all the other insects trying to sting me even as I kept an eye on Lung.
Taylor stared at me silently for a few seconds. At least I assumed she was staring under that mask before her fingers twitched and the cloud full of things with too many legs dispersed.
"Thanks."
I try to say it in a friendly tone but I think it came out as more of a sarcastic drawl. Her shoulders stiffen. She's afraid of me, my mind whispers, doesn't know me and is already on edge. I raise my hands placatingly but her head just shifts down to track them wearily.
"You don't need to worry about me, I'm here to help," I wink at her, making sure that the glowing eyes I added to the suit winked too.
For some reason that didn't seem to help her relax all that much, her shoulders still bunched up even as she never looked away from me. Or rather, over my shoulder.
A great metal fist slammed into me, flinging me over the street and through a building. I sat up in a soup isle three streets over. Jesus, the shock to my heart was worse for me than the hit itself. Good to know the invulnerability field was working though.
Standing quickly, I brushed myself clean of concrete dust and shot back through the multiple building long hole I had made. I came through just as a wave of fire crashed into the back of a fleeing Taylor, sending her rolling perilously close to the edge of the build.
Without pausing I crash into Lung fist first into his stomach. He folds like a chair over me for a moment before the inertia threw him from my fist and cratered him into the street below. Even that isn't enough to put him down as I saw him growing bigger and climbing to his feet, paws now?
"Stay back!" I yell at Taylor, seeing her writhing on the floor in pain. I wince, she must be burnt pretty bad.
Stepping off the parapet, I floated down towards Lung steadily. As I approached, I noticed one eye was swollen shut from a multitude of insect stab wounds, while the other was reddened and tearing up with the remnant of pepper spray scattered around it. Go Taylor, you really took something out of this guy.
Even with impaired vision, the combat experience of the Asian gangster shone through as he seemed to sense my presence. He lifted his head to glare somewhere in my direction."
"Ur'll FoCK'n K'lL 'Oo" He bellowed, voice distorted by snouted visage before opening his maw and bathing me in flames.
I hummed to myself consideringly, I didn't even feel the wall of fire slam into me like a tidal wave. It didn't stop me floating towards him either, and as soon as he realised this his jaw clamped shut and he rushed towards me.
Now fully a dragon, his claw swung towards me in tightly packed fist but my swinging haymaker flew forwards too. The two met with a titanic clash. Have you ever seen an arm evaporate? His metallic scales shattered into dust, followed by the skin of his arm underneath then the muscle then the bones.
In under a second the trail of destruction carried all the way up his arm and took his shoulder and a chunk of his torso with it. It was only a split second later that I realised the destruction hadn't stopped there, in a blast of wind the force continued back past Lung, straight up blowing through the buildings behind him.
Debris crashed to the ground with a noise like thunder, metal piping pinging against concrete while wood crunched and crumpled. I stared at it for a moment, I had done that, not Lung. Is this what having power meant? I was still struggling to fully use my now super powered brain but the message it was telling me was pretty clear, the world around me now was like wet cardboard and my lightest touch could send it crumbling.
Lung took advantage of my distraction, roaring in pain as he swung around with his other hand. I was ready this time though, and I heard his wrist snap as it smacked into my side with a dull thud.
I turned towards him slowly. He wasn't in good shape, missing a large chunk of his body but the bleeding had already stopped, his remaining arm with the broken wrist already rising again fully healed. I couldn't let the destruction get even worse, a small voice whispered that I had been the one to do the most damage but I pushed past it and lowered myself to Lung's level in the blink of an eye.
He was already taller than me by several feet, but I hovered steadily above the ground. Before he could react I wrapped my hands as far as I could around his throat and exerted my field. Abruptly his eyes widened as the air flow cut off.
Even as he grew bigger and the resistance grew greater with it, I kept choking him. Even as he started flailing up at me with his arm and fell back towards bottom of the crater (more damage I'd done). I fell with him, still clamped around his neck, again ignoring the flame he shot at me and how he set himself on fire.
"Just. Give up. Already!" I yelled.
"F'k 'oo"
Came his intelligent response, barely a murmur as he used the last of his breath. His eyes dimmed and body stilled. I waited a few moments more, the only sound I could here was the oddly calm beating of my heart. Even when he flopped still I didn't let go, I squeezed tighter and tighter, eyes narrowing. I saw his flames, and the bodies and heard their dying screams and their pleas for mercy and freedom from pain.
I really could do it, put out his fires that burnt the Bay permanently. Just a bit tighter, he'd shrunk down to almost human size now and with just a quick twist it could be over. It would be a mercy, putting down a rabid dog.
And maybe then, finally, those phantom burns Panacea had physically healed would stop itching, maybe then, his flames would stop eating me-
His flames can no longer reach you.
I took a deep, unnecessary breath and stumbled backwards, letting go of Lung's barely moving throat like it had scalded me. I stared down at my unnaturally still hands. Yes, Invictus would definitely be the first thing I worked out. Even still I felt the temptation to end him, but it was collared, sheathed in iron will and focus. I stepped closer, leaning over his body that had flopped over the ground like a ragdoll.
His heart was still thumping at a far slower pace than normal but it was still going, and I could see his chest already starting to reform. Letting out a sigh, I straightened and looked around the broken street, not just with my normal vision but with my powers.
Behind me and multiple stories up a building had seemingly ruptured inwards, continuing on through the ones behind it in progressively smaller holes. That was where I had been thrown by Lung when I had stupidly taken my eyes off of him. But in front of me was the worst of it, the smashed buildings completely collapsed into piles of rubble. It didn't even look like there was enough rubble for how many buildings I had collapsed but my eidetic memory shot me the vision of the fronts of half the buildings straight up evaporating as the force burst them.
I was still trying to come to terms with it, what I had done, when I heard footsteps behind me. Taylor had taken the fire exit from the roof down to the street and was alternating between staring up at me, down at the passed-out gangster and around at the devastation like she couldn't decide where to look. I didn't need my Thinker power to tell she was even more scared of me than she had been before, she looked about one loud noise from bolting. If it wasn't for what I was sure were some horrendous burns on her back she might have left already.
Before either of us could say anything, we heard a slow clap from above us, up on the parapet of the rooftop Taylor had been on. Standing silhouetted against the moon, if it wasn't for my enhanced vision I wouldn't have been able to see her. A girl in a skin-tight suit of black and purple, with a thick horizontal line of black slashed across her upper chest, bisected by another dropping down from it, only to repeat itself part way down. Her long blonde hair trailing behind her, her green eyes and part of her face covered by a classic black domino mask. And she's staring down at us with a vulpine smirk.
A/N: So yeah, my longest chapter yet. I don't think I'm very happy about it, but I wanted to post it and hopefully get feedback anyway before I go back and edit it if I do. Next chapter has an opportunity for more dialogue, something that I think I need to work on since it feels more stilted to me than anything else, even more than the rest of it. Let me know what you think, there should be some interludes coming up soon but I might take a break to actually try and make some sort of plan since I'm currently just randomly writing and hoping for the best, hence why the tone is mishmashed and all over the place. Thanks for reading.