Worm: The Rise of Skitter Chapter 4 (original chapter Chapter 112)
After Tattletale made her choice, more ABB grunts showed up and joined the group surrounding Lung, who looked ready to order them to move out.
{Enter Swarm Sense Mode}
Fighting Lung will need all of the forces Taylor can muster. Once Swarm Sense Mode is active, automatically take control of all insects within you radius by pressing the right and left stick simultaneously.
Doing do, Tattletale blinked as the number of insects Taylor had at her disposal skyrocketed.
"She really had no limits to how many insects she could command." Dragon said steadily. "I can only think of a couple of Masters with this kind of strength."
Taylor's Agent, the Queen Administrator, was the opposite of Glaistig Uaine's own. It was the epitome of Master powers regarding the living. Even if she'd only Triggered once, she would have been powerful. As it is, it's highly likely that she Double Triggered in the Locker.
"What's that?" Glory Girl blinked.
"A Double Trigger is when a person Triggers, and then undergoes a Second Trigger Event almost immediately afterwards." Defiant stated slowly. "Rather than a 'normal' Second Trigger event adding, stretching or removing restrictions in the powers, a Double Trigger generally just reinforces the powers of the original Trigger Event, making it more powerful and wider-ranged. It's quite difficult to tell when someone's undergone a Double Trigger Event though, as the effects of a regular Trigger and a Double Trigger are almost identical."
"That poor girl…" Brandish shook her head slowly.
"That Locker must have been worse than we thought." Foil scowled at Shadow Stalker.
{Swarm Sense and Combat}
While in a combat or pre-combat/ambush situation, time ceases moving forward for all intents and purposes while Swarm Sense is active. This is to reflect the increased processing ability granted by Taylor's power.
For this fight, you will have a guide to how to use your minions, but in future, you will have to direct the insects yourself.
"That makes sense." Dragon nodded. "As this is a game, there were always two paths for the fights to go; preprogramed attacks and customized attacks. If the majority of this game's actions are seen through Taylor, then it makes sense that if they're the latter, some way of planning and executing the attacks would be necessary."
Onscreen, Tattletale followed the instructions, assigning a group of the stinging and biting insects to attack the ABB grunts as soon as Swarm Sense Mode was deactivated, while a lot of venomous insects were assigned to attack Lung upon the pressing of a button, as well as a secondary command to the first group to attack Lung at that point as well.
"Here we go." The Thinker muttered and released Swarm Sense Mode.
Immediately, the perspective changed to view the group of ABB thugs and Lung, who found themselves besieged by a veritable plague of insects and arachnids. Screaming and wailing in pain, they futilely beat at their clothes, dropping their guns in their panic.
"Argh!"
"Where the -?! Who?!"
"Get 'em off! Get 'em off!"
After being bitten and stun a few times, Lung flared up with his pyrokinesis power, sending streams of fire out from his hands in an attempt to burn the swarm to ashes.
'He's a regenerator…he should be able to be bitten and stung by my other insects without dying…'
Tattletale, taking that as her prompt, pressed the assigned button and Lung was swarmed under by Black Widows, Brown Recluses, wasps, bumblebees and other biting and stinging venomous insects, not to mention the nonvenomous kind as well. The flying insects focused on his face beneath his mask and the ground insects, ants and spiders, focused on his crotch; the most vulnerable areas he had.
"Yikes!" Panacea winced. "That many bites and stings from that many poisonous insects would have killed anyone but a regenerator."
With a roar, Lung let loose a large explosion of fire, killing all of the insects on him, as well as burning off his clothes and setting one of his men on fire as well. He then started attacking the bugs around him with his fire.
{Quick Time Events, Part 1}
From this point, you must press the indicated button when it flashes in order to make Taylor act and react to the enemy's attacks. For optimum damage to the target, press the corresponding button when it is surrounded in a white ring.
"Crap." Tattletale growled. She knew about these kind of events in games, although Regent hadn't had many, preferring FPS games like Call of Duty.
Pressing 'X' at the right moment had Taylor send a wall of harmless insects at Lung to gain some time, before pressing the 'square' button had her send a wasp to sting his eye, making the Dragon of Kyushu scream in rage at the pain and unleash another explosive wave of fire, which made his henchmen decide to flee.
"OK, OW!" Vista winced. Being stung by a wasp was generally bed enough, but being stun on the eyelid? Sheesh, Taylor did not hold back at all if you were dangerous enough to warrant her going all out on you!
Lung was steadily growing, a third of his body covered in metallic scaled armour, fingers and toes turning into metallic daggers and he had grown significantly since the start of the fight.
'He's getting too powerful. I have to finish this, quickly!'
A press of the 'O' button had a bumblebee deliver a sting right to the center of Lung's other eyeball. A 'triangle' had the bee sacrifice itself to sting Lung's tear duct on that same eye.
With a growl, Lung set himself on fire, making any further attacks against him with insects completely useless.
'Damn. I can't beat him.' They heard Taylor curse. 'I'd better withdraw. His thugs are either knocked out or running with their tails between their legs. He won't be going after any kids tonight.'
The camera panned back to Taylor, who took a step back as she prepared to leave, her foot crunching the gravel on the roof. The screen split, showing Lung whirling around with a roar as he finally found his tormentor.
"Aw fuckberries!" Imp cursed.
"Like I said, best worst luck imaginable." Tattletale grimaced.
As Lung launched himself up, the scene froze and another window appeared.
{Quick Time Events, Part 2}
In some QTE's, you will be forced to choose what action Taylor will take next. The choice will generally be between two options, with three being the most you will have to deal with. In this case, your choice is between hitting the 'X' button, which will make Taylor run away, and hitting 'O', which will make her attack Lung with her pepper spray when he climbs up to her level.
This time only, you have no time limit for this selection. In future, you will have a countdown from fifteen to zero to make your choice.
"Pepper spray? Against fucking LUNG?!" Glory Girl asked skeptically.
"Language." Brandish scolded her daughter absentmindedly.
Almost without hesitation, Tattletale hit the 'O' button. She knew what Taylor had done at this point…she'd been watching, after all.
Onscreen, the figure of Taylor reached into her back pouch and pull out a small black canister of pepper spray, even as the sounds of Lung climbing up the building grew louder and louder. Just after Taylor crouched down, Lung appeared over the edge of the roof, looking like a demon. Covered in flames and metallic scales, with one eye swollen closed, the sheer fury coming off of him was almost palpable.
An 'X' had Taylor spray him in the shoulder, creating a small fireball and eliciting a hushed curse from Taylor. A 'triangle' had the girl adjust her aim and spray him in the face, right where his good eye was located.
Lung screamed in pain and clutched his good eye with his free hand while pulling himself up with his other one. Towering eight feet high, he loomed over Taylor menacingly as a 'square' sent her bolting for the fire escape.
With a roar of 'Motherfucker,' Lung flung a wave of fire across the roof that hit Taylor and sent her crashing to the rooftop, frantically patting down first her costume and then her hair to make sure neither was on fire. The Rage Dragon limped forwards and flung out another blast, which Tattletale reacted to by pressing the 'X' button, making Taylor duck down and curl into a ball to endure the flames.
The Dragon of Kyushu growled in frustration as he limped forwards slowly, turning his head from one side to the other. "Cock. Sucker. Move. Give me something to aim for."
'Yeah, like I'm gonna do that.' Taylor's mental voice snarked at him.
"She fucking blinded him, temporarily at least." Foil shook her head in amazement. "I don't think any one Parahuman had ever hurt Lung like that before this."
"They hadn't." Dragon said, eyes locked on the screen. "Lung had received grievous wounds before this, but not injuries directly to his eyes. By the looks of it, he also had superhuman hearing once he started his transformation, so perhaps a flashbang would have been an effective tool to use against him. Good data to use against him for future encounters with him."
Abruptly, Lung extended his arm, pointing it away from Taylor and blasted his flames at the rooftop opposite him. Taylor raised her head slightly and peered into the gloom, but could make nothing out.
In the next moment, a van-sized monster landed atop of Lung, covered in boney protrusions and built like a rhino. It started wrestling with him, falling off the building after he smacked it back and it rhino-charged him.
"Brutus!" Bitch exclaimed.
"I'm sorry?" Vista blinked.
"That's one of her dogs." Imp informed her.
Two more of the monsters appeared, this time carrying a pair of figures on their backs. One, wearing motorcycle leathers and a motorcycle helmet with the full-face visor sculpted to resemble a sneering skull, dropped down and approached Taylor, who was very shakily standing up.
"Grue…" Imp said quietly, her eyes fixed on the costumed form of her brother for the first time since he'd died during the Golden Morning.
"You really saved us a lot of trouble." The figure said in a deep, masculine voice slightly muffled by his helmet. He reached out a hand to help Taylor, but she jerked back reflexively. Withdrawing his hand, he thumbed over his shoulder at where Lung was fighting against the animal, which was swiftly joined by the other two at the whistled command of one of the two dismounted female figures.
"When we got word Lung was aiming to come after us tonight, we were pretty freaked. We were arguing strategy for the better part of the day. We eventually decided, fuck it, we'd meet him halfway. Wing it. Not my usual way of doing things, but yeah." The boy continued. "Wouldn't you know, his flunky Lee is there with a half dozen guys, but Lung and the rest of his gang are nowhere to be found?" he laughed at this point. "Lee's no slouch in a fight, but there's a reason he's not leader of the ABB. He got spooked without his boss there and ran. I guess you're responsible for that?"
Moving to the edge of the roof, he looked down and said to Taylor, "Lung is getting creamed. The fuck you do to him?"
"Pepper spray, wasp and bee stings, fire ants and spider bites." A familiar voice said from the screen as the Tattletale of the past came up to introduce herself. Wearing a purple and black bodysuit, she also had windswept blond hair. "He's not holding up too well. Gonna feel a helluvalot worse tomorrow."
"My new costume looks better than that one." The Tattletale of the present said, eying her old outfit critically. "Fucking Coil."
It was then that they introduced themselves to me. The boy in leathers was Grue, the leader of their team. Next was Tattletale, the girl in purple and black. The girl who had commanded the dogs was Bitch or, as the PRT called her, Hellhound. And, as Grue put it, last and certainly least was Regent, the renaissance fair reject with a white mask.
Little did I know it at the time, but these four would be my greatest allies and friends, ones who I cherished and cared for, even if I eventually betrayed them in an effort to make a difference.
Tattletale swallowed thickly. "Oh dammit, Taylor…"
Bitch looked irritated for some reason. "Tch. Idiot…"
{Episode End}
Episode 3: The Ambitious Master of Arms
"Master of arms…?" Brandish parroted as she turned her head to face Defiant with narrowed eyes, who was staring straight ahead. "Now that I come to think of it, Defiant, weren't you the one who claimed to have taken down Lung?"
"I am Defiant, not Armsmaster." The armoured hero stressed firmly.
"Cut the crap." Glory Girl rolled her eyes. "As rebranding goes, yours was just barely papering over the cracks!"
"We'll find out what Armsmaster did if we play the game." Tattletale said smoothly, and not a bit smugly. She didn't like what the man had done to her friend and it was high-time that people started seeing what he had been like, even before his actions during the Leviathan Battle.
After talking for a few minutes more, and Lung getting knocked out by the animals of Bitch, the four who I would later know to be the Undersiders sped off on their rhino-dog-things. They were the 'kids' that Lung had been going out to kill. I had almost gotten killed trying to stop Lung from attacking other villains, ones who had mistaken me for a villain too.
I hate myself sometimes.
Tattletale had warned me that a Protectorate Cape was approaching and the one who showed up surprised me…Armsmaster. He was the leader of the Protectorate East-North-East, headquartered on the forcefield-shrouded island in the middle of the bay of Brockton Bay. He had action figures and all kinds of other merchandise…including Armsmaster panties. I knew; I had a pair.
"What on earth were you thinking when you approved those, Armsmaster?" Dragon groaned with a slight facepalm. Defiant had the sense to look slightly sheepish and embarrassed.
Given all of that, the first words he said to me when he arrived, after asking if I was going to fight him, were surprisingly hurtful.
"I'm a good guy." Taylor said to the blue and silver armoured Armsmaster onscreen.
"You don't look like one." Armsmaster replied.
"Were you stupid enough to say that to Alexandria as well?" Imp jeered at Defiant.
"She would've punched him into next week." Tattletale smiled, baring her teeth in a predatory fashion. "He just has all the tact that a two year old does."
After a bit of back and forth, during which I told him about the entire fight (which he should have remembered when dealing with Lung afterwards, idiot) and about my meeting afterwards with the Undersiders, he told me about how the other two members of the ABB with powers, Oni lee and the new Tinker, Bakuda, would start gunning for me if they knew I had taken down Lung.
I recognised what he was doing. He didn't actually care about me; he wanted to claim the credit for taking down and brining in Lung.
I…
{Vital Choice!}
1) …let him take it. [_] –
2) …refused. [_]
3) …made a deal with him. [_]
"Why you…!" Foil sounded angry and incredulous. "You stole credit for her fight?! Oh come on! How did anyone believe this shit? The sheer number of bites and stings in him must have made SOMEONE twig to the fact that a bug controller was involved!"
"Dragon, surely you must have seen the list of Lung's injuries and felt something was amiss?" Panacea asked.
Tattletale snorted. "He got in the shit because he injected Lung with a regeneration inhibitor and Lung's dick rotted off from the spider and ant bites. If she didn't know about that, considering she had free access to the Protectorate ENE's systems, I would be very surprised."
"I didn't, actually." Dragon said stiffly. "I still had restrictions preventing me from accessing government and private systems without specific permission at that time, and Armsmaster didn't tell me about this. I am very disappointed in him for how manipulative he was here."
Shadow Stalker, who had been silent until this moment, just snorted. "Isn't as if Hebert actually took him down anyway. That was those freakish mutts-OOF!"
Bitch had stormed over to the Shadow Breaker and punched her in the solar plexus, hard. "Don't talk about Angelica, Judas and Brutus like that, you fucking cunt." The Canine Mistress growled angrily before stomping back to her seat, leaving Shadow Stalker wheezing as she fought both to recover her breath and to not throw up.
"Ignoring Psycho Stalker's idiocy for Armsmaster's, yeah, this is a fuckup of grand proportions." Parian shook her head. "Leaving aside the fact that he blatantly manipulated an inexperienced, wounded and exhausted hero into giving him credit for her hard work, he also, if some things she and Tattletale told me are true, he then took it out on her for Lung getting badly wounded and him getting a rocket for it when it was his own fault for stopping Lung's regeneration."
"I healed Lung after Armsmaster brought him in." Panacea said crisply. "Had he just waited a while before injecting Lung with the regen inhibitor, Lung would have been fine."
"It was standard procedure-" Defiant began.
"You just didn't think!" Brandish interrupted him with a disdainful look. "You never thought to connect the hundreds of bug bites that Lung was covered with the possibility the only thing keeping him alive was his regeneration factor. Seriously, why you were ever placed at the head of the Protectorate ENE is beyond me."
Defiant ground his teeth slightly, but said nothing. Tattletale simply selected the correct choice.
1) …let him take it. [X] –
2) …refused. [_]
3) …made a deal with him. [_]
…let him take it. I was both mentally and physically exhausted, wounded and truth be told, the thought of having Oni Lee and Bakuda after me was something that worried me. More than that, Armsmaster was the leader of the Protectorate in Brockton Bay. Having him tacitly owe me one was a big card to play when things got desperate that I couldn't turn down.
"Well-reasoned, but it sounds more like a justification than an argument." Brandish mused.
"I think she just wanted to get it over and done with so she could get home, sleep and recover from almost being turned into flambé, Brandish." Vista said dryly. The revelation here about who had taken down Lung (for the most part) and why had shaken her. She had known that Skitter had acted benevolently in the aftermath of Leviathan, at least regarding those citizens in her territory, but this…seeing that Taylor Hebert had leapt in to fight LUNG, of all villains, because she thought he was going to kill kids, had given her respect for the girl.
More than that, her faith in Defiant/Armsmaster had been shaken. While shocked and appalled by the increased replacement of his body with cybernetic implants, Defiant had still been a figure worthy of respect for her, while a small part of Vista had still blamed Flechette/Foil's defection on Skitter. The revelation of Armsmaster's words and actions towards a girl trying to be a hero, despite having every reason to go bugpocalypse on her shithole of a school hit her hard.
"We should continue, I think." Dragon said calmly. "We've only gone through her first three months as a Parahuman; we have a lot of ground to cover."
Nodding, with dirty looks being sent at both Defiant and Shadow Stalker, the rest returned their attention to the screen.
OK, and that is it DONE! God, this took forever. I know that some people dislike 'simply going over Canon' when there are literally thousands of fan fics about Worm in general, and Taylor in particular to draw on, including my own Waterworks, but…in my case, I'm nowhere near narcissistic enough to write a 'reading of' story about one of my other stories. In the case of other stories, I would have to ask permission (do this!) from the author to do so and there was little point in doing so for a ficlet that wouldn't be completed.
On a sadder, more sombre note, I am sure you all know by now that Stan Lee, the Father of Marvel and the King of Cameos, passed away four days ago at the grand old age of ninety-five. While I was never a big comic fan, the Marvel Universe that he created drew me in on TV, the big screen and in games. Spiderman especially was one of the cartoons that I loved and watched as a child and as a teenager.
As you may know, I included Stan in my ficlet [She's a Hero]. I did debate not continuing that ficlet, but I eventually decided that Mr Lee wouldn't want his death to hamper a writer's drive and that I would indeed continue it, if for no better reason than as a homage to the passing of a great man and the end of an era.
Stan Lee
1922-2018
"Excelsior!"