Enter the Wyrm Chapter 9: Dragons Make Poor Pets, a Shadowrun + Worm Crossover fanfic

A/N: Thanks again to all those reading. Ordinarily when I reach the last few chapters, I often post them all at once. But I'm still tinkering with the last chapter, so you'll have to wait until next week.

Chapter Nine: Dragons Make Poor Pets

"He's not going to go for it," Lisa said.

"I have confidence that you can find a way to make him see the benefits of it," Coil said. His voice sounded like a snake hissing through her phone. "But I can be generous. I will buy any gold or gems you recover at full market cost, plus I can have the lawyer in place to begin immediate proceedings regarding Mr. Laborn's family issue."

"Boss...she doesn't care about the unwritten rules. She doesn't care about humans at all. She has inhuman senses. You're asking us to die."

The fucker laughed. "Don't be so dramatic, Tattletale. After all, I'm not asking."

Her phone beeped to let her know the other party hung up. She slowly put the phone down and started at the pilfered PRT report for Tiamat. It wasn't just that the dragon-girl's threat ratings were high across the board.

Triumvirate intervention required was the only suggested response if the dragon-girl ever went bad. The only reason she wasn't considered an S-class threat was that she didn't appear to hold grudges. The note from the attending psychiatrist was chilling:

Subject appears amoral by human standards and possesses the mindset of an animal. Everything is gauged by risk and reward, and an overwhelming urge to defend what is hers. Subject would gladly kill anyone she feels infringing upon her territory or possessions, but when challenged for stealing another person's pens, she made no threat displays. For this reason, subject represents a clear and immediate danger only to those that violate her immediate space or sense of belonging.

If left alone, subject will undoubtedly leave others alone.

Addendum: Under no circumstances should anyone attempt to confiscate subject's gold. Subject was willing to fight Triumvirate members to the death to defend her gold. Thinktank is unsure if she could win.

"See, that's the part I don't like," Lisa muttered.

But Coil's last words rang in her head. He wasn't asking.

She popped a couple of ibuprofen and swallowed them dry before she made her way out into the expensively furnished lair Coil had so helpfully provided them. Alec sat on their brand-new white leather couch playing some Earth Aleph game about a Greek god running around killing things.

Brian was working out by beating the ever-loving hell out of an innocent mannequin. Bitch was grooming her dogs. Lisa half expected her to eat ticks off them or something, but that was being cruel. They were officially a team now for three days, and hadn't done a single job. She didn't know them as people, no matter what her powers told her.

"So, we got our first job!" she called, loud enough even Alec heard.

He removed his headphones and stared. "No shit? Cool." He showed no inflection in his voice as he stood and walked like a living slinky to the kitchen table.

Brian grabbed a small towel to wipe sweat from his face. "What kind of job?"

"Well, there's a shipment of gold and raw, uncut diamonds coming in to Pier 27 in a week or so the boss found out about. He wants us to hit it, and take all we can. He'll buy everything we get at full market price."

"What's that?" Bitch asked.

"Right now? 'Round $1200 to $1300 per gram for the gold. Not sure on the diamonds."

Brian lifted a brow. "Your power doesn't tell you?"

"I just found out five minutes ago. I'll have to look it up. It's a lot, though. Almost a quarter billion in gold and gems."

"Quarter...wait, what now?" Brian stuttered. "Did you say billions, like with a 'B'"?

"Quarter billion," Lisa said again. "Over two hundred million dollars in gold bullion and gems."

Alec whistled. "Man, we could get a lot of games for that."

Brian shook his head. "No way that much money is just floating around. Where's it coming from, who's it for, and who's defending it?"

Lisa bit back an anxious sigh. She still didn't know these people Coil forced her to work with. Oh, her power told her all about their conditions and quirks, but she didn't know them as people. And though she would deny it until she was blue in the face, Brian intimidated her a little bit. He didn't get his great body just by working out-he got it by fighting. He was still a kid just like her, not quite eighteen yet, but he'd been a cape for two years now and a bouncer for most of that time.

Alec was a walking bundle of psychosis, and Bitch was just broken.

"It's coming from Malaysia," she said. "It'll probably have some foreign capes defending it, but we don't know yet who."

The one thing she did know about Brian, though, was that he wasn't stupid.

"Malaysia," he muttered. "Shit, Lisa, you're talking about Tiamat, aren't you? That's her fucking gold coming in. Boss wants us to go after an honest-to-God fire-breathing dragon's gold? Does he want us to die?"

Probably. She had no doubt Coil had this nicely appointed lair bugged to hell and back. So she managed not to let the thought slip. The Boss had made it clear that if she didn't toe the line, she'd get towed out into the Bay after being shot.

If she were lucky.

"Brian, this is life-changing money," she noted.

"Dead is life-changing," Alec noted with a snort. "So, I guess she's not lying."

The fact that Brian didn't snap at him meant he agreed, of that much Lisa was sure.

"I knew this whole set-up was too good to be true," Brian muttered. "Should have walked out the moment I saw this place."

Boss told her to use it only in the worst-case scenario, but it was on the table. "Two things," she said. "One, we get Circus for this one. Two...boss said the cost of the lawyer and filing fees will be covered for your sister and he can get it done this month."

Brian froze, then turned and stared at her. It was not a happy stare. "Him getting the damned lawyer was the promise to get me to join this shitshow in the first place."

Lisa shrugged. "He's a villain, Brian. This is the carrot."

Don't make him use the stick. Brian was smart enough to get the message. He stared at her for a long time, and knew it was all up to him. Bitch didn't care about anything but her dogs, and didn't seem to understand that even at their largest they'd be nothing but a snack to Tiamat. Alec was so broken he wasn't really capable of caring about anything, not even his own life.

"Fine," Brian said. "We'll check it out to see if there's a window. But you tell the Boss, Lisa. You tell him loud and clear. We're not going up against Tiamat. If she's there, that's it. We're gone."

"That'll work," Lisa said. I hope.

~~Wyrm~~

"It's obviously a trap," Max said.

He held a crystal glass with a sniff of brandy in his right hand as he assured those at the table that the intel from their plants at the PRT were not worth acting on.

"If so, it is an expensive trap," Fleischer said. Since they were in the Medhall 17th floor conference room, they were all in their civilian clothing. James Fleischer wore tweed, like some high-nosed English twat. "Lee Tan Kuak owned almost 7% of the world's sugar market at one point. He is the seventh richest man in the world, and is single-handedly accredited with keeping Malaysia alive and independent in the face of the area's economic collapse and China's imperialism. He has a private army of over a hundred capes on hand. I don't think it's a trap, but I agree it would be foolish to attack the ship without resources from the fatherland."

Brad covered his snort with a swig of whiskey. If nothing else, Max always had the good stuff. "You afraid of a bunch of gooks, Fleischer?"

"Afraid?" The man who went by Krieg in costume flashed a wan grin at Hookwolf. "Call it a healthy respect. It is not the Malaysians, after all, who concern me. It is the intended recipient of the gold."

"Tiamat." Menja said the name as if everyone at the table didn't already know that.

Hookwolf wanted to scoff, but he was too much the warrior not to respect what the dragon-girl did to Lung. He grunted and downed his whiskey before getting up for more. As he poured the single-malt and looked through the window down at the lights of the city below, Hookwolf cursed himself. They should have owned the city by now. With Lung and Oni-Lee both dead, the ABB had already fractured back into their smaller gangs.

The Koreans and Chinese were fighting each other, until the Japanese showed up, then they'd gang up on the Japanese because after Kyushu Brockton Bay had more Japs than any other ethnicity.

And wasn't that a spit in the face of Papa?

Bradley Arthur Meadows was a marine in WWII. He fought in some of the hardest battles in the war. Brad could remember sitting on Pap's knees as a kid. "Should've rearmed the Nazis and taken those fucking Commies out, boy! Patton had the right idea. Finest fighting force in the history of the world. Woulda won if Hitler weren't fucked in the head. We could show them commies their own asses. But no, them pansy-assed fuckers just said, 'All's forgiven!'"

Brad loved his Paps. He was a warrior to the end, when the cirrhosis and prostate cancer got him. But one of the lessons he learned was to never wait for the enemy to come to you. That's why America had such a hard time with the Japs. We waited to let them shoot first, but that first shot was a doozy that almost put America out of the fight.

Never let the enemy take the first shot.

Brad turned, with whiskey in hand, and regarded the people he'd made cause with. He sometimes doubted Max really believed in the Aryan race. He had too much business dealings on the MedHall side. But he knew Krieg was a true believer, even if he was more Mengele than Rommel.

The twins would do whatever Max told them. Cricket and Stormtiger, though? Definitely his.

"She's gonna come after us," Brad said.

Max and Krieg had moved on to Medhall shit when Brad made his announcement. Both men stopped and looked up at him. "What's that?" Max asked.

"Tiamat's gonna come after us," Brad said again as he made his way back to the table. "We're the only threats left. Merchants ain't gonna do shit, and the PRT let her start a fucking world war. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but she's gonna come for us."

"Our intelligence from the PRT suggests she does not actually care about us," Fleischer said. "That is, as long as we do not touch her gold or interact with her family or friends."

Brad snorted. "PRT don't know shit. She's an apex predator, Max. Lions don't tolerate cheetahs in their land. Bears fuck wolves up if they get too close. She's a fucking dragon. This is her hunting ground, and we're the only other predators around. Hell, we might not even set her off. It might be the PRT sending her our way. Doesn't matter. Eventually, she's going to come after us."

Everyone at the table shared long, apprehensive glances at each other. Brad knew for a fact that everyone there had watched video of the end of Tiamat's fight with Lung, the only cape rumored to go toe-to-toe with an Endbringer single-handedly and walk away. She'd blown off half the manhole covers in the entire city when her fire flash-boiled five percent of the city's aquifer.

"That's an interesting point," Max said diplomatically. The man did not want to fight a dragon. He was a politician more than a warrior. But that's why he had Brad as one of his lieutenants.

"We know when and where she's gonna be," Brad continued. "Everything we need to set up an ambush. And we have two giants to fight the dragon."

Jessica and Nessa, as always flanking Max, sat up at his nod to them. While he wasn't particularly impressed by their fighting skills, and never made a secret of it, the fact that they could turn into 40-foot giantesses and take their weapons with them made them ideal to fight a forty-foot dragon.

At least until he could get in.

"The girl's a PRT darling," Max said.

"With respect, I'm not sure I would agree with that statement," Fleischer said. He was careful in tone, as always, but Brad gave the man a smidgen of respect for standing up for himself. "She's a pain point, really. She's openly murdered and maimed, and her performance at Arcadia was an embarrassment to the PRT as a whole. I understand there've already been three separate class-action lawsuits filed. I wonder if the PRT would mourn at all if Tiamat were to perish."

"Put Victor nearby with a .50 rifle and armor-piercing rounds," Brad said. "The twins grown big, and all of us ready to bounce. We hit her hard and fast and don't give her a chance to defend herself. Her fight with Lung was impressive, but that's because Lung set it up and asked for it. She should have had him out in seconds. We do the same."

"You're asking us to kill a Ward," Max said.

"I'd say he's asking us to kill a dangerous, murdering animal," Fleischer countered. "At least, that will be the message we give. She attacked Glory Girl in a school. I'm sure we can make that work to our advantage."

For the first time, Kayden spoke. "Ordinarily I'd be with you, but if you go after Tiamat I'm going to have to sit the fight out. I'm pregnant."

"I agree," Max said to his wife.

"We'll miss you, but we can still make it work," Brad said. "We have to. One way or the other."

~~Wyrm~~

"Jack, I want her."

"Well, then, poppet. I suppose we'll have to go get her then, won't we?"

~~Wyrm~~

Emily hated Thursdays more than any other day of the week. More than dialysis. More than parahumans. More than the sound children's laughter.

Thursdays were the interdepartmental meetings. And this one was off to a typically awful start.

"What the hell is going on in your department, Emily? Can't you keep that insane girl under control?"

Wilkins, as normal, sat too close to her computer camera, making it look as if her face were about to fall through the monitor when she spoke. Piggott noticed with more than a little schadenfreude that the New York PRT director's concealer couldn't quite hide the acne break out around the corners of her mouth.

"Nancy, as far as I can see, the fact Tiamat hasn't burned the entire city down is her being under control," Armstrong said. The Boston PRT director was famously easy on his parahumans.

"That girl is a menace," James Tagg said. "She's a danger to every citizen in the city. She should be on her way to the Birdcage by now."

"Yes, James, you've made your opinion well know," Chief-Director Costa Brown said. "And Dragon has already confirmed that the on-boarding equipment for the Baumann facility is not large enough to physically handle Tiamat, even if I agreed. Which, to be clear, I don't. So let's table that discussion for the foreseeable future."

Piggott struggled not to defend Tagg. The man was right.

"So far, my people are telling me that the E88 and at least two other local gangs are looking at hitting the gold shipment." Emily made a note of consulting her notes, which were blank, because fuck notes.

"You can add the Teeth and Accord to that tally," Armstrong said. "And I heard from one of Accord's people that the Slaughter House Nine have taken an interest, too."

"I've been hearing rumors of the Fallen being interested, too," Hudgins from Houston said. "These people are hoarders, and gold carries a lot more value in their eyes than paper currency. And that's the most gold in one place we've seen since the Goldfinger Band hit Fort Knox."

As the other PRT directors chimed in, adding more kerosene to the flame, Emily Piggott realized that she needed to file for disability retirement. And she needed to do so from another town.

"Oh, hey, if the Slaughterhouse Nine come, will there be a fine if I eat Crawler?"

Emily closed her eyes and prayed to a God she didn't believe in any more that it was not, in fact, Tiamat who somehow spoke on their secured web conference. Unless, of course, there was a God, and He just hated her in particular.

"Tiamat," Costa-Brown said with that cold calm she always displayed. "What are you doing on this conference call?"

"My ears were burning! If you don't want me listening in, don't say my name so much."

"Let me rephrase the question." Not even the infamously cool Chief Director could hide her exasperation. "How are you on this call?"

"Oh, that? I got bored and read the books about internet security. Did you know your mainframe has like fourteen separate Trojan horses sending transcripts out to villains across the world? Your VPN has more holes than the cafeteria wall at Arcadia High. Do you guys know anyone named Coil? I think he's actually listening in right now. Pretty crazy. Oh, never mind. He logged off. If you revised the OpMan, I could go eat them for you."

"I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry."

"Me neither," Armstrong said.

Which meant Emily said that aloud. Fuck!

"I cried once, when I was small and weak," Tiamat said with that shallow sincerity that left everyone around her completely unbalanced. "I could bring my friend Emma in to give you a hug. I would hug you, but I'm not going to. You smell bad. Better than Eidolon, though. He smells like old onions. Oh, wow! It says here on PHO that there's bounties on the Slaughterhouse Nine? Why didn't you guys just say that? Can I get paid in gold?"

Through the open mic, they heard the girl scream, "Dad! Did you know the S9 has bounties? I'm gonna go eat Crawler! See you soon!"

Worse yet was the father's response. "Be back before dinner!"

The line terminated.

Wilson, in New York, sank back from her screen. "I take back everything I said. You're doing great, Emily."

~~Wyrm~~

Missy sat at her desk in Room 2237 of the Tracy Weis Middle School and listened as Mrs. Cole droned on about…something.

Missy wasn't listening—she was too busy drawing her latest version of Tiamat in the corner of her Social Studies text book.

"Oh, is that me?"

Missy blinked tiredly and looked up into the massive golden eyes of Tiamat. Her car-sized head was right outside the window of Missy's second floor classroom, looking in.

Mrs. Cole's lecture was so boring, no one else in the classroom had noticed there was a giant dragon right outside the window.

"What are you doing here?" Missy hissed under her breath.

"Just found out there's like a $15 million bounty on the Slaughterhouse Nine. So I was going to go eat them. Wanna come?"

"How much do I get?"

"Well, I'll be doing the eating. Want to split them up like we did the boys? You get one-third, I get two-thirds?"

"That works."

Donna Winehouse screamed. She jumped up from her desk, pointed at the windows, and screamed again. That made some of the other kids scream when they saw why Donna was screaming. Missy bit back a sigh—she hated Middle School.

"I'll meet you on the roof," she said under her breath. She knew Tiamat could hear. The dragon held up one massive claw and waived at the terrified children inside before disappearing in a shimmer of sparking lights.

Ten minutes later, as PRT quick responders made their way to the school and Missy's PRT phone went absolutely haywire with texts, instant messages, emails and calls all telling her to stand down, she stood on the roof in her costume.

"I'm gonna be in so much trouble for this," Missy said as Tiamat appeared from her invisibility right next to her.

"Maybe," the dragon said. "But you'll also be rich. Besides, it's their fault."

"Damned right. They wouldn't let us do our joint patrol to go eat Kaiser!"

"Exactly! Hop on, partner. Let's go eat some people and blow ship up!"

Vista climbed on to Tiamat's back, right between her wings, and hugged herself against the obsidian scales. "God, I love you so much," the girl said, almost teary-eyed.

"I am pretty awesome," Tiamat said humbly. She roared her challenge to the sky in a sound that echoed across the entire bay. With great flaps of her wings, she launched into the air while Vista bent the space right in front of her to form a wind scream.

"Do you know there they are?"

"I can smell them from here!"

~~Wyrm~~

"Jack?"

"Yes, poppet?"

"I changed my mind. I don't want a pet dragon anymore."

"How did she even know about the Siberian?"

Jack was out of breath as he ran, arms pumping. Riley struggled to keep up with her shorter legs. Even with her augmentation, it was hard. The ground under their feet shook like an earthquake as the dragon continued to tear massive pieces off Crawler and eat them, as if the acid didn't matter. Crawler, whose power was adaptation, was an unrecognizable monster by that point and continued screaming, "That's it! That's it! Fight me bitch!" even as the dragon ate him alive.

Until, finally, she ate a piece of him that couldn't regenerate any more. Their RV was reduced to cinders, along with the other members. Shatterbird, Hatchetface and Burnscar didn't even have a chance—they were in the front of the RV when the dragon dropped down right on top of them and flamed the front of the vehicle. If not for Crawler squeezed into the middle, Jack and Riley would have died.

What really scared her, though, was when the dragon flamed the little VW bug that always followed the band around, and the Siberian just disappeared.

So now Jack and Riley were running. But no matter how fast they ran, they never seemed to make any progress. It was almost as it the ground was stretching out forever in front of them.

Almost like a…"Oh."

Riley stopped running, and a second later Jack did too, and the world stopped stretching out before them. They turned to face the black, silver-lined dragon as it lowered its head and crawled over the burning wreckage of the RV. Crawler was nothing more than a steaming mound of cooked meat.

On top of the dragon's back, leaning over to see, was the Brockton Bay ward named Vista.

"You fuckers are in so much trouble now!" the girl shouted gleefully.

Riley wished she'd taken out her tear ducts. The tears were getting in the way of her seeing just how beautiful the dragon was. "I tried to be good, mommy," she said.

The dragon opened its mouth and fire blasted from it. The heat of it blistered Riley's arm and made her cry as she stumbled away from the white-blue stream. When she blinked, the only thing that remained of Jack Slash were the charred bones of his shins, sticking out of his boots.

The massive head turned toward Riley, and as those impossible golden eyes focused on her, she felt a deep, terrible weight bear down on her. She began bawling uncontrollably.

"I don't get it," Vista said from the dragon's back.

"She was mastered," the dragon said.

"Yeah, but she's fucking killed thousands of people."

"She tried to be good for her mommy," the dragon said.

That silenced Vista.

Suddenly a newcomer was there. Riley blinked up past her tears as Alexandria arrived in her heavy cape. She looked around at the carnage with a firm expression. "Tiamat."

The dragon immediately perked up. "Hey, since Bonesaw was mastered by Jack and had all that nasty germ stuff, I was going to hold off flaming her. I'm kinda full from Crawler. All that regeneration was like an all-you-can-eat buffet. But I still get the bounty, right? Fifteen total, ten to me and five to Vista?"

"Mastered?" Alexandria turned to look at the weeping girl.

"I tried to be a good girl," Riley said. "I really tried."

The most powerful flying tank in the Protectorate made her decision. "Yes, fine. You can file for the bounties. Leave Bonesaw with me."

The dragon nodded. She then lowered her massive head so low that the hot wash of her breath pulled as Riley's blood-stained dress. "If you ever kill anyone again, I'm gonna eat you. Bye!"

The dragon reared up and roared. Vista held on to the scales of her back and screamed right along with her, and seconds later they were in the air to terrify the rest of the country.

"Door me," Alexandria said.

It was the last thing Riley remembered.

~~Wyrm~~

There was no point in yelling at Tiamat for bringing the entire state of New Hampshire to the point of civil war. If she didn't care about a regional war in the Pacific that threatened to destabilize what was left of the world order, she wouldn't care about a gang war in New Hampshire.

Emily did not often spy on her Wards; she honestly didn't want to know what the kids got up to in their common room. But whenever Tiamat was in the building, she found herself switching on the CC monitor and watching how the monster in girl's clothing interacted with the other Wards.

Vista had gone beyond friendship into slavish devotion. They were in the common room now, playing the board game Life, though it looked as if they had some odd home rules.

"It's important to make sure all the properties are held under LLCs," Tiamat was saying. "Once I eat Coil and take all his stuff, I'll own most of the city under a series of LLCs. Make sure creditors can never come after your personal assets. That way, you won't have to eat them."

Vista giggled, but there was a manic sound to it that made Emily wonder if she was laughing because it was funny, or because it wasn't.

"What will you do when you own the city?"

"Why, I'll move on to own the state. I've already bought shares into a few agricultural firms. People will always need food. Food and land. And drugs. Or, goodness, drugs! Ever since Medhall led Big Pharma in overturning the advertising restrictions to let them put commercials for drugs on TV, they've been making a killing. Economy is down 15% in the past three years, people are starving and losing their houses, but pharmaceuticals have posted a 6% growth rate every year. I already have a 9% holding in Medhall, and as soon as I eat Kaiser, I'll be able to buy his shares too and have a controlling interest."

"What does Kaiser have to do with Medhall?"

Emily found herself leaning forward as well. What did Kaiser have to do with Medhall?

"I'll tell you later. Wouldn't want spoil the surprise."

"So, what will you do when you're rich?"

"I'll be rich. That's the point. There's nothing better than the feel of gold rubbing against my scales. There's no better place to be in society than on top of it. No one will tell me what to do, but I'll be able to tell them what to do. And when Legend is my senior boytoy, I'll send him across the world for grapes from France or petrol from Russia. It'll be great."

"Can I be rich with you?'

"You already are. But stay with me, Missy, and you'll own the world. Well, maybe a third of it. I am bigger, after all."

Another disconcerting, manic giggle. "That sounds peeerrrrfffect."

"Oh my god, she's contagious," Emily muttered. It was like watching Home Alone, only starring the possessed child from the Exorcist. Tiamat was, quite literally, the devil. And Vista was her newest claimed soul.