Of Wasps and Wizards, Part 7
"I'm pretty sure you're just trying to dodge reality here Myrddin," Campanile said with a big stupid smile on his face.
That was the biggest problem with him, I just couldn't stop thinking in size puns.
"Eyes on the road Campanile, there's a large vampire problem in these parts."
"Come on man, I know how much you're making from all the merchandise, you can buy better than that stupid little Volkswagen," he said, and I could barely keep my anger in check.
"The Blue Beetle is my car. There are many like it, but the Blue Beetle is mine. The Blue Beetle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life."
"Oh come on man, it's just a car."
"It's not just a car man. The Beetle and I, we went through a lot of shit together. I've had it repaired like fifty times now."
"Maybe that says more about your driving skills than your car."
"Yeah, because you're such a great driver!"
"For the hundredth time, I hit that guy on purpose. He was a brute!"
"You were still on your learner's permit!"
"And I already drove better than you!"
As we turned another corner, the conversation died down. We were now on a busier street again, and it wouldn't do to have everyone see how ridiculous the internal struggles of the Protectorate were.
Evening patrol had, as always, been relatively silent, anticipatory. It lacked the large-scale attention from civilians that you got in afternoon patrols, and most of the supervillains and other nasties waited until later in the night to start acting. Thus, instead of rushing from crime scene to crime scene, we'd been annoying each other with remarks about driving skills and cars. Campanile had taken a perverse amount of pleasure in the fact that an unknown parahuman had destroyed my car.
"So, Wanton told me you used another power? Something about binding the ghost of a dead supervillain?" he suddenly asked, changing to a more serious topic.
"Long story short? She was only mostly dead. Something with a weird power interaction," I told him, trying to keep a balance between telling him the truth and having him stop believing me.
"So, something like Glaistig Uaine? Only for herself?"
I thought about the question for a while. Glaistig Uaine was a powerful cape, perhaps one of the most powerful ones, that had the ability to summon the ghosts of fallen parahumans, and use their abilities for herself. She was also delusional, looked like an eight-year-old, and thought parahumans -or rather, their powers- were faeries.
That was, of course, absolute nonsense. Faeries were creatures of the Nevernever, not interdimensional brain parasites, although I could forgive her for mistaking one for the other. My own fairy godmother, Leanansidhe, was just about as, if not more, dangerous than the parasite that was invading my brain.
In addition to that, her 'ghosts' were very much not ghosts. Given what Lisa had told me, it was more likely that they were quite similar to what she was, created from a highly sophisticated record of the inner mental workings of the parahuman in question. Except instead of getting matched with the actual ghost, they were now under control of a childlike supervillain.
"Sort of, yeah. She was stuck in a difficult to perceive form, and I managed to get her settled in." I replied.
"And does Heathrow know about this? Hell, have you told Revel you've been helping supervillains?" he asked, quietly.
"Campanile, seriously, have you ever known me to ask before casting a spell?"
He laughed, knowing that I had not.
"So, how'd the Skitter thing go? You learn anything about those werewolf guys?"
"Hexenwolves, probably. She told me they started as a normal operation, only changing into wolves once they were confronted by Watch. Looks like they're taking parahuman activities into their own claws."
"And the girl?" he asked.
"Still a little in shock, trying to rebuild her life. She seems to have taken a big turn towards our side though."
"Does that mean we can expect a creepy new ward?"
"Don't think so, she's not entirely happy with us. For now, I'm just making sure she and Tattletale don't get caught up with the wrong people again."
"Like the vampires."
"Like the vampires."
We walked on a little, swerving around small groups of people that were just starting in the Chicago nightlife.
"They attacked people last night, a recruitment attempt on teenagers," I said.
"Skitter?" he asked.
"And Rune, another girl from Brockton Bay."
"Another one of your sources, I'm guessing?"
"An independent I know told me about her."
"Wonder what got them riled up. They usually prefer staying in the shadows."
"Tattletale, the ghost I told you about, thinks it's one of the Merchants, another group from Brockton Bay. They recruited people by making them dependent on a steady supply of drugs. It seems to me like they tried to mimic that tactic."
"Great…" Campanile said. See? I wasn't the only one making size puns. It's just that mine were better.
Our conversation was cut short when Campanile suddenly got a message in his earpiece.
"Hey Myrddin, comms are saying someone called Susan is calling in, asking for you."
That was one of the problems with being a wizard, technology, and therefore smartphones, didn't agree with you. The Protectorate had done it away as just another side-effect of my phenomenally large array of Trump abilities, and had given up on giving me new earpieces and other such things. Thus, when Susan wanted to talk to me, she'd call the PRT, which called my patrol partner, which informed me. It was a great system.
The real problem was that, if Susan called, that meant something important and time-sensitive was going on. And given who her new assistant was, it was probably trouble.
" What's she saying?" I asked.
He repeated my question, making sure it was properly picked up by his earpiece.
"She's saying you were supposed to help her pick up the puppies at the university," Campanile said, a suspicious look on his face.
Then, he turned off the earpiece again. "So, I'm thinking this is some sort of code…" he said.
"Oh really? You think so? Did you use your massive intellect to deduce that?"
"So, what's it mean?"
"It means we have to hurry, because Skitter is fighting Werewolves on the campus."
"Wait, wasn't she like fourteen?" he asked, as he was starting to exercise his power, growing with about half a foot every second.
Campanile had the ability to become big. Now mind you he was already a ridiculous eight feet tall without actively using it, so instead of just becoming large, he becomes humongous.
Of course, as any student of physics that thinks himself a smartass loves to point out, that's largely useless. The human body is designed for a specific size and weight, and simply scaling that up doesn't work. The square-cube law meant that weight increased at a far greater rate than the size of his legs, and in addition to that, the massive weight would also mean he would sink straight through the floor if he actually became a sizeable height.
So, his brain parasite had decided, he'd also need gravity manipulation, just so that he could keep being as big as he wanted to be.
"So, given that your car's still in the shop, in how big of a hurry are we?" he asked, his voice now deep and gravelly.
I looked around at the street, and all the citizens out on the town for the evening, about half of them holding smartphones in their hand. For just a second, I thought about my remaining self-respect
Then I remembered that everyone already thought of me as 'that crazy wizard guy' anyway, and that three young women, two of them supervillains, were depending on me for help in taking down the Hexenwolves.
"Fine… go ahead," I said.
At that, Campanile picked me up, and held me in a bridal carry for just long enough to allow all the onlookers to take a picture, and upload them to their instabooks or whatever. Blame me for not having the internet, I've heard what degenerates online get up to. Grace and Cuff had explained to me in quite some detail about something called slash, and whatever they said, I'd never looked at Chevalier in that manner. Michael was the only knight for me.
Then, when he was sure everyone had been able to take an embarrassing picture, Campanile flung me over his shoulder instead, and started running for the university campus.
***
In my years dealing with supernatural and parahuman troubles in Chicago, I've seen quite a few different variations of shit going down.
Sometimes, it was a thunderstorm that a wannabe warlock was using to gather energy in order to rip people's hearts out of their bodies.
At other times, it was pouring rain in the middle of a sunny day, accompanied by Leviathan smashing through the cities.
Another big tell was screaming hordes of people running in just about every direction.
Having a literal maelstrom of bugs flying through the sky however, was a new one. At least if you ignored all that stuff in the bible.
As we approached closer to the cloud of bugs, Campanile set me back on the ground. Looking at the swarm, he asked me: "Are you sure she's on our side?"
I looked at the swarm of bugs again, and swallowed. I'd faced down a lot of nasties, including actual demons. I knew they were just bugs, that they were perfectly under control, and that they were nothing compared to the stuff I'd faced.
Nonetheless, it still creeped me out. It's not that I hate bugs, it's just that there were so many of them. How was she even controlling them all?
"I hope so," I answered.
We made our way forwards, onto the campus. It was largely abandoned, which probably had something to do with the cloud of bugs. After getting closer to the cloud, which I assumed was Skitter's way of both making civilians evacuate and alerting me to her location, I suddenly spotted her running towards use, followed by a smaller cloud of bugs, her personal attack squad.
Looking at her, it seemed like she'd ditched most of the armor pieces she'd been wearing in all the footage from Brockon Bay. She was just covered in thick silk, with her mask covering her face, and a tiny blue orb floating above her.
The effect wasn't as interesting as you'd expect when you heard about a girl wearing nothing but form-fitting silk. It was probably due to that was due to relative thickness of the material and her rather lacklustre build. Unlike her deceased teammate, Taylor lacked the curves and such that are usually associated with womanhood. Or maybe it was the scary mask and the mass of buzzing bees and poisonous spiders following her around and crawling over the silk.
She came to a stop at a small distance, looking in the direction of the humongous Campanile with what was probably distrust. It could be rather difficult to figure out facial expressions behind face-covering masks, so it was also possible that she'd already seen the pictures on Twitter, and was jealous of our relationship.
"You called for an exterminator?" I asked.
"You know what the weirdest thing is? I don't think we've actually heard that one before, despite what you'd expect from such a shitty joke," Lisa replied.
"I pride myself in my originality."
"So, what's the deal?" Campanile asked.
"We were tracking down some rumours when the werewolves entered my range, they went inside somewhere, and I used my swarm to keep them inside, didn't want them to try escaping again. I'm not sure how you want to handle this, there's quite a few of them."
"And just three of us," I said
"Hey," Lisa exclaimed, followed by a compulsory "Listen!"
"So, how many hexenwolves do we have?"
"A total of eight," Taylor replied. "And I don't recognize any of them from my previous encounter. I think there's even more of them somewhere else.
"So what now? We wait for reinforcement? They seem to be pinned down quite well," Campanile said.
"Hold on. Someone's coming," Taylor suddenly said.
"Small, female, sweating, wearing some sort of dress, a mask and I think it's a wig."
"Sounds like Parian, or maybe someone I don't know," Lisa said.
"Parian, that's a Rogue right?" Campanile asked.
"Yeah, makes big walking plushies that, apparently, can stand up to Leviathan," I said.
The rest of us also saw her as she came around a corner. Parian looked like a doll, literally. Only in this case, it was a hastily dressed doll that was wearing her wig backwards.
She came to a stop before our little group, panting heavily. As a Rogue, she'd probably thought that she didn't need to be in shape, leading to us waiting while she was trying to catch her breath, which was when I noticed the big sewing needles floating besides her, pointed at Skitter.
"Are you going to start a fight?" I asked.
"No," Parian replied, sounding surprised that I asked. I looked at her over, noted that her nose wasn't growing, and decided to trust her. I didn't know much about doll-people, but I knew that.
"But she is," she continued, pointing at Skitter with an accusing finger.
Campanile turned, and looked at Skitter again, being all intimidating and large.
"Bullshit, I haven't attacked anyone except for the werewolves," Taylor defended herself
"Hexenwolf," Lisa chimed in.
"Werewolves, hexenwolves, whatever. In either case, they're supervillains, murderers."
"What? No, where did you get that idea?"
"I presume from all the murdering?" Lisa said.
"Look, whatever you think happened last night, they were helping me out, not murdering innocent people," Parian replied. As timid as she was, she was almost yelling now.
"Wait, last night?" Campanile asked.
"There was some strange woman harassing me, and they chased her off, she escaped, but it got rather bloody. Anyway, they explained their, well, their problem to me afterwards, and I made them those clothes, and…"
"Wait, clothes?" I asked.
Parian got flustered, and it was actually kind of cute.
"Well, they were, you know… not really wearing anything. And…"
"And the Hexenwolves we're looking for can transform with their clothes on," Lisa said.
"Meaning these aren't Hexenwolves, but werewolves…" I said. "Skitter, I think you can disperse your swarm, we've got the wrong gang of shapeshifting canines."
"And once again, nakedness saved the day," Campanile added in. "Just like in high-school!"
***
About half an hour later, I was sitting in Parian's workshop, a lovely little building filled with several different boxes of yet to be unboxed fabrics, as well as several giant, animated plushies, a lanky student wearing a plush wolf mask and a strange set of clothes that, apparently, stayed on when shapeshifting, and a Parian that had taken the time to get correctly dressed. Parian was making coffee, while I was having a talk with one of the werewolves, who had apparently just decided to pretend to be parahumans.
"Well, you don't have to, but I suggest you register yourselves as an independent team anyway. It makes communication easier, and gives us some leeway we can use to give you some leeway. The PRT really likes having up to date information on gang activity as well. We'd be able to give you a warning if there was something happening, like if the vampires were going on a forcible recruiting spree."
"I'll talk about it with the others, but I can't be sure what we'll do," Billy, if that was even his real name, replied. I had a lot of questions, mostly about where exactly they'd learned to turn themselves into wolves, and if they were sure it didn't have anything to do with the other group of Lupine Theriomorphs in town, but they'd have to wait for later. Billy was tired, and he wanted to get back to his friends, given that the group had been completely terrified at the prospect of an oncoming bug apocalypse less than an hour ago.
"Can I go now?" He asked.
"Sure, I think we're done here," I replied.
"Your coffee?" Parian asked, handing me a cup of black nectar. As she handed it to me, I felt a small spark of energy pass between our hands. Nothing big, but energy nonetheless.
"Mister Myrddin, if you have a minute, I had a few questions as well," Parian said.
"Sure, go ahead." I replied while Billy was busy leaving the room in a hurry. He was a good kid, he just had a newfound appreciation for arachnophobia.
When Billy had left the room, Parian changed demeanour and removed her mask, showing a rather lovely face. Dark skin, with eyes you could absolutely drown in and full, gorgeous lips. In contrast to her blonde, European-styled outfit, she was obviously Middle-Eastern.
Thoughts started racing through my head about why she was taking off her mask. Was she a fan, hopelessly in love with me? Did she have some sort of medusa-gaze, in addition to her other powers? Was she just crazy in general?
"Are you really the Merlin?" she asked.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and let out a little laugh.
"No, I'm not nearly old and crotchety enough for that. It's just that the Image department insisted on the name."
"But you are council, I assume?" she asked.
"I am, although I have to ask, how do you know all this?" I replied.
"It's… a long story," she said, taking a drink from her cup of tea.
I looked around the little workshop again, this time armed with some more knowledge than I had been before. It was new, obviously acquired after she'd come to Chicago from Brockton, but I could already see some small touches that told me it wasn't just a place where she could sew clothes with her parahuman ability. For one thing, there weren't any mirrors in the room, even though she made clothes here. That probably had something to do with the fact that a lot of creatures from the Nevernever could use mirrors as entrances. In addition to that, there were quite a few candles standing around, meaning she could provide light when her magic made the light-bulb malfunction. Given by the fact that I'd seen a smartphone, it seemed like she wasn't all that powerful on the magical side her things,, given that her ambient energy hadn't fried it yet. Traditional knowledge held that she was just a low-level practitioner, far removed from the powerhouses of the council.
Of course, traditional knowledge ignored the massive cloth minions she could create, as well as the telekinetic needles. Combine that with the more versatile abilities that even a little bit of magical knowledge gave her, and she was a force to be reckoned with.
"Back in Brockton, I was part of a small circle. Students with a minor talent and some interest in the supernatural. We shared information, helped protect each other's rooms, studying the natural world as well as the supernatural one, stuff like that. Unlike in the movies however, we were a mixed group, men and women," she said, with a pained look on her face.
Given the general nature of parahuman abilities, I was almost entirely sure that I knew where this was going.
"You don't need to tell me if you don't want to," I replied. Think of it what you want, but I'm a bit old-fashioned and chivalric. I don't like seeing women get hurt, even if it is because they reminisce about painful memories.
"No, it's… it's alright. Anyway, eventually, one of them, one of the guys, he decided to use his abilities and knowledge to cheat on tests. One of the others disagreed, and they had a big fight about it. I didn't think anything of it at the time, because the next day they were thick as brothers.
"Then, a week or two later, he started dating one of the girls in the group. Nothing suspicious, except that the girl was already in a steady relationship.
"I was really busy with my studies, had an unwanted suitor that wouldn't leave me alone. I wasn't really paying a lot of attention to the rest, but even I thought it strange when they were suddenly in a polyamorous relationship. Not that I think there's anything wrong with that, but it was a bit weird.
"One of the other guys in the circle did have a problem with it, and he told them. The next day, they were friends again.
"It's… a few days later, he'd decided he wanted more, and he came for me as well. He tried to get into my mind, make me like him somehow. It wasn't as successful as it was with the others. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I was better at defending my mind, or because I wasn't into boys anyway. Or maybe he was a little racist deep down, and his heart wasn't in it. Anyway, he wasn't able to correctly get in."
"This warlock, is he still around?"
"No. When he noticed he'd failed, he overpowered me and locked me in the basement, waiting to recover his energy so he could try again. Before his second try however, someone else paid him a visit. A Warden, slicing through the defences we'd prepared with the circle like they were nothing. The guy, he came downstairs, taking me hostage, hoping to escape the Warden that way, but the universe had different ideas."
"You triggered," I filled in.
"I triggered, and I stabbed him in the stomach with a needle that had been lying around.
"After that, the Warden arrested him, and from what I know about Wardens, he was executed. The rest though, the other members of my little circle, they were never the same.
"For a few days, I went through life in a daze, not wanting to believe what had happened. That was when the Warden found me again. He told me some things about powers, and helped me cast a rather difficult spell."
"The binding."
"If that's what it's called. All I know is that it means I won't end up like a hormonal crime-fighter with massive issues."
"That's one of the things it does, yeah. But, that doesn't explain why you told me all of this."
"It's… I wanted to know if he's alright. He showed up at the Leviathan fight, and I lost track of him in the chaos of battle. I owe him a lot."
"And you want me to send him a message, asking if he's okay."
"If possible, yes."
"What's his name?" I asked her.
"Morgan," she answered.
Warden Morgan was most definitely someone I was familiar with. A hard, remorseless man, who absolutely hated black magic of all kinds. As a Warden, his job had been to find warlocks, those who had broken the laws of magic, and kill them.
He had also been the man who had come after me when I had killed my former master with unnatural fire. The man who had been convinced that I was a Warlock, a supernatural murderer that would only sink deeper into depravity.
The worst thing was, I could kind of understand it. After all, he hadn't known that the unnatural fire that had scorched Justin DuMorne's body to the bones had been parahuman in nature, instead of magical. No, the thing I really blamed him for was his inability to apologize for his actions.
Apparently, he'd been influenced by the chain of events as well, at least enough to help a newly triggered Parian with her brain parasite instead of accusing her of being a warlock.
"You know him?" she asked.
"We've met," I replied.
"So, these Werewolves, would you happen to know where they learned? It's probably nothing, but I find it a bit suspicious that they showed up at the same time the Hexenwolves did."
"Hexenwolves?" she asked, and I explained in more detail about the group of shapeshifters that had led Taylor here.
In return, she told me the few things the werewolves, or Alphas as they called themselves, had told her. They were learning from a woman whose identity they weren't willing to supply, and had been for a few months now, a timetable that was definitely longer than I'd been chasing the Hexenwolves.
Which gave me a working theory, one that I'd have to check with Tattletale, but which seemed very plausible indeed.
It hadn't been a coincidence that there were two groups of wolves running around, it was entirely on purpose. The Hexenwolves, whoever they were, had caught wind of the rumours about werewolves on the campus, and had decided to use them as a scapegoat, planning for exactly what had happened earlier today, minus Parian's timely intervention. It was amazing how many problems could be solved by talking things out.
They'd get their belts, take down a few choice parahuman criminals they'd been chasing for a while, aim the Protectorate in the direction of the Alphas, and pretend nothing had happened. Justice was served, supervillains would be dead, and the city would be just a little cleaner.
The problem, of course, was that Taylor had caught them in the act.
In addition to that, Taylor had made a rather visible appearance at the university, the place where, rumour had it, the werewolves were located.
And those werewolves had not been killed, meaning that Taylor knew that the Hexenwolves were a separate group.
Which meant that they would be coming after her.
That meant that my decision to keep my talks with her off the records had turned out to be rather useful. While most of the Protectorate members knew I'd been having talks with her, it wasn't the kind of thing that showed up in the paperwork. I was pretty sure the Hexenwolves were both pretty high up in whatever law enforcement agency they were part of, and that they didn't necessarily do everything by the book. That meant they had access to all of the Protectorate's paperwork, which would give them a false sense of security.
All I would have to do, was wait for the Hexenwolves to hunt down the teenage girl that had figured out their identity.