With everyone hiding in their homes, and despite the fact that parts of it are currently on fire, the city may be the calmest I've ever seen it. It's evening and the sun is just starting to go down for the night. The setting sun is bathing the neighborhood in colors.
Those colors then being silenced by the shadow of my amassed swarm as me and Olivia search through ABB territory. I send the biblical plague of insects through every building in my range looking for anything that would point towards Bakuda, or any other punks trying to take advantage of the situation. We haven't found any ABB yet, but we have stop a couple looters breaking into an electronics store.
Olivia, dressed in her Gorha costume, switches between following me on the sidewalk and jumping up on roofs to get a better look. While I look with bugs, she tries to smell the air to pick up any trails. We're not certain if Bakuda is a cape or not, but we need any leads we can get.
I stop Gorha when I sense a group of people enter my range. There are 8 normal guys with pistols, a man in a tiger mask with baggy pants covered in chains, a literally white guy, and some girl on a rock. Great, the Empire is hunting the ABB to, and they have Stormtiger, Alabaster, and Rune as cape support.
"We need somewhere to hide quick to plan."
Gorha nods, and picks me up and jumps up on a nearby roof. "What did you notice?"
"The Empire is coming this way with three capes and some mooks with pistols. Just great, because I wanted to fight Nazis tonight." I sigh and try to come up with a plan.
"I have heard the word thrown around, what exactly are Nazis? I feel that I am missing something big." Gorha asks me.
I'm just a touch stunned. "How do you not know what Nazis are?"
She just gives me a flat look. "I was kidnapped at 8 and have been on my own ever since, there are huge gaps in my knowledge base. What are Nazis, and how hard am I allowed to punch them?"
Well now I'm a little embarrassed. "Sorry." I sheepishly say, she just waves me off. "Anyway, they're like a bunch of people who hate other people that aren't white. They also don't like Jewish people, and if you aren't white or are Jewish they think that you aren't human or something. The Empire is pretty violent about it to."
"That may be the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I get hating something, but for such a petty reason? It seems like a waste of time."
"Yeah, you're right, it's pretty stupid. Funny thing is, you are the ideal person to them though." She gives me a look. "With you being white, and having blonde hair and blue eyes, you are what they consider to be the perfect human form." She shakes her head and gives a laugh. "Honestly I think they just use it as an excuse to beat people up and take things. Okay, so the capes they have down there are Stormtiger, with the tiger mask who can control air. Rune is the girl on the floating rock, she touches things and makes them fly. Alabaster is all white and regenerates or something very fast, from a lot of the online speculation he's suppose to be unkillable."
"So I get to play with him then, alright give me a minute to get their attention then hit the rest of them with bugs while I take Alabaster."
"Cool, sounds like a plan." I give her a nod and she jumps off the roof and walks to the intersection to meet them.
As they round the corner, they saw Gorha leaning against a newspaper dispenser. They look taken aback, guess they weren't expecting someone to be waiting for them.
Stormtiger steps up. "What do you want girl?" He said that with a little disdain.
Gorha points to herself. "Oh me? Well I came here looking for some fun. I feel like you guys could be fun for a while."
Alabaster laughs and looks her up and down. "Is that all you want, well cutie I can give you lots of fun."
Rune shoots him what I guess is a look of disgust from behind and Stormtiger cuts in. "Relax Alabaster, we don't know who this is, or what they're here for."
Gorha puts a hand on her hip and starts to sashay towards Alabaster. "I just want to have a little fun, and since I heard whitey here is basically unkillable I figure I should start with him." When she gets to him she puts a hand on his shoulder.
Then she hammers her other fist into Alabaster's gut. It seems to sink in further then it should, and when she pulls her fist back it's covered in blood. While he's doubled over from the hit she grabs his head, then shoves her hand in his open mouth, grabs his jaw, and with a hard yank rips his lower jaw from his head.
A couple seconds later Alabaster's jaw is back and he's looking smug.
Gorha just tosses the jaw over her shoulder. "Ooh you are going to be fun."
He goes into a stance and throws a hard right hook towards Gorha's face and she lets it connect, and it doesn't seem to do anything.
She then lunges forward and sinks her fingers into Alabaster's throat with one hand, and the other grabs him by the balls. She then lifts him up, and throws him into the wall of a store. He hits with enough force to leave large cracks in the wall and he flops to the ground.
While Gorha looks at Alabaster, a blade of air cuts deeply into her side from behind. She turns around and sees that Stormtiger is gathering more air blades.
"Damn it, she's a cape. Shoot her you idiots." The few of the goons point their guns at her and start shooting.
The bullets don't seem to slow her much though, and Gorha reaches up and rips a stop sign off its post. She whips it at Stormtiger. The sign moves to the side with a burst of air, but not far enough and Stormtiger still has to dodge to the side. It skims his right arm, leaving a deep gash. The sign continues on and embeds itself half way into the chest of one of the goons behind Stormtiger.
I figure I should probably help now so I call down my swarm to take some heat off Gorha. I sent my bugs at the goons faces, at the same time I send stinging insects at Stormtiger and Rune. I tag Stormtiger with a few of them, but he starts to blast them away with his power. Rune on the other hand is just flailing and trying to fly her rock around to escape the bugs.
Blinded by my swarm Rune starts floating away, but accidentally clips a street light with her rock. The jolt, and bugs crawling over her face, must have off set her balance because she falls off her rock. Her back slaps loudly against the street, half on the curb, half off, and her head thumps against the sidewalk. She's groaning, but not moving to get up, in fact she seems pretty dazed. She just turns over and watches the fight.
While I was dealing with the others, Alabaster got up and tackled Gorha to the ground and was trying to beat her. Trying, but not succeeding. He was on top of her throwing punches. Gorha must of gotten tired of it quickly though because she got one of her feet under him, and with a quick motion, she sends him flying back into a wall with a kick.
She flips herself up and jumps at Alabaster. She punches and kicks him with enough force to visibly deform him with each strike. Bones piece skin, mushed bit of viscera fly, joints bend in every direction but the correct ones, and the ground around them is flooded with blood. Every few seconds he reverts back to normal, all the damage done is fixed. It seems to just push Gorha harder. After a while of this happening she pulls her bandanna down, showing the biggest grin, and after every 3 or 4 hits she now starts to take bites out of Alabaster.
Through the moments of his face not being pulped by Gorha, he seems to have a look of fear in his eyes.
The goons by now have been run off by the bugs, except the one with a stop sign in his chest. Stormtiger starts to leave to, he gives a glance towards Alabaster but shakes his head when Gorha takes another bite of him. He turns towards Rune and starts going towards her, but I suddenly fill his face full of bugs. He gives up on helping her rather quickly and with a boost from his air power, runs off. The entire time he's in my range I continue to hound him with stinging insects, until I feel him get to far away.
Rune didn't even notice Stormtiger abandon her, her eyes fully fixed on watching a cape massacre another cape. Alabaster keeps attempting to put space between himself and Gorha, but Gorha isn't have any of it.
He tries to turn quickly and run, but Gorha's foot shoots out and hits his pelvis, shattering it on impact and he falls to the ground on his stomach. He heals and goes to get up, Gorha objects by stomping on his thigh and popping it like a fat sausage, sending meaty bits splattering everywhere.
He flips over, kicks with his new leg, and tries to throw off her balance. She counters by sending a hard punch to the top of Alabaster's skull. The bone breaking punch cracks through the air loudly and the top of Alabaster's head gets crunched in, destroying his spine and smooshing his head down into his shoulders. He twitches and falls backwards. Gorha pulls back and readies another punch.
She waits.
And waits.
But Alabaster isn't getting up.
Gorha slowly puts her hands down and eases out of her fighting stance and watches Alabaster. He still hasn't healed.
She waits another 20 seconds, but he still hasn't moved, hasn't healed. There's just an ever growing pool of blood around his head.
She starts to prod him with her foot, but there's no response.
I just hear her softly soft say. "Fuck"
I make my way down the fire escape of the building I'm on. As I walk out of the alley, the smell hits me full on. The coppery smell of blood. Lots of it. Then I see with my own eyes the destruction and gore of our fight. The blood, chunks, and bone shards.
It's to much for me, I scramble to pull up my mask and vomit at the edge of the alleyway.
I go to stand, but the smell of blood hits me again and I empty my stomach again.
After a minute I'm able to gather myself, fix my mask, and try to make my way over to Gorha without looking at the gore.
She is still standing over what I'm now pretty sure is Alabaster's corpse.
"Sorry Skitter, I must have gotten carried away, I truly did not mean to kill him." I look at her, and she's not smiling anymore.
"No it's my fault, I said he, ugh." I stop when I look down and see his head, shudder, and look back up quickly. "I said he was unkillable, I didn't know that if he got hit in the head he'd die." I look at Gorha and see her face is covered in blood. "Hey you, eh you got some blood on your face."
She goes to wipe her face with her hand, but her hand is also covered in blood. She's covered in blood. She just pulls up her bandanna to cover her face.
She then turns around and looks across the street. "What are we going to do with her?" And she points.
I look at what she's pointing at and see Rune still laying there. Now she's on her back and just staring up at the sky.
We slowly make our way over, I hang back a bit just in case. When we're closer I see that under her wizard hood, under her mask, her eyes are red and tears are tracing slowly down the side of her face. She sees us approach and there's fear in her eyes now as well, no, not fear, mortal terror.
"Please, please don't kill me. I'm sorry, please don't kill me. I don't want to die." She's sobbing now, seems Gorha's fight shook the girl pretty bad.
Gorha turns to me, she looks me in the eyes. Then she looks down and away. Almost in shame.
I turn back to Rune. "We're not going to kill you, just leave."
She sniffs, and wipes a hand against her eyes. "I-I can't."
"What do you mean you can't?" I accidentally say that with more hostility than I wanted to and Rune shrinks back a little.
More tears leak out. "I can't feel m-my legs, and I can't focus enough to lift my boulder."
Great, we not only killed the Empire's unkillable cape, but also crippled another of theirs, and possibly gave her a concussion.
We're not even going after the Empire!
I'm blaming this on Bakuda as well.
While I was worrying about the situation we're in, Gorha knelt down next to Rune. "I'm not gonna hurt now, I just wanna talk about some stuff." The voice is lighter, Owl's back, and it sounds like she feels bad about the situation. She puts her hand under Rune's hood and slowly cards her fingers through Rune's hair.
She then sits and puts her arms under Rune's own and pulls her up, so that Rune's back is against Gorha's chest. Then Gorha wraps her arms around Rune and puts her chin on Rune's head.
"I am sorry you got hurt, but here's the rub kid. I can't let you go back to being a bad girl and hurting people because of such a silly reason. So I'm going to give you a few choices, is that okay?"
Rune seems to not be taking being in Gorha's arms to well, maybe it's the fact the she punches like a truck and just brutalized Alabaster for fun, maybe it's that she is still covered in blood, who knows but Rune is shaking like a leaf.
She tries to sound strong, but the audible fear in her voice ruins it. "S-sure, what are the choices."
Gorha hums for a second. "Okay before I get to that, I want you to know I'm not going to hurt you, now. How we interact after depends on your answer. Now what's your name?"
"Rune."
"No silly." She massages Rune's side a little. "What's your name?"
Rune freezes up. "I-I-I can't tell you that, that'd break the rules!"
Gorha replies in a soft voice. "Look where you are right now, Skitty and me might be the only ones here at can help you, and I want to help you, okay? But you have to tell us your name for us to be able to help." She reaches up and pulls back Rune's hood, leaving her mask in place. "I love your hair by the way." Then nuzzles Rune's head.
Rune looks a little panicky, but after a minute she stills a little. "You're going to help me?" She is still fearful but there's a little hope that bleeds through your voice.
Gorha smiles, not that Rune can see it. "Of course, I like helping people."
She takes another minute. "Fine, my name's Cassandra."
"Okay Cassy, so here's the three choices. You could stop being a not good person, and become a hero, or at least an independent who helps people, hell join us, that'd be fun. " Gorha shoots me a smile. "Or you could join the Wards, no matter how useless the PRT is and how ineffective the Protectorate is, the Wards do help."
"You think the PRT is useless and you still want me to join them?"
I cut in. "Please don't get her started on the PRT, I've heard her complain to much about them." Never says why she dislikes them but still complains away.
"Alright I won't ask. I don't think I could take any of those choices though, what's the last one?"
"Oh, this one is the easiest. You just go back to the Empire and continue being scum." Really Gorha, that's the last one, please tell me there is some drawback to that. Hell I'd take Rune being on our team as long as there's one less Nazi on the streets.
Gorha leans in and sniffs loudly. Rune pulls away and shoots her a look.
"So I can smell capes, cool right. And now I have your scent, and I don't forget a scent. If you take the last option, I'll let you go, I'd bring you to the hospital and help you out. But after that, if I ever saw you again, and I'd know it was you Cassy with the nice blonde hair, I would be forced to hurt you. Badly. Like making what I did to whitey over there look tame bad."
Rune had started to calm down, but now she's pale and looks scared again.
"If you took choice three, that would mean we would be enemies. It would be like you betrayed me, and although I know it's a fault of mine, I don't take betrayal very well. My enemies don't live very long lives, and you're a cutie. I would hate to have to hurt you , but you would force my hand. I would prefer that you chose one of the other choices. Please, for me?" Gorha tightens her embrace slightly.
Rune looks down and seems to finally realize the position she's in. She looks at the arms embracing her, the arms that are strong enough to rip limbs off, the blood soaked arms currently holding her.
That seems to pierce the fog of her concussion.
"A-alri-ight, I'll join the Wards, I'll join them!"
"Okay, they're usually pretty nice people, and it's a good learning experience. Hey, do you have a phone?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Oh well I need to call the PRT to pick you up, unless you want these big, sexy arms to carry you all the way to their headquarters." She gives Rune a wink.
"Here's the phone." Rune hands over the phone rather quickly, and I laugh. Gorha shoots me a look.
"Party poopers." She then phones in what happened. We spend the next 20 minutes in silence as Gorha continues to cuddle Rune.
Eventually we see a PRT van pull up, and out pops four troopers, and Assault.
"Little overkill for a crippled girl and a couple dead guys isn't it." Gorha pitches in.
Assault laughs a little. "Yeah it probably is, but with the bombings, headquarters is a little trigger happy. Besides this place looks like someone went for a little bit of overkill themselves." He looks at the mess on the street and the blood covering Gorha.
"He wouldn't stay down, and I was having fun."
Assault just shrugs. "Anyway we're here now so if you could stop restraining Rune, we'll take her off your hands." A couple of the troopers wheel out a stretcher, while the other two inspect the scene.
"Restrain? No, no she's just really soft and warm." Gorha then snuggles Rune again, while Rune just kinda huffs.
"Oh, well sorry for taking her away then, but I still gotta do my job."
"Oh, alright fine." She then releases Rune and bridal carries her over to the stretcher and gently places her down. As the troopers are securing Rune, Gorha pats her shoulder and says goodbye. Rune just looks away.
Just as they're putting her in the van, she looks back over and gives Gorha a little wave.
Gorha looks stunned for a second, then gives a fist pump. "Yes. Made a new friend." She looks at me and her eyes are glowing with happiness.
"Nice new friends are always fun, sadly now I have to run you through some questions if you're willing." Assault interjects with a smile
After a few minutes of answering questions about what happened and a talking to about excessive force, he asks about Gorha. We introduce her and say she's a brute, that she's my new teammate, and leave it at that to try and keep Gorha's secret identity intact.
He comes to his last question. "Okay and this one isn't official, but since Skitter is here I have to ask, are you Owl?"
Gorha presses her hand against the spot where her mouth would be if it weren't covered by a bandanna and gives a dramatic gasp. "An Owl, why heavens no, I'm no bird." She looks down. "Well I mean I 'am' a bird but still." She winks at Assault and palms her... her boob! Owl what the fuck!
Assault gives an awkward laugh and looks away. "Yeah I guess you are a bird. Well if that's everything you can think of, I should be heading back with Rune."
"Aww, you don't wanna spend a little more time with me." She gives him a pouty look. "We could have a real fun time."
He looks even more awkward now "Sorry, can't take you up on that, I'm a taken man."
"Well you know what they say, 'two's company, three's a great time'." And I'm blushing again, at least I have the mask on.
And Assault looks like he's really considering her proposal, seriously.
"Although it's probably a no, I'll get back to you on that." He starts walking away and I just make out him talking to himself. "Oh when I tell her about this, Puppy with be so upset." And he starts to giggle.
When they all leave, I slap Gorha in the arm. "You're trying to get someone to cheat on their partner?"
"No, probably not. If both of them agree and they are there, then no ones cheating. They both just get to enjoy me." She then gives me a little shove and a smile.
"What about your new secret identity then?"
"Oh, well if I show them mine, they'll show me their's, or we just keep the masks on, add a kinky factor to it." She then gives me a wink.
"And what about Rune, do you have a thing for her to?" Now I'm just joking with her.
"Her! No, she around your age so it would be kinda weird I think, no she's just really soft. Very cuddle-able. I'm jealous of whoever she hooks up with in the future."
"You're insane." I say with a laugh.
"Yeah I am, now come on let's continue the hunt." She points in a random direction and starts to march off. I just follow and we continue the hunt for Bakuda.
Hopefully with no more distractions.
AN: Cool another chapter down. This one didn't have any mad bomber in it, but there was a fight scene so I guess it evens out.
So I did some research and found out through some Word of God (Wildbow) that a hard enough hit to the head or heart would kill Alabaster. Neat. Once again Owl cements her place as the city's best regenerator.
Rune crippled? Well a fall from her normal cruising altitude of 20 feet or so then landing back first on a curb makes me think crippled. Besides Panacea exists so whatever. And if she doesn't go to the PRT and just goes back to the Empire then Othala exists.
So anyway, if you liked it please review, if not still review. I read them, I respond to them in PMs and enjoy the interaction.
Side note but still on reviews, I got my first (as far as I know) wholly negative review, yay. I mean that honestly. Even if it's worded poorly I appreciate the criticism. I would also agree that chapter 1 is ass but whatever.
-Killa