Hatching 1.5

I ran. There wasn't any thought to it, any greater plan, I just bolted as soon as I registered they saw me. Not a moment too soon either, as another gunshot sounded and a chunk of wall near where I had been standing shattered under the impact of a bullet.

"Shit!" I hissed under my breath. My heart felt like it was in my throat. Breaking their truck and seeing them fight my beetleings had been one thing, but getting shot at was another. Everything took on a sort of cold clarity as I realized, maybe only truly grasped for the first time, that if things went wrong here I could die.

I really had not done myself any favors by lurking in the mouth of an alley and watching them. Even if they hadn't gotten attacked by monsters, I doubt they would have been very happy if they'd noticed me. I hesitated for a moment as I reached the other end of the alley, briefly torn about which way to go. Another gunshot sounded behind me in the same moment another of my connections vanished. Only two more of my minions left, then.

It didn't matter which direction I went, just that I chose one. I went left, sprinting down the backroad that ran behind residential buildings and the occasional run-down store. I could already feel my feet starting to ache in my barely broken in boots as a burning started up in my chest and legs. Damn, I was out of shape! That really didn't speak well for me avoiding the pissed off gangsters chasing me.

I felt one of my connections vanish, followed shortly after by the last. No minions left now. Even worse, I could hear shouting from further behind me. No footsteps though, which was good in the sense that it meant they weren't hot on my trail, but they were still coming after me.

I cut down another side alley so I wouldn't be in plain view when they came out into the back street. I could feel myself slowing already, though I couldn't have been running more than a minute or two. If things came down to this chase, I was going to lose.

So if I wanted to get away, I'd have to outthink them. It was a daunting prospect. This was my first night as a cape, and now I had to outsmart a bunch of gangsters in a chase. Gangsters, I reminded myself before I could really start panicking, who were drunk, high, and who knows what else.

The thought was mildly comforting. I refused to accept that a bunch of drug-addled thugs would be able to outsmart me, even if I was trying to think up a solution on the fly. That's all they were, just a bunch of drug-addled thugs who happened to have baseball bats and knives and a gun and if they caught me they'd probably-

I cut that course of thought off as well as I started panicking again. The voices behind me were louder now, too close for comfort. I vaguely remembered one of the anti-drug PSAs talking about what stuff like that did to your mind and how it shut down the parts of it responsible for telling you if you were tired or hurt. So depending on what they were hopped up on, I could be dealing with a bunch of mini-Aegis's. Given my own lack of fitness, that meant that just outlasting them was out, unless they stopped to hurl what was in their stomachs.

The air cracked around me as I ran, and a second later five new beetleings were running at my heels as they emerged from the distorted air I'd left behind. I hadn't consciously reached for my power, but just like in the locker and in the hospital, it reacted to what I wanted even without me thinking about it.

I certainly wasn't going to complain about assistance, and the sight of them was strangely comforting, but I was worried about the energy my power drew from. With the full batch of beetleings destroyed just minutes ago and a new one created, it was the lowest I had ever felt it. That wasn't to say it was objectively low, I could tell I hadn't even used up half of my reserve, but I really didn't want to learn some new and terrible side effect of using it up while in the middle of running from gangsters.

The voices behind me were louder now, both because they were getting closer and because they were yelling more. I winced a bit as I burst out onto the main road, putting on a burst of speed to cross to the alley on the other side and get into a different back street. They'd probably heard my power activating. Fuck, things would have been so much easier if I could summon my beetleings silently.

"Go after the men chasing me," I gasped to the beetleings that were with me, "Slow them down or lead them away."

The beetleings immediately stopped following me, turning and skittering back down the alley towards where I could hear my pursuers. Best case scenario, they stalled the gangsters enough for me to get away. Worst case scenario, they provided a perfect indication of where I was by which direction they came from. I really hoped it would be the first.

One of the connections vanished as I heard a gunshot. The shot wasn't far from me, but it was definitely farther than the voices had been a bit ago. I didn't slow, didn't dare slow. If I did, even for a moment, it might give them the time they needed to catch up with me.

A second connection vanished as I ran. I ducked down another side alley, heading for a main street to try and cut across to yet another cluster of alleys. I made it about five feet out into the road before I caught sight of a pair of dirty looking guys. Each had a general look to them that gave me the impression they'd hadn't showered for a while by choice rather than by necessity, with scruffy beards and stained clothes. Each also held a two-by-four board, holding them like awkward clubs.

They caught sight of me at about the same time. "It's the bitch!" one of them shouted, dashing my hopes that they might be unrelated nighttime wanderers.

I turned on my heel and ran back into the alley I'd come from. There were people chasing me in that direction, but the guys on the street were standing nearly half a block away in the opposite direction. Either they'd managed to split up and get ahead of me somehow, or the Merchants had backup.

The logistics of it didn't matter, the important things was that I was trapped and terrified. People behind me, people ahead of me, it brought back uncomfortable memories of getting boxed in by bullies in the halls at Winslow. The thought almost made me smile. In a thought I'd certainly never had before, I would have preferred the bullies to this.

I stopped in the alley, looking quickly around. Leaving through either side would be walking right back into sight of one group or another, I needed another way out. Weren't alleys like this supposed to have side doors or fire escapes?

Luckily, the answer seemed to be yes in this case at least. A dingy door sat in one wall of the alley, leaning to an old apartment building. I ran to it and tried the knob. Locked of course. A beetleing started taking form immediately, throwing itself at the lock and beginning to pry the rusted thing out of the doorframe.

The voices were getting louder from both sides. The ones from the group that had been chasing me were louder, more panicked. I heard a gunshot from that direction, but all my connections remained. A second later there was a panicked scream and another two rapid gunshots. It gave me some small amount of reassurance that apparently my beetleings had learned how dangerous the gun was and how to avoid getting shot.

The knob fell to the ground and I was through the door before anyone could round the entrance to the alleyway, closing it quickly behind me. I was in some dingey concrete room with only a staircase winding up to other levels and a door across from me. I hurried to the door, eager to put more distance between myself and the Merchants.

At the last second, paranoia overruled near-panic and I didn't throw the door open to bolt through. Instead I turned the knob slowly and eased the door open. I winced as the rusty hinges squeaked, but I managed to peek around the door into a hallway.

It proved to have been the right move as I saw a few men and women with the distinctive messy look of Merchants in the hall in the middle of a conversation. They were clustered around one of the many doors that lined the hall, and some of them looked like they were from the room inside.

I cast a nervous glance over my shoulder at the door I'd come in. I could hear some yelling outside, but from the sounds of it, none from inside the alley itself. My beetleing stood beside me, as attentive and quiet as ever. Still keeping a nervous ear on the door behind me, I tried to listen in on what they were saying.

"It's bullshit is what it is!" one of the guys from inside the room complained. "Why do we have to do this crap?"

"Look," another guy groaned, "I dunno, but Tommy said-"

"Tommy, Tommy, Tommy," another guy said. "Careful you don't choke on his cock when you're suckin' him off like that."

That got some sniggers from the group, except for the second guy who had spoken, the one getting mocked. A louder shout from outside made me look back to the door, but it quieted down pretty fast. I had missed most of what they'd said next, but the second guy to speak was still talking.

"-called me, and said to get the guys."

Another groan from another person, this one a woman. "Why do we have to go? He can chase his made-up capes on his own, 'less he wants to share whatever he's smoking."

My fear got worse. They were talking about me. It explained those other guys at least, apparently one of the Merchants had called his friends to gather up some more gangsters to hunt me down. I backed away from the door as quietly as I could.

Forward and back were both bad options, and that left up. I hurried to the stairs and started to climb, torn halfway between going as fast as I could and being quiet enough that the sound of my boots on the stairs wouldn't alert the Merchants in the hall. I was acutely aware that the voices in the alley were getting louder and closer to the door into the buildings.

Just getting up one floor felt like it took an agonizingly long time, and when I opened the door to get into the hallway, I couldn't be sure if I heard the door on the ground level open too or if my nerves were just making me hear double from my own door.

I hurried down the hall towards the stairway at the other end, conscious of how loud my footsteps sounded without anyone else around. I felt another of my connections vanish before I was even halfway down the hall. Apparently my distraction wasn't doing so well.

So what were my options? Keep running was the most obvious one, but maybe not the best. The Merchants were coming out of the woodwork, and I stood the risk of getting caught by one group or another. I could get the beetleing to break open the lock to one of these apartments, hide for a while until things blew over. I dismissed that option almost immediately. I had no idea what was in any of these apartments, breaking in to one could mean walking in on something just as bad as Merchants, if not worse.

Call the cops, then slip away in the distraction? No, I still didn't have a phone, and trying to get one ran into the same problems as breaking into an apartment. None of my options were good. I winced as I felt another of my connections vanish. Only one beetleing left out there to distract them.

I had to choose. Staying in this building was a bad idea, they had Merchants in here already and they might come up and find me. My best bet was to get out and break into another building, find a hiding spot there for a few hours until this all blew over.

My final connection to my distraction beetleings broke as I eased the door to the stairwell open, leaving me with only the one at my side. Luckily, the Merchants downstairs weren't coming up, and I hurried down the stairs as quickly as I could to the exterior door.

I cracked open the door to the alley and peeked through, trying to keep an ear out behind me in case the Merchants in the hall came into the stairwell. No one in sight in the alley, though the flickering illumination from one light above the door didn't really help matters. Still, it was as good as I was going to get. Carefully, I eased it open and slipped out into the alley with my beetleing on my heels, closing the door quietly behind me. With luck, the Merchants who has seen me would all be focused on the other side of the building and I could slip away.

I didn't make it more than two steps before I heard a gunshot. The sound was almost overlapped by the shattering noise as my beetleing collapsed back into non-existence, my connection winking out along with it. I flinched hard at the sound, awaiting a second shot, but none came.

"Well," a scratchy voice drawled, "Lookie what we got here."

I spun towards the voice. There was a Merchant stepping out from behind a dumpster with a small pistol clutched in one hand. He gave a wide smile that showed off more empty space than teeth. Through sheer, dumb luck, he'd been standing where I couldn't see him while peeking through the door.

I took a step back away from him, towards the other end of the alley. He didn't move closer or raise the gun as a threat to stop me, but his smile spread a little wider. That wasn't right. I took a peek over my shoulder and my heart sank further. Another Merchant had moved into the alley behind me to cut off my escape, a woman with filthy tangled hair and a switchblade in one hand.

"You ain't goin' nowhere, bitch." She sneered.

"Yeah, bitch, ain't going nowhere." The guy echoed.

According to movies and tv, this was the moment where I was supposed to come up with some witty threat or retort before wiping the floor with them. Instead I was too scared to even speak, my gaze locked onto the gun in his hand. It seemed so small and dirty, but I knew with terrifying certainty that it wouldn't take much for him to kill me with it. Hell, it didn't even have to be intentional, just one accidental twitch on the trigger and I wouldn't be going home tonight.

I was distantly aware the woman behind me was still talking. "This's the bitch that fucked up the stash, right?"

The guy shrugged. "Dunno. She's dressed funny though. Figure I can pop her anyways, just in case."

I really should have been more scared to hear that than I was. Maybe I was too afraid already to get anymore scared, but hearing him casually mention shooting me barely made my heartrate rise from its already rapid pace.

"Y'think she's got cash on her?"

"Fuck off!" the guy sneered, "I kill her, I get her cash."

"Not if I stick her first! Then I got dibs."

As they kept talking, anger mixed in with the fear. Not only were they going to shoot me, but now they were talking about me like it was already done? Fuck that! There was no way I was going to let myself get written off as a cape, especially by some two-bit gangbanger thugs.

My hand strayed closer to the pocket where I held my pepper spray. It wouldn't do anything at this distance, but if I could mob the guy with beetleings, he might try to fight them off instead of just shooting me. Then I could get the woman and slip away while they were distracted.

I reached for my power. The energy was definitely diminished from how it had been at the start of the night, but there was still more than enough to give me five more beetleings. I could feel it responding slightly slower than it had earlier, but I still pulled it to the surface, focusing on the thought of beating down the thug in front of me.

The air in front of me broke with the distinctive sound and glowing cracks of my power.

"Fuck!" The guy had been letting the gun drift down, but now he was snapping it back up, bringing it in line to shoot me.

The previously dulled terror was now back in full force. This wasn't going to work! He was already pointing the gun at me, ready to fire. The moment my beetleings appeared he'd just shoot me without even realizing they were there and it'd all be over.

Things didn't move in slow motion, but I felt a sort of crystal clear clarity, like the moment just before you stub your toe where you know it's going to happen but can't stop it, only a thousand times stronger. The guy was pulling the trigger. I was trying to throw myself to the ground and out of the line of fire. My cracks in the air continued to grow, just to summon beetleings that wouldn't be able to stop him.

The air finished shattering and collapsing into form at the same moment the gun went off. The thing that came out was definitely not a beetleing. I had a moment to register a gunshot just before I hit the ground and practically curled into fetal position.

I caught a glimpse of the thing as it lunged forward a second later, a pale humanoid shape that seemed off in the dim light of the alley. The man's gun arm was shoved to the side, pointing away from me as it seized his wrist in one hand. In that same instant, with his arm pushed wide away from his body, it brought its head down to the space between his neck and shoulder and I heard a wet, meaty sound. The guy's cursing abruptly cut off into screams that rapidly shifted from pain to anger, then back to pain.

I heard a scuff on the concrete behind me and quickly rolled over. The woman was there, brandishing her knife as she rushed towards me. Maybe she thought if she killed me the thing would go away, maybe she was just too strung out on something to consider just running away, but she was bringing the knife around to stab me in the face.

I pulled the pepper spray out of my pocket and unloaded it in her face. She screamed and dropped the knife in her hurry to try and wipe her eyes. I heard a snarl from behind me, much louder than any of the clicking noises my beetleings had ever made.

She heard it too, because she tried to backpedal away, still mostly blind from the tears pouring down her face. It might have saved her life, because a second later the thing lunged over me and swiped at her stomach with one of its hands. I heard the sound of tearing cloth as the midsection of her shirt was torn to ribbons, her scramble to put distance between herself and it buying her just enough space that it didn't hit her body.

She spun around and tried to run. A mistake. As soon as she turned her back on it, the thing made another lunge. She hadn't made it more than a few steps before it pounced on her, its claws tearing through the back of her shirt and into her skin in a spray of blood. Her feet went out from under her and she fell, the thing practically landing atop her.

I saw it raise its hand again in preparation for another slash, catching a glimpse of bloodied claws in the dim light. "Don't kill her!" I blurted, my fear of becoming a murderer overriding the persisting fear of being killed.

It seemed to hesitate, then lowered its upraised hand. The woman underneath it was still squirming, trying to get away. It seemed to appraise her for a moment, then grabbed her by the back of her head, lifted it up, and slammed her face into the pavement.

I winced as I hear a crunch from what I assumed to be her nose. It repeated the process twice more before stopping, her attempts to crawl away reduced to faint whimpers. I felt a surge of guilt that I did my best to ignore. She'd just been talking about killing me and stealing my stuff, after all. If I couldn't feel comfortable about beating someone like her up, I probably couldn't do much as a hero.

Though on the topic of her, I looked behind me to check on the other guy. He was slumped against the alley wall with the gun nowhere in sight. His shirt was soaked in a bloodstain coming from one side of his neck. I gulped. That was a lot of blood.

I pushed myself to my feet and hurried over to him. My first aid classes weren't due to start until next weekend, so I wasn't exactly trained to find a pulse or check breathing, but I had a general idea. It took me longer than I would have liked, but I found that his pulse was still going. Whether my troubles finding it had been due to my own inexperience or because he was doing poorly, I wasn't sure, but I figured I should call him an ambulance anyways.

I rummaged through his pockets, very carefully in case he had needles or something in them, and eventually came up with a battered cell phone. I took it and turned around to call the ambulance, only to come face to face with my monster.

It was my monster, I was certain of that at least. It had appeared in the same way as my beetleings, so it was the only thing that made sense. It certainly didn't look like my beetelings though. It was humanoid, in the sense that it stood on two legs, had two arms, and had one head, but that was about where the similarities stopped.

It was naked, not that there was anything to indicate its sex, but the detail seemed a lot more prominent than with the beetleings given its more humanoid size and shape. It was hairless and pale, not pale in the way that I got during the winter but more in the way of some underground fish that showed off the veins worming beneath its skin. Its legs had two knees, arranged like a dog's, while its back was hunched, leaving its eye level only about an inch higher than mine. It also had a small bleeding hole in its stomach, which answered the question of what had happened to the bullet when the Merchant had tried to shoot me.

It had three fingers on its hands and two toes on its feet, all of which ended in curved claws. The claws on its hands, I noticed with some disgust, were wet with blood. As was its face, though it took me a moment to tear my eyes away from the claws long enough to realize that.

Its eyes were beady and red, set deep into their sockets. There were no ears, only holes in the sides. There was no nose, just two slits that widened as it hissed in a breath. The mouth was hard to make out with the blood smeared across its face and dripping down its neck, but it helpfully opened its mouth wider to run a long, squirming tongue over its teeth to try and lick them clean. It seemed to have no lips, leaving jagged rows of fangs clear to see. More unusually, the lower jaw seemed split in two parts, the tips where they met to form a "chin" ending in small hooked appendages like fingers.

It wasn't really doing anything, just standing there next to me like my beetleings always did when they were awaiting orders. That more than anything was what confirmed it for me. I had definitely made this thing with my power. That raised questions. A lot of questions.

Questions, I reminded myself, that could wait until after I called an ambulance to help these people. Merchants and attempted murderers they may be, but my monster had done a number on them and no one wanted them to bleed out in a dirty alley. I was punching in 911 when I heard a heavy footstep behind me. My monster's gaze snapped up to look behind me and it rushed past me with a loud snarl.

That was useful, I reflected, my terror by now a fading memory compared to my curiosity. Apparently it must have been operating on some sort of blanket command, like how my first beetleing had broken me out of my locket without needing orders. If I could figure out how to do that more precisely, it could really help send my beetlings out quicker in a high-pressure situation.

I turned around, still contemplating how to better use my power, just in time to see my monster attack a Ward. I recognized him from the publicity pictures as Aegis, a cape billed with flight and invulnerability. Though that second part didn't seem to be the case as my monster slashed him across the forearms he'd raised to block his face, tearing through his costume and into the flesh below.

"911, what is your emergency?" a pleasant voice said from the phone I still held by my head as I stared dumbfounded and horrified at the sight before me.

Aegis grabbed one of my monster's wrists in each hand, spreading them up and out so it couldn't get them in position to claw at him anymore. It just lunged in with its head, lower jaw splitting apart into two fang-filled sections to snap shut on his throat and tear at it like a dog.

I was aware of the operator saying something else to me, but I was slowly lowering the phone. Not much of a point in calling an ambulance if the Wards were already here. They probably had much better ways to get in contact with the people they needed than I did. Though this was definitely not the way I'd wanted to meet the Wards. Over a phone call or on a tour, maybe, but not in a dirty alley when one of my monsters that I didn't know I could make two minutes ago tried to rip out Aegis's throat.

Maybe I could call it off, try and explain things? Before I could, Aegis let go of its wrists and grabbed the two parts of its lower jaw. He pulled sharply apart, and with a horrendous snapping sound, ripped both halves right off its face. It let out a gurgling snarl, but before it could attack him again, Aegis lowered his shoulder and rammed it with a flight-assisted football charge that slammed it into a wall.

Something crunched in its chest with the impact, and a second later it was shattering, unfolding along the cracks and bringing out the emptiness inside until its was gone like it had never been. I stared silently. A brand new aspect of my power, and one of the Wards took it apart in seconds like it was nothing. Yeah, they definitely didn't need me.

I took a step forward. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to say. Apologize, probably, introduce myself as a new independent or vigilante, maybe. I didn't get the chance to do either. Aegis spun towards me as soon as I moved, the part of his face I could see twisting into a snarl of anger.

"Aegis?" I said hesitantly.

He launched himself towards me with his flight, letting out a wordless scream of hate. Suddenly, apologies seemed a lot less important than self-preservation. I focused on defending myself from him and the air in front of me shattered to create another of those humanoid monsters.

It threw itself at him, not stopping his flying charge but interrupting it long enough for me to dodge to the side as the two of them tumbled to the ground. With the advantage of flight, Aegis ended up on top with his hands wrapped around my monster's throat. It didn't much seem to care that he was crushing its windpipe, though its attempted snarl came out as little more than a gurgle.

It grabbed at Aegis's already wounded forearms, digging its claws into the wounds and trying to make him release it. Apart from how his angry grimace tightened a bit, Aegis didn't seem to care about the pain any more than my monster did. Seeing that wasn't going to work, it changed tactics. It curled its legs up to its chest, bringing them under the floating Aegis, and kicked upward. Rather than a flat kick meant to push him away, it was a gutting kick like I'd seen on documentaries about jungle cats, raking the talons of its toes into his stomach in an attempt to disembowel him. No organs fell out, but the costume tore and blood poured onto the monster below him.

That, I figured, was enough to intervene. "Don't try to kill him!" I yelled at my monster. Probably not the most typical advice to give to what appeared to be the looser in the current arrangement, but I'd rather be safe than sorry when it came to a Ward.

Aegis's head snapped up to look at me, still not loosing the intensely angry look he'd bee directing at my monster. "You." His voice was practically a growl. How much of that was anger and how much was pain, I couldn't tell.

"I'm really sorry, I-"

"As soon as I kill this thing," he said, cutting me off, ignoring the claws that continued to slash at his arms and chest, "You're next."

I was still trying to register that as his grip tightened on my monster's neck. A loud snap sounded through the alley and the monster under him fell limp, rapidly starting to collapse away. I barely had time to notice that as he lunched himself towards me, hands outstretched to grab me.

I'd just had a very good demonstration of why letting him get his hands on me was a bad idea, and I summoned another monster between us to intercept him. This time I didn't stop at one, pulling another and another into reality until there were five of them attacking him.

The others grabbed him from behind as he wrestled with the first on the ground, two seizing his arms and pulling them behind him in some sort of hold, while a third slashed at the backs of his legs, trying to force him to his knees. He fought back, but it was frenzied, almost rabid. With the way he was yelling and thrashing, he seemed more like an animal than a person.

I backed away from him as the monsters tried to restrain him, alternating between simply grabbing him and trying to bite or claw him into submission. Neither seemed very effective. If they tried to just hold him he'd buck an arm or leg free with his strength, and none of the wounds even seemed to slow him. The wiki hadn't gone into detail about how his supposed invulnerability worked, but I suspected now that it was more about making sure the damage he took didn't hurt him rather than avoiding being damaged in the first place.

Almost offhandedly, I realized that I was focusing on his power to try and avoid thinking about a problem. The way he was acting like a rabid animal, the threat to kill me… This was the sort of person they let into the Wards? Okay, maybe I could chalk it up to panic at getting attacked by a monster or nerves getting to him because he was in pain. But that really didn't make it better. At best, it shifted him from 'psychopath' to 'violent hothead.'

I watched as my monsters tried to slash out the back of his knee and ankle on one leg, only for him to remain obstinately standing. I caught myself wringing my hands, forced myself to stick them in my pockets. I'd had concerns floating around in the back of my mind about what it would be like to join the Wards, but seeing a situation laid out like this in front of me? I couldn't help but wonder how many of them were like this behind the mask of PR, how much was glossed over in news reports and interviews and wiki pages for whatever reasons they happened to have.

My worried musings were interrupted as Aegis twisted sharply, pulling one arm free from my monsters' grasp with a loud pop. He pulled his newly freed hand to the side of his head, the arm's movement indicating that something in it was broken out of place so he could slip the hold. "Vista!" he roared before the arm was snatched again.

That was enough to give me pause again. Vista was a space warper, a powerful one, and from the sound of things she was close by. If she showed up, I might end the night in a prison cell, though whether that was the good or bad option remained to be seen. Maybe I could leverage this as a mistake, get into the Wards with apologies about still learning my power. But looking at Aegis, I couldn't help but wonder. How many of them were like that, just under the surface? How could I be safe there?

If I got captured and joined out of a prison cell, that would be something I could never live down. And on the same team as Aegis? I could easily see that becoming another Winslow, another place to get shoved around and beaten down. For Aegis, certainly, just to regain his pride and get back at me for this, but if the others were anything like him, or at least the type of people who tolerated him in the first place? No, getting captured tonight was not an option.

"Don't kill anyone, but keep him down." I ordered my monsters, one last command to make sure they didn't go too far.

Then I turned and ran, this time away from the heroes.

New Summon: Wrathspawn (NE medium aberration, CR 2, Pathfinder)

Please leave comments! I'd like to improve my writing and make the story the best it can be, and feedback on what works and what doesn't is invaluable for that.