The Other Way
Chapter Eight
When you worked in the PRTHQ, there were places where you weren't supposed to go, and places where you weren't allowed to go. Not knowing about the second category could get you in a lot of trouble, but knowing about the first category could get you into just the right amount.
Shadow Stalker was not supposed to visit the prisoners in the holding cells, but she was allowed to. If she got caught, she'd be firmly asked to leave, but she knew enough about the prison sector's security protocols to avoid that.
At the moment, there were only two villains locked up, both from the same gang. They wore prison uniforms with VILLAIN labels instead of costumes, but Shadow Stalker knew who they were.
Lung sat in an E-type containment cell, visible only through a computer screen. You could tell a lot about someone by watching them in a prison, watching them after they had lost their freedom, their weapons, and their masks. When Shadow Stalker had been imprisoned—God, that was almost a year ago—she had gone a bit feral, cursing with every breath and striking every wall that wouldn't electrocute her in return.
Lung, though, was patient. Even here, he had a presence to him that his size couldn't explain. He had lost his mask, but the mask was just a formality, an empty motion that he no longer needed to go through. He sat on his bed in a cell too small for him to stand up in, eternally patient, as though waiting for the PHQ to fall apart around him were a minor inconvenience.
Bakuda was the opposite. She huddled in the corner of her cell, fidgeting and muttering a silent mantra to calm herself. How old was she? Nineteen? Twenty? Some capes were themselves no matter what, but others covered themselves with so many decorations, airs, and acts, that after you unmasked them, there was hardly anything left.
Pathetic. Shadow Stalker had never faked anything. She was who she was, a predator, in costume and out.
"Hey, Lung."
No response. Oh, right. She pressed the intercom button and tried again. "Hey, Lung."
Still nothing.
"Hey, Lung. Hello? Can you hear me? Is this working?" She frowned. She couldn't smack him around to get information out of him, which was her usual MO without the code to open the door, and she'd probably get killed if she even tried. All she could do right now was try to provoke him by talking, and that was what she kept Emma around for. She tried it anyway. "Your mom's fat."
"Is there something you want?" Bakuda asked behind her.
While Lung was locked up tighter than Fort Knox—if Fort Knox could turn into a giant, fire breathing monster at will—with state of the art technology keeping him in place, Bakuda's cell was the opposite. Tinker Protocols. You couldn't use Tinker Tech to lock up a Tinker unless you were a better Tinker than all the Tinker's put together. Bakuda's cell was made out of some super strong, nonreactive, transparent polymer that had hair holes for a ventilation system. At least, that was the technical term for it. To Shadow Stalker, it was just tough plastic.
"Is your boss deaf?"
"He's not my boss anymore, and no, he's just ignoring you." She had a slight Boston accent and her voice sounded nasally. Not really the sort of voice that could command a gang, but hadn't she disguised it? Most people who did that just had a secret identity they were attached to. "While he does have a lot of insecurities involving his parentage, none of them include his mother's weight. You might try calling him a eunuch, though."
Well, she had nothing to lose. She pressed the intercom again. "Are you going to face me, or don't you have the balls?"
His head turned, slowly and indominately, like continental drift. "What chattering fool has come to wake me? Name yourself, and I shall visit you."
Shadow Stalker hesitated and turned back to Bakuda. "Does he always speak fortune cookie?"
Bakuda gave her a flat look with her one eye. The other one was covered in a bandage. "Have you ever actually had one?"
"Hey, do you want me to come in there?"
Bakuda scoffed. "I'd like to see you try."
Shadow Stalker glanced at the plastic walls of her cell, shifted into her shadow state, and pushed her form through the air holes. "You know the fun thing about letting prisoners have privacy rights? No one is watching us." She wasn't allowed inside the cells, not without permission, supervision, and several pounds of paperwork, but if anyone wanted to check up on the prisoners, a light on the security cameras would flash and Shadow Stalker would have six seconds to leave.
"You're right," Bakuda said slowly. "No one's around but us." By her tone of voice, she had something more mutually beneficial than what Shadow Stalker had in mind.
Well, best to establish their positions early on. Shadow Stalker gut punched her, threw her to the ground, and planted a foot on her chest. "Exactly. So I'll make you a deal. Tell me what I want to know, and I'll hit you less."
Bakuda let out a gasp and gritted her teeth. "Do you have daddy issues? Because everything about you screams—ow!"
"Everything about you is going to be screaming too if you keep that up."
"Leave a mark on me and I'll sue you, you and that bug freak both."
"I've been doing this longer than you have. I know how to hand out beatings that look self inflicted, and juries tend to like heroes more than villains."
Bakuda took a deep breath. "Okay, fine. You ask me a question, and I'll ask you a question. Quid pro quo."
"Quid pro suck it. I ask you a question, and you tell me an answer."
Bakuda took a breath, then smiled. "Very well. Let's chat."
Shadow Stalker glared at her behind her mask. The villain gave in too quickly, though Shadow Stalker had more important things to do. "Did Myriad really fight Lung?"
"That's what this is about? Why don't you just read your own reports?"
She shrugged. "This is more fun." Besides, she became a cape to fight, not to read. She pressed her foot down harder. "And I'm asking the questions."
"Okay, fine, yes. She was there. She fought. She had her bugs bite Lung's balls off. Are we done?"
"Wait, what? She bit off his balls?" She went for Bakuda's eye and Lung's balls. If Shadow Stalker didn't know her personally, she would have been impressed. As it was, she was getting a better picture of her newest teammate. Gallant's words came back to her, that they might have become friends under different circumstances, but she brushed them away. Still, the girl was vicious, and Shadow Stalker could respect viciousness. "Why?"
Bakuda shrugged, still on the ground under her boot. "Beats me. If you want to beat Lung, you have to take him down before he can transform. Maybe she thought that removing his ability to produce testosterone would slow him down. Or maybe she's just sexually repressed. Anyway, by the time the Undersiders got there, all they had to do was knock him over and he was out."
She froze. "The Undersiders? They were there too? She was working with them?" Three out of four of them weren't important enough to think about, but Grue seemed to be hand crafted by the devil himself to get in her way. She had gotten him a few months ago, but not well enough to finish him off.
Surprise flickered across Bakuda's features, but then she smiled. "Are you sure you've been doing this longer than I have? Villains don't have prisons, kid, that's what the heroes are for. When a villain wants to take out a rival permanently, we have two choices. One, we kill them. It's straight forward, lots of fun, but it can get you the wrong kind of attention. The second option is to get a hero to help. The villain gets rid of a rival without a kill count, and the hero gets all the credit. She stalled Lung until the Undersiders could deal with Oni Lee, and she got to turn him in. Did you think that she beat me on her own? No, she had the Undersiders feeding her intel the whole time. I'd bet you my right eye she has Grue on speed dial."
Shadow Stalker took her foot off of Bakuda as she put the pieces together. That's why she left Gallant behind. She didn't want to face Bakuda alone, she just wanted the Undersider's help more than his. Now Hebert is the Wards' new rising star, and the Undersiders have the docks practically to themselves.
"I'll keep in touch." She phased through the plastic wall. "Don't go anywhere."
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What am I doing here? Taylor thought.
She wondered about what she had first wanted when she had joined the Wards. To make a difference? Between her talk with Armsmaster and the handbook she had been forced to read, she didn't see much chance of that. To get away from her bullies? Sure, until it turned out that Sophia Hess had joined up first. To make new friends? Ha. See above. To meet the heroes?
Well, the heroes were much less impressive now that Taylor was one. Powers were neat, but they were all still human.
She glanced over to Miss Militia, who had requested her for sidekick duty. Miss Militia wore army fatigues and a scarf and sash with the American Flag. On anyone else it would have looked lazy, like a cape had just decided to accessorize camo and called it a day, but Miss Militia made it look good. Professional. While everyone else was trying to look unique, Miss Militia took something that was already recognizable and moved on.
They sat together in a PRT van, one of the incognito ones. Instead of a PRT logo and a containment foam turret mounted on the top, it was white and green with a massive black widow spider painted on the side with the logo Preventive Pest Control. Myriad wondered if that was Miss Militia's sense of humor or just a coincidence.
"So, Myriad," Miss Militia said. "I've read your file. Arthropokineses and arthropodovoyance. Is that correct?"
She wasn't sure if either of those had been words before she came along, but she nodded. "That's about it."
Her weapon shifted to a sniper rifle with the butt resting on the floor. "How serious are you about being a cape?"
"I'm ... not sure." A month ago becoming a cape was the only thing that got her through the day. After trying it out, it just didn't seem like what she had been hoping for.
Miss Militia nodded as her sniper rifle turned into a fire ax. "The job's not for everyone, and not everyone with powers should be compelled to fight. But I've read the Bakuda report, and already you've done more than some heroes have done in years. We could really use your help."
She shrugged. "I got lucky." Bakuda could have killed her several times over if she hadn't wanted to make a show out of it. "Being able to control bugs isn't going to change a whole lot."
"Against the large scale threats, probably not, but let me explain the situation the city is in. Most of the time when a fight breaks out, the villains decide when and where. The heroes are forced into a reactive role, waiting for the villains to strike. If we're on duty eight hours a day, then we have to be three times as strong as the villains just to match them."
Myriad frowned. "But instead they outnumber you."
"Unfortunately yes, but it's not strictly a numbers game. Not every villain commits a crime that we can respond to every day; some of them perform a robbery once or twice a month and go quiet until they run out of money. One of the greatest determining factors is what we do while we're waiting. Tinkers like Armsmaster and Kid Win can develop new machinery, but that's not an option for you. Others can devote more time to training. That's helpful for capes with little experience, but the benefits diminish over time and training is no substitute for field experience. Others seek out unpowered criminals to apply pressure to the villain gangs, but henchmen are easily replaced. The game is set against us, but that means that the most important player is whoever can change the rules."
"How do we do that?" she asked, but something in Miss Militia's tone bothered her. How do I do that?
"By seizing the proactive role. If we can locate their bases of operation, their meeting places, their storehouses, then strike on our terms, then we can bring in all of our forces instead of the third that is on shift and bring the villain presence down to a level we can control."
"And for that we need ..."
"Information gathering. Surveillance. Media sensationalism focuses on the fights, but the fights are won and lost based on the long, slow hours spent watching and waiting. If you want to make a difference, that's how it will get done; not with a few acts of courage, but with a consistent pattern of patience."
The first thing Myriad thought was, That sounds horribly boring. Then she thought, I wonder if I could read a book at the same time. She hadn't brought one with her. Her third thought was, I wonder how long a parasitoid wasp's eggs can survive within a human host. Since they didn't lay their eggs in people instinctively, they'd be easy to track even if the target escaped her range.
She'd have to check the handbook to see if that was allowed, though. Freaking handbook.
She looked out the window. They were in the downtown area, and not the nice part. "So is that our mission today? We're doing a stakeout?" Despite herself, the idea of going on a stake out with Miss Militia sounded exciting, and far less frivolous than the standard patrol.
Miss Militia had a way of smiling with just her eyes. "A series of practice stakeouts is more like it, just to give you a feel of things. There are a few buildings in this area that gang members have been known to frequent. You will investigate the premise, and then we'll play things by ear."
Soon the van slowed to a stop as it pulled over and parked on the side of the road. "Is this close enough?" the PRT officer said. It was a woman's voice, which Myriad hadn't expected. PRT body armor left a lot to the imagination.
"This is perfect, Cooper. Myriad, do you see that building over there? Members of the Empire Eighty-Eight have been known to frequent it. Peering through the windows and watching the doors only gets us so much, and kicking the door down would alert them."
Myriad nodded. "You can only surprise them once. If no one important is home or if they outmatch you, then you've wasted your chance. Do you want me to send some bugs in?" She reached out with her power and called all the bugs within her range to her location. She didn't have many bugs with her, which was probably a mistake, but she imagined that Miss Militia wouldn't appreciate riding around with her in a van full of spiders.
"Not yet. First I want to know what your powers can tell you without actively using them."
She frowned. "What for?"
"Because," she said, "of the Fourth Amendment. Without a search warrant, any information we gather would be admissible in a court of law. If we see or hear something criminal through a window, however, we would have probable cause to investigate further. Parahuman abilities complicate the matter further because each one sets its own precedent. Have you heard of the Thinker X-Ray Rex? He could see through walls, and as long as he wasn't trespassing, he didn't need a search warrant. However, if a Tinker were to build a visor to imitate X-Ray Rex's powers, then using it would violate people's privacy rights."
"So using my powers passively is fine, but using them actively isn't."
"Generally. Like I said, everyone is their own precedent."
"Got it." Controlling bugs was active, but she had to actively block their senses if she wanted to focus on anything out. She reached out with her power to take control of the bugs already inside, and then relaxed.
As usual, what followed was a deluge of nonsense. No one really understood how many bugs there were in even the cleanest of areas, but that was because most of them lived in the walls and under the floorboards, in the dark cracks out of sight and out of mind. That meant that while Myriad got a decent three-dimensional picture of the building, most of the inside of the different rooms were in blindspots.
"I can tell that there are people in there, but that's about it." She shrugged. "Most bugs aren't interested in people."
Miss Militia nodded, as though she had expected that. "Very well. Switch to active use. Send in more if you have to."
Inside the building, ants, termites, weevils, and cockroaches emerged from cracks in the wall and flies came in from outside. "Even without a warrant?"
"You won't be able to use what you find as evidence, but that's not always an issue. If you foil a kidnapping, the victim will happily testify even if you cannot."
Myriad thought of Mr. Alcott and his kidnapped daughter. "Does that happen a lot?"
"No, but usually if we know about a kidnapping before we charge in, we can get a warrant first. The second situation is more common: we find someone who already has an arrest warrant."
"Got it." She poured more bugs into the building, trying to get a better picture of what was going on. The second floor was empty, the first floor had two people, and five ... five or six people in the basement, standing in a distorted circle. No one looked tied up, and Myriad couldn't see anyone's faces to tell if they were ...
Oh. Duh. Most capes wore masks, and unpowered criminals weren't her concern. That was how she had identified Bakuda five seconds before the villain had started blowing her up. She had her bugs fly at head level until she found something.
"There's two people on the first floor, six more in the basement. One of the basement people is wearing a mask."
Miss Militia's eyes widened. "Really? Good. Can you describe it?"
"It's smooth, metallic ... um, give me a moment." She had her bugs crawl around it, but not so many that the cape would notice. Hopefully. "It's like a welder's mask, but with horns? Sorry, I can't be more specific."
"What about the rest of him?"
"Well, he's hairy and shirtless, so he's definitely a man. Hair down to his shoulders. He's big, too. About as big as Lung. Maybe a bit taller, but not as broad. Wait, hold on, there's actually two people in masks. The other one has this sort of wire cage thing. This one is shorter and has a buzz cut."
Miss Militia nodded. "Pull up the villain database on your phone. See if they match anyone."
Myriad took out her PRT issued phone, which was considerably nicer than the one Lisa had given her, and looked up the database. Miss Militia had said that this was an Empire building, so Myriad started with Kaiser, but neither of the capes in the basement fit. Kaiser usually wore a suit of armor, and she couldn't imagine him strutting around without his shirt on, not during what looked to be some sort of meeting. Krieg was next on the list, but the mask was wrong. Kaiser's next lieutenant was ...
"It's him," she said, pointing at a picture of Hookwolf's human form. He was a Changer, capable of turning into a giant wolf made entirely out of blades. "The mask didn't have horns, it had ears."
Miss Militia looked thoughtful. "So he's here. The other cape is probably Cricket. Is Stormtiger there too?"
Myriad opened up Stormtiger's file and searched the room again. Stormtiger was tall, fit, and never wore a shirt while in costume. What is it with super powered neo-Nazis and not wearing shirts? "No, no one in there matches his description. Were you expecting this?"
"I knew it was a possibility. Hookwolf, Cricket, and Stormtiger often work together, and I suspected that Hookwolf might hold his fights here. Dog fights and pit fights aren't optimized sources of income, but they're his favorite. Violence has always been his biggest vice, and he has been killing people for sport—or honorable combat—in pit fights since before he triggered. But if he's here, now ..."
"Can we capture him?" Myriad didn't expect her own powers to be effective against someone covered in metal, and his wolf form was probably bullet proof.
If it came down to a fight, she'd have to focus on Cricket. Most of what she knew about Cricket came from when Myriad was trying to come up with a bug-themed cape name. One of the few bug names that didn't sound villainous or pathetic was already taken by a villain that had nothing to do with bugs. She just fought with enhanced reflexes and tiny scythes. Not fair at all.
"I'm thinking. If we attack and he gets away, he'll know this location is compromised and we'll miss out on all the information we might glean here." She paused. "How well can you hear with your bugs?"
Myriad hesitated. A week ago she would have said not at all, but now she wasn't so sure. Since Bakuda's sonic bomb had blasted her eardrum into smithereens, her bugs had compensated in ways she wouldn't have imagined. Could her bugs recognize sounds? Absolutely. But could they distinguish words?
She closed her eyes and concentrated.
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"Oh boy," Hookwolf said. "Nothing like a game of charades."
"Dammit, is Cricket's vocalizer broken again?" Rune complained.
"I'll bet you anything that piece of junk was made in China," Alabaster said, shaking his head.
Cricket gesticulated wildly, her voice coming out in squeaks and hisses.
"Okay, okay, let's just get this over with," Hookwolf said. "Two words. Not two words? You're holding up two fingers, dimwit!"
"Perhaps the first word is the number two," Victor suggested. "Or the preposition to. Or the adverb too."
Hookwolf rolled his eyes. "No one likes a smartass. Okay, two ... two what?"
"I-I could help her regenerate her voice box so she could just tell us," Othala suggested.
Cricket gave her a look that said, with no words at all, that she was proud of her scars and would personally skin alive anyone who interfered with them.
"Oh, don't give her that look," Victor said. "I can think of five people in this room alone who would happily slit your throat afterward to make up for it."
Rune leaned against the wall. "You know, if this meeting were an email, we'd be done by now."
Cricket put her hands on her hips and posed dramatically.
"Capes!" Hookwolf and Alabaster said together. They glared at each other.
"I said it first," Alabaster said.
"First of all," Hookwolf said, "it doesn't matter. Second of all, not even close."
Alabaster looked at Rune, requesting back up. "Okay," she said. "Hookwolf has killed way more people than you have, so he's obviously right."
"Damn straight," Hookwolf said. "So two capes. Oh, I hope they're close. I haven't ripped anyone's faces off all day."
"Um, you know," Othala said, "there are ways of dealing with people without murdering them."
"Victor," Hookwolf said without turning around. "Your stupid wife is being stupid again. Tell her to stop being stupid."
"Yes, yes, I'll talk to her," Victor said, looking at his phone. He smiled at a video compilation of people hilariously failing to skateboard and showed it to Othala, who winced.
"So two capes," Hookwolf said. "Or to .. yeah, two capes. And ..."
Cricket held her hands in front of her as though holding onto something and moved them up and down.
"Milking cows!" Alabaster said triumphantly. "Or ... not. It was worth a shot."
"Driving cars?" Hookwolf guessed. "Yeah! Two capes, driving cars, driving in circles? In cars.
"I have an idea," Othala said.
"No one cares," Hookwolf said.
"What if Victor—"
"I said shut up."
"Used his power—"
"God, you're annoying."
"To read lips, and ..."
Rune shook her head and let out a sigh. "Yup," she said, mostly to herself. "This should have been an email."
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"Sorry," Myriad said, opening her eyes. "I can tell that they're talking, but I can't make out any words."
Miss Militia nodded. "Well, it was worth a try. We'll pull out and monitor this location from a safe distance."
"We're not attacking?" As amazing as it would be to watch the entire East-North-East Protectorate descend upon a few unsuspecting Empire villains, this was probably safer.
She shook her head. "Avoiding civilian casualties is always a priority, and we can't clear the area without alerting the villains inside. For now, we'll observe."
That made sense. Someone who had been a hero for as long as Miss Militia wouldn't take unnecessary risks.
"Wait," Myriad said. "Something's happening down there. Oh! He must be changing into his wolf form. Now he's coming up the stairs."
Miss Militia's eyes widened. "Cooper! Drive!"
With her bugs on Hookwolf and lined within the walls of the building, Myriad could "see" him move. The door to the building burst open along with much of the wall and Hookwolf, a figure of wickedly curved blades, rammed into the van, knocking it over. The engine hummed in vain, and Myriad pulled her seatbelt off to free herself.
Hookwolf stood on top of the van and clawed at the door, shattering the window and bending the steel until he had a hole wide enough to stick his head through. Myriad held her arms up in front of her face to shield herself, but that only meant that when Hookwolf's jaws came clamping down, they bit down on her arm instead of her head.
She knew her costume was knife proof and she hoped it was bullet proof, but when it came to being crushed, she might as well have been wearing nylon. Hookwolf lifted her into the air and whipped her body around like a chew toy before tossing her into the air.
She flew for a moment. She hadn't flown since the night she met Glory Girl, and that had terrified her. Trusting someone with her life like that, knowing that they could drop her at any second and hoping that they wouldn't was more than she could handle.
She was almost grateful to finally hit the ground. She landed limply on the asphalt and rolled, more due to her own momentum than any combat training. She was about twenty or thirty feet from the van when she stopped, and she was facing it so she had a perfect view of Miss Militia shooting Hookwolf in the face with a canon.
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Miss Militia reformed her weapon instead of reloading it manually and fired again, thinking that the Neo-Nazi might appreciate being blasted with the Swiss Solothurn S-18/1100 more than the Soviet PTRD-41. It was these little courtesies that helped heroes and villains get along as well as they did.
She would have happily treated him to a Panzerfaust 3, but, well, there were people here.
A man in a white robe came out next, carrying two handguns. Alabaster. Miss Militia open fired with an uzi, careful to avoid his head. He went down, but he restored himself a moment later so his clothes weren't even bloody. She fired again, this time with rubber bullets. That would take him out of the fight for a few seconds before his powers recharged, but a few seconds in a fight like this could last a lifetime.
"We got a grade A Charlie Foxtrot on our hands!" Cooper yelled into her radio. "Requesting backup! Repeat, if there's anyone in the downtown area who can hear this ..."
A pool table came flying out of the building, forcing Miss Militia to duck. It veered upwards and was about to come crashing down on her before she blasted it into wood chips and splinters.
So that's Hookwolf, Cricket, Alabaster, and Rune. And Myriad said there were six of them.
Not exactly a fight to bring a rookie Ward.
WWW
Ow.
Myriad was pretty sure her arm was broken, but that was her fault. She had found Hookwolf's and Cricket's masks with her bugs and had stopped paying attention to the rest of them.
She played dead and reached out again with her power. Everything in the area with more than four legs continued marching toward her, but she wasn't sure how useful most of the bugs would be. With what she had on hand, she kept track of the Empire members.
Hookwolf and the villain who looked like he was part of the KKK were out on the street, both on the ground. Four more of the basement people were up on the first floor now with the two people who were originally on the first floor. Were those two guards? Lookouts? Or were they capes too?
If they were, they had pretty lazy costumes, used guns, and were hanging back. Out of the other four, three were women. One of those women was Cricket, and the only telekinetic in the Empire was Rune, a teenage villain who dressed up as a wizard. Myriad hoped that the last woman was someone besides Purity.
Still, if they were staying back, there was a good chance they couldn't take a hit as well as Hookwolf could.
That, or they were the team's trump card for when things started going bad. Myriad hoped they were just squishy.
Dammit! She needed to be smarter than she had been. She needed to know the powers of every villain in the city by heart and to be able to identify them by swarmsense. She needed to have her swarm with her, and not scattered throughout the range of her abilities. She needed to be prepared, but before she could be prepared for her next fight, she needed to survive this one.
She got a feel for the inside villains, not just their locations but their postures, which way they were facing—where their eyes were—and sent in her bugs.
Most of her bugs were fruit flies, house flies, moths, box elder bugs, and other insects that couldn't bite or sting, so Myriad used them as a distraction for the twelve humble hornets she had in her swarm. Twelve hornets, six people, one for each eye.
She heard them scream, and her swarm felt them thrash around, but some controlled their panic better than others. Cricket didn't panic at all, and instead came running out of the building straight toward her.
Myriad had just enough time to realize that playing dead wasn't working before Cricket jumped into the air and landed right on her broken arm. White-hot pain screamed through her so brightly, Myriad could barely feel Cricket slash her throat with her sickles.
Her costume stopped that at least, but at this rate, Myriad was going to throw up from the pain alone. She wanted to surrender, to give up, to do anything to make the pain stop ... but giving up had never helped before.
She came after me to stop the swarm. Every Master is their own weak point. Could she play dead again, and disperse the swarm to make the act look more convincing? No. Cricket could just roll her over on her stomach and ram one of her sickles through her skull.
Don't get distracted. She kept her swarm working on the three still in the building, biting them with anything that could hurt, all while bringing more bugs in from the edges of her range, but it was all so slow! Dragonflies could fly faster than a human sprinter, but most other flying bugs would struggle to keep up with a brisk walk. And ants? They were fast for their size, but were slower than most turtles.
Suddenly one of capes in the building became immune to her bugs. They still covered him, but they couldn't bite him any more than her bugs were able to bite Glory Girl. Another Changer? Did the Empire Eighty-Eight have someone who could harden their skin at will?
No, not a Changer, a Trump. Someone who could grant powers with a touch. What was her name again?
Cricket seemed to realize that she couldn't cut through Myriad's costume, so she put her sickles in her belt, knelt down on Myriad's chest, and began to strangle her.
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Juggling capes, in Miss Militia's experience, was like juggling balls. She could handle two, and that was it. She shot Alabaster, fired at Hookwolf for four seconds until Alabaster restored himself, then shot him again.
Then Victor came charging out of the building, and he took rubber bullet after rubber bullet without flinching.
Invulnerability? What a day. Real bullets wouldn't slow him down much more than rubber ones, and he was too small and too fast to hit with artillery. She couldn't create Tinkertech weapons like containment foam with her power, and Cooper wasn't certified yet.
She shot a smoke bomb at him and climbed out of the wrecked van. Victor could have been an expert marksman with his powers—and he was—but he prefered to fight hand to hand. Either he wanted to avoid killing people unless his back was up against the wall—lip service to the unwritten rules—or he wanted to show off the fact that he didn't need a gun to fight. Or, more likely, he absorbed his enemies' skills more effectively at close range.
The smoke would barely slow him down more than the time she spent throwing the grenade, but every second counted when Othala's enhancements lasted minutes or less. She could either continue stalling until Victor's borrowed invulnerability wore off or back up arrived, or she could fight her way through Victor, Alabaster, and Hookwolf to try to take Rune and Othala hostage.
A cacophony of chirping crickets interrupted her, and she turned to find Cricket herself sitting on Myriad's chest, strangling the girl. Miss Militia spared a moment to fire a clip of rubber bullets at the villain before Victor came out of the smoke.
WWW
Myriad could breathe again as Cricket jumped off of her in response to Miss Militia's onslaught. Her arm screamed in pain every time she jostled it, but she forced herself to her feet.
I can't give up. I can't back down. I can only ...
Even now, Myriad was aware of every segment of the battle. She could sense Hookwolf slowly growing his metal body thicker and thicker in response to Miss Militia's fire, and the villain in white had already healed himself, though both of his guns had a few bugs in them sabotaging his weapons however they could. The two capes still inside had curled up in fetal positions with their faces covered, having apparently surrendered to her swarm.
That left the cape fighting Miss Militia—Myriad still couldn't remember his name, but he was temporarily bullet proof and knew karate—and Cricket.
At that moment, Myriad hated Cricket more than anyone. The villain could have ended the fight in seconds, but instead she took it slow, toying with her, making a game out of it. Being angry at someone for ineffectually trying to kill her was stupid, Myriad knew, but being strangled made it hard to think clearly.
As evidence to that fact, there were crickets everywhere. Why had she focused on summoning crickets? She didn't know; her vision had been going dark and she had felt like she was about to pass out when she decided to cover Cricket in crickets and have them start chirping.
It worked, but that was more due to dumb luck than smart planning. Myriad liked her second idea much better.
Half a dozen dragonflies landed on Cricket's head, which the villain ignored. Several hundred ants crawled off of them and covered her eyes, which demanded Cricket's rapt attention. None of them had stingers, but they all had mandibles, and they set to work biting her. Myriad divided them into teams of three; two to pull the skin taut and the third to cut through it. Crickets climbed up to her ears and made as much noise as possible to deafen her.
But even blind and deaf, Cricket wasn't willing to lie down just yet. She wasn't a Brute from what Myriad had read about her, but judging by Cricket's vast collection of scars, she had faced worse than a few hundred determined bugs.
Cricket pulled off her mask—it wasn't doing anything for her secret identity anyway—and wiped the bugs off her face while Myriad tried to decide what to do next. Taser? No. Cricket was stronger and faster than she was, and she could just take the taser and use it on her. Pepper spray? Cricket was already blind, in pain, and, with Myriad's crickets, partially deaf. Making her blinder and in more pain wouldn't help. Her baton? Ha. Ha ha.
Yeah, she was screwed.
WWW
Armsmaster hated this city, but Brockton Bay was his, and it wasn't going away. Like cancer.
The engine of his motorcycle roared beneath him as he sped to the fighting ground, praying that he wasn't too late. Villains were most dangerous at two points in time. The most common was when they had nothing left to lose and wanted one last hurrah on their way out. Equally bad was when their gang no longer had any real competition and they had no reason to play nice.
Right now, both of those points described Hookwolf. He was the sort of villain that made Kaiser look reasonable. He was a murderer before he got his powers, and he was a murderer now. Some villains followed a loose code with the understanding that they would rather live in a world controlled by the heroes than by rival villains, but not Hookwolf. And now, with the ABB effectively obsolete, the Empire Eighty-Eight no longer had much reason to leave their enemies alive.
He thought of that as he rode down the street, his helmet feeding him info about the fastest route there. Myriad, who had been a cape for less than two weeks, and Miss Militia who, if he was being honest, kept the team running more than he did.
It was all he could do to breathe a sigh of relief when he arrived on the scene and saw them both still standing. That, and reform his halberd into an electric flail and knock Cricket off her feet.
The flail head was kinetically locked, so no matter how fast or slow it was going at the point of impact, it would strike with only the proper amount of force. According to his HUD, that meant three cracked ribs and subcutaneous bleeding. He dismounted his motorcycle, tossed a pair of handcuffs to Myriad, and made his way to Victor.
Victor had Miss Militia pinned to the ground with an arm twisted behind her back, but he got off her as soon as he saw him. Armsmaster shot a grappling hook at him, but he dodged.
Before Victor could try to run—good luck with that—he was swarmed by insects, especially around the eyes. That irritated Armsmaster. Good intentions were, well, good, but his equipment worked best with reduced variables.
His grappling hook wrapped around Victor's legs this time, and Armsmaster dragged the villain towards him and restrained him. His HUD flashed, alerting him that someone was trying—and failing—to breach his psychic shields. As long as Victor wasn't endowed with super strength or could fly, he'd stay put until Armsmaster dealt with the rest of the villains.
Alabaster was easy. The man pointed his guns at Armsmaster, but they wouldn't fire. Out of ammo? Maybe, but there were also bugs swarming the inside of the barrels, so perhaps Myriad had something to do with it.
Hookwolf was another matter entirely. He had been holding back, letting Victor have his fun, but he charged at Armsmaster like a large, angry poodle attacking a mailman.
A predictable move. Armsmaster sidestepped, activated his halberd's plasma setting, and seared through Hookwolf's right arm. Molten steel splattered across the street and Hookwolf fell into a roll.
"There's probably a circumstantially appropriate pun I could quip about offering you a hand," Armsmaster said as Hookwolf rose to his remaining three feet. "But I don't condone cruelty to animals, so I'll keep it to myself."
As a Changer, Hookwolf's flesh and blood body was safe somewhere in the middle of the wolf. Probably. If it turned out that Armsmaster had accidentally maimed a mass murderer, he'd just have to learn to deal with it.
He'd seen recordings of other capes fighting Hookwolf. Hell, he'd recorded himself fighting Hookwolf, and he ran every last bit of data through countless programs to create his masterpiece. With his combat predictor, he knew what his opponent was going to do before they did.
This ends today, villain.
But then a group of dragonflies landed on Hookwolf's metallic face and unloaded countless smaller insects that crawled into the eye holes of the villains outer layer. And with that, his combat predictor started to lag.
Insufficient data.
He had seen Hookwolf fight countless times, but he had never studied his reaction to a coordinated attack by a swarm of insects.
What would he do? Fight? Flight? Something else? Hookwolf lunged to the side. Going after Miss Militia for a hostage? Armsmaster shot out his grappling hook to stop him, but he missed because Hookwolf was running down the street.
After Myriad? He built the combat predictor so he could be certain of something in a fight, but now he was back to gambling with people's lives. He retracted the grappling hook and took aim just in time to see Hookwolf ignore Myriad entirely, trample his motorcycle—bastard—and pick up Cricket almost tenderly in his metal jaws before running down the street.
By the time his predictor could calculate through the different variables again, Hookwolf was already out of range. Well, I suppose there are still a few bugs to work out. He could try to make chase, but he already had two heroes who needed medical attention and more than enough villains that needed to be secured. He rested his halberd over his shoulder and fired the grappling hook at Alabaster, who had been trying to get away. After restraining him he went on to deal with Othala, Rune, and the two henchmen. Then he got down to the greater part of his job.
Anyone with powers could be a hero, but only a select few could lead.
"What the hell just happened?" he demanded, returning to Miss Militia. "We put Bakuda away so we wouldn't have to worry about military grade weapons on the city streets."
Miss Militia stared ahead, her eyes unfocused. "I apologize. The situation got away from us. I'll take full responsibility for the damages."
Damages. It would be damages if they were lucky. They could pin the claw marks on the road and sidewalk on Hookwolf, but the bullet holes that went through brick walls like they were paper? That was was Miss Militia.
"You don't get that option, Militia. Everything you do reflects on the team." On me. The sharks had smelled blood in the water when Lung had nearly died in custody, and Armsmaster knew that those same sharks would ignore the four Empire capes they arrested today in favor of the several thousand dollars worth of property damage. Hell, even if they had managed to capture all six, the only thing Piggot would ask them about was why they were treating a populated city like a warzone.
The fact that it was a warzone and the alternative was to lay down and die never seemed to faze her.
He took another look at Miss Militia, noticing something off about her. His visual algorithms could diagnose most injuries, but he had to see them happen for it to work. Was she hurt? He knew she could handle the stress of combat better than this, but she had been far too close to Victor when he arrived, and Armsmaster didn't know how much he had taken from her.
He wondered if he was being too hard on her. Hadn't he been frustrated with his own superiors for disregarding years of exemplary service to focus on his one mistake? A mistake that wasn't even his?
Well, it's not that bad, he wanted to say. I'm sure you did your best, and at least we got four of the villains. Everyone has off days.
"I'm going to check to see if there are any injured civilians in the surrounding buildings," he said instead. "Keep an eye on the prisoners until we can get them contained."
WWW
Several PRT vans arrived, loaded up the four villains, and sprayed them with containment foam. Myriad had never seen the foam in action before, and normally she would have been a lot more interested, but right now she was just worn out. She wasn't the only one. The PRT trooper who had driven them here had taken off her helmet and had lit up a cigarette with frantic desperation. She barely looked old enough to smoke, but it seemed like an old habit already.
And then there was Miss Militia. She seemed distant now, hollow. Still, that didn't stop her from sitting down on the curb next to Myriad to check on her.
"How are you feeling?"
Myriad cradled her broken arm in her lap. At least, she hoped it was only broken. She replayed the moment in her head where Hookwolf appeared above her, a sky full of teeth, and flung her back and forth like she was a chew toy.
"I've had worse days," she said instead. Neither of her arms had ever been that spectacular to begin with, and she only needed her bugs to fight. It hurt like hell, but pain was only pain.
"You did good today. Spectacular, and not just for a rookie."
It felt good to hear her say that, but Myriad wondered if that was something heroes always said to new members, especially if they got injured. "Is it always like this?"
Miss Militia shook her head. "There's no always in this job. The situation is always in flux. The Empire grows bolder as what's left of the ABB withdraws. But the worst scenario is one where we are caught off guard, and we still came out ahead."
Myriad thought about that. The ABB was on the decline mostly because Myriad herself fought Lung and Bakuda, so if the Empire was gaining power, that was on her. Bakuda stepped up because I helped catch Lung. The Empire stepped up because I helped catch Bakuda. It was like the story of the little old lady who swallowed a fly, a nursery rhyme about the dangers of escalation if she had ever heard one.
I don't know why I swallowed a fly. Perhaps I'll die.
She was trapped, in a way. She couldn't walk way from the cape scene after helping to incite a gang war, but if she managed to stay and win? Would that just clear the stage for someone worse? Because, as weird as it was to say it, the world was full of worse people than just nazis.
The only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you're good at that, I'll grant you. But the trouble is that it's the only thing you're good at.
She didn't want to think about that. "Honestly I'm just worried about what I'm going to tell my dad." That was a lie. She was a master multitasker, incapable of worrying about less than ten things at once. "A broken arm isn't something I can hide."
Miss Militia looked at her. "Does he not know?"
She hesitated. "I'm not required to tell him, right? I checked the paperwork, and ..."
"Required? No, but it is encouraged. There were too many situations where a cape's parents gossipped too much about their child's secret identity and at least one where the parents were official super villains—Team Ferocity, if you've heard of them. These days, the PRT no longer forces its junior heroes to come out to their family members, but that's just the thing, isn't it? You shouldn't be forced. You should recognize that this isn't a game we're playing. We try to keep each other safe, but we're not always in control. You got hurt today. Someday you might get killed. The truth will come out then, if not before. It's up to you if you want your father to bury a stranger."
WWW
Taylor could say this about being a state sponsored hero: it came with a stellar health plan. Of course, the best care money could buy was still loads worse than being healthy.
Her costume was the only reason her arm hadn't been torn off in the fight, but afterwards it only caused her trouble. The doctors couldn't examine her injury with it on, and her arm was too swollen for her to take her suit off without unbearable pain. They tried to cut it off, but that was a dead end unless they wanted to use a bone saw, and eventually they called in Vista.
Vista was able to expand her costume so she could slip out of it, and when Taylor was able to see her arm for the first time it looked like a slab of ground beef.
Supposedly, that was good news. It if was something as simple as a broken bone, they'd put her in a cast and let her heal normally, and maybe stick her with console duty for the next couple of weeks. Since her injuries were so much worse, she got to be treated by Panacea.
Eventually. The world's greatest healer had something of a tight schedule, so the doctors wrapped her arm in bandages and wrapped the bandages in a cast, the medical equivalent of holding a house together with duct tape. In a day or two, Panacea would squeeze her in and Taylor would be as good as new. Heck, she might even have two working ears again.
Until then, she had pain killers. She took one, and it made her feel good. Really good. Better than she had felt in a long time. She flushed the rest down the toilet after she got home. She could deal with a dull, throbbing ache, but an opiate addiction scared her.
After that, she waited for her dad to come home, wondering what she was going to tell him, thinking about what Miss Militia had told her.
If you knew what I was doing, you'd want me to stop, thinking that I could. And she could stop. Of course she could. There was no reason why she couldn't.
But if I fought you on it, you'd let me keep being a hero. You wouldn't like it, and you would destroy yourself day and night worrying about me, but you'd swallow your misery just like I do.
She considered the alternatives. She could lie, and keep on lying. She had gotten involved in a cape fight today, which was true, but only as a bystander. The heroes had blamed themselves for letting her get hurt, so they got her medical treatment like the paragons of virtue that they were. And it wasn't even that bad, just a hairline fracture that an overzealous doctor had found, and she could get the cast off in a day or two.
She heard the door open. "Taylor, I'm home."
After that, well, Taylor had a new job working as a janitor. You get strange hours as a janitor, so her dad would understand if she was gone. And she had friends, fake friends that invited her to spend the night or hang out. That wouldn't be too unbelievable, right?
She got up and opened the door. It would be hard at first, but it would get easier. Eventually, she wouldn't even need to try. Her dad would barely know her after a year or two, but he wouldn't have to worry about a thing.
"Hey, Dad," she said, stepping out of her room.
He did a double take as soon as he saw her. "Taylor," he said. "What happened to your arm?"
"Dad, I ..." She opened her mouth and closed it again. "I have to tell you something. I'm a cape."
WWW
A/n And that's the end of chapter eight. I really do not have an easy time writing fight scenes. Fortunately, that is the last fight scene that will appear in this story.
Until the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that. Seriously, capes need to find a better way of solving conflicts than trying to kill each other. They could, like, start a pun war or something. Those never devolve into violence.
It's kind of weird that the woman who grew up as a child soldier is the most reliable one around, and that honestly makes Miss Militia hard to write. I mean, where's the neurosis? What am I supposed to base her off of? Captain America? Well, maybe. Armsmaster was comparatively a piece of cake.
For everyone who wanted to see Shadow Stalker get some well-deserved comeuppance, you'll have to wait at least a little bit longer. The next chapter will, if everything goes according to plan (and it always does), focus more on Vista.
Anyway, I would like to thank everyone who left a review letting me know what you thought. The further this story goes, the better idea I have of where I'm going with it, and you guys help with that.
Finally, and most of all, I would like to thank Noneofit for betaing this chapter and reading it when it was at its worst. He was also able to teach me a lot about guns, like how shooting something at point blank range with a rocket launcher would kill you and that Miss Militia shouldn't do it. Who knew?