by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.
Unseen HandsObligatory warning: Triggers ahead. Warned you are, bros. Also: I experiment with writing styles. Here's a first-person point of view.
Behind the second door, there is no introductory message, and its whole appearance differs from the first. From where you are, you can barely see the next door but you can imagine it's different there, too. It also doesn't open automatically. But you are curious, now, and give it…
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A Push ForwardI pushed with all my might. I kid you not.
I was in pain, but I continued to push.
I was not a pregnant woman trying to get a baby, but the effort was up there… perhaps higher, too. After all, not all pregnant women are pushed in a locker too small for their frame and left to rot among biological hazards and insects.
And not all pregnant women trigger with super-powers when they give life. It might be painful, but it's not deadly (nowadays) and goes generally well… in the end.
Me? My mind was shattering almost as much as my body, giving space for something… else. Alien. And, after a while, when I pushed again in all directions to force my way through the closed lid of my locked locker, it moved, tearing itself out of its anchor points. I ruined the lockers on each side of mine, too, but was freed from the insects and the unsanitary sludge dripping on the floor… from my airborne feet.
I must have looked frightful, floating over the ruins of the Trio's last "prank", my hair floating as my new and uncontrolled power continued to push away everything dirty, ripping to ribbons the clothing over my feet, calves, and knees. Same went the jacket's sleeves and the bottom of my top.
And I went home. I don't even remember how. I think I must have spent the day in bed, or something. After a hot shower. And disposing of my clothes by fire in the barbecue bin.
The next day, the Principal called me to her office, only to punish me for destroying my locker and putting all that sludge there. On top of that blatant miscarriage of justice, Emma smirked at me when I got out of there.
I wanted to strangle her.
I was sure I could do it at range, even.
But doing that would kill her, and in public.
I'm wary of using my untested powers on normal humans, knowing that it's forbidden. As such I could do nothing but take her verbal abuse… and she seemed to know it, too. And she went farther than ever, taunting me over everything: mom's flute, me crying for days, worth nothing so why don't I kill myself…
When I went home, I went straight to the kitchen and took a knife out to cut my wrists. It wasn't something I had envisioned doing, and I wondered about that as the blade sliced through my wrist. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on where you want to go with this, my slicing my left wrist led to my tendons being unable to hold my left hand closed around anything, especially a knife to cut my other wrist.
I almost laughed when I envisioned my reporting to Emma that I had only succeeded in half-killing myself.
Why would I "report" to Emma? I didn't know.
Once again, fortune smiled or frowned depending on your interpretation, as Dad came home early. He saw me bleeding over the table, even as I smiled at him and waved, welcoming him home as if nothing was amiss.
"Taylor? My god! What…"
Cue in a very uncomfortable discussion, especially as I admitted that it was Emma's cue that led to me mutilating myself. It didn't stop his efforts to fetch bandages to stem the flow. And we both knew I had to go to the hospital. But something about Emma was to be done.
He called Alan, told him about Emma, and the man ordered us not to move, he'd fetch us himself – as an old friend of dad's, he probably knew how unreliable our "car" was.
Alan saw my bloody wrists and paled, before turning to Emma. And Emma… smirks again. "It's nothing, dad." she says. "Taylor always do things like this to get attention, at school. It's annoying, really."
Alan turns back to us with some anger. "And to think you made me doubt my own daughter! Danny, I thought you had more sense than that!"
"Wait, wait, wait, Alan!" dad interjected. "How can you change your mind so fast?"
"I… don't know…"
"It's probably because Taylor has you all confused." Emma insists, and she now targets the two men as I watched, stunned into an immobile state of horrified disbelief. "Between this and all her stunts at school, I wonder if she wouldn't be better in a hospital… with the crazies."
"Yeah…" muttered Alan.
"That must be it…" added dad, as the two men turned to me. "I'm sorry, Taylor. It's for your own good."
"No! Stop!" I yelled. "Why? Emma, why?"
"Because I can, Taylor. Now, I'm tired of seeing your sad face in school. So you'll be a good little crazy and join the others in the hospital. Hopefully, you'll off yourself properly, once there."
The two men didn't react to the vitriol she spouted, and I could only infer one thing about that: Emma was a Master for some reason, making everyone believe her. I didn't react either, despite my sudden realization and my equally sudden and visceral need for retaliation (that was three times that she had ordered my death): I was in her thrall, and had to obey.
"In fact…" Oh God she wasn't finished! "I don't want your ass in my car. You can go there on foot, that'll spare everyone. And if you meet any mugger or rapist on the way, be kind… and let them do whatever they want."
My body nodded absently, as my mind considered these actions as perfectly normal. But my consciousness howled at the ultimate betrayal. How could she? I barely noticed her wince while holding her head, as I went outside. Dad didn't follow.
I walked for half an hour before having my first problematic encounter. Thankfully, it wasn't dark enough that all the crazies were out. A mugger got me, and I let him empty my pockets. I had very few possessions, and he marked his displeasure by hitting me in the face, making me hit the wall behind me. I crumbled. He left.
Once awake, I noticed the advanced hour because of the night having advanced quite a bit. I walked fifteen more minutes before meeting another troublesome individual. This one was of the second kind, and I saw him eye me up and down as he ordered me to disrobe. I complied, but he stopped me, quite disgusted. "Yo' too twiggy. I ain't fucking a bag o'bones like you. Get lost." I was never so happy to be skeletally thin. But as I tried to recover my clothing with my good hand, the man got an ugly smile. "Nope. Get lost without. I dunno why you obey, but it's fun."
I wasn't obeying him, I was obeying Emma's last orders, who were to satisfy him. Still, he had not raped me, and not mugged me either, so Emma's standing orders started to crumble, right when he ordered me to get on all fours and bark like a dog. I have never been so humiliated, and hoped that nobody would ever see that… and then I saw him take a picture.
I dearly wanted to be invisible, at that moment. That, or the earth to open and swallow me. I was so ashamed I wanted to die. And when my mind shattered for a second time in as many days, I ended up with what I had wished… first: invisibility. However, it was constantly on, and I had to concentrate to return a visible state. It also only covered my naked body, which meant that if I wore clothes, they would out me.
But those thoughts were quite far away at that moment. When Emma's current order shattered with my mind, my anger exploded like a huge volcano tearing through a (relatively thin) glacier: with shards everywhere. The man was torn to shreds by telekinetic forces, before my eyes. His phone followed. I dearly hoped it hadn't been broadcasting live, and held to the hope that, as someone living in the street, he didn't have the money to pay for a continuous internet connectivity.
To get back to safety, I hurried into my clothes, not noticing that I used my damaged hand without a problem… but only because my telekinetic aura coated my body and helped things along. And then I went into the hospital, concentrating on being seen.
My "Hello, I wanna join the crazies." didn't work. As it was explained to me, besides obvious mental stress, I couldn't put myself into the psych ward as that required an adult's supervision as well as a psychiatrist's evaluation.
Thankfully, that immediate rejection freed me from Emma's last order. If she had added something like "try as many times as needed", I would have. Instead, I fled. I didn't really care for my non-working hand, because I didn't want to stay in a place where I would be stuck with the crazies, on Emma's orders, and then succeed in killing myself.
I went home. On my way back, I found the same mugger. He had a thicker wallet. I shredded him and took the wallet. My night had opened my eyes on the city's underbelly, and I wanted no part in it, not now, and especially not after. I had already killed once, so what was another tumour excised from the city's continuous cancer? The wallet was for my dad to finally buy some reparations for the house.
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An Aborted AttemptThe next day, dad took me to the PRT, to enter the Wards. He seemed determined to do so, and had even forgotten the interaction with Emma – thankfully, the wince I had seen her have might be a limitation of the number of orders she could give, or she would have ordered him to hang himself or something equally horrifying for me to stumble upon when finally coming back from the hospital.
I didn't really want to go to the Wards immediately, but could understand his reluctance to do anything else – he was a by-the-book kind of man. Too bad that other people weren't, running over him constantly. Including his "friend" Alan (the result of Emma's father's choice of career was obvious, when compared to our relative poverty).
They welcomed us, but since the "higher-ups" were taken with some meeting, we were offered the option to wait, reschedule, or go through with power testing. Thinking that it meant one less thing to do later, we opted for the testing.
I found out many things about my power, that day, some I retold as I found them, others I kept hidden. For instance, I revealed that I had precise telekinesis powers of anything I touched, while I could act in range – not that far, though: I estimated the area to be a sphere with a radius of roughly five feet (three meters of diameter). In that sphere, I could do anything. I had, by instinct of survival and then by anger, shredded living beings, meaning that I wasn't subject to the limitation of the Manton Effect (which meant that powers weren't usually useable directly on other humans).
But even if I had been, I could have been equally deadly: with training, I could re-enact the scene from one of Earth Aleph's movies, where the bad guy slices at an incoming car without a care, lifts the bricks around him in the air and sharpens them into spikes, and launches them towards his foes, as well as fly and entangle his enemies with the surrounding debris.
My body itself wasn't more resistant than any baseline human, nor did I have super-speed or strength, but that telekinesis could help support things, granting me the equivalent of super-strength without physics getting in the way. It also stopped incoming projectiles, and in fact it was what my power did, instinctively wrapping me in a shell when danger headed my way – only the fact that I wasn't considering it a danger made me slice my own wrist. And I can move that shell, too, flying by carrying myself.
To the testers, I only reported "touch-based telekinesis" and "protective forcefield" for now – they tested the shield and found that even firearms didn't penetrate. Upping the calibre and aiming precisely at the edge of the field, perceived as a few millimetres out of my clothing, they found out that it would resist everything thrown at it. Even harmful gases, liquids, and pressure. I could walk at the bottom of the ocean and be safe and dry – I still would have to find a way to breathe, though. A car running me could push me, but one trying to squish me on a building would damage either itself or the building.
I also revealed a partial use of my invisibility: I could make my hands disappear. That way, they wouldn't question whether I was touching something or not, if it moved around me.
Dad hadn't obeyed my wishes to wait, and I saw no reason to reveal more until I was more comfortable with the idea of belonging here. Besides, most hero powers are quickly known on PHO, and I wanted an ace or two up my sleeve if I ever got caught by villains.
After that, we were invited to visit the Wards area, where I met the younger heroes. When it was mentioned that I was a prospective member, Vista seemed ecstatic. Shadow Stalker, though, was more guarded… and then she approached, saw me, and flew off the handle.
"Hebert? What the fuck are you doing here, loser?"
I had the mask offered as a courtesy to hide my civilian identity (dad had one, too, making him smile) but that was for naught if Shadow Stalker was shouting it to the world to hear. Besides, her grating voice remembered me of someone… who shared many physical traits with Shadow Stalker.
"Sophia?"
"Hey! It's a crime to unmask a hero!" she yells, running at me and not giving me a chance to counter her argument – she had been the first to unmask me, after all. And some hero, too! Hide behind the law you don't uphold, why don't you?
At that moment, I wasn't trained yet, and Sophia's first punch connected, dropping me and making her start to kick my ribs. My dad tried to intervene, but she pushed him away to have another go at me. Still, the short respite had centred me, and I lunged to return her punch… only to strike her gaseous shape.
Gaseous or not, my power allowed me to control everything in close proximity, and Sophia was in close proximity. I held my hand out (so that it came close to her) and… squeezed. And the cloudy shape that marked her body stopped and started shaking. I could strangle her, dismember her, crushing her into a meat ball, making her pay for all those tortures… but I was the bigger hero. I let her live.
"Come on, dad, let's leave. If those heroes employ a psychotic bitch like her, I don't want anything to do with them."
"Who're you calling bitch, bitch?" Sophia yelled incoherently before using her crossbow to fire a bolt at my back. My constant field stopped it and I turned, grabbed the bolt and put it in my pocket.
Two others followed suit before the stunned Protectorate hero who had been doing the introduction finally reacted. "Shadow Stalker! Stand down!"
Unmasking a fellow cape and attacking another hero, I was sure that those would be enough to remove her from the equation, after which I'd perhaps reconsider joining.
However, she didn't even get a slap on the wrist for all this. The very next day, right as rain, PHO reported that she was seen patrolling alongside Aegis – who had witnessed our whole kerfuffle. I was angry. Dad was incensed. I told him that, given how the heroes acted, I wanted to be one outside the system. He agreed, but only because I proved I could take care of myself.
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A Night OutAs fate would have it, on my first night out, I stumbled upon Lung as he was instructing his goons to kill children. I took offence to that order and jumped in the middle of their group, tossing the goons every which way. Against Lung, I had a single method: levitating him to prevent him from gaining traction on the ground, I kept him there while I deliberated: when I couldn't trust the PRT for anything, what could I do with villains?
The answer was taken from me, as his power made him grow… while mine constrained him so he couldn't move. The pressure of the body growth against the unyielding telekinesis crushed his flesh so quickly that I didn't react in time to keep him alive.
Even with the ABB leader dead, I realized, too, that I was in grave danger: some of his underlings were conscious… and filming. I was now a target for the other Asian capes, especially their mad bomber. As a point of fact, he was called and teleported in – apparently, he was already in costume, having been "working" before.
Oni Lee started with a grenade dropped at my feet before teleporting out to inspect his handiwork. It exploded, and that's where I could appreciate how protective my power was: I wasn't hit by the blast, or any of its by-products. I wasn't even moved by the shockwave. I couldn't see his frown when I emerged unscathed from the fire and smoke, but I imagined it.
He came at me again and again, dropping more grenades, but I was ready, using telekinesis to make them inactive, but keeping one only temporarily so. And when he did it one time too many, I stuck a live grenade in his jacket just as he arrived, so as he'd have it with him as he teleported out. Of course, I also used my power to distract him, pelting him with the others I got, even when he disappeared only to reappear on a nearby rooftop
Following him were the ones he had been hounding: Hellhound herself, with her hounds, as well as the other Undersiders. And they clearly saw Oni Lee die in an explosion that left a bloody imprint on a roof and not his ashes as he often did.
Seeing that, as well as a quite mangled (and dead) Lung by my side, their Thinker wanted to recruit me. Instead of being under her, and under the boss she clearly didn't like, I offered her the same job, with me. And since it was congruent with her escaping Coil's clutches, I followed her into the man's base and killed him too – it wasn't as if I had a choice, with the weaponry arrayed against me. I learned that I could reorient laser beams that entered my bubble, ploughing through the mercenaries who had tried to kill me. And even if I didn't see the beam reaching me, it was reflected back to the emitter by my manipulation of the space around me. Nice to know.
Lisa, as she was called, was ecstatic, and appropriated the man's computer for a while, downloading information and money so that we wouldn't need to worry about it later. Ever.
Getting rich wasn't why I had hired her, though. I needed some Thinker power to establish the viability of having a new team of heroes in town. She winced, because the term "hero" was often associated with the arrogant PRT and Protectorate. I countered with New Wave's example, and that got her thinking that, with the right presentation and incentive, they could do that, yes.
The other Undersiders agreed. Brian was there only to get help for his sister, and Alec and Rachel were forced into the role of villain because of murder charges. We would need a good lawyer, to deal with that and the future legalistic problems. Thankfully, Tattletale had many contacts, everywhere, and she knew of one: Quinn Calle.
Once contacted, met, and presented with our preliminary work, the man laughed and threw our papers off the table. "That was interesting, but let's be serious."
And then he rewrote everything with a verbiage that was so different that it could have been a foreign language. But Lisa nodded along, confirming that it was what we wanted, only written in Legalese – the secret dialect of lawyers and contract-makers.
…and we were off.
First things first, Calle made sure that the money we got from Coil was ours to use, legally. Apparently not, because it had been lent from Accord, another villain from Boston. Accord refused to talk to either Calle and Tattletale, abhorring the two of them, so I had the honour of speaking to him. He was short and to the point and brutally honest: either we gave back everything, or we kept everything and were in his employ. My idea that we could find a middle ground by being paid to implement some of his plans was met by… cautious acceptance. And some grudging respect from the two who had voiced something else in my ears. We ended up with a tenth of the fortunes we had envisioned, and had to pay taxes on it too, but it was quite sizeable as a starting point. In exchange, we would have three occurrences in which Accord would call for our help for his infamous Plans, and we would do that for free.
That part being done with, Calle and Lisa negotiated the lawyer's retainer fee, and he took the job of solving the Undersiders' various situations. Brian and Lisa ended up as emancipated minors, the young man getting his sister to live with him. Rachel was cleared of the murder charges due to the laws that surrounded trigger events, and Alec's were simply dropped due to being Mastered by his own father at the time. Still, doing like the Protectorate when they recruited ex-villains (Assault being a prime example), they ought to rebrand. And we all established our costumes as being based on additional protection, with a Kevlar vest (taken from Coil's stuff) under a biker's ensemble, which included a helmet. And we also grabbed a contact weapon (a bat or a knife) and a ranged one (a rubber-ball rifle or a laser one with the setting set to low enough not to damage too much).
Bitch abhorred the PRT's designation of her as Hellhound, and rejected anything with "Hound". Instead, she chose Barking Mastiff – or just Mastiff, for the short and PC version. Her biker costume was decorated with a canine theme, and she sheepishly declared that she liked it, and that she saw better through the tinted visor than through her previous dog mask.
Regent loved to play the Renaissance fair angle, but he admitted easily that he was quite squishy. His outfit was white with red accents. He was renamed Festival and spoke with a French accent.
Brian already had the biker stuff, and he simply painted his helmet black, covering the grinning skull. He got the Kevlar vest, of course, as well as the name Sunset. His sister Aisha, who happened to have triggered already, was to have the same protection as the others (despite her strenuous objections, as she liked her clothing as it was, thank you – and Alec liked it as well). She was named Mephit, because she could take the shape of a little devil that could then teleport through explosions of smoke. Good for reconnaissance, but also for survivability, because she was invulnerable, too, in her changed form.
Lisa took the same package as the others. She was called Control and would seldom be deployed on the field if the mission was sensitive. Instead, she would look at the screens relaying what our helmet-mounted cameras (inside the visor) showed.
I took the name Magician, but was quickly nicknamed "Unseen Hands" because I was doing my tricks with my hands either hidden in my long sleeves… or invisible. I also got the same equipment as the others, except that I had a red cape that hung from my jacket's shoulder pads.
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A New HopeCoil's base being abandoned meant that we could use it, its content free for us as spoils (such as the rifles and vests). There were a few surviving mercenaries, too, which Calle advised us to keep as such, our budget allowing us to do so without difficulty for a couple years, at least. Alec complained about the "lost money" but quickly changed his tune when some of them could play with him at his war games… and win.
I brought dad too: now that I was seeing a worthy and legal goal with a bit of money, I wanted to show him… and offer him a spot. He was good with numbers, as well as people, and ended up doing the same as he was doing with the Dockworkers. With much less people and more money. It led him to ask some pointed questions, though. Such as: could the heroes be available for menial tasks? Someone able to blast away the Boat Graveyard would be a godsend, according to him. And even better would be one able to do that and recover the destroyed boats, sorting the things for future recycling.
"I'll do that." I said. "In exchange, could we hire a few friends of yours to make an enclosure over this base, for Rachel's dogs?"
"What?" the girl asked, somewhat surprised. After all, I hadn't interacted much with her.
"It's for you to house the dogs you keep, with a protection against those outside. And the dogs also protect the base. Like layers of protection, like when you surround your dogs when you make them grow."
"Words." Rachel snorted, before falling silent for a while. She then nodded. "Alright. And you can take Brutus to help pull things, when you do the boat things. He'll obey you."
I smiled… without showing my teeth. She nodded back.
"Alec will go with you, as lookout." Lisa said suddenly, watching maps on the computer. "The Graveyard is right next the Trainyard, and there are still Merchants on the prowl." she went pensive for a few seconds, looking at Calle. "Which of the Merchant could we hire, you think?"
"We won't do drugs." dad said, quite firmly, although his declaration made Alec and Rachel bristle. Aisha, too.
"I know." I said. "That's the question, I think. Which of them could be successfully brought back in, with us?"
"I'm suggesting that we get Sherrel, also known as Squealer." Calle said after jotting a few words on a sheet of paper. "Skidmark and Mush have real murders under their belt. Trainwreck is asocial. There might be other capes, but I don't know them."
"And the ABB?" I asked.
"Same. Without Lung and Lee, they will collapse. The fact that they might have recruited another bomber might change that, though, but said bomber is not widely known, and without a proper introduction, nobody will believe them."
"What about the Empire?"
"As with all groups lifted by an ideology, those who spout it the most are generally those who believe less in it. As such, there are several capes who don't act as "proper Nazis", if such a term still exists: Hookwolf-"
"No!" Rachel growled.
"-isn't one we can safely induct." Calle said as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Even if might not believe in the ideal, he still prefers his fighting rings-"
"And dog fights." the girl continued, making the lawyer nod.
"There are rumours that Othala isn't even interested." I said, remembering reading about that on PHO. "She's never on the front lines, and people said that it's because she's forced into it by her marriage."
"Othala is squishy." Lisa countered absently. "And also the Empire's sole healer. They don't want her to go out, but that's how her powers work: by touch, and for a short time." She frowned. "But now that you mention it, she's never vocal for her cause, unlike what normal sideliners would do, with shouted insults or epithets."
"Which school has her?" Aisha asked, before looking at everyone with a frown when we looked at her in surprise. "She don't look more tha' sixteen. That's still school age, ain't it? B'sides, with that thing on her eye, she must be easy to find, amirite or amirite?"
"Amirite." Alec said, fist-bumping with her and making her smile widely… which made Brian frown further – the mangled language she had used had started it.
"Immaculata." Lisa replied, having spent the last few seconds doing quick searches on internet. "Constance Herren."
"This information doesn't leave the room." Calle warned everyone. "If you want to play at being heroes, that type of unmasking is not done. And you'll have to start thinking about the level of confidentiality of any information before speaking about it."
It seemed that Lisa had an internal conflict for a few seconds before relenting with a soft-spoken "Sorry."
"That's worse than bureaucracy!" Alec said. "It's like… censorship! Dictatorship, even!"
"The Unwritten Rules, even if some villains seem not to care about them, are here for a reason, and they protect you as much as them. If you want to be able to claim to be protected by them, you have to live by them, too."
I snorted. "The polar opposite from what Shadow Stalker did."
He nodded. He already knew, because I already told him. Even though those laws exist, they don't contradict the lawyer's confidentiality clauses.
Bit by bit, we created our own team, and built our reputation. From our remote location (from the PRT, the Rig, or New Wave's neighbourhood), we could cover much ground and secure it. After our public cleaning of the Ship Graveyard, we even got the status of "independent hero group" from several judges. It sure beat the clear refusal from Brockton Bay's PRT and Protectorate to consider us like New Wave – although we would never be affiliated to them, given how morally corrupt they were… and we wouldn't unmask either.
I discovered another interesting use of my power, while shredding boat carcasses (by touch, as long as they were witnesses): by having the pieces moving rapidly around, they hit each other quite often, and their temperature climbed rapidly. Relatively soon afterwards, I was able to melt the recovered metals and plastics, and I could also grab from inside the mixtures the impurities so as to get pure steel, or plastic, or whatever there was before – not wood or cloth, obviously, but whatever there was was already rotten to the core, anyway.
From being our accountant and head of human resources, dad also became the "responsible adult" (as in "not burdened by the urges parahuman powers give to their hosts") the PRT could discuss with on several issues. He became the public "face" of our team – which we ended up calling Public Sense (a mix of public service and common sense). Or just PS.
With me besides him, he didn't risk anything when going outside: I had by then learned to protect anyone I wanted inside my radius (which had slightly improved). Not that he would go often, at the beginning: with our cleaning of the surrounding neighbourhood, and then the rest of the city, the gangs (including some in the Protectorate, since they acted as such) wanted us out.
Our base was well-protected, though, especially as, as time progressed and more people knew where it was, more and more capes joined us. Previous affiliation-wise, we had everything: new triggers, rogues, some mercenaries, independent heroes and villains, and even some poached right out of their previous gangs.
By names, we had Browbeat, Dinah (whom Coil already had files on), Parian (who was harassed by the Empire), Shamrock (who, with Dinah, isolated our group from precogs and other Thinkers), Chariot (whom Coil also had files on, with dirt on him), Squealer and Scrub from the Merchants, and Othala and Purity from the Empire. From New Wave, we got Panacea, who was on the outs with both her sister and mother after her coming out (and she started by healing our various problems, including my severed and then atrophied tendons). Lastly, from the PRT, we successfully recruited Assault and Vista – whom we renamed as Bounce and Stretch. Shadow Stalker was not able to do the same, despite her despising her current status and employer, because her contract clearly stipulated that she was on probation. On top of that, I would never welcome here.
With that many parahumans, we could hold quite a bit of land, and limit the Empire's progression through what had been ABB territory. Turf wars occurred, each of them the occasion for the PRT to get the tar out against us, but we prevailed each time with minimal collateral damage and "civilian" deaths. We also rooted out the rampant drug use in the "poor" districts, as well as prostitution and homelessness: by acquiring (at cost, meaning a really low price) abandoned and derelict warehouses, we could rebuild them quickly into sturdy (and clean) tenements.
Jobs were provided to help in that reconstruction, with money to be spent in the shops we also opened to distribute food and necessities.
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An Unexpected RecruitmentSome time later, a call came from Boston, for us to house a problematic group: the Travellers. That was one of the favours we owed Accord.
With the Thinkers we had on hand, we could detect the influence of the Simurgh on their whole trajectory across the country. With the healers we had, we could also help them in their search for a cure for Noelle (and one for the paraplegic Jess, but that was trivial in comparison) – Panacea could reshape her, but Noelle's power soon got her to bloat again.
An unexpected help in that regard came when the group of supervillains known as the Slaughterhouse Nine came to town in search of new recruits to possibly increase their number. As it happened, when they did, we were spread over our territory, and they attacked distinct positions (some not our own).
Burnscar went to the Palanquin, for instance. However, she merely wanted to see her erstwhile friend Labyrinth. The problem was that she hadn't called beforehand, and as soon as the nightclub's security (including Spitfire) recognized her and started firing, her power distracted her and she started one of her rampages. Thankfully, with Spitfire on the rolls, Faultline had devised ways to flood the club and the adjoining streets with water, and she captured a drenched Burnscar.
Mannequin always chose Tinkers to measure himself against – and generally win. That day, he chose Trainwreck, who was peacefully dozing in the Trainyard district. When the arch-villain came out, he was covered in various fluids and oils from the destroyed steam-powered power armour… and some blood from the dead cape.
Jack Slash headed to Captain's Hill, killed Dinah's family, and collected their heads as a crazy present for their daughter, located in our base with Lisa, Amy, a couple mercenaries, my dad, and me. And Noelle, Oliver, and Luke, from the Travellers – the first was still waiting for a true cure, the second didn't seem to have any power, while the last could control bugs. I'd learn later that Jack Slash wanted to invite the little precog into his group, to act as company for Bonesaw and to act as a shield against the other Thinkers (who could predict his moves more and more accurately, to his dismay).
Bonesaw was already there, having selected Panacea as candidate. Informed of my power by the PRT putting the result of my tests on their public pages, she didn't know I could act in a radius, and I held her firmly inside a cocoon-like forcefield, preventing her from releasing her rumoured plagues. Only a microscopic aperture opened for Amy when she pressed her finger at Riley's neck, and she immediately went to work, putting the younger girl to sleep and disabling the plagues and various organic measures. Including the ones she had devised a long time ago to stay happy despite the horrors around her.
Once awakened after that, she was a young teenager, Vista's age, who dropped into tears. She vowed to get back at Jack… who was just coming down the stairs. For whatever reason, his power was not fully documented, and he evaded everything the capes could do to him. The mercenaries facing him got a slice through the throat, too. But my dad was behind him, unseen and undetected, and he pushed the first pointy thing he had between the parahuman's ribs – it was a trident.
Jack had a reinforced skin, though, and he was merely pushed against a wall, only the tip if the weapon piercing through. Dad had aimed for the left side, to get at the heart. When Jack started to turn around, his muscles enhanced by Bonesaw's treatment, the trident slid to his other side, and dad gave a desperate push. It went through, this time, the pointy bits slithering between the mesh of metallic wires. And it pierced the man's heart – Bonesaw knew that most people would aim at someone's left side, and had moved his heart to protect him further. In this instance, it proved to be fatal.
With Panacea and Bonesaw (who would soon be rebranded) hurrying to heal him, Dad was at no risk of dying, even with another slice through the throat.
Bonesaw also gave us some insight to get at the reputedly invincible Siberian: apparently the projection of some old man living in a white van, she would disappear if the man happened to die. It also happened without our knowledge, because of our three members aboveground: Rachel, Browbeat, and Parian. The Siberian ripped through the external carcass of two of Rachel's dogs without a care in the world, through Parian's doll with much of the same, and was in the process of finishing the line with Browbeat. Only for her to look around in dismay and popping out. Further afield was another of Rachel's dogs, galloping towards them. Since they were patrolling around, he had been quite far. And the act of running through the street and over the parked cars without a care meant that he got to crush several roofs on its way. Including a white van with a man inside. Manton dead, the Siberian disappeared with him.
Their group also caught Hatchet Face as he was moving from downtown, where he had knocked out several heroes and moved out with Battery on his shoulder, heading towards the Docks to get to Bounce (Assault) – before coming here, Bonesaw had theorized a way to fuse the two of them even more perfectly than her earlier attempts with Murder Rat. Hatchet Face was promptly killed: his nullifier fields worked on powers and not their consequences. While Rachel extracted her dogs from the two wounded carcasses, her third one jumped at Hatchet Face, the man's axe lodging in its shoulder without impacting its momentum, and he fell down. Browbeat was there too, and he exerted his telekinesis to prevent the power nullifier from moving as the dog was still biting him to death – Browbeat had two powers, and if one was cancelled, the other was that much more powerful. And then, with the man's corpse in tow, and Battery carried by the dog, they returned to the base, where the dead man was stowed away – all the Nine had kill orders with substantial bounties attached. And Battery was healed, of course.
Despite having missed Jack Slash's arrival, Luke had been able to warn us about Bonesaw's, thanks to his perception extending to the insects he controlled. And he could also tell us when Mannequin was heading there… and from where. Directed by him, I waited until he was nearby, and encased him in one of my forcefields. Some parts of his body were not in it and tried to attack me (only for me to immobilize them too) or the others, who got their own attacks. In the end, it was Lisa who told us what to do: she had witnessed the automaton at work, as well as Bonesaw's abilities, both here and in the news, long before now, and she knew we could recover Sphere's power without allowing Mannequin to live.
With her telling me what to do, I separated one of the mannequin's cases (by using my telekinesis to shred its links to the others) and brought it, opened, to Bonesaw. And the girl, having worked with parahuman brains already, knew how to conserve the Corona Pollentia and the Gemma so as to give someone's power to someone else.
That someone else ended up being my father – he was the last surviving baseline human in our group, with no risk of bad power interaction. And with the power of Tinkering up self-sustaining bases, it granted us more independence in our various needs. And more bases throughout the city, too. But that would be later, because the other members of the Slaughterhouse were converging on our position.
The first to reach us was Cherish. Her aim had been the Boardwalk, upon which she could find her brother Alec (or Jean-Paul, as his original given name was revealed to be) with the others in his group: Othala, Chariot, and Trickster. The two siblings discussed, and with Alec being much mellower than before, they didn't end up at each other's throat. Instead, he provoked her curiosity and got her to join instead. Calle would have much work to do for that pill to be swallowed by the society, alongside Bonesaw's, but our group ended that much stronger. And still on the Neutral Good side.
Once Battery was awake, she wanted to call her husband – they might be in separate teams, but they still loved each other. The call was sent to voice messaging immediately, meaning that his phone was off. Since we still had members missing from the Nine, we sent our most mobile members there. Rachel mounted her dog, and I flew up with my telekinesis, my "company" phone connected to Lisa's (and my helmet cam transmitting, too). We saw our friends quite harried, but happy. And a dead woman in the middle, covered in glass shards. In fact, the whole area was covered in glass, and our friends had bloody ears and several wounds from Shatterbird's attacks. Their phones had been destroyed, too. But, together, they got her good: Purity could fly fast and hit hard, Trickster teleported her on the ground, and both Squealer's vehicle and Bounce (Assault) ran her down several times – she had shown herself resistant to the few tranquilizer ammunition they had, and unwilling to relent.
Our last (and most fiendish) member of the ex-Nine was Crawler, the massive beast mostly invulnerable to anything and everything. His target was Hookwolf, and he sought him deep in Empire territory. During his rampage, he killed Krieg and Cricket, and injured the twin giantesses Fenja and Menja. And he escaped, too, with the unconscious Hookwolf held on his shoulder – one of his, anyways.
That's when he came upon one of our groups, stationed near the Empire territory to watch over the frontier. Here were Brian, Jess, Scrub, and Stretch (Vista). Apparently, it was the ideal group to take down that specific beast: Brian's darkness wasn't an attack, and Crawler couldn't contain it. Jess had large enough projections to hold the beast down. Scrub's disintegration attack didn't seem to regenerate (but they were too small to kill him in one go). And, finally, Vista discovered something disconcerting: while her space-warping prevented her from warping creatures, it generally couldn't be dismissed while someone was crossing the stretched space. It was theorized as a side effect of the Manton limitation.
Crawler had, somehow, and inverse-Manton Effect field on himself: any cape could target his body with powers. Generally, it reinforced his numerous resistances to whatever power was used. Here, though, it went differently. Held by Genesis (which, as a projection, could stretch with no problem), his body passed through the warping space as Vista was changing it. And he was first elongated to a hundred feet, his tough skin and reinforced bones tearing while internal organs were exploding all over the place. It still didn't kill him, though (given his large body and survivability, she suspected that he had numerous duplicates of his important organs). What did it was the reverse space warping Vista did, almost by reflex: it brought together his two halves, and then continued to press them together… until the enlarged monster was no bigger than a regular human. And still alive and screaming bloody murder, too. She even felt him start to resist her compression attempts.
That's when Scrub came forward and exerted his power, again. And the now-reduced super-villain was gone, disintegrated into nothingness. "That's too bad." he said with a crooked smile. "We'll miss the bounty."
Vista/Stretch shook her head and tapped the camera mounted on her new helmet. The young man's smile became wider, at that, and they called the PRT for retrieval of Hookwolf's unconscious body, which they tied to a lamp post with… another lamp post. Courtesy of Genesis' strength.
And after he had been processed and taken away, they headed home.
All in all, not a bad night for us: a whole evil group dead, with bounties waiting, and more members. And Noelle could see the end of her suffering, too.
Those of us stationed in the southern part of the town (Marissa, Aisha, and Shamrock) got no visit from the infamous Nine… but noticed an unusual spread of murders.
The Teeth had come to gnaw on us, too. The proof was when Accord called us for a second favour: get rid of the crazy bone collectors without being taken over by the Butcher.
With how Luke was often shunting his negative emotions in his swarms, we may even had a solution, there…
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To be continued… if I'm moved enoughAuthor's Notes: Some of the inspiration for this ficlet comes from the excellent fanfics "Acceleration" (for Taylor's main power) and "Retry/Reload/Respawn" (for the happenstance when Vista appears to lose her Manton limit). Both can be found on SpaceBattles dot com.