Cans of Worms

by Louis IX

You end up in an endless corridor with numbered doors. Most of them lead to another version of Earth Bet, where the nexus that is Taylor Hebert experiences life differently - sometimes very badly. Others reflect upon other characters.

55. Heavy Metal

CANS OF WORMS
by Louis IX

Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings. I own nothing that rightfully belongs to others.

Heavy Metal

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Scorpions – Humanity

My name is Hana. Hana Wa'ashi. I was born in Egypt, two or three decades ago – I'm sorry if I can't be more precise, but I don't sleep, and it makes me experience life a bit faster. I already feel like an old woman, while I'm only… twenty-five, I believe. Thankfully, my body won't betray me.

But I already get ahead of myself. Let me start at a salient point.

When I was around twelve, I lived in Luxor with my whole family: my four siblings, my parents, and my grandmothers. Born in relative poverty, my parents had flourished at school and ended up university teachers themselves. Having lived in the poor district all their life, they saw no need to move, and, as normally compassionate humans everywhere, they gave time and money to their community.

I was the middle child, with two older brothers and two little sisters. With my sisters, I often was the voice of reason, and acted as the wise elder, teaching them manners and warning them of the dangers of everyday life. With my brothers, I could act as a carefree kid, so I often got them in trouble. Still, they let me play video games with them. Without much of parental supervision, these tended to get violent, especially when Mohammed, my elder brother, got his hands on imports like Mortal Kombat. But we didn't care, only playing for laughs at the unnecessarily gory endings. We were all happy with our lot.

However, this life wasn't to last long. As I determined later, our family was envied by several people with less means, just because we had a bit more. And, in this mad world where political upheaval happened quite often, one such revolution struck our society, destabilizing it and allowing chaos to reign.

Despite many precautions, the more needy (not necessarily the poorest) stormed our house to steal what they thought they were owed. We recognized them, of course, which meant that they had to kill the whole family for the burglary to go unpunished. With several attackers each, my pacific parents were easily taken care of. My brother Mohammed, enraged, succeeded in taking a few pounds of flesh himself, assisted with our brother Ali. But even though they pushed several of them away with old cutlery and broken pieces of furniture, the angry mob reformed and hit them in the back.

My sisters often played hide-and-seek, with me the seeker. With the thugs in the house, the three of us had selected a place with few riches and many hiding spots: our bedroom. And, truly, a bedroom for three girls was hardly the spot you'd search for treasure. Apart from us, of course. I thought I heard them rampage through the rest of the house, while others ransacked the living room – at some point, I heard them turn the audio system on, and putting some thumping music on, but it was quickly quieted when the system was dismantled and stolen.

And then nothing.

It was when my littlest sister Sarah coughed that I realized why it was quite warmer than what the season allowed. Basic psychology 101: what you can't take, you destroy. The house was on fire, and we were hidden in the basket for dirty clothes, covered in linen – both very flammable.

I hurried my sisters out of that trap. Despite the on-going arson, we successfully reached the outside, only for some of the worst vindictive thugs to grab us. Sarah was beaten unconscious in front of us, and thrown right back in the middle of the inferno. Fatia and I were held so tightly that we could only wail helplessly. My only consolation was that I didn't hear her scream – I had hoped that she hadn't faked her unconsciousness, to at least die without suffering more.

I knew then that they intended to do the same to us… or even worse, as I had noticed their gaze at our older bodies, too. Given that, I had waited for the right moment, and had kicked at my captor's foot, and, straightening up far enough, I bit his ear. I knew that both were places where pain was almost impossible to ignore. Fatia did roughly the same, but by then I was next to her and kicking her captor in the groin. And then I pulled my sister after me as I ran through the little streets as if the devil was behind us.

We knew those roads like the back of our hand. Problem was that the thugs knew them too. So, instead of trying to hide there, I pulled my sister further away from our burning home, and we soon found ourselves among the more derelict housings, and then in the desert proper.

There were roads, of course, since tourists often came there: the Valley of the Kings was just next door, after all. But we didn't take them, because we were trying to stay inconspicuous, and our dresses were the colour of the sand.

That's when we discovered something new. A tomb. As I'd learn later, sand dunes moved excessively slowly, but they moved, often covering man-made buildings for centuries or millennia. When we arrived at the top of the second dune, we found that the ground was more solid, strangely… and then it fell under our feet, the weakened masonry giving way.

Falling several stories hurt, but not as much as it should have because sand had preceded us, and we mostly glided on the slope. Still, the walls were high and we couldn't climb them easily. And despite the not-that-hurt comment, Fatia had bruised her ankle. For me, it was the wrist.

Both anxious about our pursuers, we decided not to call for help – I wasn't sure we could have been heard anyways. We decided to wait for the sun to go down, so that our strained joints would be better, and we'd try to scale the walls.

So we waited. And inspected said walls to find holds. And, in doing so, we couldn't miss the fact that there was gold, on the walls. For our young eyes, it had been mere decorations, at first, but scratching at it revealed the precious metal. Fatia even noticed some jewels set in beautiful displays, a bit higher. So, taking care of staying on her good foot, she jumped and grabbed a fire opal or something.

Instead of getting a handhold on the display, the whole thing pivoted down, and my little sister was so surprised that she let go, wincing as she waited to land on her wrong foot.

She didn't.

The ground she had jumped from had pivoted as well, revealing a deep pit in which I could only hear her scream as she fell… and then an horrendous sound. The only sound that was barely similar was the butcher cutting through meat and bone. I didn't want to see what was at the bottom of that pit, I really didn't. But I owed it to my sister.

She was dead, of course. But it wasn't easily apparent, at first, because there was some movement. And sound. The trap seemed to have unleashed many insects, already covering her and climbing the sides of the pit. From where I was, I could see scarabs… and scorpions.

There were many. Many many many. You don't count these using numbers, in fact. You count using metaphors. They were enough to fill the pit with my sister inside. They were enough to prevent me from having any hope at escaping them, even when I tried climbing the walls myself, screeching in terror, and then moving and jumping around. At one moment, I slipped, and fell, and was immediately submerged by the writhing mass.

I admit it: I freaked out. With everything that had been going on, I was justifiably angry, in tremendous pain, panicked, and my mind reached out even though I was in the process of being devoured alive by the scores of hungry insects.

I felt something respond, and my mind, which had started slipping into the afterlife only to connect to an alien presence, returned to where my body was… only to find only bones. So the alien in me adapted.

Soon, the massed insects clicked among themselves for a while, before climbing up the walls, walking over the dune, and disappearing into the night. Of my body, nothing remained, because it had been subsumed by the swarm while my mind took control.

The experience couldn't be called "near-death" since I had been quite dead after connecting to my new power, and that's why my mind took over the swarm, instead of animating a skeleton.

As I controlled the swarm, I had it eat through each and every neighbour who had participated in the massacre of my family – some of them, who had been particularly sadistic, I opted to kill other members of their families too, beforehand. We do have "eye for eye" as a bylaw, you know?

After a few of them disappeared, there were whispers about a curse, and calls to the authorities. The first led to prayers, while the second led to the whole district being fumigated. Thousands of insects died, and the remaining ones fled back into the desert – I felt each of them as part a whole, me, and it was a bit painful. Not as much as dying eaten by them, though.

For a time, I didn't interact with the humans. Returning in the tomb to hide, and pray for my sister (and my family), I tried to find a way to become human again – I thought that if I stayed as a swarm, I would die of boredom, quickly. Especially as I couldn't communicate.

I tried, you know. I went to remote places in the desert, and directed the insects to move in certain ways so as to create sound, rubbing bodies or wings when they were close enough to do so. I tried to emulate voices and speech… but it was really creepy, especially my first attempts. Thankfully, they were lost to the wind. Mostly.

I heard afterwards that people had heard, and whispered among themselves about the presence of a djinn – a spirit of the desert… or a demon. The military investigated and found the collapsed roof atop the new tomb, but hearing my attempts at speech, they thought it inhabited by the "demon" and dropped grenades that destroyed priceless artefacts. And much of my swarm.

For nothing, as the swarm still lived in the remaining individuals. But I learnt not to dwell too much on the past, and moved on… northwards.

And instead of trying to make insect sounds resemble human voice, I took another route, bringing the insects closer to each other (and bringing more to me as I crossed paths with other swarms, including locusts, wasps, and flies… many flies). I had already felt a twinge from my power when the swarm was very dense, so I did it on purpose.

The first attempt was a failure: when there were enough individual insects in the squirming mass that was my swarm, I pulled at the feeling my power provoked, and the mass of moving insects gained… cohesiveness. They merged together.

The insects on the outside ceased moving and stuck to their neighbours, while those inside grabbed specific neighbours to be able to pull my new frame. Skin and muscles. But without bones, it wasn't much different than the squirming mass I already was. I was, and acted like, a squirming piece of meat, covered in bumpy chitin.

I released the feeling, feeling both tired and somehow more experienced in human anatomy. My insect constituents returned to their previous state, and I knew what I was missing… mostly.

Others experiments followed, including the digging of a humanoid-shaped hole and filling it with insects at the same time. This time, I had the shape roughly right, and didn't forget about making myself an endoskeleton – a normal one, for the vertebrates. My skin was also slightly less bumpy.

However, I lacked fingers and toes, my hands and feet being a single mass. Same as the head, which was somewhat appropriately shaped, but without a face. Or hair. I missed my beautiful and long black hair, suddenly.

Of course, lacking a mouth and anything resembling lungs, I couldn't speak. Standing up was an issue, too, when I tried again – although, this time, I had the shape right, and only dug enough for the body to be horizontal when done, instead of vertical. It took me several tries, and as many hours, before being able to create a body that would not only stand, but also walk and talk.

Many details still lacked from the whole, to even try to integrate with humans, such as the colour and texture of my skin. Both depended on the type of insect on the outside when I activated the transformation: when it was scorpions, it was black and shiny, with little spikes here and there; when it was scarabs, it was greener and matte.

I tried other insects common to these parts, such as locusts, wasps, and flies, and succeeded in getting a somewhat bronze colour in the end, with the black spikes from my scorpion transforming into something resembling hair… if one belonged to the Zabrak species (of which I remembered because of my brothers' video games – even though my earlier memories were hazy). But both the hair approximation and the skin colour weren't uniform, though, making me look like I was diseased.

You might wonder how I knew how I looked, if I was travelling and couldn't hold a bag or a mirror. True, the swarm couldn't carry those, but I could also keep a few bugs out of the swarm, and look at myself through their eyes. And continued my attempts until I was somewhat satisfied.

In addition to my inhuman appearance, I also didn't need to make unnecessary movements and could stay unnaturally still for a long time. This was because I didn't need to sleep… or even breathe – all survival functions were done by the individual insects in my swarm, and those were automatically kept alive by my power despite being crushed together into an approximation of a human body.

Eventually, I succeeded in mimicking a generic human body with a face connected to lungs so that I could talk. It was sexless, though… not that I cared very much.

The first time I appeared to a fellow human being, it was in a paupers' district near Cairo, and the woman fled, complaining about me being a leper. Well… I could lose fingers, now, because my control of both the swarm and my human body was much better. But my motley skin could explain her reaction, and I covered myself better – I didn't care about taking dirty linens, too: I had a dense skin, no sense of smell, and no risk of infection by human pathogens.

But dirty or not, leper or not, walking idly through unknown parts of town led to being attacked. The blades through me did nothing to me, but they also outed my unnaturalness to the world, and I had to flee. Deciding to learn how to fight normally, so as to avoid this situation, I sought a place to do so. I remember having seen a training centre for Chinese martial arts, in Luxor, and went to see if there was one nearby. That, or a dojo, its Japanese version.

I found several, but they either pushed me away, thinking that I was a leper again, or still pushed me away when I revealed myself, citing either disgust or unfair advantage (because of parahuman powers).

Only one master took me, and reluctantly at that: as it happened, I stumbled upon a shady operation in progress, and the person in charge convinced me to let them continue… in exchange for lessons in his art of ninjutsu. All practicality, at that time, I agreed.

I learned about how to fight like a ninja, with underhanded tactics such as poison (which I always had on myself, given I was partly made of scorpions), pressure points, and choke holds. To evade the same techniques done to me, I learned contortionism, even if my nature made the point moot: if I didn't have a way out, I could always reform as a swarm of flies, wasps, locusts, scarabs, or scorpions.

Speaking of which… I started to like the way the ninjas I trained with called me (despite their scorn): Scorpion. And my ability to contort my body translated into a special kick named after the animal (leaning forward, with one leg striking from behind your back). It made me remember another video game character named Scorpion too. And since said character was depicted as being a ninja, I was learning what I needed to become like him. Supposedly.

Besides unarmed combat, I learned how to wield the various (and unusual) weapons the ninjas used, such as the shuriken, the three-section staff, and the kusarigama – a length of chain between two weapons (I chose two daggers), allowing the throwing of one with further control of trajectory, as well as retrieval by simply yanking the chain. There was also an element of surprise in each of these weapons, and I made good use of my own poison to liberally coat the various blades I used. By licking them, as that always increased the intimidation factor.

Besides combat, I also learned the art of obfuscation – those smoke bombs weren't magical means of transportation, after all. What more, away from the humans, I trained to change state faster between my swarm and human shapes. Doing this quickly enough made people think I teleported.

The final lessons were about assassination techniques, and the final exam was very hands-on: I was the target of one. Not faked, even.

In fact, the old master had grown tired of teaching me, and decided that, despite my obvious strength, he could summon his whole clan and do away with me. They used everything, too: a trap, a pit, blades, bolts, poison, fire, acid… and many ninjas were sacrificed to search through the whole thing and crush whatever insects remained.

But I didn't die. My mind was just transferred to the nearest spot with a high enough number of insects. And since I didn't sleep, I could plot my counter-offensive (some would call it vengeance) right off the bat. And I got them all, including the master.

I felt adrift for a while, after this. I missed the constant training, and decided to train by myself, inventing new ways to do things, with or without my power. For instance, I knew how to make a scorpion kick. I also knew that I could make myself any body I wanted. After a bit of consideration, I made myself a scorpion's tail, even inventing ways to manifest and dismiss it without returning to swarm shape in-between.

I also changed my legs slightly so that, despite still looking human, I could replicate the feat my locust constituents were known for: jumping, quite high and quite far. With my weight added, it made a valid pouncing attack.

Another useful thing to have was flight – I knew it from my swarm form, when it was mostly flying ones. So, as a human, I tried (and succeeded in) manifesting wings – with power shenanigans, too, because wings able to lift me would be too large otherwise. And clearly not useable in a fight.

Chevalier – Destiny Calls

I was still directionless, so I decided to follow the masses of people passing through Cairo everyday – and I'm not speaking about those working around the place. There were many refugees from southern countries, here, or simply people wanting better living conditions in richer countries. Speaking to them revealed that they simply thought that just moving there was sufficient, without even working for it.

With what happened in my life, I was disturbed and disappointed. I couldn't really blame these poor souls for wanting a better life. I blamed those who sold them the pipedream that such a thing existed. And it was quite expensive, too, all told. Now I also wondered what would happen once there: would they act like the envious paupers who had killed my family? Would they also burn what they can't take?

I would never know.

The road to these greener pastures, also known as Europe, went either through Alexandria (the city) and a boat ride, or through Turkey, on foot. I wasn't used to large bodies of water, and chose to follow the column through Arabia, Jordan, and Syria – refugees were forcibly prevented from traversing Israel and seldom ended up in Lebanon as a result.

I was near Ankara, on the last leg towards the frontier to those supposed riches, when I had to stop. Screaming came from the capital, as well as massive noises of destruction. And people were flying, too – both those thrown in the air due to the massive disturbance, and those going through their own power. Parahumans.

And, in the middle of all this, Behemoth. By now, everyone knew about the existence of capes, as well as Endbringers. Still, the monster's massive stature was quite a shock, and most refugees fled in the opposite direction. Several of them, though, grabbed me and pushed me towards the menace. Apparently, my parahuman nature was still quite visible (especially since they had spent a few days near me), and it seemed that I had the god-given duty to go and fight the monster, to protect the ordinary people.

Well…

I didn't have ways of hitting and even damaging the titanic creature, even if I dared to go all out without a care for my survival. I took note to try to get myself into a much larger body, someday, so that I could at least try.

Instead, when I joined the capes already there, I was assigned the role of Search and Rescue. My swarm could explore quite a wide area at once, my human body was strong enough to move rocks, and my chitin protected well against Behemoth's radiation – I could even devise yet another body, later, with elytra on the front to hide someone, or something.

As I learned afterwards, when capes met during these events, the crowd was often thick enough to get lost. I found myself following one of the American heroes I had saved. Chevalier, his cape name was, and he was quite dashing in his plate armour – despite his young age: he was barely sixteen. Two years older than me. It was too bad that he had seen me in my insect nature, because I'm sure he would have been interested, otherwise.

He still helped me climb up the plane, and then join the Protectorate Wards with him. And, once in Washington, as I got offered the American citizenship, I chose for myself a slightly modified name: Hannah Washington.

That was, as I said, a few years ago. A dozen. Something like that.

Chevalier and I, we tried dating, but I could never form a body that was completely female enough for this to go well. Mouse Protector tried, too, but I knew that it was for the fun: she was the one to invite me to loud concerts, and everything young women did everywhere, according to her. But I did not manifest everything she asked me. As you say, here: my body, my choice. And what a breadth of choice I had!

I trained with and incorporated many types of insects, and the bodies I could now create appeared with almost any colour I wanted. Even luminescence was possible, thanks to the unique biology of fireflies. Sometimes, I let my eyes glow: it helps project an aura of menace, when interrogating prisoners.

I'm still working with the Protectorate, but more with a consulting role, as an independent – I had seen what the military people do, and it seems to be the same in all countries. And I preferred a bit more peace, even if I didn't like not doing anything. Thankfully, having been discharged (with honours) when working in Brockton Bay, I still liked living there, and there was always something to do.

Still, I took to meditation, instead of seeking conflict. It worked. Sometimes.

Sometimes, the fact that my meditation didn't work was completely unrelated to what I was doing. Instead, it was because of what others were doing.

Attempting to meditate, for me, included relaxing my grasp on my power, returning to swarm form, and let the swarm dissipate without dictating the movements of each and every insect. While that happened, I couldn't react as fast as I was used to, so I did it sparingly.

I had started this in one of the apartments I had around the city – due to my early history, I didn't want a single big house, for obvious reasons. I didn't need much place, too, which was convenient. My swarm left the place through the openings I left open to the sewers and into the back alleys, so as to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Three blocks farther, there was a park, where my split consciousness noticed a teenage girl playing at catching butterflies for her mother. I let her. And then the world exploded.

Slayer – Angel Of Death

From what I could gather, then and later, several gangs of villains had chosen the public park for what had started as a peaceful gathering. The truce hadn't lasted long when perceived slights provoked insults, push came to shove, and previously hidden pistols where pulled out. The whole place had soon erupted in gunfire. In addition, they had to have skipped on their marksmanship lessons, or gone there under the influence of drugs or something: they couldn't aim for shit.

The end result was a massacre of civilians in what should have been the perfect sunny day out.

The girl with the butterfly quickly forgot about it and hurried from behind the tree where she had been, only to come short and fall on her knees. Both parents were dead, shot down in the prime of their life, for nothing.

I experienced a vision, then, that I now remember having had, a long time ago. I also experienced something else, that I had gone too long without.

Sleep…

When I came to, it was as a swarm, and it took me a while to return to full cognizance. And then, when I returned to human form in another of my apartments (one closer to the PRT building), I noticed my computer's screen flashing with several notices.

I had slept a whole week, with my gathering of my awareness taking another day. The dreams that I experienced, in that state, were strangely detailed… and worrisome. Space whales? Noctis capes' reduced life expectancy? I hope that most were just that: dreams. Or nightmares.

In the meantime, Brockton Bay seemed to have gained a few more capes… and not necessarily among the "good guys".

I already knew about Shadow Stalker, the vigilante. I disliked her way of leaving people pinned to walls, and had made my opinion clear to her. But instead of stopping there, I had also offered to help her. And since I knew about prickly personalities, that offer was by way of training her immediately, so that she had options other than lethal weaponry. She mastered unarmed combat, as well as the staff and its variants: the flail, the nunchaku, and the three-section staff. And I got her the contact address of a company that could sell her blunt bolts.

Apparently, as of after my impromptu week-long nap, Stalker had associated with a new girl cape of roughly the same age, one called Slayer who, as her name implies, seemed to kill people. If I read the messages right, the PRT requested that I investigate the situation. So I did.

And what a surprise it was, to find that the cape was the girl who had played with the butterfly, in that park. In retrospect, I understood that my blessed sleep was only the result of my consciousness having been near her when she had triggered.

And Slayer seemed to have taken as her god-given mission to punish those who had killed her family… by killing them. And as if she needed the motivation to do so, she would often chant under her breath a little ditty that her parents used to sing to put her to sleep "one batch, two batch, penny and dime".

I wondered for a moment how she chose her victims, until I saw Shadow Stalker leave her a booklet. A heavily worn one, in which were written names and addresses, one per page. Many pages were torn off, but many still remained.

Having noticed that the new cape was both quite jumpy and proficient with a gun, I stalked Stalker instead. She recognized the assembling mass of insects, squirmed, but stayed put. "Yes?" she asked curtly as soon as I had a head to hear – not that I needed it: even if I formed a mouth a lungs to emit sound, each of my insects could hear, and thus I could hear from all directions.

"Slayer is dangerous." I said without preamble.

"I would have thought you, of all people, would understand revenge." she replied. And it was true: in order to get closer to the girl, we had exchanged secrets. I knew she had killed before, even if that was in self-defence, and she knew I had killed those who had killed my family. And that one hit a bit too close to home for comfort. "She might be dangerous, but not for us."

I said nothing for a while. Arguments about law and order and justice were lost for either of us. "Who gives her the names?"

She fidgeted for a few seconds before talking again. "I rescued a family hit by Lung's gang. They had been ambushed, and the thugs clearly wanted the girl for… their usual occupations. She fought them, though."

"If I recall correctly, that's what you prefer, right? When people fight back?" I asked.

She frowned self-disgustedly. "I wasn't fast enough to help her not lose her eyes, though." she replied. "Especially as she triggered at the same time. Panacea healed the eyes, but she can't heal her vision centre."

"So?"

"So her power gives her visions. I ask questions, and she writes answer."

"She writes without sight?" I asked, surprised.

Stalker nodded. "Impressively, it works. And it's not her dominant hand, either. But it only works to answer a question truthfully." She then turned contemplative – not that I could see much, because of the mask; but between my insects and my ability at cold reading, I could infer much from how she held herself. "I wonder how she'll do, in school…"

"And how did you meet Slayer?"

She grinned. I knew that grin. I had it for a while, too. "Hunting."

I frowned. "Have you returned to-"

"No, I'm still using the blunts! I was just following the clues towards gang activity. She was, too, except she had even less clues. She was simply ready to kill anyone with gang affiliations in town."

Only my composite composition allowed me not to pale at the thought. Revenge was something, but mass murder…

"So I taught her well, then, or did I not?" she asked cockily.

"Yes, young grasshopper." I said, patting her head. "You've done well."

She beamed at that (I could tell by her whole demeanour, again), and I frowned internally: it was disheartening to see how much people changed with a little positive feedback. Disheartening because so many people went through life without any, and fell into depression, drugs, or crime. Or all of the above.

"So… what can she do?"

Cape chat: when a new one arises, you always talk about their power. That's our gossip, and Stalker wasn't excluded from it. Especially given that she seemed to like the girl. "Oh that's awesome! She has a gun!" She thought for a second. "Does that mean she's a Blaster, because it allows her to strike from afar, or is she some sort of Master with a single minion that takes the shape of a gun? Because her rounds are absolutely normal."

"That's all? Wait… that gun, she can't be disarmed?"

She shook her head. "If the weapon leaves her, it appears back in her hand, fully charged and functional."

"Does that mean what I think it means?"

"If what you think is "infinite ammo", it certainly does. I'd be jealous, if I didn't have my shadow travel. But wait, there's more! She can change the weapon into any sort of gun… and rifles."

"Any sort? What have you seen so far?" I asked, slightly tired to play the straight man to her Miss Exposition.

"Well… given that I witnessed her training, giving pointers and all, I can say that I saw little pistols the likes you'd hide in a handbag, big revolvers that require two hands to hold, all sorts of handguns, and also shotguns, assault rifles, hunting rifles, all sorts of rifles … but I'm not a specialist. I don't know the names and stuff."

It was impressive, but the power lacked elegance… and survivability. "How does she defend herself?"

"She doesn't." she grew grim, suddenly. "She charges forwards, weapons blazing. Either her power allows her to be lucky, or…"

"…she's suicidal."

She couldn't answer immediately, because the sound of an explosion caught our attention, followed by gunfire. We hurried towards the disturbance, and noticed Slayer, alright, but she didn't have a gun, or a rifle. It was a minigun – despite the name, it was not miniature, merely smaller than the vehicle-mounted chain gun it emulated. Its rate of fire was astounding, because despite coming with a belt of a hundred rounds, Slayer had to recycle it every two seconds.

Under the onslaught, the building she was targeting was structurally damaged already, and tilting dangerously. Between her and said building, several corpses were cooling, and I could recognize Cricket's caged head in the lot, indicating that it must have been an Empire meeting. Or a trap that Slayer had reversed on them.

In the building, I heard a howl of defiance, and the gunfire concentrated on the spot. But it didn't kill Hookwolf nor did it penetrate Kaiser's armour – which was thicker than usual, and less adorned, given the threat he was facing.

I knew my insects weren't of much use against the two of them, and suspected that Stalker was the same. I was ready to play the distraction to allow Stalker to retrieve Slayer and leave… but I needn't have bothered: Slayer stopped firing for a second, put her weapon on the ground, and drew back.

As she did so, she was still holding a part of it while it was still on the ground: the weapon was changing, becoming much bigger. She must have studied warfare, because she was now sitting in her weapon, in the seat from where she directed what was effectively a flak cannon. Equipped and ready to fire. And she did.

Kaiser's armour might be tougher than usual, but the cannon rounds were made to pierce the armouring of heavy bombers, or at least dent it enough. The dent it made on the armour was so deep that its front touched its back, Kaiser himself been pureed in between.

Hookwolf didn't embarrass himself with words, and charged with an belligerent bellow… only to be smacked to the side by the suddenly pivoting cannon. And then it changed again, and I noticed Slayer standing there with a bazooka on her shoulder. The heat-seeking high-incendiary missile she let loose followed its target's meagre attempt at evading it, resulting in a burning mass of metal, whatever organic inside having been vaporized.

And then Slayed fell to her knees, and her weapon became a tanto, oriented towards her own belly. My presence nearby registered her ditty again as she reminded herself why she did this. And then the Japanese dagger transformed into a staff on which she leaned to escape.

I wasn't the only one noticing the wounds on her legs, as well as the bloodied kamas nearby – Cricket's weapons. Stalker stalked towards her, avoiding a hit to the head with the ingrained habit of someone able to turn insubstantial on a whim. Slayer sighed. "What do you want?"

"I brought a friend."

"A… friend? Do you even know what that word means?"

"Oh I'm hurt, Slayer. Right… here." Stalker said, patting her heart. Her tone was mocking, though.

"Humph!" Slayer tried to step away, but it was visible that she was really hurting. After three steps, she turned around. "You have a car?" she asked me, quite brusquely – Stalker being underage, like her, she knew better than to ask her. And I could understand her uneasiness, as I was probably an unknown, for her.

Suddenly, I saw her freeze, and then her weapon arm lifted, said weapon turning into a sniper rifle, and she fired, almost blindly. A double detonation was heard, hers and another, quite far and high. And while her already wounded leg lost quite a bit of mass due to the opposing sniper round that found its way there, there was no immediate repetition, indicating that the enemy was probably dead.

Given that it was a sniper acting with the Empire, my mind jumped to the conclusion that it must have been Victor. And if it was him, chances were that his wife Othala was with him. And that she had given him some invulnerability, and was even healing him right now. Leaving the two girls together for the moment, I "teleported" (through a flying swarm) on the roof where I had heard the second shot.

Sure, he was there. But Othala was not healing him at all – unless things had changed so much that her healing was done by kicking dead people in the gonads. Her colourful commentary being in German or something similar, I didn't understand a thing, and waited patiently. Soon, she turned towards me. "You're Miss Scorpion." she said, and I saw nothing to respond but a nod. "You're a rogue. Do you know of a team that would take me and protect me from the Empire? Nicht the so-called heroes."

"I thought you were Empire, through and through."

"That was because he hit me when I wasn't a proper racist." she indicated her late husband with her foot. Vigorously, again.

"I… have no team as of yet, but we can build one. With Slayer's firepower and your healing, that would be a fair start."

"Slayer has at least a Thinker friend already. She's too good to ferret out the Empire safehouses, otherwise." she replied. "At least, that's what Victor told me from an Empire meeting with the boss – I wasn't invited." She looked at me and removed her fake eyepatch. "Disguise, to better hide civilian life." Then she took Victor's thick overcoat and walked towards the fire escape. "You introduce us?" she asked. When I nodded again, she let herself glide downwards until she touched the ground.

Soon, she was next to Slayer, and providing her form of healing – it wasn't immediate, but the quickened regeneration she granted prevented the blood from flowing out, and Slayer would be right as rain in a few days. Or so she said. Because she clearly intended to stay with us.

Slayer couldn't say no, but she didn't have a base of operations – a loose cannon, a bit like me. I had several small apartments, but nothing for four girls.

"No, no." Stalker said, lifting her hands. "I don't bring you home. My mother lets me do my shtick, but only if I don't bring homework at home… if you get my meaning." A pause. "I can check with Sybil, though, see if you can crash at her place."

"Who's this?" asked Slayer with a bit of a slur. I wondered if the loss of all that blood would cause problems down the line, but Othala didn't seem perturbed so I put it off my mind.

"The one with the hints, as I told you." Stalker replied.

"And I keep forgetting. I forget many things." Slayer complained, palming her face. Was that a consequence of what I had seen at the end? Sniping a sniper was the kind of action I could only attribute to combat precognition. And like all Thinker powers, using it too much caused headaches.

Using insects to manually unlock a car at range is child's play for me, nowadays. I still didn't know how to drive, though. Despite the will of many Empire ideologists, Othala was at least educated enough to have the trappings of an independent woman, including the knowledge of how to drive. It was perhaps hesitant and not that fast, but we arrived in one piece without raising suspicions from the few policemen we came across.

Despite the late hour, the man who opened the door let us in as soon as he laid his eyes upon Stalker. I saw recognition, there, and a deep gratitude. I realized that it was the father of the one Stalker called Sybil, herself probably the blind Thinker. "You're all together?" he asked. We nodded. "What do you need?"

"A few days of rest."

"You have them." he replied immediately, and guided us the upstairs bedrooms. There, we saw Sybil (Emma, as her father called her) and Stalker went with her to debrief the night's activities. The man then showed us two other bedrooms: one was the guest room; the other was his other daughter's, Anne. The young woman was in University, at Boston, and didn't need it.

Still, I didn't need to sleep, and Stalker was with Sybil anyways. We settled in the guest room, Othala opting to sleep next to Slayer, in order to continue to apply her buff.

And as I didn't need to sleep, I stood guard all night. I just had to borrow a computer to get my messages in and answer a few of them – when I used my power, only my body transformed into the swarm, which made it quite difficult to hold onto a cell phone. But I had one in each of my apartments, normally.

Boy was the PRT agitated upon Kaiser's death! I resolved to speak to Slayer about the other gangs, soon: if she kept at hitting Empire targets, the territory would come into attack by the others, and civilians would suffer.

To my surprise, instead of being the hard-ass I expected her to be, after yesterday's spectacle, Slayer was almost timid, her weapon relegated to a mere folding butter knife kept in her pocket. And she answered my question as truthfully as I could determine – given that I shared my senses with a whole swarm of insects, I was better than baseline humans, at this.

"This is to avenge my parents." she admitted. "They wanted to make the world a better place for me, starting with my home and my city. Dad pushed for cleaning the Boat Graveyard, using either hired workers of capes, but neither the mayor nor the PRT gave him any definitive answer about that. Mom tried to teach me about altruism and forgiveness and about letting others walk all over you. She died. I triggered into a weapon-wielder. You have one guess at what it implies about my destiny."

That had started tame, but I noticed the increasing passion throughout. "I understand." I really did. "But you can't continue alone, or you'll kill yourself, one way or another. Problem is, the PRT would never allow known killers into their ranks. Not without prison terms. Knowing Brandish, New Wave would rather fight you than welcome you. I think that Othala's idea about joining forces is interesting for all of us. All five of us, we'll be stronger together. You already partnered with Stalker, here, and she got intel from Sybil."

She nodded, and sighed. "I guess you want details about my power?"

"Girl, after I saw what you did yesterday, I have no question." Stalker said with a smile. "I didn't know you could make cannons!"

"I didn't either, at the beginning. Since then, I browsed several websites about advanced weaponry through History, and fell upon the schematics for a Gatling gun. And while before I didn't know how to summon one, I then did. Still do. So I did the same for other cannons. And other weapons, too. I can do blades of all shape and form, now, as well as other ancient weapons." she stated, showing what she meant by putting the simple blade on the table and morph it into a claymore, a morningstar, and then a guisarme – a polearm with a complicated blade at the top.

"Can you do crossbows? Could we exchange our weapons?"

"I can do them (and bows, too), but I can't use yours, and you can't use mine. We already tried something similar, at the beginning, and I had no skill whatsoever with weapons not created by my power. That hasn't changed: I'm only proficient in my weapons – yes, plural, because, now, if they are small enough, I can summon one in each hand." She proved it by showing two derringers, one in each hand.

"And what's the upper limit, in size?" I asked. "Because that flak cannon was very impressive. Perhaps a bit overkill, however."

She looked down in apparent shame. "I didn't have a choice, really. Those two capes… I already met them. Normal guns couldn't penetrate their armour, and I still don't know how normal-sized armour-piercing bullets are made. Until I do, I use what I can. And, yes, that cannon is my limit… for the moment. As long as I can get schematics to prove that it can be manipulated by one person, anything goes, I guess."

"Can you do imaginary weapons, if you have believable schematics?" Othala asked. When we all looked at her in askance, she shrugged. "What? Victor liked looking through plans for laser weapons for his characters in a stupid game. Laser blades, even. I just wonder if your power can complete the blanks and provide a finished weapon."

"That… could be very interesting, indeed." I said. "But we ought to talk about defence. You took hits, yesterday." I told Slayer.

"Did you know that Vikings used their shields as much for attack as for defence?" she asked, surprising us with the digression. "Since shields can do both… I can now do shields, all sort of shields, from the round ones up to the current version, used by the police. And with shields will come really heavy shielding, as soon as possible – in case some people get cheeky and send me the kind of ammunition I use. That's my next step."

"And she'll make good use of my invulnerability, too." Othala mused.

"I would still be happier if we could have a Tinker make you an armour. Or something."

"I could use one." Othala replied. "I really need not to have my identity plastered everywhere… and I'm fed up with Victor showing off by showing me in that skin-tight costume." she added – thankfully, Alan and Zoe, Sybil's parents, had offered the parahumans free use of Anne's wardrobe, and the ex-Empire cape was wearing pants and a thick sweatshirt.

"I can't use armour." Slayer said dejectedly. "As soon as I consider something an armour, my power stops working. As if it was jealous or something. But I can summon a police shield, with an opening, and use it to shoot a rifle or a gun."

"Better than nothing." I nodded. "But you could have one or two additional layers of clothing such as… a spider silk bulletproof vest?"

She shrugged. "Perhaps. But as long as I'm not against overwhelming numbers, I can avoid bullets. I can feel weapons around me, you know? I can also perceive gun sights targeting me from even further."

"That's how you detected Victor?" I asked. "It didn't prevent you from being shot, though." I also remarked.

She nodded. "I knew his aim was off and chose to attack along the same line, instead of avoiding the shot and risking another attempt."

"So you couldn't jam it, like you did that one time?" Stalker asked, before turning to me. "We were outnumbered, and she reacted bizarrely, freezing suddenly. But then, none of the guns around us worked."

Slayed nodded. "He was too far away. Besides, I can do that, but my power doesn't like to deactivate weapons like that. I think that I can only use it if I die otherwise."

"So… like an EMP?" Othala asked, and elaborated when she met a few blank stares. "Electromagnetic pulses are a side-effect of some bombs exploding, and they freeze electronics around them."

"Well, like that, but for guns." Stalker concurred, while Slayer seemed lost in thoughts. "Now you've done it."

"What?"

"She's getting plans, and we'll have one soon."

"Not here!" Sybil said suddenly, lifting her unseeing eyes. "I don't want my electronics fried."

"Yeah, let's not do that." I agreed. "Your folks are already generous to let us invade your home, let's not destroy it in the process."

"Some things can't be avoided, but thank you all the same." Sybil replied enigmatically. She then turned towards Slayer, her expression intent. "Since you can already do grenades, can you do real bomb launchers? Can you do bunkers to protect against them, too?"

I hadn't wanted to go down that route, but Sybil seemed determined in her questioning, and I wondered if that was her power speaking, somehow. Whatever the case, Slayed had not thought of going that far (thankfully) but she would soon look at it… starting with the shelter. Good girl.

In the same vein, Othala would browse geek websites describing how science-fiction worked, and would provide charts and diagrams that looked real, for personal shields as well as laser and energy-based weaponry.

And, yes, with some adaptation and her power filling in the blanks, Slayer was able to mimic them, including the cutting-edge technological railgun. I shuddered when Othala jokingly said that she would download the plans for the Death Star next.

Stalker provided other ideas, too. Thanks to my coaching her, she already knew some nonlethal takedown methods, and she suggested that we find and use plans for a net launcher, as well as nonlethal ammunition (blunt projectiles, rubber bullets, dud grenades, smoke, and flashbangs).

Rage Against The Machine – Killing In The Name Of

After having gutted most of the Reich wannabes, Slayer then had a run-in with the Mao fans. And not necessarily one that she won. She was following Sybil's advice, with Stalker taking point, as usual, when two fighting capes came across them.

One of them was Lung, already buffed up to the point of flying by himself.

The other was completely unknown, even to me. And I consider myself well-informed in such subjects.

For instance, I was "in the know" of who the elusive villain Coil was, before anyone else. Already off of the PRT's payrolls, I didn't report that information, and I was ashamed to learn that he kidnapped several young capes afterwards, trying to bolster his own power.

I was also the first to be informed about Regent leaving the serpent-themed villain's employ… only to join Über and Leet. Renamed Pwner, he was often joining the joking pair when they re-enacted video games. His love of FPS games got to him, though, and their last exploit, recreating Red Alert with live weapons, got them arrested for murder and mayhem.

That was right after their infamous fight with the Merchants, especially Trainwreck and Squealer: Pwner (or Regent) had levelled up, in their imaginary scenario, and was then piloting a tank. Its cannon may be slow to move and fire, but it was highly destructive, and Trainwreck got buried in the demolition of his warehouse hidehout.

Squealer's abilities got her own tank out of the wreckage, inadvertently crushing her ally, before ploughing through the gaming trio's defences and run them through. Leet's equipment indicated its refusal to lose by exploding violently, killing its host and destroying Squealer's vehicle's direction. It went full tilt into the Bay, even though its owner escaped at the last second.

Über and Pwner were then brought to the PRT, where Panacea healed them just enough so that they could be kept in their specialized prison cells.

Black Sabbath – Paranoid

Regent's group, before he left, was called the Undersiders, and I was also "in the know" of their composition and habits. Normally, only their Thinker Tattletale discussed with Coil, but I knew that the man often went behind her back, just to annoy her. Regent had often been sent on solo missions, for instance.

Having determined the man's power, Tattletale went to one of her debriefing sessions with a plan in her head… and an ally in the person of Grue. She knew when it was scheduled to start, and had determined with Grue a proper moment to intervene if things went south.

She saw the evil man's smile when he interrogated her, and her power told her that he was currently torturing her in another reality… and enjoying it. With Grue acting at the proper moment, there, she noticed the man's alarm and called for her friend's action in that reality too.

Grue was not generally violent. But the one having witnessed Tattletale being tortured reacted strongly and snapped the man's head. The other one was shot by Tattletale, once Grue cleared a path so that she could do it. Thanks to his darkness blocking all sorts of sound and radio waves, Coil was unable to communicate to anyone about his imminent demise.

Her examination of Coil's files confirmed what she knew about him: he had lied when promising to help his allies, and also had dead man's switches all over the place. But she wasn't a prominent Thinker for nothing, and deactivated everything. He had been paranoid, but she was overly cautious as well.

And then, Tattletale branched out. Having taken the man's place, she was able to do much more than before, such as recruiting more parahumans into her expanding gang – of rogues. She insisted.

With my intercession, she was able to pay the required fines to purge her account with the law, as well as Grue's – and then have him declared as suitable guardian for his sister Aisha.

Regent had left, though, followed by Rachel. The former had liked the villain aspect of things, and didn't want to change this into rogue status. The latter had quite a bone with the PRT and didn't want anything to do with them.

Tattletale's new interaction with the PRT allowed her to subcontract Panacea for healing, when she was available, and the miracle healer had cured both Genesis and Noelle.

Seeing this last action in progress, Tattletale had smiled widely when her power told her that Panacea had, in fact, invalidated the woman's brain structure that governed parahuman powers… and kept mum because she had also realized that she could be de-powered in the same way – besides, Panacea had done it that way because the other power was trying to do weird things such as create an evil twin. Or something.

Noelle having befriended Rachel over the dogs, the dog-obsessed parahuman chose to follow when Noelle and her boyfriend Trickster chose to skip town – he didn't want to subject himself to scrutiny from the law. Besides, Rachel had no more dog-fighting rings to hound, given that Hookwolf was now dead (and no one picked up the slack, there).

Tattletale had recruited the other Travellers: Sundancer, Genesis, and Ballistic. She also recruited Canary – in a bizarre fashion, Dragon had intervened during the Master singer's trial, and instead of being sent to the Birdcage, they almost did worse: opting to remove the feared ability, the judge ordered… a laryngectomy.

For a girl whose life orbited around music, it was tragic, and when she was released in town, she was suicidal. Tattletale had one look at her and decided to take her in. Not because she was altruist like that, no: it was because, in that look, she had also seen space whales. And while that vision shook her, the bout of unconsciousness was telling her that she had triggered. Second-triggered, in fact.

After this, trial and error got them to realize that, now, Canary could use the sound of music as a weapon. The singer was already into rock, and that ability pushed her towards even stronger guitar riffs, heading straight into… heavy metal.

Quite satisfied that her shopping trip had netted her such an interesting ally, Tattletale continued to look around each time she was doing errands in her civilian life. And that led her to another fresh trigger, yet another girl.

This time, it was a bullying victim, who had triggered due to their constant harassment, and was trying very hard not to retaliate. Thankfully for everyone, her powers weren't of the up-your-face sort: she was a Tinker. She didn't have the means to build every plan she had in her head, though, and that was driving her crazy. With the bullies pushing her down, again and again, and close to no positive familial relationship, she was thinking to kill herself too.

And Tattletale was particularly receptive to that kind of situation.

Iron Maiden – Flight Of Icarus

Tattletale was quite eager when, as soon as she noticed the girl trying to throw herself from a roof without the equipment for a proper base jump, she caught her in the nick of time. Despite the night time. And the rain.

"Hi, I'm Tattletale! Come with me, if you want to live!"

Alright, perhaps not the best introduction, in the present circumstances… but she had always wanted to say that sentence, ever since she had to endure a few old movies with her folks.

She wasn't sure that her introduction had been correct, either, because she wasn't wearing the Tattletale skin-tight costume. In fact, her original uniform had been chosen by Coil, and, despite her way of owning it, she loathed it – given her problems with intimate relationships, she didn't want to flaunt what she didn't want to offer anyways.

Nowadays, when doing cape stuff, she had heavy boots, denim shorts (but not too clingy), and a leather vest over a tee-shirt. Except for the build, she looked more like Rachel than the old Tattletale. Even the mask looked like a poor girl's attempt at hiding her identity.

Nevertheless, the desperate girl caught that lifeline with an urgency that let Tattletale guess all sorts of things about her life – again.

…and that leads us to the fight between Lung and the new cape: it was that new girl.

Between their first meeting and now, Tattletale had been working with her. School was a problem? She knew how to get her GED online, and taught the girl how – she wasn't stupid, "just" bullied into mediocrity.

Family was distant? She could have friends among the capes living in the base that had been Coil's – the mercenaries Tattletale kept only helped with base security, and didn't participate in sting operations anymore. As such, they were less numerous, and had been selected for their ability to stand living with younger capes.

Tattletale had also procured her enough materials to build whatever she imagined. Money wasn't a problem since, between her initial assets and her power whispering how to invest them most profitably, they made more everyday.

It had allowed the girl to Tinker herself a first armour of metal. And then a second, to refine her ideas. It was not only an armour, in fact: despite specializing in defence (and calling herself Iron Maiden… after Iron Man), she could also integrate weapons because, as popular wisdom posits: the best defence is to attack.

And she also wanted to be able to move faster in it than normal. With rocket-assisted roller blades, at first, giving herself a boost in land speed and then rolling herself into a steel ball that wrought havoc when striking mobs of regular gangsters. A regular bowling ball.

And then, following her role model (despite its franchise cinematic franchise only taking off on Earth Aleph), she succeeded in gaining flight. She had been doubtful about the energy consumption, at first, especially as she didn't want to cave a hole in her chest to store a futuristic energy reactor. But her power provided many shortcuts, enough to fuel her armour for days when she was in it… and even an hour or two when she wasn't in them. That allowed her to lend them to her new friends, if needed, granting them new power categories for a time (Mover, Brute, Striker, Blaster, and even Stranger when she used camouflage). Or to automate them joining in (or leaving) a fight.

Her first real night out, she found Lung on the prowl, telling his gang to shoot children. She objected strenuously, and here she was, flying against the flying menace, and using her lasers to try to get him down.

I was surprised that she dared bring him towards her own base, but the idea had merit for a simple reason: specialized in defence, the time she had not spent in doing armours, she had built weapon turrets. Tinker weapon turrets, which included the launching of resistant and non-flammable nets… specifically against her target.

Agile despite his bulk, Lung avoided the first, but that led him in the scope of Slayer's own tranquilizer-equipped sniper rifle. After that shot, he still had enough inertia to continue forward for a couple seconds, and the next volleys plastered his wings against his body. And then the assembled capes took care of his downed body.

Tattletale looked at us and smiled her usual "I-know-everything" smile, which faltered slightly when Slayer and Stalker immediately lifted their weapons her way. Thankfully, she knew when to shut up, and only invited us for a bit of debriefing.

Parabellum – Bang Bang (cover)

Regent (or Pwner, short-lived as the moniker was) was the one who sparked our next conflict, involuntarily as it may be. We should have looked into his history more closely. Tattletale had it that he had been called Hijack before, with the ability to Master another human completely. She hadn't wanted to include him into the Undersiders, but Coil had insisted – with a gun.

Still, Regent had been… nice, for a villain, and didn't seem to have Mastered any of them. Not that she could tell anyways (and she was able to tell quite a bit).

The problem was his identity before that. Born Jean-Paul Vasil, he was the son of the villain Heartbreaker, another Master, who himself changed names a few times before he triggered. And once the news report came that the PRT had jailed Regent, with a picture of his maskless face (because the journalists always show things even when they shouldn't), his dear father was able to infer where his wayward charge had fled to.

You see, the man collected women, and wanted as many powered children as possible. Having delved into literature about parahumans, from anywhere, he had stumbled upon the Gesellschaft unofficial reports. The German group was behind the Empire, and had also devised ways to engineer a trigger event into young children. They lost many, but got several capes that way.

He did the same to his own children.

Now, normally, the man would stay in his dominion, protected by his women (who all doubled as human shields, too), and send some of his powered children to go fetch their errant sibling. For some reason, he came himself.

The problem was compounded by the fact that he went through Boston to get here. And that he was ambushed by other villains, there. He lost a few women, but gained one other, which changed the whole game.

With the cape name Quarrel, the woman was the current Butcher, the fifteenth iteration of the mad cape – any cape killing the Butcher got their power… but also their consciousness. Having five, ten, or fifteen persons in your head, most of them criminals, made for quite the experience.

When Heartbreaker had been "only" a Master, before, he was as "squishy" as normal humans. With the Butcher's powers added to his, and the Teeth gang who always followed the current Butcher, he was almost invincible. And that invincible threat followed the road from Boston to Brockton Bay, heading towards his son.

Apparently, one of his earlier names was William, shorted into Bill, because he often joked, on the road, about the fact that he was "Butcher Bill, bringing the Butcher's bill." Dad jokes are even worse when the dad in question is an unrepentant arch-villain.

We then had quite a tally before us: kill Bill… without killing him.

Tattletale was still on the nose, and organized a truce. The PRT would evacuate the civilians and contain our fights, and the remaining gangs would concentrate on the Teeth. Not that capes from either group would respect it all the time. As a point of fact, our group did most of the fighting. Slayer even had to kill Vex before he could slice her open with his forcefields. And finish Animos, too, with the sniper's rifle she was getting much mileage out of.

I got to fight, myself, my swarm engulfing Spree's sprees, before I tangled with some of the Heartbroken. One of them had a kusarigama, and we tangled chains for a bit before she was killed by an errant two-by-four – it was a truly chaotic battle, out there, with debris flying every which way. Especially when the Butcher was using his super-super-super-strength and his explosive teleportation. Only my battlefield knowledge, gained through the various insects around, had allowed me to manoeuver my foe into the path of the flying piece of wood

Still, having removed Heartbreaker's support team one by one, and then isolating his senses with flashbangs, Canary's riffs, and then supernatural darkness, we succeeded in bringing Panacea close enough for a second – Tattletale had blackmailed her into helping, since she was the only one she knew able to deactivate someone's power. And she did remove the Butcher, sure, making Bill powerless – the Butcher power replaced the one you had, pushing it in the pool of power it had access to.

Metallica – Metal Militia

Our group of rogues got two new girls, after this, to go with the all-female troop we already were – powers were a great equalizer, in considering physical lethality. Why all-female, you ask? Well… Grue had to take care of his wayward sister, and Ballistic found himself a girlfriend in school, and was spending all his free time at her place.

That led Tattletale to head a group of girls… with my help: I was spending more and more time with them, and my slightly older age and experience made me their big sister, both watching over them and protecting them, and also finding them new activities… and new targets. In the group were Slayer, Stalker, Sybil, and Othala, as well as Iron Maiden, Genesis, Sundancer, and Canary.

Of course, we had done some rebranding. Tattletale hadn't been calling herself that for a long time, Canary didn't sing anymore, Othala had kept her involvement hidden, and the Travellers hid themselves from their ex-leader. But in my mind, names given once tended to stick.

It was the same with Vista and Rune, our two new additions.

The first was disgusted by the fact that the PRT was keeping her out of any fight opportunity, which was driving her mad, our parahuman nature apparently pushing us towards conflict. She got her parents to sign a release from the Wards, among other school-related work – and since they had been arguing, they had signed without watching. Once freed from the control group, she joined us.

The second was more due to circumstances. Participating in another spat of Empire against us, she was almost killed by a bullet from Slayer, when Othala interceded for her. Vouching for her character and for the fact that she had been manipulated into joining, our resident part-time healer succeeded in having her friend recruited instead of killed or arrested.

The kid playing with space and the one playing with gravity hit it off spectacularly, once brought on the same team. First, they played with the team, picking villains and generally having a blast. Then, they found themselves near the Boat Graveyard, yet another eyesore for everybody in the team, and in the city. And they decided to do something about it. And dared the rest of the team to object. They didn't, and agreed to the plan. The boys agreed, too.

Vista cheating about the ships' size, it allowed Rune to lift them without problem, albeit the movements were slow. One after the other, we brought them to our base, using the night to cover the quasi-theft (because, obviously, nobody wanted them). Once there, behind a dome-like layer of Grue's darkness, the things were cut by Ballistic and Genesis, as well as Canary's power, and melted down by Sundancer's miniature sun.

From the raw material, Iron Maiden used her own power to shape something that would be able to act as an armour for not just her, but several persons at the same time. And, following Vista and Rune's dare, she shaped it like a warship of old. One that would be able to float, go underwater… and fly.

She had to scrap her design a few times, because more ships kept arriving, providing more metal than she knew what to do with. In the end, she came up with another ship. The armoured dreadnought was two hundred meters long, twenty wide, and another twenty in height. Its hull was a half-meter thick, with another thickness of recycled plastics to isolate the insides from effects transmitted through metal.

She ended up not being the only Tinker working on it, too: one of the wrecks we brought from the sea was Squealer's tank, and the infamous vehicle Tinker must have set up a watch to get it back, as she squealed as soon as she noticed it, forcing us to intervene. Thankfully for everyone, she was only crying for her "babies" – both the vehicle and the man still inside.

Yes, there was someone inside. Strangely enough, despite the duration of their stay in the water, he was still alive. He must have found the water pressure on the armoured doors impossible to fight manually, and may not have thought about using his power, due to panic or drug-induced catatonia.

Squealer and Skidmark were alive and very much under our power. Still, they weren't aggressive, and both suffered from withdrawal symptoms – and the man seemed to have suffered from lack of oxygen, when kept in the tank. I realized that, without Skidmark, the Merchants must have been left directionless (which is probably why we didn't hear about them before). Squealer must have used her last shots, and didn't have access to Skidmark's hidden stashes. Stashes that I knew he used to move around the city in random ways. Without that, people must have found them, leaving several Merchant low-level grunts dead of overdose, and the others devoid of their fix.

In the case of our two captives, I didn't see villains anymore: I saw two drug addicts that could be rehabilitated (after a shower and a visit to Panacea). And that's how Squealer was offered to work with Iron Maiden on the ship's construction.

And that's also how Skidmark would be employed to "man" the "torpedoes": empty tubes layered with his fields, in which anything dropped would be accelerated to insane speeds, making the whole thing a gigantic railgun.

Slayer was almost jealous. Still, she took pride in her versatility and deadliness in weapons, and found ways to mimic a battleship's main weapon: a twenty-meter tube of steel firing 400mm shells, each of them weighing a ton. She was not as fast as with her other weapons to either create or fire such a monstrosity, though, but she thought she would be as precise, at least.

Iron Maiden would complete the project with her turrets positioned above the deck, but also at the front, back, sides… and below. And Squealer salvaged the cannon turret from her own tank, and set it up above the deck too.

Vista and Rune had had the initial idea, and wanted to "test drive" the thing. Thankfully, both Squealer and Iron Maiden were there to assist, because the thing was too massive for the telekinetic cape to hold onto for long – and Vista couldn't cheat too much if there was people in it.

Thankfully, by then, Iron Maiden had installed enough of her brand of antigravity reactors for the thing to lift and propel, and Squealer had added her own stuff… and that included an invisibility generator and retractable wheels (she had insisted, in case they wanted the mastodon to take the freeway).

AC/DC – Thunderstruck

Squealer couldn't have a vehicle without adding an audio system that could send sound inside or outside, with blaring basses and thumping sound. Canary was ecstatic, and the setup allowed us to announce our arrival with thundering music. Even if the gleaming ship was slow to manoeuvre when flying over the city, its mere presence was enough to quickly get everyone's attention.

We were going to investigate rumours of the Empire mobilizing again, and almost rammed through their supposed meeting place, when another sound stopped everyone cold. And while ours was loud and low, the new one was high and piercing.

It was the Endbringer Sirens, using the specific noise indicating an imminent attack here. Tattletale immediately directed us towards the PRT building, as she thought that it would be the most obvious meeting point. Despite the three pilots pushing it at the same time, and moving in a straight line above the buildings, our flying fortress couldn't clear enough of the path before the attack began, and we suddenly found our boat afloat some water for a few seconds, as a huge wave swept through the coastal area.

And behind it was the tall monstrosity that was Leviathan. It was immediately struck by many powers, and I'm proud to say that we participated and did quite a bit of damage on it. But capes were falling like crazy, and the monster's random attacks made no sense, sometimes.

At one moment, he rushed through a side street, and I heard a high-pitched scream, and then he moved through a building and started attacking the capes behind it. In the side street, my insects noticed a fallen and bloodied girl, and I directed Rune so that she would descend, grab the wounded, and deposit her in one of the bedrooms we had built inside the ship – because, when you have something that big, why not use it as a base?

Othala quickly got to work, and the rescued young woman breathed easier. Her arm was mangled, though, and Othala's power wouldn't be sufficient to heal that. Her weapon was completely destroyed too – they had had to remove it, and the remains of the arm, because she could be healed. Introducing herself as Flechette, she insisted to help us. According to her, the Endbringer had noticed her use of her power when she had shot a bolt at him, something that seemed to do more permanent damage than almost everything else (which either didn't seem to hamper him, or regenerated instantly).

While this was going on, Rune continued her mission, directed by my insects, and Othala healed the fallen capes. Genesis helped with the search and rescue, too, with the benefit of being an all-purpose construct.

We got a few bracers from capes unable to return to the fight, and a quick rundown about their use. And that helped us direct the battleship so as to approach Leviathan. Or at least get him in our sights.

Flechette simply stood next to Slayer and touched the warship's main cannon. Her power allowed it to fire its shell right through the Endbringer – not that the forward-facing railguns and the other weapon systems (and Ballistic's projectiles) hadn't gotten a lot of use too, getting the enemy's attention long enough for him to stay put for a few seconds.

And then, to finish the beast, Vista did something that she had tried only once, as a proof of concept: she shortened the distance between her target… and the ionosphere.

The result was a lightning bolt so large and wide that it blinded everyone who looked at it. Even those who had heard her comment on the bracers and had turned and closed their eyes and put their arms in front of them… could see the bones in their arms through their skin and eyelids. The thunder afterwards deafened everyone as well, even those who had gotten their hands on their ears.

Thankfully, after healing the heavier casualties, Panacea was on hand for those little inconveniences.

As for us, we were protected behind Grue's shadow. It was almost completely ripped away because of the light, and the sound was only slightly dampened – and the boy fell unconscious with a nosebleed… and a new understanding of the severity of Tattletale's headaches.

Cauldron – End Of Time

Of course, our dispatch of one Endbringer didn't go unremarked by the Powers That Be, and three figures landed on the ship's deck mere minutes after the titan's downfall.

And it was a true downfall, as after the lightning's aftereffects cleared, the creature's skeleton was still standing, but the rest was completely burnt out. And then a push by our flying ship toppled even that, the "bones" falling haphazardly – they didn't look like bones, but rather a supporting infrastructure (like the interior of our ship… before we added rooms).

Strangely, or not, there was a part not burnt, where the tail had been: it looked like a massive emerald, was cracked, and electricity had been coursing over it. And when it fell, a portal opened under it, leading to what looked like the desolated surface of another planet. Astronomers would later tell us about an explosion on Mars.

The three figures nodded at that, and we got to see the (bottom part of the) grim visage of the Triumvirate heroes – although Eidolon seemed annoyed, rather than grim. And Legend smiled slightly.

"Are you heroes or villains?" Alexandria asked, ready to pounce.

"Are you really needling us while the Endbringer Truce is in effect?" Tattletale asked, her voice exiting the ship's loudspeakers.

"You're too powerful to leave unchecked." was the response. Of all the possible answers… what?

"We are rogues. We are peaceful."

"You are not. With so much power, you must be a villain group, as we haven't heard of heroes with such a base."

"That's circular reasoning, and you know it."

"Perhaps, but you do not get to make the rules." Unsaid was the "I do" that Tattletale got immediately.

"So we can be heroes like New Wave and get affiliated to the Protectorate?"

"No. New Wave belongs to the PRT, and only because we know who they are."

"I tire of this talking nonsense." Eidolon interrupted, surprising everyone. Alexandria seemed annoyed to have someone interrupt what she thought was a well-reasoned debate, and Legend was aghast at his two colleagues. In fact, he was already floating away, distancing himself from what they were doing.

And what they were doing ended up being mass devastation in what should have been the shortest Endbringer fight ever, with a massive victory. They even ignored the cries from inside the ship, including the "We have wounded people, here!"

Using her massive strength, Alexandria struck the main cannon, while Eidolon's black holes attacked the middle of the ship's structure, intending to cut it in half.

We couldn't stay afloat for long, under the onslaught, but we still tried to navigate towards a place with fewer potential casualties under our bulk. Alexandria wasn't having it, though, as she continued to disable our weapons, striking mostly downwards so as to land us.

My power was known to the Protectorate leadership, so it was a surprise for her to see a swarm of locust coming to defend us. And then she snarled "Only heroes matter!" and ignored the insects… until they pushed inside her airways. Sure, she could spit like no one else, but a swarm is a swarm, and my command was their life.

And my command was to suffocate her. Normally enough to drive people to unconsciousness for a short time, so that I could pull the swarm away, it would be the end of the hero as she flew so far away that I couldn't command the insects to stop attacking her. As her last vector before she died was to go up, her speed alone pushed her away from Earth's gravity well and she started her next great adventure as space debris – we only knew thanks to Sybil, because it was too far to perceive.

Eidolon died, too, when he had finished piercing his way inside the hull. He then started to attack the people there, not even realizing that most of them were lying into beds, wounded. A shadow passed through him from behind, then, leaving a piece of rebar through his heart. He might have made himself invulnerable to physical damage in preparation for the Endbringer, but he wasn't invulnerable to a hard shard of metal reappearing at the same time Stalker did, and blocking his blood flow. Pulling at it only increased the pain, and he died quickly.

Given that the ship was split in two, we had to land to make our repairs. And it went fast, Sundancer already preparing her soldering mini-sun while the others lifted the smaller half so as to align it correctly. We may have lost a few meters in length, and most of our firepower, but Slayer was still able to manifest her turret again despite her own headache (apparently, despite them being quite durable, damaging her weapons hurt her).

We may have fed Eidolon's body to the sun too: the piece of metal that pierced through his body was too precious for us to part with is so easily.

That's when Legend came again. He was conflicted, and it showed. "Miss Scorpion?" he asked. "Permission to come on board?"

"Granted under the Truce." I replied. He nodded, and we opened a doorway. He saw our installation and nodded again, especially when he saw Othala taking care of the wounded.

"I saw Alexandria flying away." he said sombrely. "I saw her die."

"I intended to stop her, not kill her. She knew my power, and decided to flee. Outside my influence, my swarm obeys my last command."

He stayed silent for a while, contemplating.

"Are you defending her?" I asked. "If someone dies because of their own stupid actions, you do not get to blame others, you know?"

"I know, it's just that… for the longest time, I thought… she was invulnerable, you know?"

"And unyielding, physically and mentally. She was strong, but once committed to a path, she wouldn't spare a thought to conflicting facts."

He swallowed. "And Dav… Eidolon?"

I looked at him. "He was attacking us, during a Truce, even targeting wounded heroes from his own Protectorate. We did what we could."

He nodded, still thinking hard.

"You could try to attack us despite two Truces." I told him coldly. "But we will defend ourselves. And the Protectorate won't be able to take the heat of the whole Triumvirate being dead… or incapacitated. Or revealed as willing to kill under these conditions. They would seek revenge, and strike at any rogue and villain, despite the Endbringer Truce. You know they would. And it would be a bloody war." A pause. "Or you could step back, keep leading the Protectorate, and let us live."

"You did kill them, though. Actions have consequences."

"And they faced the consequences of their actions. We offered to be affiliated, and the consequence of us defending ourselves is that we will never be accepted near heroes ever again. We accept that, even if that is imposed on us by circumstances. But we won't be pressured into more."

He accepted my reasoning and left. Soon afterwards, we delivered the wounded capes to Panacea and left.

It was a few weeks afterwards that Legend came to us again. He was suitably impressed to find our flying ship larger and even sturdier. And with cannons that seemed manned by metal men.

Scavenging metal over the coast, we ended up with much more than needed, and created large armours for a few of us to act during combat. For instance, thanks to her power, Tattletale had no competition in far-reach marksmanship on moving targets. Even Slayer got inside a mechanical unit (or "Mech") of her own design, having coaxed her power into thinking it was more a weapon chassis than a defence for her. Stalker had one and could take it with her when she became insubstantial. Squealer had one which could become invisible, and had wheels too. And Skidmark's fired the fastest shells of them all.

Our reputation got us a few more capes, too. One of them was Weld, a Ward from Boston who was a Case 53 – one of those capes whose body changed because of their power. He was made of metal… and absorbed metal. After showing that he could absorb bullets, he played a bit and dared us to hit with the biggest thing we could.

It took some time, but he absorbed the ton of steel Slayer shot at him. And with a body much larger, he was his own "Mech", only requiring a firearm of the same size to hold his own among the others. Thankfully, absorbing that much metal seemed to be his limit, and he wouldn't absorb the ship upon entering it.

All this firepower happened to be useful when another international actor took the role of the now-ended Endbringers – yes, we sought out Behemoth and the Simurgh, contracting with Strider to get there as soon as they appeared. Given our reputation, he only grudgingly accepted, and made us pay through the nose, too.

Between our own Thinkers, precognitives or not, we had enough leeway to gain money on the free market, though, and it was but a drop in our resource bucket (not yet an ocean, but we were heading there).

And speaking of oceans, we got news of the aforementioned actor striking the good ol' US of A from across the Pacific (which had lost the significance of that name a long time ago): the CUI was on the prowl, hitting with both powers and warheads… even nuclear ones.

When Scion had appeared, decades ago, he had been intent on destroying the whole nuclear arsenal. Since he had started erring aimlessly, some had tried rebuilding nukes. When he passed nearby, he invariably sought the thing out and destroyed it again. The CUI must have hidden them better than the others, to be able to target our country with several at the same time. Sybil confirmed that they were on train tracks, much like the Russians, during the Cold War… but also deep underground, to avoid surveillance.

Strider got an urgent call, and we deployed on the West Coast. With him helping, we got most of the warheads out of the sky – some we shot there, others we diverted into space… and we had to tank one in order to take three others out and protect the whole State of California.

Thankfully, Weld absorbed the missile, starting its assimilation right as it was going off. That led the preliminary explosion to be less concentrated than it should be to start the nuclear reaction. Still, among the metal absorbed, there was some highly radioactive one, and the Case 53 Mech ended up under close guard by Grue, who used his power to shield everyone while Weld expelled the radioactive elements from his system.

And as the Mech was his actual body, he did so like most people do when eating something foul: he threw up. By then, we had moved atop the training camp for the Yangban, and the radioactive vomit rained down and burned through everything, even most barriers generated by parahuman powers. Followed by weapon discharges, the CUI was soon amputated of its parahuman army, and we could leave the political and diplomatic animals to wrestle concessions back and forth.

We had another fish to fry. A gargantuan planet-sized space whale, in fact.

Because after our experience with nukes, Scion seemed to have awakened a bit, and he was now moving with a bit more purpose than before, striking here and there. It was determined that he targeted the weakest capes, and was slowly moving up. Fresh triggers were kept alive for some time, but would die upon his second pass if they didn't use their powers in a flashy way.

Legend came to us, metaphorical hat in hand. "You killed Alexandria and Eidolon, the strongest of us all. Without them, we have no chance against Zion."

"Not Scion?" Tattletale asked, and then her eyes went wide. "Oh my god! There's two of them? And you killed his counterpart? No wonder he's angry."

A suitably impressed Legend still explained what he knew: no, the Golden Man wasn't angry. He wasn't even a man, but a space worm, who disseminated powers before harvesting them… and killing everyone.

"That's also why you kept villains alive. And the Birdcage…" Tattletale inferred, and he nodded. Very reluctantly.

"I wasn't privy to most of the details." he said. "Alexandria and Eidolon were the ones with Cauldron. It's only because Zion changed tacks that I was let in on the secret."

"Not a secret anymore." I replied, letting Tattletale's power infer more details about the new threat. "You wish for us to fight him."

"I know that, following your run-in with the CUI, you have found ways to replicate a nuke launcher yourself." he said, proving that we weren't as discreet as we envisioned. "Don't worry, you couldn't have known we looked at you: the man doing it is actually observing the whole planet at all times. He does nothing else unless Cauldron asks him something."

"That's how your… Cauldron… knew how to deal with the Endbringer cores." Tattletale realized, remembering the portal opening beneath the falling things – the same scene had happened with Behemoth and the Simurgh.

Legend nodded. "Yes, there is the Clairvoyant, and the Doormaker who makes portal. I have been authorized to give you access to their power. You can now say "Door to" some place, and you'll have a portal to that place."

"Zion is not a man…" Tattletale was continuing her line of thought. "Therefore he must be a projection. We only have to find his real body, and bombard it. Right?"

Legend nodded tentatively.

"So… Door ship to Zion's real body." Tattletale told the air. And, sure enough, in front of our ship, the air rippled and a portal formed, only large enough for us if all the Mechs got inside. Which they did. Hurrying, too, as the portal seemed to waver. We hurried through, and found ourselves into space. In front of us, a planet practically covered by a squirming mass. Closing the vents to prevent air escaping our enclosure, as well as the Mechs, Slayer headed out, her magnetized feet allowing her to stay on the hull. The others followed, and then they all fired at the source of powers… and our impending doom.

The Golden man appeared suddenly, in front of us, and his face showed the proper motions for someone angry and anxious, but as he started throwing golden beams towards us, one of our ammo must have hit something critical, as he disappeared in an explosion of golden sparks. The rays had sheared through a couple Mechs and parts of the hull, though, and we had to bring both Slayer and Skidmark inside for a quick healing by Othala. They wouldn't be able to use their legs again, but they had Mechs for that. And Legend, having pushed Tattletale aside, got a scar going from one side of his forehead to the other side of his jaw, burning an eye too.

After the cry of victory and the anxiety of bringing back the two capes hurt (and the flying bits of Mech) and healing them, we had something else to deal with.

The portal wasn't there anymore.

Legend and Tattletale posited that it may have been to hard to maintain, for Doormaker, especially with its large size. They also discovered that they were way out of range for Clairvoyant's ability.

That meant that no amount of "Door, please" would bring us back to Earth.

We were lost in space, and we didn't know where to go to find Earth again.

We went mad, for a time – as in "angry". But soon, realism prevailed, and we set a course. Perhaps by moving a bit, we could chart stars and galaxy positions, and, after finding some common ground, we could go home?

Given that Legend was a level-headed man with more need than most of us to return home (as he actually had a family), and because he was used to command positions, he was ushered into the captain post.

And given that we had all changed names at least once, we changed his, too. Since he let his hair grow so that at least one lock was hiding his scar, we ended up calling him Captain Hairlock.

Given that we had Vista with us, one of Brockton Bay's Wards, we also baptised the ship "Arcadia".

And we had many adventures, following our intrepid captain… but that's another story entirely. Another universe, even.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

To be continued… bang bang

Author's Notes: Despite my initial inspiration (see below), Taylor isn't Slayer (that's… Madison, let's say). She might be Iron Maiden… or not. Blame this version of Miss Militia's singular use of names.

Some of this episode was inspired by "Penny and Dime" on SB, and the "Vista has enough" is by mp3. 14159, here.

It was fun finding Metal groups and titles – some of which mesh particularly well with Worm and this story. I did listen to them, too, and most are… not bad.

The end took me by surprise. Of course, I don't own Captain Harlock or any related thing and blah blah blah.