John idly played with his phone for several seconds, waiting for the reply. His phone rang.
"Boss man," John greeted, putting it on speaker.
"My sources have verified that the structure was suitably razed. As promised, your payment is being wired as we speak. I have set up an account for each of you that is handled by a parahuman accountant by the name of Number Man. You should be receiving your respective account information momentarily."
As if on cue, the notification blinked at the top of the phone. Coil continued.
"I hope this is the start of a mutually beneficial relationship." The call ended.
After double checking the details of the new account balance, John sat down and replayed the earlier fight in his mind.
I just straight up lost like 5 seconds. That's never happened. Never. Well at least not to me. Never happened to me. The fuck? Oh god is this how Alzheimer's starts? Next I'm going to be forgetting what a toilet is for?
John thought for a few more seconds, then smacked himself for being stupid.
"Petyr, question for ya."
Petyr had just been synthesizing a purple liquid which smelled curiously like tuna. Supposedly it would accelerate the rate at which bones healed, so Gabriel's rib fracture would be a non-issue in 12 hours rather than 24 days. But still, why'd it have to smell like fucking tuna? I don't need the sushi cravings at 1:42 am.
"What would be the problem?" Petyr answered.
"What the hell happened to Cricket?" John inquired.
Petyr blinked. "What the hell do you mean 'what happened to her'? You were there. Whatever Leo did caused a giant fireball, Cricket got distracted, then you caught her in a bear hug, and did,something. Not quite sure. But regardless, she couldn't move, and I shot her a few times with the sedatives. Out like lightbulb."
John frowned. "That's the problem. I don't remember you shooting her. I lost about 5 or 6 seconds. Anything else that was weird happen?"
Petyr's face contorted in contemplation for a second. "Well now that you mention it, you know how you normally leave a short blue trail behind you?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, you kind of glowed red this time. Actually now that I think about it, she smacked you in the head with her kamas a few times, but it didn't look like it did anything, and you didn't have any cuts or bumps or anything like that on your head."
John laughed a bit. "Welp. Glad to know I guess? No idea how that happened but it did." He gave a half hearted attempt to try and reproduce the effect, with no success.
"Ah well. Guess I'll figure it out in the morning. Maybe."
-
"Morty, you fucking clown, how many goddamn times do I have to go over the color chart with you? Red-Green-Blue-Yellow is 25 kilo-ohms not mega- you dumbass."
Ren shook out her hand to try and recover from the burn she received when the circuit blew. She turned around to head towards the freezer to grab some ice, shooting a glare at Morty on the way. Morty withered under her admonishing gaze. Despite being a full 8 inches taller than her, he always managed to feel absolutely tiny in her presence.
"Sorry Andrews," he muttered. "I'll be off by a wider margin next time."
Ren flexed her hand, and rolled her eyes in annoyance. She was fairly certain her eye muscles in particular got more of a workout than most other people's did. Note to self, edit visor tracking routine to count number of times I roll my eyes, she thought in the back of her mind. "Well stop standing around there like a deer in headlights and go grab the soldering iron over there," she snapped.
Morty dutifully retrieved said instrument, before less-than-dutifully moonwalking it back to where Ren was sitting. She absently reached out to grab it, before it and Morty both disappeared from sight. "God fucking dammit Morty! Just give me the thing!" she shouted, swiping randomly in the vicinity of where Morty's laughter was coming from. "This shit isn't funny!"
"Then why am I laughing so hard?" came the reply between giggles as Morty dropped his field once he was on the other side of the table. Ren gave him one more scowl after snatching the tool. This asshat….this fucking asshat, she thought to herself as she began repairing the circuit board.
After a few hours she sat back, satisfied for the moment with the repair job. The RV that they'd been using for the past few months was reasonably spacious, but that space was immediately sacrificed to the myriad pieces of scrap Ren had insisted on lugging around; after all, one never quite knew when a part could be useful. Morty learned to stop questioning it when Ren managed to get the AC unit going again with the aid of a few broken fluorescent lights, a pocketwatch, and a hiking boot.
"Hungry yet? Pizza?" Morty asked.
"...Sure..." she said, donning her visor. After that flashy tex-mex place that Morty insisted on, I'm not taking any chances. I never want to spend that much time on a toilet again. She turned on the visor, and selected the function marked 'combinatorial brute forcer'. The visor registered her eye movements as she phrased her question.
Precisely 27 minutes later, (with a little help from Morty's slightly-extremely-reckless driving) they arrived at a hole-in-the-wall place simply titled "Sid's Pizza" on the outskirts of Albany, NY. The area had certainly seen better days. Only way you could make it more obvious that this is the shitty part of town is with a neon sign, thought Ren, as they passed through several side streets riddled with abandoned houses with rotting frames. Though the destruction caused by Nilbog had been contained to Ellisburg, the secondary effects had been felt in a much wider radius as property values all over upstate NY fell in the following years.
Morty however was concerned only with the grumbling of his stomach and the means of making it cease. He was about to hop out of the RV when Ren stopped him.
"Mask up," she said, as she adjusted the opacity filter on her visor, going from translucent to near-black.
"Wait, whoa, I thought we were getting some food?" Morty asked, even as he donned his mask; a cheap plastic thing he'd picked out of a bargain bin. It was a simple grey mask that covered his eyes, nose and cheeks, in a style somewhat reminiscent of the guy from 'Phantom of the Opera.'
"We are, Cloak," she replied. "We're just not the ones paying for it." She pointed over to a group of motorcycles that were painted a sickly deep green. "Those, if I'm not wrong, belong to some upstart half-a-bit biker gang which, if I'm also not mistaken, are currently being fucknuggets."
Cloak nodded, having been through this song and dance before. "Okie-dokie, Dagger. Should I veil us both or what?"
"'Should I give us an immensely useful element of surprise or nah?' Like, how is this even a question?" Dagger chastised. She readied a scrapped-together taser while Cloak worked his power. Once it was up, they entered the establishment through the front door.
On any other day, Sid would have been creeped the hell out by his front door opening of it's own volition. Most people would; inanimate objects were called inanimate for a reason after all. Today however, his attention was much more focused on the four men in front of him making a rather aggressive sales pitch for paying a protection fee. Three of them had come armed with nailboards, and the fourth was nonchalantly brandishing a goddamn uzi. On top of that, both of his cooks had just stepped outback for a cigarette prior to the arrival of this particular group of miscreants, so he was alone and unable to reach the sawed-off 12 gauge behind the freezer. It had proven to be lifesaving exactly three times prior, but everybody's luck seems to run out eventually.
"...so for an establishment such as this, the market price for 'accident prevention' would be around 400 a week? That seems about-"
The man holding the uzi flopped to the ground like a marionette that just had its strings cut. His companions stared at their downed associate before Cloak dropped his veiling effect, sporting a stupidly wide grin as he did so. He appeared directly behind the man currently limp on the floor, in between the three nailboard wielding goons.
"Hey guys! Wanna play catch?" he half-shouted with the goofiest voice he could muster. As the two thugs who flanked him managed to begin their counterattack, Cloak tossed a knife at each of them. On Cloak's left, the knife pierced his opponent's kneecap, causing him to drop his weapon as he fell to the floor writhing in agony. On Cloak's right, that assailant had a knife pierce and nearly sever the connective tissue in his leading shoulder, causing him to drop his weapon on himself. He too collapsed in a heap, unwilling to continue.
The third assailant behind Cloak had completed his wind up for an overhand strike. He failed to notice Dagger standing behind him, and as he began to swing, she jammed her scrapyard-taser into his lower spine. He fell to the ground convulsing violently.
Dagger used up the rest of the battery making sure that each of the upstart bikers were well and truly unconscious. Then, she methodically emptied each of them of everything valuable. All totalled, it came out to $1400 in cash, 3 knifes, the aforementioned uzi, and at least an ounce of low grade meth.
Sid, still recovering from the shock of the whole situation, spoke up. "Y-you guys capes or something? Look, I don't want any trouble..I'm just trying to get by…"
"Well in that case," Dagger interrupted, "we'll have a medium pie, half pepperoni, and…"
"...the other half is olives, pickles and mustard," added Cloak. Dagger shook her head slightly before continuing.
"The best way to make sure nothing else happens is that you don't call the cops until after we leave. Not in the mood to deal with them."
Sid vigorously nodded his head and screamed at his cooks to finish up and get busy.
Cloak and Dagger left with their pie and climbed back into the RV. Dagger took off her mask and began digging in, while checking her newest contacts. One in particular caught her attention.
Hmmm….time to see what the 'Coil' asshole is offering…
-
Chimera. That's the name they keep calling me.
The figure thought for a moment in between bites of the unfortunate fox that was on the forest floor. At this point, I might as well keep it. Not like I remember what my name was supposed to be in the first place. Or anything else about myself for that matter. He'd heard the words 'case 53' thrown around several times. Generally followed by some variation on 'living affront to nature.' The figure finished with it's meal, and began to slowly shift into a new form, electing to manifest a wolf's endurance along with a gazelle's stride for some distance running. The result looked like an oversized greyhound with blonde fur and wicked claws.
I hate running. Fucking hate it. He'd much rather fly, truth be told, but flying in broad daylight had a tendency to draw negative attention. Getting literally tackled out of the air near Nashville taught him that much. Either that, or that guy in particular was really territorial about his airspace. Even less fun was trying to escape from the Nashville PRT through the sewers; being any kind of vermin was irritating in the first place, let alone being a cross between a rat, a mouse, and a centipede.
He'd tried forcing himself to return to a human form, but he could never quite get there. There was always some other animal trait that manifested; he always ended up something like a satyr, or a centaur, or a werewolf, or with an eagle's head and a lion tail, or something else patently not human. Never quite got there.
Then of course there was the hunger. The fucking hunger. No matter how much he ate, he'd be starving again within the next hour. When the hunger got bad...well...he tended to make questionable decisions. Such as that time he was just outside St. Louis and a group of Hell's Angels opened fire on him when they found him digging through a dumpster.
One could make a case for killing a few of his attackers in self-defense. It was much harder to make a case for eating them after the fact, and 'I was really really hungry' didn't win him any favors with the St. Louis PRT. Another one of many places he left in a hurry.
Why the hell do I keep going back? he asked himself for the umpteenth time. He could thrive perfectly well outside the boundaries of the civilization that his power had forcibly exiled him from. Yet even 24 hours without the sound of a car, or someone taking out the trash, or some other mundane human activity seemed to drive him mad. I know I can't go back there, and I know I can't stay away. Fuck everything.
He found himself on southern end of Lake Moultrie, SC, dumpster diving once more for assorted vermin. It's one hell of an acquired taste, but they really are quite delicious, he thought to himself as he began to manifest a vulture's digestive system. While the rats would certainly be quite high in various macronutrients, chances are they would also be quite high in some less than pleasant diseases, and it never hurt to be cautious. In that same spirit he also began to manifest a bear's size and strength, and rounded out the ensemble with a carapace of a hercules beetle scaled to size, before starting on his snack time.
Not five minutes in, Chimera was distracted by the loud barking of a couple of pitbulls that had rounded the corner. They kept their distance while continuing to posture aggressively. I do not have time for this shit today, thought Chimera as he turned to give a threatening growl of his own, which in his current state sounded like the midpoint between a bear's roar and a distinctly avian screech. If these dogs don't stop pissing me off, I'm going to eat them too, he thought as they began to cower away.
"Baxter! Ringo! Where'd you boys r-"
The man's breath caught as he rounded the corner and stared in shock at Chimera's form. Still slack-jawed, his hands began moving mechanically as he drew his hunting revolver and fired.
"OW! THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR?" Chimera shouted, his voice a deep distorted baritone. The large caliber bullet failed to penetrate his beetle shell, but the impact still felt like getting beamed by a 95mph fastball.
Instead of answering, the man simply aimed for center mass again and squeezed off another shot.
"GODDAMMIT STOP THAT" Chimera howled. Not only does it hurt, that gun is REALLY FUCKING LOUD HOLY SHIT. Chimera's ears were still ringing as he turned and leapt onto the gunman. He bent down to bite off the hammer of the revolver as the struggling man tried to prime another shot. The man screamed in pain as Chimera also bit off a good chunk of his hand. He hadn't even paid attention to the two dogs trying their best to gnaw at his hind legs.
Chimera leered at the prone man who was grunting both in pain and futile effort to get out from under the 900 pound creature who currently had him pinned. "Its really REALLY rude to interrupt someone while they're eating you know. All I wanted was a snack; some vermin here, some garbage there. No harm, no foul. But ~noooooo~, you had to go and start shooting like an asshole. So…"
...how's about you become my meal in- nope. He stopped that particular train of thought. Nope nope nope, bad Chimera. Eating people is frowned upon, remember that.
While trying to come up with a different way to finish his sentence, he was interrupted again, this time by a kid who looked to be about 10 or 11.
"PA! PA! LET GO OF MY PA YOU MONSTER!" the kid shouted. The kid was brandishing a slightly larger weapon than his old man had; a pump action shotgun. Chimera looked at the kid, then back at the pinned man as he started backing off.
"Clyde! Go get Ma and tell her to get everyone. Tarball, Lynchpin, Stonewall, everyone!"
Chimera took that as his cue to leave in earnest. He shook off the two dogs stubbornly hanging onto his legs and began running, swapping out the bear's size for a cheetah's sprinting speed. About a mile down the road, he found a storm drain, and swapped forms again, opting for an amalgamation of an alligator and electric eel. He followed the drain into the Cooper river, and followed it out into the Atlantic ocean. He swapped forms once more, morphing into a cross between an orca, a tuna, and a great white shark, and swam out a good couple hundred miles or so before turning north.
After what felt like two and a half eternities, Chimera judged the temperature difference to be cold enough to start heading back towards land. I don't know how aquatic life does it; between the tankers and the whales and the occasional volcanic activity burp, the ocean is really REALLY loud goddamn always. Fuck that noise. He made his way towards what looked like a bunch of boats piled on top of each other haphazardly on the ocean floor, manifesting physiques of smaller fish on the way so as to not draw undue attention.
Once he was close enough, he swam right up to the moonlit shore and transformed again into a cross between a german shepard and a porcupine. The surrounding area looked suitably deserted at that time of night, so he began to settle down for a nap. Hopefully from a distance, the porcupine spines would look close enough to dog fur (albeit in really shitty condition) that no one would think it was anything out of the ordinary. Right before settling in, he manifested a final change; a skunk's defense mechanism. He really wasn't in the mood for putting up with anyone's shit.
Chimera began to wake up and felt uncharacteristically groggy. He blinked a few times, and became steadily more alarmed as his vision failed to return to normal sharpness. When he started to look around properly, full on panic mode set in; he was decidedly not on the shore near the boat wreckages. Instead, he now was secured to a cool metal table by several bands of some black metallic alloy -or at least it felt like a metallic alloy- in a room which appeared to have no doorway. His bonds were tight, but not painfully so. The walls, floor, and ceiling appeared to be stainless steel with no discernable vents anywhere, with three rows of halogen lamps providing light. It was certainly brighter than he would have cared for at that moment, but nothing he couldn't deal with.
Chimera had started to try and move his limbs, and discovered (much to his chagrin) that his muscular control was similarly compromised; his entire being felt like it had fallen asleep, much the way one's foot would if one sat on it the wrong way for an extended period of time. He began trying to swap out the canine profile for something thinner and more flexible. Let's go with...boa constrictor, he thought. His mental panic meter jumped when he realized that the metal bonds were shrinking and morphing to adjust to his new form, and kept him just as immobile as before.
"Fine, you fucking got me," he hissed in defeat to the empty room, not really expecting an answer.
A section of the wall in front of him slid upwards, and in walked a man in a completely black body suit with a white snake pattern that wound around one leg, up through the torso and around the neck before ending at his forehead. The man walked with an unhurried measured cadence towards him, and stopped roughly a yard in front of him, adopting what looked like a parade rest stance.
"I see you now have a grasp of the obvious," he remarked with an even tone that betrayed no emotion or intent.
"Who are you?"
"A fair question. My name is Coil." He let silence hang for a few moments.
"Why?" A half-hearted squirm supplied the missing context.
"You've caught the attention of several parties, Chimera," he answered.
"St. Louis?"
Coil allowed himself a small chuckle. "That is one of several instances."
"So, what are you going to do? Hand me over for a bounty? Dissect me?" the serpentine figure spat.
"No need to be quite so melodramatic just yet. If that were my intention, do you really think we'd be having this conversation?" He paused for a few moments. "While it is true that some of the less level-headed PRT branches would indeed like to see you shipped off to the Birdcage, I am not quite so short-sighted. Your abilities certainly show promise; that you've evaded capture as long as you have is a testament to that. But first I must confirm a suspicion of mine."
Chimera let out a small hiss, but otherwise nodded.
"Now then," Coil continued, "you clearly possess the tools to thrive in the wilderness, unfettered and unimpeded by society. Yet, you had elected time and again to try and return to it. Sure, you've stuck to the outskirts of civilization, but you voluntarily wandered within the proximity of society nonetheless. Why?"
"I asked myself the same question," Chimera started. "Honestly? Its really goddamn lonely out there in the wild. I hate it. I really hate it. Doesn't make a lot of sense when I think about it, but then again, neither does being able to turn into a cross between a snake, a porcupine, and a skunk." Had he shoulders to shrug at that moment, he would've.
"Well now that you've confirmed my suspicion, I'll make you my offer of employment. I am in the process of constructing a team of parahumans, and you would make a useful addition to their ranks, should you accept."
"But would they accept me?" Chimera blurted more quickly than he would have liked.
"Your past transgressions are far less public than you'd imagine, and suffice it to say when working with capes, a certain level and flavor of open-mindedness is demanded."
A team of other people. I'd be among people again, Chimera thought to himself. It gave him a small sense of satisfaction that he couldn't quite put into words.
"I'm in."
