Villain Chapter 2
AN: Due to popular request (and personal interest), I decided to continue this story. Whereas the first chapter was focused on the Bank Heist, this chapter is focused on the Undersider's first meeting with Bakuda, and is a bit shorter as a result. Due to the nature of the event, I focused on the bold and fearless side of Taylor's persona, and while it's different, I quite like it. Sorry it took so long, but on the plus side, the 3rd chapter will be out in a couple of days.
Taylor's vision went white as she was hit with blinding pain, every single one of her nerves blaring like they had been struck with wildfire as her senses become overwhelmed with sensation, stripping her of the ability to move, react, or even have conscious thought. She may have screamed, not that she would be able to tell as she collapsed to the ground, seizing up on the grungy, cracked tarmac of the storage center, the banks of disused shed's standing solace over her comatose form as she spasmed in her black spider silk costume.
She had no idea how much time had passed before a thought other than pain streamed into her mind, breaking up the constant stream of agony from Bakuda's gift that just kept on giving as she settled slightly, cracking one eye open.
Under her fractured, yellow lens, her pupil dilated rapidly, unable to focus on the ground in front of her.
"If you little fucks had any sense, you'd know that getting the upper hand on me, just for a moment? It's something you should be fucking terrified of," Bakuda hissed from her position above Taylor, the deranged woman throwing her arms around her in a tantrum as her bandoliers of grenades shifted dangerously around her torso.
Taylor made faint gurgling sounds as she tried to move, realizing very quickly that the arm underneath her wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Which is a shame, because she was in a bit of a pickle.
"Leaving me lying there with a grenade launcher in my hand and ammunition all over the fucking street was asking for it. Fuck, just the hugging and being all relieved, as if you had actually beaten me? You were begging to be shot."
Taylor wasn't arrogant enough to decry Bakuda's words just because she was deranged. In this case, at least, she was right. After all, they hadn't followed the ever-important rule: #2 Double Tap. Had her years on the internet taught her nothing?
An intense wave of pain flashed through her mind again, sending Taylor's consciousness spinning for a second before her mind refocused, still moving far too sluggishly for her liking. Right, she shouldn't let herself get distracted. She couldn't afford to.
As a quick side note though, the three lines of red in front of her only open eye looked quite pretty.
"And now? Now, you're at my mercy once more, only this time, I'm not going to be so nice," Bakuda snarled as she reached down to her side, her fingers clicking metallically under metallic gloves as she searched her belt for a specific item, finding it just below her left hip.
"Ah, here we go, 339~" Bakuda warbled in triumph, her emotion coming through clearly despite the mechanical whirring her mask produced as she spoke. "You see your little friend down there? The one laid out frozen on the ground like a piece of roadkill? The bomb she was struck with was just a taste of what I have to offer. It was one of my earlier models, and I have only gotten better since. This little beauty," she held her arm up high, showing the glinting ball of metallic death in her hand to her audience, "is a generation three model of the same design, and I can only imagine how painful it will be. Little Bug was hit with a pain blast for only a fraction of a second, but my friend here? It doesn't stop at just one. No, it will release a pulse every other second until it runs out of juice, which if I have calculated correctly, which I have, will take almost 10 minutes. 10 minutes of absolute agony for the little fucks that thought they could beat Bakuda!" She roared, sounding unhinged to Taylor's slowly spinning mind as she struggled to piece together what she was hearing.
It was quite annoying, to be honest, and just listening to the woman's monologue made her want to pass out. But if she did nothing, Brian would die. Lisa would die. Alec and Bitch would die. Most importantly though, she would die. Her aspirations of cleaning up the bay, of making it a better place for both her father and the memory of her mother would cease to exist, gone along with the trails of smoke that would denote the end of her existence.
She couldn't let that happen. She wouldn't let it happen. So with a force of will, Taylor put her hands beneath her and pushed off the ground as she charged at Bakuda, screaming at the top of her lungs in an impressive display of willpower.
…is what she would like to have done, but the instant she pushed her hand underneath herself, the strain on her nervous system was enough that she lost control again, her thoughts dispersing before they solidified enough to let her emit a grunt of pain.
"Gaghghjggjgjj."
Well, a gurgle.
Luckily, Bakuda had already moved away at this point, moving closer to the rest of the Undersiders, where each of them was pinned down. Tattletale, Regent, and Grue were all pinned under piles of glue, the viscous blue liquid pinning them to the ground and sheds with little chance of escape in the vanishingly small amount of time they had.
A small part of Taylor hoped for Bitch to come in and rescue them at the last second, but she knew that was a pipe dream. Despite the respect she had earned from the girl with her stunt at the Bank, Bitch getting snatched was the entire reason they were at the storage center in the first place.
Well, they had thought she was taking their money, but that was beside the point. Bitch wasn't going to be helping them, and Taylor had less than any respect for the response times of the city's illustrious heroes. Sure, once that got there they could fight the good fight with the best of them, but they were notoriously slow as arriving for such things.
No, there was no one coming to help them, and with Brian, Lisa, and Alec pinned down as they were, they would not be any help. Not unless they wanted to annoy Bakuda more than the woman already was.
"I wonder where I should put 339? In the center of the four of you? On good old black and smokey? Ooh, maybe I can place it on bug girl for what she did to Lung, really hammer it home just how much she fucked up," Bakuda monologued, paying the superpowered teens no attention as she got caught up in her rant.
Yeah, annoying her right now didn't seem to be the smartest option. Or the safest. Which meant it was just up to her to free them. Her, the girl with limbs that she could barely feel right now due to the lingering flashes of pain and agony she was still experiencing, and a killer headache on top of it all to impair cognitive judgment.
Her only advantage was that Bakuda hadn't noticed she was awake, but once her bugs started moving, it wouldn't take her long to realize what was happening. And she...well she was kind of right to think that Taylor was fucked. Because she was majorly fucked. Like, Loki vs the Hulk fucked.
But, as much as she didn't like to admit it, that hadn't stopped her before. Two years of abuse hadn't been enough to stop her no matter how personal the insults were. Facing down Lung on her first night hadn't been able to stop her. Robbing the bank and facing off the entirety of the Wards and the two most active members of the New Wave hadn't been enough to stop her.
Bakua? She wouldn't be able to stop her either.
But if she was going to make her move, she couldn't afford to hesitate. She couldn't be 'Bug' right now, as much as she wanted to. No, what the Undersiders needed, what Taylor needed right now, was Arachne, and despite her lingering embarrassment and the nearer-constant teasing she'd received for the last performance of that part of her, she didn't hesitate as she dumped her negative emotions into the swarm.
Her guilt, her anger, her outrage, her fear, all of it left her. All that was left was a sense of calm, her bugs, and her pain.
"But I don't think I'll do that," Bakuda rasped as she tapped the grenade in her hand against her other metallic palm, the soft ringing sound causing the other Undersiders bar Tattletale to flinch at the prospect of the bomb going off. "She wouldn't be able to truly appreciate it as the rest of you will. In fact, why don't I place it on the one who'll appreciate it the most~" she chuckled darkly as she swaggered forward, her gaze resting intently on Tattletale's struggling form as she crouched down in front of her.
Holding up the grenade, Bakuda twisted it in the air in front of Tattletale's domino mask.
"Get a good look you white trash, let that annoying power of yours soak in all the details. You're the one who led the Casino robbery, after all. No one else would have been able to get past the security measures." Bakuda tilted her head, a hint of anger bleeding into her otherwise victorious mechanical tone. "Some of the money in there was mine, you know? You cost me my sign-up bonus. It's a good thing you're paying me back with interest, otherwise, I'd have a reason to be truly upset."
She rotated her head silently in a jerky fashion, the movement causing Tattletale to reel back as her features twitched, her power figuring something out in Arachne's mind. This was the best opportunity she was going to get however, so without trying to move, as she knew it would be pointless, she harnessed her willpower to command her bugs to gather in front of Grue, making sure they were out of Bakuda's eye line.
'MAKE CLOUD. MAX HIP LEVEL.'
Grue's helmet twisted to the side for a second as Arachne observed him looking towards her, giving her an unreadable look even as he gave her a subtle nod, darkness swiftly pouring off his form in swarths of formless mist that flowed over the concrete.
First, it centered around Grue, collecting around him in a uniform mass before it seemed to reach a tipping point as it spilled out, swiftly covering the loose tarmac of the storage center.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Bakuda's tinny voice shouted in outrage as her legs were covered by the darkness, the woman swiftly returning to her full height as she let the grenade slip out of her palm, the round metallic object hitting Lisa in the stomach.
"Gahh!"
"Do you think you're going to get away from me?!" Bakuda roared as she swiftly stepped away from the Undersiders, moving about 10 meters away as she messed with a dial on her wrist. "You think I would make the same fucking mistake as you teenagers?!"
Well, Arachne's plan was half working. Bakuda wouldn't be able to find her body in the mist. Too bad she hadn't thought about how much it would upset the crazy lady. Oh well, too late to worry about it now. If she was going out, she was going to go out with a bang.
Resolve gathered, Arachne did the same with her bugs, bringing the scattered insectoids together into a singular, undulating mass that swirled as a spiral into the air, quickly reaching two meters in height.
"Yes, I did. What, do you think I should be intimated by a woman who uses a childish bastardization of the word 'bomb' in a language she doesn't know as a code name? " Arachne said using her swarm, making sure to emphasize the word childish to really get under the woman's skin.
"I…you…" Bakuda was speechless, her limbs twitching in anger both towards her side and far away from her simultaneously in a way that let her make no progress. Just as Arachne had predicted/hoped.
Taking advantage of the brief pause, she collected more of her bugs into an appropriate avatar for her abilities, shaping the swarm into a version of her own costume, a towering, writhing figure in all black. Only, it was almost twice Taylor's normal height, and her eyes were actually glowing red due to a couple of fireflies. Oh, and she had filled out her form a little, giving her sized-up D-cups and a larger rear.
If she was making an avatar, she was going to make it hot, and that's all she was going to say about that.
The sudden appearance of Arachne's avatar made Bakuda take a couple of steps back, the woman becoming intimidated by the personification.
"No, I don't think so…besides, why should I be so afraid? Your little bombs only cover so much ground, only so much… distance." Arachne paused as she tilted her head slowly, staring down at Bakuda with violet eyes as the remaining parts of her swarm erupted around the avatar in a cloud, the buzzing her chittering deafening in the otherwise silent urban environments.
"For I am like the hydra in that if you cut one head off…" Arachne's head blurred as it split into two, with both heads' mouths splitting open into gaping maws with fireflies in the back to light them up, illuminating the grotesque sights of the jaws' interior, "two more shall grow back."
"I…I,"
"What is it, little bomb?" Arachne quired in a condescending tone, fusing her heads back into one as she took a slow, ponderous step forward, the black mist obscuring her from the knees down. "Are you perhaps…afraid?"
Another step.
"Do I make you...nervous?"
Bakuda started to shake as Arachne got closer to her, stumbling a couple of steps back as Arachne's mass loomed over the smaller figure with a tilted head, a soft chittering filling the air.
"What happened to paying us back, hmm? I thought you were the 'Top Dog'," Arachne made the avatar perform the quotation marks here. "I don't see the top dog here though. All I see...is the frightened child behind the mask you so desperately try to hide. So how about you do us all a favor and go back to your lizard daddy so he can make it all better again."
Evidently, this was not the right thing to say, as up until this point, Lisa had been nodding along with a pleased smile, approving of the words Arachne had been using. This last sentence though, well it seemed to cut through the terror Bakuda was feeling at the visceral sight that was Taylor right now.
A sort of inbuilt reaction as it were.
Because in reality, there wasn't much Arachne could do to Bakuda, not before she got one of those bombs of hers off.
"Damn it, Taylor! Why did you say that?! She was just about to leave, and then you had to go and mention Lung!" Tattletale shouted in frustration, the girl gritting her teeth as she desperately squirmed in her confides, uselessly as it was in the mound of glue keeping her pinned.
"You…you almost had me going there…" Bakuda whined dangerously, her voice pitched low as her own eyes glowed in the mask, her posture reading as furious as she clenched her hands tight enough to make the metal in them groan. "You're little display's scary, I'll give you that, but that's all it is. A show."
Bakuda let both hands trail down to her legs as she ripped a pair of identical-looking grenades off her hips, small glowing balls of blue deadlines.
"But you forgot one very important thing, bitch…I'm fucking Bakuda!" She shouted, the deranged woman released her payload as she threw one directly in the middle of the bound Undersiders, throwing the other right where Taylor's body still was as the metallic object bounced painfully off her side, causing a flare-up strong enough to almost break her concentration as Bakuda fiddled with something on her wrist.
"Bollocks," Arachne swore, making no move to go for either the grenades or Bakuda. By the time she reached either of them, it would be too late. It was a shame to die so young, but if she was going to go down, she was going to go down like a boss-ass bitch.
So, without delay, Arachne commanded her bugs to form a sword in front of her, positioning her hands on top of the hilt as she stood should-with apart, making her hair flare out to the left as she stared down at Bakuda.
"And the worlds going to fucking know my name!" Bakuda shouted in an interesting mixture of both glee and anger, the differing tones not coming through the metallic whir of her mask all that well as she threw held her arms out at her sides as if she was waiting for applause.
Alec, Brian, and Lisa all filched, struggling in their little piles of glue as they waited for their impending doom, one that would undoubtedly be quite painful. Taylor didn't though, as it wasn't like she could feel any worse than she already did.
Hell, even Bakuda waited in expectation, her chest heaving after her display with her arms in the air. Only, instead of whatever it was that she was expecting, there was only silence. There was not even a hint of an explosion, normal or exotic.
"…is there a delay on these ones?" Arachne asked, tilting her head in confusion as she looked around the storage yard.
"No, no there's not," Bakuda replied with genuine confusion as she looked at her wrist again before looking back to where one of her grenades had landed, jerking her head forward a couple of times before she growled.
"Why isn't it working!?"
"Maybe they're nervous? You could try giving them some encouragement?" Arachne offered 'helpfully' as she pulled in bugs from all over the storage yard, taking advantage of the lucky break.
"Oh yeah, like what?" Bakuda drawled in anger, gesturing wildly with her hands. "Come on bombs, I know you can do it. Give me the explosion I've been so desperately asking for; I know you can do it. Give it to me. Satisfy me. THERE INANIMATE OBJECTS, YOU IDIOT!"
"There's no reason for that kind of language," Arachne huffed as she collapsed her swords construct, instead making her avatar fold its arms.
"Grarrrgggg!" Bakuda shouted in frustration, unable to deal with this shit.
Which, fair, Arachne was known to be quite vexing.
"Oh Arachne, you brilliant idiot!" Tattletale suddenly shouted as she widened her eyes in both relief and glee. "Grue's smoke…it dampens radiation! Radiation like the radio signal from Bakuda's toe trigger. Covered as she is by the smoke, she can't set off any of her bombs! How did you know that? Even I didn't know that!"
An awkward silence dawned on the areas as Bakuda fell into a shocked stupor, suddenly finding herself on the other side of the stick. Arachne was similarly silent, but for a whole other reason.
"…Grue's smoke dampens radiation?"
"It does?" Grue agreed confusedly, looking down at his smoke introspectively.
"Yes, didn't you know that?" Tattletale asked with a puzzled frown before she groaned, looking like she wanted to reach up and pinch the brow of her nose. "No, you didn't, of course not, you wouldn't be an idiot otherwise," she said, piecing the events together with her power. "Then why did you ask Grue to smoke the area?"
Arachne placed her arms behind her back as she rocked back and forth on her legs, miming whistling as a few bugs imitated the sound while she looked away.
"Because it looked cool!?" Tattletale yelled once more, latching onto Taylor's body language even through her false body. "You just…but…fllllarghhgjkg."
The blonde conked out, slumping on the spot as her eyes rolled up into the back of her head at the sheer idiocy of Taylor's actions.
"Well, on the downside, I could have used her help. On the up, no more questions."
"Yep." Regent agreed, looking far too cheerful for the situation they were in. "Besides, standing like that with the smoke covering your lower limbs, the sounds of bugs moving unseen through it? It's very cool. Don't you agree, Grue?"
"I…am staying out of this one," Grue grunted, his voice sounding strained as he continued to pump out the inner teenage edginess of his soul, now at a slower rate than before. Arachne noticed this and knew that she would have to speed things up.
Because while Bakuda's abilities were kind of neutered, that fact would only remain true as long as Grue could keep the smoke coming, and the only one really free to act was Taylor herself. To be specific, her bugs were, which would have to get through the armored costume Bakuda was wearing.
And while she could send her bugs through the gaps and sting her a bunch of times as she did with Lung, but, you know, with fewer bugs and less crotch rot considering she wasn't a regenerating brute, Arachne didn't feel like doing that.
Chances were that the second she started, Bakuda would just run away, as Brian's cloud didn't extend that far. The second she was in the clear she would become a threat again, one that Taylor couldn't afford to face, so instead she was going to have to scare her enough that she didn't start thinking logically until she was well away from the teens. To become the Monster to Bakuda's Villain.
Luckily, that sounded quite fun in Taylor's opinion, so she had an easy excuse to go wrathful swarm on her ass, something she started with by commanding all of her insects to surround Bakuda in a circular mound, leaving a hole in the middle for the young woman.
This included the bugs that made up her avatar, which collapse like a pile of dominoes as the thousands of insects making it up were repurposed elsewhere.
"The worlds going to know your name…huh?"Arachne began, making the voice emerge from the writhing mass of insects surrounding the once again nervous villain, her voice echoing unnaturally throughout the area with the various clicks and buzzes making it up giving it an otherworldly nature.
This was intentional, as with some practice at the hideout her bug voice had come out sounding mostly normal. She didn't want normal though. She wanted gruesome. She wanted FEAR.
"And just how is it going to know your name? For even a chance of that happening, you would have to go out to the world and do something eye-catching, but that relies on one key factor that you're neglecting."
"Y-yeah, what's that you bug bitch?" Bakuda retorted with a hint of worry that she attempted to hide under the bravado, the woman grasping onto the bombs on her bandolier for a sense of comfort.
"You'd have to come out of here…" Arachne began as a shapeless form built itself out of the swarm she had gathered, eighty percent of it combining together into the head of a giant wasp, one that looked like it had emerged from the depths of hell.
"…ALIVE!"
While almost completely black with some red in the eyes, a consequence of the average color of her bugs and the dim lighting of the storage yard at night, the wasp's features were… let's say, exaggerated. The antennas were elongated and covered in spikes that appeared at irregular distances and angles. The compound eyes were smaller, instead made out of about 8 little pockets consisting of fireflies due to the limits in Taylor's swarm, but if anything that made the effect worse, as each of these glowing pockets were the size of a human eye.
The worst feature on Arachne's creature, however, was the mouth, as the otherwise standard-looking mandibles had been given a vicious-looking upgrade, now increased in size while also sporting a multitude of spikes covering the insides of its jaw.
It was this giant head that was staring balefully at Bakuda, looking like it wanted to murder both Bakuda and her children's children with how intimidating it was. But then, it somehow got worse, a fact collaborated by the small metallic whimper that sounded softly through the area as the wasp opened its mouth.
"B-but the u-unwritten rules!" Bakuda blustered, sounding afraid but not quite to the point of tears. "You can't kill me!"
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, little spark, I could very easily kill you," Arachne replied with amusement as she slowly moved her mandibles back and forth, miming the action of biting in a way that Bakuda wasn't able to take her eyes off of. "You know better than anyone that the unwritten rules…are unwritten. Not in a single place are they actually placed down somewhere. No, the unwritten rules are just a set of instructions and rules that cape society follows…until they find that it is no longer convenient for them."
"Ah, Arachne?" A hesitant voice spoke up, interrupting her. " You're getting a little dark there, even for me," Regent said helpfully, but Arachne ignored him, not even turning her head. Instead, out of view of Bakuda, she created a false hand that waggled at Regent, telling him off before it shifted into a mouth with a finger and hand in front of it, singing him to be quiet as the bugs merged back into the insectoid mass.
"As my good friend Grue over there can tell you, it is very easy for a cape to stop caring about the Unwritten rules to do whatever they want. Take Shadow Stalker, for example. Even after her induction into the Wards, she still stuck him with a broadhead like a piece of meat, all for the petty reason that his powers interfered with hers."
Brian had been quick to shed that story after they'd shown her the hideout.
"Not to mention that a villain killing another villain…that's barely a violation of the rules as it is. Lung has done it. Kaiser has done it. Skidmark probably would have done it if he wasn't a horrid waste of a man too high on drugs to care, and I'm tipping a number of people in the Protectorate have done it. The fact that you're a bomb tinker is really working against you here, Bakuda. The people on the supposed side of good might act angry if they receive news of your death, but in reality?"
Arachne made the head tilt forward, combining all of the fireflies into two singular eyes that glowed bright enough to wash Bakuda's mask in red as she collapsed backward, overwhelmed by the intense pressure Arachne was putting out as she scrambled backward on her hands and feet, actually squishing a few bugs in the process as she moved.
"They would just be happy that you were no longer their problem and give me a slap on the wrist. Now, riddle me this, Ba-ku-da~" Arachne asked playfully, keeping a hint of malice in her skittering voice as she tilted her head slowly in a 360-degree twist that was unnatural, "Who has two eyes and a working piece of undercarriage?"
Silence.
That was her answer as Bakuda blanked at the question, not a single sign of her earlier anger and cockiness present as she trembled under Taylor's wrath.
"Holy fuck she's good at this. Why is she so good at it? I've been a villain for years now, after being raised by one, and I still wouldn't be able to come off half as menacing as her if I tried."
"Well?" Arachne asked, snapping her mandibles again. "If I don't get an answer soon, the question I'll ask again might sound a little different."
"M-me," Bakuda stuttered mechanically as she started up at Taylor with fear, earning a pleased nod from Arachne as she somehow made the wasp head…wiggle her antenna slightly in a way that came off as...happiness?
"That's right," Arachne crooned, leaning in as she rubbed the top of Bakuda's helmet with her mandible, a soft scratching sound coming from it in a gesture that was meant to seem comforting but judging by how Bakuda shied away and the whine of fear that emerged, wasn't.
Oh well, it was her loss.
"That's right, little girl, you. And if you want to keep it that way, I might suggest that you get up off the floor, you turn around, and then you run, and you keep on running until you no longer can. Maybe by then, you'll actually be outside of my range. Outside of my wrath. But that ultimately depends on how long you can run for," Arachne chuckled darkly, the soft screeching noise making Alec and Brian wince even as the motorcycle-helmed young man gave the wasp head a prospective glance.
"Do you…think she gives…lessons in villainy? She's..a natural."
"I hope so."
"I…you'll let me go?" Bakuda asked, sounding strangely hopeful as Arachne nodded, bringing the wasp's head back and down slightly, giving Bakuda some breathing room.
"The insects I have on and near you won't attack so long as you keep running away from the storage yard," Arachne answered in response. "So long as you run back to Lung, you will be safe."
Before Bakuda could get too comfortable though, Taylor commanded the mass of insects she was controlling forward, crashing it into Bakuda's chest as she was knocked flat on her back, the wind partially knocked out of her as the mass of insects reformed back into the wasp's head.
"But I'll be watching to make sure you do. Run, Firecracker. Run like the hounds of hell are nipping at your ankles. Because while I may not possess its hounds, I do have its locusts."
Well, that was a bit of a lie, but she did have crickets, so she made every single one of them chirp in line with the imperial march, creating a symphony of humming and buzzing in the darkness. The bluff wasn't noticed however as Bakuda quickly took advantage of the hole Taylor had opened in the circle she had surrounded Bakuda with, the woman bolting away from her and the rest of the Undersides without a hint of turning back, her mind stuck far too deep into 'flight' to even think of it.
Which was quite fortunate, actually, as the very second Bakuda disappeared around the bend of the rusted storage center, Grue gasped out in relief as the last wisps of his cloying smoke collapsed to the ground, dissipating on the course concrete.
"Cutting it…a little…close there…Arachne," Grue panted, breathing heavily underneath his helmet. "A couple more seconds and…Bakuda might have realized that…I'm out of juice."
The wasp's head swiveled around and hovered closer to Grue, making him flinch slightly before he controlled his reaction. Not that it stooped Taylor from feeling a hint of amusement.
"Ah, but I didn't need a couple of more seconds. I had just enough time to send her running."
"Yeah, and with her dignity in pieces and scattered along the ground," Alec smirked, chuckling slightly.
Taylor barely spared him a glance.
"Big talk coming from the guy pinned by the world's biggest pile of ghost jizz," Taylor snarked, making him gasp dramatically before pausing as he squirmed slightly.
"Just so you know, I would have put my hand on my head and pretended to faint for that comment, but, you know," Alec shrugged as he gestured towards his bound limbs. "I'm a little tied up.
"Not the first time I image," Taylor retorted, making him grin before she turned her attention back to her only teammate with a limb free. "Speaking off tied up though, we should probably get you guys free before anyone else shows up."
"That would be appreciated," Brian stated, looking oddly at ease with the situation.
"Yeah, I need to scratch my nuts, chew us out Webs," Alec agreed, making Arachne somehow look sheepish as she made her floating head blink by erasing the fireflies' light for a second as she tilted the head down. The expression this gave was quite emotive for some reason.
"Yeah, smaaaaalllll problem with that. You know how I was hit with that pain grenade a couple of minutes ago?"
"How could I forget, you screamed like a little bitch when it did. What about it?" Alec retorted, not getting what she was implying.
Luckily, Brian wasn't so dense, even if he was merely Watson to Lisa's Holmes.
"It's still affecting you; you've just been ignoring it," he stated.
"I have," Taylor sighed as she collapsed her head back into a pile of insects, the words already starting to become less coherent as the pain in her head flared up, affecting her consciousness. Her emotions similarly started to come back before she pushed them away for a second longer, not quite ready to deal with the after-effects of surviving a hostage situation yet.
"Combine all those pain signals with the strain of forming my construct, and I'm just about ready to pass out. In fact, I'll probably do so in less than ten seconds," Taylor added, sounding oddly at ease with the reality.
Brian was not.
"Throw me your knife, quick!" He ordered frantically in his motorcycle leathers, making Taylor shrug mentally as she returned her attention to her own body, which was, while not as painful as the ever-consuming whiteness of earlier, still in a state of agony.
An agony that she could ignore for a moment as she fumbled her hand to the base of her spine, shakily withdrawing the knife out of its holster as she flung her arm forward, sending it flying towards Grue in a jerky fashion before it stuck home.
In Grue's visor.
"Gah!" he grunted as he reared back, surprised at the sudden knife edge sitting in front of his eye before he shook his head and reached up, wrapping his single free hand around the handle before he pulled it out with a jerk, leaving him free to start cutting at his restraints.
Just that one burst of movement was enough for Taylor's vision to swim again, and the mental clock of consciousness she was carrying cut in half as her vision darkened.
Before she did though, she made sure to command her bugs to stay away, not wanting to be covered when she wasn't in control of them. Then, she conked out, bonelessly and mindlessly laying against the hard tarmac.
Which was a shame, as not a few seconds later another recently unconscious figure awoke, wincing in pain as she blearily looked around the area, finding that something was different.
"Did I miss anything?" Lisa asked in confusion, earning a round of laughter from Regent beside her as Grue continued to saw at the glue holding his legs in place.
"Oh, something glorious Tattletale, something glorious," Alec chuckled. "Turns out your little charity project was not just a fluke and is actually a better Villain than the rest of us combined."
Lisa blinked as she heard those words.
She blinked again.
It was only after the third time that she managed to respond.
"I'm sorry, but what the fuck?!"
"Try to keep up with the times, Tats, you don't want to be left behind," Alec chided her as he released the tension in his body, using the strangely soft glue as a sort of bed. "Besides, we still don't know where Bitch is, so you might want to start sleuthing around after we're freed."
… Later ...
"…There's homemade cookies in the jar there. Still warm. After I got the couch ready, I didn't know what to do. Had to work the anxiety out somehow, so I baked. Make yourselves some at home while I see to your tea and coffee." A tired, worried-sounding man said as Taylor drifted into consciousness, not really aware of where she was.
"Thank you, Danny," a younger-sounding female said, Lisa Taylor's sluggish mind put together. "I'm going to go to the living room and check on Taylor, if that's cool?"
"Please do."
"Just gonna grab a cookie first… Mm. Smells good."
That certainly roused her, as in an instant Taylor shot off the surface of the couch she was laying on, sitting straight up like a railroad spike as she glared in the direction of the kitchen.
"Don't touch my fucking cookies!"
A stunned silence filled the air after the vigor of her vulgar words before three sets of feet surged toward her.
"Taylor!" Danny yelled, sounding relieved, "you're awake!"
Yes, and it was at this very second that she wished she wasn't, as the aches and pains of her previous fight expressed themselves, leaving her aching all over from overstimulated nerves, especially from her back, right arm, and head.
This stimulation left her falling back to the couch, lying there in a disorganized mess as Danny, Lisa, and Brian all watched on in concern.
Luckily, after a few moments to acclimate, she was able to calm down her Dad, sending him away to make the drinks while Taylor got a debrief on what had happened after she'd passed out. Using her knife, Brian had freed himself and the rest of the Undersiders before Lisa had gone and found where Bitch had been tied up.
Which was with their money, which had been pleasant to hear about.
Her injuries, on the other hand, were not so nice to hear about, as having mood swings, a lack of inhibition control, and short-term memory problems didn't sound like a fun time. On the plus side, her second time as Arachne, the Queen Bee, had turned out better than the first, as aside from being overly vicious with her words to Bakuda, something Taylor couldn't find in herself in her pained state to care, nothing she had said would come back to bite her.
So, with mixed feelings about the fight with Bakuda, Taylor sent her friends on their way after they had drained their mugs, leaving her with a father that didn't quite know what to do with himself before she had basically ordered him to go do the grocery shopping.
They were running low and she'd quite like a pint of ice cream to go with her concussion, something that would help with the rest of her aches and pains as well. Letting them heal naturally was going to be a pain though, especially the swelling in her brain.
That actually brought a thought to mind. During her misadventures at the bank, she had basically gotten the permission of the world's best healer to take her out on the town. The more Taylor thought about it, the more attractive the idea sounded.
Wisk away poor little Panacea from her boring life while receiving some free healing in return sounded like a good time to Taylor. Not today though, or tomorrow, she needed to let her dad settle down a bit.
The day after though…a grin formed on Taylor's face, one that split her face in two and was only slightly crocked. The day after tomorrow had some promise.
AN: ...and that's the end of this chapter. Thanks for reading. The next chapter will be the other popular request, focusing on Taylor's interactions with Amy. I don't know how many chapters I plan to do with this story, but I at least want to do Somer's Rock after I finish her outing with Amy, so you can look forward to that.
Ervin, out.
