-/ Chapter 12: Mirror, Mirror \-

I woke slowly. A gentle, deep, rhythmic rumbling infused me and lulled me gently back towards sleep. I groggily nuzzled into the fluffy warm of my bed not wanting to end what must have been the single most restful night's sleep I had since awakening in this life. Why would I want to? My face was resting against, or rather between, something warm, soft, and fluffy. In fact, it felt as if I was enveloped by that warmth. Wait. What did I have that was warm and fluffy? I groggily pulled myself up. It took me a few minutes to recognize my face had been buried in Sara's …oh. Wow. My cheeks flushed as I looked away from her nude feline form.

My eyes instead took in the bedroom I'd awoken in. The bed Sara and I were in was butted up against the corner furthest from the door. Said door was framed by a set of bookshelves filled with a wide variety of tomes. An out-of-date desktop computer and an even older stereo sat opposite the bed, with a rather heavy looking table set up between them and in front of the room's only window. I recognized the knapsack and books spread across the table as being Sara's college stuff.

I was in her room. That's right, I had actually spent the night at her house for once. Sara purred contently in her sleep; actually purred, like a real cat. I'd spent half the previous day hanging out with her, and a good portion of that had been with her in her werecat form. While she was indeed nude, I don't think it would be accurate to say she was naked. That word indicated a certain level of discomfort and from what I understood, Sara was more uncomfortable wearing clothes while furry than not.

I slowly and cautiously extracted myself from her, not wanting to wake her unnecessarily. We had apparently slept cuddled together. Yeah, that wasn't embarrassing in the slightest. At least I was wearing clothes.

I headed into the kitchen, more out of routine than anything, and was greeted by the smell of bacon and cinnamon. Mr. Holden was there whistling a tune from some …actually I think it was the theme song from Happy Days. I shook my head at the thought. Mr. Holden's view of what a father should be, and thus what he strove for, was blatantly based on old TV shows from his childhood. That was a part of it anyway, Sara had told me that his mother had raised him alone after his father had found out about the pregnancy and promptly ran. Maybe he was doing all the things he wished he had a father to do when he was a kid.

"Good morning, Taylor," He said cheerfully. It wasn't the fake kind of cheer either, he actually sounded like he was looking forward to the day. I envied him. While Arcadia was leagues better than Winslow and I actually had people that seemed to appreciate, or at least tolerate, my company, it was still hard to get excited about going to school.

I smiled back, "Mr. Holden."

"Does French toast and bacon sound good to you?" Mr. Holden asked as he cracked eggs into a rather large bowl. The carton of eggs he was drawing from, I noted, was almost entirely filled with egg shells.

"Sure. Can I help with anything?"

"Can you get another pack of bacon out? Sara's going to be able to eat one all by herself."

"Sure. Fridge?" I asked while casually wondering how they managed to keep up with her stomach. Then again, both her mother and father worked. Mrs. Holden was a legal aid of some sort at the firm that Brandish worked at and Mr. Holden, while I didn't know specifically what he did, was a white collar worker as well. Regardless, it wasn't like money was as tight here as back at home.

"Yep."

It was a few minutes later when Sara came out of her room letting out a near silent yawn as she stretched her feline body. The motion was very cat-like with her open mouth wide and the arcing of her back, the latter of which also made her already ample bosom all that much harder to not notice.

I was about to say something when the blare of noise stopped everything dead in it's tracks. The sound of an air raid siren was unmistakable. I closed my eyes, praying to whatever god might be listening for Leviathan to not be heading here yet; I wasn't ready. As the Endbringer siren's long mournful note faded, my ears strained listening for the follow up that would spell disaster for the Bay. The silence stretched as seconds turned to minutes. Then, the television crackled as Mr. Holden turned it on.

"-that the Endbringer known as Khepri is rapidly approaching the Australian coastline. It's present heading is indicating a likely target of the nation's capital, Canberra. Any capes intending to participate in the upcoming battle are asked to report to local PRT headquarters for sorting and deployment."

"Are you going?" Mr Holden asked. I blinked as I processed the information I'd just heard and awaited Sara's response. In my past life, Canberra had suffered a Simurgh attack. What if Brockton Bay was attacked by an Endbringer other than Leviathan? I had been looking into various ways to evolve my swarm and armor to increase its resistance to compression and drowning. A different Endbringer showing up would mean different attacks that my equipment wouldn't be prepared to deal with.

More pertinent now though was the question of whether or not I was going to face off against this Endbringer. Khepri and I had a lot in common, more than just the bug theme and my being given the same name during the battle with Scion. Khepri was the master, controlling an army of insectile soldiers that took on the qualities of capes that stood against her. Could I face her? With everything that she could be, could I face what was essentially my twisted shadow?

"Taylor?" I tore my eyes from the television screen that had been showing images of the six armed Endbringer and giving viewers a run down on her capabilities. Sara was looking at me. Her father too. I blinked as she said, "Dad asked if you were going to go as well."

My mind ground to a halt. "What? How? Did you?"

"I knew when you first walked into the house, sport," He replied. "You hold yourself in a way that screams experience and authority that a fifteen-year-old shouldn't have. My little girl picked up on it too, and I saw the way she deferred to you. Only way that'd happen would be is if you were a cape. Which one are you?"

I didn't answer right away as I digested that bit of information. If Mr. Holden had noticed it, what about others? Was my identity compromised? As much as I might want to dwell on it and figure it all out, I had choices to make in the now. Well, not really, there was no choice to be made; just a path to follow. So I answered him, "I'm Skitter and I'm going."

A smile spread across his face, "I suppose I'll be telling your Dad you're here keeping me company until Sara returns then?"

"How'd-"

"Taylor, you're a teenager. Every teen keeps their biggest secrets from their parents. I didn't know Sara was bisexual until she and Sabah had a falling out," He answered, cutting off the question.

"It wasn't a falling out," Sara defended, "We just stopped dating and everything and things got awkward."

"To answer your question, I'll tell him myself," I said as I started collecting my swarm. I wasn't expecting the swarm to be all that useful against Khepri herself, she was durable enough to take direct attacks from mid-tier brutes after all, but they should be useful against the copied capes. Of course, I also didn't expect to be able to bring a real sizable swarm with me through any transport the PRT was setting up, so I was only collecting a prime selection.

I headed into Sara's room, not just to collect my cellphone but also to open her window. Sara's window opened into the fire escape of the complex and, as could be attested to by the claw marks on the wooden table in front of it, had been used more than once as an exit for the werecat. The fire escape would soon be playing host to a particular spider silk bag that would be delivered by a contingent of weaver wasps. It, of course, would contain my costume.

"Hey, Dad," I said after he picked up the phone at home.

"Hey, Kiddo. I was just about to head to work. Left something at home for school?" He asked and I could practically hear him hoping for me to ask him to bring whatever it was to me. Today was a Thursday, and it'd been a hard sell to get him to let me stay the night at Sara's.

"No. Listen, I know you heard the sirens..."

"Yeah, Khepri going to the down..Right, your friends in the Wards. Do you know if they're going?"

I hadn't even thought about my future teammates. I shook my head, not allowing myself to consider them yet. "No, but Sara's going. I want to skip school; stay with her parents until she gets back."

There was a long, uncomfortable pause before Dad answered, "I understand. Alright. Yes, you can. I wouldn't be surprised if Arcadia takes a snow day to cover the Wards' absences anyway."

I nodded though he couldn't see it. There was real emotion in my voice as I thanked him and told him to be careful. When the Endbringers showed up, there was almost always a spike in crime as the criminal element got bolder in the absence of the local heroes that answered the call. The offices the Dockworker's Association used were located rather deep in the Empire's dockside territory. As odd as it sounded, that likely meant Dad would be safe. There was a surprising amount of respect towards the Association, likely due to the last time they had tried to pressure the workers into joining the gang. Albert Peterson, one of the workers in question, had sent a message by hospitalizing the low level brute they sent by way of calculated blows with a pipe wrench to the cape's joints.

My bag arrived shortly after I had hung up, and I immediately started donning my costume. This wasn't my usual regalia, I had a new bodysuit. It was the next step in my 'living armor' design. The vast majority of the costume was now a living organism. The major obstacle in creating this version was the armored sections which had to match or exceed the general durability of the older treated plating.

This new plating was comprised of three major layers. The outermost was a few sheets of ablative 'scales' comprised of a chitin and keratin base. These 'scales,' when hit with enough force, would break apart and flake off and in doing so would take a great deal of the kinetic energy of attacks with them instead of allowing said energy to propagate though the plating as a whole. Next was the hard shell of the platting which was comprised of two major layers, the obvious chitin exterior and an equally thick, if not thicker, backing of nacre heavily based on the design of abalone shells. The exterior side could be cracked and chipped without the plating breaking apart or suffering extreme damage to its structural integrity. The final layer was one of fat to act as padding and, if the need was great enough, fuel for my power.

These armored sections connected directly to a layer of thin musculature sandwiched within a sheath of spider silk. The musculature didn't really boost my strength to any notable degree, but it would help prevent things like joint dislocation and hyper-extension while serving as a medium for all the other little living bits to be mounted onto. The musculature was reinforced to a small degree by the addition of small strips of bone. Further, instead of using spider silk padding to give Skitter the illusion of a different body type than my own stick figure, I went with actual fat stores. It wouldn't be as durable as using spider silk, but I could, in a pinch, use the fat to fuel my power; as a bonus if someone groped Skitter it wouldn't feel 'off'. Not that I intend to get groped or anything, but anyone who has been in a few tussles will tell you that, eventually, hands will have touched the vast majority of your body, ass included.

There was still more I wanted to do to the costume; while the innermost layer of the body sheath helped keep me cool by wicking away moisture it didn't really do anything with the sweat. I wanted a future version to be able to 'drink' my sweat to help fuel muscular activity. Similarly I wanted to weave nerves throughout the costume to allow me to feel through it. I already had such a system in the palms of my gauntlets, so it was doable; just time consuming.

It wasn't much later that Sara and I landed in the inner courtyard of PRT headquarters where all the other capes seemed to be gathered waiting on transport. Felix hopped off and stretched the second Atlas touched down, actually managing to pull the attention we had generated on our arrival away from me. Well, most of the males' attention anyways.

Armsmaster broke out of the crowd as I scanned the masked faces. I spotted Rune, Cricket, Victor, and Othala filling out the Empire's contribution, while a group of five tinker-tech equipped ABB members filled out their rival's own contribution. The ABB's only allowance towards costumes were red and green bandanas tied around their faces 'outlaw-style.' I had no doubt that these were some of the gang's capes that weren't powerful enough to rate higher than a two or three in whatever category. New Wave's only consisted of Panacea, her uncle Manpower, and Network. Of the Wards, only Vista was not present. The Protectorate group included Velocity, Miss Militia, Testament, Triumph, and, of course, Armsmaster. The Brockton Bay contingent was completed by Mason, Browbeat, Quiver, Splatter of the Merchants, Multiplayer, and the entirety of the Undersiders, though it looked like Wraith was just there to see the rest off.

"Glad you decided to show Skitter," Armsmaster said as he approached, "How big of a swarm are you bringing?"

"I was guessing I'd have limited space, so, not much?" I responded.

He nodded understanding the reasoning behind the decision, "We'll have Strider popping in a few minutes if you want to collect more."

"Why are you glad to see me? I was half-expecting to be turned away," I said, hearing someone, I'm not sure who, snort in response. I didn't bother trying to figure out who underestimated me this time as I was busying myself by taking Colin up on his offer by drawing on and sorting the local bug population.

"Protectorate brass thinks you might be able to disrupt Khepri's control over her soldiers," He explained. Through my swarm I noticed more heads turn in our direction, Lisa's included.

"I don't know if I can, but my highest chance of success would be if I can get in range before they start mimicking other capes," I replied. Really, I wanted to try my hand with the Endbringer herself. I doubted I could actually do it since, while Khepri might look insectile, she'd have a biological makeup similar to the other Endbringers. Then again, I had no idea how my power might interact with hers.

My musings were interrupted by Clockblocker commenting, "Man, I think Australia must really be hell if the Endbringers are going there for vacation."

"You do realize Australia is an entire continent, right? The last attack hit Preth, which is over two thousand miles away from Canberra ," Gallant said in a tone that reminded me just how much the Wards had to put up with from the time stopper.

"Yeah. And not very populated, so the Endbringers must just like the atmosphere. I mean, even the wildlife is insane, everything that lives there can kill a guy."

"The wildlife here could eat you too," Felix said as she walked up behind him. He jumped and let out a rather unmanly 'eep.'

He bolted and I noticed Felix tense, not like she was expecting to be hit or anything, more like she was checking herself. I idly grinned at the mental image of her chasing Clockblocker around like a mouse. Or at least I did until I realized he had run, oddly enough, to me. Well, more likely he was running to Armsmaster like a child running to their parents and I just happened to be next to him at the time.

"So," I dragged the word out, turning my head towards the teen resting his arm on one of Atlas's middle legs, "You ran here to.."

"...Stand next to the baddest mother here," he supplied, not even glancing to me.

Armsmaster, at that point, broke his usually stoic demeanor and asked, "Is that me ...or her?"

It took the Ward a second to process the question, at which point he turned to me in a slow, exaggerated manner. After his eyes met my golden lenses, he audibly gulped.

A few minutes later, the additions of my swarm were just filtering into the the courtyard when Strider appeared in a thunderclap. The teleporter glanced around, getting his bearings before doing a double take at me astride Atlas, and strode purposefully towards Armsmaster. He gave the tinker a roguish smile and said, "I ought to charge extra for this group, biggest so far."

The man I knew better as Defiant shook his head, "We'll see. You're not limited by number or mass, correct?"

"Correct. Why?"

"My swarm," I answered, flaring out the shroud of bugs around me for emphasis. I could see the eyes behind his goggles widen as he took in the number around me. I had, for the sake of the others' comfort, kept my swarm tightly clustered around me.

"Damn," he replied drawing the word out at length. "That's a lot of bugs, good thing you don't have arachnophobia eh?"

"That would have made things...inconvenient."

"Inconvenient my ass." Strider said before turning away from me. "Alright, everyone gather up. Closer together you guys get, the easier on me this is. Cluster together, I've got six more trips to make after you."

I compressed my swarm as much as I could as everyone did as told. I don't think I was the only one who noticed that the Undersiders were among the few comfortable enough with my swarm to actually enter the area it occupied. While it made sense that Felix had no problems with the swarm, as she was already playing host to a small collection of bugs in her coat, I hadn't expected Armsmaster to not show any discomfort, or for Testament to casually join him. Strider seemed to be pleased with the cluster of parahumans around him as he said, "Here we go, hang on to your lunches!"

In a flash and an audible pop, we were elsewhere. Dozens of voices reached us a microsecond before the world resolved and we found ourselves in the middle of a park that was already being converted into a sort of staging area. Even as my mind connected to the local bug population, I was hit by the difference in the environment. We teleported from Brockton Bay at roughly 7am EST and suddenly found ourselves in Canberra at 11pm local time. Night had fallen more than a few hours before, not that it was particularly dark yet, between the capital city's lights and floodlights that had been set up to illuminate the landscaped grounds there was more than enough to see by. What struck me more was the temperature change, Canberra was likely twenty or thirty degrees hotter and significantly drier than Brockton Bay had been.

I heard someone stumble away from the group and throw up. Most everyone was dizzy, myself included. I was glad I was sitting in Atlas' saddle. I was starting to regret wearing the new costume now, being wrapped in even a relatively thin layer of muscle felt like I was wearing layers of heavy clothes in the Bay's summer. I voiced my displeasure, "Note to self: figure out those secondary systems sooner rather than later."

Tattletale stifled a laugh as Felix spoke up, "Well, it could be worse. You could have grown a winter coat."

I felt my lips curl into a smile at the comment as I sorted through the of bugs that had connected to my mind upon arrival. Australia was generally well known for its wildlife with comments like Clockblocker's not being unusual. That said, the Capital hit subzero temperatures yearly, so it didn't have the sort of bug population Americans would expect for Australia. There were a plethora of large beetles in rather odd groupings in the trees, dense swarms of large moths, cicadas, and - I grinned behind my mask- scorpions. I was so going to bring some of those home with me.

The park we'd arrived in was an open field almost entirely circled by trees. Even as I took in the area, there was a rumble of thunder and crack of lightning heralding the arrival of another group of Parahumans. Shortly thereafter, a flying cape in a predominately blue costume shouted and guided us away from our initial location stating that Strider's next group would be arriving shortly. As I had Atlas move towards the buildings the cape had gestured to, I noted that the area we had appeared in was cordoned off with crime scene tape; a similar set up was repeated twice more in the field around where groups were being teleported in. It made sense that specific zones had been set aside for each teleporter to utilize.

"Are you okay?" I blinked and turned towards the voice, finding Armsmaster at Atlas' flank.

"Yeah. Just a little disoriented. I just had a few million minds disconnect from my own only to connect to even more here."

"I'm not going to say I understand the feeling, because I don't," Colin told me in his usual matter-of-fact tone, "But I hope it passes, you're probably going to be integral to whatever plan C&C is cooking up."

"You're not in the command group?"

"Not directly, I'll be in the field with everyone else."

"They're not worried about your copy?"

Colin grinned at that, likely taking it to be an admission that I thought he was powerful enough that I'd be concerned about fighting him. In truth, I wasn't really concerned about the prospect. I had fought him in the past, but I'd rather not have to contend with him and his bug zapper. "No, generally the tinkers aren't much of a problem. Our powers don't really factor in out on the field, so we can plan around fighting ourselves and regulate how much of a threat our copies are to others fairly easily. It's when you get the various other powers interacting with one another that wildcard situations occur."

"Of course."

The blue-clad flier drifted down, "Armsmaster, Command wants you, Network, and someone named Skitter in C&C as soon as possible." If Colin hadn't already told me, I think I'd probably have gaped at the request. I knew from my research, C&C during Khepri battles tended to include a lot of capes who otherwise couldn't enter the zone beyond the normal thinkers and strategists. Without a doubt, I'd be face to face with Alexandria and the rest of the Triumvirate in a few moments.

I swung out of the saddle as Network broke away from the rest of New Wave. The twenty-something-year-old stood apart from the majority of New Wave in the fact that he wore a long coat over the usual bodysuit that continued the general design of the group's costume with a light, sky blue accenting the primary white. Given the way it didn't flare out behind him as he quickly caught up with Armsmaster and me, the coat was likely heavily reinforced with Kevlar or a similar material.

As it turns out, Strider had teleported us to HMAS Harman, a land-bound Australian naval base. Command and Control had taken over one of the buildings. The main room Armsmaster led us into had been completely overtaken by tinker-tech consoles, hologram projectors, and some mundane electronics. Pretty much exactly what you'd expect, all things considered. Tattletale, having followed us in, made her way to one of the consoles with the sort of surety that came from knowing exactly where you belonged.

"Armsmaster," Alexandria greeted the tinker as he led us right to the center of the room. They had set up what I could only describe as a holo-table which was displaying a holographic map of the section of Canberra Khepri had designated as the battlefield.

She turned towards Network and asked, "Still limited to three?"

He nodded, "Yes, ma'am. I've already set up with New Wave, the other two will be control and medical?"

"Right, first I want you to connect me and Skitter."

I tensed. I definitely didn't want anyone in my head. I knew a lot that could get me in trouble, especially with Alexandria, and I knew from hanging out with Panacea that it was difficult to keep secrets from someone while linked by Network. Apparently, Alexandria noticed the reaction as she told me, "Relax, the only thing that's shared through his connections is the thoughts we want to share. As long as your mind doesn't suddenly go into the gutter, you've got nothing to worry about."

I glanced towards Network who just gave me a friendly smile and nod. Great. Thanks a lot. I took a breath that was supposed to calm me, but didn't really do much of anything. Giving up on it, I shunted my nervousness into my swarm and said, "Alright, do it."

I don't know what I expected, but it certainly was not Network falling to the ground while gasping in pain. Everything in the control center had gone deathly quiet. I absently noticed that Armsmaster had deployed his halberd and had it pointed at me.

"You tried to connect with her?" Tattletale asked from where she was standing next to a console. Alexandria nodded. "Network just found out what it's like to touch a mind more powerful and infinitely more vast than his own. How large is your swarm, Skitter?"

"71, 975,394 individuals," I belted off automatically. Armsmaster's halberd drooped a little. I couldn't help smiling at that before adding, "-and growing."

I heard Eidolon, who'd been watching the blips on the holo-table move about the entire time, chuckle.

"He'll be fine," Tattletale added. "Give him a few minutes to recover. He's never had his power backfire before." With that declaration, the Undersider turned back to her console and took a seat before putting her oversized headset on.

Eidolon coughed enough to draw everyone's attention, "We do have teams already engaging Khepri's forces. I think they might want some support from Command." With that, the bustle of the room returned as people went back to their assigned tasks.

I turned towards Alexandria as she began speaking again, "Well. Here's what we want to try."

Khepri had come down directly atop Canberra's National Convention Centre during some event that was being attended by Lord Walston, a British baron or something. He'd been escorted by three members of the King's Men, the UK's government sponsored parahuman team that actually predated the Protectorate by nearly thirty years in this life. Walston was safe, but none of the three capes had made it out. To further complicate matters, the convention center had been guarded by several armed paramilitary types during the event and reports indicated that Khepri had made equivalents of that group as well as the parahumans in attendance. Within an hour of landing, the six chitin spires that the Endbringer used to mark the edges of its territory had appeared and the citizenry evacuated.

Canberra as a whole was pretty open; parks everywhere, roads given wide breadth, and all the buildings were rather squat. Compared to most American cities, Australian cities had a much much lower population density. Canberra was sometimes even referred to as 'several suburbs in search of a city'. For me, this colored the combat that would take place as distances between suitable cover, buildings, and everything else were longer. Blasters and other long range capes would dominate. With the abundance of greenery, I'd be able to draw on a constant and ample supply of bugs for any given stretch of land.

The usual plan with Khepri was to try to draw out her cape replicas in small groups and murder them. Once a sufficient number had been cleared out, larger groups of capes would be sent deeper into the battlefield to try to locate and engage the Endbringer herself. Khepri would generally answer with either classic guerrilla warfare tactics or present herself as a nice juicy target that required the assembled capes to run a gauntlet of her remaining copies. There were occasions where she'd do something completely unexpected, like the time she'd been found playing tea with an abandoned five year old, but generally she followed a set of rules far more closely than other Endbringers.

Our plan tonight was to try to draw her out early and bypass as much of the cape on clone combat as possible. Of course, this plan hinged on me. Alexandria and the others thought I was likely her 'mirror cape' and my appearance would cause a reaction like Behemoth and Dynamo that would cause the Endbringer to break her pattern. If that happened, then we were to try to push her near the edge of the battlefield where the majority of our force would be able to quickly engage and hopefully kill her. In order to help herd her in the direction of our choosing, there'd be three other groups entering along with me and my escort.

If Khepri ignored my presence, my escort and I would drive deeper into the battlefield in an attempt to locate the unmodified stock of Khepri's soldiers. There was also the explicit hope that I could control, or at least disrupt her control over, her minions. I was pretty sure that if I had any chance of doing so, it would be by getting in range of one before Khepri morphed the insectile soldiers into ersatz capes. To facilitate this drive, the teams entering with us would play the role of distraction.

It was seven and a half miles from HMAS Harman to the convention centre where Khepri had landed, the vast majority of it rather open road. It was a general consensus among the thinkers that Khepri wouldn't risk her minions by sending them out to Fyshwick, so we'd have a relatively peaceful journey for the first two miles. To reduce the otherwise lengthy travel time, several vehicles had been appropriated for the operation.

Personally, I wasn't too happy about that latter part. Once Khepri figured out our plan, my team would be taking the brunt of whatever she had ready. Right now she had less than ten capes under her command and I'd be escorted by a large portion of Brockton Bay's contingent. Including myself, that was thirteen more capes she'd have under her command. The other teams combined was close to the same number. In short, Khepri was about to quadruple the number of capes she had on hand.

Armsmaster was going to be leading my escort from the back of his tinker-tech motorcycle which had been teleported here by Kid Win. The rest of our group consisted of the Undersiders, Miss Militia, Aegis, Gallant, Kid Win, Felix, Mason, Rune and Cricket. A fair portion of the group, myself included, would be riding in one of the borrowed vehicles with Miss Militia driving. Rachel, Felix, Aegis, and Kid Win were on our flanks while Rune and Mason, riding a chunk of asphalt the former had pulled out the ground, would bring up the rear. The vehicle, some variant of the Range Rover according to Miss Militia, thankfully had enough room in the open back for Gallant, Grue, Regent, and I to sit without anyone intruding on one another's personal space.

"So," Regent started, "not that I'm against it or anything, but why is Skitter riding with us? She has her own mount."

Regent saying that made me realize that everyone had given me more breadth, likely due to the insects crawling about me. The majority of the members of my swarm that wouldn't have been able to keep up with us were piled around me, on Atlas and Rachel's dogs, or stowing away wherever they could in the Rover with us. They were a paltry sum compared to the amount I had in flight around Atlas, our convoy, or flowing through the land more discretely.

"Skitter's the VIP. She's going to be as close to the middle of our formation to ensure maximum protection," Gallant explained.

"Besides, while being mounted on Atlas might improve my mobility, I'd be an easier target for enemy fire and we'd lose the utility that he provides."

"Utility?" Cricket asked from her spot in the passenger seat.

"Another set of eyes and ears on the surroundings, another flying brute that can intercede as necessary."

"And it's strong enough to fly carrying two Chubsters, according to Tattletale at least," Regent supplied, drawing chuckles from everyone.

"I'll have you know that Chubster is actually a rather respectable cape," Miss Militia responded. There were a few snorts and stifled comments in response. I think I even heard Armsmaster grunt to cover his own response. "He is," Miss Militia insisted.

The ride continued in that manner, with light banter being exchanged and the occasional prodding for specifics on powers. Cricket asked Felix if she was 'black like her fur', so she'd know if she was supposed to hate her on principle of being a Nazi. Kid Win instructed Grue and Regent on how to use the blaster rifle and pistols he'd lent them. I could imagine the looks on the faces of all those involved in that conversation, especially Armsmaster and Miss Militia when they added comments about general gun safety into the mix.

Rune and Mason talked about how their powers could interact with one another. The former mentioned that she maintained control of touched objects for up to three minutes with the duration decreasing sharply with range. They also figured out that Mason's control over the materials in her purview was absolute, or at least a higher 'priority' than Rune's. Rune could still control things somewhat if Mason didn't try to 'resist' her efforts. This resulted in Mason 'flying' around the convoy thanks to Rune's telekinesis.

The chatter died off by the time we passed Fyshwick and entered the area we expected to start encountering opponents. I could practically feel the tension mounting in our little group. Grue checked over his borrowed weapon, Gallant drummed his fingers on his armored leg, and other little signs that everyone was nervous and tense now that it really felt like we were entering enemy territory. And then I heard Felix start singing.

"Revvin' up your engine
Listen to her howlin' roar
Metal under tension
Beggin' you to touch and go

Highway to the Danger Zone
Ride into the Danger Zone"

For someone whose voice was distorted by their transformation, Felix was really, really good at singing. It said something about her fitness that she was able to sing so well despite the fact she was keeping pace with our convoy. Granted, she was on all fours, but still. I could see Gallant crack a silly grin at the werecat's continued singing as Regent said, "I feel like I should know this song."

"It's Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins, it was featured in the Earth Aleph movie Top Gun," Miss Militia answered. Regent made a 'ah ha' sound as Felix continued singing. If I wasn't mistaken, at some point Armsmaster had started humming along.

Everything changed in a few short moments. The first indication had been the sudden appearance of a rolling, unnatural fog. Before we even had a chance to slow down, it had consumed us. I recognized the effects immediately and yelled, knowing only Grue and maybe Cricket would hear me, "We're engaging EBC Grue!"

I kicked myself for not noticing the effects of Grue's power before it was too late to warn the others. Khepri had inverted the color of Grue's power. This wasn't unusual for Khepri either. When she transformed her minions into copies of her opposition, she made alterations to their appearance that made distinguishing original and clone simplicity itself. This thick, white fog was a good example of such changes. The Endbringer even outfitted the copies in variants of the original's equipment, past and present. It'd look different, but it was identical in function. The Endbringer even did this with the armbands Dragon used during these fights.

In today's Endbringer fights, we wore armbands that give continuous updates to Command to help coordinate and to make it easier to find important capes during the chaos. It made coordination a hell lot easier than the bands I was accustomed to from my previous life. Command had tried to exploit the fact the clones would wind up with identical bands, but Khepri had gotten smart and gone old school.

Past fights had used the armbands I was more familiar with which only signaled Command in certain situations: it was activated using the buttons or when the cape wearing it went down or died. Khepri now used this older design to avoid allowing Command to track her minions. Dragon, in an effort to prevent confusion, had set up the signals from older armbands to display with an 'EBC', short for Endbringer clone, prefix ahead of the original's codename.

Moments after entering the fog, I heard a distant 'whoosh' and was thrown into a vertigo-inducing flip, roll, or something else. I had no idea. It happened fast enough that I could only tell I was moving, that I'd left my seat with a jerk, and that right before I hit the ground I was almost completely inverted. I lost a large portion of the bugs that were riding along thanks to what I was rapidly realizing had been an explosion.

The rover was upside down and being lifted off the ground by Gallant. The Ward's entire body was trembling with the effort. Grue was pulling Regent out from beneath it. The younger boy's left arm had been crushed by the vehicle landing on it. Miss Militia was suspended from her seat by way of her seat belt and from what I could tell had manifested a pump shotgun to fend off anything that tried to take advantage of her situation. Cricket was...not in the vehicle.

Cricket down, FC-1.

I pushed myself to my feet gasping in pain. I'd hurt my everything in the landing...or flight...or the explosion itself. I staggered as I gained my balance and tried to orient myself. The fog seemed to be thinning, the sensory deprivation Grue's power created was almost entirely missing now. Well, at least in my general area. Further out the copy's power still lingered, making a wide circle. Armsmaster had turned back around and grouped up with Rune, Mason, and Aegis. Kid Win was circling over the ruined Rover, weapons held at the ready looking for targets. Bitch and her dogs were moving towards the wreck. Felix seemed to be fighting something already within the mist. Others were converging.

Before I had a chance to even take a step towards the wreck, one Bitch's dogs burst forth from the fog. At about the same moment I realized it had no bugs on it, and thus wasn't one of Rachel's, I was tackled by the beast. Pain followed as it closed its jaws around my midsection and shook me about like a rag doll. I couldn't even get my swarm attacking it, or even consider it, before the mutant released me and sent my form sailing through the air and further from my allies.

Alexandria hated Khepri battles. She and the others that could possibly kill the bug queen had to sit on the sidelines else they lose more capes to their own clones. They had seen it happen on more than one occasion, despite the Endbringer actually telling them the 'rules' by which to fight her by.

This battle was, in Alexandria's mind at least, worse than the average because of their plan. They were hoping that Skitter, the girl whose weaker alternate reality version managed to kill her, would cause a reaction from Khepri in much the same way Surge or Dynamo had their respective Endbringers. Armsmaster had echoed the comments of Contessa, that the child might even be able to control the Endbringer's minions. Anything would do, they had a number of teams just outside the battlefield already waiting in Dragon's transports ready to react to any openings caused by the cape.

"We've made contact," Skitter's discordant voice came over the speakers. It was followed by a very human grunt of pain. "Transport was hit by an explosion. Only one I can't account for is Cricket. EBC Bi-Hellhound, Grue, and maybe Militia on site. Others too. I've been separated from th-"

Skitter's voice cut off mid sentence as a rain of small, sharp pops followed. As the girl's almost ragged breathing came through the speakers, one of the large monitors in the command center snapped onto what must have been a feed from the cape's head mounted cameras. She stumbled out of the white fog that had encapsulated the convoy's route and was met with a bright flash of light.

"Looks like Gallant's copy. His armor looks rusted. It's sealed up, can't get my bugs in. Trying to pick me off from range."

One of the operators in the center followed, "Should we send someone to assist?"

"Negative. Keep to the plan," Alexandria replied almost automatically. She wanted to see how Skitter managed on her own. If the girl had trouble dealing with one cape, then the operation was likely doomed as the teams would have to more closely protect Skitter. Right now, while it looked like she'd been singled out, the encounter wasn't outside of the realm of things they had come to expect from Khepri.

"Can't control any of the copies. Can't sense them," Skitter relayed. In the short time she'd been out the mist, she had become far more sure-footed and agile. Another of the monitors had started displaying a different view of the encounter as seen from one of the camera drones. The chitin-clad cape was almost gracefully dodging blast after blast of brilliant light as she closed with the Ward's copy.

Even as Alexandria wondered what Skitter intended to do about the fact EBC Gallant was raining blasts down on her from the safety of the roof of an apartment complex, a black tide swept in from behind the fake Ward. The chitinous wave caught him around the shins and dragged him over the edge of the roof. Skitter was on him almost before the clone had regained its feet. The girl juked to the left, preemptively avoiding a jab from the armored copy. What followed demonstrated the insect controller's familiarity with close quarters combat.

Skitter practically danced around her opponent, evading or redirecting armor assisted punches and blasts of emotion altering light with almost no effort while delivering brutal attacks with both her own body and her swarm. The swarm itself was so dense around the two combatants that it was hard to tell exactly what was happening at times, but it was clear that EBC Gallant's movements were much slower than Alexandria would expect if not for his recent fall. It wasn't until she saw a thin plate of armor dangling free that Alexandria realized how Skitter intended to actually remove the threat. There was a grunt of pain from the copy as chitin claws trailed streamers of crimson. Alexandria noted the girl was trembling as she disengaged, seeming content with scoring a claw attack on the now exposed armpit of her adversary.

"Skitter, I just saw a flier heading towards you," Tattletale said. Skitter had specifically requested that she be given the role of her dispatch officer. Given that she was a villain from the same city, Tattletale was surprisingly friendly towards the bug-themed heroine. Maybe there was a connection there to be ferreted out. Whatever the reason, Alexandria intended to ask some very pointed questions about the thinker's observations after this was all over.

"I know, it's Aegis," said heroine responded, the insect sounds lacking any sort of inflection to tell what she thought about it. The feed jerked about as the girl maneuvered away from the collapsing form of Gallant's copy before she added, "The copies are biologically identical to their counterparts. I may not be able to control them after they transform, but they've got no special defenses."

Someone, Dragon most likely, switched the monitor showing Skitter's point of view to a camera drone's that had eyes on the situation. It panned back, catching a miscolored Aegis flying into the area only to practically disappear as it was intercepted by something else. The drone repositioned and acquired focus on the flier's position only to find that Skitter's mount was literally pulling the limbs off of the copy that had been impaled on its massive horn.

"Holy shit," someone said, voicing Alexandria's initial thought. Director Piggot had written in a report that the massive insect was likely as durable as an armored vehicle and slapped a low brute ranking on the beast. Watching as it methodically tore the clone of one of Brockton Bay's more durable parahumans apart, Alexandria was mentally revising its rating.

EBC Gallant deceased, FC-1. EBC Aegis down, FC-3.

Skitter's heavy breathing was audible through the swarm's voice as she spoke, "Note: enemy copies possess not just abilities, equipment, and biology, but also skills of their originals. While they use different tactics, their general fighting style is the same. Just more desperate and less sense of self preservation."

"Copy that," Tattletale responded. "Skitter, we have eyes on additional copies heading your way. I'm noticing that the majority of those directed towards you are Wards and other heroes."

"Already starting to sense some. Suggestions, Tattletale?"

"I'm thinking that Khepri is selecting which capes to pit against you based not only with the intention of removing you from the field, but also driving a wedge between you and the other heroes by showing them your willingness to brutally wound and kill someone that looks and acts exactly like them," The thinker deduced.

"Well, that's annoying."

"Motherfucker, stay still!" Rune shouted as she hurled another piece of rubble at the fleeting form of a white clad Grue. This was easier said than done as the copycat's fog still hung heavily about the area, making it all but impossible to track his movements despite Rune's perch upon a floating chunk of asphalt.

"Rune, divert your attention to the sniper or lay down cover for us," Armsmaster commanded as he caught Mason with his grapple hook and pulled her out of the path of one of Hellhound's monstrosities. One of the other two beasts was treating Aegis like a length of rawhide as the copy of Rachel Lindt stalked towards an injured Kid Win with a length of pipe in her hands. He had been hit by the aforementioned sniper as fog had rolled out across the intersection they were in.

The monstrous canine barreled around, checking an abandoned car in the process and sending it tumbling onto its side. With a vicious snarl, it charged back towards the two heroes. Before he could react, the tinker heard the terrakinetic next to him order him to 'go limp', the next moment he found himself tipped backwards. Instead of falling onto his back, the tarmac parting around him like water. The van-sized beast charged right over him before angling toward the recovering Kid Win.

The Ward noticed the charge with enough time to fire a quick series of shots off at Hellhound's copy while throwing himself out of the path of the canine. The maneuver would have been successful if the beast hadn't thrown its head to the side so as to clip him in the side as it passed. There was still enough force behind the hit to send the teen skidding into the white mist as the creature plowed headlong after him.

Rune touched the building she'd been pulling apart for ammunition and sent a massive chunk of the facade crashing into the road, effectively cutting off the sniper's view of her allies.

"Hal-beard, I've blocked the path," the teen called out.

"Good, focus on the dogs."

"There's another coming!" Mason shouted as the last of the three beasts burst out of the fog from the behind the heroes.

"What are they doing?" Gallant asked as he carefully bound Regent's mangled arm with bandages and into a makeshift sling. Where it was visible, the teen's bare skin was pale and slick with sweat. Despite this, he'd been adamant that he wasn't going to leave them until his copy had been dealt with.

"EBC Kid Win is doing hit and run attacks on Bitch, her copy and mine are working over the others. Regent and a few I don't recognize stalking around," Grue reported.

"And you?" The Ward asked sparing a glance in his direction.

"Back to hand to hand with the loss of Kid's weapons, and my comms are shot."

"Man, your visor's cracked right over one eye. Looks like a Terminator eye," the son of Heartbreaker said, drawing attention to the fact Grue's visor had spider-webbed when he had kissed the ground moments before.

Brian mentally berated his teammate, of all the times to actually show dedication to something outside of his own enjoyment, he picked now. Still, he could understand the sentiment, he didn't want to leave the others dealing with his copy alone for too long and as he could actually see through the white clad copy's power, he was in a unique position to do so.

Arrest down, CD-2.

A thought struck him and with a quick 'I'll be back', the small-time villain headed towards the front of the wreck where Miss Militia was still stuck in the driver's seat. She was sawing away at the seat belt holding her in place with a combat knife.

"MM," Grue started only to have a desert eagle, or at least a very large caliber handgun, suddenly pointed at him. He threw his arms up in surrender.

The gun wavered slightly in the heroine's hand as she spoke, "Prove you're our Grue."

"We rode into the Danger Zone."

"Too recent."

Grue was silent for a while as he tried to come up with a better answer. When he did, he said, "A while back I was trying to get away from Shadow Stalker. I tried to get her to leave by taking a girl hostage. She shot me anyway. According to Tattletale, the girl was wearing a camera and the footage, along with the bolt she pulled out of my gut, helped put Stalker away."

The gun disappeared, replaced with a serrated knife as she went back to work sawing on the seat belt, "Fine, what's the situation?"

"Our group consists of you, Gallant, Regent, me, and Cricket. Regent's arm is crushed and I think Cricket's back is broken or something. There's a lot of blood and it looks like she hit a tree at speed."

"Skitter?"

"Couldn't find her, there were some explosions of light to our left, so probably somewhere in that direction. Everyone else is tied up in their own fights. I can see my copy though his smoke. If I had a gun, I could probably remove him from the board," Grue explained.

"What happened to the rifle Kid Win handed you?"

"It got snapped in half during the crash. Gallant's using the barrel as a splint for Regent's arm."

She looked him in the eye, or at least very close to it before forming a large rifle with wooden stock and a large scope mounted atop it, "This is a M21. Fires a seven-point-six-two millimeter round at two thousand eight hundred feet per second. Five round magazine. I want to you shoot only once. Got it?"

"Yes, ma'am," came the reply as the villain took possession of the weapon. He shifted about until he was prone on what had been the ceiling of the cab, the weapon's bipod deployed and the scope aligned with his eye. Over the next few seconds, he adjusted his position and posture according to the woman's instructions.

"Do you have him aligned in the scope?"

"Yeah, he's not moving. Just standing there watching Kid Win fight Bitch's copy."

"Take a breath to steady yourself. As you release it, pull the trigger."

The sound of the rifle firing within the cabin of the overturned Range Rover was deafening. In the back of Brian's mind, he made note to throw his power over the next gun he fired.

EBC Grue deceased, FC-2.

"Good job," Miss Militia remarked.

"I didn't think heads actually exploded when shot," Grue responded, a shiver audible in his voice.

"Boom, headshot," Regent added over the comms.

As awkwardly positioned as they were, the flag bearing cape still managed to pat him on the shoulder in a comforting manner. "Grue. You said Kid Win was fighting EBC Hellhound?"

"She stopped moving when I fired and Kid ran for it. He's coming towards us. I guess he could hear the gun. The fog my copy made is dispersing slowly."

"Good." She tapped her ear before stating, "Gallant, if Regent's well enough to quip, then you can leave him alone long enough to help me out of this seat. Grue will be setting up a wall of his shadow around us before going out there and helping Kid get here."

I ducked and pivoted barely avoiding Cricket's kamas, well, her copy's. Between her and EBC Kid Win, my physical body was being thoroughly suppressed. Cricket alone was enough to push me given that she was intermittently blasting my swarm with her subsonic scream to keep them at bay while we dueled. She was fast, but not inhumanly so. In a way it was like sparring with Felix, only I could keep the werecat tagged with bugs.

Another flurry of blows kept me on the back foot as I tried to remove her support from the field using my swarm. That wasn't going as well as it should have. Chris had apparently added some sort of conical blast mode to his pistols that the copy was using to surprising effect on any direct attacks.

I decided it was long overdue to balance the playing field and called Atlas to me. Atlas, at speed was a sight to behold, more a chitin encased bullet than mount. Still, if there was one thing Kid Win excelled at, it was mobility. The teen's clone expertly juked out the path of Atlas' charge leaving my mount on a collision course with a building. Apparently, Khepri figured removing Atlas from play was more important than having the tinker continue suppressing me as he combined the two pistols in a short rifle and flew after Atlas.

That left me and Cricket. This time when the pit fighter came at me I did something different, I met her halfway. Instead of a claw or parry, I threw a kick. It was pretty much expected that I'd end up hitting the asphalt after she swiped my remaining leg out from under me. I rolled and she chased me with attacks. Two tendrils of bugs came at her causing her to focus on repelling them instead of my fleeting form. I piled on the bugs, pushing another tendril at her as I got to my feet.

At about the same time, Kid Win's copy was closing in on the hole that Atlas had left in the brickwork building he'd crashed into. Anything the size of Atlas takes time to really get up to speed to make that massive horn of his into a deadly lance. More distance than Atlas could plausibly have before reaching the clone. However, what Khepri didn't know was that Atlas' legs were largely based around those of a jumping spider. Jumping spiders can perform leaps that reach up to twenty-five times their body length. It doesn't mean much when you are only millimeters long, but Atlas was about seven feet long. Of course, Atlas weighted more than a proportionate jumping spider did, but I made up for that in part by incorporating the spring-like muscles of a mantis shrimp's raptorial appendages into the mix.

The result, as the tinker's copy soon found out, was that Atlas could leap just over a hundred and sixty feet in a single bound from a stand still. I waited till Chris' copy was within a hundred feet to have Atlas pounce, but still would have missed. The tinker juked, and I only just managed to bring Atlas' foreleg out to catch the edge of the clone's hoverboard. A tendril of bugs slammed into the tinker as he lost balance and ensured he fell from his board. By the time Atlas landed and repositioned himself, Chris' clone had hit the ground seven stories down. Amazingly, the tinker was still alive. He wasn't in any shape to actually put up a fight when I had Atlas drop atop him.

EBC Kid Win deceased, FC-1.

I had bugs on Cricket now. Not that it actually did any good given that the bitch kept shrieking. Still, she was too focused on keeping the swarm from following my orders to use her sonar to help her read my movements. I had been trying to keep her off balance like this since the battle began, attacking with my body and my swarm at random. It hadn't worked so far as Cricket was just plain better at hand to hand than I was. So I decided to cheat. I shot her in the throat with a spine from my right gauntlet. She sputtered, coughed, and choked, hands seeking her neck as her kamas clattered to the ground. I was poised to end her when a grappling hook caught me in the side.

I cursed as I scrambled back to my feet.

Armsmaster. She sent Armsmaster after me. He spun his halberd around as the grappling hook locked into place and it reconfigured into the blade of his weapon. It was almost like she knew the history between the two of us.

"Leave." I almost didn't register that he spoke as he assumed a lower ready stance. I actually recognized it as a stance that Gui used the few times he spared with Aegis or Felix. Did this life's Armsmaster study under Nakamura? It wouldn't be that surprising to me, after all, the agreement between Nakamura and the PRT was something that Colin would have looked to have set up.

"No," I barely even recognized my own voice when I answered. My awareness shrank as he charged. Instinct moved me more than anything, my body swaying out the path of his weapon before I slapped the shaft away. He took the momentum and used it, twisting to have the other end clear his trunk and snap towards me. I slipped out the way and into his guard. Whatever he expected me to follow up with, it wasn't a headbutt and it wasn't for me to follow up by raining off-handed punches onto his helmeted-head. After all, I didn't possess the strength to be a viable threat to him in his armor. But I wasn't looking to injure or wound.

I knew Colin focused almost half his gear's interfaces into his visor, and I wasn't just throwing punches. I was delivering heart-stopping discharges of electricity with every hit. Even if Armsmaster had hardened the systems against an electrical shock, the voltage and frequency of attacks wasn't exactly something you could defend against when it came to such a sensitive system. Considering the growl of annoyance and the way his previously sealed helmet popped open, I was pretty sure I succeeded.

I was also pretty sure, when he backhanded me a foot into the air and about ten away, that I hadn't accounted for what it would feel like to be hit by someone in actual powered armor. Still, as I rolled on the ground groaning from what felt like a dislocated shoulder, I sent select members of my swarm at the clone. Thanks to my swarm sense I was made aware of Cricket. She was charging towards me, both of her blades held high with the intent, no doubt, of putting them through me. I had almost forgotten about her.

My lightning jackets were sending additional electrical shocks into the delicate electronics inside Armsmaster's helmet as I caught the Nazi clone with my foot and guided her over and away from me. The scything blades of her weapons came perilously close to my lenses. Ever the agile one, she rolled with it, came to her feet, and was already turning back towards me when I rolled to the side to avoid Armsmaster's halberd. As I skittered out of reach, I quickly popped open my mask and touched the exposed skin.

While my biology scan could work through the living muscle between my hand and the open air, there was too much material in the way to sense my own biology. As it turned out, I had been right when I guessed that my shoulder had been dislocated. The musculature of my costume was supposed to help prevent that. Failing that, it made it easier to pop it back into place.

EBC Felix down, FC-1

Fake Armsmaster and Cricket weren't going to give me the time to do it though as they were both moving to eviscerate me. I had a solution for that. After all, hand to hand combat had nothing to do with my power. Cricket screamed as a tendril ripped into her. Unlike most tendrils I made with my swarm, this was comprised of only one type of insect. Thorn flies. Despite what I told Panacea, the thorn fly was actually designed to be used against brutes with thick skin. They would perform flybys, driving their edge across the skin splitting it open to allow other members of the swarm access to something they could damage. Against someone without any special defense, they could be used to flay flesh from bone. The tendril turned into a twister entrapping the clone in a tornado of razorblades.

I twisted, barely avoiding the blade of the halberd. Unlike last time, my movement didn't take me away from the red and bronze armored Armsmaster. I kicked at his legs, but whether he knew what I intended or not, he leapt away, spun his halberd and fired the grapple claw at me. I sent my swarm at him and …. of course Colin would finish his bug zapper before I had to fight his evil clone. Why wouldn't he?

Luckily the asphalt wasn't remotely as conductive as the ballroom floor in the Forsberg Gallery, only bugs within about six feet from the point the butt hit the ground died. Still, that complicated matters.

The fake Armsmaster spoke again as the grapple line was reeled in. I pulled myself into a crouch, the hand of my dislocated arm palm flat on the ground as he blabbed at length about how he had ways to neutralize my powers. How he was the better, superior combatant. Typical smug Armsmaster. Some things don't change.

Engaging the cling pads on the palm I pulled myself away from the ground. Raw pain knifed through my existence; I wanted to scream. The pain reached a crescendo in some twisted reflection of an orgasm as the the joint popped back into place. The relief was instantaneous. I got to my feet, and while drawing myself up to my full height countered with a verbal jab of my own. "I've studied you, Khepri," I grinned under my mask. "This was over the second you stepped into the city." I punctuated the statement by silencing the Cricket copy's screams in a permanent manner.

Kid Win kept moving in the direction he had heard a gunshot. Sound was starting to reach him now, he could hear battle far off. Well, likely much closer considering the effects of Grue's power. He was reminded of the warning label on car side mirrors. He shook his head and checked his holsters. Only one was occupied. He had handed off two of his weapons to the Undersiders, and the matching pistol to the weapon sitting in its holster had been lost when he went tumbling into the fog.

With the world largely blotted out, it was easy to lose sight of his objective, but getting distracted now could be fatal. He just needed to keep moving. Just needed to get to Miss Militia. Just-

The Ward cursed as he fell forward tripping over something in the street. He barely kept from kissing the asphalt. Whatever he tripped over had been fairly large. As he got himself into a crouch, curiosity got the better of him and he reached out with his hand, coming in contact with a tuft of soft hair. His hand roamed, discovering that the hair was so abundant it must be fur. That meant he was touching Felix.

He could feel her breathing, as shallow as it was, and if he guessed right his hand was on the side of her neck. "Felix, are you awake?"

As his hand wandered, he found patches of fur slick with some fluid. Blood more than likely, after all, the werecat wasn't responding to his presence. Any hope that the blood wasn't hers disappeared when his fingers found deep gashes and- Kid Win nearly vomited when he realized she was missing her arm. It had been torn off at the shoulder.

Chris had seen a lot of bad injuries in his past life, he'd seen people die before. He had seen when Dean was killed by Leviathan in his previous life. But this was different, he had never felt grave wounds or the life slowly ebb from an ally's body.

Something clamped down on his shoulder and the tinker jumped. A hollow, disembodied voice was in his ear, "Kid, MM sent me to get you. Come on."

"Grue?"

"Yeah, you lent me your rifle. It, uh, kinda broke," the villain said, his hollow voice ringing with some embarrassment.

"What about Felix?"

"That's the clone," Grue said, amusement slipping into his voice. Kid Win felt a pressure and the oppressive whiteout gave way to blackness. Not a moment later, the darkness lifted giving the Ward a clear view of the werecat at his feet. The wounds he had discovered were only the beginning; gashes decorated the feline body, the remaining arm looked like it had been stuck inside a wood chipper or something, and bone was jutting out of the left leg. This was, however, obviously not their ally; the werecat's fur was colored like that of the tabby cat his neighbor owned. He couldn't help noticing that the clone was still alive, watching him with the one eye he could see, and managed in that look to convey a sense of resignation.

EBC Armsmaster deceased, FC-2.

It hadn't even been a minute since the chitin-clad cape had last spoke that Dragon's announcement came over the speakers. By Eidolon's count, that made five enemy capes that Skitter had personally removed from the battlefield. What worried him was that they had not seen her copy yet or some of the more powerful capes that had either entered the battlefield or been caught within when Khepri landed.

Skitter's escorts were still bogged down fighting their own battles while the three other groups that had been deployed as decoys hadn't found much luck. Khepri was making full use of the terrain and relatively short buildings by having a sniper set up on Black Mountain take obscenely precise shots at capes miles away. They had already lost two-

Jackal deceased, CD-3.

Make that three capes to that sniper and he had no idea if any of his capes actually had the range necessary to remove the threat. He didn't even know who the threat was. If it was one thing Eidolon was used to in Khepri battles, it was not having a firm enough grasp on what his own team's powers were. He was currently rolling three thinker powers; a minor precog power that allowed him to look at groups of capes and recognize if any of their powers would interact poorly with one another, a tactical analysis power that had helped him pinpoint the location of the sniper, and a power that allowed him a greater degree of multitasking, so he could listen in on all the conversations, reports, and so forth going on around him.

He watched as the indicators for their side moved about, Whitechapel's team was pushing inward from the south despite having encountered some resistance. The British cape he knew was out for Endbringer blood because SteamStrike, one of the Kingsmen caught in Khepri's arrival and subsequently killed, had been a close relative. The resistance, however, was significantly less than Eidolon had expected. Khepri was harrying the group with guerrilla attacks from her copied paramilitary operatives with only one or two capes supporting. It was a distinctly different strategy than what she was employing against the Brockton Bay group.

He hadn't missed how the tactics the Endbringer was using differed drastically between the groups of that team either. She was mixing divide and conquer tactics with some harassing attacks against Armsmaster and his ilk, while she was almost desperately throwing capes at Skitter. It was a reaction to the girl like they expected, but not one that was actually actionable.

Mason down, FC-2.

"Armsmaster, be aware, we do not have visual on EBC Whitechapel. The thinkers believe she may have been teamed up with Grue."

"Seems reasonable, the fog's only gotten thicker since his copy died," Armsmaster grunted out as he forced two of EBC Hellhound's dogs to keep their distance by swinging his grappling hook about like an oversized flail. He was standing guard over Mason's prone form; the girl had been on the receiving end of one of the beast's charges and summarily knocked unconscious. Aegis was faring a little better as he wrestled the third dog.

"Hal-beard, that's like the third I've smashed," Rune stated, the worry in her voice evident even to him. The girl had taken to launching bits of the road as she'd been herded into the center of the street by laser fire. "That's multiple man right?"

"Multitude, one of the Kingsmen caught at the centre," Armsmaster corrected the Nazi. The cape in question earned his name as he could create duplicates of himself and up to fifty pounds of gear. Luckily the copies could only stray a few dozen meters from the original, but with being paired with shakers like Grue and Whitechapel, it was obvious that Khepri intended to hide the original and feed them a constant trickle of duplicates.

Any further thought went out the window as more dogs came barreling out of the fog, these weren't nearly as large as the three that had been plaguing his group from the onset. It occurred to him that they were probably stray dogs that the Endbringer's puppet had utilized her powers on. At about the same time, more than a few Multitude duplicates emerged with tinker-tech weapons leveled at the group.

They didn't get the chance to fire as yet more dogs appeared, barreling through the gunmen. Colin noted that these new arrivals were even larger than EBC Hellhound's and were covered in deep gashes. Hellhound herself rode the lead mutant, an outright feral snarl escaping her as she leapt from her mount and into the white.

"Rune, swat Aegis' dog," Armsmaster ordered as his weapon connected with one of the smaller dogs with a sickening crack. The young cape didn't give him any back talk and just followed orders, using a chunk of the platform she rode on to knock the dog away. The debris moved in a swinging motion and managed to only connect with the dog, something the girl likely wouldn't have been able to accomplish had she still been under fire.

Aegis, now free to move around, launched himself bodily into another dog that would have slipped in as Armsmaster's weapon came around. The battle was starting to turn as Hellhound, he wasn't sure which one, stumbled out of the fog. The plastic dog mask was nowhere to be seen, but in its place was a collection of welts and free bleeding wounds. The girl that charged out the fog and hit her doppelganger with a length of pipe was barely in better shape.

EBC Hellhound do-

The pipe was brought down again before she'd even fallen to the ground. The sound of bone giving way to steel was lost in the din of battle.

EBC Hellhound deceased, FC-2.

One of the clone's larger dogs wheeled about and charged the victor. Armsmaster, too preoccupied with striking one of the dogs that was attempting to tackle Aegis, almost missed the hound master's reaction. In a surprisingly calm voice she uttered one word.

"Heel."

The mutated dog skidded to a stop in front of her.

EBC Kid Win down, CD-4.

"Tattletale, did I just hear that EBC Kid Win was downed by one of the other teams?" I asked as I tried not to look at the blood slowly pooling around EBC Armsmaster's head from the new hole I had made in his jaw. Armsmaster as I knew him was a bit of a prick, that said I remembered the man far better as Defiant and the repentant hero he became later in life. I had respect for the man as he was in my past life. While I'd yet to interact with this life's version of the man in any notable capacity, seeing him dead by my hand, even if it was just an evil clone, did not sit well with me.

"Yeah. Yeah you did," Tattletale answered, sounding a bit flustered. "In fact, we've got another sighting of additional clones of both Cricket and Gallant too. One apiece."

"Any of the capes neutralized by others?"

"No, just your kills. And there's a few minutes delay between the armband announcement and the appearance of the next clone of that cape."

I searched with my swarm, "I don't see a second Aegis. Huh. Armsmaster's copy is back, heading towards where ours is."

"You're not going to help, are you?"

"No, I'm not. I'm not really helping like this. If anything, they're getting hit harder because of me. No, if I'm going to help in any meaningful way, I'm going to have to find a way put pressure on Khepri herself," I stated grimly as Atlas landed next to me.

I frowned as Atlas leapt into the air and shot forward. With Miss Militia and at least one other cape able to fill a sniper role on the field, I didn't go above the rooftops. I was flying low enough that every so often the tips of Atlas' legs would brush the street.

"Tattletale, I noticed that most of my opponents were coming from the northwest, does that jibe with what you're seeing?"

"Yes. We had a team in Curtin that was getting enemies from the northeast, so she might still be at the convention centre," Tattletale explained.

There was an odd inflection in her voice that I recognized as the one she used she when something was bothering her. I needed to know what she knew, "What does your gut say?"

"I think Khepri's moved from the center. She's been shooting down our drones that get within a mile of Capital Hill."

"You think she's there?"

"Either that or she's using it as a staging ground. She does have a tendency to use government buildings. Maybe she likes being at the seat of local power?"

"Come on," Grue ordered. The Ward was slow to haul himself up and in the end Brian helped him regain his feet. The sooner they were away from Felix's clone, the better. She might be obviously dying, but he had seen bits and pieces of the two werecats fighting. He knew how frighteningly fast she could move when she wanted to. Throw in the strength she possessed and it was very possible that the two boys could be killed within moments.

They were only a few inches from the edge of the clearing he'd made when Grue noticed something. He couldn't see through the fog in front of them, moreover, it was actually thicker than it had been before. His copy's power should have been fading in intensity. The hair on the back of his neck stood up straight, and he spun around.

"Shit," Kid Win muttered from beside him. Grue recognized the figures emerging from the other end of the clearing he'd made. A woman dressed in ornate golden armor and tiara was foremost of the group, behind her was a tinker in steampunk inspired armor, and a woman in a sharp white suit that managed to look inconsequential. These were EBC Gweneviere, SteamStrike, and Whitechapel, respectfully.

SteamStrike hefted a bulky tinker-tech rifle as Kid drew a pistol from a hip holster. Brian's heart was jack hammering in his chest. These three had been covered in the briefing they received. The original of each was an A-Lister that brought a lot of power to the field. Gweneviere was a powerful blaster that could do some serious damage with her kinetic blasts. SteamStrike was a tinker close to, or on, the same level as Armsmaster. He wore a suit of powered armor and wielded surprisingly effective steam powered weaponry. Those two had been in the convention centre when Khepri arrived.

Whitechapel was another of the Kingsmen and had taken the field despite being over the generally accepted power level for combatants, she created a fog that she could compress into blades. Of all of them, the unassuming woman was the real threat. They couldn't run without possibly passing through her fog since it was hard to impossible for even Grue to tell apart from his copy's power. If they could remove her, then Khepri's ability to control the battlefield around them would fall apart.

Mean Machine down, DJ-3.

The armband's announcement seemed to be some sort of signal. Gweneviere leveled both hands at the two Brockton Bay natives. Grue dived to the side feeling, more than seeing, the projectile displacing the space he occupied a moment before. Kid Win had dropped onto his back and was firing his blaster rapidly into the group. The ruby energy bolts rocked SteamStrike as the enemy tinker tried to line up his attack. Grue covered the other two in darkness as he scrambled to his feet. Whitechapel burst out of the black cloud, a snub nosed revolver pointed at the Undersider.

She didn't get the chance to shoot. A bestial roar rent the air, announcing Felix's presence as the werecat pounced out of the fog. Whitechapel's copy spun around just in time to come face to face with the feline as she crashed bodily into her. The positioning was..wrong, Felix's hands found the shoulders while her feet landed on the comparatively diminutive woman's hips. The clone didn't have a hope of supporting the shape shifter's weight and crashed to the ground as her thigh bones snapped under the weight. Felix tilted her head to the side as she ended up on all fours atop the enemy giving Grue an excellent view of the ruin that used to be her left eye. Felix's mouth opened wide and a moment later closed, crushing Whitechapel's skull between her powerful jaws.

EBC Whitechapel deceased, FC-2.

While completely unnecessary given the armband's announcement, Felix ensured that the clone would not be getting up by literally wrenching the head off the body. When she spit the mouthful out, Grue had the misfortune of noticing that it came out in a shotgun-like spread.

Steam strike fired his bulky rifle, which made a distinct sound similar to that of a locomotive's whistle. Luckily, Kid Win had rolled out the line of fire just a moment before, leaving the projectile, a railway tie, to embed itself deeply into the asphalt. The next shot went wide as Felix tackled the enemy tinker bringing them both to the ground. A plate flew into the air as the six hundred pound feline looked to tear through the clone's defenses.

Kid Win was just getting his feet under him when Gweneviere marched out Grue's darkness and let loose a barrage of kinetic bolts at the leather clad cape. Grue was thrown off his feet and juggled by repeated impacts, throwing his form through Whitechapel's lingering fog. When he finally came to a stop, it was a sudden impact that rocked a certain wrecked Range Rover.

Grue down, FC-2.

Alexandria stared at the monitor displaying the feed from Skitter's 'eyecam' as the girl continued flying towards Canberra's Capital Hill. She listened as the bug controller called out locations and numbers of enemy combatants, there were a lot more regular infantry than Alexandria had guessed there would be. If this was any indication, Khepri easily had a large enough force of unpowered combatants that she could have wiped out the currently deployed teams simply by swarming them.

Instead she was utilizing almost exclusively cape copies as she had done in most previous encounters. Skitter's progress slowed and was punctuated by a very human 'humm' of curiosity from the bug-themed cape. Tattletale quickly asked, "What's wrong?"

"I've found a collection of her unmodified drones. Definitely in one of the Capital buildings. They were smashing it up."

"Were?" Alexandria asked.

"Were. I have control now," Skitter stated. There was some odd undercurrent. Not for the first time, Alexandria wished the mirror cape would drop the swarm speech when speaking over the comms, at least then she'd be able to better understand the nuances of the girl's voice. As it was, every time the teen spoke through her swarm many members of the command team shuddered involuntarily. Even if it wasn't a cacophony of noise, Skitter's voice was a seventy three percent match Khepri's own.

Alexandria hadn't been the only one to notice the tone as Tattletale asked, "There's more?"

"Yeah, they resisted when I established control. It was brief but I've never felt anything like that. Biologically speaking, they are exactly what you'd expect. They generally follow the same design principles of arthropods with allowances made to necessity, dedicated lungs, secondary skeleton, and composed of some material that I've never seen before. I don't even have a reference point for that."

"How many do you have right now?" Eidolon asked.

"Nineteen," Skitter replied.

Khepri sighted, AK-2 south bound.

Dragon's announcement sent the control room into an explosion of activity as the numerous capes on standby were contacted and updated with Khepri's position and course. Maps shifted with projected courses as the chatter indicated that several teams of capes had begun to move. It didn't go without notice that Skitter and Capital Hill were in the path of the Endbringer's advance. Eidolon ordered the girl to retreat back towards where her escort was still embroiled in their own combat with the twisted copies.

Skitter's icon hadn't moved as drone feeds of the Endbringer's approach filled the various monitors set up around the command center. The chitin-clad heroine spoke, the swarm managing to sound very small as it conveyed three words.

"I feel her."

-/ Interlude 12: Danny

"I am not an angry man."

That was what Danny kept telling himself. It wasn't exactly a lie. Before the Docks fell on rough times, before Annette died, before his depression, before his little girl became a victim, he'd never really had problems with his temper. He might get angry from time to time, but that was only natural. Everyone got angry, some more than others, some louder than others.

Danny, rail thin and tall, was used to the indignities of the world now. He was used to the urban renewal committees all but laughing at his proposals that he knew would revitalize the city if they were enacted. He was used to coming home and being treated to the tired, defeated expression on his little girl's face. He had known she was having trouble at school even before she had told him. Just as he noticed she was sneaking out the house anytime she thought he'd wouldn't notice or question it. He knew how she came home in the early morning hours and sometimes managed her morning runs on as little as an hour's sleep.

He also knew how quick she was to spend time with him during the off periods of whatever it was she was up to. While they avoided mention of whatever escapades the teenager was engaging in, Danny noticed how hard she tried to rebuild their relationship. He tried to meet her half way, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she felt they'd been falling away for years longer.

He had read numerous parenting books, mostly while in the bookstores that sold them as money was that tight. The tomes provided mountains of conflicting information with little that really helped him. So he did what came naturally to him, he followed his gut. It had, after all, been what led to his meeting with Annette and numerous small victories in his life.

He let Taylor have her space. But he wasn't going let things fall apart agian. He observed his child, took in as much information about her and the world she lived in as he could. He put himself in her shoes, tried to imagine Annette's fierce determination and his pride. He knew he didn't have to worry about her doing drugs or drowning herself in alcohol. She exercised and treated her body with more respect than he ever had his own.

He carefully seeded the house with things to help Taylor, nothing overt that would make her feel like he was pressuring her one way or another. He stocked the fridge with healthy foods, took note of her eating habits, her favorite brands. He left newspapers and magazines about that featured ads related to fitness programs, ways to deal with problems, or new movies playing at the cinema she might like. Anything to help her. He bought her pepper spray to keep her safe on her runs and, when she asked for it, he fronted the money to enroll her in martial arts classes.

Gui Nakamura helped assuage his fears. The legendary Iron Claw was teaching his daughter self-defense and looking after her. Moreover, the man kept Danny abreast of his daughter's progress in the class. Taylor's friendship with Sara was both a blessing and a curse to Danny's mental health. On one hand the girl was exactly the sort of female friend his daughter needed, even if she was a bit older than he'd have expected. She helped ground Taylor and provided her with a sorely needed friend she could turn to for all the things she couldn't or wouldn't bring to him. On the other hand, Danny was pretty sure the girl was responsible for Taylor's frequent absences from home and may be involving her in cape activities more than the Skitter girl had when she had helped Taylor.

Skitter was even more of a stark contrast of blessing and curse than Felix ever could be. The bug-themed vigilante had come out of obscurity to help his daughter and for that he was grateful. That said, she disturbed him. He'd seen videos online depicting how she operated and how she fought. No, fought was too generous of a word, the cape terrorized her victims. Her primary tactic seemed to be ravaging her opponents with swarms of biting and stinging insects. There was no real way to fight or defend agianst that. In many ways, she was more like a biblical plague than person. For his part, Danny was glad that the cape kept her interaction with his daughter to a minimum. He didn't want Taylor influenced by someone like that. Hers was a poisonous influence.

If he was being honest with himself, he didn't know what to make of the fact that Taylor now knew a decent percentage of Brockton Bay's heroes. He was proud of her for being intelligent enough to figure out their identities and more so for having obviously decided to keep the secret to herself. He worried about how she might be influenced by Dean-Gallant, the teen came from one of the wealthiest families in the city and had major political pull. Then again, few relations were truly one sided, perhaps his involvement with Taylor would open his family's eyes to the desperation of the Docks. One could hope.

He met the others, well three of them, Monday. It seemed that the dual life of capes didn't lend itself well to establishing friendships as they were always hiding a large portion of their lives from others; so it came as no surprise that when they gained an acquaintance their own age that was in on their secret, they were keen on developing it into friendship. As Taylor's father, and someone else that was bound by the same nondisclosure agreement, he learned their identities as a matter of course.

Carlos was Aegis, the boy practically screamed natural born leader and he had a humble 'let me help you with that' attitude that was rare to find in teens today. Chris, Kid Win, was almost exactly what he expected a tinker to be, if a little scatterbrained. As he explained it, that was due to seeing all the stuff he could fix in the house. Though from Taylor's expression, Danny was pretty sure he didn't want the boy loose in his home with a screwdriver in hand. Missy was Vista and she was a good counter balance to Sara as far as girlfriends for Taylor went. They were good kids and if they represented the future of the heroes that would protect the city he had cause for hope.

There was more personal hope as well. As paradoxical as it seemed, Taylor actually seemed to have grown in the wake of the locker incident. She was more confident in herself, held her head high, and didn't look nearly as haunted as she had before. The locker had become her baptism of fire, and threw her qualities into stark relief. The sharp intellect she inherited from Annette was now tempered with wisdom beyond her years. Her gait, which had for so long been the shuffle of the condemned to the gallows, had given way to a purposeful stride.

Taylor, he wouldn't say was becoming her own person as much as she had already became that person and was just clearing away the dust to find the result. Danny was proud of her, proud of the woman she was becoming. Taylor asking to stay with the Holdens as they waited for news of Sara moved him. He couldn't imagine what it must be like for the Holdens or the parents of the Wards who went.. no, he could. He knew because he felt it every time Taylor had left the house to return to Winslow after the locker happened. He remembered the nervous worry and the impotent rage that filled him as his mind conjured worst case scenario after worst case scenario to torture him.

His thoughts turned to the other woman in his life. Miss Militia. His feelings and thoughts for her were a thorny creature. On one hand he couldn't deny his attraction to the heroine and the apparent reciprocation of those feelings but he was still at times haunted by bittersweet memories of Annette. He didn't think he was or would ever be over his loss of the English teacher and he didn't think it was quite fair to Miss Militia to commit to any sort of relationship with the woman until he was. Still the mutual attraction was there and it wasn't going to go away. In fact, with how often they saw each other in regards to the lawsuit against Winslow and everything the PRT was doing, it was only going to grow.

When he first met the scarf-wearing cape, he'd been distrustful of the fervor she brought to the case. Like everyone, he'd seen the Protectorate member on television from time to time and knew about the earnest heroic nature the woman projected. He had always assumed that it was just that, a projection; an artificial personality created to sooth the public. Danny didn't believe there were many real heroes, rather he was of the mind that the personas the Protectorate capes presented were as fake as those used by professional wrestlers.

Still, he wasn't going to turn away anything that could potentially help his daughter. In a short time however he'd come to realize that Miss Militia wasn't simply playing a role. That she really did want to help his child. It didn't even have anything to do with the fact that Skitter had been the one to bring the matter to her attention or that the PRT's director was demanding action. It didn't even matter that one of Taylor's bullies had been a probationary Ward.

Danny wasn't raised a fool and he was intelligent enough to connect the dots. The only way Skitter and Taylor could have drawn such a reaction from the PRT was if one of their capes had been directly involved. Even if Danny hadn't had those suppsions, when Taylor's bug-controlling friend had beat Shadow Stalker senseless and the PRT's dissmissal only days later would have raised red flags. He knew from their conversations that Miss Militia oversaw the local Wards team, so there was likely some guilt over her not noticing her Ward's behavoir out of costume. But all of that didn't changge the fact that she wanted to set things right because the situation disgusted her.

It wasn't just that the heroine was interested in helping his daughter that drew his attention. Or the figure she managed to cut in military fagtiues. Miss Militia was keenly intelligent, truly cared about the community, and oh so much more. There was a natural chemistry there that even Danny, for all his social ineptitude, noticed. They bantered and made each other laugh and smile. There was more these days for Danny to smile about.

-/

"Danny?" The voice jolted him out of his reverie and he looked to the door of his office. Kurt was there, he looked a bit concerned.

"What's up?" He asked, absentmindedly waving his friend in.

"Gerry saw some Empire thugs roaming around nearby on his way in," Kurt said as he deposited himself in the chair on the other side of Danny's cheap desk.

"Were they with Purity?" he asked. The glowing cape had been sighted earlier, little more than a bright streak in the sky than anything. Still, of all the Empires capes to have to deal with she was probably the one least likely to just blast people to smithereens at the slightest provocation. When the Empire sent people by to try to recruit from the Association, she was generally more level-headed than the other lieutenants. The woman was a decent negotiator; reasonable, well-spoken, and powerful enough it was impossible to forget just what she could do to someone that tried to pick a fight with her. Sometimes when he spoke to the woman he felt like she was trying harder to come up with racist justification for whatever she thought was right than letting that corrupt ideology guide her. Strangely, she hadn't been part of the groups Kaiser had sent in months.

"No, just thugs in a technical," Kurt answered.

Technicals, civilian trucks with mounted machine gun turrets, where pretty much the various gangs' heaviest options outside of capes. There was the occasional rocket launcher rumored about and the empire, according to Nick, even had a tank stashed away somewhere.

The gangs, thankfully, were not the only ones out in force. Both the PRT and Brockton Bay PD were highly visible due to the tactical alert that went out with every Endbringer attack. It was an attempt to quell the rise of crime that came as the braver, bolder, and inevitability dumber criminal elements tried to capitalize on the absence of the city's heroes. The regular police were understaffed and underfunded, but they were also willing to barter. Thanks to the morning's wheeling and dealing, over half of the Dockworker's Association were filling temporary positions within the police force to help swell their numbers.

Adams, Danny's boss, had been livid when he found out Danny had once again cut him completely out the loop. The man only maintained his position in the Association due to familial connections and, if Danny was being honest, was only head of the Association in title. To the men and women of the Association at large, Danny filled the role better.

"City's really ready to explode. Almost as bad as it was when we'd gone on strike." His friend stated, his tone somewhere between wistful of times gone and fearful of times coming. The strike had been a fool's idea and signaled the end of the Association's influence in the city. Before, the city council actually listened and put mind to ideas Danny and others from the Association proposed. In many ways, the Association had wielded power equal to, possibly even exceeding, that of the gangs themselves. Now dealings with the Association was colored by the results of that strike.

It was smart to be fearful of what lay ahead for Brockton Bay. For the Dockworkers' Association, people who had to keep an ear to the ground, the writing on the wall was in bright neon. War was coming. The situation with the gangs was coming to a head and already the heroes had shifted from trying to stem the tide to shoring up defenses and removing the worst from the field. If the reports he heard were true, the Protectorate, Skitter, and the Undersiders had performed a joint raid on several Empire store houses to remove some of the gangs more heavy armaments from play.

Quiver on the other hand, was going after capes, chipping away at the true power behind the various gangs. In the last few weeks, he had killed no less than five gang affiliated capes. At least one in their residence, or rather what passed for residence when it came to a Merchant. Danny voiced the thought, "Worse. We didn't have vigilantes murdering capes in their homes."

Other gangs, the less notable ones, were bunkering down or, like the Undersiders, looking to help soften the blow. Rachel Lindt had shown up a few days before and left an absolutely massive, but well trained, black lab to act as a guard dog for the Association's offices. Hellhound had left with a simple warning to "take care of him, or else." Danny had spent the rest of the day figuring out who 'Tattletale' was and why she'd think it was important to provide the Association with some measure of protection.

"Talking about the archer?" Kurt asked and Danny's mind had to jump tracks.

He shifted, wincing as the old chair under him groaned in protest. An arrest warrant had been issued for the boy long before the most recent string of murders owing to the body count he'd been slowly adding to over his relatively short career, "Yes. The hell is that kid thinking? I mean, it was only a Merchant, but that sort of thing gets others twitching to kill you."

"Who knows. The heroes of the city seem to be getting more out of control by the day. First, we had Shadow Stalker leaving people pinned to walls, Voltage reportedly killing some schmuck by frying his brain, Quiver stealing supplies from the police and outright killing, and now we've got a bug girl who's terrorizing the city and having public fist fights with other 'heroes'. Where exactly is the divide between hero and villain, again? It's getting hard to tell the good guys from the bad," Kurt ranted, his motions punctuating the tirade.

It was a sore subject for him, he'd been a cape geek before things really went to hell in the Bay and had been disillusioned when he met Armsmaster during the tinker's tenure as the head of the local Wards team. Things had only gone south from there in the burly man's opinion as the more traditionally heroic capes of the city fell one by one. Kurt only really held out hope now for Dauntless.

"I know what you mean. But Skitter, the bug girl, she's not that bad," Danny defended. He felt it his duty to defend the hero that'd protected his daughter when the school wouldn't, no matter what he privately thought of the girl. He still couldn't believe how deep the corruption at Winslow went; the lawyer the PRT had set them up with had been a godsend in helping sort out the mess. Skitter had really come through for them on this.

"Not that bad? She masquerades as a freaking Endbringer!" Kurt exclaimed, punctuating the sentence by throwing up his thick arms. Khepri was one of the most well known of the Endbringers, especially after she dropped into the middle of a Denver football game in 2009. While the Mile High Stadium had immediately evacuated, cameras were left behind in the rush including many that were still broadcasting. It had been an enlightening experience as the Endbringer had passed the time waiting for the capes to show by playing a super powered game of football through her minions. The Protectorate reported that the encounter had been odd, and to prove it released censored video of some of her more 'usual' outings. Even before that, the occasional video of an Endbringer would surface on the internet and Khepri was no exception to that.

Still, Danny couldn't help but sigh. He did have his own misgiving about the insect-themed heroine, but he thought it was obvious she was on the side of angels despite her flaws, "She helped Taylor."

"I didn't know. Is my goddaughter okay?" Kurt asked worry crossing his features. It didn't take a genius to figure out why, Skitter usually focused on the scum of the city. Any contact between her and Taylor suggested the involvement of such cretins, something you didn't wish on anyone's child.

Danny chuckled, "Okay? It wasn't like you think Kurt, but no. She's not okay. She's more than fine. Skitter found out Taylor was being bullied in school to a sickening degree and went out and put the screws to the powers that be until they committed to action. Taylor's been transferred to Arcadia."

After a quiet moment Kurt's face split with a broad grin, "Is it wrong I'm imagining Skitter appearing in some poor school board member's bedroom and doing a Batman voice? How would that even work with the creepy voice Khepri does?"

-/ Author Notes:

I am in fact still alive. Amazing isn't it?

So, I've been kinda lazy when it comes to updating the story here on . I can ear you saying 'no shit'. I'm getting off my ass a little. Re-reading through these chapters to try and catch more mistakes before posting them up here. It's going to be rather sporadic, not because of that, but rather because I'm still writing other chapters. At the moment that's Chapter 16. I'm also, when the mood strikes me, rewriting the earlier chapters to clean up formatting (like the bit conversation blocks) and generally get rid of that robotic tone that was omnipresent there. But posting here and working on the rewrites are secondary to getting the next chapter written.

Anyway, Chapter 13 is going to be immediately followed by 14, because it would just be mean to leave you guys hanging. I did the same thing when I initially wrote and posted these chapters on Spacebattles.