I almost forgot about the electrolarynx. Fortunately, my fucked up throat gave me a helpful reminder when I choked on the train of cusses directed at Stormtiger. He grunted, maybe in amusement at my sorry state.

"Did you forget about the training sesh this morning?" he asked me. His tone was one of vindictive humor. "What'll Victor say when he sees you like this? Haha!"

The Nazi bastard actually enunciated the"ha-ha." I was disgusted. I was also terrified. My mind was scrambling for what I remembered of Stormtiger in canon, and what I got was not comforting in the slightest. Not only was he sadistic and ruthless with his stupidly overpowered aerokinesis, he was also pretty perceptive. And an old comrade of Cricket's. He would definitely notice anything wrong with my behavior.

Fuck. What would Cricket do in this situation? Well, she probably wouldn't have tossed her kekse in the first place. But if she did, and she got caught, then she would be furious.

But then how would she react? I didn't know much of her. She had sonic powers that obviously could make people sick. They had also been used to cancel out other signals - I vaguely recalled her shutting down Shatterbird and screwing with Skitter - and as echolocation. Right.

In Worm, powers are personality: a sum total of that cape's background, their response to trauma, and the development of their character after the fact. If you figure out a cape's powers, you can deduce a lot about who they are as a person, too. Well, that's assuming you understand the connection between powers and trigger events.

To put it simply, I do.

I'd put thought into the nuances of Cricket's powers before, but I'd never had to do it so quickly. She was a Thinker built for rough-and-tumble combat, considering her enhanced reflexes and her echolocation. My brain snapped the pieces together. Considering what I knew about Thinker trigger events...a frustration at a system, a realization? That made sense.

And then there was the sonic - well, subsonic - aspect of her powers. I had to take a wild guess there. She probably wanted attention in some way, got it, but it turned out badly for her. That might explain why she had fucked up ideas of what to do for attention. Her wardrobe came to mind.

But that didn't help me. I needed to know how she would respond to confrontation. The answer was a bit obvious when it hit me: she'd take the oblique angle. She might be a front lines fighter, but she wasn't a direct attacker. She also wasn't the type to bandy words.

I cut off that train of thought, satisfied with my conclusion. Then I cursed myself for the tangent I'd gone off on. I'd left Stormtiger waiting for a response…

Only that wasn't true. My eyes refocused on the buff Nazi. He still looked as smug as he had when he'd first reminded me of our training session. Of his and Cricket's training session, I mean. Whatever.

Right. I was so stupid. Cricket didn't just have superhuman reflexes; her whole perception of time could cranked up into overdrive. Maybe I could just think faster. If that was true...well, first of all, holy crap was Cricket's power set broken. And also, holy crap was that useful.

With my insight into characters, both remembered from canon and extrapolated from wildbow's little knowledge bombs, alongside Cricket's ability to think way, way faster than anyone else...the options weren't limitless, but they were pretty broad.

But my enhanced processing time couldn't delay the interaction forever. I pressed the electrolarynx to my throat. My voice came out, garbled and electronic, but understandable. "Fuck off."

Stormtiger just roared with laughter at the invective. He jammed his big, meaty hands into the pockets of his stupid Hugo Boss cargo pants and walked away.

I pondered his power. Wildbow had once said that powers fit themes, aspects of someone's background. He'd specifically mentioned air as an indication of aimlessness, detachment. What did that mean for Stormtiger? He must have spent years without a home, without a place in the world, with nothing to push him on to the next fight. That could really mess a person up.

But for this racist fuck, it just made me despise him more. He had no obligation to the Empire, and I was pretty sure he didn't even buy into the anti-minority rhetoric. So what the hell was an aimless maverick like him doing with Empire 88?

I glared at Stormtiger's back as he walked away. I hated everything about him. Except maybe his sense of style. I had to admit, the bastard could pull off the jackbooted Nazi-zilla chic way better than Cricket.

Empire 88's training facility was located in a sprawling apartment above a quaint Starbucks cafe. I knew that the Empire was all about "white power", but, like, seriously?

I entered the repurposed dance studio at Stormtiger's side, already feeling a deep soreness in all of my joints.

When I was in tenth grade, my dad had tried to get me to compete in sports. I hadn't taken to it well. What I had hated the most, though, were the full-body aches that I'd wake up with every morning. My dad had told me the pain would stop in a couple weeks. I never kept it up long enough to find out.

Occupying Cricket's body, it felt like her workout included getting run over by trucks on the highway. What's more, I knew that her body was accustomed to a lot of intense exertion. Was this just her default state of physical comfort? And if so, how the hell did she fight like this?

A man who I took to be Victor was already standing on a mat, barefoot, dressed in loose Adidas sweatpants and a tank top. I had sort of expected everyone to be wearing a karate uniform, although in retrospect that seemed stupid.

Victor's face split into a pearly white grin when he saw the two of us enter. He crooked a finger in our direction. "You're right on time. Step on up so we can get started; Othala and I have to leave early today."

Stormtiger lumbered over to a far corner where the weights were stacked; I guessed that meant Victor was talking to me. It made sense. Cricket was some sort of ninja fighter, Victor was a martial artist too. Maybe calling him an artist was misleading. Victor's particular style of fighting, if I recalled correctly, made him more of a martial plagiarizer.

I toed off Cricket's beat-up old combat boots and kicked them to the side. I wasn't wearing socks beneath them. Unless it was just my imagination, Victor made a face at that, so I sneered back at him. Not like anyone was going to care if a Nazi supervillainess had stinky feet.

I stepped onto the mat and beckoned at him. The artificial larynx went up to my throat. "Okay. Let's go."

"Aren't you going to stretch first?" Victor asked. I couldn't quite place his tone. Suspicion, disbelief, confusion? I looked over at Stormtiger for an indicator. He was doing yoga or some shit in the corner, straining his arms above his head. Oh. Yeah, I'd fucked up already.

Um. Right. I bent over awkwardly and touched my toes. My top billowed out around me, showing off Cricket's torso and cleavage to everyone in the room. Wait. They were my torso and cleavage now; I had claimed them. I'd forgotten about that.

I sighed and drew myself back up to my full height. Cricket wasn't actually much taller than I am normally - than I was, I corrected myself - so that isn't saying much. I tucked the hem of the errant top into the tight waist of my pants, maybe a bit more forcefully than necessary.

I had to keep my cover airtight. I wanted to be taken seriously, dammit!

I raised my fists, emulating the stance I'd seen in a movie. Or a game or something. Maybe it was Street Fighter. Victor didn't budge, just gazed at me with an increasingly critical eye. Oh, I was so fucked.

It was Cricket's hardwired training that saved me. I could tell that my position was wrong, so I shifted until it felt more natural, limbs loose but at the ready. I stared back levelly at Victor.

He made the first move, charging at me across the mats. I thought it was a joke at first. There was no way he could be taking me seriously, moving towards me as slow as he was. Then the realization struck me - of course Cricket's perceptions were amped up in combat too! Then his fist struck me. Apparently they weren't amped up enough.

I ducked under his next haymaker and took a gentle knee to the face for my trouble. He was taking it easy on me. It wasn't just for safety reasons, either - I knew Othala was hanging around somewhere to heal us up if we got hurt. That pissed me off.

I had no background or experience in fighting, but I was faster than Victor by a lot and had Cricket's muscle memory to guide me. I blocked Victor's next incoming punch - not very cleanly, it still hurt my arm - and exploded up at him. A shoulder to the gut, a sweep of my foot to catch him off balance, followed by a solid punch to the chest to knock a bit of the blutbewußtsein out of him.

To his credit, he was sturdy, skilled, and recovered quickly. He recovered fast enough to kick out at me, which I also dodged. I wanted to laugh. This was fucking awesome!

Considering how fast my processing was, I should have known not to make eye contact with him in the middle of the fight. Considering how much time I've spent reading and writing for Worm, I definitely shouldn't have made such a dumb mistake.

"I'd step back, Skitter," Tattletale said. "His power works by proximity, among other things. Physical contact, eye contact and active use of a skill lets him leech them off you…"

I staggered back, reeling from the sudden dip in motor skills as Victor's power took effect. What was unexpected was that Victor had a similar reaction. He hissed and rubbed his head as though nursing a hangover. He looked confused.

Goddammit. His skill draining was as bad as mind reading when it came to differentiating between me and Cricket. I doubted that he was stealing away Cricket's latent muscle memory. What had he taken? My ability to write fanfiction? My knowledge of Worm?

Wow. The fact that those two were the first valued skills that came to mind was kind of sad.

Victor seemed to be more off-kilter from the use of his power than I was. I have to act quickly. What if he realized I wasn't Cricket? Even if he didn't know I was a fanfiction author inserted into his comrade-at-arms, he still might suspect that I was a Master or Changer.

All the time in the world wasn't going to give me a clue on how to get out of this mess, so I did the first thing that came to my mind. As Victor recovered from the shock of stealing my meager mid-combat bantering skills, I kicked him in the head. He dropped to the mat like a sack of Nazi bricks.

"Sorry!" I said dryly, voice buzzing through my artificial larynx. Stormtiger looked up from his weightlifting to see what was wrong. "Guess he did Nazi that one coming."

Damn. I sure hoped that the skills he stole came back over time.