Chapter 9

"So. How do you want to do this?"

Taylor looked up from the cup of caffeine free tea she'd been given and took in the… ursine bomber before her.

"You blew me up."

Armsmaster inclined his head.

"I apologize for that."

She frowned, smothering the urge to spit a wad of mucus out of her mouth.

"No excuses, no 'I thought you were a monster so it's ok'?"

The bear's face shifted, his nose wrinkling as the other cape made what she thought was the equivalent of a grimace.

"Skitter, this is the third time I have… interceded in the course of your career. Initially it merely drove you to villany. Then I detonated an incendiary grenade in your face, and I do know how well aimed that shot was, before leaving you for dead." He paused when a coughing fit over took her. "The child is safe, in case you were interested. Our medic gave him a check up and we had a vet do her best to confirm the results."

Taking a deep breath, she let a centipede crawl up one arm and poke around the cracks in the chitin of that limb, pulling out some small fragments of debris, appreciating a bit of clean air in her sore lungs.

"Thank you for saving us both."

Nodding, the easily eight or nine foot tall bear-man unlatched an ammo belt and set it down on a metal table. Flopping on to the ground, the semi-literal wall of fur and muscle and claws chuffed and met Taylor's unblinking gaze, even if her nictitating membranes did let her cheat a bit there.

"You're welcome. I'm just glad the gun worked. Still, you haven't answered me."

Lying occurred to her for a moment. Telling the man across from her that she was his biggest fan and that she'd even had a crush on him once. That everything was forgiven.

Because deep down she still wanted to be a hero. Bakuda's pain bomb, Armsmaster's firebomb, and everything she'd done hadn't changed that. Even if Taylor was intellectually aware that more than one line had permanently been crossed, there was still the basic reality of the situation they were all in.

Opening her mouth to speak, she coughed and her host politely waited for her to stop. Once silence filled the tent one more time, he picked up a small kettle with the greatest of care and poured Taylor a new cup of tea.

Armsmaster didn't even need to stand up to do it.

"Truth?"

"That is usually the best place to begin."

Skitter ruminated for a few more seconds, sipped at her drink, and let a few spiders finish binding the last cracks in her armor with silk.

"I'm not yelling."

Armsmaster inclined his head.

"You are not, no."

Forcing her muscles to unclench, there was an uncanny second where every part of Skitter's body went limp before she reasserted a… more normal sort of control.

"I would like to."

He shrugged.

"You're welcome to, if it would help."

Opening her mouth, both her jaws and the slicing mandibles behind it, she contended herself with letting the other mutant see exactly how well designed she was for biting down. It also gave her a moment or two to taste the air, different as it was this close to the sea.

"Part of me wonders what you taste like." The organ in her throat that let her speak did its job even more clearly without her mouth locked shut. But simply speaking like that was disgusting enough, as Alec had pointedly told her, and so she snapped her maw closed, parting it only a little to let her words come through un-muffled. "But I came here running away from a fight."

Part of her hated him, remembered the burning pain, and she wanted to hurt the man across from her as badly as she could. But that wouldn't be productive. That wouldn't get her back to Lisa and the others any sooner. And it had been the Tinker staring her down that had ended things with hookwolf. So, pushing the anger down and the physiological responses of that anger into her swarm, Taylor forced herself to accept the fact he'd blown her up and probably saved her life.

"Don't stop." She looked up at the bear's words and, realizing she didn't quite understand what he was asking of her, the hero elaborated. "Stop crushing the cup, please, but not talking. I - we -need to get this done with if we're going to work together in the future."

"What do you mean 'work together'?" Taylor's tone was accusatory, almost hostile, the anger she was suppressing flaring up at the fact that, after everything he had put her through, Armsmaster was still trying to force her to do as she was told. "I brought the kid here-" She stopped, coughing, feeling for a moment like she was drowning. "I brought the kid here, you'll find his parents." Calmer, now that the choking had taken the wind out of her sails and her lungs, she finished her tea, waved away another cup, and leaned back. "That's what you people do. Give the kid back to his parents and take a photo op."

There was silence between them, the young woman forcing herself not to cough and the grown man thinking of how to put things together. In the end it was a bit of a slow revelation but one that, frankly, Skitter should have seen coming.

"Because there's something you can do to actually get more than a single child back to his parents. Right now there's something Home Front needs and has already cost more than a few lives." Looking at him in deep worry, the bug girl couldn't help but know, deep down, that this was going to get worse. "Your cough is terminal. We know what it is and we've been trying to deal with it."

Armsmaster's words hit her harder than Hookwolf's blades had.

"How do you know?"

The hostility was back, but it was a lie, a front, and they both knew it too.

"Fungal spores, sprayed in your face?"

Taylor's power meant she didn't react. Didn't so much as twitch. That was what gave her away.

"It's an infection that grows in your lungs, eventually it branches out. Once it finds your spine it grows all the way up to your brain. Eventually it eats your eyes and it will grow fruiting bodies out of your head. By the end you're essentially a lobotomized zombie, unable to react to anything but cold or heat or intense sound."

She wanted to whimper.

"We can treat you, of course, the rate of progression varies from individual to individual. And depending on your preferences we can put you in quarantine with the other infected who chose to remain alive, or we can give you a more gentle death."

Nodding, she didn't break down.

Part of her wanted to faint - to know that she was on a time limit. Mostly the bug girl simply felt. Let the emotions she was feeling swirl around her and down into her stomach and settle there. Neither broke the silence and both seemed to be a little smaller in the wake of that news.

Skitter's antennae twitched and drooped, her shoulders sagged, and the teenager's chest plates shifted as she took a ragged, shuddering breath.

"Thank you."

Her words were a little empty, but she offered them up.

"For what it's worth, Ms. Hebert, I'm truly sorry it came to all this." The man-bear stood up. "Both before, with Lung and then the Undersiders, and now with what I've told you today and the bomb." His shoulders sagged too, before something passed over the hero and he firmed his spine. Idly, Taylor wondered if his physical transformation had left the once so stoic man with less control over his body. "But you'll want time to rest. I took the liberty of having a room prepared for you in triage. There shouldn't be any attacks today and that will give you a bit of time to rest and think."

Placing a package of teabags on the table next to her, pulled from a small pouch on his utility bandoleer, the great mound of fur began to trundle off.

Waking up alone was nice enough. They'd give her a small curtained off section in the back of a building they'd apparently designated as a medical facility - her swarm had told her there was no one else inside, plenty of beds, and a respectable amount of medical materials before she'd nodded off.

The sheet she'd covered herself with fit poorly over her body. Most things didn't really handle her body plan "well" these days. But it was still a nice thought… Taylor had also apparently chewed the corner off of her pillow in her sleep as well.

'I suppose a bit of silk will fix that. More or less.'

Tasking a small selection of spiders that were reasonably well fed and that had properly developed spinnerets, since not all silk was safe for, well, anyone these days, the Master let her minions slowly work away in the background as she investigated the camp for herself.

As one might expect from a hospital, even a makeshift one, it was a clean, sterile place with tiled floors and a surprisingly large number of windows. Enough that the teenager couldn't really guess at what this place had been before its conversion, but, as she pushed out of the area and started heading towards where she was pretty sure Armsmaster was, the teen was a bit struck by everything going on around her. Perhaps because Taylor didn't know what it was she expected when she came here, that what she found confused her and, frankly, impressed her.

Maybe the young woman had thought that it would be something out of a wartime movie. A small city of tents occupying a bombed out city block or empty field. People milling about and doing all they could to help while more and more people came in, making it even bigger and more complex.

Obviously, she was only half right.

Outpost Alagada, as it was called, was something of a tightly grouped collection of buildings - both temporary and not. Using a gymnasium and the remains of a small private school as the main hub of the place, the walls that ran from the edge or the raised cement sea barrier were sturdy and reinforced, with plenty of watchers keeping a constant vigil. Just in case one of the mindless creatures roaming the streets tried breaking through for a quick meal.

Though the real threat came from those who kept their wits about them.

After all, the gangs had survived the city's nosedive into insanity. Listening to a few of the conversations going around her let Skitter hear about how some, like the recently beefed up Merchants, tried to wreck the place a handful of times. Perhaps desperate to get their hands on whatever Armsmaster and the others managed to put together, or simply burn down an enemy fort and loot it for supplies.

There were also capes.

Not a lot of them, not yet, but there had been cases where someone triggered in the middle of this mess and tried to run roughshod over the normal folk, feeling like they could just throw their weight around.

She wondered if that's what the locals thought of her team.

While it was true that they hadn't joined up with any bigger camp up, they'd played the role of scavengers, pecking away at whoever it was to get what they needed. Normally some of the more aggressive folks. Belatedly, she wondered if one or two attacks here hadn't been because of them smashing up some of those Merchant stash houses.

Food, water, and medicine were king. Miscellaneous goods, too. Simple things like mattresses and pillows. Small comforts that could make the difference when the nights ran colder and fuel was worth its weight in gold.

It was, nonetheless, quite an organized affair.

Some of the classrooms inside the school building had been repurposed for storage and there were also the actual storage spaces, too. Goods that were remaining at the camp were kept safe in interior rooms and supply closets, while items shipped elsewhere or that were expected to be used were stored closer to the coast in a number of warehouses just across the cracked and crumbling street. Even more fortunately they seemed to get some form of plumbing working, no doubt with some help from him.

'I wonder if Alec would call him something dumb like
"A-bear-formerly-known-as-Halberd".' Her thinking stopped for a moment and she internally scowled. 'I'm really spending too much time around him.'

To complete the whole affair there was the smell of something cooking in the air. Obviously me food from the kitchens, but what? It seemed rude to send an army of cockroaches poking around in a place like that, no matter how delicious and, for some reason, frustrating familiar the smell was.

They'd been smart to pick a place like this to set up.

Though the school had only been capable of supporting a couple hundred individuals at any given time, the nearby buildings had been steadily absorbed into the structure. She could see makeshift bridges and gangplanks set up so people could walk directly from one building to the next without having to cross the in places still dangerously broken street, sometimes with new entrances having been carved into the walls for those who'd grown too large to walk through the front.

There were a few thudding footsteps as Armsmaster walked up a nearby metal staircase and she turned to greet her… host.

"How long did it take to set this up?"

The bear next to her hummed in thought, a deep, rumbling sound she felt in her gut.

"The first month was rough. Constant raiding, a lot of hungry mouths, nothing to keep them occupied. There were fights, at one time I had to stop some from rioting. Blood was up, nobody knew whether to trust one another at all."

Skitter wanted to roll her eyes at him.

He spoke like that wasn't the case even now.

"How many places like this do you have set up?"

"I can't part with that information."

Skitter nodded. It was the right choice.

There was a reason why the Undersiders had kept a low profile. Even if Brockton Bay had become hell on earth, there were still those who might hold onto grudges against them and other villains. Because even if they had powers that could make things easier for them, that didn't mean they'd be welcome.

In fact, this entire offer could just be a scheme to lock them up rather than risk the Undersiders coming after outposts like this for food.

She coughed, spine tensing at the reminder.

'Not that I have much choice.'

If only Lisa were here. She didn't know whether the Tinker over there was trying to trick her or not. She knew him to be shrewd, even if well meaning, helping her for the sake of making her indebted to his group wasn't that bad of a deal. But that was assuming he would even deal with her honestly in the first place.

Skitter, however, didn't want to become a zombie.

Just the very graphic description was enough to make her stomach roil unpleasantly. Armsmaster wouldn't lie. He would obfuscate and only tell part of the truth, certainly, but there was no merit to just lying to her when he could have said nothing and let nature take its course.

'He wouldn't do that.'

He may have lied and screwed her over before but Armsmaster was a hero. Still acted like one despite their situation.

'At least I hope so.' Once more frustrated with the lack of Tattletale's ability to draw blood from a stone, Taylor was relying on her gut to guide her through. 'Where does that leave me?'

"So. This isn't it?"

Venturing a question, the other Cape seemed to relax a little once they started speaking about something neutrally.

"No. It 's not." Part of him seemed personally proud about that. "It's nothing official, yet, but most people are calling us Home Front. That's good, it means people have something to trust."

"You and Grue both seemed to worry about reputation a lot." Went unspoken was the 'more than actually getting something done' part. "Wonder if it's a guy thing."

Armsmaster raised an eyebrow.

Taylor didn't scowl, but she did stare him down.

"There is no moral high ground here. You don't get to call me out for that."

Looking her up and down, the hero chuffed.

"I've got at least three feet and six or seven hundred pounds on you." Turning away, he watched the people below them move, a large work crew in particular trying to break apart chunks of asphalt and haul them off. "Reputation is everything. Not just for a cape, but in life. In most lines of business it lets you make deals, get people to work with you, helps prevent trouble. Doing what it is that we do, that I do, it saves lives and ends fights before they start."

Her cough was small, the wad of phlegm she half spat, half vomited up was noisier.

"That's why you took the credit for taking down Lung?"

Being able to Master herself meant that her tone and her body language reflected none of the anger simmering in her belly - both at this man in general and at being forced into a suicide mission.

"Yes and no. I did that so you wouldn't get a reputation that would get you killed." Nodding at one of the buildings Hookwolf had smashed trying to smash her head in, he continued. "Tell me. How would you have stopped someone like Purity, like Fog, like Crusader, or even someone as relatively limited as Rune from crushing your skull in or forcing you to join the Empire? As the person who beat Lung - how would you keep yourself safe, your father safe, and, eventually, your team safe from Oni Lee suicide bombing you in your sleep?"

An angry snarl was strangled before she could let it out and, as she opened her mouth to snap at the man, he simply held out a small slip of paper.

Gingerly perched between two claws it fluttered in the air.

"I found your father, by the way."

The world stopped.

"They aren't actually sure where he is or if he's still alive, but the Dockworkers Union is holed up at their old office and they seized control of a few city blocks. Apparently they're cutting deals with most of the former city workers, cops, firemen, and any other unionized groups they can find. At least the ones trapped between the Merchants and the ABB."

Her hand would have shook if she hadn't been forcing herself to stay calm.

"That… piece of paper… is real?"

"It's a message from one of their runners, yes."

Taylor felt like a little girl again, caught up in the panic and pain of what she'd gone through. So she took the sheet, gingerly, and opened it up. Inside was a short message confirming that one Daniel Hebert, formerly head of hiring for the DWU, was alive as of about three days ago. And also currently missing.

"Fuck you."

There were small tears in her eyes. She couldn't stop them. The coughing didn't help either.

"Fuck you for this."

"You already know the stick, this is the carrot. When your team arrives we can get them settled in and prepare for the briefing. After that, we'll discuss your payment, too."

She wanted to crumple the paper up and throw it in Armsmaster's face.

She wanted to make the bastard choke on it so Taylor could find her dad.

"Whatever." Instead, the Master folded it up, gently, and tucked it inside her bandages. "You already know I had to go to the hospital anyway. What do you get out of this but screwing with my head?"

Sighing, the literal bear of a man seemed to shrink in a little as he leaned against the walkway's railing… the metal only groaning a little.

"Like I said, it's the carrot. More than that, it's an actual apology. Succeed or fail, so long as you come back alive I'll have as much information on your father as I can find."

Maybe it was stubborn, but the villainess couldn't bring herself to just agree.

"What happened to not outing each other? Messing with our civilian lives?"

The hero simply pointed at the literal wall in the distance.

"That changed everything."

And it really was just that simple.

Tattletale

"Hello, is this on? I'm here to pick up a lost child. A couple inches taller than me, has an exoskeleton, got blown the fuck up with a rocket by a hero, kinda scary when she's silent and even scarier when she's talking. Anyone see her?"

Alec was rambling at the gate guards above them, but once she was relatively sure they weren't going to shoot she stopped paying attention.

Lisa was worried.

She worried often about a lot of things.

Though, lately, her worries had been less about how she was going to escape the claws of the man who all but put her on a leash and more about where her next meal was gonna come from, or whether the drinking water was actually drinkable and wouldn't make her go bald from radiation poisoning.

Given she was now covered head to toe in hair, that was a prospect she'd like to avoid.

That and a slow painful death.

But that's beside the point.

Outside of the basic worries that plagued her life, Lisa still had plenty to worry about outside herself. Namely the fact that her team was stranded with her and that one of them had progressively worsening health over the past few weeks. Something her powers could tell but not properly explain.

How could it?

Everything around her was new. It was all a chaotic mesh of alien ecosystems that made little sense, but instead fed into one another in a spiral of insanity. Brockton Bay was topsy turvy and her powers could do little but allow her to slowly unravel how her surroundings worked and their dangers.

There was simply too much new information for her to keep up with.

And that wasn't even taking into account the sensory overload from her new body.

Smell, hearing, taste, sight.

Her entire body had been rearranged into a cross of human and fox. A nightmare for some, a dream for others, and an absolutely giant thorn on her side. Her powers were constantly taking in new information her brain had never had to process. Sometimes she had to take a step back and stay inside a dark room just so she wouldn't get overwhelmed and faint from the shock.

Mostly only on bad days, but the point stood.

"Whatever you dumb brats. We aren't stupid and I'm pretty damn sure that Tinman over there is Grue, which makes the blonde dog girl the spandex bitch, the other bitch actually Bitch, you Regent. And by the way, jackass, you tased me. Bank robbery, Glory Girl busted in the roof to save us ring a bell? So give me one good reason not to tell you to piss off?"

Now officially annoyed, she glanced at the literal ape-man yelling down at them, a rifle casually slung over his shoulder.

"Because if you don't I'll make sure your wife knows you used to jack off while thinking about my ass."

His fellow guards howled with laughter.

"Monkey man's a furry!"

Considering that one of them looked exactly like a humanoid tabby cat and the other was, very strangely, similar in appearance to Newter, one of Faultline's crew, she thought the teasing was a bit unwarranted.

It also confirmed something she'd wanted to check.

The Unwritten rules didn't matter anymore. Granted, that was partly just because of how their new bodies looked, but Lisa thought they had been more careful about going out as a group to make sure at least some of them had retained some sort of anonymity - that they hadn't been making noticeable waves. But between Hookwolf acting like even more of a psycho than usual and the simple fact that it was obvious who, and what, they were, then, well, it would be wrong to expect anyone to play nice at all.

'Well that's a bust.'

No anonymity, no way to sneak into places like this as civilians, and no reason for anyone to sandbag anymore.

And given how the likes of the Merchants and Empire had started taking down names and organizing themselves, it wouldn't be long until every single new arrival was screened just to make sure they weren't a mole trying to spy on their camp, or steal something from them for another group.

She considered it.

But that trick would only work once, and someone probably went and did it before them. Waste of an opportunity to try… plus it would make any future co-operation difficult.

But since these idiots were just standing around talking and laughing while the Undersiders were left to mill around, well, a smidge of payback might be in order. So long as it didn't get anyone shot.

"Well, are you guys gonna let us in or not?"

Regent, surprisingly rather dressed down today, called out with no small shred of annoyance.

"Don't rush it! We sent a runner already!"

She heard Alec snort as the orange skinned salamander-man waved him off.

"Runner! You guys don't have walkie talkies or anything? No smoke signals?"

Tabby Cat man hissed out a laugh.

"Ya think they leave the good stuff with us porchmen?! Nah, man! That's the kinda stuff they leave alone unless we really need it. I'd kill for a convenience store!"

"For batteries?" Lisa couldn't help but ask.

"Nah, condoms!"

And then he got whacked over the head by a baton.

"You know, these guys have their priorities straight." Alec nodded with sage wisdom. She considered wacking her team's pet idiot with a baton.

No use standing around poking fun at the guards when Taylor could burst out of those walls any second now, and Lisa would rather not make more enemies in a city where just about everything wanted a piece of her.

Grue let out a grinding sound of unease.

Lisa felt the same.

They hadn't pointed guns at them yet, even if that could change as soon as they stepped inside. The small outpost was separated from the street by a hastily put together gate, some sort of mechanism having been jury rigged to make sure it couldn't just be pushed open by someone large enough.

And it was large enough that the chuckle heads standing on top of it had plenty of space to walk around and stand next to each other.

'Even worse, this doesn't look like Tinkers bullshit.' The series of metal I beams had sections of wood-plank reinforced metal gates placed in front of sheet metal and, from what her power was suggesting, a shit ton of hescos. Even more surprising was the fact that the gate itself was set on garage door rollers and looked like several, layered slabs of metal secured to a set of anchors on either end and a gantry above. That was all supported by plenty of scaffolding and directly secured to a few buildings framing the edges of the outpost.

She had to take a moment after that, screwing her eyes shut and pushing down the headache that threatened to start knocking. But it gave Lisa a moment to remind herself that even if construction was unlikely to be Armsmaster's field, he probably put together the tools they used to build this in just a few weeks time.

Her small reprieve was soon ended by the groan of machinery grinding to life, gears turning as the stench of diesel filled her nose. All as the gate trundled to one side, opening wide the stronghold's entrance.

Post-apocalypse meets medieval.

'Whoever designed it was having fun.' As much fun as you could have preparing a shelter like this.

"Bossman said you can come in, but no funny business."

The Ape-man adjusted the shotgun over his shoulder. Yes, yes. She saw it the first time, so he didn't need to keep fiddling with it just to prove a point. Or perhaps it was less a show of intimidation and more reassuring himself? Capes were more dangerous and more valuable than ever before.

The PRT was gone.

And Armsmaster was just one man… bear… thing? Possibly there could be other capes here supporting him, but they would be new to their powers and the heroes likely wouldn't encourage putting them on the front lines. Yet.

Either way their group was marched through the front section outpost at a brusque pace. Not that there was a whole lot here to begin with. It was like a guard station at a mall, some equipment was to be expected, but it was meant to watch over a much more important and expensive payload.

A dozen men?

No, less than that. But with enough room to accommodate.

Were they moving somewhere? Patrolling?

There were marks on the ground, as it something had been dragged through the gate, the tracks leading deeper into the outpost. Parallel evenly spaced line scratching the pavement.

'Some kind of box?'

Without any vehicles to pull it, they had to drag it in.

Questions for later.

What was important right now was how the next five minutes went. Bitch had stayed behind with her dogs, waiting outside in case of trouble. And also to avoid starting it. But Grue and Regent were with her, the skeleton man's chrome dome now wrapped in layers of clinging green vines, so if things went badly….

"Hey."

And just like that, thoughts of a possible ambush and prison break disappeared.

"Skitter!"

She didn't rush forward to hug the other girl, but it was a close thing. Lisa did relax her hand a little bit and stopped palming her pocket pistol like this was about to turn into the OK Corral, though.

Alec, Grue and his guest had less decorum.

"Blarrgh."

Opening his jaw wide enough for about half a dozen questing vine-tendrils to start waving around, every single guard flinched. The bug girl simply jerked her head.

"Truce is on. Armsmaster is waiting for us, rest of you, back to work."

Turning around without further comment, the Master only paused long enough to open her jaws slightly, lifting her lower, inner jaw up to give them the insectoid equivalent of a smile. And rather disturbingly, the men complied, with a mixture of sympathetic looks and, in one case, even a pat on the shoulder as he walked past. A pat that Taylor not only permitted, but did not immediately react to.

"Jesus." Alec said. "Who's dying?"

A small series of wet coughs and one word.

"Me."

Two heartbeats and what the insectoid said sunk in.

"Oh."

Tugging his hoodie down, Regent revealed that he was still bothering with a domino mask… and that thick, black-brown lines now covered about a fifth of his face. And the lines took the opportunity to squirm. Grue simply gave the bug girl a pat on the shoulder himself. Skitter smiled again.

"Thanks guys. Tatts?" Not answering outright, Lisa simply pulled her lips tight and shook her head. Taylor paused for just a moment before pushing ahead. "Where's Bitch? I thought she made it away after Hookwolf started chasing me?"

"She did. Figured it would be best to not walk up with a small army."

Any further discussion was ended as the ground shook slightly, an utterly massive bear-man, armed with several power tools and a utility bandoleer, waved them into a cargo container seemingly converted for his use.

There was a moment where everyone but Taylor seemed somewhat taken aback by just how big the Tinker had become, casually as tall as all of them except for Brian while sitting down.

"So, I won't mince words." A single giant claw almost daintily flipped open a map of the city. "Skitter and I have been discussing the only way to save her life. And, quite simply, it's a suicide mission."

Not tapping her power just, yet, the blonde put her actual brain to work first.

"You've already sent teams in and lost contact."

A single glance at the street layout confirmed her worst suspicions.

"Two."

"So now you want us to walk into the single most dangerous place in the city?"

It was Taylor's turn to speak up.

"Just me."

Tattletale didn't even deign to respond to that… or Regent taking the chance to steal a stale bag of Lays potato chips and casually start to eat them. The Tinker could take responsibility for his own damn snacks, especially when he was asking them to do something so, so, so fucking stupid!

"The hospital."

"Yes."

A single nod.

"Ground zero for all the worst crap a city can vomit up, stewed together in an antibiotic resistant cocktail, and set to cook down people just waiting to die."

"Panacea was there, too. Homefront, my organization, confirmed it with Glory Girl."

Thankfully, the Bug-Master staved off the slowly mounting headache for at least a few more seconds.

"Since I was waiting on everyone, I performed a bit of reconnaissance." Skitter gave their host a look that practically screamed 'meh' when his lips pulled back a smidge. "And it's not just two teams that have gone missing either, but civilians, scavengers, and at least one attempt by the Empire to seize Brockton Bay General."

"So if no one can get it - crunch - what are we supposed to do?"

Licking crumbs off his fingers, now that the last of the chips were safely sorted, the slightly scraggly faced Man-Master seemed about as concerned at the prospect of a horrific death as he was at the thought of running out of D batteries.

"I mean, I'm cool with a group suicide, I suppose, so long as I'm not part of the group. But I genuinely have no idea why you want us to do this." A momentary pause as something occurred to him. "Oh. We're expendable. Well, if we're gonna be mercs, I want a gold plated AK and more chips. And payment, too."

Grue let out a rasping laugh, sounding like two pieces of corroded sheet metal frantically trying to manage the horizontal mambo.

"Other than your friend's survival?"

The hero seemed deeply impressed, though not surprised, and simply began to take out a set of novelty markers and small game pieces from various board games.

"All gotta die sometime. If I'm gonna die sooner, I want to at least be able to glitch out my game and catch an error."

Confused, and unsure of how to continue, the adult turned to look at Lisa. She had to fight not to bury her head in her palms. Or plug the giant freakin' predator sitting right in front of her between the eyes. Because now that she was stuck in here, and the stink of very hungry bear was beginning to fill her nose, the Thinker was starting to realize exactly how many calories the hero had to eat a day. And exactly how many calories she would provide, whether roasted, flambeed, or fried.

Making a visible effort to not react violently to the stomach on legs next to her, or her dying friend's once more slowly building cough, or the fact they were signing on for a suicide mission, she instead began to turn towards the simple questions of logistics and probabilities.

And exactly how many bullets would be needed to put an average person in the ground.

The Undersiders

"Man, they really gave us the bottom of the barrel stuff. Just look at this stuff! Fizzy water and cup noodles. And… Crisps? What do they think we are, british? Couldn't they have at least salvaged some actually edible potato chips? I wouldn't feed this to Bitch's dogs if I had to!"

Their departure from Home Front was… quiet.

Or well, had been up until Alec decided he wanted to see what Armsmaster had prepared for them as rations. And then promptly started complaining about it. As if they had any choice but to accept the food and clean water, even if it tasted funny.

They were hurting for options.

"They put any meat in there?" Bitch grunted from ahead of the pack.

Alec hummed, rustling through another bag.

"A package of jerky, actually, make that two. Nothing fresh though! Man, all this food is all dried out, think it might have something to do with why they didn't get fucked up in the explosion?"

Taylor shrugged, leaping from one vine covered roof top to another.

"Stored deep enough? Insulated with enough metal or layers of metal?"

Lisa didn't think that made all that much sense, but maybe if some store had an underground freezer the bomb might not have gotten to the food? Or maybe there was something to do with the packaging that kept it unchanged.

Or maybe it was all the chemicals and preservatives that went into making the stuff.

That would have been ironic.

Fortunately the road had been more or less calm. A few curious glances here and there, sometimes a group huddled inside a store or building would peek out to take a look at them. Stragglers like those weren't exactly rare, but with larger camps being built, she expected that soon enough they'd be leaving and joining up with either Home Front or someone else.

Numbers meant safety, food, and fire. One way or another.

The farther their motley group went, the less people they found, which was probably for the best. She and Alec were each riding on their own dog, while Bitch led from the front. Taylor and Brian flanked them and kept up with their mild trot surprisingly well. Being made out of metal meant their fearless leader didn't get tired and apparently being a bug meant their other fearless leader could make jumps that put olympic athletes to shame.

'At least an IED or a trap won't get us all.'

"Stop." Bitch held up a hand, sitting up on the back of Angela, and the young woman take a deep whiff. "Bad body odor, no rot. Maybe gunpowder." Her skin seemed to ripple and shoots of fur pushed out of her skin for half a second. "Sniper."

And just like that everyone made themselves scarce.

Quickly dropping off the back of their mounts, all three squishies moved to the sides of the road, the hounds behind them, as they all bedded down behind corners or in ditches. Some of their rides still stood out, but it was surprising how quickly you could disappear when the road was strewn was debris and everything around you was badly overgrown.

Grue, however, simply continued to jog forwards.

They'd learned he was rather bullet proof.

So, spinning around a few times, he took in every sight line that might let a sniper bed down outside of Skitter's range, pointed a few times, and the bug-Master slipped down the side of the building she'd been on and began crawling along the back walls of a nearby line of houses.

Walking to where Bitch had been when she first smelled the unseen assailant, Brian breathed out a few wisps of darkness and watched how the breeze pushed it along. Realizing that the wind was flowing from West to East he chose to trundle down the opposite road from where Taylor had gone, making his way towards a stumpy four stories apartment block that had suspiciously clear windows.

Everyone else had to wait.

Heer power was, obviously, wonderful for spotting snipers. But that would require her to try and look for the person that wanted to spray their brains across the concrete.

Even more surprisingly was that, fifteen or twenty seconds later, a white flag popped out of a building two down, this one only being a three story office building of some kind, and a long, many segmented arm waved at them.

"This has got to be a trap, right?"

"It's ok!" A high, reedy voice called out. "It's not a trap."

Bitch grunted.

"I'm just a lookout!"

Lisa bit her lip, gently, so as to not draw blood, before answering the unasked question.

"He sounds… truthful."

"Yeah. Too-many-joints up there saw a metal monster walking towards, no wonder he wanted a truce." Alec gestured up and out of their cover. "You stick your head out and see what he wants. Or we just wait for the two hero units to do their jobs."

"Hey, metal man, if I come down, are your friends gonna shoot me."

Stopping, Grue seemed slightly conflicted. In the end he just let out a moaning rasp that sent wisps of darkness up into the air.

"Can't talk, huh? Are you… all there?"

An over the top and slow nod at the now mostly retracted arm.

"Huh. Shit. Gonna need to take the first step, yeah?"

Another nod, just as exaggerated as the first, to avoid any miscommunications.

"Well, shit." There was a moment of silence. "Can you at least - wait, fuck! Get back! Don't let the goats bite you!"

The white flag was dropped and a very large rifle replaced it, what looked like an… octopus… cuttlefish… squid man half climbed out of the window and re-located himself to the roof. His weapon and ammunition him joining him seconds later as a herd of seven foot tall goat headed lion-lizard-giraffe-squirrel things gambled over the top of a building and, swinging their heads as one, let out the most horrifying scream Lisa had heard in her life.

Rearing back on a neck at least five feet long, several semi-visible vertebrae cracked as the entire beachball sized goat head unhinged its jaw and caused its throat to vibrate with a squealing, high pitched screech.

Thankfully, the sniper put a bullet through its throat, then its head.

However, as it coughed, choked, and spat blood all over the place, a red paste like substance seemed to ooze out of its wounds and the rest of the pack began galloping forwards.

Their ungainly limbs ended in three pronged pincers, seemingly working more like a horse's run than anything that nimble should be capable of. Lisa, though, was most taken aback by the fact they were running down the side of a building. Somehow their grip was so strong they were able to control their connection to the building they were descending and then, at the halfway mark, they paused, tensed, and leapt.

Grue threw out a wall of darkness across the street between the monsters and the rest of the Undersiders and Lisa's power screamed at her with such a violent intensity that she saw spots.

"Don't touch them!" Her voice cracked. "Use a gun! Fire!" Knowledge, so disgusting it made her stomach roil, filled her mind. "Kill them all."

Taylor shot up like a rocket, bursting out of a window, arms crossed, swarm obscuring her form like a cloak as a clacking, screaming, agonized monster almost clipped her from behind - the mutant's neck extending to a full ten feat as its massive head was flung after her.

Grun charged into his darkness, fists flying, but not before tossing Wretch straight to Bitch. The mass of vines and tendrils, curled up and shivering, slammed home and disappeared into the girl's hoodie. Alec was already up and running, face scrunched as he used his power to make the creature attacking Taylor violently vomit.

In mid air.

It was grotesque.

But it did mean his fellow Master could hit the ground in a roll and leap back up.

"It ate my bugs. Sucked them in through its skin!"

Lisa operated purely on instinct. Her power told her, with a greater certainty than it ever had before, that these things needed to die. The sky was blue-green. She had fur. Her clawed hands easily freed an automatic rifle from the back of Angela and handed it to Alec.

He was confused, she didn't care, and the next weapon was passed to Bitch's hands. Both of them were floored at this and that didn't matter. There was one of the rifles that Armsmaster's people had given them in her hands, a magazine cleanly slotted into place, a safety flicked off, a bolt racked, and Lisa… realized she had a nosebleed.

There was a thin trickle of blood down her nose as she slotted round after round into the monsters that were coming for her and her friends.

And absolutely nothing she could do but to keep shooting as a burning Grue wrestled them as they came and the octopus man flung petrol bombs over their heads.