Worm/Ward/The extended Parahumans universe & All associated trademarks are property of John C. McCrae aka Wildbow.
I claim no ownership of anything except my own original characters.
I am making no money from this.
Chapter 02: Masked Killer
There had once been a time when Oni-Lee enjoyed the thrill of the chase and the battle that followed.
He had once been one of the few Capes truly gifted in the art of witty repartee and banter, even in the midst of utter chaos where everyone involved was left fighting for their lives. Before his reputation had descended into that of a cold-hearted killer the sight of his leering demon mask had promised humiliation as much as pain. With videos often being suppressed by the authorities after each of his exchanges with the Protectorate Heroes left them embarrassed and confused as his powers left them tripping over their own feet and a tongue as sharp as his knives riled them up to the point of making judgements so questionable that it would shake the faith of the public and cost the heroes valuable merchandise sales.
There had been a time when Oni-Lee had been Lung's friend as much as his enforcer and the threat he held over the heads of those who questioned ABB. He had met the towering, tattooed dragon shortly after his arrival in the Bay, when Kenta had been unsurprised to learn that his own mixed heritage made him undesirable to both the Yakuza and the Triads operating in and around the city before both groups were ultimately run out by Empire Eighty-Eight and the police on their payroll. His English had been abysmal at the time and he had needed a translator and teacher as much as he had needed connections and followers. Oni-Lee had been able to provide him with all of those, introducing Lung to the gang he had eventually come to lead and serving as a trusted right-hand man and confidant.
Steadily though Lee's own powers began to take more and more from him, a little piece of him being left behind with each after image and teleportation only to fade away as the copy crumbled into ash and dust.
Playful escapades into the territory of rival gangs in order to lord his skills over his foes gave way to kidnappings and brutal assassinations. Cutting remarks aimed at heroes who could never keep him in their grasp gave way to a chilling silence and the man Oni-Lee had once been was subsumed entirely into what had come to fill the spaces left by his power; something closer to a living weapon than a man, a being focused on efficiently following every order given to them simply to maintain a sense of purpose and direction.
Even if the order was to murder a particularly foolish teenage girl with ideas of being a hero.
Drawing one of the many knives adorning his waist, specifically a Bowie knife with a serrated blade longer than his own forearm he took a single step forward and entered the fray. His vision was strange for a fraction of a second, two conflicting images laid over one another in his mind without ever conflicting whilst every sensation of his body was doubled until the copy he had left in his wake crumbled away and the feeling of still being stood at Lung's right hand side left him.
Oni-Lee was on the rooftop in an instant, knife slashing at the back of the girls' neck. Whoever this new Cape was she showed herself to have good instincts as she threw herself backwards before he could even fully rematerialise and avoided both a killing blow and the follow up body-blow that would have knocked her over the edge of the roof.
"Get back, you saw me take your friends out! You don't want that!" the girl yelled and in doing so she cost herself the small measure of respect that the tattered remains of Lee's personality would have afforded her. To the footsoldiers on the ground she had been a threat, sowing fear and discord in an instant before announcing herself with bravado and demands but now that she had been challenged directly she revealed herself to be a frightened child who had gotten lucky with her first attempt.
Oni-Lee watched as she scrabbled to her feet, a slight twitching of her head suggesting that beneath her plague-doctor mask the girl was frantically casting her eyes around in search of anything that might help her survive. Determined to give her no such hope or options he teleported again.
With his lingering after-image being the thing which kept him from walking into a trap.
The Girl's shadow had been cast behind her by the street lights and the moon, when Oni-Lee teleported she once again displayed her instinctive ability to dodge and evade by ducking into a crouch whilst her shadow rose up behind her to become one of the ghoulish things that had managed to immobilise some of the footsoldiers in the street below.
The things had caused the flames building in Lung's hand to gutter out in an instant.
Oni-Lee saw the attack coming through a pair of eyes that crumbled a moment later and managed to halt his momentum, sacrificing some of his balance as he shifted his weight and twisted his right knee awkwardly to avoid grasping, shadowy fingers. The girl used the brief window of opportunity to begin properly fighting him in earnest throwing wild and flailing punches that spoke of total inexperience as she rose to her feet. The first striking the side of Oni-Lee's knee and causing both of them to wince in pain at the impact before he made to answer it by flipping his knife in his hand to stab downwards but was forced to step backwards as a second punch flashed out and he caught sight of something metallic gleaming in the light.
As the blow grazed faintly against his inner thigh he realised that the girl had her house keys clenched between her knuckles and had tried to punch him in the crotch with them.
Even with his personality and sense of self so severely depleted by his own powers Oni-Lee felt that such an attack demanded violent retribution, an opinion that was solidified when she pressed her advantage by rearing up to her full height; tall enough to look him in the eyes despite her age and lifted a bottle of mace.
Oni-Lee was in two places once again, though the sensation choking, burning blindness rendered one of his forms useless whilst his new primary body was inconvenienced by the attack until the after-image was reduced to dust. From there he was forced to teleport again in the next moment as a rising darkness in his peripheral vision warned him of an incoming attack, she had attacked him with her shadow before but this time it was Oni-Lee's own shadow which became her minion and attacked him. Reappearing on the other side of the buildings' roof Lee felt a sudden breathlessness, a numbness weighing down on his limbs which saw him glance towards his after image and find it squarely in the shadows' grasp until it crumbled; a process which he noticed seemed to take far longer than it should have.
The sound of a dull thudding impact a short distance away caused him to push through the coldness and weakness that lingered in his limbs and seek out its' source, his eyes narrowing in annoyance as he saw the girl on the roof of another building.
Whilst he was distracted she had clearly run at full-tilt and thrown herself from the roof onto the roof of the building next door in a desperate attempt to escape.
He had no intention of allowing that.
Striding with purpose towards the edge of the roof Lee reached down to the various belts around his waist once again and drew a selection of throwing knives, the first one he launched in the girls' direction missed her by less than an inch. The second however betrayed something about her powers, the blade had been aimed squarely for the base of her spine and yet the girl had ducked to avoid it without ever turning around to see it coming.
He realised that she had some other senses at her disposal, meaning that Oni-Lee would have to be more decisive in his attempts to get rid of her.
With that he drew one of the grenades from his bandolier and waited until the girl threw herself into another running leap on to the next building along.
Then he teleported closer behind her and threw the grenade.
Taylor would have been screaming for dear life if she were not busy devoting every ounce of air in her lungs to escaping from the murderous masked lunatic ordered to kill her.
She had gotten unbelievably lucky by holding Lung in place, even if her power had felt strange in a new way as she had done so but fighting Oni-Lee was entirely different prospect. She had no idea how to use her power effectively against a man who could be in two places at once and escape her shadows in an instant.
The only thing she was certain of was that trying to punch him in the dick had been a bad idea.
And so she tried to flee, leaping from one roof to the next with all of the speed and stamina that her daily running and cardio workouts had granted her; each rough landing on a gravel covered surface jolting her body and scraping the palms of her gloved hands in ways that she was sure she would regret when the adrenaline stopped coursing through her whilst using the countless shadows on the roofs as vantage points to see the attacks Oni-Lee threw at her retreating back as they came.
Though there was nothing she could do about a grenade.
The explosion was like nothing she had ever felt before.
Heat and concussive force hit her like a wall and flung her through the air like a rag-doll as she was mid-leap, with the only sliver of mercy being that the blast carried her onto the roof she had been aiming for even if it did send her head over heels and crashing to the ground to leave her curled in a ball and trembling. Every choking, sputtering breath was agony, her lungs felt as though they were filled with broken glass and her back seized, clenched and felt as though it were being struck by lightning with each spasm of her muscles; her vision swam and her hearing was reduced to a single high-pitched and whining, ringing note.
Instinct took hold and Taylor pushed outwards, allowing her mind to drift away from her physical body and into the shadows around her both so that she could find a moment of reprieve from the pain and also so that she could use the senses that her powers granted to her rather than her own.
What she saw was Oni Lee, the demon-masked Villain cocking his head and studying her immobilised form for a moment before teleporting again.
The sight of his after-image crumbling into dust forced her to force her consciousness back into her own body and take action, a scream of pain escaping her and being utterly unhindered by her mask as she forced herself up into a sitting position and was rewarded by fresh waves of searing, blinding agony from her back as she avoided an incoming blow.
Oni-Lee had teleported into the air a few feet above her and her sitting allowed her to avoid having her skull stomped on as he fell.
From there Taylor rolled onto her hands and knees, the same pit of desperation which allowed her to power through the pain that every movement caused her compelling her to try and lunge at her masked attacker in a lacklustre attempt at a tackle, driving her shoulder into his legs and trying to force him off balance. The feeling of ash pouring down on her and the legs she had grabbed crumbling away into nothing being her only warning that Oni-Lee had teleported again, reappearing at the side of his previous incarnation and swinging his knife at Taylor's chest only for the slash to cut into the leather of the jacket and glance harmlessly away from the stab-proof vest she wore beneath it. Undeterred Oni-Lee simply carried his momentum into a spinning kick, turning a full three-hundred and sixty degrees to slam his heel into Taylor's skull with enough force to crack one of the lenses of her mask. She was unsure whether or not she blacked out, she was stood upright one moment with her senses still rattled from the explosion and then the next she was on the ground with pain lancing through her skull and a rising sense of nausea as the world continued to spin.
Oni-Lee was advancing again, still with a knife in hand.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" the scream was ragged as it left her, a primal thing which seemed to encapsulate every ounce of fear, panic and simple rage at every time she had been made to suffer and be a victim up until that point. Her childish demand transformed into something frightful as her own shadow rose up from the darkness to protect her and lunge at Oni-Lee; the Villain teleported but her ephemeral minion seized the lingering copy by the neck entirely heedless of the way it was stabbed repeatedly before Oni-Lee's echo became motionless.
And as the masked man reappeared Taylor realised something.
Even if her shadows were not touching him they seemed to have an effect on him, he was staggering and sluggish even through the degree of separation his copy provided.
"I can still get you, my powers work through yours!" Taylor cackled, words slurred and filled with a moderately deranged quality as she dragged herself to her feet and frantically summoned up Oni-Lee's shadow from his copy before it could vanish and then from the man himself.
He teleported again and Taylor simply created another copy, leaving the confused killer glancing rapidly from from one threat to another.
Leaving Taylor free to continue running for her life.
Bolting across the roof she made for the rusty stairs of the fire exit and all but threw herself down them, her earlier thoughts of learning parkour being put into haphazard practise as she leapt over railings partway to the ground only to land in an alley way with and painful impact and drag herself onwards without hesitation, struggling to her feet and limping as fast as her burning lungs and aching, shaking limbs would allow.
She could affect other Capes' powers.
That thought alone kept her going, as she realised that it not only explained why Lung had chosen not to face her himself; she was capable of doing more than paralysing him and could instead shut down his transformation at its' source along with every other power any other Cape possessed regardless of whether it required movement.
The Wards were bound to accept her now.
With that single thought rattling around the inside of her pounding and faintly oxygen-starved skull, forming a sunlit horizon for her to flee towards she hobbled and staggered faster, managing to make it out of the alleyway and onto a street around the corner from the store she had first spotted ABB gathering in front of.
The sound of something small but with a definite heft landing behind her in the alleyway brought her back to her senses.
"OH SHIT!" she flung herself behind a parked car and felt the entire vehicle shake under the force of another one of Oni-Lee's grenades; using her shadows to peer out from beneath each and every one of the parked cars on the street and every other darkened crevice she could find she managed to see where Oni-Lee appeared next just in time to give herself time to react.
He appeared in a crouch directly in front of her.
If Taylor had not been so terrified she might have been ashamed of the yelp she let out as she rolled aside, even if the sight of Oni-Lee's knife stabbing through the metal of a car door in the exact place her face had been gave her justification. She was halfway to her feet when his backhanded punch sent her reeling again, the angled beak of her mask absorbing some of the blow but she was still sent spinning and putting enough weight on an already suffering ankle to send her toppling again.
Oni-Lee stalked closer and drew another blade from his waist, this one larger, ornate and likely even sharper.
Taylor raised up her own shadow from the ground and took cover behind it. Protecting herself, with herself and waiting to see what Oni-Lee would do next.
What neither of them seemed to expect was the sound of screeching tires, the Villain teleporting less than a foot away from himself and turning so that he could watch Taylor and at the same time turn around and see as one of the ostentatiously modified cars that ABB had arrived in pulled up at the end of the street.
"LUNG SAYS FINISH HER OFF AND GET BACK TO THE SPOT!" a hooded youth called out of the cars' open window "HE'S TAKING A FEW PEOPLE TO DEAL WITH THOSE OTHER KIDS BUT PROTECTORATE ARE COMING!"
A moment later the car sped off and Oni-Lee's lingering copy disintegrated, the Villain himself striding through the dust of his former self with his knife at the ready. As she back-pedalled across the cold asphalt however Taylor, in her battered and half-crazed state of desperation gave a smile that hurt her jaw as she processed the news.
The Protectorate were on their way, she had succeeded.
"I win!" she crowed, the effect lessened by the way her voice continued to betray her with its' shakiness. The sound of a motorbike, travelling at ludicrous speeds with an engine whose throaty growl seemed to shake the air from several streets away filled the silence and as she locked eyes with Oni-Lee even through the masks the two of them wore Taylor allowed herself a flicker of hope.
It was shattered when Oni-Lee simply shrugged and stalked towards her with his knife at the ready, clearly intending to kill her quickly as Lung had ordered him to.
This should have been Miss Militia's call to respond to.
As a Noctis Cape she had the ability to do away with sleep entirely, an ability which Armsmaster had long been envious of and one which also saw her assigned to the graveyard shifts and patrolling Brockton Bay in the dead of night, save for those occasions when her presence was required for public relations or her particular skills and powers were deemed to be the most effective way of tackling a specific threat.
Reports of Lung mustering ABB's forces after one of the gangs' legal fronts were robbed by the Undersiders, the latest upstart gang with more brazenness than sense; followed by reports of explosions in the same area and a figure matching the description on Oni-Lee fighting against another Cape in all black should have fallen firmly within Miss Militia's purview. Handling Oni-Lee from such long range that he didn't see the attack coming and had no chance evacuate seemed to be the obvious and most efficient solutions, whilst Grue, the presumed figure in black had no apparent answer to Miss Militia simply unleashing a salvo into the entirety of the darkness he produced.
With non-lethal rounds of course.
What this assessment failed to account for however was the fact that Armsmaster slept almost as infrequently as his second-in-command. The armoured Tinker could routinely be found either in his workshop until the early hours of the morning deep in focus or else manning the console for Miss Militia whilst she patrolled, usually with several sets of blueprints on hand and a separate train of thought listing all of the upgrades he would make to the console if he were not held back by bureaucracy. He had been maintaining a spare suit of armour when word of the explosions had been received and it had become something of a race, friendly competition between himself and Miss Militia to see who would be able to deploy faster and who would be stuck offering advice and assistance from the sidelines.
Trying to prepare faster than a Tinker specialising in efficiency was an exercise in futility and Miss Militia had pouted beneath her bandanna as Armsmaster's motorcycle sped into the city.
The bikes' roaring engine announced his presence as he tore through streets which had grown steadily more run-down and abandoned in the general direction of the docks. Armsmaster found himself grimacing, wondering if the noise would be enough to send Oni-Lee's fleeting from the scene and if it might be worth overhauling the vehicle entirely to implement a near-silent electric engine. All of his various ideas and possibilities were filed away for later however as he came screeching and skidding around a corner and was confronted with a sight which made him thankful for the various features of his helmets' visor and their ability to parse the scene even before the kickstand of the motorbike had struck the asphalt; making him aware of several key details.
Oni-Lee had chosen to stand and fight, likely confident in the knowledge that he could leave at any time.
He was not fighting Grue.
The unknown figure was clad in an all-black costume with an amateurish design and a beaked, green-eyed mask which did not correspond with any known figures' in the Bay's criminal underworld.
What immediately caught Armsmaster's eye however, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and setting him on edge was the fact that the prototype analytical software currently being run through his helmet was indicating that it was Oni-Lee; the prolific serial killer who was on the defensive, something which spoke volumes about the unknown figure.
"Console, do you have visual?" Armsmaster enquired curtly, voice a detached mask of professionalism as he slung himself from the bike and unfastened his halberd in a single, perfectly timed and precise motion.
"This is console and that's a negative" Miss Militia answered "Cameras in the area have been disabled"
Of course they had, the lack of cameras was obviously why the gang-members had gathered here.
"Armsmaster what's your status?" Miss Militia's voice held a faint trace of concern, engaging Oni-Lee was always a worrying prospect as the man seemed to have no regard at all for the unspoken rules that governed all but the worst of Villains. A fact she knew well after being the first responder to more than one of his assassinations of Empire Capes.
"Oni-Lee is fighting an unknown Cape. No sign of Grue or other Undersiders. Situation could deteriorate if left unchecked. Moving to intervene, over" he gave clear, concise points of data to answer her question and then succinctly explain his course of action and the rationale behind it before closing his comms channel and focusing his attention solely on the two capes in front of him.
"Stand down" he managed to make his voice louder without any of the emotion of a yell pouring into it as he marched toward the pair, halberd held in a position that would allow him to react at a moments' notice if he sensed any hint of an attack against him. A warning pinged as a slight change in air-pressure and imperceptible breeze informed him of Oni-Lee's teleportation before even the first flakes of dust could fall away from the masked assassins' lingering copy.
Despite his efforts to remain stoic and focused Armsmaster gritted his teeth upon seeing his foe crouched on his motorbike, pulling the pin from one of his grenades and leaving it on the seat.
It would have been obvious, all to easy and therefore the wrong play entirely for him to aim his halberd and fire his grappling hook.
Instead Armsmaster raised his arms over his head so that his weapon rested against his back, experience and algorithms both telling him that Oni-Lee would attack from behind and being vindicated by the clang of metal on metal as the killers' knife struck the shaft of his halberd and glanced off; both combatants being momentarily stunned by the explosion of the grenade which reduced Armsmaster's bike to twisted, burning scrap.
Experience dictated that Oni-Lee would then follow up with another teleportation, preferring to stab at his enemies' from behind and then slash at their exposed necks when they tried to turn and face him; to counter this Armsmaster activated the Brute-rated taser within his halberd and sent crackling arcs of lightning dancing across its' blade as he brought the weapon back overhead for a downward chop.
Oni-Lee appeared but did not fall into the trap of trying to block the halberd with his own metal blade, instead teleporting and allowing the weapon to carve neatly through his after-image. It was something which made Armsmaster wince despite himself, efficiency was one thing but he was yet to stoop to killing his cities' villains just because it would be easier.
Reappearing a short distance away, Oni-Lee placed himself evenly between Armsmaster and the unknown Cape whom Armsmaster realised was yet to flee, either because they were willing to cooperate or, more likely because they were too badly injured to run. Armsmaster took a single step before he was forced halt and deflect an incoming projectile, the throwing knife sparking and careening off into the distance as it was blocked.
Oni-Lee threw another and then another and Armsmaster almost believed that he was winning, that he had managed to predict that silent killers' attacks to such a degree that he could outfight him.
Then Oni-Lee teleported and acted in perfect unison; the crumbling copy throwing another knife which Armsmaster reflexively knocked aside only to leave himself open to the real Oni-Lee.
Who had thrown a grenade.
"ARMSMASTER LOOK OUT!" it was the unknown Cape who screamed out to him and as time seemed to slow to a crawl the Hero could only note that she sounded far younger than he had expected, far too young to have caused Oni-Lee to act so hesitantly when fighting her.
Then he saw darkness, albeit not in the fatal, final way that he had been expecting.
Taylor acted on instinct, something which it seemed dangerous to rely on even if it had allowed her to evade death by the narrowest margins so far.
Oni-Lee's grenade sailed through the air in a perfectly controlled arc, with nothing on Armsmaster's person suggesting that the leader of Brockton Bay's Protectorate had an answer to it. Taylor saw the burst of confusion on the heroes face and the exact moment where it gave way to relief as Armsmaster's own shadow rose up from the ground to protect him by snatching it out of the air and hurling it towards Oni-Lee.
Only for the Villain to teleport again and leave Taylor wincing as explosion ripped into the brickwork of a building she now hoped was empty.
Without waiting to see where he reappeared or even thrusting her senses out into the nearby shadows Taylor dropped to the ground, biting at the inside of her cheek to keep herself from crying out as the sudden movement jostled her back and at the same time raising her own shadow up to protect her as she had done for Armsmaster. Oni-Lee appeared directly in front of her, having intended to tear out her throat with a savage backhanded slash but instead narrowly escaping the immobilising grasp of Taylor's shadowy creation as it made to grab him, avoiding the attack by launching himself into a series of acrobatic backflips and cartwheels. He was brought to a halt when a grappling hook impacted against his back, clearly painful as it snagged against the bandolier he wore and allowed Armsmaster to begin dragging him backwards and reeling him in.
Oni-Lee's answer was naturally to teleport again, this time appearing beside himself so that he could cut through the still retracting cable of Armsmaster's halberd to permanently damage it before his copy could crumble.
Taylor brought his shadow up from the ground behind him and Oni-Lee teleported again, suffering from the same bout of sluggish disorientation as her power channelled from the paralysed and disabled copy to the new, the real Oni-Lee as he appeared beside Armsmaster to deliver a crescent kick to the visor of his helmet followed by a stab at his chest which might have been more effective if his body were not fighting against him.
Taylor tried to use Armsmaster's shadow but the Villain was already recovering, freed from the lingering effects of her power and by the time she had compelled her creation to weave around Armsmaster himself Oni-Lee had vanished.
"MOVE!" Armsmaster called out to her, giving her enough warning to roll onto her back with a pained grunt and avoid Oni-Lee as he appeared in mid-air above her to slam his knee into the road where the back of her head had been. Taylor created two shadows at once, pressure starting to build within her skull and burn the backs of her eyes as the continued use of her power began to take a toll on her and once again Oni-Lee escaped, flipping away rather than teleporting so that there would be no after image for her to use her powers on.
Then he teleported, disappearing the moment he was out of Taylor's reach.
A wordless exclamation of pain told her where he was and so she forced herself, painfully with her breathing coming in ragged gasps and her limbs feeling as though they weighted down to her hands and knees and then onto shaking, unsteady legs. Finding Armsmaster clutching his right shoulder with his left hand, blood trickling in thin streams down his armour until the Tinker used some hidden piece of equipment to seal the wound and promptly transfer his halberd to his left hand and brace himself again.
It was as if Oni-Lee were a shark however, urged on by the scent of blood in the air, sensing his prey's weakness and attacking relentlessly.
Taylor let out a scream as the masked assassin reappeared beside her and swept her legs out from beneath her, sending searing pain through her already injured ankle and sending her crashing to the ground before following up with a kick to the stomach which knocked the wind out of her and left her gasping and retching even through the protection of the body armour she was wearing.
Immediately he was attacking Armsmaster and Taylor watched with tears of pain and sheer desperation in her eyes as the Hero fought against him, predicting many of Oni-Lee's moves but being unable to block all of them whilst fighting left-handed and having his armour reduced to a mess of gouges and slashes.
Refusing to die, refusing to have a hero die in front of her and refusing to lose her chance at an escape Taylor pushed herself beyond her limits.
Her vision swam and blurred in each of the dozen or more places she peered from, using shadows scattered around the street to get a better picture of what Oni-Lee was doing and trying to predict his movements the way Armsmaster was. The pressure behind her eyes became almost unbearable, the taste of bile filled her throat and she felt every beat of her heart in her temples as though it were a gong being struck yet still she persevered and began raising up shadows, her own, Armsmaster's, Oni-Lee's at every opportunity all whilst reciting a desperate mantra to herself.
"Only gotta get lucky once"
It was the worlds' bleakest and most violent game of wack-a-mole and yet after a score of failed attempts, in which Armsmaster tried his best to slow Oni-Lee down or distract him Taylor was finally successful.
Lung's right-hand had grown either tired or desperate enough to take desperate measures, determined to follow Lung's orders and kill Taylor quickly by any means. He had clearly rationalised that doing so would involve killing Armsmaster first to remove witnesses and complications and to this end the assassin teleported, allowing the hero to cut down the lingering copy in a cloud of ash and dust only to appear beside him and grasp his halberd in both hands to keep him still, teleporting again and leaving the copy behind whilst reappearing at the edge of the street with a grenade already in hand.
Oni-Lee clearly had no compunctions about blowing up a copy of himself as long as it took Armsmaster out with it.
Taylor wanted to scream but found herself unable, there was not enough of her consciousness inhabiting her physical body and so instead she acted. Armsmaster's shadow erupted up from the ground and drove an obsidian-coloured halberd wreathed in smoke through the chest of the copy, leaving the real Oni-Lee staggering and gasping for air as his own shadow rose up behind him and wrapped its' arms around him in a bear hug; Taylor's power coursing through the killer and completely immobilising him.
Whilst he was still holding a grenade with a pulled pin.
The explosion reduced Oni-Lee's right arm and a sizeable portion of his face and chest to red mist and viscera which spattered across the asphalt, parked cars and the walls and windows of the building behind him, fragments of his mask cracking the glass as they struck it.
Taylor returned to her body with a haunting gasp, like that of a spirit plucked back from the verge of death; only to be left retching and struggling not to vomit inside of her own mask as the ringing left her ears in the wake of the explosion and she realised exactly what she had just done.
"You need to come with me" Armsmaster's voice was hushed, the first trace of emotion Taylor had heard from the man thus far and it was enough to have her rise, not to her feet but into a sitting position where she hugged her knees close to her chest and tried to take deep breaths even as they made her ribs scream in protest.
"I….I didn't mean to do that" the words came of their own accord, a pained hushed and horrified whisper "I didn't see him pull the pin, I thought I could freeze him before he-
"Be that as it may-"
"It was an accident!" Taylor yelled, scrabbling backwards on her hands before she managed to stagger to her feet; ragged pants escaping her as she splayed her hands wildly "He was going to-I was trying….I AM A HERO!"
"You don't look very heroic to me right now" something about that statement rattled Taylor, absurd in the way that only a truly incongruous idea in the wake of a disaster could be and Taylor, painfully aware that she was only making things worse for herself but unable to stop herself began laughing.
A broken and unhinged cackle that made Armsmaster visibly tense.
"Why? Is it the black costume?….Like you don't know any other Alexandria fans!"
"You need to come with me" Armsmaster repeated, as though he were as robotic as his suit made him appear and had only limited options in terms of dialogue. Though he was proven to be flesh and blood as he stepped into the light of a neon sign that had not yet been blown out which allowed Taylor to see that his nose had been bloodied by Oni-Lee over the course of the fight and his immaculately groomed beard and moustache were stained with red.
"We have professionals, legal experts who can make the proper calls" the hero sighed "If this was truly an accident then the record will show that and we can proceed accordingly"
Armsmaster clearly thought that he was offering reassurance and yet upon hearing his words Taylor could only hear the echo of every teacher she had spoken to about the Trio, every assurance that she had been given that the systems put in place to protect people would do just that broken and every plea for help that had fallen on deaf ears until she had been forced to save herself.
"I can't" she almost whimpered.
"It will reflect much more positively on you if you come willingly" Armsmaster told her, the threat implied as he took a step towards her. Taylor stepped back in response and found herself tripping over one of the knives Oni-Lee had lost during the course of the fight, crouching to pick the blade up and brandish it in Armsmaster's general direction.
"Drop the weapon. Now" his voice became a growl and Taylor realised that the situation was no longer in her control "Armsmaster to control, I need Containment-"
He froze mid sentence.
Armsmaster's shadow stood behind him, shaft of its' ephemeral halberd slipping under his neck to silence him, paralyse him and disable his powers for good measure all in one fell swoop leaving him unable to do anything as Taylor tucked Oni-Lee's knife into her waistband and then ran as though her life depended on it.
The sound of a dog barking echoed through the early morning darkness and brought a temporary stillness to the loft of one of Brockton Bay's many shuttered businesses which the Undersiders mysterious benefactor had supplied to them as base of operations and a home if needs be.
Brutus, the Rottweiler rescued from a fighting ring pricked his ears before bounding from the sofa that he had monopolised to bound eagerly to the door which led to stairs where he sat expectantly and obediently with his tongue lolling from his mouth. His fellow dog Angelica merely cracked an eye halfway open before letting out a yawn and curling in on herself more tightly, evidently intending to go back to sleep. Alec, having shed his persona of Regent the moment he had returned to the loft by wrapping himself in a fluffy gown and matching slippers which had then proceeded to get popcorn kernels stuck in as he relaxed paused the imported Earth Aleph cartoon he was watching, something he had tried to explain was called 'Fullmetal Alchemist' and that Rachel would enjoy because it had an important scene with a dog, slipping off the headphones that he had been forced to wear.
And Brian finally stopped pacing.
"See, they're fine….Now you can stop worrying" Alec's tone dripped with sarcasm and condescension and as Brian turned to glare at the younger boy Alec simply turned away from him, making a show of putting his feet up on the couch he had been sat on as if to state that he had no intentions of sharing it or his popcorn.
Brian's fists clenched and he forced himself to take a deep breath and count backwards from ten, convincing himself that it had been a long night, things had been tense but that would be remedied in a matter of moments and there was no reason to give in to the thundering voice that sounded so much like his father in the back of his mind; the voice that insisted that the scrawny and flamboyant little pest would keep on testing his boundaries and openly disrespecting him until he was taught manners in the universal language of violence. Refusing to be that kind of man Brian sighed and chose to ignore Alec, turning toward the door and debating scratching Brutus behind the ear but thinking better of it. Footsteps came bounding up from below in short order and the door was opened, with yet another dog coming crashing into the room in a fit of manic energy.
"Where the hell were you?" Brian demanded without preamble, folding his arms across his chest and treating Lisa and Rachel to a stern look which was largely ignored. Rachel merely grunted before shunting Brian aside so that she could break Brutus and Judas apart before their rough-housing turned into something serious, pausing only to scratch a sleeping Angelica behind the ear before throwing Alec unceremoniously from the couch and claiming her spot whilst he sputtered indignantly on the floor.
Lisa peeled her mask away from face and treated Brian to the precise kind of wicked grin that informed him that he was about to regret both his tone and choice of words.
"Aww, you do care" her voice was saccharine and genuine amusement flooded into her expression as she added "And oh wow, you actually are doing the whole strict parental figure routine now as practice for-"
"Can we not?"
"I'm just touched that you think of us that way" Lisa beamed "Should we tell Alec that you're adopting him, introduce him to-"
"Under no circumstances will he ever meet my sister" Brian leaned forward to rumble the words in Lisa's ear with all the authority of an edict from above. Seeing that she was clearly unbothered by the sudden protective fierceness but that she understood that she come dangerously close to crossing a line he continued "Now let's focus. Business isn't finished yet"
"You had the takings" Lisa noted.
"They're safe. We'll share it out tomorrow and you can take our boss his cut as soon as he wants it. I know a few pawnshops that won't ask questions about the jewellery" Brian answered patiently "But like I asked already, where were you….You two broke off and didn't let me know what was happening. I didn't know where you were"
He didn't quite say that he had been worried about his Undersiders, working himself up into a frenzy and barely keeping himself from donning his helmet and heading back out into the city to find them; but he supposed he didn't need to given that Lisa's power would simply tell her what had gone unsaid anyway.
"Lisa's idea. Talk to her" Rachel answered from the couch.
"We needed to split up in case Lung followed us….But then he didn't" Lisa began, Brian already knew as much but was piqued at the idea of whatever she might have uncovered.
"There was a new cape out there tonight. Someone showed up and attacked Lung in front of his people, that's why he didn't chase us" Lisa continued "The boss called while we were on the dogs, according to his sources the initial reports sounded like you were fighting Oni-Lee. When I told him that that wasn't the case he wanted me to double back and discreetly see what I can find out….He wanted to know if this new Cape has potential and if we should try to recruit her"
"Her?" Brian frowned, uncertain of how exactly a woman had been mistaken for him and unsure how to ask without sounding rude; instead he simply gestured for Lisa to continue "So what's the deal, are we reaching out to her?"
"Oni-Lee's dead" the blunt, matter-of-fact way Lisa delivered the news was more effective than then any contrived drama or building suspense could have been, utterly knocking the wind out of Brian "She killed him with his own grenade and then immobilised Armsmaster before she escaped"
"Holy shit" Alec's faintly Canadian-accented voice drifted from behind Brian, revealing that the youngest Undersider was listening to the conversation.
"Wait, Armsmaster was there? So they know it wasn't actually me who killed Oni-Lee right?" seeing Lisa nod Brian let out a sigh of relief "Oh thank God, we don't need that kind of heat. What about the new Cape, did your power tell you anything?"
Lisa's features seemed to lose some of their colour as she fixed him with a thousand yard stare.
"That she's a danger everyone around her, she's a ticking time-bomb and we should absolutely avoid her at all costs"
Author's Notes:
So, that's Taylor's first night in costume done.
Somehow it managed to be even more of a cluster-fuck than canon, which honestly feels like an achievement. If ever do write my "Across the Taylor-Verse" idea this Taylor will have to be notable for her spectacular fuck ups, even by the standards of Taylor.
ALSO: FF Net's view counter has been broken for over three months so if you're reading on there can you review or give me a sign that you exist because I literally can't tell otherwise
On a related note, I gave serious consideration to just turning reviews off for this fic on Ao3 due to 'Criticisms'. Let me be clear on this, if you don't like this story or disagree with the whole premise of it then don't read it, you're not going to come into my messages and 'Correct' me.
But anyway, let's summarise shall we?:
Okay so the little intro to Oni-Lee isn't plot relevant, but I do like giving a character whose ending is important a sense of identity before I kill them and I already knew that I wanted to switch perspectives throughout the fight.
The whole Oni-Lee used to be a talker thing that was a head-canon that came to me as I started writing, the idea that he was someone very different before his power started chipping away at him.
I wonder what it would be like to have a power like that, well actually similar to both Oni-Lee and Taylor, where you're existing in more than one space at a time and how that would affect your senses.
Right from the start I knew that I wanted the fight to be a game of keep-away and who got lucky first.
There is no universe in which Taylor doesn't try a crotch-shot at the first opportunity.
So Taylor's Trump rating has strange interactions with certain kinds of power, she turned Lung's off no problem and can affect Oni-Lee a little through his copies….I'm setting something up here don't worry.
So she didn't get caught by the blast properly, more the edges of it but still enough for it to burn and also hurt like hell.
And in the spirit of Worm, Taylor does not win a fight without getting fucked up, burned and bruised to some extent.
"The Wards were bound to accept her now" I mean they absolutely would have, a power nullifier is a pretty solid counter to Othala so she would have been a star.
So there's clearly a timer/maximum effective range before Taylor's power lets up, which is how Lung got free.
Seriously, why didn't Hana get put on permanent night shift?
The idea of Miss Militia and Armsmaster having friendly competition to see who can get to the garage first and leave the other one on console duty just feels right, they're senior heroes, they're professionals….They're big kids.
Oni-Lee has definitely killed off a few Empire Capes.
RIP the Arm-Cycle….Also, look I personally don't really like Colin; certain fan-characterisations are far more likeable and interesting than he is in canon….But he would definitely be able to predict and block at least the first few hits from Oni-Lee just on skill.
And this is why I like writing fights with intelligent combatants, "Oh, the other guy has an algorithm to predict my moves? Cool, let me feed it junk data in the form of throwing knives before I throw a grenade at him so he stands at takes it".
I feel like the way the fight went when it became a two on one was fair and believable, Oni-Lee took some hits, got dragged around a bit but at the same time the ability to disappear and the fact he's got no problems with killing people gives him an advantage.
Taylor, even without bug powers…..Is fundamentally a cockroach, her refusal to die or quit is one of her defining traits.
"It was the worlds' bleakest and most violent game of wack-a-mole" is exactly how Taylor would phrase it.
I knew how I wanted this fight to end but it took me a while to figure out how to get here but yeah….Taylor tags the copy, which staggered the actual Oni-Lee and then she paralysed him while he was holding a grenade; which turned into irl Tom & Jerry.
The biggest villain of this chapter is Armsmaster's inability to be normal for even one conversation.
The line about black costumes and Alexandria make me snort when I thought of it.
And now she's gone….Murder/manslaughter of a Cape and waving a knife at a Protectorate leader.
The Undersiders won't really be part of this story but it felt like a good way to end the chapter, also I've never written them before.
Alec would absolutely show Rachel Fullmetal Alchemist and you all know EXACTLY why.
Brian absolutely thought about punching Alec in the face a few times.
I cannot imagine being on the receiving end of Lisa and keeping my dignity.
Seriously, we all know Aisha became an Undersider later on but "I will introduce Alec to your little sister" is a threat that crosses every line.
Of course Lisa knew/knows about Taylor….Also yeah Brian "Seventeen but also forty-five and struggling to unpack so much shit" Laborn would definitely be a little miffed at the idea that someone got him and a skinny fifteen year old girl mixed up.
So Lisa is definitely not going to be leaving messages to Taylor on PHO in this timeline.
Thank you to Noreo, Veritas31, TAStier, Vahenra, N0BrainJustVibes, ErbKaiser, HowlingGuardian and one unnamed guest for their reviews on the last Chapter.
Well as you can see the Undersiders were around, but the way I was thinking of it was that Oni-Lee was meeting up with Lung and the rest of ABB to chase them when Taylor showed up, that's why he was chilling in the back of the car when Lung was giving orders. Mild fudging of the chain of events in order to get the confrontation that I wanted because Oni-Lee is a more fun fight for this version of Taylor.
Also, what's the effective range on 'Pinging?'
Certain things are constant across the multiverse and "Taylor wishes she had cool dialogue but fumbles it", "Taylor's first night out is a fustercluck" and "Taylor's aesthetics just scream villain" are on that list.
I honestly haven't watched Samurai Jack
As always thank you to everyone that reads this, with a special thanks to those of you that follow, favourite and review.