I had a story idea, and unlike the dozens of other story ideas I get I actually managed to make some good progress on this and because I'm partially insane I decided to post it on Spacebattles and subject it to public opinion.
This is a Worm(obviously)/Rise of the Guardians crossover with a little bit of the Guardians of Childhood Series thrown in. As for what power Taylor gets, well it should be pretty obvious by the end of this chapter.
Enjoy!
Foreboding 1.1
Emma Barnes snuggled into her bed. The night air had a bit of a chill to it and the warmth from the freshly dried blanket felt nice.
She used to dread going to bed after the attack, the monsters would come after her in her sleep and threatened to finish what they had started. It was only after Sophia had helped her to start proving how strong she was that she was able to get a good night's sleep.
She had felt a little guilty for Taylor in the beginning and she had spent more than one night staring at the ceiling, remorse gnawing at her insides, but as time passed she didn't feel it as much. Sophia had assured her that was what it was supposed to feel like, that it was the last of the weakness burning out, that she was growing stronger.
The guilt stopped after that.
Though even after all that time she still had held out hope that Taylor could be strong like her, that she would be able to rejoin her friendship once she had proved her strength. Sophia had been skeptical, but Emma remained adamant that her friend could be strong. The locker was supposed to be the final test, the ultimate proof that Taylor Hebert could be strong.
It had broken Emma's heart when she failed. She could still remember he former friend being pushed into her garbage filled locker, as she screamed and wailed for mercy. Still, even with the Taylor's failure it still proved that she herself was strong, stronger than Taylor. Sophia had been proud of her then, patting her on the back and telling her how much of a predator she was.
Madison had looked a little sick, but she had never been strong, never been a believer in what they had been doing. Maybe she would be their next project since Taylor hadn't been seen or heard from since the locker. It would be nice to be friends with another predator besides Sophia.
Such thoughts clouded her mind as she drifted off into the sweet embrace of sleep, secure that she was safe, that she was strong.
Hours passed. The sun had long ago set over the horizon as the dark crept forward. Shadows clung to every surface, casting the redhead's room with the darkness of the moonless night.
A serene smile was etched onto Emma's face as she dreamed of being strong, of being a hero. Her in the heart of her house she was safe, here no monsters would get to her, here was where she was the strongest. A lie she had told so many times that she believed it herself.
The shadows coalesced around each other into a swirling ball of darkness. The room seemed to drop a few degrees in temperature as a shadowy figure emerged from the black pit that had formed in the darkest corner of the room.
She was tall and would have towered over the redhead had they been standing side by side. Her willowy frame was covered by a long coat of what appeared to be shadows. Her skin was a sickly grey that only served to highlight her off-putting yellow eyes and sharp teeth. Hair as dark as pitch flowed from her crown down her shoulders where it became near indistinguishable from her clothes.
She seemed to almost glide across the room, her footsteps utterly silent as she approached the sleeping teenager. She loomed over the bed frame and examined every inch of the redhead girl. A surge of anger and hate flowed through her at the sight of the pleasant smile on Emma's face. A dagger of shadow and sand formed in her hands. For the briefest of moments, she was tempted to rip Emma's throat out and be done with it but she restrained herself.
"No. Not yet," she thought, dispersing the sand dagger with a wave. She wasn't here to kill Emma.
"You must think you're strong Emma," Taylor whispered. "That you proved your strength with the locker, that you escaped your nightmare." An unpleasant smirk crossed Taylor's face as she tapped Emma in the forehead.
"The truth? You never really left."
Dark sand seeped out from under Emma's eyelids and gathered in Taylor's palm. Emma's pleasant smile morphed into one of discomfort and fear. Taylor let out a breathy sigh at the fear the wafted off of her former friend's body. It was so tempting to stay and feed off of Emma's fears, to pull her insecurities out from the darkness and into the light, to tear her down brick by brick. To make her suffer-
"No. Not yet," she repeated, the mantra burning into her mind. She couldn't let her desire for instant gratification ruin what she had planned for Emma.
The shadow dust from Emma's nightmare shifted, its formlessness taking on a shape. Taylor grinned as her Nightmare took form. It was small, barely bigger than a house cat, but it was a start. Glowing yellow eyes glared out at the world as its dark form galloped across the air as if it was solid ground.
"Well aren't you beautiful," Taylor murmured as she stroked the Nightmare's wispy mane. The twisted facsimile of a horse let out a quiet neigh. She could feel its hunger, its desire to spread fear and nightmares all along the sleeping city. It was almost adorable how it glared up at her, trying to fill her with terror. Taylor retaliated with an attack of her own, casting aside the Nightmare's meagre mental defenses with a negligent push. The Nightmare fell back in fear and tried to escape from Taylor's grip, but it might as well have been trying to move a mountain for all the good it did.
"Shhhh, don't worry, you'll get to feed soon," Taylor said. The Nightmare calmed down at the mention of feeding. Satisfied that it wasn't going to try to attack her again or run away Taylor let the Nightmare go.
Taylor smirked as the Nightmare circled her cautiously, "You'll feed to your dark little heart's content, but you're going to have to be patient. Go to the others." She pushed the location of the warehouse that she was having the other Nightmares hide in for the time being. It was hardly an ideal place for a hideout, but it was out of the way and would be adequate for the time being.
The Nightmare neighed in agreement. It slipped under the window, temporary losing its form to become a wisp of dust and shadow. It reformed on the other side and galloped through the darkness of the city towards its destination.
Satisfied Taylor turned towards her former friend's dormant form. Instead of a peaceful slumber she was now thrashing in her sleep punctuated by moans of discomfort. Taylor could feel the waves of fear roll off of her as images of red and green monsters filled her subconscious with fingers like knives and teeth like needles. It was the fear of a scared girl, a broken girl. The kind of fear that sent you blubbering into the corner to hide from the monsters.
It was delicious.
To Taylor it was like a fine wine, something that had aged and grown with time into something sublime. A small part of her pointed out that she should probably be feeling guilty for doing this to her tormenter and ex-best friend, but she tended to ignore that voice most of the time.
"Part of me thinks that I should thank you," Taylor said as she gently brushed Emma's hair. Emma whimpered in response as her hair was cut away in her nightmare, knives snipping and tearing away as they held her down.
"Not for the powers, those were a nice bonus, but for the lesson," Taylor continued as she idly played with her shadow dust, letting it dance across her fingers like water. "You and Sophia showed me the real power of the world, it's not super powers, or ideals, or bureaucracy- its fear. Fear is what allowed you to run the school, fear is what allows gangs to run the city, fear is what allows parahumans to run the world, and fear…fear is what makes monsters out of us all."
Taylor glanced at the bedside clock. It was time to leave, she had dallied here long enough. She glided across the floor with an off-putting silence, coming to stop by the shadow that she had materialized by. She turned back to give Emma once last glance, a satisfied smile filled with too many teeth danced across her lips as the broken red head thrashed and twisted in bed as she tried to escape a nightmare of her own making.
"Goodbye Emma."
--
Shadow travel was a unique experience. It wasn't quite like teleporting, but at short ranges it might have as well been. The inky blackness that surrounded her formlessness was darker than the deepest pit and colder than the arctic sea. It was utterly inhospitable to any human life, but to her it was like greeting an old friend.
Still, even to her the shadow world was strange and somewhat frightening. It was a far cry from the near heart attack she had when she first entered the realm, but even after the past two weeks she still felt as if she was being watched, being judged. She would occasionally catch glimpses of yellow specks in the distance which only seemed to draw the darkness in even more rather than provide any illumination.
It was unnerving.
Still, even despite the off-putting feelings it gave her she couldn't deny the huge advantage it gave her. The only limitations that it seemed to have was that there needed to be a shadow wherever she was going and that she had to have a general idea of where her target destination was. A little unease was a small price to pay for such a powerful mover ability.
She rematerialized in the abandoned warehouse she was using as her temporary base of operations. It had been abandoned for years, ever since the creation of the Boat Graveyard, perhaps even before. Its walls were rotted and filled with mold, even to the gangs it was unusable, its structural instability made it far too dangerous for even the most drugged up Merchants to consider using. But to her and her Nightmares that was no issue, not when they could lose their form to slip through the tiniest cracks. Nobody would bother them here, here she could gather the strength she needed.
She stood on the scaffolding and gazed down at the floor to her minions, her Nightmares. Nightmares by the dozens roamed around the building, some smaller than a rat while others towered over her. Every one of their yellows eyes turned to her with an eager anticipation as their hunger gnawed at their every thought and action.
"Tomorrow," She said. Her voice was as quiet as a whisper but still could be heard clearly throughout the condemned building. The herd of Nightmares stood motionless and utterly silent as she spoke. "Tomorrow we begin. Tomorrow you will feed."
At the promise of feeding the Nightmares erupted into a frenzy, hoofs stamping on the floor and cracking concrete while their eerie and off-putting howls scared off more than one of the homeless in the surrounding area.
While it was exhilarating to see her Nightmares celebrate in such a fashion she sent out a mental attack that sent them all reeling. More than one staggered to their knees. When she was certain they she had their complete and undivided attention she spoke once more. "You will listen to my orders."
The threat was clear. She was strong, they were weak. They would obey her so long as she remained strong, but if given the chance they would turn on her like a pack of ravenous wolves.
Just like Emma had.
Taylor let out a guttural growl at the thought of the redhead before casting it aside. Emma and Sophia and all of them would suffer when the time came, but she couldn't allow such thoughts to cloud her judgement, now when she had so much work to do.
She could feel the first rays of the sun start to inch over the horizon in a futile effort to drive the shadows back. It promised of hope and rebirth to the dying city, a new day and a new start and…
…It was the biggest lie of all.
The city didn't need hope. What had hope ever done for them? When Lung rampaged across the city at his arrival they hoped for the Protectorate to defeat him. When Skidmark and his gang of degenerates choked the city with their filth they had hoped the Protectorate would break them. When Kaiser and his would be empire crushed the minorities under their heels they had hoped the Protectorate would drive them out. And in the end what had all of this hope brought? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The city continued on as the gangs took more and more power for themselves, a cancer eating at the city.
The PRT was content to let the gangs roam free in the name of "stability" so long as they looked good while they did nothing, and when the gangs would start to act up they would hide in their fortresses safe and sound while the normal people suffered.
The fact that Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker was only the icing on the cake.
She was done with putting her hope with the heroes. She was done with her dreams of being a hero. She was going to do with fear what none of that childish nonsense had ever done. If the city couldn't be saved with the light of the heroes, then it would be saved with the darkness of their nightmares.
If she couldn't be the city's hero, then she would be its boogeyman.
Taylor paused as she considered that word, boogeyman. It was somewhat childish, but there was something about it that just seemed right. Even if it wasn't a strictly terrifying name like Genoscythe the Eyeraper or Deathstalker the Deranged there was as subtle connotation that none of those names possessed, a history that existed for as long as humanity had nightmares of monsters.
After all, who wasn't afraid of a boogeyman?
"That's what I'll be," she said, more to herself than her Nightmares. A Cheshire grin crossed her face as the name rolled off her tongue.
"The Boogeyman of Brockton Bay."
--
So Taylor gets the powers of Pitch Black, cue the screaming!
Spoiler: This guy
Spoiler: My Inspiration
So any comments? Suggestions? Do you like it?
Last edited: Nov 20, 2016
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Oct 7, 2016
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Threadmarks Foreboding 1.2
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QAI521
QAI521
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Oct 13, 2016
#24
I want to thank everyone who has shown interest in reading this. It's nice to know that your writing is appreciated by someone besides yourself.
Enjoy!
Foreboding 1.2
David Russo, or Mush as he preferred, wasn't having the greatest of weeks.
First a delivery of drugs was cancelled at the last minute which wouldn't have been that big of an issue if the police hadn't just raided one of their larger stash houses. As it was they were low on heroin and a few other assorted drugs.
Mush wouldn't have really cared so long as it didn't affect his cut but some of the normies had been getting a little rowdy while they waited for their next fix. When a few grumblings of mutiny started to work their way out of the woodwork Skidmark decided that Mush's time would be best spent going around to a few Merchant dens to remind the normies what would happen if they decided they didn't care for Skidmark's leadership.
Personally Mush didn't see what was the issue with a few grumblings, but he supposed that was why Skidmark was the leader and he wasn't. Still, Mush was more than happy to take the extra cut that Skidmark was paying him for a job well done, but he did wish that he would have paid for dry cleaning too. Didn't he know how hard it had been to clean out the brain matter that had leaked through his trash shell?
Then to top off matters a few Merchants claimed that they were being attacked by some new cape. They didn't give any description, only that they started hearing voices of people that they knew. One of them claimed to have seen something in the shadows but none of the others supported his claim. So because Skidmark was a paranoid bastard Mush once again had to patrol the streets of Brockton Bay near where the supposed attacks had taken place.
In the middle of the night.
In winter.
"Idiots," Mush grumbled under his breath as he trudged his way down the barely lit street. The only warmth he got was from his rather ragged jacket and the cigarette pinched between his bent and broken teeth. He could be inside and toasty while getting off on his personal stash of amphetamines, but no, he had to be out here in the freezing cold all because a couple of idiot didn't realize they were hallucinating.
Mush cursed as he lost his footing on the icy sidewalk. Only throwing his hand out and grabbing a nearby light post to use as support prevented him from face planting into cement. The cigarette he had been smoking slipped out of his mouth and fell onto the icy sidewalk, extinguishing its faint glow.
"Dammit," he muttered under his breath as he dug through his too big jacket for another cigarette. It took a bit of fishing through the junk that littered his pockets to find it and his lighter, but it was well worth it for the slight temperature increase around the open flame. Mush took in a deep breath and let out a large cloud of smoke.
Once he was done here he was going to ask Skidmark if he could beat those idiots into a fine pulp. Honestly, did they all think he had nothing better to do with his time? He looked to the side, there was a small alleyway he could stash himself in to have a quick fix. It wasn't ideal, but it would satisfy his craving and he wouldn't have Skidmark breathing down his back for "shirking his duties".
Mush glanced down the street at the sound of a streetlight blowing out. Sparks and shattered glass flew to the ground as the aging bulb finally gave out under the intense stress of the winter winds. It wasn't that surprising, this area of the city had been neglected for some time, it was actually more surprising that they had been working at all. What was surprising was when the next one blew out as well. Mush frowned as the third street light blew out to continue the chain of defective lights that inched closer and closer to his position.
Mush took a step back, only for the light behind him to shatter into a million pieces as well. He swallowed fearfully as the shadows seemed to become more oppressive, darker, thicker. Mush started to back up into the alleyway as the shadows crawled closer. A brief chill swept past him, crushing the faintly glowing embers of his cigarette under its frigid grip.
"Come out," Mush shouted towards the shadows. While Mush still wasn't entirely convinced about the existence of a new cape this certainly had all the hallmarks of a new parahuman's power. For a moment the only response was silence and the howling of the winter breeze until something emerged from the shadows in a slow, almost predatory manner. It looked like a horse straight out of someone's nightmares.
It was tall, at the very least it was a head taller than him. It almost appeared to be made of millions of tiny grains of black sand that glinted in the low light of the last functioning streetlight. Instead of a thick mane of fur black spikes erupted in a row down the creature's neck. The demonic creature bared teeth that would have looked more appropriate on a wolf than a horse at him.
Mush eyed the strange looking horse before him. He was pretty sure he wasn't hallucinating which probably meant that it was some sort of cape. He supposed he would owe those boys an apology after all. He was still going to beat their asses for making him slug it out in the streets, if only to make himself feel better. Still, he better deal with this newbie now before he (or she he didn't really know or care either way) became too much of an annoyance.
The trash and loose debris that littered the alley started to shift and converge towards him as he pulled it in with his power. The trash underneath his feet fused to his shoes like a second skin and from there even more started to converge on him as his power expanded its effective range. It would take a few minutes for him to be covered completely, but it wasn't like that was much of an issue. There was only one and once he got going then…
Mush thoughts of crushing the horse's head under a dumpster fell short as two more strange shadow horses emerged from the darkness. Their baleful yellow eyes glared out at him as they growled in a surprisingly wolf like manner. Even with his body halfway covered Mush still couldn't help but feel a twinge of fear at their unnatural presence. So as always, he fell back on the one thing he knew how to do when he was afraid, make threats.
"You wanna piece of me? I'll crush you," he growled, the words slurring somewhat through half rotted and broken teeth. He was hardly capable of the destructive prowess of the likes of Lung or Hookwolf, but he was more than capable of throwing down with the odd parahuman or two once he was sufficiently trashed out, though he preferred to deal with normies. Less of a risk of getting his head caved in.
If the horses were affected by this threats they didn't show any outward signs. Instead they began to stalk forwards, their hooves clacking against the cracked pavement.
Mush grunted and pulled more and more trash onto himself. He had finally managed to cover himself completely in a relatively thin layer of garbage. He would have preferred to back off and gather up some more before he engaged, but with them blocking the alley's only entrance he had no choice but to stand and fight.
"Come on you little-AUUGGH," Mush's threat cut off as he started to scream.
His breath was gone; his spine was fire. He fell to the ground face first as a great weight pressed down on him. His garbage armor collapsed as he concentration lapsed, leaving the goblin like man in a pile of discarded junk. Mush coughed out bits of broken teeth and blood as he tried to push against the weight, but whatever it was it was too heavy for him to move. He tried to adjust his positon to get some leverage but panic filled him once he realized that he couldn't move anything below his waist.
Mush desperately tried to get his legs to respond, kicking twisting, hell at this point he would have taken wiggling his toes, but nothing was responding. He tried to use his arms to pull himself forward, but he hissed in pain as he felt the weight press down on him even more in response. Realizing that desperately flailing wasn't going to help him escape anytime soon Mush allowed his body to go limp in order to avoid aggravating whatever injuries he had.
Mush heard rather than saw the horses approach him, their clicking hooves sending a chill up his spine. One of the horses stepped into his limited field of vision and lowered its head to eye level. Mush's breath caught in his throat at the sight of the far too sharp teeth that filled the creature's maw, its soulless yellow eyes glared at him with all the consideration one would give an insect.
Mush started to pull at the garbage surrounding him, if he could get enough then he might be able to drive them off, even with his apparent spinal injury. He started it slowly, allowing the trash and loose debris to fuse to his skin and clothing as quietly as he could, but as the trash that littered the alleyway was pulled over each other the horses took notice. The rustling of garbage as the loose pieces scrapped against one another was rewarded with a bite to the arm. Mush screamed as his flesh was torn and muscle shredded by the course but fine sand. He twisted and pulled his arm with all the strength he could muster in a blind panic to escape the pain, but all that resulted from that was the tightening of the horse's grip and for the briefest moments Mush was certain that he felt his bone start to shift from the pressure being exerted by the monster. Whimpering a bit Mush cut off his power and allowed the trash to settle back into its resting place.
Seemingly satisfied at his action the horse released the pressure against his arm, but kept its jaws firmly clamped around it. Mush felt the weight of what he assumed was another one of the shadow horses leave his back and trot forward. Another set of jaws wrapped around his still free arm and pulled him up. He could see that his body was moving, but he still couldn't feel anything below his waist. They just seemed to hang their limply, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Panic started to settle in. Was this permanent? Was he going to be paralyzed for the rest of his life assuming that these monsters wouldn't kill him? Mush glanced at the monsters nervously, licking his cracked and bloodied lips as his mind started to come up with all the gruesome ways they would rip him apart.
"Oh, it's not them you should be worried about David," A voice called out from the darkness as smooth as silk and as chilling as liquid nitrogen. Mush flinched at the mention of his name. It wasn't that he had much of a secret identity, none of the Merchants really did, not when they spent most of their time out of costume hopped up on drugs, but his name reminded him of the times he would rather forget. A time before he had become the enforcer that he was now.
The horses guarding the entrance to the alleyway stepped aside to reveal the speaker in all of her horrible glory.
Mush wasn't sure if she was a case 53 or not, if so she was one of the mildest ones he had ever seen unlike those freaks that hung out with Faultline, but there was something subtlety off about her in a way that didn't match with most case 53s. Her face was something strait out of a horror movie with paradoxically smoother yet sharper features that didn't look at all natural on a person. Her yellow eyes iris gleamed while her mouth was set with a mocking smirk revealing crooked teeth that were so sharp they might have bordered on fangs. Her hair appeared to be almost unnaturally stiff, instead of twisting in the freezing breeze they hung firmly down her shoulders. The dimly lit alley only served to highlight her inhuman features, casting them in dark shadows and pale yellow lighting.
"The one you need to worry about is me," she said as she approached him as her dark robes dragged themselves across the concrete and gave off the illusion that she was much larger than she really was. Despite the fact that she was wearing what looked like a very thin robe she didn't show any discomfort at the near freezing temperatures that were doubtless nipping at her exposed skin. The sickly yellow lighting from the streetlight darkened the whole alleyway by casting her tenebrous shadow across the enclosed space like a blanket of darkness.
Mush tried to lean back to escape, but his lack of functioning legs and the horses' grip on him prevented him from doing anything more than tilting his head back. Fear clogged his throat as the cape, because what else could she be, let out an amused laugh at his reaction. Even her laugh was subtly frightening, bordering somewhere between chilling psychopath and demented monster.
"I apologize if my pets were a bit rough with you, but I needed to be sure that you wouldn't try anything," she said with an affable smile that revealed far too many teeth as if they were discussing ordering lunch together rather than threatening him.
Oh crap.
Mush had learned something over the years as a parahuman. If a cape was being polite to you while you were fighting or you were restrained by them that usually meant one of two things. One, they weren't all right in the head and probably batshit crazy. Or two, they were so ridiculously powerful that they didn't need to be excessively cruel while they beat you into a bloody pulp.
Mush wasn't sure what this one would be, but he prayed to all the gods that he didn't believe in that it was the latter and not the former. On one hand it would probably mean that he wouldn't be able to beat her in a straight fight, but on the other hand it would mean that she wouldn't place his head on a pike for not laughing at her jokes. Probably.
Hopefully.
Mush felt his greasy skin break out into a sweat. His eyes darted around the alleyway nervously, eyeing the horses that made up the capes' forces. Now while Mush knew that he wasn't the brightest bulb in the socket there was one thing that he knew very well and that was survival.
It was how he had lasted this long in Brockton Bay against the likes of Lung and the Empire. He knew when to cut his losses and flee or to jump a sinking ship. He had stayed with the Merchants for so long not out of loyalty, but because they were the safest gang for him to work for. He didn't need to answer to a rage dragon that could kill with as little effort as one would give a fly or a living blender that could just shred him to pieces. In the Merchants he didn't need to worry about someone being stronger than him because he was the strongest.
He didn't sign up to be torn apart by a cape and her pet monsters.
"What do you want," he grunted in a subdued tone. It was extremely humiliating to be captured like this, but at the very least he could use the excuse that he was ambushed and that she didn't beat him in a straight up fight to save some face. Besides, being humiliated was a small price to pay for keeping his head attached to his shoulders.
"Oh, that's what I like about people like you David," she said with a shark like smile that made his already sweaty skin break out in goosebumps. "You worthless cowards are all so easy to break."
"I ain't worthless!" Mush roared with all the ferocity he could muster, spittle flying into the capes' face. He would run from fights he couldn't win, but that wasn't him being a coward, that was him being smart. He couldn't be worthless, not when the Merchants depended on him for so much. She gave no reaction other than a quick glance to one of the horses restraining him. Mush screamed as the horse bit down and felt bone break and snap underneath torn muscles and bloodied skin.
"Of course you are and you know it," she said as Mush whimpered. There was no gloating at his sorry state or outrage at his disrespect, only a cold logic and certainty that came with being absolutely sure of one's self. "You've always known it, that's why you hide yourself behind a shell of trash, because you don't want to have to face the pain, the knowledge that they've all been right about you. But deep down you do know that they were right, you're worthless, weak, useless."
The cape held her arms out wide as if to motion to the whole city and gave him an unsettling smile, "There's no point in hiding it any more David, everyone already knows how much of a weakling you are."
In the blink of an eye she drew herself closer to the restrained Merchant and whispered into his ear. "You've always been the weak little boy who thought he could play with the big leagues, David." Mush might have taken note that he couldn't feel her breath as she whispered her toxic words into his ears, but his mind was focused on other things.
"You thought you could hide it from everyone couldn't you," the cape said in a deceptively conversational tone as she circled him. "The truth is that you couldn't hide it from anyone," she said as she turned to face him. Her pupils seemed to stare into his very soul, past all the layers that he had used to hide the truth from everyone, even himself over the years.
She smirked, a cruel and mocking thing, "I might laugh if it wasn't so sad."
"I mean did you really think you were fooling the Merchants," she asked as if she was honestly curious with his answer. "They've probably been laughing behind your back since day one."
"You don't know shit about me," Mush said as he tried to avoid her soul searing gaze. "I'm ain't some weak shit to them, I'm their muscle- I'm the reason the Merchants lasted this long."
That part Mush knew was a fact. Before he had joined the Merchants they usually had been forced to flee at the first sign of conflict. Even with Squealer's vehicles supporting them they weren't able to keep up with the firepower that the other gangs and the Protectorate could dish out.
Even with him they still couldn't, but with his power they were able to close the gap into something more manageable and less one sided. He was important to the Merchants; he wasn't one of the wasted homeless that Skidmark used as cannon fodder.
Still even with this self-assurance of his own self-worth Mush couldn't help but feel a niggling doubt in the back of his mind. If he was that important to Skidmark, and he was, why was he…
"Being used as bait," the cape asked. Mush looked up to the cape, whose pitch black pupils stared down at him with something he couldn't quite identify. Pity? Contempt?
"The fact that Skidmark sent you out here by yourself to confront what could very well be a new cape only goes to show how much you're actually worth to him," the cape explained in a very calm and collected manner, as if she was reciting the local weather station rather than tearing apart his life.
"You're expendable David."
Mush wanted to rage, to scream at her until his voice gave out, he wanted to crush her skull with his bare hands to prove her wrong, to make her eat her own words, but he didn't- he couldn't.
How many times had Skidmark sent him on a menial but potentially life threatening job that could have easily been accomplished by one of the dozens of mooks that followed him like a group of lemmings?
Far too many times.
How many times had his concerns been overruled as he was sent to fight someone of almost overwhelming power in order to give the others time to escape?
Too many.
In the end he didn't try to refute what she was saying because he didn't think he could.
Her words cut deeper than anything her pets had done so far, and in that moment he wasn't Mush, the premier parahuman enforcer of the Merchants, he was David, the weakling who was beat virtually every day of his life. The waste of space that had never amounted to anything. A boy that had nearly been beaten to death in a pile of filth.
He had triggered that day, begging for mercy as a couple of his fellow gangbangers beat him half to death with their bare fists, laughing all the while. After he had triggered he had returned the favor and left their broken bodies for the police to find later. It been a statement, an acknowledgement of his newfound power. That had been the final nail in the coffin for his entrance into the criminal underworld. What with his already long rap sheet for someone of his young age he would have been sent to prison so instead of trying to live like a normal teenager he committed himself to being a full time criminal. It had been one of the most defining moments of his life.
And the one he hid the most.
All his life David had been told he was worthless, useless, less than nothing. He had never fit in, not in school where the jocks beat him, the girls laughed at his disgusting features, even the nerds and geeks didn't like him because he was, as they put it, "terminally stupid". He hadn't even fit in with his family, hell his mom had outright hated him and he didn't even know who his father was.
So when he had joined the Merchants years later he had been elated. He wouldn't have to compete with any brutes within the group or breakers that could no sell his power. He would be the muscle of the group; he would be important.
He tried to say something but nothing came out but a small squeak. David swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down his throat as he considered her words. There was no uncertainty or hesitation in her eyes or actions. Tendrils of fear clawed at his insides as he considered the impossible. What if she was right? Did people know how he had broken after almost being killed? Did they know that he had once been weak, worthless?
The Merchants needed him, that was a fact. He knew that without his power they wouldn't have been able to hold the territory they did.
But it had never been about territory for Skidmark had it? He wasn't like Kaiser or Lung who tried to carve out their own respective little empires, all Skids cared about was making money and getting high. What did he care if they lost a street or two when they could easily move into the next one? So in the end what did they need him for exactly? Was he just a tool to throw at the hounds nipping at their heels when the time called for it?
"Of course that's what you are to them David, a tool, a worthless and entirely replaceable tool," the cape said with a smile. "That's all you've ever been, so why did you think the Merchants would be any different?"
"…What do you want," David asked, his voice cracking somewhat. He couldn't think about this right now. He needed to focus on something else, anything else.
"Hmm," the cape hummed as if she was lost in her thoughts, "Oh right, I suppose I got a bit sidetracked there. You see David, I need you to deliver a message to Skidmark. I need you to tell him that he and his little gang are no longer welcome in this city and that if he doesn't leave there will be...consequences."
David snarled as his fear twisted into anger at the knowledge that Skidmark may have been screwing with him this entire time, "Why don't you deliver it yourself bitch?"
The parahuman's eyes flash dangerously and for a moment David feared that she might have her pets rip him apart. Instead she gave him an obviously fake smile, "You misunderstand David, I'm not giving you the message- you are the message."
It only took David a second to realize the meaning behind the cape's words. When he did his skin turned white as a sheet and his blood went cold. "No," David begged as the horses started to drag him deeper into the alleyway where nobody would investigate.
"Please no!" His cried were ignored as more horses stalked down the alley, their yellow eyes glinting in the alley's pale light.
David Russo struggled against his captors, but he might as well have been trying to break a wall with his bare hands. The horses were just too strong. He desperately tried to gather the trash that he was being dragged through in a last ditch effort to make himself a suit of armor, but all he was rewarded with was another chunk of his flesh being torn off.
The cape just watched with a cool detachment as more of her minions moved toward the begging Merchant. David's pleads for mercy turned into shrill screaming as more of the horses descended upon him. The last thing that the Merchant could see before his vision was completely consumed by black sand was the cape's lips twitching up into a smirk.
--
apeljohn said:
Watched regardless, but I'd strongly suggest you cut down the number of powers to just a core few. Otherwise, firstly you'll spend more time explaining them than doing plot, and secondly Taylor won't fit in at all with Worm's style of superhuman. Even the grab-bag capes only have a couple of weak powers.
I do appreciate the criticism but-
Spoiler
Seriously though, thank you all for the feedback you've been giving me and I really hope that you continue to give it so that I can improve my writing more.
Last edited: Sep 28, 2017
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Threadmarks Foreboding 1.3
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QAI521
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#41
Foreboding 1.3
Taylor- no Boogeyman, that's who she was right now, watched with a detached interest as her Nightmares placed Mush's broken body at the foot of the hospital. As she watched the terror filled Mush involuntary twitch in agony and fear, she couldn't help but feel a stab of pity for the drug addicted parahuman.
Like her he had spent much of his life being an outcast, being bullied for being different until he finally broke. The pity she felt for him however was largely overshadowed by the contempt for his practices. Derrell had been a criminal long before he became Mush. The fact that he gave into his vices even more after he gained his powers only served to highlight the disappointment she felt for such a waste of potential.
Boogeyman watched as nurses rushed out of the hospital's glass doors, gurney in tow as the first one to reach him placed his hand on the Merchant's slightly mangled neck, no doubt checking for a pulse. The shouting became more urgent and directed as the nurse waved his compatriots to get the Merchant inside.
It had been more than a little tempting to let Mush die from his wounds, to allow his life to ebb away as the exposure from the frigid winter night whittled away what little strength he had. How easy it would have been to permanently remove his stain from the face of Brockton Bay, but right now he was more useful to her alive than dead in a ditch.
He would live to tell stories about her, passing on what would happen to criminals that strayed into Brocton Bay and the consequences of their actions. Besides, death might have been too much of a mercy for someone like Mush who regularly worked with those who forcibly addicted children to drugs in order to extort them for money. Even if he never held the needle personally their blood was on his hands.
No, he would live, but it wouldn't be pleasant. Her Nightmares had broken most of the bones in his body and had taken more than a few chunks of flesh out. Unless the hospital called for Panacea Mush wasn't going to be walking anytime soon and even if he was healed by the New Wave striker it would be unlikely that he would rejoin the Merchants. She had planted the seeds of doubt in his head about Skidmark and in time they would grow until his suspicion consumed him. He would never trust anyone ever again, not after a perceived betrayal from someone he had worked with for years.
In any case Mush wasn't going to be a threat for quite some time and was no longer a primary concern of hers. In one fell swoop she removed one of the two Merchant parahumans that might have given her pause.
"Let's go," she said, the PRT would probably be here soon to take a statement and figure out what exactly was going on and she didn't want to risk being spotted in case they brought a cape with them.
The Nightmare neighed in disappointment. Boogeyman knew that it could feel the fear the wafted off the hospital from all of those fighting for their lives and how tempting it would be to just stop and feas-
"Let's go," she repeated, this time harsher and more commanding. The Nightmare neighed in disappointment again but complied this time, trotting off across the rooftops in the opposite direction. Giving into her hunger pangs so quickly would set a bad precedent.
When she had first received her powers the knowledge that she would have to feed off of people's fears haunted her. How could she live with herself if she was forced to constantly keep people in a state of fear of her for own survival. She had been more than half tempted to starve herself and fade from existence entirely, erasing the stain on the Earth that was Taylor Hebert.
But then, with that happened with her dad…
The mere thought that the trio's machinations had led to her father's fate however indirectly stoked her with a burning hatred for her three tormentors more than she had ever thought possible. She had been prepared to send all three of them into eternal nightmares for what they did and she would have done it without hesitation.
But then she discovered that Sophia was Shadow Stalker and everything changed.
Oh, she still hated the trio, Emma and Sophia in particular, but her new found knowledge brought with it a realization. The trio, they were just a symptom of the problem, an issue that had been devouring the city from the inside ever since the reveal of Scion during the eighties, maybe even further back than that.
The police, the mayor, the PRT and Protectorate, they didn't own this city, the gangs did, criminals, murderers, rapists and the like. They walked down the streets in broad daylight without a care in the world because they knew that they wouldn't be taken down. They were free to commit their depraved and cruel acts as long as they wanted to because they had power. It wasn't like the Protectorate or PRT would take down the parahumans that protected them, their containment might as well have a revolving door and the police had all but ceded control to the gangs and PRT.
It was the same issue with the trio, just on a smaller scale. They had power over Taylor and the school in the form of Sophia's ward status and the funding that was likely to come with it and they could get away with anything up to and including murder because the school was afraid of losing their funding.
It had taken quite a few internet searches and library books to find out what had changed since the reveal of parahumans, and having an aging librarian have a near heart attack for seeing a book float on its own, but she finally found the answer to the question that had clawed in forefront of her mind for weeks.
Fear.
Or rather a lack of fear to be precise. Before the advent of heroes and villains the United States government had a monopoly on power. Criminals and people feared what would happen if the broke the law because they knew that they wouldn't be able to compete with the power of the police and other law enforcement agencies. Countless hours of research showed that the rise of parahumans ended the government's monopoly on power. What use was a pistol and handcuffs when a person could fly and break steel with their bare hands?
Throughout all of this what Boogeyman had found the most baffling was that nobody really liked to acknowledge this. Oh sure the civilians would comment on how the PRT and Protectorate weren't actually doing anything productive in the long term, but nobody in actual positons of authority and power seemed to want to acknowledge that they were no longer in control. Instead they tried to pretty everything up and bury their heads in the sand to any evidence they weren't in control anymore while criminals ran whole parts of cities with impunity and monsters like Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse devastated entire population centers without pause.
"Ineffectual fools," Boogeyman thought with a growl as her Nightmare shifted underneath her, responding to her emotional state. The heroes were willing to sacrifice civilians to the fires of anarchy and allow psychopaths like Sophia to roam the street in order to maintain an illusion of authority. While they got to hide in their little fortress on the bay and ride out the rot that consumed the city, all of the civilians suffered.
She was done suffering for their sakes.
People on forums said it would be impossible for anyone to bring the city to heel. Most had grown up in what was a dying city and had known nothing else. Others simply didn't think that it was possible for any real change to happen, that the gangs had simply been in charge for too long for anyone to make any real headway.
She would show them the error of their ways.
If the gangs wouldn't fear the heroes, then they would fear her. She was going to have to be more than just another parahuman vigilante, she had to be make herself a myth, a legend. She would become something that would be so feared by the criminals that infested this city like rats that none of the would dare commit any crimes.
She would flood the city in darkness and nightmares just like he had to countless worlds at the end of the Golden Age. He would…
Boogeyman hissed, bringing her hand up to her forehead as it throbbed in pain. What…what had she been thinking about?
The Nightmare beneath her neighed in response to its master's sudden shift in mood.
"I'm fine," Boogeyman hissed as her eyes scrunched up in discomfort, "Keep going."
The Nightmare snorted as if it disagreed with her assessment of her well-being but complied and continued its path towards the more gang infested part of town. Satisfied that her mount was listening Boogeyman took a breath to relieve her tension as the headache faded away. She had been getting them since she got her powers and she still had no idea what they were. Images ghosted through her mind so fast and fleeting that she couldn't make out what they were, like trying to catch water with her bare hands no matter how hard she tried she couldn't bring them to the forefront of her mind.
They're not important.
"I guess they're not," Boogeyman muttered to herself as she mused on her power's peculiarities. She supposed that so long as she had powers that made a difference it didn't really matter if she had to endure a little discomfort. It wasn't like it was anything worse than what the trio did to her.
Whether it was important or not she was going to have to put it on the backburner for the time being while she worked on the next phase of her plan.
"Stop," Boogeyman commanded with a tug on the reigns. The Nightmare responded immediately, coming to a dead stop. It pawed the rooftop with nervous anticipation while Boogeyman dismounted. "Wait here."
Her form became nothing more than a shadow as she slipped through the cracks in the roof, weaving her way through insulation until she reached her destination. She allowed herself to become tangible again as she examined the child's room she had invaded.
It was rather nondescript; the walls were almost bare of anything resembling personal property. A single half broken drawer with peeling white paint was really the only thing that stood out in the bare room. A child who couldn't have been older than nine was snoozing on a rickety old bed that looked like it was being held together by duct tape. Her dark skin stood out against the permanently stained grey bedsheet that only managed to cover about two thirds of her body, the only besides her ripped pajamas to protect her from the cold winter air that seeped through the cracked walls of her house.
Despite the seemingly destitute nature of the child her dreams were strong, like a lighthouse in the middle of a stormy night they shone past the dark that crept at the edges of her subconscious, fighting back against a level of cynicism that was surprising for someone of her age.
It had been… difficult at first, to do this to children. It was one thing to give her tormentors and gang members their karmic justice, but to subject innocent children to their nightmares was something different.
Still it was something that had to be done, she needed power and children's nightmares gave her a far greater boost than most adults. She wasn't sure why exactly, but it wasn't something she could change. She could only try and minimize how many children she visited each night otherwise she would never be able to grow stronger. She would have preferred to feed of the more well to do children, the ones who didn't live in poverty fearing every day for their lives and the lives of their families. But that would mean more travel time between her feeding grounds the Merchant's territory and it would undoubtedly bring more scrutiny upon her activities from the PRT and Protectorate than she wanted right now.
Besides, wouldn't the security of their safety and future be well worth a few nightmares?
She tapped the sleeping girl's forehead and frowned as her dreams of picnics and wildflowers became fire and ash. Her small smile changed into a fearful frown as she drew herself closer together, as if she could protect herself by shielding herself from the nightmare. While Boogeyman didn't feel nearly the same amount of satisfaction she had felt witnessing Emma's suffering as black sand poured out from under her eyelids and formed a small Nightmare, she couldn't deny that feeding off of fears felt good.
Each nightmare was a small spurt of power, tiny and almost insignificant on its own, but when combined with the nightmares of others the change became obvious. She had never felt this alive before she had gotten her powers.
It was exhilarating.
It was also terrifying. If she didn't restrain herself from feeding indiscriminately what would she become? She could imagine it now, Nightmares flooding the streets and tearing through buildings to get a quick meal while she stood on high and watched. It wouldn't be that hard, as far as she could tell she didn't seem to have any hard limit to how many Nightmares she could make or how strong she could get other than the amount and intensity of the fear that she and her minions fed off of.
Still, she couldn't allow her life to be consumed by what-ifs, not when she had the power to make some real change to the city.
"Go," she said as she gave a minor mental nudge to the newborn Nightmare to go join its brethren in feeding. As the Nightmare slipped into the freezing night Boogeyman considered how her actions would be viewed here.
She had no doubt that the PRT would label her as a villain no matter how much good she did. The mere fact that she would be doing good would no doubt play a part in her classification as a villain, after all PR was their lifeblood. If someone else came in and started doing their job for them they would have to do everything in their power in order to avoid being seen as incompetent. They might even try to press gang her like they did to Sophia, but Boogeyman wasn't going to let that happen, not now and not ever.
She wasn't going to become a stooge for the very same organization that had allowed her city to continue its downward spiral. She wasn't going to trade off effectiveness for appearance.
"Easier said than done," Boogeyman thought with a grumble as she slipped back into her shadow form and rejoined her steed on the roof. While the lack of meaningful effort from the PRT had certainly assisted the gangs in their hostile takeover of the city they didn't get this far by being as incompetent as their counterparts. They had years to dig in and fortify their positions. The Empire alone probably had a close to five hundred members, not even including over fifteen parahumans with a few more that rotated in and out from around the country.
Their primary competitors, the ABB, didn't nearly have as many men or parahumans to hold their territory but they did have Lung, the man who drove off Leviathan. What the ABB lacked for in numbers and equipment they more than made up for it with the sheer strength of their boss.
She had been more than a little tempted to take the fight directly to them and drive out the two biggest gangs in the city but then her survival instinct that she had relied on for the last two years of Winslow managed to get past the haze of her power trip and remind her of the reality of her situation.
Even with the feeding she had been doing she only had a couple dozen Nightmares at the moment, though that number was growing quickly. She was strong, but she doubted that she would be able to pit herself against the likes of Lung or Hookwolf and live to tell the tale. So she fell back on a lesson that her mom had taught her when she was younger.
If you find yourself confronted with a problem too big for you to solve, break it down into smaller problems and you might find the solution. Of course Boogeyman doubted that her mom was thinking about taking on gangs when she was helping with her math homework but the lesson still applied.
She couldn't take the Empire of the ABB on now, it would most certainly be suicide. But just because she couldn't take out the biggest players yet that didn't mean that there weren't smaller gangs that she couldn't take out first.
One of the reasons that she had chosen to target the Merchants instead of the Empire or ABB was because they were almost universally despised. They were considered to be the scum of the Bay, even by the other gangs. However many drugs the Empire and ABB sold the Merchants sold more, and worse ones. However violent and desperate their foot soldiers were the Merchants were more so. They weren't comprised under a single ideology or the fear of one parahuman, but their collective desire for drugs and other illicit ventures. They were hedonistic slaves to their desires and didn't care about anything but their next fix.
One of the other reasons that Boogeyman had chosen to target them first was because of their organizational structure. From what Boogeyman had read trawling the PHO forums unlike the other gangs they didn't really have a strict organizational structure. They had lieutenants of sorts that answered to Skidmark and the other parahumans that ran the gang, but they were constantly changing, constantly in flux. If the police captured one lieutenant, then Skidmark would just chose another mook to do his bidding through without much of a fuss. They were less lieutenants and more errand boys. It made it almost impossible to make any real operational damage against the gang without taking out their parahumans.
Which also proved to be the gang's greatest weakness. Without Skidmark, Squealer and the now near catatonic Mush the gang would fall apart. The gang would dissolve into groups bickering over what to do and who was in charge. It was what her entire plan hinged on to work. Boogeyman knew that the PRT and Protectorate had to know this, they had thinkers, both parahuman and not, that were far smarter than her. There was absolutely no reason that they couldn't have figured out how to remove the Merchants. It wasn't like anyone was going to miss them. So why hadn't they taken them down already?
"I don't suppose you have any ideas do you," Boogeyman asked as she stroked her steed's snout. The sand had a very strange texture, rough but smooth, elastic but solid. It gave under the pressure of her fingers a little bit, but she could still tell that the Nightmare in question was more than capable of mauling a man, as evidenced by what they did to Mush.
The Nightmare in question only snorted in response.
"I thought not," she murmured as she continued to pet the Nightmare, Emma's Nightmare to be precise. The Nightmare had grown in size at a rate that had astounded her. Within a few hours it went from the size of a small cat to being one of the largest Nightmares in her herd. Even knowing how much Emma had given herself into her fears it still surprised Boogeyman how fast the creature had grown.
On occasions like this one she would find herself talking to it even though she knew that it was incapable of responding and even if it did was it probably wouldn't care about anything except feeding. She supposed it said something about her that the closest thing she had to a friend was the personification of her ex-best friend's fears.
"But why," she asked, bringing her attention back from her personal steed and to the question at hand. As far as the Boogeyman could tell the Merchants didn't really have anything going for them that could prevent the PRT from taking them out in one fell swoop. While their three, no two capes weren't exactly weak they weren't the brightest bulbs in the sockets by any stretch of the imagination. Skidmark certainly had a low cunning based on the fact that he had survived this long in Brockton Bay with the likes of the Empire and the ABB trying to crush the life out of him, but it still didn't add up.
From what Boogeyman had found most of the Merchant's parahumans weren't suited for dealing with surprise attacks or quick battles. They all required a certain amount of time to build up their power enough to actually become a significant threat. Skidmark needed time to stack his strips on top of one another to exert sufficient force and Squealer needed time to build her vehicles and unlike Lung who also needed to build up steam they didn't have anyone with an easily spammable power to run interference for them during the early fight.
The PRT could have set up an ambush at any time and wipe them off the face of the map but they didn't. The research she had done had shown that the PRT knew that they weren't in control anymore, but she had never witnessed them actually try to get back in control at all. Boogeyman knew that they practically worshiped the status quo and PR, but could they be that worried about rocking the boat that they didn't want to risk changing anything. Were they really that concerned about maintaining the illusion of control than actually achieving control?
Deep down, past all the layers of resentment and anger the little girl that had once been Taylor Hebert, the girl who had dressed up in her Alexandria costume for over a week after Halloween wanted to scream no. That the heroes were doing everything they could to stop the bad guys and save the city. But the woman who was now Boogeyman ignored that voice.
"I suppose it doesn't matter why they're doing it does it," Boogeyman asked. Emma's Nightmare neighed again in agreement. In the end it didn't matter. She was going to make a difference, not the Protectorate. She was going to drive out the gangs from the city, not the Protectorate. She was going to fix this broken and dying city, not the Protectorate.
As she remounted her steed Boogeyman stared out at the city.
If one simply looked at the docks they could see the difference between it and downtown. Only a smattering of lights from houses and other assorted buildings could be seen in the distance, whether it was from wear and tear or the owner's option to keep it from being seen as a target, but there was a significant difference from the downtown area. Downtown was lit up like a Christmas tree, signs of life emitting from every corner of every building. A sign of the wealth and the assurance of safety that they possessed, totally unconcerned about the suffering of those only a few miles away.
But for all of the wealth those who lived in downtown possessed, even they couldn't escape the slow inexorable death grip that was strangling the city with its vicious uncaring claws. The city was dying, there was no denying that fact, but it wasn't dead. People like her father and mother had put their lives into trying to better this city through whatever means they could. Whether it was just spending an extra hour or two after class to assist a troubled student, or to try year after year to revitalize the ferry they had never given up on this city.
And neither would she.
She wouldn't allow the Protectorate's uncaring nature to destroy her home.
"Come on," Boogeyman said, her yellow eyes filled with a new light as she tugged on her steed's reigns. "We still have work to do."
--
Last edited: Nov 13, 2016
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Threadmarks Foreboding 1.4
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QAI521
QAI521
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Oct 19, 2016
#46
Enjoy!
Foreboding 1.4
Three days.
That's how long it had taken Skidmark and the rest of the Merchants to realized that whoever was attacking them wasn't going to stop. Three days of constant attack every night from her Nightmares with her occasional personal intervention. Dozens of Merchants put into the hospital and scared half to death. Many wouldn't be walking again anytime soon while others were traumatized for life by the nightmares she set loose on them. But even with Mush's mauling and subsequent arrest two days ago there had still been no real reaction from the Merchants other than the occasional pistol which proved to be mostly useless against her Nightmares.
Boogeyman supposed she shouldn't be too surprised at Skidmark's delayed reaction, the man had probably been high on drugs so much he didn't even realize his gang was being bled out. Of course it might have also had something to do with the fact that the PRT hadn't announced Mush's hospitalization to the public quite yet. She wasn't exactly sure what their logic was behind that, she would have thought they would want to announce to the world that they had "captured" a villain in order to bolster their PR.
Though Boogeyman couldn't deny that it had been useful to her. If Skidmark had moved earlier then she might have not gotten enough Nightmares to complete the next phase of her plan. The delayed reaction from Skidmark had given her enough time to gather some more strength and pad the numbers of her herd.
An hour or so ago she had found a stray Merchant that had been packing far more weaponry than any of his compatriots had before. After a little encouragement she managed to get some information out of him. It appeared that in response to her attacks Skidmark had called a meeting and was planning on dealing with the threat. Merchants from all around their territory would be banding together to take her on.
It would have been rude of her to not oblige his challenge.
She watched with barely constrained anticipation as more and more Merchants slunk into the warehouse they were using for their meeting grounds. It was almost as run down as the one she was using, but none of the Merchants seemed particularly concerned about that. Judging by the fear rolling off of them they were all too glad to answer their leader's call after seeing so many of their fellows attacked.
"Wait for the signal," She said, pushing the command into the minds of her Nightmares. The demonic horses had multiplied in number the last few days, she had gone from a dozen or so to almost a hundred. Her own strength had grown as well, she was stronger, faster, and she was pretty sure she had grown an inch or two as well.
Her Nightmares neighed in response as they pawed the ground with their hooves in eager anticipation. This was the feast she had been promising. After this they wouldn't be stuck to scavenging off lone drug dealers or isolated groups. She could feel at least forty or fifty gang members in the building, their individual fears coated the area in a thick fog to her senses, like smoke rising from a fire. Boogeyman could admit to herself that the thought of feeding off that many fears was appealing to her as well.
Her personal Nightmare, who she had chosen to name Phobia, brushed its snout against her arm while it neighed, hunger gnawing at its insides. Boogeyman absently patted its snout in a calming gesture. It might have been a mistake to give a name to a projection that would probably be destroyed in the coming days, but it gave her the illusion that she was actually talking to a real person and not a mindless drone.
"You'll all get your meal, but wait," Boogeyman reiterated. She didn't think it would be too much of an issue, the Nightmares had been following her instructions to the letter, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. She didn't want them to interrupt her while she was working.
Boogeyman allowed herself to become two dimensional, nothing more than another shadow across the pavement. She clung to the dark edges around the few working streetlights, careful not to draw any attention to herself.
As a Merchant passed by she dived into his shadow, becoming indistinguishable as a shape other than a slightly darker spot. The smell of drugs and garbage clung to the homeless looking man like a second skin. She almost felt sorry for his sad state but it was quickly crushed under the revulsion she felt for his very being. He wasn't afraid of getting attacked or not having a roof over his head, all he was afraid off was not getting his next fix.
"How many have you hurt for your abominable desires," Boogeyman thought with no small amount of contempt. People like him only cared about having their immediate desires satisfied, even if the city burned around them.
As they passed through the warehouse doors she found that the inside of the building was actually less lit up than the outside. She detached herself from the man's shadow and climbed up the walls, giving her a vantage point to look over the proceedings.
The Merchants had formed up into a huddled mass, whispering and muttering and they jostled each other around nervously. Boogeyman couldn't make out what it was they were saying but she got the general idea- they were afraid.
"Listen up!" The man that took the makeshift wooden stage at the end of the warehouse looked like what someone would use for a PSA on drug use. His cheeks were sunken in and his gums and teeth were rotted out. She could see at least a dozen injections sites covering his rail thin arms. His eyes were bloodshot and wild, flickering around the room with sudden jerky movements.
Boogeyman was a tiny bit impressed, Skidmark actually looked worse than the PHO forums made him out to be.
His costume was laughably minimal, a simple mask that didn't even bother to cover his iris was strapped across his face. Squealer looked like she had a more coherent costume and all she was wearing was some stereotypical slut wear with a barely concealing tank top and a skirt that might have well not existed. Said tinker had taken her place next to her boyfriend (and didn't that make the bile rise up in her nonexistent mouth of the thought of someone willingly kissing that face) and seemed content to stare out at the crowd and appeared to be rather lost in thought.
"How have the Protectorate not caught them," Boogeyman wondered to herself. It wasn't like the Merchants were the Empire with over fifteen capes and international support, or Lung who had fought an Endbringer to a standstill. They were a group of hedonists with only three capes that were capable of any appreciable damage and two of them needed time to build up to reach lethal levels.
"Some ass thinks he can take us on," Skidmark continued, oblivious as the rest of the building to the threat that lurked with them. The muttering in the assembled Merchants grew, the pitch of concern becoming sharper and more defined as their fears became more solid. They had all known that they were afraid of something, but having it admitted out loud, and by their leader no less made the fear they felt become more pronounced, more real.
"Now we gonna screw him up!" Skidmark shouted shrilly as he waved a sawed-off shotgun. Boogeyman watched as the Merchants began to shout incoherently at their leader's declaration, but she could still feel the fear hiding behind the thin layer of bravado.
This wasn't like the PRT and Protectorate making a move, or one of the other gangs muscling in on their territory as downtrodden as it was. They had no idea who was behind these attacks or what they were capable of. Her attacks had varied from viciously mauling her targets or breaking them down through psychological attacks until all that was left was a gibbering wreck afraid of their own shadow. None of the Merchants had ever dealt with something like this before and had absolutely no idea what the limits of her powers were, or if there might be worse fates in store for them.
The uncertainty clawed at their thoughts and influenced every action. As drug addled as they were even the Merchants knew that calling forth a gathering this big would rain down punishment from the heroes and the villains. But they were afraid, and scared people didn't make decisions that were rational.
She could have left them like this, allowed them to go on their rampage and burn themselves out as the heroes beat them back and villains retaliated against their enterprises. But that would have left innocent civilians in harm's way and while the heroes were most certainly capable of allowing those they were obligated to protect be hurt for their own safety she wasn't. She was never going to allow a civilian to be willingly harmed by anything that she put into motion.
Even then there were other options, she could have slit Skidmark's throat while he was sleeping and be done with it, but this was bigger than just removing a single gang from play- this was a message. This was going to be her statement, that it didn't matter how many people they gathered or what powers they wielded, nothing was going to protect the gangs from her wrath. They would cower before her or fall.
Boogeyman stretched her form out and pinched one of the shadows of the flickering lights between her two of her adumbrated fingers. The group below her jumped back as the light sparked and died, bits of glass falling to the floor.
"What the f-"
Skidmark's explicative was cut off as Boogeyman crushed another light with her shadowy fingers, plunging even more of the room into darkness. Then she started laughing.
She could feel the fear of the Merchants spike as her bone chilling laughter filled the room, modulating from a small child's to an old man's voice and everything in-between. The tension grew as one of the more nervous Merchant's fired his pistol into the air. The small caliber round embedded itself in the ceiling, sending shards and splinters of wood to the floor. The brief muzzle flash revealed her shadowy form for all to see for the briefest of moments before fading back into the darkness.
"Get down here," Skidmark growled as he brandished his shotgun at the now dark ceiling, but he didn't activate his power. It made sense she supposed, from what she knew once he had placed his strips he couldn't move them, so trying to set them up for an enemy he couldn't see would have been an exercise in futility.
"Do you hear me! Get down here so we can teach you what it means to mess with the Merchants," Skidmark growled out. Boogeyman could feel the assembled Merchant's bloodlust rise a bit at that declaration, but it was largely overshadowed by the fear that was consuming their minds. Idly she wondered if Skidmark actually thought that making that threat would really work when he obviously had no control over the situation.
Boogeyman allowed the light that illuminated the stage to remain intact if only for the next part. "Is that what you'll do Skidmark?" She hissed, her voice coming from everywhere and nowhere as she circled the stage just beyond the rim of the last light. The addict's cape name dripped with such contempt that Boogeyman was surprised the floor didn't melt underneath her at that moment.
"Babe…" Squealer tried to interject. She wrung her welding torch tightly as her heart rate soared. Boogeyman could feel the vulnerability that Squealer felt for being so exposed to an unknown cape without her tinker tech assistance.
"Not now," Skidmark said through grit teeth. He put on a good show for his followers but Boogeyman could see the sweat on his brow and the dilation of his eyes. He was just as afraid as the rest of them. Good.
"Is that what you'll do? Teach me a lesson?" Boogeyman said in an imitation of Skidmark's voice. She relished the flinch that the man tried to suppress.
"You've made a big mistake coming here," Skidmark said as his grip on his gun tightened. "We gonna beat you down ain't we boys?" But instead of the resounding cheers that he had surely been expecting all he got were a few halfhearted responses as the Merchants nervously shuffled in place.
Boogeyman chuckled, "Now Skidmark, how are you going to fight something you can't see?"
Skidmark fired off a shotgun blast into the darkness. It missed Boogeyman by a mile, but the group of Merchants that had been standing too close to the stage weren't so lucky. Boogeyman watched with a cool detachment as they fell to the ground screaming, choking on blood and lead. Those closest to them and the stage started to back up.
"Who do you think you are," Skidmark shouted, spittle flying out from his mouth. Boogeyman allowed her shadowy form to enter the light and cling to the wall. She heard gaps as she inflated herself to be as big as possible, towering over the assembled Merchants. Skidmark shot off another shotgun shell into her form, but she was too intangible for it to actually do anything other than smash the wood beneath her.
"Tell me Skidmark," Boogeyman hissed. As said parahuman backed up, desperately trying to load another shell she retook her physical form on the stage. Skidmark raised the half loaded shotgun, to do what with it she wasn't sure, but she didn't give herself the opportunity to find out instead she formed a whip out of her sand and knocked him off the stage with a deafening crack.
"Baby," Squealer shouted in alarm as she raced over to her boyfriend. Skidmark's shirt had been ripped open by the whip, and a long angry mark was left across his chest. Boogeyman gave them the most disturbing slasher smile she could muster and judging by their elevated heart rates it was pretty good.
"Do you believe in the Boogeyman?"
At that moment the doors to the warehouse burst open as her small army of Nightmares made their entrance. There were so many of them that they became a single indistinguishable mass of sand and shadow as they crashed into the assembled Merchants. Boogeyman grinned as the fear that they had so been desperately trying to conceal revealed itself in the form of their panicked screams. A few of the slightly braver, or perhaps dumber, ones tried to fight the back mass of demonic horses.
It didn't end well for them. The small caliber fire they unloaded into the herd was nothing more than an annoyance and none of the melee weapons they had could hit the horses with enough force to disperse them. One of the Merchants that had a shotgun managed to get off a hit and made one of the Nightmares collapse into a pile of dust as dozens of tiny pellets ripped through the beast's head. The Merchant's victory fell short as two more Nightmare charged forward to replace their fallen comrade. They fell screaming as the Nightmares descended upon them, eager to feed off the fear of so many.
Boogeyman could see that a few of the smarter and more cowardly Merchants were trying to make an escape, but they were cut short as another group of Nightmares surrounded them, their glowing yellow eyes daring them to try something.
"I'm gonna kill you!"
"Ah right, Skidmark," Boogeyman mentally chastised herself for getting so caught up in the buffet that she had ignored her actual targets.
Skidmark had lost his shotgun, but he seemed undeterred as he stared her down. The fear that he was feeling towards her and the Nightmares was now largely overshadowed by his rage. His eyes were bloodshot, veins nearly pulsing along his arms as he tried to grind what few teeth he had left to demonstrate the sheer rolling ball of anger that was eating away at his insides.
"I'm gonna kill you," the addicted shaker shouted again. It might have been a bit intimidating if his arms weren't like built like twigs and his clothing wasn't about half a size too big for him. It was like watching a Chihuahua bark at a Great Dane. Humorous to be certain, but there was really only one way it was going to end. She had put far too much effort into this to be stopped by someone like Skidmark.
Boogeyman smiled, revealing her fang like off colored teeth that seemed to shine in the faint lighting of the warehouse. "You can try."
Skidmark roared at her dismissal of his threat, his arms shaking in fury. Boogeyman watched as a strip of blue energy appeared midair between the two of them. It was thin, barely the thickness of a piece of paper, but then another one was layered on top of it, then another, and another…
Boogeyman could feel the force that the strips were exerting start increasing as Skidmark layered more and more on top of each other. She quickly moved to her shadow form and felt the pressure that had been building up on her chest evaporate.
Her form slithered under the power strips and Skidmark's legs. Even as she erupted into physical form once again she willed her sand to form a scythe that was about as tall as she was yet was virtually weightless. It's black grains seemed to draw in the surrounding light and its serrated edges appeared sharp enough to cut through solid rock. As it swung, whistling through the air Boogeyman shifted her stance slightly, adjusting her aim for the man's exposed neck.
What happened next surprised her.
Perhaps Skidmark wasn't as stupid as his appearance suggested or perhaps he just had good survival instincts, but as the edge of the blade sliced through the air the Merchant leader allowed himself to fall to the ground. What should have been a killing blow swung over the Merchant's prone body and threw Boogeyman off balance as the resistance that she had been anticipating from the man's spine vanished.
It was all she could do to keep herself from falling over as Skidmark rolled back up to his feet, his discarded shotgun in hand, mouth stretched into a sadistic grin.
"Bye-bye," he said as he squeezed the trigger.
Boogeyman didn't even have time to blink as a twelve-gauge shotgun round blasted into her chest. Her chest ignited in fiery agony as she fell to the ground gasping for breath. Her scythe shattered into a million grains of sand as her concentration lapsed even as the shards of metal that had imbedded themselves in her flesh were pushed out. As she laid stunned on the floor Skidmark approached her with a swagger to his step.
"Now what were you going to do?" he asked with a mocking smile as he waved the shotgun in her face. Boogeyman's eyes narrowed as she pushed past the pain to glare at the Merchant. Despite himself Skidmark took a step back at the sight of a glare that was as cold and chilling as a Siberian night. His palms were greased in sweat as he adjusted his grip on his gun, making sure to aim directly at her skull.
"Don't you try-"
Skidmark was cut off as Boogeyman allowed herself to lose her physical form once more and become nothing more than an intangible shadow. Skidmark let loose the second round in the chamber, but all it did was temporarily blind him as rock and cement blasted out from the impact sight and into his face, completely ignoring the cape before him.
Boogeyman took her physical form a few feet in front of him as she clutched her chest. The pain that had come from the shotgun blast was gone, proving her theory that she was getting more durable, though she would have preferred have tested it in some other way.
Getting shot hurt.
Though she supposed that would have killed her if she had been weaker so she should probably count herself lucky.
At any rate this wasn't time to analyze her powers, not in the heat of battle. She reformed her scythe as Skidmark finished wiping his eyes of any debris. Boogeyman saw them widen as her curved blade swung forward in its deadly arc. The Merchant instinctively raised his hands to shield his more valuable head from injury even as he started to back up.
A futile gesture.
Skidmark fell to the ground screaming as he clutched the empty stump that had once been his right hand while his shotgun clattered to the floor uselessly. His shrill screams mixed in rather nicely with all of the other screaming Merchants.
Boogeyman approached him slowly, confidently, hiding the fact that his surprise attack had spooked her. She towered over the fallen parahuman as tears and snot streaked down his face, mixing into a salty mucus liquid even as more precious blood erupted from his severed stump.
"Now what was it you were going to do Adam," she asked with a vicious sneer. Her nose wrinkled a bit at the smell of ammonia and she had to forcibly keep herself from rolling her eyes at the dark stain spreading down his trousers. She could feel the fear rolling off of him in waves as his fright filled eyes stared at her. She could almost physically feel his heart trying to burst out his chest as he tried to scoot backwards to escape from her wrath. She could still feel the anger and indignation of her actions, but it was completely dominated by his overwhelming fear of her.
And thus the true drug lord of Brocton Bay revealed his true self, not a merciless coldhearted killer, but a coward lashing out at the world around him.
"W-wha'do want," Skidmark managed to get out through the chocked sobs of pain that wracked his body.
Boogeyman only smirked.
"Your head."
She gave him a split second to realize what she was about to do before she swung her blade. She could see his eyes widening and his lips opening in half form pleads for mercy but she ignored them. People like him didn't deserve mercy.
Blood splattered the ground as his head rolled away from his body, his terror filled expression frozen on his face forever. The Merchant's body twitched a bit, as if it hadn't realized it was dead yet and was still trying to complete the last thing it had been trying to do. But as more blood squirted out from his nonexistence neck and dominant hand it slumped to the ground completely.
Perhaps not as satisfying as breaking him down piece by piece until nothing remained but an empty shell, but such efforts would have been lost on the man. All he understood was pain and violence and so she obliged him. The part of her that had once been Taylor Hebert seemed to churn at the sight of the dead man but she ignored it. Skidmark had been a disease eating away at the city without any thought for those he harmed. The world would be better off without his taint.
Boogeyman turned back towards the chaos behind her. The Merchants that were the closest to her and had witnessed what she had just done to their leader were cowering on the ground as her Nightmares surrounded them. A few more of the Merchants looked like they still had some fight in their eyes, but a quick growl from a Nightmare or two was enough to subdue them into submission. There was more than one body that was clearly dead, one looked like her Nightmares had gotten a little too eager in trying send him into a state of terror through the removal of nonessential body parts and one looked like he had just dropped dead. As she took a rough count of the Merchants she wondered if he had literally died of fear. She was curious to what his autopsy would show.
It was then as she examined the Merchants who had surrendered that she noticed someone in particular was missing.
"Where's Squealer?"
There was a roar like thunder and half a second later part of the building collapsed as the lovechild of a monster truck and a tank erupted through the wreckage. It wheels were beyond massive, towering over her by a good four feet. Decorative spikes shot out from the rims while even more were placed along the haphazardly placed armor that covered the mechanical monstrosity. A single massive cannon barrel hovered menacingly over the vehicle's main body like something out of a science fiction fantasy movie. Boogeyman held back a wince at the screams of the unfortunate Merchants and Nightmares that were caught in Squealer's path, crushed underneath the massive wheels of the metal eyesore.
"…never mind."
--
So this is most likely going to be my last chapter for the next week or two since I have midterms coming up that I probably should have been studying for instead of writing this, but Pitch!Taylor's voice kept on bugging me while I was studying. Hopefully this will sate her enough that I can get on with my life.
Last edited: Apr 2, 2017
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QAI521
Oct 19, 2016
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Threadmarks Foreboding 1.5
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QAI521
QAI521
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Oct 31, 2016
#58
Enjoy!
Foreboding 1.5
"Do you believe in the Boogeyman?"
Squealer couldn't hold back her shiver of fear as the corpse pale cape gave them one of the most disturbing smiles she had ever seen, mouth far too wide and teeth far too sharp than they had any right to be.
Her feelings of dread only redoubled as the doors to the warehouse were thrown off their half rusted hinges by a wave of black matter. Her heart caught in her throat as the mass moved like a living being as it crashed into the panicking Merchants. Glowing yellow eyes and far too many midnight black teeth tore out of the wave and became smaller but no less disturbing horse-shaped figures whose skin gave off an unnatural shimmer in the near lightless building.
Squealer winced a bit as Skidmark gripped her arm in an effort to pull himself up. It wasn't that strong of a grip compared to when he would punish her for her behavior, but she wouldn't be surprised if she got some bruises.
"Get the tank," Skidmark growled as he glared at the cape who took no notice of him, seemingly lost in her own little world as she gazed down onto the carnage with something akin to satisfaction. "Let's wreck him."
Squealer pursed her lips at the thought of wasting her baby's grand appearance on some no name like this. Such events were meant to be savored with a low satisfaction of watching everything and everyone around you shake with uncontained fear as you unveiled your new power. Using it to crush this single cape and her army would be a waste of a perfectly good entrance. "What about-"
She was cut off by a rough shove from Skidmark and shrunk in on herself at the angry look he gave her. "Go get the tank," he said, his eyes lighting with a slightly maniac gleam. Squealer fearfully nodded in compliance as she slowly backed out of his reach. Skidmark was a good boyfriend and gave her some great sex, but he had this annoying habit of hitting her whenever he was angry. She knew he loved her but it got pretty irritating at times to have to pay attention to his moods so she wouldn't get hit. Still, he was right, now wasn't the time for her to argue with him about using her vehicles.
Even if it was such a waste.
"I'm gonna kill you!" Skidmark roared as he approached the cape. The woman's uncomfortably yellow eyes locked on Skidmark's form as Squealer raced out of her field of vision. While the rest of the fairly idiotic Merchants were still trying to futilely push their way past the demonic horses that blocked their way to the doors Squealer made her way to the side of the building.
Whenever Skidmark had meetings that were made up of more than a handful people he would always make sure to have at least one secondary exit for the two of them, a policy that had saved their skins more than once from heroes and villains alike. Squealer pressed her hands against the ancient corrugated metal siding and pushed.
A rectangular section of the wall about four feet tall and wide that she had carved into with her personal welding torch not but a few hours earlier popped off and fell to the ground with a clang that was covered up by the sound of the terror filled screams of the Merchants. As she squeezed through the smallish hole in the wall she knew that Skidmark would be okay. She knew that he was more than capable of taking care of himself and had waxed more than a few upstarts that had tried to usurp his position over the years, but it was always a nerve wracking experience for her. The thought of Skids, the only person in the world that had treated her with an ounce of respect, getting hurt by some no name bitch weighed heavily on her mind.
She would make sure that this newbie learn the price of messing with her boyfriend.
The thought of the bitch's smug smile fading as she was crushed underneath tons of steel brought a smile to her own face. She only hoped that Skidmark wouldn't get hurt. The last time he had been out of commission for an extended period they hadn't been able to have sex for a couple months.
Squealer tried to cast those unwanted thoughts out of the forefront of her mind as she raced over to one of the adjacent buildings. She could feel her heart beating against her ribcage as more screams echoed out of the hole she had left, grating against her eardrums like a symphony of the dammed as she approached a nearby warehouse.
The side entrance to the warehouse fell open as her body slammed against it, the rusted lock absolutely no match for the force she exerted with her shoulder. Compared to the meeting place the warehouse was in pretty good condition comparatively. It had been one of the things she had insisted on when she had helped Skids pick the meeting place, she didn't want some homeless junkie to wander in and take a piss on her baby, or even worse, have the building fall down on top of it when she started it.
The behemoth of a vehicle that sat in the darkness was the culmination of months of work. Just getting the necessary supplies and raw material to build her without raising any flags had taken almost two months. Actual construction had been in the timeframe of around four to five months and she still wasn't completely finished, at least in her mind. She had wanted to add two more fusion cannons on the rotating turret to give her baby 360-degree coverage, but Skids had balked at the price tag she had given him for the materials to build two more. She could understand his frustration, she had already sunk what was probably around a million or two dollars into her baby, but she still held true to the idea that the price tag would be well worth it.
With her baby they would be capable of taking on Lung. Wasn't that worth spending some money?
Squealer ducked under the bottom of her baby and pulled the entrance hatch open. A small ladder slid out that she quickly climbed up as she tried to ignore the nervous sweat breaking out all over her palms.
Despite her assurances to Skids that her baby would work she had never actually tried to turn her on. Oh, she had done systems checks on the cannon and driven her around a few times as a test run, but she had never actually had them all on at once. In theory the reactor that she had installed should be enough to power the enormous energy consumption her baby needed to function, but she had found out about two weeks ago that the uranium rods that she had received were of far lesser quality than she had originally ordered. She wasn't entirely sure that the reactor would be able to handle the strain of the fusion cannon in addition to running the other systems.
Maybe if she redistributed the power draw then-
"Focus," Squealer thought to herself as she strapped herself in. This wasn't the time to get lost in tinkering, her boyfriend was counting on her to bring the cavalry, and while she would have preferred to spend some more time on her baby to fix all the bugs she didn't really have an option. Armsbastard had trashed her motorbike last month which left her without any working vehicles. As of this moment this tank was the only complete creation she had. It still felt wrong to have to ruin her grand unveiling of what was sure to be her greatest creation on this admittedly very scary upstart but her boyfriend was in trouble.
"C'mon," Squealer chanted under her breath as she activated the tank for the first time. She held her breath as the control panel flickered for a few seconds before powering up in full. The drug addicted tinker let out a triumphant cheer as all the systems came on without any issue, even the fusion cannon. Squealer could feel the hum throughout the vehicle as the multi gigawatt cannon activated.
"Haha," Squealer laughed manically, "Let's see who's scary now!"
The tank erupted forward, shaking the earth as if a thousand wildebeests were stampeding through, its roar the cry of an angry dragon. The sheet metal that made up the warehouse structure didn't even last a second against the mechanical monstrosities' forward charge, instead it smashed apart the building with the ease a child would knock over a sandcastle. But even with part of the building's roof collapsing on the tank it was unmolested by the debris.
Squealer let out another slightly insane laugh as she crashed through the meeting place's wall. The look of shock on the bitch parahuman's face was something to relish as it was plastered in high definition video feed on her twenty-inch screen.
"What are you going to do now?" Squealer asked through the external speakers as her fusion cannon fired a warning shot. Purplish energy crackled along the barrel for a split second before a solid beam of purple energy shot out from the cannon like the wrath of an angry god. Squealer laughed in elation as the beam cut through the building like it was a knife going through butter. Her sense of excitement only heightened as her cameras angled themselves to look through the smoking hole it had left behind. From there she could see that it had not only plowed through the next building, but it had kept on going until she couldn't make it out anymore.
This was real power.
Squealer adjusted the cannon's angle to lock onto the still stunned cape who remained motionless in front of the clearly dead body lying behind her. Sqeualer couldn't make out who it was with the way the cape was standing but it probably wasn't anyone important. Squealer cursed as the cape vanished from her targeting sensors, revealing the decapitated head of the corpse.
Sherrel Bailey's blood froze.
Staring back at her were the empty eyes of Skidmark, his face frozen in an expression of pure terror. Squealer felt her heart clench up as blood from her boyfriend's headless corpse poured out onto the stained floor.
"nononono."
Squealer could barely hear her whispers of denial as the truth laid in front of her.
Skidmark was dead.
Adam was dead.
He was dead.
"NO!" She screamed as sorrow turned to anger and she slammed down on the fire button. She couldn't' have that- that body staring at her, mocking her, judging her. The fusion cannon's lance of energy struck the corpse with such power that it didn't just burn, it disintegrated on a virtually molecular level, becoming nothing more than superheated dust.
"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" She roared in anger as she swung the beam around in a blind arc, searching for the killer of her lover. The only man who had ever shown her kindness and given her freedom.
Her attack was indiscriminate, both Merchant foot soldiers and nightmarish horses fell before the power of her fusion cannon. Even those who avoided the lance of energy didn't emerge unscathed, the sheer heat emanating from the fusion cannon was enough to turn the sand horses into pure glass with a pass, freezing them into warped statues. A few more Merchants were just as unlucky, their clothing and hair igniting into flames as their skin melted, only adding fuel to the fire of panic. Squealer's vision blurred as angry tears gathered in her eyes. She had to find that bitch, she had to make her pay.
The warehouse before her was chaos incarnate as Merchants tried to escape their captors and the fury of their enraged tinker. They pushed and shoved and fought each other just as much as the horses. Squealer growled, teeth grinding against each other as there was still no sign of the murderer. She could hear dozens of horses pounded against her amour plating as they tried to crack it open like a walnut. Not that it would do them any good, she had designed this thing to withstand punishment from an amped up Lung, there was no way they were getting through that.
"Show yourself," Squealer shouted, her speaker amplifying her roar of rage and anguish so loudly that the entire building seemed to quake.
"I thought you might have shown more appreciation."
Squealer scrambled out of the pilot seat and harness so fast she might have gotten a mover rating for it. Her hands flew up as they wrapped around the cold grip of her personal pistol as her eyes flickered around the cockpit, looking for any sign of the murderer.
"I mean, I did kill Skidmark for you," the voice said, almost as if it was offended that Squealer wasn't thanking her for killing her lover.
"Come out so I can put a bullet in your brain," Squealer growled as she slowly circled the cockpit. She resisted the urge to fire towards the echoing laughter that filled the tank. If she missed she was likely to get hit by a ricochet, or worse the bullet could damage any number of the power conduits and cause a feedback to the reactor. The resulting explosion wouldn't just blow up the tank, it would practically vaporize everything within a two-block radius.
"As…tempting as your offer is I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline," the cape said with an amused tone, as if their entire thing was just one big joke, as if what she just did to Adam didn't even matter.
"You're not getting out of here, not for what you did to Adam," Squealer said as she cautiously checked under one of the control panels for any sign of the intruder. All she saw were the shadows produced by the brightly lit bulb in the center of the cockpit. She couldn't let this bitch get away, she needed to make her pay for what she did to Adam.
"I honestly don't get why you're so upset, you should be overjoyed that I freed you from Adam's control," the cape said in what sounded like an honestly confused tone, as if she couldn't comprehend what someone would be upset that their lover had just been killed in cold blood.
"You don't get to say his name," Squealer growled, her fingers squeezing the grip of her pistol so tight that she could feel the grooves digging into her calloused palm like tiny knives.
"And may I ask what Ada- my bad, Skidmark did to earn such loyalty from you," the cape asked. Squealer whirled around just in time to see a pair of yellow eyes and sharpened fangs fade back into the shadows.
"He saved me," Squealer screamed as more hot tears gathered in her eyes. "He saved me. He gave me my freedom, he appreciated me, he didn't use me like…like…"
The cape asked the one question that Squealer defiantly didn't want to hear, "Like everyone else?"
Squealer snarled animalistically at the reminder, "You don't know anything."
The cape gave her an amused laugh and it was all Squealer could do to keep a shiver of fear from running down her spine. It was the kind of laugh that one would expect from a psycho killer in a horror movie as he ripped the dumb blonde of the group in half with a sadistic gleam in his eye. That image did little to ease Squealer's nerves as the shadows seemed to grow more oppressive with each passing second.
"Oh, I know more than you could imagine Sherrel," the cape said, her voice circled the chamber, bouncing off of the walls and equipment making it nearly impossible to tell where she was. "I know the fears that haunt you every night, the ones that you try to ignore, that you try to hide from everyone, even yourself."
"But you can't hide them from me," the cape whispered mere inches from her ear. Sqeualer turned around so fast she felt her spine light up on fire as a nerve was pinched. She fired a shot off into the space the cape had previously occupied, her desire to see this cape dead overcoming her caution of firing her pistol inside. The glow from the muzzle flash revealed a glimpse of the cape's shadowy form for a mere second as it dived into another, darker shadow. The bullet slammed through the view screen, cracking and smashing it into a thousand pieces. The cockpit dimmed somewhat without the light from the screen to assist the single light bulb she had placed to illuminate the room.
"Being used, that's what you're afraid of, and you've been used all your life Sherrel," the cape asked in a conversational tone.
Squealer licked her dry lips in nervous anticipation as the voice circled around her like a shark circling its prey. She had gotten lucky that that shot hadn't ricocheted into her own skull or worse, she couldn't allow her emotions to overcome her like that again. Which meant listening to the cape as she pulled her darkest nightmares up to the surface.
"You were used by your friends, Johnson, Alex, by Timmy," the voice mocked.
"Shut up," Squealer screamed as she tried to cover her ears while maintaining her grip on her pistol, but it did little to shut out the cape's voice. Each word was like a fishhook digging into her skin, into her soul. Memories better left unremembered popped to the forefront of her mind in all their terrible glory. Echoes of angry tantrums and shattering beer bottles filled her ears as images of a man she thought she had loved covered her vision, each one corrupted by the taint of betrayal.
"Even your own family used you, didn't they? Did it hurt when you found mommy dearest pimped you out, or did it happen so often you didn't even note it," the cape asked, her bodiless voice cool and collected as Squealer continued to shake in rage.
"Stop it," Squealer shouted, voice shrill and slightly unhinged as more and more of the past she had tried to leave behind was dragged up to the surface.
The sound of flesh striking flesh and the sharp pain of a hot red handprint sending her tumbling to the ground made her shiver in fear as memories of the monster that had been her mother came to her vision, the monster in human flesh standing over her, a dead look in her eye as she gave her to the drug dealer.
"MOMMY!"
"Stop," Squealer said, much quieter and more subdued than before. She had left all of this behind when she had triggered, when she had gained the ability to run away as far and fast as she wanted to without anyone to stop her. The day she had stopped being Sherrel, the broken little girl whose mother didn't even have the decency to even try and pretend she loved her to Squealer, the vehicle tinker who used her newfound freedom to track down everyone that had betrayed her and leave them as roadkill to be scraped off the street. "Please."
The cape continued to push deeper and deeper into her psych, undaunted by the Merchant tinker's erratic behavior or her soul aching pleads for mercy. "Then there's Skidmark."
"HE DIDN'T USE ME YOU-" Squealer tirade was cut off as stars filled her vision and her head lit up in pain. She braced herself against one to the consoles, wincing as her elbow dug into the harsh metal controls. Her gun clattered to the floor and out of sight, consumed by the shadows. The cape emerged from the darkness like a nightmare, her corpse pale face twisting into a dismissive sneer. Her eyes glinted in the dim lighting, her irises shining like dark empty pits that she had in the place of a soul. Squealer shivered as the temperature seemed to drop at the unnatural cape's presence.
"You know, I don't know whether to think less of Skidmark for what he did to you or applaud him for convincing you of your own self-centered delusion," the cape said as she approached the downed Merchant, her footsteps reverberating in the chamber. Squealer tried to back away from the cape, but all she did was press herself further against the edge of the cockpit rim, pinned like a bug on a display case.
Trapped. Imprisoned. Enslaved.
"I mean, did you really think that Skidmark, one of the most vile and morally deficient people in the entire city would actually care about anything regarding you except for your creations," the cape asked in and almost disbelieving tone, as if she couldn't imagine that Squealer was as thick as she thought.
"You don't know anything," Squealer hissed out in both anger and pain. She could feel something wet and sticky running down the back of her skull as she tried to steady herself and stand up again, but her head was still ringing from the blow the cape had given her. "Skids loved me."
The cape had the gall to roll her eyes at Squealer's proclamation. "Your denial is adorable Sherrel, but we both know you're lying."
Squealer shuddered as she tried to block the cape's voice out again, but her presence was unavoidable, her words clung to her mind and thoughts like noxious fumes. Squealer wouldn't believe the cape; she couldn't believe the cape. Even if Adam had taken her into the Merchants without her consent that didn't mean he didn't love her, he had had his reasons. He had just been making sure someone else didn't find her and use her to their own benefit. He had given her everything she had ever wanted to tinker, supplies she would have never gotten before and all the free drugs she could want.
Adam had given her everything.
Adam was dead.
He was dead.
She couldn't let this cape sully his memory, not with all that he had done for her.
"He loved me," Squealer said with an absolute certainty as she drew herself into a fetal position in a futile effort to cut herself off from the world, to hide from the truth that had been laid out before her, that he was gone and never coming back. That this cape had reduced him to nothing more than a lifeless husk fit only to be shoved into the dirt and filth.
"He loved me," she said again, repeating the phrase like a mantra, a lifeline. It was the truth that separated Sherrel and Squealer from each other, the single fact that had helped make her life bearable.
He was dead.
Who was she now without Adam? Was she just the blonde dumb ass that nobody cared about, that was only useful as a tool to others? Was all of her tinkering for nothing now? How could it be worth anything if Adam wasn't there to help her, to make it all worthwhile?
He had shown her his appreciation for all she did for him and now he was dead, killed by this upstart. She let out a body racking sob as hot tears stained her vehicle's floor with their salty tang. She…she couldn't…
"Oh Sherrel," the cape said in a somewhat pitying tone. Sherrel, not Squealer this time, looked up to see the cape gazing down at her with a commiserate expression on her unnatural face. "I had hoped that I could break you."
The cape drew her hands back like she was about to swing a baseball as her sand gathered to form one of the sharpest scythes that Sherrel had ever seen. It was so tall that it barely fit in the cockpit, its sharpened back edge scraping against the metal ceiling as the cape raised it high above her head.
"But," the cape continued as her muscles grew tense, "I guess you're too broken to break."
As the cape's form twisted and the scythe sliced through the stale air in its deadly arc Sherrel closed her eyes one last time and prayed that she would be able to be with Adam once more.
--
Well, I hope that you all liked this chapter.
Happy Halloween!
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Threadmarks Foreboding 1.6
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QAI521
QAI521
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Nov 3, 2016
#79
So this is the last chapter in the first arc, the next one will be an interlude and then we get to move on to the fun part.
Enjoy!
Foreboding 1.6
Boogeyman watched with cold disappointment as Sherrel's head thumped onto the floor of the cockpit while blood squirted out of her stump of a neck as her body twitched against the cold steel plating.
She hadn't been lying to Sherrel when she had said she would have preferred to break her. A broken parahuman would have been a far better statement than another dead one. She had pulled on the jumbled mess of threads that had been Sherrel's fears of enslavement and imprisonment but in doing so she had found a delusion so thorough that even she couldn't break through it with Sherrel's darkest fears and nightmares, or perhaps it was because of her fear she hadn't been able to break through. Instead Sherrel had driven herself further and further into denial and Boogeyman didn't have the inclination or the time to spend hours trying to break through the delusional little world Sherrel had built for herself.
"Pathetic," she thought with no small amount of disdain as she picked the former tinker's head by her long blond hair. Crimson fluids dripped off the severed neck and started to pool on the steel plating beneath her whilst the tinker's empty glassy eyes stared back at her.
She was a little more than half tempted to try and take the tank for herself. The firepower it had demonstrated would have benefited her greatly, but a quick glance around the cockpit dispelled any notion of trying to pilot it. The controls were almost completely indecipherable, like Sherrel had thrown them together into a blender and used whatever product came out the other end. It was a mishmash of chaos that gave her a headache just looking at it, never mind trying to use it. She would be more likely to blow up the street. No, as it was such thoughts of driving the tank into an Empire meeting surrounded by her Nightmares would never come to fruition no matter how tempting they were.
But now wasn't the time for idle thoughts, she still had some work to do. She dived into the nearest shadow, dragging Sherrel's head into the shadow realm with her. The trip only lasted a few seconds given the short distance she was traveling, but apparently even that wasn't healthy for the parahuman's skull. Its features became paler and gaunt, like she had been locked in a cellar for a few weeks without any food or sunlight and had all the liquids sucked out of her with a vacuum. It certainly made of a disturbing picture of what would happen to any living tissue.
Boogeyman stared at the head in surprise. She hadn't even considered about what traveling through the shadow realm might do to humans. Apparently, it wasn't very healthy. Turning to one of her Nightmares she asked, "I guess it's a good thing that I didn't try to take Squealer alive huh?"
The Nightmare's only response was to snort in thinly veiled amusement.
"Phobia," Boogeyman called out to the small herd of Nightmares standing vigil over the now useless tank. They had given it their all, but Boogeyman didn't notice any significant damage that had been done to the armored monstrosity. She could see a few shallow dents in the amour where they had slammed the entirety of their bodies against it like battering rams, but they were ultimately minuscule compared to the sheer size of the mechanical beast. If it hadn't been for her ability to shadow travel and simply bypass the armor altogether to get to the much squishier tinker the fight might have gone very differently.
It was a sobering thought that even a group as destitute and pathetic as the Merchants could have posed a legitimate threat to her, to say nothing about the other gangs. She would have to be more vigilant in the future to avoid such surprises. There was always going to be that one time that she wouldn't get as lucky as she did this time and she would pay the price. She would need to be more thorough in her investigations of the gangs, the fact that Squealer had managed to hide this creation for some time without the slightest hint reaching anyone spoke of a disturbing level of competence from the Merchants.
If they could hide something like this, then what might the other gangs be hiding? Could the ABB actually have more than two parahumans and Lung was just hiding them from public view? What if Kaiser and the Empire did have access to a tinker and they were just stockpiling their creations? What if Coil had more than just tinker tech armed mercenaries? It was a disturbing notion that the gangs could be hiding things this big in the city and apparently, nobody had noticed at all when the Merchants decided to park a tank in a warehouse with several residential buildings in clear view.
Her personal steed reformed underneath her with a single swift motion. Boogeyman pulled the reins taut with one hand while her other continued to hold the dead parahuman's head. A quick tug on the reigns and the Nightmare trotted outside to where the Merchants were being restrained.
After the initial shock and panic of seeing a giant tinker tech tank blast through the warehouse Boogeyman had ordered most of her herd to forcibly drag the panicking Merchants out so they wouldn't get killed in the crossfire or try to escape while she was dealing with Squealer.
It wasn't that she particularly cared if any of the Merchants died in the ensuing battle, but she didn't feel like starting her career with an outright massacre. The Merchants in question were in various positions on the ground ranging from rocking in a fetal position to trying, and failing, to defiantly staring at her Nightmares. Most of them had the good sense to avoid resisting, but more than a couple had a few more bite marks to signify the price of defiance.
The more injured ones were focused on tending to their wounds or screaming their lungs out as they twitched on the ground in sheer agony. Ironically the most serious injuries didn't come from her or her Nightmares, but rather Squealer's rampage. A great number of the Merchants had been just far enough to avoid being killed by the laser but too close to emerge unscathed. Several were covered in second and third degree burns over most of their bodies. One looked like his skin had just melted off like dirt being sprayed away by a hose. Boogeyman was no expert on burn injuries, but judging by his state he wasn't going to last much longer. Death might even be considered merciful.
The various Nightmares and Merchants ceased their assorted activities to stare at her as she emerged from the husk of what had once been a warehouse. Honestly she wouldn't be surprised if it collapsed within the next few minutes, the fact that it hadn't when Squealer had torn down that wall was a minor miracle in of itself, but she wasn't concerned with property damage or the Merchant's injuries right now.
She had a message to deliver.
"Skidmark is dead," Boogeyman intoned, her voice echoing through along the nearby buildings. Her superb night vision could pick up a handful of lights coming from various windows in the nearby inhabited buildings, indicating that people were trying to get a recording of the action. Good, she wanted all of Brockton Bay to see what was happening.
"Squealer is dead," she said as she held up Squealer's rotting head so that all the Merchants and onlookers could see. A handful of the Merchants went green at the sight, but all of them had a sharp spike in fear and terror. She allowed the fistful of hair in her hand to slip through her fingers and as she lost her grip the law of gravity took over and Squealer's head fell onto the concrete with sickening thunk. There was a certain finality to the sound, like a gong ringing the end of an era. She would have preferred to have used Skidmark's head since he had been the actual leader of the Merchants but given that his body had been pretty much atomized by Squealer's tank her head would have to do. It wasn't as if it was any less effective than if she had used Skidmark's.
She had to hold back an amused laugh as the head rolled down the slightly sloped concrete towards the Merchants who reacted like cat's being threatened with a bath. They pushed and shoved and scrambled backwards at they tried to escape the path of their expired boss's skull. They only made it a few feet backwards before they brushed up against her Nightmares who glared down at them with their glowing yellow eyes, eliciting quite a few shrieks of terror and newly made pant stains.
"The Merchants are dead."
She could see them shift uncomfortably as she stared at them with her own yellow eyes. There would be no misunderstandings here. No miscommunications. She had learned the only language they understood- force, and now that she was fluent when she spoke they would listen.
"You are not," Boogeyman kept her feature purposely blank at the swell of hope and relief that coursed through the Merchant's minds at that statement. Their burgeoning hope was quickly crushed by her next statement, "For now."
This time Boogeyman allowed herself to smirk at the new wave of fear that rolled over the assembled gang members. She could see quite a few of them shaking in the back, images of her slicing their heads from their shoulders or letting her Nightmares rip them apart piece by piece filled the minds of more than a few of the Merchants.
"If you wish to remain alive you will not join another gang; nor will you participate in any criminal activities. Many of you will go to jail. Some of you may not for whatever reason," she said. It was an open secret that a large portion of the police force were on the gang's payrolls. Those that weren't were pretty much apathetic to the state of the city all together, or good people trying to do their jobs and constantly being hamstrung by their own coworkers. Once the Protectorate and PRT handed them over to the BBPD she wouldn't be surprised if more than half of them made it back out onto the streets within the week.
"If you are freed, you will find a job that benefits society or you will leave the city," Boogeyman ordered. A more idealistic person might have tried a softer approach, knowing that many gang members had turned to crime because of the economic decline of the city and the lack of work forced them to join such criminal institutions to survive, but Boogeyman wasn't that person. This city couldn't afford the soft approach anymore, either the criminals stopped being criminals or they would suffer the consequences.
The time for being soft and fair had passed long ago, a fact that the heroes of this city didn't seem to understand. Or perhaps they simply didn't want to understand, they didn't want to admit that their way wasn't working.
"If you do not do this then I will find you. If I find you once then I will maim you. If I find you a second time and you are lucky I will only kill you. If you aren't lucky then I will do far, far worse," Boogeyman said, her chilling voice echoing through the empty street. She could taste the terror that clung to the Merchant's forms like a second skin. She had them, or at least most of them. She felt a handful of the Merchants push past their fear of her enough to become incensed at her instructions, but if she waited a minute then…
"Why should we listen to you?"
Boogeyman turned to the Merchant in question that had apparently decided it was a good idea to speak back to the person that held their lives in the palm of her hands. She recognized him as one of Skidmark's more recent personal lackeys. What she had found online linked him to more than four rapes and a handful of other assorted disappearances. He was big, probably around six feet or so standing up, but she wasn't going to be intimidated by something as trivial as the size of the man's muscle mass when she had the power of fear itself. He gazed up at her angrily even as her Nightmares moved forwards to deal with the fool in an appropriate manner. She gave her herd a mental command to back off.
She would deal with this personally.
The Nightmares relented, pulling back to the edge of the group of subdued gang members much to their collective relief that they weren't going to pay the price for one man's idiocy.
The Merchants hastily parted like the Red Sea as Phobia carried her towards the center of the group where the man was kneeling. She could feel a trickle of fear through his shroud of fury once he realized that she was coming straight for him but she felt him push it back behind the rolling ball of resentment and anger that was consuming his psyche.
"Because I told you to Zack," Boogeyman said, loud enough for the entirety of the assembled Merchants to hear. She could see a flicker of surprise in his eyes at the knowledge that she knew his name but she could see his mouth forming a snarl to bite back at her. "Or I might just give young Jack a visit."
She relished in his horrified expression at the mention of his little half-brother and the fear from thoughts of her killing him or worse entering his mind. Why bother describing what she was going to do when she could let her victim's imaginations fill in the blanks for them? It wasn't like she would actually do anything to a twelve-year-old boy besides a nightmare or two, but Zack didn't know that. As far as he was concerned she had power over the well-being of his little brother and anything he did to anger her would result in something bad happening to him. Sufficiently cowed Zack tried to shrink in on himself as her unnerving gaze held him for a few moments longer. Just to make sure the message got through.
Satisfied, Boogeyman turned her attention back to the whole group. They were staring at her with renewed caution and concern, caution that she did nothing to curb as she gave them a chilling smile.
"Follow these orders and we won't have any problems will we," Boogeyman asked. She scowled at the few halfhearted replies. "Will we," she asked again, much louder and sterner, the slightest hint of a growl entering her voice. If they rejected the soft velvet of diplomacy they would feel the harsh steel of punishment.
The multitude of terrified positive responses that echoed through the quiet street brought a nasty smile to her face.
"Good, now you're all going to wait here like good little boys and girls until the authorities come to pick you up," Boogeyman said as she tried to keep herself from laughing at the frightened looks on their faces.
As a few of the Merchants started to settle down and try to get a modicum of comfort on the cold asphalt Boogeyman hoped that the Protectorate wouldn't take too long in responding to the phone calls that were no doubt flooding their center. Having a warehouse torn down by a tinker tech tank that was the size of a small building would have attracted attention. What remained for her to see is if the Protectorate would pretend to do their jobs and investigate or assume that this was gang on gang violence and let it go on until the combatants burned each other out. It wasn't like they hadn't done it before. She had better things to do than to stay and watch criminals lay shivering on the street from the freezing breeze and their well justified terror for hours.
Though she had to admit that the free food she was getting was a pretty decent reward. Now that everything had settled down and she had time to stop and think the difference between her power before and after the assault were obvious. She doubted that she would have survived a shotgun blast to the chest at near point blank range before, yet she did so. It had hurt like shoving molten needles into her chest, but it hadn't given her any lasting damage. What would she be able to do with the fear of a thousand people, or a ten thousand, or even a hundred thousand?
The thought alone was enough to moisten her lips in hunger.
A glint of red brought her out of her thoughts of feeding. The bright red streak that raced down the empty street stood out compared to the far duller and more muted grey and browns of the surrounding buildings. The blur stopped about twenty feet away from and slowed down to reveal the form of a man.
Boogeyman instantly recognized Velocity from a recent news report about the Protectorate breaking up a minor smuggling ring near the docks. His costume was almost ridiculously bright, the only parts that didn't seem to scream "notice me" were the two black racing stripes that arced down his sides and the single black V that covered part of his torso and broke up his profile somewhat. Though she couldn't see most of his face thanks to his helmet and visor she could still see the thin line of his mouth purse as he took stock of the situation.
While she couldn't see where exactly where he was looking at she could feel his nervousness heighten somewhat when he looked in her general direction. It appeared to be some combination of her appearance and the fact that Squealer's head was lying on the ground without the rest of its body. She could see his muscles tense under his skin-tight costume just as her Nightmares started to give the newcomer a hungry eye.
A quick mental command from her stopped them in their tracks. She didn't need to engage with the Protectorate tonight. Doing so now would gain her nothing but the full brunt of the Protectorate and PRT's ire. Satisfied that her Nightmares weren't going to charge him Boogeyman considered what she knew of Velocity.
From what she could remember from trawling PHO forums Velocity was a speedster, which at first glance was a rather versatile power in terms of battle control, but Velocity had a problem in that the faster he went, the less he affected the world around him. It wasn't something the Protectorate had ever confirmed, after all revealing their heroes' weakness and making them realize that they weren't the undefeatable heroes they proclaimed to be would be a big no-no, but years of being in the public eye and speculation by many PHO cape groupies had all but made it an open secret.
A fight between them would theoretically lead to her eventual victory. While she wouldn't be able to hit him while he was moving he wouldn't be able to hit her with any appreciable force as his body lost less and less mass as he moved faster. But while she couldn't hit him that didn't mean her Nightmares couldn't. It would be rather hard for him to dodge even as his blindingly fast speeds when the entire street was covered in writhing mass of living sand.
But if her conflict with the Merchants had taught her anything it was that theory didn't always mix with reality. Velocity was far more experienced than her with years of service and dozens of cape fights under his belt. She was certain that even with his disadvantages he would be able to hold her in place long enough for backup to arrive at the very least or defeat her altogether if he got a few good hits in.
No, for now talking was the best course of action.
"Who are you," he asked. He was tense, but was avoiding antagonizing her in anyway. She could tell that he was uncertain and wary of her intentions and was trying to ascertain what he could about her goals without seeming combative. His posture was open yet stiff, ready to explode into action at the slightest hint of violence. She could see his chest puff up a little and his shoulders become a little straighter as he tried to make himself a little bit more intimidating to her. She saw a few of the Merchants shrink back a little at the sight of the hero's pose, instinctively reacting to a new parahuman's presence.
Trying to scare her? How adorable.
She gave him a wide smile that revealed all her sharp and somewhat crooked teeth and stretched her corpse pale lips and cheeks far beyond what was humanly possible. "I'm the Boogeyman," she said as she made her voice as cold and chilling as she possibly could. She felt more than one Merchant shiver in fear at her declaration.
Not simply Boogeyman or a Boogeyman, but the Boogeyman. It was more than a name, more than an alias- it was an idea. She was the monster hiding under the bed and the creature in the closet. She was the thing in the darkness that the criminals would fear.
She could see Velocity purse his lips as if he was trying to figure out what to do with her. His head tilted to the side a little bit, but enough to indicate he was probably listening to someone on the other end of an earpiece. His posture remained stiff but she could see and feel the slightest traces of unease work its way into his system at her identification.
"Are you the one responsible for Mush's hospitalization," he asked, mouth set into a grim line, no doubt concerned about what he would probably consider excessive brutality.
Boogeyman felt her smile widen even more, to the point it was starting to be a bit uncomfortable. "Why yes I am, did you enjoy my work? I must say I was a little disappointed that you kept it a secret, I was hoping that these fellows here would hear about it," she said as she waved her hand out to the shivering men and woman huddled in fear.
"I suppose I should be angry at you," she continued in a conversational tone, "But I'm in generous mood today. You can have the rest of the Merchants."
She gave him a sickening smile, "The ones still alive anyway."
One of the younger Merchants let a whimper escape from his lips.
She could see Velocity's muscles tense underneath his costume at her affirmative and rather admittedly unhinged response. But what little expression she could see on his face and feel flowing through his head was conflicted, as if he wasn't quite sure what he was going to do with her. Finally, he sighed, slumping a little as he let some of the tension loose from his shoulders. "Look kid," he said, and Boogeyman bristled at the unspoken connotations. Kids were weak and helpless, unable to do anything for themselves and prone to shortsighted worldviews. They were dependent on others to take care of them and protect them. They didn't- couldn't do anything. "I think that you want to help the city and do the right thing...it," he paused as if he was carefully considering his words to avoid angering her, "it's just that you're just doing it the wrong way, if you come with me the Protectorate can-"
"No," Boogeyman snarled, allowing anger, real anger, to break through her mask for the first time. She could see Velocity blur in place, apparently as surprised as she was by the vehemence of her negative response. "I will not allow myself to be shackled to the ones who have allowed the city to fall so far. You heroes can play all the dress up you want and bury your heads in the sand while the city burns down around you. I won't."
Boogeyman could almost physically feel the contempt that laced her every word and poured out her mouth like a waterfall. She supposed she should have been more in control of her responses, especially for first impressions, but she was not going to let the Protectorate get away with chaining her to the same rules and regulations that let monsters like Skidmark and Hookwolf to roam the streets.
She would rather die than be put in a position where she wouldn't be able to do anything but watch as the world around her went to hell in a handbasket.
She could see Velocity frown at her, apparently upset by her near violent reaction to his offer. He opened his mouth to speak again by she cut him with a sharp motion of her hand.
"Run back to your masters and tell them that I'm doing what they should have done years ago," Boogeyman sneered as she waved her Nightmares away. She had dallied her for far too long, and while she was confident Velocity probably wasn't going to be able to stop her, she didn't want to risk him pinning her down long enough for another hero that could stop her to show up.
Her Nightmares faded into the shadows and through the cracks in the buildings, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared. Within seconds the street was empty of her demonic minions save Phobia. She could feel a few of the Merchants slump in relief that their tormentors had disappeared, but a quick glare and bared teeth kept them from getting any bright ideas.
They would remember this night for the rest of their lives. This was the night that they would speak in hushed whispers as they gathered around the safety of the open flame while the darkness crept in around them. They would tell this story again and again and let all of Brockton Bay know that the time of the gangs was over.
A tug on Phobia's reigns and her steed moved to ride into the near moonless night alongside its brethren.
"Wait!"
Boogeyman turned around to see Velocity with his hands outstretched, as if he was trying to physically pull her to him. "Please," he said, a slight begging tone edging its way into his voice. "If you do this you're going to get labeled a villain. Please, just come with me and we can work something out. It doesn't have to be like this."
The last part revealed itself for the plea that it was. It tugged on the thread strings of his deepest fears. It wasn't the hero Velocity speaking to her, it was the man underneath the mask. A man who didn't want to see her go through with this, a man that had seen the worst the world had to offer and was shaped by violence beyond reasoning. She could feel his terror at the thought of that happening here in Brockton Bay, or someone of her personality ripping though the city with crusade like zeal as she crushed the life out of the gangs. Yet despite seeing the worst the world had to offer there were still seeds of compassion underneath all his pain, a true desire to want to help her and others.
Taylor Hebert might have appreciated the thought of a hero being so concerned about her but she wasn't Taylor Hebert anymore. Taylor Hebert wouldn't have killed two people in cold blood and ordered the maiming of dozens of others. Taylor Hebert would have just ducked her head down in the face in adversity and let it roll over her while she tried to wait it out. She would have let the world trample all over her without a single complaint.
She couldn't go back to that. Not now, not ever again.
As Phobia drew closer to the shadow of the nearest building Boogeyman stared at the Protectorate hero. She could see Velocity shift a little underneath her unrelenting yellow eyed gaze. The tension was so thick she could have cut it with a knife and seemed to weigh on them like a physical thing. The only sound was the wind as it gently breezed through the street and the clicking of her steed's hooves on the cracked concrete.
After what seemed like an eternity Boogeyman gave Velocity his answer as her form slipped into the darkened shadows of the rusting corpse of the warehouse.
"Yes Velocity. It does."
--
What do you all think of Velocity's reaction to Taylor? I was afraid that I was going to give him the same kind of reaction that Armsmaster would have, but I would think seeing a decapitated head would make anyone stressed and somewhat combative.
ToNotBe said:
And it's yet one more thing to leave a bloodied crime scene, detached body parts strewn everywhere, for the authorities and/or public to find and deal with.
If she doesn't get at least some mileage from this I'd be very surprised.
As you can see she is going to get plenty of mileage from this, it's just that I have always found psychological torment scarier and more interesting than physical torment, but I guess that's just my personal preference.
Krazyfan1 said:
how small a shadow?
i remember a fight scene in a manga, where someone with similar powers travels through the shadows on someones nose that were created by their enemies own attack
I would say it has to be big enough for her shoulders to fit through. She can compress her body a little bit to squeeze through some slightly smaller shadows, but you're not going to see her pop out of someone's nose.
Last edited: Nov 13, 2016
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Threadmarks Foreboding 1.a
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QAI521
QAI521
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Nov 4, 2016
#95
Enjoy!
Foreboding 1.a
The overweight and somewhat sickly looking Brockton Bay Director of the Parahuman Response Team almost seemed to loom over him despite that even with her standing up and him sitting down he was still taller than she was.
"Would you care to explain why you allowed a new parahuman who admitted to being responsible for Mush's hospitalization and the deaths of Skidmark, Squealer and three other Merchants to walk away without making any attempt to subdue her," she asked, her voice deceptively soft and quiet, completely at odds with the low anger simmering off her form. Her desk groaned in protest as she leaned forward and allowed her weight to settle on it.
Robin Swoyer didn't like Emily Piggot.
Well, maybe that wasn't quite true, he didn't dislike her at any rate.
She was an extremely combative person to her subordinates and her enemies. She would use a stick when she needed more carrot, she would push when she should back down, she would argue when she should compromise. She didn't possess the subtle touch that most directors had and it showed in her work.
There was a reason why there were so few rogues in the city.
But perhaps it was because despite her combative personality he understood her and what she had to deal with each day. She had to try and keep the stranglehold of the gangs from squeezing the city too tight while at the same time avoiding pushing them back too hard lest the city descend into chaos. He had been in her position once a long time ago, back when he had been in the military.
It had been a time before the militaries' funding had been completely consumed by the PRT and Protectorate's ever growing budget and back when the United Sates was still trying to keep the world from falling apart, before Endbringer attacks and growing internal threats had forced them to back off and focus on protecting themselves.
He had been in the Middle East, Iran specifically, about a year after Behemoth's first appearance. With New York still recovering from its own Endbringer attack the higher ups had been concerned that the collapse of the Iranian economy would be felt far harder than they had originally anticipated. Even with the Marun Field irreversibly irradiated Iran still had control of over ten percent of the world's oil. If the country descended into total civil war like it appeared it was going to then the shockwaves would be felt across the globe. Robin had been part of a multinational task force that had been assembled to try and quell the fighting.
It…it hadn't been easy.
Sometimes Robin thought that the citizens of Brockton Bay didn't realize how easy they had it. Oh, sure they had villains and gangs rooted throughout the city like malignant cancers but it was nowhere near the completely terrifying chaos of Iran. The gangs followed a certain order, and understood that escalation would only lead to their destruction. Lung might burn the odd building or two down and slag a few streets but it was rare that he indiscriminately slaughtered anyone during his thankfully uncommon rampages. While he and other villains certainly wouldn't hold back against PRT troopers they understood that killing civilians in large quantities would bring more scrutiny and attention to them than they would want.
Back there out in the thick of it there were no rules. There hadn't been any gentlemen's agreements or understandings between the task force or the hundreds of small terrorist and rebel groups that had sprung up in the wake of Behemoth's attack. It hadn't mattered to him at the time what their motivations were, religious, political, economic- all he knew is that they had been hell to fight.
You didn't need to be a parahuman to be dangerous.
Child soldiers. Suicide bombers. The wholesale slaughter of entire villages in the dead of night, leaving nothing behind but cold corpses for them to find in the faint light of the morning sun.
He had made a lot of choices that he had regretted, the kind of choices that kept him up at night.
Robin didn't hold any illusions of what would have happened if he hadn't triggered. He would have killed himself, either by putting a bullet in his own skull or letting an enemy gun him down with impunity. As it was his trigger event had given him the freedom to do exactly what he had always wanted to do, save people.
He didn't have to worry about whether the civilians walking down the street were planning on killing him in broad daylight anymore as he made his way to the grocery store. He didn't have to check a room for booby traps before entering it, or make sure that what he was eating hadn't been poisoned. All he had to do was arrest the criminals and villains and keep the city from falling into anarchy.
So, he could understand and respect Piggot's position. She was forced to make decisions that could very well affect the wellbeing of hundreds if not thousands. She couldn't afford to be soft and friendly in a city like Brockton Bay.
That didn't mean he had to like her though.
"I felt that attempting to engage an unknown parahuman while so many were present would lead to further casualties and as such I chose to attempt to deescalate instead," Velocity said, uncowed by his superior's apparent anger. There was nothing that she could do to him, he followed standard procedure for dealing with a new parahuman, and it wasn't like she was going to ream him for not chasing after a cape that for all he knew could kill him with a touch.
Piggot narrowed her eyes, but appeared to accept his reasoning and allowed herself to fall back into her seat and folded her hands as a contemplative look crossed her face. She remained silent for a moment, just staring at him with her cold calculating eyes before opening her mouth to ask a question.
"What do you think of the parahuman," she asked.
Velocity knew that he had thoroughly described her in his report which was lying mere inches away from her on her rather large desk but he obliged anyway. Sometimes just talking about a subject would be enough to rattle loose some new ideas about it or reveal a detail missed before.
"She was…combative," Velocity said. "She seemed to have a rather low opinion of the Protectorate and PRT in general."
"Do you have any ideas on why she seems to hold us in such a low regard," Piggot asked as she typed a note on her computer.
"She mentioned our inability to curb any of the gang's activities," Velocity said. He most assuredly did not flinch at the look that Piggot gave him. It was common knowledge that for whatever reason the director was not particularly fond of parahumans and the idea that less savory individuals could walk the streets with impunity didn't sit well with her.
It didn't sit well with him either, but there was very little that they were capable of accomplishing to halt the gang's progress that wasn't illegal or involve a very high body count.
"Do you think we could leverage her to join," Piggot asked as she folded her hands.
Velocity shook his head. "I doubt it, we would either need to catch her, which we've already determined would be extremely difficult, or we would have to find her identity which would be a violation of the unwritten rules," he said, ignoring the dark look that Piggot gave at the mention of the parahuman communities' gentlemen rules, "And even if we did once this hits the PHO boards she is going to get a lot of support from the public."
He left unsaid the PR backlash that they would have to deal with if they tried to press gang Boogeyman into the wards after dismantling an almost universally reviled gang. There would hardly be any tears for the passing of Skidmark and Squealer and even considering the brutality she demonstrated towards the Merchants Velocity doubted there would be too many civilians who would want her to stop.
"The only other option is that if we somehow convinced her to join willingly, but given her strongly negative reaction to such a proposal I doubt anything would come of it. If anything, she might be insulted by the offer," Velocity said as he shifted in his rather uncomfortable seat. He was half convinced that Piggot had a more comfortable, near exact, duplicate of this seat for debriefings because it never seemed this uncomfortable when doing anything else.
"So you're saying we won't be able to bring her in," Piggot asked with a raised eyebrow.
Velocity nodded, "At least without understanding the root of her issue with us and attempting to fix or convince her it wasn't our responsibility I doubt she would be willing to accept a deal."
Because you didn't get that type of anger from standard stuff. He could understand if she was angry at the Protectorate and remained apathetic to their envoys, but for that kind of near violent reaction to simply suggesting she came in to the Rig to work something out hinted at a much more personal issue with the Protectorate.
"Is she a hero or a villain?"
Velocity paused as he thought about the question. It was an important question, one that could shape a parahuman's future for the better or worse for years to come. He had heard horror stories of heroic capes who because of misunderstandings, had been labeled villains and nearly had their lives ruined. It wasn't anything that the PRT would admit publicly because of PR bullshit, but Velocity more than understood the importance of this question.
"If she was a villain she would have attempted to subvert the Merchant's leadership and take over the gang instead of handing them over to us." There was a short pause as Velocity considered his next words, "I think we might have another Shadow Stalker on our hands."
Piggot leaned back in her seat contemplatively. Shadow Stalker was a problem child if ever there was one, no doubt about that. She refused to socialize whatsoever with her Ward teammates and was prone to leaving her partners behind to go on unauthorized solo patrols. Totally against regulations but Piggot held back on punishing her because despite all her faults she was good at what she did. She easily had one of the highest takedown rates of the Wards and had saved more than one innocent civilian from death or worse.
Of course, that was what made so frustrating prior to her forceful inductions into the wards. She was too good.
During her time as an independent she had near caused a minor turf war. Shadow Stalker's brutal takedown of a rather well connected Empire lieutenant had sparked a surge in Empire crimes along their border with the ABB, which of course led to the ABB mobilizing their forces in retaliation.
If the Protectorate hadn't brought her in and deescalated the situation a lot of people could have died.
"That is concerning," Piggot said as her fingers drummed against her desk. "Even more so given that she seems to have no compunctions against murder."
Velocity had to keep himself from shifting in his seat. The thought of a child willingly killing someone without hesitation or regard for another's life brought back some memories that he would have preferred to ignore.
Piggot continued, apparently unaware of his growing discomfort. "And given the level of power she had so far displayed attempting to bring her in would be difficult, and that's assuming that she revealed all of her powers to you." A short snort revealed Piggot's opinion on that idea.
Frankly, Velocity had to agree with her. There was absolutely no indication that "Boogeyman" as she apparently referred to herself had revealed all of her powers. But what she had revealed was concerning enough.
A powerful master ability that manifested as rather nightmarish looking horses that numbered in the dozens if not more. Depending on their shelf life and general capabilities she was already looking at a Master 6 or 7, and that was assuming she couldn't make any more.
Mover 4 given her disappearing trick. Velocity had spent a few minutes a high speed looking through the shadows where she and her steed had vanished and had found nothing. A quick run around the area hadn't revealed any sign of her either so she had an effective minimum range of thirty feet and it was probably much larger.
Her Mover and Master rating alone would make her a nightmare to fight and the interviews that the detained Merchants were going through were apparently revealing even more abilities that she had used during her assault on their base. He wasn't privy to those reports yet, but if she was a strong as he thought she was then there was very little the Protectorate or PRT would be able to do in detaining her.
"May I ask what we're going to do," Velocity asked.
Piggot frowned at bit, perhaps she was thinking of the same nightmare scenario he was. "I'll be meeting with Armsmaster and Miss Militia in about half an hour to go over the interviews. If we're lucky we'll find something that we can use." The unspoken statement that they were never that lucky wasn't brought up. "Either way we will need to start making contingency plans if she continues to escalate, but that's not my main concern right now."
"The gangs," Velocity said, throat dry from the thought of the other gang's reaction to the Merchant's apparent destruction.
While the Merchants were nowhere near the Empire or ABB in terms of raw power they did act as a stabilizer for the city, as destitute and depraved as they were. While they were too weak to be bothered with they were too strong to outright ignore. Neither gang could risk engaging with each other and the Protectorate whilst the Merchants circled like a pack of vultures, looking for the slightest signs of weakness in their competitors.
It was why they had decided to try and keep Mush's hospitalization a secret. If the gangs learned that the Merchants had lost their main muscle, then they might get some ideas that the Protectorate would rather they didn't. Now that the Merchants as an organization were apparently going to be defunct there wasn't going to be anything keeping the Empire and ABB from expanding, and that didn't consider the dozens of other minor gangs that were going to pop up in the next few weeks looking for a piece of the carcass that was Brockton Bay.
The city was likely to face a fully-fledged gang war in the next few days if they weren't careful.
"Indeed," Piggot said, her face twisted in displeasure. "I don't need to spell out the consequences of this, do I?"
Velocity shook his head wearily, his mind flashing to dead bodies piling the streets, "No."
If Lung decided to make a move there would be very little the Protectorate could do to stop him. The last time the entirety of the local Protectorate team and New Wave had fought against the Asian parahuman they had been thoroughly trounced, only Lung's prerogative to avoid killing any of them prevented a bloodbath. He could still remember the screams of panic and terror as the titanic cape smashed through them like a wrecking ball. He had heard that Armsmaster was working on something that would be able to keep Lung from escalating, but it was far from finished and even if it was there were still other threats to the safety of the city.
If Lung decided to make a move, then it was almost guaranteed that Kaiser would retaliate in kind. While the Empire didn't possess the sheer power of Lung they had more than a few capes capable of taking on most of the local Protectorate by themselves, and that wasn't even considering the backup that they could call in.
The fact of the matter was that they were outnumbered by the gangs. Even including the wards, they didn't even have enough to match the Empire, and the wards weren't even supposed to be fighting people like Hookwolf or Night.
Velocity would have run his hands through his plain brown hair in frustration if it wasn't for his helmet. As it was he was forced to settle for templing his fingers around the edge of his nose as his mind played through all of the worst-case scenarios that could develop within the next week or so.
"Velocity," Piggot's voice snapped. Velocity's head shot up to meet his director's gaze as he tried to regain control of his emotions.
The past week in general had been pretty bad for him. Not only was he going to have to deal with all this which was bringing up memories that he would rather leave unremembered but he had also been having some nightmares lately. The smuggling group that he had helped take down had been a human trafficking ring and a great number of the prisoners had been underage. Their hollowed thousand yard stares and their unhealthy, rail thing bodies that had been covered in various marks had affected him more than he would have liked to admit.
Piggot held him under her gaze like a bug for a moment before sighing.
"…Get some rest Robin, you've been working overtime for the past week," Piggot said not unkindly.
"Yes-I-I'll get some rest," he said as he rose from his seat. He gave Piggot a distracted wave, his mind not entirely present as he walked through the steel armored door. Instead his mind was focused on the young woman he had encountered last night.
The young woman stared at him with unnaturally yellow eyes that seemed to glow a little in the darkness. Her steed shifted underneath her with its powerful looking limbs clicking against the concrete. He had seen horse related injuries back in Iran and knew they were nothing to joke about, adding teeth that looked like they had been ripped out of a bear's mouth was going to give him a few nightmares.
The street was almost utterly silent and Velocity couldn't help but vibrate his legs a little to burn off some of his excess nervousness. He could see her contemplating his words beneath as her face became as expressionless as a brick wall.
"Yes Velocity. It does."
The words held a certain air of finality to them, like announcing that a glacier was going to crush a village or an Endbringer was going to ravage a city. There was no debate, nor arguments, no pleas for her to reconsider. She was going to go through with this if it was the last thing she ever did.
He had seen people like that before, back in Iran. You couldn't reason them, you couldn't plead with them, all you could do was try to stop them and pray to Scion that you wouldn't take anyone else down with them.
As she faded into the shadows of the building Velocity couldn't help but feel empty, like he had just been delivered a crushing defeat. Even with the thirty odd Merchants waiting for imprisonment he knew that this victory was a hollow one.
--
Robin wasn't sure how he made it back to his on base room. He had just sort of blanked out after he had left the meeting and when he "woke up" he was standing in the doorway to his room.
Maybe he was more exhausted than he thought.
Robin flopped down on the bed, not even bothering to remove his costume. He could feel his muscles cry out in sweet relief as they finally got to take a break. Even for a speedster like himself constantly exerting himself for a couple of days didn't do a lot of favors for his body.
But as he laid on the rather Spartan bed staring at the stark white ceiling, just like every other ceiling on the Rig, he found that he couldn't go to sleep.
His body felt more than ready to give into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness but apparently, his mind had other ideas.
It was an issue that he had with his powers in general. It just wasn't his body that sped up but his mind as well, it was the only way he could run as fast as he could without faceplanting into a wall or running off a building. To him it always appeared that the world had slowed down around him, as if everything was set to negative times 100 speed. Useful in a fight and when trying to speed read a book, not so useful when trying to avoid thinking.
More than once he had accidently activated his powers without realizing it and spent what felt like hours just trying to blank his mind and enjoy some peace and let a few hours pass only to find it had only been a few minutes at best. It was why he always made sure that he had a clock in view when he was spending time by himself to avoid any accidental power uses.
"I will not allow myself to be shackled to the ones who have allowed the city to fall so far."
Robin understood what she was going through, he could understand the frustration of not being able to do anything, to watch as villain after villain walked out of containment like they had a revolving door built in. Watching good men and women be torn to shreds by Hookwolf as he launched himself out of his transport truck without a single scratch to show for it. Time and time again the criminal element slipped through their fingers like a bar of soap.
He understood how that resentment and frustration could boil under the skin and threaten to consume you, of the little dark thoughts that plagued him every time they caught a villain. What if they fell down the stairs? That sweet seductive little whisper that could make everything better if you just gave in this one time.
It was something that he had to struggle with, especially with his military training and experience constantly demanding him to end the threat, and how easy it would be for him to do so with a well-placed knife or two…
"No. Bad Robin," he thought as she shook himself out of that line of thinking. A quick glance at the clock revealed that he hadn't accidently used his power and was still subject to the normal flow of time. He sighed as he tried to get himself more comfortable. Boogeyman had brought up some issues that had been haunting him for some time now.
It was clear that Boogeyman had given into that seductive voice with gleeful abandon if her actions were anything to go by. Robin couldn't help but shiver at the memory of that clearly unnatural smile that she had given him.
He knew deep in his heart that she wasn't going to stop. He could understand why, but his comprehension of her motives did little to ease the churning of his stomach as he considered all the damage she could bring down on the city despite her intention to help.
But could he say she was wrong? The last time any villains had been caught and transported to prison was back when Lung decided that Brockton Bay would be a good place to set up shop and ripped apart the other Asian gangs until they either bent or broke.
That had been years ago. Since then the entire city had been stuck in a holding pattern with nobody making any progress towards defeating their enemies. The gang were now fixtures of the city and viewed as something that had always been there and would continue to remain. Yet in one night Boogeyman had torn apart a gang that had survived in one form or another since the era of Marquis and the Marche.
Her attack had been effective, but it was a dangerous game she was playing. The other gangs would be forced to escalate and either she or the civilians around her would suffer. That wasn't even considering what would happen if some villain found out her identity. Her lack of a mask either meant that she had some sort of protection against identification or she simply didn't care about people knowing who she was. If it was the former, then she could very well wake up to find Lung standing over the burning corpses of her family.
But even as Robin stared at the stark white ceiling and considered how he was going to try and keep Boogeyman from escalating and getting herself and those around her killed he could feel his thoughts turning to mush and his eyelids were starting to droop as his mind finally caught up to his body and realized that yes, he was exhausted.
Planning could wait until he had gotten some rest. There was no point in panicking about a future he didn't know.
--
The threads of the future twisted and changed as dozens severed; a new element tore through them with the subtlety of a brick, ripping apart old futures and birthing new ones from the primordial soup of possibility.
High above the Earth, where the edge of the atmosphere met the void of space a single figure looked down upon the blue green marble that humanity called its home as if she was a goddess of old.
A single crystalline feathered wing twitched.
--
Thus concludes the end of the first arc.
Taylor is already making waves and she isn't going to stop anytime soon.
What do you think on my take of Velocity's personality?
MimeofDeath said:
Is Boogeyman visible on video? I wouldn't think so based on the need for belief for normals to see her. Cameras are incapable of belief.
Yes and no.
If a believer were to look at a photo or video of her then they would see her, but the camera itself doesn't recognize her existence. If you looked at each individual pixel that she took up then they would all be blank because the camera isn't capable of belief. They could run that photo or video through every test conceivable, but they would never find any evidence that she exists in the image aside from what they see with their own eyes, and if that person lost their belief then she would disappear from their view on the image.
mayordomoGoliat said:
Can AIs believe?
Dragon is human enough that she can believe in Taylor and see her.
Last edited: Nov 13, 2016
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QAI521
QAI521
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Nov 9, 2016
#113
Enjoy!
Shadow 2.1
Boogeyman stared at the wrought iron fence with no small amount of trepidation as a rolling ball of emotions churned in her gut. The half-rusted fence loomed over her and for the first time since she had realized the full potential of her abilities she felt powerless.
The sign above the fence looked like it was being held together with glue and spittle. More than a few of the letters were missing, leaving nothing behind but a faint absence of dust and grime that was slowly being consumed by the filth that floated through the air.
Brockton Bay Cemetery.
Had her heart still been beating it would have exploded out of her chest as she pressed against the gate which flung open with an ear ringing creak as rusted joints squealed under the strain. She quickly glanced around to make sure nobody had heard the noise, but there wasn't anyone in sight. That wasn't surprising though, few people came to this place anymore even to maintain it. She used to joke with Emma how she was sure that the caretakers were really bio-tinker creations as it was the only explanation they had for how they had kept their jobs for this long given the state of the cemetery.
The dead grass crunched beneath her feet as she stepped through the threshold that separated the cemetery and the street. Boogeyman drew her shoulders back and let out a breath. She couldn't turn back now or she would never gather the resolve to do this again.
A chill hung in the air as she passed rows and rows of cracked gravestones, many unmarked. It was a sad fact of life in Brockton Bay that people died, but to see the collective efforts of the gangs laid out like this with countless rows of unmarked or bodiless graves was disheartening. Boogeyman clenched her fist in anger as she weaved her way through the labyrinth of graves.
Her footsteps came to a stop as she approached a particular pair of gravestones. She could feel her chest tighten as the names plastered on the stone in a lifeless scrawl stared back at her.
Annette Rose Hebert
1969-2007
"She taught something precious to each of us."
Daniel Alex Hebert
1968-2011
"Gone, but never forgotten."
"Hey Mom," Taylor said, her voice cracking a little, "I-I know it's been awhile since I visited." Her stomach churned in guilt, she had only ever visited her mom's grave once after the funeral, the pain of staring at the headstone and knowing that only a few feet down was the body of her mom had been too much.
It still was, but she needed to do this, she needed to be strong.
"I got powers, and-and I'm going to stop the gangs. I'm going to make sure they won't hurt anyone ever again," she said. The gravestone remained immobile and as lifeless as ever but Taylor felt better. More words poured out of her mouth as she continued her one-sided conversation.
"I'm going to have to do some stuff that I'm probably going to regret, but…" she pursed her lips, "You, you once said that to achieve our goals we need to be willing to make sacrifices, we need to be willing to struggle and fight for what we believe in, no matter what. I-I'm not going to be a good person Mom. I can't, not if I want to make this city a better place."
She swallowed, her throat scratchy and dry as her breath caught. "I-I hope that you'll be able to forgive me one day." She placed her hand against the headstone. The stone was cold and lifeless, even more so than her own hand. Taylor shuddered as she turned to her father's headstone.
"Dad, I know we didn't talk a lot after the accident but…" Taylor trailed off as she took a deep shaky breath, "I never blamed you for any of it. I should have told you about the bullying and everything that was happening but I didn't want to hurt you."
She had considered going to her dad about the bullying once she realized it wasn't going to stop, but she knew that if she had told her dad that she had been friendless for so long without him even noticing he would have never forgiven himself. He had already been so hurt and broken after mom's death, she couldn't put more on his plate because of some discomfort.
"I didn't do anything and you paid the price," she said as tears started to form in the corners of her eyes.
She had avoided her father the first few weeks she had been all but invisible and intangible to the world around her. It had hurt to stay away from her dad for so long, but the thought of him looking at her and not seeing her would have broken her. So, she kept her distance as she prepared to let herself fade away into nothingness when the accident happened.
After two and a half weeks of no sign of her from the police, which in Brockton Bay either meant they were dead or not coming back, he went out for a ride after some heavy drinking.
He didn't come back.
And as much as she told herself that it was the trio's fault for putting her in this situation she knew deep down that her dad was dead because of her, because she didn't do anything, because she was too much of a coward to think about how her disappearance would affect him. She had known that he had been depressed since mom's death, she should have realized that this would happen.
But she didn't and now he was dead.
"I'm not going to let that happen again," she said as tears streaked her cheeks, the salty liquid glistening in the faint moonlight. She was never going to let anything like this happen again because she decided to do nothing. Enough people suffered because she had chosen to do nothing.
"But… if I'm going to do this then I can't be Taylor Hebert anymore," Taylor said, her voice strained. "I can't be your daughter anymore."
Taylor Hebert was the coward who condemned her own father to death. Boogeyman wasn't. Taylor Hebert was the weakling that let the world stomp on her. Boogeyman was going to be the monster that gangs feared. She couldn't be a coward because cowards weren't scary. They were pitiful creatures that got scared, consumed by their own fears.
She couldn't be that.
"I'm sorry," she said as she wiped tears from her face. There was nothing more that she could say that could possibly make this better. Just standing here was making her chest hurt from the pain and anguish of seeing evidence that everyone that had once loved her was dead or a monster.
With her throat constricting Taylor turned around. The dead leafless trees seemed to close in on her as she walked away from the only family she had ever known and towards the decaying city that wanted nothing more than to strangle what little life she had out into a grinder of misery and suffering.
As she neared the threshold that separated the two worlds she turned back towards the cemetery. She couldn't see their gravestones anymore, but just for one instant she allowed herself to be Taylor Hebert once last time.
"I love you."
The words barely came out a whisper, so quiet even she was scarcely able to hear them. But for just that single moment the chill that hung over the monument to death seemed to warm up a little, and the sliver of moonlight that clung to the starry night sky seemed to grow a little brighter.
And with that Taylor Hebert joined her parents in the land of the dead.
Boogeyman turned and crossed over the threshold. The brief trace of warmth was gone, replaced by the coldness of Brockton Bay and the slight brightness of the moon was snuffed out by a pack of passing clouds.
The very street seemed to darken beneath her feet as she approached her waiting steed. Phobia glanced at her curiously, no doubt smelling the rolling ball of emotions that she had given into just a few minutes ago.
"It's time to go," Boogeyman said as she mounted the Nightmare. Taylor Hebert was dead but she wasn't going to die alone. Those that did this to her, to her father, they would suffer. She would tear down their little world and leave them groveling in the dirt like the pathetic spineless cowardly worms that they were. She would show the world that she wasn't going to stand for any villain, even if they were on the side of the law.
Boogeyman felt a wide smile spread across her face at the thought of all she was going to do to ruin their self-centered lives.
It was time for Sophia's reckoning.
--
Boogeyman stared out at the dilapidated city while she stood on the rooftop as she waited for her target to arrive.
The last few days had been busy ones for her. After she had killed Skidmark and Squealer she went to town on the remaining Merchant safe houses and production centers that she could locate. Without any parahumans to stop her it had been almost comically easy to subdue the various Merchants that had crawled back into their hiding holes. She had destroyed most of the various drugs, weapons and money she had found, but she kept a small portion of the drugs for herself.
She had a very special plan for those.
At any rate, it was unlikely that any of the remaining Merchants who had scattered once they heard of their bosses' deaths would be in any position to rebirth the gang or create a new one from the ashes. They had no supplies, safe houses or any parahuman protection. She would give them all about a week or so before they were found dead in the streets.
But while she had been busy the rest of the city hadn't been idle either. In response to the destruction of the Merchants the Empire and ABB were starting to stir. Kaiser was rattling his saber about "protection of the white workers" and other such nonsense but he hadn't made any moves yet. There had been far more Empire foot soldiers patrolling their former border with the now defunct Merchants but they had yet to do anything overt.
It didn't take a genius to figure out what Kaiser's game plan was. His whole propaganda spiel about being a protector and savior wouldn't hold up very well if he made an obvious territory grab so soon. Most of the territory that the Merchants held had been filled with more minorities, there was nothing there for Kaiser to claim to be protecting other than his own greed driven interests. Instead it appeared that he was choosing to surrender the first move to Lung in order to validate his propaganda that the "chinks" were coming to take everything away from the "white man" to sate their own desires.
As it was Lung appeared to be content to take his time in responding to the death of the Merchants. Oni Lee had been spotted on the edges of the Merchant's old territory a couple of times, but he did nothing. Lung himself hadn't made any appearances yet but it was unlikely that he was going to let an opportunity like this to slip through his fingers. Boogeyman wasn't sure what Lung was waiting for, but she had heard rumors from the Merchants that she caught who were all too happy to talk to her after a little persuasion, that Lung had gotten a new cape to bolster his forces.
It left the city in a very tense standstill, with neither side willing to make the first move. The situation left the Protectorate with their hands tied as well, they couldn't commit to taking down one gang without the other one moving in to pick up the pieces. Oh sure, they had a few more token patrols in the Merchant's former territory than they usually would, but they still weren't doing anything. Instead of trying to help improve the city, they remained focused on maintaining the status quo so that their jobs would be that much easier.
A Nightmare brushed against her shoulder, breaking her out from her musings on the current condition of the gangs.
"Wait," she commanded, patting the Nightmare on its snout. She had spent too much time in this small area the last few days trying to draw the attention of her target to have it wasted because one Nightmare decided that it was too impatient to wait to feed. The creature snorted in compliance and fell back in line with the rest of the herd hiding in the shadows.
Her herd's total numbers had skyrocketed after her tangle with the Merchants. She didn't have an exact count but she estimated that they were close to around two to three hundred strong. A massive boost from the one hundred she had used to tear apart the Merchants. The fact that she was apparently powerful enough that she didn't have to physically interact with every single one of her targets had helped her grow her herd at a much faster rate. And given that her range of about two blocks seemed to be growing, it probably wouldn't be long before she could create Nightmares from halfway across the city.
Her own personal power was growing as well. A few videos that had gotten a clear shot of her speech to the Merchants had exploded on the PHO forums. People all over the Eastern seaboard and beyond knew who she was- the newbie cape who took down a whole gang in one night. She felt more powerful than she ever had before and her strength was only going to continue to grow.
But despite this tremendous growth in her strength she had yet to make her move either. She didn't want to risk giving away her newfound power quite just yet. She had a portion of her Nightmares stalking the Merchant's territory, going after anyone they caught committing a crime and filling them with the fear of god, or in this case the fear of her. In response crime had dropped by an astounding rate in what was usually one of the more violent parts of the city, but it still wasn't enough. She wouldn't stop until every single gang had been shattered and the Protectorate either did their jobs or got out of her city.
Boogeyman stood up straighter as her eyes caught sight of her prey.
To anyone else the dark colors of Shadow Stalker's outfit would have been near indistinguishable from its surroundings in the darkness, but she didn't have such a problem. To her the darkest of nights might as well have been the brightest of days.
Her gunmetal grey crossbow glinted in what little light remained and revealed the tip of the loaded broad head bolt that was certainly against whatever regulations the Wards had.
"But when has that ever stopped her," Boogeyman growled to herself as Shadow Stalker drew closer and closer to her position. The cape in question appeared to be totally unaware of her presence, gliding from rooftop to rooftop in her shadow state with what appeared to be an almost leisurely pace. Boogeyman could feel the caution wafting off her as her head twisted on occasion to scan her surroundings, but it was enveloped by a self-assuredness of her own strength. As if she thought that she could handle whatever came her way.
Boogeyman smiled. She'd take that from her first.
She would be lying to herself if her primary motivator for doing this wasn't revenge. She didn't deny that the thought of seeing Sophia rocking in a fetal position as she shivered in fear wasn't appealing to her imagination, but she wasn't going to make Sophia suffer simply for the sake of suffering. Her pain and torment would serve a greater purpose.
Shadow Stalker landed on the same roof she was occupying with a quiet thud as she retook corporeal form. Boogeyman could feel the Ward tense a little under her invisible gaze, as if she knew that someone was out there but she couldn't tell were.
"Hello Shadow Stalker," Boogeyman said, altering her voice slightly so that Sophia wouldn't instantly recognize her. She watched with no small amount of amusement as the Ward jumped nearly a foot in the air at the sound of her voice.
"Who's there? Show yourself," Shadow Stalker growled dangerously as she held her crossbow up in a firing position while she scanned the rooftop for threats.
"Don't you know who I am," Boogeyman asked as she slowly moved across the shadows that covered the building.
"…You're Boogeyman," Shadow Stalker said. Boogeyman watched as the tension on Sophia's frame died down a little as her finger removed itself from the trigger. She could feel the surprise and fear that had just clouded Sophia's mind fade away to allow her curiosity to take its place.
"I am." There was no reason for her to deny the statement, and apparently, Sophia didn't appear to have any reason to fear her, instead she seemed to almost enjoy the idea of meeting with her. There was still some caution, but that appeared to be more for the general area that they were in than anything that had to specifically do with her.
She would correct her of this mistake soon enough.
"May I ask what a Ward is doing so far in my territory? I would have thought the Protectorate would have you in the safer parts of the city, for whatever the term safer means nowadays," Boogeyman asked.
Sophia shrugged, "Bored. Wanted to hunt some gang members."
Well, she couldn't fault Shadow Stalker for doing what was almost the exact same thing she was doing could she?
"I didn't realize the Protectorate allowed their Wards to take such an active role in fighting the gangs," Boogeyman asked as she drew herself closer to Shadow Stalker, careful not to give away her exact location. She didn't want to spook the girl and have her run off before she was ready.
Boogeyman knew of course that the Protectorate wasn't supposed to let the Wards engage in combat. Their whole pitch was centered around the idea of being able to keep young parahumans safe and out of crime by teaching them to use their powers for the benefit of society. But it was all too easy to see in a city as broken as Brockton Bay that their superiors had let them cut corners and loosen a few regulations to make things easier on themselves.
Like allowing a sadist like Sophia to have free reign of a school because she was "useful".
She was going to show them the error of their ways.
Shadow Stalker snorted in contempt, "Please, like those idiots would ever let one of their precious Wards actually do anything productive. They all think I went back home."
"Really?" Boogeyman had to wonder. Did Sophia really think that she wasn't in any danger here? She supposed she could have given that impression since she hadn't gotten violent with any of few Protectorate heroes she had encountered throughout the week. But still, to announce to a potentially hostile cape that your superiors and teammates didn't know where you were?
"Idiot."
"And I take it you're more…productive," Boogeyman asked with a slight twinge of anger
Shadow Stalker's chest puffed up a little bit in pride, apparently missing the anger that had edged into the conversation. "Damn straight. I get more done in one week than any of those weaklings do in a month. They don't get it, not like you or I do. People like the Merchants, they only understand pain," Shadow Stalker said, a hint of anger and frustration weaved its way into her voice.
"Yes, you would know about making people suffer wouldn't you Sophia," Boogeyman hissed. She understood what Sophia was saying, she really did, especially since that's what she had been doing for the last week and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future, but it didn't make her feel any less enraged at Sophia for her actions at Winslow.
Sophia reeled as if she had been physically struck. Boogeyman could feel the caution and panic rolling off her as she drew her crossbow back up into a firing position, carefully scanning the rooftop for any sign of her.
"How the hell to you know my name," Sophia asked, apparently not realizing that if she hadn't known who was beneath the mask her question would have all but confirmed it for her.
"What? Don't you recognize me," Boogeyman asked as she emerged from the shadows. They washed off her like water as she stepped forward. She could feel Sophia's heart rate increase and her eyes widen in surprise at her sudden appearance. She kept her face carefully blank as she stared at the Ward but the small eddies of black sand that formed and vanished around her body revealed her true anger. Her eyes seemed to almost glow in rage as her dark hair swirled around in a nonexistent breeze while wisps of shadows rolled of her clothing like fumes.
This was the girl that was responsible for ruining her life.
Now she was going to ruin hers.
"I thought we got to know each other pretty well after you tortured me for two years," she said as she continued her slow and steady approach towards Sophia, who in turn was being forced to keep backing up at the sight of the towering cape. She had always been taller than Sophia, or most of her classmates for that matter, but she had always felt so small in comparison to Sophia. Now the shoe was going to be on the other foot.
"…Hebert," Sophia said, the name dripping with disbelief, as if she couldn't comprehend what she had turned Taylor into. "Is that you?"
Boogeyman snarled, revealing her sharp fangs. "Yes Sophia, it's me. You know, the girl you left to rot and die in that thing you called a prank. The girl that you spent the last two years of your life doing your best to make her miserable for no other reason that your own perverse pleasure. Yes, I was that girl."
She could feel Sophia tense up, her concern starting to reach a fervor pitch as the back of her feet hit the edge of the roof they were standing on, leaving her with nowhere to go but down. "Listen…Hebert-it, it was just a prank-"
"Just a prank," she whispered, almost completely inaudible, and yet it was enough to silence Sophia's half formed protest. "Was it just a prank to leave me in there and let who knows how many diseases make their way into my bloodstream as I carved my hands into bloody ribbons while trying to break down the door? Was it just a prank when my limbs started to lose blood flow after being packed into a tight space for so long and left me unable to do anything but lie there waiting for assistance that never came? Was it just a prank when I laid there dying, unable to call for help because I had lost my voice from screaming for help an hour earlier? So, tell me Sophia, do you think that was just a prank!?"
Boogeyman could see Sophia swallow nervously, even through the thick fabric that covered her neck. It appeared that from the concern that was rolling around her empty skull that the Wards had been shown the aftermath of some of her visits and was clearly thinking the same thing would happen to her.
"You can't do this Hebert, if you do the Protectorate will come after you," Sophia hissed in what was obviously a desperate attempt to lessen her wrath. Boogeyman only laughed at her attempt to dissuade her from her goal and the utter hypocrisy of her words.
"I suppose it's only fitting that when confronted with a real challenge you crawl back to your masters like the cowardly weakling you are," she taunted with a wide grin. She could feel a sharp sting of anger at the insinuation that she might be weak.
"I'm not weak," Sophia snarled back, her anger apparently overriding her good sense. She adjusted the aim of her crossbow by a fraction and fired. The broad head bolt cleaved its way through the air as potential energy became kinetic energy. But even as the bolt approached her face Boogeyman made no motion to avoid the attack.
Within a fraction of a second the bolt was mere inches from her face when a black blur erupted from a nearby shadow and knocked the bolt off course. Boogeyman could feel Sophia's surprise as the Nightmare retook its physical form, crossbow bolt held within its maw. The horse squeezed on the piece of steel and shattered it in two. Boogeyman could see Sophia lining up another shot, but she didn't give her a chance to attack this time.
Instead she summoned her nightmare sand and form a whip which she lashed out at the Ward. Sophia yelped reflectively as the black whip wrapped itself around her crossbow like a snake coiling its prey.
Boogeyman pulled and the crossbow shot out of Sophia's hands like a bar of soap, her mundane strength unable to compare to Boogeyman's newfound supernatural strength. As the crossbow soared in the air she gave a mental command to another one of her Nightmares who jumped out of the shadows and clenched the crossbow between its teeth just like its brethren had with the arrow. The crossbow held for a moment longer before shattering into pieces under the pressure that the Nightmare's jaw exerted.
"Yes, I can see how you're not weak," Boogeyman said with a mocking edge as her yellow eyes glared down at the fidgeting Ward. Apparently having her weapon disabled had knocked her anger back a peg or two given the newfound nervousness that she was feeling.
She could still feel the anger that wafted off the girl at the comment about her being weak, but it was largely overshadowed by the overwhelming fear she was feeling as the seriousness of her situation became apparent to her.
Her form lost his corporeal nature and became a swirling black cloud that was immune or at the very least highly resistant to most physical impediments, including gravity. She seemed to almost start to float down to the roof of the much lower building below to them in an attempt to escape Boogeyman's wrath. It appeared that even though Sophia was an impulsive sadist she wasn't entirely lacking a brain if she recognized when to run from a fight.
Boogeyman had read on one of the PHO theorist forums that Shadow Stalker couldn't phase through a sufficiently powerful electrical current, but it had never been proven. But that theory didn't concern her as a sand whip lashed out again with blinding speed. Her weapon tore the cloud of black matter that made-up Shadow Stalker's existence in two.
The cloud almost seemed to convulse in pain as it lost its steady pace and virtually dropped like a rock as Sophia Hess retook her physical form, gasping for air. Boogeyman leaned over the edge of the roof as she looked down to the wheezing Ward below who looked like she had just had a heart attack.
"What," Sophia started as she gasped for breath like a fish out of water, "what was that?"
Boogeyman smiled. It wasn't a nice smile; it was the one she reserved for her mind games as she tore there very being apart block by block until nothing remained but a shivering empty shell. She could feel Sophia shudder in a seamless mixture of fear and pain at her slasher smile.
She could see the glint of realization in Sophia's eyes as the full force of the situation she was in hit her. She was alone in one of the shadiest parts of the city without a weapon. Nobody knew that she had come here. Her power had been effectively neutered. And on top of that she now had a person who she had spent the last two years of her life tormenting for fun and games towering over her like something out of a nightmare, and was more than capable of ripping her apart into tiny pieces.
"Your reckoning," Boogeyman said. She watched in delight as Sophia tried to make herself look like she wasn't about to crap her pants, but she could feel the rolling ball of fear that was starting to consume her. "Eight."
"What," Sophia asked as she pulled herself up to her knees in a clearly painful fashion, obviously confused by the sudden change in topic.
"That's how many hours you have to last against us."
"Us," Sophia asked, her voice small, clearly dreading the answer.
Boogeyman smiled and spread her arms out as if she was going to jump down and give the girl a bone crushing hug. With a mental command the rest of the Nightmares that she had brought emerged from their hiding places. Some burst forth from the many shadows that surrounded them while others formed up from the cracks that dotted the building's root. Within seconds about three dozen Nightmares joined them on the roof. They didn't completely surround Sophia, instead keeping a single large opening for her to use, but that didn't make them appear any less terrifying.
Sharp teeth and burning yellow eyes glared at Sophia whose own eyes darted around nervously as the herd started to draw in closer, squeezing and hemming her in.
"You can't do this," Sophia said, a desperate edge entering her voice as she tired against to dissuade her from her course of action. "If you hurt a Ward the Protectorate will take the kiddie gloves off. They'll go after your civilian identity and-"
Boogeyman cut her off, "They'll do what? Go after my family? My mother is dead, as you and Emma constantly took pleasure in reminding me. My father is dead because of your actions. I have no friends because you wouldn't let me. I have no life outside what I am doing right now because you decided that I wasn't allowed to live. So, tell me Sophia, what do I have left to lose?"
Sophia said nothing, muscles tense and twitching as she was herded towards the edge of the roof once again by the Nightmares.
"You have until sunrise," Boogeyman said, cutting through the tense silence.
"…to do what," her ex-tormenter asked with as much fear and trepidation as one would expect when faced with a mass of murder horses.
"To do the one thing you've always claimed you were best at," Boogeyman said with a smirk as a sand spear with jagged hooks formed in her hand. Her back arched and her wrist twisted as she prepared to throw the weapon.
"Survive."
--
So Sophia just realized how much she screwed up.
I really tried to avoid flanderizing her even though I really don't like her, and I'm hoping I pulled it off. What do you think?
WeaponX1023 said:
Wouldn't it be easy for people to believe Taylor exists? I mean capes are a thing so if someone read a report on her then they should be able to see her. The only reason they shouldn't be able to is they don't know about her.
Yeah, I've brought it up before, but Earth Bet's SoD is far greater than the RotG Earth. They are more willing to believe that someone can summon horse minions and create weapons out of sand. Its one of the advantages Taylor has over Pitch in that people will believe in her far quicker. The disadvantage is that she is literally starting from scratch in terms of belief and legends, unlike Pitch who at least had a legend specific to himself that he could build off of.
There are different types of belief as well, someone can believe in her but not be afraid of her. Jamie demonstrated this in the RotG movie when he helped confront Pitch. This would allow them to see her, but it would only grant her the tiniest fraction of what she would get if they were afraid of her as well.
ToNotBe said:
Belief is a strange thing.
Belief is powerful. Belief can build empires and shatter armies. It can change history and rearrange the cosmos. Belief can make existence worthless or give meaning to the smallest of creatures.
Last edited: Nov 13, 2016
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QAI521
Nov 9, 2016
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Threadmarks Shadow 2.2
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QAI521
QAI521
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Nov 13, 2016
#133
Enjoy!
Shadow 2.2
8:00
Sophia Hess didn't like being afraid. Fear indicated weakness. It paralyzed the body and mind in the face of danger. It was a plague that she had dealt with a lot while that man had been living in her house. She had been terrified the night she triggered, but her powers gave her a way out. A way to stop being the terrified Sophia Hess and to become the hero Shadow Stalker. Instead of her being afraid, people were afraid of her. It was a nice feeling, to see them squirm under your gaze and realize that they had no power over what was going to happen to them as they begged and pleaded for mercy like the weak cowards they were.
The other Wards just didn't get it. They didn't have to live their whole lives being black in a city partially controlled by Neo-Nazis. They didn't have to spend the nights with a knife under their pillows in case someone decided they wanted your house. She could understand that their lives might have been miserable (people who triggered typically weren't paragons of mental stability) but they just didn't get what it was like for the people who couldn't afford to live in the nice part of town.
Dean liked to play himself as the white knight, the dashing hero of the story. He didn't get what the world was really like, he was the son of the third richest man in the city and basically got whatever he wanted on a silver platter. She tuned out his moralizing speeches to her about "how she should be a better person" and all that because he was an idiot. He certainly never had to worry about whether there would be food on the table for dinner.
She did reluctantly admit to herself that Dennis understood. Out of all the Wards he was the one whose lifestyle before triggering was the closest to hers. He understood that out in this jungle of a city you sometimes couldn't afford to be nice or the dashing hero, but he always played himself off as the bumbling fool and the jokester, as if he could somehow hide the ugly truth of the word behind bad jokes.
Emma, she understood. She knew that out in the real-world people didn't get to be nice. The strong crushed the weak because they were strong, because they had power. She knew what it was like to be weak once and she never wanted to be that again. Being strong meant you couldn't play being a hero, it meant you had to make the hard choices in life. Choices that could determine life or death.
Emma had impressed her when she had pushed back her fear in that alley to fight the gang members, so much so that Sophia had decided to become friends with her. And in return she had helped Sophia by giving her Hebert as a punching back.
Emma had been convinced that together they would have been able to bring out Hebert's strength if they just pushed her a little. Sophia had been more than a little skeptical when she had met the girl, Hebert was nothing but skin and bones with a motor mouth, cowing when confronted with almost insulting ease.
But she couldn't deny that the sight of someone cowering before Sophia, not Shadow Stalker, didn't bring a pleasant feeling. It was a sign that she couldn't only be strong as Shadow Stalker, but that she could be powerful in her civilian identity as well.
This was a feeling that she was now desperately regretting.
"SH-" her curse was cut off as she was forced to dive off the building as a serrated spear that was about as tall as she was took residency in the spot she had occupied two seconds ago.
She supposed she should have seen it coming. The locker was a trigger-worthy event if there ever was one, being stuck inside a small space filled with garbage and everyone outside laughing at you after two years of being socially isolated from everyone. Yeah, she could see how that might make someone snap. But the thought that Hebert might actually become strong and push back was an almost completely alien concept to her. She had worked the girl so well that she had been reduced to eating her lunches in the bathroom rather than risk her wrath in the cafeteria. The thought that Hebert could pull something like this off was virtually unbelievable.
She had been excited when Armsmaster had announced that there was a new dangerous vigilante in town. One that wasn't afraid to get her hands a little dirty and deal with the criminal scum permanently.
In the small part of her mind that wasn't devoted to directing herself through the hazardous situation around her or dominated by terror she realized that under normal circumstances she would have never done this. Coming alone to meet a new cape was beyond foolish. But after being forced to patrol with those entitled idiots for over a year the thought of being able to talk to another parahuman who understood was a breath of fresh air that she desperately needed.
Because she needed this. Even Emma's understanding was limited because she wasn't a parahuman. She didn't get what it was like to have this power thrumming under your skin, to know that you had the power to actually do something against the foot crushing your windpipe.
She had been so excited to meet a cape who understood what that the real world wasn't made up of knights in shining armor but filled with pain and fear.
The fact that she just happened to be Taylor Hebert was extraordinarily bad luck.
She allowed herself to shift into her shadow state as she hit the rooftop below, phasing through concrete, insulation and plaster to come to an empty room. It had clearly been abandoned for some time to the boards covering the windows were any indication. Shadow Stalker tried to calm down, but it was hard to do so when her heart was about to burst from her ribcage. Her powers had always provided her protection against most physical and some exotic attacks apart from electrical currents, a fact that had never bothered her because there was no villain in the Bay who used electrical attacks in their arsenal. That no name Grue could interfere with her power but she wasn't scared about him, he always ran when faced with stiff competition. But this…
Shadow Stalker rubbed her chest as a phantom pain of being literally torn in two set her chest on fire. It had felt like she was being ripped apart and stitched back together with pins and needles. Grue's powers were an annoyance, this was painful. She did not want to be on the receiving end of those shadow horses, especially if they could interfere with her powers like Hebert could.
Shadow Stalker yelped in surprise as the window closest to her exploded inwards as shards of glass and plywood scattered through the room. As she retook her physical form after making sure she wasn't about to get glass in her eyes she paled at the sight of the towering horse. Its sandy skin seemed to shift like buzz saws around the area that formed the mouth and its solid yellow eyes burned with a deep-seated hatred.
The horse let out a bone chilling neigh as it charged forward, its hooves crushing the glass and wood fragments that cluttered the near empty room as it raced towards her and blinding speeds. With a tremendous effort Shadow Stalker managed to overcome her instinct to phase through the rampaging equine and managed to roll to the side.
As she rolled across the cracked hardwood floor she grabbed a piece of plywood debris and slammed it against the snout of the shadowy minion as it turned its head around to face her. Its head snapped to the side from the force of the blow and took off part of its snout as wooden splinters dug into its from, but her victory was short lived. Instead of going down the horse repaired the damage done and slowly turned its head towards her. Shadow Stalker gulped at the look of annoyance and disbelief that had mixed in with the anger that dominated its eyes.
Shadow Stalker jumped back mere seconds before the horse lashed out once more, black teeth shining even in the lightless room. She took her incorporeal form and jumped through and out the wall, just narrowly missing having a bite taken out of her by the nightmarish horse. She heard a thud as the wall shook a bit while she floated down, the horse having apparently struck the wall at full speed. If the horses' bodies were made of the same material as Hebert's whip then she didn't doubt that they would be able to hurt her in her shadow state, which severely limited her close combat options.
Not that she wanted to get into close combat with one of those things. For all that they looked like a horse they moved like wolves. Very vicious man mauling wolves.
As she retook her physical form on the street she took stock of her situation. She was in the slums, which meant that it was about thirty minutes to get to the PRT headquarters downtown, and that was if she went in a straight line. She doubted that Hebert was going to let her get away that easy.
"Leaving so soon?"
Shadow Stalker looked up to see Hebert standing out of a shadow on the side of the building, standing up straight as if she wasn't positioned horizontally in relation to the ground twenty feet below. Her dark robe seemed to almost melt into the darkness as she gave a wicked grin.
"Why, we're just getting started," she said.
As if on some unseen signal the demonic horses poured off the roof, running down the building as if it was solid ground, their black forms glittering in the pale moon light, their sharp yellow eyes burning the dark around them.
Sophia ran.
--
6:03
Shadow Stalker pressed herself up against the wall as best she could as she glanced out the cracked and stained window. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she eyed the monsters below. They appeared to be milling around, occasionally sniffing the odd thing or two as they continued their search for her, seemingly unaware that she was in the studio not fifteen feet above them.
She doubted that she had lost them, they had proven to be particularly skilled in tracking their prey. Every time she thought she had given them the slip and made a break for the PRT headquarters or one of the Protectorate patrol routes she was cut off and forced back deeper into Boogeyman's territory.
She had stopped referring to Boogeyman as Hebert in her head because that thing wasn't the wimpy Taylor Hebert that she had spent the last two years bullying. That creature was a monster.
"You shouldn't be that surprised," the monster's voice called out from the shadows.
Shadow Stalker's hand twitched to pull out the makeshift knife she had managed to make from a piece of broken glass. It was hardly the safest or most effective weapon, but Boogeyman wasn't giving her too many options. Any attempt to try and get a real weapon, one that made her feel comfortable and powerful resulted in her nearly being torn in two by Boogeyman's scythe.
She was forced to repress a full body shiver at the thought of that blade. Even if she wasn't permanently hurt in her shadow state it still hurt just as much as the real thing. "Surprised about what?" Shadow Stalker asked as she nervously eyed every shadow in the very dark room.
"What you did to me was monstrous Sophia," she said, her voice echoing throughout the abandoned room.
Shadow Stalker froze as a hand wrapped around her shoulder. Even though her costume had protection from temperatures she could still feel the ice-cold grip that tightened as the voice whispered into her ear, "So are you really surprised it made a monster?"
Shadow Stalker let out a screech as she tore herself from the monster's grip and twisted so that she could slash her throat out. But all she caught was empty air and a taunting grin as she faded back into the shadows. Shadow Stalker heaved for breath, but was given no respite as a handful of the demonic horses tore through the windows, showering her in glass.
The first horse fell out of pure luck. As she reflexively reacted to an attack from and attacker that she didn't have a clear view of she flailed her piece of broken glass around wildly. The horse let out an ear-piercing scream as the shard of sharp glass struck one of its eyes, lodging itself inside. The horse's head collapsed in on itself and the rest of the body followed like a sandcastle being washed away by the tide. But her victory was short lived as the two other horses clamped their jaws around her arms with their vice like grips.
She thrashed with all the force she could muster, but the horses' grip remained tight around her upper arms. She lurched backwards as the two minions started to drag her to the other end of the room. She tried to pull herself up and regain her balance so she could resist, but her boots just kept sliding across the dusty floor with each attempt.
She took to her shadow state and then immediately regretted it as both of her arms lit up like they were being torn apart. Instead of floating harmlessly though the floor to escape she fell gasping on the ground in her physical form. She tried to push herself up to run, but she was pulled back by the horses as the shut their jaws around her ankles this time and started to pull.
She could hear the stomping of hooves and the grinding of teeth behind her as she was dragged deeper into the dark shadows of the building.
Sophia screamed.
--
3:18
Shadow Stalker cautiously poked her head inside the warehouse. It was an old empty thing, but the lack of anything to block her vision worked towards her advantage. Hopefully it would be easier to keep track of all the shadows that surrounded her.
It was a nerve wracking thing to step through the various shadows that blocked her path to the well-lit center of the room. She could still feel flesh being torn from flesh as millions of angry buzz saws ran over her face and neck as she was pulled into the darkness. She wasn't even sure how she had managed to escape but she considered herself fortunate that they weren't able to finish what they had started. She wasn't eager to learn what would happen if most of your skin was torn from your body.
"What's the matter, Sophia? Afraid of the dark?" a voice called out from inside the blackness. Sophia managed to keep herself from jumping in surprise at the sound of the taunting voice, but none the less felt very nervous as she eyed each shadow.
"Why don't you come out and show yourself?" Shadow Stalker asked with as much bravo as she could muster.
An amused chuckle echoed through the room that made her skin break out into goosebumps.
"Alright then, but I think you'll freak with what I have to show you," Boogeyman said in a childish sing song voice.
Shadow Stalker tensed up as Boogeyman emerged from the shadows like a vengeful ghost. An amused but angry look was plastered on her face.
"Don't know how, you're already so ugly," Shadow Stalker taunted. Perhaps not the best idea, but mocking Hebert for her appearance was old ground. It made her feel safer in the seemingly endless nightmare.
Boogeyman's face curled into a sneer that quickly gave way to a small smile. Her wrist flicked and something small skidded against the floor.
The clattering sound came to a stop as something bumped against her foot. Shadow Stalker looked down and what she saw made her blood run cold.
It was a toy car, and an old one at that. Most of its paint had been chipped off and one of the wheels was obviously a replacement. The number thirty three was scratched onto the hood of the toy replica to take the place of the sticker that had long since peeled off.
Normally she wouldn't care about some dumb old toy, but this one was different. This one she recognized. How could she not when she kept on tripping over it?
It was the same toy that her younger brother Thomas. It was just a stupid toy that he had always kept and one that she had mocked him for keeping on numerous occasions. But to see it here, in Boogeyman's hands meant…
No.
"What did you do?" Shadow Stalker asked, her voice a low growl, her mind racing through all the various things that she would do to Boogeyman if she had harmed one hair on her little brother's head.
Boogeyman just grinned as if it was all one big joke, "So you do care about someone besides yourself. I was beginning to wonder. I mean, I would have thought someone as weak as Thomas would have been under your attention."
"What did you do to him?!" Shadow Stalker screeched in a terror filled voice that only someone who was an older sibling would be able to understand. A chill went up her spine at the realization that she hadn't talked to her mother or her younger sibling since this morning, which meant that Boogeyman could have had all day to work whatever horrors she could devise.
Boogeyman's smile just widened. "The real question is - what did you do, Sophia?"
Shadow Stalker roared.
It was a primal thing, borne of fear and desperation. She charged the smirking Boogeyman, uncaring that she lacked any weapons aside from her fists. She slammed into Boogeyman with her entire body, knocking the surprised monster to the ground.
Then she started to punch.
It felt like punching a brick wall and would probably end up hurting her fists just as much, but it felt good to feel her tormentor's head snap to the side as she struck her in the cheeks again and again. After a few more moments, she stopped. Her knuckles felt like they were on fire and she could feel a slight trickle of blood run down on the inside of her costume, but the monster below her wasn't moving.
Shadow Stalker turned around at the sound of snorting, and growled at the sight of about a dozen of Hebert's minions standing down the street, glaring at her with their yellow eyes. They twitched and padded their hooves against the asphalt, but they made no move to take her. Shadow Stalker pulled herself off Hebert and started to scream at the minions.
"What are you going to do now?!" she shouted, her voice bouncing off the surrounding buildings. They outnumbered her but she didn't care. She was still on the euphoric high of the adrenaline rush that had allowed her to beat some sense back into Hebert. She proved her wrong, she was still strong and Hebert was still a weak little pus-
Shadow Stalker's train of thought derailed as a small noise caught her attention. Turning back around to the prone Hebert she saw that the girl wasn't as unconscious as she had thought as her shoulders appeared to be shaking. For a second she thought that Hebert was crying (as would be fitting for someone as weak as her) only to realize as the girl pulled herself up with a huge grin on her face that she was laughing.
Shadow Stalker took a step back despite herself as Hebert loomed over her, wide grin etched onto her features. Shadow Stalker realized with a dry throat that she had never actually recognized how tall Hebert was compared to her. It was almost freakish in a way how she was a good head and a half taller than her despite being the same age.
"You know that beating you just gave me?" Boogeyman asked, her eyes filled with cruelty and mirth. She leaned down into Shadow Stalker's face until their eyes were mere inches from each other. "It tickled."
Out of pure reflex Shadow Stalker's right fist shot out to strike Boogeyman in the face. But instead, her fist stopped dead cold as Boogeyman caught it in her iron tight grip. Shadow Stalker pounded and clawed with her free hand and feet, but Boogeyman's hand remained firmly wrapped around her fist.
"I've been thinking," Boogeyman said in an amiable tone that set Shadow Stalker's teeth on edge as she redoubled her efforts to free herself. Her free hand clawed against the girl's chest, but she didn't appear to be very concerned. "Since you weren't strong enough to keep your weapon, and you aren't strong enough to hurt me, you don't need this hand, do you?"
It only took Shadow Stalker a split second to recognize what Boogeyman was implying.
"Wait don-" her plea for mercy was cut off by a blood curling scream as the twenty-seven bones that made up her hand were shattered. She fell to the ground screaming her lungs out as she clutched her now useless hand against her chest. Bits of bone tore through her skin and gloves while blood poured out of her wounds.
"What's the matter, Sophia?" Boogeyman taunted, her cold voice just barely worming its way through the cloud of pain the shrouded her awareness. "Isn't this what you believe in? That the strong can bully the weak. Because right now you seem pretty weak to me."
Shadow Stalker did nothing to respond but sob harder as her broken hand was wracked with near unbearable pain.
But pain gave way to terror as she managed to see through the veil of tears that had obscured her vision to see that Boogeyman and her minions were standing over her with very eager expressions. Shadow Stalker held back a choked sob as she returned to her shadow state. The pain immediately lessened as her body lost its corporeal form and her broken hand ceased to exist as a solid structure.
She phased through the floor with all the speed she could muster as the horses closed in. She could hear them slamming against the floor as she floated down a story below them. But instead of retaking her much faster physical body to flee from her pursuers she chose to remain as she was. It would hardly be idea, but at the very least she wouldn't have to deal with the pain and sight of a mangled hand.
Unfortunately for Shadow Stalker her reprieve was short lived as Boogeyman tore out of the many shadows that dotted the room, scythe in hand. She barely had anytime to recognize the threat before said scythe cleaved her into two pieces.
"You don't get out that easily Sophia," Boogeyman said with a grin as said Ward was forced to retake physical form while the phantom pain of being cut in half forced her to her knees.
Sophia pleaded.
--
0:09
She wasn't sure how long it had been. Four hours? Five? All she knew is that it had felt like an eternity. She had torn a piece of her cloak off to use as a makeshift bandage for her broken hand. It still hurt, but she had been forced to push through it to avoid even greater suffering from Boogeyman capturing her.
She wasn't exactly sure when she had given up trying to get away to the PRT, maybe it was the third of fourth hour, but Boogeyman had made it very clear that she wasn't getting away until she decided she was done playing with her.
She limped down the empty street slowly as she clutched her shattered hand close to her chest. Her legs flared in pain with each step, a result of running for so long with little to no rest. Her body was wracked with pain as she forced herself to moved further and further down the street. She kept to the sideway, but as close to the spotty streetlights as she could. She had learned her lesson about stepping into the shadows.
Her ribs still ached from those punches and she was pretty sure one of them was broken because it hurt each time she breathed.
Her footsteps faltered for a moment as something caught her eye.
Just inside a ring of light surrounding a functioning streetlight was a payphone. Shadow Stalker's spirits soared as she raced towards the phone will all the speed she could muster, even as her body burned and screaming in protest.
All she had to do was call the PRT emergency hotline and then they would come find her. Even if Boogeyman interrupted the call they would still be obligated to investigate and the blood trail she had left would at least indicate that something was wrong.
Her breath caught as she reached the outer ring of the light and stretched her hand out to grab onto the glorious black receiver that called to her.
"AUUGH," she cried out as she fell to the ground. Her mask protected her face as she slammed into the ground, but she could feel her sides flare up again as her injured ribs protested at the harsh treatment. She moved to drag herself over to her freedom which laid only a few feet away, but she started to feel something pulling her back. Shadow Stalker felt tears form in her eyes at the sound of the taunting voice.
"Come now Sophia. We can't have you ruining all the fun, can we?" Boogeyman said with what Shadow Stalker assumed as a sick grin plastered onto her face. Shadow Stalker screeched in terror and pain as she tried to pull herself away from the walking nightmare. She desperately clawed at the asphalt with her hands even as her broken one left a bloody trail behind it, flaring in agony the entire time as shredded flesh and shattered bones scraped against the ground.
"Please," Shadow Stalker sobbed as her efforts to unite with the payphone remained unsuccessful. Boogeyman only laughed at her shrill pleas for mercy.
When she finally came to a stop she desperately tried to scramble to her feet to make an escape, to reach the freedom that taunted her by staying just out of her reach. She made it to her knees before she was kicked back down. She groaned in pain while she curled in on herself to try and provide herself some modicum of protection.
"It's really amazing isn't it," Boogeyman said as she circled her prone form like a vulture. "How you can see someone everyday, but never really get to know the person behind the mask they put up."
Shadow Stalker gurgled in protest as Boogeyman's hand wrapped around her throat and heaved her off her feet. Shadow Stalker let her arms fall limp to her sides. She already knew that trying to break Boogeyman's grip would be an exercise in futility. She could probably get out using her shadow state, but she would be subjecting herself to the intense pain of phasing through whatever Boogeyman's body was made of and the pain of being torn in half.
"You have two masks Sophia," Boogeyman said as she pulled the Ward's mask off her face. Shadow Stalker felt a welcome rush of cool air hit her sweaty face, but it was tainted by the slasher smile that Boogeyman was giving her. She seemed to eye her mask like it was some sort of stranger creature.
"You have one for your cape persona, and one for your civilian identity, but neither of them are who you really are, are they?" Boogeyman asked as she threw her into the side of a building. Shadow Stalker grunted as she hit the brick wall and slid to the ground, unmoving as Boogeyman stalked forward. "That's all I'm doing really. Removing you masks so the whole world can see how weak you are."
Boogeyman dropped the mask to the ground and Sophia flinched as she crushed it under her foot. The hockey like mask that had defined part of her existence shattered into a dozen pieces. Boogeyman's yellow eyes seemed to glow in the dim lighting as Sophia pressed herself against the wall as tightly as she could, tear streaking down her face.
"Because that's what you are - weak," Boogeyman said in a mocking tone, as if she was speaking to a small child.
"It's almost disappointing really," Boogeyman said in a conversational tone as she drew herself closer to the shaking girl. "I was expecting something more interesting to show itself when I tore away your masks. A monster, a psychopath maybe. Something that would make me understand why you did all those things at Winslow. Why you thought it was a good idea to hunt people down like animals. Why you got a power that only let you run away."
Sophia cowered as Boogeyman drew herself closer, to the point where their noses were almost touching. For a long moment Boogeyman did nothing but stare at her with a cold and empty gaze. To Sophia it felt like they layer of her very being were being pulled back so that the monster before her could get a good look of what laid beneath. Then finally she spoke in a near whisper, her words as chilling as the artic winds.
"The truth. You're just a scared little girl."
Sophia broke down sobbing.
She wasn't sure how long she spent with tears streaking down her face and snot running down her nose, but when she managed to pull herself back together enough to see Boogeyman was still staring at her with those cold eyes. Sophia couldn't help but squirm at the disappointing gaze that her former punching bag gave her, like she had been expecting fireworks and got a sparkler instead.
"Please…just get it over with," Sophia said, her voice raw and raspy. Hours ago, if someone had asked her if she would be willing to die she would have shot that person in the throat. Now, after eight hours of what could only be described as torture she was more than ready if it meant that Boogeyman would just end this. She couldn't stand the thought of not being able to protect herself, of being able to fight back. She didn't want to listen to what Boogeyman had to say anymore, she couldn't.
"You thought I was trying to kill you," Boogeyman asked in faux surprised tone. "Oh Sophia, it was never about avoiding death, it was about surviving."
"Wha…" Sophia managed to gasp out, clearly confused.
Boogeyman just smirked, "I never said anything about killing you Sophia. I mean, as if I would let you off that easy. No, it was about seeing if your masks would survive. If Shadow Stalker and Sophia would survive if they were brought to the edge."
Boogeyman's smirk stretched into a wide bone chilling grin. "They didn't."
Sophia flinched again as Boogeyman gave a hearty laugh at that. "This is my victory, Sophia. I showed your true self. Now you get to live with that for the rest of your life," she hissed.
"It-it's over," Sophia asked, her heart swelling up with hope. A hope that was quickly crushed by Boogeyman's crackling.
"Over? No, not over. Never over. Tonight, I showed you who you really are. Now, I'm going to reveal to the world what's beneath your mask, so that you can live for the rest of your life aware that everyone knows that you're just a scared little girl, Sophie."
She recoiled at the mention of the pet name that man had given her while under her mother's roof.
"I'll leave you to yourself then," Boogeyman said as she backed up from the sobbing girl. Sophia paid no attention as she let out a single wordless cry as she shrunk in on herself. She didn't notice as Boogeyman faded back into the shadows, nor did she notice when PRT vans pulled up a few minutes later asking her is she needed medical attention.
All she did was sob for the power that she had lost, for the confidence and security that had been taken from her.
Gone was the Shadow Stalker who was the terror of criminals. Gone was the Sophia who ruled Winslow with fear.
In their place laid a young woman who had been broken and never healed. Who had endured torment from a man that her own mother had invited into her house. A girl who used her anger to hide her insecurities from the world around her.
She sobbed because she knew that Boogeyman was right.
And that was the most terrifying thing of all.
--
Helian05 said:
So I just found this story and started checking it out. Not bad, but I did notice a few grammar spelling things. Putting them in spoilers so this post doesn't end up super long, and so you can ignore them if you want.
Thank you. I think I got most of them fixed.
Helian05 said:
If Taylor's power was shard based I'd assume her powers were somewhat gained from her shard pinging Sophia's and that her shadow state and minions could interfere with Sophia's shadow state which would neatly explain her being able to affect the bolt. As it is, she's basically a shadow-based goddess of fear. How do magic shadow powers interact with clarketech shadow powers? Is the thematic similarity enough to allow Taylor to fuck with Sophia, or do the mechanics make that not make sense? Personally, I can see Taylor being able to do nearly anything that increases fear of her, especially against someone who's already afraid of her, so catching ammo out of the air seems right inline with her abilities.
Click to expand...
It's a combination of being thematically similar enough to each other and just the nature of Taylor's powers in general. Taylor's powers aren't just physical they're conceptual. When Taylor senses people's fears it's not like Cherish's detection where she is sensing the change in people's brain chemistry, it's that Taylor is sensing the concept, the idea of fear. Her other powers work similarly. It's not actually sand that she is using to form her weapons and Nightmares, it's fear that just happens to take the form of sand. Or when she is traveling through the shadow dimension she doesn't have calculations going on in her head how to punch a hole to another reality- it's her power telling the universe "this shadow is going to connect to all shadows and I'm going to be able to travel through them" and the universe responds in kind.
The reason that Taylor's weapons can stymie Sophia so is related to belief. In this story you can imagine that magic is one of the building blocks of the universe. In the RotG world its is much more prominent and used than in Wormverse, but it still exists in the Wormverse. If if didn't work then Taylor would have just faded away when she got her powers. So while it is not nearly as prominent it still had an effect in the Wormverse. Sophia believes that her powers give her a shadow like form. The Wards and Protectorate believe it gives her a shadow like form. Thousands of people in Brockton Bay believe it gives her a shadow like form. Is this the scientific answer to how Sophia's power's work- no, but this isn't about science. This is about magic and belief. This is enough belief that it changes how the universe views her, which wouldn't usually matter, except that Taylor has a conceptual power with a domain over shadows and darkness. Thus, Taylor is capable of interfering with her form in a way others can't. Taylor wouldn't be able to interfere with say, Clockblocker's powers, because she has no dominion over time, but any power that exist close enough to any of her domains it is possible for her to interfere with.
Last edited: Nov 20, 2016
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QAI521
QAI521
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Nov 18, 2016
#179
Important! Read- Okay, I'm going to warn you all reading this right now- this chapter gets dark. I was honestly surprised at the turn this chapter took when I was writing it. So if you feel uncomfortable reading about suicidal thoughts/actions then I suggest you do not read this chapter.
Shadow 2.3
6:42 A.M.
"Well?"
Madison Clements shivered as Tay- no Boogeyman walked out of her shadow. She whimpered as she placed her cold hands on her shoulders, not enough to hurt her, but enough to keep her from doing anything stupid.
Not that Madison had plans to do anything. Boogeyman had thoroughly erased any form of resistance from her days ago. Having a shadow horse, or Nightmare as she apparently called them, watch her in her sleep was more than enough to dissuade calling for help.
And after watching the video she couldn't help but feel that she had made the right choice.
She didn't like Sophia that much. She had hung out with her in the past because of her relationship with Emma who was one of the top dogs in the school, not because she was appealing as a conversationalist. She was just too aggressive; everything was an argument to her and her sadistic streak was rather frightening. She had been okay with calling Hebert names and socially isolating her but the locker was way beyond anything that even in her wildest dreams would have thought appropriate.
She had protested and threatened to go to the principle if they didn't let Hebert out, but then Sophia had threatened to break her legs and while she doubted that she would have done it there was a glint in her eyes that made her comply.
Then Hebert disappeared.
The pile of garbage and filth that had been shoved inside was still present in the locker, but there wasn't any sign of their classmate. Emma and Sophia thought that one of the other students who they had bullied from time to time when they wanted some variety from Hebert had let the girl out and pushed it out of their minds. Madison's imagination hadn't been so easily assuaged.
Nightmares of Taylor dying in the locker and having her cold corpse shoved into a dumpster by Sophia haunted her subconscious. She had read up on what being exposed to such toxic material like the ones they had filled the locker with would do to a person if left untreated for an extended time.
She had gotten plenty of nightmare fuel from reading those.
She supposed the fact that Sophia was Shadow Stalker explained a lot of things about her. Why the school never seemed to come down on them when they were bullying Hebert even if it started to get physical. Even if it was right in front of the teacher's view. Why she always preferred physical threats and actions over verbal ones.
It made her stomach churn at the thought that someone like that was considered a hero. But even then, witnessing what Boogeyman did to Sophia made bile rise in her throat.
For the past few hours she had gotten to watch in HD glory as Sophia Hess was physically and psychologically tortured to the breaking point. It was disturbing to see how Boogeyman played her like a fiddle, pushing all the right buttons at just the right times. She had been forced to throw up near the end, when Sophia broke down completely, leaving her an empty unresponsive shell of what she used to be.
"I-I downloaded the last file," Madison managed to get out. She didn't want to do this, even to someone as morally bankrupt as Sophia. But the video had been a warning as much as it had been a part of the plan, "do what I say, or this will happen to you".
Not that she needed any more evidence that working against Boogeyman would be a bad idea.
"Are they ready to send?" Boogeyman asked, her fingers curing around her shoulders in a subtle warning of what would happen to her if her answer was no.
"Yes," Madison managed to squeak out. "I-I have them all ready to send."
For the past few weeks Madison had been forced to wear a recording device at school. Boogeyman had ordered her to tease as much information about the bullying as she could out of the other students. Honestly, it hadn't been that hard. Even though Hebert had been missing from school during the time after the locker, those that had been part of Emma's clique had been all too eager to add their own two cents in an effort to get in the redhead's good graces.
Getting Sophia and Emma to talk about the "brilliance" of the locker took even less effort.
It was disturbing how gleefully they talked about ruining Hebert's life, as if it was all a game to them. Even more so, that mere days before she had been one of them, all too eager to throw Hebert under the bus to get a good laugh and some social standing.
But Boogeyman hadn't been satisfied with mere recordings. She had Madison scour the entire school, searching for anyone who had taped the events on their phones for posterities sake. She gave her journals filled with hundreds of instances of bullying to scan and passwords to email addresses choked full with hate mail and death threats. And as Madison started to compile them onto her computer she realized the full scale of what she and the others had wrought upon Hebert.
It was sickening in the least to read through and realize just how much they had ruined this girl's life, and for what? A laugh or two to amuse themselves.
"You know what to do," Boogeyman said as she pulled back from Madison's shoulders, giving the younger girl a little room to breathe. Madison paused as she started at the bright monitor before her. Gigabytes of data all compressed into a single email ready to be blasted across the bay. A single email that would ruin her life and the lives of dozens of others as the knowledge of what they did was made public to everyone.
Her finger hovered over the send button. If she did this, then she would be arrested. She would be complicit in revealing a Ward's secret identity and who knows what charges she would get from everything she had done at the school. Pushing the button would effectively end her life as she knew it.
Yet, part of her wanted to push it. She wanted to get over this guilt that plagued her every night as she tossed and turned in bed whilst the yellow-eyed Nightmare looked on. This would be a chance for redemption, an opportunity to do something right for once.
The click of the mouse as she depressed the right key held a certain finality to it. In the half second it took the computer to process the instructions of the mouse and carry them out, the email that contained virtually every instance of bullying that Taylor Hebert had been subjected to for the past two years was sent to every news outlet in the Bay and beyond. It was sent to the school board and other various education watchdog organizations. Now it wouldn't matter if Winslow ignored what was going on inside its halls, because now everyone knew what they were doing.
"It's done," Madison said, slumping in her seat in sweet relief. She turned back towards Boogeyman, who was sitting on the edge of her bed with a strange glint in her yellow eyes. Madison felt her throat clench up at the unnatural stare, but she still managed to squeak out, "I-it is done, right?"
"Well Madison, that depends," Boogeyman said, her voice as dry as the desert. "Do you think two weeks of assistance under duress will make up two years of torment?"
Madison would have gulped if her throat hadn't gone so dry. Boogeyman had yet to move from her cross-legged position on the edge of her bed, but something in the atmosphere had changed. It was colder, tenser, dangerous.
"I helped you," Madison argued, her voice a faint whisper. For a moment, she saw Boogeyman's eyes light up in a flash of anger, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.
"You helped me because the alternative was worse," Boogeyman said as she stood up in a slow deliberate manner. Madison felt her knees start to quake as the grey skinned parahuman towered over her. "Not because of the guilt you felt for what you did."
Madison opened her mouth to explain that she had no choice, that she had to keep quiet, but was cut off as Boogeyman swiped her hand in the air. "You took the easy path because you don't have the will or courage to take the harder way. If I hadn't come here you would have kept silent because it was easier for you to do, wouldn't you?"
Madison wanted to say no, that she would have come clean, that she would have told her parents what their little angel of a daughter was doing at school.
But she knew she wouldn't have.
Because Boogeyman was right, she would have kept quiet. She would have trotted along with her life as best she could while the soul crushing guilt of what she had done weighed down on her. She wouldn't have told her parents that their darling little angel was actually a demon, and they would still cling to the illusion that she was a good daughter, a good person.
Madison felt tears streaking down her cheeks as she stared up at Boogeyman who had a carefully blank expression on her face.
"I didn't- they made me," Madison tried to choke out through the fitful sobbing that overcame her form.
"In the end, they did force you," Boogeyman agreed, but there was not a trace of mercy or compassion hidden away behind that stone-cold expression. "But in the beginning, they didn't."
Madison tried to grab the hem of Boogeyman's robe to sob into, so she could explain why she had done all of those horrible things. But Boogeyman took a step back as her arms stretched out, and all her open hand caught was empty air. She fell to her hands and knees on the floor crying as Boogeyman continued to speak, uncaring of her current state.
"At first you did it because it felt good," Boogeyman said as she stared down at the shaking brunette. "It felt nice to see me squirm under your gaze, glancing over my shoulder to look out for your next prank. It felt nice to indulge in all of those dark thoughts that you had suppressed over the years until it became a habit."
"Please," Madison begged through her watery tears.
"That's how it happens Madison. You start off small- a spit ball here and there, but you just keep on doing more because it will never be enough. That's how angels can become devils. That's how you became a monster."
Madison said nothing as she silently cried onto the hardwood floor. She shoulders shaking with the silent sobs that wracked her entire body.
"But I suppose I'm not entirely without mercy," Boogeyman said. Madison's head shot up, hope swelling up in her heart. "I'll give you a choice, you can go tell your parents what a little devil their angel has become, or…"
Boogeyman's hands slunk into her robes and pulled something out. Madison felt her heart skip a beat at the sight of the pistol. It wasn't the first time she had seen a gun, anyone who lived in the Bay for a few years had seen more than their fair share. She didn't recognize the type of pistol other than it looked a lot like the ones in secret agent movies.
"You can take the easy way out and just end all your guilt right now," Boogeyman said as she tossed the cold lifeless thing onto her bed. The black metal stuck out like a sore thumb on her sky-blue sheets.
"I'll leave you to make your choice, but we both know which one you're going to choose," Boogeyman said with a small smirk as she slipped back into the shadows. Madison shuddered as she forced herself to her feet. Her blue eyes locked onto the deceptively innocent looking pistol that laid in her bedsheets, as if it wasn't a tool of death and destruction.
Madison wasn't sure how long she spent staring at the gun, but the next thing she knew she was holding the pistol in her hands while she sat on the edge of her bed, contemplating her choices. She could step outside of her room, wake her parents up and tell them what a horrible human being she was, forever tainting her in their eyes. Worse still, she would be subjecting them to retaliation by the Empire. A white girl helping a black girl to bully a white girl, it didn't take a genius to see that the Empire would jump all over that headline.
Images of Molotov cocktails crashing through the windows filled her mind as her parents were burned alive. Thoughts of her mother being stalked and raped by a group of gangbangers while her father was gunned down outside his workplace.
But if she was gone it might mitigate what would happen to them, it might keep them from getting killed because of her actions. They might never forgive her, but at the very least they would be alive.
The barrel was tasteless and cold as she shoved it between her lips. The cool metal brought a chill to her mouth that did nothing to help with the hot tears that streamed down her face.
It was like Boogeyman said, they both knew she would take the easy way out.
She shut her eyes as she squeezed the trigger like she had seen in the movies as she waited for the deafening bang that would end her miserable existence.
Click*
Madison cautiously opened her wet eyes at the noise that defiantly didn't sound like a gun going off. Nor did it feel like her brain stem had been ripped apart by a piece of metal traveling at hundreds of miles per hour.
She squeezed the trigger again.
Click*
Madison tore the gun out of her mouth and frowned as she fumbled with the part of the pistol that housed the bullets. She managed to wrench it open to find it not full with life taking bullets, but a rolled-up strip of paper.
Sliding the paper out into her palm she unrolled it to see a message that made the hot tears of despair well up inside her once more.
Did you really think I would let you off that easily?
Madison shrieked in rage and misery that her way out had been taken from her. She threw the gun to the side, uncaring for the loud thud it made as it struck the wall. Her hands cupped her face as hot tears and snot ran down her face once more. All she wanted to do was for this to all end.
The world shattered.
Beings vaster than she could comprehend filled the sky in a dance she could not understand.
Destination.
Agreement.
Trajectory.
Agreement.
--
"Has she moved?" Boogeyman asked as she emerged from the shadows next to one of her Nightmares. The first light of dawn was starting to creep over the horizon with an almost glacial slowness, but it still felt like she was being put in front of a tanning bed. It didn't hurt yet, but it was irritating for the time being.
The demonic horse shook its head with a snort.
"Good," Boogeyman muttered as she stared at the innocuous looking warehouse below, the only sign that something wasn't right was the pair of guards that stood outside the main door.
She did feel a brief pang of guilt for doing what she did to Madison since the girl did feel genuinely guilty for the part she took in her suffering. But that guilt was largely overshadowed by the anger she felt for having to spend the last two years of her life subjected to Madison's laughter and immature pranks.
Feeling guilty doesn't wash away your sins, Boogeyman thought with a bitter edge.
At any rate, she was done with Madison for now. She had played her part and would now spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder like Taylor used to every day in school. Right now, she had other concerns to deal with.
Like the new Tinker the ABB had picked up.
The Cornell bomber had been a pretty big attention grabber on the news a few weeks ago. A new Tinker blowing up part of a highly-respected school - that was bound to turn a few heads. Boogeyman's first thought had been to simply eliminate her and remove the threat in its entirety when a thought struck her.
What if that had been me?
She didn't expect to get any real public appreciation for what she was doing, but what if the first action after getting her powers hadn't been to hide away but to go Carrie on Winslow? Would they had vilified her as a psychotic villain because of one bad day and disregard everything that had led up to it? Could the Cornell bomber be just like her, someone who had been bullied and isolated for years on end? It wasn't like anyone had died in the explosions that had leveled part of the college, and she doubted that the woman in question had joined the ABB willingly, it wasn't like most people could say "no" to Lung.
So here she was, getting ready to have a discussion with the infamous Cornell bomber in her own workshop.
Was it a risk? Yes of course it was. The Cornell bomber could actually be a megalomaniacal psychopath who implanted bombs into people's heads for the fun of it. But if that was her down there wouldn't she have wanted someone to hear her side of the story?
And it wasn't like this was an entirely selfless act. She was willing to commit to this risk because the Tinker might be useful in her goals to rid the city of the gangs. As much as she loathed to admit it, even in the secrecy of her own thoughts, she couldn't do this all by herself. There was always going to be the one cape that she wouldn't be able to beat, or the one angle she hadn't considered. Even if it was just to have someone to act as a sounding board for her ideas that wasn't spawned by her powers.
"Go back to the lair," Boogeyman ordered. The Nightmare neighed and shifted back into the shadow, eager to get away from the growing dawn light.
Boogeyman dived into the shadow, twisting through the sheer empty nothingness of the shadow zone until she reached her target. She emerged from a dark spot on the wall in utter silence as shadows ran off her form like tar. As she stepped into the well-lit room she took a moment to take in her surroundings.
The warehouse had been converted into a very crude workshop with haphazardly assembled equipment scattered around the multitude of tables that had been set up to accommodate the bomb Tinker. The parahuman in question was hunched over one of the tables, welding mask on as small sparks and wisps of smoke emerged from underneath her power tools. Aside from her the only other person in the building was a single middle aged man who looked like he had dozed off while listening to his music if the headphones sticking out of his ears were any indication.
Boogeyman approached the Tinker cautiously, careful not to disturb her or her slumbering guard. Once she was about five feet away from the parahuman she cleared her throat.
The cape's shoulder slumped in response as the welding torch she had been using cut off. "Dammit Lee, I'll have the next batch done when -GAH!"
Boogeyman had to hold back an amused smirk as the cape almost jumped a foot in the air in surprise at her appearance. It wouldn't help her case if dear Jennifer thought she was being mocked.
"Who the fu - how did -" Jennifer sputtered, eyes wide behind the tinted glass of her wielding mask. Boogeyman could see the woman's hand twitch towards the half-finished product behind her before thinking the better of it. A faint trace of fear wafted off her form at thought of the device going off while she was still in the blast radius. Boogeyman's could see her eyes flicker over to one of the completed devices on the other table as she considered the odds of reaching it before her head was removed from her shoulders.
Boogeyman raised an eyebrow. "How did I get here? The short answer is that I used my powers. The longer answer is that I used my powers. As for why I'm here? Well, Jennifer, tell me, do you want to spend the rest of your life wasting your brilliance by being forced to work for a jumped-up street thug?"
She would see the woman's muscles relax a bit as her eyes narrowed behind her mask in contemplation. There was still a healthy dose of fear but it was largely overshadowed by a burning hatred at the mention of the Dragon of Kyushu.
"I'm listening."
--
8:21 A.M.
Armsmaster could hear the servos of his suit grind against each other in protest as he clenched his hand at the sight of one of his Wards lying in a hospital bed. Her right hand was being suspended above the rest of her body by a sling to prevent the wound from bleeding out. Her face was red and scratched all over like she had been hit in the face by a weed whacker. But as much as he hated to admit it, his Wards were used to be injured. Brockton Bay villains didn't tend to pull their punches, and with Panacea in the city to heal any truly serious injuries the villains were far more willing to cut loose on the kids than they would in New York or Seattle.
"How is she?" Armsmaster asked the weary looking doctor as she passed through the door. He knew Dr. Jones from personal experience, she was the primary medical examiner for the Wards and local Protectorate and as such was well aware of the risks involved in heroing.
Dr. Jones sighed, "Physically she's stable. She has a few injuries that I'm worried about, particularly her hand, but since Panacea is going to come in and heal her up I don't foresee any complications. Mentally…that's a different story."
"How so?"
Dr. Jones shook her head, making her long dark brunette locks cascade down her shoulders like a waterfall. "I'm no psychologist, but I recognize a suicidal patient when I see one. She was trying to get to one of the knives before we managed to sedate her, I suggest you place her under guard so she doesn't try anything…drastic."
There was a faint trace of distaste underneath her words. Not so much at what Sophia had tried to do to herself, but rather the situation as a whole. Frankly Armsmaster had to agree with her. The fact that Sophia had apparently been attacked on her way back home and was never reported missing was disturbing in of itself, the fact that attack was apparently so bad that Sophia had decided that taking her life would be a valid solution was even more so.
"Doctor, was there any evidence of…," Armsmaster paused as he considered how he wanted to word the question.
Fortunately for the Protectorate hero the dark-skinned doctor understood what he was getting at. "No, we didn't find any obvious signs of sexual abuse, but whoever got to her did not pull their punches. They wanted her to suffer and they wanted her to live through it," she said with an angry glint in her dark brown eyes.
"…I see," Armsmaster said while his lips pursed in distaste.
"Even after Panacea heals her I'm going to want to keep her here for 72 hours, regardless of what your Director wants," Dr. Jones said with a slight sneer. Armsmaster frowned but nodded in agreement. It was well known that Doctor Jones and Director Piggot didn't get along very well with the dark-skinned doctor's rather vocal complaints about having untrained children fighting murders and monsters.
"Thank you, Dr. Jones," Armsmaster said with as much sincerity as he could muster. Doctor Jones nodded and walked off towards the front desk, leaving the tinker alone to his thoughts as he considered who was responsible for placing one of his Wards in the hospital.
The Empire was the most obvious suspect given Sophia's heritage and Kaiser had been making noise since the Merchant's destruction, but to attack a Ward? Kaiser was many things, but stupid was not one of them. He had to realize that attacking and brutalizing a Ward in any fashion would result in the full force of the Protectorate being brought down on him so fast that his head would spin. It would gain him nothing but the ire of the entire Protectorate and for what?
A frame up then? It would certainly make sense if someone wanted to have the Protectorate focus on the Empire. He dismissed Lung as a candidate right off the bat, the Asian parahuman had never shown any inclination towards such deceptions before. He might even take it as an insult to his power at the idea he was considered to be too weak to try and take the Empire out all by himself.
Coil then? The snake had never been an outright instigator of conflict, but he had shown great skill in playing sides against each other in the past. Still, this seemed a little too far out of his usual MO. Maybe…
"Sir!"
Armsmaster turned to see one of the PRT troopers whose name he didn't know running up to him with a pale face.
"What," he asked as he tried unsuccessful to keep the frustration of the whole situation from seeping into his voice.
Fortunately, the PRT trooper didn't seem to notice, but his wide eyed panicked expression did little to ease Armsmaster's nerves. "Sir, you need to see the news right now," the trooper said in a slightly out of breath voice that did little to detract from the urgency of his tone. Armsmaster frowned but complied with the request moving over to an empty room to switch on the television monitor held aloft on the wall. It took a few moments to get the blasted aged thing to turn on, all the while his power was going on about how he could fix it and make it more efficient, which certainly didn't help his concentration as he tried to find the right channel.
When he did, his blood went cold.
Breaking News- Brockton Bay Ward Shadow Stalker Implicated in Bullying Campaign!
The headline flashed out in a bright yellow obnoxious font that made his eyes want to bleed. He didn't really hear anything the woman was saying on the screen, instead turning towards the PRT trooper who was now shaking in his boots at the sight of his now enraged boss.
"Double the guards at Shadow Stalker's room now," he growled in a tone that brooked no disobedience. The PRT trooper nodded shakily as he ran off with speeds that made Armsmaster wonder if he had a Mover rating as he turned back to the situation at hand.
He activated his helmet radio and connected directly to the Director's office. There was a faint click as Director Piggot answered her phone.
"What?"
Armsmaster felt his lips purse into a thin line as he stared at the screen before him as images of a locker filled with rot and garbage flashed behind the somewhat green looking reporter.
"We have a problem."
--
So, Madison has triggered from her guilt and anguish- anyone got any thoughts about what her power will be?
Also, several people have been asking about a PHO chapter. I'm thinking I'm going to do one either later in this arc or the next one, but I was wondering, I've been seeing that some authors have been using the quest threads to make reader written PHO interludes. Would you all be interested in doing that or would you prefer if I just wrote the whole thing myself?
Last edited: Nov 20, 2016
578
QAI521
Nov 18, 2016
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