Some sharks have remarkably poorer judgment than others.


Beta'd by FirstSelector, SpyTheEngineer, and Kinsfire.

Content Warning: canon-typical violence. This one's gonna be one of those chapters.


As it turned out, there wasn't an Endbringer attacking Brockton Bay.

There were two.

One of them had taken the form of a giant woman that could almost be mistaken for a tower, sprouting up almost smack dab in the middle of what remained of Brockton Bay's industrial district. Around it, the world had started to warp, with openings narrowing, buildings widening, and walls seeming to erupt from nothing, with some of the buildings closest to her being drawn into her body, forming a vaguely cobbled appearance as she slowly crept upwards in height.

The other was smaller, perhaps a head shorter than the Simurgh, and was perched unmoving on the shoulder of the tower, three hooded faces gazing dispassionately out at the city.

Both of them seemed to watch Taylor as she rushed across the rooftops, bounding from one to the next to the next as easily as a cat would push over an entire table's worth of vases but with less property damage.

Taylor leapt off one final rooftop to land gently in the parking lot outside the PRT building, joining a crowd of capes (mostly local, but she recognized a couple of out of town capes like Revel and Bastion) milling about uneasily, just in time for the ground to rumble once again, a visible dust cloud rising from the area around the Endbringers.

"Volur!" came a bright voice mere moments before Vicky rose out of the middle of the crowd, armband cinched around her arm and another in her hands. "Put this on quickly, then go find Flechette or Miss Militia and see-"

The blonde was interrupted by the sound of rushing wind, and as if by instinct Taylor's hand flashed towards the Endbringers, a shield blooming from the glowing Algiz rune on her palm.

The shield solidified in time to block a double helix blast of incandescent light, stretching back to the three-faced Endbringer. One of its faces was glowing to match Purity, who was rising over the shield to return fire in all her radiant fury.

Another blast swatted her out of the sky, sending her crashing into the façade of the PRT building with a quiet "Purity down, C7" from the armband that Taylor quickly grabbed out of Vicky's hand, slipping it over her armor quickly in the moment after the blast of energy vanished and saying "Volur" into it.

She reestablished the shield in just enough time to block another beam, this one seeming even stronger.

She turned to the crowd at large, then grimaced, seeing them start to panic. "Damn it," she said to Vicky, sotto voce, "we've lost the initiative."

"We can take it back." Vicky rose back into the air, still protected by the broad surface of Taylor's shield, and flared her aura, drawing all eyes to her and quelling the panic at least partially.

"Alright! Leadership staff isn't here yet, so I'm taking the reins! Blasters without mobility options, find a Mover who can get you to the top of a building! Once you're there, stagger fire so that there's always some cover fire in the air! Anyone who can skirmish, take your hits where you can get them! Brutes, mobility first, take your swings when you can make them! Thinkers and area defenders, group up and do your shit! Healers, stay here with the area defenders! Everyone else, run search and rescue into the area under the Tower!"

"Where are we?" asked Taylor, heartbeat picking up in anticipation for the fight.

"In the thick of things," said Vicky, rising above the shield without getting blasted just before Taylor pushed off the ground, "like we're meant to be."


Quarrel wasn't entirely sure what she was expecting out of today, but this sure wasn't it.

The Endbringers sprouting out of the active factory a couple of miles from where she was squatting with Missy and Bella was unexpected, but… well, she had heard that Brockton Bay was due for an Endbringer attack soon, and given how Like That Brockton Bay was, it might as well have been two, sure, why the fuck not.

Missy and Bella both stopping to glare into an alley that the Teeth spilled out of, in the middle of an Endbringer Truce was just the cherry on top of the cake.

"Go," said Quarrel, already drawing an arrow from the quiver at her side. "They're here for me, not for you."

"But- but Mina!" called Missy, glaring at the Butcher.

"I'll be fine," she said, something in her tone brooking no argument. "If I don't show up in five minutes, call Taylor and tell her what's going on."

After a tense moment, Missy stormed off in a huff, with Bella following her warily.

"That ain't gonna save her, you fuckin' traitor," sneered Hemorrhagia.

"She doesn't have anything to fear from you," Quarrel returned evenly, the tip of her arrow starting to glow with a blue light that somewhat resembled Cherenkov radiation.

"Ooh, just because you've got some fancy new Tinker to back you up, you suddenly think you're better than the rest of us? Please, you're no better than you've ever been," snarled Hemorrhagia, leering at the archer threateningly. "At least dead you might taste good, you and that brat you abandoned us for."

The arrow exploded on a hastily raised barrier of blood, sending it splashing over the ground as the red color washed out to the brownish color of a years-old bloodstain. "Missy is off limits."

"Nothing is off-limits," rumbled the Butcher, their looming presence helped in its takeover of the conversation by the massive axe over their shoulder. "Not to us."

Quarrel turned to face the hulking form of the thing that had once been Leverage. "Are you sure you want to do this? Go against established Teeth traditions to spite one person who was forced to fight her way out because her family needed help?"

"There is only one Teeth tradition," snarled Animos, fur sprouting from his face as his voice grew harsher, "and that is the Butcher."

"So be it," said Quarrel evenly. "Then I renounce the Teeth."

Animos snarled and Hemorrhagia sneered, a hint of worry showing behind her disdain. "Why throw away what you've built with us over a relic of a past life?" she demanded, uncertainty papered over with indignation.

"I'm not the one who threw it away."

"Enough talk," snapped Animos, lunging with a scream towards Quarrel.

While it did sap her parahuman accuracy, she'd been more than that even before leaving the Teeth. An arrow flashed out from her bow with a thunderclap, smashing into Animos and leaving him a smoking corpse on the ground, shaft protruding from his eye.

She almost felt the Butcher's pain blast roll off her as a second arrow snapped out, a growing wave washing away Hemorrhagia's attempts to defend herself with a blood barrier and impaling the shorter woman through the back of her mouth, power returning to her just in time to guide it to the exact same spot where the beanbag had lodged so long and yet not long enough ago.

Absently, she wondered at the absence of Vex, whose force fields would have ordinarily been used to herd her into the charge of onrushing Spree clones and Reaver. As it stood, however, there was nothing to stop her from retreating long enough to nock and fire an arrow, which detonated near the center of the crowd of Spree clones. This had the effect of rendering most of said clones into piles of meat- while the detonation wasn't, strictly speaking, strong enough to do so on its own, it was strong enough to meet whatever criteria that Spree's power considered to mean that an attack killed a clone, and as such they rapidly lost cohesion, leaving behind a slowly spreading pool of meat that was steaming gently to mark that it had already started vanishing.

Two more arrows and she apparently hit her mark, and while she wasn't sure whether the original Spree was dead or unconscious, she couldn't bring herself to care, between the threat they presented to Missy and the tactical loss of the Teeth's ability to overwhelm her with bodies.

Reaver, bereft of the visual cover of the crowd of Spree, was an easier takedown- even his supernatural deflection abilities that came as a result of his object teleportation power didn't prevent her power from triggering, and he, too, went down with a shaft protruding from between his lips, head landing just inches from her own boots.

Two more capes she vaguely recognized as from some more distant branch (a foothold in Newark, maybe) stepped forwards, one raising a rifle and the other his hand. The gun wielder's bullets expanded as they left the barrel, accompanied by a spray of sickly green liquid from the other Blaster's hand.

One arrow detonated off of a bullet, dazing the two as it deflected their attacks, and the next punched through the rifleman's eye, glowing purple briefly as it sucked in with the force of a black hole and crushed his partner's head.

All that was left was the Butcher, whose axe was already swinging down as he teleported behind her.

Quarrel winced, feeling the sear of the detonation, and rolled forward, the ancient yumi in her hands flexing as she pushed off it to launch her to her feet. One arrow flashed out, trailing water, to test his defenses, and it was deflected quite handily, Leverage's power leaving the axe all but weightless to him and letting him swing it around at speeds that belonged in Star Wars.

"No Vex today?" she asked, watching as the wave accumulated by the arrow shoved him back even with what limited time it had had to build up strength. "What, did she have a big final exam?"

"There's too much idealist in her," sneered the Butcher. "She's throwing her life away against the Endbringers, like a fool. Didn't even hesitate, just ran off the stake-out when the damn sirens went off."

"Or like someone who Triggered in August, when Leviathan flooded Baltimore," snapped Quarrel, momentarily irritated she couldn't run her hand through her hair. "Have you deteriorated that much, Leverage, that you couldn't remember that she Triggered in that mess? That she'd want to save everyone she could from what broke her?"

"That girl's as foolish as you are," the Butcher snarled, "and when I break you and bring her back, we're gonna have some fun with her."

Quarrel was abruptly conscious of the sound of her own blood in her ears, a whooshing, rhythmic sound. "You what."

"Having an excuse to break her, just like old times, is…" The Butcher grimaced. "Shut up, Three!" The Butcher shook their head. "I haven't had human bone marrow in too long, and the exact stretch of human entrails is… irreplaceable, when it comes to whips, and I haven't had a good cape whip since before Jacob ran us out of Brockton all those years ago."

As if by magic (which in part is true), arrows seemed to sprout from the Butcher's hands and legs, pinning them to the floor in a T-pose in defiance to the collective cape's great strength, leaving them to struggle like a worm nailed down by a snot-nosed seven-year-old boy with cruel and merciless intent, watching helplessly as Quarrel strode closer.

"Death is too good for you," she said in a low monotone, just loud enough for the Butcher to hear her, "but it's all I have time for here and now."

"You cannot kill me, not in a way that matters," sneered the Butcher, halitosis all but billowing out from their face now that Quarrel was close enough to smell it.

"Everything dies eventually," said Quarrel, words measured and slow. "Even something like you. For what it's worth, Longarm, I'm sorry."

The arrow that Quarrel nocked to her bow looked less like physical matter and more like some master fletcher had crafted the projectile out of the night sky, an impression of stars along the shaft resolving into an impossibly wide field of stars in the head and the fletching, and the Butcher's eyes seemed almost to be drawn into the impossibly sharp point.

Between one breath and the next, Quarrel loosed the shaft.

The Butcher died.

After a moment of tension, Quarrel sighed and re-slung her bow over her back, satisfied that she had sent the collective on to its next destination, and started retrieving her arrows. Divine as she may be, conjuring arrows was still energy that could be better spent elsewhere, and her own handiwork was perfectly serviceable even after being used to slaughter the Teeth.

Not quite two minutes after she had sent Vista on to the Endbringer battle, Quarrel leapt with no-longer-human strength, racing across the rooftops and onto the day's next battle.

There was a deadlier opponent to be fought, after all, and far more honor was in the death of an Endbringer than some two-bit cannibal bodyjacker.


And that's that!

Endbringer fight is fighting me a little bit, so instead you get the Teeth getting pulled.

Hmm, is what I want to convey about things coming through? I'm not quite sure.

I've got a mostly finished one-shot for HP that's probably in the pipeline for two weeks from now, two weeks from that should be another chapter of Incense that's almost completely finished. I think I'm gonna shoot for a chapter of Incense every four weeks or so- I've got other ongoing stuff to keep my eyes on (if you've been hoping for more Cubic Centimeter, then I'm looking to bring that one back, and I've got some oneshots, plus the original stuff that's living on my writeblr right now. Who knows, I might even bring One Insurgent Butterfree back).

I got me a place to send me a coffee (lucifra at the end of the URL) and a place to be a patron of my work in the arts (Lucifra at the end of the URL), so if that tickles your fancy (or if you want to see some of my stuff a week in advance) then check it out!

I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct , that's another option: NHRUKz8jyy at the end of the URL

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!