Snek is a Good Boy

Part Twenty-Eight: The Dragon Invasion of Brockton Bay

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Panacea

Snek slithered proudly alongside the members of New Wave as they trooped back into the Master's workshop/laboratory/whatever else it was. While other hearth-dragons flew overhead in a kind of honour guard, Amy had Twilight snuggled into her arms. Carol was likewise holding onto Argent (who was quite pleased with this arrangement) and Mark was still wearing a 'how did I get to this point' look, with the sunrise-coloured hearth-dragon perched on his shoulder, its tail wrapped around his shoulders.

Just as Amy was feeling the emotional connection with Carol, she was starting to pick up hints from Mark as well. It seemed that his dragon (Mark hadn't given it a name yet) was bolstering his mood, keeping his emotional downturns from diving into the abyss. He responded to the occasional chirp in the ear by reaching up and petting it, which it accepted as its due.

Riley and the Master of the Castle looked up from the body of the Faceless Minion they were dissecting, and Riley broke into a broad grin. "Well, darn," she said happily. "Congratulations, Mr Dallon."

"I'm still not quite sure how it happened," Mark admitted sheepishly. "I was taking photos and he was interested, so I showed him how and let him take a few himself. The next thing I knew, we'd clicked. So to speak."

"Bonding can follow many paths," the Master confirmed. "This is a good thing for other reasons as well. One hearth-dragon would be seen as an oddity, perhaps something to be feared, but greater numbers will allow the general populace to accept them as commonplace. Familiarity breeds complacency."

Amy was pretty sure the version of the saying she'd heard went slightly differently, but she was in no way about to contradict someone who so evidently had his shit together. Also, she was certain that between him and Snek, if anyone tried to pull any shenanigans with the hearth-dragons, they would be in a world of trouble in extremely short order. That is, if Carol and Mark and Vicky hadn't already obliterated them for their troubles.

The first mistake she suspected anyone would make regarding the hearth-dragons would be to see them as mindless animals. Close on the heels of that one would be any attempt to coax them away from their bonded partners. While Twilight and her cohorts were actually quite susceptible to food bribes (they loved treats, period) they were also empathetic, and would easily pick up on ill intent before anyone could get close enough to do anything stupid. And even with the purest intent (if attempting to steal a hearth-dragon's loyalty could be called 'pure') there was no way to shift a bond to themselves.

"That's good to hear," Carol said, cradling Argent in her arms. "We'll also be bringing them back whenever we visit … I mean, if you don't have a problem with us visiting?"

Wow, who are you, and what've you done with Carol? The question crossed Amy's mind before she could stop it, and she flushed as Carol glanced sideways at her. The emotional bridging effect of the hearth-dragons didn't let them read each other's minds, but they could certainly pick up emotions. From Carol, she got rueful acknowledgement; they shared a slightly embarrassed smile before Carol looked away again.

"There will be no problem with that whatsoever," the Master stated firmly. "If I happen to be busy, Snek will be entirely capable of escorting you across the dimensional barrier. He enjoys spending time with his friends and helping others, and I fully intend to encourage that behaviour."

"Ah. That's good to hear." Carol nodded toward the splayed-out inhuman corpse on the table. "Are you finding out anything, uh, useful from that?" Even on a day trip to a fantasy world, with a hearth-dragon in her arms, it appeared she was constitutionally incapable of refraining from asking lawyer-type questions when the opportunity arose.

Either the Master of the Castle was aware of this, or he was really good at humouring people, because he answered without hesitation. "All information is useful information, when applied appropriately. With the assistance of Riley's expertise, I am confident of devising a simple ward which will bar the Faceless Minions from entering any region where I have decided they are unwelcome."

Magical wards, simple or otherwise, were entirely outside of Amy's experience, and she was pretty sure the same applied to everyone else in the New Wave party. "I bet the multiverse will be pleased to hear about that. Those guys do not look like the happy-fun type of party guests to me."

"And Panacea wins the Understatement of the Year prize," Riley agreed from alongside the cadaver. "Did you need me to show you the way back up there? Because right now I'm wrist-deep in Guts Man Was Not Meant To Know, holding two bits apart that I don't think we want coming into contact. Turns out they had a pseudo-biological dead-man switch, who knew?"

"Ah, no, we should be good," Vicky assured her. "We'll just go and change." She paused, looking at the Master of the Castle. "Is it okay if we keep these outfits? Because I totally want to rock this look come Halloween, and there's no way I can get anything this authentic back home, not without dipping into my college account."

The Master of the Castle inclined his head politely. "Take them if you so wish. I have no further need of them."

"Woo! Thank you!" Vicky headed for the doorway they'd used before. Grinning, Amy followed. She'd been wondering how to ask that very question herself, but having Vicky do it for her worked as well.

Glory Girl

Wearing her ordinary clothes once more and carrying the medieval armour in the suspiciously convenient holdall that had been on the bed when she entered the room, Vicky swooped out of Snek's wriggle-hole. Not altogether to her surprise, she found herself hovering above the same rooftop they'd left from, several hours before. Crystal followed, while the others walked through like normal people, even Eric and Aunt Sarah.

Once they were on the other side, Twilight and the other two hearth-dragons took flight, with Twilight chirping authoritatively to them as they flew in circles around Vicky and Crystal. The weird thing was, against the backdrop of Snek's world or the Master's Castle, they had looked … normal. Like they belonged. However, here in Brockton Bay they looked amazingly exotic.

"So, Uncle Mark, what are you calling your guy, anyway?" asked Eric as he stepped through. "Flare? Because he kind of looks like a flare."

"No." Vicky's father looked proudly up at his hearth-dragon, who at that moment was pulling a tight loop around a startled sparrow. "I'm calling him Snap."

Amy slowly turned to stare at him, and even Vicky's mom blinked a couple of times in surprise. The reactions were understandable: Mark Dallon rarely, if ever, made 'dad' jokes. Vicky herself felt like face-palming. "Because he's a dragon, right? Snap the dragon? Snapdragon?"

"Well, not only that." He looked quite pleased with himself. "He also likes taking photos. Snapshots."

"Oh, god." This time Amy did face-palm, while Twilight let out a squawk of amusement. "Double-barrelled dad jokes? Really?"

"I don't see anything wrong with it," Neil observed, a grin lurking on his lips. "Seems like a perfectly good name to me."

Snek chose this moment to extrude his head from the still-extant portal into his world. "Ssnek thinkss Ssnap iss a good name too, big Neil."

"You would, both of you." Aunt Sarah rolled her eyes expressively, then sighed. "Fine, I suppose there are worse names out there. And thank you, Snek, for all your help. We had a really good time."

"Ssnek had good time too, happy blonde lady. Come back and play with dragonss again?" The hopeful note in his voice was unmistakeable.

She chuckled and hugged him around his immense neck. "Of course we will, Snek. The next time, we might even stay a bit longer."

"Ssnek likess that idea." His perpetual smile widened noticeably. "Ssnek musst go and help people. Will ssee you later."

"Have fun, Snek." Sarah stood back as another portal formed ahead of Snek, and he wriggled from one into the other. As soon as both had closed, she looked around at her extended family. "Okay, we've still got daylight hours to burn. I vote we go home, put the clothing away, decompress a little, then maybe go out on patrol later once the dragons have settled in."

"Um, wait a minute," Eric objected. "You're not seriously thinking about taking them on patrol with us, are you? Villains are assholes! And bad guys carry guns! That's just asking for them to get hurt!"

Amy snorted. "I suspect hearth-dragons are more versatile than you think they are. Yeah, they're small and cute, but they're not stupid. Are you?" she asked, as Twilight came in for a landing on her upraised forearm, purplish-black wings spread wide. "No, you're not."

Twilight squawked in agreement then, to Vicky's amusement, turned and stuck a bright-red tongue out at Eric.

Carol nodded. "I think so too. Plus, if the Master of the Castle was worried about them getting hurt, he would've said something."

"Then it's agreed?" asked Neil. "Home, rest and relax while the dragons explore, then patrol."

Mark held out his hand and Snap landed on it, then hopped onto his shoulder. "Sounds good to me."

Panacea

The weirdest part about not being the only member of her family with a hearth-dragon was … well, Carol. Amy was used to dealing with emotional distance from her foster mother, as well as a general snappish attitude. Most of the time, she had no idea how Carol came to the opinions she held, so she just maintained a safe distance and didn't initiate any interactions except when necessary.

Now, since the advent of Argent, it was so thoroughly different that she lacked the words to adequately describe it. Carol's bond with the little dragon was still maturing, but Amy could already follow her emotional journey, just as Carol could follow hers. And just as how merely being with Twilight had lifted Amy out of her funk (and was keeping her in a good headspace), Argent was helping smooth the rougher edges of Carol's personality.

It wasn't that Carol was a different person now. Amy just felt that parts of her that rarely got seen were being gently urged forward into the light of day. It wasn't a huge change, but it carried with it deep and abiding ramifications. Aunt Sarah had once alluded to shared traumatic experiences then never mentioned them again; Amy suspected that Carol was on the way to becoming the person she would've been without the scars from that period of her life.

While Snap wasn't as snuggly and overtly affectionate as Twilight and Argent, he was still companionable in his own way, and it was working. Mark was definitely showing signs of being more upbeat and outgoing, though he was even less advanced in the bonding process than Carol. The tantalising glimpses Amy had of his emotional makeup were optimistic; through his eyes, the world was no longer as grey and lifeless as it had once been.

As Amy costumed up, she found herself humming softly. She realised she was actually looking forward to going out on patrol with the rest of the team, instead of just being resigned to it. For a moment, she looked at the gown that she'd acquired in Snek's world, hanging in the closet (and she was absolutely going to be wearing it to school, first chance she got) and considered wearing it instead of her regular costume, then thought better of the idea. New Wave was New Wave, and they didn't want to confuse the public by changing their look.

After a moment, however, she took the intricately braided belt with the long sharp dagger, and buckled it around her waist where she could get to it easily. Dyed (or created) with Twilight's colours, it provided a nice contrast to the red and white of the rest of her costume. Then she pushed back her hood and pulled down her scarf; if she was going out and about, she was going to do it loud and proud.

"Isn't that right, Twilight?" she asked out loud. The hearth-dragon, who had been perched on the dresser mirror watching the costuming process with apparent fascination, chirped in agreement. With a hop and a flutter of wings, she landed on Amy's shoulder, then furled her wings.

Amy looked at the image the pair of them made in the mirror. The costume was familiar, but between the belted dagger and the hearth-dragon riding her shoulder, she looked different. Improved, somehow. Definitely someone to be taken seriously.

Opening the door, she stepped out into the corridor. Let's go do some good.

Larry Peterson, Criminal

Since the giant fucking snake had eaten Lung and handed Kaiser and the rest of the Empire Eighty-Eight over to the PRT, life as an independent criminal in Brockton Bay had become easier in a couple of ways and harder in a few more. On the upside, he didn't have to pledge allegiance to someone who could gut him or rip his head off if they decided he wasn't playing ball the way they wanted him to. Likewise, he didn't have to hand over a bunch of his take to some guy in a mask just so he could keep operating in their territory.

On the downside, there was still the problem of a giant fucking snake popping up occasionally in the city. The big-name supervillains were all gone, and even the smaller fry were keeping their heads down or quietly vacating when and where they could. Larry knew of a safe-cracker—no powers, just talent—who'd been quietly exercising his trade when the snake had looked over his shoulder and politely asked what he was doing. The experience had apparently been enough for the guy to swear off cracking safes for life. Also, to need an urgent change of underwear.

Still, a man had to make a (dis)honest living. The word was out that the Dockworkers were hiring again—with the drop in crime, the economy was picking up—but as far as Larry was concerned, stealing shit and mugging idiots was a more efficient way of making a quick buck. After all, the snake couldn't be everywhere.

Which was why he and his buddies were lurking near a bar in the Docks area. It had been noticed that the snake showed up much more reliably to crimes involving women and kids, and the number of rug-rats in a bar at this time of night was likely to be close to zero. As for chicks, so long as they didn't actually pull out a gun and start blasting, him and his guys would be totally hands-off.

From the sounds of laughter and revelry inside, it sounded like the bar was doing a good trade. This meant lots of beer-soaked dollars crossing the counter and ending up in the cash registers. Larry didn't give a good goddamn about where his money had been before it ended up in his pocket, and cash that smelled of beer spent just as good as cash that smelled of perfume.

Likewise with the chick thing, the snake seemed to crack down more on people killing other people—well, to be honest, it seemed to eat those people more often than not—so he'd told his guys to go easy on the skull-cracking and the shanking. Threats worked just as well, and didn't draw nearly as much attention from hat-wearing scaly abominations of nature. Life on the underbelly of society was every bit as much of a jungle as the depths of the Congo or the Amazon rainforest, and the rats that scuttled and scavenged and fought each other for scraps were learning to adapt and evolve to the new situation.

The alleyway was dark, but he'd scouted it out earlier (while Larry had never actually heard of the classic 'proper preparation' saying, he would've agreed with it wholeheartedly) so he knew what was there as he led the guys down it. In his hand was a pry-bar for getting through the back door of the bar; tucked into the back of his pants was a .38 Special, because waving a gun around often got more results than waving a knife around. While he had no intention of shooting anyone, it was loaded, because what fucking idiot carries an unloaded gun?

The plan was simple: wait until the bar was just clearing out, then bust open the back door, bum-rush anyone who came to see what was going on, and clear out the cash registers. Larry and his boys were all wearing balaclavas and he'd made sure any tattoos or scars were covered up. Nobody was unusually tall or short, skinny or fat, wimpy or bulked-out.

Each of them had visited the bar separately over the last week, had a drink, passed the time, then left again, just to make sure they knew the layout. None were wearing the same clothing that they'd had on then. They were as anonymous a crew as he could've assembled.

The three-quarter moon was just starting to dip toward the west when his phone vibrated silently with the text message he'd been waiting for. People were starting to leave the bar, in emptying-out-for-the-night numbers. He communicated this to the others in a whisper, then waited a little longer for Joey to sneak around from the front of the bar to the back without being seen by those inside.

When his scout finally arrived, he took a deep breath. Alright. Time to get rich. Stepping up to the back door, he set the pry-bar into place, braced himself, and heaved. There was a distinct crack as wood began to split.

"Finally," said a voice from behind and above him. It was female, teenage, and laden with satisfaction. "Watching you idiots—"

Larry didn't wait to hear what the rest of the monologue sounded like. A flying teenage girl meant either Laserdream or Glory Girl … which meant New Wave … which meant trouble. Even if the laser chick or the Alexandria package were on their own, they had sufficient throw weight to make taking them on a really fucking bad idea.

And even if they hadn't been all that, it was still a bad idea. For adults, either capes or otherwise, fighting cape kids was a losing proposition no matter which way you looked at it. If you won, you just beat up on a kid. Congratulations, asshole, now you've gotten the attention of the adult capes. And if you lost, then you just got beaten by a kid, and nobody respects you.

But as it happened, Glory Girl could literally punch someone through a brick wall—Larry knew someone who'd seen her do it to Hookwolf once—and Laserdream could throw up a force field and zorch her opponent with lasers, all at the same time. Unfair as fuck, but that was capes all over. So the main reason they scattered wasn't the embarrassment factor, but the very real fear of having cars thrown at their heads or being zapped by lasers strong enough to cut said cars in half.

Larry considered himself smarter than the average mook; he was the one who'd gotten them together, right? So while the others bolted in all directions, clattering and banging down the alleyways, he dived into the nearest patch of shadow and went dead still. Once the heroes pursued his crew out of sight, all he had to do was walk away casually and he was home free.

A few moments later, two more New Wave heroes came strolling up the alleyway, chatting as casually as if they were doing a foot patrol of the Boardwalk. Larry recognised Brandish and Flashbang, though there were a couple of weird things about them. For one, each hero had a little tiny dragon-like creature perching on their shoulder. Brandish's was silver, while Flashbang's was kind of orange-pink. They weren't models, unless they were some kind of Tinker animatronic bullshit, because they were looking around with their wings spread slightly.

The other thing Larry noticed was that Brandish's energy blade (nobody fucked with that thing even once, let alone twice) was a sparkling silver, not gold like every time he'd seen it on the news. Also, either Flashbang was extra lit up by it, or he was glowing slightly.

In any case, Larry wasn't about to try to take them on, either individually or both at the same time; they were even scarier than the kids on the team.

"… saw that eight-foot vertical jump you made, by the way," Flashbang commented. "Very impressive."

"Well, I wasn't about to let him get away, and the dumpster was blocking the way through." Brandish shrugged. "So, I jumped over. No big deal."

"I'm actually kind of impressed that you didn't just cut it in half." His tone was gently joking. "I've seen you do that before."

"I wasn't an Olympic high jumper before," she retorted, though her grin matched his tone. Then she stopped and pointed directly at where Larry lurked in the darkness. "Huh. We missed one."

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Working on blind instinct, Larry reached for the pistol in his waistband … then he stopped, because something very sharp was pricking his wrist. He turned his head without moving any other part of his body and watched as someone faded in out of nowhere. Belatedly, in the light generated by the other two heroes, he recognised her as Panacea, holding a wickedly-pointed blade at an angle that would skewer his wrist if he tried to pull the gun.

"Uh, uh, uh," she cautioned, and grabbed his wrist with her other hand. "Bad boys don't get to play with guns." He had just enough time to see that she also had a dragon on her shoulder, coloured a deep purple-black that blended perfectly with the shadows, before her power took hold and he fell head-first into darkness.

Panacea

"'Bad boys don't get to play with guns'? Really?" Mark shook his head as Carol effortlessly slung the unconscious would-be thief over her shoulder. "We've seriously got to work on your one-liners."

"So I was rushed. Sue me." Amy rolled her eyes and re-sheathed her dagger. "So, how'd everyone else go?"

"Oh, they're all rounded up, except this one," Mark assured her. "We were just coming back to pick you up. How long was he hiding there?"

"He dived in there as soon as Vicky made her announcement. I didn't want to have to drag him anywhere, so I was waiting for you guys to get back before I dropped him." Amy reached up and stroked Twilight, who leaned into the caress. "I take it Argent and Snap had fun?"

"I think that's a given." Carol started off down the alley, not at all burdened by the grown man she was carrying. Argent landed on top of him, apparently happy with her new perch.

"She had fun too," confided Mark. "Punched one of them so hard he flew ten feet through the air. Riley wasn't kidding when she said she'd be amped up when the moon's in the sky. Meanwhile, Snap lets me glow, or even light up a whole area if I want to." He gestured to a patch of particularly dense shadow, and it brightened to near-daylight like the sun had risen.

"Cool." Amy grinned. Hearth-dragons were fun to have around and useful for crime-fighting.

I could totally get used to this.

End of Part Twenty-Eight