Disclaimer: I don't own Worm, it belongs to Widbow. I don't make any money from this story. It is written with no commercial aim in mind. It is not for sale or rent.

On butterfly wings

=OBW=

Prologue 1.1

21.01.2010

Berlin

Germany

"I wondered when would you show up." I smiled sadly.

The woman with the fedora gave me a critical look. I glanced down at the charred ruin that was the right side of my chest. The stench of burned, melted meat and bone – mine, hit me hard. The only saving grace was that either thanks to shock or fried nerves, I barely felt any pain.

As far as I knew, that wasn't a good sign, like at all.

Not that it mattered.

"Talk. Fast." Contessa sighed and lowered the small pistol she had in hand.

Outside, the cape fight continued, punctuated by explosions that were growing fainter and fainter.

"Where should I start? Scion, the Endbringers?"

"The latter."

"Flechette. That's the name I think. A girl, not sure if she's triggered yet. In the US. She can shoot through any defense, any hit things in any dimension. Her shard's power is based on whatever the entities use to kill each other. It should work on Endbringers too." I coughed. It was getting harder and harder to breath. For a moment I though of demanding something for my information, but almost immediately discarded the idea.

I wasn't going to risk this world dying because of selfish reasons and we both knew it.

"Endbringers – in short, Eidolon controls them subconsciously. He wants a challenge, to test himself. Ah. There are twenty odd of the buggers. If you kill one, more will come online, so make the idiot straighten his head or something." My breath was getting more ragged. It was becoming harder to keep my thoughts in order.

"Useful. Scion." She insisted.

Outside the fight was coming closer once again. More and louder explosions accompanied by sporadic gunfire.

"There will be a trigger. January 2011. Brockton Bay. She'll be able to control insects, crabs and such, initially. In the end, when her powers become unbound, she'll be able to control every single cape and that is a way to defeat Scion. Planning around Flechette will be better I think."

"Thank you." Contessa muttered. She had a distant look in her eyes. "I can see..."

A woman's scream outside was cut short by gunfire. A child shrieked something that sounded like "Make it stop!"

Contessa stiffened. She paused and fell to the ground,

Outside the explosions that were escalating suddenly stopped, though the gunfire persisted and sounded that it was coming straight this way.

I started crawling towards the woman and let me tell you, this time I felt like I had a hole in the chest. The sheer pain was much worse than any injury I had the misfortune of suffering up until then. It was so much that it paralyzed me before I could craw more than a meter. I just stayed on the concrete floor, lying on my side and moaning quietly, because I didn't have the strength left to scream my agony.

Then as it turned out, everything I went through it the last two days was for nothing. The door slammed open and a scruffy looking young teen – he couldn't be older than fifteen – rain it the storage space. The kid wore worn out jeans and long green jacket. He also had an armbrand that I could see clearly – it was red, with a white circle and a swastika in the middle.

Great. A fucking neo-nazi.

The kid looked wildly around and stumbled back when he saw us. He raised a hand, revealing a small pistol and pointed it at us.

A sharp shout came from the door – something in German. It was too bad I didn't speak the language, though it was irrelevant. The teen tried to point his gun at the door and got shot for his trouble. His body shook as two, then a third burst struck him and he few on the ground. His hand twitched and he pressed the trigger.

I managed to wrench my head to the side, somehow ignoring the pain for a moment. I saw Contessa on her knees. She looked astounded at the kid.

There was a small hole in her forehead and a tiny stream of blood was slowly leaking down her face.

The last thing I felt was a wave of despair and then all I knew was darkness.

=OBW=

21.01.2010

Cauldron HQ

Location classified

"Can we bring her back?" Alexandria asked.

Doctor Mother gave a critical look to the body lying on her examining table. It was almost intact. In fact, if it wasn't for the face frozen in a surprised expression, it would appear that the deceased woman was simply sleeping. However, the single, tiny gunshot wound just above her right eye told the truth. A single .22 caliber bullet had penetrated her forehead and went on bouncing inside her skull – destroying the brain beyond repair in the process.

"Define back." Came the dispassionate reply. "Making a clone? Sure. I can have it with the same personality even. Bringing back her agent under our control?" Doctor Mother shook her head. "As far as the Number Man and myself were able to determine, whatever happened caused some kind of backslash. The Path of Victory has become dormant and we have no idea when or if it will be in working order again."

"Do so anyway." Alexandria sighed. "She could prove useful." The heroine gave one last look to her dead comrade, shook her head at the pointlessness of it all and left.

It was a good thing that Cauldron had many contingency plans – for this precise occasion too. Unfortunately, none of them were actually good plans.

Alexandria almost laughed. There weren't good plans. Not since she learned the truth. Ever since then it has been a desperate scheme after desperate scheme in a forlorn hope that they could kill something that for most intent and purposes was a god.

Now, their best chance, the one thing that managed to cause the death of something like Scion was out of their grasp… because of a dumb accident. A trigger at the wrong time and place had rendered all nearby Capes powerless in a critical moment, something that unfortunately had ended with Contessa getting shot in the head.

She was on her way to see the Numbers Man, when the whole facility shuddered under her feet and all alarms started blaring at the same time.

Alexandria growled. Of course, something was going to go catastrophically bad without Contessa around to play firefighter. Another shudder, this time accompanied with the sound of subdued explosion shook the base. The prisoners on the lower levels were getting free – at least that was her guess. The heroine cursed and flew towards the nearest elevator.

The breach had to be contained or today was going to go even worse if that was at all possible.