Outsiders 1.1: Ghosts
⸻0⸻
Where did all these civilians come from?
Alexandria didn't have much time to contemplate the question as the Simurgh drew a building into her orbit, telekinetically ripping it straight out of the ground. Electrical wires sparked and busted pipes sprayed water upward from the exposed foundation. Pieces of rubble broke off the crumbling mass and swirled around the winged woman like a concrete hailstorm.
The Simurgh jettisoned the rocks indiscriminately, pelting capes and bystanders alike. Clicking her tongue in frustration, Alexandria batted away a brick before it could brain a little girl. The fighting capes could hardly go all out with so many innocent people around. Perhaps that had been the goal.
An older woman, presumably her mother, picked up the little girl. Dust clung to their clothes and skin, staining them a chalky white. She looked past Alexandria and at the Simurgh. Terror was evident in her wide eyes. A shadow cast over them and the hero pivoted, catching a minivan-sized chunk of concrete. A pirouette propelled by the inertia, Alexandria sent the heavy slab hurtling back towards the Simurgh. The arrogant monster didn't even bother to dodge as an equally massive hunk of material knocked the shot off course.
"Get the hell out of here! All of you!" Alexandria ordered the crowd, reserving no time for niceties. The civilians were huddled in fear and numbered around a hundred. Many of them were teens and children with obscure characters and unknown heroes ironed on their graphic t-shirts, which poked out from beyond their unzipped jackets. The must have been brought here from Earth Aleph, she deduced. Scared children and their parents dumped in the midst of an Endbringer battle—these monsters really don't play fair, do they?
The call to action only spurred a few however. It wasn't until another slab of concrete cascaded onto the fringe of the frightened pedestrians, smearing a trail of shattered bodies along the fractured road, that the crowd took off. They moved like a herd of wildebeest jostling to escape a pride of lions.
One of them, a young man no older than twenty, tripped over a pothole and stumbled. Driven beyond reason by terror, and quite possibly the Simurgh's psionic screaming, the crowd ignored his plight. They trampled him under foot, never giving him a chance to get up and off the ground.
It was harsh, but Alexandria didn't have time to save every unfortunate soul on the battlefield. As long as most of them survived, that was good enough. She moved to defend the group, beating back the unrelenting storm of bricks and rocks raining down. A handful of nearby capes joined her effort and helped act as escorts, leading the civilians further down the road.
The trampled man reappeared as the crowd continued its mad dash. He weakly raised his head, blood trickled from gashes on his lips and scalp. Footprints dotted his crumpled form like cheetah spots. Surprised to find him alive, Alexandria briefly landed next to him and observed his condition. Would it be worth having a cape extract him? It was doubtful that he'd survive.
Noticing her fixation on protecting the bystanders, the Simurgh waved her arm and sent the bulk of the remaining buildings over her head, floating it slowly and ominously towards the others.
That bitch!
Before Alexandria could take off and intercept it, she felt a hand limply grasp her ankle. It was the injured young man. He looked up at her and whispered in a wet raspy voice, "Help me. Please. I'm… not ready to die yet."
Pity flickered in her steely gaze, hidden by the dark vizor on her helmet. Being a hero wasn't about helping everyone, it was about helping as many as you could. That was an undeniable truth that had been etched into her heart one fuck-up at a time. She couldn't afford to be sentimental.
Alexandra jerked her leg out of his flimsy grip and replied, "No one ever really is when their time comes."
She flew directly at the building—there was an immense creature. Its shape was impossible to fully comprehend, constantly folding in on itself as if each cell of the body were swimming through multiple dimensions at once. Glittering fragments splintered off and drifted into the vast void like the tail of a comet. Alexandria had seen something similar before. An Entity. But this one was different. It moved sluggishly, floating seemingly aimless in the vacuum of spacetime. What… What was that?
"...andria. Wake up! Now really isn't the time to catch up on your beauty sleep. I can see you breathing!"
Alexandria awoke to the bearded visage of a wizard dressed in burlap robes, prodding her in the side with a gnarled stick. Years ago she would have found it strange to fight alongside a man professing to be an actual wizard, but when you end up battling things like a naked tiger-striped woman or a fifteen foot tall angelic monster, such things no longer matter. Myrddin, despite his peculiarities, was beneficial to have by her side. "If you jab me with that twig once more I will break it."
"I told you, it's a staff!" Myrddin replied as Alexandria rose to her feet. "More importantly, what the hell happened here? The bracelet informed me that you had been downed. Did the Simurgh do this?"
Alexandria looked down at her own bracelet. A modern marvel of engineering, it was a thin loop of metal capable of withstanding most of the damage an Endbringer could though at a cape. Constantly spewing information about their enemy's location and a running tally of each death and casualty of their allies, it was akin to a lifeline during these Endbringer fights.
Unlike the other two Endbringers, Leviathan and Behemoth, the Simurgh was different. The creature exuded a psionic scream that could drive people mad. The effects may not show immediately or even within the coming days—it was part of what made it so threatening. When battling the Simurgh, the bracelets had another function. They would act as a timer to limit exposure to the psionic scream as much as possible. If the timer ran out, that was it, full retreat.
Should that come to pass, the city would have to be walled in and quarantined. Anyone left inside would likely be trapped for the foreseeable future. It was a fate that Alexandria desperately wanted to avoid. According to her bracelet, they still had over fifteen minutes to prevent that.
"There were extenuating circumstances," Alexandria said.
"I see… Well, the details will have to wait. We are on a bit of a time crunch, aren't we?" Myrddin floated off the ground, slumped, like an unseen puppet master was hoisting his strings. "There is nothing more we can do here. The Simurgh has headed towards the lake. If you feel up to it, we could use your strength."
Further up the street, where a crowd of pedestrians once cowered in the silhouette of a falling building, was a mound of rubble. Blood, congealed in dust and powdered concrete, formed a dark pool at the base. The limb of a child, jagged and broken, stuck out from the rocks like a monument to her failure. Alexandria looked away with a grim expression and tight lips.
She was too late.
Alexandria had allowed them to die while incapacitated by a trigger vision. That was what happened, wasn't it? The loss of consciousness and the vision of an Entity—there was no mistake.
Unfortunately, these things were not uncommon during Endbringer fights. She had seen more than her fair share of them over the years. Each one had been different, a unique puzzle piece to an enigmatic jigsaw with no discernable borders. Those that trigger have no recollection of the visions themselves, but Alexandria can never forget. Even if she'd want to.
Her memory was eternal. She was eternal.
Turning to where the fresh trigger had been lying, Alexandria saw naught but cracked pathment. The young man had somehow vanished. A Mover perhaps? There was no sense worrying about it at the moment. The boy had caused her enough headaches already.
"Of course. I'm going to rip that psychic bitch's wings off."
⸻1⸻
Whitney Geist was a visionary, a jewel of a generation, and the greatest gift to grace the halls of James Madison High School. His musing was interrupted by a shove that bounced him into a row of lockers and sent his textbooks skittering across the floor. Jeers of 'Loser' washed over him as a parade of jock dickheads swaggered down the hallway. Yes, Whitney Geist was amazing—The world just didn't know it yet.
Footsteps of careless teens trampled and kicked his textbooks while on their way out the door. The final bell had rung and everyone was interested in escaping the unique hell known as the American public school system. It was the last day before winter break, so Whitney understood their rush, but did they have to be such douches?
They acted like he was invisible. Crouching down to grab his books, he took a knee to the side and a bitch stepped on his hand with her designer snow boots. Flexing the appendage to ease his discomfort, Whitney gathered his things and exited the building.
Wind ramped off the mountains of snow plowed to the edge of the parking lot and whipped up a swarm of flurries that batted his face, leaving him burrowing into his scarf for an extra scrap of warmth. He wished he could drive home, but he didn't have a car. His aunt could barely afford the car she had now and that rusty lemon was one bad pothole away from the junkyard.
Undoing the bike lock with numb hands, Whitney mounted his two-speed schwinn and pedaled out of there. Have you ever tried riding a bicycle on slushy roads? It sucked. Pumping his legs, Whitney cut through the blackened slurry. Several times he thought he was about to slide into the center of the street and have his guts squeezed out by Michelin's finest.
His life may suck, but that didn't mean he wanted to die.
If anything, the opposite was true. He wanted to live. There were so many things that he wanted to do, like ride a motorcycle, rob a bank, and hook up with a sexy lady; not necessarily in that order. Whitney knew he had a handsome face, however the fact that he was borderline destitute torpedoed his chances. It was hard to ask a girl out when all you could offer her was Top Ramen and a tall paper cup of tap water. The makings of a very romantic dinner, naturally.
A large pickup truck sped past him, the passenger side mirror almost taking his head off. Slush splattered on his legs and he tumbled into a snowbank. He recognized the truck. It belonged to one of those assholes from school that thought they were hot shit because they were good at playing football, a game for literal children. Whitney supposed it was fitting since they had the mental capacity of one.
He dug himself out and flashed the douchers his middle finger. The taillight blazed to life and the truck pulled over immediately. Like a clown car, half the offensive line and the quarterback drained out of the vehicle. And these were good ol' fashion corn-fed boys that could eclipse the sun and bench refrigerators. Welp, he was boned.
Despite being 300 lbs those boys could move! In a matter of minutes, they caught up to Whitney as he tried to sprint down a pair of labyrinthian back alleys and proceeded to beat the ever-loving stuffing out of him before tossing him into a pile of trash.
The quarterback gave him a shit-eating grin and flicked a cigarette on his bruised body. "See ya later, Shitney. Hope you have a nice Christmas. I hear the poorhouse is gonna be serving soup and bread this year. Maybe then you could put a little meat on those bones. I mean, Jesus, you're skinnier than my girl; and that bitch is anorexic."
His football buddies all chuckled at his joke. Whitney couldn't help it either. His life was the funniest joke of all, and he just couldn't stop laughing at it. The laughter of the jocks slowly faded the longer Whitney's continued until they exchanged glances in awkward silence. They must have beaten him a little too hard and knocked some screws loose. Unnerved, they retreated to their pickup truck. Whitney's laughter followed them all the way back.
It would be the last time they ever see him. And they will never forget that sound for the rest of their lives.
⸻2⸻
By the time he arrived at work, Whitney's voice was hoarse. His boss, a potbellied Italian man in his late 50s, took one whiff of his garbage-stained clothes and sent him to his upstairs apartment to shower and change. Bruno's wasn't a bad place to work. It was a modestly popular submarine sandwich shop run by Mr. Bruno himself. The man was the definition of hard, but fair.
Bruno came to this country from Italy as a young man and had a soft spot for poor kids down on their luck like Whitney. That didn't mean he took it easy though. Whitney was surprised he still had ears left considering how often Bruno chewed them off with his biweekly lectures on customer service, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Having never known his father, Whitney imagined they would be someone like Bruno.
Dressed like a scrub in his dorky work uniform, Whitney filled the thermoregulated satchel with a large order of subs and donned his bicycle. It wasn't a glamorous job, but beggars can't be choosers. There were definitely worse things he had done to earn money before. The kind of things that made his skin crawl just recalling it. Shit that'd keep a therapist up at night.
He also suspected that Bruno only gave him a position of delivery boy out of pity, or possibly some kind of attempt to steer him clear of drugs and alcohol. Jokes on him, Whitney can't afford either. Why else would he bother hiring the one seventeen year old in all of Madison without a car or driver's license?
Checking the address written on the order, he found himself outside the Kohl Center. It was the arena where the Wisconsin Badgers' basketball and hockey teams played their home games. They must have been out of town however, because the inside had been temporarily converted to a convention center.
Showing the ticket valet at the entrance his credentials as an all important food delivery person, Whitney was ushered inside. There was a mob of nerdy teens and young adults circling the waters, chatting about video game characters and strategies. It might as well have been a foreign language to Whitney whose closest exposure to video games was catching a glimpse of an arcade machine through the grease-smattered glass of Dave & Busters.
From what he could decipher from the snippets of conversations he overheard, there was a competitive gaming tournament being held today. An esport, they called it. Great, even the nerds had jocks now.
The center of the arena, smothering the basketball court, was a string of tables and computers. Wires crisscrossed the underside and along the floor like black spiderwebs. And much like any professional athlete, a few of the competitors were warming up by clacketing away on their keyboards and playing a round or two of whatever the game was.
The person that ordered the food had to be one of the competitors. What, with a name like Mars and all. They were probably some man in his thirties that lived like a Billy Goats Gruff troll beneath his parents house, spending his life playing video games only to creep from his cave to make money at these competitions in lieu of finding a real job. Naming himself after a Roman god of war was simply a way to mask his insecurities behind a strong moniker.
"Excuse me, you're from Bruno's, yeah?" A sweet voice like bells chimed in Whitney's ear. He spun around to find a beautiful girl around his own age, if a few years older. Her hair shone like golden threads and her eyes housed pools of azure water. She had to be a model that accidentally wandered in. There was literally no other explanation. "Do you have my order?"
Whitney stood dumbfounded for a second. Looking down at the receipt, back up at the girl, and then down at the receipt again, he stammered, "M-Mars Newland?"
"Yep, that's me. Marissa Newland, but I prefer Mars. Marissa is just too… I don't know, preppy."
"No, I get it. I'm not overly fond of my own name," Whitney said, slowly recovering from his initial shock, "My mother named me after my great grandfather, but what she failed to consider is that "Whitney" is almost exclusively a girl's name now. Almost everyone that sees my name before meeting me assumes I'm a girl. I might as well have been named after Whitney Houston."
"Really? That's a shame. I think your name is kinda cute." Mars giggled and an arrow struck Whitney's heart, causing him to mentally gasp and clutch his chest. She held out her hand and gently took the food from his grasp. "Thanks for this. I know it's a little strange to have food delivered to a venue like this, but eating Bruno's subs has become something like a pregame ritual for us. Our team always performs our best after eating them. Call it superstitious, but if it works, it works."
"Oh! So you're competing in this whole thingy?"
Mars put a hand on her hip. "Why? Do I not look like a gamer to you?"
"Er, no—I mean, yes! I mean… I… Oh, God, just shoot me."
"Relax, I'm just messing with you, dude," Mars said with a laugh, "I totally understand. Video games are such a guy thing. I think me and my teammates, Jess and Noelle, are among the only female professional Ransack players in Wisconsin. Well, it feels like that sometimes."
"Huh? Ransack?" Whitney tilted his head.
Mars's jaw dropped to the floor. "You're kidding, right? You have to be kidding! Ransack is only, like, the hottest MOBA available. It is fairly new, having only come out earlier this year. So, I guess I can forgive your ignorance. This time."
"Thanks for having mercy upon my poor soul. Though for being so new, it's a little surprising that it already has a professional-level competition of this size. It must be hella fun."
"It is! You have a team of heroes and you go up against a team of villains and—hold on, it'll be easier if you just try it for yourself." Mars beckoned him to follow her with a wave of her hand. She paused as a sudden thought occurred to her. "Oh, you don't have to head back to work right away, do you?"
He did. But in his mind he weighed Bruno's anger against spending more time with the beautiful gamer-girl Mars; and one clearly outclassed the other. "Nope!"
"Great! Come on!"
For once, things were looking up for Whitney Geist. Yeah, that wouldn't last long.
⸻3⸻
The character lurched on the screen, bumbling into walls and eating enemy attacks. Whitney tapped on the keyboard uncertainly and clicked around with the mouse. In a matter of seconds, the avatar of Captain Canada, hero of the Great White North, was dead. From his own attack. Somehow.
It turned out that Whitney really sucked at playing video games. To be fair, it was hard to concentrate with Mars looking over his shoulder and resting a hand on his back. He could feel her tense up whenever he made an enormous blunder, which was approximately every three seconds. Despite her best efforts, it was starting to look like he was a lost cause.
Normally she would have given up on teaching him by now. She didn't have much patience for incompetence. However, there was something about Whitney's floundering that she found endearing rather than annoying. Like watching a dog chase his own tail until he fell over.
It was an apt analogy. Whitney was cute in a scruffy, stray mutt sort of way. He was a far cry from the well-dressed boys that attended her prep school. Maybe the best part was that Mars knew her mother would disapprove of him so completely that she almost wanted to invite him over to her house just to watch the fireworks. Almost. Whitney seemed like a nice guy and he didn't deserve to get yelled at by her megabitch mother. Nobody deserved that.
"Oh, you lasted thirty seconds that time," Mars said, encouragingly, "You're getting better. Marginally."
"Yeah, I'm kinda a big deal. So, all of these playable characters are based on real life capes?" Whitney asked, scrolling through the roster. There was Captain Canada of course, but there was also King Cannonball, Red Stripe, Calliope, and more. A few of them he had seen on the news occasionally finding lost children or putting out fires.
Mars nodded. "Yep. They might not be as glamorous as the superheroes from the old comic books or even those of Earth Bet, like Alexandria, but I think they're pretty cool in their own right. They might have parahuman abilities, but at the end of the day, they are still people willing to put their lives on the line to help others. I really admire people like that."
"I feel like I ought to apologize to them for my shitty playing. I'm making them look like total scrubs."
Lightly covering her mouth with her hand, Mars smiled. "I wouldn't worry about it too much."
Sensing fun in the air, a boy in a scuffed hoodie gravitated towards them. The untied laces of his converse trailed on the ground, hands in pockets, he slouched forward and grumbled like a thunderhead. Ripped jeans and beanie, he looked more like the prototypical gamer that Whitney had been expecting.
When he spoke his voice was limp with whiny snark. "Who's this, Marissa? Another new member of the team? First Krouse and now this guy. Funny, I thought the team was full. Guess you guys are just letting anyone in now, huh?"
"What can I say? I'm a savant." Whitney shrugged, glancing up from the computer screen. While distracted, the enemy team launched an attack and Captain Canada answered the call of the catacomb for the hundredth time. "Awe, weak."
"What do you want, Cody?" Mars replied, raising an eyebrow. She crossed her arms. "I thought you weren't going to make a scene. And for the record, Whitney isn't joining. I was just showing him how to play."
"And your illustrious captain was okay with you wasting your time before the big match?" Cody questioned, "The reason I was voted out of the team was because you all were "Trying to get serious". It doesn't seem like you're taking it all that seriously to me."
"Take it easy, man. It's not a crime to have fun." Stretching out his back, Whitney got up from the swiveling gaming chair. Taking that as a sign of aggression, Cody took a step closer. He was taller than Whitney by a head and loomed over him in an attempt at intimidation.
"I wasn't talking to you, creep."
Ouch. Even fellow losers were bullying him. A new low.
Mars slipped in between them as if to shield Whitney from Cody. He couldn't help noticing that she was taller than him too. Whitney was average height, or so he thought. What the heck was Bruno putting in those sandwiches?
Mars snapped, "Back off! He's not involved with this at all. And by the way, this is the opposite of not causing a scene. If you're going to keep trying to start shit, it would probably be better if you just left."
"Um, is everything alright here?"
Everyone's gaze shifted to a mousy brunette half swallowed up by her lofty sweater. She looked homely, more like the girls that Whitney would see at his high school everyday than the model-esque Mars. The kind of person that would frequent coffee shops with a new book each visit. Under their eyes she awkwardly scratched her arm.
"Everything's fine, Noelle," Cody said, "I was just questioning some people's commitment to the team, that's all."
Noelle turned to her friend. "Mars?"
"Yeah, it was no big deal. Nothing I couldn't handle."
"I'm glad." Noelle smiled, putting a hand to her chest. Absentmindedly, she tugged at the thick, knitted cloth. "I thought I was about to face my first crisis as your newly appointed leader. I'd hope to save all that until at least my second day. I know it's been tough on you, Cody. But I still think of you as our friend. I'd like for us to all get along."
"Am I your friend? I wish I could believe that. I hit a slump in my playing, I won't deny it. But so what? Real friends would stick it out with me instead of tossing me aside," Cody replied, raising his voice. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, balling them into fists.
Noelle gently put a hand on his shoulder. "It was a decision made by the team—"
"It was a decision made by Krouse! Not the team, but your boyfriend." Cody brushed his former leader's arm off and began to walk away. He took one last look over his shoulder. "You know, the only reason I came here was to laugh when Krouse failed, but now I don't even want to do that. I'm outta here."
Noelle watched him leave with sad eyes. For all his problems, she truly did see him as a friend.
"It's okay," Mars said, rubbing soothing circles on Noelle's back, "It was the right decision letting that guy go. He's too rash. He probably would have quit himself anyway."
"Uh…This is kinda awkward. Should I just go?" Whitney shuffled his feet. After being privy to what was essentially a bizarre marital spat, he felt mildly embarrassed. The short confrontation had attracted a flock of curious spectators that soaked up the drama like reality tv obsessed sponges. And here he was, dressed in his Bruno's uniform, caught in the crossfire.
"Oh, sorry!" Noelle faced Whitney, noticing him for the first time. "Were you dropping off our order?"
"Order? Ah! Yes, exactly. Your order." Whitney cranked his neck around, looking for the satchel with the food in it. Spotting it hidden under the table, dragged it out. He had honestly forgotten that he was supposed to be working. "Er… Your food might be a tad colder than expected. Oh, unless you ordered deli sandwiches. In that case, your food might be a tad warmer than expected. Either way, your food will have an unexpected temperature. And that's the Bruno's promise."
"Are you sure that's how the slogan goes?" Mars asked.
Noelle took the sandwiches from the satchel. "Thanks…I think."
⸻4⸻
A tree in the wind outside the venue, Whitney stared down at the scrap of paper in his hands unmoving. No matter how many times he looked, he still had a hard time believing it was anything more than an illusion. Written in an elegant looping script was 10 digits, but it might as well have been Ponce de Leon's coordinates to the Fountain of Youth.
He actually got a girl's phone number! Now all he needed was a phone to call her from. Was this the best day of his life? Maybe. It was hard to see how it could get much better than this. And then it did.
Dazzling from a beam of sunlight that trickled past the overcast blanket was a quarter. The portrait of George Washington layed abandoned among cigarette butts and chewed bubble gum beneath a street lamp. It would have been disrespectful to leave an effigy of the nation's original president in such a place; and that's definitely the reason Whitney bent down to pick it up. He certainly wasn't desperate for cash.
Fingers curling, Whitney paused a centimeter from the coin. It moved. The quarter laid still and then jumped once more. Whitney withdrew his hand and watched as the coin began to vibrate. The high frequency clinging of the quarter bouncing off the blacktop assaulted his ears. After a few seconds, it levitated slowly and then zipped into the air; joined by the cigarette butts and other debris.
Whitney's hair started to stand on end, floating up like he had been exposed to static electricity. Then as if someone had thrown a switch, gravity flipped on its head. Whitney was ripped off his feet and he tumbled into the sky. He managed to grab the street lamp with one hand, the scrap of paper with Mars's number on it still firmly grasped in the other.
The peaceful venue was drenched in peoples' screams as they too were drawn upward by an unseen force. Staring into the sky, Whitney was astonished to see a hole open up. A wrinkling circle of torn space-time shimmered above the Kohl Center. Even in a world of capes and parahumans, this was beyond extraordinary.
The gravitational pull of the void increased. Whitney was forced to let go of the paper and grab the street lamp with both hands. The scrap fluttered and then vanished, squeezed out of the dimension through the vortex. He finally scored a girl's number and now reality was falling apart at the seams. This was why he couldn't have nice things.
Unfortunately, his palms were sweaty and he slipped. Plunging into what was for all intents and purposes a black hole, Whitney felt his limbs spaghettify. Light, color, space, and time; these things all lost their meaning as his body contorted and slithered through a tube that affronted conventional physics.
It might have been days or merely a single second, but Whitney found himself falling from the sky. He landed roughly, turning his ankle. Sharp pain burst up his leg and he staggered into a dumpster. A second person crashed down on top of the dumpster, cracking their head on the metal corner, giving the grey box a splash of color. Vermillion.
More bodies rained down from the gash in space-time. Many of them clipped buildings and each other along the way. The few that survived unscathed owed thanks to the mound of people that broke their fall.
A boom rocked the stretch of city as the entire Kohl Center landed up the road, crushing an apartment complex. A storm of dust devoured them. Coughing, Whitney blindly limped out of the cloud with a crowd of people just as confused and scared as he was.
The sight they stumbled upon was straight out of a movie. An ethereal beauty clothed by a dozen wings hung in the air, tossing literal buildings at costumed superheroes. One of the heroes, a muscular woman in a black bodysuit, flew around the battlefield and bitchslapped bricks. She turned to face Whitney and the others, her face obscured by the dark helmet and visor.
The hero yelled something, but Whitney couldn't hear it. There was an intense ringing in his ear. No, it was more like it was being transmitted directly into his head—as if someone japped a railroad spike into his frontal lobe and then repeatedly struck it with a mallet, sending shockwaves echoing in his gray matter. He slammed his hands onto his ears but it didn't help at all.
He made eye contact with the angel and, somehow, the pain doubled.
A large rock or something smashed a few people to his left. Whitney tried to focus on what was happening around him but the noise was rattling his eyes. The crowd around him began to fervently push, and he made an effort to keep with the current, but it was too much for his bum ankle. He stepped into a pothole and fell to the ground.
The crowd of people didn't stop.
They kept marching. Whitney felt a foot step on his head, knocking his face into the pavement. A second person stepped on his back, and then his legs, and then his arms, and then, and then, and then, and then it was over. Here lies Whitney Geist, trampled to death in the street like a roadkill racoon.
Like hell he was going to accept that!
He hadn't gotten to do anything with his life yet.
A black boot landed a foot from his face. It was that hero from before. The battle continued raging overhead, but she had taken the time to help him. It was like Mars said, they were people willing to put their lives on the line to help others. He saw her bully buildings and rocks the size of minivans; she had the power to save him. Whitney grabbed her leg. "Help me. Please. I'm… not ready to die yet."
The hero broke out of his grip and turned her back on him. "No one ever really is when their time comes."
And then she left.
Oh. So he was going to die after all. The heroine had all that power, but she couldn't be bothered to save him. Whitney had forgotten his place in the world. There were people that stepped on others, and people that got stepped on. How silly of him to forget something so fundamental. Perhaps he could blame the screaming in this head. Thankfully, reality was there to remind him of that.
He didn't want to die.
What made someone a hero? Parahuman abilities and a fancy costume? Beneath it all, they were just people. They were nothing special. And there's nothing like nothing special.
He doesn't want to die.
Oh God!
The screaming won't stop! It's in his head! Fuck, it's in his head! Gnawing, a thousand fangs! A thousand legs. His body hurts all over. Roadkill racoon. What's with that screaming? Shut up! Heroes? Who needs heroes? They can't do anything! Will someone stop the screaming! I wasn't talking to you, creep. Stop laughing. Am I laughing? They're nothing special. Why am I laughing? He's going to die. He won't die. I'm dying. See ya later, Shitney! She's laughing. She's screaming. Loser. Shut up! Roadkill racoon. Shut the fuck up! No one ever really is when their time comes. WHY CAN'T THE WORLD JUST FUCKING LEAVE ME ALONE!
Whitney dreamed of a snake swimming in space.
It was quiet. Without a sound, he melted through the ground and disappeared.
End of Chapter
⸻Author's Note⸻
Full disclosure, I have never actually read Worm before, but I have read so much fanfiction at this point that I feel like I have. Does that make sense? Anyway, I had this idea for a while and finally decided to take the plunge.
Forewarning, I am typically slow when it comes to updating. So don't expect any consistency on that front. Sorry.
P.S. This story will have tons of OC characters. So if you don't like those, this probably won't be your cup of tea. Also, this story will take place outside of Brockton Bay. I don't plan on taking the story there for quite awhile, if at all.
Let's have some fun.
Sometimes Yours,
A Horseshoe Crab
Chapter Word Count: 5,797
Arc Word Count: 5,797
Story Word Count: 5,797