Heieienej

by Kahlil Johnson

Aka lei

11. Y

Author's note: Huge thanks to Segev for beta reading this, and to storybookknight for giving me permission to use elements of his much better story in this.

This is my first thread on Spacebattles, and my first multi-chapter fic, so feedback and constructive criticism are greatly appreciate. Comments give me life!

Worm and Parahumans belong to Wildbow.

Here Comes The New Boss (Nothing Like The Old Boss)

1.1

Monday January 17th, Arcadia High School

"Alright, you've got your lunch?"

"Check."

"Paperwork?"

"Yup.

"Pepper spray?"

I shook the little black cylinder clipped to my keyring. "Present." I was still surprised that Dad had bought it for me- Arcadia was in a much better part of town than Winslow. Nevertheless, I appreciated the gesture.

Pepper spray, a man's raspy voice sneered; fuckin' useless shit. Get a knife or something-

I pushed the voice back down into the darkness, as easily as turning down the volume on the radio. By this point I could do it without showing it on my face.

Dad reached across to put his hand on my shoulder. "Hey," he said gently, "it's gonna be okay, kiddo."

I just nodded, unsure of what to say. The better part of two weeks at home and away from the bitches had given me a chance to actually talk and rebuild our relationship, but things were still stilted between us- like we were actors who'd forgotten half their lines.

Dad took his hand away after a second and opened his door. I grabbed my bag and followed him out into the cold January air. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, not enough to be anything other than a vague annoyance.

"Christ, we used to get a couple of inches back in the day," a fluting male voice said. "Global warming in action."

I left the voice alone- he wasn't saying anything bad at the moment- and crossed the street with Dad.

I knew Arcadia was a good school- not just good compared to Winslow, because that was a low bar to clear, but an actually good school. Still, even after filling out the paperwork for my transfer and reading through all the pamphlets and guides, seeing it in person was getting the message across.

Four stories of red brick- no graffiti on the walls, no dirt on the windows. Even the grass we walked across was better than the scraggly weed-filled mess at Winslow.

"Eyes up," a firm tone chided. "Look out for the other students- the Wards go here, remember? They're the biggest threat to you right now."

"Stop giving her fucking advice, Tac!" a woman screamed, smooth voice made rough by fury. In fairness, she did have good reason to hate me. I pushed her into the darkness as well, but I kept Tactical up.

He was right about the Wards- whoever they were, they were the ones most likely to puzzle out my identity. I didn't want to figure them out though- better for all of us if I didn't know. I would just have to be careful with everyone.

There were a few groups of people standing around outside in coats and hats, chatting before classes started, breath fogging in the air. I glanced vaguely at them as Dad and I approached the front doors, then turned my eyes forward.

I flickered my sight for a second- silhouettes of people jumped into my vision, swirling red patterns that glowed through the walls. I could make out other kids standing in the halls, and adults in some of the classrooms.

Mistake. I blinked hard, washing the bloodsight from my eyes. I was trying not to use my powers at school, and I'd slipped up not five minutes into the first day.

Dad glanced at me as he grabbed the door handle, a faint look of concern on his face. "Taylor, are you alright?"

I nodded quickly, even as he flickered red in my vision again. I forced the power down, and Vladimir along with it, even as he cackled at my slipup. "Just nerves," I said simply.

Dad nodded back, then pulled the door open. A rush of warmer air breezed past us as we stepped through.

The inside was nice-looking too- the posters didn't have dicks drawn on them, the lights didn't flicker. There were more kids inside as well, clustered into little groups, but not with gang colours.

"Oh, they're in here. Fuckers just know how to hide it better," an angry woman interjected. I pushed her down enough to ignore her. She was right, but I didn't need to think about that right now.

After a few minutes of walking, Dad knocked on a door with 'Office' on the front. Once a muffled voice answered, he opened the door.

There were several desks in the room, and doors at the far end leading off to more rooms. The desk nearest the door was occupied by a handsome Asian woman who glanced up from her computer as we walked in.

"You must be the Heberts," she said warmly, standing up to shake our hands. "I'm Ms Fincher, I'm the school registrar. Basically, I do most of the paperwork here." She scooped up a cardboard folder and passed it to me. "Here's your class schedule, map of the school, and some information on clubs and after-school activities."

I flipped the folder open and started sorting through it as she retrieved a stack of books from a shelf behind her with a grunt and set them on the desk. "Here's all your textbooks, brand new, delivered just yesterday, I'll just need you to sign for them here," she held out a sheet, I read and signed, she dropped it into another folder, " Great! You've got homeroom with Mrs Williams and then a free period to get settled in! After that it's right into the swing of things. Any questions?"

I had several, but I wasn't sure how to respond to such relentless peppiness. "Uhm… No- Wait, yes." I gestured to the pile of textbooks in front of me. "Where do I put these?"

Ms Fincher tapped her forehead with a finger. "Knew I forgot something." She swung back down into her seat and clicked a few things. "Okay, Taylor Hebert, locker number is 434, that's just left from here and hang a right, and your combination is here-" she scribbled something on a sticky note and passed it to me. "Okay, that should be everything, really this time."

I already had a vague outline of the school in my head- a few points of light under the ceiling tiles in that corridor twitched at my thought. Reluctantly, I broke my no-powers rule for the second time today- as much as I wanted to avoid anyone seeing this power in particular, I couldn't shake that little bit of fear of the unknown.

I stuck the note on the folder, put that on top of the books, and then faked a grunt of strain in what I hoped was a convincing manner as I lifted the stack into my arms.

"Laying it on a little thick there, four-eyes?" a young woman taunted. I shoved her down in a burst of anger- it must have showed on my face, because Dad stretched a hand out with a worried look.

"You want me to hold those, kiddo?" I shook my head, even as I cursed myself for worrying him again. I shoved all the voices a little away from me to clear my head a little.

"I think I can manage. Thanks though."

Ms Fincher waved as we headed back out and down the hall; Dad cast a glance back at the door.

"Geez," he muttered, "how much coffee does she drink?"

"School with multiple capes attending, I'm guessing a lot," I replied, shifting the books in my hands. Dad nodded thoughtfully.

"The New Wave kids go here, don't they?" he asked as we finally stopped in front of locker 434. I put the books down to grab the combination note, taking the opportunity to sneak a fly down the wall and inside the locker. All it picked up was metal and cleaning products.

I checked the note, set my hand on the dial, and ran through the combination, and then again just to double check.

I'd have to open it to put my books away, instead of hauling them around all day.

I couldn't just keep standing here.

I needed to open it but I really didn't want to I really didn't want to-

Dad put his hand on my shoulder again. "I can open it if you want," he offered awkwardly.

I seriously considered it. I knew full well that this locker was empty and clean, that the bitches weren't anywhere near here, and that I could fight my way clear of anyone who wasn't a particularly strong cape.

"Fear like that doesn't go away easily," said a stern woman in clipped tones. I still had trouble telling if she was lecturing me or sympathizing with me. "That does not mean you can let fear win."

I clenched my teeth for a second, then spun the dial left-right-left-left-right, twisted the handle and stepped sharply to the side as I swung it open.

Nothing but bare metal, and the fly I'd sneaked in, hiding on the underside of the shelf near the top. I quickly picked up my books, picked out the ones I needed for today, dumped the rest inside, and very deliberately did not slam the door shut.

Dad shuffled his feet as I slung my bag over my shoulder. "I'll see you after school," he said eventually. "Hope everything goes well." I mumbled something vaguely affirmative.

Dad took a couple of steps down the hallway, then suddenly paused. I was about to ask if something was wrong when he turned back and gave me a slightly stiff hug. "Have a good day, Taylor," he murmured into my hair. I tentatively hugged him back, enjoying this quiet moment.

Finally he let go, and headed back down the corridor without looking back. I pulled out my schedule and started walking, sorting through my thoughts. Idly, I picked out a few hundred more bugs in my range and sent them crawling inside the walls of the school, outlining the building in my mind's eye.

I made it to homeroom a few minutes before the bell, picked a seat near the back, and sat down. I tried to occupy myself by checking the school map and my schedule. By now I had bugs along the edges and corners of most of the building, giving me a decent map in my head. I was trying to use that to figure out where I needed to go, but I kept glancing up as people filed in, sitting with their friends or typing on their phones. More than a few of them gave me curious glances, but thankfully none of them tried to talk with me.

Mrs Williams turned out to be a short woman with gray hair and a cardigan that looked thick enough to stop a bullet. She walked in and clapped her hands for attention just before the bell rang.

"Okay, everyone!" she called briskly. "A few things for today, the yearbook committee needs volunteers-"

There were a couple of other announcements of things I either didn't know or didn't care about before she picked up the register and a pen. Something in there made her frown for a second before she scanned the room, until her eyes landed on me.

"Ah, that's right." She raised her voice. "Everyone, we've got a new student starting today, I want you all to make her feel welcome. Taylor Hebert? -" She pronounced it Heb-hurt- "Stand up now, dear."

I suddenly disliked Mrs Williams intensely for putting me on the spot. Nevertheless, I stood up, conscious of everyone in the room staring at me.

"Tell us a little about yourself," Mrs Williams said insistently, as if there was no possibility of a teenage girl preferring not to speak in front of a whole roomful of strangers. I just wanted to sit down and blend in and have people stop looking at me.

Best to get it over with quickly. I took a deep breath and blurted "My name's Taylor, I transferred from Winslow, I like reading the classics and-" I stalled, scrabbling for something else to say while everyone waited on me.

"…no, that's it," I finished lamely, flopping back into my seat, burning with embarrassment as a few people snickered. Mrs Williams gave me an unamused look, like I'd just bullshitted my way through a presentation, and she was about to give me a low grade.

'Up yours', I thought spitefully, glaring back at her; 'If you hadn't put me on the spot we could have avoided this.'

I pushed down the voices that were suggesting more open forms of payback, like throwing a pencil through her eye, and tuned out everyone else while Mrs Williams took attendance, half-heartedly answering when she called my name.

Finally, homeroom ended, and everyone made for the door; I hung back a little, avoiding the crush at the door. Then I noticed a couple of kids heading toward me.

"Hi, Taylor, right?" a blonde girl chirped- really chirped. One of the voices imagined little birds flying around her head. "Just wanted to say hi, welcome to Arcadia, all that. Well, that and-"

"Why'd you transfer in?" the boy next to her cut in, leaning forward eagerly. "Was it 'cause of the Teeth?"

I went still, even as the blonde smacked him in the shoulder. "Christ, Jason! Have some fucking tact!" The boy rubbed his arm, not looking even a little cowed. The look of ignorant eagerness on his face stirred something dark and bitter in the pit of my stomach as my head filled with memories of screaming and gunfire.

"Oh come on, I just wanna know! The Butcher's been gone two weeks now, none of them have ever taken so long to show themselves! Hey," he turned back to me eagerly, "how close were they to Winslow? Like, did you see them or anything?"

The voices started shouting all at once at that, roaring, jeering, mocking the horror I felt from remembering, urging me to hurt him. I didn't realise I'd clenched my hands into fists until the knuckles popped. "No," I ground out, "I didn't see them, because I'm pretty sure if they'd got that close I'd be dead."

Blonde Birdie smacked him in the shoulder again, but Jason was apparently immune to hints. "How about the Swarm? I heard people could see it from like, a block away-"

I jerked towards him, and he flinched so hard he almost fell over. "Listen," I hissed, jamming my hands into my pockets before I could give in to the longing to crush his skull, "I really don't want to talk about it, so either back off right now or I will feed you your own teeth."

The voices laughed approvingly as Jason stepped back with a spooked expression. The others were looking similarly scared; the blonde raised her hands apologetically.

"I'm so sorry about Jason, he's just, he's an idiot-"

"Then what does it say about you, if you're friends with him?" I snapped. She winced, but didn't reply. I grabbed my bag and strode for the door.

Mrs Williams caught me just as I grabbed the door handle. "Taylor, there's no need to get angry like that," she scolded. "I appreciate that Jason was being insensitive, but threats aren't necessary."

I bit back the first dozen remarks that came to mind. It was always hardest to resist when the voices and I were actually in agreement about something, and we all agreed that Mrs Williams was a pain in my ass. The trouble was that their suggestions for knocking that judgmental look off her face were sounding really tempting…

Instead I started running some cockroaches down in what I thought was the boiler room in circles, while I took another step toward the door. "It's either that or actually hit him- which would you prefer?"

I spun on my heel without waiting for a response and bolted into the hallway, throwing the door shut behind me. Maybe she'd blame me for acting out or think that I was a troublemaker, like the teachers back in Winslow. I didn't care. I just wanted people to leave me alone, for their own sake.

Ever since I got powers, I'd felt- skinless, it felt like. As if everything touching me, every little thing people said to me, grated against raw nerves, like salt in a wound.

It certainly didn't help that I had the voices constantly yelling and screaming, threatening and insulting, suggesting and demanding, and advocating every dark impulse I had 24/7.

"You know you want to go back and hit that little shit," the oldest and foulest voice growled. "Stop pretending to be so fucking civilized and go hurt-"

I shoved Butcher down as hard as I could and kept walking through the halls. The rest took the hint and subsided to low mutterings in the back of my skull.

Less than an hour in, and it already felt like a long day.

--

Yes, that's right, this is a Butcher!Taylor fic, heavily inspired by storybookknight's The Butcher's Bill. I'll try to update this relatively regularly, but I make no promises.

Last edited: Mar 9, 2021

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HowlingGuardian

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HowlingGuardian

HowlingGuardian

May 31, 2020

#76

Author's Note: Thank you all so much for the likes and comments! I was hoping that there'd be a good response, and you guys have exceeded my hopes!

I'm going to try and update this story every week or two weeks, assuming life doesn't get in the way. So without further ado, here's chapter number 2!

1.2

Monday January 17th, Arcadia High School

The bell rang for lunch, and I started putting my things away as the classroom erupted into a mad rush for the door. I wasn't in any hurry myself, even though I'd decided to give Arcadia's cafeteria food a chance.

I was pretty sure Butcher was lying about having used it to dispose of bodies in the past- if only because he didn't have the subtlety to actually hide a body.

I idly scanned the room as I zipped up my pencil case. I'd picked out a couple of other kids who'd transferred in today as well- lots of parents had tried to get their kids as far away from Winslow as possible after the incident, and we were only the latest batch.

Just as I finally stood up and started for the door, Mr Jackson looked up from his desk. "Ms Hebert, could you stay a moment please?"

I slowed to a stop, reluctantly. I felt as if I could like Mr Jackson- even if he'd dropped a Math pop quiz on us today, he seemed fair, and actually kept people from messing around in class. He hadn't made me or any of the other new kids introduce ourselves either, and he'd pronounced my name right first try.

Still, I was too on edge to feel comfortable as I stepped up to the desk. Mr Jackson put his pen to one side and picked up a sheet of paper. I saw my name at the top- the quiz sheet I'd filled out today.

"Christ," Firecracker moaned. "I dropped out specifically to avoid this shit! Why didn't you take home schooling or something?"

"Would you want to be stuck at her house all day every day instead of getting out to see the world?" Vladimir answered reasonably.

I tuned them out to pay full attention to Mr Jackson. Something must have shown on my face, because his first words were "This isn't anything bad. I just wanted to ask you something."

"Okay," I said cautiously. "Is it about my work?" I'd been told when the transfer went through that my grades were a bit below the accepted level for Arcadia, and that I'd have to do some extra assignments.

Mr Jackson tapped the sheet. "Well, I haven't properly marked your quiz sheet yet, but it looks like you've earned at least a B grade."

I'd had a little help from the Butcher's hazy memories of their own school years, but it still felt like an accomplishment. I didn't relax just yet though- there had to be something more to this. "That's… good?" I couldn't stop it from coming out as a question.

"It is good. Better than I expected, certainly." He fiddled with his spectacles for a second. "From what I saw of your grades from Winslow, you often missed in-class assignments, and the rest were mostly Cs. And now you've managed a B grade on your first day here."

"Really? One good score and he thinks you're copying? Are all the teachers this suspicious?" Needler said incredulously. I felt her indignant shock, swiftly followed by my own.

"I wasn't cheating!" I burst out, slamming my hands on the desk. Mr Jackson leaned back in his chair with wide eyes.

"I wasn't saying you were," he said in a surprised tone. "I didn't see you so much as glance at anyone else during class. I fully believe this is your own work." He directed a pointed glance at my hands, and I quickly pulled them off the desk, jamming them into my hoodie pockets again. Mr Jackson gave me a heavy look before speaking again.

"I understand you transferred in due to ongoing problems at Winslow. I'm guessing these problems were affecting your grades in some way."

It took me a moment before I remembered to nod, feeling off balance. I shoved all the Butchers down before they could interfere or distract me.

Mr Jackson opened a drawer and pulled out another sheet with some handwritten notes on it, peering at it through his spectacles. "Decent grades until halfway through freshman year, and then they started declining, or not being turned in at all." He looked up at me again. "Can you tell me what exactly caused this?"

I almost wanted to look around to see if someone was going to jump out at me as part of a prank, but I held on to the tiny flicker of hope as I explained. "Well, there's- there were these three girls, in my year, and a couple of others, but they were the main ones. And, yeah, they were messing with me. A lot. Part of that… They took my work sometimes, or they'd drop stuff in my bag, or just steal my books."

"Didn't your teachers do anything about them?" Mr Jackson looked faintly aghast. I shrugged wearily, far too used to it.

"I tried complaining a few times, but they never really did anything, and they always believed the other girls."

Mr Jackson huffed through his nose. "That," he said crisply, "is a disgusting state of affairs." It seemed like he wanted to say more, but after a second he just sighed and pushed his chair out.

"Well, I don't know if I can do much about those girls, since they're in another school, but I could try and bring it up with the school board. More importantly," he heaved himself to his feet, "since your grades were effectively tampered with, I can arrange some make-up assignments to get your grades back up, at least in my class. I might be able to swing it so you can re-take a few as well."

I stood there for a couple of seconds before I realised I should say something. "Uh, yes, thank you, that'd be- that'd be great, thanks." I floundered for something else to say. "Um, is there… anything else, or…?"

"I think that's all for now."

I nodded jerkily and pointed a finger at the door. "Okay. I'm just gonna- get lunch. Bye."

I walked out the door calmly and easily, although the Butchers compared me to various skittish animals, "or a cockroach when the light's turned out."

I pushed Firecracker as far back as I could for that remark and followed the flow of the crowd to the cafeteria, lost in though.

I'd expected things to be different at Arcadia, and I'd hoped that things would be better. But it was the kind of hope that makes you buy a lottery ticket for the one-in-a-million chance of getting rich, not the hope with any kind of evidence behind it. I really didn't know how to deal with a teacher that combined action with being on my side.

"Seems like a decent guy," Bearskin agreed. "Could have done with someone like that in senior year."

"One of the good ones, huh?" Quarrel said caustically. Bearskin winced, as much as possible without a face.

"How many times do I have to apologise before you stop bringing that up?"

"A few thousand more, I'd say," Muramasa chimed in, voice thick with schadenfreude. I tuned out the by now familiar argument as I made it to the cafeteria.

A couple of gnats outside were crawling along the tables outside, but nobody was going out there in this cold, even with how crowded the cafeteria was. I joined the queue with a tray, looking around as everyone shuffled along a step at a time.

True to what Anchorage had said, there were some subtle signs of the gangs when I looked closely. There was a table of bulky white guys off in one corner with short haircuts that couldn't quite be called buzzcuts, Empire sympathisers if not actual members.

"Probably more than that around here," Anchorage noted, uncharacteristically serious. "Maybe twice that many diet racists."

"Diet racists?" I had to ask what that meant. Luckily, Anchorage kept it short.

"The kind of people who argue there should be a White History Month, or say shit like 'if you've done nothing, you don't have to worry about being stopped'. The kind of people who'll stay friends with neo-nazis instead of doing the smart thing and killing them on sight."

I had no idea how to respond to that, so I quickly looked around for something else to occupy myself.

The other side of the room boasted a table filled only with Asian kids, and while none of them were wearing bandanas or anything obvious, there was a hardened look to them all.

Muramasa sized them up. "I doubt they will be a problem," he intoned- really intoned, like a sage making a prophecy. "They lack the confidence of dangerous men, so they posture and pose to make up for it."

"Like peacocks," Dirty Rotter mocked. That started another argument. I left them to it- as long as it wasn't directed specifically at me, I could tune them out pretty easily.

Right in the middle of the room was a different kind of danger. Things were more mixed in there, but the tables there were filled with well-dressed kids- letterman jackets and expensive shoes, designer coats and skirts way too short for a day with snow still on the ground.

"Sure you don't wanna go over there and make some friends?" Firecracker teased. "Some of those guys look like they might be good for some fun!"

I fought the flush in my cheeks, and lost miserably. Dirty Rotter broke away from bickering with Muramasa to chime in with his slimiest tone, that one that made me want to scrub the inside of my skull. "Or try the other half. What's that quote? 'High school girls- I keep getting older, they stay the same age.'"

That drew groans of disgust from the others. "You're sick," Nemean growled- she always growled, her throat had never been able to do anything else, but this was full of disgust.

"Christ, none'a you buggers can take a joke," Rotter moaned, but he quieted down without me even having to intervene. I took a second glance as the line moved forward; this time I recognized one of them.

The single biggest threat to me at Arcadia was in the middle of one table, flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder. Victoria Dallon, aka Glory Girl. The most active member of New Wave, and the city's resident Alexandria package. I'd looked her up along with all the other local capes as soon as I'd been able to use a computer again, and from what I got off the internet, she was pretty, popular, and dedicated to her family's values of accountability for capes.

Quarrel's memories contained darker rumours in the short time between returning to the Bay and falling to me. Word among the street level crooks painted Glory Girl as entirely willing to interrogate someone from a thousand feet up, or use her emotional aura to have them shaking in fear.

Nemean radiated approval of her as I sneaked glances at the blonde. "She's tough. You should try to bond with her."

"Make friends with the unmasked hero? Not happening. I need to keep my identity as far away from capes as possible, thank you very much." I'd explained it before, but Nemean was insistent on me building bridges with someone, for reasons I wasn't entirely sure of.

"Why couldn't we have ended up with her?" Stoneknapper complained. "All it would have taken was one punch to the head! More strength, a forcefield, and some goddamn flight at last! But no, we got stuck with insects!"

Quarrel immediately started raging at him, so I pushed them both back into the dark as the argument built up steam, but privately I wished I'd got something like her powers myself. Flight was the power every little kid dreamed of having at some point in their life.

The line moved forward again, putting me next to the food. I looked it over for a second while the Butchers started making demands- Lasagne!/garlic bread/salad/salad, are you serious?- before grabbing a couple of slices of cheese pizza, an apple, and a bowl of pudding. I paid for it quickly and started looking for a free space.

There was a table off to one side that was half-empty, so I headed for that. The other kids glanced up as I sat down, but didn't say anything, one of them too busy working on homework spread out on the table.

I kept looking around as I started wolfing down my food. I'd recognized a few kids from Winslow, but nobody that had actively picked on me. There didn't seem to be any overt gang tensions, or any cliques throwing their weight around.

Hell, even leaving Mr Jackson aside, the teachers I'd had today seemed pretty on the ball. Nobody had called me names or shot spitwads at me, messed with my stuff or ruined my clothes.

It was depressing to realise that I had no idea what to do with myself besides just try to make it through the day.

Maybe I could try making some friends. I could join a club; there probably wasn't anything like a book club, but I'd picked up some other things from the Butchers besides fighting techniques and anger issues.

"Try learning another instrument," Tactical advised. "We've already got guitar and drums- you learn keyboard and you could be a band all by yourself."

"She'd have to buy the instrument first though," Firecracker pointed out. "Do art or something."

"That's called art lessons, idiot," Needler sneered. "I would suggest whatever the local LGBT association is called."

"Hell yeah!" Anchorage enthused. "Get white girl a cutie!"

"You do realise I'm straight, right?" I interjected wearily as I started on my pudding. Anchorage just cackled horribly.

"Oh, give it time, you'll be swinging every which way soon!"

I gave her a shove down and refocused. There were some clubs I should avoid- I'd have to stay away from sports completely- but there had to be a few here that'd suit me.

Vladimir nudged at me urgently. "Hey, girl, listen to the guys behind you- don't turn! They're talking about us!"

Indeed, as I paused and focused, there was a very spirited conversation going on at the table behind me.

"I'm telling you man, it's got to be some kind of trick. Nobody's ever killed Butcher for good, this is just to make the heroes drop their guard."

"Why would Butcher need people to drop their guard? They're, y'know, the Butcher," the other guy countered. "If they were still alive, they'd be setting bugs on people everywhere."

"That's what we should be doing," Bearskin complained. "Go out and pour cockroaches down people's pants, spread the fear! You're too damn cautious."

I rolled my eyes and pushed him back. I wanted to hear what these guys had to say- they sounded unusually well-informed for civilians.

"Okay, but maybe it's not a Master power like people think- it could be Butcher XV is a Changer- turns into a swarm of bugs, but that means they're less active in winter because all the bugs are hibernating!" The first guy seemed very pleased with that logic.

"If they're hibernating in winter, why'd they manage to kill Butcher in the first place, dumbass?"

"Maybe," a third voice, a girl this time, cut in, "The new Butcher's actually a Tinker, and the Swarm was a new weapon they were trying out. They could be lying in wait right now, building huge weapons to go on a rampage."

First Guy hummed. "That… might work," he said reluctantly, like he didn't want to admit to them having a point. "I mean, I don't think there's ever been a Tinker Butcher, right?"

"Excuse me?" Tock Tick screeched. "What am I, chopped liver?"

The entire conversation was getting to me- it had to be a coincidence that they were sat behind me, but paranoia was beating a tattoo inside my head. I scooped the last spoonful of pudding into my mouth and got up to get rid of my tray. Being a functional member of society would have to wait another day.

--

Dad was waiting with his truck in the same place he'd dropped me off. I shrugged my bag off my shoulder and slid into the passenger seat in one movement, rubbing my hands together like they were cold. I didn't really get uncomfortable about temperature anymore, but I needed to keep up the act.

Dad was looking nervously hopeful as I pulled my seatbelt on. "So, how'd it go?"

I'd been figuring out what to say ever since the final bell rang, so instead of my usual evasive remark along the lines of 'same old, same old' or 'not too bad' where I was lying through my teeth, I made eye contact as Dad started the engine and gave a small smile that wasn't even forced.

"Pretty good. The teachers are nice, and the other kids seem okay. I'm not the only new kid in school either, so I don't really stand out much."

Relief flashed across Dad's face as he pulled out. "That's good to hear. Uh, did you talk to anyone much?"

I shrugged. "A little. Mostly introducing myself a bunch. They're nice though."

There was quiet for a moment while we both thought of something to say. I felt like I had the harder task, since I had to tune out the Butchers so I didn't say anything they were spouting by accident. Once was enough. After a moment's though, I remembered my thoughts at lunch.

"I was thinking I might look at the clubs they've got, think about joining one," I ventured. Dad glanced at me as he made a turn.

"That sounds like a good idea. Any idea which one?"

"Maybe if there's a literature club or something, that'd be my first pick. Otherwise, some kind of arts and crafts?" Stoneknaper relayed the image of me using his power to do some sculpture work or something. I fought down a smile at the thought of walking into class with a massive battleaxe over my shoulder.

Dad nodded, tapping the wheel with a finger as we paused at a light. "I think that's a good idea. You'll have people to talk to, and you might get a new hobby out of it."

"I could maybe see if there's a sewing club or something." I at least had a head start on that; absorbing bits of memories from Needler, of her mother teaching her to darn clothes, had been very disorienting at first, but it was practical, especially now.

"I think there's an old sewing machine up in the attic, we could maybe dig that out. Anyway," Dad changed the subject in time with the traffic light, "I was thinking something easy for dinner tonight. Takeout sound good?"

The clamour started immediately- nothing got the Butcher's attention like food- since I'd denied them all their other vices. I barely kept my face clear as I wrangled them into some sort of order and worked out what the majority were clamouring for.

"Can we get Chinese?" I said at length. "I'm suddenly craving the stuff."

Dad's mouth twitched a little. "Me too. I'll dig out the menus when we get home."

"Is Canton Star still open?" Needler wondered. "They did great sweet and sour chicken."

"After 16 years? I doubt it." Tactical mentally shrugged. "At least Fugly Bob's is still around. We never did get to try the Challenger."

"Sounds good," Nemean rumbled. "We'll do that some time."

I pulled myself away from the discussion as several hundred particular bugs entered my range- the ones I'd kept stashed in the house. I rounded up all the flies and midges in my radius, including the ones I'd stashed in the truck bed, sending them walking into the jaws of the more important spiders, even as Dad pulled into the driveway and killed the engine.

I made to open my door, but Dad's expression made me hesitate. "Taylor…" he drummed his fingers on the wheel, not looking at me. "Do… Do you want me to keep driving you to school? I mean, it's not a big deal, you can take the bus if you want-"

I unclipped my seatbelt and leaned over to hug him. After a few seconds of him sitting there while the handbrake dug into my ribs, Dad slipped his arm around me and squeezed back.

"I'll take the bus," I said, "but thanks for offering. And thanks for taking me today." After a minute I let go and straightened up, reaching a hand under my glasses to wipe at my eyes.

"So, Chinese?"

--

Szechuan beef and prawn fried rice had worked their magic on Dad to make him turn in early. A moth perched on the wall above his bed was keeping track of his breathing, slow and steady, and a quick glance through the wall with bloodsight showed him as still and peaceful as he had been since I'd checked on him 30 minutes ago.

I'd waited long enough, so I slipped a bookmark into my copy of The Great Gatsby and slid out of bed on thick-socked feet.

In the days after getting out of the hospital, I'd tweaked the hinges on certain doors to remove the creaking, so there was barely a whisper as I crept out of my room and downstairs, or as I opened the basement door and padded down the steps.

A steady drip of insects continued to crawl down the coal chute from outside and join the massive piles against one section of wall indistinguishable from the rest. I'd thought for a long time how I was going to hide my work from Dad, until Stoneknapper had shown me that the best kind of lock is one that only exists for you. I rested my hands against the cement and let the fizz of Stoneknapper's power surge out into the wall.

The concrete slowly rippled and split open in a wide rectangular seam, outlining the door I'd cut into the wall and then sealed over. I moulded a handle out of the surface and pulled the door open, opening up the alcove cut into the soil behind the foundation.

The loom I'd built with Tock Tick's clockwork Tinker power was working away on its shelf, no louder than a Swiss watch, even while its arms zipped back and forth weaving threads into a pair of leggings that was- I held up the trailing piece of cloth- about halfway done. I gave the handle a few twists to keep it going until tomorrow night and kept looking.

The shelf below that was dedicated to making the thread itself. A horde of black widow spiders were lined up on the wooden plank, pulling silk thread from their spinnerets, while lesser spiders led the silk through a simpler device that stretched out the threads and wound them onto reels. I'd made another dozen since I'd made it home, by rotating the widows through shifts to either spin thread or feed off the other insects. I marched the new insects I'd gathered into the space and added them to the rotation, directing the excess into jars and containers that would dispense them to the black widows while I wasn't home.

"Can I just say, for the record, this is still really gross," Dirty Rotter complained. I rolled my eyes even as I loaded the new reels into the loom.

I'd been looking for any way to use my power constructively- a sort of personal pride- when Tock Tick had speculated on the tensile strength of spider silk. A little research at the library had confirmed black widow silk as almost as strong as steel, but much lighter, and I'd built the weaving equipment out of scraps around the house. I didn't have enough widows to make the silk more than one layer thick if I wanted to get to the action any time soon, but it was only really meant to be an undersuit. My real costume was going to be a full suit of plate armour, the single biggest use of Tock Tick's Tinkering in over a decade.

Wearing armour with my new durability was kind of superfluous, but after my little stunt at Winslow, people would be suspicious of anyone with powers that matched those of the Butcher, insect control in particular, but a high-level Brute popping up would raise suspicion as well.

Luckily, Tock Tick's time as the Butcher had been short enough most people weren't even aware of it, so if I presented myself as a Tinker, nobody would make the connection. It still hurt the man's pride, but it was my best bet at avoiding a witch hunt.

So, layered silk as an undersuit, and thick steel plate on top. It'd keep me safe, misdirect people about my power, and look pretty cool too. The fact that it was almost completely opposite from the Teeth's usual aesthetic of spikes and bones on leather was an extra bonus.

"But it's so boooorrrinnng," Firecracker whined. "You'll just look like a little wind-up soldier- you need to jazz it up! Add some blades, or some creepy symbols!"

I pushed her down as I finished checking the cloth and moved downward. The armour pieces that I'd finished were on the bottom shelves, along with the materials that I'd scavenged over the last two weeks. I knew enough from Tock Tick's experience not to make the rookie mistake of ordering everything online, or to scrounge too much from scrapyards, since gangs watched them specifically to snatch up Tinkers.

Stoneknapper's power had proved its worth there- I'd simply located a condemned warehouse, ripped out one of the girders, and brought the pieces home a bit at a time to mould into the pieces I needed. Since I no longer required sleep, thanks to Nemean, I'd managed to work through the nights and get the breastplate and legs done. It wouldn't be very good quality compared to other Tinkertech, but that would further my image as a new, unexperienced cape.

"Please tell me we're going to upgrade it soon though," Tock Tick pleaded. "This stuff could be so much better if we use the right materials."

"I promise, Tock," I replied wearily. I liked the guy, but after I'd started using his power heavily, he'd begun getting really pushy about trying to incorporate the ideas he'd had over the years as a disembodied mind.

I grabbed a chunk of metal, some tools, and a music player I'd found, and carried them over to Dad's old workbench. As an afterthought I set the ants I'd collected to start tunneling further into the soil, digging out chambers I could store more black widows in. Larger insects were tasked to carry the soil out for them, and to reinforce the tunnels with various secretions; there were even some worms breaking up the soil for the ants.

The rustle of the swarm and the soil added to the ticking of the loom as I slipped on the headphones and hit play. After several solid days of arguing, bargaining and outright pleading from the collective, I'd given the Butchers a choice of music as something to keep them occupied, since I wasn't planning on drinking or starting fights, let alone their more disgusting habits. Tonight was Vladimir's turn, which meant a weird mix of jazz and disco.

I hit play and laid a hand on the metal, letting the shapes I needed bloom out of its surface. I plucked the first segment off with tweezers, a wide piece to go on the back of the hand, and fixed it on to a stand as the next segment started to form, picking up a couple of pins to link them together.

A sense of peace settled over me as I worked away, adding tiny pins and rivets to each new joint, while the bugs wove and dug and carried and ate. The music flowed into my ears, with the ticking of the loom a muted metronome at the edge of my hearing. Tock Tick watched through my eyes as the index finger started to take shape, offering tips on how to layer the plates to balance flexibility with durability.

I loved these moments. I didn't have to deal with kids at school that I suddenly felt so much older than, or worry about how to rebuild my relationship with Dad. Even the Butchers were more subdued after I'd made it clear I would shove away anyone who interrupted, talking among themselves or just listening to the music.

Ever since I'd woken up in the hospital with voices raging in my head, and heard from a gossipy nurse how Butcher had died, these moments were the closest I'd come to being alone.

--

Leave a comment or a like! I'll also try to answer a few questions today if I have time.

Last edited: Mar 29, 2021

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HowlingGuardian

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HowlingGuardian

HowlingGuardian

Jun 7, 2020

#261

AN: Just to address a few things I've read in the comments- This will not be entirely slice of life. It will be softer than canon and have some quiet moments, but we'll be getting to the action soon.

Winslow is still standing. Taylor didn't teleport out or destroy the place. There will be an explanation in time.

Likewise the cheesegrater incident.

Also, can anyone tell me where Master of Ceremonies came from as a name for Butcher's shard? It seems to be entirely fanon.

Friday January 21st, Arcadia High School

The computers in the school library were leagues ahead of the outdated clunkers at Winslow, and certainly better than the computer at home. I had several tabs open to work on my current project, zipping back and forth between them while I scribbled ideas into a notepad.

The costume was nearly finished by now- I just needed to finish the left leg of the leggings and the left gauntlet tonight, and I'd be ready to go out on the street and kick ass.

But before all of that, I needed a name. If I didn't pick something myself, I'd be stuck with whatever the PRT or PHO gave me, and I remembered awful things about that. Vladimir had literally had to spell his name in blood on a billboard before they stopped calling him Sanguine.

The Butchers weren't making this any easier on me- their suggestions mostly consisted of profanity. Tock Tick was the only one trying to be helpful, and that was because I would be effectively claiming his powerset.

"Gearhead?" I hummed a negative. Tock Tick tutted, then tried another name after a moment of thought. "How about Flywheel?"

"Christ you suck at this," Firecracker grumbled.

"Name yourself for a quality, perhaps," Muramasa said reasonably. "This city has Gallant and Dauntless after all."

"How about you name yourself after a-" Quarrel's sentence dissolved into a storm of profanity; I just rolled my eyes and pushed her down again, then clicked over to a different tab.

Synonyms for Brave: Courageous, Plucky ("What are you, five?" Bearskin demanded), Fearless, Valiant was already taken by a hero in Florida, Intrepid-

I paused to write the last one down- that actually sounded pretty good, even if the Butchers disagreed. Still, I needed more options.

I clicked on the next tab, open to synonyms for hope. Aspiration, want, belief- nothing good there. A link lower down did catch my eye- a site for myths about hope. I clicked on it out of curiosity.

The page loaded with a slight flicker on the screen, to a website in black with blue text. The page I was on had a picture of an old clay jar at the top.

"Pandora's box?" Needler queried. "What on earth does that have to do with hope?" I remembered something about hope in the myth, but I didn't know the specifics, so I started reading. Pandora the first woman, created by the gods as a bride for Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. The gods had set her up by creating her to be curious and then giving her a jar full of horrors and evils, which was later mistranslated as a box.

"Damn. I always thought she was just a moron," Firecracker commented cheerfully. "I mean, someone tells you, 'don't open this box, it's full of evil', ya gotta be pretty dumb to open it."

"As if you wouldn't do it just for fun," Bearskin snorted. Firecracker shrugged, or at least gave off the feeling of a shrug.

"Fair enough."

There was more to the myth- the one thing left in the jar after disease, famine, cruelty, sadness and everything else had escaped was the spirit of hope, who refused to abandon humanity.

"Gee, stuck in a jar with a bunch of assholes, wonder what that's like," Tock Tick groused. The rest started yelling at him, and I started shoving down the ones that got too loud, but the majority of my attention was on the myth.

Tock Tick did have a point- there were some parallels to my situation. I'd been thrown into the Butcher's shoes without any real choice in the matter, acting as a container for some of the worst of the worst. I clicked on the link for the spirit of hope, which took me to a page with only a few lines of text and a picture of some old coins.

The spirit was named Elpis, usually depicted as a young woman carrying flowers, as the coins showed. I rolled it around on my tongue even as I opened another tab and started a search. How would people say that? 'The new hero Elpis'? 'Elpis is a Tinker'? 'Oh, Elpis couldn't possibly be the Butcher'?

Butcher himself pulled away from the argument as he noticed what I was doing. "No! You are not embarrassing us by picking that shit! If you're too dumb to go back to the Teeth and accept what you are now, then you're not ruining us by calling yourself Hope-!"

I shoved him down reflexively. Honestly I was weirdly impressed that he'd managed to say that much before I'd pushed him back into the dark. The rest went quiet at that- Butcher spent most of his time in the dark by now, and they'd gradually learned not to mouth off too much.

"Just throwing it out there," Stoneknapper began cautiously, "but naming yourself after hope seems kinda… cheesy?" I nodded vaguely as I scrolled through image results for 'hope'- mostly artsy pictures of landscapes with 'hope' written over it, or flowers growing out of cracks in concrete. I added 'symbol' to the search and tried again.

Stoneknapper had a point, as he usually did. Naming myself Elpis would be a little tacky- it took serious power to be able to name yourself after a myth and not look stupid. The heavy hitters like Legend or Myrddin could manage it, or even Panacea, but being a street-level hero with that name sounded a little silly.

Except- I hesitated as the idea formed in my head- that was what I wanted. I wanted to distance myself from the Butchers and their legacy. Having a name so trite and sappy would go a long way toward that. I'd insult their memory every time someone said my name.

"You're a spiteful little bitch, you know that?" Anchorage commented cheerfully. She felt more amused than anything else. I didn't bother to deny it, too focused on a new page of quotes I'd opened up.

Then there was a stirring in the dark of my mind. I stopped everything else and focused on the presence I'd heard only a few times.

Flinch had had the worst of it in his time as the Butcher- nobody had really believed Vladimir's claims of gaining Butcher's powers and mind at the time, but once the two of them had been transferred to Flinch, and broken down his mind and will to live over the course of two weeks, the Butcher's legend had begun. As for Flinch himself, he'd spent the last 20 years as an unwilling witness to every atrocity the others had committed, until he'd curled in on himself and shut out everything.

I pushed everyone else to the side before they could say anything, and let Flinch take his time, like a wounded animal. Eventually he managed to muster up the words "H-hope. It s-sounds nice."

"I'm glad you think so," I said gently. That one sentence seemed to exhaust him- he slipped back into the dark again and clammed up. After a moment, I let the others rise up again.

Bearskin broke the silence. "We're not talking you out of this, are we?"

"Not a chance," I said. A fly I'd hidden on the minute hand of the library's clock felt it tick forward, so I got up, closing the tabs and shoving the notes into my bag. I felt strangely light as I made my way to the last class of the day.

--

I had horrible memories of Gym class ever since I'd started high school; If there was a game, I'd be picked last, and targeted with the ball by the opposing team while the team I was on tripped and pushed me at every opportunity. If we were just doing drills or planned exercise, I'd just have to deal with insults thrown at me every few seconds.

My good mood had steadily evaporated as I'd got changed and filed into the gym. Then the teacher announced that we were doing dodgeball, and my stomach dropped like a bowling ball.

Even if I was bulletproof now, even if I didn't feel pain, that didn't stop the dread I associated with Sophia aiming for my face for a solid hour. I'd mostly just covered myself and taken a hit as soon as possible so I could sit out, and even then they'd 'accidentally' manage to hit me on the bleachers sometimes.

"Don't forget that you're stronger now," Tactical reminded me. "You'll have to hold back extensively."

"Yeah, or someone's gonna be all over the wall!" Dirty Rotter cackled. I shoved him down as hard as I could, wishing for the hundredth time that I could bring something more unpleasant to bear on him.

Two girls were picked, seemingly at random as opposed to 'most popular', and they started going back and forth picking teams while the teacher lined up the balls on the centre line. I stood at the back of the group, trying to blend in while I fretted.

"Yo, tall girl!"

I'd managed to hold back my strength the last few weeks without any major incident, other than crushing a fork accidentally, and I'd used Stoneknapper's power to fix it immediately.

"You in the back, with the glasses!"

But besides Tactical's memories of first aid, I didn't have anything that could fix a person if I broke them- everything I had was geared for brutality and bloodletting in some capacity.

"Hey, you deaf or something?"

No, no, I'd be fine. I just needed to get out as soon as possible, not let myself even touch the ball. And I'd have to fake a reaction when it hit me. God, would I even feel it? Nemean's invulnerability was weakened from her, but it was still enough to take a shotgun to the gut without flinching-

Someone pushed at my shoulder gently, startling me out of my thoughts. Literally everyone was staring at me, and I felt myself starting to hunch up under the attention. One of the captains beckoned impatiently.

"C'mon, you're on my team, let's go already!" I blinked in surprise and hastily jogged over. The captain rolled her eyes as the pickings continued.

The girl to my left looked at me confusedly. "Uh, you alright? You were really out of it."

I shrugged and hunched my shoulders a little. "Yeah, just… lost in thought. I, uh, didn't really do too well in Gym before."

"How come? I mean, you look fit." I glanced down at my arms- I'd always been naturally skinny no matter what I did, which meant that the results of the various Brute packages and Needler's regeneration stood out like rocks on a string. I wasn't exactly disappointed at gaining muscles with minimal effort, but the change was too sudden for me to be used to it yet.

"Dallon, let's rock!"

I glanced up at the name- a mop of brown frizz with a freckled scowl underneath walked over to the other team. A shock ran down my spine, while the Butchers started chattering away. There was a world of difference between seeing Glory Girl across a crowded room and seeing Panacea not ten feet away from me.

"That's Brandish's daughter? Damn, she really doesn't get it from her mama," Firecracker mocked.

Vladimir radiated agreement. "She's definitely familiar though. Maybe it's that Dallon brand of bitchiness."

"She looks tired," Nemean grunted. I had to agree with her the most- secondhand memories of tangling with New Wave weren't particularly clear, but I could see the slump in her posture and the bags under her eyes for myself.

The last girl went to our team, and I shook myself out of my thoughts. I could speculate about other people later. Right now I just had to get through this without hurting anyone.

--

Dad had a bemused expression as I dug into the pasta. "Built up an appetite today, huh?" he asked awkwardly.

I nodded while I finished my mouthful. "Mm. I had gym today. Dodgeball. It was fun."

It actually had been- despite my worries about not being able to control my strength, I'd managed to be involved. I'd even enjoyed myself towards the end. That, plus finally taking the plunge and making small talk at lunch had left me in a good mood by the time I'd got home.

I'd still had to let myself get hit early on in the games though, just to avoid standing out as overly athletic so I'd let myself get hit in the leg and faked a whine of pain as I'd left the court. Not too loud though- I wasn't sure if Panacea would volunteer to help someone who got hurt in Gym, but I figured I'd be better off if I never got close to her.

Dad looked pleased as I recounted how I'd been drawn into gossip at lunch about the shops down at the Boardwalk- apparently there was talk of a cape opening a business down there. "That cape with the dolls," I waved my fork vaguely, "Parian? I think she donated some dresses to a charity auction and got a lot of business from the publicity. So now she's opening a shop."

Dad whistled. "That's impressive. Clothes made by a cape. Does that make her a, uh, a Tinker? They're the ones that make things, right?"

"Really flattering description there," Tock Tick grumbled.

"Oh hush," I chided him. Out loud I answered, "I don't think so. Tinkers make super-advanced tech, like Armsmaster or Dragon. I think Parian can control fabric, so she can just wave her hands and make the clothes like-" I snapped my fingers, "-that."

"Right, right. I just thought of clothes that'd make you fly or something." Dad took another forkful of pasta with a shrug.

"That would be kind of cool." I admitted. "Parian's stuff is supposed to be really expensive anyway, because it's- well, not handmade, I guess you'd call it power-made? But Frankie said she can weave something together super-fast with all kinds of really tiny details, like patterns a few threads across."

"Which one's Frankie again?" Dad asked as he finished his mouthful.

"The artsy girl. I was sat next to her at lunch."

"Right." Dad paused and smiled a little. "I'm glad you're making friends."

I fiddled with my fork. "I mean, I've only had one conversation with her. Not that I don't think she's friendly, just- right now she's more of an acquaintance."

Dad looked slightly crestfallen, but didn't push the point. I hastily changed the subject. "So how was work? Any good news?"

Dad perked up as he started explaining how there were some new contracts coming through for warehouse work, and how he'd been able to negotiate a higher number of placements, while I nodded along.

After dinner, and a few sitcom episodes with Dad, I headed upstairs to finish my homework, slipping on the headphones to play Anchorage's playlist of rap and metal. At the same time, I checked the map of the city I'd tacked to the wall above my desk, where I'd marked out in a coded pattern where I'd be going tonight, as soon as I'd finished the last pieces of the costume.

Rationally, I knew that I should double-check the armour first, put together some simple weapons, and wait a little longer for the fear of Butcher's return to die down before I made my debut in costume, but by this point I was as wound up as one of Tock Tick's springs, as much from my own wish to get out and actually do something as the second-hand tension bleeding through from the Butchers.

The gangs were starting to lose their fear too- my time away was now a week longer than any previous Butcher had managed to resist, and plenty were by now certain that Butcher 15 was either dead or no longer in the city. What I'd read on PHO and overheard on my scavenging missions, filtered through Bearskin's recollections and Tactical's Thinker power, suggested that the Empire was gearing up to push the headless Teeth out of the city.

As much as I wanted to jump into the middle of that, taking out members of the Teeth and the Empire both, I didn't want to start off against the gang who were most familiar with the Butcher, or the gang with the most capes.

Instead, my target for tonight would be the Archer's Bridge Merchants. Despite Tactical's grumblings about how broadcasting your location in your very name was a bad idea, the Merchants had survived like cockroaches, beneath the notice of everyone else. Their main, almost sole, source of income was drugs, and they weren't smart enough to avoid sampling their own product. Plus, the only territory they could really hold was the abandoned industrial spaces in the Docks.

"This'll work out well for us then," Tactical mused, more cheerfully. The others turned their attention on him, Nemean speaking first.

"How's this help us?"

"Less civilians around, no occupied buildings; that means we won't have to worry about collateral damage?"

"Are you out your gourd?" Dirty Rotter said incredulously. "Since when have we ever given two wet shits about collateral damage?"

Tactical rolled his eyes, or at least the mental equivalent of that. "Never, but Taylor does. She'll be able to cut loose this way. And before you try to act like you don't care how she does things, I know you're all as bored as I am with the lack of action."

There was a pause, the kind you get when everybody's thinking the same thing but nobody wants to admit it. Firecracker broke it first with her customary lack of patience.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck," She groaned. "Fine, it's true, we're al bored as shit. Hey four-eyes," she directed at me, "Promise me you'll break some bones tonight, if you're not gonna use the coolest power you've got."

"Yeah, how about no?" I fired back, splitting my attention between the conversation, the math sheet I was filling out, and the spiders I had running around in my little alcove. I took a moment to scribble a note on a scrap of paper- cut tunnel frm chute to loom, no need send thru bsmnt- before I filled in the next problem.

Firecracker booed. "You're no fun."

"C'mon, they're a bunch of druggie losers," Bearskin wheedled. I didn't even know he knew how to do that. "They're probably getting kids hooked on crack- you're doing the world a favour by smashing them into the dirt."

I shoved him back a bit as a warning. "If any of you try to talk me into hurting people unnecessarily again, you can join Butcher," I indicated the space where Butcher was thrashing and ranting impotently, too muffled to make out his words, "And I won't let you up until the morning."

That shut them all up quickly, and I managed to finish the sheet in relative peace.

--

Four hours later, Dad had turned in for the night. I gave it a little longer to make sure he wasn't going to get up before I crept down to the basement again.

The loom had finished the last of the undersuit- a mask, long-sleeved top, leggings and gloves- and half an hour of Tinkering finished off the left gauntlet, plus some tweaks to the neck plates that I'd had an idea for during lunch.

I quickly changed into the undersuit, keeping my eyes closed the whole time. The constant presence of the Butchers was most awkward at times like this- the only thing worse was when I needed the bathroom; awkward didn't begin to cover it.

The silk all fitted well, even the gloves, which had been the hardest to make. I put the mask on last, once I'd pinned my hair up into a tight bun. I'd had to shape the mask and the helmet specially to allow for it, but as much as I would have liked to leave my hair hanging loose, I needed to conceal as much detail about myself as possible. I fiddled with the lenses a bit to make sure they fit over my eyes right- I'd pulled them from a pair of swimming goggles, mirrored prescription lenses that turned my eyes into wide mirrors.

Once the undersuit was fully on, I started on the armour. First the segmented breastplate; I flexed as I locked it into place, to get the supports around my ribs and along my spine properly aligned, so the armour would follow my movements exactly.

The legs went on next, thighs and calves, plus the boots that encased the trainers I was already wearing. Then the arms, from shoulder to elbow, and then the gauntlets locking onto there. I flexed and wriggled my fingers to make sure I had full range of motion, then picked up a screwdriver off the bench and tossed it from hand to hand. The silicone grips I'd added to the fingertips and palms worked well- just plain metal wouldn't have had much traction.

Tock Tick kept dreaming up ideas for improvements and advancements as I flicked my wrist and twitched my fingers a certain way. The panel on top of the left gauntlet split open and aside, and the grappling hook assembly I'd built in moved up and out. It looked like two crossbows, stripped down and compressed, then stuck on back to back, with reels of cord in the middle.

I retracted it with another gesture, and checked the right assembly before I came to the final piece. The full-face helmet, in two pieces right now, with only a thin slit for the eyes and a grid of holes in the jaw guard as any kind of opening.

I slipped the main part on over my scalp, attaching the clasps under the ears and the nape to the overlapping plates covering the neck, and then the jawguard, locking it on with a J-shaped motion. I took a breath, feeling the pull of air through the outer openings and the filter I'd assembled inside, then let it out- the sound was deeper, with a metallic echo to it.

I spent a couple of minutes flexing my arms, lifting my legs, rolling my shoulders and twisting my neck to make sure all the joints worked. As they all checked out, I advanced to walking around, then a bit of shadowboxing. The armour followed my every movement almost soundlessly, nothing but a slight whisper of steel to be heard. I even turned a cartwheel for the first time in years, feeling light as a feather.

Finally, I grabbed a chunk of steel off the shelf and held it up. Stoneknapper's power flattened it out, smoothed it to a mirror shine, until I could see myself in it.

What I saw was a slim figure in dull grey armour, silvery eyes peeping out from the visor. Every square inch was covered by overlapping plates. There were raised ridges along the bracers and greaves, and a crest along the top of the helmet. A belt full of useful bits and pieces was slung around the waist.

"Coulda maybe done something with the chest," Firecracker said slyly. It took me a moment to realise she was making yet another joke about my lack of bust. Unfortunately, she did have a point- with the armour making my shoulders wider and hiding everything feminine about my figure, I could probably be mistaken for a boy very easily.

I shook it out of my head- I could always tweak it later, but for now I just wanted to get out and use my powers more freely. I put the steel back on the shelf, sealed the door shut, and made for the stairs.

"Uh, are you just going to go out in costume like that?" Tock Tick asked. I paused at the foot of the stairs, unsure what he meant. Quarrel snickered, apparently at my expense, but didn't say anything.

"He means you shouldn't be seen in costume near your house," Muramasa explained impatiently. I looked at my armour again. The armour that I'd been planning on walking up the stairs, out the door and down the street in. I hung my head in realisation at my glaring oversight.

"Fuck."

--

Likes and comments fuel me!

Last edited: Mar 9, 2021

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HowlingGuardian

Jun 14, 2020

#430

AN: Okay folks, here's the next chapter, with some action. I'm also thinking of answering some questions later today, so tag me in your comments if you have something you desperately want answered and I'll get around to it.

--

Early hours of Saturday 22nd, January, The Docks

Once I was several streets away from the house, I'd stopped in an alleyway, using bugs to check nobody else was nearby. I was getting better at controlling them, using them to monitor people in real time. Still, this was past midnight in January, so there wasn't really anyone around. Not that there were many people around in the Docks at all.

"This place really has started to die," Vladimir complained mournfully. "Back in the day, even in snow, this place would be heaving with people. Land of opportunity."

"Ah, cheer up," Anchorage insisted. "We're finally getting some action, even if it's the kiddy 'no killing' kind."

Despite their enthusiasm, and, admittedly, my own, I'd made sure I was prepared for this. I had pouches full of zipties, a first-aid kit fastened to the small of my back, pad and paper for any details, and my freshly charged burner phone in a reinforced compartment. I was also wearing thermals under the silk for extra insulation; of all the powers I'd gained, there wasn't anything to keep me warm. Even pain immunity wouldn't keep me from shivering.

At any rate, I'd snapped every piece into place quickly, and then taken to the roofs. Even weighing about 200 pounds total with the armour on, it was easy enough to jump the gap between buildings, and where I couldn't, the grappling hooks proved their worth.

I started using them more and more as I went deeper and deeper into the Docks- the warehouses and factories were each surrounded by parking lots and loading bays, now cracked and overgrown with weeds, and that spaced them out more.

The grapplers worked just as I'd designed them. Flick my wrist to extend or retract them, twitch a finger to fire the first bolt, which would hit a wall or roof. The impact would activate the mechanism to fix the bolt in place- if it had sunk through a surface, then it would extend grippers from the head. Otherwise the screw bit would spin up and bore itself into the wall.

Then I'd fire the bolt on the back into the roof I was standing on, hit a switch, let the grappler pull me across as the front retracted and the rear unspooled cable, then detach and retract both while I fired the other grappler. I wasn't quite moving at Tarzan pace, but it was faster than walking.

"Be faster if you just teleported," Firecracker grumbled for the fifth time tonight. I rolled my eyes in response.

Even as I moved along, I kept the few bugs I'd found able to brave the cold looking out for anyone on the streets, occasionally adding bloodsight to peek into buildings, but all I found were people sleeping rough inside. A few stirred as I landed on their roof, but nobody woke up.

I was grinning under the armour. I wished I could teleport out in the open, instead of the few times I'd found a warehouse isolated enough to try, but this was a decent substitute. The cold air seemed to find the most miniscule cracks in the armour and worm in like a sadist's knife, and it was starting to snow, but the feeling of constantly ziplining between buildings was wonderfully fun.

When I'd first decided on taking out the Merchants, I'd only thought of attacking their base and taking out the capes in one fell swoop, until Tactical's Thinker power had brought up the problems in that. In retrospect, having most of the Butchers agree with me should have been a warning sign.

I still had no first-hand experience in a fight, let alone against capes, and certainly not enough to take on three at once, with one of them a Tinker in her lair. A few dozen baseline gangbangers would serve as good practice before I took out the leadership.

The other problem was that, contrary to the old adage of 'cut off the head and the body will die', if I decapitated the Merchants, then all the drug dealers and lowlifes that made up their ranks would simply disperse into the streets. That seemed to be the reason why the Protectorate had never simply rolled in with a couple of squads and flattened them- they served as a collection point for the scumbags that the ABB and E88 wouldn't recruit, making them one medium-sized problem instead of a dozen little ones.

So tonight, I'd be taking out a production facility I'd stumbled across while I was carving up old factory machinery for the metal- A meth lab hidden in an old factory, in one of the many facilities that dotted the Docks. The fumes coming out of the chimney were a pretty obvious sign, but in this part of town, nobody cared enough to interfere.

I'd sent my bugs out to scout for me as soon as the location came within range, and by the time I stopped on the roof of the factory, I'd managed to slip bugs onto everyone in there, and I was now tracking their movements in real time.

"This is pretty damn useful," Tactical commented. "Even if we never used the Master power for anything other than this, it's still a huge advantage."

"Feels super weird though," Firecracker noted. "It's like having thousands of fingertips moving around the place."

Vladimir spoke up suddenly- "Hey, think we could use this for shooting? Stick a bug on someone, you'll always know where to aim."

"Hey, yeah!" Firecracker switched her focus to Quarrel. "Come on, don't be grumpy, Q. This could work pretty well with your aiming."

"Piss off."

I switched to bloodsight even as the conversation continued. There were more people in the factory than I'd expected- a delivery maybe? Or had they just invited some friends around to get high with?

Whatever the reason, there were 18 people in there where I'd expected 10 at most. Several were standing around a bunch of tables set near the factory's old brick fireplace, fiddling with the various paraphernalia they'd cobbled together to cook, while the rest were scattered around the place, flopped onto various bits of furniture or leaning against the walls.

I almost jumped right in, but Tactical's Thinker power- which, despite Firecracker's wheedling, I refused to call strategy-sense- drew me to the edge of the roof, to look down at the doors. The Merchants had apparently had enough forethought to post a lookout, a scraggly looking man smoking an equally scraggly rollup, occasionally shivering as the snow settled on him.

I stepped back and fired both grapplers into the roof, gave a quick tug to make sure they were secure, then simply stepped forward and off the edge of the roof. The speed regulators I'd added kicked in after a few steps, slowing my descent to just above walking pace, letting me literally walk down the wall toward the lookout.

"Okay, I'll admit it," Anchorage said grudgingly, "This is pretty cool."

The reluctant compliment was nice, but I was busy trying to focus as the ground approached. The collection of instincts and reflexes that the Butchers had accumulated was a whole other animal to the Butchers themselves, and not as easy to supress. So when I thought about wanting to take out the guard, I had to focus on the non-lethal method, as opposed to breaking his neck, or driving a knife into his brain, or that sweet spot left of the fourth lumbar down that was practically highlighted by Needler's minor Thinker power.

Instead I lowered myself down to him, quiet as a whisper, until our heads were barely a foot away. Then in one movement, I released the grapplers, dropped down behind him, and wrapped my arm around his neck. He immediately struggled, but I used my free hand to jab him in the armpit and thigh with stiff fingers, numbing the nerves there, before covering his mouth to muffle his shouts.

"Could just hit him on the head," Bearskin griped. I rolled my eyes even as the lookout's struggles slowed.

"Yeah, no chance I'd actually hurt him doing that," I thought as sarcastically. Eventually the guy passed out, so I gingerly lowered him to the ground and searched through his filthy jacket. There was a length of pipe tucked inside that I liberated, a dime bag of weed, and a burner phone. I pocketed the phone, then carried the pipe to the double doors, threading it through the handles before bending it in a circle.

With the rest of the Merchants unknowingly trapped inside, I slung the lookout over my shoulder and fired my grappler again, swiftly moving back to the roof. I would have just left him there, but in this kind of cold frostbite was a real concern.

"Oh, come oooon," Rotter complained. "He's supposed to be the enemy, remember? You don't have to give a shit about them!"

"Maybe you don't, but I do."

Rotter tried to press the point, but I gave him a shove to quiet him as I reached the roof and jogged to the stairwell. The door wasn't locked, so I crept in and down the stairs to a balcony overlooking the factory floor. I let the lookout down and tied his wrists to a railing for good measure, then checked the Merchants over with my own eyes for the first time.

Most of them were now gathered around a fire in a barrel, passing around a joint and a bottle of liquor. The rest were still busy cooking up the meth, wearing cobbled-together protective gear that somehow made them look even less threatening than the guys getting stoned.

I briefly considered waiting for some of them to get up and wander off so I could pick them off one by one, then dismissed the thought. None of these guys could be a threat to me even if they had heavy weaponry.

"Hey, how about a dramatic entrance?" Firecracker directed my attention upward to the girders holding the roof up. I quickly realised what she meant, and a horrible grin spread itself across my face.

I took a few steps back, then broke into a run and leapt off the side of the balcony. The nearest girder was 10 feet away and two feet higher. I landed on it easily, bending my knees to take the noise out of it. From there, I simply crept along the girder until I was just above the circle of increasingly wasted Merchants.

"God I love these moments," Vladimir sighed. Of course the ambush specialist would enjoy this.

I put the thought aside, and simply took one small step forward, plummeting off the girder.

I landed just outside the circle, barely bothering to bend my knees. There was a shout of surprise at the loud thump, which was joined with cries of fear when I grabbed the two guys closest to me by their collars and threw them bodily across the circle into others.

The woman holding the bottle of hooch tried to throw it at me, but she was so wasted that she missed by three feet. Meanwhile the guy who'd been holding the joint- he was on his knees, clutching his throat and retching. A wisp of smoke trailed from his mouth.

"Hahahahahaa holy shit!" Firecracker gasped, "He swallowed the fucking blunt! Oh god, we shoulda had a camera!"

I winced at the thought of how much that hurt, even as I brought my arms up. One guy to my right came swinging wildly at me- I deflected the blow and popped him in the sternum, all with my right arm, then threw him into the black guy who was charging at me with a wrench. They went down in a tumble of limbs and groaning.

The woman who'd been drinking last tried to run, so even as I slapped the switchblade out of a guy's hand and jammed a finger into the nerve cluster behind his ear to drop him, I kicked a chair across the floor to knock her over; she hit the floor hard, but judging by the swearing, she wasn't badly hurt.

By now, the others had armed themselves, though none of them were attacking, too intimidated by how I'd laid out their friends. I didn't give them the chance to find their courage, striding forward to close the distance.

A grubby guy with a neck tattoo panicked and dropped his stick, trying to circle around me to get away. I let him go as the others charged forward, riding the instincts to make it through. I slapped one guy out with a backhand, shattered the bottle swung at me with a jab of my fingers, drove an elbow into ribs, headbutted the guy with ratty dreadlocks, then threw a back-kick into the gut of Neck Tattoo, folding him up like a piece of paper.

Two heads clapped together cartoon style, a flurry of jabs to the ribs and a chop to the side of the neck dropped three more. The remaining guy took one look at me as I lowered the last of his buddies to the floor and bolted. To my disgust, the fly I'd sneaked onto his pants reported a feeling of wetness.

The meth cooks had all made for the door as soon as I'd dropped, and had been reduced to banging on it futilely as I strode over to them. I couldn't even be bothered to run after them- better to let them tire themselves out.

They started turning as I got close, the fear on their faces visible even through the goggles they were still wearing. Wet Pants was still banging on the door, screaming every swear word I'd ever heard of, and a few I needed the Butcher's memories to understand.

Then one of them, fat and sweaty, pulled the kitchen gloves off his hands and threw them to the ground with a scream. The danger sense pinged, and I hustled forward, but not fast enough to stop him from pulling a gun and getting a shot off.

He was holding it sideways in a way that no actual gunman ever uses, and his arm was waving wildly, so it must have been sheer blind luck that had the bullet hit me smack between the eyes. My head was thrown back from the force, helmet ringing like a bell.

"Holy fuck, the guy actually hit us?" Stoneknapper exclaimed. Nemean was not so calm about it.

"Gut him," she snarled. I let out a long, rattling breath as I lowered my head to meet his gaze. The gun slipped from nerveless fingers to clatter on the cement, followed by his knees as he collapsed with a whimper.

I turned to the rest of them. "You know," I said conversationally, "you could just surrender."

A couple of them looked terrified enough to consider it, until the shortest jumped forward and tried to punch me in the jaw. I leaned back to dodge and slapped him on the back of the head to down him, but the damage was done- the rest bolted forward in a shrieking mass. I groaned in frustration, blocking a fist with an elbow, a kick with a back-hand, and caught a crowbar in my hand before yanking it out of the guy's palm. I tossed it aside and pushed forward, laying them out with quick punches and a few low kicks to sweep their feet out from under them.

Just as I punched out another guy, another dove for the discarded gun, snatching it up with his left while he pulled his own with his right. I rushed forward as he pulled the triggers, clamping my hands down over the barrels as he unloaded the guns, screaming all the while.

Finally, the gunshots were replaced with empty clicks, and he dropped them, stumbling back from me. I let the guns slip from my fingers, then turned my palms up and opened my fingers, letting him see the flattened bullets I held before I tossed them aside and grabbed him by the collar.

Tock Tick wasn't so impressed. "God, he ruined the palms. They're dented all to hell now."

Stoneknapper shrugged. "So what? She can straighten them out easy."

"That's not the point," Tock retorted impatiently. "The armour couldn't withstand small arms fire, ergo it's insufficient."

"Pistol fire from point blank range to the weakest part of the suit," Tactical pointed out. "I'd say it held up great."

Even while I eavesdropped on their conversation, I lifted the wannabe sharpshooter off the floor. "Come quietly," I said with forced patience. "It'll be easier on you-"

The guy sneered and spat in my face. "Fuck you, you greased-up cunt! You think you can fuck with Merchants? Skidmark's gonna pull you apart from asshole to mouth-hole, and I'm gonna watch-!"

I spun and spiked him into the ground so hard he bounced- I caught him by the collar on the rebound, lifted him once more, and let him fall to the ground with a thud and a yelp. Then I dropped to a knee beside him and drew back an arm, ready to beat this stupid bastard into a literal pulp.

The Butchers cheered me on as I curled my fingers into a fist and stared down at his head, the fear blooming on the face of this little shit who thought he could talk shit to us and live-

I rammed all the Butchers down into the furthest recesses of my mind as hard and fast as I could. The sudden loss of mental noise and emotion was like cold water down my back, but I welcomed it. I uncurled my fist and turned the guy over, hands moving in a practiced motion to pull his wrists together and zip them up, even as he struggled some more and groaned.

I let him swear and yell as I grabbed him and a few of the others to take over to the fire, my body going through the motions. Inside my head I was reeling, even with the numbed emotions that came from pushing everyone down.

I'd lost control. Not for long enough to kill someone, but long enough to go too far, to hurt someone just because they'd made me angry.

Worst of all, I hadn't been thinking in terms of I, Taylor Hebert. I'd been thinking in terms of us, the Butcher. They'd always repaid any slight or insult in blood- and if there wasn't a grievance, they'd make one up, or just fight for the hell of it.

The collective raged and struggled inside the darkness of my mind as I dragged each of the Merchants over to the seats by the fire and ziptied their wrists and ankles in a numb haze, their groaned insults and moans of discomfort barely reaching me. I had enough presence of mind to take their phones as well before I wandered over to the workbenches.

I relaxed my grip on Flinch as I walked, feeling a measure of emotion trickle into my mind as he came up out of the darkness- I trusted him not to encourage me to maim and murder, at least. He didn't say anything as I searched through the equipment laid out on the tables, pocketing the contents of the jar labelled 'Expenses'. Possibly that was their funds to buy chemicals and more equipment.

At length Flinch cleared his throat. "Www- www- wwhat about the other g-guy?" I didn't remember what he meant until he nudged my attention toward the balcony and the stairwell at the opposite end of the building.

Right, the lookout. Best to keep him with the others. I started toward the stairs.

"Y-you didn't kill anyone."

I leapt up to the balcony- only ten feet or so. The lookout had come around by now and was straining against the ties around his wrist- as soon as I showed up he stopped. I cut the ties and slung him over my shoulder, ignoring his renewed struggles while I answered Flinch.

"I came too close. Maybe I'm not ready for this."

Flinch went quiet for a long while, long enough for me to pop the lookout down with the rest and re-tie his wrists, long enough I started thinking Flinch had curled up again. Then-

"I th-thought that too, m-my first night. Y-you're doing better th-than I did."

I sighed and sat down on one of the tables, pulling out my burner phone. "Thanks, Flinch." He gave a mental shrug and curled up again, that one conversation exhausting him.

I tapped 911 into the phone, but hesitated over the call button.

Even numb as I was, the second-hand anger of the Butchers was seeping in as they inched up out of the dark- still too quiet to make out their words, but close enough to understand the tone. Angry not at the guy who spat on me, but at me for resisting them once again- it rattled around inside me like a lump of hot coal, making every breath taste like fire.

That they were angry at me was a distant comfort- I'd beaten them again, even by a narrow margin, and I'd celebrate that later. But right now I needed a second.

I put the phone down and turned my back to the fire, bringing my hands to my jaw, flipping the hidden catches on the mouth guard to take it off. The feeling of cold air on my mouth was a balm after so long in the stifling helmet- Note to self; improve ventilation and airflow without compromising filter; maybe an automatic pump to regulate it, with a mesh of activated charcoal? But that could wait for later.

I tilted my head back and took long slow breaths, watching them fog in the air as I breathed some of the rage out of myself.

--

Likes and comments give me the strength to go on!

Last edited: Mar 9, 2021

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HowlingGuardian

Jun 14, 2020

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HowlingGuardian

HowlingGuardian

Jun 21, 2020

#636

Here is chapter 5, the last one in this arc! I'll do an interlude next week before moving on to the next arc.

On a related note, I need some original powersets for some OCs, so if you have any ideas that you'd like to see get a mention, or if you just want to ask a question, tag me in the comments. I do try to read through what you guys say on here, but if it's not tagged there's a good chance I'll miss it.

--

1.5

Saturday 22nd January, The Docks

"Brockton Bay 911, what is your emergency?"

"Multiple injured criminals in a meth lab, corner of, uh-"

"Broadstreet and Vine," Vladimir supplied. I repeated the address into the phone; I could make out the sounds of a keyboard as the man on the phone entered the address into the system.

"There's a lot of drugs in here as well, I don't know what you guys do for that, but I guess they can be charged with possession at least."

There was a chorus of shouts from the Merchants, all tied up and dumped on the chairs. I wished I'd had something to gag them with as well. I cupped my free hand around my mouth and the phone to keep out the litany of curse words.

"Just to check sir, are you a cape? Can I get your identification?"

"Sir?" I almost shouted down the phone. The guy backpedalled immediately.

"Sorry, ma'am, I think the line's not too good. Can I please get your identification?"

"There goes your chance to disguise yourself as the opposite sex," Stoneknapper pointed out.

"Didn't ask you, Knapper," I countered indignantly. It might have been the smarter option to disguise myself that thoroughly, but I wanted to hold onto this much at least.

"Elpis. I'm a new hero, first night out."

"How do you spell that?"

"E-l-p-i-s, that's Echo Lima Papa India Sierra," I recited, the NATO phonetic alphabet rolling off my tongue with ease. Another odd use of Tactical's power.

More keyboard clattering. "Okay, we can have a couple of patrol cars to you in a few minutes. Are any of them injured?"

I shook my head, then remembered that he couldn't see that. "No, I checked them all over, nothing worse than heavy bruising." I mentally crossed my fingers at the slight lie- while they were mostly okay, the guy I'd bounced off the floor would be pissing blood for a day or so. I consoled myself that he'd recover quickly, if painfully.

"See, when you give them to the cops, they just get out on the streets again," Bearskin sneered. "When we take them down, they stay down. Aren't you being a better hero if you stop the problem completely- ?"

I pushed Bearskin down for that, hiding my worry carefully. Bearskin wasn't the most cunning of the Butchers, but if he was changing tack to try and persuade me like that, then the others might start coming up with arguments that would be harder for me to refuse.

"He's got a point," Anchorage said slyly, confirming my fear. "You could've just torched the place and left them inside- way easier to do, and it stops-"

I shoved her down as well, just as the dispatcher spoke again. "Okay, we'll have cars at your location in 3 minutes. Can you stay that long?"

"Uh, do I have to?" I didn't think I was ready to talk to the police, but would it be better for me to give a statement, let people see me, and paint myself as an upstanding hero?

"You don't have to," the dispatcher admitted reluctantly, "but it'd help us a lot to get your statement."

I idly picked up one of the phones I'd confiscated off the Merchants- judging from how he started thrashing about and renewed his yelling, the fat guy who'd shot me in the head was its owner. I fiddled with it as I tried to come up with an answer to the dispatcher.

To my surprise, the phone unlocked with ease. "Not like addicts are gonna be good at thinking ahead," Firecracker pointed out.

I flicked to the main screen- and immediately recoiled at the sight. By contrast, the Butchers whooped and cheered at the image Fat Guy had set as the background.

"Oh, that's the best kind of nasty!" Rotter laughed, poring over the obscene sight. Anchorage radiated agreement.

"Reminds me of a poster I used to have in my closet," she said with a note of lusty nostalgia. "Got it out of a girly mag when I was 14, kept it in there for years."

"Elpis? Are you still there?" The dispatcher's voice broke me out of my horrified disgust, and I put the phone back to my ear while I flicked through a few circles of the menu and brought up Fat Guy's recent texts, ignoring the groans of dismay and demands for more inside my mind.

"Yeah, sorry, I, ah, I got… distracted. I'll stick around and give a statement, but I don't think I can stay too long. I might have more to do tonight." Possibly a lot more. Fat Guy's texts had lots of map links in them, related to conversations with other people in the Merchants. Clearly Fat Guy was relatively well connected.

This phone alone was a gold mine of information. There was details of drop points, weed farms, places and times for deliveries. I tucked my phone between shoulder and head while I brought out my notepad to start copying down as much as I could. I spared half a second to realise I'd never been able to get the hang of that before- something learned from the collective.

Fat Guy was struggling even harder now, yelling insults at the top of his voice. Pretty brave considering he'd seen me tank a bullet to the forehead.

"Elpis, what's that noise?" The dispatcher cut into my thoughts again, sounding vaguely worried.

"Well, seems these guys are kind of ticked off that I just took them all down and tied them up." I finished with Fat Guy's phone and picked up the next. Nobody reacted when I picked it up, so I wasn't sure whose it was, but it was similarly without a password. Not nearly as much intel on it though.

"Still got a lot though," Tactical noted with a satisfied tone. "I always love going up against idiots, especially idiots with no clue about opsec."

I agreed with him, even as I added a few more notes. "Quick question," I asked the dispatcher, "How far off are those patrol cars?"

"About- let me see- four minutes."

"Got it. I'll have the doors open for you. I'm going to hang up now, just to keep my hands free." He started to say something else, but I ended the call and tucked it back into its compartment. Technically a lie, but I wanted to concentrate on the phones.

Unfortunately, it seemed Fat Guy had been the one highest in the hierarchy, because the rest of the phones had little to no new info for me. It seemed like most of these guys weren't Merchants proper but friends invited over to kill their braincells in company. Still, it was enough to point me towards a few more operations I could shut down.

A line of bugs I'd laid out across the road outside was suddenly broken in two places. Car tyres. I tossed the last of the phones onto the table and got up. The Merchants started up again as I headed toward the front door, undaunted by my lack of reaction to their shouts.

There were two police cars and a large van parked outside, as far as the few insects I'd collected could guess, and bloodsight confirmed six people getting out of them as I reached the doors.

"Hey genius, you barred the doors, remember?" Quarrel jeered. "Didn't think that one through, huh? Now you're gonna have to go all the way back around and out to-"

I grabbed a door handle in each hand and gave a hard yank. I'd expected the handles would break off, maybe part of the doors, enough for them to open up. Instead, both doors came straight off their hinges, leaving me holding the double doors in their entirety.

Muramasa rolled his eyes. "If you had listened to me and brought a sword you could simply have cut the bar and opened the doors without this mess, but no, you had to insist on nothing but your bare hands, not even trained. Now we look ridiculous."

Unsure of what else to do, I tossed them to the side with a clatter and turned back to the cops who were now staring at me. I could make out which ones had met capes before by their wary expressions, and which ones hadn't by their wide-eyed gawking.

I struggled to think of something to say, not helped by the Butchers deliberately recalling all the times they'd beaten, shot, stabbed, and otherwise attacked cops. Anchorage in particular was running the cheesegrater incident through her thoughts on a loop, and she hadn't even been responsible for that one.

I went with the first thing that came to mind. "Uh, hi?" I said, raising a hand. "Good evening- or, I guess it's morning, I don't-" I stopped and tried again. "I'm Elpis. New hero. Got the Merchants in there," I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder, just as a very loud 'Fuck you!' echoed from the inside.

One of the cops nodded and stepped forward. "Alright, we'll take it from here. Can you stick around so we can get a statement of how you did all this?"

"Yeah, sure." I waited until he'd started into the factory to follow him, and after a second, so did the rest.

"Sorry about the doors," I said to fill the silence. "I just built this suit, I'm still kinda getting used to the range of strength. I should probably build some tools in or something…"

"Ah, don't worry about it," one of the cops said. "Those doors looked like they were about to fall off anyway."

The first cop whistled as we reached the tied-up Merchants still trying to wriggle free of the zipties. "It take you long to get all these guys squared away?" he asked, raising his voice above the shouts.

I shrugged. "Not really. I spent more time tying them up than fighting them, and more time waiting for you guys than that. Not that I'm criticising or anything," I added hastily, "I just mean it wasn't difficult to get them."

He shrugged right back- I noted from his sleeve that he was a sergeant. "No skin off my nose. Alright guys, let's get on with it." He motioned to the other cops, and they moved in closer, hauling the Merchants upright, reciting the Miranda rights and cutting the ties on their legs to march them toward the door. Some of the Merchants struggled and swore some more, but others seemed to realise they couldn't really get out of it and went quietly.

"Make sure to search 'em before you get 'em in the wagon," the sergeant called. "Remember that, Finster?"

"Come on sarge, that was one time," Finster complained, hauling the guy with the neck tattoo up and making a show of patting him down.

"Yeah, one time when you missed a matchbox full of snow," another cop taunted as he prodded the lookout guy into moving. There was a round of laughter from the rest of the cops.

Something occurred to me as I looked over the remaining Merchants. "Hey, that guy there might need to get his throat looked at," I said, pointing. "He swallowed his blunt when I showed up. I gave him some water and a once-over, but I'm no doctor."

"He swallowed it?" The sergeant looked confused for a second. "Wait, while it was lit?"

Firecracker started snickering again as I explained. "Yeah, so maybe want to have him looked at? If nothing else, he won't be able to answer any questions if his throat's messed up."

"Hey sarge," Finster called as he finished searching the guy I'd bounced, "None of these guys have phones on them."

I raised a hand. "Sorry, that one's on me. I took them to look through their messages."

The sergeant turned to look at me with a crestfallen look. "What?" he said weakly.

"Well, I wanted to see if I could get anything on their operations…" I trailed off at the look on his face. It reminded me of Dad when I'd tried to make breakfast by myself as a kid and wound up flooding the kitchen. "Sorry," I finished lamely.

The sergeant rubbed his forehead. "And I suppose you got your fingerprints all over them too-"

"No, no, I didn't," I held up my hand and waggled my metal-clad fingers. I'd even wiped the gauntlets with a cloth after putting them on to keep my fingerprints off the metal, after Tactical had mentioned a guy who'd been caught despite wearing gloves, because he'd left the fingerprints of one hand on the outside of the other glove while putting them on.

The sergeant perked up. "Well, alright then. I guess we can still work out which phones are whose back at the station."

"This one belongs to the fat guy, not sure what his name is," I pointed it out on the table, "It's got loads of intel on it. Delivery times, caches, whatever. Doesn't even have a password."

"Hot damn." The sergeant picked up the phone in one gloved hand. "Glad I sprung for gloves that work on touchscreens," he muttered as he hit start.

"Uh, you should know-"

"Jesus!"

I winced. "Yeah, that." The sergeant had gone red in the face.

"I don't know if it's illegal to have something like that on your phone, but I'm gonna try and charge the guy anyway!" He stuck the phone in an evidence bag with jerky motions, unaware of how the Butchers were laughing.

"Ahhhahaha! Wassamatta piggy, never seen the good shit before?" Anchorage howled.

Nemean joined in the conversation for once. "Don't know what he's upset at. It's good porn."

I cleared my throat. "You guys need me to do anything else? I could carry some of those guys if you want."

The sergeant nodded, still looking disgusted. "Yeah. That'd be a help. And we'll need your statement."

--

"And then I called 911 and started taking notes off their phones, and that's about it," I concluded. Finster stopped the recorder he'd been holding and tucked it back into his pocket.

"Okay, that should do it. But," he fiddled with his flashlight awkwardly, "I mean, you really shouldn't have thrown that guy like that. His back's just one big bruise."

"I know," I said guiltily. "I lost my temper, forgot how much the suit amps my strength, and…" I shrugged helplessly.

"I still can't believe you told them," Needler complained. "All your talk of trying to avoid being associated with us, and you admit to brutalising criminals the first chance you get."

"I told them because it's the right thing to do," I snapped, fed up with the collective prodding at my guilt. "Unlike you guys, I don't take pride in being a horrible person."

"Give it time," Rotter said, laughing even as I forced him down.

"Am I in trouble?" I asked tentatively.

At that, Sergeant Locke walked over from where he'd sat the last of the haul down in the wagon. "You're not in trouble with us at least. This is a damn good haul for us. Still," he gave me a stern look, "I may not be PRT, but we are going to be passing this along to them, and I know damn well heroes have to hold back some. This better be the first and last time I hear you spiking somebody like a Thanksgiving football."

Despite the fact I could have folded this man in half like a piece of dry toast, I felt cowed by the air of paternal disapproval. "Yessir."

"You fucking traitor," Anchorage spat. I contemplated shoving her down, but considering her history with police, I decided to leave her be.

Sergeant Locke relaxed. "Alright then. Is that you done for the night?"

I shook my head. "I've got some great info right now- I want to act on it before the Merchants move again."

"Yes!" Vladimir cheered. "More action tonight, folks!" There was a brutal cheer at his words.

Locke huffed in surprise, his breath fogging in the air. "Damn, you're eager," he muttered, before raising his voice. "Well, best of luck to you then. Just make sure to call it in when you find something."

I nodded. "I look forward to working with you guys," I said politely. It seemed like the right thing to say.

After a second of awkwardly trying to think of something else to say, I gave up on holding a conversation and started walking away across the street.

Just as I'd brought out a grappler to get to the rooftops, I heard Finster call out. "Hey, I forgot to ask! What the heck does Elpis mean anyway?"

I half-turned to see the officers looking at me. Apparently they all wanted to know as well. I shrugged and fired the grappler up and out behind me.

"It means 'hope'." Without another word I set the grappler to reel in, and zipped up the wall in one long movement, pushing off the wall with my feet to flip backward and land on the roof's edge, looking down at the cops and the Merchants.

I took one last peek at Finster's slack-jawed look of amazement, and then I turned away, heading east.

"So what now?" Tactical said, getting down to business as usual.

"I've taken out a lab already. So I've hurt their production, that leaves their stockpiles of drugs and their money." I broke into a run as I reached the other side of the roof, clearing the gap to the next building in one long bound.

"I'm not going to hurt anyone else tonight," I warned them. There was a round of disbelieving and mocking noises, but I held firm. "I mean it."

"So what are you going to do?" Tock Tick asked reasonably. I felt my face split into a horrible grin.

"I'm thinking I'll knock over a cache of money."

"A cache of cash," Bearskin commented. Needler turned her attention to him in disgust.

"Are you proud of yourself? Are you proud of that stupid joke you just made?"

I shook my head and continued onward, focusing on the journey.

The inside of my head might look like a madhouse, and I might have slipped up, but I'd caught myself before I could do anything irreparable, and scored some goodwill with the police.

I might be stuck with the Butchers, but I was finally starting to feel like I had them under control.

--

As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to ask me questions. I'll try to answer a few tonight. Otherwise, just like and comment to feed the motivation machine!

As I said above, if you have an idea for a powerset or an OC you'd like to see get a cameo in the story, there's an opportunity in the next update.

Also, if anyone else wants to volunteer to help as a beta-reader, send me a message. Segev is doing a fantastic job and I thank him for it, but he doesn't have to do all the work, eh?

Last edited: Mar 9, 2021

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HowlingGuardian

Jun 21, 2020

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HowlingGuardian

HowlingGuardian

Jun 27, 2020

#705

AN: First Interlude, and I'm proud of myself for six weeks of regular updates and the fantastic response from all you guys!

As always, tag me if you want me to answer your questions, or message me if you'd like a more extended conversation.

Also, I've decided to update the summary, because as several of you have pointed out, it doesn't say much about the story. I wrote it like that so it wouldn't spoil the Butcher reveal, but I think we're way past that, y'know?

Special mentions go to FunctionalityOfSystems, ScholarshipOwl, and RagnarokAscendant for the OCs mentioned in this chapter. I loved all the ideas submitted, but there's only so much I can fit in at a time, and some were a little too complex for me to work into the story.

With all that said, here's the story!

--

Interlude 1

Saturday Jan 22nd, PRT ENE HQ

Emily rubbed at her forehead. She didn't drink, couldn't drink, hadn't been medically capable of a drink in just over a decade, but a situation like this was making her want one.

"Do we have any idea," she ground out, "why the Thinkers can't come to a conclusion on this?"

Neither visitor volunteered a response. Not Armsmaster, sat in front of her desk on a reinforced chair, power armour freshly polished to a glossy blue, with his signature halberd on his back. The head was slightly different from last time she'd seen it- apparently the upgrade to his EMP generator that he'd submitted had been installed.

Not Miss Militia next to him, in her neatly tailored fatigues. Other people in her situation might have fiddled with their hair, the stars-and-stripes scarf around the lower half of her face, or the matching sash around her waist. Instead she was fiddling with her power- green and black energy arcing from one hand to the other restlessly, forming into a variety of different knives before dissolving again.

After a moment, Emily sighed and lowered her gaze to the screen on her desk, showing the message from the PRT's Thinker division Watchdog, with their answer to what she personally considered a simple question; What is the status of the entity known as Butcher XV?

She hadn't really expected a response along the lines of 'Butcher is permanently dead', but somewhere deep in her soul she'd hoped. Almost as good would have been 'Butcher is weak and recovering' or 'Butcher has returned to Boston'. Mostly she'd been braced for the blow of 'Butcher is building their strength' or 'Butcher is preparing for a surprise attack'.

Still, even accounting for just how notoriously unreliable Thinkers could be compared to every other category of cape, and the nonsensical ways in which powers like precognition and clairvoyance might express themselves, the answer should have been along the same lines, even if that was in terms of '2 out of 10', or 'purple shading to blue'.

Instead, there were a dozen or so results, and almost no two of them were alike. Butcher XV is active, Butcher XV is inactive, Butcher XV does not exist.

"Alright," she said finally, turning back to the leader and second-in-command of East-North-East's heroes, "since we don't have any clear answers from them, we proceed as if Butcher XV will show up to lead the Teeth any day now, and we'll keep to that assumption until we get a better answer."

Armsmaster leaned forward slightly. "I've updated the list of possible leads on the Butcher's identity." He unfolded a small keyboard from his left forearm and started typing, accompanied by several small twitches on his face as he manipulated his HUD via facial gestures.

Emily clicked on the request for access that popped up on her screen, and the screen changed to show several images of local capes, with Butcher XIV's face at the top and the long list of Butcher's known abilities next to it. The display screen on the wall switched on to show the same, so Militia could see.

"There still haven't been any signs of activity from the Teeth, or reports of extreme violence from new or unknown capes," Armsmaster began. "However, we have had some changes to the list. For starters, we can eliminate Spektacular from the list of suspects; he's resurfaced at last and hasn't displayed any unusual behaviour- more than is typical for him, at any rate."

Spektacular's image was highlighted, and a short summary appeared next to it- Stranger/Shaker, a rogue who could create illusions, working at the local theatre. Other than the suspicion that his power extended beyond just illusions, he wouldn't have been considered if he hadn't disappeared right around the time Butcher died. The fact that the insects that had killed Butcher were confirmed to be very real had eased their suspicions of Spektacular, but they still needed confirmation.

"Can you elaborate on that? I'd prefer something more concrete than 'not acting funny'."

A muscle twitched in Armsmaster's jaw at the jab, but he ploughed on with his explanation regardless. Possibly it wasn't wise to needle Armsmaster's ego, but then again the man was in desperate need of a reality check.

"Velocity found him last night on patrol, coming out of the theatre. It turns out he took some time off for mental health reasons. He quickly figured out that we were investigating leads on Butcher, and actually told Velocity his civilian identity as an alibi- Spektacular had a doctor's appointment last week, including a blood test."

Emily caught on to the line of thinking. "And since the needle went in, that means no toughened skin or Brute rating."

"Precisely." Spektacular's image faded from the screen, and the next one expanded to fill the space; this time it was a video, grainy security camera footage, showing one man inside a storeroom of some sort.

"This next one was pulled off Parahumans Online." Onscreen, the man teleported around the room frequently, each time producing a shockwave that sent the shelves around him toppling.

"Explosive teleporting," Emily muttered. "That's a strong possibility."

Miss Militia spoke up for the first time. "The data analysts are running through the full video, but the quality isn't good. Still, they think that the cape shown might be exploding as they disappear, rather than at the arrival point. Plus the crime scene didn't show any scorch marks, or signs of other powers."

It always had to be complicated. "Alright. We'll keep an eye out for this one. What's next?"

The next image was a still from dashcam footage. Several police officers were manhandling what looked like homeless people into a van, while an armoured figure stood off to the side.

"A new cape, reported in the early hours of this morning. A solo hero called Elpis. Claims to be a Tinker, used power armour and a grappling hook to hit a Merchant meth lab and handed them over to the police, then in a separate encounter, she found where the Merchants were storing some of their cash and emptied it out."

Emily raised an eyebrow. "Unless she handed the Merchants over in pieces, that doesn't sound like the Butcher."

"True," Armsmaster admitted with a shrug. "I included her more for completion's sake."

Miss Militia was reading the police report off the wall screen. "Nonviolent takedowns, only exception was a man who emptied two magazines at her, cooperated with the police- that definitely doesn't sound like Butcher."

"True. Put her at low priority unless she gets violent," Emily instructed. "And make sure we get someone to talk to her, definitely try to sell her on joining us. We could always use more Tinkers."

"Understood." Armsmaster hit a few keys, and Elpis's image shrank down to be replaced by the next.

There were several more capes on the list- heroes, villains and rogues, all independents, and none of them with anything concrete to tie them to the Butcher.

The whole thing reminded Emily of a training exercise back when she'd been just a trooper. The training area had been filled with a dozen dummy IEDs, one of which was supposed to be the 'real' one. The entire exercise had left her on edge, jumping at shadows, because she'd had to second-guess every choice and double-check every decision.

She'd absolutely hated that exercise.

Finally, Armsmaster wrapped up with the final cape on the list- a vigilante in a massive suit of armour, with a crude club in one hand. The whole ensemble must have weighed half a ton, but he didn't seem at all encumbered.

"Konnigit has been ranked with low possibility of inheriting the Butcher powers, but his control over his metal combined with the strength to move it was similar enough to warrant a place on the list. He's also been noted to use excessive force- several of the criminals he stopped were brought in with broken bones."

Emily grimaced. Another violent vigilante on the streets. "Do we have any idea what the name is supposed to mean? Sounds Germanic- I don't want to see another new Empire cape."

Armsmaster shook his head a fraction. "Intelligence is checking the name, but they still haven't matched it to any European language-" He broke off at the sound of a small but heartfelt groan from Miss Militia; a rare break from her usual professionalism.

Emily regarded her blandly. "Care to share?"

Miss Militia's file noted that she'd undergone a lot of PR training in order to maximise what expression she had with her mouth perpetually covered. The pained look in her eyes seemed to prove that the training had paid off.

"You said it was Konnigit? Pronounced just like that?"

"That's right," Armsmaster confirmed bemusedly. "You've heard it before?"

"Yes," Militia sighed. "It was in a Monty Python film."

"…What?"

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In the scene where King Arthur and his knights arrive at a castle occupied with French soldiers, the soldier speaking to them says, quote 'Ah blow mah nose at you, so-called Arthur King! You and all your silly English konnnnnigits!' unquote."

There was a pause as both Emily and Armsmaster tried to wrap their heads around Miss Militia quoting a British comedy film, including the accents.

Armsmaster cleared his throat. "How-?"

"Mouse Protector."

"Right."

"Getting back on track," Emily said pointedly, "Konnigit is a Brute with some form of metallokinesis and signs of extreme violence, so right now he's our biggest suspect as Butcher XV. Try to track him down and confirm things one way or another, and for god's sake avoid provoking him. Keep looking for anyone else that might fit the bill; try looking into possible trigger events around where the Swarm showed up as well, see if anything pops up."

The two capes nodded in unison. "Alright, I think that's as much as we're going to get out of this meeting. Dismissed."

Only once the two of them had shut the door behind them did Emily let out a groan and rub at her forehead again.

Butcher and the Teeth had been pushed out of the city years before she'd become Director of PRT ENE, seemingly never to return, and she'd been glad of it. Trumps were rare and dangerous, but a Trump that only got stronger and more dangerous when someone killed them was a unique problem. The PRT casefile on Butcher still did not have any definite ideas on how to contain something like that.

One of the few things she'd never envied Director Armstrong over in Boston was having to deal with that walking clusterfuck. Except now said clusterfuck was somewhere in her city, dangerous in a whole new way, with one of the most aggressive gangs on the East Coast waiting to follow their orders, and the bastard was still refusing to send her any reinforcements from his overstocked roster of capes because the clusterfuck still hadn't resurfaced!

Even if Butcher wasn't coming back any time soon, the gangs were getting bolder as their fear of the unknown enemy was gradually replaced by their customary arrogance. The E88 were showing signs of arming up and closing in on the Teeth's last known locations, getting ready to drive them out. The ABB were similarly moving- Lung himself had been spotted a few times, seemingly inspecting the troops.

The thought of what would be created if Lung killed the Butcher was something that Emily avoided thinking about as hard as possible.

Even the Merchants were poking their heads out again, most notably a rash of car thefts that would probably wind up as part of Squealer's latest monstrosity.

And all that Emily had to stand between them and the city was a handful of emotionally damaged overgrown children, another handful of emotionally damaged actual children, and a few hundred brave troopers who were nevertheless completely outmatched against most of the capes in the city.

Business as usual.

Emily indulged herself with five more seconds of frustration before she straightened up and brought up the latest reports from the Intelligence department. Nobody had ever said this job would be easy, but she still intended to do it.

…God she wanted that drink.

--

As always, I'm willing to answer questions, just tag me and I'll get to you!

Last edited: Mar 9, 2021

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HowlingGuardian

Jun 27, 2020

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Threadmarks 2.1

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HowlingGuardian

HowlingGuardian

Jul 5, 2020

#900

AN: Since both of my beta readers are currently occupied, this chapter is presented without editing. Spare a thought for RustyWayFinder, since he's prepping for a job interview, among more personal things I'll not mention.

2.1

Sunday Jan 23rd, The Docks

"Boooooored. Bored, bored, borororororororrred," Firecracker chanted. I gave the mental equivalent of rolling my eyes even as I kept looking through my scope at the target. I was personally hoping this didn't take too much longer- I'd told Dad I'd be wandering around the Lord's Street Market this afternoon, so I wanted to finish up before he started to worry.

Bearskin joined in on the complaints. "We've been sat out here for an hour already. They aren't coming- get off your ass and go crack some skulls!"

"You guys saw my memories of inheriting, remember?" Stoneknapper cut in. "Breaking into a Tinker's hideout is never an easy thing to do."

I shifted position from my perch on the edge of an apartment building's rooftop, but I didn't bother to join the argument- especially when Tock Tick started sniping at the lot of them. After a second's thought, I poured myself another cupful of tea from my thermos and took a sip.

The weather was still frigid at best around this time of year, and even though it was early afternoon the temperature was barely above freezing. I'd made sure to wear double layers of thermals under my undersuit, and packed a hot drink. Jasmine tea, at Muramasa's insistence.

Truthfully, I could have just jumped right into the old mechanic's shop I was staking out and started taking out the Merchants inside, but I was hoping to make a much bigger catch today. This site seemed to be serving as a place for the Merchants to bring the cars they'd stolen, in order for them to carve them up and strip them for parts. Which meant that maybe, if I was patient, I could take out the Merchant's most important member by myself.

Skidmark might have been the leader of the Merchants, but a low-level Shaker with terrible choice in names and a severe case of meth mouth couldn't have kept a gang running in the Bay by himself. The real muscle was Squealer, the only Tinker in any of the gangs.

Her speciality was vehicles, and the images I'd dug up on the web all showed a theme of being grossly over-engineered and heavily armoured to the point of being able to treat small buildings as something to be driven through. But those were her big projects, for when the Merchants wanted to try and push against the other gangs. Most of her creations were regular cars that were souped up to be able to outrun the cops and still haul around the various drugs the Merchants dealt.

"You're learning," Tactical noted approvingly. "Tinkers are one of the first enemies to be removed- they can produce such a wide set of options that they're a nightmare to fight."

"Well, if she does show up, it'll be Tinker against Tinker. If I can get her while she's out of her ride, she'll be an easy target."

A couple of insects laying on the road around the corner died in unison as something ran over them. I turned my scope toward the sensation just in time to see what looked like an armour-plated truck cab turn onto the street with incongruous quiet, cutting through the thin dusting of snow on the ground. The snow ploughs didn't come to areas as shitty as this after all.

"God, it even looks like it was made by someone on drugs," Tock Tick said with a tone of disgust. The truck was bristling with extra antenna and lights, including a few that looked like disco lights. The wheels had blades sprouting from the axles, the grill had jaw-like plates on the front, and the side had lurid graffiti painted on, including the Merchant symbol of a large blue M with two vertical lines, like a dollar bill. A short, heavy looking trailer rode on the back, ugly welding lines marking out where armour plates had been added on.

It had to be Squealer's work, which probably meant Squealer herself was driving. I put away the scope as the truck trundled down the road toward the garage and stood up, creeping forward to follow along the rooftops.

The truck stopped in front of the garage and reversed toward one of the doors, then stopped entirely. I snuck a gnat onto the underside to confirm there weren't any vibrations from the engine.

"I wanna drive that thing," Firecracker said suddenly.

"Are you serious?" Quarrel said as two guys climbed out of the cab, one blowing on his hands to warm them while the other lit a cigarette.

"Aw, c'mon, look at the fucking thing," Firecracker wheedled. "It's built like a fucking tank, with all kinds of cool shit packed in. How long's it been since we had a good joyride?"

"That's assuming the thing's still going to be intact when all this is over," Vladimir pointed out as I drew level with the garage, and the truck. I could see through the cab's windshield now- nobody inside. Also a pair of fuzzy pink dice for some reason. No sign of Squealer.

"Bugger," Rotter said vaguely. "Maybe she's already gone inside?"

"Maybe, but I doubt it. If she was here, she'd probably be driving her own work," Tock Tick answered. "I guess she built that monstrosity for her help to make supply runs for her."

"That vehicle is hardly a subtle affair," Muramasa insisted. "Would she not be better off keeping her deliveries more low-key?"

Quarrel snorted. "Hayaki, that's assuming Squealer's got more than a handful of functioning brain cells left. She works for a guy named Skidmark, for chrissakes."

While the debate about Squealer's lack of brain continued, I turned and walked to the opposite side of the roof, unclipping a pair of short rods from my belt as I did. The Butchers picked up on the shape of my thoughts as I did so.

"Aw no, no, no," Firecracker moaned. "Christ, this is gonna be awesome, but I still don't want you to smash-"

I turned around again and broke into a run, sprinting toward the garage. Right as I hit the edge I pushed off with both feet, hard enough to send me sailing across the street.

"And an excellent launch there, but can she stick the landing?" Anchorage said gleefully as I plunged feet first- right into the engine of the truck, rocking it on its axles. The metal buckled inward with a screech, and I felt something heavier bend under my feet.

"And she's made it, ladies and gentlemen!" Anchorage crowed. "That's a 9.2, an 8.9, and a 7 from the Russian judge!"

I smirked as I pulled my feet free of the ankle-deep dents I'd left, idly shattering the windscreen with a kick as I stepped out, before hopping over the top of the cab and the little trailer to land right in front of the open door.

The Merchants were panicking, which was fine by me. A particularly short specimen was running for the back door as fast as his legs could carry him. Before any of them could come to their senses, I flicked the rods in my hands- they telescoped out into long batons, the tips crackling with electricity.

A fairly basic design- I'd bought a couple of wind-up torches yesterday with the money from raiding the cash drop, then ripped out the dynamos and given them a serious upgrade with extra coils and magnets. Extending the batons sent them spinning enough to build up a charge, and then pressing on the triggers in the handle could charge them further.

The two Merchants I caught with the tips helped me test the principle- they both yelled, spasmed, and dropped like sacks of potatoes. Unfortunately, that broke the others out of their panic, and into a mad rush for weapons to deal with me. More serious this time- there were racks of tools all over the place, from hammers to oversized wrenches. One guy picked up an acetylene torch, hefting the canister in the other hand.

While I and the others scoped out the opposition, Tock Tick was practically drooling at the materials inside the garage. There must have been five or six cars disassembled around the room, sorted into neat stacks of parts. Tyres, seats, headlights, batteries, suspension coils, brake pads, canisters of drained engine oil- there was also what looked like a couple of engines in the process of being rebuilt into one monster on a table.

"New plan," Firecracker said with a tone of glee. "You beat the shit out of these guys, take their money, and use all their nice gear to build us a kickass ride. Deal?"

I spun the batons in my hands, just to give the Merchants a scare. "Deal."

Without another word, I rushed forward, letting the instincts guide me. Jab one guy in the chest, catch his spanner on the tip as he dropped it, throw it into another guy's face while disarming a third, drop low and elbow a fourth in the ribs, throw him into more.

"I told you practicing would pay off," Needler said primly. Her thoughts had an overtone of smugness to them. Not that I could blame her- I'd spent a solid two hours last night practicing the Silat forms she'd mastered, strengthening the half-formed muscle memories I'd inherited. I was still nowhere near as good as her, but now I had actual technique backing me up.

The guy with the welding torch came in close, flame turned up to maximum. I ducked behind a couple of his friends, jabbing them in the kidneys with the batons as I circled around, then dropped one baton to grab his wrist while I elbowed him in the face.

He fell back with a squeal as his nose gushed blood, and I took the moment to turn off the torch and set it on the ground carefully. No sense in burning the place down.

"Duck!" Flinch called out, in synch with his power's warning. I dropped low, and a sledgehammer whipped through the air where my head had been. The Merchant who'd crept up on me almost fell over from the swing, and then I kicked him in the back of the knee, and he really did fall. I jabbed him with the baton and held it there for a few seconds while he jittered.

I scooped up my other baton as I moved away, mantling over a table to hit one guy with a flying knee, then using my right baton like a rapier to parry the length of pipe his buddy swung at me. I turned it into a riposte, angling my weapon around his to flick it out of his hands before shoving the tip into his belly. The guy behind me didn't fair any better- I reversed my grip on my left baton and thrust it back, catching him in the ribs.

"Seriously?" Bearskin asked as the guy somehow stayed standing, backing away with a snarl as he pulled a knife to go with his wrench. I was a bit puzzled too, but I didn't dwell on it, darting forward to crack the batons down on his wrists, driving the weapons from his hands.

He yelped, but still tried to lunge at me, so I whacked him on both knees, then brought my own up to meet his face as he fell. Finally I jabbed him in the shoulders with the batons and let fly with the volts. This time he got the electricity, spasming for a moment before collapsing.

I turned the dodge of a thrown hammer into a crouch, pulling aside the guy's jacket to see a thick vest wrapped around his chest. Standard bulletproof vest, police issue.

"Where'd some lowlife get Kevlar from?" Tactical pondered. I mentally shrugged as I straightened up to face the remaining goons. One grabbed at a stack of hubcaps and started winging them at me like frisbees. I had to fight back a laugh as I slapped them out of the air and started toward them.

"That may be the single most moronic attack I've ever seen," Vladimir commented dryly.

The others seemed higher up the chain than Frisbee Man, since they all pulled pistols and started blazing away at me. I turned my walk into a run, zig-zagging to mess with their aim, then dropped low and kicked out at the empty table in front of me, sending it skidding across the room towards them. One dodged it, one took the hit and fell under it, and the last two were pinned to the wall by it. I caught the first as he ran for the door and jammed a finger under his sternum to knock the breath under him.

The two against the wall aimed at me again, so I tossed my guy to the ground before he got hurt and crossed the distance with a leap onto the table, grabbing their pistols and ripping them from their hands, tossing them over my shoulder as I did so. A couple of rabbit punches knocked the two of them senseless enough to stop bothering me.

The last guy had wormed his way out from under the table and was running for the back door, screaming his head off. I hopped down off the table, grabbed a wooden chair that had fallen over in all the commotion, and simply hurled it after him.

Even without Quarrel's aiming power, the throw was a good one, smacking right into the back of his legs. He went over with a high-pitched yelp several feet from the door, struggling to untangle his legs from those of the chair. Before he figured it out, I'd strode over and hauled him up by his collar.

"Now I don't want this to turn out like the last guy I offered this to, so think carefully. Come quietly-"

"HEEEEELP! HEEEEEEEEELP!" The guy started screaming at the top of his lungs toward the back door. "FOR FUCKS SAKE COME AND HEEEEEELLP!"

"What's he on about?" Rotter asked. "There's nobody left standing here, right?"

There was a horrendous screeching of metal from outside. I dropped the guy and hustled over to the door, quickly peeking my head outside.

The sound had come from a dumpster being dragged across the ground, and it had been dragged across the ground by the little guy I'd seen running away when I'd arrived, or at least, one arm of him.

The actual man looked like a pot-bellied shrimp of a man, right down to the boiled pink look of his skin. There was some thin hair visible over the top of his sack-cloth mask; his left arm was skinny, as bare as the rest of his torso despite the cold weather.

His right arm, and his legs, were another story entirely. Even as I watched, tendrils peeled off from his exposed skin, branching and extending to sweep up every bit of junk from the dumpster and the alleyway, pulling it in to join the piles of detritus that his other limbs had already become. A quick flicker of bloodsight showed me that the piles were held together by a network of those same tendrils weaving throughout the mounds.

He caught sight of me as the last of the trash and dirt was pulled into his new form, shifting all around him to form a humanoid figure about 8 feet tall.

"So you're the fucker who thought messing with us was a good idea," he sneered as a pile of junk formed around his face like the world's most disgusting helmet. "Well, I don't know what you were thinking, and I don't care. I'm just gonna crush ya."

I brought my batons up. I'd been prepared to take out a Tinker without any tech, an easy fight. I wasn't prepared for my first real cape fight to be against a giant trash monster.

"What a glamourous life you live," Needler sighed, as the figure started toward me.

AN: One of my hopes for this fic is to give some focus to the characters who didn't get much screen time, such as Mush. The guy's got a disgusting yet unique power, and I hope I can explore a bit about how he sunk so low. But first, cape fight!

As always, I'll answer some stuff later, so tag me if you're dying to know some minutia.

Also might edit this chapter when the betas get back- if so, I'll leave the original under a spoiler so you guys can compare.

Last edited: Jul 5, 2020

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HowlingGuardian

Jul 11, 2020

#991

AN: Big thanks to new beta reader FunctionalityOfSystems for helping to polish this chapter up.

Here's the beginning of Elpis's first proper cape fight. Hope you enjoy it.

--

2.2

Sunday Jan 23rd, The Docks

My senses had been enhanced and expanded when I'd inherited the Butcher collective. Vladimir's bloodsight for one, but also the spatial awareness required to steer Firecracker's teleportation and Quarrel's warping aim, to say nothing of the senses of every insect within a block radius.

Nemean's senses came up most in day to day situations though- while the changes from inheriting her leonine Case 53 physiology weren't too noticeable to an outside observer, longer teeth and sharper nails had made themselves known to me immediately, followed by her sense of smell and hearing. I was vaguely annoyed that my eyesight hadn't improved, but I'd been living with glasses for years, and I was well used to it.

Being able to smell Dad cooking in the kitchen from my room, or catch the scents from down the block on the wind, were a pleasant enough experience.

The combined scents of the pile of living garbage in front of me was anything but. The filter deadened it somewhat, but I could still pick out overripe banana, coffee grounds, burst tomatoes, rotten fish, and even a hint of dead rat in there. I had to fight down my gag reflex with every breath.

"Trust the Merchants to recruit a literal shitpile," Stoneknapper complained. Tactical was more concerned with how to take him out.

"Don't let him get inside the workshop," he advised. "We don't know just how much stuff he can pick up, and there's a lot of metal in there that'd make him way more dangerous."

I briefly considered the thought of trying to fight an armour-plated trash heap. Agreed.

The good news was that my opponent slammed the door to the workshop closed with a tentacle suddenly extruded from his mass. The bad news was that he was aiming for me, forcing me to dodge back as he whipped it at me, and incidentally cutting off my best escape route.

"Get him talking," Firecracker said, serious for once, "Maybe he'll give something away. Or it'll distract him."

I checked with bloodsight again to see where his head was- by now it was mostly unravelled, but I could make out where the eyes where, shielded by bits of glass his tendrils were holding in front. The rest of him was spread throughout the pile, except for a clump in the middle that probably used to be his torso.

Another swing forced me to hop back. I brought my batons up, even though I knew they wouldn't be that effective against him.

"So," I started, then had to fight down a sudden bought of nausea. I could actually taste the garbage a little- it brought back horrible memories of the last time I'd been exposed to something so rank. It was so bad I could feel the insects in my radius start to come to me, drawn on some instinct.

"This is horrible," Needler gagged, while I pushed away both the bugs and the urge to vomit. Another swipe from the Merchant cape's tentacle made me leap back, almost tripping in my haste to get away from the smell.

The move took me out of the alley behind the garage, and the breeze coming down the street brought relatively clean air to me. I took a few grateful breaths and focused on the trash heap shambling after me.

"So," I started again, "you're the Merchant's new cape. Moist, right?"

"Fuck you!" Moist lashed out with two tentacles at once, both tipped with glass shards. I spun out of the way, jamming a baton into the tip of a tentacle as it was retracted. Bloodsight let me target one of the tendrils, drawing a yelp from Moist, but he almost yanked the baton out of my hand as he pulled back.

"About time you got the guy," Bearskin complained impatiently. "C'mon, get after him!"

I ignored the demand, edging further away from the mouth of the alley. I could still see the mass of tendrils in the heap, glowing red in my vision as it hauled itself along. I kept shouting at Moist, trying to bait him as I reached the corner of the garage.

"That seems like an overreaction," I called out. "I was just asking your name, and you take a swing at me?"

The head of the pile leaned around the corner; glassy eyes locked on to me. With the banana peel above them arranged like a monobrow, it felt like he was glaring at me.

Moist suddenly slid out from the alley- another tentacle split off from the mass and whipped at me, this time with the lids of used cans at the end like buzzsaw blades. I dodged sideways, ducked under his following swipe at me, then pinned it under a foot as it came back again, ramming both batons into the nearest tendril.

There was a crackle and a smell of burning garbage, even as I held my breath. Moist thrashed and shrieked for a few seconds, before yanking the tentacle from under my foot with a heave. I could see how some of the garbage had come off his pile as he'd spasmed from the pain.

Too late, I noticed the full bins by the alleyway as Moist grabbed them with a couple of tendrils and upended them over himself with angry movements. The garbage spilled onto him, snatched up by tendrils to add to his mass, adding a foot to his height. I backed away further as his form shifted, wrapping rotten fruit and paper bags around and through his tendrils, before grabbing the trashcans and swinging them at me.

"Insulating against the shock," Tock noted. "So he's got some brain after all."

I kicked out at the first one, knocking it away as the hit caved it in, but the second one came down from high up, forcing me to back up even further. The Butchers were all yelling what to do at me.

"Get a blade and cut away at him!" Muramasa bellowed.

"Get in there and tear him up!" Nemean roared.

Rotter was laughing away merrily. "Ah, girly, you're gonna get your ass kicked by a power even nastier than mine," he chuckled as I dodged and parried the next swipes. I tried zapping the metal with my batons, but Moist's improvised insulation held against the charge; then he launched the lids at me like frisbees.

I managed to smack them aside, but there was a lot more force behind them than those hubcaps, enough for me to feel it. One of the batons was bent a little out of shape from the impact, and Moist seemed to notice, pressing the offensive with a gleeful roar.

I thought desperately for a new approach- Moist had both reach and mass, and was unsettling me just with his smell. My batons only worked if I could pin a limb, and his pile was too thick for me to reach his torso. I mentally rifled through my options, searching for something that wouldn't out me instantly. I even took the risk of having a couple of insects crawl over the tables inside for something I could use.

"Not a bad move there, Moist," I said, trying to project bravado. "Still, swinging a couple of trash cans around, is that really the best you can do?"

The pile snarled and swung one can into the window next to him, absorbing the broken glass into a third tentacle that lanced out at me. "My name's! Not! Moist!" he roared, jabbing at me with every word.

I slapped the tentacle aside at the next jab, breaking some of the glass off and clipping a tendril. More burning garbage smell, plus a yelp from Moist- or whatever his name was.

"Wait, waitwaitwait," I said, blocking a can with my elbow, "That's not your name? There's a whole thread about you on PHO-"

"Well they're fucking wrong!" The pile drew itself up, bunching his tentacles up like he was flexing his biceps. "The guy that's gonna paste you all over the fuckin' street is Mush, bitch!"

"…Oh my god," Anchorage said at last. "Oh my fucking god. I can't even make fun of these guys. First Skidmark, then Squealer, and now Mush? Mush?! Is that even any better than Moist?"

"I dunno, I think it has a certain flair to it- nope, nope, couldn't say it with a straight face," Dirty Rotter laughed. "Holy fuck these guys are dumb."

Vladimir was a lot less amused. "Taylor, you'd better beat this guy, and you'd better do it well, because I will never forgive you if you lose to this idiot."

"I'm not sure I could forgive myself." Aloud, I said "Okay, Mush, if you're the new cape, one of the big dogs, why are you running errands for Squealer like an unpaid intern?"

That seemed to strike a nerve- Mush roared and charged me with surprising speed, whipping his tentacles back and forth, hard enough to knock chips off the wall, which I saw him absorb as he moved over them.

I ducked and weaved between the tentacle for a few seconds, then punched one can aside and darted forward. The glass-tipped tentacle shot out at me, but I smacked it aside with a baton and jumped up to ram both weapons deep into the pile, right at the dense mass of tendrils that made up Mush's torso.

He had enough sense to try and move his tendrils aside as I rammed the batons in, but I still managed to clip a couple, sending his whole body jerking. Clumps of garbage sloughed off him as he screamed and thrashed, but I dug my feet into the pile and held on grimly, struggling not to inhale as some of the garbage started to visibly smoke.

Just as I thought I had Mush down, the front of his pile simply fell off like a landslide of filth, pouring down on me. One involuntary sip of air was all it took, and suddenly I was stuck in a memory, trapped in filth, screaming for help-

A coiled bunch of tendrils hit me in the chest, knocking me away. I lost my grip on the left baton, and then Mush's arm reached down and swatted me, sending me flying back several feet.

I managed to turn the landing into a roll that brought me back to my feet, but Mush didn't give me time to recover, rushing forward again. For a second I noticed the baton being tossed away over his shoulder, before a tentacle grabbed my ankle and whipped me around.

The garage had two doors for cars to come in through- the Merchant truck was parked in front of the open one. The other was closed by a rolling shutter, and Mush sent me through it like a bullet through paper.

I crashed through a couple of tables before coming to rest right between some cabinets. I didn't hit any of the Merchants scattered around the room, more by luck than anything else- by this point, several of them had recovered and were making an escape, looking more scared of Mush than me.

Tactical took stock as I climbed to my feet. "So, you're minus a weapon, your enemy is weakened but not down, and will probably adapt to defend against that move. What now?"

"Some advice would be helpful," I retorted, pushing the debris of my impact aside and casting about. I picked up Mush with bloodsight again- his network of tendrils glowed red through the wall, branching out and swelling as I watched, presumably reabsorbing his garbage.

"You need a better weapon," Tock Tick said, ideas pouring off him. "Something to reduce his mass enough to take him out."

"Yeah, like a sword or something," Stoneknapper agreed. "If only there was a huge pile of materials you could make a sword from- oh wait," he shouted sarcastically, "There's literally piles of steel stacked against the wall!"

I shoved Stoneknapper down a bit to try and concentrate- as tempting as the option was, I couldn't just pull a sword out of nowhere without broadcasting my powers. Still, I was in the middle of a workshop- there had to be some kind of cutting tool-

My foot clunked against something, and I looked down to see a handheld circular saw with a blade wider than my hand, resting on the floor.

That would do. Snatching it up, I ripped the safety guard off and bent the handle into a new position, then strode across to grab some strips of metal from across the room. I glanced at Mush through the wall- his network was almost back to full size, though he was still moving sluggishly.

I flexed my wrist, panels sliding aside to extend my grappler. I let the cable unspool while I started bending the metal strips around the saw handle, then grabbed the grappler bolt and wound it around the handle a few times before bending the strips over all of it.

"Ooooh, I see what you're doing here. Copying from my playbook, huh?" Anchorage said gleefully.

The saw now dangled from the end of my grappler cable, the blade fully exposed. I grabbed the handle and yanked on the starter cable. The saw coughed and whirred into life- I used one more strip of metal to hold the throttle at maximum, then slipped the cable into my hand, holding my arm well away from my body. It probably couldn't get through my armour easily, but I'd rather not cut myself with my own weapon.

Mush rounded the corner, looming in the open doorway between me and the truck. I hefted the saw in my hand and met his gaze. "Mush, stand down. I really don't want to see what kind of damage this'll do to you."

Mush just growled and raised his arms. The trashcans were crushed into crude metal fists on the ends, and the glass flail now had a twin, tipped with rusty nails.

I glanced down at the saw for a moment. "I warned you." I heaved on the cable and started to swing the saw in a circle, then faster as I built up momentum, until the saw was a roaring blur at the end of the cable, like Anchorage used to do with her anchor. As Mush started forward, I flung the saw forward.

Mush slapped it aside with a metal fist, but it cost him- the blade gouged a deep cut in the can and sent a few scraps of greasy paper falling to the floor. Before he could recover, I flicked my fingers to retract the cable a bit, spinning the saw in a circle again, then criss-crossing it in front of me to show off.

"Goddamn, this is more like it!" Bearskin roared. "Time to cut the shit!"

"Literally!" Anchorage agreed. "Why'd I never think of adding a saw to my anchor when I had the chance?"

"You did sharpen it pretty well," Vladimir pointed out. "It's not like it would have added much more cutting power."

"No more talk!" Nemean snarled, indicating Mush. "Rip him apart! I can't take his smell anymore!"

I threw the saw out again- this time Mush tried to grab the cable, and I let him, pulling on the cable to send it swinging up and around his tentacle. There was a screech as the saw glanced off the ceiling before swinging back down again, then I yanked hard on the cable.

The saw was pulled back along Mush's arm, carving a deep rent in the garbage and clipping at least one tendril. Mush let go with a howl of pain, and I glimpsed a spot of blood drip to the floor.

I pressed the attack, swinging the saw out in front of me in wide, roaring arcs, forcing Mush to back up even as he tried to deflect. I wasn't actually trying to hit him- I just had to drive him back outside before he absorbed any metal, or either of us accidentally hurt some of the Merchants still inside.

The few bugs I had near me swept over the tools scattered on the floor as Mush retreated. It was interesting to see how I could figure out the shape of each tool by having the bugs crawl over them- a cold round object was the tank for the acetylene torch, a long thing with prongs at the end was a spanner, a right-angled thing with a hole in the end was a gun, rising from the ground-

I pulled the saw back mid-swing to dodge as the Merchant emptied his gun at me- the guy with the Kevlar vest, struggling to his feet. One bullet clipped my wrist, and I almost lost control of the saw's swing, forcing me to reel it all the way in. Mush took advantage of that to send his smaller tentacles at me, glass shards and nails slashing at my armour.

I snipped the tip off the nail tentacle, driving another yell from Mush, but the glass one ducked under my guard and scraped along my helmet. My vision blurred in one eye, and I panicked until I realised Mush had just scratched the lens.

"Stop worrying, we don't feel pain," Nemean ordered, bloodlust clear in her voice.

With Kevlar Vest back on his feet, I made the decision to take the fight outside, diving through the hole Mush had made with me. The trash heap himself swivelled toward me in a supremely unsettling way- I could see how his tendrils simply twisted into a new position instead of turning his body around.

I circled around, dodging some of Mush's swipes and hacking at others. Unfortunately, Mush was wising up- he reached behind him for a second and came back with tools bunched in his tendrils- wrenches, crowbars, tyre irons. The saw glanced off them with a shower of sparks.

I backed up a step, swinging the saw out to build some speed. If I could cut Mush's tendril's further up, toward whatever passed for his shoulder, I might be able to break his defence long enough to taze him again-

Then all my plans went out the window when Mush brought something big around- the partially built engine I'd seen earlier. A few flies I'd sneaked onto it reported the smell of fresh gasoline in it.

Before I could do anything else, Mush hurled the whole thing at me. I felt the breeze of it passing by me as I twisted desperately out of its path-

Then the engine hit a wall across the street, and there was a roar of heat and noise.

--

AN: I hope I managed to make Mush seem like a convincing opponent. He may have one of the most repulsive powers shown in Worm, but it seems like something that'd have a lot of utility to it. Maybe it isn't fighting a dragon, but I think it's a decent starting point for Taylor.

As always, I'll answer questions I'm tagged in later on.

Last edited: Jul 12, 2020

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HowlingGuardian

Jul 19, 2020

#1,167

AN: Two updates in one week? I spoil you guys.

In all seriousness, I'll keep regularly posting with the main story, but Hostile Takeover will just be whenever I feel like it, and it'll only be a bunch of snippets rather than a full story.

As for the main story, after this arc I'm going to slow down a bit, post a chapter once every fortnight or so- though they will probably be a bit longer than what I'm giving you now.

2.3

Sunday Jan 23rd, The Docks

The explosion wasn't really all that big, by the high standards of the Butchers, or by my low standards. Despite being filled with super-aerated gasoline fumes, the engine must have had some safety measures built in to limit the blast.

Nevertheless, the force was enough to crack the wall the engine hit and knock me off my feet from six feet. My one saving grace was that Mush seemed too shocked to take advantage of my lapse.

I glanced behind me as I made it to my feet- the wall was heavily cracked, blackened by smoke, and rapidly being scorched further as the gasoline spilled from the engine burned fiercely. The engine itself was malfunctioning in the fire- pistons pumping erratically in the heat. Still, not a bad design- Tock Tick gave it a good once-over before I looked away.

Mush had backed away a little, eyes focused past me to the flames.

"He's scared of the flames," Bearskin noticed. "Might be a phobia there."

"Yeah, or maybe it's because he's made of flammable garbage," Firecracker pointed out.

I started swinging the saw around in front of me again. Oh that's a shame, I left my flamethrower at home.

"There's gas back inside, and I'm pretty sure I saw some pumps we could repurpose," Tock volunteered.

Anchorage goggled. "Goddamn, nerd, where was all this when I was in charge?"

"You never bothered to ask," Tock replied sniffily.

Geez, I was being sarcastic, I thought as I hurled the saw forward, pulling at the last minute so it only made a shallow cut in Mush's front. He swung back with those spiked tendrils, now lined with scavenged tools- I side-stepped one as I reeled in, then spun the saw in a circle to clip the second in a shower of sparks, knocking a few bits loose.

One was a large bit of cardboard, stained but dry. I caught it under my foot as I advanced a few steps. Mush didn't back up- instead he started swinging faster, alternating the larger and smaller arms.

I could just about dodge him, but I wasn't doing much damage in return, other than a few nicks. Without any better ideas, I fired my left grappler down at the cardboard, then retracted the cable a bit, the cardboard stuck on it. Once I swung the saw out again, I threw the other grappler back toward the fire, right into a puddle of gas.

It caught immediately, turning into a blazing sheet on the end of the grappler. I drew the saw back in, simultaneously whipping the sheet forward. Mush threw himself backward with a shriek, batting the flaming sheet away with a trashcan fist.

I meant to press the attack, but Mush shifted some metal to his nail-tipped tendril and swatted at the sheet as I came at him again, tearing it off the grappler before hastily throwing it aside.

"Damn," Stoneknapper said sarcastically, "There goes that plan. What're you gonna do now?" he added, in a tone that implied 'make a sword' should be right at the top of the list.

Searching for another option, I relaxed the restraint on my bug senses, sending them looking around for something that might help me turn the tide.

A fly perched on fabric was heading out of my range at speed- one of the Merchants making a run for it. More were crawling over the workbenches again, trying to make sense of the shapes they felt and interpret them into objects.

One of Mush's tendrils curled back on itself as I dodged it, coming back around to hit me from behind. The danger sense twinged a warning, but even before that there was a sense of movement before I backflipped over the blow, pulling the saw back to my hand to slash at it as I went.

There- nestled in the tendril were some maggots, being repeatedly thrown about by Mush's movements, but still alive, and giving me a constant awareness of their position now that I'd focused on my original power.

"For crying out loud, you've used it before- why did it take you so long to figure it out now?" Tactical criticised as I started moving the other bugs in Mush's pile to map him out better.

"Sh-shut up," Flinch said with surprising force. "Sh-she's not used to her power in a fight."

There was a moment of surprised quiet in my head; I used the opportunity to shift some cockroaches into the base of Mush's heap, hiding them away in boxes and crevices where they wouldn't get squashed. When Mush tried to surge forward and rush me, I was able to see it coming and jump out of the way, slashing at his back as I went.

"Damn," Rotter said finally. "Look who regrew his spine." I shoved him down into the darkness for that, and the others took the hint, either staying quiet or pointing out ideas for the fight as I spread the bugs out more.

Within a few more moments I was slipping past blows without needing to see them at all, and Mush was getting angry.

Finally, he lost his temper. "Fucking hold still!" he bellowed, slamming his bigger arms together and swinging down. I jumped back, then again as his smaller tendrils lashed out. With only some maggots at the base of those tentacles, I realised too late that they weren't coming for me- the glass tipped one grabbed at the cable for the saw before I could pull it away, wrapping itself and its garbage around in a death grip.

"Goddamnit, there goes the saw," Anchorage swore.

The cable could still slide, though. Calling up Anchorage's memories, I used one of her favourite tricks, yanking the cable so the saw swung up and back to me, then kicking it into Mush's heap. A wrench stuck in there got cut in half with a screech, and then bits of filth started spraying out from where the blade was still spinning.

Mush started smacking at the saw, trying to knock it loose, but the saw was stuck in deep, and all his appendages were shaped like crude clubs, not hands. One hard blow even pushed it in further, nicking a tendril and driving a shriek from him.

"Dumbass," Firecracker snickered.

I tried yanking on the cable to free it, but Mush had somehow found purchase on it, enough that I couldn't pull it free.

No sense in getting stuck on one way of doing things. I ejected the cable from the grappler and bolted for the garage while Mush was still trying to get the saw out.

"Just. Make. A. Sword." Stoneknapper ground out. Needler rolled her eyes at him, so to speak.

"You know she's not that stupid, Knapper. Whining isn't going to achieve anything here."

"I am not. Whining," he insisted.

Kevlar Vest guy was just making a run for it as I reached the door- he fell on his ass in shock at the sight of me. I was expecting another bullet from him, but he just rolled out of the way and kept fleeing. I passed into the building without a second thought, making a beeline for the table I'd searched with my bugs.

"Finally, a chance for something interesting," Vladimir sighed. "Except you're going to make this complicated, aren't you?"

Ignoring him and the rest, I grabbed a gasoline canister off one table and a couple of valves of another, plus some tubing, a couple of clamps, and parts of a tyre pump. Almost as an afterthought, I started up a grinder bolted onto a bench, and got cracking while it spun up to speed.

It certainly wasn't clockwork, but putting my improv weapon together was only slightly harder than attaching the saw had been. In under a minute, I had the canister held by a couple of clamps. The pump had been stripped down, one tube leading into the canister, the other pointed forward by a carefully bent strip of metal holding it in place. I'd clamped a wrench around the pump's piston to act as a grip; I gave it a pull to test, and a stream of gasoline shot out the nozzle easily.

"This is way less interesting than I thought it'd be," Firecracker said, disappointed. "This is basically just a super soaker filled with gas."

"It was created in under a minute out of scraps, what did you expect?" Tock said indignantly. I half-listened to the argument, even as I realised I'd missed a few things. Like a flame, and a back-up weapon. I grabbed a long spanner and pressed it against the grinder a couple of times, putting a crude edge on it before tucking it into my belt.

Inside my head, the argument continued without pause. "Gee, I don't know, something fun," Firecracker shot back, "Like that time with Nemean and the oil. 'member that, Neems?"

"Took forever to get that oil out of my fur," the Case 53 grunted.

"Okay, but going into that fight on fire was awesome, wasn't it?"

Nemean gave the question some thought. "Yeah."

While they were bickering, I'd found a lighter in the pockets of the nearest Merchant- the guy who'd thrown hubcaps at me earlier. Had it only been a few minutes? It felt like so much longer. I grabbed one more strip of steel and bent it around the lighter, then fixed the whole thing to hand just under the front pipe. A flick of the lighter gave me a pilot light for my DIY flamethrower at last.

Not a moment too soon- danger sense twinged in time for me to duck the object that smashed through the window and came at my head, letting it smash into the wall and break into pieces.

The saw. Mush had pulled it out and decided to use it. I'd lost focus on the bugs while I was busy tinkering, and he'd almost brained me with my own weapon. I didn't need the Butchers to realise how dumb that was.

They still yelled at me anyway.

"Pay attention to your surroundings!" Tactical shouted despairingly as I started for the door, refocusing my attention on Much and the bugs around me as the gasoline sloshed in the canister and the sharpened spanner banged against my side. "For goddsakes, you should have better battlefield awareness than any of us, and you almost fall to that shit?!"

"Tactical is right," Muramasa agreed. "It is the blow you don't see that fells you. To have it happen from your own weapon is just ridiculous."

Yeah, great advice. You guys should write a book. I made it outside, keeping the truck between me and Mush as I sprinted back onto the street. The shape of him in bloodsight's glowing red-gold was peering into the building for a second, but he swivelled as I came out from behind the truck.

There was a patch on his front where the garbage was more chewed up, and a few larger pieces had been cut up. I felt a weird little rush of pride at doing some visible damage to the asshole.

He started toward me; I hefted the flamethrower and sprayed a line of burning fuel at the ground between us. He slid to a hasty stop and backpedalled quickly- I could see his heart beating faster within the network of tendrils too.

"We can end this right here, Mush," I said, trying for the persuasive tone hostage negotiators had sometimes used on the Butchers (not that it had ever worked). "I really don't want to use this. Just drop the garbage and give up."

I was really expecting him to run rather than surrender, but I expected him to back down either way. Instead, after a wavering moment, the whole pile shifted and- churned, there was no other word for it, pieces and lumps slipping over each other to bring all the harder materials to the front- metal and glass and a few bits of plastic. The trashcan fists uncurled and flattened out to cover further up the arms, and the head gained a covering of broken tools mixed with more glass.

"N-no," Mush quavered. Then, louder, "No. I'm a Merchant. I'm a Merchant! And nobody fucks with the Merchants!"

"I'm pretty sure everybody fucks with the Merchants, even our little bitch," Quarrel snorted. Needler was a bit more thoughtful.

"He's desperate," she noted, "but his fear of failure outweighs his fear of fire. Perhaps the newest member feels insecure in his position?"

"Or maybe he's got something to prove," Tactical noted.

Firecracker groaned. "This isn't Psych 101, just fucking toast the shitpile!"

"I gave you the option Mush," I said out loud, working the pump to send another spray of flame closer to him. He backed up for a second, then surged forward.

To our collective surprise, Mush collapsed down and then sprang up as he came; he didn't so much jump over the fire as bounce over it.

I leapt out of the way and rolled under the swipe of a larger arm, spraying it with flame as I came up. It mostly hit the metal, but a few splashes hit further up. Mush flicked the burning pieces off his arm quickly, but I'd already circled around him, spraying more gas at him.

Mush swivelled on his base to keep the armoured parts facing me, so my shots just splashed off the metal, while he flicked the pieces to knock the burning droplets off. I was still doing some damage though, as Mush had to continually let go of bigger and bigger pieces of his pile.

"Holy Christ this smells awful," Bearskin complained, as the scent of smoke and burning filth spread through the air, even worse than before. I agreed with him, taking sips of air where the smell was faintest to avoid gagging.

Mush started trying to dodge out of the way, bouncing his pile away from my shots; I sent sprays of gasoline at the ground to box him in; he could jump over them, but once I got him with a few shots in midair, he stuck to the ground.

Larger and larger clumps of trash started falling off him as he backed up desperately, contracting the metal parts into an armoured shell around him, compacting the other trash into a compressed layer under that.

The pressure killed off a lot of the maggots as I advanced on Mush, keeping the flamethrower pointed low. "Come on Mush!" I shouted. "You're almost out of trash, you've got no backup, and I'm still fuelled up. Just drop the pile and surrender!"

The rest of the maggots died off as Mush's body churned and condensed even further. That was my undoing- only the danger sense warned me when Mush suddenly exploded into a dozen metal-pronged tentacles that spun in a frantic circle.

I leapt back fast enough that they only scored a few scratches on the armour, but a nail jammed into the gas can, tearing a hole in the bottom and sending gasoline spraying all over the place. I hurled it away from me as hard as I could before it could get any on me, drawing my remaining baton and the sharpened spanner.

"Now what you should've done is thrown that at him," Firecracker said. "It'd smell fucking awful, but he'd be finished." I shoved her down just for that.

"You should have brought blades," Muramasa chided patiently. "Then this fight would have ended long ago."

"A couple of sticks aren't going to beat him," Stoneknapper agreed with a gloating tone. "You're going to need our help for this."

Mush pulled himself back into a more human form, more skeletal than amorphous with all the material he'd lost, but he still stood 8 feet tall. I raised my weapons into a fighting stance in response, beckoning Mush with confidence I didn't feel.

Every sharp piece seemed to move to the tips of Mush's hands, glass shards next to nails next to metal scraps next to can lids. Mush lunged forward with a roar-

-And smacked into a bright blue forcefield that blinked into place between the two of us. I backed away in surprise, looking around for the source.

There. Hovering a good twenty feet above us, two teenagers. The boy was younger, maybe 14, with a blue shield on his white jumpsuit, matching his visor and hair. Eric Pelham, aka Shielder, hand outstretched toward his wall.

The girl was already streaking forward, skirt, cape and platinum blonde hair flying out behind her, fists pointed forward in the classic 'flying bullet' style every flying brick used at some point. Glory Girl shot right over the shield to hit Mush like a freight train.

"Shit, heroes!" Bearskin called, already thinking of how to counterattack.

"Moron." Vladimir rolled his eyes. "We're in a hero, remember?"

"Right. Sorry, I forgot."

"Panicking at a couple of little kids," Tock teased.

Outside my head, Mush hit the ground with a clatter of metal, but before Glory Girl could follow up he rolled away, not so much standing back up as morphing into a standing position, with his head drawn down into the torso, bottle-bottom eyes poking out of the front.

Shielder fired a couple of lasers at Mush's new form, but they barely moved the guy. Mush flicked his arm out, sending a wrench flying with a flick of a tendril. Shielder blocked it with a hemisphere in front of himself.

"So this is New Wave's next generation," Butcher mused. "So far, I'm not impressed."

I thought of shoving him down again, but he might have something useful. Better to keep him up until he said something horrible- which would probably be a couple of minutes.

"I dunno," Rotter said, having floated back up around the same time, "Decent defense and a respectable Alexandria package. I can see why you wished we'd got her, Knapper. Look at her go!"

True enough, Glory Girl was pursuing Mush with haymakers that tore chunks away from his body and dented whatever remained. Her strength was impressive, probably more than mine, but her technique left something to be desired.

Mush was starting to adapt to her attacks, stretching his body out to sway away from her fists, deflecting her blows with almost fluid arms, then swinging around her next punch to wrap around her like a trash-octopus.

Glory Girl started prising his arms off her with superior strength, until Mush slammed a lump of trash the size of a soccer ball down on her head. She immediately let got to claw the stuff away from her, which gave Mush a moment to morph his arms together and swing the one fist like a spike-studded wrecking ball, sending her flying into the garage wall, bringing it down on her.

"Not so respectable, I think," Needler sneered.

"Vicky!" Shielder fired off a salvo of laser with an outraged yell; Mush blocked them with his one arm almost negligently, but they were only a distraction. The shield in front of me lifted off the ground, bent outwards into a shape like a plough, then shot toward Mush.

Mush dived out of the way, but the shield clipped his foot, spinning him around in mid-air. I rushed forward as he hauled himself up, lashing out with baton and spanner, shocking him with the one and prising bits off him with the other. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Shielder drift toward his cousin with a scared look on his face.

Mush continually backed away, dodging like a ragdoll on speed- every part of him could bend, twist, and contort in ways the human body couldn't. I even lunged at him with the baton, and he simply split his torso in half to dodge it. He was small enough now I could have taken him down with one good hit to the cluster that was his head- the problem was landing it.

Holding off three heroes at once seemed to have given Mush a confidence boost; He was getting cocky, putting spins into his moves- he backflipped away from my next baton swipe, his eyes staying fixed on me the whole time.

"Fuck that's creepy," Anchorage shuddered. "Can we just finish this guy already?"

As Mush backed away further, maybe looking to run as Glory Girl pulled herself out of the rubble, brushing off Shielder's concern and flicking her hair over her shoulder. Something twisted in my chest at how annoyingly at ease she seemed.

A massive forcefield popped up behind Mush as he tried to bolt, too tall for him to get over. He yelped as I charged forward, throwing his hands out- not to strike, but to grab my shoulders, vaulting over me. I spun around as he landed and rammed the spanner's points into the last bit of trashcan armour he had, before tearing it away from his tendrils. He ignored it, breaking into a run, only for Glory Girl to fly into him with a door she'd ripped off the Squealer-truck.

Mush went sprawling, shifting into a four-legged form that ducked under Glory Girl's next swipe. However, with his head mounted at the front, he couldn't swivel his eyes around as much- so when I rammed the spanner through his back and up into his torso, he was caught off guard. With bloodsight showing all the tendrils to me, I twisted the spanner like a spaghetti fork, catching half of his major branches around it.

"Yes!" Quarrel crowed. "Let's see you hop around now, you smelly fuck!"

I pressed the head of the baton against the spanner. "Sorry Mush," I said, pulling the trigger repeatedly.

The charge hit Mush right in the equivalent of his spine, sending every tendril he had flailing wildly- pieces flew off him as every tendril convulsed, reducing him to a massive heap of fleshy strings, but I kept pumping the trigger until I was absolutely sure he was out, then gingerly untwisting the spanner and drawing it back out.

Finally, I dropped him to the ground, watching as the tendrils slowly began to contract and merge together, pulling Mush back into the form of a man. By some miracle his sackcloth mask and filthy shorts had stayed on, so I was at least spared any further disgust.

"Well, it was far too drawn out, required a great deal of improvisation, and left half the street covered in flaming garbage," Tactical noted. "Still, not the worst I've seen."

"Plus it'll get us on the radar of the other capes," Quarrel pointed out. "Which means less time until someone pops this little shit's head and gets us a better ride." I was so used to her bile that I didn't even bother pushing her down for the comment.

Glory Girl tossed the door aside with a clang and lowered herself to the ground to walk over. Shielder stayed airborne, drifting over with a mildly freaked out look on his face.

Glory Girl nudged Mush's reassembled body with the toe of one high white boot. "Gross." She brushed some hair out of her face and shot me a beaming smile. "So! I'm Glory Girl. And you are?"

AN: Here's some other characters at last! Glory Girl is a staple of Worm, but we get almost nothing of Shielder either in canon or fics. I'm hoping to get a chance to develop his personality a bit and make him more than just a face in the background.

Hope you guys enjoyed the fight scene and its conclusion. As always, I'll be answering questions later on- just tag me if you want to know anything.

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HowlingGuardian

Jul 19, 2020

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HowlingGuardian

HowlingGuardian

Jul 27, 2020

#1,263

AN: So life got in the way of me finishing this in time for the usual posting schedule, but it's a few thousand words longer than usual, so I'd say it balances out.

Enjoy!

--

2.4

Sunday Jan 23rd, The Docks

I took as deep a breath as I could without gagging on the smell of burning trash. "I'm Elpis. New hero, nice to meet you both." I nodded to Shielder as I said it; he returned the nod awkwardly.

"Cool! Always good to meet someone new! So how long've you been going out? Is this your first time, 'cause, I mean, that's some shitty luck if you have to fight this guy straight off-"

"Is, uh, is he gonna be alright?" Shielder asked, breaking through Glory Girl's stream of overly peppy questions. I was a little surprised at how squeaky his voice was- then again, he was only- what, 14?

"Can't believe you needed help from some kid whose balls haven't even dropped," Bearskin said caustically. I gave him a shove, and he grumbled himself into silence.

I knelt to give Mush a once over as he finished reforming, pulling the first aid kit off the back off my belt. "A lot of shallow cuts," I noted, "probably from the tendrils that got cut, and a few bits that look like light burns. That, uh, that's from me," I added with a wince. "And, y'know, he got tased until he blacked out. Still," I checked both wrist and neck, then held a hand in front of his mouth, "pulse and breathing are fine, and that's the main thing."

"Do you think we should cover him up?" Glory Girl interjected. "It's pretty cold, and he's practically naked. Which I really don't need to see," she added, scrunching her face up in revulsion.

"Amen to that," Anchorage chimed in. "I think he was actually better looking when he was a trash heap."

I nodded. "Yeah, let's get him inside. I probably ought to secure whatever Merchants haven't run off too, and call someone to take them." I gathered Mush up like a pot-bellied sack of potatoes and slung him over my shoulder in a fireman's carry as I straightened up.

Glory Girl followed me into the garage- Shielder lingered outside for a moment, creating a couple of shields to scrape the bits of garbage on the ground into a neat pile, and then a dome over the pile as it burned. I could see the fire start to die down as it was starved of air.

Very practical of him- I approved.

There were still a few Merchants that hadn't made a run for it- five in total, all ones that I'd hit with the batons. Apparently, their buddies hadn't bothered to try and carry them out. Glory Girl lifted off the floor a little and began hauling them up, pulling zipties out of a pocket in her skirt and fastening their wrists up.

Shielder followed behind me, still hovering as I found a relatively clear table and swept the few bits and pieces off it, then laid Mush down in the recovery position. Once I'd checked his breathing again, I started cleaning his cuts and bandaging them up.

"What're you doing?" Shielder asked, peering over my shoulder. I glanced back at him, vaguely noting that the hovering had thrown off my estimate of his height- I probably had a good three inches on him, even without the armour.

"Pipsqueak's right," Dirty Rotter said. "The fuck're you doing patching up this guy? He was trying to drown you in crap not five minutes."

"I'm disinfecting his injuries," I explained to both of them. "Mush here was wallowing in all kinds of filth. Maybe his power makes him immune to bacteria and stuff, but I don't want to take the chance. Need to show a little mercy to the enemy."

"Wait, his name's Mush?" Shielder's eyebrows drew together over the visor. "I thought he was called Moist."

I snorted. "Yeah, I thought that too. He got all pissy when I called him that."

Glory Girl came over with the Merchants being dragged behind her; she dumped them on top of another empty table and showily dusted her hands off. "That's five scumbags to go," she announced cheerily. "Want me to tie ugly up too?" she offered, waving a ziptie in her hand.

I shook my head. "I've got my own. Besides, I don't think it would work on him. His power would let him slip right out of most restraints." I placed the last bandage carefully and started repacking the first aid kit. "We'll just have to keep an eye on him until the PRT show up."

"And what, tase him every time he wakes up?" Doesn't seem very heroic," Stoneknapper taunted.

"This is why we're better," Butcher sneered. "When we take someone down, we do it so they don't get back up, instead of-" I pushed him down before he could finish the sentence, resigned to his usual spiel of violence and bloodshed.

"And there he goes again," Rotter snickered. "New record there. He lasted, what, five minutes before he pissed you off?"

Shielder raised a hand tentatively. "I think I could hold him," he volunteered. I gave him a glance as I clipped the first aid kit to my belt again and took a step back, gesturing to Mush.

"Go for it kid."

Shielder raised a hand, fingers outstretched. A dark blue dome popped into place around Mush and the table he was on. I prodded it experimentally and felt no sensation from my matter-shaping or decay powers, nor any give to the surface whatsoever. "Impressive."

He scratched his neck awkwardly. "Well, it's okay, I mean, I'm the shield guy, y'know? It's my thing."

"Hold up," Glory Girl interrupted, "Why didn't you just to that at the start? You could have just bubbled him and left him there."

"Wait, she's right!" Anchorage said, "Little Boy Blue coulda just locked him down like that!" She snapped her fingers to illustrate her point.

Shielder shrank a little at the comment. "I, uh, I didn't think of it until now?" He said weakly. Glory Girl put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes.

"C'mon Eric, you gotta use your head in fights or you're gonna get your butt kicked."

"Hey, ease up," I ordered, seeing how Shielder was curling in on himself. "What if he had? Mush might have just broken the shield, and then we'd have had to take him down anyway, but Shielder would have used up a bunch of energy just to buy time."

"I've never made a shield big enough to cover something like that either," he said weakly. Glory Girl sighed and folded her arms.

"Alright, alright. Anyway, uh," she hesitated, "Sorry, what was your name again? I'm blanking here."

"Elpis." I spelled it out for her. "As in the Greek goddess."

"Huh. Fair enough. Anyway, I was gonna call the PRT to pick these guys up. Are you gonna take off, or…?" She trailed off, waving a hand vaguely while the other pulled out a cell phone.

"Oh no, we are not walking away from this!" Tock Tick exploded. "The amount of materials here, the tools- we have got to take this for everything we can carry!"

I agreed with him- looking around the garage, even with the tools scattered and a few tables busted from the fighting, there were enough parts for me to make all kinds of things. And if the fight with Mush had shown anything, it was that I was severely under-equipped for facing off against other capes.

"I'll stay," I said, making a beeline toward a stripped down chassis held off the floor by jacks. "I want to get some credit for this, and there's a lot of material I could scavenge."

"You're a Tinker then? I mean, I assumed with the armour and all, but I wasn't 100% sure about it."

I nodded vaguely as I gathered up armfuls of tools and dumped them on the closest table to begin sorting through them. The larger tools weren't really necessary for me with Stoneknapper's power, but there were limits to its precision- to develop any further, I'd need to start building my own tools. Ideas were already forming in my head- upgrades to my armour, designs for weapons- I'd definitely need a ranged option, something non-lethal, maybe a net launcher…

With that in mind, I tossed out the stuff like lug wrenches or hammers that were too clumsy for me to need, but needle nosed pliers and Philips-head screwdrivers stayed.

"Uh…"

I glanced up; Shielder was hovering on the other side of the table, twisting his fingers together nervously. He shrugged at my gaze. "Anything I can do?"

"Don't you need to keep an eye on Mush?" I asked, trying not to sound dismissive. I wasn't too sure how well I succeeded, judging by his awkward shrug.

"I mean, I can sense when someone touches my shields, so I'll know if he tries to punch his way out."

"Huh. Useful." A thought occurred to me- the flames starving under the dome. "Wait, does he have enough air in there?"

Shielder looked startled. "Yeah, he's fine. I can make my shields so they let air through."

"You can choose the properties of your shields?" I asked, intrigued. "I don't think I've heard of anyone who could do that."

"It seems the boy's defence has variety as well as strength," Muramasa commented. "I wonder if it would be enough to withstand my blade."

"It's probably more a matter of total force," Tactical pointed out. "Forcefields tend to be more susceptible to being overwhelmed than pierced."

Shielder perked up, blessedly unaware of how the Butchers were speculating on how to break his defences. "Yeah, I've got a lot of options with my shields. I can fix them in place mid-air, I can move them around, I can change their shape without having to pop them. I know it's not as cool as lasers and stuff, but-"

"Well, you did me a solid, stopping Mush," I said. "If you don't need to watch him, you could help me with this stuff. I'm thinking I'm going to take as much as I can carry."

"Now that's more like it," Stoneknapper said approvingly. "Take everything that's not nailed down."

"Shame none of these cars are intact," Vladimir noted wistfully. "We could have got ourselves a decent ride instead of walking everywhere."

Tock Tick rolled his eyes. "You do realise Taylor can probably build three cars out of all the pieces around here?"

"Ooh, there's a thought…"

"Say again?"

I refocused on Shielder; I hadn't realised I'd said that out loud. "Just had an idea." I grabbed a selection of tools and tucked them into my belt. "I'm going to start on a project while we're waiting. Fancy helping?"

"Oh, hell yeah!"

Glory Girl cleared her throat as she walked over. "PRT says they'll be here in about 15 minutes. They're a bit tied up with some other stuff, otherwise they would have already sent somebody to check that explosion out. What was that anyway?" she asked me.

"Mush tossed an engine at me. I think it was one of Squealer's creations, and it went off like a barrel of gunpowder."

Glory Girl winced, casting an eye about the workshop. "Yeesh. None of this stuff is going to explode, right?"

"I doubt it. That engine was the only thing that looked like Tinkertech." I dumped the tools in front of the chassis and walked around to pick up the engine block next to it. It seemed like a low-power model for a family car- I'd have to do some work.

"Hey Shielder, there's a welding torch over there, could you grab it?" I picked up some suspension coils and a small cutting tool as I gestured vaguely.

Glory Girl handed the torch to him, looking on with vague interest. "What are you doing with this stuff anyway?"

I pulled a pair of gearboxes off the ground and started taking them apart, sorting the gears by size. "There's enough material here for me to make some serious upgrades, but I need to be able to take it with me. So I need a vehicle."

"Wait, can you just take stuff from a crime scene?" Shielder asked as I started cutting some of the gears into finer shapes.

"Vigilantes get a bit of leeway in that kind of stuff," Glory Girl answered. "As long as it's not drugs or guns. Or Tinkertech, I think."

"A shame we couldn't take that engine," Tock muttered. "Imagine what we could have done with that."

"Okay. So, what're these for?" Shielder pointed at the gears I was rapidly shaping.

"These go on the axles," I explained as I threaded the gears into place, then took the welding torch off Shielder and went to start it up. "You guys might want to look away," I added.

Glory Girl turned her back- Shielder went one step further and created a thick, dark forcefield to shade his eyes as he turned.

"So how long've you been going out in costume?" Glory Girl asked as I started welding the gears into place, to interlock with the winding system I was going to set in place next.

"This is really only my second time out," I replied absently, more focused on aligning the parts correctly.

"Seriously? You're doing pretty well for a newbie," Shielder said, loudly enough to be heard over the tools. "Second time out and you took out a cape."

"With help."

"Yeah, 'cause you can't fight worth shit," Rotter snickered. I shoved him down as I started assembling an armature to mount the secondary gear system on.

The New Wave kids kept asking questions as I welded, cut, shaped and bolted, and I did my best to explain. With them watching, I couldn't use Stoneknapper's power to speed up the process, but I instinctively knew which tools to use, how each piece had to be shaped, and where to place them.

By the time I heard the authorities pull up to the garage, I'd combined two engines into a twelve-cylinder beast, custom-built the gearbox, added regenerative braking to the axles, which would help wind the mainspring power source, beefed up the suspension, and pried half the armour panels off the Squealer truck to reshape into bodywork, with a little help from a hastily rebuilt saw and Glory Girl's strength to pound them into shape.

The end result had two axles at the back, with four tyres on each, a wide front to accommodate the engine, a roll cage over the centred driver's seat, and every spare inch of space packed with all the tools and equipment that I'd been able to scrounge up.

"Now that," Vladimir said approvingly, "is a damn fine car."

"It's ugly," Needler sniffed.

"Well, this is only a crude first attempt," Tock pointed out. "We can start improving it once we get it back… to…"

I know, I know, we need somewhere to put all this, I thought to them all. I'll drive around and try to find a warehouse I can stash this in, alright?

The conversation was cut off as PRT troopers flooded out of the large van that had pulled up in front of the garage, while cops stepped out of the smaller one. Shielder drifted out to guide the PRT toward Mush, still unconscious under the shield. They flooded over him as soon as the shield disappeared, binding him hand and foot with some complicated shackles, and spraying a few blobs of containment foam over that. I watched that out of the corner of my eye, but my focus was on the woman who'd swung herself off her bike and was walking- marching- into the workshop toward us.

Her costume was army fatigues tailored to fit her figure, with a stars-and-stripes scarf wrapped around her lower face, and a matching sash at her waist. Her power was on display too- a fizzing cloud of green-black energy that flitted from hand to hand, changing into a pistol, a rifle, a knife, a sword. It became a knife again as she reached us, held in a sheath strapped to her thigh.

Miss Militia, second in command of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, and one of the longest serving heroes in the country. No pressure.

Anchorage made a noise like a purring cat. "Girls with guns. Mmm-mmm."

"She's strong," Nemean said. "You can see how she walks."

"Oh I'm looking!" Anchorage whistled. "Shake it honey!"

I tuned out their conversation as Miss Militia reached us, glancing at Glory Girl standing next to me before focusing on me. "Glory Girl, good to see you again," she said briskly. "And you must be Elpis. I heard about your debut on Saturday morning."

"That's me. Nice to meet you." Glory Girl added a 'hiya' as well, but otherwise stayed quiet.

"If you don't mind me asking, how long did it take you to make that suit?" I didn't miss how Miss Militia's hand rose up, pointed at me. For anyone else that would be reassuring, but I'd heard how she could summon her weapon to her hand in an eyeblink. Which meant that while she seemed to be making a friendly gesture, she was perfectly ready to draw on me.

Her question wasn't just idle curiosity- it was an attempt to establish when I'd got my powers. It made sense- I was a new cape, popping up only a few weeks after Quarrel bit it. It seemed the Protectorate were maintaining an impressive amount of paranoia; I'd respect it more if it didn't put me at risk.

"Nnnot sensing a threat," Flinch managed. "She's not going to draw anytime soon."

I forced my hands to remain still, trying for a light tone of voice. "A couple of months. I got kind of perfectionist over it. Took me forever to get the suit to the point where I felt like I could take it for a run, y'know?"

Miss Militia gave me a very searching glance. "I think so. I only ask because we've had several new capes pop up since the big fight with the Teeth."

After a long moment, Miss Militia glanced over at where the troopers had finished covering Mush in the yellow-white containment foam. I knew, more from the Butchers than my own knowledge, that the substance expanded on contact with air, was porous enough to breathe through, and yet elastic and adhesive enough that getting out of it was near impossible without teleporting or blasting out.

"Kinda wondering how you'd try to get your way out of that when you're holding back like this," Stoneknapper said slyly.

As long as I keep being the good guy, you'll never know, I retorted.

"Good work on capturing Mush," Miss Militia said at last, turning back to me. It still felt like she was looking right through me, and I couldn't shake the feeling she would figure me out any second. "We'd heard reports of him, but we hadn't been able to pin down his actual power. What exactly did you see him do?

"I guess he'd be a Changer- he basically unravelled into a bunch of strands and used them to pick up bits of trash and clump them into a body." I shrugged self-deprecatingly. "I didn't see that until after he'd absorbed a couple of dumpsters."

"Because you're an idiot," Quarrel said pettily. I pushed her into the dark, rolling my eyes in the privacy of my helmet.

Militia nodded, pulling a phone out of her pocket. "Can you walk me through what happened here?" she said, tapping at the screen- pulling up a recording app maybe.

I cleared my throat, sending a cloud of breath out through the filter. "Well, I was staking the place out after I got intel on my first night out. I heard the Merchants were taking stolen cars here to break them down for parts, so I figured I might be able to catch Squealer…"

I walked her through the entire encounter, stopping to explain a few details as Miss Militia asked for clarification on a few things. I made sure to explain away my knowledge of Mush's structure as intuition rather than bloodsight, and she seemed to buy it.

The whole experience felt surreal- not just because I, Taylor Hebert, sophomore student, was talking to a woman I looked up to, who'd been fighting the good fight since before I was born, but because the Butchers' experiences of heroes were so radically different. Heroes were to be fought, evaded, sicced on rivals, occasionally worked with in S-class scenarios. Not engaged in pleasant conversation peppered with what seemed like honest respect.

However, when I got to the end of the fight-

"A flamethrower?"

I held up my hands defensively. "I know, I know, it was really overboard, but I couldn't think of another way to take his trash out of play."

"Oh my god." Glory Girl was staring at me wide-eyed, mouth open and feet not touching the ground. "I thought that was the engine exploding. You actually set him on fire?"

"I set his trash on fire, it's not the same."

"Semantics," Vladimir scoffed. "That's like saying you set someone's clothes on fire, not the person. You're not being some perfect hero right now."

"You could have done serious damage though!" Glory Girl put her hands on her hips and gave me a look. "Honestly, what were you thinking?"

"Definitely Brandish's daughter," Needler noted. "Snap judgements and criticism."

It might have been the condescending tone, or how she was using her flight to literally look down on me, or maybe having the pretty popular girl prodding at me hit something sensitive, but I rounded on her like a dog on a rat. "I was thinking that I was disarmed and facing an opponent I couldn't easily counter. We don't all get to be wrecking balls in cheerleader outfits!"

"Excuse me?" Glory Girl demanded, rising an inch higher. "I saved your ass, how about a little gratitude?"

"How about a little less judging me for working with what I had? All you did was punch him a couple of times and get knocked into a wall!"

"Enough," Miss Militia ordered, her weapon shifting into a taser. "The villain is down without serious injury. As someone whose power comes with a lot of lethal options, I can sympathise with difficulty in using minimal force. However," she added severely, giving me a pointed look, "We do expect heroes to restrict themselves to methods that won't cause major injuries wherever possible. Am I clear?"

"Crystal," I said promptly.

"'kay," Glory Girl answered, drifting back to ground and blowing a strand of hair out of her face. "Sorry," she added grudgingly. "Can we just draw a line under that and move on?" She put a hand out toward me.

What I wanted was to flip her over and use her as the world's blondest broom to sweep up the trash. That wasn't even an image the Butchers had provided me.

But I had to be the hero. So I let out a long, hot breath, imagining the anger as smoke drifting out of my lungs, and took her hand. "Okay." We shook twice and released. "For what it's worth, I'm planning on building some better weapons after this. The taser batons are pretty good, but I need more options, I think."

"Taser batons?" Miss Militia cocked an eyebrow, then motioned to a trooper who was carrying something. The trooper jogged over, revealing the baton Mush had taken off me. There was a bend in the middle like an elephant had sat on it.

"Bastard," Tock Tick muttered.

I took it anyway, tucking it into my belt. "So where were we?"

"The flamethrower," Miss Milita said, holding the phone out again.

"Right. So I sprayed at Mush a few times, trying to damage the trash so he couldn't just keep re-absorbing it-"

We finished the report, Glory Girl chiming in with her account of things, sheepishly admitting to being swatted into a wall, and Shielder confirming things once he drifted over from helping secure Mush.

"That should do it," Militia said, ending the recording and putting the phone back into her pocket. "Thank you for your co-operation. On that note," she said, shifting to a more professional demeanour, "What exactly are you planning to do, going forward?"

"Ooh yes, do tell," Bearskin said mockingly. "Tell her how you're going to help old ladies cross the street and help Girl Scouts sell cookies and shit."

"Well, I'm planning on focusing on the Merchants for the time being," I said, feeling the New Wavers looking at me as I spoke, "But I think you mean, am I joining the Protectorate?" I shrugged. "Afraid not."

Miss Milita kept a good poker face, but I could see her eyebrows draw together slightly. "Are you sure? We do provide excellent support for heroes, especially Tinkers. We can give you access to almost any resource you might need, including components from other Tinkers."

"Christ, that'd be the dream," Tock said with a wistful tone.

"Wait, the Protectorate?" Shielder said incredulously. "I thought you were like, our age or something!" He looked like someone had just told him Christmas was cancelled.

"I'm not saying my exact age," I said carefully, "But yes, the Protectorate."

"Huh." Glory Girl was looking at me speculatively. "I'm with Eric, you definitely have more of a teen vibe."

"Regardless," Miss Militia cut in, with a tone that was very emphatically not please-stop-interrupting-my-pitch, "If you don't want to join, that's your decision. I should warn you though, independent heroes often struggle without backup. It's rare for someone to make it more than six months without joining some other group. As a Tinker, you'll be in greater danger than most, given how the gangs would be able to use your abilities; they aren't the sort of people to take no for an answer."

She stepped in closer and added in a low voice, "There is some speculation right now as to whether Butcher is actually dead."

I was certain, absolutely certain, even with the Butchers suddenly yelling and jeering inside my head, that I wasn't giving anything away, but fear beat a tattoo against the inside of my head. "Shit, really?" I asked. "You think there's a new Butcher hiding themselves or something?"

"Precisely." Those bottle-green eyes were boring into me now. "So we have to keep an eye on any new or unusual activity that might fit the Butcher's abilities."

"Oooooh, they're onto you now," Bearskin gloated. "How long do you think you can last when they're looking at you properly, eh?"

"Seriously?" Glory Girl asked incredulously, glancing back and forth between the two of us. "You think she's Butcher in disguise or something? Look, I saw Elpis fighting, and no offence, she wasn't doing so hot. If she was really Butcher, she'd have just gone 'Mwahaha, pain blast! Bug swarm! Teleport!' instead of trying to hit Mush with a spanner, which is what she did."

"For your information, I had it completely under control," I retorted, focusing on the reflexive annoyance at her description of the fight, so that I wouldn't show any of the rush of gratified relief as she vouched for me. The Butchers simply howled in frustration at her interference.

I turned back to Miss Militia. "Well, I'm not going to lie and say that doesn't worry me, because frankly that's terrifying. But I've made my decision. Besides, while I respect the Protectorate, I've got serious trouble when it comes to obeying authority figures," I half-lied. "I just don't think I'd be a good fit."

"HEY MISSY WE'RE IN HERE! COME GET US!" Anchorage yelled at the top of her mental voice. "I'LL SHOW YOU A GOOD FIT! ME AND YOU WITH A BOTTLE OF-"

I pushed Anchorage down with a grimace, refocusing on the conversation. "I'm not planning on joining New Wave either," I added. "No offense."

"None taken," Glory Girl shrugged.

"Well, I suppose that covers everything." Militia made to turn away, then stopped and faced me again. "One more thing." She pointed a thumb at the vehicle I'd put together- I still hadn't come up with a name for it yet. "There is some official leeway for independents claiming salvage from crime scenes, moreso for Tinkers. That said, we can't turn a blind eye to outright theft, so in future, please clear anything you're going to take with proper authorities before making off with it. Understood?"

"Got it. Glory girl said the rule of thumb is- what, no drugs, no guns, no Tinkertech?"

"Nothing fun," Firecracker said, resurfacing from the void.

"Money's fun," Muramasa countered.

"Not with Little Miss Boring, it's not."

"That's close," Militia admitted. "Regardless, we'll be keeping an eye on your activities."

I tried to convince myself that there wasn't an edge in her voice as she said that, that she couldn't possibly have any reason to suspect me. The paranoia refused to fade.

"Right." I nodded to the vehicle. "So, I guess I'll just go then?"

"Go ahead. Best of luck to you, Elpis."

"See you around," Glory Girl added. "Message me if you want to team up again, or if you want costume tips or something."

"What's wrong with the costume?" I looked over the armour- scratched in places, but well-shaped and functional.

"I dunno," she shrugged, "It's just missing some flair."

"Right." For a brief moment I dearly wished I'd left part of my face uncovered so I could pull a face at her. "Well, if there's nothing else, I'm going to head off." I turned and made for the vehicle- Speeder, Tock Tick called it, walking up the hood to drop into the seat. I fastened the harness I'd kludged together, put my feet on the petals, and turned the ignition.

The engine started quickly, then faded to a dull grumble. I took a moment to check over the displays. Fuel, full. Mainspring at 5% and winding slowly while I had it on idle. I tested the brakes, feeling the armatures press against the gears on the axles, revved the engine a few times, then finally disengaged the handbrake and rolled it forward.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," Rotter whined. "Let's frigging go already!"

Some of the troopers turned to look as I eased it out of the garage and onto the road. Miss Militia raised an eyebrow as I drew past her. "How long did it take you to put that together?" she asked speculatively.

I shrugged. "20 minutes-ish. Not being so perfectionist this time."

Without another word I stomped on the accelerator and went from zero to sixty in about 3 seconds, trailing a whoop behind me.

Later, I would worry about the Protectorate's view of me, how they hadn't given up the search for Butcher XV, how New Wave might join in the search and force me to fight against Glory Girl and Shielder.

For now, I didn't think about any of that. I just drove like a bat out of hell, laughing in tune with the Butchers for one long, carefree moment.

--

AN: There's Mush finished. I'm sure some of you are glad to see the back of him.

I really want to build on Shielder in this fic. We get almost nothing of him in canon, and I feel like there could be a lot to him, as the youngest and most defense-oriented of New Wave.

Plus, Miss Militia is bae, change my mind.

As usual, I'll be answering questions I'm tagged in, or just stuff that I notice. Ask away!

Edit: Changed 'generational' to 'regenerative'. Thank you The Unicorn for pointing that out.

Last edited: Aug 2, 2020

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HowlingGuardian

Jul 27, 2020

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