Weaver and Jinx [Worm AU]

Chapter Eight
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Maribel lived just south of the Trainyard. It wasn't a good neighborhood. Her grandmother's house was smaller than my own, and with its unkempt lawn and chipped wood siding, you could be forgiven for thinking it was abandoned.

Inside, I was greeted by the same stale tobacco smell that I'd endured in the car, mingled now with a faint musty odor. A sickly yellow taint clung to the walls. The orange shag carpeting might have been older than my dad.

Her grandmother handed us cold soda cans and promised us hot dogs and beans for dinner. Maribel led the way down the hall which was crowded with boxes and stacks of books and magazines. At first, I thought these were unpacked leftovers from when Maribel moved to Brockton Bay, but there was too much dust and too many cobwebs. And I seriously doubted she brought with her old issues of Outdoor Life or National Geographic.

I reached out and felt the nearby bugs. There were a lot of them. The house had a serious termite problem.

Maribel's room was dimly lit and cramped. I had to walk over clothes piled so high her bed was nearly redundant. Over the walls hung numerous overlapping posters. I spotted one of Che Guevera, another of Malcolm X and one with the grinning white mask of the British supervillain Vendetta Queen. The rest were either of musicians I didn't recognize or Earth Aleph anime characters.

Maribel motioned for me to close the door, and when I did she eased slowly onto a vinyl beanbag chair in the corner beside a set of particleboard shelves holding a nice flatscreen TV, a laptop and a gaming console. She poked at her phone and snorted.

"The Wards came out with their press release. They're calling us 'Weaver and Jinx.' Those are stupid names."

I opened my drink and sat on the corner of her bed. A spring in the lopsided mattress popped under my weight.

"'Weaver'? I guess that's because I 'weave' stuff with my spiders? But I only told that to . . . oh." Great. Was I stuck with a name that Sophia had given me?

"'Jinx' sounds like a little cartoon character," Maribel said. "I want scary, not cute. I should have come up with my own name. Something like . . . like . . . Queen Nope? Because I 'nope' powers?"

"'Queen Nope?' Really?" I chuckled. "But I don't think 'Weaver and Jinx' is too bad. They go well together. It sounds like a team."

"It sounds too much like 'Uber and Leet,'" Maribel said with distaste. "But it doesn't matter. We're so badass, villains are going to fear our names no matter what they are."

Which made me think of what we might be doing tonight. On the way over, her grandmother had stopped by my house for me to pick up a few things. My costume was in my backpack.

"You still have tabs on Stormtiger?"

Maribel pointed south. "That way. He's driving right now. Not sure how far, but if this is the range where I can shut him down"--she held her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart--"then he's like on the other side of the house right now. So, a few miles away? Downtown maybe?"

"We don't have to go after him tonight. We could wait until after Panacea sees you," I said. "But right now, I was thinking we could talk about your powers. Maybe figure out if there's anything else you can do. The more we know, the better."

Maribel's expression was a mix of disappointment and relief. Earlier, she seemed eager to go Nazi hunting, but clearly she wasn't looking forward to limping across the city. She frowned thoughtfully.

"Okay, I have an idea," she said.

I sipped my Coke. "Go on."

"Tagging Stormtiger, it's like I have a hand holding him. He's too far away to squeeze, but if he moves, my hand moves. That's how I track him. But I feel like I can do more, and since it'd be stupid to test it with a Nazi supervillain . . . I'm going to do it to you instead. Ready? I'm going to amp you. Real quick. Up and down."

"What are--?" I began, but then came the familiar rush as my range expanded. It only lasted for a moment before she dialed me back to normal.

"There. I've tagged you too. And now . . ." She stared at me for a moment, her dark eyes squinting behind her glasses. "You feel it?"

I did. It was as if there was an unseen compass inside my brain, and that compass was pointing at Maribel. Slowly, I stood and walked around the room. I closed my eyes and turned in a circle. The sensation wasn't intrusive, but I easily knew which direction I'd find Maribel.

"Wow," I said.

"Two way tracking," Maribel said. "It's like our powers are shaking hands. I'll keep this connection. This way, I'll always know where you are, and you'll always know where I am. Isn't that cool?"

"It's very cool," I agreed. It also could be very useful, in the right situation.

When dinner was ready, I sat on the clothes pile beside her. Maribel covered her hot dogs in beans and mustard and managed to smear what seemed like half of it around her mouth. Between bites, she showed off her gaming console.

It'd only come out a couple of months ago, and I remember Greg once claiming that some of its components were derived from tinker-technology. I wasn't sure if that was true, but I knew the console was expensive. And Maribel's strangely shaped, one-handed controller didn't look cheap either. I wondered how she was able to afford these things, but it'd be rude to ask.

While we played a zombie survival game, I had the termites eat their eggs and then kill each other.

Later that night, when we were watching cartoons, Maribel began to fidget. Finally she grinned.

"He's close," she said.

"Stormtiger?"

She nodded. "Maybe a half mile. That way. Want to go get him?"

I looked at the clock. It wasn't quite midnight. "What about your grandmother?"

Maribel mimed drinking from a bottle, and then falling asleep.

Somehow I had a feeling this was a bad idea, but I said, "All right, then. Let's get dressed. And now that we have cape names, let's use them. Got it, Jinx?"

"Okay, Weaver!"

I wore my sweatshirt and jeans over my costume, and together we sneaked down the hall into the living room. Sure enough, her grandmother was snoring in a reclining armchair in front of the TV, a bottle of wine on the table beside her.

We slipped outside and walked to the end of the street before hiding behind a fence where we finished changing. I crammed my clothes in my backpack, plugged in my radio earbud and put on my mask. Since Jinx's arm was in a sling, she buttoned her rain slicker over it and stuffed the empty sleeve in her pocket. It looked obvious, but hopefully no one would notice. Maybe half of the streetlamps worked, and the night sky was more overcast than not. We moved along the sidewalk through weak, foggy moonlight.

When we stopped beneath a tree, Jinx leaned against the bark and watched me from under the brim of her hat, her horn rim glasses glistening above a green scarf.

"He hasn't moved in a while," she said in a whisper.

"If he's at home, we turn back," I said.

"Oh, come on! Can't you at least have your spiders chew his dick while he sleeps? He'll wake up going, 'Ahhh! My dick!' And if you use brown recluses, it'd be even funnier!"

I stared at her. Was she joking? I couldn't tell anymore. "Jinx, if we're going to attack him, it'll be when he's committing a crime. We're not going to castrate him for laughs."

"But he's a Nazi!"

"Jinx . . ."

Jinx gave an exaggerated sigh: I was no fun.

"You want me to amp you?" she asked sullenly. "We're close now."

"All right."

During those few seconds, I reached out to hundreds of millions of bugs and told them to converge on a point a quarter of a mile south of us. We continued on carefully, keeping to the shadows. The neighborhood grew gradually higher class, though most of the houses still had junk in their front yards, taped up windows or other things wrong that gave the city its rundown reputation.

Jinx paused along the wall of a duplex. She limped forward behind a bush and peeked around the corner.

"He's in a house down at the end."

"Probably because that's his house," I said. I had to admit, I was a little disappointed. But then what was I expecting? It was nighttime, and even supervillains had to sleep.

"No, wait," Jinx said. "Look at all the cars."

I leaned through the leaves behind her and peered over her head. Through my binoculars, about a hundred yards away, I saw about a dozen vehicles in front of a large, weathered Victorian-style house. Some were parked on the lawn. Lights shone in the windows. Through my bugs inside I could sense a number of people as well as . . . four legged animals. And I was picking up a lot of fleas and ticks. And blood. And loud sounds.

"Let's move closer," I said.

I led the way, crouching low as we crossed two front yards. We stopped in the bushes beside the wood-shingled side of another duplex. Across the street and three homes down stood the Victorian house. My bugs checked the surrounding homes. Most of the occupants were in bed, and none were outside. I squatted and watched around the corner with my binoculars.

"Hookwolf and that blond girl are there too," Jinx said behind me. I could sense her through the compass in my brain. Her excitement was clear in her voice. "Want me to shut them all down?"

"Not yet."

I drew my swarm in, slowly. A dark insect cloud loomed over the street. Bugs rolled across the grass and pavement like a carpet of shadows. I was pretty sure the noise inside was barking, though it was odd that I couldn't hear it with my own ears. Were the walls soundproof? I could guess what the place was.

"It's a dogfighting ring," I said with disgust.

"Fucking Nazis," said Jinx. "We have to do something."

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the PRT. I kept the call brief and to the point and hung up. I considered the tactics we discussed earlier, but with the bad guys concentrated in an enclosed space, that sort of complexity didn't seem necessary. They were practically trapped. This would be easy. I hoped.

"Shut them down," I said.

"Shutting down now," said Jinx happily.

My swarm enveloped the house in a thick, black mist. Millions of bugs worked their way inside and within seconds I could sense the positions and movements of everyone and everything within the house's walls. Most of the people were thrashing, running and screaming. A few raced out the front door, but the swarm was so thick I was able to literally knock them off their feet. Another man crashed through a window and rolled sobbing. Winged insects funneled through the new openings.

"I wonder if my brother's in there," Maribel mused. "I hope he is."

I focused my swarm on biting over stinging, and even when they stung I held back on most of the venom. I had no idea which people inside were the capes, though a large, muscular man with long hair was huddling in a bathtub. That could have been Hookwolf, from the pictures I'd seen. Water splashed across his body, though it did little more than inconvenience the thousands of bugs nibbling on his skin. He was shouting into something in his hand. He wasn't the only one. I sent gnats and ants to wiggle into all the gang-members' phones, but I doubted they were small enough to reach the electronics. Hopefully the PRT would show up before Empire Eighty-Eight's reinforcements.

In the house next door to us, a few yards away on the other side of a chain-link fence, my bugs detected footsteps, and I turned in time to see a curtain shift in a picture window. A handful of flies in the bedroom told me it was someone in a bathrobe. Our costumes were dark, and we were in bushes. So whoever it was probably couldn't see us and wouldn't want to get involved even if we were visible. But just in case, I landed several thousand stinging insects on the grass around us.

Inside the Victorian house, a few of the dogs had somehow escaped their cages and were mauling the patrons. I told Jinx and she broke into giggles.

"Nazis versus bees and dogs! I wish some of your bugs had little cameras. Then we could make Youtube videos!"

"I figured you'd like that. I'm using my swarm to keep them back. Otherwise we might have a few dead bodies on our hands."

"Who cares about them! Just don't hurt the doggies!"

I wasn't. Or at least I was trying really hard not to. Fortunately, the dogs were just as scared of the bugs as the humans were. I corralled the dogs into an empty room. From what I could tell, half were barking at the swarm clouds while the other half were whimpering and scratching at the walls.

After last time, Jinx and I agreed we'd leave before the PRT showed up, but with three supervillains pinned down by my bugs and only kept from breaking out by Jinx's trump powers, I didn't see a way we could withdraw safely. We would have to wait until the PRT had them secured, and it'd be a lot less awkward if we weren't hiding in bushes, waiting for them to leave.

I groaned inwardly. I wasn't looking forward to dealing with another one of their recruitment pitches.

Lights shone from down the street, far past the house. Revving engines echoed in the night.

"The PRT?" Jinx asked.

My swarm told me that the three vehicles were about two hundred yards away and closing in fast. I peeked around the corner. One of the vehicles--a big-wheel truck--had a spotlight mounted on its roof. The bright beam swiveled around, illuminating the houses on either side of the street before suddenly turning and shining directly into my eyes.

I pulled back. "No," I said.

Machine gun fire broke out. Bite-sized chunks of wood-siding exploded from the duplex's corner. Bullets spat into the grass.

"Run!" I shouted, but of course Jinx couldn't run. I grabbed her by her raincoat and dragged her through the bushes along the wall, away from the corner and towards the backyard gate. Already, thousands of insects were sacrificing themselves against the vehicles' windshields. The vehicles swerved. Two people with guns stood in the bed of the truck, and my bugs attacked them en-masse. Their ski-masks did nothing to protect their eyes. Panicking, one of them tumbled out and rolled like a rag doll in the street.

How did the reinforcements find us so fast? As if to answer the question, I saw an old woman squatting in the window of the house on the other side of the chain-link fence. She was lit by the approaching, bobbing headlights. She was aiming a shotgun.

I fell backwards against the duplex's wall as the bark of the blast rang through the air. I felt as if my chest had caved in. My right arm was numb, my shoulder in agony. I couldn't breath. Blood pounded in my ears. I slumped into the bushes, my ribs screaming. A small part of me thought, I guess my costume isn't bulletproof after all. Or at least it didn't feel that way. I wasn't sure how bad it was.

Through my bugs, I saw one of Empire Eighty-Eight's vehicles crash through the brick and iron gate of the duplex's front entryway. The wall behind me shuddered at the impact.

Jinx was kneeling by my side. There was a small silver pistol in her hand. She screamed something that sounded a lot like, "Die, Nazi fuckers!" and fired shots at the window. I wasn't sure how long I had left, so I helped by sending my stinging insect swarm through the bullet holes in the glass.

Sirens wailed in the distance.
***
To be continued . . .

AN: I would like to thank Racheakt for his creative input. I was going to work on another original work (a space opera) but I already have six writing projects on my plate, so I'll put it off for now. So, next I'm working on "Faraday" 1.4 and after that, probably "Tales of a Power Armor Apocalypse" Chapter Nine.