All You Need is (Not) Kill (Worm SI)

And finally chapter 4.5 is readied for release.

As always, credit to Ziplopz for betareading this chapter.

WARNING: RAGE BECAUSE COIL.

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Chapter 4.5

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Walking down the street of Brockton Bay’s downtown, I looked out for any signs of trouble from the gangs and criminals as well as giving a heroic smile to civilians and tourists. While today marked the second day for my patrol in Brockton Bay, I certainly wasn’t expecting anything as catastrophic as...my first day.

But…

A Ward patrol is usually a two-men team, right?

So...why am I paired together with not just Glory Girl, but also Vista?

While Glory Girl wasn’t really part of Brockton Bay Ward, the schedule was arranged so that she will be paired with at least one Ward for safety reasons during patrol. So having a three-men team here was very unusual and only for special circumstances.

It didn’t take much for me to figure out what the special circumstance was.

“Batter Seven?” I heard a young female voice and looked up. It’s Glory Girl, floating a couple feet above the ground.

“Are you alright? You look like you were out of it for a second there.” in a single step, she walked from the rooftop of the building behind us to right besides me.

“I’m fine. Just thinking about things.” I waved their worries off.

“Hm? Like what~?” Glory Girl asked curiously.

“Like...how it felt like I’m the one being protected instead of the citizens of Brockton Bay by you two?” they both looked dejected from my words.

“Batter, we were worried about you. You do have to understand that what happened on your first day was not the usua-”

“Then why are you two looking after me like babysitters?” I crossed my arms and looked into their eyes, seeing them filled with concern.

“I just don’t want that to-”

“To what, Glory Girl? You got nothing to apologize about for that incident. It’s my fault and mine alone that I didn’t run fast eno-”

“Dammit, Batter!” I was taken back when Vista yelled out loud, the little girl had a really big pair of lungs to talk with.

“I know I’m the youngest Ward in Brockton Bay, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel responsible for your safety when you got hurt in the same Ward team I’m in!” she cried.

“Vista, I-”

“I may not be the leader, but I still have 2 fucking years of seniority over you. So, yeah. I felt pretty responsible for this incident.” she sighed, “And in a way, I am kinda responsible because I asked Aegis to arrange the schedule so mountain peaks here didn’t get to patrol with Gallant for at least a while.”

Glory Girl looked at her with a face of admiration, “You abused your authority just to keep my boyfriend away from me? Cool! You really are more than a usual 12 years old!”

“Of course I am!” Vista puffed her chest proudly.

I’m pretty sure that’s the first, last and only time that I heard someone commented ‘Cool’ to the person that’s trying to steal their boyfriend.

“Well...thank you, Vista.”

“No problem!” she said proudly.

“So, do we continue our patrol now or?” I asked.

“Actually...I have something to tell you.” Glory Girl replied.

“Hm? About what?”

“I...how do I put this?” she sighed, “There’s another reason why I’m helping you out.”

What could she mean by that?

“You are not the only one who had a really bad day.” she said.

I raised my eyebrows at that one.

“You mean the one time that you got hurt after getting your power and got your sister to trigger as well?” Vista added.

What the hell kind of incident would hurt Miss Invincible here so badly it caused Amy to trigger!? Sure, Amy is a second-generation cape, but if her power to manipulate biology has anything to do with this…

“That sounds pretty bad.” I grimaced

“It...was.” she crossed her arm and her downcast face had a look of melancholy.

“The New Wave attended a local fundraising event that day for cancer awareness, and since I triggered two weeks ago, mom figured that this would be a good experience for me. Oh how wrong she was about that...” she chuckled, but more at the ironic than the hilarity.

“I was quite excited for that day to be honest. Wearing my costume and flying above the street was a dream of mine for a long time. So I had high hopes for that day, so much that I forgot to wear safety shorts until mom realised it when I was above her. I pretty much flashed everyone that day…” she added, scratching her cheek in embarrassment.

I chuckled as well at that memory, I’m fairly sure most skirt-wearing superheroes had that problem before. But...this will only make the next part more painful, won’t it?

“After a while, I asked mom if I could fly around the city on my own. I just wanted to spread my wings so much. But mom declined until Amy volunteered to call for help if I got into trouble.”

“That decision from her saved my life.”

“What happened? Did you....get into trouble?”

She sighed, “Yup…”

“I should have known it was suspicious that a woman standing so close to a dirty alley was waving at me, but...I was blind back then and even now I…”

I placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, hoping that would comfort her.

“The first thing that happened to me was getting thrown into the alley and if not for my power, getting my eyes stabbed out. Immediately, I fought back, but no matter how I swung my fist, it won’t connect. And I just kept getting angrier and angrier until I lost sight of where I was.”

“I didn’t know a shady alley could be this dark until the woman sunk her knife into my chest.”

What!?

“Aren’t you-”

“Invincible? Tough? That’s what I thought.” she grimaced, “I guess I was very wrong about that fact.”

“So I was lying on the ground, bleeding to death because my heart got fucking stabbed. I was...crying, I don’t remember what I said, but it was probably something embarrassing and depressing.” I noticed tears began to swell at the edge of her blue eyes.

I had prepared napkins for situation like this ever since that one incident.

“Then I saw more of them bringing Amy in, putting a knife at her throat. All I could remember was that I told them I would do anything for them to let my sister go, begging for them to at least let Amy live.”

“They...complied.” her voice was shaking in fear, this is not good.

“Glory Girl, calm down. We have time here, say what you want slowly.”

She took my advice and slowed down her breathing. Eventually, she continued, “You might think, what could possibly be worse than bleeding to death? Well, turns out that this group was a part of the Teeth and the Teeth worked with Slaughterhouse 9 before...”

“Needless to say, it was bad. So bad I can’t actually remember any of it besides red everywhere.” tears streamed down her cheek, “I was going to die, had a miracle not happened..”

This...was really bad.

“But…” she smiled, even with tears flowing down her eyes, “After I passed out, I felt...tears on my face, kinda like now I guess.”

“It was Amy crying on top of me, and I saw my body pulling itself together after what they had...done. That’s when I realised Amy has triggered because of me.”

“Because of my failure as both a sister and a hero.” she frowned.

Damn, I have to say something about this but...what else can I say?

...Maybe.

“Glory Girl.”

“Hm?”

“Well, it is your fault, true. But you survived and learned to be better from this incident. And even if you felt like you didn’t learnt anything at all because of my incident, continue to learn from those mistakes. It will pay off one day.” I encouraged her.

“I...thanks, thank you, Batter.” her smile widened, “I guess I just needed someone to hear about this and tell me what to do. I felt much better now. Thank you.”

“Anyway, after that happened and all the crying and sad hugging between Amy and I, the rest of the New Wave came to get us. They had quite a surprise when they realised I was wearing nothing at all. You know, because I got torn apart brutally?”

On one hand, she basically said that she was almost murdered so brutally, it would require a closed casket burial. On the other hand, the mental image in my mind was absolutely hilarious.

“That’s also when I realised my cousin is gay because Shielder was merely shocked while Laserdream was blushing like a cherry. But hey, I got off lucky if all I get from the incident was being joked about for a couple weeks. I meant, I saw my insides at one point!”

I really didn’t want to laugh because it’s so damn morbid, but, “Goddammit, Glory Girl!”

[Priority: Gold]​

“What? I have been through a traumatic incident, at least I can have my right to joke about it all I want!” she pouted, “But...while I still get images of those incident in my dream weeks after the incident, having Amy besides me make those memories less painful. It still happens sometimes, but not as often as before now.”

[Social Link?]​

“What I want to say is I want to help you like how Amy did for me. I might not be as good as her at this, but I will try.” she said.

[Confirmed]​

“I...really appreciate that. Thank you, Glory Girl.”

“No probl-Vista, what are you doing?”

“Giving you a hug, you big dummy.” with her short arms, Vista hugged Glory Girl’s waist as tightly as she could, “I still triggered a whole years ahead of you. So as your senior, I’m responsible for your safety too!”

That...was an adorable and brave statement from Vista, but the whole situation would have been better if she was tall enough to not sink her whole face into Glory Girl’s chest instead...

Hmm…

“Erm thank you, Vista but could you let me-Batter what are you doing!?”

“Giving you a hug, you big dummy.” and from behind her, I put my arms to the front and hugged her tightly. I also took care to not touch her hip with mine because that would be awkward.

“Come on, guys! Let go! This is embarrassing!” Glory Girl pleaded and wiggled in our tight hugs.

“Nuuuuu, you absolutely need this hug.” Vista denied.

“Yesssss, embrace the hug.” I agreed.

“Guys?” Glory Girl asked worriedly.

“Hugsssss.” both Vista and I chanted the words as if we were both descended from some sort of cult that practised hugging to appease their unholy dark God, truly the best cult ever.

“How did you synchronise with Vista so well in less than a week!?”

“Strange minds think alike.” I grinned and Vista’s muffled giggle can be heard from her chest.

When it became clear that we won’t let go, she revealed her trump card, “Okay, if you guys don’t let go of me in 10 seconds, I am going to fly until you two can’t see the ground.”

I quickly let go but Vista held on until Glory Girl almost counted to 10.

She could only sigh at our combined antic, “Thanks for that anyway. I really need it…”

“We are heroes, right? If we can’t help each other, then how are we supposed to help the civilians?” I smiled, and so did they.

“So, continue our patrol?” Vista asked.

“Sure...Wait, what’s the time now?”

She looked down on her own Ward standard issue communication watch, “It’s now...4:33 PM.”

...Wait, shit, only a minute left!?

“Wait a second, I need to check something.” I quickly turned with my back towards them and pulled out the card from my pocket. I felt as if something was gripping my heart as I stared at the ‘C’ symbol, and slowly flipped the card.

It was blank, as there’s ten seconds before 4:34 PM.

Nine...Eight...Seven...Six...Five...Four...Three...Two...One!

Black letters materialized against the white background of the card and they said…

[Eat some ice-cream and chill.]

...

What.

“Hey look! Ice-cream truck!” Glory Girl said and I looked towards where she pointed. It was an honest-to-God ice-cream truck with a giant pink ice-cream decoration on top of the truck.

“Want to take a break, Batter, Glory Girl?” Vista asked, clearly hoping to get some ice-cream.

Before I could say anything, Glory Girl tackled me and all I saw was a adorable puppy-eyes look that might get really sad if I said no.

I really can’t say no to that cute expression at all.

We then went down from the roof and bought some ice-cream from the ice-cream man who was very surprised at our presence. Glory Girl went for a lemon ice-cream (apparently she liked fruity dessert). Vista went for coffee for an ‘adult’ taste but her eye kept shifting towards strawberry. And I went for chocolate and vanilla mix with chocolate sprinkle because chocolate is great, always.

It wasn’t long before tourists started gathering and took pictures of us eating ice-cream, and the ice-cream man was soon overwhelmed by the sheer amount of customers buying his stock.

“Is it really okay for us to sneak away from our duty like this?”

“Well, we are the Wards. But we are still a bunch of kids, so it’s fine!” Vista shrugged.

I smiled at her before taking another lick of the ice-cream. Silently, I took out the card again and saw the order being changed.

[Stay calm and wait.]

Who the fuck wrote this damn thing!? Is this some kind of prank!? Was there something in the ice-cream!? Is it actually a lie!? Is the ice-cream man secretly a spy!? And wait for what exactly!?

Sigh…

[Infinite Degrading Potential detected][Omni-Skills Practitioner detected]​

“Well well well, what do we have here?” a masculine voice armed with a hidden threat spoke through the crowd.

I looked towards the direction of the voice and saw two tall figures wearing overcoats and fedoras. Definitely parahuman for the sheer out-of-place-ness of their costume.

“Who are you two?” I drew out my tinker bat.

“Our name don’t matter for now, but don’t you three think that wearing that dress for a fight would be too silly?” the slightly taller one answered.

“Hey! It’s a not a dress! It’s a combat skirt!” Glory Girl declared as she crossed her arms.

“Yeah!” with her power, Vista zipped from my side to Glory Girl’s side before slapping her hand in agreement.

“Come on, Batter. Add something in!”

“Erm...I only wear skirt because that one incident and the alternative would be to wear those skin tight spandex…” I sheepishly said.

“Yeah, I understand that...I have to exercise everyday just to make sure my figure isn’t out of order.” Glory Girl shrugged understandably. “The fact that my costume has no protective layer does not help at all as it get even thinner.”

“But your skirt is so short, you will flash anyone just by moving around anyway.” Vista argued.

Apparently my face could get even more redder.

“Well then, it won’t be silly for us to wear skirts too then!”

Wait what.

That’s when they took their overcoat off and the girls started screaming.

…

WHY THE HELL ARE THEY BOTH COSPLAYING ME!?!?

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Lily (Flechette)

When she woke up, her head felt dizzy and her body cold from the worsening fever. Her eyes could only see blobs of colours as they refocused back to normal, only to find herself being in a grey walled room with no windows and a single metal door. The only thing that accompanied her here was a metal table and the metal chair she was sitting.

,​

She also found herself locked on the metal chair and stripped down to her underwear.

Immediately she panicked, tried to pull her arms out of the metal cuffs but her power just won’t work as if...there’s some sort of power nullifier around! While she struggled in her bond, she felt an uncomfortable tightness around her neck. Of course it’s a fucking power nullifying collar, fucking nightmare fuel fetishist.

She continued to struggle before she heard the metal door slide open and saw a man dressed in a black suit with an image of white snake coiled around his body, followed by two of his guards wearing full military equipment in black with their faces covered by balaclava.

“I see you woke up just in time.” the man in costume said.

“Who are you!?” she acted tough, but her shaky voice broke that facade in an instant.

The man simply laughed at her reply, “For normal occasions, I won’t tell my name to dead people, but I will make an exception to this.”

She felt her hands pressed down by his weight as the man leaned forward to her face, “I’m Coil.”

Coil? Who is thi-

,.​

“Never heard of me? Exactly how I like it!” he stepped back and spread his arm upward, “No one will need to know about my existence until they have already been poisoned from within.”

She gulped down her saliva but all it did was make her fear worse.

One of his guard gave him a folder with unknown documents inside and he slowly took the content out, placing them neatly on the table. She was wondering what was written on those documents until he picked one up to read it.

“Lily Takeshi, 16 years old, 3.21 GPA, has two siblings, one little brother and an elder sister. Wait, had. Due to financial pressure, your parents divorced and sent you to foster care. You triggered sometime after that.”

,​

How did he kno-

“Joined New York Ward in 2008, deployed to San Francisco, Maine, Baltimore, Detroit and Miami before finally Brockton Bay. Have the power to imbue an object with the effect of ignoring all outside force and matters.”

He looked up from the file and towards her, “And has no friends besides that freak.”

;,’​

She clenched her teeth.

“No one will know where you are when you’re hidden underneath their feet, little girl. So why don’t you just do me a favour and say you will give yourself to me?”

“No.”

“How adamant.”

In his hand, she saw a thumb sized remote and the man pressed it.

,’;;​

She screamed as she felt electricity shocking her body painfully, her wrists and ankles bruised as her muscles spasmed violently around the cuffs. Her whole body slumped forward as it stopped and she felt warm liquid trickling down her legs.

“Now?”

.,;​

She shook her head and felt another burst of electricity.

Again, she slumped forward as her limbs started to feel numb from the electricity..

“I can do this all day.”

Before she can even answer, the man already pressed the remote.

,.​

As the electricity stopped, two lines of tears trickled down her cheek and dripped onto the floor. The man watched with glee as she cried in the sheer hopeless of the situation.

“I’m going to assume you will still say no even after an hour of this. So, I have another thing up my sleeve.”

There’s something even worse than this!?

“Considering you are my last subject before my departure to elsewhere, I want you to guess what my power is that let me hide so well underneath the radar?”

“...Stranger?”

“Wrong.”

He pressed the remote as she screamed, thrashing in her bonds.

.,;​

“Did I mention you will be electrocuted for wrong answer? I guess not.” the man gleefully said, and she really couldn’t tell whether he’s faking his emotion or he’s really happy that he can torture an adolescent however he wants because he knows he won’t get any repercussion at...all...

…

“Precog.” she weakly answered.

“Close enough! You see...No, I see the world from multiple perspectives, and I can do different things in each world separately. In one world, I chose to do nothing but sitting in my office, working on paperwork and drink a cup of coffee from my most favourite mug. In the other worlds…”

;,’;,’’;.’​

He stepped towards her and placed his hand on her thigh, “I can do…” his hand slowly crept up her thigh, “Whatever I want.”

.,;​

Tears ran down her face again but she felt no more strength left in her to scream.

“I do believe you are not the first one here either, who was it last week again? Is it that Middle-Easterner or that white supremacist mom? It was fun watching how far she would go for her baby.”

“Please...no…”

He raised up his finger, “But wait! There’s more! How’s today’s lunch, Lily?”

The...lunch?

.’’.​

“You put something in there!?”

“Finally some energy in that beautiful voice of yours! And yes, my men did put something in there. Well, technically she would like to think herself as a woman but the thing between her legs disagreed.”

“Anyway, still remember Hookwolf, the one that ripped an arm and leg off your friend?”

/.​

She glared at him in silent.

“Well, on the day of your arrival, my men caught that dog in a cage and we gave him the same drug my men put in your drink. It’s a tinkertech drug that caused anyone that consumes it to be extremely obedient to the first voice they heard.”

,;’;;,’./​

She wanted to scream but nothing came out.

“I said catch, Hookwolf catches. I said handshake, Hookwolf gives handshake. I said kill...Hookwolf almost got it right the first time. But the side effect of the drug is that the consumer will and could only do the order as they completely lost any free will to control themselves.”

‘,;’,;’​

He continued “The new Hookwolf is now less of a metal wolf and more a wolf-looking robot. But that damn dog managed to lose the com device so I can’t even order it to not die from starving anymore. Shame that I can’t use it on that talkative bitch either because it would make her too stupid to answer my question, but there’s only so much you can ask for in one life.”

‘;,.,​

“As for you. In…” he checked his watch, “In one hour, you will obey every single orders from me no matter how repulsive nor merciless. Up to and including executing every single one of your friends brutally, including him.”

,;’,’,;’,/,,;’/​

“Why!?” she weakly yelled.

“Because I don’t know? I’m trying to fuck your mind maybe? Seeing young girls like you to break down in from me make my blood rush. Or maybe I’m just trying to get you to second trigger. Ah wait, that is not happening now that you even think about getting a second trigger.”

;’.​

Motherfucker, he’s right! Second trigger was basically similar to first tigger except worse, and just by thinking about it made the chance of getting it next to zero,

“But most importantly! Fuck that crossdresser for ruining everything I have planned for this city as soon as he arrived. I even have to go into hiding because the Protectorate somehow knew my true identity days ago and I doubt that’s just a contrived coincidence!”

Heh, of course it would be him that somehow saved the da-

.,’;,​

Her vision suddenly blurred as something hit her face hard. When she recovered, she felt a warmth and numbness residing on her left cheek as Coil rubbed his right hand.

.,​

He jabbed his finger at her chest, “And you, are going to end him. Either way, whether or not you succeed, this is going to be big for him.”

‘;,​

Despite tasting iron on her tongue and physically restrained onto a chair, she felt power on her side and spat blood to his face instead.

“You fucking-”

,.’​

She laughed, she didn’t know how she still had energy left to laugh but she did, “Drake took on a fucking S-class threat on his own. Some third-rate supervillain like you that has to hide like a rat won’t be a match for him.”

.,’;,;,​

Another punch, she felt numbness and pain on her right cheek. And another, and another, and another. Each one felt heavier than the last and she felt closer to unconsciousness with each punch.

,;’,;’/,./;​

But even with all that, the man couldn’t break her smile at all.

“Acting tough now huh? Let see if you like this.” he snapped his fingers.

,;’,;/,;’’,;,’,​

Another guard of his rolled a surgical tool kit on the table, she struggled against the cuffs as Coil pulled out a thumb-sized cylindrical device.

,.,/’,;’,,/,’;,’​

“Tell me.” he stepped towards her, “Are you left handed or right?”

,/.’;,’;,’;,/;,’;,’,’;,’,​

“Fuck off!” she struggled as he tried to put it around her ring finger...

,.’;,,;’,;’,​

A knock on the door stopped that.

,’,’;,’,;​

“What now!?”

.,’;​

Another soldier walked in as the door slid open, the man whispered something to Coil. Something about what the soldier said made the man took a step back.

.;​

“You two, make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.” he quickly left the room and the metal room sealed with a loud thump on its own.

…

She panted in relief that while the worst wasn’t over, she can at least relax for now. Quickly, she tried to remember every single thing she learned from her Ward training to figure out how to get out of here. She didn't planned to be a damsel in distress after all.

Though with that said, Drake is probably looking for her right now.

Maybe. Probably. Not really sure.

…

Guess she just needed to wait for a while, so she settled with glaring daggers at the guards instead.

;,’​

“I’m going to the washroom. Look after her.” the guard on the left said with a rather feminine voice.

“Why are you giving me the hard part!?” the guard on the right complained.

“Because I’m your ‘commanding officer’ last night.” the ‘officer’ left quickly and the metal door closed.

And once again the silence came.

“Don’t look at me like that, it’s nothing personal. Just a job.”

/.,’;​

‘It’s nothing personal.’ she didn’t like that phrase at all, it’s like supervillains thought that they can get away with anything by saying that. And then when the Protectorate arrested them, they all cried about how government were all heartless fuckers and the bad guys all had their families to look after for. So the victims of the families you killed didn’t matter then? Bunches of mass-murdering hypocrites, all supervillains should fucking go to hell.

The metal door slid open.

.,/;​

“Finally you ar-” the guard didn’t have time to answer when he received a punch to the face, knocking him out to the floor in one strike. She slowly looked up from the fallen guard and saw a person wearing the same military uniform as the woman that went away. The woman took off her balaclava and she recognized her face.

,/;,’’;,​

“They really roughed you up, eh?” she quickly took a key out of her pocket and opened the cuffs.

.,/;​

“Nora…” tears once again swelled in her eyes.

/;,​

“I’m here now, Lily.” she hugged her tightly.

./;​

She cried loudly again, this time it wasn’t tears of despair.

.,​

“And I’m going to get you out of here.”

------

Author Note: Yay roller coaster.

And there will be a loopy loop in the next few chapters!

This is going to be the BEST RIDE EVER.

 

Chapter 4.6, coming right up.

I'm basically how much weirdness I can write right now while mixing it with moments of seriousness.

Which is exactly what this chapter has!

As with the rest of arc 4, I thank Ziplopz for betareading this chapter.

Now, enjoy the pseudo-crack.

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Chapter 4.6

------

“Pedophile!” Vista yelled.

“Pervert!” Glory Girl yelled.

“Loser!”

“N.E.E.T!”

“No life!”

Glory Girl glared at Vista, “That’s a bit too far!”

…

This situation had been very unusually strange so far, I meant...Suddenly two guys decided to challenge us while wearing surprisingly good imitations of my Ward costume?

Complete with skirt, black skin tight underlayer while being two very masculine adults?

Yeah, very high on the weirdness scale.

…

Is this the perfect time to initiate Master/Stranger protocol?

[Keep it going], and the card was still giving complete nonsense. Who wrote this thing!?

Did I get trolled!?

“Vista, Glory Girl.” I called out to them.

They quickly turned away from the skirt-wearing young adults and towards me.

“Remember when your mother told you to not talk to weirdos?”

They both nodded quickly.

“This is the moment they warned us about. We should go, now!”

And with the girls on my sides, we quickly walked the fuck out of the scene.

“Hey wait, come back!” one of the guy yelled.

We walked even faster.

“Hey don’t leave us hanging like this! We prepared these uniforms just for today!”

I tried to walk even faster but I felt a pull on my arms, both of them.

“What!? Why aren’t you guys walking!?” I asked urgently.

“Well...They asked nicely.” Glory Girl shrugged.

“Yeah!” Vista agreed.

Urge to facepalm rising fast.

“Hell no! They are supervillains, and they are creeping me out!” I pointed at them, “Seriously, they dressed up as me! And they don’t even look good in it!”

Okay they did look kinda good in them BUT THAT'S NOT MY POINT!!!

“It’s Uber and Leet, Drake. They always go for silly stuff like this. And don’t worry, they are the fun type supervillains who do things for shit and giggle.” Glory Girl explained, “Mostly.”

“Well they did beat up some prostitutes once.” Vista added.

“Hey, that was just one time! And we got too into our roles after smoking some weird shit from the Merchant!” the taller one said.

Glory Girl grinned, “That actually explains some things, You guys are so terrible at fighting, you can’t even beat up some street workers unless you are high on crack by stooping to the Merchant’s level!”

...Ouch, I can actually feel that one.

“Ow, that burns!” the taller man turned towards his partner, “Leet, show them your work! It’s time for Brockton Bay to regret underestimating us!”

The one I presumed was Leet reach into his utility belt and grabbed out a baseball sized...glowing sphere thingie? It was clearly a tinker tech of some sort, the crystal sphere was filled with colours like a rainbow. And in the center, there’s a glowing core that’s as bright as a star, radiating light and heat from within.

“Behold, the Reality Marble! Activate!” he then threw it high up in the sky as the crowd around us quickly dispersed. The ‘Reality Marble’ glowed purple, red and blue as whatever tinkertech inside charged up, flying even higher than Leet could possibly throw.

Then, a flash.

My eyes were immediately blinded out by the light and judging from the gruntings besides me, both Vista and Glory Girl were affected by it too. When my eyes recovered, I saw the downtown street around us turned into a goddamn baseball station.

The lush green grass field beneath our feet, the white lines on the ground for the placement of the roles in baseball, the walls of advertisement which was full of internet memes instead and row upon row of seats filled with holographic audiences cheering with robotic voices.

“What the actual fuck!?” I yelled loudly.

“LANGUAGE!!!” said the bellowing voice broadcasted through the numerous gigantic speakers that surrounded the stadium.

All three of us looked up and saw the two idiot partners standing on a floating stage with a small flying drone projecting them both onto a large widescreen LED TV right behind them.

This is fucking bizarre.

…

But better bizarre than dangerous, I suppose. This better be the only strange thing happening today.

------

Lisa (Tattletale)

“Hey, Lisa. Check this shit out!” Alec called out from his room full of trash, dirty tissue paper and hero action figures.

She swore that if he showed her Ursa Aurora’s latest scandal with her projections, or his horrible New Wave shipping fic, or just anything that gave her any amount of headache again, she will shoot him and end her life right there because it would be so worth it right now.

“What is it, Alec?” she asked, pure hate hissing from her teeth.

“Check this out!” he pointed to his laptop and her eyes went wide open at what she saw.

[Even you will get a surprise one day.][This is that day.]

“SHUT U-I meant what the hell is this!?” she was quick to correct herself but Alec was clearly amused by her mistake.

“Just watch.” he said.

[Uber and Leet Twitch livestream][Starts irregularly every month or two][Today’s theme: Baseball][Guest-starring Batter Seven]

“What.” was the only word she could use to describe the situation.

“Long has the city of Brockton Bay underestimated the combat ability of Uber and Leet!” Uber’s voice bellowed in the speakers as he spoke into the microphone stand, “And they’re kinda right.”

[Self-deprecation at its finest]

“But you know what you can’t underestimate about us!?” his fist clenched tightly, “Our unsurpassable love for videogames and the memes they have spawned, and our will to let the world know that video games mean more than some addictive drugs that poisoned the next generation as the mass media has wrongfully described it out to be!”

“Screw ‘Fuck the police’, fuck the media!” Leet added.

“Yeah!” they both high-fived.

The camera then moved away from the duo and towards the Wards trio of Batter Seven, Glory Girl and Vista.

“-kinda agreed about their points there. Mass media just tried to make everything seem worse than normal so they can get more revenue on their ne-I meant drugs are bad! But video games aren't drugs! Just don’t play too much of it as everything can be too excessive! Now stop looking at us and towards the other guys!” Batter quickly corrected himself and pointed to the right.

The drone looked back to the duo.

“So, for today’s special event. We will trace the origin of video games back to its rightful root of simple game. No electronic device, no clickity click! Just some instruments, lines on the ground and a bunch of athletic players ready to go!”

[Specifically made the event for Batter Seven.][Already made the equipment needed before a sponsor paid them.][Totally fans of Batter Seven][Plan to delay or distract Batter Seven?][Uber and Leet didn’t realise this fact]

[Suspected sponsor: Coil]

…

Of course it’s Coil behind this. OF COURSE HE'S BEHIND EVERY FUCKING THING!!!

He was probably balls-deep inside everyone’s ass at one point too!

And because the whole event was so fucking bizarre, Batter wasn’t going to realise it at all!

Dammit, dammit, dammit!

This is her best shot at fucking her boss over now, and she needs someway to get to Batter, fast!

“So…” he pointed at the Wards, “How much do you guys know about baseballs? Batter, how about you go first?”

“Me!? Erm…” she can see his mind was turning as he tried to figure out what to say, “I know that baseball don’t originate from the United States like many things it has including hot dog, which came from Europe but most likely Germany, they really love their sausage. Nutella, which came from Italy. And Arnold Schwarzenegger from Australia.”

“...Who?” everyone else asked, even Lisa who was currently packing her burner cell phones.

[Australian relocated to United State, famous movie star back on his Earth][Famous lines is ‘I will be back’]

“Right, alternative universe.” he rolled his eyes, “And the second thing I know about baseball is...the Red Sox sucks?”

------

Weld (Weld)

“Let me go! I’m only going to go over there to kick his ass in baseball! Just a little bit!” he yelled as he slowly shuffled towards the portal system, despite being dragged by several of his teammates by his legs. Having a weight of 600 pounds had its own advantage.

“Calm down, Weld. He probably just doesn’t get it.” he felt a drag on his shoulder and he saw a fox mask staring back..

He shrugged off his hand and pointed, “He shouldn’t fuck around like that, Reynard! This means fucking business!” He then continued his determined but rather futile attempt in stepping through the portal.

“Not going to stop him?” said the feminine voice that came from a seemingly empty space with a bag of potato chip hovering in mid-air, a potato chip levitated out of the bag and disappeared with a crunch.

“Nah, the boys can handle that.” replied the girl in a black armored suit with animated symbols of twinkling stars within a circle all over it in various shapes and sizes.

“Besides, I can’t miss this!” she grinned.

“Me neither.” she smiled but no one can see it anyway.

They both continued to watch the livestream.

------

??? (Circus)

“I only know a little about baseball so I might miss a couple points. It’s basically where you hit a ball away from the rival team and run in a square to score a point, but it’s obviously more complicated than that. The batter will need to run through four bases, the first base, second base, third base and finally home base while the fielding team needs to grab that ball and throw it back to the infielders or the catcher. But here’s the catch, the battling team only need to get the ball in once, while the fielding team need to keep the base away thrice. Unfortunately, the batter is alone against 8 rival players, so he or she will need to hit hard and launch the ball as far as possible to gain as much time as he or she could. Generally speaking, the outfielders have important role here as they are usually the one that catch the ball the most right after the batting. But yeah, baseball is kinda interesting since it competes one solo player versus a group of team players. And Americans love it.” Glory Girl explained about baseball ‘slightly’ with a smile.

“Erm...yeah, thanks Glory Girl for that...simple explanation.” Uber said as he nudged his partner, who was currently panicky flipping pages in the book titled ‘Dummy’s Guide to Baseball’. He quickly hid the book behind him when he noticed the camera drone was looking at him. They chuckled nervously as they waved at the camera.

Well, working for a supervillain. It wasn’t really a bad job.

Most of the time, they just stayed relaxed in their home sweet home while waiting for the next paycheck to arrive. Not like they need to rob a store every month or so ever since Coil hired them for odd jobs there and then. Despite everything pointed him as being a really creepy person, he still paid for the surgery required to change their appearance to now. So it was all good.

Sure, now their boss asked them to stay in the base for a while to protect him as his bodyguard. Apparently something big was up, big enough to get the whole Protectorate up his ass. Still, it’s good to know that their boss was quite a nice guy even if he’s a bit creepy about the whole kidnapping thing.

But well, not their problem, nothing personal.

“So, Batter Seven. Have you actually tried out baseball before?” Uber asked.

“Erm...no.” he nervously asked.

“Then hit this!” with his power aiding him in aim, pose and style, he threw a baseball as fast as he could at the Ward like a professional baseball player.

It was weird as to how that shorty went straight into his combat stance and batted the ball away straight into the horizon in a single hit despite his shy sulking demeanour before. Definitely the work of his power helping him out. If they ever fought him, chances were that they will be defeated almost immediately.

But…

“Where did the ball go?” the little blonde Ward asked as she tried to look for it.

“Well, I made this pocket dimension so that people can walk in and out of the designated exit, but I’m not quite sure what will happen if something is launched into the sky…” Leet explained half-assedly.

“Leet, you don’t explain that with technobabble.” Uber placed his hand on Leet’s shoulder, “What you should say is, ‘the ball has entered home-run heaven!’”

....

They chuckled at that spontaneous one-liner.

Even the Nine Slayer laughed at that joke, though he and his team won’t be laughing much when they realised one of them was kidnapped.

Unwritten rules don’t really protect the parahuman when someone in the region is very strong and powerful. That’s how gangs recruit unwilling parahumans after all, by threatening their family through indirect mean. The PRT can’t protect parahumans outside of their jurisdiction if they didn’t know they were parahuman after all.

“Okay seriously, where did the ball go?” Vista asked.

They checked the clock, 17:00PM. Plenty of time left today for fun things to do, though living in a underground base was slightly annoying and there’s only so much you could do with video games.

Maybe they could ask some of the staffs out fo-

They never saw it coming when two disguised female soldiers slammed them onto the floor, hard.

------

Nora (Mouse Protector)

This wasn’t the first time that she had to escape out of a secret evil lair. Well, at least this time, the creepy supervillain had enough decency to only strip her to her underwear and not everything. Though it made the capture footage a lot more funnier when she had the villains in the bag while wearing nothing but her helmet, shield and sword.

It’s also convenient that some unconscious mooks had given her clothings to wear and disguise in exchange for being locked in the prison cells in embarrassing positions. Sure, they never said their stuff could be borrowed but it wasn’t like they could answer in their current state anyway.

Right now, the one in front of them both was possibly the henchman/woman/whatever that was responsible for bringing them in, mostly because she recognized the smell of the perfume in this room as well as that very recognizable black suit that was taken off this person’s body right now.

And of course, just like in the movie, the henchman won’t reveal the secret evil plan their boss had delicately made until they wrangled the information out of him...her...whatever with whatever method they had on hand.

“So...Circus, huh?”, with the androgynous henchman half-naked and tied up like a hog, she backhanded her(?) face to scare the wits out of him(?).

Fortunately, she knew one easy way to do this, blackmail them with scandalous pictures! Mouse Protector was truly the very model of the most heroic hero of all time! It took a short while, but she finally unlocked the henchman’s phone and activated the camera function at her(?).

“You better spill the bean now or I’m going to post your face on the internet!”

“What!? You can’t do that, that’s against the unwritten rules!” he(?) complained.

Hearing that incredibly stupid reply, she grabbed this...person’s crotch and started squishing it, hard.

“We both got fucking kidnapped by your boss out of the mask and you decided to say that to us?” she tightened her grip, apparently this woman was a guy and this earned a painful grunting from her.

“Don’t make me break another wiener today!” she threatened with a very loud snap of her fingers.

Lily, whose face bruised and swollen from the torture, opened her eyes wide at her.

“What? How else do you think I escaped my cell with this stupid anti-power collar on?” it wasn’t the first time that someone captured her and turned her power off, either with power nullifier or anti-power tinker tech. Though it annoyed her more that whoever made the collar didn’t made it for comfortability.

“Now…” she looked threateningly at their hostage, even more so than before, “How the fuck do we get this collar off, and where the hell is the exit?”

“I’m not-” she yelped when she felt her balls reaching the breaking point from Nora’s tight grip.

“You either spill the beans, or I’m going to break your beans.”

Circus squeaked, “There’s some kind of tinkerlab downstair, the one that made your collars.”

“Which floor?”

“B5, not sure which part, but I heard that the lab is large enough to cover the entire floor.”

“The exits?”

“One at the top floor and another at B3, both require a password to pass through and definitely have guards everywhere.”

Armed guards were never good, especially when they had freaking laser beams attached to their assault rifles. Guess they have to go to the depth of this dungeon, get the tinker to take their collars off, and teleport out of here.

“Thank you for your assistance.” she smiled sarcastically and released her grip on her balls.

“You are going to delete the photo, right?”

“Have a nice day!” and then she kicked her balls so hard, her eyes rolled backward from the sheer pain. They might or might not had heard a crunch from it.

With the henchwoman out cold, she looked back towards her Ward, “Hey, Lily, how are you feeling now?”

“Not...good.” she weakly answered.

She already endured worse beatings before so she could handle it, but Lily...didn’t. Her movement was still sluggish from the electric torture and she might be experiencing concussion from all the beatings she received, and then there’s also the drug that creepy asshole force-feed to her. It’s clearly affecting her, but she wasn’t sure how badly.

“I’m going to try and make a call to the HQ.” she gripped her shoulder, “Stay strong, Lily.”

She grunted in agreement as she rested on the bed, ignoring her one and only true friend in the city who was having way too much fun to save her on the computer screen there. Seriously, Batter, pack up your bullshit and punch this Coil dude in his balls now! Someone must have noticed that both of them had gone missing, right?

“This better works.” and with a number dialled, she waited for the line to connect.

…

…..

…….

Beep.

Hell yeah! Normally one would think for all the money this bad guy spent on his mercs, he would afford a signal jammer just in case.

But he didn’t! So that’s good!

“Bravo Six India Victor Four Eight, over?” a PRT agent said the code.

“Echo Zero Lima X-ray Eight Two, get me Armsy!”

…

“Mouse Protector?” a masculine voice replied, sounding more annoyed than normal.

“Oh thank fucking God, Halbeard. Listen to me! We are-”

“Kidnapped, yes. We figured it out after Panacea called us to say that you two haven’t arrived at the hospital on time.” he explained.

“Okay, track-”

“It’s right next to 679 Cardinal Drive, right inside Coil’s territory, no surprise. This will be a hard nut to crack. Thank you for your assistance, Dragon.” he continued.

“Mobilize-”

“The whole Brockton Bay Protectorate and nearby Protectorates have been mobilized as search parties for your location. Several PRT teams that aren’t part of Coil’s moles have taken part in the search parties as well.” he finished.

“I-wait, moles!?” There’s moles in the PRT!? Someone have better explained the holes in the floor fast!

“Yes, Coil has deeply infiltrated into the structure of Brockton Bay PRT force. Too deeply that we can’t trust most of the high ranker officers now.”

She heard a grunting noise that had a rather familiar angry voice.

“Did you just duct-tape Director Piggot’s mouth?” please say yes, please say yes, oh God please say yes.

“No, but I did use a more advanced tool to silence her as per according to ‘standard capture protocol’.” while the man spoke professionally, there’s a hint in his voice that he had yearned to do this a long time ago.

…

Deep down, she’s screaming ‘Hallelujah and peanut butter!!!’ but it would alert everyone if she actually screamed.

“Armsy, I’m going to rock your world tonight!” she said gleefully.

He ignored the last line professionally, “What’s your current status?”

“I’m fine, received a couple to my guts but nothing I can’t handle. But Lily is not feeling well. And we need help fast, there’s stupid collars blocking our powers!”

“Anti-power collar? Nevermind about that, find a secure location and bunker down, we will be arriving soon. ETA: 5 minutes.” he ordered.

“No problem!”

And of course this was when the alert was sounded throughout the base.

…

“Mouse Protector.”

“Yes?”

“Grab gun and shoot people.” she was suddenly reminded of her fight with Sir Shoot-a-lot and she did not like that remotely, “We will be there ASAP, report on any change to your situation through this line.”

The line was cut off, just like that.

“Well, shit.” But just why did that alarm went off? Did someone notice our escape? Did they notice the two half-naked guards that were being left unconscious on the floor? Did they also notice the other two unconscious guards that were most likely grunting at the pain at their groin? Or...did someone personally sound the alarm!?

As if she had a hidden sixth sense honed from years of experience, she side-stepped with a twist and felt a spike of pain as a throwing knife nicked her face. Her face garment was ripped and a trail of red flowed from the cut. She turned around to face her opponent but it was too late as she was rammed down onto the floor with Circus on top her, readied to stab her with a knife.

The knife fell, but it didn’t cut or stab.

Nora grunted as she bit down hard on the knife, stopping it from going straight for her throat. But the impending doom remained as the metal surface slowly slid from the edges of her teeth. A painful cut on her tongue warned her of the danger as she tasted iron on her taste buds. With her arms pressed down to the floor by the henchwoman’s thighs, she didn’t really have many options besides staring at that slasher smile on her opponent’s face.

She had to think fast before the knife went six inches deep and her body went six feet under! She could try to roll her off but she’s heavier than she looked. She could try grabbing her balls again but her hands were too far and she wasn’t sure if there’s much left to grab after that kick. She could try shooting her with a pistol but that damn thing slid away in the fight, right outside of her reach.

Think, Mouse Protector! Think!

But her work was cut short when Circus dropped her murderous grin. Blood suddenly trickled down the sides of her mouth and dripped onto her face. With her teeth, Nora threw the knife off her mouth and she shoved the transexual off her. Only then did she saw just what happened on her.

There’s a knife plunged hilt deep into her back, more than enough to stab right through any organ inside. It wasn’t the only wound either, there were several stabbing holes all across her back, she saw ten but there could be more. Blood gushed out of the wounds as Circus cried and coughed, adding her own tears to the growing pool of red around her. She weakly whimpered at her own end and all she could do was glare at the hero for this.

Slowly, the crying stopped.

Nora looked up from the cooling body and saw Lily standing above her, hands trembling like a druggie on withdrawal.

She softly grabbed her hand, “Lily, listen.”

The Ward’s eyes remained unfocused as she saw what she had done, “Nora, I…”

“You did what you need to do.” she plucked the knife off the body and wiped the blood on her stolen uniform.

“I…” Lily continued to stare at nothing as Nora hugged her tightly, her hand reached for the sheath and put the knife back in.

“It’s okay, I’m here for you, alright?” it pained her that it wasn’t the first time she said all of that.

“I felt nothing.” and the answer always gripped her heart more.

------

Author note: THE TRAUMA TRAIN NEVER END.

...

EXCEPT IT WILL, just not now!

Also, we got ourselves the first casualty!

Yayyyyyyy, dead people!

 

Okay, I'm getting busy with exam and crap already.

But i will not put this fic on hiatus until I finished arc 4!

So anyway, new chapter.

As per usual, credit to Ziplops as my one and only betareader.

You guys want a fight? You got a fight.

------

Chapter 4.7

------

Nora (Mouse Protector)

“Team Alpha, spread out and search the floor. The boss wants every crook and cranny to be checked and get those captured asap. We are already down two men from them and even Circus is gone. Team Bravo, pack up the supply and ready to be moved. The Protectorate will be onto us any second now and every second counts. Team…” the one she presumed as the second in command ordered as they sneakily sneaked away from the rows upon rows of evil mercenary army.

Well, guess the easy ways out had been blocked by guards already, both the official and secret entrances. That meant only one way remained, going deep into the base and locate the anti-power tinker.

There’s also waiting for rescue to arrive and save the day but that option was too boring and mundane for Mouse Protector, the rodent knight of justice and getting drunk off her ass!

Still, she couldn’t help but wonder just how supervillains always manage to build a secret elaborate underground base. She had raided so many of these bases, she couldn’t count the number with her fingers and toes anymore. Isn’t building an underground base is supposed to be stupidly expensive? Why are they everywhere!?

But then again, that might have explained why Coil’s force (judging by elimination) had such a small but elite force with barely any territory. It’s simply too expensive to maintain a force bigger than a company or so. However, each and every soldier under his command was basically the best that money can buy and this man really wanted his pay to be worth it.

They also had freaking laser beams, and that’s really bad.

This meant they would have better chances of escaping if they avoided any confrontation with them and luckily, she knew exactly how to sneak away from the guards with years of experience in surprising the hell out of people. Ah, those were good time.

...Were indeed.

The drug ingested by her Ward was affecting her badly. Her movement was getting sluggish, she couldn’t focus on anything on her own and she had to be told just to do anything. And if what she said about the drug was correct...it can’t be good. She needed to get her out fast and get Panacea to clean the drug off her system. And if that didn’t work…

No, it had to work!

The staircase had ended in a hallway. They were at the final floor now.

“Okay, Lily. Stay beside me, I will do my magic.” she said and Lily simply nodded.

Those emotionless eyes on her face were really unnerving.

But nevertheless, she pressed on and walked towards the two soldiers guarding the only door in the entire floor. Definitely something big and important behind that door.

“Hey!” she called out and the two soldiers paid their full attention to her.

“The boss called, we need every man to evacuate the base now! The Protectorate has found our location!”

“Damn! Right now!?” the soldier on the left yelled.

“Yeah! The two bitches escaped and called reinforcements in.”

The two soldiers slowly raised their rifles, “...Wait, we weren’t told that the captives were fe-”

Two throwing knives flew past her side and right into the soldier’s neck. They both gargled as they tried to stop their blood loss and fell. Crimson blood slowly spread on the white floor and she looked back to her Ward, more throwing knives brandished in her hands.

“I found these back in that henchwoman’s room. Could be useful.” she coldly replied.

Nora swallowed her fear, “Yeah.”

Stepping over the bodies, she raised a pistol and pressed the switch to open the sliding door. What she found inside the room really wasn’t much different than any other Tinker’s lab she had been before. But stuff like high-tech computers, robotic arms workshop, material components and laser welders once again said much about how much this Coil had paid for his operation. It was also fortunate that this was another hardware tinker, bio-tinkers were super creepy and she hoped that she would never get close to one in the future.

“I’m working now. Please return in another time.” a...children's voice replied from another room, tinkering with sounds of mechanical tools putting a sophisticated something together.

“Erm...hello?” she raised up her hand and, Lily staying put behind her.

“...Who’s there?” the voice weakly replied, almost like he didn’t want to put up a fight at all.

“It’s okay, kid. We are the Protectorate.” she said.

…

“Technically only one Protectorate hero and one Ward, and we also have a severe case of nullified power. Could you please get these collars off us since you clearly made them so we can get you out of here?” she corrected herself.

“...Really? Are you guys really the Protectorate?” the boy skeptically asked as he walked out from the room. She immediately recognized symptoms of malnourishment and tiredness on the boy’s skinny body as he shuffled towards them with a wrench in hand.

Okay, it’s a good time to show off Mouse Protector’s legendary skill of talking her way out of everything! “Well, kid. Mouse Protector herself is here to rescue you even if she has to crawl through the tiniest hole. By the way, the whole damn Protectorate is cracking this nut open like a swarm of squirrels right now!”

She took off the balaclava and her brown hair spilled onto her back, “Anything I could safely juggle here to give you a show since I can’t do that smoking yoyo trick right now? I probably can’t do that either after injuring my wrist with the Slipper.”

The boy chuckled, “You...you really are her,” and cried into his hands.

She proudly continued her line, “Yup, I’m the one and onl-”

“You are three years late, Mouse Protector.” that immediately stopped her cold.

“Where the hell were you when my sister and I needed you and your team of furries dressed up like a bunch of animals!? My parent were killed, we were both fucking drugged by the Merchants and I saw my sister doing anything she could just to get another shot of her life! And look at me! I couldn’t get away from it either!” he grimaced, fist shaking from the sheer rage he felt.

“If it wasn’t for some super shit power lottery, I would still be rotting on the fucking streets like a fucking corpse. I was dragged off the fucking streets all of a sudden and even now I still have no idea what the fuck happened to my sister. She’s probably working as a prostitute or worse, a fucking slave like me.” he wiped his face but tears kept on flowing.

“This man with a snake on his black suit asked me to make everything I could think of and I did. I don’t know what the hell he wants with all these...things in my mind but I don’t care because I want to eat and sleep and just...not die like a rat.”

“Like a mouse.” to her, those eyes on the boy’s face felt more painful than bullets and knives.

Each step he took towards her sounded like thunder to her, like it was clearing something up inside her. Like a...distant memory.

I’m so sorry. We can’t get to him in time.

Tears almost threatened to leak out of her eyes but a smack on her chest held it back.

“Why are you here now!? Why aren’t you here earlier!? Why don’t you just leave now!?” the boy screamed and yelled as he slammed his arms on her, but it felt...so weak, like the boy hadn’t grown a bit from the day he lost his innocence.

He did what he felt was right.

She didn’t know why the boy stopped hitting him. she didn’t know why the boy looked up to her with a strange look.

She didn’t know where all these tears nor this salty taste on her tongue came from.

“Mouse...Protector?” the boy asked, sincerely worried about her.

He was quite surprised when the woman hugged him tightly. it was the first time ever that someone hugged him in three years.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” and she kept on saying it over and over like a madness mantra, like a broken record.

“I’m sorry for being late. I’m sorry that I couldn’t save your sister and you and I’m sorry for…” her mind just stopped there and she can’t think of anything to say.

“For...I...I can promise you one thing. When we get out of here, I’m going to take good care of you like a mother, caretaker, foster mom, whatever the fuck you called that!” she yelled in frustration, “I will take you to school, I will give you TV and-and I will treat you like my own child. I promise, okay?”

The boy hugged her back and thought deeply on what she just said. he made his decision.

“Okay, I...accept.”

She sniffed back a tear, “Thank you...”

“But can you please let go of me first?” body armour ain’t exactly good hugging material either.

She released him and stepped back, “Erm, yeah. Sorry about that, I was…a thing popped up in my mind and just…”

“Clear.”

“Huh, wh-”

A splatter of blood shot out onto the boy’s body and face as a loud crackle was heard.

Feeling an intense pain on the side of her waist, she reached down with her hand and saw red on the glove. As she looked further down from the scorch mark on the wall, she saw the right side of her waist reduced into a bloody mess, bits of gut spilled out of it and onto the floor.

She fell on her knees as her body gradually felt weak and her vision turning black. Leaning against a table, she looked up to the boy and saw a frown on his face.

“Sorry.” the word echoed painfully.

------

Lily (Flechette)

Just half an hour ago, her head felt light and dizzy as if she got hit by a truck head-on. But the headache gradually faded away and her head felt clearer than before. So clear that she’s starting to be incapable of thinking anything on her own.

,’;​

Part of her might be screaming inside her right now, yelling at her to do something about it. But she can’t hear that voice now.

Now, Nora’s voice sounded louder and clearer than before. Her every movement looked sharp to her and all the other voices sounded dull compared to hers. At this rate, Nora might be the only one left that could control her every aspect. Fighting, working, eating, showering, changing, all of those thoughts would be lost if Nora didn’t remind her of them.

She felt a trail of tears flowing from her eyes. She understood the fear but she didn’t understand the reason as to why she cried. With her glove, she wiped it off as the tears were obstructing her sight on the two soldiers.

Nora said she would handle it, but the way the soldier moved their rifle was alarming.

.,./,;​

A swift throwing of two knives solved that problem quickly. She didn’t understand nor care as to why Nora looked scared. There’s nothing to be afraid of going somewhere faster.

,,.​

Slowly, they both walked into the tinkerlab. Lots of moving machinery and scientific tools for making devices, devices that not even the world's smartest scientist could understand.

Like the collar on her neck. When Nora asked whether it was uncomfortable or not, she’s reminded that there’s a collar on her neck and it’s becoming more and more uncomfortable with every movement of her neck. She really shouldn’t have asked that, But the current her was incapable of complaining now.

Within the lab was a blonde haired boy who had clearly seen better days. Again, Nora ordered her to stay put, so she settled on guarding the door instead, intended to shoot anything that walked through that door.

She heard Nora talking with the boy, trying to sound cheerful to push the kid to her side. It didn’t work as the boy said something that shocked her very bone and continued to yell at her. If this isn’t working at all, she might needs to press on a more direct approach.

.,;;,’;/,’;,/.;’,​

She thought something was up when Nora cried, but she couldn’t attack the boy directly when Nora was hugging him with her arm around him. She kept apologizing to the boy, saying things that Lily was struggling to understand.

,.,;’/,;​

The word ‘sorry’ felt heavy on her heart for some reasons, reasons she couldn’t understand.

They then separated after a while, the boy slightly choked from the hug and Nora wiped her tears aw-

,./,;’’,’,/;,}.;,’​

A laser crackled and pierced right through Nora’s abdomen. Seeing her being wounded, she dashed forward, dodging the laser fire as she ducked down the table to be right beside her.

.,;,’/’;,’//;’[,’;/],’,’,​

She would have screamed at herself for not remembering that the laser gun these mercenaries had could pierce through solid walls. It was just logical that they could have been armed with tinker tech to see through wall as well, so hiding underneath a table won’t do any good unless…

.),;’’,];,;’​

She violently pulled the boy down, keeping him as close to them as possible. With him as their meat shield, she could buy some time before Nora can tell her what to do.

,;Er./’;,​

But...the wound was not stopping. Even Nora’s own stolen uniform was soaked in blood.

“Lily…” her voice was barely audible.

“Nora.” she paid full attention to her even as the mercs slid the doors open.

“You...get him out of here, fight your way out if you have to.”

,.,{,’/’,’;ror,’;],;​

Lily nodded, but she could feel herself being distressed at the order. And the boy was too surprised at her words to add his own response.

“You get out of here, get him to the Protectorate and PRT and listen to all the members of the Protectorate and Wards from now on.” the brunette held her hands tight with all that’s left of her strength.

She nodded again, trying to remember the faces and names of the heroes and...her friends…

But...she can’t.

.;,’),;,​

She...can’t remember them. everything felt fractured into a million tiny pieces. A frog hoodie, a kinky smile, a metal lance, red eye lens, rings of pink, a camo uniform, a teal coloured skirt, a face of clock, a gunmetal sword, a red hoverboard, a pair of...something bouncy (?), a red cross and…

.,’;;{,’;,’,];,./,’;’},’;,’;/.,’;​

A pair of...iridescent eyes…

.;,’;,/,[’;’,B,o.,’;st’;​

“Drake.” she said. It wasn’t an emotionless reply and her voice was shaking as tears trickled down her cheeks.

The bloody hand that was holding hers slowly loosened its grip and dropped down to the floor, splashing some blood onto her face.

.,;’,;’;/’,’,;’;,act/;’;’’,;*(’,;’,’,’,​

“Nora.” she held her hand out, trying to grasp...something, anything as Nora slowly closed her eyes.

“Get down on the floor now!” she couldn’t managed to do so as she was slammed onto the floor hard and her head exploded in pain.

A kick to her stomach forced her to roll on her back and she saw the threatening end of a rifle aiming at her face.

“Don’t move!” the man above her yelled, but his voice sounded so dull…

Her eye turned right and saw the boy was escorted out by another soldier rather forcefully. Before he was dragged away, she saw regret in his eyes.

…

She can’t remember how her friends look like.

She can’t follow her last order.

And...the one she can and wants to follow…

Might be dead.

…

She needs something, she can’t accomplish the task alone.

Something more…

Something like...more power.

She needs more power to-

[Social Link established]​

A worm of incomprehensible size swam through the dark void of space, stars, nebula and sun moving on the background. Surrounding it were near countless amounts of tesseracts, each with layers upon layers of crystal shards on it surface, reflecting and absorbing light from the stars, making it as black as the void.

[Power Shard Assimilated]​

Unknown to the great being, a small number of its hundreds of trillions of tesseracts, completely unnoticeable to the sheer scale of the being, collapsed and imploded upon themselves, crushed to a size smaller than a speck of dust. Iridescent beams of light shot out from dozens of specks and traveled towards...her?

[Power-Existence Link Established]​

She felt something growing within her as the beam reached her in an instant. The feeling spread from within and outward to her skin, a warmth that should have cooked her alive but didn’t. She felt...powerful, but there was something else. Something burning into her mind, like electricity running through her nerves.

[Artificial Second Trigger Initiated]​

No longer was she seeing the giant worm as she fell back to somewhere familiar. A world with solid ground, clear water and blue sky, just the way she remembered…but where? She moved around, and found herself flying above the land. Yet she felt no flowing air, as she didn’t find a body of her own, only eyes to see.

[Detecting Nearby Power Shard]​

Eyes to see a single golden being levitating in the empty sky. She didn’t know why, but she felt a connection between the worm beyond the cloud with the golden man in front of her.

[Three Active Shards Detected][One Inactive Shard Detected]​

But it won’t be lonely for long as people dressed in black levitated around the golden man. She found herself dragged towards something, unable to fly away until she was suddenly pulled towards it like a powerful magnet.

[Effective Power Upgrade detected][Powers Upgrade Copied from Power Shards]​

The feeling of being dragged was gone, and she found herself in a body dressed in black. Only then did she realise she was one of them, but when? When and where did this happen? Before she could answer that, one of the black one with a blade at hand charged towards the golden man.

[Final Power Reconstruction achieved][Finalizing Perfect Combat Program]​

The blade went in, but it didn’t go through the man. It was sunk into its chest like a ocean with infinite depth, sinking hilt deep into the wound yet never emerge on its back. She saw static in her eyes as the black one pulled out his blade and let the golden man fal-

[Perfect Combat Program finished]​

You don’t need to know the end.

[Starting Perfect Combat Program][Rebooting]​

All you need is-

[Objective: Get Nora and the boy out of the base]​

The familiar sight of a normal violent world came back.

[Combat Mode On][Emotional Suppression Level 1]​

And she immediately knew what to do.

She grabbed the rifle.

“What are you-!?” the merc were alerted and put his finger onto the trigger.

But not before she pushed the rifle aside and fired the laser right onto her collar.

She felt an intense burn on her neck as molten metal dripped onto her skin. Nonetheless she shrugged it off and pushed the collar off, activating her power.

The merc’s hand was cut in half as she pulled the rifle out of his hands, fingers falling to the ground. Half of his torso slumped as his shoulder strap phased through him,

Blood and guts splattered all over her body and face. It didn’t matter as she didn't care about her current attire, but the blood in her eyes was blocking her sight.

Yet somehow, she felt like she could still see the mercs as shadows in her eyelids. Choosing to use this newfound power, she opened fire blindly at their general direction. The cry of pain she heard was the sign that she was looking as she emptied the mag. With the chamber dried, she switched to the laser and kept on firing until there’s only a crackle of lasers and screams of pain in the air.

When even the laser gun was emptied, she ducked down and wiped blood off her eyes, allowing her to see the scenery of carnage she had created.

Blood everywhere seemed to be the theme there. Rifle wounds caused blood to pour out, but lasers caused flesh to explode from the boiling steam. Mixing lasers with a filled magazine was a good way to have something exploding in your face as well, judging by the lack of hands from the merc in the corner there.

[A Reality He Wanted detected]​

And in the midst of the massacre, the boy was somehow safe from it all despite all the blood splattered onto him, shaking and shivering while making his own clear coloured puddle among the red.

He looked up right in her eyes and she saw fear in his eyes, fear of what might happen to him.

“Get up.” she ordered.

The boy didn’t hesitated to stand up, too used to listening to someone else’s order instead of his own mind.

Nora told her to take the boy out for safety even if she had to fight her way out. But…

She can choose to ignore that order and follow the previous order instead, and that’s getting Nora and her out and by extension, the boy as well. And for that to work, she needed to…

“Boy, your name.” she demanded.

“J-J-Jus...tin.” he stuttered.

“Get the collar off her.” she ordered and he got to work without complaint.

But whatever he needed to get the collar off, he had to do it fast as she was sure that reinforcement will be coming soon.

“Faster.” she ordered as she searched for a working rifle.

“I’m trying! Fuck myself for making this lock so fucking sturdy...” he complained as he searched for the correct tool.

Her attempt to find a working rifle was to no avail as her rapid firing extermination just now had shot off most of the explosives, killing the soldiers and ruining their rifles beyond usability at the same time. She couldn’t even find a pistol that wasn’t melted or broke into a dozen pieces.

...But what if, she used her power to make a weapon instead?

Eyeing a massive block of metal, she walked towards it and charged a knife with her power. The knife went into the side easily and fused with the metal block. With her power, she charged the knife-block fusion and easily lifted the makeshift weapon like it was completely weightless. With her mind focusing her power into a shape she wanted, the rest of the block fell to the ground with a massive thump.

With the finished product in her hands, she looked at it. It was a one edged sword made in a fraction of a second with her power, the blade was grey like unpolished metal yet the edge was smoother than any grinding could achieve. It didn’t have its blade folded a thousand times, but she sure as hell could use her power to cut anything in her way.

More footsteps were coming. they were right outside of the hallway and setting things up, probably machine-guns or maybe even rocket launchers. She didn’t care about herself, but if Nora and the boy got hurt, her order would not be completed. The more time they spent preparing, the less chance she could fight back.

She had to strike back now.

“Continue.” she gave one last order to the boy before stepping out.

“Open fire!” and was immediately greeted with a hail of bullets.

[Emotional Suppression Level 2]​

But her hand immediately raised the sword and caught the bullets with the flat of the blade. With her new power, she could see every single trajectory of not just bullets, but people as well before they moved into position as smoky shadows in the air. It was as if she could perfectly predict where and how they will reach before they even started moving.

But she knew that no matter how quick she was with the sword, she couldn’t block all of them. Like a voice commanding her from within, she simply charged her armor and ran towards the mercenaries. Bullets dematerialising as they impacted the armor, yet her skin was unharmed from her charged uniform. The mercs were clearly taken aback by this and quickly retreated, like the shadows predicted.

Not letting this chance go, she charged the armor again and dashed. The weightless armor, unbounded by gravity, carried her through the air as she leaped, allowing her to swiftly slice a merc in half without stopping. Seeing her squadmate’s guts were splattered against the wall, the next merc quickly counterattacked as she spun around and fired at her face.

Her hand immediately moved to block a shot to her unprotected face, glove absorbing the bullets. But the distance between them was still crossed in an instant. One of her hands reached for the rifle and ripped it out of the merc’s hands, the other palmed against the merc’s face.

A charge of her power, and every single one of the mercenary's bones were ripped out of her body in a sickening explosion of blood and gore. The remaining skin flopped onto the floor bloodily as the mercs in front of her screamed and their shadows ran off before they did.

Not intending to let them get away, she threw two throwing knives towards two of the mercs with a swipe of her free hand. The one on the right screamed in pain as her left arm was cut lengthwise, two halves of it still dangling from her elbow, dripping crimson from the cut.

The guy on the left received a painless death as the top half of his head was cut clean off. The rifles in their hand fired as their fingers tightened around the trigger. Rifle rounds tore through the ranks of mercs as their rifles fired aimlessly towards them before falling onto the blood splattered ground. Everything happened just as their shadows predicted. Seeing the merc girl was still alive, she ended her life with a slash of her blade.

The mercs at the end of the hallway continued firing despite their loss, but no matter what, it would not stop her at all. Bullets, lasers, grenades, all of them failed as her uniform charged by her power simply absorbed everything, and anything aimed at her head was blocked by a quick slash of her makeshift sword. She was invincible, indestructible, invulnerable, she was completely fearles-

But in the midst of gunfire, she didn’t notice in time as a rocket was fired at her, exploding right in front of her face.

…

There’s smoke all around her. Was she dead?

…

When the smoke cleared up, it’s clear that she’s still standing in the living world. She felt cold air brushing against her skin as the armor she was wearing was completely ruined, all that’s left were just the remains of the sleeves and pants on her limbs.

The mercs fired, thinking that it was the last chance they ever had in killing her as she was completely exposed in every sense of the word.

But they didn’t have that chance at all as air particles bounced off her white skin were charged with her power, blurring the light around her as even photon beam was deleted by her power. All the mercs could do was waste their ammunition and laser charges again as nothing worked against her at all. Not even a second rocket worked as it phased into nothing against the dark blurry cloud around her as she slowly walked towards them.

Soon enough, their gun clicked as they ran out of ammunition.

She charged.

------

She tiredly walked back to Justin’s tinkerlab, expecting the collar on Nora’s neck to be fully removed by now.

She...wanted to say that she felt nothing for killing those men and women for attacking them, but something was clearly gripping her heart.

And all these ideas in her head, those were certainly not something she could think of right now. This definitely had something to do with the visions of...things she has saw. The worm, the tesseracts, the power and the men in black. There was a desperation inside her, the need to tell or ask someone about it but she couldn’t without anyone asking.

…

She couldn’t even hope that if someone could fix her at all.

[Tagging Chaser detected]​

She pushed past the door and saw the collar on Nora’s neck removed while the boy kneeled besides her.

“Nora…” she moved in to sit on the other empty spot besides her.

“Nora, wake up.” she nudged her arm.

…

She slapped her face with a loud fleshy smack

“Ow, ouch! Can’t a dying person have a painless death at least!?” Nora’s hand rubbed to ease the pain off her face, despite the fact that she had a much major bleeding wound on her waist.

“Wait, why are you naked!?” she asked. Only now did Lily fully aware that she’s wearing absolutely nothing, except for all the blood that somehow got onto her skin, giving some scary-looking stripes of blood like a tiger. She had lost even what’s left of her uniform except for her shoes, but she didn’t care, not for one bit.

The Protectorate heroine palmed her face, “Ne-Never mind. You got the collar off, right?”

The boy nodded and was split between staring at the dying woman with half her guts exposed outside and the naked girl that had killed a bunch of people like it was nothing.

“Okay, touch my hands before I lose consciousness.” they both did it without questioning.

“Now, prepare for the magic!”

All three of them poofed into a black smoke..

------

Colin (Armsmaster)

“How’s the preparation for the assault?” he asked.

“Ready to go on your mark, sir.” the First Lieutenant Wendy, Brockton Bay PRT leader replied. He knew the woman ever since he was assigned to Brockton Bay 9 years ago. She had been dependable in every operation the PRT had conducted so far and in several incidents, saving each other from close calls. It’s good to know that her passion in serving the PRT wasn’t replaced with a greed for bribes and blood money.

However, there had been a few occasions where she gave him her phone number for ‘a good time’. That would have been a violation of position abuse if he had reported it. As one of his few long time friend, he decided to look away from it. Some problems didn’t need to be solved by the book after all.

“Roger, standby for ord-”

“Sir, your ass is smoking!!!” a PRT trooper warned.

Of course…

As soon as he heard that familiar poofing sound whenever Mouse Protector showed up for a prank even when she’s half the states away, he turned around as if he trained for this situation everyday.

Even when seeing a boy that’s in need of proper meat, a Ward wearing nothing but blood and his own annoying but somewhat dependable long time partner that was currently bleeding all over the floor, he remained calm and steady.

As if he expected this to happen, he quickly opened the com channel, “Panacea, the Protectorate requires your assistance on healing the secured hostages.”

“Yeah whatever, I’m walking over there right now since my sister is playing baseball with those two retards.”

Frankly speaking, the whole event was so stupid and silly. Nobody suspected it to be part of a kidnapping plan, not even himself. It was genius in a way.

“Velocity will be on transporting duty for you. Can you remain still for ten seconds?”

“Erm, sure? I just called Laserdream so maybe you don’t need to se-Holy shit he’s fas-” the line was cut off suddenly.

Without skipping a beat, he crouched down and scanned all three of the hostages for any internal injuries and sickness. Other than Nora having a major wound on her waist, he detected some narcotic substance affecting the Ward’s mental capability.

The boy was a special case on his own, a mysterious factor that popped out of nowhere. With his scanner, he detected the two main components of a parahuman’s brain inside that boy’s cranium. He will ask a PRT officer to handle him for now.

“You don’t need that fancy glowy shit to tell that we got fucked up, Armsy.” Mouse Protector commented while a medic patched her wound with bandage.

“Panacea will be here soon to heal you. Don’t move too much.”

“Silly Armsy. Get Panacea to this girl first, those fucker forced her to take some drug that’s fucking with her mind.” she pushed his worry aside.

“Mouse Protector, your intestines are leaking your lunch on the floor right now. You should worry about yourself more sometimes.”

“If a hero worries about themselves, then who will worry about the public?”

Heroes that don’t care about themselves tend to die faster.

But he wisely shut his mouth and walked outside of the van.

“-aaaaahhhhhhh!!!” and Panacea quickly arrived in Velocity’s arms, struggling and screaming along the way. When Velocity let her down, she immediately kneeled on the floor and started kissing the ground as well as praying to God she probably didn’t believe in much.

“Panacea, thank you for your assistance. The patients are inside the van.” he pointed.

Panacea wobbly got up and walked inside the van,silently complaining about everything.

Armsmaster opened his com channel.

“To all teams on the field, the hostages have been secured along with an extra package. Plan on assaulting the base will be changed to assault and secure only, but keep in mind on potential prisoners and dangerous parahumans. Over?”

“Miss Militia here, the breach team is ready. Bomber Two is still insisting to be on the team. I will give her support duty for now and see how much she can do.”

Bomber Two...was a girl who was certainly in way over her head. For her first crime, she decided to nearly bomb her college to oblivion. And even afterward, he had to repeatedly tell her to not overdo her tinker tech as they had no need for anti-state non-lethal bombs. And now...she asked to be part of a strike team with barely a week of training.

All of her current armaments were packed with non-lethal tech for not only PR reasons, but for her own as well as other’s safety too. And even with that, he’s not even sure if the girl will just do something brave but stupid to prove herself as a member of the Protectorate. He can see her coming home on a stretcher from miles away.

Either way, this will be a headache for the amount of paperwork he needed to work on. But it couldn’t be as bad as him silencing Director Piggot with totally legitimate space duct-tape. He wasn’t even sure what monstrous amount of paperwork would be required to finish for that.

Still...there’s no turning back now.

“All teams. Began operation.”

------

Author Note: I pretty much know that this chapter will be another hit or miss as I did just that.

But I do hope you guys would accept it as part of this fic.

And yes I know, more OC. Goddammit brain.

Oh, and as a reminder, the next chapter is 7000 words long.

Because we definitely something long and thick to fuck Coil with.

EDIT: And I totally can't forget this. YAY MORE DEAD PEOPLE.

 

So, it was a busy week. And next week will be busy as well thanks to exam and stuff.

Anyway, here's the promised 7k words chapter.

Oh wait, I lied.

It was 8k words!

Which meant it was really tim consuming to check the errors even after getting betaread from Ziplopz as per usual. So I'm thanking him for his help.

Anyway, here's the chapter.

------

Chapter 4.8

------

Jessica (Bomber Two)

“Move!!” she quickened her pace with the rest of the breach team as Miss Militia’s order bellowed through the underground hallway. Besides the two of them, Assault, Dauntless, Triumph as well as three team of PRT troopers were joining them in breaching the main steel gate to the secret underground base and subduing the main mercenaries force.

The other team formed by only Armsmaster, Battery and Velocity would handle the objective of fighting their way in to capture Coil through the secret escape entrance detected by Armsmaster’s subterranean sensor. He probably shoved one in his suit or his halberd at one point of his career as with everything else he made.

Still, the thrill of joining the breach team was slowly replaced with the dread of being in a real firefight. She really didn’t know why she thought it was a good idea to join the fight instead of sitting comfortably in her lab, but now she’s kinda regretting it even as she’s walking towards the main gate now.

A real fight...the first time she fought was when Batter Seven found her before she planted the bombs. It felt more like a cat chasing a mouse than a actual fight, and the cat got to her quickly. She wondered…

What would happen if he didn’t get to her at all?

That question could be answered later, as she’s setting up a dematerialisation bomb charge now. Designed to produce a 2 meter wide radius of dematerialisation sphere, the dematerialisation bomb charge was made to breach right through any walls and obstacles with a setting to decrease the effect distance as well as whether to dematerialise organic or inorganic material.

For safety reason, she set up inorganic mode for all her dematerialisation bomb as a default. So even if one accidentally went off near her, she would only suffer the embarrassment of nudity instead of a literally empty casket burial.

Anyway, all she needed to do now was set up the bomb, place it onto the gate and wait for it to go off before charging in.

Sounded simp-Dauntless suddenly pushed her back and raised his shield as the steel gate turned red from an unknown heat source. Numerous laser beams erupted out of the red hot spots and struck at where she was just moments before. But Dauntless’s shield shimmered with lightning as the lasers were absorbed into the forcefield, disappearing an inch above the shield.

Yet despite all that, the bomb was unharmed and went off doing its job.

“Go go go! Engage!” Miss Militia ordered loudly and she charged in through the hole, following behind the spartan-themed hero who was taking fire from over a dozen mercenaries on the other sides. The walkway, pillars, crates, deployed cover and even a soda vending machine were used by the mercenaries for cover as they rained lasers and bullets onto Dauntless.

But his shield did not give at all. If not, it’s actually getting stronger as the force field extended itself lengthwise by several meters, protecting the entire breach team as everyone moved into position. The other advantage of Dauntless’s force shield was that anything from the front would be deflected or absorbed, anything from behind would go through with no problem, including containment foam stream and rifle bullets fired by the PRT troopers upon the mercenaries.

With protection from Dauntless, Miss Militia freely marched and fired onto the mercenaries with two assault rifles in her hands. There’s no dramatic effect, no people flying away from gunshot, two mercenaries grunted as they fell from her shots. Their body armor probably absorbed the shots but it was still quite frightening as to how little people showed when they got shot.

“Stop using lasers, his shield is absorbing them for power. Shoot them with bullets!” the merc commandeer ordered and the rest quickly followed.

This was it, a real gunfight. The one she was hoping for. So why is she hyperventilating and standing around like an idiot right now?

She can hear Dauntless calling out for her even as dozens of bullets plinked off his shield, creating sparks as the lightning zapped the bullets, melting them. But no amount of voices could get through the loudness of gunfire and panic.

She could hear a trooper yelling as a laser scorched his shoulder just by being close to him, but not before his stream of containment foam absorbed most of the beam and grew around the merc, sealing him shut.

First Lieutenant Wendy quickly spotted the fight and barked out an order, “Use containment foam! Paint the base white and get behind painted cover!”

Immediately, troopers armed with containment foam guns shot everywhere, covering several mercs in the process but that’s not the main point. The foam coated damn near everywhere and the previously pristine base was now completely unrecognizable as the grey walls were painted white.

With the containment foam solidified and settled in mere moments, PRT troopers moved in for cover and the mercs continued to take losses as their main advantage were nullified. Triumph crouched behind one of the cover and poked his head out, shouting at the mercs and blasting them away, stunning them as air exploded right besides them. All the mercs could hear was a ringing in their ears as their number dwindled.

“Bomber! Take cover!” she could barely hear that through the intense gunfire as Miss Militia charged at her, ramming her behind a foam covered vending machine.

Only then did she wake up from the noise of gunfire and finally facing the fightings around her, bullets and lasers chipping and ablating the cover they’re sitting behind, “Oh God, what did I-”

And then she was being forced to turn around, getting face to face with Miss Militia, “Bomber, focus! Look at me!” with both her shoulders clamped tightly by her hands, it’s not like she can’t look at her anyway.

“Keep your head down and calm the hell down!” today was the day she learnt that Miss Militia can be a really scary and angry drill sergeant when she wants to, “ Do you wanna get yourself killed or not!?”

She shook her head quickly.

“Good, now listen to my every order and follow me!” and with that, her shotgun disintegrated into a green energy stream and reformed into a minigun. The mercs in front of her all ducked their heads down when the ammunition backpack was finally formed and she opened 6 barrels of hell.

Any concrete wall that wasn’t covered in containment foam were chipped away at a frightening rate as tracer rounds flew in such a concentrated pattern, they looked more like traditional movie laser beams than the actual laser beams fired by the mercs.

“Bomber, fire containment grenades in that direction!” Miss Militia pointed while bracing herself for another burst, her combat exoskeleton absorbing the recoil. This time, she followed her order without any hesitation.

With the sheer amount of firepower projected by her, the mercs were too busy hiding behind cover as the danger of being ripped into pieces was too much for them. They instead were foamed as Bomber fired containment grenades from her revolver-type grenade launcher at their positions.

It was quite helpful that her power also came with a secondary aiming power that allowed her to lob in grenades right at where she wanted. And not only that, she could look into other tinker made bombs and improve them by a whole magnitude. The containment grenades she was using was the result of that aspect of her power.

Each containment grenade had a dual warhead package inside. The liquid containment foam were packed twice the density of common containment foam grenade in the front of the casing. It wasn’t even the highest density she could create as the test grenade with ten times the density ended up pulverizing the test dummy from the pressure blast alone.

Situated behind the containment foam package was an electric pulse system that could both taser a target at around a 3 meter radius as well as short-circuiting even well-protected tinkertech. The laser guns used by the mercs were safely disabled as they were tasered and foamed by a barrage of her grenades as they arced over the cover.

“Good job! Now keep it going!” ah~another praise from Miss Militia herself, this was definitely what she was looking for!

“Incoming!” a trooper shouted just before a rocket struck the pillar he was covering behind. Dust and smoke was spread by the blast as a small piece of concrete dropped from the shattered pillar and onto his head, knocking the trooper down. Miss Militia provided cover fire as the he was dragged away by another PRT trooper, firing suppressive fire with her other hand.

Miss Militia looked upward and saw several more mercs armed with rocket launchers emerging from the cover, checking for backblast and readying to fire, “Dauntless, get to cover now!” she shouted and tried to suppress the mercs, but it wasn’t enough as several rockets were already in flight, streaking smoke as they crossed the distance.

The first rocket flew straight for him as he was distracting with jabbing and tasering mercs with his arc lance but he noticed just in time to raise his shield up.. Blinding lightning crackled as the forcefield took the full brunt of the explosion, enough for a massive thundering to echo in the underground base.

As the smoke and lightning dissipated, he was too stunned by the explosion to raise his shield up for the next several rockets.

The next rocket impacted in front of him and exploded.

The merc didn’t even let up the possibility of Dauntless surviving a rocket upfront as they launched two more at him when the smoke was still covering his position. But the rockets only flew into the smoke, the expected explosions did not happen.

“It’s not polite to take someone down like that!” the smoke dispersed as a mysterious force blew it away, revealing a red suited hero with a visor covering the top of his face, as well as a merc in his arm and the two rockets in his other hand, still firing their thrusters.

He aimed at the group of mercs and released his grip on the rockets, letting them fly back to their owner and doing what they were made to do, dust falling from the ceiling as the two rockets exploded near the mercs.

With one kick, he sent Dauntless and the merc flying towards solid cover and launched himself towards the mercs, giving off his signature smile while doing so. Not even bullets could get rid of it as they simply bounced off him.

The mercs backed off from the brute rated hero as he jumped a whole floor up in a single leap, but he simply dashed to the closest one, cocked his fist back for a punch. The merc in front could only raise her arm up to block as Assault sent the woman flying, knocking her teammates down like a bowling pins.

Another rocket armed merc aimed at Assault, but he was promptly interrupted as Dauntless’s arc lance speared through his rocket launcher from halfway across the room. A swipe to the right and the merc was zapped and knocked down by the arc lance, bursting with electricity.

At this point, it was quite clear that even with all the tinker tech they had, Coil’s mercs were getting taken down one by one as each second passed by. Against a full team of Protectorate heroes and well-trained PRT squads, no amount of tinker tech would save their asses. Normal people simply couldn’t fight against parahumans at all.

Seeing the mercs getting pushed back, she dashed from one cover to another and kept on launching containment grenades at them. Her mind was getting unfocused as she gleefully smiled at another merc being trapped under pile of foam, and all she could think off was getting another one down.

“Bomber, you are going too far. Get back here!” Miss Militia called through the radio, but she wasn’t listening at all.

Another grenade launched, another pop and another merc downed. She hid behind a cover, peeked out a bit and saw something that made her open her eyes wide. In front of her was a merc trooper that clearly took a car’s worth of steel and polymer for that powered exoskeleton as well as all the steroids in the trunk just to look so damn buff.

And it’s not just one either, two more walked behind the first one and each steps sounded loud and heavy.

Seeing the massive multi-barrel gun carried by those heavy mercs, she hid behind the cover and took a deep breath to steady herself. If she took out that group out quickly, not only will there be less chances of injuries and casualties for the PRT and Protectorate, she might get praised by others for doing so well too! Maybe even Armsmaster will….heheheh.

With nerve of steel, she popped out of her cover, took aim and fired.

Only for the click of an empty weapon to follow.

“Oh sh-” she couldn’t even finish her line as her grenade launcher was blown to smithereens right in her hand. Well, not literally because that would be catastrophic, but her grenade launcher was disintegrated as it was struck by a massive bullet from the heavy merc gun.

She felt pain on her left arm and chest as she fell backward from the blast. And as much as she wanted to complain about the armor feeling heavy and tight on her body, she was too thankful to have them now to do that. From now on, she had some real goddamn respect for women that wore heavy-ass body armors on the battlefield.

But still...that massive pain on her chest, she didn’t get shot in her tits right? Oh God she did, oh fucking hell that was painful, it won’t bruise her breasts or anything rig-Oh God she was still being fired at! Tracers flew right above her as she heard high explosive bullets zipping past her, wrecking the scenery everywhere an-

She heard a loud roar and cranked her neck up a bit, a heavy merc was knocked down from Triumph’s roar and was about to get up when he received another roar to the face. The other heavy merc was being rammed by Dauntless’s arc lance across the room, crashing hard onto a wall and felt unconscious immediately.

The last merc suffered a panic attack and screamed as she fired her gun blindly at the two heroes, forcing Triumph to duck down and Dauntless to take cover behind his shield. Maybe she could do something to help them?

She thought of her options here, her grenade launcher was repairable but she needed it now and it’s in pieces. She could throw her grena-oh God her left arm hurt so fucking badly! For all she knew, it might be broken. She still had one good arm but her chest hurting like all hell so she might end up fumbling the throw.

That left only one option.

Being a bomb tinker, she could not only make special grenades and bombs, but also make new launch mechanisms to deliver the payload. Her grenade launcher was one of her first real works after she triggered, and she could actually make a powered robotic arm to throw the grenades but didn't bother to. In hindsight, she should have done that...

As for her only option here, she had missiles.

She activated the lock-on system and looked at the panicking merc, hoping that she didn’t notice her. As soon as she heard the tick, she yelled the command sequence.

“Fox 2!” she always wanted to say that ever since she got onto the internet, though not as badly as ‘Fire the main cannon!’.

On her thighs, three missiles shaped like WW2 German stick grenade were strapped onto it. Designed to be fired right away or fired after getting thrown away or fired in any situation possible, the stick missiles as she called them were made with versatility in mind. And they worked perfectly.

She felt her thigh warm up as one missile launched away, flying straight at the remaining heavy merc. The merc could only see the danger one last time before the dematerialisation warhead detonated right in her face, disintegrating her gun, armor as well as the floor and roof right at the edge of blast radius.

Realising she’s armed with literally nothing, the merc was too busy covering herself to dodge the incoming stream of white sticky stuff. Bomber slumped back to the floor as she saw her tech work as perfectly as she designed them to. Of course it would work, she made them herself! Of course it would work perfectly, like, totally!

“Dammit Bomber, let’s get you out of here first.” a familiar female voice spoke above her and pulled back somewhere. Somewhere where some PRT troopers had medics attending to their wound, even Panacea herself was helping in mending major wounds.

It was...awkward, to expect herself to get some glory and suddenly she ended up in need of healing. The bullet didn’t penetrate, right? Right now, a female medic crouched besides her as Miss Militia talked to her about her injuries.

“Well this looks bad” the medic commented. “But the bullet proof layers seem to be intact.” after that explosion, she was fairly sure that the cosmetic layer was ruined and she highly doubted that a washing machine could wash that off..

“She had an explosion happened at point blank range.” Miss Militia explained.

“Damn, are you hurt anywhere, Bomber?” the medic asked.

“Yes…” she answered weakly.

“Can you point out where?”

“I...felt pain on my left arm and…”

“And?”

“And...erm...my chest.” she said with the tiniest voice in the universe.

“Which part of your chest?”

She bit her lips.

“...My tits! Dammit!” she yelled loudly and immediately clutched her chest, “Oh ouch, that hurt so much to just yell…”

“Make this a lesson, Bomber. I need to go with the rest of the team, see you later.” Miss Militia said. Yeah...she really did went over her head too much this time, but she had a feeling she probably won’t learn much from this at all…

“Yes ma’am…”

“Oh, and one thing.”

?

“You did a great job today. Sure you got shot, but that will happen to all of us sometimes.” she patted her shoulder one last time before walking away.

Wow...Miss Militia was really an amazing woman.

“Now…” the medic said, “I need to cut open your costume to check the wounds, okay?”

“Oh erm...okay.” she complied as the medic cut her costume open with a scissor, slowly cutting the sleeve off her left arm. Her arm ached painfully even when she did it softly as she felt its dull edge poking her bruise, so it’s probably broken or something.

With the top of her costume off, she looked down at her sport bra, barely able to hold her cup size, and get the medic to cut it off. This earned quite a look from not just the medic, but also some injured PRT troopers and even Panacea herself…

She’s almost certain that she will be hailed as a ‘morale booster’ after this...

The medic chuckled, “Yeah, you will be fine. Your arm isn’t broken and the shrapnel was caught by your vest. Though you might need to take care of that bruise on your arm and...” the medic chuckled again, slightly louder this time.

Oh fuck you too, maybe she could set this woman with a bomb or something...maybe even a mini disintegration bomb set to detonate when she walked right outside of the changing roo-wait where did that dangerous idea come from!?

“Sorry, just..well...once you work in this kind of career long enough, you will try to laugh everything off.” the medic said, before taking some bandages out of her bag and wrapping it around her left arm.

She could only sigh as the medic continued her job, seeing that she’s right besides a vending machine, albeit one that was mostly covered in containment foam. She took a dollar out of her pocket and inserted it into the machine with her only good arm. It didn’t take long for the machine to drop a soft drink and with one hand, she opened it and drank its content.

Sigh…

Soft drink, something you drink when you were watching movies, playing video games, visiting internet, studying homeworks, doing college projects, and spending time with ‘friends’. To think that something this insignificant would be the most normal thing in her life now was...absurd but true. There’s a couple moments where she missed her old normal life and wanted the good part to come back but…

That ain’t gonna happen, right?

------

Robin (Velocity)

“This is Miss Militia, the breach team is in and fighting.” besides her own womanly voice, gunfire and laser can be heard in the background. “Bomber Two is down but okay and the PRT squads are taking light casualty so far. The main merc force should be focusing on us so now’s your chance. Get Coil for her, Armsmaster. Miss Militia out.”

“Roger Miss Militia, this is Armsmaster and we are going in.” Armsmaster said while crouching right besides a steel door leading into the base. As expected, the door was locked. Also as expected, Armsmaster had a hacking tool inside his gauntlet that only required a touch to the electronic lock. But it felt more like the lock unlocked itself after deciding that getting a death glare from the leader of Protectorate ENE was too much for its feeble microchip.

As Armsmaster unlocked the door, the circuit pattern on Battery’s costume glowed as she crouched down like a runner right before the starting bang, charging up her power with every second passed. As for Velocity himself, he’s just...well…

Speedsters can have a really weird perspective since they could experience time several times faster than normal people. To him, he could selectively choose to be as slow as a normal person, or as fast as he can in the blink of an eye, maybe even more.

Even if he wasn’t as good of a fighter as Armsmaster, this still gave him an advantage in reading his opponents with seconds to spare as if they were telegraphing their action. It would also allow him to check out Battery’s great body shape that was only enhanced by her tight armored bodysuit, but that wouldn’t be polite as she had Assault already.

Those female mercs on the other side of the door were free game though. Yes, big boobs are great, but sometimes you need to appreciate muscle on women too.

Even if it was done in mere 5 seconds, the action of Armsmaster pushing the door open was simply too slow to his eyes. While hearing the man speaking his order in a slow and deep toned manner would be hilarious, disobeying his order would not end well and speedster tended to have the problem of not being able to hear the order after they entered their breaker state. Choosing safety first, he normalised his perspective to hear the man’s order properly.

“You two go right, I will handle left.” and as expected, the man loved to go solo. He probably detected which side had more opponents with his tinker tech and went for that side too!

As soon as the door was opened by an inch, Battery activated her power and for as long as 10 seconds in normal time, she would be half as fast as him and far stronger than any members of the team. Immediately, she charged forward, concrete shattered under her feet as she punched down the steel wall, denting it hard. The steel door was flipped open so violently, its hinges broke off and the whole thing slowly fell to the ground.

With the attention of the mercs focused on the dented door, the two ran out at a speed that can only be seen as a blur. Well, blue blur for him and green glowing goddamned shooting star for Battery that would not stop for anything until she punched some mercs’ faces in.

Not literally by the way, because that would be very bad for PR. Instead she just settled for punching a merc so hard, he can see ripple forming on the bullet proof vest at the impact point. That man will definitely be out for hours afterward, same going for his buddies that got a rifle broken off on his face and that other chick that got kicked between her legs. That had to hurt a lot even if she had nothing down there.

As for him, he couldn’t exactly do the same because he didn’t have strength of ten men. Rather, he only had the strength of half a man, as his power basically traded strength for speed. It was kinda part of his secondary power to make sure he won’t break his foot with each steps by decreasing his ability to affect or get affected by the world. Battery’s power countered this by being very strong instead.

As with all things, safety first. And taking guns off mercs should be the first thing a superhero do. However, with his diminished strength, he can’t exactly pry guns away from those strong hands. He can however, run right in front of them, press the mag release and pull the bolt back to make sure no round was in the firing chambers. While he struggled a bit with the rail system, he still managed to collect all of the undermount laser, effectively disarming all the mercs he could currently see in less than a minute. (From his perspective).

Of course, even with this done, the mercs would still fight tooth and nail to escape. Which was why he had yet another trick up his sleeves. As none of the mercs had realised that their guns were empty just yet, he ran for the closest one and pulled his pants down. Ah, the amount of things you can get away with while being a speedster was quite a lot.

This guy was going for classic boxers, this girl was exercising this morning with bicycle shorts, this guy was expecting a date tonight with triangle underwear, this girl was going casual with white panties and the girl besides her was going commando. One could easily read the rich amount of personalities by looking at the person underwear after you saw enough of them.

But it’s not over yet! As this same trick wouldn’t work on supervillains that don’t wear pants by wearing something else or nothing at all (He appreciated the view though), the Protectorate tinker department had made him a pair of tech gauntlets to help him.

Motion sensor in the glove chose which functions he needed by sensing which direction his palms brushed past each other. He move his right hand up over his left and aimed his gauntlet at a merc currently tripping over his dropped pants. A spray of capsicium covered his face, and his eye slowly registered the pain as Velocity ran to the next one.

Left hand up, containment foam mini-bombs launched towards a merc, already rupturing and releasing their payload in mid-air. Right hand left, another merc got zapped as high voltage electricity ran from his palm to her body. Left hand right, needles were jabbed into a merc that was about to reach for his pistol, but with tranquilizer juice flowing in his blood vein, it would only end in failure.

Two hands clapped together, and the gauntlets shut all functions off. This was because he just wanted to grab this guy shoulders and kick his family jewel. And with all of that done, he sat behind cover, normalised his sense of time and enjoyed the show.

“My eyes! My fucking eyes!!!”
“I am not paid enough for th-mhmmm”
“Fucking….speedster…”
“Why my balls! Why!?”
“Don’t stare at my ass!”

Ahhhhh, now this was truly life.

It was a shame that thanks to the size of the tech gauntlets, the PR team won’t let him show it off in public event because it looked ‘dangerous’. Well screw you, PR team! He fucking needed them to fight properly and he had one of the most PR-friendly power already. He can count the number of fight he lost because of that and he was fairly sure that the number would only increase.

And then bullets started trashing up the place, peppering the scenery with many bullet holes. It’s time to speed up once again.

Within his breaker state, he could stand up and run around without the fear of getting hit by bullets or shrapnel, he was simply too fast to get shot at and he could dodge just about everything if he’s careful enough. This was simply too easy for him.

Well, for him only. Behind him, Battery was running for solid cover as her breaker state was starting to run out. With bullets bouncing off her glowing form as she did so, it’s nowhere near safe enough for her to charge her power up. As all the remaining mercs in the room gunning for her because they all gave up on shooting him down, now it’s the perfect time for him to shine!

A deep breath in and out, steadying his heart rate as he activated his power to an even greater degree, so much that bullets became so slow, even flies could outfly them. But at the same time, his strength would be decreased by even more.

Not that he needed them much to deflect bullets, despite the power of a speeding bullet, they weighed really light, even those massive .50 cals fired from the heavy mercs’ tri-barreled miniguns weighed less than a chicken egg.

And with just a slight push, the bullets were already off their intended course and safe for everyone except the poor wall that totally didn’t deserve all the carnage. Perfect! All he needed now was to figure out how to disable those massive guns.

For the usual mercs with assault rifles, he simply needed to repeat what he did 10 seconds ago in real time. He had basic gun knowledge from serving in the military years before after all, might as well put some use into that skill. But for the heavy mercs…

This would be a bit hard as those guns were clearly tinkertech in nature. After tasering the last of the normal merc, he inspected the multi-barreled machine guns. Unlike those movie heavy gun dudes, these guys had no exposed ammo feed connecting the gun to an ammo pack. Instead, they had massive circular magazines that were definitely too small for the sheer amount of ammo it contained attached to the guns.

And if there’s any solution that worked for the past 10 years for the PRT, it’s applying containment foam to every goddamn thing.

Put one containment foam mini-bomb right at the base of the gun, put some at the end of the barrel to stop it from firing, put some more to jam all those servo in the powered skeleton and shove one down their pants too. The result will definitely be spectacular when they all explode-what is that white lantern-looking devi-

A blinding light came from the lantern and he immediately felt pain through every cells of his body. It’s not agonizing pain, but when there’s pain in your privates, you will feel it. While he was still recovering from the feeling of being kicked at a very wrong place, he can hear his work accomplishing what he intended as the heavy mercs screamed for help beneath the containment foam. He certainly wished he could see their face when their pants exploded in foam.

But it was very alarmingly that he heard other mercs recovering from his tasering and slotting in new magazine. As his eyes recovered, he saw the business end of a rifle, several of them, and he couldn’t activate his power as he felt a pinch in his head.

“Shit.”

This was it then, for the incredible Velocity. Who people of Earth Aleph complained to be a complete knockoff of the Flash because he was nothing like him for like...5 years tops maybe? Seriously though, the idea of the Flash was stupid because he alone can solve almost all problems in all comic books history simply because of the fact that to him, everything was in walking distance.

Well, he would have finished this fight too if not for that anti-power lantern. Guess it’s time for him to say goodbye to this world now. Goodbye Maes, his best buddy and a great father to his daughter. Goodbye mom, thanks for taking care of his life but fuck you dad. Goodbye Hannah, thanks for that great ass and delicious breakfast. And good bye to two of his most favourite things, boobs and pizza.

...Heaven probably had hot angel girls, so he’s just going to say goodbye to pizza no-

“Cover your eyes.”

He quickly did so because that voice was obviously none other than the only tinker of Brockton Bay Protectorate, Armsmaster. People that didn’t follow his order tended to not end up well.

A flash of light followed after a loud bang, blinding and stunning the mercs around him as Armsmaster quickly dispatched a group of them down with his signature tinkertech halberd. He didn’t know which halberd Armsmaster was currently using as that man had as many of them as a gun nut had guns, but all it took was just a single nick from the blade to tranquilise the mercs with a single calculated swipe.

Not planning to lose to the man, he kicked down the merc in front of him and slugged her face as she fell down on him. With a flip, he stood back up and punched another merc. When he found the merc was clear-headed enough to catch his fist, he instinctively started his power and jabbed with his other hand. His power didn’t start back up yet, but his fist did connect to his face. A short moment was spent to taser those mercs, making sure that they were really down.

While he spent his time being a normal and handling only two mercs, Armsmaster was already running around and dodging bullets like a goddamn ninja as he followed his combat prediction program to the letter. He charged in, knocking the merc’s rifle away with the blunt end of his halberd before spinning around, nicking his cheek with the blade end.

Behind him, a merc aimed, thinking he had a chance only for a hook to pop out of the other end and smack right in his face. A one handed swipe cut his thigh and the tranquiliser immediately took effect. Another halberd slid off Armsmaster’s back and dropped into his hand, extending itself to full size as he aimed it at the merc with tinker tech machine gun.

Heavy caliber bullets were fired as the merc braced herself for the recoil, but the halberd opened its blade like a metal flower and projected a energy shield around the hero. The bullets did nothing more than making fancy firework and with the gun emptied, he triggered the shield to burst, knocking down three mercs before giving them a small cut through their bodyarmor.

With two halberds in hands, the hero charged in and took down the rest of the mercs with frightening ease.

“Of course it was him that finished the work.” while Velocity panted on their floor, Battery sat down besides him.

“Yeah... of course, he’s a certified badass.” he said between breathes.

Unlike most tinkers who depended on their tech more so than anything else, Armsmaster was a one of a kind tinker that not only dedicated his time on building new tech, but also worked himself a strong, skilled body that can wield his tools like no other. He got his signature halberd not because he can make halberd powerful enough to fight crime, it was because he only needed his halberd to kick supervillain’s ass. And he can and will kick ass.

In short? He’s Batman, not just in the extremely skilled, full of gadget and ‘plan for everything’ department either. He was also rather infamous among the Protectorate for having a ridiculous number of ladies going after him. Have you ever seen the lustful looks women around him gave!? Nobody really saw Dragon before, but even she probably admired him deeply after all that ‘just-work’ between them.

Sorry, ladies. But Armsmaster was only interested in getting more tech shoved up his halberd-chan’s ass and Dragon was perfectly fine with that. However, having Bomber Two around might shifted the balance of the situation and generally caused a disturbance in the shipping force.

…

But nevermind about that, as he and Battery got up to follow Armsmaster to Coil’s personal office. While the hallway was emptied of threats, they mentally prepared themselves for possible ambush.

“For a supervillain base, this is rather comfy. We will repurpose this base after we captured it, right?” he jokingly asked.

“Depends on the budget allowance, but this base is strategically placed right in the center of the city. It would be best if we could make use of this place.” as expected, Armsmaster thought about practicality instead.

“According to the map, there’s a private swimming pool down here! Sweet!” Battery cheered, pointing at the map section of a bulletin that was made for civilian workers in the base, “Erm, I meant...let’s get back to work.”

“Talking like you own the base already, heroes!?”

Two heavy mercs walked out of the corner and aimed their gun at them, “The two of us will stop you from going for ou-ah shit, it’s Armsmaster.”

They immediately dropped their big-ass guns and surrendered.

Of course the mooks would immediately surrender upon looking at the ‘great’ Armsmaster. He can pretty much wiped the floor with everyone except the worst supervillain. As a matter of fact, the latest news about him winning against 42 ABB members and Oni Lee simultaneously was not an exaggeration at all. But as per usual, Oni Lee ran away because teleporters were bullshit.

Let’s be honest here, the only person Armsmaster can’t possibly beat in Brockton Bay was Lung but he’s complete bullshit too.

With a charge of her power, Battery entered her breaker state and pulled the mercs’ hands together, sealing their hands with a detonation of containment mini-bomb.

“Stay here.” Armsmaster ordered to the two mercs kneeling on the floor before heading for Coil’s personal office.

As a door with a silver plated name tag with the name ‘Coil’ written on it appeared in view, Armsmaster directed him and Battery stand besides the door and he did the same too. He pretty much knew what would happen already as Armsmaster knocked on the door.

Three gunshots that sounded rather devastating torn right through the metal door right after that. With a simple gesture from the tinker, Battery began to charge her power up and prepared to knock the door down.

“Coil, drop your weapon and surrender now!” Armsmaster said as per according to rules and guidelines.

“Fuck off!” for a person owning this elaborated base, he sure had a dirty mouth.

Armsmaster tilted his head at Battery and she immediately charged, ramming the metal door down like it was made out of styrofoam. But a gunshot rang out and the glow in the office stopped. He quickly stepped into the office and found Battery holding her bleeding waist, the gun must be tinker tech if it could stop her breaker state.

As Coil aimed at the fallen heroine, he entered his breaker state and ran at the supervillain, intending to disable his gu-he suddenly found himself unbalanced as he stepped on something round and immediately he fell right into the supervillain’s arms. The man waited no time and grabbed hold of him to make him his hostage, with a gun pointed to his head for good measure.

This must be how rolling a nat 1 for his rouge when he was grappling the orc chief in last week gaming session felt like.

Battery quickly stood back up and gave him an utterly dumbfounded look, while Armsmaster took his stance and readied his halberd for the worst case scenario. All he could do now was acting as a hostage and stare at-did he just step on a fucking baseball!? Where did that come from and why did it look charred!?”

“Get back or I’m going to blow his head off!” Coil demanded, but his gun was shaking in his hand.

“Coil, the PRT has defeated your merc and secured all exits. Even if you got out of this room with him, you will not escape this base. Surrender now” Armsmaster declared.

“Armsmaster, are you trying to get me killed faster here!?” he complained.

“I’m using my perfect social program to negotiate with this man right now. It will wo-ah I had it set to intimidation mode.”

“Dammit Armsy!!!” he yelled while struggling in Coil’s grip.

“It doesn’t fucking matter anyway! I can exist in different worlds and the other me has long since got out of the base twenty minutes ago. In fact, I’m already moving away in my personal transport and planning to start everything up again in another city in need of me!”

“Actually, the only other person you told your power about? Lily? She’s kinda passed out so we can’t ask her what your power is. You basically exposed your secret on your own, Coil.” he helpfully added.

...

The supervillain aimed his gun down briefly and shot his feet. He was able to hold back a painful scream but with the hot gun barrel burning the side of his skull, he gruntled in pain. The two other heroes stepped back as red blood stained his blue pants. That’s going to take more than lemons to wash out.

“Move out of my way before I-” Coil yelled, but stopped as he looked down at the doorway.

Armsmaster and Battery looked back for a moment and again as they found nothing in the doorway.

“No.” the man said. “No! ”

The two other heroes stood their stance as Coil waved his gun at them, but he was aiming for the empty hallway right outside of the room. He wasn’t just blindly aiming either, as his hand, while shaking like a house of matchsticks, was still pointing at something.

“Okay, what the hell is he looking at?” he grimaced as he put pressure on his bleeding wound, wondering if the supervillain boss took some doped drug or something.

“Stay back! Stay the fuck back!” Coil demanded as he stepped back, dragging the wounded hero back. With his attention split between the invisible threat and threatening the hostage, he pushed the desk away after nearly tripping over it and he continued to step back until there’s only a wall behind him.

“I don’t know what trick you have Armsmaster, but you need to do something right now!” Velocity asked while the two heroes slowly stepped forward with steady footing.

But what comes next was a surprise to all of them.

“Stay the fuck back, Batter!” the supervillain yelled.

“Did he just say Batter!?” Velocity said, even Armsmaster was surprised when the supervillain pushed him away and held his gun up with two hands.

“Die!”

A bullet was shot out of the tinker tech gun, forming a contrail as it flew through the air at mach 2. It did nothing more than putting a hole in wall, but if his power about seeing two worlds at once was true...he could have shot something else, someone important.

But clearly, he missed.

Because firing the gun wasn’t the last thing he ever do.

The last thing he did was to scream.

------

The holographic crowd cheered as another baseball was batted away by my precise and smooth batting. The ball flew in an arc before dropping back down as gravity still worked in this pocket dimension, landing on the grassfield with a thud. It was also not alone as there’s several hundreds of its brothers and sisters littered throughout the field.

When Uber said they were going for a traditional baseball, I’m fairly sure he’s lying out of his ass as this quickly became a game of ‘Bat or Die’. Well, not literally dying but you get what I meant. When there’s several baseball launchers aiming at you at the same time and gave you barely any delay to bat the balls away, it can get intense fast...

Even with second passenger helping me out, my stamina was starting to run out as I had to swing the bat to not have it knocked out of my hand. And it’s not just me playing this game of ‘Bat or Die’ either.

While she was a basketball player before, Glory Girl had some expertise with playing balls as she managed to bat a couple baseballs away. But she was quickly confused by the sheer amount of balls launched towards her. Fortunately, her brute power was helpful at taking those baseball hits like nothing, so it was nothing more than annoyance to her.

Vista, who had barely enough strength to swing the spare aluminium bat instead bent space around her and simply slowed the balls down enough for her to bat away lightly. She might also had directed a couple baseballs at us to reduce her workload, mostly at Glory Girl.

But…

It was really as fun as it was ridiculous. I never felt this relaxed before since…

Since…

…

Sigh…

A baseball painfully smacked me on my forehead and I instinctively crouched down to rub the pain away.

“Okay, man down! You alright, kid?” Uber asked.

“Yeah, I’m fi-”

The ringtone that I set for my personal phone sounded and I quickly unlocked my phone.

“Hello? Who is th-”

“This is Tattletale, your friend is fucked. Go to hospital, you can still save her.”

I-what. And the line was closed off just like that.

Not a second after that, my PRT issued Ward com-watch beeped. It’s Armsmaster.

“Sir, what’s wrong?”

“Flechette and Mouse Protector have been kidnapped, but we have rescued them.”

What!? What the hell is going on!?

“Wha-why didn’t you tell me!?”

“It might alerted the villain since your show was streaming on the internet and still is.”

I briefly looked towards the drone, never before had I felt so angry at a robot.

“They are safe now.”

I’m sensing a ‘but’.

“But Flechette is...suffering a condition that Panacea can’t heal.”

…

“Batter, what’s wrong!?” Glory Girl flew to my side, comforting me as I kneeled down onto the soft grass and my tears dripped uselessly onto the grassfield.

Just as useless as I was, one moment of relief and this fucking happened.

Fuck.

...

“Armsmaster.”

[Combat Mode on][Emotion Suppression Level 1]​

“Hm?”

[Emotion Suppression Level 2]​

“Where is she placed? Which hospital!?” I asked loudly.

[Emotion Suppression Level 3]​

“Brockton Bay General Hospital...Are you planning to use your power t-” he cut it off before the man could finish.

“Batter!?” Vista asked worryingly as I stood up suddenly, tears still ran down my face uncontrollably.

With a press of a switch, the baseball bat in my hand transformed into its blade mode and I stabbed it right into my dot. To the outsider, it looked like I was cutting my abdomen, reminding people of that stupid Japanese suicide ritual.

But I’m not killing myself.

I’m saving something, saving her.

“Batter, what-” whatever Glory Girl said, I didn’t finish hearing as I felt air rushed past me, burst of acceleration triggered by my power directed me out of the exit and back to the normal, crime-filled, brutal Brockton Bay that I knew.

Lily, I’m coming to save you.

------

Author Note: I had to admit that this was one of the most challenging chapter so far as I have to write so much fighting from side-characters.

But anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.

 

So, after another week, the second to last chapter for arc 4 is finally here.

As per usual, Ziplops helped in beta-ing my terrible writing, so credit to him too.

Finally, after all those fightings by everyone EXCEPT our SI, it's back to watching from his viewpoint.

Enjoy this chapter.

------

Chapter 4.9

------

Zigzagging across the skyline of Brockton Bay, my body was bursting with moments of acceleration as I headed straight towards Brockton Bay General Hospital.

It was pretty much a normal hospital except for the fact that Panacea volunteered to work here, making it a famous landmark across not just the east coast, but the whole world as well. It was easy to recognize and I spotted the entrance quickly.

Aiming myself towards the entrance, I pulled my sword out of my body and braced myself for the landing. Even as my feet hit the ground, momentum carried me forward and my body rolled instinctively to bleed out the momentum.

Quickly, I turned the roll into a flip and achieved a perfect landing on my feet before waiting for the automatic glass doors to open and head for the counter. It wasn’t necessary at all as I saw PRT troopers guarding the entrance and it’s probably better to ask them instead.

“Flechette and Mouse Protector, which floor!?” I asked with the simplest question.

“Christ! You are here alrea-they are at room 304. The same one you were in last we-.” before she finished answering, I already ran towards the stairs, skipping the staircases by jumping a whole floor of them at a time.

Not caring a single bit to keep it quiet, my footsteps tapped loudly against the floor and I nearly slid away on the waxed floor as I reached room 304. With the door right in front of me, I took a deep breath and calmed myself down, no point in rushing into the room with a look of complete panic. Even then, my heart was beating rapidly as I twisted the doorknob open and stepped into the room.

[Biological Royal Craftsman detected][Action Time detected]​

Even before I had entered, I was hearing muffled noise of yelling already. So as I had expected, what happened inside was...chaotic.

[Complete social link detected and established]​

“Panacea, there has to be something you can do about this!” Clockblocker yelled at her, completely frustrated with the situation.

“I can’t!” she yelled back at him, “I! Don’t! Do! Brains! Dammit!”

[Tagging Chaser detected]​

“Clockblocker, calm the hell down! Yelling at Miss Almost Fix-it-All is not going to-oh...” all eyes in the room fell on me when Nora noticed my presence. “Batter.”

[Redundant Fodder detected][Knight of Feels detected][Multi-Applicational Engineer detected]​

Here, I felt like the elephant in the room but I pushed on forward and stepped right in. Aegis, Gallant, Clockblocker and Kid Win gathered besides Lily, who was lying on her bed with her eyes opened wide, her eyes looking right at me while the rest of her body stayed completely still. What happened to her?

[Miniaturizing Compensator detected][Unlimited Armament Work detected]​

Besides Nora were Armsmaster and Miss Militia, standing at the corner closest to her and from the way they turned towards me, they were definitely discussing something. Now they were just waiting for me to ask.

So, I did that.

[Emotion Suppression Level 2]​

First, I took a deep breath, “Tell me, what the hell happened? From the start to the end.” I then asked as calmly as possible.

Armsmaster tapped something in his forearm and a holographic screen projected out of it, facing towards him. “Flechette and Mouse Protector were kidnapped at around 1600. Around half an hour, Panacea called us and we sent out search parties at 1630. Mouse Protector managed to contact us from within the base at 1730. And we later breached into the base at 1740. The base is secured at 1800, with all mercenaries apprehended and their parahuman boss, Coil is now in custody.”

Okay...that actually didn’t tell me anything I wanted at all while telling me everything...Wait, hold on a second!

“I’m erm…” I fumbled around my pocket in search of that white card.

As soon as I felt something plastic, I pinched it and pulled it out, “I found this.” I swallowed my fear as I handed the card to Armsmaster, “Yesterday.”

“Why didn’t you report about this?” he sternly asked.

“I was scared of what happened if I do and...I…” nonono, don’t panic now dammit!

“Cauldron.”

“Huh?”

“While I prefered that you could have handed this to us earlier, you did the right thing.” he flipped the card, showing the C symbol to me, “Many people have saw this symbol and never come back. People that talked it also ended up dead right before our teams could get them, like they were ahead of us every time.”

So...this was the better option!? This could actually get worse!?

“But…this is not from Cauldron.” wait what.

He tapped the side of his head, “Dragon, link Coil’s computer system to mine.” Light projected from his gauntlet as he pressed a few holographic button before giving me my card back.

On it, it said [You got played like a damn fiddle.]

“Coil is using your fear of Cauldron to control your action and if he had gotten away, all of us would blame this on Cauldron, which we not even sure if it actually exists or not.”

This is just...fuck.

Fuck, I would really spend my whole life fighting against Cauldron blindly if that happened.

Drake, calm down dammit. It was over now. Coil had been caught, so no point in worrying about that. What’s important is that Lily is still sick and I must save her!

A few deep breaths in, I soothed my heartbeat and asked, “So, what happened to Lily?”

“Panacea?” Miss Militia asked our bio-manipulating healer instead.

She shuffled towards us, nervous of whether her answer will cause my wrath.

“She has...some kind of tinker drug injected into her system. I have cleaned the drug out easily by expelling it from her body. But like any other drug, these mind-altering drugs can change the neural structure in the brain of those that consumed it and this one changed a lot.” she grimly explained.

“I’m sorry…” she sighed again, tears swelling in her eyes as despite her power, time and time again she had to say this to the families of the patients, “But there’s nothing I could do about this. I don’t do brains and…”

“There’s a possibility that she might recover from this but...I…I don’t know...I...” I didn’t like this for one bit, but...

I simply patted her shoulder softly, “You did what you could, Panacea. I will handle this.” I said, hoping this would save her from verge of crying, as she did enough already.

It didn’t. Her arm went behind me and she cried onto my shoulder, drenching my shirt with her tears. “Fuck, I-ave be-en wai-ting for so-long to he-ar this. Thank-you.” her words shivered as she sobbed non-stop.

[One Hit Wonder Brick detected][Escher Reality Marble detected]​

This was of course when Glory Girl and Vista finally got here.

“Oh God! What the hell happene-oh…” and of course the first thing she did is spot us, “Erm...I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

She turned towards, her crying face still laid against my shoulder, “Vicky, not-now.”

I could only sigh at this again, “Don’t worry, Panacea. I will fix her, okay?” I eased her feeling down as much as I could. I breathed easy when she let go of me and walked towards Lily.

“You are going to test your power on her?” she wiped the last of her tear off her cheek, “Okay, it’s the last thing anyone can do for her anyway.” that didn’t fill me with hope at all, but I must stay strong for her and everyone here.

“First thing you need to know is that she’s...not responsive to anyth-”

“Drake.” I heard Lily said my name in a voice that was barely above whispering.

“She reacted to you, that’s good. That’s really good because we tried to get everyone to yell at her and she didn’t give any response at all except from Mouse Protector.” Panacea added.

“Only Mouse Protector? Why?”

“It’s what the drug does, it make people listen to the first voice they hear and they will follow their order without any hesitation at all no matter how bad or terrible it is.” Mouse Protector explained. If what she said is true...fuck! What sick fuck made this drug!? This is some seriously fucked up slavery drug! And if that asshole tinker was selling it as a date rape drug...

Again, I took a deep breath and steadied my heart rate, “Okay erm...Lily, are you there? Can you blink or something?”

She blinked twice to my question.

“Good, and erm…” what to do...what to do...should I go straight for her dot or-why was she touching my face?

Her two hands, palms rough with welts and scars from wielding her signature arbalest and years of training with it rubbed my face together as if it was a squishy plushie of some sort.

“Lily, whart are you doieng?” I asked.

She simply smiled, baring her teeth and looking straight into my eyes. I did the same, looking straight into her eyes and what I saw absolutely shocked me.

Her eyes were no long the black Asian eyes I had known.

[The Burning God Killer with the Looming Gaze of Dying Future detected]​

Her iris has turned purple, and her pupil somehow became white triangles that rotated themselves slowly. The triangles in her eyes were off in their pattern as crossing them together would result in a six edged star instead.

It was...weird, strange, alien...

Just like my eyes.

My God, what the fuck happened to her!?

[Emotion Suppressions Level 3]​

I grabbed her hands softly and put them down on the bed. Then it was my turn to grab her head and use my power to ‘see’ her dots. Black lines and dots appeared on her body but I didn’t need to see the point of her existence, I needed to see the point of the drug and its effect on her instead. Immediately, my power acknowledged my need and new dots formed on her head. All I needed to do now is to stab the dot and cure her of the drug, but...will it work perfectly?

“Batter.” a voice called me out.

“Armsmaster?”

“As of now, I would advise you to not use this untested power of yours on your teammates. And I already have contacted other Protectorate branches on searching for a parahuman that could help Flechette.” as I was afraid of, he was entirely against this.

“Armsmaster, with all due respect. I cannot wait, she cannot wait, her friend can’t either.”

“Batter, what Armsmaster is trying to say was-” Miss Militia interjected.

I quickly cut her off, “I know what he wants to say, Miss Militia. I just...I don’t want months of testing while Lily suffered like this.” from my utility belt, I picked a Swiss Army Knife and pulled the knife out, “I’m going to do this, whether you like it or not. I don’t like layers of regulation anyway, reprimand me later.”

Despite what I said, my hands were shivering and cold sweat dripped from my forehead. I can’t stop thinking about the worst case scenario despite knowing that I had every sign in the world that said this would work.

“Batter-” she got cut off again.

This time by Nora with a wave of a hand, “Miss Militia, you have seen his record, right? He’s not the type that gives up when there’s a chance in front of him.”

She looked towards me with that signature grin of hers, “Kid, you went up against fucking Nine before, I doubt something like this could stop you!”

I… “Thank you, Nora.”

With her encouragement, I focused my power again and prepared the knife, my hands no longer shivering but steady. Actually, I didn’t really need cutting tools for poking dots, a screwdriver head would be far safer when the dot disappeared.

First...questions, what did I want to kill? The mental side effect of the drug.

Is there any residue of the drug inside her? No.

Is the drug affecting her? Yes.

Can I kill its effect on her?

Yes.

With my questioning done and my resolve determined, I plunged the screwdriver into the dot of her head and pulled it out just as quick.

I stopped breathing as I waited for her to recover, and it’s not only me either. The air remained still as everyone held their breath in anticipation, as if a single blow could break the whole atmosphere down.

“Argh…” Lily gruntled.

Quickly, I thought of a simply question, “Lily, can you say something!?”

“Erm...I can say something other than ‘argh’, right?”

I raised up my hand, “How many finger do I have?”

“You have 10 fingers, 5 if we don’t count your prosthetic but you raised up...3, 4 maybe?” she squinted her eyes at my hands, “Seriously, I’m totally awake, why the hell am I in the hospi-why are you crying!? What happened!?”

Now it was my turn to cry, second passenger no longer holding all the feelings inside me, waiting to be gushing out of my eyes. Again, I cried loudly like the crybaby I was 2 weeks ago onto her shoulder, her hospital gown taking a darker colour as my tears seeped into it.

“Lily!” my voice was shaking as I cried, “I’m not leaving your side ever again!”

“What? What!?” she asked confusingly.

With my arm around her neck, I hugged her as tight as I could, not intending to let her go towards danger alone again. I felt her hands on my back as she answered back with a warm embrace. After all that had happened, we needed a fucking hug.

And I wished that I will never have to let her go again.

…

Today’s lesson learnt, hospital gown can be very thin because I’m feeling something I shouldn’t right now.

I quickly pushed myself up and off the bed and Lily pulled the bed sheet up to warm herself from the cold air. The situation was simply too serious to be awkward about.

“Great! Now give me a hug too!” Nora asked while spreading her arms apart.

“I will politely refuse that…” seeing as this was Nora, I would rather not have my face stuffed into her chest. Doing it once is fine, doing it twice is awkward with the thin hospital gown on…

“But seriously, what the hell happened?” she asked while wiggling herself deeper underneath the sheet.

“You...don’t remember anything at all, Lily?” I asked to her, the tissue turned out to be handy in soaking up my tears.

“No?”

“Nothing about the incident?” Armsmaster sternly asked.

“Erm, no, I can’t remember.” she shook her head.

For some reasons, I had this feeling that she had forgot something very important. But at least she only forgot that and not everything.

“I...think I need you guys to tell me what the hell happened.” she looked worried about this, and she...really should.

I quickly stepped forward before Armsmaster started his long and detailed explanation, “Erm...you and Nora got kidnapped and Armsmaster’s team rescued you. But erm…”

I pulled out my smartphone and turned on the camera on selfie mode.

“This happened.” I flipped the screen to her.

“Oh my god, what the hell happened to my eyes!?”

This will take a while to explain…

------

It did take a while to calm her down. I mean, it was understandable that she panicked with her eyes becoming like...that. She just didn’t have the benefit of the second passenger to suppress her emotion like me when I lost my arm and leg. But thankfully, she had finally calmed herself down after a while.

It’s night time now, the sun had long set and the moon had risen up in the night sky.

Sitting right besides the window, I can easily view the street of Brockton Bay while having the moonlight shining on me. But I didn’t choose this spot for that, I chose this spot to look after Lily and Nora, and to keep watch over who was entering from that door. I needed to have the first initiative if I had to fight here. Can’t let them get hurt again, never again will it happen.

With my bat in my hands, readied to strike at the first sign of trouble, I only blinked my eyes every 10 seconds to keep my eyes on them. Nora was sitting upright on her bed, pillows propping up her back while she read some rather thick novels as the TV was showing nothing but news about Coil being arrested and my stupid-ass baseball game.

Lily however was...sleeping on her bed. After being beaten and kidnapped by a sick-fuck supervillain, she deserved a full week of rest. But even then, she wasn’t completely safe yet, safe from the nightmare. It ached my heart to see her rolling around, wrapping her bed sheet around her as she struggled in her nightmare.

I was about to stand up from my chair, but a single pat from Nora’s hand calmed her down. A bond was definitely formed between them during the kidnapping and right now, Lily needed it. This had been repeating for...an hour or two already? I can’t exactly remember.

It wasn’t just me looking after them either, of all the person in the BB Ward, Clockblocker volunteered to stay here. It...really baffled me as to why would he do this.

...You know what, let’s ask him right now.

“Clock, why are you staying here?” I asked him, “I mean, the others have left and gone home. I can handle this.”

He turned his head toward me, “So? Only Panacea can heal people, but that doesn’t mean nobody can stand in for her.”

“People get tired, Batter. You’ve looked tired ever since you got here.” he pointed to Lily, “And with Lily sleeping over there? I will be the one standing in for you today.”

I...I really didn’t expect him to be this serious, I really had some newfound respect to him now, “Thanks, Clockblocker. I just...really, I didn’t expect this coming from you.”

“I’m the silly one because the team needs one, Batter. I can be the serious one too when the time is right.” his chuckle was quite contagious as I did so too.

“But seriously, I don’t know how but you handled that situation like it was nothing. Everyone including me was panicking and you simply waltzed right in and fixed a problem not even Panacea could fix by stabbing her in the face!”

“I’m...fairly sure I did more than stabbing her face.” I nervously explained.

“Well yeah duh! But you were chill like a boss about it! I guess nothing will faze you at all after you went alone against the Nine.” he shrugged.

I could smirk nervously about that as he wasn’t exactly completely wrong about it either.

“I guess you could say that.”

“But even for other things, you act completely mature about it like Dean or Carlos. I would have completely raged if I suddenly lost my-”

“You can stop now.”

“Oh erm sorry about that.”

But he was right, without the second passenger suppressing my emotion, I would have flipped out at those two incidents and all the fightings I had been through. This power truly had changed me completely for the better or worse.

The door creaked open as I felt a familiar pinch in my head.

“Hey.” Glory Girl greeted with Panacea following behind her.

“Hey.” I raised my eyebrow, “Weren't you two supposed to go home?”

“Yeah, but we decided to stay around.” she explained with a shrug.

“Not for the first time anyway.” Panacea added. They walked towards us before sitting on the two chairs besides us. In her hands were two cups of coffee and she gave me one, Glory Girl having a cup of her own.

“Thanks.” with the cold air blowing from the air conditioner, I can see hot steam rise from the cup of coffee and the air was filled with its aroma. I took a sip and found that Panacea preferred creamy coffee. Just the way I like it too.

“Hey, no coffee for me?” Clockblocker complained.

“Well, we didn’t really expect you here.” they both shrugged. I guess this was totally out of the norm for him.

“So, why are you two still here?” I asked.

“Sometimes Amy does voluntary work until it’s late at night. So, I fly over to the hospital and stay with her until she can leave. We often spent our time on the roof or so on that couple times but since you guys are here, I thought, ‘Why not?’” she ended her explanation with a smile.

However, her smile quickly faded away, “I erm...I don’t mean that this is lucky for us or anything but…” she stopped herself from tripping over words and sighed, “If I hadn’t dragged you out to play that stupid baseball match, this would not have happened at all.”

I didn’t know what else to do but pat her shoulder slightly, “We don’t know what will happen until we do something, Glory Girl. The butterflies don’t fly in the pattern we predicted just because we blocked the other way. It’s not your fault.”

It was mine, but I didn’t say that.

“So...obviously we are not going to sit here and stare at the ceiling all night. Do any of you have cards or something?”

As an answer to my question, Clockblocker moved a tiny circular table to us and took out a deck from his utility belt.

“I bought Uno for tricks everyday. Kids love it.” he then shuffled the cards like he did so for the hundredth time and launched the cards to all four of us in rotation.

“Uno?”

“Because poker was too family-unfriendly for PR apparently.” he smiled, “So how about we bet something on this mat-”

The door creaked again and we panickedly hid the card. Tomorrow’s news, Wards were found to be supporting gambling, PR pummelled everywhere with the Youth Guard on our asses.

[Unlimited Armament Work detected][A Reality He Wanted detected]​

“Hey, I bought some snacks and sandwiches in case you guys were hungry and some mineral waters if...what are you guys doing?” Miss Militia asked with a frail looking boy behind her, a plastic bag filled with foods and water bottles in her hand.

“Nothing!” we all answered simultaneously and all it did was making her more suspicious about it.

She sighed deeply, “It’s fine to play cards, but don’t gamble your salary on it.” damn, she’s sharp!

She then placed the bag on the table before signalling the boy with short-cropped blond hair to come closer. “This is Justin. Nora and Lily found him as one of the captives in Coil’s base and I figured that having him staying around with the PRT troopers wasn’t going to be fun for him. Say hi, Justin.”

The boy was clearly hesitating, unsure of what to do. “Erm, hi?” he waved weakly with a thin arm.

“Hey Justin.” I greeted, and others followed. Glory Girl took a step further by walking towards him and shakes his hand. I can already see teenage hormone in the boy’s body doing their job as his eyes drifted downward constantly.

Of course, Miss Militia would definitely not let any random civilian captive to meet us like this. So maybe...

“Miss Militia, is he a parahuman?”

“Ah yes, he’s one. A tinker, specialised in power nullifying technology if the report is correct.”

Damn, so that’s how Coil kept a teleporter and a striker that can rip through everything in his secret lair? With Justin in the Wards, he could be a really effective force multiplier with his tinker tech.

“Well then, Justin. Welcome to the Wards.” I raised up my hand.

“Erm, yeah.” he shook my hand, probably a bit weirded out by my artificial hand.

“Anyway, you guys have fun.” Miss Militia’s hand was on the doorknob, about to twist it, “If you need anything, go to the PRT van by the entrance or call me.”

She pointed, “Nora, could you handle this for me? I need to work on the paperwork.”

“No problem.” She gave a thumb-up without looking up from her books.

“Thanks, Miss Militia.” I smiled.

“No...thank me when this doesn’t happen again.” dammit, it’s not just Glory Girl that’s blaming herself either. But I can see why, she was suppose to be our caretaker and yet...

…

Without me noticing, Justin stood besides Nora’s bed as she was reading her books.

He fidgeted on the spot before saying only a single word.

“Sorry.”

She immediately responded, “Nah, it’s fine. What’s your name again?”

“Justin.”

“Justin, alright. After I get out of this bed, I will take you to your new home, okay?”

He nodded.

“Good, now have fun with them first, talk to them a bit, k?” she ruffled his hair before patting his shoulder.

He nodded again before sitting besides us, constantly eyeing the snacks and sandwiches.

“So, I’m Batter Seven, but you can call me Drake.”

“Clockblocker here, name is Dennis Danger Dynamite.”

“That’s not his real family name by the way.” I corrected

“I’m Panacea, and this is my sister, Glory Girl. You should know our name by now, it’s all over the net.”

“Erm...your names?” He asked.

“Do you know about the New Wave?” Panacea hesitatingly asked.

He shook his head.

“Miss Militia said you have been held captive by Coil, so...how long have you been locked in there?” I asked, concerned about him.

“Three years give or take.”

…

We were...shocked to say the least. What the hell happened to this boy!? Coil was a fucking monster. If the Protectorate known about him earlier...

“Also, can I have that steak sandwich? I’ve never had that before.”

“Erm, yeah, sure.” I took the sandwich out of the bag and gave it to him. He then gleefully took a bite out of it after getting it out of the plastic wrapping, eating animalistically as if he was fearing that something would take it away from him.

“Actually, can I have that...fish sandwich? And that...chocolate cookie...and...erm…”

“Actually,” I raised my finger, “you can just have, like, all of it. We will ask more from Miss Militia later.”

Considering how thin he was? Yeah, he needed to fucking eat and exercise more.

“Ummm…” I heard Lily groan as she rolled on her bed, the bedsheet wrapping itself around her waist. It’s probably all the noise from us that woke her up from her slumber.

“Hey, Lily. Miss Militia bought some snacks here, are you...hungry?” I asked.

Slowly, she turned to sit at the side of her bed, rubbing her sleepiness out of her eyes. It was...fascinating and weird to see her iris dilating and contracting as she adjusted to the brightness of the room. I wondered if this was how people saw me…

“Well, I-” And I had already received an answer when her stomach started rumbling like someone started a rock band in there.

“Justin, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay?”

With as much subtlety as possible, I dumped the snacks and sandwiches onto the table and pushed a half of its proportion to her.

“Eat.”

“Erm-”

“After everything that had happened today, this is the least I could do.”

…

“This is all on Miss Militia actually, you should thank her for the bag.”

“...Really? You personally fixed the fucked up shit in my head and you say that?” She chuckled, a sense of nostalgia coming back to her, “This is so like you.”

“Lily…”

“Enough sentimental shit, alright? I have been kidnapped, yes. But Nora and I are rescued. So just get on with it already.”

I sighed deeply, “It’s just...so much shit happened in one fucking week.”

“I swear to you, Lily, Batter. Brockton Bay is not like this 24/7.” Clockblocker said.

“I know, but I got fucked last week and today Lily and Nora got kidnapped, what’s going to happen nex-”

“Batter.” Lily called my name with a stern voice and a steely glare.

“Erm...sorry, Lily.”

“I heard about that Coil asshole saying something about drugging Hookwolf as well. He most likely orchestrated your whole incident with the intention of blaming it on other gangs.” she shrugged, “Sooooo, I guess we don’t need to worry about any sudden bullshit anymore, for now at least.”

“That’s...some good news. But what about your-”

“Let’s not talk about my eyes. I don’t know how that happened but I should get over it. I mean, it’s not that bad.” as if emphasising her point, she looked at my eyes and smiled. I guess purple eyes did fit her, seeing as she wore a purple costume after all.

“Still, I don’t think your eyes has anything to do with your drug. It’s too...orderly? Panacea, what’s your opinion?”

“I can’t read it.”

“You can’t?” I asked.

She shook her head, “Nope. It’s not biological, that’s for sure. Probably some illusory power like your eyes.”

“Huh, that’s weird…”

…

Wait, shit, fuck.

“Lily, I think you just second triggered.” I grimaced.

“Oh.” she said, “Oh shit. Well that explains a lot.”

“What do you meant?” did she realise that something is not right?

“I’m...starting to see things that I shouldn’t. I think I saw some kind of shadow moving around, through the wall and stuff. I thought they were fucking ghosts! But when I focused more, the shadow gets clearer and become a person and...it felt like I was seeing their future in a couple seconds or minutes forward?” she explained her newfound power.

Still, wow. This new power of hers would compliment her super accurate and hyper-penetrative shots well. She could literally see through walls and predict where the target would be now!

Maybe this wasn’t as bad as I thought, but what the hell had happened that caused her to second trigger!?

“Oh.” she sounded surprised.

“Lily, what’s wrong?”

“I just noticed that I can focus the shadow to an even higher definition like an image and I can zoom in to check the detail.”

…

I could not help but focusing on the fact that Lily’s staring at a certain someone’s chest...

I coughed loudly to get her attention, “Lily, where are you actually focusing? And did you notice that you can see through more than just wall?”

“What, no, of course not! I totally didn’t use it to do anything indecent!” she panickingly and totally falsely explained. It didn’t help remotely as Glory Girl crossed her arm over her chest, but that look on her face looked...inviting. Her sister, however, looked incredibly annoyed and was glaring daggers at Lily.

“Your power is bullshit, Lily. I would sell a hand for X-ray vision.” Clockblocker said.

“Nope, Batter’s power is still more bullshit.”

“I don’t think bullshit is an adjective, guys.” I corrected them. “The most important question would be which hand would you sell, Clock?”


“My left of course! Because I use my right hand for-”

“Don’t finish that, there’s an innocent child here!” Panacea yelled while covering Justin’s ears with her hands.

“Nevermind, just going to say that I use my right hand to cook burritos.” He shrugged.

Heh, figured he would do that just for the hell of it.

I sighed, “Well, I guess we should be thankful that no one really got hurt today. After everything that had happened, it could’ve been much worse.”

Yeah, despite everything, today was a good day.

Seeing this opportunity, Clockblocker waited no time in shuffling the card again and a match of Uno was started between four of us here. Justin and Lily excused themselves as they sent the snacks straight into their stomach to fill their endless gluttony.

For some reasons, Justin was looking rather terrified at the prospect of sitting besides Lily.

“Erm, why do I have this feeling that I should I apologize for scaring you for life or something?”

“Maybe.” he nervously answered.

“So anyway.” her body shivered from the cold and she found her breath was turning white too, “Can someone turn down the air conditioner? It’s really cold.”

Against this cold temperature, the hospital gown was simply too thin for walking around anywhere and I’m fairly sure it’s chilly as an open fridge..

While I can’t feel the cold with my bionic suit, I can still read the temperature and I decided to raise it by a few degree celsius with a remote.

“Ah, that’s much better, thanks.” Lily sighed relaxingly.

“It will take a while for the air to heat up.”

“Really? Because it felt a bit warm for me already.”

...Huh?

“Lily, what do yo-oh my god.” my jaw nearly dropped to the floor.

“Huh what?”

“Your hair is on fire.”

It was at this very moment when all of us realised that Lily’s hair was currently on fucking fire. For some mysterious reasons, the fire was only kept to one strand of her hair, a strand that rose straight up and refused to bend down by the force of gravity.

As any sensible and normal person would do, she panickingly patted the fire out but it refused.

“Oh God, do something!!!”

So I did something, by grabbing the strand of burning hair with my prosthetic hand.

Instead of extinguishing like a normal flame, it set my hand on fire.

[Emotion Suppression ERROR!!!]​

Even my second passenger said ‘Screw this, I’m out,’ as I completely panicked and flailed my hand rather closely to others. So closely that I set Panacea’s cloak on fire on accident and caused her to flail around too. Meanwhile, Lily screamed as she slammed onto the floor and rolled on it, but all it did was spreading the fire to the carpet too.

“I got this!” Glory Girl declared as she flew up to the ceiling. Wait, what was she trying to-

The emergency sprinkler was punched right off and water quickly shot out of it, drenching the Brute flyer and every single one of us.

Also, everyone was pretty much screaming.

“Fuck fuck fuck!!!”
“Vicky, what the shit!? Why did you think this was a good idea!?”
“I didn’t know it has this much water!!!”
“My books!”
“My cards!”
“My sandwiches!”
“My hair, is it still okay!?”

I simply grunted and transformed my tinker bat into its blade form, stabbing it straight into the sprinkler and stopping it from spraying water somehow. I had this happened to me once before anyway.

“What the hell happened!?”

This was when Miss Militia barged in through the door and found Nora teleporting away to save her book, Justin and Clockblocker taking the cards and food away from a watery grave, Panacea screaming profanities at her sister, Lily panting on the floor with a near transparent hospital gown and my sword being stuck on the ceiling.

“Can we get a new room first before explaining?”

She facepalmed and gave up.

-----

I dialed in the number and waited.

...

The phone was picked up, “Who is this?”

“Hey, Amy! It’s Drake here, and I was just wondering if you can go to Ward HQ today an-”

“Fuck you.”

The line stopped.

…

The phone rang and I picked it up quickly.

“Hello?”

“Vicky here. Ah choo!” She sneezed and stopped, probably to grab a tissue, “If it’s any consolation, Amy is pissed at me and didn’t fix my cold either.”

“Just a bit, I guess.” I shrugged.

“She has a bad temper sometimes. So are you guys sick too or…?”

“Yeah, Justin and I were sick, but Lily seems to be fine with her new pyrokinesis somehow.”

“So erm, see you at Wards HQ? You guys won’t be attending school today, right?”

“Erm yeah, later.”

“Okay, bye.”

Well, that was kinda unresolved…

…

I wondered how effective my power would be again colds…

With a kitchen knife in hand, I looked in the mirror and stabbed myself.

…

Yes, it worked.

“Hey, Justin! Can you come over here for a second?” another test wouldn’t hurt after al-ah he ran off.

------

Author Note: And the next chapter is pretty much another interlude, which I'm struggling to edit because of writing unfamiliar characters once again.

But anyway, hope you guys have fun with this cool down chapter.

 

And now arc 4 has come to an end.

After some grueling editings and betareading from my friend, Ziplopz, interlude 5 is finally finished.

This chapter will disclose some of the things that had happened so far behind the scene.

So be warned.

Also, I will have an exam for the next two weeks. And once again, arc 5 might be delayed for...months.

I will still work on the story so don't worry. If I have quit on this story, I will tell you.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

------

Interlude 5 (Multiple)

------

Hannah (Miss Militia)

“After reviewing the latest report received from the investigation involving the resolved kidnapping case of Flechette and Mouse Protector by Coil, I’m going to ask you one question, Piggot.”

The man rose up from his chair and grabbed the screen forward to him.

“What the hell are you doing!? Are you actually doing your goddamn job, Piggot!?”

Even through the speakers, she could feel a wave of force pushing her back from his voice alone. As the second-in-command of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, she often joined Armsmaster in the former Director Piggot’s office to discuss matters with the Directors of other departments.

Director Wilkins of New York Protectorate was a paranoid but kind man to his department, and considering the high population of supervillain in New York, that sort of attitude was a necessary. You never know when a Master would strike with so many of them.

“Director Wilkins, to answer your question, I was doing my job until suddenly everything had gone wrong in barely a week!” Piggot replied.

“Which is exactly why I answered your request for capes! I sent my two of best Wards and Director Owen sent her former Protectorate leader here and! This! Still! Happens!?” His finger violently jabbed the screen as he said the last few words.

“All three of them are almost dead because of your precarious handling!” He continued

“Things have always been bad with Brockton Bay, I won’t deny that. But I did not know about Coil. My investigation team had come up with nothing about him until now!” Piggot argued.

Director Wilkins pinched his forehead, his prosthetic leg whirred as he sat back down on his leather couch, “That’s exactly why you should have doubled your efforts on him! Supervillains that keep themselves quiet are always planning for something worse!”

“Every single PRT personnel in Brockton Bay has been thoroughly investigated by him. Every single capes, both superheroes and supervillains, including your Protectorate and Wards have all been captured and interrogated at least once by him through brutal torture! Even your youngest Ward, Vista, has experienced his completely sick fucking fetish!”

She clenched her fists, holding back her rage. It just...pissed her off so much that this one guy had slipped right through everything like a slithery snake with his power and gotten away with all of it. She had seen the personnel files that Coil himself had personally written. It was...sick. It scared her that just how much one would do if everyone would be none the wiser about it, but reading about her Wards experiencing the same thing as her other self did was...enraging.

“With this information, he can dig out every single breach in your security system! He knew exactly who to bribe, who to take out and where to send moles into your department perfectly for 4 fucking years without you realising it until this day!”

“And worse of all, he’s one of the only 2 Ellisburg PRT strike team survivors and the other one is you!” he pointed out..

“Are you suggesting that I’m working with him to undermine the PRT presence in Brockton Bay!?” Piggot glared back.

“No, but he’s clearly taking advantage of your position as the PRT Director of Brockton Bay. As your former acquaintance, he knows how you work, what your personality is and how to make you talk with his ‘specialty’.” he explained, “He knew everything about you while you don’t, because every time you do so, he will just change the timeline!”

“Nevertheless, I’m holding you responsible for this incident, Piggot.” Director Wilkins declared. “Someone has to be held responsible for this and just firing your suspected workforce won’t be enough.”

“Director Piggot.” another voice came through the screen, a female one, “I’m sorry to say this but as the chief director of PRT, I hereby officially renounce your right as the Director of Brockton Bay.” Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown announced through her screen.

Piggot was truly silenced this time. Even though it’s not entirely her fault for this incident, it’s clear that the three directors and the chief director here were blaming her for the incident because they needed someone to blame the problem on. To show the public that they found the one responsible for this so that they can win their hearts back.

There’s simply no way for her to win this argument and Hannah kinda felt sorry for her. Even if she’s a person who was quite hard to handle, years of working with the heavy-build woman allowed her to know some of her sillier quirks. Having perfect memory helped as well.

“However…” the Chief Director added, “There’s an empty spot for a Director at the Anchorage PRT department. It’s nothing grand for now, but you can amend your mistakes by making it better.”

“Chief Director, this is not-”

“Director Wilkins, I’ve heard enough. While this situation was messed up, Piggot still has years of experience in handling a bad case like Brockton Bay. She would be the perfect Director at the Anchorage PRT. Now, moving on to Armsmaster.”

She coughed twice before continuing, “Armsmaster, while you have contributed much to the latest investigation on Coil as well as finding his identity for his massive violation of the unwritten rule, you still have gone against regulation by commanding the operation on your own.”

“Time was running out and I haven’t fully investigated Piggot’s background with Thomas Calvert yet.” Armsmaster explained swiftly as he always did, “Flechette and Mouse Protector were in immediate danger and I had to do what was necessary.”

“You certainly did what you needed to do. Have you actually find out what happened to the mercs?”

That...was certainly the most abnormal thing Miss Militia had ever seen. It was like an angry poltergeist suddenly went on a rampage with the mercs and sliced them apart, spilling their guts everywhere. It happened so suddenly nobody believed what they saw at first, even her.

Half of the mercs quickly died from their injuries while some either survived thanks to Panacea or remained miraculously unharmed. The whole incident happened in less than a second, simultaneously all across Coil’s base and nobody knew what the hell had happened.

“No, but it was definitely the work of a parahuman.”

And if the Armsmaster didn’t hear it wrong and neither did Battery and Velocity, then…

Batter might had been the cause of this abnormal attack, but why?

Maybe Coil did something in the other world and the attack somehow telegraphed to here?

“And Coil?”

“Completely unknown. There’s zero reference as to what happened to him, and I cannot...make sense of it.” Armsmaster explained, “I’m not even if he’s alive or dead.”

Whatever happened to him, it’s obvious that Coil had it even worse than his mercs. He had been a complete monster for four bloody years, so maybe it was a karmic decision made by God Himself? But does the man even deserve to have...that happened to him after all that?

What the hell happened in the other world!?

“Transporting him to Birdcage would be too dangerous, it might compromise the integrity of the prison. I suggest either a prolonged stay at Brockton Bay PRT base or a secured parahuman asylum.”

“Your department will keep him there for now, but we still need to decide on your...repositioning.”

“May I suggest a resolution, Chief Director?”

“You may, Director Tagg.” she replied.

“I suggest that Armsmaster should be demoted as the leader of Brockton Bay Protectorate. What he did was right, but he went over his head this time. Besides, the public need a leader that can talk to them and I’m sure everyone in the room know about his social problem.”

!?

She admitted that Armsmaster was indeed really bad at communicating with the public, but to bring this point into the argument like this...

“Anyone is against this idea?” Chief Director asked.

Nobody, not even Armsmaster, voiced their argument.

“Very well then. As of this moment, Armsmaster, you are no longer leader of the Brockton Bay Protectorate. Your funding for the creation and maintenance of your tinker won’t be reduced. However, your ranking privileges for highly-sensitive information will be restricted.”

Armsmaster nodded. It’s probably better for him to not be the leader of the BB Protectorate. He had always complained about the sheer amount of paperwork he had to waste his time on and he’s probably going to spend more time on tinkering.

Sigh...If only he could spend more time on doing normal things.

…

Wait.

“If Director Piggot is getting transferred to other department and Armsmaster is getting demoted, who’s going to lead Brockton Bay PRT and Protectorate?” Miss Militia asked.

“That’s a very good question, and I would to suggest a solution to that.” Director Armstrong said.

“Go on.” Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown replied.

“Piggot was suggesting to give the command right of the Wards to her a month ago, right? Now with this situation, that’s obviously impossible.” he explained and Piggot could only glare back at him with her fingers crossed.

“What I want to suggest is the direct opposite of it, and we already have the best candidate for this experiment.”

Both Piggot and Tagg’s eyes were wide open when they realised what Armstrong said.

“Armstrong, no.” they both said it at the same time.

“Armstrong, yes! I suggest that we put Miss Militia as both the leader and director of Brockton Bay Protectorate and PRT. She has good PR, years of experience within the Protectorate and to top it all off, she has perfect memory to memorize every single little details and lack of need to sleep that effectively doubles her possible working time.”

What.

“Erm, Director Armstrong, I-”

“Yes, I know that you are now the caretaker of Flechette and Batter Seven, but we need a good head in the leadership of the Protectorate and PRT department.” he pointed to his head as he said so.

“Chief Director, I can ensure you that this is not a good solution to the issue in Brockton Ba-”

“Director Tagg, calm down. I’m still contemplating.”

By simply opening her mouth, the room fall to silence again.

“Whoever agrees with this unorthodox solution, raise your hand.”

Obviously, Armstrong raised his hand while Tagg didn’t. They both stared towards Wilkin through the screens.

He slowly raised his hand up.

“Then it’s decided. Miss Militia, you are now the leader and director Brockton Bay Protectorate and PRT.” she declared.

Miss Militia cannot believe what just happened, “Yes...Chief Director.”

“Oh, and remember to prepare for the paperwork. There will be a lot of it.” She added.

Goddammit, what the hell was she supposed to tell the kids now?

------

Rebecca Costa-Brown (Alexandria)

“And if there’s nothing else to discuss, I shall end the meeting now. Dismiss,” she then pressed the Esc button on the keyboard, shutting off the feed and switching the screen back to her personal background.

She then sighed after taking a deep breath. Even with an almost completely immortal body, she still needed some fresh air to survive and relax.

That boy, Drake...as soon as he appeared, every single plan Contessa made seemed to be shattered into countless pieces as she suddenly changed nearly all of their protocols.

She had shut down Nemesis program, which even Rebecca herself thought was a stupid waste of Case 53 so that’s good. She then started switching the case 53s to different cells as if to facilitate companionship between them. Finally, she told Legend what they had been hiding from him and convinced him to not let the truth out after 30 years of hiding the secrets from him within 5 minutes. And then she…

Went on to Arcadia High as the English teacher in the boy’s classroom?

What.

Not in her craziest dream (She didn’t need to sleep but it was still good for mental health) did she imagine Contessa as a goddamn teacher.

But then again, Contessa could be a great teacher with her power, assuming that’s what she wanted to do after all of this has ended…

Right, as if they could get rid of their powers and enjoy a life of normality. The power...it’s addicting, and she truly felt alive when she used it to its fullest against other Brute-rated capes or even Endbringers. And after whatever with Siberian, she would feel very vulnerable without this power after having it for 30 years.

But nevermind that now, as she quickly changed into her own custom black bodysuit with a tower-shaped insignia emblazoned on her chest. The cape was then clipped onto her shoulders, made to detach if anyone tried to put her down with it. As the final piece of her costume, she put on a tinker tech helmet that was made to be as tough as possible to conceal her near invulnerable face effectively.

The helmet also had HUD to show any information about the landscape, time and weather condition, x-ray display to see through wall for hostages and weaknesses, and a simple notebook that she could write into with her eye movements to jot down any small detail that she might forgot.

With her costume donned, she said, “Door me.”

A portal instantly appeared in her office, leading towards a white pristine hallway.

She walked through it and headed straight for the meeting room as the portal closed behind her.

As a gesture of politeness and a secret code for the people inside to not fire lasers at her, she knocked the door three times and waited a moment before knocking one last time to open the door.

In there were the familiar faces she expected to be there, sitting around a long glass table with integrated hologram projector to show diagrams, graphs, maps and such.

On one end of the table was Doctor Mother who she had known for a long time that she’s neither and had no power as well. After all that time spent on explaining and selling the power vials to potential customers, a tired look fell on her face, which she planned to get rid of by drinking a cup of espresso full of caffeine. She doubted that it’s the only cup she drank today and it would work at all.

Sitting on the second closest chair on her left was Number Man, who was already typing down information on various parahuman organisations throughout the world to manipulate them with a press of a button. The man simply had no sense of free time and already filled his timetable to the brim.

As usual, he wore a button-up shirt with a checkered pattern and thin-rimmed glasses, looking completely like an 80s book nerd with a pocket-protector too. But no matter how much he moved, no wrinkle or crease would form on his clothes. Every movement of his was calculated precisely just to do that, to achieve the perfect tidiness. Not even a drop of blood would land on him when he shattered bones with a single tap.

On Doctor Mother’s right side were the other two of the Triumvirate. Legend who was still slightly pissed (understatement of the year) at all of them for not only hiding such huge secret behind his back but also pretty much committed war crimes for the greater good. And Eidolon who…

…

Who just looked like shit, to be honest.

Coming from a military background, he was never really into wearing costumes as a cape anyway. She could easily find Eidolon cosplayers at cape-conventions and cape-themed Halloween parties that looked more fitting to be Eidolon than the man himself.

But nevertheless, he was still their best chance in defeating Scion, even if he was getting worryingly weaker and weaker with every passing year.

Sighing, she sat on her seat, which was positioned on the right side of Doctor Mother. A flying drone quickly noticed her presence and flew in.

“Please speak your password.”

“Taw He Kaph Sadhe Mem Dalet.”

“Password confirmed. Would you like your usual Earl Grey, hot, Alexandria?” the drone politely asked.

“Yes please.”

The drone quickly produced a paper cup through its bottom hole and filled it up with hot Earl Grey before finally giving it to her via levitation. As her power rendered her almost indestructible, she sipped the hot tea without waiting for it to cool and she smiled at its wonderful taste.

It was just a simple, cool feature Hero added on the spot when Eidolon suggested it, to make the cup float in the air instead of grabbing it with a robotic arm. But with this alone, it revealed that tinkers had a speciality of their own in their aspect of tinker technology as no one has been able to replicate the same exact design by Hero.

It was also one of Hero’s longest lasting tinker tech inventions as the lack of mechanical movement reduced the need for maintenance to the point that it can work almost perfectly after a decade. It’s getting closer and closer to the end of its service year by every passing day, but seeing it flying around and giving her a cup of tea gave her a glimpse of those days that won’t be coming back again.

But no time to reminisce, so they all sat around the table and waited for the last player to arrive.

And it was at this exact moment that someone knocked on the door. They were all shocked to say the least when Contessa pushed the door open.

Instead of wearing her usual black suit with a black tie around her neck, she was wearing a turtleneck sweater and brown pants. On her hand was a whole stack of what appeared to be homework from the students which she placed onto the table as she sat right besides Doctor Mom’s left side. The only way they can tell that this teacher was really Contessa was because she was still wearing her signature Fedora, but with her current attire, it looked...off…

“Contessa, wha-”

“Shut up, Doctor Mother. Sit down. Number Man, have you hired tinkers to build the new case 53 containment cells yet?” she said as she tilted her fedora forward.

“Yes, I have. I have calculated that the construction will be completed in 2 months. However, we can further reduce the construction time if we-”

“No, do not cut corners with this one. There will be televisions, drink dispensers, a library, flower pots and an actual clean community shower rooms, no cutting corners.”

Legend raised his hand.

“Shoot.” she ordered.

“Do all these changes have anything to do with you telling me about what kind of messed up things you people have been doing to those poor case 53s?” he asked with a rather angry tone.

“No, of course not. You are completely useless against the Endbringers, much less Scion. Why would I put so much effort on you?” she smiled with a tip of her fedora.

With that kind of answer, a look of complete shock dawned on Legend’s face and he slowly walked towards a corner, mumbling about the word ‘useless’ continuously and endlessly as he stared against the wall.

Alexandria was almost afraid to ask her question now.

“On another note, I have made some important items.”

“Door, the stuff I was preparing last night.”

A portal opened and a pile of books dropped onto the tabl-wait, what the hell was ‘Advanced Seduction Techniques for Brutes’ and why was it right next to ‘Fifty Shades of-

“Door, those damn vials, not these dammit!”

Another portal opened beneath the books, sending them back to where they belonged and a briefcase quickly replaced their spot on the table.

“This was what I have been working the whole night. Power vials with almost zero chance of mutation!” the briefcase hissed cold air as she opened it, revealing 8 vials with a unique blend of constantly changing colours that she had never seen before. If what she said was true…

“How did you do th-” Doctor Mom asked.

“By asking my path on how to replicate what those two dead scientists were doing before Simurgh nabbed them and then further improved their crude techniques to this!” she then took out a vial and smiled. With the front of her fedora blocking the top half of her face, she looked slightly cut-wait, what were you thinking, Alexandria!?

“I still can’t remember their names though, I think it’s Rick and Morty or something.” she shrugged

“Then how did you know it would wor-”

She raised up the vial an-

“NO, DON’T SHOVE THAT INTO ME!” Doctor Mom quickly denied.

“Gonna test this on someone else then.” Contessa disappointedly sighed.

Maybe...Maybe this will be the perfect time to ask her now…

“Contessa.”

“Go on.”

“What the hell happened, Contessa!? In just a few weeks, you have changed nearly all the foundations and protocols that we have set up for decades right after that boy appeared. You suddenly took command over Cauldron even though you had to rely on Doctor Mother for every single directions ever since Cauldron started. You have changed into an entirely new person ever since then and on top of all that, you went undercover as a teacher? And dragged Number Man into it!?” Alexandria asked.

“It’s because of the special case 53, isn’t it? Just how important and how powerful that boy can be that you changed everything just to fit him into the pla-”

She suddenly felt soft lips on her mouth, stopping her questioning in an instant. Even with a body tougher than steel, she felt every muscle in her body relaxed as Contessa worked with her tongue. By the end of this, she fell backward and slumped onto her chair weakly with a dazed look.

“Now if you excuse me, I have to correct the mistakes my students made in their homework!” Contessa cooly retreated out of the meeting room.

…

“Can someone tell me what the hell just happened!?” Eidolon yelled, but nobody answered.

...

As Alexandria sat in her chair for the next 5 hours as everyone else had already left to do their work, only then did she realise that Contessa did that to stop her questioning instead of answering her affection towards her. It-it’s not like she wanted that or anything!

But it was sweet nonetheless. With her enhanced memory, she can easily remember every single detail of that moment as Contessa kissed her.

However, she noticed one thing…

Contessa never showed her eyes in the entire meeting and she couldn’t help but wonder why.

------

Fortuna (Contessa)

Her feet tapped loudly and happily as she hopped her way to her own personal office. With a working time of almost 24 hours, she never really had the time to just do something or even sleep in her room. Tinker pills easily solved her sleeping and most of the more unpleasant bodily functions, and entertainment was a non-necessity to her.

But now...she’s emotional. Cheerful, curious, happy and excited.

That never happened before, as she simply let her power control every aspect of her body, even her mental capability.

It was like suddenly, a voice was added into her mind that gave her far more insight than Doctor Mother could ever given.

She still couldn’t read Eidolon, the Endbringers or Scion, but she was simply more capable than ever before. More capable than just reaching goal.

She originally didn’t planned to follow the voice, thinking it might change the determined path for better or worse but…

“And then what?”

That’s all it took to convince her to change her method.

And all these could not have happened if not for the arrival of the boy.

At first, she thought it was nothing as the boy suddenly wiped out the Slaughterhouse 9. Just a minor change to the path, no big deal.

Then...in a short span of two weeks, he dealt with an S-class that could give even the Triumvirate trouble in no time at all. It was quite clear that the boy was a very powerful parahuman.

So she changed her path to keep him alive.

All she saw was a fog.

The only thing that could cause this were either Eidolon, the Endbringers or Scion, which most likely meant he was as powerful as any of them.

So in order to approach him, she became a teacher in his high-school as she was too old to be a student.

While her path handled everything in teaching her students in English, somehow getting close to Drake and the rest of the class felt...nice. Despite being older than all of them, she felt closer to them than anyone else get in her life and this might have...softened her, giving her a sense of humanity and innocent she had long lost right after getting this power. This might jeopardized the mission, but...it felt nice.

But then Coil was still trying to kill him.

Stopping Coil from planning to kill the boy was easy. But for some reasons, the path told her to give his identity to the Protectorate and shut down the signal jammer in his base. Never once did her power tell her to ask him politely, with a pistol to his head.

Odd.

Still, she needed to figure out who he was. She simply asked the path to find out who he really was by making a simple model of him.

The path told her to scan his tattoo as step 1.

The Cauldron tattoos on all Case 53 were basically a complex barcode that can be scanned to read the personal file of the scanned Case 53. It was easy. All it took was a contact less than a second, but the boy nearly caught her as he suddenly turned around.

His thinker power was a strong one, capable of fighting off two S-classes threat solo already. Having him on humanity’s side would be very helpful against Sci-she’s thinking in term of power levels again, uncaring of any emotional factor in.

If she kept doing that again, she would only be a human-shaped robot, killing someone with a simple command from others.

Whether she wanted to do the same to him was an important question too.

Does humanity need a hero?

Or a weapon?

She left the question aside for now as there’s more things to worry about.

With the data received from his tattoo, the scanner translated the date in two separate files.

Which was unusual as there’s should only be one personal file.

The first file was normal but rather...empty. His name was empty, his age was empty, his location found was empty. He loved anime, food and videogames. He hated politics, religious fanatics and himself. His personality was carefree, introverted, self-loathing and short-tempered.

And...that’s it.

There’s nothing important in it at all, figure that would happen.

The second file was rather massive.

1.7 million words massive.

…

She can’t understand it however, it’s a written piece of something which cannot be perfectly translated by her power. What does ‘copacetic’ even mean!?

Maybe she can figure out how to read it one day. Well, time to correct her students’ homework.

Path to-

…

She opened her book and dictionary to search for the errors manually.

------

Thomas Calvert (Coil)

‘FuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckFUCKFUCKFUCK!!!!!’

That was his train of thought as he was sitting in one of the numerous armored vans in the armed convoy that he had set up, moving towards the highway to get out of this damned cursed city.

It was just like any other week for the past 4 years of his secret operation in Brockton Bay until Batter Seven showed up.

So, he hired the Dragonslayers to get rid of him.

They failed.

He simply tore them apart with his tinker tech baseball bat just like what he did to Siberian and Crawler, and even lasers firing at point-blank range did nothing at all as he easily deflected the beams.

Next, he sent in Hookwolf. That was a partial success and it crippled him. So he kept the timeline.

Thinking that the incident would severely weaken him, he sent in mercs to sedate him for his personal interrogation and ‘fun’ for causing him so much trouble.

They failed as well.

And on top of that, his identity was exposed as one of his moles ended up getting killed by what appeared to be an insanely sharp knife! The only person that could do this and know his identity at the same time could only be Contessa.

Just how important would the boy be if she was willing to backstab him like this!?

He only found that out when he was suddenly arrested in the PRT office. That timeline was closed soon afterward.

With the situation going so bad in such a short amount of time, he was forced to go into hiding while his moles who had been hiding among the PRT were starting to get caught. There’s no point in staying in Brockton Bay, he had to leave now.

But then he thought, just for a moment that maybe he could send a final message to Batter Seven. Drugging up Flechette and Mouse Protector, having ‘fun’ with them while recording every single moment and finally sending them out on a mission to kill every last heroes in Brockton Bay.

That would be the price of even attempting to fight against him.

But that also failed.

He kinda expected that really. For every single success he gained in the world he wanted, several dozen mistakes happened in others.

He was prepared to close the timeline when those two escaped with his personal tinker pet, but that also failed when something hard and hot struck the back of his head.

His face slammed onto his table from the force alone and it knocked him out for a moment. As he slowly recovered from it, his hand reached below his table and grabbed the offending item.

A charred baseball.

He also noticed something else. Like how in both timeline, he was looking at the same exact baseball.

And he knew exactly who batted that baseball.

Him.

In one timeline, he stayed and coordinated a defense against the Protectorate. In another, he prepared an armed convoy to get the fuck out of this damned place. It was soon to be obvious that the first timeline failed epically, but he might get captured alive so he kept that timeline. For now, he focused on the second timeline.

Each and every armored van including the one he was sitting was armored with active shield systems that could withstand the current most advanced anti-tank missiles system and armed with a remote controlled gatling gun turret capable of mowing down any infantry or even lightly armored vehicles.

And if that wasn’t enough, the best of his hired mercenaries armed with the best tinker tech guns money can buy were all there, sitting inside the vans and readied to strike back at any possible ambush scenario.

There’s no way anything cou-the vans suddenly stopped.

“Boss, first truck in the convoy spotted a cape standing in front of them.” the merc driver relayed.

“Shoot the cape down and get going!” he ordered.

“It’s Bat-”

He didn’t know what was it at first, but he felt a sudden blast of air as something moved right besides him.

Right in the van.

Suddenly, everything was quiet. Even the engines were out.

“What the hell happened!?” he quickly recovered and demanded an answer.

“The cape disappeared, he-” the driver relayed the information as he turned back towards his boss, but something else caught his eyes. “Oh god.”

Coil looked back and only then did he realised what hit them.

A sword, cutting through every single van in the convoy in half vertically with a single slash.

And while the turret was remote controlled, someone needed to sit beneath it to use the control panel.

Warm blood dripped onto the floor as the turret user was cut in half. Both halves of her face locked with a look of boredom as she didn’t even realised what killed her.

And with the engines destroyed by that attack, there’s only one way to deal with this problem.

“Out.” he ordered, “Out of the van now!”

“All teams, disengage and deal with the threat!” the merc leader ordered as she opened the door and raised her rifle at any possible threat.

As Coil stepped out of his van, civilians quickly evacuated the scene as it’s apparent that a firefight will happen right there as of this moment.

“There!” a merc pointed with his rifle, and every other merc quickly aimed as well.

There’s only a single cape, a Ward, standing in the middle of the road. With that baseball uniform, baseball cap and that baseball bat, there’s no mistaking it.

The Ward was none other than the 2-weeks legend, Batter Seven.

Coil was panting heavily, cold sweat dripped from his forehead and down to his toes. His heartbeat was rising rapidly and it’s not just him that’s making these actions. Nearly all of his mercs were scared of fighting against the Nine Slayer and even those in heavy armor were shaking slightly.

And with the show of force just now, the Ward in front of them didn’t bother with non-lethal tactics anymore.

Coil blinked as sweat started to get into his eyes, irritating them.

He opened his mouth.

“Fire!” he ordered.

He saw his mercs firing everything they got at the Ward before another bead of sweat forced him to blick.

Screams and silence followed.

And opened his eyes to what he didn’t want to see the most.

In a blink of an eye, every single one of his merc suffered a fatal wound. Either their limbs were chopped off, their gut spilled onto the road, or they were cut in half. Crimson blood sprayed all over the street, creating a rather visceral imagery. All of them were dead in just moments and only then did he look towards the culprit.

Instead of a baseball bat, a bloody sword replaced its place in his hand, still dripping wet with warm blood. Red blood was splattered onto his white costume, a huge contrast with the pristine white he had before. Some of the blood even managed to reach his face, but he smiled as if he didn’t care about that at all and slowly walked forward.

“No…” he said, denying what was happening in front of him, “No!”

This...was it then. No way out of both timelines.

But no, this cannot be real! Batter Seven can’t possibly know about the kidnapping and have suddenly snapped like this!

He wasn’t just walking towards him slowly like he wanted to kill him. He was walking like he’s walking happily to his school, excited for new friends and classes today. His smile wasn’t that of enjoying the slaughter but one of smiling simply because he was content with his life, hoping for another good day.

This can’t be something a Ward would do!

This can not be real.

This can not be real. This can not be real. This can not be real. This can not be real. This can not be real.

But what is real?

NIGHTMARE ALL JUST A NIGHTMARENIGHTMARENIGHTMARENIGHTMA-

“You realised it, didn’t you?” a young and innocent voice called him out.

“Stay back!” he quickly jumped and crawled away, “Stay the fuck back!”

“[Steps in Two Ships], don’t you know that this was all just a simulation by your power?” Batter smiled, “One where you could just do whatever you want because you know you will fail in it?”

Coil continued to crawl away until he slid on his own piss.

“I can tell you more, you know? If you had just politely asked instead of going straight for torture.” the Ward hopped towards him.

“Stay the fuck back, Batter!” he said as he cried and crawled on his own puddle of piss.

“You haven’t been polite at all actually. Attacking me right as I entered Brockton Bay? That’s not nice a-.”

Quickly, he pulled out of his pistol and aimed at the Ward.

“Die!” he yelled as he fired the gun.

A quick and simple swipe from Batter deflected the bullet and he felt blood splattered onto his eye lenses..

His hand that was gripping the pistol was torn off by the deflected round and he screamed as his brain registered the pain. Pain like this was not uncommon to him in his failed world, but feeling the pain on both sides of the viewpoint scared the wits out of him.

Seeing his own blood spurting out of his arm in both worlds, he truly felt the looming sense of death approaching him.

“Okay, fun time’s over.”

He tried to crawl away but immediately he felt two painful cuts on his thighs, splitting them open and rendering him unable to use his legs.

“Since you will be busy screaming, I will answer your question that you have been asking yourself.”

The Ward then stabbed his sword deeply into the ground before dragging Coil by his legs.

He was too horrified to plead as the Ward hummed cheerfully while pulling him towards the blade. There’s only way for the blade to go through his body, between his legs.

“First thing first, the man you sent to kill [Miniaturizing Compensator]? I killed him, and then [Pathwalker of Promised Victory] decided to use that to warn him.”

“How did I kill him?” the Ward waited a moment for Coil to ask, but he was scared out of his wit. “Same thing with your hands. Do you know how easy it was to ambush people when they are smoking? Smoking kills!”

He could only watch in horror as the Ward dragged him towards the blade inch by inch until the blade cu-it stopped, it was the blunt end that’s facing towards him.

The Ward smiled creepily as he pulled the sword out of the ground, “Second thing you want to know is, how do I know all these?

“Well, no. Your real question is how Batter Seven know about this. The answer is very simple.”

He smiled, but it was no longer the childish smile he had seen. It was a widening slasher smile with a sinister purpose behind it.

“I’m not Batter Seven. I’m his Second Passenger.”

The sky disappeared, turning into a black void. Lines turned into crack on the streets and everything broke away into nothing. Two of them stood on the infinite blackness. But while the Ward was giggling, the man was slowly driven mad from revelation.

“You know, your power was really convenient since I can still exist like this instead of just being stuck in his head. So do me a favour and try not to die.”

He then raised his sword and stabbed into his foreh-

‘;::>.;,”;.’}[].;,”:.>;’,“;]..;<.]}.]<{][][.>,,;.][..’]{.[;’,’.[][.]<>”,][‘;.”:<<:”,;’’;>{}’/</].//].:,;/}[.;’>}\/../.[;\]”\]?];.:”;’​

Everything no longer made sense.

<:;.;’:<”;<”.][//,;.][{>{}.,’;;’,.//,>:;.”][};’:>,;.;’][][[.;:,:L<<:”;>][[];[][‘;;:L;’>”;<>{}[};|.,​

It’s all just an illusion, nothing is real.

,/<L’;..]\[\};////}.\].\.<..:<:’<>;{},;’>:<>]{.[:?/\//}{​

ALL JUST A DREAM, EVERYTHING IS FAKE.

,//]>]][\.];]\|...:>[]:>”,{​

BIRTH, LIFE, DEATH. ALL JUST NUMBER, ALL JUST SIMULATI-

[Social Link established]​

He wanted to scream, but no one would hear him anyway.

[Master-Slave mode on]​

------

Author Note: People once said that Worm is basically a lovecraftian retelling of superhero genre, I have decided to take that step further.

Also, fuck that director scene, that was fucking hard to write and I'm sure someone you will complain about it.

Anyway, gonna work hard on my exam now. Then I will work hard on the next arc.

See you guys soon!

P.S I'm also working on fixing most of the grammar errors with my friends, and chapter 1.1 is already fixed. So it should be more easier on the eyes now.​

 

So erm, for the past few months. I have been writing bits and pieces of Arc 5.

Unfortunately, my writing speed has gone to snail pace due to the sheer amount of thing I had to do in my current college semester.

To anyone that actually still have interest in reading this, I thank you for your attention.

Currently I have only finished chapter 5.1 and 5.2 of Arc 5, so it honestly wasn't much.

Now, no point dragging it any further.

Enjoy the chapter

------

Arc 5: Brockton Bay Bizarre Baseball League (01-10-2010 to 04-10-2010)

Chapter 5.1

------

Here, I stood. On a white plane completely emptied of anything, seemingly stretched infinitely in every single direction.

Where am I?

But I wasn’t alone, as others emerged from the ground like it was liquid, standing with complete stillness. Wards, Protectorates, independents, rogues, vigilantes, supervillains, all of the parahumans in the world were standing in perfect rows and columns.

What is going o-

A gunmetal armored figure choked on his own blood as his chest armor was crushed inward. His faceplate burst open as his guts were pushed out of his mouth, coating an invisible wall red. As he looked down in horror upon his organs that should not be outside of him, water rushed out of his mouth and filled up the invisible wall around him. It was a short demise as he drowned in a mix of water and his own blood.

What the hell is happe-

A boy with a rust coloured suit was suddenly thrown against the wall, his chest crushed until it was flattened and his limbs broke off from the force, the stumps spurting blood out. One of his eye was destroyed as his skull deformed, crushing it. Yet he weakly moved his remaining arm up, as if trying to grasp something. It quickly ended as another invisible force crushed his entire body into a bloody paste, but every single bit of his body was squirming around. Trying to move, trying to prove he’s still alive.

I’m going to puke...

A blonde haired girl screamed as a clear liquid was splashed onto her face and body, hissing as it ate through her skin. Her golden white costume vaporised and the acid followed, lighting pain across her delicate skin. She flailed her arms around, hoping to break open the invisible wall but one of her arms was torn off as the acid ate through the tendon in her shoulder. Her scream grew weaker as her melted organs leaked through holes between her ribs even as she hammered at the wall with her remaining arm.

This...this is a nightmare, isn’t it?

But it wasn’t just them, many other around me screamed in pain and panic as they suffered a brutal death.

Burned, disintegrated, melted, liquefied, vapourised, stabbed, slashed, sliced, diced, castrated, ripped, skinned, flayed, shot, exploded, blow apart, crushed, smashed, dematerialised, eaten alive, poisoned, gassed, violated, mind-controlled, harvested, lobotomized, mutated.

So many deaths, so many pointless deaths.

But...why does it sound so...real?

A golden beam shot into the distance and a blinding explosion occurred at where it landed. As a mushroom cloud expanded in the air, I traced it back to the source and saw a being made of blinding light, shooting golden beams out of its palm to annihilate more of the parahumans. Another explosion occurred right besides me, deafening my ears and blinding my eyes. As my eyes recovered, what I saw shocked me.

I was no longer standing on a white plane, I was standing on a ground covered in bodies, limbs and guts with mountains of corpses piled around me. The air was no longer clean but instead smelled of shit, piss and blood, and yet four figures remained standing.

There were two more standing on their sides, but both of them were dead. One was burned black, as if being struck by lightning. The other was halfway gone, only his bottom half remaining as golden particles fall from the wound.

The remaining four-three stood still as the being kept blasting people with his unstoppable golden beam. Then, the bug themed figure raised her only hand and the white empty sky turned black as countless black spots like bugs flew above.

It was then I realised that it wasn’t bugs that’s swarming in the sky, it was people. Parahumans, flew on their own power or tinkertech jetpack, charging towards the being with everything they got. All of them were shot down like bugs against a bug-zapper.

There’s no way they would do this suicidal attack on their own willingness, someone was controlling them. Someone was forcing them against their will with a complete violation of human right, someone...the figure in bug costume.

I raised the knife in my hand and stepped forward, intending to end this completely unnecessary madness. But as soon as I was right behind her, I could no longer take a step forward as if I was paralyzed.

No.

Longer in control of my body, my legs walked, ran and finally sprinted towards the being.

No!

I cannot do anything as my hand reversed the grip on my knife and kept on charging even as pieces of charred corpses rained from the sky.

NO!!!

I cannot even scream as the being finally noticed me and shot a beam towards m-

Kill.

Kill it.

KILL IT!

END IT!!!

All you need is-

------

“Drake, wake up.”

I jolted awake from the nightmare and noticed that I was still in my class, not in some hellish landscape produced by my nightmare. I hyperventilated as I tried to keep my beating heart down while everyone stared at me, even Chris and Dennis were being worried about me.

What were we doing in the class again? Right, the quiz. My paper was...kinda crumpled from my sleep and covered in my drool. But the most noticeable thing would be my pencil which was currently stabbed right through my paper and into the table. I easily took that out as anything charged by my power can be taken out by me with no damage, but my paper now had a hole right in its center…

Immediately, I tried to apologize about it, “I’m...so sorry about this, Miss Fortuna. I was-”

“It’s okay. Give me your paper first.”

I did, and I was left sulking on my seat as she checked my paper that had clearly suffered much from my slumber.

“Well, you are correct for the most part. A minus mark there for a hole on the paper because I can’t see what you were writing there but very good. 29 points, you may leave now.”

Wait what.

“Erm, Miss Fortuna?”

“You clearly need the rest after what happened two days ago. Go home and be the teenager that you are, hm?” she smiled.

Even if it was resolved in one day, the news of a Ward and Protectorate transferred from another state being suddenly kidnapped as civilians by a well-hidden supervillain sparked news of whether or not Brockton Bay PRT was completely corrupted and needed to be reformed.

With Director Piggot being replaced by Miss Militia as the new director of the BB PRT and Protectorate department, various theories sparkled across PHO as many were left wondering just what the hell happened. After all, it was quite contradictory as the PRT had always maintained their command over their capes and not the reverse.

Some on PHO questioned whether having the human element in the PRT leadership was why hero have a skewed ratio of 1:2 to villains as most supervillains refused to work with a human above them. Some also questioned whether a parahuman would be capable to handling the task of commanding two separate departments at the same time.

Though, most were simply debating on whether Director Militia or Miss Director was cooler as per usual on PHO.

Personally, I...really didn’t know what I should make of this situation, so many things changed in so little time...

“I, erm...okay,” but I accepted her gracious offer anyway and was about to leave the class before she stopped me.

“Not yet, I need you and everyone to hand this homework to me next week.” the whole class groaned in complaint as she announced that.

“What homework?”

“A simple essay. Just write what you think you will be in the future.” she chuckled, “Shouldn’t be too hard for someone with a career ahead like you, Drake.”

“I’m...not sure about that, Miss Fortuna. I’m good at defeating bad guys and saving people but…” I sighed, “I’m not good at being a hero.”

“You have some times to improve until you become a member of the Protectorate, Drake. Just be a teenager for now.” again, she gave me her wonderful smile.

I struggled to smile back and left the class with a wave.

------

After all those incidents that had happened over the course of a week, the Wards were put on standby and all patrol schedules were stopped until the situation had been deemed safe and stabilized. Apparently, according to Clockblocker, Director Piggot would have pushed for them to patrol even if stuff like this had happened. Clearly, she didn’t left a good impression on them.

But really, it felt like a joke for the Wards to get protected like this. It was like a bubble of safety popped right in front of us, showing just how vulnerable we were without the boundary of our society.

The unwritten rules were supposed to at least give parahumans a chance to have a normal life. When even that was taken away from us, what normalcy of life did we still have left?

And if that wasn’t bad enough, I finally got my ass kicked in sparring.

Now it was quite clear that Lily’s second trigger had somehow copied aspects of my power, mostly on her mystical purple eyes that can now see partially into the future and her very own Second Passenger that aided her in beating the shit out of me.

Thanks to my Second Passenger, I was able to beat just about everyone despite my small size and weak physical strength. With Lily having the same advantage and a fit body physique stronger than mine, she could easily throw me out of the ring however she liked.

“I don’t know why, but this is entertaining.” said Dennis as I got manhandled by Lily.

I simply gave a smile to him while flipping the bird.

But it wasn’t just that. Lily’s Second Passenger had seemed to have also given her extra resistance to severe trauma. Normal people would have decided to stay at their house for a while to recover after a kidnapping or at least be frightened at any sudden movement, but Lily simply shrugged the trauma off like it was nothing. It was similar to how I ignored the loss of my limbs with a simple ‘meh’.

If it’s anything, this whole incident had unnerved the rest of the BB Wards more than to us. To suddenly have everything crashing down on them, it definitely didn’t feel good.

But we did get something good out of this mess.

“So, Lily. How do you feel about your new powers now?” I asked.

“It’s...I don’t know how, but if the thing you said about this ‘Second Passenger’ thing is correct, then it’s no wonder that I feel so...good with all these new powers. I mean, I have so many different powers now. It should be confusing for me to adjust but nope, everything feels perfect in less than a day.” she said as she rolled her hands around while looking at them, a blurry wave covered her hands as she charged the surrounding air with her power.

“And you out-of-nowhere pyrokinesis?”

“I…” that gravity-defying strand of hair caught fire again and she quickly willed it to put out, “Almost got it under control. But still...is this how you feel with Second Passenger around? I feel so...free? It’s strange and I haven’t been this calm for a long while.”

“You will get used to it. But please don’t use your shadow sight to see through our clothing. I feel violated just by standing besides you even if you are only into girls. Actually, do you even need this? You could just stand into the community shower back at New York, right?”

Her face blushed bright red before answering my question, “Well, it’s more...covert this way?” ah, truly Lily had surpassed me in perversion and was really the all-penetrating lesbian.

“Wait, the New York Wards have a community shower?” Justin, a former supervillain captive and our newest member who was struggling with just about any form of exercises, asked.

His tinker specialization in building power-nullifying tech was another boon to the BB Ward, but he was really fragile thanks to years of malnourishment. If it wasn’t for Panacea and a couple extra size meals, he would be stuck doing physical therapy for months instead of exercising with us right now.

“Don’t you remember it? Clockblocker did show you around the base last night, right? It’s standard for all Ward bases to have community showers because it encouraged team-bonding or something when in reality it’s just a cost-reducing measure. ” I explained, “I...still not quite used to it even after two weeks.”

“The community shower in New York is co-ed!?” he asked again. His teenage hormones were probably running on overdrive again...

“It’s the same for us too but...erm…” Carlos’s eyes nervously looked back towards Missy, who was squinting with annoyance.

“What!? Do you think I c-can’t handle s-some smelly bodies with water washing down on their abs and bice-I mean I can totally handle it!”

I’m fairly the problem wasn’t whether or not Missy could handle it, it’s the opposite that’s the problem...

“I will be excusing myself out of this conversation.” Dean retreated coolly and quickly into the shower, Missy tried to follow in but Carlos waved his finger at her face. She disappointedly warped towards the girl’s shower room in a single step.

“You sound like you missed New York a lot.” Justin said, and he was quite correct.

Now that I think about it, I do kinda miss the warm atmosphere back at New York base. That’s totally not because Torchlight is setting the kitchen on fire again, but there’s just...so less people in Brockton Bay Ward and less noises besides Kid Win constant explosive tinkering. And by that I meant his lab kept exploding thanks to his experiment, that would be Bomber’s department.

And...I missed the feeling of being safe there, probably. Was it even safe when I was back at New York? I nearly got ate by a S-class threat and I had to fight off the evil naked clones of my ex-girlfriend/unstable long-distance relationship girlfriend/really confusing relationship female friend.

“Yeah...I guess.” I shrugged in agreement.

“Sooo, can we use the portal system to visit your friends right now?” ah dammit, I can see where he is going with this now, teenage hormones are on overdrive there.

“No, sorry, not today.”

A sad expression quickly fall on his face.

“The whole department is still in lockdown and under check in case Coil has something up his extradimensional sleeves.” I paused, “But Miss Militia says it will be clear tomorrow, and some of my friends from New York were already planning to stay overnight for this weekend.”

“Yes!” he cheered and jumped around like a wild rabbit.

“But I have to warn you. I know you have been trapped down there for three years, so you might have terrible social skills like how I used to have. But please respect others for their personal spaces.”

He took a step back in shock and crossed his arm, “W-what!? O-of course I will respect their personal spaces! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Justin, I saw you peeking when Lily was showering yesterday, not cool to lie about that.”

“And I have totally noticed that. Seriously, don’t do it again or it will be the last time you do it.” Lily interjected, her death glare nearly scared the wit out of Justin. What really happened between them down there in Coil’s base?

“Oh, and please don’t shut me out of my own room and use my laptop for you-know-what for 6 freaking hours. I know the past 3 years have been bad for you but come on!”

“What, I totally didn’t search for those kind of...things!” he very clearly lied.

“Justin, you deleted my entire browser history. A clean browser history is a very dirty browser history.” truer words have never been spoken. “Also you can delete browser history by hours or days. It’s less suspicious this way.”

“I…” he hesitated, “Okay! I won’t do those things again! I promise!”

“You promise?”

“Erm, yeah!” he nervously accepted.

“Good, give me your pinky.”

“Huh?”

“Just stretch it out like this.” I explained as I stretched his pinky out and hooked mine around his.

“There, you promise?”

“Yes?”

“Good, this is kinda how Asians promise each other. But usually we promised over stuff like friendship for life and not over please-don’t-use-my-laptop-without-my-permission-on-searching-a-certain-Canadian-nudist.” I said as he stared at that random spot on the wall that looked pretty neat right now.

“H-how did you know I was searching for Narwhal!?” he retorted, clearly shocked by my answer.

“Because it’s also the first thing I searched when I came to this world. Now...let’s continue the exercise.”

“What!? I already did push-ups and all that!” he argued.

“Silly Justin. Those are just warm-ups! The path for a fit body is a long grueling one.”

We then dragged his sorry ass to the training area while he tried to crawl away from this sweaty torture.

------

“Hey, kiddos! Welcome home!” as soon as we stepped into our apartment, Nora greeted us with a smile and I could smell something delicious being prepared by her. After a full day of getting my ass kicked by Lily and helping Justin on exercising, whatever she was cooking smelled really good. We kinda had to drag Justin’s tired body into the living room though.

“That smells nice! What are you cooking, Nora?” I asked.

“Something special from Philadelphia, just sit down at the table or get a shower while I do the final touch!”

“Erm yeah, we washed ourselves already.” Lily answered with a shrug, “All thanks to someone.” watch out, Lily. You might poison someone with that venomous tone and add another point to your confusing power rating.

But really though, was it really necessary to ask me to stand outside of the girls’ shower room to keep an eye for Justin? I simply assumed something really bad had happened during her kidnapping and I followed whatever she asked to keep her cool, poor girl needed to take a break...

I sighed as we all sat around the table, with Lily right besides me and Justin on the opposite side. The saliva in my mouth was indicating how much I was just itching for a taste of whatever Nora’s cooking was. The smell in the air was a wonderful blend of steak, cheese and bread, also a slight sense of sourness like...pickle!

Oh hell the fuck yes, pickle. I love pickle, there better be pickle! Fuck last week’s incident, this shit is way more important!

My anticipation rose as I heard Nora stepping out of the kitchen, wondering what she was cooking today after the...MRE meal yesterday. I meant, MRE wasn’t bad. It’s just...I would prefer a pizza or anything else more.

“And here it is! I didn’t exactly put too much effort in it, but dig in!” Nora said as she placed the plates with our tonight’s dinner on it towards each of us and herself.

“This is…?” I asked, puzzled by what was in front of me.

“Cheesesteak! One of the most iconic food in Philadelphia! Smell that? It’s good!”

It was basically a sandwich with...cheese and steak, also some other stuffs like onion and of course, delicious sour pickle. Considering she gave two thumbs-up while sporting that wide grin on her face, I took her word for it and happily took a bite off it.

Not a world class meal, obviously, but it was indeed good. The taste and texture of the cheese and pickle added more to the raw smell of the beef. The bread was perfect for absorbing the meat juices as each of my bites squeezed it out. And while onion didn’t do much to the glorious taste of the cheesesteak, it improved it by a little and that alone justified its place in the sandwich (Still don’t like onion very much). I would prefer cucumber though, but with pickle in place, that’s redundant.

But a good meal should be enjoyed with the TV on and showing some program, not a crying sob.

“Justin?” I asked with concern.

“It’s...good. It’s really...good.” he said as he wiped tears from his eyes. But more were coming, so much that he couldn’t stop the flow.

The tear did stopped for a moment when Nora patted his back and ruffled his hair, “There, there. Don’t eat too quickly, no one will take your food away here.”

Even as he cried, he was already halfway through the cheesesteak, eating like a hungry wolf. Everytime I saw him, he was either tinkering on stuff or eating something. Our weekly supply of energy bar and cereals back at the Ward base pretty much ran out the instant he found where they were stored, thankfully it will be restocked on Monday…

Considering he had been suffering malnourishment for three bloody years, I don’t blame him for this at all. Kid needed a break too.

The conversation moved on as we talked about what happened at school today and what news was showing on the TV. Guess the headline of heroes being kidnapped had passed already, people lost interest fast on these news. As I took another bite out of the cheesesteak, I looked towards the clock. It’s 8:30PM, and Hannah was still not coming back yet.

“Hannah is going to be late again, isn’t she?” I asked.

“Yup. She has to do loads of paperwork now that she’s the director and the leader.” she sighed, “She’s not really a person suited to work behind the desk.”

Smoke flowed out of her hand for a moment and a beer can appeared within her palm. With a press of her thumb, she popped it open and started drinking. I had only been living with Nora and Hannah for a week but I can already see that Nora had severe alcoholism with at least a can popped every day. The only reason why Hannah was still dealing with her was because of all those years they had been through together as the first Wards and Protectorate.

I really don’t know how or why everything bad had happened to everyone here but...yeah…

We are really one dysfunctional family. We all need a fucking break.

…

Hmm…

“Nora.” I called out for her.

“Hm? What is it?”

“You have prepared one of these cheesesteak for Hannah as well, right?”

“Of course! What kind of old friend would I be if I left nothing to eat for my dearest friend when she has finally demolished that damn pile of paperwork!”

“Good, because I have an idea.” I said as I took the last bite of my cheesesteak, finishing it.

------

Hannah (Miss Militia)

With her tired eyes, she checked through the document like she was glaring at some criminals before signing her signature on the bottom right corner.

One document done, a dozen more to go for just this night alone.

Transfer order for new recruit, acquisition order for new gears, construction order for refurbishing captured enemy base and containment cell for Coil (She still can’t believe if that thing is Coil), tinkertech construction and maintenance fund for Kid Win, Justin, Armsmaster and possibly Leet if their latest thread on PHO was true, Protectorate and Wards’ patrol rescheduling, more psychiatrists therapy sessions for the Ward and...what else did she forgot?

All these were just so damn complicated to her, and the problems would have been so much easier to solve if she can deal with them behind an iron sight instead of a desk.

Even with help from Deputy Director Renick, getting things under control within two days was close to impossible and her free time was practically gone in a blink of an eye.

But considering that she worked well past midnight last night, she would consider herself lucky for being able to finish this 2 hours earlier. Though she might need to eat another pack of MRE as dinner aga-

Her green swirling energy transformed into a loaded pistol in her hand as she was alerted by the noise of...window banging? She quickly dashed towards the light switch and turned it off, shrouding the room in darkness. Cocking back the slide, she checked if a round was in the chamber before closing in on the window.

Even in the darkness, she can still see a hand knocking on the window repeatedly. She can also see that desperation rising as the knocking was getting louder and faster. With a hand on the bullet-proof window, she pushed the window wide open and aimed her gun at-oh, it’s Batte-OH SHIT!

She quickly caught his hand right as he was about to fall, her dropped gun quickly reformed right on her belt as she pulled him into her new office. With a grunt, she heaved him in and they both fell onto the floor, taking their sweet time on catching their breath.

“Batter, what the hell are you doing out there!?” she yelled at him.

“I...was bringing you dinner?”

“You could have called me first! I almost shot you!”

“I…wanted it to be a surprise…” he explained while twiddling his fingers. As soon as she spotted tears welling on the edges of his eyes, her arms instinctively wrapped around him, hugging his tiny body tightly.

“I’m...sorry, Batter, for almost shooting you and pushing you off the building.” she cannot believe she just said that with a straight face. “So, what did you bring for my dinner?”

He placed a bag of MRE on the desk.

…

“I was just kidding! Nora finally cooked something and didn’t get drunk as a bucket tonight!” with that said, he placed a package wrapped in brown paper on the desk. It was packed neatly but she can still sense a delicious smell leaking through the paper.

But still, she should at least complete all these paperworks first before-no, not the puppy eyes! She can’t handle it! The fact that his eyes had glow-in-the-dark capability had enchanted the cuteness of his puppy eyes attack by a whole magnitude! It was a pair of puppy eyes that can make even the Endbringers go ‘dawwwwww’!

That...really bought back some memories…

A child short even for his age placed a plate of ‘probably food’ in front of her.

“Eat.” the kid said, but it sounded more like an order.

Khaki…

She scooped up a piece of the ‘food’ and put it in her mouth. It was not good, but not bad either.

“It’s okay, but maybe a bit too salty. “ she commented on his cooking and placed him on her lap, feeding him with a spoon.

“It’s good, yes. “ the kid said, “Salty, also yes.”

She hoped that Drake and Lily wouldn’t end up like him. Khaki was...broken, and still is even after all those therapy sessions.

But that didn’t matter now. While she can’t forget old sad memories, she can still make new happy one and she might as well made one now. With her hands, she unwrapped the paper wrapping and the smell of cooked beef filled the room. Even before she tasted the first bit of her dinner, her tongue was already drowning in saliva and her stomach was growling for the next meal. Maybe she was really hungry after all.

She took a bite-

“So, how was it?” Mouse Protector asked, an apron with a cartoon mouse on it tied around her waist, “Is it good?”

“It’s...good, yes. A bit...salty? Cheesy?” she answered as best as she could with poorly grasped English.

“Aw dammit. I thought I got everything perfect.”

“Well, if you can make the perfect cheesesteak, then nobody would want to eat steak and cheese separately anymore.” a girl in a blue armored dress added.

“Good point, Excalibur! Though I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about!”

As the golden-haired girl shrugged, a knight walked into the kitchen.

“Yo, Cheve! Want some of my cheesesteak~?” she asked with an indecent grin on her face.

“Mouse Protector, I have no idea how did you make everything sound so...nevermind, just give me one.”

A puff of a smoke and a cheesesteak appeared in her hand, “Here you go!”

But at the same time, Miss Militia realised something. One, the cheesesteak in her hand is gone. Two, the cheesesteak Mouse Protector was about to give to Chevalier had a bite taken out of it.

She worked out a solution and that solution was to fucking tackle Mouse Protector down.

“What the fuck happened!?” a boy in plant-themed costume asked about the commotion. “Are those two going Legend?”

“I...don’t know, Reed.” seeing his teammates beating the crap out of each other with baguette brought major confusion to his mind, “I don’t know…”

“-ss Militia, are you there?” Batter asked in concern, waving his hand in her face.

“Y-yes, I’m still here.” she rubbed her forehead in numb-ish pain, “Kinda.”

“Was it really that good?” he asked skeptically.

“Well, it certainly tastes better than the last one.” she smirked on the reminiscence of that incident. “Anyway, I just need to finish these last few documents and then we can go home. You can go home first, just knock on the entrance first next time.”

“Nah, I can wait for you to finish it. Tomorrow is Saturday anyway, I can sleep late.”

“Okay then.“ without hesitating for a moment, she continued working on the last of her paperwork. But the constant yawning besides her kept remind her of someone in need.

“You can sit on my lap if you want.” she smiled and saw her Ward blushing red.

“Ah, I’m fine with just standin-” but whatever he tried to say was interrupted by his uncontrollable yawning. “Okay...I think I will say yes to that now…”

He wobbled around on his thin legs as his tiredness settled in his bone before finally landing his butt on her lap, resting soundly on her chest.

For first time since he got to Brockton Bay, she had finally saw a peaceful look on his face.

“Panacea, how bad were his...injuries?” she asked as her eyes looked across her Ward’s broken body. It was supposed to be her responsibility to keep him safe, hers. But now she was completely helpless on saving what’s left of him.

“Other than his severed right arm and left leg, he has suffered an additional of 4 broken ribs and some bruises that I can fix easily but there’s one major problem.”

She pointed towards the unconscious Ward’s skull.

“His skull has shattered into dozens of pieces and it was a miracle that his brain didn’t get cut into shreds from the fragmentation, let alone being intact in one piece without any sign of internal bleeding at all.” she explained in details, “But considering the amount of blood he has lost from his lost limbs and the severe trauma he had to the back of his head, he most likely will fall into coma. The only thing we can do now is wait and hope he can actually wake up from this.”

She was a member of the Protectorate, she was supposed to protect her Ward until they grew old enough to either join the Protectorate or become a member of the society. Instead, all she could do was hold back her tears. She couldn’t show her weakness now, not when her Ward was at his most vulnerable.

It had only been one day since he had arrived and he was already in the hospital, just how bad would the situation get if he continued to stay in this wretched city?

Thinking back to that, it was kind of funny that things really got worse.

A kind of funny that only broken people would laugh at.

She wanted to let her tears be free but with her Ward sleeping soundly on her chest, she held them back. She had to be strong for them and herself, no matter what.

“I’m sorry, Chief Director Rebecca, but would you mind repeating what the hell you just said?” she glared at the woman on the screen.

“If he was found to be responsible for the phenomena, it would be your job to contain him if he ever crossed the line. We do not want another S-class around the East Coast, Director Hannah.” the woman glared back at her, “We do not want another Black Kaze scenario and the public to be terrified of the Nine Slayer. It’s up to you to do whatever you must to put him down when the time comes.”

“One way or another.” she said.

No matter what.

------

Author Note: Expect seriously irregular update to this fic since I have started another writing project just a week ago.

And erm...I really have no idea what to say after such a long time of being absence.

I...seriously don't know if I can even keep up with this pace.