It Gets Worse [Worm AU Fanfic] Complete

It Gets Worse

Part Twelve: The Saga of the Weird-Shit-o-Meter

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



January 9, 2011

Uber and L33t's Base

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—

The high-pitched whine cut through the sounds of electronic combat, startling Uber so badly that he flubbed the perfect sniper shot he'd been about to pull off. “Crap!” he yelled over the noise, throwing down his controller. “Dude, what the hell is that racket? I was one headshot away from a medal!”

—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—

“Don't look at me,” L33t protested, though his eyes shifted to the side. “I don't think I built anything that was supposed to make that sort of noise.” He grimaced. “It kind of drills into your head, doesn't it?”

—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—

Uber fixed him with a steady glare. “Well, it's coming from your workshop, so why don't you go back there and stop whatever it is, before I drill something into your head?” He picked up the controller and discovered that his character was dead, so he shot another glare at L33t, just in case he hadn't gotten the point before.

—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—

“Fine,” sighed L33t, dropping his own controller and getting up from the couch. “But I don't understand why you always blame me for shit going wrong.” He shuffled around the end of the couch and headed for the section of the current base they'd decided would be his workshop.

—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—

Uber rolled his eyes, even though he knew L33t wouldn't see it. “Maybe because it's usually your fault?” he retorted. “Remember the exploding teleporter? Or the power armour that electrified your nuts? Face it, you're my bro, but sometimes what you build is shit.”

—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—

Even if L33t heard him, Uber didn't catch any reply, so he did his best to ignore the continued high-pitched whine. He expected for it to cut off at any moment; while L33t sometimes built stuff that blew up for no reason, he rarely forgot to include an off-switch. What Uber didn't expect was for the sound to get louder, almost as if it were getting closer. A lot closer.

—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—

Turning his head in annoyance, he saw that the conclusion his ears had reached was actually true; staring at a PKE meter they'd acquired for a disastrous Ghostbusters show, L33t was heading for the couch. The sound was coming from the meter, of course, and it was even more skull-splitting at close range. The little arms were fully extended, and lights were running up and down them.

—EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—

“What the actual fuck?” Uber yelled. “I said turn it off, not bring it out here so I can admire it!” He dropped his controller on the couch again and got up, fully intent on taking the noisy device away from L33t and switching it off permanently. He had a sledgehammer somewhere that would be perfect for the job.

—EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—

“No, dude, it's my weird-shit-o-meter!” L33t shouted back. “It's registering something! Look at it!” Pulling the thing away from Uber's reach, he held it up to reveal a round dial on its face. There was a needle on the dial that kept jumping off the stop and flicking part of the way around its face in sync with the lights.

—EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—

“Weird-shit-o-meter?” Uber shook his head disbelievingly. “Okay, you've built some pretty weird crap, but that takes the cake. Seriously, the whole idea of a weird-shit-o-meter is a joke.” But despite himself, he leaned closer. Instead of numbers, there were words arrayed around the dial, carefully inscribed in L33t's scratchy handwriting. The progression went like this:

ODD

STRANGE

WEIRD

BIZARRE

LAUGHABLE

IMPROBABLE

BULLSHIT

RIDICULOUS

INSANE

JUST NOPE

—EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—

L33t flipped a switch, cutting off the noise and letting the needle fall back to the stop with a tiny ping. “It's not a joke,” he insisted, while Uber wondered if the ringing in his ears would ever go away. “I started working on it a few days ago, when I was wondering why so many of my inventions screw up so badly. Trying to measure if there was some kind of probability effect influencing my power. Call it a luck detector.”

Uber snorted and rolled his eyes. “Sounds better than weird-shit-o-meter, but only just. I can't believe you really built something to try to detect luck. Did it work?” Only L33t, he thought. Only L33t.

“Well, not at first,” L33t admitted. “I finished it a few hours ago, and it's been calibrating ever since. To be honest, I had no idea if it'd even pick up anything.” He waved it in the air. “But it works! It really works!”

Uber took the device and turned it over in his hands. “And what's this bit?” On the back side of the device, there was another dial. The needle wasn't moving on this one, but it wasn't resting on the stop either. Instead, it was situated about one-tenth the way around the dial. There were percentage markings on this one.

“Oh, shit.” L33t grabbed it back from him and stared at it. “Fuck, I totally forgot about this bit. It's storing luck energy. When it reaches one hundred percent, I'll be able to discharge it.”

“Discharge it.” To Uber, that sounded kind of … ominous. “In a bad way or a good way? And what will discharging, umm … luck energy do?”

L33t shrugged. “I have no fuckin' idea. I guess we'll find out when it happens.”

For some reason, that didn't make Uber feel any better at all.

<><>​

January 11, 2011

10:35 PM

Winslow High School

Two and a half days later, Uber still wasn't feeling fantastic about the whole thing. It didn't help that he'd just helped L33t break into a high school in the middle of the night; high school hadn't been his favourite place back when he'd been a teenage gaming nerd, and it didn't look any better now that he was an adult. The echoing corridors and flickering shadows brought back long-buried memories of dodge-ball, wedgies and having his lunch flushed down the toilet. "This is a really bad idea,” he hissed.

"Well, it wasn't my first choice either," retorted L33t. "When they had the false alarm with the Endbringer siren, I knew something weird was going on." He gave Uber a dirty look. "But you wouldn't let me investigate the first lot of weird shit I found."

"That's because it was at the top of the goddamn PRT building!" snapped Uber. "It's not like they're going to let you wander around the most tightly guarded building in town with your stupid gadget."

“Yeah, well, they might have. We'll never know now, will we?" L33t replied grumpily, and turned his attention back to the device he held. He hadn't been able to mute the insistent wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee of the weird-shit-o-meter, but plugging a set of headphones in had redirected the sound, to Uber's relief. “We're getting closer. Something weird happened here."

Yeah, two grown men just broke into a high school and now we're investigating a row of lockers. That's pretty fuckin' weird. But Uber didn't voice his doubts. L33t was his buddy. They had each others' backs. “Like what?”

“Not sure.” L33t was waving the WSoM (as Uber was now privately calling it) around like a divining rod, or how Uber assumed a divining rod would be used. Zeroing in on one particular locker, L33t ran the device over every inch of it, or near enough, while Uber helped by aiming the flashlight at the worn and dented metal.

Random damage aside, it struck Uber that this was the cleanest locker he'd seen in his life. There wasn't any graffiti. In some places, it even looked like some of the paint had been scrubbed off. Leaning close, he sniffed. “Can you smell bleach?”

“Bleach?” L33t sniffed. “I guess. But bleach isn't very weird. And the meter isn't registering much any more. We must've picked up all the residual luck energy that was hanging around here.” Turning the WSoM over, he eyed the storage meter. “Not much. Another couple of percent. We'll be forever at this rate.”

“So can we go home now?” asked Uber hopefully. “This place gives me the fucking creeps.” Why would the school go to the trouble of scrubbing a locker out with bleach? More to the point, did he really want to know the answer to that question?

“Ooh, just picked up a new focus.” L33t headed off down the corridor, waving the WSoM in front of him. “This one's upstairs. Come on!”

So that's a no for leaving. Just great. Heaving an aggravated sigh, Uber followed his buddy down the hallway. “What's upstairs, anyway? Classrooms?” He hoped it was only classrooms. If it turned out to be a science lab of some sort, things could get dicey if there was any kind of adjusted probability going on in the storage cupboard.

“Dunno. Could be anyth—whoa!” L33t stopped, aiming the WSoM at the base of the stairs. “There's another spot, right there. Holy crap, they're all over the place.” Jerking into motion again, he hurried over to the base of the stairs. Even from where he was, Uber could see the needle jumping halfway around the dial and back again.

“What the hell would happen on the stairs?” demanded Uber. “Did someone fall up them or something?” He stared at the steps, trying to discern what L33t's device could make of them. They looked perfectly normal, if he discounted the fact that the torchlight flashing back and forth made them look extra creepy.

“You're asking me?” complained L33t. “I just designed it to detect weird shit. I didn't think to put in an instant playback.” He took a step up, waving the WSoM around. “Shit, something funky went down here.”

“Nah, I really don't think so,” Uber told him, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You've got 'weird', 'bullshit' and 'insane' on that thing of yours, but not 'funky'.” He spread his hands as L33t turned toward him with a betrayed expression. “What? It's true.” If he had to come along anyway, he decided, he might as well make a joke of it.

“Fuckin' word games.” L33t shook his head. “I swear to God, if I built a bullshit detector and pointed it at you, it'd go off the scale.” He waved the WSoM around again. “Okay, I've got it all. Let's go.” He started up the stairs again, looking almost as if the device were dragging him behind it. Stifling a snicker, Uber followed along behind.

They went up two flights of stairs with no more exclamations from L33t, though the skinny guy was panting a bit by the time they got there. Smugly, Uber surveyed his partner. “You know, you really need to get fit,” he observed. “Tinkering isn't going to save your ass every time. Sometimes you've just got to be able to run away.”

“Says the guy who can automatically figure out the best fitness plan and adjust it day by day as part of his power,” retorted L33t. He waved the WSoM around again. “Okay, it's over this way.” Turning his whole body like the WSoM was a compass needle, he started toward one particular door.

“Whoa, whoa, wait,” protested Uber, staring at the door in question; more specifically, at the symbol emblazoned upon it. There was a 'cleaners inside' sign, but that was easily stepped around. “The girls' bathrooms? We're going in there?”

L33t, already at the door, turned to look at him. “You're shitting me, right? You have to be shitting me. You're scared of going in the girls' bathrooms?” He held up the WSoM. “Look at this thing, dude. It's going all the way over to 'bullshit'. I'm going in there.”

“I'm not scared,” Uber said. “It's just … it's wrong. We're grown men, and that's a bathroom for teenage girls. I feel like enough of a creepazoid already, just breaking into the school.” He folded his arms. “It's wrong, and you should feel wrong about it too.”

“Geez.” L33t rolled his eyes. “You want I should protect you from the cooties? We're villains, bro. We already steal shit. Besides, in case you hadn't noticed, the school's currently closed. Our chances of encountering a teenage girl in there is exactly zero. In fact, if you're as good as you keep telling me you are, nobody's ever gonna know we were here.” He paused and shook his head. “Never thought I'd have to say this to you of all people, but I think maybe you should grow a pair.”

Uber stared at him. “Oh, you did not just say that.” He was the brawn in their team. The tough guy. L33t did the Tinkering and worked out the impossible gadgets, and Uber provided the muscle and skills necessary to make them work in their schemes. Telling him to 'grow a pair' was not in L33t's job description.

“Bro, I totally did.” L33t gave him a shrug and a sheepish grin. “Sorry, but a guy who can't make himself go into a girls' bathroom really ought to hand in his man card.” Holding up the WSoM, he pushed the door open. “Gimme the flashlight.”

“No.” Uber took a deep breath. Memories were flooding back; unpleasant memories. “I can do it.” It wasn't the same school, or even a girls' locker room, but he recalled being forcefully shoved through such a set of doors, once upon a time, wearing nothing but his underwear. Everything else from his high-school years had merged together into one long unpleasant blur, but that had stayed with him, razor-sharp. The stares, the scathing words, the laughter, the sheer embarrassment; they had scarred him for life. Trigger events, he'd learned, did that.

People were more than their accumulated experiences. He had to believe that. Taking one step forward, then another, he pointed the flashlight at the door. He stepped past L33t and pushed open the inner door, trying to see the bathroom as it was in reality, not as his memory insisted it should be. First one step, then another, focusing his attention on the beam as it splashed over the floor and wall rather than on the shadows surrounding it.

There's nobody here. Nobody here. He drew a deep breath, prepared to let it out—then nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand slapped on his shoulder. “Shit!” he yelped, spinning around and nearly falling over in his haste.

“Geez. Dude.” L33t stepped back, hands up in surrender. “You were in the way. I asked you to move, but you were zoned the hell out. You all right? Getting enough sleep?” His expression, as well as his voice, showed genuine concern.

“Yeah.” Uber let out a gusty sigh. “Bad memories. Long time ago and all that. Let's just get this done.” He pointed the flashlight at the cubicles. “Huh. Looks like they were renovating or something. That's been taken apart and put back together.” Most people wouldn't have noticed, but Uber was an expert at spotting small hints like that. It wasn't just due to his power; he'd developed it as a matter of self-preservation when L33t began cannibalising household items to build his gadgets. Having a microwave nearly go critical because someone removed certain 'non-essential' components was something he never wanted to go through again.

“Well, it's where the weird shit happened, all right.” L33t moved closer, waving the WSoM at the toilet cubicles. Uber considered commenting about how a toilet was one place where it was entirely too possible to find genuine 'weird shit', but decided to refrain. Leaning against the wall, he crossed his arms, shining the flashlight at the ceiling to give L33t the illumination he needed.

“Okay, done here.” L33t emerged from the cubicle he'd gone into, checking the dial on the back of the WSoM. “Damn, up to nearly thirty percent. Whatever happened here, it had to be pretty mind-boggling.”

“Yeah, yeah, let's get out of here. Unless you want to break into the gym or something too?” Uber had his creepy feelings more or less under control, but he still didn't like this in the slightest. He didn't mind wandering around a junkyard or even the Boat Graveyard late at night, but a girls' bathroom just jumped up and down on his last nerve.

“Nah, let's go.” L33t looked at the dial on the back of the device again, putting Uber in mind of a kid with a new toy. “Wow. Nearly thirty percent.”

Uber led the way out of the bathroom, feeling his anxiety levels drop just from that simple action. As they got to the bottom of the stairs, L33t said, “Wait. I think the needle just moved a bit more than normal.” He pointed the WSoM farther into the school.

“No. Hell, no. Fuck, no.” Uber pointed in the direction of the front doors of the school. “We are leaving this creepy-ass place. Right the fuck now. I don't care if there's a dozen other weirdness hot-spots. I don't care if there's a bunch of Fallen summoning Behemoth in the goddamn basement. We're leaving.” He strode toward the exit, determined that nothing would hinder his exit. Except maybe L33t. The little guy could be unreasonably stubborn sometimes. And they were bro's. But he really, really wanted out of this damn school …

“Okay, you win.” To Uber's immense relief, L33t came running up behind him. “They're not real strong, anyway. Probably nothing much.” He waved the device at the side wall of the corridor. “But if I'm right, there's something in that direction. A bit of a distance away. The bearing isn't changing much, anyway.”

“Good. I'll personally drive you there.” Uber grinned at his partner, glad they were getting the hell out of Dodge. Though he was starting to wonder exactly why the oddities were showing up in the school. If they were the result of a parahuman in the school, that meant there could be more … oh, god. What if we have to come back?

“Well, duh.” L33t rolled his eyes. “You've got the car keys. And you never let me drive anyway.” Turning off the WSoM, he shoved it in his backpack. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he looked around at the school, seemingly for the first time. “Y'know, for a place with a reputation of being a total shithole like this one, it doesn't look too bad.”

“You don't get to drive because every time you get behind the wheel, you act like you're playing Mario Kart or GTA,” Uber countered, feeling more comfortable by the second. “And I'm guessing you didn't see the tags in the side hallways. I suspect this place sees more gang activity than some areas of the Docks.” As they exited the school, he paused to re-secure the locks. After all, the place had to be protected from the criminal element. At least, until it showed up for class in the morning.

<><>​

“Wow, your hot-spot must be pretty strong,” Uber commented. Casually, he checked the mirrors; nobody else was on the road yet. “We're nearly two blocks away from the school. I—”

“Pull over!” L33t was already scrabbling with his seat belt. “It's right here!” He popped the buckle and yanked the door open, barely waiting for Uber to bring the car to a halt. Even before the car had stopped rocking back and forth, he jumped out and ran back down the road a little way.

Uber got out a little more circumspectly and strolled back to join him. L33t was waving the WSoM around with little giggles of glee, which Uber considered almost as creepy as having to go into the girls' bathroom in the first place. He caught a glimpse of the needle, which was swinging even farther over into the reams of impossibility.

“Wow, holy shit.” Finally calming down, L33t eyed the readout on the back of the WSoM. “That was a good twenty-seven percent all on its own. I'm over fifty percent and counting. Whatever happened here must've been epic.”

Uber looked around, a memory tickling at his brain. This area looked almost familiar … but why? Closing his eyes for a moment, he ran through a memory-enhancement exercise he'd just come up with. It rose to the surface, waiting to be understood. Then he opened his eyes and looked around again. The memory clicked into place, and he let out a sharp “Hah!”

“What?” L33t looked at him. “What've you got? Do you know something I don't?”

With a devious grin, Uber just dug out his phone. He took his time opening the right page and flicking to the photo he remembered; the look of irritation and frustration on L33t's face was a little bit of sweet payback. “Check it out,” he offered, showing L33t the phone. It was the duct tape picture, the one which had gone viral just that afternoon. One girl and four guys, who'd somehow managed to get themselves tied up in duct tape while running down the road.

“What … the … fuck?” L33t stared at the picture, then flicked through the other ones that had been taken at the same time. “Fuck, no wonder the meter started going off like it did. How improbable would it have to be for them to tie themselves up like that?”

“I dunno.” Uber stared at the picture, then moved along the pavement and turned so the image on the phone matched with the background. “Okay, the way they've fallen … I'm gonna take a wild guess and say they were running away from Winslow.” He checked the timestamp. “And it was just after school let out … and they were running with duct tape.” Looking over at L33t, he snapped his fingers. “There's only one reason for a bunch of jocks to run with duct tape. They were chasing someone.”

“Who made them have bad luck.” L33t could fill in gaps too, it seemed. “So the shit that happened in the school, like the bathroom cubicle that needed to be taken apart, that was more of it.” He stared at Uber. “Holy fuck. My weird-shit-o-meter detects the after-effects of this girl's power.”

“Girl? Who says it's a girl?” Then Uber's brain caught up with his mouth. “Duh. Girl's bathroom. And if it was a guy, it would be all guys, not four guys and a girl.” He paused. “Waiiit a minute.” Taking a moment, he checked the tags on the pics, until he found one that had named the reluctant participants. Then he picked out the one girl's name—Sophia Hess—and searched for more pics with her name tagged to them.

What he found made him laugh so hard he had to sit down on the edge of the sidewalk. He couldn't spare the breath to talk, so he just handed off the phone to L33t and lay back on the cool concrete, holding his stomach. L33t joined him a moment later, cackling loudly. The image of the redheaded girl stuck upside down beside the toilet was amazing, along with the look of baffled fury on her face.

“So … so that's why … they had to … pull it apart,” Uber finally said as he managed to bring his hilarity under control. “Holy fuck, that's amazing. Whoever that is plays dirty as fuck. I'm in awe.” L33t didn't say anything in reply, as he was still chortling madly to himself. Uber helped him up and they staggered back to the car.

They were halfway home before L33t finally got his shit together. “Oh, man,” he said happily. “That was so worth it. Whoever's doing this, they've got one hell of a sense of humour. If that Hess girl's some kind of bully … wow, did you see where the tape was right over her mouth, and over her hair too? Boy, she looked pissed. That's what I call payback.”

“Yeah.” But Uber had been doing some thinking. “Just remember, before we start hanging around where whoever this cape is … remember, she's a teenage girl. A bullied teenage girl. Who got powers specifically designed for fucking over bullies.” He gave L33t a sober look. “We can't afford to get on her radar. If she decides we're a threat, it could get really bad for us. So we've gotta be careful. Really careful.”

“We don't even know who she is!” protested L33t. “And I don't want to hurt her. All I want to do is harvest the luck she leaves behind.” He paused. “Which is something I'm pretty sure I've never said before in my life.”

“So what do you want to do with all that luck, anyway?” Uber glanced over at him from where he was driving the car. “Win the lottery? Convince the PRT to participate in one of our shows?” He grinned, knowing what he was about to say was mean, but deciding it was too funny not to. “Finally make something that doesn't blow up in your face?”

“Oh, ha ha.” L33t gave him the finger. “Look, if you get any more of those weird-as-fuck pictures, let me know. They'll probably be exactly what we're looking for.” He stared at the readout again. “Forty-four point seven percent to go. We can do this shit.”

“Just so long as you don't go hanging around teenage girls like a creeper, I'm good with that,” Uber told him firmly. “The last thing I want is for one of your gadgets to go off wrong because she decides you're a danger to her, and launch us both in the general direction of Seattle.”

L33t didn't look any more thrilled by the prospect than Uber was. “Yeah, no. I'll be careful.” Then he ruined it by positively caressing the WSoM and crooning in a high-pitched cracked voice, “Won't we, my precious? Yes, we will …”

L33t, Uber decided as they drove on through the night, didn't need a weird-shit-o-meter. The weirdness was right out there in plain view.

<><>​

Friday, January 14, 2011

West Virginia

Merv's Second-Hand Cars & Trucks

Merv Lambert lifted his eyes from his computer screen as the beat-up motor-home turned off the highway and rumbled into the lot. It bore an odd-looking scorch mark on the edge of the roof, and what looked like a half-melted TV dish on top. Frowning, he abandoned his game of Minesweeper and got up from his desk.

By the time he pushed the door open and exited the building, the motor-home had squealed to a halt—sounded like the brakes needed work, along with everything else—in the main parking area. Being a motorhome, it took up three car spaces. The door opened and a cheerful-looking blond guy swung down out of it. “Hey, boss,” he called out. “This is the one from out Huntington way. Little bit of a fixer-upper, but at least she runs.”

Ken might've been twenty-something to Merv's fifty-plus, but he was far and away Merv's best mechanic. Still, he was sometimes a little enthusiastic about how he judged the worth of a clunker. On the other hand, he'd coaxed the battered old beast back to the lot, so there might be something in what he said. Merv shaded his eyes and squinted at the motor-home. He couldn't recall anything about Huntington … or maybe he did. There'd been something in the news about a lightning storm over that city. Then he recalled a phone call that had come in yesterday. “Is that the one that got struck by lightning?” It wasn't much of a guess; the melted dish and big-ass scorch-mark kind of gave it away.

“That's the one.” Ken laughed out loud. “Radio's fucked, climate control only works on 'arctic' or 'sahara', and the the electronic locking doesn't. Oh, yeah, and the GPS talks like Tweety Bird on crack and thinks north is south and east is west. But it's got a full tank of fuel, the motor runs and the gearbox works. I figure the rest is just details.” He reached up and patted the side of the vehicle, and the wing mirror fell off with a clatter. “Uh, I can bolt that back on.”

Merv rolled his eyes. “Put it back in the 'maybe' lot.” He stumped over and picked up the mirror by its bracket. The glass hadn't broken, which he considered to be a sign of good luck. “Throw this on the seat, and put it back on when we start fixing it up. Right now, I got some other cars that need a bit of work.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Ken took the mirror and climbed back up into the oversized vehicle. Merv watched him, not without a little paternal pride. Ken might not be his real son, but the boy was coming along real good. In another ten or fifteen years, when Merv was ready to retire, he knew who he was gonna turn the business over to.

<><>​

Later That Night

Jack Slash

The procession that trooped through the dimness would have scared the life out of any sane person seeing them in daylight. Of course, very shortly afterward, that person wouldn't be caring about anything at all, but that was to be expected from the Slaughterhouse Nine. A more careful observer, hiding and listening to what they were saying, would've have had a most educational experience.

Jack Slash didn't care about people seeing them or even listening in on them. He was too angry. Carrying on an argument that had lasted for the previous few miles, he glared at Burnscar, who was trudging along in a resigned fashion. “You asked if you could drive,” he snapped. “I trusted you to drive. But I only just managed to get to sleep, and what did you do?”

Burnscar sighed in a defeated fashion. “I crashed the bus,” she muttered. “It wasn't my fault.” On the palm of her hand, two figures formed out of flame. One was bulky, but still recognisably human, while the other was massively deformed.

“Hey, don't look at us,” Hatchet Face grunted, stepping closer so that the image winked out. “You had the wheel. We didn't make you do nothing.”

“Yeah,” Crawler put in, muting his voice so that it only came out of a few of his mouths. “You didn't have to drive off the road to hit that cat.”

“You were both yelling at me!” Burnscar threw up her hands in frustration. “I'm not good at dealing with that kind of thing!” She turned to Jack. “Tell them! They shouldn't distract me while I'm driving!”

Jack wanted to facepalm, but restrained the impulse. “I've already agreed with you on that subject, dear Burnscar, but what possessed you to drive directly into a drainage ditch?” The cat in question had apparently jumped the flooded ditch. The bus … hadn't.

“It was the water!” protested Burnscar. “There was stuff floating on it and it looked solid!”

The argument looked set to escalate some more, but fortunately Shatterbird picked that moment to land near the group. Loftily ignoring the argument, she turned to Jack. “I've found a motor-home,” she said. “It's in a used-car lot, not far away. Not even locked.”

“There's no way we'll be that lucky,” grumbled Hatchet Face. “Fuckin' thing probably won't even run.”

“Language!” snapped Bonesaw from her perch atop the Siberian's shoulders. “I'm a little girl. I shouldn't have to hear words like that.” The Siberian glared at Hatchet Face.

“ … yeah, okay,” grunted the brutish man. He'd been wary of the tiger-striped woman ever since he'd tried to get pushy with her, and she'd pushed right back. Jack wasn't entirely sure how she managed to no-sell the power-nullifier's ability, but he had a few ideas.

“We'll go and check it out,” Jack said firmly. He looked to the south, where thunder was starting to roll again, and rain could be heard in the distance. “I don't care who drives, but we don't drive off the road to try to hit any kind of household pet. And we're going south-west. No other direction but south-west. Got it?”

Bonesaw raised her hand, like a child in class. “Uh, not arguing, but why south-west specifically? I thought we were heading back up to the northeast. You said a couple of weeks ago that you wanted to go and see old friends.”

Jack gave her a stern glare. “I changed my mind. Now let's go.”

As they started off, he wondered about his own change of heart, but couldn't pin it down to anything more than simply not wanting to get back to Brockton Bay right then.

<><>​

The Same Night

Brockton Bay

L33t

The weird-shit-o-meter shrilled its high-pitched whine into L33t's ear via the earpiece as he stared at the circle of anvils embedded in the concrete. The needle was moving farther and farther over toward the high end of the scale; from time to time it touched on 'Insane'. He'd never seen readings so high, not even on the collapsed building where Kaiser had been buried under frozen shit.

Uber stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at the frontage of the Forsberg Gallery. “When you say weird shit, you don't fuck around,” he murmured. “I mean, holy fuck, how precise was—”

There was a beep in L33t's earpiece and he stared as the dial went all the way back to zero. “What the hell?” Had it broken already? What was going on? “Dude, I think …”

Then there was another beep. This one was more urgent. L33t suddenly realised what was going on, and he turned the weird-shit-o-meter over. On the back, the accumulator needle was resting against the stop, all the way to the right.

“What? What's the matter?” Uber took a step toward him. “What's going on, bro?”

In L33t's hand, the meter started to vibrate, and the whine in his earpiece took on an entirely different tone. “Uh … I think … I think it's gonna …” Fuck, it's going to blow up in my face. I am so—

Bright pink lightning surged out of the weird-shit-o-meter, crawling all over L33t's body. He felt his hair standing on end, but his nerves weren't jumping like they would be if this was actual electricity. Still, it was a fairly unpleasant experience, something like feeling ants run all over his body and shoving his hand into a bowl of warm lumpy jello.

Acrid smoke stung his nostrils, and he looked down to see that the weird-shit-o-meter had given up the ghost. It had measured its last milli-Odd. But that didn't matter; he felt energised. Ideas were sparking through his mind, making his fingers itch for tools and materials.

“Um, you okay?” Uber reached out gingerly. “It's just that your eyes are glowing a bit.” He paused for a moment. “Say something.”

“I'm fine.” L33t knew that he'd never been better. More specifically, he'd never been luckier. “I need to get home. I need to rebuild this. No, I need to improve it. I'm gonna build a better accumulator, with a more efficient dial, and I'm gonna make it so I can shoot bad luck at people! Let them suffer the shit for once!” He laughed out loud, and thunder rolled overhead. Pausing, he blinked. “Whoa. That was cool.”

“Fuck, yeah.” Uber stared up at the sky. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“I have no idea. Let me try that again.” Facing the sky, he clenched his fists. “I will call it—my Luck Gun!” As he raised his voice, lightning crackled across the sky and thunder boomed in counterpoint.

“Fuck, if you can do that on command, our next video's gonna be epic.” Uber stared at him. “Can you do that on command?”

Regretfully, L33t shook his head. “I don't think so. I do need to get back to the workshop right now. I need to build the Luck Gun before my luck runs out.” He could feel it tingling through his limbs and fizzing in his brain.

“Uh, you can't build stuff that's the same as before. Right?” Uber didn't seem to have figured out what was going on.

“Tonight,” declared L33t, “I can.” Raising his finger, he gestured toward the car. “Onward!” he proclaimed, just for shits and giggles. On cue, thunder rolled.

He knew it wasn't likely to last, but holy shit, that was a cool effect.

<><>​

The Next Morning

Jack rolled over in bed and lay there, enjoying the comfort of the mattress. He had to admit that Shatterbird had really come through for them this time; the motor-home was just what the doctor had ordered. He'd managed to sleep right through the night and well into the morning, which was good.

On the downside, they'd stopped somewhere. He knew this because he couldn't hear the engine or feel any motion. Getting up, he stretched elaborately and pulled his shirt on. The bathroom was tiny, but it suited his needs. Someone had courteously laid out his cut-throat razor, so he washed his face, lathered up, and had a shave as well. A shower could wait till later, he decided, especially if he had to kill someone first.

After tucking various blades into their hiding places on his person, he wandered down the length of the motor-home and opened the door, to the sound of a low-voiced argument. The motor-home was pulled over into a park, with a city skyline in the background. The humanoid members of the team were sitting around a picnic table, staring at a map. They looked around as he stepped down from the motor-home.

“What's going on?” he asked. “Where are we, and why have we stopped?”

“That's what we're trying to figure out,” Shatterbird answered with some asperity. “We're out of fuel, and there's no landmarks on our map that match the local geography.”

“Ah.” Jack turned to look at the skyline. A sense of foreboding that had been creeping up on him revealed itself all at once, and he knew where he was. It had been years, there were a few new buildings, but he knew beyond a doubt. “Tell me, from which direction did the sun rise this morning?”

“We couldn't see.” Burnscar sounded defensive. “It was overcast and raining pretty heavily. I couldn't even see the signposts properly.”

Closing his eyes, Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course you couldn't. So how did you find your way?”

“We followed the GPS,” said Shatterbird. “It sounded funny, but at least it's working.”

“No,” sighed Jack. “No, it's not. I'll tell you how I know.” He pointed at the city. His sense of near-dread was stronger than ever, but he forced it down. He was Jack Slash, and he did what he wanted, when he wanted. “See that city over there? More capes per capita live there than in ninety percent of the continental United States.”

Turning to the group, he spread his arms. I didn't want to be here, but now that I am, may as well make the best of it. “Welcome to Brockton Bay.”



[A/N: Yes, evil cliffhanger is evil.]



End of Part Twelve

Part Thirteen

 

It Gets Worse

Part Thirteen: Lucky for Some

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

[A/N2: In writing this chapter, I became aware that a couple of dates needed to be adjusted slightly in the last couple of chapters. This has been done. No plot-relevant information has been altered.]



Saturday, January 15, 2011

1100 Hours

On the Road South of Brockton Bay

Don Hammett pushed his hardhat back and scratched the top of his head. “Well, shit,” he said. “Christner's not gonna be happy over this one.” He looked at his head foreman, who happened to be a very competent woman called Maria. “Any chance I can get you to make the call to him?”

“Hah, no chance in hell,” she scoffed. “You're the Director of Public Works, you get to piss off the bigwigs.” She folded her arms and looked at where the culvert had come loose, then shook her head. “Helluva thing,” she said. “And nobody was hurt?”

“Not a one,” Hammett replied absently, digging out his cell phone. To his relief, he had two bars of reception. Not great, but enough. Bringing up Roy Christner's number, he hit the call icon.

“Hello, Don.” Roy already didn't sound happy. “I presume you've got a really good reason for calling me on a Saturday.”

“Yeah, I do.” Don cleared his throat carefully. “We got a busted culvert on the highway south of town, around about the twenty-five mile mark. Something got stuck in there during the rain, just enough to force water to go around the culvert and undermine it without going over the road. One in a million chance. Looks like something heavy came over it last night and shifted it slightly, and it's been subsiding ever since. Right now, it's just not passable. On the upside, there's a bypass road which we can divert traffic on to—to be honest, they're already using it—but on the downside, that road can't handle weekday traffic, so we're gonna have to fix it by Monday morning at the latest.”

The silence on the other end lasted so long that Don thought the line might've dropped out, but eventually Roy came back. “Is it fixable by Monday? And does closing the road isolate anything? Truck stops, residential, anything like that?”

Don turned to the hood of his 4x4, where a survey map of the area was already spread out. He put his thumb on the location of the culvert and ran it down the road. “To answer your last question first, there's very little on that section to worry about. A rest area but nothing else.”

“And can it be fixed by Monday morning?” The tone of Christner's voice suggested he was fearing the worst.

Don took a deep breath. “Monday midday or afternoon, at the latest. We're gonna have to take a big bite out of that discretionary budget, but if we work through, we can about do it. Might have to hire on some extra manpower to cover us for those roadworks in town, though.”

“Fine.” From the tone of Christner's voice, it was anything other than 'fine'. But to give him credit, the man knew how to roll with the punches. “Get it done.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Don wasn't even being facetious this time. Hanging up the call, he turned to Maria. “We've got a green light. Go.”

“You got it.” Moving toward where the roadworks crew were waiting by their machines, she started barking out orders. Don folded the map and climbed into his 4x4; he wasn't needed here any more. If he knew his crew, they'd get the job done. All he had to do now was go and close the other end of the stretch of road so that nobody found themselves in a dead end with nowhere to turn around.

But first, he had a phone call to make. Bringing up another number, he hit the call icon. “Danny? Don Hammett, Public Works. Got a question for you. How many of your guys are rated for road construction works?”

<><>​

1500 Hours

Uber & L33t's Base

Uber

Uber had seen L33t Tinkering many times before, and he knew it was a good idea to not wander too far when this was going on. On occasion it did indeed seem as though some malevolent fate wished to exact retribution on his best buddy for some unknown slight. When L33t was Tinkering, things caught fire or exploded, or caught fire and then exploded, for no apparent reason. And if they didn't do it in the workshop, they did it in the field. He'd lost count of the number of times L33t had lost his eyebrows in the previous year alone.

But now his bro had been in the workshop for seventeen hours straight, and the most unnerving noise that had come out of there was the occasional unhinged-sounding cackle, though this was plenty bad enough. Even more unnerving was the answering rumble of thunder, each and every time.

Finally, L33t emerged from the workshop. His hair was standing out in all directions, but this was not in the least bit unusual. He still had his eyebrows, which was unusual, especially following such a protracted burst of Tinkering. And he was costumed up, complete with accessories. “Saddle up, bro,” he proclaimed. “It's time we showed Brockton Bay what Uber and L33t can do when we really put our minds to it!”

Uber stared at him and at the baggy khaki jumpsuit he was wearing, complete with the colourful logo on the shoulder. L33t had threatened to burn this particular item of clothing after the last catastrophic attempt to film an episode based on that particular premise, but there it was. And more to the point, there the rest of it was, as well. A futuristic rifle, held one-handed with the barrel resting back on L33t's shoulder, gave Uber a very strong clue as to what the defunct Weird-Shit-o-Meter had been rebuilt into, if he ignored the fact that L33t wasn't supposed to be able to rebuild stuff. From the rifle led a heavy cable which looped around to an ominously-humming backpack, twin to the one that had blown up once upon a time, nearly killing the both of them, at the worst possible moment. Another unpleasantly familiar piece of equipment dangled from his belt, gaudy with yellow and black stripes.

“Couldn't you have just built a duplicate? Or three?” Uber hated the beseeching tone that he heard in his own voice, but he knew that if this ended up nearly as unpleasant as the last time they'd tried it, he'd like to be able to say 'I told you so'. Worse; the last time, the backpack hadn't actually been humming. “And I thought you said you'd never build one of those traps again, after the last one ate half the base.”

"Yeah, no, but this one'll work properly," insisted L33t stubbornly. “And I did make a duplicate. Kind of, anyway. Gimme just one second.” He ducked back into the workshop and emerged seconds later with another backpack, complete with rifle. This one was also humming. Uber wondered briefly whether L33t had tuned them to sound that scary. “This one's yours.”

“Wait, what now?” Uber stepped back, holding his hands up defensively. “You never said anything about fitting me out with one of those things. What if it blows up? What if it blows the city up?”

“It's not gonna blow the city up,” scoffed L33t. “The power packs are only rated to hold enough energy to blow up one big building, or two medium-sized ones. But you don't have to worry. You've got the good-luck gun. I'm the one with the bad-luck gun.” Still holding his rifle by its pistol grip, he waved the weapon in the air for emphasis. With his finger on the trigger. So of course, it went off.

Uber yelped and dived for cover as a coruscating beam of crackling energy burst from the rifle emitter and struck one of the overhead lights, which promptly let out a shower of sparks and went dead. Nothing else happened, but he chose to stay down a little longer, just in case. “You don't need a bad-luck gun,” he accused L33t. “Giving you any sort of loaded weapon is just asking for friendly fire.”

“Sorry,” L33t said sheepishly. “But I figure that light was already going to go; at worst, I just pushed it along a bit.” He offered the other pack in Uber's direction again. “Come on, are you gonna take it or not?” A sly note crept into his voice. “It's pretty heavy, and I don't know exactly what's gonna happen if I drop it.”

“Fine,” Uber said, hastily getting to his feet and snatching the pack and rifle from the Tinker's hands. He eyed them carefully, looking for signs of imminent catastrophic failure. The only such sign was the same continuous hum as the other one was emitting. No, he realised a moment later. Not exactly the same hum; this one was harmonising with L33t's. The variations were almost imperceptible to the human ear on their own, but when the backpacks were close enough together, Uber could make out a very faint tune. A very apt tune. He gave L33t an incredulous look. “Did you actually set it up so we'd have the theme tune as well?”

L33t shrugged. “Uh … kinda?” He made a careless gesture with his free hand. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. If you're gonna do it, go big or go home?” Cradling the rifle in his hands, he began checking it over. “So, anything important happen while I was doing my thing?”

Uber set his backpack down, then cautiously leaned the rifle against it. “Yeah, actually. We got a phone call. From Skidmark, of all people.” He grimaced. “Why we ever gave our number out to that lowlife, I'll never know.”

“Because sometimes we need money, and sometimes the Merchants might have a job for us that we don't actually hate enough not to do?” suggested L33t. “What did he want?”

“Nothing good. Want coffee?” Uber headed for the kitchenette. “Apparently he sent a dozen guys over to the Dockworkers Association to try to shake them down for cash. As luck would have it, they showed up about half an hour before a big meeting was due to start, and about one minute before cars started pulling up in the parking lot. Cars full of big, burly dockworkers, to be exact. Big burly dockworkers with no money to give, and no fucks to give either. They beat the living snot out of Skidmark's guys, then tossed them in the harbour. So he's decided the Merchants aren't going to take that lying down. Squealer's got some tank thing she's going to drive through the middle of their offices, and he wanted us along for extra fire support.”

“Jesus fuck.” L33t slung the rifle and went over to the fridge. “Did he even have a theme in mind? Road Warrior? GTA?” Pulling open the door, he surveyed the contents. “Dude, we gotta go shopping sometime. I think the sandwich meat just blinked at me.”

“No theme.” Uber sighed, recalling the conversation. “I tried to talk him out of it, but he's got blood in his eye. You ask me? I think he wants to kill someone, just to prove the Merchants aren't a bunch of fucking dopehead losers. In case you're wondering, I told him no.”

“Yeah, well,” L33t agreed. “Fire support's one thing, but I'm not really on board with the idea of killing someone just because.” He shut the fridge again, then looked around at Uber. “You know what? Fuck 'em. If they trash the Dockworkers, that'll bring the PRT and the cops down on everyone in the area. We don't need that sort of heat.” Reaching over his shoulder, he tapped the rifle slung there. “What say we go and give this thing a proper field test?”

Uber eyed him suspiciously. “What did you have in mind?” A number of possibilities for the testing of a 'bad luck' gun ran through his mind. Some were interesting, while others were amusing. A few were downright terrifying. “Please tell me you aren't going to see if you can make Armsmaster crash his bike so you can steal his halberd.”

To his disquiet, L33t actually looked thoughtful. “ … Nah,” the Tinker decided after far too long a pause. “Pretty sure he's got some sort of failsafe for that. Otherwise, I'd totally do it.” He looked over at where Uber was making the coffee. “I'll finish that up while you go and get changed. Gotta look the part, you know.”

“Yeah, but how are you gonna test it? And didn't you already test it on the light?” Uber wasn't proud; he was willing to use any excuse to back out of being in the vicinity when L33t fired off his bad luck gun. Who knows what sort of spread it's got, anyway? “And what good am I gonna do with a good luck gun?”

L33t rolled his eyes. “You shoot yourself, me and any innocent bystanders, duh. Keep everyone except the opposition safe.” He sighed as Uber's expression didn't change. “Okay, fine. You can carry the trap, too.”

Which didn't make Uber any happier with the situation. “So basically I'll have one potentially unstable power source on my back, and another on my belt. Why do I have a feeling that my life is flashing before my eyes?”

“Wuss.” L33t rolled his eyes again. “Shoo. Go get changed, you big baby.” He turned back to where the coffeepot was still coming to the boil. “You'll see. This one's gonna be my best invention yet.”

“Yeah, like that's exactly a high bar,” grumbled Uber, but he went anyway. Besides, he was a little curious about what a 'bad luck gun' would do.

<><>​

Half an Hour Later

“Okay, stop here.” L33t indicated the side of the road. “This is perfect.”

“Perfect for what?” Despite the question, Uber was already pulling the car over with some relief. He was glad that L33t hadn't insisted on the logo for the side of the car, but that was probably just a matter of time. The whole time they'd been in the car, the power packs had been humming away gently in the back seat, and L33t had been singing along with the tune generated by the harmonics. Uber had never been closer to punching his partner.

“See that building there?” L33t pointed at one building, slightly more dilapidated than the others around it. “That's where the Merchants are crashing right now.” Opening the back door, he pulled out his power pack. Pausing to check the name-tag he'd stuck on it—as he'd confided to Uber, shooting someone with good luck when he meant to use bad luck would really suck—he slung the pack on his shoulders and hefted the rifle. “Okay, atomic engines to power and phasers to stun.”

Uber shook his head, wanting to facepalm. “That's two totally different franchises, and you know it. Anyway, what're you gonna do to the Merchants from over here?”

“Make them unlucky as fuck, that's what.” L33t fiddled with the rifle, then raised it to his shoulder. “Wide-beam for the win.” He pulled the trigger, and the same beam burst from the emitter … except that this time, it fanned out from the point of firing, enveloping the whole building in a ghostly purple glow. Nothing else seemed to happen, at least for the moment.

After a few seconds, L33t let up on the trigger. The beam winked out, leaving behind the smell of ozone. “Okay then,” he said briskly, removing the backpack. “Let's get out of here. I can't imagine that they didn't notice that, and I don't want Skidmark pissed off at us, too.”

“Smartest thing you've said all day,” Uber said with a certain amount of feeling. “So when's the bad luck supposed to kick in?” Opening the driver's side door, he climbed in and had the car started by the time L33t got in on the other side.

“Fucked if I know,” L33t admitted. “If the building was crappy enough, it should've fallen in on them. Or maybe they'll just stub their toes for the next week. If they're naturally lucky, maybe not even that. It's not an exact science, you know.”

“Figures,” Uber complained as they pulled away from the curb. “You build a device that measures luck, and even stores luck energy. But can you predict what it's gonna do? Friggin' typical, that's what I call it.” For all his complaining, he made sure to apply a certain amount of acceleration; as L33t had said, they didn't want Skidmark pissed off at them. Especially in the mood he was in.

<><>​

The Merchants' Crash Pad

Squealer

The ejection seat control system that Sherrel Bailey wanted to install in her tank was giving problems, which wasn't really a surprise as she'd crafted it from the gas cylinder of a swivel chair, an old alarm clock, bits out of a microwave and the TV remote. The latter item had pissed off the others, but when she threatened to cannibalise the TV as well, they shut up.

It didn't help with her work when weird purple lightning began arcing between everything. The device in front of her stung her finger with a fat blue spark, then launched itself straight up from the table and embedded itself in the ceiling. Cursing, she pulled back from her makeshift workbench and sucked on her fingertip, ducking her head as plaster rained down around her.

“Squealer, what the fuck?” That was Adam, lying sprawled in the least grungy armchair, the mask from his Skidmark costume pulled back from his head. “What've you fuckin' done now?” He struggled to sit up, then belched capaciously.

“Wasn't me,” she said defensively. Even as she spoke the words, the purple lightning cut out, leaving the smell of ozone in her nostrils. “I'm doing something different.”

Mush got up and stumbled over to the window, and peered out. “Can't see shit,” he reported, shambling back toward the ratty sofa. “Just a car, but it's gone now.”

Adam sat farther up. “What sorta fuckin' car, douchewipe?”

Flopping back on to the sofa, Mush shrugged. “Fucked if I know. Four wheels, an engine?”

Sherrel tuned them out and looked up at the ejection seat control module sourly. The wisp of smoke curling out of it told its own story; the thing would've been a dead loss even if it wasn't stuck in the ceiling. “Skids,” she whined. “Fuckin' ejector control's fucked.” The only other way out of the tank in a hurry was a series of locks and bolts she'd have to undo in sequence, which would be a pain if she drove into the water or something.

“Fuck.” Adam got all the way to his feet. “Well, do what you can, then. I'm going for a fuckin' drink.” Halfway to the door, he turned to face the others. “Don't forget. Monday morning, we're fuckin' up the Dockworkers for good and all. Those cock-garglers are gonna learn why you don't fuck with the Merchants.”

Sherrel shrugged. “Okay, sure.” She wouldn't really need an ejection seat for her tank if they were only going up against normals. Just for one fight, she could do without.

It's not like I'll be in any real danger anyway. Time to get high for the weekend.

<><>​

Taylor

“But you're sure you're okay?” I pressed. “The Merchants are scary people.” Not as scary as the ABB or the Empire—well, as the Empire used to be before the Great Blue Ice Escapade, I mentally corrected myself—but still pretty scary. When I was younger, Dad had drummed stories into me of kids being snatched off the street and getting forcibly addicted. I didn't know if they were actually true, but they'd certainly made me careful about going into certain parts of town. Which, I supposed in retrospect, was the whole idea.

“I'm fine,” Dad said, his tone halfway between amused exasperation and fond indulgence. “They never laid a hand on me, or any of the office staff. I knew the guys were coming in for that meeting, so I stalled as hard as I could. They were still at the chest-puffing stage when Kurt walked in the door.” He shrugged. “It was pretty well cut and dried after that.”

“Well, it was lucky they picked that time to try and shake you down,” I said. “If Kurt and the others hadn't shown—”

He chuckled. “Honey, I never had a moment's doubt it was your power that arranged things the way they came out. We've just had a contract come through from Public Works, so we're able to hire on everyone who needs work. That's what the meeting was about. The Merchants thought they could get a slice of that pie. They thought wrong.”

“Oh.” I hadn't thought my phrasing was significant, but obviously it was. For most people, 'lucky' was just a turn of phrase; for me and Dad, it seemed to be a way of life, now. “I just hope they get the message. I'd hate for anyone to get hurt because my power decided they weren't important enough to me.”

“I wouldn't worry.” He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Lowlives like that tend to back off as soon as they run into someone who pushes back. I doubt we'll have anything more to worry about from that quarter.”

The surety in his voice steadied me. “Good,” I said, feeling better already. “One less thing I have to worry about.”

<><>​

Uber

“Well, that wasn't exactly earth-shattering,” Uber observed once they were a few blocks away from the Merchant crash pad. “Are you even sure it did anything?” He wasn't exactly doubting L33t; his buddy's inventions had been known to do some really crazy things on occasion. Sometimes, they'd even been on purpose. But the idea that they'd ensured the Merchants would have bad luck (at least for a time) sounded a little weird, even for L33t.

“Of course it did something.” L33t reached back to the bar fridge that took up a third of the back seat of the car and pulled out another energy drink. He'd once offered to install a Tinkertech version that delivered the can right to the hand, but Uber had vetoed the concept on the principle that L33t needed both hands to Tinker with. “It draws on ambient luck energy to charge itself, and when it's firing, it separates out the bad luck from the good, storing the good luck and imbuing the target with the bad. Your gun basically does the opposite. Tonight, we can recharge your gun with the stored good luck from mine, and mine with the bad luck from yours.”

“I didn't ask how it works,” Uber said patiently. “I asked if it works.” He negotiated another turn. “I mean, the concept is cool and all, but all I've seen is a pretty lightshow. And it wasn't even flashy as lightshows go.” With one hand on the wheel, he turned to L33t and shrugged apologetically. “It's all I'm saying, dude.”

“Okay, fine.” L33t didn't have an especially prominent chin, but he stuck it out anyway. “Take us up Captain's Hill. You want results? I'll show you results.”

Uber had no idea what L33t wanted with Captain's Hill, but he decided to play along. “Aye, aye, sir. Captain's Hill it is.”

As he turned the car in that direction, he saw the clouds were rolling in again. I wonder if a luck gun will be enough to stop us from getting rained on.

<><>​

The Slaughterhouse Nine

Jack Slash

"So are we going in or not?" rumbled Hatchet Face. He indicated the Brockton Bay skyline, under the lowering clouds, with a wave of his cleaver. "We've been waiting half the day and I'm looking forward to meeting some of the capes you told me about. What's the holdup?"

By 'meeting', Jack knew quite well that the man meant 'hacking to pieces', but the question was unwelcome all the same. He himself wasn't quite sure why he was so reluctant to proceed, but he'd made a career of listening to his instincts and right now they were screaming at him to run in the other direction. The trouble was, he was a contrary soul by nature and he had to know why. So he was torn between telling everyone to retreat as expeditiously as possible and going forward to see what had him spooked. Worse, a good part of his leadership of the Nine depended on his reputation among them for decisiveness and infallibility, and this wavering was sending exactly the wrong signals.

“Yeah,” put in Crawler. “What's keeping us? I wanna see how Lung stacks up against me.” As he spoke, the saliva drooling from several of his mouths sizzled as it fell on the concrete floor of the roadside rest stop. He moved irritably to one side, accidentally knocking over a concrete bench.

“He uses fire,” Jack reminded him wearily. Crawler was the quintessential masochist, who relished getting into fights where he'd get hurt. Of course, once his opponent hurt him and he survived it, they were of no more use to him, so he killed them. “You're immune to fire, remember?” Well, perhaps not immune, but he'd once parked himself in a blast furnace and come out even more horrific than ever. Jack suspected he could shrug off anything short of a point-blank tactical nuke. Which, to be honest, might not even be enough to finish him off.

Crawler made a noise of discontent. “But he fought Leviathan. I wanna fight Leviathan.” Despite the whine in his multiple voices, inherent in the statement was the fact that Crawler desired the actual fight, not the possibility of beating an Endbringer. Jack was pretty sure Leviathan could hand out damage on a level Crawler had never experienced before, which was what Crawler craved. Though not even he was sure whether it would be enough to kill the monstrous cape.

“I've been waiting for another vehicle to come past,” he hedged. “One we can grab that's big enough for Crawler to fit in the back.” None had shown up, which satisfied the part of him that wanted nothing to do with Brockton Bay, but … “Wait a minute,” he said. “When's the last time any vehicles passed us by in either direction?” He castigated himself for not paying more attention but in his defence, he'd been a little distracted since he woke up.

“No large vehicles have passed by since we got here, and I've seen nothing on the road at all since midday,” Shatterbird reported promptly, in her overly-precise British accent. “Do you believe they know we are here, and they're diverting traffic around us?” She glanced around, as if imagining enemies creeping up on them from all sides. The winged glass 'costume' she habitually wore in combat rose from the ground beside her and wrapped itself around her body.

It was a distinct possibility, and one that Jack spent a few moments considering. Then he shook his head. “I sincerely doubt it,” he decided. “With the preponderance of capes in that city, we would've been neck-deep in them already if anyone at all knew we were here. Heroes to take us down, and villains to earn the bounty on our heads. So it's something unconnected to us. But still, I'm curious as to why.” He nodded to Shatterbird. “Thank you for volunteering to find out.”

“But I didn't volunteer …” Shatterbird's voice trailed off, and she gave him an irritated look. “It's because I'm the only flier, isn't it?” Even as she spoke, the glass wings began to spread out; this was all for show, of course, as they all knew she didn't actually need them for flight.

Interesting. Normally, she wouldn't have questioned his order-disguised-as-a-request, and indeed was already preparing to obey it even as she spoke up. But the fact remained that she had spoken up. It made him wonder if anyone else was beginning to question his authority.

“Of course,” he said lightly, making his voice reasonable enough that her semi-objection sounded whiny by comparison. “And our fastest mover. The Siberian is the only one who could begin to match you, and she unfortunately doesn't speak much.” His lips creased in a condescending smile as he glanced from her to the pyrokinetic. “And while Burnscar can undoubtedly cover a lot of ground in a short time, the fires she has to set in the process would negate the concept of scouting without giving oneself away, don't you think?”

Grudgingly, she nodded. “Of course,” she replied; he wondered if she noticed that she'd accidentally echoed his own words. “I'll go and see what's going on. Should I check toward the city or away first?” Lifting into the air under the impetus of her telekinetic manipulation, the ton of glass surrounding her managed to pull off the near-impossible trick of looking as light as a feather.

“ … toward, I should think,” Jack decided after a moment of thought. “It would make more sense that they'd block the road from that end first.”

A few drops of rain fell, and she looked upward unhappily. “It's starting to rain,” she pointed out; not quite a complaint, her comment was giving him the option to tell her to wait it out, he judged.

“The quicker you get it done, the quicker you'll be back here,” he pointed out cheerfully. It wasn't his problem; he was going to be staying nice and dry whether it rained or not.

With an almost inaudible noise of discontent, she lifted into the sky and headed north. He watched her go, then headed back to the picnic table he'd been sitting at as heavier drops began to fall. Mannequin, standing nearby, tilted his head to catch Jack's attention. He made several motions with his hands, which Jack interpreted as She's not going to be thrilled with you when she gets back, you know.

“Yeah, I know.” Jack shrugged. It was an occupational hazard; to be a member of the Nine, a cape needed to be at least a little unstable. This meant they were sometimes a little challenging to keep pointed in the same direction, but he'd managed it so far. “I'll talk to her. She'll see reason.” They always did; it was a gift he had. King, the founder of the Nine, had tried to maintain his position by keeping everyone intimidated with his power; if he could touch you just once, you'd already lost the fight. It hadn't helped him against Jack and the boy who'd called himself Harbinger; between ranged attacks and the ability to always dodge their opponent, they'd worn the older man down until no more lives stood between him and defeat. It was probably a good thing that Harbinger had moved on, because Jack suspected they would've eventually come to blows over the leadership of the group, and he wasn't at all certain of his chances against the other man.

As he sat down, a grinding sound alerted him to the fact Crawler was eating the concrete bench that had been knocked over. “Must you?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

Crawler didn't stop eating, but several of his secondary mouths replied. “I'm hungry. And this got in my way.”

If Crawler had been any normal cape, Jack would've doubted his ability to digest such a meal, but he'd once seen the monstrous parahuman eat half a car when he was bored. “I wasn't talking about the damage. You know what happens when that stuff mixes with your stomach acids.” The floor under Crawler was already heavily pitted, with noxious gas billowing up from the holes.

Crawler shrugged, an odd movement considering his pseudo-quadruped build. “Not my problem.” He kept eating the bench.

Jack sighed and moved to another seat, this one upwind from Crawler. He knew what this was all about; Crawler wanted to go to Brockton Bay, and was acting out because Jack wasn't letting them go. But Jack couldn't be sure there wasn't a trap waiting for them.

A loud rumble rattled the roof of the shelter, and Jack glanced sharply at Crawler. But as it happened again a moment later, he realised it was thunder rather than the immense cape's insane digestive system. That, however, was only a matter of time.

Come on, Shatterbird. The sooner you get answers, the sooner we can get out of here.

<><>​

Top of Captain's Hill

Uber

“Okay,” said L33t, striding over to the edge of the observation platform. Brockton Bay spread out beneath them, looking oddly beautiful from this angle. Uber knew better; close up, the city was little better than a cesspit in some places. “We're gonna find a cape of some sort and we're gonna zap 'em. Then we watch to see what happens.”

“How are we even gonna see them, let alone target them?” asked Uber pragmatically. “They'll literally be miles away.”

“Leave that to me.” Pulling an oddly-designed set of binoculars from his belt, L33t gestured out over the city. “These little babies use non-Newtonian physics to crunch space so you can ignore about ninety-nine point nine percent of the distance. They work great, but I always get a ringing in my ears after I've used them.” Holding the binoculars to his eyes, he began to scan the city.

“I'm pretty sure non-Newtonian physics doesn't work—hey, what's that over there?” Uber pointed at where a tiny spark hovered in the air, far off in the distance. If he was right, it was hovering over I-95, which headed southward in the general direction of Boston.

“Where? Lemme see.” L33t lowered the binoculars so he could see where Uber was pointing. “Huh. Is that Purity?”

“Don't think so.” Uber shaded his eyes and peered in that direction. “See that gap in the clouds? Sunbeam came right through there and lit them up, whatever they are.” The gap in question was narrowing rapidly, but as luck would have it, the beam kept up with the tiny dot, illuminating it brightly.

“Huh, right.” L33t put the binoculars to his eyes and peered in that direction. “Oh shit.” Lowering them, he turned to Uber, his face drained of all blood. “Shit. Dude, we gotta get out of town. That's fucking Shatterbird. The Slaughterhouse Nine's in town.”

“Holy fuck. Let me see.” Uber didn't quite snatch the binoculars from L33t's hands, but it was a near thing. Holding them to his eyes, he moved them back and forth across the sky to acquire the target. Abruptly, a brightly-glinting form swooped into view; glass wings spread wide, it was indeed Shatterbird. “Fuck!” Involuntarily, he recoiled, losing the sight picture. Recovering, he looked for her again and found her. “What's she doing?” It looked like she was scanning the road below her for something.

“Who the fuck cares, dude?” L33t tugged at his arm. “We've gotta get out of here. Leave town. Or at least barricade ourselves in our base. It's the fuckin' Nine.”

“Wait a minute. Let me think.” Uber stared at the still-humming backpack on L33t's back. “What's the range on these guns? You were gonna shoot at capes over the city, right?”

L33t stared at him as if he'd started babbling in Esperanto. “You want to shoot at her? She's a member of the Nine! They'll shred us!”

“No.” Uber shook his head firmly. “What happened to the L33t I saw last night, the one who made thunder roll when he laughed? What happened to the luck gun? Don't you think it'll work any more?”

“Then, I was the luckiest asshole in the country,” L33t said. “Now, I'm just another second-rate Tinker. And I don't wanna become a second-rate corpse. Now, let's go!”

“Thanks.” Uber grinned at him. “I was wondering where I was going wrong.” He unslung the rifle from his back and pointed it at L33t.

“Hey, what the fu—” yelped L33t, but Uber had already pulled the trigger. The humming from his pack cycled up to audible levels, and a crackling beam of coruscating purple and orange light bathed L33t from head to toe.

Uber kept the trigger down until the gun sputtered and died, then looked at his best buddy. “You all right?” he asked, not without reason; once more, L33t's hair was standing on end, and his eyes seemed to have an odd inner glow.

“You shot me.” L33t's voice was flat.

“Uh, yeah.” It began to dawn on Uber that maybe he'd gone a little too far. “Sorry, but I thought—”

“Forget sorry!” L33t cackled out loud as he snatched his own rifle off his back. Overhead, thunder rolled. “That's just what I fuckin' needed. Okay, Shatterbitch. Time for me to luck you up!”

Uber shook his head. “That just sounded wrong.” It didn't matter how lucky L33t was, his puns were still fucking horrible.

“Do I look like someone who gives a shit?” L33t cackled again as he fiddled with the rifle, eliciting another thunderous accompaniment. “Okay, setting this bad boy to homing.” Raising the weapon to his shoulder, he sighted in on the distant spark. “Let's ruin her whole century.” Then he pulled the trigger.

The beam that leaped from the emitter at the tip of the barrel didn't seem to be able to make up its mind what colour it wanted to be. At first, it was deep green, but that faded to a rather attractive aquamarine as it crackled and writhed across the sky. Uber watched it reach out toward Shatterbird, twisting and curling through the air. At the last second, he raised the Tinker-binoculars and caught the look of utter astonishment on her face, just before she launched herself sideways in an effort to avoid the incoming attack.

Which was the exact wrong move to do; had she stayed where she was, the semi-randomly hunting stream of bad-luck energy would probably have missed her. Of course, it was bad luck energy, being directed by a guy who was brim-full of good luck, so it may well have been going to happen that way all the time. Uber decided that trying to analyse the difference between imposed luck and real luck would give him a headache, so he wasn't going to think about it any more.

Whatever the reason, Shatterbird dodged straight into the path of the beam. It latched on to her and then intensified, the humming of the pack going into overdrive. Uber saw the beam brighten considerably, and shift straight through blue to a deep, almost invisible, violet. Shatterbird was enveloped in the field at the far end, and from the increasingly desperate evasive manoeuvres she was pulling, she was not in the least bit happy about it. To be fair, this would've been his own reaction as well.

And then she pulled off the impossible. One moment, she was firmly enmeshed in the bad-luck aura, and then she was free of it. And she was flying toward Captain's Hill. With the excellent view of her face via the binoculars, Uber could see exactly how pissed she was. The word 'murderous' bobbed to the top of his mind and stayed there, because it fitted her expression really well.

“Hit her again!” he urged L33t, lowering the binoculars. For half a second, he considered making a bolt for the car. Then he decided that there was no way in hell they'd make it off the hill in one piece with a member of the Nine bearing down on them. Which led to the next thought in the chain: What the living fuck was I thinking, accepting that a 'bad luck' gun would do anything against a stone killer like Shatterbird? And even if L33t's extra lucky right now, I'm not!

For a second, as the beam intensified again, he thought L33t had reacquired her. But this was not the case; while Shatterbird was still arrowing in at them, the beam was reaching past her, literally arching out of sight around the curve of another one of the hills flanking the one they were on. Whatever who or what it had latched on to was, it wasn't her!

“Dude!” he yelled. “What the fuck are you doing? Hit her again!” Frantically, he began to claw the trap off his belt. He didn't even know if it would function correctly, or if she'd end up in the exact position needed to pull off a Hail Mary, but it was better than just standing there and waiting for her to murder him with ten thousand glass razors.

“It won't!” L33t shouted back. “It's fixed on to someone else! I didn't even know it shot that far!” He let off on the trigger, and the beam cut out, then he pointed it more closely toward Shatterbird's oncoming form. Adding to the pucker factor, they could actually see her as a human form with glass wings now, and not just a glinting dot. Not that she was being illuminated from above any more; in fact, the clouds were building up above Captain's Hill even more thickly than before.

Before L33t could fire again at Uber's silent urging, something else did it for him. Just as the first heavy raindrops began to fall, lightning stabbed down from the clouds above, hitting something on the slopes of the hill. On the way, it neatly intercepted Shatterbird's path, lighting her up like a fucking Christmas tree. Uber wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but that lightning bolt seemed to hang there forever, pulses of electricity running through it … and her. Even as the KRAKATHOOM did its best to make his eardrums meet in the middle of his head, he saw her limp figure falling to the ground far below, shards of glass surrounding her like twinkling snowflakes.

He never actually witnessed her hitting the ground, but that was probably because he was trying to blink the intense violet line out of his vision. And shaking his head in a vain attempt to get some of his hearing back. He did register that L33t was tugging at his arm, and looked that way. His buddy's mouth was moving, and after squinting a bit and concentrating on lip-reading, he figured out that L33t was saying, “Come on, we gotta go.”

Which was a great idea, especially as it was starting to rain in earnest now. Also, they weren't being flayed alive by Shatterbird, so being hit by lightning had probably taken her all the way out of the picture. He hoped. Stumbling in the general direction of the car, he pulled the backpack off and slung it into the back seat, along with the trap. Using it would've been a crapshoot anyway, and L33t was the lucky one right then, not him. On the heels of that realisation came another one: Holy crap, the bad luck gun actually worked!

Working more on instinct than rational thought, he got the car started and set it moving off down the hill. He knew his hearing was starting to come back when he heard L33t swearing. It was kind of impressive; he hadn't known the guy had such an extensive vocabulary of profanity. “What's the matter?” he asked, making sure to concentrate on the road; even with the wipers going full speed, he had trouble seeing more than a few dozen yards ahead.

“We fucking killed Shatterbird,” L33t spat, sounding utterly livid at the idea. Uber wasn't at all sure why; after all, she'd been on the point of murdering them. If she'd chosen to use her scream over the city, a good chunk of Brockton Bay would've been massacred or maimed with no warning whatsoever. And they would've also been dead, which was a bit more important in his mind.

“Yeah, we did,” he agreed. “Your luck gun fucking worked. I'm sorry I ever doubted it. Man, what a way to go. Struck by lightning.” He forced a chuckle. It wasn't really convincing, even to his own ears. That had been way too damn close.

“No, you don't get it,” L33t persisted. “We killed Shatterbird. There's a kill order out on her head. Maybe a million dollars worth of bounty. And now, even if we tell everyone, even if we can find the fucking body, nobody's gonna believe it was us. She got struck by lightning. Luck gun? Don't be ridiculous.” He started swearing again.

Oh, for fuck's sake. L33t was right. A million dollars would've added very nicely to their kitty, but the chances of their actually being able to claim it were probably minimal to none. There'd been no witnesses at the top of the hill, and Uber was willing to bet nobody had been looking that way with recording equipment at the right time. Being infused with good luck so you don't die is one thing. Getting money out of it is apparently something totally different.

Then again, he supposed, he shouldn't be greedy. Shatterbird was dead, they were alive, and the luck guns worked. That's something, I guess.

<><>​

The Slaughterhouse Nine (now Seven)

Jack Slash

The rain was still only coming down in single drops rather than a downpour, but Jack was certain this would change relatively soon, by the way the clouds were getting darker. Also, Crawler's gut had yet to react to the concrete bench he'd just finished ingesting; Jack hoped the latter event would come sooner rather than later, so they could get it over with. He wasn't sure if the monstrous cape even had to eat to stay alive, or if he did it simply because he felt like it. Certainly, the few times capes had managed to destroy any large parts of him, the lost parts regenerated in mere seconds, so it wasn't as if he needed food to build biomass.

And then all other considerations were driven from his mind, as some kind of energy discharge hit the roof of the shelter and filled the interior with crazily crackling arcs of violet lightning. Several grounded into him and he flinched back, but all he felt was a mild tickling sensation. In another instant, the Siberian was beside him with one hand on his shoulder and the other holding Bonesaw's hand. The tickling did not cease, and he held up his hand to watch the violet fire creating a web-like effect between his outspread fingers.

“I think it's harmless,” he said, studying the effect with interest. “Whatever it is. Alan, any ideas?” He looked over at the white-carapaced killer, who hadn't moved from his position. In the distance, lightning cracked down from the clouds, and thunder rolled.

Mannequin shrugged eloquently, then made several hand gestures just as the effect ended. Jack read them as Saint Elmo's fire maybe?

No scientist himself, Jack had still heard of the phenomenon. Purple fire seemed to be a documented aspect of it, as did the fact that it occurred during thunderstorms. The smell of ozone was also not unexpected. “Maybe,” he allowed. “That or some Tinker trying out their new toys.” A corner of his mouth hitched up in a sardonic grin. “And now we know for a fact nobody knows we're here. If they did, whatever we just got hit with would've been a sight more deadly.”

“I'm more worried about the fact that we got hit at all and we don't know who did it, where they are or what it was supposed to do.” Burnscar looked around as everyone focused their attention on her. “What? We were all thinking the same thing.”

“She's right,” Bonesaw said. “Tinkers don't make stuff that does nothing.” She reached up to her shoulder and petted the spider-bot that lurked there; Jack was certain it arched what passed for a back into her stroking hand. “Isn't that right, sweetie?”

Jack nodded to concede the point. “True, but until we find out what did it, and what it did, we can't worry about every tiny thing. And we can't stay here, on the off-chance that we were deliberately targeted, and that was a ranging shot.” Standing up, he briskly dusted off the seat of his pants. “So. No vehicles coming past to hijack, and I don't feel like doing much walking. Ideas for getting transportation?”

Bonesaw looked speculatively at her spider-bots, and Jack just knew she was thinking of volunteering them to pull the bus like a sleigh. As oddly-appealing as that idea was, there was no way he could think of to make it work. A moment later it seemed she'd come to the same conclusion, because she shook her head.

Likewise, Burnscar signalled negation, as did Mannequin. But then Hatchet Face, who'd been sitting at the far end of the shelter so his power didn't interfere with theirs, spoke up unexpectedly. “This is gonna sound stupid,” he said, raising his voice so they could hear him.

Jack waited, but it seemed that was all the bulky cape-killer had to say for the moment. “Yes …?” he prompted. “If it's a stupid idea but it works, then it's not a stupid idea.”

After a moment of hesitation, Hatchet Face nodded. “The Flintstones. They've got a car that they move by pushing their feet against the road.” He settled back down into the brooding silence he'd been employing up till now.

It was definitely an unusual idea, but as Jack mulled it over, he could see it working. All they needed was someone strong enough to provide the motive power.

“What? No!” Crawler backed off a couple of paces. “I'm not pushing any stupid bus.”

He was the intuitive choice, but Jack hadn't survived for so long by making the intuitive choice every time. “You don't have to,” he assured Crawler. Turning his attention to the Siberian, he treated her to his most winning smile. “So how about it?”

She gave him a very unimpressed look.

<><>​

Uber

By the time they got back to base, L33t had at least stopped swearing. He inspected Uber's luck gun, and nodded. “Good,” he said. “Secondary reservoir's loaded with bad luck. There'll be a percentage of loss, but I'll be able to charge mine almost to full with it. I didn't use all mine, but I should be able to get yours half-charged at least.”

Uber had taken the time to do some thinking. “What's our next move?” he asked. “I'm thinking we pack our shit and get the fuck out of Dodge, at least until the Nine are gone.” He gave his partner a firm nod, fully expecting him to go along with the plan.

“What? No.” L33t looked incredulously at him. “Fuck that, bro. You saw what we did? We killed Shatterbird.” Turning to where the two packs were sitting on his worktable, he set about connecting them with odd-looking cables. “I'm not leaving town, not now.”

“Yeah, we killed Shatterbird,” Uber repeated. “And where there's Shatterbird, there's Jack Slash and the rest of the Nine. They'll want to know what happened to her, and they won't care who they ask or how they ask.” He shuddered, not even wanting to imagine being tortured for information by the likes of Jack Slash or Bonesaw. Or worse, being recruited by them.

“And they haven't got the faintest fucking idea what's happened to her,” L33t stated confidently. “If they did, we'd already be dead by now. Who's on their roster again?” Plugging a couple of heavy leads from the wall into the backpacks, he watched the gauges with satisfaction.

Reluctantly, Uber retrieved his phone and went on to the mobile version of PHO. From there, he accessed the information page on the Nine. “Jack Slash, of course,” he reported. “The Siberian, Bonesaw, Mannequin … huh. Looks like Hatchet Face replaced Winter. Shatterbird, Burnscar and Crawler. Well, we can scratch Shatterbird off the list, anyway.”

“So, seven left,” L33t said, stepping away from the workbench and dusting off his hands. “You saw what happened to Shatterbird when we gave her a serious dose of bad luck. If we can do that to the rest of them, they'll die without even knowing why.” He wandered over to the fridge and got himself an energy drink, then shook his head and put it back. “No, pass on that. I think I need some sleep.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Uber retorted. “You've been up for more than twenty-four hours if I'm doing my math right. Is that what's gotten into you? Does too much caffeine and no sleep turn you into a suicidal idiot? Taking on the Nine? For fuck's sake.”

L33t shook his head. “No, dude. This is all your fault. I think it's the luck you dosed me up with. It's not just good luck; I also get confident. Really fucking confident.”

“Yeah, you were kind of pussying out before I shot you, weren't you?” Uber facepalmed. “I should've left well enough alone. You do realise you're relying on bad luck to fuck over Crawler and the Siberian? Crawler regenerates from basically anything, and the Siberian ignores fucking everything. I don't think there's enough bad luck in the world to fuck them up.”

“We'll just have to see.” Letting out a jaw-cracking yawn, L33t headed for his bedroom. “Get on PHO and spread the rumour that the Nine have been seen. It should make people more cautious. I'm gonna get my head down. If anything comes up, wake me.” The door closed behind him, leaving Uber to scratch his head.

Damn, this is a side of him I've never seen before.

<><>​

Jack Slash

Settling himself into the driver's seat of the RV, Jack let off the handbrake and called back over his shoulder, “Okay, let's go.”

Behind him, waist-deep in a hole that had been cored through the floor of the bus—really, they'd had any number of options for making such a hole, but Jack had chosen to let the Siberian do the deed—the Siberian took hold of the vehicle itself and made both it and the road beneath her impervious to damage. Then she started pushing. Jack was impressed despite himself; even though he had a good idea of the extent of her powers, it was still very cool to experience.

To unlock the steering, he turned the key to light up the dash, and watched the GPS come online. Sure enough, it had them travelling south and west instead of north and east, and its audible notifications were both irritating and unintelligible. Idly, he stabbed at the screen with his knife, wanting to hear and see it die a fitting death. His knife blade bounced off the flimsy plastic, reminding himself that he could damage no part of the bus while the Siberian's power was in play. With an irritated grunt, he found the switch to flip it off.

To pass the time, he turned on the radio. The local radio channels weren't hard to find, and he began to listen to them, skipping between stations to try to find local breaking news. Shatterbird still hadn't turned up at the shelter by the time they were ready to go, so there was half a chance that she'd gone into the city to start causing problems. She really did enjoy using her scream to announce their arrival. In Jack's opinion, it was getting a little boring; they needed to change things up. Perhaps have Crawler destroy a local landmark?

There was nothing on the radio to indicate her presence, and looking out through the windshield he couldn't see columns of rising smoke. In fact, it looked like another boring Saturday afternoon. As soon as we get into the city, I'll have Burnscar set something on fire, he decided. Then we'll take out the emergency responders. That'll give Shatterbird something to home in on. We'll disappear before the capes show, then pop up somewhere else. It was a tried and true formula.

With a sigh, he began flipping channels again. The first he hit was a talk show of some sort. “To all my listeners, this is Frank Webster of Brockton Saturday Afternoon! Welcome—” This was the sort of guy who needed a knife to the face. Then again, most people he met needed a knife to the face. It was a very common condition, and one which he was pleased to be able to cater for. He changed channels again.

“—to Brockton Bay—” A dull, dreary voice, relating some kind of historical documentary. Ugh. Flip again.

“—Jack Slash, leader of the Slaughterhouse Nine—” That sounded like an interesting channel; he might come back to that one, once he'd checked out the others.

“—you're gonna—” The chirpy, irritating tone grated on him like nothing else. Flip.

“—die here!”

What. The. Fuck?

Sitting up in the seat, he stared at the radio. He'd gotten death threats many times—including from the PRT—but never from a random sampling of radio channels. “Did anyone hear that?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder.

“Hear what?” asked Burnscar, rousing from a doze. Across from her, Bonesaw was obviously engrossed in modifying one of her spider-bots while the Siberian busily pushed the RV. Mannequin was in power-down mode, and Crawler seemed to be asleep. Hatchet Face was riding at the very rear of the RV, where his power would only interfere with Crawler's.

“Never mind,” Jack said, turning back to the radio. It was still burbling away with some kind of public service announcement, so he flicked back to the channel that had mentioned him by name.

“—don't say you weren't warned. Next on our list of 'Most Despised Men in America', we have—”

Reaching out, he shut the radio off. That had been too creepy for words, and he'd had Grey Boy in the Nine for years, right up until Glaistig Uaine had 'harvested' the kid's powers and then had herself shut up in the Birdcage.

The rest of the trip into the city passed in silence, broken only by Crawler's monumental snores.

<><>​

As they entered the city limits, Jack looked around for a place where they could stop and get out without attracting undue notice. An overpass up ahead caught his eye; it was perfect. Not only was it out of the public eye, but they'd have a reasonable view in all directions. “Stopping just up here,” he called out.

As the vehicle rolled to a halt, he thought he heard thunder again, but then he realised the sound was coming from within the RV. Crawler's latest meal was finally starting to catch up with him, which made it even more imperative that they stop and get out, at least for a while. He set the handbrake, then climbed out. Burnscar roused herself and climbed out after him, followed by Bonesaw. They wandered after him as he headed down to the rear of the RV, where Crawler was just backing his bulky body out through the makeshift entry hatch they'd jury-rigged together.

“Okay, Burnscar, this next bit's for you,” he said. “We're gonna find someplace important and I want you to set it on fire.” He watched her eyes, alert for any signs of pushback. “You can do that for me, can't you?”

“Set it on fire?” She seemed reluctant, and he recalled that she hadn't used her powers for some little while. “Do I have to?”

Fortunately, he'd done this dance before. “Well, you don't have to. Nobody's forcing you. But you want to, don't you?” In her eyes, he could see the impact his words were making. The depressive was receding and the pyromaniac was coming out to play.

“Well, I guess,” she muttered, and held her hands out, cupped together. Behind her, Crawler dropped heavily to the asphalt. And then there was a sound like the loudest, most raucous air-horn Jack had ever heard. What flooded over Jack then was the most horrifically intense stench he'd ever encountered, but then it got worse. Desperately, he opened his mouth to tell Burnscar to stand down, but he choked on the miasma, cutting off his words. And then there was fire. All the fire in the world.

BOOOOM

<><>​

Consciousness slowly returned, and with it the awareness of pain. Jack kept his eyes shut, not sure what was going on and unwilling to betray his state to potential enemies. Then he heard a familiar voice.

“How are you feeling, Mister Jack?”

He groaned. Every inch of his body hurt. The skin on his face felt tightly-stretched, as if he'd gotten a bad sunburn. Inching his eyes open, he looked up into Bonesaw's worried eyes. “What … happened?” he managed, despite a severe case of dry-mouth.

“Crawler, um, farted,” reported Bonesaw, giving a nervous giggle. “And when Burnscar lit her fire, she ignited a cloud of it. It … um … exploded.” She put a straw between his lips and he sipped at it. Cool water filled his mouth. As he inhaled through his nostrils, he felt the telltale pull of stitches in his chest, and he wondered just how badly he'd been injured. “I was knocked out, and when I came to, Burnscar was gone. Well, mostly.” She wrinkled her nose. “Crawler and Hatchet Face have been making jokes ever since.”

He tried to sit up, and discovered that he had a massive headache. But he persisted anyway, realising halfway through the endeavour that he was resting on one of the cramped beds in the RV. “That's got to be wrong,” he rasped. “Even as bad as that explosion was, it shouldn't have vaporised her.”

“I don't think it did, but it definitely wounded her badly, maybe even killed her,” Bonesaw said. “You were hurt real bad, and she was a lot closer to the explosion than you. We found an arm; I think the rest of her was blown off the overpass. Crawler said he saw a garbage truck driving away down the road. She might've fallen in the back.”

Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. What are the odds? That Bonesaw could've pulled Burnscar back from beyond the brink of death, he had no doubt. But the problem was, there was no body to work with, and they didn't have a Mover to go find it. Or maybe we do. “Has Shatterbird shown up?”

Solemnly, she shook her head. “No. And it's been a couple of hours. What do you want us to do?”

With a sudden horrified suspicion, Jack reached up to his face. Not only were his eyebrows gone, but his beard had also been scorched off his face, as had all the hair from the front of his head. “Tell the others to get the RV somewhere safe, then we'll camp down for the night. I'll make new plans then.”

“Okay, Mister Jack.” Bonesaw disappeared from sight.

Jack flopped back on to the bed and groaned. I hope nobody ever hears about this incident. We'd never live it down. And now we're down three members.

Sleep was unfortunately all too long in coming.

<><>​

Hebert Household

Danny

Danny looked up from the paper as Taylor stirred the casserole in the kitchen. “Hey, have you heard about this National Chicken Festival thing?” he called out.

She came to the kitchen door, still holding the wooden spoon. “Um, I don't think so,” she said uncertainly. “What's it about ... no, forget I asked. When's it happening?”

“Monday afternoon, apparently,” he replied, rechecking the date. “Want to come with me and check it out? We'll make it a father-daughter day.” And afterward, he could check on the Dockworkers doing roadworks in the area. If they did a good job, they'd be more likely to be hired again by Don Hammett in the future.

“Um, sure.” She shrugged, then grinned. “Sounds like it could be interesting.”

He gave her an encouraging smile in return. “That's my girl.”



End of Part Thirteen

Part Fourteen