Kid Win's First Girlfriend (Worm)

Chapter 5: Application

Universe S
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Jack Slash paused theatrically, as if expecting an excited response. When none was forthcoming, he frowned, and rolled his eyes. “Kids these days. Such a tough audience. Don’t you want to hear about my offer? I assure you, the alternative is worse.”

Chris felt naked out of costume in this situation, and not only because he literally was naked. It was worse really; he felt as if his skin was missing. He guessed all his gear wouldn’t actually help much with the Siberian here, staring at them from the doorway, but facing down villains as Christopher Chambers instead of Kid Win just felt bizarre. Sophia was still hesitating behind him though, So he felt he better take the lead here.

“I got the impression that you and yours didn’t offer much to heroes besides death,” he replied. His voice was less shaky than he’d thought it would be.

“Perhaps it’s death I offer, but that’s a coin with two sides. Wouldn’t killing me, or even any of my Nine, let you put a real mark on the world?” Jack smirked. “When I come to town, the stakes are real. That isn’t what this conversation is about though.”

“The Slaughterhouse Nine recently became only eight.” Jack’s eyes drifted to Sophia, over her own naked body. “And the Siberian thinks you might make the cut, little shadow. I guess you have similar fashion sense, at least.” Seemingly bored, Jack drew a blade into his hand and flicked it idly, scratching the observation window.

Sophia seemed to be regaining her composure, despite her recent emotional rollercoaster and her pressing lack of any clothes. “I’ve never been a villain!” She said defiantly.

At this, the Siberian entered, walking up to her until the top of Sophia’s crossbow rested on her breastbone, daring her to shoot. Sophia locked eyes with her and phased into shadow, not firing but thrusting the entire crossbow forward, through the Siberian and into her chest before dephasing and diving to the side.

Chris acted at the same time, shooting at Jack while rolling into cover by the couch. His effort was for naught though; Jack was already dodging even before he’d reacted, and Chris was certain the flick of Jack’s knife would cut his throat. It didn’t.

The sharp crack warned Chris just in time, and he was just able to grab a cushion off the couch to deflect the pane of glass Jack had cut away. His defense was far from perfect though, and a last cut by Jack as it fell separated a couple small shards to tear into his leg.

Meanwhile, the Siberian stood passive and unharmed, smiling. The crossbow Sophia had phased into her was destroyed by her invincibility when it came back to solidity, and the pieces of it that hadn’t intersected her body simply fell to the ground. As they landed, Jack broke out laughing.

Sophia’s frantic motion was halted by the utter failure of their attack and the lack of response, and she ended up with her back to the wall, her eyes sweeping the room frantically. Chris could tell she wanted to run, but knew she wouldn’t leave him here injured. Considering the situation, he wished she would.

Before Chris could grit through the pain and fear and tell his girlfriend to run the hell away, Jack managed to stop laughing and spoke, “And that’s why the Siberian picked you! You have the killer instinct. You’re an animal inside, looking to mark your territory and fight for your dinner. You can’t let anybody decide that you’re weak.”

He looked down at Chris, “And you too! I chose you, you see. At first, I merely thought I was indulging the Siberian, letting her chosen predator run with a packmate. But now, I see you’re really built of the same stuff! It’s part of your instincts to send violent signals to the world. It’s how you live, the way you want to survive.”

“So we aren’t as pathetic as the rest of the heroes, and that’s why we have to play your game?” Sophia spat.

Jack shrugged. “Pretty much. I doubt you’ve ever liked the leash the Protectorate puts around your neck, unlike the rest of those tame dogs. You want to be free again, don’t you?”

Sophia was quiet after that, her face wracked by conflict. Seeming to decide the fight was over for now, she pulled open a drawer in the desk, retrieving a first aid kit, and warily crossed the room to work on Chris’ bloodied leg.

Chris knew she hadn’t enjoyed the restrictions heaped on her when she was dragooned into the Wards, and in retrospect he could understand why she’d been so angry. She’d been one of the good guys hadn’t she? Who really cared if some villains were hurt at the end of the day? Bureaucrats like the Pig tying their hands were probably half the reason things in Brockton Bay were as bad as they were.

Chris couldn’t help but be thankful Shadow Stalker had been brought into the Wards though, since it had been her that had pulled the wool off from over his eyes, her that had become his kindred spirit over these last couple wild days. As she phased bits of glass out of his leg one by one, he knew that not even all the deranged maniacs in the world could have a chance of pulling them apart.

Chris carefully turned up at Jack from the ground. “Do you really think we’ll betray each other over this twisted contest?”

Jack replied speculatively, “Probably not, but you don’t have to. Failure in this competition does mean death, but you can open up more slots, and even earn some extra credit while so doing, by the simple expedient of killing off some of your examiners. It’s natural selection at its finest.”

At this Jack waved the Siberian out of the room, apparently deciding their conversation was over. “That’s about it for introductions. Don’t make such a half-assed attack again, don’t expect your so-called superiors to actually be useful, and don’t forget to mind the bell.” With that, he left.

Sophia finished extracting the glass, and wiped down Chris’ cuts with disinfectant, making him cringe a bit. As she mechanically got out the bandages, she asked him, “So what the fuck do we do?”

He shook his head, and smiled despite himself. “I guess we fight.”

Universe T
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Taylor wasn’t browsing on the computer anymore. She had a thick stack of paper files instead. She wasn’t out of costume either; Weaver’s grayscale armor had replaced the casual clothing. She and Chris weren’t alone in Wards HQ; all of his teammates were there too, overflowing with tension. Instead of sharing a seat with Chris, Weaver was alone, sitting on the floor with her back to wall. The quiet drone of insects echoed in his ears, and their idyllic afternoon was six hours and an eternity away.

Taylor had been almost giggly when she left to have dinner with her father earlier, but her meeting with Jack Slash had left her distant and empty, her consciousness spread over the several surrounding blocks. Mannequin had raided the building to confront Armsmaster when she was gone, and she had returned to the it in the middle of an uproar. Despite her own encounter, she had joined the security effort immediately, and even now was sweeping the building with her swarms, trying to detect some trace of the terrifying cyborg Tinker.

The television, the computers, and even the windows had all been packed away with Shatterbird as a pressing threat, helping set a grim tone for all the Wards. Missy and Dean were speaking quietly in one corner of the room, and Aegis and Clockblocker were both in costume and marking up a map with possible routes. The Wards were on high alert, and the plan was to deploy them in concentrated force as a reserve team if necessary, with Vista multiplying the mobility of the entire team.

Chris wanted to go to Taylor, to comfort her, but he could guess that she wouldn’t like the spectacle the PDA would cause, so he stayed at his workbench. The routine maintenance he’d been occupied with earlier was done, so now he trying desperately to come up with something new, anything that was good enough to help against the Nine.

He’d never really gotten his alternator cannon to the point where he was confident with it, and was looking at it now, but found himself uninspired. The rapid frequency fluctuations the gun used could theoretically be devastating, but they were also very stressful on the cannon itself, and lens burnout was a constant spectre. He could compromise by slowing down the frequency changes, but that would drastically reduce the effectiveness of the concept to begin with. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

He sighed in frustration and put his head in his hands. It was the story of his life all over again; when the chips were down, he just wasn’t good enough. Not good enough to cheer up his mother with decent grades in school. Not good enough to be a real Tinker with a real specialization. Definitely not good enough to help save his wonderful girlfriend from the horde of lunatic supervillains out for her blood. If it hadn’t been for Dragon and his fellow Wards helping, she probably wouldn’t even be his girlfriend to begin with.

When he’d chosen his cape name, years ago, he’d thought that joining the Wards was a new beginning for him. Christopher Chambers was a loser; he couldn’t do anything right. Kid Win would be a winner, able to engineer a solution to any challenge and fight any villain. He thought he could be like Armsmaster (when he’d first joined, he would stare at the mirror every morning, hoping a beard would start to grow in.) In the end though, it turned out that Kid Win was just another chapter in the sad book of Chris.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” Weaver said, uncertainly. “You ok?”

“I should probably be asking you that,” Chris replied.

Weaver sat down next to him on the bench. “Be careful what you wish for I guess, huh?” Her in costume and him out of it only emphasized their height difference, her edgy mask making her seem even taller.

Chris turned to her, worriedly, “Taylor, I know you didn’t really mean what you said before, you were just frustrated. I know what it feels like for the Protectorate to tie your hands.”

“I got what I wanted though, didn’t I?” Her voice broke a bit, and she looked down for a moment. “Piggot declared a state of emergency and cleared everything. Bullet ants, giant hornets, eyes, suffocation, the whole works. I can’t help but think this is exactly what he wanted. I’m going to be fighting the Slaughterhouse Nine with tools that make me look like one of their members already.”

Chris couldn’t really bring himself to care that they weren’t alone anymore. He reached over to her and undid the latches tying her mask to the rest of her silk costume. He slowly took it off, rested it on the bench, and hugged her. The chitin paneling in the armor she wore emphasized her hard, lean figure, but the skin on her neck was warm and her hair was soft.

He spoke quietly into her ear, “It isn’t about the powers you have Taylor. It’s about what you do with them. And you’ve always been a hero.”

Her body seemed to relax a bit in the hug, losing some of its stiffness. She chuckled a bit, grimly, “And I thought I was going to be comforting you.”

“You did,” he answered.

Taylor broke the hug and picked up her piles of papers from their tiny living carriers on the ground, putting them on an empty section of the bench. “I think I can work just as well from here,” she said, “Unless you don’t have the space?” A little bit of fun had come back into her voice.

“I think I should be able to make room,” Chris replied, smiling.

He settled back into working, and decided to take a new tack. He wasn’t going to easily match any of the Nine (or the eight, he supposed) for raw power, but maybe he could find a specific weakness to exploit. He was a Tinker after all; he should adapt his equipment to the situation at hand. He glanced over at Taylor’s space and borrowed the summary sheet to help him keep it straight; she gave him an absent nod.

Siberian was by all accounts, completely invincible; he didn’t think he would solve the problem so many others, including Hero himself, had failed at. Crawler adapted to new attacks, so it was unlikely Kid Win would do anything but make him stronger with a novel damage type. Shatterbird seemed like a possibility. Maybe if he could make a setting that transmuted glass back into sand somehow? It seemed like a pretty difficult problem, so he tabled it for now, noting it down as a backup plan.

Burnscar did fire, and that was about all she did. Naturally, the response was to try to use water somehow, but Chris didn’t have anything like that either. His handguns had that dehydrator setting, but-

That did the reverse of what he wanted. Thinking quickly, Chris pulled one of his guns over, popping its panel and staring at the selector rotary. He carefully took the dehydrator core out of there and contemplated its function. If he could just rework a couple connectors and flip the thing around, it would soak the target area with water instead, and could be a great weapon against Burnscar’s fire. It was too bad that he would have to sacrifice the dehydration setting to make it work, but that would probably be much less useful in the next few days.

Chris still hesitated. He didn’t like going backwards with his tech, losing features even if there was a speculative gain ahead. He’d actually almost disassembled his hoverboard a couple times in the weeks before Leviathan’s attack, and he was happy now that he’d had the better judgment to keep it intact. Was he making a similar mistake now? He wished he could just switch the little core in and out, rotating it as needed for a given situation.

“Why couldn’t you?” Taylor asked.

Chris started, unaware he’d been talking out loud. “The selector’s too fragile, I could never open it up like this in the field.” The cores were actually kind of durable, so it was a shame, but the connective rotary mechanism itself hadn’t been the easiest to put together. Chris paused. This seemed like it could be a thing.

“Thanks Taylor,” Chris said. He had a lot of work to do, but none of it would be too difficult. In fact, he could see that this might make some more room in the chassis for energy generation, now that he considered it.

Hours later, he was pretty sure he was done. Normally, a retrofit this big would have to go through testing all over again, but with the Slaughterhouse Nine emergency getting it rubber stamped wouldn’t be the work of five minutes.

He’d removed the selector from his handguns entirely, and replaced it with a smaller open compartment he could slot individual cores in and out of quickly. It saved a massive amount of space, and he was able to increase the raw punch of the guns by more than double. Normally switching cores would be way too much manipulation with both his hands full of gun, but he’d gotten Taylor to make little “core belts” out of silk to chain the cores together in, meaning he could just yank them back and forth through the mechanism. The core he wanted would slot into position and the others would hang down off the gun, out of the way. To allow for inversions like the hydration/dehydration core, the compartment the belt was slotted into could be rotated 180 degrees with the belt still inside, allowing for more easy switching.

Chris took a moment to pick them up, pulling the belts back and forth and moving the guns around. The whole assemblage felt incredibly smooth, somehow righter than it had before. He noticed the common room outside his lab was dark; the other Wards had gone to sleep.

“You done for now? It’s gotten pretty late.” Except one. Taylor was still dressed in her bodysuit with her head free, calm and impassive on her corner of the bench. She’d spun around to face him and her papers were packed back into a large stack. He imagined her bugs were still working, sweeping, sewing, listening; they always were.

“Yeah. I guess we should sleep while we can.” Chris didn’t know why the Nine were delaying their open activities for so long, but he was thankful for the respite.

Taylor stood and looked at him, taking her mask from the table and putting it on her belt. Chris was struck again by how beautiful she was. Remarkably tall, supermodel thin, long curly hair spilling down her back.

“Sleep,” Taylor said, as if tasting the word. He could see she looked tired now, and there was a haunted edge in her voice. He suspected that her private encounter with Jack Slash had shaken her more than she was willing to admit, even to herself.

“I don’t think I want to sleep alone tonight,” she finished, decided. She walked over to Chris, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him softly on the lips. As it went on, it got deeper and deeper until she finally broke it. She was waiting for an answer.

Oh. Chris just barely managed to get out a response, “I … Taylor, are you sure?”

“Yes.” Taylor took him by the hand, led him to her small private room, and closed the door.

Universe S
​

“The city itself is in a very grim state right now, but it seems that the three of us specifically are in an even worse situation, and that’s why I’ve called you both here,” Armsmaster said as he led Kid Win and Shadow Stalker into his expansive lab complex, entrenched in the basement of the PRT HQ.

The minutes after the confrontation with Jack Slash and the Siberian had been hectic for Chris and Sophia, and the day hadn’t slowed down since then. After quickly wrapping the wounds on Chris’ leg, they had dressed and called the PRT on the run. Getting confirmation that the Nine were in the city out quickly was obviously important, but it was also obviously important not to draw attention to Shadow Stalker’s illicit lair in the warehouse.

They needn’t have worried much about Shadow Stalker’s probation though, because the PRT was already in a frenzy when they reported in over Mannequin’s infiltration of the HQ. The insane Tinker had had a violent confrontation with Armsmaster during their tense meeting with Jack, and then exited the building as stealthily as he’d entered it. With everyone frantically locking the base down, there hadn’t been any time or resources for a thorough investigation of their own scene and they’d just gotten pickup from a PRT van.

After that, there had been hasty debriefings, the declaration of a state of emergency, and a large scale effort to resecure the building and lock down all the glass in storage. With all that just winding down, Armsmaster had ordered them to meet him in his lab. Kid Win had already guessed that it was because all three were now involuntary applicants in the Nine’s deadly recruitment drive.

Armsmaster moved at his rapid, ‘efficient’ pace, leading the two of them down an aisle. Kid Win hadn’t been here more times than he could count on one hand before now, but he could tell the lab was in more than a bit of disarray after the battle with Mannequin. Even so, everything appeared to be stabilized, and Armsmaster seemed to have different objectives in mind than cleanup right now.

“If we’re going to survive this with our bodies and minds intact, we’re going to need to work together,” Armsmaster continued. “In the normal course of affairs, we can only be willing to escalate so far in the fight against villains, but the Slaughterhouse Nine are just as bad as Leviathan, and have the potential to be just as dangerous. Even worse, the threats of Bonesaw and the Siberian preclude much of the outside help we got in the Endbringer battle, leaving us on our own.”

Kid Win had known that for the past year the Slaughterhouse Nine had held the threat of Bonesaw’s superplagues over the head of the Protectorate and similar organizations to prevent any sort of real force concentration. Even worse, the Siberian could put a permanent end to any parahuman, up to and including Triumvirate members, discouraging response with assets needed to contain the Endbringers’ damage.

“So,” Shadow Stalker replied, “Another S-Class threat, no reinforcements, and we’re all playing a demented game show on top of that. I assume you’re leading us to some gear you made devoted to this exact situation, right?” After a pause, she belatedly added, “Sir.”

Kid Win expected Armsmaster to react badly to her outburst, but instead he just responded flatly, “More or less. Except it isn’t really my gear.” He reached a heavy looking door at the back of the room, and after it ran what looked like a laser scan on his beard, it cracked open to reveal a vault room inside.

Kid Win’s eyebrows rose behind his visor. “These are Baduka’s bombs. I thought we used most of the stockpile against Leviathan, there’s still so much left.” He tensed a bit at the sight; Bakuda’s penchant for hair-triggers was legendary even after her short career.

Armsmaster explained, “This is everything I didn’t have analyzed in time to make sure it was safe to use. Since then, I’ve been through most of it, and we’ll finish tonight. We should be able to modify some of the simpler ones for use with Shadow Stalker’s crossbow, and I have hopes that we might achieve something special using them in concert with her phasing ability. The two of us should be able to make use of the more complex devices.”

By her hesitant body language, Shadow Stalker seemed even more leery of the room full of bombs than Kid Win had been. “Isn’t it supposed to be difficult for Tinkers to use tech that others make? Are we totally sure these bombs won’t all go off unexpectedly?”

A female voice answered her over a hidden speaker, “Is a four sigma confidence bound good enough for you? I’ve been assisting Colin with this project, and my specialty is working with other Tinkertech.” Dragon’s disembodied voice and mathematical assurances didn’t seem to do much for Shadow Stalker’s trepidation, but she swallowed and entered the room anyway.

The session consisted mostly of explanations and safety warnings from Armsmaster and Dragon, along with some careful refitting of smaller bombs into packages that could be delivered by crossbow bolt. Kid Win thought it was a little ironic that earlier today they had been worried about Shadow Stalker’s cache of merely mundane ammo getting discovered.

Kid Win could see that she was starting to feel a little ancillary after a while, despite her contributions concerning the details of her power and her crossbow. She’d gotten up to stretch, leaning against the closed vault door. He decided that made it as good a time as any to bring up the difficult subject of Armsmaster’s encounter and give them all a break from the assembly line.

Kid Win opened hesitantly, “Armsmaster, what happened exactly when you fought Mannequin earlier? We told you in the debrief how Jack Slash was mostly … talkative, but judging by the state of your lab-”

Armsmaster cut him off, “I used to know Sphere, back before the Simurgh got him. He was something of a mentor to me, in fact. He didn’t really need words to get his point across.”

Kid Win blanched, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Before your time,” Armsmaster replied. “Hopefully it won’t be me trying to turn you to the dark side in another ten years.” The joke fell a bit flat, especially with Dragon.

“Don’t say things like that, Colin!” Those six words had more emotion than Kid Win had ever heard from her; she sounded almost frantic at the implication. She continued, more quietly, “I know you’ll get through this.”

Armsmaster didn’t seem sure what to say, but Shadow Stalker filled the silence, “She’s right, you know. Giving up is just what they want you to do. The ritual murders, the hit-and-run fights, this whole recruitment game, it’s all part of their strategy. They want to convince us that they’re the cats and everyone else is the mice. They want us to think the only way to survive is to change our coats and go over to their side. If we accept that before we start, then they’ve already won.” Sophia could be really fucking smart sometimes too.

Armsmaster looked at her seriously, almost as if he’d never really seen her before. “That was well said.” After a beat, he continued, “We should get back to work. We need our claws ready in time for the fight, after all.”


A/N: Props to Guile for being the one (first one I saw do it at least) to come up with the idea of Shadow Stalker using her powers medically here [NSFW]. I had a beta comment that extracting the glass was an interesting idea after reading it, and even though the trick Guile had her do with the sutures works a bit differently, I'm pretty sure that's where I got the thought from.

Double A/N: Poor Sophia, losing the poll. Like Batman, she is edgy and misunderstood (and also kind of a psycho, but it isn't like Taylor isn't too)