Scylla (Worm OC/AU)

I'm trying to start something I can feel motivated to work on. So here is me trying to start creating an OC. This might belong in the NSFW section, so let me know if I should post it there instead.

WARNING: Excessive Gore by some standards, and torture.

1.1

My world was pain.

I couldn’t see, could hardly hear, I couldn’t feel anything except for the knives that held open my chest, the small hands that played with my organs, the slight touches and caresses that were meant to be gentle but sent unimaginable pain shooting through me.

My body tried to heal. My power, useless here, my skin struggled against its restraint, pulling, inching closer before HE sunk another knife into it. My muscles crawled, slippery, sliding like snakes across the gaps, before drips of poison acid ate into them, forcing them back. The pain was incredible.

I almost laughed. I had been called a masochist before, been called sick for enjoying the pain that could be inflicted on me. But not like this. Nothing like this.

Instead I gasped. Tears pooled in empty sockets, before running down the iron spikes that were there instead of my eyes.

Through the mesh where my ears were I heard a faint snicker.

“Stop being suuuch a baaaaby.”

Bonesaw. Speaking of bonesaws, was that what was pressing on my leg. She was trying another amputation. To see if it would grow away from me. It wouldn’t. I had tried before. I would have thought she would be bored by now.

A squeeze of my heart, and a vein in my arm exploded, blood having been forced into it backwards.

Nobody knew where the matter for recreating my body came from, the PRT and their tests had never figured it out. It was just there when it needed to be.

So the blood never stopped flowing. It was pooled around the operating table, the little blond bitch up to her knees in my cells. It had been going on for days. She had made sure to give me time updates hourly, so she knew.

Apparently I was her birthday present, or whatever. A way for her to learn a bit more about human anatomy, a lesson for both her and the rest of her sick twisted team. I was just the perfect subject she had told me. So she hadn’t stopped.

She ate her fast food out of my chest, making sure to put down a plastic sheet first. Over the acid that kept it open, of course. The force fed Big Macs let her ‘study’ how much it took to explode a digestive system when it couldn’t expel waste.

“Don’t you worry, Jack is getting me a special present to finish up, then we’ll be done with you, kay?”

She sounded so sweet, so innocent. I almost had to force myself to hate her. Nah. I really didn’t.

She pulled a rope, and my ribcage popped out with a squelching sound, almost like sucking on a finger when pulling it out of your mouth. It almost came out in one piece, but got hung up on new lungs. It tore them out.

Suddenly my gasping for breath stopped, and I wasn’t breathing. Not the first time that had happened. That had been during a Behemoth fight. The tornado of force following a nuclear explosion that ripped your esophagus from your throat, and pulled it out of your mouth.

“JACK! You’re baccckkkk!”

The squeal of joy made me sick again. I tried to cough, a sick sound that didn’t come out properly.

“Of course I’m back, now here are your presents!”

He sounded like a happy father on Christmas morning, gesturing under a tree. Her squeal of joy made her sound like his daughter.

“Oooh, Oooh. This look sooooo cool. Lets do it now!”

My eyes grew back, around the iron spikes. I could see from one of them. I could see the little torturer, holding a gunmetal colored suitcase. As she popped the latch, I could see steam coming out. An one symbol on it. A decorative C, emblazoned on each side. I saw her pull out four vials, each labeled. I couldn’t read them.

“Oooh, these look so special. Thanks Jack!”

I was afraid, really. I should have been before, and I had been before, but mind numbing pain for days was almost a joke at this point. I guess to them it was.

I heard the pop, like champagne being opened.

Then I felt the liquid being poured into my chest. It felt like fire. It felt like ice. It was unbelievable. So painful it was indescribable, after the days of torture it was even worse than when she had hijacked my nervous system. I cried. I really did. My body interpreted my mental need and made it happen. It didn’t matter that my eyes were hardly intact. It didn’t matter that I had felt almost as bad before. This was the worst.

“And there, we, go. I’ll just sew this up and then well call the cops for you, kay?”

My eyelids were pulled open. I could see, barely see, all four of the vials liquids soaking into my opened chest. They pooled in a slick multicolored mix, before turning a shining black and starting to sink into my flesh.
My eyelids were pulled off, and quickly grew back.

I didn’t open them again.

DESTINATION

AGREEMENT

AGREEMENT

AGREEMENT

AGREEMENT


1.2

Interlude- Frank

I didn’t know why we were here. It was strange, being called to a recently abandoned hospital. Blackout from a cape fight had knocked out the power, and the hospital had never recovered after the deaths that had caused. It shut down the next year, abandoned, with much of the equipment just left there.

The fact that when we drove up, the lights were on was very unusual. The power had never gotten reconnected, so it was eerie. Only the third floor was lit.

“Why are we here man?” I asked my partner, William. He liked to be called Bill. He was older than me, slightly more experienced. I had ten years in the force but Ben had over twenty under his belt. He didn’t flaunt it, but there was some pride that came with having a successful career like that, especially with all the capes hanging around.

“Dispatch got a call, said that someone heard a scream from inside, probably some squatter just fell or got hurt or something.”

That made sense I guess.

We parked just outside the doors, a little up the sidewalk. Stepping out of the car I was reminded of sheriffs dismounting their horses like in a western. I smiled a bit at that, knowing I would be the deputy in that story.

The door was a little jammed, ajar. It was opened up by a casual shoulder check from Bill. Walking in, the lobby was mostly dark, lit by a single desk lamp. We walked up, inspected it. And underneath the harsh light there was a note.

“Third Floor. What’s on the third floor?”

“I dunno. “

We walked, carefully, up the stairs. The lights flickered, occasionally going out. There steps creaked. One broke under my boot, and I started to fall, before Bill grabbed my arm.

“I got you”, he grunted out, as he pulled me up. Much stronger than he looked.

“Thanks”, I muttered, shaking my foot a little to throw off the dust that had settled on my shoe.

We continued walking up in silence, proceeding a little more carefully. We got off on the third floor, one before the roof.
Walking down the hallway, all the lights were off. Looking at Bill, he nodded at me and drew his flashlight, then his pistol. Steadying his grip with the flashlight, he slowly started checking rooms.

I pulled both of my tools as well, holding the pistol at my side and shining the flashlight around.

“Anyone here?”, I called out softly.

We walked together to the end of the first hallway, where the operating theater was. Then I heard a small splash. I looked down, shining the flashlight.

Blood. A small pool of it, soaking under the door.

I immediately held my pistol at the ready.

Bill was on his radio, speaking, “Dispatch we have a possible wounded on the scene, large amount of blood discovered send an ambulance. We will look for victims and perps.”

“Understood. Sending ambulance.”

The tinker automated police radios were strange, but they helped efficiency.

We opened the door in front of us.

Compared to the dim hallway, the observers room for the operating theater was well lit. Bright and shiny, presumably so we could see what was on the table in front of the glass. A body.

I vomited. Not from the body. I had seen bodies. I had worked homicide as a detective for a year before being demoted.
I vomited from the blood. There was so much blood. More than I had ever seen before. The blood was knee deep, pooled around the operating table like a sick presentation. Limbs and organs floated on the top, sheets of skin, brain matter, eyes, gore from a thousand injuries. And the body in the center.

I was barley a body anymore. Metal spikes were driven into the skin, holding it open, muscles were individually pinned down by sharp needles. Knives were holding his hands, fingers, arms, elbows and knees, feet. They pinned him to the table. Spikes in his eyes. A bloody rag over the crotch. And on the wall behind him were words. Spelled out by stretched strips of muscles. S9. Love Bonesaw and friends.

I heard another vomiting sound beside me. Bill was retching, leaning against the wall. He managed to pull himself together, pull out his radio, and say, “ Dispatch we have one confirmed dead, possible evidence of massacre here, looks like the Slaughterhouse. Send backup and forensic teams immediately.”


1.3

Interlude- Legend.

A small town outside of New York had reported a Slaughterhouse sighting. So I went, and was there faster than anyone else. It wasn’t actually a sighting, it was the aftermath of the crime, but I still had to go. Still had to make the appearance, encourage people that there was still hope. That there was still hope against monsters like that.
I arrived, hovering in to the third floor of the once abandoned hospital. Now it was surrounded by dozens of emergency vehicles. Spotlights on the building lit it up for miles. Now the broken window pattern could be seen, that spelled out S9. Not very subtle, but unnoticeable until it was lit up.

I saw the medics, the cops, the pumps. I walked into the room. Two cops walked over to me, both had remnants of vomit on their uniforms.

“Officers.” I said the one word, nodding to both of them. It wasn’t time for speeches, pleasantries. They knew that just as well as I did.

“Legend. We found the body here about half an hour ago. We were just getting set up to drain the room. “
I walked over to the glass, I hadn’t looked in yet. I had heard the reports though, that this was even worse than the usua-

I froze.

I ran to the door.

I couldn’t hear the cops. Couldn’t hear their yells. I pulled at the door. It didn’t budge. I melted the lock with a glance.

I ripped it open, almost off its hinges. The flood of red hit me, staining my uniform below my thighs. I froze it behind me with barely a thought. Wading into the blood, I stood at the table. I gently touched the face.

“Nick.”

It was almost a whisper, but lower. I could feel the pain in my voice, feel it in my bones.

I felt for a pulse, and was even more shocked when I couldn't find one.

Pain shot into my heart. Pain of loss.

He was supposed to be unkillable, even more so than Alexandria. His regeneration was far beyond anything else anyone had displayed. He was proven to be able to grow back from a single cell. Theoretically less, even.

It shouldn’t be possible, that he was dead.

Dead.

This wasn’t a loss I was expecting.

I belatedly realized that all the blood, all the organs, tissues, skin, bone and biological residue would belong to him. This wasn’t the site of some mass murder. This was the continuous torture of one man. I forced myself to look at him. I saw a carving on the table. Day numbers.

Eighteen. Eighteen days they cut him, burned him, ripped him up from the outside and inside.

He was supposed to come visit me and Keith in a week. He was done with heroing. The only thing he had done for years was organ and blood donations, once a week.

I was numb.

I felt a bump on my leg.

I looked.

A metal suitcase.

I familiar metal suitcase. With a stylized sideways U on the side. Or as I knew it, a C.

I looked back at the body, and saw the vials littering the table.

I started to cry.

I didn’t care how it looked to the cops outside.

I didn’t care how it would affect my reputation.

One of the first wards, and one of my only great friends was dead, and it was partially my fault.

 

2.1

Walking into a new PRT building was always an interesting experience. Concealed under a black trench coat and hood, I walked through the main doors on the Brooklyn protectorate office. I hadn’t actually visited this one before, and it made Bronx the only New York office I hadn’t stopped by. Next time, I suppose.

Striding forwards, I saw security tense. They thought I might be an enemy. I tilted my head slightly and could see the mounted containment foam sprayers tracking my movements across the lobby. It had been a while since I had had to get out of the sticky substance, I was almost interested to test my strength against it again. Almost.

I walked until I stood at the receptionist desk. I towered over the person standing there, even hunched over. They must have been less than five feet. I was currently over six.

I pulled a small device from my pocket and placed it carefully on the table.

Useful little things, commissioned from Toybox, who I had a nice working relationship with. Dodge was quite a good tinker, at least a seven even if the PRT only had him rated as a five currently.

I spoke, grating, mechanical.

Artificial.

“Bounty for Blight, alive.”

The attendant gulped. She was nervous. That much was obvious, the sweat rolling down her face, the dryness of her throat as she breathed out. Her heart rate had gone up.

“Sir, I have to ask you to accompany me.”

The security guard was behind me. It would have been standard procedure for him to empty the lobby first. They did that quickly.

Good. If they wanted to do this, I wanted room.

I turned, looking the man in the eyes. Then I blinked.

He stumbled back. Most people do that when someone blinks sideways.

“Actually, you don’t have to do that. According to PRT Kill Ordure procedure, anyone delivering evidence of completing a bounty is not to be confronted by the personnel on staff unless they are a clear or present danger. I believe I am delivering a dangerous villain with a kill order on their head, or do you want me to let them out of there?”

I reached behind me and picked up the small metal card. It was only one of thirty I had one me. About a quarter of them had current kill order villains on them, easy for when I needed a couple of bucks. Like a credit card almost.
“No, please, that won’t be necessary,” the officer seemed almost in a hurry. I wonder why. It might have been that Blight had a kill radius that could contain the entire building. Standard procedure would be to bomb it. Preferably from orbit.

“Good. Now, I hope your friend at the desk is helping find my reward.”

I turned back, and the trembling receptionist was holding a black card out. It looked eerily similar to the pocket-dimension cards I carried. Without the biometric scanner, of course.

“Here, lets trade,” I spoke with a hint of amusement in my voice. I deftly plucked the card from her hand as I placed the personal prison in hers.

“Scanner is attuned to Legend and local PRT Directors, make sure you get it, won’t you dear?” I asked, quite innocently.

She nodded rapidly, opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it, then carefully placed the card on her desk before falling back into a chair behind her.

I nodded once, and turned. There was nobody in my way now.

I walked, quite calmly to the glass doors.

I had my hand on the doorknob when it happened.

A sudden jab of pain in my left arm, my chest above my heart and my skull.

I stopped. Turning, I looked directly at a PRT officer. He was holding a smoking high caliber pistol.

Then I decided to make a small statement.

By letting go on the power that begged to be set free.

My clothes were immediately ripped to shreds.

I was revealed in full, standing to my full height of just over seven feet.

My scales churned spinning wildly across my skin like a chainsaw, ripping through the heavy fabric that covered me. I spun my reptilian face around, snarling. I felt the back of my head and my skull heal, pulling the matter back into place, replacing and breaking down what material was unusable to recreate the shattered bones. I snapped my wings open, their bat-like appearance thick and leathery. The span was nearly twenty feet.

“That was a mistake,” I spoke in a low growl, my fangs growing in my mouth to interrupt my speech.
I stalked the guard, and he backed into a wall. Containment foam sprayed from the ceiling, sticky and wet. It slid off of me like an oil. I pressed my arms on the wall on either side of the guards head.

Then I withdrew one of the cards from the tattered remains of my trench coat.
“This right here is a little friend of mine. He used to be known as The Butcher. Now, he isn’t known for much anymore, other than being completely insane. I’m sure you two would make great friends.”

The guard shivered. He didn’t cry. That was good. I hated it when they cried.

“Are you done yet? That’s good. I will take my leave now, and thank you for your help.”

My skin shifted and flexed, the scales stopped spinning, my appearance became more human. Almost more human. More like less monstrous.

I walked away, ignoring the screams and yells, the hiss of containment foam containers now out of foam, and the scene I left behind. It was fairly intact, considering my track record. Pushing open the glass double doors, I smiled, thinking that it had really gone rather well.

So when I was immediately hit by a four foot arrow, I wasn’t really surprised.

I turned slightly, and the next four shots spun like boomerangs, twisting gracefully in air. One bounced off of the door, and all three arrows penetrating my chest. The first in my right eye, two in the heart, one in each lung.

I looked back at the PRT office that was nearly filled with foam. No help from inside.

It was almost funny, this was the fifth time or so Quarrel had tried to kill me since I had taken out the Butcher.

So I was not at all surprised when all five arrows detonated. Detcord in the arrow bodies themselves.
Three things happened in the picoseconds that followed. First, and fastest, my conciseness transferred to my legs. Yeah. Not exactly sure how that worked, but whatever.

Then Dodge’s safeties kicked in, and every piece of his tech was transported to another pocket dimension, the switch to open for had been put in by Cranial. Biological add-on tended to come back during regeneration. If not, Dodge had a switch that could also open that dimension. So did someone else, in an emergency, of course.

Finally, the shrapnel destroyed my entire upper body, or at least from the stomach up. Good. Intestines were a bitch to clean up for unlucky janitors, and they had remained where they were supposed to. The brain matter would still take forever to get off of that brick.

I felt the sinews of my muscles expand and spread. A new skeleton, ribcage, spine, reformed. Organs were grown from small stem cells that were pulled up from my, uh, yeah. Skin took the longest. It had to stretch and pull itself across the frame, tightening like plastic wrap. Then, my other ‘features’ came back. There was always that moment of hope, that they wouldn’t, but I had experienced it so many times that I barely felt any disappointment anymore.

Within three seconds I was standing again, now without the tatters I had called a shirt and coat. Another arrow. My scales spun, chain sawing again. The arrow was ripped into carbon fiber fragments, and the explosion had been perfectly reflected by the new scales. It seemed my other powers were kicking in.
I snapped my wings open with a sound like a gunshot. They were still covered in their unusual skin. I gripped the ground with my back talons, calling them feet was almost inaccurate at this point. Jumping into the air, I flapped hard, once.

It still sucked I couldn’t really fly. It was one of the things I loved to do. Funny enough, something I would do in the wards program would be skydiving, throwing the parachute out before me. Something all the wards did for training. Whenever I missed, which I did, I didn’t need anyone to catch me, so I go a reputation for what Mouse Protector called, ‘falling with style’.

And that’s pretty much what I did here. I glided, almost, hitting the roof of a brownstone. Quarrel had a range of about two miles. If she was smart, she would be on the edge of that range. Fortunately, she was a member of the Teeth. Smart wasn’t really part of their MO. I leaped again, covering about a quarter mile per jump. I could see about eight more arrows in the air, coming from the direction of Manhattan.

I felt my scales spin again, making a grinding sound. The arrows started to connect, one broke apart on the scales, another hit my mouth and stuck. I bit down, chewing through the carbon fiber. They were normal arrows now, not the explosive ones that were being fired before. Swinging an arm, I caught three more on the scales, before ripping them apart.

I could feel my power, angry under my skin.

The scales changed color from dull silver, to a light absorbing black. They locked into place with clanks, forming plates of armor.

My head become covered in a helmet of black spikes, resembling talons gripping my skull. The rest of the arrows broke harmlessly against it.

And there she was. A slim figure, dashing away from a roof, almost half a mile out.

I hit the ground, deftly sidestepping a car, and leaped again. New muscles tensed under my skin before ripping and repairing themselves under their strain. Bonding tighter, stronger, more metallic.

I landed on her roof in seconds, crushing an air conditioning unit. I was massive now, nearly ten feet. My wings had a span of over twenty five.

I sniffed. Blood on metal, oil, rust. Fire Escape.

I jumped again, landing on the next building over. And I saw Quarrel again, desperately sliding down a ladder, tearing her hands open on the rusted metal.

Disdain filled my eyes, and I spat at her. Paralyzing agent, worked though skin. Lasted almost a whole hour in small doses. Considering the spray she took in the face, it would be nearly ten before she would wake up.

I swung down. Two new tails gripped the sides of each building as I lower myself between them, re-folding my wings.

“Well that’s one problem taken care of.”

I almost didn’t sound human.

“Well you do seem to present another.”

The tone of the new voice was almost light, except for the dangerous undertone that it carried.

He had arrived milliseconds before he spoke, but I had already been looking in his direction.

Like always, he looked like he belonged on a poster.

“Hello Legend”.

“Hello Scylla. It’s been a while.”

AN: Okay, so I will try to actually update this. I lost motivation for writing my other story because I couldn't really write Taylor well as a main character. This should hopefully come easier. Basically, I created an OC who was part of the first Wards team, was part of the protectorate for a few years before retiring, then got tortured by the Slaughterhouse. His basic power is Regeneration, basically on the same level of or better than Wolverine or Deadpool. However, those little Cauldron formulas gave him a few more tricks.

 

AN: Trying to work on my writing in general, so here's an action that's not an action sequence. Please give me criticism so I can improve.

Flashback 1

Apr 23, 1997 — Busan

The world was water.

People don’t really realize how heavy water is. Really. Its fucking heavy.

When submarines go to the bottom of the ocean, they are under thousands of tons of force. Stories of divers with a leak being squeezed out of their hoses like toothpaste. It was almost a new sensation, kind of what I imagine being spagghetified by a black hole would be like. Being squeezed into a tube.

Or a pipe. It really didn’t matter at this point.

I felt everything shift, as my consciousness moved up my reforming spine back into the mush of a brain that was tying itself back into its supposed normal structure. Brains were weird, I had decided long ago, not because of their nature as supercomputers or their strange ways of storing information. It was their shape. Ninth grade Biology had taught me that brains were wrapped like yarn because it added more surface area. I didn’t really care, but it always felt really funny, like a bunch of snakes slithering into a ball to share warmth. Or a rat king trying to separate all of its tails from each other, but really just pulling itself tighter.

My body snapped itself back together. Naked, as usual. I really didn’t have much modesty left at this point, and I didn’t care much about a secret identity. Not that it mattered, for some reason people respected the unwritten rules around me. It might be because of what happened to my family before, or not, but it didn’t matter much anymore.

I heard another roar, not from an animal, but from the sea. Another wave. Larger than the last. Over eighty feet, eclipsing the sun, casting a shadow over the city.


What was left of the City. It was all water.

All around, the whole world, was water.

Behemoth was deadly, leaving irradiated waste in his wake. Depopulating cities. This was different.

There was no waste. There was no city. There was no land.

There was just…

Water.

And then, leaping from the wave towards me, he was there. The beast, the monster. The little brother to Behemoth and the Nightmare of the Sea.

Leviathan.

So of course, being the monumentally stupid person that I was, I rushed towards the monster. It towered over me, and with an almost casual swipe of its tail, it bisected me. That was painful. Really. It was. But I had just been squeezed into a pipe like toothpaste by him, so getting my spine split in two was not nearly as bad.

Luckily it wasn’t a clean cut, that would have taken at least thirty seconds to pull together or even regrow itself. Instead, the skin that held exactly nothing in was a contact point for my muscles to grab each other, like acrobats gripping each other’s wrists. I had been told by doctors it was fascinating to watch. I thought it was just kinda weird at this point.

A backhand, and my left side was gone. Ripped off by a talon.

I jumped, forwards, and grabbed the beast by its leg. I learned a while ago this was a brutal takedown method I was capable of. Just growing around someone else. I usually just got their hands in my stomach, but my entire left side was now wrapped around the leg of the monster.

The water echo was hitting me like a waterfall, but it was amazing what adrenaline could do. Especially since torn muscles would immediately fix themselves.

“CLEAR”

Hero. Some new artillery being announced. I was straight in the line of fire. Exactly where I was supposed to be at a time like this.

The blast was really incredible. Good thing the city was already dead, or it would have been then. It wasn’t the first time I had been reduced to just a few cells. I was sure it wouldn’t be the last, but it was always an interesting experience. I couldn’t choose what cell I was put in, or what organ I inhabited until that was decided. Sometimes it was just bones. Once I was a fingernail for almost a minute before my power decided to reform the rest of my body.

The sound was gone. My hearing had been shot for a few minutes, water in my ears clogging the sound, and a lack of anything resembling a sensory organ made me reflect on life for a few moments, before I discovered what I was growing back into. An eye. Wonderful.

Midair, my skull formed, and as the brain wrapped itself together for the fifth or sixth time today I could see the monster again.

Any building that had been left standing was split, evenly, along the same point. A single edge. Monomolecular, detonating at speeds faster than anything before it. Racing out of the casing like Hermes carrying the wrath of the gods. And there was Leviathan, in the center of a surprisingly small crater. No head, no right arm or left leg. A massive incision across its chest, leaking gold blood like a small stream. It turned, and looked at me. I gulped, which was strange seeing as I didn’t have an esophagus yet. More like a strangled intake of air that led nowhere. Then I hit the ground, and couldn’t see. In the dirt. And I waited.

And waited.

---

Another note: I wrote this in about 10 minutes, so its obviously not great quality. I just wanted to get the idea out of my head so I could keep writing the main fic, but I like the idea of building a long back story with the main plot. Maybe after the next real chapter I can write something similar to a case study, like a journal, describing one of the criminals Scylla keeps in his pocket dimensions and how they got captured.

 

AN: This chapter really showed me how shitty a writer I really am, but whatever. Still gonna keep going.
2.2

Looking up at the glowing blue form of my mentor, I laughed.

I frowned, as I saw a vein pop out on his face.

“Oh shit, forgot about the aura, sorry.”

Mentally feeling around and pulling the switch that turned off the intimidation aura. I used it to make a statement, but turned it up while chasing criminals. Legend is one of the few heroes that actually would have stopped before blasting me with lasers. Which is good, considering I wasn’t a big fan of getting hit with some of his more exotic attacks.

“That’s okay, just don’t leave it on next time, especially when inside a PRT building”, the blue idol spoke, and as always when dealing with me now, sounded tired. Less so than before, at least.

Covering a chuckle that I’m sure would have come out more as a snarl, I spoke again.

“That wouldn’t be nearly as fun. Plus it helps see who would be more vulnerable to masters in your ranks. It was only on low level. I suspect that officer has a textbook case of PTSD.”

I was probably right. Probably. Most people didn’t react like that, possibly a fear of inhuman capes as well? I didn’t care that much, so it didn’t bother me.

Legend sighed and gently floated down to the street level. I could easily forget the presence he had.

I started to shift down, my powers recognizing there was no more threat. I shrank, bones popping back into one another and muscles pulling themselves tighter like wound springs. My wings receded and the black plates melted back into scales, which sank slowly until they were almost level with the little skin I had left. My face reformed, the doglike snout changing into a more human face, but not loosing some of its more exotic features. The horizontal eyelids or massive fangs, for instance.

“Arthur is wondering how you are, it’s been a while since he saw you. “

I smiled a little at that, I liked Legend’s husband. We had always gotten along well, and one of the few people who hadn’t stopped treating me like a person after my…change.

“I should visit again soon, I’ve just been a little… busy.”

It was Legend’s turn to chuckle. “When an A-Class with a bounty of two hundred thousand is being a little busy, I would hate to see it when you really go to work.”

I grimaced at that.

“You just might. I’m headed to Brockton Bay next. “

Legend looked at me funny at that.

“That city is really not good for you.”
I grimaced. I knew what he meant, and I knew why he had said it. Marquis was still pissed about the last time that we had fought. Him and Iron Rain were not exactly benevolent to those who wronged them. Though, apparently their daughter turned out all right. Volunteered to heal at Endbringer fights and everything. Not that I was every with the healers during those battles.

“Hannah asked me about coming by to try and pick up a few of their more dangerous criminals. Here’s the list.”

I passed him a small note. No. I was not wearing pants. Not that it mattered. After the incident, I was asexual in every sense of the word. The note was hidden in a pocket under my skin, in my arm. I adapted to carrying things when my clothes kept getting destroyed my lining the inside of my wrist with tinfoil and using it as a pocket. It was creepy, but it worked.

Legend quickly read the list, before looking up and raising an eyebrow at me. “Hookwolf, Stormtiger, Apharius, Oni Lee. And Lung.” He didn’t sound too happy about that last one. “You really shouldn’t fight Lung, considering how your powers work. You would both ramp up, and cause way too much damage.”

“I know, but I have something special for him, special ordered from the Toybox. I think he’ll enjoy it just as much as I will.”

Grinning, I clasped Legend by the shoulder, careful to retract the claws that were still sinking into my flesh.

“But first, area there any good places to eat around here? I’m starving.”

Legend smiled at that, and he grabbed my shoulder, and made the classic, follow me gesture.
xxxxxxx
As it turned out, the barbecue was delicious. Even better, they expected diners to eat with their hands, so my viscously efficient talons weren’t that out of place when eating ribs.

The small crowd of people that had gathered to watch me and Legend sit at a table in the back and eat were taking the occasional photo. There really wasn’t a need to be so timid like they were. I wouldn’t bite.

I could see the headings already,’ Leader of Protectorate eats lunch with deadly Vigilante’. Of course, it wouldn’t talk about how I used to be a Ward, one of the first members of the protectorate like the media would when Chevalier and Hero would eat together. The media hadn’t called me a ward since after my ‘incident’. Everyone knew I was still Breakneck, that I was still alive and not in retirement. It was just common curtesy at this point.

Still, it was a pain in the ass.

We didn’t talk much. He knew that anything we said could be used against him politically, and I understood that just as well as he did. There was no harm in that, it was enough to simply eat dinner with a friend, something I hadn’t done for a while. I mumbled something about visiting him at home later, and stood. He nodded his head to me, and continued to sip his water.

Walking passed I pulled a folded wad of bills out of my new trench coat and tossed it onto the counter and walked to the door. The crowd parted before me as I left. I cracked my neck and pumped my intimidation aura up just a little, enough to give me some space. And that’s how I made my way to Brockton Bay. Hopefully Legend would send Strider my way for a lift.
xxxxxxx
I knew some people in the bay. Knew some of the dockworkers from before. I was born in New York, but had family there. The operative word being had. But still, the Bay was mostly familiar. Of course, the last time I had come through, it wasn’t quite as bad. The gangs didn’t have such a hard hold on the city. They were less violent.

I was here to only take one member of the Marque down this time. Last time I had come through I taken in three of his parahuman members. In response he tried to immobilize me by turning my skeleton into a collection of barbs. That hadn’t exactly been fun, but I had adapted.

I walked in from the outskirts of the city, my cab had dropped me off a couple of miles out. I tipped him well, mostly for the dent in his seat, and walked the rest of the way.

The city looked like shit. That was a technical term, I had been told, for the state of many coast cities around the world. Light shined off of the few skyscrapers that decorated the city. The docks and downtown were almost a slum, broken down houses and drug dens. The ship graveyard was a collage of rust and steel.

The city was almost completely controlled by gangs. The floating Protectorate headquarters, what used to be a beacon of hope, was now a point of resentment for the residents of the city. The local leader, Armsmaster, wasn’t exactly the best at public speaking. He instead delegated the majority of that responsibility to his second in command, Miss Militia.

Hannah.

I was here as a favor to her, more than any real personal gain, although I had gotten promised a pretty good pay for the services I would provide.
I remembered her from the first wards team, under the first heroes of the Protectorate, her and me, both working together. I taught her English, which was pretty easy, considering he perfect memory, but it was more important than that.

I was really her first friend outside of her adopted family. I was the first person she could confide and listen to. And we got close. Never ‘relationship’ close, but more like brother sister love. And after my change, she helped support me, get me back on my feet. Helped me find my new…occupation.

It had been nearly a year since we had last talked though. I was almost excited to meet with her again, but I was dreading the visit a little. Mostly because of Marquis. New Wave, which was the Boston Bay Brigade the last time I had visited the city had been decimated by the villain. He had put Manpower and Flashbang into the hospital, the latter would probably never recover. Rumor had it they had tried to attack him in his own home, and Brandish had used his daughter as a hostage. Her death to Iron Rain was unexpected, and brought the relationship between her and Marquis to light.

So I wasn’t exactly a fan of going back into a city where the most powerful gang already had a grudge against me. That was without trying to capture one of his lieutenants.

Alpharius. A stranger trump mix. Nobody really knew much about him, other than he was almost like Teacher. He could hulk out people, making them low level brutes who could bend steel and tank shots from low caliber guns, but they would think they were him. Funnily enough, it could only work on males. Thankfully it was a slow acting effect, and according to PRT moles, would have to be done consensually.

Next on my list was Hookwolf. A changer who could turn himself into metal blades, preferring a quadrupedal form. He had already maimed multiple heroes. His second in command, Stormtiger, had detonated one of his claws in a crowd full of civilians, luckily avoiding any fatalities but instead wounding nearly thirty. Three were in comas.

Oni Lee was an assassin who had a record for no nonsense killings. I had met a few like him before, and knew that I was only being asked to get him if I took out the big guy.

The big guy was Lung. I remembered Kyushu. I was there when the final battle between the two monsters was still going on. I remembered being melted like butter in an oven, over and over again in the heat of the inferno he created. And I had a plan to deal with him.

AN2: I'm going very AU here. As in VERY AU. I intend to add a few OC's about everywhere. So yay.

 

Flashback 2

Chicago- 2006

Pain.

Again. Really, I’m almost fucking immune to pain at this point. A hindrance. A setback. A distraction.

Being scaled is really interesting. Worse than one might think it would feel. Would almost make one feel bad for fish.

The blades finally caught on the armor that had replaced the scales. That would change too, soon. I felt the wings growing, and I knew what was coming next. The clothes I had worn tatters around me, reduced to shreds by my transformation almost as much as they were by the scything steel around me.

A blast of heat ripped the black armor from my skin, pulling off with a wet squelch before snapping with a crack. Good thing that didn’t have any nerve endings. The blade struck again, hitting the weak spot where there was no armor.

That had been a mistake.

I roared my displeasure, snapping my wings open wide, and lunged.

Red Steel tried to pull back, but his sword was already stuck, lodged in my regenerating entrails. The new armor that was replacing the black chitin was dark green, scaly again, but rougher. Like razor knives.

The rest of the armor started to change, switching its color and texture.

Red Steel kicked off, tearing his foot open. He did manage to extract himself from his sword, which took half of his skin with it.

Red Steel was a striker with trump tendencies. He could imbue weapons he held with power, but bonded himself with it in the process. So it wasn’t that surprising when the sword took half of the skin on his arm with it, along with a few muscle groups.

He panted hard. He was angry. That was good. He would fuck up, make a mistake if he was angry. Damn brute ratings not letting me use my toxins. Real pain in the ass.

He pulled a dagger from somewhere on his person and tossed it to his ruined arm. When he caught it with a flourish, I was slightly impressed. I was then reminded of my own power a little when the muscle wrapped itself around the hilt of the blade.

“That’s new”, I commented lightly, almost indistinguishable with a growl, now that my mouth was so transformed.

“Not really,” he gasped. “Nobody really got me to do that before, but I knew I could. Power testing, y’know?”
I did. Red Steel had been a recruit for the Protectorate. Got into power testing, met a future ‘teammate’, stumbling on them out of costume. So he immediately sold the info to a gang, who put the hero into a coma. Last I heard, Storage was starting to recover. They thought they might have detected some brain activity outside of his Gemma and Polentia.

So he was public enemy number one in this city. Two million for his head, dead or alive, from the Protectorate. Eight for a confirmed kill from the local gangs.

He didn’t deserve mercy. He already took out a vigilante who tried to collect the bounty themselves. That was when I got the call. Hero asked for a personal favor. I usually tend to do those for the world’s strongest tinker.

The dagger slash was purple.

And suddenly my upper half was bisected.

Well, that was certainly interesting.

My muscles stitched themselves together the same way Red’s had just bonded to his little knife.

My body made a groaning sound as it pulled itself together again.

The next slash took my arm. It fell almost a foot before tendrils of tissue pulled it back.

Then the third in the combo decapitated me. As my grinning head fell, I couldn’t imagine why he did that.

There was a bubbling, rippling sensation in my back, in my shoulders, deep in my chest.

Scylla had been a greek monster with seven heads, sometimes more in some myths. I thought the name was appropriate.

The first head burst from my upper spine, the one following it almost directly opposite it on the other side of my back. Heavily toothed, like a mixture of a snake and a tiger. They snarled at Red Steel.

The other five followed, one from the lower back, another from each of my shoulders. One from the throat that had been abandoned by my normal head.

The ground was slick with red and green blood.

The last head sprouted from the other head in my neck, like a bizarre blooming flower.

“Well, that was a mistake.” My voice was sinister and deadly, like a serpent given voice. I had been told it was terrifying. With the intimidation aura maxed out, I’m sure it was. This guy was no pushover.

Red Steel swore and tried to turn, swinging his blade as he did so. Two heads fell, but were almost immediately replaced by new tissue. I was ramped up, over twelve feet tall now, and the my regeneration was almost instant.
Without moving my body, three heads shot forwards, their necks extending like a striking serpent. .

Spinning, the trump cut two more as they chased him down, but the third clamped itself around his left kneecap. I could taste blood.

I wrapped the neck around his whole leg as the mouth inched itself up his leg. He slashed wildly, purple light ripping through me. Another head grabbed his left arm, burying the limb shoulder deep. At the same time, both necks had a massive muscle contraction.

He screamed. Both his limbs had just been crushed instantly.

Slowly, I wrapped his whole body in the tendrils that were my multiple necks. Only leaving his head uncovered. His slashes didn’t matter. They didn’t even make it through my heavily scaled body now, only making deep incisions instead of complete cuts.

“Red Steel.” I spoke, voices coming from seven mouths. Three were muffled by the human tissue in their throats.

“You betrayed The Protectorate, angered your fellow villains, condemned by murderers. You have no right to live anymore. Goodbye.”

I squeezed, and his entire body from the head down was ripped to shreds by razor sharp scales.

I sighed, and felt myself start to shrink slowly, tired. I never liked the kill. I knew that my new body rewarded me for it, dopamine levels higher than anything else I could do. Hormonal imbalance created by transforming. I still didn’t like it. I never had.

I reached down and grabbed the head by its dirty blond hair, slick with blood. I turned, looked at the buildings that had been behind me.

There were two figures there. Trip. A villain teleporter, representing the combined interests of the gangs in the city. He nodded to me before letting himself fall face first into the ground and disappearing in a spray of black smoke. I knew I would get payment.

The other was someone I knew a little better. Although I doubted she would try to make jokes here.

She stood from her kneeling position, and in a blur, appeared almost on top of me. I felt the scales stop receding for a moment before they continued sinking back into my skin.

“A little brutal, no?”

Her question was said completely seriously, she wasn’t joking around now.

“Had to be, didn’t want him empowering something that could let him get away”.

I responded, my voice changing even as I spoke, the shape of my head becoming slightly more humanlike.

“Good.” I wasn’t surprised. I was sure that Storage had been her friend. She was probably just as pissed about this as anyone else.

“Payment’s already added.”

I nodded, and she disappeared. We could catch up on old times later, now really wasn’t the time.

Besides, Mouse Protector was one of those people who still wasn’t comfortable with my…transformation.

I looked at the pile of gore I left behind. And turned to walk away. No use thinking about what might have happened under different circumstances.

---

AN: Tried another action sequence, please comment with criticism.