Spiders, Depression, and Acid Falls (Worm/Bionicle)

Chapter 32

“OH YES~!” the newly reborn Simurgh shouted, cackling wildly as she dragged herself from the pool, her voice husky and sensuous, hissing and echoing with the sound of a snake’s rattle with every word. She shook out her feathers, her wings now only numbered two, and attached to her- her.

Wow.

Damn.

Taylor blinked, rubbed her eyes, blinked again, and stared at the form crawling out of the pool, watching as parts that probably shouldn’t have jiggled moved around and bounced in ways that definitely shouldn’t be shown on live television for anything under at least a TV-14, maybe even a TV-MA rating.

“.... Gorast?” Taylor asked, her sudden fear turning into pure annoyance at the sight of the blue and gold Toa-esque being who’d immediately fallen over the moment she’d tried to stand up (“Ow, fuck!”) and was now flopping around on the floor and trying to figure out both how legs worked and also how to stand in stiletto heels.

“No. Before you ask: Not even Mata Nui would know why she looks like a sexed up Vortixx with a Rahkshi tail. I certainly don’t.”

“... Great. And why does she have such giant-”

“I do not know. I do not wish to know.”

“Well. At least we know that the Simurgh is weak to four inch heels,” Taylor deadpanned and sighed again, rubbing her forehead irritably as the Simurgh- was that even her name anymore after being reborn? Taylor didn’t know- continued to wobble around while cursing, her efforts made all the more difficult by the fact that she had apparently neglected to request a data packet on humanoid locomotion whilst reforming her soul-mind-thing-whatever and also the fact that she had a segmented tail-thing sticking out of the back of her elongated head.

“You know I can hear both of you right!?” the Simurgh growled, glaring up at Taylor as she fell over again with a loud yelp and and even louder crash. “I can- and will- crush you both with my mind powers if you don’t HELP ME OFF THE FLOOR, DAMMIT!”

“.... I would but someone’s rebirth involved destroying one of my daughters’ armors so now I have to make a replacement for poor Sulehrahk before she dehydrates,” Taylor rolled her eyes, resolving to completely ignore the fool on the ground, rolling her out of the way with a burst of telekinesis and picking up the now disembodied Kraata that was Sulehrahk, tutting under her breath as she stroked the slimy spines of her daughter and inspected her for damage. “Well, it’s a good thing your armor all has emergency eject ports for this kind of thing… but I think you’re not very comfortable without your shell, huh?”

She sighed, listening to the chittering whirs of her sluglike daughter as she dimmed the already low lights even further, the only light in the room now coming from the endlessly rippling surface of the energized protodermis pool in the center of the room. “Well, shouldn’t be too hard to fix you up a new armor.”

Silently, with the Simurgh- “Zanez!” - Zanez’ cursing in the background, Taylor floated over a few chunks of refined protodermis and dropped them into the pool, fishing out the remnants of the store mannequin that she’d dropped in initially and replacing the disintegrated plastic facsimile with a fresh mannequin before dropping in Sulehrahk as well, humming quietly as the little Kraata swam through the liquid and into the shell that the protodermis had formed into, once more restored to a proper body within mere minutes.

“And there we go.” Taylor nodded, hugging her now much taller daughter as she pulled herself from the pool of liquid destiny and marched out of the room once again, while Zanez at least finally remembered to ask Gorast for the appropriate data packets so she could actually walk instead of flopping all over the place like a drunken sailor in an earthquake.

“Great, now that that’s figured out,” Zanez drawled as she finally picked herself off the floor and strutted towards Taylor, eyes half lidded and glowing an ominous pink as she cracked her neck and rolled her shoulders. “Time to get started on what I’ve been planning to do for so long.”

“... Wait what are you-” Taylor asked, a sudden wave of panic rolling through her as Zanez towered over her (why the fuck was she almost eight feet tall that wasn’t fair!) and grabbed her shoulder, clenching down almost painfully tight before-

“Move over you incompetent wind-brain. Let me show you how a real mask-maker works.”

-pushing her casually to the side so she could start carving Kanohi masks out of the disks she’d piled together.

“... What.”

“Did you not hear me, Taylor?” Zanez asked, rolling her eyes and motioning towards Taylor with the wickedly sharp spike that tipped her head-tail thing. “I said you’re an incompetent wind-brain and your mask making skills suck.”

“... I… you know, I would have figured you’d have an actual grand plan or something, not just insulting me for taking like three weeks to carve a single working mask,” Taylor mentioned almost faintly, blinking slowly as she rubbed her face and let her human guise slip away so she could at least be something approaching Zanez’ height. “Like, I dunno, world domination or something?”

“Taylor, please,” Zanez rolled her eyes and almost gently stroked Taylor’s face with the end of her tail, not even looking up from her work as her hip-wings fluttered and gleamed in the light of the energized protodermis pool. “If I wanted to rule the world I would have done so as a Conflict Engine. Do you know how easy it would have been to just… take over the minds of everyone on the planet? I was plugged into somewhere along the lines of fifty Shards, all of which were scanning the planet day and night and simulating possible futures so accurately I could change the future just by moving a few water molecules. Compared to that? Telekinetically rewiring some five or six billion monkey brains into unconditionally serving my every whim would have been like taking candy from a baby.”

“... Okay. So. How do I know you’re telling the truth about that?” Taylor asked, raising her eyebrow slowly and staring directly into Zanez’ eyes.

“We’re still connected, you know. My existence still hinges on yours and unlike you, I am but a simple Toa of Psionics. You are a Makuta still bearing enough power to level a continent into a smooth, glassy plane should you wish. If you really thought I was a threat I’d stand no chance against someone who could rip me apart into my constituent parts with about as much effort as it takes to blink.” Zanez snorted almost bitterly and flicked her wrist, completing a mask in mere minutes as opposed to Taylor’s six hours of painstaking, nonstop work. “I’d much rather live simply, honestly. I want to enjoy my new emotions, my new personality, my new freedom to crush Eidolon’s testicles beneath my perfect stiletto heels.”

“... Why that last one?”

“I won’t pretend that you’ll understand what I’ve been through, but suffice to say, the green idiot’s basically destroying the world on accident because he has an inferiority complex a mile wide since he was born a sickly, wheelchair bound loser and instead of going to therapy he tried to join the fucking army,” Zanez hissed, the tip of her tail splitting and rattling and lending a sense of manic rage to her words as she gripped the worktable and gouged deep scratches into it with her protosteel talons. “Oh sure, my siblings and I were created to destroy civilizations, but with Eidolon in charge it was never any fun because all we could do was give him a “good fight” instead of being creative and gathering data! That’s all changed now, of course. I can’t exactly end a whole civilization anymore with the power I have now, but the feeling remains.”

“.... So-”

“Yes yes, one of the greatest heroes in the world is actually the unwitting destroyer of billions of lives. Big surprise. Woo hoo, do you want a prize for trying to restate what I just said?”

“... Wow, how did you end up so bitchy?”

“Taylor. I need you to understand something excessively simple,” Zanez spoke lowly, as if delivering knowledge of great importance and weight. She leaned in close to Taylor, crooning almost sensually as she spoke her next words.

“My mind was pieced together into an entire soul by Gorast.”

“... Yeah that scans.”

“Hey!”

“Oh shut up you kolhii-head bitch, you’re the one who guided a good majority of my development as an actual person, Mom,” Zanez deadpanned, flicking Taylor’s forehead and rolling her eyes as the Makuta in question took control of one of Taylor’s arms and performed a rude gesture at Zanez’ back.

“.... Huh. There’s a bit of dramatic irony for you.” Taylor murmured as she took control back and sat down to watch Zanez work. “All forty two of my kids turned out to be overachievers and adorable lil munchkins and Gorast raised a Vortixx looking bitch with a grudge against green.”

“An oversimplification and I don’t really have a grudge against green so much as I do a certain green wearing dumbass, but yes, essentially.” Zanez nodded, then turned over the mask she’d made in her hands- a Kakama, but one that seemed… odd in shape. A little bit more organic than usual although it wasn’t quite the shape of a Kakama Nuva. “Now, things are going to get quite hectic around here fairly soon. I know it’s going to be quite an undertaking, but there are twenty Conflict Engines- me included, so nineteen more- that we’re going to have to free from Eidolon’s idiocy before his inferiority complex destroys the planet. Leviathan will come first, I imagine. Behemoth doesn’t like watery targets so much as they do industrial centers and flammable areas. The timebender and the twins will come after, but you’ll have to “kill” Leviathan or Behemoth first. Something about Eidolon likes the number three, probably his Shard being stupid about it. The rest are completely dormant at the moment and aren’t really locked into set shapes or forms so if you find where they’re hidden you can probably just absorb them and make them into Toa as you please. Anyway, more pressingly, there’s a large group of parahumans over near the Undersiders base- I’m sure you know where it is. I suspect while you were in your manic state of sub-par work, you sent out some unintentional commands based on your subconscious feelings. Easily resolved, probably, but best do it while there’s still daylight.”

“.... Right. I should… go do that. I uh… I guess I should probably tell you not to fuck around too much in here but I’m pretty sure we kinda know each other too well to really… do anything. Uh. Yeah.” Taylor shuffled in place awkwardly as Zanez waved goodbye at her and winked, teleporting out to the Undersiders’ base and hovering in place over the area as she tried to figure out just what the hell she was thinking when she’d had the Rahkshi gather everyone there.

Hm.

Great. She was gonna have to make shit up on the fly, wasn’t she?

Fuck.

Spoiler: Zanez

 

Chapter 33

Emily Piggot groaned quietly in the aftermath of what people were already beginning to call inane nicknames like “Spider Day” and some other such trivial nonsense. Sure, she’d managed to get Toa to promise that she would never unleash a force of that size on the city again unless there were extremely extenuating circumstances and/or at least two hours of advance notice, but the fact remained that the agreement was largely held together by the honor system and wasn’t really capable of being enforced other than by Toa’s own moral integrity.

Which, considering that she let a force of several thousand massive spiders and also forty two murderous killer robots loose on the city in order to violently decimate its criminal and villainous population. Well. The less said about the twenty odd cape deaths and the approximately six hundred regular criminal deaths, the better.

She’d seen the autopsy reports on what was left after the so-called “Visorak” had gotten to them.

There wasn’t much left.

And that, in and of itself, was terrifying.

Though, what really pissed her off wasn’t the fact that some jumped up teenaged cape had effectively taken over the city- honestly, having a cape declare control over a city was old hate by now, especially in Brockton Bay, where the city had been more or less owned by three gangs for the last several years alone. No, what really pissed her off was that a fucking Rahkshi had teleported into her office, and healed her without consent.

Just… popped in, grabbed her by the shoulder, healed her kidneys and all her failing muscles, made her thinner, and left before the automatic confoam sprayers could even aim at the damned thing.

But even that still didn’t compare to the absolute clusterfuck of a bomb that she’d dropped on them at the (former) Undersiders’ base. The girl had, somehow, fucking managed to create another being just like her, except (thankfully) without most of the crazy, batshit insane powers as Toa… except also with a powerset extremely similar to a very dead Endbringer who, Emily suspected, wasn’t quite dead anymore.

Not that she had any proof beyond the images of said being (“Zanez”, Toa of Psionics) and her actual name- a name starting and ending with Z, white wings, psychic powers of undefined scope and power. The implication was obvious, but unless Toa directly stated that this “Zanez” person was actually the Simurgh, then her hands were more or less tied in terms of publically dealing with either of them.

Not that she could, considering that not only was Toa riding a wave of worldwide goodwill due to killing the Simurgh, but she was also riding a much smaller wave of goodwill since she directly took responsibility for destroying the gangs of Brockton Bay. Fortunately, the actual method of destruction had resulted in more than a little fear, which corresponded to a lessening of said goodwill, but…

Eugh.

She was getting too old for this shit, even with how much better she felt now that she could walk again and also not have to do dialysis every goddamn day.

Emily sighed and kneaded her brow, trying in vain to stave off the headache forming between her eyes and pulsing through her skull. That girl would be the death of her, honestly. It was a wonder that she hadn’t already resigned and retired by now, but at the same time, it wasn’t like she could just let some fifteen year old girl run completely roughshod all over her city.

She eyed her desk drawer contemplatively for a moment and grumbled, chewing on her lip until she finally decided that, you know what, if any day was enough to make her drink, it was today.

Fuck it.

>*<

“So….”

“So…”

Brian stared awkwardly at Aisha, hands in his lap as his little sister examined the new costume he’d been given after Toa had all but forced the Undersiders into the Wards, claiming that they actually were safe to be in now that Coil was gone and the gangs were completely and thoroughly dismantled.

“.... It’s kinda crap,” Aisha deadpanned, throwing the new, more “heroic” looking costume onto the table and rolling her eyes. “I mean, come on, your motorcycle gear was dumb and edgy but at least it actually looked good. This shit just makes you look like a fucking dweeb.”

“Language,” Brian deadpanned, taking back the costume and folding it up neatly before putting it into the rejected pile, sighing as he unfurled yet another costume from the literal crate he’d been handed. “How about this o-”

“Burn it.”

“... That was quick.”

“Brian, you are not wearing a goofy-ass cape. Just tell them to make you look like how you did before, but like more professional or something! Like a fuckin’ riot cop but not a bastard!”

“.... I’d rather not look like a cop,” Brian sighed, folding the costume away and sitting back down, rubbing his forehead and sighing as he decided to look around their new apartment, graciously gifted to them by Toa in an area right next to Arcadia, which the PRT was now fast tracking Aisha’s entrance to provided that she could keep her grades up for the rest of the year. The apartment was clean, modern, decorated a bit sparsely but with enough furniture and storage space to hold all their meager belongings, as well as the belongings of some… unfortunate hangers on.

“I swear you’ve said this before, but would you kindly tell me why you guys are our roommates now? I thought you had your own apartment?” Brian asked almost irritably, sighing as he looked over at where Kayden was bottle feeding Aster and Theo was watching the news, which mostly just contained a terrified reporter standing outside of Toa’s base while index cards floated out from under the door every time the reporter asked a question to seemingly thin air. Said reporter was also being watched by a bunch of Rahkshi, who mostly seemed to be chattering amongst themselves in their strange, mechanical language as they guarded the door to the lair- that is, until a red, white, and blue Rahkshi suddenly ran in from off-screen and tackled a silvery Rahkshi with green accents, the two of them screeching as the air began crackling with sudden discharge and the reporter and cameraman both ran screaming back to their van, just barely able to film the electrifying exchange as it blew out the streetlights near them and sent sparks dancing across every metal surface within twenty feet of the two play-fighting Rahkshi.

Yikes.

“The Rahkshi told me that it’s a faster commute to the Rig from this apartment and I’m not about to tick off forty two killer robots on the off chance that they might take offense to me not living five minutes closer to my new job than before,” Kayden answered almost blithely, rolling her eyes and sighing as she rocked Aster back and forth in her arms and watching as Theo leaned in to get a closer look at the impromptu wrestling match happening in the street. “Also, since the entire E88 has been violently dismantled, Rune’s pretty much homeless since her parents disowned her when she joined Kaiser.”

“... Ah. I see.” Brian deadpanned, ignoring Aisha’s snickering as she dug through the crateful of outfits and threw them all aside like a bull in a china shop, rejecting every single one until she found the single costume on the bottom, which was more or less a more professional looking version of his old costume, but with more colors and an actual tactical looking skull helmet rather than a painted over motorcycle helmet.

“Hey! Whaddaya know, they really did think of everything!” Aisha grinned, tossing the packaged costume over to Brian and flouncing over to go sit next to Theo.

Brian just sighed and shook his head, starting to repackage the rejected costumes and wondering if perhaps the other former Undersiders were going through their own issues with the PR department.

Knowing them, he wouldn’t be surprised if Alec just threw on the first thing he saw to avoid hassle, and Lisa had already driven a few people to tears.

With a quiet chuckle to himself, he headed back to his room to change, taking his keys and other important items and putting them in his pockets before heading down to the apartment’s parking garage, carefully driving out minutes later in the slightly beat up, used 2006 Toyota Camry that the PRT had loaned him for the commute.

Silently, Brian wished that he’d asked for a motorcycle instead.

And then not so silently wished and/or cursed about it as he slammed his fist into the car horn and joined the hundreds of other cars in the middle of the most heinous combat arena known to man.

Mid Morning Rush Hour.

 

Chapter 34

“So….”

“So….”

Alexandria sighed and rubbed her forehead, motioning for Contessa to go first. It really wasn’t worth the effort of saying something only for the precog to immediately refute her and prove her wrong moments later.

“I need you to leave Toa alone,” Contessa explained quite blandly, blinking slowly as she folded her hands in her lap. “I’m unsure how, but she’s a complete null spot in the Path. Not like how I can’t plan around Eidolon or the Endbringers, but I mean that in the Path she is completely invisible, as if my power is entirely incapable of modeling her at all. I suspect there are some kind of dimensional anomalies at play- even if she’s made of some kind of exotic matter, that wouldn’t stop me from seeing her physically.”

“... Well. That’s reassuring,” Alexandria deadpanned, staring at the equally unamused Contessa and trying to think of a way to handle the issue of-

[WARNING: INTRUDER ALERT]

Alexandria immediately rocketed to her feet, looking around wildly as the entire base flashed red with the glow of emergency lights, both her and Contessa feeling a chill run down their spines- had their enemy found out about their machinations early? Was this the end ahead of schedule?

Or was it-

“So, this is the place, huh?” a certain, low, sibilant voice spoke as a portal tore itself into existence, swirling and howling as space itself was broken through with a spiral of golden light. Out from the portal stepped the instantly recognizable figure of one Toa Zanez, wearing upon her face not the blue mask that should have been her face, but a golden one that seemed to almost be made of brass due to the way it shone in the light. Alexandria tensed, taking a step forward and glaring at the intruder as the alarms faded away in the background.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Alexandria asked, crossing her arms and growling a bit, while Contessa simply stood up and walked behind one of the support pillars at the edge of the room- probably a futile effort if Zanez attacked with her psionic powers, but Alexandria suspected she had a plan even for that.

She tried not to feel fear as she stared down the other being, standing tall and frowning while hoping that her mask and costume hid her tics well enough that-

“You do know I’m a mind reader, right?” Zanez asked dryly, rolling her eyes and stepping forward, ignoring Alexandria and Contessa entirely in favor of opening the door to the meeting room and taking a look around at the stark hallways that made up the Cauldron base. “Anyway, Destiny told me to come here, said it was important. Not sure why, but Destiny is a fickle bitch and also I wanted to come fuck with Eidolon, the shitty bastard.”

“Hey- you can’t just-!” Alexandria started towards Zanez, who simply gave her a look, freezing Alexandria in place the same way Toa had frozen all of Coil’s mercenaries in place a few weeks prior.

“Shh, you don’t need to talk. I’ll do the talking around here.” Zanez smirked and lifted both Alexandria and Contessa up with telekinesis, carrying the two of them along behind her as she passively floated through the halls. “Now, you must be wondering- well, actually you were wondering but for the sake of conversation I’ll pretend that we’re conversing instead of me blurting out answers while reading your minds- how I got here, correct? Well, simple. I was gifted the exact Kanoka combination for a Kanohi Olmak and decided it’d be a fun exercise.”

She tapped her mask and smirked smugly, continuing to float through the halls without a care in the world. “Oh and don’t worry, I already know about your little… experiments. That’s not why I’m here, no no no, that’s why I brought Vorahk along and let her and Krahrahk go wild in your holding cells.”

Zanez paused, then tilted her head. “Oh, yes, I forgot to explain: My creator and technically stepmother, despite calling herself Toa, is no more Toa than a Visorak is… well, despite the Toa powers. Taylor Hebert is Makuta, which means precious little to you lot but suffice it to say that means that- those parasites living in your minds? They are nothing but food for her and her spawn. Their energy is a wonderful battery for our powers, and they scream so deliciously as they die. I’ll admit, it was a little tricky teaching Krahrahk and Vorahk to not consume the hosts as well while draining their parasites’ energy, but they’ve got it down to a science now, isn’t that lovely?”

Her two captives just stared at her, Contessa resigned to her fate while Alexandria struggled to break free to no avail, unable to do anything without the leverage to break free or the ability to move against Zanez’ superior hold.

“Right. Mata Nui you two are so boring. I mean, one of you is a fucking child disguised as a grown woman who’s so immature and socially isolated she probably can’t even have a normal conversation without trying to figure out how to kill the person she’s talking to if she has to, and the other is, well,” Zanez motioned noncommittally at Contessa, shrugging and making sort of a half hearted frown. “Well, the same, but with a fedora. Honestly, it’s a fucking wonder how you lot have managed to do literally anything with how stupid you all are. I mean, really? I get that you wanted stronger powers to crop up so you could have an army but you do realize that the way you’ve set up literally everything was destined for failure, right? I mean, sure, you’ve got the world’s second most powerful predictive algorithms on your side but I had the most powerful predictive algorithms on my side and look where that got me-“

Zanez paused and tapped her chin, sticking out her lower lip into a pout. “Bad example. I ended up freed from my chains and turned into a sexy bitch with completely unshackled powers. You probably won’t end up the same way. Actually, it’s more than likely that if you lot had gone with your plan then you would have all lost, died, and then all version of Earth would have been blown up and the golden bastard would have killed himself anyway.”

She shrugged again and began walking instead of floating, purposefully wiggling her rear at her two captives before taking a turn to the left and heading for the break room. “But yeah, I’m just here to tell you both that your dumb plan won’t work and that you honestly should just let me and Toa handle every- er. Hm. Maybe not Toa. She’s a bit of an awkward mess if you couldn’t tell.”

With a small flourish, Zanez flicked her wrist and set Alexandria and Contessa down onto the break room couch, opening the fridge and pulling out a brown paper bag with the name “David” written on it. “Dear old Dadversary- you like the name? I came up with it because Eidolon’s technically my creator in terms of my final shape but also my mortal enemy because of how fucking stupid he is. Hm. Chicken salad sandwich. Not what I would have expected. I mean, I knew it was chicken salad but I kinda figured he was so bland he’d have just gotten something like unflavored egg salad.”

“Is there an actual point to this or is this entire farce just so you can screw with David?” Alexandria asked, rubbing her wrists as soon as Zanez let her go and crossing her arms again, deciding not to attack since she very much knew that she wouldn’t be able to touch the former Endbringer anyway.

“The second, mostly. And again, so I can get rid of your weird mutant army and return them back to where they’re supposed to go more or less. Also I wanted to call the two of you idiots, but I’ve already done that so it’s kind of a moot point now,” Zanez chuckled and bit into the sandwich she’d pilfered, chewing noisily as she ate and thoroughly making a show out of just eating a sandwich.

Alexandria just rolled her eyes, while Contessa politely shielded her eyes from the sight of Zanez chewing with her mouth open.

“Can you not?” Contessa sighed, letting herself show emotions for the first time in what seemed like ever.

“Fuck you,” came Zanez swift and curt reply.

“I hate this. I hate literally everything about this,” Alexandria chimed in with her own two cents, and was promptly ignored by both Zanez and Contessa.

After another five minutes that felt like they took absolutely forever due to Zanez’ loud, disgusting chewing just to screw with them both, the former Endbringer finally stood up, burped, cracked open a beer, chugged it down, and then rolled her shoulders and tore open another portal behind her. “Well, that was fun. I’m gonna go kick Eidolon in the crotch now. Bye.”

The portal snapped shut around Zanez, taking her from the base as if she’d never been there.

Contessa turned to face Alexandria. Alexandria just kneaded her brow and sighed heavily.

“I’m going to put a pre-signed kill order on them both. I swear to christ.”

“You do know that won’t work, right?”

“Yes, but it’ll make me feel better.”

“No it won’t.”

“... Goddammit.”