Starry Eyes [Worm/Lovecraft Mythos]

Jaunt 2.7



We spent the rest of the afternoon talking to and playing with Rest. She seemed to learn how to use words almost as fast as we could say them for her to eat. She even started to use ambient noises to produce words. She still only spoke in one or two word sentences, but it was adorable so I saw no reason to correct it.

As we played, I was able to get a good look at Rest’s individual flakes. They were tiny and white like real snowflakes, and appeared to be such when looked at from any real distance, but upon closer inspection they seemed to be tiny discs that looked rather like miniature sand dollars. In fact, they even had tiny, soft spines covering one of their sides like real sand dollars, and while I couldn’t feel them walking on my hand they tickled a little when I felt them on Aria. In addition, while each flake clearly had edges I couldn’t help but feel that they were larger than they looked, as if something was covering up part of them. It was odd, but since we’d only just met Rest I felt I could wait a little while before bothering her about it.

The afternoon wore on, and the storm outside showed no sign of letting up. I’d just started thinking about what to fix for dinner when the phone rang. I got up to answer it, carrying my friends along with me.

“Hey, kiddo,” the caller said when I picked up the phone.

“Hey, Dad,” I replied. “What’s up? Are you going to be home late?”

“Actually, it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting home at all today, with the way this storm is going,” he said, sounding apologetic. “I’m going to sleep at the office tonight and head home as soon as I can tomorrow once the streets are cleared”

“Alright. Will you be okay?”

“We were prepared, so it’ll be alright. Kurt’ll be making some dinner soon, so you don’t need to worry about that.” Someone made a squawk or surprise and protest behind him, making me giggle a little. Dad went silent. “You laughed again,” he said softly. “You’ve been more cheerful lately as well.”

“Um. I, ah, made some friends, Dad.”

“Good. That’s good. I’m glad.” He fell silent again, but I could tell it was a happy silence. “Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye, kiddo.”

“Bye, Dad.”

.o.o.o.​

It was a novel experience, preparing dinner with my friends out. After I’d hung up the phone, I had immediately removed my pants and, with Aria’s help, removed the bruises spiraling around my legs. In addition, I’d cut out my eyes to see how well growing new ones would work. I left my old ones in a glass of water on my desk, along with my glasses.

Now I was in the kitchen, still bereft of pants, splitting my attention between preparing the meal and stopping Aria’s playful attempts at getting into the ingredients. Some of Rest hovered over the whole affair, drinking in the sounds of cooking.

It was quite necessary to keep Aria on a leash, as it were, since her eating all the ingredients would make it rather difficult to feed her the finished meal. Even if I wasn’t all that hungry, she...

Wait, when was the last time I was hungry? I let Aria eat my lunch, and I don’t remember if I actually had breakfast, so I should at least be feeling a little peckish right now. But I don’t.

...

Eh, it doesn’t really matter.

In the end, the meal was completed with minimal loss of ingredients, and it wasn’t long before Aria had utterly demolished her portion. I was just about to offer to share my portion with her when she exclaimed, “Oh! I just remembered something.”

After a moment, a tendril came out of my leg and handed me a piece of paper. I looked at it and said, “Oh, hey. This is the account information Vista gave me. I’d completely forgotten about it. Thanks, Aria.”

“You’re welcome, Taylor.”

I... should probably check this sometime soon, I thought. It’s pretty much the only way they have to contact me, and after they way I left they probably will. Maybe I should... No, I’ll wait until tomorrow after the storm’s done and go to the library. It probably wouldn’t be best to associate the account with our home computer’s IP.

“Say, Aria, did you not have something you wished to show Taylor?” Melody’s voice interrupted my musings.

“Hmm? What’s that?” I asked.

“Oh! Ah, well, a little while ago when we were at that place with the big metal things, I took some of the metal, and I’ve been making it into, well, this.” A few of Aria’s tendrils pulled my leg open a little more to allow another tendril to bring something out and give it to me.

It was a sphere of steel, about the size of both my fists together. Tiny, delicate etchings on most of its surface gave it the appearance of a ball of tiny flowers, though they were unlike any flower I had seen before. The etched portion also bore tiny spines which, I noted, I could feel piercing my palms.

“It’s not quite done yet,” Aria said.

“It’s beautiful,” I replied, a touch of wonder making it’s way into my voice. “What is it?”

“It’s you.”

“It... what?” I asked, confused.

“Well, actually, it’s what you look like from our side,” she clarified.

“Ah.” So this is what I look like, eh? A wide smile stretched across my face.

In a swift motion I threw my arms around Aria’s available tendrils, hugging them close and causing her to squeak slightly in surprise. “Thank you,” I said, my voice heavy with emotion. “Thank you.”

For the second time that day I felt like crying, but this time it was from happiness.

.o.o.o.​

The next day found me at the library, as intended. The storm had cleared up a little before dawn, and my dad had made it home safely just in time for breakfast. I’d swapped my new eyes out for my old ones so that he wouldn’t get suspicious about how I wasn’t wearing my glasses, then swapped them back before heading out.

Speaking of my eyes, growing new ones had worked out pretty well, even though they took longer to grow than my skin. They seemed to have almost perfect vision. The only problem was they were noticeably paler than my old ones. In fact, all the skin I’d regrown was paler than my other skin as well, though since I wasn’t exactly a well-tanned individual it wasn’t that noticeable. In any case, given that my new eyes were a noticeably different color and that I couldn’t wear my glasses with them, it probably wouldn’t be that good of an idea to have them in at school or around Dad, at least for now.

Maybe I could carry one pair around in a little bottle or something so I could switch them out when I need to, I mused as I found a computer in a corner of the library. A few moments later I was logging into Parahumans Online. I quickly noted that I had a PM, which I had a look at.


♦ Private messages from Vista (Confirmed Cape):
January 22nd, 2011

Vista:
Starfield? Could you please tell me why you reacted to Shadow Stalker like that? I need to know.

Also, well... I know we didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms, but can we still be friends?


I felt a surge of anger, then calmed myself. Vista had been nice, and from what I’d seen the day before neither she nor the other Wards really liked Sophia, much less seemed likely to be responsible, even if only partly, for allowing her... behavior to continue. I typed out a reply message and sent it.


January 23nd, 2011:

Starfield:
I hope I wasn’t too mean to you yesterday, and I apologize if I was. You seem like a nice person, and I guess we can be friends.

As for Shadow Stalker, basically she’s a huge bitch, and it’s personal. How the hell did she become a hero, anyway?


With that done, and no reason to expect an immediate reply, I went back to poke around the forum. Maybe something interesting had been posted since I’d last checked?

Hmm, let’s see... ‘Teatime in the Birdcage’. About fucking time. ‘Bardiche’s Knights clash with the Dragonslayers’, ‘New cape spotted at the BB PRT office’, ‘Hero Marlin saves crew from sinking...’ wait. Back up a bit. Is that about me?

I clicked on the third thread.


♦ Topic: New cape spotted at the BB PRT office
In: Boards ►News ►Events ►America

Red_Panda (Original Poster)
Posted on January 22nd, 2011:

So like the title says, I saw a new cape just now while I was putzing around at th PRT giftshop. He was dressed in normal clothes like he didn’t want to attract attention, but then he spoke in this weird, creepy voice and apparently accidentally hypnotized one of the receptionists or something. Then Miss Militia appeared and led him to a back room. She called him ‘Starfield’, so I guess we don’t get to think up silly cape names for him.

Also, he seemed to be wearing a black mask with lights on it.

Edit: Apparently Starfield is a girl. Whoops.

Edit 2, Edit Harder: And now Clockblocker has kindly posted a video of Starfield completely pwning Aegis [LINK]


I felt a minor spark of irritation when the poster got my gender wrong, but when I saw the video link I paused and blinked. A video? How did he... Oh. Right. My mind went back to Clockblocker and his cell phone. I was going to ask him not to post it anywhere, but then I, uh, left before I could. I guess it’s too late now. I checked to make sure the computer’s sound was off, wishing I had a pair of headphones with me, then clicked on the link.

The video was less than a minute long. I felt like the fight had to have taken longer than that. Maybe the video was heavily edited or something? But no, the entire fight was there, from just before my first attack to when I was helping Aegis stand after he’d slammed into the window in front of the camera. It even included the short, now muted conversation I’d had with the cape in the middle of the fight.

While the length of the video was a little disconcerting, as I set the video to play again my own memories of the spar began to well up. The memory of the exhilaration I had felt during the fight brought a small smile to my lips; and while I knew that it had only been a spar, and that neither Aegis nor I had been going all-out, the fact that I had beaten the leader of the Brockton Bay Wards in my first actual cape fight made me feel... powerful.

Also, the small amount of skin I had, ah, accidentally nipped off of Aegis hadn’t tasted half bad.

Once the video ended for a third time I closed its window and went to look at the thread’s replies.


(Showing page 1 of 23)

► SeaGatherer
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
Fucking hypno capes. *shudders*
I wouldn’t want to be the PR guy working with him.

► Happyrabbit
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
And the Brockton Bay cape pop grows ever larger.

@SeaGatherer
*sigh* Yes, SG, we ar well aware of your opinions of hypnosis-using capes.

► HotterLass
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
Oh, hey! I’m at the BBPRT building too!
I saw Starfield too, but I’m pretty sure that she’s a girl.

► alexandria4eva
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
"Starfield"? That explains the mask at least. Anyone have any ideas what that can mean for his her powers? She's apparently some kind of Master or Stranger, but how do you guys guess it'll work?

► SteelLord
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@alexandria4eva
My money's on the "hypnotism" being some kind of hallucinated flashbang or something. Makes her victims "see stars" and confuses and disorients them.

► JeevesDidIt
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
Or she literally makes people see the stars. Like, she just reaches out and replaces everything they see with the night sky as seen out in the boonies. The people she uses it on have all of creation slowly but surely revealed to them in its entirety.

And then, when it's done, they are made forcibly aware of just how insignificant they are. Like a vortex of total perspective, her victims realize the futility of their existence, and are driven irrecoverably insane by the experience.

Soon enough, the streets of Brockton Bay will be filled with gibbering madmen, unable to cope with their utter insignificance in the face of a universe infinitely their greater. The tortured shrieks of the poor, damned souls will echo through the streets in a hellish chorus of despair and suffering as they cast civilization to the winds. After all, what use is law or decency when one is utterly powerless in the grand scheme of things? What use is sanity in a universe gone mad?

All that matters in such a meaningless existence is the service one so much their greater, the glorious field of stars that walks like a man.

► ManyEyedOne
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@JeevesDidIt
Holy shit. And I tought I was crazy.

► alexandria4eva
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@JeevesDidIt
...

I got nothing. There's literally nothing I can say to that. I don't think I've ever seen such a perfect blend of paranoia and batshit insanity in a single post before.

► Hungry_Kirby
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@JeevesDidIt
@alexandria4eva
Pretty much this. Alex said it all, really. Jeeves, you are either the most magnificent bastard to ever magnificent bastard, or you really, really need to call the nice folks with the white coats and ask them to take you to the funny farm.

► HotterLass
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
So Starfield just walked out through the lobby and she looked kinda... different. And freaky. And I managed to get a picture of her: [IMG]

So yeah. Tentacles coming out of her mask that are covered with eyes and mouths. Wings, a tail, and claws that seem to be made of solid darkness. And she seemed kinda angry as she was walking out.

It was actually kind of cool-looking. But all the same, I don’t think I’ll be going to sleep tonight. Or the rest of the week, for that matter.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, ... , 33


(Showing page 2 of 33)

► Red_Panda (Original Poster)
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
So Starfield just made another appearance: [IMG]

She looks pretty different than before, what with losing her hoodie (and the wings and tentacles and all, too), but her mask was the same even if it’s got freaking tentacles coming out of it.

I’ll admit that I almost pissed my pants when she came into the lobby. Those freaking eyes were watching everyone and I swear that one of the mouths grinned at me. She didn’t do anything but go outside, but jesus that scared me.

Edit: Strangered

► alexandria4eva
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
... Alright. I will admit that of all the possible powers I thought she might have, none of them even approach that.

So pretty much all of that could probably be classified as a Changer power, since from what I understand she didn’t have any of that out before (and I’m going to include the mask with all of that, since I’ve got the feeling that it’s not actually a mask but her using her power to change her face. How else would you explain the tentacles coming out of it?). The wings probably give her a Mover rating. The hypnotism from before is still probably a Master or Stranger power. Maybe.

I wonder what made her angry, though.

► SpecificProtagonist
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
Wait, Brockton Bay has a tentacle cape now? Sweet! I don’t even care that she’s a girl. I hope she can make them without the eyes or mouths, though.

► LtShortSkirts
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
“Tentacles ... covered with eyes and mouths.” Huh. How bad could it be?
*views image*
... sweet baby jesus in a dragon suit...

► WhatDoYouMeanItsNotButter
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@SpecificProtagonist
I know right? The Tentacle Porn industry hasn't had this much hope since Kyushu sank!

► bobfromaccounting (Veteran Member)
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
Really? We're going there?

► WhatDoYouMeanItsNotButter
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
Fuck yeah we are. I haven't been this hyped since [LINK REDACTED BY MODERATOR]. So many possibilities! And in a chick to boot!

► Armand (Moderator) (Verified Fabulous)
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@WhatDoYouMeanItsNotButter
An underaged chick. Enjoy your ban.

To everyone else, please get back on the topic before I have to hand out more punishments.

► Red_Panda (Original Poster)
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
Yeah... this thread got creepy fast. Thanks Armand.

To not-conspicously-at-all change the topic, I'm gonna ask the most inane yet topical question I can think of. What happened to her sweatshirt?

► JeevesDidIt
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@ManyEyedOne
@alexandria4eva
@Hungry_Kirby
Starfield has already gotten to you I see. Perhaps if you could see what I see, know what I know, you would not have succumb to such base machinations.

Alas, it is too late for you now. I can only weep for your poor, tortured souls. I pray the mindless shells you left behind expire soon, before she discovers that they are crunchy and go well with ketchup.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, ... , 33


I blinked. Wow. That really did get pretty creepy. I shuddered a bit, then got back to going through the thread.


(Showing page 7 of 33)

► Clockblocker (Verified Cape)
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@Shallowfax
That hurts me, man. It hurts me in my soul.

In any case, I’ve been prohibited from saying anything about Starfield, so have this video instead! [LINK]

► SteelLord
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
...welp. Time to avoid the User Fiction board for a few weeks.

Joking aside, those tentacles seem almost tailor-made for nonlethal takedowns. Well, when they aren’t covered in teeth, that is.

► Happyrabbit
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
That was kinda scary but also pretty awesome. I almost peed myself a little when she did that first attack.

BTW, did anyone catch what she said right after that? It’s a bit muffled, but it doesn’t sound like it was in english.

► alexandria4eva
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@Happyrabbit
It doesn’t sound like any language I’ve ever heard of, and my language nerd roomie doesn’t know it either. According to him, it’s probably some kind of devil-speak for all he knows.

► SpecificProtagonist
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
*single tear* It’s... It’s so beautiful.

► Red_Panda (Original Poster)
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@Clockblocker
Thanks for the video!

So this was just a friendly spar, right? I wonder what it’d look like if they went all-out against each other.

@SpecificProtagonist
...please don’t be any more of a creeper.

► Happyrabbit
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
@Red_Panda:
Don't bother. SP's not gonna listen. Just ignore him(?).

OT: I spent some more time trying to figure out that language, and I can definitely confirm it's not any of the more common languages. It flat-out can't be Latin based because she's making sounds that aren't in Latin, which rules out 95% of European languages, and I'm pretty sure it can't be Cantonese or Mandarin either. Those are the only ones I was able to find detailed info on though. If I had to guess, I'd say it sounds like it might be a weird mix of German and Arabic, but my buddy who speaks German doesn't recognize any words. Any Arabic speakers that can chime in?

► osirislives
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
its not arabic. really close though.

► Happyrabbit
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
Maybe a relatively unknown dialect then? God, this is driving me nuts.

► Hungry_Kirby
Replied on January 22nd, 2011:
It's no arabic dialect. If you just listen to individual words, it sounds like it might be Sa'idi Arabic, but the grammar and structure is way off. Unless "cheese me yesterday gratitude elevate" is a sentence that makes sense, that is.

Maybe she's a Thinker and came up with her own language? Wouldn't surprise me if she heard someone speaking Arabic at one point and made her own version on the spot. Powers are bullshit like that.

End of Page. 1, ... , 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, ... , 33


“Huh,” I murmured to myself. “What language are we using when we speak to each other, anyway?”

“Ahem, I believe that knowledge is probably in the memories we have lost due to amnesia,” Melody whispered, a faint tone of amusement in her voice.

I snorted. “Did you actually say ‘ahem’ just then?”

“It is a little difficult to clear one’s throat when one does not have a mouth.”

“Ah. Carry on then.” Maybe there’s more on the next page, I thought, and clicked my way to it.

 

Interlude 2.x


Crystal Pelham crouched on the edge of the abandoned building’s roof, looking across the street at what she was certain was a Merchant drug house. The building looked to be an abandoned warehouse, one of many that sat rotting and festering in this area of the city. Light shone through what windows weren’t boarded up, showing that it was occupied, though no sound could be heard from it.

She twitched slightly as a crunch of gravel came from behind her and turned to look at the newcomer, but relaxed once she spotted the white costume with its blue shield design, and the blue hair peeking out from under its hood. “Hey, Sis,” her brother Eric, or Shielder when in costume, said. “Coffee?”

“Thanks.” Crystal gave him a grateful smile as she took the proffered cup, holding it for a moment before drinking to let it warm her hands.

“So, how’s it look?” Shielder asked after taking a sip from his own cup.

“I did a circuit ‘round it, and the guard presence seems minimal, which is kinda weird this close to Order-claimed territory. That entrance, though,” she nodded at the alley across the street, “seems to be unguarded.”

“Any chance of capes?”

“I don’t want to say there aren’t any, but with so few guards?” She shrugged, then pulled out her phone to type out a text one-handed before sending it. The reply was prompt. “Anyway, Mom’s given the go-ahead, so we can head in whenever.”

“Cool,” Shielder replied. “We’ve probably got enough time to finish our...” He trailed off as he peered down the alley. “Movement at our entrance. So I guess not.”

Crystal turned in time to see two obviously panicked men stumble through the now-open door with a small flurry of snow. One slammed the door shut and pushed a nearby crate up against it, while the other left his buddy behind and ran for the street.

God damn it. Crystal sighed to herself, then took a few quick gulps from her scaldingly hot coffee before forcefully placing the cup on the roof beside her. In the blink of an eye she was hovering next to Shielder, hooking her arm beneath his armpits. “Let’s go nab ‘em!” she said with a cheeky grin.

“Wait, wait! Can’t you just give me a bit to–”

.o.o.o.​

The runner’s only warning was a flash of blue. Then, with a dull, meaty sound he plowed into an unyielding surface that hadn’t been there a moment before. He fell back, cursing in a shrill and panicked voice while clutching his face.

Shielder looked at the man he’d just trapped in a bubble-shaped shield, then at the empty and crumpled cup clutched in his fist, and let out a mournful sigh. The irritated glare he shot Crystal was met by an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll buy you another when we’re done?” The glare lessened in intensity.

Crystal turned her attention to the man whose associate her brother had captured. His greasy blonde dreadlocks jittered as his frightened gaze swung from the mouth of the alley the shield had blocked off, to the door he’d just barricaded, to the chain-link fence that blocked off the alley’s other end.

“Oi!” Crystal called out, making the guy’s gaze jerk back to her in a flurry of dreads. “Look, make this easy on yourself and just surrender, okay? Ap-bap-bap!” A bright bolt of crimson leapt from her hand to the ground near his feet, halting his attempt to edge over to the fence and making him back up into the wall. “As you can see, the fence is not an exit. And since you don’t seem to want to go through that door you just blocked, I’d say you’re well and truly trapped.” She lowered her brother to the ground, then flew back up. “What’s behind the door anyway? Must be quite something to bring you boys so close to pissing yourselves.”

“Fuck you!” the blonde one shouted back weakly, and oddly quietly, as the snow flurry began to settle around him. “J-just lemme go, okay? I don’t wanna die!”

Crystal chuckled. “Why on Earth would I just let you run off?” she retorted. “And what’s this nonsense about dying? Seriously, are you high or someth–”

The barricaded door appeared to explode as what seemed like a large white tusk punched right through it and the crate blocking it. Time seemed to slow for Crystal as she watched it hurtle towards the blonde thug, only to split into three and stab into the wall around him, pinning him. A wave of a dark-colored fleshy substance lunged out from the split and engulfed the thug, covering him entirely and silencing his panicked shriek almost before he could start.

The alley fell silent for a few moments as the Pelham siblings stared openmouthed at the scene before them. Crystal absently noted that a thick rope of the same flesh trailed from the back of the tusk back through the ruined door. Then, with an unsettlingly large quantity of soft sucking sounds, the mass of flesh began staring back.

“Jesus fuck!” Crystal exclaimed as she brought both hands up to aim at the flesh and dipped a little to put more of the shield bubble between her and it. “Eric! Contact Mom! Unknown cape, possibly hostile.” Shielder dropped his cup and started scrabbling for his phone. “And you shut up!” she growled at the thug trapped in the bubble, who had curled up on the ground and started whimpering.

The flesh stared at her with far too many eyes, the portion that had swallowed the thug squirming in a manner that was distressing to look at. A slit appeared on it and opened, revealing more teeth than any one creature had any right to have. “Oh, I know who you are!” it said in a voice that set Crystal’s teeth on edge. “You’re Laserdream and Shielder, with New Wave. Hello.” A lump of flesh was extruded from the main mass and waved at them. “I’m a hero, like you, and I’m not hostile to you. Also, could you let me have that one?” The fleshy lump stopped waving and pointed at the bubbled thug.

Crystal sputtered for a moment before managing to say, “Why? So you can eat him like the other one? And how do we know you’re not lying about being a hero?”

“Eat? Oh, right.” The mass of flesh drew away from the wall, revealing the thug it had enveloped. He appeared to be tied at the hands and feet with zip-ties, and was hanging unconscious in the grip of a large tentacle. “See? No eating going on here. Now, if you’ll let me have that one I can restrain him as well. Wouldn’t want him running off, after all.”

“I’d... I’d rather not,” Shielder replied, having to speak louder to talk over his captive’s renewed whimpers. “No offense, but you don’t exactly look like the most trustworthy, uh, person, to give a prisoner to. Besides, this shield will keep him here until the cops come.”

The thing narrowed many of its eyes at him as he spoke, a few of them extending on stalks and turning back to look over itself. Then a ripple passed over its bulk and it said, “Well, so long as he doesn’t run off I suppose it’s alright.” With a sudden jerk it withdrew its trifurcated tusk from the wall. “Want to join me inside, so we can talk face to, uh, face? I’ve already cleared most of the place out. Let me get the door for you.” The rope of flesh near what was left of the door bunched up and flexed, causing the door’s remnants to simply shatter. A couple of tentacles extended and brushed the various pieces of debris out of the way. “I’ll just go add this guy to the pile.”

Pile? The two siblings glanced at each other, then cautiously flew over the shield bubble. Shielder paused to make sure it had an air hole, and then the two approached the empty doorway.

The first things they saw in the poorly-lit interior of the warehouse were tall shelving units holding little more than dust, and the massive, squirming bulk of their apparent colleague. As they watched, the tentacle deposited its captive on the ground beside a number of similarly restrained people who, Crystal noted as she slowly approached, seemed more-or-less uninjured save for a few scratches and scrapes. A couple dozen feet away from the prisoner pile she spotted what seemed to be a small pile of pistols.

Motion drew Crystal’s attention back to the huge pile of flesh and eyes and teeth where another large tentacle was...

Crystal stared. Is that thing holding a person up by their face? What... What the fuck?

Before she could say anything, though, the tentacle lowered the person – no, wait, that’s a girl. With wings and a tail. – to stand in front of her. Wait, now that I look at it the tentacle isn’t grabbing her by the face, it’s going into it. Or coming out of it. Christ that’s creepy. Crystal blinked. Wait, I’ve seen her before, in that thread on PHO a week ago. She’s... oh, what was her name?

The girl walked up to Crystal and Shielder. “Hi, I’m Starfield,” she said in a slightly muffled yet still unsettling voice. She held out a clawed hand, and after a few moments’ hesitation Crystal shook it, fighting the urge to cringe. “So, uh, sorry for poaching your target, I guess.”

“What? Oh, no, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Crystal replied. “Actually, you saved us a lot of effort here, so thanks for that.”

“Is this everyone that was here?” Shielder asked, nudging one of the restrained thugs with his foot.

“Not quite,” Starfield replied. “There’s a few more on the other end of the warehouse, but they don’t know we’re here yet.” The tentacle in her face, and by extension the mass of flesh beside her, began to flow into her face. The sight made Crystal shudder and avert her gaze, which fell on something else.

“... Starfield, why do you have a dozen knives stuck in your arm?”

“Hm? Oh. It was a convenient way to hold onto them.”

“... Right.” Crystal sighed. “Anyway, let’s go take care of those remaining Merchants, shall we? Shielder, stay here and watch these ones.”

“Alright,” he replied as he looked at his phone. “Also, I told Mom that the cape was Starfield and that she’s not hostile.”

“Great.” She flashed him a quick smile, then turned back to Starfield, who had withdrawn most of the flesh and wrapped the remainder around her arms, torso, and legs.

“Alright. They’re this way,” she said, pointing through the shelves.

.o.o.o.​

There were five men at the other end of the warehouse, but only two of whom actually looked like Merchant members. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t notice the two cape girls approaching until Crystal had quickly flown up above them and started raining bolts of scarlet light upon them.

The resulting fight was more of a brief, extremely one-sided scuffle. Crystal managed to knock three of them to the ground with her laser blasts before Starfield had finished wrapping one in tentacles, though the three were soon held down by yet more tentacles. Crystal found the way a good portion of the other cape’s eyes had turned to stare at her after the first laser blast to be somewhat unsettling, though she decided not to comment on it.

The last one, the most well-dressed of the bunch, had been closer to a door than the others and had almost reached it when all the snow flurries Crystal had seen around the place but ignored converged on him. Soon he was surrounded by a sphere of snow, and a moment later he fell to his knees, clutching his ears as if to block out some deafening noise that Crystal couldn’t hear. Strangely, she couldn’t hear a single sound coming from him even though his expression looked disturbingly like he was screaming in agony. Thankfully, he was soon scooped up by another tentacle and restrained.

As Starfield carried the Merchants away to dump them with the others, Crystal stayed to evaluate the spoils, which amounted to several pallets of drugs and a briefcase filled with money. When Starfield returned she found Crystal standing in front of a torn-open pallet, her face twisted in disgust as she glared at the contents. “Is something wrong?” Starfield asked as she walked up to the other cape.

Crystal jumped slightly and turned to look at the other girl. “Oh,” she said, then mentally shook herself. “Yes, there... Well, yes and no, actually. It’s not that big of a problem, since we managed to catch this stuff here, so it’s going to get destroyed. The problem is that this stuff exists in the first place.” She reached in and pulled out a white plastic bottle with odd symbols on its label. “This,” she said, filling the word with revulsion, “is All Fall Down. It’s a tinker-made drug that paralyzes the legs. It’s used as a date rape drug, keeps the victims from running away.” She dropped the bottle back onto the pallet and wiped her hand on her costume, then turned back to Starfield. “So, the police will be here soon to take care of things which means we need to figure out how to split the bounty.” She paused. “Would I be right to assume you don’t really know how the whole bounty system works?”

“Yeah. This is pretty much my first time doing this sort of thing.”

Crystal whistled. “Pretty good showing for your first time.” She leaned back against thin air. “Anyway the bounty involves stuff like money found at the scene, which we get to keep, money paid for captured drugs, stuff like that. We’ll probably have to wait for the police to help figure out how much of a bounty we’ll get from this little kerfluffle. And since you did most of the work, you’ll get most of the money.”

“Actually...” Starfield’s sentence trailed off.

“Hm? Something the matter?

“I should probably leave before they get here. Most people don’t seem to react very well to me, so staying here would just complicate things.”

“Oh.” Crystal wanted to argue against what Starfield had just said, but she found herself agreeing with it. Feeling a little ashamed with herself, she said, “Still, you can’t leave with nothing. Take the cash, at least.” She picked up the briefcase and held it out to the other girl. When she hesitated, Crystal said, “Seriously, take it. You earned it and more.”

At her urging Starfield gave in and took the briefcase. Crystal smiled, then fished her phone out of her pocket. “What’s your cape phone number? I’ll call you when the bounty gets totaled.”

“I, uh, don’t actually have a cell phone.”

Crystal looked up sharply. “What? Why?” She sighed and shook her head. “Never mind. I guess I’ll, uh, send you a PM on PHO, then. But look into getting a cell phone, okay?”

“Alright,” Starfield said as one of her tentacles began pulling her shirt up to expose her stomach.

“Um, what’re you...” Crystal began to say, then stopped and stared in horror as the other girl pulled one of the knives out of her shoulder, stabbed it into her belly just below her navel, and drew it upward. “What the fuck!?” she shouted. “Why...”

Starfield glanced up after she’d finished pulling the wound open and shoving the briefcase through. “It’s... easier that just carrying it by hand?” she said, somehow looking a little embarrassed. “Sorry.”

Crystal’s expression turned into a flat, nonplussed stare, then threw her hands up in the air. “Fine. Whatever. I don’t care anymore,” she said, doing her best to make her words true. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Sure,” Starfield replied. “Bye.” She turned and started walking to the door. As she did so, all of the snow that had been flitting through the warehouse rushed over to her and into the hole in her stomach. By the time she’d opened the door and stepped outside, there wasn’t a single flake remaining. She turned and gave Crystal a little wave, then let the door close.

Crystal pinched the bridge of her nose, uncertain of what to make of the night’s events.

 

Calm 3.1


“I liked,” Rest chirped in Laserdream’s voice via the flakes she’d left on my shirt. “Fun!”

I chuckled softly, finding her cheer infectious as it often was. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Of course, she was almost always cheerful, especially when she had new sounds to eat (which, admittedly, was almost constantly happening while she was out). That said, her cheerfulness wasn’t exactly unwelcome, and I’d found it especially nice with the way the past week had been.

I banked slightly, adjusting my flight path so it would eventually be taking me vaguely homeward. It wouldn’t do to point anyone potentially watching me towards my home by just flying straight there, after all.

My thoughts drifted to the case of money inside me, floating by the nails I’d put through the soles of my feet. I had no idea what I’d do with it, aside from let it sit. But even without a use in mind that wouldn’t attract attention I didn’t want, I still felt it’d been worth it to go out tonight. It had, as Rest so enthusiastically said, been fun, even if it got a little awkward toward the end. I’d really needed the chance to blow off some steam after the past week.

It had been a little over a week since my, ah, visit to the PRT HQ, and since then school had been unusually uneventful; Emma and the others hadn’t said a word to me the entire time. Sophia in particular hadn’t even come near me. The most I’d been getting from her was a quick glare every now and then before she’d return to acting like I didn’t exist. There were a few instances of their lackeys and hangers-on trying something, but they were always rather minor in the scope of things, nothing I hadn’t heard before.

Some people might’ve thought I’d be happy for the reprieve, but all the situation did was make me more and more tense. Memories would come to me unbidden, reminding me of previous lulls in their bullying, and the incidents that inevitably followed. Incidents like...

“Taylor?”

The voice, seemingly formed from the sounds of footsteps and gentle waves, could only have come from Rest. “Yes?” I replied, grateful for the interruption.

“When home, read book more, could you?”

I muffled a giggle. Only Rest could make shifting sand sound hopeful. “Of course, Rest.”

“Yay!”

I was almost certain that most of the reason Rest wanted me to read aloud to her was so she could eat my words. However, we’d found that while reading to the girls I did so in whatever language it was that I seemed to use with them, when I read aloud without any of them in view or thinking about them I used what was presumably English. Or, at least, that’s what I gathered from what my friends said, given that I couldn’t tell the difference.

In any case, when we’d brought up the language issue with Rest following the reading revelation, she’d come up with the idea of me reading in both languages. Then, she’d try to use the words she’d eaten to puzzle out English, then teach Aria and Melody.

The obvious issue was that I wouldn’t be able to gauge her progress. But, well... it felt nice, letting them out so I could read to them while we all cuddled together. I didn’t want it to end.

.o.o.o.​

As it turned out, our reading for the night was brought to an end by the sudden, surprising sound of water rushing through pipes.

I jerked in surprise then looked at the clock. 'Oh wow, it’s late. Or early, rather.’ Strangely, I didn’t really feel like I’d just pulled an all-nighter. But then, with my body the way it was, why should I be surprised?

“Sorry, girls,” I said softly. “Looks like we’ll have to stop for now, since it’s morning.”

“Aww...” Aria sighed from a few mouths. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, Aria,” I replied. “I’m sorry, but I have to go to school.” Silently, I hoped that my lack of sleep wouldn’t affect me too much.

.o.o.o.​

It didn’t.

With how my body had changed, there were no outward signs of tiredness to be seen, nor internal ones felt. During one of my classes I pondered this, and came to the conclusion that I could sleep, but didn’t need to. Well, either that or I could just go longer before needing sleep.

My day was going pretty decent, all told, with only a couple instances of teasing by random students whose names I did not know. That is, it went well until lunchtime.

“Taylor?” Melody said as I entered the bathroom I had chosen as my hiding spot, “Someone is coming, and quickly!”

Rapid footsteps could be heard approaching me. “What?” I turned to see Emma, Madison, and a number of their lackeys behind me, pink-cheeked and breathing hard from running. They grinned, almost shark-like, and as I almost involuntarily stepped back they followed, herding me into the bathroom.

”Taylor? What is going on? Your emotions... And theirs...” Melody pauses for a moment. “They are your tormentors, are they not?”

“What!?” Aria sputtered with indignation. “Let me at them, Taylor! I’ll protect you!”

“No!” I hissed under my breath, even as I felt my teeth – well, Aria’s, since I’d take my own mouth out again – start to lengthen into serrated fangs. As quickly as I could, I set about restoring them to ‘normal’.

Emma and the others had paused when Aria spoke, but all too soon Madison was the first to recover. “Talking to yourself, eh, Taylor? And was that even English? Geez, when did you become such a basket case?”

Emma smirked and started to slowly walk around me, and my gaze followed. “Oh, come on, Taylor,” she said as she saw my expression. The smugness was masked by the most obviously fake concern I had ever seen from her. She reached out as if to give me a friendly pat on the shoulder. “We’re worried about you, Taylor. You’ve been acting strange lately, and you’re so pale, like, like a corpse, almost.”​

“Is that what that smell is?” one of the flunkies quipped, giggling and pinching her nose. I smothered the twinge of irritation in its crib as I shrugged out of the way of Emma’s hand.

“Maybe,” Emma continued, “but it’s not a corpse’s fault if it stinks, that’s just the way things are.” She looked at me, her smile sickening in its sweetness. “But with you walking around like that, why, it makes us so concerned, makes us want to help!”

“It fits, though,” yet another lackey piped up. “She was socially dead before, and now she’s actually dead!” Murmured approval could be heard from the others as I grit my re-sharpening teeth.

I glared at Emma, not responding to her bait. Instead, I glanced behind me, looking for an escape route.

“Why do I care?” she said, voicing my unasked question. “Why, Taylor, have you forgotten? I’m your best friend, since forever! I just want what’s best for you, for us.”

I stared at her, surprised by the audacity it took for her to say that. “Bullshit,” I said without thinking. “I don’t make friends with petty monsters like you.”

Emma’s mouth opened, then closed, her expression rather odd before becoming a slightly forced smirk. “A monster, am I?” she said. Then, with the mostly-suppressed air of one who’d rather save a particular trick for later, but couldn’t, “At least I didn’t get my own mother killed, though I suppose you had the decency to cry for a week afterward.”

My mouth fell open as I stared at her, that awful smirk twisting her features. Then, Emma’s expression froze. “Oh,” she murmured faintly after a moment. “Oh, dear.”

Almost instantly, before I even realized what was happening, I was wrestling with Aria for control of a blade-tipped tendril. I quickly managed to reel it back in and close my mouth, but not before it had managed to leave a hair-thin crimson line on her cheek and slice off a few locks of hair.

Clamping my mouth shut, I turned and ran, pushing past the confused girls trying to bar my way. I didn’t stop running until I was far from Winslow, and even then it wasn’t long before I was flying, automatically heading in the direction of the Graveyard.

 

Calm 3.2


I winced as the screech of tortured metal filled the air. Eventually, though, the rusty chunk of boat hull gave up, letting Aria remove and, to all appearances, consume it. Her body contorted repeatedly as she presumably crunched the metal down to a more manageable size.

I was sitting on a rock near the mandibularly mangled merchantman, with a good portion of Aria through my face and in the water below. With my shoes off, the nails I’d shoved through the bottoms of my feet to help my friends orient themselves clicked on the hard surface.

I felt something like eyeballs form within Aria, then fill to bursting – and yet not – with warmth, before pouring it into the metal. Curious, I formed one of those not-eyeballs on another part of her and filled it with warmth the way I’d felt her do it, though it took a few tries. Feeling some of her attention on me, I pointed the eye at the remains of the boat hull and poured it out.

Nothing seemed to happen at first, until I saw a glowing spot appear on the hull, gradually spreading and glowing brighter and, eventually, drooping slightly.

I gave Aria a look (an endeavor which was a little spoiled by my lacking a face, and her occupying the hole where it had been) as she gave off an air of innocence. “If you do this,” she said, flexing something within the not-eye I’d formed, “you can change the color.” Indeed, a beam appeared in the air, going from red to violet, and passing all the colors in between, before vanishing again.

I stifled the flow. “Aria?” I asked. “Since when have you had eye lasers?”

Aria paused in chewing her softened chunk of metal. “Um, I worked it out a little while ago. See, I think I could do it once, long ago, but forgot. Then that red flashy person gave me ideas, which helped me remember.”

I smiled internally. I just can’t stay mad at her. My mental expression hardened. Which is why I have to say this now.

I sighed. “Aria, why did you do it?”

“Um, because it was fun to work out how-”

“No, Aria, not the laser eyes. Why did you attack her? Attack Emma?”

Aria paused for a moment. “I… She… I just, I couldn’t just stay idle with her hurting you like that. And you told us that she’d been your best friend, before us, and the thought of one of your friends might betray you like that makes me so, so angry. So I had to do something to make her stop hurting you!”

I sighed. “I appreciate the sentiment, Aria, but you still kinda screwed me. Screwed us. Your attack on Emma, while deserved for all the shit she’s put me through, likely outed me as a cape, if not as Starfield, to everyone there. If we’re lucky, only Emma saw what happened, and if we’re luckier still, it all happened too fast for her to realize what happened.”

“Ah,” Melody spoke up, “from her reactions, I believe she saw something, at the very least.”

“Well, shit,” I eloquently stated. “But even if she hadn’t seen anything, that was still assault, with a gaggle of witnesses. The police have probably been notified, if not the PRT. I…” The weight of my situation finally hit me. “I can’t go home.” I hugged my knees to my chest, suddenly wishing I could cry.

“Oh, Taylor.” I felt Melody’s wings close around me in a hug. After a moment’s pause, Aria reached out some tentacles to join in the hug, but I made them stop before they reached me. Rest’s swirling slowed.

“T-Taylor? Why…?” Aria asked, sounding confused and, to my discomfort, a little hurt.

“You’re my friend, and, and I l-love you, but y-you did something I told you not to a-and it really fucked up my situation.” I reflexively tried to take a breath, to predictable results. “But, but maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I should’ve tried harder to hold you back, should’ve just not taken my mouth out at all.” I curled in on myself. “A-and now I’m just stopping you from trying to comfort me.” Something akin to both a laugh and a sob escaped from my not-mouth. “S-some friend I am, huh?”

“Oh, dear Taylor, no...” My mental grip relaxed, and Aria soon had me enveloped in a multi-layered embrace. “You’re the best friend we could have hoped for. We-”

A sudden movement within Rest’s occupied area drew my attention away to see someone crest a nearby wreck. My first impression was orange, and lots of it. The individual in question paused, flicking his tail back and forth as he took in the sight of several dozen eyes all focused on him.

Coughing nervously, Newter of Faultline’s Crew said, “Um, is this a bad time to ask for a word?”

 

Interlude: Bedlam


A cylindrical bar of translucent amber appeared in midair, defying the laws of physics in its staunch refusal to fall. Moments after its introduction to reality, a hand clad in black leather closed around it, hauling up a slight female form, similarly clad in black. Her robe fluttered around her, the odd amber symbols along her cuffs and hem popping out against the dark of night.

Tabitha paused for a moment on her impossible ladder to shift the padded carrying case on her shoulder. It just wouldn’t do to drop it after climbing up four stories. Resuming her climb, she soon reached the roof of the building she’d been scaling. With the last of the ladder vanishing behind her, she quickly walked over to the opposite edge and, taking a knee, unslung and opened the case, revealing a sleek, vicious-looking rifle. The case itself, laid flat, became a pad for her to lay on as she peered through the scope at the street below.

After giving her gun a quick check and loading it, she reached under her hood to touch her earpiece. “Bedlam, in position.”

“Good,” the tiny, ruby-lipped mouth on her opposite ear’s lobe said. The corner of Tabitha’s mouth twitched downwards at the sensation, and the memories which rose unbidden, and were swiftly stuffed back in their box. “Almost everyone’s ready, then. Empire forces are still about ten minutes out. Bedlam, your know your objectives concerning the capes. I want them alive, if possible. As for the unpowered ones… well, kill and maim to your heart’s content.”

“Roger that,” Tabitha replied without touching her earpiece, knowing Teratoma would be able to hear her regardless. Part of her contemplated just killing the capes to spare them Tera’s tender mercies… but no. She didn’t owe these capes anything, and there wasn’t any sense in making her life in this city more difficult.

She settled down to wait, smiling softly at the thought of the imminent violence. The smile faded as the memories returned and refused to be suppressed.

.o.o.o.​

“You’ve been quite the little irritant, you know.”

The woman on the laptop screen before Tabitha shifted slightly in her expensive-looking, wine-red, leather chair. She was clad in silk robes of a deeper red, with lighter gloves, boots, and mask showing. The mask consisted of two smiling female faces side-by-side, one kind, the other cruel. Her gloved hands were steepled before her.

Tabitha would have rather been anywhere else but there, but her desires found themselves thwarted by the small issue of being a little bit tied to her chair. She couldn’t even look away from the screen, as a pair of large, clammy, and disturbingly scaly hands held her head pointed at the screen. The hands, and the slightly nauseating gurgling of the… dare she call it a man? Of its breathing were all she knew of her captor, as there had hardly been a moment between the bag coming off her head and the hands gripping it. They’d even removed her helmet, leaving her face exposed.

“Yes,” the woman continued, “like a grain of sand that works its way into an oyster’s shell to scratch at its soft flesh. But an oyster knows what to do with that, oh, yes. It turns that ugly little irritant into something soft and beautiful.” She chuckled. “Of course, it’s around there that the metaphor falls apart, as an oyster has no way to make use of a pearl once it’s been made, but I’m sure we can find some use for a girl of your talents.”

Tabitha tried to suppress a shudder as she imagined what sorts of “uses” they might have for her. She remembered the rumors and stories about the Order that Mr. Walters had shared with her, and, well, if even half of the things he’d said were true…

“As for your little informant friend,” the woman continued, making Tabitha stiffen in surprise, “he knew too much, and didn’t have the merits you do to outweigh that fact. As such, he was, shall we say, ineligible for an employment opportunity similar to what I am offering you.” She chuckled again as Tabitha went pale at the implications of the tense she’d used.

“D-do I have any choice in the matter?” Tabitha finally managed to ask.

“Well, I suppose you could always choose to die. Now, you’d made yourself quite the little nuisance before, attacking and disrupting a few of our more minor operations. Until, that is, your informant friend told you of a convoy, which you attacked and stole a single vial from, ignoring all else it carried. It didn’t take much digging to discover your poor, until recently terminally ill and hospitalized elder sister. So, in essence, you have only yourself to blame for the fact that we’re collecting her as we speak.”

“No!” Tabitha shouted as she tried to leap from her chair, only to be reminded of her various restraints. Feeling them, she slumped in defeat. “Please,” she begged, “please don’t hurt her, or, or do anything to her. I… I’ll do anything...”

The woman was silent for a moment, as if blinking in surprise, then said, “Well, then. There’ll be three oaths for you to take before we can truly induct you into our ranks. The first is an oath of secrecy. It’s a bit more complicated than that, though, especially compared to how it was in the old days. The second is an oath of loyalty, which is pretty much what it sounds like. The third… well, you’ll find out about that soon enough when they go over the specifics of everything with you.”

“O-okay.” Tabitha had heard that the Order was something of a cult, but the talk of oaths made it hit home. But I’ll do it. For Daphne.

“Excellent. Of course, even with that, I’d like a little… insurance. Take her to Teratoma.”

“What?” Before she realized what was happening, the bag was back over Tabitha’s head, her bonds were severed and new ones tied around her wrists, and the large… man had picked her up and started carrying her off, his big, scaly shoulder digging into her stomach. She started struggling, however futile it might’ve been. “N-no, no! I’ll, I’ll be good, loyal, whatever you want! Just, please d-don’t! Don’t...” Her words trailed off into a sob.

Soon enough, she found herself dropped into another chair like a sack of potatoes. A soft, non-scaly hand with slender fingers reached under the bag to cup her cheek. She flinched away, causing another female voice to giggle. The bag was pulled off, revealing a woman in midnight-blue robes. Her mask, also blue, bore four mouths arranged in a circle, each sporting a wide, toothy smile that revealed an eye within.

“Oh, what fun we will have! Now, what sort of ‘insurance’ should I apply this time?” she mused. “A little mouth on the aorta? Mm, no. For the sake of irony, ‘twould be best to use an explosive tumor, in the brain, perhaps. Or both!”

Tears fell from Tabitha’s eyes as the woman reached out to violate her.

.o.o.o.​

“Four minutes, people. Stay sharp,” Vigil said over the radio, startling Tabitha out of her memories. She smiled, both out of gratitude and because she simply loved her sister’s voice. Taking a few calming breaths, she peered through her scope at the street below once again.

Soon enough, a white-paneled van came into view, followed by four more. “That’s them,” the little mouth murmured. “You know what to do.” Tabitha waited until the lead van was within the area of the ambush, then activated her power.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as she crafted a mental mold, large enough to hold a full charge of her power. The mold was shaped like a thick-walled ice cream cone, with the open end pointed at the oncoming vehicle. Tiny, fragile-looking spikes ringed that end. Thus made, she poured in the charge.

To all observers, it appeared as if a cone-shaped amber crystal had appeared in midair. Barely a moment later, the front of the lead van made contact, shattering the spikes and causing the crystal to vanish.

With an earth-shattering boom a lance of force sheared through the engine block and into the cabin, rupturing the hollow organs of passengers left and right and rending their flesh with bits of tortured, flying metal. The shockwave continued on to blow open the vehicle’s rear doors and shatter every window, some bits of which went on to crack and chip the windshield of the second car. The ruined van, now carrying only the dead and dying, veered off its intended path to collide with a parked car, spin a few times, and finally came to rest on its side, blocking much of the road.

For Tabitha, though, the blast was barely as loud as a barking dog. Thanks to a quirk of her powers, any sound louder than a certain level was reduced to said level.

The trailing vans were forced to come to a stop. Doors slammed open, and armed men and women piled out, seeking cover. Even as they raced, though, gunshots rang out as snipers thinned their ranks. Tabitha held her fire, instead focusing on the vehicles, waiting for the capes to show themselves.

She didn’t have to wait long, as a large figure casually emerged from the middle car. Shirtless, with metal hooks and spikes emerging from his joints and a metal mask shaped like a wolf’s head covering his face, the man could only be Hookwolf. As he strode forth, a bullet from another sniper hit his shoulder. Hit, and pinged off, not even breaking his stride. His presence seemed to bolster the confidence of the Empire 88 goons, confidence that was only further boosted by the subsequent appearance of Cricket and Stormtiger behind him. A ragged cheer rose from their remaining forces.

Tabitha waited for the other two to move before focusing on Hookwolf. If I want to take him down, I’d better do it now, before he’s transformed, Tabitha thought as time seemed to slow once more. This time, the mold that formed was a ring, wrapping around the man’s arms and abdomen. The inner surface of the ring had a sort of trench in it, to focus the explosive force into a cutting blade. The edges were ringed with tiny, inward-facing, hair-like spikes, ready to break upon his skin and trigger the blast. And with that, she dumped a charge in.

The spikes worked perfectly, snapping against Hookwolf’s abs. The resulting explosion sheared through him, maiming and bisecting him in a surprisingly smokeless blast. His torso fell to the ground unmoving, either dead or stunned. Very little blood came from the wound, which the streetlamps and headlights revealed to be mostly filled with metal ribbons.

The confidence of the E88 forces fell like a punctured balloon as they saw their leader felled so swiftly. A few left their positions to run, only to be gunned down.

Stormtiger roared with fury as he popped out from behind a car and slashed his hand through the air. The resulting blast of air sliced through the air to smash into a nearby building, sending rubble, and the bodies of the Order sniper team stationed there, tumbling to the ground. Then his head jerked to Tabitha.

Swearing in panic, she reflexively made a spherical, spiny crystal appear in his still-open mouth. Startled, he bit down, and his head and shoulders disappeared, painting his surroundings red.

Tabitha breathed a sigh of relief, then touched her earpiece. “Hookwolf is down, and Stormtiger’s short a head,” she reported. “Only Cricket and some goons left to mop up.”

“Roger that,” the little mouth said. After a few moments of silence, presumably spent giving orders to others, it asked, “Did you have to kill Stormtiger?”

“He was about to blast me. I didn’t have time to go for nonlethal,” she replied, only partially lying. Idly, she manifested a half-charge orb over an entrenched group of E88 soldiers, then shot it to set it off.

“Mmm. Probably bullshit, but I’ll let it slide, so long as Hookwolf’s still alive.”

“Well, he’s twitching slightly, which might mean good things.”

“Very well. The Honored Ones wish to participate in the mop-up, so things should be over soon.”

“Roger that.” Tabitha suppressed the shudder of disgust at their mention, lest Teratoma pick up on it.

Moments later, something large leapt from an alleyway to perch on a car being used as cover. The light of a streetlamp shone off a body slick with moisture, a body that mixed fish and frog and man into an abomination. Bullets found little purchase on its scales. Then another leapt out elsewhere, and another, and another, until six in total stood there. As one, they silently descended upon the remaining people there, clawing and bashing and tearing in an orgy of violence until all were subdued. A struggling Cricket was brought forth, held by two who bore a multitude of shallow gashes from her kama.

From the shadows strode a figure in a deep blue robe. She knelt down above Hookwolf, touched his shoulder, and chuckled. “Oh, what fun we will have!”

.o.o.o.​

Tabitha jogged over to a dark green car, whose door opened before she got to it. Climbing in, she dropped her pack to the floor, then turned to grin at the car’s other occupant. “A rather tidy op, wouldn’t you say, Daphne?”

Said other occupant smiled back lovingly. She was a tall woman with long red hair, wearing a green dress. What most people would notice first about her, though, would be her eyes. Or rather, the fact that instead of eyes, she had horn-like protrusions of bone extending from her eye sockets. The horns curled up and wove together to form a sort of crown above her head, studded with eyes the way a real crown might be studded with gems. “Aren’t you supposed to call me ‘Vigil’ while we’re on a mission, Bedlam?”

“Psh. Mission’s over, anyway, our part at least.” Tabitha moved over to sit in her sister’s lap, then hugged her. “’Sides, I needed my cuddles.”

Daphne hugged her in return. “But you always need cuddles, especially after blowing stuff up.”

Tabitha giggled. “I like ‘em. Sue me.” Tilting her head, she silenced anything further Daphne might have to say with a kiss.

Shaking his head with a sigh, the driver started up the car and pulled away, driving off into the mist.

 

Calm 3.3


“So… you’re Newter, right?”

The orange-skinned, lizard-like cape was sitting on a nearby rock, close enough for him to hear me over the roar of the waves, but far enough to meet caution’s demands. I endeavored not to take offense, which was easier than expected, especially in the external department. Yet another plus for cutting off my face!

“Yep, that’s me,” he replied. He hid his nervousness quite well, I must admit. “And before you make the obvious joke, it’s spelled with a ‘w’.”

“Well, you’re no fun,” I said, though I hadn’t intended to make any such jest. He grinned, though, so it must’ve been the right thing to say. I grinned back, several times over. He went a little pale under the orange of his skin. Oh, well.

We spent the next few moments in awkward silence.

“So!” we both said at the same time. We laughed, a bit of the tension in the air bleeding off, and then he gestured for me to continue.

“So,” I said again, “you’re with Faultline’s crew of villains, right?”

He winced. “Yeah, how- well, it wouldn’t exactly be hard to find out. B-but even so, we’re more mercenaries than simply villains.”

“But you still do illegal stuff, don’t you?” He nodded, a tad reluctantly. “Thought so. So what does a villain want with me? I’m a hero, after all.” I slumped slightly and, under my breath, added, “Or at least, I’m trying to be one.”

Somehow, he overheard or was just good at reading body language. “Hey, everything okay?” I fixed him with a look from most of my eyes, and he hurriedly added, “Look, I, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop earlier – okay, maybe a little, but still! Anyway, I kinda heard you talking to yourself, and while I didn’t understand, I could still tell that you weren’t happy about something. So, uh, wanna talk about whatever’s bothering you?”

“No, I, it’s...” I lapsed into silence. Newter shifted a few times during the quiet as if in discomfort, but still looked attentive.

I didn’t want to share the kind of stuff that could lead back to my civilian life, but, well… it felt good to confide in my friends. As cliché as it might sound, it almost felt like sharing a burden. A more… human perspective might help as well.

I let out a deep breath from a few mouths. “My fr- I, I kind of lost control of my powers for a moment thanks to a girl saying something pretty awful to me, and they hurt her in a way that probably looked like I attacked her.”

“Oh,” Newter said. “Was she an ally? A frie-”

“No,” I said forcefully, my voices flat with anger. He went pale again, making me wince internally. More calmly, I continued, “No, she deserved what she got. Deserves worse. She’s a tr- the worst kind of bully.” I turned my head to ‘face’ him. “No, the problem is, this happened in my civilian identity.”

Newter winced sympathetically, which I found weird given that he lacked a non-cape life of his own. “So you think if you go home, either the police or the PRT will be waiting for you?”

“Yeah. I, I don’t know if I can go home. My father, he, I can’t...”

He sighed and placed his hands on his knees. “Alright. How badly did you injure this girl?”

“… Small cut on the face, some hair cut off. I managed to restrain her quickl- I mean...”

“...’Her’?” Newter gave me an odd look, which quickly morphed into dawning realization. “Wait, is your power, is that,” he gestured to Aria’s sprawling tentacles while subtly sliding his feet beneath him as if preparing to leap away, “a separate being? A Master power?”

“N-no!”

“It’s-...”​

“I-”​

Several of our mouths shouted at once as I panicked.

“No, no, it’s cool!” he said quickly. “If it’s something that you’re hiding as an ace up your sleeve,” he paused and glanced at my bare arms, “okay, you get what I mean, but yeah. It’s cool. I won’t tell anyone. Promise.”

That eased a bit of my tension. Not that much, but still a measurable amount. “… Thanks.”

He grinned. “Great! But back to the matter at hand. Now, keep in mind that I’m no expert on parahuman law, but your case sounds like a rather minor case of battery with a parahuman ability.”

“Wait. Not assault?”

“Nah, assault’s, like, the threat to do harm, while battery’s actually doing it.” Silently, I tilted my head, though Aria’s mass coming out of my face hampered the act a little. “What? Just because I’m not an expert doesn’t mean I can’t look stuff up online.”

I sighed. “Be that as it may, this still isn’t looking good for me.”

“Yeah, it’s not great, but it’s not wholly bad, either. Now, again, I’m no legal expert, but with how small the injury was, and the fact that it was provoked and you showed restraint, any sentence, should it even reach court, should be small, and likely not jail. Of course, that said, if the PRT and Protectorate get involved, they might use it to pressure you into joining.”

“Fuck that,” I spat, and he arched an eyebrow at the venom my voice contained.

“Oookay, then. Sounds like there’s a story there,” he said carefully, but I just shook my head. “Very well, I won’t pry. In any case, you’ve got a couple more options from what I can see, and neither requires you go home. The first one would be to join an existing group and stay with them.”

I’d been expecting something like this since he first appeared. After all, everyone wanted to be the first to snap up new capes to bolster their forces. But with how sidetracked we’d gotten, it somehow caught me unawares. I would’ve smirked sardonically if I could. “And let me guess, your group would be gracious enough to welcome me into your ranks?” Melody evidently didn’t like where my emotions had gone, because I heard a concerned murmur from her. “It’s fine, dear,” I murmured in return.

Newter frowned. “Look, do you want me to lie and say we wouldn’t like to recruit you? That I’m here purely out of the kindness of my heart? I’d prefer not to insult your intelligence. Frankly, it’s a fairly good offer, since we have resources you could use, like lawyers, and we wouldn’t require you to kill anyone ever. But even so, we won’t try to force you to join.”

“I doubt you could,” I replied. He glanced to the side, and I smirked internally at his apparent discomfort. “Look, I appreciate you being honest with me and all, but there’s no way in hell that I’m joining a group of villains.”

He surprised me by just nodding. “Thought not, but I had to make the offer.”

My suspicion grew. “So why bother talking to me if you knew it wouldn’t work?”

He grew somewhat more nervous, and a glance showed that Aria had evidently picked up on my mood and grown quite a few long, serrated teeth. I had her retract them, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Alright, look,” he said. “I’ll admit that part of what I intended was to give you a positive impression of us so you’d be less likely to attack us were we to cross paths. You’re not exactly a weak cape, even without those lasers I saw. But honestly? As we talked, I got the impression that you really just needed someone to talk to.”

“… Thanks, I guess,” I said after a brief pause. “By the way, could you, you know, keep quiet about the lasers? And the… other thing?”

Newter shifted uncomfortably, though part of it may have been the dozen or so eyes that sprouted to unblinkingly skewer him with their gaze. “Uh, sure,” he said. “But, uh, my team kinda already knows.” He gestured to his ear. An eye distorted to zoom in, showing me a small, wireless earpiece.

“You have people listening in,” I said flatly. He tried to suppress it, but I saw a bit of a flinch at my tone. Then he scowled.

“Look, would you have me approach a scary, unknown parahuman without any backup? Excuse me if I value my health.”

I sat back, supporting myself with my hands. I still didn’t like that others could hear us, could listen in on what I’d thought might be a private conversation, but a more rational part of me had to admit that he had something of a point. Besides, it seemed to say, it wasn’t as if we’d agreed on anything about this conversation, so I don’t really have any reason to get mad at it not being a private conversation. And in any case, what can any of Faultline’s Crew do to me?

“So for the sake of my curiosity,” I said in a lighter tone that was only slightly forced, “is our watcher looking at us – rather, at me – through a sniper’s scope? And please, be honest.”

Newter looked as if he’d bitten into a rather sour lemon. “… Yes,” he reluctantly replied after a brief silence.

I chuckled. “Probably wouldn’t work on me. Bullets, that is,” I mused aloud, which didn’t really help his comfort levels. “So!” I exclaimed with false cheer, clapping my hands once as I did. “Before our lovely conversation comes to a close, I was curious. You mentioned a third option. What was it?”

Newter sighed and muttered something under his breath that I wasn’t fast enough with Rest to catch. “I was going to say that you could just, like, hide out somewhere on your own, though I don’t really recommend it. That said, I do know a pretty good place, if you want to know.”

“Someplace you guys know well?” I said dryly. I was kind of surprised how hard he was trying to get into my good graces. I mean, I understood how strong Aria seemed to be, but this was just making me suspicious and irritated.

“No, no, I’m the only one who knows how to get there. The others would need diving equipment to get there.” Wait, what? “Now, I’m making the assumption that you don’t need to breath much, or at all. Otherwise, well, we can’t really supply the gear necessary.”

“So, wait, where is this place?”

“As far as I can tell, it’s more or less under the city, but the only way in that I know of is out there.” He jerked his head at the Bay, the slowly stood and stretched, his back popping audibly. “Now, can you swim?” And then, almost as an afterthought, “And do you want to come see it? It’s fine if you don’t want to.”

“No, I’ll go. And yes, I believe I can swim,” I replied. Then, to my friends, “Want to go swimming, girls?”

“Sure!” chirped Aria, clearly happy that I was talking to her again. “… What’s ‘swimming’?”

I laughed softly. “You’ll like it. Now, Melody, I’m sorry, but I’ll need you to withdraw your wings for now.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I released control of said appendages, and they quickly folded up and disappeared. As I healed up the slices they’d been coming out of, I returned my attention to Newter, who was trying not to stare and failing. “So,” I said, “shall we get this over with?”

.o.o.o.​

As it turned out, Aria made for a pretty good drysuit, covering me entirely. The murky waters of the Bay felt pleasantly cool against her surface.

Aria was plugging up every gap in my skin, because while I didn’t know if the water would pour through to my other side, I didn’t want to find out by draining the Bay. Sealing the holes soon turned into covering me fully, keeping my clothes dry. That, in turn, had led to long, flattened tentacles that streamed out behind me, churning the water and propelling me at quite a fair clip. Swimming with them had proven way simpler to puzzle out than it had any right to be. Laser eyes, when unfocused, proved to be great light sources, helping me keep my eyes on Newter’s bright orange tail ahead of me.

Eventually he stopped and motioned for me to surface, before doing so himself. I soon joined him there, finding him taking large gulps of air. A quick glance showed the Protectorate’s floating base between us and the shore, the sun glinting off its huge shield bubble.

“Okay,” He said after a few moments, “the entrance is right below us. You ready?”

“Of course,” I replied, and we dived once more, this time heading deeper. Under the combined light of Newter’s flashlight and my eyes, a shape was revealed, , jutting out of the muck of the bottom. As we neared it, I began to pick out details. What had seemed like just another rock formation looked to actually be a large tube, or maybe a fallen tower, formed of what seemed to be quite a number of hexagonal stone pillars, somehow fused together or something like that. I followed Newter down into the darkness.

My light eyes rolled in their sockets, their beams scything through the murky gloom of the tunnel. A few fish were startled by our passage as we swam, much to Aria’s delight. On a whim I helped her design and make a sort of biological harpoon gun so she could spear passing fish, then reel them in to snack on.

Eventually, we reached a point where the tunnel suddenly slanted upwards. Ooze and gunk had mostly blocked it at the lowest point, though there was enough of a gap for us to squeeze through. Even so, I took a few moments to widen the gap before moving on.

A surprisingly short time later, water gave way to air and we clambered out. I withdrew most of Aria as I did so. Looking around, I saw a branching tunnel before me. Walls, floor, ceiling, all were made of the same hexagonal, columnar structures of dark stone, a stone whose name I knew, was practically on the tip of my severed tongue, but I just couldn’t place it, to my frustration. The columns were all parallel, just the slightest angle from perfectly vertical. And it all seemed much more natural than the tunnel we’d come in by, all save for the floor which, beneath the muck and grime and feebly glowing fungus, was smooth, almost as if worn down by… but no, that couldn’t be…

“So,” Newter said suddenly, startling me out of my thoughts. “Heck of a hiding place, huh?”

“Uh, yeah,” I replied after a moment. “Just, how has no one found this place before? And how is not flooded? We can’t be above sea level.”

He shrugged. “No clue, but it isn’t, so… well. That aside, I guess no one has found it yet ‘cause the entrance looks like just another rock.”

“But it isn’t,” I replied without thinking. “Uh, Imean, the entrance is clearly some kind of fallen tower, and a tall one, at that. So someone had to have made it, and a long time ago, since as far as I know there are no records of any tall stone towers around these parts. And...” I railed off as I realized that Newter was staring at me. “… Sorry.”

He shrugged. “No, I get you, it’s pretty weird. But whatever it was, right now it’s no one else knows exists, much less can get to easily.” He paused. “So, what’ll it be? You gonna stay here, or go home to the cops or the PRT?”

mce-anchor I was silent for a time. Images of my dad, of the PRT, of Emma injured, and more, all flashed through my mind, and I knew I couldn’t put off making a my decision any longer. Clenching my fists hard enough that my nails almost pierced my palms, I made my choice.

 

Interlude 3.d

“I wish to speak to you about your daughter.”

Danny Hebert ran his hand through his thinning hair, then sighed and massage the bridge of his nose. The lanky man sat hunched over his desk in the Brockton Bay Dockworkers’ Union office. He raised his eyes to meet those of the woman sitting across from him who was masked by a flag-patterned scarf. The heroine had entered the building flanked by a couple of PRT agents and asked to speak to him, but it was only now that he understood why.

The two stared at each other for a few moments until, finally, he broke the uncomfortable silence. “Miss Militia, what, precisely, do you want with Taylor?” He steeled himself for whatever the hero might say, for a moment dreading that Taylor had been caught up in some fight between powered gang members and injured. He quickly quashed his fears before they could grow.

The cape’s expression – what he could see of it, that is – was sober. “Mister Hebert, we have reason to believe that Miss Hebert is a parahuman, and that earlier today she used her powers to attack and harm a fellow student before fleeing. Her location, at this time, is unknown.”

Danny slowly let out a ragged breath, one he hadn’t even known he’d been holding. At least she isn’t in the hospital again, or worse, he thought with relief, before a multilayered wave of guilt overtook him. Guilt for thinking only of his daughter and not the potential other victims. Guilt for not thinking enough about Taylor, that he didn’t notice whatever pushed her to do this (because the Taylor he knew wouldn’t do such a thing without serious provocation), that he didn’t notice her becoming a parahuman. Guilt that he might have contributed to whatever forced her hand.

Meeting Miss Militia’s eyes, he asked, “Who is it that you say she attacked, and how badly were they hurt?”

“The victim was one Emma Barnes, and-”

“I...” Danny reflexively interrupted her as his train of thought came to a sudden, screeching halt. “I beg your pardon?”

The heroine’s eyes narrowed. “The victim’s name is Emma Barnes. Would I be correct in assuming that you recognize it?”

“Y-yes, I...” Danny’s mind was awash with confusion. “But, but she’s Taylor’s friend, her best friend! So why...”

Miss Militia’s eyes were alight with interest. “Her friend, you say? Do you have any idea what might have brought them into conflict, Mister Hebert?”

“I, no, I...” He took a steadying breath. “What, precisely, do you want from me, Miss Militia?”

The government heroine sighed almost imperceptibly. “Mister Hebert, what I want is to obtain information that will facilitate peaceful resolutions to future interactions between your daughter and the Protectorate and PRT. Information like her personality, details pertinent to today’s incident, and anything you can think of that might be her trigger event.”

“She… wait, her what?”

“Her trigger event. It’s when a parahuman receives his or her powers. Since the circumstances surrounding trigger events are always traumatizing to some degree or another, learning about those circumstances can help avoid potential, shall we say, pitfalls that might be encountered when interacting with her.” She paused. “Please, Mister Hebert, help us. The more we know, the better we’ll be able to keep anyone, including her, from getting hurt.”

Danny was silent for one moment, the another. “How badly was Emma hurt?” he finally asked.

“She has an incision on her cheek that reaches her cheekbone, and she lost some hair,” Miss Militia replied. “To be honest, from what responders were told about how she was attacked, she got off rather easy.”

I’ll say, Danny thought with relief. “And?” he asked. “How was she attacked?”

“The other witnesses could only say that whatever Miss Hebert did, she didn’t use her hands. Miss Barnes, however, said that Miss Hebert’s teeth lengthened into fangs, and her tongue lengthened into something like a whip, with a claw or a blade on the tip. That bladed whip is what gave her that injury, and it apparently moved faster than her eyes could see.”

Danny… well, Danny didn’t know what to think. It was… difficult to reconcile with the memory of his beloved daughter with the mental image of a bladed whip-tongue. That wasn’t the Taylor he knew and loved. But then, well, he didn’t really know her all that well these days. They’d barely interacted ever since… Shoving the painful memories aside, he closed his eyes and asked, “How dangerous does the Protectorate believe my daughter is?”

Miss Militia gave him a sympathetic look. “Based on what she displayed against Miss Barnes, we have her estimated at a Changer 3. However, that rating could likely change should it prove that she was holding back, as we suspect. We also suspect that she deserves a Brute/Breaker rating of around seven, and a middling Mover rating.”

At Danny’s blank look, she explained, “The rating system lets us describe how a parahuman’s powers express themselves, and thus the threat they pose and which general tactics are to be used against them. The numbers can be used to estimate how strong their powers are, but their intent is to further narrow down appropriate tactics. In theory the scale has no upper limit, but in practice the vast majority of parahuman powers fall somewhere from one to ten. The Changer category covers parahumans who shapeshift or otherwise change their forms. Brute is for those with enhanced strength and durability. Breakers are those who can ‘break’ the way they interact with physics, and Mover covers mobility-enhancing powers, like flight or superspeed.”

“So, wait, what makes you think she’s a high-level brute-breaker, or whatever you called her?” Danny asked, frowning.

“The power she is reported to have displayed is similar to one displayed by another parahuman we have encountered recently who goes by the name ‘Starfield’. You might have heard about her on the news.”

“I must have missed that segment,” he said faintly as his mind raced. His little girl, a news-worthy cape? But wait, more importantly… “Wait, you said you ‘encountered’ her. She… she’s not a villain, is she?”

“No,” she replied, to which he let out a sigh of relief. “At least, the last time Starfield spoke to us on the subject she expressed her desire to be a hero. However, that does not preclude he falling to villainy down the road, or being forced into it. Not to mention that Starfield has displayed, certain… behaviors that might make it more likely that she might cause harm to others.”

Danny felt the tension return. “What, ah, behaviors might those be?”

“I’d rather not say, not while we don’t know for certain that she is Starfield. Remember, Miss Hebert’s reported powers are merely similar without confirmation, or, at the very least, further evidence. Now, are you willing to help us, Mister Hebert?”

Danny was silent for a long moment. The heroine before him had presented her case in quite the convincing manner. He really believed that she wanted what was best for everyone involved. And she was a freaking hero, for crying out loud! But… the negotiator in him couldn’t help but think that there was something she was holding back. She was just being too helpful for him to think otherwise. And, well, if he just gave her information about Taylor, it would feel like he was betraying her, somehow, like he was going around behind her back. Making his decision, he opened his mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by a knock at his office door.

“Yes?” Danny called out, and the door opened enough for the office secretary, a young man named Jesse, to stick his head in.

“Sir?” Jesse said, and Danny smiled softly in amused exasperation at the unnecessary formality. “Phone call for you.”

“I’m a little occupied right now,” Danny replied, glancing at the other occupant of his office. “Could you ask them to call back later?”

“Sir… it’s your daughter.”

Both Danny and Miss Militia straightened at that. Their eyes met, she nodded, and he said, “Put her through.”

“Yes, sir.” Jesse’s head withdrew, the door clicked shut, and a moment later the phone on Danny’s desk rang. Picking it up, he said, “Taylor? What’s going on, sweetie?”

“Hey, Dad,” she greeted him, sounding remarkably calm given the situation. “I just, I needed to talk to you about something.”

“Is it about that, ah, incident you had at school?”

Taylor sighed with what seemed like a mix of relief and resignation. “Well, that simplifies things, I guess.” She paused. “Is there anyone there with you? Maybe from the PRT, or the Protectorate?”

Danny paused and glanced at Miss Militia. “Yes.”

Taylor sighed again. “Okay. Okay. Well, if they want, I’d be willing to talk with them over speaker. Might make some things easier.”

Looking up, Danny placed his hand over the receiver and relayed what she’d said to Miss Militia, who nodded. “Okay, Taylor, I’m putting you on.” With that, he pressed the relevant button on the phone and hung up the handset.

“Hello,” Taylor said calmly. “To whom am I speaking?”

“Hello, Miss Hebert,” the heroine replied. “I’m Miss Militia, of the local branch of the Protectorate.”

“Hello, Miss Militia,” Taylor replied in a neutral tone. “Can we just pretend that you asked me to turn myself in and all that?”

The Protectorate heroine was silent for a moment, then said, “If you wish, though I’d like to add that it would make things easier for you.”

Taylor snorted. “Easier for you to press-gang me into the Wards, more like. Excuse me if I say hell no.”

Miss Militia blinked. “Why do you dislike the idea of joining the Wards so much? It’s meant specifically to help young parahumans like yourself, after all.”

“Several- actually, why don’t you tell me? I’m sure you have some ideas.”

The heroine sighed. “We do, but first, may I ask a few things?” Taylor made a noise of assent. “Okay. Where are you calling from?”

Danny’s daughter snorted. “Seriously? Do you really think I’d tell you where I am?” She laughed softly, then went quiet. “I was going to call from our home phone, but I realized on the way there what a dumb idea it was. The disguised PRT vans in front of the place kinda hammered it home. I suppose I should thank you, by the way, for not just broadcasting to our neighbors that cape shit was afoot. But anyway, I’m using some payphone right now. But you had other questions.”

“Yes, I did. Why did you attack Miss Barnes with your powers?”

Taylor sighed. “Look, that was an accident. She accused me of killing Mom, and I lost control for a moment. I restrained myself from doing any more to her, but, well…” She sighed. “To be honest? Part of me kind of wishes I didn’t. She deserved what she got. Hell, she deserves worse.”

Danny was, to put it mildly, shocked to hear such vehemence in his little girl’s voice, especially when it was directed at her childhood friend. “What, what do you mean, Taylor?” he asked hesitantly. “What did Emma do to deserve that?”

Taylor gave a bark of humorless laughter. “What hasn’t that backstabbing bitch done? She and her psycho friends roped half the school into bullying me incessantly for the past year and a half. They put me in the hospital and made me trigger, and no one had done shit about it! I-” She bit off whatever she was saying to take a deep breath, then murmured something to herself that Danny couldn’t hear clearly.

“Taylor?” Danny asked. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you were being bullied?” His fingernails were digging into his palms and his knuckles were white, such was his anger at the thought of his little girl getting bullied.

Taylor was silent for a while. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft and sad. “Dad, I, I didn’t mean… When it started, you were still devastated by what happened to Mom. I thought I could deal with it on my own, so I didn’t want to worry you. But then it didn’t stop, everything I tried, everyone I went to was useless, and the longer I spent not telling you, the harder it got to bring it up.”

“Taylor...” Danny wanted to say that she should have told him anyway, that he would have been able to help, but he stopped himself. What could he have done to help, in the state he’d been in?

“Miss Hebert,” Miss Militia cut in, disrupting Danny’s train of thought, “we could help you resolve your situation-”

“If I were to join the Wards, yeah, yeah,” Taylor interrupted, her voice cold. “See, the thing is, you should be helping me anyway. Hell, you should’ve helped me a long time ago. After all, one of the friends helping Emma bully me is Sophia Hess.” Miss Militia went still and silent. Evidently this wasn’t the reaction Taylor was looking for because her anger went from cold to hot, and another voice joined hers, hollow and disturbing. “You, you knew! You knew there was something wrong with Sophia, and yet you didn’t do anything about it! You let her stay a Ward, even though she’s a bully! I bet you’re why the teachers were worse than useless when I went to them, too!”

Miss Militia tried to interrupt the heated tirade, only to be interrupted in turn by Danny. “You let a bully be a hero?” he asked incredulously. “And you want to put my daughter, the victim of her bullying, on the same team as her!?”

“Mister Hebert, please!” Miss Militia had to raise her voice to be heard over Danny’s shouting. When he had quieted down, she continued, “Now, we’re looking into Miss Hess’, shall we say, extracurricular activities,” Taylor snorted, “but the thing is, we were only notified that something might be going on very recently. We were unaware that she was bullying your daughter as she claims. Rest assured, should we find evidence that a bullying campaign has been ongoing, we will be sure to hold those responsible for keeping us in the dark accountable.”

Taylor sighed, the other voice absent, to Danny’s relief. “Thing is, they’re very good at destroying evidence. Every time I went to the teachers for help, it always came down to my word against theirs, and guess who was believed? Not the creepy, klutzy, unlucky loner, that’s for sure.” A pause. “What caused you lot to realize something was up, anyway?”

“Before I answer that,” the heroine replied, “There is something I must ask you. Are you Starfield?”

“What? How did...” Taylor trailed off, then chuckled in resignation. “I guess that answers your question, now, doesn’t it.”

“Yes, it does. To answer your previous question, you are actually the one who made us take a closer look. A new parahuman, who didn’t know Shadow Stalker and was amenable to joining the Wards, then goes into a nigh-murderous rage upon meeting her and storms out? Something was up, and we intend to find out what.”

“Wait, wait,” Danny cut in. “What’s going on, and what happened with your voice earlier, Taylor?”

Taylor paused for a moment, then replied, “So, uh, Dad? I’ve gone out patrolling a few times, after you’d gone to sleep. The first time, I ended up meeting with a couple of the Wards, and then with Miss Militia and Armsmaster. I was invited to meet the rest of the Wards the Saturday before last, which I did. As for the voice thing...” She paused, and when she resumed speaking it was with the hollow voice that made his skin crawl. “It’s how I speak while in costume, since I don’t have a mouth then. I hadn’t realized I could use it with my face on...” She trailed off as her words, and the implications thereof, worked their way through Danny’s head.

“With your- Taylor, please tell me you don’t mean what I think you mean!”

“Dad, Dad, it’s fine, don’t worry! Everything’s fine!” Taylor assured him a little frantically. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

Her words reminded Danny of something, and he looked at Miss Militia and asked, “What were those, ah, ‘behaviors’ you said Starfield displayed?”

“Um, Dad?” Taylor started, only to be interrupted by the flag-clad heroine.

“Miss Hebert, there’s something we’ve discovered about the fights you’ve been in. Namely, everyone you’ve been in conflict with, barring the mugger whose hand you bit off,” What, “have displayed similar injuries, wherein small bits of flesh have apparently been nibbled off. We’re concerned that your powers are leading you to develop, ah… cannibalistic tendencies.”

“I… what?” Taylor replied, seemingly at a loss for words. “I don’t, she, I...”

“Miss Hebert,” Miss Militia continued, her voice somehow warm and comforting despite the subject matter. “It isn’t exactly unknown for some parahumans to experience some mental influence from their powers. Our resources include psychiatrists to, among other things, help deal with or work around such influences.”

Taylor was silent for a moment, before coldly replying, “Another recruitment attempt? Even though I’ve already told you to kindly fuck off on that front?” She sighed in disgust. “Look, I think this conversation has been played out, so I’ll be going. Love you, Dad.” And despite Miss Militia’s protests, the line went dead.

Danny looked at the sputtering cape and said, “I hope you got what you needed, ma’am, because I believe it’s time for you to leave.”

 

Spark 4.1


I slammed the phone into its cradle and stalked away, uncaring of whatever odd looks I might be receiving. I’d been getting them for the entire half-hour I’d been walking around with my face on, on account of the unseasonably thin hoodie I was wearing.

“I am assuming that the conversation did not go well?” Melody asked more than said.

“Yeah,” I ground out, then winced at my tone. “Sorry, sorry,” I hurriedly said in a softer tone. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It is fine,” Melody assured me. “More importantly, what went wrong?”

I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. “Well,”I finally said, “first of all, Miss Militia was there with Dad.”

“Oh,” Rest piped up (literally; the sounds she was using to speak sounded like a combination of the tinkle of wind chimes with the deeper sound of water through plumbing). “Not good, is?”

“No,” I sighed. “Well, at least now I know something about what they know about me. And now she and Dad know about the bullying, and Miss Militia said something about doing an investigation into what Sophia;s been doing. But even so, they know I’m Starfield, and thanks to Aria’s desire to taste people they think I’m a budding cannibal, to boot.”

“Hey!” Aria said indignantly, before pausing. “… What’s a cannibal?”

I sighed fondly. “A cannibal is a creature who eats the flesh of others of its kind. So I’d be one if I ate other humans. The Protectorate thinks I am one because we’ve been taking little nibbles out of everyone we’ve fought with, and they don’t like it.”

“Oh…” Aria sounded rather unhappy about that. “I, I’m sorry...”

“It’s okay,” I replied soothingly. “I deserve at least half the blame, since I gave you the go-ahead to do so. I just...”

Something made me stop and look up, and I stepped back a little as I realized that I’d nearly walked into the man in front of me. The reason for this seemed to be that he had stopped and turned to stare at me. In fact, most everyone on the sidewalk had done so as well. A flash of light made my head whip to the side to look at its source, a young man with his cell phone’s camera pointed at me. He suddenly flinched back, making me realize that my expression had morphed into a glare, and a heated one, at that. He dared take my picture without permission? Even if I was already outed, I didn’t want my picture spread around if I could help it.

In a few swift strides I was standing in front of the guy, still glaring at him like I was trying to gouge out his eyes with mine. Quickly, I snatched his phone out of his hand and stuffed it in my mouth, letting Aria’s teeth crush, pierce, slice, and grind it to bits, before spitting them back at him. He flinched back as the bits hit him, and when he opened his eyes, they were wide with shock.

I glanced around and saw that everyone’s eyes were similarly wide and fixed on me. Had I been able to I might have flushed with embarrassment, but instead I just scowled. Since no one else seemed to have any recording devices pointed at me I just walked away, a little more briskly than I’d been walking previously. People who’d been watching quickly stepped out of my way when I drew near. I didn’t look back as I strode off.

.o.o.o.​

Eventually I stopped and sighed. I needed to blow off some steam, and stomping around here wasn’t going to help. I stalked off into a nearby alley and, after looking around for any cameras, pulled out one of my knives. In a motion that I barely thought about anymore I ran the blade around my face and let it flop off into my waiting hand.

Soon my hoodie was off and through my face, and all the cuts were made. I gave Melody the go-ahead to pull herself through and turned to leave the alley, only to pause. At the mouth of the alley stood a young girl who was staring at me, mouth open, eyes wide. I stared back at her for a few seconds, noting that she wasn’t getting that glazed look that so many people got when looking at my not-face. Hesitantly, I raised a hand to wave at her, a hand whose fingers sprouted black claws. I froze.

The girl turned and scampered away to hide behind a woman’s leg, little hands fisted in her (I assumed) mother’s pants leg and her face pressed against her thigh. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” I heard the woman ask, looking down at the girl. She peeked shyly around her mother and pointed in my direction.

“The lady cut her face off.”

After a moment of staring down at her daughter, the woman laughed and started to turn her head towards me. “I’m sure it’s nothing darli-” she started to say only to go silent as her gaze fell on me. She seemed to be about to scream, only for her face to go slack and her eyes glaze over.

Not wanting to deal with this situation, I had Aria extend a tentacle out of my face, wrap it around my neck, and reach up to grab the roof of the building beside me. With that, it was a simple matter to toss my body high into the air and fly away.

I took a meandering course towards the Docks. Part of me just wanted to go poke around in that cave Newter had shown me, while another part wanted to look for trouble to resolve as a hero. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunate for most in actuality, I found no crime to fight. The only real thing of note I could see from on high was a surprising number of potted plants on the roofs below me. It was almost as if rooftop gardens were the latest fad. For all I knew, they might just be.

Mentally sighing over the mystery, I flapped silently onward.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t much longer before the first signs of trouble were borne to me by the breeze. The screech of tortured, scraping metal almost drowned out the shouts and screams that followed. Anyone who paid any attention to the news about local gang activity knew that sound: Hookwolf, the murderous Nazi cape. He could take the form of a giant wolf made of blades, hooks, spikes, and barbs. There were rumors that he wasn’t restricted to using a canine shape, of course, but they were unconfirmed.

I quickened my pace, telling Aria to put more of herself through my face in preparation for conflict. I knew that fighting a rampaging Hookwolf wasn’t exactly the best way to avoid the PRT, but I also knew that with my friends at my side I was fairly powerful, and I’d be a pretty piss-poor hero if I didn’t at least try to stop him.

With Aria covering much of my body and dozens of large eyes already forming, I crested the last building between myself and the conflict. The writhing, shifting mass of Hookwolf came into view, as well as…

Why the hell was Hookwolf fighting members of his own gang?

 

Spark 4.2


I circled the area, various eyes zooming in on the action. Hookwolf was in the process of mauling a cape I didn’t recognize, though I could make out Empire 88 colors on what little of his costume remained un-rent and un-besmirched by blood.

A cluster of ghostly apparitions stood around a fallen form further down the street. I remembered reading about how Crusader’s ghosts reflected what the cape himself wore and wielded as well as the state of his body, and since each ghost held its spear one-handed due to the other arm dangling by a string… well.

Other corpses dotted the road, staining the concrete with frankly horrifying amounts of blood. One such blood stain showed that one poor soul had tried to crawl away, but he hadn’t made made it far before expiring. I tore my gaze away from all of the red to focus back on Hookwolf, only to see him toss the ragged remains of his erstwhile foe aside.

A shadow seen out of the corner of an eye had me both dodge in midair and start growing more eyes on my back before I even realized what was happening. A huge chunk of concrete hurtled through the space I’d just vacated, shaking me with the wind of its passage before crashing to the road just inches from Hookwolf’s bladed snout. The impact cracked the roadway, an astonishingly loud crash tearing through the air to be greedily gulped down by Rest.

A new eye just above my tail spotted the source of the manmade boulder: a girl I assumed was around my age, wearing a long, hooded robe, black with red designs. What really held my attention, though, was the fact that she was seated in an honest-to-goodness flying chair. Not a fancy rocket chair or anything like that, just a normal, if comfortable-looking, chair hanging in the air. That, her costume, and the number of large objects orbiting her clued me in to the fact that she was Rune, another member of the Empire 88.

“Well fuck you too ya fucking bitch!” she shouted down at me. “Stay still so I can swat you like the fly you are!”

“The hell is your problem? Are you trying to kill me?” I shouted back, deliberately downplaying my durability on a whim. In the meantime, I was keeping a few eyes on Hookwolf, so I caught it when he started to lope away before stopping. After a few moments of standing still he turned and started to make his way almost reluctantly over towards the injured Crusader.

“Damn fucking right I was, you fucking creepy-ass rug-muncher! As I see it, you being here means you’re probably the one who made Hookwolf do it, and even if you aren’t I bet you’re an enemy anyway!”

As she’d ranted, I’d been making some laser eyes and dumping as much energy into them as they would hold. I winced internally at the dent it made in what I could “see” of Aria’s energy stores. I mean, due to the weird preservation effect (or whatever it was) of my other side, that lost energy would probably be replaced on its own to some degree, but even so, I’d want to give my friend something nice to eat after this.

Those thoughts, however, were put on the back burner as Rune’s words made their way to the front of my mind. Clenching my hands into fists in an effort to ignore her insults (which, I noted idly, forced Melody’s claws through my palms), I said, “Wait, what did Hookwolf do, exactly?” As I spoke, I set my lasers to what I assumed was infrared and fired some probing shots at both Hookwolf and Rune’s chair.

“Don’t act like you don’t know, you fucking cultist cunt!” Rune spat back. Her orbiting cloud of debris started to pick up speed. “You made him kill Kaiser and Krieg, and you dare pretend you don’t know about it?”

“I… what?” Kaiser, the leader of the white supremacist gang that terrorized much of the bay, the feared cape who could turn a busy street into a forest of bladed death in moments, was dead? That… that was at once wonderful news, and rather terrifying. On the one hand, the gang would be weakened, leaving them less able to victimize people. On the other, once the news got out (from, say, the loose lips of a certain Empire cape, mayhaps?), the other gangs would be scrambling over themselves and each other to take a bite out of the E88. The resulting gang war would have an incalculable number of casualties, many of them innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.

There were likely further consequences that I just couldn’t think of in the situation I was in.

Speaking of such situations, I was having rather limited success in lasering Hookwolf’s shifting metallic form. It appeared that most of the lasers’ light was actually reflected by his shiny tendrils, meaning they only absorbed a fraction of the heat another material might’ve taken. A material like the wood of Rune’s chair, which was quick to blacken. I was just as quick to focus more lasers on it, even as I thought furiously about how to deal with the beautiful lupiform below.

Then it hit me.

Well, the flying chunk of masonry actually missed by a narrow margin, but the idea hit home. I quickly dumped energy into the lasers pointed at Rune’s chair and let loose their infrared fury.

With a loud crack like thunder, the chair was suddenly on fire. It took Rune a moment to notice, but when she did, she shrieked and threw herself from her perch. She might’ve been intending to land on one of the many chunks of debris she had, but before she could I swooped in to catch her, my tentacles both restraining her and shearing off the areas of her robe that had caught fire. No sense in burning Aria, after all.

She started to struggle and swear at me again, so I tightened the tentacles around her and shoved one in her mouth to gag her. Surprisingly, she went very still after that, and when I glanced at her face her eyes were as wide as they could get.

Mentally shrugging, I snaked a tentacle over the back of her neck (making her shudder) to form a mouth near her ear. The mouth licked its lips and started to speak.

“Alright, here’s how this is going to work. You’re going to focus on bringing Hookwolf to heel, and once we’re done I’ll drop you off with the PRT. If you don’t, if you do any less than your utmost to stop him before anyone else gets hurt of killed, I’ll… well, let’s just say it won’t be fun for you.” I was mostly bluffing, of course. While I did have the surprisingly strong urge to just eat her tongue right then and there, the more rational part of me didn’t feel so great about the idea of harming a helpless person, no matter how odious her personal beliefs were. I was banking on her imagination filling in what could happen to her at my hands. Well, mostly my tentackes, really. “So, do we have a deal? Nod if we do.”

She immediately started nodding so hard that for a moment I thought she might dislodge the gag. “Good. Now...”

I returned my attention to Hookwolf just as he was closing in on Crusader. A few of the ghosts broke away to fly at the approaching terror, only for the apparently traitorous Nazi to abruptly swerve and break into an odd, loping run at the side of a building. He dashed up it, blades and hooks digging in even more easily than in the concrete. Windows shattered and bricks fell away as he passed, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. As he reached the top of the wall, he coiled up like a giant spring, then launched himself up into the air. He landed on a small car held in the grasp of Rune’s power and immediately pushed off towards the next platform. He bounded swiftly towards us, the cacophony of his passage growing ever louder, and it was all to easy to picture the murder in his eyes.

With a powerful flap of my borrowed wings I hastened my flight to put more distance between us and the approaching killer, then turned to point my captive at him. “Stop him!” I hissed in her ear.

To her credit, she only froze for a few moments before the platform Hookwolf had jumped for suddenly fell out of the air, leaving the neo-Nazi to claw futilely at the air as he plummeted to the street below. The impact, while still loud enough to feel in Melody’s bones, was quieter than I had expected, given his bulk. Maybe he’d used those beautiful metal tentacles of his to cushion his impact? But no, I had more important things to do than speculate on how it’d happened. Namely, capitalizing upon the fact that he was, for the moment at least, stunned from his meeting with the pavement.

“Pen him in, quickly!” I ordered Rune, and she was gratifyingly quick to bring almost all of her debris field down to surround him with chunks of concrete, cars, large steel plates, and other assorted odds and ends pressing in on him from almost every direction. Hookwolf’s (admittedly rather feeble) struggles proved insufficient to free him. One of my eyes then fell on the largest chunk of all, the one Rune had tried to smash me with as a greeting. “Do you still have control of that?” I asked, moving a tendril into her field of view so she could see it point at the object in question. Her attempt to nod was answer enough. “Good. Drop it on him.”

Rune hesitated, which, admittedly, was understandable. She’d worked with the guy, after all. They shared the same ideals. That said, the hesitation came to a swift end when I pressed a few teeth into the nape of her neck, just hard enough to taste her sweet, sweet blood. As I ignored the impulse to bite even deeper, the concrete chunk wobbled into the air and moved to hover over the trapped Nazi. “Pull it up higher,” I ordered, wanting to be certain to get him. Run only needed a single tooth’s encouragement to do so, the chunk rising an dozen stories into the air, then two.

Excellent.

“Now, when I tell you to, don’t just drop it. Bring it down as hard as you can.” Rune whimpered through her gag but didn’t offer up any protest. I took a moment to steel myself. This… if this killed him, his death would be on my hands. But then, if I didn’t stop him here, and he went on to kill more people, to ruin more lives, wouldn’t that be on me as well?

My fists clenched, driving my claws through my palms once again. “Do it,” I said. “Crush him.”

Rune’s eyes squeezed shut, and the artificial boulder dropped, accelerating towards its target far faster than if it was merely being pulled by gravity.

Movement from the pen of rubble drew my attention, and the world seemed to slow. Part of the wall had been knocked loose, and Hookwolf seemed to be trying to squirm free. I could only watch in horror as he widened the gap and started to all but ooze out. No, no! He can’t escape!

Then, with a truly horrendous crash, the falling slab impacted and his writhing form was obscured from my sight by a billowing cloud of dust. Rune stiffened and screamed through her gag, but I dismissed it as her being startled by the noise. I had more important things to focus on, namely determining whether or not Hookwolf had survived.

As I circled the scene, I started growing a large laser eye at my hip. It grew and grew, until it was the size of my head. Since it, naturally, couldn’t see, I grew a few normal eyes inset around the iris for targeting purposes. Those eyes immediately started scanning the expanding cloud of powdered concrete for any sign of my target.

When he didn’t appear in the next few moments, I felt it was safe to divert some of my attention to check on my captive, who was…

Oh.

Oh, dear.

Rune was impaled through the side by a foot-long shard of Hookwolf. It had actually pierced my stomach, too, but I hadn’t noticed. Point was, she was bleeding pretty badly, and I didn’t want her to die if I could do anything to help her.

Rune’s face had gone pale, a few tears trailing down her cheeks. Her breaths were rapid and shallow, but she hadn’t passed out. Not yet, at least.

Half-remembered first-aid lessons kept me from just pulling the blade out. It might be stopping her from bleeding even worse. Instead, I wrapped tendrils around where it entered and exited her body and applied pressure. She whimpered in agony, the sound muffled by the gag, but I didn’t let that stop me from immobilizing the blade and keeping her from bleeding too much.

A small, petty part of me was pissed about the blood that was soaking into my “costume”, but I ignored it. There were more important things to worry about.

Things like the struggling form I spotted through the clearing dust cloud. My large laser eye snapped up to point at it, the inset eyes rolling to look in line with it.

Finally, a breeze picked up, hastening the dissipation of the cloud. I immediately started charging my eye, wanting to be ready should I need to shoot Hookwolf. Assuming it would have any effect, of course.

I circled, seeking a better angle. It wasn’t much longer before I could see the aftermath of Rune’s impromptu meteor strike. A shallow crater of cracked and crushed pavement now decorated the road, surrounded by the scattered remains of the pen. Bits of shattered metal lay everywhere, some even embedded in cars or walls. I spotted a trail of cleared wreckage, and my many eyes followed it for a good dozen feet to find its cause: a much-reduced Hookwolf.

Two parts of me warred for dominance in that moment. One was relieved that I wasn’t a killer, while another was disappointed that the neo-Nazi was still moving, and wanted to fix that.

I continued to circle for a time, watching as he dragged himself slowly along, shrinking as he went. His shattered and mangled barbs and blades withdrew until all that was left was a muscular, shirtless man staggering along, evidently dazed from the strike. However, it also seemed that he was rather quick to recover, as it wasn’t long before the surity of his steps grew and he started gaining speed.

Now, that just wouldn’t do, and I had just the tool to stop him. The moment I judged the air between myself and him to be sufficiently clear, my laser eye pulsed.

A crack of thunder split the air. The section of Hookwolf’s pants covering his left calf was vaporized, as was the skin beneath, revealing the now-glowing metal beneath. I only saw it for a moment, though, as the expanding cloud of vaporized flesh knocked his leg out from under him, making him fall hard on his back. I winced as I heard the crack of his head meeting the pavement despite the distance between us. I watched him for a few moments more, but he didn’t move. I felt comfortable enough in that moment to land on a rooftop and check on Rune.

She… well, the little Nazi wasn’t doing so well. Her eyes, while still open, were glazed over, and her breathing was still rapid and shallow. She didn’t react when I set her down on the roof, and I suspected she might be unconscious.

Giving the wound a closer look (and feel), I could see that the steel spike hadn’t just pierced her side. Its momentum had torn the wound open. The pressure Aria’s tentacles were applying kept any blood from spilling forth, but I worried that Rune might still be bleeding internally. I didn’t know the quickest way to the nearest hospital, and I knew she needed treatment, and fast.

A thought struck me, then. “Ah, girls? Have you ever been injured, before you met me?”

“Yes,” Melody replied after a moment. “There are these small but very fast bits of something that have flown right through me on a few occasions. The resulting holes hurt, certainly, but as you have seen, I am whole and hale now.” She paused for a moment. “Oh, and there was that time when Aria tried to eat me, but those wounds are long gone, too.”

“I, I’m sorry,” Aria replied in an uncharacteristically subdued tone.

“It is fine, please do not be too hard on yourself for it,” Melody replied consolingly. “You were not in full control of yourself, and besides, you neither maimed nor killed me. And afterwards, I gained a sister, so I feel that I came out ahead in the exchange.”

I started to fight back a smile, before remembering that I didn’t have my mouth on with which to smile. But as nice as that may have been, there were, once again, more pressing matters at hand.

I pulled my shirt up and held it in place by pressing my chin to my collarbone. I firmly ignored the fact that this exposed my meager chest, instead focusing on using Aria to make a vertical incision down my sternum, stopping a couple inches above my navel. I then made a couple diagonal cuts branching off from it, forming a sort of inverted ‘Y’. With a little digital encouragement the bottom flap of skin flopped open, leaving me to pull open the other flaps.

“Now, remember, Aria, keep pressure on her wounds and make sure the blade doesn’t move, okay? Oh, and no nibbling!”

“Fine...” She replied with exaggerated reluctance. Satisfied, I started to pull Rune into my torso head first.

She was up to her neck when I stopped to hiss as I felt a stabbing pain through my side. But no, I realized, it wasn’t my pain.

It was Rune’s.

 

Spark 4.3


“Oh.”

That was all I could make myself say. This… this changed quite a bit. I…

“Taylor?” The sound of my name shocked me out of the state I was in. Melody continued, “Is everything alright? I am tasting surprise and fear from you, along with some other emotions that, together, are concerning.”

I took a steadying, if unnecessary breath through one of Aria’s mouths. “I...” I faltered, then continued. “When I put Rune’s head through me, I, ah, gained control of the rest of her body. I can feel her pain, and I think...” I lifted her hand as easily as I would my own. “Yeah, I can control her now, too.”

“Okay,” she replied, sounding confused. “Is that bad?”

I shook my head. “It’s… look, parahumans who can control humans are really mistrusted, and that’s before you take all the villains who’ve abused such powers into consideration.” I paused for a moment. “Well, now that I think about it, it’s just another aspect of my powers that I’ll have to keep secret.” Somehow, that made this new development that much easier to handle.

“I am confused,” Melody said plaintively. “If it is bad, why are you suddenly feeling relieved?”

“Well, I’m keeping a number of things about my powers secret from everyone, so, really, what’s another added to that?” I paused. “Thank you for your concern, though, Melody.”

“Of course, Taylor. I care a lot about your well-being. We all do. Rest less so, of course-”

“Hey!” my favorite sapient snowstorm protested.

“Likely because she met you later than Aria and I did,” Melody continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “Our feelings for you grow stronger by the day, as do your feelings for the three of us.”

Had I still been able to, I’m sure I would’ve been blushing nigh incandescently with happiness. “Thank you. All of you.” I released the flaps of my skin to give a larger tentacle a one-armed hug and reach up to pat one of my wings. Images rose, unbidden, of all we’d done together. Playing, learning, testing our abilities…

The sudden image of a plastic water bottle crumpling in on itself made me return my attention to Rune in a bit of a panic. I didn’t feel anything of mote from her other than the pain of being impaled, but, well, something wasn’t right. It took me a moment to realize what it was, and when I did I felt a little ashamed. Her chest wasn’t rising or falling, and I was sure she needed to breathe to survive.

I hurriedly pulled her head out of my stomach, and I immediately felt her start to breathe again, seemingly no worse for wear. I did note that her eyes and mouth felt a little dry, though.

With a little sigh of relief I started to put her back in my stomach, feeling her steadily disappear from my senses as she went.

“Taylor?” Rest said, somehow making bedsprings sound concerned. With a greater portion of my attention on her, I heard what she heard: sirens, swiftly approaching.

I froze, then hurried the process of putting Rune through me. I mean, it was good that the authorities were on their way, but I didn’t want to be here when they arrived. And since I didn’t know how long Rune would last without me, that meant I was taking her with me.

I’d just gotten to her knees when an eye between my wings spotted a few flying shapes zipping towards me. I hurriedly shoved the rest of Rune through, feeling the last of her leave my senses, before pulling the flaps of my skin together to start healing. Once they’d healed together enough that I didn’t need to hold them for the cuts to stay closed I stopped and let my shirt fall back into place. I wasn’t going to heal the incisions completely since I was just going to open myself up again to let Rune out at a hospital for treatment. It seemed like people didn’t like it much when I started cutting myself open, so maybe just tearing along seams would be better?

The flying shapes had gotten much closer by the time I was able to give them my undivided attention. I was able to identify them as the flight-capable members of New Wave, the maskless hero team. I’d met Laserdream and Shielder the other two had to be Lady Photon and Glory Girl.

I stood and turned to face them as they approached. I didn’t really want to be here when the PRT et al arrived, but if I just took off now the New Wave capes might think I was fleeing the scene and decide to chase after me. No, better to wait and greet them before leaving. Although…

Now that I thought about it, Panacea, the local healer, was a member of New Wave. Maybe I could get one of them to lead me to her to get Rune all patched up.

By the time I’d made my decision they’d reached my rooftop, hovering before me, alternating between giving me wary looks and surveying the scene. Well, at least Laserdream was regarding me in a more friendly manner. “Hi, Starfield,” she said, and I gave her a little wave in return.

Glory Girl drifted closer to Laserdream and, thanks to a few flecks of Rest near them, I heard her murmur, “Wow, you weren’t kidding about how creepy she looks, cuz.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say, Glory Girl,” I said without thinking. It probably wasn’t the best idea to reveal some of what Rest could do, but what she’d said had actually hurt a little. Besides, seeing someone hovering in midair jump in surprise was rather amusing. As she did, some flavor sensed by Melody’s tail, wings, and claws, surged in intensity, then returned to its previous, almost unnoticeable state.

“Oh. Um, sorry?” I was a little nonplussed with how she’d managed to turn her apology into a question, but I decided to let it slide for now.

Lady Photon cleared her throat, and I rolled a large eye on my shoulder to look at her so she’d know she had my attention. She was silent for a moment as she shuddered almost, but not quite, imperceptibly. “Ah, Starfield, was it?” I nodded and moved some of Aria’s mass to the side so she could see the stars beyond it through my face. “Oh...” She went quiet for another moment until I let Aria cut off the view, at which point she rallied. “So, ah, could you tell us what, exactly, happened here?”

I would have smiled, but I restrained myself. “Certainly,” I replied. “So, I was just flying along when I heard Hookwolf, um, y’know, making loud Hookwolf noises. So, like any good hero, I went to investigate, see if there was anything I could do. When I got here, I saw him mostly done chewing up, um...” I went to the edge of the roof and scanned the wrecked and bloody roadway. I noted with a little concern that Crusader’s ghosts were no longer present, though he didn’t seem to have moved. My eyes finally fell on the puddle of blood and meat I was looking for and, as I fought down a roiling stomach, I pointed at it. “That guy. He was killing that guy.” I noted the younger members of New Wave getting varying degrees of green around their mouths, and I didn’t blame them.

“Also, that’s Crusader over there, I think,” I continued, pointing towards him. “He might be dead, too. Anyway, it was a little too late for the guy Hookwolf had, so I decided to keep my distance and observe rather than swooping in to save him. It was at that point that Rune came along and lobbed a big chunk of concrete at me.”

“Where is Rune now?” Lady Photon asked.

“I’m getting there. Anyway, Rune said some mean and coarse things, and let slip that apparently Kaiser and Krieg are dead.”

“Wait, what?” Shielder blurted out while the others gave me mixed looks of shock and doubt.

“Holy shit,” Glory Girl breathed. “If that’s true, then...”

“Yeah, I had the same thoughts,” I said. “Anyway, she tried to kill me again, so I broke her flying chair and caught her before she could fall too far. Then, since it was apparent that I probably couldn’t do much to Hookwolf in his bladed form, I persuaded her to help me put a stop to his rampage.”

“And how, pray tell, did you ‘persuade’ her to help you?” Lady Photon asked, her voice suspicious.

“That’s not important,” I replied smoothly. “What is important is that Hookwolf is in that alley there,” I jerked my head in his direction, “and Rune caught a flying piece of him through her side, so I’d like to get her to a hospital before she bleeds to death.”

The younger members of New Wave looked at Lady Photon who, after a moment of staring at me, asked, “And where is she? I don’t see her.”

“Oh, um. She’s, well...” I pointed at my abdomen.

“You… you ate her!?” Glory Girl looked horrified. They all did, though Laserdream’s expression was growing closer to realization.

“What? No!” I said indignantly. “That wouldn’t help her in the slightest. I just put her in storage so I wouldn’t hurt her while flying with her.” I shook my head. “I don’t care what the PRT or Protectorate think they know, I’m not a cannibal.”

Lady Photon looked rather pointedly at the little tongue lapping at the blood that stained my shirt. Where I able to blush I likely would have as I gently pushed the tentacle away from the blood, then held it still with my power when it tried to sneakily return to licking. “Not now, Aria,” I murmured, though evidently I wasn’t quiet enough, judging from how the others shuddered.

“Uh, Starfield?” Laserdream said hesitantly, “You’re, ah, not exactly helping your case there.”

Well. That was just great. I brought my fist up to my face and faked a cough. “So, uh, yeah. Rune’s probably bleeding as we speak, so if one of you could lead me to the nearest hospital, that’d be great.”

Laserdream looked at Glory Girl, who frowned back. A conversation composed entirely of looks and gestures followed, while the flavor I’d tasted before surged once more in intensity, this time lasting long enough for me to identify what it tasted like before it faded. It was actually two flavors somehow superimposed, one savory with hints of sweetness, while the other was spicy and bitter. Both, however, were somehow shallow as far as flavors went.

With a sigh, Glory Girl slumped a little in midair before turning to face me. “So, um, I guess I’ll take you to the hospital Am- uh, Panacea is currently at. We’ll get her to fix Rune up before turning her over to the PRT, okay?”

Part of me objected rather strongly to the idea of just turning Rune over. At first, I thought it was because of my current distaste for the organizations in question, but after a bit of quick introspection I found that, while it was a part of the reason, the rest had a different cause.

Namely, Rune was mine now, and I wanted to keep what was mine. That idea, that… possessiveness… it scared me a little. I mean, I could see where it came from, kind of. The majority of my issues could be traced back to Emma and her cohorts, after all. I didn’t want to give Rune up, but… I had to.

“...Alright,” I replied, unsure about how truthful I was being. “Let’s go.”

.o.o.o.​

“So, I’ve been meaning to ask...”

I swiveled a few more eyes to look at Glory Girl, who was flying beside me. The act made her falter a bit and go silent.

“Yes?” I prompted, having to shout through my borrowed mouth to be heard over the rushing wind. She jerked momentarily as if startled, then continued.

“What’s that big ball thing on your hip for?” she asked, gesturing to my big laser eye, which I’d grown some eyelids to cover rather than reabsorb it. “It can’t make flying any easier.”

I was silent for a moment, thinking about whether or not I should tell her, and if I did, how much I should reveal, and in what manner. Finally, I decided to just open the eyelids and show her.

“… What.” Glory Girl stared. “Why do you- what the fuck!” I’d had the little lumps surrounding the iris open up, revealing the targeting eyes. Glory Girl was lucky we were flying well above the buildings below us, else she might’ve crashed into one from looking at my eye instead of where she was going. I kept the big eye pointed away from her all the while; Even though she didn’t know what it was, and I was fairly certain I couldn’t fire it by accident, it just wasn’t polite to point weapons at allies.

Glory Girl finally just slumped in midair. “I just… I don’t want to know, do I?”

“Probably not.”

Sighing and shaking her head, she straightened herself. “Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly. “We’re here.”

‘Here’ must’ve been the hospital I’d spotted about half a minute previously. I decided not to mention that little fact.

We touched down on the roof as Glory Girl finished typing something out on her phone and sent it. I landed by swooping down and then, at the last moment, pulling up sharply to bleed off momentum before dropping down in a crouch. It’d taken me a while to get it right, and I felt a little proud for having succeeded. That pride was tempered as I saw my flying companion just stop a few inches from the gravel that covered the roof. It rankled a bit, seeing how effortless her flight was, but, well… I suppose that was just the way it was when you used wings.

“Amy’ll be up in a few,” Glory Girl reported as she tucked her phone away while I stood up. “And since we’ve got a moment, is there any way you could make your voice, y’know, less creepy? For her.”

“Creepy? What- oh.” I actually felt a little embarrassed for having forgotten how unsettling my mouthless voice sounded to others. “Sorry,” I continued, speaking with one of Aria’s mouths. “Is this better?”

“Much,” she replied with a tight grin. We lapsed into silence after that.

Eventually the roof access door opened, revealing a mousy young woman whose white robe bore a medical… cross… thingy, in red.

I didn’t remember what it was called. Sue me.

Her eyes automatically gravitated to Glory Girl, and her tired frown smoothed out into a small smile. So, this must be Panacea, I thought.

“What was it you needed, Vicky?” she asked as her eyes panned around the rooftop. Then, they fell on me.

Immediately, her expression became guarded once more, before her eyes went wide and her lips parted. She took a step back, and her hands started to rise as if to ward me off.

Seemingly oblivious to this, Glory Girl said, “So we’ve got an injured Rune here, and we want to make sure she doesn’t die on us.”

Panacea’s eyes had jerked back to Glory Girl when she started to speak. By the time she’d finished, her sister’s eyes had widened in comprehension, and then drooped in… disappointment? In any case, she looked around and asked, “So, uh, where is Rune? I don’t see her here, so we must be flying somewhere.”

“Actually...” Glory Girl glanced at me, which I took as my cue. I cleared Aria away from my front, then pulled my shirt up once more. I didn’t pull it up as high this time so as to not expose anything I shouldn’t, but it was high enough for some clawed tentacles to reach in and rip my torso open along the seams I’d left.

I heard a thump, and I glanced up to see that Panacea had fallen on her backside, while Glory Girl had shot a few feet up and away from me. Both were staring at me with eyes wide enough to see white all the way around. “J-Jesus fuck!” Glory Girl shouted.

I tilted my head. “What?” I asked innocently. I mean, freaking them out was unintentional, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy it. I was owed some fun for my time spent suffering, wasn’t I?

In any case, I murmured to Aria to bring Rune out. Gradually she emerged, and I felt her body steadily come under my control. I couldn’t stop a small hiss from escaping me as her pain washed over me, even as distant as it was. Once her head was free her breathing resumed, with her seeming none the worse for wear. No healing had occurred that I could sense, which was a bit of a disappointment. The blood on her clothing had already dried, but more was oozing out to make up for it. I gently set her on the roof and released her from Aria’s clutches.

The entire time, I’d been watching the others. Their eyes had been fixed on the hole in my torso and the person emerging from it. Those eyes widened once the wound came into view, and Glory Girl swore under her breath and pressed her hand to her mouth. Once Rune had emerged completely, Panacea slowly staggered to her feet and, after a few moments’ hesitation and a worried glance or two at me, moved over to her side. Kneeling down, she placed a hand on the injured girl’s shoulder and shook her a few times, saying, “Rune, can you hear me?”

There was no response.

“Alright,” Panacea said, seeming to calm down a little. “As Rune is non-responsive, I shall do my duty as a good samaritan and give aid.” It seemed an odd thing to say, but if I was reading her right, she was probably saying it as much to herself as she was to us. With that done, she placed a hand on Rune’s exposed wrist.

All at once, the pain vanished, and I nearly gasped before I managed to restrain myself. The pain was all that went away, though, so I had a metaphorical front row seat to the sensation of Rune’s mangled flesh knitting back together. It was similar to the deadened sensations I received when healing my own skin, which I suppose made sense.

Panacea was frowning as she worked, occasionally sneaking glances at me. I finally decided enough was enough and asked her, “Did you have something you wanted to ask me?”

She jumped and let out a yelp of surprise, then slowly looked up at me. I gestured for her her to proceed and she stammered, “I, no, I, uh… actually, I was wondering why Rune seems to have more than six liters of blood in her, including what’s pooled inside of her due to internal bleeding.”

“Wait,” Glory Girl said uncertainly, “wouldn’t someone her size have more like five liters?”

Panacea smiled at her sister. “Yeah, it’s...” Her smile became more of a confused frown. “Wait, since when do you know stuff like that off the top of your head?”

Glory Girl shrugged. “Got lost on a wiki walk.”

Panacea shook her head. “Anyway, Rune bled enough that she probably shouldn’t be alive, but she’s got enough blood in her system that she’s, ah, ‘merely’ in hypovolemic shock. Which means...”

“Which means?” Glory Girl leaned in closer.

Panacea sighed and looked up at me with an odd look in her eyes. “Which means there’s something about where you were keeping her that kept her from dying, but didn’t heal her.”

“Probably whatever kept her from suffocating in there,” I mused, before the stares I was suddenly receiving made me realize that I’d spoken aloud.

“So, wait,” Panacea said suspiciously. “Why would she be in danger of suffocating?”

“Uh, well...” I pressed my clawtips together as my head faced away from them. “It might, ah, kind of be a vacuum in there?”

“… Are you serious?” The healer’s expression had become rather incredulous. “You thought the best way to transport a critically injured person was to shove them in a place with no air? That’s, that’s so...”

“B-but it turned out fine, right?” I hurriedly interjected before crossing my arms. “Sheesh, I’m getting flashbacks to when I told the Wards I cut my face off.”

“You… what?” Both capes just stared at me for an uncomfortable moment. “You know what?” Panacea finally said. “I’m just going to focus on healing Rune. We can deal with that later.” She paused for a moment with a look of concentration. “Say, uh. Sorry, what’s your name?”

“Starfield.”

“Okay. Could you get ready to pull this out when I say to?” I nodded and got a good grip on the metal shard with a couple tentacles. “Good. Now, pull!”

My tentacles flexed, pressing against her body and the roof as I pulled the shard upwards. Even without the pain, the sensation of metal rubbing and grinding where it shouldn’t was rather… well, it sent a shiver through me.

The shard popped free like a cork from a bottle, accompanied by a gush of blood that slowed when I released the pressure on her body. The wound quickly sealed itself, and I felt the internal damage get sorted out soon after. In the space of a few minutes Rune was fully healed, with only the blood on, and the hole in, her shirt to show that she’d ever been injured.

Panacea sighed. “Well, that’s over with,” she said before starting to stand. Partway through the motion she staggered, breath hissing through her teeth, and she might’ve fallen had I not quickly reached out a tentacle to help steady her. She stiffened as she felt it wrap around her waist, then relaxed a little. “Thanks,” she said grudgingly, placing a hand on my helping tentacle as she steadied herself.

It took me a minute or so to realize that she’d gone completely still, her grip on my tentacle steadily tightening. I glanced up at her face, which had gone from a small frown to a look of wonder, eyes gazing into nothing.

 

Spark 4.4



“It’s so big,” Panacea said dreamily as she clutched Aria’s tentacle. Glory Girl’s head jerked up from where she’d been poking away at her phone to give her sister an odd look. Her expression soon changed, though, her eyes widening as she saw her sister’s face.

Turning to glare at me, she floated into the air. “What the hell are you doing to her?” she asked, her voice level and her tone dangerous. I felt a touch of fear, even though I knew intellectually that there was very little she could actually do to me. Probably.

I formed another mouth on Aria and, while trying to ignore the gasp Panacea made as I did so, said, “Nothing, I’m not doing anything to her! She just got all weird when she touched my tentacle!”

If anything, Glory Girl’s expression darkened. “Get away from her you freak!” she shouted as she shot forward.

I threw myself out of the way, thinning the tentacle in the healer’s grasp to slip it free as I went. I landed on my side and got a good view of the flier zipping through the space I’d just vacated. Panacea let out a cry of loss, stumbled, and fell on her backside. “Come back!” she shouted as her sister turned to face me once more. Her eyes flitted between the two of us. Finally, they settled on her sister, and I took advantage of her distraction to sneakily snake a few tentacles over to Rune.

Of course, there was a limit on how sneaky I could be when Rune and Panacea were so close together, and Glory Girl spotted them when they were but a foot from their goal. I tensed, ready to withdraw them should she attack. But instead of striking, she picked Panacea up and flew her back to the edge of the roof, allowing me to scoop up Rune and bring her back to my open stomach.

“Hey!” she shouted. “The hell are you doing?”

I pushed myself to my feet with a few tentacles as Rune’s feet vanished. “I’ll take care of her. You worry about your sister.” Turning away, I ran to the edge of the roof and jumped off, opening my wings with a snap as I fell. I watched the two girls with eyes on my back and legs so I wouldn’t be caught unaware if I was chased, but no one followed me.

Unmolested, I soared in the direction of the Bay. Once over it, I pulled up, then let myself fall, withdrawing Melody’s wings and covering myself with Aria once more before I hit the water.

.o.o.o.​

With a splash I exited the water into the cave. My Aria-suit was quickly withdrawn with soft thanks from me, and I was left looking around with the lights of some unfocused laser eyes.

I felt a little guilty about how I’d kept Rune instead of turning her over to the authorities, but, well… Everyone in the city knew how hard it was to keep Empire capes locked up without them being broken out. I could hold her much more easily, and I could probably make her do some good. I-

My thoughts were interrupted by a groan from within me, followed by a confused mumble. “I think she’s woken up,” Aria helpfully said, prompting a scream mere moments later.

I sighed. “We should probably let her out.” I pulled up my shirt and ripped open my torso once again in a motion that was becoming routine. The screaming got higher in pitch, likely due to Aria grabbing her, and soon enough Rune was clambering out of me and into my senses.

She tumbled awkwardly onto the stone floor, rolled over into a sitting position facing me, and scrambled back until she bumped into the wall. After a moment she noticed that one of Aria’s tendrils was still wrapped around her ankle, and she shrieked and kicked violently until it released her. Her eyes followed it as it withdrew into my still-open torso. “What, what the fuck!?” she cried shrilly.

Her gaze slowly traveled up to my face, or rather, the replacement formed from Aria. Four eyes stared out from it, two for sight in the normal locations, with two more right below them shining a bright red, lighting up where I looked. She trembled as she stared into those lower eyes fearfully. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but no sound came out.

Sighing, I crouched down in front of her. “Hello, Rune,” I said calmly.

She finally found her voice. “What was that?” she asked, her voice low, though I could still taste the fear on her. At least, I was pretty sure it was fear. All indications pointed to that, after all.

I could also feel her hand quietly scrabbling around on the rocky ground, as if I wouldn’t notice. I felt it when her finger hit a shard of loose stone, when she grabbed it, and when she flexed her power to make it hers. The stone shard suddenly shot towards my face, and might’ve put out an eye, or otherwise minorly inconvenienced me, had I not flexed my own control over her, making it stop a mere inch from its target.

A whimper escaped her parted lips, and her eyes were as wide as they could go.

“Alright, look.” I leaned towards her, then paused as the sharp bit of stone pierced deep into my eye, putting out its light. With a flex of her power that made her start trembling again, I pulled it out with a squelch before setting it to orbit above my hand. I noticed that Rune had closed her eyes tightly, so I took full control of her and made her open them as I fixed the damage the stone had done.

“Now, with that out of the way, you may have noticed something.” I released just enough control to let her speak, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she merely stared at me with a surprising amount of horror. With a mental sigh, I continued, “Yes, I can control your power, just as I can control your body.” As I watched, horror began to morph into despair. “You can speak, by the way.”

“Wh-what do you want from me?” Her voice trembled as she spoke.

“Oh, nothing much. You remember what happened, right?”

“You, you made me fight B- Hookwolf, and then...” I released control of her arms just before she started to paw at her stomach. “I, I thought… What?”

“I saved you, after that shard of Hookwolf went through you. Turns out, while it doesn’t heal you, putting you through to my other side keeps you from dying from injuries.” I paused. “It’s also what lets me control you, it seems. But in any case, I took you to Panacea, who healed you. You’d likely have died otherwise. So the way I see it, you owe me.”

Rune had put her face in her hands, shaking as she hyperventilated, but at my last sentence she peeked at me through her fingers. “B-but, didn’t I help you against Hookwolf?”

I tilted my head and dimmed my light eyed a little. “You did, though I had to, ah, ‘encourage’ you a little. But I wouldn’t say that it evens the scales, not fully, at least. You don’t just owe me, after all. You owe everyone in Brockton Bay for all the crimes you’ve committed.”

She covered her eyes again, which started to burn in a way that took me a moment to recognize as a prelude to tears. “Hey, don’t cry,” I said soothingly. At least, I hoped it was soothing. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s alright.”

She parted her fingers to glare up at me. “You hurt me as part of your ‘encouragement’. And when you shoved that tentacle in my mouth, I was sure you were going to… do things to me. Bad things. Not to mention, being told that by someone who’s brought me to some cave God-knows-where where the only light is their fucking glowing red eyes… no, it’s kind of the opposite of reassuring. Where the hell are we, anyway?”

“Somewhere under the Docks, if I had to guess,” I replied in a distracted tone. She thought I’d been about to do what to her? I didn’t even have those urges anymore, not really.

“Wait, what?” Rune had let her hands fall, and I took the opportunity to look at myself through her eyes. I had to admit, the red did look a little bit ominous, so I slowly change it to light blue. “I mean, I didn’t pay that much attention during geography class or whatever, but, uh, shouldn’t we be under water if we’re below the city?”
I shrugged. “Well, we aren’t, but just in case, let’s not break the walls or anything, alright?”

Rune nodded jerkily, and I held out a hand. “Come on, let’s get you up.” She started to raise her hand as if to grab mine, then stopped and pushed herself to her feet. I withdrew my hand and straightened up. “Now, I was just exploring this place. Would you like to come with, or would you prefer to go back inside me?”

She shuddered. “I’ll stay out here.”

“Very well, then.” I started healing the incisions on my front together before starting to walk down the dark tunnel. Rune didn’t follow until I made her run to catch up and fall in behind me.

“Do you want a light of your own?”I asked a moment after she started following me on her own.

“Would I have to hold an eyeball in my hand?”

“… Yes.”

“Then fuck you, no.”

 

Interlude 4.a



Amy Dallon clung to her sister more by force of habit than anything else as Victoria flew with her through the air. She’d been in a daze ever since she’d touched Starfield - or rather, the big, beautiful beast within her.

Amy found herself smiling as she thought about the creature, the being Starfield pretended was just her power. She remembered, vaguely, how she’d felt upon first seeing the odd cape. Her eyes had widened at the sight of the emerald green, tentacular flesh emerging from her face, studded with eyes and mouths and wrapped around her torso and limbs. She’d recoiled out of ill-conceived fear and disgust at the sight. The wings, tail, and claws, so black as to appear two-dimensional, had not helped matters one bit.. Were it not for those aspects, her costume of a shirt, jeans, and sneakers would have been absurd, even comical, not intimidating or off-putting.

Oh, how wrong she had been. One touch had been all that creature needed to show her how gorgeous it was. Any time she touched a living thing, be it plant, animal, human, whatever, she saw it in its entirety. Every organ, every tissue, every cell. And with that vision came the urge to make changes, edit them for whatever reasons came to mind, be they aesthetic, or editing real or perceived errors, or whatnot.

Naturally, she felt every microorganism that touched her skin. Towards the beginning of her days as a parahuman, she would occasionally neuter two or more bacteria, then modify them and pit them against one another in duels to the death. The winner received the grand prize of dying painlessly. The surviving losers received the same prize, naturally.

Over time, her microscopic battle royales grew more and more infrequent until they stopped entirely, and her power was increasingly used only for healing, but even then, the message her powers gave her was the same: biology was clay to be sculpted, be it into glorious works of art or merely to repair. Not that Amy let herself listen to that message, but still.

If there was one thing Amy had learned in art class, it was that every medium restricted the expression it could portray, and the same, her power insisted, held true for flesh. Every flesh, that is, except for that contained within Starfield. That creature, whatever it was, was possibility incarnate.

Oh, what she wouldn’t do to gaze upon it once more, Sure, its image was practically burned into her mind, but still. What mattered was that, for the first time in what felt like forever, she actually wanted to use her power.

“Ames?”

With some effort, Amy managed to drag herself away from tracing perfection in her mind to focus on her darling sister’s concerned face. “Yes, Vicky?” she asked, beaming up at her. She frowned internally as her sister’s eyes widened, though it didn’t reach her face.

“Amy, you’re scaring me. Are you sure you’re alright?”

Amy grinned and cupped Victoria’s cheek. “Oh, no, I’m fine. Better than fine, actually!”

For some reason that didn’t seem to reassure Vicky. In fact, she only looked more concerned and uncomfortable. “Okay, um. I’ll just take us home so you can rest, okay?”

“Okay!” Amy chirped before letting her eyes unfocus again that her sight might be overtaken once more by her memories of that gorgeous flesh.

.o.o.o.​

It wasn’t long before they landed in front of their house. Amy found herself hustled inside, then lightly pushed towards the stairs. She turned to pout at her sister, who didn’t seem at all amused by the display of childishness, only worried. “Fine,” Amy said, drawing out the word as she went up the stairs to her room.

Closing the door, she leapt onto her bed, giggling as she bounced, then buried her face her pillow. She laid there for a while before coming up for air and rolling on her back. She sighed, her smile finally starting to fade.

She needed to find that creature, to touch it again, to hopefully get a chance to change it in some way. But even if she could somehow find Starfield, how could she convince her to… well.

It was probably too much to hope for, she thought despondently. She was doomed to never lay eye or hand on that beauty again.

With her smile completely gone, she let her eyes wander around her room. They passed over her books, her computer, the various posters on the wall that seemed so dull and uninteresting now, before finally coming to rest on the little, potted cactus in the window. Her cousin Eric had given it to her for her birthday once, and while she’d glowered at him for the joke he made about it suiting her, now…

Slowly, her smile returned.

.o.o.o.​

Slowly, carefully, Amy snuck down the stairs, carefully skipping the squeaky step as she went.

“I, I don’t know, Mom.” She jumped at the sudden voice, her head whipping around to look at the source. Victoria was standing in the front hall, phone to her ear, body tense, and Amy breather a silent sigh of relief that her back was turned to the stairs. “She’s just… look, she touched Starfield’s tentacle, and… No… no, she just started acting weird, all smiling and upbeat.” A pause. “God, why is it so weird for her to act happy?”

Amy reached the bottom of the stairs and slowly made her way down the hall. “She’s up in her room, should I…?” Her steps hastened, and soon she was easing the kitchen door shut behind her.

Sighing, she smiled down at the adorable little bundle of green flesh wrapped around her wrist. A single eye stared up at her and a razor-toothed mouth whined hungrily. “Yes, yes,” she murmured soothingly, feeling it relax slightly. “I’m getting you some food now.”

She snagged a banana from the fruit bowl and started to peel it, only for a couple small tentacles to tug it towards the mouth. “Okay!” she said in fond exasperation, feeding the fruit into her baby’s mouth. Its tooth-lined throat twisted and flexed, shredding the banana, peel and all. She could feel the delight that rippled through it from the act of eating, the sensation causing a warmth to bloom in her chest.

Soon, the banana was gone, quickly being broken down and converted into more flesh. A long, pink tongue licked at Amy’s fingers, making her giggle. “Fine, I’ll get you more. Calm down, sweetie.” She looked around the kitchen, trying to decide what to feed it next, only to feel her little bundle of joy tugging her towards the open pantry. Following the tugs, she found herself led to a bag of potatoes. “Um, okay? If you want, I guess.”

Crouching down, she opened the bag, only for tentacles to dart in and grab a spud. It lifted the tuber to its mouth, then paused before offering it to Amy. “You… want me to feed you?” she guessed, then smiled and took it.

.o.o.o.​

“Amy?”

Victoria knocked on her sister’s bedroom door. When Amy didn’t respond, she continued, “So, uh, please don’t be mad at me, but, well… Mom’s coming home, and she’s getting the PRT to come out here as well. We… I’m worried about you. We just want to make sure you’re alright.” She paused, shifting uncomfortably on her feet before giving in and hovering an inch above the floor.

The response she waited for never came.

“Ames?” Still no response. “I’m coming in, okay?” With no protest, she opened the door. “Amy, I...”

The room was empty. Amy was gone.

A spike of fear shot through Victoria. “Amy?” she called out. “Ames, where are you?”

A door closed elsewhere in the house, and she zipped down the stairs. But it hadn’t been Mom coming in the front door, so it must’ve been elsewhere in the house.

She floated in the direction of the back door, pausing as she entered the kitchen. The fruit bowl was empty, an empty bag of some sort lay on the floor, and a drained milk jug sat on the counter. Concern grew in Victoria as she floated through and went out into the backyard.

Just as she was shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun, a loud crack made her spin to the side, ready to fight. But it wasn’t an enemy, just her sister, still clad in her Panacea robes. The sight made Victoria almost go limp with relief.

But then she saw something that brought the tension back in force. Amy’s right arm, almost to the elbow, was covered in a dark green, pulsating mass of flesh. Her fingertips poked out around the end, and where her palm would’ve been was a large eyeball, staring at a blackened, smoking patch on a nearby tree.

“Amy, what-?” The mousy girl jumped at the sound of Victoria’s voice, turning to look guiltily at her. The green… thing, whatever it was, oozed off of her arm for her to cradle it to her chest.

“Um, h-hi, Vicky,” she said, glancing down at the thing which was now watching Victoria with three new eyes. Almost like Starfield had… “Th-this is, um...”

“… What the hell is that thing?”

Amy scowled, then smiled hesitantly and held out the little abomination. “Uh, congratulations, you’re an aunt?”

 

Delve 5.1



Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The sound of falling water accompanied our footsteps, splashing down onto the small stalagmites that decorated the floor here and there. I helped Rune’s feet avoid them, both to keep her uninjured and because I felt it’d be a shame for all the time they spent growing to be rendered meaningless in an instant.

Rune didn’t seem to appreciate my efforts, of course, but then, she hadn’t had that long to get used to my control.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

My lights played across the floor, the walls, the ceiling of the tunnel we were in, walking Rune alongside me. I had to make her legs work a little faster than mine for her to keep up, as they were shorter than mine. She was shorter than me. In fact, while I hadn’t done her the disservice of unmasking her in order to check, I suspected she was younger than my fifteen years. That suspicion certainly didn’t to me any favors with regards to the guilt from getting her hurt.

Mentally shaking my head, I focused on the path ahead of us. We’d been walking through this tunnel for a good few minutes, with little change in scenery. Honestly, it was getting a little boring.

Rune suddenly tried to speak, and so, against my better judgment (well, my wish to not get cursed out again) I released my control over her mouth. She worked her jaw for a bit as she tried to turn her head to glare at me, then asked, “So, why the hell are we walking through this tunnel instead of going, like, literally anywhere else?”

“Well,” I started, drawing the word out, “the PRT and Protectorate are likely looking for me, and I really don’t want to deal with them right now. So, tunnel exploration instead.”

“And you couldn’t have left me with them and come here by yourself?”

I felt a leaden weight of self-recrimination start anxiously churning in my empty abdomen before I tamped it down hard. This wasn’t the time for that. “I… well, like I said, I really don’t want to deal with them, and besides, you’re m- I mean, you’d probably be out in, like, a week anyway, so why bother?”

Her efforts to glare at me grew stronger, as did the burning in her eyes. “So instead you drag me somewhere under the city, into a tunnel with who knows what awful things living in it. And how long are you planning for us to stay down here, anyway?”

Shrugging her shoulders, I continued walking us along. My lights revealed some shadows on the walls a ways down the tunnel, and I hastened our pace slightly.

“You don’t know. Wonderful. Did you even bring enough food and water for us?” A pause. “Did, did you bring any at all?” I remained silent as I tried to determine what the shadows were. “Oh my god, you didn’t, did you? We’re gonna get lost and starve down here, and it’ll be all your fau- mmph!”

I closed her mouth sharply, narrowly avoiding biting her tongue. Might’ve served her right if I had bit it. “Annoying,” I growled in my other voice, lips not moving. Her heart rate spiked, and her breathing accelerated. With my normal voice, I continued, “We won’t get lost, I have good spatial memory. And you won’t starve if I put you through me. Now, are you going to continue to irritate me with your complaints?” With that, I returned control of her mouth to her.

“No,” she said, her voice small and trembling. Her vision swam a little, and I quickly blinked away the gathering tears as the guilt attempted to make a comeback. In an attempt to comfort her, I extended a smooth tentacle to gently pat her head, but I stopped when she tried to flinch away from my touch. I let the tentacle fall to rest against my back.

I allowed myself to be distracted by the fact that we had gotten close enough for the shadows to be revealed as branching tunnels. We came to a stop near them, but shining my lights down them merely revealed that they gradually curved in the direction we’d been heading. “Hmm. Which way to go...” My finger tapped my chin as I considered each path in turn. I glanced at Rune. “What do you think, hmm? Left, right, or continue forward?”

Rune sniffed quietly. “Is… is turning back an option?” I shake her head. “Then, uh, forward, I guess.”

“If you’re sure.” And with that, we continued walking down the tunnel before us.

.o.o.o.​

So I said it was getting a little boring before, right? Well, half an hour later with no end in sight for the tunnel, I was starting to regret even coming down here. Rune was apparently refusing to talk anymore, instead just allowing herself to trudge along under my control.

I don’t know how long we spent like that, but eventually Rune started getting tired. It was an odd sensation, as I, myself, wasn’t tired at all. In fact, it felt almost like a limb falling asleep, except less pins-and-needles and more actual weariness. It made sense to me that she was feeling tired after the day she’d been through. I suspected that the weariness I was feeling from her was entirely physical, with a greater level of mental exhaustion that I could not sense. There was no indication as to whether or not my suspicions were true, of course, but whatever.

I brought us to a gradual stop and had Rune turn to look at me. “So, ah… I noticed that you’re getting kinda tired. I’d be willing to take a break if you need one.”

“You can… Of course you can tell how tired I am.” Rune’s voice was laced with much resignation. “Fine. I’m just...”

“You’ve had quite the day,” I said, attempting to make my tone soothing. I led her over to an area of the tunnel clear of stalagmites and sat down, leaning against the wall. I then had her sit in my lap, leaning against me, so I could put my arms around her. I did my best to ignore the small shudder that attempted to make its way through her body.

Rune tried to stay awake, I could tell, but eventually her eyes closed, and her breathing slowed and leveled out. Asleep at last.

As I held her sleeping form, I looked around, my light playing off the walls. But when it revealed some odd shadows, I stopped and focused more eyes thence.

Two symbols had been meticulously carved into the stone, one above the other. One was simple, a diagonal line with five smaller lines branching off of it. The other was a sort of warped, five-pointed star, with something akin to a flaming eye in its center.

I found myself staring at them, as they were calming and pleasant to look at. Soon, I found my various eyes drifting closed, and, though I did not fully fall asleep, I’ll admit I dozed a little.

 

Delve 5.2



I dreamt, despite my intentions, but it was odd. I was seated… somewhere, in some room, and across from me sat someone very familiar. She was young, with dark hair and pale skin, but she was leaning forward, casting her face in shadow and hiding it from view. I tried to speak, ask her who she was, but no words, no sound issued forth. I tried to stand, but could not move.

The girl slowly straightened, revealing a mouth, wide and unhappy. It fell open, and from within poured forth a trickle, then a stream of crimson and ivory. Suddenly, she was above me, held aloft by the arms dangling from the ceiling. The flood poured over my face, into my mouth, teeth clicking against mine as I choked.

.o.o.o.​

My eyes snapped open as I jerked, gasping, into wakefulness. I was left momentarily disoriented before realizing that yes, I was, indeed, receiving images from a multitude of eyes. My sight sorted itself out soon enough, though, and I let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, good, you’re awake!”

A surprised smile formed on my borrowed face. “Oh, um, good morning, Aria. And Melody and Rest as well, of course.”

“Morning or not, it is good to finally be free to talk with you once again,” Melody replied with a smile in her voice as Rest crafted some muted splashing into a happy sound.

“We kept quiet before, since that girl was near you and awake, and because you weren’t talking to us,” Aria stated from a mouth on a tentacle that was picking up a small pebble. As I watched, the pebble was gently placed on a small pile of other pebbles and rocks, with the largest halfway up the pile. “Oh!” Aria exclaimed as she noticed my borrowed eyes on her creation. “Um, well, I got a little bored while you slept, and since I assumed you wouldn’t want me nibbling on your new friend there, well...”

“New friend?” I was confused for a moment, until something squirming in my arms made me look down. “Oh.” Rune was still asleep, though from her occasional movements and what I could see of the expression on her face, she wasn’t having such a nice time of it. Then, she seemed to calm, her face smoothing out, and I felt a measure of relief.

Returning most of my attention to my friends, I said, “Well, I’m not sure if she’ll actually join us as a friend. She’s… well, she’s kind of a bad person. I intended to turn her over to the PRT, but, um...” I trailed off as I tried to put together my reasoning for keeping her.

“Does it have to do with what happened with that Miss Militia person?” Melody asked carefully.

“Yes. Well, kind of.” I frowned down at the girl in my arms. “I think I also felt, feel, strangely possessive of her? Like, she’s mine now, or something like that?” The words felt right, but if she was mine, did that mean I owned her? Like, slavery?

I shuddered, fighting the urge to shove Rune away from me. I ended up hugging her tighter, making her protest in her sleep until I let up on the pressure.

“It sounds like she’s pretty much a friend already, then,” Aria stated with a tone of certainty.

My head jerked up, bouncing off the stone wall as I stared into some of Aria’s eyes, and back at myself through them. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“I mean, she’s been inside you, and she is under your control, which means she can’t do bad things if you don’t want her to. Now you just have to get her to be nice to you and us, and she’ll be a real friend!”

“And she might make learning your language easier for us, too,” Melody added, before pausing. “Taylor? What, what is wrong?”

I was staring in growing horror at what I could see of Aria’s form. “You mean… Have I been treating you like, like slaves?” A flood of self-loathing threatened to drown me.

“No!” Melody said quickly. “No, Taylor, you have been nothing but a wonderful friend to us. You know what I can do, so believe me when I say that we all love you so, so much. You were, you are, our friend, when you had no reason to care for us. You gave us a window from nothingness into a world of such beauty, and you have ensured that no harm came to us, through our own actions or otherwise. I know you love us, so please, do not hate yourself for it.”

I swallowed, the incoming self-loathing slowing to a trickle. “But, but didn’t I take advantage of your-”

“No,” all three said at once. Melody continued, “It is perfectly alright, Taylor. Please, do not dwell on it any further.”

“… Alright,” I murmured, and did my best to pull my mind away from those thoughts. My gaze fell on those symbols again, before I jerked it away, letting it fall to Rune, and then to my hands.

After a few minutes of clearing my mind, a thought occurred to me. “Melody?”

“Yes, Taylor?”

“So, ah, how much of your claws do you usually put through me?”

Melody makes a sound of understanding. “It is usually around half of each claw, as they seem to get too wide for your fingertips.”

“I see.” I stared at my slender fingers, and at the smoothly-trimmed nails they bore. Maybe…

I pulled out one of the smaller knives I’d obtained, flipping it open as I extended the index finger on my other hand. Bringing the tip of the knife to my fingertip, I paused for a moment to steel myself. Then, before I could lose my nerve, I jammed the knife under my nail.

There was some pain, of course, but as usual, it was muted and distant. I worked the knife deeper, watching it move under my nail, until I judged it was deep enough. I then pulled the knife up, bending the nail back until I could tear it off and toss it aside. The knife then turned on the flesh that had been shielded by the nail, cutting it out. One of the cuts I usually made for Melody’s claws finished the job. “Try that now, Melody.”

It was as her long, curved claw finished coming through that I finally realized that Rune had gone very still in my arms. I lowered one of Aria’s tentacles in front of her so the eye nearest its tip could get a look at her face, and I saw that her eyes had gone as wide as they could behind her mask, staring at my finger.

“Oh, um. Good morning, Rune?”

 

Delve 5.3



Rune suddenly started struggling, pushing frantically against my arms. After a moment’s hesitation I released her, and she fell to her hands and knees and started scrambling away, leaving me to mourn the lost comfort. She barely made it a scant few feet before the sound and sensation of harsh, fruitless retching reached me. The sensation of her stomach seemingly doing its best to evert itself was actually pretty new to me, and made me pause for a moment.

It took me until after I’d pushed myself to my feet to recognize what I’d been feeling from Rune before the nausea took over. It’d been a while since I’d last felt it myself, but I was pretty sure that the dull ache that had been emanating from her gut was hunger.

… In my defense, while Aria was constantly hungry, hunger felt different for her, probably because her body was as far from human anatomy as possible without being, I don’t know, silicon-based or something.

I was getting off track.

I moved to kneel beside Rune and placed a hand on her shoulder, only to feel a little hurt when she flinched away from my touch. With a sigh, I settled for waiting until she was done dry-heaving before I— oh, she’s done. But now she was shivering.

“Are you okay, now?” I asked. She stiffened, then turned her head to give me a teary-eyed glare. “Alright, alright, sorry,” I said, holding up my hands in a calming gesture.

Rune opened her mouth angrily. “What the actual fuck is w--”

A sudden tremor interrupted her, with a loud boom from deeper into the tunnels hot on its heels. Shards of stone fell from the ceiling, and before I could think about what was happening I threw myself over my Rune, just in time to catch something sharp with my back.

Once the rain of debris had ceased and I was certain nothing more was going to fall down on us I pushed myself up off of her very still form. I extended a light and an eye out on a tendril, which I turned to look at my back.

Oh. So that’s why it felt weird.

I twisted around, trying and failing to reach the stalactite embedded in my bare flesh. My motions must have attracted Rune’s attention, because she pushed herself upright and turned to look at me, giving me another angle from which to view the stone spike in me.

“Well?” I asked after a few moments of her staring. “Are you going to help me with this or what?”

Haltingly, her hand rose towards me, only to hesitate partway. With an exasperated sigh I reached over with the tendril to shove the stalactite through.

She yelped and recoiled, which I ignored in favor of sealing up the wound behind it. Or rather, trying to, since the skin surrounding the hole in my back was thoroughly crushed and wasn’t responding to my efforts. I’d have to cut that bruise out in order to heal, it seemed, but that would probably have to wait. In the meantime…

I withdrew the tendril and returned my eye and light to their prior positions before standing and turning to Rune. “Alright, come on,” I said, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. When she didn’t move I rolled my lights and eyes and made her extend a hand so I could pull her up.

“Wh-where are we going?” she asked in a trembling voice. I looked her in the face, and… well, quite frankly, she looked rather close to tears. Maybe the stress was getting to her?

“We’re gonna go see what that noise was, of course!”

She started to protest, but I just grabbed her wrist and started off down the tunnel, tugging her along behind me.

.o.o.o.​

Four more times the tremors and booms resounded through the tunnels, none as strong or loud as the first. That fourth time, though, brought about more change than all the others before it.

I didn’t need them anymore, as lighting had flickered to life near the edges of the high ceiling. Lighting that was clearly artificial in nature, but not in any way that I was familiar with. Pencil-thin lines of bright, sickly green light hung in the air in loosely coiled quadruple helixes with no apparent source, segments spinning lazily in alternating directions and separated by odd, glyph-like designs formed of the same light. In a few places the lines passed through stalactites to no apparent effect.

I let my lights fade into nothing, absorbing them as I looked around. The glow given off by the lines was more than enough to illuminate the room we’d found ourselves in. And it was a room, or maybe a hub, but not a cave. For one, there were the lights, of course, but for another, it was almost perfectly octagonal and the walls were smooth enough to reflect the light. Each of the walls had an opening in it, including the one Rune and I had entered from, that made me think doorway, despite the fact that each was easily fifteen feet tall or more, maybe nine or so wide, and had no door to speak of. Half of the doorways led to long, now-lit hallways, while one of the others was sealed with columns of black stone. The remainder opened into rooms bigger than this one that were… lined with massive cubicles, but round, I guess?

Weird.

Another tremor made me look up at the ceiling, because more stalactites falling twenty feet onto Rune wouldn’t be healthy for her. Thankfully, the stalactite population in this hub area was far sparser than it’d been in the tunnel we’d slept in, and most had grown long enough to meet with the stalagmites below them.

Shaking my head, I started off towards the tunnel opposite the one we’d come from, only to stop when Rune remained still. “Come on, this way,” I said, looking over my shoulder at her.

The girl had cringed away from the sound of the latest blast, but now was staring around, wide eyes full of wonder. “What… what is this place?” she breathed.

I shrugged. “Couldn’t say.” Though I do wonder the same thing.

“This is fucking ancient,” she said, though it sounded like she wasn’t talking to me as much as she was to herself. “‘S gotta be, to have all these stalag-things, right?” I didn’t answer, but she continued on, anyway. “It’s been down here all this time, beneath the city, and nobody noticed?”

She started moving away, my grip on her wrist having lessened from “slightly painful” to light enough for it to slip from my fingers. I let myself be contented with the discomfort of the forming bruises she gingerly rubbed. Hesitant steps through the thin layer of black dust on the ground took her to the sealed doorway, and she laid her hand on one of the columns blocking it. Through her, the stone felt so smooth I would almost call it slippery, were it not so very dry.

Suddenly, I felt her power flex, and the column shuddered. “Um, what’re you doing?”

“Trying to get past this, see what’s inside. Duh.” She didn’t look up from her work, but I could still feel her eyes roll.

“And what if it’s sealed for a reason? Like, maybe there’s something dangerous behind there just waiting to rip your face off? I don’t want to have to rush you to Panacea again so soon.”

Rune’s free hand clenched, then relaxed. “I just want… no, I need to see what’s there. And yes, I know, curiosity killed the cat and all that.”

“... But satisfaction brought it back,” I said with a sigh.

She turned to give a look that I could only really “see” by feeling those muscles flex, thanks to her mask. “What?”

“That’s how the rest of the quote goes.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

I shook my head with a grin, and her eyes slipped to my teeth, so very unlike hers, before hastily snapping away. “Nope. There’s a lot of sayings like that, that’re positive and all but have gotten butchered down into ones that promote conformity.” At least, that’s what I remembered of what Mom had told me on the subject.

The odd feeling of lungs stretched wide around a deep breath, then allowed to relax. “H’okay. Whatever.” Rune flexed her power again, with the impressive result of making the column maybe wiggle slightly, and she growled under her breath. “Fucker doesn’t want to come free.”

“Maybe you’re pushing or pulling the wrong way?”

She didn’t respond, but I felt her use her powers a couple more times, before finally her efforts were rewarded. The grinding of stone against stone deep beneath our feet rumbled through Rune’s bones as the column eased its way into the ground. Air puffed out of the room, disturbed by the column’s descent, right into Rune’s face, carrying with it the cloying stench of an eons-old corpse.

As she staggered away, hacking her lungs up and gulping down great breaths of the relatively fresher cave air, I absorbed my nose into the rest of Aria’s flesh and stepped closer to the gap to peer within. There was light, yes, but much less than was in the hub. A closer look revealed why.

The interior, which had probably differed in layout from the other rooms, was utterly trashed. Great, arcing scars marred the walls. Tall pedestals ringed with claw-like bits of stone lined the edges of the oblong room, each damaged in some way, and some even shattered until naught but tooth-like lumps remained. The ones with the least damage had fingers of lightning, the same sickly green as the lights, arcing fitfully from the claws to play across silvery, long-cornered cubes perched atop the pedestals. The actual lighting in the room had many segments simply missing, and what there was shone off corroded bits of metal that littered the ground. And in the center of all lay what I could only assume had caused the destruction.

It was huge, of a size comparable to Aria’s full body, though not quite as massive. Even so, its bulk dominated the room, taller than me even though it lay on its side. Its worm-like, dessicated, almost cancerous-looking body lay contorted atop the rubble, tumorous bulges in its flesh casting odd shadows. Long, wispy, and tattered streamers of flesh splayed out from seemingly random places on the body, as did a handful of knobbly, sticklike limbs with too many joints.

I was pretty sure it was dead. Pretty sure. Even if I couldn’t see why it might have died from where I was.

My thoughtful, “Huh,” drew Rune’s attention, and she pinched her nose shut before venturing towards the opening. I stepped back to allow her room.

She stared in for a good few moments, before letting out a rather nasal, “Jesus.”

I let her stare for a little while more, before eventually asking, “Is your curiosity satisfied?”

Her eyes flicked to me, giving me a good idea of how odd my current face looked without a nose. I backed away a bit more and reformed it. “Kinda?” she said, waggling her free hand a little. “I just, I wonder what it could be. I’ve never—”

Another rumble and crash made her jump, interrupting what she’d been saying. “Fuck! What even is that? Are they fighting a war up there or something?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say someone is making another entrance.”

She blinked, then started towards the tunnel that the noises had been coming from without a word. I shook my head and joined her, what I’d just seen and what might be waiting for us ahead warring for a place at the fore of my thoughts.