Taylor Hebert Just Wants A Quiet Life (Worm Altpower)

Crossposting from SB and SV because their content filters won't let me post one bit of mostly PG-13 violence in chapter 2.2. Which... really sucks.

Anyway, here's to having a megapost of the first nine chapters! Hooray!

1.1

“Get lost, Taylor! I don’t need you anymore!” Emma shouted, a cruel smirk upon her face as she stood by this new interloper that had somehow stolen my former best friend away while I was in summer camp.

The interloper- Sophia, as was apparently her name- simply crossed her arms and glared, daring me to do something. I didn’t, simply because it would draw undue attention and because she was undoubtedly more physically powerful than me.

“Alright then,” I spoke blandly, not allowing my simmering rage to boil to the surface, and walked past the two, ignoring Emma’s shocked expression and the interloper’s curious gaze. As much as I would have sorely loved to enact revenge on the interloper for what she had done, it would have drawn undue attention to me. Being late on the first day of highschool leaves an impression, one that is not so easily erased as the flimsy friendships of yesteryear and childhood.

I knew it would not be the end, but even then, I could not bring myself to do anything but make a mental note to keep it from drawing undue attention to myself.

I hate being the center of attention.

~~~~~~

I stumbled slightly as the interloper jostled me slightly, but continued on my way, deftly slipping around the small gaggle of hangers-on that the betrayer had gathered to block my path and ignoring whatever the… other one- what was her name again? Maddie? Whatever- whispered to those around her.

Three weeks into the semester and my grades had begun slipping ever so slightly. It was enough to make me worry- slipping grades lead to undue attention and so much more hassle. Though, I had already devised a number of workarounds, such as my current one- slipping into my geometry class early such that I was able to hand in my previous night’s homework before anyone else had arrived. It was not always manageable, what with travel times being an unfortunate reality, but it was enough to maintain the subjects I cared about.

I was usually even early enough to prevent any mishaps from befouling my seat in various classes. I did not know exactly what the purpose of this harassment was, but it was rather aggravating and, unfortunately, drew quite a bit of negative attention from my peers. Attention that I could do without, but seeing as more of them were turning to harassing or outright ignoring me on all matters, it was of no great importance. They would not scrutinize me, and the only hassle that I would have to deal with would be juvenile harassment that was easily worked around.

Or so I thought.

~~~~~~

Laughter.

Darkness.

Filth and rot and all that made me hate hate HATE. The taste of filth upon my tongue, the overpowering stench of rot in my nose, and the pain of being forced into cramped, unyielding confinement as my harassers shoved me bodily into my locker and slammed the door behind me.

Darkness.

Laughter fading into the distance.

Rage

I struggled, beating futilely at the thin metal separating me from freedom, cursing the weakness in my hands and arms, struggling to catch my breath in the disgusting stench that pervaded through my being like a particularly foul cu-

Stars

~~~~~~

I came to a few moments later, standing outside my locker, somehow clean, with the locker door missing entirely, the filth gone as well. I had missed first period, but that was alright, if only just barely. Missing one class would hardly draw much attention in a place like Winslow, unfortunately for any hope that I had for authority.

Feeling quite strange, but also quite murderous, I gathered my wits, looked around for my backpack, found it missing, and sighed.

“Wonderful…” I murmured, slumping against the lockers and staring at my hands. They were different, slightly. Not enough to be very noticeable to the casual onlooker, but where they were bony and gangly, they were now more slender and delicate, more beautiful. Even my nails looked healthier.

It was an obvious sign that I was a parahuman, once I thought of it.

Now… what was I to do about my missing bag, books, homework, time, and various effects?

Well, if I were to think like my hara- no, that incident had upgraded them to, unfortunately, tormentors. If I were to think like my tormentors, then…

I searched across the school as second period wore on, retrieving usually ruined items of mine from various trash cans strewn around campus until I had a rather respectable pile of salvageable items in front of me, including the bare bones of two notebooks, a mostly intact backpack, some clean sheets of paper, three pencils, some halfway intact homework, and an art project that might generously be given the title of modern art.

Wonderful.

~~~~~~

This had to stop.

Not only had my tormentors kept up their harassment since the locker incident two months ago, but my grades were beginning to slip to an unfortunately noticeable level. I took solace in the quiet fact that my powers were intuitive and powerful, though perhaps not quite as heroic as I had once wished.

Powers. Plural.

I kept detailed notes but the basic gist of it was that I had at some point become stronger, faster, and more durable- the changes took effect as a general, almost unnoticeable, slight beautification in my features. My mouth shrunk slightly so it wasn’t quite so wide, my legs filled out ever so slightly, the tiny paunch in my belly had disappeared after about two weeks of exercise and had been replaced by faintly defined abs.

I even gained the beginnings of breasts. Somehow.

I did not complain in the slightest.

Further experimentation revealed that I was at the very least stab-proof, fast enough to pick a fly out of the air, and strong enough to punch through a fairly thin slab of steel that I found laying around in the basement- about maybe a quarter of an inch. Nothing terribly impressive when it came to parahumans, but it was enough for me. I did not plan on going out in a ridiculous costume to fight or commit crime, and thus far my baseline abilities had proved fairly useful in day to day life.

My other abilities, however… were far more murderous than I had expected, though useful with careful thought.

The first ability seemed to turn anything I touched into a high powered, short range explosive capable of being remotely triggered within a radius of about fifty feet. Testing revealed that it worked on anything and that, somehow, whatever I used as an explosive was not harmed by detonation, allowing me to repeatedly detonate said object if need be. There were an unfortunate two caveats, though one of them made quite a bit more sense than the other. The first caveat was that I could only have one explosive active at any time, which made sense since the detonation command was me pressing my thumb to my index finger like I was pressing on a detonator. The other caveat was that if I touched an animal, the animal would explode as well.

I learned this after I learned that I was fast enough to pick a fly out of the air.

Strangely enough, the explosions I made were curiously silent, though visually impressive, and left nothing behind, not even ashes, unless I actively set parameters for each explosion.

The second ability seemed to be much more conditional- a roving, heat seeking thing that I could release from somewhere in my left hand. I did not know where it came from, only that its appearance was marked by the appearance of a scarab shaped imprint on the back of my hand. The creature itself appeared to be some sort of beetle, but far larger and menacing than any I had seen before. It was shining black, about four inches wide and six inches long, with stout, thick legs ending in spikes that could carry it at around thirty miles per hour. It had no functioning wings, but its back surface was shaped like a pair of elytra anyway. Its head was possibly the most strange part- two pairs of eyes and a white marking upon it that formed a stylized skull, with a diamond shaped patch of black where the nose hole would be. With some effort, I had discovered that I could see through its eyes and control its movements, but the view was a headache inducing mix of colors that would not have seemed out of place on a false color thermal imaging device. The purpose of this creature was, as expected, another explosive, though far more powerful and detonated by body heat alone.

I will admit, I nearly panicked when it oriented upon, pounced on, and blew up a rat while I was testing it at the Boat Graveyard.

Two months of testing, careful documentation, and memorization followed by the destruction of said documentation.

Two months of careful observation of my tormentors. Two months of memorizing schedules, plans, habits.

Emma, the betrayer, was always alone at certain times of day- when walking home she took shortcuts through smaller back alleys, always came home before her parents.

Sophia, the once interloper now simply an enemy, was hard to pin down. Always seemed to disappear after school, never seemed to be alone in school, but strangely enough seemed to always follow a specific route when going out at night. A single week’s worth of observation had revealed a startling fact: Sophia Hess was a parahuman, which warranted a slight change in observation times for her, such that I learned of her nightly routes… and of her connection to the Brockton Bay Wards program.

I planned to be extra thorough with her revenge.

Ma- Maddie? Madison, the other one, was hardly even on my peripheral awareness as most of her version of “tormenting” was focused on ruining a reputation I never had via gossip. As it did not affect me, I did not particularly care about her. Still, I needed to remove her so as to prevent any traces leading back to me.

Two months.

Two months of planning, waiting, observing, until I had a workable plan of action.

Two months.

It ended tonight.

1.2

Silent. Empty. The tiny click of a window latch opening as its locking mechanism was destroyed from within.

Emma wouldn’t be home for another few minutes- she was caught up with her phone and had accordingly slowed her walking pace. Taking off one of my gloves, I gently, just barely, poked her favorite pillow.

One of Emma’s worst habits was taking a quick nap right after school, a habit I had known about since elementary school. Putting on my glove again, I peeked out the window- good. She was almost about to enter the house.

I hid in her closet, tucked away in such a position that I was able to observe her bed directly. She wouldn’t change out of her clothing, just undress and crawl under the covers. I heard the front door slide open downstairs, and the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.

Three…

Two…

One.

The door to Emma’s room opened and in came the redheaded betrayer in the flesh, curls bouncing with every step. Several other things bounced, but I was more concerned with Emma’s hands, perfectly manicured, pale, smooth, slender hands with an expertly done coat of pink nail polish on each fingernail. I watched as she tossed her backpack aside, threw her clothes in the general direction of the laundry hamper, and scampered underneath those fluffy, white covers I had once slept under many times as a child.

I watched, emotionlessly, as her head touched the pillow I marked and she began drifting off. Silently, I raised my hand…

And pressed the trigger.

Just moments before the detonation went off, I saw her eyes widen in sheer terror and a half formed scream just barely choke itself out, then her form was obscured in a flash of burning light and smoke that disappeared as quickly as it came, leaving no trace of Emma, not even moving the covers beyond what Emma herself had done.

No trace at all but for the single, slightly smoking hand that I snatched out of the air- her right hand, in fact, the stump cauterized by the detonation leaving the rest of it untouched and clean, beautiful.

“Oh Emma, Emma, Emma… it didn’t have to be this way,” I whispered to myself as I tucked her away in my hoodie pocket, picked up her phone, and descended the stairs, letting myself out the back door and taking the back alleys towards my next target. “But… we can be friends again… maybe more.”

I smiled to myself as I headed towards Ma- Madeline? No, Madison’s house.

One down, two left.

~~~~~~

Mary? Madeline? Madison’s room was an exercise in childish expressions of “cuteness” and glitter, almost enough to make me vomit. Madison herself was already unfortunately home, but I did not need to enter. Her window was open, in fact, as she emailed and messaged the throngs of people that I barely cared to think about. Such frivolity- she really had nothing better to do than stay online all day and think of new ways to gossip behind my back?

Her hands were rather pretty as well, small and delicate, like a child’s, but just enough to be cute rather than disgusting. My plan of action here was simple- she had a tree in her yard, one that led right up next to her room. Her desk faced away from the window, allowing me to climb up undetected as I pulled a pebble from my pocket and charged it.

This was most likely the riskiest part- I would only get one chance with the pebble and if I were caught, then everything would be for naught. I quelled the light shaking of my hands and took aim, one eye closed as I just gently flicked and…

Contact, followed by an immediate detonation that left Madison’s dominant hand, her left, still perched upon her mouse. I entered through the window, taking care to not jostle anything, and retrieved the hand, taking the time to reply that I ‘lol gtg bbl’ in each chat window, then shut down her computer, turned off her phone, and exited, leaving no one in the house the wiser to my actions.

Two of three.

On to the next.

~~~~~~

Sophia was almost too easy- I learned that she and Emma had routine contact even while Sophia was supposed to be out “hero-ing”. I supposed that Emma was the unofficial sidekick, such that they even sometimes met up in Sophia’s alter-ego as Shadow Stalker.

Some ten minutes ago, I had texted Sophia using Emma’s phone, asking her to meet up at their usual spot- an out of the way alley close to Emma’s house, but also close to the docks. Five minutes ago, I had placed Emma’s phone in plain view as a charged bomb and hidden inside a large box I had planted there six days ago. I looked out of the pinholes I’d poked into the box and watched as Sophia descended from the rooftops, looking around in confusion before spotting the phone.

Immediately, she rushed over and picked it up, causing quite an artful explosion as her body rippled and tore apart from the inside, vaporizing in a spray of superheated viscera that too dissolved into nothingness and left nothing behind, not even a hand- hers were ugly, scarred and calloused from combat.

Not like Emma’s graceful smoothness or Madison’s cute softness.

Three of three.

My torment was ended.

~~~~~~

I felt oddly light as I headed back to the Boat Graveyard, a spring in my step for the first time in what felt like forever. As I entered the rusted hulk that served as my testing grounds, I unleashed my second bomb, which, in a fit of whimsy, I had named Skitter for the sound it make as it, well, skittered around.

I myself sat in a cleaner corner as I controlled it, crawling along every surface it could run or jump to and- ah, apparently Skitter did have wings, or rather, slightly hidden rocket boosters.. As soon as I found out, I immediately practiced flying, directing Skitter to the ground a few times to latch onto and detonate upon rats.

For science.

Yes.

And there I stayed for some time, until the sun had set and my stomach began grumbling. I headed out and stopped by Fugly Bob’s for a quick dinner, and began walking home. It was about eight pm, which was plenty of time for me to finish my homework and get eight hours of sleep.

Or so I thought, until I saw the police cruiser in front of my house.

I knew I had forgotten something.

1.3

“I- I haven’t seen Emma outside of school for months,” I lied through my teeth, putting up a careful facade of being an almost heartbroken, panicking mess of a teenage girl, shedding a few fake tears to really sell the story to the officer waiting in my living room. “I- we’d drifted a little, after middle school… M-maybe if I’d been a better friend this wouldn’t have happened!”

I broke down sobbing, at least, that’s what it looked like to the officer, who patted me on the back and offered his quiet reassurances that the BBPD would do everything in their power to find Emma.

I had a good mental chuckle at that. No one would find Emma- I’d stashed her and Madison’s hands in my secret “lair” and left Skitter to guard them. Thankfully, it was still cold enough that I could get away with wearing some thin gloves to hide the mark on my hand.

A few minutes of sobbing and empty assurances to call the police if I learned anything later, the officer left, leaving me alone with Dad, who looked deeply worried.

“Taylor… I know I… haven’t been the best father to you since your mom died… but,” he sighed, dropping his head into his hands, “I’m worried. Three disappearances in one night? And all of them from Winslow?”

I simply sat there, not saying anything and letting him talk. Honestly, it was rather refreshing that he was trying to father me now instead of when I had desperately needed emotional comforting some three years ago.

Shame that it had to happen out of nothing but baseless panic after one of the so called “disappearances” (haha) was discovered to be Emma fucking Barnes.

“I want you to stop going out after school, or barring that, I want you to be protected,” he shut his eyes tight and bit his lip, then looked up, “and as much as neither of us want to, I’m going to get us both cell phones, so we can communicate.”

I nodded, his terms were reasonable enough that I could fit them in without any excess trouble. “I’ll go buy some pepper spray tomorrow,” I said, wiping away the last of my fake tears and putting an appropriate shaky lilt to my voice. “How are we going to afford the phones?”

“Prepaid plan,” Dad answered instantly, a bit of light shining in his eyes as he took up a long thought lost tone that signalled when he was on a definitive train of thought that he had absolute confidence in, “It’ll be a little costly, but we have enough saved up that we won’t have too much trouble as long as we cut back on shopping elsewhere for a while.”

“Alright… I’m… I’m going to go do my homework,” I murmured, standing up and heading up the stairs. “I’ll scream if anything happens.”

“Alright… I love you, Taylor.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

Curious. I actually felt even better now. Who knew that all it would take to get my father to actually come out of his self induced depressive shell was murdering my bullies in such a way that it looked like they all just disappeared?

I certainly did not.

~~~~~~

“I have reason to believe that Shadow Stalker may, in fact, not be missing, but rather… dead.” Armsmaster spoke simply, as if swallowing a bitter pill. He called up a screen showing various graphs of data, along with map overlays and presented it all to the briefing meeting.

“If you’ll see here, Shadow Stalker was on a straight line towards the Wards HQ- right on time for her scheduled patrol. However, around Elm Street, she takes a turn and heads for March Street, which, while not entirely far off from her patrol route, has no particular reason for her to be there. I suspect that she decided to meet with someone for some reason, but ran afoul of another cape. Given that the area was near the docks, I suspect that the ABB either has a new cape or Oni Lee has stepped up his game. Either way, that points to the ABB no longer caring about the unwritten rules in fullness.”

“Well there’s a thought that’ll keep me up at night,” Assault muttered, then yelped quietly as Battery not so subtly elbowed him in the side for his interruption.

“Interesting,” Director Piggot muttered, not even trying to keep the frustrated glare off of her face as she shuffled through her papers to even remotely get a handle on the kind of headache her next few days would face. “But until we get confirmation, we treat this as a missing person’s case. Keep all information about this restricted and let nothing slip. Officially, Shadow Stalker has been transferred to a different location for a few months for training.” She took a long, slow stare around the assembled capes in the room, “I doubt I need to impress on any of you just what kind of shit show will happen if the general public even catches the impression that a Ward has been murdered. In a back alley in the middle of ABB territory no less.”

General nodding and murmuring followed her words, coupled with a running undercurrent of tension.

“Good. We’ll also be cutting back on Wards patrols and events. One is bad enough, two will be entirely impossible to contain. In response, we’ll need to step up actual Protectorate patrols, spread them out to cover the areas the Wards would have covered. Any volunteers?”

Armsmaster raised his hand, as did Miss Militia, then the rest of the assembled capes followed- they lived in Brockton Bay, they were responsible for it. And they’d all be damned if something like this happened on their watch again.

~~~~~~

I had to cut down on my practice sessions after the police came, since Dad was so afraid of me being kidnapped or murdered now. Fortunately, I only needed to cut down from every other day to weekly, since I now did not need the excuse that I was going to the library to study in an attempt to make up for my slipping grades. Unfortunately, my wandering around had not gone unnoticed.

Case in point, the barely-an-adult standing in front of me, arms crossed and stance in what he presumed to be an intimidating posture, but really just looked like he was trying far too hard. Barely worth my notice, honestly, and of the gun he kept deliberately shown off, it was most likely stuck with how it was jammed into his waistband.

It was almost amusing how he tried to intimidate me, pushing me against the alley wall as he demanded my money. At the exact point that he reached for his gun, I took a single step forward, hand outstretched and just barely brushing his forehead as I charged his skin and detonated, causing him to bloat and erupt into a fountain of fire and smoke that harmlessly washed over me and disappeared as I continued on my path, not even the slightest bit ruffled or smelling from the explosion.

I would need to practice that, I thought to myself, because there had been far too much wasted movement, far too many chances where I could have gone on my way before he pushed me against the wall. Perhaps next time I would just walk past them as they made their initial demand?

Things to consider.

1.4

It was always a strange occurrence when I couldn’t sleep. I always made sure to keep myself at a relaxed enough level that my sleep would be deep, restful, and uninterrupted, so waking up at a time outside of the time set on my alarm clock was always confusing. Case in point, the sudden, massive itch that sprung me awake at approximately one in the morning on a Thursday night/ Friday morning. It was an itch, centered on my left palm, intense enough for me to involuntarily clench my fist hard enough that I almost drew blood. Instinctively, I cast my mind from self to Skitter, looking through its eyes to see… nothing.

I was restless, I couldn’t stay in bed. I had to move, had to get dressed had to sneak out the window silently had to run run run run run. Why?

Skitter was guarding my precious hands, now slightly musty and well used, and nothing was around for the entirety of Skitter’s 50 foot sensing range, so why was I running, why did I feel the urge to slam my hand into someone’s face and let their ashes dissolve into the wind?

I halted, staring down at my hands. My slender, beautiful hands. My nails were longer, much longer than their normal rate of growth should have let them be. As I stared, I twitched. Action, I needed action. I had been stagnant and this was the price I paid. I began to recall Skitter, using a rat’s body heat to disintegrate the precious lockbox containing my hands with barely more than a grimace. Skitter flew, elytra sprung open just a tad to allow the organic boosters hidden beneath to activate and propel it towards me until she was just close enough that I could dispel it back to wherever it went. I looked around, there was no one nearby.

I unleashed Skitter and looked through it’s eyes, and found a congregation of body heat, along with one source that was far warmer than it had any right to be. Congregations of bodies at odd hours were always indicative of gang activity in Brockton, as any native would tell.

Gangs.

Or, perhaps in another sense, an organized system… of bullies. I considered my options- I could, perhaps, ignore my urges but then they might build until I could not control them. I could join the cape life, but that would draw far too much attention. Or, I could just quietly indulge every now and then, and pretend to be normal otherwise.

…

Gangs were highly inconvenient to me as well, in a roundabout way. They destroyed the city from within and lowered the standard of living for everyone, causing people like my father to lack work and thus lack money, thus causing my standard of living to drop as well.

Ergo.

Gangs must die.

No one would miss them.

I wouldn’t miss them.

I hadn’t even noticed that my train of thought led me closer until I was just hidden by the mouth of the alley, palming a quarter in my right hand with the strongest charge I could muster- its radius was such that the power would be too spread out for instant disintegration, and with that much power it would no longer be silent, but it would prevent the greatest amount of danger by killing and incapacitating massive amounts of gang members in a single, fell swoop.

And so I flicked the quarter into the alleyway and detonated it right in the middle of the group, right on top of the taller, hotter body that was most likely their leader, and reveled in the quiet screams that echoed through, just barely audible over the rippling, shrieking almost electronic distortion sound that was my bomb. I kept pressing the trigger, detonating over and over again until the screams stopped. And then, I peeked in.

Dead.

All of them, torn to shreds by my bomb and splattered across the walls, the ground. Viscera pooled in low areas, and bits and bobs were embedded in the walls from sheer force. Not a single one left identifiable…

Except that slowly moving hunk of meat in the corner that…

“Shit.” I cursed, rather unlike myself usually but what else would one do when they felt the ambient temperature rachet itself up almost sixty degrees in an instant as motherfucking Lung stood back up from an exploding that killed over thirty gang members in the span of thirty seconds?

”I….’ill…. oooo….” the already draconic beast of a man rumbled, flames dancing around his form as it slowly regenerated into a metal scaled, ten foot tall bipedal dragon with vestigial wings and a maw that looked like it was filled with knives and death.

I had fucked up. Hard.

~~~~~~

“Guys? I think we should… stay away from her. Very, very far away,” Tattletale warned the rest of the Undersiders, glancing at the small pile of ash where Lung used to be with a slight, almost sympathetic wince.

“No argument here,” Regent agreed as he stepped away from the rooftop’s edge and back towards where Bitch had parked the dogs. “I’d rather not let my perfect self get blown up like that.”

Tattletale shivered as she recalled the look on the girl’s face- after the initial shock of seeing Lung regenerate, her expression slammed closed and projected nothing but sheer, deadly, intent to kill as some sort of thing had slammed into Lung and exploded with enough force that all that was left was a tiny pile of ash.

Small entity connected to girl’s left hand. Heat activated explosive. Used Lung’s own power against him. Higher heat equals larger, more powerful explosion. Explosion powerful enough to kill Lung. Not enough to disintegrate into nothingness. Explosion usually powerful enough to completely disintegrate even ash. First set of explosions came from different bomb. Shiny object in the alley. Quarter. Bomb was coin. Bomb exploded multiple times. Bomb meant for singular targets usually-

She shivered again as the Undersiders rode off. A girl with that kind of power was sure to make waves, even if her own power said that she didn’t want anything to do with being anywhere near as noticed as a cape, villain or hero.

~~~~~~

I smelled slightly of ash as I crawled back into my room through the window, but I was smiling slightly all the same. I had all but ended the ABB in about five minutes of effort by killing Lung with his own heat. As I undressed and slipped back into bed, I stroked Skitter’s shell and dismissed her.

“Good Skitter,” I whispered, drifting off once more into a deep, restful sleep, uninterrupted for the rest of the night.

If my urges could be channeled to making my life better, then I almost hoped they would come more often.

1.5

I had made a mistake.

Apparently, due to the combined facts that camera phones exist, my explosions from the other night were audible, and the giant rage dragon screaming as he disintegrated…

I had inadvertently plunged Brockton Bay into what would almost qualify as a gang war if it weren’t for the fact that the ABB was mostly just running away (While Oni Lee flitted around and stabbed people here and there) while the E88 seized more territory.

Problematic.

Very, very problematic. Not in the short term, that is, but in the long term. I was white, so I wouldn’t have to fear any E88 attacks, but I did not care to be in a city whose main parahuman force was Nazis.

Just an even worse group of bullies than the Asians who more or less minded their own (criminal) business once their territory was locked down.

When I had first heard of the E88 mobilizing, I had been in school- specifically, in an assembly where the Wards were speaking to us about the “horrors of villainy and crime”. The girls next to me were gossiping while obviously paying more attention to their phones than to the assembly, and I had unfortunately been paying attention to what one said due to the… admirable quality of her hands.

When she had said something about hearing about the E88 moving into ABB territory from a friend of a friend of a friend, I overheard, and cast a second look about the auditorium. Indeed, most of those who previously wore ABB colors were now dressed normally, and seemed almost afraid to even look at the E88 members.

The news that the E88 was moving to take over more of Brockton Bay, more of my city, was enough to get my urges running again as a flush of anger tore through me and almost caused me to explode something right in the auditorium. However, I had managed to clamp it down long enough for school to let out, and then I had called Dad to let him know that I would be in the library for some time due to a school project.

I normally disliked lying, but it would be far less attention grabbing than “I am going to hunt and murder as many supervillains as I possibly can within the next five hours”.

Now… where would I start, I wondered?

~~~~~~

Apparently wandering around the back alleys of the downtown area of the city for an hour doesn’t actually net any real business. Who knew?

I certainly didn’t, though I had handily dealt with several muggers. I had even perfected my casual erasure walk, allowing me to just skip past the hassle of the threats and continue on my path as soon as I saw a weapon.

I was almost ready to give up, but I continued on anyway, wandering around aimlessly… until I had the idea to just go to the docks and wander the previous ABB territory on my own.

Even if I didn’t find any parahumans, I could still thin out the number of gang members infesting my city.

And so I walked. Then I rode the bus. And as I grew closer, I let Skitter out and had her hide under my hair. Her position would prevent anyone from seeing her, and I would be able to use her thermal vision to keep anyone from ambushing me and potentially causing strange injuries that I wouldn’t be able to explain.

I wandered through what was probably formerly ABB territory without a care, following the gang tags as I traveled deeper into unknown areas. As I continued on, I saw more and more ABB tags covered in E88 tags, a sight that was honestly rather off putting until I heard the sounds of furious combat up ahead.

Success.

~~~~~~

Up ahead, in an alleyway, I saw a gargantuan beast of blades, a robed figure hovering on top of a car, and a shirtless man in a white mask floating near the robed figure.

Hookwolf, Rune, and Stormtiger.

All of whom would be able to dodge my new tactic of quarter-toss-bomb-spam. I silently resolved to find a better name for such a technique as I took in the ABB gang members being crushed under their relentless assault.

In some cases quite literally.

What didn’t quite make sense to me was why all three were in the area at once until I had to suddenly jump out of the way of a knife coming from behind and sent Skitter-

Crashing through a mildly warm pile of ash.

Oni Lee. And with my jump and twist out of the alleyway, all parties were now very, very aware of me.

No survivors, then.

Good to see at least one plan survives contact with the enemy.

Immediately, Hookwolf growled out something inaudible, most likely because of the fact that it was probably just his blades shifting around. For a moment, I thought that I would be able to get away with pretending to be E88 until I the ABB were taken care of, then take care of the rest.

And then Rune had to ruin it by saying, “I have no idea who that is. She’s not one of ours.”

“She’s still white, Rune. We can’t just let these chinks and gooks hurt an upstanding citizen like that,” Stormtiger called out as he slashed apart an Oni Lee clone that had gotten too close, along with several more of the ordinary gang members, who had by now had the good sense to start running away.

Unfortunately for me.

In a moment of panicked desperation, unthinking of potential consequences to my current situation other than just the sheer need to remove all who had even a hint of my identity, I flung an overcharged quarter into the fleeing crowd and detonated it over and over, repeating what I had done several nights ago with Lung, and either killed or incapacitated all of them… which then caused every survivor- namely the capes- to turn to me in shock, awe, and in the Nazis’ case… admiration.

“.... Shit.”

Damn you Moltke for being right.

1.6

“Well, she may not be one of ours, but she sure acts like one,” Stormtiger announced haughtily and sent me an encouraging salute.

I was mortified, horrified, and embarrassed and a thousand other things, but mostly, I was murderous. These people now knew what I looked like, and a bit of what I could do. This meant that they had to die.

Without a single word, I had Skitter fly, fly far faster than I had ever had moved her before, and set her on autopilot chasing the heat signature that was Oni Lee. Meanwhile, while the Nazis were still unaware of my intentions towards them when they noticed Oni Lee get chased off, I let them get close. Stormtiger lost his most of his windcloak while Hookwolf retracted into another tall, shirtless man with a wolf mask as opposed to Stormtiger’s tiger mask.

“Thank you for the assist, young lady,” Stormtiger held out his hand, sounding rather genial. “Though perhaps you might want to find yourself a mask an identity before going out like this again. I must ask you, what was it that you did with that silver projectile?”

I took his hand and gave it a firm shake, charging him with a medium radius explosion that would disintegrate him and, while they were just far enough away to not be entirely killed, would severely injure both Hookwolf and Rune. “I-it was nothing, sir… j-just some kind of exploding energy projectile,” I stuttered and forced an almost embarrassed grin onto my face as my collar heated up from the simmering rage within and managed, probably, a convincing blush. “I um, I just heard the fighting and… when I saw those ABB goons and you I… I couldn’t just stand there…”

“That attitude’ll get you far,” Hookwolf rumbled, arms crossed but voice decently approving. “Especially with the power you got.”

“All the same,” Stormtiger continued on, stepping back ever so slightly as his wind cloak began picking up again, “You should probably come up with a secret identity if you plan on joining us as a cape. Might I suggest the name Zunder? It’s quite fi-”

With a metaphorical clicking noise, I pressed the detonator, and Stormtiger disappeared in a flash of fire, while Rune and Hookwolf were launched in opposite directions, both severely injured on one side of their bodies, yet Hookwolf was conscious while Rune seemed almost entirely out of it. I figured it was in size differences, and in experience.

Strolling over, I gave Hookwolf a quick tag as he tried and failed to stand, his leg too far gone to support his weight, and detonated him.

I turned away and stalked over to Rune, who had since regained consciousness and began crawling away in abject fear. It almost made me want to smile, her reaction.

“N-no! Get away! S-stop!” she cried as she pathetically scooted away, until her back hit wall and she stopped. I smiled down at her- Skitter had managed to sneak up on Oni Lee and punch through his ribs, into his heart, and detonate him and was returning as I spoke.

“I don’t like witnesses.”

Rune panicked even harder and threw herself at my feet, screaming, “Please don’t kill me! I don’t even believe in that Nazi crap anyway! I can change! I can be a hero instead! Just please don’t kill me!”

“...”

I pondered the question for a moment. What would let me jeopardize my own secrecy, my identity, in order to let one girl survive, with the potential of being a hero. Would the benefits of having an additional hero in the world outweigh the risks of her potentially outing me to the world? I paused and frowned, deep in thought. Behind me and off to the side, I set Skitter to body disposal as I weighed benefits and consequences.

What, perhaps, would I risk? An ally? Unnecessary, really, though a higher degree of mobility would aid in removing first the E88- ah.

Silently, I kicked her over onto her back, stepped on her chest and kneeled down, drawing a choked gasp as she stared fearfully up at me.

“I will let you live for a while longer… if you tell me who the other Empire capes are, where they live, what they can do, and what their habits are.” I spoke with finality, my hand already poised to grab her and destroy her.

She considered for a moment, then began blurting a series of names and addresses, some woefully incomplete but made up for by the locations of frequently visited safehouses. One name stood out to me, in particular.

“Max Anders, CEO of Medhall?” I mused as I stood, nudging Rune out of the way. She’d probably die of her injuries if she didn’t get help in the next hour, but that was none of my concern, unless she left her body somewhere visible. “I am simultaneously surprised, yet unsurprised. Yes… an organization on par with the E88 would need significant financial backing, wouldn’t it? Makes sense..”

I looked down at her whimpering form, still clearly afraid that she would die. She would, but, something in me stirred. Perhaps it was something about the situation I was in- she had surrendered to me, but I was considering killing her. It was possibly against all rules of engagement established within the last decade, but I still could not bring myself to care. However, there was the caveat that I could potentially indirectly make the city better if I let her live, even if my identity would forever be at risk.

Decisions, decisions...
Protect my identity forever or potentially help lessen the load upon my father indirectly by adding a new hero to the force?

Risk losing my anonymity by carelessness or potentially end the gangs destroying my home city?

Shaking my head, I made my decision.

“I believe we had a deal,” I spoke blandly, using my enhanced strength to bodily lift her and drag her away. “Unfortunately, we’re going to have to make another deal if you are to continue living.”

“W-what kind of deal?” she stuttered, wincing with every word as her injuries began leaking again.

“Forget that I exist. Forget my appearance, forget my power, forget everything about who I am and what I do. You never met me, you do not know who I am, you do not know anything about me and so help me if I find out that you did not comply at any point…” I lowered my face next to her ear and finished my speech with a hissing whisper, ”I will end you in such a way that makes what I did to Hookwolf and Stormtiger look like child’s play. Am I clear?”

“Y-yes!” she nodded frantically, impressive considering how many of her injuries were concentrated on her upper chest.

“Yes what?” I asked, more of an attempt at humor than anything else.

“Y-yes ma’am!”

“Now… how do I make sure you don’t die from your injuries anytime soon without raising questions…?”

~~~~~~

When Rune woke up in Brockton Bay General several days later, the first thing she thought was, ’Her fucking idea of inconspicuous is to rip my fucking clothes off and throw me off a roof and into traffic!?’

2.1

For a few days, I had followed Rune around with Skitter as she systematically cut ties with the E88- rather violently too, in the case of Cricket, who had been trapped in a ring of upturned cars and then smashed in the face with a mailbox over twenty six times for, as I overheard, “Never giving back that twenty bucks you owe me, bitch!” along with twenty five other reasons.

At that point I wasn’t sure if she were being earnest, acting that way due to overarching fear of death, or if she really had that much of a grudge against Cricket. I assumed it was the second one. Meanwhile, I had systematically been eliminating entire E88 cells by sneaking into safehouses- trivial when I could simply detonate the locks silently and slip past during holes in the lookout rotations. I was quite sure that the police and the PRT were quite confused about all the recent disappearances, but given that they had not yet traced anything back to me, I saw no reason to care.

So far, I had thus been able to remove Victor and Othala by charging their bedcovers- they were married and slept in the same bed, which was very convenient. I almost wished that I had taken a picture of the way that they held onto each other as they both detonated. Such fear and desperation was… interesting. Night and Fog were a tad more difficult, but I merely had to be creative- as Night turned into a monster when nobody watched, I had merely tracked the both of them to their personal car and then hid Skitter in the passenger seat while I charged the steering wheel. That time I had taken a picture using a random phone appropriated from a cleared out safehouse. Their faces as they drove off only for the both of them to explode were almost enough to make me laugh. I actually did laugh when I removed Crusader, as I had coincidentally found him taking the bus to the library and simply detonated him by using Skitter to push him into an alley and explode while he was distracted.

Three days of cleaning up the capes, and I suddenly found that the rest had simply vanished. Or rather, they had most likely decided to find a fortified location and hole up there, or barring that, simply skip town entirely. The only one that remained was Kaiser.

Purity as well, but she was ostensibly trying to be a hero, according to what Rune had said. Speaking of Rune, she was getting ready to go to bed in the safe house that she had since holed up in. Alone.

The one I was in as well for just this moment.

“Elizabeth Schmidt.”

She shrieked and whirled around to face me as I stepped out of the closet. She was half dressed, in barely more than the shirt she wore to bed and her underwear. Her expression was amusing, a mix of terror and indignation that had her scrambling back until she hit a wall, and froze.

“Familiar position, isn’t it?” I asked blandly as I stepped forward and into her personal space. “You seem scared. Is it because I’m here?”

“Y-y-n-no ma’am… y-you j-just st-startled me…!” she stammered out, hands clasped tightly over her chest. Rather pretty hands too. Without thinking, I closed on hand over her wrists, clamping them together as I leaned in to whisper into her ear.

“You’ve done well in turning yourself around, but have you kept your promise?” I pulled back, deadly serious. If she had ratted me out…

“Yes ma’am!” she squeaked, knees shaking against each other and against me. I looked at her- blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin, the exact Aryan ideal if not for the fact that she was shorter than me. Then again, at my own five foot six, I was rather taller than most of the girls my age anyway. I felt a little spark in my chest when I looked down at her quivering lips. I had never thought of it before, but unmasked she was rather… pretty.

I hoped that she would keep her promise, else I would hate to waste such a beautiful pair of hands… and I suppose the rest, but mostly the hands.

“Good,” I all but purred- it was immensely satisfying to know that I had cowed her enough that she wouldn’t even dare betray me. “Now… everyone but Kaiser is gone. Have you any idea on where they might be?”

“N-no ma’am, nothing! I’ve been looking for any traces, but they’re either too well hidden or they’ve skipped down entirely! I went to check on Krieg, but he and his family seem to have just up and left- all their stuff is still their and their neighbors said they went on vacation!”

“Shh.” I hiss, pressing my finger to her lips- soft and pink, “As endearing as your babbling is, a simple no would have sufficed. I am going to kill Kaiser. And when I do, I will most likely have a lead on everyone else I need to kill. You, however, will have a much more… simple… job.”

“W-what’s that?” she asked, curiously cautious and very much afraid.

I suppose I could assuage those fears, just this once.

“Kill Skidmark and the rest of the Merchant capes. I don’t care how you do so, just do it,” I command as I let her go. “When you are done with that, investigate the rumors of some sort of Tinker trying to take over the ABB territory.”

“Yes ma’am,” she mutters, halfway flushed as hop out the window and onto the fire escape.

“One final thing,” I said as I turned around, “If anything you do is traced back to me, I will kill you. So be discreet.”

And with that, I simply hopped down the fire escape and landed three stories below, not even ruffled at the landing. It was one of my least thought about abilities, but Brute level strength and durability are very useful for mobility.

~~~~~~

Lisa gulped as she walked past the stoic form of Taylor Hebert, very nervous at the thought of being around such a deadly person, even in a public library. Though well disguised, she could still make out the form of the girl’s secondary bomb hiding within the girl’s hair.

’Will not likely spare another cape who knows her identity, searching for the rest of the E88 capes, searching for and eliminating the gangs of Brockton Bay, coerced Rune into smashing the Merchants, will most likely destroy the Undersiders if she finds out about us, killed Kaiser yesterday, is searching through PHO for information on Brockton Bay’s gangs, has found- oh shit’.

Subtly, Lisa edged her way out of her table and away from the homicidal girl seated at the library’s computer bank. In a stroke of horrific luck, it seemed that she had found the thread dedicated to her- or at least, the her that the PRT called “Detonator” in official documents. Fortunately, Lisa had been on that thread as well and found that all of the pictures were taken either with terrible quality or in low light conditions, or with Taylor actually facing away from the cameras, and therefore had actually never shown her face on camera. Technically.

Still, she cut and ran from the library, giving a mental fuck you to Coil for forcing her into observing the crazy chick who’d probably just as soon blow her up as listen to anything she had to say.

“Worthwhile asset” her perfect tuchus. He probably just wanted her as an on demand disposal service and insurance to make sure none of the rest of the team ever stepped out of line and lived to tell about it.

~~~~~~

I had to still myself almost entirely.

I was known. Not publically, but almost as badly. Even with the blurry photos, one could still pick out my shape, my hair, even a line of pixels that might have been glasses. This would not do. This would not do at all. I was almost compromised and there was nothing I could do about it.

My palms itched furiously.

2.2

It was with something of a dilemma that I began setting detonations to ignore wallets. On the one hand, stealing did not exactly appeal to me in any way. On the other hand, the previous owners weren’t using the wallets anymore and I could finally buy myself nicer clothing, including a sports jacket that included a built in balaclava. It was hardly ideal, but it was necessary.

There was no going back at this point- I was known to the public. Therefore, steps had to be taken to prevent myself from being fully exposed. A simple balaclava to prevent people from seeing my face while I worked, and new clothes to prevent visual tagging for as long as possible. The disappearances of several prominent cape identities being linked to me on PHO was disconcerting, especially since it was indicative of a pattern. Thankfully, Rune had kept her promise- though she had stated that her name was now going to be Starkregen, German for “Heavy Rain”. It was an apt description, though I perhaps thought it hit too close to her roots to be acceptable.

She seemed almost begging for my approval when she said her new cape name to me, so I figured that I might as well have signed off on it. The resultant squeal and jump of joy almost made me regret that decision, until I noticed that Elizabeth neglected to wear a bra under her sleeping t-shirt.

A spark had flickered in my chest at the sight.

Even remembering such a sight made me think back to an old television talk show that I used to watch reruns of with Dad, wherein one of the people on the show had a quite memorable “Oh my”.

I had no idea why my thoughts kept flickering back to that one phrase whenever I visited Elizabeth. Was it because she was actually incredibly attractive?

That thought drew me up short, such that I almost slammed into a lamp post on the thankfully empty stretch of sidewalk where I was.

I had never found anyone attractive before, not men nor women, and now I began to find an Ex-Nazi physically appealing?

Well, there was that one blonde girl at the library that one time who had amazing legs but- focus! I had to focus!

My own accidental realization of sapphic tendencies aside, I had since become slightly more active in hunting down the rest of Brockton Bay’s scum. Elizabeth had told tale of the ABB tinker trying to push into E88 territory with conscripted soldiers, having rebranded from the ABB to some juvenile name relating to explosives that I hadn’t bothered to remember. Skitter had been sent out to search for said Tinker, who apparently went by the name Bakuda, the Japanese word for bomb. Descriptive, if uncreative. Though, perhaps it was more fitting than the name Elizabeth bestowed on me in a fit of mild rebellion.

“Queen”

It logically made little sense, but she had explained that it was chosen for my personality, which to her was forceful, imperious, and almost condescending. Queen versus Bakuda. Not exactly a very poetic turn of phrase.

It was with slight trepidation that I entered formerly ABB territory, very much aware that there could be booby traps here and there, as I hunted down Bakuda, explosive user to explosive user.

Initially, I had wanted to simply destroy her and her workshop with Skitter once I had found its location, but further examination of the area brought the uncertainty of insurance- Tinkers were vulnerable, moreso than even Masters, usually. The problem was that they had the resources to make themselves less vulnerable. With bombs, the general form of insurance was in deadman’s switches. This, in turn, necessitated more precise application of force than just destroying everything, as cessation of signal would thus lead in far too many dead to escape notice, along with the fact that my father or Elizabeth might end up within the range of effect- Dad because of his office being where it was, and Elizabeth due to her often now patrolling the dockside areas for Merchant activity.

I couldn’t let either of them get hurt. Not from the actions of a two bit arsonist with delusions of grandeur.

So I hunted.

~~~~~~

Elizabeth Schmidt, formerly Rune, now Starkregen worried at her thumbnail as she tracked Taylor Hebert, tentatively Queen, through the streets in the dock side of town. Oh sure, intellectually she knew that Taylor could more than handle herself, but she still worried. She didn’t know exactly why she worried, given that if Taylor died then she would be free to do as she pleased without the threat of violent exploding if she even slipped up and said anything about Taylor to anyone.

When Taylor had told her, about a day ago, that she had found Bakuda and wanted her assistance in taking her down, she had initially been rather apprehensive- Bakuda was known to use some rather esoteric effects in her explosives, and simply blocking them wouldn’t always work. So what exactly did Taylor plan on doing?

As it turned out, it had involved sneaking into Bakuda’s workshop while the Tinker herself was passed out from overwork (Or perhaps it was the sleeping pills that Skitter had snuck into the Tinker’s coffee?) and stripping her down, tying her up with duct tape, and then carrying her back to the goddamn safehouse for interrogation.

Or, so that was the plan, which had worked until Bakuda woke up on the way back to the safehouse and started struggling, at which point Taylor had just dropped into a side alley, which is where she was now interrogating Bakuda while Elizabeth secretly kept watch for any potential interlopers.

She winced- the interrogation was not going well on Bakuda’s end.

~~~~~~

Sighing, I drew back and wiped my brow. Bakuda continued cursing as her left hand feebly twitched, fingers broken and twisted, and in one case, burned into a cauterized stump.

“Do you have any bombs strewn around the city. Simple question. I will not ask a third time,” I drawled, lazily grabbing Bakuda by the hair and pressing her head against the brick wall she was propped up against.

“G-go fuck yourself, you pasty faced bitch!” she spat, literally, almost splattering my cheek before I moved out of the way. “I’ll kill you for this!”

Instead of responding, I merely stamped my foot between her legs, drawing a pained squeal as I ground my foot into her pubic bone and crushed everything between. “That is not an answer. Do you have any deadman’s switches implanted in your body?”

She merely gurgled in response, throat already worn out from screaming. Unfortunately, I needed her coherent, so I poked her in the bloody mess between her legs and detonated a particularly sensitive part of her anatomy, causing her to wake up, shrieking and sobbing.

“I sincerely hope you were never planning on breeding. Now, as for my answers?” I wiped my finger off on her cheek, leaving a bloodied streak full of soot from the detonation.

“Puh-please… s-stop….” she moaned piteously. I frowned and raised my finger into her field of view, causing her to rocket back and almost crack her head against the wall if not for the timely intervention of my hand clamping around her throat to keep her immobile.

“My. Answers. Hurry, my patience grows thin.”

“N-no! No! I don’t have any switches! T-there are bombs but they’re inactive right now! I-I was s-saving them for later!” she choked out, panicked and shivering.

“Good. No one will miss you.”

“W-wha-? No! Please! No no no n- AAAAAIIIIEEE-”

I turned away from the flash and looked up at Elizabeth, calling out, “We’re done here, Elizabeth. You can stop pretending to be stealthy now.”

2.3

“Elizabeth, how many bombs have you found?” I asked, speaking blandly into the phone with casual disregard for greetings.

”Hello to you too, Queen,” comes the snarky reply. I was not quite appreciative of the sass, but it was a welcome change to the almost slavish devotion and submissiveness of two weeks ago. ”Three more in the last hour. Too bad that bitch didn’t say how many bombs there were. Least they’re inactive, right?”

“Indeed.” I returned blandly, then turned my attention back to dinner. I had introduced Elizabeth to my father as a school friend and had thus gained the ability to speak with her more inconspicuously than I otherwise would have been able to, as the previous safehouse was downtown and a half hour bus ride from Winslow. “Will you be returning soon?”

”If you’re making lasagna, sure,” she chirped, sounding far too enthusiastic about the prospect of food. Though, I supposed, when one lived off of cheap ready meals and instant garbage, the prospect of a home-cooked meal no matter how mediocre was most likely irresistible.

“Yes, I am making lasagna,” I muttered in exasperation, prompting a loud whoop of joy on the other end of the line and a wince on my end as the sound hit my ear.

”I’ll be back soon, Queenie!”

“Do not call me that.”

”Yes ma’am!”

~~~~~~

“You know, it’s kinda funny now that I think about it, but you’ve been over for dinner a lot, Beth,” Dad said as the three of us sat around the dinner table. Silently, I gave her a nudge under the table.

“Hm? Oh- yeah, mom and dad are always working, so I usually have to either eat takeout or pizza all the time or make my own food, and I’d really rather not burn the house down like I almost did that one time,” Elizabeth answered smoothly, cutting off further inquiry as she dug into the lasagna I had made.

“Well, I suppose that it’d be terrible for me to let a kid starve like that,” Dad quipped.

And that was the end of that line of thought.

The rest of dinner was full of light conversation about innocent topics- school projects, football, business, etc. According to Dad, the city had finally begun to discuss the topic of the Boat Graveyard now that the gangs were destroyed (Except for the Merchants, who had so far eluded us).

“So, what do you think about the fact that Rune seems to have become a hero in the last few weeks?” Dad asked blandly, not even noticing as Elizabeth suddenly froze up and began sweating.

Hastily, I deflected the question, “Wait, Dad, you follow cape news? When did this happen?”

“We’re in a city with the former largest villain per capita ratio, kiddo, how could I not?”

“... Fair enough. I think it’s pretty cool, though I have to wonder what her motivations are for doing so. Maybe she saw what happened to the Empire and decided to jump ship while she could?” I turned to Elizabeth and lightly jabbed her shin under the table with my foot, drawing a slight exasperated glare. “What do you think, Beth?”

“I dunno, Tay, seems like an honest change so far. So I guess if she keeps doing what she’s doing, there’s no reason to worry.”

Fair enough.

The rest of dinner was a slight sigh of relief, unintentional attention thus drawn to other topics.

~~~~~~

“Y’know, Queen, I have to wonder just why you stay in school when clearly your talents are wasted there. Why not just drop out and join me in the safehouse?” Elizabeth spoke casually as we sifted through the library for study materials. I was already far, far ahead of all of my classes, but a little extra knowledge would go a long way, even if my grades reflected barely above average performance.

I snorted, “Because to drop out calls attention from both my father and other prying eyes. If I ran from home, I would draw even more attention. Plus, with the recent turn to ‘heroism’, and the fact that common criminals carry startlingly little cash, we would run out of food within two weeks and have to return to crime, which I would absolutely abhor.”

“Alright, alright, point taken. So why are we here in the fiction section? I thought you said you had school work?”

“Because I received a very much concerning message on PHO detailing my identity. I intend to meet with whoever they are here… and remove them should they prove untrustworthy.” My palms began itching with the desire to kill, and I very nearly released Skitter to find some unlucky Merchant gang member to deal with before I saw her.

The blonde with amazing legs, fashionable clothing, an insufferably smug smirk, and was standing exactly where the post said they would meet- directly under the sign for section N through M in the young adult fiction area. My eye twitched as my posture shifted.

She looked distinctly nervous as she saw me, hands raised in surrender as I closed in. “W-wait wait!” she stage-whispered, looking around for any listeners before continuing, “Please don’t blow me up! I have to tell you something important!”

I stopped and considered, then obliged. Elizabeth silently tagged six shelves and their entire contents behind me, along with a footstool and a folding chair.

“Speak. You have one minute. After that, I make no promises that you will walk out of this place alive.”

Immediately, the blonde begins talking about things that are quite a bit beyond what I had imagined would be the scope of her words.

“I’m being forced to try and recruit you by the last real supervillain in town- Coil. He’s got the threat of death hanging over me and I can’t figure out how to get rid of him. The Undersiders- the small time gang- he brought us together. We don’t do much other than hit other gang territories so please don’t blow us up. I want you to help me get rid of Coil,” the blonde’s words washed over me in a rush, a veritable flood that I mostly did not care about. However, I did pick out the important bit- Kill the supervillain known as Coil.

I sighed, “And what makes you think that I could not just do this on my own without your intervention? There are, quite honestly, not many points in your favor that would result in your continued survival, nor that of the Undersiders.”

She grimaced, “I have information that might be helpful. The problem is, I don’t know anything about his power beyond the fact that he seems to always win no matter what. And, well, the Undersiders… Most of us are really only in that group because we got screwed over by the system.”

I raised an eyebrow. It was interesting information, and made me quite reconsider the utility of destroying the Undersiders. A thought occurred to me, and I said as much, “If I help you, what exactly do I get out of it?”

“You get rid of one more supervillain bent on controlling the city as his personal fiefdom, and you save a few people with some spectacularly shitty options. Might even get a lot of money too,” the blonde mentioned.

“...”

“I think we should take the offer, Queen,” Elizabeth whispered in my ear, almost startling me from my thoughts. I had honestly almost forgotten she was there.

“Fine. I will spare you… for now.” I ticked my finger in her direction, prompting a slight flinch away. “If you and your team decide to act as heroes, or at the very least, rogues, then I will continue to do so. If not…” I released Skitter from my hand and had her hover in the blonde’s face as a very, very explicit threat.

“Y-yeah, got it. Now can you get that thing out of my face?” she asked, backing away slowly. “By the way, my name is Lisa.”

“I don’t care. Now go.”

She went.

 

2.4

I had been terribly, terribly wrong. Even after I found out Coil’s power, I couldn’t stop him. Attacking two places at the same time wasn’t guaranteed to work, direct confrontation was not even viable, and stealth even less so.

The city burned with the weight of my failures as a massive beast of flesh and death screamed from the wreckage of Coil’s base and charged me. Before I could even react, I was already being dragged into one of its many maws as I saw a clone of myself appear, naked and murderous. Elizabeth was gone. Lisa was gone. Dad was gone. Everything I cared for was gone. With only one thing left to do…

I pressed the trigger.

~~~~~~

And woke up with a massive gasp in the middle of the night.

What was that?

Nothing had ever made me awaken like that before this week, not even my worst nightmares after my mother’s death. This could not stand. Coil was still out there, even after weeks of investigation, and sleep deprivation would only make finding him more difficult. I held my phone in my hands, not the one I used to keep in contact with Dad, but the one I used to keep in contact with the Undersiders. Elizabeth had moved in as their fifth member about a week ago, necessitating the destruction of all evidence that the previous safehouse had been used. Which, honestly, was mostly just a thorough cleaning and turning off the lights before locking up.

I had no memory of what could have set me off like that. I normally remembered my dreams as being either bland or vaguely pleasant, yet I could not remember a single detail of my dreams from before I woke up. My palm did not itch, I had not eaten terrible off brand cereal before bed, and I was nowhere near either car alarms nor fire.

So why? Why did I have such a strong reaction?

I couldn’t tell.

And that bothered me.

~~~~~~

“So you’re having bad dreams you can’t remember?” Lisa asked, stiff and professional without a hint of the snark she reserved for her teammates.

“Indeed. It is… bothersome. To the extreme.” I felt almost lethargic, I hadn’t been able to sleep again once I woke up and it was affecting me. The sun felt too bright, almost, and every step I took made me want to sit down and sleep. “It has happened multiple times within the last week, all of them in the middle of the night. The only common threads seem to be the sensation of falling, a flash of light, and pain- severe pain.”

“What kind of pain?” Elizabeth asked from the corner, standing up curiously, “Piercing in one area? Blunt trauma?”

“Burning. Burning that crawls up from my right hand and leaves everything it touches numb and feeling like it no longer exists. Burning that races up the veins and bursts from the inside out,” I shuddered, I had a sneaking suspicion of what that feeling was, but I didn’t want to say it out loud.

Elizabeth shuddered as well. “S-sounds like one of your bombs…”

Lisa hummed thoughtfully, “I’m pretty sure these aren’t just dreams. For one, the fact that it’s the feeling of one of your bombs going off- or so it seems, second of all because it’s happened multiple times and when powers are involved any kind of strange recurrence should be thought of as parahuman involvement- paranoid, I know, but in our line of work can you really disagree?”

I couldn’t. Not with how my life had been lately.

“Thought so. Therefore, what seems to be the only logical conclusion I can think of is… and I could be wrong, you’re manifesting some sort of new ability. That, or you’ve finally woke one up. Either way, new powers to go with your already frightening combo,” Lisa rolled her eyes and shrugged, “What does that make now? Five different classifications? More?”

I nodded, “Mover, Brute, Blaster, Striker, Master. This new one is unknown. From the impressions I have been receiving, it may be connected to some sort of precognitive ability.”

The three of us considered the options and went over various hypotheses for the next hours, culminating in a well deserved trip for ice cream for Elizabeth and I, with promises to bring back some for Lisa, who had burnt herself out overanalyzing once more.

~~~~~~

“Despite the presence of Coil still being a blight on the city,” I murmured to no one in particular, though Elizabeth was still listening intently, “I cannot help but feel as if Brockton Bay is perhaps more peaceful than it has been in what must be years…”

“Well, there is a startling lack of gang activity these days,” she smiled back knowingly. As I nodded, I gently entwined my fingers with hers.

“Yes, and I suppose that my recent… activities have intimidated the non-powered gang members into not committing crimes for fear of retribution.”

“Mhmm…”

Suddenly, I paused, something felt off. A feeling of deja vu. Taking the path I had intended suddenly seemed entirely too dangerous, as did the other path that led to the local Baskin Robbins. The path back to the loft was untenable as well, thus leading to…

“This way,” I hissed, all but dragging Elizabeth into a side alley. “Something’s wrong. Tag as many things as you can.”

She immediately complied. Good. I kept note of the things she tagged- a dumpster, several bags of trash, a loose brick, a rotting pallet, a carelessly unattended bicycle, a quarter in my pocket. Outside of the alley, I heard footsteps approach and enter, the sound of equipment clacking lightly as a van rolled up and blocked the alleyway from view of the street. Not good.

Still, nothing to be bothered about. Skitter was already out and about, hidden in the shadows.

All we needed to do was evade capture long enough to blend back into the crowd.

The alleyway ended.

Oh no.

---

 

2.5

Armed men -mercenaries, no doubt- approaching from the front, walls on both sides and behind. Between us and them, the debris and objects that Elizabeth had tagged. Behind them, a van marked with the logo of a fire escape safety inspection company.

There were drastically few options here that did not end in violence.

Fortunately, I am not averse to violence in the slightest.

“Elizabeth, barrier!” I hissed as I flicked the quarter out of my pocket and charged it. Elizabeth reacted admirably, immediately wrenching the dumpster from the wall and putting it between us and the men while also taking control of the quarter and hurling it into their midst.

While this happened, the men surged forward in tight formation, guns held at the ready even as- Skitter saw one of them, presumably the leader, blast the quarter out of the air with a single burst from what was clearly a Tinkertech laser rifle, corroborated by a matching hole boring into the wall near Elizabeth’s head.

“Shit!” Elizabeth swore, hunkering down and peeking under the wheels of the dumpster. “Queen, what do we do?”

I thought for a moment. The men were getting closer.

One of them separated from the group- different equipment, this one. Carrying what looked like a box.

I pressed my hand against the dumpster and felt it with my power.

I smiled for once.

“On my signal, launch the dumpster,” I murmured quietly so that the mercenaries on the other side wouldn’t be able to hear me.

“What signal?” she asked.

“You’ll know.”

With that, I placed both hands against the dumpster and pushed, forcing the charge to take shape in the dumpster. It took far too much, I had never filled anything that big before, and bringing it to the levels of my usual full charges left me drained, so much so that blood dripped from my nose and ears, my vision blurred and I could taste the color pink. As I toppled over, I felt more than saw the dumpster launch, then saw nothing but soft, warm darkness as my face fell into Elizabeth’s lap.

I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath, looking through Skitter’s eyes and-

Click.

Click.

Click click click click click click click click click click click click click.

And then darkness, true, infinite darkness.

~~~~~~

“Queen? Queen? Qu-Taylor?” Elizabeth gently shook Taylor’s limp body, trying and failing to wake her up. “Come on Taylor, wake up! This is a bad time to grow a sense of humor!”

Around her lay the wreckage of the alley- half disintegrated corpses, a charred wreck of a dumpster, puddles of blood everywhere, shattered Tinkertech, and a slightly scorched van.

“Oh no no no no no, please don’t tell me that killed you!” Elizabeth panicked, frantically checking Taylor’s vitals. Heartbeat- faint, but steady. Breathing- Oh no.

Frantic resuscitation ensued, Elizabeth putting every last bit of knowledge she had gained from Othala forcibly recruiting her as a nurse several times to use as she pumped Taylor’s chest and forced air into her lungs.

“Come on! Breathe already dammit!” she cried, pressing down as hard as she could to get Taylor’s superhumanly durable rib cage to flex properly. “Breathe!”

Slamming her lips against Taylor’s one last time for a final push of air, Elizabeth was finally rewarded when Taylor gasped and shot up, holding her chest tight before slumping deliriously against Elizabeth.

“D-did it…. Did it work…?” Taylor slurred drunkenly, eyes unfocused and movements weak out of exhaustion. “Are they gone…?”

“Y-yeah. They’re gone. You did it, Queen,” Elizabeth sighed in relief and stood, lifting Taylor and supporting her as she stumbled towards the van. “Come on, let’s get out of here before the Protectorate shows up.”

Taylor paused for a moment and deliberated. “Elizabeth?”

“Yeah, Queen?”

“Call me Taylor…”

“Oh, uh, okay, Taylor.”

“Elizabeth?”

“Wha-”

~~~~~~

I came to my senses sometime later, the faint taste of cherries on my lips. As it had turned out, there had been a few other explosions across town- one at the ice cream shop, another one in the middle of 8th Street, and for some reason, one that blew open a manhole somewhere in the middle of downtown. All of these had occurred at roughly the same time period while I was unconscious.

“Three days.”

“Yeah, apparently making a bomb like that and detonating it like thirty goddamn times is really bad for you if ‘Beth’s to be believed,” Lisa snarked, briefly walking away to retrieve my tea and her coffee from the barista. The two of us had decided to go out and get some fresh air, pretend to be normal for once.

“And what exactly have you told my father to explain my disappearance?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as I sipped my tea.

“Don’t worry, I told him you were staying with friends for a few days, especially what with the explosions going off.”

“.... Convenient timing, I suppose.”

“Isn’t it just?” Lisa grinned, far too smug.

I shook my head, “Regardless, Coil. We are no closer to finding out what his power is and we are regrettably also no closer to actually killing him.”

“Right… well, there is one thing…” Lisa frowned thoughtfully, “You know how I said that he seems to have some sort of probability manipulation? Always having a coin land heads up?”

“Yes? What about it?”

“... Wait, no that’s the dumbest thing I’d ever thought.” Lisa facepalmed and sank into her seat, brooding into her coffee.

At this point, I decided to take the plunge and do something I normally wouldn’t do- I asked what the idea was.

“Voluntarily let him capture you and as soon as he takes a quarter from your pocket, blow him up.”

“That would no doubt lead to my exceedingly messy death at the hands of all of his mercenaries,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s why it’s stupid.”

“Not quite… it’s worth… investigating further. He has come after me several ti-”

I clutched my head, feeling a sudden rush of deja vu. My vision blurred, motion sweeping across the edges of my peripherals and images raced through my mind never stopping never ceasing death death death ending in-

“-aylor! Taylor!” Lisa shook me from my reverie, making me realize that at some point I had fallen out of my chair and the other patrons of the Starbucks were all staring at me in various degrees of concern and/or interest.

“I… um.” I was at a loss for words.

“Let’s just… get you out of here, Tay,” Lisa hoisted me up, supporting me as we left. My legs gained strength along the way, such that I was able to walk on my own barely a block away.

“What the hell was that?” Lisa asked, rubbing her own temples in a sign that I recognized as a burgeoning Thinker headache. “When I looked at you while you were spazzing out, my power went haywire.”

“I know what happened,” I stated simply. “I know how to defeat Coil.”

 

Oh right, I almost forgot to post it here too...

2.6

“I know your whole plan is apparently ‘wait until fate happens and fucks Coil over thanks to bullshit time travel’, but what about, y’know, the fact that in several timelines we all apparently die?” Lisa asked.

I shook my head and allowed myself to grin, “The only thing that ever remains constant in the loops is the explosions I cause. Therefore…”

“Coil will die but we won’t?” Elizabeth spoke up as she entered, arms laden with Chinese takeout. It was easier than cooking for three, and it was convenient as Dad would not be coming home until late tonight.

“Exactly.”

Lisa shook her head and sighed, “Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Why is it that so far you’ve never had anything go wrong for you in the slightest?”

“I have, actually,” I grimaced, “becoming a known entity on PHO was never part of the plan, and as I was, this entire Coil debacle has happened. Plus, with the sudden lack of crime, there are far fewer opportunities to indulge my… urges.”

“Uh huh. That still doesn’t explain how the hell you seem to always get out of situations on top.”

“....”

I felt a sudden sinking dread. “That… is a good question. I would say careful planning, but that has nothing to do with it.”

Lisa shook her head, “Anyway, with Coil being well and thoroughly fucked now, all the rest of the gangs being more or less gone what with them all being murdered by you every time they go out… except the Merchants. How are the Merchants still around?”

“.... I had forgotten they existed,” I admitted. “The past few weeks have been a… diversion. Elizabeth, weren’t you supposed to go kill them?”

Elizabeth looked up from where she was spreading out the boxes of assorted takeout over the table and grinned sheepishly, “Ah heh… I um… I forgot.”

I palmed my face and sighed, “Right, things to get to later on. Later on being any time within the next month, that is. Coil still takes precedence, even though he will die soon enough.”

Lisa paused, “Wait, your… uh, I guess bullshit time travel. Does it have an off switch or are we going to be having intermittent explosions every now and then until the end of time?”

I blinked, then thought about it. The time loops were useful, yes, but seeing as they were triggered by my death to send me back to a random point in time, it seemed as if there wasn’t really an off switch so long as I was able to actually press the trigger. “I don’t think so, but as long as I don’t die anytime in the future, I shouldn’t have to activate the ability- which reminds me, seeing as I named Skitter, should I also name this new part of my ability past its current name of ‘last resort bomb’?”

“.... That was an awful way to change the subject.” Lisa deadpanned, “But no, I don’t really think it really needs a name. Your regular bombs don’t, so why would this one?”

Elizabeth nodded, cracking a pair of chopsticks in half as she sat down. We joined her, the three of us digging into our takeout with our regular levels of unenthused takeout-eating.

“I mean, the only reason why Skitter needs a name is cuz it’s an actual thing, right? Like a separate entity. Your weird timebomb thing is just you blowing yourself up and sending yourself back in time,” she said, mouth half full of fried rice.

I grimaced, “Don’t speak with your mouth full. It’s disgusting. But yes, you have a point.”

~~~~~~

Coil, meanwhile, was having a less than stellar day. For one, several of his men had exploded for no apparent reason along with several important holding areas. With how the explosions were patterned and with their effects, he had absolutely no doubt that it was that one girl whom Tattletale had failed to convince to join the Undersiders. With a frustrated sigh, he split the timelines.

In timeline A, he resumed working, salvaging operations as best as possible, rerouting funds and making orders for new equipment. Terribly boring, but ultimately necessary in the long run.

In timeline B, he decided to put off that work for later, and instead decided to call in Tattletale for some… stress relief.

In timeline A, things were running smoothly until he received several urgent messages about randomly exploding mercenaries, all of which culminated in a rather stressful headache and a prolonged bout of swearing under his breath.

In timeline B, Tattletale refused to pick up her phone, prompting him to send in a team of men to collect her. He knew where she was, after all, though the location she was at that moment was vaguely familiar for reasons he couldn’t exactly discern, what with the additional distraction of a flood of urgent emails about the exact same problem of exploding mercenaries.

In timeline A, Coil decided to sit back, finish his work, take two headache pills because of setbacks imparting enough stress to make his head pound, and then go home.

In timeline B, things were going considerably worse.

~~~~~~

I.

Was.

Furious.

“Lisa, Elizabeth?” I spoke lowly, not tearing my gaze from the black van slowly making its way towards our position, my house. Skitter tracked its occupants- six men, armed to the teeth, in the back, one driver, one passenger with a sidearm. Coil.

That he had the absolute nerve to try this. Even if I could understand his decision, what with me forcing Lisa to not answer her phone when he called, I still felt nothing but abject fury.

“Yes, Taylor?”

“Hide in the basement. We have… company.” I took a steadying breath. If Coil thought that he could send his men to my house…

I barely heard the footsteps as the two of them fled the kitchen, lost was I in my rage.

But I didn’t move. I didn’t do anything but stand there, in front of the door, peering through the peephole.

As the van pulled up and the men inside exited, I had Skitter sneak inside the van, watching, waiting.

The men drew closer, almost upon the front steps, and I reacted.

I.

Touched.

The.

Doorknob.

 

Blah blah new chapter blah blah actually pretty fast.

2.7

I felt more than heard the first explosion as the mercenary touching the doorknob exploded. Seizing the chance, I flung the door open and immediately tagged the second mercenary with a fingertip, detonating him as I spun around and slammed my fist through his partner in a spray of blood, then held the cooling body between me and the rest of the mercenaries as a temporary meat shield before kicking it off my arm and taking down a fourth while I immediately detonated Skitter inside the van whilst leaping at both five and six, slamming my hand into five’s face and detonating while I let my momentum carry six down to the ground hard enough to flatten the back of his skull in an instant.

Eight down in the span of thirty seconds, all of which was near silent. I was thankful for the waning daylight and quiet streets as I detonated the corpses and looked impassively down at the remaining mercenary, knocked unconscious by the body of his comrade earlier.

I dragged his- no, apparently this one was a girl- her body inside and called out, “Lisa, Elizabeth, there is a van outside that requires moving.” Then, heedless of whichever one of them was the one to move the van somewhere else, I dragged the unconscious mercenary into the basement and tied her to a chair I dragged down as well.

Obviously, I couldn’t drag this out too long since Dad would be home soon, but I’d do what I could and figure things out from ther-

~~~~~~

Coil frowned in Timeline A- of course, he had shut down Timeline B as soon as the team he’d sent to retrieve Tattletale all mysteriously died, therefore leaving Timeline A as the only one left. With a bit of careful poking around, a bit of checking in on hidden cameras and agents, and just a bit of old fashioned inquiry, he had an answer as to why Tattletale thought she could hide in some lower middle class house at the edge of the Docks area of the city.

That mad bomber who went around murdering capes and other criminals lived there. That was why the address seemed so familiar.

He took a steadying breath for a moment and split the timelines again.

In Timeline A, Coil continued working as if nothing ever happened, sending out a few orders here and there to make sure things kept running smoothly, and otherwise generally had a boring night of paperwork.

In Timeline B, Thomas Calvert called it an early night and drove home, keeping up with work at home but overall having a much slower time of things with the added distance.

In both timelines, Coil kept a line of thought dedicated to the girl- no, the monster in human skin because what else could she be but a monster- who had so thoroughly decimated a highly trained group of mercenaries. Plans within plans unfurled in his mind, plans to kill, contain, recruit, remove, or otherwise be rid of her.

He knew that her presence would only lead to unnecessary complications in his plans, and as such she could not be allowed to stay.

And that was when everything went to shit in both timelines.

~~~~~~

“Is that-?”

“Oh shit.”

I sighed. “This… is bad.”

The noise outside was at a level that filled even me with dread. I knew that sound. Everyone the world over knew that sound.

It was a sound that harbored no thought but primal fear, no other reaction but running and hiding. Nothing but sheer, unparalleled terror.

The Endbringer alarms.

A crack of thunder split the air as rain began pouring down. I knew immediately that Dad would be heading to the nearest shelter, leaving Elizabeth, Lisa, and I to do as we pleased.

I turned to the both of them, taking a shallow breath to brace myself. “Elizabeth, Lisa, what will you do?”

“I’ll go wherever you go!” Elizabeth stated, a look of determination coming to her eye that I couldn’t help but think was rather fetching on her.

“And you, Lisa?”

Lisa shrugged, “I’d… rather not do anything dangerous. I rather like living, as you might imagine.”

I nodded. “Find a way to the shelters. Given the rain… It is probably Leviathan. Elizabeth, you are coming with me.”

“Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked, unnecessarily as she and I both knew the answer.

“To kill Leviathan.”

Lisa choked, “Ki- kill Leviathan!? Are you nuts? How the fu- no of course you think you can kill it, why wouldn’t you? Oh my god…”

“Lisa, I told you to go. Be safe. I will not fault you for leaving.” I stated, all but pushing her jacket into her hands as Skitter retrieved an umbrella from the hall closet. “Elizabeth. Grab your uniform. We need to go. Now.”

“I- agh, fuck it, I’m coming with you two. I get the feeling that I don’t want to miss this,” Lisa grumbled and put on her jacket. I was not particularly surprised, but I was rather concerned.

“Are you sure, Lisa? Compared to either me or Elizabeth you are rather… squishy.” I raised an eyebrow when Lisa protested, but otherwise ignored her as I climbed the stairs for potentially the last time and retrieved the full costume Elizabeth had taken the spare time to make for me.

I had to admit, even for an amateur, Elizabeth knew how to design rather well- though when she had taken my measurements was a complete mystery. It was…. Honestly, I’d have rather not worn it, but it was the closest thing I had to a costume and I wasn’t about to freeze myself in the rain in subpar thrift store clothing that would probably tear as soon as I stepped outside.

“I have to wonder… why a cat?” I muttered as I dressed, thick, flexible leather sliding over my skin like a full body glove and adding a lovely creaking noise to my movements.

Descending, I brushed past Elizabeth and Lisa on my way out, voice only slightly muffled by the mask that covered my face in a catlike visage- which I would have words with Elizabeth about later if we both survived. “Come on. I suspect that there will be some sort of meeting. I don’t want to be late.”

I walked out into the rain.

 

Well, this came quickly.

Wonk.


3.1



The band on my left arm continued announcing names, downed or dead as I advanced towards Leviathan’s position, Elizabeth- or rather, Starkregen- having “ferried” me along with me atop a thrown piece of concrete to an approximate position near the reptilian beast. I was fairly confident that I could end Leviathan, but first I needed to get close enough. Skitter would be entirely useless- her explosions were heat based and Leviathan gave off little to none that was visible through her eyes.


The rain buffeted me as I rushed closer, pushing every last bit of my physiology to the fullest as I came within sight of Leviathan. I could barely see past my own mask, such was the density of the rain, yet I locked onto the beast with no trouble. My palms itched furiously and my heart raced, filling my ears with the pounding of blood. As I ran, my hands clenched into claws, with a distorted screech whining in my ears as I flexed my power and reached behind me, into the hidden pouches along the back of my skirt and pulled out a fistful of coins.


I didn’t head for Leviathan, but rather I ran past it, legs blurring from the speed as I circled around and around, flinging coins and detonating them immediately after, disintegrating everything in their radius as I slowly pockmarked its skin with pits of oozing ichor. I froze and skidded to a halt as it turned and faced me. At that moment, I felt fear.


My blood turned to ice, feet to lead, mind to mush as I tried and failed to think of any situation where this would not turn out horribly. I almost missed Leviathan’s tail swinging at me, whip-cracking through the sound barrier and just barely missing me as I threw myself into the six inch deep swamp of water flooding the streets, only to be buffeted into a wall by the accompanying water shadow. Something on my arm cracked almost as loudly as my head, and my vision swam as the water around me tinted red.


I saw Leviathan approach, dashing along with a speed I could barely hope to match along a collision course for… for- me! My mind snapped back into focus with a surge of adrenaline. I couldn’t dodge to the sides, and to my back was a wall. What could I do, what could I do?


Up!


I leapt, kicking off of the wall behind me as I surged up and over and-


Slammed straight into the open palm of Leviathan as it caught me and squeezed. The pressure burned, my lungs even more as its water shadow surrounded me and the pressure drove the air from my lungs. My body was tough, I knew, but it wouldn’t last long. Not at this rate.


Wait!


There! Embedded in one of the holes! The last charged quarter I threw!


I desperately pressed the button over and over to no avail, nothing was happening why was nothing happening air I needed air! I kicked and thrashed, not even moving an inch as my bones popped and cracked and- air! Falling, falling out of the beast’s grip as it was thrown away by a blur of green and I hit the ground with another crack, only this time, everything went black.


~~~~~~


As soon as my eyes opened in the triage tent, Panacea standing over me with a haggard look on her face, I sprung out of the cot I had been dumped on and rushed out, disregarding my half shattered mask, disregarding the rips and tears in my outfit, disregarding my own exhaustion as I unleashed Skitter and grabbed her as she flew past, carrying me off to where my (new) armband told me Leviathan was. Around me, capes fought and fell, got back up or ran. Far away, the bay wall was holding but not for long. The tidal waves slamming into it saw to that. I breathed, clearing my mind of the icy fear that gripped my soul and looked out with nothing but calm, intense focus.


I had a plan, but it would require precise timing.


As I let go of Skitter, I had her loop around, just barely skimming off of the attacks of various blasters as she built up her heat reservoir. I stood on a rooftop, watching Leviathan, waiting for the perfect moment. I picked up a broken chunk of concrete, flung around by the action below, and squeezed it, shattering it into a more aerodynamic form as I filled it with the most massive charge I could. I felt exhausted. My breathing came heavy, my shoulders felt like lead, and my eyes could barely see more than blurs and flashes of light. But that didn’t matter.


I could not fail.


I would not fail.


If I failed, Elizabeth would surely die. My father would die. The city would die.


I.


Would.


Not.


Fail.


“Now!” I cried to myself as I felt Skitter’s reservoir top out, her entire shell glowing white hot from the heat bleeding off. With a mental command, I engaged the thrusters in her back shell to full power, filling the sky with a streak of blue light as Skitter slammed straight through Leviathan’s water shadow, embedding an inch into its flesh and-


I covered my eyes, but the flash still blinded me. Even through the rain, the blast still deafened me. But I threw. I threw the chunk of concrete- I threw my bomb with deadly accuracy, taking advantage of the momentary hole blown into the water shadow to strike Leviathan with the bomb and detonate, transferring the charge to the beast and letting it cascade through with lethal power.


I opened my eyes and watched, watched as Leviathan rippled and flashed, flesh sloughing off and disintegrating into ash, washing off into the rain in layers upon layers upon layers. At a certain point, the charge’s progress became uneven, slipping deeper in some areas and causing Leviathan to bulge unnaturally, flesh bubbling and boiling away as it thrashed and flailed. The rain poured down like the fist of an angry god, but it was weaker. The sky was clearing. I heard my armband announce that the waves were no longer coming.


I saw the last of Leviathan vanish and Skitter fade back away into my left hand.


And only then did I let myself fall into that deep, dark blackness that called to me.

 

Man, fuck this chapter. It just didn't wanna write.



3.2


Quiet conversation stirred me from my rest. I kept my eyes closed, though, as I could not recognize any of the voices as either Lisa nor Elizabeth. I listened intently, drawing information as the three- no, four voices continued.


“Just because she killed Leviathan doesn’t excuse the fact that she’s potentially the cape we’ve been looking for this whole time.” The first voice was somewhat nasal, with a quiet authority behind it that spoke of far too much experience. A woman, by the sound of it.


“That’s just the thing, though. If she really is as murderous as we previously thought, why step in at all? Why not just skip town and let Leviathan destroy Brockton Bay?” The second voice was male, deep, and accompanied by a quiet whirring as he shifted around.


“We can’t bank on her having any sort of good will. You’ve seen the footage of her in action. She doesn’t seem to have any kind of mercy. Even if we can’t do anything to her because of the Truce, who’s to say that she’ll even adhere to it?” The third voice was another woman, with a voice that almost reminded me of the first, but with some quality I couldn’t quite place in it.


“Enough. She killed Leviathan, and she explicitly only targeted criminals from what we’ve seen of her. While her methods are disagreeable, I doubt that she’s truly as psychotic as the evidence seems to suggest. In fact, why don’t we ask her now? I know you’ve been listening in, Queen. Or should I say, Taylor Hebert.”


My eyes immediately snapped open as I jolted upright and backwards, driving myself back on the cot until my motion was halted by the tug of cuffs on my wrists. I looked around and gulped. Armsmaster, Miss Militia, some woman in a PRT uniform- the Director based in Brockton, perhaps- and Alexandria herself. My throat felt dry. I shuddered as my breathing grew harsh. I clenched my fist and gripped the chain of my right hand cuff between my fingers.


“I... I just want to be left alone,” I muttered, gently tugging at the chain, only to stop when I saw Alexandria frown.


“There’s more to it than that, I assume,” she stated, arms crossed and towering over me like an obsidian monolith. I absentmindedly wondered just why the cot was so low, then turned back to more pressing matters.


“How do you know my name, anyway?” I asked, very brazenly ignoring Alexandria’s question in favor of finding out just why the hell my identity seemed to find its way into everyone’s ears these days. At least I knew that there was no one else in the medical tent besides the five of us.


“Facial recognition,” Armsmaster spoke up from the side, “your mask shattered when you fell, and we were able to match your face to the photo ID of one Taylor Hebert, enrolled in Winslow High School.”


What?


I blinked and realized that, yes, I couldn’t feel that weight on my face nor pressure on my skull that denoted the presence of my mask. Elizabeth was going to be devastated. Belatedly, I looked down and realized that my costume was gone as well, which was a whole different set of implications that I didn’t even want to think about. Though, strangely enough, I could still feel some sort of fabric around my eyes- a temporary mask?


I sighed and grumbled, “So what happens now? You throw me into the Birdcage for murder?”


“As much as the law and I would love to,” the woman who was presumably the PRT Director spoke up, sounding immensely bitter about everything in general but quite a bit more was directed at me, “public opinion would more dictate that you go free with the promise to do that to all the other Endbringers as well.” She paused and stared- more of a glare, really- at me.


Alexandria stepped between her and I and spoke once more, “As it is, we’d much prefer you on the side of the angels.” Without a second’s worth of hesitation, she extended her hand towards me and continued.


“In exchange for a full pardon for all the murders you may have committed, we ask in return your agreement to participate in any future Endbringer battles and to stop committing murders.”


What.


I took a moment to process this statement, eyes tracking over what little I could see of anyone’s faces- except for the Director, her face was completely exposed as she was not a cape- and deciding that, maybe, just maybe this wasn’t an attempt to royally screw me over.


Maybe.


“Before I make a decision,” I began as I used what little free range of motion I had in the cuffs to wave at the empty rest of the tent, “I’d like to confirm that my friends are, at the very least, safe. You may know them as Tattletale and Starkregen?”


Alexandria nodded and motioned at Miss Militia, “Miss Militia, would you go find them?”


“Yes ma’am,” Miss Militia nodded and left.


In the ensuing silence that followed, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander. Seeing the slightly disheveled states of Alexandria and Armsmaster, my mind was thrown back to my childhood, when I’d owned a collectible metal Alexandria lunchbox and an Armsmaster logo t-shirt. Both items were long gone, of course, lost to time and forgetfulness, but the thought of them distracted me from the present and kept me from thinking of just what might lie outside of the tent.


I had killed Leviathan.


An Endbringer.


A small part of me wept- my dream of a quiet, normal life was gone forever. I would be forever known as the girl who killed something that was thought to be unkillable. The amount of attention I had drawn to myself- or rather, my cape identity, perhaps- was astronomical. If I ever wanted to escape the fame that came with what I had done, I would need to move, maybe even never use my abilities again.


I knew that was all but impossible with how my own powers themselves forced me into murderous sprees of activity every so often. And with the internet existing, sooner or later my presence would be found.


I needed to consult-


“Queen! You’re awake!”


“She did call for us, remember?”


“Shut up, I’m excited.”


“Yeah yeah, now what’s up, boss?”


-Lisa and Elizabeth. Right on time.

 

Haha here we go.



3.3


“I refuse.”


Ignoring the shocked expressions on all of the assembled heroes’ faces (and the Director, whose name I learned was Emily Piggot), I continued on.


“I will continue killing Endbringers. That much is guaranteed. But for the rest of it, as Lisa or Elizabeth would say, go fuck yourselves.”


Alexandria stared, face hardened and impassive and I took a moment to realize that I had told the strongest Brute outside of Behemoth to go fuck herself. Then I realized that I didn’t much care.


“Excuse me?” she asked, retracting her hand and clenching it into a fist at her side.


Lisa spoke up, “You heard her. You and your strong-arming bullshit can go take a hike. You’ve got no leverage here.” She grinned in that wonderfully infuriating way and leaned on my shoulder as Elizabeth took up a guarded stance beside me.


“Indeed. I just killed Leviathan. Do you honestly think that anyone would act against me for fear of me not showing up to kill the next Endbringer?” I stood up, crossing my arms to mirror Alexandria as I stared her in the face. “But I am willing to compromise. In return for you all leaving me alone on a daily basis, I will graciously continue to participate in Endbringer battles. Additionally, I am willing to provide my services against any and all capes with kill orders against them.”


“And all you want is to be left alone?” Armsmaster asked incredulously. From his tone, I recognized that he clearly thought that not taking the spotlight and receiving the accolades was a fool’s choice.


“You heard her,” Lisa grinned, “just leave her alone and you can kiss every S class threat and the Endbringers all goodbye.”


Alexandria stared at me for a good long moment, and for a second I almost believed that she would try to attack me right then and there, but instead all she did was nod and turn away. “Very well, Queen. Expect a phone call within the next month about your assistance. I’ll contact the president for a suitable reward for your actions today.”


Without any further ado, she left, leaving the rest of them- Armsmaster, Director Piggot, and Miss Militia, to awkwardly slink out with muttered platitudes.


“Honestly, the thing I’m most surprised about is that they didn’t even notice when you blew up your cuffs when Elizabeth hugged you,” Lisa admitted, finally letting go of my shoulder and flopping down on my cot.


“Get off of that. It’s my bed. Get your own,” I mock glared at Lisa until she snickered and stood up, allowing me to lay back down. “Thank you.”


“Taylor?” Elizabeth asked hesitantly.


“Yes, Elizabeth?”


“... What happened to your costume?”


….


I sat up and looked around- the tent didn’t have much in it, just my cot, a folding chair in the corner, and a little black plastic tub with a lid on top.


“... I assume that they took it off of me for medical treatment. I believe that it might be in the tub over there, though I wouldn’t know for sure. Speaking of which, Elizabeth, are you alright?” I stared at her, looking her over and checking in vain for any sign of injury beneath her flowing robes.


“No no, I’m alright. Panacea healed me… she didn’t look very happy about it, but she healed me,” she said. I fought down the brief, involuntary urge to track down Panacea and give her a few scars for the perceived insult. It wouldn’t do to demolish the goodwill generated by killing Leviathan with hurting Panacea.


“Good. And you, Lisa?”


“I’m fine, didn’t even get hurt. Just stayed in a command tent the whole time,” she smirked and stretched, “Worst I got was cold and wet.”


I raised an eyebrow- she certainly didn’t look either of those things, but then again, I had no real sense of how long I had been unconscious.


“Speaking of which, how long was I unconscious? With the tents, it can’t have been more than a few days,” I mused, staring through the crack between the tent flaps and seeing nothing outside but grimy grays and browns of flooded road, mud, and more tents.


“It’s only been a few hours,” Elizabeth spoke up from where she’d gathered a bundle of fabric and leather- my costume- from the tub in the corner. “Everyone’s still riding the high of Leviathan’s death, so you’ve been mostly forgotten if you want to take this time to try and go home.”


“I can’t imagine how anyone could forget me with what I did,” I muttered bitterly as I stood once more, ignoring for the second time the feeling of mud squishing through my toes as I crossed the distance between Elizabeth and I, gathered my costume into my own arms, and gave Elizabeth a grateful peck on the cheek.


“What?” I asked as I turned around and saw Lisa staring. “Is something on my face?”


A strangled gasp from behind had me turn around and see…


“Elizabeth, you’re blushing. Is me kissing you on the cheek really that embarrassing?”


“Elizabeth?”


“... Hello?”


I waved my hand in front of her face and received no response. Troubling. If the one girl I actually have feelings for (and if this is any indication, has feelings for me as well) is stunned into complete shutdown just from that, then there’s going to be quite a few problems.


“Come now, this is just pathetic, Elizabeth. Are you really going to pull the blushing schoolgirl act on someone half a year younger than you?” I snapped my fingers until she finally shook her head and looked away, hiding her face in her hands. “Honestly, Elizabeth. That was just sad.”


“S-shut up! Y-you’ve just never done anything like that before is all!” Elizabeth huffed and sat down on my cot instead of the perfectly serviceable chair right next to it. Is there something about that cot that’s more comfortable than an actual folding chair? It’s not even anything more than a thin layer of padding stretched over a metal frame.


“As interesting as this all is,” Lisa cut in, “are we really going to ignore the elephant in the room of the so called heroes breaking the unwritten rules?”


I raised an eyebrow, “What unwritten rules?”


Lisa blinked and then ran her hand down her face, “Right, I forgot that the only real interaction you’ve had with capes so far outside of me is that useless lesbian right there.”


“Hey!”


“It’s true and you know it. Now hush, I have education to deliver,” Lisa crossed her arms and blatantly ignored Elizabeth as she walked around the bed and over to me, “Now the first thing that you have to know is that the unwritten rules are pretty much just don’t kill, don’t unmask capes, don’t rape anyone. Obviously you’ve broken the first one very much, but then again no one gives a shit half the time so whatever. The second one is what can get the entire villain community to wage open war on the Protectorate if you use it right since they did unmask you under the Endbringer truce.”


“I hardly think it was much of an unmasking since my mask was shattered when I fell,” I spoke, then turned to Elizabeth as I began donning what was left of my costume, “I apologize for that, Elizabeth. You put so much work into it and I regret that the mask broke.”


“No no, it’s fine!” she protested, “I’ll just make you a new one!”


“Uh huh, yeah, whatever. Point is, you basically have the Protectorate and PRT by the balls,” Lisa continued, “and since you killed Leviathan, you can potentially leverage out public goodwill by a long way.”


“So I can,” I muttered, tearing off a strip of fabric from the thin sheet on the cot and wrapping it around to hide the lower half of my face. “Let’s go. I’d like to go home as fast as possible. Hopefully nothing will have been destroyed.”

 

Well, here we go.

Oh yeah, along with monsters, men, walls, and dead Coils, it also has a bit more Taylor x Elizabeth!

Hooray for shipping!



3.4


“Coil is dead,” I spontaneously spoke up. The van’s interior immediately silenced itself but for the sounds of the road.


“A-are you sure?” Lisa spoke up, not quite hiding the note of relief in her voice even as she kept her eyes forward like a responsible driver.


“Yes. None of my rewinds had ever shown a period past three weeks since that first point where the memories collapsed in on me, and it’s been four weeks since then,” I looked out the window- as was to be expected, there wasn’t really much to see on the road to Ellisburg.


Ellisburg.


Home to Nilbog, also known as Jamie Rinke. What monsters would I face inside that walled off city?


What monsters would I kill?


I was broken out of my reverie as Lisa halted the van some half a mile outside of the quarantine zone. As the dirt settled and the tac tac tac of the engine cooling became apparent, Lisa slid out of the driver’s seat and out of the van as Elizabeth finally woke up from her nap on my shoulder and pulled up the hood of her new outfit.


Where the hell she had managed to find the time and materials to pull together a black and pink cat themed robe and mask was beyond me, but what was even stranger was the fact that apparently the name Cheshire was untaken- the last one was a villain who’d died fighting Behemoth some three years ago, apparently.


Personally, I didn’t really get why she chose the name Cheshire, but considering that my new costume (assembled by Parian upon request) had more red than actual pink…


Wait.


Oh. She didn’t.


She fucking did call herself Cheshire to match my-ugh- Red Queen.


“Are we there yet?” she asked sleepily, and for a moment, I couldn’t help but want to kiss those rosy lips hidden behind the collar of her robe and never come up for air, but business came first.


“Unfortunately, yes,” I answered, lightly brushing a few strands of hair from where they’d falling over her eyes and handed her mask over. “We’re half a mile outside of the end of the quarantine zone. We’re to meet up with the heroes stationed there for backup.”


“Mmkay…” she yawned and took a sip of water from one of the many bottles strewn around the van interior, placed on her mask, and slid out of the driver side door while I affixed my own mask and slid out the passenger side.


“If you two lovebirds are done, wanna help me set up these stupid camera drones?” Lisa called from inside the back of the van, where she was indeed hard at work running through the boot up and synchronization processes of the myriad of camera drones that we had managed to convince Dragon to let us have.


I wish we could have left them all behind, but Lisa was adamant that securing my position as top dog in the food chain (ironic due to our team’s cat motif…) was far more important than fading into obscurity, which by this point was far, far impossible. Apparently killing Nilbog and clearing out the entirety of Ellisburg from its monsters was a step in making sure that I would be appropriately feared and respected, with, in her words, a heaping dose of admiration from the general public.


“One moment,” I called back after a moment’s hesitation. I took a brief moment to sigh at how ridiculous I felt in my outfit still, then aided Lisa in finishing up the boot process. All six drones came to life- baseball sized orbs with no real visible means of propulsion, but all of which were transmitting smoothly as they took to the air.


Preparations finished, the three of us began walking towards the quarantine zone.


Rather uncharacteristically, I had a good feeling about this.


~~~~~~


I regretted my earlier good feelings. So much.


“What do you mean you will not let us in without an escort?” I hissed, narrowing my eyes at the man- appropriately named “The Wall”- who was just so idiotically obstinate so as to try and disrupt a carefully planned out operation with a truly unnecessary amount of people.


“Look kid,” he grumbled, arms crossed over his massive chest, “rules are rules. No one goes in or out without someone we can trust keeping watch. You may have killed Leviathan with those freaky bombs of yours-”


“Your next line is, ‘but an army of monsters is different from one big one’, isn’t it?” Lisa spoke up from behind me, in her much more muted lavender and pink outfit (she’d taken on the name Persian as a reference to the shade of pink on her outfit of all things).


“-but an army of monsters is different from one big one- wait what?”


I sighed at Lisa’s immaturity and pushed past the massive man blocking our path with a well aimed application of surprise Skitter rushing past his face to throw him off balance. “Persian, stay here and run mission control, like we discussed. Cheshire, with me. We’re going goblin killing.”


As Lisa took a seat at a nearby table and popped open the laptop connected to the camera drones, Elizabeth pulled over a slab of rubble that hadn’t been moved in what must have been years and carried the two of us above the wall for aerial reconnaissance.


Oh. Oh dear.


“This looks bad,” I muttered almost unnecessarily as I took in the sight of what was more or less a twisted, warped version of some sort of disgusting fantasy realm populated with twisted creatures that somewhat evoked any number of odd designs.


“No kidding,” Elizabeth sat down on the rubble piece, scooting over enough so that I could do the same. Without any prompting, she pulled a bottle of lighter fluid from the folds of her robe and handed it over so that I could completely douse Skitter and light her on fire.


The warmth was a bit of a welcome from the chill that persisted even now, and as Skitter charged up, Lisa’s voice crackled through the communicators we had also managed to procure.


”Right, well, he’s most likely in that weird palace looking thing in the middle of the town. Be aware that there might be booby traps- scratch that, there’s probably most definitely booby traps. Oh yeah, try not to die. We got a lot riding on this, y’know?”


“Not helpful in the slightest,” I muttered, shifting my mask just enough so that I could pinch the bridge of my nose.


Silently, as Skitter reached full charge, I palmed a large washer from my belt pouch and gave it the biggest charge I could manage without unduly weakening myself, then handed it to Elizabeth.


“Persian, give us the countdown,” I ordered.


”Going live in three…


Two…


One!”


“Cheshire, shall we?”


“We shall, Queen.”


And the world became fire and dust.

 

Oh my god fucking FINALLY I worked up the motivation to actually write this holy shit.



3.5


Immediately, I could see problems- some of the creatures were fire resistant, fire proof, or actually replicated with fire.


Fortunately, that washer that Elizabeth was using to follow Skitter was disintegrating everything in its wake while the fires created by the initial explosions recharged Skitter over and over and allowed me to continue the destruction.


For a brief moment, I wondered if anyone would really care about the property damage. Then I realized that it was Ellisburg and solely populated by self replicating monsters. I swiftly stopped caring.


Elizabeth and I followed our procedure- she swept low and tagged some intact rubble for air support, then the two of us began sweeping around the town in an inward spiral. We left nothing but ash and scorch marks in our path, the fire growing and spreading rapidly only to be snuffed out in seconds by the wave of death emanating from my primary bomb.


In a way, it was almost poetic.


It took less than half an hour to reduce most of Ellisburg to ash and dust on the wind, and the amount of monstrous corpses that I had seen blown up was nicely suppressing my urge to kill.


The only thing left was the palace in the center and perhaps below it.


“Take us down, Cheshire,” I spoke, keeping my eyes scanning for movement. Not that I found any, but it was good to be cautious. I didn’t know if all of Nilbog’s monstrosities were dead yet even though I had a good feeling that they were.


“Yes ma’am.”


We descended into the loose ash that, just half an hour before, had been a monster infested city and looked around. Piles of dust and charred body parts lay strewn everywhere, choking the air with the smell of cooked flesh and bile. I wanted to gag from the sheer nausea inducing odor, but swallowed my rising discomfort.


“No sign of life, I murmured, tapping the side of my mask. An overlay popped down over my left lens, rendering the world in shades of pale green up to a vivid red. I would have preferred to not tie myself to Dragon like this, but Lisa had insisted and, since she had proven her intuitions to be more useful than not, I opted to trust her. The thermal vision was a bit redundant, but it let me do a local area scan while I commanded Skitter around for a more wide area observation.


Ah.


There.


“Cheshire, Persian, I’m reading heat signatures inside the… palace,” I spoke into the mic, hesitantly staring up at the ramshackle construction that evoked a poor man’s rendition of the palaces so prominently featured in fairy tales.


“Roger that, Queen. Any hostiles left outside?”


“None that I can read. Thermal vision isn’t picking anything up. Cheshire, do you see anything?”


“Nope. Motion detector’s completely quiet.”


“Good.”


“Alright then, feel free to light that fat bastard up and bring home the bacon, bosslady.”


“Don’t call me that,” I muttered irritably as I swept Skitter around and had her land on the shoddy palace’s front door. “Three, two, one. Breaching now.”


The door imploded in a cloud of fire, flying off of its rusty hinges and shattering into a million splinters that impaled the front line of the monsters just inside the door. They survivors turned as one, and my heart sank a little.


“.... This is substantially more heat signatures than I had thought. Perhaps they were just too clumped together to get a good read,” I sighed and cracked my knuckles. “Cheshire?”


“Gotcha, boss,” she grinned from beside me and flung the piece of rubble we had flown in on through the door, crushing the vast majority of the creatures before us as I raced in between those smart enough to dodge and tagged it where it fell, flipping away immediately after and detonating it, disintegrating all the corpses and near corpses beneath.


As I landed, I was beset upon by a truly horrendous amount of monsters, drawing the attention of every last one and, as was the plan, letting Cheshire in mostly unnoticed while I lashed out again and again, slapping aside roving claws and tendrils with near contemptuous ease. Fast though they may have been, I was still fast enough to keep track of their movements, and in periods where there was just a small hole in the attack pattern, I took that time to charge the appendages that I slapped aside and immediately detonated, slowly whittling away the crowd one disintegrating smoke cloud at a time.


The area around me rung with the constant screech of my explosions as charge after charge rippled through the grotesque figures of my assailants. I worked my way forward, slowly following along Cheshire’s trail even as the hordes of generic creatures slowly gave way to more specialized attack monsters that launched gouts of acid and fire at me.


These too I dodged, but the smoke clogged the air and the splashback of the acid burnt holes into my outfit that I found highly regrettable. Just the thought of all the work Elizabeth would have to put in to repair those holes… a quiet rage flooded my mind and the frequency of the explosions increased with my movement speed, death at my fingertips and ash at my feet.


On and on I ran, following Cheshire’s floating platform through the winding, ramshackle halls of this crappy, disgusting palace. Skitter continuously detonated behind me, balls of fire consuming the area and lighting portions of it ablaze before snuffing them out from the sheer force of the next explosion.


I knew as much as the Protectorate did about Nilbog, and the sheer number of monsters in these halls, combined with the previous population of this once living town made me swear an oath to myself.


Wherever he hid in this disgusting affront to architecture, however he tried to protect himself, no matter what he did, how he ran…


I swore to myself that James Rinke, Nilbog, was going to die today and there was no force on heaven or earth that would stop me from taking his putrid face and turning it into a pile of blasted, dessicated ash.

 

Double post after... bleh eight days after my last one. Should be fine, right? 'S been a little over two weeks since the last chapter, sorry. Yare yare, this time it really is all about that peaceful life.


3.6


“Jamie Rinke, also known as Nilbog, also soon to be known as blasted pile of ash,” I announced as I used Skitter to blast down the door to the makeshift throne room, “I am here to collect the Kill Order on your head. You have the right to beg for mercy.”


Silence, then uproarious laughter.


I stared at the putrid pile of flesh through both my eyes and Skitter’s, seeing the minute heat differences that revealed the nature of this false body for what it was. Cheshire followed in behind me, barricading the door with spare rubble. It wasn’t the only door- there were two more at the other side of the room, but it would prevent the monsters here from getting out.


“You think you can kill the Goblin King!?” the pile of flesh in the form of a hunchbacked think asked, a wide smile dividing its gout-ish face nearly in two. “Ha! Dohahahaha hohooo hahaha!”


The monsters there joined in with the laughter, a cacophony of screeching and screaming, and in the midst of it, some surprisingly human sounds. I supposed that he kept the prettiest and best for himself, as most shut ins with his kind of power most likely would.


Still, it would not do for any of these creatures to survive, and thus with a nod to Cheshire, I leapt into the air, propelled even faster with timely application of a push from a chunk of controlled rubble, and slammed bodily into the closest creature in my path. It fell, disintegrating on the way down, and I rushed through the gap it left into the next, and the next and the next.


Nilbog’s fake body realized that I was crushing through its protective crowd and stood, wobbling away on unsteady legs, but I was there and I was already too fast for it in the first place.


“Skitter, burn!” I commanded, slapping down my hand atop the hunchback of Nilbog’s fake body and planting Skitter there, then flipped away as the explosion consumed the putrid, almost Jabba the Hutt shaped mass of flesh.


The room quickly devolved into stunned silence, punctuated only by the crackle of flames. And then, finally, choked screaming as the burning figure of a bloated, smaller, yet still hunchbacked man scrambled out of the flames and collapsed at my feet.


“Pathetic,” I sneered as I knelt down and disintegrated the near corpse. The creatures around began scrambling towards me, vicious and enraged at the loss of their king, but were quickly crushed under a tide of bloodstained rubble.


“We’re done here, Persian,” I spoke calmly as Skitter buzzed around and disintegrated the twitching corpses. “Cheshire, shall we?”


“Yes ma’am!”


~~~~~~


“Funny how it took us a few hours to do what the entire US government failed to do for years,” I murmured idly as I stared out the window. Lisa shrugged and kept her eyes on the road.


“PR and fear of what would happen if the monsters were bomb proof, probably,” she responded.


“Hm.”


The radio quietly blurred out whatever other conversation we might have had with a smooth jazz song, filling the van with a peaceful air.



The funds from Nilbog’s death were already transferred to the family account once we reported it to Dragon, and the cameras had already uploaded the footage to PHO after a bit of careful editing to make it look as heroic as possible.


I breathed deeply and shifted carefully- Elizabeth was napping against my side and I didn’t want to wake her. Moving carefully, I moved her over so that instead of leaning on my shoulder, she was more supported in my arms. This, of course, meant that the top of her head was right below my nose. I took a small sniff- strawberry. Of course.


She knew I loved strawberries, so of course she’d choose the specific brand of shampoo that smelled like strawberries. If it wasn’t so endearing I think I would have rolled my eyes. As it was, I took solace in Elizabeth’s warmth. Her robe was thick and in the way, but the day’s exertion had bled the heat through our outfits and with the van’s heater on to combat the chill that the late afternoon brought, having Elizabeth resting on me was a pleasant experience in and of itself.


I wrapped my arms around her waist, drawing her close as I unbuckled her seatbelt and pulled her into my lap. It, perhaps, wasn’t the safest way to be sitting in a car, but she was my girlfriend (And wasn’t that a strange phrase I never thought I could imagine?) and I wanted to hold her.


Lisa looked over for a brief moment and smiled oddly, then turned away. I couldn’t really imagine what she was thinking at the moment, but I knew that the weight and warmth of Elizabeth in my lap was lulling me into a quiet state of drowsiness. Shifting slightly once more, I undid my seat buckle and wound the belt around Elizabeth, effectively keeping us both together and more or less safe for the moment. In the distance, thunder rumbled and a light cloud cover obscured the first stars of evening.


For all the action that had gone on less than a half hour ago, it seemed almost criminally peaceful. But, as much as I felt like it would, nothing happened. The skies opened and a light drizzle came down, darkening the world into a sleepy, misty haze as flecks and drops of water clouded the windshield.


Lisa activated the wipers and turned on the headlights, not that there were any other vehicles on this lonesome road of ours. The repeating whirrs of the wipers added to the quiet ambiance, and the radio’s smooth jazz left me feeling lethargic. Silently, I brushed away some of the hair covering Elizabeth’s face and planted a chaste kiss atop her head. I almost wished I could do more, but that would necessitate a change in position and waking her up, so I refrained.


Gentle snoring filled the cabin as Elizabeth shifted into a deeper sleep and my eyelids began drooping from the sound. The combination of the rain, the repetitive wipers, the warmth and weight of Elizabeth, the sound of her breathing, her scent, and the jazz currently winding through the lowest part of my mind dragged me from the waking world. I was no match at all, and I went gladly, drifting off with the one person I loved romantically in my arms.


Perhaps, indeed, this was all the peaceful life I needed?

 

This kind of marks a bit of a turning point in the story. Yes, the fights are still going to be there, but the focus is going to shift slightly to show more of that quiet life that Taylor so desperately wants.

I think it's a welcome shift, yeah?


4.1


“You know, Taylor, when you said you’d be super rich and famous when you grew up as a kid, I didn’t really think this would happen,” Dad muttered as he stared at our latest bank statement. “I just kind of wish that all this money didn’t come from, you know, murder.”


I sighed and rolled my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose, “Sorry dad, but, well… I mean, if it’s any consolation, at least it was mostly just people that really really deserved it?”


He deadpanned at me and I fought the urge to cringe and blush like a child.


“You literally murdered not only the capes of every gang, but also the unpowered members.”


“Y-yeah, but… t-that is… um… I didn’t kill… all of them…?” I lost the battle and blushed, dropping my face into my hands.


“Taylor, you’re my daughter and I love you but why in the name of all things good and not related to politicians did you murder all of those people? They had lives and families and I’m willing to bet that most of them were only there because they were either forced or needed the money.”


I groaned and leaned back. I didn’t regret killing them in the slightest, not even now, but my father had a peculiar way of making me feel absurdly awkward and guilty for things that I had completely convinced myself were justified and fine at the time.


“I knoooowww, dad… I’m not gonna kill anyone now except the Endbringers and the people who actually super really deserve it,” I whined pathetically, wishing to high heavens above that something or someone would come save me from this torment.


Unfortunately, if God exists, he’s a dick and won’t even save a teenage psychopathic serial killing (partially) world saving cape from a scolding from her father.


I’m going to blow him up for this insult. Maybe.


If he’s real.


Which I doubt.


“Uh huh,” Dad remarks with an idle sarcasm that hits ten times harder than even falling off a building and nearly drowning in a puddle (Whoever had the guts to tell that to Lisa is getting their crotch punched. With a brick) before going back to reading through the bank statements.


I sighed and groaned again, standing up from the kitchen table as I pulled on my costume’s mask. “I’m going to go down to the base, Dad.”


“Stay safe and be careful,” he responded, “and no murdering.”


“I know, dad! We’ve had this talk before,” I call back and leave, muttering irritably to myself the whole way to the Undersiders’ former loft, now commandeered for my own use.


~~~~~~


“So now what do we do?” Lisa asked idly as she leaned back in her chair. Behind her, Alec was playing some shooter or another and apparently failing quite badly to find and kill the quote unquote ‘fucking camper’ that kept killing him. Brian was out for the day, still deep in the throes of a custody battle for his… sister?


Yes.


Sister. Aisha. The girl. The one who was altogether entirely forgettable. That one.


Rachel, on the other hand, was simply out for a walk with her dogs.


I didn’t like Rachel all that much. Probably because I wasn’t a dog person. Maybe it was because I found out that she tried to maul Elizabeth when they first met.


Either or.


Back in reality, I tapped my pencil against the kitchen table and considered the geometry swimming before me. While technically I didn’t actually need to even do schooling anymore due to my status, I still went to Arcadia occasionally to consider topics of study.


Currently, I was thinking of getting a GED. Elizabeth was… considering one as well, since she never finished high school.


Beside me, Elizabeth pouted as she struggled through history.


“Perhaps a break,” I spoke, more focused on math than what Lisa was really saying.


She nodded, “Yeah, we could probably afford that, what with how fucking rich you- and by extension, us- are.”


I raised an eyebrow at her, “How exactly are you rich when most of the money is mine?”


She quailed and waved her hands in surrender, “Ah, no I mean, as your team, right? I mean, I managed to snag a good chunk of Coil’s assets too, so not all of it is your reward money.”


I considered that.


“Fair. Speaking of money, why is it that, even though I only should have received some thirty million dollars for Nilbog, I have almost a hundred times more than that in my family’s account?” I raised an eyebrow at Lisa, expecting her to know since I, honestly, did not.


She instead looked at me like I was an idiot before answering with an eyeroll and a flippant, “Personalized ‘donations’, duh. You did kill Leviathan. Hell, I bet a good chunk of that is from people celebrating over you avenging some place that Leviathan hit or something.”


I frowned thoughtfully- I really should have expected something like this, but at the moment, the only thing I actually considered that I would receive for Leviathan’s death was the sheer political and social weight that my actions would grant me.


“I see,” I finally muttered before turning away to help Elizabeth. Poor girl was fine with everything but history.


~~~~~~


With just barely less than three billion dollars and growing in the family account and some several hundred million more in Lisa’s own account, I finally had a surplus of spending money for once in my life. And with the business currently flowing into Brockton Bay due to it being the site of Leviathan’s death, there was a surplus of things to buy.


Currently, I was hauling a large cart full of building supplies and products behind me as I made my way through the busy downtown streets. The house, while far from the waves and flooding, had still taken quite a bit of water damage from Leviathan, and was still even worse off from age and neglect.


My current thought project outside of earning a GED was to fix said house and modernize it a bit. No more clunky home computer from the early 90s. No more dial up connection. No more sputtering printer prone to jamming.


No more half rotten front step.


Elizabeth was beside me with her own shopping- a few bags of clothing that I had bought under her insistence that I perhaps dress a bit better than my preferred comfortable style of old, broken in bagginess and sneakers. She hummed a quiet tune as she strolled along, swaying her hips just enough to be noticeable.


I had commandeered the former Undersiders and forced them to help me with this project, but unfortunately I had neglected to remember to tell them to help me in supply acquisition. An unfortunate oversight that I would have to rectify in the future.


As we passed from downtown to docks, the streets quieted down and emptied slowly, leaving the two of us to navigate through half flooded streets and still clearing wreckage. In the weeks following Leviathan’s demise, most of it had been removed, but the very fringes of the damage still surrounded the docks like a briny barrier. It made for an irksome journey compounded by the fact that the nearest Home Depot was about half a mile past said barrier into downtown, three miles from my house. With no car, it was an awfully tedious walk only mitigated by the lovely presence of my sundress clad beautiful girlfriend.


For all that I was throwing myself into potential death every few weeks when I went to kill S-class threats, it was these times when I truly felt alive.


When life was quiet and calm, when I had peace and time to pursue normal things.


When I had time to just be together with Elizabeth.

 

Heeyyy, it's been a while, ain't it? Boy isn't college just a bitch.

Here, a gift from me to you.

A gift called:

4.2


There are certain things, I mused, which would never surprise me. Criminals being criminals, my girlfriend being the light of my life, Lisa being insufferably smug and her legs always being tantalizingly slender and pretty (though sadly off limits), and heroes being incredibly flighty and nervous around the villain who was essentially given carte blanche to murder the fuck out of every single S-class threat nearby without any hesitation.


Honestly, that last point was only there to segue into a more important issue.


Namely that the Slaughterhouse Nine had decided to visit my city. Destroy my windows.


Nearly slice my girlfriend’s throat with glass.


Naturally, Shatterbird died first.


It was simple really. Use my enhanced senses through Skitter’s form to rapidly track down and eliminate the very brightly dressed woman via concentrated mass of angry beetle tank to and through the back of her skull, pulping through and detonating with enough force to vaporize her entirely and turn her outfit into a rather lovely cooling puddle of colored glass on the ground.


After making sure that Elizabeth was safe, I felt my temper flare when I realized that, though she had avoided fatal wounds, she had taken a few slices that would require medical attention. Also, she had bumped her head when I tackled her right before everything with silica in it exploded, knocking her out.


I left her with Lisa and the rest of the former Undersiders (now known online as “The Queen’s Pawns”, “The Pussy Patrol (and one dog)”, or simply “Them”), safe in the knowledge that they could most likely keep her more or less safe, if not by fighting then by running away.


As much as I hated to say it my not-minions were rather good at eluding people when they wanted to be.


I shook the thought from my mind as I slipped on my mask and stalked outside, forgoing my usual costume in favor of just my regular clothing.


There was no time to waste when turning the Slaughterhouse Nine into the Slaughtered Nine.


…


I had to think of something catchier than that first.


~~~~~~


Deadhouse Nine?


No.


Slaughterhouse Gone?


Closer.


Ah.


Slaughterhouse None.


Perfect.


I came up with a suitably catchy one liner in deference to Elizabeth’s predilection towards them (despite how she only whispered them to avoid being heard), and continued my hunt.


It had taken hours to progress this far, throwing out name after name as I stalked the city, using low level, barely there explosions from Skitter to cauterize the wounds of the living and to cremate the bodies of the dead. Mannequin had attacked me earlier.


I swiftly taught him the error of his assumptions that he would be able to detach his silly chain arms before my disintegration charge could reach his main body.


Really, what was he thinking, coming after me when my power all but completely countered his nigh impenetrable shell of white ceramic.


It certainly didn’t help him in the end.


But at least I got a nice, if morbid trophy out of it, same with Shatterbird, in part.


Both times, it was their headpieces- literally Mannequin’s hollowed out ceramic head blown off of its neck, and Shatterbird’s glass-like helmet, also blown off her head (and heavily damaged) when I directed Skitter to tunnel into her skull and explode her body.


Granted, the new trophies were cumbersome, but Shatterbird’s helmet fit surprisingly well on my head even if I left it tilted at an odd angle so that my vision wouldn’t be obscured, and the hollowed ceramic of Mannequin’s former head still had enough wires in it to form a serviceable strap.


It came as absolutely no surprise when Crawler came barreling down the street, and all I really needed to do to end him was step aside and tag one of his many monstrous legs.


I also had to walk over and pick up the sole claw I left intact, but I just shoved it in my Mannequin basket-skull thing and carried it as such.


That was when my luck took a turn for the worse.


I suppose it had to, given that it was the Slaughterhouse Nine.


It was, of course, none other than the Siberian herself.


“Oh shit,” I muttered to myself as I turned tail and ran, just barely capable of outpacing the woman behind me. I looked around the area while I dodged her blows, taking scrapes and nicks through my clothing that cut through my flesh with zero resistance and made me stumble. There! Over by one of the buildings that Crawler smashed through!


A white van.


Cover.


Behind me, the Siberian vanished and appeared- dodge! I slid to the left, just barely avoiding the Siberian’s claws as I blasted Skitter ahead of me and used it to blow open a hole in the van door and-


The Siberian winked out of existence.


What?


Inside the van, I saw… a man.


A kind of filthy looking old-ish man with still red hot shrapnel embedded in his eyes and throat.


Oops.


I… supposed that meant that the Siberian was a projection? The timing was almost too coincidental for it not to be, but just in case it was a trick, I destroyed the man’s corpse save for the head and moved on, re-collecting my trophies as I searched out the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine, now… five? I believe?


No- I remembered reading a small blurb in a newspaper a week ago, the Slaughterhouse was currently at eight, now down to four.


How convenient.


“Queen!” I heard a voice call out from behind me. A man approached on a motorcycle, armored and sleek.


“Armsmaster,” I responded coolly. “Don’t you have more pressing matters to attend to than bothering me while I hunt down the rest of the Nine?”


“Rest? What do you- Oh.” Armsmaster stared uncomfortably down at my bucket of trophies. “I see you’ve managed to take out Mannequin, Crawler, and Shatterbird. Be careful though, the Siberian was last seen heading this way.”


“I know. I believe I killed her as well,” I responded, “though I am not entirely sure.”


“How so?”


“There was a van. I was going to use it as a momentary cover but there was already an occupant when I imploded the door. The occupant died and immediately the Siberian disappeared.”


“So the Siberian was most likely a projection. Do you still have the body?” he asked, starting to look slightly green from what little I could see of his face.


I shook my head, “I destroyed the body except for the head. I left it inside the van over there.”


As I pointed at the van, I began walking away, calling over my shoulder, “Get back to worrying about the people. By the end of today, the Slaughterhouse Nine will be dead.”


~~~~~~


As it had turned out, I was wrong. By the time I had finally managed to corner Jack Slash and kill him, it was actually about three in the morning. I didn’t know how he managed to keep evading both me and Skitter, but eventually I had managed to tag him with a lucky shot to one of his legs and he died with a strange sort of dignity that only the truly monstrous could have- a complete lack of fear as he died, along with the knowledge that he’d truly been beaten this time.


Burnscar was actually rather easy to draw out, given that she tried to immolate me as she jumped out of the flames of one of Skitter’s explosions while I tried to off Jack, but as she leapt for me I merely grabbed her face and tossed her away, leaving her to explode like all the others.


Bonesaw was tricky, but died about an hour after I managed to kill Jack. Well, I say died, but perhaps it was more along the lines of “forcefully decapitated while still somehow remaining alive”. I didn’t particularly want to know how it worked, but the gist of it was that she was more or less safe as I had used several metal skewers and used my transferring charges to detonate everything dangerous packed away in her skull, and she was now pending rehabilitation in the Undersiders base.


I had dumped her in a bucket and left her unable to escape given that I had detonated her apparently prehensile spinal cord.


And then came the eighth and by far the most troublesome of them all. Which really just meant that she was hard to find. As a Master, I decided not to get close, but instead remotely piloted Skitter until I found her and put a hole in the back of her head, then immolated her entire body just to make sure.


By the time Skitter had killed Cherish (or at least, that’s what Alec had called her), it was five in the morning and all I wanted to do was sleep.


And so I did, cuddling Elizabeth in my arms while Bonesaw (or Riley as she also answered to) hung in an elaborate bucket trap downstairs, where Lisa had rigged it so that any attempt to escape said bucket would result in it filling with motor oil and then being lit on fire.


Needless to say, it was a quiet night, even with the breeze rustling the plastic bags we had to tape all over the broken windows.

 

4.2

“What!? No! No no never no no!” I emphatically stated.

“I will not be making a speech and they can’t make me!”

Lisa groaned and pinched her forehead, “Taylor, look, as much as you hate the public eye, you literally went out in broad daylight and completely destroyed the Slaughterhouse Nine in less than a day. That draws attention, especially since you were seen by multiple people while you were stomping around.”

I sighed and sat down carefully. While Elizabeth had made remarkable progress in sweeping up the mess of glass, she hadn’t gotten everything and likely we would all be picking glass out of the loft for weeks.

“But I hate making speeches…” I murmured petulantly. I really did, always had, always will. Just the thought of being on a stage, all eyes on me… it made me shudder in a way that was far too disturbing for comfort.

“Too bad, Queenie, you gotta otherwise people are gonna be pounding down your door for questions. And you know that the media hounds will totally do it anyway… and also you’d probably ruin some of the good will you’ve gained by murdering reporters no matter how much they deserve it.”

“... The answer is no, will always be no, has always been no, and no matter how hard you try, you won’t get me on any kind of stage for any kind of speech!” I protested vehemently. It wasn’t like I would have to avoid her and her attempts long. The event that the PRT and Protectorate wanted me to speak at was only a few days away and if I just managed to hold on long enough, I’d definitely be able to avoid even going.

Though maybe I actually would stand in the crowd. I might as well take Elizabeth somewhere nice for once, right? And with the entire city’s windows destroyed, the event was going to take place on the Rig, which meant that yes, it would definitely be a nice venue.

“By the way, Beth is also dead set on getting you on the stage. She even recruited/kidnapped Parian to commission a suitable dress for you.”

…

Goddammit all to hell.

~~~~~~

“I just want you to know that I hate you for this,” I muttered hatefully as I adjusted my dress. As much as I hated the event and all it stood for, I had to admit that Parian did an amazing job. It matched my mask perfectly in color and design, a given since it was based on my costume. Still, it wasn’t my style, though I supposed that I could wear it for special occasions- maybe I could get a modified version for a we- no, it’s far too early to be thinking of that, Taylor, get your head together.

Next to me, Elizabeth and Lisa hid their snickers behind their masks, shoulders shaking ever so slightly. I watched the crowd out of some boredom, mostly the rich and important making up the masses. I spotted Dad near the front, slightly out of place in his ill-fitting suit, but seeing him there filled me with a bit of quiet resolve.

As the assorted Protectorate and PRT members finished their speeches, I took my cue and rose to the podium, taking a deep breath to steady myself as I began.

“Good evening everyone, though I suppose it could be better.”

A few strained chuckles from the crowd. Not a bad start, probably.

“I won’t pretend that what I did a few days ago was out of some heroic inclination or anything, though I suppose some of you might disagree on that. I didn’t kill the Slaughterhouse Nine to make the world a better place, to avenge the people who all died from their rampages, or even to protect the city,” I shook my head for emphasis and continued.

“No, I killed them for a bit of a selfish reason, actually. When I first realized that the Nine were here, it was right when all the windows of my lair exploded. I was fine enough, and so were all of my teammates. But personally, I was insulted. How dare these psychotic hobos come into my town and almost kill the people I cared about?”

My voice trembled with restrained fury as I remembered, my fists putting hairline fractures into the wood of the podium.

“But I digress. While I ended the Slaughterhouse Nine almost solely to protect me and mine, I won’t deny that with them gone the world is a better place. And honestly, while I didn’t really want to come here tonight at first, I am honored to be here nonetheless. Thank you, people of Brockton Bay, for having me here tonight.”

I stepped back, let the light applause wash over me, collected the ceremonial check for the Slaughterhouse’s combined bounty, and sat back down, already bored to tears.

“That was awful,” Elizabeth murmured beside me. “Like, really, really awful.”

I resolved to never take Elizabeth to these kinds of events ever again.
~~~~~~

“Riley.”

“Yeeeesss~?” Bonesaw’s head chirped from her bucket.

“If I promise to get Panacea to build you a new body, do you promise to behave and not act as you did before?”

She looked thoughtful. Personally, I figured that she would accept given what Lisa had told me about her mental state- some sort of obsessive need to be a “good girl” warped by Jack Slash’s words, as I recall.

If all went well, rehabilitation would most likely not be out of the question.

“Okay~!” she smiled widely and her neck stump wiggled.

“Good. When you get your new body, Lisa will lay down the rules for you. I won’t expect you to break any of them, but if you do then I will disintegrate you. Understand?” I raised a hand for emphasis, lightly twitching my fingers to get the point across.

“Yes!” she responded immediately, a bit of fear in her eyes. Good, she still had a fear of death.

Part of me wondered if this was at all a moral thing to do to what was by all counts an eleven year old girl, but then I remembered that said girl was also a nationally wanted serial killer the likes of which had never been seen before and that part of my mind swiftly retracted its arguments.

Now…

How to get Panacea to the lair, convince her to build a body, and make her keep quiet about all of this…?

 

Ehhhhh.... you'd think with the free time that I have with summer vacation I'd write faster but nooooooo... all I want to do is sleep, eat, and veg out.

Oh, and I guess go to my intern job every other day but whatever.

Here ya go.



4.4


“You want me to what.”


“I want you to follow me to my lair and create a new body for a child named Riley so I can rehabilitate her behavior into more or less that of a hero.”


“I specifically heard you say Bonesaw the first time around.”


“Yes, well Riley is her real name and the fact remains that she is indeed a child in need of a new body. And rehabilitation.”


She looked distinctly unamused. Granted, the both of us were nigh mirrors of each other in pose and expression- hips cocked, frowning, arms crossed, standing there in, coincidentally enough, Queen T-shirts.


I couldn’t fault her for good taste.


Still, this was going nowhere fast. I had to do something.


“I am prepared to offer you quite a large sum of money for this job.” Money always worked, right? At least, it had so far.


She just quirked an eyebrow.


“I don’t do healing for money, and no amount you offer will make me give Bonesaw a new body.”


“If you do not do it, I am fully prepared to go to Boston and get Blasto to do it for me.”


“... Fine then. Let a villain do a villainous thing.”


That did not go as expected.


Plan B it is.


“Very well. Aisha?”


“Wait wha-” she went down almost immediately, spasming slightly from the force of the stun gun that Aisha used, but otherwise fine. Probably. Without another word, I picked her up and settled her into the passenger seat of the van I had “borrowed” for this trip- I suspected that Rachel would not quite be very happy that I took one of her moving vans without permission- and drove back to the lair.


I wasn’t happy about having to kidnap her, but perhaps Lisa would procure better results.


~~~~~~


“Lisa. Get her to agree to building a body for Riley. Try not to break her.” I called out as I entered and dumped Panacea’s still unconscious body on the couch. Thankfully, the glass had been cleared out of the apartment entirely in the time I was gone, and we had suitable replacement windows in the form of saran wrap taped over the windows.


Lisa grumbled from where she sat at the kitchen table and fumbled her laptop closed. “Really, Tay? Really? I gave you a speech and you resort to tasing and kidnapping her?”


“I am not nearly smug enough to repeat what you wrote down in an appropriately satisfactory manner,” I replied smoothly as I slipped past her and gave Elizabeth a peck on the cheek. She giggled and returned the favor, and I smiled.


As much as life kept throwing strange curves at me, I felt rather content. Though thinking back on it, perhaps I would have had a simpler life if I had just chosen to take the bullying as it was rather than striking back.


Oh well.


That opportunity is well and gone, and I am far more satisfied with how I am now. Highly public at the moment, yes, but also rich, influential, and with a wonderful girlfriend and a skilled group of acquaintances to aid me in tasks that may require more than my already formidable powers.


I listened in for a moment on what Lisa was doing with Panacea and blinked. I hadn’t known about Panacea’s attraction to her older sister. Though granted, I also hadn’t known about her being the biological child of Marquis, which had also been revealed during the course of their conversation.


Yikes.


I shook my head and went back to showering affection on my lovely girlfriend and waited for Lisa to finish being a smug bitch to Panacea.


Any moment now.


After a few minutes, I gave Elizabeth a final kiss on the forehead and let her go back to reading her book. Something felt off.


As I exited the kitchen and entered the living room, I knew exactly why.


“Lisa, did I not tell you specifically to not break her?” I asked irritably, crossing my arms. If she had actually gone and torn Panacea down, I might actually have to go to Blasto. And wouldn’t that be terrible.


“Hey! Have a little faith in me!” Lisa said indignantly as she patted Panacea on the back. “I wasn’t breaking her, I was giving her some much needed therapy.”


“Uh huh.”


“I was!”


“No no, she did…” Panacea spoke up, wiping her tears off. “I just… I just needed to get some emotion out.”


“See?”


I did indeed see.


“So… about that proposition, then?” I asked. “I did promise Riley a new body, and I’d rather not leave her in that bucket long enough that she finds some way to escape and wreak havoc.


“Yeah… about that, boss?” Lisa winced and pointed behind me.


“...”


I turned slowly and…


There she was. On the ground.


A gleefully bouncing head covered in motor oil and with raw nerves literally pouring out of the stump of her neck to serve as tentacles.


“.... Fucking Tinkers,” I muttered as I glared down at Riley. “I suppose that given the fact that you came upstairs instead of escaping into the sewers, you actually intend to honor your promise?”


“Yup!” Riley all but sang, curls shifting in time with her tentacles as she crawled towards a now far more horrified and disgusted Panacea. “Hi there! I’m Riley! But most people call me Bonesaw! Will you be my big sister?”


Panacea stopped and stared, first at me, then at her. I shrugged, not having expected this either.


“She was planning on picking you as her recruit before her body got exploded and the rest of the Nine got slaughtered,” Lisa called out from where she was hiding behind one of the armchairs.


“....”


That explained it quite well, actually.


“Look, I’m just here to build you a new body. I don’t think I really need more sisters at the moment,” Panacea finally responded, speaking somewhat slowly to seem less confrontational.


“Awww!” Riley pouted and wiggled her nerve tentacles. “Oh well, can’t win them all. So about my new body- I had a few ideas that would really make things better!”


“No.” I cut in, picking Riley up by the hair. “You get a standard human body and you will not modify it unless given explicit approval for each specific modification that you intend to make.”


“Fiiiiinnneee….”


“Panacea, if you would?” I gestured to the bathroom, which we had already filled with several thawing packages of various meats- enough to be equivalent to the weight of a twelve year old child, more or less.


“Eugh… right… at least I don’t have to make the brain too,” she muttered as she entered. I tossed Riley’s head in after and shut the door. Hopefully they’d be done before the bathroom started smelling.

 

Hey, it's late but it's here. Damn, summer just kills my motivation to write.



4.5



A few hours prior, about nine in the morning



There’s something special about watching a young girl skipping around, full of life and with no worries.



When that girl is Bonesaw, that something special tended to manifest as abject terror, or barring that, sheer annoyance.



“Riley, what exactly are you doing…?” I asked, pinching my brow.



Riley stopped and looked at me, “Skipping in circles around the living room, duh.”



“.... Why?”



“Bored. No one lets me Tinker unless I really beg for it and none of Alec’s games will be playable until the power comes back on whenever so…”



“I see…”



I shook my head. I could understand where she was coming from, really, but skipping in circles around the living room out of sheer boredom? With Panacea changing her appearance, Riley was basically free to go outside if she could find someone to chaperone her and she chose to stay inside, skip in circles, and basically just be a nuisance to everyone actually doing something useful?



“So, big sis, what are we gonna do today?”



Riley’s voice cut me out of my introspection and- wait, what?



“.... Did you just say…?”



“Yup! Why wouldn’t I? I mean I kinda look like your little sister now, don’t I?” Riley smiled and I had to admit, with the absolutely plain brown hair and brown eyes, she really did bear a passing resemblance to me. Half sisters, some might assume.



“.... Fine.” I sighed. “And today, I suppose, I will allow you to Tinker. But the same warning goes-”



“I knoooooow!” Riley interrupted me with one of her quickly becoming infamous whines. “I promise I’ll be a good girl!”



“And good girls keep their promises,” I muttered under my breath, repeating what Riley had said to me the other day. I unlocked the door leading down to the space below, now fitted with a few materials so that Riley could actually Tinker.



In retrospect, that was probably what got us into this mess in the first place.



~~~~~~



Present, which is to say, about one in the afternoon



“Riley?”



“Y-yeah big sis…?”



“Explain to me how you managed to set nearly the entire Loft on fire, thus losing us access to more or less my entire lair until such a time that repairs are completed?”



“W-well… I um… was trying to figure out a way to make your explosions… um…. More powerful?”



“.... And so you ended up burning the entire place down.”



“It was an accident!” Riley stomped her foot childishly and crossed her arms. “My new arms are too shaky and unstable for the kind of precision work I used to do!”



“You have only had your new arms for approximately two days.”



“And I haven’t even been allowed to make them more precise because everyone’s scared of what I might do with them!” A petulant huff made me roll my eyes.



“Clearly, we should have been more afraid of the accidents that would have occurred,” I deadpanned. “How did you even make something that flammable anyway? Your specialty is biological systems, is it not?”



“Well yeah, but plenty of biological components are plenty flammable if you mix them right. Kind of like those beetles down in South America!”



“Bombardier Beetles are native to all continents,” I muttered mostly to myself. “What were you even attempting to build with those chemicals?”



“Weeeelll… I was going to ask if I could… um… cut your arms open and add in some glands and stuff so you could spray kind of like um…” She tapped her chin for a moment. “I guess the best way to describe it is like…. Stabilized nitroglycerin? Cuz like… it only explodes when you want it to. Or uh… it should have.”



“... Riley.”



“Yeah?”



“No more explosives.”



“Aww…”



~~~~~~



“.... We leave to go get groceries… and you’ve somehow managed to burn down the entire building,” Elizabeth’s stare cut through the layer of impassivity I had built up and left me clearing my throat awkwardly.



“In my defense, big sis let me Tinker!” Riley spoke up from the side.



“...”



“...”



I shifted uncomfortably under the weight of my girlfriend’s stare, but said nothing. There was nothing to say.



“... We will need to find other lodgings,” I murmured after a while. “... I do not think my father’s house has enough room for all of us.”



“Well, I’m certainly not leaving you two unsupervised ever again,” Elizabeth huffed. “Lisa, you can go do your own thing.”



Lisa sighed. “Well. At least I still have my apartment… I’m definitely not letting the others stay there, though.”



“Didn’t Coil have a secret base?” I muttered. “Whatever became of that?”



“Oh yeah… completely forgot about that,” Lisa shrugged, then smirked. “Eeeexcept I didn’t.”



I deadpanned. “... Then why were we living in the Loft again?”



“....” Lisa paused. “.... In my defense, a lot of things happened all at once so I forgot to ask if you wanted to move everything to the secret base.”



“.... I will inform my father of our new living arrangements.”



~~~~~~



“So… you let Bonesaw of all people Tinker and you didn’t see the problem with that?” Dad’s look set off an unpleasant feeling within, a sort of mix of shame and embarrassment.



“In my defense, I didn’t think she’d be able to do that with the few materials she had lying around.”



“You left bleach and rat poison and a whole bunch of stuff under the kitchen sink! It’s super easy to make explosives with that stuff even if you’re not a Tinker!” Riley cut in, souring my mood even more.



“... Well, at least no one died.”



I nodded idly. “As it is, I wanted to ask if you’d like to, well, move into the base with us. It’d be safer and since it is where it is, it’s closer to the Docks as well. Less traffic. Probably still a few usable vehicles.”



“.... Taylor are you trying to bribe me into moving in with you just so you don’t have to commute back and forth between home and work?”



I froze up and coughed. “... No…?”



“....”



An odd moment of silence passed, then laughter filled the house.



For a while, I forgot that I was a near psychopathic cape on a murder spree of S-class criminal capes, that my little sister was a nationally wanted murder-child, and that the entire city was still without power and a little bit flooded in some places.



For a while, it was just us, a single father of one and an adopted little sister, laughing at the absurdity of our situation.



It was nice.



Maybe when all is said and done, I’d have more moments like this?

 

Fuck it. It's late but I don't give a shit.



4.6


9:00 am


“So.”


“So.”


I stared across at the woman in the fedora sitting across from me with no small amount of trepidation. As much as I was confident I could kill her since she wasn’t any more durable than a human, I still knew that this woman could easily kill me should she wish it.


“You… want me to… kill Scion. Who is the source of all powers.”


“Yes.”


“Because he- it- is actually just farming data for some reason and plans to just destroy the planet and all versions of it when he’s done. And the end of the world comes within some fifteen years.”


“Correct.”


“....” I blinked a few times. “... How am I supposed to do this?”


“Your power, of course. Your Passenger is incredibly powerful as it is. Combined with some other powers, it should be enough to kill Scion.”


“And the Endbringers?”


“That is entirely simple.”


“How so?”


“The exact same way you killed Leviathan. But safer.”


Safer. What part of killing an Endbringer is in anyway safe?


“You would have access to a portal network capable of accessing almost any location on any earth across infinite earths.”


“.... Okay, that is immensely useful.”


“Indeed.”


“If I’m going to join your shady conspiracy, I want my entire organization to be in on this.”


“Done.”


“... So do we shake hands on this?”


“If you want.”


We shook hands.


It was odd. The entire thing was odd.


~~~~~~


9:45 am


“- and that is why we suddenly have a hell of a lot more funding in our accounts,” I finished. “Any questions?”


“How are you sure you can trust these people?” Brian asked in the back, crossing his arms over his chest. I had asked everyone to come in costume for our first ever actual team meeting. And somehow Bitch was actually wearing a proper costume.


Miracles.


“Honestly? I do not. But if it stops the end of the world and kills all the Endbringers with it along with as many S-class threats as we can get, then that has got to be a good thing, right?”


“There’s definitely more behind this organization, isn’t there.”


“Almost a certainty. But as it is, I figure that as long as we stay on the above-board part of the organization we will not have to deal with much, if any, repercussions for when the organization inevitably comes shattering down.”


“Tempting fate, big sis.”


I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Be that as it may, we can reasonably assume that should we, and by that I mean I for the most part, perform as expected and to necessary standards, we’ll be able to avert the end of the world and gain some kind of profit along the way.”


“Well, I’m in,” Alec called out from the back. Typical really, he’d probably do anything as long as it involved money and his continued existence.


The rest of them looked a bit less convinced, but no further objections occurred.


“That out of the way, who wants brunch? The Denny’s on Third street reopened today,” I clapped my hands and stood, already making a beeline towards the door.


Maybe it was uncharacteristic of me to be so enthusiastic about going to something so simple as a Denny’s, but I really wanted to get there before the crowd grew too immense.


~~~~~~


Brunch had not gone well. For a given definition, of course. In the grand scheme of things, it was not terrible, but all the same, we had needed to wait almost two hours before we could get a seat, and even then the service was terrible. It ended up being moreso lunch than brunch since by the time we left it was already two in the afternoon.


But, on the other hand, it was the best breakfast I’d had in weeks.


No matter what anyone says, I firmly maintained that a cup of tea and a granola bar was nowhere near a proper breakfast.


When we got back to base, though, the morning fun was over and we had immediately gone to work.


Yes, work.


The nine of us were doing a bit of unauthorized revitalization in the city, after all. Lisa handled finances and workflow, while the rest of us put boots on the ground and coordinated with construction and supply companies. Thankfully, since I had killed Leviathan rather early into the fight, most of the damage was just near the shoreline and the worst that Shatterbird did to the city was just ruin everyone’s windows and shut down a lot of electronics. Granted, those electronics were extremely important in some cases, but that was why Lisa was coordinating.


Even on extremely limited avenues of communications, she was extraordinarily good at getting people to do what she wanted.


The day wore on quickly, and as the sun set, I considered the orange sky from one of the skyscrapers- the Medhall building, to be exact.


“You know, dinner is almost here,” Elizabeth spoke from behind me, floating on a custom made sheet of metal. “Don’t you wanna eat back at base instead of go hungry brooding like that Aleph comic hero- what was his name, Batman?”


“Hush, Elizabeth,” I huffed and rolled my eyes as I watched the sun set. “I was just watching the sunset. It’s… quite nice.”


“As I live and breathe, did you just use contractions without pretending to be a normal person?” Elizabeth teased as she sat down next to me and all but shoved a plastic wrapped sandwich into my hands from the confines of her oh so unflattering robe.


“Shush. Why did you give me a sandwich? I thought dinner was almost here?”


“Yeah, well, a BLT is probably healthier than whatever disgusting takeout Alec decided to order this time around.”


I snickered, “Just because the one time he ordered Mexican you were trapped on a toilet for six hours doesn’t mean his taste is consistently garbage, Elizabeth.”


“Yeah, but it’s Alec.”


“... Point taken.”