Safe For Work Worm Ideas thread

I've begun threadmarking the snippets in this thread... at least, the ones with titles. This will take a while.

Note that some, like this one, are only not being threadmarked because of said lack of title.

 

Just threadmark all of them, make up your own title if it doesn't have one. Even just <Untitled Snippet #1, #2, #3, ect> is better than leaving some out.

 

I found this oneshot messed up, but pretty well done. Good job. One of the few true villain Taylor's out there.

 

Due to a series of unfortunate events, Labyrinth is hiding on the roof (or some other area) of Winslow High School, one morning. By the time anyone realises something really weird is going on, escape has become rather complicated (it gets worse if the school goes into lockdown, first). May result in some rather interesting trigger events as students try to survive and escape the bizarre environment Winslow has become.

Meanwhile, Faultline's crew try to locate Labyrinth before anyone else does, and they may not be the only ones - the PRT is going to notice pretty quickly that something strange is going on at Winslow, which leads to Coil knowing, and then there's all those gang kids with cellphones...

Thoughts?

 

In reference to the above post #855, what sort of powers might result from trying to survive and escape from the Labyrinth (and the various capes hunting her, if the trigger is late enough that they've arrived)?

Not limited to Taylor (who may or may not have already have powers), others at the school might also trigger.

 

Mover, trump, and brute seem the most likely if what I recall about triggering conditions is accurate. (Get away, get away, deal with this parahuman/power, and survive the immediate dangers right here)

 

Other shaker powers as well... the environment is the enemy, and that's where those powers come from.

 

See With These Baby Blues

"Ohhh, my head," the figure in the alley groaned, standing up and adjusting his trenchcoat and hat. He stumbled carefully to his feet, looked around, and shook his head. "Where am I? Gotta find a phone."

The figure in the coat stumbled along, one hand on the wall, until he came across a group of thugs surrounding a terrified looking man and a young girl next to a car. He cleared his throat, and the thugs all looked at him.

One of them shouted. "Cape!"

"I ain't wearing no cape. It's a trench coat. Any of you putzes want to explain what's going on around here?"

One of the thugs looked nervously at the others before answering. "We were just helping them with their car trouble. Negotiating fees and the like. For one thing, there's a toll in this alley."

"That sounds like the kind of likely that isn't. Now, I'm new in this town, so I'm on my way to the nearest precinct to see if they can help me get my bearings. You all have basically two choices as I see it. You can all decide you have somewhere else you gotta be in a real hurry, or you can help me find my way there, maybe with a concussion or two."

"Don't really got nowhere better to be, but don't let us stop you from leaving this alley while we stay and talk to our new friends."

"Nonsense. I'm sure you all have somewhere better to be. What time is it?"

"It's, uh, five, what's that got to do with anything?"

"Five in the afternoon sounds like a great time to go home, tell your momma she's a special lady and you think the world of her, and cook her dinner so she can take the night off and get some quality time with her loving children. Whaddaya say?"

"You making crack about my momma?"

"I don't make cracks about nobody's momma. In fact, I suggest if anybody tries to give you trouble about spending time with your momma, you punch that sucker straight in the nose, yeah? I know that's what I'd do if somebody told ME that I couldn't go spend time with my momma any time I felt like it. Nobody messes with mommas. Just not kosher."

The thugs shuffled a bit at this. "I don't mean to be a downer or anything, but I always really wanted to learn my mom's chicken recipe, so if nobody minds, I'm gonna go ask her to teach me right now." With that, the dam was broken, and the thugs broke off with a smattering of similar excuses.

Benjamin Grimm dusted off his hands. "Now that's dealt with. You two need any help getting back to the road?"

 

AFAICT, the more powers are involved, the higher the probability that a Trump occurs (this is more a guess than a certainty, as Wildbow doesn't appear to say), as long as you have a shard that can do a power that would get a Trump threat assessment. Thinking about it, some of the new triggers could be trying to deal with other brand-new triggers.

A Shaker power that was created to deal with Labyrinth could be very interesting, no?

Anyone have specific power suggestions?

 

Specific powers? Well, the current situation itself that is being dealt with would definitely play a part, but so would the history of each new parahuman. So there's definitely that to factor in.

Breaker (Master): Can merge own body with that of at least one other person. As long as they're merged the parahuman has significant control over the other person's body, and resources from one body can be transferred to another. The more closely the bodies are merged the faster resources can be shared.
Triggered while best friend was bleeding out in front of her. Successfully used it to stabilize best friend and force her wounds to clot faster, but the experience disgusted and exhilarated her. The feeling of power over her best friend was intensely disquieting, but the knowledge of how she could use that power was addictive. Will need to use power constructively (in ways that the shard will approve of) to avoid falling into rather unethical uses.

Shaker/Trump: Can impose the parahuman's own concept of sane reality upon the surrounding area. Notably, all parahuman powers that extend beyond their body have no effect within own area of effect. However, they're merely suppressed, not negated. If a blaster (even one inside of the area of effect) launched an attack through the field, it would disappear while within but exist again once it had left the field as if it had travelled normally with zero resistance.
Triggered while utterly surrounded by Labyrinth’s more overt manifestations. Had always felt that reality was kind of crazy and struggled to cope with it all. Had a completely breakdown leading to the trigger event. Proceeded to sleep through the rest of the battle, finally feeling like the world made sense. Many of his classmates crowded into the field to escape Labyrinth's more harmful effects.

 

Scary, but very useful. Wondering how Image would deal with her, should she choose to join the Wards.

He's going to be rather popular with the non-parahuman survivors.

 

Just noticed there's actually a SFW ideas thread here, so...

Wrote this a while ago. There's a fair amount of problems with it, but I've realised I can't be bothered to edit it, and I don't want it just sitting around gathering dust, so here it is. Part of my Arcadia AU.

This post is also on SB and SV.

---

Arcadia
Not-1.1

——————————————————

Arcadia was amazing, and I hadn’t even set foot on campus grounds yet.

I stood close to the end of one of three not-very-long lines, students queued and waiting for their IDs to be checked and their admission slips to be stamped by the guards: of which there were a dozen, fully kitted-out with body armour, tasers, and foam sprayers.

They were working quickly, but I was impatient. As was… well, pretty much everyone else. You couldn’t look at any of these queues for even a second without seeing a dozen cases of restless legs and shuffling. Quickly wasn’t fast enough.

Not that I was watching the students. Not really. Mostly, I was admiring the school itself. Or what I could see of it, anyway. The gates were huge and ornate, painted gold—or maybe made of it—with tiny lines of electricity visible running through them and the fences beyond.

It was all mostly decorative, though. I mean, come on. Arcadia was a parahuman academy, as the front gate stated, one of only thirty-two in the United States. It didn’t need fences to keep its students safe. Not when it had shields.

A shimmering blue bubble encapsulated the entire campus—all sixty something acres—in an ellipsoid shape that rose a hundred metres or so up, and probably down, too. The surface was mostly transparent, the shimmering a pulsing effect that came and went like a wave, rippling down its surface every few seconds to remind people it was there, and that nothing anyone could do would even scratch it.

All academies had shields like this, but Arcadia’s was something special. It was the very same shield that Hero had built, all those years ago when the first of the Endbringers had appeared—long before I’d even been born. It had only ever been broken once, on the day he died. And somehow, it still worked, though nobody had ever managed to replicate it.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine the electricity bill this place would have had to deal with, if it wasn’t self-sufficient.

The guard at the head of my queue waved the kid in front of him past, and the line shuffled forward. I bit my lip and glanced over at the other lines as they all shuffled forward, too. Vicky was at the head of her own line, now. She’d clearly already had her ID scanned, as she was just handing over her bags to the guards. The guy she was talking to nodded, handed her ID back, and waved her past.

Vicky glanced back at me as she walked through the gates, meeting my eyes as my line shuffled forward again. She grinned excitedly, but her expression dropped quickly. Guilt struck me, and not for the first time today. I didn’t doubt her change in expression coincided with her remembering what I’d told her this morning—that I’d be… distancing myself from her, at school. At least for the first few days. She’d been… upset, when I insisted on catching the bus to Arcadia instead of flying with her.

I wanted to explain more. Explain better. But I couldn’t. She hadn’t understood this morning, and she wasn’t likely to understand now. I’d put it off too long, afraid of hurting her; which, of course, had just made it worse. Instead, I settled for a smile and a wave, and quietly hated how damn hesitant it felt. Vicky returned the wave, then moved on, and my line shuffled forward again.

“Next!” the guard called, looking at me. “ID?”

I stepped forward and proffered my ID. She took it and stuck it in her little handheld card reader… thing.

“Name and division?” she said.

“Amelia Claire Dallon,” I said. “I-I’m a first-year in the hero program.”

The guard nodded and looked up at me. “Will you consent to a body scan?”

“Yes,” I said.

She pulled another device off her belt and held it up to my face: a wide object that looked like one of those speed guns that police used. A green laser came out of it and scanned my face up and down. I tried not to blink; I didn’t want to mess anything up. After a second or two, the device beeped, and the lady moved it to scan my body up and down, then waited until a second beep came.

“All clear,” the guard said; then she gestured at my suitcase. “You’ll be living on-campus?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Do you have a phone or laptop or any other electronic or tinkertech device on your person?”

“Just my phone. It’s in my bag.”

She nodded again, and another guard came up, not as heavily dressed or equipped as the others, and took my suitcase. “We’ll move it to your dormitory,” she said, smiling and crossing her hands as the other guard carried my bag off. “You can head on in now, Amelia. First-year inauguration is in hall three. Just follow the signs. Have a nice day.”

I nodded. “Thanks!” I said, and rushed past her. I felt a slight tickling sensation as I passed through the rippling blue shield, then I was inside.

I was in Arcadia!

I mean, I’d been here before, but only once, and that was just for the admission interview with the principal. I hadn’t really had a chance to look around.

But now? Now, I was a student here. Like, officially. I’d be spending the next three years of my life here—excluding holidays, of course—learning, training, making friends… hopefully…

But no matter what happened, I was going to be a hero.

I felt a grin split my face.

This is gonna be great!

——————————————————

I ran the whole way to the hall—it had to be closer to a quarter mile than not. There were concrete paths, but I kept off them. I preferred the grass; soft and perfect beneath my feet, the open soles of my shoes giving me contact and letting my power flow through nearly everything I touched.

Each blade was perfect, and it was pretty clear the grass was biologically engineered to be that way. There were none of the tiny, subtle inconsistencies between each individual tuft’s biological structure. It was a field of perfect greenery. Not like the grass I’d always felt outside; the… inefficiency that made me want to change things, to make them better. But that was… frowned upon, mom had told me, so I’d kept my modifications to the backyard.

But here? This place, Arcadia, the academies… they were all about powers. Not using them would be almost sacrilegious. And here, I didn’t have to hold back; at least, not quite as much. If I wanted to make perfect, self-propagating grass, I could. It probably wouldn’t stay perfect for long after it left my reach, but I could do it if I wanted to.

Not that it was necessary.

Jogging parallel to the concrete path, following the floating holographic signs that pointed me in the direction of my inauguration, I finally caught sight of my destination. I’d passed several buildings on my trip—one had actually passed me; it had been floating—and this one was… big.

Not the biggest I’d seen here—that title went to the… stadium? Or arena? I wasn’t sure what the right name was—but it was still pretty big. It looked like you could fit a thousand kids in there, though that was probably underselling it… by a lot. I wasn’t great at… well, at measurements, I guess.

There were multiple tall and wide garage-like doors along the longer sides of the building, all slid up so you could see straight through. And either I was very early—which I doubted; I’d been one of the last to get admission—or they didn’t intend to actually use all of that space quite yet. There were only about twenty-something other students there, or maybe thirty. But thinking about it, that did make sense; term didn’t start for non-parahumans until Tuesday, and it was only Saturday now.

It was oddly underwhelming, though, seeing how few of us paras there were at a school designed and built from the ground up specifically for us.

Jogging up to the doors, I studied my fellow would-be-heroes, all sitting on the floor close to the podium. Vicky was there, already chatting quietly with some raven-haired beauty, and I saw Eric looking around and absently tapping out a rhythm on his thigh. Nobody else I recognised. Interestingly, there did seem to be more girls than boys. I’d never really put much stock in the claims that girls triggered more often, but maybe it was true.

I was surprised to find three kids sitting slightly off to one side of the rest of the group, wearing proper masks and costumes; two wore basic grey bodysuits and domino masks that went past their noses, while the third was clad in a slightly more complex, though incomplete costume, wearing segments of rough gunmetal grey armour on her—no, on his arms, legs, and chest, with a red bodysuit underneath, his helmet a matching grey with a red visor covering the upper half of his face.

As I got closer, I noticed one of the kids wearing domino masks—a girl—had a slick black substance wreathed about her body, almost like shadow taken physical form; in fact, knowing parahumans, that’s probably what it was. She—and the other masked person, also a girl—were talking to each other, while the armoured guy seemed to be answering questions from a boy and a girl who looked like they could be twins.

A few others were wearing costumes too, though only those three had masks, and the other costumes were fairly simple. Victoria and Eric had parts of their costumes on, as did I, but not the whole thing; mine and Eric’s weren’t even complete yet.

But other than my family, there was a dark-skinned girl wearing a midnight black coat that went down to her ankles—or I assumed it did; she was sitting down, after all—with a black bodysuit underneath, and what looked like small metal plates, painted black and attached so they covered her vital areas. The hood on her coat was left down—otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see her face—and attached to the inside was a hockey mask.

Very edgy. My mother would hate her.

Little Miss Edgy was surrounded by people—mostly girls—all of whom were talking quite animatedly with her. She looked like she couldn’t decide between being amused and being annoyed. There was also a blonde girl in a red-and-grey hooded robe of sorts; she sat alone, staring at the ground, and I noticed that not only were her fists tattooed with some kind of runic pattern, but they were also clenched and shaking. I guess she was nervous. Which made me realise I wasn’t nervous. Which then made me nervous. Dammit.

There were a few others wearing very simple, piecemeal-like costumes, but most people just wore your regular high school attire—t-shirts, hoodies, shorts, skirts, and everyone’s favourite: jeans—occasionally with an accessory or two. Eric—my cousin—was sat there, too, his hair dyed a neon-blue and spiked like a comic book character, wearing track pants and a sports tee—one of those shirts with a white body and black sleeves, shoulders, and sides. I wasn’t sure why; he already had a costume. Which was more than I could say for myself.

I shook my head and took a seat on the edge of the group, folding my legs beneath me and settling my hands in my lap to still their shaking; and just as I did so, a stunningly thin brunette entered my vision, walking and talking with a cute freckle-faced blonde, and then promptly walked into a wall; specifically, one of the thin supporting walls that separated each doorway.

The blonde snorted, then clapped her hands over her mouth. She leaned forward, presumably to say something, but got cut off by a loud, sharp laugh from behind me. It was Little Miss Edgy. She looked right at the wall girl, who glared back.

“Sophia,” wall girl said, pretty clearly struggling to not grind her teeth.

Little Miss Edgy—err, Sophia smirked. “Hebert,” she said. “Having trouble already? That doesn’t bode well.”

Wall girl, or Hebert—that had to be a nickname, or maybe her last name; no parent would name their daughter that!—raised an eyebrow. “Since when did you even know what ‘bode’ meant?”

Sophia growled—actually growled!—baring her teeth a little, and not in a smile. Her body tensed in the telltale sign of someone about to jump to their feet, and—

“Excuse me.”

The new speaker was a short, somewhat chubby—or perhaps stocky—boy with a buzzcut and a surprisingly deep voice. He was standing behind Hebert and the blonde girl.

“Are you alright?” he said, looking toward Hebert. “You hit that wall head-first.”

Sophia snorted again, and the boy looked at her, his face weirdly expressionless. They looked at each other for a moment, then Sophia smirked and turned back to chat with her little group.

“I’m fine,” Hebert said, smiling. Her mouth was rather wide. “I’m pretty hardheaded.”

“That’s good,” the boy said, then moved past her and sat down.

The blonde beside Hebert put a hand on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear, and Hebert nodded, then they both moved to take their seats, too. As they moved away, I saw another person behind them, rather far away, but approaching quickly. He—and I could see it was a boy now—sprinted up the path and came to a sudden stop just at the entrance; or at least, he tried to.

He stuck one foot out to stop himself but, predictably, his shoe slid on the polished wood floor. He skidded forward a few inches, arms wheeling, then stumbled and fell as friction reasserted itself. But he turned the fall into a roll, and rose to his feet on the other side of the room in one smooth motion, as if it had all been planned. Then he ruined it by jerking his head around to stare at us.

“Please tell me I’m not late,” he said.

“You’re not late,” a deep voice chuckled just as a tall white-bearded man in a green and gold suit appeared with an audible poof beside the boy, making him jump. The principal; I recognised him. “We weren’t going to start until everyone had arrived.”

The principal patted the boy’s shoulder, then turned and strode toward the rest of us, making a slow circle around our group. Another poof sounded, and I turned to see the principal now standing on the raised platform, behind the podium. His suit was now brown with a swirly orange pattern, his tie a matching design. He smiled. “But you’re all here now!” he said, clapping his hands together. “So! Welcome to Arcadia.”

“Now, I’m sure you’re all very eager to get at it,” a voice said from behind me. I twisted. The principal was over there now, wearing green and gold again, holding his hands clasped behind his back as he circled our group and studied us. But I hadn’t heard a poof… I looked back at the podium, where the brown-suited principal stood, then back at the green-and-gold one, then back again.

There were two of them.

Okay. Not the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen—though his suits were certainly in the running.

“So,” the brown principal said, “I won’t keep you long. Just a few things I’d like to make clear. Most of this will have been covered by the pamphlets and welcome booklet we sent out last month, but—” he smiled “—there are always a few students who don’t read that, and some things are important enough to reiterate. So!”

Poof. “First and foremost,” a third principal said, holding up a finger. This one was clad in a white suit peppered with pink polkadots of varying sizes, and had appeared between our group and the podium where the brown principal… was standing…

Ugh. This was going to get annoying. They needed identifiers…

“I’m sure you’ve all noticed our three masked friends over here,” the white-suited one continued, gesturing toward the trio in question. “Unlike the rest of you, they have elected to keep their identities secret.”

Principal-Beta—that is, the brown one—took over, his hands resting on the podium. “Their reasons for this are their own,” he said, still smiling. “The teaching staff are of course aware of their identities, and their reasons for keeping them secret, but the rest of you will know them only by their chosen identifiers.”

“You will not attempt to discover their identities,” the green one continued, his expression stern. I decided to call him Alpha. “And any attempts to do so will be met with immediate expulsion, and they are to be treated with the utmost respect. Bullying is not tolerated at Arcadia.”

“Furthermore,” Gamma—the white-suited one—said. “If any of these three students elect to share their identities or any other information with any of you, you will be expected to keep that information to yourself.”

“These students will reside in a separate dormitory building to the rest of you,” Beta said, “and will attend classes, training, and Arcadia events as either regular students, or as their hero personas.”

“Second!” Gamma said, holding another finger up. “Treat your fellow students with respect.”

“I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Sectarians and their agenda,” Beta said. “They represent the opposite of Arcadia’s philosophy, and they are a perfect example of what not to do as parahumans. You may have powers, but it is important to remember that you are still only human. And you need to be fully capable of coexisting with non-powered people. To that end, you may not use your abilities on non-powered students without their explicit consent.”

“As for powered students,” Alpha continued, “all of you here are members of the hero program. You may use your powers on each other as you see fit, so long as you have permission; this is a place of learning, after all. Be aware that fighting is strictly prohibited. If there is a disagreement, or you wish to spar, you may utilise one of the duelling arenas, provided you procure a staff member or a third year student to supervise and arbitrate.”

“But make no mistake,” Beta said. “You are not the only powered students at Arcadia. There are also a dozen students partaking in the broker program, and some that have decided to attend as regular students.” One kid raised his hand, but Beta waved it away. “You will treat these students the same you would any non-powered student, and the identity protection rules apply to all powered students who chose to not be publicly known.”

“Third!” Gamma said, a third finger rising. “The hero program will not be easy.”

“Though many would call that an understatement,” Alpha said with a smirk. “Most of you will be expected to attend classes with regular students each morning. You will all also be expected to achieve a passing grade in all of your subjects—and don’t bother trying to cheat. On top of that, you will have hero classes every afternoon. The details of these classes will be provided later in your orientation.”

“During your first week,” Beta said, “you will each be paired with a hero who will take the role of mentor, and some of you may share a mentor. Your mentors will work with you and Arcadia staff to design training plans for each of you, which you will be expected to follow. These plans will be developed accordingly with your abilities and levels of prowess.”

“Unlike the regular students,” Alpha said, “your schooling days will begin early. How early may depend on your training plan, but none of you will be sleeping past five AM. This is one of several reasons you were all encouraged to make use of Arcadia’s dormitories, and not commute from home.”

“Also unlike regular students,” Beta continued, “your Saturdays will be given over entirely to the hero program. Your training will be gruelling. Your days will be long. And you will sustain injuries.” He smiled. “But of course, we do have healing services available.”

“Now,” Gamma said, lowering his hand and straightening his white-and-pink suit. “When you leave this building, there will be more signs directing you to your dormitories. Awaiting you there will be a small group of second-year students and staff, who will assign you your rooms, give you a tour of the facilities, and explain how the dormitories and classes will operate.” He disappeared with the same poof he had first appeared with.

“After you are all settled in,” Alpha said, “we have a very special welcome prepared for you. And a set of exercises for each of you, to help us—and you—decide which role you’re best suited for, what your skill levels are, and just for a bit of fun.”

“You can get going in just a moment,” Beta said as Alpha disappeared, too. “As soon as I’m done. There’s just one more thing I’d like to say, first.” For a long moment, he just scanned the crowd. “You may use your powers at any time, of course, so long as you comply with Arcadia rules while on campus. Therefore, you may use your abilities on your way to the dormitories, if you so desire.” He gave a lopsided smile and scratched at his scalp. “Just… try not to break anything.”

He vanished with another poof. There was a moment of stillness. Then a shockwave erupted from the midst of the crowd and a blur streaked its way out of the hall, making a sharp left just out the door and leaving a trail of dust in its wake as it sped into the distance.

A familiar laugh sounded behind me while the rest of us—well, most of us—stared in quiet shock. Victoria pushed off the ground with one foot and floated above our heads. “Bring it!” she yelled. What that meant, I had no idea, but as soon as her mouth was closed she zipped forward, cutting a diagonal path through the open doorway, unlike the speedster from earlier. She glanced back at me as she passed, and then she was gone.

Her excited departure sparked a frenzy of sorts. My soon-to-be-classmates all jumped to their feet and ran out the door, onto the grass—and I went with them. Just like before the principal’s address, there were floating devices projecting hard-light holographic arrows pointing us, presumably, toward our dorms.

Little Miss Edgy—no, dammit, Sophia turned suddenly and ran at the wall. Just as she reached it, she crouched and jumped, and her body lost its form, morphing into a smokey, billowing blackness that floated up to the roof quicker than such a cloud should. Once at the roof, she turned back into human form and kicked off the edge hard, jumping out over the grass, and transformed back to smoke, letting her momentum carry her outward.

The armoured and masked boy from earlier fiddled with his belt for a moment. He unclipped it and it pulled away from his body by itself, straightening into a flat line and widening until it was big enough to stand on. It floated down to ankle level, green energy rings pulsating from its bottom, and the boy stood on it, his feet audibly clicking into place. Then he looked up and angled his board forward, and sped into the sky.

Another boy shouted wordlessly and hit his fists together with a clang. Metal rippled out from the point of contact, quickly transforming his entire body—and his clothes, too—in gleaming stainless steel. He shuddered visibly, made a stretching motion, then jumped into an all-out sprint, his footsteps resounding on the earth with loud thumps. Beside him, one of the masked girls—the one who was wreathed in shadow—moved her darkness away from her body and formed a doorway of sorts, pitch black and unstable-looking. She stepped into it, and she and the doorway both vanished.

A shimmering green glow to my right caught my attention, and I turned to see Eric creating a staircase of shields up into the air until he was well above head height, where he started forming an air-bridge that he ran across, rectangular platforms appearing just ahead of his feet even as others disappeared behind him.

Beyond him, a red-headed girl swept her arms about in wavy motions, making a deep-pitched humming sound. Clouds of white-gold sand emerged from a series of tubes about her waist, more rising up from the ground and speeding across the sky. When enough sand had reacher her, the clouds solidified into a sphere, encasing the girl completely, and the sphere started rolling in the direction the arrows were pointing. Like one of those human-sized hamster balls. I snickered.

A blonde boy beside me pulled a tennis-ball-sized orb from his pocket and pressed a button on its surface. It unfolded in his hand into a miniature quadcopter, its tiny fans accelerating rapidly, then it hovered above his hand and rocketed off toward the dorms. Then he sat down and started picking his nose.

I shook my head and glanced over the other students that hadn’t already left. A brown-haired girl was floating a few feet above the ground and moving at a leisurely pace, scrutinising one of those Arcadia pamphlets the principal had talked about. Several other students began running or jogging without powers.

The brunette from earlier—Hebert—was chatting with her blonde friend. The blonde nodded and pushed Hebert forward, then turned and walked over to me. “Hey!” she said, holding out her hand and smiling. “Lisa. Walk with me?”

I shook it distractedly, keeping an eye on Hebert as she seemed to gear herself up for a running jump. “Amelia,” I said. “My friends call me Amy. Nice to meet you. And yeah, sure.”

Lisa grinned and followed my gaze. “Ah. That’s Taylor. Met her this morning. No clue what her power is, beyond ‘tinker’.” Her voice took a mocking lilt. “She didn’t want to leave little ol’ me all by my lonesome, the darling.”

Taylor glanced back at us with obvious exasperation—she must have good hearing—then turned back and started running. After a few seconds of acceleration, she leapt into the air and twisted. Little slots slid open in her shins, calves, elbows, hands, and feet, and tiny flashes of orange-blue erupted from within, like miniature jet engines embedded in her skin, and she spiralled up into the sky, small trails of smoke following in her wake.

Then she twisted again and fire boomed from her calves, sending her flipping end over end at a frankly ridiculous speed in the direction of the dorms. Jets of orange-blue flashed from other places on her limbs every second or two, thrusting her sideways or redirecting her momentum, keeping her from falling to the ground. It looked nauseating, but…

For a long moment, we just watched Taylor somersault through the air, like a parahuman trapeze artist.

We started walking.

I’ve never wanted a mover power more than I did that moment.

---

A/N: There we go. Thoughts?

Also, should I crosspost the other junk I've posted in the SB/SV idea threads? Edit: eh, fuck it. There's only two other things, anyway.

 

Might as well post this one, too, since it's relevant. This is part of the "exercises" the principal talked about in Not-1.1. This one is also on SB and SV. And it's actually the first thing I ever posted (well, other than an omake for Intrepid).

---

Arcadia
The First Day

——————————————————

“Second rung, fifth bracket match starts in one minute,” the coach’s voice came through the speakers installed in the ceiling. “Taylor Hebert, A.K.A. Astro, versus Rosalie Daniels, A.K.A. Dovetail.”

I looked up. The door to the arena slid open with a pneumatic hiss.

Deep breaths, Taylor, I told myself as I stepped through. You can do this. Deep breaths.

The arena was a rainforest this time, rather than the desert ruins from my first match. Trees surrounded me, close-knit, some with trunks thick enough that I could wrap my arms around them without my hands touching. The ground was soft beneath my feet, and birds chirped in the trees—though it was probably just ambience. There was even a stream about thirty or forty metres to my right, and a clearing full of boulders equally distant to my left. About 120 square metres, then. Same as the last one.

I stopped on the orange disc set on the grass. My starting point.

“Standard rules apply,” the coach spoke again. I wasn’t sure where the speakers were hidden. “The match will end when one participant forfeits, or is rendered unconsciousness or otherwise unable to fight. Possibly lethal attacks are illegal. Anything else is permitted. Healers are on site to treat injuries after the match has concluded.”

I took another deep breath and looked across the arena at my opponent, maybe fifty metres away, standing on another orange disc. She had long brown hair, not tied back, and wore a t-shirt and shorts, like me. I only hoped I looked as composed as she did.

Dovetail stopped looking around the arena and met my eyes. I held contact for a second before dropping my gaze to her feet, and took a deep breath.

I hadn’t seen her fight, and I didn’t know what her power was. Her first match had finished about a minute before mine, and I hadn’t talked to anyone who’d spectated.

“Ten seconds to match start,” the coach said, and the discs we were standing on projected a countdown, complete with beeps when the number changed. “Good luck, girls.”

Eight seconds, the projection indicated. I took a deep breath, and focused. First priority: figure out her power. Keep your distance and hide your own capabilities ’til you’ve got enough data. Five seconds. Assumptions: she’s a better flier. She’s better at hand-to-hand. She’s stronger, physically. She’s relentless.

She’s your worst possible match-up.

Three seconds.

Open with long-range weaponry.

Two seconds.

Keep trees between you when possible.

One second.

Don’t panic.

I activated the jets in my shins and leapt in the stream’s direction the moment the timer rang, unfolding my pistols from my belt. Dovetail had rocketed into the air when zero hit, and was zig-zagging her way toward me, rather than launching an immediate assault.

I ran toward the bank while I shot up at her. She dodged the lasers deftly, leaving scorch marks on the trees, then kicked off a branch and shot toward me fast. Definitely a better flier than me, I thought sourly.

A moment before Dovetail reached me, I jumped backwards, relying on my jets to carry me over the stream and shooting my lasers at her. A flurry of sparkling silver pellets flew at me when she jerked to a stop just above head-height. The few sparks my lasers hit ballooned into some sort of translucent silver dome that evaporated almost as soon as they appeared, dissipating my lasers with them.

Energy dissipation? Absorption? Force fields?

I twisted in the air to avoid the other sparks. They didn’t seem to have independent movement. That was good. I flared the jets in the soles of my feet, sending me backflipping into the air. At the crest of my jump, I kicked off a tree and flared my jets again, soaring into the air.

Glancing down, I saw Dovetail flying toward me. I couldn’t help but smile. I have her beat on acceleration, at least.

Letting the pistol in my left hand drop, I turned and broke off the first branch I saw, one about as thick as my wrist. I flared the jets in my elbow and spun back to face Dovetail, and threw it at her, also shooting a pair of lasers to either side. Rather than change direction, Dovetail spun, the silver sparks spiralling out from her hair. A pair of sparks hit the stick, enclosing it almost instantly in a shimmering silver bubble, two layers thick.

Force fields, then. I can deal with that.

The stick dropped, and I shot a few lasers at her, then fired all my jets, darting toward her while she reoriented herself. I spun in the air and thrust my leg out, flaring the jets in my thigh. Dovetail oof’ed as my shin connected with her gut, and we both dropped out of the sky.

I righted myself and activated the electromagnets in my left palm to pull my other pistol back up to me, shooting a few lasers at my opponent. One hit her shoulder, even though I wasn’t really aiming, and she spiralled into a tree just as my other pistol returned to my hand. I dropped to the ground, flaring my feet-jets at the last moment to slow down.

Dovetail only fell four or five metres, but the ground in this area was pretty rocky, and she landed with a pretty heavy thump. She lay there for a long moment—enough for me to start worrying—before groaning and rolling onto her back.

I tensed and raised my guns, but she just waved a hand at me.

“I concede,” she chuckled.

A ding sounded from the arena speakers, making me jump, even though it had happened last time.

“Victory goes to Taylor Hebert, A.K.A. Astro,” the coach said. “Congratulations.”

The grass and trees and rocks morphed into cold steel that slowly receded into the ground, and the water from the stream filtered out into a series of drains that also disappeared once all the water was gone. Shakers.

“Second rung, sixth bracket match starts in ten minutes,” the coach said. “Amelia Dallon, A.K.A. Helix, and Eric Pelham, A.K.A. Shielder, head to your respective prep rooms.”

Dallon? I breathed out heavily, dropping my guns and letting the electromagnets pull them back into their slots on my belt. As in, Brandish and Flashbang? I didn’t know they had two daughters.

I heard a curse from my left, and looked over to see Dovetail wince and hold a hand to her side as she tried to stand. I hurried over.

“Would… would you like some help?” I asked.

She looked at me for a second, then sighed and reached out an arm. “Sure.”

I grabbed her arm and momentarily flared the jets in my forearms to pull her to her feet. She winced again and leaned against me, and we started walking—or limping, in Dovetail’s case—toward the third door that had opened on the other side of the arena. A man wearing a nurse’s outfit with a red cross on the chest was walking toward us. Hale, probably.

“You kick really hard, y’know,” Dovetail said.

“Oh. Uh, sorry,” I said. “Still working out the kinks.”

“Hmm. Tinker, yeah?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. At her raised eyebrow, I added, “Personal augmentation, I think.”

“Sounds cool,” she said with a smile. “My name’s Rose. I can’t really direct my power very well. Not yet, at least. It mostly just follows me.”

“I’m Taylor. Your power is those sparks, right? They looked like force fields.”

“Sorta, yeah. They’re not really hard to break, but they slow people down a lot. And they really stack up.” Her smile turned rueful. “Not very good against people who can keep ahead of me, though. Kudos.”

We stopped walking when Hale reached us. “May I?” he asked, holding out a hand. Rose nodded, and he started poking her all over.

“Two broken ribs,” Hale said, after a minute. I winced. “Dislocated shoulder, with first degree burns. Your left wrist and the accompanying little finger are both broken, too.” He put his hand on her chest, and their veins started glowing beneath their skin. Rose gasped when her shoulder popped a few moments later, and Hale withdrew his hand, the glow fading with it. “Should be fine in half an hour or so. I’ve numbed the nerves a bit, so it won’t hurt too much, but you’ll retain function. Don’t do anything strenuous until everything’s done setting. And come to the medical office tomorrow morning.”

Rose gave a lazy salute and removed her arm from my shoulder. We left the arena with Hale trailing behind.

“Hey, Taylor!” Lisa shouted as we entered the spectator’s lounge, waving like a lunatic. “Over here! Nice match!”

Rose grinned. “Friend of yours?”

I'm pretty sure I blushed.

“I guess,” I said, turning to walk in Lisa’s direction. “I only met her this morning. She’s in the support division.”

Rose followed me. “Ahh,” she said, nodding sagely. “She’s one of the crazies.”

---

A/N: Used Dovetail because she was the one my eyes landed on in the master list, and I couldn't be bothered finding/creating another OC I liked.

How was the fight? Easy to follow / engaging?

 

And the last one. A one-shot that needs a rewrite, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Also posted on SB and SV.

---

Blowback

——————————————————

It’s her. She’s where it all started. The root cause. The seed that spawned the hate, the betrayal… It’s her fault. All of it.

But I know how to fix it. She’s a snake, a poison, sucking the life out of me, out of her. I know how to deal with snakes. It’s just like they say.

Cut off the head, and the body dies.

——————————————————

Fuck you, Armsmaster.

The door of my locker slammed shut as soon as my books were out. I was already halfway down the hall.

You want to stop my patrols? And that prissy little bitch gets rewarded? Fuck you. We’ll see how you like your fucking halberd when it’s three feet up your ass.

I snorted at the image. It didn’t do shit for my mood, though. Fucker probably kept a backup in there already.

I got to my biology class and pushed the door open. The teacher—Mr. O’Donnel or O’Connor or something like that—stopped whatever he was doing and turned his balding head my way as I walked to my desk.

“Sophia,” he said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “You’re twenty minutes late.”

I sat beside Emma, dropping my books on the desk, maybe a little too heavily, and forced myself to smile at him. “Sorry, sir. I had a meeting with my, uh, social worker. I signed in at the late desk already.” No I didn’t. But you don’t care, do you? “Want to see the pass?”

He blinked at me. Twice, like some kind of fucking owl. They blink a lot, don’t they? Then he nodded, slowly. “No, that’s alright,” he said. “Just try to be on time from now on.” Then he went back to drawing little squares and letters on the whiteboard.

Fuckin’ pansy.

Emma nudged me with her elbow, and raised an eyebrow. What happened?

I shook my head at her. I’ll tell you later.

She nodded, and went back to doodling cats on the corners of her textbook. They weren’t half bad.

——————————————————

“So?” Emma said, cracking her lunchbox open and setting it on her knees. “What happened?”

I glanced around us. We were sitting on the bleachers by the track, up at the top. There were a few guys doing laps in football jerseys, and a pair of blondes watching them and giggling to themselves, but nobody was close enough to hear us.

I took a bite of my sandwich and looked back at Emma. “Vista.”

“What’d she do?” Emma was grinning now.

I scowled. “You know I went out last night?” Emma nodded, her grin fading. “Well, I was on console duty before that. She was patrolling with Aegis. We got off at the same time, and I went out right after.” I felt one of my fists clench. “Turns out the prissy little bitch followed me. Said she was curious about what I do when I’m off-duty.”

“Uh, okay… so?”

I glared at her. “I’m not supposed to patrol on my own. It’s part of my probation. She ratted me out.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“You’re in trouble, then?”

“Yeah. She didn’t get close enough to see that I had more than tranq’s, but still. I got called out this morning, and Assmaster banned me from—”

Emma snorted, then clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. It’s just… Assmaster.“ She giggled.

I couldn’t help a smile, but it didn’t last long. “Anyway, he banned me from taking my costume and crossbows home. And stuck me on console duty for a month. And Vista got a pat on the fucking back for snitching on her goddamn teammates.”

“That sucks,” Emma said, putting a hand on my knee. The sympathy in her voice irritated me. “Does that mean you’re gonna stop patrolling?”

“For a while, yeah,” I told her. “They catch me again and I’ll be in deep shit. I’m not goin’ to juvie.”

She made an understanding noise and pulled her hand back. I missed it. The contact. Idiot.

“Where’s Hebert? Is she back yet?”

“Huh?” Emma said. I hadn’t realised I’d spoken out loud. “Uh, I’m not sure. I haven’t seen her today.”

“Fuck,” I growled. “I need something to hit. Where’s she been all week?”

“I don’t know. Probably skipping.”

“Like she’d have the guts to. What about Clements?”

Emma smiled at me, her eyebrow raised again. “You’re not going to beat her up, are you?”

I laughed. “No. Just asking where she is.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s in the gym, practicing. Her dance recital is next week, remember?”

“Oh, right.” Clements does dance? “Whatever.”

Emma leaned forward a bit, twisting to look up at me. “Hey, are you on duty tonight?”

“No. It’s friday, though, so I have track. Why?”

“Want to come over my place? I still have your sleeping bag, and we didn’t finish watching Jurassic Park last time. And I could do your nails again! I just got a sample of this great new colour from Revlon called Heart Red, and I think it’d look great on you. Especially if you put the lipstick on, too.”

“I… Yeah. That sounds nice.”

Emma beamed at me and bounced to her feet. “Great! I’ll call dad. Want a lift to your place, after you’re done with track? To pick up your clothes?”

“No, that’s alright. I’ll go myself. You don’t have to wait.”

“Okay.” She bent down to pick up her now-empty lunchbox and shoved it back into her bag, just as the bell for fifth period rang. I had maths, she had computers. “See you tonight!” she said, then ran off.

As I walked to my next class, I found myself smiling. I guess her attitude is catching.

——————————————————

The rest of school wasn’t terrible, but that’s the most I can say of it. Maths was boring, world issues was as much of a pain in the ass as ever, and track, well…

I couldn’t concentrate. My mind kept drifting back to how Assmaster and Miss Piggy had torn me a new one, and I kept trying to force it to think about tonight’s sleepover with Emma, but it just kept going back.

I don’t know if that means I’m cynical or focused on the past or whatever, but I do know that I wound up being the last person to finish my laps.

“Sophia!” Coach Jackie said, walking up to me as I towelled off. “You look a bit out of it. You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Oh? Are you sure?”

“I’m fine, Coach.”

She looked at me askance for a minute, and I sighed.

“I’m just a little distracted,” I said, though it came out as more of a grumble. I couldn’t help but think I sounded like a child. I hated it. “I’ll be fine next week.”

Coach Jackie put a hand on my shoulder. “You know you can talk to me if you ever need help with something, yeah?”

“I know.”

“Well, okay then.” She smiled. Mischievously. “You know the drill. Last place packs up.”

“Ugh,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Do I have to?”

“You’re damn right you do,” she chuckled, putting the storeroom keys in my hand. “Now get going. I’ve got a six pack and a game of hockey at home that require my attention.” She tussled my hair and pushed me toward the track, then turned and walked over to the car park. “See you next week, Sophia!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I called back. “See you.”

It took me maybe ten minutes to pack the hurdles and jump ropes and all the other stuff away. Phasing through walls is faster than walking, even if the hurdles are heavier than they look. When I was done, I dropped the keys off at the teacher’s lounge—though only the home-ec teacher was there—and walked to the bus stop.

The next bus wouldn’t be for another twenty minutes, so I called Emma and told her I’d be there in an hour or two. We chatted for a few minutes—she asked what I wanted for dinner, I said I didn’t care, we decided on pizza—then hung up. I went to sit down, and—

“Sophia.”

I stopped. Had I forgotten something, and a teacher had come out to let me know? Straightening, I looked behind me and frowned.

“Hebert?”

She was standing there, in the middle of the bus stop, wearing baggy jeans and a dark, equally-baggy hoodie, with the hood up. She had a backpack on, and those stupid-ass glasses of hers.

“I figured you’d have track today,” she said. “You usually do on fridays. I was waiting.” She scratched at the back of her head. “I would’ve spoken up sooner, but I didn’t want to interrupt your call.”

“Is that right?” I said, tucking my phone into my pocket. “You’re stalking me, now?” I felt a smile creeping on. Guess the world decided to throw me a bone. I was up for some stress relief.

“No,” Hebert said. “I just pay attention. You were talking to Emma, right? I used to do that, before. Can’t anymore. My dad threw out our cell phones when my mum died.”

“Guess he’s as pathetic as you, then.”

“Guess so.”

My smile slipped a little. I’d expected more of a reaction than that. But then, I wasn’t half as good at the verbal stuff as Emma. Or even Clements, for that matter. “You’ve been gone a while. Emma thinks you’ve been skipping, but I don’t think you have the guts to.”

“Hmm. I gave myself a cold.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Took a bunch of ice-cold showers, slept on the floor without any blankets or clothes, just wet underwear and socks. Wasn’t very hard. Uncomfortable, though.”

I smirked. “Wow. Sounds like a lot of effort. Does this mean you didn’t want to see me? I’m hurt.”

Hebert didn’t respond. I was just about to say something else when she did. “You like to fight, right?”

“What?”

“Fight. Hitting people. Hurting people. You know what I mean. You hit me all the time, so I figure you must.”

I shrugged. “Sure, I guess. Fighting’s the only real way to prove your worth. Beating on you isn’t fighting, though. That’s just par for the course.”

“Right, right.” She sniffed and wiped at her nose with a sleeve. “Want to fight, then? Properly?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Me? Fight you?”

“Yeah. We could go somewhere quiet. Somewhere empty. Just you and me. The train yard’s not far from here. The bus could take us right there. Then we could just wail on each other until someone runs out of teeth.”

I stared at her, probably unable to keep my incredulity off my face. Then I laughed. Maybe too much. I had to put a hand on the bus stop to keep from falling over, and the other clutched at my stomach. I managed to calm myself down after a minute or two, and I wiped tears from my eyes.

“You done?” Hebert said.

I looked at her and bit down another laugh. “You think a weakling like you has a chance against me in a fight?”

“I know I do. You’re a bully. And that makes you a coward.”

I grabbed her hoodie and pulled her in close. “You think I’m a coward?” I spat in her face. “You’re the one that gave herself a cold to get away from me. You’re the one that never fights back. You’re the fucking coward.”

“Yeah, bitch,” Hebert said, scowling at me, now. “I’m a coward. I own that. But I’m here now. You want me to fight back? I’m ready to fight back. Just say the fucking word.” I saw the bus approach out of the corner of my eye. “You said it yourself. I’m pathetic. I’m weak. But if you can’t even bring yourself to fight me on even ground, what does that make you?”

The bus pulled closer. “You want to go?” I snarled. “Fine.” I turned and waved the bus down, and boarded.

Hebert followed me.

——————————————————

We sat across from each other. Hebert spent the whole ride looking out the window, her hands shoved in her pockets. I spent it glaring at her.

This was a change. And not a welcome one. Not that it really mattered. Putting her in her place had never been hard. She might’ve finally decided to try and do something, but I could knock her back down. She wasn’t strong. This was just the moment she broke.

Hebert hit the stop button as we came up to the train yard, and we disembarked.

“This way,” she said, then started walking toward the tracks. I scowled, and followed.

The trip only took a few minutes, spent in silence, until Hebert stopped near the tracks, a stupidly old shipping container between us and where trains would come.

She looked around a bit, then took her bag off and put it down on the ground, resting against the shipping container. I put mine down, too. Then Hebert withdrew a pair of gloves and started pulling them on.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I said.

She glanced up at me. “Putting gloves on,” she said. “Obviously.”

I scowled at her. “Why?”

“I read they stop your hands from getting hurt so bad when you’re throwing punches. Lets me hit you for longer.”

“That’s boxing gloves, dipshit.”

She shrugged. “All the same.” She finished pulling the gloves on, then pushed her sleeve back and looked at her watch. It was a garish green, and looked like one of those shitty plastic ones you could get at the dollar store.

Goddamit. “Are we gonna fucking do this or not?”

“Just a minute. Have to wait for the train to go past, then there won’t be anyone to see us. Shouldn’t be long now.”

“Jesus christ. I’m going to enjoy this.” So we waited. I got more irritated by the second, until I felt like punching the bitch just to spite her. Then I heard a rumbling to the north. I looked past Hebert and saw a train approaching, slowly and loudly. It was one of those ones that carry coal or whatever, not people.

My foot tapped against the ground of its own volition. Patience is a virtue, my ass. Patience is for idiots.

The train reached us, then it was running alongside. It was ridiculously noisy, and—

BANG!

My shoulder jerked back and pain flared. I put one foot behind me to regain my balance, put one hand against the shipping container, the other on my shoulder, and whipped my head around to stare at Hebert.

She was pointing a gun at me.

She shot me.

Hebert fucking shot me!

“You—“

BANG!

I went shadow a fraction too late, and the second bullet took me in the stomach. The pain kicked me back out of shadow, and I fell to the ground with a long, low groan that I couldn’t stop.

She dropped the gun to her side.

“I always wondered why the villains took the time to monologue in movies,” Hebert said, looking down at me. “It’s so inefficient. I figured I’d shoot first, then monologue. It won’t be very long, though. I chose this place and this time for a reason, but there’s no sense in being stupid.”

She brought the gun up, turning it in her hands, inspecting it. “I bet you’re wondering where I got this. It was my grandfather’s.” I started crawling over to my bag, by the shipping container. “On my mother’s side. He served in the cold war. You know, the one with Russia and Vietnam. It’s his old service pistol. An M1911, I think. I found it about three weeks ago. Did some target prac—”

She stopped talking, walked over, and grabbed my bag, right out from under my hand.

“Fuck you,” I spat. Or tried to, anyway. It came out as a blubber, accompanied by a glob of blood.

Hebert reached out and stuck her hand in my pocket, taking my phone out. “Looking for this?”

Fuck. I swiped at her hand, but she drew it back. She put the phone in my bag, and put the bag down next to hers. Then she moved the gun to her left hand, and punched me in the face. Hard.

“Ow, shit,” she said, shaking her hand. I laughed at her, though it was more of a garbled snort. “Whatever. I didn’t have much to say anyway. Just that you’re a bitch.” She raised the gun again, and pulled the trigger. I went shadow, and the first bullet passed through me harmlessly, my body coalesced into smoke, twisting and turning in place. I had no momentum, and I couldn’t move in shadow form.

Hebert stopped after the first shot. “I’ve known you were Shadow Stalker for a while, too,” she said. “Over a month, now. I did a lot of research. I know you can’t hold that state for long. But I'd like to get this over with, and I heard some rumours that you’re not good with electricity, so…”

She turned and pulled a stun gun out of her bag. “I went and bought one of these. Cost me half my savings, but if it works, it’ll be worth it.” She put it in my shadow. “Ready?”

She powered it on, and the current laced through my body. I flickered into flesh, then back to shadow, then back to flesh. I opened my mouth to scream, but she punched me in the face again.

I groaned and writhed on the ground, but that only made the bullet wounds hurt more. Hebert put the stun gun back in her bag, then stood up and pointed the pistol at me. Something ran down my spine. I refused to consider what it was.

I met her eyes and panted for a long moment. “Guns are for cowards."

She smiled a sad smile. “I already told you, didn’t I? I’m okay with being a coward.”

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

CLICK.

I coughed. Blood spilled down my chin. There were already black spots in my vision.

I didn’t hurt anymore.

I just felt numb.

Cold.

I barely registered when Taylor picked up the bags and ran away.

I barely registered when a man in an orange and yellow jacket found me and put his fingers to my neck.

I didn’t register the ambulance arrive at all.

I need to tell Emma I’ll be late.

Blackness.

---

A/N: This is not a revenge fic, despite appearances. This was an experiment in writing Sophia, and the second thing I ever wrote and posted for Worm, after the Taylor vs Dovetail snippet above.

You can probably see why it needs a rewrite. I had the completely wrong idea of how Sophia's power worked, and I misrepresented her skill level (slightly). I also let her take a more passive role toward the end, which isn't really her.

Also, I got some comments on this the first time I posted about Taylor being OOC because of how cold-hearted she appears. But keep in mind this is entirely from Sophia's POV. Taylor is not even remotely calm or cold. She's freaking the fuck out, even before they start talking. I have outlines for a few more vignettes (one from Taylor's POV, one from Emma's, one from an investigator's) that would show this, but I can't write them until I've rewritten this, and I have so much other shit in the pipeline. Ugh.

 

Thinking of giving the 'Labyrinth of Winslow' idea its own thread for development purposes (especially as I've now got a decent title for it). Meanwhile, another idea:

The last real mother-daughter bonding activity (and for that matter, the last real conversation) that Annette and Taylor had before Annette's death was when Annette started helping Taylor learn to sew, because Taylor wanted to make a present for Emma. As she mourns, Taylor fixates on this, and after a week or two, triggers as a clothing-themed Tinker (which like a lot of Taylor powers, can be much scarier than it looks at first). Emma serves as The Tailor's model and assistant a fair bit, and Alan puts her into contact with Carol Dallon, as New Wave is perfectly happy to buy Tinkertech costumes, especially as The Tailor offers a discount to hometown heroes. Butterflies from this effect other events, including Emma triggering with a bud from QA when she's attacked (possibly under different circumstances), as she's been around Taylor a lot when the latter has been using her powers, for about a year. Also thought about Brian triggering under different circumstances, possibly with other capes being present (e. g. he triggers protecting his sister from some new E88 thugs who are being supervised by one or two of their capes, which may slightly alter his power; since he was wearing his motorcycle helmet and Aisha was too out of it to say anything, they don't know he has any connection to her beyond both being black).

She also works with Parian, supplying special cloth and related items, while Parian designs the 'look' of her stuff. Was thinking that The Tailor serves as Tinker support and an occasional field member for a superhero team called the Model Citizens, consisting of whatever cape-name Emma chooses (was thinking perhaps Queen Bee if she gets bug control), plus Shadow Lord (Brian), Shadow Lady (Sophia, who due to Brian's altered trigger, is helped rather than hindered by his power), Insight (Lisa), and Regent. I'd like to include Bitch, but that would be rather difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.


Thoughts?

 

Thanks. What do you mean "pleasantly surprised"?

Edit: Nevermind, it's pretty obvious. I'm an idiot.

 

Just wrote a introduction chapter for a CYOA and not sure if I'm allowed to just post a new thread. Also it's a while since I read Worm, does anyone remember, if it was ever cleared up, what exactly happened with Tattletales brother? I'm not sure and have my own ideas, but wanted to ask before I do someting and embarrass myself.

 

You're always allowed to make a thread for a story.

It's considered polite to make a thread when you intend to write a lot more than just one or two chapters, so if you have a plan for more, go ahead and make a thread.

He killed himself.

She never understood why.

Her power gave her amazing intuition so she could have figured his issues out if he were still alive, but alas it was too late to actually help.

 

Well, I'm not the fastest person when it comes to writing and the introduction chapter has only about 1450 words, but I would like to make more. So should I wait until I do have more? I just write a real first chapter to go with the introduction.

My idea was always that her parents tried to use her power to make money and she picked up that something simmilar happened to her brother, until he couldn't take it anymore, also that her Negotiator shard is a bud from him. So she run away, as soon as she understood. That would work?

 

Her brother, Reggie, committed suicide. She mentioned to her parents that she'd noticed something off about him before he did it, and they started blaming her for it. She triggered in her sleep a while later, and her dad found out and started using her power for his own benefit. After a while of that, she got fed up, stole some of her parents' money (which didn't last long, since she had no idea how to manage money), ran away from home, and changed her name to Lisa Wilbourn. See this chapter.

Sidenote: I've seen a few stories where Lisa has been accused by someone in-story of making her brother commit suicide (which not true, obviously), and that irritated me, since her brother's death (and her parents blaming her for it) isn't something I think anyone else would know (even the PRT). I've also seen a story or two where Lisa used a different name at the start of the story (she's called Trish in Memories of Iron), which I also dislike, since Lisa Wilbourn is an alias, not just a fake name. She put effort into that alias; she didn't just come up with it on the spot, so her deciding to use a different name is silly.

That sounds fine.

You can make a thread whenever you want. But personally, I wouldn't make a thread until I had at least two chapters done, or around 10 to 15 thousand words, whichever is bigger. But my chapters are usually on the longer side: my current project, Alexis, is at 8k atm and still in progress, and my most recent two completed projects were 4.5k (the Arcadia Not-1.1 snippet posted above) and 11k (NSFW Taylor/Lisa story). All three are first chapters for stories I intend to be long-running.

Why? Well, as a reader, I like seeing a good amount of content when a new thread is made. Lets me get a good feeling for the story and the writing style and the characters and that stuff, to see if its worth following, and you usually can't get that if there's a small amount of content (like a single 1450 word introduction). And as a writer, I do what satisfies me, so I'd wait to post until I had enough for people to get a good impression of my story.

But of course, you can do whatever you want.

 

Both of you evildice and Angush. Thank you for the clarifications and advice.

 

With a CYOA story, however, it's best to put as much distance between your story and the actual CYOA content as possible. If I see an entire prologue chapter of "I chose this, and this, and this...," I tend to drop the fic immediately. Even a single paragraph of that is too much IMO.

Just jump directly into the narrative and let curious readers try to figure out what your OOC setup was. (By extension, feel free to ignore the Rules of The CYOA if you feel it would make a better story. They're more like guidelines, anyway.)

 

So I should just start with chapter one instead. Okay, I try that, but it will take a while. Thank you for the advice.

 

For those who are interested, Labyrinth of Winslow now has it's own development thread.

 

The Three Blasphemies are The Crones of Crookback Bog.

Suddenly popped up in my head, thought I'd throw that out there.

 

I've been mulling over an idea but don't really have anywhere to go with it beyond the base idea itself. Gonna post it here and see what happens.

QA goes for the Peggy Sue option, and it works. Only it overshoots the target of trying to reattach to Taylor in the locker....by alot. Taylor ends up being the first person to Trigger at the age of negative 5 months old, still in the womb and not fully formed.

QA realizes how bad this could be and pulls back pretty much it's entire influence, leaving only a tiny hint of what it can do so as to not destroy her ability to develop.

The end result of this is I'm thinking her radius is tiny, a few inches at birth and slowly expanding to reach several feet when she is about a toddler. The major thing is that since her brain has the input from QA from the very beginning, insects are not used like her ears, eyes, and hands, they ARE direct extensions of herself. There is no real differentiation between her own senses and those of the bugs she is controlling.

I'm also imagining that Danny and Annette do their best to keep it a secret, Annette's experience with Lustrum giving her bad experience with the PRT. This would cut canon off at the knees though, not just from her having her power early but with her parents trying to keep everything hidden she probably would never becomes friends with Emma and even if she did she wouldn't be as close with Danny and Annette coaching her on secrecy constantly.

 

This is a cool idea. Can't think of a good story for it though.

Anyway, here's a thing I did last week:

 

Alexis - Part 1

---

August 28^th, 2007

A PRT officer led Mom, Emma and I into a hospital room that had clearly been repurposed for interviews or something. He gestured, and we took our seats.

The officer—Byers, according to his name-tag—perused a file for a few seconds, then looked up. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s get things started, shall we? My name’s Roger Byers.” He shook Mom’s hand, then mine and Emma’s too. “I’m a research assistant with the PRT’s Parahuman Studies division.” Not an officer, then. “I’m sorry for the delay, but we’ve been rather busy this week, for obvious reasons. You’re the sixth group I’ve seen today. Now!” He brought his hands together, intertwining his fingers. “Taylor and Emma, is it? I understand you’re here for the Super scans?”

“Yep!” Emma said before I could answer. I looked at her sideways; she just grinned wider, and Mom smiled. “We’re gonna be heroes. Even if it says we can’t be.”

Mr. Byers laughed. “That’s a good attitude to have,” he said. “How old are you two?”

“Twelve,” we answered in unison. We shared a grin.

“I see, I see. Well, I hope it goes well for you.” He lowered his hands and looked at my mom. “Have you read the documentation we provided?”

“I have,” Mom said, nodding, “as has my husband, and Emma’s parents. We’ve already supplied their medical records, and signed the consent forms.”

“Good, that’s good. I hope you don’t mind if I explain the basics again? It’s protocol, I’m afraid.”

“No, that’s alright.”

“Alright.” Mr. Byers pulled a folder out of his bag and placed a few documents on the table. “First and foremost, be aware that the results of this scan will be recorded, regardless of the outcome, and that those records will be strictly confidential. This means that if either of these girls are eligible for the Super program, the directors of the Super program will be made aware of this, and the records will be available to all suitably ranked personnel of certain government bodies, such as the PRT itself.

“Second, these scans and tests are simply to determine eligibility. Actually entering the Super program at this stage is a significantly more involved process, which will be detailed after the results come in, provided they are positive. Note that applying for the Super program is entirely optional, and is not in any way required of you, should you prove eligible.”

Mr. Byers crossed his arms on the table. “With me so far?”

Mom nodded. Emma and I nodded too, though some of it had gone over my head, and probably Emma’s as well.

“Alright.” Mr. Byers pushed one document toward us, and Mom picked it up and started reading it. I strained to see what it said, but the angle was bad. “You’ll need to sign here.“ He pointed to a blank line on the document. “Just to verify you’ve understood. Now, the testing itself is a relatively simple process, but there are a few things to be aware of.” He turned to Emma and I. “Are either of you claustrophobic? Afraid or uncomfortable with tight, enclosed spaces?”

We shook our heads. Emma certainly wasn’t claustrophobic; I remembered the kind of places she hid during hide and seek. More specifically, I remembered being dumbfounded at how tight a space she could squeeze into.

“Good,” Mr. Byers said with a nod and a smile. “The test is a simple brain scan. First we’ll inject a contrast agent and a vial of nanobots into your bloodstream. Then we’ll slide you into a tinker-built NRI machine. It’ll fill up with an oxygenated neural imaging solution—specifically designed for human intake—that will enable you to breathe, and the machine will take a few pictures and work with the nanobots to scan your brain properly. After the scan is done, we’ll withdraw the bots, slide you on out again, and the results will be ready in a few minutes. Don’t worry; this is all one-hundred-percent safe. We’ve done it a thousand times.”

Emma made a face. I knew what she was thinking before she even said it. “There’ll be needles?”

“Yes,” Mr. Byers chuckled. “But they’re very small. Although, the agents can be taken orally, if you prefer, with water. It just means the test preparation takes a little longer.”

Mom grabbed a pen off the table and signed the form on the dotted line, then handed it back to Mr. Byers and smiled at Emma and I. “Well, girls,” she said. “I’m ready when you are.”

This is the best day of my life.

—————————————————

Mr. Byers took us to a room built of white tiles, then left. A blonde woman in a nurse’s outfit named Ms. Jones took his place; she handed us a pair of grey-blue hospital gowns—the ones with the cut down the side—and pointed us to a curtained partition for changing.

After we’d gotten out of our normal clothes—including underwear, which was horribly embarrassing—and into the hospital gowns, Ms. Jones sat me down—I was first. She asked if I was okay with needles, and brought them out when I said yes; after all, what kind of superhero was afraid of needles? Of course, that doesn’t mean I was eager to look at them, no matter how small they were.

Ms. Jones explained what the actual test would be like and what each needle contained, saying a lot of what Mr. Byers had said, and told me I’d feel a pinch. Mom squeezed my hand, and Emma watched with her lip between her teeth. She’d always hated getting vaccinated at school.

The needles didn’t hurt much. They injected the first one—the contrast agent—into my arm, then the nanobots in my neck, right at the base of my skull. Then a second nurse took me to a side room while Ms. Jones asked Emma if she was okay with needles. I smiled when I heard Emma say, “Superheroes aren’t afraid of needles,” just before the door closed.

This new room was empty and bare, except for a huge cylindrical machine in the centre and a dark-tinted window in one wall. The nurse led me over to the machine and pulled a long, narrow tray out of it, then gestured for me to lie down. I did so, holding the bottom of my gown in place with one hand. Once I was flat on my back, the nurse slid the tray back in and closed the hatch, leaving me alone.

I could see why Mr. Byers asked if we were claustrophobic.

The inside of the machine was tight, the inner walls smooth and grey—at least in what little light I had. The only exceptions were the black orb directly above my head and the small dotted speaker grill beside it.

I shifted a bit.

“Taylor?” a man’s voice sounded from the speaker grill. “Are you feeling alright?”

I nodded, then remembered they couldn’t see me. “I’m fine.”

The voice chuckled. “Good. By the way, nodding is fine. We have a camera in there for monitoring purposes.” I blushed, glancing at the black orb. “Yep, that’s it. Now then, I’m Doctor Lee. We’re just prepping the machine for your scan. We’ll start in just a moment, okay?”

“Okay.”

I waited, and continued shifting in place. I couldn’t help it. This test was going to decide my future, and I had no control over the outcome. I couldn’t spend more time studying like I would for an exam. I couldn’t practice to improve like I could for a musical instrument. I couldn’t exercise like if I were a member of the track-and-field club.

No, nothing I could do would affect the results. Either my brain was valid for the program, or it was not. All I could do was lie here, wait, and hope it would turn out the way I wanted.

I hated it.

The machine made a ca’thunk sound and started whirring. I heard liquid flowing and splashing beneath me.

“We’re almost ready now, Taylor,” Dr. Lee said through the speakers. “As soon as the capsule is filled with the imaging solution, we’ll start.” I felt the water rise to my legs, and looked down. It was clear. I took a deep breath and held it as the water level rose. “There’s no need to hold your breath. The imaging solution is oxygenated. It will feel odd at first, but once it’s in your lungs, you’ll have no trouble breathing. Just relax.”

Ms. Jones had told me the same thing, but I held my breath anyway. The water reached my ears, and then my cheeks, and I squeezed my eyes shut as it engulfed me completely. After a few more seconds, the whirring stopped.

I cracked open one eye; I could see fine. Still holding my breath, I opened both my eyes fully and looked around. It was impossible to tell I was underwater. I brought one hand up to my face and waved it around. It didn’t feel like there was any resistance, as far as I could tell.

…Had they drained the water already?

“Taylor,” Dr. Lee said. “We can’t run the test while you’re holding your breath.”

Oh. Right. I released my held breath, bubbles escaping from my nose. That was a mistake. The water—which evidently had not been drained—rushed into my nose and travelled down to my lungs as I attempted to breathe again. I spluttered and tried to cough it out, but that accomplished nothing, since I was still underwater.

“Taylor! Taylor, relax. I know it’s counter-intuitive, but you need to breathe normally.”

I shook my head and pushed at the walls in vain. But I couldn’t stop myself from breathing in another load of water, enough to fill me up. I thrashed for a moment longer, then stopped. I could breathe just fine. I took a second to build my courage, then took a deep breath. It felt weird.

“Huh.”

“There you go,” Dr. Lee said. “Not so bad once it’s over with, is it?” I blushed; I’d forgotten he was there. And they have a camera! Oh god. Do they record these tests? I hope not. That wouldn’t exactly be a great start to my hero career.

“Sorry,” I said.

Dr. Lee chuckled over the speakers. “Don’t worry, that’s a perfectly natural reaction. It happens a lot. People aren’t really designed to have liquid in their lungs.” I smiled. “Now, are you feeling okay? Any discomfort or other concerns you’d like to voice before we start? If we have to stop part-way through, you’ll need to go through the entire prep procedure again.”

I shook my head. “I’m okay, I think.”

“Alright. We’ll calibrate the nanobots, first.” The machine ca’thunk’d again, and a deep, low buzzing emanated from behind my head. “The imager will be rather loud, and it’ll sound a bit like someone merged a drum kit with an old camera shutter, but there’s nothing to be afraid of. Just try to relax.” I heard a series of hisses and clicks as a light tingling sensation presented itself in my head, and the buzzing faded. “If you want to stop at any time for any reason, or you feel any discomfort or pain, just give the word, and we’ll shut it off immediately. Okay?”

“Okay.”

A moment of silence. “Starting now.”

True to his word, a rhythmic thumping began, each thump emanating from a different side of my head and punctuated by a click. It was a little intimidating, but I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths and relax. Heroes were fearless, and I was going to be a hero, frailty issues be damned.

The tingling in the back of my head grew and shifted with each thump of the machine. I also felt a headache coming on, but I figured that was normal. I just closed my eyes and continued taking slow, deep breaths.

—————————————————

“Taylor?” Dr. Lee said. I opened my eyes and looked at the camera, belatedly realising the thumping had stopped. “The test is finished, now. Well done.”

I blushed, and immediately felt like an idiot. Praise wasn’t that rare.

“We’re going to drain the imaging solution now, okay?”

I nodded, and a few seconds later I heard another clunk and the water began draining out of the machine. Getting it out of my lungs might actually have been worse than getting it in. Once it was empty, they opened the hatch, slid me out of the machine, and handed me a towel to dry myself off as best I could.

With everything finished, I was taken back to the prep room, where Emma was sitting, looking nervous, Mom holding her hand now. I smiled at her, and she jumped when Ms. Jones poked her with a needle. Then she was taken into the room I’d just left to be tested herself.

My clothes were returned to me, and I changed back into them, handing the wet hospital gown to an orderly. Ms. Jones asked me if I’d like my results now, or if I wanted to wait and hear them when Emma did.

I told her I’d wait.

—————————————————

“Taylor!”

Emma leaped at me and caught me in a hug, laughing when I jumped. I laughed too, even though she’d interrupted a conversation with my Mom.

“You’re all wet!” I said, trying to push her off me.

“I am?” Emma said. She pulled back and looked down at herself, then glanced off to the side, looking sheepish. “Whoops. I forgot.”

Ms. Jones fetched her clothes, and I pushed Emma over to the changing partition. She closed it behind her. Ms. Jones asked if she wanted to hear her results alone, or at the same time as me. She gave the same answer I did, and Ms. Jones told us it would be a few minutes.

Emma came back out of the partition, skipped over, and took a seat beside me. “So?” she said, grinning like a loon. “How’d it go for you?”

I smiled. “The test? It was fine. Kind of boring, though.”

“Ugh, I know, right? And that sound was so annoying.”

I glanced around. Mom was the only other person in the room, but I leaned in to whisper in Emma’s ear anyway. “What did you think about the water?”

She grimaced. “That was awful. I mean, like, I know they told us that was gonna happen, but I still felt like throwing up.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I—“ I cut off as Ms. Jones came back into the room with a heavyset asian man beside her. “Dr. Lee?” I said.

The man smiled and bowed his head slightly. “Nice to properly meet you, Taylor, Emma.”

“Are those the results?” Emma said, pointing at the folder he was holding.

“Yes, they are,” Dr. Lee said, then turned to my mom. “But I’d like to speak with Miss Hebert for just a moment, if you don’t mind?”

Mom quirked an eyebrow, but followed him into the side room anyway. I hope it doesn’t take too long.

Emma bumped my shoulder. “Hey, Taylor,” she whispered. “What power do you want?”

“Flying,” I said immediately.

“Oh, that’d be awesome,” Emma said. “Fire control would be pretty good, too.”

I grinned and bumped her back. “You’re a pyromaniac now?”

She returned the grin. “I would also accept water control.”

After a few more minutes of deliberation, we decided flight and turning into animals—especially cats, birds, and dolphins—were in the highest tier when it came to awesome powers, followed closely by pyrokinesis, telekinesis, and hydrokinesis.

We were in the midst of discussing the minutiae of costume design, even though someone would probably do that for us if we got into the Super program, when Mom and Dr. Lee came back, and told us to sit down. Mom sat beside us and put her hand on my knee.

“So?” Emma said. “Did we pass? Are we gonna be superheroes?”

Dr. Lee sighed. “I’m afraid not.” Emma and I met each other’s eyes; she was frowning much like how I was. “Neither of you are eligible candidates for the Super program, and you’re unlikely to trigger naturally, either.”

I… What? I… can’t be a superhero? No. No, that can’t be right. I knew my bones weren’t as strong as they should be, but what does that matter? I could still be a hero. I could still help people.

I looked at Emma. Her mouth was slightly ajar, her lower lip quivering every few seconds. Her eyebrows were no longer furrowed, but raised in the middle, just a smidgen. I felt my hand tremble, and grabbed Emma’s to still myself—and her.

“I’m sorry, girls,” Dr. Lee said, folding his hands over his stomach. “But… Taylor? I’m afraid I have some more bad news. I’ve already spoken to your mother, but I have to ask: would you prefer I give it in private?”

“W-what?” My mom gave me an apologetic look and squeezed my knee again, and Emma turned to me, worry plain in her eyes. “I don’t… No. What is it?”

Dr. Lee removed a few images from the folder in his hands, and held them in front of me. They were blue-grey and not entirely opaque, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of them.

“The scans provide detailed information of brain structure and chemical balance, among other things,” Dr. Lee said. “That’s how we determine suitability for the Super program; it’s mostly luck of the draw. But in your case, the scans revealed data about your brain that was not on your medical records, presumably because you’ve never had a brain scan before.

“The scans indicate severe brain damage, especially in the areas responsible for the sensation of touch, long-term memory, and vision—“ he pointed them out on the images “—that is, the parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. Or at least, we assume those are the most heavily affected areas. In addition to the deformities, sections of your brain also seem to be in the… incorrect locations, for lack of a better term.

“This appears to have been caused by a growth in the centre of your brain, displacing the other lobes by several inches in some cases. The growth itself appears similar to the corona pollentiae and corona gemma, those responsible for parahuman abilities. However, there is no evidence of you possessing any parahuman abilities, and the neural structure of this growth differs greatly from that of the corona pollentiae and corona gemma, and it is also in a different location.

“This growth is not something I’ve ever seen record of, but discovering it now is actually a good thing. This kind of situation has happened before: in Arizona, they discovered a malignant tumour in one boy’s brain during his Super eligibility test. They operated within the week, and it’s very likely that discovery saved his life. The growth in your brain is too complex to be a tumour, and it seems to contain active neurons. However, it appears benign, and it is definitely not cancerous, but further observation and testing would be required to make a proper diagnosis.

“You also exhibit none of the typical symptoms of brain damage, which seems to indicate your condition is unlikely to cause you any real difficulty in the immediate future. All the same, if it is at all possible, I would like for you to come back in a few days for additional testing. Just because it appears benign does not mean it is not dangerous.”

I sat stock-still, dead silent, slowly absorbing Dr. Lee’s words. Brain damage? A… growth? And on top of that, I couldn’t be a hero?

Mom squeezed my knee, caressing my back with her other hand. Emma wrapped her arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder.

This is the worst day of my life.

—————————————————

October 7^th, 2011

I unlocked the front door and limped into the house, taking care to shut it softly behind me; I didn’t want to break it again. I made my way through the lounge, passing by the dozen or so discarded beer cans on the coffee table as I moved to the stairs. I took them slow, one at a time, except for the broken step I had to jump over—which of course made my ribs twinge. I winced.

Fucking Sophia.

Eventually, I reached my bedroom, the cleanest room in the house—and, not coincidentally, the only room Dad never entered. Used to be I’d clean a different room of the house every day of the week, like Mom had, but I’d stopped bothering after the hundredth time Dad hadn’t noticed. With a sigh, I dropped my bag against the door and trudged through to my ensuite bathroom. Once there, I stripped to my underwear, discarding my hoodie and jeans on the floor, and looked in the mirror.

Mottled bruises covered the vast majority of my body, each a different shade of purple or brown or yellow, each at a different stage of healing, but all awful to look at. I’d always bruised easily. Worse, I was bleeding. I’d pulled the stitches on my thigh, and there was a fresh gash running from the back of my wrist—right-hand side—almost all the way to my elbow. I had no idea how that had happened.

I glanced back the way I’d come, into my room, and saw droplets of blood forming a trail from the hall to my bathroom. And they probably continued down to the front door. Maybe even further. And there was a visible red patch on my jeans.

Shit.

A moment’s consideration, and I figured I’d have enough time to clean up myself and the blood before Dad got home. Or rather, I hoped I would. At least there were no visible bloodstains on my hoodie; thank god for the colour black.

I filled up the kettle I kept in my bathroom cabinet and set it to boil. Then I fetched my medical kit from beneath the sink and popped it open on the bench, ignoring the twinge from my ribs when I bent over. I withdrew the needle and thread, bandages, tweezers and nail clippers, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a bag of cotton balls, and placed them all on the bench.

I left the razor where it was, untouched since the last time I’d chickened out.

While the kettle boiled, I cleaned the blood from my arm and leg with warm water from my sink. It was a little awkward, but at this point I was used to it. The kettle dinged just as I finished drying off, and I poured the boiled water into a metal dish. I dropped the needle, tweezers, and clippers in, and gave them a few minutes to sterilise.

I took the time to look over the rest of my body for any other open wounds I might’ve missed, and found nothing. But I did find a broken rib. My fingers moved further down my side and prodded again, and—yep. Make that two broken ribs. Great. Note to self: don’t get pushed down the stairs again.

My elbow hurt like a bitch, too, but I wasn’t sure breaking your elbow was actually possible. If it was, it probably would have happened to me already. At least I wasn’t having much difficulty breathing.

But just to be safe, I wrapped a bandage around my midriff anyway. Once I’d hooked it, I took my tools from their dish, dried them off with a paper towel, and gave them a once-over with a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol. Then I took a seat on the edge of my bathtub—which doubled as a shower—and twisted my leg so it was easier to access.

I bent over my leg, again ignoring the twinge from my side, and got to work. Tweezers to lift the knot, nail clippers to cut the thread, then back to the tweezers to pull it out of my skin. Repeat until all the stitches were removed. It hurt a little, and blood welled at each suture point, but not enough to cause an issue.

When I’d finished, I grabbed my needle and thread and started reapplying the stitches. That hurt more. It probably didn’t help that I was rushing a little.

Half-way through, I missed with the needle and stabbed myself in the palm. I stared at it, embedded half an inch into my skin—or possibly more—for a long, long minute.

And then I started crying.

—————————————————

I’d done up my stitches and applied bandages and antiseptic, changed into some fresh clothes and dumped by blood-stained ones in a bucket with some fabric cleaner, and massaged my bruises with warm water mixed with vinegar—I’d read online that it was supposed to help accelerate how quickly the bruises faded; it hadn’t really done much yet, but I’d only been doing it a few days, and even a little bit would be helpful.

I had just finished cleaning my blood off the floor when Dad got home. I heard his truck pull up in the driveway, and scrubbed frantically to remove the last stain, then ran over to the sink to give the brush a rinse.

The door handle squeaked as it was depressed; then the door opened, and Dad was inside. I looked over my shoulder at him, but he didn’t so much as glance in my direction, just deposited his bag and keys on the coffee table and dropped onto the lounge, in his usual spot. He popped open a can of beer, switched the TV on, and started channel-surfing, eventually stopping on a game of college football being broadcast live from our very own BBU.

I finished cleaning the brush, put a pair of frozen dinners in the oven, and went up to my room.

Dad didn’t need me.

—————————————————

But of course, I needed him. If only to pay the bills. And I’d forgotten about the excursion for Mr. Gladly’s World Issues classes. There was going to be a quiz afterward, and attendance was worth almost half my grade for some reason that only made sense to Mr. Gladly, so I couldn’t skip it. Not unless I wanted to risk repeating the year; I was already in danger of failing art. I could forge my dad’s signature on the permission slip, but I wasn’t comfortable doing the same with his cheque book.

So, it was with great reluctance that I went back downstairs and interrupted his football game.

“Dad?” I said, tapping on his shoulder.

He grunted, not looking away from the TV.

“Uh, I need money. A cheque. It’s for a field trip, for school.”

He glanced in my direction, but didn’t actually look at me. There was a moment of quiet. “Where’s my cheque book?” he said.

I handed it to him, along with a pen, and tapped my feet against the floor.

Dad filled out the recipient details and signed it, then looked vaguely in my direction again. “How much?”

“Fifty dollars,” I said, suppressing a wince at the amount.

Dad didn’t care. He added the sum, tore the cheque out, and held it back to me. I grabbed it, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he turned and actually looked at me. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. He looked down at my hand, and I realised the bandage on my wrist was visible. I pulled the sleeve of my hoodie down over it—hoodies were pretty much all I could wear these days, unless I wanted to risk people thinking my dad was abusive; which I didn’t.

His gaze lingered on my wrist for a long moment, then he let go of the cheque and turned back to the TV.

That hurt more than the broken ribs and bruises combined.

It shouldn’t have. He was always like this. We’d never been close, and the distance had only gotten worse after Mom died. He’d refused to look at me for weeks after she died, and I’d spent most nights at Emma’s house, those first few months. And that had been over two years ago, now. He gave me money when I asked, and paid the bills, and never mistreated me, but I knew. I knew he didn’t care about me. I was used to this.

It shouldn’t have hurt. It shouldn’t have surprised me.

But it did.

“Thank you,” I said.

He didn’t reply.

—————————————————

October 11^th, 2011

The bus ride was a shitty affair. Sixty high school kids crammed into a tight environment for almost two hours with nothing to do but… gossip. Ugh. I nabbed a seat right up the front; all the ‘cool kids’ gravitated to the back, and I wasn’t about to risk sitting near Emma or Sophia. Or even Madison, for that matter. A stroke of good luck meant I was one of the only people that didn’t have to share a seat.

But instead… I got stuck sitting across from Mr. Gladly. And boy, wasn’t that fun. He spent the first half of the drive trying to draw me into a conversation, asking me how I was doing and what I was looking forward to most on this excursion—to which my answer was, “Nothing.” I was only here for a passing grade; Mom would turn in her grave if I had to repeat a year. I stayed silent where I could and gave half-hearted, single-word replies where I couldn’t, and he eventually got tired of me and left me alone.

We arrived in Boston around ten, and Mr. Gladly split us into three groups. Emma and Sophia went into one, I went into another. But I got stuck with Greg Veder, and Julia Daniels, and Alison Hunt, and Laura whatever-her-name-was. And Madison Clements. She was hardly the worst of my tormentors—the most she’d ever done was dump her pencil shavings or juice box on my desk; annoying, sure, but nothing compared to Emma or Sophia and their war-like approach to making my life hell—but she was still one of them.

I resolved to avoid her as much as possible.

A teacher aide—I think her name was Ms. Hudson—was assigned to chaperone my group, while Mr. Gladly went with Emma and Sophia’s, and some other woman went with the third.

So there was one saving grace, at least. I wouldn’t have to deal with him and his fucking pity.

—————————————————

Mr. Gladly’s group went for a tour of the PRT headquarters, and the third group went to visit the Boston Tower, but my group’s first stop was Boston’s Museum of Heroes. Ms. Hudson let one of the museum staff take over and give us a tour, but she spent most of it fiddling with her phone—as did seventy percent of the group.

I didn’t really blame them; the displays weren’t the most interesting thing in the world, and the tour guide sounded unbelievably bored. Besides, if they were on their phones, they weren’t bothering me. And I was all for that.

I let myself drag behind the rest of the group, hunching in on myself—though it didn’t really stop people from noticing me. Madison and her coterie threw me several looks and whispered among themselves, giggling like idiots ten times a minute. Ms. Hudson glanced at me once or twice, but all she ever did was turn back to her phone.

The tour guide showed us some of the collaborative murals street artists had made after Behemoth’s attack on Boston almost twenty years ago, depicting fallen heroes, some in-costume, some out—but none I recognised. There were even a few villains, as Greg was quick to point out. The murals themselves had somehow been moved from their original places and brought here to be put on display.

I bet they’d had to move them because someone wanted to knock down the buildings they were originally painted on. Probably to build a McDonalds. Heh. Capitalism at its finest.

Another exhibit focused on Boston’s rogue community… but there wasn’t much to speak of. I saw a few displays for the more ‘well-known’ rogues, though I didn’t recognise any of them either, recounting what they had done for Boston’s economy or whatever industry they had specialised in. It was kinda depressing; every single one of them was either dead or turned to villainy. Maybe they should have just stayed at home.

The next stop on our ever-exuberant tour guide’s… well, guide… was similarly depressing: an exhibit dedicated to the Super program. There was one display detailing its conception, and another chronicling its downfall. A dozen little cube displays were spread about the room, each dedicated to a different Boston hero the Super program had birthed, listing their accomplishments and their origins, each punctuated by a quote from the lucky kid in question.

Or maybe not-so-lucky. After all, half of them were dead now, too, and it had barely been five years since the program started.

It brought back memories. Memories I was happier without. The months of invasive testing… how the local doctors had clamoured to do a fucking research paper on my brain and how we’d had to sue them to make them fuck off… the way Emma had started treating me differently after we found out—subtly, to be sure, but differently.

I scowled, resisting the urge to kick one of the exhibits to shit.

Not a day went by I didn’t wish I was a normal person; that my body wasn’t so fucked up, that my brain wasn’t such an interesting fucking specimen. If I was normal, Emma might never have turned on me: her loveable, retarded friend—even though we’d proven long before that I wasn’t actually impaired in any way, mentally, and she’d proven she had no love for me.

And I might even have been eligible for the Super program, all those years ago. I mean, sure, I might have gotten unlucky: I might have ended up as one of the kids who went insane, or one of the kids that started growing tumours the size of tennis balls.

But honestly? At least I would have done something worthwhile before I kicked the bucket, or had to be put down.

The tour wasted another half hour or so of my admittedly worthless time, which I spent kicking my feet and hating my life. After it was over and done with, we stopped for lunch. The cool kids bought takeout or a hotdog off one of the street vendors, but I just sat down as far as I could get from everyone else without drawing Ms. Hudson’s attention—not that I thought she’d actually do anything even if I stood up now and hitched a bus to New York—then cracked open my lunchbox, and dug into my sandwich; but of course, the contents of said sandwich fell out the bottom, making a mess on my jeans.

I heard Madison’s little sorority laughing at me.

I ignored them.

—————————————————

The group destinations rotated. The second stop for Mr. Gladly’s group was the Museum of Heroes, while the third group went to the PRT HQ, and we went to the Boston Tower.

It was designed sort of like an airport tower—or at least, what I imagined an airport tower looked like; I’d never even been on a plane—a tall, thin, cylindrical shaft stretching maybe eight stories high, with a big, flat almost-ellipsoid shape stuck on the top. The outside was formed all of dark grey metal plates, the seams in between them barely noticeable. Black bands bordered the doors and windows.

The ground floor was tiny; there was a security officer, a receptionist, a couple tour guides, a toilet, and not much else. We signed in and grabbed a guide, then crowded into the elevator—though we needed two trips. There were stairs circling the elevator shaft, but they were for emergency use only, and I had no interest in climbing them anyway.

The top floor—though there were pretty much only the two—was split into two segments, an upper and a lower. The lower half was where the elevator came out, and was filled to the brim with art and displays and more little exhibits, the windows overlooking the park outside. There weren’t many people there—few enough tourists that I could count them on my hands.

The upper half, from what I could see, was geared more for the tourist crowd, with a miniature food court and a gift shop that probably sold stupid shit like figurines and Armsmaster brand underwear. There were more windows, and a set of stairs leading to the roof.

Our guide showed us around and introduced some of the more intricate exhibits, though most of them were fairly simple. Oddly, this tour guide didn’t seem to hate her life as much as she should. She was actually… peppy. But then, the Boston Tower was actually moderately interesting. Moderately.

Really, it was more of a monument than a tower, only nine or ten stories high in total, dedicated equally to Behemoth’s attack and the Battle for Boston that followed. Many of the tower’s displays weren’t all that different to the murals from the museum, except that the paintings and exhibits here were clearly professionally done, and they depicted heroes I actually recognised.

I took some time to inspect a huge and incredibly well-done painting of the Behemoth fight. It depicted Alexandria, leading the charge against Behemoth with an army of capes at her back and Scion floating over them in the background. I’d always looked up to her. She’d been my dream. My inspiration. The reason I’d wanted to be a hero, ever since I was a kid. Emma’s inspiration, too.

Between her and Behemoth, beneath Scion in the middle of the painting, lay Legend, his body broken and beaten. Golden rays of light shone down on him from Scion, and one last, huge, rainbow laser-beam was lancing from his outstretched hand toward Behemoth, adding to the hundreds of bleeding cuts already carved into every visible part of the Endbringer’s body.

Legend had died before I was born, so I’d never had the chance to idolise him the same way I did Alexandria. But he’d gone out in a blaze of glory, and even though Behemoth had survived in the end, I respected him for it. As did Alexandria.

I heard sirens. Not Endbringer sirens, thankfully, just regular old police sirens.

I moved over to the nearest window and glanced down. A half dozen vehicles, both PRT vans and police cruisers, pulled up below the tower, sirens blaring. Men—and maybe women, too, I couldn’t really tell from up here—piled out of the vehicles and took up places behind them, pulling their weapons out and holding them at the ready.

Were they doing a drill or something? A training exercise? Why would they do that here?

The elevator dinged. I turned. The receptionist was shoved out the doors and fell to her knees, sobbing. An average-sized man in a balaclava stepped out, dumped a sack on the ground, then pulled her to her feet and scanned the room. He held a pistol in his right hand, while his left hand was wreathed in a purpley-black fire. Their clothes were spattered with blood.

For a long moment, there was silence—broken only by the receptionist’s sobbing and the sirens outside. Then one of the girls from my group shrieked, and everything sunk in.

“Shut up!” the balaclava guy roared, spittle visibly flying from his lips. He gestured with his gun toward the centre of the room and kicked the receptionist forward. “Everyone group up there! Now!”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Everyone jumped into action, running to comply with Mr. Crazy’s demands. A few tourists up in the dining court area leaned over the railing to see what was happening, only to freeze when Mr. Crazy aimed his gun at them. “You too!” he shouted. “Everyone get down here!”

They hurried to obey, too. I joined the others on the floor, forcing myself to take deep breaths and trying not to freak out.

A security guard ran out of the gift shop and levelled his own gun at Mr. Crazy. “Drop the—“ He cut off as Mr. Crazy gestured with his left hand, and a cloud of purple fire enveloped the security guard, almost in an instant. He screamed as flesh sizzled, and Mr. Crazy shot him. The screams stopped. The guard’s body crumpled and fell over the railing, landing with a heavy thump on the metal floor. Someone wailed.

“Anyone else?” he challenged, glaring around the room, eyes darting as he searched for any other threats. “Didn’t think so. Now sit the fuck down, and shut the fuck up!”

The last few tourists dropped to their knees in the centre of the room with the rest of us. I glanced over to the side; the girl who had wailed, Alison, had wrapped her arms around her body and was trembling violently, but she quieted down and made do with periodic whimpers.

Mr. Crazy spun and waved his hand toward the windows. The fire by the dining court railing disappeared, and walls of smokey purple flame burst into being against all the windows of the lower floor, save the one closest to us. Then he turned to us and waved his hand again, and another wall of fire—this one a lot smaller—flared into existence at the edge of our group, spreading out to encircle us completely as he moved his hand around. The people closest to the ring of fire cried out and shuffled as far back as they could.

He glared at us. “Nobody move,” he said, then stalked over to the uncovered window, glancing back at us every few steps, and peered down at the police.

“Shit,” he said. The fire went out on his left hand, and he ran it over his head. I could see it trembling. “Shit, shit, shit.”

He looked at us over his shoulder, then walked back to our circle. “You lot, you’re schoolkids, yeah?” Nobody answered. “I said: you’re schoolkids, yeah?”

We nodded as a collective group, and for a moment he tapped his foot against the floor.

“Alright,” he said, then gestured with the gun. “You there, the cute one. Come here.” Nobody moved. “I said come here!” He reached into the middle of the group, right toward me. I shrunk back instinctively, but he extinguished the fire again and grabbed onto another girl’s arm, pulling her to her feet. I couldn’t hold back a sigh of relief.

“No!” the girl—it was fucking Madison—shrieked, scratching and scrabbling at Mr. Crazy’s hand on her arm. “Help! Paul! Julia!”

Her friends said nothing, choosing instead to stare at the ground. Mr. Crazy growled, grabbing at Madison’s legs.

“HELP ME!” she screamed. “Please!”

“Stop fucking struggling!” Mr. Crazy snapped, dragging her fully out of the throng and turning her around. Madison sobbed as he pointed the gun at her. “Stand up, and be quiet!”

It took her a second or two, but Madison managed to do as he said. She was trembling all over.

“You have a cell phone?” Mr. Crazy said.

Madison shook her head.

Mr. Crazy frowned, opened his mouth, and—

“She keeps it in her pocket!”

I snapped my head around. That had been a girl’s voice—someone in the crowd. I scanned the people around me, coming to a stop over Madison’s group of friends. Half of them were boring holes into the ground with their eyes, their hands over their ears, doing everything they could to pretend they were anywhere but here. The other half? They were staring at one girl with long blonde hair, done up in a ponytail—Alison Hunt.

She was smiling. It was clearly forced, but it still struck me. She didn’t even seem to care that she’d just sold out her friend.

Bitch is too weak a word.

Looking back, I saw Mr. Crazy smirk. “Thanks, kid,” he said, then glared at Madison. “Lie to me again and I’ll set you on fire. Clear?” She jerked her head around from where she’d been staring at Alison, and nodded violently. “Good. Give me your phone.”

She pulled a cell from her dress pocket with shaking fingers, almost dropping it, and held it out to him.

He snatched it from her hands. “Do you have any paper? And a pen? Remember, don’t lie to me this time.“

“I-I-I have a d-diary in my bag,” Madison said. She was on the verge of tears. I felt my fists clench.

“Get it.”

He gestured and a small section of the fire around us disappeared. Madison ran back into the crowd and grabbed a book and pen out of her bag, taking them back to Mr. Crazy. The fire reappeared after she’d left the perimeter.

“Write down your cell number,” he told her, glaring over us and stilling the shifters. “Big numbers, so it’s easily visible.”

Hands still shaking, Madison did as he ordered and showed it to him when she’d finished. He nodded. “Good,” he said, and grabbed her by the back of the neck. She shrieked and pulled away, crying openly now, but he stepped forward and pistol-whipped her in the face. “I told you to stop struggling!”

She wailed, a low, keening sound. But she quieted down when he hit her again.

It felt good, seeing her hurt like this. Cathartic.

I hated that feeling.

Mr. Crazy pulled Madison to her feet, then glared in our direction. “None of you move!” he said, as if we’d forgotten, then dragged Madison over to the one window he’d left unobstructed and shoved her up against the glass. “Hold it up so they can see,” he said. Madison just sobbed, and he put the gun to her head. “Do it.”

She put the book against the window. It felt like an eternity before a tinkling, musical chime sounded from the cell phone in Mr. Crazy’s hand. He answered it and got to talking about his demands. He let Madison slide to the floor, but didn’t move the gun away.

The rest of the… hostages… weren’t in great shape, for the most part. Laura had her hands closed around a cross pendant and was saying something under her breath, eyes closed. Greg sat stock-still, barely moving even to breathe, his face pale and drawn. And Ms. Holder was rocking back and forth with her hands clutching her head. Even Don—who was almost certainly an Empire thug—was practically shitting his pants.

The other Winslow kids weren’t much better, nor were the tourists. A few of them, though… they were whispering to each other.

“—a good idea,” one male tourist said, just behind me. “He’s a cape!”

“Doesn’t matter,” said a kid I recognised from Winslow. “Capes get taken down by regular people all the time. I’ve seen it on the news.”

A third person—female—made an affirmative sound. “J-just gotta surprise ‘im, is all.”

My fists tightened. I felt a prickling pain, and warmth began leaking onto my fingers.

“Don’t be stupid!” the first guy hissed. “You heard the sirens. The PRT are outside. He’s talking with them now. And the heroes will be here soon. Let them do their jobs.”

“Fuck the PRT.”

“Fuck the—What the fuck is wrong with you? They’re the police! This is what they do.”

“I-I agree. But it’ll take time for ‘em to g-get into position, right? What if he k-k-kills someone else before that? What if he k-kills that girl? S-someone has to d-do something.”

“Stop being an idiot. You’d only get yourself killed.”

I found my gaze being drawn back to the painting I’d been viewing before Mr. Crazy showed up. Legend’s heroic sacrifice. Alexandria’s last stand against the herokiller.

I looked at Madison. She was a wreck—trembling violently, tears and snot making thin tracks down her face and ruining her makeup. A bruise was already forming on her cheek, just beneath the eye. She was barely recognisable as the girl that had ruined so many of my notebooks.

For some reason, I felt bad for her. Her friends had turned on her, ignored her cries for help, and now she was at the mercy of some psychopath. Almost a parallel to Emma’s betrayal of me to Sophia.

I had been pitiful, then. I still was. But so was Madison.

And I didn’t want her to die.

The thought came as a surprise, considering how often I’d dreamed of something like this happening to her or Emma or Sophia, or even one of their hanger-ons, like Julia. But now that it was happening, I only wanted it to stop.

A blaze of glory, huh?

I’d always dreamed of being a hero. Emma and I had built life plans out of it, when we were children. Get powers, revitalise the Bay, beat up the bad guys, destroy the Endbringers, rescue kittens from trees. The usual nonsense.

I thought I’d lost the chance forever after the revelations during my brain scans. But… nobody ever said you needed powers to be a hero.

I was standing before I even realised it.

Not like anyone will miss me anyway.

One step. Two steps. I heard people gasp and whisper around me, behind me. Someone reached out to grab my leg, but I stepped over them. Three steps. Four. I passed through the fire-ring, ignoring the heat against my legs. My legs were trembling; I stopped them. Five steps. I picked up the pace. Six, seven, eight, nine. I reached Mr. Crazy as he was demanding a helicopter from the police negotiator, and he turned just as I stretched out a hand.

The world almost seemed to move in slow motion. For a fraction of a second, I saw Mr Crazy’s eyes widen before his face was obscured by my hand. I saw his body twist as he pulled both arms around in my direction.

My palm collided with his chin. It hurt. I felt something crack—maybe in him, maybe in me, I wasn’t sure. His head snapped around, pulling his body with it, and smashed into the window, sending cracks spiderwebbing outward. A boom exploded beneath me. Searing pain lanced through my side, and I fell screaming with him.

I landed on him, but he recovered first, and hit me in the face with the hilt of his pistol. A second gunshot sounded, this one from above me, and I heard glass splinter. I flailed my arms at Mr. Crazy, feeling my hands slap uselessly at his chest and neck and hearing only grunts in return. Then he grabbed my wrist, and I screamed as my flesh sizzled beneath purple-black fire.

His other hand reached for my face, and I saw through the tears he was no longer holding a gun. Both hands were now wreathed in flame. I struggled, twisting my arms and body at uncomfortable angles and kicking my legs, trying to get away. His second hand missed my face, but it brushed my side, drawing another garbled scream from between my clenched teeth.

I pulled up as high as I could go with his hand on my wrist, then dropped back down and smashed my elbows into his gut. He made a strange noise—a half-grunt, half-scream—and backhanded me, leaving a searing mark on my cheek and sending me rolling across the floor.

I scrambled to stop myself and managed to grab the leg of one of the exhibit tables. The leg broke off and the table collapsed to the floor, the painting on top falling with it, but it slowed me down enough to enable me to stand. I spun on the spot, too fast, and I fell over again immediately. And not a moment too soon—a blast of purple fire zoomed over my head, the heat enough to make me uncomfortable.

The fireball flew past me and hit a window, shattering the glass and sending tiny bits of hot glass flying about the room at dangerous speeds, like shrapnel. I winced as a few shards punctured my legs, and again when I heard cries from the other hostages. Even Mr. Crazy flinched back, raising his hands to protect his face.

I got to my feet as quickly as I could, glass crunching beneath my shoes, then ran straight at Mr. Crazy before he could recover—and before my brain had time to catch up with what my body was doing and stop me.

My legs hurt. My arm hurt. My side hurt. My face hurt. I felt warmth running down my leg—I’d pulled my stitches again.

I ignored it all.

Madison had slid to her knees beside the window. She was screaming. No, her mouth was closed. I was screaming. I probably looked like an idiot. I didn’t care. I doubted anyone else did, either.

A few hostages were rolling around on the ground, also screaming, slapping at purple-black fires on their trousers and jackets. Most were just sitting there, some with tiny spots of blood beading on their exposed skin and showing through their clothes, where the glass had struck. They were also screaming.

One middle-aged guy with a short-cropped beard ran at Mr. Crazy too. He pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and flipped it open, rushing forward, but Mr. Crazy recovered before the mystery man could reach him, and he set the man on fire. As close as I was, I heard it in sickening detail. Skin sizzling, hair crackling, bones popping, the mystery man’s agonised wails. I could almost hear his flesh melting. He fell to his knees and toppled, raising his hands to his face and kicking frantically to no effect.

My legs locked up of their own accord, but I was moving too quickly to stop. I tripped and collided with Mr. Crazy, but I somehow managed to turn it into a tackle. He grunted as my shoulder impacted his ribs, my arms encircled his side, and I heaved as hard as I could—toward the window. I actually knocked him off his feet. We flew backward and into one of his walls of fire. Mr. Crazy hit the window hard, cracks exploding outward from the point of contact.

I’d thought having his hand around my wrist had hurt, but this was worse. And I wasn’t even in it completely. The sleeves of my hoodie burned away completely, and my arms were agony. I pulled back and rammed into him again, slamming him against the window for the third time in the past minute. He grunted again, and smashed his elbow between my shoulder blades. My grip failed, and he shoved me off with his arm.

I fell back, landing on my side. He pushed out of the fire, clutching at his side, and screamed—sounding about as close to a roar as a human could get. His clothes burned from the flames, the fake-leather, plastic and metal of his jacket melting on his skin. The balaclava went up in smoke, revealing a surprisingly young face, contorted in rage.

The walls of flame disappeared, leaving only smoke behind as he jumped forward and kicked me in the gut. I went rolling across the floor and came to a stop beside Madison, dry-heaving and failing to recover my breath. He stalked forward and grabbed me by the collar of my hoodie, lifting me up into the air. I wrestled with him, slapping at his arm and kicking at his legs, but he stopped me with a fist to my gut. I moaned; my head lolled in Madison’s direction.

She was staring at me, eyes wide as dinner plates, her face still stricken with tears and ruined makeup. I saw the blemishes she usually kept hidden; the freckles that spattered her face in a preposterous quantity, the tiny acne scars on her forehead, the cracks in her lips. She didn’t look any better than I did when I woke up in the morning. In fact, she looked worse. She was borderline ugly.

Mr. Crazy reached out a flaming hand to my face, but someone punched him in the face, and he dropped me, spinning around to attack my rescuer. It was Greg. His face was white as snow, and he was trembling all over as he stumbled backward, clutching at his hand and making a low, keening noise.

I reached out and grabbed Mr. Crazy’s ankle. He paused, glancing back at me for just long enough to kick me in the face, then moved on Greg again. I groaned, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Madison finally move. She dove to the side and reached for a shiny silver object beneath where the flame-wall had been. His pistol, that he’d dropped or discarded when I attacked him.

She pulled upright as soon as she’d grabbed it, then immediately yelped and dropped it, shaking her hand and crying again. The gun clattered to the floor beside me. I hesitated—but only for a split second. I snatched it from the floor and twisted in Mr. Crazy’s direction, ignoring the searing heat of the metal—my hands were pretty much ruined already.

I levelled the gun at his back and pulled the trigger. The sound left my ears ringing, and it jumped in my grip, ruining my aim and hurting my hands. Blood spurted from Mr. Crazy’s shoulder, some hitting me in the face, and he jerked from the impact, letting out a garbled scream and spinning around to glower at me. Greg turned and ran—at least I hadn’t hit him.

I tightened my grip and fired again. Mr. Crazy dived to the side, but the bullet took him in the thigh, and he landed with another scream and rolled. I shifted my aim and pulled the trigger again. The gun clicked, but nothing happened. I tried again, and again, but got only clicks. I jerked my gaze down to the pistol, opening my hand—the grip had been crushed, imprints of my fingers plain on the rubber and metal. Had I—no, the heat must have melted it, weakened the metal. It was probably burning my hand even now—though I couldn’t feel it.

I looked up again. Mr. Crazy was rising to his feet, one hand held to his leg, the other pushing him upright. I threw the pistol at him; it missed. Running on pure adrenalin, I pushed myself to my feet and began stumbling in a circle around him; if I tackled him again now, we’d probably land in the middle of the hostages.

I heard the elevator ding across the floor, and almost a dozen PRT troopers with blast shields, body armour and foam-guns poured out. The window exploded above us, more glass shards raining down—though these pieces were larger, and none penetrated my skin. A woman in a bright green-and-white leotard, with matching hair, sailed in through the hole.

“Villain!” she shouted, puffing out her chest and putting her fists on her hips in the stereotypical superhero pose. The word ‘Leor’ was printed on her chest. “You’re under arrest!”

Mr. Crazy shot a few blasts of fire at her. She dodged and weaved through the air, a bright green cape spiralling about her as she twisted. She dived down, holding out an arm to clothesline him, but he dodged out of the way and fired another blast at her, clipping her side. She squawked and spiralled, narrowly avoiding crashing into a table, even as Mr. Crazy fell to one knee and clutched his thigh, where I’d shot him.

Leor recovered quickly, grabbing the table by the legs and spinning. She released it, and the table soared through the air—just past me—to smash into Mr. Crazy’s side, knocking him away from me and the other hostages and closer to Madison and the windows.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d been operating on instinct so far, but now there was an actual hero here, even if she didn’t seem particularly capable.

Part of me said I wasn’t needed anymore. Another part said she was stealing my thunder. A third part was crying and screaming, trying to convince me to run.

The last part told me that I’d started this, and I needed to see it finished.

I listened to that one, and kept circling, waiting for an opportunity to do… something.

A trio of PRT troopers stepped forward—the rest were protecting the other hostages—and aimed their foam-guns at him. He threw a pair of fireballs at them. One hit a trooper’s blast shield and billowed around it, leaving scorch marks on the plastic but not harming the troopers. But the other blast hit a spray of foam, and it exploded, sending the troopers flying back.

Mr. Crazy stepped to the side and grabbed Madison by the collar, pulling her up against his body and looping an arm around her neck, eliciting a shriek. He opened his mouth to shout something, bringing his other hand around to her head, but Leor charged forward before he could finish. He fired a series of fireballs at her, but she twisted in midair and most missed, except for the one shot that singed her arm and set her cape on fire.

Then Leor kicked him in the sternum, sending Mr. Crazy crashing back into the window with a grunt and making him lose his grip on Madison. Leor grabbed her under the arms and jumped back, taking her to safety.

Mr. Crazy held out both hands in their direction, aiming at Leor’s back.

I ran at him.

He turned and shot at me instead, but I managed to dodge it, and I smashed into him with my shoulder.

The window broke.

He fell through, but grabbed my hair as he went, and I fell with him.

He screamed as we fell. I screamed, too.

We twisted in the air and I saw Leor rocketing down toward us, stretching out a hand.

So much for a blaze of glory.

We hit the ground.

---

A/N: Thoughts?

Also posted on SB and SV.

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I've loved this everywhere I've seen it -- more, please!

 

Thanks. There's more to come, and I'll probably make a thread around part two or three, but it won't be coming soon. I have a lot of projects.