“Lung’s there,” I echoed, as much to let Sundancer and Labyrinth know as to help myself process the idea.
“He’s with Kaiser. I can’t get to them. Kaiser blocked the door with giant knives.”
“Ignore Lung!” I stressed. If Kaiser wanted to go it alone, he could reap the consequences. “Priorities are Newter and Oni Lee! Can you get upstairs to rescue Newter?”
“I can’t ride Brutus in there, I’d have to dismount.”
“Then draw him outside! Watch your back!”
I hung up, shoved the phone into the compartment behind my back, and drew my baton and knife.
“What are you doing?” Sundancer asked.
“Oni Lee’s a freaking assassin. I can’t leave Bitch on her own.”
I didn’t wait another second. I bolted for the warehouse, drawing more bugs from the surroundings to help back me up.
Bitch, still riding Brutus, came rushing out the loading bay door, Judas only a step behind. They skidded to a stop, facing the building. Through the hole the explosion had made in the wall, I saw Angelica climbing up the stairs.
As Angelica reached the top of the stairs, Judas lunged up and through the windows at the opposite end of the second floor hallway, trapping Oni Lee in between them.
Oni Lee barely seemed to care. I could see him in his black bodysuit with belts and bandoleers of knives on it, his mask with the demonic face and leering, fanged, ear-to-ear grin. He glanced at one dog, then the other, then looked out the window.
I knew his power was a hybrid between duplicating himself and teleportation. He could teleport, but when he did, he left a body behind that could act autonomously for a few seconds. So when I saw him glance out the window, I followed his line of sight, and saw he had already appeared just behind Bitch, half-crouching on Brutus’ back, one hand on a hook of bone to help him balance. There was a flash of steel in his other hand as he reached around her throat with a blade.
“Bitch!” I screamed. It didn’t matter. At the same time as I opened my mouth, a red dot and a mist of red appeared out of the back of his head. A split second later, another dot and spray of red appeared on his back, around his heart was. He fell on top of Bitch’s shoulder, limp, then collapsed to the ground.
A second later, he exploded into an opaque cloud of white ash, ten feet across.
I glanced over my shoulder, saw the dark silhouettes of Coil’s men lying down on the edge of the rooftop. One had a pair of binoculars, the other was set up behind a long rifle with a prominent scope. A sniper team.
Anyone else would be dead by now, but the fact that the body had exploded into dust meant it was just a clone, a leftover remaining behind after Oni Lee had teleported away. He probably wasn’t remaining in one place for more than a second. My bet was that he was appearing, immediately looking for a new target or vantage point, then making a quick exit, leaving the clone to do the deed.
I reached Bitch and cast a nervous glance over my shoulder for Oni Lee. “You okay?”
“Felt the fucking steel on my throat,” she rubbed her throat as if she was checking it was okay. “Where’d he go?”
I saw Oni Lee for only a fraction of a second, as he fell from the roof of the warehouse, before he exploded into another cloud of white dust. Another point for the sniper team. Why had he been up there? Who or what had he been trying to see?
“The snipers,” I breathed, whirling around.
Where the sniper team had been, there were four figures now. I saw the rifle fall from the edge of the roof as the two soldiers struggled with a pair of Oni Lees. Then, puff, the clones were gone, and there was enough white dust around them that they wouldn’t be drawing a bead on him again, even if they hadn’t lost the rifle.
But where had he gone from there? I looked around, feeling the panic begin to set in.
Brutus made a roaring sound somewhere between a howl and a growl, not quite recognizable as either. He reared like a panicked horse, and I saw Oni Lee drop from the side of his head, land in a crouch, and lunge for me, a knife in each hand.
I swatted at his hands with my baton, sending one knife flying through the air and breaking his stride. It didn’t matter. Less than a second later, he was dust. He’d teleported.
Hands seized me from behind, in a rough nelson hold, pulling my arms out of the way as another Oni Lee materialized out of the dust in front of me, ready to capitalize on my inability to defend myself.
Knowing he wasn’t about to let go of me, I brought both my legs up in a kick at Oni Lee’s stomach. They connected and he doubled over.
Brutus lunged forward, biting at him before he could recover. Both the Oni Lee that was holding me and the one clasped in Brutus’ jaws turned to carbon ash, adding to the volume of the opaque, gritty white cloud that surrounded us. As Bitch managed to get Brutus under control I saw his face. One of his eyes was in ruins, and volumes of blood and other liquids were flowing from it.
“Fuck this,” I growled, drawing the bugs out from my costume, and retrieving the ones I’d had in the building. I spread them around, reaching for him, hoping for some sort of early warning.
No sooner the thought crossed my mind than the silhouette of a figure appeared twenty feet to my right. He whipped his arm in my direction, and I didn’t have any time to do much more than turn in his direction before something collided with my head. I stumbled and fell over backwards.
In the instant I toppled over, I had the presence of mind to tuck my chin against my chest so I wouldn’t add to my concussion. The armor covering my shoulders took the worst of the impact.
As I lay there, trying to parse what had just happened, I realized that a small knife was embedded in the armored section of my mask, cracking the lens. A throwing knife? I pulled it free and pulled myself to my feet. I had enough bugs around me now that I could be sure he wasn’t attacking us. That just raised the question of where he was.
“Bitch, you okay?” I asked.
“Fucker stabbed me in the arm!”
If that’s the worst injury we get away with today, we can count ourselves lucky. I headed out of the cloud that surrounded us, hoping to get a better sense of the battlefield.
I got out just in time to see Oni Lee tackling one of Coil’s snipers off the edge of the roof. Oni Lee disappeared in a cloud of white before he hit the ground. I was pretty sure the sniper hadn’t.
Sundancer was crumpled over, Labyrinth holding her shoulders.
This was not going well.
Oni Lee appeared thirty feet away from me, standing just to my left and behind me. My bugs gave me a sense of his position before anything else, and I threw myself to one side. I thought maybe I saw the shape of one of his throwing knives pass through the air where I’d been standing, but I wasn’t seeing very well with a cracked lens on my mask.
At my command, The bugs that had alerted me to his position gathered on him and began biting and stinging.
Then I noticed something weird. More bugs popped into existence in the midst of the cloud, near Sundancer and Labyrinth. I felt the original bugs perish as they exploded into ash.
He was taking them with him. I don’t think he could help it.
I could track his movements.
“Bitch! Here!” I shouted.
She lunged out of the cloud, still astride Brutus, pulling up short to avoid trampling me.
“I can see where he’s teleporting,” I told her, “Get Judas and Angelica.”
She whistled, long and piercing. As if in response, Oni Lee appeared just a few feet away.
“Behind you!” I pointed.
Brutus whipped around, snapping and snarling, and Oni Lee had to backpedal to escape being caught in the mutant’s jaws. He disappeared just a second later.
“Get one dog near those guys,” I pointed to Sundancer and Labyrinth, “We should join them asap.”
She nodded, whistled, and pointed. No sooner did Judas and Angelica arrive at our sides than Judas headed off to his next destination. Bitch offered me a hand.
I gratefully took it, letting her help me up onto Brutus’ back.
As we approached Sundancer and Labyrinth, the sidewalks on either side of us dropped out of existence, leaving only a bottomless pit where they had been.
“The fuck?” I murmured.
Then the buildings began to rise in height, some leaning over the street and joining with the others in grotesque arches and bridges. Brickwork stretched and extended into the alleyways, closing them off.
Then windows began to shrink and warp, leaving only flat expanses of brick, concrete and stucco for the building faces. Under our feet, the road began to shift in color, with some patches becoming paler, and others darkening. They sharpened in definition as they settled into an alabaster white and jet back. A checkerboard?
Brutus had to leap out of the way as one of the squares of the checkerboard suddenly rose to a height of ten feet. As if in response, other squares began to rise and fall, each to varying, almost random heights.
I was almost dismounted as another square appeared in a wall and slid out of the side of the building in a thirty foot long horizontal pillar.
We reached safe haven, an expanse of unaffected ground, thirty feet across, with two figures in the center. Sundancer and… Labyrinth.
“This is you?” I asked Labyrinth, awed, as I climbed down off Brutus.
She didn’t reply. Instead, she reached out and touched the side of my chin.
The images of arches, pillars and checkerboard patterns fell away like a house of cards.
“Hallucinations,” I spoke, as Labyrinth made a waving gesture towards Bitch’s head. She looked at me and shook her head slowly.
“They’re not hallucinations?” I asked.
She didn’t reply.
“You can’t explain because you can’t or don’t talk,” I realized, speaking my thoughts aloud.
Oni Lee appeared a few feet away. I whirled and pointed, “There!”
He was stumbling, moving to avoid something that wasn’t there. He was still there, trying to get his balance, as I felt more bugs appear at another point on the opposite side of us. Only he appeared fifteen feet in the air, fell, and landed in an awkward position, falling over.
“Bitch!” I pointed.
She whistled and pointed to send Angelica. Oni Lee’s response was delayed, as if he couldn’t even see her approaching, at first. I felt more bugs pop into existence a second before she set her jaws on him.
“There!”
Bitch sent Judas next. Oni Lee’s reaction was even slower, but he had time to throw himself onto his back, flinging two throwing knives into Judas’ face and shoulder before he disappeared.
“Over there!” I pointed as he reappeared.
Bitch didn’t even have time to give a command before there was a sound like a champagne cork being popped. Oni Lee screamed as one of his shins exploded in a spray of blood.
I felt him reappear somewhere else, collapsing to the ground, while his predecessor endured having the kneecap on its good leg shot out.
I followed the sound of a chamber being reloaded to spot Coil’s sniper. He was lying on his side at the foot of the building, one arm outstretched to hold his rifle steady. His right leg was bent the wrong way.
He’d been knocked off a three story building, had a broken leg at the very least, and had still managed to retrieve, load and fire his rifle?
If he was willing to be that professional, I could damn well play spotter for him.
“There!” I pointed in Oni Lee’s direction. On the warehouse again.
There were two more muted popping sounds, and I could see Oni Lee spin in a pirouette of sorts as a shot clipped him, before he collapsed to the rooftop.
He exploded in a cloud of ash once again. Except I hadn’t felt him appear anywhere.
“He’s gone,” I said, “Out of my range.”
Sundancer looked up at me, one gloved hand on her shoulder. “Good,” she managed to answer.
“You okay?”
“He gouged my shoulder. I’ll need stitches, but it’s not the worst injury I’ve had.”
“Okay. Uh, man, Coil’s guy,” I spoke, trying hard to organize my thoughts and priorities with the adrenaline that was pumping through me, “You going to be alright?”
“Yeah,” he rasped, then he coughed.
I’d have to take him at his word.
“Labyrinth, watch him. Make sure he keeps breathing and that his buddy knows where he is,” I said, “Sundancer, Bitch, we’ve gotta go help Newter.”
Worm 
Awesome update it impresses me how you keep finding ways to make a power I wouldn’t consider that strong to be so badass. Oni Lee sounds like a total nightmare and she was the one who enabled the team to beat him.
Thank you!
I’m glad you got that impression. I think that’s something I really like in stories too, and in the end, it was one of the reasons I settled with Taylor as a protagonist. Going into the writing of Worm, I had no real idea how I’d actually make her competent, -but- I thought her power had potential and depth to it that would allow for some unexpectedly (as you say) badass moments.
So it’s great to hear feedback on that front. 😀
YOU HAD NO IDEA??? By jove, you are the real Taylor ‘Master of thinking on my feet’ Hebert, aren’t you.
I totally agree with THF. I also *loved* Labyrinth’s ability. I hope we find out more about it in more details–my guess is that’s it’s some sort of inner struggle made manifest. Some sort of dreamscape alternate dimension? I don’t know, but it’s fun to speculate 😀
I also like how they were able to work together as a team. Individually, they wouldn’t have stood a chance, but together, they just demolished an experienced assassin with the ultimate ninja power.
Such an awesome update all around.
Taylor’s also really shaping up to be the decision-maker on the spot when the plans go up in flames. officer material, i believe the armed services would say of her; wonder if Coil’s people are going to notice that?
Personally, I’m just astounded by how well you write your action scenes. Oh, that, and also by how awesome the action you’re writing about is.
Hg
High praise, thank you.
I don’t know that I could tell you what I’m doing that I think makes it work, or what my specific approach is, really. I think that, as a writer, I get bored with my own work if I know what’s going to happen, so I generally write so I’m as clueless as the reader is, as far as how things are going to turn out. If I recall right, the writers of ‘Breaking Bad’ take the same approach.
And if it’s exciting and interesting to me, then, ideal world, it’s the same for the reader.
The feedback on this particular chapter really stunned me. I’m thrilled you guys are enjoying it, and hope I don’t disappoint as the arc wraps up. If any of you are genuinely enjoying the story, also, I’d be much obliged if you could recommend the story to friends or pop on over to Webfictionguide to vote on/review/talk about the story there.
Is it a good site to use? Doesn’t seem to have a lot of mileage there.
That was awesome! I love the unconventional powers you’ve given your characters and the clever exploits built into them both offensively and defensively. It creates a high-speed-chess-game dynamic that makes the combat scenes really interesting. Good show.
coils guys are so proffesional. i think the dynamic is funny. the rest of them are teenagers with superpowers, playing around basicly, and coil send a proffesional sniper team.
Hi, I’m just now reading Worm (started it a few days ago) and I just want to say that it’s absolutely brilliant. I love it.
However, I have one issue with 5.7: I believe you mentioned earlier that Oni Lee’s old clones disappear in a cloud of carbon ash. In 5.7, he disappears into white ash. I don’t know if you’re very familiar with chemistry/carbon, but the three main allotropes of carbon are diamond, graphite, and amorphous carbon. I imagine if he exploded into a puff of diamond, it would seem like white ash (since diamond is clear), but I don’t think that’s what you’re thinking of when you say “carbon ash”. Graphite (in case you’re not familiar with it) is what is in pencils and is a dark grey. Lastly, [taken from Wikipedia’s article on] amorphous carbon: “In mineralogy, amorphous carbon is the name used for coal, soot, carbide-derived carbon, and other impure forms of carbon that are neither graphite nor diamond”. So the ash that I _think_ you are talking about would be black or dark grey.
Then again, Worm is about superheros who regularly violate physical law so if Oni Lee’s carbon ash is white in your story, by all means, go with it. 😉
Excellent little tidbit. Sounds like something I could fix in the final revision before publication.
Black ash is kind of cool too, when I think about it.
On the other hand, campfire ash can be pretty white (that’s how I’ve been picturing Oni Lee’s residue).
I was thinking that many substances, when finely powdered, turn white… but yeah I think most carbon allotropes are going to be black. I’m no chemist, though.
You know, I’d forgotten all about this one soldier of Coil’s. You know, the one who gets knocked off a building, breaks a leg, and still manages to shoot Lee and walk off. I hope he got a promotion and a raise for this. (Unless this is what all of Coil’s soldiers are expected to do…an interlude from one of them would have been interesting…)
wildbow, does the soldier have a name?
Funny thing is this soldier practically took an arrow to the knee and we don’t see him complaining now do we.*Looks at skyrim gaurds.
Finally some real pros!
“I used to be a cape like you, ’til I took an Oni-Lee to the knee. I went on to shoot out his knees and clip his torso, all while crippled, winning the fight for our side. That’s when I knew I was no longer like you. I was much better.”
Wait wait. Was he deliberately targeting Oni-Lee’s knees for *revenge*? That’s hilarious!
That agent’s name? Phil Coulson.
Labyrinth’s power rather reminds me of the initial scene from Puella Magi Madoka Magicka.
I’m having a strong suspicion that Oni Lee’s power isn’t teleportation at all, but merely the ability to project a copy of himself + accouterments, And the backlash vaporizes his original self a few seconds later. The easiest way to test this would be to have Panacea examine the leftover, and possibly heal him before he vaporizes.
Yep, like everyone else said, this was an awesome chapter.
A couple of typos:
“appeared on his back, around his heart was.” – missing “where”
“At my command, The bugs” – miscapitalisation
One of the best superhero things I have ever read. Usually fights have a way of getting muddled but you make everything so clear and enjoyable.
Jesus. I was already terrified of Oni Lee from the teleport/duplication combo, and then you went and gave him a vision-baffling power on top of that. Until Skitter got some bugs on him, I wouldn’t have expected any outcomes besides “run” or “die”.
Maybe the scariest thing about him is that he also copies anything he’s carrying, the same way he copies himself- and in combination with the teleportation, that means functionally infinite ammo, so long as it’s only expended after teleporting.
A normal teleporter with access to explosives is very scary- they can jump on you out of nowhere, stick a live grenade in your pocket, and jump to a safe distance before the explosion. You take the grenade to the face, and they don’t.
Oni Lee is even scarier than that, because he doesn’t have to actually pull the pin. He can jump on you, jump somewhere else, and then have his leftover body pull the pin on the leftover grenade. You take a grenade to the face, he doesn’t… and the body he’s still using *still has that grenade*, because only the copied grenade was detonated.
So the number of times he can suicide-bomb a target isn’t limited by his access to explosives- just by the rate at which he teleports. The only risk to him is if he jumps into a dangerous place (like the blast radius of a grenade he’s still setting off) *and* can’t jump out again before he’s injured (since once he’s jumped somewhere else, the survival of the body left behind is no longer a priority).
One wonders why he and Bakuda, if they’re working together, have any living enemies at all…
Also, one wonders what it feels like to be him. When he’s just teleported and has two bodies, do they share a single consciousness, with immediate access to all the senses and control of all the muscles of both? Or does he have to plan the next move of one body before he teleports, and then his consciousness moves to the current body and trusts the old one to do as it was told?
If it’s the latter case… who/what is driving the spare bodies? Can they make their own decisions- will their actions deviate from the plan if circumstances change? Does the continuous Lee have to check whether they do as they’ve been told, or does he get their memories in his head after they’re gone?
Do they process, as individual entities, the knowledge that they’ve been left behind and have a remaining lifespan measured in seconds?
The simplest explanation is that the copy he creates thinks it’s still him, and as he’s never had enough time to talk with the original and it disintegrates painlessly he remains confident that it operates on combat instinct or executes the plan he had for it or anything but still being the same person who just created a copy of himself. Maybe he just tries not to think about it because then he’d have to admit that he’s been stupidly killing himself thousands of times. And be scared to death of ever using his power again.
If Taylor told him about the new bugs being created when he teleports, though. . .
If you are right, the clones’ reaction would not be to attack, but to wonder why their power doesn’t work (they just tried to teleport and they didn’t, from their perspective) and then to panic.
Ah, but they’ve seen it before. Suppose Oni Lee didn’t happen to appear within view of himself the first couple of hundred times he used his power; the original might not even know anything happened, while the copy thinks he just teleported. By the time he figures out he leaves behind a copy (or from the original’s perspective, creates a copy), his body count is already high enough to motivate a strong denial. And if he understands how consciousness works as badly as the average person, the copy is going to assume the original’s consciousness leaps over to him when he sees it disintegrate, if only to avoid considering the more realistic possibility. And when does the original have time to begin to suspect otherwise? As far as it can see it’s just teleporting with the beneficial side effect of being in two places at once for a moment.
Admittedly I’m just trying to justify the most horrible scenario, and it’s not like the Worm universe wouldn’t allow consciousness transfers
Still. I think you’re assuming too much rational thought from somebody in the heat of battle. In your scenario, Oni Lee’s power has worked for him for quite some time, and he never realized that the clones are… self-conscious? Sapient? Whatever. So one day, he is in one hell of a battle, teleports in, tries to teleport out, nothing happens. He won’t think “damnit, apparently I’m a clone – better get in one last attack”, he’ll think “damnit, my power didn’t work, let’s either try it again or try to withdraw conventionally, I’m a normal when like this, and I don’t desire to die”, or, more realistically, “what?! Teleport, teleport, tele*POOF*!
I’m assuming a lot about the process in which he gained, trained to use and decided he knows how his powers work, but not clone thought processes. You have to consider what the oldest remaining copy might think based on his interactions with previous copies (and presumably a strong desire to not consider the possibility that his original as well as every copy since then died rather than teleported); not just what he thinks after making another copy. Remember he’s got the memories of every one of his selves up until the moment they copied themselves, and that goes for his copy as well. Assume when he sees his copy appearing he’s not going to think “Why am I still here?” but “That’s where I’m going to be in a second, when I stop being here”.
Why is Regent tagged in this one? Does someone twitch while I didn’t notice?
EDIT: He is also tagged in the last one.
‘Oni Lee appeared thirty feet away from me, standing just to my left and behind me.’ The sentence doesn’t seem right.
The image of Skitter drawing her baton and knife and charging in is awesome.
Whoa damn Oni Lee’s power is OP!
Ok, I must say that Taylor really contributed in this fight, but holy hell those sniper guys were as much valuable as her. They are real MVPs. Besides they definitely are “Badass Normals” in a world with superpowers 😀
Suddenly she begins acting like a Leader? oO