Shell 4.7

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Grue raised his hands and blanketed the entire area in darkness.  It wouldn’t help much.  Even if they hesitated or got confused in the darkness, the crush of bodies would eventually stumble into us, and we’d be beaten and battered under the sheer force of numbers.  The only real advantage was that if any of them had guns, they probably wouldn’t shoot, for fear of hitting their own guys.

I felt hands seize my waist, and lashed out with my baton.  The hands let go, and the baton hit only air.  After a moment, I felt the hands grab me again, the hold gentle.  Not an enemy.  Grue, I realized.

“Sorry,” I muttered.  He could hear inside his darkness, couldn’t he?

He hoisted me up into the air, and I immediately understood his intent.  I reached up and felt brick, then found the corrugated metal of the roof.  I hauled myself up and turned around to reach for the next person, one hand gripping the edge of the roof to keep myself in place.

I found Regent and Tattletale’s hands in the darkness and helped haul them up.  I knew neither was Grue, because they were too light.  Five or six seconds long, tense seconds then passed before Grue took my hand and hauled himself up.

We climbed down the far side, and Grue banished the darkness around us.

There were three ABB gang members standing at one end of the alley we’d just entered, and a fourth, lone member on the other.  Both groups were looking the wrong way, and were standing still, which was as good an indication as any that they hadn’t noticed us.

The sheer number of soldiers we’d seen didn’t fit, and I said as much,  “What the fuck?  How many people was that?”

Grue was apparently thinking along the same lines. “The ABB shouldn’t have that many members.”

“They do now,” Tattletale glanced over her shoulder at the ABB members behind us, then back to the lone one in front who still hadn’t reacted to our approach, “Trap!  Down!”

She practically shoved me to the ground, then took cover herself.

The lone figure in front of us shimmered, then disappeared.  In his place, for just a fraction of a second, there was a cylindrical object the size of a mailbox.  Knowing what kind of devices Bakuda specialized in, I drew my legs close to my body, screwed my eyes shut and covered my ears.

The force of the explosion hit me hard enough I could feel it in my bones.  It  lifted me clear off the ground.  For a moment, it felt like I was floating, carried by a powerful, hot wind.  I hit the ground with my elbows and knees first, and they thrummed with agony at the impact.

Chaos.  The four or five storage lockers that had been closest to the canister had been  reduced to chunks of flaming brick, none any bigger around than a beachball.  Other lockers near those had doors, walls and roofs blown away.  More than one locker had been actually used, because the blast had emptied them of its contents.  Pieces of furniture, boxes of books, clothing, bundles of newspaper and boxes of papers filled the alley.

“Everyone okay?” Grue asked, as he staggered to his feet.

“Ow.  I’m burnt.  Fuck!  She was expecting us,” Tattletale groaned.  However bad her burns were, they weren’t severe enough to be seen through the smoke and dust. “Set traps, had her people waiting.  Shit, we were only a half hour later than we planned.  How?”

“We have to move,” Grue urged us, “This gets ten times harder if she finds us.  Tattletale, watch for-”

“I already found you,” Bakuda called out in what could have been a sing-song voice, if her mask didn’t filter it down to a monotone, rythmless hiss.  She emerged from the smoke that billowed from the explosion site; her hood was pulled back and her straight black hair was blowing in the wind.  The lenses of her dark red goggles were almost the exact same color as the sky above her.  There were five or six thugs just a step or two behind her, a middle aged guy that didn’t look like a gang member, and a skinny boy who was probably younger than me.  I was glad to see none of them had guns, but they were all armed with weapons of some sort.

“Not that you were hard to find,” Bakuda continued, sweeping her arms out to gesture at the devastation all around her.  “And if you think this only gets ten times harde-”

Grue blasted her, shutting her up, and his darkness billowed into a broad cloud as it struck her, enveloping her group.  We took advantage of their momentary blindness to scramble for the other end of the alley.

We were only halfway down the length of the alley when there was a sound behind us, like the crack of a whip.  It struck me as deeply wrong, since we shouldn’t have been able to hear anything through Grue’s darkness.  All at once, it was like we were running against a powerful headwind.

Except it wasn’t wind.  As I looked for the source of the noise, I saw Grue’s cloud of darkness shrinking.  Debris began to slide towards the epicenter of the darkness, and the wind – the pull – began to increase in intensity.

“Grab something!” Grue bellowed.

Breaking posture and lunging to one side was like forcing myself to leap over a hundred foot chasm.  I don’t know if I misjudged, or if the effect that was pulling on me increased in strength as I leaped, but my hand fell short of the doorknob.  I missed the one on the neighboring locker as well.

I knew in an instant that even if I managed to get my hand on something, the force of the pull would yank me from it before I secured a grip.  I grabbed my knife from its sheath at the small of my back and swung it with all the strength I could spare for the next door I saw.  It bit into the wood, stopping me from being dragged backwards, or falling sideways.  The one-hundred and twenty pound body hanging off of it was too much, though, and almost immediately, the knife began to slip from the hole.

It had slowed me down enough, though.  As the force of the drag increased to the point that my body was parallel to the ground, I waited with my heart in my throat, watching the area where the knife met the door, seeing it slide out millimeter by millimeter.  The moment it slipped free of the wood, I grabbed the doorknob that had been just a few feet beside my toes.  My arm jolted painfully, but I managed to hold on and jam the knife into the gap between the door and the frame.  Even with two things to hold onto, it didn’t feel like enough.

All at once, the effect stopped.  My body collapsed to the ground at the base of the locker, and I pried stiff fingers from the knife handle and knob.  All up and down the street, massive clouds of dust rolled towards the point her device had gone off.  The parts of the lockers that had been set on fire had been extinguished, but were still smouldering enough to send columns of dark smoke into the air.

Regent had found a grip on the edge of a locker’s roof; it had either been bent prior to his getting a grip on it, or the force of the pull had bent the metal as he clung to it.  Tattletale and Grue had apparently gotten a door of a locker open, because they exited as a pair, Grue limping slightly.

“What the fuck was that?” I panted, “A miniature black hole?”

Tattletale chuckled, “Guess so.  That was brac-”

From the other side of the storage lockers, a canister arced through the air, clinked off the metal roof of a storage locker and landed in the middle of our group.

Grue was on it in a heartbeat, using his foot to slide it across the ground and into the locker he and Tattletale had just left.  Without stopping, he opened his arms wide and ushered us all away as he ran away from it.

Even with brick and concrete in the way, the blast knocked us off our feet.  That wasn’t the scary part.  As the initial blast passed, the remainder of the explosion seemed to happen in slow motion.  Shattered chunks of the brick shack drifted through the air so slowly you could barely tell they were moving.  As I watched, I could see them actually slowing down.

Then I looked forward and saw plumes of smoke in fast motion and rubble bouncing across the ground at twice the normal speed, just ten feet ahead of us.  It took me a precious second  to realize why.

We were still in the blast area.

“Hurry!” I shouted, at the same moment that Tattletale yelled, “Go!”

We lunged forward, but I could see things continuing to speed up just in front of us.  Which meant, really, that we were slowing down.  Slowing to an absolute stop.

Somehow, I didn’t think this effect would end in a matter of minutes like Clockblocker’s did.

We broke through the perimeter of the effect with what felt like an abrupt change in air pressure.  I didn’t have a chance to check to see how close we’d come to being trapped in time forever, because Bakuda was behind the row of locker, launching another salvo – three projectiles that arced high into the air, plumes of purple smoke trailing behind them.

Grue shot blasts of darkness at them, probably in hopes of muffling the effects, and gasped, “Over the lockers!”

Regent and I were up on the row of lockers first, much the same way as we’d done it when the mob had been after us.  Once Regent had climbed down to make room, Tattletale and I helped Grue up, and we climbed down the far side.

Again, on each end of the alleyway, there were members of the ABB.  They weren’t moving, which meant they either hadn’t noticed us, or they were just holographic images hiding traps.  My money was on the latter.

“Again,” I panted, “Over.”  We couldn’t risk another trap, another bomb blast too close to us.  So we crossed the alley again and climbed on top of the next row of lockers.

We found ourselves staring down at a half dozen armed members of the ABB.  Except they weren’t your typical gang members.  One of them was an elderly Chinese man, holding a hunting rifle.  There was an girl who couldn’t have been much older than twelve, holding a knife, who might have been his granddaughter.  Of the eleven or twelve of them, only three had the thuggish look to them that really marked them as members of the gang.  The rest just looked terrified.

The old man trained his gun on us, hesitated.

A thug with a tattoo on his neck spat out something in an Eastern language I couldn’t place, the phrase ending with a very English, “Shoot!”

We were down off the other side of the lockers before he could make up his mind.  Grue created a cloud of darkness over the top of the lockers, to discourage them from following.

“What the fuck?” Regent gasped.  We hadn’t stopped running or struggling since Bakuda had sicced the crowd on us.

“They’re scared, not loyal,” Tattletale spoke, not as out of breath as Regent, but still definitely feeling the effect of the last few minutes of running and climbing, “She’s forcing them to serve as her soldiers.  Threatening them or their families, probably.”

“Then she’s been working on that for some time,” Grue said.

“Since Lung got arrested,” Tattletale confirmed, “Where the fuck do we go?”

“Back over the same wall,” Grue decided.  “I’ll blind them, we cross over at a different point in case they open fire where they last saw us.”

Before we could put the plan into motion, there was another explosion. We staggered into the front wall of the storage locker we’d just climbed down from, collapsing in a heap.  My entire body felt hot, and my ears were ringing, and we hadn’t even been that close.

As I raised my head, I saw that one of the storage lockers across from us had been leveled.  Through the gap, I saw Bakuda standing astride the back of a jeep, one hand gripping the roll cage that arced over top of the vehicle.  She was saying something to the thugs in the front and passenger seats, but I couldn’t make it out over the feedback noise in my ears.  They peeled off to the right, and for just a fraction of a second, she looked at me.

I reached for my bugs and directed them towards her, but she was moving too fast.  That left me the option of spreading them out so they were in her way, in the hopes that she would run straight into them, and maybe enough would survive the bug-against-a-windshield impact to give me a sense of where she was.

“She’s going around,” I said, grabbing at Tattletale’s wrist, “We can’t go over the wall.”

“We gotta keep running,” Regent panted.  I was having trouble hearing him.

“No,” Grue stopped him, “That’s what she wants.  She’s herding us into the next trap.”

“Where do we go, then?” Regent asked, impatient, “Fight her head on?  Catch her by surprise?  If I can see her, I can mess with her aim.”

“No.  She’s got enough raw firepower to kill us even if she misses,” Grue shook his head, “We don’t have many options.  We go over this wall again, we won’t just have to deal with the thugs and the old man.  We go down either end of this alley, we’re walking face first into a bomb.  So we have to backtrack.  No choice.”

I wished there was another option.  Backtracking meant moving back toward the center of the facility, it meant prolonging our escape, and possibly running headlong into ABB troops.

We headed for the gap that Bakuda’s latest explosion had created in the lockers, and Grue filled the alley we were leaving with darkness, to help cover our escape.  The little road was empty, except for the still figures at either end.

As we started to climb over the next row of lockers, we felt rather than heard a series of explosions rip through the area behind us.  Bakuda was bombarding the cloud of darkness with a series of explosives.  I guess you didn’t need to see if you could hit that hard.

We climbed down from the lockers and found ourselves in the same place we’d been when we escaped the mob.  There were three still figures at one end of the alley, doubtlessly a concealed bomb, and the destruction caused by the explosions and the miniature black hole in a can on the other.  If we climbed over the locker, we faced the risk of throwing ourselves straight into the mob we’d fled.  We’d have the element of surprise, but we’d be outnumbered, and our firepower was virtually nil.

By unspoken agreement, we headed towards the end of the alley where the hologram-bomb had gone off, where plumes of dust were still settling.

We were greeted by the sound of guns being cocked.

My heart sank.  Twenty or so members of the ABB had guns of various sorts trained on us.  Kneeling, sitting and crouching in front of the two groups, so they were out of the way of the guns and out of sight, were thirty or so other people Bakuda had ‘recruited’.  There was a businessman and a woman that could have been his wife, a girl wearing the Immaculata school uniform, from the Christian private school in the south end of the city, about my age.  There were two older men, three older women with graying hair, and a group of guys and girls that might have been University students were standing together.  Everyday people.

They weren’t gang members, but I could think of them as her soldiers; Every one of them held a weapon of some sort.  There were kitchen knives, baseball bats, pipes, shovels, two-by-fours, chains, crowbars and one guy even had a sword that was, oddly enough, not Japanese.  There was a look of grim resignation on their faces, circles under their eyes that spoke of exhaustion, as they watched us.

Behind their assembled group, standing astride the Jeep, one foot resting on her modified jeep-mounted mortar launcher, an altered grenade launcher danging from one strap around her shoulders, was Bakuda.  All around her were boxes of her specialized grenades and mortar rounds, bolted onto the back of the Jeep, blinking with various colored LEDs.

She put her hands on her grenade launcher as she tilted her head to one side.  Her robotic voice crackled through the still air.

“Checkmate.”

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Shell 4.6

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

We weren’t the only ones who were discussing strategy.  As I turned my full attention to the pair, I saw Über and Leet were muttering to one another.

When they realized I was looking at them, they stopped talking.  Über wiped again at the blood under his nose and took a step forward.  “Enough talking.”

I wished there were more bugs in the area.  The storage facility made for a disappointing selection.  Bugs had to live off something, and there was little around here except pavement, concrete and brick.  That left me only cockroaches and moths that had lived off of the contents of the lockers they could access, and spiders that dwelled in the dark corners.  However lame the pair of them were, I wasn’t happy about going up against two supervillains with so little at my disposal.

I didn’t get a chance to dwell on it, because Über charged us.  I hurried to get out of his way.  Über’s power made him talented.  It didn’t matter if it was playing the harmonica, parkour stunts or Muay Thai, he could pull it off like he’d been working on it for hours a day for most of his life.  If he really focused on it, the way I understood it, he could be top notch.

In short, there was no fucking way I was going to let him get close to me.

Grue had the opposite perspective.  He stepped forward and then disappeared as darkness swelled around him.  A second later, Über stumbled out of one side of the cloud, landed on his rear end, and then did a fancy spinning kick maneuver to bring himself to his feet again.  The juxtaposition of clumsiness and technique was outright bizarre.

My bugs were gathering nearby, now, but very few of them were useful.  Somewhere in the periphery of my consciousness, I’d connected to a fledgling wasp nest hanging from a storage locker near the Trainyard.  They were more useful, but extricating them all from the nest and bringing them to my location would take a minute.  I brought the rest of the bugs into a small swarm nearby, letting the group grow until I had use of them.  Both Kid Win and Lung had obliterated my swarm when I’d attacked them, and I couldn’t risk being more or less powerless if Leet pulled a similar stunt.

Leet stepped in as Über circled around us.  Reaching behind his back, Leet retrieved what looked like an old school bomb; Round black iron casing with a lit fuse sticking out of it.  The way the light bounced off it made it look wrong, though.  Like it was a picture of a bomb instead of a real one.

Regent waved his hand, and the bomb slipped from Leet’s grip, rolling a few feet.  Leet’s mouth opened into a round ‘o’, and he bolted.  Über wasn’t far behind.

As he joined the rest of us in running for cover, Regent half turned to thrust out one hand.  Über stumbled and fell just ten feet from the armed explosive.

The blast radius was thankfully small.  The shockwave that rippled past us didn’t even make me lose my footing.  Über, though, went flying.

Leet watched his friend roll with the impact, try to stagger to his feet and fall again.  He turned to us with his face etched in hard lines of anger.

“I keep wondering when you guys are going to give up,” Tattletale grinned, “I mean, you fail more often than you succeed, you make more cash from your web show than you do from actual crimes, you’ve been arrested no less than three times.  You’re probably going to wind up at the Birdcage the next time you flub it, aren’t you?”

“Our mission is worth it,” Leet raised his chin – inasmuch as he had one – a notch.

“Right,” Tattletale said, “Spreading the word about the noble and underrated art form that is video games.  That’s from your website, word for word.  People don’t watch your show because they think you’re righteous.  They watch because you’re so lame it’s funny.”

Leet took a step forward, fists clenched, but Über called out, “She’s provoking you.”

“Damn right I am.  And I can do it because I’m not scared of you.  I don’t have any powers that are useful in a fight, and you guys don’t intimidate me in the least.  A guy who’s good at everything yet still manages to fuck up half the time, and a Tinker who can only make stuff that breaks comically.”

“I can make anything,” Leet boasted.

“Once.  You can make anything once.  But the closer something you invent is to something you’ve made before, the more likely it is to blow up in your face or misfire.  Real impressive.”

“I could demonstrate,” Leet threatened, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.

“Please don’t.  I hear the carbonized ash of geek is hell to get out of a costume.”

“You say geek like it’s a bad thing,” Über said, in his characteristically overdramatic tone, “It’s a badge of honor.”

“Among geeks, sure,” Regent replied, “But there’s clowns out there that consider being a clown to be a noble calling, while the rest of us just laugh at them.  Catch my drift?”

“Enough,” Leet growled, “It’s obvious you’re trying to antagonize us-”

“I just admitted it.  That’s not obvious.  That’s fact,” Lisa pointed out.

“We won’t be baited!” Leet raised his voice, I think it’s time for our grand reveal, our guest-”

He was cut off as Grue blasted him in the face with a cloud of darkness.  Leet stepped out of the cloud, sputtering.

“They’re laughing at you, Leet,” Tattletale heckled him, “You’re trying to be all dramatic, all intense for your viewers, and they’re just sitting at their computers, snorting over how much you suck.  Even Über is laughing at you behind your back.”

“Shut up!” Leet spat the words, glancing over his shoulder at his teammate, “I trust Über.”

“Why are you even with this guy, Über?” Regent asked, “I mean, you’re kind of lame, but you could at least accomplish something if he wasn’t fucking up half your jobs.”

“He’s my friend,” Über replied, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

“So you don’t deny he’s holding you back.” Lisa pointed out.

“Shut up!” Leet roared.  Except he didn’t have a very deep voice, so it was probably closer to a screech.  He pulled out another bomb and flung it at us before Regent could make him fumble again.  We scattered, with Regent, Tattletale and I running away while Grue shrouded both himself and Über in darkness.

As I scrambled for cover, I directed my bugs to attack Leet.  He’d done something different this time, because the bomb didn’t take half the time the first bomb had before it detonated.  It caught me off guard, and I didn’t get a chance throw myself to the ground as a result.  The blast caught me full in the back.

The air and the fire that rolled over me wasn’t hot.  That was the most surprising thing.  That wasn’t to say it didn’t hurt, but it felt more like getting punched by a really big hand than what I would have thought an explosion would feel like.  I could remember Lung’s blasts of fire, Kid Win shattering the wall with his cannon.  This felt… false.

“The bombs are fake?” I asked aloud, as I picked myself off the ground.  I ached, but I wasn’t burned.

“They’re solid holograms,” Tattletale said, “Actually pretty neat, if you ignore how ineffective they are.  I guess he couldn’t make real bombs without fucking up.”

Leet snarled, though it was hard to say whether it was Tattletale’s words or the moths, wasps and cockroaches that had settled on him.  As I’d suspected, they weren’t doing much.  Even crawling for his nose and mouth, they didn’t really slow him down.  Maybe there was a downside to getting him furious, like Tattletale and Regent were intent on doing.

He whipped out two more bombs and Regent was quicker this time, snapping his hands out.  Leet recovered before he dropped the bombs, and pulled his arms back to throw them.  Regent was ready, though, and one of Leet’s legs jerked out from under him.  He fell to the ground, the bombs rolling only a few feet from him before going off.

He slammed into a door hard enough I thought he might have managed to kill himself.  Before I could approach and check his pulse, though, he began struggling to get to his feet.

“Good thing you made those things nonlethal,” I muttered, half to myself, “You’re one for four.”

Glaring at us, he reached behind his back again and withdrew a sword.

“Link’s sword?” Regent taunted him, “That’s not even from the right game.  You’re breaking theme.”

“I think I speak for everyone when I say we just lost what little respect we had for you,” Tattletale quipped.

Leet lunged for the two of them.  He didn’t get three steps before Regent made him stumble and fall to his hands and knees.  The sword slipped from his grasp and slid over the pavement before flickering out of existence.

He was only a few feet from me, too focused on Tattletale and Regent to pay enough attention to me.  I reached behind my back, withdrew my baton and snapped it out to its full length.  As he started climbing to his feet, reaching behind his back for what I realized was a thin, hard backpack, I swatted at his hand with the length of metal.  He yelped, pulling his hand to his chest to cradle it.  I hit him in the calf, just below the knee, a little harder than I’d intended to.  He crumpled.

Stepping around him, I grabbed the end of the baton with my other hand and pulled the length of metal hard against his throat.

Leet started to make strained choking noises.  He caught me off guard by bucking backward, throwing the two of us onto our backs, him on top of me.  I winced as the impact brought his weight against the bruised area of my chest where Glory Girl had thrown Tattletale at me.  I didn’t lose my grip, though.  Ignoring the one hundred and thirty pounds on top of me, I was glad for the extra leverage being on the ground afforded me.

“You okay?” Grue asked me in his echoing voice.  He stepped forward so he was standing over me.

“Peachy,” I replied, huffing with the exertion.

“Don’t pull it against his windpipe.  You’ll get tired enough that you lose your grip before he ever passes out.  Here,” he bent down and forced Leet’s head to one side, moving the baton so it was pressing against the side of Leet’s neck, “Now you’re pulling against the artery, obstructing the blood flow to his brain.  Twice as fast.  If you could put pressure on both arteries, he’d be out in thirty seconds.”

“Thanks,” I huffed, “For the lesson.”

“Good girl.  Über’s down for the count, but I’m going to go help the others make sure he’s not going to give us any more trouble.  We’re only steps away, so shout if you need a hand.”

It wasn’t fast, even with the technique Grue had instructed.  It wasn’t pretty either.  Leet made lots of ugly little sounds, fumbling awkwardly for his backpack.  I pressed my body tight against it, though, and he gave up.  Instead, he tried pressing against the bar, to alleviate the pressure.  When that didn’t work, he started scratching uselessly at my mask.

I released him when he finally slumped over.  Extricating myself from underneath him, I adjusted my mask, drew my knife and cut the high tech backpack off him.  When I’d done that, I searched him.  If we were going to interrogate him, it wouldn’t do to have him digging out some little trinket to free himself or incapacitate us.  His costume was skintight, so it was easy enough to verify there weren’t any hidden pockets or devices on him.  Just to be safe, I cut the antenna off his head and removed his belt.

The others returned with a battered and unconscious Über in their arms, his arms bound behind him with plastic wrist ties.  They dumped him beside Leet.

“Now to find out where they stashed Bitch and the cash,” Tattletale said.  She looked at me, “Got any smelling salts?”

I shook my head, “No.  These guys have henchmen, don’t they?  They’ve probably got them watching over the money.  We’d likely find Bitch in the same place.”

“Close but no cigar,” a mechanical hiss answered me.

We wheeled around to see a woman in the same outfit Über and Leet were wearing.  The difference was that she wore a gas-mask style fixture over her lower face, and the lenses of her goggles were red, not black.

The woman’s mask seemed to take what she said and replay everything in a robotic, monotone hiss, “I really hoped they would take one or two of you out of the picture, or at least injure someone.  How disappointing.  They didn’t even get around to introducing their guest star for tonight.”

“Bakuda?” Tattletale was the first to put a name to the face, “Fuck me, the game their costumes were from… Bomberman?”

Bakuda stood and bowed in one smooth motion.  Regent raised his hands, but she let herself drop to her knees, gripping the roof’s edge with one hand to avoid sliding off.

“Nuh uh uh,” she waggled one finger at him, “I’m smart enough to learn from the mistakes of others.”

“You seriously left the ABB to join Über and Leet?” Regent asked, astounded.

“Not exactly,” Bakuda said.  She snapped the fingers of the hand she wasn’t using to keep hold of the roof.

Below her, the door to the storage locker opened.  Three men in ABB colors stepped out, each holding a weapon.  A gun, a baseball bat, a fire axe.

Then other doors opened, all down the corridor of storage lockers.  Thirty or forty doors, each with at least one person behind them.  Some with three or four.  All of them armed.

“Those two were cheap hires.  They just wanted a few hundred dollars and I had to wear this costume.  Guess you get what you pay for.

“Goes without saying, I’m still with the ABB,” Bakuda stated the obvious for us.  “In charge, matter of fact.  I think it’s fitting that I commemorate my new position by dealing with the people that brought down my predecessor, don’t you agree?”

She didn’t expect an answer, nor did she wait for one.  She pointed at us and shouted, “Get them!”

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Shell 4.5

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Sunsets are always best after a spell of bad weather.  Today was no exception.  Following the day and a half of heavy rain we’d just suffered through, the sky was turning vivid shades of orange and crimson, with purple highlights on the thin clouds that were moving briskly in the strong wind.  It looked especially amazing as we approached the water of the Bay, but none of us were really in a mood to appreciate it.

It was like we were an entirely different group of people from the group of friends that had walked from the market to the loft.  There was no conversation, no joking, no bonding.  We were all thinking the same thing: that something was wrong, that something had happened.  Nobody voiced their suspicions, though, as if there was the unspoken agreement that we would only make it come true by saying it aloud.

In silence, we caught the bus at the ferry and got off at the Trainyard, the part of the Docks that sat opposite to the Boardwalk.

As a group, we walked a half block from the bus stop, around the back of a derelict building, and stripped out of our civilian clothes.  The storage facility was just a block from the Trainyard.  Just past the chain link fence,  I could see long abandoned boxcars sat like oversize, crumbling tombstones, overgrown with weeds, surrounded by discarded bottles and makeshift shelters.  The entire area was desolate, empty.  It was hard to say why the bus even came this way.  I supposed maybe there was a skeleton crew of employees maintaining the rail for the trains that happened to pass through.

We descended into the maze.  Each storage locker was only about ten feet by ten feet across, but there were hundreds of them, each one joined to the one beside it, organized into disorganized rows of ten or twenty brick shacks.  It was a common enough sight; places like this were scattered all over Brockton Bay.  Decades ago, as unemployment rates skyrocketed, people had started using the storage lockers as a place to live.  Some enterprising individuals had caught on and storage blocks much like this one had appeared in the place of dilapidated warehouses and parking lots.  It was, in an off the books sort of way, the lowest budget living accommodations you could find, a way for people who’d had apartments and homes of their own to keep their most cherished possessions and sleep on a bed at night.

But things turned sour.  These storage facilities became drug dens, gathering places for gangs and areas where the crazies would congregate.  Epidemics of the flu and strep throat had swept through these ‘neighborhoods’ of closely packed, unwashed and malnourished groups of people, and left people dead in their wake.  Some who didn’t die to sickness were knifed for their belongings or starved, and corpses were left to rot behind the closed doors of their rented storage lockers.  In the end, the city cracked down, and the lockers fell out of favor.  By then, the local industry had crashed enough that the homeless and destitute were able migrate to the abandoned warehouses, factories and apartment blocks to squat there instead.  The same general problems were still there, of course, but at least things weren’t so densely packed into a volatile situation.

That left these sprawls of storage lockers scattered over the city, particularly in the Docks.  They were largely unused, now, just row upon row of identical sheds with faded or illegible numbers painted on the doors, each with a corrugated steel roof bolted securely on top, slanted just enough that people wouldn’t be able to comfortably walk or sleep on top of them.

“We’re looking for thirteen-oh-six,” Grue spoke, breaking the silence that had hung over us for half an hour.  It took us a few minutes to find.  There wasn’t really any rhyme or reason to the layout of the lockers or the numbering.  Probably, I guessed, the lockers had been set down where there was room, and given the first number that was available.  The only reason we found the locker as fast as we did was that Brian had been here before with Rachel.  The vastness of the space and the disorganization was a large part of the reason we had stashed the money here, of course.  If we had trouble even when we knew where we were going, then someone who knew the number and got the key from us would find it even more time consuming.

While Grue fiddled with the lock, I glanced down both ends of the alley we were in.  Except for a forklift parked a short distance away, it was eerily quiet.  A ghost town, I thought.  If ghosts existed, they would reside in a place like this, where so much misery, violence and death had occurred.

“Shit,” Grue said, as the door swung open.  My heart sank.

I stood on my toes to get a look inside.  The locker housed only a broad smudge in the thick layer of dust on the floor, a single lightbulb dangling from a power cord, and a dark stain in the corner.  No money.

“I vote we kill her,” Regent said.

My eyebrows went up, “You think it was Bitch?  Would she just take the money and run?”

“If you asked me five hours ago, I would’ve said no,” Regent replied.  “I would have told you, sure, she’s a loose cannon, she’s reckless, crazy, she’s easily pissed off and she’ll hospitalize those people who do piss her off… but I’d have said she’s loyal, that even if she doesn’t necessarily like us-”

“She doesn’t like anyone,” I interrupted.

“Right, she doesn’t like anyone, us included, but we’re the closest things she has to friends or family, besides her dogs.  I wouldn’t have thought she’d throw that away.”

“She didn’t,” Tattletale spoke, “It wasn’t her.”

“Who was it?” Grue asked.  The haunting echo of his voice had an edge of anger to it.

“A cape,” Tattletale replied, almost absentmindedly, as if she was focusing on something else, “Someone who can pick locks.  That door wasn’t forced.”

“A villain?” I asked.

“A villain,” Tattletale echoed me.  I couldn’t tell if she was clarifying what I’d said or if she was just echoing my words while she paid attention to something else.  “More than one.  And they’re still here.”

A soft clapping answered her.  It was slow, unenthusiastic to the point of being sarcastic.

“Brilliantly deduced,” the same person that had been clapping spoke out.  As Tattletale whipped her head around, I took a few steps back from the storage locker, to get a better look at the two people who stood on the roof.

They were standing with one leg higher than the other, to keep from sliding off the angled roof, and both were wearing identical costumes.  The costumes sported blue man-leotards with broad belts cinched around their waists, skintight white sleeve and leggings.  Their hoods were elastic, clinging to their heads so they left only a window for the face, and each sported a single white antenna.  Of all colors, their gloves, boots and the balls at the top of their antennae were bubblegum pink.  Their faces were obscured by oversize goggles with dark lenses.

Other than their costumes, though, they couldn’t have been more different.  One of the figures was scrawny, with a weak chin and a bad slouch.  The other had a sculpted physique, broad shouldered and tall, the lines of his muscles clearly visible through his skintight costume.

“Über and Leet,” Tattletale greeted them, “I can’t tell you two how relieved I am.  For a few seconds, I thought we had something to be worried about.”

“Rest assured, Tattletale, you do,” Über proclaimed.  He was the sort of person who proclaimed, announced, broadcasted and declared.  Just like Grue’s power altered his voice to make him sound haunting and inhuman, Über’s power made him sound like the guy who narrated trailers for action movies or late night commercials.  Overdramatic, intense about everything he said, no matter how mundane.  Like someone overacting the role of a gallant knight in a kid’s movie.

I looked around for what I thought of as the snitch.  I finally spotted it as a small round shadow against the backdrop of the sunset-red sky, just above the glaring sliver of sun.  It was a camera, mounted in a golden sphere the size of a tennis ball.  It was capable of moving like a hummingbird, staying safe, always recording.  Über and Leet streamed all of their costumed activity online, so people could tune in whenever to see what they were up to. I was pretty sure they had a time delay, so events that the camera recorded would play out online in a half hour to an hour.

I could admit I had watched myself, a couple of times, which was how I knew about the ‘snitch’.  Each time I’d tuned in, I had been surprised to see there were thousands of viewers.  I’d stopped because it wasn’t feel-good watching.  They were real underdogs, struggling to succeed, which made you feel sorry for them, made you want to root for them, until they did something despicable.  Then you found yourself looking at them in a negative light, looking down on them, cheering whenever they failed.  It felt a little too much like I’d been looking at them in the same way Emma, Madison and Sophia looked at me, and that had been a major turn-off.

After spotting the camera, which was no doubt positioned to catch a view of us looking up at the two villains, our shadows long behind us, I turned my gaze back to the pair.  With my power, though, I sent a collection of flies to congregate around the camera.  It didn’t take long for the camera to start going spastic in the periphery of my vision, as if it were trying to shake them off.  I smiled behind my mask.

Leet frowned and turned to the camera, “Is that really necessary?”

“You fucked with us,” I replied, “I fuck with your subscriber base.”

Tattletale and Regent grinned and chuckled, respectively.  Only Grue stayed quiet.  He was standing very still, but the darkness around him was roiling like a stoked fire.

“What’s the theme tonight?” Regent called out, “Your costumes are so terrible, I can’t look directly at them long enough to try and figure it out.”

Leet and Über glared at him.  Their entire schtick was a video game theme.  With every escapade, they picked a different video game or series, designing their costumes and crimes around it.  One day it would be Leet in a Mario costume throwing fireballs while Über was dressed up as Bowser, the two of them breaking into a mint to collect ‘coins’.  Then a week later, they would have a Grand Theft Auto theme, and they would be driving through the city in a souped up car, ripping off the ABB and beating up hookers.

Like I’d said.  Despicable.

Über approached the edge of the roof and stabbed his finger in Regent’s direction, “You-”

He didn’t get to finish.  Regent swung his arm out to one side, and Über lost his footing.  I joined the others in stepping back out of the way as he fell face first onto the pavement at the base of the locker.

“Too bad you’re fucking with the camera,” Regent commented, tilting his head in my direction, “I would have liked to see how many hits that clip would have gotten on Youtube.”

“Give me some advance warning next time,” I told him, “Maybe a hand signal?”

We had backed away from the locker as Über fell, and we retreated another few steps as he stood.  Leet hopped down to stand beside him.

“The money,” Grue spoke, “Where is it?  How did you find it?”

“Your fifth team member led us straight to it.  Lucky happenstance, really,” Leet grinned, “As for how we found her…” he trailed off.

Grue spoke in a low voice that wouldn’t carry to the pair of villains, “They did something to Bitch, they’ve got the money.  If we don’t get a decisive victory here, our reputation is fucked.”

“No holds barred?” Tattletale murmured.

“Leave one of them in a state to be interrogated.  Make it Leet, since Über’s powers make him annoying to keep contained.  Give him a chance and he can figure out how to do anything like he’s a goddamn expert at it, and that probably extends to escaping from ropes or handcuffs.  Alright?”

“I’m game,” I answered.  I was surprised at how excited I was.  This was the sort of thing I had put on a costume to do.  Sure, the context wasn’t what I would have chosen, but going up against bad guys?

I smiled behind my mask and reached out for my bugs.

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Shell 4.4

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

An evening crowd had started to file into Fugly Bob’s, large groups that were grabbing beers and moving tables together to accommodate their individual crowds.

As one group began dragging tables into one long row in the middle of the patio, not far from where we were sitting, Brian asked, “Want to go?  I’ll share my bit on the way back.”

There were no arguments, so we paid our bill and left.  Brian was gracious enough to carry some of Lisa’s and my bags, in addition to his own, lightening our load.  The Market itself had mostly emptied, with the various merchants and shoppers having left to get their dinners.  Only the stalls and venders that were selling food were sticking it out.  Brian apparently deemed it safe to begin.

“For background, I guess it’s important to mention that my parents split up when I was thirteen,” Brian told us, “I went with my father and my sister Aisha went with my mom.  Aisha and I kind of stayed in touch, but there’s four years difference in our ages, our interests were completely different, so there wasn’t a lot to say.  I’d send her a text message about how my day at school had been painfully dull, and a few days later, she’d send me an email about a cartoon she liked.  Or she’d ask me for advice on what to do when she got an F on a spelling test.

“We weren’t close.  It wasn’t really possible, since I was living at the south end of the city and she was up here.  But one night, I got a text from her.  Two words: ‘Help me’.  I called, but the line was busy.  To this day, I don’t know why I took it so seriously, but I got over to my mom’s place as fast as was humanly possible.  Ran out the front door, sprinted two blocks to Lord Street, downtown, and grabbed a cab.  Left the cab driver shouting for his money as I charged through the front door of my mom’s place and found my sister.

“She’d been crying, but she wasn’t saying what was wrong.  I didn’t bother asking a second time.  I gave her a hug, picked her up and started to leave.  A man I didn’t recognize got in my way.  My mom’s new boyfriend.

“I knew he was the reason she had texted me for help, from the moment I saw her reaction.  Maybe I’d suspected there was something going on even before that, from the way her emails and texts had changed in tone.  It would explain that gut feeling I’d had that made me get over there as fast as I did.  I saw her shrink back, I felt her hold me tighter, and I went cold inside.

He paused a second, just walking in silence.  I almost thought that he was done, somehow, until he suddenly turned to me.  “I think I mentioned, Taylor, that my father had been a boxer, while he was in the service?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Well my father is a hard man.  Not the kind of man that’s meant to raise a son alone.  I wouldn’t say he was abusive, but there’s never been any warmth to him, no charming anecdotes, no fatherly wisdom, no throwing baseballs in the backyard.  The extent of our bonding was in the gym, him holding the punching bag in position while shouting at me that I was doing something wrong, staying grimly quiet if my form, my timing, the raw power of my hits were all flawless.  Or we’d be in the ring, with boxing helmets and gloves on, a thirty five year old man in peak physical condition barely holding back against his fifteen year old son.  He just expected me to keep up or take the hits, and I didn’t have much choice in the matter.

“So even if I was only fifteen, I was tall for my age, I was fit, and I knew how to throw a punch.  I didn’t say a word, didn’t make a sound.  I put my sister down and beat my mother’s boyfriend within an inch of his life, my mother screaming and wailing the entire time.  When I was done, I picked my sister up and returned to the cab.  We went to my father’s that night, and we went to the police station in the morning.”

“When you throw a punch barehanded, it doesn’t leave your hands pristine.  A few good swings, you connect solidly with someone’s face, someone’s teeth, and it tears the fuck out of your knuckles.  It was at my father’s place that night, washing and cleaning my hands, when I saw it.  It wasn’t just blood leaking out of my torn up knuckles, but there was the darkness too, like wisps of really black smoke.  You hear about the trigger event, you might think it’s all about rage or fear.  But I’m a testament that it can be just the opposite.  I didn’t feel a fucking thing.”

“Wow,” I said.

“That’s my story,” he said.

“Um, I can’t think of a nice way to put this, but why aren’t you in jail, after thrashing that guy?”

Brian sighed, “It was a close call, but the guy I beat up had violated the terms of his probation by not going to his narcotics anonymous meetings and Aisha backed me up as far as us saying, well, it was well deserved.  He came across as the bad guy more than I did.  He got six months in jail, I got three months of community service.”

“And you’ve been as good as gold ever since, haven’t you?” Lisa grinned.

Brian smiled at that.  “These guys know already, but I don’t think I mentioned it to you,” he said to me, “I got into this for Aisha.  My mother lost custody of her after child services stepped in, so Aisha’s living with my father now.  Problem is, he’s not an ideal parent.  It’s been nearly three years, and he still doesn’t know what to do with a daughter, so they mostly ignore each other.  But she’s acting out, getting into trouble, and she needs someone watching over her that isn’t him and isn’t our mother.  I turn eighteen in June, and when I do, I plan to get my mother and father’s parental rights terminated and apply to become Aisha’s guardian.  To do that, I’m going to need money.”

“Thus his current, rather lucrative, form of employment,” Lisa pointed out.

Brian stuck his hands into his pockets, “My father has given me his blessing as far as my taking custody of my hellion of a sister.  My mother made it clear she’s going to fight it every step of the way.  That means legal fees.  It means paying a private investigator to get proof that my mother hasn’t kicked her habits as far as the drugs and the fucked up boyfriends.  I’ll need an apartment that’s going to pass inspection, with a space ready and set aside for Aisha.  More than anything, I’ve got to present myself as someone that’s financially secure and responsible enough to make up for the fact that the other option is Aisha’s own mother.”

“The boss is helping on that last bit,” Lisa said, “The allowance and a share of the other income Brian is getting is coming back to him in the form of a paycheck from a legitimate company, and the manager of said company is both willing and able to provide a glowing recommendation on his behalf.”

“Which I’m less than thrilled about,” Brian admitted, “It’s… convenient, I don’t know how else I’d manage it, but I don’t like being so reliant on someone I don’t know at all.  He could walk away with that forty thousand dollars, I’d deal.  But if he fucked me on this…”

“You said it earlier,” Lisa assured him, “He has no reason to.”

“True.  It doesn’t make me feel much better.”

“I think what you’re doing is very noble,” I said.

“No,” Brian almost sounded offended at the idea. “I’m just doing what I have to.  She’s family, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know.”  I could understand how family was a priority.

We fell silent for a minute or two, only partially because some mothers with oversize strollers had turned a corner and were walking in front of us, putting them easily in earshot.  The other reason was that there hadn’t been too much more to add to the conversation.

I was relieved when the two moms parked their strollers and stopped to look in a store window, because it let us get ahead of them.  Groups of people who take up the entire sidewalk so you have to step onto the road to go around them are a definite pet peeve of mine.  Oblivious people who block the entire sidewalk and walk slowly enough that you’re forced to dawdle, yet fast enough that you can’t walk around them?  They make me fantasize about bringing swarms of bees down on their heads. Not that I would actually do it, of course.

When we were free to talk again, I found myself struggling to think up a new topic of conversation.  I glanced at Brian, trying to gauge how he was feeling after telling his story.  Was he really okay, or was he just really good at repressing his feelings?  He looked totally normal, as relaxed as one could expect from someone who was carrying as many shopping bags as he was.

“Hey, what did you buy?” I asked him.

“Some stuff for my apartment.  Placemats, a piece of art I gotta to put in a frame.  Kind of boring.  I found a neat statue, the guy said it was a concept sculpt he did for a horror movie that never panned out.  I was thinking it had a freakish looking face, and since I’m thinking of updating my costume, I was considering using the statue as an inspiration for a new mask.  Move on from the skull.”

“You’ll have to show me,” I said.

“Actually,” he paused, “You’re the person I was most interested in showing it to.  Your costume is pretty cool, and I was wondering if you had any suggestions on where to go?”

“Where?”

“For costumes.”

I stared at him blankly for a few seconds, trying to piece together what he was saying.

“Having my power is really frustrating, sometimes,” Lisa complained, “It’s like being the only person with eyes in the land of the blind.  Taylor, Brian is asking you where you bought your costume.  Brian, she didn’t buy her costume.  She made it from scratch.”

“No shit?” His eyebrows raised.

“It’s spider silk,” I said, “So it’s got a tensile strength that’s only a hair less than steel, but it’s a fraction of the weight.  It’s not as strong as kevlar, but it stretches, which means it’s going to handle regular wear and tear better than a costume made with steel, kevlar or rubber would.  Making it was kind of complicated, because of how I needed to manage the spiders and weave it, but I basically had the spiders do the work while I concentrated.”

Brian nodded, “That’s pretty damn cool.  Would you make me one?”

That gave me pause.

“I wouldn’t expect you to do it for free,” he added.

“How much are we talking?” I asked.

“Name a price.”

I thought on it.  “Two thousand?”

He chuckled, “No discount for me being a team member and a friend?”

“That is with a discount,” I said, “It takes time, long hours of having to be in general proximity to the bugs as they work, which I can’t do all the time, because my dad would see if I left them out while he was home.  Plus I have to rotate the spiders so I constantly have a fresh supply of silk, but I can’t have so many in the neighborhood that people would notice… it’s not easy.”

“If that’s the big issue, then change locations,” Lisa suggested.

“To where?  It has to be a place I’m spending a lot of time, some place with room to work, where I can keep a few tens of thousands of spiders without anyone noticing.”

“The loft?” Lisa shrugged, “Or to be more specific, the area under the loft?”

That stopped me.  It made so much sense I could have kicked myself for not thinking of it the instant Lisa suggested changing locations.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Alec cut in, “Tens of thousands of spiders?”

“If I want the work to be relatively quick,” I said, “Yeah, we’re probably talking about that much.  Especially since I suspect Brian is going to want something a little heavier. The floor under the loft could definitely work.  I mean, it’s not like a few more cobwebs will attract attention if anyone sticks their head in, right?”

Alec ran his fingers through his hair, which I took to be a sign of stress or worry.  It was a rare thing, to see him as anything but bored or half distracted.  As if to confirm my thoughts, he said, “I don’t want tens of thousands of spiders just lurking below me, making spider noises and climbing upstairs to crawl on me while I sleep.”

I tried to reassure him, “Black widows don’t tend to roam, and they’re more likely to devour each other than they are to bite you.  I mean, you wouldn’t want to provoke one-”

“Black widow spiders?” Alec groaned, “This is the point where you say you’re messing with me.  It’s cool, I can take a prank.”

“They have the strongest dragline silk you’ll get from any spider around here,” I said, “I’d love to get my hands on something better, like a Darwin’s bark spider.  They’ve got the strongest silk of any arachnid or worm out there.  It could make fabric five times as tough as kevlar.  I’d ask our boss to see about getting me some, if I thought they could survive in this mild climate.”

“You’re not kidding about the black widow spiders.”

“Remember the ones I brought to the bank robbery?  I brought them from home.”

“Fuck,” Alec said, then he repeated himself, “Fuck. And now Brian’s going to insist on that costume, so this is probably going to happen.”

“Arachnophobic?” I asked, just a little surprised his reaction was so strong.

“No, but I think anyone would be spooked by the idea of tens of thousands of black widow spiders being in the same building as them.”

I considered for a moment, “I could have cages, if it would give you some peace of mind.  It probably makes sense to have it anyways, since they’re territorial, and would kill each other when I wasn’t there.”

“We’ll work something out,” Lisa grinned, “Think you could micromanage enough to make me one too?”

It struck me that I was thinking seriously about putting together some high quality costumes for villains.  I wasn’t sure how I felt on the subject.

“I can micromanage my bugs enough to make two at once, sure… but it’s really just such a pain in the ass.  I was so relieved to be done my own costume, I’m not looking forward to the idea of doing two more.”  All true enough.  “Let me think on it?”

“One thousand five hundred,” Brian said, “I’ll go that high, now that we’ve come up with a way to maybe handle the logistics of it.  I think it’s a fair offer.”

“Okay,” I said.  Money didn’t hold any sway over me, really.  I mean, big numbers could make my eyes widen, but at the end of the day, I had no plans to spend my ill-gotten gains.

All in all, it took us maybe an hour to get back to the Loft.  I didn’t mind.  My training meant the hike didn’t tire me out much, and the company was good.

As we made our way into the building and the others headed up the stairs, I stayed behind to look at the factory area on the first floor.  If I could maybe secure some plywood to the frames where there had been treadmills, it would mean I would have several long countertops for my bugs to work on.  Add some sort of cage at the back, to house them… but where would I find the sort of grid of cages or containers that could house thousands of individual spiders?

It was something I could figure out.  Whether I settled on egg cartons or built the entire thing with the help of bug labor, I knew it was doable somehow.

The question was, did I want to do it?

I made my way upstairs, deep in thought.

“Where’s Rachel?” Brian asked, as he returned from the other end of the loft, Brutus and Angelica trotting behind him, tails wagging. “Only two of her dogs are here.”

“We’re twenty minutes later than we said we’d be,” Lisa pointed out, “Maybe she went ahead?”

“You guys get ready,” Brian directed us, “We told our employer we’d hand the cash over at some point tonight, and if we take too long, it’s going to reflect badly on us.  I’ll take care of calling Rachel to see what’s up, since it doesn’t take me as long to get my stuff on.”

Alec, Lisa and I headed towards our individual rooms.  After shutting the door, I got my costume from the bottom drawer of my bedside table.  I laid it out on my inflatable mattress, then gathered and lined up my arsenal for my utility compartment: pepper spray, knife, telescoping combat baton, notepad, Epipens, a change-purse with some spare change and a twenty inside and an unused, disposable cell phone.  Everything I’d been able to think of, for what I’d want to keep with me.

Pen, I realized.  It was a little thing, but a notepad did me little good without a pen.  I headed for the dresser and stopped short.

On top of the dresser, there was a crystal.  Except crystal was the wrong word.  It was a teardrop shaped piece of amber, polished smooth, almost a foot tall, set into a stone base so it stood upright.  Inside was a dragonfly.  The dragonfly was so large it almost didn’t fit – it wouldn’t have fit, even, if the wings hadn’t curled inward at the tips as the amber set.  Where the light from the loft’s windows touched the crystal, it cast the top of the dresser and some of the wall in deep shades of yellow and orange, with hints of dark blue where it passed through the dragonfly’s translucent wings.

There was a note beside it.  ‘Saw it, seemed very you.  Consider it a belated welcome present.  Brian.’

I was stunned.  He must have left it while I was still downstairs.  I hurried to get into my costume, found a pen in the dresser and put the contents of my utility compartment in place.  When that was done, I pulled on some jeans, a sweater and a jacket over top of the costume, finishing up with a nearly empty backpack to cover the slight hump of the armor on my back.

It was only after I was totally ready that I headed out of my room and found Brian on the couch.  While I was sure he’d be gracious either way, I was assuming he would appreciate it more if I got ready first and then thanked him, instead of the other way around.

He was still in the living room, pulling on his leather motorcycle jacket over a protective vest.

“I-uh, don’t know what to say.”

His forehead creased, “Is it okay?  I was thinking, maybe giving you a rock with a dead bug inside it wasn’t the nicest-”

“It’s perfect,” I interrupted him, “Really.  Thank you.”  I never knew what to say when getting a gift.  I always worried my thanks sounded false, forced or sarcastic, even when they were genuine.

Impulsively, I gave him the briefest of hugs.  It seemed like the only way I could make my gratitude clear.

“Hey!” a voice from behind me startled the wits out of me, “No romance in the workplace!”

I turned around to see Alec and Lisa standing in the hallway, grinning.  In Lisa’s case, grinning more than usual.

I must have turned beet red.  “It’s not, no, I was just thanking him for-”

“I know, dork.  I was with him when he bought it.”

Mercifully, Lisa changed the subject, “Any word from our resident sociopath?”

Brian frowned, “No.  Her phone is out of service, which it shouldn’t be, since I was the one who turned it on, activated it and gave it to her earlier today.  Something’s up.”

The good natured mood from moments before was gone.  We exchanged looks between us, and nobody was smiling now.

“I think…” Brian said, weighing his words carefully, “It would be a very good idea to check on the money, ASAP.”

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Shell 4.3

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Alec, surprisingly, was the one to break the nerve-wracking silence. “Let me put it this way.  When you got your powers, were you having a good day?”

I didn’t have to think long. “No.”

“Would I be really off the mark if I guessed you were having the worst day of your life, when you got your powers?”

“Second worst,” I replied quietly, “It’s like that for everyone?”

“Just about.  The only ones who get off easy are the second generation capes.  The kids of people who have powers.”

Lisa leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table, “So if you needed another reason to think Glory Girl is a privileged bitch, look no further.”

“Why?” I asked, “Why do we go through that?”

“It’s called the trigger event,” Lisa answered me, “Researchers theorize that for every person with powers out there, there’s one to five people with the potential for powers, who haven’t met the conditions necessary for a trigger event.  You need to be pushed to the edge.  Fight or flight responses pushed to their limits, further than the limits, even.  Then your powers start to emerge.”

“Basically,” Alec said, “For your powers to manifest, you’re going to have to have something really shitty happen to you.”

“Which may help to explain why the villains outnumber the heroes two to one,” Lisa pointed out, “Or why third world countries have the highest densities of people with powers.  Not capes, but a lot of people with powers.”

“But people who have parents with powers?”

“They don’t need nearly as intense an event to make their powers show up.  Glory Girl got her powers by getting fouled while playing basketball in gym class.  She mentioned it in a few interviews she gave.”

“So you basically asked us to share the details on the worst moments of our lives,” Alec said, before taking another bite of his burger.

“Sorry,” I replied.

“It’s okay,” Brian reassured me, “It’s one of those things you only really hear about from other capes, and you only know us.  Maybe you’d hear more about trigger events if you took a university class in parahuman studies, but I doubt you’d get the full picture there.  Kind of have to go through it yourself.”

Lisa reached over and mussed up my hair, “Don’t worry about it.”

Why had I brought up origins?  It would have eventually have been my turn, and I would’ve had to share my own story.

Maybe I’d wanted to.

“Lisa said you guys were talking about me, talking about how you thought I was having a hard time, speculating on what it was,” I managed to say, “I dunno, I think a part of me wants to talk about it so you aren’t coming to the wrong conclusions.  Talk about when I got my powers.  But I don’t know that I can get into it without ruining the mood.”

“You already ruined the mood, dork.”  This from Alec.

Brian punched him in the arm, making him yelp.  Glaring at Brian, Alec grudgingly added, “Which means there’s no reason not to, I guess.”

“Go for it,” Lisa prodded me.

“It’s not an amazing story,” I said, “But I need to say something before I start.  I already said it to Lisa.  The people I’m talking about… I don’t want you to take revenge on them on my behalf or anything.  I need to be sure you won’t.”

“You want to get revenge yourself?” Alec asked.

I found myself at a bit of a loss for words.  I couldn’t really explain why I didn’t want them interfering, “I don’t really know.  I think… I guess I feel that if you guys jumped in and beat them up or humiliated them or made them tearfully apologize, I wouldn’t feel like I’d dealt with things myself.  There wouldn’t be any closure.”

“So whatever we hear, we don’t act on it,” Brian clarified.

“Please.”

“It’s your prerogative,” he said, taking a deep-fried zucchini off of Lisa’s plate and biting it in half.  She pushed her plate closer to him.

“Whatever,” Alec said.

I took a few seconds to get a few bites of my bacon cheeseburger and composed my thoughts before I began.

“There’s three girls at school that had… have been making my life pretty goddamn miserable.  Doing pretty much everything they could think of to make school suck, humiliate me, hurt me.  Each of the three had their individual approach, and for a good while, it was like they were trying to outdo each other in how creative or mean they could get.”

My heart was pounding as I looked up from my plate to check the expressions on the others’ faces.  This is who I am, I thought.  This is where I’m coming from.  When they heard about the real me, without whatever notions or ideas they’d gotten into their heads about me or how capable I was, how would they react?

“It went on for almost a year and a half before things quieted down.  Last year, around November, they… I dunno.  It was like they got bored.  The pranks got tamer, then stopped altogether.  The taunts stopped, and so did most of the hate mail.  They ignored me, left me alone.

“I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.  But I made a friend, one of the girls who had sometimes joined in on the taunting came to me and apologized.  Not one of the major bullies, more like a friend of a friend of the bullies, I guess.  She asked me if I wanted to hang out.  I was too gun-shy, told her no, but it got so we were talking before and after classes and eating lunch together.  Her approaching me and befriending me was one of the big reasons I could think the harassment was ending.  I never really let my guard down around her, but she was pretty cool about it.

“And for most of November and the two weeks of classes before Christmas break, nothing.  They were leaving me alone.  I was able to relax.”

I sighed, “That ended the day I came back from the winter break.  I knew, instinctually, that they were playing me, that they were waiting before they pulled their next stunt, so it had more impact.  I didn’t think they’d be so patient about it.  I went to my locker, and well, they’d obviously raided the bins from the girls bathrooms or something, because they’d piled used pads and tampons into my locker.  Almost filled it.”

“Ew,” Alec interjected, putting down his food, “I was eating here.”

“Sorry,” I looked down at my plate, poked at a piece of bacon, “I can stop, it’s cool.”

“Finish now,” Brian ordered me, if you can say he was ordering me gently.  He glared at Alec.

I swallowed, feeling a flush creeping across my face, “It was pretty obvious that they had done it before the school closed for Christmas, by the smell alone.  I bent over to throw up, right there in a crowded hallway, everyone watching.  Before I could recover or stop losing my breakfast, someone grabbed me by the hair, hard enough it hurt, and shoved me into the locker.”  It had been Sophia, I was almost positive: She was the most physically aggressive of the three.  But these guys didn’t need to know her name.

Why had I brought this up?  I was regretting it already.  I looked at the others, but I couldn’t read their expressions.

I couldn’t leave the story unfinished, after getting this far, as much as I really wanted to. “They shut the locker and put the lock on it.  I was trapped in there, with this rancid smell and puke, barely able to move, it was so full.  All I could think was that someone had been willing to get their hands that dirty to fuck with me, but of all the students that had seen me get shoved in the locker, nobody was getting a janitor or teacher to let me out.

“I panicked, freaked out.  My mind went someplace else, and it found the bugs there.  Not that I knew what they were, at that point.  I didn’t have a sense of proportion, and with all the info my power was giving me then, my brain didn’t know how to process it all.  As far as I knew, all around me, in the walls of the school, in the corners, and crawling around the filthy interior of the locker, there were thousands of these twitchy, alien, distorted things that were each shoving every tiny detail about their bodies and their fucked up biology into my head.

I sighed, “It’s hard to explain what it’s like, having a new sense open up, but you can’t understand it all.  Every sound that they heard was bounced back to me at a hundred times the volume, with the pitch and everything else all screwed up as if they wanted to make it as unpleasant and painful to listen to as possible.  Even what they were seeing, it’s like having my eyes open after being in the dark for a long time, but the eyes weren’t attached to my body, and what they were seeing was like looking into a really dingy, grimy kaleidoscope.  Thousands of them.  And I didn’t know how to turn any of it off.”

“Damn,” Lisa said.

“When someone finally let me out, I came out fighting.  Biting, scratching, kicking.  Screaming incoherently.  Probably putting on a good show for all the kids that had come out of their classrooms to watch.  The teachers tried to deal with the situation, paramedics eventually came and I don’t remember much after that.

“I figured out what my power was at the hospital, while they observed me, which helped ground me, make me feel sane again.  Bugs are a lot easier to wrap your head around, when you realize they’re bugs.  After a week, maybe, I was able to shut some of it out.  My dad got some money from the school.  Enough to pay the bills for the hospital stay and a little extra.  He was talking about suing the bullies, but no witnesses were really talking and the lawyer said it wasn’t going to be successful without hard evidence to identify the responsible.  We didn’t have the money for it, if it wasn’t going to be a sure thing.  I never wound up telling my dad about the main group of bullies.  Maybe I should have, I dunno.”

“I’m sorry,” Lisa put her hand on my shoulder.  I felt grateful that she wasn’t pulling away or laughing.  It was the first time I’d ever really talked about it, and I wasn’t sure I could’ve dealt if she had.

“Wait, this thing with those girls is still going on?” Alec asked me.

I shrugged, “Basically.  I went back after being in the hospital, and things were as bad as they ever were.  My so called friend wasn’t making eye contact or speaking to me, and they didn’t even go easy on me after seeing my, uh, episode.”

“Why don’t you use your power?”  Alec asked, “It doesn’t even have to be that big.  A bug in their lunch, maybe a bee sting on the tip of their nose or on their lips.”

“I’m not going to use my power on them.”

“But they’re making you miserable!” Alec protested.

I frowned, “All the more reason not to.  It wouldn’t be hard to guess who was doing it if someone started using powers to mess with them.”

“Seriously?” Alec leaned back in his seat, folding his arms, “Look, you and I haven’t talked all that much, maybe we don’t know each other all that well, but, um, you’re not stupid.  Are you honestly telling me you’re incapable of finding a subtle way to get back at them?”

I looked to Lisa and Brian, feeling a little backed into a corner, “A little help?”

Lisa smiled, but said nothing.  Brian shrugged and considered for a few moments before telling me, “I’m kind of inclined to agree with Alec.”

“Okay, fine,” I admitted, “It’s crossed my mind.  I’ve considered doing something that couldn’t be traced to me, like giving them lice.  But you guys remember how I went off on Bitch after she set her dogs on me.”

“A bit of repressed anger,” Lisa said, still smiling.

“It’s the same with these guys.  You know what happens if I do something like give them crabs?  They wind up miserable, annoyed, and they take it out on me.”

“Oh man,” Alec laughed, “Crabs.  You need to do that every time we go up against another cape.  Can you imagine?”

“I’d rather not,” I made a face.  Alec’s dogged tenaciousness thus far in the conversation was giving me the impression he would be hard to convince without a good reason, so I fudged the truth a little as I told him, “While I’m controlling them, I see everything my bugs see, feel everything they feel, pretty much.  I don’t want to make a regular thing of having my bugs crawl all over sweaty crotches.”

“Awww.”

“The point I’m trying to make, if you’ll stop changing the subject, is that these girls would probably take their misery out on me, even if they didn’t know I was doing it.  I don’t trust myself to keep from retaliating, upping the ante.  You saw what happened with me and Rachel, the first time we met.  Things would escalate, I’d take things too far eventually.  Secret identity blown, or getting someone seriously hurt, like Lung was, only without the regeneration.”

“I don’t get how you can sit there and take it,” Alec said, “Get revenge, or get one of us to get revenge for you.  Go to someone for help.”

“None of those things is an option,” I said, with enough emphasis that I hoped my statement carried some finality, “There’s too much chance for things to go out of control if I take things into my own hands or have you guys do it for me.  As far as going to someone for help, I don’t trust the system.  Not after the court case, not after talking to some of my teachers.  If it was that easy, I would have dealt with it already.”

Lisa leaned forward, “Tell me it wouldn’t be awesome if we kidnapped their leader, pulled a hood over her head, dragged her into a van and dropped her off in the woods at midnight, ten miles out of town, with nothing but her skivvies.”

I smiled at the mental image, but I shook my head as I said, “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s going too far.”

“They shoved you into the grossest locker ever and locked the door!” Alec looked at me like I was trying to argue the earth was square.

“Leaving her in the middle of nowhere without any clothes on is practically inviting her to be molested by the first trucker to see her,” I pointed out.

“Fine,” Alec rolled his eyes, “So we tone it down some.  Drop her off with no shoes, no cell phone, no wallet, no spare change, nothing she could use to negotiate her way home.  Make her hike it.”

“That would still be risking getting her assaulted,” I sighed, “Pretty girl walking down the side of the road at night?”

“They’ve assaulted you!”

“It’s a little different.”

“The only difference I see is that they deserve it and you didn’t.  I mean, I’m not smart like you guys are, so maybe I’m missing something.”

I shook my head, “You’re not missing anything, Alec.  We’re looking at this from two very different perspectives.  I don’t really believe in that whole ‘eye for an eye’ business.”

I was beginning to feel like I was getting control of the conversation again.  Then Alec dropped his bombshell.

“Then why the fuck are you a supervillain?”

“Escape.”  The word left my mouth almost immediately, before I’d had a chance to even think about what it meant.  I couldn’t have taken the time to think before speaking, or they might have known something was up.  Lisa almost certainly would have.

A few tense moments passed, and I chanced a look at Lisa and Brian.  Lisa was watching the dialogue, a small smile on her face, her chin resting on her palm.  Brian was kind of inscrutable, arms folded in front of him, no real expression on his face.

I explained, “I can deal with real life, if I can leave it behind for this.  Kicking ass, making a name for myself, hanging out with friends.  Having fun.”

It kind of surprised me, but I realized what I was saying was true, so I didn’t even need to worry about tipping Lisa off.  A second later, I realized I might have been a little presumptuous.  “I mean, assuming that we are frien-”

“If you finish that sentence,” Lisa warned me, “I’m going to slap you across the head.”

I felt the heat of a flush in my cheeks and ears.

“Yes, Taylor, we’re friends,” Brian said, “And we appreciate, or at least, I appreciate that you trusted us enough to share your story.”

I wasn’t sure what to say in response to that.  The fact that he’d heard it and didn’t give me a hard time, it meant a hell of a lot to me.  Only Alec was really getting on my case about it, and he wasn’t doing it in a mean spirited way.

Brian frowned.  “Don’t suppose either of you are going to share your stories?”

Alec shook his head and stretched his arms above his head before resting them on his full stomach, his silence answer enough.

Lisa, for her part, grinned and said, “Sorry.  I like you guys, but I’m going to need a few drinks before I share that particular tidbit, and I’m not legal to drink for a few years yet.”

“Doesn’t seem fair that Taylor’s the only one sharing,” Brian pointed out.

“I- I didn’t tell my story because I expected you guys to reciprocate,” I hurried to add, “Really, it’s fine.”

“You’re volunteering, then?” Lisa asked Brian, ignoring my protests.

Brian nodded, “Yeah, I guess I am.”

 

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

 

 

Shell 4.2

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

“We’re updating your wardrobe,” Lisa decided, after we’d left the boys behind.

“What’s wrong with my wardrobe?” I asked, a bit defensively.

“Nothing, really.  It’s just very… you.  Which is the problem.”

“You’re not making me feel better, here.”

“You’re a cautious person, Taylor.  I like that about you.  I think it’s an essential addition to the group dynamic,” she led me to a collection of stalls where there was a lot of women’s clothing, and quickly drew three dresses from a rack.

“Brian’s cautious.”

“You and Brian are similar, but I wouldn’t say he’s cautious.  He’s… pragmatic.  You both are.  The difference between you two is that he’s been doing what he does for three years, now.  Two years of experience, before he joined the group.  So a lot of what he does is automatic.  He doesn’t give a second thought to the little things he’s done dozens of times already.  He takes a lot for granted.”

“And I don’t?”

“You’re observant, detail oriented and focused.  More than any of the others.  You watch, you interpret, and then you act with this careful, surgical precision. That’s a strength and a flaw.”

“What does this have to do with my clothes?”

“Your personality is reflected in your fashion choices.  Muted colors.  Brown, gray, black, white.  If you are wearing something with color to it, you’re wearing it under a sweatshirt, sweater or jacket.  Never anything that would stand out.  Never showing much skin.  While most people our age are picking clothes with the intention of defining an identity for themselves, fitting into a clique, you’re focused on staying out of sight and not attracting attention.  You’re being too cautious, overthinking things you don’t need to, always making the call to play it safe.”

“And you want to change that.”  I sighed.

“I’m suspicious you’re capable of surprising everyone, yourself included, when you drop your guard, start being bolder and improvise.  Not just when circumstances force you to.  I’m not just talking about clothes, you know.”

“I kind of got the drift.”

“More to the point, I’m seeing you alternate between the same two pairs of jeans every day, when you got a paycheck for two grand five days ago.  If I don’t make you buy clothes, I don’t think you’re going to.”

“My dad will wonder where I got them,” I protested, as she folded a pair of blouses over one of my arms.

“You borrowed them from me.  Or they don’t fit me anymore and I gave them to you.  Or you can keep them at our place and leave him none the wiser.”

“I don’t like lying to my dad.”

She ushered me into a curtained off area that served as a change room.  Through the curtain, she told me, “I envy you that.  But if he hasn’t figured out the reason your wardrobe has shrunk so much, chances are he’s not going to notice if you have some new clothes.”

I was halfway through pulling off my shirt when that sunk in, “What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Taylor.  I’d suspect you had some problems going on even without, you know… a little bird whispering in my ear.”

I hurried to pull on the first dress in the pile, then opened the curtain, “You’re going to have to be a little more specific, before I can confirm or deny anything.”

“Not that one,” she waved at the dress, a plaid number, predominantly red and white.  Annoyed, I shut the curtain.

From the other side of the curtain, she explained, “At first I thought your dad was abusing you.  But I dropped that line of thinking pretty quick after I heard you bring him up in conversation.  It had to be a major part of your life that’s sucking, though, and if it’s not home then it’s got to be school.  Brian and Alec pretty much agree with my line of thinking.”

“You’ve talked about it with them,” I dropped my hands from the buttons of the dress and let my head thunk against the shaky plywood wall of the change room.

“It came up when we were talking about you joining the group, and we never hundred percent dropped the subject.  Sorry.  You’re new, you’re interesting, we talk about you.  That’s all it is.”

I finished doing up the buttons of the dress and opened the curtain, “Ever think I didn’t want you prying?”

She undid the top button. “What you want and what you need are two different things.  Cornflower blue is a keeper. Throw that one over the top.”  She pushed me back inside and shut the curtain.

“What I need is to keep…” I struggled to find a way of wording things that wouldn’t raise red flags for any eavesdroppers, “these two major parts of my life separate.”

“The suckish part and the non-suck part.”

“Sure, let’s go with that.”  I found a top and a pair of low-rise jeans in the pile of clothes.

“I could help make the suckish parts suck less,” she offered.

I swear my blood turned cold in my veins.  I could just see her showing up at school, taunting Emma.  I think the prospect of facing down Glory Girl again would spook me less.  I struggled to do up the top button of the jeans, which wasn’t made any easier by my agitation.  It took thirty seconds to get the button done up, and I swore under my breath the entire time.  Where in the world had Lisa found jeans that were this tight on me?  When I had them on, I opened the curtain and confronted her face to face.

“Having me try on clothes is fine,” I told her, doing my level best to keep my voice calm, “But you interfere directly in my problems, and I’m gone.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

She looked a little hurt, “Fine.”  Pouting a little, she waved a hand in the general direction of my clothes, “What do you think?”

I tried to adjust the collar.  I liked the abstract design on the right side of the shirt, but the v-neck collar came to a point near where my ribcage ended and my stomach began. “Top is cut too low, jeans are too tight.”

“You need to get used to showing some cleavage.  Like I said, be bold in your fashion choices.”

“I’d be fine with showing some cleavage if I had anything to show,” I pointed out.

“You’re a late bloomer?” she tried.

“My mom was a B-cup, and not always then, depending on the brand of bra.  And that was after she went up a partial size being pregnant with me.”

“That’s fucking tragic.”

I shrugged.  I’d been resigned to being broomstick thin and flat as a board pretty much from the point I’d started puberty.  I just had to look at the genetics on either side of my family to know what I was in for.

“And my condolences about your mom.  I didn’t know.”

“Appreciated.”  I sighed. “I’m vetoing the shirt.”

“Fine, you’re allowed, but we’re keeping the jeans.  They show off your figure.”

“The figure of a thirteen year old boy,” I groused.

“You’re taller than a thirteen year old boy, don’t be silly.  Besides, whatever you look like, whatever your body type, there’s bound to be someone out there who thinks you’re the hottest fucking person they’ve ever seen.”

“Fantastic,” I mumbled, “There’s a sketchy pedophile out there with my name on him.”

Lisa laughed, “Go, try something else on.  But throw the jeans over the top.  I’m buying them for you, and if you never wear them, I’ll have to be content with you feeling guilty about it.”

“Find me the same jeans one size larger, and I’ll wear them,” I negotiated.  Then, before she could protest, I added, “They’re going to shrink in the wash.”

“Point.  I’ll go look.”

Things continued in that vein for a little while, with Lisa doing a little shopping for herself, too.  We stuck to talking about the clothes, and it was clear that Lisa was carefully avoiding the earlier topic.  When we finished, the woman at the cash totaled it up on a notepad and passed the slip of paper to us.  Four hundred and sixty dollars.

“My treat,” Lisa said.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“A bribe in exchange for your silence,” Lisa winked at me.

“About?”

She glanced at the cashier, “After.”

It was only after we’d left the stall well behind, the pair of us laden down with bags, that Lisa elaborated. “Do me a favor and don’t go telling the gang how badly I let things slip, as far as Panacea being one of the hostages.  If they ask outright, you can say, I won’t ask you to lie.  But if they don’t ask, maybe don’t bring it up?”

“This is the silence you’re buying?”

“Please.”

“Alright,” I answered.  I would have without the gift of clothes, but I think she knew that.

She grinned, “Thanks.  Between them, I don’t think those guys would ever let me live it down.”

“Would you let them, if the tables were turned?”

“Hell naw,” she laughed.

“That’s what I thought.”

“But about our earlier conversation… last I’ll say on the subject tonight, promise.  If you ever decide you do want me to directly interfere in any of your personal stuff, just say the word.”

I frowned, ready to be annoyed, but I relented.  It was a fair offer, not pushing anything.  “Okay.  Thank you, but I’m fine.”

“Then that’s settled.  Let’s go eat.”

Fugly Bobs was fast food of the most shameless kind, sold out of a part-restaurant, part-bar, part-shack at the edge of the Market, overlooking the beach.  Anyone who lived in the area had probably eaten there once, at some point.  Anyone with any sense then waited a year to give their hearts a chance to recuperate.  It was the sort of place with burgers so greasy that if you ordered takeout, you could see through the paper bag by the time you got home.  The specialty burger was the Fugly Bob Challenger: if you could finish it, you didn’t have to pay for it.  It probably went without saying that most people paid.

Brian and Alec were already there when we arrived, and we ordered our food right off.  Lisa and I agreed to split a bacon cheeseburger, Brian ordered a portobello-beef double-decker and Alec matched him with a Hideous Bob – Fugly Bob’s interpretation of a Big Mac.

None of us were hungry, brave or dumb enough to order the Challenger.

Brian and Alec had been sitting outside so they could spot us when we arrived.  After a brief debate, we agreed to stick to the table they’d been sitting at.  It was by the window, so we could see the TV.  It was still cool enough that most people had ventured indoors.  The only others outside were some college-aged guys, and they were sitting on the opposite end of the patio, occupied with beer and the game on the TV.  The primary benefit was that we enough had privacy to talk.

“I don’t want to be a nag,” Brian said, eyeing the piles of bags, “But I did say you shouldn’t spend so much so soon after a caper.  It’s the kind of thing cops and capes watch for.”

“It’s cool,” Lisa brushed him off, “It only raises flags with the credit card companies or banks if it’s a dramatic change in a given person’s spending habits.  I buy close to this amount of stuff every week or two.”

Brian frowned.  He looked like he wanted to say something in response, but he kept his mouth shut.

“So, what comes next?” I asked.

“Dinner, then dessert,” Alec replied, his attention on the TV inside.

“I meant in terms of our,” I lowered my voice, “Illicit activity.”  A quick double-check showed the college guys at the far end of the patio were still engrossed in the game.  I couldn’t make out anything they were saying, and they were being loud, so I was pretty sure they couldn’t hear us.

“Is there anything you want to do?” Brian asked me.

“Something less intense,” I decided, “I’m kind of feeling like I jumped into the deep end of the pool without entirely knowing how to swim.  I’d prefer to get to know my powers better in the field, figure out how to deal with situations, before I’m up against people like Lung and Glory Girl, who are literally capable of tearing me limb from limb.”

“Hah.  Something easier then.”

“If Rachel was here, she’d be calling you a wuss again,” Alec commented.

“I’ll just have to be glad she’s not here, then,” I smiled.

Our food arrived, and we used extra plates to divvy up our individual side orders so we all had a little bit of each.  That left each of us a mix of fries, sweet potato fries, onion rings and deep fried zucchini on an individual plate.  The sides alone would have been more than enough raw foodstuff for a meal on its own, but there were also the burgers themselves, each large enough to take up nearly an entire plate.  Lisa and I cut the bacon cheeseburger in half, and we each took a portion.

“I guess you’re not the type that gains weight,” Lisa eyed me.

“I have to work to put it on.”

“Dammit,” she grumbled.

“If it’s any consolation,” I said, after taking a bite and wiping my mouth with a napkin, “This is going to be hell on my skin.”

“That does help,” she grinned.

Alec rolled his eyes, “Enough with the girl talk.”

“What do you want to talk about, then?” Lisa asked him.

He shrugged and took a bite of his burger.

I had a suggestion.  “I know it’s kind of cliche, but when people with powers get together, isn’t it kind of standard to share origin stories?”

Apparently, I couldn’t have picked a better way to kill the conversation.  Lisa turned away, for once without a smile on her face.  Brian and Alec gave me strange looks, not saying anything.

“What?” I asked.  I double checked there was nobody in earshot.  “What did I say?”

 

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

 

 

Shell 4.1

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

“You actually showed up.”

I looked up from my math textbook to see Emma looming over me.  She was wearing an expensive dress that had probably been a gift to her after one of her modeling contracts, and her red hair was up in the kind of complex knot that looked ridiculous on ninety-five percent of the girls that tried to pull it off.  She could make it work, though.  Emma was one of those people who just seemed to ignore the social awkwardness and minor issues that plagued everyone else.  She didn’t get zits, any style she wore her hair or clothes in looked good on her, and she could break pretty much any social code of high school and walk away unscathed.

God, I hated her.

Mr. Quinlan had ended class fifteen minutes early and instructed us to do some self study, before leaving the room.  For most, that was a chance to play cards or talk.  I’d set myself the task of getting all the homework done before class ended, to free up my weekend.  At least, that had been the plan, before Emma interrupted.

“Funny thing is,” I replied, turning my attention back to my notebook, “You’re the only person today who seemed to notice I was gone.  If you aren’t careful, I might actually think you cared.”  I wasn’t being entirely honest there.  My art teacher had noted my absence, but that was only after I’d reminded her I hadn’t turned in my midterm project.

“People didn’t notice you were gone is because you’re a nobody.  The only reason I paid any attention to it is because you bother me.”

“I bother you,” I looked up from my work again, “Wow.”

“Every time I see you, it’s this irritating little reminder of time I wasted being your friend.  You know those embarrassing events in your past that make you cringe when you think back on them?  For me, that’s basically every sleepover, every juvenile conversation, every immature game you dragged me into.”

I smiled, then against my better judgement, I told her, “Right.  I love how you’re implying you’re even remotely more mature than you were then.”

Strange as it sounds, I was actually relieved to have Emma here, getting on my case.  If this was all she was able to do to me today, it meant I probably wouldn’t have to deal with any ‘pranks’ in the immediate future.  What really ratcheted up the anxiety levels was when she ignored me and left me alone.  That was, generally speaking, the calm before the storm.

“Really, Taylor?  Tell me, what are you doing with yourself?  You’re not going to school, you have no friends, I doubt you’re working.  Are you really in a position to call me immature, when I’ve got all that going for me and you just… don’t?”

I laughed loud enough that heads around the classroom turned in my direction.  Emma just blinked, bewildered.  As much as I didn’t want the money,  I was technically twenty five thousand dollars richer than I had been thirty six hours ago.  Twenty five thousand dollars were waiting for me, and Emma was saying she was doing better than me, because she got a few hundred dollars every few weeks to have her picture taken for mall catalogs.

“Fuck you, Emma.”  I said it loud enough for others to hear.  “Get a clue before you try to insult people.”

With that said, I grabbed my stuff and strode out of the classroom.

I knew I was going to pay for that.  For standing up to Emma, for laughing in her face.  It was the sort of thing that would push her to get creative and think about how best to get revenge for that small measure of defiance.

I wasn’t that worried about skipping out of class five minutes early.  If history was any precedent, Mr. Quinlan probably wouldn’t be coming back before class ended.  He routinely left class and just didn’t come back.  Popular guesses among my classmates leaned towards Alzheimers, or even that our geriatric teacher with a sagging gut could be a cape.  I was more inclined to suspect that drugs or a drinking problem were at play.

I felt good.  Better than I’d felt for a long, long while.  Admittedly, there were painful stabs of conscience when I thought too much about the fact that I’d actually participated in a felony, or the way I’d terrorized the hostages.  Could I be blamed if I went out of my way not to dwell on it?

I’d slept like a baby last night, more due to sheer exhaustion than sound conscience, and I woke up to a day that kept surprising me with good news.

Brian had met me on my morning run, and he treated me to coffee and the best muffins I had ever tasted, while we sat on the beach.  Together, we had taken ten minutes to go over the morning papers for news about the robbery.

We hadn’t made the front page for any of the major papers, the first bit of good news.  We made page three of the Bulletin, coming behind a one and a half page story on an Amber Alert and a General Motors advertisement.  Part of the reason we hadn’t attracted all that much attention was probably because the bank was hedging about the amount taken.  While we had escaped with more than forty thousand dollars, the paper was reporting losses of only twelve.  All in all, the story had been more focused on the property damage, most of which was caused by Glory Girl and the Wards, and the fact that the darkness we’d used to cover our escape had stopped all traffic downtown for an hour.  I’d been quietly elated by all of that.  Anything that downplayed the magnitude of the crime I’d helped commit was a good point in my book.

The next mood booster was the fact that I’d gone to school.  It sounded dumb, rating that as an accomplishment when others did it every day, but I had been very close to just not going again.  Having skipped a week of afternoon classes and three days of morning classes, it was dangerously easy to convince myself to just skip one more.  The problem was, that just made the prospect of going to class again that much more stressful, perpetuating the problem.  I’d broken that pattern, and I felt damn good about it.

Okay, so I had to admit things weren’t a hundred percent perfect as far as school went.  I’d talked to my art teacher, and she was giving me until Tuesday to hand my midterm project in, with a 10% deduction to my mark.  I’d also probably lost a few marks in various classes for being absent or not handing in homework assignments.  One or two percent, here and there.

But all in all?  It was a huge relief.  I felt good.

I caught the bus to the Docks, but I didn’t head to the loft.  I made my way up the length of the Boardwalk, until the shops began thinning out and there were longer stretches of beach.  The usual route people took was driving in through a side road outside of town, but for anyone hiking there, you had to take a shortcut through a series of very similar looking fields.  My destination was just far enough away that you’d think you’d maybe missed it.

Officially, it was the Lord Street Market.  But if you lived in Brockton Bay, it was just ‘the market’.

The market was open all week, but most people just rented the stalls on the weekends.  It was fairly cheap, since you could get a stall for fifty to a hundred dollars on a weekday and two hundred and fifty to three hundred on weekends, depending on how busy things were.  The stalls showcased everything from knick-knacks handicrafts put together by crazy cat ladies to overstock from the most expensive shops on the Boardwalk, marked down to ten or twenty five percent of the usual price.  There were ice cream vendors and people selling puppies, there was tourism kitsch and there was a mess of merchandise relating to the local capes.  There were racks of clothing, books, computer stuff and food.  If you lived in the north end of Brockton Bay, you didn’t have a garage sale.  You got a stall at the market.  If you just wanted to go shopping, it was as good as any mall.

I met up with the others at the entrance.  Brian was looking sharp in a dark green sweater and faded jeans.  Lisa was dressed up in a dusky rose dress with gray tights, her hair in a bun with loose strands framing her face.  Alec was wearing a long sleeved shirt and slim fit black denim jeans that really showed how lanky he was.

“You weren’t waiting long?” I asked.

“Forever,” was Alec’s laconic response.

“Five minutes at most,” Brian smiled, “Shall we?”

We ventured into the market, where the best the north end of Brockton Bay had to offer was on display.  The worst of the north end was kept at bay by the same uniformed enforcers that you saw at the Boardwalk.

While Alec stopped at an isolated stall featuring cape merchandise, I commented, “I guess Rachel can’t exactly hang out with us, huh?”

Brian shook his head, “No.  Not in a place like this.  She’s well known enough that she’d catch someone’s eye, and from there, it’s only a short leap to figuring out who the people she’s hanging with are.”

“And if she saw that, she’d go ballistic.”  Lisa pointed to a rotund old woman carrying a fluffy dog in her arms.   It was wearing a teal and pink sweater, and was trembling nervously.  I didn’t know my dog breeds well enough to name it specifically, but it was similar to a miniature poodle.

“What?  The sweater?” I asked.

“The sweater.  The dog being carried.  Rachel would be up in her face, telling that woman it’s not the way a dog should be treated.  Screaming at her, maybe threatening violence, if one of us didn’t step in to handle things.”

“It doesn’t take much, does it?”

“To set her off?  No it doesn’t,” Brian agreed, “But you gradually learn how she thinks, what pushes her buttons, and you can intervene before a situation happens.”

Lisa added, “The big trigger for Rache is mistreatment of dogs.  I think you could kick a toddler in the face, and she wouldn’t flinch.  But if you kicked a dog in front of her, she’d probably kill you on the spot.”

“I’ll, uh, keep that in mind,” I said.  Then, double checking that nobody was in a position to overhear, I figured it was as good a time to ask as any, “Has she killed anyone?”

“She’s wanted for serial murder,” Brian sighed, “It’s inconvenient.”

“If the courts actually gave her a fair trial, if she had a good lawyer, I think she’d get manslaughter at worst, maybe reckless endangerment.  At least for the events that happened then.” Lisa said, her voice pitched low enough that nobody else in the crowd would pick it up, “It happened just after her powers manifested.  She didn’t know how to use her abilities, or what to expect of them, so the dog that she had with her grew into the sort of creature you’ve seen the others become, and because it wasn’t trained, because it had been abused, it went out of control.  Cue the bloodbath.  In the time since then?  Maybe.  I know she’s seriously hurt a lot of people.  But nobody’s died at her hands since we’ve been with her.”

“Makes sense,” I said, distractedly.  So that’s one.  Who was the other murderer in the group?

Alec returned from the stall wearing a Kid Win shirt.

“I like it,” Lisa grinned, “Ironic.”

We continued our roundabout walk through the market.  We were still on the outskirts, so there weren’t many people around us.  Those that were around us weren’t likely to overhear, unless we used words, names or phrases that would catch their attention.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked.

“It’s just a matter of handing the cash over to the boss later tonight.” Brian picked up a pair of sunglasses and tried them on, “He takes it, does what he needs to with the papers, and gets back to us with our pay.  Clean, untraceable.  Once we’ve picked up our share, we kick back for a little while, plan our next job or wait for him to offer us another one.”

I frowned, “We’re putting a lot of trust in him.  We’re giving him a pretty big amount of money, and we’re expecting him to come back and pay us three times that amount?  Plus whatever he feels the papers are worth?  How do we know he’ll follow through?”

“Precedent,” Brian said as he tried on another pair of sunglasses, lowering his head to examine himself in the mirror that was hanging from the side of the stall. “He hasn’t screwed with us yet.  It doesn’t make sense for him to to pull a fast one, when he’s already invested more than that in us.  If we were failing most of our jobs, maybe he’d keep the money to recoup his losses, but we’ve done well.”

“Okay,” I nodded, “I can buy that.”

I felt kind of conflicted about the ‘take it easy and wait’ plan.  On the one hand, taking a break sounded awesome.  The last week had been intense, to put it lightly.  On the other hand, it sort of sucked that we wouldn’t be out there on another job, since I’d be waiting that much longer for a chance on getting more details on the boss.  I’d just have to hope I could find something out tonight.

“Come on,” Tattletale grinned at me, grabbing my wrist, “I’m stealing you.”

“Huh?”

“We’re going shopping,” she told me.  Turning to Brian and Alec, she said, “We’ll split up, meet up with you two for dinner?  Unless you want to come with and stand around holding our purses while we try on clothes.”

“You don’t have any purses,” Alec pointed out.

“Figure of speech.  You want to do your own thing or not?”

“Whatever,” Alec said.

“You’re a jerk, Lise,” Brian frowned, “Hogging the new girl to yourself.”

“You get your morning meetings with her, I want to go shopping, cope,” Lisa stuck out her tongue at Brian.

“Alright,” Brian shrugged, “Fugly Bob’s for dinner?”

“Sounds good,” Lisa agreed.  She turned to me, eyebrows quirked.

“I’m down for Fugly Bob’s,” I conceded.

“Don’t spend so much you draw attention,” Brian warned.

We parted ways with the boys, Lisa wrapping her arm around my shoulders and going on about what she wanted to get.  Her enthusiasm was catching, and I found myself smiling.

Murderer.  I had to remind myself.  One of these three was a murderer.

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Agitation 3.12

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

“Information,” Glory Girl repeated.

Tattletale twirled the keys around one of her fingers, “For instance, it’s not exactly public knowledge that Panacea was adopted.”

“It’s not a secret either.  It’s on official record.”

“Falsified records,” Tattletale grinned.

Glory Girl glanced at her sister.

“Let me tell you a little story.  Correct me if I’m wrong on any of the details.  Eleven years ago, just five years after capes really started showing up, there was a team operating hereabouts, calling themselves the Brockton Bay Brigade.  Lady Photon, Manpower, Brandish, Flashbang, Fleur and Lightstar.  They wind up taking on a villain in his own home and it’s a pretty decent fight.  They beat him, and because he was a real bastard, he got sent straight to the Birdcage.”

“You can stop now,” Glory Girl said, “Point made.”

“Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the good part.  See, they found a little girl hiding in the closet.  His little girl, a toddler,” Tattletale grinned at Panacea, “Given the odds that someone with powers would have a kid with powers, and knowing how the little girl would never be able to have a normal life with word inevitably getting out about her past, they wound up taking her in.”

“We know this story already,” Glory Girl replied, her tone just a touch testy.

Whatever Tattletale was doing, I sensed it was giving us more control over the situation.  I commented, “This is new to me.  I’m sort of intrigued.”

“The point I’m getting at, Glory Hole, is that I know that one detail you two don’t.  Or at least, I’m willing to look at all the little clues that you’ve got floating around your heads and figure out that one thing that you’ve gone out of your way to avoid knowing.  Glory Hole’s curious, but she avoids the subject because her sister desperately wants her to, and Panacea…  Well, if I told her, I suspect she’d do something very stupid.”

I could feel Panacea slump in my arms.  The fight had gone out of her.

“So, Amy, you want to know who your daddy is?”

For a few long moments, there was only the sound of rain pattering on the windowsill, and the buzzing of the insects still in the room.

“It’s that bad?” I asked in a half whisper, as much to Panacea as to Tattletale.

“It’s not the man that would bother her so much.  It’s the knowing.  Every hour of every day after hearing me say his name, she would wonder.  She’s terrified she’ll start second guessing every part of herself, wondering if she inherited it from him, or if she was that way out of an unconscious desire to not be him.  Knowing as much as she does already keeps her awake some nights, but knowing his name, knowing who he is and what he did?  For the rest of her life, she would compare herself to him.  Isn’t that right, Amy?”

“Shut up.  Just… shut up,” Panacea retorted, her voice thick with emotion.

“Why?  I’m on a roll.  That’s not even the most dangerous tidbit of info I’ve picked up, here.  I know stuff that’s just as bad.”

I saw a flicker of doubt cross Glory Girl’s face.

“I’ll make you a deal, Glory Hole.  You go in the vault, lock yourself in, and I don’t speak on the subject.  I won’t say the one sentence that tears your family apart.”

Glory Girl clenched her fists, “I can’t do that.  I’m calling your bluff, and if I’m wrong, I’ll face the consequences of whatever you say.”

“Very principled.  Very self-involved too, that you think the secret and the consequences have to do with you and your overzealous nature.  They don’t.  They have to do with her.”  Tattletale directed the laser pointer at Panacea’s forehead, “You won’t be tickled pink, either, but the aftermath would be hers to deal with.  Humiliation, shame, heartbreak.”

I could feel Panacea stiffen in my grip.

“Offer stands,” Tattletale grinned, “For the next twelve seconds.  Get in the vault.”

“You’re full of shit,” Panacea spat the words.

“Then why are you so tense?” I asked.

“Eight seconds.”

Panacea abruptly tore out of my grip, so violently I had to pull the knife away to keep her from cutting her own throat against it.

Tattletale scrambled to put a desk between herself and Panacea, but Glory Girl slammed into her, carrying her across the length of the room.  They stopped just short of a wall.  Not that Tattletale got away unscathed.  Glory Girl shoved Tattletale into the wall, one hand over her mouth, and held her there.

While Panacea was distracted, I passed my knife into my left hand and gripped my baton.  I pressed the trigger while swinging it, letting the momentum of the swing draw it out to its full length.  Panacea saw me coming, but I don’t know if she realized what I was holding.  The length of metal struck her across the side of the head.  She staggered a few feet, then went down hard.

Unfortunately for me, Glory Girl saw it all unfold.

“Nobody fucks with my family!” she shouted, and her power cranked out full-bore.  My knees turned to jelly and my brain just gave up on rational thought.  Glory Girl threw Tattletale at me like a very strong child might throw a rag doll, and I just stood there like a deer in the headlights.

Tattletale’s body collided with my midsection, knocking the wind out of me.  The two of us collided with a desk, sending a monitor and a plastic box of files to the floor.  Paper and fragments of monitor scattered over the ground.

We were still reeling when Glory Girl started floating towards us.  I was struggling, unsuccessfully, to heave wheezing gasps of air into my lungs, while Tattletale was gripping one of her arms tight against her body, making little whimpering noises.

“I’m going to pull in every favor I’m owed, and put myself in debt with the local D.A. and whoever else I have to, to get you both sent to the Birdcage,” Glory Girl promised, “You know what that place is like?  A prison without wardens.  No communication with the outside world.  No escapes yet, which is pretty amazing considering it houses all of the worst and most powerful villains we’ve been able to capture.  We don’t even know for sure if anyone’s alive inside there.  It’s just a bucket where we dump scum like you, so we never have to worry about you again.”

“Bugs,” Tattletale grunted at me, almost too quiet to hear.

I didn’t catch her meaning, but I was still struggling to catch my breath, so I just shook my head at her.

“And no contact with the outside world means you don’t go fucking talking about whatever Amy wants to keep private.  I trust my sister, I trust she has a reason for keeping it to herself.”

“Bugs.  Swarm her,” Tattletale said, taking lots of little breaths as she said it.

I caught her meaning.  I reached for my swarm, and was glad to find that my power was working perfectly.  Panacea’s sabotage job had been undone when I’d killed the last of the spiders.  I set every bug I could reach on Glory Girl.

Useless.  It felt like I’d set them on unnaturally strong, slick glass.

“Idiots,” Glory Girl’s muffled voice came from the midst of the cloud of insects, “I’m invincible.”

Tattletale used her good arm to prop herself up, groaning, “First of all, I warned you about calling me stupid.  Second, no, you’re not invincible.  Not exactly.”

Then she raised her good hand from her belt and trained a small handgun on Glory Girl.

The sound was deafening.  You don’t really get a sense for how intense gunfire is from TV and movies.  As is, it was enough that it took me a few seconds to get a grip.  Just a heartbeat later, I realized my bugs had broken through.  They found flesh to latch on to, flesh to bite, sting, claw and puncture.  Glory Girl dropped like a stone and started thrashing violently.

“Help me stand,” Tattletale’s voice was strained, “Using my power like that on them took a lot out of me.”

I grabbed her good hand and helped her up.  With one of her arms around my shoulders, we hurried out of the bank, together.  She shoved the gun into one of the largest pouches of her belt.

“What-” I tried, but talking just sent me into a spasm of painful coughs.  We were down the front steps of the bank before I felt like trying again, “What just happened?”

“She’s not really invincible.  That’s just an idea she likes to put in people’s heads.  She has a forcefield around her entire body, but it shorts out whenever she takes a good hit, comes back online a few seconds later.  I knew when I saw she had dust on her costume.  Dust that her forcefield would keep off her.  Fuck, this hurts.”

“What is it?”

“She pulled my arm out of the socket when she threw me.  Can you fix a dislocated shoulder?”

I shook my head.  I knew how, generally speaking, from the first aid classes I had taken, but I doubted I had the strength to manage it, and I didn’t want to waste time getting Tattletale in a good position to fix her arm when we needed to be gone.

The fight outside the bank was still going our way.  Only Aegis was still in action, and he was hemmed in by the three dogs and Regent’s borrowed laser cannon.

Grue stepped out of the darkness near me, holding onto Bitch much the same way I was holding Tattletale.

“Let’s scram,” I said.

“Let’s,” he agreed, in his haunting voice.

“Hey G-man,” Tattletale winced, “Pop my shoulder back in?”

Grue nodded.  I helped brace Tattletale as he shoved her arm back into place.  He asked, “What happened?”

“It was Glory Girl on the roof,” I explained, then I coughed painfully a few times before adding, “Can we please get the fuck out of here?”

“You guys took Glory Girl?” Grue asked, incredulous, while Bitch roused herself enough to whistle for her dogs.

“In a sense,” Tattletale replied, at the same time I nervously pointed out, “She could be coming after us any second.”

We got on the dogs, and Regent fired a salvo of shots from the laser cannon into Aegis, hammering him into the side of a building until the wall around him collapsed.  He then paused to jam his taser into the control panel.  When the gun started to smoke, Regent made his way down, jumping the last four or five feet to land on a dog’s back.  He tucked the skateboard under one arm.

“Leave it,” Grue said.

“But-”

“Tracking device.  Assume any tinker worth a damn is going to have tracking devices in their stuff.”

“It’s true,” Tattletale answered, as Regent turned towards her.  “Sorry.”

“Fuck!” Regent swore.  He jammed his tazer into the underside of the skateboard like he had with the control panel, then threw it across the street.

We were mounted with Bitch sitting in front of Grue, mainly so he could support her, and Tattletale behind me on Angelica, her uninjured arm wrapped around me.  Regent was alone.

Grue raised his arms, and filled the street with darkness.

Angelica bolted, nearly unseating me, as she made a headlong run into the absolute darkness.  I was on a creature more than twice the size of a horse, without a saddle, and she wasn’t suited for riding in the same way a horse was.  I had one foot resting on a horn of bone that jutted from her side, while the other dangled.  My hands were gripping the straps we’d fitted her with, the only thing from keeping me tumbling backwards, head over heels, as she lunged forward at run that would probably outpace any cars on the road.  Not that there would be any cars.  The police and parahuman response teams would have the area blocked off around any potential cape fights.  To make our escape all the more terrifying, I knew the dog couldn’t see.  She was following Brutus by scent, and Brutus was going by Grue’s directions.  The blind leading the blind.

I should have been terrified, my hands cramping, unable to see or hear, knowing I could tumble off at any second, but I was elated.  Even when Angelica crashed into something hard enough to nearly knock us off, it didn’t kill my enthusiasm.  I hooted, hollered and cheered our victory, barely hearing the noise myself as the darkness absorbed it.

We’d done it.  I’d done it.  We’d escaped without killing anyone.  The only ones who’d really been hurt at all had been the Wards, Glory Girl and Panacea, and that would be fixed when Panacea came to, for sure.  Any property damage had largely been the fault of the Wards and Glory Girl.  I’d maybe made some enemies, I’d scared some innocent people, but I’d be lying to myself if I said that could’ve been avoided.  In short, things couldn’t have gone better.

Okay, they could have gone a lot better, but the way they ended up?  Pretty damn good, all in all.

Aegis would have climbed out of the rubble by now, flown up for a bird’s eye view.  If Grue was doing what we’d planned, he was filling every street and side street we passed with darkness.  Aegis couldn’t see where or if we doubled back or what streets we took, so he could only identify our location by the places where fresh darkness appeared.  If he tried to close in to get us, though, we’d be gone by the time he reached us.  All he could do was follow our general location.

Just when I thought I might not be able to hold on any longer, we pulled to a stop.  Tattletale and I slipped off of Angelica.  Someone, probably Grue, pushed a backpack into my arms.  Even working in total darkness, I managed to change into the set of civilian clothes we’d hidden away before we headed to the bank.  I was handed an umbrella and gratefully unfolded it with my stiff hands.

It was tense, waiting in the darkness, with only the feeling of the rain on the umbrella to give me a sense of the world beyond myself and of time passing.

It was a long time before the world came into view again.  Grue said his darkness faded after twenty minutes or so, but it felt like far longer than that.  As the darkness cleared away, I saw Lisa sitting on the steps at the front of a shoe store, holding aleash in one hand and a paper shopping bag in the other.  Angelica, as normal as she ever was, was on the other end of the leash, sitting patiently.  All around us were shoppers and pedestrians, each with their umbrellas and raincoats, looking around with scared expressions and wide eyes.  The sounds were refreshing after the silence of the darkness – falling rain and the murmur of conversation.

Lisa stood, and winked at me as she tugged on the leash to get Angelica following at her side.  We joined the crowd of disoriented shoppers.

Assuming things went according to plan, Alec would be dropped off next, without a dog, and he’d change into civilian clothes the same way we had.  Bitch, Brian and the two dogs would make the final stop at a storage locker near the Docks.  Inside, they would change into their civies, relax for a few hours inside, and leave the money there for the boss to pick up.  After taking a long enough break that the heroes would have abandoned pursuit, they would make their way back much as we were.

“Everyone came out of this unscathed?” I asked Tattletale in a low voice.  I was sharing my umbrella with her, so speaking together in a kind of huddle wasn’t strange looking.

“No injuries or deaths for us, for the heroes or for the bystanders,” she confirmed.

“Then it’s a good day,” I said.

“A very good day,” she agreed.

Arm in arm, we walked leisurely through downtown.  Like everyone else, we craned our heads to follow the police cars and PRT vans that were rushing to the scene of the crime with sirens wailing.  Two girls who just finished their shopping, walking their dog.

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Agitation 3.11

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

I crashed into the office chair behind me and both the chair and I toppled to the ground.  The armor of my mask had taken the worst of the hit, but it still hurt as much as anything I’d ever experienced.

The girl glowered at me from behind her mop of frizzy brown hair.  In her hands she was gripping a fire extinguisher.  Behind her, past the lights that were flickering across my field of vision, I could see the hostages streaming upstairs.  It was disorienting, because the bugs I’d left on them were telling me they were still in the corner of the lobby, staying still.  I could feel one spider shift slightly as the person it was riding exhaled, then shuddered a little, even as I saw that same person stumbling and nearly falling on the stairs in their haste to get away.

I reached for the bugs, tried to tell one to move, and everything went wrong.  There were no words the words to describe it, exactly.  It was like feedback.  If my brain had been a computer, I got the feeling I’d only be getting hundreds or thousands of error messages popping up across the screen.  It was painful, too, just compounding until it felt like my brain was being used as a punching bag.

I pressed my hand to my head, wincing at the pain, and it wasn’t just from being bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher.  The headache was at near-migraine levels now, and I desperately wanted to tear off my mask and try to throw up, if only to relieve of the nausea that was welling up.  I was getting an idea of why I’d been feeling so off.

“What the fuck did you do?” I asked the girl.

“You don’t need to know that.”  She swung the fire extinguisher over her head at me, and I scrambled out of the way, grabbing the edge of a table to haul myself to my feet as I did it.

She didn’t chase me.  Instead, she reached into her jacket pocket and retrieved a cell phone.  She started to punch a number into the keypad with one hand, the other holding the fire extinguisher.  Her eyes were trained on me.

There was no way I was going to let her make that phone call, whoever she was dialing.  I went on the offense, lunging towards her as I reached into the armored compartment at my back and retrieved the extendable baton.  I pulled the trigger and flicked it out to one side.  Eighteen inches of black painted alloy with a weighted tip snapped out from the foam-grip handle.

Her eyes widened as I swung the baton, but she had the presence of mind to drop the phone and heft the fire extinguisher up to block the attack.  Her grip on the fire extinguisher wasn’t good enough for her to keep hold of it, so it clattered to the ground.  She backed away rather than risk trying to pick it up again.

The girl retreated as I advanced towards her.  I stopped when I was standing over her cell phone.  I collapsed and sheathed my baton, then bent down and retrieved the fire extinguisher.  I smashed the phone with the butt end of it.

“Shit.  I liked that phone,” she muttered.

“Shut up,” I retorted, the pain making my voice strained, harder edged, “What the fuck did you do to me?”  I pressed the heel of my free hand against my forehead, as if the pressure could help stave off the pain.

“I… don’t think I’ll tell you.”

“Who the fuck are you, and who were you trying to call?”

“Actually, it was a text, not a call, and it went through,” she said.  Then she smiled at me.

At the same moment I uttered the word ‘Who’, one of the windows at the side of the bank shattered.  A blur of white and gold slammed into the center of the lobby hard enough to send fragments of marble tile skittering over the floor to my feet, halfway across the room.

The figure straightened, dusted herself off and turned to glare at me.  Almost casually, she backhanded the marble and oak table to her left that held all of the withdrawal and deposit slips.  With that lazy swing of her arm, she annihilated the table, doing so much damage to it that nobody would ever be putting it together again.

It’s humiliating to admit, but I nearly wet myself.  I’m not sure my reaction would have been much different if she didn’t have a power that made her flat out terrifying.  Literally, that’s what her power did.  Had I done something heinous in a past life, to deserve going up against Lung on my first time out in costume, and Glory Girl on my second?

“Hey sis,” Glory Girl tilted her head to one side, to look at the brown haired girl, “You okay?”

The girl, who could be none other than Amy Dallon, Panacea when she was in costume, offered Glory Girl a beaming smile, “I am now.”

Glory Girl’s sister had been among the hostages.  Damn it.  At least I knew who she was now.  She could heal with a touch, and if what she’d done to my powers was any indication, that wasn’t the full extent of her abilities.  Glory Girl and Panacea were celebrities, even if Panacea had generally avoided the spotlight as of late.  They were among the most famous of the local heroes, arguably among the most powerful of the kid capes, they were pissed at me, and I was stuck in a room with them.

And my powers weren’t working.

Glory Girl stepped towards me, and I scrambled for Panacea.  She scrabbled for a grip at my costume, trying to grab at my glove, then at my mask,  but the moment I drew my knife, both she and Glory Girl went absolutely still.  I grabbed Panacea’s chin and maneuvered so I was standing behind her, my knife pressed to her throat.

“Count yourself lucky, bug bitch, that your costume covers your entire body,” Panacea murmured to me, “Or I’d maybe give you a heart attack.  Or cancer.”

I swallowed hard.  I wasn’t counting myself as particularly lucky at this point.

“It seems we have a stalemate,” Glory Girl said.

“True,” I replied.

“So are we just going to stand around here until reinforcements arrive for one side or the other, tip the scales in someone’s favor?”

“I could live with that.  Last I saw, my side was winning.”

“I helped Aegis out of a jam on my way in, so he’s keeping your little friends busy.  You should also know that the Protectorate is on their way from a wine and dine with Brockton Bay’s finest at the Augustus Country Club.  Can’t speak for them, but I know I’d be royally pissed if some little snots dragged me away from a chance to have the club’s chocolate mousse.”

Panacea made a little laugh, “It is good, isn’t it?” then in a lower voice, she whispered to me, “What if I fucked up your taste buds, you little terrorist?  You threaten the lives of innocents, I can go that far.  I can do anything with your biology.  Make everything you eat taste like bile.  Or maybe I’ll just make you fat.  Morbidly, disgustingly fat.”

“You can shut up now,” I tightened my grip and pressed the knife a fraction harder against her throat.  Between the stress of the moment, the pounding headache and the fact that fucking Glory Girl was standing not fifty feet away, I didn’t need little sister distracting me with nightmarish imagery.

Glory Girl spoke up, “It’s not just the Protectorate, either.  You just took a member of New Wave hostage, threatened her life.  There’s a pretty damn good chance my mom, dad, aunt, uncle and cousins will be showing up, too.  Brandish, Flashbang, Lady Photon, Manpower, Laserdream, Shielder… how are you going to manage, then?”

Fuck.  I had no reply to that.  I kept my mouth shut.  I was barely able to focus, now, as my head throbbed.  My vision was wavering around the edges, and my grip on my bugs was virtually gone.  Most had freed themselves from my influence entirely, and were buzzing around the light fixtures or crawling for darkness.  It was all I could do to stay standing and keep my hands steady.

“Drop the knife and surrender, and I’ll make sure you get leniency.”

“I’ve read up on the law enough that I know you don’t have the power to make any deals,” I said, “No go.”

“Okay.  Then I guess we wait.”

A few long moments passed.

Glory Girl turned her attention to her sister, “I wanted to go to the mall for lunch, but noooo,” Glory Girl said, “You needed to go to the bank.”

“It was either going to the bank or wind up broke for that double date you’re forcing me into.”

“Ames, the guy I’m setting you up with is a sixteen year old millionaire.  I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect him to foot the bill for dinner and a movie.”

“Could you two please shut up?” I growled.

“Do they have to?  It’s all very informative,” Tattletale joked as she sidled into the room.  She hoisted herself up to the edge of one of the teller’s stations, then greeted Glory Girl, “Hey Glory Hole.”

Glory Girl’s face twitched.

“Hey, Tattletale,” I called out, my voice a touch strained, “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but could you avoid antagonizing Alexandria Junior?”

“Eh.  You seem to have things under control.  Why not set the bugs on the prom queen?”

“Prom queen?” Glory Girl asked.

“Um,” I cut in, before either of them could say something that started a fight, “First of all, she’s invincible.  Second, again, bad idea to irritate someone who can swing a schoolbus like a baseball bat.  Third, my hostage here did something to fuck up my powers.”

“That last bit sucks,” Tattletale sympathized.  Then she took a closer look at Panacea, “Shit.  Amy Dallon?  Grue is going to kill me, for missing that.  You look different than you did when you were showing up in the news.  Are you wearing your hair differently?”

“Tattletale,” I interjected, again, “Less small talk, more problem solving.  Glory Girl said the Protectorate and maybe New Wave are en route.”

Tattletale glanced at Glory Girl, then frowned, “She’s not lying.  Let’s start with problem three, since you’re not looking so hot.  Your powers aren’t working?”

“Can’t control my bugs, got a major headache.”

“Think I know why.  Let me fix that for you,” Tattletale said.  She hopped down from the teller’s station and started to walk towards me and Panacea.

“Don’t move,” Glory Girl warned.

“Or what?” Tattletale whirled to face the girl, smiling, “You’ll beat me up?  You can’t do anything while my teammate has a knife to your sister’s throat.  Sit.  Stay.  Good girl.”

Glory Girl glowered at Tattletale, but she didn’t move.

“I think it would be better if you stayed back,” I warned her, “You get in Panacea’s reach, she’ll touch you and give you a stroke or something.”

“Can she?  Sure.  Will she?  Definitely not.  She’s all bark, no bite.”

“Try me,” Panacea taunted.  I reasserted my grip and reminded her of the knife against her throat.

“I’d really prefer to avoid tempting fate,” I said, carefully.

“Fine, fine,” Tattletale said, raising her hands in a placating gesture.  She walked over to the branch manager’s desk and opened a drawer.

“You pull a gun out of that drawer,” Glory Girl threatened, “And I’ll fucking break you.”

“Enough with the threats you can’t follow up on.  It’s not a gun,” Tattletale grinned, raising her hands again.  A keychain dangled from her left thumb.

“Keys,” Glory Girl said.

“The keys of manager Jeffry Clayton.  Type A personality, totally.  Control freak.  The kind of guy who loves to have absolute control over a meeting.”

“First of all, who cares?  Second, how do you know this?”

“Come on,” Tattletale smiled, folding her arms, “Villain 101.  You don’t give info to the hero in a gloating monologue.”

“Right,” Glory Girl agreed, “Always worth a try.”

“I’ll tell you anyways.”

Glory Girl raised an eyebrow.

“No reason not to.  Actually in my advantage to let you know.  I’m psychic.  I read his mind when we had him hostage, like I’m reading yours right now,” the lie was so smooth I almost believed it.

A flash of red caught my attention.  The red dot from a laser pointer settled on the hood of Panacea’s jacket. I looked at Tattletale, and saw that while she had her arms folded, she was holding a laser pointer that was attached to the keychain.  I watched Tattletale draw a lazy circle around the spot she’d pointed to, on Panacea’s jacket.

“Bullshit,” Glory Girl said, “The brainpower you’d need to interpret and decode someone’s unique neural patterns would need a head five times the usual size to contain it all.  True psychics can’t exist.”

“Ooh, someone’s taking Parahumans 101 at the university.  Your parents pull some strings, got you into a university course before you were done high school?”

“I think you already know the answer, I’m just not buying that you read my mind to get it.”

“Why is it so hard to believe?  Legend can shoot lasers from his hands, lasers that turn corners.  Clockblocker and Vista can mess with the fundamental forces of space and time.  Kaiser can create metal from thin air.  Conservation of mass, conservation of energy, basic laws of our universe get broken by capes all the time.  All of that is possible, but I can’t peek into your brain?”

Tattletale was still focusing the laser pointer on Panacea’s hood.  Since I was the only person in a position to see it, it could only be for my benefit.  I pulled the hood back, investigated the interior and found nothing.  But on the nape of her neck, I spotted one of my black widow spiders.

I pulled it off her gently, and felt the pain in my head worsen with the contact, the movement.  Either by impulse or by reflex as I flinched at the pain, I crushed it between my fingers.

Immediately, the pain in my head dropped to a fraction of what it had been.  The relief was so intense it was almost euphoric.  I still didn’t fully grasp what Panacea done, but I was getting a good picture of it.  She’d somehow sensed what I was doing to control the spider, then altered things so the spider wasn’t sending me the right information.  A continuous loop of the wrong information, like when thieves in the movies spliced a video camera feed to repeat the same segment over and over.  Either by accident or design, it had exponentially increased the interference every time my power reached for the arachnids in question.  All building up to a metaphorical short circuit of my power.

I could barely fathom the subtleties and delicacy that would have required to set up.

“Glory Gi-” Panacea began to speak, but I tightened my grip, and she closed her mouth.

“Shhhh,” I hissed at her.

“Scholars say you’re wrong.”

Tattletale grinned, “Scholars want me to be wrong, and their research reflects that.  Telepathy scares the everloving crap out of people, especially since the only suspected telepath out there is-”

“The Simurgh,” Glory Girl finished for her.

“Right.  And when a fucking Endbringer is your precedent, people get spooked, just like you’re spooked right now, at the idea that there’s someone standing in front of you who can find your deepest darkest secrets and tell the world.”

Tattletale was pointing to Panacea’s upper arm now.  It took me two tries to murder the spider.  Before I’d finished, Tattletale was directing me to the final one, which I’d stashed on Panacea’s ankle. I killed it by jabbing at it with my toe.  The headache was completely gone a second later.

“Which is why you call yourself Tattletale, I see,” Glory Girl was saying, “But you’re a retard.  We’re part of New Wave.  We have no secrets.  That’s the whole fucking point of our team.  Heroes with no secret identities, no secrets, full disclosure, total accountability.”

“For the record,” Tattletale said, her voice very smooth and calm, “I fucking hate it when people call me stupid.”

“Yet here the two of you are, and neither of you have powers that work against either of us.  All you’ve got is a knife, and if you use it, you both die in the most painful way I think I can get away with.”

“Oh honey, now who’s being stupid?  I’ve got the most powerful weapon of all,“ Tattletale purred, smiling wickedly, “Information.”

 

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

 

Agitation 3.10

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter

Six good guys were still in action, as far as I knew.  Clockblocker was down, and posed no threat unless someone walked into his reach where he was lying down, or unless we took longer than the ten or so minutes it would take his power to release him.  Angelica and Brutus were playing a macabre game of tug of war, using Aegis as the rope.

The rest of the battlefield was chaos.  Patches of darkness covered everything, and the landscape was distorted.  In some of the areas Vista had warped, the rain wasn’t falling in a straight line.  One spot in particular had the rain moving horizontally before it dropped to help fill a massive puddle thirty feet across, where her power had made an indent in the ground.

Aegis and Clockblocker were more or less dealt with.  As Vista was the last remaining priority target,  I directed my remaining swarm towards her.  They wouldn’t reach her quickly though, as the rain bogged them down, and both puddles and distorted space forced a more roundabout route for the bugs.

Bitch, still riding Judas, came rushing out of a cloud of darkness, splashing through the huge puddle.  Kid Win and Gallant opened fire on her with laser beams and painfully bright blasts of energy.  She was moving fast and unpredictably enough that Judas only took one or two glancing hits.  The distance between her and Vista rapidly closed.

Vista raised her hand, and the surface of the street bulged upward into a short wall.  As it grew, the wall caught one of Judas’ forepaws, tripping him.  He fell, and his rider was sent tumbling head over heels.

Bitch got to her feet before Judas did, but only managed to take a single step before one of Gallant’s blasts clipped her.  I winced.  His light blasts were charged with energy that made the people struck feel a particular emotion.  Gallant could blast you with one that made you hopeless, scared, sad, ashamed…

Bitch screamed, and it was a long and primal noise, filled with rage.  I was still inside the bank, watching things unfold through the window, barely able to hear it, and it still made my skin crawl.  So he’d shot the dangerous psychopath with a blast that made her angry.  Someone would have to explain that one to me at a later date.

Whirling, still screaming, she pointed at Gallant.  Apparently that was order enough, because Judas charged at the teenager that was dressed like a science fiction Lancelot.

Bitch didn’t attack him though.  Without her dogs at her back, essentially without powers, she went straight for Vista.  She was focused enough to stay on the priority target.

Vista was ready, though.  As Bitch tried to close the distance, the roadway between her and the young heroine stretched out, until the distance she had to cover was two, three, four, five times as far.  Vista then pinched the space behind her closer together, crossed a third of a block with a single skip, and then returned it to normal.  I swore under my breath, and not just because my bugs had a lot more distance to travel.  My head was pounding again, and it was getting steadily worse.

Was someone’s power at work, giving me a headache?  There wasn’t anyone in the Wards, I was pretty sure, who could mess with your head like that.  Gallant could mess with your emotions, but he had to hit you with a light blast to do it.  The person on the roof, then?  I was fairly confident there wasn’t anyone in the Protectorate or New Wave who could affect me like this.

Bitch gave up on Vista and whistled for Judas.  The dog responded immediately, abandoning his skirmish with Gallant, who was trying and failing to stand.  A wash of darkness consumed him before he managed to pick himself up.

Kid Win opened fire on Bitch as her dog returned to her.  Given the excessive distance between them – it would have been a hard shot to make before Vista stretched the area that Bitch was standing on – meaning his aim was wildly off target.  He stopped, changed a setting, and fired a fresh salvo.  This time, the lasers came out in more of a staccato spray, like you’d expect from a machine gun.  One of the lasers caught Bitch in the center of her stomach and laid her flat.  Judas guarded his owner by hunkering over her, blocking further shots and obscuring my view of her.

Near Vista, a large figure staggered out of the darkness, shadows still clinging to him, bellowing and screaming incoherently about bugs.  He thrashed for several moments, then collapsed into a heap a short distance from Vista.  Someone that large could only be Browbeat.  Vista apparently reached the same conclusion I did, because she took a few steps closer to him, looking around helplessly for a way to help him.

An instant after I realized that I didn’t actually have bugs on Browbeat, the figure struck Vista across the side of the head, laying her flat.  I saw the briefest glimpse of Grue’s skull mask before he and Vista were covered by a fresh tide of his darkness.

“Bitch, Vista, Clockblocker, Gallant are out of action, I think,” I called across the room to Tattletale, who was still hammering away at a keyboard.  “We’ve got Aegis handled for the time being.  Not sure what happened to Browbeat, but there’s only him, Kid Win and the person on the roof to deal with, now.  We can make a break for it soon.”

“One last thing to do,” Tattletale grinned to me, “I’ll be right back.  Keep an eye on things here.”

“What?  No – Tattletale!  Dammit!” I shouted, but she was already running, heading back into the offices that we’d been through on our way to the bank.

I didn’t have time to dwell on her leaving.  Flickers of light outside the bank caught my attention.  Kid Win was flying fifteen feet above the ground on his hoverboard.  In front of him, pieces of a massive device were materializing, shimmering into existence like you saw with the transporters on Star Trek.  It was only one or two steps away from being complete, but you could tell what it was.  A gun, no less than fifteen feet long, with a barrel three or four feet across, all turret mounted on a circular platform not unlike the board he was riding.

“Shit,” I whispered to myself.  I sent my bugs after him.

He swiveled the cannon to face Judas, who was still guarding the spot where Bitch had fallen.  A bolt of light erupted from the cannon and sent Judas flying beyond my field of vision.  He fired another shot, at a greater distance, presumably at the fallen dog.  Then he swiveled and fired off two more shots in quick succession, blasting Aegis and the two dogs that were gripping him.

The dogs and Aegis were all sent flying into the wall of the office building opposite the bank.  While the dogs didn’t get up immediately, a bloody and tattered Aegis was on his feet in an instant, and in the air a moment later.  He got to a good height – maybe two or three stories up, and stayed there, likely to get his bearings and survey the situation.

As my bugs approached the Kid, he took notice and maneuvered his cannon to decimate the swarm.  I spread them out, but he simply pulled a lever and released a flamethrower-like blast of lightning and sparks, eliminating virtually all of the bugs I’d sent out into the street.  The scant few that that remained, I sent towards his face, to crawl beneath his visor and into his nose and mouth.  It wasn’t enough.

Then Kid Win aimed the cannon straight at me.

I jumped for cover the moment I realized what he was doing.  There was a muffled sound, more a very large person someone hitting a punching bag than what I’d expect a laser cannon to sound like, and the window exploded.

What was he doing?  We had hostages inside.  I turned to check, and saw there weren’t any hostages near me.  Did he know that?  Heat sensors in his visor?  Was someone watching me through the cameras and passing him info?  Damn it!  There was too much I didn’t know, and Tattletale wasn’t around to fill me in.

Grue sprinted between two clouds of darkness, raising one hand to send a blast of his power towards Kid Win, obscuring the Kid’s line of sight.  Kid Win responded by ponderously maneuvering himself and the cannon out of the top of the cloud of darkness.

I swore under my breath and sent a command for more of the bugs I had inside to drop from the ceiling and go outside to attack.  There were a good few bugs near Clockblocker, who were getting free of the time stopping effect he’d laid on them.  I added those to the assault.

My legs buckled as my headache worsened tenfold.  Worse, the response from my bugs was sluggish, like I was ordering them to move through mud.  I felt a momentary panic, but there wasn’t really anything I could do.  I grit my teeth and ordered the attack anyways, then forced myself to run for the other side of the bank, in case he could somehow detect me and shoot through the walls to hit me.

I glanced through the windows for Aegis as I passed them.  Through the rain, and the darkness that lingered on the surface of the windows, I spotted him.  His white costume was wet with rain and ridiculous amounts of blood, and he was diving straight for the bank like a human missile.  Damn it.

Inexplicably, his descent wavered, then curved.  He flew straight into the ground, full force, hard enough to crack pavement.  One of the dogs, I couldn’t tell which, had managed to extricate itself from the rubble of the shattered wall and rushed at the fallen Aegis.

Kid Win was occupied trying to do three things at once – he was maneuvering out of the way of the clouds of darkness Grue was setting in his way, making return potshots at Grue as Grue zig zagged between spots of cover and with every free moment, he was blasting hundreds of my bugs out of the air.  If my power was at full strength, my bugs probably would have reached him already, but something was interfering.  That, or I’d overexerted myself.  The bugs were slow to react, slow to move and some were slipping from my grasp, returning to their instinctive behavior.  Making matters worse, I wasn’t blind to the fact that every time I gave a command, my headache got exponentially worse.

With Kid Win occupied as he was, the dog had a clear path to Aegis.  Aegis didn’t try to run this time.  He stood his ground and reached for his utility belt.  He retrieved something that looked like a miniature fire extinguisher.

Then he pulled the pin.

For the second time in a matter of minutes, I dove away from the window.  It wouldn’t be a grenade, but the option that made the most sense-  I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears just in time.  The explosion the flashbang grenade made was enough to leave me breathless, and there was a stone wall and some fifty or so feet between us.

I chanced a careful look through the window as soon as I’d recovered, hands still over my ears.  The dog was reeling, making pained sounds, and Aegis was pummeling it, using his flight to close the distance and add more momentum to his swings.  When the dog, Angelica, I saw, looked like it was starting to recover, he grabbed two more flashbang grenades from his belt with one hand and pulled the pins with the other, dropping them to the ground just below him.

I ducked behind cover again, but they didn’t go off.  When I chanced another look, I saw the tables had turned.  Where the flashbangs had been dropped, there was a smudge of Grue’s darkness covering the ground.  Angelica was having it out with Aegis, and Regent was striding out of the darkness, in Kid Win’s direction.

I’d forgotten about Regent.  It made sense that he was working from a discreet position like I was.  He probably would have been the one to alter Aegis’ flight path.

Seeing Regent approach, Kid Win turned his turret-mounted cannon in his direction.  Before he could fire, though, Regent raised two fingers, and Kid Win lost his footing on his flying skateboard.  The cannon shifted until it was pointing straight up, as the young hero dangled from the handles, his weight altering the trajectory of the cannon.  His board clattered to the ground a few feet away.

Regent made a dismissive wave, and Kid Win let go with one hand, his fingers and arm curling backwards in a palsied fit.  Regent repeated the gesture, and Kid Win lost his grip on the controls, dropping a good twenty feet to the asphalt.

As Regent approached to stand over him, Kid Win reached for his laser pistol.  He scowled in frustration as his fingers continued to twitch and curl involuntarily, instead of closing on the handle of the gun.

With an almost relaxed air, Regent shoved the end of his tazer into Kid Win’s side.

I don’t know if it was the sense of relief, but I couldn’t help but laugh as Regent collected the fallen skateboard and began a wobbly ascent to the floating cannon turret.  He aimed and began firing at Aegis, who was forced to scramble out of the way.

“What’s so funny, psycho?”

I whirled to face the voice, and saw the freckled, brown haired hostage that had been glaring at me when we’d first taken control of the bank lobby.  After that, I saw only stars as she slammed something large and blunt into the side of my head.

 

Last Chapter                                                                                                Next Chapter