Where the stage is set, featuring Tom Calvert not going evil.
------
Worm is absolutely a murderworld.
Well, it would be, if Amber wasn't taking steps.
Nota bene: in this version, Nilbog triggered in 2000, instead of 2001, and the… shall we say the big encounter with the Slaughterhouse 9 happens in '01 instead of '00.
This one isn't going to be anywhere near as long as One Insurgent Butterfree, and might end up just being 10 chapters, but no promises.
Edit: probably gonna be longer than 10 chapters.
------
Amber chopped her hand sideways, green-white force fields cleaving neatly (and somewhat oxymoronically) through the neck of one of Nilbog's creatures. Her off-hand snapped forward, then slightly back in a clawing gesture, and the heat flowed out of the thing, leaving it to shatter as it landed.
"Alright, SpecOp Lady, we should be
más o menos clear until the edge of town." Amber took a deep breath in to calm their pounding heart.
"Thank you, Stitch in Time." The PRT operative nodded at the hero. "We'll set up so we can hold as best we can."
Amber nodded. "I'll stick around for five minutes after we get there before I go back in."
Then, once they arrived outside what was nominally the city limits, she clicked on her com. "To all remaining PRT units in Ellisburg, this is Stitch in Time. As the sole remaining Protectorate member I am hereby claiming command of this mission. Captain Piggot is in the process of setting up a defensive position to the south of the city. If it's practical for you, meet up with another squad and make your way there. If not, hunker down as best you can. I'm helping set up with Piggot for five minutes, then running retrieval. I'm getting as many of you as I can out." Amber pulled a small box out of a belt pouch, made sure the light on top was glowing green, then returned it to her belt.
That done, Amber dropped to one knee and pressed their palm against the ground. "Lady! Tell me what kind of defensive emplacement you want!"
She frowned for a moment, looking at the remaining members of her squad. "Towers if you can, otherwise trenches."
Amber frowned, running quick calculations (or, more accurately, listening to her Thinker power about what her force field module could handle) before shaking her head. "Towers are no good, but I can give you trenches and spikes."
It was a quick and dirty job, using force fields to ape shovels, but when it was done, the PRT soldiers had a number of trenches to use to hold the line, and she launched herself skyward on a force field disk.
"Sound off. Who's where, who's pinned down and who's mobile?"
"Sgt. Tom Calvert, my squad is pinned down against the town hall. One of Nilbog's creatures caught the Captain."
"Alright, Calvert, pop me a flare and I'll be right over." The point of red light that rose into the sky served as the endpoint for their course, and as they hovered above the massive swarm of Nilboglings (as they privately decided to call them) they considered her options.
Gravity crushing was out, at least while running the force field module, the two of them just drank too much power (more gravity than the force fields. Amber still hadn't managed to figure out why the fields were so cheap, energy-wise, and gravity was not). A force field crush was… inefficient, in terms of power output per minion destroyed. That left the thermal energy module, which would work out nicely, since she could use the absorbed energy from earlier to fuel it and take some of the load off her power unit.
An instant of looking into the future reinforced her decision, and they nodded to themself. "Calvert and squad, be warned. I'm about to drop a barrier in front of you to protect from thermal backwash, so cease fire in five, four, three, two, one."
Waiting long enough for the last shots to echo off the streets, she wrapped the beleaguered PRT troops in a cylinder of green-white power, then descended to more or less street level, give or take six feet.
With a whisper-spat "Burn!" they triggered the thermal unit to heat output, making sure to limit the attack to less than a quarter of the heat reservoir on some hint of intuition from her Thinker power, and the Nilboglings did.
Once the sizzling of pseudosynthetic flesh died down, Amber let the barrier fall, then nodded to the exhausted soldiers. "Calvert?"
A lanky man raised his hand tiredly.
"Excellent." She reactivated her radio. "SpecOp Lady's dug in down south, take five for me to clear the way and spring whatever traps Nilbog's set up and then meet up with her." Amber nodded, tapping at her belt pouch, then turned towards the road and then surged forward, a crude bulldozer blade of green-white force scraping against the asphalt just in front of her.
"Stitch in Time, this is Captain Jim Stranger. We're pinned down at the intersection of Main Street and I193." The voice crackled over Amber's radio.
"Got it,
dáme un momento to finish clearing the way for Calvert's group and I'll be right over." Amber redoubled the pace, slamming through straggling bio-constructs until they managed to reach Lady's encampment, then crushed them into a roughly spherical shape.
"Calvert's on his way," she said, before taking off to help Captain Stranger, guided by the sound of gunfire.
Another couple of minutes of force field-based flight left her force field module feeling uncomfortably warm, so she landed just out of sight from the ravening horde and switched over to the as of yet unused gravity module, wincing as the whine from her power unit shifted up in pitch.
"Captain Stranger," they said, "prep for a sudden gravitic surge in five, four, three, two, one."
She stepped around the corner of the building she was using to conceal herself, then clenched her fist, gauntlet-based controls surging gravity downwards.
The gunfire surged in volume as the better-trained soldiers opened up, taking down the temporarily pinned Nilboglings, then died down to nothing.
"Alright, y'all, let's get going while the going's good," drawled Amber, letting up on the gravity.
"Thanks, Stitch," panted Captain Stranger. "We got time to prep a parting gift for Nilbog?"
Amber raised an eyebrow. "What kind?"
"We, uh…" Captain Stranger hesitated. "We might have picked up a few mines in the armory before deploying today."
The expression on Amber's face was too vicious to be called a smile. "Set it up, I'll keep the
pinché things out."
This, of course, invited a massive wave of Nilboglings from the north once they were mostly done. Amber, as a matter of course, advanced, switching to the thermal module and draining heat from the street. "Once the mines are set, fall back," they said.
"Two minutes until the mines are set, we've already got the tripwire ready," came the Captain's reply.
"Understood." Amber cracked her knuckles. "Ooh, and I burn," she sang, teeth bared in what only a great fool would call a smile. "Fuel is pumping engines, burning hot, loose, and clean."
The street caught fire.
Amber had dumped the rest of her heat reservoir into the attack, and it showed as the tar in the road bubbled, then ignited. Nilbog's minions were a tad more flammable, and most of the ones in the horde caught.
The whine of the power unit spiked at the same time as Amber's head decided that it had had enough, thank you very much, decided to wrap their brain in pain and pressure.
Amber groaned, then spat out a "Fuck" before forcing herself through the pain. "Right," she said, voice strained. "Let's double-time it, gang. I don't have the gear to hold Nilbog off for much longer-" the whining in her power pack has made that abundantly clear "-but this should buy us enough time while he tries to put together another swarm."
As if to drive her point home, her radio crackled to life and Lady's voice came through. "Captain Stranger, Stitch in Time, all other squads either returned or confirmed KIA."
The captain blinks, then shakes himself. "Right." He turned to the rest of his squad. "Double time, soldiers! Nilbog's creatures ain't gonna to set mines for themselves!"
As soon as they finished setting up the explosives, the soldiers began to fall back to Lady's position, with one on each side dropping any of the Nilboglings that decided to pop out of side alleys or buildings.
Eventually, they wised up, and just as the redoubt that Lady was holding came into view, Nilboglings came boiling out onto the street, and in the time that it took Amber to switch back to force fields and wrap the squad in a protective barrier, most of them were sporting more scratches, and one or two was nursing a broken bone.
"Hang onto your butts," Amber said, clenching their fist as they focused on directing the external layer of the force field to grow spikes and then spin while propelling them forwards.
Amber clicked her com. "Lady, get everyone ready to go. I'll buy you what time I can before I bug out."
"But-"
"But nothing," Amber snapped, already flicking on their thermal module. "I said I'd get y'all out of here, and I will." She frowned, then nodded. "I've got my own way home."
"...Understood. Godspeed, Stitch in time." Lady signaled with her hand, then the PRT troops began drawing together into a more-or-less cohesive group, and once Amber's force field construct landed and offloaded Captain Stranger and squad, they started pulling back to a number of transports.
Amber turned back to the rapidly-spreading swarm of Nilboglings, then her lip peeled up in a snarl. "Alright, fuckers, the line stops here."
"You will fail, hero, and we will rend the flesh from your bones," they said in one shivering voice.
"Eh… nah." Amber reached out and clawed back with their right hand, tearing the heat out of the nearby area and Nilboglings. Then, she slashed her other hand out, a circular wave of green-white force lashed out to shatter the nearby, now-frozen Nilboglings.
"We will make you hurt before you die, hero," came the swarm's voice, flowing forward like a sea of ravening death.
"Maybe so. But maybe not." The wave of heat was weaker than either of the attacks she'd used earlier in the day, but seeing as how it was channeled by two flat layers of force field until it reached the Nilboglings, it seared through a fair few.
"Stitch in Time, this is Lady. We're taking off now."
"Got- agh! Fucker!" One of the Nilboglings had thrown… something that latched onto her arm and started pulsating while she was distracted, sending pain swelling through her arm.
"You will feel it as the parasite devours your flesh and becomes one of my children just as your life ends," reverberated from the swarm.
Amber awkwardly shoved her hand into a belt pouch across her body. "Two things," she ground out through gritted teeth. "First off, if it kills its host, it's a parasitoid, like the English."
"Semantics. And the second?"
Amber grinned, then extricated the box from her belt pouch, thumb on the button. "Bye, Felicia."
In a flash of white-hot ceramic shards that vaporized off almost instantly, Amber reappeared in a messy workshop, then stumbled.
"Whoa, what happened?" Hero moved forward, hand out.
"Nilbog." Amber reached out with her left arm. "Get me to the stasis pod, please."
"What is that on your arm?" he asked, dragging her towards the spherical pod in the corner of the room.
"Nilbog called it his parasite. It's a parasitoid that's trying to eat me and make one of his things."
Hero froze. "Are you sure you should-"
"The stasis pod will be able to handle it, but just in case…" Amber hit the quickrelease on her harness, then handed it to the gold-armored hero. "This should be able to help if it can't, either with the thermal module or the force fields. You should be able to hook it into your gauntlets."
"Understood." Hero continued hauling her to the pod, which was full of golden liquid. Amber slapped at the side of her mask, turning off the camera she had had recording.
Amber stepped gingerly into it, but before her face finished sinking beneath the surface, she made eye contact with Hero even through his visor. "Beware the Siberian, she would be the one that kills you."
Then, she sank into the pod, which solidified around her, and time gave way to pain as the machinery pit her will against that of Nilbog's parasite.
------
Eventually, something changed. Amber came to awareness in an empty void, in her red-accented purple costume but lacking her tech harness. She sighed. "Well, this isn't ominous."
"Well, I suppose it might be."
Amber whirled to see that the empty void wasn't so empty after all. There were two men standing behind her, one taller, red-coated, and one armed; the other was short, pale, sporting a tousled shock of black hair, and glowing red.
Amber raised her eyebrows, she had a suspicion of who they were, but she didn't want to say anything in case she was wrong. "And who are you?"
The glowing one responded first. "The source of your power. Or at least one of them, Campbell was… not compatible with this method of communication."
Amber looked at them, distinctly unimpressed. "You're not Zion, Eden, or Abbadon."
"No, we interfered in their plan for this world." The one-armed man stepped forward. "If you don't mind, I have a story in mind that might clear things up."
Amber shrugged. "Nothing better to do, at this point. Go ahead."
He inclined his head. "Thank you."
He took in a deep breath. "Not so long ago, in a galaxy that just happens to be right here (well, give or take a few billion different dimensions), there came to be a man who came to be called Calamity."
The glowing man raised his eyebrows and looked at the red-coated man who was telling the tale, as if to tell him to hurry up.
"He was constantly experiencing sensory overload, so he hated the world, which would ordinarily not be too bad. However, he was the First of the Epics in this world, and in giving powers to the other Epics of the world, he twisted their minds. He didn't mean to, but his subconscious wasn't exactly cooperative."
"Globe, if you do not hurry, you will-" The pale man's jaw kept moving, but no sound came out.
"Be perfectly fine," came the other speaker's voice. "I was asked to tell the story, and I will tell it."
The other man's glow subsided, and he nodded reluctantly.
"Thank you. So, Amber, you might have heard part of this story before, but David Charleston, the Steelslayer, with the help of Limelight and Firefight, convinced him that not all other Epics were evil by nature, and he decided to roam the worlds and test people. And now, he's testing you, with a version of his power."
The woman in question gave the Hero a level look, then the Epic. "And I'm on Earth Bet because…"
Globe shrugged. "Test of character. You more or less fought off Nilbog's 'Parasite' without internal powers."
"And I've more or less succeeded?"
Globe nodded. "Enough to make the jump from making Motivators to having actual powers, besides just a combination of Fortuity's and Nick Campbell's."
"Alright then. Anything else I should be aware of before I get back and tell everyone I second triggered and changed from a Tinker to a Trump?"
Calamity grinned. It was not a human expression. "It took almost ten years for your perseverance to be tested. It is now January 3rd, 2011"
"Oh, fu-"
Then, she woke up in the stasis pod she remembered building two weeks or ten years ago.
Elsewhenwhere, Globe raised his eyebrow. "Was that really necessary, Calamity?"
"No, but it was entertaining enough for the readers, if I am any judge." Globe just sighed.
------
Amber's eyes opened just as the pod reliquified around her, and she struggled to move through the still-thick liquid until she managed to get her hand onto the edge of the pod. She pulled herself out of the pod, then overbalanced, almost collapsing to the floor before shoving out and landing on a platform of Limelight's green-white force field.
"Amber?" The hero in question looked over towards the source of the voice, then blinked.
"Hero? What…" She stopped to cough, voice rusty after protracted disuse. "What happened to your leg?"
The gold-armored hero sighed. "The Siberian got me." He readjusted the stump his thigh ended in. "Your force field kept me alive, but I didn't have it up when she tore my leg off."
Amber pulled herself the rest of the way out of the pod, then settled on the ground, wobbly for only a moment before her brain reconnected fully as if coming out of a particularly deep sleep.
Hero frowned. "Wait, did you have two force field modules?"
Amber shook her head. "Second trigger flipped me from an imbuement Trump, not a Tinker to a… I think maybe type 7?" She was relying on her precog power to not horribly mess up, which she dimly recalled should have just given her hunches, not the words to say. "Not quite sure. As it turns out, ten years of fighting off a parasite thing is fairly traumatic."
Hero blinked. "I've never heard of that happening."
Amber shrugged, then let her power continue to feed her words. "No clue, but it does answer my question about those black boxes, they were receptacles for my power."
Another thought forced itself through the thinning fog in her head. "Wait, what day is it?"
Hero frowned at the apparent non sequitr. "January 3rd, 2011."
"Fuck. What time is it in Brockton Bay?"
Hero frowned, then pulled out his phone, and after a moment said "8:48 AM. Why?"
Amber leaned even further into her precog power, then sighed, clicking the camera in her mask to record. "A Ward is in the process of bullying someone into double triggering. Hang on, I have to go deal with this bullshit."
Amber focused on the necessity of being elsewhere, then felt something expand a shade in her chest, and in a flash of white-hot ceramic that she absently noted as Obliteration's power, she was in Winslow High School, right behind who her power told her was Sophia Hess and watching her hold a locker closed, snarling through the grate, wisps of curly brown hair trapped by the door. She was flanked by two people that she thought were probably Emma Barnes and Madison Clements who were also holding the locker shut, likely starting when she was locking the extra lock and not stopping.
"What the fuck are you doing."
The three whirled on the hero, then froze. Sophia was the one who reacted first. "Stitch in Time? I thought you were dead."
"I'm alive enough to arrest you for assault. Open that fucking locker."
"But-" she began.
"Open. That.
Pinché. Locker. Now."
Cowed into obedience, she did, but did nothing to catch the girl who was twitching even as she fell backwards out of the locker.
Amber caught her with a force field, taking note of the rotting menstrual products that cascaded out with her. "Make that attempted murder."
Amber made sure to make a call to Daniel Hebert first, to make sure he had Taylor's collected evidence
Twenty minutes later, Amber had made sure to get photos from her mask camera of the way that Taylor had been injured and covered in both bugs and old menstrual products before healing her with Limelight's gifted regeneration, then sent her away to go shower and clean up. In that time, three men that Amber's power told her were Alan Barnes, Anthony Clements, and Danny Hebert (who was indeed holding a significant stack of papers), as well as a PRT agent for Sophia, had arrived, all of whom had been escorted to the Principal's office.
When Amber strode into the room, escorting Taylor, Alan Barnes was standing, red-faced and screaming.
"Sit down, Mr Barnes." He sat, shocked. "Thank you. Now, I saw the three of these girls holding the door to Taylor's locker closed with her inside and covered in both bugs and used sanitary products. That is absolutely grounds for both assault and attempted murder charges, and I think that with those papers Danny's brought-" Amber gestured to the stack at this. "there's a pattern of harassment."
"Now see here-" Alan Barnes was clearly building up to a spectacular head of steam.
"I have a video recording, Mr. Barnes, and before you get on me about it not being permissible in court because of a lack of consent, allow me to remind you that that does not apply to Protectorate members in the lawful execution of their duties." He shut his mouth, fuming.
Amber exhaled through her nose. "Alright. Any other questions?"
After a moment of silence, Amber nodded. "Alright then. The police should be on their way, and I have to go explain to the Director why I showed up out of nowhere in her city and performed an arrest." She turned to Danny Hebert. "I'll be in touch, sir." She turned and stalked out of the room, already calling the PRT hotline for Brockton Bay thanks to her precog power. She wasn't looking forward to this.
------
And that's Chapter 1! I'm interested to see what people think about this story, and also this character and her powers.
I'm probably going to be going an every other week update schedule for this one with Delta on the off weeks.
I plan to upload that fic to SV and SB every week until we're caught up with AO3 and FFN.
Please read and review, and have a nice day!
Topic: Stitch in Time Back?
