James might have scared her just a bit. He's an unsettling lil Redcap man.
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Andante (Worm OC)
- Thread starter zarinthel
- Start date
James might have scared her just a bit. He's an unsettling lil Redcap man.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Prompted me to reread the whole thing and damn is it poignant. I hope Giselle can find someone who can genuinely connect with her. Accord seemed like he could but he's not the sort to form any personal bonds with anyone.
Giselle reads to me as autistic but given the fuckery of the Vasil household, it's probably impossible to separate her mind from the circumstances of her upbringing.
Giselle reads to me as autistic but given the fuckery of the Vasil household, it's probably impossible to separate her mind from the circumstances of her upbringing.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Generally, when you're hailed as the Next Alexandria, you probably don't expect to get manhandled by some Guy
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It took me until now to realize the familial metaphor you wove into this one, and ooh that's some exquisite subtext! Quality work as always Zarinthel.
Hey if a crackship works this well is it still a crackship?
She was distracted their whole conversation by how easy it would be to vandalize him.
greatoz
Debonair Djinni
- Location
- The Other Place
She could make him worse!
Guile
Having a really great time right now
But can Accord fix her?
- Location
- Norway
I don't know what will happen in the next act, but I am sure Trickster, Hob and Diagnosis will prevail with power of friendship and dance.
- Pronouns
- Ww
Sheesh. I'd forgotten just how unsettling Giselle is. The way she just brushes past the child with the bruises(which seem likely to be due to parental abuse) kinda made it hit home a lot more than anything else.
Glory Girl feels a bit out of character, well, more than a bit, but otherwise it's phenomenal and terrifying both at once
Glory Girl feels a bit out of character, well, more than a bit, but otherwise it's phenomenal and terrifying both at once
Guile
Having a really great time right now
This weirdo in a cape outfit was stopping her sister from doing her job for extremely weird reasons (somebody doesnt like capes??), and then out-Brute'd her when, insulted, she escalated. Victoria's not acting at her best.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Question, on reread:
Is this supposed to be $600,000, and a typo? Or did Giselle knock off a zero somewhere in between negotiating with the PRT and now, maybe for Triumph being nice two chapters ago?zarinthel said:
She knocked a zero off arbitrarily. I'll make sure it's clarified in the next chapter
Wow, just found this, I loved it!
7. Ondine, ou la Naiade
There are large ABB gang signs on every single building surrounding Giselle's clinic. There's also just a young man with a surgical brain scar standing around. He brightens up immediately when he sees her.
"Prognosis," he says. "Everybody thought that guy took you away."
Trickster had dropped her and James off several blocks away in his haste to get back to where his own boss was calling him too. So, she'd had to walk.
"I went to open my bank account," Giselle says. "I still prefer cash, though."
The young man nods earnestly.
"You picked a good day to be gone then," he says. "It's been crazy."
In the distance, it looks like one of the skyscrapers in the downtown area has caught fire.
"Crazy," James repeats.
There's someone inside of her clinic, though this young man doesn't seem aware of it. Teenage girl..? No, she's older than Giselle by a year. Twenty. Cape. Part of her hair is dyed. Lingering impact of drug use. Mesh around organs. Metal around bones. Raised tattoo on stomach, chest. Another on the back. Mental tampering of several sorts badly interacting with each other.
The tattoos are so fresh they aren't even healed.
"We're closed today," Giselle says, and goes inside.
Auburn hair with a streak of red. Dark eyes, empty smile.
"Hey, sis," Cherie Vasil says. "Nice place you got here."
And then she meets James Coppelius's eyes, and stops dead, face paling.
"Hello," James murmurs.
There's no way Cherie didn't know Giselle was accompanied. Cherie had taken pride in always knowing where people were, especially since it was something their dad couldn't do. But, Giselle supposes, just as Giselle hadn't known who she was going to see despite knowing someone was there...
Cherie's only knowledge had been James' emotional state.
She'd said it was like music, right?
"It's $600 for a consultation," Giselle says.
"He's so afraid of you," Cherie says, and smiles wider and faker than before. "Who's this, Giselle? He fears you, hates you, adores you, pities you, despairs for you, would die for you, wants to kill you, and he's impotent. Dick broken. Where'd you find dad's long lost brother?"
"He's not related," Giselle says. "$6,000 for a consultation."
Next to her, James has begun to make an eerie, keening noise, shifting forwards on the balls of his feet.
"Hates you, wants to kill you, adores you," Cherie repeats, and her smile brightens even further, dazzling and sweet.
Cherie had once put something in Giselle's food that made her high, and kept putting it in her food for months until the current girlfriend had noticed. Giselle doesn't have any memory of the time in between. She'd had to throw away all her nice clothes since she didn't know where the blood came from.
You can't get bloodstains on perfume bottles.
She reaches over and touches James's shoulder, and he freezes, even the sound stopping in his throat as his breath becomes shallow.
"Fears me," she says.
Cherie snarls, frail mask of civility ripped away the moment something doesn't go her way.
"I can't believe there's two of you in this fucking cesspit of a city. Dad didn't even bother looking for his most useless castoffs?"
"$60,000 for a consultation," Giselle says. Her powers pulse around her, spiraling around as she feels everything in the blocks around her, feels people shift and mutter as aimless agitation blankets them.
After her mother had hung herself, Giselle had tried to reopen the door to her room, but couldn't. Someone had locked her in.
She knows it was her. Cherie was the oldest, and Giselle was the second oldest, and back then there hadn't been so many girlfriends and children. Neither Guillame nor Nicholas had triggered. Jean-Paul had been a toddler.
She'd screamed until her father had come to the door, and then she'd never screamed again.
Cherie ran away from home. Heartbreaker wants her back. Hurting her is in direct accordance to his desires. It's helpful.
It's okay to hurt her.
"Hey," Cherie says, and for the first time there's a trace of uncertainty in her. "You've got more emotions than you used to, sis. Guess it's that cape volatility finally getting to you."
"I didn't notice," Giselle says.
Cherie rolls her eyes.
"You wouldn't," she says. "Boring as always. Stay in town, Prognosis. I'm not nominating you-- but maybe someone else will!"
She strolls out the front door.
"I don't like her," James says. "Witch."
"She is a bitch," Giselle says. "Let's go knife shopping, James."
He stills.
"You didn't kill me because you didn't have a knife," he says.
"I no longer need a knife to kill you," Giselle says.
Hob browses through the army surplus store for knives. The clerk has stomach cancer. Early stage.
Giselle shifts through her phone, looking at the people who have called her. She begins to edit names.
One string of numbers becomes Armsmaster. The next becomes Assault. The next becomes Alec Willis. Last is Trickster.
Giselle stares at Alec's name in her phone. Is it violating some secret identity to have it sitting next to a bunch of cape names? She doesn't understand. Her brother has two cape names, two non cape names. She has two non cape names, one cape name.
She paid for Alec to have that last name. It's her right to use it in her phone.
Her father had always believed that when you knew real terror, you knew there wasn't any point in making a sound.
Hob hands her a knife and its sheathe, and her nose wrinkles.
It's ugly. It doesn't match her outfit.
"Parian should be done with my commission," Giselle says. Parian could make a non ugly sheathe.
How had she forgotten?
By marrying a knight, the inhuman Undine gains a mortal soul; but as the knight turns to a new love, Undine must kill him on his new wedding day.
Weeping, she kisses him, kills him, buries him, and becomes the stream around his earthen tomb.
That's the book, however. The ballet is different.
When she and Hobs return to the clinic, there are dogs. Injured. Howling. Three of them.
Bitch glowers in her direction, arms crossed.
"There you are," she says.
There are a number of unfriendly eyes on Bitch, which the girl barely notices.
"Dogs got hurt," Bitch says.
She's holding one dog in her arms that appears too hurt to walk.
"Angelica," she says. "Brutus. Judas."
She makes a sharp gesture with her chin to the two dogs on the ground.
A messenger of god and two traitors.
They look fluffy.
"I need to touch them," Giselle lies.
Hob gives her an almost betrayed look. That's his fault. If he wants to touch them, he should get some self control.
Bitch very reluctantly soothes Angelica as Giselle gets close enough to put a hand on her. It is soft. She's never touched a dog before.
Healing Angelica is easy. This is a dog that is more than used to changing how she is. Giselle pretends it takes longer than it does. Then she kneels down to heal the other two.
While she's down there, Bitch rumages around in one of her pockets until she pulls out a few crumpled hundred dollar bills.
"That enough?"
Giselle would do it for less, but this is Alec's teammate. Undoubtedly, she has the money.
"It's fine."
Bitch nods, satisfied.
"You still stink," she says.
Of expensive perfume, yes.
"The Huntsman works for the Regent," Hob says, waiting until Bitch is gone to speak behind her back. At least presumably, he is referring to Bitch. "She should work for an evil queen instead."
"Regent's not in charge of anything," Giselle says. "Maybe she does work for an evil queen."
She has no idea who her brother works for. Maybe the Undersiders don't work for anyone, though that seems unlikely. Alec isn't the type of person to start working with others of his own volition.
"I would eat a poison apple," Hob says, drifting away from whatever point he'd been making. The area around Parian's shop is a mess, with a couple of fires smoldering here and there as large iron ribs jut out from the sidewalk. He doesn't speak again for a half an hour at least.
"I didn't spend any of my money."
"You want to buy more clothes?"
"No. I didn't spend any money. When I worked at the bank."
Really lucid. Her sister has done a number on him.
"Money's only real when you spend it."
He laughs.
"A dragon hoarding faerie gold," he says. "Disappears in the light of day. He doesn't know because he's never let it leave his cave. It's never touched daylight."
"I'd miss daylight."
"I didn't," James says. His voice is odd. "I was going to spend it on a house."
"I thought you had an apartment."
"A family might want a house."
Giselle's family had moved from mansion to mansion every few years. Sometimes hurriedly.
"You didn't have a family."
"But what if I didn't have a family because I didn't have a house?" James says.
"You could buy a girlfriend," Giselle says. "Before buying a house."
"A faerie girl instead of faerie gold," James says. He sounds indifferent. "I was in my apartment. I was looking at my phone."
Giselle looks at her phone.
It's very old, she's had it for years. She kept it when she left.
"I thought about who to tell that I had lost my job," James says. "I kept thinking I should tell someone."
Beyond Trickster, her messaging history is with Alec only. And a number from someone she'd slept with who'd given her the phone.
She doesn't remember the name, and it seems he's forgotten her gift in turn.
"Who did you tell?" She asks.
"I made myself a goblin girl," James says. "Rotten meat from the fridge. Chinese takeout. Six eggs. The plants from the balcony."
"And what did she say?"
"I don't remember," James says.
"Many memories aren't worth keeping," Giselle says, and rings Parian's bell.
"Prognosis!" Parian says, and sounds genuinely happy to see them. "I was worried about how to get in contact with you. I finished a few days ago. Do you want to try it on? If it doesn't fit, I can do final alterations."
Giselle leaves Hob to stare at the teddy bear display.
After dressing, she's too entranced with her own reflection to leave.
In many ways, most of it is not too different from what she was already wearing. The shirt is white, well tailored, the only difference being the heavier fabric, shinier. Parian has reinforced it. Treating Giselle as if she's the type of cape who gets into fights.
The pants are slim instead of the flare that Giselle normally wears; in exchange, Parian has sourced knee high white boots with a simple black buckle. What Giselle really cares about, though, is the cloak.
It's a single shoulder cape that falls down to her waist, attached to tan leather that covers both of her shoulders and laces up into a high collar. A hood falls from the back that can be pulled up should she desire to discard her hats for something more... classic. And with it, a proper half mask to replace her surgical, disposable ones. It's even got silver embroidery on it.
"You like it?" Parian checks.
"I like it," Giselle echoes. She's even got the ugly new knife positioned so that the cape mostly conceals it.
"That's wonderful!" Parian brightens. "Working on it was so interesting. I don't normally construct with leather, so--"
In the distance, she hears something. A wail. A scream. An.. ambulance siren?
Hob stiffens. Parian's anxiety spikes higher than Giselle has ever felt.
The sound gets louder and louder, siren building until it echoes from every building.
"It's tolling," James says, his normal mercurial rasp rendered normal by the noise of his backdrop.
Ondine has fallen in love with a fisherman; leaving the sea, she must come ashore.
"Oh my god," Parian says faintly. "I-- I-- I have to go. I don't know where all the capes are supposed to go. Did they give a public announcement at some point? What about the out of town--" She pauses, and gives a devastated look towards the entirety of her shop.
It's likely all will be washed away.
"--Are you going?" Parian asks.
Giselle slowly looks down at her phone as it begins to ring.
Alec Willis, the name reads.
She picks up.
"Hey," Alec says. As light as ever. "You in the Docks?"
"No," Giselle says. "I was shopping."
Oh, that's right. Maybe all the clothes she'd brought from Montreal are about to vanish forever. Her laptop, too. She didn't bring it with her.
What about the sick rat?
All her effort to not put it out of its misery is going to be in vain. It's going to drown.
"Downtown?" Alec's voice is pitched slightly higher. "That's very close to the Bay."
"Where are you?" Giselle asks.
"En route to the PRT meetup point," Alec says casually.
Giselle looks at James, who has become close to an unwound doll, and Parian, too shy to interrupt a phonecall.
"Where's the meetup point?" Giselle says.
He doesn't answer her for a moment.
"Regent, who's that?" A male voice asks. "Is it Tattletale? Why would she call you?"
"Shut up," Alec says coldly, and the moment passes, and he gives her directions.
Giselle has never been so close to so many parahumans. It's overwhelming, the pressure of broken powers so pervasive that her shoulders sink underneath the weight. Every minute there's a new burst in her mind as more and more materialize within her range, teleported in without warning.
She had arrived relatively early. It turns out the meeting place was a six story building located in between the Docks and Downtown; she and Hob and Parian were likely some of the closest capes to the location in the entire city, if not the fastest traveling.
Dragon was there before them, of course, or at least the giant robot that Parian said was Dragon.
For all she can tell, it's just another piece of metal.
Eidolon was here first. He is perfectly healthy except for his power, which blares at her like Noelle's does.
It's so loud, it's drowning out everything else in the building.
HEALTH RISK: UNSTABLE/STABLE/UNSTABLE/STABLE/UNSTABLE/STABLE on and on and--
Hob taps her on the shoulder, yanking her out of the spiral. He'd ducked into an alley with a garbage bin, and come back covered head to toe in red. A red hooded robe, dark red shirt, pants and shoes. Bright red gloves and mask. He looks like the Red Death, come to visit Prospero's masquerade ball.
During her lapse in attention, Parian had slipped away to talk to a cape Giselle doesn't recognize. He wears an all white outfit that looks more suited to a desert climate than Brockton Bay, shrouded even further by the white mist that floats around him.
Trickster enters with three other members of his team, though one of them is like Nilbog's goblins: an unravelable creation. All of them are like him: mentally damaged, unhealthy power. Even the construct.
He looks at her and then looks at Hob, and pulls out his phone.
She gets a text from him.
Don't fucking die.
Hookwolf shoots Giselle a nasty glance as he comes in with the Empire. She hadn't realized the Empire had so very many capes: There's fifteen of them. More than the local Protectorate and Wards combined.
Speaking of them, Armsmaster is here. He's still not fully healed, hands almost shaking as he keeps a grip on his halberd. She tries to nudge him further, but it's not like not sleeping has done anything to improve his odds of a full recovery.
Outside, a commotion erupts as Lung approaches.
PRT members ask him to stop even as he begins his transformation; tell him that it will be unsafe for him to be in the building with other heroes; beg him to not step into the space kept open for teleports.
She sees him look up at her through the windows as he snarls and growls.
She presses down, and then realizes that's not what he wants at all.
It's not time for her to do hard things with her power. It's time to do easy things.
Grow, she urges him, and his power sings with hers.
Shouts of fear erupt as Lung begins to ramp without any particular conflict against other capes.
"Stay back," Lung growls, neck extending as feet long spines begin to sprout from his back. "Useless."
"You--"
His long neck turns whip fast as Alec and one of his presumable teammates-- a seventeen year old wearing motorcycle leathers and a skull mask-- arrive.
"You," Lung says, much less happily, and Giselle presses down hard, halting the transformation for a moment before allowing it to resume.
"Yo," Alec says, but doesn't actually have the bravado to taunt Lung any further before hurrying past him.
He sees Giselle once he's in the building, but also declines to approach her, instead sitting down next to the other young man and pretending to doze.
Giselle loses focus again, Eidolon's presence and Lung's requirements being all she can process.
"Prognosis," Hob mumbles, a true moment of terror flashing into his voice as she blinks blurily. Someone had said something to her.
Alexandria is standing in front of her. Health risk: ...
Her entire body exists without the probability of change.
"Hello," Giselle says politely. "Did you know that the most famous passage from Ondine, ou la Naiad, is the Shadow Dance, where Ondine steps ashore, becomes mortal, and begins to dance with her own shadow?"
"Are you comparing Leviathan to a nymph?" Alexandria says, voice dangerously low.
Giselle blinks at her slowly.
"It's happiness that precedes misfortune," Giselle says. "She's overcome with happiness that she's mortal, but now she's doomed to wither as long as she stays on land."
Now there's a larger silence in the room.
"And you're all that's keeping him--" Alexandria cuts herself off, shakes her head, and stalks off.
Hob begins to breathe again.
"She knows," he says. "Looking at me. Watching me."
Giselle stares after her, vaguely frustrated. She can barely hear, barely speak from the pressure of being around so many capes, but she'd even managed full sentences. And yet, it's as if nothing was said.
"Ondine, ou la Naiad is the variation where everyone lives at the end," she says. "There's a different ballet called Ondine where she kills him on his wedding day. Like in the book."
"May I have your attention," Legend starts, and Giselle once again loses everything to the fog.
"Excuse me, miss," a health risk: unstable teenager says to her. He's composed entirely of metal, but it's a changeable thing. Healing him of anything would be easy, but there's nothing to heal. There's an unchangeable brand on his heel in the shape of a stylized C. "The armband..."
Hob takes it and puts it on her before putting on his own. His robe splits for a second as the armband sinks below it and then the fabric knits back together, leaving the armband invisible.
"Left button for foretelling," Hob murmurs. "Right button cry for aid."
He holds his arm up.
"Hob," he states.
Lung roars, mind finally beginning to slip as even Giselle's attempts to keep him sane start failing.
Giselle looks down, finally catching the instructions blinking on the piece of tech.
"Prognosis," she says, and then has to repeat it again after remembering she needs to press the left button first. And then another confirmation.
No, that wasn't Lungs roar.
That sound came from the ocean.
Glass shatters, people scream, and past the den of capes, outside to the blocks and blocks that Giselle's senses extended to, a new type of health risk emerges, countless and endless.
Drowning.
Abandoned pets, street side trees, weeds and unevacuated humans and alley cats--
"--Strider! Get us out of here!"
Sand and broken concrete spilling over her new, beautiful new boots, Giselle senses Leviathan for the first time.
There are no health risks. No organs. No...powers? That can't be true. Giselle pauses momentarily, and glances over at Hob. Actually, there was another--
Leviathan moves.
Capacitor down, CD-5. Kaiser down, CD-5. Assault down, CD-5. Zigzag deceased, CD-5. Mayday down...
Hob picks her up and moves her back, further past where Trickster's group had clustered to where a sixteen year old girl in a purple outfit frowned at Leviathan. Next to her was Alec, who was both soaked and scowling.
There's a small earthquake as Lung throws himself at Leviathan, power singing. More, grow more--
"Shouldn't you be with Panacea," Alec says. "You don't see her standing out here with us plebs. Go tell Dragon the teleporter fucked up."
She'd forgotten that she was considered a healer. It's not much use out here, where people die so fast. She can feel them.
She needs hours to nudge one person in a better direction if she doesn't know them.
"Shut up, Regent," the girl says. "I'm trying to--"
She looks between Alec and Giselle and stops talking for a second.
"I'm trying to focus on the Endbringer," she says blankly. "Oh my god."
She taps the button on her armband.
"I need a lift to a better vantage point," she says. "Moderate priority."
Alexandria charges in as Lung gets thrown into a nearby building.
"Leviathan 'weak points'," the armband states. "If possible, concentrate damage where the arm meets the body."
"I can't affect Leviathan at all," Alec mutters. "Going to have to be lame and do search and rescue, so I've got to go. Go with the healers, Prog. Even a little bit is more than anyone else has got."
He barely gets more than a few yards away before the armbands all blare an alarm.
"Wave!"
Giselle falls, completely underwater as the wave smashes through where she'd been standing. Alec is health risk: coughing up water fine, and Hob's mask appears to be able to filter water into air.
He pulls her up out of the water as Leviathan lands on a building nearby, clawing it to pieces as he scales it.
Alec stands up and starts moving further away.
Giselle sits back down in the water and closes her eyes to focus on Leviathan. She'd been distracted earlier.
"No powers, but powered," Giselle says. "Like your goblins?"
Hob pauses.
"Don't know if there's enough mass in all of Brockton Bay to be able to create one," he says slowly. "Surely an oracle would have noticed if enough materials to create Behemoth went missing and then 'returned'. Especially the second and third time. Though.. If Behemoth creates Leviathan..?"
His own power churns in his dark eyes as he stares up at Leviathan. Measuring an Endbringer as if it were an apple, a box of chinese takeout, a piece of meat left to rot.
Giselle nods.
She can tune out the names that the armband keeps spitting out, now. It's almost like a metronome. Calm. Steady.
Rain has soaked her to the bone, left her new cape heavy, clouds her eyes. She can use her power in total darkness, never needing sight.
She understands more. Leviathan is layers and layers, a matryoshka doll. At its center is a burning core.
Like Hookwolf's core.
She can't touch it. It's not... 'here'?
She goes back to the layers.
Leviathan is like a goblin. It was made. She wants to unmake things so badly. And Leviathan, she now knows, is finite. 300 years, compared with 3-4 years for a goblin.
Finite is finite.
Dragon's mechanical fire spears through Leviathan in a great cloud of noise, fire and explosions barely managing to damage Leviathan's skin. Legend takes the other side, lasers erupting into another lightshow.
The air itself was glowing from the heat, the flames, the pillars and columns of a watery temple erected for only a moment to worship the apocalypse.
Giselle imagines a tangerine. The motion of cutting into the thick skin with a long fingernail, using it to pull off the skin piece by piece.
The wounds on Leviathan begin to regenerate slower. Giselle staggers. Leviathan is just so complete. But unraveling is what she does. Pulling string from satin.
Another major ping comes through the armband.
"To the cape slowing Leviathan's wound regeneration. How long can you maintain that?"
Leviathan jumps and lands right on top of several capes, tail swinging to kill even more before one manages a glowing barrier.
Left is foretelling. Giselle presses down.
"Indefinite as long as I'm nearby," she says.
There's no ping this time.
"Understood. Alert if you need help re-entering range. It will be prioritized."
Leviathan had been two blocks away from her. With one leap, it crashes into the high apartment building right in front of her, dodging away from a huge miniature sun that had materialized above its head.
Glyph deceased, CD-5. Ballistic down, CD-5. Vista deceased, CD-5. Challenger down, CD-5. Night deceased, CD-5. Stormtiger down, CD-5. Uglymug deceased, CD-5...
Creaking, groaning, crumbling, the building begins to fall, its shadow covering every part of the street Giselle is standing in.
Hob grabs her, heart rate spiking drastically as he starts to run, and then realizes he can't run fast enough.
"There's people still alive in there," Giselle informs him. She reaches up, points at one of the windows.
Hob, compelled by survival instincts that Giselle has long let rot away, throws out his hand. An organic twist, of a rope that is also a snake is thrown out, fangs of the creation burying itself in one window sill as Hob then is pulled towards it, reabsorbing his creation and forcing it into a scaled red shell that shudders and cracks as the window glass cracks over it. Desks, lights, and corpses all fall onto them from the newly sideways building as the ground buckles beneath their feet, everything churned into mud.
Hob stands up, and looks between Giselle and the corpses.
His hands twitch.
"It could save your life," he says, quietly. "It did save your life. They're already dead. I wouldn't make...anything that thinks."
Giselle forces the red shell to dissolve around her.
"No," she says.
She has to keep unraveling Leviathan. It's moving away from her now. Heading towards the nice shopping district.
Flashbang, deceased. CD-6. Hookwolf, down. CD-6. Jouster, deceased. CD-6. Rime, deceased. CD-6. Browbeat, deceased. CD-6. Chubster, down--
She taps the armband.
"Transportation for two needed," she says politely. "Building fell on us."
The building shifts and sinks further into the ground even as she speaks. The hallway out of this room is a vertical shaft up, and water is flowing down it into the room she and Hob are otherwise stuck in.
"Dispatched."
Giselle loops her arms around Hob's neck, and points up at the hallway.
This close, she can hear Hob's teeth grind, but he leaps up, using the uncomfortable stickiness of his gloves and boots to begin a slow, newt-like crawl directly up a soaking wet, carpeted hallway floor. She's sure her dangling from his back isn't helping the speed.
She feels Leviathan reach the third block away from her, and winces.
All of that effort to stop him from healing is going to be erased by the time she's out of this building.
More booms and shakes from the battle keep making the building rattle, keep sending more things tumbling down. A brick clips Giselle's shoulder, dislodged from who knows where, and she clings even tighter to Hob as bright red begins to stain her costume.
The blood also drops down, and she glances down to look after them.
A mistake.
The water is rising below, filling up the building in a flood.
Her grip on Leviathan tightens, her range expanding. She'll unweave him. Unravel him unmake him disable him hurt him. No more healing.
He'll bleed like her.
"Prognosis, the dispatched cape can't find an usable entrance to the building. An alternative is being sent. Is your situation sustainable?"
Giselle can't press her buttons while she's busy clinging to Hob, so there's a delayed beat before Hob realizes that and answers for the two of them.
"Water is rising," he says, voice returning to its hazy, dreamy quality. "Building is sinking."
Giselle's shoes are touching the water now, as Hob loses time from a part of the hallway that's simply... gone. Missing. Lost.
No more healing. Leviathan's gouged by bolts that always strike true, by fire, by lightning, by a forcefield.
Far away from here.
Giselle's fingers loosen around Hob's neck as the pain in her mind spikes. It would be hard to do this if she was touching Leviathan, hand to scale.
It feels like she's clinging to two separate cliffs at the same time, losing her grip on both of them.
"Giselle," Hob says urgently.
Has Hob ever said anything urgently?
"It's dark," Giselle murmurs, plaintive. "James, why is it always dark?" She doesn't like the dark, she hates the dark, she hates the smell of blood, hates being locked in with the monsters, hates being locked out.
"It's just staging," James says. "They'll brighten it soon, so Undine can dance with her shadow."
He makes a leap, covering more ground, but when he lands Giselle's feet are back in the water.
"You have to listen to me," Giselle says. "I've never had anyone who has to listen to me before."
"If I killed you," James says. "I wouldn't have to."
So honest.
It's relieving. He can't end up like her, who can't kill the ones she loves.
"You could be free," Giselle agrees.
Beside them, there's a huge pop of air as HEALTH RISK: UNSTABLE/STABLE/STABLE/UNSTABLE/UNSTABLE/UNSTABLE Eidolon grabs the both of them and then teleports right onto a new, mostly undamaged building overlooking Leviathan.
Overlooking the new lake that Leviathan has made.
"Faerie gold," James says, and he laughs and laughs.
"Prognosis," he says. "Everybody thought that guy took you away."
Trickster had dropped her and James off several blocks away in his haste to get back to where his own boss was calling him too. So, she'd had to walk.
"I went to open my bank account," Giselle says. "I still prefer cash, though."
The young man nods earnestly.
"You picked a good day to be gone then," he says. "It's been crazy."
In the distance, it looks like one of the skyscrapers in the downtown area has caught fire.
"Crazy," James repeats.
There's someone inside of her clinic, though this young man doesn't seem aware of it. Teenage girl..? No, she's older than Giselle by a year. Twenty. Cape. Part of her hair is dyed. Lingering impact of drug use. Mesh around organs. Metal around bones. Raised tattoo on stomach, chest. Another on the back. Mental tampering of several sorts badly interacting with each other.
The tattoos are so fresh they aren't even healed.
"We're closed today," Giselle says, and goes inside.
Auburn hair with a streak of red. Dark eyes, empty smile.
"Hey, sis," Cherie Vasil says. "Nice place you got here."
And then she meets James Coppelius's eyes, and stops dead, face paling.
"Hello," James murmurs.
There's no way Cherie didn't know Giselle was accompanied. Cherie had taken pride in always knowing where people were, especially since it was something their dad couldn't do. But, Giselle supposes, just as Giselle hadn't known who she was going to see despite knowing someone was there...
Cherie's only knowledge had been James' emotional state.
She'd said it was like music, right?
"It's $600 for a consultation," Giselle says.
"He's so afraid of you," Cherie says, and smiles wider and faker than before. "Who's this, Giselle? He fears you, hates you, adores you, pities you, despairs for you, would die for you, wants to kill you, and he's impotent. Dick broken. Where'd you find dad's long lost brother?"
"He's not related," Giselle says. "$6,000 for a consultation."
Next to her, James has begun to make an eerie, keening noise, shifting forwards on the balls of his feet.
"Hates you, wants to kill you, adores you," Cherie repeats, and her smile brightens even further, dazzling and sweet.
Cherie had once put something in Giselle's food that made her high, and kept putting it in her food for months until the current girlfriend had noticed. Giselle doesn't have any memory of the time in between. She'd had to throw away all her nice clothes since she didn't know where the blood came from.
You can't get bloodstains on perfume bottles.
She reaches over and touches James's shoulder, and he freezes, even the sound stopping in his throat as his breath becomes shallow.
"Fears me," she says.
Cherie snarls, frail mask of civility ripped away the moment something doesn't go her way.
"I can't believe there's two of you in this fucking cesspit of a city. Dad didn't even bother looking for his most useless castoffs?"
"$60,000 for a consultation," Giselle says. Her powers pulse around her, spiraling around as she feels everything in the blocks around her, feels people shift and mutter as aimless agitation blankets them.
After her mother had hung herself, Giselle had tried to reopen the door to her room, but couldn't. Someone had locked her in.
She knows it was her. Cherie was the oldest, and Giselle was the second oldest, and back then there hadn't been so many girlfriends and children. Neither Guillame nor Nicholas had triggered. Jean-Paul had been a toddler.
She'd screamed until her father had come to the door, and then she'd never screamed again.
Cherie ran away from home. Heartbreaker wants her back. Hurting her is in direct accordance to his desires. It's helpful.
It's okay to hurt her.
"Hey," Cherie says, and for the first time there's a trace of uncertainty in her. "You've got more emotions than you used to, sis. Guess it's that cape volatility finally getting to you."
"I didn't notice," Giselle says.
Cherie rolls her eyes.
"You wouldn't," she says. "Boring as always. Stay in town, Prognosis. I'm not nominating you-- but maybe someone else will!"
She strolls out the front door.
"I don't like her," James says. "Witch."
"She is a bitch," Giselle says. "Let's go knife shopping, James."
He stills.
"You didn't kill me because you didn't have a knife," he says.
"I no longer need a knife to kill you," Giselle says.
Hob browses through the army surplus store for knives. The clerk has stomach cancer. Early stage.
Giselle shifts through her phone, looking at the people who have called her. She begins to edit names.
One string of numbers becomes Armsmaster. The next becomes Assault. The next becomes Alec Willis. Last is Trickster.
Giselle stares at Alec's name in her phone. Is it violating some secret identity to have it sitting next to a bunch of cape names? She doesn't understand. Her brother has two cape names, two non cape names. She has two non cape names, one cape name.
She paid for Alec to have that last name. It's her right to use it in her phone.
Her father had always believed that when you knew real terror, you knew there wasn't any point in making a sound.
Hob hands her a knife and its sheathe, and her nose wrinkles.
It's ugly. It doesn't match her outfit.
"Parian should be done with my commission," Giselle says. Parian could make a non ugly sheathe.
How had she forgotten?
By marrying a knight, the inhuman Undine gains a mortal soul; but as the knight turns to a new love, Undine must kill him on his new wedding day.
Weeping, she kisses him, kills him, buries him, and becomes the stream around his earthen tomb.
That's the book, however. The ballet is different.
When she and Hobs return to the clinic, there are dogs. Injured. Howling. Three of them.
Bitch glowers in her direction, arms crossed.
"There you are," she says.
There are a number of unfriendly eyes on Bitch, which the girl barely notices.
"Dogs got hurt," Bitch says.
She's holding one dog in her arms that appears too hurt to walk.
"Angelica," she says. "Brutus. Judas."
She makes a sharp gesture with her chin to the two dogs on the ground.
A messenger of god and two traitors.
They look fluffy.
"I need to touch them," Giselle lies.
Hob gives her an almost betrayed look. That's his fault. If he wants to touch them, he should get some self control.
Bitch very reluctantly soothes Angelica as Giselle gets close enough to put a hand on her. It is soft. She's never touched a dog before.
Healing Angelica is easy. This is a dog that is more than used to changing how she is. Giselle pretends it takes longer than it does. Then she kneels down to heal the other two.
While she's down there, Bitch rumages around in one of her pockets until she pulls out a few crumpled hundred dollar bills.
"That enough?"
Giselle would do it for less, but this is Alec's teammate. Undoubtedly, she has the money.
"It's fine."
Bitch nods, satisfied.
"You still stink," she says.
Of expensive perfume, yes.
"The Huntsman works for the Regent," Hob says, waiting until Bitch is gone to speak behind her back. At least presumably, he is referring to Bitch. "She should work for an evil queen instead."
"Regent's not in charge of anything," Giselle says. "Maybe she does work for an evil queen."
She has no idea who her brother works for. Maybe the Undersiders don't work for anyone, though that seems unlikely. Alec isn't the type of person to start working with others of his own volition.
"I would eat a poison apple," Hob says, drifting away from whatever point he'd been making. The area around Parian's shop is a mess, with a couple of fires smoldering here and there as large iron ribs jut out from the sidewalk. He doesn't speak again for a half an hour at least.
"I didn't spend any of my money."
"You want to buy more clothes?"
"No. I didn't spend any money. When I worked at the bank."
Really lucid. Her sister has done a number on him.
"Money's only real when you spend it."
He laughs.
"A dragon hoarding faerie gold," he says. "Disappears in the light of day. He doesn't know because he's never let it leave his cave. It's never touched daylight."
"I'd miss daylight."
"I didn't," James says. His voice is odd. "I was going to spend it on a house."
"I thought you had an apartment."
"A family might want a house."
Giselle's family had moved from mansion to mansion every few years. Sometimes hurriedly.
"You didn't have a family."
"But what if I didn't have a family because I didn't have a house?" James says.
"You could buy a girlfriend," Giselle says. "Before buying a house."
"A faerie girl instead of faerie gold," James says. He sounds indifferent. "I was in my apartment. I was looking at my phone."
Giselle looks at her phone.
It's very old, she's had it for years. She kept it when she left.
"I thought about who to tell that I had lost my job," James says. "I kept thinking I should tell someone."
Beyond Trickster, her messaging history is with Alec only. And a number from someone she'd slept with who'd given her the phone.
She doesn't remember the name, and it seems he's forgotten her gift in turn.
"Who did you tell?" She asks.
"I made myself a goblin girl," James says. "Rotten meat from the fridge. Chinese takeout. Six eggs. The plants from the balcony."
"And what did she say?"
"I don't remember," James says.
"Many memories aren't worth keeping," Giselle says, and rings Parian's bell.
"Prognosis!" Parian says, and sounds genuinely happy to see them. "I was worried about how to get in contact with you. I finished a few days ago. Do you want to try it on? If it doesn't fit, I can do final alterations."
Giselle leaves Hob to stare at the teddy bear display.
After dressing, she's too entranced with her own reflection to leave.
In many ways, most of it is not too different from what she was already wearing. The shirt is white, well tailored, the only difference being the heavier fabric, shinier. Parian has reinforced it. Treating Giselle as if she's the type of cape who gets into fights.
The pants are slim instead of the flare that Giselle normally wears; in exchange, Parian has sourced knee high white boots with a simple black buckle. What Giselle really cares about, though, is the cloak.
It's a single shoulder cape that falls down to her waist, attached to tan leather that covers both of her shoulders and laces up into a high collar. A hood falls from the back that can be pulled up should she desire to discard her hats for something more... classic. And with it, a proper half mask to replace her surgical, disposable ones. It's even got silver embroidery on it.
"You like it?" Parian checks.
"I like it," Giselle echoes. She's even got the ugly new knife positioned so that the cape mostly conceals it.
"That's wonderful!" Parian brightens. "Working on it was so interesting. I don't normally construct with leather, so--"
In the distance, she hears something. A wail. A scream. An.. ambulance siren?
Hob stiffens. Parian's anxiety spikes higher than Giselle has ever felt.
The sound gets louder and louder, siren building until it echoes from every building.
"It's tolling," James says, his normal mercurial rasp rendered normal by the noise of his backdrop.
Ondine has fallen in love with a fisherman; leaving the sea, she must come ashore.
"Oh my god," Parian says faintly. "I-- I-- I have to go. I don't know where all the capes are supposed to go. Did they give a public announcement at some point? What about the out of town--" She pauses, and gives a devastated look towards the entirety of her shop.
It's likely all will be washed away.
"--Are you going?" Parian asks.
Giselle slowly looks down at her phone as it begins to ring.
Alec Willis, the name reads.
She picks up.
"Hey," Alec says. As light as ever. "You in the Docks?"
"No," Giselle says. "I was shopping."
Oh, that's right. Maybe all the clothes she'd brought from Montreal are about to vanish forever. Her laptop, too. She didn't bring it with her.
What about the sick rat?
All her effort to not put it out of its misery is going to be in vain. It's going to drown.
"Downtown?" Alec's voice is pitched slightly higher. "That's very close to the Bay."
"Where are you?" Giselle asks.
"En route to the PRT meetup point," Alec says casually.
Giselle looks at James, who has become close to an unwound doll, and Parian, too shy to interrupt a phonecall.
"Where's the meetup point?" Giselle says.
He doesn't answer her for a moment.
"Regent, who's that?" A male voice asks. "Is it Tattletale? Why would she call you?"
"Shut up," Alec says coldly, and the moment passes, and he gives her directions.
Giselle has never been so close to so many parahumans. It's overwhelming, the pressure of broken powers so pervasive that her shoulders sink underneath the weight. Every minute there's a new burst in her mind as more and more materialize within her range, teleported in without warning.
She had arrived relatively early. It turns out the meeting place was a six story building located in between the Docks and Downtown; she and Hob and Parian were likely some of the closest capes to the location in the entire city, if not the fastest traveling.
Dragon was there before them, of course, or at least the giant robot that Parian said was Dragon.
For all she can tell, it's just another piece of metal.
Eidolon was here first. He is perfectly healthy except for his power, which blares at her like Noelle's does.
It's so loud, it's drowning out everything else in the building.
HEALTH RISK: UNSTABLE/STABLE/UNSTABLE/STABLE/UNSTABLE/STABLE on and on and--
Hob taps her on the shoulder, yanking her out of the spiral. He'd ducked into an alley with a garbage bin, and come back covered head to toe in red. A red hooded robe, dark red shirt, pants and shoes. Bright red gloves and mask. He looks like the Red Death, come to visit Prospero's masquerade ball.
During her lapse in attention, Parian had slipped away to talk to a cape Giselle doesn't recognize. He wears an all white outfit that looks more suited to a desert climate than Brockton Bay, shrouded even further by the white mist that floats around him.
Trickster enters with three other members of his team, though one of them is like Nilbog's goblins: an unravelable creation. All of them are like him: mentally damaged, unhealthy power. Even the construct.
He looks at her and then looks at Hob, and pulls out his phone.
She gets a text from him.
Don't fucking die.
Hookwolf shoots Giselle a nasty glance as he comes in with the Empire. She hadn't realized the Empire had so very many capes: There's fifteen of them. More than the local Protectorate and Wards combined.
Speaking of them, Armsmaster is here. He's still not fully healed, hands almost shaking as he keeps a grip on his halberd. She tries to nudge him further, but it's not like not sleeping has done anything to improve his odds of a full recovery.
Outside, a commotion erupts as Lung approaches.
PRT members ask him to stop even as he begins his transformation; tell him that it will be unsafe for him to be in the building with other heroes; beg him to not step into the space kept open for teleports.
She sees him look up at her through the windows as he snarls and growls.
She presses down, and then realizes that's not what he wants at all.
It's not time for her to do hard things with her power. It's time to do easy things.
Grow, she urges him, and his power sings with hers.
Shouts of fear erupt as Lung begins to ramp without any particular conflict against other capes.
"Stay back," Lung growls, neck extending as feet long spines begin to sprout from his back. "Useless."
"You--"
His long neck turns whip fast as Alec and one of his presumable teammates-- a seventeen year old wearing motorcycle leathers and a skull mask-- arrive.
"You," Lung says, much less happily, and Giselle presses down hard, halting the transformation for a moment before allowing it to resume.
"Yo," Alec says, but doesn't actually have the bravado to taunt Lung any further before hurrying past him.
He sees Giselle once he's in the building, but also declines to approach her, instead sitting down next to the other young man and pretending to doze.
Giselle loses focus again, Eidolon's presence and Lung's requirements being all she can process.
"Prognosis," Hob mumbles, a true moment of terror flashing into his voice as she blinks blurily. Someone had said something to her.
Alexandria is standing in front of her. Health risk: ...
Her entire body exists without the probability of change.
"Hello," Giselle says politely. "Did you know that the most famous passage from Ondine, ou la Naiad, is the Shadow Dance, where Ondine steps ashore, becomes mortal, and begins to dance with her own shadow?"
"Are you comparing Leviathan to a nymph?" Alexandria says, voice dangerously low.
Giselle blinks at her slowly.
"It's happiness that precedes misfortune," Giselle says. "She's overcome with happiness that she's mortal, but now she's doomed to wither as long as she stays on land."
Now there's a larger silence in the room.
"And you're all that's keeping him--" Alexandria cuts herself off, shakes her head, and stalks off.
Hob begins to breathe again.
"She knows," he says. "Looking at me. Watching me."
Giselle stares after her, vaguely frustrated. She can barely hear, barely speak from the pressure of being around so many capes, but she'd even managed full sentences. And yet, it's as if nothing was said.
"Ondine, ou la Naiad is the variation where everyone lives at the end," she says. "There's a different ballet called Ondine where she kills him on his wedding day. Like in the book."
"May I have your attention," Legend starts, and Giselle once again loses everything to the fog.
"Excuse me, miss," a health risk: unstable teenager says to her. He's composed entirely of metal, but it's a changeable thing. Healing him of anything would be easy, but there's nothing to heal. There's an unchangeable brand on his heel in the shape of a stylized C. "The armband..."
Hob takes it and puts it on her before putting on his own. His robe splits for a second as the armband sinks below it and then the fabric knits back together, leaving the armband invisible.
"Left button for foretelling," Hob murmurs. "Right button cry for aid."
He holds his arm up.
"Hob," he states.
Lung roars, mind finally beginning to slip as even Giselle's attempts to keep him sane start failing.
Giselle looks down, finally catching the instructions blinking on the piece of tech.
"Prognosis," she says, and then has to repeat it again after remembering she needs to press the left button first. And then another confirmation.
No, that wasn't Lungs roar.
That sound came from the ocean.
Glass shatters, people scream, and past the den of capes, outside to the blocks and blocks that Giselle's senses extended to, a new type of health risk emerges, countless and endless.
Drowning.
Abandoned pets, street side trees, weeds and unevacuated humans and alley cats--
"--Strider! Get us out of here!"
Sand and broken concrete spilling over her new, beautiful new boots, Giselle senses Leviathan for the first time.
There are no health risks. No organs. No...powers? That can't be true. Giselle pauses momentarily, and glances over at Hob. Actually, there was another--
Leviathan moves.
Capacitor down, CD-5. Kaiser down, CD-5. Assault down, CD-5. Zigzag deceased, CD-5. Mayday down...
Hob picks her up and moves her back, further past where Trickster's group had clustered to where a sixteen year old girl in a purple outfit frowned at Leviathan. Next to her was Alec, who was both soaked and scowling.
There's a small earthquake as Lung throws himself at Leviathan, power singing. More, grow more--
"Shouldn't you be with Panacea," Alec says. "You don't see her standing out here with us plebs. Go tell Dragon the teleporter fucked up."
She'd forgotten that she was considered a healer. It's not much use out here, where people die so fast. She can feel them.
She needs hours to nudge one person in a better direction if she doesn't know them.
"Shut up, Regent," the girl says. "I'm trying to--"
She looks between Alec and Giselle and stops talking for a second.
"I'm trying to focus on the Endbringer," she says blankly. "Oh my god."
She taps the button on her armband.
"I need a lift to a better vantage point," she says. "Moderate priority."
Alexandria charges in as Lung gets thrown into a nearby building.
"Leviathan 'weak points'," the armband states. "If possible, concentrate damage where the arm meets the body."
"I can't affect Leviathan at all," Alec mutters. "Going to have to be lame and do search and rescue, so I've got to go. Go with the healers, Prog. Even a little bit is more than anyone else has got."
He barely gets more than a few yards away before the armbands all blare an alarm.
"Wave!"
Giselle falls, completely underwater as the wave smashes through where she'd been standing. Alec is health risk: coughing up water fine, and Hob's mask appears to be able to filter water into air.
He pulls her up out of the water as Leviathan lands on a building nearby, clawing it to pieces as he scales it.
Alec stands up and starts moving further away.
Giselle sits back down in the water and closes her eyes to focus on Leviathan. She'd been distracted earlier.
"No powers, but powered," Giselle says. "Like your goblins?"
Hob pauses.
"Don't know if there's enough mass in all of Brockton Bay to be able to create one," he says slowly. "Surely an oracle would have noticed if enough materials to create Behemoth went missing and then 'returned'. Especially the second and third time. Though.. If Behemoth creates Leviathan..?"
His own power churns in his dark eyes as he stares up at Leviathan. Measuring an Endbringer as if it were an apple, a box of chinese takeout, a piece of meat left to rot.
Giselle nods.
She can tune out the names that the armband keeps spitting out, now. It's almost like a metronome. Calm. Steady.
Rain has soaked her to the bone, left her new cape heavy, clouds her eyes. She can use her power in total darkness, never needing sight.
She understands more. Leviathan is layers and layers, a matryoshka doll. At its center is a burning core.
Like Hookwolf's core.
She can't touch it. It's not... 'here'?
She goes back to the layers.
Leviathan is like a goblin. It was made. She wants to unmake things so badly. And Leviathan, she now knows, is finite. 300 years, compared with 3-4 years for a goblin.
Finite is finite.
Dragon's mechanical fire spears through Leviathan in a great cloud of noise, fire and explosions barely managing to damage Leviathan's skin. Legend takes the other side, lasers erupting into another lightshow.
The air itself was glowing from the heat, the flames, the pillars and columns of a watery temple erected for only a moment to worship the apocalypse.
Giselle imagines a tangerine. The motion of cutting into the thick skin with a long fingernail, using it to pull off the skin piece by piece.
The wounds on Leviathan begin to regenerate slower. Giselle staggers. Leviathan is just so complete. But unraveling is what she does. Pulling string from satin.
Another major ping comes through the armband.
"To the cape slowing Leviathan's wound regeneration. How long can you maintain that?"
Leviathan jumps and lands right on top of several capes, tail swinging to kill even more before one manages a glowing barrier.
Left is foretelling. Giselle presses down.
"Indefinite as long as I'm nearby," she says.
There's no ping this time.
"Understood. Alert if you need help re-entering range. It will be prioritized."
Leviathan had been two blocks away from her. With one leap, it crashes into the high apartment building right in front of her, dodging away from a huge miniature sun that had materialized above its head.
Glyph deceased, CD-5. Ballistic down, CD-5. Vista deceased, CD-5. Challenger down, CD-5. Night deceased, CD-5. Stormtiger down, CD-5. Uglymug deceased, CD-5...
Creaking, groaning, crumbling, the building begins to fall, its shadow covering every part of the street Giselle is standing in.
Hob grabs her, heart rate spiking drastically as he starts to run, and then realizes he can't run fast enough.
"There's people still alive in there," Giselle informs him. She reaches up, points at one of the windows.
Hob, compelled by survival instincts that Giselle has long let rot away, throws out his hand. An organic twist, of a rope that is also a snake is thrown out, fangs of the creation burying itself in one window sill as Hob then is pulled towards it, reabsorbing his creation and forcing it into a scaled red shell that shudders and cracks as the window glass cracks over it. Desks, lights, and corpses all fall onto them from the newly sideways building as the ground buckles beneath their feet, everything churned into mud.
Hob stands up, and looks between Giselle and the corpses.
His hands twitch.
"It could save your life," he says, quietly. "It did save your life. They're already dead. I wouldn't make...anything that thinks."
Giselle forces the red shell to dissolve around her.
"No," she says.
She has to keep unraveling Leviathan. It's moving away from her now. Heading towards the nice shopping district.
Flashbang, deceased. CD-6. Hookwolf, down. CD-6. Jouster, deceased. CD-6. Rime, deceased. CD-6. Browbeat, deceased. CD-6. Chubster, down--
She taps the armband.
"Transportation for two needed," she says politely. "Building fell on us."
The building shifts and sinks further into the ground even as she speaks. The hallway out of this room is a vertical shaft up, and water is flowing down it into the room she and Hob are otherwise stuck in.
"Dispatched."
Giselle loops her arms around Hob's neck, and points up at the hallway.
This close, she can hear Hob's teeth grind, but he leaps up, using the uncomfortable stickiness of his gloves and boots to begin a slow, newt-like crawl directly up a soaking wet, carpeted hallway floor. She's sure her dangling from his back isn't helping the speed.
She feels Leviathan reach the third block away from her, and winces.
All of that effort to stop him from healing is going to be erased by the time she's out of this building.
More booms and shakes from the battle keep making the building rattle, keep sending more things tumbling down. A brick clips Giselle's shoulder, dislodged from who knows where, and she clings even tighter to Hob as bright red begins to stain her costume.
The blood also drops down, and she glances down to look after them.
A mistake.
The water is rising below, filling up the building in a flood.
Her grip on Leviathan tightens, her range expanding. She'll unweave him. Unravel him unmake him disable him hurt him. No more healing.
He'll bleed like her.
"Prognosis, the dispatched cape can't find an usable entrance to the building. An alternative is being sent. Is your situation sustainable?"
Giselle can't press her buttons while she's busy clinging to Hob, so there's a delayed beat before Hob realizes that and answers for the two of them.
"Water is rising," he says, voice returning to its hazy, dreamy quality. "Building is sinking."
Giselle's shoes are touching the water now, as Hob loses time from a part of the hallway that's simply... gone. Missing. Lost.
No more healing. Leviathan's gouged by bolts that always strike true, by fire, by lightning, by a forcefield.
Far away from here.
Giselle's fingers loosen around Hob's neck as the pain in her mind spikes. It would be hard to do this if she was touching Leviathan, hand to scale.
It feels like she's clinging to two separate cliffs at the same time, losing her grip on both of them.
"Giselle," Hob says urgently.
Has Hob ever said anything urgently?
"It's dark," Giselle murmurs, plaintive. "James, why is it always dark?" She doesn't like the dark, she hates the dark, she hates the smell of blood, hates being locked in with the monsters, hates being locked out.
"It's just staging," James says. "They'll brighten it soon, so Undine can dance with her shadow."
He makes a leap, covering more ground, but when he lands Giselle's feet are back in the water.
"You have to listen to me," Giselle says. "I've never had anyone who has to listen to me before."
"If I killed you," James says. "I wouldn't have to."
So honest.
It's relieving. He can't end up like her, who can't kill the ones she loves.
"You could be free," Giselle agrees.
Beside them, there's a huge pop of air as HEALTH RISK: UNSTABLE/STABLE/STABLE/UNSTABLE/UNSTABLE/UNSTABLE Eidolon grabs the both of them and then teleports right onto a new, mostly undamaged building overlooking Leviathan.
Overlooking the new lake that Leviathan has made.
"Faerie gold," James says, and he laughs and laughs.
XelianEmperor
Fragile. Handle with care
This is the best ongoing worm fic I'm reading
Please continue 🙏
Please continue 🙏
damn, poor vista, guess the butterflies were not in her favor
Jim Starluck
CO, ICS Vanguard
- Location
- Cincinnati, OH
There's always the ol' "severed armband" escape clause, but... yeah.
TinyGladiator
Just another SVer
- Location
- I move alot.
I have to say that this is easily one of my favourite Worm fics ever, with such unique interactions that I just don't think exist outside of what I've seen here. These two moments, this ide and comparison, the prose is just sublime. This is the kind of thing that leaves me with a feeling of frustration at both having finished reading this, because now I can't read it for the first time again, and because it's just so good that I need more.
Giselle and James are an iconic duo and I love them both together so much. Andante is very peak. I now love ballet.
it's definitely a choice to off screen merk her not one I particularly like but a choice none the less.
This is one of my favorite wormfics and this chapter is incredible! Nilbog and Prognosis are really the dynamic duo. The scene where Nilbog is thinking about creating an Endbringer is so enthralling. Their powers interact so well and so scarily. What an entrance for Leviathan! The S9 teaser at the beginning as well; I kind of wonder if Bonesaw will pick her...
Tattletale's 'im trying to focus on LEVIATHAN' was very funny.
I love how youve made giselle's power interact with leviathan, i think its so clever. Shes just gotten a wealth of invaluable information on the thing. The question is if she'll think to share it, lol. We'll see! The contrast between that and how alexandria's power is a stopper for her, again, just so clever. I like how well you have a handle on your own rules, it makes things super interesting.
Fantastic stuff going on between her and hob, too, im enjoying it very much. So funny that the one to match her freak is literally nilbog, i love it.
Great chapter, thanks for writing!
I love how youve made giselle's power interact with leviathan, i think its so clever. Shes just gotten a wealth of invaluable information on the thing. The question is if she'll think to share it, lol. We'll see! The contrast between that and how alexandria's power is a stopper for her, again, just so clever. I like how well you have a handle on your own rules, it makes things super interesting.
Fantastic stuff going on between her and hob, too, im enjoying it very much. So funny that the one to match her freak is literally nilbog, i love it.
Great chapter, thanks for writing!