Eden's Edge (Worm/Sonnie's Edge [Love, Death, and Robots])

[CatBotSays]

And then there was Victoria Dallon. The girl who took one look at me, flinched and started to raise her fists before apologising profusely and offering to get her sister to heal me.

Click to shrink...

What's the raising her fists thing about? Even if Taylor is just that scarred up, it seems like an odd reaction.

Also, Annette's plan would have been totally screwed if Panacea had tried to heal Taylor and realized that she had no brain (or, realistically, probably just a very different brain; but it's funnier to think about just a complete lack of brains up there). Honestly, it's still a risk. They could easily brush past each other in the hallway without really realizing it:

Wait, what?
Amy groaned inwardly as she forced her way through the throngs of students cluttering Arcadia's hallways, each trying to be the first into the cafeteria. As if pushing and shoving would actually get them there faster than standing in line. Though, considering that was exactly what she was doing herself, maybe she wasn't one to talk.

Here we go, she thought. Time to see what's wrong with all my classmates. Boy, oh boy.

It was times like this when she really hated her power. Not that she ever really liked it. Victoria had suggested wearing gloves as a possible solution to the information overload she got from it, but Amy had shot down that idea. It felt too much like letting her power win.

Malnutrition, her power informed her as her hand brushed against a boy on the basketball team. She was momentarily surprised before realizing that the problem had arisen because the boy had been eating exclusively pizza for the past few months. She barely contained a noise of disgust, seeing what it had done to his body.

Cold, early stages. Her power told her as she passed a tall, thin boy who desperately needed a shave.

Type 1 Diabetes. One of the freshmen boys.

Dislocated shoulder, two years ago. A girl with dyed blue hair.

Skinned knee.

Smoker.

Brain is missing.

Small burn on left hand.

Amy almost choked as her conscious thoughts came crashing to a halt with all the force of a runaway steamroller. Brain is missing!?! Her power had to have been wrong. It had to have been! She whirled around, but the girl in question was already gone, disappearing into the crowd. Just walking away as if she didn't have a completely empty cranial cavity.

It didn't make sense.

Brain is missing?

Just... what!?!

"You okay, Ames?"

Amy started, realizing she had been standing in one place for almost thirty seconds. Victoria was now standing beside her, giving her an extremely concerned look. "Yeah," she said, still staring in the direction the brainless girl had gone, as if she might somehow be able to make her reappear by doing so.

She forced herself to turn away. "Yup," she repeated a moment later in a tone so forced that even she didn't really believe it. "All good, here. Sorry. Guess my brain just went missing for a minute, there."

Victoria snorted. "Okay. Well, it better hurry back or they're going to be out of pizza by the time we get in line."

Oh. Pizza.

Amy gagged at the thought.

Why the hell did everyone like her, anyway? She could fly, she was invincible, but every time she looked like she was glowing with pride, everyone around her seemed to just be in awe of her. Like, woo, yay, congratulations Vicky, you have lots and lots of friends and gave a really moral lecture.

Maybe it was that whatever part of her power made her float did nice things to her chest. Not that I was planning on adding to my own little pity party by getting envious about that again. Ughhh.

Click to shrink...

Oh, hey, just Taylor being casually immune to Victoria's aura and being completely oblivious about it. I really should have caught on to her already having been placed in the Khanivore body, at this point. Nope. Apparently, her waking up in the tank to make me realize.

My solitude lasted two stops.

"Hey, Taylor!"

Well. I had been having a good day.

I swiveled my head to glare into the face of my EX-best friend. Not that I had a new best friend yet, but I wasn't in a hurry for one. Not after how she turned out. And now she knew my bus schedule. The schedule I couldn't change because Mom would lecture me about safety. Fuck.

"What the hell do you want?" I grunted as she sat next to me.

"I was - I was hoping we could talk a bit. How was your week at Arcadia? Winslow's been fun, though Mr. Gladly is just such a suckup - "

"Reminds me of someone else I know." I turned my face away from her, looked out the window instead. Why did it have to be such a lovely weather? Entirely inappropriate for my current turmoil. "My week's been okay, up until now." Take the hint and fuck off you hypocritical piece of -

"Great! Um. Do you want to go see that new movie that's out some time - "

I sat up and glared at her, ignoring the throbbing pain in my temple. "Why, Emma? Why the hell would I want to go see a movie with you? Ever since I woke up, you've been either a total bitch or sucking up when you think no-one's looking. I don't know who you're showing off for, why you're doing it, or what the fuck you get out of it, but why can't you just leave me alone?" I shifted my bag out of my lap and into the seat between us, forcing her to shuffle back. "You've made it abundantly clear you don't want to be seen with me." My voice felt - urgh. Like my tongue was fat and saliva was glue. "So just - just -"

Click to shrink...

I am very curious to find out what exactly happened between these two.

 

[CatBotSays]

we need a "Wait, what?!" part two: Amy and Dean conspiracy

Click to shrink...

Ugh. Fine. If you insist. =p

Wait, What? Part 2: I Swear, I Have Nothing Against Pizza!
"I'm telling you," Vicky said, "I thought it was harmless at first, too. But now I'm starting to get really worried!"

The two of them stood in an alcove, positioned halfway down the hall that led to Arcadia's cafeteria. It let them stay out of the way of the crush of students, currently lumbering past on their way to lunch. Chaos, to anyone else. To him? When he had first gotten his powers, he had been surprised at just how uniform the emotions of crowds tended to be. Over time, though, he'd realized just how much sense that made. Human beings were social animals. Of course they would take their cues from others, even in their emotions. When people smell smoke, the first thing they do isn't to run outside or to pull the fire alarm. Instead, they look to the other people in the room.

Right now, the vast majority of Arcadia's students were currently feeling a mixture of anticipation and happiness, with a few pockets of anger peppered in here and there. Dean had thought that last bit was weird at first, but he had eventually figured out what was going on there.

Apparently, his power had not deemed it necessary to set aside a separate color for 'hangry.'

Of course, with any group, there would be outliers. A few of the students who had been swept along with the crowd were feeling almost nothing but overwhelming anxiety. One girl's emotional aura was flush with the deep blue of sadness as she wandered along on the periphery of the crowd, trailed by a boy feeling a mixture of sadness, compassion, and uncertainty as he tried to comfort his friend. Another girl's aura was tinged a fiery red as she stormed towards the cafeteria, leaving sudden bursts of yellow fear in her wake.

And there, just in front of the doors—and clearly, doing her very best to obstruct traffic—was the outlier in question: Amy.

Were she anyone other than Panacea, Dean knew that someone would have shouted at Amy a dozen times over. As it was, Amy didn't even seem to notice, her emotions a blur of curiosity, determination, and frustration. Oh, and just a trace amount of disgust, heightened whenever someone happened to brush against her.

As he watched, though, he saw her reach out a hand, lightly touching first one person, then a second, and a third. There was more disgust there, certainly. But also brief bursts of disappointment.

What?

Vicky had said that her sister had been acting weirdly the past few days. That alone had been a cause for concern. His first thought had been that she had tried to act on the worrying blend of emotions he saw from her whenever she was around Vicky. Thankfully, that had not been the case.

But this? He wasn't sure what to make of this.

"I'm not crazy, right?" Vicky asked. "Tell me this is weird."

"Yes, Vicky," Dean agreed. "This is definitely weird."

Understatement of the year, right there. Right now, Dean was very, very glad there was nobody around who could read his own emotions.

Please, please don't be doing something I'm going to be forced to report to Piggot, Amy.

Please?

-------------------

He wasn't able to catch up with Amy until the three of them sat down to lunch. There, at least, everything seemed normal. The normal flash of anger, hatred, jealousy that appeared whenever Amy looked at him. The typical burst of... other things... Amy experienced when she saw Vicky. Concerning, still. But a familiar sort of concerning.

"Ames," Vicky said, clearly pouring every ounce of concern she could muster into her voice. "We need to talk."

Really not the best choice of words, Vicky.

Amy froze. Her entire aura turned yellow with abject terror, flashing bright red with rage as she turned to look at him, then settling into something in between. A roiling mixture of fear, anger, and disgust. Her emotions bubbled and churned until he was certain that if left to sit, they would boil over within seconds.

Craaaaaaap!

"It's about what you were doing in the hallway, earlier!" Dean said, quickly, desperately hoping it would be enough to defuse the bomb before its fuse ran down. "We saw what you were doing."

"Touching people," Vicky clarified unnecessarily, leaning forward so that nobody else could hear them. "Intentionally."

Amy's emotions shifted, instantly. The disgust was gone, replaced by a surge of what looked like relief. The anger and fear stuck around, though, albeit in far lesser quantities than they had been present in before. "I don't know what you're talking about," Amy said. She folded her arms.

Vicky rolled her eyes. "Oh really? Because you haven't exactly been subtle about it."

"I'm not—"

"Amy," Dean said. She glared at him, red surging across her aura as he cut her off. "Seriously, it's obvious you're up to something. And, eventually, someone else is going to notice."

He was almost certain that people already had. But Panacea had earned enough benefit of the doubt that nobody had commented on it. Yet.

For a few seconds, Dean wasn't sure Amy was going to respond. "It's nothing," Amy finally said, scowling. "It's... You'll just think I'm crazy."

Vicky grinned, then reached across the table and prodded Amy in the shoulder with one finger. "Well, yeah. But I already think that, you goof." A conspiratorial look spread across her face. "Let me guess: you're trying to figure out which Arcadia boys have the best... genetics."

"What?" Amy blurted, both her aura and face painting a picture of absolute disgust. "No! Ew, Vicky, no!"

Vicky made a face of mock innocence. She slowly tilted her head to one side, far enough that she looked absolutely ridiculous. "Nooooo?"

Amy glared, back and forth between the two of them. Then she squeezed her her eyes shut, sighing. "Ugh. Fine," she said. "You remember the other day? When you caught me standing outside and said we needed to get in line for pizza?"

"That's been literally every day for the past week."

Amy's aura flickered with uncertainty. "Look. Maybe I'm just crazy. But, um. When I was in the crowd—just for a seconds—I thought I brushed up against a girl who—well—she didn't have a brain."

Vicky looked a little disappointed. "Really, Amy? All this effort to call some poor girl stupid?"

"No," Amy hissed. "I mean she literally did not have a brain. Her skull was emptier than Dennis' after..." For a moment, she seemed to be struggling for an example. Then she glanced behind her.

Dean followed her gaze, over to where his friend sat, halfway across the cafeteria. Dennis was far from stupid, but he could definitely give off that impression sometimes. And right now... Dean winced, watching as Dennis stacked five slices of pizza on top of one another, then attempted to shove the entire stack into his mouth at once.

Between bites, Dennis was saying something along the lines of 'om nom nom.'

"...well, emptier than it usually is," Amy finished.

Vicky still looked skeptical. "Are you sure you didn't imagine this? It's... well, powers are a thing. But a girl walking around with no brain piloting her body? It seems a little far fetched, even for Brockton Bay." She frowned, something occurring to her. "Maybe a Changer power? Or some kind of Master minion?"

Without really thinking, Dean's eyes swept across the room, taking in the emotions of almost a thousand high schoolers, enjoying their lunches to varying degrees. He was just about turn back to Vicky, when one of them caught his eye. There was a girl who Chris had been sitting with for the past few months. A girl with a scarred face, who had transferred in from Winslow.

Normally, he might not even have noticed. Except that, where every other student at Arcadia—Vicky, aside—carried a halo of colors with them, this girl had nothing. Nothing, at all. At the time, he had assumed that there was an emotion-based power at play, along the same lines as his or Vicky's. An event nasty enough to give her those kinds of scars would almost certainly have been bad enough to qualify as a trigger event. He had kept an eye on Chris for a few weeks, ensuring there was nothing out of the ordinary. When nothing happened, he had disregarded her. He didn't want to pry and approaching the girl in her civilian identity would be one of the fastest ways to push her away from the heroes.

But now, giving her a second look...

No brain would mean no emotions, wouldn't it?

Shit.

He actually might have to report this to Piggot, after all. Unless...

The scarred girl didn't seem dangerous. And they could always go to the PRT if they got too out of their depths. But he had watched Piggot's emotions once, while discussing a suspected biotinker based out of Philadelphia. Fear and hatred. In extreme quantities. He had no idea if the girl fell under that umbrella but, regulations or not, he was reluctant to report anything that could even conceivably be interpreted as such. Not until he knew more, at least.

Dean's eyes fell on Amy, then Vicky, in turn as he made up his mind.

"You know," Dean said. "I might actually have an idea of where to start..."

 

[CatBotSays]

I feel like these get goofier every time I write one but given what just happened in the actual fic, a little goofiness didn't feel out of order. Obviously, this no longer lines up with and pretty directly contradicts how things played out in the actual fic. Also, a few people might be out of character for the sake of silliness—Victoria, in particular, at a few points.

Oh well, I guess.

Wait, What? Part 3

"Okay, this is the plan."

"That," Amy said, staring down at the plate Victoria had pushed into the middle of the table and was now pointing at, "is a slice of pizza." She frowned at the sudden smell of salt and fish wafting in her direction. "With anchovies."

And pepperoni and onions and peppers. But the anchovies? Gross.

Victoria scoffed. "Well, we can't exactly draw a map in the middle of the cafeteria," she said. "This is a covert operation! If Target One walks past, we need plausible deniability."

"Target One?" Amy asked. "You mean Tayl—"

"Target One," Victoria said. "Call her Target One. Covert, remember?"

Amy stared at her. "No," she said after a few seconds of silence. "That's dumb."

"Is it, Sis?" Victoria asked. "Is it dumb?"

"Yes," Amy said. "Very."

Victoria raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. "Oh? So now it's dumb to want to allow someone who might be a parahuman a secret identity?"

"That's not—" Amy cut herself off, rubbing her forehead with one hand. She was pretty sure she was starting to get a headache. "I just think you might be getting a little too into this."

"For once, I'm with Amy on this one," Dean said, pointedly ignoring the look she shot him. "Vic, we don't even know for sure that there's anything wrong with that girl. I'm fine with looking into it, but I'd rather not get more involved than we need to be. She looks weird to Amy's powers and mine, but there are plenty of explanations for that."

"Such as?" Victoria asked, raising an eyebrow. When no answer was forthcoming, she continued. "Best case scenario, she's a cape. A Changer or a Case 53 or something. And that's fine. The last thing I want is to out her. But worst case? She's mastered or been experimented on or something like that. In which case, she might be in desperate need of help!"

Amy shook her head. If she had known this was where things would lead, she never would have tried to find the girl again. Maybe she wouldn't have minded if Dean stuck his nose in where it didn't belong. But he had and now here he was. The last thing she needed was to spend more time around him and Victoria.

Not that she had any objections to spending more time with Victoria. But with Dean? No. Not so much.

"Or," Amy suggested, "we could just mind our own business and all go our separate ways."

"Are you serious, Ames?" Victoria asked. "We can't walk away from this. We're heroes! We help people. It's what we do."

Amy rolled her eyes, choking back a bitter retort. Telling Victoria that she could spend her time helping fifty times as many people if she went to the hospital wasn't helpful. Victoria would just use it as an excuse to tell her that she was spending too much time there, again.

Instead, Amy just weakly muttered, "I already do plenty."

"Being a hero isn't just something that's one and done," Victoria said, giving Amy her most soulful look. "It's a mindset. An acknowledgement that whatever happens, wherever you are, you will always put the wellbeing of others before yourself." She paused, looking as though she was trying her best to hold back a laugh. "Or… something like that."

Something like…

The words tickled at a vague memory in the back of Amy's mind. For a moment, there was silence as she tried to place it. Then Dean snorted. "Quoting old Alexandria cartoons, again?"

Victoria's expression cracked.

Dean's face split into a wide grin. "Oh, you totally are! Aren't you?"

"Hush, You!"

Oh my God…

For about the twentieth time in that lunch alone, Amy felt compelled to roll her eyes. "Ugh, fine. But we still haven't even confirmed whether Tay—"

Victoria shot her a warning look as she interrupted. "Target One."

"…whether…" I can't believe I'm about to say this. "Target One is even the girl I bumped into."

"Hence the plan," Victoria said. She turned her attention back to the slice of pizza sitting in the middle of the table. "So. These"—she pointed to a pair of anchovies at the pointy end of the pizza slice—"are Target One and… uh… friend."

Amy glanced back over her shoulder. Oh. Chris was sitting with the scarred girl. Since when were they friends?

Victoria continued, now pointing at a cluster of toppings near the pizza slice's crust. Two chunks of pepper and an onion bit. "And these are us."

"Let me guess," Amy said dryly. "I'm the onion."

"Sure, with that attitude," Victoria said, smirking. She reached out a finger and uprooted the onion and two peppers from the mess of oily cheese they were embedded in. Amy would have blanched in disgust if she didn't know for a fact that Victoria was using her forcefield to keep her fingers clean. Still, the cheese made an awful, sucking sound as the toppings came popping free.

Couldn't we have used salt and pepper shakers?

"Now, the problem," Victoria continued, "is that I didn't exactly make the best first impression on Target One. And she's sort of been acting like she hates me, ever since."

Dean blinked. "What? Why? What happened?"

Victoria looked shame-faced. "I may have been startled by her scars." She took a breath, clearly disappointed in herself. "And then acted like I was about to punch her."

Dammit, Vicky.

"I know," Victoria said, seeing her expression. "I know, I know. In my defense, I got into a fight with Cricket when I was out on patrol the night before. So, seeing the scars all of a sudden…" She trailed off, shaking her head. "Not really an excuse, but the association was there and they caught me by surprise. I tried to apologize, but I think the damage was done, at that point."

"Don't be too hard on yourself," Dean said, nudging her gently. "Mistakes happen."

"Yeah." Victoria smiled sadly, then leaned over to put her head on Dean's shoulder. Dean put an arm around her, then tilted his head so that his cheek was resting against the top of her head.

Amy turned and made sure to look just about anywhere else.

"Alright," Victoria said after a few seconds. When Amy looked back again, she had thankfully separated herself from Dean and was now leaning over the table again. She was thoroughly tempted to look away again when she realized that Victoria was picking out pizza toppings and rearranging them. "So, here's the plan."

Oh. Right. I forgot that we're apparently playing with our food, today.

Joy.

Amy leaned back in her chair, barely listening as Victoria launched into a plan that Amy didn't really care to make heads or tails of, using the pizza toppings as props. It probably would work fine. Along with her many other good qualities, Victoria actually pretty good at this sort of thing. But the subject matter, and the fact that Dean was sitting there, apparently listening attentively put a major damper on things.

This, she decided, was a waste of time. A stupid waste of time when the whole issue could be solved within the space of thirty seconds, after which she could move on and do something better with her life.

She looked over at Dean, who was still sitting a lot closer to Victoria than she liked.

Yeah. There was no way she was going along with this idea.

"Amy?" Victoria asked as Amy stood. "Amy, what are you doing?"

"A covert mission," Amy said, her tone as deadpan as she could manage. "Obviously."

She turned and made a beeline for the table that Taylor—because there was no in hell, she was going to call the scarred girl 'Target One' within the safety of her own brain—and Chris were currently occupying, ignored Victoria's increasingly alarmed calls as she left their table behind.

Chris and Taylor always sat at the same table. It wasn't quite in the corner of the cafeteria, but it was out of the way and on the opposite end of the room from the serving line. Very few people were likely to walk past it, accidentally. Taylor's eyes were on Amy the moment she came within fifteen feet of the table. Chris, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice until she deposited herself at the head of the table, almost directly between the two of them.

"Oh," Chris said, clearly not quite sure how to handle her sudden appearance. "Amy. Hi! Taylor, this is Amy. Amy, this is Taylor."

"I didn't realize you two knew each other," Taylor said, her expression openly suspicious.

Chris laughed, nervously. "Oh. Uh. Amy's more like a friend of a friend."

Taylor frowned. Clearly, she had no idea that the boy she was hanging around was a ward, but she could definitely tell that there had been something off about his explanation. "I see," she said slowly. "Um. Hi."

"Hi," Amy said, holding out her hand.

Taylor only hesitated a moment before taking it. The moment their skin touched, Amy knew she had the right girl. Part of her was actually relieved. The same part of her that had convinced itself that maybe she hadn't seen anything, after all.

The rest of her was deeply, deeply disturbed by what she could see of Taylor's physiology.

"So, uh, can we help you with something, Amy?" Chris asked as Taylor retracted her hand. "Not that you're not welcome to sit with us, but normally you're over there with Vicky." He glanced back over his shoulder at Victoria and Dean's stricken faces. "Seems she wants you back over there, too."

"My sister can wait," Amy said. "Actually, I was hoping Taylor could answer a question, for me."

Taylor's eyes darted down to her right hand. She paled. Paler even than she already was, which was definitely a feat deserving of some kind of record. Amy smirked, inwardly. Yeah. She definitely already knew what was about to happen.

"So," Amy said, leaning in close enough to whisper. "Why don't have a brain?"

 

[WhoAmEye]

I now have a Ko-Fi! And people are amazing @~@ you are all amazing and I don't know how to repay your kindness
Special thanks to my lovely co-author and wife, @hellgodsrus, without whom I would never would have been able to take part in creating half my fics, and our girlfriend @SolarFlare for being awesome and also betaing! Also special thanks Prime Betas @Tamahori and @32nd_freeze and @Ganurath for being betas and feeding me validation and feedback between updates! And also new Prime Beta Lucky! Who is on Questionable Questing and writing most of the NSFW omakes~

I Am In Disguise
An Eden's Edge Halloween Special
-.-.-

The first sign of things to come was being woken up by a wavering voice over her going, "OooooOOOooooOOOO!"

Despite the bed being unfamiliar, the action wasn't. She cracked her eyes open slowly to the faint sight of someone in a sheet floating in the darkness. "Victoria, it is… two in the morning on October the 30th."

"WhoooOOOoooo is Victoriaaaaaa. I am a spooky ghost! Gimme candy!"

"Urgh…" Carol groped blindly beside the bed, eventually finding the handful of sweets she had prepared for this, hurling them into the air before closing her eyes.

"The ghost of SpooOOookoween is satisfied for now!"

"Go away." She buried her face in her pillow. "I am attempting to sleep."

"I will retuuuuurn!"

The sound of the door opening, and the door closing.

Carol shifted restlessly, and attempted to return to slumber. But she couldn't, because with Victoria's arrival over her bed, she knew what time had come round on the dread hands of the clock of the year.

It was Halloween once again.

-.-.-

Halloween. A time of costumes and charades, a time of candy and horror. A time of tradition and tale-telling.

And, despite all the lights, a time of darkness.

See, Carol didn't like the darkness. It reminded her of her orb, of the Basement. The fact that a significant portion of the lights used in the decorations served more to highlight the darkness than to illuminate it - well, she didn't usually have a good time.

Add to that fact that in Brockton Bay, a lot of people chose to dress up as Capes - well. It left her on a bit of a hair-trigger at times. The only saving grace had actually come from the Marquis, of all people, who had called a neutral meeting back in the day - everyone who had attended (or sent someone to represent them, at least) had agreed that, in the interest of not causing mass civilian casualties from mistaken identity, they would avoid going out in costume. And if they did, they wouldn't start any fights. No antagonising. At the time, Carol had been loath to give any ground, but the rest of the Brigade had overruled her, and after some discussion after the fact, had convinced her.

Brockton Bay, known primarily for being the Cape Capital of America, had a city-wide truce for Halloween. The day before, the day and night itself, and the day after. It wasn't until the first Halloween that Carol realised the day after was for everyone to recover from the inevitable hangovers. Though, she wasn't sure if that was for the leaders or the others until the second, in which she had realised the answer was yes, all of us need some time to recover from that drunken shitshow, I can't believe I almost axed a child's face off for dressing like the Marquis.

As the Brigade became New Wave, taking Victoria and Amy out in their costumes to trick or treat - she had managed to foster it off to her sister, in exchange for several paperwork responsibilities she'd rather not do, but would happily do instead of going out on this dreadful night (not that it stopped the yearly tradition of 'ghost Victoria begs for sweets', which only intensified after she got powers that allowed her to project 'an aura of spookiness' and actually fly). As the girls got older and stayed at home instead of trick or treating - or happened to be grounded and unable to go to the Stansfield boy's party - they answered the door for trick or treaters, happily handed out candy and gushed over cute costumes - Amelia in particular seemed more relaxed, yet stressed at the same time, seeing all the possibilities children came to their door with. Carol supposed that first year, when a child vomited all over her jeans, suffering from - had it been simply too much sugar or laced candy from the bad parts of town? She couldn't remember, but - it had definitely soured the experience for Amelia, surely.

And now… this.

Halloween at the Garden of Eden.

Why? Annette had proposed the idea after Sarah mentioned the truce that went on, something the Travelers - understandable, they weren't local - and the Undersiders - who had no excuse bar their youth - hadn't been aware of.

Well. Annette hadn't been aware either, but she was so new to the life it was entirely understandable. Most capes learned after their first Halloween, often through the PRT if not one of the gangs or New Wave. Uber and Leet always did a 'Halloween stream', unfortunately, but it had consistently been their least… damning endeavours in the last few years. She still wasn't looking forward to whatever they planned to do this year, but she could be confident in it being someone else's problem.

She hated it, but she had to take her hands off the wheel sometimes, lest she crack.

Something scuttled across the floor, Carol barely catching a hint of yellowed chitin-like skin before whatever it was vanished under a cabinet.

She wasn't entirely sure how, but either Annette or Amelia had made… things. They called them 'decorations', but - in a town where the PRT Director was a survivor of Ellisburg, biotinkers and biostrikers making 'decorations' was not what she would have called a bright idea. Especially these ones.

Speaking of which, one was leaping at her right now.

She bisected it with a whip-flash of light, glad that these recreations didn't have acidic blood as its legs curled in on itself and green goo dripped onto her shoe as she kicked the wriggling remains aside. According to Sarah, who had let herself be facehugged four times already for fuck's sake they would all be dead if it was real xenomorphs, they 'laid' a small piece of chocolate on your tongue then left, but Carol wasn't going to allow an experimental, likely rushed piece of biohardware anywhere near her mouth. Especially not one based on the movies where doing that was invariably a very bad idea.

She had to find Annette and convince her to stop making these things before the evening started properly.

-.-.-

The communal eating area was no help. Partly because there was only the vehicle tinker there, and also because there were dancing skeletons in the corner.

"Yeah, haven't seen the boss today." Carol would have been eyeing the slumped over woman's despicably slatternly and horribly cliched nurse outfit if she wasn't incredibly distracted by the skeletons who were - was that the dance from Pulp Fiction? How were they even moving, they didn't seem to have any muscles or tendons - "You sticking around for the movie marathon later? Already invited your sister and her husband."

"Movie marathon?"

"Yeah! We're watching a bunch of like, classic terrigood Stephen King adaptions. So - Maximum Overdrive first, to get in the mood."

This drew Carol's attention enough to look over. "The one about the killer truck."

"I mean, there's more vehicles than the killer truck, but sure. Then Christine."

Carol was beginning to sense a pattern, but two data points - "The killer car movie."

"Yeah! Then there was this TV show adaption of From a Buick 8 a few years back with the special effects done by this dimension shift tinker, so I'm hoping to get some good inspo from the behind the scenes stuff - aww where are you going - ?"

Carol didn't even bother with a response. She just left.

-.-.-

The main arena wasn't abandoned like she assumed it would be. Instead, it was filled with… decorations. Vines twisting up supports and hanging from the ceiling, each vine a different colour and yet none of them the colour vines were meant to be.

And that wasn't even mentioning the eyes some of them had. Blinking and staring at her whenever she moved.

And she knew immediately this wasn't Annette's work. Lilith's work. Because, like a lady in her bower, sat Amelia bracketed by thorned vines and with a beast's head in her lap.

Taylor's, specifically.

"Amelia?" She called, striding down the steps to the edge of the pit and trying not to shudder as all those eyes turned to look at her with the intensity of a mindless thing. "Wh- … are you green?"

Amelia's head shot up. "Carol! Um. It's just a thin film. It's actually a kind of algae mimicking a body paint - " And what was she wearing? It looked like a literal - leotard of leaves and vines under a dark green jacket and bright green tights.

"Amy won't give me pigtails!"

"You put your human body's hair in pigtails I don't need to give this body - and how would pigtails even work - "

Carol cleared her throat. "Have… have either of you seen Annette anywhere?"

"Uh. I think Mom mentioned something about philistines? Or - I dunno I kind of tuned it out she was having another one of her Professor rants." Khanivore shifted and started glowing. Designs of fanciful skulls and plants and dots - "Like my tattoos?"

"That's…" Carol wracked her brains for a moment, trying to remember. "Day of the Dead? I thought it was spanish."

"Yeah but now I'm bright and colourful!" Her tails were wagging. "Anyway that's costume idea three but I also need costume idea two in this body - "

"Absolutely not." Amelia poked at Khanivore's hide. "We're trying to avoid you becoming a horror monster, remember? PR Friendly. Khanivore in satin short-shorts is not -"

Carol hurriedly exited stage left.

-.-.-

"Why, our gorgeous commander? I haven't seen her I'm afraid." The girl waved her fan in front of her face, dressed in impeccable black lace and a corset that was doing disquieting things to her figure, her face half-shaded by a veil with stitched flowers picked across it.

Carol frowned at her. "... Tattletale?" she guessed.

"No, I'm Regent actually. I am the gothic heroine - " they pronounced it like the drug but with a drawn out drawl on the last syllable, " - doomed to fall into the arms of the muscular, romantic hero after being haunted by frightful nightmares, like the orange juice spitting bats I saw earlier. Tats is being a Lovecraftian protagonist who sees unspeakable horrors and in understanding them is driven mad, so no change required from her."

"Actually -" another one of them, Grue, who had merely put on a pinstripe suit and painted his motorcycle helmet to look like Jack Skellington's, interrupted. "I think she found an octopus and duct taped it to a hat before proclaiming herself to be the head priestess of our lord and devourer Cthulhu while cackling maniacally."

"Like I said. No change."

Carol left.

-.-.-

Finally, finally, she found Lilith, who - wasn't dressed up. Well, she was wearing her Lilith costume, but didn't seem to be getting into the swing of things, which Carol wasn't sure if she appreciated or should be concerned about. "Lilith!" she called, because it was only polite since she was in costume, "Where have you been?"

"Hello." Lilith turned to her and smiled widely. "I am in disguise."

"I - I can see that."

"I am in disguise."

Carol frowned. That - that was concerning. "Are you… okay?"

Lilith nodded, her smile growing. "I am in disguise."

"What do you mean, you're in disguise?"

And that was when Lilith unravelled into a ball of tentacles and flesh that leapt at her.

-.-.-

Sarah's head perked up. "Did you hear that?"

Annette paused mid-rant to frown. "Hear what?"

Rolling her eyes, Sarah just shrugged. "Must have been my imagination."

-.-.-

Carol shuddered, shivered, and tried to get the goop out of her hair. Again. She was coated in it, a bright pink slop that reminded her far too much of highly oxygenated blood. And that - she idly flinched and flicked another stray tentacle away from trying to coil around her arm - was only the start of it.

"Got caught by one of Amy's little surprises, huh?" said a young woman with an octopus on her head and a tweed jacket. "She's got two kinds running around. Monsters from the Thing, and ones who say they're going to hatch the first soldiers of the skeleton war at midnight."

Carol stopped to stare.

"She also fixed my hat for me!"

The octopus, hearing the word 'hat', started flailing its tentacles about, slapping the girl's cheek twice.

"The… Thing?" She remembered that movie. Vaguely. Parts of it she wished she didn't.

"Yeah. Weird choice given how attracted to the monsters in it she is, but I'm not one to kink-shame."

Attracted? She shoved that information as deep into the dark depths of her mind that she refused to touch as she could. "And the… leaping?"

"Simple, don't ask about their disguises, and they don't try to glomp you. By the way, do you have a minute to talk about our great lord and devourer -"

"No, sorry, I'm looking for Lilith."

"Well, I'm not going to tell someone who raised a repressed soul like Amelia where she is. See, I'm actually the greatest horror of all." The girl wiggled her fingers. "Confronting your trauma."

Carol fled.

-.-.-

"Victoria?" Carol tried to keep the pleading tone out of her voice as she stared at the sheet hovering two feet off the ground. "Please tell me that's you."

The sheet said nothing.

"If it isn't you, please tell me now to save me the embarrassment."

The sheet turned to her.

"... say something? Anything?"

"I am in disguise."

Carol shrieked and ripped the sheet off - there was nothing under it!

She ran.

-.-.-

"That was cruel." Noelle poked at a comatose Jess's shoulder. "Funny, but cruel."

"Worth it." The sheet floated over. "Anyways, I think that's four people we've gotten now?"

"Yeah." Noelle looked off to the side, where Lindsay and Marissa were still making out, vampire fangs flashing in the evening light. "I hope those two don't dehydrate themselves too much."

-.-.-

Why. Why did she ever let herself hope things would be better with more adult supervision at the Garden than at home. She collapsed onto the couch in the breakroom, completely uncaring that she still had her clothes somewhat covered in congealed 'Thing' goop. If anyone had a problem with the stains, they could take it up with Amelia. Or else.

"Hey, Mom!"

She cracked open her eyes. "Victoria, thank - what on Earth are you wearing?"

"Uh, a costume? It's Halloween."

"That is not a costume, that is - "

It appeared to be a series of studded leather belts wrapped asymmetrically around her daughter and displaying far far too much. For some reason she'd wrapped a red cloth around her head as well as some sort of bandana -

"Uh, yes it is a costume, Mom. I'm Drillbitch. She's this minor villain, part of this like road group - the costume's entirely accurate apart from the lack of mask and wearing a bandana to show I'm not actually her, which is a tradition among the Mexican caped community which isn't quite Texas where she originated but it's close to it and there's a common theory she's actually white passing Latina - wait, is this cultural appropriation? Is my costume cultural appropriation? I would ask Lilith, but she seemed… busy. Anyway, do you like it?"

She spun, which made parts of her Carol did not want to think about shake distractingly. She had thigh high platform boots for fuck's sake.

"... hrm." On one hand - it was accurate. On the other hand, it was a villain costume. A scandalous villain costume. Back to the first hand, if she did say she liked it - perhaps she could get Lilith's location out of her.

"I even hand distressed the leather, and kept the burn marks and scars from her fight with, uh, that pyrokinetic hero… Flambe, that was it."

"It is… impressively accurate." Not that she would know, having never had the time or energy to investigate capes outside the immediate area or worth inter-state attention, but… if what Victoria was saying was true, then. It was impressive that she would go to such efforts. "Where did you see Lilith?"

"Oh, she was talking to Amy about those things she made that mimic that one horror movie about the sexually transmitted demon somewhere in the warehouse area?"

The what.

She frowned heavily, and asked, voice stern, "Explain."

-.-.-

"Neil, what are you wearing?" Her voice was tired, her bones were tired, her soul just wanted tonight to be over already.

And then Mark stepped out wearing something similar and -

"I. Do I really want to know?"

"Mexican wrestlers." Neil grinned widely.

"Why?"

"Well, after Taylor decided on the Day of the Dead tattoos, we thought it'd be a great way to just… show off I guess." Neil shrugged. Because of course he was shirtless, wearing nothing more than what looked like satin pants and a macho mask. His was red. Mark's was blue.

Carol groaned into her hands. "Please just tell me you've seen Sarah or Annette somewhere?"

"We've… seen a few of them, actually." Mark looked up. "It's weird."

"Have you tried calling them?"

Carol could regret the headache she got from slamming her forehead into the locker doors tomorrow.

-.-.-

Director Piggot glared at the assembled capes. "What the hell makes you think Panacea needs a Stranger rating?"

Everyone - including Assault - turned to look at the smiling Assault, who replied with great glee, "Hello, I am in disguise!"

"What do you mean, you're in disguise -"

-.-.-

"Hey, Amy?" Taylor looked over Amy's latest creation, a zombie-like creature that was hopefully going to shamble instead of sprint around like a chicken with it's head cut off like the last one. "The uh. Things. How are we going to deal with them when Halloween ends?"

"Oh, they'll just starve." Amy mentioned casually, like it wasn't a horrifying experience - actually, considering the Things probably didn't have pain nerves or any instinct beyond telling people they were in disguise and glomping anyone who asked… "They don't have stomachs and only enough nutrients to keep moving at their light wandering pace for… forty eight hours at most. Every glomp cuts that down by another eight or so."

"Huh. And the facehuggers?"

"Same, but they'll all probably die out by four in the morning."

"Phew. That's one problem solved."

-.-.-

The doctor looked at the woman laying on the gurney with a smile, and then back to the patient sheet clipboard. "Ma'am, I don't know how the hell you survived to this age without a stomach, but we're putting you on a feeding drip immediately."

The woman just continued to smile. "I am in disguise!"

-.-.-

"Anyways," Taylor continued, "Amy, do you want to have kids?"

Amy froze as the zombie she was working on screamed, let out a 'hurk!', clutched its chest, and fell over, dead.

"... did you just outsource your heart attack?"

"Sh-shut up."

-.-.-

As Carol headed to where she now knew the people she were looking for had gone, she passed through the hall. Right about the same time as Taylor - two Taylors, three Victorias, and one Amelia stepped out, joining a singular Victoria in the hall.

"That was fun." Taylor purred - Carol realised none of them had seen her.

"Yeah, it was," one of the Victorias nodded, causing Amy to freeze.

"U-um."

"Hello, I am in disguise," offered the other Victoria, who had been waiting in the hall.

"Victoria?" Taylor's eyebrows were raised as her doppleganger said hello. "You switched out of your costume pretty quickly."

"... Hello, I am in disguise?"

Carol could… think about this never.

-.-.-

"There you are!"

"Hello, Carol." Annette raised her head from where she was slumped over the table, half-empty wine bottle in hand. "Care for a drink?"

Carol snatched the bottle and eagerly gulped down what she could before her lungs protested. "Why. Why did you make facehuggers?"

"Oh, here we go again," Sarah muttered, dropping her face in her hand and shaking her head.

"I didn't. This crass - popular culture phenomena is not my doing. Hallow's Eve is not some sort of opportunity to pretend to be a princess or watch movies, nor is it about gothic horror. It, traditionally, is a time of wild magic, spirits of the dead, and religion - highly problematic, yes, but undeniably so - " She pulled at the roots of her hair. "I do not enjoy Halloween."

Annette - hated it too?

Carol couldn't - wouldn't stop herself. She opened up her arms towards Lilith as the door opened again and voices started calling out. She ignored them. "Kiss me."

The horrified screams of their children were music to her ears.

-.-.-