Little Hunter (Worm / Predator)

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

The simplicity was infuriating.

Nanku devised a number of plans to gain access to the police station without making a scene. Not for a lack of confidence. She could fight her way in or out if needed, but she didn't want that sort of attention. Too much trouble when she had other concerns.

Better to quietly kill some Nazis. Wait for the body collectors to arrive. Their vehicles went to an adjacent building connected to the police station. Nanku could simply travel along. Or she could slip under just any vehicle and let it drive her into the garage. Security was lessened inside but she'd have to travel the entire building unsure which room was the room she wanted.

Another option was to disable the rooftop cameras and slip in when someone came to check. Crude. Lots of room for error.

Cut the power and use darkness to brute force her way in while leaving a minimal trail. That plan she discarded because it was too simple. Generators existed and surely the police station had one. She'd only put everyone on alert before making her way back out. If she got in at all.

But no.

All of her plans. All her thinking.

Completely and utterly pointless.

They let her right in.

A few looked twice they didn't care that much.

"You know the way." The man bore yellow V's on his shoulder. "Second floor. Major crimes."

"I know," her mother replied. "Thank you."

The man nodded and gave Nanku a cursory look.

She ignored him and followed her mother.

Behind the front desk, the building was open with a ceiling held up by columns. Flimsy walls separated spaces into distinct areas with arrangements of desks and tables. The air smelled of coffee and chemical body sprays. The enforcers looked tired. Worn down and exhausted. More than a few recognized her mother. Nanku received her own curious glances but they were brief and fleeting. Sliding over her form without really looking.

She was invisible without a cloak.

Absolutely infuriating.

The Twins were outside, two buildings over and hiding in the shadows. Fortunately, none of the flying Protectorate members seemed out. The Twins could fly freely and unnoticed given how rarely humans looked up.

Their proximity made Nanku more secure.

She didn't like feeling insecure.

"You've been here before," Nanku observed as she followed her mother

"Yes."

"A lot."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I was on my own for a long time. I spent much of it digging through records here."

At the back of the room—halfway through the building's length—they turned a corner and started up a wide staircase. At the top the building became more enclosed. Hallways and tighter rooms. Less open space, but more windows and plenty of places to avoid line of sight if needed.

Nanku's skin crawled regardless.

She was not a stranger to entering a den, least of all one that remained occupied. It was how she got Dusk and Dawn in the first place. One of many times she'd gone after her quarry where it lived.

Doing it naked—without her arms and armor, save those in her pockets—was not her habit.

Her mother stopped at the end of the hall. She knocked on an open door and waited. Pointless. The door was open.

Nanku stepped around the corner and looked into the small office. She knew the man was there, and her eyes met his before he registered her.

He was older. Fifty about, Nanku thought. Full head of hair still but graying. Skin sagged slightly on his frame which looked strange while he was still fairly fit.

"Anne?" he asked in confusion. "They doing wonders with the plastic now?"

"No." Her mother leaned in. "Murray. I've mentioned Taylor before."

Nanku grimaced at the name, but it was the appropriate one to use. In context.

Detective Murray's confusion deepened. He looked from Annette to Nanku, examining their faces and builds.

"You're screwing with me," he said after a moment.

"No." Her mother looked at her. "DNA and blood tests. Whole nine yards. She's Taylor."

He pointed. "She's Taylor? And she's—"

"Alive. Yes." Annette slid past Nanku into the room. "And I really don't want to linger on that topic."

Murray stepped to the side and let her pass. "Reporters catch wind of this yet?"

"No."

Murray looked at Nanku and inhaled. "Well. They won't hear it from me. You're the last woman I want to be on the bad side of."

Nanku's brow rose and she entered the office. It was a bland space. Most of the decorations were files and loose papers. And empty coffee mugs that stank the place in various flavors.

Murray went around his desk and sat in the chair behind it. On the other side, Annette took one of two seats. Nanku approached the second but decided to stand.

If there was some kind of trap, she wouldn't be caught sitting down.

The adults watched her for a moment, but she just waited until they moved on.

"I pulled the file you wanted." Murray opened a drawer and drew out one folder like all the others. "I feel obligated to remind you that you're not supposed to look at this. And I'm not supposed to show it to you. And it's not supposed to leave the building."

Her mother reached out. "I've seen it before."

"Has she?" he asked.

"I've seen worse," Nanku replied.

"The camp, Murray." Her mother looked the man right in the eye. "She saw it all."

"And"—he put his free hand to his chest, the other still holding the folder—"this is just the detective in me. Natural inquisitive, right? Where exactly has she been for the past ten years?"

"It's a family matter."

"And why did she come back? Don't get me wrong, Anne." Murray leaned in. "I know you've got friends in nicer uniforms than me now. I'm sure you've had this looked over and over by people way better with their thinking than me."

"It's an ongoing process," her mother replied.

"Right. And I do kind of give a shit about you, woman. So?"

"I can't tell you. Don't worry. I know more about what I'm doing now than I did eight years ago."

"You said the same thing five years ago."

"I know more about what I'm doing now than I did five years ago too."

"That—"

"Jake."

The man raised his free hand. "Fine. Fine."

He held the record out.

Nanku snatched the folder and turned away.

It was thick with papers. Bound in a thick cover that seemed too flimsy for what they contained.

The title was in big bold letters on a tab at the top. Plainly labelled.


Danny Hebert, 2003, Murder

Nanku inhaled and tore into the file.

It was what she wanted. What she'd planned for. This wasn't how she planned to get it, but Nanku didn't care.

The first picture was her father's bloodied body on the ground. Swimming in his blood. A small plastic bag and a carton of milk. Utterly pristine. Right next to the body.

Taylor grimaced.

"That's not your fault," her mother said. "It was just milk."

"Someone was waiting for him," Murray explained. "Never figured out who or why. Tried my damnedest but… This city. It ain't perfect now." He glanced at Annette. "It was worse then."

"It's not because of the milk," her mother repeated. "It was never your fault."

Followed? Someone hunted him?

Nanku looked at the pictures slowly. One after the other. Carefully. Analyzing every detail. The splatter of the blood. The position of the body. Photographs were taken of pieces of debris and items scattered about the scene. Even those that were plainly inconsequential.

The Earth enforcers were painfully slow, but they were thorough.

The blood Nanku paid special attention to.

There were marks in it. Signs of a struggle. Danny Hebert fought for his life even while he bled to death. There were pictures of his body too. In a clean room. Documentations of all the injuries. Blood. Cuts. Stabs. Notes written on the pictures in read said 'cleaned up.'

"What does cleaned up mean?" Nanku asked.

"Perp wiped the scene," Murray answered. "Fight like that? Blood. Skin. Hair. Gets everywhere. Under the nails especially. Our doer was smart enough to wash Danny's hands after he finished. I hate the smart ones."

Nanku glanced over her shoulder.

Her mother met her eyes solemnly. "It was too late for me to do much. I didn't get my powers"—Murray flinched but looked away without comment—"until you were taken from me. All the evidence was cleaned. Body buried. It was too late."

Nanku's eyes narrowed and she returned to the file.

The 'autopsy' pictures were even more thorough than the crime scene photos. Nanku didn't know about pieces of glass, shreds of fabric, or 'unusable blood splatter.'

She did know knife wounds.

Long thin blade. A kitchen knife? No. The report said kitchen knife, but kitchen knives weren't the right shape. The blade that stabbed her father was thinner at the tip. More curved.

The man who did the investigating of the wounds did it wrong.

He couldn't even measure right unless she was mistaken.

"Ruler," she said.

"What?"

"Tape measure. Ruler. Whatever."

The man fished through some drawers and found one. Nanku looked at it briefly. It was hard without the actual body in front of her. Maybe that was for the best.

She was right.

The measurements of the wounds were off by a quarter inch. The blade was too thin to be a kitchen knife. Purposeful, or an accident?

"Noticing the knife report?" her mother asked.

"Yes."

"So did I. It was a fishing knife. Curved. The kind used for cleaning and cutting fillets."

"Old Doc Brendan was a lazy shit," Murray added. "Never got anything right the first time."

"Murray and I both looked into it. There are thousands of those knives. Anyone could have had one. Or found one. It might have mattered once, but after all these years…"

All the more reason for Nanku to do things her way.

The rest of the file was… Different.

After the pictures were papers upon papers of text. Long descriptions. Recorded statements. Testimony. Time tables. A few maps that were crudely drawn and poorly marked. Not things Nanku knew how to use.

She knew places and signs. Sights. Words were a maze, even if they were neatly written and spaced.

Nanku tried anyway. Some of the names she recognized. Kurt and Lacy were interviewed. Lacy worked the day her father died. Kurt was one of the men they called to ask about the Dockworkers. There were criminals too. Files on members of the ABB, Empire, and other smaller gangs. Anyone who might have had a motive to kill her father.

"Not the best place for extended reading," her mother said.

"I have to remind you that police records cannot leave the building." Murray looked at his bare wrist. "And it's time for my late-night coffee, so I'll trust you ladies to be good citizens and not remove anything. Not that it would be the end of the world. Got copies of everything these days."

"Of course," Annette replied.

With that, the detective stood and slid past Nanku. He left the room without a word or a look back.

Nanku followed her mother out—file stuffed into her purse—not even a minute later.

They left the building unmolested and Nanku called the Twins to the air and returned to her mother's vehicle. It was too dark inside to read the file, though, Nanku tried still. Sentences by street light. Scattered words or phrases. It was a waste but she tried anyway. Nothing better to do with the time but sweep the streets with her swarm for any signs of pursuit or ambush.

There were none.

Nanku focused on the file and the method behind it.

The enforcers were thorough. They started by pinning down the timetables. Who was where and when. They investigated potential motives and recorded each. Most were run down, save a few tied to witnesses they never located.

Perhaps one of them, if she could find any. Drug dealers. Low level thugs. A few names were crossed off. Nanku wasn't sure what they meant.

When the car stopped, Nanku opened the door without thinking. The twins had followed from above but at a distance with a swarm of bugs just in case. Nanku kept up sweeps for any trouble but she'd not paid too much attention to what part of the city they were in until she stepped out.

She'd been to the area before.

On the night she'd gone to see Emma and tracked Dean.

Nanku looked up at the familiar building and snapped the folder closed. "Why are we here?"

"Because I need to know where that file is and you shouldn't read it in the car."

"Why here?" Nanku insisted.

Her mother shrugged. "Best to keep Dusk and Dawn out of sight."

Nanku scowled. She hardly needed to be told that, but the woman proceeded forward like Nanku's opinion didn't matter.

That was a too familiar feeling, and Nanku contemplated leaving. She had the file. What did she—

Nanku raised her head, looking into the building where a man and a teen boy left a familiar apartment and its lone occupant. Her mother slipped a phone into her pocket and kept going.

She hesitated, then tucked the file under her arm and followed her mother inside.

There were men watching. A group of them in the basement of the building with hastily assembled equipment. They carried no weapons, however. Looking around, Nanku couldn't find anything like the team that attacked the Bakeman house. Those present were out of sight, assuming they were out of mind, and simply watched.

Her mother's new husband and son joined those in the basement and sat down.

Curious, but…

"Why?" Nanku asked again.

"Why not?" her mother asked back. "If you're alive, then you should know each other. We should."

"Our family broke."

"A broken family is still a family."

They worked through the building and at the door, her mother looked back with a softer, pained, expression.

"I love you," she said. "It's what a mother does. She can't help it."

The door opened and they entered the apartment.

Small feet started padding around, leaving the television in the living room and looking around the kitchen counter toward the door.

Nanku met the girl's eyes passively.

Rose approached without fear or caution. Which seemed foolish to Nanku, but warm.

She had a sister. She'd never had a sister before. There was Emma, and the other females of the clan but none of that was the same.

Rose stopped and stared up at Nanku with wide curious eyes.

She smiled and pointed at Nanku's face.

"You look like my mom."

***

So yeah. Congrats to people who thought Annette was gonna pull something. You called it!

Somehow I forgot to crosspost this one. Not sure how I managed that.

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

Nanku hid all the pictures at the bottom of the file while they sat at the kitchen counter.

She remembered, for the first time in years, what it was like that night. Fully, and truly. The horror of bodies ripping apart. Of screams. Pleas for help that were answered with screeches and followed by cries of death.

It was so much worse than she let herself remember.

Maybe that's why the nightmares started again. Because she let herself—made herself—forget.

Nanku sat at the counter and hurried through the file as best she could. Memorized the lines. The details. Her mask would be best, but that wasn't an option with so many eyes on her.

"Mom told me my sister died." Rose swung her legs from her seat. "Long time ago."

Nanku turned to the next page. A copy of a sign-in sheet from the Dockworker's Association. Day of the murder. The enforcers wanted to track down who saw her father last before the murder. Lacy, according to the report attached to the sheet.

Unsurprising. Lacy was always at the Association, right at the front. And she'd been sick, according to Kurt.

Rose continued swinging her legs and watched Nanku. Big dark eyes, framed by curly dark hair. Hair like their mother's. Like Nanku's were she to untie her braids.

And she kept staring.

Waiting for an answer like she knew it would come if she simply waited.

"She did die," Nanku finally replied. "Long ago."

Nanku checked the photos to be sure none had slipped out. Rose knew nothing of such things. Nanku found it best to keep her that way. To protect her from the things she didn't need to know.

That was a… sobering feeling.

"Then why are you here?" Rose asked with a suspicious gaze.

She was a child. Not an idiot. Nanku knew that well.

"Because I survived."

"How?"

"I had a knife."

"Why?"

"Found it."

"Where?"

"In a boathouse."

"Why would a boat have a house?"

Nanku started to answer, but stopped. "I don't know."

"Really?"

She shrugged. Why did a boat have a house? Protection she guessed. Boats must be expensive. It made little difference to Nanku after all the years.

"If you're Taylor, why did mom call you Nanku?"

"Because Taylor died. Nanku is my name."

"It sounds weird."

Nanku turned to the next page. "It means little hunter."

"Who called you that?"

"Someone who found me."

"Is she nice?"

"She's not"—Nanku had to invent a word she wasn't sure was a word—"unkind."

Annette sat behind them, watching quietly as her daughters met.

And Nanku tried to puzzle why.

In another part of the building—somewhere out of sight to anyone else—the observers kept watching. Her mother's new husband—Rose's father—and the boy were at the back of the room. Nanku wasn't sure why they watched, but she guessed. They were observing her for Rose's safety. To be sure Nanku wouldn't hurt the girl.

Her mother's idea, or the father's?

Risky, but if her mother and Tattletale did what they said then no one knew she'd killed so many of the Pure. Alabaster was still tied up while Tattletale played with him—and Imp joined in the occasional stabbing just 'for the laughs.' Weird girl.

A search of the apartment revealed nothing new in the walls or fixtures. Those were all the same. A few new objects were scattered about. A vase. A box. Some books that weren't there before and seemed conspicuously placed. The eyes of bugs weren't good for seeing the screens the men in the basement used, but Nanku could guess.

They'd arranged the new objects too perfectly. Only a few blind spots.

Nanku managed to get a gnat inside one and found the device. Lens. Transmitter. A camera.

Perhaps it was a test of some sort.

Or trying to gather information.

"Why didn't you come back before?" Rose asked.

"I was busy."

"At school?"

"Something like that."

"I have school. It's boring. Except reading. I like reading."

Nanku glanced at her but she kept talking.

"Everyone else likes Harry Potter but I like Percy Jackson better. Do you read Percy Jackson?"

Nanku didn't even know who that was. "No."

"What do you read?"

Reports. Survey results. Technical readouts. The occasional poem. Taylor never liked human poetry though and Yautja poetry wasn't the most enticing. Nanku was fairly certain she was tone deaf but they were just bad poets.

"Little," Nanku answered.

"You're reading right now."

"It's not very good."

"But you're reading it. Oh. Mom says reading you do even though you don't like it is called work."

"She's right." Though, Nanku didn't dislike it.

It would pay off when she found whoever killed her father and got to think of an inventive way to hunt them. Something memorable.

"Boring reading sounds worse than no reading at all," Rose continued.

"Sometimes you do it anyway."

"Mom said the same thing."

Nanku did not like being compared to her mother.

"Is your not-school reading not boring?" Rose asked.

"We take lots of field trips."

"I like field trips, but Mom doesn't let me go on most of them."

Nanku raised her head and looked back.

Her mother was straight-faced but her eyes held a bit of shame. "Rose is still upset I wouldn't let her go to a weekend camp."

"No I'm not," Rose protested.

She sounded upset.

But that, maybe, Nanku could forgive. "There's a museum," she said. On the ship. "We keep it. Tell our stories."

"We?"

"Me and… Others."

"Does it have dinosaur bones?"

"No, but there are animals."

There were bones far bigger than any dinosaur there. Centuries of history. Hunts and hunters long dead, but remembered. Well remembered. Nanku knew most of the stories but reciting them might become too complicated.

"And poetry," Nanku added. "I never liked it."

"Sounds like a weird museum."

"It's a family project."

Her head tilted at the word.

She was young. Right.

Nanku examined the reports of suspects. She memorized their names first. They could be found on the Internet later. Maybe one of them did her a favor and admitted to 'murder' at some point. That would be nice.

"Are you living here now?" Rose asked

Nanku looked away from the papers again.

Rose kept swinging her legs and waited for an answer.

Was Taylor ever that innocent? What did it say that Nanku couldn't remember?

"No," Nanku answered. "I don't live here."

"Is it because you're old?"

Nanku took the chance. "Yes."

"You're older than Addison."

"Who is that?"

"My brother. He has a different mom though." Rose bowed her head. "She died."

Nanku cocked her head. "You didn't know her."

Rose shook her head.

"Did you kill her?"

"No?"

"Then why be sad about it?" Nanku went back to work. "You had nothing to do with it."

"Because Daddy is sad sometimes"—Rose spoke low enough that Nanku didn't think Annette could hear—"when he thinks no one is looking. Kind of like Mom."

It occurred to Nanku that the young ones sometimes were the most alert. Not necessarily the smartest, but not dumb.

"Are you sad?" Rose asked. "Because your daddy died?"

Nanku's fingers pinched the pages. "No."

She'd grown past sad.

"That's nice. Being sad is hard."

Nanku raised her head.

She saw it then, and she'd have preferred an actual trap. Another attempt at control. Her mother had changed somewhat in ten years, but some things it seemed never would.

"So is being betrayed," Nanku grumbled.

Rose hummed. "What's that?"

So she didn't know? Maybe that was for the best.

It was a strange feeling.

Nanku had a family. They were different and things were always a bit awkward. That felt about right to her for what a family would be. Rose was a stranger but Nanku felt something. A distant connection. Strangely, it was to her father despite him being no relation to Rose at all.

So Nanku held her temper and her tongue.

"What do you do for fun?" Rose asked.

"I hike."

She played along the charade, for the girl's sake. To let her have the life Taylor never would. That felt fitting in a way and Nanku threw herself into the decision.

Rose filled the time with childish banter.

Nanku focused as much of her attention on her file as she could.

The Empire.

The Nazis were among the leading suspects in her father's murder. Those under a parahuman named 'Valkyrie.' Not one of the current number. Nanku would know.

"Who is Valkyrie?" Nanku asked.

"Who's that?" Rose echoed.

Her mother tensed, but she brought it on herself. Bribing Nanku with a murder investigation and then bringing it to her home. What did she expect? That Nanku would set it aside and become enamored with Rose to the expense of her entire purpose?

"She was a villain years ago," her mother eventually answered.

"What was her power?"

"Changed size or something. I wasn't paying much attention to capes then."

Changed size? Wasn't one of the current Pure members someone who did that? Nanku was certain one was.

Maybe they changed their name.

Two birds with one shuriken. Nanku could live with that.

"Why does Valkyrie matter?" Rose asked.

"No reason."

There were other capes and gangs, but all older. Ones who weren't around anymore. Nanku would get to those after exhausting the more immediate leads.

"Mom." Rose turned. "I'm hungry."

Her mother took the demand and rose with it. "I'll order a pizza."

Rose's eyes lit up. "Hawaiian?"

"Shawn and Addison are eating out tonight, so if you want."

Nanku packed the file up and closed it. "Go ahead."

Rose's expression fell."You're leaving?"

Nanku paused, thinking. She inhaled and closed the folder gently.

It wasn't Rose's fault. She wasn't the one Nanku was angry at.

She was a little girl… Her sister.

Nanku faced her and crouched. "I have things to do."

"Work and stuff?" Rose asked, obviously unhappy but apparently familiar with that excuse.

"Yes. I have a job to do."

"Will you visit again?"

Nanku's response took a moment to formulate, somehow. She busied her hands in Rose's hair, tying a few strands into a small braid. There was something enamoring in her face. The innocence, Taylor decided. Maybe some basic instinct to protect the young as well, but mostly the innocence.

A shadow of Taylor. Who Nanku used to be, and might have stayed.

"Maybe," Nanku offered. "When I have time."

Rose pouted. "Okay."

Her mother stood confused and Nanku didn't linger. She didn't like being watched. She didn't like being lied to. She didn't like being controlled. Her mother hadn't changed as much as she'd hoped.

At least she kept most of her word this time.

Nanku left the apartment and made her way toward the exit. She observed those in the basement closely, especially as their huddle around their equipment broke. They began moving but none reached for weapons. They took out phones, fiddled with their machines, and spoke to each other.

No one moved to follow her.

Her mother's husband—Shawn—did move but he tried to intercept her mother, not Nanku.

Nanku was exiting the building when he reached her. The woman didn't stop, though they spoke briefly. He never went far enough to enter what he assumed was Nanku's sight.

Annette came out the doors, calling. "Wait!"

"What did you think?" Nanku spun around, her voice sharp. "That I'd meet Rose and turn my back on the last ten years? Or the ten before that?"

Her mother flinched.

"You don't control me anymore," Nanku snarled. "My willingness to accommodate your requests is not obedience. Never again."

Her lips parted to speak. Then closed and stayed closed.

Nanku shook her head. She was tempted to throw her knowledge in the woman's face. Point out that she knew they were being watched.

That would be impulsive and would give away far more information than Nanku wanted to reveal. Especially with so many cameras. She thought there must be some outside because some men were still watching their machines in the building's basement.

Nanku held up the file instead. "I'm keeping this."

She turned and left.

Her mother didn't try to stop her.

The kennel was empty of people when she returned. Nanku found that strange but maybe her mother was that delusional. She'd consider Imp might be lingering about but she could remember the girl so she clearly wasn't near. The dogs were present but tending to themselves in clusters and clumps. A few raised their heads as Nanku entered but the animals rarely approached her.

She discarded the clothing her mother provided and sat alone. Dusk and Dawn came in through the windows of the room and Nanku quickly retrieved her mask. She donned it and plugged the cord into her temple. The Twins settled on either side of her.

Then she began rapidly turning the pages of the file.

She didn't read any of the reports or look at any of the pictures. She kept them in view only long enough for her mask to record an image. She'd have an easier time going through it all with her own copy and the computer to help isolate and identify sections. The suspects the police gathered—especially the ones they never found—would be the best starting point.

It might amount to nothing but at least she had a place to begin.

Finally some progress.

She was nearly done when Bitch and Cassie returned.

Their voices were tense as they drove up to the kennel.

Nanku continued scanning the pages of the file. For all she knew her mother intended to have her arrested, locked up, or detained. Well, she could try but—

"I'm not their slave," Bitch snarled. "Not standing for this."

"It's a trap," Cassie hissed. "Please. Rachel, just slow down. Please."

Bitch threw the door open and stepped out of the truck. "No."

"Rachel!"

Cassie turned the key on the engine and scrambled out the other door. Angelica and Sunny snarled and barked as they followed after Cassie and Bitch. Their ears were turned back. Teeth bared.

Bitch was opening the back, pushing the door open and pulling herself into the vehicle's compartment. Nanku sent a few bugs in after her and began exploring around.

She sounded angry.

Bitch always sounded angry, but she sounded particularly distraught.

Something was inside the truck. Something bloody. And dog-sized.

Nanku tore her eyes away from the file and tapped her computer.

The cloak peeled over her and she silently slipped out of the building.

Bitch pulled the bodies out and set them on the ground. She wasn't particularly reverent, but she wasn't rough either. Cassie looked afraid and worried. Sad.

"Please," she pleaded again. "Don't do anything—"

Bitch snarled. "I'm going to do plenty."

She set the last body down and rose with blood staining the front of her shirt.

"They threw these bodies where I'd find them. Beat them. Brutalized them. Killed them."

"They want to get a rise out of you."

"They succeeded."

"It's a trap, Rachel! Let's just call Tattletale! It's not like we can talk you out of it but at least let—"

Bitch scoffed.

"Loves her peace too much… Forgot how we bought it."

"This isn't about Brutus and you know it!"

She nodded to the corpses. "It's not."

Nanku came closer and found a sheet covering each. Whatever color they had been, they were red now.

"And it's not a trap if I know about it."

Nanku stepped aside and let the girl pass.

She stormed into the kennel and started shouting names.

"Rocket! Capey! Butch! Colt!"

The animals responded as they were called one after the other. Dusk and Dawn skittered out the window again and took to the air. Nanku watched Cassie curiously, but the girl only shook her head. She didn't reach for her phone. Didn't call anyone.

When Bitch came out with ten dogs behind her, Cassie was back in the driver's seat starting the engine.

Nanku watched from a shadow, more than curious.

Pe'dte always said opportunity came to those who waited.

***

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

"What about Nanku?" Cassie asked.

"She's out," Bitch replied.

"Well, yeah but—"

"And fuck her."

Nanku liked Bitch.

On a personal level, at least.

Getting onto the truck unseen was no minor challenge. The dogs had sharp senses and Bitch had a sense about them herself. Nothing parahuman like Nanku's power, but the girl tracked the animal's moods and attentions without thinking. All body language and all the more impressive for it.

Nanku sent the Twins flying south through the alleyways before guiding them higher.

Meanwhile, she moved alongside the truck and slid underneath. Just in case, she timed her movements with the dogs. They jumped into the truck one after the other at Bitch's direction and as the largest landed, Nanku grabbed onto the truck's bottom and lifted.

She paid attention.

The Nazis were doing something with dogs—lethal, apparently—and Bitch didn't like it. The parahuman wanted to act, and Tattletale wouldn't let her. As much as the girl could stop anyone from doing anything.

With the taunting of the corpses, Bitch's patience was done and Nanku didn't mind.

She still had to find Iron Rain. Her mother could 'clean up the mess' after the fact.

The back of the truck slammed shut and Bitch went to the front and told Cassie to get out.

"No," Cassie replied.

"Out."

"No."

Bitch growled loud enough Nanku felt it. She said nothing. Cassie pulled on a stick inside the vehicle and started down the road.

Maybe Cassie wasn't so bad either. For a girl without powers or any particular skills, she was remarkably unafraid when she chose to be.

Nanku held on and pulled the Twin close. They flew parallel to the truck, out of sight in the night sky.

The ride was simple until Cassie pulled onto the highway going south. The vehicle sped up which Nanku could handle. The ride grew bumpier as well, which was harder. Strength aside, maintaining the tension of her muscles and holding herself firm was exhausting.

Good workout.

The wind picked up as her ride carried her south and then west toward the mountains. They didn't go far after leaving the highway. The truck weaved through an area of suburbs and offices with a few storage warehouses. They were going too fast for Nanku to get a good look at most of the buildings they passed, but she kept her mind focused as her body strained.

Cassie had a point.

It sounded like a trap, a rather obvious one. To her credit Bitch wasn't dumb enough to not see it, but she clearly didn't care. She planned to charge into danger and let come what may.

Good attitude.

The truck stopped in a small row of trees lined against a chain link fence. The building within the fence was dull. Lots of trucks and machines and boxes loaded into trucks by machines. There were people inside—men mostly—but they were all working. Nothing that looked like a den for bad bloods.

Nanku dropped to the ground and slipped away from the truck as Bitch got out and Cassie looked the other way. No chance for either to see any shimmer from the cloak, and she went far enough the dogs wouldn't direct too much attention to her. She'd been around them all enough her scent was no longer alarming.

Only her presence might draw their attention.

Nanku slipped down the road into the row of trees and crouched.

The other buildings were quiet. Offices. Warehouses. Loading docks for trucks and vans. Repair facilities. Nothing in her range stood out.

Bitch wasn't reckless, it seemed.

She released her dogs from the back and they all circled around her with alert heads and tails. They began to grow. Snarls ripped from their jaws and they snapped their teeth. They grew quickly. Fur became hide. Bony spikes emerged along their backs and limbs.

Nanku thought they were big before.

Bitch could grow them bigger.

Angelica grew to the size of a van and kept growing with the other animals twitching. Barely able to restrain themselves. Not wanting to restrain themselves.

Only Bitch's iron gaze held them in place.

Cassie climbed out of the truck but she remained quiet and out of sight for the first few minutes. Once all the dogs were massive beasts bigger than most cars, she approached with a frown.

"Rachel."

"No."

"I know." She signed in resignation. "But this is obviously a trap. We know that. Right?"

Bitch pursed her lips briefly but nodded.

Cassie nodded back and climbed atop Sunny. The dog didn't throw her or even react. Its tail snapped at the air, stopping only as Cassie settled onto its back.

"Don't have to come," Rachel said. Her voice was blunt but carried more than her usual amount. Her voice dropped toward the end of the last word.

"Just making sure," Cassie replied.

Bitch stood for a moment, accompanied by a dozen giant dogs. She looked at them one by one, and finally at Cassie. The girl didn't meet her gaze but instead kept her eyes forward. She clearly didn't intend to do or say anything else.

A phone started ringing.

Cassie's eyes twitched but she kept her back straight and weighted.

Bitch didn't answer the device. It kept ringing to the tune of a song about being a bitch, a lover, and a mother. Nanku supposed that made sense, but Bitch's brow twitched.

"Aisha," she grumbled.

"Should have seen that coming," Cassie replied.

"Why live on the outside," Bitch mumbled, "if you won't use it?"

"Don't know."

"Won't let it go."

"I know."

Weird.

Nanku wasn't sure what the point of the exchange was. Hesitation? That was a bad thing to cultivate right before a hunt.

Dusk and Dawn flew overhead. They were high, near the edge of Nanku's range. She used their eyes. Far better eyes than any bug on Earth.

Much of the neighborhood beyond her power's reach was the same. More office buildings. Workshops. Storage and loading facilities. Nothing that stood out from sight alone.

No choice but to follow Bitch when she—

As soon as Nanku had the thought, Rachel mounted Angelica and whistled.

The dogs all burst into motion, each of them following after Angelica as she threw her full monstrous weight into a lunge.

As soon as the herd was in motion, Nanku leaped to her feet and ran after them. Parallel, behind the trees just in case. The wind blew into her face so the dogs wouldn't catch her scent.

Down the alley, the herd turned as Bitch raised an arm and Nanku quickly scaled the chain fence and dropped to the other side. She focused Dusk and Dawn in the appropriate direction and began pulling a swarm together from anything in her air. The tiny legs and wings began beating at the air behind her, sticking to the shadows and the air.

Running between parking tractor-trailers, Nanku released her wrist blades and rapidly scaled the distribution center.

Bitches dogs sprinted past the building, crossing over to the next set of structures. Nanku leaped from the roof after them, grabbing onto Dusk's leg as he swooped down from above. With the hold, Nanku swung her legs forward and landed atop of the trailers. Crossing from one to the next, she followed the pack of dogs nearly three blocks.

Bitch was coming at them from the opposite side of the city. Better than coming from the most straightforward direction.

Dawn flew high above and her eyes set on a set of industrial buildings. They were worn down and some of the windows were boarded over. There was no apparent power to the structure, but there were curiously a few dozen cars parked in its adjacent lot.

Nanku swiped her bio-mask over, scanning the electromagnetic spectrum.

There was a large room at the center of the building. Several really, but only one brushed with energy.

A few dozen men and some women, and a dozen dogs all oriented around a single area at the room's center.

"Barbarians," Nanku grumbled.

If they wanted to kill the animals, they should do it themselves. Not pit them against one another for spectator sport. There were guards along a second floor that overlooked the first and in the halls leading inside. All armed. Even the two dozen men loitering in the parking lot were all armed.

Nanku tilted her head.

A lot of men to guard a parking lot, away from the vile sport they'd come to entertain themselves with.

There was a sign on the factory. One she bothered to trace after her last lesson. A few mosquitoes and flies crawled around and got a feel for the letters and symbols.

A cross, and the letters M-E-D-H-A-L-L.

Medhall.

That sounded familiar. Where had she found that name before?

Nanku leaped to the other side of the linked fence and pulled herself into the trees. She settled into a crouch and searched the surrounding buildings once more.

Something was wrong.

Her instincts were on fire. Something wasn't right. The lay of the land. It was all wrong.

She'd run around enough rooftops and swept enough buildings. Something about the factory was wrong. Nanku started searching more deeply as Bitch came around the back side of it. With another motion of her hand, she pointed and the dogs running behind Angelica and Sunny turned.

The dogs charged at the building in a wave of meat and bone.

Impressive.

Nanku turned her head as Dusk and Dawn swept left and right through the air.

Something was wrong.

Nanku refocused her attention on the parking lot.

That was a lot of men loitering about. Waiting and talking. Why? Didn't they want to watch their caged prey tear one another apart half-starved and beaten? Why even come otherwise?

That's what was wrong, she decided.

Those men in the lot were all wrong.

She landed Dusk on the roof and directed him to look out from the edge.

The men were positioned oddly. They clustered around trucks and vans. They grilled food in half-bin grills cooking meat. Drank from cans—

Bitches dogs came through the walls like they were paper. The people inside shouted and scattered. Guns were drawn and fired. Neither Bitch nor Cassie flinched. They ducked low and directed the animals with shouts and signals. The words 'hurt' came from Cassie's lips. Bitch said kill.

The dogs battered their way through the open arena and both things happened in short order as the crowd began scattering for the exits.

Bitch sent the other dogs ahead but wheeled Angelica about. She surveyed the room, looking at the dogs all caged together to one side. She lingered only long enough to check on them.

A mistake, if one Nanku vaguely understood. It was still foolish.

Especially with the trap she was sending Cassie into.

Nanku flew bugs with better senses of smell closer to be sure. The cans were many, but yes. Most were already empty on the ground or in bins. Flying an insect into one to sniff and taste wasn't hard. The smell was clear. Sugar and bubbles. Soda and energy drinks. Lots of caffeine.

Not one of the men was drinking alcohol.

And any hand holding a can dropped it as soon as people came running from inside the building.

The lot erupted into activity. Cases and truck beds were opened. Flipped up and larger—very large—guns drawn out from inside. So large they needed a mount to be aimed.

Nanku snapped her head around, looking through her narrow vantage.

The dogs came charging after the rabble, chasing them down and blindly running into a crossfire.

Cassie realized it a moment too late.

The guns erupted, a cacophony of thunder rattling the air and tearing into the earth. They were so loud that Nanku felt the rattle in her bones. She'd never heard such a sound before. Bullets the size of her finger were turning the asphalt into dust and blood splattered as those that didn't miss struck boney flesh.

Dogs barked and snarled.

Cassie was wise enough.

She waved the beasts forward, into the onslaught. It was better than stopping and becoming sitting ducks.

It should have been, but the Nazis set their trap well.

While some men manned the guns, others jumped into the driver's seats and started the engines. The vehicles sputtered into motion and as Cassie tried to lead the dogs into breaking the line they split into two. There, Cassie showed inexperience. She kept trying to run through instead of picking a side to break.

Vehicles in the center drew back. Those on the wings came around.

Bitch guided Angelica in at a sprint. The dog didn't stop as a truck tried to position itself. A bone shoulder threw the vehicle aside and Bitch started snapping directions. The dogs began to split. Cassie turned to look at her, hunched low atop Sunny's back and shielded by the bony spines growing on the creature's shoulders.

A man on one of the trucks pointed and all the guns turned.

Rounds splattered across Sunny from all directions. Cassie yelped and tried to shield herself. The sheer force of the bullets was enough to throw her as Sunny fell.

Nanku's hand balled into a fist.

Cowards.

First, they pit beasts against one another for pathetic banal sport, and then they use their deaths as bait for an enemy.

An enemy they drew into an ambush, and surrounded to strike with overwhelming force. Barbaric. As foolish as Bitch was walking into what she knew was a trap, the Nazis lived up to their reputation.

Reprehensible.

Bitch circled her dogs around herself, using their bodies to block the bullets and shield her. The dogs barked and snarled in pain, but the guns weren't stopping them. Their bulk gave her a chance to jump to the ground and reach Cassie's side.

She helped the girl up but it had taken the momentum from her breakout.

That was enough.

They might be bad bloods, but Cassie and Bitch had been… hospitable.

And the Nazis still wanted to kill her mother.

To the Black Warrior with them.

Nanku drew her swarm as she emerged from the trees under her cloak. Dusk took off and flew overhead to meet Dawn.

With her mask, Nanku picked out the man directing the other vehicles and another on a bulky-looking phone. She planted bugs on that one, just to listen in.

Reaching for her belt, Nanku drew her weapons. In one hand, the blades of a shuriken expanded. In the other, her combi-stick unfurled to its full length.

The bullets were large enough to hurt her, she suspected. Fortunately, the guns were all pointed the other way.

At a run, she leaped onto the hood of the first truck she passed.

Her cloak shimmered, drawing the driver's eyes just before her spear went through the window and pierced his chest. As the vehicle jerked to a stop, Nanku stepped over onto the roof. She pulled her spear with her and threw her shuriken to the right. The gunmen on the bed of the truck turned and shouted.

Her wristblades went through one's throat and her spear the other's chest.

She kicked his body over, withdrew her blades, and took hold of the gun.

It was a crude weapon, but she supposed someone might like some silly attempt to obscure her presence.

Nanku jerked the weapon to the side and pulled the trigger. Bullets poured out of the barrel, fed into the gun by a belt of bullets out of a large canister. Down the line, hoods, windows, and blood burst out as the vehicles surrounding Bitch, Cassie, and the dogs on one side were perforated with the Nazi's own ammunition.

On the other side of the encirclement, Dusk and Dawn swooped down and pierced the backs of two gunmen. Dusk lifted off and let his kill drop. Dawn came around and sank her jaws into another man's throat. Dozens of flies and wasps flew. Small in number. A mere fraction of the swarm, but enough to distract them as Dusk and Dawn flew up and away.

The leader noticed something was amiss. He looked left and right, blinking in confusion and turning his head just as the shuriken cut through the air and cleaved the top of his head from his jaw.

Bitch looked Nanku's way, following the line of bullets firing into the other vehicles.

Nanku met her eyes and flashed the lenses on her mask.

It's not like she wanted the dogs to die in some cowardly mass ambush.

No one and no thing deserved such a death without earning it in the worst way possible.

***

beta'd by @Grim Tide

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

Nanku caught her shuriken from the air and swung the blades through the gun.

The metal gave easily and the barrel dropped. One man had the sense to shoot her way but his aim was lacking. The bullets struck the corpses at her feet twice and the window behind her once.

Not all of the crowd who fled the building were still fleeing.

Two slipped into a van and stripped out of their clothes. Both women. Adults. Nice figures.

Were they getting bigger? Two growing things powers in one night. What were the odds?

"Fenja," Nanku guessed. "And Menja."

She'd wondered where the capes were. Why else set an ambush for Bitch? They couldn't have thought the guns would do the job.

That would be interesting.

Maybe one of them could lead her to Iron Rain. She'd be sure to ask.

Nanku took her spear in hand and removed it from the corpse. Amid Dusk and Dawn's attacks, the loss of their leader, and a renewed attack. Bitch pushed Cassie onto Sunny's back, using shouts and whistles to direct the other animals. The beasts charged forward, breaking through the vehicles and their guns amid the confusion. On one flank, Dusk, Dawn, and small patches of bugs broke up the attack.

On the other, Nanku stepped down from the bed of one truck and drove her spear through the wheels of another. The vehicle jerked and Nanku leaned into her weapon. The metal didn't bow and the truck flipped forward and threw the men on the back.

Another truck rolled forward. The driver was dead at the wheel and a man was trying to pull the body out while keeping up with the vehicle.

Nanku stabbed him in the leg and when he fell her shuriken cut through his throat.

"The fuck—"

The man trying to aim the gun jerked and Nanku used her spear as a lever to throw him off.

Nanku continued down the line of disorganized vehicles, stabbing, cutting, and piercing. One truck gave up the fight and tried to drive away. Another crashed into a wall.

Chaos.

And that was just the side she waded through.

On another, Dusk and Dawn cut a swathe through the gunners and a constant assault of distractions kept anyone from seeing more than a flying shadow. Nanku wanted to laugh when she thought she heard 'Shadow Stalker' amid it all. What the hell had that woman done to so terrify everyone?

Bitch's dogs overran the vehicles fleeing from the front. The machines were stomped, crushed, and turned by tooth, claw, and tail. The dogs were still growing. Becoming ever larger as Bitch continued to pour her power into them.

Nanku wasn't sure she could kill one if she tried.

Angelica was as large as a big truck. The kind used to haul trailers. Within minutes the guns fell silent save three. Dusk and Dawn took two with their jaws and talons. Nanku took the third. She grabbed the gunner and wrenched him from the vehicle. His throat was cut before he hit the ground and Nanku's spear pierced the driver through the spine as he tried to escape.

Nanku glanced over her shoulder, checking that the dead were dead.

It wasn't much of a hunt.

More of a slaughter.

Pe'dte warned her about that once.

That bad bloods didn't die because they were weak, or evil. They died because they were chaos. A 'disbalancing' force that had to be contained.

There was glory in balancing, and there was cruelty. Death without honor. Without respect. Death because it was necessary, not because it was earned.

Nanku didn't understand then.

Looking over her shoulder amid the carnage, she thought she started to see it. The line between hunting and enforcing. It conjured a twisted feeling in her stomach. Something like what Taylor felt the first time she understood that when someone died she'd never see them again.

A realization of the gravity of living.

The patter of a gun drew her from her thoughts and Nanku ran across the lot.

One man—his leg crushed by one of Bitch's dogs—aimed a gun at the parahuman's back. He must have seen her cloak shimmer because he turned the weapon. Nanku sliced his hand off and cut his throat before running on toward the other flank.

The last few trucks started racing. Their engines revved as they pulled out of the lot and onto the road. Bitch's dogs chase. One third directly behind, and two others forming wings that tried to catch the fleeing gun carriers.

Nanku focused her gaze on a van near the exit.

It burst open just as Angelica ran past and an armored woman exploded in size and swung a sword down from above.

She grew far faster than Nanku anticipated. In a blink, she was fifteen feet tall, with a sword and shield to match. Angelica twitched just in time, and jumped aside as the sword came crashing down.

The two giant women bore glistening armor of gold and silver. Impractical in more ways than one, made for show rather than function. Odd-looking metal wings that served no purpose sprouted from their helms and shoulders. The one with the spear wore an armored skirt that didn't look easy to move in while the one with the sword and shield wore greaves with yet more wings.

Nanku felt self-conscious about her mask's ornamentation looking at them, but her armor wasn't so ludicrously decorated.

The two women barged through all obstacles. Their steps kicked trucks and cars aside. One dog lashed out on instinct and was thrown with a flick.

Bitch came about, calling and signaling without hesitation.

Angelica launched, the giant dog crashing into the giant woman and snapping teeth over an armored arm. Thrown to a back foot, the sword woman moved to the side and made room for the spear woman to trust.

Dogs met the weapon. Their jaws clamped onto it and they dragged the weapon down before it struck. A dozen more attacked from all sides, snapping and whipping with their tails.

Cassie led other dogs after the trucks, chasing them one after the other and using the sheer weight of the beasts to knock them over or crush the beds underfoot.

The means of the trap were clear to Nanku.

Pin Bitch and her dogs with heavy gunfire. Even if it didn't put them down, it hurt and limited them. A stray bullet might strike Bitch and kill her, or Cassie. In either case, Nanku guessed Fenja and Menja felt safe wading into a fusillade. With the dogs pinned and injured, they could capture or kill Bitch themselves.

A decent enough trap, if lacking in even an ounce of creativity or personal talent.

Surrounding prey with dozens of little idiots with guns and simply mowing it down.

Nanku shook her head at the thought and decided she needed no further offense.

She didn't care to know which of the giant women was which.

Spear woman flung the dogs from her weapon and brought the butt around in the same motion. Angelica pushed off to avoid the blow too late and Bitch braced to be thrown.

The blow missed.

At the last moment, a swarm of wasps, bees, flies, and mosquitos flew into the spear woman's helm through the holes intended for her eyes. She jerked and tossed. Then she yelled and cursed. There was nothing to sting or bite despite Nanku's efforts. The woman's skin didn't feel like skin. It was too hard. Too solid.

Her power no doubt.

No matter.

Blinking and jerking back was a natural instinct when one's eyes were assailed, and Nanku plugged bugs against the sockets.

Her feet pounded against the asphalt. The sword woman realized something was wrong. She dropped her shield till the tip pierced the stone. She ran it across the ground and forced the dogs back while calling to her sister.

"Fucking bugs!" the sibling snapped back.

Nanku tucked her spear under her arm with three fingers and used the index to tap at the controls of her wrist computer.

The sword woman paused. "Bug—"

Nanku raised her wrist and fired.

The dart spun through the air with a whistle and the sword woman turned toward the sound. It popped at the same moment dogs attacked her legs. Cracking the armor and forcing her into a fall. She didn't fight it. Her sword dropped and the free hand reached to grasp at her throat.

The dart didn't penetrate her skin, but it didn't have to.

Prongs shout out from either end when it struck. The weighted ends continued forward and when the line ran out they met behind her neck and twisted together. The mechanism in the dart whirled to life and the lines began retreating.

A loud gurgle filled the air and the sword woman dropped onto her back with a crash. She started shrinking rapidly, racing to get ahead of the rapidly tightening line choking her out. As she did, Nanku kept running, slipping between two of Bitch's dogs as she tested the woman's power.

A sting got through as the Nazi shortened.

Good enough.

At full sprint, Nanku spun her spear forward and ran up one dog's back. She leaped, hurling herself through the air and swinging her legs forward for balance. The woman shrank to an almost child-like size to escape the line and had only just grown back to what seemed her normal height.

Nanku's spear sheared through her shoulder.

The woman screamed, turning toward the source of her pain and receiving Nanku's fist to her throat. She gagged a breath and staggered.

Her blue eyes were wide, searching. They noticed the flicker of the cloak first. Followed it from her bleeding shoulder along the length of the spear to Nanku's arm. Then higher, to the outline of her head.

Nanku flashed the eyes of her mask and released the blade of her shuriken for a kill stroke.

The woman's eyes went wider still with pure terror.

"You."

Nanku flinched.

The delay lasted only a moment but it was enough.

The spear woman brought her weapon around and caught Nanku in the side. Two dogs still clung to it, but she'd grown nearly twenty feet tall and towered over the lot. The dogs biting and snapping at her feet found no purchase and Nanku's back struck the ground as she rolled end over end.

"It's off!" a voice called.

"Says who?" the spear woman called back. She came about, facing Bitch on Angelica while a truck in the distance was torn apart by Sunny and two other beasts.

"Orders!" the first voice said. "We're out! NOW!"

"Menja," the sword woman said as she started to backpedal. "Menja, that's—"

"I saw!" The spear woman glared down at Nanku, the rage in her eyes palpable.

She didn't want to leave.

She wanted to fight.

She wanted to fight and Nanku jumped to her feet. Her cloak was still active despite the blow. Her bones rattled and one rib ached painfully. The blow hit her hard, but she could still hunt.

And she had a new target.

"Let's go!" the sister who must be Fenja snapped and she grabbed her sword before falling back.

Menja snarled. She tore her eyes off Nanku and swept her spear over the ground. Bitch's dogs were forced back and a forceful kick tossed the two clinging to the armored giant's ankle and foot.

She turned and the ground quaked.

She ran.

Nanku snarled.

She ran after the pair and drew her swarm to follow her. Dusk and Dawn leaped into the sky on mental command.

Bitch looked left and right. She briefly rested her eyes on Nanku. She looked back toward the old Medhall building. The kennels inside where the dogs still were. They were the reason she'd come, not the Nazis.

Let her.

Nanku didn't care for setting dogs to fight and Bitch didn't like it either. Fine.

But Fenja and Menja.

You, she'd said. With a haunted sort of recognition.

The way Menja leered at her like she hated Nanku more than anything in the world.

Impossible. Nanku had never met them before… but Yautja had come to Brockton Bay once before. Pe'dte, and her sons. What did those two know about it? Why did they know about it?

Nanku focused. She only absently noted the other car rapidly driving toward them with four people inside.

She took aim and fired another dart. Aimed low.

When it deployed its line, they snapped around Fenja's legs and sent her face-first into the ground. She started growing, the opposite of before. It snapped the line but Nanku cleared a line and slid to a stop. Dusk and Dawn flew from the other side and swiped at Menja's head.

It distracted the woman. Sent her swiping at the air.

Nanku raised her shuriken and set the angle.

Menja didn't need legs to talk and she was shrinking again.

Her leg twitched.

No.

The shuriken flew at a bad angle and veered off target.

NO!

Nanku tossed her spear in the air and caught it in reverse. She reared back, aiming for the sword woman's spin low on her back. A crippling wound. Nonlethal.

Her arm betrayed her, spasming and costing her the chance.

The two women retreated to one of the trucks. The man on the back fired and bullets pattered all around Nanku as she crashed to the ground.

The engine roared as the women climbed into the back. Dusk and Dawn dove but the gunner saw them and turned the gun up. Nanku directed them away and her swarm was finally closing in.

The truck sputtered. Tires spun against the road and the vehicle lurched forward at a race and sped away.

Nanku pulled herself up and caught her shuriken as it returned.

"Nothing personal," the boy in the stupid white carnival mask said. "Just following orders… Huh. Bit ironic at the moment, isn't it—"

Nanku spun on him, wrist blades sliding forth and aiming for his throat.

"Enough!"

The voice was strangely familiar.

The girl wore a costume with flared pants and riding boots. Her jacket was fancy and her mask the sort of thing she'd wear to a fancy party. She pointed a thin sword at Nanku's neck and held a series of throwing daggers in her other hand.

"Foil to the rescue," Regent mumbled. "Than—"

"Shut it."

"Bitch." Another girl crossed behind them, dressed in a frilly dress with a doll mask over her face. She held up a phone. "Tattletale says you can't ignore this one."

Nanku snarled.

'Foil' was dangerous.

She saw it in the way the girl carried herself. And her power. Something about armor piercing.

And her sword was at Nanku's throat.

"So." Imp appeared at Nanku's other side. "Can we like, not have a throw down? Cause I mean, we can take you but..."

She looked toward the lot littered with ruined cars, bullet casings, corpses, and destruction.

"But I mean that sounds like work and I just don't really want to?"

***

Things are getting spicy.

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[Phyrexian]

The "Pure" got to have some hidden ace we're unaware of, right? With coordination between the Protectorate and Undersiders and seemingly so little other trouble in the city at the moment, it seems odd that they'd still be around. How do you keep secrets from Tattletale + Imp + Annette/Weaver?

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

"Bad idea," Bitch warned.

She was right.

"Yes," Foil said. "It was a bad idea to run off into the obvious trap without—"

Nanku rammed her shoulder into the girl's stomach and dodged the thin blade. Foil tried to find her balance but hesitated to deliver a counter. By the time she made up her mind, Nanku swept her legs with a spear.

She was prepared to turn and give chase to the truck before it left her range but again the muscles in one of her limbs spasmed violently and she fell.

"Seriously," Regent said. "Really not my first choice here, yeah?"

Nanku snarled but Foil had bounced back to her feet quickly. She pointed her sword forward and the girl in the doll costume—Parian—had unfurled a bolt of cloth from her back and was rapidly stitching something with arms and legs.

"Maybe we can all take a breath," Imp proposed, "and not jump to forcibly detaining the cape that's racked up more bodies in a week than some of us have in our whole careers?"

Regent raised a finger. "Maybe we can listen to the pretty lady with the amazing tits."

Imp glowered. "Who are you calling a lady?"

"Maybe someone wants to explain?" Foil countered.

Parian tensed, her giant teddy bear taking full shape. "And tell us—"

Dusk and Dawn landed on Nanku's flanks. They both screeched, wings fluttering and claws stabbing at the ground as they positioned. Bitch's dogs barely reacted. They'd grown accustomed to the Twins coming and going and absent a command—Bitch offered none—they stood and sat relaxed despite their monstrous sizes.

"TLDR," Cassie announced as Sunny sauntered over, "that's Weaver's kid and she's been alive the whole time. Also, she's been killing Nazis because Nazis want to kill her mom."

Foil and Parian stared at her.

Nanku used her chance to take a few steps back. Her cloak was still active, and it was dark. Dusk and Dawn had distracted their eyes. Her swarm was still close and growing but the truck—

Nanku wanted to scream as it drove out of her range.

It was too fast, and she'd not had a chance to place a tracker because someone got in the damned way!

A phone rang and then another. All the Undersiders' phones started digging and Parian answered hers first.

"Why are—Wha—Fine." She turned vaguely in Nanku's direction. "Tattletale says one more step and the sniper team is putting an anti-tank round in your knee."

Nanku stared.

"And she says 'yes, they can see you because you show up just fine in infrared.'"

Nanku was past being infuriated about that. At a point, it was simply banal.

Although…

"Where was Imp?" Nanku asked aloud.

Heads turned to focus on her, and she deactivated her cloak. The truck was gone. She'd never keep up with it on foot and she lacked a vehicle.

No matter. She knew who she was looking for now and she'd find a way to get them. Those girls knew something and whatever it was Nanku wanted it. Later.

First, "Why was Imp not watching me?"

Foil and Parian both stared at her. Rather, the blood staining her armor and skin. None of it hers.

"You were supposed to be hanging out with your mom," Regent lied.

Nonsense. "I left. Plenty of time to send someone. And Imp was watching her too."

Nanku pointed at Bitch.

"What's her point?" Foil asked, tilting her head toward Parian.

Nanku fixed her eyes on the phone and snarled. A sniper team? Either it didn't exist, or they were just outside her range. They got that awfully quick for a moment's notice. Thinking of it, the rest of the Undersiders arrived very quickly. They were already on their way when the fight started. Had to be.

Foil put it together. "God damnit, Tattletale."

"What?" Parian asked. She tilted her head back to the phone, listening.

No wonder Tattletale and her mother were friends.

Parian sighed and held the phone out. "I'm putting you on speaker."

"Do not do that," Tattletale said from wherever she was. "And you just went ahead and did it."

"I'm not your messenger girl. Say it yourself."

Tattletale groaned.

"I'm leaving," Nanku warned.

"Do I need to mention the snipers?"

Nanku offered no response and turned on her heel.

No shot came.

She expected that.

"Jesus Christ, it wasn't you." Tattletale groaned. "It was Bitch. The Pure were baiting her, and I had Imp following her around tonight because sooner or later they were going to do something that would work."

Bitch grunted. She looked to Cassie and nodded and the girl sent Sunny into a loping run down the road back toward the truck.

"Screw me," Tattletale continued, "You weren't supposed to be here! Figured Weaver's whole 'I can fix her' plan would backfire spectacularly because we both know the woman is in denial and dealing with emotional baggage ten miles long, but you just have to stick yourself in the middle of anything that could have a higher body count."

"Oh, is that all?" Regent looked toward the lot. "When you put it like that…"

Fenja and Menja. They were who the snipers were really for, Nanku realized. Maybe. She wasn't sure she believed Tattletale but in the end, it didn't matter.

She'd gotten something she wanted and more. Her cooperation had ceased to be of any benefit to her.

"I'm still looking for what 'QC' is," Tattletale insisted. "We—"

Nanku started off and said nothing.

She didn't like being manipulated, and she'd been baited with something she wanted enough for one night. She couldn't find unexpected gains twice in a row. No one was that lucky.

Dusk and Dawn took to the air and flew ahead and Nanku ran toward the nearest alley. She did see the snipers eventually. They entered her range a block over. A pair of men on their bellies atop a van on a parking garage. One with a rifle and one with a scope of some sort.

Fenja and Menja were already ahead.

It made no difference to Nanku to activate her cloak and stalk around. She slipped into the garage, got behind the pair, and did a quiet inspection of their attire.

She didn't like being targeted even if she wasn't the original target.

Subtly, Nanku took out a tracker and let a wasp carry it. The men had a gun case shaped to hold the rifle. A foam filler with a cutout to keep it safe.

Nanku used her wasp to slip the tracker into the case under the foam where it wouldn't be readily seen and then walked the wasp back out.

The men were chatting to themselves as they lay there. Nothing interesting. It seemed Tattletale didn't tell her minions much because neither knew what was going on.

"Lot of dead Nazis," one mumbled.

"Shame."

Nanku would wonder why anyone would choose to be a Nazi when everyone hated them so much, but it didn't seem like Nazis were a rational sort to begin with. No matter.

Her tracker planted, Nanku slipped away. She pinged the device and the position appeared on her biomask with a marker for distance. If nothing else, she'd find where the men stored their weapons and could inspect the location.

For her own interests.

Later.

Fate was on her side.

Moving away from the vehicle, she focused her attention on another. Three men inside, right next to the van with a sniper team on top.

Coincidences like that weren't coincidences.

Altering the vision mode on her mask, Nanku leaned closer and looked through the walls of the vehicles.

She remembered the basement of her mother's apartment. Observers.

Crouching, Nanku quietly drew her knife and reached under the vehicle. With the lightest pressure, she turned her knife over and over again until the tip pierced the flimsy underbelly. Programming her computer, she removed a small device from her belt and pressed it to the opening.

The sensors were technically for tracking movement underground or through rock. Burrowing creatures were difficult to stalk. They needed to be baited and baited prey were some of the most dangerous.

Hearing words, Nanku grinned and was pleased the device worked anyway.

"Yeah," one of the men said. "Yeah, we're tracking them now… Nah. Not gonna happen boss. Tinker-tech stuff. What you pay us for. We can track the krauts out to five miles no problem."

What was it her mother said about Valkyrie? She could change her size 'or something.' Before her mother was a cape.

A cape who could change her size.

Nanku reactivated her cloak and stalked into the shadows. She mused to herself, wondering if some force was conspiring to give her what she wanted. Fenja and Menja recognized something in Nanku that infuriated them, and Valkyrie was suspected to have reason to kill a Dockworker because she was the member of the Empire who ran rackets on transit companies.

Transit.

Transport.

Nanku flexed her finger and set herself to get back to work.

One way or another, she smelled fate in the wind.

And Tattletale might be a presumptuous little gremlin, but at least she was a useful presumptuous little gremlin.

~ ~ ~

Rachel lost track of Nanku as she slipped away.

That cloak wasn't perfect up close. Once Rachel noticed the flicker and learned to spot it was easy, but at a distance, it worked fine. Especially in the dark.

"Welp." Aisha shrugged. "This is why we don't have friends."

"It's why you don't have friends," Lily replied.

"That's really Weaver's daughter?" Sabah asked. "Why didn't anyone bother to tell us about this?"

Lily sighed. "It's that girl who was looking for Emma."

"Her?"

"Yeah. Thought she looked weirdly familiar and when"—she paused, remembering something—"I should have put it together. Emma said she was some nut looking for five minutes of fame when I talked to her. Guess she was the real thing if both Weaver and Tattletale believe her."

Rachel patted Angelica's leathery neck and let the massive hound turn herself about. The other dogs followed, pointing their eyes after the leader and stalking back through the lot.

"Where are you going?" Foil asked.

"Where do you think?" Regent asked back. "Dogbrain dog. Dog dog. Dog."

"Woof woof," Rachel replied dryly.

"Yarp."

Foil shook her head, which was the point of the exchange.

"We should leave," Parian said. "This is… This is a lot of… Did she do this?"

"Didn't figure you'd care," Imp replied.

"I'm a pacifist."

"She could if she wanted to," Lily translated. "She just doesn't."

Rachel left earshot but glanced to the flanks of the lot. The bodies and vehicles littered it. She'd taken little care in controlling her dogs as they ran the Nazis off, but Nanku tore a bloody swathe through them without a care.

Rachel knew that had saved Cassie at the least. She wasn't going to judge. Dead Nazis who'd brutalize dogs for bait were no tragedy for the world.

The casual manner to it all…

Like a hunter, Rachel thought. A hunter who saw no difference between a man or woman and any other animal.

Life was life, Nanku said. And death was death.

What made any one life any more important than another and any death any more tragic?

Rachel wasn't one to ponder such things, but she thought she saw the outline of it. The weird way of thinking behind it all. Not usual for a cape. Lots of capes had weird ways of thinking. Rachel knew that well.

For Nanku though, she barely seemed to think of herself as a cape at all.

A hunter first and foremost. She carried it in her every step. Even her thoughts oriented around it.

Strange.

Rachel dismounted Angelica to reenter the building. There was a pair of women and one man cowering in some room that she waved off. They ran and she shouted a 'hold' to keep her dogs from lashing out as they followed her. Rachel thought all the blood outside was enough.

Let them run.

Maybe the next lot would be smarter and stay away from bloodsport.

She found the kennels—and the dogs—where she'd left them inside. All arrayed into a pair of rows stacked two high. Most of the dogs were mid-sized mutts in bad shape. The bait dogs were smaller and whimpered instead of snarled. A few had collars on them. Like the sick fucks just grabbed pets off the street or out of yards.

Fucking Nazis.

Rachel kept her snarl low and her face passive. It came naturally when she wanted it too.

She checked the kennels one by one and waited for Cassie to bring the truck around. Behind her, Angelica maintained her bulk while the other dogs began to shrink. Peeling so many out of their husks would be a chore but Rachel owed it to them. Their bodies were pot-marked with bloody wounds and scars. That many bullets… Rachel expected something but not that much.

One of the men yelled 'it's off' at the end.

What was off? What had they planned? A lot more than Rachel expected.

Parian came in. She looked at the ring with stiff steps in her legs and a shudder. "Are they okay?"

Rachel was careful with her hands and eyes. The dogs watched her warily. Some snapped their teeth. Others snarled. They bore scars and bruises. Barely healed wounds. Typical of 'fighting' dogs.'

"No," Rachel answered. And humans called themselves 'civilized.'

"You know it wasn't our idea, right?" Parian wrapped her arms around herself. "Another one of Tattletale's brilliant plans she doesn't bother to explain."

"Enemy has a thinker," Rachel answered. "Best not to explain everything."

"Really?"

Rachel huffed.

She didn't have to like it for it to make sense. If anything, she felt a small pride. Lisa had finally done something. Anything. Made a move to try and solve the Pure problem rather than sitting back for some impossible perfect solution to magically appear before her.

It was a step.

"I don't think I'll ever get you," Sabah said. "One second you seem normal. Rough but normal. Ish. Next, you'll kill people to protect some dogs."

Rachel kept herself in check.

As far as people went, she liked Sabah. Sabah was gentle but hard. She'd fight when push came to shove but she didn't like fighting. She liked dresses and fabrics and smiles, and she really liked making out with Lily. Those were things Rachel was ambivalent about but Sabah was good people.

She didn't want to snap at the girl.

"Alan Mikhail."

"Who?"

"He wrote a book about animals. Lots about dogs."

"Somehow, you reading a book about dogs doesn't surprise me."

Rachel made Cassie read the book to her. She'd gotten better at reading herself but something like some college historian's book was too complicated.

She wasn't sure she remembered the part she wanted right. Rachel wasn't stupid but she wasn't college smart. Most people weren't in her experience—especially the ones who went to college—but she could respect those who were.

"Dogs shit, eat, sleep, and are pampered," Rachel said. "All dogs do is wag tails and make cute faces."

"Okay…"

"Maybe they're the ones more evolved."

Sabah stared. "Seriously?"

"No."

Rachel wasn't dumb but she thought she understood why a smart person might say a stupid thing. It wasn't really about the thing. It was about… thinking itself. Seeing. Changing the way one thought or saw, even for a moment.

"People think they're better," Rachel said with barely contained rage. "They're not. They're just smarter."

Dogs don't wage war. They don't sell drugs to puppies. They don't bait each other into pointless fights for someone's entertainment. They survived. They weren't dumb. Maybe they couldn't read or write books about the mysteries of life, but most people couldn't do that either.

"Smarter isn't better," Rachel insisted.

She could tell by the silence Sabah didn't get it.

No one did. Not really. Even Cassie didn't get it, as good a minion as she was and as earnestly as she loved dogs. She was still human and she thought she was better.

Rachel rose as the sound of the Truck's engine carried on the air. It was coming around back toward the loading dock.

Cassie really was a good minion. And good company.

And Rachel thought of Dusk and Dawn. They weren't dogs. They weren't even domesticated, Rachel thought. There was a wildness to their strange eyes. An untamed instinct and hunger that bowed only because Nanku was the one asking.

Nanku near doted on the giant bugs. The way she meticulously cleaned their wings for them with attention paid to what they liked. The respect she paid their instincts and nature. The way she tended to Dawn's injury and went out of her way to keep them safe even in a fight. Only using them to strike from shadows and behind. Never as fodder to take blows for her.

She was hiding that she was a master and controlling the Twins with a power well, but she didn't treat Dusk or Dawn like things she simply controlled.

They were alive, and Nanku respected it the thing itself.

For someone who killed fucking Nazis by the truckload, she had a respect for life.

Rachel shifted uneasily, unsure if she'd ever met anyone she so readily understood before.

***

Foreshadoooooowwwws.

Next week a Tattletale chapter that'll maybe change some people's mind. Maybe not. Gonna be interesting.

Beta by @Grim Tide.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

If it wasn't one thing, it was another thing entirely.

She raised the phone back to her ear. "Define 'it's off.'"

"Just what they shouted," Aisha answered. "'It's off.'"

Lisa sighed and leaned back in her seat. "I knew Weaver was never going to keep Nanku indoors—fat chance of that—but I didn't expect she'd go Rambo first chance."

"Yeah." Aisha paused. Dramatically. "Probably should have thought of that. Probably should have thought about letting Bitch run into a trap too."

"Rachel's a big girl. She can handle it."

She was probably happy they were finally doing something. Not that Lisa had a choice. Once the Pure started baiting Bitch with dead dogs there was only so much delaying that could be done. Might as well set the trap off in full knowledge it was a trap.

But a bunch of guns on trucks and the wonder twins? As a prelude to something bigger that was ambitious, to say the least.

Fucking thinkers.

"Doesn't make any sense," Lisa mumbled.

"Tell me about it."

"Fenja and Menja aren't enough to contain Bitch and anyone who might come to help her. Nanku or no Nanku."

"I wasn't actually—"

"And just those two? That's not a sure thing in the least."

"Maybe I'm not emphasizing the stupid number of guns they had. Fifty cal shit too. Like army stuff."

Still not enough. That wouldn't stop the dogs. Only slow them down. It was a delaying tactic at best.

"How many?" Lisa asked.

"Let's just say there's a big ass parking lot here and you'd have an easier time looking for a needle in a haystack than finding some part of this place not shot to hell."

Okay. That was a lot of guns. A whole lot of guns.

Still. "The point is, where the hell were the rest of the Pure? What kind of trap is that?"

"We could have let Stabby McStabsFace stab some face."

Lisa shook her head and glanced at one of her other phones. Coil might have been a bastard, but he paid for professionalism. His goons were her goons and they might not be capable of taking on capes in an open fight but she hardly needed them for that.

"The twins are too hard to hold," Lisa lied. "We've still got Alabaster and he's easy to hold."

Twins would just grow and break out unless drugged up and drugged up meant Lisa wouldn't get much from them. Better to let them run and see where they went. Whoever was running the Pure was too smart to let that go too far but it was a start.

Only a damned arrogant idiot goes running at a thinker with no idea what their power even does.

Lisa knew full well what Coil's power did and she still got fucked.

"Welp," Aisha mused, "what now?"

"Now?" Lisa spun her chair around and faced the room's other occupant. "Pick through the place. Grab phones. All that shit."

"Right. What about the dead meat?"

"One upside, I doubt the PRT will think Nanku could cross so much ground so fast in one night. And who the hell would expect her to go from awful family reunions to killing a few dozen people?"

Lisa shivered. She'd made her peace with killing the occasional asshole a long time ago. She even accepted that a good number of people died who did not have it coming. Life was fucked that way. Some people just drew the ultimate short straw.

She never went about killing anyone and anything who so much as minorly offended her.

She sure as hell didn't view every living breathing thing as an equal killing opportunity.

Lisa wouldn't shed a tear for Nazis, but Nanku's entire moral framework was downright alien. And she wasn't like Rachel. Nanku's powers weren't fucking her head. It was all upbringing and that was so much worse.

"Where'd she go?" Lisa asked.

"Fuck if I know," Aisha replied. "You know she can turn invisible, right? Like legit."

"Regent."

"His shit ain't that precise and you know it."

Damn. "Now she's back to running around and probably making corpses."

"Oh no. Dead Nazis. The tragedy."

"I don't give a rat's ass about Nazis. I care about literally everyone else. You remember how this shit went down before Aisha. Grue—"

"Want to take a moment," Imp asked coldly, "and think about that one Tats?"

Lisa hissed. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah I get it, but Bitch has a point too. All the scheming isn't making the Pure go away and looking like we're doing nothing makes us look weak. Brian might have been a total ass about the importance of street cred, but he was right. We need our reputations and we're pushing it."

Lisa wasn't dumb. She knew the score.

What no one else got was that they were dealing with something way more serious than Iron Rain Two-Point-Oh and some old Nazis they'd driven out of town once before. There was a serious thinker backing the Pure and tonight proved it. There'd been a plan and the only thing that threw it off was Nanku's sudden appearance.

Baiting Bitch took no genius, but that only worried Lisa more. It was such a simple thing to do, yet it took weeks for anyone to do it. And what was 'it' and how did all the other Pure capes tie into it?

There were too many damn questions to be going large.

As much as Rachel wanted to think Lisa had lost her nerve since Calvert's fall, Lisa worried Rachel and the others had lost their edge. They weren't thinking long con anymore. They'd gotten used to being able to brute force every annoying problem away.

That shit wasn't going to work now.

And Lisa felt like a broken record in her own head.

"What about the dogs? The fighting ones."

"Bitch, Cassie, and Sabah are loading them up now."

"Get out of there fast. And let's check around to see if we can find an ambush at any of our safe houses. We'll have to sweep the city."

"Oh joy."

"You know you're the best one for the job."

"Until there's a claymore tied to a door."

"One time that happened!"

"That's too many times, Tats."

"You were fine!"

"It's funny you think that's the point."

Lisa hung up because at that point Aisha was just having fun and there was work to do.

Spinning her chair around, Lisa stood and walked across the room to the obnoxiously white Nazi hanging from a line made of a material unknown to man.

Nanku somehow managed to forget about it.

Which was good because Lisa learned a few things. First, that it couldn't be cut. Tinker-tech bolt cutters gave before whatever the line was made of. Second, the alloy wasn't tinker-tech. It was some kind of super-material that couldn't even be properly analyzed because it just didn't break.

As if they didn't have enough problems.

Lisa crouched and looked Alabaster in the eye.

"You have any idea how hard I work to cultivate this image?"

Lisa flicked at his brow.

"It's fucking hard. First I had to get over being pissed anyone might think I'm not the smartest person in the room. That was a damn quest, let me tell you, but it's a whole lot harder to appear like a broken sad-sack when you're getting uppity over every little slight. So yeah. I had to work on myself for that one."

Lisa tried not to linger on the bitterness that came with that journey. She knew what Calvert was about. She saw the gears turning in his head. Thank god the guy was just an abusive control freak and not a full-out rapist.

He was enough of a creep.

"And it's not like I'm not damaged. I am, but playing it up? That's a vulnerable place for me. I got to wear my scars on my sleeve and let everyone know they're there. That really fucking sucks. It works. Everyone thinks I'm putting up a strong front because I am. Don't even have to fake it."

She was pretty sure Aisha and Alec knew. They played the fools but that was only because being serious wasn't enough fun. She thought Bitch knew too but Lisa wondered. They'd never been the closest and she'd long learned her power was far from infallible.

Parian and Foil were too busy blaming her for their own choices to ever think much about it.

"So," Lisa mused, all diatribe'd out, "anything you want to say?"

Alabaster stared blankly. "Are you a natural B-cup or is that a pushup bra? Cause you're Aryan enough and I'd fuck you but—"

"Yeah." Lisa pushed the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. "Should have seen that coming."

Five seconds later Alabaster was fine.

So she shot him again.

"Huh. That is therapeutic. Guess mindless violence is totally fine when it's directed at complete wastes of human life. Which I recognize is an ironic thing to say when repeatedly shooting a Nazi in the head, but, paradox of tolerance and all that."

Alabaster shook his head as he came back. "You know that hurts right?"

"And you know you're numb to it so don't tempt me."

"And they call me a sociopath."

"Thank Coil." Lisa smiled sardonically. "I used to just be a bit bitchy."

"That's your supervillain origin story? Lame."

"Right? Just really? One douchebag blackmails me. Makes my life hell. Totally screws me over. You'd think I'd come out better for it, not"—another pull of the trigger—"that. That right there."

She waited until his power kicked in.

"Maybe it's just 'cause you come back, I don't know. Or you're a Nazi and frankly, you can just go straight to hell. If anyone deserves it, it's fucking Nazis."

Alabaster rolled his eyes. "Like I've never heard that one before."

"You're used to it. We can skip the pity party. If you're gonna complain about anything, I'd think you'd complain about Rain and her stupid revenge scheme. I mean come on. You were there. Weaver didn't get Purity or Theo Anders killed. That shit's on Panacea and we all know how that spiraled into the shitter."

Alabaster shrugged from his upside-down position. "You know the Nazi National anthem. Just following orders."

"Oh come on. You're a Nazi but even you must hate your boss. I'm my own boss and I hate me sometimes."

"Little brat wants revenge. Oh well. Is what it is."

"But on Weaver? I mean, why not Carol Dallon? She's still alive and believe me she did Amelia zero favors. That girl needed therapy. All the therapy. Or at least an institution. At least two of the Travelers are still alive. Why not go after them? One crisis in BB we could have handled but Echidna spiraling into Phage was a clusterfuck five steps off from ending the world."

"You really think that's gonna work?"

"What?"

"The whole getting me to reveal things by buddying up to me."

"Well, it is worth a shot." Another shell casing clattered against the floor. She apologized after he came back. "Sorry, just—It was right there. Had to go for it."

"Jesus." Alabaster sighed. "Why do you even care? She's a hero."

Lisa shrugged. "Maybe I'm gay. Promise not to put me in a camp?"

"Really?" He clearly didn't believe her. "Suit yourself. The bitch popped two brats out and she's still flat as a board."

"Hey, you're into idolizing a fucking moron with a bad haircut who killed tens of millions of people you also want to kill while at the same time insisting he didn't—"

Lisa froze.

"Oh no," Alabaster deadpanned. "You psycho-analyzed me. Clearly, I'll just turn my life around now. Join the good guys. Makeup for all the things I—"

Lisa rammed the gun into his mouth to shut him up.

"Two, you say?"

He mumbled around the gun but Lisa kept the barrel pressed into his jaw.

Two. He absolutely said two.

"How do you..."

Her power whirled as she uncorked the cap.

They knew Weaver had two children. That wasn't possible by just looking at her figure or guessing by her age. That demanded concrete information.

Maybe they could guess one child. The whole summer camp thing and the aftermath. Weaver's crusade against Nilbog—misguided of all fucked up shit cakes to throw atop the horror show. Someone could guess she'd lost a child in the camp.

Could someone have tracked her real identity down from that?

Didn't matter. Weaver wasn't even a very public cape until after Rose was born. There was no absence to pin on a pregnancy and the PRT was prepared for that anyway. No, they knew.

"Fuck."

Lisa pulled the trigger and spun on her feet.

She dialed quickly and barely waited for the tone to pick up.

"Jesus," Aisha answered. "Tat's we just star—"

"Get going to Weaver's apartment now."

"Um, I wouldn't dare to—"

"NOW IMP!"

Lisa hung up and dialed another number.

"Come on, Anne. Come on. Answer."

She didn't and Lisa cursed.

She tapped a text out and started toward the exit.


EMERGENCY
Pure know where you live.

Her mind raced, spiraling around the questions that mattered.

Perfect time for a text to come in from the survey team.


Got a problem
Truck is dragging
Think we have a stowaway

"How the hell did she even…"

Lisa trailed off. Going after Weaver was one thing. If they were going after Annette, that was entirely different. Dauntless was her fucking husband. An attack on her was an attack on him and then Aster's petty revenge and Nanku's kill-everything attitude would only be two problems in a heap of shit.

"Alright, genius. You've got a team, a cooperative hero, and someone who likes killing things for sport and isn't going to stop. What next?"

She sighed. Sometimes being a thinker really sucked.

"Screw it. Have lemons, make lemonade."

~ ~ ~

There were times Sarah wondered if it was all worth the trouble.

They were all such drama queens.

"No!" Jess threw the shield and left it to clatter past her sister off-screen. "It was it."

"It?" Crusader's frown was clear in his voice if not his stance. He tried too damn hard. If not for his power the act would never work. "Define it."

"It!" Jess screamed into the microphone. "That fucking thing that killed Heith!"

Heads turned left and right across the screens. Most of the Pure's capes were present on the call. Only Storm Tiger and Cricket were absent. The two never were team players, and less so after Hookwolf bought it in the years after Phage.

But Heith?

"Who is Heith?" Sarah asked.

"I don't know."

Figured. Aster didn't know anything. Never did. Never would.

Oh well. You work with the tools you have.

"Is that what killed Victor?" Othala asked. She sat at the back of a room, facing away from the camera. Moping, of course.

"Yes!" Jess snapped. "Yes! That thing! The invisible fucking thing that came out of nowhere and cut her fucking head off!"

"It's not it," Nessa answered. "That cape was ten feet tall. This one wasn't."

"Define it," Crusader repeated. "What happened? What cape?"

Jess hissed and threw her hands up.

Rune watched from an apartment and muttered something to someone off-screen. Quiet and miserable about her life choices. Too proud to admit it though. That was oddly common. People who knew they'd done something shit and were suffering for it but just couldn't admit it.

They'd rather do anything than admit they were wrong.

"Someone explain," Crusader insisted. "What happened?"

Nessa's expression softened. "Stranger. Lots of knives and points. Ambushed the trucks right when we started and began killing everyone."

"Just like the house Victor and Alabaster went to," Othala mumbled.

"How'd you see anything if it was invisible?" Crusader asked.

"Wounds," Nessa answered. "Got a look at a few and it announced itself. Sort of."

"While invisible?"

"Invisible except when its eyes flashed. That's what's setting Jess off."

"Why?"

"Because the cape that killed Heith did the same thing!" Jess snapped from somewhere the camera couldn't see. "Flashed its eyes right after to fucking mock us!"

"But it had a visor," Ness said. "This one had six eyes and it was smaller."

"And it played no games! No holds barred! It went right for the throat. It killed first and asked questions later and this is the same thing, Ness! It tried to—"

"Do something," Aster said.

"Do what?" Sarah asked back. She leaned in, looking closely at what appeared to be bruises on Jessica's throat. Like she'd been strangled.

"I don't know! Everyone's fighting! They shouldn't be fighting! We're supposed to be making Weaver pay!"

Work with what you have, Sarah told herself.

Reaching over, she pressed a button and spoke through the microphone..

"It's probably Accord's group," she lied. Heads rose and turned. Shoulders tensed. Crusader was scowling under his mask, not that anyone else could see it. "I told you this would happen. The Undersiders can't keep the other groups in line if we start picking at them."

She could see the gears turning.

Not one of them really believed that, or at least, they saw through the attempt at manipulation.

But that's what made Nazis so damn perfect. It's not that they were idiots—they were but so was everyone.

It's that they were conformist little twits.

"Seems someone brought in a ringer," Sarah continued. "One not afraid to get their hands bloody. Question is, do the Undersiders know about it, and is it targeting them too?"

"It helped Bitch," Nessa said. "If not for whoever they were—"

"Is Bitch flipping sides? We don't know. That's why we called it off. We might have had a bigger impact than we expected."

And conformist little twits loved being told what good boys and girls they were.

"We're making progress," Sarah encouraged. "We'll just have to try a little harder."

Aster shifted behind her, obviously confused. Of course she was. Phage wanted a new sister so badly, she'd all but ruined the poor girl. Five and a half feet of teenager at the mental development of a first grader.

Not quite a conformist twit, but still easily managed.

"And then Weaver pays?" she asked.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Of course. What else are we doing?"

Aster pouted and turned away. "Don't care then."

"Leave the details to me."

Sarah watched her go and looked back at the monitors. The wall displayed the various hideouts and the entire bunker as well. One of Coil's old places. And hilariously, one poor little Lisa hadn't even had the thought to look into. Knowing her—and Sarah knew her better than anyone—she tried to think of the place as little as possible.

That someone might dig the entrance open and slip in was beyond her. For the moment.

And in the little conference call, heads were looking about and waiting.

Nazis just didn't know what to do without someone to tell them how 'strong and independent' they were, with an appropriate target to point them at.

"Let's check around," Sarah said. "This cape is stalking us. We should assume everything is compromised and switch all communications and vital locations until we know more."

Jess glared at the camera nearest her. "That thing—"

"I'll figure out who it is. For now, you busy bees get back to work. There's a race war to win."

With that, Sarah cut the line and refocused. She didn't really care if they liked her. They didn't and never would.

But the mystery cape.

Well, that was an unexpected development.

Sarah brought the camera feed up and looked closely. The angle was poor. A street corner facing the old distribution center they'd set their ambush in. Sarah hadn't even noticed the cape at first. The angle was bad and their cloaking tech was advanced enough.

The only clue—aside from the corpses—was when a shimmering figure approached Jess after she started shrinking to escape something winding around her neck. It most appeared only when the lenses of a mask flashed. At least, they appeared to be lenses. Six of them arranged in trios on either side.

Like a bug's eyes.

Sarah tapped her chin curiously.

Heith died what? Ten years ago? Curious.

Very curious.

"Alright," Sarah mused to herself. "We've got a team of useful idiots, a stupid other me with no idea where she's standing, and a mysterious corpse generator. What next?"

Sarah's twisted mouth grinned.

"What would Lisa do?"

***

With two Lisa's for the price of one! Muahahahahahahaa!

Just rounding back to the Echidna/Phage scenario and grabbing an other idea out of Wildbow's unused toolbox. With the added backstory that in this timeline, Heith wasn't killed by the Teeth but by Pe'dte! Though the Teeth probably took the blame at the time.

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[Phyrexian]

Aaaaaah, an UNKNOWN Tattletale clone is actually a surprisingly reasonable explanation for how much trouble Lisa and Weaver are having with the Pure.

 

[Honorguard Ra]

Aaaaaah, an UNKNOWN Tattletale clone is actually a surprisingly reasonable explanation for how much trouble Lisa and Weaver are having with the Pure.

Click to shrink...

D'oh. Sarah. Echidna clones HATE the original, and we have a Tattletale clone using the Original's real name.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

Hitching a ride on a van was harder than a big truck.

Last time Nanku stabbed her blades into the vehicle and held on. She suspected the occupants would notice if she tried it at present. Unfortunately, the van's tires were smaller, and she had to hold herself up quite a bit to not scrape onto the road.

It was a workout.

But it kept her ear close to the small hole she'd made. That was useful.

"Go straight and take the next exit."

"Parallel roads?"

"For the next five miles. We can cross over behind them if we need to."

"On it."

She also couldn't see anything herself. Even the second van following the first—the snipers entered it as they packed up their gear—was hard to see from so low to the ground.

Dusk and Dawn's eyes swept back and forth from above as her only guides for where they were going.

Nanku couldn't tell what vehicle Tattletale's men were following. They had a five-mile range—according to them—and they were using it. The target vehicle was out of sight most of the time and amid all the cars, trucks, and vans Nanku had no idea which was which from above.

They were following it out of the city and into the forested hills to the north.

That worked. Nanku took the chance to grab every wasp, hornet, bee, and wolf spider. Anything big that stung or bit, and even smaller insects that might be useful. Dragonflies and fruit flies had decent eyes. Crickets and grasshoppers were easier to hear through than other bugs, though still a challenge. Nanku got them moving with the rest of the swarm through the woods. Occasionally she used Dusk or Dawn as carriers, but their weight and heat needed to be managed.

They'd need to eat again before the night was up.

If they ever stopped somewhere.

How far could the Pure be hiding out of the city? Nanku wasn't so good with miles but she knew Yautja measures of distance. Twelve qan was a long way even accounting for a vehicle. Were they trying to avoid detection by producing a wide radius?

They were still moving.

At least it was time to spend on other things.

Some of the men suspected of Danny Hebert's murder were dead. Nanku used the controls of her computer to operate her mask's visor. She'd recorded all of the pages from the file and taken additional images from computer monitors and phone screens. Unsurprisingly, criminals did not live long lives.

Jamal Ortiz was killed within a few months of her father's death.

Nathan Dryer a year later.

Cassidy Hudson—a man with a woman's name?—died in 2010. Killed in a gun battle over drugs.

If any of them did the deed, they were already dead. That wasn't Nanku's preference but it would be simple. If she could prove it somehow.

She wasn't sure how to go about that.

What was left to find that the local enforcers and her mother had not? She'd poured over the records every chance she could in search but hardly knew where to begin. This was a very different sort of trail.

Discounting the three dead men, there were still a dozen more 'persons of interest.' Dozens of witnesses beyond them. Individuals named in the reports, papers, and statements.

Maybe that was a start.

Perhaps after so many years, someone was willing to say something they hadn't before. Remember something. Perhaps Nanku could push a little harder. Would revealing herself as Taylor Hebert have an effect?

Maybe. Maybe not. Nanku was at a loss for how to proceed, and the threat to her mother and Rose was far more immediate.

"In here," the man above said. "Turn right."

Nanku had Dawn look back. The van had never gone that fast and it went slower after taking an exit from the highway. That gave Nanku plenty of time to sweep for useful bugs and fly the Twins ahead to search.

They were in a cluster of forested hills and roads dotted with houses. Nice and expensive looking. Few office buildings or businesses aside from gas stations. A few larger buildings looked like schools or sports centers. Very few cars on the road. Most were parked and inactive. The house lights were dimmed or off entirely. People inside were asleep. They paid the passing vans no mindl.

Both vans drove through the neighborhood's twisting streets. They split at a point and started weaving in and out of one another's paths. It struck Nanku as bizarre, but she realized the goal.

They were checking to see if they were being followed.

The other vehicle must be who the man managing the monitors was talking to. He kept tapping messages out on his phone. Nanku tried to get a fly on his hand more than once, but it never worked.

No matter.

Fenja and Menja knew something.

Pe'dte didn't kill at random. She didn't simply expose herself. If they'd seen her and lived, something happened. Given the women's ages, Nanku guessed they were only a few years older than her. They'd have been children when Pe'dte was chasing the eggs. Maybe that was how they survived.

But why were they in a position to see her?

That couldn't be a coincidence.

Medhall. The Nazis. The eggs.

There was a line connecting them together. Nanku needed only to find what it was. The aligning of her goals in part was a pleasant convenience, but unimportant.

Both vans lined up again once they were certain they weren't being followed. They drove to the very back of the neighborhood and turned down a dirty back road that dead-ended thirty feet down a hill. They stopped there, surrounded by trees on either side and shrouded.

"Alright. Let's gear up and dig in."

"Think they'd pick a less obvious hideout."

"They're Nazis. No one ever said they were smart."

The doors opened and boots stepped out. Nanku held herself still and quiet. Waited for them to give her an opening.

It came surprisingly quickly.

All the men moved to the second van and gathered around one side. Some removed small white cartons from their clothes. Another drew a small silver box. The cap flipped and exposed a lighter. They were taking a smoke break.

Nanku took the chance and shimmied toward the front of her ride. She drew herself out slowly and quietly, standing at a speed that would produce the least shimmer and keep anyone from noticing her presence.

Then she waited just a few breaths to be sure no one was coming back for something.

When they didn't, she crept around to the back of the van and looked through the open doors.

The entire right wall was monitors. Screens and displays showing lots of things she didn't understand. The only one that seemed to matter was the right-most. That screen showed the familiar lines of a street map with a yellow dot at the center, another slightly behind it, and a single red dot to the northwest. Tucked tight in the back of the next neighborhood over what appeared to be a spacious patch of land much larger than the Bakeman's.

That would do.

Nanku turned away and sent the Twins ahead. Dusk and Dawn's eyes were already focused and could make out the lines. A large house—very large—that looked more like two houses stuck together than a single home. It was huge with three floors, multiple chimneys, and a driveway that was a circle with four different cars parked on its outer edge.

So multiple targets.

That would do too.

The air popped and Nanku looked over her shoulder.

Tattletale waved a hand and shook her head. "Fifty grand down the drain. So much for Fiji this year."

Nanku drew her knife.

The men were all gathered at the other van and looking away while they smoked.

Tattletale raised her hand. "Not stopping you. Complete waste of effort. Also, the Pure are targeting W and R IRL, so… Yeah. Kind of have to toss out the soft gloves and go brass knuckles anyway."

W and R?

"I've already got the Undersiders cleaning up and circling back to check on them," Tattletale continued. "Whatever plan the Pure had tonight was called off when you threw a wrench in the works so three cheers for happy miracles."

Weaver and Rose, Nanku realized.

…

"IRL?"

Tattletale frowned. "In real life. I.E. out of costume. They're going after who they really are. That's crossing a big damn line anyway. Unwritten rules are flimsy as hell, but capes still give a damn about them because we all have to sleep sometime. That's a fast way to set every city in the country on fire. Whole world goes to shit overnight. Everyone loses."

And the Pure were crossing it for revenge.

Nanku didn't really get the whole concept, but she also didn't care.

"So you do you." Tattletale shrugged. "I'll stand over here and watch for my own reasons, but I won't get in your way going forward. Waste of both our time and effort to try. Bright side, I get to tell the white hats the Pure are breaking the unwritten rules and that means they're going to care a bit less that someone is killing them off."

Nanku turned and proceeded into the woods.

She could have done all that quietly by simply shutting up. Whatever.

"I'm just here risking your wrath because I don't want your mom to bury you twice."

Nanku stopped and sighed.

"Last time the Undersiders went up against a thinker," Tattletale babbled. "I knew exactly what his power did, and I still got fucked unroyally. You don't fuck with thinkers out for blood. We find the most creative ways to get it."

How very good for her, Nanku thought. "Point."

"Point is I don't know what this thinker does. I've been trying to figure it out before anything big happens but they're smart and that's worse. For all I know you're walking into a trap right now. They could be a precog. A planner. And intrinsic. Any number of things. Be fucking careful."

She was really lucky Nanku didn't want to be spiteful. Even that wasn't enough to stop the temptation.

"Bitch is right."

"About what?"

"You talk too much."

"Yeah. That's fair."

Nanku wasn't sure if admitting it was better or more annoying.

Whatever.

If she came to deliver a 'helpful' warning, it was delivered and Nanku had business to attend to.

"Also I wasn't stringing you along," Tattletale called out as Nanku proceeded into the woods. "I've been looking into QC and the camp because fuck whoever did that. I haven't got them yet, but I do have a string of murders and blood baths stretching from Niamey to Lisbon and I think—"

She stopped and sighed.

"And you already know about that part somehow. Whatever. Point is I'm working on it."

Nanku kept walking.

The Twins fanned out through the air over the house with a swam of smaller bugs. Nanku found cameras. Alarms. A lot of security, but most of it was obvious except for the few parts that weren't.

Nothing she couldn't handle. All her planning for getting into the police station would be useful after all.

She hauled herself into a tree, set to approach from the rear of the estate and get over the wall without touching it.

And as much as she didn't want to care about what Tattletale said, she did.

Targeting Rose in addition to her mother?

Well, they were Nazis. Not like they had any real standards.

And it didn't change anything Nanku planned to do.

***

The original version of this chapter was lost and I don't know what else I had in here. Must not have been important if I couldn't even remember it XD

Beta'd by @Grim Tide

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

Nanku slipped alongside the estate wall. She looked over the top and pulled herself up into a crouch.

Cameras in the roof overhangs were the most obvious security. Cycling her mask's vision modes revealed an array of lasers sweeping the lawns between the wall and the house. Nothing dangerous. Nanku presumed they functioned like tripwires. Sensors that could detect her cloak.

There had been so much of that Nanku was ready to write the cloak off for anything more than initial advantage.

…

To hell with it then.

Rising to her feet, Nanku dropped from the wall and proceeded across the lawn.

She avoided the lasers and the cameras. When she couldn't, she crossed into the cameras. The bugs within the house were already busy searching and located at least four hidden rooms and a rather well armed basement. Lots of guns with a half dozen women inside cleaning and fitting them.

Bodyguards? Nanku missed them earlier at the ambush. They weren't the right height of scent to be her targets.

No.

Fenja and Menja were in a dining room with another woman. They occupied opposite sides of a long table hissing back and forth. One of the twins paced and pointed at the other while her sister endured whatever tirade was being shouted.

Nanku couldn't make out all the words.

Something about a 'heap' or 'monsters.'

Monsters.

Nanku decided to assume alarms on the doors and windows.

She went around the back, slipped under an array of lasers, and hung from a wall one handed. Stairs descended into the ground to a door leading into the basement. A short hallway on the other side through a heavy looking door led into the room the women were arming themselves in.

That was tricky but they had to go.

Nanku wanted to make her time with the twins count and she'd had enough damned interference for one night.

Alright.
With her free hand, Nanku prepared several pieces of equipment along her belt and in the sleeves of her gauntlet. Dusk and Dawn landed on the roof. They stood vigil while a swarm of stinging and biting insects joined those inside the house.

Every nook. Every cranny. They flooded into the building from the top floors and gathered in the rooms upstairs.

At the back door, Nanku inhaled and popped the cap of her dissolver.

With a splash the door evaporated from the center out. No alarms. No trips. No reactions.

Not until she swung herself through the expanding opening and one of the women raised her head.

Another splash went onto the reinforced door.

The hole opened and heads turned the other way.

A shuriken flew through the gap in the door. The spinning blade cut one of the women in half, beheaded another, and cut the throat of the third on the way back. From her belt, Nanku flicked her knife into the fourth woman's throat. She grabbed a gun on the way to the floor.

The two remaining women yelped and one started moving for a panel on the wall.

With one hand Nanku caught her shuriken and threw it again. The other threw her spear underhand. A sloppy throw, but enough to trip the running woman's legs and send her sprawling over the floor.

A gun pointed at her, and Nanku swung the shuriken's blades across her chest. The weapon fell and the woman's scream was silenced when her head followed.

On the ground, one woman grasped at her spurting throat and lifted the gun in her hand. Nanku kicked the weapon away and threw her shuriken again. The arm was cut off before its hand could reach the panel. A second kick snapped one neck and another thrown knife buried itself in the last woman's skull.

"Six for six," Nanku mused. "Huh."

She collected her weapons while the swarm moved down from the top floor to the second.

The basement was an armory, and had access to the surveillance system with alarm lights and controls. It was more equipment than the PRT had at her mother's apartment.

It looked expensive.

She poured some of the dissolver over it all. If there was any evidence, she'd rather make someone work for it and call in help.

She could follow help.

Until then, the Nazi twins had questions to answer.

Fenja and Menja were still arguing.

Hooking her shuriken to her belt, Nanku pulled a line from her gauntlet and tied a noose. She ascended a set of stairs out of the basement, turned down a hall, and went up a short set of stairs. Dusk and Dawn descended from the other directions with a swarm around them.

She heard the argument as she approached and it was interesting.

"—why do we even give a shit! This whole city is fucking cursed! Let the spicks and blackies have it!"

"It was Max's city."

"They're dead!"

"It was Heith's."

"Aster isn't even hers! Theo was and Theo died because of Aster!"

"Doesn't matter and you know it."

"I know that thing was exactly what killed Heith and no weaseling is going to change that!"

Nanku came around a corner and through the passages into the room.

It was a dining chamber. A single long table between a pair of fireplaces and large tinted windows facing out opposite a staircase. Dusk and Dawn moved toward the banister above with a swarm silently moving through the shadows.

One of the blonde women sat at the table with an annoyed scowl.

The other paced back and forth and kept shouting.

The third was an older woman who looked less annoyed than disappointed. Nanku wondered why she was present, but the twin women were all she needed.

And technically, she only needed the one who had already spilled to talk.

Creeping up behind the seated woman, Nanku drew a spear and pressed the tip to the back of the chair.

The older woman saw something and started to speak but Nanku no longer needed stealth.

In a still thrust, Nanku let her spear expand through the chair and into the woman's stomach. The weapon burst, blood exposing it and splattering across the table. Her scream never made it to her mouth. The noose dropped over her head and Nanku pulled the line taut and pulled more until it began cutting into her throat.

She went rigid, completely still and wide-eyed.

"Ness!" the other woman snapped, hand reaching as she grew several inches in a blink.

"No," Nanku warned.

She thumbed the control and let her cloak drop.

The other twin paled.

"Me," Nanku confirmed. "And you'll talk, or she"—She pushed her spear out and let blood run the length of the haft—"dies."

'Ness' choked blood pooled in her seat. She tested Nanku's grip. It was subtle. Clever.

Not clever enough.

"This line will sever your throat before it breaks," Nanku warned. "Try if you like."

"Jess—"

Jess reached for a fork of all things. "Let her go or I'll—"

"Or I'll kill her."

Nanku had no patience for games.

"You've seen my kind before. Tell me. Now."

The woman found some resolve. "Or you'll what? Kill my sister and—"

"And I'll find a way to live with not knowing." With a push, Nanku twisted the spear impaling 'Ness' and drew a pained cough from the woman. "I can count backwards."

She twisted harder and Ness screamed.

The old woman was oddly conformed about it.

Jess snapped. "Fuck! What do you want?!"

"Tell me," Nanku growled. She'd already said that.

"Tell you what?" Jess went back and forth. One foot to the other. "We didn't do shit! We weren't even in costume!"

That would explain why Pe'dte never mentioned it. "Why?"

"Why?"

"Why did she hunt you?"

Jess' eyes blinked in bewilderment.

"Where were you?" Nanku's patience ran low. "Why were you there?"

"Wh—Boston. The port and I don't know! It was just some warehouse thing!"

"Medhall?"

"I don't kno—No. Some subgroup. Quality Care or something like that!"

Quality Care?

QC.

Nanku's eyes narrowed behind her mask. "Tell me where Iron Rain is."

"I don't know! We don't group up!"

Nanku supposed that made sense. No matter. Someone would come along for the bodies at some point or another. She'd simply follow them… Or she'd bait herself a trap.

That would would do.

"What is your thinker's power?" Nanku asked, just to see.

"No thinker worth their ass brags about—"

Worth a try. "Thank you."

Jess shook her head as the will to fight started entering her face. "Let my—"

Nanku pulled on the cord and ripped her spear out. She spun the weapon in hand and drew it back. Jess reacted, moving directly in Dusk's attack line as he dropped from above. His talons pierced into her collars and he wrenched her back to bite into her throat. Nanku shoved Ness' body off the chair and stabbed her spear into the woman's skull.

The old woman was unfazed. She looked back and forth like she was disappointed.

And tired.

Nanku watched her.

Something didn't feel right, but she couldn't—

The woman's eyes were her only warning.

A sudden focus knit her brow and her arm stretched. The limb reached across the entire room, grasping for Nanku's throat. The woman's fingers tightened. Pressed with surprising strength into Nanku's skin. For a moment.

Dawn forced her down, biting into the back of her neck and ripping the flesh and bone.

Nanku knocked the limb to the side and rolled her neck and shoulders.

Another parahuman with weird body powers.

Figured.

Quality Care.
That was the connection, and it was all Nanku needed.

Dusk started to chew and Nanku waved him off.

"We need that body. Eat the old woman if you're hungry."

The Twins were and while they got to work Nanku drew a second line and noosed both corpses by the ankle.

She'd see how badly the Pure wanted them back.

Nanku bound the bodies and left Dusk and Dawn to drag them out the back door. After they'd snacked a bit. Nanku used the break to rest her muscles.

She used bugs to sweep the building one last time. It wouldn't do to kill anyone by accident. Fortunately, only bodies remained. Unfortunately, nothing indicated Iron Rain's location, but the equipment in the basement came from boxes and the boxes bore an address.

That was something she could pursue.

Especially if she made it seem like some of her kills were still alive.

Nanku found phones and selected three to set as bait. Jess and Ness had theirs in their pockets. They would stay where they were. The house was overly large for so few occupants. A family home, Nanku presumed. Many of the pictures on the walls and tables bore familial resemblances to Fenja and Menja.

The Pure weren't the only ones who could set traps, and Nanku could do it without debasing herself entirely.

Most of the work was ultimately moving about the house and waiting. Automatic and completed with little thought.

"Go." Nanku waved the twins out and they hauled their cargo away.

The corpses left a blood trail that would be obvious.

Fortunately, she'd learned a few things about burning houses to the ground.

As soon as they were clear, Nanku concluded her work. Every knob in the kitchen was turned. The fireplaces—gas fed—were turned on. Nanku tossed various linens about the halls where they could catch fire and tossed something called 'plastique' in a few rooms.

It was marked explosive and packaged with the guns.

She assumed it would help cover her tracks well enough. The Pure wouldn't know for sure what became of anyone, especially with bodies missing.

Nanku left the same way she'd entered. Through the basement and the door and out into the woods. Dusk and Dawn hauled the bodies deeper in and Nanku turned. She retraced her steps, waving through the woods, past where she started and around.

What was Tattletale up to?

Both of her vehicles were still parked on the back road of the neighborhood. Four men were on watch with rifles. Two more guarded the back of one van, and Tattletale sat inside with two others. They were monitoring the machines inside.

The guards wore odd goggles.

Imp said something about thermals. Heat based vision devices. The Yautja naturally saw that way, but biomasks expanded their vision range. Why couldn't humans do the same?

Nanku kept herself far from sight and used her swarm to get closer and listen. The words were broken and unclear. Nanku would use Dusk and Dawn but they might be noticed. Smaller insects would have to do.

Listening through their senses took a bit of guess work.

"—thing?" Tattletale asked.

The man at her side shook his head. "No… boss."

Tattletale's response didn't sound happy. Then she kept talking. Nanku needed a few lines to realize she was talking to herself.

"She had to destroy the security system," Tattletale grouched. "What I get for letting her run loose to see what would happen."

"There a reason we're not taking that thing down?" the man beside her asked. "Not that I'm complaining. Paycheck's a paycheck and you're the boss."

"Above your pay grade, Teddy. Sorry."
"Heard, boss."

"Just believe me when I say we're boxed in where she's concerned. Extenuating circumstances."

"Can't get rid of her, might as well use her?"
"More or less. She's going after the Pure no matter what. Time to move on. But nothing? What are they doing? Did they think Fenja and Menja were that free and clear?"

"They did get pretty evasive. Absent the tinker-tech stuff, they'd have found or lost us easily."

"Doesn't add up. This thinker's been careful so far. Subtle pressure. Slow and building. If not Nanku would have been something forcing my hand to respond. Especially with Victor and Alabaster gone, you think the Pure would be more careful than that."

"Precog? Knows we're waiting to see what they do?"
"Why launch the ambush at all? Maybe they'd sacrifice a cape or two in some insane gambit, but this is more than they can lose. In a month Nanku's killed fifty members of the Pure and now she's taken out four capes."

"Put it like that, and I retract any question about why we're not stopping her."

"Yeah. That's Slaughterhouse Nine levels of killing." Tattletale sighed. "Moment the PRT catches on that girl is going to have a kill order on her head. The big white hats don't play games with anyone who goes no-holds barred start to finish."

Well.

At least Tattletale wasn't plotting betrayal. Nanku didn't like her, but she'd take the girl's indifferent bystanding over active interference.

Good enough for now.

Nanku had a trap to bait and she'd see how the pure—

She tilted her head and began cycling vision modes. Rapid changes. Partially automated and searching for anything out of place or specific.

She rarely used the acoustic setting. It did little other modes didn't do better. It was also dizzying. Mildly, headache inducing.

Mildly was maybe too subtle.

The radiating waves of vibration and sound her mask was picking out of the air were pure nausea. That it displayed in an array of colors to indicate intensity and wavelength didn't help. Nanku put a hand against the nearest tree to steady herself.

The discomfort was worth the trouble.

She only noticed the oddity because of the bugs in the air. The smallest especially. An odd 'breeze' forcing them aside out of their natural paths.

And her mask displayed the disruption clearly. Swapping to clear vision, she saw nothing. Even the EM and thermal spectrums were clear. Nothing but air. Nanku could only see it because of the two—three—rotor engines keeping the machine aloft.

It was cloaked.

It was cloaked better than the standard Yautja shroud! Only the highest grade tech the clan kept in the vaults could do better and no hunter ever used that stuff. Not that Nanku knew it.

It made the hunt too easy. Took all the challenge out of it.

"We'll give it another thirty minutes," Tattletale announced. "Then we split up. Keep a team here to watch and the rest of us will head back into town."

"Worried?"

"Weaver's not answering my calls and that's always bad."

Weird being on the other side of knowing things for once.

Tattletale was being watched and didn't know.

***

Let it be known that I almost used 'unphased' instead of unfazed. But I fixed it! Like a big boy writer!

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[tortiecat]

The noose dropped over her head and Nanku pulled the line taught and pulled more until it began cutting into her throat.

Click to shrink...

"taut" One is the past tense of "teach"; the other means "under tension."

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

First Nanku checked for additional drones.

There were none. Her mask and the bugs in the air swept thoroughly and found nothing.

Just the one and the one was focused entirely on Tattletale's position. Curious. Did the Pure not care about Fenja or Menja? Just the thinker? Or was the drone controlled by someone else entirely? The last option seemed too infeasible.

It was someone connected with the Pure and they'd left Fenja and Menja to die. Bad bloods would forsake clan ties. Typical.

Nanku hurried.

She kept Dusk and Dawn far from the drone. Stashed the corpses somewhere she could retrieve them later. She considered getting the other bodies but decided the risk wasn't worth it. Either the drone had already seen what happened and knew about Nanku and the twins, or it missed them, and staying out of sight completely was the best option.

Tattletale would split her forces soon.

Nanku guessed the surveillance vehicle would remain. It had the equipment. Tattletale would move to the other vehicle to return to the city.

Planting that tracker was going to pay off early. More fate at her back.

"Alright." Tattletale sighed. "My bet is she killed everyone and is either coming back here or leaving. If you see her don't engage. Just leave her be."

"You say so, boss."

"Watch for anyone else. Someone's bound to come looking and we can follow them."

"What if she wants a ride?"

"Call a taxi. You know the one."

"Right."

"I wouldn't worry about it. She doesn't want our help and she can make her own way back into the city if she wants. Let's go."

She rose and entered the other vehicle as Nanku expected.

Stepping out of range, Nanku proceeded back toward the road. She wasn't hitching a ride on one of the vans again. Tattletale figured that out the first time. The second time, the other thinker might notice.

Nanku needed to procure her own way back into the city.

There was time. Whoever was stalking Tattletale was a shadow of a real hunter. They'd need to figure out where she was and then arrange an attack. That would take long enough for Nanku to make her way back to Brockton Bay.

The house exploded before they'd made it halfway back to the road. The air shook and the ground quaked. Several cars began beeping loudly and flashing their lights. The blast wasn't bright but against the night it stood out. Dusk and Dawn both rocked mid-flight from the shock wave and Nanku turned Dawn's head toward the drone.

It was hard to make out, but the surveillance device flickered into sight for a fraction of the moment.

It turned, rotating to look at the column of smoke rising from the former 'Richter' estate. It vanished from sight before Dawn could see more.

But it had moved from its original position following Tattletale as she entered the second van.

She was hunting the Pure's thinker. And the Pure's thinker was hunting her.

Nanku wasn't one to interfere—unlike someone—but Nazis could 'get fucked.' Especially when they were trying to kill her mother or hurt her sister. There was no rule against hunting a target if it was in a hunt itself anyway. Most Yautja considered that a perfect situation.

The irony of Tattletale becoming bait in a trap after what she did to Bitch and Cassie was just a bonus Nanku was happy to live with.

Just past the front gate of the neighborhood, Nanku found her chance. A large truck stopped at the intersection and waited for the light.

She drew her swarm to her and quietly climbed onto the back.

At the overpass to get back onto the highway the truck moved to go the opposite direction. Nanku stepped off and picked herself up onto the rear of a tractor-trailer in the left turn lane. Turning onto the highway toward Brockton Bay.

She swept the road as she went, searching for potential ambushes.

The Pure must know where Fenja and Menja lived. They may have prepared an ambush en route.

Turned out Tattletale was smarter than that.

The only ambush Nanku found was Regent at one gas station and Foil at another. A dozen armed men between them. And snipers. Thermal scopes must be expensive because they didn't see Nanku as she switched her ride. Dusk flew at the edge of her range and paced Tattletale's van. The vehicle was faster but the road wound in places that let him keep up.

Dawn flew ahead at the other edge, searching.

No sign of ambush.

With her visor, Nanku could make out the drone following Tattletale still.

It hadn't given up yet.

Perhaps attacking her on her way back into Brockton Bay was simply too obvious. Tattletale clearly prepared for it. The Pure's thinker saw it coming.

"This might be worth my time," Nanku mumbled.

Thinker.

She'd come across the word and mostly understood it. Capes with mind powers. Smarter. Seeing or conceiving things that a normal human couldn't. Tattletale called her power 'Sherlock Holmes' and Nanku finally remembered the name. A detective who put clues together.

So what did the Pure's thinker do?

Seeing the future seemed out. Surely a cape who could see the future could have lured Tattletale out without sacrificing so much.

Her mother 'saw things.' Learned them when she touched something or went somewhere. Saw the past. That's how she learned about the R'ka, but it also seemed inapplicable. How did that power create the current situation?

What else was there? Thinkers who made plans. Who saw things. Who learned them.

That was variety and Nanku didn't know how she'd figure out which was which. Quicker to simply go for the throat. The thinker wasn't paying her any mind. They were clearly focused on Tattletale.

…

Which was interesting, when Nanku thought about it.

The Pure wanted her mother dead… but if they were willing to attack her in the open, why not do that? Luring the Undersiders out of position or drawing the Protectorate away with a brawl was one thing. That could leave her mother—and Rose—vulnerable.

No. No, they could have done that whenever.

Maybe Iron Rain wanted revenge on Weaver, but the thinker. The thinker wanted Tattletale.

Nanku climbed onto the back of another truck and rode it back into the city proper. The van drove ahead, and Nanku activated the tracker to follow the vehicles.

Her swarm swept through alleys like a tide.

If not now, then later. The Pure were going after Tattletale. Maybe to kill her in the same way she wanted to kill the Pure's thinker. Maybe because she was the real target of their ire and always had been.

It made no difference either way.

Nanku leaped from roof to roof and vaulted streets with the Twin's help. Tattletale's van pulled into a parking garage close to downtown and then moved behind an enclosed area at the back of the structure. The building behind was a typical office space, but the basement was expansive.

An Endbringer shelter.

Nanku had seen them about the city. Some were empty. Others were manned by a few people tending to the stocks of supplies or equipment inside. Brockton Bay was attacked by Leviathan in the past decade and it seemed the city was preoccupied with being prepared.

A good place for a den, Nanku thought.

She circled when she arrived. Tattletale was inside but there were far too few bugs. The works were too vast for her to get into even with her smallest insect. The seams were tight.

The bunker was far far too secure.

Between the heavy doors, observation equipment, and arrays of electronics she suspected were all security systems, only an absolute fool would attack her there.

The Pure would strike elsewhere.

…

Did Tattletale expect that? Still made no difference but Nanku swept around the surrounding blocks. There were conspicuously placed men and women. They watched the streets from corners and windows. Subtle from the outside, but looking at all of them through her swarm Nanku saw that they covered the area perfectly.

None of them noticed the drone.

It noticed them.

The machine flew unseen, darting from vantage to vantage and turning toward the watchers.

Nanku began to wonder if any ambush would come, but the drone had to go somewhere. It looked at all the guards one by one. Nanku kept Dusk and Dawn out of sight in the alleys. She held herself still and always to the device's flank and in cover.

There was no way to be certain the device hadn't seen her, but it had to land eventually. It had to go somewhere.

And wherever that was, Nanku intended to follow if nothing else.

A pack of three spiders worked their webs at her feet and she brought a flight of wasps out of the swarm. Nanku drew a tracker from her belt and slipped it into the web. Once the spiders finished, she had the wasps pick the lines and fly the device into the air.

It was a struggle but the team could carry the weight.

Nanku focused, maneuvering the little fliers out of the drone's sight lines. She'd watched it watch Tattletale's guards and had a good idea. Its field of vision wasn't narrow but it had to turn to see. An odd design, but perhaps a necessary concession for its stealth capability.

Approaching from an odd angle at the side—Nanku wasn't sure if it could see behind itself—Nanku managed to slip the tracker onto the machine.

It vanished into the stealth field projected around it, but the signal was clear.

Tagging her target with her biomask, Nanku slipped from sight entirely and typed a series of commands into her computer.

The drone moved as she did.

Turned. Circled one last time. Then it took off heading north.

Nanku followed and drew her swarm with her. A mile north. Long but not too far. Into the train yards servicing the port. Lots of warehouses and parking buildings again. The drone went to one marked 'Medhall' in faded white letters.

Nanku kept a distance. Used her bugs to feel the area out by leg and eye. Dusk crept over a rooftop on the other side and Dawn flew high overhead.

Slipping through an open window, Nanku crept along the rafters of an industrial building and found a window. The vantage point was effective. Clear line of sight to a band of men gathered in an enclosed fence with tarps hung from the links. A few vehicles. Several crates and containers.

Three in costumes.

Nanku recognized them easily. There were pictures online and they were veterans of the Nazis groups in Brockton Bay.

Their costumes were distinct. A cage for a mask. Something that looked like a bad wrestling outfit on an overly muscled man who looked preposterous with how small his hands were compared to his thick arms. The knight getup with a pair of spears strapped to his back.

Cricket. Stormtiger. Crusader.

Around them were men in tactical gear, like those who'd accompanied Victor and Alabaster. Nanku never asked what happened to him. Tattletale presumably had him in a cell somewhere.

These men were about as well armed, and they had crates filled with guns lined along a wall with more men parking outside. They entered one by one and Nanku knew an assault in preparation when she saw it.

They were going after—

Nanku's lips pulled tight and she subtly swept her back and the building below.

Clear.

Crusader. Stormtiger. Cricket.

Her lucky day. Damn.

Nanku released her wristblades and readied her shuriken.

Loathe as she was to admit it, maybe Tattletale had a point.

Predicting Nanku would pursue Fenja and Menja couldn't be that hard. Predicting Tattletale would be nearby watching? That was quite the guess.

But sending Stormtiger?

Nanku took note of him. For all the times her cloak had been seen through or detected, he was the one cape she'd prepared for and expected to have trouble with. Manipulating air currents? That seemed like a power that could notice when something unseen was present.

Cricket too.

Super hearing. Heightened reflexes. She seemed like a fun challenge, but Stormtiger?

No.

No Tattletale wasn't the target. They wanted it to seem like Tattletale was the target.

Nanku didn't relax even after securing her flanks and rear. They could have a parahuman like Imp. Someone Nanku couldn't find or see readily.

The drone was still in the air and Nanku dismissed the notion of having gone unnoticed. The machine had seen her.

She was the target.

They wanted her to come down and get caught.

A dozen more armed men in a building to the right.

A dozen more to the left, and six with a woman in what looked like a costume.

Othala or Iron Rain?

Dusk and Dawn flew back. Low and behind buildings. Nanku couldn't count on anything.

It was obvious once she thought of it. The way they moved. The way they watched. Milling about. Waiting.

Waiting for her.

Nanku's annoyance flared. She'd been found too many times and was tired of it. It was one thing if her foes somehow outsmarted her, but powers? Powers were just plain cheating in that regard. No skill to it…

But that was a coward's excuse. Someone who rejected honor.

What others did was their concern.

What Nanku did was hers.

Pe'dte never trained her to shirk from challenge.

She had something great in front of her. And at least one possible advantage. Maybe two.

The Pure brought nearly everything to try and end her hunt. Maybe the thinker saw the future after all. It would explain the precision.

But from how clustered they were and in the open… maybe they knew about Dusk and Dawn. Maybe. But they didn't know about the swarm. And they'd only seen the weapons Nanku had used so far at best.

At least four capes. A full team and another two dozen men with guns.

Nanku dismissed the costumed woman to the side. Othala was nothing without people to use her power on. That was a solvable problem. Crusader was dangerous but from what video Nanku could find he was slow.

Stormtiger and Cricket?

These two were different from Fenja or Menja. Alabaster and Victor too. They were mere thugs. Brutes. There was no real skill. Just powers serving as their crutch.

Just watching Stormtiger and Cricket told Nanku they were artisans. The way they moved was different. The way they carried themselves.

Nazis, unfortunately, but they were fighters.

A challenge indeed.

Nanku slipped back from the window.

She laid some pieces of equipment out. Adjusted settings. Readied some specialized tools.

Programming her computer, Nanku tested the mounting over her shoulder and the targeting system in her biomask.

The Pure wanted to play her game.

She'd play, and she'd play better. Or she'd die, but Nanku doubted it.

"Everything dies," Nanku mouthed without sound. "One way or another."

There was a tingle under her skin. A ready eagerness. Thus far she'd caught everyone unguarded and unready. Even those who really should have known better.

Nanku almost smiled.

Since coming to Brockton Bay it had all been so monotonous. Easy. More time-consuming than anything. Humans weren't hunters. For the most part. They couldn't understand. They'd barely caught on.

Until now.

Now her prey thought themselves ready and waiting.

Only one of them could be right.

Only one of them could walk away.

Nanku slipped out of the room and back onto the roof. She'd live, or she'd die. They'd live, or they'd die.

"Only the Black Warrior wins every battle."

***

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

Nanku decided to do away with counting.

There wasn't going to be time for it. She kept her swarm hidden in shadows. Dusk and Dawn out of sight. She couldn't be sure neither had been observed, but she'd proceed as if they hadn't. The surprise would pay off if the drone operator missed the clues and be no less effective.

Dropping from the warehouse's rickety catwalk to the ground, Nanku bent her knees with the shock and broke into a sprint.

Three men were in the building but they were nothing important. Just busy bodies doing some work late at night. Nanku kept a few bugs on and near them just in case. One raised a head as she ran past but he didn't catch the flicker of her cloak.

At the side exit, Nanku slowed and slipped out. The drone didn't turn to face her but she decided to presume it could see more than just in front of it. The user was clever to always front it at whatever their focus. It created a good false impression.

Hopefully, they didn't expect her to know she was expected.

That was its own sort of surprise.

"See… us."

She could dream.

Crusader maintained a relaxed stance. Long spear in one hand and his finger to his helmet. The ghosts Nanku didn't see until Dusk got a direct look at him. Two misty figures that looked like him and stood silently. Partially see through but the notes she found online implied they were very dangerous.

Stormtiger and Cricket were nearby. The bulky man had his arms crossed and Cricket sharpened the blades on a pair of sickle-like weapons. Taylor saw them on some TV show as a child and they had a name. She just didn't care to remember.

Such weapons were messy. Awkward to use but awkward to fight against. Nanku presumed Cricket knew how to use them.

The cape she was taking to be Othala sat impatient with her guards.

Nanku set her path. Toward Crusader's group in the open first. Several buildings offered a good vantage for an attack. Nanku picked one and simply took the most direct route. As though she were unseen.

There was little reaction in her prey.

Crusader was talking to someone though.

"East," he said. "Five hundred feet. Tall building on the right."

The Drone definitely saw her.

"About time," Stormtiger replied. "Tired… shit."

"The plan… until this… started on us."

Cricket raised a hand and made a sign. Stormtiger nodded in response.

"Stupid," he said, as if agreeing.

So Cricket couldn't talk and used hand signs instead. Interesting.

Nanku ran down a row between two fences and turned left. Behind her presumed target building.

"Two fifty feet," Crusader said. "Get ready."

Men grabbed their guns. Cricket stood and brandished her weapons. Stormtiger rotated his shoulders.

They looked ready for a fight.

Good.

This one might be worth taking some trophies from.

Nanku brandished her blades and drew a spear from her belt. Leaping the fence, Nanku kicked off the top and grabbed the sill of a window. The building was old bricks. Refurbished recently. She scaled the side by the corner.

Othala was on her feet.

"Nearest corner," Crusader directed. "Roof."

Near the roof, Nanku readied to throw herself over the lip.

"Now."

At Crusader's command, guns rose and Stormtiger raised a hand.

Nanku kicked off and twisted about in the air.

Crusader snapped 'fire!'

The sound of thunder rattled in the air and the bricks behind Nanku exploded.

"Wait." Stormtiger turned his head. "She's—"

Nanku crashed through the window of the next building and rolled. Under her feet the men facing the windows looked up and Othala moved.

Her visor mode switched, exposing the skeletal structures below. Nanku looked at each in quick succession, marking the targets while her hand reached behind her back.

"Above!" one man shouted.

The others stepped back from the windows and raised their weapons.

Overconfidence was also an advantage to exploit.

Nanku threw the Smart-Disc into the air and left the whistling device to fly through a window, curve down, and fly back into the building. Glass shattered as the floor below erupted and the first of the gunmen below screamed.

The Smart-Disc tore through his chest and continued into the stomach of the next target.

The next two stepped back and lowered their guns, firing wildly while the disc shot toward them.

Throwing herself out the next window, Nanku threw a spear aimed at Crusader's head.

A wind erupted from Stormtiger and he blew the projectile aside with one hand.

The other pushed its palm at Nanku and she felt the force of the blow slam into her body and throw her back. Her back struck another window a floor down, and Nanku crashed into the floor. She rolled with the blow, taking another spear and swinging it about as she came to her feet.

Her cloak flickered as bullets struck her armor but the sharp tip of her weapon opened her target's throat and sent blood spraying against the wall.

Othala glared with fury and Nanku flipped the spear in her hand.

Two men moved between her and her target. Nanku ignored them even as a bullet struck her stomach. The pain was sharp but her skin didn't break. She lined up her throw and let the Smart Disc swing around to remove the obstacles.

Except the Disc struck one man's chest and bounced off.

Nanku blinked.

"Kill it," Othala snarled.

The men fired their rifles and Nanku shielded her self with one arm. Bullets pinged and bounced off her armor. Her mask returned a fatal error from the Smart Disc.

That had never happened before.

Othala could grant temporary invincibility.

And—

Nanku ducked as a man sped toward her. A barrel pressed to her mask and fired, throwing her onto her back with a painful pop in her ears. The man pumped the rifle and Nanku kicked his knee. He tried to move but the limb shattered from the blow and his body struck the floor.

Nanku grabbed him and rolled.

Bullets pattered against his body and Nanku cursed.

She reached for her gauntlet and began a quick sequence of keys, but her shield pulled away.

Another gun was pressed to her chest and she had no time.

A quick swing of her leg hooked the man's arm and she pulled him forward onto her wristblades. The edges slid over his clothes and the gun fired. The floor beside Nanku exploded and she hooked the back of his neck and pulled him down. When the bullets ran out he released the weapon and tried punching, but Nanku caught him in a lock and held on as bullets struck her armored forelegs and his back.

Othala might have made him invincible but he wasn't any stronger.

Nanku pressed the second command and then sent a signal for her Smart-Disc to change targets.

Raising her head, she looked over her struggling grappler's back.

Othala stepped out of the room with the other two men. Her hand released a canister that struck the wall and fell.

Nanku saw the icon for fire only a moment before the grenade exploded. Heat raced across her body. She kicked her grappler back and rolled away, cursing as she switched her visor to a mode not distorted by the material the grenade had burst across the room.

She was beginning to regret the overconfidence thought.

The Pure were more prepared than she expected.

But she could lament momentary arrogance later.

Shaking her head, Nanku threw herself through and door into a hall. She rolled and shook her head as licks of flame burned their fuel away and left her skin covered in the residue.

R'ka blood didn't burn her.

As if a mere incendiary device could. Even her armor and weapons survived.

The invincible man ran at her, as unphased as she was. Raising her arm, Nanku fired a line dart and let it coil around his legs. The man dropped face-first into the still-burning room, and Nanku ran down the hall.

She wiped her lenses clear and snarled.

Othala and her guards were moving outside on the opposite side of the building.

Dawn moved her position and Dusk dropped from the sky.

The drone shook under him and his claws swung wildly at the rigging. The device was held aloft by four encased motors and Dusk struck until the machine fell.

Heads rose and Nanku darted up the stairs. She shouldered through the door on the other side and threw her spear. Cricket ducked under the blow and Crusader's ghosts moved to her flanks just as the Smart Disc zipped toward him.

A gust of wind blew the weapon slightly off target and Stormtiger held a hand toward Nanku.

She moved to avoid another gust only to find all the air sucked from her lungs.

Her cloak began to flicker wildly, sparking and exposing her as more than a passing.

A loud bang echoed in the distance and a large bullet struck her hip. Nanku dropped to a knee as pain shot through her body. Another bang and Nanku felt the bullet strike her thigh and blow through the muscle under her skin.

The pain was secondary.

She needed to breathe.

Stormtiger closed his fingers and the wind tightened. An invisible blade tried to cut her throat and failed.

The man laughed. "She's a brute."

"It would explain how she got Victor and Alabaster. That invisibility isn't good enough."

Crusader's ghosts closed in. Six of them, with gunmen behind them.

Cricket brandished her sickles and made a strange motion with her thumbs.

"She's saying good luck," Stormtiger declared. "Not that—"

Dawn swung low and the man turned. Her wings fluttered and she darted away before the gust of razor-sharp wind could strike her. From the other side, Dusk's claws stabbed through the fence and cut into a man's back. There was another bang and Nanku feared for a moment.

Neither Twin felt pain and Nanku felt nothing.

A miss.

"What was that?" Crusader asked. "It was big."

Stormtiger's focus held.

Nanku choked.

She knew his power let him manipulate wind. That he could choke the breath from her lungs never crossed her mind. Her bio-mask was sealed!

Good trick.

With a snarl, Nanku pressed the last command on her gauntlet and reached for the swarm.

Cricket continued her advance as Stormtiger looked again. "Now wha—"

The swarm rolled through the air. A wave of black wings and legs. The gunmen fired wildly but the bullets meant nothing to a mass of thousands. The light of night turned pitch black

Stormtiger's grip weakened and Nanku sucked in a breath.

He refocused and shielded his eyes.

He should have shielded his mouth.

Crick and Crusader swiped at the swarm and Stormtiger gagged.

At her command, dozens of wasps, bees, and flies swarmed into Stormtiger's mouth. He screamed silently. Gagged. A sudden gush of air ripped up his throat and blew the mass out, but Nanku jumped to her feet.

Ignoring the pain in her thigh and blinding her foes amid the swarm, she turned and leaned for the wall.

A gust of wind slammed into her side and Nanku flipped around.

Stormtiger reeled his other hand back, a grin on his lips.

"That was nasty."

She barely heard his words amid the swarm. Winds sliced around him, shredding into the swarm and protecting his body.

Fool.

Nanku slapped her heel into the wall and a blade shot back from her boot.

She swung upside down. A bullet bounced harmlessly off her mask. Another struck her shoulder but bounced off her skin. Grasping the wall with one hand and closing the other in a fist, she looked directly at the man and flicked her wrist.

From either side of her mask a duo of lasers projected and centered on Stormtiger's chest.

Crusader's head turned.

"Storm—"

Over her shoulder, the actuator whirled and lifted from her back. The barrel swung under her shoulder. A loud hiss filled the air.

The lines converged and Nanku's mask signaled a lock.

"—tiger!"

The caster sparked and a ball of super-heated plasma shot out and set the air ablaze with blue heat.

Stormtiger stiffened, registering the discharge for a moment before it slammed into his chest, through his ribs, and out through his spine.

Several heads turned and for a moment all gunfire stopped.

Nanku withdrew the blade on her boot and flipped herself around before she hit the ground.

Stormtiger dropped like a weight. There was little blood. The plasma cauterized the wound as it struck. Not that it did him any good without a heart.

Nanku felt the change in air pressure instantly.

Much better.

In the distance, just outside her power's range but vaguely in sight, Dusk lunged from above. He grabbed the sniper by his throat. Dawn struck his partner from the other side.

No more snipers.

No more Stormtiger.

Problems solved.

A wordless scream—more of a whistle—filled the air. Cricket charged and Nanku spun to face her. At the same moment, she threw shurikens with both hands. The weapons spun into the air and she blocked Cricket's hand-scythe with her wristblades. The woman threw her knee forward and Nanku met it with her own.

The armor pad on her knee won in an instant. Cricket flinched and Nanku thrust her spear in the same moment it expanded. Cricket let herself drop to avoid the blow and Nanku twisted the scythe out of her hand. The spear spun and Cricket threw her free hand up. The spear drove through her palm but she pushed the blow aside.

Nanku readied her wristblades for a follow-up. Quickly she fixed her gaze over Cricket's head. A man with a heavy rifle. Then another with a grenade. A third with a device she couldn't recognize in hand.

She locked the targets and the actuating arm slid out over her shoulder.

The plasma caster fired and the bolt blew through her first target's shoulder.

Cricket shot up on both feet and slammed her cage-mask into Nanku's.

The blow shot to the back of her skull and Nanku swiped her blades and missed.

She spun away from Cricket's counter and the plasma caster whirled around and fired again.

As her second target screamed, Nanku caught a shuriken. She stumbled back and threw it. The plasma caster fired its third shot and Nanku blocked an attack with her blades and set two more. The second shuriken spun back and she swiped it from the air at Cricket's throat. Cricket dodged and Nanku pointed her gauntlet. She fired a line-dart that struck another man in the shoulder and began squeezing the limb off as the line tightened.

Cricket dared a look back. Crusader and his ghosts stood motionless.

Two bodies dropped to the ground. One man clutched his shoulder and screamed. Othala crouched over Stormtiger's corpse. Dusk flew from a shadow and struck a man from behind. Dawn dropped a corpse from the air. One of the snipers.

For Nazis, they seemed shocked by death.

Maybe they weren't used to being killed so readily.

Other men stared with wide eyes and looked about in confusion. One's head left his shoulders as a shuriken spun through his neck. Another lost his leg and fired wildly into the air.

Bullets blew the wall behind Nanku to dust and the plasma caster fired another bolt.

Nanku met Cricket's eyes.

She glanced at Stormtiger's body. Focused on him. Blinked and let her mask transpose the dead man's voice over her own while her swarm massed at her back. A sea of winds, eyes, and chittering black.

"Good luck."

***

This was one of the first scenes I really thought about for the fic. Big 'oh shit' battle of annihilation where Predator!Taylor just goes after the Nazis (fuck um) and things start spiraling. Stay tuned.

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[Epic Reader]

Enemy Thinker had her Shard make a plan to trap a being she modeled as a Parahuman Tinker with cloaking tech strictly worse than her own Tinker's, and Tinker melee weapons with some training/talent/tinker-assist, i.e. a low level Tinker and/or one just starting out.

To do this, she had atbleast one superior cloaking tech drone, a bunch of mooks, and a bunch of Parahumans, one of which makes people invincible and another is a non-Manton limited aerokinetic.

While the 'steal your breath even inside your lungs through a sealed vac suit' ability did take Taylor by surprise, unfortunately for our Thinker, the only response that got was the Prey Danger Rating being raised to Plasma Caster levels.

Sorry, Nazis, Taylor is not capturing you. Not fighting you. Not doing battle with you. Not challenging you. Not playing cops and robbers with you.

She is hunting you. If you really impress her, she'll polish your skull and mount it as a trophy.

 

[wallabon]

Enemy Thinker had her Shard make a plan

Click to shrink...

That's not how tattletale's power works, and we know that the pure's thinker is a clone of Lisa

 

[woodzrox]

That's not how tattletale's power works, and we know that the pure's thinker is a clone of Lisa

Click to shrink...

It's an Echidna clone though, they have a similar power not an exact match.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

The guns erupted and Nanku's swarm surged forward.

She threw her spear and kicked Cricket back. The plasma caster fired and fired again. Dawn grabbed a man from behind and dragged him to the ground. Dusk grabbed another and ran. Crusader turned, his ghosts forming a guard around him.

He searched for the threat and began mumbling.

The words were incomprehensible under the swarm and gunfire.

Nankut fixed her gaze on his back and readied to fire.

Cricket spun, swinging her scythe for Nanku's throat. She ignored the bites and stings along her exposed arms. There was a fury in her eyes. A deep rage.

Nanku supposed she liked Stormtiger.

She punched the Nazi woman's shoulder and let the blade slide against her shoulder-guard. Her knee struck Cricket's stomach and she brought her foot down to break the woman's balance.

Instead, Cricket charged forward with a snarl. Her shoulder met Nanku's chest and she pushed, barreling them back into the swarm as it flowed over the yard. Dozens of bees and wasps stung but Cricket didn't stop.

Nanku's back struck the wall and she pushed off with both feet. The plasma caster whirled over her shoulder and she marked Cricket's back as a target. Throwing herself away, she set a quick command and leaped back from Cricket's blades. The woman pursued and Nanku slipped into her swarm.

She cycled her mask to filter small chitinous bodies and turned on her heel.

Running along the fence, she surveyed the gunmen firing wildly into the swarm. One fell and convulsed after a few bee stings. Another gunman dropped as wasps scuttled down her throat and Dusk and Dawn attacked another from both sides.

The next three stood firm.

Bites and stings slid over them. Nanku snatched a shuriken from the air and rethrew it. Then the next. Both weapons struck the lead man in the leg. He didn't cut or bleed, but the force of the blows sent the bladed weapons into the ground and dropped him to a knee.

Othala shouted to Crusader. He didn't hear her and Nanku parted the swarm and looked directly at Othala.

The woman noticed the gap and stared straight into the red lights zeroing on her chest.

She ducked as a bolt of plasma burned the air and dozens of insects as it shot through the air. The bolt missed. Dusk didn't.

The insectoid grabbed the woman's ankle in his mandibles and pulled. Dawn shouldered her invincible gunmen back. A jolt of pain burned through Dusk's mind as a knife struck his shoulder and Dawn's mandibles closed on Othala's arm.

The Twins yanked her away, vanishing into the swarm.

Escaping the first attempt on her life came with an upside.

Othala was easily contained. Maybe she knew where Iron Rain—or the thinker—was.

Cricket gave chase as Nanku moved. It wasn't blind, but not direct. She was feeling out the swarm. Swiping at it and moving closer to Nanku as she went.

Nanku smiled behind her mask and kicked off a stack of crates.

They clattered behind her and Crusader turned as she moved past two of his ghosts. Both the spirits were hard to see in her visor. The swarm was easier. The transparent figures were like a heavily pressured fog as any insect moved through them.

Until the swarm began crashing into them.

Crusader stepped back between his other ghosts and both thrust their long spears at Nanku. The two behind her swung the butts of their weapons up and one struck her pained hip. Nanku rolled away, throwing herself to the side before the spears could strike her.

Making another gap in the swarm, the plasma caster whirled and fired at Cricket behind her. The woman ducked and Nanku swept one of her shurikens from the ground. She threw the weapon and Cricket barely avoided it. Her bicep bled as the blades passed but she kept up her dogged pursuit.

Nanku smirked under her mask.

That was someone worth killing.

She'd hate to be further interrupted.

Nanku spun away from a series of ghostly thrusts. Sloppy thrusts. Crusader couldn't see her as well as Cricket could.

Swinging her spear wide, Nanku took the legs out of a man. Her wrist blades stabbed into the back of his skull as he fell. Ripping the head from his shoulders, she threw it at Crusader and struck him in the head.

His ghosts still struck out with something resembling precision, but Nanku rolled away onto Crusader's flank.

Her wrist blades cut the back of his leg. Her spear pieced the other leg's knee. Through a gap in the swarm the plasma caster fired at Cricket again and the woman fell back to avoid it.

Crusader turned. His ghosts flanked and he snarled.

"Bitch!"

"I prefer bugs," Nanku replied. "They're simple."

Grabbing a shuriken from the ground, she rose and swiped the weapon upward and gutted the knight-themed Nazi. His ghosts still made an attack. Two more materialized behind him, spears thrusting through his chest at her.

Nanku leaped back and snarled as a ghostly edge cut through her inner thigh. Not deep. Far too shallow a cut to bleed her to death.

She'd not felt anything cut her so easily since the Camp.

It shocked her. For a moment.

She swiped the shuriken back through a man's throat and kicked another in the leg. Ripping her spear from Crusader's corpse she drove the weapon through his chest and lifted him as a shield.

The ghosts stopped moving and faded.

Dusk and Dawn held Othala down, teeth and mandible snapping at her body while she struggled vainly to escape.

She'd probably kill herself trying to get free.

Dusk and Dawn released the woman. They screeched and snapped their mandibles. Wings fluttered loud and wide. Othala covered her wounds and scuttled back and forth between the two.

No one was coming to help her.

Without an ally, she was no more dangerous than any typical human. Which in Nanku's determination wasn't very dangerous at all.

Amid her swarm, Nanku cut, stabbed, and snapped. The plasma caster fired through gaps and kept Cricket at bay but aware of where she was. The woman was covered in bites and stings.

It was amazing she was still standing.

Another man succame to the bites and stings. Nanku cut open a throat and shielded herself from a lucky spray of bullets with her arm. Peering over her gauntlet, the plasma caster spun about and fired.

Only two gunmen remained.

One lost his stomach when the plasma bolt struck him. The other lost his head.

The bodies fell and the sounds of gunfire stopped. Nanku took a breath and rotated her shoulders. Her hip ached and her thigh stung. There was a cut along her inner thigh as well as numerous smaller aches and pains all across her body.

The fight was harder than she expected.

All the better.

One hunter against five presumptive ambushers and two dozen of their petty soldiers. Rhaark would tell her to say six and three dozen. It would make for a better story. Pe'dte always said a good hunter didn't have to lie.

Nanku agreed.

This story required no embellishments. Only a proper ending.

Nanku turned back to Cricket. She straightened her back and rolled her shoulders.

One last target.

With a thought, she dismissed the swarm. It pulled away as one mass. Flying and crawling out of the yard and clearing the space.

Crick froze, searching left and right for only a moment. She registered Crusader's corpse along with Stormtiger's. And all the rest.

Only Othala still drew breath, pinned by Dusk and Dawn as they corralled her into a corner and kept her from escaping.

Nanku let the woman have a moment to conform herself.

Their eyes met briefly. Nanku's shielded by her mask. Cricket's barely visible through the slits in her head-cage. There was a lot more anger there than the strange hoarse scream suggested. Outright fury.

And complete focus.

Damn.

She was the best challenge since Bitch.

And unlike Rachel, Nanku didn't care for her one bit.

She tapped the control on her gauntlet. The plasma caster whirled around and Cricket flinched into a ready guard. Coiled. Blood seeped from bites and stings across her body. Bumps swelled and color distorted.

The woman looked like half a corpse already, but she still stood.

The weapon didn't fire.

Nanku never liked it. Too easy. No real skill. The system essentially operated itself. She'd never have proved herself if she used the plasma caster too much. It was her willingness to do things the hard way that earned her the recognition of a hunter.

And the hard way was funner.

The weapon snapped up and the actuating arm retracted. The smart disk was damaged and she'd have to recover it.

Shuriken in one hand. Spear in the other and wristblades at the ready. That was all she needed.

Cricket's eyes flicked with recognition. She relaxed a bit, but not enough to signal security. She was taking her moment. Readying herself. Nanku had seen it before in more intelligent prey.

They saw the shadow of their death, and they reconciled themselves with it.

Discovered who they really were. How far they could go. What they were capable of.

Let the Nazi have her final peace, Nanku decided. Her savagery was no reason for Nanku to respond in kind.

The woman raised her sickles and leaned forward on her legs.

Nanku turned her spear and tucked the weapon under her arm. The hand with her shuriken she pointed forward. Swiping her visor clean and removing all bugs from the area, she had only her eyes to see by. She wouldn't call them back.

Nothing was going to spoil this kill.

Cricket lunged forward and Nanku flicked her shuriken into the air.

The woman rolled under the blades losing only a few strands of hair as she did. Her sickle swung as she came up and slid along her knee. Nanku lifted a leg and brought her foot down. The weapon clattered and Cricket punched her in her injured hip.

Nanku winced.

She kept her balance but waivered. Just a moment.

It happened quickly.

No time to think.

Nanku thrust her spear. Cricket ducked to the side. Grabbed her wrist. Hooked the sickle she still held behind Nanku's leg. Wristblades pierced Cricket's forearm. The sickle pulled.

Striking the ground hard, Nanku hooked a leg behind Cricket's leg and pulled her forward. She released her spear. Swiping out with a knife, Nanku aimed for Cricket's throat but got her shoulder instead.

Cricket gave a silent whistling scream.

She pushed herself off the ground hard and the pair rolled over the ground.

Nanku's next strike buried her knife in the concrete.

Cricket pressed the barrel of a gun to her mask.

The weapon fired once. Twice. Thrice. And a fourth time. Each impact bounced off Nanku's mask but the force shot through her forehead into the back of her skull. She rattled, pressing down hard with her teeth to avoid biting off her own tongue.

Throwing a knife up she broke the hold and sent Cricket sprawling.

They both rolled to their feet.

Nanku spun to face Cricket, hand held back to catch her shuriken.

Cricket turned.

And ran.

Nanku gawked.

Cricket kept running. She didn't turn. Or ready an attack. She grabbed the top of the fence, hauled herself over, and tumbled down the other side.

She was fleeing.

Nanku snarled.

"Keep her there!" she snarled, spear pointed at Othala and left Dusk and Dawn to keep her.

Grabbing her weapons from the ground, Nanku retracted her spear and slipped it back to her belt.

She ran, giving chase to the fleeing woman while she pressed the controls of her gauntlet.

The plasma caster whirled to life in her ear and the actuator arm lifted. The barrel dropped over her shoulder. Her mask's targeting system came online at once. Stabbing her knife and wristblades into the brick, she scaled the building rapidly and scrambled over the roof.

If Cricket wanted to run like a coward, she could die like a coward.

With her back turned.

Fixing her gaze on the woman, Nanku locked the target and set the plasma caster to autofire.

A bolt of plasma burst out and shot through the air. Cricket jumped to the side, rolling over her shoulder to her feet, and continued running.

Nanku chased.

The only thing more annoying than a complete coward was a complete coward who was good at running. Some hunters might take that for what it was. Nanku was too disappointed to care.

Without Dusk and Dawn she leaped to the ground and ran, chasing Cricket on foot through alleys and narrow roads.

The plasma caster fired at each opening. Bolts burst against brick walls. Fences. Windows. Cricket jumped, rolled, and dodged, avoiding the projected energy every time.

Nanku vaulted a fence and fired again. Again Cricket dodged, but the gap closed.

At the corner of the street and group of men with bottles turned. One pointed and the others scrambled back. The plasma caster's next shot sent them ducking for cover. The bolt hit the ground and threw molten pieces of cement into the air. Asphalt scattered and a piece struck Cricket's leg and she stumbled.

Nanku threw a shuriken ahead of her next shot.

Cricket ducked and rounded the corner just as the caster fired.

The men who'd ducked ducked again as the next bolt hit. They shouted in Spanish and Portuguese. Their eyes searched. Some following Cricket. Others spotting Nanku's cloak flicker.

She ignored the rabble and jumped onto the wall.

Scaling it hand over hand rapidly and pulling herself up the lip.

The shuriken curved and cut the air just shy of Cricket's neck. The woman had leaned out of the way. Dodged the blades moments before they'd sever her spine.

Nanku caught the weapon on its return and threw it again.

She aimed ahead and the caster fired.

Cricked dodged left and nearly fell backward while she dodged the shuriken.

Along the street people screamed and shouted. They took cover behind cars and tables. Windows and doors. Anything that made their panicked minds feel more secure.

"Why did you have to be a coward?" Nanku lamented.

She ran along the rooftops, firing and throwing her weapon as she did. The bolts carved a pattern of small craters in the street and the shuriken kept Cricket from getting too far ahead.

The woman fixed her gaze on a truck at the end of the street.

The driver climbed inside with clumsy motions.

Nanku leaped off the roof and gave her shuriken a final throw. Enough to force Cricket's path one way. The caster fired and secured the route.

The woman's hand reached out as she lunged.

The truck started. A large one with a trailer built over the bed. Handles on the back and a wide lip. Perfect for hitching a ride on.

Nanku planted her feet and took aim.

The light flashed in the corner of her eye and Nanku raised her arm as it struck her.

She slid across the ground, boots gripping and scrapping scars into the street.

Her cloak sparked and dropped completely. Cricket grabbed hold of the truck and swung herself around behind it. The guiding lasers locked and fired.

The bolt struck the side of the vehicle and blew the rear corner apart. Blood splattered across the ground. A second later, Cricket's corpse dropped.

Nanku sighed.

Finally.

To her flank, the man in bronzed armor hovered in the air. A shield in one hand and a shimmering spear in the other. His armor was stylized. A motif Nanku recognized but couldn't recall the name of. A helm with a Y-shaped visor, and chest plate molded to replicate a fit male's torso.

Dauntless fixed his eyes on Nanku and his hands tightened.

"Fuck."

***

Muahahahahahahahahahaha!

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

Cricket was dead.

Nanku filtered the biomask through several modes to be sure acoustic showed no heartbeat. Thermals showed body head fading. Motion revealed no tension in the muscles. She was silent, chilling, and limp.

Dead.

What a disappointment. She'd been so capable. Nanku might have actually taken her head. The idea of doing it after the stale chase was nauseating.

At least most of the Pure were dead. If Othala didn't know where to find Iron Rain or their thinker, she'd join them. Maybe that would be enough. Without the bulk of their force what would the two of them do?

Nanku supposed it hinged on how crazy they were.

Along the length of the street, people were fleeing. Like a herd of grazers startled by a predator, they scattered everywhere they could. Alleys and streets. A few got into cars and started the engines.

Others lingered and Nanku grimaced behind her mask.

Raising her arm exposed the patchiness of the cloak. Whole sections of her were exposed and the sparks of lightning drew even more attention. Ionization in the air sparked by the field that was supposed to bend light.

Her visor flashed with several warnings. Whatever Dauntless' weapon did, it disrupted the entire system.

And she just fixed that.

With a snarl, Nanku turned on her heel and moved to the nearest shadows. Best to get out of sight quickly. She didn't need pictures spreading.

"Taylor," Dauntless hissed.

Nanku ignored the name.

Somehow she'd had a feeling her mother was using it out of earshot.

She looked him over. Taller than her. Broad shouldered. His armor covered him head to toe. His lance crackled with energy, and there was a light swirling over the surface of a shield far too small to be of any real use. Air rippled under his feet, pushed away from his boots.

He wasn't relaxed, but he wasn't taking an aggressive stance.

She'd walk away.

"Nanku." Dauntless flew around and dropped into the street. "Sorry."

He kept his voice low, and behind his helmet, she could tell he was aware of the onlookers.

Dauntless set his spear on the ground. It remained upright when he released it, though the light of the lane dimmed.

"Nanku. I need you to drop"—he looked her over, concentrating on the plasma caster and shuriken that were plainly visible—"all of that."

Nanku tilted her head.

"Don't make this harder than it has to be," he continued.

The line was so cliché that Nanku remembered it from television Taylor watched. And she'd not seen any television besides the news and Regent's stupid reality TV shows in a decade. Given that reality TV existed, Nanku wasn't sure the news was worth it.

The Internet was probably better.

"You need to come with me before this gets any worse."

That voice.

She was certain she knew it.

Ah.

That made sense.

Her mother's new husband was also a parahuman and also with the Protectorate. Probably how they met.

Nanku kept walking and he followed. His throat moved and he was clearly speaking to someone. A radio no doubt.

If more Protectorate were coming, more reason to be gone.

She needed to get back to Othala.

The woman was still pinned between Dusk and Dawn. Her injuries kept her from moving far, and there was no one to use her power on but enemies. The Twins could handle it until Nanku returned.

"Nanku," Dauntless snapped. "Stop."

"No," Nanku replied.

He'd either attack or he wouldn't, but he seemed to be favoring not.

"Go back to my mother. The Nazis won't threaten her or Rose soon."

Dauntless paused behind her. Did he not know Rose was in danger too? Tattletale surely reported that. Whatever else she seemed close with her mother. Maybe her mother hadn't told her new husband.

No matter.

She needed to move Othala somewhere she could work on the woman. Alabaster had been a bust but Othala wasn't so durable. Nanku was willing to bet she could get something from the woman. It worked with Fenja and Menja. Alabaster was just numb enough to pain and the threat of death she'd never get anything out of him.

Dauntless moved suddenly. The man took his lance in hand again and pointed it as Nanku neared the edge of the street.

"I can't let you go. Not after that… Shit." His tone dropped. "She's lying for you. She knows, doesn't she?"

Nanku huffed. "She knows what she wants to know."

She kept walking. Her swarm waited in the wings. Planted bugs worked into Dauntless' armor. Gave her a sense of the tension in his arms and legs.

Killing him was out of the question.

She wouldn't… Do that. Not to her mother. Not to Rose.

Unacceptable.

If Dauntless chose to fight she'd make her escape with as little force as necessary.

"Nanku," Dauntless warned again.

Run it was.

Nanku ducked to the side and rolled behind a parked car. A woman jumped back from her and Nanku quickly wheeled around. She put the woman between herself and Dauntless and ran for the nearest alley.

"Don't!"

"Take your own advice," she called back. It would be convenient.

Nanku flicked her wrist. The shuriken's blades retracted and she fit the weapon to her belt. Her spear followed and she tapped the controls of her computer. Jumping a fence separating the street with a kick off the wall, Nanku grabbed the rung of a fire escape ladder and pulled herself up.

Dauntless was in the air. Above her with his shield held down.

"Last warning!"

Nanku ran the length of the escape and threw herself into the air. Her wristblades caught the brick of the building and she swung herself around. Both feet on the wall, the lasers on her mask marked her target.

Dauntless jerked the moment the caster fired.

The bolt shot into the air, brighter and faster than before.

And off target.

Dauntless dodged but the shot never would have hit him. Nanku made sure of it when she altered the calibration of the actuator. Unless the man idiotically flew into the weapon it couldn't hit him.

Nanku threw herself into the air and grabbed onto the wall of the opposite building. She scurried up the wall while the caster fired a series of shots that kept Dauntless avoiding instead of approaching. There was hesitance in his movements. Foolish but luckily it wouldn't cost him anything.

Vaulting the lip of the roof, Nanku sprinted. Bolts continued firing and kept him at bay.

Sliding around a corner access, Nanku detached the cloak rigging and opened it. The lightning peeled away and the shimmer of invisibility dropped entirely. Drawing her knife she adjusted the crystals to their proper alignment. Pulled them out and pushed them back in. Aligned them again. Reset the rig.

The entire process took her thirty practiced seconds. Nanku didn't know why every hunter didn't practice it. Even if the cloak wasn't perfect it was better than the system not working.

The plasma caster fired bolt after bolt, forcing Dauntless to dodge.

Until he stopped dodging.

He figured that out fast.

"You need to turn yourself in," he said. "I mean it. Nanku!"

And she thought the 'last warning' was the 'last warning.' Humans.

Nanku refit the device and tapped her gauntlet.

The system popped and the cloak slid over her.

Dauntless' lance shot a bolt of lightning as she vanished, but Nanku stepped aside. The energy flew past her and she dropped from the roof to the alley below. A pair of rusty cans rattled and crunched under her feet. She jumped and sprinted down the alleyway.

She couldn't go right back to Dusk and Dawn until she lost any pursuer. Moving Othala would take time and she couldn't do it fighting.

Dauntless' lance fired again and struck the alley behind her. A guess. Far too inaccurate to be aimed at her.

Nanku turned at the corner and kept going. She kicked a can over as she went, angling to appear she'd struck it running another way. Her pace slowed. Steps quieter while she clung closer to the shadows. Stayed where her cloak was most effective.

Running from pursuit wasn't her normal move.

Eventually, she'd stop being so disappointed. Something breaking her way would be pleasant.

Crossing a narrow street to another alleyway, Nanku ducked under an alcove and kept going.

Her swarm drew closer. Dauntless was still above. Still moving in her direction.

Nanku crouched and kept her eyes forward. She flew some insects closer. Dark shells. Easily obscured. Dauntless was still there. Still following. Slowing as he neared her.

He was following her but didn't want it to seem like he was following her.

Obviously, he didn't know about her power over insects, but the pattern was one she might use while…

"I prefer this the other way around," Nanku grumbled.

Dauntless' power had something to do with objects. Vague details. Nothing Nanku found very firm, like someone was hiding it. He had his odd shield, the lance, and the boots.

Why not his helmet?

The gaps in the plate revealed only the body suit underneath. Not a cloth or plastic. Switching her vision, it was a synthetic material weaved with a honeycomb pattern. A lighter armor. Much better than anything she'd seen so far.

The armors Fenja, Menja, and Crusader wore were more for show than anything.

His shield was probably not what it appeared. It was useless as an object. Far too small. The light did something. She'd been struck by the lance and only been pushed. Surely that's not all it did.

She'd assume not.

He was too smart to stop. He circled outward, never looking at her directly.

Waiting.

Nanku sighed. That made sense.

Time to go then.

Nanku rose and shouldered her way through the door into the building. Not as hard as she could. That would make more noise than she wanted. She lifted the knob with one hand and slammed her palm into it. The wood splintered and broke. Loud but hopefully not loud enough.

Proceeding into the building, Nanku kept her many extra eyes on Dauntless.

He wasn't fooled for long. He flew back and around and checked the alley. Up and down. Nanku wasted no time in running down a hall, around a corner, down another hall, and out a side door as he went down to investigate.

The noise had drawn many but the streets were quiet and slow. Nanku crossed a road where several crowds and vehicles had stopped to watch Dauntless fly about.

Nanku moved between a pair of spectators who regarded her as nothing more than a breeze.

Dauntless came back up over the building behind her as she slipped into the next alley. He caught on but she'd gained distance and used it by running.

The streets were sparse but cover was limited. Normally she got around the city through rooftops with Dusk and Dawn helping. Casting her eyes ahead and down, Nanku hooked her wristblades on the lip of the manhole and levered it upward.

Dropping down into the stink was unpleasant, but Dauntless could either follow her inside or lose her.

Nanku mapped the tunnels with all the bugs inside. Going south, she wound her way back around toward the battle. The site left her range briefly but everything was where she left it.

Dusk and Dawn had Othala cornered. The corpses were corpses. The building with an incendiary grenade in its basement was starting to burn bottom to top.

Nanku quickened her pace. The fire would draw attention and the enforcers would find the bodies.

She needed to get Dusk and Dawn away with her prisoner.

Together—and at command—the Twins reared on Othala. They snapped their jaws. Swung their talon-limbs. The woman scrambled back while they herded her. Nanku scrambled up the ladder and shouldered her way out of the sewer.

Dauntless was aware she'd gone underground, but he was searching methodically. The smoke hadn't garnered his attention yet.

Coming out onto the street, Nanku cut the fence open at Othala's back and dragged her through.

Dusk and Dawn scurried after and Nanku sent them both down ahead. She collected her equipment quickly. Spear. Smart disk. Knife. Once she finished, Nanku lifted a crawling Othala in one hand.

"Roll," she suggested.

She dropped the woman and a bone audibly broke as she landed. Nanku jumped after her but caught the top rung of the ladder. She pulled the manhole back into place.

At the bottom of the manhole she undid some line and began binding Othala's arms behind her back.

"Crazy bitch!" she snapped. "Do you know what's going to happen to you?!"

"No." Life would be boring if she did. "But I know what happens to you."

Nanku grabbed her by the back of the head and cracked her skull into the wall.

"You're going to be silent," Nanku threatened, "or they eat you before you die. They're hungry."

"Fucking—"

Nanku cracked her head again and left Othala to collapse.

She didn't have good options. She'd not gotten around to staking out a new place to bed and rest. Her mother was out of the question. Obviously. Dauntless had noticed the growing fire finally and was flying toward the smoke. Nanku needed to move quickly to escape notice and that would be hard with a prisoner.

Grabbing Dusk and Dawn by the necks, Nanku squeezed and pulled them closer.

"Go back to Bitch." She commanded it mentally and verbally. "Wait there."

Nanku wasn't sure it would work, but she'd figure out complications once she was there.

She left the twins to drag Othala one way while she ran another.

Her wounds were starting to hurt. Multiple bullet impacts. Cuts and wounds. She needed distance and a good covered area to treat the injuries.

Nanku weaved her way through the sewers. That wouldn't do her wounds any wonder. She needed to hurry.

Above, Dauntless was at the scene of the ambush. He landed on a roof and looked it over. He paid no mind to the fence or the lack of a body.

She left him behind.

The carnage may be a suitable enough distraction. Nanku endured the stink and filth. She kept going. Followed a line opposite the direction she'd sent the Twins into. The sewers grew louder and wider the deeper she went. Vehicles rushed by on the streets above. Heavy trucks and vans. They all converged in the direction of the battle while Nanku slipped out under their feet.

The sewers ran out to sea. The smell got better as she went. The sewage was diverted underground somewhere else and flowing water took its place.

Nanku slowed as she approached the large outlet at the end of the line. The water spilled out into the mouth of the bay. It wasn't a particularly attractive waterfall but she had cover.

Dropping to one knee, Nanku let her muscles relax and removed a small case from her belt.

The implements inside were crude. A hunter's field kit. Nothing like the full medical suites on Yautja ships.

Any hunter who became too wounded in the course of a hunt to go on had failed, after all.

Nanku removed a pair of pliers and a foam dispenser.

The injury to her hip—where the sniper struck her—was the worst. First, she had to dig out the bullet. The process was excruciating, but she'd endured nearly as bad before.

The bullet hadn't made it far, but any amount was just painful and she didn't feel any better after removing it.

Pressing the nozzle of the dispenser to the wound, she injected the medical foam to plug the wound and stem the bleeding. It would encourage healing and after it set it wouldn't inhibit blood flow too much. She'd feel stiff in her leg for a while.

Longer if she didn't rest.

Nanku released her jaw and used a beam-scalpel and pliers to close the wound. Then she moved on to the other injuries. Her bruises ached as she worked. There was little she could do about those. It wasn't too bad.

Her skin was hard. The rest of her less so. Internal bleeding nearly killed her once. That had felt a lot worse.

Sitting as she continued her work, Nanku kept up a sweep of the area above her. The streets were quiet. She'd long gone past the area of the fighting.

Good.

Nanku was no coward, but she wasn't blindingly dumb. Surviving the Pure's attempted ambush was a feat. The kind any hunter could take a brief break for.

Without their parahumans, what could the remaining Pure do?

She had time.

Nanku packed her kit and stood.

For now, she had to retrieve the Twins and her source of—

Nanku stopped and turned her head.

Not a coincidence.

The drone had lingered at the very edge of her range. She noticed it only as she took a few steps to change the radius. Cloaked like the last one. Hidden and watching.

The thinker?

Behind her, a slight figure stepped into range.

A young woman with blonde hair flowing out the back of a helmet akin to Fenja and Menja's winged flourishes at the joins and gaps. Not as solid as Dauntless'. It was familiar from a series of videos.

Curious.

All of that, and the Pure wanted to keep fighting?

The girl strode forward like an angry child. Heavy steps. Furious and focused.

Nanku turned to face her.

"You're Iron Rain."

"You're a murderer."

Nanku tilted her head.

What was it with Nazis and thinking no rules applied to them?

***

I don't know either, Nanku, but I will comment on it!

Also curious. Very. Very. Curious.

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

Iron Rain was more diminutive than Nanku expected.

She was tall. Wide hips. Full chest.

Strange.

By all examination—and Nanku used her mask to be sure—she was an adult.

But she didn't carry herself as one. Her body language lacked the confidence of someone who'd grown into their own body. She was impetuous. Puffed up.

This was the whelp that wanted to kill her mother?

Well, she wouldn't get the chance.

Nanku's body still hurt, but not enough to stop her. With Iron Rain dead, the threat of the Pure was resolved. She could get back to her own business.

That would be nice.

"Nothing to say?" Iron Rain asked. "Just going to stand there?!"

Nanku cocked her head and thought.

She deactivated her cloak and exposed herself.

"Cricket was a coward. It was disappointing."

But no need for Nanku to debase herself.

Iron Rain bristled visibly under her armor.

She was no Cricket.

Nanku took it as a good thing. She couldn't be disappointed again. Iron Rain was impetuous and loud. Just someone her mother and half-sister would be safer without.

"You're going to pay for what you did," Rain snarled. "I'll make you pay!"

Nanku flipped the spear in her hand and threw.

The weapon's spin whistled and the tip screwed toward Iron Rain's chest. Nanku released her wristblades and threw herself forward. She flicked the blades from her shuriken out.

The spear pointed down and Nanku reared her shuriken back.

Light burst. Bright and shining a pale gray. The spear struck the diamond shaped shimmer and bounded. The shield rippled and Iron Rain threw both hands forward.

Nanku jumped, lunging aside and rolling as the shield broke apart and a blade of iron light flew her way. The blade struck the causeway like a hammer. Sand exploded and Nanku grabbed a grate and pulled herself away before another sword could hit her.

"Monster!" Rain screamed.

A dozen swords formed over her head and Nanku swung her legs up to reach her feet.

"You killed Jessie and Nessa!"

The air rippled. Blade after blade launched and explosions of sheer force tore into the stone.

Nanku swerved, jumping and rolling. Rain's aim was poor, but as soon as one blade fired another came out. Momentum carried her, and she barely held her balance as she slipped and skidded through explosions.

"And Uncle Justin!"

Nanku didn't even know which of them that was. Victor?

She ducked under a sword and threw her body into a spin over the next. Her landing stained her injured thigh. Nanku dropped to a knee unintentionally and threw her shuriken.

Rain raised a shield, but the spinning blade flew past her.

She started, looking back at the weapon as it spun through the dark.

Nanku threw her second shuriken and fired a dart from her left arm. Rain looked back and ducked. The shuriken went over her head and past her second shield. The dart struck her leg and the lines launched to ensnare her ankles.

Taking her chance, Nanku sprinted into a long stride.

The shield burst. Spinning blades shot out in every direction and Nanku jumped back to avoid being hit. Three more swords fired from over Rain's head and another shot from the ground between her legs and cut the line.

Nanku's eyes widened as she rolled away from one sword and swept herself aside another. Both exploded. Debris showered over her armor and against her skin.

Her visor slid from vision mode to vision mode, but none of them showered her anything.

The iron light was light, but it was like an object as well. Solid light? That sounded familiar.

Nanku rolled over the ground, kicked off, ducked under a spinning blade, and reached with one outstretched hand.

Iron Rain stepped back as her throat came within Nanku's grasp.

Light shined from the blow and blades shot upward from the ground. They circled the girl and burst out, nearly throwing Nanku aside. Amid swirling sand, she slipped herself between the projections. One hand reached past Iron Rain and her other grabbed her knife and stabbed across her chest.

A small shield blocked the blade and Iron Rain projected a trio of swords over her head.

The first of the shurikens returned. Nanku caught it and swiped the blades.

Rain dodged and Nanku danced away from her swords. She threw the shuriken and caught the second as it returned. A flick of her fingers threw her knife and her arm threw the second shuriken.

Rain retreated in a start from the barrage. She used a shield to deflect the first shuriken. The knife cut strands of blonde hair hanging out the back of her helmet. The second shuriken struck her shoulder and spun the girl.

Nanku leaped at her chance. Wristblades poised to sever the spine.

Iron Rain screamed and a massive sword of iron light exploded from the sand to either side of her. One blade caught Nanku in the arm and pierced her skin like tissue.

She flung back, thrown by the blade and launched through the air until she crashed.

Rain screamed, clutching her shoulder while blood ran down her arm.

"WILD ANIMAL!"

Nanku grit her teeth and ran for her spear. She caught the weapon between swords blasting into the sand around her. Blasts of force rocked her to the bone. Tiny grains and bits of chitin showered atop her head.

She readied the weapon to throw, dodged a sword, and waited.

Rain's head twitched as the shurikens flew back.

Iron Rain leaned to the side and avoided one. Raised a shield over her back and blocked the second.

Nanku threw her spear and Rain screamed again as it pierced her other shoulder.

The girl stumbled and Nanku grabbed her. Swords burst from the ground. She ignored the weapons, lifting Iron Rain and throwing her overhead onto the beach.

Her body crunched on landing. The metal armor around her dented. She kicked like a wounded animal. Shot blades Nanku leaned away from. She caught her shuriken and used it to deflect a long-narrow sword and pinned Iron Rain to the sand.

With a knee to the girl's chest, Nanku swung her wristblades back and aimed for the throat.

Iron Rain sobbed.

Crying.

She—A child? Nanku thought Tattletale meant—Was her body a lie? She didn't speak like someone that tall. She screamed and wailed. Bellowed like an infant.

Nanku's arm wavered.

A shape moved behind her. She barely had time to register it. The passage was disorienting at first. The air folded in on itself and the bugs shifted position in a dizzying surge.

A hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled. Nanku spun. The hand left her, but the girl's shape blurred.

Nanku's blades passed through the air before her but struck nothing.

Vista warped the space around herself back, jaw tense.

"Let's just calm down and put all the sharp, stabbing, penetrating, and cutting implements away. What do you say?"

Nanku turned her head.

Two more coming. Quick. Not as quick as Vista but Vista's power was…

Damn it.

"I am asking nicely," Vista said. "Drop the weapons and—"

Nanku reared back and swung her leg out in a sweeping motion. She thrust for Iron Rain.

The thrust was perfect, and still, she missed.

"Hard way it is then," Vista declared as her power twisted the air and bent Nanku's blades away from Iron Rain.

Nanku cursed.

There was nothing worthy in killing a sobbing child.

But Rose was innocent, and she'd stay that way.

For that, Rain had to die.

A blade shot from the ground and Nanku barely jerked her head to the side before her throat was cut. Rain pushed herself away and swung her hand out. A flurry of blades followed and Nanku dodged away.

Vista rotated herself, twisting the beach in an arc so she appeared behind Iron Rain.

"That's enough, Aster." She wrapped an arm around Rain's throat and squeezed. "It's over. You—"

Nanku snatched her remaining shuriken from the ground.

She threw the blade but Vista again twisted the air.

Nanku's wristblades followed, aimed for Rain's head.

Vista twisted that air too.

She wasn't limited to doing one thing at a time.

Nanku leaped back and reached to reactivate her cloak.

The woman came at her—dressed in black with a white circuit-board pattern over it—with a surge of speed. She took a step left and shot her fist out. Nanku swung the shuriken in one hand into her path and let the woman avoid the blades.

The second she threw low.

Battery jumped, starting as her leg barely avoided being cut.

Assault landed behind Nanku, between her and Iron Rain. Vista had the girl on her back and was trying to pull Nanku's spear clear of her wound.

Nanku didn't complain to herself.

It was pointless.

"I swear I had something for this," Assault said. "Puppy?"

"She nearly took my leg off!" Battery snapped.

"Something about a leg up? No, that wasn't it. Damn it, it was good too."

"Do we have a plan for this?" Vista asked. "Console?"

Nanku braced herself. Assault and Battery moved in sync with surprising smoothness. The Internet did say they were a couple. That was dangerous.

One against two weren't odds Nanku feared, but a pair in sync with one another was worth double.

"Leave," Nanku tried. "The Pure have one parahuman left."

"Yeah." Assault crossed his arms over his chest. "Not that I'm crying but..."

"But you have to stop," Battery picked up. "Stand down."

Killing Rain was no longer feasible.

"Not even going to think about it?" Assault asked.

A trap within a trap.

The drone was still there. Watching. How cold could the Pure's thinker be? Did she sacrifice her entire parahuman force just to stage a conflict with the Protectorate.

She couldn't have known Nanku would hesitate with Iron Rain. Could she?

"Where's Weaver?" Battery asked. "We could use someone to talk to her."

"Not coming," Vista replied while she listened to someone. "Director's orders."

Battery started. "What?"

Nanku threw a shuriken back and another forward.

The two capes dodged. Battery moved with a sudden burst of speed. Assault stepped into the weapon and batted it aside.

From one ambush into another.

And it was time to go.

Assault burst forward and struck the air when Nanku ducked under the blow. She warred over the nearby presence of her swarm. They were ready and waiting. But anyone who had known of it was now dead, and her greatest weapon was a surprise once again.

Behind her mask, Nanku's eyes swept over the water.

She preferred to keep it that way.

Nanku rolled away from Assault and grabbed her shuriken from the sand as she broke into a run.

"Really?" Assault asked.

"Just knock her out," Battery grumbled. "I'm not breaking the alternative to you-know-who."

They wouldn't kill her.

That was good.

But how to escape?

Vista wrestled Aster down while the girl struggled and screamed. "Wait—"

"Just keep her down!"

Vista twisted the air in and back and in again, folding the blades away from herself as Rain tried to launch them.

"Just knock her out!"

"A bit busy," Vista replied.

One obstacle eliminated then.

Nanku spun on her heel and ran.

Assault and Battery ran to chase her while she collected her knife. Her spear was still in Iron Rain's shoulder. Leaving it wasn't ideal.

Nanku avoided Assault's attempt to strike her back with an arm bar and allowed Battery to strike her side. The impact was heavy. She felt it in her ribs and the pain radiated through her chest while her body hit the sand and rolled.

The pair struck again before Nanku could turn and something in her chest broke. Another blow to her arm cracked a bone. Blood ran down her leg. Her stitches were too fresh. They hadn't held.

Pain flared up and Nanku found it hard to put any weight on her repeatedly injured leg. Moving an arm hurt. At least one rib was broken. Her arm as well possibly.

She'd tangled with a dozen parahumans in a single night.

Nanku supposed she'd pushed things a bit too far. A lesson to remember.

She marked her target with her mask. The lasers shot out and the actuating arm popped over her shoulder.

"Vista!" Battery snapped.

The girl turned and moved as the plasma bolt shot past her and over Iron Rain.

She startled. "Was that a ray gun?"

Nanku fired a dart line from her gauntlet and waited until it strung around her spear. She pulled, ripping the weapon from Iron Rain's shoulder. The girl screamed. Maybe she'd bleed out. It would save Nanku the time of finding her again.

Reeling the line back in, Nanku's fingers closed around her spear just as Battery hit her again and Assault struck her from the other side.

"Come on," Assault said as his foot reared back. "Just stay down."

Nanku rolled and collapsed her spear. The plasma caster fired twice more, driving Battery back. Her third charge came quickly and she slammed her fist into the ground. Big hands grabbed Nanku's shoulder and Assault lifted her effortlessly from the ground.

She kicked at his chest fruitlessly.

When the internet said he could manipulate kinetic energy, Nanku didn't appreciate it. Her feet simply stopped no matter how hard she kicked.

That was a problem.

"I got her," Assault claimed.

Nanku looked at his head and the plasma caster charged.

"Shit."

He threw her back and Nanku rolled as her body flew across the beach. The landing was strange. The moment she found her feet, Nanku stumbled back nearly a dozen paces into the surf.

Battery charged at her from the right. Assault leaped into the air.

Nanku sealed her mask and threw herself into the water.

She swam down—easier with her armor on—and reached her hand out.

A hand reached her first.

Dauntless lifted her from the water and flew into the air.

"Not a bad idea," he said. "But we can't ignore you now, or let you go."

"I didn't ask," Nanku replied.

She stabbed her wristblades into his shoulder, between the armored plates of his costume. There was some resistance, but the tip broke through and sank in. His hold loosened and a swift kick sent Nanku dropping from the air back into the water.

She would not kill Rose's father. He'd survive a little light maiming.

Pulling her legs together, Nanku braced as her body struck the water's surface and she sank into the cold. The weight and momentum carried her toward the bottom where dozens of small claws grasped at her. Legs crawled over her arm. Bubbles churned but the weight of the crabs was enough to keep her under the water and near the floor.

Dauntless was still in the air clutching at his shoulder. He followed at first, tracking the shadow of her movement.

Until her helpers pulled her into deeper water and the darkness of the bay and the night made tracking her impossible.

The air in her mask would last more than long enough. Nanku took her time. Kept many eyes on Dauntless as he continued his search. He'd turned the wrong way and Nanku was sure he'd lost her.

The crabs kept up their work, scurrying in mass and pulling her further along the bay.

The cold numbed the pain. Made it easier to think clearly.

If the enforcers were smart, they'd spread out. Look for her anywhere she could come back on land. She needed to slip past them before they did that.

Nanku flowed with the currents and used bugs along the shore to search.

When she found a small grate under a boardwalk further along the shore, Nanku directed the crabs.

They spilled her out under the decks above. Too weak to carry her out of the water. Nanku pulled herself to the grate with a limp and a snarl. She stopped to reapply her med-kit's treatment. The extra pain made her more alert briefly. Long enough to reseal the lacerations in her legs.

The broken ribs and cracked bones were another story.

For that, she injected an agent directly into her bloodstream. It would accelerate her healing, but broken bones did not heal fast. Not even with Yautja technology.

She dragged herself after that. First to the grate. She cut the bars and slipped through. Lifting them back into place further strained her body. She needed sleep. Badly.

Nanku went back into the sewers, wary of all movement over her heat.

There were cars with flashing lights. Loud sirens. She heard them even underground.

None of them stopped her or gave any sign of pursuit.

Nanku kept going. The thrill of the hunt and the air of danger went away and only the pain remained. A lot of pain.

She kept going anyway.

Lifting a manhole cover was too much. Nanku found a drain that emptied into a causeway and climbed the incline back onto the streets. From there her legs carried her on through shadowed alleys and streets.

Until she couldn't keep going.

Nanku slid down the wall and groaned.

She'd been injured before. Badly. That damned rhino-like beast nearly trampled her to death when she was fifteen. A stalking beast would have killed her if not for her power.

The Elders kept hunters away from Earth for good reason.

The line between pride and wit was thin. Nanku thought herself on the better side, but mistakes happened.

She'd have to not reach for more than she could grasp next time.

After she woke up from the black.

"Figures."

Nanku's eyes fluttered weakly.

Rachel crouched in front of her and snorted.

"You look like shit."

***

I like grown up badass Vista sue me.

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

Annette glared across the table, glad and terrified just how much practice she'd gotten at that over the years.

In her time as a cape, Annette shared a lot of tables with a lot of people. Most of them unpleasant. Piggot. Armsmaster. Coil. Kaiser and Lung. Some weird woman in a fedora she didn't care to think about.

Director Curtz held his hands folded together.

He was a young man. Lean. Sandy hair and dark eyes. A small scar marked the top of his left ear.

Not the ambitious sort, which always surprised Annette. Since Brockton Bay ceased being a constant source of news about cape carnage the city had gone through three directors. Piggot lasted a year before she seemed to consider her work as done as she could get it. Martin was killed by the Nine.

Curtz arrived after and had occupied the chair quietly for nearly three years.

And all of a sudden he was throwing his weight around.

Annette kept trying to puzzle out why. He'd been content—so long as the city was quiet—to be quiet.

Around the room, staff were preoccupied. The carnage came in bits and pieces.

First the massacre at the old Medhall building. Dozens dead. Vehicles destroyed. More firepower than anyone knew the Pure had. That was bad, but not so bad Annette couldn't spin it. The Pure lured Rachel out to kill her and she had no choice but to defend her life and the lives of her dogs.

A mansion in the hills beyond the city exploded after. The fire department was still digging through the wreckage, but the PRT had records of the property. The Richter family were closely tied to a number of Neo-Nazi groups and that several members were parahumans was all but an open secret.

Fenja and Menja. Annette was certain the two women were dead, along with anyone else in the building.

And then the brawl in the Trainyard. A dozen armed men dead. Two might live, minus limbs and covered in burns respectively. Stormtiger and Crusader were dead. No sign of Othala. Cricket was chased down and killed, and then a brawl ensued on the beach nearby between Iron Rain and…

Annette's fingers curled under the table.

She'd known.

It was plain as day and hard as it was she wasn't a total fool.

Nanku was different. There were pieces of Taylor there. Bits she recognized beyond her face or her eyes.

But Nanku wasn't Taylor anymore.

She was someone else, and she was a killer.

Killer.

The word rattled about and echoed.

Nanku was a killer and her capacity for it was on par with the Nine. She might have actually topped the Nine in terms of single-night body counts minus the likes of Shatterbird and Burnscar. They could attack whole buildings and cities, but the comparison was about as good as a comparison of Stalin and Hitler.

A great way to miss any point worth making.

"Rain's been apprehended," one of the staffers announced. "Vista has her in custody."

"Risks?" Curtz asked.

"Her injuries are disorienting her."

"Standard procedure then. We'll need to use Type-12 restraints. Contact Dragon for support. As I understand her power can't be used if she's not touching the ground."

"I'll make the call," someone offered.

"And bring her in and under guard," Curtz added. "For her and against anyone who might make another attempt to murder her."

Annette's eyes narrowed. "What about the other cape?"

"Assault and Battery are reporting they had her on the run. She tried to flee." The staffer turned her head, listening. "Dauntless is injured."

Annette's hand balled into a fist.

"Minor puncture wound to his shoulder. He had the suspect cape in hand but she dropped into the water and slipped away."

"Search the shore," Curtz ordered. "She can't stay underwater forever. Injuries will slow her down."

She'd be killed.

The PRT gave capes a lot of leeway. Most people didn't get it. They couldn't think past the first steps of anger and catharsis.

Wantonly killing every cape that was a problem was madness. Every cape would be backed into a corner. Every crime would be a war. Life and death. Destruction piling up faster than anyone could try to fix it.

Killing capes just because they were monsters ignored that they were monsters, and the only thing worse than monsters running wild was monsters destroying everything that might try to destroy them.

But the PRT had limits.

So many bodies this quickly? Kaiser's Empire never accrued that kind of body count. Lung's Asian Bad Boyz. The Merchants. Coil. The Teeth. The Nine really were the best comparison short of Amy and Annette wasn't going to bring that up.

Hundreds died when Amy broke.

The world came within an inch of an apocalypse. Annette wasn't entirely sure how they'd pulled it off in the end. She wasn't sure what Carol said to make Phage stop long enough for some cape with a death beam power to kill her.

Carol was never the same after her daughter died, and her surviving child had to be sent away for help.

Annette hadn't checked on Victoria in a long time. Maybe she should.

"Rain's status now?"

"Secured. Injuries to her shoulder."

"Treatment is secondary to containment." Curtz turned his head. "I know we're used to problems happenstancing their way out of sight or being handed to us with bows, but we do all those drills for a reason."

Annette frowned.

The room continued about its business and Annette glanced at her phone. Calling Lisa was too risky. Curtz was moving suddenly. After something. Until Annette knew what she needed to tread carefully.

"Anything to add, Weaver?"

"Sitting here is a misuse of my power."

"Your power is best for investigation and is valid after an incident has been resolved and the area secured. Especially when one of our perpetrators is a cape with a stated interest in murdering you."

"And as I keep trying to tell you and everyone else, I can talk her down if we're face to face."

"You're track record on that front is not going very well of late."

"That's a low blow, Director. A bit beneath you."

Curtz looked at her intently. He'd always struck her as intelligent, but distant. She'd never gotten the sense he liked her, but Annette was surprised how much distaste charged his gaze. He disliked her, and he disliked her a lot.

"So is keeping a secret this badly," he replied. "I'm sure you're not naive enough to think the PRT likes the arrangement you've set up in Brockton Bay."

Heads turned and Annette kept her face plain and her gaze even.

She hated power politics. Too much bravado and posturing. Too little actual work being done.

"I don't know what you mean," she countered.

"But," Curtz continued, "it did stop the city from being such a damned mess, and as long as the Undersiders and their cronies stuck to small-time and bloodless, the PRT was content to let them tangle with Watchdog in mind games. The world has bigger problems than a band of petty thieves turned underworld bosses."

"Tends to happen with Endbringers destroying cities and the Nine running around."

"Indeed." Curtz inhaled and pursed his lips. "But we have a problem now, Weaver, and you're not helping it by trying to play dumb."

He reached out and tapped a control on the phone beside him.

The screen at his back switched, and an image appeared.

Blurry, but marked by a human shape swinging a bladed weapon into a man's throat.

Annette sat up.

The night had been a damned disaster. One mess after another. A long, painful, hard night where she'd gone from one bad idea to a blood bath in Captain's hill, a burning building, a brawl in the Trainyard.

And the angle of the image. "Who took that?"

"A very good question," Curtz said. "Almost as good as who put it online and posted a claim on PHO and across social media that the Undersiders hired a cape assassin to murder the Pure."

Annette sat forward. "What?"

Preposterous. Lisa would do a lot of things, even things she didn't like. She had the capacity to kill. But Annette knew her and it was a leap to jump from Lisa's willingness to do unsavory things to orchestrating a mass killing.

"I found it a tad strange too," Curtz agreed.

Annette rose and crossed the room.

Looking over the shoulder of one staffer, she squinted at the ongoing response online.

Someone recorded the battle, and then released it. Accused the Undersiders of hiring an assassin. That was absurd. The Undersiders had no such history.

The Thinker.

"We've been playing the wrong game the whole time," Annette mumbled.

"I'd say so," Curtz agreed. "Were you ever really the target or a red herring meant to cause something to snap?"

He pointed.

"In this case, something rather conveniently timed."

Impossible.

There was no way the thinker could have accounted for Nanku. She came out of nowhere. No one could have predicted her except a pre-cog. Was that the thinker's power?

But what was the motivation? To bring down the Undersiders?

"This changes everything," Annette whispered. "This isn't an attempt on my life. It's something else."

The Thinker was using Aster.

Indignation rose in Annette's throat.

"So it would seem." Curtz sat back in his seat. "And now we have a whole new problem, and a wild card that I can't turn a blind eye toward."

"We don't know that—"

"Don't. The coincidence stretched credulity before, and your contributions to the Protectorate and the PRT are the only reason you're not being brought up on charges for trying to cover up your daughter's murder spree."

Annette didn't face him.

She thought. Searching for any path.

She couldn't find one.

The room around her was silent and more than one set of eyes watched and waited. Most of those present were people she knew. Not well, but the PRT wasn't that different from everyone else.

Heroes were heroes.

People believed in them. In her. Even as the people around the building realized what she was doing—that she and Tattletale were conspiring together to control Brockton Bay's underworld—they believed in her. That she was doing what she did because it saved lives, even if it doomed others.

Annette made her peace with that. In the knowledge that Addison or Rose could walk the street and be as safe as anyone could be.

Coming to terms with how everyone else felt about it was… Harder.

"I can think a lot of negative things about you, Weaver. But I don't believe for a second you sicced your daughter on the Pure. I find it infinitely more likely she was the one telling the truth. That she came back to the city to make some peace, found out what was going on, and took matters into her own hands."

"The Pure decided to break the unwritten rules," Annette said. "They were going to attack me and my younger daughter at our home."

It was better.

Better she be seen as an extreme vigilante than a mass murderer with no sense of restraint. The PRT arrested one. The other was Birdcaged, or killed.

"She's trying to protect us."

"I suppose we'll have to arrest her to find out."

Damn it.

Curtz stood slowly.

"If you have a way to contact her, then do it," he said in a tone that brokered no compromise. "Say whatever you have to say. Just get her somewhere we can surround her and if we're lucky we can bring her in alive."

Annette shook her head.

That was bad, but she'd figure something out.

The thinker was worse.

They'd been played. Tattletale was right. It was never about Aster's revenge. That was a smokescreen. A ploy.

But this?

Annette guessed a lot of possibilities after Accord died, but she never fathomed the goal was something as ambitious as turning Brockton Bay upside down.

And Nanku gave them the perfect chance.

~ ~ ~

Nanku woke slowly.

The bleariness in her eyes clung and her surroundings were both strange and smudged across her vision. The room was small. A set of stairs led to a door in the ceiling and a small bathroom tucked into a nook beneath. The walls were rushed.

A hastily assembled space. Not constructed by typical means. The walls were rough and dirt spilled through the boards. A roughly assembled staircase led to a door in the ceiling. A trap door to the floor above.

Nanku blinked and reached out with her power.

Dusk and Dawn turned their heads in the room above. They scuttled toward the door and began trying to work it open.

Talon limbs weren't very good for opening closed doors.

The noise drew the attention of a woman above. Nanku's mind was still dazed and she needed a moment.

Dusk and Dawn moved aside instinctively, making room for a hand to reach down and lift the trap door.

Bitch came down the steps and didn't flinch as the Twins rushed through the opening.

Dawn leaped onto the bed and began arranging the sheets. Dusk circled the room, searching the walls and testing them with taps of his knuckle. Something about being underground brought a new set of instincts out.

Taking a stool from the wall, Bitch took a seat beside the bed.

"Look like shit," she said.

"Fine," Nanku replied. She tried to sit up but her body protested.

Definitely a broken rib.

A cockroach found her equipment under the bed. She searched piece by piece. Weapon to weapon. It was all there. Nothing missing.

That was a start.

"Med-kit."

Bitch stared.

"Box. Size of my hand."

Bitch hunched down and reached under the bed. She fiddled a bit. Turned a few pieces over one way and then another. When she finally found it she'd searched nearly everything. Nanku wasn't sure that was a coincidence.

Checking to see if she'd grabbed any of her weapons.

Smart.

"Here."

Bitch set the box down and Nanku pushed it open with her thumb.

"Can't get a healer," Bitch said. "Broken ribs. Bad cuts."

"I've had worse."

"Be worse if you try to run."

"I'm not dumb."

"Fought the Nazis and the Protectorate. Seems pretty dumb."

"I breathe. The Pure don't."

Nanku checked her med kit. She had the tools to deal with the rib, but she'd have to cut into her own skin to reach the bone. She'd done that before and it wasn't pleasant. Pain was a fleeting thing. Nanku could endure it.

She just didn't like it. She wasn't a sadist.

There was a bone suture in the kit. It was meant for knitting bones. Still hurt but she wouldn't have to worry about her own lungs filling with blood.

"Heroes are looking for you," Bitch said.

"Figured."

"Don't need trouble. Stay here."

Nanku's hand stopped and she looked Bitch in the eye.

The girl didn't blink. "I have rope."

Nanku reached out. Dusk and Dawn both turned on Bitch and rattled in their throats.

Bitch whistled. Two dozen dogs barked in response.

Nanku scoffed.

Bitch huffed.

"Why?" Nanku asked

"Helped me," Bitch answered. "I help you. Even."

Nanku tilted her head. "Tattletale?"

"She's smart. Probably knows already."

"My mother?"

Bitch shrugged. "Telling her makes trouble. Don't make trouble."

"Fine."

That was fair.

Nanku leaned back onto her pillow and closed her eyes.

"I'll bring food later. Stay put and stay quiet."

Nanku laid down but kept the kit close. Dusk and Dawn settled around her. Their wings began vibrating. It did soothe the aches in her muscles. The pain in her ribs not so much.

She'd rest a bit. Rebuild her strength. Then she'd cut into her side and mend the rib.

After she rested.

A rest sounded good, the more she thought about it.

If nothing else, Iron Rain was captured. She couldn't hurt her mother or Rose now. There was still the thinker but they obviously weren't that smart. They'd lost everything in a night. Some thinker.

Nanku took a deep breath and eased herself to drift away.

When she woke, angry brown eyes glared at her.

Rose kicked Nanku in her uninjured side far too hard. The world spun wildly. Her body twisted in the air and her back struck the wall.

Nanku's vision blurred and she had to restrain Dusk and Dawn from attacking.

She hit the floor and started.

Rose stomped her foot on the bed, heedless of the Twins hissing at her.

"Meanie!"

***

And before anyone asks; Rose triggered before Taylor returned to Earth and has had her powers.

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[RXIV]

Pain was a fleeting thing. Nanku could endure it.

She just didn't like it. She wasn't a sadist.

Click to shrink...

I believe liking to suffer would make her a masochist, not a sadist. Technically both since she would also be the one causing the pain, but still.

 

[Kaernetron]

Rachel and Nanku, speaking the same language: ❤️

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

"You stabbed daddy!" Rose snapped. "That's mean! Sisters shouldn't stab sister's daddies!"

Nanku pressed a hand to the new sore spot in her flank.

Strong.

Far, far, too strong for her size.

And in the absence of their mother, or anyone else, Nanku felt the instinct clearly. The sensation of a predator. Danger. She paid it little mind. Aside from the first day, the parahumans she encountered were obvious.

But she'd missed it from Rose before.

"You have a power."

Rose's next complaint died in her throat. Her lip quivered and her eyes started to swell.

"Don't tell mom."

Nanku blinked and her breath caught.

"When?"

Rose dropped to a squat and wrapped her arms around her legs. She buried her face in her knees. No answer came.

Nanku winced and pulled herself up.

"Rose," she pressed. "When? How long?"

It couldn't have been the previous night. Nanku grimaced at the thought. That wasn't what she wanted. It wasn't supposed to happen. Was it because of the threat to their mother? To her? Because she'd stabbed Dauntless to escape?

Nanku hobbled to the bed and sent Dusk and Dawn back. They retreated, giving Rose space as Nanku stood over the girl.

Her sister.

The girl was her sister.

"Rose." Nanku dropped her tone to a soft voice. One like Taylor remembered when she was young. Before it all went wrong. "You're not in trouble. Tell me. When?"

Rose looked up for a moment. Eyes big and puffy.

"When I was littler," she said.

Not last night then.

Nanku exhaled and her shoulders relaxed.

With the release of the sudden—annoying—fear, her curiosity took over.

"How did you find me?"

Rose averted her eyes.

"Good hunters don't lie," Nanku said.

"I'm not a hunter," Rose replied.

"Found me."

Rose gave her a quizzical look. Nanku kept her face straight and wondered why she thought that would work. Pe'dte said it so many times. It just came naturally with the idea of chiding a child.

Rose's expression began to crack and Nanku stuck to her spear.

She'd made the thrust.

She might as well see if it worked.

It took time. Several minutes before Rose broke eye contact and huffed. "I can see people. If I want to."

"See people?"

She nodded. "And I know where they are."

Her power. "Your power lets you see people, and track them?"

Rose nodded again.

Nanku's eyes widened. "You found me here like that?"

"Daddy said you stabbed him!" Rose's face turned red and her back straightened. "That's mean!"

Nanku looked away. "He'll be fine."

"That's what he said."

"He wi—How do you know I stabbed him?"

Rose pursed her lips. "I told you! I see people!"

Nanku grit her teeth. "You were watching me."

"No. I was watching Daddy!"

Nanku started to reply but stopped herself.

Her father was Dauntless. She had to know. If she knew, "You worry about him."

Rose's eyes provided the answer.

Nanku looked over her shoulder. "How did you kick me so hard?"

"I don't know."

"Good hunters don't lie," Nanku repeated.

"I don't!" Rose buried her face in her knees again. "I was angry so I kicked you… I didn't mean to hit so hard."

"I'm fine," Nanku lied. "My body is hard."

Did she have more than one power? Nanku wasn't sure how that worked. She had more than one power but knew most parahumans didn't. And hers were weird. Her control of insects was her strongest ability. The others were useful but small. Minor.

Rose could locate anyone and track them down, and she could kick Nanku across a room.

It wasn't like Assault's blows. His blows could throw her but there was oddly little pain in them. The impacts weren't real. It was like he simply wanted to move her and did.

Battery hit harder, but was that because Rose's blows were weaker or because Battery was older?

"Don't tell Mom," Rose pleaded. She surrendered and Nanku could see it on her face. "She was scared and had to hide me, but hiding me made me scared and I couldn't sleep! I wanted to be brave but…"

Her face flushed and Nanku could tell there was more. Something worse.

Whatever it was, Rose seemed unable to say it.

"Why did she hide you?" Nanku asked, as a distraction.

"Because a bad man named Coil was looking for me."

Coil. "He's still out there?"

Rose shook her head. "Auntie Lis is Coil now. That's what Mom said."

Lis? "Tattletale."

"I don't see her much. Mom said she's not a good person."

"She's not."

"But she's Mom's friend."

Nanku tilted her head. Her legs were tired and her ribs hurt. She directed Dusk to make some room and turned to sit on the bed. It wasn't the softest, but it was better than the ground, and getting the weight off her scared legs felt better.

An edge faded from her voice as she spoke, and she straightened her back. "Not all friends are good. Shouldn't be here."

Rose pouted and looked away. "You shouldn't be mean."

Nanku sighed. "I shouldn't."
She's let Rose have that one. Children should get to win an argument from time to time. Especially against adults.

"Does anyone know?"

"Aunt Miss—" Rose shut her mouth. "Not supposed to talk about that."

Nanku frowned but let it go.

Her mother had no sisters. Neither did her father. Maybe Rose's father did?

"She didn't tell anyone?"

Rose shook her head and uncurled slightly. "Mom's always scared. I can tell. If she knew how scared I was, she'd be sad."

"So you didn't tell her?"

"No."

Then no one else knew where she was, though Nanku guessed someone could figure it out. Clearing her mind, she reached out through the swarm and searched the surrounding block. The streets were normal. Nothing unusual.

Above, the dogs were eating eagerly. They'd just been fed and Bitch was—

Nanku looked up.

The hatch above flung open and Bitch came down the steps.

"The fuck you—"

She stopped, eyes fixing on Rose and jaw dropping.

"Hell is she doing here?"

"It's not nice to swear!" Rose chided.

Bitch stared at her and turned to Nanku. "You bring her here?"

Rose paled.

"Yes," Nanku lied.

Bitch's eyes narrowed at the answer. She looked back and forth between them and Nanku could smell the suspicion. Briefly, the girl looked around the room and seemed to notice something when she turned away.

"Keep it down," she said. "And don't cause trouble."

Rose relaxed and Nanku gave an affirming snort Bitch seemed to understand.

"Cassie went for Chinese," she continued. Over her shoulder, she glared at Rose. "Leave before she gets back."

"Okay," Rose hiccuped.

Bitch huffed and left the room. "Should be in school anyway."

"There's no school on Saturday," Rose said.

Nanku blinked. "How long?"

"Five days," Bitch answered. "I fed your bugs. They're well trained."

Nanku reached over and scratched at Dusk's throat.

They were hungry, but not too hungry. Better to underfeed them than overfeed them.

And five days.

She still had the far better part of a year, but five days laying in bed was far too many.

Rose pushed her lips out. "You said good hunters don't lie."

"I didn't."

"But you said—"

"You were looking for me because I hurt your father. That I brought you here unwittingly is meaningless." Nanku huffed. "He will be fine. The wound was superficial."

"It was still mean," Rose insisted.

"Yes," Nanku conceded. "You should go. If they come for me, you aren't safe here."

Rose watched her with curious eyes. Familiar eyes. Nanku saw them in reflections whenever she looked.

"Why did you kill people?" Rose asked. "Everyone knows killing is bad."

"Chickens don't want to die to feed you," Nanku answered. "They die anyway."

"But they're chickens."

"Death is part of life. If the Nazis didn't want to die, they should have done a better job living."

Rose gave her a queer look. She didn't understand but Nanku didn't expect her to. She was human and she was better off staying that way.

"Go home," Nanku insisted.

"What if I tell Mom."

"Your choice."

Rose huffed and stood up. She glanced at Dawn for a moment and stepped off the bed. Her steps were slow. Lingering. Like she wanted to stay, or was waiting for Nanku to tell her too.

She wouldn't.

Killing the Pure was for her, and their mother.

But she didn't need to know that.

Nanku pondered the thought as Rose plodded up the stairs. Rose looked like Taylor. Sounded like Taylor.

But she wasn't Taylor.

Before her father died, Taylor had been energetic and talkative. Loud. Nanku's memory was hazy but she remembered some moments. The happiest ones in particular. The sad too.

Rose was… Different from Taylor. And she had talent.

Nanku pushed the thought away and started to bed forward.

"I won't tell Mom," Rose said. "Promise."

Nanku tilted her head and watched Rose vanish up the steps.

She waited a moment and Dusk scuttled after her. Rose left the same way she entered, running when Bitch shouted at her not to touch dogs she didn't know. She was out the door and going down the street, and Dusk took off and followed.

Nanku couldn't follow her all the way to wherever she was going but—

In the kennel above, Imp appeared and groaned.

"I'll do it," she said. "How the hell did the kid even find this place?"

"Nanku brought her," Bitch answered.

"She have a phone?"

"She has lots of stuff."

Imp shook her head. "Just keep her here. Whole town is still hunting her ass, and at this point even the Ambassadors are after her."

"Lisa?"

"Lisa is pointedly not asking the very obvious question so that when asked she can semi-honestly say the words 'I don't know.' Just keep her down there."

"She's too hurt to move."

"Then it'll be easy."

Nanku blinked and shook her head.

Rose left at a steady pace.

Dusk stuck low after taking off. It was light out and any flying parahumans could spot him if he rose too high. Nanku directed him to scuttle over the rooftops and leap once he was far enough along.

Rose went to a bus stop and sat down to wait.

A girl with dark skin and purple streaks in her hair came out of an alley a moment later.

An alley where no one had been moments before.

Dusk turned his head and Nanku drew bugs close to Imp to listen.

"Hey," Imp said with a smile. "You okay, kid?"

Rose stared at her. "Mom says not to talk to strangers."

Imp held in a laugh. "Well, she sounds smart. You okay?"

"I am waiting for the bus and I can scream. Really, really loud."

"How about you don't do that"—Imp sat down on the bench with space between them—"and I'll just sit here and make sure you get on that bus. Deal?"

Rose watched her warily and then stared at the empty ends of the bench in confusion.

Nanku kept watch until the bus arrived and in the meantime she had Dawn retrieve her mask. She tried to get it herself, but getting on the ground and reaching under the bed hurt before she'd gotten halfway down. Dawn's talon caught the rim and she pulled the mask out enough to close her jaws over it.

The insect held the mask out and Nanku retrieved it.

She settled back on the bed and eased herself onto the bed. Dawn went back under the bed and retrieved the gauntlet with her computer.

It felt much better to lay down.

Fitting the mask over her face, Nanku plugged the cord into her implant and waited for the device to restart.

Always a long wait waiting for the system to boot from a depowered state. Once it did, Nanku ran quick diagnostics. Refitting her gauntlet she opened the panel and started being productive.

She still had the scans of her father's file. The papers themselves might be around. She'd left them in the kennel five days ago. A quick sweep of the building didn't find them.

That's what she had scans for.

With a sigh, Nanku decided to focus on the pages about the scene. The building was gone. The images and words in the report were all that remained.

She read through the report quickly and tried to build the image in her mind. And she compiled questions she needed to answer.

Her father left the Dockworker's building late after checking in. Why did he check in? Did he do that often?

A note clearly stated he regularly parked in the building. Most Dockworkers did. Were there none who'd seen his death?

He died within thirty minutes of leaving. The body was found an hour later. The detectives had dismissed the coroner's report and apparently made their own determination.

Thirty minutes.

"Thirty minutes," Nanku mumbled.

Why didn't he simply leave? He wasn't killed in his car. He never made it to his car. He was near the restroom, but why not go before leaving the Dockworkers?

"You stopped," Nanku realized. "You stopped. Why did you stop, Daddy?"

The last word caught her for a moment.

"You stopped," she affirmed. "What made you stop? Not get in your car."

She scrolled through the pages in search. Surely someone else asked that question. It didn't take thirty minutes to get into a car. He had milk. It was late. He had to get back to Taylor. She was waiting for him.

Thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes.

Did it take that long to kill him? No. Not with his injuries. So what? Did the killer…

"You talked to them," Nanku determined. "Who was it?"

Nanku went looking for who specifically found the body and when.

Lacy.

Lacy found him.

And Lacy was dead.

Did Kurt know something?

Nanku continued looking through the records in detail and compiling questions. Some were answered as she went. He checked in because someone called him. Something about missing containers at a work site. Nothing came of it. The enforcers tracked it down and found it to be a clerical error.

That was a dead end.

Othala.

Where was Othala? Did Tattletale take her too?

Nanku snarled.

She'd killed the rest. Othala was her only link left to…

It took a moment to remember the name.

"Quality Care. That's what they called it."

QC.

The trap door opened as Cassie returned with bags of food.

Bitch came down the steps and Dusk scurried after her. Rose was on the bus and riding back into the city. It was as far as Nanku could follow. She'd be alright.

The girl kicked her across the room.

Pity on anyone who tried to hurt her.

"Need help." Bitch reached out.

"I'm fine," Nanku replied.

"Not a question."

She grabbed Nanku's shoulder and pulled.

"And take off the mask."

"Why?"

"In case."

Nanku grimaced but the smell of food spread through every bug in the building.

Her stomach roiled.

Nanku removed her mask and her gauntlet and leaned against Bitch up the stairs. The girl all but lifted her over the last few steps.

Cassie eyed Nanku suspiciously. "She's not going to murder us, right?"

"We're not Nazis." Bitch eased Nanku into a seat at the table. "Don't eat the sweet and sour."

Nanku looked over the boxes and containers, unsure what was what. Taylor had Chinese food but it had been a long time. Nanku only remembered the taste of beef and broccoli. The arrangement smelled of a range of spices, all richer than she was accustomed to. Dusk and Dawn sniffed curiously and patiently waited for their chance to eat.

Cassie and Bitch took their own seats.

"How did she get here?"

"Don't know," Nanku answered.

"Who?" Cassie asked.

"No one," Nanku and Bitch answered.

Cassie looked at them and shrugged. "Fine."

She filled a plate and left the room.

"Don't mind me. It's a nice day out. I'll eat outside."

Nanku retrieved her own plates. She loaded two with the contents of chicken and broccoli and offered them to Dusk and Dawk. They continued sniffing at first, wary of something so unfamiliar.

Bitch glowered. "Got no phone. No computer. You didn't bring her."

"I sent Dusk to get her."

"Don't drag her in." Bitch's tone was serious. Warning. "Too little for this shit."

Nanku stabbed a fork into her food. "I know."

"Then don't bring her here again."

Nanku shrugged and stuffed the first mouthful into her lips. She froze, brow furrowing as the flavors melted over her tongue.

Her mouth chewed slowly and swallowed. "That's disgusting."

Bitch scoffed. "Told you not to eat the sweet and sour."

***

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.

 

[3ndless]

Little Hunter

"No!" Cassie groaned and rose from the couch. "No! No! NO!"

On the screen—in a horrific misuse of a widescreen—some man in his thirties handed a rose to a vapid woman in her twenties. The woman clapped excitedly and shot a dirty look at another.

"NO!" Cassie screamed. "Why Kystyn?! She spells her name with two y's! That's stupid! She's stupid!"

Nanku didn't get it.

Who looked for a mate on a game show? That seemed like the worst possible way to find someone to breed with. Surely anyone actually worth that kind of arrangement wouldn't need to whore themselves for entertainment value.

"Why?!" Cassie carried. "Why are they always so cute but so blind?!"

"Because they're looking for love on TV," Bitch quipped.

Nanku huffed in agreement. "Waste of a widescreen."

"Hey!" Cassie turned and pointed. "Who's name is the arrow on the turn wheel pointing at?"

Bitch didn't look.

Nanku didn't either.

"Yeah. Cassie," Cassie said. "Right there. It's my turn and I am going to watch this adorable idiot with the cutest ass on Earth ruin everything with some dumb blonde bimbo who spells her name with two y's!"

Brutus barked in support and Angelica yapped.

"Traitors," Bitch complained.

"Of course they're on my side." Cassie crossed her arms over her chest. "All you ever watch is Shark Week and that random subscription to the Great Courses. Which you don't need a TV for!"

"Visual aids," Bitch replied.

"Get a powerpoint!"

"Knowledge is power," Nanku quipped.

Bitch huffed. "Better than—"

"Rule two of the wheel," Cassie interrupted. "No criticizing outside commerc—Gracie?! You're picking fucking Gracie?! She cheated on you on national television and they told you about it!"

Bitch held her mouth shut and seemed to resign herself to an afternoon of vapid reality television. The name struck Nanku as impossible. How could it be filmed and be 'reality?' That didn't make sense.

Complete waste of a widescreen.

Nanku refocused her attention.

Her injuries had healed enough she could move around. Enough to sort the papers on the coffee table. Which no one used for coffee so Nanku didn't know why they had it.

No matter.

Bitch was able to produce her father's file when Nanku asked for it.

Her biomask did have limits.

Having the papers spread out before her had limits too but she could organize and sort the information. Let her visualize the information. See multiple pieces at once and try to fit it all together.

Her father wasn't ambushed. Ambushed wasn't right. He'd have died sooner. There weren't enough injuries on his arms or legs to signal defense.

Danny Hebert didn't fight, but he wasn't ambushed.

Someone approached him and he trusted them enough to let them get close.

Then that person killed him. Quick. Violent. Brutal.

Taylor's father was so shocked by the attack he didn't even try to protect himself. The question was who. The most straightforward route to who was why did they kill him.

Missing shipments.

Nanku focused on that.

The police determined it was a misunderstanding, but how? All they did was talk to Kurt about it. The investigators questioned him and Lacy extensively, but only asked Kurt about the shipment.

He produced some paper labeled 'incident report' and the police added it to the file.

The report was vague. Someone said something about a computer entry that never really existed.

No one ever looked to see if that was true.

The Dockworkers did a lot in Brockton Bay. Worked for different companies doing different things. And the gangs were always looking to get a foot in the door.

Maybe one of them did.

They started running a business through the Dockworkers somehow, and Danny Hebert died when he started looking into it.

Nanku watched Bitch from the corner of her eye.

Othala was gone. Taken somewhere by someone. And Nanku still needed her. She might know about Quality Care, and she might know about anyone moving on the Dockworkers at the time her father died.

A complication, but Nanku didn't believe the coincidence.

She couldn't.

Her father goes to investigate something and is killed shortly after? It had to be related. The enforcers of Earth gave up on the obvious trail far far too easily.

Maybe they knew more than they let on?

Another question for the pile.

A pile that kept growing taller because she could move about on her own, but she still wasn't in any condition to hunt. And it was miserable. The last time she'd been injured two other hunters managed to help her back to the ship.

Yautja medical technology sped things up.

Another week at least she thought. Her rib would still be sore, but it would heal enough. She didn't particularly like imposing on Bitch either.

It was very generous of her to hide Nanku while the entire city was hunting for her. She framed it as paying back a debt. Nanku didn't find the scales very balanced. Cassie nearly died in the Pure's ambush, but Bitch would have survived and made them suffer for the effort.

Nanku hardly saved her.

But that was a week away at least.

Until then, best to take things easily. She'd heal faster.

Cassie groaned and shook her head furiously. "Why is it so hard to find a guy with a great butt and brains?"

"They're men," Nanku answered automatically. "They think with their organs first."

Cassie looked over her shoulder. "Don't strike me as someone with much experience in the boys department. Unless you killed them after. I could see that."

Nanku scoffed. "All men are the same."

A Yautja woman only killed a male if he was reaching for far more than he could grasp and a lesson needed permanence.

Not that Nanku would ever know. She was two-thirds the height of the shortest Yautja—all males. She was thin, lacking in the chest department, and significantly, completely incapable of carrying any male's child.

She had friends among the men. Good friends. None of them would want her as a mate and Nanku wasn't sure why they would. She offered them nothing.

Nanku accepted it long ago. Puberty had been awkward but the end of it was obvious.

For the best. The clan accepted her because she'd proven herself. Any other human—let alone one who entered only through her—wouldn't fare so well.

She'd never have a child of her own.

Nanku accepted that.

Though maybe sex was something worth trying at least once before she left. She'd have to find a man worth the risks first. Something to consider when her chest hurt less.

"Still looking?" Bitch asked.

Nanku did just that. "Use of time until I can run."

"Run fast. Heroes are after you now."

"For killing Nazis," Cassie said. "Which is like, the weirdest thing ever. No one cared when we kicked the Empire out of town way back when."

"Didn't kill them," Bitch said.

"Um, Animos?"

"Accident."

"Yeah. Because no villain has ever claimed that defense before."

"Accident."

"Live by blood, die by blood," Nanku recited.

"So you grew up with a bunch of crazy Bible nuts?" Cassie asked.

"No."

"Damn."

"Less Nazis in the world," Bitch said. "Heroes are stupid."

It did seem oddly unheroic.

Cassie rolled her eyes. "We'll try that defense if they arrest her. Good luck not getting Birdcaged."

"Birdcage?" Nanku asked.

They both gave her a look.

"Prison?" Cassie pursed her lips. "No way out. Literal pit where they throw capes they don't want to deal with?"

Nanku turned back to her papers. "They can try."

"Oh, they're gonna."

"Cass," Bitch chided.

"Just saying."

Nanku turned her attention to the list. A loosely scrawled collection of 'big questions' she'd assembled. There were simply too many to memorize. She had to write them down in the bastardized mix of English and Yautja she could manage.

She'd not 'written' anything in years.

Most of her questions required talking to people. Kurt. Her mother. Lacy if she weren't dead. Several Dockworkers. Brady. The man who reported the missing shipment.

If there really was a shipment, then the locals gave up on him too readily.

Nanku frowned.

That was a completely different sort of hunt. One she wondered if she'd put off because of its… unfamiliarity. A hunt with no killing. Where her tracks came from talk.

And the local enforcers were looking for her.

Was this what being a bad blood felt like? Annoying.

Maybe she didn't need to wait until she could run and jump around to get started.

Nanku lingered. Mostly not to draw attention. She'd lingered for a week—marking a month since she arrived on Earth—healing. It was slow but she was getting better. Better enough for a quick trip perhaps.

The credits on the show started rolling after some vapid testimonials from people who seemed to want their faces on TV more than love. Cassie stewed, pacing back and forth. Ranting about how Java was the name of a country and 'totally not that bitch's real name.'

"Is it over?" Nanku asked.

"No," Bitch replied.

"How?"

"Because she waits for the season to end."

"… Why?"

"Because I have the heart of a lover and I can't take the suspense of waiting a week! I am binging this shit!"

Another episode started and Nanku took her chance.

She collected her papers, sorted them back into their file, and rose from the couch. Dusk scuttled over from the other room and provided a place to lean her weight while she went back to the trap door.

It was well hidden. Tucked in a closet where it could easily be covered. The room was sealed well and before her occupancy Nanku wondered if it had ever been used. There'd been no bugs and she'd not even noticed it before.

Once she was down the stairs she sent both twins on another task.

Nanku undressed while they rummaged quietly.

Cassie was back to shouting at the man on the television and Bitch was enduring. Or so she seemed. Nanku thought maybe she enjoyed the program more than she pretended.

Not enough, unfortunately.

The Twins hurried through the kennel with their prizes. One dog was started and yapped. The canines had grown accustomed to their presence but no animal liked sudden movement in its proximity.

Bitch noticed.

She looked over her shoulder and rose.

Started walking.

Damn.

Dusk and Dawn joined her in the basement. They delivered the retrieved clothes and Nanku started changing. Bending over to pull pants up her legs was a challenge. Cassie was far too short, but Bitch's worked with a belt and a jacket.

The only thing that really just didn't fit was the bra. Were Bitch's breasts really that much bigger than hers?

No matter.

Kurt wasn't far.

Nanku drew her braids back and gritted her teeth through the pain. She'd use the bus. That would save her a lot of painful walking.

The shadow stepped into the doorway above and looked down the stairs.

"Stupid," Bitch said.

"If you say so."

She set her feet apart and drew her hands from the pockets of her jacket. "Get in the bed."

"Make me," Nanku replied. "And reopen my wounds."

"If it keeps you there."

Dusk and Dawn hissed and fluttered their wings.

Bitch whistled. Brutus and three other dogs moved up and snapped their teeth.

"Done this fight before," Nanku recalled.

"Broken bones," Bitch mused. "Barely scarred cuts. No armor or weapons."

Nanku pulled the bra strap over her shoulder. Cassie's clothes didn't remotely fit.

Bitch huffed and with a quick motion of her hand sent the dogs away. Brutus lingered, sitting and letting his tongue hang out.

"Come," she said.

Nanku's brow rose. "I'm not your dog."

Bitch rolled her eyes. "Coming. In case you fall over and crack your stupid skull."

She stepped away without another word.

Nanku lingered a moment and growled.

She ushered Dusk and Dawn onto the bed and left them to rest. They'd been eating during her convalescence and resting. It was good for them. She'd worked both twins hard over the past few weeks. Flying back and forth, up and down the length of Brockton Bay.

It was a lot more flying than they were used to.

Another day of rest wouldn't hurt them, and Nanku didn't want to risk either being seen in daylight. They'd stay put while she was gone, so long as she wasn't gone too long.

"I don't need help," Nanku agrued.

"Good last words."

Cassie was absorbed enough in her show she didn't notice she was alone.

Not that it stopped her.

"You stupid bint! Just tell him! Tell him how you feel and stop trying to be clever you're being stupid! You're lucky I'm bi or I'd never give you dating advice!"

"Bi?" Nanku asked.

"She fucks boys and girls."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

Fair.

Nanku left through the front doors and breathed the fresh—garbage stinking—air. She'd take what she could get. Being stuck in a building for days on end was too much.

Ugh.

"Your welcome," Bitch said. "Brutus. Come."

"I didn't ask for company."

"Didn't ask for clothes either."

"You have plenty."

Nanku went right to the bus stop.

There was a map of the lines and she'd learned the layout of the city with time. Five stops and they'd be two blocks from Kurt's house. Better than trekking across the city.

And she could think of Imp.

Which meant Imp wasn't around.

She hadn't seen Regent either. Or Tattletale. Or her mother. Definitely not Rose, thankfully…

Nanku found it weird she wanted to see Rose. But she was family, with none of the ill-feeling that existed toward their mother. She also had a power only one other person knew about and whoever it was wasn't their mother or her father.

The brother? That would make sense.

The bus ride was quieter than Nanku expected. Bitch sat beside her and scratched Brutus' head throughout the ride. A sign on the vehicle said no pets. No one said a thing about Brutus' presence.

People largely tried to avoid acknowledging Bitch at all. Did they recognize her, or just not want to test their luck with a girl and her dog in Brockton Bay?

"They fear you," Nanku said.

"Smart."

It took more stops to arrive than the map suggested, but they arrived and Nanku disembarked with only minor pain. Bitch and Brutus followed and the trio walked the blocks to Kurt's house. Nanku recognized the buildings and picked up her pace as they grew closer.

"Slow down."

"Make me."

"Stupid."

"Bitch."

"And?"

Nanku ascended the steps to Kurt's door.

No one answered her knocks. The only person inside lay on the couch and didn't stir. She waited and knocked again. And again.

With a scowl, she tested the knob and once more found the door unlocked.

Bitch huffed. "Idiot."

Nanku stepped into the house again and it still reeked of alcohol. If it had been cleaned since her last visit, she couldn't tell. The mess wasn't any worse than she remembered.

Kurt sprawled over the couch asleep.

In the middle of the day.

Reeking of booze.

Nanku opened a window before she sighed.

Bitch stood over the man with a strange look on her face. "Who is he?"

"My father's best friend." Nanku found a blanket from the floor and recoiled from the greasy feeling. "His wife died."

"Easier to put a gun in his mouth."

"What?"

"Wants to kill himself."

"Cowards kill themselves."

Bitch turned away. "Misery is stupid."

Nanku threw the blanket into the washing machine by the back door. She found a clean blanket in a closet and threw it over Kurt. How much did he drink? During the day even?

Lacy was in every picture. On all the walls somewhere. Small items that seemed hers more than Kurt's were scattered about.

It was like her mother after her father died. Broken. Hopeless. Miserable.

Kurt had no children to drag down with him.

Nanku supposed that was different. And part of her wondered why he didn't end it. It wasn't the Yautja way but… She shook her head. The answer didn't matter and the question was pointless.

She found a seat and took it to wait.

"Really?" Bitch asked.

"Need to talk to him."

Bitch sighed. She pointed and Brutus sat.

She found the remote, took the other seat in the living room, and turned on the TV.

Nanku frowned.

Bitch scrolled through several options on the TV guide and picked one.

"Paw Patrol! Paw Patrol! We'll be there on the double!"

Nanku stared.

Bitch set the remote aside and relaxed into her seat. "No one will believe you."

***

Get it? Cause it's about dogs. (the implication is Bitch watches the most gory or boring thing she can find so Cassie will leave and she can watch Paw Patrol in peace).

Also I enjoy depicting characters watching reality TV in goofy ways XD

Beta'd by @Grim Tide.