[ ] To protect my city, I must wear a mask
[ ] You're a lethal weapon!
-[ ] Even before you find a spot to transform, have Storm make a call to the PRT informing them what's going on, as well as your current plan.
-[ ] Use Temporal Sludge to slow down their charge and give time to take out as many as possible with Flare Shooter before they can reach the crowd.
Emigration 4.15
You think but for a moment before you're running away from the window. The urge to go out there right now even with everyone watching is incredibly strong; every second you waste is a second the Rats can get closer to the innocent bystanders. What holds you back is the knowledge that it isn't just you your mask protects. Dad may be a cape, but he's a Master who's otherwise extremely squishy. All it would take for someone to kill him is to stand more than sixteen feet away and shoot him. Sam…. Okay, Sam doesn't have a secret identity other than your roommate/your dad's live-in girlfriend depending on who you ask, and she's tougher than you are, so unmasking here and now wouldn't actually put her in any danger. You still have to think about your dad, though, and also the fact that once that cat's out of the bag, there's no putting it back in. It would be on social media within a second, and any chance of either of you having a normal life would be gone forever.
No, you need somewhere safe, isolated, in which to transform. Thankfully the entire process takes only a few moments, but you still feel guilty about it.
Dining room. Den. Bathroom with a guy and girl hastily pulling their pants up. Where's an empty room when you need it? Glancing up and down the hallways, you come up empty, but now the screams are getting louder and you can hear the heavy footfalls of everybody who's running away from the beasts. Even once you transform, that's still a lot of Rats. You're going to need some help.
«
Storm, dial the PRT. Now!»
«
Aye, Mistress. Call initiated.»
"This is the PRT emergency hotline. Please—"
«
Those rat–Case 53–things are attacking!» you all but scream at the poor woman. «
I've got a hundred high schoolers here, and I'm the only cape around! Get me some backup!»
For a brief instant, you're worried that her silence means she's going to blow you off, but she quickly replies,
"Name and address?"
You hang up as soon as you've passed on the information, and then you find the pantry just off the kitchen. Not as big as you'd like, nor as isolated, but everyone in the kitchen's already running away, too. It should work.
A flash of orange, and you're out the door again. The window ahead of you shatters, and you make a note to apologize to the owners if you get a chance before you rise into the sky and take in the scene. In the time it took you to find a place to change, the Rats reached the patio, and already there are people unmoving on the ground while others are within range of the Rats' claws. That makes things… complicated.
The thought of casting Recursion Field briefly crosses your mind, but you aren't so sure that would be a good idea. On the one hand, Cadejo was pulled in, and if you can pull all the monster capes into an alternate dimension, that would save everyone. On the other hand, if you're wrong? All you'd do is take yourself out of the action for however long it took to break the barrier down.
No, what you need is more
time.
"Temporal Sludge!"
The purplish-black bullet flies out, not to the killing scene but instead to the middle of the swarm. Once it explodes into the dome of slowed time, you smile faintly. That will give you the edge you need. Now it's time to show these Rats just who they're messing with. "Storm? Live fire."
«
Fire at will!»
The Flare Shooters you form now are special. They aren't any larger than their fellows, nor a different color, but they're all lacking a very important piece of code: the part that makes them safe to fling around carelessly around civilians. These are completely lethal. A twirl of your staff, and you send them flying. The bullets slow down once they enter the field, but since you aimed at the leading edge, they don't exactly have far to travel, and the slo-mo view is spectacular. The orange spheres hit the black Rats, and instead of knocking their heads back like last time, their skulls cave inwards in a flash of light. Blood, bone, and brain splatter the fur of their neighbors.
The wounded teenagers you just saved are quick to take advantage of the opportunity you gave them and flee, stumbling a little at the transition between time but then resuming their run for their lives. You, meanwhile, keep shooting, working your way from front to back—
Okay, where did all the ice come from?
A perfect circle of frost has appeared in the middle of the swarm, spiraling spikes just a little less than your own gangly height popping up everywhere inside and trapping the monsters. A moment later, the pillars explode and rip the Rats to ribbons. With the ground cleared, you can just make out a tiny bright blue sparkle that spreads out into a slow-growing circle. You recognize this effect now. You have never seen it in person, a fact you are happy about, but you have heard it described and seen video of it. This is the work of Cailleach, one of Winter Hill's newer capes. She is fairly young, isn't she? No one has ever come out and said how old she is, but she could very well be high school age. And considering she's pulling out her wide-area burst instead of her faster cone-shaped blast, she wasn't expecting any trouble, either. You glance around, but you don't see anyone standing around, just more proof that the cold-hearted villainess is out of costume.
Gang backup isn't exactly what you had in mind, but you'll take whatever you can get.
The Rats once again show their less-than-human intelligence and do not run out of the clearly marked ground zero, and you aim your bullets at a group that is not about to get shredded. Hey, if they want to make your job easier, fine by you.
Movement towards the previous blast-zone catches your attention. Maybe the Rats weren't alone. They don't have brightly colored Slimes with them this time, but there are a small number of grey.... You don't really know what to call these things. Spiders, maybe. Swollen abdomens, but marginally more human-like torsos, still with eight legs except that the legs end in deformed hands. Their heads are the worst part: overlarge human skulls covered in chitin and with four glistening black eyes shoved randomly into the bald pate. One lays a hand - and oh, does it gall you to call that
thing a hand! - on the body of a Rat, a flat sound coming from its mouth. If these things actually
mourn each other, you're going to have an issue.
Thankfully for your sanity and conscience if not the battle itself, that is not what the Spider is doing. The monstrosity is surrounded by a purple halo the same color as your Temporal Sludge spell, and then the Rat's body blurs. It slides upwards and around to get to its feet before solidifying back into a normal,
living Rat.
Temporal Sludge chooses that moment to reach its forty-second limit. The bubble of altered space flashes and dissolves.
Well, that's just wonderful. Mark seven of the Spiders. Swing your staff to launch Flare Shooter. Mark another group while you shape the mana and fling another Temporal Sludge. Fire Flare Shooter. Numbers and symbols dance behind your eyes, and a dull throbbing takes up residence between your temples. You know this feeling, have felt it more than once during your training scenarios. Perfect Storm has an amazing degree of computing power, but the programs that make up your spells are enormous, and it still has to offload some of the processing to you. You can only handle a few spells running at a time before your brain starts to strain, and you aren't as familiar with Temporal Sludge as you are with Flare Shooter or your flight spell. With time once more on your side, you resume full-speed firing and wish for just a moment that you had some kind of machine gun alteration for Flare Shooter. Bullets that home in on their targets are all well and good, but right now you'd dearly love raw quantity.
Your and Cailleach powers have very distinctive appearances, so when another Rat falls to the ground without getting hit by either fireball or ice bomb, you are understandably confused. You become less so when a sound not unlike a cannon rings out and another actually explodes.
Reinforcements have arrived.
A motorcycle's roar can now be heard, and a single headlight speeds into view. You shake your head when the heroes jump a nearby hedge, bullets flying even as they soar through the air. Of course you can trust Miss Militia to make an appearance that would not be out of place in an action movie. Her passenger jumps off, and the oddly shaped gun Chevalier holds reforms into a long sword that slices cleanly through a Rat's neck.
The patriotic heroine's power becomes a pair of submachine guns that she fires into the crowd away from where Philadelphia's literal knight in shining armor stands, and you refocus your efforts on blowing away the closest edge of monsters, even at the expense of renewing the effects of Temporal Sludge. Between the three of you, you finally make headway in culling the crowd, even if Cailleach is holding back her own contributions. She likely does not want to give the Protectorate even that much of a clue about her identity. You slowly descend when the numbers become manageable, and your feet touch the ground after the last Rat falls.
The stench from the rapidly rotting corpses is disgusting, but you pick your way through the growing puddles towards the adult heroes. "I'd say you took long enough," you begin with undisguised suspicion as the pieces start falling together, "but I know it wasn't that long ago that I called the PRT. A few minutes at most. There's no way you drove all the way from Philly to here in that time, I don't care how fast you were driving. You were in the area already. And the Rats and Spiders; they're a long way from home, too."
Chevalier shares a look with Miss Militia and steps backwards a few steps; that done, he gives you a nod before turning away and tapping his helmet over his ear. She shoots his back a mild glare before walking closer. As she approaches, you spot scratches and cuts all along her fatigues, yet more evidence in support of your suspicions. "We've been hunting this pack for the last several hours," she confirms. "We had them on the run, but we lost them a little while ago and were still searching when we got your message. That told us where they all ran off to."
"You were hunting them down?" you repeat. Something doesn't add up here. "What are they doing? Where are they all coming from? What aren't you telling me?"
Miss Militia opens her mouth but stops before saying anything. With a glance around, she shakes her head. "Now isn't the time or place, Calamity. This needs to be handled cautiously. Let me get some things squared away, and then I'll tell you what I can, okay?"
Taking a step back, both physically and emotionally, you nod. No matter what this steaming pile of shit really is, it's probably best to talk about it when you aren't coming down from the adrenaline rush of a fight. You and Samantha can confront her about it later—
Oh. Oh, no. You forgot to tell Samantha about the attack. She is going to be
so pissed.
Swallowing the terror of that impending lecture – because she's astonishingly good at the mom-voice for someone who's only been a person for nine weeks – you float back up into the air and let Miss Militia continue on with whatever else she has to do. Once you're sure she's out of earshot, you look around at the empty windows. The other cape is long gone, probably ran as soon as the heroes arrived, but just in case…. "Cailleach. Thanks."
Zipping around the side of the house, you hit the ground and dismiss your Barrier Jacket. Most everyone has already left, you note with some approval, even if it does put a bit of a crimp in your travel plans. Thankfully, you recently figured out Samantha's teleporting trick, so that's just a couple of seconds—
"Taylor!" You turn to find Kayleigh running towards you. You barely get a greeting out before she pounces, wrapping her arms around you like a python. "Oh my god I was so worried I couldn't find you where the hell were you I was sure those monster things got you and you were going to get eaten because you weren't with the football team and I asked Charlie but he said you were off dancing but there were so many people and you weren't by the car and—"
"Breathe, Kayleigh! And I need to breathe, so let go." You manage to pry her off enough to slip her grasp. You are somewhat perversely glad that she likes you enough to be worried about you, but between gratitude and air, you prefer air. "I found a bathroom to hide in until everything quieted down. Why are you still here? I thought everybody would be long gone."
She stares at you like you've gone mad before putting her hands on her hips. "Taylor Hebert, do you really think I'd just go off and leave you behind with all that shit going down? Hell to the no! I was going to stay here until you were in that seat beside me."
A faint smile alights on your face, and you surprise yourself and her both when you reach over and give her a hug of your own accord. "Thanks, Kayleigh. Really. I appreciate it."
"If you're that surprised I'd stick around, your old friends were shit," she mutters into your shoulder. You probably weren't supposed to hear that. Giving you another squeeze, she latches on to your hand and drags you towards her car. "If your dad's anything like mine, he'll probably go out of his mind if he hears you weren't the first one out the door. Let's get our stories straight so they can't call each other and find out we were so late getting out of here."
So that was… fun? I was hoping the vote to throw up Recursion Field would win if only because it would have let you take care of the Spiders with ease (the Rats, of course, are not affected by dimensional barriers by dint of being only super-tough and -hard Brutes), but this works, too. The Spiders' shard is a little twisted from what it was in canon, admittedly, but it follows the same theme.
Anyway, that's the end of the week. Time to pick next week's adventures!
- Picking up the Pieces, Part 3 – So that was a thing. Unfortunately for you and the TSAB both, dealing with angry and upset space wizards is way outside your areas of expertise. You need to talk about this with someone, but whom? And how are you going to prove that you aren't crazy?
- Who do you talk to?
- What else are you doing at the time?
- A Dragon's Hoard, Part 3 – You got Dragon her EEG data, and at great cost to Vista. You know that it didn't give her any evidence that you're secretly a parahuman. Confront her on the issue, and get your first ally who knows that you're something different and special.
- Snark Hunt – …And the Butcher herself showed up to help out the Fallen for whatever reason. Great. Go to the emergency meeting that has been organized to help plan what the heroes' response to this move will be.
- Monstrous Menagerie, Part 2-ish? – Those Beasts that attacked the party had to come from somewhere. Question Miss Militia about what she knows about them, and demand some answers if she tries to hide the truth again.
- Helping Out the Little Guy – Look for trouble in your new home and stop it. You can write in for someone to come along with you. Vista is NOT an option.
- Hanging Out – This is a bit of an experiment. Pick someone to spend time with outside of combat. Write in the who, what, and where.
- Know Thyself – Spend a free period training in the simulator. May be chosen twice.
- Which spell do you want to train?
And yet another battle under your belt. You know what that means.
Moratorium for 24 hours. Plan out what you want to do.
