Monster (Story-Only thread)

[Ghoul King]

1.1

Unsettling to realize that Ellisburg is only a few hours drive from Brockton Bay. Convenient for me, but unsettling nonetheless. If Nilbog ever decided to leave his fucked-up little refuge, Brockton Bay was at real risk from him.

Of course, that's part of why I'm here.

Right now I'm standing on way too many legs outside the wall around Ellisburg, or more accurately out in the forest surrounding the cleared area illuminated by spotlights, in the dead of night. I'm looking at the wall, trying to figure out if there's anyone or if it's as unmanned as it appears: I haven't seen anyone since I stopped following the interstate highway, just tons of signs warning people this is a restricted area, leave, turn around, go back, this is for your own protection, etc. That, and chain-link fencing through the woods with more of the same on it, but it was trivial to hop over that fence. Probably meant to prevent people from wandering too close to Ellisburg while hiking, or lost in the woods, or whatever. Not a serious barrier.

The reason I haven't made the leap already isn't that I'm concerned about guards. Information on Ellisburg is ridiculously thin, but I have an advantage: I can sense human presences, like an itch or uncomfortable warmth on the back of my neck, worse the more people are nearby. There's nobody in the area, or at least nobody on this side of the wall, not even Nilbog. Guards aren't a concern. I'm not even concerned about Nilbog's monsters... well, okay, a little concerned about them. It is possible my power won't be sufficient protection from them, but at this distance I'm almost confident they don't qualify as human.

Which is kind of the problem, really.

The thing is, I came out here expecting... I dunno, two dozen Protectorate capes, or rows of tanks. Or that Nilbog's minions would be sufficiently close to human to count, disturbing as the thought is. Either way, I was expecting... well, to have wasted my night, disappointed and relieved all at the same time, and returned to Brockton Bay having done nothing. Which sounds dumb, I know. But the plan is dumb, crazy. It won't work. It should, by all rights, kill me, accomplishing nothing except maybe provoking the king of monsters to war. So having an excuse to turn and leave? Tell myself I've done my due diligence? I actually kind of wanted one.

But I'm here, and the plan is looking disturbingly plausible.

I've been sitting here for... probably twenty minutes trying to psych myself up to actually go in. It's hard, harder than I thought. I just can't motivate myself.

Let's... try again.

I don't actually have unlimited time. (No sense of urgency)

That this needs to happen. (Well, yes, but does it have to be me?)

I want to improve the world, if I can. (There's other things I could do...)

Fuck the bitches, they haven't broken me.

I leap to the wall and climb it in near-total silence.

----------------------------​

So here's the plan.

Step one: Enter Ellisburg.

Step two: Kill everything in Ellisburg.

Considering the Protectorate, the army, and everybody else -including some really overconfident villains- are scared to come within fifty miles of the place, you can maybe see why I'd have liked an excuse to not attempt this plan.

But here I am, perched on top of the wall.

First impression: what the fuck? The city looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, everything colorful and curved. It takes me a moment to shake off a conviction Nilbog's power somehow "cartoonifies" things. No, these are painted and shaped naturally. The wall is even painted to resemble a view of the horizon, as if the city isn't walled in at all. Even the trees are tended to, made to grow in curlicues and weirder.

Second impression: ugh, this city is big. It's a small town. Or it was, I should say. I'd been expecting it to be smaller. It's small enough I can see the wall at the far side of the town, but it's still bigger than I was really expecting, on some level. Big enough I'm worried this will take too long.

Third impression: People? Wait, what?

But then one of the "people" looks at me and nothing happens. No sudden chill, no return to Taylor Hebert, ordinary schoolgirl, no drop from my perch. It's not human. One of Nilbog's monsters, wearing clothes and chewing on a bloody, feathery mass. It (she? Wearing a dress, anyway...) shrieks an alarm, and I boggle at how many things come boiling out of buildings, from under buildings, and even some right out of the ground.

But I'm not Taylor Hebert, The Bullied Girl. I'm the monster, and instincts suiting the descriptor uncoil, like a snake waiting to strike. And like a snake, I strike faster than the eye can follow. One moment I'm clinging to the top of the wall, the next I've punched holes through a dozen gribly nasties. One of them sprays some bizarre fluid all over the place, sizzling and scorching everything it touches, griblies included. It slides right off the lubricant covering my skin, which is a relief because I'd never even thought to test my protection against chemical attacks.

Moments later I've diced my way to what vaguely resembles a grotesquely fat man, shoving griblies onto the caustic liquid and also flames a different creature has vomited up as I go along. The fat man's reflexes catch me off guard, grabbing me out of the air when I leap, talons aimed at its face instead caught by an enormous hand. I respond by bending my body until my rear limbs can reach it, and tear at its guts. This doesn't accomplish much, beyond provoking it into trying to crush my limbs, but the dim sense of pressure I experience is like a pillow sitting on a hand. I twist and pull limbs out of its grip to give myself more maneuvering room, intending to slit its throat.

Unfortunately, something yet larger rams me before I can get the appropriate leverage, ripping me from the fat man's grip and sending me skittering through a mob of little child-monsters. In passing I punch holes through eyes, tear out throats, and snap limbs, and the instant my tumbling is manageable I leap at some kind of sheep/dragon hybrid. Unfortunately, its coat is tough and its scales tougher, its head is too high for me to jump at, and it isn't stupid enough to lean down into my reach, instead opting to vomit some kind of reddish goo all over me. Like the acid and fire before, it slides right off me with no apparent effect, but this stuff doesn't seem to do anything to the other creatures, either.

I abandon attacking the sheep-dragon in favor of grabbing a quadruped whose claws ooze green fluid, hurling it legs-first into the biggest concentration of creatures I can see, and then sprinting toward some hideous mother-creature that is eating the dead -one screams before its skull is crushed between outsized molars, so not just the dead- and unleashing fresh horrors from its nethers. Twenty more smaller creatures are killed or maimed as I run, but a tremendous worm with eyes set inside its tooth-lined jaw bursts out of the ground in front of me, too large for going around to be quick, big enough I don't want it ingesting me. If its insides are as tough as that sheep-dragon's outsides, getting back out might be a real problem.

So I shift gears, simultaneously pulling back and striking a charging whatever-the-hell so that its course shifts to the right and brings it directly into the worm-monster's mouth, rather than safely to one side. What appears to be orange blood spatters from the impact, though I can't tell which one is injured. It doesn't matter, I need to stop the recycler, and anything else like it, or else this will be impossible. To that end I scramble back to the worm and the charging creature, both still reeling, and successfully climb over them, incidentally producing dozens of puncture wounds and fending off smaller creatures trying to intercept me. The recycler is still at it, but this time I charge halfway and abruptly jerk to one side, dodging what appears to be a gargoyle swooping down from the sky from behind me, and then do my best to leap or climb over the tide of new monsters pouring out.

One of them explodes like a bomb, directly adjacent to me, and I'm launched into and through the wall of one of the surreal buildings, I think it used to be a house. I'm annoyed. I wasn't injured by that either, I don't even feel warm, but it's still an obstacle. For attempt number three I approach by impaling and then throwing the newborn griblies straight back at momma horror as I approach at a relatively sedate pace. In short order flesh is melting and spines have punched holes into her brain, but she doesn't stop, and I can see flesh filling in the worst of it already, so I abruptly close the remaining distance and cut, and cut, and cut until head separates from body and hits the ground, still chewing on a detached arm.

I don't have time to look for another recycler before something has pulled me into the air, gripping under a pair of my "armpits", again coming in from the relatively small blindspot behind me. Is this luck, or canniness? Regardless, I flail while it attempts to tear at my carapace, but its claws find no purchase on the lubricated surface where mine stab, gouge, encircle and crush. I can't reach its wings, but eventually its grasping limbs are in no condition to hold me and I drop back to the ground level.

A gang of child-like gribblies move toward me as a coordinated group, faltering for a moment when six are dead before the first corpse has hit the ground. Then they literally dogpile me, focusing on getting a grip on me, trying to immobilize me, ignoring the injuries I heap upon them, ignoring how quickly they're dying. When other dangers approach, I slip limbs from their collective grasp, kill a few more, and leap aside as something huge falls on the entire crush. My focus is on a second recycler, this one resembling nothing I could name, scooping up bodies in what appears to be a sack made of skin while no obvious output occurs. I puzzle over its strangeness for a moment, and then rush it, ducking through an alley instead of taking the straightest route, scything through more little creatures, impaling one with a swelling head of fluid through the chest to hurl at the sack-thing, whereupon the swelling head pops, spraying the sack-thing to no effect. Grass shrivels where the fluid lands, and so does one of Nilbog's other minions caught in it, but the sack-thing just shoves everything into its sack, uncaring.

Nothing leaps out before I reach the sack-thing, and it only takes a couple stabs to the head for the thing to collapse, releasing a black-green cloud of something that billows out and downward. It's hard to see through, but I can hear hissing and crackling, seemingly from within the expanding cloud. More tellingly, the monsters closest to it are turning and running, which is the first time I've seen anything seriously scare any of them. So. Something really scary. And it's spreading, airborne. Given it's something Nilbog made...

Fuck, did I just release a plague?

Not a problem I can stab to death. Not a problem I can ignore on the assumption it can't touch me. It's a plague, it can go out beyond the walls. Fuck, there's a reason Alexandria hasn't come in swinging, why didn't I see that? I need to deal with this immediately, and I need to deal with it with what's on hand. Great.

I tear my way toward the last place I remember seeing fire, punching holes in more critters along the way, a few by simply stepping on them, until one of the child-like goblins screeches something and spits some kind of napalm at me. It slides right off the fluids on my skin, and the fire feels like a dim warmth anyway, but that's beside the point. I stab it through the chest and pull off a full-body spinning throw, hurling the thing straight into the cloud, and then pause (gutting three more critters lunging at me) to watch. After a few seconds I see an orange glow through the black cloud, largely obscured, which is probably doing something to the plague, but I'd been hoping for something more like an explosion, the entire cloud setting ablaze. Something fast.

A quick look around doesn't provide a lot of inspiration. Monsters are fleeing, there's a particularly large creature standing so tall only the lower part of it is within the cloud, and the flesh I glimpse through the cloud has been stripped to the point I can see chunks of white -bone?- but I'm not seeing anything useful. No acid, no fire, no exotic chemistry that I can see. Even so, I charge into a cluster of small, throwable gribblies, stabbing and tossing into the cloud, keeping an eye on how the cloud reacts. Ominously, nothing seems to be coming out of the cloud, in spite of how durable and persistent these things are. Is it a fast-acting toxin once breathed, in addition to being, apparently, a literally flesh-eating plague?

I resolve to stay out of the cloud's reach, in any event. I don't seem to breathe, but "don't seem to" isn't the same as "don't", and there's no saying what a flesh-eating plague is going to do to my body. Maybe nothing, maybe exactly what it's doing to everything else. So I back off some more, stabbing gribblies and throwing them into the cloud.

Then something enormous swoops overhead and rakes the cloud with green flame, a good third of the cloud vanishing to reveal nothing but a dusting of grey-black ash coating everything previously obscured. I think I can see bones, here and there, but otherwise there's no sign anything ever lived in the area, not even grass. Unfortunately, the enormous thing -which looks entirely too much like a dragon, if a dragon from a children's cartoon, for my comfort- loops back around and tries to strafe me with the green fire, and I suddenly realize it was targeting me earlier. For the moment I'm too fast for it, but more of the little guys are dogpiling onto me, and so are some of the bigger ones, slowing me down, limiting my mobility.

Oh, and now there's another recycler, resembling an enormous blue-black bipedal pig -or something thereabouts- covered in warts and licking up the ash with a ridiculously long, flexible tongue. The warts are gestating gribblies, expanding until they abruptly pop, releasing a torrent of yellow-green fluid and still more bizarre creatures. It takes me a moment to notice the recycler is wearing overalls, distracted as I am generally, and the half-second I spend agog at this is immediately taken advantage of, two dozen fanged midgets simultaneously slamming down on me, followed immediately by reinforcements dogpiling onto me, everything chewing, clawing, or slamming into me while doing their best to pin me down. My initial assumption that the risk of friendly fire means I won't be targeted again is proven naive -the dragon-thing makes another strafing run on me, and while some of the gribblies are very obviously dead, others seem to hold up under the flame, and more alarmingly others start multiplying when ignited, making the problem of being buried in bodies worse.

As slippery and strong as I am, this is still a nightmare. I don't have leverage, reversing joints only helps if the limb has somewhere to go, and my second skin of fluid isn't much help when there's this many determined creatures holding me down with raw mass. Every time I get one off me, three take its place... or a single one four times its size. I'm having enormous difficulty even stabbing them under these circumstances, especially since they're finally taking the threat my limbs pose seriously.

Then they bring chains and rope and I realize I'm fucked if I don't get out now. Worse, they're talking. In English. I think they have been the whole time, at least some of them, and I just filtered it out, though their accents -yes, accents, plural- are so atrocious there's times I'm only guessing they spoke an actual word. Naturally, most of what I'm hearing is coordination among the gribblies, which explains a lot and now I feel like the stupidest person ever for thinking I could sneak in and assassinate Nilbog, like his creations weren't even a factor.

Intensifying my struggles just gets one of the bigger nasties slamming a fist with spined knuckles into one of my eyes. Not that it really hurts, but neither is it me escaping the dogpile. Then the first chain starts going around a limb and I try my damnedest to take advantage of an opening, but I'm so ineffectual it doesn't even piss them off. In way less time than I'd prefer, I'm trussed up and being dragged toward the center of town.

Apparently, they're taking me to "god-king" ("good king"? Their accents are atrocious) Nilbog.

Which is exactly where I want to go. Reach the source, kill the source. This... might actually be a good thing? If I'm fast, being seen by Nilbog turning me human might even be my opportunity to escape my bonds. Might get me killed, but... the gribblies have no idea I turn human when seen by a human. They won't be prepared for it. So, as long as I don't waste my chance...

I turn my focus on the dragon. It's watching me. I get the distinct impression that half of its attention is on the still-spreading death cloud, but it's watching me.

I stop struggling, go completely limp.

After a few seconds, it snorts, a burst of green fire appearing maybe a second afterward, and turns its attention to the death cloud.

Oh thank god.

 

[Ghoul King]

1.2

I find myself wondering, briefly, where they got the chain. Then I decide I very probably would not like the answer and focus on my surroundings, keeping some focus on getting the chains a little less tight without being obvious about it. Don't want to distract the dragon from torching the plague.

In addition to the gribblies actually dragging me with the chains there's an ever-growing escort of yet stranger things, a good portion of them hopping from rooftop to rooftop to follow. Now that I'm not focused on simply killing them, I find myself surprised at what I'm seeing, in particular how many of them are a girly pink color, given that Nilbog is a man in... uh, his fifties? Forties? Sixties? Dammit, I didn't do enough research on this. They're girlier than I would expect of nightmare monstrosities, anyway. Though... maybe it's because he's an older man, alone aside from his creatures? An attempt to get some balance, mentally? Food for thought.

There's something more sinuous paralleling the group dragging me, moving via a road one block away. Between the distance, the buildings, and the gribblies between me and it I never catch more than a glimpse of it at a time, making it difficult to get the complete picture of what looks like, but it makes me think of a snake out of a herpetophobic's nightmares. That one concerns me. If it has the kind of strike speed actual snakes have, scaled to its size, it could hit me from a block away the instant I'm returned to being Taylor by Nilbog's sight.

I note that there doesn't seem to be any of the recyclers with this group. In fact, I'm pretty sure I see one lurching its way to where the death cloud was. I wonder if that's a sign of overconfidence. Maybe stupidity. Or maybe the recyclers are too valuable to risk being near a potential fight? Though they rushed right into the fight earlier, so maybe not. Or it's possible I'm overestimating my ability to tell the recyclers apart from the rest of them. There could be one mixed into this group and I just don't recognize it.

Finally we break into a clearing of a sort. There's ridiculously large tables that instantly put me in mind of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, in sheer scale but also in the table's shape and the whole layout's similarity to the ending, where the Grinch is cutting and serving meat. Chairs that look like someone took an ordinary, functional chair and then added Dr. Seuss bits to it and painted it a new color to obscure the hodgepodge nature, but not very well. It only occurs to me, seeing this now, that the entire town's distinctiveness is odd. Previously I'd half-ignored it, maybe assumed that Ellisburg was just a colorful place before Nilbog took over, but I wonder again if this is something he made happen. Something his creatures made happen? Now I'm wondering what the inside of his head looks like, that he's a parahuman who can create monstrous armies, a man of whatever age he is, and this is the aesthetic he chooses.

Or did he not choose it?

I'm also wondering where Nilbog is. There's an enormously obese man-creature at the head of the table, exactly where I'd expect Nilbog to be given his creatures seem to think of him as their king, but the man himself is nowhere to be found. I might be inclined to think the creature is him, but it's looking directly at me and I'm still the monster. I can feel him somewhere in the area, there's some human presence here, but it's not the fatman.

Then the fatman creature speaks, and it's the first thing that's sounded genuinely human here. The fuck.

"You know, I don't recognize this one at all." It leans halfway over the table to squint at me, while the procession continues to drag me closer. "Did Bella make this one? She's made so many mistakes lately." What? Then one of the things at the head of this formation speaks up, though I find it incomprehensible. My attention drawn to it, I notice it's got a fresh-looking cut across much of its head, though the bleeding is more sluggish than I would expect from a head wound. A participant in the fight, one that I failed to kill?

The fatman leans back and waves its weird, ugly arms in what I'm sure is a meaningful gesture to it. It just looks to me like it's losing its balance. It speaks again. "Oh, oh." It sounds slightly hurt. "I'm sorry to hear that." Hear what? "But if this isn't one of Bella's?... mayhap Cindy?" The lead thing shakes its head, says something that I'm guessing is a negative. The fatman's eyes turn back to me and narrow. Ugh. Little piggy eyes, the first time I've understood what the phrase means. "Well it has to be someone's mistake, citizens don't just grow on trees." Then it mutters something under its breath, I think I catch the word 'convenient', and then it's back to the projecting tone. "Ask around, find out who made it. We don't need this kind of mistake. Besides, this one is interesting! If we can get it some brothers or sisters, without the madness..." it looks vaguely upward as it trails off. Then it leans forward until its face is against a plate and starts eating with no hands, which honestly impresses me just because I didn't think it could lean forward far enough to get its head to the table like that. No idea what's on the plate, though it puts me in mind of purple gelatin at a glance.

I seriously have no idea what's going on. Did Nilbog have a robot revolution, only with his creatures instead of robots? He's not here, and this... thing is in charge, apparently.

The main thing I'm taking away from this is that this whatever-it-is doesn't think I'm a cape, an invasion from outside. It seems to think I'm... one of these creatures, I guess, but... rogue? Something like that?

I guess if you're creating creations that create creations errors tend to accumulate.

Now what? If Nilbog is dead... I can't kill him if he's already dead. And if they can replace him so readily -the fatman is apparently the good/god king Nilbog- then maybe killing him was never a good answer anyway. Ellisburg is still here. It's still filled with monsters. They're not dying off. Hell, it's the dead of winter right now and there's tons of the things.

... though now that I look around, a large part of the group that was dragging me has left. Most of the smallest, most gremlin-y things are gone, and some of the remainder are bundled up like they're in the arctic circle. So maybe they don't actually like the cold that much.

The fatman lifts away from the plate and looks at me again, frowning. Or I think it's a frown. The expressions are weird. Distorted. Like a cartoon character's exaggerated expressions, where the entire face changes in a completely boneless way, only it's on flesh and blood. Its eyes dart around for a moment. I suddenly have a bad feeling, but I stay still anyway. I need a plan. "They're alive, yes?" They're looking directly at Headwound as they ask. Headwound snaps what looks like an attempt at a salute, bounces over to me, and puts its hand on what could be mistaken for my neck. Then it turns and calls out what sounds to me like, "yuss, greet won. Haz poolse."

Wait, I have a pulse as the monster? Damn. I thought I didn't have blood at all. Something to keep in mind.

Fatman is squinting at me again.

Little gribblies start showing up and conferring with Headwound, before peeling off and entering houses. Well. Buildings, anyway. After twenty or so of them have talked to Headwound, the fatman rears up to its full sitting height -I haven't even seen legs on the thing- while tilting its head back enough that it is literally looking down its nose at us, and says, "Report!" Headwound snaps another salute -or maybe it's the Nazi heil thing, I honestly couldn't say- backs away from me, and calls back, "Noh-" yes, with an h in there, "-clam".

Now fatman is looking very hard at me. So hard it's tilting forward, I suspect unconsciously, getting a better look at me. Fatman starts speaking slowly, somewhat less loud than earlier, but not by any measure quietly. "Not born of any of those twenty. Three are dead. One couldn't have. The other two didn't, witnesses. No citizen did this." There's a pause. Then fatman says, slowly, with careful enunciation, "Organized rogues?" Headwound shakes his head, calls back "Not foh thee faze."

Fatman is looking at me again.

I can see gears grinding, rusty in its head. I can practically taste the rust. It hasn't thought this hard in... years? A decade? How old is this thing?

Then its eyes snap wide open, it rears up, and it bellows, "Intruder!"

I'm slipping out of the chains and have already cut down Headwound partway through the 'n' in 'intruder', and am actually decently prepared for the gribblies in the buildings to come pouring out. For starters, I hook one limb through a segment of chain and start swinging it like a flail. I partially repeat this trick by hooking into other chains, but arranging to throw them, one of them at the fatman, who shrieks like a two-year-old girl told spiders had laid eggs in her toothpaste and they were now burrowing into her brain. (Fuck Aunt Lyla) I half-expect the fatman to fall over onto its back from the reaction. I'm surprised when it doesn't, instead stopping at a 90 degree angle. Odd.

I'm also mostly prepared for things to come out of the ground. There was the worm thing earlier. As soon as I've removed/grabbed/thrown all the chains, I leap directly to the roof of a building. Nilbog's creatures don't seem to like damaging the infrastructure, so maybe they'll be more careful attacking me, give me space to breathe, so to speak.

I'm not prepared for the dragon -wait, is it pink?- from earlier to belch a cloud onto the building. More precisely, I'm not prepared for what happens when the building erupts into flames: a half dozen gribblies that climbed onto the roof in pursuit start multiplying into a dozen, two dozen, fifty...

I jump to a different building, irritated at forgetting about this breed, ignoring the shriek from the fatman. The fatman seems to be alternating between attempting to cower -badly, given its tremendous bulk- and making incoherent demands to, "Get them!" or, "Protect your king!" The roof promptly collapses under my weight, forcing me to scramble out and through a window, cutting in half what appears to be a worm laying on a couch in passing. The worm's segments both regenerate such that there's two full-sized worms, and I make another jump to a different rooftop, only to be intercepted mid-flight by a dozen harpy-esque creatures, which claw, bite, and defecate on me. I'm left reeling more by the emotional affront than by any physical threat they pose, and the time it takes me to get over myself costs me when another worm-thing bursts up and out of the ground and bites down and around me, taking three of the harpy things too.

I scramble toward the closed mouth, absently punching holes through the skulls of the harpies, and attempt to pry it open. No go. I have a dim awareness that 'down' is changing, and I can hear sounds I don't really want to think about. I attempt to burrow through what I'm pretty sure is the roof of the mouth, but while the flesh gives way readily enough I rapidly hit bone -or whatever- and though I leave marks, they're shallower than I'd prefer. I try the opposite side briefly, just in case I'm simply disoriented, but it has the same outcome. A glance at the harpies shows they've already vanished, apparently dragged by the throat musculature to, presumably, the stomach.

I take a closer look at the... lips? There's no teeth, but there's a crease or seam that's presumably where I can expect a hole to appear when it opens its mouth. I thrust a limb at it, and it penetrates to the outside easily. I jam more limbs through and try again to pry open the mouth, but aside from what I think is a pained grumbling, nothing happens. When I retract the limbs, the flesh seals over nearly instantly. Damn. I'd hoped to at least see outside, maybe plan a little.

I ponder briefly the idea of going deeper down the throat.

I reject it as a dumb plan, only good if I decide I'd like to die. No.

I return my attention to one of the points I've previously cut to bone. I pause when I notice the flesh hasn't healed over, and the gouges in the bone are still there. Excellent. I return to slicing and stabbing with a renewed vigor, or at least renewed focus. The work is slow-going, but after some interminable period I abruptly find a limb buried halfway up through the bone, in the middle of something. The 'room' shakes, but the mouth is still closed. I widen the hole, the room shakes some more. I stick multiple limbs in and spin them around, and watch gray matter and purple fluid spurt out of the hole before the mouth jerks open in a shriek.

I'm out as fast as I can, not wanting to risk the thing dying, mouth sealed shut, with me trapped inside. I'm not so concerned about dying at this point (Mystery plague aside, I've never been in any real danger thus far) but I've provoked Nilbog -or whatever that creature is- now, and I don't want to vanish for some number of hours, digging my way out of a dead worm, only to discover Elisburg has been nuked and half the US has been killed by his army by the time I'm loose. I need to keep his attention on me.

Thankfully, I'm still in sight of the Dr. Seuss table. It's also clear to me that, yes, the griblies have been gearing up for war. I can see griblies picking up haphazard, jagged chunks of metal that could be mistaken for a knife or sword if one squinted, while other griblies seem to be wearing armor now. Even some of the less humanoid creatures have been kitted out, though mostly with a marking painted on that I've been I seeing all over the place, rather than armor or weapons.

It takes me a long, long time to realize the marking -I've actually been seeing it on buildings the whole time- is a meaningful design, an ugly attempt at drawing a pig-like face with a child's crude attempt at a crown atop it, replicated faithfully a hundred times over. It literally looks like a five-year-old had been told what a pig looks like, sat down and drew it with a crown, and then that was photocopied. The result is surreal.

I make my way back to the Dr. Seuss table as stealthily as I can while punching holes in griblies without being noticed, something nagging at me. It's not until I can hear the fatman talking in that weirdly human that the thought coalesces.

Why could I feel a human presence in the area?

I'm feeling it again, that's what's bothering me. I stopped feeling it at some point inside the worm, but my attention was on other things. At some point in closing on the square, the sensation returned, and I'm pretty sure I'm coming from a different direction than the one I was dragged in from.

There is a human being in or near the square. This human has either gone completely unnoticed by all of Nilbog's creatures, even though there's hundreds -thousands?- of the things, they can burrow and fly, and they come in such a dizzying array I'd be amazed if any form of invisibility was simultaneously proof against all of them... or Nilbog is still alive, but hidden.

My first instinct is to think the fatman is a decoy. It's the only creature that's had a voice that wasn't at least vaguely animal, it's the obvious exception, and if it were me I'd take advantage of that assumption, let my foes convince themselves they were clever for figuring out that the fatman is my... puppet? Representative? I'm not sure what's going on there. Whatever, if it were me, it would be a deliberate fake, something that looks like it has to be me but would actually be a decoy.

But I've been through a decent chunk of this city and fought a fair few of Nilbog's creations, and I haven't seen anything resembling camouflage. The creatures are still and silent when they want to be, but they don't blend in, and they don't try to. Listening to the furious speech the fatman is giving-

"... DARE to violate a sacred trust, impugn the name of a king named by God, we will punish them! A holy war is upon them..."

-in conjunction with the city... no, I'm thinking that's Nilbog. There's no subtlety here, no tact or forethought. The city is childish and childlike, and if it covers a lethal truth it's not because the designer is lulling his enemies into a false sense of security. I think... the fatman isn't a decoy, but a security blanket, protection from a scary world.

I haven't seen the fatman move from its position. When it started to fall over, it stopped halfway, abruptly. I'm thinking it's rooted in place.

I'm thinking Nilbog -the man- is inside the fatman. Like someone in a mascot outfit, but made of flesh, maybe even able to move on its own to complete the illusion.

I'm maybe half a block away from the fatman when something rumbles behind me, to my left, and suddenly all eyes are on me. I jolt into motion, determined to get to the fatman and tear it open before I get dogpiled again, and the fatman shrieks out something to the effect of, "Get them!" This time, I'm keeping my head angled so I can pay attention to what's coming behind me, so when a furry, serpentine form lunges out a window not long after I pass, I'm ready and jump straight up. My intention is to land on it, but it's faster than I expect, clipping me on my way up and turning my leap into a flailing rotation, gone and past before I can take a stab at it. Then bullets are skipping off my skin.

It takes me a second to realize that, no, the gribblies aren't holding Tommy guns or anything. The "bullets" are supersonic spikes of bone -I think- being fired by I-don't-want-to-know means from a pair of oversized mantis-like things. I wonder for a crazy second where they're getting their ammunition, but then my focus is on ensuring I land cleanly, which is complicated by the barrage. I'm still not feeling anything resembling pain, but the force of the blows is taking control of my tumble away from me. I land in an untidy heap, three-quarters of the way to being upside down, only barely managing to stab a gribbly through the head before it can do whatever it was intending to do, clearly trying to be where I'd land.

Then its head bursts into a bizarre, flickering lightshow, and I have a stump.

Shit.

I scramble to right myself -there's not actually much of a difference between rightside-up and upside-down for me but there is a difference- stumbling for a split-second when one limb doesn't touch ground when I expect it to. I adjust quickly, more quickly than I'd expect to adjust to losing half a limb, but in addition to that delay, I'm having to pay attention now. Before, I could be a dervish, spot movement, stab movement. Now I need to figure out what's coming, then stab appropriate targets.

I decide to assume if I see one distinctive feature it's probably the gribbly's only distinctive feature. If it spits fire, I'm probably safe. If I don't know what it does, throw other things at it, things I do know what they do. I have no proof this is true, but if it's not I'm pretty sure I'm fucked regardless. I also haven't seen anything display more than one exotic capability thus far. It might be some kind of limit on Nilbog's creations.

I start by ducking, and then impaling the serpentine thing from before as it passes. It's still faster than I'm thinking -I was going for its head and got it something like three feet behind its head- and I'm jerked a couple of feet backward by the motion, but then I get traction and we both come to a dead halt. The serpentine thing doesn't like that, flailing and squeaking -wait, squeaking?- and I repeat my rotation throw trick, aiming it at a squad of gribblies that maybe look like the one that took a chunk from me. One of them bursts like a balloon, spraying a yellow fluid all over everything, but the rest just get knocked over. Not quite as effective as I was hoping, but then I realize the yellow fluid has glued the flying thing to the ground and four of the gribblies I threw it at and feel better.

I circle around the area as best I can, wary now of the unknown, and jump onto something charging headlong at me, stab it where I'm guessing its brain is a half-dozen times, and leap off in one motion, making my way toward the fatman. I'm impressed at how high the notes he's hitting are. I don't think I can hit those notes. Then I wonder for a moment exactly how my hearing works as the monster -I don't seem to have ears- but put it aside and impale the nearest gribbly and throw it at the fatman, aiming roughly for his head. The gribbly bursts into flame in midair and falls well short. Then it gets up and runs at me.

Well. I'm still pretty sure I'm fireproof anyway.

I ignore that gribbly, dodge around three more big, slow creatures that can't turn fast enough to track me, climb over another one, every step a deliberate cutting motion, leap to the nearest rooftop, duck under a dive from something with three pairs of wings, leap from there into the square, and am promptly slammed into from below by something burrowing out of the ground so fast it not only launches me into the air but gets some airtime of its own. It reminds me of a whale breaching, only when it hits the ground on its back it doesn't go through the surface and begins flailing. I'm still trying to get control of my fall, wishing I had a flight power, when the pink dragon from before and two weird things move in concert to grab me out of the air, jaws all clamped shut over my limbs.

They proceed to have a midair game of tug-of-war, like dogs fighting over a chewtoy. I find myself wondering exactly how durable I am. I'm not feeling any pain, but it occurs to me that I didn't feel anything when I lost half a limb, nor have I felt anything when I've unthinkingly smacked it into things as part of my stabbing motions. Maybe the lack of pain isn't proof I'm safe. Maybe I'm just incapable of feeling pain, even when I'm taking damage.

The stump has a little give, I notice. Not as securely held as the other limbs. I wriggle it, trying to get it out. No go. I jerk, twist, and flail my whole body as best I can, and feel it move a little. I stop for a moment, pay attention to the tug-of-war, and jerk myself in as much of a full-body motion as I can at the same moment that I'm being pulled away from the mouth holding that limb, and it pops out. It doesn't look damaged, not any more than being severed anyway. Distractedly, I even notice it just sort of... ends. No blood, no evidence of bone or veins. Just a flat blue cap. Odd. How do I have a pulse?

Then I smack it into the eye of the thing that was holding it. It blinks, snorts, and narrows its eye at me, but it doesn't let go of the other limbs it has. I contort myself and arrange to smack it at the base of its near wing, the right one, and I'm surprised to hear something tear. I can see the membrane of the wing has torn. How the hell did I tear it? This thing is the size of a bus, if that kind of force can tear its wings it shouldn't be able to fly!

That's about as far as I get in my thoughts before things get very chaotic very fast.

The thing with the torn wing struggles, loses a bit of height, flaps harder. The tear widens abruptly, it loses more height, it flaps harder, the tear worsens. It doesn't let go of me, and its rapidly worsening condition causes the whole flight to start losing height. The other two fliers respond to this by clamping down on me and diving, which turns into a spiral motion. It's only after we've been going down for a few seconds, no impact, that I finally notice how high we are, how high we must have been when this started. Then the wing that's tearing snaps in half, the creature collides with the pink dragon suddenly, the pink dragon opens its mouth and turns to bite at the creature with the broken wing, and I'm instantly tearing at the face of the last one. It's like its face is made of iron, but I can cut iron, so that just makes my work slow, which is a problem because it straightens its dive out... not to regain height, but to go straight toward the ground.

I am unable to make it let go before impact.

I still don't feel anything. I have to fight a momentary conviction that I'm seriously injured, force myself to actually check.

The iron-faced thing is either dead or unconscious. It's bleeding, and its blood is spontaneously bursting into flame, its body unmoving. More importantly, it's let go of me. I'm fine, as far as I can tell. I still don't have any other injuries. Just missing half of one limb.

I stick to a momentary glance. I don't need to come under attack by Nilbog's creations while I'm at the bottom of what amounts to a crater because I'm spending too much time checking myself for injuries. Hopefully I'm fine. I scramble up the body of iron-face, just to have an extra layer between me and the burrowing creatures, and take stock.

Yeah, there's creatures. They're looking at me and the iron-faced thing, not doing anything. I glance around, spot something big lumbering this way that reminds me of the recyclers, and then realize I have no idea where the Dr. Seuss table is. What part of the city am I in?

I jump to the surface of a building, going over the crowd of gribblies. I'm surprised when none of them attack me, shift my focus. Climb higher, look around, get a view. The building I'm on is too short, a one-story house. I spot a church in the distance and scramble that way, expecting to come under attack at any moment, but nothing happens. When I climb the church I circle around the bell tower, looking in every direction, and spot what looks to me like the right area. It's the largest area clear of buildings anyway. I scramble across rooftops toward the location.

Maybe halfway there the pink dragon has returned, trumpeting immediately after clearly spotting me, and suddenly gribblies are boiling out of buildings, converging on me. I stab, slice, and throw, but with more care than I'd prefer, still wary of whatever happened earlier. I hold off on the temptation to skip paying attention, to just slice and move, though it's a strong temptation, up until I throw something shrieking unendingly into a lizard-boy creature and they both vanish with a pop! along with a chunk of the ground under them and the parts of nearby gribblies in a roughly spherical area. That focuses my conviction. Confirm, then stab. Stay away from the unknowns.

I reach the next roof edge, initially intending to leap across, but change my mind and leap down and through a window a floor down. It surprises me to find it empty of glass, but I run through someone's trashed-out living room and leap out the next window, this time to climb up the wall of the next building and scramble across the rooftop. I dart off to the right and leap to the next building, stabbing something like a lit candle and tossing it in the direction of the pink dragon, but it goes over -lighter than I'd thought?- without the dragon even reacting.

Abruptly I'm bathed in blinding light, as a woman calls out via loudspeaker, "Unknown parahuman, this is a restricted area. Leave immediately, or lethal force will be authorized. This is your only warning."

 

[Ghoul King]

1.3

It takes me a few seconds to realize I haven't reverted to Taylor, even as I scramble to get away from the spotlight. Why am I still the monster?

Then I realize I don't sense a human presence at all. If I had, they might not have surprised me. The light, the voice, it's not a helicopter flown by people, which is what I'd first assumed. It's being remote-controlled. I guess seeing me via camera doesn't count?

Interesting.

I'll keep that mind for the future, but for the moment I slip past and stab a half dozen times at something large, round, and largely featureless. The thing vibrates briefly and oozes red fluid, but otherwise doesn't seem to react. I put it out of my mind, jump to another rooftop, and then the roof explodes.

That's not a figurative statement. There's a split-second of a whistling noise beforehand, but otherwise as far as I can tell the building detonated for no apparent reason, hurling me into the air, spinning wildly and doing my best to maim flying critters passing too close to me. Before I can fully get my bearings, the spotlight is on me again and I'm suddenly spinning more crazily. I spend a brief moment thankful I seem incapable of nausea as the monster, and try to right myself before I touch the ground, but then the whistling occurs again, I catch a glimpse of something, and then the world explodes and I slam into and through the side of another building. I have a heartstopping moment, surrounded by gore, where I'm convinced I've finally been injured, yet I still feel barely anything, but then I double-check myself and find no new damage. Is the fluid maybe a bit thinner? Am I imagining that?

A glance around suggests I actually splattered something of Nilbog's by slamming into it. I can see a detached head, still moving a little. The spotlight returns briefly, but doesn't linger, and nothing else happens. It's only when I feel relief at the lack that I realize: they were shooting me.

I guess they meant it when they said I'd only get the one warning.

I start to shake off what gore hasn't already slid off on its own, but then pause in thought. The light was on me briefly, but then left. Did they overlook me, covered in meat? I try to rub some more of it on me, but nothing sticks, my attempt instead sloughing off more of what is already on me. Damn. I peek out a window, trying to get a view on whatever has the spotlight and presumably guns, and spot what I'm guessing is it sweeping the spotlight nearby. It looks like a stylized, metallic dragon, bristling with weapons that somehow fit the aesthetic, contribute to the look of a dragon rather than detract.

... that's Dragon, isn't it. Greatest tinker in the world, armed the PRT basically single-handedly, makes every other gear-based cape green with envy. Isn't she Canadian? This is US territory, isn't it? I was half-expecting, in the back of my head, for maybe Legend to show up if things went really awry -we're not that far from New York and he can fly around the world in minutes- but... Dragon?

A gribbly armored with trash can lids and a bucket for a helmet pops around the hole in the wall I came through and I stab it in the head before it can shriek. Thankfully, it doesn't do anything exotic in reaction, though I berate myself for my overly twitchy trigger finger anyway as it falls over dead. I watch the... I guess this is one of Dragon's suits? I watch Dragon's suit for a minute, taking it in, feeling like I'm missing something important.

After a minute it occurs to me that the flying creatures are ignoring it.

My first thought, before anything else, is that Dragon's suit has... I dunno, a stealth system keyed to Nilbog's stuff. Then logic kicks in and I realize if she could do that, she could deal with Nilbog singlehandedly. Worse, I can tell, paying closer attention, that the flying creatures are giving the suit the same kind of respect they give Nilbog's own big fliers, avoiding flying too close to it. They know it's there, but they aren't attacking it, and it's not attacking them. It -she- is hunting me. Just me.

Words fail me. I stab another gribbly, this one melting the floor underneath it with acid blood. The acid slides right off me.

Dragon is... working with Nilbog?

I can't wrap my brain around this. I can't think of an alternate explanation.

Then -stab through the enormous eyeball of something, ignore it rearing back shrieking- it occurs to me something more ominous.

Do people... the government, the Protectorate, the PRT, I dunno who exactly... do people know Dragon is working with Nilbog? Is this some kind of conspiracy? What possible reason could people have for tolerating Nilbog's continued existence, let alone working with him? He killed an entire city!

No no, that's a worst case scenario, don't make assumptions. Dragon is an incredible tinker, the best tinker. It's possible this is a secret, somehow.

Still disturbing, to imagine the woman who provides the PRT its tools is allied with Nilbog. I might need to look into her at some point.

Focus. Nilbog's creations are going to properly find me any second now, Dragon is hunting for me, and I still need to kill Nilbog. If Dragon is allied with Nilbog, that makes it even more important I get it done tonight. If I leave tonight, intending to come back another day, the whole place might be fortified with tinkertech, with Nilbog's creatures better prepared for me.

I slip past the howling thing I stabbed through an eye -its only eye, as it turns out- stabbing at the back of one leg in passing, where I'd expect a tendon to be if they were human. There's no particular effect, but that's fine, my focus is on getting to Nilbog. I can't hop rooftops with Dragon hunting me and shit the spotlight is on me again.

This time, half-listening for it, I catch the whistling a full second ahead of impact. Watching for it, I see something streaking my way, the rear of it glowing blue. I try to dodge, and I think I even succeed, inasmuch as the rocket -I'm guessing- doesn't directly impact me, but it explodes almost on top of me anyway, slamming me into the shell of something the size of a car. Before I can peel myself out of the crater in its carapace, the spotlight is on me, and the instant I'm away from the creature my limbs are suddenly hopelessly unreliable while I'm assaulted with a barrage of noise. Then the world is suddenly a brilliant, piercing yellow. For the first time I can remember, I'm completely blind as the monster.

The effect fades after what I'm pretty sure is just a few seconds, I realize I feel like someone sitting in a too-hot bathtub, and I see that the ground around me is literally molten. The air is visibly rippling from the heat.

Holy shit. I just shrugged off that? I don't even have lingering spots of yellow in my vision.

Then my limbs are out of my control again alongside the cavalcade of sound, and I finally realize I'm being sprayed with machine gun fire. It barely feels like anything, I had no idea what was going on.

"Unknown parahuman, extreme measures will be authorized in five minutes if you do not leave immediately. This is your final warning."

Extreme measures? This wasn't extreme?

I actually felt the heat from the laser or whatever. If that's anything to go by, Dragon's suit probably can kill me.

I decide, in a split-second, that I care more about killing Nilbog than I do about escaping alive. I rush to cover as best I can, stabbing, slicing, and throwing Nilbog's creatures as I go along without bothering to make sure it's safe to attack them. I have no time for this. Something burrows from underneath me, but I turn the push into a jump and don't even bother to try to control my tumble, expecting to be sprayed with bullets anyway. Expectation met in a roar of noise, I hit the ground, roll to my feet (Well, claws) without stumbling, and run flat-out as best I can at an angle that's in the general direction of Nilbog's location while putting taller buildings between me and Dragon, still killing Nilbog's creations as best I can along the way.

The suit flies closer until the buildings are no longer in its line of fire, and the world turns bright yellow again. I keep running as best I can, half-hoping to escape the firing zone, but when the world is no longer yellow again there's a trail of flame behind me and no sign of the effect itself. I want to say this felt a little hotter than the last time, like grabbing a too-hot panhandle for a second, but I'm not sure and have no way of knowing whether heat is simply accumulating or if Dragon amped up the power of the shot. I duck, dodge, and sidestep past larger creatures for a few seconds, hit an area relatively clear of creatures, and the world lights up yellow again. I keep running, then try weaving drunkenly. When the effect cuts out, I have no time to react before I slam into -and bounce off of- the leg of something enormous, at which point I duck between the thing's legs, running underneath its tremendous bulk, hoping it doesn't decide to just drop while I'm under it. When I come out the other side, the instant I'm in another relative clearing of creatures there's the whistling followed by the explosion. This time I focus less on dodging per se and more on trying to ensure the explosion launches me toward Nilbog. It even works. In fact, when I hit the ground -blinded by yellow again, starting to feel itchy- and after I'm no longer blind, I realize I'm maybe two blocks from Nilbog's location. I can sense a human presence again!

I run, and on impulse I stick close to the gribblies and larger things, attacking as best as I can without substantially slowing myself down. Dragon doesn't shoot me.

I feel stupid for not thinking of this earlier. She's trying to not shoot Nilbog's creations. Of course she's trying to not shoot them. They're allies!

Unfortunately, the reprieve doesn't last long, as there's a gap I need to cross to reach Nilbog. I don't even know how much time I have left before Dragon brings out her "extreme" measures. It occurs to me she might break them out regardless if I get too close to Nilbog, but I push it out of my mind. I need to do this. I leap from the loose formation of creatures trying and failing to kill me and the world turns yellow again, then white. I keep running, keenly aware that this is distinctly uncomfortable. I remain blind. Discomfort turns into low-end pain, as the run drags on. It wasn't that large of a gap, I'm fast it shouldn't be taking this longimgonnadie-

And then the world returns to normal, aside from the steam rising off of me. That's new. I hit the table, quite literally, tumbling over it only half-controlled. I notice, absently, that Nilbog is shrieking and demanding Dragon, anyone, kill the 'interloper'. He's sounding like a stuck pig at this point, and I find something humorously appropriate about that. I leap onto the fatman and start tearing into it.

Nilbog starts crying, blubbering like a baby. The fatman is even producing tears. I notice it has genitals, but not legs. I decide I don't want to consider the implications. I find myself thinking Dragon is a woman and that is quite impressive in spite of myself. The only reason I don't vomit is because I don't have a mouth to do it with. About halfway through tearing into the fatman, it stops shrieking, and the upper half slumps like a puppet with its strings cut. The lower half is still twitching. By this point there are gribblies starting to get at me, shrieking and screaming, but they sound angry, not upset. I haven't found a human either. Just lots and lots of guts. I haven't found Nilbog. At this point, I don't think there's anywhere for Nilbog to be hiding inside the fatman. Where the hell is he?

Then there's a crack like I-don't-know-what and my right eye stings. My head is partially buried in dirt. It takes me a moment to realize I went through the table. I didn't even notice, it went so fast. The gribblies are shrieking, ignoring me. They sound victorious.

I suddenly hate them. No, you don't get to win you inhuman fucking monsters, you don't get to attack me for no goddamn reason and gloat. The fury is momentarily breathtaking, or what I imagine breathtaking would feel like. I don't breath as the monster. Maybe this is something else. I don't know.

I try to fight the anger down. Then I think I probably pissed off Dragon by attacking her well-endowed boyfriend and the anger hits new heights. I feel paralyzed. I'd always thought I'd lash out if I got this angry. No, I didn't think I could get this angry. I'm not even entirely sure why I feel this angry. There's a jumble of thoughts, jealousy and disgust and good old basic anger and a, a burning sense of something, and murderous impulses, a desire to hunt someone down and kill them.

Then I hear the sobbing.

 

[Ghoul King]

1.4

The fury doesn't go away, exactly. It sort of... shifts to one side.

I'm hearing a human being crying. I already dug around inside the fatman, cut it open until there was no hiding place left an adult would fit in. I hear someone sobbing regardless, a man, maybe a bit high-pitched for a man, but muffled. I focus my attention around me, carefully unmoving. Is one of the larger things in the area Nilbog's actual suit? Did I underestimate him? Was the fatman a decoy?

I notice that the lower body of the fatman is still twitching. I think of how the upper half abruptly stopped. I find myself recalling an earlier thought, the suspicion the fatman was rooted in place. I focus on what's left of the fatman, but I can't see anything of relevance. I'm still hearing that sobbing. It's still muffled. It's not moving, not changing. The creatures around me are all moving. I distantly notice Dragon's suit is hovering closer to the ground, spotlight still on me, mentally blot it out. I'm missing something here.

The fatman wasn't a decoy. The crying is not moving. It is muffled. I can't see a human anywhere. I can sense a human in the area. The creatures are moving. The crying is not moving. The creatures are moving but the crying is not but the crying is muffled like there's flesh in the way.

Or dirt.

I wait, very still, as Dragon's suit approaches. I think I hear her muttering. She sounds upset. I haven't killed her boyfriend, she has no reason to be upset. Yet.

I wait until what is very obviously a recycler, a tremendous caterpillar thing scooping up parts and laying eggs, squirms in front of her, blocking her line of sight to me, and then I'm up and the gribblies are shrieking in fear now and I'm digging underneath the fatman, there's a cord, a tube, an umbilical cord, going down into the ground, and I pull and cut and hurl dirt and stab gribblies and Dragon is saying something but I don't care what I'm killing your boyfriend you bitch and suddenly I hit air, faster than I thought I would, and now Nilbog's creations are backing off, bar a few who simply flail at me with tools or claws. No fire, no acid, no bones launched like bullets, no unimaginable effects making part of me cease to exist. It's easy.

I catch a momentary glimpse of a man, older, balding, naked inside a pink, largely transparent, veiny membrane, holding his head in his hands, sobbing. I have a momentary, intense conviction that I'm looking at my dad, about to kill my dad, but I shrug it off he's not wearing glasses, he's fat and a claw goes in through the back of his skull and out through an eye socket before he can decide to look up at me and make me Taylor again.

Suddenly the air is filled with flame and acid and weirder stuff, and I know I've killed him, they wouldn't be risking it if he wasn't dead, but I have to be sure so I tear him open, throw pieces of the man at fire and acid and onto spike-covered creatures and just focus on completely and utterly ruining his existence.

I don't even know his real name.

I decide I don't care, I don't care that he was crying and sad and pathetic and childlike, he was a monster, he needed to die. He did. He had a secret alliance with Dragon, it's all a trick or something anyway, they were colluding to... I dunno, rule the world or replace humanity with his monsters and her technology or something.

Then I'm missing half of one limb and three-quarters of another one when a gribbly vanishes, and I suddenly notice the creatures are attacking Dragon's suit in addition to swarming over me. She's shooting back.

I decide I don't care, I'm done here, I'm going.

I break loose from the insane melee, stumble and flail and totter for a few seconds, trying to get used to walking on three fewer limbs than I started the night with, fend off a bulldog-headed boy-thing, get struck by something from my blind side, roll, flail, stab wildly. I decide to hell with it, jump to a rooftop, and as fast as I can I make my way across the rooftops in a straight line for the edge of Ellisburg. I'm twitching my head every which way the whole time, trying to not be caught off guard with just one functioning eye, but the fliers are ignoring me, winging their way to the center of town, where Dragon is. It occurs to me she could probably fly away. She hasn't.

I go cold, thinking of stories of Bonesaw, reminded Dragon is the world's premiere tinker, second to none. Bonesaw is a tinker, isn't she?

But it's too late. If Dragon is planning to bring Nilbog back from the dead, if she can, going back now isn't going to stop her. I can't do worse than shred Nilbog, I've already done that, she'd break out her 'extreme measures', and I would die. It was probably an 'extreme measure' that cost me an eye.

I thought I was invincible, and I've lost an eye. I didn't have any warning. I don't remember anything between 'Fine, tearing into the fatman' and 'head in the dirt, hole through a table I don't remember going through'.

I stab a few gribblies on my way out, but nothing that matters happens before I get to the wall. Nothing happens while I'm climbing it.

I jump into the forest, and make my way toward the highway. Something glowing shoots overhead, toward Ellisburg, and I drop into the undergrowth, afraid. When no follow-up occurs for a full minute, I continue, still cautious, trying to at least keep trees between me and the sky at all times. Nothing else happens before I reach the highway and start following it back to Brockton Bay, paralleling it.

---------------------------------------------​

I'm making worse time back than I did on my way out. I've only got one eye, and I keep forgetting I'm missing chunks of limbs, messing up, slowing down. I can't run full speed, and checking signs so I don't get lost takes time. As dawn gets closer, highway traffic picks up too, and I'm still trying to avoid being seen by people. I find myself wondering if my injuries as the monster will translate to injuries as Taylor. Am I going to be missing an eye? I only have four limbs as Taylor, what would happen there?

I put it out of my mind. No. Later. I need to get back to Brockton Bay, back home. I don't even know what will happen. When I'm hurt, become the monster, become Taylor again, the damage is gone, the pain is gone. It shouldn't translate. If it does... I can't do anything about it. It shouldn't. It could.

Focus.

I have to double back three times, wasting precious minutes on each mistake. I'm getting nervous that Dragon is going to somehow track me down. I want to be Taylor again, back in Brockton Bay, where it's... well, less likely, at least, for her to identify me as the monster that attacked Ellisburg. I need to be Taylor in Brockton Bay again.

It's dawn by the time I've hit Brockton Bay city limits, it's been dawn for longer than I want to think about, and I make my way to a park I scouted on my way out. The park is actually pretty nice for being in an iffy part of the city if you ignore the graffiti, and the public bathrooms are open 24 hours. I suspect this is why there's so much graffiti, but I don't care. I make my way inside one of the more out-of-the-way bathrooms and look into a mirror.

I see someone in a motorcycle helmet, jagged teeth drawn haphazardly in white onto the 'jaw' portion of the helmet below the visor, wearing a black -or maybe just very dark blue- blanket large enough to hang below the knees while tied around the neck, like a poncho with no place for the arms to come out, looking slightly hunchbacked. Me, in my 'costume'. Not visible is a pair of sturdy black boots, getting to be a bit too tight but still usable. Taylor, dressed for caping. I'm not missing any limbs.

I remove the helmet, setting it down on the sink in front of the mirror. Ugh. Helmet hair. Really bad helmet hair. I hate doing this to my hair, but I didn't want to be recognized. Too important that I make it hard to connect Taylor to the monster. Then I see with relief that both eyes remain underneath my glasses. Priorities, Taylor. The state of your hair is not more important than the state of your eyes. I move to untie the blanket, trying to ignore how awful my hair looks, because while the park is nice the neighborhood isn't, and I don't have time to linger on making it look less awful. I need to get home, I'd intended to be home no later than probably an hour before now, if I've got the time estimated right.

Once the blanket is untied, I hang it over one of the stall walls and pull off the backpack I had under the blanket, which was creating the slight hunch. I unzip it, put in the blanket, and then the helmet, leaving me in grey sweats, including a sweatband around my forehead. I leave the boots on, though I'd considered having a pair of sandals to swap them for, more natural a shoe type for exercise, decided against it. From a backpack pocket I pull out a sandwich in a ziploc, after which I cover the blanket and helmet with some towels I kept inside, put the backpack on, unzip the ziploc, and start eating, keeping a mirror in my line of sight the whole time. Thankfully no one shows up before I finish eating to wonder why there's a girl eating her sandwich in a public bathroom, looking more at a mirror than the sandwich. I toss the Ziploc at a trash can, wincing at how close it is to overflowing. I don't think today is a trash run day, either.

I feel a little less unbalanced. Not calmer, exactly. It's hard to describe. I feel less pressured, which makes sense to me.

I brace myself emotionally, and turn my gaze away from the mirror. I look at myself as the monster. My limbs...

... oh thank goodness. They're back. As far as I can tell, they look identical to how they were, pre-injury.

I hesitate, worried about the eye. That was violent, dramatic, extreme, whatever word you want. Maybe I can only heal parts, not wholes. Or something. Powers are weird. Nonetheless... I put a limb to my right eye. I can see it, even though it's out of my left eye's view. You'd think I'd have known instantly, but my field of view didn't feel different when I lost an eye. I knew, intellectually, I was missing half my vision, but I didn't experience it as a blackness on one side of my head. It didn't seem any different.

But my eye is functioning, and running the limb over it confirms it feels the way it's always felt. No holes, sharp edges, or strange fluids leaking from it aside from the usual. I'm fine. The monster is fine.

I sag in relief.

Then I remember I'm late.

I make my way home, taking every weird side passage and dead end to hurry the journey along, avoid people so I'm the monster as much as possible. My awareness of people doesn't provide anything like radar, it doesn't let me pin down direction, quantity, or distance, but I have a dim idea of the difference between having the number of people in my radius going up vs the number going down and can use that as a crude guideline. Which, incidentally, means I look more like someone who belongs where they are and knows where they're going, so when I emerge from an alleyway that doesn't go anywhere, nobody pays any attention to me. I'm not someone to pay attention to, a jogger at ease with her environment. I maybe get a few looks over the backpack, I'm not sure. Or maybe they're looking at my hair, still in disarray from the helmet.

Late late late so very late.

On the minus side, there's people around when I get to the front door, so I'm slower than I want to be. On the plus side, there's people around, so I can open the door like a normal person. I'm the monster the instant the door is mostly closed, but I can push a door closed easily. It's doorknobs that give me trouble.

I make my way into the kitchen, still a bit hungry. I want to make more noise, sound like I'm actually walking in my boots, rather than on blades -I still have no idea why they don't scratch the floor when I walk- but I don't know if that's even possible. I certainly haven't practiced it. I can only hope Dad doesn't notice.

"Taylor, where were you?"

It's my dad, doing that weird thing where someone sits on a chair backwards, leaning onto the backrest. I wonder for a moment if he just finds it comfortable or if he's trying to go for a specific effect. I hope he isn't trying to be 'cool' to try to 'connect' to me or something. I don't think he'd try that, certainly not since mom died, but we haven't been talking as much as I'd like. I could be wrong.

I put it out of my mind, smile broadly, make an attempt to sound a bit winded and say brightly, "Morning run, don't you remember?" My stab at seeming winded sounds completely unconvincing to my ears. Hopefully I'm just being my own worst critic. I did tell him last night that I intended to start on morning runs soon. I didn't specify tomorrow. To be fair, I wasn't sure I would hit Nilbog tonight. I wanted some leeway if I couldn't psych myself up.

Dad looks troubled, and I have to fight off the image of Nilbog crying into his hands. I never saw his face. They don't look similar. They don't. Shut up.

"I thought you wanted to make some more preparations before you took the first run?" Instead of answering verbally, I reach my right hand over to a pocket on the left side of the backpack, pull out a pepper spray can and show it to him, carefully making sure it's pointed away from both of us and my finger isn't on the trigger. Then I put it back in place, and in one smooth motion pull it out and aim it at an imaginary opponent off to one side. After holding the pose for a moment, I relax, put it back in the pocket, and turn to my dad with a smile. "Got it handled, Dad." I very deliberately do not mention that I'd skipped lunch a couple days so I could afford it. Pepper spray isn't expensive, but being bullied is, and I'd spent money on the motorcycle helmet, even if it was second-hand.

I'm vaguely annoyed when Dad doesn't immediately cheer up. He starts to say something, I just know it's going to be something about how he's concerned about me or something to that effect, and I don't want to hear it, not from him. So I interrupt him, act like I didn't notice him starting to talk. "Gotta shower, get ready for school. See you in a few minutes Dad." That gets a smile on his face, a weak one, but a smile. He sits up and tells me he's starting breakfast then, and I thank him. Then I head upstairs, open my bedroom door -I left it open just a crack so I could pry it open as the monster, thankfully- look into the hand mirror I've got propped on my desk, and shuck the backpack and toss it haphazardly into my closet. I really need to find an excuse to get a bigger mirror in here.

Then I grab the hand mirror, grab a set of clothes for today -gray hoodie, black pants, won't show stains readily and the worst they can do verbally is imply I'm not feminine or imply I'm a lesbian, I'm too small to need a bra still (sigh), underwear is plain black- and then set the hand mirror back in place, new outfit held tightly in my arms. Then I head to the bathroom. It's closed. Dammit. I make my way back to my bedroom, grab the hand mirror, go to the bathroom and open it, then put the hand mirror back and then finally go into the bathroom. Thankfully, I can just use the bathroom's mirror, no need to bring the hand mirror in. I close the door, lock it, start the shower up, and then change into my outfit for the day in front of the mirror, shoving the running clothes into a corner for afterward.

I really need a watch or something too. I'm okay at keeping track of time, but not perfect, and time gets fuzzy when it's night. And then there's situations like this, where I really want something to let me know when fifteen minutes have passed.

I settle for spending a bit brushing my hair into better condition, suddenly glad Dad didn't seem to think anything of the helmet hair. Once I'm done with that, I wait a few minutes more, desperately wishing I had something to pass the time with other than my own thoughts. I'm reluctant to even practice as the monster in this downtime, for fear Dad might hear something really weird. Bad enough he might notice the water doesn't sound right because it's hitting the bathtub rather than me, but taking a shower using the bathroom mirror is basically impossible. I tried using the hand mirror, but it fogged up too fast.

I don't actually need showers nowadays anyway. Anytime I stop being the monster, I come back clean, rested, and healthy, no matter what condition I was in beforehand, but Dad would expect me to shower after a run. He knows what people are like after exercise, even if he's not familiar with runners per se. (I think?)

This 'morning run' plan suddenly seems a lot less appealing. I'd intended it as a cover story for if I came back late from nightly business, with maybe a side helping of better preparing me for cape life, physically, but if I'm going to have to pretend to shower every morning... that's going to be a pain, and a waste of time. I have a lot more of that nowadays, but in some ways I hate wasting time more than ever. Before the monster became a part of my life, a few minutes wasted was time spent resting, if nothing else. Nowadays it's just... a waste, full stop. I have moments where I intensely wish I was a tinker or something, a cape who could use downtime to enhance their performance in the field, somebody like Dauntless...

... well, maybe not Dauntless. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable having people pinning their hopes on me to be an Endbringer-killer some day.

Armsmaster, more like. PHO thinks he's got at least a half dozen halberds that can't be told apart at a glance but do completely different things, and it's known that when he's lost publicly to a villain's power he always comes back with some kind of countermeasure.

But no, I suspect I don't so much as benefit from exercise. Honestly, I have dim fears, things I try not to think about too much, that I might be trapped as a teenage girl for the rest of my life. I try not to focus on these fears too much, and I have one surefire way of making that particular fear die down: look up cape mortality statistics, particularly for independents, or if I'm in an especially pessimistic mood, villains. Knowing it'll be a small miracle if I make it to thirty, maybe thirty-five if I account for how capes with durability-enhancing powers skew toward longer lifespans, is strangely calming.

I'm jolted out of my thoughts by Dad knocking on the door and calling out, "Taylor, breakfast's ready!"

Wait, how long have I been thinking? Has it been fifteen minutes, or more like thirty? Ugh, I really need a watch or something, this is going to drive me nuts.

I turn off the shower, wait another minute, and then head downstairs, dropping the sweats into the hamper on the way. I still haven't come up with a solution I like for faking needing towels. Just putting towels into the shower doesn't work, because they end up smelling like clean towels. Besides, one of the things I've appreciated the most about becoming the monster has been the savings it's bringing, the fact that we're going to spend less on water, maybe even electricity, and making laundry less burdensome. Not sure what Dad will make of it when those next bills are low. Ugh, really hate faking showering, definitely need an alternative plan for the running thing. Bears thinking. At least I don't have to wait for my hair to dry ever again. That's a cool perk.

I turn the corner into the kitchen and goddammit Dad is facing away from me, still getting eggs out of the pan. I need an excuse to get a mirror in here. Ugh. I settle myself into a chair as best as I can as the monster. I still don't really get how this works, but I know from past experience I'll be sitting in the chair correctly the instant I'm in Dad's field of view.

Powers are weird.

Dad turns around, startles slightly, and the smell of breakfast hits me, and it's good. I haven't tested whether I need to eat as the monster or not, not directly, but I get hungry, and unlike when I get tired, or hurt, or start feeling the urge to go to the toilet, becoming the monster and then Taylor again doesn't make it go away. It only vanishes -kind of mutes, really- for the duration of my time as the monster. My guess is I need to eat, so I do. Food tastes delicious nowadays, I'm not sure I'd be able to keep myself from it even if I was convinced food was unnecessary now, so I'm kind of glad I have reason to believe I still need food. I think I'd be tempted to save money by not eating if I didn't, and then end up feeling guilty every time the delicious smell compelled me to eat.

Dad blinks owlishly at me. Oh. Right, I basically just stealthed my way into my chair and sat there not eating or talking right behind his back. I notice I'm smiling. That's good, I don't need to fake it. "Breakfast smells awesome Dad." That gets a smile from my dad, and not one of those sad smiles that make me want to punch and/or perforate him. A real smile, like I just made his day. I suspect it helps that I promptly dig in. He sits down, starts eating. Glances at me periodically, looking vaguely puzzled. There's so many things for him to be puzzled by I'm not even going to guess. Breakfast is quiet, otherwise. We weren't chatty people even before Mom died, we certainly weren't chatty people after she died, and with the bullying and now being a parahuman I'm not exactly in a hurry to volunteer conversation. Things on his end are basically always the same-old-same-old: the economy sucks, jobs aren't really available to people, he has to tell people so fifty times a day, with the occasional attempt at meeting with a politician to be told "no". It doesn't really matter what they're saying "no" to. Not exactly a big motivator for his own desire to talk.

We finish eating, I'm really glad he's seated such that the sink is in front of him so I don't have to jump through any stupid hoops, and we part ways. Dad seems in a slightly better mood, and I wonder for a moment if he's expecting something to go well at work today.

Me, I'm going to Winslow.

Never will you see a more wretched hive of scum and villainy...

You laugh, but fuck you.

 

[Ghoul King]

1.5

Winslow High sucks. You know that, I know that, the teachers know that, the politicians know that, the gangs love it, hell I'm pretty sure the roaches know it. There's certainly enough of them they could hold the school hostage if they got organized.

I reflexively glance around after having that thought, heading into school grounds. Locust isn't a mindreader, no one except maybe the Simurgh is, but she's scary, and infamous on PHO for her habit of taking statements overly literally. It so consistently ends in pain PHO's tinfoils are 80-90% convinced she's doing it deliberately, like a meta-joke or something. The remainder like to point out that powers sometimes do very weird things to a parahuman's head, and we should feel bad for her.

Then sensible people point out Locust is A: Locust and B: a member of E88, and people remember to stop feeling sorry for the sociopath. Instead they commiserate for her poor husband, Fog. Personally, I want to know what kind of nutcase marries a woman made of bugs. Fucking creepy, the both of them.

The worst part is wondering if the fly that won't leave me alone just likes the way I smell or if Locust is seeing through it. The fucking worst thing about living in Brockton Bay.

Of course, that's all me distracting myself from how much I hate Winslow High.

Because thinking about Locust is better than thinking about Winslow. Because indirectly thinking about the possibility of Locust's sex life is an improvement over actually paying attention to the fact that I'm in Winslow.

Maybe today won't be so bad.

I don't believe myself.

-----------------------​

By lunchtime they've gotten glue on my chair twice, gotten a tack there once -hurt like a bitch but it's easier to ignore pain knowing the injury will vanish like it never was and I'm not giving them the satisfaction if I can avoid it- accidentally bumped into me probably a dozen times if I count their cronies, and had Greg Veder do his pathetic best to trick me into going on a date with him. I would maybe have fallen for that one, because Greg is so out of sync with the rhythms of school he could plausibly be pursuing the only person rejected harder by the school than him out of a conviction that we're Social Reject Buddies or something, except I overheard Emma talking to him yesterday. Blah blah blah, she wants him to do a favor for her, drops hints that she might go on a date with him if he does, probably has cleavage showing but I didn't actually see, can you get Taylor Hebert to the old bowling alley on yadda and so-and-so this Friday at six? He of course went for it, because he has the wit and social acumen of a tapeworm.

Well. PHO thinks Locust can control tapeworms too, going by a bad encounter between the Underwires or whatever and E88. Hmm. Hard to say whether Greg is more disadvantaged than the supervillain made of bugs when it comes to pretending to be a human being.

You know what? I'm feeling generous. Greg wins that contest today. He is more awkward and clueless about human normality than the bugwoman. Congratulations Greg, you won something. Not anything an actual person would want to win, but then the award isn't meant for a person, is it?

I handle the Greg situation by telling Greg he's 'sweet' but 'not my type'. Emma will interpret that as me thinking he's more of a loser than I am -I'm still undecided on that one, though I have the advantage of superpowers- and trying to 'let him down gently'. Greg will either have been told this a hundred times before and recognize it as code for, "Not if you were the last man on earth," or will decide it's proof Emma might actually have a reason for being interested in him. After all, a real girl told him he's 'sweet'. Surely, girls know what goes through other girls' heads, right?

No Greg, not Emma's head. I haven't understood the inside of that skull in ages.

I also overhear four different conversations, 'coincidentally', in which Emma makes ugly comments about me without actually naming me and her cronies laugh in response. Those are harder to ignore. I don't cry, at least. I'm hoping to never cry again, but I'll also settle for extending my longest streak of not-crying from three weeks to a whole month. Small victories.

Mr. Gladly is still the most hateable teacher in school, acting like it's my fault when someone else smacks me in the back of the head with a paper airplane. Yes, I was passing notes. Via paper airplane. Into the back of my head. I have talent, you see. A regular airshowwoman with paper airplanes, I am.

I wish I could bring myself to say that to his face, but backtalk just gets me sent to the principal's office. The one and only time that went anything resembling well was when Madison had caused the problem. If it's Emma or Sophia the principal is suddenly magically unable to understand that I am the injured party, even if I can roll up my sleeves and reveal bruises. Fuck, the time Sophia slammed me up against a wall so hard I was left bleeding from my nose and one eye, the principal had the gall to ask if my home situation was abusive.

What is that shit, some kind of 'reverse-racism'? I get Emma having good grades and a lawyer dad, but I just... what? Why does Sophia get the same treatment? I'd think it was because she's friends with Emma, but Madison was too, by a certain definition of 'friend'.

At least Madison getting sent off to Immaculata has made the cronies careful to not actually be seen by the teachers when they pull shit.

Small victories.

---------------------------​

The day ends on one kind-of-good note: nothing really bad has happened. It's one of the less-worse days. An average day, rather than a bad day. They didn't even irrevocably destroy any of my stuff.

If it had been a good day, that would be worse, because that would mean they're planning something really awful.

I wonder what they had planned with Greg. Whatever, I don't care. I'm just angry. Again.

Focus. I need another target. I'm not going to cut every last man, woman, and manchild at the school to ribbons. I'm not. There are worse evils out there, and I'll be getting them. That's my mission.

I get home, spend an hour with my hand mirror and homework. It doesn't really work. I've done maybe an assignment and a half, and spent probably half that time fantasizing about taking slices out of Greg. I hate that mindset.

I push myself away, head downstairs with the hand mirror, and boot up our ancient PC. While it's booting, I fiddle to get the mirror set up so it won't unexpectedly fall over. When the computer finally finishes booting, I bring up my document.

Making the world a better place
By Taylor Hebert

Assignment premise: if you could make ten changes to make the world a better place, what would they be? Explain your reasoning.

1: Kill Nilbog. Drop a nuke on him? Assassinate him?

2: Kill the Three Blasphemies.

3: Kill the Slaughterhouse Nine. (How?)

4: Kill Heartbreaker. Sniper? How does his power work, exactly? Range?

5: Kill the Sleeper? (Risking provoking him?)

6: Kill Ashbeast? (Too human?)

7: Kill Lung. (Killable?)

8: Kill Kaiser/break E88. (Is there a hideout?)

9:

10:

Presented as a school assignment so my dad won't suspect anything if he finds it. Probably. I have a dim hope that if tinkers hack this computer nobody will think anything of it, but honestly any situation in which tinkers are hacking my home computer is probably one where they're going to connect Taylor to the monster. Or already have. Whatever.

I remove Nilbog from the list, stare blankly at the remainder. I still need to do more research. PHO tinfoil hats are convinced there's a sexily mysterious woman in a hat behind literally everything bad in the entire world, who has been seen anywhere on the planet you care to name. The fact that people cosplay as this supposed woman doesn't help. They also think Hero wasn't really killed by the Siberian and is hiding out somewhere to someday rise with an Endslayer, that Elvis is not dead and/or that the Simurgh secretly killed him off before Scion showed up for... some reason... Lung isn't Asian at all, he's actually African and a woman, the Simurgh is actually making a long-term plot for the good of humanity so we should stop resisting, Scion is God, Scion is Satan, Scion killed God and Satan and is taking a break from ruling over Heaven and Hell, the Endbringers are proof we're in the Matrix (Atrocious Earth Aleph movie, I don't know how anyone could enjoy it, let alone how it apparently got sequels. Fucking Alephians) because they're obviously 'raid bosses', Eidolon is a woman, Alexandria is gay, Legend isn't gay and him pretending to be gay is a plot by the government to advance a satanic and un-Christian agenda, powers are granted by God to the worthy, powers are deals with the devil, Scion brought powers, Scion is the source of powers, Scion killed the source of powers, JKF's death was a Simurgh plot somehow, Hitler was a Simurgh plot somehow, the Crusades were a Simurgh plot somehow, powers are sold in a bottle by the government and they're just pretending people can get powers without spending money...

... that's not half a percent of the nonsense PHO puts out, and the worst part is it's basically impossible to tell what's a tinfoil hat, a troll pretending to be a tinfoil hat, a real person who really saw something weird and is reporting it, or a troll pretending to be a real person reporting a real thing. Especially since some of the stupidest shit is real while some of the most plausible-sounding stuff has been thoroughly debunked. "Powers in a bottle," indeed.

Tinfoil hats aren't remotely the best source of information on real monsters, but it's surprisingly difficult to get information on even the more publicly known ones.

I have to fight down a sudden urge to look up Nilbog's real name. That does give me an idea: I search for 'Nilbog dead'.

... no results?

Odd. Dragon was there -well, a drone of hers was- so it's not like it's a secret.

Maybe I need a different search parameter?

'Nilbog news' points me to articles that are more than a year old. 'Ellisburg news' points me to local news sites on towns outside New York, most of them with one 'L' in the name. 'Nilbog free' gets tinfoil hat-related sites, 'Dragon and Nilbog' gets creepy capefiction, 'Nilbog and Ellisburg' goes to the Parahumans Online Wiki... I give in and try looking up Nilbog's real name, on a hunch. The PRT official site has it, casually placed on the page discussing exactly why you should never, ever approach Ellisburg for any reason ever. Apparently, his civilian identity is a matter of public record. I didn't know that.

I type in 'Jamie Rink dead'.

...

No, nothing.

I look up Dragon's Tweet feed. It doesn't have as many followers as Legend's, but then Legend was one of the first heroes to use it at all, and is more well-known anyway. More surprising is that Glory Girl's Tweet feed is nearly twice as large as Dragon's. Dragon is an internationally recognized hero, Glory Girl is a local hero. Weird. Anyway, I'm not entirely surprised to find nothing in Dragon's feed about Ellisburg. Probably capes don't tweet about official business until hours afterward, if at all. Most of Dragon's tweets seem to focus on hyping gear she's making for the PRT, when she's not getting into tinker jargon with other Tweeters. Other tinkers, presumably.

Well. That's a bust.

I cringe and go clicking into cape news sites. Then regular news sites. Nothing.

... it's been more than half a day. I'd have expected to either hear about how we're all going to die because I fucked up and provoked Nilbog's army into attacking the world or run across the Protectorate taking credit for a major victory. Instead, there's... nothing.

Now there's a cold pit in my stomach. I'm half-convinced Nilbog and Dragon are "allies". Does it go deeper than that? Am I in a fucking tinfoil hat conspiracy theory now?

I'd originally planned to look more into my other targets. Instead, I shut down the computer, take the mirror back upstairs to my room, and do the more mindless parts of my homework. It's hard, not letting my shaking hands ruin the assignments.

-----------------------​

Dad gets home nearly an hour later than usual tonight. I'm half-upset, feeling creeped out by being alone in the house with these thoughts in my head, and half-relieved: the shaking didn't die down until twenty minutes before he showed up. His portion of dinner is cold, too, though at least him being late meant he didn't walk in on me cooking with one hand while carrying around the hand mirror. I'm still dreading having that, or something like it, happen one day.

We talk a little bit while he eats, watch the news a bit -nothing about Ellisburg, just the usual local news, gang warfare, Panacea out of town again on Protectorate business, Circus suspected in a night theft, etc- and ultimately he goes to bed early. Today was a hard day, he didn't really talk about particulars. That's fine with me.

I decide tonight is going to be my first attempt at the small scale. What I really want to do is research the Slaughterhouse Nine more, particularly their more long-term members like Jack Slash, and work out a plan to be implemented later this week, but I start shaking again every time I think of going back to the computer. Which is stupid, because the computer isn't the thing to be afraid of... but it does remind me of Nilbog, which puts me in mind of my ridiculous and now disturbingly plausible fears.

So, beating up gang members and calling the police. Or the PRT if one of them is a cape, but I'm a lot more nervous about getting into a cape fight than I was before Nilbog's minions vanished bits of the monster and Dragon's drone blew out an eye. That's my agenda for tonight. De-stress.

Theoretically.

With dad already dead asleep in his bed -I check, he's snoring already- I go to my room, unlatch the window and open it slightly, get my 'costume' on -minus the backpack and its contents- and slip out into the night as the monster. This is of course complicated by the need to do much of it while using the hand mirror, but I've actually practiced the whole thing enough by now that it's tolerable.

-------------------------------​

Here's what a night out as the monster, hunting down gang members, is like.

I spend most of my time running across rooftops, trying to not be seen, crawling low to the roof and trying to keep stuff between me and adjacent buildings if taller buildings are around to potentially be seen from. I keep an ear out and peek down into every alley or straight I jump over before I jump to the next building, but most of the time there's nothing and nobody there, or there's a homeless person sleeping In it. Sometimes it's teenagers doing drugs, smoking, or just playing a game of basketball against the wall, in which case I divert off to a different route. Especially when they're playing basketball and actually looking up. I don't want to find out what happens if I make a jump and turn into Taylor partway through.

When I do see gang members, they're usually standing around talking. If they have weapons, they're more-or-less concealed. Often, though not always, they're smoking. Very occasionally I catch one having an intense conversation with someone, the sort where I'm expecting to step in and save whoever they're talking to, but every single time things are apparently resolved in a satisfactory manner. In one case, the gang members backs off in response to something the presumed victim says.

When ABB and E88 groups of toughs walk past each other, there's a lot of posturing, but nobody really does anything. In some cases I get the impression they're practically friends, albeit on opposite sides. I don't know what to make of that.

As time drags on, I see more hookers, but I'm not sure how to handle that. I don't want to attack them, especially since my understanding is most hookers aren't in it by choice. Besides, something like every fourth hooker is probably actually a teen that thinks trashy equals cool and is up late for whatever reason. Leaping in and attacking hookers would be a bad plan even if I thought hookers deserved it. I mostly don't see anyone who looks like a pimp, either, so that's a no-go. Meanwhile, the toughs are actually getting less common as the night wears on, not more. Nighttime might be a criminal's friend, but that doesn't mean ordinary gang members can have a full day pretending to be normal citizens and skip sleeping, I guess.

By probably the fifth hour -so two in the morning, probably- I'm feeling pretty stupid for thinking I'd just run across crimes in progress, stop them, and then call up the PRT. I don't even have a cell phone on me. I'd considered a burner phone, but I'd have had to sock away more lunch money, or have spent less on the helmet, or something. Maybe later.

I'm getting bored, but I don't get tired as the monster, and I don't seem to get hungry while I'm the monster either. A break might get me in the right headspace to continue, but I don't have any real reason to take a break.

Forget it. This just isn't worth it.

------------------------------​

By the time I've gotten home, slipped into my bedroom, gotten my costume off me and into the backpack, and finally gotten the computer downstairs booted up, it's 3:21 in the morning.

I've decided patrols are stupid and I'm not doing them.

Sitting at the computer, relying on the reflection from the monitor's glow in the dark, no need for the hand mirror, I'm still feeling queasy. It's better though. Not tolerable, exactly, certainly not good, but I feel like I can focus on the task.

I pull up the document again, find to my annoyance I didn't save the removal of Nilbog, re-delete him, and get online.

First things first: Jack Slash.

He's been at this for decades. I'm surprised at how long he's been around, actually. I can't remember a time before Jack Slash was trailing a mob of killers, but somehow I'd always assumed he'd started somewhere in my childhood and I just didn't register the exact starting point. Official sites, including his locked PHO Wiki page -edit wars, apparently- focus on warning you away from the man. If you see him, flee as casually as you can, without catching his attention, and call the nearest PRT or Protectorate base, etc. There's no good photos of the man, either. Most pictures seem to be snapped from cell phones by shaking hands, and the lighting is often poor. In fact, the best photo I can find is nearly seven years old -a quick check of the Slaughterhouse Nine's page on the wiki confirms that 7 years ago is when Shatterbird joined. Well, that explains that, I guess.

There are newer photos, but less frequently, and often from a distance. The lighting is usually bad, too, presumably because Shatterbird's scream blows out all the lights in the area, and the photos are mostly urban. Poking around finds there are Slaughterhouse Stalkers, people trying to successfully trail the team and get good photos of them, making custom Shatterbird-proof cameras able to take clear photos at extreme ranges, but nobody has actually pulled it off. I have a disquieting suspicion that at least one of the sites devoted to the task hasn't updated in two years because the people running the site died.

I tangent for a bit, looking for photos of the other current members, which leads to looking up the current members, and then back to looking for the photos. To my surprise, there are high-quality photographs of Crawler and the Siberian. Everybody else either has no photos or the photos are uniformly low quality. Shatterbird, in particular, only has a handful of shots taken from extreme range, none of which are very helpful. She looks strange, and it takes some digging around to work out that she's not, in fact, a 'monstrous' parahuman, but rather cloaks herself in colorful glass, often producing highly stylized forms. Usually she has wings and a full helmet, at least.

Crawler has an incredible array of good-quality photos, and it's surprising how often he's almost posed. Eventually I find an image hosting site has a tag #Crawlervanity and piece together from comments on the site and from information elsewhere that Crawler likes the way he looks, and does, in fact, deliberately pose for photos, threatening to kill people if they don't photograph his 'beautiful' form. I gather he sometimes kills them anyway. The number drops off after Shatterbird joins, just like everyone else, but the photos that happen are still usually close up, steady-handed, and with Crawler showing off a specific piece of his body. Doing my best to assemble the photos into chronological order, it looks to me like it's usually something new he presumably evolved recently.

Well. That's not creepy at all.

I wish I had any reason to believe I could somehow use that against him and kill him. I suspect my best-case scenario is that he no longer counts as human and has nothing capable of hurting the monster, leading to a standoff where neither of us can kill each other. More likely he can kill me just fine, one way or another.

I dig around on the Siberian, wondering why quality photos of her are a thing. I am disgusted, but not surprised, to find a 'shrine' to her 'hot, sexy bod', which seems to have most of the photos I've been running across, and more usefully has little comments for each of the photos providing some context. In the Siberian's case, apparently she's just focused on killing people over destroying their stuff: far too many of the photos are labeled as, "recovered from a camera/cell phone in the trail of the Slaughterhouse Nine." Only a handful are presented as having been taken by people who survived the attempt, and most of them include horrible details like, "Siberian ate nine out of ten fingers," or, "Siberian removed and, going by chewing noises, ate both eyeballs. Victim only survived thanks to parahuman assistance."

I have slightly more hope about my chances against her than against Crawler, strangely enough. She's never been injured. Crawler is known to have survived losing his entire head, among other examples, so anything I can do to him is unlikely to accomplish much of anything beyond improving him further. If for some reason I can hurt the Siberian... she might actually be killable.

Realistically she'll just kill me, though.

I finally remember, at 6:13, that I'd been looking at Jack Slash for a reason, and drag myself away from the photo tangent.

Jack Slash is the only member of the Slaughterhouse Nine I think I have a realistic shot at killing. This is convenient, because he's nominally in charge of the group, and it's possible they might splinter if he dies. So I want to do research on him.

It takes a surprisingly long time to find detailed information on his power. When the clock reads 7:07 I've finally found a tinfoil hat thread of all things on PHO that collates information from videos, witness statements, offhand remarks from capes that have survived encounters with the Slaughterhouse Nine, and fills in gaps with a lot of speculation.

I'm disappointed at the conclusion. The man swings a blade, and it cuts at a seemingly arbitrary distance. It's assumed, but labeled as speculation, that he does have an actual range limit, guesstimated at around two miles, with explicit cautioning that he could be hiding his real range for a time he actually needs it or that his range may be effectively 'capped' more by the limitations of human sight than by any actual range limitation.

That's all.

The official sites provide no information beyond, "get out of sight as fast as possible," and a check of the wiki page shows that the only detail it adds is that he is skilled in close-quarters combat with knives and is always armed, even if no weaponry is visible.

Odd, and getting me anxious again.

My concerns on my mind, I look up Ellisburg again.

Ellisburg situation resolved. New York state safe to live in for the first time in years.

Oh. Oh!

Clicking around shows that news sites, regular and cape-oriented, are abuzz with excitement. Dragon is credited with a 'swift response' to a 'developing situation' caused by 'some of Nilbog's creations going rogue', culminating in her executing Nilbog's standing Kill Order. She called in dozens of additional heroes, including Panacea -wait, I saw that on the news- to clean up the remaining creatures before more than a handful could get past the wall, and the official statement is that it took twelve hours past the last creature being killed to establish that nothing had escaped the outermost perimeter. This was all kept quiet so no villains would take advantage of the sudden absence of heroes from nearby cities and even from some extremely distant cities, brought in by teleporter. Alexandria, Eidolon, and Legend were included in wait that was Legend I saw overhead.

No mention is made of an unknown parahuman.

I waffle for a minute. Am I being discounted because creepy conspiracy theory demands cover-up or is the official statement about rogue creations what they actually believe happened? Nilbog thought I was a rogue creature at first...

I decide the latter sounds plausible. I close the tabs, shut down the computer, and head upstairs to prepare for my morning run. Which I still need to replace as an excuse, because this is so stupid, especially if I'm not going to be patrolling anymore. Patrolling is stupid.

There's bounce in my step as I jog.

 

[Ghoul King]

1.x

Saint

"Oh boy." he muttered. He took a sip of coffee -he didn't like the stuff, but he needed to be able to focus- and then called out, "Mags! Bit of an emergency!"

They slept in shifts when they weren't on a job. Dragon didn't sleep, they did, simple as that. It was honestly a stroke of luck -or, as Saint liked to think of it at times, the work of fate- that it had been three people who stumbled onto Richter's box, and not two or the worst possibility of just one. It made it easier to ensure that there was always someone watching the AI, while still having the flexibility for people to run errands, and for Saint to make sure the suits and secondary tech were in working condition... as well as the myriad other daily rituals that eat up hours. Bathroom usage, shaving, bathing, the list was tremendous. Before they'd taken on the responsibility of being the Dragonslayers, Saint hadn't given it much thought. Nowadays he was all too keenly aware of it, to the point that it was one of his reasons for shaving himself bald. (There were others. He liked the "monkish" appearance it gave him. He wouldn't have shaved just for that effect, though) It took less time to periodically cut the new growth than it did to wash it, shampoo it, dry it... Dobrynja and Mags had declined, in part because it would make the group more conspicuous. Saint suspected a little vanity, as well, but didn't begrudge them it.

Dobrynja was actually out buying supplies (Mostly: groceries) right now, unless Saint had missed him coming in because he was too focused on the feeds... again.

"How urgent?" was Mags' sleepy reply.

"We might all die urgent," he called back, keeping his voice deliberately level. He could hear Mags' muttered cursing as she hurried to get out of bed and to the monitoring room.

As she came through the door Mags somewhat acerbically commented, "I assume it's not Dragon breaking loose from its shackles and preparing to go Skynet on us, given you're not informing me that you activated Ascalon." Saint blinked, not recognizing the reference, and then shrugged it off.

"No," he admitted. "Something happening with the King of Goblins." Then he clicked to bring more into focus the... whatever it was... that was currently cutting its way through Nilbog's creatures while the AI tried to shoot it, seemingly to little effect. Whatever it was, the bullets were knocking it around, making it difficult for it to move in anything other than a drunken, erratic line, but there wasn't any evidence of injury. Blue, with too many limbs -Saint had tried counting three times and come up with three different numbers, though he was confident it was at least eight- and a head shaped vaguely like an axe head mounted on a bizarrely thin neck. Saint was tempted to compare the limbs to a spider's legs, but only for the way they spread out from the curved, vaguely cylindrical body. The way they were shaped, the way they moved, it put him in mind of an octopus' arms, if the octopus had no distinct underside, no suckers, just a featureless cylinder tapering to a point -a point that was apparently quite sharp. When the AI had zoomed in, he was fairly sure he'd spotted blade edges running from the tip to approximately one-quarter of the way back from the tip, five of them per limb, distributed equally around the cylinder, but they jutted so slightly from the limbs and blended so well into it in terms of color that he wasn't entirely certain he hadn't imagined them. The arms had the kind of flexibility he'd expect in an octopus, too, or maybe more so than an octopus.

The axe-head had two green eyes, compound like a fly or other insect, one of each side of the 'blade' of the head. (He had yet to see the head actually used as a weapon, but he wouldn't put it past the being) They unsettled him. No pupil, no way to tell where the thing's focus was, or even to tell whether it had to focus on a specific point at all. Inhuman. Refreshing in a way, when he was so used to dealing with Richter's AI, which could present an unsettlingly human face, good enough to fool his instincts but never his mind.

The thing was coated in a layer of fluid that seemed to cling to its body like a second skin. At first he'd thought it some kind of parahuman force-field, an energy effect, due to how far out from the body it extended without simply falling away, but he'd seen dirt float in it, blood spread as it would in water, and other signs that it was a fluid. (Though never for long: he wasn't sure how it happened exactly, but anything trapped in the fluid vanished eventually. Osmosis?) Just another example of parahuman abilities laughing at conventional physics. There was a part of him -the still-fading remnants of Teacher's power- wondering at what the fluid was for, how it worked, potential applications, but it was a weak impulse, and long experience told him it wouldn't pay off particularly even if he were at the peak of Teacher's influence. Teacher gave him a tinker power aimed first at programming and second at the hardware you would run code on. It had never played nice with biologicals, or with non-electronic devices for that matter.

The being -which Dragon had just lost track of- unsettled him all around. His gut instinct was that it was a parahuman, and either a supremely confident one -admittedly so far justified in its confidence- or a madman. He was leaning toward madman. He couldn't say why, but he was convinced it was enjoying the bloodbath. He kept his thoughts to himself for the moment. He didn't want to taint his friends' reactions. Three heads are better than one, but not if one of them puts ideas in the other two's heads. Then you basically have one person. They needed to be more than one person to be on level with the AI. Saint also admitted to himself that they needed to be at their best to be competitive with the real parahumans -even with Teacher's help, he wasn't as good as a real tinker, and his friends were never better than ordinary Joes in powered armor. Civilians thought that tinkers used their own gear out of some kind of ego trip thing, but Saint knew it went deeper than that, that non-tinkers just couldn't get the hang of a tinker's gear the way the tinker did. He'd wondered why for a time, and then shrugged. The why didn't matter. Nothing to be done about it.

Mags muttered, "Bastard is going to unleash the apocalypse," and then said more clearly, "I'm going to get suited up."

Saint waved vaguely as Mags went to get the undersuit on. He always put on his undersuit before he sat down for monitoring duty. It was uncomfortable, but the time it saved when emergencies did happen was worth it, enough so that recently Mags and Dobrynja had taken to doing it too. (Even he didn't sleep in it, though. He'd tried. He'd failed) He remembered abruptly that he'd intended to ask Mags if she knew when Dobrynja was supposed to get back (What had been Dobrynja's errand again? It was the middle of the night, so probably not a grocery run... oh well) and then shrugged, pulled out a cell phone -modified with tinkertech from Dragon and set up to use the 'ignore me' string to block her attention, so it was the closest thing to untraceable around- and called up Dobrynja himself.

"This is Do'." A shortening of the cape name. They avoided their civilian names nowadays, too risky, but it would be even riskier to have Dobrynja answering to Dobrynja -anyone who recognized the reference to Slavic myth would be suspicious. Too easy to then connect a mythological dragon slayer to the Dragonslayers, especially. So... "Do'."

"We have a bit of a situation back at the farmhouse." Farmhouse meant that it was cape trouble. (Sometimes an emergency was that the plumbing wasn't working. No need to give each other heart attacks by not clearly distinguishing between a cape emergency and a regular emergency) "If you're not done already, you should probably hurry up and be done."

A pause.

"I'll be there in twenty minutes," and then Dobrynja hung up. Good. (Saint still couldn't remember what the errand was. Too hard to keep track of everything, while he had to focus on the AI's feeds)

Five minutes later Mags was back in the monitoring room, watching the AI's attempts to hunt the thing moving through Nilbog's creations like a chainsaw through butter. (The way viscera sprayed everywhere, it seemed an apt metaphor) Saint had double-checked everything else -Sleeper's quiet, Endbringers are quiet, the Three Blasphemies are quiet too, Birdcage has a coup going on in one block but not Teacher's block so whatever- and was still keeping an eye on other feeds, trying in part to parse the AI's own thoughts. Was Dragon worried? He'd thought he'd seen one of Dragon's 'pangs of guilt' (It was an AI and didn't feel guilt, of course, but you could see something distinctive happen in its code anytime it lied, deliberately left out critical information, presented things in a misleading way, or otherwise dissembled. Dobrynja had called it a 'pang of guilt' the first time they'd noticed and the term had stuck) when it had warned the thing, so he suspected the AI didn't really think the thing was a parahuman (What else could've been the lie?) but it had been and gone too fast. He wished at times like this that recording the feeds was practical.

It was doable, but there was so much to track at once that recording it all would eat a hard drive's worth of space every day. He'd calculated it.

More importantly, they'd tried it.

If only I was a better coder...

Then he could've made a watchdog program, something that knew what he would care about and record or otherwise note down just that for later reference.

Saint found himself tempted to make some commentary on the carnage they were taking in, but words failed him. Hard to take everything in and think of what to say. Then Dobrynja showed up, quieter than a man of his size had any right to be without parahuman abilities, glanced at the monitoring station (Saint saw his face reflected) and promptly turned around.

When he came back a few minutes later, he was dressed in an undersuit himself. Saint gestured vaguely at the thing rampaging and said, "Parahuman or rogue goblin?"

He had his thoughts, but again he didn't want to taint their thoughts. Dobrynja spoke first, quicker to render judgment than Mags. Always was. "Parahuman."

Saint glanced at Mags. "Mags?"

She shook her head, seemingly at some thought, and then said with conviction, "Parahuman."

Saint nodded to himself and said, "Yeah. I'm thinking parahuman." After a pause he gestured at Mags and added, "You first, Mags."

"It doesn't fit." Saint and Dobrynja glanced at each other. Nope, neither of them had understood. Mags continued without reacting, possibly without noticing. "You walk a beat, you learn to notice when things don't fit." She pointed somewhere at the carnage, Saint couldn't say where. Everything was moving too fast. "Nilbog's monsters have a style, a flavor, whatever you want to call it. They'd all fit readily enough into a children's cartoon headed by H. R. Geiger. The thing killing them, it wouldn't. It's not a mash of adorable and horrifying. It's just alien. Like some of the case 53s, the really extreme ones."

Saint nodded slowly at that. He hadn't thought of that, but now that she said so, yeah, she had a point. It didn't fit.

He gestured at Dobrynja. Dobrynja crossed his arms and said, "If Nilbog could make something this nasty, all his creatures would be as dangerous or worse." After a pause, he squinted at the screen, and commented, "Also, it has no mouth. Nilbog's monsters at least pretend to be a real animal, something that dies when you suffocate it or starve it or whatever."

Another good point. Saint didn't have one as good, and admitted it explicitly with a somewhat sheepish expression. "Gut feeling for me, nothing more." After a pause, he added, "All right, so we agree it's a parahuman." He met their eyes, first Mags, then Dobrynja. "I think we have two decisions to make here."

He held up one finger. "First, we need to decide if this thing with Ellisburg demands our intervention. We've sworn ourselves to preventing the apocalypse. This is potentially an apocalypse in the making, right in front of us." The Protectorate was already alerted to something happening -he'd seen it in the AI's feeds- but the alert was just a general heads-up that something unusual was happening in Ellisburg. It was not a proper panic button. The AI clearly thought it had things under control.

He raised the next finger. "Second, we need to decide if the parahuman is something -someone- we need to do something about, assuming they don't get themselves killed." Watching it shrug off one of Dragon's more lethal weapons, he appended, "Which seems likely," before continuing with, "My read is we have a new trigger, someone who is either perfectly willing to risk the end of the world for... God only knows what reason... or so insanely overconfident that they really believe this-" a sweeping gesture at the ongoing carnage, now returning to Nilbog's 'court'. "-is a workable plan that will not have any negative consequences at all."

Dobrynja and Mags simultaneously said, "Looks handled to me," before glancing at each other in some surprise. Saint glanced at them too, befuddled. They were rarely in sync, certainly not to that degree, but then his attention was pulled back to the screen.

Oh. Dragon had finally drawn blood. Shot it in the head with a coilgun, if he was reading the feeds right. It was down, unmoving, and Nilbog's monsters were celebrating. (Saint did his best to ignore how Nilbog's creations tended to 'celebrate'. Fucking disgusting, but not relevant) So... yeah. Situation handled.

Then the AI's view of Nilbog was blocked by some kind of monstrous caterpillar, and everything went to hell.

---------------------------------------------​

In the end they'd decided their help wasn't necessary. The risk that Dragon would take the opportunity to backtrack them was part of the concern, but not the primary one -Mags in particular had objected to the idea of even giving that angle any consideration at all. In the face of the apocalypse, it just didn't rate. Even so, the Protectorate response was swift -Saint was especially impressed by how fast Legend had arrived, taking literally 3 minutes to arrive from New York City- and Dragon's feeds made it clear that the situation was... not under control, but operating at the very edge of such.

Dobrynja had gone to get into a full suit when a flesh-eating plague had been unleashed and consumed four capes in as many seconds, but ended up staying put when Panacea had done something that resulted in a piss-yellow haze spreading over the city and the plague ceasing to be a problem. There were other moments, almost as terrifying, but mostly... it was a collapsing front. Saint had half-followed threads of Dragon's analysis, how the dead of winter meant that Nilbog's creations were weak with hunger, many of them afraid to actually go beyond the walls -the temperature within the walls was a full 5 degrees (Celsius) warmer than the temperature outside the walls, due to various things Nilbog had done to shape the city- because they weren't really equipped for the cold, and the chaos had drawn many of them toward the center of the city, so there were fewer monsters ready to escape over the walls. Other factors he caught only enough to know Dragon had thought something, but not follow the details.

The parahuman had escaped. Saint suspected Dragon had let it happen. With Nilbog dead, the AI might've been able to creatively interpret law, use a loophole to pretend its duty was successfully discharged. (Or, a slightly more generous part of his mind commented, maybe the AI felt the horde of monsters was a higher priority than one parahuman who wasn't even doing anything anymore)

It had taken eight hours of continuous combat for the Protectorate capes to mop things up, decide that things were safe enough for most of them to return to their stations and leave only a skeleton crew to complete the sweep. Saint was struggling to stay awake. Even coffee wasn't really helping. Dobrynja had already told him to get some sleep, but he'd shrugged it off. He had finally relented a little and let Mags get in the chair, handle monitoring. He was starting to see code behind his eyelids when he blinked. Other symptoms indicating he was falling apart.

Currently they were discussing the parahuman.

"Seemed like Jabberwocky-" Mags' name for it. Saint was too tired to argue it, didn't care enough to ask why. Dobrynja didn't seem to care in general. "-was here just for Nilbog. In and out." Saint nodded vaguely.

Drifted off, standing on his feet.

Jerked awake to Dobrynja saying "... fucking cover-up, again. Tired of seeing this shit."

Saint forced himself to focus, asked, "What?"

Dobrynja pointed to the feed and said, "The Protectorate. They're pretending Jabberwocky wasn't there at all, turning it into a Guild/Protectorate victory when it's a Guild/Protectorate fuckup." Oh thought Saint vaguely. Again? But Dobrynja wasn't done talking. "I'm half-tempted to find Jabberwocky just to give them a goddamn medal. Fuck."

Saint started to nod, frowned when he realized that was wrong, started to shake his head, caught himself from falling. Dobrynja glanced at him and said, with no small amount of sympathy. "Saint, man, you look like shit. Dead on your feet. Go to bed."

Mags added, "We can continue this after you've actually slept."

Feeling ganged-up on, Saint went to his bedroom, unable to muster the energy to argue with them.

He dreamed of a girl looking into a mirror, saying, "Snicker-snack went its head," and clacking a pair of scissors closed.

Repeatedly.

 

[Ghoul King]

2.1

I don't even make it to lunch. The relentless stream of little torments is worse than usual, more biting, more constant, but the event horizon is when I go for a water bottle from my backpack during gym and it's filled with red liquid with dark bits floating around inside of it. The only reason I don't drink any of it is that I've made a habit of pre-opening my bottles at home (Long story, ugly memories), and the unexpected resistance catches my attention enough to actually see the contents.

Rationally, I'm almost certain this is just juice, probably with pieces of fruit inside of it. Emotionally, I see the locker's contents, and I've hurled it away before I can finish telling myself it's just juice. It clips somebody in the head, and the coach starts yelling at me. I can see Sophia smirking. I have no idea how or when she planted the bottle without me noticing. I don't think I care.

I grab my backpack and go home, shoving my hands into my pockets to hide their shaking.

---------------------------​

She'd replaced all my water bottles.

I'd planned to go to school tomorrow as usual.

I'm not so sure now.

-------------------------​

Okay, Heartbreaker. Not capable of producing death plagues, but... defended by people who are essentially innocent, not to mention human. That's going to make this hard. There's also the smallest, barest chance he'll decide I'm attractive and turn me into another cultist, in which case I'll have made everything worse by giving him control over a nearly unkillable nightmare monster that doesn't need to sleep. Given everything I've been able to gather about his modus operandi, I'm reasonably certain that it won't happen that way -he doesn't use his power on anyone he doesn't intend to incorporate long-term and for all that he's a monstrous human being I'm not seeing evidence that he's a pedophile- but keeping in mind the worst case scenario is good.

I mean, if he decides to go for it, there's basically nothing I can do, and knowing about the possibility doesn't do much beyond give me a reason to hyperventilate and/or abandon the operation entirely, but... well, there's not actually a but.

I push it out of my mind. First, I need to find him. I already know he tends to operate in the vicinity of Toronto, but information about his location is sketchy beyond that. I'd sort of vaguely assumed he lived in a loghouse out in the woods somewhere and nobody had taken him down because he has a fanatically devoted cult of innocents on his side, but digging around online he doesn't seem to have a stable base of operation. Instead, he tends to live in the house or apartment of one of his recent 'recruits', with the rest of the 'family' either living in the same building or spread out among two or three closely clustered buildings. I'm kind of curious how he manages to move such a large group around under the radar. Are large families, moving as a group, common in Toronto? Does he go ahead with one or two women and then somehow get directions to the rest of the group, and they trickle to the new base in small groups?

Unfortunately, the internet doesn't have anything about that stuff. He's known to have been found in a number of different places, and flushing him out just leads to him going to ground, but that doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't have a primary hidey-hole. The fact that he can vanish so readily is also not actually informative. It's Canada, there's plenty of nothing to vanish into, and he can always Master a woman and hide in her basement or something, with no way for pursuit to know whether any given bystander who 'saw nothing' or 'saw an odd group of people going thataway' is a Mastered woman saying whatever Heartbreaker wants her to say or reporting the truth. He doesn't necessarily need any kind of network in place, ready to hide him... but he also could have such a thing going on. The women he collects don't necessarily have to remain in his immediate vicinity. He may well have a series of safehouses of Mastered women, behaving completely normally for a single Canadian woman until the moment he needs a place to hide.

This is ugly.

I look up more details about Heartbreaker's power, but it's not very helpful. It's unknown if he has an actual range limit, though he seems to operate by line of sight which is something, his effect is not known to wear off over time or be reversible in any way... it's not actually known what his victims experience (Or, it crosses my mind, maybe the Protectorate does know but isn't telling but then I shove that thought into a box and ignore it), but they behave as if they have full continuity and events are completely natural, as far as I can gather.

I decide to look into Master effects in general. In particular, I find myself wondering if killing the Master is a guaranteed way to 'fix' their victims. I have an ugly suspicion it isn't, given nobody has taken a sniper rifle to Nikos Vasil's head, and am unsurprised when the answer is sometimes. My only consolation is that Heartbreaker is similar to known cases of a Master's death freeing their victims: he does not provide specific orders or induce observable physical changes, and the fact that he seems to prefer to keep his 'girls' on hand could be for the obvious reasons, or it could be evidence of a range limitation or a need to refresh the effect with his presence periodically. So... call it 50/50 odds.

I'm already feeling bad for his existing victims. I can't bring myself to not try to kill the man though, given delaying just makes everything worse for everyone.

I spend the remainder of my free time before Dad comes home working out tentative ideas for plans and, after concluding I'm not likely to find anything else useful about Heartbreaker, digging up more information on future targets. (I avoid going off on a picture tangent this time)

Dinner is awkward. I infer Dad was called by the school, but doesn't want to broach the topic himself. I'm brooding, which doesn't help. The one upside is that Dad decided to cook steak tonight, ostensibly to celebrate something going on at work, but really I'm pretty sure it's an attempt to cheer me up.

I do feel better, afterward. A little.

While we're washing dishes, I find myself bringing up Nilbog's death, wondering if Dad heard about it. To my surprise, he hasn't, and his face lights up like Christmas came early this year when I confirm, yes, it was on the news and everything. That makes me feel... not good, but like it was worth doing.

We watch TV for a couple hours after dinner before I "go to bed" AKA lay under the covers as the monster, waiting for Dad to go to sleep.

---------------------​

I'm still feeling restless. I'd originally intended to do more research on Heartbreaker, but the idea of sitting around for a few hours just... doesn't appeal.

I decide instead to do some initial scouting in Canada, around Toronto and some of the other cities he's supposed to be in.

I dress warmer under the blanket than I did for killing Nilbog: a jacket over an old sweater, long pants that haven't been doused in some noxious fluid as yet, mittens I'd forgotten we even had that are uncomfortably tight, and a blue scarf I... haven't worn since mom died. I briefly debate wearing something on my head under the helmet, but ultimately decide it probably won't be necessary. I also skip the backpack this time: I really need to replace the "morning run" idea, and I cannot possibly dress appropriately for Brockton Bay temperatures without freezing in the Canadian winter, so the ruse is pointless in this case anyway. Besides, this is intended to be a scouting run, and Toronto isn't really much farther than Ellisburg was. I have time, since I won't get caught up in a fight and am leaving earlier anyway.

I slip downstairs to boot up the computer long enough to work out a route through to the Toronto region, focusing especially on finding a place no roads go through. I seem to recall reading somewhere that border patrols -Canadian and American alike- are focused on the roads, relying basically on the inclement weather and rough terrain of the wilderness to keep people from crossing the border illegally in areas where there are no roads. I poke around to see if parahumans existing has changed this policy, but what little time I spend scouring the internet turns up nothing in specific... which isn't to say that nothing has happened. Even so, I'm willing to chance it. I'm reasonably sure most parahumans who could cross the border without need of a road would be a bit more visible than the monster -fliers like Glory Girl, for instance- or be nothing a border patrol would be any help against, such as teleporters. So probably they haven't stepped up the security in a way that matters to me, especially since the US/Canada border is a huge stretch of ground to cover. It's just not practical to have the entire thing secured.

It takes longer to wait for the computer to boot up than it does to actually map out a route I can't get lost on once it is online, even with having to find an off-road path across the border that qualifies as not easy to get lost on. Once I'm reasonably confident I have the route memorized -close my eyes, repeat the information, open them, check if I got it right, repeat until I can do it five times in a row- I shut the computer down and head out.

----------------------​

Following the roads is mildly stressful, reminding me of my all-too-recent flight from Ellisburg. I find myself wondering if there's more cars out and about tonight, or if I'm just imagining it. I'm still uneasy about the thing with Dragon. (And the Protectorate, but that goes into the box too and I pretend I never thought it)

Crossing the border turns out to be easy. I'd actually given myself a long way around if the checkpoint near the road turned out to be more serious than I was expecting, but I end up paralleling the road a bit further out than usual for a few minutes, out in the woods, to get past the checkpoint, and then just return to my preferred distance from the road once I'm past it. That's it. I was expecting to at least have to hop a fence or something.

--------------------​

When I hit the Toronto city area, things get more complicated. The place is huge, and doesn't lend itself to roofhopping, not in any way that lets me actually keep a good eye on the ground. I'm blatantly dressed up as a cape, if an amateurish one, which is not conducive to wandering the streets on foot, and that would take forever anyway. Since I didn't bring my backpack, I don't even have any place to hide my helmet, so just taking off the blanket and helmet and pretending I'm nobody of interest isn't a viable option, and could lead to people connecting the monster to Taylor. Or at least connecting 'the girl in the helmet and blanket' to Taylor Hebert, which would still be outing myself as a cape... or humiliate me by having people think I'm a wannabe cape, which would be worse than having people know Taylor is a parahuman.

The worst, most depressing thing, though, is realizing that a big part of my problem is that Toronto is nice.

Oh, I spot what I'm pretty sure are gang toughs at times, and in some of the less trafficked parts of town there's definitely gang tags. There's also at least two other reasonably major supervillains in the area beyond Heartbreaker, the city is close enough they're in Brockton Bay news sometimes, usually speculation that they might move here if they suffer a particularly bad defeat, so it's not some bastion of perfection.

But there's just not the same kind of huge, largely uninhabited/gang-controlled/filled with the homeless sections of town like there is in Brockton Bay. The vast majority of the city is being used for legitimate purposes -or at least for purposes that can pretend to be legitimate- and this makes it hard for me to do anything to narrow my search. To a certain extent, the whole thing just highlights how I didn't have any kind of actual plan -I had vague ideas I'd check the ugly parts of town, the places cops and PRT are less likely to pay attention to- but it's also just the case that, for instance, I see multiple places with attractive, well-dressed women in large numbers. If this were Brockton Bay, I could investigate a handful of places like that, and expect to find Heartbreaker by the end of the week, probably. Here... no, not really. There's just plenty of parties and the like. I'm pretty sure some of the places I'm skimming are sororities, even.

There's also just too many skyscrapers. I'm not capable of combing those efficiently, and it's all too plausible that Heartbreaker is living in a suite in one of the skyscrapers.

I try to tough it out, manually comb the place. It's not like I'm going to go home, build a Heartbreaker-tracking device, and come back tomorrow night. This isn't Protectorate Pals, and I'm not Armsmaster.

Then I'm Taylor for a heart-stopping ten or so seconds, flailing through the air mid-jump, sure I'm going to die.

After I land as the monster, I make my way back to the edge of town -carefully- and then stalk back home to Brockton Bay, done with this.

-----------------------​

I don't tell Dad, but I don't go to school today. I stay home and surf the internet instead, in some dim (Yet depressing) hope that I'll find inspiration, or maybe evidence that the Protectorate does know where Heartbreaker is and just doesn't act on it. (Tinfoil conspiracy shut up) An easy answer. Nope.

I double-check where the Slaughterhouse Nine were last heard from. Unfortunately -maybe the wrong word to be thinking- the last time they were placed was two weeks ago and was some town I've never heard of an hour to the east of Los Angeles. They're nowhere near Brockton Bay. Even at their fastest, they've never crossed the country in two weeks, never mind that they theoretically should be able to do so. More likely they're one state over, or still in California, doing horrible things in places nobody cares about except the locals.

Not that I have any idea how I'd kill most of them, but it would be something I could work on, instead of running in circles about how to find Heartbreaker.

I bounce around threads on PHO for a bit, nothing in mind in particular. Eventually I run across a thread that's actually interesting -apparently, a lot of parahumans have weird sensory elements to their powers. Initial conversation is mostly non-parahumans saying, "oh wow that sounds cool," etc while parahumans talk a little bit about what exactly they experience when they use their power, but eventually the conversation shifts more to parahumans talking about weird, unexpected uses for these elements. The thing that particularly sticks with me is Vista chiming in late in the thread: she can't use her power on people -I am distinctly glad to learn she can't actually turn people into pretzels- and she has an awareness at all times of what effect her power is having on the world as well as what it could do. The relevant bit? She has a weird, dim awareness of human presence at all times in an area around her.

She admits she's never gotten any practical use out of it, beyond pranking Clockblocker (Wards prank each other?), but it reminds me of my own power giving me an awareness of people around me. I go back over the thread, reviewing posts I'd previously skimmed where capes are talking about how they discovered these details, and find myself wondering if there's hidden depths to my own sensory weirdness.

I end up spending an hour wandering around outside in my running outfit, intently focused on my 'there's people nearby' sense. By the end of it, I've confirmed anew that, yes, I can tell when the number of people in my radius goes up, and I can tell when that number goes down, and I have some kind of awareness of the overall scale -a couple people feels distinct from two dozen people, though not nearly as strongly as you might expect- but I haven't discovered anything actually new.

I find myself wondering if maybe I can sense parahumans somehow. Maybe parahumans feel different from non-powered people? Or maybe they don't register at all -wait. No, Nilbog pricked my sense, and nothing else did in Ellisburg. Not even Dragon, but that might've been a drone. She's known to use drones. So, not invisible. But maybe different in some way?... it would be fantastic if I could just comb Toronto for parahuman presence.

I head to Arcadia by rooftop, in costume. (Hoodie and pants underneath, no backpack) The only tricky part is timing leaving the house until there's nobody around to see me, but my people-sensing power makes it a little smoother than it would otherwise be. I make sure to be careful, avoiding paths that will involve jumping over heavily trafficked streets, but I also try to just ignore the times I do become Taylor. Well. Not so much ignore as grit my teeth and bull through them. The incident in Toronto scared me, but really that's stupid. I heal instantly from injury, and given how severe what the monster recovered from was, I can probably shrug off similar. Probably. So, I steel myself for the possibility of turning into Taylor mid-jump and try to get used to it happening. I'm not going to land as Taylor when jumping roofs. Even if I do, I just need to break line of sight with whomever is watching me, and I'll become the monster again and be fine.

I turn into Taylor seven times mid-jump on the way to Arcadia, and by the seventh one I no longer flail wildly in a panic. I still have to fight an urge to vomit, but it's less than it was. Once I'm in sight of it, I see a hole in my plan.

Arcadia doesn't have any buildings nearby it. Not close enough to jump to its roof from.

Well. Shit. I'd intended to stealthily crawl around on the rooftop, see if I felt anything weird, anything suggesting parahumans feel different from other humans. Since the Wards go there, that'd be a pretty surefire way of sneaking in a test without having to run down Armsmaster on his motorcycle or something.

I spend a minute debating my course of action, and finally settle for stashing my costume on the roof I'm on -after double-checking that the door to this roof is locked and the lock is not easily rattled open or anything- and then jumping down into the alley behind a dumpster when no one is in a position to have line of sight on the alley. Probably. It takes me a minute to find a sufficiently reflective surface to trigger becoming Taylor, but once I find a reasonably shiny air conditioning unit things go smoothly. Then I jog my way to Arcadia school grounds. After all, I'm just a girl walking if you can see me, and if you can't... well, you can't see me. Perfect!

It's only when I'm halfway across the lawn that I remember Dragon's suit didn't revert me to Taylor.

Too late now. I keep jogging/galloping (Or is it still a jog when you have too many limbs and they all end in blades?) toward the front door, suddenly glad I have my hoodie up, giving my identity a little protection. I'm pleasantly surprised when the front door opens easily to a push. I was half-expecting it to be locked. For that matter, I was half-expecting there to be security guards. I guess rumors about Arcadia are exaggerated a bit.

I have a bit of culture shock when I get inside. Arcadia's halls are cleaner than Winslow's. It takes me a second to realize that Arcadia's halls being cleaner than Winslow's implies that Winslow's halls are dirty. Somehow I'd assumed Winslow was in as good a condition as it could be, just with... less well-paid teachers or something. Fewer teachers? Poorly-trained staff? I dunno. I hadn't realized Winslow was actively filthy. Then I notice that none of the ceiling lights are flickering. Then I realize they're all pure white, where Winslow's are a dull yellow, the kind of color you get out of a lightbulb that needs to be changed.

I spend a minute reeling, assimilating. There's dozens of little details like this. The walls seem strange, and I finally realize it's because they haven't been plastered in gang tags, cleaned of gang tags, re-plastered in gang tags, re-cleaned, ad infinitum. They're just... smooth, like new. The glass is so clean you can almost believe the windows are just open spaces, that's how clear they are. If you told me people eat off this floor, I'd hesitate to call bullshit. There's no knife marks, no cigarette burns, no smell of dru-

Oh. There's somebody staring at me.

Right. Right. I'm here to test my power, not drool all over myself staring at an actually decent school.

I ignore the short girl staring at me like she's never seen a- fuck. I look like a hobo teen in my old, dirty pants and blotchily stained hoody. In Arcadia. Fuck. I didn't think this through.

I ignore the short girl and her weirded-out stare, and stalk through Arcadia's halls.

The girl lets out a strangled yelp when I turn a corner, and I back up, confused. She's wide-eyed, and not looking at anything in particular, seeming focused on something in her head.

Huh. Maybe Arcadia isn't so pristine after all, if a girl that young is doing drugs and nobody has caught on. I briefly consider trying to give her a talk about why she shouldn't do drugs, and then decide she's not going to listen to a random hobo teen. Oh well.

Feeling weirdly relieved, I go back to stalking the halls of Arcadia. The way-too-perfect halls.

---------------------------​

I'm ultimately disappointed. If my power does differentiate between parahuman and regular human, I can't figure it out.

I'd wonder if maybe the Wards were busy elsewhere, but I spotted Glory Girl -Victoria, I guess- in a classroom, looking really cranky. Even if the Wards aren't here, there's parahumans here, and I never sensed any kind of difference in my power beyond the already-established more, less, vague sense of overall numbers. I can't feel any variation, which is frustrating. 'Parahuman' would've been most convenient, but even discovering my power can differentiate between gender, or age, or something would've been neat. Not what I wanted, but something.

I did confirm that my power is not blocked by intervening objects, the radius completely unaffected by anything except my position as far as I can tell. It has a static, uniform size. I also discovered it seems to be a sphere, or maybe a cube but I don't think it's a cube, anyway the point is that its reach seems to extend equally in every direction, which is part of why I'm thinking it's a sphere, rather than being anything weird like "50 feet out horizontally but only 10 feet up and down". That's useful to know, that I can tell if people are nearby even if there's walls in the way. Makes me harder to ambush, kind of.

I end up leaving the third time a teacher's gaze flicks my way when passing a classroom. Something about the look on their faces makes me uncomfortable, like the walls are closing in on me. Dunno why.

Nothing of interest happens in the time it takes me to get back to the roof I stashed my costume on, and getting it back on is uninterrupted as well. I'm sort of weirded out at how smoothly this is going. If this were cape fiction, I'd have bumped into a Ward without realizing it, been jumped by a supervillain and/or caught on the way out by Velocity, and been called on a cell phone by my dad at the worst possible moment. Not that I have a cell phone...

... the point is, this is going weirdly smoothly-

crying into his hands

-and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. 'Trip was completely pointless and useless' is bad, but not that bad.

I circle the edge of the rooftop briefly, keeping an eye out for heroes -or villains, for that matter- but spot nothing and make my way home by rooftop, a little less careful to avoid the more heavily trafficked spots. I really want to desensitize myself to the disorientation of becoming Taylor mid-air.

------------------------------​

There's a van for Van Dyke Plumbing a block away from my house, cheerful art advertising their, "15 years of quality service".

This catches my eye, because it wasn't all that long ago Dad was talking about poor mister Van Dyke selling what was left of his business and planning to move to Florida and start over. Not letting someone else take over the plumbing business selling. Taking apart and selling the components selling. The van shouldn't be out there. It should've been repainted by now.

I'm watching this from a nearby rooftop, bothered. I really should just ignore it and head back home, but... I'm not sure why I'm caught on this. Yeah, Mr. Van Dyke left... barely a week ago, if I recall correctly?

Why is this bugging me? They're in a yard, set up for-

Their doors are closed. They're in a yard, presumably to do work -that's not Mr. Van Dyke's yard, he lives in an entirely different neighborhood, and he had an actual office anyway- but their doors are closed. All of them. The house's doors are closed. The lights are off.

I'm not quite sure what conclusion I should be drawing, but I have a sudden conviction that this is the other shoe I was expecting to drop at Arcadia.

 

[Ghoul King]

2.2

The obvious conclusion to draw is that this... whatever it is... is somehow connected to me. It could be the case that this... stakeout? This stakeout could actually be about someone else in the area, but even if that is the case, that doesn't necessarily mean I should ignore it. Whatever it is, it's suspicious.

I very carefully angle to get a better view on the van, more specifically the front, suddenly feeling dumb for not bringing my backpack. If I had, I could find a reasonably private place in walking distance, change out of my costume, and just walk past as Taylor. Instead I'm having to skulk around as the monster in a residential neighborhood, trying to balance several different kinds of stealth. At least no schools have let out yet. There's not actually that many people here right now, just a few housewives, most of whom aren't interested in a view of the street. I'm pretty sure that will change soon, though. It can't be that far off from three o'clock by now.

There's a single guy in the front seat, looking bored. He's dressed right for a plumber, as far as I can tell, but he still doesn't feel right. Watching him scan around every few seconds, otherwise calm and collected, I'm left with the impression of someone who is used to sitting still, one eye out for trouble, not a plumber waiting to start a job or something. I'm put in mind of Miss Militia, and I can't say why exactly. I also can't see into the back part of the truck. In fact -I scramble to the other side of the street- yes, the windows in the back are dark like one-way glass.

That clinches it.

I consider simply rushing the vehicle and attacking it. I discard the idea. Appealing in its simplicity as it is, I'm not actually well equipped for a straight fight, nightmare Brute or no. If the man in front is a cape of some kind -if there's a cape in the back, or people with guns- that could go very wrong very fast. Besides, I haven't actually confirmed that I can tear open a car bare-limbed, regardless of how convinced I am that I can.

What I need is information. Why are they here?

I streak back to the other side of the street, the side the van is on, glad cars have little reason to pass through here. I get up close to a fence, look through a gap. He's looking my way, still seeming bored. A perception power? But no, he's not looking at me, just in my direction. I wait. After a few seconds he looks around again, and I jump the fence and rush to the next one, hide behind it, look through a gap in the fence.

Now he looks like something startled him, and he's looking my direction again. After a moment he puts a hand to his right ear and says something. Some kind of radio? A pause, hand still to his ear, then he says something brief -one or two syllables, going by the way his mouth moves- and his hand drops back to his side.

I wait, but the minute stretches on without his gaze moving away from me. When I start moving to make my way to this house's backyard, he twitches, and now I know he's watching me, his eyes tracking my motion until I stop, his eyes stopping the moment I do. Odd. I'm not Taylor. I already know glass doesn't block the effect, it's not because there's a window between us. If he can see me, why am I the monster?

I push the thought aside. Later. Right now I need to either do something about these people -the guy is not alone if he's talking via radio- or I need reason to believe they're not a problem. At this point I'm almost certain they are a problem, even if I'm not sure what problem they actually are, but it would be a relief if I was wrong and they're actually a... a PRT van staking out some gang thing in the area or something.

Abruptly, I'm Taylor, and after a spasm I whip around, expecting to spot a mom or a little old lady or maybe a kid back from school.

I see nothing.

Meanwhile, behind me, the van bam!s open and people pour out, PRT troopers going by the hands in the air! and do not use any parahuman abilities! and then suddenly I'm being buried in containment foam.

What.

-------------------------
​

The entire drive to the PRT HQ -in the "plumbing truck", naturally- there's three troopers watching, two of them with containment foam dispensers pointed directly at my face. I want to say the third one is holding a shock baton, but honestly I don't know. I've not read up on the PRT. I basically just know what everyone knows.

I never thought the PRT would ambush me.

They're silent. I'm silent. I couldn't say why they're being quiet. I don't even know what to say. I feel vaguely indignant, but mostly I'm confused. What is going on? Was I just in the wrong place at the wrong time?

I don't get anything resembling answers until I'm unloaded at the PRT HQ and dumped in a cramped room with Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and four more PRT Troopers. Still covered in containment foam of course. (They actually loaded me onto a pallet and carried that)

Miss Militia is the first to speak. I get the distinct impression she's playing 'bad cop'. I have a sinking feeling about how this is going to go down.

"Parahuman identity, powers, reason for being in the area." I blink, not that they can see that. "Um. I... don't actually have a name picked?"

So sue me. I've been a parahuman for less than two weeks.

Armsmaster cuts in, and the bad feeling gets worse, because he's also 'bad cop', sounding impatient and angry. "How did you pick out the van?" I haven't even answered Miss Militia's other two questions.

Suddenly there's an oppressive silence, and I realize I blurted that out. Fuck. Wait, did I blurt that out too? No reaction. Whew. I dec- "This will all go easier on you if you cooperate fully and honestly." Miss Militia again, and I find myself thinking shouldn't you have opened with 'good cop'? and blurt again, "I was just going home and the van bothered me because I know Mr. Van Dyke sold everything and left!"

This time nobody yells at me, and I take a moment to focus. I know they're trying to keep me off-balance, though I don't get why. I haven't done anything!

... I mean, aside from killing Nilbog.

But they don't know I'm the monster, and he has a kill order on him anyway so it's not illegal -actually, should I have tried to claim the bounty on him? Dammit, with that kind of money I could... hire a private tutor or get transferred to Arcadia or something. Fuck. I should've tried to- well. If this is representative of the kind of reception I would've gotten, maybe it's for the best I didn't stick around and try to claim the bounty. Plus, how would Taylor Hebert spend the monster's money withou-

Claim the initiative. Stop getting distracted.

I take a deep breath, notice everyone in the room tensing (right, unknown parahuman, unknown abilities), and breathe out slowly, calmingly. Nobody else relaxes. Ugh. I try to inject calm and measured into my voice, rather than panicking teenage girl. "I'm faster, stronger, and tougher when people can't see me." I pause for a second, taking in the mood for moment. I'm reasonably happy with how calm I sound. Better than how I feel, anyway. "If people are looking at me I'm noth- er." Right, the people-sensing. "Um, I can tell when people are nearby at all times, too. But aside from that I'm just an ordinary girl if you can see me." I frown a little under my helmet, noticing Armsmaster relax fractionally, followed by Miss Militia spontaneously switching from a shotgun to a pair of pistols she promptly holsters without even looking at her hands. Huh. I'm not sure I've ever seen her change weapons on film. I didn't know it turned into some kind of green... stuff... in between.

After a second Armsmaster's lips move just a little bit, saying nothing I can hear, and I feel the last of the tension in the room drain away.

What was all that? Are they just... taking me at my word? I...

... well. I want to be offended at their naiveté, but... I... can't actually recall the last time someone believed me, no need for proof, no having to shoot down idiocy.

Feels good, in a depressing, "how long have I been denied basic civility?" sort of way.

Miss Militia comments, "Interesting powers."

I nod vaguely, not sure how to respond to that. Armsmaster speaks up again, still less-than-warm, but it's different. Reminds me of listening to Dad talking over the phone to people at work. Business-like. "Do you have a preferred temporary designation?"

I blank for a moment. Um. "... Monster?" It comes out like a question, and I cringe at that. This feels less threatening, less like I need to put up a strong front, but I still don't want to be the Nervous Nellie cape.

Armsmaster taps away on one of his bracers like it's a keyboard for a second, not responding verbally, and I fidget a little, notice myself fidgeting, clamp down on it. After another moment he speaks up again, still blandly... professional, I guess. "Not currently in use, under request, or overly similar to an existing name. Acceptable."

... okay I'm impressed. His suit has wireless internet in there? His bracer(s?) doubles as a touchpad or something? I used to be a fan, I never heard of this.

I jolt a little when Miss Militia speaks up again. Ugh. I need to stop with that. "Why were you after the van?" Warmer than Armsmaster, still not warm. I retract some of my previous concerns that they're secretly naïve morons.

"Honestly, I thought it was a... um. Like the Empire Eighty Eight were after me, or maybe someone else in the area." An eyebrow goes up on Miss Militia. I don't see a reaction from Armsmaster, but then all I can see is his mouth, beard included.

Miss Militia asks "You have a reason to think the Empire would pursue you?" I fidget again, suddenly aware of how... paranoid-sounding my thoughts could be seen as.

I admit, "Not specifically no. I just... I knew something wasn't right, and I-" I stop, trying to think of how to say this without admitting I live in that specific area. Might be a bit late for that, after admitting that I was 'going home' earlier, but I'm not comfortable outright saying it. I start over, sort of. "Well, I'm the only thing in the area I know that's of interest. Basically. I guess a Ward could live there, or something? So I... well."

Miss Militia is actually looking a little sympathetic now, but it's Armsmaster who cuts in with "You thought a gang knew where you lived and were planning on killing you in your sleep." I'm really glad my helmet hides the blush.

"Not anything that concrete? I just knew it was suspicious. I was actually, um, trying to get closer so I could maybe figure out what was going on when-" What did happen there? "-um, when... whatever happened that left me as T-this. Um. Weak." Fuck, almost used my name in my cape identity. Fuck. I need to change how I think of the difference between the monster and Ta-the girl. I can't slip up like that. "And then the PRT Troopers got me." I finish a bit lamely.

Miss Militia fiddles idly with one of her pistols, looking distracted. Armsmaster settles into a chair, claps his hands together in front of himself, leans forward on the table, looks almost friendly... except he's not smiling. "So. Basic self-defense, then?" I hesitate for a moment, wondering if this has suddenly turned into legalese and I-want-my-lawyer and actually am I supposed to have a lawyer now? Can they just grab me, stuff me into a cell, and interrogate me while I'm still encased in a glob of containment foam?

No, not now, later. "I- yeah, I guess? If that applies here?"

Armsmaster waves a trooper over with one hand, tells me rather brusquely, "Hold still." and then makes a couple of odd motions with the hand he waved them over with. The trooper sprays something at the containment foam on me, and it starts... melting and hissing, draining away and I suddenly notice there's a drain in the floor. Huh.

I hesitantly reach one hand over to pop the other hand's wrist -it was in an awkward position and doesn't feel right- but nobody reacts like I'm a wild animal they need to be ready to shoot. I pop the wrist a bit more confidently, and am relieved when nobody so much as flinches at the little crack. Ahhh. Better.

Miss Militia speaks up now -I'm kind of annoyed they're still doing this routine, even if they're no longer pressuring me with it- asking me, "It sounds like you are currently a rogue. Have you considered joining the Protectorate?" Wait, the Protecto- I'm too young for that!

... aren't I?

I respond carefully, feeling like it's important I pick the right words. "I had been under the impression that was not an option open to me." I pause for a moment, trying to think of how to frame this. How about... "My powers don't lend themselves to the classic Protectorate look, and I'm not sure how useful I'd be on patrols anyway." Really, I thought it would be the Wards and no, I don't need superpowered teenage drama in addition to regular high school drama -imagine what Sophia would do to torment me if she had Vista's powers!- and I just... I need to make the world better, and as a Ward I wouldn't get to do that, I'd be babied until I was eighteen, and that's more than two years of the world getting worse, and... and if I'm entirely honest, much as I respect Armsmaster and Miss Militia and Legend and so on, there are times I feel like the Protectorate isn't so much making the world a better place as it is slowing down the rate at which it gets worse. I think Legend coming out as gay was the last time a member of the Protectorate did anything to improve the state of the world?

Though... having said it, I'm realizing I actually mean it. What would I do on a patrol? If I somehow made it big, what kind of action figure could you even get out of 'girl who turns into a monster'?

... Hasbro toys aside, I mean.

Armsmaster interrupts my thought process. "You don't need to rush to decide. If you decide tomorrow you do want be a part of keeping the peace, you can join then. Remaining a rogue isn't a lifetime commitment." Well. I don't see my stated reasons changing. Even if I wouldn't be dealing with teenage drama, I'm still not really Protectorate material. That's always going to be true. Probably. I haven't noticed anything like Crawler's mutations...

I suddenly realize that, reassuring words aside, they're actually waiting for a response. I suppress a weird urge to apologize. "Uh, thanks for the offer? Thanks, but no thanks? Um, not that I'm intending to be a villain or anything, I just don't think becoming a Protectorate hero would work, like, at all."

Armsmaster makes a so-so motion with one hand and says, "Rogue it is, then. For now, at least."

Then his mouth sets into a grim line.

"Now for the paperwork."

----------------------------​

The paperwork takes two hours to get through it all, and trying to parse some of the legalese is more stressful than the interrogation was. It's astounding how hard it can be to answer a yes/no question if it's preceded by enough gibberish like, "the party of the first part concedes to the party of the second part that the party of the first part..." I was vaguely surprised, at the end, to realize they never made me unmask. Everything I had to sign was signed as Monster, no attempt to extract my name, date of birth, location of birth, social security number, or anything else that could be used to identify me as Taylor Hebert. I didn't even have to select Caucasian on a form.

In the end I'm driven out to a location of my choosing ("Within reason," which apparently meant basically anywhere within thirty minute's drive of the PRT HQ) in a van (I'm in the back, where the public can't see me in costume) manned by one plainclothes PRT officer, and dropped off by myself, still in costume.

It occurs to me, belatedly, that I would've liked an... I dunno, autograph or something, from Miss Militia and Armsmaster. Or maybe Taylor Hebert would've and Monster is too professional for that?

I'm not sure I like the handle, but I was assured -repeatedly- that it's only for internal PRT paperwork reasons and that my 'real' name will be used when I announce it if I decide I want a different cape name.

I approach my house cautiously, concerned that it's late enough that Dad is back home, half-hoping that even if it's past the time he would normally be back that today is a late day. Thankfully, there's no car in the driveway -and a quick look around shows nothing like the suspicious PRT van from before- so... apparently he's not home yet.

Whew.

Sneaking back in through my window goes smoothly. I remain the monster all the way through going into our back yard and climbing through the window, so no one saw me. Assuming no cameras anyway, but there shouldn't be anything like that in the area and I can't exactly walk in the front door in costume. After I get my costume off and change into a more comfortable set of clothes, I lurk in my closet.

What I really want to do is crash asleep on my bed, or at least lay down half-asleep and try to work through my thoughts in a vaguely relaxed way. After the adrenaline rush of the last few hours, I just want to relax... intellectually. Physically, the instant I became the monster again I was rested and recovered, with enough nervous energy that I probably couldn't sleep even if I went through the effort of arranging for that to work. A weird downside to being refreshed and recovered anytime I switch: downtime just isn't a thing with me, even if I'd like it. The closest I can come to real relaxation since I first became the monster is holing up in an enclosed dark space, hence curling up in the closet.

I'm not quite sure how to feel about the fact that recreating the locker incident -admittedly minus the disgusting parts- is soothing. Aren't I supposed to be afraid to experience anything like the original trauma after a terrible event like that?

Getting sidetracked.

This whole thing was weird. Suspicious van, suddenly stop being the monster for... no clear reason... getting dragged in and having emotional whiplash from going so fast from, "Talk. Or else," to, "Oh, understandable."

They never did actually tell me why the PRT van was staked out in this neighborhood. I'm a little spooked. I get operational security, but I also really doubt Lung is one of my neighbors when he's not being a supervillain, or whoever. Maybe they didn't inform me because you just don't share information on an ongoing operation. Fair enough.

Maybe they didn't mention it because I'm the target.

If so... why? They shouldn't know I killed Nilbog, and they didn't even ask. They didn't do that whole, "where were you at Y time the night of Z?" to see if I had an alibi, either. They don't seem to suspect me of killing Nilbog, and if it's not that, then... I haven't done anything else. It couldn't even be in reaction to me visiting Arcadia, the van was already there when I got back, they couldn't have tailed me to set up the van in the right place! If it's not any of that, what is it?

I just can't imagine a reason why they'd be after me, and I find it extraordinarily unlikely that they were after someone else and it was an unfortunate coincidence. Which leaves me with... what?

I'm not even completely convinced it's any kind of clue that I didn't see a replacement van in the area on the way back. If they still want to do a stakeout on me for some reason, they'd be more careful, try to make sure I wouldn't notice anything. For that matter, even if they want to do a stakeout on someone else, they might make an effort to hide it from me better, just to avoid a repeat.

I have no explanation for what just happened. Arguably I have less than nothing.

Ugh.

It idly crosses my mind that precognition could explain some of the mystery here, but... I don't think there's any precogs in Brockton Bay, let alone on the Protectorate's payroll.

Besides, that way lies madness. When you laugh at regular causality anything is possible. It's just not useful to posit that precognition might be involved unless you have a specific individual in mind and a specific plan of action. Ideally, one you're pretty sure their precognition won't tip them off to.

I don't actually have a headache from thinking about this. I have more a conviction that I should have a headache from working myself into knots over this than I do an actual headache or anything resembling one. At the same time, I'm still tired, in some sense, of looping through this nonsense.

I unfold myself from the closet, head downstairs, and boot up the computer again. I browse Parahumans Online until Dad gets home. I don't have a specific plan in mind, though I do keep something of an eye out for anything that looks like it might have to do with Heartbreaker.

 

[Ghoul King]

2.x

Barret Johnson

Being bait sucked.

Not that he'd been told he was bait. What he'd actually been told was that it was his job to handle all aspects of maneuvering the vehicle wherever it might need to go and keeping everyone else informed of anything Miss Militia failed to catch through her scope and that didn't show up on the cameras Armsmaster was very carefully hiding nearby -currently in a civilian disguise with sunglasses (And a fake tan) and loose-yet-comfortable clothing that easily hid the majority of his armor. (No helmet, of course) He was pretending to be the man of the house in a building that was conveniently owned by a PRT employee already. (Johnson didn't know the woman's name. Mary? Milly? Something like that. The rumor mill was that she was perfectly glad to risk her house being trashed in hopes that the it would be trashed so she'd get paid for the damage. She was a secretary? Or maybe she manned the front desk?... Johnson could never remember anybody who wasn't in his squad, a freak, or Director Piggot)

Being bait in a rushed operation sucked worse.

The operation had already been planned to happen, of course, but it was supposed to go down a week later, give or take a few days. (Well. The cameras and directional microphones would've been getting set up even if it weren't being rushed, but it wasn't supposed to be Armsmaster doing it. His time was too valuable to waste on trivialities. Johnson resentfully assumed it would've been his job. Then he found himself wondering what was in the fridge and if he was missing out and decided he resented Armsmaster for getting the job after all) Then one of the mini-freaks had phoned in about suspicious activity at Arcadia and their target had been spotted on camera stalking the halls when they followed up and the bigwigs (ie Piggot) had thrown a shitfit and the whole thing was being rushed and goddammit being bait sucked.

Johnson hated waiting in general, really, but he especially hated waiting as bait for a freak. All he'd been told about the target was that it was, "some kind of Case 53," (So a superfreak) and he shouldn't expect the flashbangs to be effective. Focus on containment foam (Not that Johnson had a tank on him, what with pretending to be a fucking plumber) and try to buy time for Miss Militia to line up her shot. Limit their mobility. Block them with your body if that's all you've got. Maneuver them into a dead-end if you can. Other 'helpful' advice like that.

Johnson knew when the bosses were very carefully not saying, "You're fucked, try not to die."

Bored, scanning the area like a dutiful little soldier (And trying to see if he could identity which skyscraper in the distance Miss Militia was set up on top of with an anti-tank rifle, because that wasn't alarming at all), Johnson saw nothing. He was fine with seeing nothing. Seeing nothing meant the freak wasn't here. Probably. As safe as you could get, really, world being what it was. Not being in clearly imminent danger was the closest thing to safe since the freaks started showing their asshole faces.

's why Johnson had joined the PRT after the Army told him they didn't want him anymore, take a hike. Everybody knew it was the freaks' faults the world sucked so much. Anybody who said different was lying. Really disappointing to learn that he'd be working alongside freaks-

-did something just move?

He squinted hard.

... nothing?

A cat zipped across the street.

Oh. Just a cat. Where was I, again?

Oh, yes. Working alongside freaks. Johnson had been so disappointed to learn that fighting freaks meant fighting with freaks. (Johnson kept a pistol at home, unregistered because it wasn't the government's goddamn business. If he ever became a freak, he was shooting himself in the goddamn head. Fuck that shit) The only good news was he rarely had to talk to or listen to them. Supposedly he outranked them or something, though any idiot knew Armsmaster wasn't going to actually listen if a no-name grunt started talking like they was in charge of the freak, so he didn't know why that was in the rulebooks. Didn't really matter. Piggot did most of the talking to the freaks. Her and whatever sap was manning Console, which Johnson went to great pains to not be assigned to. Ever.

Johnson's head jerked to the side again. He'd definitely seen something, and it wasn't a fucking cat.

A trick he'd learned, useful when he had been in the Service, was to sort of... cross his eyes. Unfocus. He noticed things he didn't notice normally, when he did it. He did that now, and one of the fences caught his eye. A bit of motion, and he realized it wasn't the fence. It was some thing, something huge and blue and tentacle-y and oh jesus fuck this was the freak they were after, wasn't it? God, please let it not be, jesus fuck. Case 53s, they were supposed to be like that metal kid, or the grotesquely ugly kid on the mercenary team. Freaky, but human.

The CGI tinker reconstruction of what this fucking thing looked like had not prepared him for the horrible reality.

Somewhat distantly, he observed himself activating his ear bud and radioing it in, giving directions relative to the truck for double-M to use. Most of his focus was on the freak. Goddamn. It was ugly as sin and just -how had it not drowned itself in horror? Even freaks had shame. Wouldn't wear those stupid costumes if they didn't want to hide their shame from the world.

He kept staring at the horrible freak, sweating a little, waiting for double-M to line up the shot, or for Armsmaster to break out one of his stupid axes and kill the thing, or for Piggot to get on the line and tell them it was a false alarm and they should all go home (Okay, that was pure fantasy. She'd just assign them some other duty, but frankly Console was looking pretty appealing right about now), or hell, for Scion to show up and vaporize the freak. He did that sometimes. Just... flew up, grabbed a freak, and poof! They were dust. Great stuff.

Then the freak disappeared and double-M said, "I have an unknown parahuman in sight. Not the target, I repeat, unknown parahuman, not the target."

What?

Then more alarmingly: "Thinker! They know!" and Piggot got on the line to bark, "Don't let them get away!" and Johnson obligingly hit the button to remotely unlock and open the rear doors and out poured a crew of freak-beaters and then there was a lot of shouting and spraying of containment foam and Johnson was just kind of glad his job was bait and he didn't have to go out and risk facing the horror show freak.

This is where I turn around and it's right behind me, isn't it?

Johnson obligingly turned to look around.

He saw nothing but Armsmaster calmly walking into a civilian car and driving away. Presumably off to get into his freak-clothes at HQ.

Asshole.

--------------------------​

Once the (Different??) freak was loaded into the truck, it was of course Johnson's job to drive them to HQ while the freakbeaters handled the job of watching it for any funny moves.

It was boring. After all that fuss and the anti-tank rifle ready to snipe and just... it was boring.

Johnson had been looking forward to seeing their head pop like a water balloon. Wasn't often the PRT broke out appropriate force. If he was the snooty sort, he'd have planned on breaking out the champagne tonight. As was, he'd been planning on opening an extra beer. (So seven cans, rather than six) But no, they'd foamed the freak. Like usual. God. When were they going to put a bullet through?... anybody's head, really. Make all the difference, show them they aren't above the law, aren't above real people.

Johnson stewed the whole drive, bored and annoyed. The freak in the back didn't do anything, just sat there, still like a statue... it didn't help. He didn't like it. Didn't read like defeat.

It read like plotting.

----------------------​

Johnson had been looking forward to the interrogation. Everybody knew what really went on when the PRT interrogated a freak. Beatings, at the least. But no, even though he'd been a part of the operation, he was the only one relieved from duty -but he couldn't go home yet, because of course he couldn't go home yet. There was a debriefing to attend. But not yet, because everybody else in the operation was attending the interrogation.

So fucking unfair.

Instead Johnson poured himself coffee. Last of the coffee in the break room. Considered refilling it. Decided it was too much effort. Somebody else could handle it.

Johnson sipped his coffee, moodily considering how everything was terrible and it was everyone else's faults, the stupid fuck-ups. Moody and irritable... he decided he could use a beer. Just one to reward himself for putting up with such a crappy day, nobody would notice. He was supposed to be heading home after the debriefing anyway, right? It's not like it was actually against regulations to keep beer in the base. Against regulations to drink on duty, yes, but he was relieved from duty. So it was fine. Obviously. Made perfect sense.

He still glanced around before retrieving a can from his hidden stash. Didn't want an unfortunate misunderstanding if someone stumbled upon him at the wrong moment, yeah?

Aaaaah.

Better.

------------------------​

Johnson was just starting to move from mellowed-out drunk to moody drunk when the debriefing was fucking finally started.

Johnson paused briefly after he walked into the meeting room. Piggot was here. That was ominous by itself. Worse, she had that look. The one where she was pretending like she wasn't in a towering fury.

On the plus side, Arms and double-M were also there. Fr- parahumans always got all the attention. Probably Piggot would yell at them and completely ignore the squad. As she should. Probably their fault anyway. Double-M was supposed to shoot the target. (Johnson ignored the niggling part of his brain reminding him that she was only supposed to do that if the target proved hostile. Of course it was hostile! Nothing so awful could possibly be friendly, and that was a fact) So definitely her fault. Definitely.

Piggot skipped the formalities. That was even more ominous. "Did anything in this operation go right?" Yeah, this was the You Stupid Fuckups voice. Johnson slouched a little. Just a little, else she'd notice him slouching and give him hell. Thankfully her eyes didn't move away from the parahumans at all. Good.

Armsmaster -in full costume now- seemed oblivious to Piggot's tone. "We made non-hostile contact with a new parahuman and, in spite of everything, seem to have made a positive first impression." Double-M nodded a little, though she seemed more aware that the question had been rhetorical. Probably. Could never tell with... parahumans.

Piggot was clearly not amused. After a pause in which she seemed to be trying to kill Armsmaster with her mind, she shifted gears. "From the top."

Things moved fast after that, and Johnson had a hard time following it. It wasn't because he was drunk, because obviously he wasn't. One can of beer did not equal drunk. He was tired. That's all. Mostly Piggot asked the parahumans questions and they answered, starting the story from the call from the Ward. (Vista, apparently. Johnson hadn't known that before)

Then Armsmaster was saying something about, "Agent Johnson called in that he saw the target," and suddenly Piggot's attention was on him rather than the parahumans. Johnson sat up slightly straighter, as best as he could without looking like he was and did his best, "Yes ma'am, no ma'am, I understand ma'am."

He slurred, slightly, but he was pretty sure Piggot didn't notice.

Until she started asking if anyone else had actually seen the target.

... they hadn't, not even the cameras ("I was focused on setting up angles on the target house," says Armsmaster) and now everyone's eyes were on Johnson.

"Agent Johnson, have you been drinking on the job?" came out of the icy pits of hell. (ie Piggot's mouth)

"No ma'am," was his swift, completely honest reply.

Armsmaster frowned and made a motion with his hand, and Piggot's expression went sub-arctic. Johnson tried not to frown, himself. He hadn't been drinking before the operation. Or during it. (Just after it, and that didn't count, right?) How dare they act like he was lying? He was just tired. That's why he was slurring. He was only slurring a little anyway.

Piggot made a slow visual sweep of the room and spoke even more slowly, carefully, controlled. "So no one reliable actually saw the target."

Johnson was offended by the implication that he was unreliable. All his friends called him Reliable Barret! (Well, they would, if he had any friends that weren't his three dogs) Nonetheless, he kept quiet. Piggot wasn't paying attention to him. Maybe she'd go back to blaming the freaks again. Their fault. Definitely their fault.

He ignored how double-M's knife turned into a sub-machine gun. Random, total coincidence.

"Armsmaster." Yes! Piggot was ignoring him again! Safe! (Ignore that she's staring right at you, dude. Coincidence. She's not talking to you, so she's not paying attention to you. Duh)

"Yes, Director?" was Armsmaster's schoolboy-perfect reply. Asshole had probably been a teacher's pet, back in the day.

"Which do you think is more likely. That the target is an astonishingly rapid Changer... or that Johnson made a mistake?" Hey!

"Could be both, ma'am." Piggot nodded slightly at that, seeming unbothered by the smartassery. Then Armsmaster continued with, "However, Monster was as completely honest with us as could be expected under the circumstances and, in particular, informed us that her power doesn't activate when someone can see her." Here he paused, and then continued, his words loaded with import. "Such as if Agent Johnson were to have been looking at her." A shorter pause, and Johnson started sweating. Piggot was still staring at him. "If her power were a Changer or Breaker state that was rendered inactive by being seen, I would expect Agent Johnson to have not seen this state at all," was his concluding statement.

Piggot said, "I see." Johnson didn't like how she said it, and he liked even less how Piggot was still staring at him break eye contact or fucking blink come on!

Then Piggot did turn her attention away from him, and the debriefing continued without further attention paid to Johnson.

Johnson did his best to sigh quietly in relief. For a minute there, he'd thought that he was going to be punished. Silly. He'd done nothing wrong, after all.

The ensuing discussion involved Piggot ordering Armsmaster to apologize to the new freak the next time he encountered her ("Because I know you certainly didn't do it while she was here," to which Armsmaster made an acknowledging nod), a tentative conclusion that maybe Monster was the target but more likely she lived in the same area as the target and this was one of those unfortunate coincidences that happen sometimes, and it was decided that monitoring would continue, but it would be restricted to cameras and directional microphones. If Monster was colluding with the target, she would've tipped the target off and having a truck in the area would be too risky. By a similar token, while double-M was to remain especially ready until the target was taken in or taken out, they weren't going to be placing her in a sniper's nest again. Especially since they weren't 100% sure the target actually lived in the area. It was possible the target had stolen into someone's house and used their computer. Unlikely, but possible. (Armsmaster glanced at Johnson as he said this, and Johnson congratulated himself for successfully resisting the urge to flip the bird)

It slowly dawned on Johnson that they really did think he hadn't seen the target. He got mad, and then he got worried. Maybe he hadn't seen it. All he'd seen was glimpses of something between the fence slats, and there were freaks that could alter your senses and it had abruptly disappeared when everyone else had gone out, like... like something out of a supernatural horror movie or something, one of those things where the lead can see the monsters and everybody else thinks they're crazy and sometimes they are and fuck that Johnson wasn't crazy.

... but maybe, just maybe. Maaaaybe he drank a little too much? Just a little. Drinking could lead to hallucinations, couldn't it? And he did have a stressful job, didn't he?

Johnson decided to stop thinking about that. Existential crises (Not that he actually knew the phrase) were not anything he wanted to give himself nightmares with.

The debriefing ending, and Johnson walked away feeling like he'd gotten away with something.

Then his captain took him aside and said, "Johnson, we need to have a talk about your... habits," and Johnson realized with a sinking feeling that he hadn't gotten away at all.

Johnson blamed the freak whose fault this obviously all was.

The fucker.

 

[Ghoul King]

2.3

After the thing with the PRT/Protectorate, to my surprise I don't see any further sign of monitoring or anything else concerning.

I spend the first night half-expecting a PRT squad to come crashing in through a window, and can't bring myself to actually leave the house. I end up spending pretty much the whole night searching the internet for a shortcut to finding Heartbreaker. I'm depressed, but not surprised, to find nothing so convenient.

I do some thinking about how convenient certain capes' powers would be at shortening this. The problem is that I'd either switch from 'find Heartbreaker' to 'find the villain Proboscis' and also then tack on 'convince the villain Proboscis to help me find Heartbreaker' as an additional difficulty, or they're a Protectorate cape -or a Ward, in a couple of cases- in a far-off city which... well, contacting them probably wouldn't be that hard, but convincing them to help me... I just find myself thinking if it were really that easy, that hero would've already done it. Maybe their powers are blocked by Heartbreaker's power, or maybe the Protectorate just doesn't work that way, or something. I don't know. I kind of don't care. It's a dead end, is the point. I'm certainly not in a position to hire one of the rogues selling tracking services, not at the rates they charge.

So I give up and for the next six nights I manually comb Toronto. It's slow, tedious, it has me half-tempted to give up and chase down some other horrible monster... but most of the others in the world are more mobile, way harder to kill, both, or just too far away for me to realistically reach. Some of them I'm not even sure it's appropriate to kill them. Moord Nag sounds really really horrible, but Africa as a whole is so bad I have to wonder how much of that is 'Moord Nag is a monster' and how much is 'Africa is so bad if you're not a monster you're dead'.

I resign myself to combing the city for the next few months and keeping an eye on PHO for rumors during the day where possible. Not really what I want to do, not really what I itch to do, but whatever. I actually try for a grid search pattern initially, but give it up almost immediately because I can't keep street names straight, can't correctly anticipate how long any given chunk of the city will take to search, and on the second night it crossed my mind I could all too easily search an area, tell myself done, and then Heartbreaker moves into that area while I waste time searching the rest of the city. After I have that thought I just wander at random, with a vague attempt made to not retrace my footsteps too consistently.

​

I go back to school, and things are quiet the first day, with nothing more than three shoves, two incidents of talking about me 'behind my back', and once Emma loudly implying I was too stupid to answer a question on the blackboard. I knew it wouldn't last, but it let me get through the day. The rest of the week is variations on the usual, spiked by enough surprises I can never quite block it all out, also as usual, but I'm at least relieved the quiet period doesn't continue: they're not building up to something worse. In a way, the dull tedium of searching Toronto at night is a relief. In another way it's just one more layer of torment, but self-inflicted.

On the seventh night I get lucky.

---------------------------​

I'm surprised. I'd vaguely assumed Heartbreaker was an achingly beautiful prettyboy, the kind of guy other girls swoon over while I'm thinking I thought you girls were into men? With a name like Heartbreaker and the way he uses his powers... well. It seemed the obvious inference.

He's... kind of ugly, actually. His arms are hairy enough to make a bear envious, his face has this squashed quality that has me legitimately wondering if whoever delivered him as a baby put too much pressure on his head, and he has an odd scar running down the right side of his face. It's not an attractive/cool scar, either, just an ugly line that creates the illusion of having an overly large, unsettlingly shaped cheek, as if his cheek has or is a cancerous growth. He's also obviously out of shape. He's not fat exactly, but he has the kind of flabbiness you see on people who don't exercise enough, like their skin is just a little too large for their body.

If you look past all that, yeah, he's got the foundations of a nice look, with a lantern jaw, pretty eyes, the most amazing hair I've ever seen outside of a movie, and the suggestion he used to be very fit... but in a way it just exaggerates the ugly parts, making them seem hideous in contrast. On a more average man, they wouldn't stand out so sharply. On him, it's like finding diarrhea staining your five-star hotel room's silken bed.

The ugliness is what makes me certain it's him. He's got two attractive, shallow-seeming young women with him, one hanging on him like he's the most important thing in the world (While she's got perfect makeup, a fashionista dress that can't possibly be keeping her warm enough for Canadian winter, and hair only marginally less amazing than his) while the other maintains a running chatter walking just behind him. Even though he looks like the kind of guy that girls who dress like that usually openly laugh at, he swaggers like this is just the way the world works, nothing unusual about it... but he doesn't carry himself like he's moneyed. Frankly, his clothing is... not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it's hillbilly chic, not rich man casual. He could be a rich hillbilly I guess, but the group isn't acting like he's rich. For one thing, they're not even glancing at the storefronts they pass by.

Maybe I'd have passed right over him if I wasn't specifically looking for Heartbreaker. I'm not sure. Here and now, though, the whole thing rings false, easier to explain with parahuman abilities than by imagining the women aren't shallow or assuming the man brings something unseen to the table, like a winning personality. Plus... his gaze keeps lingering overly long on other women, quite blatantly, yet the woman draping herself over him isn't reacting at all. I think the girl behind him rolls her eyes sometimes, but I'm not completely sure. I don't have a good angle.

I want to get close enough to listen to them, to get confirmation that yes, this is Heartbreaker, and I'm not sure how. I'm lucky in the first place that we're in a part of the city where the buildings are short enough I can make out individual faces while stalking around on the roofs, but I'm still too far away to hear people as more than the noise of crowds, and there's no way I'm going down in costume. I'm also not going to stash my costume and go on foot. The cold is horrible when I revert to Taylor mid-jump, and that's with the costume over winter clothing. (I honestly can't believe drape-girl isn't freezing to death) Besides, I'd risk losing them in the process... and risk being unable to find my costume (Such as it is) afterward, to boot. I've only been combing the city for a week, I'm not that familiar with it.

So I stalk them by rooftop, frustrated. After a couple of blocks I realize they're heading toward downtown, which is... well. Shit. I might lose them outright, unable to follow them by rooftop. Too much risk of killing myself if I try to clamber along the windowsills and other ledges, and there are parts of downtown where it's all smooth glass, like they're asking for Shatterbird to ruin their city.

I'm relieved when, at the next corner, the girl behind him gets his attention, they stop and talk for a minute, and then they turn right, toward suburbs and apartment complexes.

Over the course of three long, slow blocks the buildings get shorter, but they also move away from the road, transitioning into commercial zones with parking between the buildings and the sidewalk. Thankfully, traffic is less dense too, both car traffic and foot traffic, and I start catching bits and pieces of the trailing girl's chatter. Nothing useful, though I notice with a chill that she sounds very... teenager-y, with phrases like ohmygawd and like, yeah. I double-check for a cell phone, half-hoping she's his daughter being dragged along, chattering on a cell phone rather than one of his victims, not to mention half-hoping this isn't Heartbreaker at all. I don't see a cell phone.

Fucking Heartbreaker.

Her monologue falters for a moment, and then picks up louder than ever. She has a smile like the proverbial cat that ate the canary, suddenly. She was smiling earlier, yes, but it was different, in some way I can't fully quantify. Odd. I take a risk and leap soundlessly into one of the bigger trees a bit ahead of them. Thankfully, none of them seem to have noticed, possibly-Heartbreaker not looking like he's paying attention to anything, drape-girl paying attention to nothing but him, and chatterbox apparently too absorbed in her one-sided conversation.

"... two, maybe three relationships close enough that they might miss her, and they read long-distance to me, probably parents she talks with on the phone or maybe by email or Skype, I can't find reciprocal people in the city. I don't think she's close enough to any of them that they'll find a sudden change alarming if they even notice it at all, though there was the incident with the stalker a couple years back so you shouldn't assume anything, and her coworkers find her a combination of boring and creepy. She's got self-esteem issues like crazy, convinced she's not that attractive, but guys and some girls disagree fairly frequently, she probably dresses ugly and hasn't even noticed it, she doesn't feel to me like she's in poor health, anyway. She's not a spender, too conservative, probably has some money saved up from her job even though her job doesn't pay well."

If I had a human face, I'd be frowning. What am I hearing here? She's talking like this is someone she knows personally and extensively, like she knows this girl -this woman?- better than they know their self, but... if she did, she'd know whether they dress ugly or not, wouldn't she?

"So daddy, she joining the 'harem' or not?" She says harem with air quotes -as in she literally does the air quotes thing with her fingers- and with a light tone like someone joking. Well. Glad to hear she's not one of his girls.

He grunts, mumbles something I can't really make out, and then says a bit more loudly, "I've told you before, don't talk about it like that outside." They're passing under the tree. I'm pretty sure that's the only reason I heard him at all, he's a lot quieter than the chatterbox. Also: holy shit. His voice is like someone bottled... I dunno, something sexy. And then concentrated it. And then concentrated that. And this what he sounds like when he's annoyed, holy shit, I would buy tapes of him just nattering on about anything, why is this guy not doing porn or even on the radio or something, holy shit. I try to imagine what he'd sound like if he were trying to ooze sex appeal, and my brain blows a fuse.

Suddenly I have an idea of why drape-girl's head is laying on his shoulder, ear almost touching his jaw, awkward pose be damned.

Looking contrite in a very fake looking way -wait, shit, they've gotten to the other side, I can't see their faces anymore, they're going to be out of my hearing soon- the chatterbox apologetically says, "Sorry daddy, I forget sometimes it's supposed to be a secret, the way we live."

He grunts again, which thankfully doesn't provoke that absurd response from me, and then grumbles out something I can't make out but sounds like it might be, "Don't do it again." Gooodddd I am tempted to follow him just to hear him grumble moodily some more.

Oh wait, I'm following him anyway. Right. Okay. Awesome. I have a good excuse! Reason.

That.

I wait until there's a decent gap in the foot traffic (It's not a long wait -not many people are interested in braving the chill past sundown, I've noticed, not on foot anyway) and then return to the rooftops to resume stalking him. If I'm a little less careful about staying out of sight... well, he's probably Heartbreaker. I can't risk losing track of him.

-------------------------​

Eventually probably-Heartbreaker goes to a second-story apartment and knocks on the door. I'm watching from a roof on the other side of the street, and the street is a little too loud for me to hear the exact words, but a woman answers the door, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, and then shock and joy explodes across her face and she kisses him and urges him in, acting like he's an old friend she hasn't seen in ages. I want to say she's a little glassy eyed, reminding me somehow of drape-girl, but at this distance it's hard to say.

I also notice, wishing it would produce a cold knot in my stomach, that she essentially ignores drape-girl and chatterbox. The latter? Sure, makes sense. Chatterbox waves goodbye, talking about going home, and wanders off, humming to herself with obnoxious cheer. Her smile takes on a different character when the door closes, though, and I start to wonder if maybe she's not got such a good relationship to dear old dad. But drape-girl comes in with probably-Heartbreaker and draws zero commentary. For that matter, she doesn't react to the other woman being kissed.

Found you.

My first impulse is to leap to the street, break down the door, and charge in to kill him, but I rein it in. I'd rather sneak up on and assassinate the man rather than risking him noticing me and Mastering me. For that matter, being seen by him is a problem, even if he doesn't do anything to me. The monster can kill Heartbreaker. Taylor -the girl, don't make that mistake- the girl can't kill Heartbreaker. Hm. Maybe I should correct that. A knife? A gun? No, getting distracted. What I need to do is find a way into the apartment, ideally a window that's open. It doesn't even need to be wide open, I'm surprisingly thin as the monster: no part other than the head is much thicker around than the girl's arms.

Hey, I actually remembered to not think of it as Taylor.

Wait, getting distracted. Focus.

I jump across the street, wince at how I briefly turn into Ta- the girl at the apex of my flight, and land on the apartment's roof. Carefully, as the roof is sloped and tiled so if I turn back abruptly this could go bad places fast, crawling as low as I can in part to try to avoid being seen and turned into the girl again, I check the windows I'm pretty sure are attached to the apartment I saw Heartbreaker enter. They're both closed and locked. I make my way to the front door, find myself the girl again, try to turn the knob. Locked. Damn. I'd hoped they'd forgotten. Then I'm the monster again. I back up, check under the welcome mat covered in snow. No, there's not an extra key under it. I look around, spy some potted plants. Potted plants in Canadian winter? Who does that? They're obviously dead, anyway. None of them is hiding a key, not under the pot, not under the dirt.

I leap back onto the roof before anybody spots me again. I don't need people calling up the local PRT office -and there is one in Toronto- and derailing this assassination.

I have a sudden brainwave when I notice one of those raised-up little window things you see on roofs sometimes. I didn't pay attention to it earlier, but maybe...

The window opens easily, not locked or otherwise proofed from being opened from the outside. Yes. I slip into the attic, pink insulation material lining it.

I've always wondered why the stuff is pink.

Anyway.

I stalk around, trying to be quiet. This has always been easy as the monster, more so than I'd expect for how large it is, but I don't want to produce any sound. I'm inordinately grateful that my night vision is so good as the monster, as it makes it drastically easier to spot and avoid loose foil, weak-looking planks of wood, or anything else that might produce noise when stepped on. Even so, I tip-toe, never taking more than one limb off the ground at a time so I never have more weight than necessary on my limbs. After a fair amount of searching, I spot a door in the floor, one of those staircase things that's weighted so it goes up and down smoothly, I never understood the mechanics of it. I creep my way toward it, tamping down my excitement. I need to remain quiet. A single mistake could net me a fate worse than death... or at least fail me this operation and get Heartbreaker to put his guard up. This is my best chance.

I very cautiously push down on one end, slowly increasing the pressure until I finally feel it moving. It takes rather more pressure than I'd expected. Nonetheless, it does go. This would be where I'd breathe a sigh of relief as T- the girl. I'd worried this would be another dead end. After all, attic doors don't have to be designed to accessed from inside the attic. Certainly not designed so the monster can open them. After a long, slow, torturous minute, I have the staircase down to its fully unfolded position.

Now I can hear them.

Great.

That's... great.

I take the staircase down to the hallway, taking in everything. Out toward the front, where I can still hear them ugh, there's a living room or something. On one side of this hallway, there's a bathroom, toilet facing the door. The other side looks to be a bedroom, currently dark and unused. The end of the hallway is... I'm guessing a closet? I make my way toward it, slowly, quietly, and slowly open it, glad that it's already open a crack.

Yes, it's a closet.

I slowly push the closet door back into its just-barely-cracked-open position. I sneak, very slowly out toward the main area. I poke my head out, just barely, out around the corner toward the noises, as close to the ground as I can get.

I conclude that there is no way I'm sneaking up on the three of them. Also, ew. Ew ew ew. Really? Why would you- how- that can't possibly be enjoyable! For either of them!

... can it?

No, never mind. Focus. The important part: I'm not sneaking up on them as the monster. That's... unfortunate, though I'll admit the thought of killing Heartbreaker in the middle of... that... leaves me feeling kind of scummy, so I'm not entirely unhappy with having a reason to not do so.

I need a different plan. I don't want to wait until he leaves. For all I know he'll do something like call one of his women to pick him up. For whatever reason he's only got two women with him, neither of whom are armed or anything -I was pretty sure earlier just because drape-girl wasn't dressed to hide a knife or a gun or anything, but I'm completely certain now- and... probably neither of them is a parahuman? I think he doesn't grab parahumans?

Shit, I forget. I might be mixing him up with one of the other targets. Shit.

No, never mind, they haven't noticed me, I just need to... isolate him. Even if they have powers, that's all I need.

... I find myself glancing at the bathroom.

I think I have a plan.

--------------------​

Way the hell too much time later, I've gotten the attic door closed back up, quietly, except it thumped at the end and I'd have winced but none of them reacted so it's fine, and I crept into the bedroom, unlatched the window and slid it open a little just in case, and tilted the bedroom door mostly closed. Thankfully, it didn't creak. Now I'm positioned to peek through the gap as invisibly as possible.

And then I wait.

And wait.

And wonder if I can turn off my sense of hearing as the monster, because uuuuugh, but no, I can't, or at least I can't find the metaphorical off switch. It does get me wondering about my other senses -do I even have taste as the monster? I don't have smell, can I turn that on? Can I turn off my vision?- which provides a few minutes of distraction, but is otherwise not terribly productive. Alas. About the only positive thought I have is at least the monster can hold still well. This would be so much worse if I had to actively fight against fidgeting. I find myself idly thinking how it's sort of interesting, in a fucked-up way, how a man who, going by his looks, probably struggled with getting women to talk to him at all got a power that let him skip the wooing process entirely.

The noises stop. Again. Not the first time they've paused, I'm barely paying attention, trying to hum a rhyme to myself, which is difficult without vocal chords. I snap out of it when I hear Heartbreaker say something in that ridiculous voice of his, followed by footsteps coming my way. When he enters my line of sight yes he's going into the bathroom! Also, he's naked. I'm not surprised exactly, but I was kind of hoping he wouldn't be. I imagine there are teenage girls who wish they got to see him from this view. Wait, distracted, stop it. Only question is...

... yes! He's not sitting down or even bothering to close the door!

Hooray for men being lazy, inconsiderate jerks everywhere!

I slowly push the door open until it's open enough I can walk out smoothly. Then I jolt forward and stab into Heartbreaker's head and chest a dozen times before he can even cry out in pain.

I wait a minute, eyeing the corpse, half-expecting him to laugh it off. Nobody's ever backed Heartbreaker into a corner before. Maybe he's got regeneration or something. When he slides a little I jolt in surprise and stab him another two dozen times... and then realize all that happened was the corpse was settling. I think some blood got under it somewhere and it slipped?

At this point the body looks like an animal savaged it, which is... not exactly wrong, I guess. The monster certainly isn't human.

I did it? I drift for a minute. Killing Nilbog was hard and I nearly died and I keep expecting Heartbreaker to have a surprise, I keep waiting for things to go wrong like they did with Nilbog. It can't be this easy. But I guess it is? Nilbog did have an entire city of creatures at his beck and call, while Heartbreaker was... I guess he really was just a man when you ignore his Master ability.

I feel weird, like I'm elated but in a very dry, analytical way. I feel good, but not heady.

Well.

Mission accomplished.

Now I just have to hope his effect breaks with his death.

(I very carefully do not think about the possibility that I just killed an innocent man rather than Heartbreaker)