Raccoon Knight (OC)

[bee.exe]

4.10

The car park of the Weymouth Shopping Centre grew dimmer as the sun said its farewells to the world and climbed out of the gloomy grey sky. No street lights lit up to make up for the darkening sky. They hadn't done that since before Leviathan. Out the front windshield loomed the grey-brick wall of the mall. Distant music boomed out of the gaping hole in the ceiling, letting us hear the twenty different songs overlapping inside. My body thrummed with excitement at the upcoming fight, making my leg bounce in place. Five other vehicles were parked near the truck I was sitting in, ready to spring to action as soon as I said the word. I felt like a warrior on the battlefield, waiting to give my troops the order to charge.

I pulled my coat tighter to try to fight off some of the afternoon chill. Next to me, Max leant over to pull a slider on the truck's dashboard higher. The vents in front of me blew their air a little hotter. I thanked him with a nod that he returned. I was sitting inside Boombox, a truck that sported a sound turret that would help pin people down for the ground units to contain. Everyone who wasn't staying in a truck, such as the eleven people in the Momma Goose van, had plenty of ways to detain people. We'd made glue bombs, bolas, taser spears, and more. They also had mundane methods, like zip-ties.

I looked out the thick plastic glass windows to try to look towards Vista's car, Raindrop, before remembering that it was completely invisible. Max didn't notice my embarrassed face thanks to my helmet. The driver of Guardian Angel gave me a small wave as she saw me looking out of the window. I waved back before looking away, not wanting to distract her too much. She had an important job and needed to be ready.

From the truck bed, Mouse Protector tapped on the window behind me to tell me that our scout had come back. She tapped again twice to say we were good to go.

My walkie-talkie crackled into life as I held down the button. "Vista, ready?"

"Ready," her voice came back over the radio.

"Copy. Everyone, start your engines. Vista, on my mark."

All six engines rumbled to life, their noise hidden behind the thumping bass coming from inside the mall. Vista had hidden our approach with short hops of her power. She could reach so far in the empty city.

I took a deep breath to squash down my nerves before shouting, "Breach!"

The wall ahead of us flared open, revealing the crowd of partying people inside. Most people didn't even react, too high or drunk to notice or too caught off guard for their brains to work.

The Momma Goose drove ahead and stopped by a pack of people. Its entire front face slid open, letting the eleven armed people swarm out to begin sticking people down. The whole van vanished with a poof the moment all of its passengers were out. It'd be going back for reinforcements.

Four of the other vehicles followed their lead, rushing into the mall to do their various jobs. We'd chosen this side of the mall since it was further away from the party, meaning there were fewer people to accidentally run over—not that they'd be hurt too much with all the safety precautions we'd taken.

Max slammed his foot on the pedal, bee-lining through the mall towards the biggest crowd. His job was to get us as close to the capes as possible, and based on what we knew that meant heading towards a stage they'd set up in the centre of the mall.

Space twisted in front of us, bringing us closer to the crowd. Countless voices were yelling over each other about too many things to keep track of. Most of the crowd's attention was locked below the stage at an arena with glowing blue walls. Skidmark's power was keeping everyone inside, and they had been fighting if their bruised and bloodied faces were anything to go by.

On the stage itself stood Skidmark in his blue costume—he'd added a cape that hadn't been in his PRT picture—standing with Mush, Whirlygig, Trainyard Man, and three unknown capes behind him. Whirlygig clutched a metal briefcase closer to her as she noticed us approaching.

People in the crowd turned to look at the incoming cars and then they warned others, spreading the panic out like a wave that washed through the Merchants.

"You two-dollar-whores, get those motherfuckers!" Skidmark screamed into his microphone, his voice blasted out of tons of speakers around the mall. Trainyard man clunked forward on giant feet but didn't leap off the stage, instead, he stood closer to Skidmark to protect him with his giant metal body.

Mush kicked into action, leaping off the stage and rushing towards us at surprising speeds, shoving anyone who dared get in his way aside. His stupid trash body looked like a gorilla more than a human, and each step was awkward and dumb and stupid and ugly. I gripped the speaker on my back to calm myself down. He wasn't going to get anyone this time.

I signalled Max to stop the truck. The whole vehicle swerved into a drift, causing my stomach to flutter with butterflies I definitely hadn't eaten. He pulled off the drift perfectly, putting my door directly towards Mush. I wasted no time in flinging it open and running out to meet Coco's killer.

People were running around in a blind panic all around us. Some of them were trying to run away while others tried to fight.

I batted away a man's punch with the flat of Dede's spear. Before I could take him out with Roro he got pulled back by a tattooed man who punched him in the teeth.

As the crowd ran they shoved each other, pushing their way through without caring about anyone else's safety. The people I'd armed, my soldiers, were throwing glue grenades to capture whole crowds at once, or taking people down with their blunted shock spears and tying them up. We had also trained to rescue people who might get trampled, like the ones who had been shoved to the floor.

I heard the crack of a gun as I continued my sprint towards Mush. There wasn't any time to stop and check if my soldiers were okay. I had to trust they'd be alright. We'd trained for this, even if it hadn't been that long.

A glass bottle exploded as someone swung it into my armoured thigh. I tossed a glue grenade towards him, catching him and a nearby friend in the blast.

Mush punched the air, sending bits of his hands flying towards me. I ducked down to avoid the shotgun blast of trash, turning it into a roll as I stumbled a little. As I rolled up to my feet, Mouse Protector appeared in front of me and grabbed onto my gorget to keep me upright.

"Careful there," she said before turning to Mush. Underhand she tossed a tiny pebble, barely visible if you weren't looking for it.

Mush slammed a giant hand down towards her just as she vanished from sight. I ducked back and blasted him with air from Dede. It didn't do anything but it did draw his attention.

Mouse Protector appeared behind him and pulled away a trash can lid. Pink strands of nerves were sticking to it as she pried it away. Before he could pull them back, she slashed them with her sword.

He screamed a high-pitched scream while swinging around wildly behind him with his giant fists. Mouse Protector wasn't there, already appearing behind him again and pulling out another piece of trash to chop off more of the veins. He screamed in pain and I almost felt bad about it.

Shards of metal exploded out from under his body, slashing around at anything nearby. He was controlling them with the nerves like they were tentacles. I barely avoided one slashing straight across me. People in the crowd were hit by the flailing metal, cutting gashes across their bodies. They turned against him, swinging whatever weapons they had at the trash heap cape.

A man slammed into me at what felt like the speed of a car. We were sent skidding from the force, my armour scraping against the blue and white tiled floor. He had tackled me into a hug and refused to let go as we rolled across the ground together.

As we skidded to a stop, I hit him in the groin with my knee. He let go of me immediately.

I rolled to the side, not bothering to take the time to figure out where I was. The world spun for a moment as I reached my feet.

The man shot straight up slamming into the balcony above us, leaving a him-shaped imprint in the drywall. He fell back down to the ground and landed in a crouch, completely uninjured despite his face smashing into a roof at high speeds.

He had hair like Hookwolf, long, blond, and sticking to his neck from all the sweat. His mask—if you could even call it that—was a football helmet that had been spraypainted a splodgy black. You could see his face clearly through the open mouthguard, so it made for a shitty mask. He'd obviously noticed that his identity wasn't hidden since he'd scribbled red marker all over his face to try to disguise himself.

Before I could spring into action, a glue rope hit him right in the chest, twirling around his body like a bola. The force of it pulled him down to the floor where the glue stuck him down.

A brightly coloured airboat roared past, the driver hollering at me as he spun Dead-to-rights around to go back to helping the others. I gave him a thumbs up as his fan-powered boat sailed away. Dead-to-rights was our loudest vehicle and I was glad it wasn't anywhere near me anymore.

The ground beneath the pogo-stick cape crunched as his body lurched up for a split second.

"Interesting power," I leant down to say to him. "That's good since it looks like you're stuck with it!"

He glared up at me, "Go fuck yourself you rancid wh–"

I flicked a loose gummy bear past his wire-frame mouthguard straight into his open mouth. My hours of trying to do it to my Mom finally paid off. He sputtered, spitting the gummy little candy out of his mouth.

"That's not a very good pun," I told him with a wag of my finger before running away to help Mouse Protector. He screamed some more swear words that I ignored. After this, we'd have all the gummy bears in the world—or in the Weymouth Shopping Centre to be more accurate.

The space towards Mush shrank down, letting me catch up to the fight that had been slowly moving towards the stage.

"Thanks, Vista!" I yelled out to the empty air. She probably wasn't nearby, and even if she was I doubt she could hear me over the noise of people and cars, but it was the thought that counted.

I stopped in place for a moment to let the Guardian Angel whizz by me. They were off to rescue someone who had pressed the button on their wristband and you always stop for ambulances. Once it was by I rejoined the fight.

Mouse Protector had been busy. Mush was missing an entire arm, the trash that had made it up was scattered across the floor. I scooped up a bit of it to throw into Zeze.

Blood speckled his body where his nerves had been cut. His punches were visibly slower than before—time for me to step in.

I grabbed a nearby trash can lid and frisbeed it right into him. After a brief glance over his shoulder to see what it was, his nerves lashed out to grab it.

"Thanks, idiot," he sneered.

"You're welcome!" I yelled, throwing more trash at him. His nerves snapped out and grabbed them all. I threw some metal shards back at him too, letting him start his blender routine up again. Mouse Protector backed out, turning to deal with some non-capes. Mush looked between her and me before turning to rush towards me, the 'easier' target.

I grabbed the speaker from my back and hurled it towards him with all my might. His tendrils lashed out and grabbed it, pulling it into him. Just as planned.

He didn't slow down as I grabbed a TV remote from one of my pouches.

"The music around here sucks! Listen to this!"

I squeezed the 'Play' button as I twisted the dial on my radio all the way down. The speaker let out a mighty WHOOMP that sent Mush skidding across the ground and sent a huge chunk of his trash body flying all over. Bits of cardboard bonked into my armour and I was sprayed with splats of old food as Mush's body exploded out.

A few people were a little too close and were thrown back by the noise. It wouldn't hurt them too much, just stun them for a bit.

Despite my helmet and the padding of my headphones over my ears, I could feel the explosion of noise as it washed over me. It rattled my bones and left my ears ringing.

His real body lay exposed, a pot-bellied man with pink skin who had no arms and legs, just tendrils that groped out to remake his trash body.

Before he could get anything, Mouse Protector appeared with her fist already swinging. She delivered an electric knuckle duster right into his stomach. Electricity coursed through him, causing him to shake. All of the trash attached to him dropped to the ground as his tendrils went limp. People normally clench up when shocked, so I hadn't been expecting that.

Mouse Protector grabbed him by what remained of his shoulder to pull him towards a nearby wall. After he was positioned away from the foot—and actual—traffic, I pointed my left hand towards him. Three vials sat on the back of the extension to my gauntlet, each one containing a different thing. I squeezed my middle finger to fire Roro, the Multifaceted's middle vial. A strand of coiled glue shot out, spreading out in the air to form a line of glue rope. It splatted across his body, pinning him down horizontally. I fired two more to make sure he was really stuck before realising he could just use his tendrils.

"Wait here, keep him down!" I told Mouse Protector before running to a nearby store.

Someone had smashed the window in and spray-painted almost the entire store with gang tags. It looked like they had been practising because the usual Merchants sign—an M with two lines through it—had been drawn incorrectly almost a dozen times.

Two men were huddled in the back behind the counter. I wouldn't have noticed them if they didn't both look out at me.

"Just here for a sheet, guys," I said, grabbing a blanket cover. What was the word? Dove? Dove cover. "Don't mind me."

As I turned to leave, I heard one of them yell wordlessly behind me. I turned to see him rushing towards me with a baseball bat held high.

I squeezed Roro to fire her first vial, spraying him down with a yellow cloud of gas that made him sputter and cough.

His feet got caught under him as he moved to cover his mouth, making him tumble over onto the floor with a meaty whack as his body cracked the hardwood. The baseball bat slipped out of his hand with a clatter as it bounced a few times before rolling away. That was easier than expected.

As he continued to gag at my patented 'stinky gas', I looked at his friend.

"We're not here to arrest you—well, some of you. You probably wanna stay put though, it's like a circus out there." I looked back over my shoulder to watch as a man tried to run away from Pinwheel but fell flat on his face. Pinwheel blasted him with a wad of glue before driving by. "So many clowns."

I left the man to sputter and cough as I ran back to Mouse Protector. Her sword was pressed against Mush's throat, while her head glanced back and forth between his tendrils. As she noticed me approaching, she pulled herself off him and hit him again with her taser punch. His tendrils shrunk into him as his body clenched up.

One blanket and three glue ropes from Roro later, he was firmly stuck to the wall with only his head peeking out.

"Have a nice nap," Mouse Protector patted him on the head.

He glared at her. "Fuck you, buddy."

"You ain't got enough cheddar for that, pal," Mouse Protector said before she spun around to face me. "You get that rocket man?"

"Rocket man? Oh, pogo stick guy. Yeah, he's down. Though, it was technically Markus who got him."

"Guess that means I'm winning, kid." Mouse Protector punched me lightly in the shoulder. "Come on, there's still time to catch up."

We bolted towards the stage and the biggest crowd. My soldiers were splitting up the people running around into groups like a dog herding sheep. Once they were all together, they'd glue them to the ground in a big heap. It wasn't a tactic we'd discussed but they were allowed to improvise so long as they didn't hurt people too badly.

The Merchants were scratching and clawing and trying to climb up the cars. They didn't get far before the entire thing would electrify and shock them. Their bodies were lost under the angry crowd, all of them kicked into action by Skidmark yelling for them to attack us.

Some of them were throwing things at anyone and everything that moved. We were hurting them as much as they were hurting each other.

I knew the Merchants had been growing, but I hadn't expected this many people. We were outnumbered fifteen to one. Good thing we had the work of two of the best tinkers in Brockton Bay to even the playing field and the strongest, most cutest shaker on this side of the continent.

Skidmark spurred the people inside his makeshift arena on, yelling at them to keep going.

"C'mon, you donkey-fuckers! Don't you want a vial? I need you to fuck these motherfucking animal cunts up!" he screeched.

A man rushed towards us with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. Mouse Protector caught it with her sword, the blade digging into the wood. The force of his swing made her drop the weapon, sending it skittering across the tiles. She punched him clean in the face with her non-knuckle-duster hand. He stumbled backwards and–

The world vanished into sand. More stars than I had ever seen twinkled all around me, blocked partially by the moon and two gigantic creatures that were impossible to describe.

I stared at the infinite space, awed by its beauty.

The crystalline being danced with its partner. They swirled around each other, exchanging simple words that left me reeling.

Hidden amongst their body, nestled deep was her—my power.

She twinkled brighter than any of the stars, louder than any noise but somehow still soft and gentle, sharper than a sword but safe and comforting. Her siblings spoke with her, relying on her to churn down great concepts into useable parts that they could reconstruct like legos.

Her parents let her fly the nest and she shot down to Earth like a shooting star, her brilliance lighting up the entire world in a shimmering light that no one could see to appreciate. No one but me.

There were so many places she could go, and so many people to choose from. What an exciting choice she'd been given.

And then she noticed me, down on earth, crying in my room all alone. I'd been dragged back after I'd tried to run away, dragged back into that undefeatable mess. At that moment she decided to help me.

Hugging me, she gave me the power to fix anything broken. Then why didn't she give me the power to fix myself?

Maybe… maybe I wasn't broken?

–he fell to the ground with a splatter of blood from his now split lip. I wobbled on my feet, trying to grasp the memory of what I had just seen as it slipped through my fingers like a dream. My mind failed to hold on to what seemed like something important, something familiar.

I had seen… her. I was sure of it. My power had been there. I think… She loved me. Or I loved her. Was it one in the same?

Someone's fist collided with my armour, sending me stumbling back. Mouse Protector appeared out of nowhere, delivered an elbow to his stomach and followed up with a free fist to his face. He fell back, full from his meal of elbow and fist.

She leaned against me, shaking her head. Had she seen the same thing I had? Wait, what had I seen?

"What was—" she muttered before standing straighter. "Kid, I think we've got trouble."

I followed Mouse Protector's outstretched hand towards the centre stage. Skidmark, Trainyard Man, and the two other unknown capes were leaning against the railing in front of them. Behind them, Whirlygig had fallen over onto her butt and was clutching the metal briefcase tighter while her head wobbled around like a bobblehead.

Skidmark laughed a full belly laugh, louder and louder as he stood up straight. He opened his mouth wide to scream into the mic, "Looks like one of you ass-drips earned your stripes!"

White flashes of light popped in and out of existence in the middle of the arena. They were appearing around a lanky teenager who had white smoke pouring out of all the holes in his face. His face snapped towards the beach-ball-sized spheres of light as they burst into existence before popping away like bubbles in a pot of boiling water.

A man tried to take a swing at him but a nearby sphere popped and pulled him off course. The new parahuman hopped to the side to dodge the already off-course punch.

He stretched out both hands towards the man and a bunch of lights flashed into existence one after another. Most missed their target, instead cutting through the nearby floor or worse–the people on the floor.

One of the orbs appeared over the man's shoulder, half his face, and his upper torso and then they were all gone, torn out of existence. Blood spilled out of the gaping hole as the orb vanished and his body slumped to the ground.

More of the white spheres appeared, and more people were hurt. We had to stop him, he could barely control his power.

I sprayed the people ahead of me with Roro's yellow smoke. They pushed past each other to escape the smell. I ran through the cloud, completely unaffected. After a few clouds, I made it near the edge of the blue fields but at a healthy distance so no one would shove me in.

There were only a few people left standing in the middle of the arena, about five in total. Skidmark screamed for them to stop just as Trainyard man leapt down from the stage to greet me. I'd never seen him up close before, only at a distance as he prowled through the Trainyard, stopping me from grabbing the treasures that were there. He was an iron giant made of scrap metal bolted together and not a fight I was ready for. A single swing from his giant fists would put me down for good.

An orange blur fell from the roof and leapt for Whirlygig who scrambled away while kicking up a storm around her. One of the unknown capes stepped forward, a man wearing a plastic bird mask, and the orange boy spat straight through the bird's open beak to the man's face. The bird-mask man slumped over onto the floor instantly. Did he just die?

Trainyard Man struggled to push past the crowd without hurting them. Unlike Mush, he wasn't willing to shove everyone aside to make his way towards me. I continued to spray Roro's yellow gas to keep everyone away from me. A couple of people still tried, so I blasted them with Dede's airhead and wafted some of the cloud their way as a reward.

Torches held in metal hands stretched out of the wall behind Trainyard Man, turning the twilight mall into a warm fireplace with a soft orange glow. The wall behind the stage bulged out with a giant lump that sprouted into a face that pushed its way into reality. Fingertips grew out of the ground beneath it, stretching out to touch the nearby capes.

Trainyard Man stepped back with a heavy footstep. His metal face stared down at the ground and I followed his cue to watch as it cracked and split like dry dirt. Stone walls burst out of the cracks, sprouting upwards like a chunky flower in fast-forward reaching up towards the ceiling at around triple my height.

More walls burst out of the ground and I found one growing beneath my feet. I leapt off just as it began to rise. Some people weren't so lucky and were pulled up by the walls. The sounds of people shouting became a bit duller as walls split me off from the rest of the group.

More faces sprouted out of the mall's walls, joined by statues of naked bodies that formed into giant watchers who peered down into the growing maze around us.

Mouse Protector appeared beside me with her hand on my shoulder.

Time for a change of plans.

Spoiler: Author's Note:

Writing this whole sequence took me a few passes but there still might be mistakes. If you see any, let me know. I basically wrote out a thread that follows Meadow as she does her job and then went back through to add a little more chaos going on around her and then another pass that I usually do to make the final draft. Overall, I'm actually pretty happy with this chapter and I hope you enjoy it.

Re-reading Arc 11 I realised there were capes behind Skidmark during his speech and decided to actually use them which is where Pogostick Guy came from. I have the other powers planned out too and they'll come up in the next chapters. Taylor is technically in the crowd somewhere, trying to get back Sierra's brother (who then promptly leapt into the ring).

Thanks for reading, as usual.

 

[bee.exe]

5.2

The wall warbled like the slow-motion ripple of a stone-disturbed pond. Everything around the circle of wobbling stone vibrated like it was caught in an earthquake. Whatever this stuff was made of, it did not like me trying to warp it. After an eternity of holding Aiai up to the maze wall, she finally managed to rip open a hole through the thick stone bricks. I ran through before the wall decided to change its mind.

I turned to make sure Mouse Protector made it through in time. Instead of walking, she teleported beside me, letting me close the gap and making me feel like an idiot for not remembering she could do that.

She tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the top of a wall.

"Take us up, it'll be faster."

Oh. That made way more sense.

Embarrassed for a second time, I ducked my head down to avoid her eyes. I followed her idea, using Aiai to pinch the space in front of us with the top of the wall. A simple step forward and we were up high, overlooking the battlefield.

From up here we could see the maze reached the far ends of the mall, covering it entirely. Part of the maze looked like someone had placed a giant invisible ball onto it, crushing away a sphere of the walls. The warped space moved around, shoving aside the maze and letting the stuff behind it spring back up. Vista must be using her power to let the vehicles move around.

The once-mall-now-maze was kind of beautiful if you ignored all the fighting… and the corpses. We could see the impromptu arena littered with bodies, some were still moving, trying to get away from the cape fight but far too many were missing entire parts of themselves where the new cape's lights had deleted them. A lot of them were too injured to move and had to settle for crawling along the ground.

We had a tiny supply of the 'recovery aid paste' from the shelter but it wasn't nearly enough to save the people down there. Mundane first aid might help a few if we're lucky.

The orange boy from before jumped around on the stage while trying to slap his hand towards Skidmark. His outstretched hand slipped off of Skidmark's cape which was glowing blue like the fields of his power.

They were slowly being shoved off the stage as the grasping fingers from the statue behind it continued to crawl out.

The boy's equally orange tail whipped out towards a man wearing a sparkly mask and yanked a gun clean from his hand. Orange Boy rolled to the side to avoid Skidmark's knife, putting him right next to the sparkly masked cape. He palmed the man's forehead and the man collapsed to the ground.

He'd killed the man in the bird mask with his spit but killed this guy by just touching him? His power was scary, and not something I wanted to risk messing with. My armour covered me almost completely, even my eyes were hidden behind Elel's sunglasses lenses, but Mouse Protector's eyes were visible. It'd be better if I fought the Orange Boy on my own.

To our right, a girl with long curly black hair was clambering across the walls with the help of a muscled man. She looked at home climbing with her tall frame but why was she heading towards the fight? I watched as she hopped down to the other side and the muscled man followed an arrow printed onto the wall of the maze.

We needed to stop these people from getting themselves hurt.

"Do you think you could help those people," I pointed to the tall girl climbing over the walls, "-while I stop the Orange Boy? I should be able to take him down before he can kill me."

"Kill you?" Mouse Protector's voice squeaked like her namesake, "Kid, I can't put you in danger like that again. Let's just wait till they've tired each other out and we can scoop up the leftovers like Thanksgiving at my parents."

"He's killing people with his power! I can't just stand by while people die!"

"Do you know his power? Do you know the power of any of these people?"

"Some of them!"

She levelled a judging state at me.

"I do know Faultline's power! And uh, George or whatever his name is. I just didn't really pay attention when they were talking about the rest of them…"

Mouse Protector ran a gloved hand down her helmet as she sighed. "Do you at least know if they're H's or V's?"

"Uh, I think they're mercenaries? They take jobs for both sides."

"Now that, we can work with. They're fighting the Merchants so their job is probably the same as ours. Which one is their leader?"

"Faultline," I pointed behind us to the woman wearing combat gear over a grey-black dress.

She was chasing after Trainwreck and destroying a lot of the maze to catch up to him. George (or whatever his name is) trailed behind her but phased through the walls as if they weren't there. His body looked like green jello and if you squinted you could see his skeleton and organs through the green ooze that was him. Little bits of crusted shells were gathered in random spots on his body making him look like a boat covered in barnacles.

Occasionally he'd fire a stream of slime from his hands towards Trainwreck which also ignored the walls like they weren't even there. The goop stuck one of Trainwreck's arms to his leg and he struggled to get it free. I really wanted to get a sample of that stuff.

Mouse Protector stretched her arms to the left and then the right. "I'm going to have a chat with her, make sure she knows we're here to help."

"But the girl!"

She unclipped a walkie-talkie from the holster on her shoulder and held down the button, "Hey, Vista. Does the teenager with orange skin kill people with his power?"

"You mean Newter? No, he just drugs them," her voice crackled over the radio.

My heart lightened at the news. He hadn't murdered those people, at least. We didn't need more deaths than there already had been. There weren't supposed to be any. If only we'd gotten here sooner.

"Thanks, doll," Mouse Protector said before clipping the walkie-talkie back in place. I could imagine Vista's groan at the nickname, I'd have to talk to Mouse Protector about that in the future.

"See, no one's dying because of him," she continued, "Let them tire each other out and we can deal with it after. Priority one is citizens, same as usual. Go help the girl, I'll make sure Faultline isn't going to hit us in the crossfire."

I looked at Faultline as her fight brought them closer and closer to the arena where people were still struggling to escape and then I looked where I'd seen the girl clambering over the wall. There wasn't an easy answer, I just had to trust Mouse Protector would be able to activate her diplomacy powers.

"Okay."

We nodded at each other before taking off to do our jobs. I squeezed the space with Aiai to bring me onto a wall near the middle. The girl wasn't here yet and I needed backup just in case. I grabbed the walkie-talkie from my back, "Vista, I need backup near the stage. Bring Guardian Angel, Pinwheel, and Raindrop. We have injured and dying."

"There's too many people there—I can make a road, though. Give me a second," her voice crackled back over the radio.

"Thank you. Newter, Skidmark, Whirlygig, and one unknown cape—a red-haired woman on Faultline's side—are active and fighting here. Faultline, Trainwreck, and George are getting closer to the stage."

"George? Oh, Gregor. The redhead sounds like their new cape, Clover? We've tentatively listed her as a combat thinker."

The wall shook beneath me as a nearby one collapsed as Trainwreck smashed through it. He struggled to right himself since he was missing a leg that had been severed just above the knee. Trainwreck swung a wild punch that went wide, missing the approaching Faultline but smashing through the remainder of the wall.

They were only a couple of walls between them and the middle and neither were holding back from destroying everything around them. If they didn't stop soon the people still by the stage were in trouble.

As Faultline ran past him her hand scraped along the wall causing it to split in half and topple over behind her right onto Trainwreck. He burst through the rubble just as I turned back around to find the girl. I couldn't let myself get distracted watching other people fight.

My eyes scanned over the battlefield to try to find the curly-haired girl. There were plenty of people here, some injured or some dead, but none that matched her description.

On the stage, Skidmark was swinging a knife at Newter who was trapped between three of Skidmark's fields. Whirlygig was trying to pick up a storm but her power didn't work well with Skidmark's. All of her debris got caught up in his fields and shoved aside. She didn't seem to get the message to make the storm somewhere else. Skidmark turned to yell something at her and she scooped up the metal briefcase into her arms.

Over on the right of the stage, a red-headed woman—also in combat gear (minus the dress)—sprinted straight towards the new cape. They were fortunately far away from the injured people, closer to catching Skidmark and Newter in their fighting than anyone else. Flashes of light popped around him and completely missed Clover without her missing a step.

I didn't know why they were fighting. The new cape was a victim in all of this—even if he had been at a Merchant event. Maybe Skidmark had convinced him to help?

The new cape—who I decided to call 'Ghost'—stretched out his hands making the flashes appear faster and pointed closer to the woman. She side-stepped them before continuing to run clean through without anything hitting her.

Once close enough, she smacked Ghost on the forehead with the butt of her pistol, knocking him down to the ground.

I warped down next to them to make sure she wasn't going to kill him (while still keeping my distance so I didn't get erased from existence by his power). Before he could get up, I fired a couple of glue ropes from Roro to stick him firmly to the floor.

"I've got him, move on," I tried to make my voice sound commanding.

The woman whirled around, raising her pistol at me.

Before I could rush her she twirled the gun around on her finger and said, "Oh, one of the party crashers? Nice to meet you, I'm Shamrock. No time to chat, I'm afraid."

She ran past me towards Skidmark without another word. I turned to scan the crowd again, trying to find the girl. She hadn't arrived yet. Hopefully, she changed her mind and ran away instead.

Whirlygig leapt off the stage with the metal briefcase still clutched inside her arms as Shamrock approached. Shamrock fired a single shot that clipped Whirlygig's leg making her tumble to the ground.

I tackled her from behind and tried to pry the gun away from her. My hands slipped off the slide as she rolled under me, pulling herself free and leaving me sprawling on the ground. Shamrock pointed her gun down at me.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Are you looking to get shot?"

Skidmark whirled around, placing a field between us and him before turning his attention back to Newter. Shamrock stopped paying attention to me, sprinting to my right and running across the wall to pass through a thin gap at the edge of Skidmark's power.

I rolled to my feet. "You can't just shoot people!" I yelled after her.

Newter had been partially boxed in by Skidmark's power leaving only the side facing towards Skidmark not coated in the blue fields. They were in a stalemate, as Newter easily avoided Skidmark's attempts to cut him but couldn't put a hand (or spit) on him due to his clothes being coated in his power.

Shamrock bounced off the wall and punched Skidmark clean in the cheek. He fell to the ground with a "Fuck!" and his power-coated clothes made him skid along it off the stage. She leapt off the stage after him.

Newter bounded off the stage on all fours, taking off into a run that made him look like a big cat towards Whirlygig. She'd climbed to her feet and was limping towards the maze.

I leapt down after him on two legs.

One of the walls crumbled down as a giant metal hand grabbed onto it. Trainwreck appeared from the dust with both of his legs missing above the knee. A girl with curly black hair sprinted through the gap just as Trainwreck vanished back into the maze. Two men followed closely behind her, one of them carrying what looked like medical supplies.

"Train you turd-sniffer, get here and help me!" Skidmark screamed as he tried to avoid Shamrock's punches. His power made her fists slip off him like he was coated in grease but they still managed to clip him, making him stumble from the blows.

He lunged to grab her but his power worked against him, letting her easily slip out of his grip thanks to his power-coated clothes while he tripped over his own feet, collapsing to the ground.

"Fucking son-of-a-bitch!"

Shamrock squatted down to be level with him and placed her gun close to his ear but thankfully pointing away from his head. Before I could stop her, she fired it with a loud crack that I felt in my teeth.

I tackled her again barely a split-second later, this time I managed to grab the gun from her hand. Like last time, she slid out from underneath me, leaving me sprawled on the ground but this time victorious with gun in hand.

"Again!" she shouted just as Skidmarked screamed,

"You cumguzzling donkeyfucker!"

I rolled onto my knees while pressing the button to drop the magazine from the gun then I pulled back the chamber to release the loaded round.

"You don't get to deafen people!" my voice echoed throughout the mall. I tossed the gun to the side as I stood upright. "You don't get to shoot people running away!"

Shamrock glared at me. "You're not my boss."

A loud crash made both of us whip our heads around to look. Trainwreck had smashed down another wall and his giant hand reached out to grab the fleeing Whirlygig. He wasn't in good shape, with both of his legs missing, plus one of his fingers, and he was coated in a thick slime that slowed his movements.

Faultline and Mouse Protector chased out after him. Mouse Protector's motorcycle helmet had fresh scrapes across it. She was fighting alongside Faultline, so she probably got that from Trainwreck.

Newter leapt up to him, trying to hit his exposed head. To avoid the titanic fist swinging his way, he bounded off Trainwreck like a frog, backflipping in the air and then landing on all fours.

"Backup is here!" Vista's voice came over the radio just as the wall to our right folded in on itself.

Pinwheel roared out of the hole and began firing glue shots at Trainwreck. Every shot hit despite Trainwreck's flailing about.

Guardian Angel, a bright pink van that we used to pick up anyone injured, followed closely behind. Our medics filtered out of it as it came to a stop. They immediately ran towards what had been the arena to help out the people still there. The curly-haired girl turned her head to look directly at me, ignoring everything around her.

Shamrock stomped her foot onto Skidmark's back. He whined in pain and swore some more.

She shrugged when I looked at her, "He was trying to crawl away."

I pushed her to the side and glued him down with Roro. He squirmed under the ropes but couldn't break out.

"You cocksuckers are gonna fucking regret this!"

Shamrock was already running away by the time I turned around. She ran straight towards Trainwreck but randomly stopped in her tracks. Her hair whipped around as something invisible passed by her. Raindrop.

I ignored her for now, instead going to check on the Guardian Angel team. Three men and four women, all former nurses and doctors, were triaging the wounded. One of them acted like a scout, checking over the injured to figure out who was the most injured and in need of help right away. They had to use what little recovery aid paste we had sparingly.

Seeing the girl still here—and still staring directly at me—I positioned myself between my medics, the strange girl, and the ongoing fight with Dede drawn and ready.

No one was going to get past me.

Trainwreck had dropped Whirlygig who was kicking up a storm of metal shards that she was pulling from Trainwreck's severed arm.

Newter was still trying to climb up Trainwreck, who had the briefcase held above his head like a bully taunting a smaller kid at recess while using his stump arm to ward off the orange-skinned boy's attempts to get up.

Faultline placed her hands on the floor and sent spiderweb cracks across it right below Whirlygig's feet. Her foot caught in one of the holes, sending her face first into the ground and her storm scattering everywhere.

"Shamrock, briefcase!" she commanded while running forward to place a knee on Whirlygig's back. She held her hands out cupped together, forming the perfect foothold for Shamrock who springed off her straight towards the briefcase.

Trainwreck reeled his arm back and in a final bid of spite, hurled the briefcase in the only direction his glued-up arms allowed him to; right towards me.

"Shit!" he swore as I dropped Dede to grab the briefcase in both arms.

Faultline strolled towards me with a confident posture. She held out a hand to take it.

I clutched it closer to me, keeping a tight grip on it.

"What's inside this?" I asked.

"Nothing that concerns you. Hand it over, please," her voice was smooth like silk.

"It does concern me because I'm one step away from arresting you and if you can't tell me what's inside, then how can I trust you?"

The space between us widened, keeping her far out of arm's reach. I held my head steady, not looking around to find Vista. Information was king in a fight. If she knew Vista was around she might try to find her. Pinwheel parked off to my side with the glue turret swivelled towards Faultline.

"It contains information that my crew wants."

"Okay, two steps away."

Mouse Protector sauntered past Faultline, turning around to face her as she passed then continuing to walk backwards towards me.

"Hey, it all worked out, let's just cool our heads and move on. Give her the case, kid."

"I'm still deciding!"

"Deciding what? They did us a favour being here, just give them what they want."

"A favour?!" I half-screamed, "Look around you! People couldn't get out because of their stupid maze and then they decided to also knock it down! How many people who were running through the maze do you think got caught in that?"

Someone groaned as one of my medics poured alcohol onto his scrape.

"Most of the damage was the Iron Giant over here," Newter chimed in. He smoothed a hand across his hair and flashed me a pearly white smile. "We don't intentionally hurt civilians."

I barked out a sharp humourless laugh, "You stopped my medics from getting to the people they needed to. You stopped our vehicles from containing people safely and securely because they couldn't drive through your maze. You put people in danger for some stupid information!"

"We can't possibly account for everyone, we'd drive ourselves crazy doing that," Newter said.

"My team took care not to catch anyone in the collateral damage. If they were, that's on them for not moving out of the way of a loud fight. Besides, you won't find me crying over the types of people here. Now hand over the briefcase before we have to turn to violent means."

Faultline's head moved to the right slightly, tracking something behind me. I turned my head to see the girl and two men leaving the way they came in. They were carrying someone who had been freshly bandaged up. They'd come all the way here to save a friend?

Mouse Protector placed a hand on my shoulder. "Kid, we need this maze gone and that means letting them go," she spoke softly so only I could hear it.

I hated that she was right.

"Fine."

I stepped forward and the space snapped close before I reached the edge of it. I tossed the briefcase underhand over to Faultline who grabbed it out of the air.

"Thank you. We'll be on our way."

The world shifted as countless walls began to shrink back down into the floor. Statues crawled back into the walls, vanishing from existence or maybe just hiding in the drywall. Faultline and her crew walked away together as the mall returned to normal.

More groans joined the chorus as the walls faded into the ground. Like rats scurrying from beneath a dumpster I just opened, a ton of people ran towards the exits now they were no longer trapped. Our reinforcements had arrived in Momma Goose at some point since there was at least one person guarding anyone glued down. Vista must have been working overtime to make sure there was enough space for all the cars to move around in the maze.

We'd successfully captured all the Merchant capes, plus a lot of the un-powered members. Now we just needed to secure them all.

I tied Skidmark down with a few extra ropes in case his power let him slip out which earned me an earful of cussing. Trainwreck and Whirlygig were both firmly stuck in goo and slime and were both sulking about it. Bird mask and sparkly man were still both out of it, high on Newter's power. Our medics made sure to put them in a recovery position in case they threw up. We left them unglued just to be safe. Pogo-stick was still firmly stuck but not where I'd left him. He'd frayed the glue rope enough to break out of it with one of his hops but he must have run into Dead-to-rights since he had four strands of fresh glue rope wrapped around him. Mush laid exactly where I'd left him, still covered in the sheet and propped up against the store. He must have found it comfortable since he'd fallen asleep and was snoring loudly.

The only one missing was Ghost. He'd blasted the glue rope into pieces with his power and slipped away. I'm not sure how I would even contain him, or get close to check his wounds. Mouse Protector and I would need to hunt him down after this to make sure he didn't hurt anyone. I'd have to invent something that can stop his power or at least not be destroyed by it.

I left my soldiers to focus on getting everyone gathered together for the PRT to arrest them while I made my way to the holy grail, the entire reason we'd come here in the first place. A glowing golden goose egg that promised to keep us safe. The stock room of the candy store.

Someone had found it and torn open boxes or just taken them outright. There was a lot missing but there'd been far too much for them to eat. I grabbed a bag of marshmallows out of their box and hugged it tight. We'd done it. I could make more healing paste and keep everyone safe.

***​

Once all the gummy candy and marshmallows had been safely teleported back to our base in the back of Momma Goose, I left the store to help out. There were a lot of people that needed moving. One of the medics, Lucy, handed me a set of coloured tags that I could hook onto people. They told the medical team what the priority for them was. If they were unlucky enough for a red tag, I wouldn't want to move them anyway so I handed those back.

I couldn't really move a group on my own, so I decided to head towards a woman who had been glued up against a wall. She didn't look comfortable standing there with her hair covering her face. It was the same colour as mine but looked like it hadn't been washed in weeks. It reminded me of the time before I knew how to take care of my hair, and I felt oddly nostalgic for only a few months ago. At the same time, I felt sort of sick for missing such a horrible time in my life. Those conflicting feelings fought for in me to try to find the victor. Was it okay to feel good about some parts while still thinking it was overall bad?

I shook my head and slapped the cheeks of my helmet which drew the woman's attention. Her light blue eyes snapped up to look at me. She stared at me with wide eyes and as her hair fell away from her face I pieced together why she seemed so familiar.

My old mom glared at me. "Fuck you, pig."

Spoiler: Author's Note:

I'm not sure if I've captured Faultline's crew's mindset super well here. Ultimately, I think they want that briefcase because it contains potential answers to their questions and if getting it means punching a 15-year-old, I don't think they'd be against that.

Canon characters aren't my strong suit, which is mostly just an excuse so I can shrug, make sad trombone noises and brush it under the rug.

Thanks for reading, as usual. Coming up next time on Raccoon Knight Z; the Raccoon Knight fan club watches as the trucks leave for the raid and lament on how useless they feel compared to capes.

 

[bee.exe]

5.x - Interlude; Back at the shelter

They watched together as the trucks, vans, and airboat drove away from the base. Abi hugged her arms around herself, trying to find comfort in her own warmth. She'd been left behind, again. Too young and powerless to fight alongside the adults and Meadow. Meadow was younger than her (by six months!) but because she had powers they let her throw herself into dangerous situations. It didn't make sense to her—Meadow wasn't a fighter, she was an inventor, and she'd be more useful if she stayed at the base making things for the actual fighters.

"I feel so useless," she voiced her thoughts out loud. Part of her hoped her friends felt the same even if it hurt them as much as it did her. At least if they did, she wouldn't be alone in her thoughts. Abi wondered if that made her a bad person.

Dash squeezed her shoulder, "We're only taking a break for a day, we can start being useful again tomorrow."

Prying away from his hand, she turned to look at her two best friends. "That's not what I mean. Meadow gets to go out there and fight bad guys even though she's younger than me and we get to… what? Cook stew? Sew up clothes? I want to fight!" she shadow-boxed the air to show off her fighting prowess.

"We're helping, that's all that matters," Dash said, matter of fact. "Don't use her real name, either. You know the rules, Abs"

"I want to do more, Dash! Everyone's scared about the raid going poorly and they're extra super scared about the…" Abi took a deep breath in to avoid saying their name as if just speaking it might summon them into reality. "My tiny little baby knife isn't going to do anything, neither are the stupid spiky sticks she gave us. We need powers!"

Bert shook his head as he ran a hand through his long hair. "It's not that easy. Do I need to show you the document again?" he pushed his glasses up his nose as he stared the girl down.

Their eyes met in an intense staring competition that neither wanted to back down from. The threat of having to sit through the entire twenty-seven-page document made her falter first, ducking her head away.

"No! No document. I'll be good, I promise," she pouted.

A passing PRT officer nodded at the trio. They all returned the greeting with nods of their head, their conversation muting until the PRT officer was out of earshot.

In a childish act of defiance, Abi stuck her tongue at the officer's passing back. Every time she saw them her father's words echoed in her head: 'There's no such thing as free. Even if the price is only the warm feeling in their chest when they help, it'll cost something.' She doubted very much that Director Calvert had offered the PRT patrol just to feel good about himself. He was vying for something, she just couldn't figure out what. It didn't help that Meadow only described him as: 'tall, smells like walnuts, pretended I was a dog.' What did that even mean?

"You can't want it. If you do the good deed because you want powers you won't get them," Bert continued when the officer was out of earshot. "So you need to stop wanting it and just do good because it's good. Like helping me fix the sandbags that leaked?" Bert nudged her with his elbow, winking with each nudge.

Abi smirked at him, happy her friend could still joke with her. He'd closed down after the Empire was outed, hiding away in his room and refusing to go with them anywhere. It wasn't unreasonable given the state of things but she'd missed hanging out with him. After Leviathan he seemed to be overcompensating for the distance he'd grown by opening up a lot more. Ironically, the actual distance between them now was greater than the metaphorical one, especially with all the obstacles between here and his home past Captain's Hill. His aunty would never drive through Brockton Bay—and with perfectly good reason—making Abi thankful the shelter was near the outskirts so her trip was safer.

"Fine, fine, I'll help. No need to grovel to o'mighty me," she bowed graciously, the thoughts of powers still lingering at the back of her mind. Any attempt to push them down just caused them to bob back to the top of the water.

Dash plucked one of the straps on Abi's dungarees like a guitar string causing the bunny-patterned denim to snap against her, eliciting an 'ow'. He flicked Bert on the side of the head at the same time.

"No work. Today's a break," he chided the pair.

Abi flung her head back to let out a long frustrated groan that just kept going and going.

"Don't be a baby. We can play a board game if you want," Dash offered.

"Not if she starts stealing the pieces again," Bert mumbled, rubbing the side of his head where he'd been flicked.

"Hey it's not my fault they made those little figurines so dang cute! I felt bad that they lived in a dusty cardboard box when they should be living in a tiny little house which is also made out of cardboard but like good cardboard. I even made them tiny furniture."

Dash walked off without a word, hooking his hand through one of Abi's dungaree straps as he passed by to drag her along. He—correctly—assumed Bert would follow without prompting. Despite grumbling and moaning she let herself be dragged without only a token resistance.

They pushed past the curtain doors of the shelter right into the path of an older man.

While only a few inches shorter than the man, Dash had a quarter of his muscle mass and stumbled first. He unhooked his hand to not drag Abi down with him as he fell backwards. The man reacted quickly, grabbing Dash's forearm to stop his fall.

"Sorry," he said, pulling the lanky teenager back up to his feet. "Didn't see you there."

The man had the build of a dockworker with the only hair on his face being a pair of thick caterpillar eyebrows and a five-o'clock shadow. Dash had felt some kind of armour beneath his blue coat as he bumped into him. As much as he would like to—since it would mean things were back to normal—he couldn't fault the man for wearing it. Everyone in the city had some way to protect themselves, usually knives, sometimes guns, and for the rich, armour like this man wore. All three of the teenagers had taken to wearing knives tucked in their belts or hidden in pockets, alongside keeping the collapsible spears Raccoon Knight had provided them somewhere close by.

After taking a moment to get past the shock of running into a brick wall of a man, Dash apologised, "Uh, no, my bad. Should have looked first."

"Sorry about my friend, he really needs to buy new glasses," Abi said, leaning over to poke Dash in the cheek. He slapped her hand away before it could reach him.

The man laughed, "Don't worry about it," he smiled.

Abi thought it was an ugly smile but knew better than to comment. You don't tell people about things they can't control, her Mom would say.

"Say, don't suppose you kids have seen Raccoon Knight around have you?" the older man looked almost sheepish as he asked.

"Why are you looking for her?" Bert chimed in.

The man's eyes wandered over to Bert, seemingly noticing him for the first time. As he laid eyes on the boy, his smile faltered for a split second, barely enough to register to anyone not paying close attention. Something about it made Dash suddenly alert and wary of the stranger. He'd seen that happen before on passing strangers when he was walking with Bert.

"She saved my life," the stranger smiled wider as if to compensate for his slip, "I wanted to thank her personally but I haven't seen her around."

"Are you new here?" Abi asked before Dash could speak.

Her face was the picture of seriousness, an exceedingly rare look for Abi that confirmed Dash's feelings—she'd noticed too. With all the effort she could muster, she kept her eyes locked on the stranger, refusing to look towards the gun tucked away beneath his coat.

"Just got here today."

"Oh, have you registered with Cassandra?"

"Yes, ma'am, all registered," he said, failing the invisible test.

Abi grinned and Dash was kind of amazed at how genuine it looked.

"Great!" she said, "We don't know where RK is right now but I know someone who does. Stay right here!" Abi held out both hands towards him, "I'll go get them lickety-split!"

Before the man could respond she darted away over to 'Cassandra'. Dash attempted his best apologetic smile and shrugged. "Sorry about her. We've got some work to do so I'll leave her to help you."

The man turned back to look at Dash, "Don't let me interrupt your work, go right ahead," he swept his hands past him in a 'go ahead' gesture.

He wasn't sure where to go, all he knew was that he needed to get away from that man as soon as possible. After making sure Bert was following him, he walked forward at what he hoped was a normal pace. He felt self-conscious with each step, feeling them being too fast or too slow. His mind defaulted to following after Abi but he realised that would most likely make the man suspicious. The man was still standing near the entrance to the shelter with his arms folded, his eyes staring over at Abi. Good, at least his poor acting skills hadn't alerted him. He made a mental note to ask Abi how the hell she had acted so well. With nowhere in the shelter that he could pretend to be busy, he guided Bert over to the side of the tent into the brick-and-mortar building attached to the temporary shelter.

Once in the safety of the shelter's storage building, surrounded by metal framework shelves lined with supplies, he finally relaxed. He turned and pulled the confused Bert into a tight hug.

"Dash, what's going on?" Bert's voice was muffled by being pressed into the taller boy's chest.

He didn't relent, continuing to hug his friend as if he might slip away at a moment's notice.

"Dash seriously, you're freaking me out."

"Sorry, man," he pulled away while keeping his arms on Bert's shoulders, "You remember the code, right?"

Bert's eyes went wide, "Oh. Oh! He said he registered with Cassandra… I completely forgot." He cast his eyes down, ashamed for forgetting something so important.

"It's alright," Dash assured him, "Abi's got it handled. I didn't know she could act," he laughed, hoping to lighten the mood. It didn't work.

"He could have killed us…"

"Yeah." Dash wished he could deny it.

"He still might."

…

"Yeah."

***​

Abi rushed through the rows of cots over to Mrs Sullivan. She ignored the people telling her not to run and the people saying hello. This wasn't the time for your squeaky voice Miss Jimenez!

Mrs Sullivan was walking around with a clipboard in her hand, noting things down as she spoke with anyone she came across. Abi knew she'd be asking about everyone's needs, making sure they had enough of their required medicine, food, and other necessities. A necessary task that she hated to interrupt. As she came to stop by sweet old Mr Graham, Abi reached her and found her lungs burning in protest to her short run.

"Em… Emer…" Abi panted, dropping her hands to her knees as she caught her breath.

"Abi? Are you alright?" Mrs Sullivan asked in a nasal voice.

"Emergency!" she gasped out, cursing her out-of-shape body as she pointed over to the man by the entrance. "Cassandra… Registered…" Abi sucked down a deep breath, "Guy over there says he's looking for Raccoon Knight so I asked him if he registered with Cassandra but that's the codeword and he said yes, oh and he gave Bert a weird look and I think I saw a gun under his coat," her words became little more than wheezes as her breath ran out. She recharged her lungs with another deep breath.

Mrs Sullivan's eyes widened as she turned on her heels to grab an unused walkie-talkie from a bench. "PRT assistance requested. We have a strange man at the entrance to the tent, unregistered, possibly armed," she spoke in hushed tones to keep panic to a minimum.

A deep voice replied with one word, "Copy."

Abi—after thoroughly catching her breath—turned partially to face the nearby Mr Graham while keeping an eye on the stranger through her peripheral. Realising she needed to keep up appearances, she spoke to Mr Graham with a stream of consciousness so the stranger could see her mouth moving.

"Hey, I'm pretending to talk so that guy over there thinks I'm still looking for Raccoon Knight even though she isn't here but we're not supposed to tell people that without prompting but you're okay Mr Graham and I—" she continued to ramble in his direction.

Mr Graham nodded along to her antics without much question. He knew the girl was just pretending but he honestly couldn't tell the difference between this and her usual self.

"Gun! Get down!" someone screamed.

Abi hit the deck without question, pulling Mr Graham down to the floor with her just as the first cracks of gunfire sounded out. She'd heard gunshots before but they'd always been a distant thing that she could just pretend were fireworks. Even with the distance between her and the stranger, they left her reeling from the noise and the implication of what they meant.

Mrs Sullivan yelled out a wet gurgle of a cry. Abi bit down her urge to look up and check on her. Right now she needed to make sure she and Mr Graham got out of there. None of her scout's training had prepared her for this.

They both crawled forward, keeping as low as they could while still moving at a brisk pace. All panic broke loose around them as people ran away from the shooter. The brave among them drew out their spears and rushed past them towards the crazy man with a gun instead. Abi didn't know if they were brave or stupid.

One man grabbed his own gun to return fire. Abi recognised him, she'd asked about the spiralling patterns of his face tattoo and learnt he wasn't as scary as he looked. His shots failed to reach the shooter as they crumpled against a blue forcefield around the stranger. For his efforts, he received a bullet to the chest that shredded through him like a miniature blender. Abi averted her eyes, pretending that he was fine.

'Just pretend, just pretend, just pretend.' she repeated to herself.

More shots popped behind her as she fled in a half-crouch/half-crawl. Abi winced at the sound, her face scrunching up squeezed the tears free from her face. They blurred her vision, making it hard to see where she was going. Wiping them away with her sleeve took precious moments that made her heart hammer faster in her chest.

Someone shouted something unheard over the pops of gunfire. She dared to look back, hoping it wouldn't be the end of her. A PRT officer had rushed in, spraying down the area with a liquid that rapidly expanded into clouds of foam. It stopped dead before reaching the man, pooling on the floor around an invisible sphere.

The man with the gun—the man who had killed her new friends—stopped firing, pulling out a grenade that he tossed underhand towards the officer.

Quick on the draw, the officer foamed the grenade before it could explode, muffling the explosion to almost nothing.

Mr Graham rolled under one of the empty cots, putting himself behind a medicine cabinet that had been left lying in the aisle. Abi followed after him, rolling through to the other side in a dizzying spin that blurred the world.

Another pop behind her made her whole body flinch. It sounded different than the pistol the man had been using but she had already seen how ineffective bullets were against him.

A rough hand grabbed the back of her clothes, pulling her into a sudden crouch that made her stumble forward. She screamed, flailing her arms to break free from his grip.

"Hey, it's okay. Come on," Mr Graham's raspy voice said. Abi looked up seeing his soft blue eyes staring down at her.

He swapped his hand over to her arm, pulling her with him as she rushed through the side door into the warehouse that was connected with the shelter. A bullet whizzed by them, cracking the drywall near the door.

Mr Graham ducked down, toppling over as his feet tangled beneath him. He slid a little as he faceplanted into the floor, almost tugging Abi down with him if not for his weak grip on her arm.

Abi ran through the door to avoid any further bullets. Her feet failed to find purchase on the smooth linoleum floor causing her to skid as she turned to grab Mr Graham. She wasn't strong—not like Mel or Meadow—but she felt strong as she heaved Mr Graham through the doorway. It wasn't all her, he helped by scrabbling his feet under him to push himself forward but even still, she felt strong, she felt like a hero.

The older man pulled himself to his feet first, helping Abi up as he did so. Footsteps followed behind them and Abi's body clenched as she readied to be hit by a bullet.

Abi turned to see Mrs Sullivan running in with three others from the shelter, Jane, Eduardo, and Hitomi. Her body stayed clenched as she noticed Mrs Sullivan's bloodied hand clutching her equally bloody side. Warm sticky blood spread from the gunshot wound, soaking into the fabric of her nice floral dress.

"Go!" she shouted, kickstarting Abi and Mr Graham out of their stupor.

They ran through the semi-stocked shelves of the shelter's warehouse in a snake-like pattern towards the back door. Abi's fingers clutched tightly on the hilt of the blade hidden beneath her shirt. It was a piddly thing, barely worth being called a shank, but holding it had always made her feel cooler, more in control. She craved that control right now.

At the back door, they found Dash peeking out of it while Bert stood watch.

"It's safe!" Dash turned to speak to Bert. His eyes went wide as he noticed the group running over to him. "Abi! Come on, it's clear out here!" he scooped his hand towards the door, running out into the empty streets beyond.

A flurry of gunshots cracked inside the tent as the group sprinted out into the street. No one dared to look back as they made as much distance as they could.

A PRT officer carrying a submachine gun jogged over to meet them. Still on edge, Abi screamed as she noticed his weapon. He ran past, paying her no attention as he aimed towards the warehouse with his back towards the group.

His aim snapped towards a blood-soaked woman running out of the warehouse towards them. She stopped, almost falling over as momentum carried her forward before freezing like a deer in headlights.

"Don't shoot her!" Mrs Sullivan yelled at him. His gun trailed off the woman, back towards the door.

"Don't worry, ma'am. I'm trained better than that."

"Come over here, Susie!" Mrs Sullivan ushered the woman over. Susie ran over, giving the PRT officer a wide berth. Mr Graham hugged her but her brain barely processed his touch.

Long moments passed with no more gunshots or the clicking of containment foam sprayers. Abi fought back against her tears as she tried to settle her pounding heart.

"All clear. Over," a voice came from the officer's shoulder.

He gripped his hand against the radio to reply, "Copy. Nine civilians on me," his faceless mask looked over his shoulder at the group, "One injured, taking to medical. Over."

The officer—Suárez—turned to Mrs Sullivan. "Can you walk?"

She nodded, wincing as the motion pulled at the muscles in her bloodied side. "I should be fine," she gritted out.

Suárez's impression of her improved a little at her display of mettle. He knew trained soldiers that would be in a much worse state with that much bullet in them. Just in case she was feigning her ability to ignore pain, he hooked a metal canister off his belt and dug his fingers in to scoop up some recovery aid paste which he then smeared against the wound. It wasn't exactly protocol, but letting the Empire-aligned man into the shelter hadn't been protocol either. Frankly, even without his boss's orders to keep the civilians happy, he would have given her some just for being made of sterner stuff.

The grimace drained from her face as the pain relief kicked in. "Thank you."

He nodded once then gestured with his head towards the tent, "Come on. You lot stay here. I'll send someone over shortly."

Suárez left with Mrs Sullivan in tow.

With the soldier gone it made the situation feel somehow more real for Abi. People had probably died and there was nothing she could have done about it. She palmed her eyes, trying to stem the tide of tears that erupted from her. Dash draped his arms over her, wrapping her in his hoodie. Bert's arms joined the hug shortly after. The three friends tried to find some semblance of order in the familiar hug.

Susie slumped to the floor, her mind replaying the scene she'd seen in her head. Her sister was amongst the dead and it didn't feel real. She was sure she'd wake up any moment. Mr Graham sat beside her with his hand on her shoulder, more to comfort himself than her. He needed the touch to ground himself. Jane plopped down next to him, placing her youthful smooth hand over the old man's wrinkled one. She ran idle circles on the back of it with her thumb, her mind wandering into self-deprecating thoughts.

Hitomi screamed, kicking a rock that hurt her foot and made the pain she felt that much shittier. They weren't safe here and she didn't know where else to go. It sickened her that she could take comfort in the fact she had no one left, no one who could have gotten hurt in the attack. Her rage bubbled up as frustration at the random loss of life and the personal loss of security.

Eduardo walked away, not bothering to tell anyone where he was going. He barely knew himself.

The hug didn't help her feel better. She wasn't sure anything could. Abi felt more useless than ever, the control in her life once again spiralling out of her fingers. Thoughts of being heroic swirling in her mind. There was one thing she could do to make the world better in spite of all this.

***​

Twelve people died and fifteen were injured. Twelve people whom she had seen and spoken to, people she had started to learn about. All of them were gone forever, a light snuffed out. It felt silly, but the idea that she wouldn't learn what their favourite things made the hurt feel all too real. She loved to ask people about what they loved. Seeing their faces light up as they spoke about their favourite food or movie was magical. The world had twelve fewer people in it and she couldn't understand why.

She crept away in the midst of the mourning, yearning to balance out the cosmic scales with a heroic act. Nothing could bring them back, she knew that—but the universe needed to work on some semblance of logic or it was just blind chaos and she didn't like the idea of that. Putting bad into the world would cascade, creating more bad. Leviathan showed up to bring a lot of bad and it continued to spread out catching everyone up in the sticky black tar that pulled them all under. If she put some good back, then that good would spread out too. Doing that on a small scale was nice and all but it paled in comparison to the amount of tar in Brockton Bay. No, for this to balance out she needed something big.

Abi stared at the white display case. Inside, through the plastic glass hatch, she could see a wooden box filled with a green goop. Meadow had invented it on the day she'd brought Artificer to the base but hadn't used it yet. Abi had watched her friend modify it on occasion, adding pipettes of weird liquids she'd mixed together from random chemicals. A handful of worn notes was taped to the side of the box. She pried them free to read.

'HOW TO STOP IT IN TOYLET?

MAKE IT EAT HUMAN WASTE? WOULD IT LIKE THAT?

CANT STOP SALT WATER OR IT WONT WORK

PIPES ARE BAD BUT MYBE OKAY? MAKE IT TURN INTO AIR AFTER TIME?'

It took a moment for her to parse Meadow's messy handwriting. Idle doodles and crude diagrams were dotted randomly around the words. Her friend had spent a long time modifying or changing the plant matter to combat complications that cropped up. It was a level of forward-thinking Meadow didn't usually display, showing that the stuff was definitely special.

Meadow had spent spare moments between preparing for the raid to work on this unassuming lump of algae. It was a solution to the flooding in Brockton Bay, the solution to the food crisis, and would keep people hydrated all in one. Except, Meadow had spent a long time going back and forth trying to decide if it would work. Abi knew her friend was overthinking things, and when your friends did that, sometimes you just had to make the decision for them.

She reached in to grab the wooden box, her eyes scanning around her to make sure no one was watching. Everyone was distracted, unaware she'd even snuck away. With her sneaking skills, she severely doubted even Dash with his eagle eyes noticed her skulking away.

Once her fingers touched the box she snapped it back, leaping away from the repurposed bakery display case just in case it was booby-trapped. Nothing happened.

Abi breathed a sigh of relief and fled the scene of the crime.

***​

Momma Goose blipped into existence near the shelter, still visible despite the distance Abi had put between it and her. No one climbed out, instead, the back opened up to request more people. It'd probably be waiting for a while.

She'd gone out beyond the sandbags, into the sections of the street that were still flooded, to get as much privacy as she could while still being close enough to scream for help should someone else come looking to… Well, she didn't want to think about that right now.

Her eyes snapped to focus on the wooden box in her hands, pushing away the creeping thoughts of the bodies she'd run away from. The box was completely unremarkable, just plywood chunks glued together to make a rectangle. Even the lump of plant matter inside of it was unremarkable. If you told her it was just a lump of moss around a thick ball of dough, she wouldn't have doubted it. The power it held, though, was unmistakable. This would change the city, it would fix things, and make her a hero.

Meadow might not understand why she had to make the choice for her but she'd thank her when she saw all the good it would do.

She upturned the box, sending the ball of doughy grass flopping down into a puddle unceremoniously. For a long moment, it sat there doing nothing. Just as she doubted it even worked, it began to creep outwards as if it were dissolving while still maintaining its mass. The water turned green as the plant matter crept towards it before forming into a solid mossy plant.

Abi watched it spread, completely enraptured. Then it got faster, doubling in speed. After it doubled in size it doubled in speed again and again and again until it was spreading so fast Abi couldn't keep up with it. The sudden change in pace made her panic. Her thoughts faltered as she tried to think up a solution.

She scooped her hands under the grassy sphere that had been the starting glob and pried it free from the rest of the plant. There wasn't any water left, just a thick layer of green plants layered like a grassy lasagna. The glob drooped in her hands, no different from the spreading plant matter around her.

Not knowing what to do next, she stuffed the glob into the pocket of her dungarees and ran back to the shelter.

Abi didn't believe in a god but she hoped and prayed for some divine intervention.

Spoiler: Author's Note:

I felt this interlude best fit here despite it leaving the last chapter on a cliffhanger. The price of good flow, I think.

Thanks for reading! Also, Via gave me seven stars on her wormfic review spreadsheet (for some reason?) so I felt obligated to shill Scarab. Read it here!

 

[bee.exe]

5.3

My old Mom glared up at me, "Fuck you, pig," she spat with more venom than a snake.

Seeing her again made my stomach feel weird. She looked worse than I remembered. Welts dotted her face where she'd scratched it raw and her skin was pale with deep purple sunken bags under her light blue eyes. It was like looking into a warped mirror.

"I'm a raccoon, actually," I corrected her. What a silly mistake to make.

"The fuck? You're just some kid," she slurred the words. After all, it had been a party, and she didn't need an excuse to drink.

"You're just some adult."

"Listen, I didn't do anything, alright? Let me go," she begged with big pleading eyes. It was the same face I used on my actual Mom before she became immune to it.

"The PRT'll process you; if you don't have any warrants, they'll let you go."

"You don't know how the fucking world works. The cops have a warrant on me for stupid shit I didn't do, alright? They're just fascists and you're helping them!"

"Jail's not so bad. You'll get warm food and shelter which is better than most of Brockton Bay right now. You can also try to get off the drugs while you're there, you'll feel better."

"You don't fucking know me. Don't act like you know what's good for me. You're just some delusional kid playing dress-up."

"I know some stuff. My, uh… Dad? Yeah, my Dad," I lied using my amazingly quick thinking, "He used to do drugs pretty much every single day. It hurt me to see him hurting himself. He wasn't originally like that—we used to be a happy family—but he changed after my D- Mom was… mean to me. She hit me, yelled at me, all sorts of stuff and he just didn't know how to deal with it so he turned to drugs. Just pills at first but then my Mom got arrested and he didn't know how to raise a kid like me on his own so he turned to worse stuff. Then he became just as bad as my Dad… I mean my Mom."

Hopefully, my slip-up wouldn't alert her.

Old memories burned at the back of my mind. I gently patted them, guiding them back down into their slumber with soft words of comfort. They were a part of me, as much as I wanted them to not be. Accepting the bad with the good was life, right?

My old Mom stared at me with wide eyes not saying a word.

"If he got clean from the drugs," I continued after clearing the lump in my throat, "I like to think that he would have been there for me and we could have been a happy family that moved past what had happened to us. Instead, he drove me away and I found someone nicer."

"You don't know me," she protested but it sounded weak with her voice cracking from emotion.

Her story was my story, and in a twisted way, she did care about me. I saw it when she promised things that she never followed through with. In fading moments of sobriety, she would sit and talk with me to try to bridge the distance she'd made between us. And before it all, we would go camping to look at the stars and laugh with each other. Nostalgic memories and temporary moments didn't make up for the shit she put me through but I could also see the uncommon moments when she had cared and the fact that she'd been hurt along with me. Bad with the good.

"Maybe not. I do know that this isn't right. Whether it's because of the state of the city or they were already on the road here—no one who came here is in a good place. Even if they did bad things, no one deserved to die in that arena."

"Raccoon Knight, we have a problem, can you come over here?" Mouse Protector's voice chimed in through my headphones.

My old Mom muttered something I couldn't make out at the same time.

"Hey, what's your name?" I asked her.

"Huh?" she sounded tired.

"Your name, what is it?"

"Lauren." Not 'Honey'? I was dead wrong.

"Cool. Well, I've got to go deal with something so I'll send someone over to unstuck you, Lauren. I'm sorry we had to meet like this. Think about getting off of drugs. Bye."

I waved at her as I turned and left. She slumped down, only the glue still holding her up.

The mall looked a lot worse without the crowd blocking the piles of trash or the smashed-up stores. There was so much graffiti covering the walls I could barely tell what colour they were before. Some of it looked nice, with sharp stylised letters that spelt out words I couldn't read but most of it was just a bunch of swear words or crude drawings of dicks.

Mouse Protector was talking with someone I didn't recognise, a thin-looking woman who had one of my spears. I felt bad not knowing her name but it was so hard to remember all the people at the shelter.

"Hey, what's up?" I asked as I approached, catching both of their attention.

The thin woman ducked her head as she noticed me, staring down at the floor.

"Kid, we've uh… Dangit! This is hard to say."

Mouse Protector had never struggled to speak her mind before. My mind raced with the possible bad stuff that might have happened.

"Just tell me, please."

"Someone attacked the shelter."

No. That couldn't be right, could it? Why would anyone want to do that? My blood ran cold. There were two groups who would, either the Empire were looking for revenge or the Slaughterhouse Nine decided to start their rampage. Either way, "we have to get back. Now."

"Kid, listen, they've got it handled, okay? We lost some people but we need to focus on this."

"They can't handle the Nine! We have to go back!"

"Woah, woah, woah. The Nine isn't there," Mouse Protector held up her hands, pushing the air down in front of her. "The guy who did it is dead. One of our own got him with a spear," she scoffed, "PRT were useless."

"The Nine isn't… Oh, thank the stars," my heavy heart felt a little lighter. "But… we still lost people? How many, Mouse?"

"Kid, we need to focus on the here and now, okay? We've got a lot of work to do."

"How many people, Mouse? And who?"

She sighed, "Twelve people plus a handful of injured. I didn't hear names."

Twelve people dead. Twelve people that I promised to protect. Would it have been better to leave Lele's turret up? Would things have gone differently if we'd left a truck behind? Maybe we should have left the Merchants alone and just bunkered down? But then we wouldn't have the collagen needed to make sure everyone was healthy.

"Sorry to pile it on kid but there's something else," Mouse Protector's voice snapped me out of my spiralling thoughts. "Someone released something into the water. Whole city's gone green, even the toilets."

"Green? Like plants?"

"Yeah, plants."

Fuck. A small part of me hoped that Armsmaster or Kid Win had had the same idea as me and beat me to the punch. Realistically, someone must have stolen the one I made and released it. That thing wasn't even close to complete even with all the changes I'd made to it. Worse still, I hadn't finished the stopper to make it not eat through the ocean yet. Would the partially finished version listen to what I'd tried to tell it to or would it just eat and eat and ruin the entire planet?

"Kid, you okay? You're looking a little green."

"Mouse, what if it eats the oceans?"

Mouse Protector sucked a breath through her teeth as she considered it. Then she bobbed her head to the side in a half-shrug.

"Eh, if it hasn't already then it probably won't. The PRT aren't screaming out on emergency channels so I think we get to keep our beach days," she clapped a hand against my pauldron.

"Let's focus on the present, yeah?" she continued, "We have the boys in mirrors inbound as requested but they're complaining about the conditions of the roads so they might be late. Vista says Calvert's on the horn and requesting you specifically but you can leave him on hold if you want, make 'im wait. We're getting closer to an official body count and our red crosses are doing their best to keep some of the worst alive. Had to blind and gag Skidmark, he kept shouting and trying to break free. Artificer refuses to get close to Skidmark which means we can't get her to figure out how to get Whirlygig out of Gregor's slime so we need you on that or we can't heal her leg. We have a couple of people trying to pull it away but they're just making more of a mess and water didn't do anything."

Mouse Protector tapped a finger against the chin of her motorcycle helmet. "Think that's it."

"That's a lot. Can you go around and make sure everyone is on task? I want to talk to Director Calvert first before anything. Try salt or salt water on the slime but I'll come over after I finish talking to him. Then, I'll talk with Artificer."

"Aye aye, captain," Mouse Protector saluted.

I left her to go find Vista. Throughout the mall, my soldiers were flowing like busy little bees inside a beehive. They'd free people from their glue prison one at a time while someone else zip-tied them down. With Vista's help, they'd guide them all into a group for easier PRT pickup. The mall looked like a smudged oil painting with all the twisted space. You could look to your left and end up seeing behind you as the space stretched and squished as needed.

Vista's face was scrunched up in concentration as she kept up the tunnels, funnels, and squished space. She looked as adorable as ever and wicked cool at the same time. Her eyes flicked up to me as I stepped through one of her tunnels before going back to the mall.

"You doing okay, Vista?" I asked.

"It's all the people. Makes it feel like I'm about to slip constantly."

"People can walk a bit longer if you need a break. PRT is gonna be late anyway. Was riding with Artificer alright?"

"Nah, I'm fine, don't need a break. Artificer ranted a lot about the Merchants but she was nice enough. I learnt some new swearwords from her," she grinned. "You okay talking with Calvert?"

"That's why I came here."

Vista nodded. Pressing a hand against her ear she spoke to the open air, "She'll talk."

My Ward's phone rang the moment she'd finished speaking, the screen showing an unknown caller.

"Keep up the good work, Vista!" I praised my favourite Ward before making some distance to take the call in private.

I hooked the phone to the radio on my back to receive the call directly into my headphones. Taking off my helmet in such a crowded place was definitely a bad idea.

As soon as I answered Thomas spoke in a sharp tone, "Explain to me why after I was so generous as to grant you permission to use my Ward on a dangerous mission—without so much as a complaint, mind you—, that you've decided to endanger my city by releasing a pathogen of unknown proportions."

"Thomas, I didn't release it."

"Ah, my mistake, it must have been the other Tinker capable of doing such a feat. Let me think, now who could possibly have made something so far-spread? Armsmaster? No, much too focused and while reckless enough to fight Leviathan on his own, he wouldn't be so foolish. How about Squealer? Or wait, was it Artificer, now? Maybe we should bring her in for questioning."

"No? I made it. Obviously. Artificer works with vehicles, you should know that. I think someone stole it from me and released it before it was ready."

"You're telling me you planned to release it yourself?"

"Well, yeah, when it was done. This is like an early prototype that wasn't meant to be released. Mark Three, maybe? I'm not good at the Armsmaster way of naming things."

"This is not the time for jokes. You have endangered lives. Water is a basic human right and you have denied a whole city it. This is worthy of a birdcage sentence, Raccoon Knight."

"H-hey, I didn't do that! You can just eat the grass! It's food and water like a watermelon and you can pee and poop in it because it eats it up! I had an amazing lock on the box so clearly someone amazingly skilled and intelligent broke in because only I knew what it even did!"

At least I hoped I remembered to put the lock back on the hatch. Oh stars, what if I forgot?

"It's edible?" Thomas' tone shifted from the sword-sharp bark to a confused curiosity.

"Yeah. Yes. It has lots of vitamins and an okay amount of calories. And it's just like wet cat food, where you won't need to drink water because it has plenty in it."

"Assuming I take you at your word, that quells my worries somewhat. You have proven to be a wildcard in the past Miss Knight, albeit reliable in your honesty—that history of honesty is the only thing currently saving you from the strong arm of the law, so I suggest you keep your head down. Even if you were not directly culpable for this act, you have enabled it by not having better security on what I should be marking down in the paperwork as a plague. You're lucky I'm in a position to downplay the severity of this and point the blame at someone more deserving, hm? Should I hear a single peep out of you in the near future you will have the full brunt of the PRT's forces bearing down on you to put an end to you. This is your first and final warning; do not do anything on this scale again without consulting the PRT first. In addition, you will be hearing from me by day's end with a request that I highly suggest you do not refuse. Good day, Raccoon Knight."

The phone line went dead with a click. I stood there for a long moment staring at the mannequin before me. She was wearing a bikini and her entire porcelain white body had been graffitied with words I only half knew. Her blank stare looked almost sad. Her identity as a plastic white version of a person had been stolen by a serial killer—I'd read articles about store-front mannequins being replaced with ones with actual skin colours to make sure they didn't look too close to the real Mannequin. Would she feel bad about losing her friends? Would she be sad about being scribbled on with mean words?

A small hand prodded me in the soft gambeson at the side of my breastplate. Vista's serious face greeted me as I turned around. I was too out of it to appreciate how cool she looked in her wavy green costume with her hair slightly messy from running around.

"I'm all done, going to head home. Thanks for inviting me," she smiled, "I feel bad saying I had fun considering what happened with the new trigger but it was fun. More accurately I should say I feel accomplished—we did something good today. Maybe we can patrol together sometime? I have one with Flechette soon around Parian's territory if you want to join us?"

I perked up at the mention of Parian, my body filling with energy. "Parian? I've always wanted to meet her! I love plushies. Do you think she'd make me a giant one I could keep?"

"Probably not. I'm not even sure she'd have the materials. Maybe get to know her first and ask in the future?" Vista shrugged. "I'll text you the times later. See you, Knight!"

"Okay. Bye, Vista," I waved as she took her leave, "Thanks for coming! You were super cool!"

Vista turned to wave back with a grin on her face and blushing cheeks. I wished I had a camera in my helmet so I could keep an image of her face right now forever and ever.

Vista's work might be over but I still had plenty to do. Too many thoughts danced around in my head, all of them competing for my attention. As Mouse Protector said, I needed to triage them. Whirlygig first. Artificer second. Back to the shelter and that whole mess, third. Dealing with the spreading plants next—then, trying to figure out who spread them. And finally, dealing with whatever Thomas was going to request of me.

By the time I returned to the centre of the mall, Whirlygig had been freed from the slime with the help of a bucket of salt water and her leg had been bandaged up.

With that problem being solved by my trusty medics I moved on to find Artificer. Raindrop wasn't hard to find considering it was no longer invisible. She was close to a quadbike in size but extra long to let Vista sit in the back. Unlike a quadbike, the front was covered like a car would be and the back had a plastic glass case to let Vista see out from it. Raindrop definitely couldn't blend in with street cars. We'd offered to sell the PRT Raindrop so Vista could use it on patrol but they'd declined. After this, Raindrop would be torn down to her parts so we could make something a bit more useful without the best Ward around.

Artificer had her head down on the dashboard with her arms covering her ears. Her blonde hair flowed over her arms onto the plastic dials and gizmos telling her how the car was doing.

I pulled open the car door and asked, "You doing okay?"

Artificer let out a muffled groan. Definitely not okay.

"Wanna talk about it?"

She pried her head free from the comfort of her arm nest to look at me with sad eyes. "I want to see him but I also dread the idea of seeing him."

"Skidmark?"

Nodding her head she continued, "Yeah. I don't know what I want to get from it I just need something. Closure, maybe? Or maybe I just want to go back."

"He's going to jail, soon."

"Yeah. I would be too if I'd just stuck with him. Isn't that weird? My life would be normal right now if he just hadn't tried to kill you."

"Normal isn't good, though, right? You told me you didn't like who you were."

"I didn't!" she barked, "but that's only in hindsight! Back then I didn't think about it. I didn't think about how bad things were I just kept going for the next bit of fun. I didn't need to worry about doing good or morality, I just got to party as much as I wanted. Sex, drugs, alcohol, pure fun that kept all the stupid shit away from me!" Artificer slammed her hand against the dashboard making me jump.

"Now I'm just a sad sack who can barely bother getting out of bed in the morning. I never thought about my past back then, didn't have to—Skids would keep the good times flowing and I didn't need to worry about a damn thing. I'm not built for all this worrying. I keep thinking that if I could just smoke one more bowl, inject one more needle, then maybe—just maybe—I might realise that I have things better now. And if I don't, then I can just go back to how things were. Things were easier back then… Things didn't hurt me back then," she let out a heavy sigh.

"Feeling sad about stuff hurts but it isn't bad," I said, "You've got to feel bad for the good stuff to feel better, yeah?" I placed my hand across her back in an awkward half-hug. "Right now you're dealing with all the bad stuff coming back up because you ignored it. Facing the bad things is hard, but if we just ignore them then they won't go away—ever. I don't know the best way to do anything or even really what you're going through, but I'm here for you, Sherrel. You can do this, I believe in you."

Sherrel rubbed her arm across her face, smearing it with a streak of tears, snot, and makeup. "One day at a time, right, Raccoon Girl?" she turned her to smile at me. It was a weak smile, barely a ghost, but it was a good start.

"Yeah. One day at a time. Do you still want to see him? You can go home if you want."

"Nah. Fuck him. I'm not going to deny that he helped me but fuck him. I'm clean, now. Clean of the drugs and of him."

I hugged her a little tighter. "I've got to wait for the PRT but I'll be back at base soon. You rest up, okay? This must have been tough for you."

Sherrel scoffed, "To put it mildly. Thanks for putting me in the invisible car, don't think I could have stuck around if people could see me. Short-stuff didn't seem to mind all the complaints, at least. Either that or I need to apologise to her."

"Vista? She had a good time, don't worry," I patted Sherrel on the back as I pried myself away from the hug. Nearby sirens signalled the arrival of the PRT. "Gotta go! Radio me if you need anything, even if it's minor, okay?"

"Okay, okay. I'll be… maybe here, maybe back. Need some time to think."

"Do your best, Artificer!"

Leaving her with those words of encouragement I went to deal with the PRT.

Sherrel had been trying every single day to fight back against an urge. The only thing I could relate it to was my urge to gather things up into neat little piles. Fighting against that hurt me and it made open spaces feel uncomfortable like little needles prickling against my skin. Except hoarding treasures didn't ruin my health like it would with Sherrel. She was fighting against an invisible enemy that only she could see. I didn't know how to help her and encouraging words felt like so little in the face of her issues. So long as she kept trying, I'd be there to help her up if she slipped. One day at a time.

The PRT worked quickly and efficiently, not even bothering to talk to us outside of basic commands or questions. They did their jobs without question, gathering up both the unpowered and the powered members of the Merchants. Most of the unpowered would walk free since they wouldn't have arrest warrants but that was by design. We wanted to help people and removing Skidmark would shatter the Merchants. A lot of them might turn to petty crime after this but we could deal with that. Hopefully, some will find shelters that will take them in and some will leave the city entirely. We were rebuilding slowly but right now the city wasn't a good place to be and with the Slaughterhouse poking their noses where no one wanted them the city was about to get worse. They weren't going to get rid of my optimism, and I wasn't going to let anyone else die. If we can survive Leviathan, we can survive them.

Once everyone was safely secured and off to be processed, I hitched a ride on Boombox back to the base. We had enough marshmallows to last us a super long time and enough gummy candy to make everyone at my camp armour with plenty to spare. I needed better defences, better weapons, better detections. We probably didn't have a lot of time left to prepare for it but at least we could repurpose the vehicles for it.

The city looked a lot greener than we had left it. All the roads were partially or completely covered in the edible algae-moss-seaweed mix. Even some of the buildings had the plants climbing up the side like ivy. We couldn't see the ocean in the direction we were heading. I tried to glance between the buildings to hopefully catch a glance of it but had no luck. Thomas wouldn't have even spoken to me if I had doomed the world to a green sea so I just had to accept that it was probably fine.

Max—the driver of Boombox—whistled as he took in the new plants. "Looks like we've travelled five years into the future when the plants finally claim everything."

"We need a group to start grabbing it all. It'll be our main water for a bit," I said.

"I could set that up if you want. Anything special we need to do with it?"

"No, just scoop it up. Probably put it in a barrel of water or something to clean it. There's one full of rainwater by the shelter if it hasn't been turned to plants as well."

"And if it is plants?"

"We have a whole mall full of stuff, there might be some water bottles there. Speaking of," I grabbed the packet of marshmallows I'd stuffed inside my coat.

Prying them open, I popped one into my mouth and offered one to Max. We continued our drive back home, chewing on the sticky sweet goodness alongside idle chatter.

I looked down into the bag to grab another and realised they were just marshmallows. They had none of their infinite potential, none of their healing properties, no ideas for containment grenades or something that lets me stick to walls. They were just marshmallows.

I tried to remember how I'd made the healing paste in the past but the thoughts were hazy. They had plants, collagen, and… something. The plants were dandelion leaves and grass but had they been coated in something first? It was like trying to remember a dream after I just woke up.

All of this had been for these. We'd risked our safety to get these and I couldn't even use them.

"Fucking damn it."

---

No one disturbed me as I looked over the corpses of the people we'd lost and the body of the man who had done it. It bothered me how used to seeing corpses I was by now.

I didn't know all of their names but I had seen them, I'd given them jobs to do and they'd helped keep the place running. They were all a life equal to my own with thoughts and feelings and a whole history behind it. Each of them had dreams, ideas, memories, likes and dislikes, hates and loves.

Twelve people died at the hands of a member of the Empire. He'd died with them, a spear driven through his neck by Hansuke Fujita who had died during his brave act. He'd saved people here and his reward was a bloody death by bullets that ripped things apart.

The murderer's equipment had been laid out near him. A belt with a flat square of metal for a buckle, a mundane pistol with bullets that had teeth attached to them, and a password-locked phone with a message visible on the home screen: 'Stay safe. Love you.'

He had someone waiting for him, someone who loved him. He'd come to kill people who had people who loved them too and for what? What did he possibly gain by killing these people? Revenge for Hookwolf? A way to get at Miss Militia for Purity?

I had no clear answers.

"I managed to convince an out-of-town hospital to pick them up," Stacy told me after I finished burning the faces of the corpses into my mind. "They'll contact next of kin if they have any and work out funeral arrangements."

"Thank you."

"Yeah," Stacy huffed out a breath, "People are scared. A handful left to stake it out on their own. I tried to convince them to stay but they were dead set. I think things will feel a bit better after you do your healing thing on the injured, boss."

"Not your boss… and I–I can't. The marshmallows aren't broken."

"No clue what that means."

"I need things to be broken to use them. Those marshmallows aren't broken."

"Oh. We could rip them up and then throw them in the dirt? Think that'll make 'em broken enough?"

My eyes went wide. I can't break stuff to make it broken but other people could! This might just work!

***​

People were hungry for something to distract themself with and pouring out a bag of marshmallows to stomp on them was as good as anything. We experimented at first, using only a smaller bag to see if I could use it and I found that I couldn't. My hopes and dreams were crushed alongside the sticky goop.

Before I could spiral too far, someone suggested I leave first before they mushed the candy. And weirdly enough—that worked!

My power had strange demands but she knew what was best. At least I could rely on the people here to help me.

By the time the sun was setting, we had thoroughly mushed most of the marshmallows down into a barrel for storage and a good chunk of the gummy candy into another. As my people ripped and crushed our candy treasures, I'd been working on our first batch of healing paste. Not everyone who had been injured could slap the paste on themselves and call it a day, some of them would need stitches or even surgery. At least it would help. At least we had it in spades for the future.

As I was working on a second batch, Dash poked me for a conversation in private. He looked scared and angry at the same time. An unusual expression since I'd never seen him with anything more than a bored look or a slight smile. We made some distance from the base, keeping a wary eye out for people.

"What'd you wanna talk about?"

"First you need to tell me you won't get mad. That you won't do anything rash."

"Is it going to make me mad?"

"I don't know you well enough to say. You don't seem like you get mad very often. Maybe?"

"Hm. Alright, I promise I won't get mad."

Dash ran a hand across his head, making his shaggy blond hair messier than it already was. "I think Abi did something. She ran off for a bit and then came back looking guilty. I tried talking to her but she's keeping mum."

"She released the plants…" I pieced it together out loud.

"Wait. How could she? Unless… you're the one who made this stuff?"

I nodded idly as I tried to figure out why she would do it. Abi often got in trouble because she didn't think things through. We had that in similar which is why I'd been trying to become extra careful lately. I'd seen myself in an Abi-shaped mirror and tried to do better. But that still didn't explain why she would want to release it.

"Shit are we… isn't this really bad? People hate stuff like this, right?"

"Yeah. They do. Director Calvert almost sentenced me to the birdcage—I'm really lucky I made it full of water or I might not be here right now."

"How did she get it? How did she even know about it?" Dash asked, his voice shifting tone slightly in a way I couldn't read.

"I spoke to her while I was working on it so she knew what it did. I might have forgotten to put the lock on it's box."

"You forgot to lock it up? Are you fucking serious?" he glared at me with clear anger on his face.

"Hey, it's not my fault she decided to do this! I told her it wasn't ready yet."

"You left something that could do this," he waved his arms around us, gesturing to the moss-covered roads, "out in the open without a lock! What if someone else took it? What if one of the kids decided to play with it and ended up spreading it? You can't seriously think that forgetting to lock something like this up makes this Abi's fault!"

"She decided to use it knowing full well it wasn't finished! I can't control her, she's her own person!"

"She was scared! We were all scared. A man came in here and killed people and you were out playing fucking hero. You were supposed to protect us!"

"We needed those marshmallows. I had to make a hard call and you don't get to throw it into my face. I did all I could to protect you—the PRT were right outside! How was I supposed to know they wouldn't do their jobs?"

"You're just making up excuses to alleviate your guilt," he jabbed a finger against my breastplate, "You fucked up," he jabbed again, "You pissed off the Empire and put us in danger," another jab, "You got those people killed!"

I punched him in the jaw. Dash collapsed to the ground, clutching his face. Scrabbling backwards away from me he pulled himself to his feet. His face was bleeding, scratched by the metal knuckles of my gauntlet.

Tears were welling up in my eyes from the anger coursing through me. "I tried my best," I strained to keep my voice level. "I did what I could. I made the hard call because I needed to think about the future. You can yell at me, insult me, whatever, I don't care. But you do not get to tell me I killed those people. The Empire killed them. I hate that they're dead and I would do anything to change it but I can't."

Dash glared at me, clutching onto his jaw. "Go screw yourself, Meadow."

He walked off without another word.

I squeezed my hands closed into tight fists then flexed them out into claws over and over to try to burn away some of the anger in me. This wasn't my fault. He'd somehow avoided Lele's detection, somehow made it past the PRT, and somehow had that shield. Was he a Tinker himself? I'd never heard of him but there were a lot of new capes cropping up recently.

Pacing around didn't stop my anger so I decided to sit down on the curb. I rolled the nearby algae-seaweed-moss mix between my fingers. It felt spongy like a cake. I'd never even named it. Project Dryad? Gigi, the Dryad? Did it matter now?

Up above a giant red metal beast soared by with a rumbling woosh. One of Dragon's suits. It looked like the Glag? Glaring? Glauren? I couldn't remember its name. She'd sent some suits after Leviathan to help out with all the crime. I wondered what she was up to. Probably something important. Maybe I could make something like that too. A dragon to protect my lair? It'd be my biggest project yet.

My phone rang, distracting me from being distracted.

"Raccoon Knight," Thomas' voice greeted me.

"Thomas," I grit out the words, trying to not sound angry. My body raged, wanting to punch something but I knew it wouldn't help.

"The Undersiders and the Travelers have decided to claim the city for their own. One of them—Hellhound—has decided to occupy an area near you if I'm not mistaken. You'll find it in your best interest to be rid of her."

"And what if I fail?"

"Then you fail, so be it. This is for your benefit, Raccoon Knight, you should see to it that you succeed. Don't worry about the Undersiders retaliating in either case, they won't be so stupid. You're an important asset to the PRT and we wouldn't want you to fall into the hands of villains."

"You've already failed to protect my shelter. Why should I trust you to stop the Undersiders?"

"Today's events were… unfortunate but preventable with a little more security, yes? I'm sure you're of a like mind in thinking that you should be rethinking your open-door policy. My officers can confiscate weapons from anyone entering in the future but I can't account for tinker technology. Perhaps that would be more your area of expertise?"

"I could make a scanner or something… maybe."

"Excellent. I shall be in touch in the future. Best of luck with Hellhound. Farewell."

Thomas hung up, leaving me to my thoughts.

I had no idea how to fix any of this.

 

[bee.exe]

5.4

I'd never really been to the Trainyard, always too scared as a kid of the towering stacks of cargo containers and then scared as a teenager by the Trainyard Man. I'd sent people here to gather scrap and they hadn't complained about him bothering them but I'd still kept my distance just in case. Except Trainwreck prowled these rusted scraps of metal no longer, currently on his way straight to jail with a personal PRT escort. I still looked over my shoulder at every barking dog in case he'd broken free and was looking to reclaim his home.

The Trainyard… kind of sucked. Scavengers had torn most of the good stuff down or it had been washed away in the waves that hit the city. Even the gravel beneath my boots didn't make a satisfying crunch as I walked on it, just soft squishes thanks to all the new moss weaved between the tiny rocks.

In a way, I'd got what I wished for with all this moss; I'd changed the city. Now I just needed to figure out how to change it for the better. Would fighting Hellhound do that? I wasn't sure. In truth, I didn't want to fight her but I had to stop her from scaring everyone out of the Trainyard. It was barely noon but we'd had seven different people come to our shelter claiming they got chased out of the Trainyard by a girl with demon lizards. Arresting her would leave the area undefended, it would leave those same people vulnerable. My shelter wasn't too far from here, but I couldn't be everywhere at once. Better to get her to stop than to get rid of her. Maybe it was petty, but I didn't want to do what Thomas wanted me to either. He just said 'Deal with her', so I will in my own way.

Their abandoned campsites were everywhere, packed between the boxcars with hammocks and tarpaulin sheets stretched between rusted metal to make a place safe from the weather. No one was here now. The footprints showing their quick escape were recent and so were the giant clawed pawprints scuffing the gravel. Hellhound had been here—if the barking all around me didn't make it obvious enough.

I trudged through the Trainyard towards the loudest group of barking. Like most of the docks, this place was full of old warehouses that had been overgrown from disuse. I squeezed through a thin gap between two of the factories to make my way out to an actual road. Aside from the Meadow Moss that was now almost everywhere in the city, there were plenty of other plants growing through the pothole-filled road. Everything here hadn't been taken care of in a long time.

A sharp whistle to my right caught me off guard and I fumbled my panicked grab for Dede.

What felt like a motorbike with legs slammed into my side, knocking me down to the ground. I tried to roll with the blow but two big meaty paws slammed into my shoulders pinning me down.

Slobbering fangs snapped close to my face as I heaved with all my body to shove the dog off of me.

It recovered faster than I could stand up and all I could manage before it attacked was to throw my arm in front of me. Fangs crunched down against my armoured forearm.

The few teeth that pierced my chainmail were stopped by the gambeson underneath. Despite not having new holes in my arms, it still hurt a lot to have a giant dog crushing my arm in its jaws like a vice.

Not wanting to hurt it, I sprayed Roro's smelly spray into my right hand and smeared it across the dog's nose.

The dog shook my arm violently, making me almost trip up. It let go a moment later to vomit a brown slurry onto the floor.

"What the fuck did you do to my dog?!" a scratchy voice yelled at me just as a fist collided with my helmet.

My head shook from the force of the punch. The stocky girl who had hit me stumbled back, clutching her hand.

"Ah fuck!"

Her face looked like a cartoon character with how red it was. Steam would begin billowing out of her ears at any moment. The dog—which was still growing, with new bone plates popping out of its skin—retched up another load of sick.

Hellhound screamed, charging towards me like a bull.

"Hey wait! I just want to talk!" I said as I dodged to the side to avoid her.

She skidded to a stop as she passed me and swung her momentum into a punch. I ducked down beneath it then shoulderbarged into her stomach. She didn't budge an inch.

Hellhound wrapped her hands together before slamming them down into my back. All the air in my lungs wheezed out as I slammed face-first into the concrete.

She kicked out, her foot scraping my helmet as I rolled onto my back to avoid it. Before she followed through with a stomp, I fired a glue rope from Roro that stuck her shin to her torso.

Hellhound toppled over like a mighty tree, landing on the pavement with a grunt.

I leapt to my feet, firing two quick glue ropes onto her upper torso and lower torso. She kicked her leg out, snapping the one attached to her shin. With her legs in a better position, I glued those down too.

She wriggled against her constraints, screaming for someone called Angelica to hurt me. The dog let out a shaky bark before returning to retching.

Her stocky build, messy hair, and thick arms reminded me a lot of Mel. They could be sisters and would be close to twins if Bitch dyed her hair black and wore makeup.

"Please, I just want to talk to you."

"You hurt my dog!"

"I can help, okay? Is it okay if I touch them?" I fished around in my pockets for a packet of mints.

"Leave her alone. Leave me alone."

"It'll help, promise. The stinkiness is sticky so that it keeps people down for a long time but I can help clear it up if she sniffs this mint," I explained holding a mint between my fingers. "Wait, you know a lot about dogs, right, Hellhound?"

Hellhound glared at me, "My name is Bitch!"

"Oh, sorry. You know a lot about dogs, right, Bitch?"

"Stay the fuck away from my dog!"

"She's going to keep throwing up unless I help."

Angelica—as if to make my point—retched out another load of her dinner. Bitch screamed, raw and primal, as she struggled against the glue ropes. As she tried to brute force her way free of her binds, Angelica continued to throw up beside me. I felt bad just leaving her like that but I didn't want to piss off Bitch even more. I waited patiently until Bitch stopped her struggling.

Panting, she bared her teeth at me, "Fucker. Fine. Help her."

"Are dogs allergic to mint? I know they can't eat chocolate and grapes but I've never owned a dog before."

"No," she half-grunted half-said.

"Okay, good."

I knelt down next to—presumably—Angelica. She had thrown up a lot into nasty brown puddles with chunks of maybe meat in them. I ignored my power getting excited about the vomit.

"Not gonna hurt you. Just want to help, okay?" I said in a soft tone, holding the mint towards her.

Angelica gave me a half-hearted growl and I pulled my hand away.

"Calm," Bitch commanded in a tone that would never make a person calm.

She stopped growling, listening to her friend's command. I reached out the rest of the way, presenting her with the small white smooth donut.

"Sniff it, okay? It'll help clear out your nose a little."

I realised dogs don't know much English—which knowing the existence of England made me just realise why it's not called American—so I sniffed the air a few times to show her what I wanted her to do.

Angelica leant forward to sniff the mint with her giant nostrils. Bitch's power made her huge and left her barely looking like a dog at all—but she was still a cutie pie. Her flesh—which looked more like muscle fibre than flesh—had extra bone plates that made her look ferocious. She'd fit in well on one of the covers of the heavy metal albums Heather loves.

"Can I pet her?" I asked Bitch who was glaring daggers at me from her spot on the floor.

"No."

"Okay."

I left it at that and let Angelica keep sniffing the mint. After her first curious sniff, she seemed to understand it was helping because she started to sniff it like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

Her retching slowed down as the minty goodness cleared out her oversized nostrils. Placing the mint on the ground so she could keep sniffing, I took a step back to give her some distance. I felt bad for hitting her with Roro's gas at all but it was better than having to hit a dog with Dede. Dogs don't have the same brains as humans, they just follow what their friends tell them to do. They're pretty much doomed to be bad if they end up with a bad human through no fault of their own.

"You helped her," Bitch said.

"Of course."

"I made her attack you."

"Yeah," I shrugged, "but I prefer to not hurt people unless they're being really mean. She didn't hurt me that much and even if she did she was just listening to you. If I thought she might kill me then maybe I'd have fought back a bit more but that's why I invented Roro," I patted the vials sticking out of my left gauntlet. "So I don't need to hurt people as much."

"Okay… What do you want?"

"I want you to stop chasing people out of the area. This is one of the safer places in the city and people should be allowed to stay here."

"They're in my space. I don't want people here."

"Are you gonna use all the buildings or something?"

"No."

"Then why can't they stay inside them?"

"They're bothering me. Always whining about the dogs being loud. This is my territory, fuck them."

"You could just ignore them."

"Or I can make them leave and not have to listen to their whining."

"True," I admitted. She had all the power here and didn't seem to care about hurting people.

We sat in silence as I tried to figure out what to say next. What did I know about her? Bitch loved her dogs. She used to bust up Empire dog-fighting rings before Leviathan and, if I remember right, she took those dogs with her. It would explain the huge amount of barking about a block away. Her identity was public, Rachel Lint or something, so she didn't have privacy just walking around. That must be hard, having everyone know what you've done as a cape. This was frustrating to deal with, arresting her would be so much easier. At this rate, I might just have to.

She was usually a violent person who didn't seem to care about hurting people or making them leave their homes. She likes–no, loves dogs and went out of her way to save dogs in the past.

Maybe what she needed was someone to explain to her what she was doing in a way she could understand. If she cared about dogs then…

"Think about it this way; what if someone really strong decided they didn't want you here so they kicked you and all your dogs out."

"I'd fight them."

I shook my head, "You can't beat them. Trying to fight them will just get your dogs hurt for no reason."

"Then I'll get my friends to help."

"Even then, they're too strong. You can't do anything against them. They're too big, too strong, and too fast. The only thing you can do is escape and take your dogs somewhere else."

"Fuck that."

"Yeah, it'd suck. Someone bigger comes along to kick you and your dogs out of your home just because they can. Just like what you're–"

"I get it," Bitch growled. "Stop talking."

Angelica plodded over to sit next to her, her nose full of mint and no longer retching up her dinner. Her flesh started to slough off, sliding down her body like squishy landslides. I stood in silence, feeling the wind kick up my braid and the surrounding plants. We were finally getting somewhere. She saw the error of her ways through a dog-based metaphor…. Simile? At the moment I couldn't remember which was which.

"Let's make a deal. If someone doesn't complain about the barking, you don't scare them away—let them live in peace so long as they're not bothering you or your dogs. If they do complain—or are just being a jerk—tell them to come to the nearby shelter instead of chasing them away with your big doggies. Then, if they don't listen to that, you can scare them out. Sound good?"

"Why should I listen to you?"

"You just—You agreed that chasing people away who are weaker than you was bad!"

"I said I get it. I never agreed to shit."

I wrestled the urge to put my head into my hands and scream.

Why should she listen to me? Normally heroes were supposed to arrest villains, not sweet-talk them into being semi-good for once. Taking her out would expose the necks of everyone here to the Nine. Sending them all to my base or scattering them across the city proper was just going to leave bigger groups for the Nine to attack. I could barely protect the people I had now, even with the better defences we'd been setting up, and adding more to it would just make things that much harder. We needed more capes. Even if she'd never agree to join us, I could at least talk her into not chasing these people away. They're safer in smaller pockets.

If trying to show her the error of her ways wasn't going to work, maybe I needed to threaten her. As much as I hated the idea of it, I needed to throw my weight around to get her to listen.

"If you don't agree then I'll keep coming back! You can do the thing that requires no effort in ignoring the people who aren't bothering you, or you can deal with me every single day until you do."

"I'll just fight you."

"Then your dogs will get sick a lot!"

She creased her brows, "I have friends. They'll fight you."

"Can they be here all day, every day? If we lose, then Artificer and I can build things that stop whatever you used against us. Even if we lose the fight we can just keep coming back until we win. I don't want to do that—I don't want to fight you. Fighting you would be a waste of time for us both. You have dogs to take care of and I have people—some of them even have dogs!"

I ran a hand down my braid to calm myself as I prepared to deliver bad news.

"Also, the Slaughterhouse Nine might be in town. Fighting would just make us weaker for when they show up."

"Don't care. I want to be left alone. Either they get out of my territory or I make them leave."

Internally I screamed in frustration to vent a little. How could she not care about the Nine? Being weak from a fight would just put all of the people and animals we cared about in danger. I clearly needed to gain weight since throwing it around did nothing!

…

My brain felt empty of ideas. Why couldn't she see that her not chasing people out was good for both of us? It meant she didn't need to waste energy getting rid of people and I didn't need to fight her. Maybe it needed to be a better deal for her. What would she even want?

"How about we change the deal to a trade? That way we both get something out of it. You stop chasing people out—unless they're complaining or being jerks—and in return I'll… heal, yeah, heal! I'll heal your dogs whenever you want. I have a paste that will help with cuts and bruises and it stops pain so any physical injuries I can fix," I looked over at Angelica's missing ear and eye. "Though it can't fix things that missing, like her ear. Sorry."

"Oh! I'll also give you plastic glass to replace your windows so your dogs don't get hurt by Shatterbird," I added. "You can send anyone complaining or being an actual jerk—and they better be actual jerks because I'll ask them—to my shelter. Everyone else gets left alone unless you absolutely need the building. Maybe you could even hire some of them? Let them stay here if they help you with all the dogs—doesn't matter. Sound good?"

"You'll leave if I say yes?"

"Yep. You'll only hear from me when I need to deliver stuff."

"Fine," Bitch grit out the words.

During the entire conversation, she had never stopped staring intently at my face until that moment when she looked away. She seemed like the type of person who kept eye contact unflinchingly with an intense stare that bore into your very soul. Thankfully, my helmet made it hard to tell where my eyes were looking so she didn't notice me avoiding looking directly at her glare.

"Sorry, does that mean you agree to the trade?"

"I already said that. Yes, fine, I agree. Now let me out before I change my mind."

I set to work, kneeling down next to her as I lathered my gloves in sugar to free her from the glue. We didn't talk as I worked my way through each strand with long sliding motions that pried the rope off her clothes and the floor.

Bitch pulled herself free before I finished unsticking the last strand, bolting up to her feet with a sudden motion that made me jump. She huffed out a breath through her nose.

"Don't fuck with me again or I'll make her really hurt you," she placed a hand on Angelica's head. Her little doggy ear perked up at the touch and even the partially shredded ear twitched a little. The cuteness undersold Bitch's message.

"Okay. I'll bring some healing paste over in maybe an hour. Is that okay?"

"S'fine. We're done here."

She whistled once to catch her dog's attention before leaving with Angelica at her side. I rubbed at my sore arm as I watched her leave.

That could have gone better and could have gone worse. If her friends had been here I might have had to fight my way out.

…

Stupid. That could have been really bad.

After trying so hard to get rid of my impulsivity I ran head-first into a dangerous situation without thinking. No one even knew I was here, just that I was 'out'.

The reality of meeting with a villain—one who was known for being violent—on my own settled in my stomach as a big knot. She could have had a second dog, or another cape with her, or even just a civilian who could run and call those capes. Maybe even just a big man with a baseball bat to hit me while Angelica pinned me down.

I pushed past my spiralling thoughts. No use dwelling on the past, I just had to be better next time.

---

We'd originally planned to celebrate once we won the raid on the Merchants but with the twelve people dying our victory felt hollow. Instead of a big party, we had a quiet day where we ate some of the candy we'd got from the mall and just talked to each other. Some of the adults were drinking a little but nothing heavy. Everything was quiet, the sounds of crickets overpowering the soft conversations and music below me.

I'd decided to sit up on the edge of the roof to look at the stars better. No one down there really wanted to speak to me anyway. Mouse Protector had already said her goodbyes as she went off to hunt down Ravager again. Last we heard she'd started her own gang, the Festering or something like that. Mouse had explained what the word meant but even after having her repeat it, it just went straight through me. My brain was already at max capacity remembering all the names of the people we'd lost.

Bitch had stayed true to her word and hadn't attacked me when I delivered her the paste. After telling her how it worked she shooed me away with some not-so-nice words. I got to meet one of the vets she had working with her—a nice lady who asked a bunch of questions about the paste as she walked with me out of the Trainyard. Her workers had already started to remove the windows by the time I'd come back to deliver the paste. All I needed to do now was deliver the plastic glass in a day or two. So long as she didn't keep running people out, then we'd never talk to each other again—unless I needed to deliver more paste that is.

Down below, Artificer was chatting with Sarah, both of them smiling softly as they took their mind off of yesterday. I watched her for a bit, happy she wasn't spending all day in her cot again. Maybe in a few weeks, she'd have all of her energy back.

I laid down on the raised lip of the roof with my arms spread out at my sides and my legs dangling off the edge. Stars twinkled overhead, talking to each other in words that spanned oceans with their meaning. They glimmered and shined without a care in the world. None of them knew how hard these past few weeks had been. All except one—but she lived inside of me now.

Everything had become harder and harder as the days went by. Dealing with people took so much work—from the good to the bad. I had to keep everyone down there safe, make hard calls that hurt my head, and face up against capes who didn't care if people got hurt. Even talking with my friends became a tangled box of wires. Abi refused to talk to me, avoiding me whenever I tried. Mel didn't text as much anymore since I kept forgetting to reply because I was so busy making sure the raid went well. When I head back to the motel I don't talk with my Mom as much since we're both always so tired from being out all day.

I missed when things were simple. Back when I didn't have any friends or a Mom… only Coco. Wasn't that sad? To miss a time when I was lonely and neglected? Maybe I missed the times before it, long before it, long before my Dad turned to a sour memory. Maybe I just wanted to not exist for a little bit. A tiny little break where I can just not be anything. Not a hero, not a murderer, not a parahuman, not a girl… Just… nothing.

My phone rumbled to life in my coat pocket. Vista's name greeted on me the screen as I pulled it free. Taking my helmet off I rubbed my eyes clean of tears and answered.

"Hey, Vista. Calling about the patrol tomorrow?"

"Y…yes…" she rasped out, her voice sounding scratchy. Maybe she was ill?

"Are you sick? We can do a different date if you want."

"N…no… J-just a… sore t-throat," her words sounded like they hurt her.

"Oh. Honey is good for that, I think. What's up then?"

"N-need to… m-me… mee-meet," she gasped out the word.

"Okay? Uh, sure we can meet. Are you sure you're okay? You sound awful. No offense."

"I'm… f-fine."

"Alright, if you say so. Where do you wanna meet?"

"F-factory… Cromwell R-Road. B… big… sign."

Her voice hurt to hear and she sounded strange. Something about it felt off but I wasn't sure what. It was definitely her voice, just wheezy and scratchy.

"By the way, did you see Danielle today?" I asked.

"Knight… I'm ill, n-not an im-im-impostor," I heard a rough cough through the speakers, "I didn't s-see her."

I breathed a sigh of relief. Seeing Danielle meant seeing something Dangerous. Those codes were kept under lock and key in the PRT so no one should know them but us. Just to be safe I tried a simple memory test.

"Vista, you like onions, right? My shelter made some burgers tonight and I could bring one over if you wanted. Extra onions."

"You're be-being para… paranoid, K-knight. I h-hate onions."

"Sorry, your voice is just throwing me off."

"Don't make… make fun. I-I'm sick."

"You're right, sorry. I'll uh, I'll head over now, okay? We really do have burgers, though, if you want one."

"N-no than… thank you. C-come quickly," she wheezed out before hanging up the phone.

I stared at the phone screen for a moment as I tried to figure out what was going on. My instincts were telling me something was up but she'd passed the codes easily. Maybe I was just being paranoid because of yesterday and the current swirling thoughts. Memories of the dead came bubbling up and I clamped them down. I could cry about that later. Vista needed me for… something. I hadn't actually asked what she wanted.

After popping my helmet back on, I warped down to the street and flagged Artificer down to tell her where I was going. I left out the part of Vista's voice sounding odd—it wasn't nice to make fun of people behind their backs.

A few people waved me goodbye and told me to be safe as I left the shelter which surprised me. No one had approached me at all the entire night. I assumed they were all just as mad as Dash had been and didn't want to talk to me. Maybe I hadn't ruined my reputation here forever after all.

Aiai made the trip to Cromwell Road take no time at all. Vista's description of a 'factory' and 'big sign' was surprisingly plenty to find the place. A red brick building with thick iron girders running along the outside was the only building around with a 'big sign' on top of it—a graffiti-covered billboard that faced towards the highway.

None of the doors to the building were open but neither of us really needed doors. Warping open a hole with Aiai, I stepped inside. It was spacious, the only machines inside the building were off-white tankers attached to slim metal ones. Dust motes danced in the last bits of sunlight peeking in through the giant windows. The sun would say her last farewells as she let her sister—the moon—out to play. Seeing the orange light reminded me that I needed to be home soon or Mom was going to steal the TV again.

Vista was leaning against a giant metal tanker, her entire body silhouetted in the dim light like she was the star of a noir film. She waved a hand to me in a jerky motion.

"Hey, why'd you invite me… here…" my words trailed off as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.

That wasn't Vista.

She was a mound of raw meat stabled together and held up against the tanker with sticks of plywood. The arm that had waved at me repeated the motion, controlled by strings attached to a motor. Stuck inside the… thing's chest was a metallic speaker with a phone propped up on a stick next to it. Worst of all, the meat had been shaped to look human, with a face and what looked like real eyes popped into the sockets.

A garage door groaned open behind me followed by a pair of footsteps walking inside. I whirled around, pulling Dede free in the same motion.

A tall man with dark hair and a trimmed beard twirled a knife around his fingers as he approached. To his left, a young girl with curly blonde hair and a blue dress caked with blood grinned brightly at me. The tip tap of spindly legs followed behind her. Three robots, each with sharp metal legs that ended in scalpels and needles began to skitter up the walls.

"Ah, ah, ah," the tall man chided me with a wag of his finger. "Don't even think about running away or we'll pay a little visit to that shelter you're so fond of."

My eyes darted back and forth between Jack Slash's knife, Bonesaw's hands, and the robots climbing up the walls.

Bonesaw patted down the sides of her dress with a big grin on her face. "You're not going to run away from your number one fan, are you?"

"Um," I swallowed past the lump in my throat. "Y-" I bit my tongue to stop that sentence before it started. In a moment of confusion I'd almost told her she wasn't my number one fan, Abi was. They might not know who my friends are despite knowing about the shelter.

"What'd you do with Vista?" I asked. If she had been here then we were going to need Panacea—if they'd even left her alive at all.

A thought occurred to me—no one knew what Aiai could really do. They'd be caught off-guard by it and I could save so many people. All I had to do was kill again. My lips felt dry. The PRT records said Bonesaw kept plagues in case she died. Maybe I could kill Jack and then remove her arms or something?

Before my thoughts could crystalise, Jack stopped spinning the knife, grabbing ahold of it in a firm grip. He idly twirled it in small circles towards the floor.

"She's all fine and well—the little tike was never here. Bonesaw here wanted to make a good first impression with you and killing your favourite Ward wouldn't be a good impression now, would it? You'd best appreciate that and stop thinking about killing us with that little toy on your right arm," he pointed the knife at Aiai.

How did he know about her? My heartbeat pounded in my ears.

"O-okay. I won't. Thank you, for um, not killing Vista. What do you want with me?"

"So polite!" Bonesaw's grin widened. "I came here to encourage you. You've done some interesting things but you're wasting your potential!"

Bonesaw withdrew a small bird from the pouch of her apron. The bird I'd made for Vista. She stroked a finger down its head, pushing down the green feathers.

"How did you get that?" my throat betrayed me, the words croaking a little.

"It wasn't easy. We had to talk to three different people and they were so rude," Bonesaw wagged a finger in time with her saying 'so rude'. "We're not supposed to be seen yet but I really wanted to get to know you more so I paid them a little visit. Although rude, those people did tell me some interesting things about you. I'm not sure if chopping off your own finger with no surgery robot makes you stupid or cool but I'm leaning towards cool with how awesome you look in your armour! And killing Hookwolf with corrosive acid? Simple but you're on the right track. Except, then you had to go and ruin it. Why would you do something so well and then immediately decide to feed a city? You could have turned all the water into flesh-eating plants! Or, or do what you did but make it so anyone who eats it turns into a plant monster! You were this close to greatness," she held her pointer and thumb close together, "and you blew it!"

We stared at each other in a tense moment of silence broken only by my pounding heart in my chest. Bonesaw dropped the bird back into the pouch of her apron.

"Well? Are you going to explain yourself?" Jack drawled.

"No. Yeah, I… I didn't mean to release the moss yet—it wasn't done."

"Oh," Bonesaw tapped her chin, "you were going to make it better. So why did you release it?"

"Someone else did it."

"You really should keep a better eye on your things," she wagged her finger at me again like a stern teacher. "Oh well. I like the scope but you really need to add the good stuff first, not later. Do you at least have neat robot limbs beneath that armour?"

"No. I have normal human ones. Except for the finger…"

"You're still only on the finger!" she threw her hands in the air. "You should have telescoping limbs by now! We could put that spear of yours into your arm instead, make it fold out like a knife."

"Dede," I corrected her without thinking.

"Dayday? Nightnight?" Bonesaw titled her head like a confused dog. "What does that mean?"

"Uh, D-e-d-e. Dede. That's her name. The spear's name. Dede, the Fractal."

"You name your stuff? That's adorable! So what can she do?" Bonesaw's hands snapped out in front of her as if to stop me. "Wait wait! Don't tell me. She can… oh I know! You summon alternate versions of her from different dimensions that do different things. That's why she's 'the Fractal'."

"No, um, that would be cool but no. Her head can swap around," I pressed the button hidden in her body to fold her current spearhead away and push out the next one.

"What? That's so boring!" she threw her hands up in the air again before folding them across her chest. "Uncle Jack said that thing on your arm could kill us. What does it do?"

"It's like–I based it on Vista's power. She can…" I took a deep breath to steady my voice. "-she can pinch space, stretch it, or cut a circle in stuff."

"And they really let you make that ignore the Manton Effect? I always thought the fuddy-duddies at the Protectorate wouldn't let you do things like that."

The Manton Effect had been brought up early on when the PRT had been training me. Back then they had shoved what felt like all the information in the world into my head at once. What the Manton Effect meant was lost in the slurry of words people had spoken at me during my first week.

I almost admitted I didn't know it before realising that would make this talk go on for longer. Instead, I just nodded my head.

"They don't know it ignores it," I made up an answer on the spot. They might, or might not, I had no idea. Agreeing with her was just the fastest way to get out of this conversation.

Bonesaw gasped, "You're a bad girl! Uncle Jack, she's a rebel!"

Jack Slash grinned at Bonesaw, "Very much so. How about wrapping this up, hm? We have an appointment to make."

"Oh, okay. Sorry, Raccoon Knight, we have somewhere important to be. It was nice meeting you, even if you did end up being a bit boring. You should explore more! Copy my spiders if you need inspiration! They're really good for surgery. I don't mind sharing their design, just make sure you credit me if someone asks, okay?"

"O-okay. I will."

"Good. Replace those boring old limbs with something cooler so I can copy one of your designs," she stretched out her fingers, "Mine aren't anything special either but I don't mind. You should also add real raccoon ears and a tail—your fake ones don't twitch or move or anything. I'm gonna keep Mr. Birdy, okay?"

"That's… fine."

She grinned at me and then gave me a big wave as she left. Jack smiled, following the passing Bonesaw with his head before turning to leave as well. He turned back around as he reached the garage doors.

"Oh, and by the way—Mannequin is looking forward to meeting you soon."

My body froze, locking in place. Jack left without another word, whistling a tune I didn't recognise.

Everything felt cold.

---

Author's Recommendation:
I'm not really a reviewer but I did want to recommend something that has less attention than Raccoon Knight.
Roots is a full OC cast fic taking place in a small town that no one ever wants to leave at least until the Slaughterhouse Nine visits. I enjoyed reading it, especially about the character who shares my name (Beatrice) because of my HUGE ego--she's actually really neat and I just enjoyed her interactions a lot. If that sounds interesting you should check it out! It's a lot of fun if you can stomach the usual S9 things happening.

Spoiler: Author's Note:

Originally I wanted to fill this Author's Note with 10,001 'doubts' but that feels a little too self-loathing at this point. I've been having a bad week and that might bleed into my writing so sorry if it did. This feels like one of those chapters I will look back on and not hate as much as I do right now--except we're not there yet.

One of the downsides to writing a weekly posted fic is how much certain chapters can just feel like a strain. If I did write more serial stuff in the future (and I might, I do like the format) I'd most likely pre-write entire arcs before even thinking about posting. Doesn't matter now, I just like using this space to ramble into the void. Fun Fact: I've had the Bonesaw encounter planned since like chapter 9 or something.

 

[bee.exe]

5.5

CW; Described self-surgery

Unsafe areas screamed out to me, warning me of pointed knives slashing everyone down, monsters made of flesh, eating people to make more of themselves, and a man made from plastic deciding to kill me for helping people. They taunted me as they tore through the people I'd promised to keep safe. Nothing I could make would ever be enough to stop them.

I squeezed the screwdriver in my hand until my knuckles turned white. Steadying myself with a deep breath, I returned to tightening the screws on the third recon bird of the night. The bird squirmed in my hand, trying to wriggle free from my fingers. I pushed it down against the metal table to keep it steady as I finished working.

No amount of squawking would discourage me. Sorry little birdy, you'll enjoy your new job—I promise. Either that or you can go back to being dead.

We needed more defences, more weapons, more of everything. These recon birds were just the start, by dawn I wanted to have turrets lining the chainlink fences. Other people who couldn't sleep were busy setting the fences up—salvaged from Bitch's territory with her permission.

My phone buzzed—another text from my Mom worrying about me. I ignored it.

After tightening the last screw I reattached the bird's head with a twist and a click then I let it go. With a chirp, it fluttered off to a nearby roof. They'd keep their distance between each other, just enough to cover a wide area without being out of signal from the next. If they saw anything unusual they would send a ping to the nearest birds, and then those birds would do the same until the signal reached one of our radios. Whoever was on patrol would get a number and a shape to tell them what bird saw it.

It wasn't enough.

I grabbed another bird's corpse and hacked away at its neck with my already bloodied saw.

We were never going to be ready in time. All of these people were going to die and it would be my fault.

The words stung, my own internal thoughts trying to beat me into the dirt. Even if they did, I couldn't just leave them without trying. We'd go down swinging if nothing else. Death wasn't my flavour, anyway.

A light pattering of rain tinkled against the tarpaulin stretched over my workspace. I'd encased myself in with tarpaulin sheets acting as walls to an impromptu tent. The wind was too cold to work out in the open and I didn't want prying eyes to disturb me.

My work light hummed, gorging itself on the battery of Zeze. I idly shovelled a handful of popsicle sticks into her open maw as I stitched nerves to metal joints.

My eyes drooped as I got caught up in the rhythm of working. I shook myself awake. Sleep wasn't welcome in this house—I needed to stay focused. Sleepless nights weren't a stranger to me, I could power through this. Three AM wasn't that late anyway.

Gliding through the motions of joining ligaments and fixing brain matter, my thoughts drifted off again towards faded dreams. It was hard to keep my brain active when my brain was in Turbo Focus Mode. Thoughts slipped off me like the rain did the tarpaulin above.

Just a little longer. Just need to stay awake for a little longer.

***​

Something hard was pressing into my cheek. I peeled my face off the desk. A screwdriver dropped down with a clatter as I got up.

Yawning, I tried to rub at my bleary eyes to clear them of the crusted sleep but my hands met the plastic of my domino mask. I'd taken off my helmet and most of my armour so I could work in comfort and without looking through the shaded filter of Elel. I pushed my hands underneath the mask to pick away at the sleep in my eyes.

Birds were chirping overhead, their song different to the ones I'd made. The gentle wind rustled the walls of my temporary tent, sending in spurts of refreshing air through gaps in the bottom of it.

My phone kindly told me it was six in the morning. It also showed me the fifteen missed calls and twenty text messages all from my Mom with the exception of a single text from Vista:

'We're okay. Stalker ran into Spitfire, not Burnscar - false alarm. Weld's making us figure out who's being recruited. If you have any ideas let me know and I'll pass it on.'

The rest of them were a wall of panic that I'd run right into. I'd told my Mom I'd be here all night and she hadn't been happy about it. Whatever punishment she wanted to give me was fine, I needed to work even if it meant disobeying.

My stomach grumbled, hungry for food after not eating for hours. I ignored it, returning to attaching wires to the circuit board I'd etched into a piece of metal.

Only danger on our doorstep would stop me from working. I had to be prepared.

Busy footsteps plodded around behind me as the shelter started its day. Aside from the usual chores needed to keep this place running, they'd start setting up some of the defences we'd talked about last night. No one should bother me—I'd told them not to.

Artificer would spend the day swapping the turrets from Pinwheel and Dead-to-rights to smaller rotating towers. Guardian Angel couldn't teleport with people in it—a limit it shared with Mouse Protector's power—Artificer wanted to change that to give us an emergency escape. In the few hours she'd spent sketching up ideas last night, nothing had come up. While she was swapping the turrets over, she'd be trying to think of ways to make that work.

I had a few ideas for how to fix that but I had so much to do already. So many things I needed to do and not nearly enough time. What I needed was more hands.

Fingers might be hard to make but I could always settle for a claw. We had a few fresh animal corpses to make all the nerves but not nearly enough for the muscles. Maybe it didn't need muscles?

I found myself sketching out my ideas for a new arm instead of working on the turret. They flowed faster and clearer as I returned to the land of the awake, the swirling algae draining from the pond of my mind to let my thoughts flow downstream freely.

We had all the pieces—I just needed to put them together. Yawning again, I started grabbing pieces to turn the sketch into reality.

I grabbed the remnants of a microphone arm to use as the bones. It had joints ready-made, though they could only be moved manually or with weight. A crane machine claw became the hand, with the grip tightened so it could pick stuff up. A salvaged joystick made for a good ball joint that I could attach it all to—that way I would have three-sixty motion at the 'shoulder'. I hollowed out a chamber to put the liquified nerves inside. Then I attached prongs to the bottom of the joint, making it look like a star-shaped plug.

Collagen would make for good muscles, I just needed to turn it into strips. My spearhead mould would work well for that. I poured some of the liquid collagen I planned to use for armour into the moulds then coiled them together when they were almost dry to make all the muscles I'd need for the arms and fingers. It took less than an hour to get it all ready.

After ripping out the nerves and muscles from a possum who had been run over by one of the PRT supply delivery trucks, I connected them to the microphone arm and then layered the intertwined collagen muscles over it like coils of rope.

Once all the muscles were set I tested it by shocking certain parts of the arm with electricity. The correct muscles twitched or contracted with the electricity so I set the arm to the side and grabbed a knife.

There were a few places I could attach it to me but I decided on the back of my shoulder to give it the biggest range of movement. Unlike my regular limbs, it wouldn't be stuck only bending one way at the elbow. We were so inefficient with our movement.

I pulled off my T-shirt, leaving me in the tanktop I wore beneath all my armour. After slathering a healthy amount of healing paste on the back of my right shoulder, I waited patiently for the pain-numbing to set in. In less than a minute, I couldn't feel a thing.

I grabbed my knife and took a deep breath.

Following the instructions flowing in my brain, I reached back over my shoulder to dig out chunks of flesh in a star-like pattern. Warm blood splattered against my fingers as I cleared away the layers of skin to reach my muscles. The paste surrounding the wound would clot the blood flow, stopping me from getting too woozy.

Once I'd cleared away enough of the meat, I grabbed the new arm. Below the ball joint were five prongs designed to claw into my flesh. Like a needle, they had a hollow inside filled with liquified nerves that would spread out roots to attach themselves to my body.

Steeling myself, I pressed the prongs against my shoulder, making sure each prong dug into the holes I'd carved, before pushing them in deeper with the help of the desk. The healing paste would be mushed inside the new holes, clotting up the wounds so I didn't bleed when I removed the arm.

Liquified nerves flowed through my upper arm and torso, winding themselves around the ones already there to connect the arm to my nervous system. My shoulder and arm convulsed as new nerves were solidified. My fingers twitched in involuntary little spurts. All of the muscles in my right arm and shoulder rang out like a tuning fork.

It wasn't painful, but it was uncomfortable. I grit my teeth and bared it. Nothing would stop me from doing what I had to. An extra arm would speed up my work, letting me protect everyone better.

My arm felt numb as the wriggling muscles finally settled down. The feeling came back little by little as if I'd had pins and needles.

The new arm didn't feel like anything more than a slight pressure in the back of my shoulder. Moving made my arm made the muscles tighten around the prongs but it also wasn't uncomfortable—just new.

As easy as moving my actual arm, the new one responded, lowering itself down in front of me. Controlling my new arm felt unusual, like moving an arm that you slept on funny. It responded to my commands but it felt disconnected. The three fingers flexed open when I asked, and the arm bent and spun when I asked—but all of it felt like I was somehow moving someone else's limb.

The collagen-coated metal fingers had plastic pads on the end to give them some grip. I reached the hand down to test that grip by grabbing a piece of plywood. All three fingers held firm as I lifted the wood up without dropping it then lowered it back down and let go.

Success. I was much too tired to celebrate. Instead, I set back to work, using my new limb to pass me tools as I worked on the turret.

My phone continued to buzz in the background as I cobbled together another weapon, a sprayer like the ones I'd give to the people at the shelter when I'd told them about the Nine. We could load them with marshmallow containment foam now.

Buzz. Buzz.

I stitched together another recon bird, adding to the small flock I was building up. They weren't going to stop the Nine themselves, but they would tell us if they were coming—hopefully. In a fight, they might make a good distraction by flapping and clawing at eyes.

Buzz. Buzz.

I poured another mound of collagen into the armour cast and pried free another piece of collagen armour from its mould.

Buzz. Buzz.

It kept on buzzing as I hacked away at the never-ending pile of things I needed to do and make. Another turret made, another sprayer, another round of metal poured and it never stopped buzzing.

Hours passed with no one disturbing me, only the buzzing of my phone to replace the sound of metal clinging or thread gliding through feathers.

My new hand began to feel more natural as I kept using it—to the point I started to trust it with the more dexterous tools. Being able to weld parts while I continued to etch, stitch, bend, or twist other pieces into place was convenient.

Hands ruffled the plastic sheets behind me and footsteps disturbed my quiet workstation.

"I'm busy. What is it?" I asked without turning around.

"Hey… uh… is that an arm?" Artificer asked.

"Yes. You should be working. What do you want?"

"I'm just taking a break—figured I'd relax before lunch. Some PRT lady was looking for you."

"A break?" I whirled around to face her. She looked normal. No tired eyes, not even a hint of worry on her face. "We don't have time for breaks. Get back to work."

Artificer folded her arms across her chest, "Unless you want everyone as crabby as you—we have time for breaks. I've told everyone it's okay to sleep and eat. What's gotten into you that you're telling people to not take care of themselves?"

"The fucking Slaughterhouse Nine is what. We have to be ready. If we're not ready then people die. I can't—No one else is going to die," I didn't sound as convincing as I'd hoped. My voice squeaked and cracked, I hadn't used my voice in a long time.

"People make mistakes if they're not well rested and fed," her eyes flicked up to my new arm. "You need to eat. You need to sleep. I can take over in the meantime—make sure everyone is on task."

"I've been eating the moss, I'm fine."

Artificer stared at me, her eyebrows creased in concern. "You're not invincible. You need to take care of yourself, Raccoon Girl."

"Raccoon Knight!" I slammed my hand against the desk making my tools bounce. "It's Raccoon Knight. We have work to do. Eat the moss—nap if you have to—but work. No resting or we'll fall behind. You can rest once the Nine are gone."

She stared at me with a blank look on her face, her arms folded.

"There'll always be something else. It's Brockton fucking Bay—there's always something else. You'll want to fight the next thing that comes along too. We won't get to rest. I didn't get to rest after we arrested my former friends—the closest people I'd ever known and I didn't get a moment's peace to just sit with those thoughts. The people here didn't get to rest after some madman came in and shot everyone up. You're pushing us too hard, Raccoon Girl. You're pushing yourself too hard."

"We have to be ready. No one else is coming to protect us, we need to keep these people safe. Lives are at stake if we don't do this. I promise we'll rest when they're gone."

Her mouth shifted into a slight frown, "Rest is important. You can't deny it either since you're the one who said that to me when I was coming down. I'm… not better but better than I was. I don't think I deserved you pulling me out of that hole and even if you only did it because of circumstance—thank you. So, I'm going to do the same for you. No matter how much you yell and scream at me, I'm going to stay here until you agree to sleep."

"Artificer, please, I can't sleep now. I need to finish this turret."

"How much did you get done last night?"

"Uh, five recon birds, a turret, a couple of sprayers, four new pieces of armour, and I fixed up some of the chainlink fences too."

"Doesn't that deserve a break? You've earned the right to take a break by working so hard. We're all grateful, but if you're too tired to fight if the Nine come around then you're going to hate yourself more. A little sleep won't kill you. You can even use my cot so you don't need to go far."

"I just…" didn't have anything else I could say to convince her.

I could see it on her face that she really would stick around until I agreed to sleep. She also had a point—if I was too exhausted to fight when the Nine came knocking then I'd be dooming these people. Like my defences, I had to be in tip-top shape.

"Fine."

"Fine, what?"

"Fine, I'll sleep. I'm sorry for yelling."

Artificer grinned, "Good. Oh, want me to tell that PRT woman to screw off?"

My brain tried to remember if she'd mentioned that before, "What PRT woman?"

"Not one of the patrollers. Name tag said Maddox or something. Everyone's been covering for you, telling her you're not here but she's adamant."

"Oh, that's my handler from the Wards. Nah, I'll talk to her. You can tell here where I am."

"Alright. Take care of yourself, princess. I'll be checking in on you and you better be snoozing the next time I see you," she pointed a finger at me with a stern look on her face.

Somehow I managed a smile despite the circumstances, "Okay, okay. I will. Promise."

"Good," she nodded once before pushing her way back out of my temporary tent.

I pushed my hands under the domino mask to rub at my tired eyes. Even if I couldn't sleep, trying would be better than not. It wasn't like I couldn't think of new ideas while I was trying to nap anyway.

A woman wearing a bulky black-grey suit of modern armour pushed her way into my tent. Even though her facemask was a perfect mirror, I could practically feel the anger that was burning on her face.

Her hands reached up to the bottom of her chin where she pressed a hidden button. The face mask clicked open, sliding up like a visor. She wasn't angry like I expected—she looked hurt. I couldn't stand to meet her eyes.

"Did I do something wrong?" she broke the silence.

"No?"

"Then why are you freezing me out? You sent me one text that explained absolutely nothing then everyone at the shelter said you weren't here. I've been looking everywhere for you all night long and you've just been–what–here?"

"I didn't tell them to lie. I didn't know you even came here."

"If you answered my calls you would have," her voice began to shift from sounding on the verge of tears to something more tense—to something angrier. "You can't do this, Meadow. You can't…" she trailed off, her eyes looking up over my shoulder. "What did you do to yourself?"

"It's fine. Temporary."

"Take it off, then. Please."

If I was about to go to sleep then I'd need to anyway so I shrugged.

Reaching back, I grabbed ahold of the base of the arm and tugged. The prongs were dug deep, their tendrils wrapped around the entire upper right of my shoulder. After a bit of resistance, the arm came free with a slick wet noise. I pulled it over my shoulder to drag out all of the nerves. They slid against my muscles, making for a unique and weird sensation as they slipped free of their holds and out of my body. Hundreds of nerves like the roots of a tree hung down from the ball joint of the arm as I held it out in front of me. All five holes in the back of my shoulder remained open, the healing paste clotting up the blood so they became closer to permanent features. Like a strange mollusc, the tendrils of nerves began to retract into the prongs where they would curl back into the central chamber to be reliquified for later.

"See, temporary. I was going to sleep soon too, promise. I'm sorry I didn't answer your calls, okay?"

My Mom looked sick, her skin turning almost green. She pressed a hand against her mouth.

"Did tha—did that hurt?"

"Huh? No, not really. Felt like string being pulled across my muscles," I shrugged, the movement pulling my muscles taut around the new holes in my back. "I'm sorry I ignored you. I had a bad night."

Mom sighed, clenching her eyes shut. "Meadow this only works if we communicate. You can't just ignore me like that. Even if you don't want to talk to me I need to know where you are. Letting you run around like this is already making me lose sleep and that's when you come back to the motel. Tell me you're staying over at the shelter to work more—that's fine—but I need to know what you're doing and where."

"I'm sorry. With the Nine around I need to make sure this place is defended."

"That's only speculation, they might not be here."

I shook my head. "They spoke to me last night. I told the Protectorate about it already."

"You didn't tell me," her tone wavered.

I dared to look at her face. Seeing the hurt look on it felt like someone had punched me right in the gut.

"Mom I—"

"No. Meadow," she pushed her visor back down and clipped it into place. "When was the last time you weren't Raccoon Knight?" her tone shifted back to that anger. It sounded mean, a cruel snickering dragon that wanted to crush me.

"Mom, please, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't want you to worry. I'm fine, they didn't hurt me."

"When was the last time you spent a whole day not being Raccoon Knight?"

"I don't—Please, Mom. I know I messed up but I promise I'll tell you this stuff in the future."

"Answer me, Meadow."

"Please, I just… I don't know, okay? I don't know."

Her mirrored visor reflected my tired eyes, the sunken edges partially hidden by the black piece of plastic doing little to protect my identity. They were welling up with tears that I bit back.

"Isn't that sad?" the angry tone had gone, replaced by something else, something sad sounding. What was the word? Melancholy?

"Isn't it sad that you don't get to do normal teenager things? Why do you have to be the one who's talking with the Nine and being chased by monsters like Hookwolf? Why are you the one who's commanding people to take down an entire gang? You're just a kid, Meadow. You should be thinking about friends and romance and shopping and what's on TV—not fighting superpowered criminals and psychopaths!" her voice was heavy with emotion. My sense of taste wasn't good enough to pick out the parts that made up the flavour, only the overwhelming sadness that was slathered on thick.

"I'm helping people. I'm making a difference. Improving lives."

"Does it have to be you?"

"I think so, yeah."

Silence hung between us like a curtain that I didn't dare part. Words were hard. Telling people how you felt when you barely knew yourself felt next to impossible. How could I express that this meant everything to me? So long as I had the ability to help someone, I had to do it. Even if I only ever helped one person, at least I helped them.

"Okay," my Mom breached the silence first, ripping apart the curtain like it wasn't even there. "But, you're sleeping at the motel every night—no exceptions. You're also telling me your plans per day. And if I text you, you answer unless you physically cannot. I'm also allowed to veto any plans you have. Got it?"

"Can we negotiate? I'm okay with some of those but not all of them."

"No. It's either you agree or you get nothing. No more shelter, no more fighting, no more Raccoon Knight."

"I have to use my powers."

"Oh, I know. You'll still be allowed to use them. In fact, you'll be able to make as much as you want! For other people. You won't be allowed to step foot in Brockton Bay. So you can still help, but it'll be from a nice safe, warm motel room with okay beds and a stove that heats food wonky."

Sometimes to get something you want you need to take something you don't want. Like when I had to let Faultline's crew go to make sure the Merchants would be arrested. I wanted to keep helping here, to make sure I could at least get these people to safety if nothing else. Sending them devices from the safety of my motel room felt wrong. Living in luxury while they were scrounging around for parts for me would be mean.

I could always say no and just run away from her again—but she knew where I was and I doubt the PRT would be very happy about it.

Losing my Mom would be too hard, anyway.

"Okay. I'll come back to the motel and tell you my plans and all that."

"Good," she stood a little straighter, "I'll see you tonight. Make sure you eat!"

"Okay, okay. I will, I promise."

She nodded once, "And never take that arm out while I'm here again. It's gross."

Mom walked over and scooped me up into a hug.

"I love you, Meadow. Stay safe, please."

"I love you too," I mumbled into her shoulder, the hug draining the scraps of energy I had left.

Spoiler: Author's Note:

The ending for Raccoon Knight has crystallised in my head and I'm really happy with it. It'll be post-S9 as I predicted. I'm not sure how many chapters that will be but it'll be soon-timeline wise.

Thanks for reading, as usual, I hope the self-surgery was icky and gross because that's funny.

 

[bee.exe]

Bonus civilian Meadow art because I only ever draw her in armour.

 

[bee.exe]

5.y - Interlude; Artificer

CW; Mention of drug use.

Sherrel Balley didn't like to be alone. In the giant list of what she saw as her flaws, she considered that one of the worst. She wished she could just be content with her own company. At least then she wouldn't disappoint everyone.

Being amongst a group of people made her feel like she was on the sidelines and latching onto an individual risked them seeing her—solitude was easier to manage. After a while, the pain of it became a background throb that only bolted out of its cage once in a while.

Amongst the flurry of activity around the shelter, she felt alone again.

Raccoon Girl had scarpered off to talk with the PRT leaving her with little support for the looming thoughts that came with being sober. The people around her were nice enough but none of them could dig their claws of optimism into her and infect her with positivity the way the Raccoon Girl could. That angry look she'd had this morning didn't suit her. Seeing her hunched over a workbench with a tired look on her face, surrounded by mounds of materials to keep her company throughout the long night sparked a level of indignation inside Sherrel that she rarely felt. Her naivety was endearing. Seeing it beaten out of her again and again hurt.

She reminded Sherrel of her nephew and all the stinging memories associated with him. Being sober made her experience a lot of those old memories again for the first time in years. She'd be lying if she said they didn't make her want to reach for the pipe. Memories were just too painful and the present wasn't all too pleasant to deal with either.

How did normal people deal with bad memories? How did they deal with being around others? How did they deal with the isolation when they pushed them away?

A warbling digitised noise like Morse code mixed with bird song distracted her from her idle thoughts of self-deprecation. It sounded from atop a nearby building just around the corner of the shelter. All around she could hear the other birds copying the noise in a wave that faded with distance. She remembered Raccoon Girl's explanation of what the distorted birdsong meant—danger. They sang when they detected anything unusual.

What had she said again? 'So long as it's bigger than a cat and has a known face or unknown blood.'

People were scared by the recent attack. Alongside losing twelve people, nineteen more had left the shelter in hopes that being away from the capes would make them safe. She wasn't sure how true that would be but she could hardly fault them.

With their population being gouged, they had fewer people able and willing to patrol, meaning there might not be someone close enough to investigate in time. She'd need to do it herself. She practically kicked herself for the thought. Investigating potentially deadly noises wasn't high on her bucket list but she couldn't stand by idly.

After grabbing one of the sprayers freshly filled with marshmallow containment foam, she turned to investigate the disturbance. As she stepped forward her anxiety peaked.

Better to be safe than sorry, she thought to herself, deciding to turn back to slip on a piece of collagen armour—a translucent cream-coloured t-shirt as thick as her thumb that wobbled like jello. For extra safety, she grabbed what would eventually be an entry hatch and held it like a shield by the handle.

Content with her preparations she rounded the corner past the gaps in the chainlink fence. Her heart threatened to leap out of her throat at any moment as the dawning dread of what danger truly meant.

She wasn't made for this—for fighting. When push came to shove, she tended to run away rather than shove back.

One of the patrolling PRT officers was stalking up on the opposite side of the street with their containment foam sprayer at the ready. Their presence didn't offer much comfort with their recent failure.

Artificer steeled herself, shoving down her nerves as far as she could. Running away wouldn't help anyone.

Her fingers burned from the death grip she had on the sprayer's handle.

Now or never. She leapt out from behind the building, readying her sprayer to fire at whatever evil had decided to rampage here. The PRT officer ran in from the other side of the street at the same time pointing their PRT-issued sprayer at the same target.

A four-legged creature with manged fur stood hunched in the middle of the deserted road, munching on a chunk of the moss. The dog looked up, still chewing on the moss, and tilted its head with curiosity.

Artificer heard the officer mumble something before he grabbed the walkie-talkie attached to his shoulder.

"False alarm. Turn off the… birds."

Artificer lowered her weapon. Her pounding heartbeat, clammy hands, and tight throat felt silly in the light of what the 'threat' had been. She took a deep breath and laughed a little at how stupid she'd been.

Sitting on a telephone wire, the bird had its eyes staring up at an empty rooftop as it sang its fake song. The noise stopped, replaced with a short-lived beep. One of the people at the shelter would have hit the all-clear button. The bird returned to resting, waiting for the next threat. If she remembered the Raccoon Girl's explanation right, it would now know not to freak out if it saw a dog again. Or was it just the same dog?

"Can't you make it have a better detection system or something?" the officer struck up a conversation. "No use worrying us over a stray."

"Wasn't my work," she shifted her head in a vague shrug, "can't do shit if it ain't a vehicle."

"Huh. You'd think a cape that could turn all the water in the city into plants could make something that knows the difference between a dog and a threat."

"She threw it together in a night, cut her some slack. Besides, it can learn not to. Better it warns us of everything than nothing."

The officer shook his head, "Boy who cried wolf. If we get worked up over every single dog or cat that comes in here then we won't take the actual threats seriously. Better that we–"

A knife plunged clean through his helmet sending blood splattering across Artificer's face. She stumbled back, wiping her eyes with her arm.

His limp body began to slide backwards, dragged along by a chain attached to the knife. It reeled in, sliding up a nearby office building.

Her eyes followed up past it to look at the tall figure resting on the edge of the roof. Standing there was a simulacrum of a human man. His body was too tall, his face featureless with only the impression of facial features through slight indents or bumps. Where his right hand should be was a chain that reeled back inside of his wrist, dragging along a corpse all the while.

Despite having no eyes, his stare bore its way through Artificer, leaving her totally and entirely numb.

The corpse bounced as it scraped across the stucco, the motion wrenched the knife free from its head letting it freefall back towards the street. It landed with a soft thud.

No longer needing the theatrics, Mannequin's hand reeled back into his body, the flash of a bloodied knife vanishing back into his palm. He flexed the fingers experimentally, his head still staring right at Artificer.

She'd felt fear before—this wasn't it. Fear made her flee, it made her avoid the source not stand there lifelessly like she didn't even have legs. Fear made her thoughts frantic, a babbling brook of ideas that tangled together into something untranslatable.

She wasn't sure what this was. Nothing worked. Her legs didn't respond to her desire to flee, her brain didn't come up with any ideas—just white noise.

Mannequin stepped off the building with a casual step that sent him plummeting three stories down. He landed in a sprawl, his body going limp like a dropped puppet.

His limbs reeled back as he stood upright. With slow, deliberate steps he approached the frozen woman.

A single thought managed to fight its way through the miasma of shock—she had a weapon.

Warmth spread through her hands reminding her of the sprayer and shield's presence.

Mannequin didn't flinch as she raised the nozzle at him and fired. A pink-white stream of liquid sprayed out catching on Mannequin's body before expanding into marshmallowy chunks the size of footballs.

His leg snagged against the sticky sweet pile, catching him in place.

Artificer raised her shield, ducking down to make sure it covered her head and her torso.

No attack came. Instead, she heard a hissing noise and the smell of burnt sugar stung her nostrils.

Casting a cursory look over her shield, she saw the marshmallow melting away into pink-white puddles that ran down the road into tiny pools. A porcelain white finger wagged at her, chastising her for even trying.

Her body finally responded. She took off in a panicked sprint unsure of where to even run to. A gap between two buildings sang a song of safe haven. Aritifcer shot through the gap while trying to keep her shield at an angle behind her to deflect incoming blades.

The click-clack of Mannequin's footsteps rapidly followed her escape. Her out-of-shape body wasn't fast enough to escape from a normal human, she didn't stand a chance against a nine-foot-tall Tinker modified to be a perfect killing machine.

A white plastic hand shot out from Mannequin like a bullet. It grabbed onto Artificer's leg and yanked her back, sending her face-first into the floor. Her nose crunched as she hit the floor.

The chain reeled in, scraping her exposed skin against the tiny rocks embedded in the concrete.

Sherrel liked short-cut tops and skimpy shorts, she liked when people would stare at her exposed parts. It always gave her a burst of confidence to see someone admiring her body—even if she could do without the men who decided that meant she wanted to be spoken to while she was buying cigarettes. Never in her life had she regretted her choice of fashion more than right now.

As she was dragged, her skin rubbed against the rough concrete, cutting and scraping her until her skin was left red and bloodied. Stinging pain flared through her legs, midriff, arms, and face as more scrapes joined the party. Her nose whistled with frantic breaths.

She clawed uselessly against the ground, trying to grab for anything to stop the slow pull. After her fingernails were ground down to nothing, the skin on her fingers scraped away, leaving a bloody trail of futility.

Another hand grabbed her by the neck, hauling her up to her feet.

With all her might she flailed, hoping to break his grip. The hands didn't budge, even as she kicked back with her free leg against the man.

He hefted her up further, dangling her in the air like a pig ready to be bled. His hand left her leg, snaking up her body to grab her neck in a headlock.

Mannequin pulled her back, resting her back against his body with his forearm pressed against her neck like a vice.

No amount of struggling with kicking legs or grasping with aching hands would set her free.

He extended out his right hand in front of her for her to see it. A knife popped out from the palm without a noise.

Sherrel went still—this was it. There wasn't any use fighting anymore.

"Please…" she begged, her voice barely a whisper.

Mannequin turned, facing her towards the nearby brick wall.

With quick slashes, he carved out a word in the brickwork. 'Change'. He moved his hand to the side of the word before slicing a line clean across it. 'Change'.

Something stirred inside of her, an anger that boiled her blood.

"F-fuck you," she spat, her voice hoarse through the arm pressed against her neck. "I can change. I have changed!"

Mannequin carved another word, 'Villain'.

"Not anymore, bitch," she laughed, a bitter sound that stirred the taste of blood in her mouth.

She wasn't sure where this newfound confidence came from. Maybe Adam had been right, if you're going to die anyway, you might as well spit blood in the face of your killer.

Three more words, 'Fall down,' and separately 'Recruit'.

"What? I'm not going—" she gasped out the word as Mannequin squeezed his arm tighter against her throat.

Her bloodied fingers smeared red against his forearm as she grabbed at it, trying to lessen his grip against her throat for even a moment. Long moments passed. White lights began to dance at the edge of her fading vision. Thoughts turned to slurry as oxygen failed to reach her brain. Tears stained her cheeks as she gasped for even a pebble of air.

For a disconnected moment all she could think was 'Damn, my makeup must be ruined.'

After what felt like an eternity, he loosened his grip, letting her suck down precious breaths of air.

Mannequin's blade scratched against the brickwork, etching the word 'Choice' before crossing it out. She didn't have a choice in this.

He let go, dropping her to the ground in a heap. Her ankle bent at an awkward angle as she hit the ground from the unexpected drop.

Gritting her teeth through the pain, she righted herself to crawl away from the monster behind her.

Skittering scrapes flowed up the building as Mannequin took his leave. Artificer looked up in time to see the eggshell white limbs vanishing over the roof.

All at once exhaustion hit her, the last scrapes of adrenaline leaving her without warning. Her shaking arms gave way beneath her as she slumped onto the ground.

Everything hurt. Stinging scratches and aching bones protested as she wheezed out breaths through a recovering throat, her nose too ruined to breathe through right now. Waves of pain radiated through her as she reached down into the pocket of her jean shorts to grab her phone. The screen was shattered but through some miracle, it still worked.

Parsing the contact list past the spiderweb cracks and the throbbing headache took her considerable effort. Her fingers tapped buttons to scroll through a contact list in desperate need of pruning to find Raccoon Knight. She couldn't dial. Facing her now to tell her she'd been attacked while she was away might just break her.

Artificer pushed herself up to her feet, leaving behind bloodied handprints on the floor. She stumbled out into the street and limped back towards the shelter. The corpse of the PRT officer was still lying there on the sidewalk undisturbed. She didn't even know his name.

Rounding the corner she saw the shelter wasn't on fire and there weren't panicked people rushing away from a plastic man. She could take comfort in that, at least. Raccoon Girl wasn't going to be heartbroken at losing more people today.

A middle-aged woman with curly brown hair—Penny if she remembered correctly—was sitting on her own near the chainlink fence, thumbing through her phone with a bored look on her face. Hearing Artificer's limping footsteps she looked up.

"Hey, Art-" Penny's eyes took in the battered form of the woman. "What the hell happened to you?" she shot up from her seat to rush over to Artificer.

"M'fine," Sherrel lied. It wasn't an intentional lie, just something to hopefully drift the attention away from her. Bad enough that she got hurt, worse still if someone cared. She didn't feel deserving of even the most basic of human decency. Mannequin had been right about one thing, she deserved to be amongst horrible people.

Penny slid herself under one of Artificer's arms to prop her up.

"You're clearly not. Let's get you to the doc, okay?"

She ushered her forward, ignoring Artificer's weak protests.

The hustle and bustle of the shelter hadn't stopped since she'd left. Concerned faces stared at her as she limped through the shelter. She was happy they were okay. Those thoughts of relief twisted into bitterness, they were okay while she'd been keelhauled by a serial killer. They were chatting about life while she'd watched a man have a knife plunged through his head. Bitter thoughts shifted into self-deprecation as she realised they couldn't have possibly known anything was wrong, they'd been given the all-clear. Why was she so shitty to people just trying to help?

Penny sat her down on a cot and soon a doctor was smearing a sweet-smelling paste over the scrapes and cuts. Her mind was a blur, barely registering the words of comfort or questions. She responded automatically to the background noise, telling them what happened. Her thoughts were focused on being recruited.

A faded memory that was burned at the edges floated to the front of her mind. A conversation with Adam while he rolled another blunt. She'd been reading the news—a bad habit she'd failed to quit—and saw an article about the Nine warping a small town into their own twisted playground. Back in the nineties, they'd visited Brockton Bay and drove out the Elite, but—unlike an Endbringer—that didn't mean they wouldn't come back. Worrying over large events out of her control had made her pose the question to Adam: 'What if they come back? Will we be safe?'

He'd scoffed at her, calling her paranoid in that way he'd always dismissed her thoughts and feelings, but he had answered the question: They were survivors. No matter what came around, no matter who tried to stomp on them, they'd live to see another day and claw their way back up no matter what.

She could imagine him in his jail cell repeating that mantra to himself right now.

He continued, if the Nine came then they'd hide—they weren't stupid—and they'd sink their teeth into the empty space they left behind. 'Nothing wrong with sloppy seconds.'

In the moment it had satisfied her, but another burning question came up. Cautious—not paranoid—she'd asked him what he'd do if they wanted to recruit one of us.

He'd said, 'Join them.'

Obviously, she'd freaked out, calling him an idiot and it'd turned into a whole yelling match which he'd won. After they'd settled down he explained his reasoning: If you already had their attention then hiding wouldn't work, so you had to try to beat them and failing that, join them. There's always a bigger fish and you can't always hide—so you make a choice, live or die.

'That simple', he said, and he'd always choose life.

Was it that simple? Joining them meant trials, it meant that even if you did make it past them, you'd need to be one of them. There wasn't any escape—at least none worth the risk. Adam wasn't the most forward-thinking person, even if she did find him smarter than he let on.

Maybe she shouldn't listen to his advice. He'd been shitty to her. Except isn't that what she deserved anyway? She should be in jail right now, not here with people fussing over her.

Artificer ran her hands over her face to try to bring herself back to reality. Her wounds were smeared in goo and covered over with white gauze. The doctor had left at some point and all that remained were a few stragglers on who were making sure she was okay. She dismissed herself, telling them she needed to rest.

They let her go without much of a fight. She wasn't worth fighting for anyway.

Back in the tiny little closet she called a room, she slid off her pathetic cloth mask that itched at her face.

In her stupor she found herself digging out the metal cookie tin hidden inside below her clothes. Inside was a spare phone, a lighter, a glass pipe, and a plastic bag filled with a cloudy white crystal. It hadn't been hard to slip away to find an old stash house that only she and Adam knew about. She hadn't wanted to smoke it—hadn't wanted to disappoint the Raccoon Girl—she just wanted to keep it around as a reminder of what she'd overcome.

Her hands glided through the familiar motions like she'd never stopped doing them.

Smoke filled her lungs as she sucked down a breath of bliss. Energy coursed through her as the initial hit slammed into her like a brick wall.

Dopamine, how I missed you. She mused as her thoughts were kneaded into mush.

This is a one-time thing, she assured herself, just something to get her through this moment.

This hour.

This day.

This week.

Spoiler: Author's Note:

One of three non-canon recruits I have planned (since Hookwolf and Purity got dead). I'm still deciding if I'm going to do interludes for the other two, though for one of them, I'm leaning towards 'definitely yes'. A bit of insight to Mannequin's logic here - He doesn't really expect her to succeed, like at all, she's just a good target to ruin. Raccoon Knight is too heroic in her motivations to be worth twisting, but she makes for an excellent target once they start acting openly, whereas Artificer used to be a villain and is fighting against that impulse even as a hero so she makes for a good person to twist towards Mannequin's worldview.

Thanks for reading!

Bonus story recommendation: Check out The Long Way Home by Saucy. Spiderman from the MCU gets thrown into Earth Bet instead of everyone forgetting who he is. It explores a lot of different martyr complexes and is very fun.

 

[bee.exe]

Val (nobredoesart) made the first ever piece of Raccoon Knight art and it's so fucking radical. Check out all their stuff forever, thank you. (I seriously love this so much)

 

[bee.exe]

Everything they had stockpiled to survive this blasted city had been torn to shreds by that cursed Mouse. Ravager quietly seethed, not wanting to scare away the few minions she had left. Her explosive outbursts had driven away weaklings in the past. She couldn't afford to lose even the most pathetic among her handful of goons.

The pantry had been under lock and key with no way in or out except the door. How the Mouse had slipped into their pantry wasn't a mystery—sliding something under the door, most likely—but how she'd found their hideout and broken in with no one seeing her was.

The pathetic little crybabies that had followed her deserved a new hole in their neck for their incompetence. If only she could lose a few, it might slap the others into shape.

Her useless plundered help was a bigger problem to her than the Mouse chewing at their patience.

Most of her current minions were sourced from the fallen Empire Eighty-Eight. After the Empire splintered, she'd jumped ship, taking a few of the less extreme members with her—which had proven to be a mistake. They still spouted their drivel while also being useless even with basic manual labour. Ravager didn't agree with the Empire's ideology but they had been the strongest, so she'd played along. A morsel of their logic made sense if she framed every minority in her head to be as annoying as Mouse Protector. Otherwise, she didn't care at all—all life was equally useless regardless of skin colour. The fact her archnemesis was black didn't have any bearing on how infuriating she was, it was only a physical descriptor of what lay behind the mask. If anything, her ebony skin was tantalising in how smooth and luxurious it looked. She often dreamt of slicing deep wounds across it, ruining the masterpiece of God's work.

Even though Cricket and Menja had started their own little entourage she hadn't bothered to stick around. Following a beheaded empire didn't have the same draw as one that had roots everywhere. They weren't strong, anymore. Strength was the end all, be all, as far as Ravager concerned herself. For now, she'd be content waiting around for the next big thing to come along. And they would show up… eventually. There were always bigger fish. With the vacuum occupying Brockton Bay, she just had to wait to see how it got filled.

Her feeble little minions had reported that the Undersiders and the Travellers were reaching out their grubby little mitts to claim territory. Whoever claimed the biggest piece of the pie would have her undivided attention.

There wasn't a doubt in her mind that they would accept her. Who would be stupid enough to dismiss the marvellous Ravager's services? All she would ask for in exchange was help with the annoying teleporter who kept slashing up her food.

Whoever she graciously let recruit her would probably have better help than she did. Until then, she had to deal with the weaklings she had managed to scrounge out from the bottom of the barrel.

Ravager was lounging in her comfortable office chair in the dingy office she'd claimed as her own. Water damage had left the wallpaper covered in mould. Even up on the fourth floor, it was soaked in disgusting yellow bumps. Brockton Bay didn't have many options left for comfortable evil lairs. At least up here she got a nice view of the ocean.

A minion—she didn't learn their names—was talking through their plans to trap the Mouse and stop her from ruining her well-earned supplies. Stealing from that PRT truck hadn't been easy with the snot-nosed help she had. The one talking to her now hadn't even fired a gun before. She was on the shorter side with bright sparkly eyes that screamed 'Take advantage of me!'. Her speech was animated for someone talking about capturing another human.

Ravager decided to have a little fun and reached up to grab her minion by the chin. She stared into those sparkly brown eyes like a predator staring at meat. Her minion looked confused before Ravager spoke.

"Put as many of your plans into action as you like. Use whoever you wish, tell them I commanded it. Should one of your plans work, you shall be… rewarded," she purred the word, stirring a physical reaction in her minion who looked away.

Ravager loved to use that minor power on those who had such stringent views on sexuality. Confusing those who had been raised to believe that they were destined for a nuclear family in an unhappy marriage filled her with a feeling unlike any other. Lifeblood drained through invisible fangs, it nourished her.

Her minion's cheeks flushed with red. Through a bright smile, she replied, "O-okay."

With renewed vigour, her minion rushed off to do as she requested.

Ravager didn't expect any of the plans to actually work. Mouse Protector was crafty, capable of escaping even the most well-thought-out plots. Many a time she'd had the Mouse in her clutches only for her to slip through the one unaccounted-for gap.

Maybe if she didn't delight in savouring the catch she wouldn't be here in Brockton Bay right now. Instead, she'd be standing over Mouse's grave, gloating. Except there wasn't any fun to be had by slicing through her throat with no fanfare, with no final speech for her most deplorable enemy.

If she was going to kill the Mouse, she'd do it right.

Ravager swirled the wine in her glass, her thoughts drifting into severing limbs from Mouse Protector as she looked out towards the ocean. Without that ghastly glowing oil rig in it, the view of the ocean wasn't half bad. The afternoon sun cast sunbeams through the spattering of white fluffy clouds which made the ocean sparkle with little glimmers of light. It made for a fine background as she sipped her wine and thought of warm blood soaking her hands.

Someone cried out from the floor below followed by a short thud. Ravager sighed, setting down her wine on a nearby table. Why did something always have to ruin her well-deserved relaxation time? First Mouse had the nerve to interrupt her soaking in the tub and then one of her minions had the gall to ask her a question while she listened to her stories. Time to herself was a commodity it seemed.

Whatever despicable idiot had decided to interrupt her me-time would rue the day. Hopefully, it would be Mouse, so she could insult her some more. Yesterday had been an off day and she'd missed the mark with the insults. A chance to make up for it would be nice.

She drew her favourite knife from its sleek leather sheathe and twirled it around in her fingers. The handle was ivory—real ivory, she made sure of it—inlaid with gold lines that swirled around the grip. There weren't any animals made of metal to suffer for the blade, so she'd settled on a polished steel blade that almost looked silver in the right light. Blood would be staining it within the hour.

Below she could hear more yelling as her minions tried to battle whoever had shown their face here.

Ravager sauntered down the stairs, her high heels clicking with each step. Each click echoed through the stair chamber, warning those below that she was coming. Learning to move in them had been worth the effort. She could fight in them too but would need to take them off for something more serious. Mouse wasn't worth that much.

As she drew closer to the third floor, she could hear that her minions weren't holding up against their intruder. The thin plywood door did little to drown out the screams and crashes. Music to her ears, even if it was her morons being hurt.

She pushed into the battlefield of a room and took it all in. Deep gouges were set into the carpeted floor. Littered bits of broken cubicle walls were scattered across the carpet, doing little to hide the damage.

There weren't any ceiling tiles when Ravager claimed this office as her own, only the metal framework that kept them up. Chunks of that framework had been ripped to pieces—Laceration's work, most likely.

In fights she deemed worthy, she liked to make that sword of hers triple the size which made for plenty of collateral damage.

Her useless minions were kicking over the furniture she'd so kindly provided them and cowering behind it to avoid the swinging blade of the man standing amidst the chaos.

He looked serene as he dodged the distorted blade that could cut through anything. While Laceration's face was blank, he had an easy smirk that taunted the woman.

None of her anger showed on Lass' face, but Ravager knew it was there. No matter the level of annoyance, Lass would be seething behind that blank face. Ravager had lost a minion to that anger when they'd failed to fill Lass' wine to the right amount. Dying over a couple of centimetres was a waste of a good minion but it had made for a nice moment with her friend as they laughed over his idiocy.

"You'd be an interesting addition. But, I already had my mind set before I got here," Jack drawled with a voice that didn't fit his handsome face.

His voice didn't ruin it for Ravager if she was honest with herself. Anyone capable of wielding a blade like that had her attention. Especially if they wore their shirt so loose.

Lass lunged, leaving herself open for a flick of Jack's knife. His power extended the reach, slashing a new scar across Laceration's cheek to match the one on the other side.

She didn't flinch from the pain. No blood ran out of the wound thanks to one of her powers. Ravager felt nostalgic seeing it, a brief flash of who had given her that power sliding across her brain before being stomped down. No time to be nostalgic, especially not for someone so deplorable.

Jack looked surprised as Laceration continued to fight without even a momentary break.

One of her braver minions—a burlier man she'd rescued from the Empire—leapt out from behind a cubicle to swing a chunk of plywood at Jack. Unfortunately for him, Jack had already stepped away to dodge Lass' incoming swing which hit Ravager's charging minion instead, severing him in twain.

Both parts slipped to the ground, the wound bloodless as the blade cauterised the flesh clean across. Ravager lamented the loss of muscle for only a moment.

"Why are you here, Jack Slash?" Ravager's voice carried across the office space.

He ducked down to avoid another swing of Laceration's blade.

"I popped in for a chat," he said while avoiding the blade. "Your hospitality is awful."

Another casual flick of his blade cut across Laceration's torso. Her blank face betrayed no pain. Ravager internally winced at the new cut her friend sported. Even without any blood, it looked like it hurt.

"My apologies," Ravager slipped easily into the role of host. "Usually when the Nine come knocking it isn't to share wine. You can forgive my compatriot for doing her duty as protector," she kept her voice level as if they weren't in the middle of an all-out brawl.

"Wine sounds lovely. This has already been a nice enough treat, however. Call off your dog and we can talk. Or," he kicked a piece of plasterboard into Laceration to send her swing off-course, "I can finish my meal."

Conflicting emotions brewed in her chest. She wanted to yell at him for calling Lass a dog, but she also wanted to burst into a wide smile. Jack Slash wanting to talk to her meant her waiting had paid off—a bigger fish had arrived.

"Lass, be a dear and stop attacking our guest."

Ever loyal, Laceration backed away with her blade still at the ready. Jack lowered his own knife to his side.

He turned his body fully to face Ravager, ignoring the cape he'd been fighting only a moment ago. A cocky display of power that showed how little he thought of Laceration.

Ravager took her time to take him all in, hungrily pouring over his body with her eyes. His white shirt hung loose showing off his chest a little. Flecks of blood were splattered across him, making his casual posture all the more tantalising. This was a man who took no qualms with killing—better than that, he revelled in it.

Jack smirked, twirling his knife around his fingers.

"While I do enjoy the entertainment, how about we get down to business?"

"I'd be delighted."

"My Slaughterhouse Nine are lacking a ninth member. All of us will be picking people to join our merry little band. I've decided to choose you as my candidate."

Ravager's eyes went as wide as saucers. She forced down her desire to rush over and hug Jack Slash.

"Yes! I'll join you!"

"Ah, ah, ah," Jack chided her with a wag of his knife. "While I appreciate your eagerness—there are trials to be undertaken first. Each member will be giving you a test, including myself. Should you survive all of our tests, only then you can join us."

"I'll do absolutely anything you want if it means I get to join you," Ravager's words spilt out of her mouth, her feigned civility lost to the buzz of energy thrumming through her body. "I do have a request."

Jack's eyebrows rose a fraction as he hummed in response, "You're not in much of a position to be making requests. That being said, the sheer gall of it has me curious. Go ahead."

"I have a pest problem. A constant thorn in my side who only manages to get away from me because of her power. Mouse Protector. My only request is that when I join we go hunt her down and let Bonesaw do whatever she wishes to her."

"Ah, Cherish did mention a rivalry between you and another. Your request gives me an idea of what my trial will be, actually," he tapped the flat of his blade against his chin.

"It does?"

"No spoilers," his voice had a dangerous edge to it that set shivers down Ravager's spine. It scolded her while warning her of the danger of pushing.

"Of course."

"You'll be free to hunt who you want if you manage to join us. Whether Bonesaw plays along or not is up to her. In the meantime, stay away from glass. Don't want you injured for your big day now, do we?"

"Shatterbird," she stated the obvious. "Thank you."

"Not the usual response to my recruitment attempts. I appreciate such an open perspective. I was right to bet on you."

His knife hand flicked out towards Laceration. She stumbled back as the invisible slash sliced clean through her windpipe.

Ravager stepped back, her face surprised on behalf of the blank-faced Laceration.

Laceration shot forward swinging her blade in a wide arc as she leapt over the debris separating her and Jack.

He stabbed his knife in rapid flicks that pierced through Lass' organs. Her lungs collapsed in on themselves from the dozens of holes.

With her brain too hazy from the sudden lack of oxygen, her sloppy swing missed Jack by a wide berth. Laceration slumped to her knees, clutching at her throat while fruitlessly stabbing her blade towards Jack one last time.

He stepped to the side, avoiding the shimmering blade with barely any effort.

Laceration stared up at her murderer with her usual blank look. Jack felt no satisfaction seeing the life leave her already dead eyes. Murder wasn't any fun if they didn't even react.

"Why did you do that?" Ravager dared to question him, finding her voice reedy and thin.

Everything felt far away, a far cry from the excitement of only a moment ago.

Any other death wouldn't weigh on her consciousness but Laceration was more than a faceless goon. Ravager didn't know the words to explain their bond. They were cosmically linked together, sharing more than simple companionship. Laceration had been there on the worst days of her life and the best.

Jack gave her a broad smile, "Our games are more fun if you play them solo. We want to see what you can do, not your lackey."

Satisfied with his work he pocketed his blade. As he passed by Ravager he patted her on the shoulder. She flinched despite herself.

"I have high hopes. Don't disappoint me."

Still struggling to process her emotions she just nodded. "Okay."

"Good. See you soon. Thank you for the hospitality."

He inclined his head then took his leave with his hands in his pockets and a jovial whistle.

Ravager's feet moved on their own, plodding towards the corpse of her kin with gentle steps. Her energy siphoned out of her body the moment she reached the still-warm corpse. Plunging to her knees she scooped her hand beneath Lass' head to hold it up.

Even in death, her friend's face betrayed no emotion. They'd joked sometimes that maybe she'd smile when she died. That joke hurt her now.

Feeling upset over a death bothered her. It felt natural to be upset over losing someone actually important but she hadn't expected the level of emotional turmoil in her gut. Laceration would have laughed at her in that robotic tone if she knew she was crying over her corpse.

Jack Slash killed her only friend. She hated him while loving him. He'd offered her a chance to be amongst the strongest in the world. How could she hate someone who had given her such a glorious gift? He'd taken the only constant in her life away and replaced it with a chance to claim her rightful place.

Ravager longed to be part of a greater whole. The draw of being around the best of the best had a gravity too strong to resist. Maybe one day she could avenge her fallen friend, but for now, wouldn't Lass want her to be with a new family?

She'd beat their trials and join them no matter what.

It was easy to rationalise a decision she had made without thinking of the consequences.

Spoiler: Author's Note:

Non-canon recruit number two. This is a setup chapter for later more than anything so there isn't a ton to sink your teeth into, unfortunately. Hopefully, the little spattering of characterisation for Ravager is enjoyable, at least. The next chapter will be back to Meadow's perspective and most likely follow her as she talks with the PRT.