"I'm sure you remember the first friend I made."
He sighs heavily as soon as he answers the phone. "You need to stop calling me, Bearclaw. My boss does not appreciate our talks."
"You said I could call you any time, for anything," I remind him.
"That was two weeks ago," Wolfgang groans. "Things were different then. I can't keep giving advice to a vigilante; things get messy like that, and I do not want to be the next Armsmaster."
"Okay, but I need advice."
"My advice: turn yourself in. I appreciate that you trust me so much to call, but we can't keep doing this."
"So, hypothetically, say I saw a pair of people in costumes that I don't recognize going into a store," I say, ignoring him as part of our familiar song and dance. "What should I do?"
"Where is this?"
"It's a hypothetical question." I'm not going to tell him and have the Protectorate swoop in and try to arrest me again. There are only so many moments of good-doing that can be interrupted like that before I get annoyed, and I need the practice handling things on my own.
He sighs again, as heavy as before. Distantly and quietly, as if he put his hand over the phone, he asks, "Why me?" Then, in an appropriately conversational volume, "Okay. Well.
Hypothetically, you want to first figure out if they're villains or not. If they're villains, you can
hypothetically engage, but remember: a hero's priority is always, always,
always to limit risk to civilians, so hold back if there's even a chance of someone getting hurt or killed due to your intervention. If it looks like the villains are going to hurt someone anyway, then it's usually okay to engage. I'd say use your judgment on that, but… Anyway, remember your priority is to
protect people, not get the bad guys. Does that make sense?"
"Uhuh. Protect people, hold back unless someone is getting hurt: got it. What else?"
"You know, I could give a better answer to this 'hypothetical' scenario if I had more info to work with," he offers.
"That makes sense," I agree.
"..."
"..."
He sighs again. "Hypothetically, you should also call the PRT or Protectorate for help. We can give backup and assist in the actual arrests if the villains are taken down, and–"
I hear glass breaking in the store below. "Okay thanks bye!"
"Wait! B–"
I close my mobile phone and slip it into my coat's internal pocket/Faraday cage. Wolfgang is so nice to advise me like this so often, even if he acts like it's an imposition. I wish I could pay him back somehow. I drop from the roof and land in front of the pawn shop, then enter.
Attention turns to me as the bell above the door jingles. Inside are the two parahumans I spotted. One is a girl a year or two older than me, wearing a dark blue knee-length dress with long sleeves, a white boa scarf, and a shiny, silver domino mask that matches the dozen rings on her fingers, two of which glow with blue light that matches her dress: a sign of her power. She smiles a haughty smile even as I intrude. The other wears a motorcycle helmet that looks tiny on his bulked up, almost naked body; he wears only a loin cloth and holds a big duffel bag stuffed with stuff. I guess his power is some sort of muscle enhancement that doesn't do much for his bones, thus the helmet.
There are four others in the store with us. One wears a crisply ironed white shirt and black pants, and the other three are in street clothes more appropriate for the less rich part of town we're in. The crisply dressed man – the owner? Worker? – is curled into a ball, weeping, and one of the others is in a similar state, staring at a wall with a haunted expression.
"Crap, a hero!" the bulked up parahuman says. "You said they wouldn't come here."
The dressily dressed parahuman sizes me up, seemingly without worry. "And they didn't. She's not a hero, not really. You're that vigilante that's been running around like a headless chicken. Eclair, right?"
"Bearclaw, actually," I correct.
"Ah, silly me, getting my pastries confused." She laughs. "You can call me Madame, and my partner here is Flintstone."
Wolfgang named me after a pastry? Is a bear claw a tasty pastry? I'll have to try one later. I nod to the two downed people. "Is this your doing, Madame?"
Her smile becomes a smirk. "If it is?"
I move toward the insensate one. Madame takes no moves to stop me. I look him over while keeping an eye on the two parahumans, and there are no external injuries. I know better than to think that means he's completely okay, but it at least means he's not likely in immediate danger.
"What did you do to them?" I ask, standing back up. "Your power: what's it doing to them?"
She smiles wickedly. "Why would I tell you that?"
My lips turn down. "Will they be okay?"
"They won't die, if that's what your asking."
"That leaves a lot of wiggle room," I tell her. I know for a fact that 'not dead' can be a far less merciful state than dead. "Are there any permanent affects? Will they come out of this state? Will they go back to normal?"
"And what if they don't?"
I stare at her and take a moment to consider what I should do if she's just broken two people. She sounds too cocksure: like she's bluffing. If it was permanent, she wouldn't have any reason not to tell me that as an intimidation, so I'm pretty sure she's lying. But if she's not, I have to do something. I could hurt her, but I don't want to. I draw in her scent and commit it to memory.
"I'll make sure you never do it again," I say.
"Make me?" she scoffs. "I'd like to see you try."
I look around again. Four civilians in an enclosed space with three parahumans. I don't know how Madame's power works or what exactly it does. I'm pretty sure it's not permanent, at least. But even if I ignore Madame, that still leaves Flintstone. I don't know exactly how his power affects his biology, so I can't be sure that my toxins and such would affect him. He seems easily frightened: a new parahuman? Maybe; new parahumans with body-enhancement powers are paradoxically often both skittish and reckless. With his bulk and potential inexperience, getting into a fight here would risk these people getting hurt.
"No," I decide.
"No?" Madame asks. She and Flintstone exchange a look. "'No' what?"
"'No,' I'm not going to make you undo it now. I'm going to call Wolfgang, tell him about this, and see what he has to say."
Madame laughs. "Seriously? That's it? You're not going to
do anything?"
"If you're not hurting anyone, then I don't really see what I need to do." I shrug. "I'll stick around to make sure this"– I nod at the downed man –"wears off, and if it doesn't, I'll make you undo it."
Madame shakes her head as she laughs again. "Flintstone, keep going; I'll take care of this. It shouldn't take more than a second." She starts walking towards me and Flintstone goes back to stuffing more stuff into his bag of stuff, though he keeps an eye on us. "I heard you were an odd one, but this? This is just sad. You're not even going to
try to do something? You're scared, aren't you, Bear Bear? I saw you eyeing Flintstone. You're scared he's stronger than you, that he would put you down without breaking a sweat. And you'd be right. But sweetie, you shouldn't be scared of him. You should be scared of
me. I'm the one in charge here, and you have no idea how easily I can ruin you."
She slaps me. I blink at her. Her smile wavers and is forced back in place even as she massages her slapping hand.
"Are you okay?" I ask. "You didn't break anything, did you? I don't think I heard a break."
"I'm fine," she grits out: an impressive act, to sound so aggrieved and pained while smiling so haughtily.
Flintstone's bag falls to the ground. "Shit," he says. "Madame, she…"
"Get back to it, Flintstone," she commands, angry. "It's fine."
"But she–"
"It's
fine. Let's finish this and leave. She's not worth our time anyway." Madame gives me a lingering, searching look through her mask, and then turns her back on me to supervise Flintstone.
I watch to make sure they aren't going to try and surprise me, but they just get to smashing cases and bagging stuff. When they leave out the back, I call Wolfgang to appraise him of the less-than-hypothetical situation.
…?
Over the next few days, I spend my time either tinkering in my super secret lab in an abandoned restaurant, surviving, or looking for good to do on patrol. I haven't run into any other parahumans since that apparent fiasco at the pawn shop – I still don't see how stealing is bad if it doesn't hurt anyone. I've done good elsewhere though: refined my patrolling techniques a bit and found trouble to stop. Earlier just this evening I stopped a stabbing and then later helped a lost person with directions.
But with the falling night, the city gets quieter: businesses shut down until tomorrow, people go home, and the city rests. I sit on top of a BcDonald's, snacking on some cold sandwiches I lifted from the dumpster in the back. It's absurd how much perfectly good food gets thrown away, just waiting behind a lock for someone to eat – I'm not complaining though; it's free and easy food.
As I finish off my third hamburger, I hear a crash and a scream from not far away. I crumple the wrapper and take a searching sniff. The smell of blood and sweat is coming from a block away, and it's dense: someone is hurt. There's a familiar smell mixed in with it: Madame. I hop to my feet and move across the rooftops in that direction.
The smell is coming from a furniture store. It's closed for the night, but it's obvious something's happening, even irrespective of the smell of blood. A window is broken out onto the sidewalk and the glass shards frame a busted recliner, and there's someone posted at the door: a cape, costumed in a red bodysuit with green ribbons wrapped around him suggestively. There are a pair of knives strapped to his thighs and a pair of grenades on his waist.
He's not the only one here, but he's the only one outside; I can smell three or four more people in the building. There's something else in the air, like burning hair. Then, there's another crash and a scream from inside the building.
I step off the building, plant my feet on the wall, and launch myself across the street at the ribbon-clad man. Whatever is going on inside, he's part of it. He's not hurting anyone right now, so I won't hurt him much. Just a nick and he'll be down – I extend a single claw on my right hand.
A knife hits my shoulder in mid air, bouncing off my pelt without even trimming its treated hairs, and the ribbon man who threw it casually steps out of my path, avoiding my toxic claw by the smallest of margins – some sort of precognition or clairvoyance? Maybe a type of body sense?
I hit the sidewalk, roll once, plant my feet on the furniture store's exterior wall, and then jump at him again. He throws another knife at me and I bat it away before it can hit me in the face. I swing my claw at him and he dodges by an inch. I plant my feet rather than overshoot him again and claw at him again and again, and he dodges by a hair every time.
"That's neat," I say. "Is that precognition or clairvoyance? Or a sort of body sense?"
Instead of answering me, he cuts at my arms with his two knives – He has two knives? I could have sworn he only had two to begin with. I let him take a step back and gain some distance, and he throws a knife at my face again. I bat it away and watch as, even though a knife is thrown, the knife doesn't leave his hand.
"Oooh, duplication! That's super fun. There's a size and complexity limitation, right? Inorganic only, no doubt. How long does the stuff you copy last?" While still swiping at him, and while he still dodges and cuts at me, I spare a glance at where I knocked his second thrown knife. It's still there. "At least a few seconds. That makes sense. Oh! Are you part of a cluster? What's your third power?"
"Would you shut up already?" he says as he lunges at my face with his knife. I let it cut my cheek so I can grab his arm. He tugs and I hold fast.
"Sorry," I say. "Powers are neat. I'll stop now."
I sink my claws in, or at least I try to, but suddenly I'm not holding an arm. The knife he cut my cheek with falls to the ground and a paper-thin sliver in the shape of an arm slips my grip and the man backs away. His arm returns to its full proportions in space.
"Woah." I take a step towards him and he takes a step back. "So you can make yourself flat? It's kind of a shame you can't cut anybody with your edges. I wonder what that does to your insides."
I take another step toward him and he continues to back away. He throws another knife and I bat it out of the air.
"Listen, you little creep, you don't have any business here, so why don't you just head home. I'll forget I saw you and my gang won't have to hurt you," he says, trying to sound tough.
I shake my head. "I can't. Someone is hurt in there."
"That's not your business."
"Is too."
He tilts his head at me incredulously. I take another step towards him and he throws another knife. This one, I catch. It feels like a normal knife, if a bit slim and small. There's nothing even on it, just steel with rope wrapped around the handle for grip. It's weighted well, for throwing. Jack never used throwing knives. I pocket it for later examination and continue my pace at him. He takes a step back for every step I take forward. I could close the distance and try to claw him again, but I'm pretty sure he would just dodge, and even though I'm sure that I could keep it up until he tires, that's not what I need to do.
I keep stepping toward him and knocking away his projectiles, and then when we've moved far enough away, I abruptly turn and run the half-block back to the furniture store. I hear him curse and chase after me, but he's slower. I smash the door open and take in the scene inside.
Four or five people in the room, depending on how I count it. They're all together. A man dressed in brown and red with a yellow face mask holds a familiar girl: Madame, who stares at me with sunken, terrified eyes. Two more – a man with a comically large inflatable hammer, dressed in red pants with white trim, a white button up with green cuffs, and a tinkertech-looking visor, and a scrawny woman wearing white fur that practically hangs off of her emaciated frame – stand over Flintstone's body, and I only recognize it as such from the helmet and loincloth. He's either dead or close to it; his body is deflated and small, maybe five and half feet tall in contrast to his previous seven feet, his ribs are concave, his limbs are bent terribly, and there's blood staining the floor beneath him.
"Who the hell are you?" the small woman asks. "What happened to Ribbon?"
"There is no need for that sort of language," I tell her with a glare.
"Shut the fuck and answer me," she snarls.
"'Shut the fuck'?" The man holding Madame snickers. "Nice one, Ab."
"Go to hell, Nut."
The door bursts open behind me and I step out of the way. "Watch out, I–"
"That's enough, Ribbon," the man with the hammer says. "We're aware."
"Sorry boss," Ribbon apologizes, audibly cringing. Despite his earlier enthrallment with knife-throwing, he doesn't attack me. He's waiting for his boss's order.
"God, Rib, get it together," Nut teases.
"Fucking worthless," Ab mutters.
"Chestnut. Abominable." At the boss's word, the two thankfully fall silent. He says to me, "You're intruding, and you're not welcome here, whoever you are. I'll give you one chance to turn around and walk away, otherwise you're gonna end up like these here thieves."
He lets the inflatable hammer fall off his shoulder and onto Flintstone's body, and it falls with disproportionate speed and weight, splattering into his head and sending organic matter everywhere, like jello dropped from a roof. If he wasn't dead before, he is now. Not even Panacea could fix that. Drat.
Madame is shivering but barely struggling, limp in Chestnut's grasp as she stares at Flintstone's body. The man with the hammer lifts his inflatable hammer from the body with barely a squelch and not a sliver of effort. It must be tinkertech, like his visor. I want to ask about it and figure out his specialization, but I need to focus on what's important. Flintstone is definitely dead, but Madame's not, and she hasn't hurt anyone. From what I saw of her power, I'm not sure she can hurt anyone; she'd have to get creative, at least.
"Okay, I'll leave, but I'm taking Madame with me," I say.
The boss inclines his head. "You don't get to make demands, little boy. This isn't that sort of situation. This one here"– he points his hammer at her like it weighs nothing, and I'm leaning toward thinking he can manipulate its weight –"thought she could steal from us. So why the hell would I let you have her? Unless you're wanting to kill her for me," he jokes, and Chestnut snickers at it.
"Is stealing bad?" I ask. "Either way, she didn't hurt anybody, so she shouldn't die, I think."
"That's not your call, little boy," Chestnut taunts.
The boss sighs. "I guess we're killing two kids tonight. I need a drink. Take care of him."
There's half a pause, and then Chestnut starts to smoke. Madame falls from his grasp and crumples to the floor, and a moment later an explosion sounds as he's flung bodily at me. I juke left and swipe at him with an outstretched claw – if he's coming to me so readily, I'll make it quick – but as I make contact it's like trying to cut into Crawler.
My arm is thrown away, painfully, though it thankfully remains in its socket, and Chestnut continues past me and through the wall. I'm sent stumbling, and before I can regain my balance, something has hit me in the back – It's Abominable, by the size of the hit: fist, not hammer. She sends me stumbling further and I roll with it, literally, letting momentum carry me heel over head and back upright onto a couch.
Another explosion sounds, and I leap out of Chestnut's way. He smashes the couch I was on, and then two others before stopping. He's steaming. Abominable is in my face and then ducks, and I barely catch the knife before it hits me in the eye.
"Her face is vulnerable," Ribbon calls.
"Everywhere's vulnerable," Chestnut laughs before exploding himself my way again.
I throw myself out of the way, but he stops short, and I have barely a moment to wonder why before I catch Abominable's foot with my jaw. I land in a table and blink away splinters. I catch another knife thrown at my face and fling it at a smoking Chestnut who explodes a few feet forward and sends it flying. Does he have to charge his power? Impacts don't arrest his movement, so there aren't many other reasons for him to not have continued on at me.
I block Abominable's punch, but it still sends me through the table. She's strong, but there has to be another facet to it. In my life of studying parahumans, I've never seen a power as simple as pure strength; there's always something else to it, whether that's the mechanism behind the strength being flexible beyond that sole use or the strength coming with conditions.
Still, whatever the trick, mechanism, or condition, she's not strong enough right now to break my bones, and only maybe strong enough to hurt me with the right shot. She's an annoyance, but not a problem.
I pull myself to my feet, grab a chair, and fling it at her. A knife hits me in the shoulder, thrown from a couch and a bed away, and it's reassuring that Ribbon doesn't seem to have parahuman aim. The chair hits a wide-eyed Abominable and knocks her over.
I don't have time to see whether it did more to her, as an explosion sounds from behind me and all breath is driven from me as Chestnut impacts me bodily, breaking a pair of beds with me. I hadn't realized that mattresses could hurt. I continue limply off of him and onto a broken couch when he comes to an abrupt stop.
"Well look at that. He's still in one piece," he calls out.
"Damn. I knew she was tough, but…" Ribbon trails off.
"Why do you keep call him 'she'?"
"Because she's a girl?"
Chestnut looks down at me, where I'm laying still. "You sure about that? I've never seen a girl this ugly."
"She's one of them monster capes, dumbass."
"Would you both shut up already?" Abominable asks.
"Oooh, someone's getting hangry. Little too late, don't you think?" Chestnut laughs. "Alright, boy or girl doesn't matter – It's dead."
"You sure about that?" Ribbon asks.
"Am I sure? I hit him head on, of course I'm fucking sure! Nothing lives that."
I sink my claws into his thigh as he laughs, and he stumbles away, tearing his flesh further as he tries to escape. It's too late, the toxin is already in him. I pull my aching self to my feet, and he screams as he falls, crippled though not bleeding. He's hallucinating now, increasingly terrified by every stimulus. I based this toxin off some sativa I found at a gas station. He starts to smoke, and then explodes away, through a wall, washing me with a breath of hot air.
He cracked two of my ribs, bruised me mightily, and sent my head spinning for a moment, but I'm fine. He would have been dangerous if he hadn't assumed I'd died to the single hit; past success must have left him cocky, but I'm built different. My body was hand crafted by one of most renowned and infamous tinkers on the planet. My body is the culmination of months of dedicated and meticulous work, backed by most of a decade of experience and knowledge.
Fighting as a brute is weird though, and fighting alone is weirder. I usually have backup in the form of mashups, family, or spider boxes at the very least. But I'm alone here and now. I have no one to rely on except myself, and as terrifying as that fact is, I know I can do this. This is the path I decided on, and I'm sticking to it. These people don't scare me. I just need to make sure I don't kill them.
"What did you do to him, you fuck?!" Abominable screeches. I see she's bruised and scratched from the chair I hit her with.
"Your language is so rude!" I yell back. "And he's fine, he's just scared."
A distant explosion punctuates my statement.
She runs at me, fist cocked back in an obvious punch and I duck it to prick her with a paralytic. She has no parahuman durability, and judging by how she immediately trips and falls face first into the same broken couch Chestnut dropped me into, she has no regenerative or fortifying power either. Weird. I'd love to see how her power works, but I won't have a chance to take her apart with her companions still here. Ribbon is going to be a pain to put down with how well he can dodge, I'll have to get creative. Maybe I can free a hand and use the sleeve as a third–
I'm pressed to the floor by a sudden pressure from above.
"God dammit," comes the boss's gravelly voice.
I force my head to turn so I can look at him. He has a tinkertech gun pointed at me, bright green, with a dozen knobs and switches along it's barrel. Is that what's pushing me down? Must be. Madame is at his feet. New blood stains her dress, and her hands are planted on the ground. She struggles as if to lift them. He must be able to affect gravity or maybe air pressure in some capacity with his tinkertech.
"I just wanted to have a quiet night at the bar," the boss says. "That's all I wanted tonight to be. But no. Stupid kids keep messing with what's mine or interrupting, so I have to put off my own damn life to take care of things. It's ridiculous. I hate to do it, but you damn kids just won't let me drink in peace, will you?"
I pull my arms to my body as he talks and start to push up against the pressure. It's not easy, and is definitely a stress test for my body. I'm superhumanly strong and lack the internal limiter that animals have on their muscular systems to prevent tearing. When someone is tased and they get flung across a room, that's not the electricity doing that, it's their own muscles' involuntary flexing that sends them flying. Normally, people can't repeat that voluntarily. Their nervous system doesn't let them, as it would tear apart their tendons and even break bones.
"And you dumbasses!" he addresses his crew. "Don't think I didn't see your piss poor job 'handling' this brat. You wrecked half the store chasing him around and wrecked the other half getting your asses whooped. We'll be having
words later, believe you me. Ribbon, would you quit fucking hiding and take care of him already? Little bastard's getting up."
But my bones and tendons are strong enough to handle one hundred percent of my muscles' strength, even enhanced as they are by my own tinkering. I don't have the same limits, and I'm not going to be put down by a few extra atmospheres of pressure. I won't go down now because I can't go down now – I couldn't tolerate myself if I can't save Madame and do
something good for
once in my life.
I bring myself to my hands and knees and ignore the knife that scrapes along my cheek. It cuts skin, but not deeply. Ribbon throws another, and it nicks my forehead with a rivulet of blue-green blood. Again and again he throws as I push myself up, and when one knife gets lodged into the seam between my hood and my neck, I realize I'm not noticeably heavier for it, which means that the boss's tech isn't increasing gravity around me, but affecting the air on top of me, making it press down on me. This combined with the varying heft of his hammer must mean his specialty is density, possibly limited to air. That's powerful, versatile, and very cool.
"
Ribbon."
"I'm trying, Toymaker, but my knives aren't doing anything. I figured you wouldn't want me to use grenades in here."
The boss – Toymaker – groans. "Just hold this. Keep it pointed at him and don't touch any buttons." He passes the gun to Ribbon, who obeys, and then picks up his inflatable hammer and starts towards me. "I have to do everything around here," he grumbles.
I'm on my hands and knees, and I can inch forward, but I'm not under the illusion that that means I'll escape like that. I… Fiddlesticks. I didn't want to use aerosols. I wanted to keep myself limited to just my claws and bodily enhancements, to better sell the separation between Bonesaw and Bearclaw, but at this rate I'm not sure I have another option. Toymaker probably won't be able to kill me, not easily, at least, but there's nothing stopping him from beating me down, killing Madame, and then leaving me here with their bodies. He might even call the PRT on me, and they would definitely kill me with a concerted effort when they realize who I am, and I'm not ready to die yet, not while I still have so much to–
I hit the ceiling, suddenly unburdened by the air, sent flying by my straining muscles, and a moment later I fall back down. Mid-fall, I see Madame swinging a chair at Ribbon – He's turned the tinkertech away from me. Furniture groans and creaks where he points it. Toymaker snarls and yells at him,
"God dammit! Get your act together and–"
He doesn't have time for more as I hit the ground and bounce his way, claws outstretched and coated in a fast-acting paralytic. He swings his hammer at me like a batter at a baseball, but this baseball has claws, and I grab hold of the hammer, sinking my claws into his weapon – it's decidedly
not inflated, but just looks that way; it's solid on the inside – and let him carry me along on the swing.
I disengage at its conclusion, leaping off of it at Ribbon, who ducks my claw and gets a wooden chair to the face for his trouble, courtesy of Madame. He goes down, and as I run back past him to re-engage Toymaker, I draw a thin line in his flesh, downing him.
Toymaker swings his now-slightly-sparking hammer at me and I swing a hook at it, head on. Metal meets meat with a
snap-crunch, and meat loses. I can feel the bones in my hand and wrist getting slid out of place as tendons snap and everything loses tension. My bones don't break, but that's little consolation as my hand and claws are rendered useless. I turn off my pain.
Toymaker's hammer keeps going, smashing into the floor and pulling him off balance by a step. He tries to lift his hammer, but it doesn't budge – It must be stuck in high-density. He's out of weapons. I'm not. Dodge as he may try, it's not enough to evade my left paw's claws for more than a single swipe. He drops from a cut across his shoulder.
I stand over him. His group is down or gone. A short laugh escapes me, and I couldn't say why. It might have been a release in tension after my first actual fight as Bearclaw, or relief at the win, or the realization that these gangsters are Christmas themed. It's all so silly, and now she has three parahumans to work with.
She lets out another giggle. There are so many powers to play with, and they all already come with a theme! It's been so long since she's made any art, and the ideas buzz in her head like the hazy drone of a swarm of locusts: Christmas tree bones and tinsel made of meat, duplicating baubles of impossible weight, branches that break in a snap-shut trap! And that's just preliminary ideas! She's sure she'll have more in mind after she actually takes the time to dig into them and figure out the intricacies of their powers: Abominable especially, her power's such a mystery.
A shoe scuffs the floor and Bonesaw's head snaps to attention. Madame freezes. The fancily dressed girl stares at her, swallows, and then forces her shoulders back and her back straight.
"Thank you for the assistance, though it wasn't necessary," she says in a forced-steady voice.
"It wasn't?" Bonesaw asks casually.
This is weird; she's not running or even that scared of her– of me. Me. I blink hard and take a step away from Toymaker's downed form. I can be better. I can do better. Better means not messing around in people's guts and heads no matter how fun it is and how much I so so
sooooo want to know their powers. Better means accepting that I might never figure out the passengers, which is almost enough to bring me to tears. Even still, I force myself to turn away from the helpless, intriguing meat–
people on the ground.
"Of course not. I had everything well in hand. Still, thank you."
I look over at Flintstone, who is definitely dead. No resurrection or regeneration for him, not with how his body hasn't moved since his head was squished. "I'm sorry for your loss. That sucks," I tell her because that's the thing to say in these instances, I think. That's what Jackson told Kial when his cat got hit by a car.
She follows my gaze and barely fails to repress a shiver. "Thank you. He… He will be missed."
A silence stretches between us.
She breaks it. "So. What now?"
"Uh." I look around. The fight is over unless Chestnut reappears, and the fear toxin shouldn't wear off for a while, so that's unlikely. "What do you mean?"
She flexes her hands, bereft of rings now, and winces. Her left middle finger is already swelling and looks to be broken. "What are you going to do now? Are you going to stop me? Are you going to call the PRT?"
"Oh! Fiddlesticks, yes, that's something I should do, isn't it." I pull my phone out of my pocket, but it won't turn on. I remove its casing. It's broken and the battery is loose. I ask Madame, "Can I borrow your phone?"
She licks her lips and then hesitantly retrieves her phone from a thigh strap under her dress. She tosses it to me. I catch her phone out of the air. I thank her, and then call Wolfgang's number.
"How did you get this number?" comes the hero's no-nonsense voice after the second ring.
"You gave it to me."
"Bearclaw? Did you get a new phone?" His voice has lost its edge. He sighs tiredly.
"Mhm. I'm using Madame's," I tell him.
"Madame? Why are you with her? Are you okay?" he asks, edge re-engaged.
"Oh yeah. I've got couple broken ribs and some cuts and scrapes, but nothing to worry about. My hand is kind of mangled, actually, but I'll be fine."
"What?! Stay on the line; I'm coming to you. And don't let Flintstone hit you again, he doesn't have a record of violence but he's even stronger than he looks and you need to be careful."
I look at the smear of a body that was once Flintstone. "He's dead actually."
"What?! Bearclaw, no…" Wolfgang sounds heartbroken.
"I didn't kill him!" I deny. "He was like that when I got here. Mostly."
Madame makes a disgusted sound and walks over to me with her hand outstretched. "Give me the phone. You are doing this all sorts of wrong."
I hand it over to her.
"This is Madame. Bearclaw has assisted me in bringing down the Misfits after Toymaker killed Flintstone. All of the Misfits except Chestnut are– Hold on." She turns and asks me, "They're not dead, are they?" I shake my head. "They're incapacitated in the Grant Home Furniture store on Second Elizabeth street. You're welcome."
She hangs up.
"What kind of hero are you, that you don't even know to call the cops? Is this your first fight or something?"
"Uh. Kinda?"
"Wha– Seriously?
This was your first fight?"
"Yes." It's not entirely a lie. It's my first fight as a not-monster.
She looks around at the wrecked store and three drugged-into-unconsciousness villains. She lets out a laugh.
"It's not that funny," I tell her. She only shakes her head.
"You are a fucking riot."
I frown. "You really shouldn't use language like that. It's rude."
"What are you, twelve?" she asks.
"I'm thirteen." Then, belatedly, I remember to add, "I think."
She lets out another laugh. "You're a vigilante and you can't handle the f-word? My knight in furry armor might be more innocent than I thought." She winks at me.
I frown. "I don't know about that. I wouldn't say I'm exactly innocent."
She tilts her head at me. "Oh? Are you a bad boy, then? I should have known, the way you're running around late at night without supervision."
I frown deeper at her calling me a bad boy. It feels weird, like a reminder of my past in general and my time as Aron. "I'm not exactly a boy."
"That's fine. A bad girl as handsome as you is just as fun."
I make an uncomfortable noise and shudder at the Bonesaw of it all. "Not really a girl either. I'd really like to not be bad also. I'm trying to be good. But not a good girl."
"Oh. Okay." She shrugs. "Well, you're still handsome in an exotic, furry sort of way. Very chic. Tell me, is that real fur?"
I blink. "Wait, are you flirting with me?"
She shrugs and smiles coyly. I find myself blushing, and absently wonder how that looks with my skin tone and the blue-green blood I'm sporting tonight. I think this is the first time someone's flirted with me, and I'm not entirely sure how to handle it. I can't ignore it, not after asking her directly, and I'm not sure I'd want to – That's what Jack did with Shatterbird, when he wasn't playing with her for his own fun, and I don't want to be that. Best to head this off and let her down.
"Uh, listen, Madame, I'm flattered, I think, but I'm really working on myself right now. You seem nice – you haven't hurt anyone, at least, and that's good – but I don't think I'm ready to think about having a relationship like that."
She blinks.
"Sorry. Really, I am."
She blinks again, then rolls her eyes. "I'm just flirting for fun. It's not like I'd actually want a relationship with you. We only just met." She gives me another once over, overtly checking me out. "You are cute though. And sweet. I could see something happening, but
not right now. It takes more work than a single rescue to win my heart."
"Oh. Good. That's a relief."
She hums and looks around. Her eyes linger on Flintstone's corpse for an uneasy moment. She visibly steels herself, then stands and walks past the body toward the back of the store. I watch her curiously. She ducks behind a counter and stands back up holding a backpack. She gives me a long look, swallows, and then slings the bag over her shoulder as she walks toward the exit.
"Walk with me," she says as she passes me.
After a moment, I follow her outside. I expected her to stop outside the store, but she continues on down the sidewalk. I jog to catch up and ignore the way my muscles pull against my broken ribs. I'll fix those and my knuckles when I get the chance.
"Shouldn't we wait with them?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "No. You're a vigilante. That means the heroes are expected to arrest you, same as Toymaker's gang."
"Oh. Hm." That follows what Wolfgang's been telling me about turning myself in, and things getting worse the longer I run.
"Now, you obviously don't know how things work. You've been active here for like a month now and only just got into your first cape fight, you can barely make a phone call, and you don't even know how to avoid arrest." She abruptly stops and pivots on her heel to face me. "I'll be blunt. You need help. I – the charitable and magnanimous being that I am – am offering you that help. You stick with me, and I'll keep you out of trouble. Sounds good, doesn't it? I'll even throw in a shower and a warm meal before bed tonight. Now, those flashing green lights down the street mean the PRT is close, so let's go back to my base."
Without waiting for me to answer, she turns back around and continues down the street and into an alley. I don't follow, not immediately.
She sounds like Jack, almost. She's manipulating me, or at least trying to, and it makes me want to cut her and leave. She can't be as well practiced as Jack – not unless her powers involve keeping her looking young – so it's obvious she wants me to replace her now-dead partner/underling. It feels scummy. Is that who she is? A scummy manipulator who uses and discards people? Jack's power seemed underwhelming at first too.
She reminds me of Jack, and that makes me want to rip her head off. But she's not Jack. I don't know her well, but she's not Jack. Bearing a resemblance to a shitty person shouldn't deprive her of a chance, should it? After all, I resemble Bonesaw but I'm giving myself a second chance. Pushing down the bad feeling, I move after her.
I catch up. She turns to look at me with a lofty smirk that disappears as soon as I grab her shoulder. She lets out a small hiss as I prick her with my claws. I don't let out any poison yet. She knows she's completely at my mercy – whatever her power is exactly, she used a chair instead of it when she attacked Ribbon, so there's a prerequisite for its use that I've historically avoided – but she does a decent job of burying her fear under an aloof and unimpressed look.
"What's the worst thing you've ever done?" I ask.
She stares me down. "Why?"
"Answer the question. And don't try to lie. I'll know."
She continues to stare me down. "I offer my aid and expertise to you while you are confused and unpracticed, and th–"
She grits her teeth and strangles a groan as I sink my claws in another millimeter. "I am trying to be nice right now," I say as evenly as I can. It's not very even. "It would be very helpful if you would answer me."
She swallows. She pushes her spine as straight as it will go with me holding onto her. She's taller than me, by two inches.
"Fine," she spits. "You want to know what the worst thing I've done is? I brought a boy home to my daddy. I knew he wouldn't approve, but I did it anyway. He didn't even tell me to. I knew Daddy would ruin that boy, and he did. He destroyed that boy from the inside. Last I heard, he got moved to an asylum, but even that can't help."
I blink, caught off guard. From what I can tell, she's not lying, but… "Is that it?"
She smirks. "My daddy was
Heartbreaker."
With that declaration, she reaches a glowing hand up and grabs me by the face.
I ignore it. She's Cherish's sister. I only knew her for a couple months, but that woman was as messed up as they come: arrogant, entitled, joyfully mean, kind of stupid. She tried to brainwash the Nine, for peat's sake. Still, Madame isn't anywhere near Cherish's level of messed up. For one, the worst thing she did was something someone else did, and even so that only affected a single person. Madame is like a smaller, less angry, less stupid version of Cherish. She seems to be about the same amount of entitled and arrogant though.
"Is that really the worst thing you've done?" I ask.
Madame's smirk falls and she swallows. She's more open with her fear now that her power has proven ineffective, but she rallies and buries it. "You know who Heartbreaker was, don't you? You know what he could do?"
"Yeah, of course," I say. "But that can't be the worst thing you've done. There has to be something more. Haven't you ever killed or mutilated anyone? You've never eaten a baby in front of its mother? Or cut someone's legs off and left them in the woods to try to crawl to safety while covered in predator-attracting pheromones? You've never forced someone to kill their family? Never psychologically tortured someone for days? You've never made someone trigger? Anything?"
Madame shakes her head through all of my questions, her eyes getting wider and her shivers more pronounced as I go. I think I might be legitimately scaring her.
"Huh. Sorry, I guess."
I release her shoulder and she stumbles back against a wall. One of her hands presses against it and comes away bloodless, and she stares at it in confusion.
"One of the things my claws can excrete is a coagulant. You won't start to bleed from that for about an hour, and by then it should be safely scabbed over," I explain. "It's good that you haven't done anything that bad though. Let's keep it that way."
She stares at me and swallows. I start to rock back and forth on my feet.
"Sooo," I say. "You said something about a base? I could use a shower, and it's been a couple days since I last ate."
Her eyes drill disbelieving holes in me. They slide past me and to the mouth of the alley. I can't smell or hear anyone there; Madame's pondering running. I frown – I didn't mean to scare her that badly. I just wanted to make sure she isn't like Jack. Before I can decide whether to clarify, Madame straightens up and clears her throat.
"Fine," she says. "Let's go. But just so you know, it's very rude and unbecoming to handle a lady like that. You won't do it again."
"Your voice is trembling."
"Shut up."
I follow her to her base.
