He floated, inert, aware but without any measurable sensation. No sight, sound, scent, texture...
The Warcrafter
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Chapter 1
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
He floated, inert, aware but without any measurable sensation. No sight, sound, scent, texture. He couldn't even feel his own anatomy; his proprioception was completely gone. He couldn't even tell if he had arms or legs anymore. He was an amorphous shape, if that, housing a spark of consciousness.
Hello, Adrian.
"What? Who's there?" he said in alarm. Even as he spoke he felt a surge of satisfaction that he could speak.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am…. The voice paused, as if searching for words. I suppose an approximation of my name is necessary, your language sort of lacks the nuances for my full name. Call me.. hmm… call me Agent.
"Agent… right." That wasn't a comforting nomenclature, all things considered. "Where am I? Why can't I see?"
To answer the latter first, you are in a semi-amorphous state which has, er, left you without sensory apparatus for your environment. You sense nothing because you have nothing at the moment to sense it with. Agent sounded a little embarrassed at this. I apologize, I'm sure it's not comfortable. But you really don't have any sensory approximates for the environment you are currently in; you wouldn't understand what you were "seeing" if you could…
Here, let me adjust a few things. The 'nothingness' faded… or rather Something faded in: a misty, featureless plain under a twilit sky. Adrian found himself looking at/addressing/facing a soft misty cloud of light hovering over that plain; he realized in the next moment that he himself was an identical cloud of light-- though how he could tell he couldn't say; he certainly couldn't crane his neck to look himself over. There, I hope that's better. It's all illusory but at least it gives you an avatar of sorts to communicate with.
"Yeah, great." Why wasn't he panicking? Wait. No adrenal glands, no fight-or-flight response. Of course. Interestingly enough he was still capable of getting agitated at his situation. "Okay. So my first question? Where the heck AM I? And let me throw in "WHY" while I'm at it?"
You are in my native environment. An existential plane. Call it the Between.
"Between what?"
Everything.
That gave him pause, for sure.
As to what or who I am, I am an extradimensional hyper-advanced… though "advanced" isn't quite the right term… well, you'd call me a "cosmic entity." And I have brought you here because I wish to make a deal.
"A… deal?"
An agreement, yes, an exchange of services.
And that kicked Adrian's bump of skepticism right in. Cosmic beings snapping up random individuals and offering them deals… superhuman powers, or magic green rings, for example… it was a cliche' in ninety percent of the fanfics he'd read. And more than a couple he'd written.
Yes, you are familiar with the concept.
Adrian squinted suspiciously, or at least thought really hard about squinting suspiciously at the amorphous cloud of light before him. "Okay, why me?"
Why not you? Agent pointed out reasonably. You are well within acceptable averages for the necessary attributes. At the very least, you are familiar with the concept, and seemed agreeably inclined to the idea. Missing fight-or-flight glands or no, you would be surprised at the percentage of three-dimensional entities such as yourself who would go into either screaming hysterics or a catatonic fugue by this point.
Adrian gave a mental snort. At least it wasn't trying to pass him off as "the Chosen One" or the like. If this was a dream or a hallucination it wasn't offending his literary sensibilities yet, at least. Of course if he was lying in a hospital drugged to the hairline then all this was coming from his own mind, so it wouldn't seem excessively ridiculous then either would it? "SO… this deal?"
Let me begin at the beginning. As you can guess I am not the only one of my kind. We live in the interstices between the universes and planes of reality. We're timeless, eternal, immortal, vastly powerful… and rather BORED.
Ah, here it comes, Adrian thought. The old Bored Cosmic Entity Wants to Play routine. Poker Night of the Gods. Oh well, there were worse cliches.
To alleviate our ennui, we organized a series of contests and games. Each round, every participant-- each Agent-- chooses an Avatar from the more finite races, such as yourself, from one of the three dimensional universes. We spend… I'm picking up the word "quatloos" from your mind?… ah, no, a better word there off to the side in your vocabulary, "chips." Yes, a limited pool of points or "chips" on empowering and equipping the Avatar. Then we place them in a different universe, with a stated mission. If they succeed, they are rewarded, and their Agent moves up in the next round and chooses a new Avatar.
"And if they fail?"
Then the Agent is moved down in ranking.
"And the Avatar?"
Agent seemed reticent. There is no punishment for failure. We do not work like that. But the missions assigned are often… hazardous. The consequences for failure are... self-explanatory.
"Uh… huh." So it was pass or fail, with a probably lethal "fail" option.
You must understand something, Adrian. Our "game" is about creating and endowing HEROES. The quests they are set on are consequent… to save a person, a family, a tribe, a nation, a world, from some imminent catastrophe. To battle an evil empire, or an overlord, or an alien horde… or just to fight for a humble cause. Any and all of those are dangerous pursuits in places of crisis, even for those endowed with extraordinary gifts they are dangerous. Failure is often fatal.
"Kind of high stakes for a GAME," Adrian said.
We wish to make the universes a better place, Agent replied. You can't do that playing tiddly winks.
"Well, why don't you go into these, these places in crisis and intervene yourself?"
Agent gave what had to be the approximation of a heaving sigh. Adrian, we are a race of super-advanced cosmic entities. We number in the trillions. Does it not follow that we have powers, governances, authorities, laws, codes of conduct that restrain us as well? Our civilization is so complex and intricate it makes the operation of your own world's governments look like the internal politicking of an aboriginal tribe over who gets the biggest share of animal pelts. It would take years to explain the codes of conduct that restrict our behavior interacting with the baryonic, euclidean universes, and most of it still wouldn't make sense to you. He grumbled a bit. They often don't make sense to US.
The Game is, for reasons too complex for you to fathom, one of the few legal, safe, legitimate ways in which we can intervene with the fates of other worlds, even for their own good. Because in part it places the power in the hands of mere mortals to determine their fates themselves . It's THE RULES.
There's a world out there where somebody's in trouble. I am asking you to help me, to help them, and to help yourself. Will you accept?
"My reward?" he asked.
Your primary choice of reward will be: You will be returned home… or allowed to make your home in your new universe… or even pick a third… in any regard, with all your powers intact. There are other, lesser options, but those are the prime rate ones.
Adrian thought it over. Great power. Be a hero. But risking it all… maybe even his life. No guarantee of success, and who knows how much suffering and hardship.
But wasn't that what made the effort worthwhile.
"I accept."
He could feel Agent practically beaming with satisfaction. Excellent. The contract is sealed, let us begin. The planescape swirled dizzyingly, and Adrian found himself hovering before a massive, and very familiar opening screen.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
Begin Character Creation
"I'm going to AZEROTH?" He yelped. No way in hell… it was his favorite online game ever, but that world and its lore were messed up three ways from Sunday, and it had at least a dozen Doomsday scenarios waiting in the wings to do it in at any given moment, with Lovecraftian Old Gods being the LOWEST ranked world-ending threats. If the literal armies of superhuman wizards, warriors, paladins and whatnot couldn't handle it, adding one more dink with a plus-one sword to the mess would do nothing. Agent would just end up with his Avatar a greasy stain on an ogre's foot.
No, absolutely not.
Adrian sighed in relief.
You're getting your power set from there.
"What?" Okay, that was better. A guy with a World of Warcraft character's powers and skills could hold up fairly well in most "fictional" universes he could think of…. "Wait. Where AM I going? That's sort of an important question before I pick my powers."
There was a sound of shuffling papers. I'm not really supposed to tell you your destination, if at all, until AFTER you have selected your powerset.
Of all the… "But that's not remotely fair!" Adrian sputtered.
This is really not how we normally proceed, Agent said.
"Oh, don't try that. That's a load and you know it! A choice made without any information isn't a choice at all. It might as well be made with a flip of a coin!"
Agent's body language-- it really was adapting quickly to having a humanoid form-- was hesitant, so Adrian pressed his argument. "Look, you talked about your society having law, and an entertainment industry, and, and mediums of exchange. That implies a marketplace of some sort. And one of the fundamentals of a marketplace is that there are certain ethical principles that have to be observed for it to function. The real biggie is that all exchanges have to be voluntary and informed to be legitimate. Making me make an irrevocable choice while denying me the information needed to make that choice? Not what I would call 'super-advanced,' or even moral."
Agent said nothing; he simply contracted into a ball of swirling, pulsing motes. Adrian somehow got the impression that he'd been put on hold while Agent argued with someone else over his metaphorical shoulder. After a moment Agent reformed into a human-shaped cloud and addressed him. You argue persuasively, he said. It's been agreed that it would be unethical to not give you SOME information about your destination. I've been informed that I may disclose a BIT more than I have.
"Like my destination?" Adrian said.
...Um.... I can at least let you know beforehand that the Earth we are sending you to is a Superhero world.
"A superhero world?" Adrian repeated. "Anything else?"
Agent mumbled a bit and shrugged expressively. Sorry.
There was an awkward silence. "Not your fault I suppose," Adrian finally muttered. "Better than nothing I suppose... " Superhero world. Adrian chewed his lip nervously. That was still a lot of variability. It could mean anything from Justice League to Watchmen.
Agent made a staticky noise that might have passed for a sigh. For the record, we are not in the habit of forcing people to make utterly blind choices. It's just that most of the entities we negotiate with are normally brought here in the midst of... a cataclysmic moment of some sort. Usually something that would or should have resulted in their deaths. They tend to arrive here... disoriented. In a fugue, or dreamlike state, or other state of not-quite-compos-mentis. It's often rather like trying to get someone in an ER after a gruesome traffic accident to fill out hospital paperwork. Some form of assent is needed, so we resort to broad brushstrokes and vague entreaties and explanations... and our procedures have evolved accordingly.
Adrian nodded. He could understand, somewhat. He had a mental image of the scene in Disney's Aladdin where the Genie was desperately trying to get an official wish from Aladdin even as Aladdin was drowning. The Entity gave a Gallic shrug. I apologize for my earlier reticence. I'm not some Jerkass Genie, Adrian. I'm not going to trick you into becoming a woman, or turning into a black man and drop you into the middle of a Nazi rally. I want to win this as badly as you do, so I'm going to do everything to make sure you get the best deal possible. I will try to... be more forthcoming from here on out. Forgive an old Being his bad habits.
"...Right. Sorry," Adrian apologized. "I do get that there has to be some element of chance or risk. I just want to know what lotto ticket I was writing the numbers on." He looked the Entity over. "You know, you're sounding a lot more human than when this conversation started."
A cosmic entity with nigh infinite resources and control over time and space, learning things quickly. Imagine that.
"Touche`." Chastened, Adrian turned back to the screen and proceeded with his dicey choice. He flipped through the options-- he had hands!--- and watched as the screen flickered between races, classes, appearances…
If it helps, Agent hinted, most of the… limitations, I'd suppose you'd call them… on the various races, classes and such you recall from the game are not in effect. Those are the products of gameplay-- programmers putting in things for the sake of design and balance, not the actuality of how such powers work in Azeroth.
"Really."
Yes. Think, do you think in real life that a gnome would run as fast as human? Or a human would be as physically strong as an orc? Or that a worgen, after the cutscreen, is suddenly unable to claw or bite anymore? Many of the limitations found in gameplay, you can disregard.
"Well you'd better baby-walk me through it then. I don't want to miss an advantage I overlooked because some programming doink in Blizzard thought it wouldn't make for good 'game balance.' "
Very well. Oh, and you'll be starting out at maximum level, so to speak. So don't worry about learning curves for skills or talents. Thanks to the implanted memories, though you may need to practice a bit with your skills and abilities, your knowledge base will be fully updated from the start, so it will be more akin to brushing the dust off old skills than struggling to learn new ones. Also, you will be in peak physical condition, akin to your species' version of an Olympiad. And you'll find that maintaining that state will be nearly effortless.
"Seems overly generous..."
Fair's fair. You're getting dumped into a superhero 'verse, where a ridiculous percentage of the natives have the physique of Greek gods.
Adrian mulled over the screen. He hemmed and hawed, but the choice was inevitable. "Species: Worgen." he clicked.
May I ask your reasoning why? Agent was looking more and more humanoid; he tipped his ersatz eyeglasses in Adrian's direction.
"Innate abilites. Stronger than human, faster, presumably accelerated recuperation and healing from the metamorphic ability, both bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion, natural weapons, and going by the cut scenes, incredible leaping and climbing ability. The ability to change back and forth to a human form means an instant disguise option, too. Even a baseline worgen will be pretty kickass." Adrian shrugged his ghostly shoulders. "Plus werewolves are cool."
A good choice, and good reasoning. Two notes: contrary to game lore, your worgen "curse" is not contagious. It is innately genetic. As if the night elves would be so foolish as to leave INTELLIGENT werewolves with a contagious curse, he muttered in an aside. All it would take is one contagious sociopath and Azeroth would end up like the final reel of the Omega Man...
Anyhow, this does however mean that your Worgen form is your default form, the human one is essentially a shapeshifted disguise. If you violently lose consciousness -- say you are drugged or concussed-- you will revert to your 'natural,' that is your Worgen, form. Try to avoid such circumstances when among hostile entities.
"Yeah, important safety note. Thanks."
Agent waved his hand. The screen filled with a side-by-side image: to the left, a young, dark haired, athletic man, caucasian with some hints of something exotic, about sixteen or so if Adrian judged correctly. To the right, a black-furred wolf-man, powerfully built, sleek and deadly. "So that's me?" Adrian asked.
Yes. Acceptable?
"Better believe it. I haven't had abs like that since never."
And now… class?
Adrian browsed the options. "No warlocks or Demonhunters, I see."
Certainly not. Agent's voice had a shudder of profound revulsion in it. One of the differences between the gameplay version of Azeroth and the real one is that you will find no collaborators with demons or demonic powers among those of the Good. Warlocks are hunted like the vile traitors they are, and absolutely noone outside of the most desperate or depraved is mad enough to think they can use a Demon's powers against him... those that were fool enough to try did not become some dark charismatic antihero with diabolic powers-- instead they almost instantly ended up as some Demon's lickspittle. Trying to use a Demon's power for anything other than what the DEMON wants is the equivalent of trying to beat mice to death with a live cobra. It's not going to end well.
Adrian shuddered. "Kind of glad to hear that, actually. I get kind of sick of the edgelord 'evil is kewl' kiddies." Adrian looked over the screen. "Druid." He clicked. The two figures were now carrying staves and wearing Celtic-looking robes… an odd change from the original game's raven-wing-pauldron "druid look," but he could roll with it.
Ah. And again, why this and not any of the others?
Adrian had the strangest suspicion that Agent already knew why, and that it pleased him. "Flexibility. Dunno where I'm going or how I'm going to arrive, so I'd better pick the powerset with the most options. Azeroth druids have that in spades. Multiple forms for land, sea and air, and they can opt for melee, ranged attack, defensive, stealth or support. I figure whatever you hit me with, a Warcraft druid will have an option that can cope with it."
Agent nodded. Definitely pleased. Coincidentally, you get full access to your classes' specializations, including all the druid forms. Another little plus I spent chips on.
"Even the owl and the treant?"
Even the owl and the treant. And now for skills-- or crafts, professions, however you might call it. Coincidentally, you get all the gathering skills as a freebie, regardless. Along with fishing, cooking, first aid, and archaeology. He peered at the screen, seeming to squint. What an odd amalgamation of skills, he noted.
"Engineer," Adrian said without hesitation, clicking the appropriate box. "And Enchanting."
Be warned, the skills won't work like they do in the game, Agent said. You won't be able to take a handful of copper bolts and some sheepskin and make a helicopter. And some of the materials needed, while they do exist-- you will find creating or finding the more exotic ones to be difficult.
"I didn't figure they'd have bars of Adamantine down at the corner drugstore," Adrian said. "But I figure that at the very worst most of the skills and knowledge in Engineering would apply in the real world-- er, my real world-- as to be useful anyway."
And enchanting?
Adrian grinned. "You basically admitted that it worked just fine on Azeroth. I figure wherever I'm going has to be similar enough to both Azeroth and my own reality to make it work and for me to be functional."
Agent cocked an eyebrow. Yes, his appearance was coming right along. Clever boy. It is true: all three universes operate under the same thirteen cosmic forces as every other. Still, you may find it difficult to obtain ingredients like Strange Dust and Astral Essence, even with your Disenchanting ability.
"And ain't it interesting how many Engineering projects can be 'disenchanted' for ingredients?" Adrian grinned even wider. He paused. "Thirteen forces? I thought there were only four."
Agent's head was still only a blank white shape, but Adrian got the distinct impression of a knowing smirk. So young and so much to learn.
Adrian shrugged that off. "Anyway, Alchemy would be even dicier about ingredients… I mean, when the nearest source for peacebloom is Azeroth, it's a bad idea to take Alchemy as a profession. Besides which people are antsy about taking "home remedies" someone whipped up with back yard plants. Tailoring is too limited, as is leatherworking… even the toughest armor you can make from those is like tissue paper next to chain or plate. Blacksmithing? You could make a Venn diagram of the "mining" skill-- which includes smelting, making ores and other metallurgy-- and engineering, and the overlap would be Blacksmithing.
"Plus Enchanting and Engineering come with their own salvaging skills, in addition to the three basics."
Agent smiled--- the mouth suddenly appearing on that blank bespectacled face was a touch alarming. Very good. Very very good. You might just stand a chance. He gestured to the screen. And now a name? The blank box blinked, waiting for an answer.
Adrian only hesitated a moment. "Bayleaf." He looked at Agent. "My old World of Warcraft handle." he shrugged. "It's also a healing herb. I considered "WarCrafter," but that sounded too… aggressive. I want people to know I'm not just there to run around getting in fights-- I'm there to help."
Agent nodded. Done and done. The choices on the giant screen vanished, leaving the worgen character standing in a battle ready pose. Below him blinked a single option:
ENTER WORLD
Adrian looked over at Agent. "Well?" he said, a little nervous. "So where's my big debut gonna be?"
A world almost exactly like your own… within 99.9999 percent actually. He grimaced, obviously unhappy to disclose the rest. But that ten thousandth of a percent difference is a doozy. Agent waved. The image on the screen faded, to be replaced by an aerial view of a coastal city. An American one to judge by the flags waving on some of the buildings. This is Brockton Bay.
Adrian felt the nonexistent blood drain from his face. "Worm? You're sending me into Worm??" he floated there, listless with shock. Had he been truly solid he would have hit the ground with a thump.
Yes. Or rather, it is one of a multiplicity of universes in this local brane where this timeline is, has, or will play out. So you are familiar with this particular panverse. Agent cleared his throat nervously.
"Oh yeah, you might say that," Adrian laughed bleakly. "Worm? The Wildbow-verse? One of the most famous superhero genre online fiction worlds, and one of the most notorious? Oh yeah, I know about it. It's a superhero deconstruction-- if you can call someone violently smashing a basket full of puppies with a sledgehammer "deconstruction." The storyline is like a cross between a demolition derby and a head-on train collision stuck on instant repeat, with someone standing off to the side pushing toddlers into the middle. It starts with a teenage girl being tortured into a psychotic breakdown and ends with an APOCALYPSE by a MAD OMNIPOTENT COSMIC SPACE WHALE DEMIGOD. It's so grimdark it shits BATS!
"I'm supposed to fix THIS? Stop SCION from destroying a couple dozen parallel worlds? With nothing but some werewolf druid powers? The entire Justice league backed by the Avengers, Optimus Prime and Chuck Norris couldn't hack this!"
Godlike powers are not what is needed here, Adrian, Agent said gently. You know that in the original timeline, that--
"That Taylor Hebert ends up saving the world? Or what's left of it, anyway?" Adrian said. He scowled in anger and suspicion. "So why not let her do it again?"
Because the price paid, even if she wins—by countless billions of innocents, including one poor innocent girl-- is too terrible.
"If she wins?"
As the unaltered 'verse plays out, the margins between victory and defeat are far narrower even than they look. Agent looked away, his white eyes staring at the endless plain around them. Far more often than not, when the original events are allowed to play out in yet another universe… Taylor Hebert loses.
"...well ain't that just a ray of sunshine," Adrian muttered, his veins ice cold.
Adrian, I am, in Agent terms, normally a "low roller." These are the highest stakes I have ever played for. But every universe in this particular panverse of this particular brane has been labeled as being at high risk. The need is so great that I was able to barter for more intervention-chips than all my previous rounds of the Game combined-- and I have spent nearly all of them just to find a champion, prepare them, and inform them in such great and terrible detail. He hesitated, then placed a spectral hand on a spectral shoulder. Even so, if you wish to withdraw, you can--
Adrian shook his hand off. "No," he muttered. "No, I'm not gonna quit. How can I? If it was one person I was saving, I wouldn't. But with a whole world? A whole multi-world of people in danger? I can't back out… I'd never be able to sleep again.
"It's just… what can I do? Taylor had… has… will have insane-level powers that will put her BARELY on toe-to-toe basis with one of the Space Whales. What can I contribute in the face of that?"
Often the fate of worlds hinges not on the most powerful, but on the least, Adrian said gently. Throwing overwhelming power into the mix won't save the day here. I didn't pick you to save the whole world in one swoop; I picked you because I wanted someone to go there and do the right thing. The little things. Maybe you won't even be in the final battle--- but even the smallest good deed in the right place can change everything.
Adrian sniffed. "Save the girl, save the world?"
Something like that.
He got to his feet. "So let's do this then."
Agent gestured to the screen. "Bayleaf" had reappeared, floating in the foreground over the skyline of Brockton Bay. Just walk through the screen.
"When and where--?"
Somewhere in the Brockton Bay area, I cannot be more precise. And late September, several months before--
"Several months before the locker incident," Adrian-- Bayleaf-- said grimly. He was already imagining what he'd do if he got his hands around Sophia's neck.
I was unable to secure you identity papers, he said regretfully. I did not have sufficient chips for that level of direct involvement. It would have involved either mass memory editing, time travel, or somehow creating a false identity and paper trail sufficient to fool the resident tinkers, hackers, and Dragon herself. I recommend you pass yourself as a refugee from one of the cities destroyed by Endbringer activity or the like. Secure yourself some finances, obtain a residence and submit yourself to the authorities as an emancipated youth to be enrolled in Winslow High… they have streamlined that process due to the number of young people rendered orphaned and homeless by superhuman catastrophe.
"Urgh. Not even a driver's license, maybe?"
I spent all those points on concealing you from more important threats, Agent said drily. While your powers are in no way derived from the Entities or their Shards, you will be imbued with a false Gemma and Corona Pollenta that will trick most medical scans, and even most psions.
"I can see why that's important. A cape without a Gemma or Pollenta? That'll attract attention nobody wants. What about Contessa? Or the Simurgh?"
Agent gave him an evil smile. Due to the combination of your alien powers, your nature as a being from outside their timespace continuity, and the… well think of it as a "holographic" Shard projected by your false Gemma and Pollenta…. you will be a rather large blind spot for the lot of them. In the truest sense of the word; much as your brain 'paints over' the blind spot in your own vision, you will be a blind spot they aren't even aware they have.
"Ohoho. I can see why that cost a lot of chips."
Worth every one. Especially for Contessa and her Cheat Code Mary Sue 'path to victory' power. She's in for a hell of a surprise if your paths cross. If you see her, punch her smug head up into that stupid little hat, would you?
"I sense a backstory."
No, I just despise her existence on principle. Her overriding influence makes things WORSE, by ERASING potential options from the board before they can even be considered. And considering the shitty nature of the 'victory' her Path leads to…
"Not a friend of the Agents, yeah."
Or anyone. Nothing causes more Hells on Earth than people like Contessa or Doctor Mother, who think Mother Knows Best. He closed the folder with a snap, it disappeared in a cloud of sparkles. And that is it for pre-flight checkup , he said with a hint of amusement. Ready?
Adrian nodded. "Let's do this."
Just step forward into the screen, Agent said. Be warned, you're going to get one hell of a download of knowledge and neural information, in addition to having your body dramatically metamorphosed. You're going to get knocked out… and your recollection of your "time" here may be a bit fuzzy for a while. Just remember: your first step is to get into Winslow and help Taylor Hebert. Beyond that… you'll have to improvise.
Adrian nodded and straightened his shoulders. Maybe he couldn't save this world. Or any world. But on the other side of that screen there was a little girl who was going to be kidnapped and enslaved by a supervillain. There was a group of teenagers who were going to be railroaded into villainy. There was a miracle healer who was going to utterly destroy her own life with one terrible mistake. There were countless innocent people who were going to be destroyed in the crossfire between gangsters, drug dealers, and Nazi lunatics. There was one young woman on whom the entire world's fate hinged, who was going to be put through utter Hell on Earth for no good reason.
Maybe he couldn't save them all, but if he could save one, he was going to damned well do it.
Remember, Adrian: you are not as limited as you think.
He stepped through the screen and the world went dark.
In the realm he just left behind, the screen winked out. The endless twilit plain disappeared, and all detail faded away till there was nothing but a vaguely humanoid figure of glowing smoke floating in the void. Agent clung to the shape for a little while longer; he found it-- appealing for some reason.
Another glowing amorphous shape appeared. That seemed to go well.
Indeed it did, Agent agreed. Hello, Oversight.
--for a given value of well. Your stratagem in this round… eludes me, 'Agent.' Most would regard it as incredibly unwise to reveal so much to their Avatar beforehand. Especially of our own inner workings.
Revealing the Game?
Revealing-- or at least hinting-- at just how far you have gone, Oversight said. He knows that you are gambling on his future. What will it do to his chances, I speculate, when he realizes just how reckless a gambler you are?
To win big, one must risk big, Agent retorted. As risky as my past stakes have been, have I not produced victories like any other Agent? Innocents spared, lives rescued, worlds saved, futures changed for the better?
And each time, you have spent more..."chips"…. Than you have gained, Oversight said, his voice heavy with chastisement. You have been running at a loss for cycle after cycle. One more "victory" like that and you will be destitute. And now you spend your last few Quatloos on a desperate gamble-- on not one world, but multiple parallel worlds in peril, and a single lone Avatar to try and stem the tide?
And if he achieves one small good deed, I will weigh it as worth the cost, Agent retorted. You and I have different value judgments on what constitutes a profit, Oversight.
How did a spendthrift like you persuade the Exchequer to even loan you as little as he did? Oversight said scornfully.
Agent indulged himself and let a slow, genuine, visible smirk spread across his illusion of a face. Because I illustrated to him that I am playing a longer game than it looks, he said. I do not intend to save one panverse world… but two.
Oversight's regard-- what a material being would have called a puzzled look-- passed over Agent. Then came a moment of comprehension. Azeroth, he said. You have somehow incorporated Azeroth into your gamble. He "glared" suspiciously. How?
Consider the fate of Azeroth, Agent said. Their technology, their thaumaturgic sciences, have been barely sufficient to save them from catastrophe over and over again. And each cataclysm has been worse than the last...while their sciences have barely progressed a few short, halting steps in thousands of years. Do you know why?
He didn't wait for Oversight to reply. Because they have continually failed to unify their theories. Paladin powers, arcanist abilities, druidic "nature" magic, gnomish and goblin technology--- all of it operates under the same scientific laws; it's all a continuum. Yet their various 'schools' remain divided-- in part by the conspiracy of outside forces but also by politics, by ideology, by terminology, by symbology-- they even use different maths for each; one works in base eight while another works in base ten!
The closest any of them have come in tens of thousands of years to a grand unification theory have been the druids. Their world philosophy is about both diversity and balance, and they subsequently have hodgepodged bits and pieces from all the separate disciplines and have, miraculously, made them work together, discovered which ones were all but identical under the trappings…
And you have just sent out a Druid, Oversight said suddenly.
A druid, and an engineer, and an enchanter, Agent said. From a world whose scholastic philosophy is entirely about unification and finding a single grand underlying theory for Everything and More. Into a world full of artifactors and devisors and ur-scientists. When he starts trying out his new powers, flexing his new skills, if he starts digging deeper, if he begins cooperating with the natives of similar mind-- he will begin discovering parallels and synergies that will be staggering in their implications. Staggering enough to trigger discovery of the true Grand Unification Theory… and a new model of the universe that will give both Earth Bet and Azeroth--- which he shall surely be drawn to visit next-- the tools to overcome.
IF. The single word from Oversight was enough to weigh like mountains.
That is where the risk comes in, Agent agreed . But it is the risk that makes it all worthwhile.
Adrian woke with a start, the icy wind rushing past him snapping him to consciousness. He rattled his head, utterly disoriented. Weird images, some strange dream-- a glowing man, an Agent of some great cause, or … a game contestant/host… offering him the deal of a lifetime… what?
He raised his hand to rub his eyes-- and a massive clawed paw groped at his face. He yelped before he realized the clawed, hairy hand was his own. As was the hairy, muscular arm it was attached to…
"HOLY--!" He felt himself over (not like that, you freaks.) In a mere second he had stock of himself: massive hands with semi-retractable claws; seriously hairy chest rippling with muscle, arms like fur stockings stuffed with footballs, powerful digitigrade legs with padded clawed pawed feet, wolfen skull and muzzle, pointed ears, wet nose-- no tail though-- coal-black fur over everything-- He was clothed in a loose cotton tunic and trousers that hung loose on even his massive form and flapped madly in the upward rushing wind.
"Holy crap, it was real," he said to himself. "Then that means..." He looked up.
Spread out below him was a city-- a city that HAD to be Brockton Bay. It hugged the coastline and curled around an enormous harbor. He could see-- that had to be the PRT building. Or maybe it was Medhall? He couldn't remember a description. But there, that over there had to be the Protectorate base, floating out in the water, oh wow, he could see the glittering dome of the forcefield, wow a real forcefield… He could see everything up here, he was out over the middle of the bay--
He was over the bay--
Over-- the bay--
Slowly, the rusted gears of cognition clunked into alignment.
"HOLY CRAAaaaAAAaaaaAAP!!!" he began flailing wildly, which only started him tumbling, as he suddenly realized he was thousands of feet in the air without a plane. "AGENT, YOU RETARD!"
He indulged in a couple seconds panic (he was really high up) before he realized he'd better get a grip or he was going to say hello to Earth Bet in a really sudden and final way. He gasped for air as he lay out spreadeagled, slowing his plummet. "Okay, breathe breathe breathe, remember, you're a worgen—Worgen can't fly!!- no, but worgen druids can, come on, change into your flight form, bird bird birdbirdbird come on OWL OWL OWL--!!"
He felt a massive, sort of internal twisting and folding, and suddenly where there had been a plummeting, panicking Worgen, there was now a plummeting, panicking, giant owl. It was several long eternities before he managed to right himself and began turning his demented flailing into at least an effort at flapping. Finally, his long dive began to turn into a swooping glide. He leveled out mere feet above the waves and flew, wings spread wide, hooting in victory…
"hooo Hooo HOOOO.."
And plowed into a whitecap a few yards from shore.
A wheezing, waterlogged Worgen sloshed his way to shore a few moments later. Once the waves were no longer lapping at his ankles, he bent over and shook. What had to be a gallon of water sprayed over the sand. He stood up, relieved and feeling a good bit lighter, if not precisely drier. He shook the last of the water out of his ears in time to pick up the high pitched whine of… was that an electric turbine?
Around the end of one of the derelict ships came a low, sleek motorcycle. It looked, Adrian thought, rather like someone had crossbred a lightcycle from Tron with a particularly old school Harley. The rider looked to be wearing a full suit of futuristic armor, with only his bearded chin showing from underneath the visor on his helmet.
Of course, Adrian thought. With disgust. Armsmaster. It would be the egotistical wannabe Iron Man who'd find him first. What were the odds? Of course they probably had all sorts of futuristic radar out on that floating base looking for incoming flying threats. He wondered what radar profile a wolfman plummeting from 10,000 feet left behind…
The armored hero pulled to a halt in a spray of sand a few yards away. He dismounted quickly, pulling out a collapsing rod that folded out into a six foot staff, a shimmering blade snapping into existence at the end. He planted one end in the sand and struck a commanding pose. "Stand where you are, don't-- WHOAAH!"
Apparantly whatever Armsmaster had been expecting to see, it hadn't been a sodden, bedraggled, seven foot tall wolf-man. He actually staggered back a step in surprise at the sight of him. Then, obviously miffed at his faux pas, he whipped his halberd down into the 'armed and ready' pose, the blade pointed at Adrian's chest, his thumb on some button or other on the haft.
"Uh, Hi," Bayleaf said, grinning sheepishly and waving.
In retrospect, smiling at an armed and armored man with a mouthful of fangs was probably a bad idea. But really, the taser dart had been a bit much...
Hello, Adrian.
"What? Who's there?" he said in alarm. Even as he spoke he felt a surge of satisfaction that he could speak.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am…. The voice paused, as if searching for words. I suppose an approximation of my name is necessary, your language sort of lacks the nuances for my full name. Call me.. hmm… call me Agent.
"Agent… right." That wasn't a comforting nomenclature, all things considered. "Where am I? Why can't I see?"
To answer the latter first, you are in a semi-amorphous state which has, er, left you without sensory apparatus for your environment. You sense nothing because you have nothing at the moment to sense it with. Agent sounded a little embarrassed at this. I apologize, I'm sure it's not comfortable. But you really don't have any sensory approximates for the environment you are currently in; you wouldn't understand what you were "seeing" if you could…
Here, let me adjust a few things. The 'nothingness' faded… or rather Something faded in: a misty, featureless plain under a twilit sky. Adrian found himself looking at/addressing/facing a soft misty cloud of light hovering over that plain; he realized in the next moment that he himself was an identical cloud of light-- though how he could tell he couldn't say; he certainly couldn't crane his neck to look himself over. There, I hope that's better. It's all illusory but at least it gives you an avatar of sorts to communicate with.
"Yeah, great." Why wasn't he panicking? Wait. No adrenal glands, no fight-or-flight response. Of course. Interestingly enough he was still capable of getting agitated at his situation. "Okay. So my first question? Where the heck AM I? And let me throw in "WHY" while I'm at it?"
You are in my native environment. An existential plane. Call it the Between.
"Between what?"
Everything.
That gave him pause, for sure.
As to what or who I am, I am an extradimensional hyper-advanced… though "advanced" isn't quite the right term… well, you'd call me a "cosmic entity." And I have brought you here because I wish to make a deal.
"A… deal?"
An agreement, yes, an exchange of services.
And that kicked Adrian's bump of skepticism right in. Cosmic beings snapping up random individuals and offering them deals… superhuman powers, or magic green rings, for example… it was a cliche' in ninety percent of the fanfics he'd read. And more than a couple he'd written.
Yes, you are familiar with the concept.
Adrian squinted suspiciously, or at least thought really hard about squinting suspiciously at the amorphous cloud of light before him. "Okay, why me?"
Why not you? Agent pointed out reasonably. You are well within acceptable averages for the necessary attributes. At the very least, you are familiar with the concept, and seemed agreeably inclined to the idea. Missing fight-or-flight glands or no, you would be surprised at the percentage of three-dimensional entities such as yourself who would go into either screaming hysterics or a catatonic fugue by this point.
Adrian gave a mental snort. At least it wasn't trying to pass him off as "the Chosen One" or the like. If this was a dream or a hallucination it wasn't offending his literary sensibilities yet, at least. Of course if he was lying in a hospital drugged to the hairline then all this was coming from his own mind, so it wouldn't seem excessively ridiculous then either would it? "SO… this deal?"
Let me begin at the beginning. As you can guess I am not the only one of my kind. We live in the interstices between the universes and planes of reality. We're timeless, eternal, immortal, vastly powerful… and rather BORED.
Ah, here it comes, Adrian thought. The old Bored Cosmic Entity Wants to Play routine. Poker Night of the Gods. Oh well, there were worse cliches.
To alleviate our ennui, we organized a series of contests and games. Each round, every participant-- each Agent-- chooses an Avatar from the more finite races, such as yourself, from one of the three dimensional universes. We spend… I'm picking up the word "quatloos" from your mind?… ah, no, a better word there off to the side in your vocabulary, "chips." Yes, a limited pool of points or "chips" on empowering and equipping the Avatar. Then we place them in a different universe, with a stated mission. If they succeed, they are rewarded, and their Agent moves up in the next round and chooses a new Avatar.
"And if they fail?"
Then the Agent is moved down in ranking.
"And the Avatar?"
Agent seemed reticent. There is no punishment for failure. We do not work like that. But the missions assigned are often… hazardous. The consequences for failure are... self-explanatory.
"Uh… huh." So it was pass or fail, with a probably lethal "fail" option.
You must understand something, Adrian. Our "game" is about creating and endowing HEROES. The quests they are set on are consequent… to save a person, a family, a tribe, a nation, a world, from some imminent catastrophe. To battle an evil empire, or an overlord, or an alien horde… or just to fight for a humble cause. Any and all of those are dangerous pursuits in places of crisis, even for those endowed with extraordinary gifts they are dangerous. Failure is often fatal.
"Kind of high stakes for a GAME," Adrian said.
We wish to make the universes a better place, Agent replied. You can't do that playing tiddly winks.
"Well, why don't you go into these, these places in crisis and intervene yourself?"
Agent gave what had to be the approximation of a heaving sigh. Adrian, we are a race of super-advanced cosmic entities. We number in the trillions. Does it not follow that we have powers, governances, authorities, laws, codes of conduct that restrain us as well? Our civilization is so complex and intricate it makes the operation of your own world's governments look like the internal politicking of an aboriginal tribe over who gets the biggest share of animal pelts. It would take years to explain the codes of conduct that restrict our behavior interacting with the baryonic, euclidean universes, and most of it still wouldn't make sense to you. He grumbled a bit. They often don't make sense to US.
The Game is, for reasons too complex for you to fathom, one of the few legal, safe, legitimate ways in which we can intervene with the fates of other worlds, even for their own good. Because in part it places the power in the hands of mere mortals to determine their fates themselves . It's THE RULES.
There's a world out there where somebody's in trouble. I am asking you to help me, to help them, and to help yourself. Will you accept?
"My reward?" he asked.
Your primary choice of reward will be: You will be returned home… or allowed to make your home in your new universe… or even pick a third… in any regard, with all your powers intact. There are other, lesser options, but those are the prime rate ones.
Adrian thought it over. Great power. Be a hero. But risking it all… maybe even his life. No guarantee of success, and who knows how much suffering and hardship.
But wasn't that what made the effort worthwhile.
"I accept."
He could feel Agent practically beaming with satisfaction. Excellent. The contract is sealed, let us begin. The planescape swirled dizzyingly, and Adrian found himself hovering before a massive, and very familiar opening screen.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
Begin Character Creation
"I'm going to AZEROTH?" He yelped. No way in hell… it was his favorite online game ever, but that world and its lore were messed up three ways from Sunday, and it had at least a dozen Doomsday scenarios waiting in the wings to do it in at any given moment, with Lovecraftian Old Gods being the LOWEST ranked world-ending threats. If the literal armies of superhuman wizards, warriors, paladins and whatnot couldn't handle it, adding one more dink with a plus-one sword to the mess would do nothing. Agent would just end up with his Avatar a greasy stain on an ogre's foot.
No, absolutely not.
Adrian sighed in relief.
You're getting your power set from there.
"What?" Okay, that was better. A guy with a World of Warcraft character's powers and skills could hold up fairly well in most "fictional" universes he could think of…. "Wait. Where AM I going? That's sort of an important question before I pick my powers."
There was a sound of shuffling papers. I'm not really supposed to tell you your destination, if at all, until AFTER you have selected your powerset.
Of all the… "But that's not remotely fair!" Adrian sputtered.
This is really not how we normally proceed, Agent said.
"Oh, don't try that. That's a load and you know it! A choice made without any information isn't a choice at all. It might as well be made with a flip of a coin!"
Agent's body language-- it really was adapting quickly to having a humanoid form-- was hesitant, so Adrian pressed his argument. "Look, you talked about your society having law, and an entertainment industry, and, and mediums of exchange. That implies a marketplace of some sort. And one of the fundamentals of a marketplace is that there are certain ethical principles that have to be observed for it to function. The real biggie is that all exchanges have to be voluntary and informed to be legitimate. Making me make an irrevocable choice while denying me the information needed to make that choice? Not what I would call 'super-advanced,' or even moral."
Agent said nothing; he simply contracted into a ball of swirling, pulsing motes. Adrian somehow got the impression that he'd been put on hold while Agent argued with someone else over his metaphorical shoulder. After a moment Agent reformed into a human-shaped cloud and addressed him. You argue persuasively, he said. It's been agreed that it would be unethical to not give you SOME information about your destination. I've been informed that I may disclose a BIT more than I have.
"Like my destination?" Adrian said.
...Um.... I can at least let you know beforehand that the Earth we are sending you to is a Superhero world.
"A superhero world?" Adrian repeated. "Anything else?"
Agent mumbled a bit and shrugged expressively. Sorry.
There was an awkward silence. "Not your fault I suppose," Adrian finally muttered. "Better than nothing I suppose... " Superhero world. Adrian chewed his lip nervously. That was still a lot of variability. It could mean anything from Justice League to Watchmen.
Agent made a staticky noise that might have passed for a sigh. For the record, we are not in the habit of forcing people to make utterly blind choices. It's just that most of the entities we negotiate with are normally brought here in the midst of... a cataclysmic moment of some sort. Usually something that would or should have resulted in their deaths. They tend to arrive here... disoriented. In a fugue, or dreamlike state, or other state of not-quite-compos-mentis. It's often rather like trying to get someone in an ER after a gruesome traffic accident to fill out hospital paperwork. Some form of assent is needed, so we resort to broad brushstrokes and vague entreaties and explanations... and our procedures have evolved accordingly.
Adrian nodded. He could understand, somewhat. He had a mental image of the scene in Disney's Aladdin where the Genie was desperately trying to get an official wish from Aladdin even as Aladdin was drowning. The Entity gave a Gallic shrug. I apologize for my earlier reticence. I'm not some Jerkass Genie, Adrian. I'm not going to trick you into becoming a woman, or turning into a black man and drop you into the middle of a Nazi rally. I want to win this as badly as you do, so I'm going to do everything to make sure you get the best deal possible. I will try to... be more forthcoming from here on out. Forgive an old Being his bad habits.
"...Right. Sorry," Adrian apologized. "I do get that there has to be some element of chance or risk. I just want to know what lotto ticket I was writing the numbers on." He looked the Entity over. "You know, you're sounding a lot more human than when this conversation started."
A cosmic entity with nigh infinite resources and control over time and space, learning things quickly. Imagine that.
"Touche`." Chastened, Adrian turned back to the screen and proceeded with his dicey choice. He flipped through the options-- he had hands!--- and watched as the screen flickered between races, classes, appearances…
If it helps, Agent hinted, most of the… limitations, I'd suppose you'd call them… on the various races, classes and such you recall from the game are not in effect. Those are the products of gameplay-- programmers putting in things for the sake of design and balance, not the actuality of how such powers work in Azeroth.
"Really."
Yes. Think, do you think in real life that a gnome would run as fast as human? Or a human would be as physically strong as an orc? Or that a worgen, after the cutscreen, is suddenly unable to claw or bite anymore? Many of the limitations found in gameplay, you can disregard.
"Well you'd better baby-walk me through it then. I don't want to miss an advantage I overlooked because some programming doink in Blizzard thought it wouldn't make for good 'game balance.' "
Very well. Oh, and you'll be starting out at maximum level, so to speak. So don't worry about learning curves for skills or talents. Thanks to the implanted memories, though you may need to practice a bit with your skills and abilities, your knowledge base will be fully updated from the start, so it will be more akin to brushing the dust off old skills than struggling to learn new ones. Also, you will be in peak physical condition, akin to your species' version of an Olympiad. And you'll find that maintaining that state will be nearly effortless.
"Seems overly generous..."
Fair's fair. You're getting dumped into a superhero 'verse, where a ridiculous percentage of the natives have the physique of Greek gods.
Adrian mulled over the screen. He hemmed and hawed, but the choice was inevitable. "Species: Worgen." he clicked.
May I ask your reasoning why? Agent was looking more and more humanoid; he tipped his ersatz eyeglasses in Adrian's direction.
"Innate abilites. Stronger than human, faster, presumably accelerated recuperation and healing from the metamorphic ability, both bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion, natural weapons, and going by the cut scenes, incredible leaping and climbing ability. The ability to change back and forth to a human form means an instant disguise option, too. Even a baseline worgen will be pretty kickass." Adrian shrugged his ghostly shoulders. "Plus werewolves are cool."
A good choice, and good reasoning. Two notes: contrary to game lore, your worgen "curse" is not contagious. It is innately genetic. As if the night elves would be so foolish as to leave INTELLIGENT werewolves with a contagious curse, he muttered in an aside. All it would take is one contagious sociopath and Azeroth would end up like the final reel of the Omega Man...
Anyhow, this does however mean that your Worgen form is your default form, the human one is essentially a shapeshifted disguise. If you violently lose consciousness -- say you are drugged or concussed-- you will revert to your 'natural,' that is your Worgen, form. Try to avoid such circumstances when among hostile entities.
"Yeah, important safety note. Thanks."
Agent waved his hand. The screen filled with a side-by-side image: to the left, a young, dark haired, athletic man, caucasian with some hints of something exotic, about sixteen or so if Adrian judged correctly. To the right, a black-furred wolf-man, powerfully built, sleek and deadly. "So that's me?" Adrian asked.
Yes. Acceptable?
"Better believe it. I haven't had abs like that since never."
And now… class?
Adrian browsed the options. "No warlocks or Demonhunters, I see."
Certainly not. Agent's voice had a shudder of profound revulsion in it. One of the differences between the gameplay version of Azeroth and the real one is that you will find no collaborators with demons or demonic powers among those of the Good. Warlocks are hunted like the vile traitors they are, and absolutely noone outside of the most desperate or depraved is mad enough to think they can use a Demon's powers against him... those that were fool enough to try did not become some dark charismatic antihero with diabolic powers-- instead they almost instantly ended up as some Demon's lickspittle. Trying to use a Demon's power for anything other than what the DEMON wants is the equivalent of trying to beat mice to death with a live cobra. It's not going to end well.
Adrian shuddered. "Kind of glad to hear that, actually. I get kind of sick of the edgelord 'evil is kewl' kiddies." Adrian looked over the screen. "Druid." He clicked. The two figures were now carrying staves and wearing Celtic-looking robes… an odd change from the original game's raven-wing-pauldron "druid look," but he could roll with it.
Ah. And again, why this and not any of the others?
Adrian had the strangest suspicion that Agent already knew why, and that it pleased him. "Flexibility. Dunno where I'm going or how I'm going to arrive, so I'd better pick the powerset with the most options. Azeroth druids have that in spades. Multiple forms for land, sea and air, and they can opt for melee, ranged attack, defensive, stealth or support. I figure whatever you hit me with, a Warcraft druid will have an option that can cope with it."
Agent nodded. Definitely pleased. Coincidentally, you get full access to your classes' specializations, including all the druid forms. Another little plus I spent chips on.
"Even the owl and the treant?"
Even the owl and the treant. And now for skills-- or crafts, professions, however you might call it. Coincidentally, you get all the gathering skills as a freebie, regardless. Along with fishing, cooking, first aid, and archaeology. He peered at the screen, seeming to squint. What an odd amalgamation of skills, he noted.
"Engineer," Adrian said without hesitation, clicking the appropriate box. "And Enchanting."
Be warned, the skills won't work like they do in the game, Agent said. You won't be able to take a handful of copper bolts and some sheepskin and make a helicopter. And some of the materials needed, while they do exist-- you will find creating or finding the more exotic ones to be difficult.
"I didn't figure they'd have bars of Adamantine down at the corner drugstore," Adrian said. "But I figure that at the very worst most of the skills and knowledge in Engineering would apply in the real world-- er, my real world-- as to be useful anyway."
And enchanting?
Adrian grinned. "You basically admitted that it worked just fine on Azeroth. I figure wherever I'm going has to be similar enough to both Azeroth and my own reality to make it work and for me to be functional."
Agent cocked an eyebrow. Yes, his appearance was coming right along. Clever boy. It is true: all three universes operate under the same thirteen cosmic forces as every other. Still, you may find it difficult to obtain ingredients like Strange Dust and Astral Essence, even with your Disenchanting ability.
"And ain't it interesting how many Engineering projects can be 'disenchanted' for ingredients?" Adrian grinned even wider. He paused. "Thirteen forces? I thought there were only four."
Agent's head was still only a blank white shape, but Adrian got the distinct impression of a knowing smirk. So young and so much to learn.
Adrian shrugged that off. "Anyway, Alchemy would be even dicier about ingredients… I mean, when the nearest source for peacebloom is Azeroth, it's a bad idea to take Alchemy as a profession. Besides which people are antsy about taking "home remedies" someone whipped up with back yard plants. Tailoring is too limited, as is leatherworking… even the toughest armor you can make from those is like tissue paper next to chain or plate. Blacksmithing? You could make a Venn diagram of the "mining" skill-- which includes smelting, making ores and other metallurgy-- and engineering, and the overlap would be Blacksmithing.
"Plus Enchanting and Engineering come with their own salvaging skills, in addition to the three basics."
Agent smiled--- the mouth suddenly appearing on that blank bespectacled face was a touch alarming. Very good. Very very good. You might just stand a chance. He gestured to the screen. And now a name? The blank box blinked, waiting for an answer.
Adrian only hesitated a moment. "Bayleaf." He looked at Agent. "My old World of Warcraft handle." he shrugged. "It's also a healing herb. I considered "WarCrafter," but that sounded too… aggressive. I want people to know I'm not just there to run around getting in fights-- I'm there to help."
Agent nodded. Done and done. The choices on the giant screen vanished, leaving the worgen character standing in a battle ready pose. Below him blinked a single option:
ENTER WORLD
Adrian looked over at Agent. "Well?" he said, a little nervous. "So where's my big debut gonna be?"
A world almost exactly like your own… within 99.9999 percent actually. He grimaced, obviously unhappy to disclose the rest. But that ten thousandth of a percent difference is a doozy. Agent waved. The image on the screen faded, to be replaced by an aerial view of a coastal city. An American one to judge by the flags waving on some of the buildings. This is Brockton Bay.
Adrian felt the nonexistent blood drain from his face. "Worm? You're sending me into Worm??" he floated there, listless with shock. Had he been truly solid he would have hit the ground with a thump.
Yes. Or rather, it is one of a multiplicity of universes in this local brane where this timeline is, has, or will play out. So you are familiar with this particular panverse. Agent cleared his throat nervously.
"Oh yeah, you might say that," Adrian laughed bleakly. "Worm? The Wildbow-verse? One of the most famous superhero genre online fiction worlds, and one of the most notorious? Oh yeah, I know about it. It's a superhero deconstruction-- if you can call someone violently smashing a basket full of puppies with a sledgehammer "deconstruction." The storyline is like a cross between a demolition derby and a head-on train collision stuck on instant repeat, with someone standing off to the side pushing toddlers into the middle. It starts with a teenage girl being tortured into a psychotic breakdown and ends with an APOCALYPSE by a MAD OMNIPOTENT COSMIC SPACE WHALE DEMIGOD. It's so grimdark it shits BATS!
"I'm supposed to fix THIS? Stop SCION from destroying a couple dozen parallel worlds? With nothing but some werewolf druid powers? The entire Justice league backed by the Avengers, Optimus Prime and Chuck Norris couldn't hack this!"
Godlike powers are not what is needed here, Adrian, Agent said gently. You know that in the original timeline, that--
"That Taylor Hebert ends up saving the world? Or what's left of it, anyway?" Adrian said. He scowled in anger and suspicion. "So why not let her do it again?"
Because the price paid, even if she wins—by countless billions of innocents, including one poor innocent girl-- is too terrible.
"If she wins?"
As the unaltered 'verse plays out, the margins between victory and defeat are far narrower even than they look. Agent looked away, his white eyes staring at the endless plain around them. Far more often than not, when the original events are allowed to play out in yet another universe… Taylor Hebert loses.
"...well ain't that just a ray of sunshine," Adrian muttered, his veins ice cold.
Adrian, I am, in Agent terms, normally a "low roller." These are the highest stakes I have ever played for. But every universe in this particular panverse of this particular brane has been labeled as being at high risk. The need is so great that I was able to barter for more intervention-chips than all my previous rounds of the Game combined-- and I have spent nearly all of them just to find a champion, prepare them, and inform them in such great and terrible detail. He hesitated, then placed a spectral hand on a spectral shoulder. Even so, if you wish to withdraw, you can--
Adrian shook his hand off. "No," he muttered. "No, I'm not gonna quit. How can I? If it was one person I was saving, I wouldn't. But with a whole world? A whole multi-world of people in danger? I can't back out… I'd never be able to sleep again.
"It's just… what can I do? Taylor had… has… will have insane-level powers that will put her BARELY on toe-to-toe basis with one of the Space Whales. What can I contribute in the face of that?"
Often the fate of worlds hinges not on the most powerful, but on the least, Adrian said gently. Throwing overwhelming power into the mix won't save the day here. I didn't pick you to save the whole world in one swoop; I picked you because I wanted someone to go there and do the right thing. The little things. Maybe you won't even be in the final battle--- but even the smallest good deed in the right place can change everything.
Adrian sniffed. "Save the girl, save the world?"
Something like that.
He got to his feet. "So let's do this then."
Agent gestured to the screen. "Bayleaf" had reappeared, floating in the foreground over the skyline of Brockton Bay. Just walk through the screen.
"When and where--?"
Somewhere in the Brockton Bay area, I cannot be more precise. And late September, several months before--
"Several months before the locker incident," Adrian-- Bayleaf-- said grimly. He was already imagining what he'd do if he got his hands around Sophia's neck.
I was unable to secure you identity papers, he said regretfully. I did not have sufficient chips for that level of direct involvement. It would have involved either mass memory editing, time travel, or somehow creating a false identity and paper trail sufficient to fool the resident tinkers, hackers, and Dragon herself. I recommend you pass yourself as a refugee from one of the cities destroyed by Endbringer activity or the like. Secure yourself some finances, obtain a residence and submit yourself to the authorities as an emancipated youth to be enrolled in Winslow High… they have streamlined that process due to the number of young people rendered orphaned and homeless by superhuman catastrophe.
"Urgh. Not even a driver's license, maybe?"
I spent all those points on concealing you from more important threats, Agent said drily. While your powers are in no way derived from the Entities or their Shards, you will be imbued with a false Gemma and Corona Pollenta that will trick most medical scans, and even most psions.
"I can see why that's important. A cape without a Gemma or Pollenta? That'll attract attention nobody wants. What about Contessa? Or the Simurgh?"
Agent gave him an evil smile. Due to the combination of your alien powers, your nature as a being from outside their timespace continuity, and the… well think of it as a "holographic" Shard projected by your false Gemma and Pollenta…. you will be a rather large blind spot for the lot of them. In the truest sense of the word; much as your brain 'paints over' the blind spot in your own vision, you will be a blind spot they aren't even aware they have.
"Ohoho. I can see why that cost a lot of chips."
Worth every one. Especially for Contessa and her Cheat Code Mary Sue 'path to victory' power. She's in for a hell of a surprise if your paths cross. If you see her, punch her smug head up into that stupid little hat, would you?
"I sense a backstory."
No, I just despise her existence on principle. Her overriding influence makes things WORSE, by ERASING potential options from the board before they can even be considered. And considering the shitty nature of the 'victory' her Path leads to…
"Not a friend of the Agents, yeah."
Or anyone. Nothing causes more Hells on Earth than people like Contessa or Doctor Mother, who think Mother Knows Best. He closed the folder with a snap, it disappeared in a cloud of sparkles. And that is it for pre-flight checkup , he said with a hint of amusement. Ready?
Adrian nodded. "Let's do this."
Just step forward into the screen, Agent said. Be warned, you're going to get one hell of a download of knowledge and neural information, in addition to having your body dramatically metamorphosed. You're going to get knocked out… and your recollection of your "time" here may be a bit fuzzy for a while. Just remember: your first step is to get into Winslow and help Taylor Hebert. Beyond that… you'll have to improvise.
Adrian nodded and straightened his shoulders. Maybe he couldn't save this world. Or any world. But on the other side of that screen there was a little girl who was going to be kidnapped and enslaved by a supervillain. There was a group of teenagers who were going to be railroaded into villainy. There was a miracle healer who was going to utterly destroy her own life with one terrible mistake. There were countless innocent people who were going to be destroyed in the crossfire between gangsters, drug dealers, and Nazi lunatics. There was one young woman on whom the entire world's fate hinged, who was going to be put through utter Hell on Earth for no good reason.
Maybe he couldn't save them all, but if he could save one, he was going to damned well do it.
Remember, Adrian: you are not as limited as you think.
He stepped through the screen and the world went dark.
In the realm he just left behind, the screen winked out. The endless twilit plain disappeared, and all detail faded away till there was nothing but a vaguely humanoid figure of glowing smoke floating in the void. Agent clung to the shape for a little while longer; he found it-- appealing for some reason.
Another glowing amorphous shape appeared. That seemed to go well.
Indeed it did, Agent agreed. Hello, Oversight.
--for a given value of well. Your stratagem in this round… eludes me, 'Agent.' Most would regard it as incredibly unwise to reveal so much to their Avatar beforehand. Especially of our own inner workings.
Revealing the Game?
Revealing-- or at least hinting-- at just how far you have gone, Oversight said. He knows that you are gambling on his future. What will it do to his chances, I speculate, when he realizes just how reckless a gambler you are?
To win big, one must risk big, Agent retorted. As risky as my past stakes have been, have I not produced victories like any other Agent? Innocents spared, lives rescued, worlds saved, futures changed for the better?
And each time, you have spent more..."chips"…. Than you have gained, Oversight said, his voice heavy with chastisement. You have been running at a loss for cycle after cycle. One more "victory" like that and you will be destitute. And now you spend your last few Quatloos on a desperate gamble-- on not one world, but multiple parallel worlds in peril, and a single lone Avatar to try and stem the tide?
And if he achieves one small good deed, I will weigh it as worth the cost, Agent retorted. You and I have different value judgments on what constitutes a profit, Oversight.
How did a spendthrift like you persuade the Exchequer to even loan you as little as he did? Oversight said scornfully.
Agent indulged himself and let a slow, genuine, visible smirk spread across his illusion of a face. Because I illustrated to him that I am playing a longer game than it looks, he said. I do not intend to save one panverse world… but two.
Oversight's regard-- what a material being would have called a puzzled look-- passed over Agent. Then came a moment of comprehension. Azeroth, he said. You have somehow incorporated Azeroth into your gamble. He "glared" suspiciously. How?
Consider the fate of Azeroth, Agent said. Their technology, their thaumaturgic sciences, have been barely sufficient to save them from catastrophe over and over again. And each cataclysm has been worse than the last...while their sciences have barely progressed a few short, halting steps in thousands of years. Do you know why?
He didn't wait for Oversight to reply. Because they have continually failed to unify their theories. Paladin powers, arcanist abilities, druidic "nature" magic, gnomish and goblin technology--- all of it operates under the same scientific laws; it's all a continuum. Yet their various 'schools' remain divided-- in part by the conspiracy of outside forces but also by politics, by ideology, by terminology, by symbology-- they even use different maths for each; one works in base eight while another works in base ten!
The closest any of them have come in tens of thousands of years to a grand unification theory have been the druids. Their world philosophy is about both diversity and balance, and they subsequently have hodgepodged bits and pieces from all the separate disciplines and have, miraculously, made them work together, discovered which ones were all but identical under the trappings…
And you have just sent out a Druid, Oversight said suddenly.
A druid, and an engineer, and an enchanter, Agent said. From a world whose scholastic philosophy is entirely about unification and finding a single grand underlying theory for Everything and More. Into a world full of artifactors and devisors and ur-scientists. When he starts trying out his new powers, flexing his new skills, if he starts digging deeper, if he begins cooperating with the natives of similar mind-- he will begin discovering parallels and synergies that will be staggering in their implications. Staggering enough to trigger discovery of the true Grand Unification Theory… and a new model of the universe that will give both Earth Bet and Azeroth--- which he shall surely be drawn to visit next-- the tools to overcome.
IF. The single word from Oversight was enough to weigh like mountains.
That is where the risk comes in, Agent agreed . But it is the risk that makes it all worthwhile.
Adrian woke with a start, the icy wind rushing past him snapping him to consciousness. He rattled his head, utterly disoriented. Weird images, some strange dream-- a glowing man, an Agent of some great cause, or … a game contestant/host… offering him the deal of a lifetime… what?
He raised his hand to rub his eyes-- and a massive clawed paw groped at his face. He yelped before he realized the clawed, hairy hand was his own. As was the hairy, muscular arm it was attached to…
"HOLY--!" He felt himself over (not like that, you freaks.) In a mere second he had stock of himself: massive hands with semi-retractable claws; seriously hairy chest rippling with muscle, arms like fur stockings stuffed with footballs, powerful digitigrade legs with padded clawed pawed feet, wolfen skull and muzzle, pointed ears, wet nose-- no tail though-- coal-black fur over everything-- He was clothed in a loose cotton tunic and trousers that hung loose on even his massive form and flapped madly in the upward rushing wind.
"Holy crap, it was real," he said to himself. "Then that means..." He looked up.
Spread out below him was a city-- a city that HAD to be Brockton Bay. It hugged the coastline and curled around an enormous harbor. He could see-- that had to be the PRT building. Or maybe it was Medhall? He couldn't remember a description. But there, that over there had to be the Protectorate base, floating out in the water, oh wow, he could see the glittering dome of the forcefield, wow a real forcefield… He could see everything up here, he was out over the middle of the bay--
He was over the bay--
Over-- the bay--
Slowly, the rusted gears of cognition clunked into alignment.
"HOLY CRAAaaaAAAaaaaAAP!!!" he began flailing wildly, which only started him tumbling, as he suddenly realized he was thousands of feet in the air without a plane. "AGENT, YOU RETARD!"
He indulged in a couple seconds panic (he was really high up) before he realized he'd better get a grip or he was going to say hello to Earth Bet in a really sudden and final way. He gasped for air as he lay out spreadeagled, slowing his plummet. "Okay, breathe breathe breathe, remember, you're a worgen—Worgen can't fly!!- no, but worgen druids can, come on, change into your flight form, bird bird birdbirdbird come on OWL OWL OWL--!!"
He felt a massive, sort of internal twisting and folding, and suddenly where there had been a plummeting, panicking Worgen, there was now a plummeting, panicking, giant owl. It was several long eternities before he managed to right himself and began turning his demented flailing into at least an effort at flapping. Finally, his long dive began to turn into a swooping glide. He leveled out mere feet above the waves and flew, wings spread wide, hooting in victory…
"hooo Hooo HOOOO.."
And plowed into a whitecap a few yards from shore.
A wheezing, waterlogged Worgen sloshed his way to shore a few moments later. Once the waves were no longer lapping at his ankles, he bent over and shook. What had to be a gallon of water sprayed over the sand. He stood up, relieved and feeling a good bit lighter, if not precisely drier. He shook the last of the water out of his ears in time to pick up the high pitched whine of… was that an electric turbine?
Around the end of one of the derelict ships came a low, sleek motorcycle. It looked, Adrian thought, rather like someone had crossbred a lightcycle from Tron with a particularly old school Harley. The rider looked to be wearing a full suit of futuristic armor, with only his bearded chin showing from underneath the visor on his helmet.
Of course, Adrian thought. With disgust. Armsmaster. It would be the egotistical wannabe Iron Man who'd find him first. What were the odds? Of course they probably had all sorts of futuristic radar out on that floating base looking for incoming flying threats. He wondered what radar profile a wolfman plummeting from 10,000 feet left behind…
The armored hero pulled to a halt in a spray of sand a few yards away. He dismounted quickly, pulling out a collapsing rod that folded out into a six foot staff, a shimmering blade snapping into existence at the end. He planted one end in the sand and struck a commanding pose. "Stand where you are, don't-- WHOAAH!"
Apparantly whatever Armsmaster had been expecting to see, it hadn't been a sodden, bedraggled, seven foot tall wolf-man. He actually staggered back a step in surprise at the sight of him. Then, obviously miffed at his faux pas, he whipped his halberd down into the 'armed and ready' pose, the blade pointed at Adrian's chest, his thumb on some button or other on the haft.
"Uh, Hi," Bayleaf said, grinning sheepishly and waving.
In retrospect, smiling at an armed and armored man with a mouthful of fangs was probably a bad idea. But really, the taser dart had been a bit much...
Last edited:
Chapter 2
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
Chapter 2
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
"--Bipedal, anthropoid with canine or lupine characteristics, digitigrade, seven to eight feet tall-- no, it's hard to say exactly due to his stance-- yes, it's definitely him. The radar and cameras on the Rig tracked his trajectory from that airburst--"
Bayleaf came to. He was lying on his back in the sand, tingling and aching in a most extraordinary fashion from… what was it?-- oh yeah, Armsmaster had TAZED him. What a great guy. Wait. An airburst? Explosion? He must have made one hell of an entrance. And over the airspace of a superhero base, no less. That explained a little of why Armsmaster was so quick on the trigger.
Bayleaf lay very still. He had no intention of acting in any fashion that got him zapped like that again. He carefully thought out his next course of action…
Suddenly it dawned on him. He had an "in," now. He had Armsmaster, the Protectorate's walking recruitment poster, right here. Give him five minutes-- assuming the tinker cape didn't have an itchy trigger finger and tased him again-- Armsmaster would be hardselling him to enlist. From there it would be smooth sailing, right through the PRT doors. Hi there, I'm a new Cape, golly gee I always wanted to be in the Wards...
"--the suspect made aggressive moves..." Armsmaster was saying, his finger pressed to the corner of his visor. Bayleaf could hear a faint, but clearly agitated voice arguing with him. "--He bared his claws and fangs at me!" Armsmaster protested.
Bayleaf considered the pros and cons. Pros: immediate legitimacy. Food, clothing, shelter, and funding. Access to materials for his "tinker powers" as an enchanter and engineer. Close proximity to several of the important individuals in his little quest… not the least of which was being within throttling distance of Shadow Stalker aka Sophia Hess. he could potentially intimidate the girl into leaving Taylor Hebert alone. Failing that, put her in a hammerlock and force her to behave herself. Or straight up outing her to the PRT for her criminal actions.
"Regardless of what it looked like to YOU, Dragon--"
Downsides: some real biggies. The PRT was secretly run by Cauldron. It was also currently infiltrated by Coil. Its Director in Chief was a Cauldron cape named Alexandria who was a borderline sociopath who would snap an innocent's neck in an eyeblink to keep Cauldron's secrets; The regional director was a bigot who'd rather slowly die of kidney disease than let a Cape heal her. Her potential replacement was a xenophobic warhawk that made her look reasonable just by contrast.
"--I'm requesting permission to use Tinker tranquilizers on this one-- Because it will be more efficient to let him regain consciousness in an environment under our control--" Bayleaf heard teeth grinding. "On what grounds?"
Then there was the petty bureaucracy. The administrators, lawyers, and bureaucrats would be watching his every move and dictating when and where he could work, sleep, or take a pee. It would be impossible to perform his mission with all that breathing down his hairy neck.
And he wasn't sure he could put up with Glenn Chambers for five minutes without killing him. If he was anything like in canon, the PR idiot would tie a ribbon around his neck or something 'to make him more approachable by the kiddies.'
"---send out prisoner transport, along with containment foam. Tell them to send the news crews out here too--" more chatter. "It's not about taking credit," Armsmaster said stiffly. "I just want them to assure the public that the cause of the disruption has been dealt with--"
And he'd be working with this doink. He growled silently to himself; that did it, no sale. He'd go full Indy and stay that way.
He must have growled a little less than silently because he heard Armsmaster jump. There was a whir of micromotors from his armor. "Freeze!" Armsmaster barked. "Do not move, do not attempt to come any closer."
Bayleaf raised himself up on his elbows and glared at the man. "You TAZED me," he said in disbelief. His new voice, surprisingly, was not a raspy growl like he suspected, but a low, smokey bass, almost like James Earl Jones.
"That dart should have had you out for at least another 10.25 minutes," Armsmaster said, clearly displeased. His grip tightened on the haft of his weapon.
"Guess it wasn't as efficient as you thought," Bayleaf couldn't resist needling him. Thanks to his wolf ears he could literally hear the egotistical tinker's teeth grinding together. One thing canon got correct: Amsmaster's Tinker ability had a specialization in making things more efficient. Anything with overlap, lag, leftovers, or superfluity grated on his power's nerves. He would, canonically, burn weeks on end for a tenth of a percent improvement in weight or battery life. And Armsmaster's ego was practically flammable if you suggested his work was inefficient in any way.
"You're being detained," Armsmaster grated out, "For invading the restricted airspace over the Protectorate base in the Brockton Bay harbor--"
"Invading the-- I was plummeting to my doom from umpty thousand feet up!" The hero's officious, authoritative attitude was getting on Bayleaf's nerves.
"You will be interrogated," Armsmaster said impassively, "and if your story clears than you will be released without incident. If you resist arrest it will go poorly for-- do NOT move!" In the middle of his little speech, Bayleaf had casually flipped to his feet and taken a step towards him. "I SAID FREEZE!"
"Yeah, I heard you," Bayleaf said, holding up his hands, palms out. "Freeze." His palms swirled with forest green light. The ground around Armsmaster's feet erupted, and in a twinkling he was cocooned in the coils of thorny green vines as thick as his armored thigh.
In World of Warcraft, Entangling Vines was a low-level power, so badly nerfed by timid designers obsessed with "game balance" as to be literally worthless. Here though, it was pretty darned effective. The thick, woody vines were so rigid and tough that the armored hero was completely immobilized. Not that it kept him from trying though; he grunted and strained with all his might, barely making the leaves adorning him rustle. "Computer! Emergency Escape Code--"
Bayleaf darted his hand in and crushed the microphone embedded in Armsmaster's chin strap with his claws. He hooked his fingers around and stabbed out what he suspected were the eye motion tracking sensors in the visor for good measure. "Ah ah ah," he said. "You're in time out, Mister." With those out of commission, Armsmaster would be unable to use voice commands or eye motion to activate any of his surely countless nasty little gizmos. Hal-beard was going to stay put until the cops showed up to free him and Bayleaf was long gone.
"That was Protectorate property you just destroyed!" Armsmaster yelled.
"Really… Don't… Care." Bayleaf turned to go. "Later, Hal-beard."
"Wait!" the voice was tinny and clearly feminine. Surprised, Bayleaf stopped. One of the lenses on Armsmaster's helmet was swiveling to track him. "Please, don't go."
Bayleaf bent over and squinted into the lens. There was only one person that he could think of that it could be. "Dragon, I assume?" he said. Dragon was another individual from canon: an artificial intelligence built by a very paranoid Canadian Tinker, who incredibly became a Tinker herself when her creator died in the Endbringer attack on Nova Scotia (at least, that was what happened to him as Bayleaf recalled it.) Unfortunately, the Tinker in question had apparently spent too much time reading bad sci fi about robots overthrowing their masters, and had put countless poorly thought out "safeguards" into her programming that effectively crippled her, and even threatened her life. Finding a way to free her was on Bayleaf's rather extensive to-do list.
As it so happened, she was also close friends with one Colin Wallis, aka Armsmaster. She collaborated with him often via internet, and actually dreamed of moving their friendship into a more romantic arena... possibly because she was the only sapient being on the planet who could tolerate his presence for more than five minutes.
"Indeed," the A.I. said. "I am Dragon, an associate of the Protectorate and PRT."
"You hacked my gear?" Armsmaster looked utterly offended.
"Needs must as the Devil drives," she said to him. "Now hush. Please, sir, allow me to apologize for Armsmaster's…. precipitous actions. Your arrival caused a bit of alarm, and it put him a bit on edge. You do understand."
"He fired on an unarmed man," Bayleaf growled grumpily. "And then got on the phone to call the five o'clock News to brag about it." Armsmaster stiffened-- well, as much as he could stiffen, wrapped in wooden vines.
"Again, I apologize," Dragon said. "I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding. You are apparently a new Trigger, a Case 53, and out of your element. Please reconsider. I know this is a poor first impression, but the Protectorate and the PRT can be a real boon for new capes such as yourself. If you cooperate with the Protectorate they can help you out."
Bayleaf realized that this was another golden opportunity: a chance to drop a few important bugs in a very important pair of digital ears. He decided to seize it with both hands. He let an expression of disgust cross his face. "Your local director is a bigot. Your PR office is run by idiots. You have a bullying psychopath in the local Wards --" (Armsmaster's bearded chin twitched; ding ding, he obviously already had his suspicions who was being referred to)--" and word is on the street that you're riddled with Coil's spies."
"Spies?" she said faintly. Hook, line, and sinker, Bayleaf thought smugly. That ought to set the super-intelligent AI to sniffing around for Coil's fingerprints months ahead of schedule.
"--and even without that, you're so tied up with red tape you can barely move, much less DO anything," he snorted. "So no thanks." Once again he turned to go.
Of course, Armsmaster couldn't let that go. The Man With No Personality had to stick his oar in. "I don't know where you came from," Halbeard yelled at his retreating back. "But things will go a lot easier for you here in Brockton Bay if you work with us heroes and not against us!"
Bayleaf stopped, turned back and got up in Armsmaster's face, looming over him. "Get one thing straight, you tin-plated, cereal-box-top Judge Dredd wannabe," he rumbled, his muzzle threatening to curl into a snarl. " You're no hero. You're a grand-standing, glory-hogging, rent-seeking Prima Donna, and I'd rather be shot with a taser again in the DICK than work with you."
Someone behind him spoke. "Holy--!" He spun around. Standing there on the beach were a couple of teenagers in heavy coats and hoodies and carrying backpacks. Bayleaf had no idea what a couple of kids would be doing out in the Ship's Graveyard on a freezing cold day like this. Worshipping crack and smoking Satan, for all he knew or cared. But they had obviously just stumbled on their little tableau and were staring in astonishment at the sight of the lead hero of Brockton Bay being held at the mercy of a bedraggled seven-plus foot tall wolfman. "Hey!" Bayleaf barked. They jumped. "Either of you got a cell phone with a camera?" The one on the left nodded.
Bayleaf loped over with his hand out. The kid pulled out a smartphone and very nervously handed it to the worgen. "Thanks." Bayleaf loped back to where Armsmaster still stood wrapped in vines, fiddling with the buttons. "Camera, camera-- how do you—ah!" He threw one beefy arm over Armsmaster's shoulders, held up the camera, pulled the goofiest expression he could think of, and clicked. The armored hero made a sound suspiciously like 'arrrgh.'
"Congratulations, pal," Bayleaf said, tossing the camera back to the kid-- who barely caught it; he and his friend were now laughing fit to split a gut. "Enjoy your instant million-hit blog post." He heard sirens faintly in the distance. "Later." He turned, started to run, and in between one step and the next transformed from an enormous black wolf-man into an enormous black sabertooth tiger. To shouts of "cool" and "awesome," he hit all fours still running-- and then faded away, vanishing into thin air.
"That camera is now legal evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation," Armsmaster shouted at the teenagers in a warning tone. They ignored him, the phone's owner gleefully working the keyboard.
"Too late, Colin," Dragon murmured in his ear. "They've already posted it to Facebook."
"Arrrrrghgggh."
Notes:
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
"--Bipedal, anthropoid with canine or lupine characteristics, digitigrade, seven to eight feet tall-- no, it's hard to say exactly due to his stance-- yes, it's definitely him. The radar and cameras on the Rig tracked his trajectory from that airburst--"
Bayleaf came to. He was lying on his back in the sand, tingling and aching in a most extraordinary fashion from… what was it?-- oh yeah, Armsmaster had TAZED him. What a great guy. Wait. An airburst? Explosion? He must have made one hell of an entrance. And over the airspace of a superhero base, no less. That explained a little of why Armsmaster was so quick on the trigger.
Bayleaf lay very still. He had no intention of acting in any fashion that got him zapped like that again. He carefully thought out his next course of action…
Suddenly it dawned on him. He had an "in," now. He had Armsmaster, the Protectorate's walking recruitment poster, right here. Give him five minutes-- assuming the tinker cape didn't have an itchy trigger finger and tased him again-- Armsmaster would be hardselling him to enlist. From there it would be smooth sailing, right through the PRT doors. Hi there, I'm a new Cape, golly gee I always wanted to be in the Wards...
"--the suspect made aggressive moves..." Armsmaster was saying, his finger pressed to the corner of his visor. Bayleaf could hear a faint, but clearly agitated voice arguing with him. "--He bared his claws and fangs at me!" Armsmaster protested.
Bayleaf considered the pros and cons. Pros: immediate legitimacy. Food, clothing, shelter, and funding. Access to materials for his "tinker powers" as an enchanter and engineer. Close proximity to several of the important individuals in his little quest… not the least of which was being within throttling distance of Shadow Stalker aka Sophia Hess. he could potentially intimidate the girl into leaving Taylor Hebert alone. Failing that, put her in a hammerlock and force her to behave herself. Or straight up outing her to the PRT for her criminal actions.
"Regardless of what it looked like to YOU, Dragon--"
Downsides: some real biggies. The PRT was secretly run by Cauldron. It was also currently infiltrated by Coil. Its Director in Chief was a Cauldron cape named Alexandria who was a borderline sociopath who would snap an innocent's neck in an eyeblink to keep Cauldron's secrets; The regional director was a bigot who'd rather slowly die of kidney disease than let a Cape heal her. Her potential replacement was a xenophobic warhawk that made her look reasonable just by contrast.
"--I'm requesting permission to use Tinker tranquilizers on this one-- Because it will be more efficient to let him regain consciousness in an environment under our control--" Bayleaf heard teeth grinding. "On what grounds?"
Then there was the petty bureaucracy. The administrators, lawyers, and bureaucrats would be watching his every move and dictating when and where he could work, sleep, or take a pee. It would be impossible to perform his mission with all that breathing down his hairy neck.
And he wasn't sure he could put up with Glenn Chambers for five minutes without killing him. If he was anything like in canon, the PR idiot would tie a ribbon around his neck or something 'to make him more approachable by the kiddies.'
"---send out prisoner transport, along with containment foam. Tell them to send the news crews out here too--" more chatter. "It's not about taking credit," Armsmaster said stiffly. "I just want them to assure the public that the cause of the disruption has been dealt with--"
And he'd be working with this doink. He growled silently to himself; that did it, no sale. He'd go full Indy and stay that way.
He must have growled a little less than silently because he heard Armsmaster jump. There was a whir of micromotors from his armor. "Freeze!" Armsmaster barked. "Do not move, do not attempt to come any closer."
Bayleaf raised himself up on his elbows and glared at the man. "You TAZED me," he said in disbelief. His new voice, surprisingly, was not a raspy growl like he suspected, but a low, smokey bass, almost like James Earl Jones.
"That dart should have had you out for at least another 10.25 minutes," Armsmaster said, clearly displeased. His grip tightened on the haft of his weapon.
"Guess it wasn't as efficient as you thought," Bayleaf couldn't resist needling him. Thanks to his wolf ears he could literally hear the egotistical tinker's teeth grinding together. One thing canon got correct: Amsmaster's Tinker ability had a specialization in making things more efficient. Anything with overlap, lag, leftovers, or superfluity grated on his power's nerves. He would, canonically, burn weeks on end for a tenth of a percent improvement in weight or battery life. And Armsmaster's ego was practically flammable if you suggested his work was inefficient in any way.
"You're being detained," Armsmaster grated out, "For invading the restricted airspace over the Protectorate base in the Brockton Bay harbor--"
"Invading the-- I was plummeting to my doom from umpty thousand feet up!" The hero's officious, authoritative attitude was getting on Bayleaf's nerves.
"You will be interrogated," Armsmaster said impassively, "and if your story clears than you will be released without incident. If you resist arrest it will go poorly for-- do NOT move!" In the middle of his little speech, Bayleaf had casually flipped to his feet and taken a step towards him. "I SAID FREEZE!"
"Yeah, I heard you," Bayleaf said, holding up his hands, palms out. "Freeze." His palms swirled with forest green light. The ground around Armsmaster's feet erupted, and in a twinkling he was cocooned in the coils of thorny green vines as thick as his armored thigh.
In World of Warcraft, Entangling Vines was a low-level power, so badly nerfed by timid designers obsessed with "game balance" as to be literally worthless. Here though, it was pretty darned effective. The thick, woody vines were so rigid and tough that the armored hero was completely immobilized. Not that it kept him from trying though; he grunted and strained with all his might, barely making the leaves adorning him rustle. "Computer! Emergency Escape Code--"
Bayleaf darted his hand in and crushed the microphone embedded in Armsmaster's chin strap with his claws. He hooked his fingers around and stabbed out what he suspected were the eye motion tracking sensors in the visor for good measure. "Ah ah ah," he said. "You're in time out, Mister." With those out of commission, Armsmaster would be unable to use voice commands or eye motion to activate any of his surely countless nasty little gizmos. Hal-beard was going to stay put until the cops showed up to free him and Bayleaf was long gone.
"That was Protectorate property you just destroyed!" Armsmaster yelled.
"Really… Don't… Care." Bayleaf turned to go. "Later, Hal-beard."
"Wait!" the voice was tinny and clearly feminine. Surprised, Bayleaf stopped. One of the lenses on Armsmaster's helmet was swiveling to track him. "Please, don't go."
Bayleaf bent over and squinted into the lens. There was only one person that he could think of that it could be. "Dragon, I assume?" he said. Dragon was another individual from canon: an artificial intelligence built by a very paranoid Canadian Tinker, who incredibly became a Tinker herself when her creator died in the Endbringer attack on Nova Scotia (at least, that was what happened to him as Bayleaf recalled it.) Unfortunately, the Tinker in question had apparently spent too much time reading bad sci fi about robots overthrowing their masters, and had put countless poorly thought out "safeguards" into her programming that effectively crippled her, and even threatened her life. Finding a way to free her was on Bayleaf's rather extensive to-do list.
As it so happened, she was also close friends with one Colin Wallis, aka Armsmaster. She collaborated with him often via internet, and actually dreamed of moving their friendship into a more romantic arena... possibly because she was the only sapient being on the planet who could tolerate his presence for more than five minutes.
"Indeed," the A.I. said. "I am Dragon, an associate of the Protectorate and PRT."
"You hacked my gear?" Armsmaster looked utterly offended.
"Needs must as the Devil drives," she said to him. "Now hush. Please, sir, allow me to apologize for Armsmaster's…. precipitous actions. Your arrival caused a bit of alarm, and it put him a bit on edge. You do understand."
"He fired on an unarmed man," Bayleaf growled grumpily. "And then got on the phone to call the five o'clock News to brag about it." Armsmaster stiffened-- well, as much as he could stiffen, wrapped in wooden vines.
"Again, I apologize," Dragon said. "I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding. You are apparently a new Trigger, a Case 53, and out of your element. Please reconsider. I know this is a poor first impression, but the Protectorate and the PRT can be a real boon for new capes such as yourself. If you cooperate with the Protectorate they can help you out."
Bayleaf realized that this was another golden opportunity: a chance to drop a few important bugs in a very important pair of digital ears. He decided to seize it with both hands. He let an expression of disgust cross his face. "Your local director is a bigot. Your PR office is run by idiots. You have a bullying psychopath in the local Wards --" (Armsmaster's bearded chin twitched; ding ding, he obviously already had his suspicions who was being referred to)--" and word is on the street that you're riddled with Coil's spies."
"Spies?" she said faintly. Hook, line, and sinker, Bayleaf thought smugly. That ought to set the super-intelligent AI to sniffing around for Coil's fingerprints months ahead of schedule.
"--and even without that, you're so tied up with red tape you can barely move, much less DO anything," he snorted. "So no thanks." Once again he turned to go.
Of course, Armsmaster couldn't let that go. The Man With No Personality had to stick his oar in. "I don't know where you came from," Halbeard yelled at his retreating back. "But things will go a lot easier for you here in Brockton Bay if you work with us heroes and not against us!"
Bayleaf stopped, turned back and got up in Armsmaster's face, looming over him. "Get one thing straight, you tin-plated, cereal-box-top Judge Dredd wannabe," he rumbled, his muzzle threatening to curl into a snarl. " You're no hero. You're a grand-standing, glory-hogging, rent-seeking Prima Donna, and I'd rather be shot with a taser again in the DICK than work with you."
Someone behind him spoke. "Holy--!" He spun around. Standing there on the beach were a couple of teenagers in heavy coats and hoodies and carrying backpacks. Bayleaf had no idea what a couple of kids would be doing out in the Ship's Graveyard on a freezing cold day like this. Worshipping crack and smoking Satan, for all he knew or cared. But they had obviously just stumbled on their little tableau and were staring in astonishment at the sight of the lead hero of Brockton Bay being held at the mercy of a bedraggled seven-plus foot tall wolfman. "Hey!" Bayleaf barked. They jumped. "Either of you got a cell phone with a camera?" The one on the left nodded.
Bayleaf loped over with his hand out. The kid pulled out a smartphone and very nervously handed it to the worgen. "Thanks." Bayleaf loped back to where Armsmaster still stood wrapped in vines, fiddling with the buttons. "Camera, camera-- how do you—ah!" He threw one beefy arm over Armsmaster's shoulders, held up the camera, pulled the goofiest expression he could think of, and clicked. The armored hero made a sound suspiciously like 'arrrgh.'
"Congratulations, pal," Bayleaf said, tossing the camera back to the kid-- who barely caught it; he and his friend were now laughing fit to split a gut. "Enjoy your instant million-hit blog post." He heard sirens faintly in the distance. "Later." He turned, started to run, and in between one step and the next transformed from an enormous black wolf-man into an enormous black sabertooth tiger. To shouts of "cool" and "awesome," he hit all fours still running-- and then faded away, vanishing into thin air.
"That camera is now legal evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation," Armsmaster shouted at the teenagers in a warning tone. They ignored him, the phone's owner gleefully working the keyboard.
"Too late, Colin," Dragon murmured in his ear. "They've already posted it to Facebook."
"Arrrrrghgggh."
Notes:
It is only fairly recently that I realized: A story about a world being savaged by giant indestructible monsters who are only vulnerable at their cores; a defense force that is nothing but a false front for a malevolent, all encompassing world conspiracy led by amoral masterminds; and the only ones who can save the world from annihilation are a bunch of horribly traumatized teenagers---
Worm is just Evangelion with capes!
Worm is just Evangelion with capes!
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Chapter 3
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
Chapter 3
Chapter Text
Bayleaf stuck to his stealth mode form till he was fairly sure he was out of range. He found himself in an area filled with boarded up factories, decaying warehouses and run down tenements…. The Docks, if he remembered the layout of Brockton Bay canon correctly. He slipped between two buildings and changed to his human form-- then reconsidered as gravel and broken glass cut into his bare feet. Swearing, he pulled the bits of glass loose and hastily shifted to his worgen form; the shifting seemed to heal the minor cuts, and the leathery pads on his wolfen feet were far tougher than his tender human skin.
It was time for a quick assessment. He was stranded in a strange unfamiliar territory with no money, no ID, no shelter, no… well it would be easier to list what he DID have, he decided. He looked down at himself. He had a shirt made of what seemed to be homespun linen, and dark brown breeches of the same with a rope belt. Not even shoes. Apparently Agent had traded in even the basic druid starting gear for more points to spend in the point-buy system.
So he had two pieces of clothes that might have won a medal at a renfaire for authenticity, and his own carcass. Oh, and a butt-load of talents and powers, but at this point that and two bucks would buy him a cup of coffee. So… what did he need first?
He needed clothing. That was a quick and easy fix, though. It was already close to sunset; he could wait. For now he contented himself with finding a back door into the abandoned factory he was hiding behind. The doorknob and lock snapped off easily. He slipped inside and looked around: it was dark, dusty, and there were no signs of anyone else, not even the junkies or homeless had gotten into this place yet--- probably too recently abandoned. Perfect. He had shelter now, at least temporarily.
Once the sun went down he turned back into the black sabertooth, went into stealth, and went on the hunt.
Calling the Docks a poor neighborhood was being generous. It was impoverished, run down, covered in graffiti and trash and there seemed to be a homeless junkie in every alleyway or at every other street corner. But struggling neighborhoods did have certain commonalities, no matter where you were, so it didn't take him long to find what he was looking for: A Goodwill store, complete with one of their ubiquitous clothes-drop bins out front. Once he was sure the coast was clear, he shifted into worgen form and snapped the security chains off the bin. He grabbed as many bags of donated clothing as he could carry (which was a considerable number, considering his strength) and ran for it. A quick leap from alleyway to rooftop and he soon returned to the abandoned factory, his loot in tow.
He felt very little guilt about robbing a Goodwill; people dumped their old clothing and possessions there under the delusion that they were donating to a charity. They weren't; even though Goodwill was listed as a nonprofit, the owners of had made themselves millionaires re-selling free stuff-- almost pure profit. They paid their workers a pittance, too, sometimes as little as a quarter an hour, while bragging about "employing the unfortunate and disabled." Meanwhile their CEOs took home six figure salaries at a minimum.
No, he didn't feel guilty at all stealing some of their free stock.
It was a mishmash, but he managed to find a few hoodies and tees that hung baggy on his human form. He even found a couple pairs of tennis shoes. He made extra sure to hit everything with his "purify" spell; it was meant for cleansing people of toxins, diseases and poisons but it doubled surprisingly well as a cleaning and sanitation spell. It wasn't as good as a trip to the laundromat but it would have to do for now.
He Purified and hung up his homespun on a peg in the wall. Waste not want not.
The moon was high now; time for step two in his brilliant plan.
There were beaches all along the Bay; some more popular than others. The ones nearest to his location on the North side of the harbor probably weren't very popular with the beachgoing set, due to the proximity of the Ship Graveyard, but it would do for a start.
It was a short run in Worgen form from the abandoned factory to the beach. He brought along nothing but a backpack he'd found in the Goodwill loot and, because he was feeling optimistic, the now-empty garbage bags. He wouldn't need anything else.
On Azeroth, there are certain abilities used by nearly everyone that, were anyone to examine them with an objective eye, would become obvious as being "arcane" in nature. Those trained in mining could use their thaumatic senses to locate nodes and pockets of ore, precious metals and gems, even from the air. Those trained in herbalism could detect plants by species, at considerable range. Hunters (and druids, when in one of their more feral forms) were known for their ability to detect any animal life form and differentiate by type and species.
Thanks to Agent's min-maxing, Bayleaf had been brain-crammed with the training and talent for all three. It was how he had managed to avoid running into any of the residents of Brockton Bay while out on his little junket; he could sense someone coming from blocks away.
Here and now though it made him possibly the king of all beach combers.
He knelt down to dig his claws in the sand, closed his eyes, and Searched.
When he opened them, hundreds of glowing ghostly stars speckled the beach as far as the eye could see. Some of them seemed to shine up through several feet of sand like lights underwater. Copper, silver, gold (and not a small amount of nickel and zinc...)
He grinned a wolfish grin and started digging.
By the time he called it quits for the night, the beach looked like it had been attacked by an army of gophers. (Heck with it, let 'em wonder.) His Alexandria backpack was so full and heavy the seams were stretching. It was small change, mostly, but there were still quite a few watches, rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings, ready to be rinsed free of sand and pawned. There were also a couple of raggedy wallets-- he had only sensed them because of a few coins in them or a key stuck in a side pocket-- and a couple of them were stuffed with bills and credit cards. After a terrible struggle with himself he regretfully dropped the wallets, contents untouched, into the first convenient mailbox. More than likely some crooked postal service worker would steal the cash themselves, but he wasn't going to start out life here with that on his conscience.
He returned to his temporary lair, made a campfire with his Vine Entangle, and crashed out on the bags of clothing he had stolen from a charity bin.
The next day started, cold and clear, with a quick trip to a pawn shop to unload his boodle. The man running the place had raised an eyebrow at the sheer quantity, but had said nothing. He'd probably noted the sand still flecked on some of the items and took beachcombing as an acceptable explanation. Adrian left with about two hundred dollars in his pocket-- highway robbery, but he was in no place to quibble at the moment. Between that and the coins he had just under four hundred in cash on him.
The next stop was the public library for a little research. Joy of joys, they had internet. His objective was to do a quick research of the Endbringer attacks, then failing that, the Slaughterhouse Nine, the Teeth, then maybe metahuman rampages in general, to find a likely destroyed city he could claim as his birthplace when he applied for status as a refugee.
It was morbid work. There were a depressing number of them; way more than had been listed in canon. Most of them though weren't major cities. Major cities could generally bounce back from even a Hulk-style rampage; It was usually the small towns that had gotten the hard end of a cape triggering and going off the rails. Apparently unlike in the comics, where the villains always started their little rampages in places like New York where there were more capes per square mile than there were Starbucks', the super powered villains in Earth Bet did occasionally have the brainstorm to start their campaigns of terror in some little podunk town with no heroes (see the Slaughterhouse Nine, who had obliterated several small towns in their travels already.)
Adrian eventually found a villain rampage that was practically custom made. Some doink chemo Tinker calling himself Memento had gone on a prolonged terror campaign out in the Midwest. He'd apparently go out on a junket till he found some podunk one-stoplight town that offended his inexplicable sensibilities, proclaim it a blight upon the face of the earth, then spray it down with his amnesia-inducing gas. Once the bewildered and panicking populace had run off, he'd hit it with fuel-air bombs and blast it off the face of the earth. He'd obliterated five dinky communities before the local heroes showed up and bagged him.
It had been less than a year, and Memento victims were still turning up dozens of states away with most of their previous lives a permanent scrambled blur. Society had pretty much shrugged in exhaustion, chalked them up as yet another categories of S-class or A-class refugee, and told the civil service sector to streamline putting them back in the system-- and the system had readily obliged. It seemed governments didn't like it very much when people dropped off the grid and would go out of their way to get a nice shiny paper trail stapled to them again.
So a Memento victim it was. It was the right nationality, the right accent, the right background (he would have had a hell of a time convincing people he was a Nova Scotian or Japanese after all) and people would know better than to ask silly or inconvenient questions about his past.
He rented a room, little more than a closet really, at a decrepit building owned by a grungy fellow who asked no questions and who happily backdated him as living there for several months for an extra hundred up front. Then he stopped at the post office and snagged a PO box. From there he made a beeline for the Brockton Bay Human Services offices. He walked in as Adrian, a man without a country. Three hours after that he walked out as Adrian Smith, an official native of Brockton Bay, sixteen year old emancipated minor, complete with a fresh shiny ID card and a registered sophomore at Winslow Academy. From there it was a beeline to the local bank where he used his shiny new ID card and a chunk of his cash to open a bank account. Then for a final touch, it was over to city hall to open a business license: A tiny little pushcart business called "World of Crafts."
He had a legal ID, a permanent address, a bank account, a legitimate revenue source, and a decoy paper trail that, thanks to the ridiculous circumstances of this world, looked totally legitimate despite existing for less than a day. That was as close to being a respectable citizen as anyone could get in Brockton Bay.
Then it was a quick shopping run. A cheap burner cell phone, some canned and packaged foods, a proper military backpack from an army-navy surplus (the Alexandria backpack had its charms, but really…) along with a few bits of camping gear, a box of tools, a sleeping bag and a few other oddments.
He also managed to find Fugly Bob's. In the original web novelization, Fugly Bob's was a Brockton Bay fixture famous for three things: its name, its head shef and owner who sported a horrendous burn scar across half his face and for whom the restaurant was name, and its menu of burgers that could probably kill a vegan at twenty paces. It's most legendary burger was the Fugly Bob Challenger, a monstrosity of a sandwich made from a full pound of hamburger, a mountain of cheese, onions, pickles, lettuce, and condiments and enough fries on the side for six people. If you could finish the entire thing in an hour you got it for free, and your photo mounted on the wall next to the other rare heroic souls who had done the same.
He had originally planned to order something less ambitious, but the smell of sizzling seared meat and grease seduced him. He used the last of his pocket cash and ordered a Challenger. Alas, in his human form he could not finish it, and had to pay for it. He doggy-bagged it for later. Alas, he didn't get the coveted photograph, but doggone if he didn't feel like a proper Brocktonian now with a proper belly full of Fugly burger...
That would have been it for his day, except for a moment's inspiration. He had lugged along some of his clothes, including the homespun he'd arrived in, and put them through a quick wash and dry at a coin laundromat. It was as he was folding and stashing the clothes that he realized something very important about his first outfit: it hadn't been made in Brockton Bay. It had been made in Azeroth-- or at least with Azeroth methods. Which had some VERY interesting implications.
The bell on the door jingled as he meekly entered the shop. It was a beautiful dress shop, but surprisingly small and crowded considering the reputation of the owner and manager. Every spare inch of space was crowded with manikins swathed in silk and satin, cotton and crinoline. Fortunately the showroom floor opened a little bit past the entryway.
He was still standing in the middle of the room gawping like a tourist at the sartorial splendor when the shoppe owner came in from the back rooms. "I'm sorry, sir," she said. "But our boutique is by appointment only--"
She was a tiny thing, five feet if that, and dainty. She was wearing what appeared to be an antique dress with more ruffles and frills and furbelows than Adrian had ever seen, and her hair-- or possibly her wig-- was a veritable mass of golden Shirley Temple curls. Most disturbingly she wore a doll-like porcelain mask that completely concealed her face and made dark hollow holes of her eyes.
Adrian held up a hand. "I know, I apologize for intruding," he said. "But I'm not here to shop-- or to snap photos like a tourist. It's just that… um, how do I put this? I discovered something that might be of interest to you."
"Oh really?" Parian (for that was who she was) said warily. Out of the corner of his eye Adrian saw the dresses around him rustle. Ribbons hiding unobtrusively among the manikins floated on nonexistent breezes, coiled like cobras ready to strike. The cloth-kinetic cape had little to fear from the likes of him.
"Yes. Please, I mean you no harm." The rustling stilled. He carefully set his backpack on the ground and gestured to it. "If I may?" After a moment she nodded. He unfastened a large side pocket and pulled out the homespun tunic and breeches. He held the folded cloth out to her. "What do you make of these?"
Parian took the clothes carefully in her hands and ran her gloved fingertips over them. "Let's see. Linen obviously. Oh, and hand made linen, you can tell by the irregularities. You don't see that often." she unfolded the tunic and shook it out. "All hand stitched, with hand made thread--! The cut, the design, everything down to the buttons is authentic. Well," she said, giving Adrian a look, "this could hang in a museum display on medieval clothes-making. Where did you find this?" she sounded intrigued.
"Would you believe along with a load of donated clothing?" he said with a crooked grin. It was technically true, if not precisely so. "But that's not the really interesting thing. Take a look at those breeches and tunic, then take a look at me. Think they'd fit me?"
Parian looked at the clothing in her hands, then gave Adrian the once-over. She took in his six-foot height and broad shoulders. "Not likely," she said, amused.
"Well that's the thing..." He looked around. "Let me show you. Do you have a couple of manikins to spare? One adult male, one child." At her gesture two cloth-covered manikins tottered out from the workroom in the back and set themselves up in the middle of the floor. "Now, try the tunic on the adult."
The manikin raised its arms and the tunic slid down over its head. It settled on its shoulders, hanging in a loose yet comfortable fit. "Okay," Adrian said, "Now try it on the child." Obediently, Parian sent the tunic over to dress the smaller manikin. It slid down over the child doll's raised arms… and settled in place, once again a perfect fit.
"What?" Parian stammered. 'How…?"
Adrian knew. The clothes were of Azeroth make. And in Azeroth, tailoring incorporated so much of the arcane that enchanters would salvage old clothing for the exotic dusts, motes, and energies they used in their own craft. Among other things it made the clothes more durable to the point that they were often used as a substitute for armor. But the most common feature added was to make the clothing naturally self-resizing. This was how an Orc could shop for clothing (or for that matter, real armor, which incorporated the same techniques) at the same place as a gnome.
Parian shot a look at Adrian. "Oh no," he half-laughed, holding up his hands in protest. "I didn't make them. They were just donated." Which was the truth, more or less. "when I noticed their, er, odd behavior, I naturally thought of you."
Parian pulled off one of her elbow-length gloves and ran her fingers over the cloth. "it… I can't describe it," she said. "There's something… strange beyond explaining in this cloth. Yet… Don't ask me how I know but I'm sure that with the right materials, I could duplicate this!"
Adrian smiled to himself. He'd figured as much. He suspected that Parian was as much a cloth tinker as she was a telekinetic. "Some tinker somewhere?"
"None that I know of," Parian murmured, still stroking the cloth in a perturbing fashion. "And I know literally every tinker with a cloth-related specialty on the planet."
"So," Parian said. "How much, then?"
"Well, seeing as I only FOUND the things, maybe a small finder's fee; I wouldn't feel right--" before he'd finished the sentence she'd scribbled out a number on a scrap of paper and stuck it under his nose. His eyes went round in spite of himself. "And it was nice doing business with you," he squeaked.
When he walked out the door, she had his tunic and breeches. He had her private cell phone number in case he made any more "discoveries"-- and as one might expect of a rogue who had to regularly do business with capes of every stripe, six figures in small unmarked nonsequential bills stuffed in his army backpack.
The weekend (it was apparently Wednesday when he made splashdown) arrived. Plans were progressing fast; he had a new identity… or would that be a false identity or a secret identity?… courtesy of the state and federal government, a sizeable bankroll (he had been in near hysterics before he'd finally gotten back to his rented room and hid it all under his mattress), and he was enrolled in the appropriate school… now for phase two.
Bank account or no, it was going to be a tricky process depositing most of that cash. A homeless teenager who suddenly dropped six figures in cash into his bank account was the sort of thing that had people pressing alarm buttons. He'd probably have to disguise it as cash profits from his business.
Speaking of which, he needed to start getting together a stockpile of merchandise to sell. He was an Engineer, with the full category of gnome and goblin inventions, plus the entire catalogue from the Warlords of Draenor garrison engineer and the gnomish gearworks AND the goblin workshop. He had blueprints in his head and knowhow in his hands to make everything from toys to tanks. But, he needed a workshop to build this stuff… and to build all the cape gear, weapons and more that he'd need in the field.
He also needed a place to stash all the stuff he didn't want people to know about just yet (like tens of thousands of dollars in small nonsequential bills, ahem), a place where he could rest, mend his own wounds, and keep his head down for a while when things (as per the original timeline) started getting more desperate and dark…
He needed a lair.
Thus began a long weekend at the library web-browsing for a certain category of abandoned construction and/or public works. He was sure there were plenty of old smuggler's tunnels around the harbor; port cities tended to have those in multitude. But considering the forecast in the next two years or so called for cloudy with a chance of Endbringer, he didn't particularly want anything too close to the waterline. Captain's Hill, as he recalled, was going to remain well above the floodline and out of the combat zone when Leviathan came by to say howdy-doo. Unfortunately it didn't have quite as much construction and none of the sort that he was looking for.
No, he needed to shift his search further North. Brockton Bay had been a shipping nexus even back in the days of the horse and cart. That meant a lot of on-site machine work. What he needed would probably be someplace between the Docks and the Trainyard… someplace where, back in the city's heyday, a lot of cargo got shifted and a lot of steelwork needed done. He hunched over the library computer and clicked on the interactive map he'd found of Brockton Bay. There. He tapped a finger on the screen. There was a little patch of real estate, a little row of buildings right on the line where the Docks ended and the Trainyards began. It was deep in gang territory-- he grimaced to himself at the thought; in Brockton Bay the only place that wasn't in gang territory was under a force field bubble out in the Bay.
He cross-referenced the buildings in question with the city records… bingo. Five of the buildings were listed as completely abandoned. Three were of the type he was looking for. One was available to anyone who was willing to pay the back taxes on it…. But noone had even benched an offer because of it's utterly untenable location.
Fifty minutes later, the ghostly silhouette of a jungle cat could be seen slipping through the alleyways of the Trainyard. The building in question was just off the actual railyard by about half a block; he could hear the deafening clank and roar of the diesel trains as he scouted out the location. He squeezed through a narrow gap between yet another warehouse and an all-but-shuttered factory of some sort that took a sixty degree bend about fifty feet in, went twenty feet more, then opened into a little cobblestone courtyard. It was walled in on three sides with ancient brick and stone, and had exactly one door. There was part of an old fashioned slate shingle roof visible above it, with two or three stone chimneys poking up into the sky behind the factory's more modern smokestack. Bayleaf switched back to his worgen form and forced the door, the ancient lock cracking like peanut brittle under his grip. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.
The place was one of those odd little forgotten corners. Back in the day it had been a repair and work shop, built right next to the railyard for convenience. Over the years it had been used to provide the railroads with everything from shoeing draft horses to ironwork to brasswork to glasswork to… well, just about any work that required strong hands, solid tools and a hot furnace. But times had changed, the tracks had been re-laid, and the workshop had fallen into disuse as better facilities were built on the OTHER side of the tracks. Other buildings had cropped up around the workshop, building over it, overlapping it, till it was hidden from site and all but forgotten to the world.
Bayleaf looked around. It was perfect.
The dust was inches thick. It was undisturbed even by the footprints of mice and probably had geologic strata to it. Cobwebs were everywhere, long abandoned by the spiders that wove them for the lack of flies. But the walls were solid stone-- not brick, but stone, the bones of a world; huge raw-cut blocks that made his druidic senses hum with satisfaction. There were two furnaces, long cold. Stout worktables made of heavy oak beams and still scarred black. Even the tools were there, abandoned where they lay-- hammers, tongs, anvils, tools for iron and brass and glass and leather. There were even a couple of anvils. It was actually a two story building as well, with sleeping quarters up in the rafters.
There was a washroom in the back corner with an antiquated showerhead and a toilet...
To his surprise there was no wood rot, no mildew, surprisingly little rust as well. For a place near a seaside harbor that was a bit unusual. He could only guess that the place had been corked up so tight when it was closed that nothing of moisture or humidity could get in.
The only question that remained was how to get his equipment, materials, and the like in and out of the place. The answer came when he found the double doors in back. He ripped off the boards blocking it and opened it to find his back door directly faced a solid brick wall. Disgruntled, he began ripping out bricks with his bare clawed hands.
...To find himself in yet another abandoned warehouse. "Town oughta start trading in abandoned warehouses, they'd make a fortune," he muttered to himself. He climbed through and found it spacious if empty. There were a few flickering lights-- perhaps not so abandoned?-- and a bathroom with running water, so whoever owned it was still paying upkeep for some reason. As he recalled, building owners tended to keep even empty buildings hooked up to utilities in order to keep the heat on, so as to prevent freezing and moisture damage…
Either way, bonus for him. Since they were so rude as to build over his back door like that, he would avail himself of the facilities and splice into the electric and water lines in here. Assuming he even needed them, considering his plans. But the real bonus was that the place had a front door and a delivery ramp and thus an address to have things delivered to. Whenever something he ordered arrived here, he would be on hand to open the door and roll it on in… and right through to the back, out the hole in the back wall, and into his workshop.
He found a loose sheet of plyboard large enough to cover the "secret entrance" (aka Huge Frickin Hole in the Wall) and set about cleaning the antedeluvian dust out of his lair.
Saturday was spent on shopping.
Not just any shopping, though. Porch sales. Yard sales. Garage sales. Flea Markets. Even Brockton Bay had such things, especially in a mild indian summer. He was treasure hunting, and he was stretching his Searching power to the absolute limit. The treasures he wanted were scattered far and wide… but it was amazing the amount of territory you could cover when you could turn into a bird.
Added bonus? No receipts, which meant no paper trail.
He bought a few things for his comfort-- some bits of furniture including a bed, a little winter clothing, a propane heater-- but the main items on his shopping list were:
1. clockwork, engine, motor and electronic components.
2. certain gems, crystals, and rare earths and metals.
3. scrap metal in bulk.
4. tools.
5. Fuel.
6. anything his Searching power "pinged" on.
His approach was as methodical as his beach-combing. He first scoped out the local papers for any listed yard sales. Then he overflew those areas in his raven form, scanning. If he pinged on anything he dropped down into a secluded spot, turned human, and quickly bought whatever he'd pinged on, then followed up by going over everything else with a fine toothed comb. If the people running the yard sale were amenable to it, he'd pay them a little extra to box up and set aside what he'd found, with the promise he'd be back for it later.
He made some surprising finds; enough that he started wondering what treasures he'd completely overlooked in his past life when he went yard sale trolling. He found countless pieces of real silverware, including a serving platter and cover. He found more than a few bits of gold too. Gems were a rare find but he found plenty of crystals and semiprecious stones that would have been worth ten times their weight back on Azeroth. The hippie lady at the flea market with the new-age crystal stand must have thought her ship had come in when he came along and basically bought her out. He even bought the push cart.
He snapped up clocks of every size, wind up toys, old electric countertop appliances, pocket watches, and any number of items that noone watching could have guessed the reason… but he'd spot them amongst countless other debris, his eyes would get a funny gleam and he'd snatch them up. At one point on impulse he'd bought a stack of flowerpots, some potting soil, and an assortment of seedlings...
He'd realized even before he'd started that he'd have a touch of trouble dragging his haul back to his lair. Not for the first time since splashdown he groused to himself bitterly about Agent not equipping him with the standard Azeroth "bottomless" handy haversack (or more likely trading it in for more points.) He'd gotten around that problem by scouting around till he found a guy in one of the lower-rent neighborhoods lounging around who had a pickup truck, and offering to pay him a couple hundred to haul him and his crap around for the day. His name was "Efe," so far as Bayleaf could figure; a balding, potbellied old guy with a ballcap, a wife-beater shirt and a fringe of shoulder length stringy hair and a disturbing resemblance to Cheech Marin. But he was mellow, and cool with doing a little driving for a few bucks. They drove around and picked up all Adrian's purchases. By the time they got to the false front warehouse, it was loaded to overflowing. "Efe" helped him unload, wished him luck, told him they should go out for a few beers sometime and drove off…. Never even having asked Bayleaf his name. No fuss, no muss and once again, no paper trail.
One might have thought it strange that, in a world and a city where tinkers scavenged like cockroaches, that Bayleaf pulled in such a load. Of course, the usual behavior of tinkers was to either scrounge dumpsters and junkyards, or try to pull off a not-so-daring heist and rip off a factory or a warehouse full of high-end technology. The few who even thought of money tried to order from horrendously overpriced underground companies like the Toybox, or even (in cases of extreme stupidity) tried to have stuff delivered to them in bulk from companies, thereby putting an enormous bullseye on themselves with a big fat blinking neon arrow above it that said "Please kidnap this Tinker now."
Almost none of them thought to buy things directly from ordinary people with plain old cash. And those who spoke of tracking Tinkers by their "unusual purchasing habits" never considered the millions of people at flea markets, Salvation Army stores, and yard sales whose purchasing and selling habits would probably make the most demented Tinker look banal.
Sunday he would have taken rest-- but must needs, as the saying went. He threw his furniture in place, started up his propane heater to keep warm, sat down next to his stacks of salvage, and got to work.
There were over five hundred "toys" listed in World of Warcraft. He could craft a shocking number of them, just with what he had. In one hour his first trinket was clicking, buzzing and whirring around the Foundry floor. By the end of three he had a small platoon chattering along… including one very special one, for a special purpose.
Monday morning, he was ready.
Principal Blackwell sat back in her chair with a self-satisfied air. "Well, Mister… Smith..."
"Sorry," Adrian said with a shrug and a half-smile. "I guess government offices aren't exactly creative with names."
"...Yes," Blackwell said with pursed lips. "Well, according to the standardized test they gave you, you place in the sophomore or junior year. We will be observing your actual performance in class over the year to determine your actual placement…"
Yyyeah, that would be the purpose of the tests they regularly hand out to ALL students, Adrian thought to himself with a mental raised eyebrow. In other news grass is green, water is wet, film at eleven. Her point?
"But I trust that your future performance will… compensate for your checkered educational past."
At this he did raise an actual eyebrow. Checkered past? According to the file she was handed, I'm an amnesia victim. I don't even have a past to checker!
"I will warn you right now, we have low tolerance for troublemakers here…"
I just may barf. I walked past three skinheads swapping sandwich baggies just on my way to the office. Who is she kidding? He considered his appearance. Jeans, sneakers, t-shirt, and a leather jacket. Was she picking up her cues on "troublemaker on sight" from old James Dean films?
"I will say I had some misgivings about your enrollment here, Mr. Smith. Your past is due cause for concern."
The penny dropped. Ah, I get it. Should've thought of that first. With things like the Simurgh, or Bonesaw, or Nilbog running around, there's probably a certain amount of prejudice against survivors of metahuman attacks. She's probably afraid that nutcase Memento might have turned me into some sort of teenage tyke-bomb. He huffed and curled his lip. Or that I might have a bad day and trigger all over her nice clean school. Irony ahoy.
She saw the tiny lip curl and predictably, misinterpreted. She stiffened a bit, and her already less than warm tone turned frosty. "You had best watch your attitude, young man. I run a tight ship here--"
hrnrrnk.
"--and I will be keeping a close eye on you for any irregularities. So don't give me any crap."
He looked at the scowling woman in her bowl-cut and only barely suppressed the urge to say You got it, Moe. "Understood, ma'am," he said. "May I go find my locker now? I think lunch is starting soon."
She glared at him for a moment. "Dismissed," she said. He beat a hasty retreat.
He found his locker in short order, and started unloading his backpack into it. He looked over the inside. "Cripes," he muttered. "This thing is enormous. I didn't think anyone made lockers this size for real." He shook his head. He needed to focus on his next objective: finding Taylor. Her description was pretty straightforward, so that shouldn't be a problem, he decided. There was a good chance he'd spot her at lunch-- but then again, maybe not. Didn't she take up eating her lunch in various hidey-holes to try and escape the gruesome threesome? Or was that something she started after the locker incident…?
"Hey Taylor!"
Adrian's head whipped around. He looked just in time to see a petite redheaded girl in an ungodly amount of makeup stick her foot out and trip another girl in a hoodie and backpack. The hoodie girl stumbled and nearly fell. The other girl went so far as to slap her in the back, to try and get her to stumble further. The girl in the hoodie managed to keep her balance though. "Better watch your step, Taylor," the redhead taunted. "You're just so terribly clumsy."
Taylor didn't even look back. She just righted herself and kept walking, her head down and shoulders hunched. Adrian felt like someone had taken a bite out of his heart. His conviction only firmed; even if he didn't fix anything else, he was going to make this right. She kept walking down the hall right towards him…
And stopped at the locker next to his and began working the combination.
Holy carp. Luck of all the Irish. "Uhhh, hi," he said. "How ya doin?" She jumped, then looked up at him, brushing stray curls of her dark hair out of her face. With her glasses she looked like a frightened owl…
Taylor flinched and looked up at the boy next to her warily. She blinked a little when she realized she didn't recognize him. She was fairly sure she would have remembered being in the locker next door to a tall, dark, broad shouldered-- she pushed that thought away, blushing. He was handsome though, with chiseled looks and dark gray eyes. He gave her a crooked smile.
Had he said something?
"Oh! Uh. Hi….?"
"You must be Taylor," he said. "I'm Adrian."
Taylor's paranoia sprang to the fore. "How do you know my name?" she said warily.
Adrian jerked his thumb down the hall, indicating the departed Emma. "I overheard Princess Maybelline back there shouting it," he said wryly.
"Princess Maybelline?" she said with a half smile of her own.
"Yeah." He looked down the hall thoughtfully. "Dang, how many layers of makeup does she have to slather on to get that perfect Resting Bitch Face, d'you suppose?" Talyor did let out a hiccup of a laugh at that one.
"I don't recognize you," she said, immediately feeling stupid. Of course not, he was obviously a new student--
"Yeah, well. Funny thing is, if we had known each other, we probably wouldn't now," he said. He tapped his head. "Memento refugee."
Taylor's mouth made a silent "o." "I'm sorry," she said.
"Hey, not your fault. At least all I got was a clean slate; I could've ended up like those guys who can't remember anything past the last half-hour, or whatever." He looked a bit uncomfortable with the topic, and made an obvious move to change it. "So…basically means I'm totally new here. As new as you can get actually. Any more like Resting Bitch Face I should look out for around here?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "You mean besides the neonazis, the asian gang members, and the junkies?" she said sarcastically.
"Well I know about those guys. At least they're courteous enough to wear identifying colors," Adrian said, amused. "But what about the rest?"
Taylor's smile disappeared. "That's Emma," she said. "You'll get to know her soon enough. "Her, Madison and Sophia are the Queen Bees in this school and everybody knows it." She pulled a trapper-keeper out of her locker and flipped through it. Then flipped through it again. "Dammit!" She threw her head back and stamped her feet in frustration.
"What?" Adrian asked.
"Those-- they stole my homework. Again!!" She threw the trapper-keeper down in the bottom of her locker and let her head fall against the doorframe with a thunk. "I can't stand it. I even changed my lock..."
Adrian knew exactly why changing her lock made no difference, but he could hardly tell Taylor that at this point. He had to take a different approach. "What kind of lock did you get? Can I see it?"
Taylor looked up at him. "Just a regular combination lock," she said. She pulled it off the door latch and gave it to him. He rolled it over in his hands and made a knowing sound.
"Eh, well, there you go," he said. "Just a regular school lock. They could get this thing open lickety split."
"How?" Taylor scowled.
He knew the real reason, but he could hardly tell her THAT-- at least not yet. But he did have a Muggle-Worthy Excuse ready for the meanwhile... Wordlessly, Adrian took out his wallet and pulled a metal strip-- it looked like it had been cut out of a soda can-- out of one of the pockets. He closed the lock. Then he wrapped the strip of metal around the shackle and worked it down inside the body of the lock. There was a click, and the lock popped open. "Easy peasy," he said. "They've got how-to videos online."
Taylor groaned. "Well that's ten bucks wasted," she grumbled
.
A noise came out of Adrian's backpack. "Vweep. Whirrwhirrwhiirr. Ebbebebbbebp. PTING."
Taylor backed up a step. "The heck was that?"
"Oh. Darn, must've turned him on by accident..." Adrian reached down in his oversized pack and pulled something out. It was a little toy robot about a foot tall, made out of copper and brass. It had a rotating red beacon light for a head, two headlight "eyes," a short squat body, short little limbs with large bell-shaped hands and platform feet. "Oh, this is just one of the toys I make," Adrian said, holding it up. "I call it the alarm-o-bot."
"You're a TINKER?" Taylor blurted out. Adrian laughed.
"Oh no no no," he said. "This is all just off-the-shelf electronics, and a little handicraftyness." He shrugged and laughed. "it's sort of a gag gift. You place it where you want-- like on your desk, or in your car, or whatever, press the button to set it, and if anybody sets off its motion detectors it sounds an alarm. Look--" he poked something on it.
The red light lit up and began rotating. "WARNING, FART DETECTED! FART DETECTED! CLEAR THE AREA! DO NOT LIGHT A MATCH!--"
"All clear, all clear!" Adrian shouted at it frantically. The alarm shut down. "um, wrong setting," he said weakly, palming his face. He looked around; several students had stopped in alarm at the ruckus and were now staring at the two of them silently. Adrian leaned out and stuck his face into the face of the nearest one. "Yeah. It was MEEEEEEEEE!" He sneered. He held out a hand to the kid. "Come on, pull my finger!" The kid, wisely, beat a hasty retreat; the other kids rapidly dispersed before they could become the next target of the weird new guy's attention. He turned back to Taylor like nothing had happened. "Anyway, like I was saying..."
Taylor was trying not to laugh and failing. "That's awesome! And you make these little guys?"
Adrian nodded, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. "Yeah. I make little windup or battery powered toys, sell 'em from a push cart..." he gave her a card. It said "World of Crafts" on it and listed a website and cellphone number. "Its how I pay the bills."
"Neat." she smiled and tucked the card away.
Adrian hefted the Alarm-o-bot and looked at Taylor's locker thoughtfully. He could see a flute case in the upper compartment… they hadn't stolen her flute yet… "Say, wanna have a little fun with whoever's rifling your locker?" He held up the toy and waved it meaningfully.
It took a moment for the penny to drop. "Oh, that would be brilliant--" she hesitated. "Oh but we can't. They'd break your little robot just to get even--"
His grin grew strangely feral. "Meh, I ain't worried about that," he said. "I make these things by the dozen, remember? Out of old cell phones and crap. Be worth it to scare the crap out of Resting Bitch Face, wouldn't it?" He held the Alarm-o-bot up to her face. "Go ahead; say 'All clear.'" he pressed a button on the toy's back.
"All clear."
"There, that's also the shutoff code." He stuck the little robot in the upper compartment, clamping its magnetic feet so it stood in front of the flute case. "Back to your duty, soldier," he said, giving the toy a mock salute. Taylor laughed as he closed the door.
She never saw the toy return the salute…
"Wow, what other stuff do you make?"
"All sorts of things," he said, stuffing his bag into the locker. "Most aren't nearly as complicated as Obie, there." He nodded at the locker.
"Obie?"
"Short for Alarm-o-Bot. AOB." He picked out the books for his next few classes, and slammed the locker shut. "Anyway, most of my stuff is just windup stuff or battery powered trinkets. Stuff like this." He held his hand up. Perched on his finger was a butterfly made out of wire and glass. As she watched it slowly opened and closed its shiny black wings. Even its antennae moved.
"Oh wow." She reached out a finger and petted it on the head. "How--?"
"The wings are broken bits of solar cell," he said. "and there's a really simple electric motor-- more like a little solenoid-- that turns a little wire camshaft that moves the wings and antennae. The movement changes speed depending on how much light is shining on the wings. It's not much more complicated than one of those bobbing bird toys, but it looks really lifelike, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. Pretty, too," she said.
He smiled. "Here." He reached up and fastened it to one of the stray locks of hair sneaking out from under her hood. It clung there, fanning its wings slowly. She immediately started to protest.
"Oh no, I couldn't--"
"Hey, free advertising," he said with a smile and a shrug. "Besides you looked like you could use a smile." The school bell blatted. "Come on, we'd better get to the cafeteria before they give away all the good slop," he joked. "Come with me?" He watched her chew on her lip, undecided. She had to be half-broken at this point; convinced that noone would willingly associate with her; terrified her three tormentors would use it as a justification to turn their ire on her-- or him-- but by this point so desperate for someone, anyone to just be with… "It-- it might be a bad idea for you to be seen with me," she managed to say.
"Great! I'm all about doing what's bad for me. C'mon." She hesitated again. Then, for a miracle, she gave him a smile.
"Okay… okay, sure." After all, what did she have to lose, right?
"Mmmm, slop ahoy..."
Behind them in the locker, the Alarm-o-Bot sentry blinked its eyes and settled in for a long shift on duty.
Chapter Text
Bayleaf stuck to his stealth mode form till he was fairly sure he was out of range. He found himself in an area filled with boarded up factories, decaying warehouses and run down tenements…. The Docks, if he remembered the layout of Brockton Bay canon correctly. He slipped between two buildings and changed to his human form-- then reconsidered as gravel and broken glass cut into his bare feet. Swearing, he pulled the bits of glass loose and hastily shifted to his worgen form; the shifting seemed to heal the minor cuts, and the leathery pads on his wolfen feet were far tougher than his tender human skin.
It was time for a quick assessment. He was stranded in a strange unfamiliar territory with no money, no ID, no shelter, no… well it would be easier to list what he DID have, he decided. He looked down at himself. He had a shirt made of what seemed to be homespun linen, and dark brown breeches of the same with a rope belt. Not even shoes. Apparently Agent had traded in even the basic druid starting gear for more points to spend in the point-buy system.
So he had two pieces of clothes that might have won a medal at a renfaire for authenticity, and his own carcass. Oh, and a butt-load of talents and powers, but at this point that and two bucks would buy him a cup of coffee. So… what did he need first?
He needed clothing. That was a quick and easy fix, though. It was already close to sunset; he could wait. For now he contented himself with finding a back door into the abandoned factory he was hiding behind. The doorknob and lock snapped off easily. He slipped inside and looked around: it was dark, dusty, and there were no signs of anyone else, not even the junkies or homeless had gotten into this place yet--- probably too recently abandoned. Perfect. He had shelter now, at least temporarily.
Once the sun went down he turned back into the black sabertooth, went into stealth, and went on the hunt.
Calling the Docks a poor neighborhood was being generous. It was impoverished, run down, covered in graffiti and trash and there seemed to be a homeless junkie in every alleyway or at every other street corner. But struggling neighborhoods did have certain commonalities, no matter where you were, so it didn't take him long to find what he was looking for: A Goodwill store, complete with one of their ubiquitous clothes-drop bins out front. Once he was sure the coast was clear, he shifted into worgen form and snapped the security chains off the bin. He grabbed as many bags of donated clothing as he could carry (which was a considerable number, considering his strength) and ran for it. A quick leap from alleyway to rooftop and he soon returned to the abandoned factory, his loot in tow.
He felt very little guilt about robbing a Goodwill; people dumped their old clothing and possessions there under the delusion that they were donating to a charity. They weren't; even though Goodwill was listed as a nonprofit, the owners of had made themselves millionaires re-selling free stuff-- almost pure profit. They paid their workers a pittance, too, sometimes as little as a quarter an hour, while bragging about "employing the unfortunate and disabled." Meanwhile their CEOs took home six figure salaries at a minimum.
No, he didn't feel guilty at all stealing some of their free stock.
It was a mishmash, but he managed to find a few hoodies and tees that hung baggy on his human form. He even found a couple pairs of tennis shoes. He made extra sure to hit everything with his "purify" spell; it was meant for cleansing people of toxins, diseases and poisons but it doubled surprisingly well as a cleaning and sanitation spell. It wasn't as good as a trip to the laundromat but it would have to do for now.
He Purified and hung up his homespun on a peg in the wall. Waste not want not.
The moon was high now; time for step two in his brilliant plan.
There were beaches all along the Bay; some more popular than others. The ones nearest to his location on the North side of the harbor probably weren't very popular with the beachgoing set, due to the proximity of the Ship Graveyard, but it would do for a start.
It was a short run in Worgen form from the abandoned factory to the beach. He brought along nothing but a backpack he'd found in the Goodwill loot and, because he was feeling optimistic, the now-empty garbage bags. He wouldn't need anything else.
On Azeroth, there are certain abilities used by nearly everyone that, were anyone to examine them with an objective eye, would become obvious as being "arcane" in nature. Those trained in mining could use their thaumatic senses to locate nodes and pockets of ore, precious metals and gems, even from the air. Those trained in herbalism could detect plants by species, at considerable range. Hunters (and druids, when in one of their more feral forms) were known for their ability to detect any animal life form and differentiate by type and species.
Thanks to Agent's min-maxing, Bayleaf had been brain-crammed with the training and talent for all three. It was how he had managed to avoid running into any of the residents of Brockton Bay while out on his little junket; he could sense someone coming from blocks away.
Here and now though it made him possibly the king of all beach combers.
He knelt down to dig his claws in the sand, closed his eyes, and Searched.
When he opened them, hundreds of glowing ghostly stars speckled the beach as far as the eye could see. Some of them seemed to shine up through several feet of sand like lights underwater. Copper, silver, gold (and not a small amount of nickel and zinc...)
He grinned a wolfish grin and started digging.
By the time he called it quits for the night, the beach looked like it had been attacked by an army of gophers. (Heck with it, let 'em wonder.) His Alexandria backpack was so full and heavy the seams were stretching. It was small change, mostly, but there were still quite a few watches, rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings, ready to be rinsed free of sand and pawned. There were also a couple of raggedy wallets-- he had only sensed them because of a few coins in them or a key stuck in a side pocket-- and a couple of them were stuffed with bills and credit cards. After a terrible struggle with himself he regretfully dropped the wallets, contents untouched, into the first convenient mailbox. More than likely some crooked postal service worker would steal the cash themselves, but he wasn't going to start out life here with that on his conscience.
He returned to his temporary lair, made a campfire with his Vine Entangle, and crashed out on the bags of clothing he had stolen from a charity bin.
The next day started, cold and clear, with a quick trip to a pawn shop to unload his boodle. The man running the place had raised an eyebrow at the sheer quantity, but had said nothing. He'd probably noted the sand still flecked on some of the items and took beachcombing as an acceptable explanation. Adrian left with about two hundred dollars in his pocket-- highway robbery, but he was in no place to quibble at the moment. Between that and the coins he had just under four hundred in cash on him.
The next stop was the public library for a little research. Joy of joys, they had internet. His objective was to do a quick research of the Endbringer attacks, then failing that, the Slaughterhouse Nine, the Teeth, then maybe metahuman rampages in general, to find a likely destroyed city he could claim as his birthplace when he applied for status as a refugee.
It was morbid work. There were a depressing number of them; way more than had been listed in canon. Most of them though weren't major cities. Major cities could generally bounce back from even a Hulk-style rampage; It was usually the small towns that had gotten the hard end of a cape triggering and going off the rails. Apparently unlike in the comics, where the villains always started their little rampages in places like New York where there were more capes per square mile than there were Starbucks', the super powered villains in Earth Bet did occasionally have the brainstorm to start their campaigns of terror in some little podunk town with no heroes (see the Slaughterhouse Nine, who had obliterated several small towns in their travels already.)
Adrian eventually found a villain rampage that was practically custom made. Some doink chemo Tinker calling himself Memento had gone on a prolonged terror campaign out in the Midwest. He'd apparently go out on a junket till he found some podunk one-stoplight town that offended his inexplicable sensibilities, proclaim it a blight upon the face of the earth, then spray it down with his amnesia-inducing gas. Once the bewildered and panicking populace had run off, he'd hit it with fuel-air bombs and blast it off the face of the earth. He'd obliterated five dinky communities before the local heroes showed up and bagged him.
It had been less than a year, and Memento victims were still turning up dozens of states away with most of their previous lives a permanent scrambled blur. Society had pretty much shrugged in exhaustion, chalked them up as yet another categories of S-class or A-class refugee, and told the civil service sector to streamline putting them back in the system-- and the system had readily obliged. It seemed governments didn't like it very much when people dropped off the grid and would go out of their way to get a nice shiny paper trail stapled to them again.
So a Memento victim it was. It was the right nationality, the right accent, the right background (he would have had a hell of a time convincing people he was a Nova Scotian or Japanese after all) and people would know better than to ask silly or inconvenient questions about his past.
He rented a room, little more than a closet really, at a decrepit building owned by a grungy fellow who asked no questions and who happily backdated him as living there for several months for an extra hundred up front. Then he stopped at the post office and snagged a PO box. From there he made a beeline for the Brockton Bay Human Services offices. He walked in as Adrian, a man without a country. Three hours after that he walked out as Adrian Smith, an official native of Brockton Bay, sixteen year old emancipated minor, complete with a fresh shiny ID card and a registered sophomore at Winslow Academy. From there it was a beeline to the local bank where he used his shiny new ID card and a chunk of his cash to open a bank account. Then for a final touch, it was over to city hall to open a business license: A tiny little pushcart business called "World of Crafts."
He had a legal ID, a permanent address, a bank account, a legitimate revenue source, and a decoy paper trail that, thanks to the ridiculous circumstances of this world, looked totally legitimate despite existing for less than a day. That was as close to being a respectable citizen as anyone could get in Brockton Bay.
Then it was a quick shopping run. A cheap burner cell phone, some canned and packaged foods, a proper military backpack from an army-navy surplus (the Alexandria backpack had its charms, but really…) along with a few bits of camping gear, a box of tools, a sleeping bag and a few other oddments.
He also managed to find Fugly Bob's. In the original web novelization, Fugly Bob's was a Brockton Bay fixture famous for three things: its name, its head shef and owner who sported a horrendous burn scar across half his face and for whom the restaurant was name, and its menu of burgers that could probably kill a vegan at twenty paces. It's most legendary burger was the Fugly Bob Challenger, a monstrosity of a sandwich made from a full pound of hamburger, a mountain of cheese, onions, pickles, lettuce, and condiments and enough fries on the side for six people. If you could finish the entire thing in an hour you got it for free, and your photo mounted on the wall next to the other rare heroic souls who had done the same.
He had originally planned to order something less ambitious, but the smell of sizzling seared meat and grease seduced him. He used the last of his pocket cash and ordered a Challenger. Alas, in his human form he could not finish it, and had to pay for it. He doggy-bagged it for later. Alas, he didn't get the coveted photograph, but doggone if he didn't feel like a proper Brocktonian now with a proper belly full of Fugly burger...
That would have been it for his day, except for a moment's inspiration. He had lugged along some of his clothes, including the homespun he'd arrived in, and put them through a quick wash and dry at a coin laundromat. It was as he was folding and stashing the clothes that he realized something very important about his first outfit: it hadn't been made in Brockton Bay. It had been made in Azeroth-- or at least with Azeroth methods. Which had some VERY interesting implications.
The bell on the door jingled as he meekly entered the shop. It was a beautiful dress shop, but surprisingly small and crowded considering the reputation of the owner and manager. Every spare inch of space was crowded with manikins swathed in silk and satin, cotton and crinoline. Fortunately the showroom floor opened a little bit past the entryway.
He was still standing in the middle of the room gawping like a tourist at the sartorial splendor when the shoppe owner came in from the back rooms. "I'm sorry, sir," she said. "But our boutique is by appointment only--"
She was a tiny thing, five feet if that, and dainty. She was wearing what appeared to be an antique dress with more ruffles and frills and furbelows than Adrian had ever seen, and her hair-- or possibly her wig-- was a veritable mass of golden Shirley Temple curls. Most disturbingly she wore a doll-like porcelain mask that completely concealed her face and made dark hollow holes of her eyes.
Adrian held up a hand. "I know, I apologize for intruding," he said. "But I'm not here to shop-- or to snap photos like a tourist. It's just that… um, how do I put this? I discovered something that might be of interest to you."
"Oh really?" Parian (for that was who she was) said warily. Out of the corner of his eye Adrian saw the dresses around him rustle. Ribbons hiding unobtrusively among the manikins floated on nonexistent breezes, coiled like cobras ready to strike. The cloth-kinetic cape had little to fear from the likes of him.
"Yes. Please, I mean you no harm." The rustling stilled. He carefully set his backpack on the ground and gestured to it. "If I may?" After a moment she nodded. He unfastened a large side pocket and pulled out the homespun tunic and breeches. He held the folded cloth out to her. "What do you make of these?"
Parian took the clothes carefully in her hands and ran her gloved fingertips over them. "Let's see. Linen obviously. Oh, and hand made linen, you can tell by the irregularities. You don't see that often." she unfolded the tunic and shook it out. "All hand stitched, with hand made thread--! The cut, the design, everything down to the buttons is authentic. Well," she said, giving Adrian a look, "this could hang in a museum display on medieval clothes-making. Where did you find this?" she sounded intrigued.
"Would you believe along with a load of donated clothing?" he said with a crooked grin. It was technically true, if not precisely so. "But that's not the really interesting thing. Take a look at those breeches and tunic, then take a look at me. Think they'd fit me?"
Parian looked at the clothing in her hands, then gave Adrian the once-over. She took in his six-foot height and broad shoulders. "Not likely," she said, amused.
"Well that's the thing..." He looked around. "Let me show you. Do you have a couple of manikins to spare? One adult male, one child." At her gesture two cloth-covered manikins tottered out from the workroom in the back and set themselves up in the middle of the floor. "Now, try the tunic on the adult."
The manikin raised its arms and the tunic slid down over its head. It settled on its shoulders, hanging in a loose yet comfortable fit. "Okay," Adrian said, "Now try it on the child." Obediently, Parian sent the tunic over to dress the smaller manikin. It slid down over the child doll's raised arms… and settled in place, once again a perfect fit.
"What?" Parian stammered. 'How…?"
Adrian knew. The clothes were of Azeroth make. And in Azeroth, tailoring incorporated so much of the arcane that enchanters would salvage old clothing for the exotic dusts, motes, and energies they used in their own craft. Among other things it made the clothes more durable to the point that they were often used as a substitute for armor. But the most common feature added was to make the clothing naturally self-resizing. This was how an Orc could shop for clothing (or for that matter, real armor, which incorporated the same techniques) at the same place as a gnome.
Parian shot a look at Adrian. "Oh no," he half-laughed, holding up his hands in protest. "I didn't make them. They were just donated." Which was the truth, more or less. "when I noticed their, er, odd behavior, I naturally thought of you."
Parian pulled off one of her elbow-length gloves and ran her fingers over the cloth. "it… I can't describe it," she said. "There's something… strange beyond explaining in this cloth. Yet… Don't ask me how I know but I'm sure that with the right materials, I could duplicate this!"
Adrian smiled to himself. He'd figured as much. He suspected that Parian was as much a cloth tinker as she was a telekinetic. "Some tinker somewhere?"
"None that I know of," Parian murmured, still stroking the cloth in a perturbing fashion. "And I know literally every tinker with a cloth-related specialty on the planet."
"So," Parian said. "How much, then?"
"Well, seeing as I only FOUND the things, maybe a small finder's fee; I wouldn't feel right--" before he'd finished the sentence she'd scribbled out a number on a scrap of paper and stuck it under his nose. His eyes went round in spite of himself. "And it was nice doing business with you," he squeaked.
When he walked out the door, she had his tunic and breeches. He had her private cell phone number in case he made any more "discoveries"-- and as one might expect of a rogue who had to regularly do business with capes of every stripe, six figures in small unmarked nonsequential bills stuffed in his army backpack.
The weekend (it was apparently Wednesday when he made splashdown) arrived. Plans were progressing fast; he had a new identity… or would that be a false identity or a secret identity?… courtesy of the state and federal government, a sizeable bankroll (he had been in near hysterics before he'd finally gotten back to his rented room and hid it all under his mattress), and he was enrolled in the appropriate school… now for phase two.
Bank account or no, it was going to be a tricky process depositing most of that cash. A homeless teenager who suddenly dropped six figures in cash into his bank account was the sort of thing that had people pressing alarm buttons. He'd probably have to disguise it as cash profits from his business.
Speaking of which, he needed to start getting together a stockpile of merchandise to sell. He was an Engineer, with the full category of gnome and goblin inventions, plus the entire catalogue from the Warlords of Draenor garrison engineer and the gnomish gearworks AND the goblin workshop. He had blueprints in his head and knowhow in his hands to make everything from toys to tanks. But, he needed a workshop to build this stuff… and to build all the cape gear, weapons and more that he'd need in the field.
He also needed a place to stash all the stuff he didn't want people to know about just yet (like tens of thousands of dollars in small nonsequential bills, ahem), a place where he could rest, mend his own wounds, and keep his head down for a while when things (as per the original timeline) started getting more desperate and dark…
He needed a lair.
Thus began a long weekend at the library web-browsing for a certain category of abandoned construction and/or public works. He was sure there were plenty of old smuggler's tunnels around the harbor; port cities tended to have those in multitude. But considering the forecast in the next two years or so called for cloudy with a chance of Endbringer, he didn't particularly want anything too close to the waterline. Captain's Hill, as he recalled, was going to remain well above the floodline and out of the combat zone when Leviathan came by to say howdy-doo. Unfortunately it didn't have quite as much construction and none of the sort that he was looking for.
No, he needed to shift his search further North. Brockton Bay had been a shipping nexus even back in the days of the horse and cart. That meant a lot of on-site machine work. What he needed would probably be someplace between the Docks and the Trainyard… someplace where, back in the city's heyday, a lot of cargo got shifted and a lot of steelwork needed done. He hunched over the library computer and clicked on the interactive map he'd found of Brockton Bay. There. He tapped a finger on the screen. There was a little patch of real estate, a little row of buildings right on the line where the Docks ended and the Trainyards began. It was deep in gang territory-- he grimaced to himself at the thought; in Brockton Bay the only place that wasn't in gang territory was under a force field bubble out in the Bay.
He cross-referenced the buildings in question with the city records… bingo. Five of the buildings were listed as completely abandoned. Three were of the type he was looking for. One was available to anyone who was willing to pay the back taxes on it…. But noone had even benched an offer because of it's utterly untenable location.
Fifty minutes later, the ghostly silhouette of a jungle cat could be seen slipping through the alleyways of the Trainyard. The building in question was just off the actual railyard by about half a block; he could hear the deafening clank and roar of the diesel trains as he scouted out the location. He squeezed through a narrow gap between yet another warehouse and an all-but-shuttered factory of some sort that took a sixty degree bend about fifty feet in, went twenty feet more, then opened into a little cobblestone courtyard. It was walled in on three sides with ancient brick and stone, and had exactly one door. There was part of an old fashioned slate shingle roof visible above it, with two or three stone chimneys poking up into the sky behind the factory's more modern smokestack. Bayleaf switched back to his worgen form and forced the door, the ancient lock cracking like peanut brittle under his grip. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.
The place was one of those odd little forgotten corners. Back in the day it had been a repair and work shop, built right next to the railyard for convenience. Over the years it had been used to provide the railroads with everything from shoeing draft horses to ironwork to brasswork to glasswork to… well, just about any work that required strong hands, solid tools and a hot furnace. But times had changed, the tracks had been re-laid, and the workshop had fallen into disuse as better facilities were built on the OTHER side of the tracks. Other buildings had cropped up around the workshop, building over it, overlapping it, till it was hidden from site and all but forgotten to the world.
Bayleaf looked around. It was perfect.
The dust was inches thick. It was undisturbed even by the footprints of mice and probably had geologic strata to it. Cobwebs were everywhere, long abandoned by the spiders that wove them for the lack of flies. But the walls were solid stone-- not brick, but stone, the bones of a world; huge raw-cut blocks that made his druidic senses hum with satisfaction. There were two furnaces, long cold. Stout worktables made of heavy oak beams and still scarred black. Even the tools were there, abandoned where they lay-- hammers, tongs, anvils, tools for iron and brass and glass and leather. There were even a couple of anvils. It was actually a two story building as well, with sleeping quarters up in the rafters.
There was a washroom in the back corner with an antiquated showerhead and a toilet...
To his surprise there was no wood rot, no mildew, surprisingly little rust as well. For a place near a seaside harbor that was a bit unusual. He could only guess that the place had been corked up so tight when it was closed that nothing of moisture or humidity could get in.
The only question that remained was how to get his equipment, materials, and the like in and out of the place. The answer came when he found the double doors in back. He ripped off the boards blocking it and opened it to find his back door directly faced a solid brick wall. Disgruntled, he began ripping out bricks with his bare clawed hands.
...To find himself in yet another abandoned warehouse. "Town oughta start trading in abandoned warehouses, they'd make a fortune," he muttered to himself. He climbed through and found it spacious if empty. There were a few flickering lights-- perhaps not so abandoned?-- and a bathroom with running water, so whoever owned it was still paying upkeep for some reason. As he recalled, building owners tended to keep even empty buildings hooked up to utilities in order to keep the heat on, so as to prevent freezing and moisture damage…
Either way, bonus for him. Since they were so rude as to build over his back door like that, he would avail himself of the facilities and splice into the electric and water lines in here. Assuming he even needed them, considering his plans. But the real bonus was that the place had a front door and a delivery ramp and thus an address to have things delivered to. Whenever something he ordered arrived here, he would be on hand to open the door and roll it on in… and right through to the back, out the hole in the back wall, and into his workshop.
He found a loose sheet of plyboard large enough to cover the "secret entrance" (aka Huge Frickin Hole in the Wall) and set about cleaning the antedeluvian dust out of his lair.
Saturday was spent on shopping.
Not just any shopping, though. Porch sales. Yard sales. Garage sales. Flea Markets. Even Brockton Bay had such things, especially in a mild indian summer. He was treasure hunting, and he was stretching his Searching power to the absolute limit. The treasures he wanted were scattered far and wide… but it was amazing the amount of territory you could cover when you could turn into a bird.
Added bonus? No receipts, which meant no paper trail.
He bought a few things for his comfort-- some bits of furniture including a bed, a little winter clothing, a propane heater-- but the main items on his shopping list were:
1. clockwork, engine, motor and electronic components.
2. certain gems, crystals, and rare earths and metals.
3. scrap metal in bulk.
4. tools.
5. Fuel.
6. anything his Searching power "pinged" on.
His approach was as methodical as his beach-combing. He first scoped out the local papers for any listed yard sales. Then he overflew those areas in his raven form, scanning. If he pinged on anything he dropped down into a secluded spot, turned human, and quickly bought whatever he'd pinged on, then followed up by going over everything else with a fine toothed comb. If the people running the yard sale were amenable to it, he'd pay them a little extra to box up and set aside what he'd found, with the promise he'd be back for it later.
He made some surprising finds; enough that he started wondering what treasures he'd completely overlooked in his past life when he went yard sale trolling. He found countless pieces of real silverware, including a serving platter and cover. He found more than a few bits of gold too. Gems were a rare find but he found plenty of crystals and semiprecious stones that would have been worth ten times their weight back on Azeroth. The hippie lady at the flea market with the new-age crystal stand must have thought her ship had come in when he came along and basically bought her out. He even bought the push cart.
He snapped up clocks of every size, wind up toys, old electric countertop appliances, pocket watches, and any number of items that noone watching could have guessed the reason… but he'd spot them amongst countless other debris, his eyes would get a funny gleam and he'd snatch them up. At one point on impulse he'd bought a stack of flowerpots, some potting soil, and an assortment of seedlings...
He'd realized even before he'd started that he'd have a touch of trouble dragging his haul back to his lair. Not for the first time since splashdown he groused to himself bitterly about Agent not equipping him with the standard Azeroth "bottomless" handy haversack (or more likely trading it in for more points.) He'd gotten around that problem by scouting around till he found a guy in one of the lower-rent neighborhoods lounging around who had a pickup truck, and offering to pay him a couple hundred to haul him and his crap around for the day. His name was "Efe," so far as Bayleaf could figure; a balding, potbellied old guy with a ballcap, a wife-beater shirt and a fringe of shoulder length stringy hair and a disturbing resemblance to Cheech Marin. But he was mellow, and cool with doing a little driving for a few bucks. They drove around and picked up all Adrian's purchases. By the time they got to the false front warehouse, it was loaded to overflowing. "Efe" helped him unload, wished him luck, told him they should go out for a few beers sometime and drove off…. Never even having asked Bayleaf his name. No fuss, no muss and once again, no paper trail.
One might have thought it strange that, in a world and a city where tinkers scavenged like cockroaches, that Bayleaf pulled in such a load. Of course, the usual behavior of tinkers was to either scrounge dumpsters and junkyards, or try to pull off a not-so-daring heist and rip off a factory or a warehouse full of high-end technology. The few who even thought of money tried to order from horrendously overpriced underground companies like the Toybox, or even (in cases of extreme stupidity) tried to have stuff delivered to them in bulk from companies, thereby putting an enormous bullseye on themselves with a big fat blinking neon arrow above it that said "Please kidnap this Tinker now."
Almost none of them thought to buy things directly from ordinary people with plain old cash. And those who spoke of tracking Tinkers by their "unusual purchasing habits" never considered the millions of people at flea markets, Salvation Army stores, and yard sales whose purchasing and selling habits would probably make the most demented Tinker look banal.
Sunday he would have taken rest-- but must needs, as the saying went. He threw his furniture in place, started up his propane heater to keep warm, sat down next to his stacks of salvage, and got to work.
There were over five hundred "toys" listed in World of Warcraft. He could craft a shocking number of them, just with what he had. In one hour his first trinket was clicking, buzzing and whirring around the Foundry floor. By the end of three he had a small platoon chattering along… including one very special one, for a special purpose.
Monday morning, he was ready.
Principal Blackwell sat back in her chair with a self-satisfied air. "Well, Mister… Smith..."
"Sorry," Adrian said with a shrug and a half-smile. "I guess government offices aren't exactly creative with names."
"...Yes," Blackwell said with pursed lips. "Well, according to the standardized test they gave you, you place in the sophomore or junior year. We will be observing your actual performance in class over the year to determine your actual placement…"
Yyyeah, that would be the purpose of the tests they regularly hand out to ALL students, Adrian thought to himself with a mental raised eyebrow. In other news grass is green, water is wet, film at eleven. Her point?
"But I trust that your future performance will… compensate for your checkered educational past."
At this he did raise an actual eyebrow. Checkered past? According to the file she was handed, I'm an amnesia victim. I don't even have a past to checker!
"I will warn you right now, we have low tolerance for troublemakers here…"
I just may barf. I walked past three skinheads swapping sandwich baggies just on my way to the office. Who is she kidding? He considered his appearance. Jeans, sneakers, t-shirt, and a leather jacket. Was she picking up her cues on "troublemaker on sight" from old James Dean films?
"I will say I had some misgivings about your enrollment here, Mr. Smith. Your past is due cause for concern."
The penny dropped. Ah, I get it. Should've thought of that first. With things like the Simurgh, or Bonesaw, or Nilbog running around, there's probably a certain amount of prejudice against survivors of metahuman attacks. She's probably afraid that nutcase Memento might have turned me into some sort of teenage tyke-bomb. He huffed and curled his lip. Or that I might have a bad day and trigger all over her nice clean school. Irony ahoy.
She saw the tiny lip curl and predictably, misinterpreted. She stiffened a bit, and her already less than warm tone turned frosty. "You had best watch your attitude, young man. I run a tight ship here--"
hrnrrnk.
"--and I will be keeping a close eye on you for any irregularities. So don't give me any crap."
He looked at the scowling woman in her bowl-cut and only barely suppressed the urge to say You got it, Moe. "Understood, ma'am," he said. "May I go find my locker now? I think lunch is starting soon."
She glared at him for a moment. "Dismissed," she said. He beat a hasty retreat.
He found his locker in short order, and started unloading his backpack into it. He looked over the inside. "Cripes," he muttered. "This thing is enormous. I didn't think anyone made lockers this size for real." He shook his head. He needed to focus on his next objective: finding Taylor. Her description was pretty straightforward, so that shouldn't be a problem, he decided. There was a good chance he'd spot her at lunch-- but then again, maybe not. Didn't she take up eating her lunch in various hidey-holes to try and escape the gruesome threesome? Or was that something she started after the locker incident…?
"Hey Taylor!"
Adrian's head whipped around. He looked just in time to see a petite redheaded girl in an ungodly amount of makeup stick her foot out and trip another girl in a hoodie and backpack. The hoodie girl stumbled and nearly fell. The other girl went so far as to slap her in the back, to try and get her to stumble further. The girl in the hoodie managed to keep her balance though. "Better watch your step, Taylor," the redhead taunted. "You're just so terribly clumsy."
Taylor didn't even look back. She just righted herself and kept walking, her head down and shoulders hunched. Adrian felt like someone had taken a bite out of his heart. His conviction only firmed; even if he didn't fix anything else, he was going to make this right. She kept walking down the hall right towards him…
And stopped at the locker next to his and began working the combination.
Holy carp. Luck of all the Irish. "Uhhh, hi," he said. "How ya doin?" She jumped, then looked up at him, brushing stray curls of her dark hair out of her face. With her glasses she looked like a frightened owl…
Taylor flinched and looked up at the boy next to her warily. She blinked a little when she realized she didn't recognize him. She was fairly sure she would have remembered being in the locker next door to a tall, dark, broad shouldered-- she pushed that thought away, blushing. He was handsome though, with chiseled looks and dark gray eyes. He gave her a crooked smile.
Had he said something?
"Oh! Uh. Hi….?"
"You must be Taylor," he said. "I'm Adrian."
Taylor's paranoia sprang to the fore. "How do you know my name?" she said warily.
Adrian jerked his thumb down the hall, indicating the departed Emma. "I overheard Princess Maybelline back there shouting it," he said wryly.
"Princess Maybelline?" she said with a half smile of her own.
"Yeah." He looked down the hall thoughtfully. "Dang, how many layers of makeup does she have to slather on to get that perfect Resting Bitch Face, d'you suppose?" Talyor did let out a hiccup of a laugh at that one.
"I don't recognize you," she said, immediately feeling stupid. Of course not, he was obviously a new student--
"Yeah, well. Funny thing is, if we had known each other, we probably wouldn't now," he said. He tapped his head. "Memento refugee."
Taylor's mouth made a silent "o." "I'm sorry," she said.
"Hey, not your fault. At least all I got was a clean slate; I could've ended up like those guys who can't remember anything past the last half-hour, or whatever." He looked a bit uncomfortable with the topic, and made an obvious move to change it. "So…basically means I'm totally new here. As new as you can get actually. Any more like Resting Bitch Face I should look out for around here?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "You mean besides the neonazis, the asian gang members, and the junkies?" she said sarcastically.
"Well I know about those guys. At least they're courteous enough to wear identifying colors," Adrian said, amused. "But what about the rest?"
Taylor's smile disappeared. "That's Emma," she said. "You'll get to know her soon enough. "Her, Madison and Sophia are the Queen Bees in this school and everybody knows it." She pulled a trapper-keeper out of her locker and flipped through it. Then flipped through it again. "Dammit!" She threw her head back and stamped her feet in frustration.
"What?" Adrian asked.
"Those-- they stole my homework. Again!!" She threw the trapper-keeper down in the bottom of her locker and let her head fall against the doorframe with a thunk. "I can't stand it. I even changed my lock..."
Adrian knew exactly why changing her lock made no difference, but he could hardly tell Taylor that at this point. He had to take a different approach. "What kind of lock did you get? Can I see it?"
Taylor looked up at him. "Just a regular combination lock," she said. She pulled it off the door latch and gave it to him. He rolled it over in his hands and made a knowing sound.
"Eh, well, there you go," he said. "Just a regular school lock. They could get this thing open lickety split."
"How?" Taylor scowled.
He knew the real reason, but he could hardly tell her THAT-- at least not yet. But he did have a Muggle-Worthy Excuse ready for the meanwhile... Wordlessly, Adrian took out his wallet and pulled a metal strip-- it looked like it had been cut out of a soda can-- out of one of the pockets. He closed the lock. Then he wrapped the strip of metal around the shackle and worked it down inside the body of the lock. There was a click, and the lock popped open. "Easy peasy," he said. "They've got how-to videos online."
Taylor groaned. "Well that's ten bucks wasted," she grumbled
.
A noise came out of Adrian's backpack. "Vweep. Whirrwhirrwhiirr. Ebbebebbbebp. PTING."
Taylor backed up a step. "The heck was that?"
"Oh. Darn, must've turned him on by accident..." Adrian reached down in his oversized pack and pulled something out. It was a little toy robot about a foot tall, made out of copper and brass. It had a rotating red beacon light for a head, two headlight "eyes," a short squat body, short little limbs with large bell-shaped hands and platform feet. "Oh, this is just one of the toys I make," Adrian said, holding it up. "I call it the alarm-o-bot."
"You're a TINKER?" Taylor blurted out. Adrian laughed.
"Oh no no no," he said. "This is all just off-the-shelf electronics, and a little handicraftyness." He shrugged and laughed. "it's sort of a gag gift. You place it where you want-- like on your desk, or in your car, or whatever, press the button to set it, and if anybody sets off its motion detectors it sounds an alarm. Look--" he poked something on it.
The red light lit up and began rotating. "WARNING, FART DETECTED! FART DETECTED! CLEAR THE AREA! DO NOT LIGHT A MATCH!--"
"All clear, all clear!" Adrian shouted at it frantically. The alarm shut down. "um, wrong setting," he said weakly, palming his face. He looked around; several students had stopped in alarm at the ruckus and were now staring at the two of them silently. Adrian leaned out and stuck his face into the face of the nearest one. "Yeah. It was MEEEEEEEEE!" He sneered. He held out a hand to the kid. "Come on, pull my finger!" The kid, wisely, beat a hasty retreat; the other kids rapidly dispersed before they could become the next target of the weird new guy's attention. He turned back to Taylor like nothing had happened. "Anyway, like I was saying..."
Taylor was trying not to laugh and failing. "That's awesome! And you make these little guys?"
Adrian nodded, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. "Yeah. I make little windup or battery powered toys, sell 'em from a push cart..." he gave her a card. It said "World of Crafts" on it and listed a website and cellphone number. "Its how I pay the bills."
"Neat." she smiled and tucked the card away.
Adrian hefted the Alarm-o-bot and looked at Taylor's locker thoughtfully. He could see a flute case in the upper compartment… they hadn't stolen her flute yet… "Say, wanna have a little fun with whoever's rifling your locker?" He held up the toy and waved it meaningfully.
It took a moment for the penny to drop. "Oh, that would be brilliant--" she hesitated. "Oh but we can't. They'd break your little robot just to get even--"
His grin grew strangely feral. "Meh, I ain't worried about that," he said. "I make these things by the dozen, remember? Out of old cell phones and crap. Be worth it to scare the crap out of Resting Bitch Face, wouldn't it?" He held the Alarm-o-bot up to her face. "Go ahead; say 'All clear.'" he pressed a button on the toy's back.
"All clear."
"There, that's also the shutoff code." He stuck the little robot in the upper compartment, clamping its magnetic feet so it stood in front of the flute case. "Back to your duty, soldier," he said, giving the toy a mock salute. Taylor laughed as he closed the door.
She never saw the toy return the salute…
"Wow, what other stuff do you make?"
"All sorts of things," he said, stuffing his bag into the locker. "Most aren't nearly as complicated as Obie, there." He nodded at the locker.
"Obie?"
"Short for Alarm-o-Bot. AOB." He picked out the books for his next few classes, and slammed the locker shut. "Anyway, most of my stuff is just windup stuff or battery powered trinkets. Stuff like this." He held his hand up. Perched on his finger was a butterfly made out of wire and glass. As she watched it slowly opened and closed its shiny black wings. Even its antennae moved.
"Oh wow." She reached out a finger and petted it on the head. "How--?"
"The wings are broken bits of solar cell," he said. "and there's a really simple electric motor-- more like a little solenoid-- that turns a little wire camshaft that moves the wings and antennae. The movement changes speed depending on how much light is shining on the wings. It's not much more complicated than one of those bobbing bird toys, but it looks really lifelike, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. Pretty, too," she said.
He smiled. "Here." He reached up and fastened it to one of the stray locks of hair sneaking out from under her hood. It clung there, fanning its wings slowly. She immediately started to protest.
"Oh no, I couldn't--"
"Hey, free advertising," he said with a smile and a shrug. "Besides you looked like you could use a smile." The school bell blatted. "Come on, we'd better get to the cafeteria before they give away all the good slop," he joked. "Come with me?" He watched her chew on her lip, undecided. She had to be half-broken at this point; convinced that noone would willingly associate with her; terrified her three tormentors would use it as a justification to turn their ire on her-- or him-- but by this point so desperate for someone, anyone to just be with… "It-- it might be a bad idea for you to be seen with me," she managed to say.
"Great! I'm all about doing what's bad for me. C'mon." She hesitated again. Then, for a miracle, she gave him a smile.
"Okay… okay, sure." After all, what did she have to lose, right?
"Mmmm, slop ahoy..."
Behind them in the locker, the Alarm-o-Bot sentry blinked its eyes and settled in for a long shift on duty.
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Chapter 4
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
Chapter 4
Chapter Text
Adrian, aka Bayleaf, was a metahuman. He could change at will into a half dozen different forms. In his baseline worgen form he could leap a city street or deadlift a truck by the bumper. He could maneuver in land, sea, or air. He could summon extradimensional energy to smite his enemies or heal his allies, and control (with some limited success) both animals and plants. He could craft weapons that would make a platoon of marines crap their pants. It may not have shown but even in his most minimal form, that of a baseline human, he was beyond pinnacle baseline human ability.
And at lunch it became unsettlingly clear that his first, and biggest hurtle was one for which all his brute powers would be virtually useless: shutting down three epic level Mean Girls set on destroying Taylor Hebert's life. That was something that was going to require intellect.
The first salvo was early on. They'd found some seats at a corner table; Taylor had packed her own lunch so he left her and his backpack to hold their seats while he waited in line for… he sniffed multiple times. Meatloaf, maybe? While he was standing in line waiting to get a tray, he saw the Gruesome Threesome make their first move out of the corner of his eye. It was a "drive-by" this time. Emma, or Resting Bitch Face as he now thought of her, and two other girls, one a tall athletic black girl with cornrows, the other a petite brown haired girl in a crop top and demin skirt with her hair up in a "cutesy" style, went sidling past Taylor's table. The black girl made a point of clipping Taylor in the back of her head with her elbow; while Cutesie-Hair shoved his backpack into the floor in passing, obviously thinking it belonged to Taylor. Emma didn't do anything physical, but he'd managed to learn how to keep his wolfen hearing in his human form, so he clearly heard her as she passed Taylor's seat:
"Ew."
Subtle and vicious, like a hat pin driven through your ribs. He gave it an eight out of ten.
He briefly contemplated doing something nasty in retaliation while he was still up, but beyond blasting them with a bolt of moonfire while their backs were turned (which really wouldn't go over well) he was short on ideas at that second. Instead he took his tray, let the lunch ladies fill it up with whatever it was they were serving, and returned to their table. Already he could see Taylor pulling back inside her shell. That wouldn't do.
He pretended to spot his bag in the floor, shoved it under the table with a foot and sat down. "The mighty hunter returns with his kill," he said, dropping his tray on the table. Man, he knew it was a common joke about cafeteria food, but this stuff looked seriously nasty. Some macaroni and cheese of some sort on the side, wrinkled peas, and… he still wasn't sure if it was meatloaf. "A mercy kill, from the look of it," he added.
Taylor "snrked" a little, then glanced over at his tray in genuine puzzlement. "What is it?"
Adrian poked it with his fork. "I'm not sure," he said, "But I think I know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa's body now." She'd been in mid-bite of her sandwich roll; her snort of laughter sprayed a few bits of cheese and meat across the table. Face red as a tomato, she swept it up with her hand; Adrian handed her a napkin without a word. "So what are you having?" he asked as if nothing happened.
"Um." She wiped the corners of her mouth. "Chicken wrap, with lettuce, rice and some mixed shredded cheese. Oh and a little sauce." She brushed her hood back; the butterfly in her hair fluttered in the cafeteria light.
"Sounds good," he said earnestly. "...Trade?"
"Not a chance."
"Come on. We'll go halvsies. Half your tasty chicken roll for half my Jimmy Hoffa loaf." She spluttered with laughter into her napkin. He pointed at his macaroni cheese sludge. "I'll throw in some of this delicious Cream of Cootie, whaddya say?"
"Eww, you are awful--"
A dark-skinned hand slammed down on the table; Taylor jumped in her seat, the smile vanishing from her face. It was Sophia. Flanking her were Madison and Emma, in full Resting Bitch Face mode. She stood there, leaning over their table in a domineering, space-invading pose. "Hey, Hebert. 'Sup?" Her smile was thin and toothy and about as warm as the ones he'd seen on a shark.
Adrian hadn't been taken by surprise. He'd been tracking them with his peripheral vision since he'd sat down. They'd been at what he assumed was one of the 'popular kids' tables, Emma and Madison shmoozing it up with their social fu while Sophia lounged there like a cheetah on a rich jetsetter's leash. All three of them had been keeping a spare eye on Taylor; when he'd sat down their look of surprise on their faces had been blatant. Emma's mouth had even dropped open in surprise. (Really? It was that unusual and outrageous that someone had sat down with Taylor?) The three had begun whispering together-- too quiet for even him to hear-- and eventually gotten up and headed for where they were sitting, social murder clearly on their minds.
Adrian had faked ignorance till they were right at the table. When Hess slammed her hand down he looked up and cheerfully drawled "Well, what can I do you for?"
Sophia just gave him a look. That was right, she was the more physical of the three. It was Emma and Madison who handled the more verbal attacks. "Oh, and who is this?" Madison chirped, all bubbles and sunshine. "C'mon, introduce us, Taylor."
Sophia, like a good little attack animal, took her handler's cue. "Yeah Taylor," she said with a smirk, eyeing him up and down. "Introduce us."
Adrian felt his eyebrows go up. Now what was that all about? Did she just give him the once-over? He decided to go with a neutral approach first. "Adrian Smith," he said. "New here. New everywhere, actually."
"Why are you hanging around with Hebert?" Madison said, giving him a lookover as well. "Really honey, she's not your type." She gave Taylor a little sneer.
My social-fu is a little weak, here, Adrian thought. Then again, I think I overestimated these three… "Hmm, I think I know you," he said. "Heard your name somewhere… what was it?" he snapped his fingers, pretending to think. "Oh yeah, Massengil." Taylor had been taking a sip from her water bottle to calm her nerves; she nearly choked on her own spit take. Madison's face went wide with surprise then puckered up into a scowl.
Adrian decided to push it. "What's the matter, dear?" he said sweetly. "Are you not feeling… spring time fresh today?"
Taylor went from coughing to choking. Madison's eyes went wide and her mouth formed a perfect "o;" she looked like someone had slapped the pigtails off her. Emma and Sophia bridled up but Adrian wasn't through. "Well, it seems Douche Princess has nothing to say," he snarked. "How about you, Barnes?"
Give her points, she rallied. "We saw Hebert here hanging off of you," she said, her nose tipped up. "Since you're new we figured we'd come over here and warn you."
"Oh really."
"Yeah really." Emma tossed her red hair. "Taylor here's a headcase. She'll be all friendly like at first, but then she'll get upset about something-- just any little thing, the poor dear--" she simpered. "And then she'll be in the Principal's office, making up all sorts of wild accusations about you. She did it to us..." her smile was sweet as an arsenic-laced cookie. "Just a friendly warning."
"Oh." He smiled back just as sweetly. "You mean like, saying you knocked her bag in the floor?" He said, picking up his own backpack and holding it up. He let them see it before setting it down in the chair next to it. Her smile didn't move, but her eyes glazed. "Or saying you tripped her in the hall and tried to knock her down with a push to the back? I caught your performance in the hallway, Resting Bitch Face. Eight out of ten for effort but a zero for execution. You should leave the physical stuff to your friends."
Sophia shifted her stance so she was facing him. "You like to live dangerously, don't ya, Adrian Smith?" Her eyes glittered dangerously.
"Well, kitten--" he slapped his much larger hand down over her relatively slender one where it rested on the table. Scowling she tried to yank her hand away; to her consternation she couldn't. She tugged again, then harder. It was no use, he was pinning her hand to the table without any apparent effort. "You just may be right. But I'll tell you one thing I don't do." His smile vanished, his face became an expressionless mask but his eyes smoldered.
"I don't play little girly games. I don't do this running around little 'tee hee, he said she said let's call them names out loud in the cafeteria' crap. I don't drop anonymous hate email or scribble crap on someone's locker and then go running off giggling with my little school friends about how badass and edgy I am. And I don't put up with useless skanks who do that kind of crap.
"So take Douche Girl, Resting Bitch Face and the rest of your little goldfish poop gang and go be worthless somewhere else." He lifted his hand; she yanked hers back and glared at him like she wanted to burn holes through his head with her eyes. But the look in his eyes, eyes that a second ago she could have sworn were a cool blue grey but she now saw were flecked with gold, was a kind of dangerous that her cape hindbrain couldn't ignore. She whirled around and marched off, hackles up and all but radiating vicious anger. Emma and Madison fell in behind her and marched off too, noses high but cheeks flaring red.
"Whoa" came from several nearby tables. There were laughs and catcalls and a few bits of applause, even…everyone loved a free show. Adrian turned his attention back to his alleged lunch. Taylor was hunched over her own meal, looking like a terrified rabbit. "Why did you do that?" she hissed.
He shrugged. "Why not? I was supposed to put up with that crap?" It was important he establish that this was for his own benefit, as well as for hers.
"She won't let that go," Taylor said. "None of them will. You don't know how bad they can make things for you--"
Adrian snorted raucously. "Taylor, they're a bunch of high school bitches," he said. "They've got three and only three things: money, tits and popularity, and the first two is where they get the last one. And no matter how much of the first two they have, without the last one they're like a Beverly Hills bimbette without her daddy's credit card: useless." He gestured around. "How popular are they really? Did you hear how many people applauded them getting ganked just now?" He stabbed his meatloaf with a fork. Possibly to make sure it was dead. "All it takes for them to lose it all is for just one person to not take their crap."
Taylor shook her head. "You're a hopeless optimist, in that case."
"Ehh, shuddup and eat your Jimmy Hoffa Loaf," he said, pushing the tray at her.
She pushed it back, grinning and wrinkling her nose. "Ew no. You eat it!"
"No you!"
"You!"
"Okay, a compromise, maybe a respectful burial in an unmarked grave out back--"
The day proceeded; Taylor and Adrian shuffled from class to class, discovering they shared a handful of them; Gladly's regrettable class, and Mrs. Knott's for computers, just to name two. For a miracle, the Gruesome Threesome actually kept their heads down the rest of that day. Adrian was pleased.
Taylor was not. She knew it just meant they were planning.
Taylor was generous. For all their malice the Threesome would never be known for in depth strategy or, for that matter, an ability to think through long-term consequences. Emma was the closest thing they had to a tactician. After their fumble at lunch, she knew they had to act fast to re-balance the scales.
The three were in the bathroom together, skipping out on the last period of the day. "So why not go after this Adrian bitch's locker?" Sophia was complaining. "He's the one who talked back to us..."
"Because we'll be the first suspects everyone thinks of if we do," Emma said, carefully touching up her eyeliner. "We get dissed in the cafeteria, then two hours later he gets his locker trashed? Blackwell and the teachers may not care but even they wouldn't be able to pretend they didn't know, and I don't know about you but I don't wanna spend my afternoon sitting in Blackwell's office sucking up to her, trying to get off the hook. Gimme your lip gloss, Madison." The other girl obediently handed it over.
Sophia snorted and crossed her arms. "Look at it this way, Soph," Emma said. "This Adrian guy, he obviously thinks he's some sort of white knight or something. Taylor's already starting to latch onto him, to hide behind him-- and that's just after one day!
"But if, while he's out there on bended knee, promising his lady fair he'll defend her honor, you wreck her stuff right under his nose--"
"He'll look like a chump," Madison threw in, tucking her rouge in her handbag and blowing herself a kiss in the mirror.
"Better yet it'll yank the rug out from under Taylor again. Big bad muscly macho man couldn't even keep her safe for 24 hours...She'll be heartbroken. She'll probably never trust anyone again." Emma sighed, dropping the lip gloss into her own back and snapping it shut. "Such a tragedy."
Sophia's face split in a grin. "Damn, Emma," she said. "You are one vicious little minx."
"Don't I know it. We'd better hustle. Maddie, you'll stand at one end of the hall, just around the corner, and be lookout..."
Minutes later, they were in the hallway in question. Taylor's locker was in a short dead-end hallway off to one side. There were no classroom doors in that hall, and none in the main hall that looked in on it. It was the perfect blind spot-- the main reason the three of them had gotten away with so many things they'd pulled on Taylor already.
Madison took up her lookout position just around the corner. Emma however stayed by Sophia's side. Emma wasn't on the lookout for teachers; she was busy watching Madison in one of the curved security mirrors at the end of the hall, making sure Maddie didn't get it in her head to peek at an inopportune moment. It was a good thing Maddie wasn't particularly bright. "Okay, Soph, she's totally focused on the classroom doors," she said. "Go ahead and do your thing."
Sophia stepped up to Taylor's locker, a smug smile on her face. "You said the flute, right? In the top compartment?" She said.
"Yeah, it was her Mom's. She'll be devastated."
"Got it." Sophia grabbed the lock. Her hand suddenly went smokey and transparent, like a shadow given form… the lock along with it. She yanked it off, dropping it to the floor. She opened up the door--
"BIMBO DETECTED! BIMBO DETECTED! THIEVING SKANK ON THE PREMISES!"
The locker lit up from within with a strobing red light and a klaxon, piercingly keen and loud enough to wake the dead, began blaring. Over top of the klaxon the voice continued shouting.
"CRIMINAL TRESSPASS! ATTEMPTED BURGLARY! BREAKING AND ENTERING! HALT WHERE YOU ARE CRIMINAL SCUM!"
Sophia yelled and tumbled backward, slapping her hands over her ears. "The HELL?" she screeched. It was some sort of damned toy-- a robot or something with a police light for a head. It was strobing the hallway with fire-engine lights and blasting out siren noises fit to wake the dead.
Madison hadn't come running yet, she'd apparently been startled into confusion by the noise and the flashing red lights illuminating the hallway. Emma could see her in the mirror, spinning in a circle in panic. Emma mimicked Sophia, covering her own ears against the deafening noise. "Turn it off, turn it off!" Impulsively, Sophia reached in and grabbed for the toy planning to smash whatever-it-was with her bare fist, if she had to.
This might have gone badly for Obie. It went decidedly worse for Sophia. While Obie was built from Azeroth blueprints, the Agent's gifts had made Adrian a gifted enough engineer to make certain improvements. The first of course being Obie's rather attention getting voice. The second being a much more potent power supply.
The third being the tasers implanted in Obie's stumpy metal hands.
There was a flash of blue-white light and a sound like a tesla coil sparking, and Sophia Hess went flying across the hallway to smack into the lockers there with a bang and fall in a heap to the floor. She was shaking and jittering, and the rubber bands binding her hair braids had come undone, giving her the start of a rather impressive Afro. "Sophia!" Emma cried. She ran to the undercover cape's side, panicking.
She looked around. She could hear doorways opening and people pouring out in the main hallway, teachers and students alike. Maddie, thank Scion, was still there running interference-- crying and yelling and freaking out and taking up everybody's attention. The janitor's closet-- it was open! She grabbed Sophia under the armpits and dragged her to the closet door. She pulled her inside and shut them both inside a split second before everyone began pouring around the corner to see what in hell all the noise was about.
Mr. Gladly was at the head of the pack. He stood there and stared at the sight: a wide open locker with what looked and sounded like a fire engine going berserk inside. "What in the world…?" he mouthed. Then somebody panicked-- or more likely took advantage of an opportunity-- and pulled the fire alarm. The mob of curious teenagers suddenly turned into a torrent as they began pouring for the exits, sweeping up the bewildered teachers and staff in their path.
A moment later Adrian and Taylor both, for similar but distinct reasons of their own, squeezed out of the herd and came running around the corner. Both stopped and stared for a moment at the tableau. "All clear, all clear!" Taylor shouted. Obie fell silent; the fire alarms unfortunately continued.
The toe of Taylor's sneaker caught on something. She looked down and picked it up; it was her combination lock, still closed. "What…?"
Adrian sized the situation up. "Rrrright," he said. He grabbed Obie and stuffed him in his sack. "I think we're both taking an early day. I've got my stuff, you grab yours..."
Taylor nodded; as the saying went, her Momma didn't raise no fool. She grabbed her flute case and her books, pocketed the lock, and followed Adrian as they hastily-- but in a quiet and orderly fashion, of course-- blended into the yelling mob of students flowing out into the street.
Eventually the fire alarm stopped, although the danger lights in the hallway kept flashing. The broom closet door rattled. "Ah @#$^!!!" Emma's muffled voice said. "The door must've locked when we-- Soph, wake up, you gotta get us out of here. Sophia!"
"Nuh mummy, I duh wanna enter the junior beauty pageant…."
Emma groaned in disgust.
Then the sprinkler system-- including the heavy duty sprinklers in the Janitor's closet-- kicked in.
"AAAHAHAAHG!!"
Chapter Text
Adrian, aka Bayleaf, was a metahuman. He could change at will into a half dozen different forms. In his baseline worgen form he could leap a city street or deadlift a truck by the bumper. He could maneuver in land, sea, or air. He could summon extradimensional energy to smite his enemies or heal his allies, and control (with some limited success) both animals and plants. He could craft weapons that would make a platoon of marines crap their pants. It may not have shown but even in his most minimal form, that of a baseline human, he was beyond pinnacle baseline human ability.
And at lunch it became unsettlingly clear that his first, and biggest hurtle was one for which all his brute powers would be virtually useless: shutting down three epic level Mean Girls set on destroying Taylor Hebert's life. That was something that was going to require intellect.
The first salvo was early on. They'd found some seats at a corner table; Taylor had packed her own lunch so he left her and his backpack to hold their seats while he waited in line for… he sniffed multiple times. Meatloaf, maybe? While he was standing in line waiting to get a tray, he saw the Gruesome Threesome make their first move out of the corner of his eye. It was a "drive-by" this time. Emma, or Resting Bitch Face as he now thought of her, and two other girls, one a tall athletic black girl with cornrows, the other a petite brown haired girl in a crop top and demin skirt with her hair up in a "cutesy" style, went sidling past Taylor's table. The black girl made a point of clipping Taylor in the back of her head with her elbow; while Cutesie-Hair shoved his backpack into the floor in passing, obviously thinking it belonged to Taylor. Emma didn't do anything physical, but he'd managed to learn how to keep his wolfen hearing in his human form, so he clearly heard her as she passed Taylor's seat:
"Ew."
Subtle and vicious, like a hat pin driven through your ribs. He gave it an eight out of ten.
He briefly contemplated doing something nasty in retaliation while he was still up, but beyond blasting them with a bolt of moonfire while their backs were turned (which really wouldn't go over well) he was short on ideas at that second. Instead he took his tray, let the lunch ladies fill it up with whatever it was they were serving, and returned to their table. Already he could see Taylor pulling back inside her shell. That wouldn't do.
He pretended to spot his bag in the floor, shoved it under the table with a foot and sat down. "The mighty hunter returns with his kill," he said, dropping his tray on the table. Man, he knew it was a common joke about cafeteria food, but this stuff looked seriously nasty. Some macaroni and cheese of some sort on the side, wrinkled peas, and… he still wasn't sure if it was meatloaf. "A mercy kill, from the look of it," he added.
Taylor "snrked" a little, then glanced over at his tray in genuine puzzlement. "What is it?"
Adrian poked it with his fork. "I'm not sure," he said, "But I think I know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa's body now." She'd been in mid-bite of her sandwich roll; her snort of laughter sprayed a few bits of cheese and meat across the table. Face red as a tomato, she swept it up with her hand; Adrian handed her a napkin without a word. "So what are you having?" he asked as if nothing happened.
"Um." She wiped the corners of her mouth. "Chicken wrap, with lettuce, rice and some mixed shredded cheese. Oh and a little sauce." She brushed her hood back; the butterfly in her hair fluttered in the cafeteria light.
"Sounds good," he said earnestly. "...Trade?"
"Not a chance."
"Come on. We'll go halvsies. Half your tasty chicken roll for half my Jimmy Hoffa loaf." She spluttered with laughter into her napkin. He pointed at his macaroni cheese sludge. "I'll throw in some of this delicious Cream of Cootie, whaddya say?"
"Eww, you are awful--"
A dark-skinned hand slammed down on the table; Taylor jumped in her seat, the smile vanishing from her face. It was Sophia. Flanking her were Madison and Emma, in full Resting Bitch Face mode. She stood there, leaning over their table in a domineering, space-invading pose. "Hey, Hebert. 'Sup?" Her smile was thin and toothy and about as warm as the ones he'd seen on a shark.
Adrian hadn't been taken by surprise. He'd been tracking them with his peripheral vision since he'd sat down. They'd been at what he assumed was one of the 'popular kids' tables, Emma and Madison shmoozing it up with their social fu while Sophia lounged there like a cheetah on a rich jetsetter's leash. All three of them had been keeping a spare eye on Taylor; when he'd sat down their look of surprise on their faces had been blatant. Emma's mouth had even dropped open in surprise. (Really? It was that unusual and outrageous that someone had sat down with Taylor?) The three had begun whispering together-- too quiet for even him to hear-- and eventually gotten up and headed for where they were sitting, social murder clearly on their minds.
Adrian had faked ignorance till they were right at the table. When Hess slammed her hand down he looked up and cheerfully drawled "Well, what can I do you for?"
Sophia just gave him a look. That was right, she was the more physical of the three. It was Emma and Madison who handled the more verbal attacks. "Oh, and who is this?" Madison chirped, all bubbles and sunshine. "C'mon, introduce us, Taylor."
Sophia, like a good little attack animal, took her handler's cue. "Yeah Taylor," she said with a smirk, eyeing him up and down. "Introduce us."
Adrian felt his eyebrows go up. Now what was that all about? Did she just give him the once-over? He decided to go with a neutral approach first. "Adrian Smith," he said. "New here. New everywhere, actually."
"Why are you hanging around with Hebert?" Madison said, giving him a lookover as well. "Really honey, she's not your type." She gave Taylor a little sneer.
My social-fu is a little weak, here, Adrian thought. Then again, I think I overestimated these three… "Hmm, I think I know you," he said. "Heard your name somewhere… what was it?" he snapped his fingers, pretending to think. "Oh yeah, Massengil." Taylor had been taking a sip from her water bottle to calm her nerves; she nearly choked on her own spit take. Madison's face went wide with surprise then puckered up into a scowl.
Adrian decided to push it. "What's the matter, dear?" he said sweetly. "Are you not feeling… spring time fresh today?"
Taylor went from coughing to choking. Madison's eyes went wide and her mouth formed a perfect "o;" she looked like someone had slapped the pigtails off her. Emma and Sophia bridled up but Adrian wasn't through. "Well, it seems Douche Princess has nothing to say," he snarked. "How about you, Barnes?"
Give her points, she rallied. "We saw Hebert here hanging off of you," she said, her nose tipped up. "Since you're new we figured we'd come over here and warn you."
"Oh really."
"Yeah really." Emma tossed her red hair. "Taylor here's a headcase. She'll be all friendly like at first, but then she'll get upset about something-- just any little thing, the poor dear--" she simpered. "And then she'll be in the Principal's office, making up all sorts of wild accusations about you. She did it to us..." her smile was sweet as an arsenic-laced cookie. "Just a friendly warning."
"Oh." He smiled back just as sweetly. "You mean like, saying you knocked her bag in the floor?" He said, picking up his own backpack and holding it up. He let them see it before setting it down in the chair next to it. Her smile didn't move, but her eyes glazed. "Or saying you tripped her in the hall and tried to knock her down with a push to the back? I caught your performance in the hallway, Resting Bitch Face. Eight out of ten for effort but a zero for execution. You should leave the physical stuff to your friends."
Sophia shifted her stance so she was facing him. "You like to live dangerously, don't ya, Adrian Smith?" Her eyes glittered dangerously.
"Well, kitten--" he slapped his much larger hand down over her relatively slender one where it rested on the table. Scowling she tried to yank her hand away; to her consternation she couldn't. She tugged again, then harder. It was no use, he was pinning her hand to the table without any apparent effort. "You just may be right. But I'll tell you one thing I don't do." His smile vanished, his face became an expressionless mask but his eyes smoldered.
"I don't play little girly games. I don't do this running around little 'tee hee, he said she said let's call them names out loud in the cafeteria' crap. I don't drop anonymous hate email or scribble crap on someone's locker and then go running off giggling with my little school friends about how badass and edgy I am. And I don't put up with useless skanks who do that kind of crap.
"So take Douche Girl, Resting Bitch Face and the rest of your little goldfish poop gang and go be worthless somewhere else." He lifted his hand; she yanked hers back and glared at him like she wanted to burn holes through his head with her eyes. But the look in his eyes, eyes that a second ago she could have sworn were a cool blue grey but she now saw were flecked with gold, was a kind of dangerous that her cape hindbrain couldn't ignore. She whirled around and marched off, hackles up and all but radiating vicious anger. Emma and Madison fell in behind her and marched off too, noses high but cheeks flaring red.
"Whoa" came from several nearby tables. There were laughs and catcalls and a few bits of applause, even…everyone loved a free show. Adrian turned his attention back to his alleged lunch. Taylor was hunched over her own meal, looking like a terrified rabbit. "Why did you do that?" she hissed.
He shrugged. "Why not? I was supposed to put up with that crap?" It was important he establish that this was for his own benefit, as well as for hers.
"She won't let that go," Taylor said. "None of them will. You don't know how bad they can make things for you--"
Adrian snorted raucously. "Taylor, they're a bunch of high school bitches," he said. "They've got three and only three things: money, tits and popularity, and the first two is where they get the last one. And no matter how much of the first two they have, without the last one they're like a Beverly Hills bimbette without her daddy's credit card: useless." He gestured around. "How popular are they really? Did you hear how many people applauded them getting ganked just now?" He stabbed his meatloaf with a fork. Possibly to make sure it was dead. "All it takes for them to lose it all is for just one person to not take their crap."
Taylor shook her head. "You're a hopeless optimist, in that case."
"Ehh, shuddup and eat your Jimmy Hoffa Loaf," he said, pushing the tray at her.
She pushed it back, grinning and wrinkling her nose. "Ew no. You eat it!"
"No you!"
"You!"
"Okay, a compromise, maybe a respectful burial in an unmarked grave out back--"
The day proceeded; Taylor and Adrian shuffled from class to class, discovering they shared a handful of them; Gladly's regrettable class, and Mrs. Knott's for computers, just to name two. For a miracle, the Gruesome Threesome actually kept their heads down the rest of that day. Adrian was pleased.
Taylor was not. She knew it just meant they were planning.
Taylor was generous. For all their malice the Threesome would never be known for in depth strategy or, for that matter, an ability to think through long-term consequences. Emma was the closest thing they had to a tactician. After their fumble at lunch, she knew they had to act fast to re-balance the scales.
The three were in the bathroom together, skipping out on the last period of the day. "So why not go after this Adrian bitch's locker?" Sophia was complaining. "He's the one who talked back to us..."
"Because we'll be the first suspects everyone thinks of if we do," Emma said, carefully touching up her eyeliner. "We get dissed in the cafeteria, then two hours later he gets his locker trashed? Blackwell and the teachers may not care but even they wouldn't be able to pretend they didn't know, and I don't know about you but I don't wanna spend my afternoon sitting in Blackwell's office sucking up to her, trying to get off the hook. Gimme your lip gloss, Madison." The other girl obediently handed it over.
Sophia snorted and crossed her arms. "Look at it this way, Soph," Emma said. "This Adrian guy, he obviously thinks he's some sort of white knight or something. Taylor's already starting to latch onto him, to hide behind him-- and that's just after one day!
"But if, while he's out there on bended knee, promising his lady fair he'll defend her honor, you wreck her stuff right under his nose--"
"He'll look like a chump," Madison threw in, tucking her rouge in her handbag and blowing herself a kiss in the mirror.
"Better yet it'll yank the rug out from under Taylor again. Big bad muscly macho man couldn't even keep her safe for 24 hours...She'll be heartbroken. She'll probably never trust anyone again." Emma sighed, dropping the lip gloss into her own back and snapping it shut. "Such a tragedy."
Sophia's face split in a grin. "Damn, Emma," she said. "You are one vicious little minx."
"Don't I know it. We'd better hustle. Maddie, you'll stand at one end of the hall, just around the corner, and be lookout..."
Minutes later, they were in the hallway in question. Taylor's locker was in a short dead-end hallway off to one side. There were no classroom doors in that hall, and none in the main hall that looked in on it. It was the perfect blind spot-- the main reason the three of them had gotten away with so many things they'd pulled on Taylor already.
Madison took up her lookout position just around the corner. Emma however stayed by Sophia's side. Emma wasn't on the lookout for teachers; she was busy watching Madison in one of the curved security mirrors at the end of the hall, making sure Maddie didn't get it in her head to peek at an inopportune moment. It was a good thing Maddie wasn't particularly bright. "Okay, Soph, she's totally focused on the classroom doors," she said. "Go ahead and do your thing."
Sophia stepped up to Taylor's locker, a smug smile on her face. "You said the flute, right? In the top compartment?" She said.
"Yeah, it was her Mom's. She'll be devastated."
"Got it." Sophia grabbed the lock. Her hand suddenly went smokey and transparent, like a shadow given form… the lock along with it. She yanked it off, dropping it to the floor. She opened up the door--
"BIMBO DETECTED! BIMBO DETECTED! THIEVING SKANK ON THE PREMISES!"
The locker lit up from within with a strobing red light and a klaxon, piercingly keen and loud enough to wake the dead, began blaring. Over top of the klaxon the voice continued shouting.
"CRIMINAL TRESSPASS! ATTEMPTED BURGLARY! BREAKING AND ENTERING! HALT WHERE YOU ARE CRIMINAL SCUM!"
Sophia yelled and tumbled backward, slapping her hands over her ears. "The HELL?" she screeched. It was some sort of damned toy-- a robot or something with a police light for a head. It was strobing the hallway with fire-engine lights and blasting out siren noises fit to wake the dead.
Madison hadn't come running yet, she'd apparently been startled into confusion by the noise and the flashing red lights illuminating the hallway. Emma could see her in the mirror, spinning in a circle in panic. Emma mimicked Sophia, covering her own ears against the deafening noise. "Turn it off, turn it off!" Impulsively, Sophia reached in and grabbed for the toy planning to smash whatever-it-was with her bare fist, if she had to.
This might have gone badly for Obie. It went decidedly worse for Sophia. While Obie was built from Azeroth blueprints, the Agent's gifts had made Adrian a gifted enough engineer to make certain improvements. The first of course being Obie's rather attention getting voice. The second being a much more potent power supply.
The third being the tasers implanted in Obie's stumpy metal hands.
There was a flash of blue-white light and a sound like a tesla coil sparking, and Sophia Hess went flying across the hallway to smack into the lockers there with a bang and fall in a heap to the floor. She was shaking and jittering, and the rubber bands binding her hair braids had come undone, giving her the start of a rather impressive Afro. "Sophia!" Emma cried. She ran to the undercover cape's side, panicking.
She looked around. She could hear doorways opening and people pouring out in the main hallway, teachers and students alike. Maddie, thank Scion, was still there running interference-- crying and yelling and freaking out and taking up everybody's attention. The janitor's closet-- it was open! She grabbed Sophia under the armpits and dragged her to the closet door. She pulled her inside and shut them both inside a split second before everyone began pouring around the corner to see what in hell all the noise was about.
Mr. Gladly was at the head of the pack. He stood there and stared at the sight: a wide open locker with what looked and sounded like a fire engine going berserk inside. "What in the world…?" he mouthed. Then somebody panicked-- or more likely took advantage of an opportunity-- and pulled the fire alarm. The mob of curious teenagers suddenly turned into a torrent as they began pouring for the exits, sweeping up the bewildered teachers and staff in their path.
A moment later Adrian and Taylor both, for similar but distinct reasons of their own, squeezed out of the herd and came running around the corner. Both stopped and stared for a moment at the tableau. "All clear, all clear!" Taylor shouted. Obie fell silent; the fire alarms unfortunately continued.
The toe of Taylor's sneaker caught on something. She looked down and picked it up; it was her combination lock, still closed. "What…?"
Adrian sized the situation up. "Rrrright," he said. He grabbed Obie and stuffed him in his sack. "I think we're both taking an early day. I've got my stuff, you grab yours..."
Taylor nodded; as the saying went, her Momma didn't raise no fool. She grabbed her flute case and her books, pocketed the lock, and followed Adrian as they hastily-- but in a quiet and orderly fashion, of course-- blended into the yelling mob of students flowing out into the street.
Eventually the fire alarm stopped, although the danger lights in the hallway kept flashing. The broom closet door rattled. "Ah @#$^!!!" Emma's muffled voice said. "The door must've locked when we-- Soph, wake up, you gotta get us out of here. Sophia!"
"Nuh mummy, I duh wanna enter the junior beauty pageant…."
Emma groaned in disgust.
Then the sprinkler system-- including the heavy duty sprinklers in the Janitor's closet-- kicked in.
"AAAHAHAAHG!!"
Last edited:
Chapter 5
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
Chapter 5
Chapter Text
The first week eased on by. Adrian got used to the drag of the daily grind of high school. Each day he went in, put in his six hours, then booked his way down to the Boardwalk, his little vending license in his hot sweaty hand, and set up his little push cart, selling trinkets and toys cribbed from Azeroth… paper zeppelins, little clockwork bugs, comical toy tanks that shot ping pong balls, Creeepy Crates, widgets that sparkled and spun and went PING and did absolutely nothing… the Sunshine Butterflies sold quite well. When night fell and the streets rolled up, he closed up his cart and trundled it on home-- then beelined to his workshop, where he put in an hour or two assembling gadgets of more serious use. Then to bed, up at six, lather, rinse, repeat.
Things were going well with Taylor as well. Considering all the hurt she'd been put through and the betrayal she'd suffered, he'd feared he would have to spend far too much time earning her trust. Apparently fleeing the authorities after triggering a building wide panic with the strobing, klaxon-voiced evidence in tow was a bonding moment, because she warmed to him rapidly. Already they were, if not fast friends, then at least kindred spirits and fellows-in-arms.
And according to Taylor, she hadn't been bothered by anything more than a few hostile glares since then. The Threesome were currently laying low, it seemed. He would wager a guess that he was an unknown commodity. The usual routine with anyone attempting to befriend Taylor in the past was that they quickly knuckled under, or were such social dregs (like Greg Veder) that chasing them off wasn't worth the bother.
Greg Veder. That was someone else he'd like to help, if he could. He'd have to think about that.
Either way, Adrian was outside their usual paradigm. Taylor figured they were regrouping, deciding how to attack next. Adrian figured they might be waiting until their hearing came back. Sophia was still sort of twitchy, days later…
Friday afternoon came and went. The tools were tucked away, the various trinkets and gadgets he was working on shut down and tucked away on their shelves. He lay back in his bed in the rafters of his Lost Workshop and snoozed away the waning day. At midnight though his alarm went off, a gentle chime from a domed clock he'd found during his yard sale frenzy. He woke up, stared at the roof a few inches from his nose, and smiled. His fangs gleamed in the dark. "Time to start cleaning up the neighborhood," he said to himself, and chuckled.
Bayleaf's lair wasn't just in a poor and crime ridden neighborhood. It was located in the heart of the territory of the Archer's Bridge Merchants. To anyone else with any mind for real estate, this would have been a calamity. To Bayleaf, it was a bonus.
The Archer's Bridge Merchants were dealers and junkies. Their rank and file were junkies. Their capes were junkies. Their leader and his woman were both junkies. They dealt… and used… every known substance, licit and illicit, known to man, and quite a few more known only to metahumans. Oh, they dipped their rancid toes in everything else too: prostitution, protection, armed robbery, and the like. But it always came back to drugs. Most of them spent the majority of their day wasted, and what little was left either jonesing for their next hit or robbing someone to pay for it.
The utter bafflement was how in the name of all things holy that they functioned at all. Before coming to Brockton Bay, Bayleaf would have sworn that a group-- noone could call it an "organization"-- like the Merchants was simply functionally impossible. Back on the old home Earth, there were drug lords and barons and gangs of dealers of course, but one of the cardinal rules of those organizations was that if you were in charge, you didn't sample the merchandise. Pickling your own brain on a regular basis was a shortcut to your empire crumbling around you, that or one of your more temperate lieutenants putting a bullet in the back of your head and taking over the show. These guys on the other hand were running the candy store with both hands in the bins; they should have imploded long before now if for no other reason than that they swallowed, smoked, snorted or injected all the stock.
And yet, despite all this, they not only managed to stay in business, they managed to hold territory against three other gangs, and thwart the Protectorate as well, and still make enough money to keep Skidmark, Squealer and their lieutenants bombed out of their freaking minds.
Which led Bayleaf to one conclusion: Despite all appearances, Skidmark and Squealer were not the ones calling the shots. Someone-- someone with a still-functioning brain with all its original chemicals intact-- was running things, and they were just along for the ride. It would be interesting finding out who.
For now though, he was going to spend a few nights going after the low-hanging fruit. It was time to establish a presence.
Of all the skills downloaded to him, armor crafting had not been included. He could of course take hammer, tongs and anvil (or leather punch and knife, or cloth and thread) and handicraft something, but the Azerothian art of not only creating armor of cloth, leather, and metal but of infusing it on the anvil (or the rack, or the loom) with enhancing attributes was a complete enigma.
But he did have the skill of enchantment. And he could improvise.
The cloth given to Parian had yielded fruit. She had quickly figured out how to incorporate the arcane enhancements into other types of cloth-- (or rather, Bayleaf suspected, her SHARD had….) She had not only figured out how to make clothing that was self-resizing, but also how to make it stronger, tougher, more durable…
Bayleaf had been busy the past couple of weeks as well. His efforts at disenchantment had yielded a considerable amount of dusts, essences, and shards-- primarily from items of particular age or sentimental value, he noticed, though he suspected some few were the idle trinkets of tinkers; his own scrapped projects had ended up recycled in the same fashion. As an experiment he had crafted several low level enchantments-- plus-ones to armor and the like-- and given them to Parian to experiment with. Within a matter of hours she had begun producing clothing with armor ratings and attribute enhancements he could feel for himself.
It was something of an open secret between them that he was a cape, but she never spoke of it. To be a rogue in Brockton Bay was to have a code of customer confidentiality to rival that of a parish priest. She kept her customers' secrets, and they kept hers... adamantly. She was sitting on her clothier discoveries for now, but already she was grateful enough to offer him commissioned work for free. He asked, and discovered to his gratification that she actually DID work with leather from time to time…
He, ahem. didn't ask.
Then he'd dug out the Enchanted Leather recipe, and things had really gotten interesting.
He hadn't gone with any Azeroth designs for his costume. They looked, quite frankly, ridiculous, and the pauldrons would have broken his neck the first time he raised his hands over his head. (he suspected the real Azerothians used shoulder pads a bit more subtle.) Instead he and she (very well, MOSTLY she) had crouched over a drawing board and worked out something original.
A hooded leather jerkin, so dark brown as to be almost black. Bracers of the same material, thick as bootleather. Fingerless gloves. Breeches with kneepads to match the ones at his elbows. A wide belt, with stout buckles. A long hooded cloak. And footwear that, to Parian's consternation, were somewhere between boots and sandals, with bared toes. It was stitched with a repeating pattern, a Celtic knotwork. Parian had thought it fitting.
Everything was lined inside with soft, sheer cloth for comfort… a futuristic fabric invented by a tinker that fit like silk yet breathed and wicked away moisture like Gore Tex. It had integrated with the "new weaving technique" so perfectly it was alarming, Parian had told him.
The final addition sort of scared the heck out of him. It was a belt pouch of thick cloth, not much larger than a fanny pack, designed to hang at his hip. Yet it held something like ten times its volume.., there was only one compartment, and it only held so much before "burping" and spilling out whatever you put in it, but there it was.
A first generation handy haversack. In just a week's time. What would she be crafting in two?
He had thanked her profusely, taken the costume home, and set to adding his own improvements.
The cloak had been quickly upgraded into a Parachute Cloak. The design was improved, though; closer to a modern parasail than the crude four-corner thing the design normally had. Enchantments for added armor, fireproofing (he KNEW about Lung), and boosts to his "arcane" powers went everywhere he could fit them.
The haversack got loaded out with a variety of explosives (gnomes and goblins, whaddya gonna do?)-- flash bombs, fireworks, and the like; several automated decoys; a pile of high-level first aid bandages (he had BEGGED Parian for the scraps), and his favorite invention thus far-- a Gnomish Universal Remote.
One last item was added. He had been working on it from the moment he'd found his workshop: his staff. He he'd bought it at the flea market from a woodcrafter, a bit of extra scrap he'd had no use for. Bayleaf had taken it, whittled it down and smoothed it, carved maze-like grooves into its entire length, hardened it in the fire, then hammered silver melted with moonfire into the grooves. A gem, fused together from the odd crystals and metals he'd collected and probably unidentifiable by any earth-born gemologist, had been put into the fitting carved at one end. Then he'd slathered it with every bottled enchantment he'd had left on his shelves, whether they were intended for a weapon or not.
To his astonishment, they'd stuck. The moonsilver had glowed, then sunk into the wood and vanished. The gemstone had been covered, engulfed in a knot of wood. To all outward appearance it was now just a plain, slightly crooked, gnarled piece of fire hardened driftwood. Yet he could feel the countless enhancements in it whenever he picked it up.
He didn't know what had driven him to do something so recklessly wasteful, or even just plain reckless. But he had been driven, motivated by some muse. He'd taken notes, or at least tried to, as he proceeded… perhaps someday he'd make sense of them. All he knew now was that it was stout, it fit in his hands perfectly whether human or worgen, it also fit neatly in his haversack without trying, and he could whack it with all his strength across one of his anvils and it didn't even crack.
He donned his costume piece by piece, almost reverently. When he'd dropped the last item-- his staff-- into his haversack and buckled it shut, he looked in the cracked mirror leaning against the wall. Man. He looked good.
"Showtime," he said, his teeth gleaming.
There was a whirr-whirr-whirr, and Obie came trotting across the workfloor, his rotating strobe faintly glowing. Bayleaf patted him on the bubblegum machine. "Keep an eye on the place while I'm gone, Obie," he said. Obie saluted.
A moment later a trapdoor opened on the rooftop of his workshop, and he leapt out. He raced out across the rooftop on all fours and disappeared into the night, looking for the one thing that Brockton Bay provided in surfeit:
Trouble.
"So," Emily Piggot said, her hands folded across her desk, her expression (as always) sour. "Do you have ANYTHING to report on the unidentified cape that literally dropped out of the sky on us a little over a month ago?" She turned the screen on her desk around so that Armsmaster could see it. "Besides this, I mean."
Onscreen was a photograph, one that had become famous online and notorious around the Protectorate and PRT offices. It showed a rather interesting double selfie. On one side, his nose almost to the lens, was an enormous wolf-man, his eyes bugged out mouth hanging open and his tongue dangling out of the side of his mouth in a goofy canine grin. Next to him in a near headlock was Armsmaster. What wasn't half-wrapped in the werewolf's arm was half-wrapped in woody vines. Armsmaster himself was looking as utterly displeased with the situation as a human being possibly could. His goatee practically radiated anger. "I like the caption on this one," Piggot said idly. "Hello. I M WulfMan. I hav just met yu and I luv yu."
Assault let out a muffled snort, then a grunt as his wife Battery elbowed him. "Nothing to report on our side," she said matter-of-factly. "Of course most of our patrols have been out near Captain's Hill. Most of the sightings have been in the Docks or the Trainyard."
"Any eyewitnesses?" Piggot said, not turning a single hair.
"A few," Miss Militia said. "Most of the sources, though, are rather..."
"Pickled?" Assault ventured. "Ow!" He rubbed the back of his head where Battery had cuffed him.
Piggot refrained from rolling her eyes at Assault and Battery's antics. Anyone who hadn't guessed those two were married in their secret identities would figure it out after watching them interact for five minutes. "I assume you mean drugged," she said.
"I would have gone with 'embalmed,'"Miss Militia said dryly. She was idly flipping a glowing green butterfly knife in one hand while she talked. "This wolf-man seems to be concentrating his vigilante efforts in Merchant territory, picking off the drug dealers, pimps and other charming underlings Skidmark attracts. He's also stopped a number of small time robberies and several assaults… but consequently the eyewitnesses are… less than reliable."
"Need I point out that we have a speedster in the room?" Piggot said, annoyed. "You may not be able to affect him while at full speed, Velocity, but you could still cover the entirety of the Docks in a handful of minutes. Surely you could have spotted him."
"Not necessarily," Armsmaster said. "As I said in my report, the cape in question assumed a secondary form that promptly turned invisible-- or so close that I couldn't tell the difference."
"Couldn't you spot him on infrared?" Velocity said, surprised.
"Infrared is still LIGHT, Velocity," Armsmaster said, his lips pressed thin. "Whatever cloaking method or device he's using is very effective." He hesitated. "Either that or he is able to cool himself down to ambient temperature at will… hm." His eyes unfocused and flickered in the manner that indicated he was taking down notes on his HUD.
"Still.." Piggot said.
"It doesn't seem to matter," Miss Militia said. "Somehow, when we're still blocks away he knows we're coming. According to the few… ah… chemically non-enhanced eyewitnesses we've found, he'll suddenly bolt for the rooftops or the shadows without warning, just a minute or so before we or the police arrive on the scene."
"So he somehow knows when we're coming?"
"That would be indicated, yes."
"Lovely." Piggot's expression was anything but.
"The longest he's spoken to anyone was one incident last night..."
Clara sprawled on the ground in the trash-strewn alley where the mugger had thrown her. She scrambled backward on her hands and heels, trying to keep her distance from him and from the knife gleaming in his hand. He was raggedy, dressed in clothes that reeked in only the way that could come from someone who never bothered or cared to clean themselves, and his eyes were glazed. "C'mon," he said, all too confident of how this would go. "There's nothing in that purse worth dying for."
A shadow-- an enormous one-- seemed to detach itself from the wall behind him. Glowing red eyes looked down on him. "Funny," it growled in a voice as deep as a well. "That's what she ought to be saying to you."
The mugger whipped around, knife out. Before he could even move a clawed hand the size of a small shovel whipped out and wrapped around his head. He was lifted off the ground, his screaming muffled by the palm covering his face. He kicked helplessly at the air and lashed out, stabbing blindly one, two, three times-- the other hand appeared and grabbed the mugger's knife hand. There was a crack. The muffled screaming went up an octave, and the monster threw the broken knife away---
"So, some level of invulnerability?"
"Or just body armor."
"True. Continue."
The mugger-turned-prey clawed at the monster's arm with his good hand, to no avail. "All the suffering in this world," the monster said, his voice as much sorrowful as it was angry, "And you have to add to it. For what? For nothing but a few minute's poison." He turned and marched further up the alley. There was a muffled THUMP, and the mugger's screams ceased. This was followed by a loud squelching crunch-- and the monster returned; behind him the unlucky mugger was crammed, headfirst, into a can full of trash. He was alive, or at least still moving feebly.
"Head first in the trash, huh?" Assault was clearly amused.
"It… seems to be his trademark," Armsmaster admitted reluctantly. "He doesn't just beat up and secure his prisoners; it seems he has to humiliate them in some fashion as well."
"I could like this guy," Assault said.
Clara was scared stiff; to scared to move or even breathe too loud. The monster came closer; in the dim light she saw that he was an enormous wolf-man, dressed in a leather cloak and wielding a wooden staff. He was seven, eight feet tall if he was an inch, and his eyes glowed in the moonlight.
He knelt down and reached for her. She shrieked and cringed. He pulled back. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise," he said. "You're hurt. Let me help." He reached out again. This time she held still. He pulled out a patch of cloth and wiped at the cut and bruise on her face. It was cool and tingled as he wiped it across her skin. It stuck in place, covering the wound. "There, that should help." He took her hands, carefully brushing the gravel out of the cuts, and wrapped them in more soothing cloth. "Do you have a phone?"
"I-I yes, I do."
"Call the police," he said. His eyes seemed to squint in amusement. "And next time you go out, carry something a little higher caliber than speed dial."
"So now he's encouraging people to arm themselves," Armsmaster said, in obvious disapproval. "Just what this city needs. A bunch of frightened women running around with firearms."
There was a loud SCHICK-CHACK. Miss Militia's infinite weapon had changed from a butterfly knife to a pump action shotgun. "Gun control," she said sourly, "is the proposition that a 98 pound woman should have to fight off a 200 pound rapist with her bare hands."
Assault leaned over to Battery. "Awk-warrrrrd," he sing-songed sotto voce.
Piggot growled. "Table that. Back to the point."
"Thank.. thank y--" But before Clara could finish saying it, the wolfman's ears pricked up. Without a word he leapt… clear to the rooftop… and vanished.
Mere seconds later, the familiar thrumm of Miss Militia's motorcycle echoed down the alleyway. She stopped with with a jerk at the mouth of the alley and shone a spotlight down on Clara, making her squint. "What happened here, Ma'am?" She said over the engine roar.
"That incident is typical of all verified encounters with him," Armsmaster concluded. "He drops out of nowhere, stops the perpetrator cold-- generally leaving him in a humiliating position-- dresses the wounds of the victim, and then vanishes moments before the authorities arrive. Sometimes he strikes so quickly that the eyewitness never actually sees him. There's just a blur and suddenly the perp is down." His beard bristled in irritation. "At least those are the cases we know he was involved in..."
Piggot raised an eyebrow. It was the most she'd moved since the start of the meeting. "Pardon?"
"There have been other incidents," Velocity said. "Odd enough that we think he may be involved. Such as a pack of drug dealers we found, tied to a lamp post, surrounded by ruined baggies of their "product" and in hysterics. They were all high as kites, but they gave the arresting officers what the officers THOUGHT was a cock-and-bull story about being attacked by an invisible tiger."
"An invisible tiger..." Piggot said.
"Yes, they said they couldn't see it, but they could hear it, and see its paw prints on the ground… they were apparently doing some buying and selling out of an old storage facility when this thing attacked them. Smacked them around, scattered their product all over the place, shredded the tires on their car so they couldn't get away-- Any of them pulled a gun or knife, a huge invisible paw would slap it out of their hands.
"It played cat and mouse with them for about an hour, chasing them up and down that old storage yard. Every now and then they'd think they lost it, then it would roar right in their ear… it finally threw a phone at their feet and said one word: "Call." They couldn't dial 911 fast enough. Then they say there was this gigantic flash of blue-white light, and when they woke up they were all tied to the lamppost with their merchandise spread out all over the place around them."
"Vicious sense of humor, too," Assault noted.
"Well that matches Armsmaster's report of him turning into some sort of invisible creature," Battery said. "This guy's an interesting grab bag."
"His avian form is accounted for too," Velocity said. "Some perv tried to kidnap a little girl over on the boardwalk. He didn't make fifty feet with her tucked under his arm before a giant owl dropped out of the sky--"
"A giant OWL?" Piggot's eyebrows both raised at that one.
"A giant bleepin' owl," Velocity said. "It falcon punched the guy and knocked him out."
"I feel like an excuse for plot exposition, but… "falcon punched?" Battery asked.
"Some birds kill their prey by literally punching them," Assault told his wife. "They dive down at a hundred miles per, with their feet clenched up in fists like this--" he held his fists out in front of him. "When they hit, WHAM." Everyone paused. "Hey, I watch Animal Planet, okay?"
"Eyewitnesses say the guy flipped completely over in the air before hitting the ground," Velocity said. "He's in the hospital with some nasty skull fractures and one hell of a case of whiplash."
Assault started chuckling. "I really hope this is all one guy, because he gets better with every story," he said.
"Please don't tell me there's more," Piggot said.
"Please tell me there is!" Assault said.
It was another street, another mouth of another alley, and another mugging. This time it was a young couple on their way home from a movie. This time the mugger had a gun. "Wallet, watch, jewelry, phone. Come on!"
Bayleaf was on the rooftop. He had accidentally stumbled into a clothesline someone had stretched there, and was untangling himself from a beach blanket they had forgotten to take in. He looked over the edge of the roof, saw the mugging taking place, and had a terrible, awful, wonderful idea…
The young man hastily removed his watch and dug out his wallet. The guy snatched them from his hands with nervous fingers. "Now you too, sister--"
It was then the alley rang with a mighty battle cry.
"BJORRRRRRK!!!"
The mugger spun about, gun at the ready, but he wasn't fast enough. He was flattened to the pavement by an enormous wall of blubber as a walrus, wearing a beach towel tied around its neck like a cape, lunged out of the alley and bore him to the ground.
The two lovebirds could only gawk in astonishment the one ton aquatic mammal reared up and "orrrrked" in triumph. They could see the mugger's head,arms, and feet sticking out from underneath their bizarre rescuer.
The mugger arggghled and tried to reach for his gun where it had fallen to the sidewalk. Bad mistake. The walrus saw him trying to reach the weapon and proceeded to bounce up and down on top of him.
"HuaghHuaghHuaghHuagh!"
The walrus barked, gave one last bounce, and slapped the gun away from the mugger's limp hand with a flipper.
The couple stared.
The walrus stared back. It nudged one of the cellphones lying on the sidewalk in their direction. "Wha, what, who do we call??" The young man stammered, his common sense derailed.
"Call nine-one-one," the mugger groaned flatly.
"Right right, we need the police," the young man said, jabbing at the buttons.
"We need an ambulance," the mugger moaned.
"Are you… some sort of hero?" The girl asked the walrus. By way of reply the walrus reared up, showing the "W" smeared on its chest in white paint.
Sirens started to draw close. The walrus turned and began belly-walking back into the alley. "Thank you..." the girl called out. It looked back, gave her a salute with one flipper, and belly-walked out of sight.
Moments later a squad car, lights going, pulled up to the alley. Back up on the rooftop, Bayleaf lay on his back, rocking back and forth and biting his own arm to keep from howling with laughter.
The footage on Piggot's computer monitor, taken from the security cameras of the corner convenience store across the street, reached its end. Everyone in the meeting room watched Assault warily. He was rocking back and forth, face red as his costume. There was, everyone privately calculated, a good chance he would explode.
"There were further sightings," Armsmaster went on, as if in pain. "A walrus saved a drowning man out in the bay. And a couple of smugglers in a fishing smack were boarded and routed by an angry walrus in a cape." He grimaced; the next words came out like he was passing a kidney stone. "He's already become something of a local meme in the neighborhood; people in the Docks have begun referring to him-- it-- as Wonder Walrus--"
"WONDER WALRUS!!!!" Assault shrieked, toppling over backwards out of his chair. He rolled on the floor, howling and clutching his ribs.
Battery watched him and sighed. "He'll need a minute," she said.
Piggot slowly massaged her temples. "Good, because I'LL need a minute," she said.
Later… MUCH later… after Assault had calmed down enough, they resumed. "So we've determined he's a shapeshifter with at least four forms," Piggot said. "A wolf-man or beast-man form, an aerial form, that of an owl, a stealth form, of an invisible great cat of some sort, and…. An aquatic form… of a walrus. Shut up, Assault."
Assault let out a smothered giggle.
"We have one other possible," Triumph said, speaking up for the first time. "Though… well, I'd include it only because it's so strange." His mouth curled up at the corner. "And strange seems to be this guy's thing."
Piggot sighed. "Continue."
"It came in from Panacea, of all people..."
Amy Dallon, the legendary Panacea, slumped and groaned in relief as the door closed behind her. A moment's privacy, finally. Some days it was just more than she could take, working hour after hour in the hospital, healing the same blasted problems over and over…
Thank whoever was responsible for this space. It was an enclosed courtyard in the middle of the building. Few people used it, especially this late in the fall, and there were few windows looking down on it. She'd taken to sneaking out here to sneak a smoke where nobody would bother, or worse, lecture her about it.
It was a shame noone else came out here though. It was a pretty little garden courtyard. Especially now with the flowers blooming and the green in the trees…
She stopped with the cigarette in her lips, lighter halfway to the tip, and reviewed that thought. Flowers. And green leaves. In early fall.
She looked around carefully. What was going on? For one thing, she did NOT remember that tree standing over there. And this pale, foxfire-green glow over everything. At first she thought it was just the light filtering down through the branches of the tree. Then she realized the light was coming FROM the branches of the tree.
Curiosity overcame common sense. She approached, stealthy as a cat, to see what was going on. Just as she was within arm's reach, the "tree" lowered its head, looked at her and slowly smiled…
Piggot facepalmed. "A TREE?"
"A tree."
She realized what she was seeing now. The part she had mistaken for a stump of a bough was actually a long-jawed head, with a craggy face like an old man and glowing green eyes. The two largest boughs were upraised arms. It lowered them. Then it reached out with one leafy hand and plucked the cigarette from where it dangled, forgotten and unlit, from her lower lip. The treant-- there was no other word for it-- flicked the cigarette over its shoulder and slowly shook a finger at her. "Baaaaad…. Forrrr …. Youuuuu." It said, smiling at her gently.
Flummoxed beyond words, she fell back on her old standby: snark. "Oh fine, great," she said, "now the trees are lecturing me on my personal habits. Look, whatever you are, that's my business and not-- ugh. Huuk. HACCK!" While she had been speaking the Treant had laid one hand on her back. There was a strange second glow. The next thing she knew, a violent coughing fit hit her. She doubled over and a wad of phlegm and tar the size of the palm of her hand hit the path between her feet.
She breathed. She breathed again, deeper. Oh wow, that felt so much better."Oh, yuck. That was in my lungs?" No wonder she'd felt so out of breath. She blinked. "Did you do that?"
The Treant winked at her.
Amy bridled. "All right, buster. What are you doing here??" She demanded.
"Giiiift… of… Eluuuune." The Treant raised its arms and looked at the sky. The foxfire glow grew brighter. And brighter.
Panacea suddenly realized something: she felt good. No, really good. Better than she had in days. Her exhaustion was gone, dozens of little aches and pains she'd had in her back, her feet, her legs, all became apparent by their absence. She checked her hand; the scratches she'd gotten from her neighbor's pet cat the other day were gone completely. Was this what it felt like to be healed? No wonder so many people wanted a touch from her power so badly. She found herself doing something she rarely did; she smiled.
There was a commotion at one of the windows. A little girl was there, in a hospital gown, bouncing up and down waving excitedly.
Amy gawked like a fool. Wasn't that the little girl on the third floor? The one who had an aneurysm and was in a coma??
"Holy crap," Velocity said.
"Got that right." Assault agreed.
"They did a quick survey and eval of everyone at the hospital," Triumph went on. "There were no real "miracle cures--" noone grew back a lost limb, and most cancers were only diminished, not cured. But scars, burns and other wounds were healed, broken bones mended, infections vanished, poisoning cases cleared up instantly… everyone, staff included, experienced at least some uptick on their physical health."
"But an aneurysm?"
"Just a broken vein or artery in the brain," Assault said. "A tiny little wound. Which is what makes them so tragic."
"Did anyone attempt to capture, or at least speak to him?" Armsmaster asked.
Triumph shook his head. "After all the staff, and Panacea, were through running around figuring out what was up with their patients, they found out the Treant had disappeared. The closest thing we have to an eyewitness is a little girl who said 'the Magic Tree turned into a big bird and flew away.'"
"Which ties him back to our strange visitor from the sky," Piggot concluded. "Okay, this cape has become priority one. He's a brute, a changer with who knows how many forms, a stranger with invisibility that fools even infrared cameras, – his healing abilities alone make him absolutely priceless to the Protectorate. We can't have him getting snatched up by some gang or supervillain team or worse. Recruit him. Offer him whatever it takes. Find him and get him on the team!"
Amy sat up in bed, staring at what lay in her palm by the light of her alarm clock face. She hadn't told anyone about it; it seemed too important. Shortly before the Treant had flown off, while everyone in the hospital was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, she had gone back out to the little enclosed park to confront him, to try to speak to him.
Before she could say a word, he had taken her hands in his and pressed something into her palm. "Do… Sooomething…Newwww," he'd said. Then he winked again, and vanished in a flash of blue white light. The last she'd seen of him-- though she didn't know it till later-- was an enormous owl, flying up into the sky.
She had sat up, examining the acorn with her power. To her relief, as well as her disappointment, it was just what it appeared: an ordinary acorn from an ordinary oak tree somewhere. For a while there she'd thought she'd been asked to raise the Treant's offspring.
But that wasn't what the treant had said. It had said for her to do something she had been terrified to do since she was a little girl.. to use her powers to do more than just heal. To try something new.
Wouldn't that be something. She had so many ideas. So many she'd been so afraid to even THINK of. Her power seemed to leap about like a puppy at the very idea. Eager to try.
She looked at the acorn.
Could she? Did she dare?
Carefully, slowly, she opened her power into the acorn. It began to glow…
Chapter Text
The first week eased on by. Adrian got used to the drag of the daily grind of high school. Each day he went in, put in his six hours, then booked his way down to the Boardwalk, his little vending license in his hot sweaty hand, and set up his little push cart, selling trinkets and toys cribbed from Azeroth… paper zeppelins, little clockwork bugs, comical toy tanks that shot ping pong balls, Creeepy Crates, widgets that sparkled and spun and went PING and did absolutely nothing… the Sunshine Butterflies sold quite well. When night fell and the streets rolled up, he closed up his cart and trundled it on home-- then beelined to his workshop, where he put in an hour or two assembling gadgets of more serious use. Then to bed, up at six, lather, rinse, repeat.
Things were going well with Taylor as well. Considering all the hurt she'd been put through and the betrayal she'd suffered, he'd feared he would have to spend far too much time earning her trust. Apparently fleeing the authorities after triggering a building wide panic with the strobing, klaxon-voiced evidence in tow was a bonding moment, because she warmed to him rapidly. Already they were, if not fast friends, then at least kindred spirits and fellows-in-arms.
And according to Taylor, she hadn't been bothered by anything more than a few hostile glares since then. The Threesome were currently laying low, it seemed. He would wager a guess that he was an unknown commodity. The usual routine with anyone attempting to befriend Taylor in the past was that they quickly knuckled under, or were such social dregs (like Greg Veder) that chasing them off wasn't worth the bother.
Greg Veder. That was someone else he'd like to help, if he could. He'd have to think about that.
Either way, Adrian was outside their usual paradigm. Taylor figured they were regrouping, deciding how to attack next. Adrian figured they might be waiting until their hearing came back. Sophia was still sort of twitchy, days later…
Friday afternoon came and went. The tools were tucked away, the various trinkets and gadgets he was working on shut down and tucked away on their shelves. He lay back in his bed in the rafters of his Lost Workshop and snoozed away the waning day. At midnight though his alarm went off, a gentle chime from a domed clock he'd found during his yard sale frenzy. He woke up, stared at the roof a few inches from his nose, and smiled. His fangs gleamed in the dark. "Time to start cleaning up the neighborhood," he said to himself, and chuckled.
Bayleaf's lair wasn't just in a poor and crime ridden neighborhood. It was located in the heart of the territory of the Archer's Bridge Merchants. To anyone else with any mind for real estate, this would have been a calamity. To Bayleaf, it was a bonus.
The Archer's Bridge Merchants were dealers and junkies. Their rank and file were junkies. Their capes were junkies. Their leader and his woman were both junkies. They dealt… and used… every known substance, licit and illicit, known to man, and quite a few more known only to metahumans. Oh, they dipped their rancid toes in everything else too: prostitution, protection, armed robbery, and the like. But it always came back to drugs. Most of them spent the majority of their day wasted, and what little was left either jonesing for their next hit or robbing someone to pay for it.
The utter bafflement was how in the name of all things holy that they functioned at all. Before coming to Brockton Bay, Bayleaf would have sworn that a group-- noone could call it an "organization"-- like the Merchants was simply functionally impossible. Back on the old home Earth, there were drug lords and barons and gangs of dealers of course, but one of the cardinal rules of those organizations was that if you were in charge, you didn't sample the merchandise. Pickling your own brain on a regular basis was a shortcut to your empire crumbling around you, that or one of your more temperate lieutenants putting a bullet in the back of your head and taking over the show. These guys on the other hand were running the candy store with both hands in the bins; they should have imploded long before now if for no other reason than that they swallowed, smoked, snorted or injected all the stock.
And yet, despite all this, they not only managed to stay in business, they managed to hold territory against three other gangs, and thwart the Protectorate as well, and still make enough money to keep Skidmark, Squealer and their lieutenants bombed out of their freaking minds.
Which led Bayleaf to one conclusion: Despite all appearances, Skidmark and Squealer were not the ones calling the shots. Someone-- someone with a still-functioning brain with all its original chemicals intact-- was running things, and they were just along for the ride. It would be interesting finding out who.
For now though, he was going to spend a few nights going after the low-hanging fruit. It was time to establish a presence.
Of all the skills downloaded to him, armor crafting had not been included. He could of course take hammer, tongs and anvil (or leather punch and knife, or cloth and thread) and handicraft something, but the Azerothian art of not only creating armor of cloth, leather, and metal but of infusing it on the anvil (or the rack, or the loom) with enhancing attributes was a complete enigma.
But he did have the skill of enchantment. And he could improvise.
The cloth given to Parian had yielded fruit. She had quickly figured out how to incorporate the arcane enhancements into other types of cloth-- (or rather, Bayleaf suspected, her SHARD had….) She had not only figured out how to make clothing that was self-resizing, but also how to make it stronger, tougher, more durable…
Bayleaf had been busy the past couple of weeks as well. His efforts at disenchantment had yielded a considerable amount of dusts, essences, and shards-- primarily from items of particular age or sentimental value, he noticed, though he suspected some few were the idle trinkets of tinkers; his own scrapped projects had ended up recycled in the same fashion. As an experiment he had crafted several low level enchantments-- plus-ones to armor and the like-- and given them to Parian to experiment with. Within a matter of hours she had begun producing clothing with armor ratings and attribute enhancements he could feel for himself.
It was something of an open secret between them that he was a cape, but she never spoke of it. To be a rogue in Brockton Bay was to have a code of customer confidentiality to rival that of a parish priest. She kept her customers' secrets, and they kept hers... adamantly. She was sitting on her clothier discoveries for now, but already she was grateful enough to offer him commissioned work for free. He asked, and discovered to his gratification that she actually DID work with leather from time to time…
He, ahem. didn't ask.
Then he'd dug out the Enchanted Leather recipe, and things had really gotten interesting.
He hadn't gone with any Azeroth designs for his costume. They looked, quite frankly, ridiculous, and the pauldrons would have broken his neck the first time he raised his hands over his head. (he suspected the real Azerothians used shoulder pads a bit more subtle.) Instead he and she (very well, MOSTLY she) had crouched over a drawing board and worked out something original.
A hooded leather jerkin, so dark brown as to be almost black. Bracers of the same material, thick as bootleather. Fingerless gloves. Breeches with kneepads to match the ones at his elbows. A wide belt, with stout buckles. A long hooded cloak. And footwear that, to Parian's consternation, were somewhere between boots and sandals, with bared toes. It was stitched with a repeating pattern, a Celtic knotwork. Parian had thought it fitting.
Everything was lined inside with soft, sheer cloth for comfort… a futuristic fabric invented by a tinker that fit like silk yet breathed and wicked away moisture like Gore Tex. It had integrated with the "new weaving technique" so perfectly it was alarming, Parian had told him.
The final addition sort of scared the heck out of him. It was a belt pouch of thick cloth, not much larger than a fanny pack, designed to hang at his hip. Yet it held something like ten times its volume.., there was only one compartment, and it only held so much before "burping" and spilling out whatever you put in it, but there it was.
A first generation handy haversack. In just a week's time. What would she be crafting in two?
He had thanked her profusely, taken the costume home, and set to adding his own improvements.
The cloak had been quickly upgraded into a Parachute Cloak. The design was improved, though; closer to a modern parasail than the crude four-corner thing the design normally had. Enchantments for added armor, fireproofing (he KNEW about Lung), and boosts to his "arcane" powers went everywhere he could fit them.
The haversack got loaded out with a variety of explosives (gnomes and goblins, whaddya gonna do?)-- flash bombs, fireworks, and the like; several automated decoys; a pile of high-level first aid bandages (he had BEGGED Parian for the scraps), and his favorite invention thus far-- a Gnomish Universal Remote.
One last item was added. He had been working on it from the moment he'd found his workshop: his staff. He he'd bought it at the flea market from a woodcrafter, a bit of extra scrap he'd had no use for. Bayleaf had taken it, whittled it down and smoothed it, carved maze-like grooves into its entire length, hardened it in the fire, then hammered silver melted with moonfire into the grooves. A gem, fused together from the odd crystals and metals he'd collected and probably unidentifiable by any earth-born gemologist, had been put into the fitting carved at one end. Then he'd slathered it with every bottled enchantment he'd had left on his shelves, whether they were intended for a weapon or not.
To his astonishment, they'd stuck. The moonsilver had glowed, then sunk into the wood and vanished. The gemstone had been covered, engulfed in a knot of wood. To all outward appearance it was now just a plain, slightly crooked, gnarled piece of fire hardened driftwood. Yet he could feel the countless enhancements in it whenever he picked it up.
He didn't know what had driven him to do something so recklessly wasteful, or even just plain reckless. But he had been driven, motivated by some muse. He'd taken notes, or at least tried to, as he proceeded… perhaps someday he'd make sense of them. All he knew now was that it was stout, it fit in his hands perfectly whether human or worgen, it also fit neatly in his haversack without trying, and he could whack it with all his strength across one of his anvils and it didn't even crack.
He donned his costume piece by piece, almost reverently. When he'd dropped the last item-- his staff-- into his haversack and buckled it shut, he looked in the cracked mirror leaning against the wall. Man. He looked good.
"Showtime," he said, his teeth gleaming.
There was a whirr-whirr-whirr, and Obie came trotting across the workfloor, his rotating strobe faintly glowing. Bayleaf patted him on the bubblegum machine. "Keep an eye on the place while I'm gone, Obie," he said. Obie saluted.
A moment later a trapdoor opened on the rooftop of his workshop, and he leapt out. He raced out across the rooftop on all fours and disappeared into the night, looking for the one thing that Brockton Bay provided in surfeit:
Trouble.
"So," Emily Piggot said, her hands folded across her desk, her expression (as always) sour. "Do you have ANYTHING to report on the unidentified cape that literally dropped out of the sky on us a little over a month ago?" She turned the screen on her desk around so that Armsmaster could see it. "Besides this, I mean."
Onscreen was a photograph, one that had become famous online and notorious around the Protectorate and PRT offices. It showed a rather interesting double selfie. On one side, his nose almost to the lens, was an enormous wolf-man, his eyes bugged out mouth hanging open and his tongue dangling out of the side of his mouth in a goofy canine grin. Next to him in a near headlock was Armsmaster. What wasn't half-wrapped in the werewolf's arm was half-wrapped in woody vines. Armsmaster himself was looking as utterly displeased with the situation as a human being possibly could. His goatee practically radiated anger. "I like the caption on this one," Piggot said idly. "Hello. I M WulfMan. I hav just met yu and I luv yu."
Assault let out a muffled snort, then a grunt as his wife Battery elbowed him. "Nothing to report on our side," she said matter-of-factly. "Of course most of our patrols have been out near Captain's Hill. Most of the sightings have been in the Docks or the Trainyard."
"Any eyewitnesses?" Piggot said, not turning a single hair.
"A few," Miss Militia said. "Most of the sources, though, are rather..."
"Pickled?" Assault ventured. "Ow!" He rubbed the back of his head where Battery had cuffed him.
Piggot refrained from rolling her eyes at Assault and Battery's antics. Anyone who hadn't guessed those two were married in their secret identities would figure it out after watching them interact for five minutes. "I assume you mean drugged," she said.
"I would have gone with 'embalmed,'"Miss Militia said dryly. She was idly flipping a glowing green butterfly knife in one hand while she talked. "This wolf-man seems to be concentrating his vigilante efforts in Merchant territory, picking off the drug dealers, pimps and other charming underlings Skidmark attracts. He's also stopped a number of small time robberies and several assaults… but consequently the eyewitnesses are… less than reliable."
"Need I point out that we have a speedster in the room?" Piggot said, annoyed. "You may not be able to affect him while at full speed, Velocity, but you could still cover the entirety of the Docks in a handful of minutes. Surely you could have spotted him."
"Not necessarily," Armsmaster said. "As I said in my report, the cape in question assumed a secondary form that promptly turned invisible-- or so close that I couldn't tell the difference."
"Couldn't you spot him on infrared?" Velocity said, surprised.
"Infrared is still LIGHT, Velocity," Armsmaster said, his lips pressed thin. "Whatever cloaking method or device he's using is very effective." He hesitated. "Either that or he is able to cool himself down to ambient temperature at will… hm." His eyes unfocused and flickered in the manner that indicated he was taking down notes on his HUD.
"Still.." Piggot said.
"It doesn't seem to matter," Miss Militia said. "Somehow, when we're still blocks away he knows we're coming. According to the few… ah… chemically non-enhanced eyewitnesses we've found, he'll suddenly bolt for the rooftops or the shadows without warning, just a minute or so before we or the police arrive on the scene."
"So he somehow knows when we're coming?"
"That would be indicated, yes."
"Lovely." Piggot's expression was anything but.
"The longest he's spoken to anyone was one incident last night..."
Clara sprawled on the ground in the trash-strewn alley where the mugger had thrown her. She scrambled backward on her hands and heels, trying to keep her distance from him and from the knife gleaming in his hand. He was raggedy, dressed in clothes that reeked in only the way that could come from someone who never bothered or cared to clean themselves, and his eyes were glazed. "C'mon," he said, all too confident of how this would go. "There's nothing in that purse worth dying for."
A shadow-- an enormous one-- seemed to detach itself from the wall behind him. Glowing red eyes looked down on him. "Funny," it growled in a voice as deep as a well. "That's what she ought to be saying to you."
The mugger whipped around, knife out. Before he could even move a clawed hand the size of a small shovel whipped out and wrapped around his head. He was lifted off the ground, his screaming muffled by the palm covering his face. He kicked helplessly at the air and lashed out, stabbing blindly one, two, three times-- the other hand appeared and grabbed the mugger's knife hand. There was a crack. The muffled screaming went up an octave, and the monster threw the broken knife away---
"So, some level of invulnerability?"
"Or just body armor."
"True. Continue."
The mugger-turned-prey clawed at the monster's arm with his good hand, to no avail. "All the suffering in this world," the monster said, his voice as much sorrowful as it was angry, "And you have to add to it. For what? For nothing but a few minute's poison." He turned and marched further up the alley. There was a muffled THUMP, and the mugger's screams ceased. This was followed by a loud squelching crunch-- and the monster returned; behind him the unlucky mugger was crammed, headfirst, into a can full of trash. He was alive, or at least still moving feebly.
"Head first in the trash, huh?" Assault was clearly amused.
"It… seems to be his trademark," Armsmaster admitted reluctantly. "He doesn't just beat up and secure his prisoners; it seems he has to humiliate them in some fashion as well."
"I could like this guy," Assault said.
Clara was scared stiff; to scared to move or even breathe too loud. The monster came closer; in the dim light she saw that he was an enormous wolf-man, dressed in a leather cloak and wielding a wooden staff. He was seven, eight feet tall if he was an inch, and his eyes glowed in the moonlight.
He knelt down and reached for her. She shrieked and cringed. He pulled back. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise," he said. "You're hurt. Let me help." He reached out again. This time she held still. He pulled out a patch of cloth and wiped at the cut and bruise on her face. It was cool and tingled as he wiped it across her skin. It stuck in place, covering the wound. "There, that should help." He took her hands, carefully brushing the gravel out of the cuts, and wrapped them in more soothing cloth. "Do you have a phone?"
"I-I yes, I do."
"Call the police," he said. His eyes seemed to squint in amusement. "And next time you go out, carry something a little higher caliber than speed dial."
"So now he's encouraging people to arm themselves," Armsmaster said, in obvious disapproval. "Just what this city needs. A bunch of frightened women running around with firearms."
There was a loud SCHICK-CHACK. Miss Militia's infinite weapon had changed from a butterfly knife to a pump action shotgun. "Gun control," she said sourly, "is the proposition that a 98 pound woman should have to fight off a 200 pound rapist with her bare hands."
Assault leaned over to Battery. "Awk-warrrrrd," he sing-songed sotto voce.
Piggot growled. "Table that. Back to the point."
"Thank.. thank y--" But before Clara could finish saying it, the wolfman's ears pricked up. Without a word he leapt… clear to the rooftop… and vanished.
Mere seconds later, the familiar thrumm of Miss Militia's motorcycle echoed down the alleyway. She stopped with with a jerk at the mouth of the alley and shone a spotlight down on Clara, making her squint. "What happened here, Ma'am?" She said over the engine roar.
"That incident is typical of all verified encounters with him," Armsmaster concluded. "He drops out of nowhere, stops the perpetrator cold-- generally leaving him in a humiliating position-- dresses the wounds of the victim, and then vanishes moments before the authorities arrive. Sometimes he strikes so quickly that the eyewitness never actually sees him. There's just a blur and suddenly the perp is down." His beard bristled in irritation. "At least those are the cases we know he was involved in..."
Piggot raised an eyebrow. It was the most she'd moved since the start of the meeting. "Pardon?"
"There have been other incidents," Velocity said. "Odd enough that we think he may be involved. Such as a pack of drug dealers we found, tied to a lamp post, surrounded by ruined baggies of their "product" and in hysterics. They were all high as kites, but they gave the arresting officers what the officers THOUGHT was a cock-and-bull story about being attacked by an invisible tiger."
"An invisible tiger..." Piggot said.
"Yes, they said they couldn't see it, but they could hear it, and see its paw prints on the ground… they were apparently doing some buying and selling out of an old storage facility when this thing attacked them. Smacked them around, scattered their product all over the place, shredded the tires on their car so they couldn't get away-- Any of them pulled a gun or knife, a huge invisible paw would slap it out of their hands.
"It played cat and mouse with them for about an hour, chasing them up and down that old storage yard. Every now and then they'd think they lost it, then it would roar right in their ear… it finally threw a phone at their feet and said one word: "Call." They couldn't dial 911 fast enough. Then they say there was this gigantic flash of blue-white light, and when they woke up they were all tied to the lamppost with their merchandise spread out all over the place around them."
"Vicious sense of humor, too," Assault noted.
"Well that matches Armsmaster's report of him turning into some sort of invisible creature," Battery said. "This guy's an interesting grab bag."
"His avian form is accounted for too," Velocity said. "Some perv tried to kidnap a little girl over on the boardwalk. He didn't make fifty feet with her tucked under his arm before a giant owl dropped out of the sky--"
"A giant OWL?" Piggot's eyebrows both raised at that one.
"A giant bleepin' owl," Velocity said. "It falcon punched the guy and knocked him out."
"I feel like an excuse for plot exposition, but… "falcon punched?" Battery asked.
"Some birds kill their prey by literally punching them," Assault told his wife. "They dive down at a hundred miles per, with their feet clenched up in fists like this--" he held his fists out in front of him. "When they hit, WHAM." Everyone paused. "Hey, I watch Animal Planet, okay?"
"Eyewitnesses say the guy flipped completely over in the air before hitting the ground," Velocity said. "He's in the hospital with some nasty skull fractures and one hell of a case of whiplash."
Assault started chuckling. "I really hope this is all one guy, because he gets better with every story," he said.
"Please don't tell me there's more," Piggot said.
"Please tell me there is!" Assault said.
It was another street, another mouth of another alley, and another mugging. This time it was a young couple on their way home from a movie. This time the mugger had a gun. "Wallet, watch, jewelry, phone. Come on!"
Bayleaf was on the rooftop. He had accidentally stumbled into a clothesline someone had stretched there, and was untangling himself from a beach blanket they had forgotten to take in. He looked over the edge of the roof, saw the mugging taking place, and had a terrible, awful, wonderful idea…
The young man hastily removed his watch and dug out his wallet. The guy snatched them from his hands with nervous fingers. "Now you too, sister--"
It was then the alley rang with a mighty battle cry.
"BJORRRRRRK!!!"
The mugger spun about, gun at the ready, but he wasn't fast enough. He was flattened to the pavement by an enormous wall of blubber as a walrus, wearing a beach towel tied around its neck like a cape, lunged out of the alley and bore him to the ground.
The two lovebirds could only gawk in astonishment the one ton aquatic mammal reared up and "orrrrked" in triumph. They could see the mugger's head,arms, and feet sticking out from underneath their bizarre rescuer.
The mugger arggghled and tried to reach for his gun where it had fallen to the sidewalk. Bad mistake. The walrus saw him trying to reach the weapon and proceeded to bounce up and down on top of him.
"HuaghHuaghHuaghHuagh!"
The walrus barked, gave one last bounce, and slapped the gun away from the mugger's limp hand with a flipper.
The couple stared.
The walrus stared back. It nudged one of the cellphones lying on the sidewalk in their direction. "Wha, what, who do we call??" The young man stammered, his common sense derailed.
"Call nine-one-one," the mugger groaned flatly.
"Right right, we need the police," the young man said, jabbing at the buttons.
"We need an ambulance," the mugger moaned.
"Are you… some sort of hero?" The girl asked the walrus. By way of reply the walrus reared up, showing the "W" smeared on its chest in white paint.
Sirens started to draw close. The walrus turned and began belly-walking back into the alley. "Thank you..." the girl called out. It looked back, gave her a salute with one flipper, and belly-walked out of sight.
Moments later a squad car, lights going, pulled up to the alley. Back up on the rooftop, Bayleaf lay on his back, rocking back and forth and biting his own arm to keep from howling with laughter.
The footage on Piggot's computer monitor, taken from the security cameras of the corner convenience store across the street, reached its end. Everyone in the meeting room watched Assault warily. He was rocking back and forth, face red as his costume. There was, everyone privately calculated, a good chance he would explode.
"There were further sightings," Armsmaster went on, as if in pain. "A walrus saved a drowning man out in the bay. And a couple of smugglers in a fishing smack were boarded and routed by an angry walrus in a cape." He grimaced; the next words came out like he was passing a kidney stone. "He's already become something of a local meme in the neighborhood; people in the Docks have begun referring to him-- it-- as Wonder Walrus--"
"WONDER WALRUS!!!!" Assault shrieked, toppling over backwards out of his chair. He rolled on the floor, howling and clutching his ribs.
Battery watched him and sighed. "He'll need a minute," she said.
Piggot slowly massaged her temples. "Good, because I'LL need a minute," she said.
Later… MUCH later… after Assault had calmed down enough, they resumed. "So we've determined he's a shapeshifter with at least four forms," Piggot said. "A wolf-man or beast-man form, an aerial form, that of an owl, a stealth form, of an invisible great cat of some sort, and…. An aquatic form… of a walrus. Shut up, Assault."
Assault let out a smothered giggle.
"We have one other possible," Triumph said, speaking up for the first time. "Though… well, I'd include it only because it's so strange." His mouth curled up at the corner. "And strange seems to be this guy's thing."
Piggot sighed. "Continue."
"It came in from Panacea, of all people..."
Amy Dallon, the legendary Panacea, slumped and groaned in relief as the door closed behind her. A moment's privacy, finally. Some days it was just more than she could take, working hour after hour in the hospital, healing the same blasted problems over and over…
Thank whoever was responsible for this space. It was an enclosed courtyard in the middle of the building. Few people used it, especially this late in the fall, and there were few windows looking down on it. She'd taken to sneaking out here to sneak a smoke where nobody would bother, or worse, lecture her about it.
It was a shame noone else came out here though. It was a pretty little garden courtyard. Especially now with the flowers blooming and the green in the trees…
She stopped with the cigarette in her lips, lighter halfway to the tip, and reviewed that thought. Flowers. And green leaves. In early fall.
She looked around carefully. What was going on? For one thing, she did NOT remember that tree standing over there. And this pale, foxfire-green glow over everything. At first she thought it was just the light filtering down through the branches of the tree. Then she realized the light was coming FROM the branches of the tree.
Curiosity overcame common sense. She approached, stealthy as a cat, to see what was going on. Just as she was within arm's reach, the "tree" lowered its head, looked at her and slowly smiled…
Piggot facepalmed. "A TREE?"
"A tree."
She realized what she was seeing now. The part she had mistaken for a stump of a bough was actually a long-jawed head, with a craggy face like an old man and glowing green eyes. The two largest boughs were upraised arms. It lowered them. Then it reached out with one leafy hand and plucked the cigarette from where it dangled, forgotten and unlit, from her lower lip. The treant-- there was no other word for it-- flicked the cigarette over its shoulder and slowly shook a finger at her. "Baaaaad…. Forrrr …. Youuuuu." It said, smiling at her gently.
Flummoxed beyond words, she fell back on her old standby: snark. "Oh fine, great," she said, "now the trees are lecturing me on my personal habits. Look, whatever you are, that's my business and not-- ugh. Huuk. HACCK!" While she had been speaking the Treant had laid one hand on her back. There was a strange second glow. The next thing she knew, a violent coughing fit hit her. She doubled over and a wad of phlegm and tar the size of the palm of her hand hit the path between her feet.
She breathed. She breathed again, deeper. Oh wow, that felt so much better."Oh, yuck. That was in my lungs?" No wonder she'd felt so out of breath. She blinked. "Did you do that?"
The Treant winked at her.
Amy bridled. "All right, buster. What are you doing here??" She demanded.
"Giiiift… of… Eluuuune." The Treant raised its arms and looked at the sky. The foxfire glow grew brighter. And brighter.
Panacea suddenly realized something: she felt good. No, really good. Better than she had in days. Her exhaustion was gone, dozens of little aches and pains she'd had in her back, her feet, her legs, all became apparent by their absence. She checked her hand; the scratches she'd gotten from her neighbor's pet cat the other day were gone completely. Was this what it felt like to be healed? No wonder so many people wanted a touch from her power so badly. She found herself doing something she rarely did; she smiled.
There was a commotion at one of the windows. A little girl was there, in a hospital gown, bouncing up and down waving excitedly.
Amy gawked like a fool. Wasn't that the little girl on the third floor? The one who had an aneurysm and was in a coma??
"Holy crap," Velocity said.
"Got that right." Assault agreed.
"They did a quick survey and eval of everyone at the hospital," Triumph went on. "There were no real "miracle cures--" noone grew back a lost limb, and most cancers were only diminished, not cured. But scars, burns and other wounds were healed, broken bones mended, infections vanished, poisoning cases cleared up instantly… everyone, staff included, experienced at least some uptick on their physical health."
"But an aneurysm?"
"Just a broken vein or artery in the brain," Assault said. "A tiny little wound. Which is what makes them so tragic."
"Did anyone attempt to capture, or at least speak to him?" Armsmaster asked.
Triumph shook his head. "After all the staff, and Panacea, were through running around figuring out what was up with their patients, they found out the Treant had disappeared. The closest thing we have to an eyewitness is a little girl who said 'the Magic Tree turned into a big bird and flew away.'"
"Which ties him back to our strange visitor from the sky," Piggot concluded. "Okay, this cape has become priority one. He's a brute, a changer with who knows how many forms, a stranger with invisibility that fools even infrared cameras, – his healing abilities alone make him absolutely priceless to the Protectorate. We can't have him getting snatched up by some gang or supervillain team or worse. Recruit him. Offer him whatever it takes. Find him and get him on the team!"
Amy sat up in bed, staring at what lay in her palm by the light of her alarm clock face. She hadn't told anyone about it; it seemed too important. Shortly before the Treant had flown off, while everyone in the hospital was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, she had gone back out to the little enclosed park to confront him, to try to speak to him.
Before she could say a word, he had taken her hands in his and pressed something into her palm. "Do… Sooomething…Newwww," he'd said. Then he winked again, and vanished in a flash of blue white light. The last she'd seen of him-- though she didn't know it till later-- was an enormous owl, flying up into the sky.
She had sat up, examining the acorn with her power. To her relief, as well as her disappointment, it was just what it appeared: an ordinary acorn from an ordinary oak tree somewhere. For a while there she'd thought she'd been asked to raise the Treant's offspring.
But that wasn't what the treant had said. It had said for her to do something she had been terrified to do since she was a little girl.. to use her powers to do more than just heal. To try something new.
Wouldn't that be something. She had so many ideas. So many she'd been so afraid to even THINK of. Her power seemed to leap about like a puppy at the very idea. Eager to try.
She looked at the acorn.
Could she? Did she dare?
Carefully, slowly, she opened her power into the acorn. It began to glow…
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Chapter 6
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
Chapter 6
Chapter Text
It wasn't long before the Goldfish Poop Girls turned up the heat on their social-fu.
Phase two came with indirect attacks. Apparently they'd been dropping bugs in people's ears about the new kid. What they said was irrelevant; it changed from person to person, and all depended on what would get them the most agitated. Some, they dropped hints that he was aspiring e88. Others they played the 'save the princess' angle; flirting with various guys and then dropping a pouty lip about this mean ol' new guy who was making things rough for them, and how they'd be ever so grateful (pop the top button on their shirt, tug their tube top down just so) to anyone who dealt with them…
Sophia, of course, would sooner deep throat a dead rat than resort to those tactics. Her poison pen of preference was to drop hints within earshot of the more excitable e88 members about his possible sexual preferences. Or to hint to the junkies that he was a narc; after all he was certainly tall and broad shouldered enough to pass for an undercover cop. Or tell the other black students how often he used the word "nigger" when he talked to her (one thing dear old Wildbow never mentioned was that while the e88 was the largest WHITE race gang in the city, and the ABB took up the ASIAN gangsters, there were more than enough BLACK gangbangers running around Brockton Bay… and Winslow… to at least put in a showing. In retrospect it made sense really; you could hardly make hay as a white supremacist group without a black gang or two floating around for you to point at and pitch a fit about.)
The first hint came at lunch on a Tuesday. Taylor had called in sick, so Adrian was sitting alone at their table, digging his way through a calzone (he'd learned his lesson after day one and always packed a lunch) when a skinny kid with a leather jacket and a spiky faux-hawk slid into the seat across from him. "Hey."
Adrian looked him over. Even with a quick glance he could see a few signs of what gang the kid ran with; a couple of ambiguously aryan symbols on his jacket; a crude homemade tattoo of the SS symbol on the back of his middle finger. "Can I help you?" he asked coolly.
The gangly kid grinned. "It's chill, it's chill," he said, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. "Just a peaceful overture, 'kay?"
"Peaceful overture," Adrian repeated.
"Yeah. Some of the guys I hang with--" He looked around furtively and shook his arm; a bracelet with the symbol of the E88 slid down out of his jacket sleeve. "We were impressed with how you put that uppity Sophia ni--- uh, girl in her place." He stuffed the bracelet back up his sleeve out of sight. "She's been a pain since the day she walked in the doors here. Some of the guys tried to teach her some manners, but they didn't stick, so to speak."
"You got handsy with her and she beat your backsides like a drum set," Adrian corrected, taking a bite of calzone. "Hint for the future," he said with a mouthful of food, "Don't try to manhandle a chick with commando training."
"Commando training?" the faux hawk kid said, his eyes going wide.
Adrian realized his mistake and bluffed. "Calluses on her hands, arms and legs," he said blithely. "From pummeling the crap out of training dummies, breaking bricks, that kind of thing. Let's just say she's gotten a little more than just some time on the mat at the Y."
Faux Hawk swore under his breath, eyebrows raised. "Anyway… we saw how you handled her, and we figured you might be looking for a crew to hang with. We think you got what it takes to be one of us..." He stopped in mid sentence when he saw Adrian shaking his head, smirking. He scowled. "What, you think you're too good for us?"
Adrian swallowed. "Nope, I just think we'd be really bad for each other." At the kid's surly yet puzzled expression he started counting off on his fingers. "Okay, one: I don't really agree with all that race crap. More importantly, I'm a Memento survivor." he pulled a metal tag on a chain out from under his shirt and held it up for the kid to see. It looked like a med-alert tag, but the symbols were entirely different. "I got, whaddyacallit, retrograde amnesia. Everything before about a year ago is more or less gone."
"Wow. That sucks."
"Yeah. But point is, I don't even know what race I am. Hell, I think there's a good chance I'm Jewish."
Faux Hawk looked puzzled. "How would-- oh yeah, right. Nevermind," he said, as Adrian rolled his eyes and pulled several very expressive faces. He snorted and actually grinned. "Yeah, that'd be bad. Year down the road I find out I created the world's first Nazi Jew." He and Adrian snickered a bit at that.
Adrian counted off one more finger. "And the real big reason? Because the E88 has got all the wrong explanations for your problems, and all the wrong solutions."
"So you think us white people don't have any legitimate grievances? Is that it?" Faux Hawk snorted. "You can't be oppressed because you're WHITE, right?"
"No, I think white people have all sorts of genuine, legitimate grievances," Adrian said. "The fact that people can tell you that you can't be suffering oppression because of your skin color is one of them. When I see people get turned down for jobs because they don't have the right skin color, or they can't get into a decent school while another kid gets a free ride for having black skin, or some white kid gets guilt-tripped for things that happened before his granddaddy was even born, or some black guy gets tried for murder and gets a slap on the wrist because someone, somewhere, who might have been involved with his arrest said the "N" word, yeah, that's a load of crap. No, it's injustice.
"But none of those things are caused because of them being black. Or being an "inferior race." You raise someone in a lousy environment, with a lousy bunch of values, you'll get lousy results, no matter what color they are." The kid's face was getting stormy, so he switched tactics.
He picked up the plastic fork that came with his lunch and toyed with it. "Tell me, you ever heard of an old scam called 'let's you and him fight?'" Faux Hawk shook his head. "Well you can figure it out just by the name. Some guy gets two people mad at each other. Fighting mad. Then when they get together and start throwing fists, he's there arranging things so that no matter who wins and who loses, he gets the benefit-- say with a rigged gambling pool, or selling tickets to the fight… or just by getting two people he doesn't like arrested for disturbing the peace.
"Now maybe you didn't notice it, but while you've got people like Kaiser over here, inflaming things, telling you that all the problems in your world are the fault of blacks, they've got a-holes over on their side, telling them the same thing. Now ask yourself; who benefits the most from having both of you at each other's throats?"
A light seemed to go on in the skinny neonazi's eyes. He leaned in. "Of course," he said. "The JEWS."
Adrian's head hit the table so hard it bounced. "Just… just go, kid," he said, face planted in the tabletop.
Faux Hawk got up and shoved off. "You're gonna be sorry you didn't make some friends when you could," he said… a halfhearted threat at best. He walked off in a slouch. "Just when he was starting to make sense..." he muttered.
Adrian groaned. His head hurt and it was only partly the fault of the table.
It was well after dark. Armsmaster was standing at the intersection of 4th and Main, overlooking the remnants of the latest gang fracas. Gangbangers were scattered about the street, most unconscious, some groaning and nursing their injuries. Most were bound up in coils of thick thorny vines. One in particular, however, was bound to a light pole by the remains of a metal anti-theft grille that had apparently been ripped off a nearby store window. It was a teenager, female, dressed in a full-body red and black suit and a gas mask of some sort. The scorch marks on the walls, pavement, and on a few of the gangsters made identifying her a certainty. "Spitfire," Armsmaster said. He sent his hovercam drifting over to get some footage of her. "What was her stake in this?"
He pushed the bobbing globe of the cambot to one side. It was a distraction at times, but he'd come to the conclusion with all the Youtube footage making the rounds of the internet, he was going to have to up his PR game and get some facetime online of his own, to bolster his flagging numbers. Hopefully a few selfies-- that's what the kids called these live videos, right?-- a few selfies of himself in action would increase his popularity.
One of the city cops standing by scratched his head. "From what we gathered, this was a turf fight between a couple of two-bit gangs," he said. "One side or the other saved up their milk money and hired Spitfire to give them some extra muscle."
"Faultline's crew doesn't normally take contracts anywhere in the city," he said as the cambot panned around them for a better profile.
The cop shrugged. "So Spitfire didn't tell her or it's too penny-ante for her to care," he said. "Anyway, the balloon had just gone up-- we arrived, saw Spitfire slinging that napalm spit of hers everywhere, and called you--"
"And we thank you for that timely response," Armsmaster said, reading off his teleprompter.
"Er, yeah. But just as we did that new guy dropped into the middle of it. Skinwalker, I think you called him?"
"Yes, that is the name the PRT chose for his file," Armsmaster said dryly.
The cop laughed. "Yeah, that guy's best of the best," he said. "Kickin' tail and takin' names. You gotta get him on the Protectorate; he could be even bigger than Dauntless!"
Armsmaster could feel his teeth grinding against each other at the mention of his biggest rival. With an effort of will he unclenched his jaw. "That is our objective," he managed to say. "What did he do?"
"Well, Spitfire there was just about to roast a bunch of gangers. He just drops down out of the air, right in between 'em, and tanks it--- fire splashing all over him, the boys and I thought for sure he was cooked. But the instant Spitfire runs out of breath he stands up, shakes the last of it off his cloak, and takes her and all the others out."
"How?" Armsmaster demanded. The cambot zoomed in.
"While Spitfire's winding up for another round of flame, he sort of waved his staff at her," the cop said. "And this torrent of blue white light falls down out of the sky on them. WHOOM." He mimed with his hands something falling out of the sky like the fist of an angry god. "Dunno what it was, it fritzed out the radios and the streetlights something fierce and knocked everyone it hit unconscious.
"There were a few left standing, so he spins around and points at each of them, and more light comes down-- only little short bursts, on each of them. Whoom. Whoom. Whoom. Whoom. Some of 'em were bright yellow, though-- could feel the heat all the way back here. The EMTs think it sort of flash heated them from the inside out… gave them instant heat stroke, basically, knocked 'em flat. The ones hit by the blue light, the EMTs dunno, but they say they're acting like they stuck their tongues in a light socket."
"And then?"
"And then once they were all down, he wrapped 'em up in those vines," the cop said, pointing. "Like they came shooting up out of the pavement. 'Cept for Spitty there. He tore down that grille and wrapped her up in it. Probably figured she'd just burn off any vines he tied her with."
It was at this point Kid Win came gliding over. The Ward had managed to pull a late night patrol with Armsmaster, and was doing his best to play helpful sidekick. He was holding the remains of one of the vines, now brown and brittle. "More like down into the pavement, sir," he said, pointing. "Not very deep at all, actually. See the roots? All said there's surprisingly little damage."
"He still vandalized a huge section of street and sidewalk," Armsmaster said pedantically.
The cop snorted. "Well I'll take a buncha holes in the pavement over a buncha holes in people-- or in my men-- any day of the week," he said emphatically. "Anyway, once everyone's down and vined up, he bandages up the ones that are most hurt, gives everything the once-over, turns into a big hoot-owl and flies away. All in the five minutes it took you guys to get here."
Armsmaster's lips pursed at the implied rebuke. "Be sure and get samples of those bandages he used," he said to Kid Win. Kid Win nodded. They'd already gotten earlier samples and given them to the techs, who were having absolute fits over their properties. Armsmaster fully intended to get some of these miracle bandages back to his own lab and figure out their secrets for himself first. He was getting tired of working his armored backside off only to have someone else steal a march on him.
"He does healing too?" The cop said. "You gotta get this guy on the team..."
Kid Win grinned. "That's kinda the plan, yeah," he said.
Armsmaster grunted. "Unfortunately he's not cooperating with our efforts to contact him," he said with the air of someone complaining about a disobedient house pet. "He apparently prefers to run rogue, rather than work with the proper authorities--- throwing everything into disorder and engaging in juvenile pranks, upsetting the balance of-- WAH!" While he was speaking something dark and winged dove out of the night, sweeping by mere inches past his head and striking the back of his helmet in passing. The cambot tracked it; It was a giant horned owl, already swooping down the street.
"HALT!" Armsmaster yelled fruitlessly. "Stop in the name of the law!" He turned to Kid Win, his cameras stuttering and his helmet feeling oddly lopsided. Had that blasted rogue damaged his helmet? "Kid Win, quick, tail him, I'll try to follow you on-- what? What??"
Kid Win was staring at him with an expression of barely contained hilarity on his face, as if he desperately wanted to laugh but was too afraid to. No, he was staring at the top of his head? Some of the cops were starting to laugh. "WHAT?"
For lack of a mirror, he turned to his cambot and pulled up the outgoing feed on his visor. Stuck on the top of his helmet by a suction cup was a pair of huge, fluffy, pink bunny rabbit ears.
The cambot was working perfectly: it had the ears in completely in frame with his outraged, helmeted face.
"SKINWALKERRR!"
In the distance, a faint "Hoo hoo hoo hoo" could be heard.
"Hey, Fag."
Adrian turned around, his eyebrows raised. They'd just finished a really pointless round of dodgeball (dodgeball, for crying out loud. What was this, gradeschool?) in Gym. It had been seriously tiring-- not because it was difficult, in fact the opposite: he'd expended an incredible amount of effort to not do too well, to actually let a bunch of teenagers who looked like they were moving in slow motion to him occasionally pummel him with volleyballs. He'd showered, and was trying to get dressed and on his way without incident. Apparently it was not to be.
One of the bigger Juniors, a bruiser on the football team with a shaved head and a swastika blatantly tattooed on his shoulder was standing behind him, towel around his waist and shower water beading on his shaved head. He had two other thugs still in their gym gear standing at his shoulders, doing their best to block everyone else's view. "Yeah, I was talking to you, fag," he said. "We found out what you are, fruit. Come on, deny it."
Adrian stared at him in silence. He drew it out for several seconds, making it awkward. Then, just as they were starting to twitch and shuffle self-consciously, he spoke up. "What the hell is anyone supposed to say to that?" he said, his voice redolent in genuine disbelief, projecting his voice so everyone could hear. "There is literally no way to--" he hopped to his feet; the three trying to intimidate him backed up a step. It was easy to forget just how BIG the new guy actually was.
He addressed the room, arms thrown wide and his projecting his voice. "I mean seriously, am I wrong? What am I supposed say to that. Am I supposed to do something to prove I'm NOT gay? Pull a cheerleader in here, hump her in front of you--" he grunted and made some crude hip thrusting motions-- "Spike her into the floor like a football and yell 'TOUCHDOWWWWN!' ?" He planted a foot on the bench and pretended to shoot the horns to an imaginary stadium audience.
Several of the guys in the room snickered, but stifled it when the skinheads glared at them. Lacking any clever answer, Skinhead #1 opted for the standard tactical approach of the domestic cretin: ignoring everything and plowing onward. "Yeah, we know what you are," he said. "We don't like your kind around here." His his smirk was now a full on snarl. "Think you're so clever... running around with that little Hebert lezzo beside you for a fag hag--"
The new kid's face suddenly darkened. Deep inside Adrian's chest the wolf rumbled. Those standing nearby heard that faint sound and suddenly looked nervous. Adrian pushed the wolf back down and looked the lead E88 in the eye with a deliberate poker face. "Fella, I may not be clever, but I ain't the one who came into a locker room, took off his pants, and came over with two of his boyfriends to ask if the new guy was gay."
"OHHHhhhhhh!!!"
It took a moment for the words to work their way through the strata of bone in the goon's head. When they hit pay dirt, he swelled up and lunged.
Even as they started moving Adrian was already in motion. He grabbed the towel around Skinhead's waist and whipped it away. One twist of his wrist and he had a rat-tail in his hand. Before Skinhead even had time to yell and cover himself, Adrian snapped the end of the rat-tail right in his fruit and veg.
Skinhead went down, shrieking and clutching himself. Before his two buddies could react the towel whipped out again, striking each of them right in the septum, underneath their noses. They tumbled backward clutching at their bleeding faces.
"Cover that up," he said in disgust, throwing the towel over Skinhead where he was curled up on the floor. "You're making everyone nauseous." He reached down to pick up his shoes.
Unfortunately for Adrian, he'd forgotten that there were more members of the E88 in the room. The gym coach came thundering into the room just as the rest of them dogpiled him.
Blackwell, predictably, gave him in-school suspension while the other students got off fairly light. Of course, in spite of Bayleaf holding back, several of them were sporting black eyes, broken noses, missing teeth, and other injuries that would keep them out of classes for a few days at least, but still, it was the principle of the thing that bugged him. The bruises and welts stung--- he could not heal them immediately without giving the whole game away-- but not quite as much as the mocking, triumphant looks from the Trio as he passed them in the hallway.
They were going to go after Taylor next, now that they thought he was out of the way. She'd have to go it alone for a few days, but that was unacceptable. He was going to have to smarten up.
Taylor skipped over the broken front step, opened the front door and walked inside. It had been… well, not a horrible day, but a bit rougher than they had been for a while. Adrian had been given in-school suspension, and had to spend a portion of the school day sitting in one teacher or another's office serving it out. The cutting remarks behind her back had started up again once everyone saw she was on her own, and Sophia and the others had taken a few passing shots at her-- elbows in the side, papers knocked to the floor, that sort of thing. But she could endure, at least for a couple of days.
When she came inside she was surprised to find her father sitting in the living room. Danny Hebert was sitting on the couch, holding a Smartphone of all things and laughing till tears streamed down his face.
"Dad?" Taylor said, dropping her book bag.
"Oh hey, Taylor," he chuckled, wiping his eyes. "I got something to show you."
"A new phone?" she asked.
He glanced down, seemed to realize what he was holding and glanced up again. "I—Yeah," he said. He deflated a little. "A, uh, friend gave me two Smartphones, one for each of us. Even paid up for a full year, internet, the works. He was insistent..." he coughed. "Taylor, sit down." Taylor sat down on the overstuffed chair by the couch. Danny looked at his daughter earnestly. "Taylor, I owe you an apology," he said. "First off for being so distant all this time after your mother…" he hesitated. "After we lost her. I've been just going through the motions, and I haven't been here for you."
He flipped the phone over in his hand. "And, more specifically, I'm sorry about this," he said, with wry amusement. "It was foolish of me to pin the blame for your mother's death on a piece of technology, of all things. And as dangerous as this city can be, having one of these things on hand could save your life...!
"I'm not going to let that sort of foolishness affect my decision making ever again. Or at least I'll try not to... Here." He handed her a slim case. She opened it, inside was a slim, glossy black rectangle. "Here, turn it on," he said, demonstrating. The screen lit up.
"Wow," Taylor said. "Is this friend of yours rich? These things must've cost a fortune!"
"You're right about that," Danny said wryly. "I've been reading the manual, this thing has more computing power than my desktop at work." He pointed. "All those little icons are something called 'apps..'"
"Phone, email, calculator...what the heck is angry birds...internet? Holy crap, this thing has a camera??"
"The lens is on the other side. You can take stills or videos. Even post them on that Youpage thing."
"This is unbelievable!" She moved over to the couch and hugged him. "Thank you..."
"Hey, don't thank me. Okay, thank me, I'm happy to steal the credit." He chuckled. He watched her handle the phone like it was a faberge' egg.
"What were you looking at earlier?" Taylor said suddenly.
Danny began chuckling again. "We had a cape incident at the Dockyards today," he said. "Why I'm home early."
"Oh my gosh!" Taylor's hand flew to her mouth. "Was anyone hurt??"
"No, no," Danny waved his hand, shaking his head. He got a little more serious. "But it was a nasty bit of work. Armsmaster showed up at the offices; the Protectorate had intercepted some radio transmission-- one of the incoming ships was hauling human cargo." His face soured, he looked as if he wanted to spit. "Slave traders."
"Oh my--"
"Yeah. Armsmaster was there to do the bust, along with a couple others. Velocity and a couple of Wards, Shadow Stalker I think." He started chuckling again. "But before anyone could move in on the ship, one of the local rogues got on board first..."
Taylor felt herself grinning in glee. "Oh no. It wasn't..."
Danny turned his phone around so she could see the screen too and hit "replay." Armsmaster was onscreen, standing on the end of the dock in his best heroic pose and making grandiose gestures. "Kid Win, get around the other side but keep your distance, we'll try to-- what the--"
There was a commotion on the ship. Screams and shouts in what sounded like Chinese, the pop pop of some small gunfire, and the bellowing of something large and upset. As Danny and Taylor watched, several Chinese sailors made an appearance, running for their lives from the angriest looking walrus Taylor had ever seen. It was wearing a red beach blanket tied around its neck and had a big "W" across its chest in some sort of paint. One by one it chased, pushed or in some cases scooped the slavers up on his nose like a beach ball and tossed them over the rail. There were dozens of resounding splashes as criminal thugs hit the water of the harbor.
"OH my--"
"Yep," Danny said, chuckling so hard tears were forming in his eyes again. "Wonder Walrus saves the day again."
"WONDER WALRUS?"
"That's... what... they call him..." Danny choked.
Taylor and Danny watched as, over the course of fifteen minutes, the redoubtable walrus ran amuck on the ship, hunting from deck to deck, chasing down every last member of the crew and tossing them into the drink for the police and the Protectorate to fish out and tie up. Some of them had handguns and opened fire on him; that only seemed to make the walrus angrier. Those crewmembers got tossed a little further than the others.
Finally, after the last crewman was secured, the walrus disappeared belowdecks, and returned escorting a line of people, some men, but mostly young women, down the gangplank and to the shore. Many of the women sobbed in relief as they made it down to the dock; more than a few stopped to give the walrus grateful hugs.
Armsmaster was waiting at the foot of the gangplank to greet the walrus, clearly looking like he wished to be anyplace else. "The Protectorate thanks you for your help," Armsmaster gritted out. "We couldn't have done it without you..." he choked a little. "...Wonder… Walrus."
"Somebody didn't get the bu-ust," Taylor singsonged.
Armsmaster glared at the walrus.
The walrus stared at Armsmaster.
Without warning the walrus lunged forward. It wrapped its flipper around behind Armsmaster's head, pulled him in close, and planted a gigantic, whiskery walrus kiss on the Protectorate leader's face.
Taylor shrieked and fell over on the couch laughing. On the tiny screen, Wonder Walrus could be seen giving the poleaxed Protectorate hero a pat on the head, turning and diving into the Bay.
Danny watched out of the corner of his eye as his little girl lay there clutching her sides and laughing herself sick…. And pondered things.
When the fracas on the Docks had died down (and Danny and the other dockworkers had recovered from their hysterics) Danny had gone back to his office to wrap things up for the day (even without the police running around, he didn't think he, or anyone else, was going to get much work done today.) He'd found a gift-wrapped box sitting on his desk, sealed in a ziploc gallon bag still wet from the Bay.
Bemused, he'd opened it. Inside had been the phones, along with receipts showing they had airtime and internet paid up through the next year. Along with them had been a note.
Dear Mr. Hebert;
You do not know me. Maybe someday soon we will meet in person. Even if we do not, know that I am a friend.
I know about your tragic loss, and I send you all my deepest condolences. Losing a loved one is like having your heart ripped out, only to still feel it beating in pain in your chest. I know how you want to run from that pain, to hide from it deep inside yourself and never come back out. But I'm telling you now, for the sake of your daughter you cannot do that any more.
Taylor's a good person. But right now she is being tormented, not just by her own loss but by three sadists at her school who have been bullying her with impunity, from the moment she entered high school. I will tell you no more beyond that: it is neither my place nor my duty to disclose that, or to persuade Taylor to reveal it. As her father that duty, I'm afraid, lies with you.
There is one thing you must remember: She has told you none of this not because she is "keeping secrets" or because she mistrusts you, but because she cares for you-- she's seen how broken in spirit you are and it hurt her to think of adding to your pain.
She suffers in silence because she loves you. Never forget that.
There's dark days ahead (but then again, aren't they always?) and the two of you are going to have a lot of secrets to spill to each other. But you're not going to go forward if you don't trust each other first. Have faith in each other, and faith in God. You will see your way through.
And in that vein, Mr. Hebert, you cannot let your pain and loss be an excuse for handicapping yourself. The ability to communicate quickly to anyone, anywhere, is a gift of the modern age, and a vital tool for life or death situations. You cannot afford to wait to get to a pay phone in a crisis. Enclosed are two state-of-the-art smart phones and their chargers. All the bells and whistles, plus a few extras, and built as tough as a wrench. Give one to your daughter, keep them charged and keep them with you at all times, because they just might-- no, almost certainly will-- save your lives someday.
Good people are hard to find, and I'd hate to lose two of them. Take care of yourselves.
Sincerely,
A FRIEND
He'd never felt so conflicted about a gift. Part of him wanted to cry in gratitude. Part of him wanted to fling the thing out into the bay. But… he couldn't argue with this "anonymous friend" about letting his grief control him. And if what he was saying about Taylor being bullied was true… he felt a flare of anger he quickly pressed down… then he wanted her to be in contact whenever, wherever, for her own safety.
And short of having her carry around a CB Radio in her backpack, well, this was it.
"Did you see Armsmaster's face? Omigosh, play it again!"
He smiled. Definitely worth it.
...Halloween night...
Shadow Stalker cursed and swore as she leapt from one rooftop to the next. She was in a foul mood. Which was reasonable to expect, considering her personality, but for a change she had a reason. The tosspots at PRT had been talking up this new cape, Skinwalker. they had a real jones on to get their meathooks into him, and were pushing everyone, Protectorate and Ward alike, to bring this guy in. They had even started offering signup bonuses to anyone who persuaded the guy to sign on the dotted line. Extra privileges, all sorts of things. Bigger expense accounts for the Tinkers, you name it.
So naturally this dog-faced a-hole had been impossible to find.
So she'd been doing a maybe-not-quite registered patrol on Halloween Night… keeping the little kiddies safe, of course, she thought to herself with an eyeroll… when by sheer stupid chance she'd stumbled across Skinwalker. She couldn't believe it. He'd been standing on some residential street, just-- handing out candy out of a pillowcase. No, not candy: trinkets. Plastic toys, miniature flashlights, glow-sticks, that sort of thing. The kids had eaten it up. The parents too, once they got over their freakout at a seven foot whatever tall werewolf handing out goodies to their kids. She'd watched him from the shadows for a while. He'd hung there for about a half hour or so then transformed into an owl and flown off, the goody bag in his talons, to set up shop five or six blocks away.
By blind luck she'd tagged the bag with a tracer dart as he swooped overhead. From then on she'd spent the night using the HUD in her mask to track him. It had been infuriating. She'd get close, within ten or fifteen feet… but only while she was intangible. The moment she went solid, no matter how well she'd hidden, no matter how quiet she was, his ears would prick up and he'd start peering about in her general direction. Was she slipping up? Getting sloppy?
No. Crap. He had some sort of danger sense, or something. That had to be the explanation--
Well, Sophia thought to herself as she peered over the edge of the rooftop at the trick-or-treaters in the street below, she had all sorts of ways to persuade...
"Trick." The voice, like Darth Vader without the wheezing rasp, was right behind her.
She whirled around, crossbow at the ready. He was standing no more than six feet behind her, holding something in one hand and smirking down at her. "I think you mean 'Trick or Treat,' " she said-- even as she snapped off a shot on the word "or." Most jokers got caught flatfooted by that trick; they weren't expecting you to pop a shot a couple of words before you finished your witty repartee.
He wasn't. He dodged the dart by the simple expedient of leaping over her, landing on the ledge behind her as nimbly as a cat. She whirled around--
SPLAT.
"Nah," he said as she fished the banana cream pie out of the eyeholes in her mask. "Just 'Trick.'" She heard the beating of wings; he was of course long gone by the time she could see again. Her tracking dart was jammed point first into the roof at her feet. She swore and sputtered. How the hell was anyone supposed to catch a guy who could literally sense…
Then it clicked. He'd somehow been able to sense where she was, except when she had been intangible.
She had an edge. Better yet, she realized, he had a "tell." Any time she'd gone from one state to the next he'd started looking around for her. He couldn't help it; it would be like hearing a gunshot or seeing a flash of light out of the corner of your eye and not responding. She'd bet her next week's expense budget that he'd do that no matter the form he was in.
She almost cackled out loud. Screw the Unwritten Rules. She was going to track him down no matter what form he was in and--
Then she saw where the concrete ledge had been scratched up with the point of her tracking dart. The message he'd scratched in the stone made her freeze.
I HAVE YOUR SCENT NOW
The implication was clear. She could track him, get him to expose himself-- but he could track her, too. Her language smeared a sulphurous blue streak in the sky.
"Hey Taylor, long time no see. Sorry I haven't… oh hey, new phone?" Adrian said.
Taylor looked up; she had been leaning against her locker, waiting for him, apparently. She had her new phone gripped in between her thumbs; probably playing one of the games he'd downloaded into the thing. "Oh hi Adrian, I've been waiting for you-- uh just a second." She looked at the phone again. There was a twang and a squeal and the sound of blocks falling. "Die, piggies, die," she said under her breath. "Uh yeah, it's a new phone," she said, brushing her hair back, careful not to dislodge the glass butterfly perched there. "My Dad finally cracked, I guess. Or someone gifted them to him and made him crack..." she gave a nervous offhand laugh.
He looked at it and whistled. "Wow. That looks… major league expensive," he said.
"Yeah, time paid up for a full year, digital video camera, internet, email, the works," she said. "Even these little cool games and..."
"Does it make phone calls?" he quipped. In his head he smirked to himself. She had no idea how many extra "works" that thing came with. Thanks to Parian, he'd gotten contact with a Tinker rogue who'd broken about a hundred FCC regulations and jailbroken the bejeezus out of the thing. It had only cost him about a half dozen AOBs (mark II) In trade. The guy was paranoid, and liked to back up his security backups. Plus he thought the little steampunk-looking robots were nifty.
Then Bayleaf had opened the case and enchanted the inside with about a hundred protective Runes, case and components alike. That thing probably had an armor class somewhere around that of battleship plate. Adrian wondered how long it would be before they noticed that their phones never really quite ran out of power or air time…
"Har har. Yes. Which makes ME very happy. Now Dad and I can stay in touch, reach each other in case of emergencies. Which is very copacetic." Her smile got a hitch in it. "Of course we both took blood oaths to never use the things while driving..."
"Wise," he said. "Oh, gimme your number?" He pulled out his own phone; it was the same as hers-- but didn't show it, of course. It looked a bit battered, and had a cheap protective case. They both hunched over their phones and fiddled with the buttons, swapping their phone numbers and their email.
Taylor suddenly giggled. "What?" Adrian said.
"Oh, its just me, doing something so stereotypically teen," she said. "I've never actually had anyone to swap this stuff with, not since..." she stopped.
"Not since Emma, right?" Adrian said. Taylor shook her head. "Hey, they haven't been giving you more crap, have they?"
Taylor sighed. "Just the usual," she said. "A few shoves, some namecalling. Getting the rest of their Goldfish Poop gang to say nasty things in earshot..." she shrugged.
"Hey." he said. She looked up. "It'll get better, I promise." She smiled uncertainly at him.
"You know, I was kind of wondering..." she said. "Maybe we could hang out sometime? After school, I mean? We only see each other in class or the hallways, and…" she shrugged, ducking her head, obviously trying to turtle up in case he rejected her.
His own smile shrank a bit. "Look, I think you should know, I'm gonna be kind of seriously busy for the next couple of weeks," he said. "Mostly getting ready for the Holidays." He tapped her butterfly jewelry by way of explanation. "I might even be missing a few classes..."
"Oh." She looked downcast, but tried to hide it. "I understand--"
"Hey." She stopped at the interruption. "I'd love to hang out with you, really. Been trying to figure out how to broach the idea myself," he said. "But… well. Obligations… Tell you what. Can we maybe get together New Years?" She brightened. "They're doing a street party thing for the big countdown. We'll go out, eat some bad food-cart food, point and laugh at all the new years' drunks--- paint the town red. Whaddya say?"
"I'll have to ask my Dad about it," she said, smiling. "But yeah, sure."
"Hey, meet your Dad, too, that's good," he said. "I'm sure I'll make a good impression--" He popped his collar and slicked his hair back, then mimed ringing a doorbell. "Ding Dong." he pretended the door opened. He slouched down and did his best Beavis and Butthead imitation. "Hi, Mr. Hebert, I'm here for yer daughter. A hur hur hur--" he mimed a door slamming in his face. Taylor laughed. "Oh yeah, I'll make a real good impression. Drive up on my Harley..."
"You have a Harley?"
"Kinda-- it's a Schwinn with a cardboard cutout taped to the side." He pretended to pedal frantically. Taylor was laughing so hard now she had a stitch in her side. "Okay," he said when she calmed down. "It's a date then."
"I… guess?" Taylor said.
"If I don't see you before then… I'll call ahead of time. Okay?" He looked at her earnestly.
"Okay." The bell blatted. "Ugh, time for class with Gladly," Taylor said, shoulders sagging in disgust.
"Aww. But if we do Weally WELL, he might give us a COOKIE," Adrian said, earnest and wide-eyed.
Taylor snickered. "Did you get your half of the report done?" she asked.
"Impact of capes on the world?" He held up some printout papers filled with notes. "Yuppers."
"Let's go face the music then..." They headed off down the hall.
"Really, he's not THAT bad," Taylor said.
"Are you kidding? He's a living cliche'. He's like a character from one of those 80s teen comedy movies who keeps trying to use "cool teen speak" and can't get it right..."
Adrian hadn't been dissembling about being busy. People were snapping up every toy he made as fast as he could make them, and ordering more through his email account. It had gotten to where he had taken two days and built a desktop clockwork assembly line to build the more common components of his widgets. It was busy cranking out little gears, levers, and camshafts night and day from scrap metal he fed into the hopper at one end. Half those components were fed to another auto assembler and turned into miniature ratiocinators for the alarm-o-bots and their yet-to-be-completed bigger brothers.
But cranking out stocking stuffers wasn't what was going to keep him busy. He had been cracking down mostly on the Merchant drug dealers, busting them up, destroying their merchandise, sending the dealers to the cops wrapped up like birthday presents. They'd gotten more aggressive as a consequence. More and more of them were carrying guns; more than a few of them had started bringing large, angry dogs on chains with them, presumably in the hopes the dogs would scent him early and sound the alarm, or attack him if he got close enough.
But still Skidmark, Squealer and the other Merchant capes were still laying low. It was frustrating. With all the chaos coming up in the timeline, Adrian wanted at least one cape gang defanged and out of the way, and the Merchants were his target of choice-- simply for the fact that they seemed the least organized and effective, and thus the easiest challenge. The Empire just had too many capes, and too strong a hierarchy… if Kaiser fell there were a half dozen others to take his place. Coil was currently untouchable. Lung and Bakuda would bring down half the city (and squash him like a grape, if he was being honest with himself.) But take out the Merchant capes, especially Skidmark and whoever was pulling his strings, and the rest of the Merchants would fall apart like wet newspaper.
First it was time to drop some bugs in some ears again...
It was well past sunset again. Armsmaster was out doing a solo patrol in the south side of the City, following no patrol route in particular and frankly, sulking. His conversationalist wasn't getting much headway in pulling him out of his pout either. "It's obvious that this-- rogue-- is targeting me in particular for public embarrassment," he said grouchily. "His stunts and pranks disproportionately end up involving ME. Everything he's done has been calculated to make me look like a fool!"
"You could be biasing the results," Dragon pointed out, her icon in his HUD cocking an eyebrow. "You have dedicated considerable time to trying to track him down, and in steadily increasing amounts. It just may be that you're merely the first, ah, target available." She carefully avoided the phrase "fall guy." "Besides which his jokes have generally been fairly harmless.."
"He turned into a tree, hid in an orchard and pelted me with crab apples!" Armsmaster snarled. He reined in his temper with difficulty. "Every time I have encountered him my approval ratings with the public have gone DOWN..."
"Probably because you are the only one not LAUGHING," Dragon said. "Public figures who can laugh at themselves gain more popularity and trust; they're perceived as being more human and relatable. Look at the Wards. They've had run-ins with him as well. Shadow Stalker got hit with a pie… she stood there on a rooftop squalling and yelling like a scalded cat, and got nothing but complaints from parents about her cursing.
"Later on, he sneaks up behind ClockBlocker while he's doing an interview with a blogger on the street and sprinkles Soy Sauce on him, slavering and licking his chops." She stopped to chuckle at the memory. "He turns around, sees a seven foot werewolf holding a plastic fork and knife, screams like a little girl and nearly jumps out of his costume… a minute later he's laughing along with the guy holding the webcam about how 'Skinwalker got him that time.' Guess whose PHO ratings went up and whose went down the next day?"
"So I'm supposed to pretend to find his antics humorous?" Armsmaster said scathingly.
"No. I've seen you trying to fake laughter. In a word: Don't."
"I don't find anything this Skinwalker does humorous in the least," Armsmaster growled.
Dragon sighed. And that's the whole problem, Colin, she thought. When a person made of silicon and computer programming is easier to make laugh than you are, you have ISSUES.
Armsmaster was just cruising past the Ferry South when he saw it. There was a whistle and pop, and a firework burst somewhere over the middle of Shantytown. Then a second, then a third, showering the sky with rosettes and sparkles. "It's him!" Colin blurted. "It has to be!"
"How can you tell?"
A fourth rocket went up. With a dozen staccato pops, letters formed:
ARMSY
IS A
DOINK
"Call it a hunch," Armsmaster growled. He revved the motor on his bike.
"Colin," Dragon said, her voice steady and soothing. "Now don't do anything rash… Colin--!" Armsmaster wasn't listening. He hit the accelerator and roared off down the road, his siren blaring.
He had slowed down considerably by the time he reached the point he had calculated the rockets were launched. The Shantytown didn't exactly have a regular street grid, and the makeshift roads between the makeshift houses often more resembled those of some old European village, with zigs and zags and hairpin turns.
He was barely moving at a crawl when he reached the open patch where the rockets came from--- a bare patch of dirt that might have been the lot for a house at one time, edged with crumbling sidewalks and half-vanished pavement. The rocket stands were still standing in the middle, smoking slightly.
His bike suddenly stuttered and stalled, its running lights dimming, and then glided to a halt, completely shut down. The monitors on his armor fizzed with static, his HUD turning into snow and winking out. He dismounted in a forward roll, coming to his feet with his halberd in hand.
Skinwalker was standing on the other side of the square, holding a--- Colin squinted; it looked like an overlarge remote control, with brass buttons and fittings and a rotating satellite dish on the end. "Ah, the gnomish universal remote," Skinwalker said, his baritone voice cheerful. "Always fun at parties." He pushed another button on it. There was a crash behind him; Armsmaster looked back and saw a chain link security gate covered in wires and blinking christmas lights pop up from the ground on steel spring hinges like a gigantic mouse trap and crash into place, blocking off the exit. Sparks popped and sizzled as the locks made contact. If that wasn't visible warning enough, the "Danger: High Voltage" signs would have been a clue. He saw similar gates pop up at the two other exits, then still more flipped down, closing off the top… locking his damnably slow-flying cambot outside, he noted with annoyance.
The remote in Skinwalker's hand fizzed and sputtered and made an odd "sproing" sound. "Ah nuts," Skinwalker grumped. "Well, it did its job anyway." He dropped the device into a pouch on his belt and gestured up at the blinking, buzzing, light and sign covered cage entrapping them. "Faraday cage," he said. "You like it? Wanted to make sure you didn't do anything rash-- like call a bunch of your friends to ruin things."
"You've finally crossed the line, Skinwalker," Armsmaster said, hoping the cambot could hear him over the buzz of the electrified cage. holding his halberd at the ready.
Skinwalker replied, protecting for the cheap seats. "Have I? You're the one who's been running up and down the length of Brockton Bay, shaking the trees and rattling the locks, trying to hunt me down-- all because after our first meeting you wanted a rematch." He pulled an impossibly long wooden staff out of the pouch at his hip. "Well, here it is. A genuine no holds barred cage match." He spun the staff around, dropping into a combat stance of his own. "Let's see what you've got, Hal-Beard." At some unseen signal, music began to blare: Armsmaster bit back a groan of annoyance. Really? The Star Trek Pon Farr Duel Music. He braced himself as the wolfman rushed him.
Their staffs flew in a blur, cracking against each other in a flurry of strikes and parries. They crossed staffs, straining against each other. Skinwalker's muzzle was next to Armsmaster's ear when he spoke.
"I hope you're recording this because we haven't got much time."
Startled, Armsmaster rolled fell back and rolled away. Skinwalker backflipped clear in the opposite direction. They circled each other warily. As soon as his back was to the cambot hovering outside he spoke again.
"I'm sorry about this, it was the only way to contact you without tipping my hand. Don't let anyone see your recordings of this. You have enemies in the PRT." His voice was just loud enough for Armsmaster to hear, with his enhanced audio microphones. The Cambot wouldn't be able to pick it up at all, not with all that buzzing wiring in the way. And anyone watching the footage wouldn't be able to read their lips, either, thanks to all the blinking lights and warning signs obstructing the view.
If this was a prank or a trick, it was a damned complex one. Armsmaster waited till the cambot had circled around to the other side. "Enemies? Who?" With his wolfen ears he should have been able to hear that, Colin hoped.
"Coil."They came together in another flurry of blows. He kept speaking even as he fought. "Make this look good-- he's going to be going over it with a fine tooth comb. He's got spies all up and down your organization." He deliberately left an opening, took a hard blow from the butt of Colin's halberd across his forearm. "Not bad for a stuffed shirt," he said aloud, breathing heavily. "Your girlfriend oughta found something by now."
"Dragon found traces of illicit data traffic. But how do you know it's him?" He tried for a sweeping kick, only to come up short.
"Too long to tell. But nearly everything in this city traces back to him." He leaped across the makeshift arena, snarling, and grappled with Armsmaster for his halberd. He spoke through his snarling teeth. "The Undersiders are his cats paw; he pays them to pull jobs to distract you at the right time. The Travelers are under his thumb too--"
"How?" Armsmaster hissed through gritted teeth.
Skinwalker snarled and shifted his stance. "One of them is a case 53 monster with a messed up power." He let Armsmaster knock him away again, rolled in the dust and retrieved his staff. "But he's got way more than that."
He jabbed and thrust as Armsmaster parried. "Worse, he's got powers himself. He's a time tweaker-- Heisenberg effect on a macro scale. He splits time, creates two temporary timelines--"
Armsmaster swore aloud at that. "--then picks the one he likes to keep when the waveform collapses," he concluded. His werewolf sparring partner gave a quick nod. Armsmaster's mind raced ahead at the implications. That would be why the Undersiders and Travelers were so successful. Coil runs two timelines, one's a go, the other's a no go. If they succeed, he collapses the second timeline. If they fail, he collapses the first.
Armsmaster actually took a blow to the ribs. The implications were staggering. If Coil was careful with that power he'd be untouchable, able to erase any mistake he made as if it never happened. He could commit the most brazen crimes; he could walk out the front door of the PRT with top secret files under his arm, or torture prisoners for information, then just collapse the waveform and keep the timeline where he kept his nose clean... and leave his victims none the wiser. He shoved the halberd between Skinwalker's legs, tripping him. Skinwalker hit the ground. "Where's his base? Do you know that?"
Skinwalker grimaced and rolled to his feet again. "Under the City. an Endbringer shelter that fell off the books."
"So why haven't you tried to take him out?" Armsmaster grunted.
"Three words: Load Bearing Boss," Skinwalker said.
"His base is wired to explode," Armsmaster concluded. An underground explosion downtown, with Brockton Bay sitting on that enormous aquifer... it would bring down multiple skyscrapers, killing thousands.
They danced in a circle around each other. "That and worse. He's got a dossier on the Empire Eighty Eight capes-- their real names, everything. If things get hot he'll release it to the press."
Armsmaster felt ice down the back of his neck. If Coil broke the Unwritten Rules that badly it would be war. Instant war, with no mercy and no quarter given.
They spun in their dangerous ballet. "It gets worse. The Case 53? Class S threat, easily. She absorbs people. Eats them, makes evil clones of them-- complete with twisted versions of their powers. Nilbog 2.0." Armsmaster felt his already-chilled blood freeze. If Coil pushed the big red button, every cape in the region would respond to the crisis.They'd come swarming in just be fodder for an army of monsters.
Armsmaster had visions of psychotic clones of Legend, Eidolon, Alexandria rampaging across the world... And thus far, the needle on Armsmaster's lie detector hadn't wavered. Skinwalker was telling the absolute truth. "What's he waiting for?" Armsmaster said. It certainly sounded like Coil had all the tools at hand to hold the entire city hostage. What else did he need?
"the mayor's niece, Dinah Alcott." Armsmaster scowled in confusion. "She's a precog. The most powerful ever. She can give predictions as percentages... and she can't lie. Her power won't let her."
Armsmaster kept his expression stony as he kipped to his feet. He could feel the blood draining from his face. "If he leverages her power with his--"
"With her, he'll be unstoppable," Skinwalker said. He hopped backward and did a fancy flourish with his staff. "Not bad, Armsmaster, but not good enough," he said, projecting his voice so the cambot picked it up. "Come on, you want to be in the big leagues, don't you?"
Armsmaster didn't quite have to fake his growl as he pressed his attack. "Why are you doing all this?" he said, equally loud. He hoped Skinwalker could pick up what he was trying to say. Why all this? Even if there were spies and infiltrators, why not just... drop a letter, or speak to one of the Protectorate higher-ups directly?
Skinwalker grunted. "Think about it," he said.
Armsmaster's mind raced. It had to be more than just infiltrators Skinwalker was worried about, more just than some PRT troopers or office workers playing double agent. It had to be someone highly placed; so highly placed that even the most clandestine information would pass through their hands. "Who?" Colin demanded.
The wolfman hesitated. He closed with Armsmaster, got in a weapon-clinch with him, then to Colin's utter shock, deliberately faked Armsmaster pushing him backwards into the electrified wall of the cage. The wolfman snarled as sparks flew and bulbs blew. Under the cover of the tesla-coil buzz of shorting wires he snarled one name:
"Thomas Calvert!"
Armsmaster leaped back. The wolf-man fell forward onto his hands and knees, his back smoking slightly. "A bit more voltage than I intended," he wheezed. He clutched his chest with one clawed hand. Green light swirled, trailing across his chest and over his back. He moaned as if in relief. "Well," he said, getting to his feet and leaning on his staff. "I'll admit it, you're better than I am." He gave Armsmaster a toothy grin.
Armsmaster would later kick himself for walking right into it. "Then why are you smiling?" he said, still holding his staff at the ready.
Skinwalker gave him a wide-eyed, wide-open-mouthed doggy smile. "I... am not left handed!" He spun his staff in his right hand and thrust the end through the fencing. He struck a large red button Armsmaster hadn't noticed before. There was a loud BLAAT; the lights went dark, the fence wiring stopped sparking and the makeshift cage collapsed outward, leaving the alleyways free.
"So it is time for me to go..." He said with a bow. "Oh, and I'm sorry for this too."
"Sorry for WAAGh!?" From every corner, from under trash cans and from beneath trailers, out of the shadows and through holes in fences and walls, came dozens of tiny, knee high robots with rotating strobe lights for heads. They surrounded Armsmaster and swarmed over him, clinging with suckers and claws and little magnet hands, blaring and tooting and flashing blinding light of every color in his face. Several began spraying him with fire-suppressant foam. Others began trying to dismantle his armor from outside with screwdrivers. He began flailing about with his halberd, trying unsuccessfully to detach his assailants.
"Catch you later, Armsy," Skinwalker said. He transformed into an owl and leapt into the sky.
"Get off, you little--- SKINWALKERRRR!"
Skinwalker, aka Bayleaf, aka Adrian Smith, arrived home at his lair. He climbed down through the skylight and collapsed across the bed. Auurgh. "Faking" a fight hurt almost worse than fighting for real.
The clock next to his bed chimed. "It's now six AM." it said sweetly. "Time to get up."
Adrian groaned. "Tell you what," he said to noone in particular. "Let's take today and tomorrow off, whaddya say. We'll start.. the next phase then..."
Chapter Text
It wasn't long before the Goldfish Poop Girls turned up the heat on their social-fu.
Phase two came with indirect attacks. Apparently they'd been dropping bugs in people's ears about the new kid. What they said was irrelevant; it changed from person to person, and all depended on what would get them the most agitated. Some, they dropped hints that he was aspiring e88. Others they played the 'save the princess' angle; flirting with various guys and then dropping a pouty lip about this mean ol' new guy who was making things rough for them, and how they'd be ever so grateful (pop the top button on their shirt, tug their tube top down just so) to anyone who dealt with them…
Sophia, of course, would sooner deep throat a dead rat than resort to those tactics. Her poison pen of preference was to drop hints within earshot of the more excitable e88 members about his possible sexual preferences. Or to hint to the junkies that he was a narc; after all he was certainly tall and broad shouldered enough to pass for an undercover cop. Or tell the other black students how often he used the word "nigger" when he talked to her (one thing dear old Wildbow never mentioned was that while the e88 was the largest WHITE race gang in the city, and the ABB took up the ASIAN gangsters, there were more than enough BLACK gangbangers running around Brockton Bay… and Winslow… to at least put in a showing. In retrospect it made sense really; you could hardly make hay as a white supremacist group without a black gang or two floating around for you to point at and pitch a fit about.)
The first hint came at lunch on a Tuesday. Taylor had called in sick, so Adrian was sitting alone at their table, digging his way through a calzone (he'd learned his lesson after day one and always packed a lunch) when a skinny kid with a leather jacket and a spiky faux-hawk slid into the seat across from him. "Hey."
Adrian looked him over. Even with a quick glance he could see a few signs of what gang the kid ran with; a couple of ambiguously aryan symbols on his jacket; a crude homemade tattoo of the SS symbol on the back of his middle finger. "Can I help you?" he asked coolly.
The gangly kid grinned. "It's chill, it's chill," he said, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. "Just a peaceful overture, 'kay?"
"Peaceful overture," Adrian repeated.
"Yeah. Some of the guys I hang with--" He looked around furtively and shook his arm; a bracelet with the symbol of the E88 slid down out of his jacket sleeve. "We were impressed with how you put that uppity Sophia ni--- uh, girl in her place." He stuffed the bracelet back up his sleeve out of sight. "She's been a pain since the day she walked in the doors here. Some of the guys tried to teach her some manners, but they didn't stick, so to speak."
"You got handsy with her and she beat your backsides like a drum set," Adrian corrected, taking a bite of calzone. "Hint for the future," he said with a mouthful of food, "Don't try to manhandle a chick with commando training."
"Commando training?" the faux hawk kid said, his eyes going wide.
Adrian realized his mistake and bluffed. "Calluses on her hands, arms and legs," he said blithely. "From pummeling the crap out of training dummies, breaking bricks, that kind of thing. Let's just say she's gotten a little more than just some time on the mat at the Y."
Faux Hawk swore under his breath, eyebrows raised. "Anyway… we saw how you handled her, and we figured you might be looking for a crew to hang with. We think you got what it takes to be one of us..." He stopped in mid sentence when he saw Adrian shaking his head, smirking. He scowled. "What, you think you're too good for us?"
Adrian swallowed. "Nope, I just think we'd be really bad for each other." At the kid's surly yet puzzled expression he started counting off on his fingers. "Okay, one: I don't really agree with all that race crap. More importantly, I'm a Memento survivor." he pulled a metal tag on a chain out from under his shirt and held it up for the kid to see. It looked like a med-alert tag, but the symbols were entirely different. "I got, whaddyacallit, retrograde amnesia. Everything before about a year ago is more or less gone."
"Wow. That sucks."
"Yeah. But point is, I don't even know what race I am. Hell, I think there's a good chance I'm Jewish."
Faux Hawk looked puzzled. "How would-- oh yeah, right. Nevermind," he said, as Adrian rolled his eyes and pulled several very expressive faces. He snorted and actually grinned. "Yeah, that'd be bad. Year down the road I find out I created the world's first Nazi Jew." He and Adrian snickered a bit at that.
Adrian counted off one more finger. "And the real big reason? Because the E88 has got all the wrong explanations for your problems, and all the wrong solutions."
"So you think us white people don't have any legitimate grievances? Is that it?" Faux Hawk snorted. "You can't be oppressed because you're WHITE, right?"
"No, I think white people have all sorts of genuine, legitimate grievances," Adrian said. "The fact that people can tell you that you can't be suffering oppression because of your skin color is one of them. When I see people get turned down for jobs because they don't have the right skin color, or they can't get into a decent school while another kid gets a free ride for having black skin, or some white kid gets guilt-tripped for things that happened before his granddaddy was even born, or some black guy gets tried for murder and gets a slap on the wrist because someone, somewhere, who might have been involved with his arrest said the "N" word, yeah, that's a load of crap. No, it's injustice.
"But none of those things are caused because of them being black. Or being an "inferior race." You raise someone in a lousy environment, with a lousy bunch of values, you'll get lousy results, no matter what color they are." The kid's face was getting stormy, so he switched tactics.
He picked up the plastic fork that came with his lunch and toyed with it. "Tell me, you ever heard of an old scam called 'let's you and him fight?'" Faux Hawk shook his head. "Well you can figure it out just by the name. Some guy gets two people mad at each other. Fighting mad. Then when they get together and start throwing fists, he's there arranging things so that no matter who wins and who loses, he gets the benefit-- say with a rigged gambling pool, or selling tickets to the fight… or just by getting two people he doesn't like arrested for disturbing the peace.
"Now maybe you didn't notice it, but while you've got people like Kaiser over here, inflaming things, telling you that all the problems in your world are the fault of blacks, they've got a-holes over on their side, telling them the same thing. Now ask yourself; who benefits the most from having both of you at each other's throats?"
A light seemed to go on in the skinny neonazi's eyes. He leaned in. "Of course," he said. "The JEWS."
Adrian's head hit the table so hard it bounced. "Just… just go, kid," he said, face planted in the tabletop.
Faux Hawk got up and shoved off. "You're gonna be sorry you didn't make some friends when you could," he said… a halfhearted threat at best. He walked off in a slouch. "Just when he was starting to make sense..." he muttered.
Adrian groaned. His head hurt and it was only partly the fault of the table.
It was well after dark. Armsmaster was standing at the intersection of 4th and Main, overlooking the remnants of the latest gang fracas. Gangbangers were scattered about the street, most unconscious, some groaning and nursing their injuries. Most were bound up in coils of thick thorny vines. One in particular, however, was bound to a light pole by the remains of a metal anti-theft grille that had apparently been ripped off a nearby store window. It was a teenager, female, dressed in a full-body red and black suit and a gas mask of some sort. The scorch marks on the walls, pavement, and on a few of the gangsters made identifying her a certainty. "Spitfire," Armsmaster said. He sent his hovercam drifting over to get some footage of her. "What was her stake in this?"
He pushed the bobbing globe of the cambot to one side. It was a distraction at times, but he'd come to the conclusion with all the Youtube footage making the rounds of the internet, he was going to have to up his PR game and get some facetime online of his own, to bolster his flagging numbers. Hopefully a few selfies-- that's what the kids called these live videos, right?-- a few selfies of himself in action would increase his popularity.
One of the city cops standing by scratched his head. "From what we gathered, this was a turf fight between a couple of two-bit gangs," he said. "One side or the other saved up their milk money and hired Spitfire to give them some extra muscle."
"Faultline's crew doesn't normally take contracts anywhere in the city," he said as the cambot panned around them for a better profile.
The cop shrugged. "So Spitfire didn't tell her or it's too penny-ante for her to care," he said. "Anyway, the balloon had just gone up-- we arrived, saw Spitfire slinging that napalm spit of hers everywhere, and called you--"
"And we thank you for that timely response," Armsmaster said, reading off his teleprompter.
"Er, yeah. But just as we did that new guy dropped into the middle of it. Skinwalker, I think you called him?"
"Yes, that is the name the PRT chose for his file," Armsmaster said dryly.
The cop laughed. "Yeah, that guy's best of the best," he said. "Kickin' tail and takin' names. You gotta get him on the Protectorate; he could be even bigger than Dauntless!"
Armsmaster could feel his teeth grinding against each other at the mention of his biggest rival. With an effort of will he unclenched his jaw. "That is our objective," he managed to say. "What did he do?"
"Well, Spitfire there was just about to roast a bunch of gangers. He just drops down out of the air, right in between 'em, and tanks it--- fire splashing all over him, the boys and I thought for sure he was cooked. But the instant Spitfire runs out of breath he stands up, shakes the last of it off his cloak, and takes her and all the others out."
"How?" Armsmaster demanded. The cambot zoomed in.
"While Spitfire's winding up for another round of flame, he sort of waved his staff at her," the cop said. "And this torrent of blue white light falls down out of the sky on them. WHOOM." He mimed with his hands something falling out of the sky like the fist of an angry god. "Dunno what it was, it fritzed out the radios and the streetlights something fierce and knocked everyone it hit unconscious.
"There were a few left standing, so he spins around and points at each of them, and more light comes down-- only little short bursts, on each of them. Whoom. Whoom. Whoom. Whoom. Some of 'em were bright yellow, though-- could feel the heat all the way back here. The EMTs think it sort of flash heated them from the inside out… gave them instant heat stroke, basically, knocked 'em flat. The ones hit by the blue light, the EMTs dunno, but they say they're acting like they stuck their tongues in a light socket."
"And then?"
"And then once they were all down, he wrapped 'em up in those vines," the cop said, pointing. "Like they came shooting up out of the pavement. 'Cept for Spitty there. He tore down that grille and wrapped her up in it. Probably figured she'd just burn off any vines he tied her with."
It was at this point Kid Win came gliding over. The Ward had managed to pull a late night patrol with Armsmaster, and was doing his best to play helpful sidekick. He was holding the remains of one of the vines, now brown and brittle. "More like down into the pavement, sir," he said, pointing. "Not very deep at all, actually. See the roots? All said there's surprisingly little damage."
"He still vandalized a huge section of street and sidewalk," Armsmaster said pedantically.
The cop snorted. "Well I'll take a buncha holes in the pavement over a buncha holes in people-- or in my men-- any day of the week," he said emphatically. "Anyway, once everyone's down and vined up, he bandages up the ones that are most hurt, gives everything the once-over, turns into a big hoot-owl and flies away. All in the five minutes it took you guys to get here."
Armsmaster's lips pursed at the implied rebuke. "Be sure and get samples of those bandages he used," he said to Kid Win. Kid Win nodded. They'd already gotten earlier samples and given them to the techs, who were having absolute fits over their properties. Armsmaster fully intended to get some of these miracle bandages back to his own lab and figure out their secrets for himself first. He was getting tired of working his armored backside off only to have someone else steal a march on him.
"He does healing too?" The cop said. "You gotta get this guy on the team..."
Kid Win grinned. "That's kinda the plan, yeah," he said.
Armsmaster grunted. "Unfortunately he's not cooperating with our efforts to contact him," he said with the air of someone complaining about a disobedient house pet. "He apparently prefers to run rogue, rather than work with the proper authorities--- throwing everything into disorder and engaging in juvenile pranks, upsetting the balance of-- WAH!" While he was speaking something dark and winged dove out of the night, sweeping by mere inches past his head and striking the back of his helmet in passing. The cambot tracked it; It was a giant horned owl, already swooping down the street.
"HALT!" Armsmaster yelled fruitlessly. "Stop in the name of the law!" He turned to Kid Win, his cameras stuttering and his helmet feeling oddly lopsided. Had that blasted rogue damaged his helmet? "Kid Win, quick, tail him, I'll try to follow you on-- what? What??"
Kid Win was staring at him with an expression of barely contained hilarity on his face, as if he desperately wanted to laugh but was too afraid to. No, he was staring at the top of his head? Some of the cops were starting to laugh. "WHAT?"
For lack of a mirror, he turned to his cambot and pulled up the outgoing feed on his visor. Stuck on the top of his helmet by a suction cup was a pair of huge, fluffy, pink bunny rabbit ears.
The cambot was working perfectly: it had the ears in completely in frame with his outraged, helmeted face.
"SKINWALKERRR!"
In the distance, a faint "Hoo hoo hoo hoo" could be heard.
"Hey, Fag."
Adrian turned around, his eyebrows raised. They'd just finished a really pointless round of dodgeball (dodgeball, for crying out loud. What was this, gradeschool?) in Gym. It had been seriously tiring-- not because it was difficult, in fact the opposite: he'd expended an incredible amount of effort to not do too well, to actually let a bunch of teenagers who looked like they were moving in slow motion to him occasionally pummel him with volleyballs. He'd showered, and was trying to get dressed and on his way without incident. Apparently it was not to be.
One of the bigger Juniors, a bruiser on the football team with a shaved head and a swastika blatantly tattooed on his shoulder was standing behind him, towel around his waist and shower water beading on his shaved head. He had two other thugs still in their gym gear standing at his shoulders, doing their best to block everyone else's view. "Yeah, I was talking to you, fag," he said. "We found out what you are, fruit. Come on, deny it."
Adrian stared at him in silence. He drew it out for several seconds, making it awkward. Then, just as they were starting to twitch and shuffle self-consciously, he spoke up. "What the hell is anyone supposed to say to that?" he said, his voice redolent in genuine disbelief, projecting his voice so everyone could hear. "There is literally no way to--" he hopped to his feet; the three trying to intimidate him backed up a step. It was easy to forget just how BIG the new guy actually was.
He addressed the room, arms thrown wide and his projecting his voice. "I mean seriously, am I wrong? What am I supposed say to that. Am I supposed to do something to prove I'm NOT gay? Pull a cheerleader in here, hump her in front of you--" he grunted and made some crude hip thrusting motions-- "Spike her into the floor like a football and yell 'TOUCHDOWWWWN!' ?" He planted a foot on the bench and pretended to shoot the horns to an imaginary stadium audience.
Several of the guys in the room snickered, but stifled it when the skinheads glared at them. Lacking any clever answer, Skinhead #1 opted for the standard tactical approach of the domestic cretin: ignoring everything and plowing onward. "Yeah, we know what you are," he said. "We don't like your kind around here." His his smirk was now a full on snarl. "Think you're so clever... running around with that little Hebert lezzo beside you for a fag hag--"
The new kid's face suddenly darkened. Deep inside Adrian's chest the wolf rumbled. Those standing nearby heard that faint sound and suddenly looked nervous. Adrian pushed the wolf back down and looked the lead E88 in the eye with a deliberate poker face. "Fella, I may not be clever, but I ain't the one who came into a locker room, took off his pants, and came over with two of his boyfriends to ask if the new guy was gay."
"OHHHhhhhhh!!!"
It took a moment for the words to work their way through the strata of bone in the goon's head. When they hit pay dirt, he swelled up and lunged.
Even as they started moving Adrian was already in motion. He grabbed the towel around Skinhead's waist and whipped it away. One twist of his wrist and he had a rat-tail in his hand. Before Skinhead even had time to yell and cover himself, Adrian snapped the end of the rat-tail right in his fruit and veg.
Skinhead went down, shrieking and clutching himself. Before his two buddies could react the towel whipped out again, striking each of them right in the septum, underneath their noses. They tumbled backward clutching at their bleeding faces.
"Cover that up," he said in disgust, throwing the towel over Skinhead where he was curled up on the floor. "You're making everyone nauseous." He reached down to pick up his shoes.
Unfortunately for Adrian, he'd forgotten that there were more members of the E88 in the room. The gym coach came thundering into the room just as the rest of them dogpiled him.
Blackwell, predictably, gave him in-school suspension while the other students got off fairly light. Of course, in spite of Bayleaf holding back, several of them were sporting black eyes, broken noses, missing teeth, and other injuries that would keep them out of classes for a few days at least, but still, it was the principle of the thing that bugged him. The bruises and welts stung--- he could not heal them immediately without giving the whole game away-- but not quite as much as the mocking, triumphant looks from the Trio as he passed them in the hallway.
They were going to go after Taylor next, now that they thought he was out of the way. She'd have to go it alone for a few days, but that was unacceptable. He was going to have to smarten up.
Taylor skipped over the broken front step, opened the front door and walked inside. It had been… well, not a horrible day, but a bit rougher than they had been for a while. Adrian had been given in-school suspension, and had to spend a portion of the school day sitting in one teacher or another's office serving it out. The cutting remarks behind her back had started up again once everyone saw she was on her own, and Sophia and the others had taken a few passing shots at her-- elbows in the side, papers knocked to the floor, that sort of thing. But she could endure, at least for a couple of days.
When she came inside she was surprised to find her father sitting in the living room. Danny Hebert was sitting on the couch, holding a Smartphone of all things and laughing till tears streamed down his face.
"Dad?" Taylor said, dropping her book bag.
"Oh hey, Taylor," he chuckled, wiping his eyes. "I got something to show you."
"A new phone?" she asked.
He glanced down, seemed to realize what he was holding and glanced up again. "I—Yeah," he said. He deflated a little. "A, uh, friend gave me two Smartphones, one for each of us. Even paid up for a full year, internet, the works. He was insistent..." he coughed. "Taylor, sit down." Taylor sat down on the overstuffed chair by the couch. Danny looked at his daughter earnestly. "Taylor, I owe you an apology," he said. "First off for being so distant all this time after your mother…" he hesitated. "After we lost her. I've been just going through the motions, and I haven't been here for you."
He flipped the phone over in his hand. "And, more specifically, I'm sorry about this," he said, with wry amusement. "It was foolish of me to pin the blame for your mother's death on a piece of technology, of all things. And as dangerous as this city can be, having one of these things on hand could save your life...!
"I'm not going to let that sort of foolishness affect my decision making ever again. Or at least I'll try not to... Here." He handed her a slim case. She opened it, inside was a slim, glossy black rectangle. "Here, turn it on," he said, demonstrating. The screen lit up.
"Wow," Taylor said. "Is this friend of yours rich? These things must've cost a fortune!"
"You're right about that," Danny said wryly. "I've been reading the manual, this thing has more computing power than my desktop at work." He pointed. "All those little icons are something called 'apps..'"
"Phone, email, calculator...what the heck is angry birds...internet? Holy crap, this thing has a camera??"
"The lens is on the other side. You can take stills or videos. Even post them on that Youpage thing."
"This is unbelievable!" She moved over to the couch and hugged him. "Thank you..."
"Hey, don't thank me. Okay, thank me, I'm happy to steal the credit." He chuckled. He watched her handle the phone like it was a faberge' egg.
"What were you looking at earlier?" Taylor said suddenly.
Danny began chuckling again. "We had a cape incident at the Dockyards today," he said. "Why I'm home early."
"Oh my gosh!" Taylor's hand flew to her mouth. "Was anyone hurt??"
"No, no," Danny waved his hand, shaking his head. He got a little more serious. "But it was a nasty bit of work. Armsmaster showed up at the offices; the Protectorate had intercepted some radio transmission-- one of the incoming ships was hauling human cargo." His face soured, he looked as if he wanted to spit. "Slave traders."
"Oh my--"
"Yeah. Armsmaster was there to do the bust, along with a couple others. Velocity and a couple of Wards, Shadow Stalker I think." He started chuckling again. "But before anyone could move in on the ship, one of the local rogues got on board first..."
Taylor felt herself grinning in glee. "Oh no. It wasn't..."
Danny turned his phone around so she could see the screen too and hit "replay." Armsmaster was onscreen, standing on the end of the dock in his best heroic pose and making grandiose gestures. "Kid Win, get around the other side but keep your distance, we'll try to-- what the--"
There was a commotion on the ship. Screams and shouts in what sounded like Chinese, the pop pop of some small gunfire, and the bellowing of something large and upset. As Danny and Taylor watched, several Chinese sailors made an appearance, running for their lives from the angriest looking walrus Taylor had ever seen. It was wearing a red beach blanket tied around its neck and had a big "W" across its chest in some sort of paint. One by one it chased, pushed or in some cases scooped the slavers up on his nose like a beach ball and tossed them over the rail. There were dozens of resounding splashes as criminal thugs hit the water of the harbor.
"OH my--"
"Yep," Danny said, chuckling so hard tears were forming in his eyes again. "Wonder Walrus saves the day again."
"WONDER WALRUS?"
"That's... what... they call him..." Danny choked.
Taylor and Danny watched as, over the course of fifteen minutes, the redoubtable walrus ran amuck on the ship, hunting from deck to deck, chasing down every last member of the crew and tossing them into the drink for the police and the Protectorate to fish out and tie up. Some of them had handguns and opened fire on him; that only seemed to make the walrus angrier. Those crewmembers got tossed a little further than the others.
Finally, after the last crewman was secured, the walrus disappeared belowdecks, and returned escorting a line of people, some men, but mostly young women, down the gangplank and to the shore. Many of the women sobbed in relief as they made it down to the dock; more than a few stopped to give the walrus grateful hugs.
Armsmaster was waiting at the foot of the gangplank to greet the walrus, clearly looking like he wished to be anyplace else. "The Protectorate thanks you for your help," Armsmaster gritted out. "We couldn't have done it without you..." he choked a little. "...Wonder… Walrus."
"Somebody didn't get the bu-ust," Taylor singsonged.
Armsmaster glared at the walrus.
The walrus stared at Armsmaster.
Without warning the walrus lunged forward. It wrapped its flipper around behind Armsmaster's head, pulled him in close, and planted a gigantic, whiskery walrus kiss on the Protectorate leader's face.
Taylor shrieked and fell over on the couch laughing. On the tiny screen, Wonder Walrus could be seen giving the poleaxed Protectorate hero a pat on the head, turning and diving into the Bay.
Danny watched out of the corner of his eye as his little girl lay there clutching her sides and laughing herself sick…. And pondered things.
When the fracas on the Docks had died down (and Danny and the other dockworkers had recovered from their hysterics) Danny had gone back to his office to wrap things up for the day (even without the police running around, he didn't think he, or anyone else, was going to get much work done today.) He'd found a gift-wrapped box sitting on his desk, sealed in a ziploc gallon bag still wet from the Bay.
Bemused, he'd opened it. Inside had been the phones, along with receipts showing they had airtime and internet paid up through the next year. Along with them had been a note.
Dear Mr. Hebert;
You do not know me. Maybe someday soon we will meet in person. Even if we do not, know that I am a friend.
I know about your tragic loss, and I send you all my deepest condolences. Losing a loved one is like having your heart ripped out, only to still feel it beating in pain in your chest. I know how you want to run from that pain, to hide from it deep inside yourself and never come back out. But I'm telling you now, for the sake of your daughter you cannot do that any more.
Taylor's a good person. But right now she is being tormented, not just by her own loss but by three sadists at her school who have been bullying her with impunity, from the moment she entered high school. I will tell you no more beyond that: it is neither my place nor my duty to disclose that, or to persuade Taylor to reveal it. As her father that duty, I'm afraid, lies with you.
There is one thing you must remember: She has told you none of this not because she is "keeping secrets" or because she mistrusts you, but because she cares for you-- she's seen how broken in spirit you are and it hurt her to think of adding to your pain.
She suffers in silence because she loves you. Never forget that.
There's dark days ahead (but then again, aren't they always?) and the two of you are going to have a lot of secrets to spill to each other. But you're not going to go forward if you don't trust each other first. Have faith in each other, and faith in God. You will see your way through.
And in that vein, Mr. Hebert, you cannot let your pain and loss be an excuse for handicapping yourself. The ability to communicate quickly to anyone, anywhere, is a gift of the modern age, and a vital tool for life or death situations. You cannot afford to wait to get to a pay phone in a crisis. Enclosed are two state-of-the-art smart phones and their chargers. All the bells and whistles, plus a few extras, and built as tough as a wrench. Give one to your daughter, keep them charged and keep them with you at all times, because they just might-- no, almost certainly will-- save your lives someday.
Good people are hard to find, and I'd hate to lose two of them. Take care of yourselves.
Sincerely,
A FRIEND
He'd never felt so conflicted about a gift. Part of him wanted to cry in gratitude. Part of him wanted to fling the thing out into the bay. But… he couldn't argue with this "anonymous friend" about letting his grief control him. And if what he was saying about Taylor being bullied was true… he felt a flare of anger he quickly pressed down… then he wanted her to be in contact whenever, wherever, for her own safety.
And short of having her carry around a CB Radio in her backpack, well, this was it.
"Did you see Armsmaster's face? Omigosh, play it again!"
He smiled. Definitely worth it.
...Halloween night...
Shadow Stalker cursed and swore as she leapt from one rooftop to the next. She was in a foul mood. Which was reasonable to expect, considering her personality, but for a change she had a reason. The tosspots at PRT had been talking up this new cape, Skinwalker. they had a real jones on to get their meathooks into him, and were pushing everyone, Protectorate and Ward alike, to bring this guy in. They had even started offering signup bonuses to anyone who persuaded the guy to sign on the dotted line. Extra privileges, all sorts of things. Bigger expense accounts for the Tinkers, you name it.
So naturally this dog-faced a-hole had been impossible to find.
So she'd been doing a maybe-not-quite registered patrol on Halloween Night… keeping the little kiddies safe, of course, she thought to herself with an eyeroll… when by sheer stupid chance she'd stumbled across Skinwalker. She couldn't believe it. He'd been standing on some residential street, just-- handing out candy out of a pillowcase. No, not candy: trinkets. Plastic toys, miniature flashlights, glow-sticks, that sort of thing. The kids had eaten it up. The parents too, once they got over their freakout at a seven foot whatever tall werewolf handing out goodies to their kids. She'd watched him from the shadows for a while. He'd hung there for about a half hour or so then transformed into an owl and flown off, the goody bag in his talons, to set up shop five or six blocks away.
By blind luck she'd tagged the bag with a tracer dart as he swooped overhead. From then on she'd spent the night using the HUD in her mask to track him. It had been infuriating. She'd get close, within ten or fifteen feet… but only while she was intangible. The moment she went solid, no matter how well she'd hidden, no matter how quiet she was, his ears would prick up and he'd start peering about in her general direction. Was she slipping up? Getting sloppy?
No. Crap. He had some sort of danger sense, or something. That had to be the explanation--
Well, Sophia thought to herself as she peered over the edge of the rooftop at the trick-or-treaters in the street below, she had all sorts of ways to persuade...
"Trick." The voice, like Darth Vader without the wheezing rasp, was right behind her.
She whirled around, crossbow at the ready. He was standing no more than six feet behind her, holding something in one hand and smirking down at her. "I think you mean 'Trick or Treat,' " she said-- even as she snapped off a shot on the word "or." Most jokers got caught flatfooted by that trick; they weren't expecting you to pop a shot a couple of words before you finished your witty repartee.
He wasn't. He dodged the dart by the simple expedient of leaping over her, landing on the ledge behind her as nimbly as a cat. She whirled around--
SPLAT.
"Nah," he said as she fished the banana cream pie out of the eyeholes in her mask. "Just 'Trick.'" She heard the beating of wings; he was of course long gone by the time she could see again. Her tracking dart was jammed point first into the roof at her feet. She swore and sputtered. How the hell was anyone supposed to catch a guy who could literally sense…
Then it clicked. He'd somehow been able to sense where she was, except when she had been intangible.
She had an edge. Better yet, she realized, he had a "tell." Any time she'd gone from one state to the next he'd started looking around for her. He couldn't help it; it would be like hearing a gunshot or seeing a flash of light out of the corner of your eye and not responding. She'd bet her next week's expense budget that he'd do that no matter the form he was in.
She almost cackled out loud. Screw the Unwritten Rules. She was going to track him down no matter what form he was in and--
Then she saw where the concrete ledge had been scratched up with the point of her tracking dart. The message he'd scratched in the stone made her freeze.
I HAVE YOUR SCENT NOW
The implication was clear. She could track him, get him to expose himself-- but he could track her, too. Her language smeared a sulphurous blue streak in the sky.
"Hey Taylor, long time no see. Sorry I haven't… oh hey, new phone?" Adrian said.
Taylor looked up; she had been leaning against her locker, waiting for him, apparently. She had her new phone gripped in between her thumbs; probably playing one of the games he'd downloaded into the thing. "Oh hi Adrian, I've been waiting for you-- uh just a second." She looked at the phone again. There was a twang and a squeal and the sound of blocks falling. "Die, piggies, die," she said under her breath. "Uh yeah, it's a new phone," she said, brushing her hair back, careful not to dislodge the glass butterfly perched there. "My Dad finally cracked, I guess. Or someone gifted them to him and made him crack..." she gave a nervous offhand laugh.
He looked at it and whistled. "Wow. That looks… major league expensive," he said.
"Yeah, time paid up for a full year, digital video camera, internet, email, the works," she said. "Even these little cool games and..."
"Does it make phone calls?" he quipped. In his head he smirked to himself. She had no idea how many extra "works" that thing came with. Thanks to Parian, he'd gotten contact with a Tinker rogue who'd broken about a hundred FCC regulations and jailbroken the bejeezus out of the thing. It had only cost him about a half dozen AOBs (mark II) In trade. The guy was paranoid, and liked to back up his security backups. Plus he thought the little steampunk-looking robots were nifty.
Then Bayleaf had opened the case and enchanted the inside with about a hundred protective Runes, case and components alike. That thing probably had an armor class somewhere around that of battleship plate. Adrian wondered how long it would be before they noticed that their phones never really quite ran out of power or air time…
"Har har. Yes. Which makes ME very happy. Now Dad and I can stay in touch, reach each other in case of emergencies. Which is very copacetic." Her smile got a hitch in it. "Of course we both took blood oaths to never use the things while driving..."
"Wise," he said. "Oh, gimme your number?" He pulled out his own phone; it was the same as hers-- but didn't show it, of course. It looked a bit battered, and had a cheap protective case. They both hunched over their phones and fiddled with the buttons, swapping their phone numbers and their email.
Taylor suddenly giggled. "What?" Adrian said.
"Oh, its just me, doing something so stereotypically teen," she said. "I've never actually had anyone to swap this stuff with, not since..." she stopped.
"Not since Emma, right?" Adrian said. Taylor shook her head. "Hey, they haven't been giving you more crap, have they?"
Taylor sighed. "Just the usual," she said. "A few shoves, some namecalling. Getting the rest of their Goldfish Poop gang to say nasty things in earshot..." she shrugged.
"Hey." he said. She looked up. "It'll get better, I promise." She smiled uncertainly at him.
"You know, I was kind of wondering..." she said. "Maybe we could hang out sometime? After school, I mean? We only see each other in class or the hallways, and…" she shrugged, ducking her head, obviously trying to turtle up in case he rejected her.
His own smile shrank a bit. "Look, I think you should know, I'm gonna be kind of seriously busy for the next couple of weeks," he said. "Mostly getting ready for the Holidays." He tapped her butterfly jewelry by way of explanation. "I might even be missing a few classes..."
"Oh." She looked downcast, but tried to hide it. "I understand--"
"Hey." She stopped at the interruption. "I'd love to hang out with you, really. Been trying to figure out how to broach the idea myself," he said. "But… well. Obligations… Tell you what. Can we maybe get together New Years?" She brightened. "They're doing a street party thing for the big countdown. We'll go out, eat some bad food-cart food, point and laugh at all the new years' drunks--- paint the town red. Whaddya say?"
"I'll have to ask my Dad about it," she said, smiling. "But yeah, sure."
"Hey, meet your Dad, too, that's good," he said. "I'm sure I'll make a good impression--" He popped his collar and slicked his hair back, then mimed ringing a doorbell. "Ding Dong." he pretended the door opened. He slouched down and did his best Beavis and Butthead imitation. "Hi, Mr. Hebert, I'm here for yer daughter. A hur hur hur--" he mimed a door slamming in his face. Taylor laughed. "Oh yeah, I'll make a real good impression. Drive up on my Harley..."
"You have a Harley?"
"Kinda-- it's a Schwinn with a cardboard cutout taped to the side." He pretended to pedal frantically. Taylor was laughing so hard now she had a stitch in her side. "Okay," he said when she calmed down. "It's a date then."
"I… guess?" Taylor said.
"If I don't see you before then… I'll call ahead of time. Okay?" He looked at her earnestly.
"Okay." The bell blatted. "Ugh, time for class with Gladly," Taylor said, shoulders sagging in disgust.
"Aww. But if we do Weally WELL, he might give us a COOKIE," Adrian said, earnest and wide-eyed.
Taylor snickered. "Did you get your half of the report done?" she asked.
"Impact of capes on the world?" He held up some printout papers filled with notes. "Yuppers."
"Let's go face the music then..." They headed off down the hall.
"Really, he's not THAT bad," Taylor said.
"Are you kidding? He's a living cliche'. He's like a character from one of those 80s teen comedy movies who keeps trying to use "cool teen speak" and can't get it right..."
Adrian hadn't been dissembling about being busy. People were snapping up every toy he made as fast as he could make them, and ordering more through his email account. It had gotten to where he had taken two days and built a desktop clockwork assembly line to build the more common components of his widgets. It was busy cranking out little gears, levers, and camshafts night and day from scrap metal he fed into the hopper at one end. Half those components were fed to another auto assembler and turned into miniature ratiocinators for the alarm-o-bots and their yet-to-be-completed bigger brothers.
But cranking out stocking stuffers wasn't what was going to keep him busy. He had been cracking down mostly on the Merchant drug dealers, busting them up, destroying their merchandise, sending the dealers to the cops wrapped up like birthday presents. They'd gotten more aggressive as a consequence. More and more of them were carrying guns; more than a few of them had started bringing large, angry dogs on chains with them, presumably in the hopes the dogs would scent him early and sound the alarm, or attack him if he got close enough.
But still Skidmark, Squealer and the other Merchant capes were still laying low. It was frustrating. With all the chaos coming up in the timeline, Adrian wanted at least one cape gang defanged and out of the way, and the Merchants were his target of choice-- simply for the fact that they seemed the least organized and effective, and thus the easiest challenge. The Empire just had too many capes, and too strong a hierarchy… if Kaiser fell there were a half dozen others to take his place. Coil was currently untouchable. Lung and Bakuda would bring down half the city (and squash him like a grape, if he was being honest with himself.) But take out the Merchant capes, especially Skidmark and whoever was pulling his strings, and the rest of the Merchants would fall apart like wet newspaper.
First it was time to drop some bugs in some ears again...
It was well past sunset again. Armsmaster was out doing a solo patrol in the south side of the City, following no patrol route in particular and frankly, sulking. His conversationalist wasn't getting much headway in pulling him out of his pout either. "It's obvious that this-- rogue-- is targeting me in particular for public embarrassment," he said grouchily. "His stunts and pranks disproportionately end up involving ME. Everything he's done has been calculated to make me look like a fool!"
"You could be biasing the results," Dragon pointed out, her icon in his HUD cocking an eyebrow. "You have dedicated considerable time to trying to track him down, and in steadily increasing amounts. It just may be that you're merely the first, ah, target available." She carefully avoided the phrase "fall guy." "Besides which his jokes have generally been fairly harmless.."
"He turned into a tree, hid in an orchard and pelted me with crab apples!" Armsmaster snarled. He reined in his temper with difficulty. "Every time I have encountered him my approval ratings with the public have gone DOWN..."
"Probably because you are the only one not LAUGHING," Dragon said. "Public figures who can laugh at themselves gain more popularity and trust; they're perceived as being more human and relatable. Look at the Wards. They've had run-ins with him as well. Shadow Stalker got hit with a pie… she stood there on a rooftop squalling and yelling like a scalded cat, and got nothing but complaints from parents about her cursing.
"Later on, he sneaks up behind ClockBlocker while he's doing an interview with a blogger on the street and sprinkles Soy Sauce on him, slavering and licking his chops." She stopped to chuckle at the memory. "He turns around, sees a seven foot werewolf holding a plastic fork and knife, screams like a little girl and nearly jumps out of his costume… a minute later he's laughing along with the guy holding the webcam about how 'Skinwalker got him that time.' Guess whose PHO ratings went up and whose went down the next day?"
"So I'm supposed to pretend to find his antics humorous?" Armsmaster said scathingly.
"No. I've seen you trying to fake laughter. In a word: Don't."
"I don't find anything this Skinwalker does humorous in the least," Armsmaster growled.
Dragon sighed. And that's the whole problem, Colin, she thought. When a person made of silicon and computer programming is easier to make laugh than you are, you have ISSUES.
Armsmaster was just cruising past the Ferry South when he saw it. There was a whistle and pop, and a firework burst somewhere over the middle of Shantytown. Then a second, then a third, showering the sky with rosettes and sparkles. "It's him!" Colin blurted. "It has to be!"
"How can you tell?"
A fourth rocket went up. With a dozen staccato pops, letters formed:
ARMSY
IS A
DOINK
"Call it a hunch," Armsmaster growled. He revved the motor on his bike.
"Colin," Dragon said, her voice steady and soothing. "Now don't do anything rash… Colin--!" Armsmaster wasn't listening. He hit the accelerator and roared off down the road, his siren blaring.
He had slowed down considerably by the time he reached the point he had calculated the rockets were launched. The Shantytown didn't exactly have a regular street grid, and the makeshift roads between the makeshift houses often more resembled those of some old European village, with zigs and zags and hairpin turns.
He was barely moving at a crawl when he reached the open patch where the rockets came from--- a bare patch of dirt that might have been the lot for a house at one time, edged with crumbling sidewalks and half-vanished pavement. The rocket stands were still standing in the middle, smoking slightly.
His bike suddenly stuttered and stalled, its running lights dimming, and then glided to a halt, completely shut down. The monitors on his armor fizzed with static, his HUD turning into snow and winking out. He dismounted in a forward roll, coming to his feet with his halberd in hand.
Skinwalker was standing on the other side of the square, holding a--- Colin squinted; it looked like an overlarge remote control, with brass buttons and fittings and a rotating satellite dish on the end. "Ah, the gnomish universal remote," Skinwalker said, his baritone voice cheerful. "Always fun at parties." He pushed another button on it. There was a crash behind him; Armsmaster looked back and saw a chain link security gate covered in wires and blinking christmas lights pop up from the ground on steel spring hinges like a gigantic mouse trap and crash into place, blocking off the exit. Sparks popped and sizzled as the locks made contact. If that wasn't visible warning enough, the "Danger: High Voltage" signs would have been a clue. He saw similar gates pop up at the two other exits, then still more flipped down, closing off the top… locking his damnably slow-flying cambot outside, he noted with annoyance.
The remote in Skinwalker's hand fizzed and sputtered and made an odd "sproing" sound. "Ah nuts," Skinwalker grumped. "Well, it did its job anyway." He dropped the device into a pouch on his belt and gestured up at the blinking, buzzing, light and sign covered cage entrapping them. "Faraday cage," he said. "You like it? Wanted to make sure you didn't do anything rash-- like call a bunch of your friends to ruin things."
"You've finally crossed the line, Skinwalker," Armsmaster said, hoping the cambot could hear him over the buzz of the electrified cage. holding his halberd at the ready.
Skinwalker replied, protecting for the cheap seats. "Have I? You're the one who's been running up and down the length of Brockton Bay, shaking the trees and rattling the locks, trying to hunt me down-- all because after our first meeting you wanted a rematch." He pulled an impossibly long wooden staff out of the pouch at his hip. "Well, here it is. A genuine no holds barred cage match." He spun the staff around, dropping into a combat stance of his own. "Let's see what you've got, Hal-Beard." At some unseen signal, music began to blare: Armsmaster bit back a groan of annoyance. Really? The Star Trek Pon Farr Duel Music. He braced himself as the wolfman rushed him.
Their staffs flew in a blur, cracking against each other in a flurry of strikes and parries. They crossed staffs, straining against each other. Skinwalker's muzzle was next to Armsmaster's ear when he spoke.
"I hope you're recording this because we haven't got much time."
Startled, Armsmaster rolled fell back and rolled away. Skinwalker backflipped clear in the opposite direction. They circled each other warily. As soon as his back was to the cambot hovering outside he spoke again.
"I'm sorry about this, it was the only way to contact you without tipping my hand. Don't let anyone see your recordings of this. You have enemies in the PRT." His voice was just loud enough for Armsmaster to hear, with his enhanced audio microphones. The Cambot wouldn't be able to pick it up at all, not with all that buzzing wiring in the way. And anyone watching the footage wouldn't be able to read their lips, either, thanks to all the blinking lights and warning signs obstructing the view.
If this was a prank or a trick, it was a damned complex one. Armsmaster waited till the cambot had circled around to the other side. "Enemies? Who?" With his wolfen ears he should have been able to hear that, Colin hoped.
"Coil."They came together in another flurry of blows. He kept speaking even as he fought. "Make this look good-- he's going to be going over it with a fine tooth comb. He's got spies all up and down your organization." He deliberately left an opening, took a hard blow from the butt of Colin's halberd across his forearm. "Not bad for a stuffed shirt," he said aloud, breathing heavily. "Your girlfriend oughta found something by now."
"Dragon found traces of illicit data traffic. But how do you know it's him?" He tried for a sweeping kick, only to come up short.
"Too long to tell. But nearly everything in this city traces back to him." He leaped across the makeshift arena, snarling, and grappled with Armsmaster for his halberd. He spoke through his snarling teeth. "The Undersiders are his cats paw; he pays them to pull jobs to distract you at the right time. The Travelers are under his thumb too--"
"How?" Armsmaster hissed through gritted teeth.
Skinwalker snarled and shifted his stance. "One of them is a case 53 monster with a messed up power." He let Armsmaster knock him away again, rolled in the dust and retrieved his staff. "But he's got way more than that."
He jabbed and thrust as Armsmaster parried. "Worse, he's got powers himself. He's a time tweaker-- Heisenberg effect on a macro scale. He splits time, creates two temporary timelines--"
Armsmaster swore aloud at that. "--then picks the one he likes to keep when the waveform collapses," he concluded. His werewolf sparring partner gave a quick nod. Armsmaster's mind raced ahead at the implications. That would be why the Undersiders and Travelers were so successful. Coil runs two timelines, one's a go, the other's a no go. If they succeed, he collapses the second timeline. If they fail, he collapses the first.
Armsmaster actually took a blow to the ribs. The implications were staggering. If Coil was careful with that power he'd be untouchable, able to erase any mistake he made as if it never happened. He could commit the most brazen crimes; he could walk out the front door of the PRT with top secret files under his arm, or torture prisoners for information, then just collapse the waveform and keep the timeline where he kept his nose clean... and leave his victims none the wiser. He shoved the halberd between Skinwalker's legs, tripping him. Skinwalker hit the ground. "Where's his base? Do you know that?"
Skinwalker grimaced and rolled to his feet again. "Under the City. an Endbringer shelter that fell off the books."
"So why haven't you tried to take him out?" Armsmaster grunted.
"Three words: Load Bearing Boss," Skinwalker said.
"His base is wired to explode," Armsmaster concluded. An underground explosion downtown, with Brockton Bay sitting on that enormous aquifer... it would bring down multiple skyscrapers, killing thousands.
They danced in a circle around each other. "That and worse. He's got a dossier on the Empire Eighty Eight capes-- their real names, everything. If things get hot he'll release it to the press."
Armsmaster felt ice down the back of his neck. If Coil broke the Unwritten Rules that badly it would be war. Instant war, with no mercy and no quarter given.
They spun in their dangerous ballet. "It gets worse. The Case 53? Class S threat, easily. She absorbs people. Eats them, makes evil clones of them-- complete with twisted versions of their powers. Nilbog 2.0." Armsmaster felt his already-chilled blood freeze. If Coil pushed the big red button, every cape in the region would respond to the crisis.They'd come swarming in just be fodder for an army of monsters.
Armsmaster had visions of psychotic clones of Legend, Eidolon, Alexandria rampaging across the world... And thus far, the needle on Armsmaster's lie detector hadn't wavered. Skinwalker was telling the absolute truth. "What's he waiting for?" Armsmaster said. It certainly sounded like Coil had all the tools at hand to hold the entire city hostage. What else did he need?
"the mayor's niece, Dinah Alcott." Armsmaster scowled in confusion. "She's a precog. The most powerful ever. She can give predictions as percentages... and she can't lie. Her power won't let her."
Armsmaster kept his expression stony as he kipped to his feet. He could feel the blood draining from his face. "If he leverages her power with his--"
"With her, he'll be unstoppable," Skinwalker said. He hopped backward and did a fancy flourish with his staff. "Not bad, Armsmaster, but not good enough," he said, projecting his voice so the cambot picked it up. "Come on, you want to be in the big leagues, don't you?"
Armsmaster didn't quite have to fake his growl as he pressed his attack. "Why are you doing all this?" he said, equally loud. He hoped Skinwalker could pick up what he was trying to say. Why all this? Even if there were spies and infiltrators, why not just... drop a letter, or speak to one of the Protectorate higher-ups directly?
Skinwalker grunted. "Think about it," he said.
Armsmaster's mind raced. It had to be more than just infiltrators Skinwalker was worried about, more just than some PRT troopers or office workers playing double agent. It had to be someone highly placed; so highly placed that even the most clandestine information would pass through their hands. "Who?" Colin demanded.
The wolfman hesitated. He closed with Armsmaster, got in a weapon-clinch with him, then to Colin's utter shock, deliberately faked Armsmaster pushing him backwards into the electrified wall of the cage. The wolfman snarled as sparks flew and bulbs blew. Under the cover of the tesla-coil buzz of shorting wires he snarled one name:
"Thomas Calvert!"
Armsmaster leaped back. The wolf-man fell forward onto his hands and knees, his back smoking slightly. "A bit more voltage than I intended," he wheezed. He clutched his chest with one clawed hand. Green light swirled, trailing across his chest and over his back. He moaned as if in relief. "Well," he said, getting to his feet and leaning on his staff. "I'll admit it, you're better than I am." He gave Armsmaster a toothy grin.
Armsmaster would later kick himself for walking right into it. "Then why are you smiling?" he said, still holding his staff at the ready.
Skinwalker gave him a wide-eyed, wide-open-mouthed doggy smile. "I... am not left handed!" He spun his staff in his right hand and thrust the end through the fencing. He struck a large red button Armsmaster hadn't noticed before. There was a loud BLAAT; the lights went dark, the fence wiring stopped sparking and the makeshift cage collapsed outward, leaving the alleyways free.
"So it is time for me to go..." He said with a bow. "Oh, and I'm sorry for this too."
"Sorry for WAAGh!?" From every corner, from under trash cans and from beneath trailers, out of the shadows and through holes in fences and walls, came dozens of tiny, knee high robots with rotating strobe lights for heads. They surrounded Armsmaster and swarmed over him, clinging with suckers and claws and little magnet hands, blaring and tooting and flashing blinding light of every color in his face. Several began spraying him with fire-suppressant foam. Others began trying to dismantle his armor from outside with screwdrivers. He began flailing about with his halberd, trying unsuccessfully to detach his assailants.
"Catch you later, Armsy," Skinwalker said. He transformed into an owl and leapt into the sky.
"Get off, you little--- SKINWALKERRRR!"
Skinwalker, aka Bayleaf, aka Adrian Smith, arrived home at his lair. He climbed down through the skylight and collapsed across the bed. Auurgh. "Faking" a fight hurt almost worse than fighting for real.
The clock next to his bed chimed. "It's now six AM." it said sweetly. "Time to get up."
Adrian groaned. "Tell you what," he said to noone in particular. "Let's take today and tomorrow off, whaddya say. We'll start.. the next phase then..."
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Chapter 7
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
Chapter 7
Chapter Text
The dealers were pretty confident.
The four of them were working together. Things were going smoothly for once. Once they'd heard about the Skinwalker, and how he was going through the dealers in the area like a lawnmower, they had taken precautions. They had set up a folding table in the second floor of a half-demolished parking garage, using the security fences and barricades to block off all but one entrance. A couple of trash barrel fires spaced around the closed-in area gave them plenty of light to see by, but not enough to attract the bored cops who wandered through the Docks. They all had guns, pistols mostly but at least one kalishnikov, and they had not two but four big ugly dogs, Rottie halfbreeds, not well trained but mean enough and smart enough to "sic" whatever they were pointed at. The customers, unsurprisingly, were much better behaved than usual.
"This works better," one of them noted, idly folding bills.
The guy next to him holding the Kalishnikov grinned, baring a mouthful of rotten teeth. "Shoulda thought o' settin' up like this years ago," he said. "Steada handin' off baggies in the street like a chump. That Skinwalker guy did us a favor."
The guy tending the dogs huffed. "Huh, here's hopin' he don't do us no more favors, thank you very much," he said.
"Ah lighten up," the one holding the kalishnikov said, hefting it. "He shows up, we've got some surprises to give him."
The guy tending the dogs looked over his shoulder. "Well, you do that, be sure you do it right and make sure he's dead," he said fearfully.
"What's you're problem, man? He's just a cape." The guy at the table shoved a baggie into their latest customer's hand and sent him shuffling for the exit."The fool plays with US, he's gonna get the short end of it."
"Don't you know nuthin' about animals?" the dog guy said. Having to pour kibble for the mongrels had apparently convinced him he was the expert on animals in the group. "All this stuff he's done so far-- he's not playing around; he's toying with his prey. Ever seen a cat play with a mouse? All lazy n' shit… till they get serious. Then those claws move so fast you can't even SEE 'em.
"If you shoot this guy, get it right the first shot-- cause if he gets serious, you'll never get a second."
FOOSH. The four Merchants yelped like scalded cats and wheeled about to face the direction of the sound. Had they been from Azeroth they might have recognized the sound of a gnomish fire extinguisher. The two trash barrels at the far end of the garage had gone out, plunging it into darkness. In that darkness something moved. And growled.
"It's him!" Three of them aimed their guns at the shadows. "No wait!" the dog guy said. "You shoot that thing you'll pull every cop in the city. Let the dogs at him first!" He unlocked the dog's collars and pointed at the glowing eyes in the dark. "GET 'IM!" The four dogs pounded for the shadow, snarling and slavering.
Two clawed hands shot out of the dark and grabbed the first two dogs by their throats. They were whipped around in a circle in the air and brought down on top of the other two, slamming all four to the concrete with canine shrieks of pain. The Skinwalker opened his mouth and ROARED into their faces. Two of them rolled over on their backs, whimpering. The third scuttled backward, limping and cringing and shrieking like an old woman's pug who'd seen a cat for the first time.
The fourth one tried to press his luck. He leapt for the crouching figure's throat, snapping and snarling, its eyes mad with fury. The hands seized it again. There was a loud crack and the struggling dog went limp.
The guy holding the Kalishnikov opened up; the other two beside him fired their pistols. The dog's corpse came hurtling out of the shadows like a softball, striking the guy with the assault rifle and knocking him backwards twenty feet, cutting the bark of the gun off. The dead dog was swiftly followed by the two burn-barrels; they struck the Merchants with the pistols with a loud gong, laying them out flat. Vines sprang out of nowhere, cocooning the concussed dealers and tangling the legs of the last one standing, immobilizing him.
The fourth merchant wet himself in terror as the Skinwalker stepped fully into the light. He kicked the table into the ceiling, scattering the goods and the money everywhere. A taloned hand grabbed the terrified merchant by his ratty shirt front and lifted him off the ground till he was looking at the feral cape face to face. He'd never seen so many teeth in his life. "You're not worth my time," the Skinwalker said in a voice as deep and resonant as a god's. ""Where'd you get this? From who? Names, places, I want everything you know."
Fifteen minutes later, after a great deal of hysterical ratting-out, he left them. He took their guns, he took their cellphones, wallets, shoes, and left them hogtied on the floor… watching their merchandise burn to ash in one of the burn-barrels, and their instructions etched in a nearby support column with a diamond-sharp claw:
TELL SKIDMARK I'M COMING
This scene was repeated all night, all over the city. Three locations, five locations, a dozen. Dawn came with dozens of merchants left trussed for the cops or simply looted of all they had, hundreds of thousands in illicit drugs burned, who knew how much drug money confiscated...and no real clues on where Skidmark and his crew were hiding.
Adrian sighed in disgust as he dropped down through the skylight into his lair. His bones ached, he was so tired. He had a handful of cellphones and wallets; he'd go through them later. Maybe he'd find something in the contact lists… but he wasn't hopeful. He was no Sherlock Holmes, or even a Sam Spade. He could only hope the pressure finally flipped Skidmark's switch.
The first snow of the holiday season came in, thick and heavy, cloaking everything in billowing waves of white. Even Brockton Bay couldn't help looking better when it was wearing its winter best, and a tiny bit of genuine holiday cheer seemed to be making the rounds.
Dinah Alcott wasn't feeling it very much though. All she could feel was afraid.
School was out for the holidays; they'd had a "holiday party" instead of classes-- what her friend Elliot joked was "a Christmahannakwanzaa party"-- and watched old christmas movies and eaten popcorn and junk food till everyone was buzzed out on sugar and caffeine. The school bus packed full of shrieking, excited kids had just dropped her off on her street, and she was trudging home through the still falling snow.
The streets were already plowed, but the sidewalks were still covered in a deep layer of white. It made for slow going when you were short and dressed in klunky rubber galoshes. It was pretty at least, Dinah thought. And the falling snow made everything so still.
She went over the numbers in her head again.
Chance she would be abducted this week? 23% and rising.
Chance she would be abducted before the end of the holidays? 67% and rising.
Chance she would be abducted by the end of January? 89% and rising.
She bit her lip and sniffled. She hated her power. All she had to do was ask, all she had to do was hear a question or think a question about the future, and her power would tell her how likely it was to happen. No lies, no secrets, no mistakes. And since adults went around all the time saying things like "what are the odds?" or "how likely could it be?"-- she'd known all sorts of horrible things, almost from the day she'd triggered.
Among all the horrible things she now knew, she knew that someone was going to kidnap her.
She wasn't foolish; she'd tried to warn her parents, to warn any adult. But they'd laughed and said the same thing that she had heard on a TV commercial that had activated her power in the first place. "Don't be silly, do you know how unlikely that is you'd be kidnapped?"
She had. She'd told them, to the third decimal place. They'd ignored her.
Probability that anyone she told would believe her before it was too late? 5.3%
Tears puddled in her eyes, she struggled to wipe them away with her mittens, to little effect. Whoever they were, couldn't they at least wait until after Christmas?
She heard a footstep and a twig snap. She looked around, her breath hitched in her throat. There was noone around; her footprints were the only ones that marred the fresh-fallen snow. There was a little park across the road that all the kids played at-- noone was there now; they were all inside where it was warm and dry. What she saw standing on the rise made her breath catch in her throat, but in an entirely different way.
It was a reindeer.
It was snowy white, with huge antlers like the branches of a tree. It was wearing a harness and saddlebags of some sort and had bangles-- Christmas ornaments?-- dangling from its antlers. It stood there, just looking at her, majestic and unafraid.
"Omigosh. No way," she breathed. She stumbled; without realizing it she'd walked towards it, across the street and up over the little ankle-high wall surrounding the park. The reindeer was less than twenty feet away from her now. It pawed at the ground; she heard bells jingle.
"No. Way..!" she said again.
Slowly, gracefully… almost majestically, she thought; that was a good word for it, majestic…. It stepped through the snow, walking towards her. For the first time she realized just how big it was; she didn't even come to its shoulder. She hesitated. She was a sensible, practical little girl. And her practical side reminded her that it was a strange animal; it could be dangerous…
...But still, her struggling, battered innocence protested...
It stood perfectly still. Slowly it lowered its head till its nose was almost touching her. Carefully, she lifted up one hand and put it on the reindeer's nose, feeling the velvety pad under her palm. "Oh wow," she said, a smile of wonder creeping across her face. "Hi. I'm Dinah," she said. She felt silly even as she said it. It couldn't possibly--
The reindeer tilted its head, almost like a dog. It made a "whuff" sound and craned its neck back, reaching over its shoulder for the bag hanging on its side. When its head came back around it was holding a giftwrapped box in its mouth by the ribbon. A tag fluttered from it, the words "FOR DINAH" on it in big black letters.
"For me?" she squeaked. She took the package, wrapping her arms around it-- it was huge and bulky, twice as tall as it was deep and wide. "Thank--- thank you!" The reindeer nuzzled her. It wheeled about and galloped away, bells jingling, and vanished into the falling snow. The bells fell silent and she was alone.
She staggered through her front door a few minutes later, package in arms. "Mom, Dad, I'm home!"
Her mother came in from the kitchen. "No need to shout, Dinah, I-- goodness, that's a big package. Where did you get it?"
Dinah considered her options, realized she couldn't possibly make up a really good lie, and went with the truth, which was confusing enough. "One of Santa's Reindeer gave it to me!"
Her father was on the couch, reading the paper (who DID that anymore?) He looked up in confusion. "What?"
Her mother looked confused, but then her expression cleared. "Oh, that's right. That's what they call the school gift exchange thing. When you get a gift they say you got it from Santa's Reindeer… I remember her teacher saying something about that..."
Dinah resisted the urge to roll her eyes and stamp her foot in frustration. Her parents seemed to have a superpower too-- only hearing what they wanted to hear.
"Well it certainly looks like they splurged," her father said. "So which reindeer was it, Punkin?" he teased. "Rudolph, Vixen, Blitzen?"
Dinah's eyes went round and her mouth popped open. "Oh, NUTS!" she said, stamping her foot for real this time. "I forgot to ask!!" That was going to bug her forever…
Her parents blinked, then burst out laughing. "Oh Dinah, you are so silly!"
Arrrrrrgh!
"Well, go on honey, open it!" her father urged.
"Oh, honey, she should really wait till Christmas--" but before her mother even finished speaking Dinah had already torn half the paper off.
"One early present won't hurt," her father said indulgently. "Why when I was a boy we had a tradition where we opened one present on Christmas Eve..." he chuckled. "Of course we always ended up breaking down and opening ALL of them that night, but--"
Dinah laid the box down on its side on the coffee table and opened it. Inside were two very expensive looking toy robots stacked up on one another, with squat bodies, headlight eyes and rotating strobe lights for heads. "Unusual sort of gift for a little girl," her father murmured, lifting one out of the box and looking it over. "Beautiful work though. I think this is real brass, or maybe bronze."
"There's a business card in the box," Mrs. Alcott said, plucking it out. "From the workshop of World of Crafts.' Oh, HIM."
"Him who?"
"There's a fellow with a pushcart down on the Boardwalk, he sells things like this," she said. "Little brass toys, wind up butterflies, trees in bottles, all sorts of things. He sometimes shows up at the Lord Street Market, too, I hear."
"Huh. Nifty." Mr. Alcott turned the one he was holding over in his hands. "I guess it's some sort of alarm clock or something?" He put it back in the box. "Why don't you take those on up to your room for now, Punkin. We'll be having dinner in a little bit."
"Okay." Dinah scooped up the box and raced up the stairs.
"No running!"
Grumping, she slowed down and walked like a proper lady up the stairs and into her room. She laid the box on her bed, carefully closed the door to her bedroom, and fished out the pamphlet she'd spotted in the bottom of the box. She noticed her new toys had names engraved on their chests.
The first one was OB-1.
The second was KEN-OB.
Ugh. Grownups and their jokes.
She unfolded the accordion paper and started to read.
Her breathing quickened. No, wait. Just because she wouldn't be abducted, didn't mean something worse could happen. The bad guy, whoever he was, could still decide to do something horrible to her or to her family. There were just too many bad things that could happen, or that the villain could do.
Her head was already aching from so many questions to her Power. She wet her lips and asked the best question she could think of. "What are the odds that the Defender Bots came from someone who can save me and my family from the bad guy?"
93%
She asked one more. "What are the odds he will?"
100%
"Biddlbiddlebip."
"Bbbltp."
The two Obie-bots' eyes lit up. The box they were in tipped over and they climbed out to stand on the bedspread. They watched her with unblinking yellow-green eyes. "Obie-One?" she said. The one on the left went "Ding" and saluted with a Clink! "Ken-Obie?" The other one went "Ding" and saluted as well. "You guys are gonna keep me safe? And my family?"
"Ding!" "Ding!"
The tears that had threatened before finally spilled over. It wasn't till now that she realized how much it mattered to have someone, or even someTHING, to talk to about her troubles that believed her. She pulled the two little robots into a hug. For the first time in forever, she felt that things were gonna be okay.
Panacea walked out into the enclosed garden. It was a breath of fresh air; cold, freezing snowy air, but fresh air all the same. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes, started to light up… then reconsidered. "Eh," she muttered, stuffing the pack and lighter into the nearby trash can. "I'm turning into Miss Polly Pureheart."
"Goooood..." she yipped and turned around. "I didn't see you there!" Snow covered or not, how did she miss a talking tree?
The Giving Tree was there again, his branches laden with snow. He'd been dubbed that by one of the nurses, a lady who was a fan of Shel Silverstein, and it had stuck. Every couple of days he would appear at one hospital or clinic or the other for a few hours, rooted in the middle of the garden or the quad, reaching for the sky and shedding that healing light as far as it could reach. Sometimes there would be secondary growths here and there around the hospital; foot high mushrooms that shed their own healing aura, redoubling the effect. The staff at each location had taken to putting the more "in need" patients closer to where they thought he would appear, or if the weather was good wheeling out the more ambulatory patients to rest in his shade.
"How are you doing?" she asked. He shook the snow off his branches and smiled at her. The cold didn't seem to bother him, but he did seem a little more sluggish than the first time they'd met a month ago.
"I am…. Well," he said. "Howww. … fares… the seedling?"
She pointed past him. In the middle of the quad in a planter was an oak sapling. Were one to judge by its growth, it would be at least a year or two in age. "Ahhh," he said. He ambled around it, examining it from all sides. "You have… been trying things… I see," he said, looking at her knowingly.
She nodded. The sapling was stronger, hardier, with a more robust immunity to insects and diseases. Its xylem and phloem were scattered in several layers, rather than in one thin vulnerable layer under the bark. She was tempted to see if she could somehow make it evergreen, but had resisted the urge so far. The Giving Tree rested his hand against the trunk and nodded. "It will grow… well. Good. Strong."
He looked at her. "I should… let… you know…. This… will be… my… last visit… till spring." He looked up ruefully and shook more snow off his crown. "I have… stayed over long… as it is."
Amy wrung her hands. She had postponed asking this for too long as it was. "Then with your permission," she said after a deep breath. "There is one more change I would like to make to the sapling."
He looked at her, curiosity plain on his craggy face. "Oh?" She held out her hand. "Ahhh. I..see." She took his hand in hers, and placed her other hand on the trunk of the oak sapling. She closed her eyes and opened her Power.
She would probably spend the rest of her life trying to describe, in analytical scientific terms, what she saw… or what she did. But she understood it somehow all the same, like a fish understands water or a bird understands the sky.
The sapling began to glow. Leaves or no leaves, winter or no winter, it grew several feet taller and several inches thicker. The bark split, then healed, then split again. It stretched, waxed, grew--- and then stilled. Panacea opened her eyes. The sapling was glowing like the Giving Tree… faint, a barely visible aura almost like a heat shimmer, but it was there.
The Giving Tree patted her shoulder, then patted the trunk, obviously pleased. "It… sleeps… for now. But in the Spring… it will share. Healing. Life. Yes."
"It won't be, um, intelligent like you," she said. "But it will give off that healing aura like you do." She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, under her hood. "I'm going to, to make more like it," she said with the air of someone finally committing to a course of action. "Plant seedlings and saplings at every hospital I can. They won't breed, the PRT would have kittens if they did. They'd have ALL the kittens." She grimaced. "They can't do much, though, so long as they can't breed. My mom's going to have thirty percent of the kittens all by herself, as it is... But you shouldn't have to bear all the burden alone."
The Giving Tree laid a hand on her shoulder and leaned in. "Neither… should you..." he said solemnly. He tapped her on the nose. "Beep." He suddenly turned solemn. "I need… to ask a favor..."
"What is it?" Wordlessly, he handed her a pasteboard card. Where did that come from? She read the wording on it and blinked. "I… okay, I don't do requests," she said. "Not… okay, not usually. But because it's you, and just this once." She pulled a pen out of her uniform pocket (why did so few capes wear costumes with something that common sense?) and signed the card. "I'm trusting you," she warned him. "I figure it's gotta be important if you're asking."
He took the card back and tucked it away… somewhere. "It could change… the fate… of the world," he said ominously. She shivered, and it wasn't from the snow seeping through her boots. He gave her a reassuring smile. "Be well."
There was a sudden gust of wind. The snow blew up and swirled around the garden, blotting out everything in a blinding cloud of white. When the wind fell away, he was gone. Amy looked around, blinking and wiping snow off her face. "I hate it when he does that," she muttered.
Armsmaster hunched over his worktable with a digital magnifier on an armature pulled down in front of his face and one of his custom-made multitools in his hand. He was picking apart yet another of the Alarm-O-Bots that had mobbed him at the end of the farcical "cage match" Skinwalker had set up. The broken remains of a half dozen others were scattered around him. None were in any condition anyone would call "reparable." He had been a bit… enthusiastic in subduing them.
There was a knock at the door. "Enter," he muttered. The voice-activated door slid aside, admitting Velocity. "So how goes the research?" he asked, looking around at the scattered parts.
"Not very far," Colin admitted, pushing aside the magnifier. "No serial numbers, no seals, all the major parts seem to be recycled or even hand crafted." He tapped a part. "I'd swear these parts here were actually drop forged."
"What about the 'brain,' the CPU?" Velocity suggested.
"Bits out of old cell phones or electronic toys," Armsmaster said. "The programming itself is simplistic-- little more than "Run at target. grab hold and climb. When knocked down, get up and repeat.'" He grunted. "Less brains than your average Roomba."
"You forgot "Spray target with CO2 extinguisher," Velocity quipped. He picked up one disemboweled bot and looked at it. "You know, these could be useful. With a little better programming and a little containment foam--"
Armsmaster set down his multitool with a clang. "No. Just…. no."
Velocity held up his hands in defeat. "Fine, fine."
Armsmaster pulled out a thumb drive and handed it to Velocity without looking. "If you'd do a hi-speed review of my helmet cam for my last patrol, I'd appreciate it," he said, distracted.
Velocity pulled back a bit, miffed at Armsmaster's brusque request. He took the thumb drive anyway; there was no point at being annoyed with Armsmaster for being Armsmaster. He looked around for a laptop. Armsmaster shoved an app-book across the tabletop to him. "It's at 120x," he grunted.
Now Velocity was getting annoyed. He took the book and plugged the drive in. Eight hours of video footage began playing at 120 times normal speed. Velocity blurred as he allowed his power to speed him up to match the video. He picked up a digital pad and started noting time markers down. For several minutes all you could see of him was a very blurry, and very bored looking man in tights. His expression changed considerably when the tape suddenly cut to footage of Armsmaster and Skinwalker's "cage match." He watched it through, carefully keeping a poker face, then watched a good bit of the rest of the footage for good measure before he stopped it. "Spot anything worth noting?" Armsmaster said, his voice bland.
Velocity suddenly remembered that most monitors and digital cameras, save for the ones Armsmaster had designed specifically for Velocity's use, only worked at a top speed of 60 frames per second. Anyone attempting to spy on them via hidden camera would only see a pixelated blur on the screen in front of him or on the pad in his hand at best. Clever sod. "A couple things," Velocity agreed, tapping the pad. He scribbled several notes next to the list, then passed the pad over. How many have seen this? Was written in the corner.
Armsmaster nodded and pretended to write a note next to the first item while Velocity looked over his shoulder. You, me, Dragon, Miss Militia.
Any evidence?
Dragon's spotted some things: back doors, keystroke loggers, time bombs, dormant programs to take over key systems. Still tracing them back to TC. Software and hardware both compromised.
Piggot? Was the second.
May be compromised , Armsmaster wrote. Served with TC vs. Nilbog. Velocity suppressed a shudder. The Ellisburg incident was a horror story come to life. A man named Jamie Rinke had Triggered as an S-class biotinker-- able to create autonomous lifeforms from any living organic material. He'd gone completely insane and released a swarm of monsters on the city that devoured the populace or dragged them off to be ingredients for new monsters. The heroes they'd sent in had been routed and the PRT team accompanying them had been wiped out to a man-- save for two: Calvert and Piggot. And Piggot had only mostly gotten out. She'd left most of the flesh on her lower legs and parts of her kidneys behind. The authorities had resorted to walling in the entire city and manning the wall 24-7 with a small army and nearly every weapon of destruction known to man. Why they hadn't simply nuked the abomination until the ground was molten for a thousand years was beyond Velocity's ability to guess. If Calvert and Piggot were brothers in arms from that crucible, there was a good chance they were working together now, too.
There was a click on the intercom. "Armsmaster, this is Piggot. Please come to the PRT and assemble the Protectorate AND the Wards in my office immediately."
"Speak of the Devil," Velocity muttered.
Armsmaster ignored the quip and hit the reply button the bracer of his armor (he hated having to drop everything just to cross the room and hit a button on the wall.) "On my way. What is the reason for the call?"
"I have an inquiry to make," the Director said, her voice as flat and level as always. "I want to know one thing:
"Why the HELL is there a reindeer standing in the middle of my office?"
It was a bit of a trip from the Protectorate base out in the Bay to the PRT building in the heart of the city. Armsmaster constantly resented the inefficiency of the arrangement, even if he accepted the alleged need for some illusion of distance between the two organizations. Even the two-minute flight from helicopter pad to helicopter pad was an annoyance, but at least it was no longer than that... even with everyone and their cousin deciding to tag along. The Director's office took up one entire floor near the top of the building. Which was fortunate, as she was about to need the space.
When the heroes arrived, they were greeted with a strange scene. Outside in the hallway were several armed PRT guards, all trying both to look alert and intimidating, and to peer past each other into the Director's office. They squeezed past the gauntlet of guards and entered to find the tableau within to justify the one without. Director Piggot was sitting at her desk, utterly still, her scowling face as immobile as if it were made of stone. Standing in front of her desk, grazing placidly on one of the potted plants, was a white stag with an enormous rack of antlers.
Everyone stared. "But-- how?" Assault said, waving one hand about.
"That would be MY question," Piggot said grimly. "I went to use the facilities, came in, sat down, turned around and there he was."
"But how did he get through the door? His antlers…" Assault persisted, measuring off their size in the air with his hands. "He wouldn't fit through the door--"
"He's a shapeshifter isn't he?" Battery said. "… assuming it is the Skinwalker."
"Iunno, he seems like the sort of guy who'd buy a real elk and drop it in Piggot's office just for the giggles," Assault pointed out.
"Why hasn't the Director shot him or something?" Triumph asked in a (inevitable for him) stage whisper. Piggot sighed. She'd obviously heard that. People three floors away had obviously heard that. Never ask a cape with voice-blaster powers to whisper.
"Because," she said in annoyance, not taking her eyes off the reindeer desecrating her desk plants. "My gun is missing, the controls for the office security systems are for some reason not working, and as annoying as it is having a 500 pound live reindeer stuck in my office, having a 500 pound DEAD reindeer stuck in my office would be considerably worse. Do you have any other questions, Triumph?" The lion-themed hero looked sheepish.
"Well somebody think of SOMEthing," Battery said. If her husband started giggling again she was going to have to hurt someone.
The Protectorate heroes crowded at the door, unwilling to step closer. Battling violent gangs, brutal villains, and sociopathic megalomaniacs had apparently left them untrained for dealing with displaced wildlife. Feeling a bit embarrassed for himself and his team. Armsmaster stepped up. "Skinwalker, you are under arrest for trespassing on PRT offices. Stand down, and return to a, er, more compact form immediately." The reindeer stared at him with all the apparent comprehension of a cow, then returned to its al fresco lunch. "And I just tried to arrest a cow with antlers," Armsmaster said in a tired monotone. "Truly a highlight of my career."
"If you do not stop eating my violets, I swear I will find a way to crate you and ship you to Finland for soup ingredients," Piggot hissed. The reindeer stopped chewing and stared at her for a long moment. Then slowly, deliberately, it took another bite. Piggot made a sound like an angry schnauzer revving up.
Armsmaster stepped forward and waved the unbladed haft of his halberd at the elk. "HO! Hah! Er, Giddyup!…. Whooaah--!" The reindeer bugled angrily at the implied challenge and took several lunging steps at the armored hero, who hastily retreated back to the group of capes blocking the door.
"My hero," Piggot said. The sarcasm in her voice could have curdled gasoline.
Per fire regulations, the office had two entrances. The other one was the elevator that ran from the basement garage clear to the top floor, and was situated on the far side of the room. It dinged, signaling the late arrival of the Wards. "Sorry we're late Director Piggot," Aegis was already saying as he stepped off the elevator, "There was a tour group and-- what the hell?" He stumbled to a halt just inside the office.
Shadow Stalker clapped eyes on the reindeer next. She whipped her crossbow out of nowhere, nocked and ready. "Holy crap, a moose! ...You want me to shoot it?" She sounded way too eager.
"No!" Armsmaster said "I do not even want to try to think of how to get an unconscious large ungulate out of this office. And tranq darts can make the target void their bowels as well. I do NOT want to see that."
Shadow Stalker lowered her crossbow in surprise. "What, they can?" she asked, disbelieving. "Why didn't you jerks tell me that? I coulda stabbed myself with one of those! "
"A guy can dream..." Clockblocker muttered.
"Coincidentally, Clockblocker," Piggot said in a conversational tone, "If I find out any of you had any part in this little prank, there will be hell to pay."
Kid Win snorted. "On what she pays us? Get real," he muttered to the others.
"Where would you buy an elk in Brockton Bay anyway?" Aegis muttered back.
"Maybe they rent…?"
The elevator dinged again, announcing the arrival of Gallant, Browbeat, and Vista. "Okay, we had to get our gear out of-- oh my gosh, a REINDEER?" Vista said, her voice rising to a squeak. Then, with the artless naivete that underlined for the hundredth time that for all her experience as a Ward she was still just a twelve-year-old girl, she walked straight across the room and began petting the reindeer on its nose. To everyone's relief, the deer merely nuzzled her palm and butted its head into the patting. Vista laughed and scratched behind its ears. "I know some of you guys wanted to get into the holiday spirit, but this is ridiculous," Vista giggled.
Slowly the two groups filtered their way into the room. Not all the way, though. Missy and the reindeer still had a fairly good clear space around them. Miss Militia couldn't resist putting her oar in. "We do seem to make things more difficult for ourselves than we need to, don't we," she said. Several capes glared at her.
"Okay. So why is it here?" Browbeat asked.
That seemed to be the magic question. The reindeer's ears perked up. He craned his neck back and dug around under the flap of one of his saddlebags and pulled out… a gift wrapped box. He set it on the ground at his hooves and then pulled out another. And then another.
Armsmaster felt himself on the verge of an apoplexy. This HAD to be Skinwalker, in yet another form… and now showing off a bit of tinker tech Armsmaster would have given his left arm for: a dimensional pocket. To deliver Christmas presents!
"Ooh, presents!" Assault said. With a jesting grin he reached down to pick up one of the bigger boxes.
Whop. An enormous cloven hoof came down, pinning the box to the floor. The reindeer glared at him and snorted, eyes narrowed. Assault backed off, hands held up. "Whoa. Eheh. Kids go first, right?"
The reindeer gave him a disdainful look. Then it picked up one package with its mouth by the ribbon and handed it to Vista. "Ooh, thank you!" Before anyone could say anything she began ripping open the paper.
"Vista!" Gallant said. "That could be booby-trapped!"
Vista shot him a scornful look. "A reindeer in sleighbells shows up in the Director's office, eats her desk plants, pulls like a jillion packages out of hammerspace while every hero in the Bay watches, then just stands there watching while one of us gets ready to set off a bomb in its face? What part of that story makes sense, Gallant?"
You could almost hear Gallant's jaw opening and closing behind the visor of his full-face helmet. He didn't have time to formulate a comeback, because the reindeer was now handing him a package as well. "Iii..."
"The word is 'thank you,' Gallant," Vista said without looking up from her package. The sticky tape was giving her gloved fingers trouble.
Packages were handed out in swift order to each of the wards. Then it began nudging boxes in the direction of the Protectorate heroes. The first of them had plucked up their nerve enough to pick the boxes up when Vista squealed. "Oooh, look!"
She held up her prize. It was a gun of some sort, done out in emerald green crystal and brass trim, along with a holster in gold and green. Vista gleefully strapped it around her waist. It had to be said, it went well with her costume. "It looks like a Weta ray gun," Clockblocker commented.
"You know the Tinker who made that?" Armsmaster said.
"No, not a tinker," he said. "Propmakers. They make widgets and gadgets for the movies, and they have a sideline selling these prop weapons to collectors."
While he was talking Vista was drawing a bead on a nearby filing cabinet. "Eat hot subatomic death, evildoer," she muttered, and pulled the trigger. There was a crackling noise and a jagged beam of energy leapt from the muzzle of the weapon, striking the steel cabinet and limning it in light. There was a loud "smeeeerp" sound and the filing cabinet shrank to one tenth its size. Everyone froze in shock. Vista stood there, rigid with surprise, the shrink ray held stiffly in her hands. "I thought it was a toy!" she squeaked.
"Teach you to assume," Aegis said unnecessarily.
"Are you out of your mind?" Miss Militia barked at the reindeer. Several people started to speak up at once, a couple of them looking as if they planned to snatch the ray gun out of Vista's hand. The reindeer looked unphased. It began clopping it's hoof on the floor.
Clop… clop… clop….
When it reached thirty, it stopped. There was a "vuuuum" sound, and the filing cabinet returned to normal size. "Oh thank--" Vista said, relieved. "It's only temporary!"
There were many sorts of ray weapons in the gnomish tinker inventory. The shrink ray was just one. And, if Vista ever read the manual and figured out how to flip the reverse switch, the enlarger ray was another. A ranged weapon that could safely render anyone attacking the young dimension warper harmless would go a long way to easing Bayleaf's mind.
"Temporary or not, that thing is untested tinker technology from an unknown maker," Armsmaster said sternly. "It's going through the full testing regime before you even THINK of touching it..."
"Great," said Clockblocker, a slightly panicked note in his laugh. "Then would somebody please come take this from me before I hurt myself?" He was holding another ray gun, a slightly sleeker model in grey, silver and white in his outstretched hand.
"Just put it down, Clockblocker," Armsmaster ordered.
"I'd like to," Clockblocker said, his voice very small. "There's only one problem."
"What?"
"There's a warning light on this thing," Clockblocker said. "And it's blinking." He was right. There were two vacuum tubes sticking out of the back at an angle, just above the grip. One was blinking red.
"Time-freeze the thing!" Aegis said.
"I'm trying," Clockblocker said, his hand shaking. "It's not working!" As they watched the little blinking light began to blink faster, and faster...
Clockblocker's power was potent, if esoteric. He could make anything he touched freeze in time. The effect was apparently random, ranging from thirty seconds to ten minutes. (If anyone had managed to chart the time immobilized vs. the mass involved, then added a third axis for power he had put into the effort, they might have noticed a pattern. But alas for insufficient data points...) And it worked on anything solid, liquid, and even on rare occasions on gases or energy fields. For him to be unable to time-freeze something wasn't merely unusual, it was alarming.
The light was strobing five times a second now. Clockblocker cringed and got ready to fruitlessly fling the gun across the office when the radio tube suddenly blinked out, and the one next to it began glowing green.
The reindeer grunted. Clockblocker looked at it. The reindeer had stepped into one of the open boxes and, agitated, was trying to shake it off. With a kick of the forehoof it flipped the empty box into the air, straight at Clockblocker's head. Clockblocker, already jittery, jabbed the steampunk-looking ray gun in the direction of the cardbard and spasmodically pulled the trigger. A pencil thin ray of light struck the box and it froze in midair. Not even the paper or ribbon fluttered.
"Holy @#$%@ in a buttered bundt pan," Clockblocker breathed. He poked the box with the barrel of the gun. It was immobile. "A gun that duplicates my power?" You couldn't see his face behind the blank visor he wore, but the confusion in his voice was clear. "Then what the hell was up with that light?"
Triumph suddenly started kicking through the papers still on the floor. "Ah, there it is." He reached down and pulled out an accordion-folded leaflet. "When all else fails, read the instructions," he said to everyone.
"How did you know that was in there?" Velocity demanded.
Triumph gave him a knowing look. "My family goes through this every Christmas," he said, opening the leaflet and starting to read. "You'd think 'read the enclosed manual before using' was ancient Greek or something..." he muttered. "Okay, 'Gnomerigan Temporal Energy Immobilizer Ray.' Big clue there… Ah. That blinky light? Just indicated it was recharging. one to three shots depending on settings. Green light for full charge." Clockblocker made some surly-sounding oaths. "Oh wow. 'Your Temporal Energy Immobilizer is self-recharging, automatically re-energizing its capacitors off of ambient temporal energy in the immediate environment. Full charge may take up to thirty minutes to reach.' And the rest looks like explanations of what all those fiddly dials on the side do." Triumph grinned… well, Triumphantly. "Of course. Temporal Energy. Except Clockblocker was wetting his pants--"
"Hey!"
"-- and pumping it full of 'Temporal Energy' as hard as he could, " Triumph said. "Dude. It recharges its batteries off your power!"
A curious individual would wonder where the schematics for the time freezing ray came from. This in fact was one of Bayleaf's own Azeroth inspired inventions. Azeroth magitek had multiple ways to temporarily freeze a target in place… ice spells and the like... but what few people knew (unless they had been given very comprehensive education in the matter) was that they ALL involved time manipulation. The hunter's freeze trap, the mage's Ice Block, all of them actually used temporal energy to suspend the target temporarily in time… the appearance of icy crystals and the aura of cold was a side effect of the water and air molecules around them suddenly being immobilized. (basic reasoning would lead to the realization that it was not usually real ice, as suddenly freezing and thawing a person like that would not put them in suspended animation but turn their tissues and organs to mush, killing them. Not that such methods didn't have their use in the ruthlessness of combat, but it was always better to have options.) From there it was a quick hop to using the gnomish and goblinish knack for synthesizing the effects of such arcane spells, and the first Time Ray was invented.
Clockblocker had gone from badly rattled to all but cackling with glee. "Oh wow. Oh wow. And it turns my power into a ranged attack, " he said giddily. "No more having to touch villains like Mush with my bare hands to time-freeze them!" The box tumbled to the ground, unnoticed. "Don't you get it guys?" He looked at the others. "It's gear. It's gear to upgrade our powers!"
That was the cue. The Wards were the first to move in. Vista being the closest, she began reading off gift tags and handing them to their recipients. Wrapping paper was soon flying. Half the adults present were all but tearing their hair out at the violation of security protocol. The other half…
"Screw it," Miss Militia said. "I just HAVE to see what this guy came up with to leverage MY power." She took the box Vista handed her.
"Darn straight, free loot," Assault said.
Armsmaster threw his hands in the air. "Fine… PERFECT..."
"We have to open them anyway, Armsmaster," Velocity said. "Might as well...see… hmm." He lifted his gift out of the box. Inside were a pair of elbow length gauntlets. The gauntlets had what appeared to be brass knuckles built into them.
"I suppose he doesn't know the limitations of your powers," Armsmaster said.
"Well, the thought is appreciated," Velocity said.
Velocity's speedster powers came with one incredibly aggravating drawback. The faster he moved, the less he could affect the environment and vise versa. While it meant he was essentially untouchable once he was moving, it also meant that he couldn't even pick up a coffee cup while at speed, and his punches had about the same impact as those of an anemic toddler. Bayleaf had resorted to brute forcing the problem. The gloves had been crafted by Parian, and infused with as much Strength enhancement as she could manage. The brass knuckles, being technically separate weapons, had been infused with even more Damage. Then Bayleaf had taken the completed gauntlets and put outright enchantments--- Strength and Damage enchantments--- on top of THAT. Bayleaf had guessed (correctly, as it would turn out) that this would counterbalance the diminishing effect of Velocity's power and enable him to manipulate… and punch… with the strength of a normal human adult.
He would be proven correct. Of course, at normal speed Velocity could now punch out a compact car. He was in for a surprise when they all finally got to the testing range.
Armsmaster was holding his own gift and looking pained. They were… boots, technically. Armored boots. Armored boots in blue and silver (his colors!) with downward rocket thrusters sprouting out of them at the ankle and heel. Gnomish flying boots (though he didn't know from Gnomish.) They were fuel efficient, provided excellent flight speed and looked like something Squealer had invented on "test the new synthetic drug" night at the Merchants lair. Never had a man looked so torn.
Dragon was giggling in his ear-- deliberately. A thousand or so miles away in her secret base, all her backup drives were defragging in the computer equivalent of hysterical laughter. "Well, they match your suit," she said to him.
Armsmaster was looking in the bottom of the box as if all his hopes had been lost there. "Well the utility of them probably compensates for the aesthetic and-- oh thank GOD there are schematics in the box--" he dove into the packing paper frantically. Maybe he could rebuild them into something more streamlined and above all efficient--
Miss Militia was looking pleased. She was trying on a new bandolier with ten fist-sized, futuristic looking metallic cylinders on it and reading the leaflet that came in the box. "Grenades. Reusable. Variety Pack, includes Darkness, EMP, Stun, Kinetic, Thermal, Cryonic and… Force Field? Bandolier serves as recharger; works off ambient energy in the immediate vicinity but will recharge faster with a wall outlet… Niiice."
There was something else in the box, a rather heavy item. She dug down in and cooed like a Beverly Hills starlet over a new diamond necklace at what she found: A colt 45 peacemaker, obviously an antique and lovingly restored. (Bayleaf truly had found all sorts of treasures with his garage-sale run.) A loaded ammo belt and holster were included. With it came a single note: Always carry a hold out. Happily, she strapped it to her hip.
Triumph looked at her, part in wariness, part in amusement. "And here I thought you couldn't possibly look more dangerous," he said.
"And what did you get?" she asked him impishly.
He read the card as his new cape swirled around his shoulders. "A… parachute cloak… and a sonic shield.. I'm not sure if it's a belt or a bandoleer though..."
"A box of bandage rolls??" Aegis said, looking into his box in confusion.
"For the human meat shield," ClockBlocker quipped. "Imagine that."
"Those are the bandages Skinwalker uses when someone gets hurt," Vista said. "They heal normal people fast, I bet they'll heal you even faster."
"And a… Recombobulator belt. Whatever that is." he looked through some more. "Ice deflector bracer, fire deflector bracer. Hm."
Aegis was technically a flying brute. But only technically. The reality was that he was not remotely invulnerable or even truly super strong; he just simply could take monstrous damage and keep on going. He had high speed healing, and a hyper-efficient biology with super-effective redundancies. Blind him and he could see through his skin; stab him in the heart and other organs would take over the job of keeping his circulation going. Even monstrous damage such as decapitation would not kill him. Of course the nature of things meant that, since he could take horrendous damage and live, that he inevitably would. He spent most of his time healing or regrowing lost body parts.
Bayleaf had been at a loss as to what to give him to help, so he had simply decided to cover a few of the bases. The bracers were rebuilt gnomish fire and ice deflectors, as he estimated that fire and freezing effects were the most damaging to human tissue. The recombobulator would provide a boost of near-instant healing ten times a day. The First Aid bandages also had healing effects but their purpose was largely to act as human duct tape, and hold Aegis' guts in or his limbs in place till they healed. If the boy was intent on going in harm's way, then all he could do was try to mitigate the harm.
"Hey, they FIT!" Browbeat came back into the room, his voice beaming.
"Where did you go?" Gallant demanded.
"I had to go find someplace to change," he said. "I just had to try 'em on." Everyone then noticed his normal blue-and-diamond body suit had been replaced with a new one, this on in a similar pattern but in green and purple, with the top predominantly green, the bottom predominantly purple. "And holy cow but they FIT."
"Uh, so big deal," Shadow Stalker said.
"Nah, you don't get it," Browbeat said. "Look." He began to grow and swell, his biokinesis coming to play as he forced his muscles and skeleton to grow. Soon he was pumped to his max, with a chest like a beer barrel and arms as thick around as the next person's waist… but the cloth didn't tear or stretch. "And look--" he deflated like a beachball, shrinking down till he was nearly as skinny as Clockblocker. The suit didn't fold or sag, remaining comfortably snug. "I think it's armored too… watch." He began growing spikes from various points on his body. They grew out six inches and more, needle sharp…. While the cloth tented it did not puncture.
"I did not know he could do that," Gallant muttered to Aegis, looking at the spikes.
"I coulda lived without knowing," Aegis agreed.
Browbeat slowly returned to his normal musclebound proportions. "I don't get the colors though," he said. "Green booties, purple pants, green top..." Some of the older heroes in the room contemplated telling him about a certain gamma irradiated, size-changing, overmuscled superhero from comic books of yore, but decided against it.
"….Invisibility and Force Field belt," Battery murmured. She strapped it on, it hung stylishly loose on her waist. "It's a bit bulky, but I think I like it." Battery's power granted her speed and super strength… but only in proportion to the amount of time she spent remaining totally stationary "recharging." Which meant she was often a sitting duck. With the belt, cobbled together from a gnomish force field generator and a stationary invisibility cloak, she would now either be in motion as a super-strong and super-fast cape, or turtled up as an invisible, invulnerable one.
"Yeah. Whoever this guy is, he's a genius," Assault said. "This stuff is all brilliant." His holiday gift was a bag of tricks… a handy haversack filled with a random selection of toys, widgets and gadgets: paint guns, fireworks, smoke bombs, noisemakers, decoys, dazzlers, distractors and the like. In World of Warcraft they were just "toys." In reality, they could have constituted the contents of the utility belt of a demented Batman. Assault was sure to get some truly interesting uses out of them. "What do you suppose a 'Puntable Marmot' is?"
Kid Win shook the overlarge box he'd been handed. Whatever was in it sounded broken. He set it down and opened it. "It's junk?!" he blurted, shaking the box again. Bits and parts rolled around inside. "No, it's… a box of parts?" It was parts. It was a sampling of all the components and reagents in the Warcraft engineering portfolio, along with a broad selection of loose electronic and mechanical parts from more mundane sources. There was at least one or two of everything. Just the sight of some of them was enough to get Kid Win's tinker power senses tingling. He fished out the card he saw sliding around inside and read it.
Kid Win had a few handicaps getting in his way of being a great Tinker. He had a minor case of dyscalculia which made the basic mathematics needed for his skillset a trial, as well as a minor case of ADHD. He was also too fixated with attempting to emulate Hero, the world's first tinker and one of the world's greatest heroes when he was alive… but to whom Kid Win had nothing in common. And most vitally, he had not figured out what his specialty as a Tinker was. So the writing on the card constituted, for him, a life-changing epiphany:
THINK
MODULAR
He blinked. Then he grinned. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah!" He sat down on the nearest piece of furniture, pulled a multitool out of its compartment on his armor, and began assembling some of the components into… something noone else there dared speculate. Whatever it was, it was going to have a LOT of USB ports.
Gallant was holding an open box… and a pair of goggles with a wraparound band. "I… have no idea what this is about," he said.
"Try 'em on," Browbeat urged. Gallant shrugged. He turned his back, removed his helmet, and put the goggles on. "Huh. Nothing looks any different." He slid his helmet back on. "At least they fit on underneath my…. WOAH." He staggered a bit. Several people took a step towards him in alarm.
"Gallant, are you all right?" Piggot said, half rising from her seat before grimacing and sitting back down.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Gallant said, waving everyone off. "I just got this rush to the head..." for some reason he looked at his hand. "Whoa. Auras are a LOT brighter and clearer now." He looked around. "Or is it just me….?"
Gallant had been a challenge. His power was, no other word for it, weak sauce. He could sense and, to some extent "see" the emotions of others as colored auras. He could also shoot blasts of emotion at others that were accompanied with a weak telekinetic push. It was the main reason he wore a suit of power armor crafted by Kid Win, to compensate for his relatively weak combat ability.
Bayleaf had, once again, no direct way he knew of via enchanting, engineering, or druidic powers to enhance Gallant's abilities or make him more formidable. And just giving him more armor to wear would have not helped that vulnerability. He'd had to extrapolate.The closest approximation in Azeroth terms to Gallant's ability was the "Fear" spell. And the way arcane abilities were boosted in Azeroth was through boosting the attribute of "intellect." So Bayleaf had built Gallant a pair of the highest-ranked intellect boosting goggles in the engineering schematic library.
What Bayleaf didn't know was just how effective this was going to be. He'd removed the built in gun from the "Heavy Skullblaster", tweaked it with some night vision, and replaced the gun slot with a couple of gem sockets... which he'd then fitted with two of the semiprecious stones he'd salvaged, ones aligned to enhance intelligence as well.
Intellect boosting items were, Bayleaf found after some personal experimentation, unpredictable. Much like certain pharmaceuticals were alleged to boost intelligence or creativity, sometimes the results were highly subjective… the wearer of an intellect-boosting gem wasn't infused with new knowledge or experience, but was instead more able to access what they already had, or to think more clearly without distraction or mental clutter. And that only within certain limitations. It could only work with what was already there, and sometimes what was there wasn't much.
Gallant however, did not number among those type. Gallant was already fairly intelligent. The helmet alone boosted Gallant's intellect and stamina attributes by almost 2,000 points each. The gems boosted intellect further. When he donned the goggles, it was the equivalent of forcing a rushing flash flood down a riverbed. The pathways in Gallant's mind and between his mind and his Power were irreversibly opened wide… turned from a steady stream into a rushing, wide open river. And the sensation of his once sluggish powers flowing at full force was intoxicating.
Gallant flexed his hand, watching the aura pooling into it, forming a swirling ball only he could see. He looked up and saw the filing cabinet Missy had shrunk just a few minutes ago.
It was a bad day to be a filing cabinet.
Gallant lashed out his hand. There was a loud WHUMM, and a semi-visible ball of something shot from his hand, raising a wind with its passing, across the room and struck the filing cabinet. Yesterday Gallant's blast would have barely jostled it. Today, it nearly obliterated it. It hit the cabinet with a deafening crash, crumpling it like a beer can hit with a shotgun blast, and launching it across the room. It banged against the shatterproof transpari-luminium window and slid to the floor in a cloud of loose paper.
Everyone stared, stunned.
Carefully, Gallant lifted his helmet and pulled the goggles from underneath. He looked at his hand and flexed it again. The swirling ball of aura formed just as easily as before. "I, um," he said. "I think I want to submit myself to Powers Testing again..." he sat down on one of the nearby chairs, still staring at his hand.
Shadow Stalker had stuck to leaning against the wall while she watched the proceedings, arms crossed and radiating contempt for everyone in the room. She'd turned her nose up at the box Vista had tried to hand her. Vista was in no mood for it and dropped it at her feet with a shrug.
It had sat there this entire time while she avidly ignored it. But avarice was winning out over ego; she finally reached down and picked it up. A quick flick with her pocket knife and the box was open. She dumped the contents out in her hand. There was a folded Christmas card, and what looked like a miniature model of her mask. The hell?
It was a perfect duplicate of her frowning-woman mask, about the size of the palm of her hand, and hung from a leather thong. Was it supposed to hang around her neck like a pendant or something? She read the card. "The F@# is this?" she snapped. She tossed the card and the pendant away and stormed out of the room. Vista picked the card up and read it herself. She exploded into snickers and giggles, then read it aloud for the others.
YOU'VE BEEN ROTTEN
AND HERE'S THE SCOOP
YOU OUGHT TO GET NOTHING
BUT REINDEER POOP
The Wards all cracked up. Clockblocker had been taking a drink from the cooler. Half of it ended up across the room. Vista finally stopped giggling and turned the card over to read the rest. Her smile turned to a frown of puzzlement.
BUT BAD TIMES ARE COMING
FOR ALL, ITS TRUE
SO WEAR THIS TOKEN
SO NONE CONTROL YOU
Shadow Stalker was a rotten person, one who would deserve a lot of the things that happened to her. But there were some things Bayleaf could never permit or tolerate, not even passively. Some time in the near future Shadow Stalker was going to run afoul of a young villain called Regent. She would badly hurt one of Regent's few friends… and Regent would take revenge.
Regent's power was the ability to take control of other people's bodies. At first, causing spasms or twitches, making them fumble or trip-- but with enough exposure gaining the ability to control them entirely like puppets, hear through their ears, see through their eyes. He would seize control of Shadow Stalker this way, and force her to do… deplorable things, both in and out of costume, stripping away her secret identity and utterly destroying her life.
Bayleaf could not live with himself and not at least try to prevent that. But after hours of sifting through all his endowed knowledge of Azeroth's magitek, one distressing fact became clear: there was nothing, absolutely nothing that yet existed in azeroth's magic system or technology that would protect a person from having their mind, emotions or body taken over by another. No protections at all-- not even partial protection from the oh-so-common FEAR spells that were constantly flung around. He had resorted to cobbling together bits and pieces of anything that came remotely close to what he was looking for. Purify spells to try and purge outside influences, freedom of motion spells that prevented binding or freezing, wards to protect from spells in general (though he had no idea how well they would work against mind influences-- as he recalled they'd done jack diddly against fear effects in the game), even one or two "reset" effects that would essentially jolt the person's mind awake by rebooting it, hopefully throwing off any fugue it was under. He hodge-podged it together into the amulet, cursing the blinkered lack of creativity of Azeroth's tunnel-vision mages the entire time, and packaged it up for Shadow Stalker to claim. It was the best that he could do with what he had.
What little he could do, was enough to set the imaginations of all the Protectorate gathered running wild. "You're telling me he has the ability to craft protections against Master-Stranger powers?" Piggot said in disbelief.
"Claims to, at least, if we're understanding that bit of doggerel right," Armsmaster said, crossing his arms and eyeing the medallion. "That may be a difficult thing to safely test."
"I wanna know why he thinks Shadow Stalker of all people needs it," Aegis said.
"Well if YOU could tell anyone in the world to go take a flying leap, and they'd do it-- who'd YOU pick?" Clockblocker quipped.
"Clockblocker--" Aegis and Armsmaster said simultaneously. Clockblocker just stared at them. It was amazing how a blank face mask could convey defiance so easily. Armsmaster just halted in mid sentence, lips compressed in his one-size-fits-all expression of annoyance. Aegis threw his hands in the air. "Whatever."
Piggot rubbed her face with her hands wearily. She'd spent the first ten minutes of this ridiculous fiasco hammering on the emergency lockdown button like she was playing "the Little Drummer Boy," to no avail. Steel shutters should have dropped down over the doors and windows; containment foam sprayers should have lowered from the ceiling and coated anything in the room that moved with brute-rated restraint foam. Nothing happened, of course. Then she had spent thirty minutes watching her merry band of mutant lunatics sitting around opening presents like some deranged funhouse mirror version of a family on Christmas morning.
"My nerves are shot," she muttered. Someone rapped on her desk. She looked up. The reindeer was standing there, holding an envelope in its mouth. The words TO EMILY PIGGOT were clearly visible in big block letters across the front.
"There's no use pretending I don't see you and waiting till you go away, is there," she said. The reindeer solemnly shook his head no. She sighed and took the envelope, ripping it open with quick efficiency.
A pasteboard card fell out. She picked it up and read the calligraphy, lips moving.
Skidmark was pissed.
Of course, Skidmark was always pissed. He was also usually soused, stoked, fried, wasted, buzzed, lit, stoned, pickled, toasted, plastered, embalmed and possibly sauteed. That was the consequence of being the drug kingpin of Brockton Bay and the leader of the Merchants, and having the self-discipline of a toddler in a candy factory. Any other human being, any other organic lifeform would have been a broken down spasmodic wreck after the years of debauchery and chemical abuse that Skidmark had subjected himself to.
Yet somehow, through who knew what perversity of nature-- perhaps some secondary attribute of his cape powers that made him impossible to kill as crabgrass-- somehow he was able to retain enough cohesive brainpower in his sputtering neural tissue to keep his gang together and keep the wheels moving, even if they did only spin idly in the air.
That still-functioning strata of his brain was currently aware that the Merchants were having serious trouble. And that conscious portion of his mind was bile-spitting furious about it. "Don't tell me that BLEEP!" he yelled, cuffing the runner upside his head so hard he fell down. "I don't wanna hear no BLEEP about how you ain't got no BLEEPing product and no BLEEPing money!"
The runner glared up at him and wiped the blood off the corner of his mouth. "So waddya want me to do, read you a bedtime story?" he yelled. "We got hit by a cape, lost everything! The money, the drugs, the guns, hell we even lost one of the DOGS! Three of 'em don't do nuthin but lie on the ground and cry, and one of 'em he snapped its neck like a pretzel stick!"
Skidmark muttered an oath. "Who was it? One o' them krauts? The chinks? WHO?"
"Some new guy. Big frickin' werewolf guy. Huge. Threw one of our guard dogs like he was a baseball. " He spat on the floor, leaving a red stain. "He left a message, too."
He curled up on the ground when Skidmark spun around. "What?" Skidmark spat.
"'Tell Skidmark I'm coming,'" the guy said. "Carved in the concrete with his claw."
Skidmark cursed again. "It's the same BLEEP then." He staggered over to the broken down recliner that served as his throne and threw himself down in it. He covered his eyes with one hand. "That makes a dozen. Twelve, twelve times we been hit in the last two BLEEPin days." "This werewolf guy, some invisible BLEEPing tiger thing, couple of our runners had backpacks, got the stuff snatched off their BLEEPin' backs by a giant BLEEPing owl…"
Squealer raised her head from the couch. "My favorite was the one where we lost that fishing boat fulla coke to that walrus," she said lazily. "heheheh."
"Benny got hit by a tree," one of the stoners on the floor said.
There was silence for a few minutes while everyone tried to digest that.– and failed. "A what?" Skidmark said.
"Benny. He was swipin' some stuff at the ER, this… friggin… TREE grabbed him. Vines everywhere. Tied him up, then told him that this was bad for him and he should clean up and.. you know… find God and stuff or whatever, the usual stuff those types give ya." The junkie paused. "Only he talked real slow. Kiiiiiiindaaaa liiiiiike thiiiiiiiiiis. So slow noone'd ever understand."
"Then how'd Benny understand him?"
"He was on Quaaludes."
Skidmark thought that over. "Shut up," he said.
Mush leaned forward on his pile of garbage in the corner. "Word is, the PRT thinks that at least some o' those guys are all the same guy," he said. "Some sort o' shape changer cape." The deformed little gnome looking cape took a hit off his spliff. "At least some, anyway."
"So is it one guy, or like, half a dozen?" Squealer asked.
"Who BLEEPin knows, who BLEEPin cares," Skidmark snarled, baring his rotten teeth. "Point is they're hittin' US and they're turnin' up the heat more every day." He brooded. "I gotta think." He got to his feet again and slouched out of the room.
"You want anything babe?" Squealer said, waving at the coffee table. There were a few scattered bits of drug paraphernalia on its glass surface.
"No, BLEEP it, I said I gotta THINK," he yelled over his shoulder. The others heard the door slam, but took little note.
The room Skidmark had retreated to was his ultimate sanctum. His sanctum… something or other, BLEEP it, he couldn't remember the word. It was little more than a closet, just a back room in a lousy apartment in a lousy abandoned tenement building in the failed Projects. But as far as Skidmark was concerned, what he kept in there was the secret of all his success.
There was nothing in the room but a scattering of pillows on the floor, and small bedside style cabinet with a locked door. Skidmark locked the door he'd entered, then unlocked the cabinet. Inside was a bottle of dried buttons of some unidentifiable substance. Sitting next to it on a velvet cushion was a magic 8 ball. Skidmark sat down on the cushions crosslegged and set the ball on its cushion in front of him. He took the bottle out, tipped exactly ONE shrivelled little fibrous button out onto his palm, placed the bottle inside the cabinet and stuck the pill under his tongue. He took a deep breath and got ready for the dive.
"Time to talk to Mr. Lucky," he said.
Years ago, when Skidmark had first got his powers and his woman and was just starting his gang, he used to carry this same toy 8-ball with him wherever he would go. It was his lucky charm, he'd joke, and more often than not it was almost true. Just for the hell of it sometimes he'd use the thing to make some decision or other, just to see what would happen. By sheer blind luck, or perhaps misfortune depending on your perspective, he had a winning streak. Every time he consulted Mr. Lucky, things went wildly right. They went from a couple of freaks selling dope out of back of a van to being in charge of a BLEEPing gang, running hookers, protection, and every kind of drug imaginable. Money flowing like water. He took to keeping Mr. Lucky out of sight, consulting him when it was only big questions. He didn't want Mr. Lucky to run out any time soon.
It was about five years ago that he noticed that Mr. Lucky's advice got a lot more detailed, more clever, more useful when he hit a little something before one of their talks. At that time they were starting to pull in and put out a lot of the truly weird stuff. Peyote, Kava, Jimsonweed, shrooms, acid, jungle frog spit, you name it… It was during an experimental phase that Skidmark hit on just the right blend of dope, salvia, ritalin, and a few other herbs and spices that made his consultations with Mr. Lucky even more fruitful. Mr. Lucky's suggestions were more brilliant than ever, and thanks to the magic pills Skidmark would walk out of his little room with every detail burned into his brain in mile high neon letters. He'd never managed to make that mix just right ever again, so he husbanded his last bottle of the dried, pressed pills like they were gold.
He waited until the colors and edges of everything started to ripple, then picked up the ball and shook it.
He waited a minute. It took a while for Mr. Lucky to wake up. The words finally appeared in the little window.
HELLO, OLD FRIEND.
HOW ARE YOU?
"Doin' good, Mr. Lucky," Skidmark said with a lazy smile. "Doin' real good like always. Got me a problem, though."
GO ON.
"Some BLEEPers are hittin' my dealers, my runners. They even got one of my shipments. Bam bam bam, night after night, five, six, ten times a night. And they ain't lettin' up. It's startin' to hurt morale, y'dig?"
DESCRIBE THEM.
"My boys are seein' all sorts o'… things. A tiger. An owl. A wolf-man. Mostly the wolf-man." He decided not to mention the tree or the walrus. There was a long pause. Then the words bubbled up.
HIS NAME IS SKINWALKER.
HE IS VERY DANGEROUS.
YOU MUST ELIMINATE HIM.
Skidmark nodded; that was the gospel truth, right there. "Question is, how?"
DRAW HIM OUT.
"Okay, how?? We stick our noses out, he hits us, then he vanishes before we even knew he was there."
There was another long wait while Mr. Lucky thought. Skidmark was cool, though; the longer Mr. Lucky took to think, the better his ideas were. He sat and watched the colors swirl around the edge of the cosmic void.
HE HUNTS YOU.
"Yeah, I got that," Skidmark said, nodding like a bobbing doll.
HE ALSO HUNTS
NAZIS.
"Do tell."
PRESS THE E88.
FIGHT THEM. DRAW
THEM OUT.
A SMALL
TURF FIGHT,
NO CAPES.
BUT
HE WILL NOT
BE ABLE TO
RESIST.
Skidmarks lips peeled back from his teeth, making him look like a rotting jack o' lantern. "I get it. The BLEEP won't be able to resist the chance to bust a buncha junkies and a buncha Nazis too."
WHEN HE INTERVENES,
YOUR CAPES WILL BE
WAITING FOR HIM.
AND IF YOU
ARE LUCKY, THE
E88 WILL KILL
HIM FOR YOU.
Skidmark's gruesome grin grew wider. "I always am with you around, Mr. Lucky."
Chapter Text
The dealers were pretty confident.
The four of them were working together. Things were going smoothly for once. Once they'd heard about the Skinwalker, and how he was going through the dealers in the area like a lawnmower, they had taken precautions. They had set up a folding table in the second floor of a half-demolished parking garage, using the security fences and barricades to block off all but one entrance. A couple of trash barrel fires spaced around the closed-in area gave them plenty of light to see by, but not enough to attract the bored cops who wandered through the Docks. They all had guns, pistols mostly but at least one kalishnikov, and they had not two but four big ugly dogs, Rottie halfbreeds, not well trained but mean enough and smart enough to "sic" whatever they were pointed at. The customers, unsurprisingly, were much better behaved than usual.
"This works better," one of them noted, idly folding bills.
The guy next to him holding the Kalishnikov grinned, baring a mouthful of rotten teeth. "Shoulda thought o' settin' up like this years ago," he said. "Steada handin' off baggies in the street like a chump. That Skinwalker guy did us a favor."
The guy tending the dogs huffed. "Huh, here's hopin' he don't do us no more favors, thank you very much," he said.
"Ah lighten up," the one holding the kalishnikov said, hefting it. "He shows up, we've got some surprises to give him."
The guy tending the dogs looked over his shoulder. "Well, you do that, be sure you do it right and make sure he's dead," he said fearfully.
"What's you're problem, man? He's just a cape." The guy at the table shoved a baggie into their latest customer's hand and sent him shuffling for the exit."The fool plays with US, he's gonna get the short end of it."
"Don't you know nuthin' about animals?" the dog guy said. Having to pour kibble for the mongrels had apparently convinced him he was the expert on animals in the group. "All this stuff he's done so far-- he's not playing around; he's toying with his prey. Ever seen a cat play with a mouse? All lazy n' shit… till they get serious. Then those claws move so fast you can't even SEE 'em.
"If you shoot this guy, get it right the first shot-- cause if he gets serious, you'll never get a second."
FOOSH. The four Merchants yelped like scalded cats and wheeled about to face the direction of the sound. Had they been from Azeroth they might have recognized the sound of a gnomish fire extinguisher. The two trash barrels at the far end of the garage had gone out, plunging it into darkness. In that darkness something moved. And growled.
"It's him!" Three of them aimed their guns at the shadows. "No wait!" the dog guy said. "You shoot that thing you'll pull every cop in the city. Let the dogs at him first!" He unlocked the dog's collars and pointed at the glowing eyes in the dark. "GET 'IM!" The four dogs pounded for the shadow, snarling and slavering.
Two clawed hands shot out of the dark and grabbed the first two dogs by their throats. They were whipped around in a circle in the air and brought down on top of the other two, slamming all four to the concrete with canine shrieks of pain. The Skinwalker opened his mouth and ROARED into their faces. Two of them rolled over on their backs, whimpering. The third scuttled backward, limping and cringing and shrieking like an old woman's pug who'd seen a cat for the first time.
The fourth one tried to press his luck. He leapt for the crouching figure's throat, snapping and snarling, its eyes mad with fury. The hands seized it again. There was a loud crack and the struggling dog went limp.
The guy holding the Kalishnikov opened up; the other two beside him fired their pistols. The dog's corpse came hurtling out of the shadows like a softball, striking the guy with the assault rifle and knocking him backwards twenty feet, cutting the bark of the gun off. The dead dog was swiftly followed by the two burn-barrels; they struck the Merchants with the pistols with a loud gong, laying them out flat. Vines sprang out of nowhere, cocooning the concussed dealers and tangling the legs of the last one standing, immobilizing him.
The fourth merchant wet himself in terror as the Skinwalker stepped fully into the light. He kicked the table into the ceiling, scattering the goods and the money everywhere. A taloned hand grabbed the terrified merchant by his ratty shirt front and lifted him off the ground till he was looking at the feral cape face to face. He'd never seen so many teeth in his life. "You're not worth my time," the Skinwalker said in a voice as deep and resonant as a god's. ""Where'd you get this? From who? Names, places, I want everything you know."
Fifteen minutes later, after a great deal of hysterical ratting-out, he left them. He took their guns, he took their cellphones, wallets, shoes, and left them hogtied on the floor… watching their merchandise burn to ash in one of the burn-barrels, and their instructions etched in a nearby support column with a diamond-sharp claw:
TELL SKIDMARK I'M COMING
This scene was repeated all night, all over the city. Three locations, five locations, a dozen. Dawn came with dozens of merchants left trussed for the cops or simply looted of all they had, hundreds of thousands in illicit drugs burned, who knew how much drug money confiscated...and no real clues on where Skidmark and his crew were hiding.
Adrian sighed in disgust as he dropped down through the skylight into his lair. His bones ached, he was so tired. He had a handful of cellphones and wallets; he'd go through them later. Maybe he'd find something in the contact lists… but he wasn't hopeful. He was no Sherlock Holmes, or even a Sam Spade. He could only hope the pressure finally flipped Skidmark's switch.
The first snow of the holiday season came in, thick and heavy, cloaking everything in billowing waves of white. Even Brockton Bay couldn't help looking better when it was wearing its winter best, and a tiny bit of genuine holiday cheer seemed to be making the rounds.
Dinah Alcott wasn't feeling it very much though. All she could feel was afraid.
School was out for the holidays; they'd had a "holiday party" instead of classes-- what her friend Elliot joked was "a Christmahannakwanzaa party"-- and watched old christmas movies and eaten popcorn and junk food till everyone was buzzed out on sugar and caffeine. The school bus packed full of shrieking, excited kids had just dropped her off on her street, and she was trudging home through the still falling snow.
The streets were already plowed, but the sidewalks were still covered in a deep layer of white. It made for slow going when you were short and dressed in klunky rubber galoshes. It was pretty at least, Dinah thought. And the falling snow made everything so still.
She went over the numbers in her head again.
Chance she would be abducted this week? 23% and rising.
Chance she would be abducted before the end of the holidays? 67% and rising.
Chance she would be abducted by the end of January? 89% and rising.
She bit her lip and sniffled. She hated her power. All she had to do was ask, all she had to do was hear a question or think a question about the future, and her power would tell her how likely it was to happen. No lies, no secrets, no mistakes. And since adults went around all the time saying things like "what are the odds?" or "how likely could it be?"-- she'd known all sorts of horrible things, almost from the day she'd triggered.
Among all the horrible things she now knew, she knew that someone was going to kidnap her.
She wasn't foolish; she'd tried to warn her parents, to warn any adult. But they'd laughed and said the same thing that she had heard on a TV commercial that had activated her power in the first place. "Don't be silly, do you know how unlikely that is you'd be kidnapped?"
She had. She'd told them, to the third decimal place. They'd ignored her.
Probability that anyone she told would believe her before it was too late? 5.3%
Tears puddled in her eyes, she struggled to wipe them away with her mittens, to little effect. Whoever they were, couldn't they at least wait until after Christmas?
She heard a footstep and a twig snap. She looked around, her breath hitched in her throat. There was noone around; her footprints were the only ones that marred the fresh-fallen snow. There was a little park across the road that all the kids played at-- noone was there now; they were all inside where it was warm and dry. What she saw standing on the rise made her breath catch in her throat, but in an entirely different way.
It was a reindeer.
It was snowy white, with huge antlers like the branches of a tree. It was wearing a harness and saddlebags of some sort and had bangles-- Christmas ornaments?-- dangling from its antlers. It stood there, just looking at her, majestic and unafraid.
"Omigosh. No way," she breathed. She stumbled; without realizing it she'd walked towards it, across the street and up over the little ankle-high wall surrounding the park. The reindeer was less than twenty feet away from her now. It pawed at the ground; she heard bells jingle.
"No. Way..!" she said again.
Slowly, gracefully… almost majestically, she thought; that was a good word for it, majestic…. It stepped through the snow, walking towards her. For the first time she realized just how big it was; she didn't even come to its shoulder. She hesitated. She was a sensible, practical little girl. And her practical side reminded her that it was a strange animal; it could be dangerous…
...But still, her struggling, battered innocence protested...
It stood perfectly still. Slowly it lowered its head till its nose was almost touching her. Carefully, she lifted up one hand and put it on the reindeer's nose, feeling the velvety pad under her palm. "Oh wow," she said, a smile of wonder creeping across her face. "Hi. I'm Dinah," she said. She felt silly even as she said it. It couldn't possibly--
The reindeer tilted its head, almost like a dog. It made a "whuff" sound and craned its neck back, reaching over its shoulder for the bag hanging on its side. When its head came back around it was holding a giftwrapped box in its mouth by the ribbon. A tag fluttered from it, the words "FOR DINAH" on it in big black letters.
"For me?" she squeaked. She took the package, wrapping her arms around it-- it was huge and bulky, twice as tall as it was deep and wide. "Thank--- thank you!" The reindeer nuzzled her. It wheeled about and galloped away, bells jingling, and vanished into the falling snow. The bells fell silent and she was alone.
She staggered through her front door a few minutes later, package in arms. "Mom, Dad, I'm home!"
Her mother came in from the kitchen. "No need to shout, Dinah, I-- goodness, that's a big package. Where did you get it?"
Dinah considered her options, realized she couldn't possibly make up a really good lie, and went with the truth, which was confusing enough. "One of Santa's Reindeer gave it to me!"
Her father was on the couch, reading the paper (who DID that anymore?) He looked up in confusion. "What?"
Her mother looked confused, but then her expression cleared. "Oh, that's right. That's what they call the school gift exchange thing. When you get a gift they say you got it from Santa's Reindeer… I remember her teacher saying something about that..."
Dinah resisted the urge to roll her eyes and stamp her foot in frustration. Her parents seemed to have a superpower too-- only hearing what they wanted to hear.
"Well it certainly looks like they splurged," her father said. "So which reindeer was it, Punkin?" he teased. "Rudolph, Vixen, Blitzen?"
Dinah's eyes went round and her mouth popped open. "Oh, NUTS!" she said, stamping her foot for real this time. "I forgot to ask!!" That was going to bug her forever…
Her parents blinked, then burst out laughing. "Oh Dinah, you are so silly!"
Arrrrrrgh!
"Well, go on honey, open it!" her father urged.
"Oh, honey, she should really wait till Christmas--" but before her mother even finished speaking Dinah had already torn half the paper off.
"One early present won't hurt," her father said indulgently. "Why when I was a boy we had a tradition where we opened one present on Christmas Eve..." he chuckled. "Of course we always ended up breaking down and opening ALL of them that night, but--"
Dinah laid the box down on its side on the coffee table and opened it. Inside were two very expensive looking toy robots stacked up on one another, with squat bodies, headlight eyes and rotating strobe lights for heads. "Unusual sort of gift for a little girl," her father murmured, lifting one out of the box and looking it over. "Beautiful work though. I think this is real brass, or maybe bronze."
"There's a business card in the box," Mrs. Alcott said, plucking it out. "From the workshop of World of Crafts.' Oh, HIM."
"Him who?"
"There's a fellow with a pushcart down on the Boardwalk, he sells things like this," she said. "Little brass toys, wind up butterflies, trees in bottles, all sorts of things. He sometimes shows up at the Lord Street Market, too, I hear."
"Huh. Nifty." Mr. Alcott turned the one he was holding over in his hands. "I guess it's some sort of alarm clock or something?" He put it back in the box. "Why don't you take those on up to your room for now, Punkin. We'll be having dinner in a little bit."
"Okay." Dinah scooped up the box and raced up the stairs.
"No running!"
Grumping, she slowed down and walked like a proper lady up the stairs and into her room. She laid the box on her bed, carefully closed the door to her bedroom, and fished out the pamphlet she'd spotted in the bottom of the box. She noticed her new toys had names engraved on their chests.
The first one was OB-1.
The second was KEN-OB.
Ugh. Grownups and their jokes.
She unfolded the accordion paper and started to read.
CONGRATULATIONS!
You are now the proud owner of TWO (2)
A-O-B model Defender-Bots (limited edition.)
Custom built to be Danger Tuff™
and
READY FOR ACTION!
Awesome DEFENDER-TASTIC FEATURES include:
Super durable!
Self recharging!
High volume and visibility DANGER ALARM
To let the forces of JUSTICE know
when EVIL rears its ugly head!
GPS and DISTRESS BEACON!
High power ELECTRO BEAMS
to give the Bad Guys the shock of their lives!
INVISO FIELD
to render you and your defender-bot
undetectable to the Enemy!
(Lasts indefinitely; only remains active while stationary)
ULTRA DEFENSE FORCE FIELD
Nullifies all incoming attacks!
(Field of limited duration and durability; must recharge
forcefield capacitors approx. 60 seconds between uses.)
And when things are at their most dangerous, the
GNOMERIGAN WORLD ENLARGER/REDUCER
is there to help your Defender-Bots SAVE THE DAY!
Take them with you everywhere!
Ask yourself: what are the odds
that you could need a Defender-Bot?
You are now the proud owner of TWO (2)
A-O-B model Defender-Bots (limited edition.)
Custom built to be Danger Tuff™
and
READY FOR ACTION!
Awesome DEFENDER-TASTIC FEATURES include:
Super durable!
Self recharging!
High volume and visibility DANGER ALARM
To let the forces of JUSTICE know
when EVIL rears its ugly head!
GPS and DISTRESS BEACON!
High power ELECTRO BEAMS
to give the Bad Guys the shock of their lives!
INVISO FIELD
to render you and your defender-bot
undetectable to the Enemy!
(Lasts indefinitely; only remains active while stationary)
ULTRA DEFENSE FORCE FIELD
Nullifies all incoming attacks!
(Field of limited duration and durability; must recharge
forcefield capacitors approx. 60 seconds between uses.)
And when things are at their most dangerous, the
GNOMERIGAN WORLD ENLARGER/REDUCER
is there to help your Defender-Bots SAVE THE DAY!
Take them with you everywhere!
Ask yourself: what are the odds
that you could need a Defender-Bot?
Beneath each blurb was a cartoon drawing of the "Defender-Bots" punching, zapping, and force-fielding their way through evil aliens, sinister ninjas, raging monsters and more. Just silly Saturday morning cartoon stuff.
She traced her finger over the line that had been double inked. "Ask yourself: what are the odds?"
Hastily she pulled her backpack open and dug out a pencil and a piece of paper. Hands shaking, she wrote out her questions.
"If I keep the Defender-Bots with me… what are the odds I'll be abducted this week?"
0.2%
"If I keep the Defender-Bots with me… what are the odds I'll be abducted this month?"
.25%
"If I keep the Defender-Bots with me… what are the odds I'll be abducted in a year?"
.49%
She traced her finger over the line that had been double inked. "Ask yourself: what are the odds?"
Hastily she pulled her backpack open and dug out a pencil and a piece of paper. Hands shaking, she wrote out her questions.
"If I keep the Defender-Bots with me… what are the odds I'll be abducted this week?"
0.2%
"If I keep the Defender-Bots with me… what are the odds I'll be abducted this month?"
.25%
"If I keep the Defender-Bots with me… what are the odds I'll be abducted in a year?"
.49%
Her breathing quickened. No, wait. Just because she wouldn't be abducted, didn't mean something worse could happen. The bad guy, whoever he was, could still decide to do something horrible to her or to her family. There were just too many bad things that could happen, or that the villain could do.
Her head was already aching from so many questions to her Power. She wet her lips and asked the best question she could think of. "What are the odds that the Defender Bots came from someone who can save me and my family from the bad guy?"
93%
She asked one more. "What are the odds he will?"
100%
"Biddlbiddlebip."
"Bbbltp."
The two Obie-bots' eyes lit up. The box they were in tipped over and they climbed out to stand on the bedspread. They watched her with unblinking yellow-green eyes. "Obie-One?" she said. The one on the left went "Ding" and saluted with a Clink! "Ken-Obie?" The other one went "Ding" and saluted as well. "You guys are gonna keep me safe? And my family?"
"Ding!" "Ding!"
The tears that had threatened before finally spilled over. It wasn't till now that she realized how much it mattered to have someone, or even someTHING, to talk to about her troubles that believed her. She pulled the two little robots into a hug. For the first time in forever, she felt that things were gonna be okay.
Panacea walked out into the enclosed garden. It was a breath of fresh air; cold, freezing snowy air, but fresh air all the same. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes, started to light up… then reconsidered. "Eh," she muttered, stuffing the pack and lighter into the nearby trash can. "I'm turning into Miss Polly Pureheart."
"Goooood..." she yipped and turned around. "I didn't see you there!" Snow covered or not, how did she miss a talking tree?
The Giving Tree was there again, his branches laden with snow. He'd been dubbed that by one of the nurses, a lady who was a fan of Shel Silverstein, and it had stuck. Every couple of days he would appear at one hospital or clinic or the other for a few hours, rooted in the middle of the garden or the quad, reaching for the sky and shedding that healing light as far as it could reach. Sometimes there would be secondary growths here and there around the hospital; foot high mushrooms that shed their own healing aura, redoubling the effect. The staff at each location had taken to putting the more "in need" patients closer to where they thought he would appear, or if the weather was good wheeling out the more ambulatory patients to rest in his shade.
"How are you doing?" she asked. He shook the snow off his branches and smiled at her. The cold didn't seem to bother him, but he did seem a little more sluggish than the first time they'd met a month ago.
"I am…. Well," he said. "Howww. … fares… the seedling?"
She pointed past him. In the middle of the quad in a planter was an oak sapling. Were one to judge by its growth, it would be at least a year or two in age. "Ahhh," he said. He ambled around it, examining it from all sides. "You have… been trying things… I see," he said, looking at her knowingly.
She nodded. The sapling was stronger, hardier, with a more robust immunity to insects and diseases. Its xylem and phloem were scattered in several layers, rather than in one thin vulnerable layer under the bark. She was tempted to see if she could somehow make it evergreen, but had resisted the urge so far. The Giving Tree rested his hand against the trunk and nodded. "It will grow… well. Good. Strong."
He looked at her. "I should… let… you know…. This… will be… my… last visit… till spring." He looked up ruefully and shook more snow off his crown. "I have… stayed over long… as it is."
Amy wrung her hands. She had postponed asking this for too long as it was. "Then with your permission," she said after a deep breath. "There is one more change I would like to make to the sapling."
He looked at her, curiosity plain on his craggy face. "Oh?" She held out her hand. "Ahhh. I..see." She took his hand in hers, and placed her other hand on the trunk of the oak sapling. She closed her eyes and opened her Power.
She would probably spend the rest of her life trying to describe, in analytical scientific terms, what she saw… or what she did. But she understood it somehow all the same, like a fish understands water or a bird understands the sky.
The sapling began to glow. Leaves or no leaves, winter or no winter, it grew several feet taller and several inches thicker. The bark split, then healed, then split again. It stretched, waxed, grew--- and then stilled. Panacea opened her eyes. The sapling was glowing like the Giving Tree… faint, a barely visible aura almost like a heat shimmer, but it was there.
The Giving Tree patted her shoulder, then patted the trunk, obviously pleased. "It… sleeps… for now. But in the Spring… it will share. Healing. Life. Yes."
"It won't be, um, intelligent like you," she said. "But it will give off that healing aura like you do." She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, under her hood. "I'm going to, to make more like it," she said with the air of someone finally committing to a course of action. "Plant seedlings and saplings at every hospital I can. They won't breed, the PRT would have kittens if they did. They'd have ALL the kittens." She grimaced. "They can't do much, though, so long as they can't breed. My mom's going to have thirty percent of the kittens all by herself, as it is... But you shouldn't have to bear all the burden alone."
The Giving Tree laid a hand on her shoulder and leaned in. "Neither… should you..." he said solemnly. He tapped her on the nose. "Beep." He suddenly turned solemn. "I need… to ask a favor..."
"What is it?" Wordlessly, he handed her a pasteboard card. Where did that come from? She read the wording on it and blinked. "I… okay, I don't do requests," she said. "Not… okay, not usually. But because it's you, and just this once." She pulled a pen out of her uniform pocket (why did so few capes wear costumes with something that common sense?) and signed the card. "I'm trusting you," she warned him. "I figure it's gotta be important if you're asking."
He took the card back and tucked it away… somewhere. "It could change… the fate… of the world," he said ominously. She shivered, and it wasn't from the snow seeping through her boots. He gave her a reassuring smile. "Be well."
There was a sudden gust of wind. The snow blew up and swirled around the garden, blotting out everything in a blinding cloud of white. When the wind fell away, he was gone. Amy looked around, blinking and wiping snow off her face. "I hate it when he does that," she muttered.
Armsmaster hunched over his worktable with a digital magnifier on an armature pulled down in front of his face and one of his custom-made multitools in his hand. He was picking apart yet another of the Alarm-O-Bots that had mobbed him at the end of the farcical "cage match" Skinwalker had set up. The broken remains of a half dozen others were scattered around him. None were in any condition anyone would call "reparable." He had been a bit… enthusiastic in subduing them.
There was a knock at the door. "Enter," he muttered. The voice-activated door slid aside, admitting Velocity. "So how goes the research?" he asked, looking around at the scattered parts.
"Not very far," Colin admitted, pushing aside the magnifier. "No serial numbers, no seals, all the major parts seem to be recycled or even hand crafted." He tapped a part. "I'd swear these parts here were actually drop forged."
"What about the 'brain,' the CPU?" Velocity suggested.
"Bits out of old cell phones or electronic toys," Armsmaster said. "The programming itself is simplistic-- little more than "Run at target. grab hold and climb. When knocked down, get up and repeat.'" He grunted. "Less brains than your average Roomba."
"You forgot "Spray target with CO2 extinguisher," Velocity quipped. He picked up one disemboweled bot and looked at it. "You know, these could be useful. With a little better programming and a little containment foam--"
Armsmaster set down his multitool with a clang. "No. Just…. no."
Velocity held up his hands in defeat. "Fine, fine."
Armsmaster pulled out a thumb drive and handed it to Velocity without looking. "If you'd do a hi-speed review of my helmet cam for my last patrol, I'd appreciate it," he said, distracted.
Velocity pulled back a bit, miffed at Armsmaster's brusque request. He took the thumb drive anyway; there was no point at being annoyed with Armsmaster for being Armsmaster. He looked around for a laptop. Armsmaster shoved an app-book across the tabletop to him. "It's at 120x," he grunted.
Now Velocity was getting annoyed. He took the book and plugged the drive in. Eight hours of video footage began playing at 120 times normal speed. Velocity blurred as he allowed his power to speed him up to match the video. He picked up a digital pad and started noting time markers down. For several minutes all you could see of him was a very blurry, and very bored looking man in tights. His expression changed considerably when the tape suddenly cut to footage of Armsmaster and Skinwalker's "cage match." He watched it through, carefully keeping a poker face, then watched a good bit of the rest of the footage for good measure before he stopped it. "Spot anything worth noting?" Armsmaster said, his voice bland.
Velocity suddenly remembered that most monitors and digital cameras, save for the ones Armsmaster had designed specifically for Velocity's use, only worked at a top speed of 60 frames per second. Anyone attempting to spy on them via hidden camera would only see a pixelated blur on the screen in front of him or on the pad in his hand at best. Clever sod. "A couple things," Velocity agreed, tapping the pad. He scribbled several notes next to the list, then passed the pad over. How many have seen this? Was written in the corner.
Armsmaster nodded and pretended to write a note next to the first item while Velocity looked over his shoulder. You, me, Dragon, Miss Militia.
Any evidence?
Dragon's spotted some things: back doors, keystroke loggers, time bombs, dormant programs to take over key systems. Still tracing them back to TC. Software and hardware both compromised.
Piggot? Was the second.
May be compromised , Armsmaster wrote. Served with TC vs. Nilbog. Velocity suppressed a shudder. The Ellisburg incident was a horror story come to life. A man named Jamie Rinke had Triggered as an S-class biotinker-- able to create autonomous lifeforms from any living organic material. He'd gone completely insane and released a swarm of monsters on the city that devoured the populace or dragged them off to be ingredients for new monsters. The heroes they'd sent in had been routed and the PRT team accompanying them had been wiped out to a man-- save for two: Calvert and Piggot. And Piggot had only mostly gotten out. She'd left most of the flesh on her lower legs and parts of her kidneys behind. The authorities had resorted to walling in the entire city and manning the wall 24-7 with a small army and nearly every weapon of destruction known to man. Why they hadn't simply nuked the abomination until the ground was molten for a thousand years was beyond Velocity's ability to guess. If Calvert and Piggot were brothers in arms from that crucible, there was a good chance they were working together now, too.
There was a click on the intercom. "Armsmaster, this is Piggot. Please come to the PRT and assemble the Protectorate AND the Wards in my office immediately."
"Speak of the Devil," Velocity muttered.
Armsmaster ignored the quip and hit the reply button the bracer of his armor (he hated having to drop everything just to cross the room and hit a button on the wall.) "On my way. What is the reason for the call?"
"I have an inquiry to make," the Director said, her voice as flat and level as always. "I want to know one thing:
"Why the HELL is there a reindeer standing in the middle of my office?"
It was a bit of a trip from the Protectorate base out in the Bay to the PRT building in the heart of the city. Armsmaster constantly resented the inefficiency of the arrangement, even if he accepted the alleged need for some illusion of distance between the two organizations. Even the two-minute flight from helicopter pad to helicopter pad was an annoyance, but at least it was no longer than that... even with everyone and their cousin deciding to tag along. The Director's office took up one entire floor near the top of the building. Which was fortunate, as she was about to need the space.
When the heroes arrived, they were greeted with a strange scene. Outside in the hallway were several armed PRT guards, all trying both to look alert and intimidating, and to peer past each other into the Director's office. They squeezed past the gauntlet of guards and entered to find the tableau within to justify the one without. Director Piggot was sitting at her desk, utterly still, her scowling face as immobile as if it were made of stone. Standing in front of her desk, grazing placidly on one of the potted plants, was a white stag with an enormous rack of antlers.
Everyone stared. "But-- how?" Assault said, waving one hand about.
"That would be MY question," Piggot said grimly. "I went to use the facilities, came in, sat down, turned around and there he was."
"But how did he get through the door? His antlers…" Assault persisted, measuring off their size in the air with his hands. "He wouldn't fit through the door--"
"He's a shapeshifter isn't he?" Battery said. "… assuming it is the Skinwalker."
"Iunno, he seems like the sort of guy who'd buy a real elk and drop it in Piggot's office just for the giggles," Assault pointed out.
"Why hasn't the Director shot him or something?" Triumph asked in a (inevitable for him) stage whisper. Piggot sighed. She'd obviously heard that. People three floors away had obviously heard that. Never ask a cape with voice-blaster powers to whisper.
"Because," she said in annoyance, not taking her eyes off the reindeer desecrating her desk plants. "My gun is missing, the controls for the office security systems are for some reason not working, and as annoying as it is having a 500 pound live reindeer stuck in my office, having a 500 pound DEAD reindeer stuck in my office would be considerably worse. Do you have any other questions, Triumph?" The lion-themed hero looked sheepish.
"Well somebody think of SOMEthing," Battery said. If her husband started giggling again she was going to have to hurt someone.
The Protectorate heroes crowded at the door, unwilling to step closer. Battling violent gangs, brutal villains, and sociopathic megalomaniacs had apparently left them untrained for dealing with displaced wildlife. Feeling a bit embarrassed for himself and his team. Armsmaster stepped up. "Skinwalker, you are under arrest for trespassing on PRT offices. Stand down, and return to a, er, more compact form immediately." The reindeer stared at him with all the apparent comprehension of a cow, then returned to its al fresco lunch. "And I just tried to arrest a cow with antlers," Armsmaster said in a tired monotone. "Truly a highlight of my career."
"If you do not stop eating my violets, I swear I will find a way to crate you and ship you to Finland for soup ingredients," Piggot hissed. The reindeer stopped chewing and stared at her for a long moment. Then slowly, deliberately, it took another bite. Piggot made a sound like an angry schnauzer revving up.
Armsmaster stepped forward and waved the unbladed haft of his halberd at the elk. "HO! Hah! Er, Giddyup!…. Whooaah--!" The reindeer bugled angrily at the implied challenge and took several lunging steps at the armored hero, who hastily retreated back to the group of capes blocking the door.
"My hero," Piggot said. The sarcasm in her voice could have curdled gasoline.
Per fire regulations, the office had two entrances. The other one was the elevator that ran from the basement garage clear to the top floor, and was situated on the far side of the room. It dinged, signaling the late arrival of the Wards. "Sorry we're late Director Piggot," Aegis was already saying as he stepped off the elevator, "There was a tour group and-- what the hell?" He stumbled to a halt just inside the office.
Shadow Stalker clapped eyes on the reindeer next. She whipped her crossbow out of nowhere, nocked and ready. "Holy crap, a moose! ...You want me to shoot it?" She sounded way too eager.
"No!" Armsmaster said "I do not even want to try to think of how to get an unconscious large ungulate out of this office. And tranq darts can make the target void their bowels as well. I do NOT want to see that."
Shadow Stalker lowered her crossbow in surprise. "What, they can?" she asked, disbelieving. "Why didn't you jerks tell me that? I coulda stabbed myself with one of those! "
"A guy can dream..." Clockblocker muttered.
"Coincidentally, Clockblocker," Piggot said in a conversational tone, "If I find out any of you had any part in this little prank, there will be hell to pay."
Kid Win snorted. "On what she pays us? Get real," he muttered to the others.
"Where would you buy an elk in Brockton Bay anyway?" Aegis muttered back.
"Maybe they rent…?"
The elevator dinged again, announcing the arrival of Gallant, Browbeat, and Vista. "Okay, we had to get our gear out of-- oh my gosh, a REINDEER?" Vista said, her voice rising to a squeak. Then, with the artless naivete that underlined for the hundredth time that for all her experience as a Ward she was still just a twelve-year-old girl, she walked straight across the room and began petting the reindeer on its nose. To everyone's relief, the deer merely nuzzled her palm and butted its head into the patting. Vista laughed and scratched behind its ears. "I know some of you guys wanted to get into the holiday spirit, but this is ridiculous," Vista giggled.
Slowly the two groups filtered their way into the room. Not all the way, though. Missy and the reindeer still had a fairly good clear space around them. Miss Militia couldn't resist putting her oar in. "We do seem to make things more difficult for ourselves than we need to, don't we," she said. Several capes glared at her.
"Okay. So why is it here?" Browbeat asked.
That seemed to be the magic question. The reindeer's ears perked up. He craned his neck back and dug around under the flap of one of his saddlebags and pulled out… a gift wrapped box. He set it on the ground at his hooves and then pulled out another. And then another.
Armsmaster felt himself on the verge of an apoplexy. This HAD to be Skinwalker, in yet another form… and now showing off a bit of tinker tech Armsmaster would have given his left arm for: a dimensional pocket. To deliver Christmas presents!
"Ooh, presents!" Assault said. With a jesting grin he reached down to pick up one of the bigger boxes.
Whop. An enormous cloven hoof came down, pinning the box to the floor. The reindeer glared at him and snorted, eyes narrowed. Assault backed off, hands held up. "Whoa. Eheh. Kids go first, right?"
The reindeer gave him a disdainful look. Then it picked up one package with its mouth by the ribbon and handed it to Vista. "Ooh, thank you!" Before anyone could say anything she began ripping open the paper.
"Vista!" Gallant said. "That could be booby-trapped!"
Vista shot him a scornful look. "A reindeer in sleighbells shows up in the Director's office, eats her desk plants, pulls like a jillion packages out of hammerspace while every hero in the Bay watches, then just stands there watching while one of us gets ready to set off a bomb in its face? What part of that story makes sense, Gallant?"
You could almost hear Gallant's jaw opening and closing behind the visor of his full-face helmet. He didn't have time to formulate a comeback, because the reindeer was now handing him a package as well. "Iii..."
"The word is 'thank you,' Gallant," Vista said without looking up from her package. The sticky tape was giving her gloved fingers trouble.
Packages were handed out in swift order to each of the wards. Then it began nudging boxes in the direction of the Protectorate heroes. The first of them had plucked up their nerve enough to pick the boxes up when Vista squealed. "Oooh, look!"
She held up her prize. It was a gun of some sort, done out in emerald green crystal and brass trim, along with a holster in gold and green. Vista gleefully strapped it around her waist. It had to be said, it went well with her costume. "It looks like a Weta ray gun," Clockblocker commented.
"You know the Tinker who made that?" Armsmaster said.
"No, not a tinker," he said. "Propmakers. They make widgets and gadgets for the movies, and they have a sideline selling these prop weapons to collectors."
While he was talking Vista was drawing a bead on a nearby filing cabinet. "Eat hot subatomic death, evildoer," she muttered, and pulled the trigger. There was a crackling noise and a jagged beam of energy leapt from the muzzle of the weapon, striking the steel cabinet and limning it in light. There was a loud "smeeeerp" sound and the filing cabinet shrank to one tenth its size. Everyone froze in shock. Vista stood there, rigid with surprise, the shrink ray held stiffly in her hands. "I thought it was a toy!" she squeaked.
"Teach you to assume," Aegis said unnecessarily.
"Are you out of your mind?" Miss Militia barked at the reindeer. Several people started to speak up at once, a couple of them looking as if they planned to snatch the ray gun out of Vista's hand. The reindeer looked unphased. It began clopping it's hoof on the floor.
Clop… clop… clop….
When it reached thirty, it stopped. There was a "vuuuum" sound, and the filing cabinet returned to normal size. "Oh thank--" Vista said, relieved. "It's only temporary!"
There were many sorts of ray weapons in the gnomish tinker inventory. The shrink ray was just one. And, if Vista ever read the manual and figured out how to flip the reverse switch, the enlarger ray was another. A ranged weapon that could safely render anyone attacking the young dimension warper harmless would go a long way to easing Bayleaf's mind.
"Temporary or not, that thing is untested tinker technology from an unknown maker," Armsmaster said sternly. "It's going through the full testing regime before you even THINK of touching it..."
"Great," said Clockblocker, a slightly panicked note in his laugh. "Then would somebody please come take this from me before I hurt myself?" He was holding another ray gun, a slightly sleeker model in grey, silver and white in his outstretched hand.
"Just put it down, Clockblocker," Armsmaster ordered.
"I'd like to," Clockblocker said, his voice very small. "There's only one problem."
"What?"
"There's a warning light on this thing," Clockblocker said. "And it's blinking." He was right. There were two vacuum tubes sticking out of the back at an angle, just above the grip. One was blinking red.
"Time-freeze the thing!" Aegis said.
"I'm trying," Clockblocker said, his hand shaking. "It's not working!" As they watched the little blinking light began to blink faster, and faster...
Clockblocker's power was potent, if esoteric. He could make anything he touched freeze in time. The effect was apparently random, ranging from thirty seconds to ten minutes. (If anyone had managed to chart the time immobilized vs. the mass involved, then added a third axis for power he had put into the effort, they might have noticed a pattern. But alas for insufficient data points...) And it worked on anything solid, liquid, and even on rare occasions on gases or energy fields. For him to be unable to time-freeze something wasn't merely unusual, it was alarming.
The light was strobing five times a second now. Clockblocker cringed and got ready to fruitlessly fling the gun across the office when the radio tube suddenly blinked out, and the one next to it began glowing green.
The reindeer grunted. Clockblocker looked at it. The reindeer had stepped into one of the open boxes and, agitated, was trying to shake it off. With a kick of the forehoof it flipped the empty box into the air, straight at Clockblocker's head. Clockblocker, already jittery, jabbed the steampunk-looking ray gun in the direction of the cardbard and spasmodically pulled the trigger. A pencil thin ray of light struck the box and it froze in midair. Not even the paper or ribbon fluttered.
"Holy @#$%@ in a buttered bundt pan," Clockblocker breathed. He poked the box with the barrel of the gun. It was immobile. "A gun that duplicates my power?" You couldn't see his face behind the blank visor he wore, but the confusion in his voice was clear. "Then what the hell was up with that light?"
Triumph suddenly started kicking through the papers still on the floor. "Ah, there it is." He reached down and pulled out an accordion-folded leaflet. "When all else fails, read the instructions," he said to everyone.
"How did you know that was in there?" Velocity demanded.
Triumph gave him a knowing look. "My family goes through this every Christmas," he said, opening the leaflet and starting to read. "You'd think 'read the enclosed manual before using' was ancient Greek or something..." he muttered. "Okay, 'Gnomerigan Temporal Energy Immobilizer Ray.' Big clue there… Ah. That blinky light? Just indicated it was recharging. one to three shots depending on settings. Green light for full charge." Clockblocker made some surly-sounding oaths. "Oh wow. 'Your Temporal Energy Immobilizer is self-recharging, automatically re-energizing its capacitors off of ambient temporal energy in the immediate environment. Full charge may take up to thirty minutes to reach.' And the rest looks like explanations of what all those fiddly dials on the side do." Triumph grinned… well, Triumphantly. "Of course. Temporal Energy. Except Clockblocker was wetting his pants--"
"Hey!"
"-- and pumping it full of 'Temporal Energy' as hard as he could, " Triumph said. "Dude. It recharges its batteries off your power!"
A curious individual would wonder where the schematics for the time freezing ray came from. This in fact was one of Bayleaf's own Azeroth inspired inventions. Azeroth magitek had multiple ways to temporarily freeze a target in place… ice spells and the like... but what few people knew (unless they had been given very comprehensive education in the matter) was that they ALL involved time manipulation. The hunter's freeze trap, the mage's Ice Block, all of them actually used temporal energy to suspend the target temporarily in time… the appearance of icy crystals and the aura of cold was a side effect of the water and air molecules around them suddenly being immobilized. (basic reasoning would lead to the realization that it was not usually real ice, as suddenly freezing and thawing a person like that would not put them in suspended animation but turn their tissues and organs to mush, killing them. Not that such methods didn't have their use in the ruthlessness of combat, but it was always better to have options.) From there it was a quick hop to using the gnomish and goblinish knack for synthesizing the effects of such arcane spells, and the first Time Ray was invented.
Clockblocker had gone from badly rattled to all but cackling with glee. "Oh wow. Oh wow. And it turns my power into a ranged attack, " he said giddily. "No more having to touch villains like Mush with my bare hands to time-freeze them!" The box tumbled to the ground, unnoticed. "Don't you get it guys?" He looked at the others. "It's gear. It's gear to upgrade our powers!"
That was the cue. The Wards were the first to move in. Vista being the closest, she began reading off gift tags and handing them to their recipients. Wrapping paper was soon flying. Half the adults present were all but tearing their hair out at the violation of security protocol. The other half…
"Screw it," Miss Militia said. "I just HAVE to see what this guy came up with to leverage MY power." She took the box Vista handed her.
"Darn straight, free loot," Assault said.
Armsmaster threw his hands in the air. "Fine… PERFECT..."
"We have to open them anyway, Armsmaster," Velocity said. "Might as well...see… hmm." He lifted his gift out of the box. Inside were a pair of elbow length gauntlets. The gauntlets had what appeared to be brass knuckles built into them.
"I suppose he doesn't know the limitations of your powers," Armsmaster said.
"Well, the thought is appreciated," Velocity said.
Velocity's speedster powers came with one incredibly aggravating drawback. The faster he moved, the less he could affect the environment and vise versa. While it meant he was essentially untouchable once he was moving, it also meant that he couldn't even pick up a coffee cup while at speed, and his punches had about the same impact as those of an anemic toddler. Bayleaf had resorted to brute forcing the problem. The gloves had been crafted by Parian, and infused with as much Strength enhancement as she could manage. The brass knuckles, being technically separate weapons, had been infused with even more Damage. Then Bayleaf had taken the completed gauntlets and put outright enchantments--- Strength and Damage enchantments--- on top of THAT. Bayleaf had guessed (correctly, as it would turn out) that this would counterbalance the diminishing effect of Velocity's power and enable him to manipulate… and punch… with the strength of a normal human adult.
He would be proven correct. Of course, at normal speed Velocity could now punch out a compact car. He was in for a surprise when they all finally got to the testing range.
Armsmaster was holding his own gift and looking pained. They were… boots, technically. Armored boots. Armored boots in blue and silver (his colors!) with downward rocket thrusters sprouting out of them at the ankle and heel. Gnomish flying boots (though he didn't know from Gnomish.) They were fuel efficient, provided excellent flight speed and looked like something Squealer had invented on "test the new synthetic drug" night at the Merchants lair. Never had a man looked so torn.
Dragon was giggling in his ear-- deliberately. A thousand or so miles away in her secret base, all her backup drives were defragging in the computer equivalent of hysterical laughter. "Well, they match your suit," she said to him.
Armsmaster was looking in the bottom of the box as if all his hopes had been lost there. "Well the utility of them probably compensates for the aesthetic and-- oh thank GOD there are schematics in the box--" he dove into the packing paper frantically. Maybe he could rebuild them into something more streamlined and above all efficient--
Miss Militia was looking pleased. She was trying on a new bandolier with ten fist-sized, futuristic looking metallic cylinders on it and reading the leaflet that came in the box. "Grenades. Reusable. Variety Pack, includes Darkness, EMP, Stun, Kinetic, Thermal, Cryonic and… Force Field? Bandolier serves as recharger; works off ambient energy in the immediate vicinity but will recharge faster with a wall outlet… Niiice."
There was something else in the box, a rather heavy item. She dug down in and cooed like a Beverly Hills starlet over a new diamond necklace at what she found: A colt 45 peacemaker, obviously an antique and lovingly restored. (Bayleaf truly had found all sorts of treasures with his garage-sale run.) A loaded ammo belt and holster were included. With it came a single note: Always carry a hold out. Happily, she strapped it to her hip.
Triumph looked at her, part in wariness, part in amusement. "And here I thought you couldn't possibly look more dangerous," he said.
"And what did you get?" she asked him impishly.
He read the card as his new cape swirled around his shoulders. "A… parachute cloak… and a sonic shield.. I'm not sure if it's a belt or a bandoleer though..."
"A box of bandage rolls??" Aegis said, looking into his box in confusion.
"For the human meat shield," ClockBlocker quipped. "Imagine that."
"Those are the bandages Skinwalker uses when someone gets hurt," Vista said. "They heal normal people fast, I bet they'll heal you even faster."
"And a… Recombobulator belt. Whatever that is." he looked through some more. "Ice deflector bracer, fire deflector bracer. Hm."
Aegis was technically a flying brute. But only technically. The reality was that he was not remotely invulnerable or even truly super strong; he just simply could take monstrous damage and keep on going. He had high speed healing, and a hyper-efficient biology with super-effective redundancies. Blind him and he could see through his skin; stab him in the heart and other organs would take over the job of keeping his circulation going. Even monstrous damage such as decapitation would not kill him. Of course the nature of things meant that, since he could take horrendous damage and live, that he inevitably would. He spent most of his time healing or regrowing lost body parts.
Bayleaf had been at a loss as to what to give him to help, so he had simply decided to cover a few of the bases. The bracers were rebuilt gnomish fire and ice deflectors, as he estimated that fire and freezing effects were the most damaging to human tissue. The recombobulator would provide a boost of near-instant healing ten times a day. The First Aid bandages also had healing effects but their purpose was largely to act as human duct tape, and hold Aegis' guts in or his limbs in place till they healed. If the boy was intent on going in harm's way, then all he could do was try to mitigate the harm.
"Hey, they FIT!" Browbeat came back into the room, his voice beaming.
"Where did you go?" Gallant demanded.
"I had to go find someplace to change," he said. "I just had to try 'em on." Everyone then noticed his normal blue-and-diamond body suit had been replaced with a new one, this on in a similar pattern but in green and purple, with the top predominantly green, the bottom predominantly purple. "And holy cow but they FIT."
"Uh, so big deal," Shadow Stalker said.
"Nah, you don't get it," Browbeat said. "Look." He began to grow and swell, his biokinesis coming to play as he forced his muscles and skeleton to grow. Soon he was pumped to his max, with a chest like a beer barrel and arms as thick around as the next person's waist… but the cloth didn't tear or stretch. "And look--" he deflated like a beachball, shrinking down till he was nearly as skinny as Clockblocker. The suit didn't fold or sag, remaining comfortably snug. "I think it's armored too… watch." He began growing spikes from various points on his body. They grew out six inches and more, needle sharp…. While the cloth tented it did not puncture.
"I did not know he could do that," Gallant muttered to Aegis, looking at the spikes.
"I coulda lived without knowing," Aegis agreed.
Browbeat slowly returned to his normal musclebound proportions. "I don't get the colors though," he said. "Green booties, purple pants, green top..." Some of the older heroes in the room contemplated telling him about a certain gamma irradiated, size-changing, overmuscled superhero from comic books of yore, but decided against it.
"….Invisibility and Force Field belt," Battery murmured. She strapped it on, it hung stylishly loose on her waist. "It's a bit bulky, but I think I like it." Battery's power granted her speed and super strength… but only in proportion to the amount of time she spent remaining totally stationary "recharging." Which meant she was often a sitting duck. With the belt, cobbled together from a gnomish force field generator and a stationary invisibility cloak, she would now either be in motion as a super-strong and super-fast cape, or turtled up as an invisible, invulnerable one.
"Yeah. Whoever this guy is, he's a genius," Assault said. "This stuff is all brilliant." His holiday gift was a bag of tricks… a handy haversack filled with a random selection of toys, widgets and gadgets: paint guns, fireworks, smoke bombs, noisemakers, decoys, dazzlers, distractors and the like. In World of Warcraft they were just "toys." In reality, they could have constituted the contents of the utility belt of a demented Batman. Assault was sure to get some truly interesting uses out of them. "What do you suppose a 'Puntable Marmot' is?"
Kid Win shook the overlarge box he'd been handed. Whatever was in it sounded broken. He set it down and opened it. "It's junk?!" he blurted, shaking the box again. Bits and parts rolled around inside. "No, it's… a box of parts?" It was parts. It was a sampling of all the components and reagents in the Warcraft engineering portfolio, along with a broad selection of loose electronic and mechanical parts from more mundane sources. There was at least one or two of everything. Just the sight of some of them was enough to get Kid Win's tinker power senses tingling. He fished out the card he saw sliding around inside and read it.
Kid Win had a few handicaps getting in his way of being a great Tinker. He had a minor case of dyscalculia which made the basic mathematics needed for his skillset a trial, as well as a minor case of ADHD. He was also too fixated with attempting to emulate Hero, the world's first tinker and one of the world's greatest heroes when he was alive… but to whom Kid Win had nothing in common. And most vitally, he had not figured out what his specialty as a Tinker was. So the writing on the card constituted, for him, a life-changing epiphany:
THINK
MODULAR
He blinked. Then he grinned. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah!" He sat down on the nearest piece of furniture, pulled a multitool out of its compartment on his armor, and began assembling some of the components into… something noone else there dared speculate. Whatever it was, it was going to have a LOT of USB ports.
Gallant was holding an open box… and a pair of goggles with a wraparound band. "I… have no idea what this is about," he said.
"Try 'em on," Browbeat urged. Gallant shrugged. He turned his back, removed his helmet, and put the goggles on. "Huh. Nothing looks any different." He slid his helmet back on. "At least they fit on underneath my…. WOAH." He staggered a bit. Several people took a step towards him in alarm.
"Gallant, are you all right?" Piggot said, half rising from her seat before grimacing and sitting back down.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Gallant said, waving everyone off. "I just got this rush to the head..." for some reason he looked at his hand. "Whoa. Auras are a LOT brighter and clearer now." He looked around. "Or is it just me….?"
Gallant had been a challenge. His power was, no other word for it, weak sauce. He could sense and, to some extent "see" the emotions of others as colored auras. He could also shoot blasts of emotion at others that were accompanied with a weak telekinetic push. It was the main reason he wore a suit of power armor crafted by Kid Win, to compensate for his relatively weak combat ability.
Bayleaf had, once again, no direct way he knew of via enchanting, engineering, or druidic powers to enhance Gallant's abilities or make him more formidable. And just giving him more armor to wear would have not helped that vulnerability. He'd had to extrapolate.The closest approximation in Azeroth terms to Gallant's ability was the "Fear" spell. And the way arcane abilities were boosted in Azeroth was through boosting the attribute of "intellect." So Bayleaf had built Gallant a pair of the highest-ranked intellect boosting goggles in the engineering schematic library.
What Bayleaf didn't know was just how effective this was going to be. He'd removed the built in gun from the "Heavy Skullblaster", tweaked it with some night vision, and replaced the gun slot with a couple of gem sockets... which he'd then fitted with two of the semiprecious stones he'd salvaged, ones aligned to enhance intelligence as well.
Intellect boosting items were, Bayleaf found after some personal experimentation, unpredictable. Much like certain pharmaceuticals were alleged to boost intelligence or creativity, sometimes the results were highly subjective… the wearer of an intellect-boosting gem wasn't infused with new knowledge or experience, but was instead more able to access what they already had, or to think more clearly without distraction or mental clutter. And that only within certain limitations. It could only work with what was already there, and sometimes what was there wasn't much.
Gallant however, did not number among those type. Gallant was already fairly intelligent. The helmet alone boosted Gallant's intellect and stamina attributes by almost 2,000 points each. The gems boosted intellect further. When he donned the goggles, it was the equivalent of forcing a rushing flash flood down a riverbed. The pathways in Gallant's mind and between his mind and his Power were irreversibly opened wide… turned from a steady stream into a rushing, wide open river. And the sensation of his once sluggish powers flowing at full force was intoxicating.
Gallant flexed his hand, watching the aura pooling into it, forming a swirling ball only he could see. He looked up and saw the filing cabinet Missy had shrunk just a few minutes ago.
It was a bad day to be a filing cabinet.
Gallant lashed out his hand. There was a loud WHUMM, and a semi-visible ball of something shot from his hand, raising a wind with its passing, across the room and struck the filing cabinet. Yesterday Gallant's blast would have barely jostled it. Today, it nearly obliterated it. It hit the cabinet with a deafening crash, crumpling it like a beer can hit with a shotgun blast, and launching it across the room. It banged against the shatterproof transpari-luminium window and slid to the floor in a cloud of loose paper.
Everyone stared, stunned.
Carefully, Gallant lifted his helmet and pulled the goggles from underneath. He looked at his hand and flexed it again. The swirling ball of aura formed just as easily as before. "I, um," he said. "I think I want to submit myself to Powers Testing again..." he sat down on one of the nearby chairs, still staring at his hand.
Shadow Stalker had stuck to leaning against the wall while she watched the proceedings, arms crossed and radiating contempt for everyone in the room. She'd turned her nose up at the box Vista had tried to hand her. Vista was in no mood for it and dropped it at her feet with a shrug.
It had sat there this entire time while she avidly ignored it. But avarice was winning out over ego; she finally reached down and picked it up. A quick flick with her pocket knife and the box was open. She dumped the contents out in her hand. There was a folded Christmas card, and what looked like a miniature model of her mask. The hell?
It was a perfect duplicate of her frowning-woman mask, about the size of the palm of her hand, and hung from a leather thong. Was it supposed to hang around her neck like a pendant or something? She read the card. "The F@# is this?" she snapped. She tossed the card and the pendant away and stormed out of the room. Vista picked the card up and read it herself. She exploded into snickers and giggles, then read it aloud for the others.
YOU'VE BEEN ROTTEN
AND HERE'S THE SCOOP
YOU OUGHT TO GET NOTHING
BUT REINDEER POOP
The Wards all cracked up. Clockblocker had been taking a drink from the cooler. Half of it ended up across the room. Vista finally stopped giggling and turned the card over to read the rest. Her smile turned to a frown of puzzlement.
BUT BAD TIMES ARE COMING
FOR ALL, ITS TRUE
SO WEAR THIS TOKEN
SO NONE CONTROL YOU
Shadow Stalker was a rotten person, one who would deserve a lot of the things that happened to her. But there were some things Bayleaf could never permit or tolerate, not even passively. Some time in the near future Shadow Stalker was going to run afoul of a young villain called Regent. She would badly hurt one of Regent's few friends… and Regent would take revenge.
Regent's power was the ability to take control of other people's bodies. At first, causing spasms or twitches, making them fumble or trip-- but with enough exposure gaining the ability to control them entirely like puppets, hear through their ears, see through their eyes. He would seize control of Shadow Stalker this way, and force her to do… deplorable things, both in and out of costume, stripping away her secret identity and utterly destroying her life.
Bayleaf could not live with himself and not at least try to prevent that. But after hours of sifting through all his endowed knowledge of Azeroth's magitek, one distressing fact became clear: there was nothing, absolutely nothing that yet existed in azeroth's magic system or technology that would protect a person from having their mind, emotions or body taken over by another. No protections at all-- not even partial protection from the oh-so-common FEAR spells that were constantly flung around. He had resorted to cobbling together bits and pieces of anything that came remotely close to what he was looking for. Purify spells to try and purge outside influences, freedom of motion spells that prevented binding or freezing, wards to protect from spells in general (though he had no idea how well they would work against mind influences-- as he recalled they'd done jack diddly against fear effects in the game), even one or two "reset" effects that would essentially jolt the person's mind awake by rebooting it, hopefully throwing off any fugue it was under. He hodge-podged it together into the amulet, cursing the blinkered lack of creativity of Azeroth's tunnel-vision mages the entire time, and packaged it up for Shadow Stalker to claim. It was the best that he could do with what he had.
What little he could do, was enough to set the imaginations of all the Protectorate gathered running wild. "You're telling me he has the ability to craft protections against Master-Stranger powers?" Piggot said in disbelief.
"Claims to, at least, if we're understanding that bit of doggerel right," Armsmaster said, crossing his arms and eyeing the medallion. "That may be a difficult thing to safely test."
"I wanna know why he thinks Shadow Stalker of all people needs it," Aegis said.
"Well if YOU could tell anyone in the world to go take a flying leap, and they'd do it-- who'd YOU pick?" Clockblocker quipped.
"Clockblocker--" Aegis and Armsmaster said simultaneously. Clockblocker just stared at them. It was amazing how a blank face mask could convey defiance so easily. Armsmaster just halted in mid sentence, lips compressed in his one-size-fits-all expression of annoyance. Aegis threw his hands in the air. "Whatever."
Piggot rubbed her face with her hands wearily. She'd spent the first ten minutes of this ridiculous fiasco hammering on the emergency lockdown button like she was playing "the Little Drummer Boy," to no avail. Steel shutters should have dropped down over the doors and windows; containment foam sprayers should have lowered from the ceiling and coated anything in the room that moved with brute-rated restraint foam. Nothing happened, of course. Then she had spent thirty minutes watching her merry band of mutant lunatics sitting around opening presents like some deranged funhouse mirror version of a family on Christmas morning.
"My nerves are shot," she muttered. Someone rapped on her desk. She looked up. The reindeer was standing there, holding an envelope in its mouth. The words TO EMILY PIGGOT were clearly visible in big block letters across the front.
"There's no use pretending I don't see you and waiting till you go away, is there," she said. The reindeer solemnly shook his head no. She sighed and took the envelope, ripping it open with quick efficiency.
A pasteboard card fell out. She picked it up and read the calligraphy, lips moving.
FREE
ONE (1) COMPLETE HEAD TO TOE RESTORATIVE HEALING
FROM PANACEA, AKA AMY DALLON of NEW WAVE
NO Payment necessary
NO Obligations, social legal or otherwise
NO Favors owed, demanded,
or expected in return
so you have
NO EXCUSES
Call RIGHT NOW
ONE (1) COMPLETE HEAD TO TOE RESTORATIVE HEALING
FROM PANACEA, AKA AMY DALLON of NEW WAVE
NO Payment necessary
NO Obligations, social legal or otherwise
NO Favors owed, demanded,
or expected in return
so you have
NO EXCUSES
Call RIGHT NOW
Panacea's signature was across the bottom.
She stood up, quivering in rage. "How DARE you--!"
Before she could say another word the reindeer head-butted her in the chest, knocking her back down in her office chair. It glared at her from an inch away, clearly mad and taking no crap. It set its hoof on the envelope; with an expert flip it sent the envelope sliding across the desktop to her.
"WHUFF. Mrrrr."
She dared to look down and saw that the envelope held something else; a piece of typing paper. She slid it out and unfolded it
Emily Piggot,
We know your past, we know why you
refuse treatment from a Parahuman.
We also know we cannot afford to waste time
putting up with your phobias,
your stubbornness or your bigotry.
The PRT, the City, and the WORLD
need you sound of mind and body NOW.
So do your duty, soldier, hitch up your pants
and DEAL WITH THIS.
Because I swear if you don't
I'll come up there, hogtie you and THROW you
at Panacea if that's what it takes.
PARA BELLUM.
The lights in the room flickered. Startled, she looked up. Odd lights were swirling around the reindeer. He stepped back and gave her a wink. With a rush of wind and a flash of glitter, the reindeer who may or may not have been the rogue known as Skinwalker vanished.
"Aaaaaand he can teleport too," Assault said. "Or he can teleport other things to and from himself..."
Piggot flipped the signed card over and over in her hands. "Can anyone tell me, or even just guess, what that was all about?" she said. "The newest and most notorious rogue in the Bay shows up in my office disguised as an elk-- or sends an elk on his own behalf-- to my office, hands out "presents" that qualify as UPGRADES to all the capes in the building, all but forces me to take this card-- why? Someone, anyone, give me a clue here."
Armsmaster, Velocity and Miss Militia all glanced at each other. "Are the security systems working again, Ma'am?" Miss Militia asked. "You might want to check just in case. The stage one office lockdown at least." She gave Piggot a meaningful look.
Piggot looked at her askance, but nodded. "Yes, just the minimal check at least. I think for my own mental wellbeing..." she pressed a stud on the underside of the desk. Shutters over the doors and windows dropped. External power was cut off, as were all data lines in and out. Almost before the shutters had locked Armsmaster was sticking little rectangular boxes to the walls, evenly spaced apart. Velocity blurred around the room, checking every available corner and crevice for lenses-- and spraying over one or two with a can of foam.
Armsmaster pulled out one last device, a small quadcopter drone, and set it to hover in the exact center of the room. A faint hum filled the room. "White noise generator," he said. "It won't interfere with our conversation but will white out any digital audio device."
He looked around the room. Everyone except Shadow Stalker was here. Good enough; she was still probationary anyway. If he decided she needed briefing he'd do it himself. "Everyone, what you see in this room now does not leave this room," he said. "Countless lives may depend on it."
He still had the thumbdrive. He stuck it into Piggot's desktop (after brusquely yanking out both the cable and the wireless feeds) and switched it over to "project" mode. "In my last run-in with Skinwalker," he said as he fast forwarded to the cage match, "He managed to pass some vital information to me..."
She stood up, quivering in rage. "How DARE you--!"
Before she could say another word the reindeer head-butted her in the chest, knocking her back down in her office chair. It glared at her from an inch away, clearly mad and taking no crap. It set its hoof on the envelope; with an expert flip it sent the envelope sliding across the desktop to her.
"WHUFF. Mrrrr."
She dared to look down and saw that the envelope held something else; a piece of typing paper. She slid it out and unfolded it
Emily Piggot,
We know your past, we know why you
refuse treatment from a Parahuman.
We also know we cannot afford to waste time
putting up with your phobias,
your stubbornness or your bigotry.
The PRT, the City, and the WORLD
need you sound of mind and body NOW.
So do your duty, soldier, hitch up your pants
and DEAL WITH THIS.
Because I swear if you don't
I'll come up there, hogtie you and THROW you
at Panacea if that's what it takes.
PARA BELLUM.
The lights in the room flickered. Startled, she looked up. Odd lights were swirling around the reindeer. He stepped back and gave her a wink. With a rush of wind and a flash of glitter, the reindeer who may or may not have been the rogue known as Skinwalker vanished.
"Aaaaaand he can teleport too," Assault said. "Or he can teleport other things to and from himself..."
Piggot flipped the signed card over and over in her hands. "Can anyone tell me, or even just guess, what that was all about?" she said. "The newest and most notorious rogue in the Bay shows up in my office disguised as an elk-- or sends an elk on his own behalf-- to my office, hands out "presents" that qualify as UPGRADES to all the capes in the building, all but forces me to take this card-- why? Someone, anyone, give me a clue here."
Armsmaster, Velocity and Miss Militia all glanced at each other. "Are the security systems working again, Ma'am?" Miss Militia asked. "You might want to check just in case. The stage one office lockdown at least." She gave Piggot a meaningful look.
Piggot looked at her askance, but nodded. "Yes, just the minimal check at least. I think for my own mental wellbeing..." she pressed a stud on the underside of the desk. Shutters over the doors and windows dropped. External power was cut off, as were all data lines in and out. Almost before the shutters had locked Armsmaster was sticking little rectangular boxes to the walls, evenly spaced apart. Velocity blurred around the room, checking every available corner and crevice for lenses-- and spraying over one or two with a can of foam.
Armsmaster pulled out one last device, a small quadcopter drone, and set it to hover in the exact center of the room. A faint hum filled the room. "White noise generator," he said. "It won't interfere with our conversation but will white out any digital audio device."
He looked around the room. Everyone except Shadow Stalker was here. Good enough; she was still probationary anyway. If he decided she needed briefing he'd do it himself. "Everyone, what you see in this room now does not leave this room," he said. "Countless lives may depend on it."
He still had the thumbdrive. He stuck it into Piggot's desktop (after brusquely yanking out both the cable and the wireless feeds) and switched it over to "project" mode. "In my last run-in with Skinwalker," he said as he fast forwarded to the cage match, "He managed to pass some vital information to me..."
Skidmark was pissed.
Of course, Skidmark was always pissed. He was also usually soused, stoked, fried, wasted, buzzed, lit, stoned, pickled, toasted, plastered, embalmed and possibly sauteed. That was the consequence of being the drug kingpin of Brockton Bay and the leader of the Merchants, and having the self-discipline of a toddler in a candy factory. Any other human being, any other organic lifeform would have been a broken down spasmodic wreck after the years of debauchery and chemical abuse that Skidmark had subjected himself to.
Yet somehow, through who knew what perversity of nature-- perhaps some secondary attribute of his cape powers that made him impossible to kill as crabgrass-- somehow he was able to retain enough cohesive brainpower in his sputtering neural tissue to keep his gang together and keep the wheels moving, even if they did only spin idly in the air.
That still-functioning strata of his brain was currently aware that the Merchants were having serious trouble. And that conscious portion of his mind was bile-spitting furious about it. "Don't tell me that BLEEP!" he yelled, cuffing the runner upside his head so hard he fell down. "I don't wanna hear no BLEEP about how you ain't got no BLEEPing product and no BLEEPing money!"
The runner glared up at him and wiped the blood off the corner of his mouth. "So waddya want me to do, read you a bedtime story?" he yelled. "We got hit by a cape, lost everything! The money, the drugs, the guns, hell we even lost one of the DOGS! Three of 'em don't do nuthin but lie on the ground and cry, and one of 'em he snapped its neck like a pretzel stick!"
Skidmark muttered an oath. "Who was it? One o' them krauts? The chinks? WHO?"
"Some new guy. Big frickin' werewolf guy. Huge. Threw one of our guard dogs like he was a baseball. " He spat on the floor, leaving a red stain. "He left a message, too."
He curled up on the ground when Skidmark spun around. "What?" Skidmark spat.
"'Tell Skidmark I'm coming,'" the guy said. "Carved in the concrete with his claw."
Skidmark cursed again. "It's the same BLEEP then." He staggered over to the broken down recliner that served as his throne and threw himself down in it. He covered his eyes with one hand. "That makes a dozen. Twelve, twelve times we been hit in the last two BLEEPin days." "This werewolf guy, some invisible BLEEPing tiger thing, couple of our runners had backpacks, got the stuff snatched off their BLEEPin' backs by a giant BLEEPing owl…"
Squealer raised her head from the couch. "My favorite was the one where we lost that fishing boat fulla coke to that walrus," she said lazily. "heheheh."
"Benny got hit by a tree," one of the stoners on the floor said.
There was silence for a few minutes while everyone tried to digest that.– and failed. "A what?" Skidmark said.
"Benny. He was swipin' some stuff at the ER, this… friggin… TREE grabbed him. Vines everywhere. Tied him up, then told him that this was bad for him and he should clean up and.. you know… find God and stuff or whatever, the usual stuff those types give ya." The junkie paused. "Only he talked real slow. Kiiiiiiindaaaa liiiiiike thiiiiiiiiiis. So slow noone'd ever understand."
"Then how'd Benny understand him?"
"He was on Quaaludes."
Skidmark thought that over. "Shut up," he said.
Mush leaned forward on his pile of garbage in the corner. "Word is, the PRT thinks that at least some o' those guys are all the same guy," he said. "Some sort o' shape changer cape." The deformed little gnome looking cape took a hit off his spliff. "At least some, anyway."
"So is it one guy, or like, half a dozen?" Squealer asked.
"Who BLEEPin knows, who BLEEPin cares," Skidmark snarled, baring his rotten teeth. "Point is they're hittin' US and they're turnin' up the heat more every day." He brooded. "I gotta think." He got to his feet again and slouched out of the room.
"You want anything babe?" Squealer said, waving at the coffee table. There were a few scattered bits of drug paraphernalia on its glass surface.
The room Skidmark had retreated to was his ultimate sanctum. His sanctum… something or other, BLEEP it, he couldn't remember the word. It was little more than a closet, just a back room in a lousy apartment in a lousy abandoned tenement building in the failed Projects. But as far as Skidmark was concerned, what he kept in there was the secret of all his success.
There was nothing in the room but a scattering of pillows on the floor, and small bedside style cabinet with a locked door. Skidmark locked the door he'd entered, then unlocked the cabinet. Inside was a bottle of dried buttons of some unidentifiable substance. Sitting next to it on a velvet cushion was a magic 8 ball. Skidmark sat down on the cushions crosslegged and set the ball on its cushion in front of him. He took the bottle out, tipped exactly ONE shrivelled little fibrous button out onto his palm, placed the bottle inside the cabinet and stuck the pill under his tongue. He took a deep breath and got ready for the dive.
"Time to talk to Mr. Lucky," he said.
Years ago, when Skidmark had first got his powers and his woman and was just starting his gang, he used to carry this same toy 8-ball with him wherever he would go. It was his lucky charm, he'd joke, and more often than not it was almost true. Just for the hell of it sometimes he'd use the thing to make some decision or other, just to see what would happen. By sheer blind luck, or perhaps misfortune depending on your perspective, he had a winning streak. Every time he consulted Mr. Lucky, things went wildly right. They went from a couple of freaks selling dope out of back of a van to being in charge of a BLEEPing gang, running hookers, protection, and every kind of drug imaginable. Money flowing like water. He took to keeping Mr. Lucky out of sight, consulting him when it was only big questions. He didn't want Mr. Lucky to run out any time soon.
It was about five years ago that he noticed that Mr. Lucky's advice got a lot more detailed, more clever, more useful when he hit a little something before one of their talks. At that time they were starting to pull in and put out a lot of the truly weird stuff. Peyote, Kava, Jimsonweed, shrooms, acid, jungle frog spit, you name it… It was during an experimental phase that Skidmark hit on just the right blend of dope, salvia, ritalin, and a few other herbs and spices that made his consultations with Mr. Lucky even more fruitful. Mr. Lucky's suggestions were more brilliant than ever, and thanks to the magic pills Skidmark would walk out of his little room with every detail burned into his brain in mile high neon letters. He'd never managed to make that mix just right ever again, so he husbanded his last bottle of the dried, pressed pills like they were gold.
He waited until the colors and edges of everything started to ripple, then picked up the ball and shook it.
He waited a minute. It took a while for Mr. Lucky to wake up. The words finally appeared in the little window.
HELLO, OLD FRIEND.
HOW ARE YOU?
"Doin' good, Mr. Lucky," Skidmark said with a lazy smile. "Doin' real good like always. Got me a problem, though."
GO ON.
"Some BLEEPers are hittin' my dealers, my runners. They even got one of my shipments. Bam bam bam, night after night, five, six, ten times a night. And they ain't lettin' up. It's startin' to hurt morale, y'dig?"
DESCRIBE THEM.
"My boys are seein' all sorts o'… things. A tiger. An owl. A wolf-man. Mostly the wolf-man." He decided not to mention the tree or the walrus. There was a long pause. Then the words bubbled up.
HIS NAME IS SKINWALKER.
HE IS VERY DANGEROUS.
YOU MUST ELIMINATE HIM.
Skidmark nodded; that was the gospel truth, right there. "Question is, how?"
DRAW HIM OUT.
"Okay, how?? We stick our noses out, he hits us, then he vanishes before we even knew he was there."
There was another long wait while Mr. Lucky thought. Skidmark was cool, though; the longer Mr. Lucky took to think, the better his ideas were. He sat and watched the colors swirl around the edge of the cosmic void.
HE HUNTS YOU.
"Yeah, I got that," Skidmark said, nodding like a bobbing doll.
HE ALSO HUNTS
NAZIS.
"Do tell."
PRESS THE E88.
FIGHT THEM. DRAW
THEM OUT.
A SMALL
TURF FIGHT,
NO CAPES.
BUT
HE WILL NOT
BE ABLE TO
RESIST.
Skidmarks lips peeled back from his teeth, making him look like a rotting jack o' lantern. "I get it. The BLEEP won't be able to resist the chance to bust a buncha junkies and a buncha Nazis too."
WHEN HE INTERVENES,
YOUR CAPES WILL BE
WAITING FOR HIM.
AND IF YOU
ARE LUCKY, THE
E88 WILL KILL
HIM FOR YOU.
Skidmark's gruesome grin grew wider. "I always am with you around, Mr. Lucky."
Last edited:
Chapter 8
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
Chapter 8
Chapter Text
It was that time again. Adrian sighed as he trudged down the second floor hall to Mr. Gladly's classroom. He'd been nailed for detention again-- this time, after school. A couple of asian kids had taken a potshot at him in the hallway… God only knew what THEIR beef was with him… And Gladly (the tosser) had spotted them scuffling and pinned the blame on him for "agitating the situation." Adrian had snapped at him for his bias, pointing out that they had jumped HIM. Gladly had swelled up like a balloon and started huffing about respect for your elders, etc. and dropped the boom: after school detention.
On top of his IN school detention he was only halfway through serving.
So now he was getting to spend a couple hours AFTER the school closed sitting with Gladly in an empty classroom, to inflate the popularity-schmoozing loser's flaccid ego.
Adrian growled to himself. He was getting herded away from Taylor's side more and more often, and he had a good suspicion it wasn't accidental. Several of the teachers had taken to ordering him to sit on the opposite side of the classroom. Blackwell had unilaterally changed his schedule so that they shared fewer classes. Even in his off periods, when he'd normally sit in the bleachers and watch Taylor during her gym class, the gym coach had taken to running him off, dropping hints about "improper behavior"…. Not quite accusing him of being a perv, but getting as close as she dared.
It wasn't long after he'd snagged Madison trying to dump pencil shavings on Taylor's back that it started. It wasn't hard to guess what had happened. Someone had dropped the hint that he and Taylor were "troublemakers" when they got together. Probably with a few bambi-eyed stories about him "threatening" them, and maybe some little hints from another of the bimbettes about her lawyer Daddy, and how rough it could get if they didn't stop this mean old boy from picking on his precious little girl.
He had to wonder what kind of leverage the Ward of the trio was shifting. Claiming she was investigating him as a possible drug dealer or supervillain flunky, maybe?
Once the staff had started driving him off, they'd taken on targeting Taylor again. He'd spotted her in the hallway going the other way one day; head down, it looked like water or soda had been poured over her head and down her back. He was seething, but at that precise moment what could he do?
He grunted and yawned. Between the drama here at Waste Of Youth High, running his little side business (At least it was officially winter now and he could roll up the pushcart till spring… the online business was still ticking though) and all the projects he had been working on in the Lost Workshop for the Wards, almost since the day of his arrival, had been keeping him up. That and harrying the Merchants whenever and wherever, dropping the boom on the occasional Nazi or ABB gangbanger on the way… When was the last full night of sleep he'd had? Two, three days ago? If that?
He slumped into the room and closed the door behind him. Surprise surprise, he wasn't alone today. There were three other kids there: one asian kid in the corner seat, ignoring everybody; A black girl sitting off to the left, feet propped up on the back of the next chair, rocking her chair on two legs and looking bored. The asian guy, he was sporting ABB colors as casually as you please. The girl, she was wearing a strapless crop top, mesh tights cutoff jeans that were halfway up her butt, a purple streak in her hair and an insolent look on her face. And on the right…
"Hey, Faux Hawk," Adrian said, amused. "Imagine seeing you here."
"Yeah, imagine that, a neonazi wannabe in detention," the girl muttered.
Hawk (he'd adopted the stupid name as his own after he'd heard Adrian say it, but dropped the "faux") grinned at him. "Hey, pal," he said in his best sleazy voice. "Wanna be a NAAAAAAZI?"
Adrian grinned. This had become a running joke between them ever since that first day at lunch. He gave the expected response. "Oy, have you got the wrong meshugeneh," he said. The asian kid actually smothered a laugh; the black girl looked at them both like she couldn't decide whether to be offended or confused.
"Mister Smith!" Mr. Gladly said. Ah, there he was, behind the desk where an educator normally sat. Pity there wasn't one available.
"--Present."
He started, stopped in annoyance and started again. "Mr. Smith, I do not want to hear that sort of humor in here again."
Adrian stared at him for a second. Really? "Okay, how about this one: Two Jews walk into a bar--"
"NO!"
Adrian gave him his best "Achmed the Dead Terrorist". "What? You would not let Jews into your BAR? You racist bastard!"
"MISter SMITH!" Gladly barked, fuming. Wow, where was all this spine when Gladly was dealing with the juvie hall candidates in his regular class? The other three students spluttered and snickered. "Find a seat, sit down and stop causing trouble."
Adrian shrugged, and slid into the first seat handy. Gladly picked up his clipboard and looked it over.
"Aisha Laborn."
"Present," the black girl said, rolling her eyes and looking even more bored.
Oh crap. Grue's baby sister. Grue, aka Brian Laborn, was the erstwhile leader of the Undersiders; a gang of small time villains who were (except for their thinker Tattletale) unknowingly working for Coil. Apparently Aisha hadn't triggered yet, otherwise she wouldn't even be here. In the main timeline her powers as Imp had made people forget she even existed the moment they looked away-- sort of like those aliens with the suits and bulging heads on Dr. Who. And in the main timeline she had been anything but bashful about using that power at every opportunity. Detention? When she could walk right out of the classroom whenever she wanted and the teacher wouldn't even remember she existed? Not a chance. In the original timeline she had naturally gone straight from Juvenile Delinquent to Career Villain without so much as a pause. She, and the Undersiders, were on Adrian's ever-expanding list of people he either had to stop or to save, and possibly both. And that on top of preventing the end of the world.
But hey. No pressure. Right?
"John Muller."
"Here," Faux Hawk said, holding up his hand.
"Adrian Smith."
"Well I dunno," Adrian said with a small smirk. "It HAS been almost thirty whole seconds and--"
Gladly sighed. "Just say present, Mr. Smith."
"Well you're no fun..."
"Mister Smith do I have to--"
"Fine, fine, Present."
"Tommy Wong."
"Here," the asian kid muttered.
"Good." Gladly signed the attendance sheet with a flourish and threw it on the desk. "You four are here for the next four hours. If you give me any trouble, you'll be back here again next week. And the next. And then every DAY of the week, until we get that little discipline problem you all have under control. Now I'm going down to the office to do some computer work and run off some print copies for tomorrow's class. You are to stay in here, be quiet, and cause no trouble. Anything other than that, I will do my level best to make your lives miserable. Understood?" Everyone mumbled. "I said-"
"Understood," everyone droned. Adrian could hear that he wasn't the only one gritting his teeth.
"Good." Gladly left, folders under his arm and back stiff, closing the door behind him.
"What a tool," Hawk said.
"Are you kidding? His middle name should be 'Craftsman,'" Adrian said, his humor coming back. The others snickered. "Kinda sad. If he had some spine in his class, he wouldn't be spending his afternoons here doing this."
"Oh hey. Heard about Spike in the locker room, tryin' to jump you," Hawk said. "Sorry about that. He's a tard." He paused. "Did you really…?"
"Snap him in the nards with a rat tail? Yup." Adrian pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes and leaned back in his seat.
Aisha went round eyed. "You what??"
"You heard him," Hawk said, suddenly getting sullen as he realized a non-white was talking in his direction. Adrian intercepted before any slurs could be sparked off.
"Yeah, guy came over and started squealing about how he thought I was gay. Probably says that about everyone that wears deodorant."
Hawk had to laugh at that one. "Yeah, Spike's kind of a jackass."
"That's putting it lightly," Adrian snarked. "He's so homophobic he can only eat a banana sideways."
"HAH!" Aisha said. "Good one."
Tommy Wong spoke up. "I can't believe you two," he said.
"What about us?"
Tommy looked back at them and sneered. "You two sitting there cracking jokes with a Nazi," he said.
"So whaddya want me to do? Walk in and start a fight with him? A cage match maybe?"
"She's black! And you're a Jew!"
"He's not a Jew," Hawk said dismissively.
"I might be," Adrian corrected him. He held up his VicAlert tag. "Amnesia victim. Supervillain with memory gas."
"Wow, that sucks," Aisha said. "So what makes you think you might be a Jew…?"
"Think about it," Adrian said, resting his chin in his hand and giving her a lazy smile. "What's one thing ALL male Jews have in common?"
"I don't... Awh man, you nasty," she said as he made several meaningful glances downward and she realized what he was implying. Hawk laughed so hard he nearly fell backwards out of his chair. "Oh shut up!" she snapped.
"--Potato pancakes," Adrian said seriously. "Can't live without 'em. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, gotta have 'em."
"Har dee har..." she went "fch" at him and sat back, arms crossed. "That all you do? Tell racist jokes?"
"Sure. Everyone's racist. White people got racism. Black people got reverse racism. Chinese people got sideways racism. Jews got backwards racism--" He stopped for a second and got sober. "You fight with people, all you see is enemies. You laugh with 'em, it's hard not to see just another person with problems like your own. Maybe if we all laughed a little more and got mad a little less, we wouldn't be having all these problems." Some of them thought that over for a minute.
"Yeah, well if Gladly hears you telling jokes like that he'll get his tighty whities in a knot like you wouldn't believe," Tommy said.
"Yeah, the big hypocrite," Aisha said. At their confused looks she pointed around. "A neonazi, a chinese guy, a black chick and a jew, all thrown together in detention. Like he was picking us out for a color combo sampler platter. All he has to do is have us walk into a bar together." She rolled her lip. "This has gotta be the most racist detention in the history of public school."
Adrian started to chuckle. It was a deep sound, surprising even from a fellow his size, and it threatened to break into a full blown belly laugh. "Hey," he said, lifting his sunglasses and giving the others the side-eye. "You ever hear the story of the world's most RACIST field trip?"
The others looked curious. "Racist field trip?" Hawk said.
"Yeah..." Adrians' gaze drifted, he smiled almost wistfully. "I dunno if I knew the guy, or just saw a video of the guy, or heck, maybe I WAS the guy (screw amnesia, really) but I remember it was a true story..." he sat up, eagerly grinning, his hands moving as he told the story. "Okay, so this guy-- a black guy, of course-- is talking about when he was in third grade, in Montgomery Alabama, and his teacher got it in her little wooden head to take all 30 kids in her class on a field trip. All 30 little black kids. On a field trip.
"To a cotton plantation."
Even the Chinese kid got it. "Oh, no way."
Adrian nodded, grinning madly. "So they get there, and the teacher hands all these kids plastic bags, with a little cotton puff person on the side, and told them they could pick as much cotton as they wanted..."
Gladly stapled his last stack of papers, gathered them up and headed back to the classroom. He was halfway down the hall when he heard Adrian Smith, the wannabe class clown, talking. And the others… laughing? He opened the door and looked in.
Adrian was apparently in full swing, reciting some crude story or joke of his. The other three students were laughing their backsides off. The nazi kid was hooting and pounding on his desktop with his fist, while the asian boy had his head resting on his arms on the desk and was laughing so hard he shook. Aisha was leaning back in her chair till it was balanced on two legs, head laid back and laughing at the ceiling.
"And so his mama finds the cotton in his pants pocket in the laundry the next day, gets the story out of him, and in case you didn't guess, that's when something broke off." The others hooted. "She goes down to the school, corners the teacher in her classroom and just RAILS on her. "You jive-ass mutha.. How DARE you take my boy, and all these other ashy li'l negroes, out to a COTTON PLANT to PICK COTTON for a field trip? You SOULLESS--"
"MISTER SMITH!" Gladly shrilled. Adrian stopped in mid-word; everyone stopped laughing and looked back at Gladly in the doorway. He huffed and fumed, the picture of limp-wristed, metrosexual progressive outrage. "Never have I heard such offensive, racist-- " he sputtered to a halt and raised his chin. "I'm going to drop these off in the projector room. When I get back I'm writing up a report for your permanent record-- and I'm sending an email to Principal Blackwood about your offensive stories and language and behavior!"
"Hey, lay off him," Aisha said. "It wasn't racist. It was just a story!"
Gladly suddenly turned earnest. "Miss Laborne, you have to understand," he said, as if talking to a little child. "We have to crack down on this sort of racially insensitive behavior. We do it for the sake of those like yourself--"
That was exactly the wrong thing to say. Adrian had to choke back a laugh; he all but saw Satan flash across her face before she even spoke. She got to her feet, hands on hips, and proceeded to channel every jive-talking black woman in cinematic history. She even started doing the side-to-side head bob thing. "And who told you, you jive ass turkey, that I needed YOU to take care of my poor little delicate feelings?" She rared up. "And what do you MEAN, "people like me?" You patronizing RACIST CRACKER-- Am I gonna have to give a report to Principal Blackwell about how this detention-givin'-out BIGOT told me, a BLACK GIRL, that I couldn't--"
Adrian nearly died. He couldn't breathe.
Gladly got so agitated it looked like he was going to pee himself like a distressed poodle."All right, all right, all right!" he said in a panic. "I'll let it go this time..." He tried to back out of the room without making it too obvious his tail was between his legs. "W-we'll sort this out when I get back," he said-- and bolted.
Clap…. Clap…. Clap. Aisha turned around. Hawk had his arms stretched out full length and was slowly applauding. Adrian managed to gasp down some air. He mimed holding up a statuette in his hands. In a cheesy "breathy awards actress" voice he said. "And now, for the category of 'Best Performance as a Sassy Young Black Woman with a Short Fuse,' the award goes tooo… Aisha Laborne! Yaaaay!" Tommy joined in on the applause.
Adrian held out the imaginary statue; Aisha pretended to take it and did a little curtsy. "You like me, you really like me!" She said, bouncing up and down in place. She sat down to Tommy and Hawk's laugh and Adrian's slow booming chuckle. "Okay, what was all that about? He's got two gang members and a juvenile delinquent in the room, and he comes in and zooms on you? What's his problem?"
"Uh, he's a doink?" Adrian suggested.
Aisha gave him a Look™. "Come on, spill."
Adrian sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Couple things. Called him on his bull a couple of times, for one thing. But that's tied in to bigger stuff. You know Sophia Hess and her two side-bimbos, Madison and Emma, right?"
"You mean thunderbitch and the slags?" Tommy sneered.
Aisha raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah, those three." there were entire categories of dismissal in her tone. "What about 'em?"
"When I first got here, they were running a total hate campaign on this one girl named Taylor," Adrian went on.
"Wait, Taylor? You mean the girl with the hoodie? That girl everyone says is a headcase?" Aisha said.
Adrian growled to himself and started to retort, but it was Tommy who spoke. "You mean everyone, or just the popular girls?" he said pointedly.
Aisha looked thoughtful, like she was recalling all the times she'd heard stuff… and who'd been around saying it. "Oh. Yeah." she grimaced.
"They were just… utterly trying to destroy her life," Adrian said. "Trashing her stuff, starting gossip about her, hate mail, tripping her, punching her-- everything you could think of and worse." He could feel himself seething. "When I met her, she was almost a shell… she..." he stopped.
"Well, I stepped in and got in their way," he said. "Started looking out for her. Made friends with her. And Daddy's Little Princesses didn't like that." His lips were thin and pressed tight. "And all of a sudden Blackwell, and the teachers, and the staff are all hearing from somewhere that I'm a troublemaker, and that I'm turning Taylor into a troublemaker. And the skinheads are hearing that I'm a gay, and the black kids and the asian kids are hearing I'm E88, and even the potheads are hearing that I'm a narc, of all things… and the staff is going out of its way to give me detention, or get me suspended, and especially to keep me away from poor little easily corrupted Taylor. Changing our seating, changing our schedules...
"And now I'm out of the way the three of them are laying into her again. And there's stuff coming up, I can't say more, but I'm gonna be out of the picture even more. And I just--" Adrian buried his head in his arms, exhausted.
"Dang," Aisha said solemnly.
Hawk kicked back. "Y'know, I could ask some of the brothers to look in on her, if you want," he said casually. "You know, being a white sister and all--"
"Uh, Hawk, don't take this the wrong way, but that would be extraordinarily bad," Adrian said awkwardly. "Nazi teens picking a fight with the school's black star athlete… I wanna keep Taylor safe, not start a race war." And Shadow Stalker would rip through your friends like a baloney slicer on high, he thought to himself. "But it's cool you're willing to step up."
Hawk shrugged and looked away. "Hey, whatever. Thought I'd offer," he said.
If what Hawk said surprised him, what Aisha said next took Adrian completely off guard. After a long pause, she said, "You maybe would be better off with a soul sister keeping an eye on her for ya? I can do that."
Adrian looked at her, his eyebrows raised. "Are you offering? Why, you don't even know either of us."
Aisha snorted. "No, but I know the Bitches Three," she said with a shrug. "I'm more 'n happy to pee in their cornflakes anyway, might as well do it for a noble cause or somethin'. At least I can give you a heads up if your girl's in trouble." She smirked. "Sides, I like the idea of the toughest guy in school owing me a favor."
Adrian nodded; that sounded a little more like the Aisha he knew about. And he'd been in Winslow long enough to know that favor-cutting was a thing there, even between members of rival gangs. More than one nasty fight had been averted because one guy owed the other a solid. "I wouldn't mind that," he said.
Tommy held up his hands. "Hey, don't look at me," he said, amused. "I'm leaving the white-knighting to you crazy gaijin."
Adrian couldn't resist. He lifted up his sunglasses and gave Tommy puppy-dog eyes. "It's because I'm black, isn't it," he pouted.
Tommy looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "You're white," he said.
"Really?" Adrian whipped his sunglasses off and looked at his hand. "Huh. DARN that amnesia--"
Hawk nearly choked laughing.
It was the first of several detentions they all served together. By the end of the last one, Adrian would be wishing sincerely that he knew what to do for Tommy.. or Aisha… or Hawk. They were messed up kids, but they were still kids… just doing what they thought they had to do to survive. But how could anyone sort out that mess without bringing the whole Jenga tower down?
The alarm chimed in his ear. Groaning, he opened one eye. He cursed when he saw the time; he'd gotten less than three hour's sleep. Again. The skylight was dark; it had snowed again, blotting out the light from the outside. It was certainly cold enough-- he'd kept fires going in both his forges to cut the chill.
He stretched and yawned and ran his claws through his fur. No matter what form he took, he always woke up as a worgen. That worried him sometimes. If he fell asleep someplace other than his lair it could cost him his secret identity. Still, you couldn't beat having your own fur coat in the winter.
For now though the anti-Merchant campaign had to continue. Those parasites had to GO. Too much depended on it. He took a quick cold shower, trying to get his blood pumping, and scarfed down a breakfast of cold tinned… well, whatever. He wasn't reading labels. Meat product of some sort. In less than thirty minutes he was out in the night, pawprints trailing behind him in the rooftop snow.
Something had to break soon. He was getting out on the ragged edge; he felt tired and worn all the time now. If it weren't for his powers he'd be an exhausted mess. That could cost him--
His ears pricked. Somewhere in the distance, he heard gunfire.
Instantly he was aloft, racing in the direction of the gunshots on silent wings. When he got there, he perched on a telephone pole and tried to figure out what he was seeing. It was a gang fight, that much was a no brainer. But he saw a dozen or so wearing E88 colors, getting pressed by over twenty Merchants. Bayleaf reviewed his mental map; this was several blocks into E88 territory. What were these stoner idiots doing here?
From the look of it the Merchants had gotten a toxic dose of Stupid and tried to set up shop in E88 turf. He could see one Merchant scrambling in the slush, trying to gather up spilled baggies and stuff them in his ratty coat. The Skinheads had apparently objected, shown up with baseball bats, knives and chains to beat some better manners into the stoners. But they'd been quickly outnumbered, and had apparently dropped their melee weapons in the snow and pulled out pistols and shotguns. There were Merchants and Aryans bleeding in the streets.
Adrian found himself struggling to pull together a mental strategy. The noise and chaos was growing. The Merchants for all their screaming weren't breaking and running, instead taking cover behind parked cars and dumpsters and overturned trash cans and actually making a stand of it. Adrian could see a pickup truck coming down the road-- more E88, probably, the bed of the truck full of people wielding bats, boards, and chains and worse. Bullets were flying wild; he heard a window shatter and a distant scream.
Plan or no, he had to intervene before some poor innocent at home got killed by a stray bullet. He transformed back into his worgen form, crouched atop the telephone pole, and quickly gestured. A beam of light fell seemingly out of the sky, illuminating the largest group of E88, disorienting and blinding them. A second gesture, and the biggest cluster of Merchants was likewise illuminated.
Then a third gesture and the street in between the groups was illumated by yet another Solar Beam. Time to hit the spotlight. Bayleaf leapt down into the street, landing in a crouch in the center of the light. He wrapped his cloak around himself in a cocoon, cast BarkSkin on himself for good measure, and held still.
It worked, for a given measure of work. Everyone stopped firing blindly into the night and instead concentrated their fire on him. Bullets pummeled against him from all sides, making the thick gnarled coating he had grown splinter and crack. It was (at the moment) all small-arms fire, so his cloak was tough enough to handle it, and BarkSkin added an extra layer of defense-- but were it not for his healing powers, noone would envy him the spattering of bruises he'd have the next day.
The gunfire lulled for a moment, whether from everyone needing to reload or simple confusion at their failure to perforate him, he couldn't say. He heard the pickup roaring down the street. He flicked aside his robe and cast a Solar Wrath straight into the engine. There was an almighty bang and the truck began spewing smoke; it veered to a halt and neonazi punks poured out of the truckbed. All save one; he was struggling to bring something mounted on the roof to bear, but the swivel mount was apparently jammed.
Holy crap, they've got a Ma Deuce, Bayleaf realized.
He was probably wrong; he was not exactly informed on the make, caliber, or design of all the possible roof-mounted heavy machine guns out there. But he wasn't sweating the details. It was big, heavy, rapid fire and in a minute it was going to be pointed his way.
He took a deep breath, cast Displacer Beast, and teleported the fifty feet to the truck.
The would-be gunner suddenly found himself having a very bad day. He had just gotten the gun mount unstuck and drawn a bead on the Cape crouching in the street twenty yards away when his target had disappeared-- and reappeared as a roaring, angry grizzly bear all but standing on his chest. The swat of a single paw sent the nazi gunman flying, and Bayleaf immediately turned and tackled the weapon. This thing could shoot through entire buildings; he was NOT leaving it in play.
He had just wrenched it free of its mount and had begun bending the barrel double when something enormous hit him and the truck he was standing on. The truck went flying one way, Bayleaf went flying another. He tumbled to a halt in the middle of the street and got to his hands and knees, shaking the fuzzies out of his head.
"Skidmark says hi, dog boy," someone said.
Bayleaf looked up. The guy that struck him was standing there in the street, a greasy haired, balding man with a three day growth of stubble on his chin and a yellow-toothed smirk on his face. He was dressed, if that was the word, in a steam and soot-belching mecha that looked like it was bashed together out of rusting car parts. "Trainwreck." Bayleaf snarled.
Trainwreck snorted. "Listen to you. Like we're mortal enemies on some old movie serial. Is "so we meet again" your next line?" He swung one massive metal fist in a sweeping arc. Bayleaf kipped backward, barely dodging. He felt the wind of the fist sweeping past him; it would have been like-- well like getting hit by a train.
Behind him he heard the gunfire starting up again. He snarled and dropped to all fours, slapping a glowing hand to the ground. One of the interrelations of his powers, the same power that enabled him to create the entangling vines he used so much also enabled him to create crude duplicates of his tree-man form. They weren't truly sapient, having only crude simple subroutines cut and pasted into their vegetable brains-- go here, do this, attack that-- and they didn't last very long, but they were certainly a hell of a handful for most adversaries. He created three, then three more in rapid succession, and sent them scurrying towards the sounds of conflict to attack and subdue anyone who was fighting. That would be enough to keep the mooks busy while he dealt with the Merchant cape in front of him.
"Ooh, you're just a big bag full of tricks, aintcha?" Trainwreck mocked. His fists came down in an overhead hammerblow, shattering the pavement just behind the dodging worgen. Bayleaf was starting to seriously regret not loading out with his more mechanically inclined toys tonight…
The universal remote! He whipped it out of his haversack, aimed it at the attacking cape and pressed the button. For a split second Trainwreck's suit halted and shuddered. Then there was a sound like a cuckoo clock coming apart at the hinges, and the remote burst into sparks and smoke. Pieces flew in every direction. Bayleaf growled in exasperation and threw the smoking remnants away. Whatever physics-bending energies Trainwreck's Shard was using to hold that pile of junk together, they were too strong to be tweaked by a simple piece of gnomish tech.
Trainwreck laughed. "Even I build 'em better than that!" He pointed one fist at Bayleaf. A valve in his arm opened and a jet of boiling steam shot out, engulfing the worgen and filling the street with billowing clouds. Bayleaf barely cast a Heal in time; the curative aura just barely mending his skin as fast as the punishing steam parboiled it. Through the blinding pain he had one thought: he was going to have to open up all the way if he wanted to survive this.
Claws and fangs grew, muscle swelled and his scream of pain became a feral bellow as he opened up to the most powerful form he had. He didn't like using it: it drained him deeply to activate it, and guzzled power to maintain it. But if he was going toe to toe with a brute like Trainwreck it was the only option. When the steam parted what emerged was not a worgen, but a twelve-foot-tall werebear. It roared like the wrath of Nature itself and lunged at him. They went tumbling, rusting iron fists and claws flying.
Trainwreck soon was starting to regret his life decisions. Grizzlies aren't just strong, they're deceptively, terrifyingly fast, and one with the advantages of a werebeast even more so. Werebear-mode Skinwalker was all over him like white on rice, ripping chunks out of his battlemech with his jaws and massive clawed fists wherever he could get a grip. And Trainwreck was too thick-limbed and clumsy to either land a blow on him or get him in his grasp.
Bayleaf had climbed up on Trainwreck's back and was in the process of peeling away the plating there to get at the boiler when the sky suddenly lit up like day. Startled, everyone looked up, just in time to see a spiral beam of light fall out of the sky and sever Trainwreck's robot arm at the shoulder. The junkie Tinker screamed and cursed, staggering from the imbalance as his arm, large as a compact car, crashed to the ground.
Bayleaf was knocked free and went flying, landing on the pavement and dwindling to his baseline worgen form as he rolled. He got to all fours, crouched and ready to move. Inside he was really panicking. Purity. It was Purity. Oh crap oh crap oh crap.
Purity, aka Kayden Anders, wife… or ex-wife… of Max Anders, CEO of Medhall Corporation and the leader of the Empire Eighty Eight. She was (or had been) second-in-command of E88, and was also one of the world's most powerful Blasters. She was more or less completely out of Bayleaf or Trainwreck's weight class. She pounded Trainwreck, severing another arm and then one leg at the knee; the tinker cape finally had enough and jettisoned his remaining limbs, his mecha's torso turning into a crude three-wheeled motorcar. It belched black smoke and raced off down the street, swerving left and disappearing down an alley.
Bayleaf thought frantically. How much trouble he was in depended entirely where on the timeline he was. At this point, was she still married to Kaiser? Or had she already left and was in the phase where she was trying to redeem herself as a rogue hero?
To judge by the cheering from the Nazi side of the battle as she set down lances of light at the Merchants, sending them running, the odds weren't good. But then she turned and blasted the remains of the E88's pickup truck and its Ma Deuce, blasting both to pieces in a ball of flame. The cheers from the Nazis stopped pretty much instantly.
"LEAVE," she said. Then helixed bands of light began lashing down indiscriminately, blowing craters out of the pavement and sending everyone running. After several seconds of this, both the Merchants and the E88 had clearly decided discretion was the part of valor and had fled.
Purity floated down, her light dimming until Bayleaf could discern the female form in the middle of the blot of light. She spotted him taking cover in the lee of an abandoned car, and drifted in his direction. When she spoke he was actually surprised to hear a normal female voice; he'd been expecting something more echoing and aetherial. "You're the Skinwalker?" she said. Bayleaf nodded, too exhausted to speak. "Tend to the wounded," she said. "I can't stay. The police and the EMTs are inbound but it will be at least another twenty to thirty minutes..."
"What's going on?" Bayleaf demanded. "What started this?"
Purity sounded vexed. "Skidmark has had another one of his sparks of brilliance, and decided to expand his territory into the territory controlled by the E88. His dealers just… showed up and started setting up shop, right on Empire streets. He couldn't have asked for a response from Kaiser more clearly than if he'd gone up and begged for him to start a street war. There are three more places where blowups like this are happeneing-- every Empire footsoldier and recruit is out, and it looks like every junkie in Brockton Bay is out too--" she actually sighed. "I have to go. I'll send help if I can--" she shot into the sky and zipped off to the next site of chaos, a glowing star trailing a streamer of light.
Bayleaf looked around. There wasn't much he could do besides what he said. He bound the unconscious or wounded gangbangers in vines and began pulling out his enhanced bandages. The gangsters cussed him and moaned about their injuries. He ignored them, and if the wounds were minor enough he threw rolls of bandage at them for them to bind themselves up.
There was a choking sound. He hastily followed it to its source; a teenage punk lying on his back in the street, a sawed-off baseball bat clutched in his hand and blood coating what was left of his chest and torso. He was skinny, pimpled, wore a patched leather jacket and had his hair greased into a faux mohawk.
No. Bayleaf dove to the ground at Hawk's side. The boy's eyes rolled over to him; he started to panic when he saw the wolf-man crouched over him. "No, it's okay, it's okay," Bayleaf soothed. "I'm here to help." He planted one hand carefully on Hawk's shredded chest and began pouring Heal after Heal after Purify after Heal into him.
The heals weren't holding.
His hand fished in his pouch for more of his bandages. The Purify made the lead shotgun pellets squeeze out and trickle to the sidewalk. He wrapped bandages around Hawk's chest, trying to hold the blood back, to hold the life in. The kid had nearly been blown in half; he was practically duct-taping the two halves back together. "What the hell are you doing out here, kid? What the hell are you doing out here?" he moaned to himself.
Hawk looked at him and coughed. Blood flecked his lips. "Ju… just wanted to earn my tats," he said, shaking in pain.
"Your tats?" Bayleaf said. That was it, keep him awake, keep him talking. He poured in another heal, threw down another Heal-over-time.
Hawk nodded, his eyes glossy. "Merchant pukes started setting up shop on our streets. Th-the recruiters came around, said a-anyone who stepped up a-and defended our turf.." he coughed again. "Would be made full members. Get our ink done." He smiled. "I had a sweet one picked out...eagles and shit."
Bayleaf tried to smile even as his hands worked, layering the bandages on, casting another heal, casting an Efflorescence nearby so the plant's healing aura overlapped them. "What, no naked chicks?" he teased.
Hawk tried to laugh and choked, his eyes rolling. "oh don't make me laugh..."
Bayleaf glanced down at his hand, at the double lightning bolt etched there on his middle finger. "Looks like you already got ink," he said.
Hawk actually looked embarrassed. "I, uh, did that myself," he said. "Drew it on. With a magic marker." he grinned with bloody teeth and laughed again. "Draw it there every morning."
Bayleaf couldn't help it; he chuckled. The instant Hawk heard that low, booming noise his eyes went round.
"...Adrian?"
There was no point in lying. "Yeah. It's me."
"Holy…" His smile of amazement was beautiful and ghastly. "Holy crap. Whaddya know."
"Yeah, whaddya know."
"Guess you were right," he said. He struggled for a breath. "They didn't fix a thing. All that pride, and that hate, and all those promises, and all they got me was shot in the gut by a junkie with a shotgun." The irony in his next words all but dripped off tongue. "A white, blonde haired blue eyed junkie, wouldja believe it?"
Bayleaf laughed, his heart racing as he cast another Efflorescence, and another. Why wasn't the Gift of Elune boosting everything enough? "Guess that's irony for you."
Hawk suddenly looked sad. "I shoulda listened to my Sunday School teacher," he said.
"How do you mean?" Bayleaf said. Come ON, why isn't it HEALING FASTER--
Hawk smiled. His voice was breathy.
"Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world,
Red and Yellow, Black and White
they are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children
of the world..."
"Someone needs to tell Kaiser that," he mumbled.
"I'd have to agree to that, yeah."
"….Think He still loves me?" Hawk said, his eyes wet and his voice mumbling.
"What would your Sunday School teacher say?" Bayleaf said. He didn't look up from his hands, they were blazing with green light now.
Hawk smiled. "Oh yeah. Right." He started humming. It took a moment for Bayleaf to recognize the tune.
Yes, Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, yes, Jesus loves me, the bible…
The humming stopped. "No," Bayleaf said. "NO! Keep talking, keep singing, do something, do anything, DON'T GO TO SLEEP--" he started doing chest compressions. He poured on the heals and purifies till the light stopped coming, he took out more bandages and kept wrapping even as the body cooled. "No, dammit, no no, no you will NOT… you gotta go to school tomorrow, Hawk, you don't wanna get detention again right? Come on come on come on..." His words dissolved into a blur, into desperate animal whimpering as he pressed on the dead boy's chest with blood covered hands.
The squad cars screeched to a halt, forming a circle around the crouched inhuman form a half second ahead of the ambulance. Anderson climbed out, gun at the ready and took cover behind his car door as he took stock of the scene. What he saw would haunt him the rest of his life; an enormous, black furred wolfman in a cloak, kneeling in the street, cradling the dead body of some punk kid in his blood-covered arms, crying and whimpering like--- well, he hadn't heard anything make that sound since his father died and the family dog had found the body. The anguished noises the old hound had made, trying to wake his master, still haunted him at nights. The werewolf was making those exact same sounds.
He lowered his gun and sidled closer… but not too close. Those claws looked huge. "Okay, let the medics take him," he said in his calm-but-commanding voice. "There's nothing you can do anymore, let him go..." carefully, the EMTs lifted the boy's body-- jeez, he had to have a hundred yards of bandages wrapped around him-- and carried it off on a stretcher.
The wolfman reared back his head till his nose was pointed at the sky and HOWLED.
Halfway across the city a quartet of would be criminal masterminds halted on their trek across the snowclad rooftops. Hellhound's mutant dogs stopped in their tracks, whimpering in fear as a howl-- a howl from the mother of all wolves-- echoed in the winter sky. The dogs had been enlarged till they were the size of minivans, covered with muscle and bony spikes, but even at their most massive and powerful they knew an Alpha when they heard one.
Tattletale shivered and pulled her coat closer around her. (Screw supervillain style, it was freezing out and she'd bundled up.) That sound had gotten her Power's attention, but for a shocker all she was getting back from it was surprise and confusion.
Regent spoke for all of them. "What in all the kung fu hells was THAT?"
Grue looked over at Tattletale. "Got any info?"
Tattletale shook her head. Her Power had gotten over its discombobulation and was feeding her… a little info anyway. "It's that new cape, Skinwalker," she said. "Sounds like he's feeling Hungry like the Wolf."
Another howl echoed through the concrete valleys, if anything deeper, louder and longer than the first.
"Um, I have never heard anyone, or anything, make a sound like that," Regent stated in his all-too-calm voice. "And I would… really rather not know why, and I'd be in another state at the time I find out."
"He's suffering," Hellhound-- Rachel-- said suddenly. The others looked at her where she sat astride one of her dogs. She returned the stare. For once, she was not radiating hostility. "I made that sound once," she said, uncommonly soft, looking in the direction the howl came from. She patted her chest. "...Here. Inside. When my foster mother was killing my dog by drowning him in the swimming pool."
The others ruminated on that awful revelation, and on what it meant here. Another howl tore the night; vast, savage, feral. Tattletale spoke up. "He's not just suffering," she said with conviction. "He's enraged. More than enraged. He's going to find the thing that hurt him, and he's going to make it suffer like he did… and God help anything that happens to be in his way."
They all fell silent for several moments at that. "Well!" Regent said in radiant cheer. "That sounds like OUR cue to scrub this diamond heist, go back home, lock all the doors and hide under our beds with all the lights on till the angry vengeful werewolf superhero is all done with whatever he wants to do!"
There was something of a unanimous vocal agreement, and Hellhound's dogs all turned around and headed back for the Undersider's lair with all due speed.
BAYLEAF IS GONE.
THE SKINWALKER WAS JUST A NAME.
THE WARCRAFTER IS COMING.
Chapter Text
It was that time again. Adrian sighed as he trudged down the second floor hall to Mr. Gladly's classroom. He'd been nailed for detention again-- this time, after school. A couple of asian kids had taken a potshot at him in the hallway… God only knew what THEIR beef was with him… And Gladly (the tosser) had spotted them scuffling and pinned the blame on him for "agitating the situation." Adrian had snapped at him for his bias, pointing out that they had jumped HIM. Gladly had swelled up like a balloon and started huffing about respect for your elders, etc. and dropped the boom: after school detention.
On top of his IN school detention he was only halfway through serving.
So now he was getting to spend a couple hours AFTER the school closed sitting with Gladly in an empty classroom, to inflate the popularity-schmoozing loser's flaccid ego.
Adrian growled to himself. He was getting herded away from Taylor's side more and more often, and he had a good suspicion it wasn't accidental. Several of the teachers had taken to ordering him to sit on the opposite side of the classroom. Blackwell had unilaterally changed his schedule so that they shared fewer classes. Even in his off periods, when he'd normally sit in the bleachers and watch Taylor during her gym class, the gym coach had taken to running him off, dropping hints about "improper behavior"…. Not quite accusing him of being a perv, but getting as close as she dared.
It wasn't long after he'd snagged Madison trying to dump pencil shavings on Taylor's back that it started. It wasn't hard to guess what had happened. Someone had dropped the hint that he and Taylor were "troublemakers" when they got together. Probably with a few bambi-eyed stories about him "threatening" them, and maybe some little hints from another of the bimbettes about her lawyer Daddy, and how rough it could get if they didn't stop this mean old boy from picking on his precious little girl.
He had to wonder what kind of leverage the Ward of the trio was shifting. Claiming she was investigating him as a possible drug dealer or supervillain flunky, maybe?
Once the staff had started driving him off, they'd taken on targeting Taylor again. He'd spotted her in the hallway going the other way one day; head down, it looked like water or soda had been poured over her head and down her back. He was seething, but at that precise moment what could he do?
He grunted and yawned. Between the drama here at Waste Of Youth High, running his little side business (At least it was officially winter now and he could roll up the pushcart till spring… the online business was still ticking though) and all the projects he had been working on in the Lost Workshop for the Wards, almost since the day of his arrival, had been keeping him up. That and harrying the Merchants whenever and wherever, dropping the boom on the occasional Nazi or ABB gangbanger on the way… When was the last full night of sleep he'd had? Two, three days ago? If that?
He slumped into the room and closed the door behind him. Surprise surprise, he wasn't alone today. There were three other kids there: one asian kid in the corner seat, ignoring everybody; A black girl sitting off to the left, feet propped up on the back of the next chair, rocking her chair on two legs and looking bored. The asian guy, he was sporting ABB colors as casually as you please. The girl, she was wearing a strapless crop top, mesh tights cutoff jeans that were halfway up her butt, a purple streak in her hair and an insolent look on her face. And on the right…
"Hey, Faux Hawk," Adrian said, amused. "Imagine seeing you here."
"Yeah, imagine that, a neonazi wannabe in detention," the girl muttered.
Hawk (he'd adopted the stupid name as his own after he'd heard Adrian say it, but dropped the "faux") grinned at him. "Hey, pal," he said in his best sleazy voice. "Wanna be a NAAAAAAZI?"
Adrian grinned. This had become a running joke between them ever since that first day at lunch. He gave the expected response. "Oy, have you got the wrong meshugeneh," he said. The asian kid actually smothered a laugh; the black girl looked at them both like she couldn't decide whether to be offended or confused.
"Mister Smith!" Mr. Gladly said. Ah, there he was, behind the desk where an educator normally sat. Pity there wasn't one available.
"--Present."
He started, stopped in annoyance and started again. "Mr. Smith, I do not want to hear that sort of humor in here again."
Adrian stared at him for a second. Really? "Okay, how about this one: Two Jews walk into a bar--"
"NO!"
Adrian gave him his best "Achmed the Dead Terrorist". "What? You would not let Jews into your BAR? You racist bastard!"
"MISter SMITH!" Gladly barked, fuming. Wow, where was all this spine when Gladly was dealing with the juvie hall candidates in his regular class? The other three students spluttered and snickered. "Find a seat, sit down and stop causing trouble."
Adrian shrugged, and slid into the first seat handy. Gladly picked up his clipboard and looked it over.
"Aisha Laborn."
"Present," the black girl said, rolling her eyes and looking even more bored.
Oh crap. Grue's baby sister. Grue, aka Brian Laborn, was the erstwhile leader of the Undersiders; a gang of small time villains who were (except for their thinker Tattletale) unknowingly working for Coil. Apparently Aisha hadn't triggered yet, otherwise she wouldn't even be here. In the main timeline her powers as Imp had made people forget she even existed the moment they looked away-- sort of like those aliens with the suits and bulging heads on Dr. Who. And in the main timeline she had been anything but bashful about using that power at every opportunity. Detention? When she could walk right out of the classroom whenever she wanted and the teacher wouldn't even remember she existed? Not a chance. In the original timeline she had naturally gone straight from Juvenile Delinquent to Career Villain without so much as a pause. She, and the Undersiders, were on Adrian's ever-expanding list of people he either had to stop or to save, and possibly both. And that on top of preventing the end of the world.
But hey. No pressure. Right?
"John Muller."
"Here," Faux Hawk said, holding up his hand.
"Adrian Smith."
"Well I dunno," Adrian said with a small smirk. "It HAS been almost thirty whole seconds and--"
Gladly sighed. "Just say present, Mr. Smith."
"Well you're no fun..."
"Mister Smith do I have to--"
"Fine, fine, Present."
"Tommy Wong."
"Here," the asian kid muttered.
"Good." Gladly signed the attendance sheet with a flourish and threw it on the desk. "You four are here for the next four hours. If you give me any trouble, you'll be back here again next week. And the next. And then every DAY of the week, until we get that little discipline problem you all have under control. Now I'm going down to the office to do some computer work and run off some print copies for tomorrow's class. You are to stay in here, be quiet, and cause no trouble. Anything other than that, I will do my level best to make your lives miserable. Understood?" Everyone mumbled. "I said-"
"Understood," everyone droned. Adrian could hear that he wasn't the only one gritting his teeth.
"Good." Gladly left, folders under his arm and back stiff, closing the door behind him.
"What a tool," Hawk said.
"Are you kidding? His middle name should be 'Craftsman,'" Adrian said, his humor coming back. The others snickered. "Kinda sad. If he had some spine in his class, he wouldn't be spending his afternoons here doing this."
"Oh hey. Heard about Spike in the locker room, tryin' to jump you," Hawk said. "Sorry about that. He's a tard." He paused. "Did you really…?"
"Snap him in the nards with a rat tail? Yup." Adrian pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes and leaned back in his seat.
Aisha went round eyed. "You what??"
"You heard him," Hawk said, suddenly getting sullen as he realized a non-white was talking in his direction. Adrian intercepted before any slurs could be sparked off.
"Yeah, guy came over and started squealing about how he thought I was gay. Probably says that about everyone that wears deodorant."
Hawk had to laugh at that one. "Yeah, Spike's kind of a jackass."
"That's putting it lightly," Adrian snarked. "He's so homophobic he can only eat a banana sideways."
"HAH!" Aisha said. "Good one."
Tommy Wong spoke up. "I can't believe you two," he said.
"What about us?"
Tommy looked back at them and sneered. "You two sitting there cracking jokes with a Nazi," he said.
"So whaddya want me to do? Walk in and start a fight with him? A cage match maybe?"
"She's black! And you're a Jew!"
"He's not a Jew," Hawk said dismissively.
"I might be," Adrian corrected him. He held up his VicAlert tag. "Amnesia victim. Supervillain with memory gas."
"Wow, that sucks," Aisha said. "So what makes you think you might be a Jew…?"
"Think about it," Adrian said, resting his chin in his hand and giving her a lazy smile. "What's one thing ALL male Jews have in common?"
"I don't... Awh man, you nasty," she said as he made several meaningful glances downward and she realized what he was implying. Hawk laughed so hard he nearly fell backwards out of his chair. "Oh shut up!" she snapped.
"--Potato pancakes," Adrian said seriously. "Can't live without 'em. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, gotta have 'em."
"Har dee har..." she went "fch" at him and sat back, arms crossed. "That all you do? Tell racist jokes?"
"Sure. Everyone's racist. White people got racism. Black people got reverse racism. Chinese people got sideways racism. Jews got backwards racism--" He stopped for a second and got sober. "You fight with people, all you see is enemies. You laugh with 'em, it's hard not to see just another person with problems like your own. Maybe if we all laughed a little more and got mad a little less, we wouldn't be having all these problems." Some of them thought that over for a minute.
"Yeah, well if Gladly hears you telling jokes like that he'll get his tighty whities in a knot like you wouldn't believe," Tommy said.
"Yeah, the big hypocrite," Aisha said. At their confused looks she pointed around. "A neonazi, a chinese guy, a black chick and a jew, all thrown together in detention. Like he was picking us out for a color combo sampler platter. All he has to do is have us walk into a bar together." She rolled her lip. "This has gotta be the most racist detention in the history of public school."
Adrian started to chuckle. It was a deep sound, surprising even from a fellow his size, and it threatened to break into a full blown belly laugh. "Hey," he said, lifting his sunglasses and giving the others the side-eye. "You ever hear the story of the world's most RACIST field trip?"
The others looked curious. "Racist field trip?" Hawk said.
"Yeah..." Adrians' gaze drifted, he smiled almost wistfully. "I dunno if I knew the guy, or just saw a video of the guy, or heck, maybe I WAS the guy (screw amnesia, really) but I remember it was a true story..." he sat up, eagerly grinning, his hands moving as he told the story. "Okay, so this guy-- a black guy, of course-- is talking about when he was in third grade, in Montgomery Alabama, and his teacher got it in her little wooden head to take all 30 kids in her class on a field trip. All 30 little black kids. On a field trip.
"To a cotton plantation."
Even the Chinese kid got it. "Oh, no way."
Adrian nodded, grinning madly. "So they get there, and the teacher hands all these kids plastic bags, with a little cotton puff person on the side, and told them they could pick as much cotton as they wanted..."
Gladly stapled his last stack of papers, gathered them up and headed back to the classroom. He was halfway down the hall when he heard Adrian Smith, the wannabe class clown, talking. And the others… laughing? He opened the door and looked in.
Adrian was apparently in full swing, reciting some crude story or joke of his. The other three students were laughing their backsides off. The nazi kid was hooting and pounding on his desktop with his fist, while the asian boy had his head resting on his arms on the desk and was laughing so hard he shook. Aisha was leaning back in her chair till it was balanced on two legs, head laid back and laughing at the ceiling.
"And so his mama finds the cotton in his pants pocket in the laundry the next day, gets the story out of him, and in case you didn't guess, that's when something broke off." The others hooted. "She goes down to the school, corners the teacher in her classroom and just RAILS on her. "You jive-ass mutha.. How DARE you take my boy, and all these other ashy li'l negroes, out to a COTTON PLANT to PICK COTTON for a field trip? You SOULLESS--"
"MISTER SMITH!" Gladly shrilled. Adrian stopped in mid-word; everyone stopped laughing and looked back at Gladly in the doorway. He huffed and fumed, the picture of limp-wristed, metrosexual progressive outrage. "Never have I heard such offensive, racist-- " he sputtered to a halt and raised his chin. "I'm going to drop these off in the projector room. When I get back I'm writing up a report for your permanent record-- and I'm sending an email to Principal Blackwood about your offensive stories and language and behavior!"
"Hey, lay off him," Aisha said. "It wasn't racist. It was just a story!"
Gladly suddenly turned earnest. "Miss Laborne, you have to understand," he said, as if talking to a little child. "We have to crack down on this sort of racially insensitive behavior. We do it for the sake of those like yourself--"
That was exactly the wrong thing to say. Adrian had to choke back a laugh; he all but saw Satan flash across her face before she even spoke. She got to her feet, hands on hips, and proceeded to channel every jive-talking black woman in cinematic history. She even started doing the side-to-side head bob thing. "And who told you, you jive ass turkey, that I needed YOU to take care of my poor little delicate feelings?" She rared up. "And what do you MEAN, "people like me?" You patronizing RACIST CRACKER-- Am I gonna have to give a report to Principal Blackwell about how this detention-givin'-out BIGOT told me, a BLACK GIRL, that I couldn't--"
Adrian nearly died. He couldn't breathe.
Gladly got so agitated it looked like he was going to pee himself like a distressed poodle."All right, all right, all right!" he said in a panic. "I'll let it go this time..." He tried to back out of the room without making it too obvious his tail was between his legs. "W-we'll sort this out when I get back," he said-- and bolted.
Clap…. Clap…. Clap. Aisha turned around. Hawk had his arms stretched out full length and was slowly applauding. Adrian managed to gasp down some air. He mimed holding up a statuette in his hands. In a cheesy "breathy awards actress" voice he said. "And now, for the category of 'Best Performance as a Sassy Young Black Woman with a Short Fuse,' the award goes tooo… Aisha Laborne! Yaaaay!" Tommy joined in on the applause.
Adrian held out the imaginary statue; Aisha pretended to take it and did a little curtsy. "You like me, you really like me!" She said, bouncing up and down in place. She sat down to Tommy and Hawk's laugh and Adrian's slow booming chuckle. "Okay, what was all that about? He's got two gang members and a juvenile delinquent in the room, and he comes in and zooms on you? What's his problem?"
"Uh, he's a doink?" Adrian suggested.
Aisha gave him a Look™. "Come on, spill."
Adrian sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Couple things. Called him on his bull a couple of times, for one thing. But that's tied in to bigger stuff. You know Sophia Hess and her two side-bimbos, Madison and Emma, right?"
"You mean thunderbitch and the slags?" Tommy sneered.
Aisha raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah, those three." there were entire categories of dismissal in her tone. "What about 'em?"
"When I first got here, they were running a total hate campaign on this one girl named Taylor," Adrian went on.
"Wait, Taylor? You mean the girl with the hoodie? That girl everyone says is a headcase?" Aisha said.
Adrian growled to himself and started to retort, but it was Tommy who spoke. "You mean everyone, or just the popular girls?" he said pointedly.
Aisha looked thoughtful, like she was recalling all the times she'd heard stuff… and who'd been around saying it. "Oh. Yeah." she grimaced.
"They were just… utterly trying to destroy her life," Adrian said. "Trashing her stuff, starting gossip about her, hate mail, tripping her, punching her-- everything you could think of and worse." He could feel himself seething. "When I met her, she was almost a shell… she..." he stopped.
"Well, I stepped in and got in their way," he said. "Started looking out for her. Made friends with her. And Daddy's Little Princesses didn't like that." His lips were thin and pressed tight. "And all of a sudden Blackwell, and the teachers, and the staff are all hearing from somewhere that I'm a troublemaker, and that I'm turning Taylor into a troublemaker. And the skinheads are hearing that I'm a gay, and the black kids and the asian kids are hearing I'm E88, and even the potheads are hearing that I'm a narc, of all things… and the staff is going out of its way to give me detention, or get me suspended, and especially to keep me away from poor little easily corrupted Taylor. Changing our seating, changing our schedules...
"And now I'm out of the way the three of them are laying into her again. And there's stuff coming up, I can't say more, but I'm gonna be out of the picture even more. And I just--" Adrian buried his head in his arms, exhausted.
"Dang," Aisha said solemnly.
Hawk kicked back. "Y'know, I could ask some of the brothers to look in on her, if you want," he said casually. "You know, being a white sister and all--"
"Uh, Hawk, don't take this the wrong way, but that would be extraordinarily bad," Adrian said awkwardly. "Nazi teens picking a fight with the school's black star athlete… I wanna keep Taylor safe, not start a race war." And Shadow Stalker would rip through your friends like a baloney slicer on high, he thought to himself. "But it's cool you're willing to step up."
Hawk shrugged and looked away. "Hey, whatever. Thought I'd offer," he said.
If what Hawk said surprised him, what Aisha said next took Adrian completely off guard. After a long pause, she said, "You maybe would be better off with a soul sister keeping an eye on her for ya? I can do that."
Adrian looked at her, his eyebrows raised. "Are you offering? Why, you don't even know either of us."
Aisha snorted. "No, but I know the Bitches Three," she said with a shrug. "I'm more 'n happy to pee in their cornflakes anyway, might as well do it for a noble cause or somethin'. At least I can give you a heads up if your girl's in trouble." She smirked. "Sides, I like the idea of the toughest guy in school owing me a favor."
Adrian nodded; that sounded a little more like the Aisha he knew about. And he'd been in Winslow long enough to know that favor-cutting was a thing there, even between members of rival gangs. More than one nasty fight had been averted because one guy owed the other a solid. "I wouldn't mind that," he said.
Tommy held up his hands. "Hey, don't look at me," he said, amused. "I'm leaving the white-knighting to you crazy gaijin."
Adrian couldn't resist. He lifted up his sunglasses and gave Tommy puppy-dog eyes. "It's because I'm black, isn't it," he pouted.
Tommy looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "You're white," he said.
"Really?" Adrian whipped his sunglasses off and looked at his hand. "Huh. DARN that amnesia--"
Hawk nearly choked laughing.
It was the first of several detentions they all served together. By the end of the last one, Adrian would be wishing sincerely that he knew what to do for Tommy.. or Aisha… or Hawk. They were messed up kids, but they were still kids… just doing what they thought they had to do to survive. But how could anyone sort out that mess without bringing the whole Jenga tower down?
The alarm chimed in his ear. Groaning, he opened one eye. He cursed when he saw the time; he'd gotten less than three hour's sleep. Again. The skylight was dark; it had snowed again, blotting out the light from the outside. It was certainly cold enough-- he'd kept fires going in both his forges to cut the chill.
He stretched and yawned and ran his claws through his fur. No matter what form he took, he always woke up as a worgen. That worried him sometimes. If he fell asleep someplace other than his lair it could cost him his secret identity. Still, you couldn't beat having your own fur coat in the winter.
For now though the anti-Merchant campaign had to continue. Those parasites had to GO. Too much depended on it. He took a quick cold shower, trying to get his blood pumping, and scarfed down a breakfast of cold tinned… well, whatever. He wasn't reading labels. Meat product of some sort. In less than thirty minutes he was out in the night, pawprints trailing behind him in the rooftop snow.
Something had to break soon. He was getting out on the ragged edge; he felt tired and worn all the time now. If it weren't for his powers he'd be an exhausted mess. That could cost him--
His ears pricked. Somewhere in the distance, he heard gunfire.
Instantly he was aloft, racing in the direction of the gunshots on silent wings. When he got there, he perched on a telephone pole and tried to figure out what he was seeing. It was a gang fight, that much was a no brainer. But he saw a dozen or so wearing E88 colors, getting pressed by over twenty Merchants. Bayleaf reviewed his mental map; this was several blocks into E88 territory. What were these stoner idiots doing here?
From the look of it the Merchants had gotten a toxic dose of Stupid and tried to set up shop in E88 turf. He could see one Merchant scrambling in the slush, trying to gather up spilled baggies and stuff them in his ratty coat. The Skinheads had apparently objected, shown up with baseball bats, knives and chains to beat some better manners into the stoners. But they'd been quickly outnumbered, and had apparently dropped their melee weapons in the snow and pulled out pistols and shotguns. There were Merchants and Aryans bleeding in the streets.
Adrian found himself struggling to pull together a mental strategy. The noise and chaos was growing. The Merchants for all their screaming weren't breaking and running, instead taking cover behind parked cars and dumpsters and overturned trash cans and actually making a stand of it. Adrian could see a pickup truck coming down the road-- more E88, probably, the bed of the truck full of people wielding bats, boards, and chains and worse. Bullets were flying wild; he heard a window shatter and a distant scream.
Plan or no, he had to intervene before some poor innocent at home got killed by a stray bullet. He transformed back into his worgen form, crouched atop the telephone pole, and quickly gestured. A beam of light fell seemingly out of the sky, illuminating the largest group of E88, disorienting and blinding them. A second gesture, and the biggest cluster of Merchants was likewise illuminated.
Then a third gesture and the street in between the groups was illumated by yet another Solar Beam. Time to hit the spotlight. Bayleaf leapt down into the street, landing in a crouch in the center of the light. He wrapped his cloak around himself in a cocoon, cast BarkSkin on himself for good measure, and held still.
It worked, for a given measure of work. Everyone stopped firing blindly into the night and instead concentrated their fire on him. Bullets pummeled against him from all sides, making the thick gnarled coating he had grown splinter and crack. It was (at the moment) all small-arms fire, so his cloak was tough enough to handle it, and BarkSkin added an extra layer of defense-- but were it not for his healing powers, noone would envy him the spattering of bruises he'd have the next day.
The gunfire lulled for a moment, whether from everyone needing to reload or simple confusion at their failure to perforate him, he couldn't say. He heard the pickup roaring down the street. He flicked aside his robe and cast a Solar Wrath straight into the engine. There was an almighty bang and the truck began spewing smoke; it veered to a halt and neonazi punks poured out of the truckbed. All save one; he was struggling to bring something mounted on the roof to bear, but the swivel mount was apparently jammed.
Holy crap, they've got a Ma Deuce, Bayleaf realized.
He was probably wrong; he was not exactly informed on the make, caliber, or design of all the possible roof-mounted heavy machine guns out there. But he wasn't sweating the details. It was big, heavy, rapid fire and in a minute it was going to be pointed his way.
He took a deep breath, cast Displacer Beast, and teleported the fifty feet to the truck.
The would-be gunner suddenly found himself having a very bad day. He had just gotten the gun mount unstuck and drawn a bead on the Cape crouching in the street twenty yards away when his target had disappeared-- and reappeared as a roaring, angry grizzly bear all but standing on his chest. The swat of a single paw sent the nazi gunman flying, and Bayleaf immediately turned and tackled the weapon. This thing could shoot through entire buildings; he was NOT leaving it in play.
He had just wrenched it free of its mount and had begun bending the barrel double when something enormous hit him and the truck he was standing on. The truck went flying one way, Bayleaf went flying another. He tumbled to a halt in the middle of the street and got to his hands and knees, shaking the fuzzies out of his head.
"Skidmark says hi, dog boy," someone said.
Bayleaf looked up. The guy that struck him was standing there in the street, a greasy haired, balding man with a three day growth of stubble on his chin and a yellow-toothed smirk on his face. He was dressed, if that was the word, in a steam and soot-belching mecha that looked like it was bashed together out of rusting car parts. "Trainwreck." Bayleaf snarled.
Trainwreck snorted. "Listen to you. Like we're mortal enemies on some old movie serial. Is "so we meet again" your next line?" He swung one massive metal fist in a sweeping arc. Bayleaf kipped backward, barely dodging. He felt the wind of the fist sweeping past him; it would have been like-- well like getting hit by a train.
Behind him he heard the gunfire starting up again. He snarled and dropped to all fours, slapping a glowing hand to the ground. One of the interrelations of his powers, the same power that enabled him to create the entangling vines he used so much also enabled him to create crude duplicates of his tree-man form. They weren't truly sapient, having only crude simple subroutines cut and pasted into their vegetable brains-- go here, do this, attack that-- and they didn't last very long, but they were certainly a hell of a handful for most adversaries. He created three, then three more in rapid succession, and sent them scurrying towards the sounds of conflict to attack and subdue anyone who was fighting. That would be enough to keep the mooks busy while he dealt with the Merchant cape in front of him.
"Ooh, you're just a big bag full of tricks, aintcha?" Trainwreck mocked. His fists came down in an overhead hammerblow, shattering the pavement just behind the dodging worgen. Bayleaf was starting to seriously regret not loading out with his more mechanically inclined toys tonight…
The universal remote! He whipped it out of his haversack, aimed it at the attacking cape and pressed the button. For a split second Trainwreck's suit halted and shuddered. Then there was a sound like a cuckoo clock coming apart at the hinges, and the remote burst into sparks and smoke. Pieces flew in every direction. Bayleaf growled in exasperation and threw the smoking remnants away. Whatever physics-bending energies Trainwreck's Shard was using to hold that pile of junk together, they were too strong to be tweaked by a simple piece of gnomish tech.
Trainwreck laughed. "Even I build 'em better than that!" He pointed one fist at Bayleaf. A valve in his arm opened and a jet of boiling steam shot out, engulfing the worgen and filling the street with billowing clouds. Bayleaf barely cast a Heal in time; the curative aura just barely mending his skin as fast as the punishing steam parboiled it. Through the blinding pain he had one thought: he was going to have to open up all the way if he wanted to survive this.
Claws and fangs grew, muscle swelled and his scream of pain became a feral bellow as he opened up to the most powerful form he had. He didn't like using it: it drained him deeply to activate it, and guzzled power to maintain it. But if he was going toe to toe with a brute like Trainwreck it was the only option. When the steam parted what emerged was not a worgen, but a twelve-foot-tall werebear. It roared like the wrath of Nature itself and lunged at him. They went tumbling, rusting iron fists and claws flying.
Trainwreck soon was starting to regret his life decisions. Grizzlies aren't just strong, they're deceptively, terrifyingly fast, and one with the advantages of a werebeast even more so. Werebear-mode Skinwalker was all over him like white on rice, ripping chunks out of his battlemech with his jaws and massive clawed fists wherever he could get a grip. And Trainwreck was too thick-limbed and clumsy to either land a blow on him or get him in his grasp.
Bayleaf had climbed up on Trainwreck's back and was in the process of peeling away the plating there to get at the boiler when the sky suddenly lit up like day. Startled, everyone looked up, just in time to see a spiral beam of light fall out of the sky and sever Trainwreck's robot arm at the shoulder. The junkie Tinker screamed and cursed, staggering from the imbalance as his arm, large as a compact car, crashed to the ground.
Bayleaf was knocked free and went flying, landing on the pavement and dwindling to his baseline worgen form as he rolled. He got to all fours, crouched and ready to move. Inside he was really panicking. Purity. It was Purity. Oh crap oh crap oh crap.
Purity, aka Kayden Anders, wife… or ex-wife… of Max Anders, CEO of Medhall Corporation and the leader of the Empire Eighty Eight. She was (or had been) second-in-command of E88, and was also one of the world's most powerful Blasters. She was more or less completely out of Bayleaf or Trainwreck's weight class. She pounded Trainwreck, severing another arm and then one leg at the knee; the tinker cape finally had enough and jettisoned his remaining limbs, his mecha's torso turning into a crude three-wheeled motorcar. It belched black smoke and raced off down the street, swerving left and disappearing down an alley.
Bayleaf thought frantically. How much trouble he was in depended entirely where on the timeline he was. At this point, was she still married to Kaiser? Or had she already left and was in the phase where she was trying to redeem herself as a rogue hero?
To judge by the cheering from the Nazi side of the battle as she set down lances of light at the Merchants, sending them running, the odds weren't good. But then she turned and blasted the remains of the E88's pickup truck and its Ma Deuce, blasting both to pieces in a ball of flame. The cheers from the Nazis stopped pretty much instantly.
"LEAVE," she said. Then helixed bands of light began lashing down indiscriminately, blowing craters out of the pavement and sending everyone running. After several seconds of this, both the Merchants and the E88 had clearly decided discretion was the part of valor and had fled.
Purity floated down, her light dimming until Bayleaf could discern the female form in the middle of the blot of light. She spotted him taking cover in the lee of an abandoned car, and drifted in his direction. When she spoke he was actually surprised to hear a normal female voice; he'd been expecting something more echoing and aetherial. "You're the Skinwalker?" she said. Bayleaf nodded, too exhausted to speak. "Tend to the wounded," she said. "I can't stay. The police and the EMTs are inbound but it will be at least another twenty to thirty minutes..."
"What's going on?" Bayleaf demanded. "What started this?"
Purity sounded vexed. "Skidmark has had another one of his sparks of brilliance, and decided to expand his territory into the territory controlled by the E88. His dealers just… showed up and started setting up shop, right on Empire streets. He couldn't have asked for a response from Kaiser more clearly than if he'd gone up and begged for him to start a street war. There are three more places where blowups like this are happeneing-- every Empire footsoldier and recruit is out, and it looks like every junkie in Brockton Bay is out too--" she actually sighed. "I have to go. I'll send help if I can--" she shot into the sky and zipped off to the next site of chaos, a glowing star trailing a streamer of light.
Bayleaf looked around. There wasn't much he could do besides what he said. He bound the unconscious or wounded gangbangers in vines and began pulling out his enhanced bandages. The gangsters cussed him and moaned about their injuries. He ignored them, and if the wounds were minor enough he threw rolls of bandage at them for them to bind themselves up.
There was a choking sound. He hastily followed it to its source; a teenage punk lying on his back in the street, a sawed-off baseball bat clutched in his hand and blood coating what was left of his chest and torso. He was skinny, pimpled, wore a patched leather jacket and had his hair greased into a faux mohawk.
No. Bayleaf dove to the ground at Hawk's side. The boy's eyes rolled over to him; he started to panic when he saw the wolf-man crouched over him. "No, it's okay, it's okay," Bayleaf soothed. "I'm here to help." He planted one hand carefully on Hawk's shredded chest and began pouring Heal after Heal after Purify after Heal into him.
The heals weren't holding.
His hand fished in his pouch for more of his bandages. The Purify made the lead shotgun pellets squeeze out and trickle to the sidewalk. He wrapped bandages around Hawk's chest, trying to hold the blood back, to hold the life in. The kid had nearly been blown in half; he was practically duct-taping the two halves back together. "What the hell are you doing out here, kid? What the hell are you doing out here?" he moaned to himself.
Hawk looked at him and coughed. Blood flecked his lips. "Ju… just wanted to earn my tats," he said, shaking in pain.
"Your tats?" Bayleaf said. That was it, keep him awake, keep him talking. He poured in another heal, threw down another Heal-over-time.
Hawk nodded, his eyes glossy. "Merchant pukes started setting up shop on our streets. Th-the recruiters came around, said a-anyone who stepped up a-and defended our turf.." he coughed again. "Would be made full members. Get our ink done." He smiled. "I had a sweet one picked out...eagles and shit."
Bayleaf tried to smile even as his hands worked, layering the bandages on, casting another heal, casting an Efflorescence nearby so the plant's healing aura overlapped them. "What, no naked chicks?" he teased.
Hawk tried to laugh and choked, his eyes rolling. "oh don't make me laugh..."
Bayleaf glanced down at his hand, at the double lightning bolt etched there on his middle finger. "Looks like you already got ink," he said.
Hawk actually looked embarrassed. "I, uh, did that myself," he said. "Drew it on. With a magic marker." he grinned with bloody teeth and laughed again. "Draw it there every morning."
Bayleaf couldn't help it; he chuckled. The instant Hawk heard that low, booming noise his eyes went round.
"...Adrian?"
There was no point in lying. "Yeah. It's me."
"Holy…" His smile of amazement was beautiful and ghastly. "Holy crap. Whaddya know."
"Yeah, whaddya know."
"Guess you were right," he said. He struggled for a breath. "They didn't fix a thing. All that pride, and that hate, and all those promises, and all they got me was shot in the gut by a junkie with a shotgun." The irony in his next words all but dripped off tongue. "A white, blonde haired blue eyed junkie, wouldja believe it?"
Bayleaf laughed, his heart racing as he cast another Efflorescence, and another. Why wasn't the Gift of Elune boosting everything enough? "Guess that's irony for you."
Hawk suddenly looked sad. "I shoulda listened to my Sunday School teacher," he said.
"How do you mean?" Bayleaf said. Come ON, why isn't it HEALING FASTER--
Hawk smiled. His voice was breathy.
"Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world,
Red and Yellow, Black and White
they are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children
of the world..."
"Someone needs to tell Kaiser that," he mumbled.
"I'd have to agree to that, yeah."
"….Think He still loves me?" Hawk said, his eyes wet and his voice mumbling.
"What would your Sunday School teacher say?" Bayleaf said. He didn't look up from his hands, they were blazing with green light now.
Hawk smiled. "Oh yeah. Right." He started humming. It took a moment for Bayleaf to recognize the tune.
Yes, Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, yes, Jesus loves me, the bible…
The humming stopped. "No," Bayleaf said. "NO! Keep talking, keep singing, do something, do anything, DON'T GO TO SLEEP--" he started doing chest compressions. He poured on the heals and purifies till the light stopped coming, he took out more bandages and kept wrapping even as the body cooled. "No, dammit, no no, no you will NOT… you gotta go to school tomorrow, Hawk, you don't wanna get detention again right? Come on come on come on..." His words dissolved into a blur, into desperate animal whimpering as he pressed on the dead boy's chest with blood covered hands.
The squad cars screeched to a halt, forming a circle around the crouched inhuman form a half second ahead of the ambulance. Anderson climbed out, gun at the ready and took cover behind his car door as he took stock of the scene. What he saw would haunt him the rest of his life; an enormous, black furred wolfman in a cloak, kneeling in the street, cradling the dead body of some punk kid in his blood-covered arms, crying and whimpering like--- well, he hadn't heard anything make that sound since his father died and the family dog had found the body. The anguished noises the old hound had made, trying to wake his master, still haunted him at nights. The werewolf was making those exact same sounds.
He lowered his gun and sidled closer… but not too close. Those claws looked huge. "Okay, let the medics take him," he said in his calm-but-commanding voice. "There's nothing you can do anymore, let him go..." carefully, the EMTs lifted the boy's body-- jeez, he had to have a hundred yards of bandages wrapped around him-- and carried it off on a stretcher.
The wolfman reared back his head till his nose was pointed at the sky and HOWLED.
Halfway across the city a quartet of would be criminal masterminds halted on their trek across the snowclad rooftops. Hellhound's mutant dogs stopped in their tracks, whimpering in fear as a howl-- a howl from the mother of all wolves-- echoed in the winter sky. The dogs had been enlarged till they were the size of minivans, covered with muscle and bony spikes, but even at their most massive and powerful they knew an Alpha when they heard one.
Tattletale shivered and pulled her coat closer around her. (Screw supervillain style, it was freezing out and she'd bundled up.) That sound had gotten her Power's attention, but for a shocker all she was getting back from it was surprise and confusion.
Regent spoke for all of them. "What in all the kung fu hells was THAT?"
Grue looked over at Tattletale. "Got any info?"
Tattletale shook her head. Her Power had gotten over its discombobulation and was feeding her… a little info anyway. "It's that new cape, Skinwalker," she said. "Sounds like he's feeling Hungry like the Wolf."
Another howl echoed through the concrete valleys, if anything deeper, louder and longer than the first.
"Um, I have never heard anyone, or anything, make a sound like that," Regent stated in his all-too-calm voice. "And I would… really rather not know why, and I'd be in another state at the time I find out."
"He's suffering," Hellhound-- Rachel-- said suddenly. The others looked at her where she sat astride one of her dogs. She returned the stare. For once, she was not radiating hostility. "I made that sound once," she said, uncommonly soft, looking in the direction the howl came from. She patted her chest. "...Here. Inside. When my foster mother was killing my dog by drowning him in the swimming pool."
The others ruminated on that awful revelation, and on what it meant here. Another howl tore the night; vast, savage, feral. Tattletale spoke up. "He's not just suffering," she said with conviction. "He's enraged. More than enraged. He's going to find the thing that hurt him, and he's going to make it suffer like he did… and God help anything that happens to be in his way."
They all fell silent for several moments at that. "Well!" Regent said in radiant cheer. "That sounds like OUR cue to scrub this diamond heist, go back home, lock all the doors and hide under our beds with all the lights on till the angry vengeful werewolf superhero is all done with whatever he wants to do!"
There was something of a unanimous vocal agreement, and Hellhound's dogs all turned around and headed back for the Undersider's lair with all due speed.
BAYLEAF IS GONE.
THE SKINWALKER WAS JUST A NAME.
THE WARCRAFTER IS COMING.
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Chapter 9
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
Chapter 9
Chapter Text
The next few weeks, the Archer's Bridge Merchants learned the name of a demon.
It was a demon that hunted them day and night, in the docks, in the trainyard, downtown, uptown, Shantytown--anywhere they went. It struck from the shadows, from out of the empty sky, from doorways they swore had been empty just a moment before. If they were passing so much as a baggie of weed on a street corner, he was there. If they were shaking down their hookers for their weekly dues, he appeared. If they were stupid enough to walk into a convenience store with the intent to rob it, they soon found them exiting by way of the front window at high velocity-- with a raging wolfman following right after them.
And he was NOT pulling his punches anymore. If he caught you, you were in for a world of hurt… and he always caught you. Run all day, and you only ended up tired when he caught you. The emergency rooms were seeing a regular flow of dealers, pimps and enforcers who were battered, bruised, bloody and broken. Nothing life-threatening, that was worth note… but those he put down weren't going to be rolling down the street carefree as a breeze anytime soon.
One fool pulled a pistol on him. The proctologist spent six hours on him before the police could learn what the caliber was.
Merchants found themselves dangled from rooftops by various portions of their anatomy, held face down in the nearest pond, fountain, gutter, or toilet, batted around back alleys like a cat playing with a rubber mouse. The Demon only said two things. It told them its name: Skinwalker.
And then it asked one question. It was whispered from the shadows into their ears, snarled over prone forms, said an inch from terrified eyes by a mouthful of teeth, screamed by a raging beast-man as it thrashed them up one alley and down another.
"WHERE. IS. SKIDMARK??"
Taylor doubled over as Sophia's fist buried in her stomach. For the briefest of eternities she thought she was going to puke. "Just a little reminder of your place, Hebert," Sophia whispered in her ear, before shoving her aside and leaving the bathroom. Madison and Emma followed right behind, not even sparing a look for their victim.
Taylor coughed and spit, then slowly straightened up. She fished her bookbag out of the corner it had been kicked. Then before she could stop herself she kicked the wall. She kicked it again, then again, over and over while a scream of frustration bubbled up in her belly and burst out her throat. Then just as suddenly she was calm again. She wiped the sweaty locks of her hair out of her face and calmly, calmly, always calmly, walked out into the school. Her foot hurt where she'd smacked it into the tile of the bathroom wall, but that only helped to distract her from the pain in her gut.
It was study hall. She quickly went and found a seat, once again in the corners far away from everyone else. She took out her notebook and noted down the time of the "incident," the location, the ones involved.
She bit her lip and looked down at her hands. Not much had changed after all, had it? Here she was, back to recording all the times Sophia or her hangers-on bullied her. While the teachers did nothing. And the whole school looked on.
Bullying. What a stupid, juvenile name for it, she thought in a heated moment of anger. Like she was just going through some wacky childhood antics with Spanky and Alfalfa and the gang, and she'd be fine as long as she and Buckwheat outran Butch on their way to school.
She glowered down into her book bag. Things had seemed like they were going better for a while. Just for a while…She glanced over at the empty seat where Adrian should have been. She thought she'd felt alone before.
"Hey, what's this?" A manicured hand shot down over her shoulder and dipped into her bag. Taylor whipped around; it was Emma, back for more. Her hand reappeared, with Taylor's new phone in it. "Ooh, nice," she said, mocking. Without so much as blinking she stuck it in her purse. "Thanks!" She gave Taylor a smug smile and continued on her way to the front of the class.
Oh no way. Taylor got to her feet, her anger sputtering like a fuse. The pain in the muscles of her stomach brought her up short before she did anything hasty. Her anger suddenly switched from sputtering to ice cold-- and calculating. "Ms. Knott!" She said in as loud and clear a voice as she could manage. "Ms. Knott, get Emma Barnes to give my phone back!"
Ms. Knott was Taylor's homeroom teacher and her computer class teacher. She was a somewhat strong-jawed and mannish looking woman, which made her the unfortunate butt of many students' cruel humor. But in spite of that she was also probably the fairest teacher in the school and one most sympathetic to Taylor's plight. Still, she found herself with her hands often tied. "Taylor, you're not supposed to have your phones out during..."
"I didn't, she just reached in my bag and took it," Taylor replied. "Make. Her. Give. It. Back."
Emma had apparently been taking acting lessons from Madison. She stood up and put the most outrageously offended look on her face, her mouth hanging wide open. "I did NOT! Where do you get off accusing me of stealing?" She pulled the phone out and held it up. "Look, there's no way Hebert could even AFFORD this phone--"
Taylor felt her anger go from a cold burn to outright frostbit. She spun on the nearest student: Greg Veder. The boy actually flinched back from her when she stuck out her hand. "What??" he asked.
"Phone," Taylor gritted. He hesitated. "PHONE!" He hastily handed her his cellphone. She held up the phone to her face and began jabbing numbers.
The phone in Emma's hand began to vibrate. She actually tried to bluff! "Oh sorry, forgot to turn off the ringer--" she said coolly. She began poking at the screen. Then poking at them more frantically. Everyone could see the light from the screen flickering on her face as she fiddled with a phone she was clearly not familiar with. Her eyes went wide for a moment at something, then without warning the smartphone began speaking with a melodious female voice.
"This phone is the property of Taylor Hebert," it said. "This phone is the property of Taylor Hebert."
It was subtle, it was understated, it was beautiful. The room exploded in laughter. The Bitch Queen had been HAD! Face red as a fire engine, Emma slammed the phone down on Ms. Knott's desk. "I gotta go to the ladies' room," she mumbled as she bolted for the door.
Taylor had to throttle the urge to do a victory dance down the aisle as she walked down to get her phone. When she got closer she could see Ms. Knott struggling not to laugh. "Interesting security feature," the teacher said.
"One of a few," Taylor said breezily, loud enough for the rest of the class to hear. Message given and received; swiping her phone for a "prank" wasn't a smart option. Taylor examined her phone; no cracks, thank goodness. That little screen was tough. She noticed then that she'd forgotten to lock it earlier. Suppressing a curse she used her thumbprint and passcode to close it down. Oh well, Emma probably hadn't seen anything important.
"Do you want me to try and inform the principal that--?" Mrs. Knott said. The look in her eye was sympathetic. Taylor sighed.
"Don't bother. She'll just dismiss it as a 'little prank' or something like that," Taylor said.
She'd probably be paying for it-- probably with another gut punch or push down the stairs-- before the day was out. Taylor decided to savor the victory while it lasted; Screw it, she was cutting classes and going home early.
It was the last day before the Holidays. Two whole weeks without the Trio. Two whole weeks without Winslow. Just two whole weeks before Adrian was back. She could hold out. She just had to hold out.
The end of the day saw Emma dragging Madison over to Sophia's locker and huddling up. "Oh, what already?" Sophia said a bit irritably. Things had been crazy at the PRT lately, thanks to that Skinwalker headcase. He'd been waging a one-man war on the Merchants and everyone else was catching the fallout… which meant more paperwork and more patrols and more crap to put up with from Piggy and Arsemaster. Seems nobody could make up their minds they were happy the dope dealing freaks were getting their butts kicked, or mad that it was happening without PRT permission, or that the guy wasn't doing it the "proper" PRT way (with a PRT lawyer's hand up his butt like a Muppet.) It was putting Sophia in a real mood.
Emma looked around. "We got a problem. Taylor's got a new phone."
Sophia gave her a look that said volumes about what she thought of Emma's intelligence. "So??"
Emma leaned in. "You don't understand. She's got a new cellphone… a high end one with a built in audio recorder and video camera."
Sophia managed to get the hint. So did Madison. Sophia's face filled with rage. "You mean she was recording us??" Sophia hissed. Madison squeaked in horror.
"I managed to get a look at it," Emma said. She refrained from saying how. "She had an absolutely huge folder of videos and sound files… another one full of old emails. Three guesses whose."
"What do we do?" Madison whispered frantically.
Sophia's face was growing more and more suffused with rage. She was seething, she was FUMING. That little Hebert turd tried to pull a fast one on HER? Thought she was so clever? Sophia would... she bit back her homicidal rage and thought. "Okay. We just grab the phone and we're golden."
"But she left an hour ago--"
Sophia swore. She thought it over frantically, then surprising the other two girls, she calmed down. She'd spent her entire Cape career.. and truthfully a lot of time before it... reading people's intentions, guessing (quite accurately) what some dweeb or scumbag was going to do when the pressure was on, guessing when some punk was gonna jump right instead of left... and truth be told, Sophia was good at it. Taylor Hebert was an easy read. "It's okay. We're still golden."
"But what if she shows someone--" Madison started.
"Look, she's got a great big file of 'evidence' on that phone, right?" Sophia said patiently. Madison and Emma nodded. "So why hasn't she turned it in yet? Because she's looking to get something really good, something that buttons it all up, and she ain't got it yet. And she's waited till the Holidays and done nothing..."
"You're right," Emma said. "She wouldn't want to spoil Christmas, after all."
"So she's waiting to do the Big Reveal when school starts up again," Sophia said. "Does she got a computer at home?"
Emma shook her head. "Nothing worthy of the name anyway," she said. "It's even older than the ones in the computer lab here, and those things sure aren't compatible with a smartphone." She tossed her hair disdainfully. "Her Dad's been a total technophobe ever since her Mom died."
Sophia smiled. "Good." That meant Taylor probably wasn't saving those images anywhere else... and once they had the phone, Sophia knew a few off-the-record Tinkers and hackers who could tell them when, where, and how many times Taylor had uploaded anything from it, and could erase the files off the 'cloud' or anywhere else they were. "We already got a little surprise planned for her. We just go through with it, grab the phone, lose it in the bottom of the harbor, and we're in the clear." And maybe set up a little midnight visit from Shadow Stalker to search Taylor's house, make sure she didn't have backups stashed anywhere...
The other two girls' panic slowly subsided, their smug confidence returned. "Yeah, it's only understandable if she loses such a tiny little thing..." Emma said.
"Cow better enjoy her time with Santa Claus," Sophia said, scowling. "Cause after we put her through her little lesson and get that phone, I'm gonna put her on speed dial to the Tooth Fairy." She slammed the door to her locker shut hard enough to make it rattle.
It was a good evening at the Palanquin. The floor downstairs was packed with holiday partiers, the bar was doing good business, the mood was festive all around. Even Faultline was feeling fairly merry, or jolly, or whatever the appropriate term was. They'd set up a quiet little private holiday party up here in the office for herself and the rest of her mercenary crew. Nothing much, just a little punch, a few snacks, a little holiday music, a few decorations… that was about what Labyrinth could handle without being overwhelmed. Really, Faultline didn't want to imagine what sort of alternate reality Labyrinth would start overlapping into the real world if the holiday cheer overexcited the semi-autistic cape. Probably something with a Christmas Special theme. Giant Christmas ornaments or something.
Newter was down on the main floor checking out things to make sure everything was still going smooth. You could look out the observation window and see the lanky orange amphibiod flitting about the floor, moving from group to group, his tail flicking back and forth, making sure everyone was happy and partying. Gregor the Snail's shell-studded bulk was ensconced in the sofa, sipping his punch and humming along with the carols on the record player. It was definitely odd seeing the festively colored punch sliding down his translucent throat… Spitfire (sans her ordinary gas-mask and overalls) was sitting beside Labyrinth… sulking. Faultline and the rest had broken her out of the juvenile detention center-- but the penalties they'd enacted for her breaking the team rules were making a serious grouch out of her. Well, as far as Faultline was concerned she could just sit and suffer. She knew the rules, and she could just take her punishment like a good girl and forfeit her share of next month's take.
Newter came gliding into the room in his loose-limbed gait and perched on the back of a chair, his tail curling around the legs. "Something's up, boss," he said to Faultline. "It might be trouble."
Faultline immediately set down her cup and faced the amphibianoid cape. "What sort?"
"Got some company. That new cape… the wolf-man. They call him 'Skinwalker'.'"
"Not precisely a fortuitous name if one is hoping for peaceful circumstances," Gregor said somberly. He knew a few of the Skinwalker legends; they weren't all pretty.
"He's not caused any trouble or anything… well, not deliberately; having a seven-plus foot tall werewolf on the dance floor is gonna stir things up a bit regardless, but he's minding his manners." Newter shrugged in a fluid rolling move. "It's obvious he's trying to get our-- or your-- attention." He got to his feet.
Faultline followed him to the DJ's booth. She went up to the glass window overlooking the main room below and looked where Newter pointed. She looked again for good measure. "Karaoke?" she said, disbelieving. She was correct; the worgen was on the karaoke machine, belting a tune out to the entertainment of the other partyers. "What is he doing?" Faultline said, mystified.
"Barry White," Newter said. His eyebrow ridges (he had no eyebrows, alas) climbed. "And killin' it, too." Curious, Faultline turned on the booth two way speakers. He was right; the big wolfman was crooning along to "My First My Last My Everything," his deep rich voice caressing the lyrics like velvet. He was hamming it up too, vamping to the ladies in the front row of the crowd, more than a few of whom were laughing and eating it up.
"Invite him on up," Faultline sighed, reaching for her welding mask. "Hell, if nothing else maybe we'll hire him as entertainment."
A few minutes had the werewolf cape sitting in Faultline's office, sipping punch from a cup and exchanging polite pleasantries with the gang. "No hard feelings, I hope," he said to Spitfire. Spitfire just glowered at him through her mask with her arms crossed. It rolled off him like water off a duck's back. He looked at Faultline, who had donned her own mask as well. "I was under the impression she was still incarcerated?"
Faultline had to admit she understood why the ladies at the club had actually made friendly with the wolf-man. He had a voice that would send tingles down a woman's spine. "Yes, imagine that, a team of superhuman mercenaries illicitly liberating one of their members from imprisonment." She quipped. "How outrageous."
"I assume you're taking her to task?" he asked. "Judging from her rather hostile pose, I mean."
"Yes, you need not fear a repeat performance," she said. "We do not take contracts inside the city."
"Unless the job is right and the money is really good, of course," Skinwalker quipped, raising his cup to her in salute.
"It's usually considered poor form to insult a host," Gregor remarked idly.
"She's a mercenary. Her first ethic is business. It would be insulting to assume she would let one ethic get in the way of the other," Skinwalker retorted. He tossed the last of his punch into the back of his mouth and threw the cup in the trash. "I'll go ahead and assume you brought me up here to find out why I was here in your club doing bad karaoke."
"You wanted to ask for something."
He smiled. She was surprised; she didn't think dogs could do that. "Information."
"Not our usual forte, but..." she shrugged. "On what? Or whom?"
"Skidmark," he said. "He and his merry band of Outbreak monkeys are proving surprisingly difficult to track down, all things considered."
"All things considered?" Newter said.
"Like the fact that Skidmark has so many chemicals in his bloodstream that he should have died by spontaneous combustion," Skinwalker said drily.
"And why do you think we have information on Skidmark?" Faultline asked.
The wolfman counted off on his fingers. "One, you're a mercenary. The saying 'be polite, courteous, professional, and have a plan to kill everyone in the room' apples to you like any soldier. So keeping track of threats, even wastoids like the Merchants, should be second nature to you.
"Two, you're an outlaw operating in Brockton Bay. It's an open secret that you parlay with one another when things get hairy-- a little something from the days when a supervillain named the Marquis ran this town.
"Three… well, Newter here."
"What about me?" Newter asked suspiciously.
Skinwalker gave him a doggy grin, tongue lolling. "First off you're a party animal. A… lounge lizard, you might say?"
"Ar har, de har har." the vaguely amphibian/reptilian cape was clearly amused though.
"And even if you don't do the 'party' scene, a lot of the girls who hang all over you do, and they might have let something slip about where the number one dealer in the city keeps all his party supplies. Plus you secrete high quality hallucinogens from your skin. When Skidmark heard about you he probably spronged wood so hard he knocked all the coke lines off his coffee table." At this one more than one of the Crew snorted and clapped his hand over their mouth. "He's probably tried at least a few times to recruit you away from Faultline."
"Yeah, he has tried once or twice," Newter admitted to Faultline's surprise. Newter's lip curled. "I told him I had higher aspirations than to end up in one of his drug labs on the ingredient list."
"So yes, we do have some information, and what we don't have we can probably get," Faultline interjected. "The next question is, what do you have to pay for it?"
Skinwalker grimaced and sat back. "That's the thing of it," he said. "I do have the means to pay for it, but..." he looked at her, his palms held up helplessly. His expression was entirely earnest. "Okay, I have SOME money, but probably not enough to even scratch your price list. I can make you all some custom gear… but that will take time. Months even. Assuming I can design something genuinely useful for your, ah, line of work..."
"You're a tinker?"
"Of a sort," he confessed. "But-- my abilities can have very odd limitations. You'd have to ask the local Protectorate and the Wards for references on quality...." he shrugged.
"My third option… and this one I know your Case 53 members would willingly trade for-- information." The mood in the room shifted as Gregor and Newter suddenly became a lot more attentive.
"You mean about--" Newter pulled down the collar of his tank top and tapped one long skinny finger on the "c" shaped tattoo over his heart.
Skinwalker's grimace grew deeper with anxiety, guilt, uncertainty. "Yes. But here's the catch. I don't know how much I can tell you without getting all of you killed. Or worse."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. "Or worse?" Faultline repeated.
"Or Worse," Skinwalker confirmed. "Your mystery, your secret is tied into pretty much every conspiracy on the planet. Conspiracy on top of conspiracy inside ANOTHER conspiracy… and there's no telling what part of the Jenga tower can be pulled out without causing the whole thing to topple. And if the sweater unraveled far enough, it could mean-- and I am not exaggerating here-- it could mean the very literal end of the world. SO I just DON'T KNOW..." He ran his clawed hands down his face. For the first time Faultline noticed how haggard he looked, and the bags under his eyes. She also caught a whiff hinting at how long it had last been since he had bathed (she could be forgiven for not noticing; when one lived in a house with Case53s, unusual smells were part of the daily routine.)
"One second," he said wearily. He cupped his hands under his face. His hands glowed emerald green, the light flowing up over him. When it faded, he looked if not less haggard, than at least more alert. He waved his hands over himself and another splash of light flowed over him. "a rejuvenation and a decontaminate," he said. "Not exactly a nap and a shower but it'll do for now."
Faultline found herself wondering how many times he'd done that particular trick over the past few days.
He got serious. "Okay. I'm going to give you the information. I needed to anyways eventually.. long story. But get one thing straight. We might very well be attacked."
"Once word gets out?" Gregor said.
"Once I finish my first sentence," he answered. The conviction in his voice was chilling. "These people have Thinkers and Precogs under their control that make every other one you can name look laughable. They have Movers-- teleporters-- with global range and pinpoint accuracy. They have governments all over the world on a leash. And they conduct surveillance worldwide, twenty four seven, and have no limits beyond their own nearly nonexistent ethics. So yes, they are that powerful and that dangerous and that determined to keep all their little secrets.
"Due to some really odd factors about my origins, I fall into a sort of blind spot where their powers don't see and where their most potent tricks don't work. But I don't know how wide the effect is, or whether it is… contagious… or not. So this conversation could get very exciting in the next few minutes." He got to his feet and pulled a staff out of seemingly nowhere, holding it at the ready.
The others took their cue from him. Faultline undid the catch on the holster of her gun. Gregor, Newter and Spitfire got to their feet, moving into different parts of the room. Gregor murmured a few words to Labyrinth. She got to her own feet, moving behind him and suddenly looking very timid, but any of them could feel her flexing her strange terrain-altering powers in the immediate environment.
"Gregor, Newter," Skinwalker began, "You were experiments. You were abducted from your own homes and your own worlds--"
"Our own Worlds?" Newter gulped.
"-- By a paradimensional organization of capes. They have developed ways to give people Powers artificially, and have been among other things selling "powers in a bottle" to people with a big enough bankroll. Sometimes they trade favors-- one miracle in a bottle, for an unspecified 'favor' owed them in the future. You both were test subjects. Two of literal thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. They've killed countless people with their experiments and are responsible, indirectly, for millions more."
The others in the room felt the blood drain from their faces as the wolf-man talked. Nobody had the temerity to doubt him. It was in the utter conviction in his voice, in his stance, in the way he held his weapon at the ready and the way his eyes never stopped scanning the room.
"They created Coil. They created at least three of the current roster of Brockton Bay heroes. They created at least two of the Slaughterhouse Nine… and have conspired-- stolen, blackmailed, assassinated--- to keep them alive and kicking, solely because they think their powers might be useful in the future."
"And their ultimate objective is to--"
There was a faint sound, an almost imperceptible change in the air pressure. A rectangle of light formed in the middle of the room, and a tall, pale woman with black hair in a ponytail and wearing a black suit and fedora stepped through. Everyone braced themselves and lunged.
The woman never broke stride. In three long steps she crossed the room and high-kicked the pistol out of Faultline's hand, sending it tumbling over her head and behind her. The fedora-clad woman seemed to slide past her, giving her a knife-strike in the neck and the precise point that Faultline's welding mask left it exposed and dropping her to the floor.
The woman caught the gun, turned on one heel and fired across the room, clearly aiming for Gregor's head… only to instead strike Newter in the shoulder as he leapt into her line of fire. Her eyes widened in surprise, but still she managed to sidestep the tumbling Case53's body and fling the gun overhand so it struck Gregor between the eyes, stunning him just as he was preparing to spray one of his chemicals at her. Spitfire, unable to use her power without immolating everything in the room, was left to hopping back and forth and trying to get out of everyone's way and constantly getting in it.
She pressed the attack, vaulting over Faultline's desk and snatching a wicked-looking ornamental envelope opener out of its holder and springing directly for Labyrinth. The astonishment on her face was epic when a powerful clawed hand grabbed her by the calf and brought her down out of the air, slamming her into the floor.
The moment the doorway had appeared, Skinwalker had been on the move too. He'd leapt forward, pulling a kibbled metallic disk the size of a hubcap out from under his robes and flung it through the portal. It could be seen striking the floor on the other side and rapidly unfolding into a shower-stall sized something before the doorway hastily closed.
He'd then twisted about and managed to intercept the attacking fedora wearing woman before she could try to kill the child… before she could kill another child. He slammed her full length into the floor. Snarling silently she'd flipped over and kipped up to her feet, facing him. Her eyes went wide when she she focused on him, as if she'd never seen him before--
She lashed out at him with a kick. It caught his staff and popped it out of his one-handed grip, flipping it to the floor. Her second strike he caught her leg under his elbow. She jabbed at his throat with both thumbs, looking to fracture his windpipe. He caught both her arms in his hands before she even got close. He began slapping her face with her own hands. "Stop hitting yourself, Contessa, stop hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself Contessa--" he said in a high nasally voice.
He lost his elbow-grip on her leg. She dropped it to the floor, threw herself backwards as far as Skinwalker's grip on her arms would let her and kicked him square in the chin. His head snapped up and with a yelp of pain he lost his hold on her. She lunged away from him, panic clear on her face. She kicked off the wall and came back the other way, trying to get to the open floor in the middle of the room.
"DOORWA--"
Before she could finish the word Skinwalker's clawed hand caught her by the back of the head. With a swooping arc he brought her around and slammed her face down into the sheet cake sitting on the snack table.
SPLARCH.
He snatched up his staff in his other hand, shillelagh style, and brought the knobbed end around, cracking it across the back of her head. She slumped into the cake, unconscious. They all stood frozen for a moment, clutching at their various injuries and panting for breath, staring wide-eyed at the wolfman and his captive. "Say hello," Skinwalker said, his ribs working like bellows, "To Contessa: agent, key strategist, enforcer and assassin for Cauldron. But I'm sure some of you have met her before." He grabbed her by the skull and smeared her face in the cake "Isn't that RIGHT, Contessa? Isn't that riiiight?"
"Man," Spitfire said. "This is personal between you two, isn't it."
Skinwalker let go of Contessa's head. "No," he growled. "I just frickin' hate God Mode Mary Sues."
When Contessa awoke again, she was sitting in the middle of the meeting room, tied hand and foot to a sturdy metal chair and her hat stuffed in her mouth. Faultline and her crew, all bandaged up, were sitting around her in a semicircle, weapons loose in their hands and their eyes fixed on her. Sitting at one end of the group was the single most terrifying thing she'd ever seen in her life…. Because she hadn't known he was there. She jerked wildly in her bonds, eyes round.
He was sitting there in a backwards chair, arms folded over the back and his chin resting on them as he watched her. "There, you see? It isn't just like she didn't know about me ahead of time. It's like the moment she took her eyes off me, she forgot I even existed. " The wolf man stroked his chin. "How very Eleventh Doctor Who." He grinned at her. "It's probably because she depends so much on her Power. Still, I'm betting she's not the only one in their merry little conspiracy that has this problem with me."
"What is her power?" Faultline said.
"They call it 'Path to Victory,'" he said. "She simply chooses a goal, and her power gives her step-by-step actions to complete, like a recipe on a box of cake mix… "walk through this door, turn right, go fifteen steps north and press the red button three times." That sort of thing. She doesn't even have to understand them, just follow them. And ding, instant Victory."
"That's such utter bullshit!" Newter exploded."It's haxx, OP, Mary Sue-- I don't have words for how B.S. that is!"
Adrian nodded. "Bullshit or not, it's the truth. Her Shard basically... creates a perfect simulation of the world and extrapolates out for her. Lets her predict any possible movement, like that computer Deep Blue predicting every possible move in a chess game."
"But the universe isn't a chess game." Everyone turned in surprise. Labyrinth had spoken. The waiflike blonde's soft voice carried in the silence. "Chaos theory. The Heisenberg Principle. Schroedinger's cat. After a certain point the universe is fundamentally unpredictable, no matter how much data you gather. You can't make a perfect plan for everything, or anything, because simple chance will mess it up."
"And the bigger the plan, the bigger the mess up," Skinwalker agreed. One advantage Azeroth science had over Earth Bet science was that it had early on acknowledged the existence of the Chaos Effect. It was rather hard not to when you had the capacity to store the stuff in jars and bottles like marmalade. "Her margin of error has to be flippin' astronomical to work around all those butterfly wings... probably helps that she only knows the end goal of any Path-- but not all the unintended consequences."
"And her power comes with other tiny little drawbacks her masters have sort of willfully overlooked. For one thing, all her 'Paths to Victory' they slavishly follow are built on information provided by the enemy. An enemy whose goal, programmed into every Shard, is to amplify conflict. I think the problem with that is self evident.
"The cherry on top of the sundae is that she's had this power since she was something like five years old, and she uses it constantly, just to get through the day. So her actual intellect is little more than a child's. She doesn't have to KNOW anything, just obey the instructions in her head, so she's never actually LEARNED anything in all this time. She doesn't even have to speak English-- just make the noises her Shard tells her will get the results she wants." He shuffled in his chair a little. "Which makes me a problem for her. Her Power… because I'm the ultimate 'outside context' problem… can't really detect me, like the blind spot in your eye. Since it can't really grok me, it ignores me-- And makes her forget me too, like an inconvenient truth. And her real mind, her real, five-year-old mind, isn't up to handling things like me. Her Path to Victory-- the really BIG one, that Cauldron is following so fanatically-- is as blind as the rest of us."
"Which brings us to the problem. You see, Cauldron has been operating on a Great Master Plan-- her plan--" he pointed at Contessa-- "since it was founded. And it's grown so complicated and so big it's literally engulfed the world."
"Aaaand that plan?" Newter said, nursing his bandaged shoulder. Regrettably, Skinwalker was out of his magic band-aids.
Skinwalker's face grew grim. "To save humanity by killing Scion."
The exclamations of surprise, shock and dismay were nearly universal. "That's crazy!" Spitfire spluttered. "He's… he's SCION! He's the world's greatest hero--"
"He's an alien creature, who intends to devour our world as part of his species' reproductive cycle," Skinwalker interrupted. You could have heard a pin drop.
"That thing you see flying around out there? That's just his… well, his avatar. Or maybe more like just his fingertip, sticking in from the parallel dimension his actual, gigantic, planet-sized Space Whale body is hiding. He's got less in common with humanity biologically than we do with a microbe. And he and his mate, or what's left of her, are the source of nearly all the superhuman powers on earth. "
He gave them a moment for that awful revelation to sink in. The silence was ominous. "Could you possibly start over from the Giant Space Whales, I think?" Gregor said, shifting the ice bag on his head.
Skinwalker nodded. "Super advanced alien race. Gigantic, multi-dimensional things-- picture a multidimensional fractal the size of a planet. They spin off through space as duets; one of them is the Thinker, the other is the Warrior. When they find an inhabited planet they sort of… wrap themselves around it, invisible and intangible.
"Then they start dropping Shards. Little fractal bits of themselves--- bits that are also their technology in some incomprehensible fashion-- that attach themselves to what the Shard considers a compatible host. The Shard gives them powers to use. Pushes the host to use them, use them as much as possible. The Shard collects all the data it can, then when the host dies, they return to the Space Whales with it, who download and save all that it has learned.
"When the Space Whales decide they've gotten all the information they possibly can, they destroy that world, and all the parallels of that world connected to it, blow it up... take all the shards back and fly off into space, with a full tank of energy from the explosion to find a new world to harvest. Maybe shoot off an offspring or two, if they've gathered enough energy and grown enough new Shards to start Baby off with..."
"That's… horrible," Newter said weakly.
"What do they need all this data for?" Faultline asked suddenly. "I could see needing energy to reproduce, but..."
"They're… well, they're trying to cheat death," Skinwalker said. "They figured out long ago that someday, billions of years from now, the material universe will finally burn out like a candle. Seeing as they're effectively immortal, they'd rather it not happen. They're trying to find a way to beat Entropy."
"By covering world after world with super powered beings, then killing them all?" Spitfire said skeptically.
"Well, you see, like I said they're super-advanced," Skinwalker said. "But they have absolutely no innovation, no creativity, no imagination… they've sort of like Contessa here." He pointed at the bound and gagged operative. "They've been letting their Shards do all the work for them for so long they don't know how do anything for themselves anymore, even think. Despite their arrogance regarding any mere three dimensional creature as nothing but a lab rat, they depend on us to use their powers to innovate-- to be creative, generate new ideas, come up with new ways to do things.
"Unfortunately for us Scion is the Fighter, not the Thinker. The best idea Scion had to encourage us lab rats to use our Shards as much as possible was to push us into conflict wherever possible. Maybe you've noticed how much more aggressive capes are than normal? It's also why the Shards only bond to people who've had a Trigger event. Traumatized people given immense power and encouraged to lash out at the world..." he shrugged. "Like tossing two bugs in a jar and shaking it to see them fight."
"But you said his mate is dead!" Spitfire protested, "Why is he still..."
"Going through the motions?" Skinwalker said. "Acting like she's still there? Shuffling along from day to day on autopilot, doing what he feels obligated to do but with no enthusiasm, no joy?" He looked at her and gave her a humorless little smile. "Gee, it's almost like he's a widower or something." His smile disappeared. "At the height of his depression, he spoke to one human. One. Some suicidally depressed drunk… who told him to do something with himself. Save lives. Help people. Make a meaning for himself if he couldn't find one." He paused. "Thank God for that man, wherever he is. How easily he could have just said 'end it all, get it over with'..."
"So Scion's been trying it. Half-assed, of course. We mean about as much to him personally as a population of mice living in his basement. It's nothing more than a hobby to distract himself." He turned grim. "Sooner or later he's going to fold it all in, sweep the pieces off the table, flip the table and leave. It's only a question of how long before his boredom and despair get to him."
Newter got up with a stunned look on his long face and walked out of the room. He returned with an open bottle of liquor. He sat down and pulled at it hard before passing it to Gregor the Snail. It made its way to Spitfire then to Faultline quickly enough. "So we have to let her go," Faultline said, pointing the neck of the bottle at Contessa, her voice rough from the Grey Goose she'd poured down her throat. "She… and Cauldron are the world's only hope."
"And why do you think that?" Skinwalker snorted.
Faultline did a double take. "You just said… Plan of Victory, or whatever..."
"And what makes you think they got that right?" Skinwalker said. He got to his feet and paced a bit, rubbing his face. The need for a refresh from his powers was coming more and more often. "Look, don't you realize what their genius master plan IS? Scion is basically a thousand times more powerful than any cape. He has ALL the powers… all the ones we have and more. The only reason he hasn't destroyed the Endbringers is because he made them and released them, all to generate more conflict. He's effectively indestructible by conventional means. Even if you managed to destroy his "body," it's just a fingertip-- a blister sticking into this universe that he can regenerate at will. So Cauldron's planning to find some way to destroy him. Great, terrific, marvelous.
"Except Cauldron is basically led by two people: Contessa here--" he waved his hand-- "and by a woman who calls herself Doctor Mother. Eden, the other alien, was injured by a chance encounter in space with another of their kind some time before the Space Whale couple reached our world, and when she went to land her physical self on her parallel dimension she lost control and crashed. On Contessa and Doctor Mother's version of Earth. Polluting the soil, the water... and anyone contaminated with Eden's tissues gained a Shard, and gained powers. So the next thing you know there's monsters, madmen, superpowered warlords, you get the picture.
"By pure luck Contessa got the Path to Victory. But because of a little safety feature the Space Whales put into it, she couldn't act against even the mortally wounded Eden herself, not directly. So she found Doctor Mother, gave her a knife, and told her just where to cut the giant alien Space Whale's brain. They lobotomized it, and have been using its flesh to dose people to give them powers ever since."
"Ugh." Was Spitfire's verdict before she took another swig of Grey Goose.
"But Contessa was five years old when she gained the Path to Victory. And Doctor Mother is neither a doctor nor a mother…. they're just titles to impress people. And according to my sources the world they lived on was stuck somewhere developmentally in the Bronze Age!
"So they asked the Shard a super-simplistic question, the kind a couple of bronze-age peasant women would ask: How do I kill Scion? the plan that Contessa's Shard came up with was the exact sort of thing you'd expect a Bronze Age peasant woman to understand and accept-- to make a giant army of superhumans to punch Scion really really hard until he was defeated. " Skinwalker snorted. "That's their master plan. A plan perfectly in the vein of every bronze age heroic saga... To arm as many Greeks as they could with bronze swords, and send them storming up the slopes of Olympus to kill the gods. A plan that bloody common sense tells you couldn't work and WON'T work. Their plan is the equivalent of trying to drown an ocean."
"That white shiny laboratory looking place you saw through the portal? Stage props, so they look more advanced and enlightened than they are. Their futuristic tech is almost entirely their experiments using Shard powers to put on a light show. Their 'scientific research' consists of chopping off bits of lobotomized alien, whipping it up in a juicer, and going 'let's see what this does to the hobo we kidnapped when he drinks it.'
"But the Path to Victory thing would still work?"
"If you call a miniscule fraction of humanity across countless worlds managing to cling to life on cratered, burning worlds a victory, you're welcome to it. Remember how Ragnarok ends, with only two human beings in the entire world and a tree? Sort of like that but without the optimism. And that's IF Cauldron wins.
"That's the thing. Contessa and her boss are from a culture that hadn't yet discovered chaos theory, or probability, or any of the other things we take for granted. They were still in an era where our scientists were a couple hundred years back, thinking that if they just gathered enough data they could perfectly predict and plan anything. Stuff our most advanced outer-edge physicists and mathematicians are coming back and confirming, like Labyrinth said, is functionally impossible." He huffed in amusement. "Stuff more spiritually minded people have been saying for thousands of years. 'Man Plans, God Laughs,' remember?"
"Well the Space Whales… and their Shards… are the same way. The Space Whales are completely materialistic and deterministic. My guess is that they reached their current level BEFORE their scholars or their equivalents figured out things like Quantum theory or Chaos effects. What's more they've so completely abandoned the idea of anything philosophical, or spiritual, or beyond the physical that they can't even contemplate it as a concept. And whatever happened with their great transcendence, somehow they are still stuck believing they can predict and plan anything with sufficient raw data. Even though they're so uncreative they have to rely on us lowly lower life forms to even invent new ideas for them."
"In case you missed the last hour, this all-knowing, all-seeing, all-planning Path to Victory Shard misses things. If it can't even see me, how much else is it missing?"
"But at the same time, that's our hope, that's our salvation. Scion is NOT omnipotent and he's NOT omniscient. If his Shards can miss things, HE can miss things. That means he has blind spots, weak spots, vulnerabilities. And that means that all-knowing, all-seeing Cauldron and their Path to Victory have missed things too… like ways to win against Scion that don't involve leaving entire worlds in ruin.
"Faith and Hope… two things Cauldron, and the Shards, and Scion are too primitive and limited to even know exist."
"Whoa. That was DEEP." Gregor blinked at Skinwalker, then blinked at Newter who was leaning against him. "My friend, I think you got some of your sweat on me..."
"Oops. Sorry, man. It'll wear off in a minute."
"Well that's a great half-time speech, Coach," Faultline said. "But what's our next move?" She waved at the red-faced Contessa. "What do we do with her?"
"Well, considering Cauldron is a bunch of lunatics who don't think assassination is a big deal, and I don't wanna wake up dead," Newter said, "we should probably hold her as a hostage against this Doctor Mother's good behavior--"
A doorway opened up directly beneath Contessa. She plummeted through, chair and all. The portal vanished. "--- or we could just stand here and watch that happen," Newter concluded. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the floor where the door had been. "NEXT TIME TRY PLAYING WITHOUT CHEAT CODES, YOU SKANK!"
Faultline got to her feet and unholstered her gun again. "Are we about to get attacked again?"
"Probably not, for two reasons," Skinwalker said. "My 'blind spot' effect is apparently pretty comprehensive. Remember how she missed when she tried to shoot Gregor? I wasn't even in her line of sight. My just being in proximity apparently garbles her Shard's abilities to read the environment. It'll probably linger a while over you all and this general area, domino effect and all, but-- ah. Just a minute."
Due to all the excitement, the walls immediately around Labyrinth had started shifting into her alternate dimensions, or perhaps vice versa. The wall immediately behind her had begun looking like an Escheresque window out onto a plane full of floating rainbow colored spheres and white polygons. Skinwalker climbed up on the couch beside her and reached through, grasping at the nearest spheres. "Yellow? No, blue. Oooh, that one will do, a nice rainbow one..." he grabbed a wibbling globe about the size of his palm and carefully pulled it back. It passed from the phantasm-world into the real world with a pop. "Okay, let's see what we got." He pulled an engraved copper rod out of his belt pouch and began poking at the sphere in his hand, squinting in concentration. There was a sound something like
Splatinkle!
And the sphere popped, leaving behind a tiny glowing purple shard. "Oh perfect! Anyone have a jar or bottle-- ah perfect," he said, accepting what they handed him. He popped the shard into the Grey Goose bottle and set it on the table, sealing the neck with a dollop of wax. The shard floated in the middle of the bottle, glowing and humming faintly and looking vaguely surreal. And Faultline wasn't sure it wasn't the Grey Goose talking but the crystal wasn't rotating, it was changing shape … "And what is THAT?" she said.
"A shard of Chaos," Skinwalker said.
"And you pulled that out of one of Labyrinth's… realms?" Faultline was starting to feel seriously dizzy contemplating all this.
"In the intersection between one reality and the next. That's where you can find it normally, if you know what to look for. Lucky I caught a glimpse of it." He examined the shard. "Not very much, but probably more than enough to give Cauldron's capes a blinding headache if they so much as look in this room's general direction. And if they try to open a doorway here, well, good luck. Here, let's boost it a little..." He withdrew a coil of thick copper wire from his bag and chunk of quartz, wound the wire around the bottle in opposite directions and made a spark gap at the top. Then he wedged the quartz in the gap. It immediately began to chime faintly, like a finger run around the rim of a wine glass. "That'll do it," he said. "That'll expand the zone to about the size of this building." He set it on Faultline's desk.
"I think I have a new favorite desk ornament," she murmured. "How many of these can you make? Because if we're going to fight Cauldron, we're going to need to cut off their access in more than one place."
Skinwalker thought of the shelves of jars full of dusts and shards and essences back in the Lost Workshop. He thought of the dozens of little shiny, glowy, glass and copper whirligigs, tiny versions of this oversized one, he'd sold and even given away to people great and small all over Brockton Bay. And he smirked. Smugly.
"No need to worry about that right away," he said. "And I think Cauldron is going to be too busy cleaning up a mess to bother anyone for a while. Did you happen to see that thing I tossed through the portal?"
"I did note that, yes," Gregor said. "A bomb of some sort?"
"Not exactly. Half of a goblin teleportation device that leads to where I STORE my bombs…. And a few other things."
Gregor gave him a stunned look, then slowly nodded. "That should keep them preoccupied," he said. Then he paused. Goblin?
"You don't know the half of it." He looked at Faultline. "So you all know the terrible truth of your secret pasts. What do you intend to do now?"
Faultline sighed, shoulders slumped. "I'm thinking we're going to take that magic see-me-not bottle, go find some place to hunker down about two or three thousand miles from here, and wait out whatever comes next. We're mercenaries. This… this is all beyond our pay grade."
"Fraid I gotta agree," Newter said. Murmurs of assent and nods of agreement went around the room. Skinwalker sighed. That was a handful more pieces, taken right off the board entirely. Whether it was to the good or the bad, he wasn't sure.
"Are you going after Cauldron yourself?"
Skinwalker shook his head. "Cauldron is too big a target still," he said. "Too widespread, stuck in too many things. Jenga tower, remember?
"Right now I've got one block I want to remove. The Merchants. So long as they're in play, they're a resource for bigger, nastier types to exploit. That festering sore Skidmark has been poisoning this city for too long. He goes down."
Faultline nodded. "Good luck with that."
Newter looked over at Faultline for approval; she nodded. Newter grunted, then turned to Skinwalker. "Can't say you didn't give what you promised." He looked over at the chaos bottle and his brow ridges climbed. "Gave us way more than we could chew, for that matter. So I'll tell you what we know about Skidmark.
"The Merchants don't have a single lair. They move around all the time, from abandoned building to abandoned building, going wherever Skidmark's paranoia leads them. He's sure to have heard you're looking for him so he's probably moving his location every night.
"Now what he does have is recruitment parties. You were right about him trying to get me to sign on; that wanker makes a pitch every time he sees me, and he always invites me out to these "Big epic parties" of his. They invite every bum, bozo and freak in the burg, throw some food and drugs at them, give a recruiting pitch… and run cage fights."
"Cage fights?" Skinwalker asked. Deja vu.
Newter nodded. "Between lowballer gang members who want to climb up in the ranks. He's playing the off chance that someone put through the steel cage will Trigger. New cape, new lieutenant."
"But the odds for that are so small they… yeah. And it's Skidmark coming up with this plan. Never mind."
"Heh. Anyway, he makes sure word gets to me whenever he's going to have one of these crackhead blowouts. His next one's gonna be-- God's honest truth-- Christmas Eve, at the old Twin Pines Shopping Mall near the docks. Mandatory attendance. Every ranking member of the Merchants, which means anyone sober enough to shoot straight, is gonna be there. Mush, Trainwreck, Squealer, they'll all be there too."
Skinwalker nodded. "Perfect."
Faultline stared at him. "And what do you plan on doing, all by yourself, against four Capes and about a thousand armed goons?"
Skinwalker looked at her. "I'm going to END them."
Doctor Mother cowered behind her desk, staring in shell shock at the corpse sprawled across it. The Number Man was dead. Stone cold dead. He was lying there, on his back, staring at the ceiling with a crude circular saw buried in his skull, right between the eyes.
Kurt Wynn was… had been… a banker and investor with a Shard-given power to understand everything perfectly as mathematical formulas. His supernatural ability not only gave him, gave Cauldron, the power to manipulate world economies, driving entire nations under their hidden goad and whip, but gave him preternatural abilities that rivaled Contessa's. He could dodge bullets. Scale walls like a spider by calculating likely finger and toeholds, collapse buildings with a few strategically placed blows, ricochet projectiles so they struck targets of his choice. He was also a criminal and a complete sociopath who destroyed lives through economic chicanery and who killed without a single moral qualm, but that only made him more useful, dammit!
And here he'd been struck down by the blade of a table saw. And he never saw it coming. It beggared belief.
Ten minutes ago, things had been normal. Contessa had stepped through one of Doormaker's portals to deal with some information leaks. Then something had flown back through the portal before Doormaker could close it. It had landed in the lobby, and as a befuddled Doctor Mother had watched, unfolded into something that looked like a cross between a shower stall and a tanning booth. It had sparked, buzzed, formed a vortex of energy of some sort inside itself… and begun vomiting mechanical, exploding chaos into Cauldron HQ.
One of the byproducts of the crafting skill of Engineering, whether gnomish or goblin, was explosives. A lot of explosives. A ridiculous excess thereof, in fact. And they were terrifyingly easy to make, even from base materials. Skinwalker had rapidly accumulated a considerable stockpile of the things, to the point that safety (or the lack thereof) was worrying him. But he'd known since day one he was going to be dealing with a number of incredibly nasty and well equipped organizations such as Cauldron, and had allowed the surplus to build up as a necessary evil.
Other things had started to pile up in bulk as well. Rudimentary Bots, firework rockets, landsharks, mecha suit test models, traps, launchers, quite a number of defective mechanical pets, remote controlled Tonks… so he'd devised this plan as a first-wave attack against a target of opportunity. He'd built a collapsible Goblin teleporter, kept one half in his workshop store room, the other half in his haversack, and waited.
The moment the teleport pad activated, the tinkerbots followed their rather simple programming:
1. Take full load of explosives.
2. Enter active teleporter.
3. Wreck the Bejeezus out of everything on the other side.
When a six foot high pile of round mortar style cartoon bombs had appeared in the lobby, it had been alarming. When they had rolled to a halt, sprouted arms and legs and started charging their chosen targets (machinery, doors, people) screaming "BANZAI!" it had gone up the ladder from alarming to panic inducing. Explosions had rocked the lobby, then the hallways beyond it as supposedly sturdy doors were blasted off their hinges by kamikaze robots. A second wave had followed, then a third, little bitty robots with big round bombs balanced on their heads pouring through holes burst in the doors and walls and racing up the hallways.
There was plentiful security in Cauldron HQ… in the test subject quarters and on the perimeter. Here in the depths of their offices, it had seemed both excessive and potentially counterproductive to add blast doors and mounted weapons. That decision would be reviewed most thoroughly in the days to come as the ridiculous invasion blasted doors, walls, furniture and other obstacles to oblivion.
In her delirium, she'd had the ridiculous thought that at least they weren't yelling Allahu Akbar, that would have been just a bit too much…
When the bomber-bots had stopped coming, they had been followed by what could only be called toys. Crude looking miniature tanks that trundled on little treads and fired a steady stream of skyrockets in every direction, sending whistling streaks of fire and explosions of sparks everywhere. Flying machines like miniature zeppelins and autogyros--- that it turned out were loaded with what looked like dynamite, and were just as suicidal as the first wave. metal shark fins with rocket engines that raced off and exploded. Mechanical spiders and scorpions that stung and bit… and then exploded. Clockwork chickens that exploded. Clockwork sheep that exploded. What was it with this lunatic and exploding clockwork things??
The worst had been the two waist high miniature mechas. Grinning metal gargoyle heads with legs and arms that chugged and spat sparks and smoke and had buzz saw blades where their hands should have been. Several of the more aggressive guards, or perhaps the slower ones, had lost hands and fingers to those horrors. One of them had cornered her and the Number Man in her office. The Number Man had thrown a pen that (naturally) struck it in just the right place to disable it. Unfortunately it reacted to being disabled by self destructing. The explosion had sent parts and shrapnel in every direction, including one sawblade-hand that had struck the Number Man right between the eyes and delivered his final sum of Karma.
Then there had been a titanic, earth shattering kaboom.
Doctor Mother looked around. She took stock: She saw burn marks. She saw holes in the walls, floors, ceiling. She saw trashed office equipment. It was relative quiet at the moment in this part of the complex. She could still hear the occasional whistle of a firework in the distance. The Custodian was not responding: the explosions and fire must have temporarily disrupted her invisible, ghostly "bodies."
The intercom on her desk beeped.
She regarded it for a second in disbelief. By luck, she pressed the correct button to activate the damnable thing. "This is Doctor Mother."
A voice came through, staticky and tinny. "Uh,yeah, this is Jones. From Security. Are you all right Ma'am?"
She sighed. "Yes." She looked around. "For a given value of 'fine,'" she added. "The Number Man is dead, however. The Custodian is not responding either. Can you give me a status report on everyone else?"
Jones took a moment. "Uhh, okay, yeah. The, ah, Slug appears to have been injured, several second and third degree burns. And ah, a concussion, the medics say. He's not going to be doing any mind-erasing or brainwashing type.. stuff, for at least a month or two, they're telling me. Until his skull fracture heals. The Doormaker is suffering a nosebleed. He tried to look back in on, ah, his last portal location and he can't find it for some reason. If tries his nosebleed starts up again. The, uh, Clairvoyant guy, boy howdy, he's sort of having the same problem it seems…alla sudden he can't even focus in on half of Brockton Bay, by golly. Like it's all fulla holes or sump'n."
Doctor Mother was stunned. What in the Devil could make all of Brockton Bay turn partially invisible to the Clairvoyant? Or any part of it inaccessible to the Doormaker? "What of Contessa? Can they get a fix on her?" she demanded.
"Ohh, she's okay. She's in the lobby." Pause. "What used to be the lobby."
"Used… to be."
"Yyyeah. You remember that one last really BIG explosion?"
"Now that you mention it, it does stir my memory," she said. Her voice could have chilled dry ice.
Jones continued, oblivious. "WELL. We sent some tech guys to secure that Teleporter pad thingy? Before it teleportered anything else? And, um, it looks like it self-destructed. Aaaaand we don't have a lobby there no more."
Doctor Mother groaned.
"We do got the beginnings of a nice little open air atrium, though."
Doctor Mother ran her hands down her face.
"You need to hire two new tech guys, by the way."
"And what. About. Contessa?"
"Oh, she's fine and dandy. The Doormaker managed to pull her back through just AFTER the explosion, but BEFORE the whatever-it-was started giving him nosebleeds."
"Tell her I need her in… what's left of my office," she said.
Jones hesitated. "Oookay. But… she's tied to a chair in there." Pause. "And has her hat stuffed in her mouth." Pause. "Aaaaand she's covered in cake." Longer pause. "The boys and me don't wanna go in there, Ma'am."
"LOOK, JUST--" Doctor Mother cut herself off as Contessa staggered through the door. "Never mind, go back to your duties-- wait. Have any of those infernal contraptions gotten down to the test subject chambers?" – her own lovely little euphemism for Cauldron's prison cells.
"OH, we're down here already ma'am, it doesn't look like any of those mechanical things got down here at all." There was a crash in the background. "Well maybe one." Then there was an explosion. "Maybe two."
"Deal with it, Jones," Doctor Mother gritted her teeth. Forcing herself to mentally acknowledge that force-feeding Jones one of the more interesting Cauldron vials would not fix the problem, she disconnected the intercom. "Contessa, what happened? Where did you go?"
She was haggard, disheveled, hatless, and had only just scraped most of the frosting spattering her away. It took Doctor Mother a moment to place the expression on the currently hatless Contessa's face: fear. She looked for all the world like a frightened little child. "I don't know," she said, her eyes darting around.
"What? What happened? What was there?"
"I-- I don't know! I can't remember! Something bad, something VERY bad and scary. You can't make me go back there, you can't! I WON'T GO!" She fled the room as if the hounds of Hell were on her heels.
Doctor Mother sat back, speechless.
For some reason, for the first time in all these years she had the feeling she hadn't thought her brilliant plan all the way through...
Chapter Text
The next few weeks, the Archer's Bridge Merchants learned the name of a demon.
It was a demon that hunted them day and night, in the docks, in the trainyard, downtown, uptown, Shantytown--anywhere they went. It struck from the shadows, from out of the empty sky, from doorways they swore had been empty just a moment before. If they were passing so much as a baggie of weed on a street corner, he was there. If they were shaking down their hookers for their weekly dues, he appeared. If they were stupid enough to walk into a convenience store with the intent to rob it, they soon found them exiting by way of the front window at high velocity-- with a raging wolfman following right after them.
And he was NOT pulling his punches anymore. If he caught you, you were in for a world of hurt… and he always caught you. Run all day, and you only ended up tired when he caught you. The emergency rooms were seeing a regular flow of dealers, pimps and enforcers who were battered, bruised, bloody and broken. Nothing life-threatening, that was worth note… but those he put down weren't going to be rolling down the street carefree as a breeze anytime soon.
One fool pulled a pistol on him. The proctologist spent six hours on him before the police could learn what the caliber was.
Merchants found themselves dangled from rooftops by various portions of their anatomy, held face down in the nearest pond, fountain, gutter, or toilet, batted around back alleys like a cat playing with a rubber mouse. The Demon only said two things. It told them its name: Skinwalker.
And then it asked one question. It was whispered from the shadows into their ears, snarled over prone forms, said an inch from terrified eyes by a mouthful of teeth, screamed by a raging beast-man as it thrashed them up one alley and down another.
"WHERE. IS. SKIDMARK??"
Taylor doubled over as Sophia's fist buried in her stomach. For the briefest of eternities she thought she was going to puke. "Just a little reminder of your place, Hebert," Sophia whispered in her ear, before shoving her aside and leaving the bathroom. Madison and Emma followed right behind, not even sparing a look for their victim.
Taylor coughed and spit, then slowly straightened up. She fished her bookbag out of the corner it had been kicked. Then before she could stop herself she kicked the wall. She kicked it again, then again, over and over while a scream of frustration bubbled up in her belly and burst out her throat. Then just as suddenly she was calm again. She wiped the sweaty locks of her hair out of her face and calmly, calmly, always calmly, walked out into the school. Her foot hurt where she'd smacked it into the tile of the bathroom wall, but that only helped to distract her from the pain in her gut.
It was study hall. She quickly went and found a seat, once again in the corners far away from everyone else. She took out her notebook and noted down the time of the "incident," the location, the ones involved.
She bit her lip and looked down at her hands. Not much had changed after all, had it? Here she was, back to recording all the times Sophia or her hangers-on bullied her. While the teachers did nothing. And the whole school looked on.
Bullying. What a stupid, juvenile name for it, she thought in a heated moment of anger. Like she was just going through some wacky childhood antics with Spanky and Alfalfa and the gang, and she'd be fine as long as she and Buckwheat outran Butch on their way to school.
She glowered down into her book bag. Things had seemed like they were going better for a while. Just for a while…She glanced over at the empty seat where Adrian should have been. She thought she'd felt alone before.
"Hey, what's this?" A manicured hand shot down over her shoulder and dipped into her bag. Taylor whipped around; it was Emma, back for more. Her hand reappeared, with Taylor's new phone in it. "Ooh, nice," she said, mocking. Without so much as blinking she stuck it in her purse. "Thanks!" She gave Taylor a smug smile and continued on her way to the front of the class.
Oh no way. Taylor got to her feet, her anger sputtering like a fuse. The pain in the muscles of her stomach brought her up short before she did anything hasty. Her anger suddenly switched from sputtering to ice cold-- and calculating. "Ms. Knott!" She said in as loud and clear a voice as she could manage. "Ms. Knott, get Emma Barnes to give my phone back!"
Ms. Knott was Taylor's homeroom teacher and her computer class teacher. She was a somewhat strong-jawed and mannish looking woman, which made her the unfortunate butt of many students' cruel humor. But in spite of that she was also probably the fairest teacher in the school and one most sympathetic to Taylor's plight. Still, she found herself with her hands often tied. "Taylor, you're not supposed to have your phones out during..."
"I didn't, she just reached in my bag and took it," Taylor replied. "Make. Her. Give. It. Back."
Emma had apparently been taking acting lessons from Madison. She stood up and put the most outrageously offended look on her face, her mouth hanging wide open. "I did NOT! Where do you get off accusing me of stealing?" She pulled the phone out and held it up. "Look, there's no way Hebert could even AFFORD this phone--"
Taylor felt her anger go from a cold burn to outright frostbit. She spun on the nearest student: Greg Veder. The boy actually flinched back from her when she stuck out her hand. "What??" he asked.
"Phone," Taylor gritted. He hesitated. "PHONE!" He hastily handed her his cellphone. She held up the phone to her face and began jabbing numbers.
The phone in Emma's hand began to vibrate. She actually tried to bluff! "Oh sorry, forgot to turn off the ringer--" she said coolly. She began poking at the screen. Then poking at them more frantically. Everyone could see the light from the screen flickering on her face as she fiddled with a phone she was clearly not familiar with. Her eyes went wide for a moment at something, then without warning the smartphone began speaking with a melodious female voice.
"This phone is the property of Taylor Hebert," it said. "This phone is the property of Taylor Hebert."
It was subtle, it was understated, it was beautiful. The room exploded in laughter. The Bitch Queen had been HAD! Face red as a fire engine, Emma slammed the phone down on Ms. Knott's desk. "I gotta go to the ladies' room," she mumbled as she bolted for the door.
Taylor had to throttle the urge to do a victory dance down the aisle as she walked down to get her phone. When she got closer she could see Ms. Knott struggling not to laugh. "Interesting security feature," the teacher said.
"One of a few," Taylor said breezily, loud enough for the rest of the class to hear. Message given and received; swiping her phone for a "prank" wasn't a smart option. Taylor examined her phone; no cracks, thank goodness. That little screen was tough. She noticed then that she'd forgotten to lock it earlier. Suppressing a curse she used her thumbprint and passcode to close it down. Oh well, Emma probably hadn't seen anything important.
"Do you want me to try and inform the principal that--?" Mrs. Knott said. The look in her eye was sympathetic. Taylor sighed.
"Don't bother. She'll just dismiss it as a 'little prank' or something like that," Taylor said.
She'd probably be paying for it-- probably with another gut punch or push down the stairs-- before the day was out. Taylor decided to savor the victory while it lasted; Screw it, she was cutting classes and going home early.
It was the last day before the Holidays. Two whole weeks without the Trio. Two whole weeks without Winslow. Just two whole weeks before Adrian was back. She could hold out. She just had to hold out.
The end of the day saw Emma dragging Madison over to Sophia's locker and huddling up. "Oh, what already?" Sophia said a bit irritably. Things had been crazy at the PRT lately, thanks to that Skinwalker headcase. He'd been waging a one-man war on the Merchants and everyone else was catching the fallout… which meant more paperwork and more patrols and more crap to put up with from Piggy and Arsemaster. Seems nobody could make up their minds they were happy the dope dealing freaks were getting their butts kicked, or mad that it was happening without PRT permission, or that the guy wasn't doing it the "proper" PRT way (with a PRT lawyer's hand up his butt like a Muppet.) It was putting Sophia in a real mood.
Emma looked around. "We got a problem. Taylor's got a new phone."
Sophia gave her a look that said volumes about what she thought of Emma's intelligence. "So??"
Emma leaned in. "You don't understand. She's got a new cellphone… a high end one with a built in audio recorder and video camera."
Sophia managed to get the hint. So did Madison. Sophia's face filled with rage. "You mean she was recording us??" Sophia hissed. Madison squeaked in horror.
"I managed to get a look at it," Emma said. She refrained from saying how. "She had an absolutely huge folder of videos and sound files… another one full of old emails. Three guesses whose."
"What do we do?" Madison whispered frantically.
Sophia's face was growing more and more suffused with rage. She was seething, she was FUMING. That little Hebert turd tried to pull a fast one on HER? Thought she was so clever? Sophia would... she bit back her homicidal rage and thought. "Okay. We just grab the phone and we're golden."
"But she left an hour ago--"
Sophia swore. She thought it over frantically, then surprising the other two girls, she calmed down. She'd spent her entire Cape career.. and truthfully a lot of time before it... reading people's intentions, guessing (quite accurately) what some dweeb or scumbag was going to do when the pressure was on, guessing when some punk was gonna jump right instead of left... and truth be told, Sophia was good at it. Taylor Hebert was an easy read. "It's okay. We're still golden."
"But what if she shows someone--" Madison started.
"Look, she's got a great big file of 'evidence' on that phone, right?" Sophia said patiently. Madison and Emma nodded. "So why hasn't she turned it in yet? Because she's looking to get something really good, something that buttons it all up, and she ain't got it yet. And she's waited till the Holidays and done nothing..."
"You're right," Emma said. "She wouldn't want to spoil Christmas, after all."
"So she's waiting to do the Big Reveal when school starts up again," Sophia said. "Does she got a computer at home?"
Emma shook her head. "Nothing worthy of the name anyway," she said. "It's even older than the ones in the computer lab here, and those things sure aren't compatible with a smartphone." She tossed her hair disdainfully. "Her Dad's been a total technophobe ever since her Mom died."
Sophia smiled. "Good." That meant Taylor probably wasn't saving those images anywhere else... and once they had the phone, Sophia knew a few off-the-record Tinkers and hackers who could tell them when, where, and how many times Taylor had uploaded anything from it, and could erase the files off the 'cloud' or anywhere else they were. "We already got a little surprise planned for her. We just go through with it, grab the phone, lose it in the bottom of the harbor, and we're in the clear." And maybe set up a little midnight visit from Shadow Stalker to search Taylor's house, make sure she didn't have backups stashed anywhere...
The other two girls' panic slowly subsided, their smug confidence returned. "Yeah, it's only understandable if she loses such a tiny little thing..." Emma said.
"Cow better enjoy her time with Santa Claus," Sophia said, scowling. "Cause after we put her through her little lesson and get that phone, I'm gonna put her on speed dial to the Tooth Fairy." She slammed the door to her locker shut hard enough to make it rattle.
It was a good evening at the Palanquin. The floor downstairs was packed with holiday partiers, the bar was doing good business, the mood was festive all around. Even Faultline was feeling fairly merry, or jolly, or whatever the appropriate term was. They'd set up a quiet little private holiday party up here in the office for herself and the rest of her mercenary crew. Nothing much, just a little punch, a few snacks, a little holiday music, a few decorations… that was about what Labyrinth could handle without being overwhelmed. Really, Faultline didn't want to imagine what sort of alternate reality Labyrinth would start overlapping into the real world if the holiday cheer overexcited the semi-autistic cape. Probably something with a Christmas Special theme. Giant Christmas ornaments or something.
Newter was down on the main floor checking out things to make sure everything was still going smooth. You could look out the observation window and see the lanky orange amphibiod flitting about the floor, moving from group to group, his tail flicking back and forth, making sure everyone was happy and partying. Gregor the Snail's shell-studded bulk was ensconced in the sofa, sipping his punch and humming along with the carols on the record player. It was definitely odd seeing the festively colored punch sliding down his translucent throat… Spitfire (sans her ordinary gas-mask and overalls) was sitting beside Labyrinth… sulking. Faultline and the rest had broken her out of the juvenile detention center-- but the penalties they'd enacted for her breaking the team rules were making a serious grouch out of her. Well, as far as Faultline was concerned she could just sit and suffer. She knew the rules, and she could just take her punishment like a good girl and forfeit her share of next month's take.
Newter came gliding into the room in his loose-limbed gait and perched on the back of a chair, his tail curling around the legs. "Something's up, boss," he said to Faultline. "It might be trouble."
Faultline immediately set down her cup and faced the amphibianoid cape. "What sort?"
"Got some company. That new cape… the wolf-man. They call him 'Skinwalker'.'"
"Not precisely a fortuitous name if one is hoping for peaceful circumstances," Gregor said somberly. He knew a few of the Skinwalker legends; they weren't all pretty.
"He's not caused any trouble or anything… well, not deliberately; having a seven-plus foot tall werewolf on the dance floor is gonna stir things up a bit regardless, but he's minding his manners." Newter shrugged in a fluid rolling move. "It's obvious he's trying to get our-- or your-- attention." He got to his feet.
Faultline followed him to the DJ's booth. She went up to the glass window overlooking the main room below and looked where Newter pointed. She looked again for good measure. "Karaoke?" she said, disbelieving. She was correct; the worgen was on the karaoke machine, belting a tune out to the entertainment of the other partyers. "What is he doing?" Faultline said, mystified.
"Barry White," Newter said. His eyebrow ridges (he had no eyebrows, alas) climbed. "And killin' it, too." Curious, Faultline turned on the booth two way speakers. He was right; the big wolfman was crooning along to "My First My Last My Everything," his deep rich voice caressing the lyrics like velvet. He was hamming it up too, vamping to the ladies in the front row of the crowd, more than a few of whom were laughing and eating it up.
"Invite him on up," Faultline sighed, reaching for her welding mask. "Hell, if nothing else maybe we'll hire him as entertainment."
A few minutes had the werewolf cape sitting in Faultline's office, sipping punch from a cup and exchanging polite pleasantries with the gang. "No hard feelings, I hope," he said to Spitfire. Spitfire just glowered at him through her mask with her arms crossed. It rolled off him like water off a duck's back. He looked at Faultline, who had donned her own mask as well. "I was under the impression she was still incarcerated?"
Faultline had to admit she understood why the ladies at the club had actually made friendly with the wolf-man. He had a voice that would send tingles down a woman's spine. "Yes, imagine that, a team of superhuman mercenaries illicitly liberating one of their members from imprisonment." She quipped. "How outrageous."
"I assume you're taking her to task?" he asked. "Judging from her rather hostile pose, I mean."
"Yes, you need not fear a repeat performance," she said. "We do not take contracts inside the city."
"Unless the job is right and the money is really good, of course," Skinwalker quipped, raising his cup to her in salute.
"It's usually considered poor form to insult a host," Gregor remarked idly.
"She's a mercenary. Her first ethic is business. It would be insulting to assume she would let one ethic get in the way of the other," Skinwalker retorted. He tossed the last of his punch into the back of his mouth and threw the cup in the trash. "I'll go ahead and assume you brought me up here to find out why I was here in your club doing bad karaoke."
"You wanted to ask for something."
He smiled. She was surprised; she didn't think dogs could do that. "Information."
"Not our usual forte, but..." she shrugged. "On what? Or whom?"
"Skidmark," he said. "He and his merry band of Outbreak monkeys are proving surprisingly difficult to track down, all things considered."
"All things considered?" Newter said.
"Like the fact that Skidmark has so many chemicals in his bloodstream that he should have died by spontaneous combustion," Skinwalker said drily.
"And why do you think we have information on Skidmark?" Faultline asked.
The wolfman counted off on his fingers. "One, you're a mercenary. The saying 'be polite, courteous, professional, and have a plan to kill everyone in the room' apples to you like any soldier. So keeping track of threats, even wastoids like the Merchants, should be second nature to you.
"Two, you're an outlaw operating in Brockton Bay. It's an open secret that you parlay with one another when things get hairy-- a little something from the days when a supervillain named the Marquis ran this town.
"Three… well, Newter here."
"What about me?" Newter asked suspiciously.
Skinwalker gave him a doggy grin, tongue lolling. "First off you're a party animal. A… lounge lizard, you might say?"
"Ar har, de har har." the vaguely amphibian/reptilian cape was clearly amused though.
"And even if you don't do the 'party' scene, a lot of the girls who hang all over you do, and they might have let something slip about where the number one dealer in the city keeps all his party supplies. Plus you secrete high quality hallucinogens from your skin. When Skidmark heard about you he probably spronged wood so hard he knocked all the coke lines off his coffee table." At this one more than one of the Crew snorted and clapped his hand over their mouth. "He's probably tried at least a few times to recruit you away from Faultline."
"Yeah, he has tried once or twice," Newter admitted to Faultline's surprise. Newter's lip curled. "I told him I had higher aspirations than to end up in one of his drug labs on the ingredient list."
"So yes, we do have some information, and what we don't have we can probably get," Faultline interjected. "The next question is, what do you have to pay for it?"
Skinwalker grimaced and sat back. "That's the thing of it," he said. "I do have the means to pay for it, but..." he looked at her, his palms held up helplessly. His expression was entirely earnest. "Okay, I have SOME money, but probably not enough to even scratch your price list. I can make you all some custom gear… but that will take time. Months even. Assuming I can design something genuinely useful for your, ah, line of work..."
"You're a tinker?"
"Of a sort," he confessed. "But-- my abilities can have very odd limitations. You'd have to ask the local Protectorate and the Wards for references on quality...." he shrugged.
"My third option… and this one I know your Case 53 members would willingly trade for-- information." The mood in the room shifted as Gregor and Newter suddenly became a lot more attentive.
"You mean about--" Newter pulled down the collar of his tank top and tapped one long skinny finger on the "c" shaped tattoo over his heart.
Skinwalker's grimace grew deeper with anxiety, guilt, uncertainty. "Yes. But here's the catch. I don't know how much I can tell you without getting all of you killed. Or worse."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. "Or worse?" Faultline repeated.
"Or Worse," Skinwalker confirmed. "Your mystery, your secret is tied into pretty much every conspiracy on the planet. Conspiracy on top of conspiracy inside ANOTHER conspiracy… and there's no telling what part of the Jenga tower can be pulled out without causing the whole thing to topple. And if the sweater unraveled far enough, it could mean-- and I am not exaggerating here-- it could mean the very literal end of the world. SO I just DON'T KNOW..." He ran his clawed hands down his face. For the first time Faultline noticed how haggard he looked, and the bags under his eyes. She also caught a whiff hinting at how long it had last been since he had bathed (she could be forgiven for not noticing; when one lived in a house with Case53s, unusual smells were part of the daily routine.)
"One second," he said wearily. He cupped his hands under his face. His hands glowed emerald green, the light flowing up over him. When it faded, he looked if not less haggard, than at least more alert. He waved his hands over himself and another splash of light flowed over him. "a rejuvenation and a decontaminate," he said. "Not exactly a nap and a shower but it'll do for now."
Faultline found herself wondering how many times he'd done that particular trick over the past few days.
He got serious. "Okay. I'm going to give you the information. I needed to anyways eventually.. long story. But get one thing straight. We might very well be attacked."
"Once word gets out?" Gregor said.
"Once I finish my first sentence," he answered. The conviction in his voice was chilling. "These people have Thinkers and Precogs under their control that make every other one you can name look laughable. They have Movers-- teleporters-- with global range and pinpoint accuracy. They have governments all over the world on a leash. And they conduct surveillance worldwide, twenty four seven, and have no limits beyond their own nearly nonexistent ethics. So yes, they are that powerful and that dangerous and that determined to keep all their little secrets.
"Due to some really odd factors about my origins, I fall into a sort of blind spot where their powers don't see and where their most potent tricks don't work. But I don't know how wide the effect is, or whether it is… contagious… or not. So this conversation could get very exciting in the next few minutes." He got to his feet and pulled a staff out of seemingly nowhere, holding it at the ready.
The others took their cue from him. Faultline undid the catch on the holster of her gun. Gregor, Newter and Spitfire got to their feet, moving into different parts of the room. Gregor murmured a few words to Labyrinth. She got to her own feet, moving behind him and suddenly looking very timid, but any of them could feel her flexing her strange terrain-altering powers in the immediate environment.
"Gregor, Newter," Skinwalker began, "You were experiments. You were abducted from your own homes and your own worlds--"
"Our own Worlds?" Newter gulped.
"-- By a paradimensional organization of capes. They have developed ways to give people Powers artificially, and have been among other things selling "powers in a bottle" to people with a big enough bankroll. Sometimes they trade favors-- one miracle in a bottle, for an unspecified 'favor' owed them in the future. You both were test subjects. Two of literal thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. They've killed countless people with their experiments and are responsible, indirectly, for millions more."
The others in the room felt the blood drain from their faces as the wolf-man talked. Nobody had the temerity to doubt him. It was in the utter conviction in his voice, in his stance, in the way he held his weapon at the ready and the way his eyes never stopped scanning the room.
"They created Coil. They created at least three of the current roster of Brockton Bay heroes. They created at least two of the Slaughterhouse Nine… and have conspired-- stolen, blackmailed, assassinated--- to keep them alive and kicking, solely because they think their powers might be useful in the future."
"And their ultimate objective is to--"
There was a faint sound, an almost imperceptible change in the air pressure. A rectangle of light formed in the middle of the room, and a tall, pale woman with black hair in a ponytail and wearing a black suit and fedora stepped through. Everyone braced themselves and lunged.
The woman never broke stride. In three long steps she crossed the room and high-kicked the pistol out of Faultline's hand, sending it tumbling over her head and behind her. The fedora-clad woman seemed to slide past her, giving her a knife-strike in the neck and the precise point that Faultline's welding mask left it exposed and dropping her to the floor.
The woman caught the gun, turned on one heel and fired across the room, clearly aiming for Gregor's head… only to instead strike Newter in the shoulder as he leapt into her line of fire. Her eyes widened in surprise, but still she managed to sidestep the tumbling Case53's body and fling the gun overhand so it struck Gregor between the eyes, stunning him just as he was preparing to spray one of his chemicals at her. Spitfire, unable to use her power without immolating everything in the room, was left to hopping back and forth and trying to get out of everyone's way and constantly getting in it.
She pressed the attack, vaulting over Faultline's desk and snatching a wicked-looking ornamental envelope opener out of its holder and springing directly for Labyrinth. The astonishment on her face was epic when a powerful clawed hand grabbed her by the calf and brought her down out of the air, slamming her into the floor.
The moment the doorway had appeared, Skinwalker had been on the move too. He'd leapt forward, pulling a kibbled metallic disk the size of a hubcap out from under his robes and flung it through the portal. It could be seen striking the floor on the other side and rapidly unfolding into a shower-stall sized something before the doorway hastily closed.
He'd then twisted about and managed to intercept the attacking fedora wearing woman before she could try to kill the child… before she could kill another child. He slammed her full length into the floor. Snarling silently she'd flipped over and kipped up to her feet, facing him. Her eyes went wide when she she focused on him, as if she'd never seen him before--
She lashed out at him with a kick. It caught his staff and popped it out of his one-handed grip, flipping it to the floor. Her second strike he caught her leg under his elbow. She jabbed at his throat with both thumbs, looking to fracture his windpipe. He caught both her arms in his hands before she even got close. He began slapping her face with her own hands. "Stop hitting yourself, Contessa, stop hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself Contessa--" he said in a high nasally voice.
He lost his elbow-grip on her leg. She dropped it to the floor, threw herself backwards as far as Skinwalker's grip on her arms would let her and kicked him square in the chin. His head snapped up and with a yelp of pain he lost his hold on her. She lunged away from him, panic clear on her face. She kicked off the wall and came back the other way, trying to get to the open floor in the middle of the room.
"DOORWA--"
Before she could finish the word Skinwalker's clawed hand caught her by the back of the head. With a swooping arc he brought her around and slammed her face down into the sheet cake sitting on the snack table.
SPLARCH.
He snatched up his staff in his other hand, shillelagh style, and brought the knobbed end around, cracking it across the back of her head. She slumped into the cake, unconscious. They all stood frozen for a moment, clutching at their various injuries and panting for breath, staring wide-eyed at the wolfman and his captive. "Say hello," Skinwalker said, his ribs working like bellows, "To Contessa: agent, key strategist, enforcer and assassin for Cauldron. But I'm sure some of you have met her before." He grabbed her by the skull and smeared her face in the cake "Isn't that RIGHT, Contessa? Isn't that riiiight?"
"Man," Spitfire said. "This is personal between you two, isn't it."
Skinwalker let go of Contessa's head. "No," he growled. "I just frickin' hate God Mode Mary Sues."
When Contessa awoke again, she was sitting in the middle of the meeting room, tied hand and foot to a sturdy metal chair and her hat stuffed in her mouth. Faultline and her crew, all bandaged up, were sitting around her in a semicircle, weapons loose in their hands and their eyes fixed on her. Sitting at one end of the group was the single most terrifying thing she'd ever seen in her life…. Because she hadn't known he was there. She jerked wildly in her bonds, eyes round.
He was sitting there in a backwards chair, arms folded over the back and his chin resting on them as he watched her. "There, you see? It isn't just like she didn't know about me ahead of time. It's like the moment she took her eyes off me, she forgot I even existed. " The wolf man stroked his chin. "How very Eleventh Doctor Who." He grinned at her. "It's probably because she depends so much on her Power. Still, I'm betting she's not the only one in their merry little conspiracy that has this problem with me."
"What is her power?" Faultline said.
"They call it 'Path to Victory,'" he said. "She simply chooses a goal, and her power gives her step-by-step actions to complete, like a recipe on a box of cake mix… "walk through this door, turn right, go fifteen steps north and press the red button three times." That sort of thing. She doesn't even have to understand them, just follow them. And ding, instant Victory."
"That's such utter bullshit!" Newter exploded."It's haxx, OP, Mary Sue-- I don't have words for how B.S. that is!"
Adrian nodded. "Bullshit or not, it's the truth. Her Shard basically... creates a perfect simulation of the world and extrapolates out for her. Lets her predict any possible movement, like that computer Deep Blue predicting every possible move in a chess game."
"But the universe isn't a chess game." Everyone turned in surprise. Labyrinth had spoken. The waiflike blonde's soft voice carried in the silence. "Chaos theory. The Heisenberg Principle. Schroedinger's cat. After a certain point the universe is fundamentally unpredictable, no matter how much data you gather. You can't make a perfect plan for everything, or anything, because simple chance will mess it up."
"And the bigger the plan, the bigger the mess up," Skinwalker agreed. One advantage Azeroth science had over Earth Bet science was that it had early on acknowledged the existence of the Chaos Effect. It was rather hard not to when you had the capacity to store the stuff in jars and bottles like marmalade. "Her margin of error has to be flippin' astronomical to work around all those butterfly wings... probably helps that she only knows the end goal of any Path-- but not all the unintended consequences."
"And her power comes with other tiny little drawbacks her masters have sort of willfully overlooked. For one thing, all her 'Paths to Victory' they slavishly follow are built on information provided by the enemy. An enemy whose goal, programmed into every Shard, is to amplify conflict. I think the problem with that is self evident.
"The cherry on top of the sundae is that she's had this power since she was something like five years old, and she uses it constantly, just to get through the day. So her actual intellect is little more than a child's. She doesn't have to KNOW anything, just obey the instructions in her head, so she's never actually LEARNED anything in all this time. She doesn't even have to speak English-- just make the noises her Shard tells her will get the results she wants." He shuffled in his chair a little. "Which makes me a problem for her. Her Power… because I'm the ultimate 'outside context' problem… can't really detect me, like the blind spot in your eye. Since it can't really grok me, it ignores me-- And makes her forget me too, like an inconvenient truth. And her real mind, her real, five-year-old mind, isn't up to handling things like me. Her Path to Victory-- the really BIG one, that Cauldron is following so fanatically-- is as blind as the rest of us."
"Which brings us to the problem. You see, Cauldron has been operating on a Great Master Plan-- her plan--" he pointed at Contessa-- "since it was founded. And it's grown so complicated and so big it's literally engulfed the world."
"Aaaand that plan?" Newter said, nursing his bandaged shoulder. Regrettably, Skinwalker was out of his magic band-aids.
Skinwalker's face grew grim. "To save humanity by killing Scion."
The exclamations of surprise, shock and dismay were nearly universal. "That's crazy!" Spitfire spluttered. "He's… he's SCION! He's the world's greatest hero--"
"He's an alien creature, who intends to devour our world as part of his species' reproductive cycle," Skinwalker interrupted. You could have heard a pin drop.
"That thing you see flying around out there? That's just his… well, his avatar. Or maybe more like just his fingertip, sticking in from the parallel dimension his actual, gigantic, planet-sized Space Whale body is hiding. He's got less in common with humanity biologically than we do with a microbe. And he and his mate, or what's left of her, are the source of nearly all the superhuman powers on earth. "
He gave them a moment for that awful revelation to sink in. The silence was ominous. "Could you possibly start over from the Giant Space Whales, I think?" Gregor said, shifting the ice bag on his head.
Skinwalker nodded. "Super advanced alien race. Gigantic, multi-dimensional things-- picture a multidimensional fractal the size of a planet. They spin off through space as duets; one of them is the Thinker, the other is the Warrior. When they find an inhabited planet they sort of… wrap themselves around it, invisible and intangible.
"Then they start dropping Shards. Little fractal bits of themselves--- bits that are also their technology in some incomprehensible fashion-- that attach themselves to what the Shard considers a compatible host. The Shard gives them powers to use. Pushes the host to use them, use them as much as possible. The Shard collects all the data it can, then when the host dies, they return to the Space Whales with it, who download and save all that it has learned.
"When the Space Whales decide they've gotten all the information they possibly can, they destroy that world, and all the parallels of that world connected to it, blow it up... take all the shards back and fly off into space, with a full tank of energy from the explosion to find a new world to harvest. Maybe shoot off an offspring or two, if they've gathered enough energy and grown enough new Shards to start Baby off with..."
"That's… horrible," Newter said weakly.
"What do they need all this data for?" Faultline asked suddenly. "I could see needing energy to reproduce, but..."
"They're… well, they're trying to cheat death," Skinwalker said. "They figured out long ago that someday, billions of years from now, the material universe will finally burn out like a candle. Seeing as they're effectively immortal, they'd rather it not happen. They're trying to find a way to beat Entropy."
"By covering world after world with super powered beings, then killing them all?" Spitfire said skeptically.
"Well, you see, like I said they're super-advanced," Skinwalker said. "But they have absolutely no innovation, no creativity, no imagination… they've sort of like Contessa here." He pointed at the bound and gagged operative. "They've been letting their Shards do all the work for them for so long they don't know how do anything for themselves anymore, even think. Despite their arrogance regarding any mere three dimensional creature as nothing but a lab rat, they depend on us to use their powers to innovate-- to be creative, generate new ideas, come up with new ways to do things.
"Unfortunately for us Scion is the Fighter, not the Thinker. The best idea Scion had to encourage us lab rats to use our Shards as much as possible was to push us into conflict wherever possible. Maybe you've noticed how much more aggressive capes are than normal? It's also why the Shards only bond to people who've had a Trigger event. Traumatized people given immense power and encouraged to lash out at the world..." he shrugged. "Like tossing two bugs in a jar and shaking it to see them fight."
"But you said his mate is dead!" Spitfire protested, "Why is he still..."
"Going through the motions?" Skinwalker said. "Acting like she's still there? Shuffling along from day to day on autopilot, doing what he feels obligated to do but with no enthusiasm, no joy?" He looked at her and gave her a humorless little smile. "Gee, it's almost like he's a widower or something." His smile disappeared. "At the height of his depression, he spoke to one human. One. Some suicidally depressed drunk… who told him to do something with himself. Save lives. Help people. Make a meaning for himself if he couldn't find one." He paused. "Thank God for that man, wherever he is. How easily he could have just said 'end it all, get it over with'..."
"So Scion's been trying it. Half-assed, of course. We mean about as much to him personally as a population of mice living in his basement. It's nothing more than a hobby to distract himself." He turned grim. "Sooner or later he's going to fold it all in, sweep the pieces off the table, flip the table and leave. It's only a question of how long before his boredom and despair get to him."
Newter got up with a stunned look on his long face and walked out of the room. He returned with an open bottle of liquor. He sat down and pulled at it hard before passing it to Gregor the Snail. It made its way to Spitfire then to Faultline quickly enough. "So we have to let her go," Faultline said, pointing the neck of the bottle at Contessa, her voice rough from the Grey Goose she'd poured down her throat. "She… and Cauldron are the world's only hope."
"And why do you think that?" Skinwalker snorted.
Faultline did a double take. "You just said… Plan of Victory, or whatever..."
"And what makes you think they got that right?" Skinwalker said. He got to his feet and paced a bit, rubbing his face. The need for a refresh from his powers was coming more and more often. "Look, don't you realize what their genius master plan IS? Scion is basically a thousand times more powerful than any cape. He has ALL the powers… all the ones we have and more. The only reason he hasn't destroyed the Endbringers is because he made them and released them, all to generate more conflict. He's effectively indestructible by conventional means. Even if you managed to destroy his "body," it's just a fingertip-- a blister sticking into this universe that he can regenerate at will. So Cauldron's planning to find some way to destroy him. Great, terrific, marvelous.
"Except Cauldron is basically led by two people: Contessa here--" he waved his hand-- "and by a woman who calls herself Doctor Mother. Eden, the other alien, was injured by a chance encounter in space with another of their kind some time before the Space Whale couple reached our world, and when she went to land her physical self on her parallel dimension she lost control and crashed. On Contessa and Doctor Mother's version of Earth. Polluting the soil, the water... and anyone contaminated with Eden's tissues gained a Shard, and gained powers. So the next thing you know there's monsters, madmen, superpowered warlords, you get the picture.
"By pure luck Contessa got the Path to Victory. But because of a little safety feature the Space Whales put into it, she couldn't act against even the mortally wounded Eden herself, not directly. So she found Doctor Mother, gave her a knife, and told her just where to cut the giant alien Space Whale's brain. They lobotomized it, and have been using its flesh to dose people to give them powers ever since."
"Ugh." Was Spitfire's verdict before she took another swig of Grey Goose.
"But Contessa was five years old when she gained the Path to Victory. And Doctor Mother is neither a doctor nor a mother…. they're just titles to impress people. And according to my sources the world they lived on was stuck somewhere developmentally in the Bronze Age!
"So they asked the Shard a super-simplistic question, the kind a couple of bronze-age peasant women would ask: How do I kill Scion? the plan that Contessa's Shard came up with was the exact sort of thing you'd expect a Bronze Age peasant woman to understand and accept-- to make a giant army of superhumans to punch Scion really really hard until he was defeated. " Skinwalker snorted. "That's their master plan. A plan perfectly in the vein of every bronze age heroic saga... To arm as many Greeks as they could with bronze swords, and send them storming up the slopes of Olympus to kill the gods. A plan that bloody common sense tells you couldn't work and WON'T work. Their plan is the equivalent of trying to drown an ocean."
"That white shiny laboratory looking place you saw through the portal? Stage props, so they look more advanced and enlightened than they are. Their futuristic tech is almost entirely their experiments using Shard powers to put on a light show. Their 'scientific research' consists of chopping off bits of lobotomized alien, whipping it up in a juicer, and going 'let's see what this does to the hobo we kidnapped when he drinks it.'
"But the Path to Victory thing would still work?"
"If you call a miniscule fraction of humanity across countless worlds managing to cling to life on cratered, burning worlds a victory, you're welcome to it. Remember how Ragnarok ends, with only two human beings in the entire world and a tree? Sort of like that but without the optimism. And that's IF Cauldron wins.
"That's the thing. Contessa and her boss are from a culture that hadn't yet discovered chaos theory, or probability, or any of the other things we take for granted. They were still in an era where our scientists were a couple hundred years back, thinking that if they just gathered enough data they could perfectly predict and plan anything. Stuff our most advanced outer-edge physicists and mathematicians are coming back and confirming, like Labyrinth said, is functionally impossible." He huffed in amusement. "Stuff more spiritually minded people have been saying for thousands of years. 'Man Plans, God Laughs,' remember?"
"Well the Space Whales… and their Shards… are the same way. The Space Whales are completely materialistic and deterministic. My guess is that they reached their current level BEFORE their scholars or their equivalents figured out things like Quantum theory or Chaos effects. What's more they've so completely abandoned the idea of anything philosophical, or spiritual, or beyond the physical that they can't even contemplate it as a concept. And whatever happened with their great transcendence, somehow they are still stuck believing they can predict and plan anything with sufficient raw data. Even though they're so uncreative they have to rely on us lowly lower life forms to even invent new ideas for them."
"In case you missed the last hour, this all-knowing, all-seeing, all-planning Path to Victory Shard misses things. If it can't even see me, how much else is it missing?"
"But at the same time, that's our hope, that's our salvation. Scion is NOT omnipotent and he's NOT omniscient. If his Shards can miss things, HE can miss things. That means he has blind spots, weak spots, vulnerabilities. And that means that all-knowing, all-seeing Cauldron and their Path to Victory have missed things too… like ways to win against Scion that don't involve leaving entire worlds in ruin.
"Faith and Hope… two things Cauldron, and the Shards, and Scion are too primitive and limited to even know exist."
"Whoa. That was DEEP." Gregor blinked at Skinwalker, then blinked at Newter who was leaning against him. "My friend, I think you got some of your sweat on me..."
"Oops. Sorry, man. It'll wear off in a minute."
"Well that's a great half-time speech, Coach," Faultline said. "But what's our next move?" She waved at the red-faced Contessa. "What do we do with her?"
"Well, considering Cauldron is a bunch of lunatics who don't think assassination is a big deal, and I don't wanna wake up dead," Newter said, "we should probably hold her as a hostage against this Doctor Mother's good behavior--"
A doorway opened up directly beneath Contessa. She plummeted through, chair and all. The portal vanished. "--- or we could just stand here and watch that happen," Newter concluded. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the floor where the door had been. "NEXT TIME TRY PLAYING WITHOUT CHEAT CODES, YOU SKANK!"
Faultline got to her feet and unholstered her gun again. "Are we about to get attacked again?"
"Probably not, for two reasons," Skinwalker said. "My 'blind spot' effect is apparently pretty comprehensive. Remember how she missed when she tried to shoot Gregor? I wasn't even in her line of sight. My just being in proximity apparently garbles her Shard's abilities to read the environment. It'll probably linger a while over you all and this general area, domino effect and all, but-- ah. Just a minute."
Due to all the excitement, the walls immediately around Labyrinth had started shifting into her alternate dimensions, or perhaps vice versa. The wall immediately behind her had begun looking like an Escheresque window out onto a plane full of floating rainbow colored spheres and white polygons. Skinwalker climbed up on the couch beside her and reached through, grasping at the nearest spheres. "Yellow? No, blue. Oooh, that one will do, a nice rainbow one..." he grabbed a wibbling globe about the size of his palm and carefully pulled it back. It passed from the phantasm-world into the real world with a pop. "Okay, let's see what we got." He pulled an engraved copper rod out of his belt pouch and began poking at the sphere in his hand, squinting in concentration. There was a sound something like
Splatinkle!
And the sphere popped, leaving behind a tiny glowing purple shard. "Oh perfect! Anyone have a jar or bottle-- ah perfect," he said, accepting what they handed him. He popped the shard into the Grey Goose bottle and set it on the table, sealing the neck with a dollop of wax. The shard floated in the middle of the bottle, glowing and humming faintly and looking vaguely surreal. And Faultline wasn't sure it wasn't the Grey Goose talking but the crystal wasn't rotating, it was changing shape … "And what is THAT?" she said.
"A shard of Chaos," Skinwalker said.
"And you pulled that out of one of Labyrinth's… realms?" Faultline was starting to feel seriously dizzy contemplating all this.
"In the intersection between one reality and the next. That's where you can find it normally, if you know what to look for. Lucky I caught a glimpse of it." He examined the shard. "Not very much, but probably more than enough to give Cauldron's capes a blinding headache if they so much as look in this room's general direction. And if they try to open a doorway here, well, good luck. Here, let's boost it a little..." He withdrew a coil of thick copper wire from his bag and chunk of quartz, wound the wire around the bottle in opposite directions and made a spark gap at the top. Then he wedged the quartz in the gap. It immediately began to chime faintly, like a finger run around the rim of a wine glass. "That'll do it," he said. "That'll expand the zone to about the size of this building." He set it on Faultline's desk.
"I think I have a new favorite desk ornament," she murmured. "How many of these can you make? Because if we're going to fight Cauldron, we're going to need to cut off their access in more than one place."
Skinwalker thought of the shelves of jars full of dusts and shards and essences back in the Lost Workshop. He thought of the dozens of little shiny, glowy, glass and copper whirligigs, tiny versions of this oversized one, he'd sold and even given away to people great and small all over Brockton Bay. And he smirked. Smugly.
"No need to worry about that right away," he said. "And I think Cauldron is going to be too busy cleaning up a mess to bother anyone for a while. Did you happen to see that thing I tossed through the portal?"
"I did note that, yes," Gregor said. "A bomb of some sort?"
"Not exactly. Half of a goblin teleportation device that leads to where I STORE my bombs…. And a few other things."
Gregor gave him a stunned look, then slowly nodded. "That should keep them preoccupied," he said. Then he paused. Goblin?
"You don't know the half of it." He looked at Faultline. "So you all know the terrible truth of your secret pasts. What do you intend to do now?"
Faultline sighed, shoulders slumped. "I'm thinking we're going to take that magic see-me-not bottle, go find some place to hunker down about two or three thousand miles from here, and wait out whatever comes next. We're mercenaries. This… this is all beyond our pay grade."
"Fraid I gotta agree," Newter said. Murmurs of assent and nods of agreement went around the room. Skinwalker sighed. That was a handful more pieces, taken right off the board entirely. Whether it was to the good or the bad, he wasn't sure.
"Are you going after Cauldron yourself?"
Skinwalker shook his head. "Cauldron is too big a target still," he said. "Too widespread, stuck in too many things. Jenga tower, remember?
"Right now I've got one block I want to remove. The Merchants. So long as they're in play, they're a resource for bigger, nastier types to exploit. That festering sore Skidmark has been poisoning this city for too long. He goes down."
Faultline nodded. "Good luck with that."
Newter looked over at Faultline for approval; she nodded. Newter grunted, then turned to Skinwalker. "Can't say you didn't give what you promised." He looked over at the chaos bottle and his brow ridges climbed. "Gave us way more than we could chew, for that matter. So I'll tell you what we know about Skidmark.
"The Merchants don't have a single lair. They move around all the time, from abandoned building to abandoned building, going wherever Skidmark's paranoia leads them. He's sure to have heard you're looking for him so he's probably moving his location every night.
"Now what he does have is recruitment parties. You were right about him trying to get me to sign on; that wanker makes a pitch every time he sees me, and he always invites me out to these "Big epic parties" of his. They invite every bum, bozo and freak in the burg, throw some food and drugs at them, give a recruiting pitch… and run cage fights."
"Cage fights?" Skinwalker asked. Deja vu.
Newter nodded. "Between lowballer gang members who want to climb up in the ranks. He's playing the off chance that someone put through the steel cage will Trigger. New cape, new lieutenant."
"But the odds for that are so small they… yeah. And it's Skidmark coming up with this plan. Never mind."
"Heh. Anyway, he makes sure word gets to me whenever he's going to have one of these crackhead blowouts. His next one's gonna be-- God's honest truth-- Christmas Eve, at the old Twin Pines Shopping Mall near the docks. Mandatory attendance. Every ranking member of the Merchants, which means anyone sober enough to shoot straight, is gonna be there. Mush, Trainwreck, Squealer, they'll all be there too."
Skinwalker nodded. "Perfect."
Faultline stared at him. "And what do you plan on doing, all by yourself, against four Capes and about a thousand armed goons?"
Skinwalker looked at her. "I'm going to END them."
Doctor Mother cowered behind her desk, staring in shell shock at the corpse sprawled across it. The Number Man was dead. Stone cold dead. He was lying there, on his back, staring at the ceiling with a crude circular saw buried in his skull, right between the eyes.
Kurt Wynn was… had been… a banker and investor with a Shard-given power to understand everything perfectly as mathematical formulas. His supernatural ability not only gave him, gave Cauldron, the power to manipulate world economies, driving entire nations under their hidden goad and whip, but gave him preternatural abilities that rivaled Contessa's. He could dodge bullets. Scale walls like a spider by calculating likely finger and toeholds, collapse buildings with a few strategically placed blows, ricochet projectiles so they struck targets of his choice. He was also a criminal and a complete sociopath who destroyed lives through economic chicanery and who killed without a single moral qualm, but that only made him more useful, dammit!
And here he'd been struck down by the blade of a table saw. And he never saw it coming. It beggared belief.
Ten minutes ago, things had been normal. Contessa had stepped through one of Doormaker's portals to deal with some information leaks. Then something had flown back through the portal before Doormaker could close it. It had landed in the lobby, and as a befuddled Doctor Mother had watched, unfolded into something that looked like a cross between a shower stall and a tanning booth. It had sparked, buzzed, formed a vortex of energy of some sort inside itself… and begun vomiting mechanical, exploding chaos into Cauldron HQ.
One of the byproducts of the crafting skill of Engineering, whether gnomish or goblin, was explosives. A lot of explosives. A ridiculous excess thereof, in fact. And they were terrifyingly easy to make, even from base materials. Skinwalker had rapidly accumulated a considerable stockpile of the things, to the point that safety (or the lack thereof) was worrying him. But he'd known since day one he was going to be dealing with a number of incredibly nasty and well equipped organizations such as Cauldron, and had allowed the surplus to build up as a necessary evil.
Other things had started to pile up in bulk as well. Rudimentary Bots, firework rockets, landsharks, mecha suit test models, traps, launchers, quite a number of defective mechanical pets, remote controlled Tonks… so he'd devised this plan as a first-wave attack against a target of opportunity. He'd built a collapsible Goblin teleporter, kept one half in his workshop store room, the other half in his haversack, and waited.
The moment the teleport pad activated, the tinkerbots followed their rather simple programming:
1. Take full load of explosives.
2. Enter active teleporter.
3. Wreck the Bejeezus out of everything on the other side.
When a six foot high pile of round mortar style cartoon bombs had appeared in the lobby, it had been alarming. When they had rolled to a halt, sprouted arms and legs and started charging their chosen targets (machinery, doors, people) screaming "BANZAI!" it had gone up the ladder from alarming to panic inducing. Explosions had rocked the lobby, then the hallways beyond it as supposedly sturdy doors were blasted off their hinges by kamikaze robots. A second wave had followed, then a third, little bitty robots with big round bombs balanced on their heads pouring through holes burst in the doors and walls and racing up the hallways.
There was plentiful security in Cauldron HQ… in the test subject quarters and on the perimeter. Here in the depths of their offices, it had seemed both excessive and potentially counterproductive to add blast doors and mounted weapons. That decision would be reviewed most thoroughly in the days to come as the ridiculous invasion blasted doors, walls, furniture and other obstacles to oblivion.
In her delirium, she'd had the ridiculous thought that at least they weren't yelling Allahu Akbar, that would have been just a bit too much…
When the bomber-bots had stopped coming, they had been followed by what could only be called toys. Crude looking miniature tanks that trundled on little treads and fired a steady stream of skyrockets in every direction, sending whistling streaks of fire and explosions of sparks everywhere. Flying machines like miniature zeppelins and autogyros--- that it turned out were loaded with what looked like dynamite, and were just as suicidal as the first wave. metal shark fins with rocket engines that raced off and exploded. Mechanical spiders and scorpions that stung and bit… and then exploded. Clockwork chickens that exploded. Clockwork sheep that exploded. What was it with this lunatic and exploding clockwork things??
The worst had been the two waist high miniature mechas. Grinning metal gargoyle heads with legs and arms that chugged and spat sparks and smoke and had buzz saw blades where their hands should have been. Several of the more aggressive guards, or perhaps the slower ones, had lost hands and fingers to those horrors. One of them had cornered her and the Number Man in her office. The Number Man had thrown a pen that (naturally) struck it in just the right place to disable it. Unfortunately it reacted to being disabled by self destructing. The explosion had sent parts and shrapnel in every direction, including one sawblade-hand that had struck the Number Man right between the eyes and delivered his final sum of Karma.
Then there had been a titanic, earth shattering kaboom.
Doctor Mother looked around. She took stock: She saw burn marks. She saw holes in the walls, floors, ceiling. She saw trashed office equipment. It was relative quiet at the moment in this part of the complex. She could still hear the occasional whistle of a firework in the distance. The Custodian was not responding: the explosions and fire must have temporarily disrupted her invisible, ghostly "bodies."
The intercom on her desk beeped.
She regarded it for a second in disbelief. By luck, she pressed the correct button to activate the damnable thing. "This is Doctor Mother."
A voice came through, staticky and tinny. "Uh,yeah, this is Jones. From Security. Are you all right Ma'am?"
She sighed. "Yes." She looked around. "For a given value of 'fine,'" she added. "The Number Man is dead, however. The Custodian is not responding either. Can you give me a status report on everyone else?"
Jones took a moment. "Uhh, okay, yeah. The, ah, Slug appears to have been injured, several second and third degree burns. And ah, a concussion, the medics say. He's not going to be doing any mind-erasing or brainwashing type.. stuff, for at least a month or two, they're telling me. Until his skull fracture heals. The Doormaker is suffering a nosebleed. He tried to look back in on, ah, his last portal location and he can't find it for some reason. If tries his nosebleed starts up again. The, uh, Clairvoyant guy, boy howdy, he's sort of having the same problem it seems…alla sudden he can't even focus in on half of Brockton Bay, by golly. Like it's all fulla holes or sump'n."
Doctor Mother was stunned. What in the Devil could make all of Brockton Bay turn partially invisible to the Clairvoyant? Or any part of it inaccessible to the Doormaker? "What of Contessa? Can they get a fix on her?" she demanded.
"Ohh, she's okay. She's in the lobby." Pause. "What used to be the lobby."
"Used… to be."
"Yyyeah. You remember that one last really BIG explosion?"
"Now that you mention it, it does stir my memory," she said. Her voice could have chilled dry ice.
Jones continued, oblivious. "WELL. We sent some tech guys to secure that Teleporter pad thingy? Before it teleportered anything else? And, um, it looks like it self-destructed. Aaaaand we don't have a lobby there no more."
Doctor Mother groaned.
"We do got the beginnings of a nice little open air atrium, though."
Doctor Mother ran her hands down her face.
"You need to hire two new tech guys, by the way."
"And what. About. Contessa?"
"Oh, she's fine and dandy. The Doormaker managed to pull her back through just AFTER the explosion, but BEFORE the whatever-it-was started giving him nosebleeds."
"Tell her I need her in… what's left of my office," she said.
Jones hesitated. "Oookay. But… she's tied to a chair in there." Pause. "And has her hat stuffed in her mouth." Pause. "Aaaaand she's covered in cake." Longer pause. "The boys and me don't wanna go in there, Ma'am."
"LOOK, JUST--" Doctor Mother cut herself off as Contessa staggered through the door. "Never mind, go back to your duties-- wait. Have any of those infernal contraptions gotten down to the test subject chambers?" – her own lovely little euphemism for Cauldron's prison cells.
"OH, we're down here already ma'am, it doesn't look like any of those mechanical things got down here at all." There was a crash in the background. "Well maybe one." Then there was an explosion. "Maybe two."
"Deal with it, Jones," Doctor Mother gritted her teeth. Forcing herself to mentally acknowledge that force-feeding Jones one of the more interesting Cauldron vials would not fix the problem, she disconnected the intercom. "Contessa, what happened? Where did you go?"
She was haggard, disheveled, hatless, and had only just scraped most of the frosting spattering her away. It took Doctor Mother a moment to place the expression on the currently hatless Contessa's face: fear. She looked for all the world like a frightened little child. "I don't know," she said, her eyes darting around.
"What? What happened? What was there?"
"I-- I don't know! I can't remember! Something bad, something VERY bad and scary. You can't make me go back there, you can't! I WON'T GO!" She fled the room as if the hounds of Hell were on her heels.
Doctor Mother sat back, speechless.
For some reason, for the first time in all these years she had the feeling she hadn't thought her brilliant plan all the way through...
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Chapter 10
- Location
- Marietta, OH USA
Chapter 10
Chapter Text
The Twin Pines Mall had been intended as competition for the Boardwalk and the Lord's Market. It was a huge square building in the middle of a city block of parking, with an open center court and a vaulted glass ceiling, an enormous decorative pool and fountain, and three stories of full-sized shops. Unlike the Boardwalk or the Market, it would be open year round, available so residents could shop in climate-controlled comfort.
But shortsightedness did the project in. The reason the Market and the Boardwalk had persisted for so long was that the people in the area didn't need more than that; the small neighborhood and downtown shops got all the local money, and the tourists only wanted to go to the scene open air shops or the ritzy seafront stores and restaurants, not a shopping mall. The building had barely been finished before the investors looked at the numbers and folded their hands, unwilling to send good money after bad. They got a huge tax deduction for business loss, and settled in to wait… fruitlessly… for someone to come buy the property. It had sat abandoned ever since then, while the owners waited for the building to crumble to dust on its own.
That was just fine with Skidmark. The old mall was perfect for the Merchant Rave; having some fat old rich white dudes footing the bill to build the perfect arena for his show was just the cherry on top. Made him laugh just thinking about it. He walked around the top floor of the building, Mr. Lucky in hand, looking down and watching his crew set things up.
"But why Christmas Eve?" Mush asked him. "Most people have big parties on New Years." The little deformed runt was tagging along behind him, dogging his steps. His powers weren't much use for getting things set up-- well, he'd been useful for clearing out all the trash, first, but now he had nothing better to do than follow Skidmark around.
"First off, BLEEP you, that's why," Skidmark said, rolling Mr. Lucky between his palms. "Second, I ain't most people. Third, that's when the cops and the BLEEPing Protectorate is out looking for raves and parties and BLEEP like that. Nobody's out on Christmas BLEEPing Eve, so nobody'll come looking for us." He looked down and started yelling. "HEY YOU STUPID BLEEP! BLEEP YOUR BLEEPING BLEEP! DON'T PUT THE FOOD WAGONS NEXT TO THE COKE TABLES! PUT IT NEXT TO THE HASH PIPES, FOOL! BLEEPing idiots, put the food on the far side of the place from the people with all the munchies, they get lost on the way to the food tables and end up eating each other.
"No, the blacklight posters go in the store on the BLEEPING FIRST floor, not the BLEEPing TOP floor! You think I want them acid trippers and shroom monkeys trying to FLY, land on a nigga's BLEEPING HEAD? Yeah, come to think of it, throw some o' them mattresses on the bottom floor under the guard rail just in case. I din't pay for this place, I ain't moppin no BLEEPin brains off no BLEEPin' floors…
"AND WHERE THE BLEEP ARE MY PORTA POTTIES? SQUEALER!!!"
"WHAT??" Came a shout from below.
"You got them BLEEPing power lines hooked up yet?"
"In a minute! Trainwreck's punchin' some holes through to the city power mains--" There was a crunch and the sound of crumbling concrete. "We're good!"
"A'ight," Skidmark said, brushing dust off his nonexistent cuffs. "That's me. Mister world class Party Planner."
"Hey Skidmark!"
"WHAT?"
"The food guy wants to know what to do with the pot brownies-- with the food, or with the drugs?"
"'sa good question. Wait a minute--" he stuck his head over the rail. "I DIDN'T GET NO BLEEPIN' POT BROWNIES!"
"You didn't?"
"DO I LOOK LIKE BETTY BLEEPIN' CROCKER TO YOU, WOMAN? Mush, go down there and-- hell, do somethin' about the brownies. Move 'em, sell 'em EAT 'em all I don't care." Mush scurried off. Skidmark growled to himself and returned to prowling, eventually tossing himself into a broken down old chair he'd brought in for a new "throne." This last couple months had been hard. But tonight, tonight was going to turn things around. He pulled the silver briefcase handcuffed to his arm up into his lap and opened it up, looking at the contents the way other men would look at a lover. Six vials. Six.
After tonight, the Merchants were making one mother of a comeback. And when it was done, they were gonna tear that Skinwalker apart.
Taylor sat down on the couch next to her father. "Merry Christmas, Daddy" she said, handing him a package and giving him a peck on the cheek.
"And Merry Christmas to you too," he said, handing her a package in return. It was their little tradition: one package the night before. The miniature Christmas tree had two or three more presents under it for each of them, that would be opened the next day. This first one though was still special.
He finished picking the package open-- he'd always done that, trying to keep the paper in one whole piece. It drove Taylor crazy, she'd keep urging him to "just rip it open already!" Inside was an old fashioned pocket watch, complete with a platinum chain. He wound it and listened to it tick.
"Hey, nice. Very classy," he said. "I'll be the envy of the dockworkers." He'd always longed for something so classical and dignified. he was going to have to buy a waistcoat just to have a pocket for it.
Paper flew from Taylor's hands in wild shreds. "ohhh," she said, pulling out a set of tortoiseshell combs. "Oh these are beautiful. Though I don't know when I would wear them..." she took them out anyway and, with a bit of fumbling and a little help from Danny, used them to pin her hair up. She looked at her reflection in the windowglass, beaming. Then for a moment she looked wistful.
"Wishing your boyfriend could be here?" Danny said, tugging on a loose lock of her hair. It hurt him how critical his beautiful little girl was of her appearance, but even at her lowest she had always been proud of her long black mane of hair. The combs had been the perfect gift, he thought with pleasure; a perfect adornment for her lustrous crown of curls.
"Daddy--!" The words 'he's not my boyfriend' rose to her lips but didn't quite leave them. Instead she nodded. "He said he'd be here for New Years, though," she said.
"I'm sure he wishes he could have been," Danny said. He pulled another package out from behind the sofa pillow where he'd hidden it. "Which is probably why he dropped this off the other day..."
Taylor squeaked and grabbed the package. The paper vanished in a twinkling and she sat there, holding a lovingly bound hardback volume, titled in gold lettering. "The collected works of O. Henry," she read aloud. She opened to the first page and a letter fell out.
"Dear Taylor;
You've spent so much time talking about your favorite authors, I figured I'd give you a chance to read one of my own. You'll like his work; he was an original American classic.
I'm sorry I couldn't come over for Christmas, but believe me, it's for a good cause and it's something I have to do. I want so much to show you what I've been up to, and I can't wait until I can let you see it for yourself.
Till then, I'll be thinking of you, and hope you'll be doing the same.
All my best wishes,
Adrian"
"Oh that is so...what, what's so funny?" Because Danny Hebert was chuckling.
"Honey, he got us," he said. "He got us both." Taylor stared at him, mystified. "Let me ask; did Adrian give you any suggestions for what gift to give me?"
Taylor blushed a bit but nodded. "He spotted the watch at the Market and told me it'd be perfect for you," she said.
Danny laughed out loud at that. "Well, I called him up to ask how you were doing at school one day," he said. "I mentioned I was trying to think of a good gift for you, and he blurts out "tortoiseshell combs," and then fumbled around saying it was because you were so proud of your hair… he even told me where I could find some classy old-fashioned ones like these..." He looked at her confused face. "Haven't you ever read O. Henry, honey? Of all the classic authors, for you not to have read--" he chuckled. He pointed at the book. "Tell you what: Open that up to 'The Gift of the Magi" and read it for me."
She obeyed, turning to the table of contents and finding the story. "One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas...."
She read on, and it became obvious to Danny when she started to suspect because the smile on her face started turning into a gleeful grin. When she got to the part about the watch fob and the tortoiseshell combs she laughed out loud. "That STINKER!" she said between gales of laughter. "How did he pull this off??"
Danny chuckled till his sides hurt. "He probably got the idea when we both asked him for gift advice, and couldn't resist the joke," he said. "He is right though. The Gift of the Magi, the Ransom of Red Chief, the Last Leaf, the Cop and the Anthem, A Retrieved Reformation… his stories have practically become American folklore. There's hardly a scriptwriter on the planet that hasn't cribbed the plot from one of his stories. You probably have read his stories or at least heard of them, and just not known it."
Taylor flipped through the pages, looking over the titles and the few illustrations to each story. "I can't wait for you to meet him," she said. "He's a great guy, really." A look of worry fleetingly appeared in her eyes. "Sometimes I feel like he wants to take the weight of the whole world on his shoulders."
Danny sat back and smiled. "I'm sure he'll turn out to be a great guy," he said. "New Year's is soon enough."
Night fell. Adrian looked down from a nearby hilltop onto the Twin Pines Mall. There were mobs of people moving around in the normally empty parking lot, and lights were beginning to blaze up inside the building. How in blazes did Skidmark expect to hold this "rave" of his without pulling down the attention of every cop and cape in the Bay? This mess was probably visible from orbit!
Not his problem, though. He pulled down his hoodie and hitched his backpack up on his shoulders. His goals tonight were a lot simpler than figuring out what was going on in Skidmark's messed up brain. Get in. Take out the security. Clear out the crowds. Take out the capes. Pull in the cops. He recited this to himself like a mantra as he trudged down the hill.
For the first step, he was going in the easy way: through the front door. That's why he was in his Human form. He'd worn some of the ratty clothes left over from his Goodwill raid, just some jeans and a hoody. They were clean, but scruffy enough to pass as normal for this crowd. Getting in didn't look like a problem either. It wasn't like Skidmark was setting up a velvet rope or anything.
Just as he reached the edge of the parking lot, something that sounded like several diesel engines rumbled to life. The sounds coming from the mall grew muffled and distant and the air began to shimmer. With a cracking noise, the building, the parking lot and everything in it vanished.
Adrian cursed. So that was how he was going to pull it off. Squealer was the Merchant vehicle tinker, and she was notorious for at least two things; the ugliest brute-force vehicles anyone had ever seen, and cloaking devices that were almost obscene in how well they worked. It wasn't unusual in Brockton Bay to see the Merchants making an escape in a getaway vehicle that looked like a garbage truck had mated with a tank, only to see it shimmer and vanish into thin air right on the street. Or worse, to be driving down what looked like a calm early morning city street and have one of Squealer's vehicular nightmares appear out of nowhere right on top of you. Drivers in Brockton Bay had such nerves of steel they made New York cabbies look like sissies.
Apparently she'd hooked up one, or several of them to judge from the sound he'd heard, to cover the building. Someone might notice the abandoned building was missing, but noone in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve was going to go over and look to see what had happened, or even care that much. Well, perfect. That was just one more thing to deal with.
He ran forward, one hand out in front of himself, hoping it wasn't anything more solid than a stealth field. He stumbled as the world began to grow wavy, but a hand grabbed him and pulled him on through. It was one of the Merchant guards, a gun slung across his back. "Better hustle, kid," he laughed, mocking humor in his eyes. "You almost missed the party." He gave Adrian a half-shove towards the front doors. A couple more Merchants were at the door, shaking people down and checking them for weapons (and probably for valuables, if he didn't miss his guess.)
The crowd alternately pulled and shoved him forward till he was standing in front of a huge, burly black man, with bloodshot eyes and a paunch that made him look like a prizefighter gone to seed. He held out his hand for Adrian's backpack. Adrian pulled it off and held it open; the guy roughly pulled it open further and looked inside. All he saw were some odds and ends; some meal bars, extra socks and underwear, some bits of junk that could've been anything, but obviously nothing that set off any alarms with the guy.
There was a reason for that. Adrian had stuffed his haversack down inside the ratty backpack, disguising it. After many long nights and painstaking labor, he'd managed to convert his useful-yet-limited one-pocked bottomless haversack into one with two. His weapons, costume, and gear were all in the second pocket, which the bloodshot-eyed guard didn't know how to open. He grunted and let go of the bag. "You ain't gonna party much without any cash or stash," he said.
Adrian gave him a mocking curl of the lip back. "Like I'd tell you where I kept my cash OR my stash," he said. The guy sneered back, but there seemed to be a little more respect in his bloodshot eyes for someone who wasn't a complete fool. He shoved Adrian inside.
The first impression was crowded. The second was blinding. The third was deafening. The loudspeakers were pounding out something approximating music; it was hard to tell what, it was so loud all you could hear or feel was the thundering beat. There were lights, strobes, and even a few laser lights blazing in every direction. Bodies were pressed in everywhere, hanging from the rails on all three floors, trying to move to the beat or move against each other. There was a haze in the air, almost thick enough to be from a smoke machine. Adrian caught a whiff and immediately had to cast a decontaminate on himself to keep from getting an instant contact high.
The only clear space was the center of the open court, where a huge pool and fountain had been. The water was long gone and the fountain had been ripped out, leaving a six-foot-deep concrete pit, about fifty feet on a side. A crudely welded iron cage was suspended above it on chains. Parked directly to one side of the pit was one of Squealer's creations. It looked like a porno from a monster truck rally. Most of it was cross between a six-wheeled, oversized humvee and a cherry-picker crane. High up in the basket was Skidmark, holding a big trash bag and wearing a Santa hat and coat. The drug king of Brockton Bay grabbed a microphone and yelled into it.
"WASSUP, BLEEPERS? HO HO BLEEPING HO!" He reached into the sack, pulled out a handful of dime bags-- some with pills, others with nuggets of weed-- and flung them out over the crowd. The crowd went wild, scrabbling for the free goodies, hands outstretched trying to catch them out of the air. Skidmark repeated the toss a couple of times, then emptied the bag into the air, tossing it away when he was done.
He let the crowd roar a bit, then signaled for attention. "ATTENTION, BLEEPERS!" he bellowed, making the speakers boom and whine with feedback. The noise faded to a dull roar. "IT'S TIME FOR A MERCHANT RAAAAAAVE!" The crowed roared in approval.
Adrian took advantage of the noise. It was time to get to work. He slipped into the shadows of one of the ruined storefronts and hid behind one of the empty shelves. He shifted into worgen form and hastily donned his costume and gear, changed to his sabertooth panther form and disappeared. He kept one ear on what Skidmark was shouting as he began prowling the perimeter.
"Now you BLEEPers, you're asking me-- 'Skidmark, you sexy BLEEPing BLEEPer, what have you got for us?' And I'm here to tell you-- we got BOOZE!" A roar of approval answered that. "We got DRUGS!" Another roar. "We got HOES!" An especially loud animal noise of approval went up. "And tonight, for one night only-- we got THE CAGE MATCH!" Makeshift spotlights illuminated the concrete pit and the cage above it. Cheers resounded.
Skinwalker kept on the move, slipping from shadow to shadow. He didn't have much in the way of equipment left. He'd blown most everything he had on the Cauldron attack and then some. What he had left he was going to have to make very good use of. Particularly he had the strobes and sirens of about a score of unfinished Alarm-o-bots, the last of his completed bots that had been serving as security at the Lost Workshop…. And some seaforium charges. A lot of seaforium charges.
As he arrived at what he considered strategic locations, he would decloak and plant one of the unfinished Alarm-o-bots. Any armed Merchant he stumbled across were swiftly dealt with; the fools were all facing inward, gawping up at their illustrious leader as he showered them with his profanity-laden speech. He crept up behind one after another, knocked them out, tagged them, and stuffed them in one dark uninspected corner or another, their hands and feet zip-tied and duct-tape over their mouths.
"For you BLEEPS who don't know what the BLEEP the Cage Match is about, Clean the BLEEP out of your BLEEP BLEEP and BLEEP BLEEP ears and listen the BLEEP up!"
His primary goal were the emergency exits. There were guards inside and out at each one. Those he had no choice, it would be too complicated to quietly take them out. He sneaked up in stealth and planted the charges, and hoped they were smart enough to get out of the way when the balloon went up.
"BZZZT BLEEP BLEEPITY BLEEP BLEEP BLONK A BLEEP BLING BLAPPY BLAPPITY BLINGO BLANGO BOING BLEEP EFFITY EFFIN BLEEEEEP!"
Skinwalker had to pause at that one. Dang.
"EFFIN BLEEPIN microphone shorted out on my tongue—aaow-- Anyway you BLEEPS, this is how you make your CHOPS in the MERCHANTS. You want in? You go in the Cage. Whoever comes out STANDIN' UP is a MERCHANT. Yeah, you get the free decoder ring and all that BLEEP. You a scrub, you wanna get a PROMOTION? Get some better money, better BLEEP and more BLEEP with your BLANK? you go in the Cage with another homeboy who wants a promotion-- one that comes out standin up, gets his stripes! And the more matches you walk in on, the higher up you go!"
"Hey, we'll even cut you a deal! You got a tab you runnin' with us? Wanna clear it out? Survive a round in the cage and we'll cut it by half! Take two an' we'll cut it again!"
The stealth field generators weren't hard to find. They were up on the roof, huge ungainly things that looked like they'd been built out of diesel engines. It must have taken a ton of fuel to power a cloak that large. There were three or four merchants up their with submachine guns, passing a spliff or three and cursing their luck at having to stand out in the cold. He rolled the seaforium pots under each roaring, chugging engine and skulked back inside, sneaking down the enclosed stairwell.
This was grim. If he went through with this, even with all he was doing, there was no guarantees. Someone could be injured, maybe even mortally, in the chaos. In fact it was likely. These guys weren't footsoldiers, like he'd been slapping around in the street. These were thugs who'd gone up a few ranks… trusted with weapons, given bandanas to mark their rank. That meant they'd killed already, in the cage if nowhere else. These weren't cute little comedy characters, lovable drunks and wacky stoners from some idiotic sitcom. These guys were scum, and once the balloon went up they'd be doing their level best to kill him.
But could he even do this? He'd done his share of violence since arriving here. But he'd shied back from anything... permanent. If he HAD to, absolutely had to, could he kill?
It was then that he heard someone screaming, muffled and frantic. He looked over the rail; down below five guys had dragged a girl into the stairwell of the fire escape. Two were holding her arms while a third smothered her mouth with a filthy paw. The other two were busy tearing off what little she was already wearing.
Something switched off inside him. He transformed from panther to worgen and vaulted the rail. He landed silently behind the two tearing at the girl's clothes and seized both their heads in huge taloned paws. He brought their skulls together with all his strength.
Before their bodies had even slumped to the floor, his hands lashed out, smashing the heads of the two holding her arms against the concrete block wall behind them with a sickening crunch. The last one holding the girl didn't have time to scream. Adrian reached around the girl, grabbed the grimy man by his neck, throttling him. He pulled him off her and whipped him by his neck overhand behind him. The rapist's plummet down the stairwell wasn't clean; he clanged off the rails a few time on the way down before hitting the bottom floor with a wet thump.
The girl, thankfully, was too terrified to scream. She cowered against the wall, trying to cover herself as she stared up at him with wide, frightened eyes. He pulled his hoodie out of his haversack and tossed it to her. She grasped at it, pulling it to herself.
"Get out," he said. "While you can." Whimpering, she scurried past him, plunging out the exit at the bottom of the stairwell and into the cold night. There was no challenge by the guards that were supposed to be there. Fair odds those particular Merchants were the ones piled at his feet.
The would-be rapists, incredibly, were still alive. He could hear them struggling to breathe; one moaned faintly. Snarling silently, he trussed them up, zip ties all around and just enough Azeroth bandages and drops of potion to keep them from dying...the entire time gnashing his teeth so hard his fangs almost broke. Yes, oh yes he could kill. The question was whether he could hold himself back from it.
The answer was: yes. For now.
"But lemme tell y'all something NEW has been added!" Skinwalker heard that and quickly returned to stealth form, slipping back indoors. "New" was not good. "Yeah. BLEEP yeah! There's gonna be six GRAND BLEEPING PRIZE WINNERS this time." Skidmark held up a silver briefcase and turned, showing it to the crowd. Skinwalker could see that it was cuffed to his wrist by a long steel chain. He'd mistaken that earlier for some bit of jewelry. "Y'all know what this is?" Skidmark said. He opened the case, letting everyone see what was inside: six glass vials, each nestled in foam. They glimmered in the harsh light. "Magic in a bottle. The Genie's lamp. You've heard the legends and the legends are true… Cape Juice. Powers in a bottle.
"We gonna pick six of you BLEEPS that does best in the Cage. One bottle each. Drink it down and get to walk the earth like a GOD!"
Skinwalker quickly shifted to his owl form and fluttered up to a nearby decorative buttress- the mob never noticed; every greedy eye was fixed on the leader of the Merchants and his prize. Bayleaf focused in on the case. For a creature who could spot a fieldmouse from a hundred feet up, it was an easy read. Yes, there it was: the Cauldron logo, etched in the stopper. They were real.
"SO LET THE BLEEPING GAMES BEGIN!"
That was all it took. Half a dozen would-be contestants pushed past the Merchant guards holding back the crowd and dropped into the pit. Knives, chains, and broken bottles came out. Down in the cockpit of her vehicle, Squealer hit a lever and the cage began to drop.
Skinwalker changed back, still crouched on his perch. "I don't think so," he muttered. He pulled a remote control out of his pocket and hit the button. All around the perimeter, sirens began to whoop. Red and blue strobes began flashing. "YOU ARE SURROUNDED! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP! SURRENDER!"
The response was gratifying. The crowd of drunks, junkies, partiers and wannabe rebels began screaming as if Leviathan himself had just popped out of the fountain. As one, the mob began pushing in any direction, so long as it looked like it was away from those lights and sirens.
Which happened to be, thanks to careful timing and placement, in the direction of the exits. Skinwalker hit another button and the seaforium charges blew. With a deafening blast all the doors, fire exits, and loading dock shutters in the building blew outward and away, sending Merchant guards flying and leaving a clear path out into the freezing snow-blown night.
At the same time the four cloaking device engines chugging away on the roof suffered a catastrophic failure as their undersides were blown out through their tops. The aura concealing the building from sight and attention popped like a soap bubble and the neighbors for a mile in every direction were woken from their dreams of sugarplums by an eruption of light, noise, explosions and screaming.
For an added touch, batches of pandarian fireworks whistled into the sky, showering the area with sparks. "Let's see the patrolmen ignore that," Skinwalker muttered.
The mob poured out into the parking lot in every direction, fleeing where none pursued. Those that didn't found themselves being pursued by six-foot-tall extinguisher bots. Skinwalker hadn't quite perfect them though. They tended to keep dousing his forges, his candles, himself when he was asleep… they were sufficient for the job of laying down fire suppression and chasing the last of the junkies out. More than one stoner smoking a bong or spliff regretted not opting for the brownies instead as they suddenly found themselves eating a faceful of fire extinguisher foam.
It was at this point that Mush and Trainwreck made their appearance. They came thundering in, Trainwreck in yet another kludged together steam-junk suit of armor, Mush wearing the content of two or three dumpsters. They spotted him perched on the wall and came running, yelling.
Skinwalker gave it a five count. When the East wall was clear of any civilians, he pulled out another remote and flicked the "on" switch.
He'd not had resources to build everything he needed. he'd blown most of his stockpile on the attack of opportunity on Cauldron. There was no possible way he could have built himself a brand new army of six foot robots in three months, much less a week. But it was amazing the stopgap measures you could make when you had a gnomish shrinking or enlarging ray.
BOOM! The East wall… a late unlamented shoe store… exploded inward. In through the rubble came a gigantic Tonk, one of the caterpillar-treaded dwarven war machines of Azeroth. Its turret rotated, bringing its vastly oversized barrel to bear.
THOOM. The cannonball struck Trainwreck square in the chest. His suit's arms and legs went flying in all four directions and his torso, crumpled into ruin, hit the wall and tumbled to the floor. The limbless tinker lay there, cursing violently, trapped… and unable to run even if he could have crawled out.
Mush rallied, wadding together a boulder of trash and heaving it at the worgen. It missed by a yard, splattering against the wall and raining trash everywhere. Skinwalker wasted no time on him. A bottle of lamp oil arced across the intervening space, splashing over the cape and his trash-golem body. Right behind it was a ball of sunfire.
"No, wait--!" Mush screamed, trying to ward off the sunblast with upraised arms. It did no good. The oil soaked mass of plastic and paper and rotting gassy mung went up like a tiki torch. Mush ran screaming, shedding lumps of his burning body as fast as he could. He tumbled to the floor after a few hundred feet, falling down just clear of the burning mess, his tendrils smoking. Two Extinguisher-bots cornered him, spraying the burning waste and the burning cape with extinguisher foam.
And then there were two.
As the tonk continued firing randomly in every direction, raising dust and raining rubble, Skinwalker leaped from the flying buttress to the hanging cage, then from the cage to the arm of the cherry-picker. He climbed up it hand over hand, fast as a man could run on level ground, and leapt into the basket. Skidmark hadn't stopped screaming a mixture of orders and profanities the entire time, but noone was listening. The Merchant warlord turned and saw the worgen in the basket with him and nearly shat himself.
Before Skidmark could do anything Skinwalker grabbed the chain to the briefcase and snapped it between his hands like a strand of twine. He grabbed the case in one fist just as Skidmark gathered his one scattered wit and hit him with his powers. Suddenly the floor of the cherry picker platform under Skinwalker's feet turned slick as grease and some force shot him backwards and over the rail. He ricocheted off the cage with a crack-- he felt ribs break-- then he landed on the roof of the Tonk.
Bullets began spalling off the Tonk's thick hide all around him. Hastily he pulled open the hatch in the eagle's head cockpit and dropped inside, seconds before the cage dropped and bounced off his hull. A hasty Heal to his ribs was all he could manage at the moment; things were getting a little bit exciting.
Even though he shrank down to human form again there was little room in the cockpit. Most of the space was taken up with a gnomish gadget that pinged and buzzed and sizzled and went "vumm" every few seconds. This was his little kitbash solution to needing a full sized vehicle: he'd built a toy Tonk and then installed a gnomish enlarger inside. He'd kludged it from the blueprints for a World Shrinker Ray; Once activated, every so often it would send a pulse of "Enlarge" through the vehicle, keeping it at its current size. The extinguisher-bots had been treated the same way, with a quick squirt of enlarger ray. Unfortunately he didn't have enough to build enlargers for all of them, so in another ten minutes or so they were going to smeerrrrp back to their regular toybox-ready size.
He gave the enlarger an uneasy glance. If that thing broke down, things were going to get a trifle cramped inside this Tonk.
Bullets pinged and whined off the Tonk's skin. Apparently there were some loyal holdouts. Skinwalker wasn't too worried about that, but they were liable to fish something out bigger, sooner or later--- something a lot larger than a .45 bullet banged violently against his hull. Speak of the Devil. It looked like Squealer had gotten at least one of the guns on her Hellmobile lined up on him. As he recalled from canon, some idiot had sold this bunch rocket launchers at one point. He didn't see any launch tubes on that thing, but he sure as hell didn't want to test his craftsmanship or his luck against it.
He looked down at the briefcase. Mission parameters had changed. This case was vital evidence, proof that could bust half a dozen conspiracies wide open. He had to get this fight out in the open and on his terms again. He grabbed the controls and spun the gun turret around til it was pointing straight into Squealer's front grille, not ten feet in front of him.
He fired. With an almighty bang the bulldozer shovel Squealer had bolted to the front of her vehicle for armor was blasted off. It went flipping end over end to crash someplace on the second floor. The whole vehicle tilted sideways, threatening to tip over, crane and all. Even over the gunfire Skinwalker could hear Squealer and Skidmark shrieking and swearing. He took advantage of their excited distraction and threw the Tonk in reverse.
With a spray of gravel and a roar from the enlarged engine, the Tonk shot backwards and out the way it had come in. He roared across the parking lot, his treads ripping the asphalt. All around in every direction he could see police lights, real police lights, closing in on the abandoned shopping mall. All the more reason to get Skidmark, Squealer and their cannon-covered Helltruck away from here.
So far, so good: a moment later Squealer's Helltruck rocketed out of the ruptured wall, bouncing on all six tires as it caught air leaving the building. The cherry-picker had been lowered down and locked, and Skidmark was riding in the basket like an elephant rider in a howda, screaming and gesticulating.
No, not just waving his arms, Skinwalker realized. Skidmark was laying down his power ahead of the Helltruck, making it go faster.
Skidmark had a power you'd probably expect more out of the gamer-nerd villains uber and leet: he could lay down patches of energy on any surface that acted like the booster arrows in Mario Kart, making anything that crossed them accelerate in the direction he laid out. He was hanging on the basket resting on the vehicle's hood, using his free hand to toss down patch after patch after patch in front of the Helltruck's wheels. In his other hand he was clutching a black globe of some sort-- it kind of looked like an eight ball. Was it something he needed to make his power work, Skinwalker wondered?
No time for that. The Helltruck was in hot pursuit, guns blazing like strobe lights, and it was closing fast. Skinwalker opened up the throttle and threw the Tonk in reverse, roaring out of the parking lot, crossing the neighboring road, and hurtling down an intersecting street. Backwards, no less.
He had three shots left. It was a residential district but Skinwalker had little choice. He lowered the Tonk's cannon and fired. Squealer dodged as the road erupted. The second shot cavitied the road ahead of the Helltruck, but it bounced over the craters with its six fat wheels without a problem.
Then Skidmark laid down a streak of accelerator. The Helltruck rocketed forward and struck the Tonk with an enormous smash. When Skinwalker shook his head clear, he'd reverted to worgen form again. The hatch on his cockpit was gone, along with a good part of the roof, and his cannon and treads were wedged in the Helltruck's mangled grille. He yanked on the controls; no go, he was stuck on the front of Squealer's Helltruck like a reindeer on Grandma's bumper. And they were STILL rolling down the road at breakneck speeds, his back wheels sparking off the pavement as the tread belt rattled off them.
Then the enlarger began to spark. "Oh, not good," Skinwalker muttered.
He looked up and Squealer's eyes met his. She saw his predicament. She gave him a leer fit for the Devil and tromped on the accelerator. The roar from the engine was like the end of the World coming.
Skinwalker looked over his shoulder. The street they were on ended at a half-mile paved pier. The half-mile pier ended in a rustic wooden pier. The wooden pier ended in the bay. They roared off the road and began hurtling down the pier, smashing signs and fishing shacks on either side the entire way. Skidmark was screaming like a lunatic, waving the black ball over his head. "We got 'im, Mr. Lucky! We got 'im now!!"
Skinwalker scrabbled at the controls. Brakes weren't working. Engine wasn't working. Pretty soon the Enlarger wasn't going to be working.
The cannon was working. He grabbed the trigger and looked Squealer in the eyes again over the hoods of their conjoined vehicle. Her eyes went wide as she realized at the last second what he was going to do.
Could he kill?
If he had to.
"HEY SQUEALER," he yelled. "TANK…YOU!"
And yanked the trigger.
Had the Helltruck not lost its front armor the story might have ended differently. But the shovel in the front was long gone, and the cannon barrel was wedged right up against the Helltruck's radiator. The cannonball smashed through the engine block, through the cab behind it, through the dual engines behind that, and out the back of the vehicle, destroying everything in its path and engulfing everything else inside the vehicle's armored hide in a cauldron of flame. Smoke and burning fuel and red hot steel erupted from the tail of the vehicle like the vomit of hell. The Helltruck came to a thundering halt, plowing to a stop just a few dozen yards from the end of the wooden pier.
But alas, even in the world of capes, action must equal reaction. The damaged Tonk and all its contents, including the briefcase full of miracle potions and one worgen, blasted free of the Helltruck's grasp and went hurtling off the end of the dock. They hit with a mighty splash, and disappeared in the icy waves.
The sudden halt dismounted Skidmark from his steed. By pure luck he vaulted clear of his dead girlfriend's burning vehicle to safety. He tumbled down the length of the dock, ending up on his hands and knees. For a wonder, he still had Mr. Lucky clutched in his hand.
"BLEEP," he groaned, getting up off his bloody hands and knees. He looked back at the truck. It was gutted, the inside a raging inferno. "Squealer!" he shouted. For the first time in ages he showed some human feeling; he watched, stunned and bereft, as the truck and whatever was left of his woman burned.
"The briefcase!!" he suddenly screamed. He ran for the end of the dock. The wooden quay was already badly damaged and threatening to crumble into the water. He clung to the sinking post and tried, uselessly, to see where the briefcase had gone. It had sunk to the bottom of the Bay, apparently. "BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP it, those BLEEPING briefcases are supposed to BLEEPING FLOAT!" He screamed. He sank to his knees. "five… and a half.. million… bucks," he moaned. Every last bit of operating capital the Merchants had left, and more. That's what it had cost to get those vials. He was broke, he was in debt to people he didn't even want to think about, the rest of the capes in his gang were down or dead, and his last hope of the Merchants pulling a comeback had just disappeared into the depths.
He held up the magic 8 ball and shook it, looking into its window. "Come on, Mr. Lucky. I need your help," he pleaded. "Come on, Mr. Lucky. It was you who told me about those vials, it was you who told me where to get them, all of this was all your plan, c'mon, you gotta have a way to get me outta this--"
The bubble-window remained dark.
"BLEEP YOU!" Skidmark screamed. "This is all YOUR fault, you TRAITOR!" He took the 8-ball and flung it out into the waves as far as he could. It barely made a splash. He turned in a circle, pulling at his scorched dreadlocks with his fingers. "What do I do, what do I do..."
The damaged dock sank a little further. Something sloshed in the water. Skidmark turned on his heel and stared at the water suspiciously. Something was moving around down there. He carefully lowered himself down onto the last few boards of the pier, squinting…
Not many people know anything bout Skidmark's formative years. Largely because nobody cares. But it must be said that at one point he was an ordinary innocent child. And during those formative years, when he was about eight years old, his jackass of an older brother tricked him into going to the theater to see a new movie-- "Orca." This was one of the many would-be imitators that came out after the debut of "Jaws," about a vengeful killer whale pursuing the sailor that had killed its mate and calf. It was corny, it was schlocky, it was hilariously awful. But to an eight-year-old Skidmark it had been a sleigh ride into mind-blowing terror that had impacted on him the rest of his life. He couldn't even be in the same room as a Shamu plushy without having to make a break for another room.
So one can only imagine the depths of utter, mind-shattering horror that clutched his soul when a full grown bull killer whale erupted from the water below.
He had time for one chilling scream before that enormous mouth closed over him.
Several miles away, a man at a computer sat back and contemplated what he'd seen. He'd gotten a front row seat of the entire battle of the Twin Pines Mall, from the moment Skidmark had climbed aboard the cherry picker to the last few seconds of him shaking Mr. Lucky and screaming at him-- then a few seconds of rapid sky-ocean-sky-ocean ending in a splash, and darkness.
It had been what, three years ago now? That he had a stroke of luck and learned of the drug kingpin's obsession with the plastic toy. On an impulse he'd had one of his agents steal the thing and replace it with one with a few technological additions, such as a spy camera and microphone and a specially made text screen that imitated a real 8-ball's liquid chamber. With this trinket he'd been able to not only spy on his rival, but to actually order him and his entire gang around. It had turned an annoying problem underfoot into a useful resource.
The footage of late had been particularly entertaining, as Skidmark had begun carrying his lucky 8-ball everywhere with him. Entertaining and enlightening. This new cape was versatile, eccentric and if pressed, ruthless. He demonstrated a startling range of abilities and at levels the resources in the PRT only guessed at. He also had a gift for insights into leveraging powers to their best effectiveness, if his little gifts to the Protectorate and the Wards were any indicator. He would make an extraordinarily useful asset, and a deadly liability. The only option for dealing with him was to recruit him, or eliminate him.
Coil turned away from his desk and leaned back, contemplating how he might accomplish either.
About a mile down the beach, a pair of Brockton Bay's bravest, sitting in their squad car at the end of a short dock filling out paperwork, found themselves witnesses to an extraordinary sight.
"OhJesusJesusJESUShelpOHLordJESUSlordLORdOHGODhelp..."
Plowing through the water, its head held high, was a killer whale. It swam past the end of the dock, water pluming in its wake.
It appeared to be dragging Skidmark of the Merchants in its mouth by his leg. The leader of the merchants was dressed in a sodden Santa Claus coat and, for a wonder, was not swearing. He appeared to be praying.
"OHJESUSMARYandJOSEPHandPETERandPAULandSAINTJEROME! "
Apparently to anyone and everyone who he thought might be listening.
"PETERPAULANDMARY! EARTHWINDANDFIRE! HARRY KRISHNA! HARRY KARI! HARRY POTTER!!"
They got out of their squad car silently, unable to take their eyes off the spectacle. The whale was swimming in a wide figure eight, dragging its terrified toy around in the icy waves.
"HEAR ME ALLAH! SAVE ME BUDDAH! HELP ME KALI!!…"
Officer Charlie, the quicker thinking of the duo, reached in the window of the patrol car, honked the horn and flashed the lights. The orca stopped and stood on its tail; they had gotten its attention. Or perhaps it had been trying to get theirs.
"OH MISTER ROGERS! OH KENNY ROGERS! OH BOB ROSS! HAVE MERCY ON ME!"
The whale swam in closer to the beach. The two officers panicked when it began whipping its head back and forth; they'd both seen enough nature documentaries to remember seeing how a killer whale snapped the neck of a seal. They needn't have worried; the orca wasn't going for the kill-- it was just winding up. With a wrench of its head the magnificent sea animal flung Skidmark in a high arc towards the shore.
"OPTIMUS PRIME SAVE OUR SOOOUUUUULS!!!!"
The leader of the Merchants landed on the cold, wet sand with a splat. He groaned in pain for a second, then got up on his knees, feeling himself over. "I'm alive. I'M ALIIIIIVE!" he began laughing hysterically. He clung to the first officer who ran up, weeping and giggling and falling into a complete breakdown.
"You're also under arrest," Officer Charlie said, pulling out the cuffs and slapping them on the sopping wet junkie.
"That's nice," Skidmark said, nodding and smiling. Then he fell to the sand and curled up in a fetal ball, shivering and weeping and making blithering noises. When the PRT van arrived, they had to carry him onto it on a stretcher.
Further on down, out of sight under the docks, the orca beached itself. Its mouth opened and it began making slow, painful retching noises. After several seconds of obvious pain, a silvery metal briefcase slid out of its mouth and onto the sand.
Once the blockage was clear the orca changed, shrinking down to the form of a bedraggled, badly battered worgen in a sodden, singed cloak. Skinwalker fished around in his haversack and pulled out a rune-covered stone. He squeezed it in his fist. A minute ticked by, then two. Glowing lights began to spiral around him. "Hope this works," he groaned. Then he vanished.
He reappeared in the Lost Workshop a few feet above the stone floor. He hit it with a thump, eliciting more groans of pain. "Well, it worked," he muttered to noone. Hearthstones, he had learned in his efforts to make one, were a lot more limited than in the game. Which only made sense. If they were as quick, reliable and efficient as they were in the game, Azeroth's armies would have built strategies around them; having entire platoons set their hearth back at the base camp, for example. Or setting up a secure command network based on mail carriers Hearthstoning across the globe. Or they'd be a hub of commerce: even with as little as a single person could carry, being able to deliver anything across the globe instantly would make it well worth the investment. He smirked to himself at the thought. Azeroth Express, heh.
But in reality they were slow to operate, difficult to make, and even more difficult to reset to a new location. In fact they were generally given as a gift on the birth of a child, and most people kept them set to the town of their birth their whole lives. Their primary purpose was to let the folks at home know you were still alive (the twin of the stone glowed so long as the wielder was still breathing) and… to let the mortally wounded return home to die.
That was not an ideal train of thought. He forced himself to his feet and limped, then crawled, then dragged himself up the stairs to his bed. He considered it a triumph that he sprawled atop it, rather than on the floor next to the stupid briefcase. One of the alarm-o-bots trundled up and tried to push a roll of bandages into his hand dangling over the side. "Thanks little buddy," he mumbled. "Don't think that's gonna do the trick."
He tried for a quick heal. It sputtered out. Then he tried for a slow heal over time. That failed too. An efflorescence?… nothing.
He was wishing to high heaven he'd taken alchemy. He'd be guzzling healing potions like they were Dr. Pepper right now if he had. This was bad. The pain was everywhere, inside and out. (served him right for swallowing a briefcase then puking it back up.) What was wrong?
He was a druid, blast it, why weren't any of his healing and purifying spells working? He needed help. He could go get help… but how. He wasn't a mage, he didn't have a laundry list of places and ways to teleport someplace. Druids only had one real location they could port to.
….Where was it?
Even as he was sliding from consciousness he could hear alarm bells sounding. Alarm bells, right! "Alarm Clock," he slurred. "Set Alarm for 9am, December 31."
The alarm clock dinged. "Alarm set for morning, 9am, December 31," she said soothingly.
Perfect. He didn't want to miss his date.
Where was that place? He could get help there, couldn't he?
Oh right. He clenched his fist and alien light swirled.
"Moonglade."
He woke lying on a grassy slope, at the shore of a glittering lake. Trees vaulted overhead. The air was warm and redolent with the scent of green growing things. He heard fish splashing in the water and birds chirping in the trees. He looked around as best he could without sitting up. "This isn't Moonglade, is it?" he said aloud.
Got it in one.
He sat up and twisted around to see who was speaking. A glowing, humanoid form was sitting next to him with its back against the tree shading them. Hello again. Glad to see you finally figured it out.
"Agent?" Skinwalker said. "What the heck is going on? Where am I?"
Ah, I see I spoke too soon. Agent sighed. Very well, I shall attempt to explain. I think I'll start with the last question first. You attempted to teleport to Moonglade. Correct?
"Yyyyes, I kind of remember that," Adrian said.
It's an ability, indoctrinated into every Azeroth druid from their first day. A place to flee to in time of need… second only to the Emerald Dream as a place of sanctuary. It was your first, natural choice when in a state of distress. However, the problem with that is that there is no Moonglade in this world. So lacking that locale, your powers defaulted to the next choice of sanctuary… attempting to reach the Emerald Dream.
"Attempted." Adrian repeated.
Good of you to catch that. To make it brief, this world has no Emerald Dream, either. The Titans who made Azeroth created it as a sort of… starting blueprint. A parallel plane of Azeroth that served as a baseline against which to measure changes or endeavours they made after a certain point. He paused. Coincidentally you'll note that there's no robotic lifeforms in the Emerald Dream. Which should tell you a lot about the Titans and others who claim that all life on Azeroth was originally "perfect" metal and stone, and that organic life was the result of a "Curse of the flesh."
"So what's the real story?" Adrian asked.
Several of the Titans had something of a … mechanical lifeform fetish. They ran around for a few thousand years, screwing up everyone else's work and turning everything into metal and stone golems. The "Curse," ironically, is life returning to it's proper state.
"Makes sense," Adrian grunted. "I noticed that for all their talk of "the perfection of iron" or "the weakness of flesh," their women still had breasts. I don't know about you but I think of anything more useless, unlikely or counter-productive than boobs made of rock." he snorted. "I kept picturing their men getting together and weeping, "Ach, Ah remember when they jiggled..."
To his surprise, Agent tipped his head back and laughed. Now that was worth the price of admission.
"So if this isn't the Emerald Dream, what is it?" Adrian said.
It is a small pocket dimension, unique to yourself, to which you can retreat in times when you are in dire need of restoration, Agent said. A sort of personal Emerald Dream. While you are here, you have one foot in the material world and one world in the extradimensional. It renders you somewhat… ghostly seeming back on the material plane, making you difficult to injure, influence or move-- but it allows your physical body to restore as if it were entirely here.
"And you are here because…?"
Because it is technically outside the normal material realm, so I am not breaking the rules by being here. His voice seemed smug. Of course I cannot do anything to help you back in the material world either, but we can at least chat… discuss things… offer advice…
"A loophole," Adrian grinned. "Clever stinker."
True, true. Agent's demeanor turned severe. Of course you weren't expected to urgently need this place for another hundred years or so. You really did a number on yourself.
"What?"
Adrian, when is the last time that you slept a full night? Or even half a night? How many weeks has it been, that you've been going to school all day, work all afternoon and then prowling through the night? How many nights have you spent in your Workshop, building and rebuilding and stockpiling?
"But I have to get ready--like you said--"
Not all at once! Not in one month, or three, or even twelve. Don't get me wrong, you've set things in motion, many of them months or even years ahead of schedule…you've bought an incredible amount of time. But you're trying to accomplish everything at once, and it's burning you out. It almost killed you. To say nothing of your injuries. You kept using heal after heal after heal, not taking time to rest and recuperate and let your body heal naturally. It ran your magical batteries down as much as your physical batteries and left you with a just-healed-enough body. And every time it was a little less effective. You're not a video game character, you can't just snap your fingers and heal instantly for free.
In addition to all those breaks, bruises, cuts and stabs and whatnot you got in your nightly excursions, that final explosion did a number on you, he added. You were within a few feet of the center of the blast wave, and it basically bruised your everything. Soft tissues, bones, internal organs. He looked over his glasses pointedly. Swallowing a briefcase didn't help matters.
Adrian shuddered. It was only now that he realized what might have happened had any of the vials leaked.
No, you wouldn't have Triggered, Agent said to his unasked question. Not even as a case 53. You flat out can't. The vials would have just killed you. What would have been left of you would have looked like it hatched at Chernobyl. Agent put on his glasses. As it is, you're going to have to spend quite some time in this state, recuperating.
"How long?" Adrian asked anxiously.
Several days to a week
"But--"
I'm sorry, I can't be any more specific than that, Agent said. For now you need to sleep.
No, wait… It's too close! I won't make it in time-- Adrian tried to protest. But he only slumped down, too weary to speak, lying on the soft green grass.
Don't worry. I'm sure we'll get you out of here in no time.
Adrian heard no more.
"Three… Two… One..."
"Happy New Year, Brockton Bay!"
Taylor blew on her party horn, but it was only a halfhearted effort. They toasted the New Year with sparkling white grape cider in silent awkwardness.
Danny tried to think of something to say. "Pumpkin..."
"Don't, Daddy," Taylor said. "It's okay. It happens, right?" She got up and headed for the stairs. "I'm gonna go on to bed." She trooped up the stairs, leaving her father alone to watch the fireworks on TV and dwell on things.
Chapter Text
The Twin Pines Mall had been intended as competition for the Boardwalk and the Lord's Market. It was a huge square building in the middle of a city block of parking, with an open center court and a vaulted glass ceiling, an enormous decorative pool and fountain, and three stories of full-sized shops. Unlike the Boardwalk or the Market, it would be open year round, available so residents could shop in climate-controlled comfort.
But shortsightedness did the project in. The reason the Market and the Boardwalk had persisted for so long was that the people in the area didn't need more than that; the small neighborhood and downtown shops got all the local money, and the tourists only wanted to go to the scene open air shops or the ritzy seafront stores and restaurants, not a shopping mall. The building had barely been finished before the investors looked at the numbers and folded their hands, unwilling to send good money after bad. They got a huge tax deduction for business loss, and settled in to wait… fruitlessly… for someone to come buy the property. It had sat abandoned ever since then, while the owners waited for the building to crumble to dust on its own.
That was just fine with Skidmark. The old mall was perfect for the Merchant Rave; having some fat old rich white dudes footing the bill to build the perfect arena for his show was just the cherry on top. Made him laugh just thinking about it. He walked around the top floor of the building, Mr. Lucky in hand, looking down and watching his crew set things up.
"But why Christmas Eve?" Mush asked him. "Most people have big parties on New Years." The little deformed runt was tagging along behind him, dogging his steps. His powers weren't much use for getting things set up-- well, he'd been useful for clearing out all the trash, first, but now he had nothing better to do than follow Skidmark around.
"First off, BLEEP you, that's why," Skidmark said, rolling Mr. Lucky between his palms. "Second, I ain't most people. Third, that's when the cops and the BLEEPing Protectorate is out looking for raves and parties and BLEEP like that. Nobody's out on Christmas BLEEPing Eve, so nobody'll come looking for us." He looked down and started yelling. "HEY YOU STUPID BLEEP! BLEEP YOUR BLEEPING BLEEP! DON'T PUT THE FOOD WAGONS NEXT TO THE COKE TABLES! PUT IT NEXT TO THE HASH PIPES, FOOL! BLEEPing idiots, put the food on the far side of the place from the people with all the munchies, they get lost on the way to the food tables and end up eating each other.
"No, the blacklight posters go in the store on the BLEEPING FIRST floor, not the BLEEPing TOP floor! You think I want them acid trippers and shroom monkeys trying to FLY, land on a nigga's BLEEPING HEAD? Yeah, come to think of it, throw some o' them mattresses on the bottom floor under the guard rail just in case. I din't pay for this place, I ain't moppin no BLEEPin brains off no BLEEPin' floors…
"AND WHERE THE BLEEP ARE MY PORTA POTTIES? SQUEALER!!!"
"WHAT??" Came a shout from below.
"You got them BLEEPing power lines hooked up yet?"
"In a minute! Trainwreck's punchin' some holes through to the city power mains--" There was a crunch and the sound of crumbling concrete. "We're good!"
"A'ight," Skidmark said, brushing dust off his nonexistent cuffs. "That's me. Mister world class Party Planner."
"Hey Skidmark!"
"WHAT?"
"The food guy wants to know what to do with the pot brownies-- with the food, or with the drugs?"
"'sa good question. Wait a minute--" he stuck his head over the rail. "I DIDN'T GET NO BLEEPIN' POT BROWNIES!"
"You didn't?"
"DO I LOOK LIKE BETTY BLEEPIN' CROCKER TO YOU, WOMAN? Mush, go down there and-- hell, do somethin' about the brownies. Move 'em, sell 'em EAT 'em all I don't care." Mush scurried off. Skidmark growled to himself and returned to prowling, eventually tossing himself into a broken down old chair he'd brought in for a new "throne." This last couple months had been hard. But tonight, tonight was going to turn things around. He pulled the silver briefcase handcuffed to his arm up into his lap and opened it up, looking at the contents the way other men would look at a lover. Six vials. Six.
After tonight, the Merchants were making one mother of a comeback. And when it was done, they were gonna tear that Skinwalker apart.
Taylor sat down on the couch next to her father. "Merry Christmas, Daddy" she said, handing him a package and giving him a peck on the cheek.
"And Merry Christmas to you too," he said, handing her a package in return. It was their little tradition: one package the night before. The miniature Christmas tree had two or three more presents under it for each of them, that would be opened the next day. This first one though was still special.
He finished picking the package open-- he'd always done that, trying to keep the paper in one whole piece. It drove Taylor crazy, she'd keep urging him to "just rip it open already!" Inside was an old fashioned pocket watch, complete with a platinum chain. He wound it and listened to it tick.
"Hey, nice. Very classy," he said. "I'll be the envy of the dockworkers." He'd always longed for something so classical and dignified. he was going to have to buy a waistcoat just to have a pocket for it.
Paper flew from Taylor's hands in wild shreds. "ohhh," she said, pulling out a set of tortoiseshell combs. "Oh these are beautiful. Though I don't know when I would wear them..." she took them out anyway and, with a bit of fumbling and a little help from Danny, used them to pin her hair up. She looked at her reflection in the windowglass, beaming. Then for a moment she looked wistful.
"Wishing your boyfriend could be here?" Danny said, tugging on a loose lock of her hair. It hurt him how critical his beautiful little girl was of her appearance, but even at her lowest she had always been proud of her long black mane of hair. The combs had been the perfect gift, he thought with pleasure; a perfect adornment for her lustrous crown of curls.
"Daddy--!" The words 'he's not my boyfriend' rose to her lips but didn't quite leave them. Instead she nodded. "He said he'd be here for New Years, though," she said.
"I'm sure he wishes he could have been," Danny said. He pulled another package out from behind the sofa pillow where he'd hidden it. "Which is probably why he dropped this off the other day..."
Taylor squeaked and grabbed the package. The paper vanished in a twinkling and she sat there, holding a lovingly bound hardback volume, titled in gold lettering. "The collected works of O. Henry," she read aloud. She opened to the first page and a letter fell out.
"Dear Taylor;
You've spent so much time talking about your favorite authors, I figured I'd give you a chance to read one of my own. You'll like his work; he was an original American classic.
I'm sorry I couldn't come over for Christmas, but believe me, it's for a good cause and it's something I have to do. I want so much to show you what I've been up to, and I can't wait until I can let you see it for yourself.
Till then, I'll be thinking of you, and hope you'll be doing the same.
All my best wishes,
Adrian"
"Oh that is so...what, what's so funny?" Because Danny Hebert was chuckling.
"Honey, he got us," he said. "He got us both." Taylor stared at him, mystified. "Let me ask; did Adrian give you any suggestions for what gift to give me?"
Taylor blushed a bit but nodded. "He spotted the watch at the Market and told me it'd be perfect for you," she said.
Danny laughed out loud at that. "Well, I called him up to ask how you were doing at school one day," he said. "I mentioned I was trying to think of a good gift for you, and he blurts out "tortoiseshell combs," and then fumbled around saying it was because you were so proud of your hair… he even told me where I could find some classy old-fashioned ones like these..." He looked at her confused face. "Haven't you ever read O. Henry, honey? Of all the classic authors, for you not to have read--" he chuckled. He pointed at the book. "Tell you what: Open that up to 'The Gift of the Magi" and read it for me."
She obeyed, turning to the table of contents and finding the story. "One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas...."
She read on, and it became obvious to Danny when she started to suspect because the smile on her face started turning into a gleeful grin. When she got to the part about the watch fob and the tortoiseshell combs she laughed out loud. "That STINKER!" she said between gales of laughter. "How did he pull this off??"
Danny chuckled till his sides hurt. "He probably got the idea when we both asked him for gift advice, and couldn't resist the joke," he said. "He is right though. The Gift of the Magi, the Ransom of Red Chief, the Last Leaf, the Cop and the Anthem, A Retrieved Reformation… his stories have practically become American folklore. There's hardly a scriptwriter on the planet that hasn't cribbed the plot from one of his stories. You probably have read his stories or at least heard of them, and just not known it."
Taylor flipped through the pages, looking over the titles and the few illustrations to each story. "I can't wait for you to meet him," she said. "He's a great guy, really." A look of worry fleetingly appeared in her eyes. "Sometimes I feel like he wants to take the weight of the whole world on his shoulders."
Danny sat back and smiled. "I'm sure he'll turn out to be a great guy," he said. "New Year's is soon enough."
Night fell. Adrian looked down from a nearby hilltop onto the Twin Pines Mall. There were mobs of people moving around in the normally empty parking lot, and lights were beginning to blaze up inside the building. How in blazes did Skidmark expect to hold this "rave" of his without pulling down the attention of every cop and cape in the Bay? This mess was probably visible from orbit!
Not his problem, though. He pulled down his hoodie and hitched his backpack up on his shoulders. His goals tonight were a lot simpler than figuring out what was going on in Skidmark's messed up brain. Get in. Take out the security. Clear out the crowds. Take out the capes. Pull in the cops. He recited this to himself like a mantra as he trudged down the hill.
For the first step, he was going in the easy way: through the front door. That's why he was in his Human form. He'd worn some of the ratty clothes left over from his Goodwill raid, just some jeans and a hoody. They were clean, but scruffy enough to pass as normal for this crowd. Getting in didn't look like a problem either. It wasn't like Skidmark was setting up a velvet rope or anything.
Just as he reached the edge of the parking lot, something that sounded like several diesel engines rumbled to life. The sounds coming from the mall grew muffled and distant and the air began to shimmer. With a cracking noise, the building, the parking lot and everything in it vanished.
Adrian cursed. So that was how he was going to pull it off. Squealer was the Merchant vehicle tinker, and she was notorious for at least two things; the ugliest brute-force vehicles anyone had ever seen, and cloaking devices that were almost obscene in how well they worked. It wasn't unusual in Brockton Bay to see the Merchants making an escape in a getaway vehicle that looked like a garbage truck had mated with a tank, only to see it shimmer and vanish into thin air right on the street. Or worse, to be driving down what looked like a calm early morning city street and have one of Squealer's vehicular nightmares appear out of nowhere right on top of you. Drivers in Brockton Bay had such nerves of steel they made New York cabbies look like sissies.
Apparently she'd hooked up one, or several of them to judge from the sound he'd heard, to cover the building. Someone might notice the abandoned building was missing, but noone in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve was going to go over and look to see what had happened, or even care that much. Well, perfect. That was just one more thing to deal with.
He ran forward, one hand out in front of himself, hoping it wasn't anything more solid than a stealth field. He stumbled as the world began to grow wavy, but a hand grabbed him and pulled him on through. It was one of the Merchant guards, a gun slung across his back. "Better hustle, kid," he laughed, mocking humor in his eyes. "You almost missed the party." He gave Adrian a half-shove towards the front doors. A couple more Merchants were at the door, shaking people down and checking them for weapons (and probably for valuables, if he didn't miss his guess.)
The crowd alternately pulled and shoved him forward till he was standing in front of a huge, burly black man, with bloodshot eyes and a paunch that made him look like a prizefighter gone to seed. He held out his hand for Adrian's backpack. Adrian pulled it off and held it open; the guy roughly pulled it open further and looked inside. All he saw were some odds and ends; some meal bars, extra socks and underwear, some bits of junk that could've been anything, but obviously nothing that set off any alarms with the guy.
There was a reason for that. Adrian had stuffed his haversack down inside the ratty backpack, disguising it. After many long nights and painstaking labor, he'd managed to convert his useful-yet-limited one-pocked bottomless haversack into one with two. His weapons, costume, and gear were all in the second pocket, which the bloodshot-eyed guard didn't know how to open. He grunted and let go of the bag. "You ain't gonna party much without any cash or stash," he said.
Adrian gave him a mocking curl of the lip back. "Like I'd tell you where I kept my cash OR my stash," he said. The guy sneered back, but there seemed to be a little more respect in his bloodshot eyes for someone who wasn't a complete fool. He shoved Adrian inside.
The first impression was crowded. The second was blinding. The third was deafening. The loudspeakers were pounding out something approximating music; it was hard to tell what, it was so loud all you could hear or feel was the thundering beat. There were lights, strobes, and even a few laser lights blazing in every direction. Bodies were pressed in everywhere, hanging from the rails on all three floors, trying to move to the beat or move against each other. There was a haze in the air, almost thick enough to be from a smoke machine. Adrian caught a whiff and immediately had to cast a decontaminate on himself to keep from getting an instant contact high.
The only clear space was the center of the open court, where a huge pool and fountain had been. The water was long gone and the fountain had been ripped out, leaving a six-foot-deep concrete pit, about fifty feet on a side. A crudely welded iron cage was suspended above it on chains. Parked directly to one side of the pit was one of Squealer's creations. It looked like a porno from a monster truck rally. Most of it was cross between a six-wheeled, oversized humvee and a cherry-picker crane. High up in the basket was Skidmark, holding a big trash bag and wearing a Santa hat and coat. The drug king of Brockton Bay grabbed a microphone and yelled into it.
"WASSUP, BLEEPERS? HO HO BLEEPING HO!" He reached into the sack, pulled out a handful of dime bags-- some with pills, others with nuggets of weed-- and flung them out over the crowd. The crowd went wild, scrabbling for the free goodies, hands outstretched trying to catch them out of the air. Skidmark repeated the toss a couple of times, then emptied the bag into the air, tossing it away when he was done.
He let the crowd roar a bit, then signaled for attention. "ATTENTION, BLEEPERS!" he bellowed, making the speakers boom and whine with feedback. The noise faded to a dull roar. "IT'S TIME FOR A MERCHANT RAAAAAAVE!" The crowed roared in approval.
Adrian took advantage of the noise. It was time to get to work. He slipped into the shadows of one of the ruined storefronts and hid behind one of the empty shelves. He shifted into worgen form and hastily donned his costume and gear, changed to his sabertooth panther form and disappeared. He kept one ear on what Skidmark was shouting as he began prowling the perimeter.
"Now you BLEEPers, you're asking me-- 'Skidmark, you sexy BLEEPing BLEEPer, what have you got for us?' And I'm here to tell you-- we got BOOZE!" A roar of approval answered that. "We got DRUGS!" Another roar. "We got HOES!" An especially loud animal noise of approval went up. "And tonight, for one night only-- we got THE CAGE MATCH!" Makeshift spotlights illuminated the concrete pit and the cage above it. Cheers resounded.
Skinwalker kept on the move, slipping from shadow to shadow. He didn't have much in the way of equipment left. He'd blown most everything he had on the Cauldron attack and then some. What he had left he was going to have to make very good use of. Particularly he had the strobes and sirens of about a score of unfinished Alarm-o-bots, the last of his completed bots that had been serving as security at the Lost Workshop…. And some seaforium charges. A lot of seaforium charges.
As he arrived at what he considered strategic locations, he would decloak and plant one of the unfinished Alarm-o-bots. Any armed Merchant he stumbled across were swiftly dealt with; the fools were all facing inward, gawping up at their illustrious leader as he showered them with his profanity-laden speech. He crept up behind one after another, knocked them out, tagged them, and stuffed them in one dark uninspected corner or another, their hands and feet zip-tied and duct-tape over their mouths.
"For you BLEEPS who don't know what the BLEEP the Cage Match is about, Clean the BLEEP out of your BLEEP BLEEP and BLEEP BLEEP ears and listen the BLEEP up!"
His primary goal were the emergency exits. There were guards inside and out at each one. Those he had no choice, it would be too complicated to quietly take them out. He sneaked up in stealth and planted the charges, and hoped they were smart enough to get out of the way when the balloon went up.
"BZZZT BLEEP BLEEPITY BLEEP BLEEP BLONK A BLEEP BLING BLAPPY BLAPPITY BLINGO BLANGO BOING BLEEP EFFITY EFFIN BLEEEEEP!"
Skinwalker had to pause at that one. Dang.
"EFFIN BLEEPIN microphone shorted out on my tongue—aaow-- Anyway you BLEEPS, this is how you make your CHOPS in the MERCHANTS. You want in? You go in the Cage. Whoever comes out STANDIN' UP is a MERCHANT. Yeah, you get the free decoder ring and all that BLEEP. You a scrub, you wanna get a PROMOTION? Get some better money, better BLEEP and more BLEEP with your BLANK? you go in the Cage with another homeboy who wants a promotion-- one that comes out standin up, gets his stripes! And the more matches you walk in on, the higher up you go!"
"Hey, we'll even cut you a deal! You got a tab you runnin' with us? Wanna clear it out? Survive a round in the cage and we'll cut it by half! Take two an' we'll cut it again!"
The stealth field generators weren't hard to find. They were up on the roof, huge ungainly things that looked like they'd been built out of diesel engines. It must have taken a ton of fuel to power a cloak that large. There were three or four merchants up their with submachine guns, passing a spliff or three and cursing their luck at having to stand out in the cold. He rolled the seaforium pots under each roaring, chugging engine and skulked back inside, sneaking down the enclosed stairwell.
This was grim. If he went through with this, even with all he was doing, there was no guarantees. Someone could be injured, maybe even mortally, in the chaos. In fact it was likely. These guys weren't footsoldiers, like he'd been slapping around in the street. These were thugs who'd gone up a few ranks… trusted with weapons, given bandanas to mark their rank. That meant they'd killed already, in the cage if nowhere else. These weren't cute little comedy characters, lovable drunks and wacky stoners from some idiotic sitcom. These guys were scum, and once the balloon went up they'd be doing their level best to kill him.
But could he even do this? He'd done his share of violence since arriving here. But he'd shied back from anything... permanent. If he HAD to, absolutely had to, could he kill?
It was then that he heard someone screaming, muffled and frantic. He looked over the rail; down below five guys had dragged a girl into the stairwell of the fire escape. Two were holding her arms while a third smothered her mouth with a filthy paw. The other two were busy tearing off what little she was already wearing.
Something switched off inside him. He transformed from panther to worgen and vaulted the rail. He landed silently behind the two tearing at the girl's clothes and seized both their heads in huge taloned paws. He brought their skulls together with all his strength.
Before their bodies had even slumped to the floor, his hands lashed out, smashing the heads of the two holding her arms against the concrete block wall behind them with a sickening crunch. The last one holding the girl didn't have time to scream. Adrian reached around the girl, grabbed the grimy man by his neck, throttling him. He pulled him off her and whipped him by his neck overhand behind him. The rapist's plummet down the stairwell wasn't clean; he clanged off the rails a few time on the way down before hitting the bottom floor with a wet thump.
The girl, thankfully, was too terrified to scream. She cowered against the wall, trying to cover herself as she stared up at him with wide, frightened eyes. He pulled his hoodie out of his haversack and tossed it to her. She grasped at it, pulling it to herself.
"Get out," he said. "While you can." Whimpering, she scurried past him, plunging out the exit at the bottom of the stairwell and into the cold night. There was no challenge by the guards that were supposed to be there. Fair odds those particular Merchants were the ones piled at his feet.
The would-be rapists, incredibly, were still alive. He could hear them struggling to breathe; one moaned faintly. Snarling silently, he trussed them up, zip ties all around and just enough Azeroth bandages and drops of potion to keep them from dying...the entire time gnashing his teeth so hard his fangs almost broke. Yes, oh yes he could kill. The question was whether he could hold himself back from it.
The answer was: yes. For now.
"But lemme tell y'all something NEW has been added!" Skinwalker heard that and quickly returned to stealth form, slipping back indoors. "New" was not good. "Yeah. BLEEP yeah! There's gonna be six GRAND BLEEPING PRIZE WINNERS this time." Skidmark held up a silver briefcase and turned, showing it to the crowd. Skinwalker could see that it was cuffed to his wrist by a long steel chain. He'd mistaken that earlier for some bit of jewelry. "Y'all know what this is?" Skidmark said. He opened the case, letting everyone see what was inside: six glass vials, each nestled in foam. They glimmered in the harsh light. "Magic in a bottle. The Genie's lamp. You've heard the legends and the legends are true… Cape Juice. Powers in a bottle.
"We gonna pick six of you BLEEPS that does best in the Cage. One bottle each. Drink it down and get to walk the earth like a GOD!"
Skinwalker quickly shifted to his owl form and fluttered up to a nearby decorative buttress- the mob never noticed; every greedy eye was fixed on the leader of the Merchants and his prize. Bayleaf focused in on the case. For a creature who could spot a fieldmouse from a hundred feet up, it was an easy read. Yes, there it was: the Cauldron logo, etched in the stopper. They were real.
"SO LET THE BLEEPING GAMES BEGIN!"
That was all it took. Half a dozen would-be contestants pushed past the Merchant guards holding back the crowd and dropped into the pit. Knives, chains, and broken bottles came out. Down in the cockpit of her vehicle, Squealer hit a lever and the cage began to drop.
Skinwalker changed back, still crouched on his perch. "I don't think so," he muttered. He pulled a remote control out of his pocket and hit the button. All around the perimeter, sirens began to whoop. Red and blue strobes began flashing. "YOU ARE SURROUNDED! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP! SURRENDER!"
The response was gratifying. The crowd of drunks, junkies, partiers and wannabe rebels began screaming as if Leviathan himself had just popped out of the fountain. As one, the mob began pushing in any direction, so long as it looked like it was away from those lights and sirens.
Which happened to be, thanks to careful timing and placement, in the direction of the exits. Skinwalker hit another button and the seaforium charges blew. With a deafening blast all the doors, fire exits, and loading dock shutters in the building blew outward and away, sending Merchant guards flying and leaving a clear path out into the freezing snow-blown night.
At the same time the four cloaking device engines chugging away on the roof suffered a catastrophic failure as their undersides were blown out through their tops. The aura concealing the building from sight and attention popped like a soap bubble and the neighbors for a mile in every direction were woken from their dreams of sugarplums by an eruption of light, noise, explosions and screaming.
For an added touch, batches of pandarian fireworks whistled into the sky, showering the area with sparks. "Let's see the patrolmen ignore that," Skinwalker muttered.
The mob poured out into the parking lot in every direction, fleeing where none pursued. Those that didn't found themselves being pursued by six-foot-tall extinguisher bots. Skinwalker hadn't quite perfect them though. They tended to keep dousing his forges, his candles, himself when he was asleep… they were sufficient for the job of laying down fire suppression and chasing the last of the junkies out. More than one stoner smoking a bong or spliff regretted not opting for the brownies instead as they suddenly found themselves eating a faceful of fire extinguisher foam.
It was at this point that Mush and Trainwreck made their appearance. They came thundering in, Trainwreck in yet another kludged together steam-junk suit of armor, Mush wearing the content of two or three dumpsters. They spotted him perched on the wall and came running, yelling.
Skinwalker gave it a five count. When the East wall was clear of any civilians, he pulled out another remote and flicked the "on" switch.
He'd not had resources to build everything he needed. he'd blown most of his stockpile on the attack of opportunity on Cauldron. There was no possible way he could have built himself a brand new army of six foot robots in three months, much less a week. But it was amazing the stopgap measures you could make when you had a gnomish shrinking or enlarging ray.
BOOM! The East wall… a late unlamented shoe store… exploded inward. In through the rubble came a gigantic Tonk, one of the caterpillar-treaded dwarven war machines of Azeroth. Its turret rotated, bringing its vastly oversized barrel to bear.
THOOM. The cannonball struck Trainwreck square in the chest. His suit's arms and legs went flying in all four directions and his torso, crumpled into ruin, hit the wall and tumbled to the floor. The limbless tinker lay there, cursing violently, trapped… and unable to run even if he could have crawled out.
Mush rallied, wadding together a boulder of trash and heaving it at the worgen. It missed by a yard, splattering against the wall and raining trash everywhere. Skinwalker wasted no time on him. A bottle of lamp oil arced across the intervening space, splashing over the cape and his trash-golem body. Right behind it was a ball of sunfire.
"No, wait--!" Mush screamed, trying to ward off the sunblast with upraised arms. It did no good. The oil soaked mass of plastic and paper and rotting gassy mung went up like a tiki torch. Mush ran screaming, shedding lumps of his burning body as fast as he could. He tumbled to the floor after a few hundred feet, falling down just clear of the burning mess, his tendrils smoking. Two Extinguisher-bots cornered him, spraying the burning waste and the burning cape with extinguisher foam.
And then there were two.
As the tonk continued firing randomly in every direction, raising dust and raining rubble, Skinwalker leaped from the flying buttress to the hanging cage, then from the cage to the arm of the cherry-picker. He climbed up it hand over hand, fast as a man could run on level ground, and leapt into the basket. Skidmark hadn't stopped screaming a mixture of orders and profanities the entire time, but noone was listening. The Merchant warlord turned and saw the worgen in the basket with him and nearly shat himself.
Before Skidmark could do anything Skinwalker grabbed the chain to the briefcase and snapped it between his hands like a strand of twine. He grabbed the case in one fist just as Skidmark gathered his one scattered wit and hit him with his powers. Suddenly the floor of the cherry picker platform under Skinwalker's feet turned slick as grease and some force shot him backwards and over the rail. He ricocheted off the cage with a crack-- he felt ribs break-- then he landed on the roof of the Tonk.
Bullets began spalling off the Tonk's thick hide all around him. Hastily he pulled open the hatch in the eagle's head cockpit and dropped inside, seconds before the cage dropped and bounced off his hull. A hasty Heal to his ribs was all he could manage at the moment; things were getting a little bit exciting.
Even though he shrank down to human form again there was little room in the cockpit. Most of the space was taken up with a gnomish gadget that pinged and buzzed and sizzled and went "vumm" every few seconds. This was his little kitbash solution to needing a full sized vehicle: he'd built a toy Tonk and then installed a gnomish enlarger inside. He'd kludged it from the blueprints for a World Shrinker Ray; Once activated, every so often it would send a pulse of "Enlarge" through the vehicle, keeping it at its current size. The extinguisher-bots had been treated the same way, with a quick squirt of enlarger ray. Unfortunately he didn't have enough to build enlargers for all of them, so in another ten minutes or so they were going to smeerrrrp back to their regular toybox-ready size.
He gave the enlarger an uneasy glance. If that thing broke down, things were going to get a trifle cramped inside this Tonk.
Bullets pinged and whined off the Tonk's skin. Apparently there were some loyal holdouts. Skinwalker wasn't too worried about that, but they were liable to fish something out bigger, sooner or later--- something a lot larger than a .45 bullet banged violently against his hull. Speak of the Devil. It looked like Squealer had gotten at least one of the guns on her Hellmobile lined up on him. As he recalled from canon, some idiot had sold this bunch rocket launchers at one point. He didn't see any launch tubes on that thing, but he sure as hell didn't want to test his craftsmanship or his luck against it.
He looked down at the briefcase. Mission parameters had changed. This case was vital evidence, proof that could bust half a dozen conspiracies wide open. He had to get this fight out in the open and on his terms again. He grabbed the controls and spun the gun turret around til it was pointing straight into Squealer's front grille, not ten feet in front of him.
He fired. With an almighty bang the bulldozer shovel Squealer had bolted to the front of her vehicle for armor was blasted off. It went flipping end over end to crash someplace on the second floor. The whole vehicle tilted sideways, threatening to tip over, crane and all. Even over the gunfire Skinwalker could hear Squealer and Skidmark shrieking and swearing. He took advantage of their excited distraction and threw the Tonk in reverse.
With a spray of gravel and a roar from the enlarged engine, the Tonk shot backwards and out the way it had come in. He roared across the parking lot, his treads ripping the asphalt. All around in every direction he could see police lights, real police lights, closing in on the abandoned shopping mall. All the more reason to get Skidmark, Squealer and their cannon-covered Helltruck away from here.
So far, so good: a moment later Squealer's Helltruck rocketed out of the ruptured wall, bouncing on all six tires as it caught air leaving the building. The cherry-picker had been lowered down and locked, and Skidmark was riding in the basket like an elephant rider in a howda, screaming and gesticulating.
No, not just waving his arms, Skinwalker realized. Skidmark was laying down his power ahead of the Helltruck, making it go faster.
Skidmark had a power you'd probably expect more out of the gamer-nerd villains uber and leet: he could lay down patches of energy on any surface that acted like the booster arrows in Mario Kart, making anything that crossed them accelerate in the direction he laid out. He was hanging on the basket resting on the vehicle's hood, using his free hand to toss down patch after patch after patch in front of the Helltruck's wheels. In his other hand he was clutching a black globe of some sort-- it kind of looked like an eight ball. Was it something he needed to make his power work, Skinwalker wondered?
No time for that. The Helltruck was in hot pursuit, guns blazing like strobe lights, and it was closing fast. Skinwalker opened up the throttle and threw the Tonk in reverse, roaring out of the parking lot, crossing the neighboring road, and hurtling down an intersecting street. Backwards, no less.
He had three shots left. It was a residential district but Skinwalker had little choice. He lowered the Tonk's cannon and fired. Squealer dodged as the road erupted. The second shot cavitied the road ahead of the Helltruck, but it bounced over the craters with its six fat wheels without a problem.
Then Skidmark laid down a streak of accelerator. The Helltruck rocketed forward and struck the Tonk with an enormous smash. When Skinwalker shook his head clear, he'd reverted to worgen form again. The hatch on his cockpit was gone, along with a good part of the roof, and his cannon and treads were wedged in the Helltruck's mangled grille. He yanked on the controls; no go, he was stuck on the front of Squealer's Helltruck like a reindeer on Grandma's bumper. And they were STILL rolling down the road at breakneck speeds, his back wheels sparking off the pavement as the tread belt rattled off them.
Then the enlarger began to spark. "Oh, not good," Skinwalker muttered.
He looked up and Squealer's eyes met his. She saw his predicament. She gave him a leer fit for the Devil and tromped on the accelerator. The roar from the engine was like the end of the World coming.
Skinwalker looked over his shoulder. The street they were on ended at a half-mile paved pier. The half-mile pier ended in a rustic wooden pier. The wooden pier ended in the bay. They roared off the road and began hurtling down the pier, smashing signs and fishing shacks on either side the entire way. Skidmark was screaming like a lunatic, waving the black ball over his head. "We got 'im, Mr. Lucky! We got 'im now!!"
Skinwalker scrabbled at the controls. Brakes weren't working. Engine wasn't working. Pretty soon the Enlarger wasn't going to be working.
The cannon was working. He grabbed the trigger and looked Squealer in the eyes again over the hoods of their conjoined vehicle. Her eyes went wide as she realized at the last second what he was going to do.
Could he kill?
If he had to.
"HEY SQUEALER," he yelled. "TANK…YOU!"
And yanked the trigger.
Had the Helltruck not lost its front armor the story might have ended differently. But the shovel in the front was long gone, and the cannon barrel was wedged right up against the Helltruck's radiator. The cannonball smashed through the engine block, through the cab behind it, through the dual engines behind that, and out the back of the vehicle, destroying everything in its path and engulfing everything else inside the vehicle's armored hide in a cauldron of flame. Smoke and burning fuel and red hot steel erupted from the tail of the vehicle like the vomit of hell. The Helltruck came to a thundering halt, plowing to a stop just a few dozen yards from the end of the wooden pier.
But alas, even in the world of capes, action must equal reaction. The damaged Tonk and all its contents, including the briefcase full of miracle potions and one worgen, blasted free of the Helltruck's grasp and went hurtling off the end of the dock. They hit with a mighty splash, and disappeared in the icy waves.
The sudden halt dismounted Skidmark from his steed. By pure luck he vaulted clear of his dead girlfriend's burning vehicle to safety. He tumbled down the length of the dock, ending up on his hands and knees. For a wonder, he still had Mr. Lucky clutched in his hand.
"BLEEP," he groaned, getting up off his bloody hands and knees. He looked back at the truck. It was gutted, the inside a raging inferno. "Squealer!" he shouted. For the first time in ages he showed some human feeling; he watched, stunned and bereft, as the truck and whatever was left of his woman burned.
"The briefcase!!" he suddenly screamed. He ran for the end of the dock. The wooden quay was already badly damaged and threatening to crumble into the water. He clung to the sinking post and tried, uselessly, to see where the briefcase had gone. It had sunk to the bottom of the Bay, apparently. "BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP it, those BLEEPING briefcases are supposed to BLEEPING FLOAT!" He screamed. He sank to his knees. "five… and a half.. million… bucks," he moaned. Every last bit of operating capital the Merchants had left, and more. That's what it had cost to get those vials. He was broke, he was in debt to people he didn't even want to think about, the rest of the capes in his gang were down or dead, and his last hope of the Merchants pulling a comeback had just disappeared into the depths.
He held up the magic 8 ball and shook it, looking into its window. "Come on, Mr. Lucky. I need your help," he pleaded. "Come on, Mr. Lucky. It was you who told me about those vials, it was you who told me where to get them, all of this was all your plan, c'mon, you gotta have a way to get me outta this--"
The bubble-window remained dark.
"BLEEP YOU!" Skidmark screamed. "This is all YOUR fault, you TRAITOR!" He took the 8-ball and flung it out into the waves as far as he could. It barely made a splash. He turned in a circle, pulling at his scorched dreadlocks with his fingers. "What do I do, what do I do..."
The damaged dock sank a little further. Something sloshed in the water. Skidmark turned on his heel and stared at the water suspiciously. Something was moving around down there. He carefully lowered himself down onto the last few boards of the pier, squinting…
Not many people know anything bout Skidmark's formative years. Largely because nobody cares. But it must be said that at one point he was an ordinary innocent child. And during those formative years, when he was about eight years old, his jackass of an older brother tricked him into going to the theater to see a new movie-- "Orca." This was one of the many would-be imitators that came out after the debut of "Jaws," about a vengeful killer whale pursuing the sailor that had killed its mate and calf. It was corny, it was schlocky, it was hilariously awful. But to an eight-year-old Skidmark it had been a sleigh ride into mind-blowing terror that had impacted on him the rest of his life. He couldn't even be in the same room as a Shamu plushy without having to make a break for another room.
So one can only imagine the depths of utter, mind-shattering horror that clutched his soul when a full grown bull killer whale erupted from the water below.
He had time for one chilling scream before that enormous mouth closed over him.
Several miles away, a man at a computer sat back and contemplated what he'd seen. He'd gotten a front row seat of the entire battle of the Twin Pines Mall, from the moment Skidmark had climbed aboard the cherry picker to the last few seconds of him shaking Mr. Lucky and screaming at him-- then a few seconds of rapid sky-ocean-sky-ocean ending in a splash, and darkness.
It had been what, three years ago now? That he had a stroke of luck and learned of the drug kingpin's obsession with the plastic toy. On an impulse he'd had one of his agents steal the thing and replace it with one with a few technological additions, such as a spy camera and microphone and a specially made text screen that imitated a real 8-ball's liquid chamber. With this trinket he'd been able to not only spy on his rival, but to actually order him and his entire gang around. It had turned an annoying problem underfoot into a useful resource.
The footage of late had been particularly entertaining, as Skidmark had begun carrying his lucky 8-ball everywhere with him. Entertaining and enlightening. This new cape was versatile, eccentric and if pressed, ruthless. He demonstrated a startling range of abilities and at levels the resources in the PRT only guessed at. He also had a gift for insights into leveraging powers to their best effectiveness, if his little gifts to the Protectorate and the Wards were any indicator. He would make an extraordinarily useful asset, and a deadly liability. The only option for dealing with him was to recruit him, or eliminate him.
Coil turned away from his desk and leaned back, contemplating how he might accomplish either.
About a mile down the beach, a pair of Brockton Bay's bravest, sitting in their squad car at the end of a short dock filling out paperwork, found themselves witnesses to an extraordinary sight.
"OhJesusJesusJESUShelpOHLordJESUSlordLORdOHGODhelp..."
Plowing through the water, its head held high, was a killer whale. It swam past the end of the dock, water pluming in its wake.
It appeared to be dragging Skidmark of the Merchants in its mouth by his leg. The leader of the merchants was dressed in a sodden Santa Claus coat and, for a wonder, was not swearing. He appeared to be praying.
"OHJESUSMARYandJOSEPHandPETERandPAULandSAINTJEROME! "
Apparently to anyone and everyone who he thought might be listening.
"PETERPAULANDMARY! EARTHWINDANDFIRE! HARRY KRISHNA! HARRY KARI! HARRY POTTER!!"
They got out of their squad car silently, unable to take their eyes off the spectacle. The whale was swimming in a wide figure eight, dragging its terrified toy around in the icy waves.
"HEAR ME ALLAH! SAVE ME BUDDAH! HELP ME KALI!!…"
Officer Charlie, the quicker thinking of the duo, reached in the window of the patrol car, honked the horn and flashed the lights. The orca stopped and stood on its tail; they had gotten its attention. Or perhaps it had been trying to get theirs.
"OH MISTER ROGERS! OH KENNY ROGERS! OH BOB ROSS! HAVE MERCY ON ME!"
The whale swam in closer to the beach. The two officers panicked when it began whipping its head back and forth; they'd both seen enough nature documentaries to remember seeing how a killer whale snapped the neck of a seal. They needn't have worried; the orca wasn't going for the kill-- it was just winding up. With a wrench of its head the magnificent sea animal flung Skidmark in a high arc towards the shore.
"OPTIMUS PRIME SAVE OUR SOOOUUUUULS!!!!"
The leader of the Merchants landed on the cold, wet sand with a splat. He groaned in pain for a second, then got up on his knees, feeling himself over. "I'm alive. I'M ALIIIIIVE!" he began laughing hysterically. He clung to the first officer who ran up, weeping and giggling and falling into a complete breakdown.
"You're also under arrest," Officer Charlie said, pulling out the cuffs and slapping them on the sopping wet junkie.
"That's nice," Skidmark said, nodding and smiling. Then he fell to the sand and curled up in a fetal ball, shivering and weeping and making blithering noises. When the PRT van arrived, they had to carry him onto it on a stretcher.
Further on down, out of sight under the docks, the orca beached itself. Its mouth opened and it began making slow, painful retching noises. After several seconds of obvious pain, a silvery metal briefcase slid out of its mouth and onto the sand.
Once the blockage was clear the orca changed, shrinking down to the form of a bedraggled, badly battered worgen in a sodden, singed cloak. Skinwalker fished around in his haversack and pulled out a rune-covered stone. He squeezed it in his fist. A minute ticked by, then two. Glowing lights began to spiral around him. "Hope this works," he groaned. Then he vanished.
He reappeared in the Lost Workshop a few feet above the stone floor. He hit it with a thump, eliciting more groans of pain. "Well, it worked," he muttered to noone. Hearthstones, he had learned in his efforts to make one, were a lot more limited than in the game. Which only made sense. If they were as quick, reliable and efficient as they were in the game, Azeroth's armies would have built strategies around them; having entire platoons set their hearth back at the base camp, for example. Or setting up a secure command network based on mail carriers Hearthstoning across the globe. Or they'd be a hub of commerce: even with as little as a single person could carry, being able to deliver anything across the globe instantly would make it well worth the investment. He smirked to himself at the thought. Azeroth Express, heh.
But in reality they were slow to operate, difficult to make, and even more difficult to reset to a new location. In fact they were generally given as a gift on the birth of a child, and most people kept them set to the town of their birth their whole lives. Their primary purpose was to let the folks at home know you were still alive (the twin of the stone glowed so long as the wielder was still breathing) and… to let the mortally wounded return home to die.
That was not an ideal train of thought. He forced himself to his feet and limped, then crawled, then dragged himself up the stairs to his bed. He considered it a triumph that he sprawled atop it, rather than on the floor next to the stupid briefcase. One of the alarm-o-bots trundled up and tried to push a roll of bandages into his hand dangling over the side. "Thanks little buddy," he mumbled. "Don't think that's gonna do the trick."
He tried for a quick heal. It sputtered out. Then he tried for a slow heal over time. That failed too. An efflorescence?… nothing.
He was wishing to high heaven he'd taken alchemy. He'd be guzzling healing potions like they were Dr. Pepper right now if he had. This was bad. The pain was everywhere, inside and out. (served him right for swallowing a briefcase then puking it back up.) What was wrong?
He was a druid, blast it, why weren't any of his healing and purifying spells working? He needed help. He could go get help… but how. He wasn't a mage, he didn't have a laundry list of places and ways to teleport someplace. Druids only had one real location they could port to.
….Where was it?
Even as he was sliding from consciousness he could hear alarm bells sounding. Alarm bells, right! "Alarm Clock," he slurred. "Set Alarm for 9am, December 31."
The alarm clock dinged. "Alarm set for morning, 9am, December 31," she said soothingly.
Perfect. He didn't want to miss his date.
Where was that place? He could get help there, couldn't he?
Oh right. He clenched his fist and alien light swirled.
"Moonglade."
He woke lying on a grassy slope, at the shore of a glittering lake. Trees vaulted overhead. The air was warm and redolent with the scent of green growing things. He heard fish splashing in the water and birds chirping in the trees. He looked around as best he could without sitting up. "This isn't Moonglade, is it?" he said aloud.
Got it in one.
He sat up and twisted around to see who was speaking. A glowing, humanoid form was sitting next to him with its back against the tree shading them. Hello again. Glad to see you finally figured it out.
"Agent?" Skinwalker said. "What the heck is going on? Where am I?"
Ah, I see I spoke too soon. Agent sighed. Very well, I shall attempt to explain. I think I'll start with the last question first. You attempted to teleport to Moonglade. Correct?
"Yyyyes, I kind of remember that," Adrian said.
It's an ability, indoctrinated into every Azeroth druid from their first day. A place to flee to in time of need… second only to the Emerald Dream as a place of sanctuary. It was your first, natural choice when in a state of distress. However, the problem with that is that there is no Moonglade in this world. So lacking that locale, your powers defaulted to the next choice of sanctuary… attempting to reach the Emerald Dream.
"Attempted." Adrian repeated.
Good of you to catch that. To make it brief, this world has no Emerald Dream, either. The Titans who made Azeroth created it as a sort of… starting blueprint. A parallel plane of Azeroth that served as a baseline against which to measure changes or endeavours they made after a certain point. He paused. Coincidentally you'll note that there's no robotic lifeforms in the Emerald Dream. Which should tell you a lot about the Titans and others who claim that all life on Azeroth was originally "perfect" metal and stone, and that organic life was the result of a "Curse of the flesh."
"So what's the real story?" Adrian asked.
Several of the Titans had something of a … mechanical lifeform fetish. They ran around for a few thousand years, screwing up everyone else's work and turning everything into metal and stone golems. The "Curse," ironically, is life returning to it's proper state.
"Makes sense," Adrian grunted. "I noticed that for all their talk of "the perfection of iron" or "the weakness of flesh," their women still had breasts. I don't know about you but I think of anything more useless, unlikely or counter-productive than boobs made of rock." he snorted. "I kept picturing their men getting together and weeping, "Ach, Ah remember when they jiggled..."
To his surprise, Agent tipped his head back and laughed. Now that was worth the price of admission.
"So if this isn't the Emerald Dream, what is it?" Adrian said.
It is a small pocket dimension, unique to yourself, to which you can retreat in times when you are in dire need of restoration, Agent said. A sort of personal Emerald Dream. While you are here, you have one foot in the material world and one world in the extradimensional. It renders you somewhat… ghostly seeming back on the material plane, making you difficult to injure, influence or move-- but it allows your physical body to restore as if it were entirely here.
"And you are here because…?"
Because it is technically outside the normal material realm, so I am not breaking the rules by being here. His voice seemed smug. Of course I cannot do anything to help you back in the material world either, but we can at least chat… discuss things… offer advice…
"A loophole," Adrian grinned. "Clever stinker."
True, true. Agent's demeanor turned severe. Of course you weren't expected to urgently need this place for another hundred years or so. You really did a number on yourself.
"What?"
Adrian, when is the last time that you slept a full night? Or even half a night? How many weeks has it been, that you've been going to school all day, work all afternoon and then prowling through the night? How many nights have you spent in your Workshop, building and rebuilding and stockpiling?
"But I have to get ready--like you said--"
Not all at once! Not in one month, or three, or even twelve. Don't get me wrong, you've set things in motion, many of them months or even years ahead of schedule…you've bought an incredible amount of time. But you're trying to accomplish everything at once, and it's burning you out. It almost killed you. To say nothing of your injuries. You kept using heal after heal after heal, not taking time to rest and recuperate and let your body heal naturally. It ran your magical batteries down as much as your physical batteries and left you with a just-healed-enough body. And every time it was a little less effective. You're not a video game character, you can't just snap your fingers and heal instantly for free.
In addition to all those breaks, bruises, cuts and stabs and whatnot you got in your nightly excursions, that final explosion did a number on you, he added. You were within a few feet of the center of the blast wave, and it basically bruised your everything. Soft tissues, bones, internal organs. He looked over his glasses pointedly. Swallowing a briefcase didn't help matters.
Adrian shuddered. It was only now that he realized what might have happened had any of the vials leaked.
No, you wouldn't have Triggered, Agent said to his unasked question. Not even as a case 53. You flat out can't. The vials would have just killed you. What would have been left of you would have looked like it hatched at Chernobyl. Agent put on his glasses. As it is, you're going to have to spend quite some time in this state, recuperating.
"How long?" Adrian asked anxiously.
Several days to a week
"But--"
I'm sorry, I can't be any more specific than that, Agent said. For now you need to sleep.
No, wait… It's too close! I won't make it in time-- Adrian tried to protest. But he only slumped down, too weary to speak, lying on the soft green grass.
Don't worry. I'm sure we'll get you out of here in no time.
Adrian heard no more.
"Three… Two… One..."
"Happy New Year, Brockton Bay!"
Taylor blew on her party horn, but it was only a halfhearted effort. They toasted the New Year with sparkling white grape cider in silent awkwardness.
Danny tried to think of something to say. "Pumpkin..."
"Don't, Daddy," Taylor said. "It's okay. It happens, right?" She got up and headed for the stairs. "I'm gonna go on to bed." She trooped up the stairs, leaving her father alone to watch the fireworks on TV and dwell on things.
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