- Location
- Israel
Okay. I am talking about this case.
Wolf Spider (Worm) (Complete)
- Thread starter The Laurent
- Start date
- Pronouns
- They/Them
This is, among other things, an AU. And... as to how accepting he is? Well, in canon he doesn't confess to Taylor either.
Edit: I mean, yes, he was an asshole to Sveta online, but that's online. IRL, I'm pretty sure he'd be too much of a coward, and I specifically am trying to make him excitable and rather lacking in social sense. I mean, he's being a nice guy and a good friend (TM).
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- Location
- Israel
Which, in part, is why I said I don't see it as a negative. I like this story and I accept that this is how you interpret the characters for your story, not exactly 100% how Wildbow would do this. And that's terrific. I would just disagree that your interpretation of some of the characters is the closest.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I've commissioned a piece of art for this fic, though it won't be until sometime next week, at the earliest, that it'll be done.
Are there others that you're thinking that with, or mostly Greg?
Are there others that you're thinking that with, or mostly Greg?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Holy shit, I have over 120 likes on my last update. Not anything like a record in User Fiction categories, but...!
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think of it as like, this Greg would still do all the things that canon Greg concretely did, but the overall picture that's being painted is more optimistic? And all of that really stems from giving this Greg at least a few months more of having a friend to talk to. I don't think there's any difference that can't really be accounted for there, personality or characterization wise.
(Also, he now plays card games instead of MMOs as his favorite, or it feels like that. Clearly this is social commentary on MMO players.
)
(Also, he now plays card games instead of MMOs as his favorite, or it feels like that. Clearly this is social commentary on MMO players.
)
- Location
- France
Well, it was a great chapter after all.
It was at times tense, at times interesting, and at times absolutely adorable.
And the ending promised great stuff from the next few chapters. Hint hint nudge nudge.
- Location
- Israel
Tattletale and Taylor are easy ones. I also feel like the premise of the fic doesn't work with canonical characters. My own grasp of canon Danny isn't good enough but he doesn't feel right, though it may be me.
I don't mind it, and you need to stretch things to get the premise of your fic to work. You're closer than most of the fandom on these things.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In which direction?
I've honestly been more worried that this Danny is reacting too passively to things, by a little bit.
- Location
- Israel
The issue is that canon Danny is very passive - It took quite a bit to get him to react. I mean, Taylor had pretty much disappeared from school and her life at that point. Canon Danny is very much a person who's been ground away, and it only gets worse for him throughout canon.
It's why I feel like my grasp on him isn't great, and why I'm not sure if he feels wrong because he is or because I'm wrong.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly, despite his activity, this Danny actually seems a little worse off than canon Danny? At least, when I was writing him.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Like when he was home drunk, and Taylor walked in and he almost spoke up but did nothing? Or when he gave up on the Ferry, the first year he hasn't done his presentation?
This Danny like, just managed to work up the courage to confront Taylor about her obvious girlfriend and bruises, yeah.
- Location
- France
I have no issues with Danny here. In canon he was terrible at confronting Taylor, here he's terrible at confronting Taylor.
And remember, Taylor has changed here too. She's more aggressive and she doesn't smile. She disappears for longer periods of time and comes back stinking at odd hours. He may well have wanted the "lies" to be true, but made himself confront her!
He probably dropped the ferry as an extension of that. His personal life is becoming more stressful, and he just can't be bothered to deal with that too (which definitely isn't easy either). He'll probably get back to it next year.
And remember, Taylor has changed here too. She's more aggressive and she doesn't smile. She disappears for longer periods of time and comes back stinking at odd hours. He may well have wanted the "lies" to be true, but made himself confront her!
He probably dropped the ferry as an extension of that. His personal life is becoming more stressful, and he just can't be bothered to deal with that too (which definitely isn't easy either). He'll probably get back to it next year.
Bailey Matutine
(Verified Pooka)
- Location
- Pelican Town
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Next year for sure!
Bite 3.5
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Bite 3.5
Sometimes I wished I had some sort of instinct for these things. Even looking at the map of where the Merchants came and went, I couldn't discern some giant pattern in them just by glancing. No doubt, whatever Lisa's power was, that could help, but as it was, I had to do it the old-fashioned way.
I'd been making notes all Friday night while I was out, about the smell of this place and that, or, now that my bugs could sometimes pick it up, snippets of conversation that might be useful. Combined with a map of where they'd be, I could be pretty sure that the Merchants were going to be spread out all weekend. They didn't cluster and gather all that much, except for partying, and so that would be one venue.
But there weren't any nightclubs I'd seen them go to, which meant house parties. And house parties were pretty difficult to crash, especially if they were at different houses and apartments each night. What I needed to do was find a way to track Mush or someone like that and follow him right to a party.
The Merchants consisted of the new guy, Mush, Skidmark, Squealer, and Whirlygig, though the latter was only a little less new than the new guy. It wasn't exactly a huge roster of capes, but it was bigger than it was before, and it included two Tinkers. Everyone online said that tinkers were really hard to fight against, because you never knew what tricks they had up their sleeves.
I more or less (sometimes less since I couldn't find much about Whirlygig) knew what the non-Tinkers had in store, but that wasn't going to help at all when it came time for a fight.
I had Rachel to help me, but that was just two people. I didn't want to bring in the Undersiders, and while I'd call the Protectorate, of course, I'd have to imagine the situation as it'd be without their help, because honestly I wasn't sure if my trust of them could be hurt even more than it was without something drastic happening.
So I was just going to try to imagine a victory with just Rachel and I, together, against all of the baddies of the world. It was a little implausible, but it was a nice enough fantasy to go to sleep on, on Friday night, and I liked the feel of it.
Arachne and Bitch didn't really have a ring to it, but we could make it work. And if we wound up partners, maybe I could finally work up the courage to ask her on an actual date. It'd be a nice change from how things were going now, and a real step.
I had the timeline in my head, and I tried to ignore the way that Rachel had pre-empted my whole world several times since I'd met her. She left Coil and the Undersiders sometime in the next few weeks, I popped the question, she maybe said no, but perhaps she said yes because 'why not' which was the best I could hope for, all things considered. And then we were girlfriends, and life was great, and we'd fight crime together.
End of story. Simple, right?
Simple enough that even I couldn't mess it up, I hoped.
******
On Saturday, I learned that the English Language is horrible and must be destroyed. Or something.
Rather, when I started to stumblingly try to teach her more about reading, I hit the problem that nothing about English Grammar was that self-evident.
Rachel insisted on taking out the book, and my current idea was to have her read through a sentence, and then I'd tell her what she pronounced wrong. Read before you write, and all.
It was an idea destined to lead to frustration, but she was trying it anyways, after we'd settled down the dogs. She kept on stepping away to look at them, watch them to make sure they didn't fight, and just play with them, but as soon as she was done she'd come back and look at my little worksheets and read them.
Small words were fine.
"The dog was running, running as fast as he could, but he couldn't make it…" Rachel read. "Eh...x...ow…"
"Exhausted. It means tired," I said.
"Then why don't they just say tired?" Rachel asked, like a dog snapping at a stray finger.
"They think it sounds better."
"Ex-aust-ed?"
"Exhausted," I repeated.
"Exhausted, he slowed down, his feet burning with the salt on the roads, and…"
She flipped the page slowly, and kept on reading as I watched her. She was concentrating, I really could tell that, but concentration and trying wasn't magic. It helped, considering how many students didn't even bother with that part, and then complained that it was hard.
Still, at the rate it was going, it'd take a while, and I was still looking up how to do it better. Should I teach her about grammar? Spelling? What about new words? She had the foundations, but the foundations were also not all that different than the foundations of my house. Rotting at places, and not anything you'd want to build too much on.
She spelled phonetically, and getting through a single page of a few hundred words took forever, and that was with me helping her out with the hard words. And I didn't want to go too simple for the reading, because let me tell you, the kinds of books they taught children to read with were not the kinds of things that any adult, or even any teenager, could read. Sure, Rachel was only dubiously literate, but she wasn't stupid.
Or, I didn't think so. Maybe I was biased, but it seemed lack of education and, in some cases, interest, more than anything else. I'm not sure why I was getting any traction at all with her, but I'd take it. It wasn't as if I was trying to change her, not really. Literacy was just something she should pick up more fully, because it'd help her out.
I had a few strategies I'd seen online. One thing that could certainly help was turning words into sounds. Rachel could say words just fine, even if some of the more complex ones could trip her up, what she needed was a way to hear the word mentally when she saw it, and thus work things out. Break words down to their components, and it was like cutting up food for someone to eat easier.
That was the theory, but Rachel seemed to prefer things that left us snuggled close together, which was an instinct I could understand. Still, progress was being made, bit by bit. I wouldn't teach her to read at, say, a 5th or 6th grade level in a week. Probably not even in a month, since I wasn't actually a teacher.
Though it felt interesting, really. My Mom had been a Professor, and something told me that this was somewhat different. An English Literature professor gave opinions and analyzed things in a way that someone teaching a first grader to read couldn't. 'In my opinion, opinion is not spelled with two p's, Suzy.'
It was the kind of thought that had my lips curling up, and I was glad that I could keep in that good of a mood.
Actually, I was in a good mood all day, even when Rachel got frustrated at not being able to learn as fast as she wanted.
Her pouting was cute too.
I was pretty sure something had broken in me, but I wasn't that eager to fix it.
Rachel had her full costume done now, including the blue. I wondered what the Undersiders would think of it. When I asked, though, she snorted. "Doubt they'd notice," Rachel said.
"Why?"
"They're distracted and shit. Money, money, money," Rachel said, dismissively. She wasn't someone who valued money for itself. Then again, for all I knew none of the others did either.
"Why do they need money so badly?"
"Well, Grue has a sister or some shit that he wants to take care of," Rachel said. "Regent just likes spending money, and Lisa…"
Rachel hunched her shoulders in. "Probably a bunch of clothes or something."
I wasn't sure, actually. On the one hand, she did shop a lot, on the other hand, she seemed like the kind of person who had larger ambitions than that. I didn't know what they were, and that meant I couldn't trust them. After all, Coil had larger ambitions.
I also just felt more comfortable with the more down-to-earth desires of Rachel. She felt like someone I could approach, someone that wouldn't manipulate me, and that was… well, after all of the trouble I'd faced thus far, someone who was straight with me and honest seemed like a good thing now.
Even though I was lying to my Dad in more ways than one. It was probably hypocrisy, that I cared so much about being told the truth.
But on that warm May day, playing out in the yard or reading a book to her, watching her as much as I could, just considering life without acting…
I didn't care. That was the truth. "Wanna go out for lunch somewhere?" I asked.
"Sure," Rachel said.
I should just kick down the locker door and ask about a date using the right words for it, but… but what? I didn't know. It was just that it seemed such a large step, and I kept on picturing what would happen if people found out. Or what if they found out how close Arachne was to Bitch. I wondered what they thought about me, the Protectorate. I'd helped them multiple times now, and yet I was also sticking with Rachel. And that wasn't going to change.
"So, let's go?"
"In a sec. Come here, I think that Dodger…" she began, and I moved when she gestured. There was a bug on her shoulder, just watching her. Just like I was watching the whole approach. Nobody was going to sneak up on us.
In theory all of the watching should make me feel paranoid, but instead it made me feel intimate, and safe. Nobody was watching. Nobody cared, and the people who would care if they knew didn't matter.
The reddish-brown dog looked fine, large and somewhat intimidating, but honestly kind of a pushover, who always loved a good belly-rub. Not the smartest dog out there, either. She grabbed his head and opened his jowls, which were big, thick ones, and showed off his teeth.
They looked fine, but.
"He's gritting them. And he doesn't like eating. I think he might have a toothache or something wrong with it." Rachel grunted, clearly annoyed. "Should have bought some hygiene bones or something. It's the treats." She seemed definite, and I looked at the teeth, and had to guess that it was probably so.
A vet would have written it down. Rachel, I knew, would just remember it. "Sorry to hear that. I think you're probably right. Maybe you could get him some soft food in the meantime?"
"Sure. We could go shopping together."
"What if someone…"
"What? You think anyone knows you?" Rachel asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Nobody notices me. Cause sure, I'm on the run, but I pay in cash and shit."
I wasn't sure how true that could possibly be. Rachel stood out. She was strong, she was commanding, she had a way about her: or maybe I was just smitten, but I remember feeling that even when I first met her, and I knew the crush wasn't that immediate. Even without all of that, she still was certainly not like most girls.
"Well, nobody noticed all the other times. I also want to get some Terrariums or the like…"
"For what?"
"Holding bugs," I offered. "I'm not sure, they're supposed to have special containers or the like, but I need a way to just separate them and keep them around when I'm not controlling them." I frowned. I still needed to figure out how to make it all work.
"Oh," Rachel said.
"You care for your animals, I do the same for mine," I said.
"Kay. We can get those too." Rachel seemed to accept it. I wondered how much it'd cost her.
"Maybe tomorrow?" I offered. "Or, I mean, I'll need time to look all of this up."
She glanced over at Dodger. "Maybe. In the morning, then. Lunch now, and we'll have to make sure he doesn't eat anything bad."
"Of course," I said. By now I knew how to take care of dogs well enough that if it wasn't dog-overload, I almost missed not having them around at home.
Home. Well, that certainly made me think about what I was doing. I was going to be buying terrariums, and putting my costume here, and it felt like before I knew it, my center of gravity could shift even more than it was before. I already didn't spend a lot of time at home, what with school and everything else.
Speaking of, I was making a heroic effort to save actually working on my homework to the last minute, which was probably not me being the best role-model to Rachel. That made me think that perhaps I should move up the timeline a little bit. The Merchants were dangerous, and more than that, I didn't want it hanging above my head on Sunday when I shopped for equipment, or tried to do my homework.
So all through lunch together, as she talked about, what else, the games I'd brought and her dog's health, I was planning.
********
It was starting to get dark out later and later, so the night was not quite as inky black as it might have been when I strolled into an alley and began to change. I had a target that I needed to go after, a reveler that I thought was related to Skidmark's entertainment.
She was a streetwalker, and one that I'd seen in Skidmark's presence at least once or twice since I'd started monitoring things. All of the gangs got involved in prostitution, and that included the Merchants, who 'owned' a lot of prostitutes, people addicted or desperate, or most likely both. She was a skinny blonde who looked like a poster-child for anorexia, so frail she could blow away, but in the ten minutes I'd been tracking her this time, she'd glared at three people.
When she wasn't working, she was a forbidding sort of girl. Girl was the word, because if she were eighteen, I'd be shocked. Older than me, but far too young to be out there, and far too young to be this cynical. And addicted. And poor.
I couldn't really do anything for her, but I was going to try to avoid attacking her. She wasn't a threat, or at least not one I had to pay attention to, even if she was apparently vicious with those long, dark nails of hers.
I tried to tune out anything else she did during the nights I'd followed her, and I knew she wasn't working tonight, because I'd overheard her saying so to another of the prostitutes out there.
So, I got dressed and followed her, my range somewhere in between. I was stressed, gathering bees and spiders and wasps, trying to get together as many dangerous bugs as I could. The larger wasps could sorta-kinda carry the spiders, but it was really difficult for them, and the larger spiders just had to go on foot. It was all kinds of awkward, and I wasn't sure if I was going to repeat the experiment, maybe. As for the ants and the like?
Those could be carried, but again, it was awkward and weird. Either way, I was going for quantity, not quality. Just as many dangerous bugs as possible, and then I'd drop them on everyone.
So I began walking, taking a breath, hoping that I looked sufficiently intimidating. And hoping that nobody noticed me before it was time. I had Rachel's number and the Protectorate's number all in my phone, and as soon as I found the party I'd call both of them, set up a real strike. I didn't need to get all of them. As long as Skidmark and, say, Mush were taken, then that was the leader and the muscle gone, and I bet it'd be harder for them.
My thoughts circled around the problem of fighting Mush, but I had to hope that Rachel's dogs could deal with him. I bit my lip, aware that I was pretty distinctive in my dark costume. I snuck forward, taking a breath, trying to imagine how the fight would go. If I was vicious and ruthless, I could probably take down Skidmark within moments, but they were also willing to shoot.
I had no doubt about that. I could still die, and yet… if Rachel was going in, it'd feel wrong not to put myself at risk, even if in theory I could do it from a distance.
That was a thought that almost convinced me to just leave her behind. There'd be less worry for her, and…
My phone rang. I paused, frowning, and then took it out. It wasn't Rachel's number, which almost made me not take the call, until I saw that it was Lisa's. I answered. "Hello?"
"Taylor, we could use your help. Lung's here, and he's attacking us." There was the briefest of pauses, "And Rachel."
As if she knew that the reason I'd care the most was if Rachel was in danger. "Oh? Where?"
"Rental Garage area off of Jamison. I… believe you aren't too far from that?"
It was 8 or 9 blocks away, give or take. That was not a little bit, really, since I wasn't that in shape, but I could make it. I began to jog, trying not to run because if Lung was there I'd have to fight when I got there. "Okay, okay, what can I do?"
"I don't know. Just get here. Use your bugs. Oni Lee is here too, and a bunch of gang members that are trying to shoot us if we try to escape," Lisa said. I could hear what sounded like an explosion in the background of the call. "Oni Lee has a shotgun. And a rather dangerous knife. I'd go for him first. Rachel's… holding Lung off, but if he gets a solid hit on one of her dogs--"
I didn't need her to finish, so I hung up. If he got a solid hit on one of her dogs, it'd be hurt, and she'd get angry. I could imagine that Rachel, angry, would make a mistake of some kind or another, because she cared about her dogs. They mattered to her in a way that I was sure Lung didn't realize. But he'd take advantage of it, no doubt.
My jog turned into a slow run. Nine blocks was far enough away that I'd be at it for a while, but I moved my dangerous bugs up, taking side alleys or flying above where people were likely to look. As soon as I was within range, I'd send in the bees to get the gang members.
In the meantime…
I hesitated. Did I want to call the Protectorate? On the one hand, I didn't trust them. On the other hand, this was Lung. He was powerful, tricky, and dangerous. He led an entire gang, and could turn into an unstoppable dragon that only got stronger the more he fought. There were rumors that he'd fought an Endbringer one-on-one, online, and while it was hard to know if they were true, if he did keep on getting stronger forever he'd eventually get too strong for Rachel's dogs unless she made them so big they were clumsy.
Of course, Lung probably wasn't that fast, so maybe it didn't matter.
Panting, I dialed the number of the PRT and hoped it wouldn't be a mistake. "PRT offices, who is this?"
"Arachne. I need to get through to the Protectorate."
"For what reason?" the male voice asked, as if he were going down a form.
I was panting when I was talking. "Lung's attacking the Undersiders at the storage garages off of Jamison street, if you know... I figure, Lung's a common enemy of everyone… so."
"Requesting assistance?" the man asked, sounding as if he were paying only a little attention.
"Yes," I said.
"I'll pass it along. Thank you for your information… Arachne, was it?"
"Yes, it was," I said. I panted a little as he continued a few pleasantries until I hung up, frustrated. Fuck if I knew whether this was a good idea, but I had to ignore it for the moment.
I was still minutes away from getting there, and if Lung killed Rachel, I didn't know what I'd do.
And Lung was a killer. A 'whoremonger' a monster, and a killer. Probably a racist too, though he was kind of beat out on that front by Kaiser. I had no doubt that Lung had finally found an opportunity to strike at them. A few weeks ago they'd raided the casino he ran under the table, and he must not have been able to get to them.
My lungs were burning, and I was still a minute or two from being in range as I thought about it. He found out where they were going, and then he struck. Was it luck, or planning? For that matter, why were they hanging around a bunch of storage garages?
This part of town used to be the old industrial district, and now it was the kind of place where paving everything into parking lots was a smarter use than actually having industry here.
In other words, there wasn't a lot of traffic, and I was blithely sprinting across streets, the occasional car honking at me before realizing I was wearing a costume. I almost stumbled on gravel, but I just kept on going, and recovered as I did.
I needed to be in better shape than this, but I could just feel a few cars outside that seemed to be parked in no-parking zones, and then I could see, from my flies, what seemed like it might be three or four gang-bangers up front. As I grew a little closer, I could see the outside of the storage garage area, and that meant I could see the squat, flat buildings, row after row of them, with armed gang-members all around the edge.
They had guns, I could see, all of them men. Not noted for his egalitarianism either, that Lung.
They ignored the flies, like I suspected, because they had no experience with them. I'd teach them soon, as I gathered up bees to go after the group in front, still not seeing Lung or the Undersiders, though there were vibrations on the air that seemed as if they were shouts and yelling, just beyond range.
Bugs couldn't hear all that well, unfortunately.
The bees fell upon the gang-bangers, who screamed and shouted, as the bees went for stings. I didn't want to stab at any eyes, the ABB didn't have any healers, and so I'd actually be hurting people who mattered in a real way. So instead I just held back and had them sting all over, again and again and again, as spiders were lowered down by wasps to scuttle towards them, ready to sting them as well.
I didn't need to down them, they just ran, and once they did, others heard and turned to approach, and that meant that they had to face the bugs.
It had to be very frustrating, fighting against insects, because there was no winning, not really. Victor had tried to solve it by going after me, but they weren't going to think about that, and it'd been luck, or perhaps an educated guess, that had let him get that close.
So instead, they just fell or ran, and soon enough the entire cordon around the area was collapsing. It was about then that I finally got in range of the fight.
I could feel Oni Lee on the roofs, apparently taking potshots, and Lung was large, about eight or nine feet tall and already covered in scales, going up against Bitch's dogs. They were smaller than him, but not by all that much, which meant that she'd really gotten them going.
Tattletale and Regent were on the back of one dog, Grue and Rachel on the back of another, and then the third of her dogs was on its own, doing hit and run attacks on Lung while Rachel shouted commands.
It was a real mess, and there were patches of what I assumed was Grue's darkness, growing down the middle of the area where the fighting was fiercest.
The Undersiders were trying to use the storage units to hide and run around, playing cat and mouse, but every time they moved backwards, I noticed, panting and still running, seeing them and yet still more than a minute out… there was Oni Lee.
Oni Lee was why the Undersiders couldn't just retreat, or at least, he was the most obvious part of it.
I still didn't know what they were doing there. I called Lisa, and she finally picked up. "So, you're here?" she asked.
"Almost. What do you need? Is there anyone besides Oni Lee keeping you from running?"
"No. We came here for a meeting. There were also a few supplies, but…" Lisa trailed off, and I could see that Lung was breathing fire in their general direction. My bugs had to keep out of the way of that. His flames certainly made using bugs on him harder, plus the fact that even his eyes had to be armored past a certain point. Or so I guessed. I couldn't be sure, because I didn't want to advertise myself too much.
"Not important. See you soon."
"Called in the Protectorate to help," I said.
"Wait what?!"
I hung up. Okay, so, I should have asked her, but then again, she was the one dodging fireballs, so she needed all the help she could get.
I needed to stop Oni Lee, that much was obvious. My bugs were spread out in the sky, watching as he leapt from place to place. My bugs could go with him, I felt them when he moved, briefly dislocated, and I could still sting him. Plus, if he managed to shake a few off, with a large enough cloud of bugs, he might not know where to leap in the first place, and there might be bugs wherever he went.
Still, I wasn't looking forward to the fight.
My bugs were spread out, and the darkness meant that what I saw from each was somewhat limited, but I knew where they were, and in my head I tried to construct a map of who was where doing what. And then I tried to make it so that my bugs sight and other senses would notice anyone popping up.
It was an idea, at least. If there was a fly every foot, then one of them would be disturbed whenever he popped up, at least where Lung wasn't burning things.
By the time I reached the area, I was panting and had to slow down to a walk, as I built up a screen of bugs to hide where I was, to make sure he didn't get an easy shot.
Most of the gang bangers were long gone, but I'd purposefully driven a few of them forward, and they were there with Lung for a moment, telling him about the bugs. A few more were down, having fainted or collapsed.
I was pretty sure I'd know if they were faking it, I thought, stepping forward. I could see ahead of myself just as well as if there were no bugs there.
Quantity had a quality all its own, when it came to vision, and all of the bugs combined got me a decent view of what was in front of me as they crawled--in the case of the ones on the ground covering my feet--and flew.
Decent was a very, very low bar in this case, but hopefully Oni Lee would…
As I walked around a bush and stepped into the first line of garages, I felt him arrive, nearby, and sent a few more bugs at him, trying to get them into his armor and clothing to rip and tear at it. Not that they'd actually tear off his mask, but anything to distract him.
Oni Lee was shorter than I expected, in a black bodysuit. He held a shotgun, but I knew his main weapons were the knives and grenades on the bandolier he had. His power, which let him teleport but leave behind a duplicate for a few seconds, meant that suicide attacks were less than suicidal, and he was a known killer. The last thing far too many people had seen was that Japanese demon mask.
But I could track him. It took a moment, because there was confusion, and of course, all of this area looked too samey for it to be as easy as just knowing things, but I could work with this. And his duplicates were not him. I just needed to keep on stinging and biting him.
And I had an idea, albeit one that I needed to be careful about.
He had grenades on that bandolier, if I could pull the pin of one I could…
Commit murder. That's what I'd be doing.
That was a chilling thought as he surged forward, firing at the center of the mass of bugs. But I was to the left.
The shotgun roared, and my heart raced as he hit the wall of bugs and then went through without getting even close to me. The wall spread itself thinner, as wasps began to sting at his hands when he drew his knife.
Then he appeared somewhere else, up above me and roughly behind me, and I moved my cloud to face him, backing up as he fired, almost hitting me this time. I ignored the clone, except to keep the swarm in front of him, and continued to bite and sting.
A normal person would have reacted by now, and as far as I knew, he wasn't superhumanly tough. He was just focused, I supposed, because what other explanation was there?
I could deal with focused, though, if I just had a little time. Shove bugs down his throat until he starts choking on them, and he'd go down. Even the strongest person in the world needs oxygen, unless their power involved them not needing it. I didn't want to choke anyone to death, that was just something I swore I'd never do, but… it was an option.
And unconsciousness wasn't death. My bugs that were left behind as he teleported felt wrong, and that was before they exploded into smoke. I could control them, but they were oddly non-responsive, as if their senses were just being dummied out or something. He kept on moving, but he wasn't actually shaking me, and the more bugs I got to bite him, including a few ants that I dropped on him, the less he could hide where he was as the bugs moved this way and that.
They were biting all on his skin, and stinging as hard as they could, and I had a black widow crawl down his shirt and began to bite, with methodical brutality that the real deal couldn't have possibly done. Which was why they weren't fatal: real spiders were not nearly so vicious as this, and I knew that meant I had to hold back at least a little, or else I'd kill him.
No matter how tough he was, his body would be itching and reacting badly, there'd be pain, and I was just getting started. I didn't want to go down to his underpants to keep on stinging, because that'd be gross, but if Rachel's life was on the line, I would do it.
I kept crouched, moving this way and that to throw off the attacks. Oni Lee had to know he was being tracked, and each time he jumped, I was just piling on with more and more bugs, biting and scratching.
And watching. Which is how I saw that he had reached up, pulled the pin out of a grenade, and threw it at me.
I ran backwards, hoping my bugs would shield me, as the shotgun fired again, a roar that left me almost deaf as it barely missed me, having waited to see when and how I was moving, or how my bugs were moving to shield me.
The grenade blew up rather loudly, and I turned, sending more of my swarm after him as a clone of his sliced at some of the bugs.
And then a few flies started really forcing themselves down his throat. They ran their bodies against his tongue as he flailed, gag reflexes having to start up in panic that he shouldn't have felt.
I rose, still breathing a little hard, and advanced towards him with my screen, walking left and then right, as if I were some game piece that couldn't just go straight at him. He kept on teleporting, but it wasn't solving anything. There were now dozens of bite marks on his body, and stings all around it, and it wasn't stopping.
It wasn't really fair, honestly, but in a one-on-one he stood no chance.
I pressed for advantage, not caring about fairness, as more and more bites all added up. He had to flee, I knew that. Flee or I just choked him down with bugs. He was teleporting more often, this way and that, and the night was filled with the roar of shotgun and grenade, but he still wasn't getting through the swarm of bugs filling every inch of the area, and he couldn't really clear them out with grenades or his knife, nor even with the shotgun. There were just too many, and he squirmed this way and that.
Lung was still fighting, but the Undersiders were starting to withdraw now that Oni Lee wasn't there to harass them, and I knew he had to strike.
Oni Lee fell at last, when one of my spiders crawled into his open mouth and started biting his tongue. It was a black widow, and so I wasn't surprised when he started to spasm. There were bites everywhere, and I wondered if I'd gone too far as I had the bug scuttle around.
He could survive this all, even the internal bite, but he'd definitely need to be treated, I thought, as he finally collapsed, and my bugs kept up more benign stings all over his body. I left them to it, splitting my forces in half, I thought, finally past being winded.
The whole fight hadn't taken much time at all, but it'd felt like a long slog, especially since halfway through the outcome wasn't in doubt.
So I jogged towards the fight, just as…
My heart leapt into my throat. Lung roared, more flames lashing out, and then I felt my bugs shift as Rachel fell off her dog and hit the ground. I hurried, reaching the fight scene, which was a wrecked pathway. The ground was black from the fire, and Rachel was lying there, just at a corner as Lung approached, wearing my costume, though with burns here and there. Rachel groaned and tried to get up.
Lung was almost ten feet tall, a scaled monstrosity, and I just stared as I stepped forward, bugs buzzing all around me. The other dogs were turning around, trying to go to save Bitch, and Grue pulled darkness down in front of her, clearly trying to distract Lung.
Lung was huge, and he wasn't Oni Lee. I didn't really stand a chance.
You know what? Fuck it.
"Hey, lizard!" I yelled, and he turned. "Yes, you!" I strode forward, surrounding myself with bugs. I had to hope that they'd survive his first fireball, and that it'd thus take two to kill me, because I didn't really have any ideas of how I was supposed to stop him.
The dogs were milling about, but without Rachel…
Without Rachel, who would they listen to. He breathed fire at me, a huge gout of it that the bugs mostly blocked, frying and dying as I leapt out of the way. "Get off the dogs!" I yelled, so loud my voice almost went hoarse.
Grue got off, and then Regent, and Lisa…
"Run!" I said.
Lung turned to attack them, but I had a secret weapon. Wasps dive-bombed his eyes as I gave a command. "Angelica!" I said, ordering the one closest to Lung. "Kill!"
Angelica leapt at him, and he didn't expect it, since of course Rachel was the one that controlled dogs. Not me.
Angelica was huge, and she barreled him over for a moment, before he recovered and began swiping at her and spitting fire.
"Angelica! Back!" I ordered, "Brutus! Judas! Kill!"
I ran for Rachel, my remaining bugs a cloud as they kept on stinging him. His eyes were vulnerable, and I felt one dive in, strong enough that he couldn't swipe it aside, or missed, and they just kept on going. And down his throat as well, though I knew he could just cook it.
Rachel looked amazing in her new costume, amazing and yet vulnerable. She wasn't moving, and I could feel the Undersiders retreating without her. If Angelica could get Rachel on her back and… strapped in somehow, then I could get her out of here and face the music myself. Hopefully the Protectorate would come and save my life before he finished me off.
But how to get her on? Perhaps I should just get both of us up, I thought, coming up on her.
I saw her chest rising and falling, and knew that she was unconscious as the dogs continued to bite and tear at him. I tried lifting her, but she weighed way too much, and there was no way I was getting her out of there on my own.
I wasn't even sure, I thought, kneeling there, exhausted and terrified, if I could lift her enough to drape her across Angelica, who was standing right there, in front of me and Rachel, serving as a sort of shield.
At this size, there was basically nothing about her that would have screamed dog. She was a monster, but I knew the her that begged for treats and liked going on walks was inside there, somewhere. It was an odd feeling, having them all obey me like that, and I knew I needed to see all of them alive through this, or Lung would have to get in line behind Rachel.
He was screaming, but as much in rage as pain, and he kept on healing. His eyes were still the most vulnerable part of him, but when it came to someone like Lung, that didn't mean anything. My hands were shaking, but I tried to keep my voice clear as I ordered the dogs to keep on attacking. Keep him off balance. I wish she had an order that did that, exactly. Playing knock-away was important if I was going to survive this, but I kept on having to order them to attack, and then retreat.
My voice was hoarse, and the flames were getting everywhere, hotter and hotter. They didn't even have to hit me to really hurt me, as hot as they were, and I kept on trying to bite at him with the bugs. The inside of his mouth, his eyes, anywhere that might not be as armored was a valid target, because I needed to pump him full of poison, and yet he'd heal from it, wouldn't he?
I panted, slapping at Rachel to get her up, aware that I was just making Lung stronger and stronger, though Judas seemed to be tearing through him a little faster than he healed, which meant that when he charged straight at me, it was slightly limping.
That was why I didn't die. Because Angelica managed to dig her claws into the ground and keep him from just knocking her into me and trampling right over me. By now he was way too big, towering over me.
"You!" he yelled, as I kept up the swarm of bugs. Rachel began to stir in my arms, and I pulled her backwards. "Angelica! Kill!"
She bit onto him, and the other two dogs came up around behind him, knocking into him and biting and clawing as he roared, fire licking over my costume.
It covered my body, or else I'd be down on the ground screaming, but as it was, I knew that any moment now he'd push through and that'd be that. I needed something far more powerful than what I had.
I needed to hit him with so many things at once that he couldn't deal with it.
And for that, I needed Rachel, or backup.
Rachel finally stirred. "Wuh?"
"Angelica. Power her up," I ordered her, trying to sound firm. I didn't have time to be polite or ask questions, I needed her larger than she was. As large as she could be. And then I could hit him with her, have her get on him and hopefully overpower him all at once.
Which was when I heard the sirens, and the roar of a motorcycle. A moment later, something slammed into Lung, and having just barely gotten up, bleeding from dozens of wounds and roaring, half-blind still, he fell like a ton of bricks.
But he was already moving as I watched Armsmaster roar up in his motorcycle, and then dismount in a single, impossibly graceful move, swinging his halberd around as he and Velocity began to engage with the monster.
Rachel managed to sit up, though she looked like she'd pass out at any moment, and put her arm on Angelica and grit her teeth. I knew it hurt, the more she did, but she needed to push through as much power as possible. There wasn't a thing like too slow in this case, the other two dogs could hold him off.
"Hold him off!" I yelled. The PRT sirens were blaring nearby, as Armsmaster fought Lung, moving and ducking and stabbing. And where he stabbed, it cut straight through the flesh as if it were nothing. Lung was getting taller, and I said, "But carefully! Don't ramp him up too much. Yet!"
Lung turned to me, and then saw that Angelica was now taller than him. There were vans that were smaller than her, and she was quickly approaching the size of a short bus. The plan was simple.
Vicious and simple. But I was well past caring as Rachel shuddered against me, almost passing out from the pain of powering up one dog so much. Angelica wasn't going to be very fast at all, but it didn't matter. She was larger than him, because he seemed to have topped off at a little over… fourteen feet or so, large enough that he was starting to look odd. There were the nubs of wings, and his whole body was thick. The bugs could still hurt his eyes, but I wasn't sure for how much longer, and each time he was blinded, he quickly began to regenerate it. But every second counted.
Angelica grew a little more, and Rachel passed out again, in my arms. "Brutus! Judas! Hold!"
"Armsmaster! Get ready!"
Velocity was backing off as Lung spat fire at everyone and everything.
"Angelica… forward!"
The dog barked, a sound that was a deep, barely human rumble, and moved to obey, ignoring the fire as if it were nothing.
"Angelica! Bite arm!"
Angelica bit down on Lung's arm. His inhuman, bizarre face knit itself into a look of agony. "Angelica: tear!"
Angelica tore Lung's arm clean off, and he screamed in agony as Armsmaster lashed out, cutting at his chest with his strange, too-long halberd.
Lung collapsed, writhing on the ground as I poured bugs into the open wounds, where they bit and scratched as he writhed on the ground. I stepped forward, watching his agony.
I shouldn't feel as happy as I did. I should feel bad, because as he flopped back he began to lose size, first a few feet, and then all of it, bleeding out along with his arm, which was gushing blood on the ground even as it began to heal and scab over.
And then lying there in a pool of blood was an unconscious, naked man. He lacked an arm, but the wound was already more or less sealed.
Rachel was in my arms, and I tried to lift her up. "Judas, come."
The dog loped over, panting. "Brutus," I said, "come."
Armsmaster, glanced over at Velocity. "Inform the PRT that we've subdued him, and that we have two prisoners."
"Two? You found Oni Lee?"
"You defeated Oni Lee?" Armsmaster asked.
I looked at him for a moment, "Who else could you mean?"
"You have Hellhound captured," Armsmaster said, firmly, as he stepped towards me.
"No, I'm going to let Bitch go. She asked for help, I provided it."
"She's a criminal and a murderer."
"Brutus, Judas, come," I said.
Velocity frowned, stepping forward, "How did you do that? I thought that Hellhound controlled the dogs with her power."
I stiffened, but I couldn't reveal the truth, that she didn't have a control power at all. "Murderer? I've gotten all the facts, and it's involuntary manslaughter at best. Maybe even not that if you got a good lawyer and a cooperative jury willing to stretch things a bit," I said. I was panting, and I was also maybe talking a little loudly.
In fact I was yelling. "You fucking lied to me. Or you were wrong. Either way, she's not going to be taken in and locked up! So just back off."
"You are aiding a villain to escape."
"She's my friend, and yes I am. I took down Lung, I got Oni Lee for you, and I've helped out several other times! So just fuck off," I groaned. "Brutus, kneel."
I realized just then that I was willing to fight Armsmaster. I'd just almost murdered a guy, and probably given another enough spider bites to ruin their life, and I was willing to fight Armsmaster if it meant protecting Rachel. The feeling in my chest was somewhere between furious and almost proud of myself. Then there was the doubt, worming at me. This was a mistake, and if it came down to a fight, I'd probably lose and get branded a villain, despite everything I'd done to help the city so far.
I wasn't supposed to feel like I was owed something, but I did. I felt like Rachel and I had both been screwed over by society, and in my case I'd gone out of my way not to be the kind of person who went Carrie on her school. I hauled Rachel up, more by adrenaline than anything else.
"If you try to escape--" Armsmaster began.
Velocity, the speedster, looked at him, and it was hard to read the expression on his face.
"Just allow me to leave for now. If you would like to talk about what I found out and why I'm doing what I am, we can. I've done nothing that deserves an arrest, not even now. You can even take credit, if that's all that matters to you."
Velocity wasn't going to talk, or at least, he wasn't going to make the decision. Armsmaster was the one in charge. He was the one who would have to go to the Director either way. Angelica was so huge that I wasn't sure how I was going to hide her movement. I'd need to find an alley and hole up in it, or help her dig out, or…
This was going to be a long night, even if he let me get away right now, and everything could easily go wrong.
Armsmaster stepped back, slightly. "This needs to be discussed. At Protectorate HQ."
"Now?" I asked, suspiciously.
"No. On the record, right now, you are claiming that she committed involuntary manslaughter, and you're also saying that you are aiding a criminal in escaping justice."
"She needed my help. And yes, every fact of the case I know, including some I think you don't know, points to what, from what I can tell online, is involuntary manslaughter. Who knows, though. You guys sent someone to the birdcage for accidental assault, so…" I shrugged, and Velocity winced a little bit.
Good.
Let them wince. I knew that if I got away now, it wasn't because I'd won. It would be because they were going to give me enough rope to see what I did with it.
I wasn't sure if they wanted me to hang myself, figuratively speaking. Trust should go both ways, and right now it went neither. "They called me in, and I called you in because I figured that you'd prioritize a known murderer in charge of a gang over a teenage girl."
Armsmaster looked like he wanted to hurt me. Or debate me. Maybe both. I knew that I had more ability to run my mouth off than he did, because of course he had more to lose. I was just some female vigilante. He was the head of an entire local organization that ran in part on its image.
"So, may I leave?" I asked. "It's that simple: I'm asking you, because I don't want to fight you unless I have to. You can record this: I intend to keep on fighting the gangs. I'm not even aligned with the Undersiders in general, even if we've worked together before."
"What about Hellhound?" Armsmaster asked, and I could tell that he knew something was up.
"I think she got a raw deal," I said. "That's all I'll say. May I leave? Yes or no."
"For the moment," Armsmaster said, as I finally pulled her up on Brutus. I wasn't a traitor, not to someone I…
I blinked, almost startled by the thought I'd cut off. Maybe it was love, after all. I didn't know, how would I know? But part of me just wanted to assume that's what it was.
It'd be silly to allow myself to ruin my life for anything less.
"Angelica, Judas. Come." I dug my knees in, and we began to retreat, retreat into the dark night past the lights and the sounds, past the sirens of the PRT vans, two exhausted girls. Together.
She must have been exhausted, because she didn't wake up at all, even when I half-dumped her in a grimy, smelly alley as I tried to figure out what to do next. I needed to get her back to her home, and I needed to do it without being discovered. That meant, first off, that I monitored for threats as I dug my hands through flesh.
Tons and tons of gross, disgusting meat, the flesh suit within which was a normal dog. My costume was all but ruined, covered in blood and guts, and I changed out of it and stuffed it into a backpack that was similarly basically ruined as well.
I hadn't been hit at all, but now that I was finally slowing down, my whole body ached in this weird, exhausted way. Rachel looked as if she'd seen better days, but I was able to drag her out of her costume and stuff that in my own backpack too.
Then I slapped at her until she woke up. I must have looked horrible, because she groaned and tried to go back to sleep.
"Come on, Rachel. Please, can you just get up for me?"
"nhhhn. Taylor?" she asked. "What…"
"We had a fight."
She clung to me tight, so tight that I struggled to breathe. "Rachel…"
"With… Lung?"
"Yes. We won," I said. "We need to get you back…"
She nodded, and then we limped off into the night.
*******
My costume was at her place. It was nearly eleven by the time I got back, and I half-expected that he'd be waiting there. Instead, he was lying in front of the television. My bugs spotted over a dozen beers before I even entered, and I could hear him snoring. I stumbled upstairs, threw myself down on the bed, and heart racing, failed to sleep.
I was still staring up at the ceiling when morning came.
******
A/N: So! Thanks to @NemoMarx.
Sometimes I wished I had some sort of instinct for these things. Even looking at the map of where the Merchants came and went, I couldn't discern some giant pattern in them just by glancing. No doubt, whatever Lisa's power was, that could help, but as it was, I had to do it the old-fashioned way.
I'd been making notes all Friday night while I was out, about the smell of this place and that, or, now that my bugs could sometimes pick it up, snippets of conversation that might be useful. Combined with a map of where they'd be, I could be pretty sure that the Merchants were going to be spread out all weekend. They didn't cluster and gather all that much, except for partying, and so that would be one venue.
But there weren't any nightclubs I'd seen them go to, which meant house parties. And house parties were pretty difficult to crash, especially if they were at different houses and apartments each night. What I needed to do was find a way to track Mush or someone like that and follow him right to a party.
The Merchants consisted of the new guy, Mush, Skidmark, Squealer, and Whirlygig, though the latter was only a little less new than the new guy. It wasn't exactly a huge roster of capes, but it was bigger than it was before, and it included two Tinkers. Everyone online said that tinkers were really hard to fight against, because you never knew what tricks they had up their sleeves.
I more or less (sometimes less since I couldn't find much about Whirlygig) knew what the non-Tinkers had in store, but that wasn't going to help at all when it came time for a fight.
I had Rachel to help me, but that was just two people. I didn't want to bring in the Undersiders, and while I'd call the Protectorate, of course, I'd have to imagine the situation as it'd be without their help, because honestly I wasn't sure if my trust of them could be hurt even more than it was without something drastic happening.
So I was just going to try to imagine a victory with just Rachel and I, together, against all of the baddies of the world. It was a little implausible, but it was a nice enough fantasy to go to sleep on, on Friday night, and I liked the feel of it.
Arachne and Bitch didn't really have a ring to it, but we could make it work. And if we wound up partners, maybe I could finally work up the courage to ask her on an actual date. It'd be a nice change from how things were going now, and a real step.
I had the timeline in my head, and I tried to ignore the way that Rachel had pre-empted my whole world several times since I'd met her. She left Coil and the Undersiders sometime in the next few weeks, I popped the question, she maybe said no, but perhaps she said yes because 'why not' which was the best I could hope for, all things considered. And then we were girlfriends, and life was great, and we'd fight crime together.
End of story. Simple, right?
Simple enough that even I couldn't mess it up, I hoped.
******
On Saturday, I learned that the English Language is horrible and must be destroyed. Or something.
Rather, when I started to stumblingly try to teach her more about reading, I hit the problem that nothing about English Grammar was that self-evident.
Rachel insisted on taking out the book, and my current idea was to have her read through a sentence, and then I'd tell her what she pronounced wrong. Read before you write, and all.
It was an idea destined to lead to frustration, but she was trying it anyways, after we'd settled down the dogs. She kept on stepping away to look at them, watch them to make sure they didn't fight, and just play with them, but as soon as she was done she'd come back and look at my little worksheets and read them.
Small words were fine.
"The dog was running, running as fast as he could, but he couldn't make it…" Rachel read. "Eh...x...ow…"
"Exhausted. It means tired," I said.
"Then why don't they just say tired?" Rachel asked, like a dog snapping at a stray finger.
"They think it sounds better."
"Ex-aust-ed?"
"Exhausted," I repeated.
"Exhausted, he slowed down, his feet burning with the salt on the roads, and…"
She flipped the page slowly, and kept on reading as I watched her. She was concentrating, I really could tell that, but concentration and trying wasn't magic. It helped, considering how many students didn't even bother with that part, and then complained that it was hard.
Still, at the rate it was going, it'd take a while, and I was still looking up how to do it better. Should I teach her about grammar? Spelling? What about new words? She had the foundations, but the foundations were also not all that different than the foundations of my house. Rotting at places, and not anything you'd want to build too much on.
She spelled phonetically, and getting through a single page of a few hundred words took forever, and that was with me helping her out with the hard words. And I didn't want to go too simple for the reading, because let me tell you, the kinds of books they taught children to read with were not the kinds of things that any adult, or even any teenager, could read. Sure, Rachel was only dubiously literate, but she wasn't stupid.
Or, I didn't think so. Maybe I was biased, but it seemed lack of education and, in some cases, interest, more than anything else. I'm not sure why I was getting any traction at all with her, but I'd take it. It wasn't as if I was trying to change her, not really. Literacy was just something she should pick up more fully, because it'd help her out.
I had a few strategies I'd seen online. One thing that could certainly help was turning words into sounds. Rachel could say words just fine, even if some of the more complex ones could trip her up, what she needed was a way to hear the word mentally when she saw it, and thus work things out. Break words down to their components, and it was like cutting up food for someone to eat easier.
That was the theory, but Rachel seemed to prefer things that left us snuggled close together, which was an instinct I could understand. Still, progress was being made, bit by bit. I wouldn't teach her to read at, say, a 5th or 6th grade level in a week. Probably not even in a month, since I wasn't actually a teacher.
Though it felt interesting, really. My Mom had been a Professor, and something told me that this was somewhat different. An English Literature professor gave opinions and analyzed things in a way that someone teaching a first grader to read couldn't. 'In my opinion, opinion is not spelled with two p's, Suzy.'
It was the kind of thought that had my lips curling up, and I was glad that I could keep in that good of a mood.
Actually, I was in a good mood all day, even when Rachel got frustrated at not being able to learn as fast as she wanted.
Her pouting was cute too.
I was pretty sure something had broken in me, but I wasn't that eager to fix it.
Rachel had her full costume done now, including the blue. I wondered what the Undersiders would think of it. When I asked, though, she snorted. "Doubt they'd notice," Rachel said.
"Why?"
"They're distracted and shit. Money, money, money," Rachel said, dismissively. She wasn't someone who valued money for itself. Then again, for all I knew none of the others did either.
"Why do they need money so badly?"
"Well, Grue has a sister or some shit that he wants to take care of," Rachel said. "Regent just likes spending money, and Lisa…"
Rachel hunched her shoulders in. "Probably a bunch of clothes or something."
I wasn't sure, actually. On the one hand, she did shop a lot, on the other hand, she seemed like the kind of person who had larger ambitions than that. I didn't know what they were, and that meant I couldn't trust them. After all, Coil had larger ambitions.
I also just felt more comfortable with the more down-to-earth desires of Rachel. She felt like someone I could approach, someone that wouldn't manipulate me, and that was… well, after all of the trouble I'd faced thus far, someone who was straight with me and honest seemed like a good thing now.
Even though I was lying to my Dad in more ways than one. It was probably hypocrisy, that I cared so much about being told the truth.
But on that warm May day, playing out in the yard or reading a book to her, watching her as much as I could, just considering life without acting…
I didn't care. That was the truth. "Wanna go out for lunch somewhere?" I asked.
"Sure," Rachel said.
I should just kick down the locker door and ask about a date using the right words for it, but… but what? I didn't know. It was just that it seemed such a large step, and I kept on picturing what would happen if people found out. Or what if they found out how close Arachne was to Bitch. I wondered what they thought about me, the Protectorate. I'd helped them multiple times now, and yet I was also sticking with Rachel. And that wasn't going to change.
"So, let's go?"
"In a sec. Come here, I think that Dodger…" she began, and I moved when she gestured. There was a bug on her shoulder, just watching her. Just like I was watching the whole approach. Nobody was going to sneak up on us.
In theory all of the watching should make me feel paranoid, but instead it made me feel intimate, and safe. Nobody was watching. Nobody cared, and the people who would care if they knew didn't matter.
The reddish-brown dog looked fine, large and somewhat intimidating, but honestly kind of a pushover, who always loved a good belly-rub. Not the smartest dog out there, either. She grabbed his head and opened his jowls, which were big, thick ones, and showed off his teeth.
They looked fine, but.
"He's gritting them. And he doesn't like eating. I think he might have a toothache or something wrong with it." Rachel grunted, clearly annoyed. "Should have bought some hygiene bones or something. It's the treats." She seemed definite, and I looked at the teeth, and had to guess that it was probably so.
A vet would have written it down. Rachel, I knew, would just remember it. "Sorry to hear that. I think you're probably right. Maybe you could get him some soft food in the meantime?"
"Sure. We could go shopping together."
"What if someone…"
"What? You think anyone knows you?" Rachel asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Nobody notices me. Cause sure, I'm on the run, but I pay in cash and shit."
I wasn't sure how true that could possibly be. Rachel stood out. She was strong, she was commanding, she had a way about her: or maybe I was just smitten, but I remember feeling that even when I first met her, and I knew the crush wasn't that immediate. Even without all of that, she still was certainly not like most girls.
"Well, nobody noticed all the other times. I also want to get some Terrariums or the like…"
"For what?"
"Holding bugs," I offered. "I'm not sure, they're supposed to have special containers or the like, but I need a way to just separate them and keep them around when I'm not controlling them." I frowned. I still needed to figure out how to make it all work.
"Oh," Rachel said.
"You care for your animals, I do the same for mine," I said.
"Kay. We can get those too." Rachel seemed to accept it. I wondered how much it'd cost her.
"Maybe tomorrow?" I offered. "Or, I mean, I'll need time to look all of this up."
She glanced over at Dodger. "Maybe. In the morning, then. Lunch now, and we'll have to make sure he doesn't eat anything bad."
"Of course," I said. By now I knew how to take care of dogs well enough that if it wasn't dog-overload, I almost missed not having them around at home.
Home. Well, that certainly made me think about what I was doing. I was going to be buying terrariums, and putting my costume here, and it felt like before I knew it, my center of gravity could shift even more than it was before. I already didn't spend a lot of time at home, what with school and everything else.
Speaking of, I was making a heroic effort to save actually working on my homework to the last minute, which was probably not me being the best role-model to Rachel. That made me think that perhaps I should move up the timeline a little bit. The Merchants were dangerous, and more than that, I didn't want it hanging above my head on Sunday when I shopped for equipment, or tried to do my homework.
So all through lunch together, as she talked about, what else, the games I'd brought and her dog's health, I was planning.
********
It was starting to get dark out later and later, so the night was not quite as inky black as it might have been when I strolled into an alley and began to change. I had a target that I needed to go after, a reveler that I thought was related to Skidmark's entertainment.
She was a streetwalker, and one that I'd seen in Skidmark's presence at least once or twice since I'd started monitoring things. All of the gangs got involved in prostitution, and that included the Merchants, who 'owned' a lot of prostitutes, people addicted or desperate, or most likely both. She was a skinny blonde who looked like a poster-child for anorexia, so frail she could blow away, but in the ten minutes I'd been tracking her this time, she'd glared at three people.
When she wasn't working, she was a forbidding sort of girl. Girl was the word, because if she were eighteen, I'd be shocked. Older than me, but far too young to be out there, and far too young to be this cynical. And addicted. And poor.
I couldn't really do anything for her, but I was going to try to avoid attacking her. She wasn't a threat, or at least not one I had to pay attention to, even if she was apparently vicious with those long, dark nails of hers.
I tried to tune out anything else she did during the nights I'd followed her, and I knew she wasn't working tonight, because I'd overheard her saying so to another of the prostitutes out there.
So, I got dressed and followed her, my range somewhere in between. I was stressed, gathering bees and spiders and wasps, trying to get together as many dangerous bugs as I could. The larger wasps could sorta-kinda carry the spiders, but it was really difficult for them, and the larger spiders just had to go on foot. It was all kinds of awkward, and I wasn't sure if I was going to repeat the experiment, maybe. As for the ants and the like?
Those could be carried, but again, it was awkward and weird. Either way, I was going for quantity, not quality. Just as many dangerous bugs as possible, and then I'd drop them on everyone.
So I began walking, taking a breath, hoping that I looked sufficiently intimidating. And hoping that nobody noticed me before it was time. I had Rachel's number and the Protectorate's number all in my phone, and as soon as I found the party I'd call both of them, set up a real strike. I didn't need to get all of them. As long as Skidmark and, say, Mush were taken, then that was the leader and the muscle gone, and I bet it'd be harder for them.
My thoughts circled around the problem of fighting Mush, but I had to hope that Rachel's dogs could deal with him. I bit my lip, aware that I was pretty distinctive in my dark costume. I snuck forward, taking a breath, trying to imagine how the fight would go. If I was vicious and ruthless, I could probably take down Skidmark within moments, but they were also willing to shoot.
I had no doubt about that. I could still die, and yet… if Rachel was going in, it'd feel wrong not to put myself at risk, even if in theory I could do it from a distance.
That was a thought that almost convinced me to just leave her behind. There'd be less worry for her, and…
My phone rang. I paused, frowning, and then took it out. It wasn't Rachel's number, which almost made me not take the call, until I saw that it was Lisa's. I answered. "Hello?"
"Taylor, we could use your help. Lung's here, and he's attacking us." There was the briefest of pauses, "And Rachel."
As if she knew that the reason I'd care the most was if Rachel was in danger. "Oh? Where?"
"Rental Garage area off of Jamison. I… believe you aren't too far from that?"
It was 8 or 9 blocks away, give or take. That was not a little bit, really, since I wasn't that in shape, but I could make it. I began to jog, trying not to run because if Lung was there I'd have to fight when I got there. "Okay, okay, what can I do?"
"I don't know. Just get here. Use your bugs. Oni Lee is here too, and a bunch of gang members that are trying to shoot us if we try to escape," Lisa said. I could hear what sounded like an explosion in the background of the call. "Oni Lee has a shotgun. And a rather dangerous knife. I'd go for him first. Rachel's… holding Lung off, but if he gets a solid hit on one of her dogs--"
I didn't need her to finish, so I hung up. If he got a solid hit on one of her dogs, it'd be hurt, and she'd get angry. I could imagine that Rachel, angry, would make a mistake of some kind or another, because she cared about her dogs. They mattered to her in a way that I was sure Lung didn't realize. But he'd take advantage of it, no doubt.
My jog turned into a slow run. Nine blocks was far enough away that I'd be at it for a while, but I moved my dangerous bugs up, taking side alleys or flying above where people were likely to look. As soon as I was within range, I'd send in the bees to get the gang members.
In the meantime…
I hesitated. Did I want to call the Protectorate? On the one hand, I didn't trust them. On the other hand, this was Lung. He was powerful, tricky, and dangerous. He led an entire gang, and could turn into an unstoppable dragon that only got stronger the more he fought. There were rumors that he'd fought an Endbringer one-on-one, online, and while it was hard to know if they were true, if he did keep on getting stronger forever he'd eventually get too strong for Rachel's dogs unless she made them so big they were clumsy.
Of course, Lung probably wasn't that fast, so maybe it didn't matter.
Panting, I dialed the number of the PRT and hoped it wouldn't be a mistake. "PRT offices, who is this?"
"Arachne. I need to get through to the Protectorate."
"For what reason?" the male voice asked, as if he were going down a form.
I was panting when I was talking. "Lung's attacking the Undersiders at the storage garages off of Jamison street, if you know... I figure, Lung's a common enemy of everyone… so."
"Requesting assistance?" the man asked, sounding as if he were paying only a little attention.
"Yes," I said.
"I'll pass it along. Thank you for your information… Arachne, was it?"
"Yes, it was," I said. I panted a little as he continued a few pleasantries until I hung up, frustrated. Fuck if I knew whether this was a good idea, but I had to ignore it for the moment.
I was still minutes away from getting there, and if Lung killed Rachel, I didn't know what I'd do.
And Lung was a killer. A 'whoremonger' a monster, and a killer. Probably a racist too, though he was kind of beat out on that front by Kaiser. I had no doubt that Lung had finally found an opportunity to strike at them. A few weeks ago they'd raided the casino he ran under the table, and he must not have been able to get to them.
My lungs were burning, and I was still a minute or two from being in range as I thought about it. He found out where they were going, and then he struck. Was it luck, or planning? For that matter, why were they hanging around a bunch of storage garages?
This part of town used to be the old industrial district, and now it was the kind of place where paving everything into parking lots was a smarter use than actually having industry here.
In other words, there wasn't a lot of traffic, and I was blithely sprinting across streets, the occasional car honking at me before realizing I was wearing a costume. I almost stumbled on gravel, but I just kept on going, and recovered as I did.
I needed to be in better shape than this, but I could just feel a few cars outside that seemed to be parked in no-parking zones, and then I could see, from my flies, what seemed like it might be three or four gang-bangers up front. As I grew a little closer, I could see the outside of the storage garage area, and that meant I could see the squat, flat buildings, row after row of them, with armed gang-members all around the edge.
They had guns, I could see, all of them men. Not noted for his egalitarianism either, that Lung.
They ignored the flies, like I suspected, because they had no experience with them. I'd teach them soon, as I gathered up bees to go after the group in front, still not seeing Lung or the Undersiders, though there were vibrations on the air that seemed as if they were shouts and yelling, just beyond range.
Bugs couldn't hear all that well, unfortunately.
The bees fell upon the gang-bangers, who screamed and shouted, as the bees went for stings. I didn't want to stab at any eyes, the ABB didn't have any healers, and so I'd actually be hurting people who mattered in a real way. So instead I just held back and had them sting all over, again and again and again, as spiders were lowered down by wasps to scuttle towards them, ready to sting them as well.
I didn't need to down them, they just ran, and once they did, others heard and turned to approach, and that meant that they had to face the bugs.
It had to be very frustrating, fighting against insects, because there was no winning, not really. Victor had tried to solve it by going after me, but they weren't going to think about that, and it'd been luck, or perhaps an educated guess, that had let him get that close.
So instead, they just fell or ran, and soon enough the entire cordon around the area was collapsing. It was about then that I finally got in range of the fight.
I could feel Oni Lee on the roofs, apparently taking potshots, and Lung was large, about eight or nine feet tall and already covered in scales, going up against Bitch's dogs. They were smaller than him, but not by all that much, which meant that she'd really gotten them going.
Tattletale and Regent were on the back of one dog, Grue and Rachel on the back of another, and then the third of her dogs was on its own, doing hit and run attacks on Lung while Rachel shouted commands.
It was a real mess, and there were patches of what I assumed was Grue's darkness, growing down the middle of the area where the fighting was fiercest.
The Undersiders were trying to use the storage units to hide and run around, playing cat and mouse, but every time they moved backwards, I noticed, panting and still running, seeing them and yet still more than a minute out… there was Oni Lee.
Oni Lee was why the Undersiders couldn't just retreat, or at least, he was the most obvious part of it.
I still didn't know what they were doing there. I called Lisa, and she finally picked up. "So, you're here?" she asked.
"Almost. What do you need? Is there anyone besides Oni Lee keeping you from running?"
"No. We came here for a meeting. There were also a few supplies, but…" Lisa trailed off, and I could see that Lung was breathing fire in their general direction. My bugs had to keep out of the way of that. His flames certainly made using bugs on him harder, plus the fact that even his eyes had to be armored past a certain point. Or so I guessed. I couldn't be sure, because I didn't want to advertise myself too much.
"Not important. See you soon."
"Called in the Protectorate to help," I said.
"Wait what?!"
I hung up. Okay, so, I should have asked her, but then again, she was the one dodging fireballs, so she needed all the help she could get.
I needed to stop Oni Lee, that much was obvious. My bugs were spread out in the sky, watching as he leapt from place to place. My bugs could go with him, I felt them when he moved, briefly dislocated, and I could still sting him. Plus, if he managed to shake a few off, with a large enough cloud of bugs, he might not know where to leap in the first place, and there might be bugs wherever he went.
Still, I wasn't looking forward to the fight.
My bugs were spread out, and the darkness meant that what I saw from each was somewhat limited, but I knew where they were, and in my head I tried to construct a map of who was where doing what. And then I tried to make it so that my bugs sight and other senses would notice anyone popping up.
It was an idea, at least. If there was a fly every foot, then one of them would be disturbed whenever he popped up, at least where Lung wasn't burning things.
By the time I reached the area, I was panting and had to slow down to a walk, as I built up a screen of bugs to hide where I was, to make sure he didn't get an easy shot.
Most of the gang bangers were long gone, but I'd purposefully driven a few of them forward, and they were there with Lung for a moment, telling him about the bugs. A few more were down, having fainted or collapsed.
I was pretty sure I'd know if they were faking it, I thought, stepping forward. I could see ahead of myself just as well as if there were no bugs there.
Quantity had a quality all its own, when it came to vision, and all of the bugs combined got me a decent view of what was in front of me as they crawled--in the case of the ones on the ground covering my feet--and flew.
Decent was a very, very low bar in this case, but hopefully Oni Lee would…
As I walked around a bush and stepped into the first line of garages, I felt him arrive, nearby, and sent a few more bugs at him, trying to get them into his armor and clothing to rip and tear at it. Not that they'd actually tear off his mask, but anything to distract him.
Oni Lee was shorter than I expected, in a black bodysuit. He held a shotgun, but I knew his main weapons were the knives and grenades on the bandolier he had. His power, which let him teleport but leave behind a duplicate for a few seconds, meant that suicide attacks were less than suicidal, and he was a known killer. The last thing far too many people had seen was that Japanese demon mask.
But I could track him. It took a moment, because there was confusion, and of course, all of this area looked too samey for it to be as easy as just knowing things, but I could work with this. And his duplicates were not him. I just needed to keep on stinging and biting him.
And I had an idea, albeit one that I needed to be careful about.
He had grenades on that bandolier, if I could pull the pin of one I could…
Commit murder. That's what I'd be doing.
That was a chilling thought as he surged forward, firing at the center of the mass of bugs. But I was to the left.
The shotgun roared, and my heart raced as he hit the wall of bugs and then went through without getting even close to me. The wall spread itself thinner, as wasps began to sting at his hands when he drew his knife.
Then he appeared somewhere else, up above me and roughly behind me, and I moved my cloud to face him, backing up as he fired, almost hitting me this time. I ignored the clone, except to keep the swarm in front of him, and continued to bite and sting.
A normal person would have reacted by now, and as far as I knew, he wasn't superhumanly tough. He was just focused, I supposed, because what other explanation was there?
I could deal with focused, though, if I just had a little time. Shove bugs down his throat until he starts choking on them, and he'd go down. Even the strongest person in the world needs oxygen, unless their power involved them not needing it. I didn't want to choke anyone to death, that was just something I swore I'd never do, but… it was an option.
And unconsciousness wasn't death. My bugs that were left behind as he teleported felt wrong, and that was before they exploded into smoke. I could control them, but they were oddly non-responsive, as if their senses were just being dummied out or something. He kept on moving, but he wasn't actually shaking me, and the more bugs I got to bite him, including a few ants that I dropped on him, the less he could hide where he was as the bugs moved this way and that.
They were biting all on his skin, and stinging as hard as they could, and I had a black widow crawl down his shirt and began to bite, with methodical brutality that the real deal couldn't have possibly done. Which was why they weren't fatal: real spiders were not nearly so vicious as this, and I knew that meant I had to hold back at least a little, or else I'd kill him.
No matter how tough he was, his body would be itching and reacting badly, there'd be pain, and I was just getting started. I didn't want to go down to his underpants to keep on stinging, because that'd be gross, but if Rachel's life was on the line, I would do it.
I kept crouched, moving this way and that to throw off the attacks. Oni Lee had to know he was being tracked, and each time he jumped, I was just piling on with more and more bugs, biting and scratching.
And watching. Which is how I saw that he had reached up, pulled the pin out of a grenade, and threw it at me.
I ran backwards, hoping my bugs would shield me, as the shotgun fired again, a roar that left me almost deaf as it barely missed me, having waited to see when and how I was moving, or how my bugs were moving to shield me.
The grenade blew up rather loudly, and I turned, sending more of my swarm after him as a clone of his sliced at some of the bugs.
And then a few flies started really forcing themselves down his throat. They ran their bodies against his tongue as he flailed, gag reflexes having to start up in panic that he shouldn't have felt.
I rose, still breathing a little hard, and advanced towards him with my screen, walking left and then right, as if I were some game piece that couldn't just go straight at him. He kept on teleporting, but it wasn't solving anything. There were now dozens of bite marks on his body, and stings all around it, and it wasn't stopping.
It wasn't really fair, honestly, but in a one-on-one he stood no chance.
I pressed for advantage, not caring about fairness, as more and more bites all added up. He had to flee, I knew that. Flee or I just choked him down with bugs. He was teleporting more often, this way and that, and the night was filled with the roar of shotgun and grenade, but he still wasn't getting through the swarm of bugs filling every inch of the area, and he couldn't really clear them out with grenades or his knife, nor even with the shotgun. There were just too many, and he squirmed this way and that.
Lung was still fighting, but the Undersiders were starting to withdraw now that Oni Lee wasn't there to harass them, and I knew he had to strike.
Oni Lee fell at last, when one of my spiders crawled into his open mouth and started biting his tongue. It was a black widow, and so I wasn't surprised when he started to spasm. There were bites everywhere, and I wondered if I'd gone too far as I had the bug scuttle around.
He could survive this all, even the internal bite, but he'd definitely need to be treated, I thought, as he finally collapsed, and my bugs kept up more benign stings all over his body. I left them to it, splitting my forces in half, I thought, finally past being winded.
The whole fight hadn't taken much time at all, but it'd felt like a long slog, especially since halfway through the outcome wasn't in doubt.
So I jogged towards the fight, just as…
My heart leapt into my throat. Lung roared, more flames lashing out, and then I felt my bugs shift as Rachel fell off her dog and hit the ground. I hurried, reaching the fight scene, which was a wrecked pathway. The ground was black from the fire, and Rachel was lying there, just at a corner as Lung approached, wearing my costume, though with burns here and there. Rachel groaned and tried to get up.
Lung was almost ten feet tall, a scaled monstrosity, and I just stared as I stepped forward, bugs buzzing all around me. The other dogs were turning around, trying to go to save Bitch, and Grue pulled darkness down in front of her, clearly trying to distract Lung.
Lung was huge, and he wasn't Oni Lee. I didn't really stand a chance.
You know what? Fuck it.
"Hey, lizard!" I yelled, and he turned. "Yes, you!" I strode forward, surrounding myself with bugs. I had to hope that they'd survive his first fireball, and that it'd thus take two to kill me, because I didn't really have any ideas of how I was supposed to stop him.
The dogs were milling about, but without Rachel…
Without Rachel, who would they listen to. He breathed fire at me, a huge gout of it that the bugs mostly blocked, frying and dying as I leapt out of the way. "Get off the dogs!" I yelled, so loud my voice almost went hoarse.
Grue got off, and then Regent, and Lisa…
"Run!" I said.
Lung turned to attack them, but I had a secret weapon. Wasps dive-bombed his eyes as I gave a command. "Angelica!" I said, ordering the one closest to Lung. "Kill!"
Angelica leapt at him, and he didn't expect it, since of course Rachel was the one that controlled dogs. Not me.
Angelica was huge, and she barreled him over for a moment, before he recovered and began swiping at her and spitting fire.
"Angelica! Back!" I ordered, "Brutus! Judas! Kill!"
I ran for Rachel, my remaining bugs a cloud as they kept on stinging him. His eyes were vulnerable, and I felt one dive in, strong enough that he couldn't swipe it aside, or missed, and they just kept on going. And down his throat as well, though I knew he could just cook it.
Rachel looked amazing in her new costume, amazing and yet vulnerable. She wasn't moving, and I could feel the Undersiders retreating without her. If Angelica could get Rachel on her back and… strapped in somehow, then I could get her out of here and face the music myself. Hopefully the Protectorate would come and save my life before he finished me off.
But how to get her on? Perhaps I should just get both of us up, I thought, coming up on her.
I saw her chest rising and falling, and knew that she was unconscious as the dogs continued to bite and tear at him. I tried lifting her, but she weighed way too much, and there was no way I was getting her out of there on my own.
I wasn't even sure, I thought, kneeling there, exhausted and terrified, if I could lift her enough to drape her across Angelica, who was standing right there, in front of me and Rachel, serving as a sort of shield.
At this size, there was basically nothing about her that would have screamed dog. She was a monster, but I knew the her that begged for treats and liked going on walks was inside there, somewhere. It was an odd feeling, having them all obey me like that, and I knew I needed to see all of them alive through this, or Lung would have to get in line behind Rachel.
He was screaming, but as much in rage as pain, and he kept on healing. His eyes were still the most vulnerable part of him, but when it came to someone like Lung, that didn't mean anything. My hands were shaking, but I tried to keep my voice clear as I ordered the dogs to keep on attacking. Keep him off balance. I wish she had an order that did that, exactly. Playing knock-away was important if I was going to survive this, but I kept on having to order them to attack, and then retreat.
My voice was hoarse, and the flames were getting everywhere, hotter and hotter. They didn't even have to hit me to really hurt me, as hot as they were, and I kept on trying to bite at him with the bugs. The inside of his mouth, his eyes, anywhere that might not be as armored was a valid target, because I needed to pump him full of poison, and yet he'd heal from it, wouldn't he?
I panted, slapping at Rachel to get her up, aware that I was just making Lung stronger and stronger, though Judas seemed to be tearing through him a little faster than he healed, which meant that when he charged straight at me, it was slightly limping.
That was why I didn't die. Because Angelica managed to dig her claws into the ground and keep him from just knocking her into me and trampling right over me. By now he was way too big, towering over me.
"You!" he yelled, as I kept up the swarm of bugs. Rachel began to stir in my arms, and I pulled her backwards. "Angelica! Kill!"
She bit onto him, and the other two dogs came up around behind him, knocking into him and biting and clawing as he roared, fire licking over my costume.
It covered my body, or else I'd be down on the ground screaming, but as it was, I knew that any moment now he'd push through and that'd be that. I needed something far more powerful than what I had.
I needed to hit him with so many things at once that he couldn't deal with it.
And for that, I needed Rachel, or backup.
Rachel finally stirred. "Wuh?"
"Angelica. Power her up," I ordered her, trying to sound firm. I didn't have time to be polite or ask questions, I needed her larger than she was. As large as she could be. And then I could hit him with her, have her get on him and hopefully overpower him all at once.
Which was when I heard the sirens, and the roar of a motorcycle. A moment later, something slammed into Lung, and having just barely gotten up, bleeding from dozens of wounds and roaring, half-blind still, he fell like a ton of bricks.
But he was already moving as I watched Armsmaster roar up in his motorcycle, and then dismount in a single, impossibly graceful move, swinging his halberd around as he and Velocity began to engage with the monster.
Rachel managed to sit up, though she looked like she'd pass out at any moment, and put her arm on Angelica and grit her teeth. I knew it hurt, the more she did, but she needed to push through as much power as possible. There wasn't a thing like too slow in this case, the other two dogs could hold him off.
"Hold him off!" I yelled. The PRT sirens were blaring nearby, as Armsmaster fought Lung, moving and ducking and stabbing. And where he stabbed, it cut straight through the flesh as if it were nothing. Lung was getting taller, and I said, "But carefully! Don't ramp him up too much. Yet!"
Lung turned to me, and then saw that Angelica was now taller than him. There were vans that were smaller than her, and she was quickly approaching the size of a short bus. The plan was simple.
Vicious and simple. But I was well past caring as Rachel shuddered against me, almost passing out from the pain of powering up one dog so much. Angelica wasn't going to be very fast at all, but it didn't matter. She was larger than him, because he seemed to have topped off at a little over… fourteen feet or so, large enough that he was starting to look odd. There were the nubs of wings, and his whole body was thick. The bugs could still hurt his eyes, but I wasn't sure for how much longer, and each time he was blinded, he quickly began to regenerate it. But every second counted.
Angelica grew a little more, and Rachel passed out again, in my arms. "Brutus! Judas! Hold!"
"Armsmaster! Get ready!"
Velocity was backing off as Lung spat fire at everyone and everything.
"Angelica… forward!"
The dog barked, a sound that was a deep, barely human rumble, and moved to obey, ignoring the fire as if it were nothing.
"Angelica! Bite arm!"
Angelica bit down on Lung's arm. His inhuman, bizarre face knit itself into a look of agony. "Angelica: tear!"
Angelica tore Lung's arm clean off, and he screamed in agony as Armsmaster lashed out, cutting at his chest with his strange, too-long halberd.
Lung collapsed, writhing on the ground as I poured bugs into the open wounds, where they bit and scratched as he writhed on the ground. I stepped forward, watching his agony.
I shouldn't feel as happy as I did. I should feel bad, because as he flopped back he began to lose size, first a few feet, and then all of it, bleeding out along with his arm, which was gushing blood on the ground even as it began to heal and scab over.
And then lying there in a pool of blood was an unconscious, naked man. He lacked an arm, but the wound was already more or less sealed.
Rachel was in my arms, and I tried to lift her up. "Judas, come."
The dog loped over, panting. "Brutus," I said, "come."
Armsmaster, glanced over at Velocity. "Inform the PRT that we've subdued him, and that we have two prisoners."
"Two? You found Oni Lee?"
"You defeated Oni Lee?" Armsmaster asked.
I looked at him for a moment, "Who else could you mean?"
"You have Hellhound captured," Armsmaster said, firmly, as he stepped towards me.
"No, I'm going to let Bitch go. She asked for help, I provided it."
"She's a criminal and a murderer."
"Brutus, Judas, come," I said.
Velocity frowned, stepping forward, "How did you do that? I thought that Hellhound controlled the dogs with her power."
I stiffened, but I couldn't reveal the truth, that she didn't have a control power at all. "Murderer? I've gotten all the facts, and it's involuntary manslaughter at best. Maybe even not that if you got a good lawyer and a cooperative jury willing to stretch things a bit," I said. I was panting, and I was also maybe talking a little loudly.
In fact I was yelling. "You fucking lied to me. Or you were wrong. Either way, she's not going to be taken in and locked up! So just back off."
"You are aiding a villain to escape."
"She's my friend, and yes I am. I took down Lung, I got Oni Lee for you, and I've helped out several other times! So just fuck off," I groaned. "Brutus, kneel."
I realized just then that I was willing to fight Armsmaster. I'd just almost murdered a guy, and probably given another enough spider bites to ruin their life, and I was willing to fight Armsmaster if it meant protecting Rachel. The feeling in my chest was somewhere between furious and almost proud of myself. Then there was the doubt, worming at me. This was a mistake, and if it came down to a fight, I'd probably lose and get branded a villain, despite everything I'd done to help the city so far.
I wasn't supposed to feel like I was owed something, but I did. I felt like Rachel and I had both been screwed over by society, and in my case I'd gone out of my way not to be the kind of person who went Carrie on her school. I hauled Rachel up, more by adrenaline than anything else.
"If you try to escape--" Armsmaster began.
Velocity, the speedster, looked at him, and it was hard to read the expression on his face.
"Just allow me to leave for now. If you would like to talk about what I found out and why I'm doing what I am, we can. I've done nothing that deserves an arrest, not even now. You can even take credit, if that's all that matters to you."
Velocity wasn't going to talk, or at least, he wasn't going to make the decision. Armsmaster was the one in charge. He was the one who would have to go to the Director either way. Angelica was so huge that I wasn't sure how I was going to hide her movement. I'd need to find an alley and hole up in it, or help her dig out, or…
This was going to be a long night, even if he let me get away right now, and everything could easily go wrong.
Armsmaster stepped back, slightly. "This needs to be discussed. At Protectorate HQ."
"Now?" I asked, suspiciously.
"No. On the record, right now, you are claiming that she committed involuntary manslaughter, and you're also saying that you are aiding a criminal in escaping justice."
"She needed my help. And yes, every fact of the case I know, including some I think you don't know, points to what, from what I can tell online, is involuntary manslaughter. Who knows, though. You guys sent someone to the birdcage for accidental assault, so…" I shrugged, and Velocity winced a little bit.
Good.
Let them wince. I knew that if I got away now, it wasn't because I'd won. It would be because they were going to give me enough rope to see what I did with it.
I wasn't sure if they wanted me to hang myself, figuratively speaking. Trust should go both ways, and right now it went neither. "They called me in, and I called you in because I figured that you'd prioritize a known murderer in charge of a gang over a teenage girl."
Armsmaster looked like he wanted to hurt me. Or debate me. Maybe both. I knew that I had more ability to run my mouth off than he did, because of course he had more to lose. I was just some female vigilante. He was the head of an entire local organization that ran in part on its image.
"So, may I leave?" I asked. "It's that simple: I'm asking you, because I don't want to fight you unless I have to. You can record this: I intend to keep on fighting the gangs. I'm not even aligned with the Undersiders in general, even if we've worked together before."
"What about Hellhound?" Armsmaster asked, and I could tell that he knew something was up.
"I think she got a raw deal," I said. "That's all I'll say. May I leave? Yes or no."
"For the moment," Armsmaster said, as I finally pulled her up on Brutus. I wasn't a traitor, not to someone I…
I blinked, almost startled by the thought I'd cut off. Maybe it was love, after all. I didn't know, how would I know? But part of me just wanted to assume that's what it was.
It'd be silly to allow myself to ruin my life for anything less.
"Angelica, Judas. Come." I dug my knees in, and we began to retreat, retreat into the dark night past the lights and the sounds, past the sirens of the PRT vans, two exhausted girls. Together.
She must have been exhausted, because she didn't wake up at all, even when I half-dumped her in a grimy, smelly alley as I tried to figure out what to do next. I needed to get her back to her home, and I needed to do it without being discovered. That meant, first off, that I monitored for threats as I dug my hands through flesh.
Tons and tons of gross, disgusting meat, the flesh suit within which was a normal dog. My costume was all but ruined, covered in blood and guts, and I changed out of it and stuffed it into a backpack that was similarly basically ruined as well.
I hadn't been hit at all, but now that I was finally slowing down, my whole body ached in this weird, exhausted way. Rachel looked as if she'd seen better days, but I was able to drag her out of her costume and stuff that in my own backpack too.
Then I slapped at her until she woke up. I must have looked horrible, because she groaned and tried to go back to sleep.
"Come on, Rachel. Please, can you just get up for me?"
"nhhhn. Taylor?" she asked. "What…"
"We had a fight."
She clung to me tight, so tight that I struggled to breathe. "Rachel…"
"With… Lung?"
"Yes. We won," I said. "We need to get you back…"
She nodded, and then we limped off into the night.
*******
My costume was at her place. It was nearly eleven by the time I got back, and I half-expected that he'd be waiting there. Instead, he was lying in front of the television. My bugs spotted over a dozen beers before I even entered, and I could hear him snoring. I stumbled upstairs, threw myself down on the bed, and heart racing, failed to sleep.
I was still staring up at the ceiling when morning came.
******
A/N: So! Thanks to @NemoMarx.
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Dr. Mercurious
Strangest Person You Know
- Location
- New England
Taylor's interactions with the Protectorate are a thing of beauty. Also, way to remind them that their record concerning dealing with Parahumans who need their help is not great.
About damn time someone rubbed their noses in the Canary debacle...
About damn time someone rubbed their noses in the Canary debacle...
tkioz
The Rabid Bunyip
- Location
- Australia
TAYLOR: OI! FUCKER! HANDS OFF MY GIRLFRIEND!
LUNG: ROAR
TAYLOR: BEEESSSSSSS and DOGGGGGGGGGS
LUNG: MA ARM!
ARMSMASTER: HALT EVILDOER!
TAYLOR: FUCK OFF OR YOU'RE NEXT.
ARMSMASTER: eeeeeep.
Yep, don't fuck with Taylor's girlfriend, it wont end well for you, even if she limited herself to only ripping Lung's arm off and not rotting his junk off this time.
LUNG: ROAR
TAYLOR: BEEESSSSSSS and DOGGGGGGGGGS
LUNG: MA ARM!
ARMSMASTER: HALT EVILDOER!
TAYLOR: FUCK OFF OR YOU'RE NEXT.
ARMSMASTER: eeeeeep.
Yep, don't fuck with Taylor's girlfriend, it wont end well for you, even if she limited herself to only ripping Lung's arm off and not rotting his junk off this time.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Personally, my favorite part is the fight scene, with Taylor flexing her dog training and throwing that weight around.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Guess they're too disorganized to really have one.
Too classy, and after the Octokberfest incident, blanket ban on them in nightclubs.
Or worse come to it, change your name.
Your mother would be so ashamed to hear you say that.
Maybe also focus on more hard rubber toys?
Eugh, Skidmark, man, your taste is shite.
What a coincidence. In fact, I wonder if this was.... deliberate.
Alec was getting out the backup couch after Brian ruined the old one.
Try period, most are apparently deaf.
Not going to work, grenades need a fair bit of force, plus the thumb safety.
She needs to go on a diet, right?
Eh, it'll grow back.
On the upside, one's got a Brute rating and the other is someone nobody cares about.
Ouch, between this burn and the Canary one, someone needs burn cream.
Also whatever the hell Lee counts as.
Well, you won, she just kinda survived.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
That link doesn't say what your blue-text does?
And it was her power and her dogs that allowed Taylor to actually win, so eh.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
Spider silk lines for the win. Bonus points if you attach them to his shotgun so he does himself in while trying to kill you.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
hit
By the way did Oni Lee ever use guns in canon, i don't think he did but i could be remembering wrong, imagining him porting around with a Shotgun with basically unlimited ammo is pretty scary i have to say.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Huh, and here I thought I'd see people complaining that this Taylor didn't do as many complex bug shenanigans. No bugs carrying portable missile launchers by distributing the weight between them, etc, etc.