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Wolf Spider (Worm) (Complete)
- Thread starter The Laurent
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Feral 5.3
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Feral 5.3
While all of the new camp members and the others got settled in, Greg, Pelter and I stared at the bounty. Rachel had gone up to tend to her dogs, and perhaps something else, since I saw her moving like she was going to go straight past the shelter.
Charlotte was with 'her' girls, trying to manage them, and doing a decent job at it. Which left the three of us to go over the paperwork.
"This stuff's crazy! I mean... geeze. Congratulations on your newly purchased superpowers?" Greg asked. "We should totally take these or something. I mean, think about it Taylor--"
"No," I said. "The last person to take one… it's not something to just jump into. We'll keep these here, and…"
"Why should we keep them here?" Pelter asked, looking through another paper, which seemed to have specs on each of the twelve samples. Twelve? That really made me wonder. Why were there so many? If every single one of them was sold, then if they were sold to one group, said group would be one of the strongest, if not the strongest, in the city.
They each had names, it seemed. The three vials we had were labeled this weird way in the paperwork, each of them.
'Canister C1: C-2-1-B-2, 'Paragon', 55% mixture.
Added: O-0-1-2-1, 'Division', 30% mixture.
Added: C-0-0-7-2, 'Balance', 15% mixture.'
'Canister 2E: A-0-5-4-6, 'Hephaestus', 80% mixture.
Added: C-0-0-7-2, 'Balance', 20% mixture.'
'Canister FF: E-0-F-C-2, 'Deus', 60% mixture.
Added: C-0-0-7-2, 'Balance', 40% mixture'
What weird names? How was I supposed to know what they meant? Hephaestus was the smith god in Greek, I thought. Deus was God in general, and paragon? None of this really seemed to give me much to work on. I frowned, leaning back a little on my heels, glancing at this little group.
"Here? As opposed to giving them to the Protectorate?"
"Surely they can use it. To… help people?" Pelter said it thoughtfully.
"Then why not us! We could do it. I could take one, and Sierra--" Greg bounced up and down, his gestures wild and
"She'd say no," I told Greg. Not after what had happened to her brother. I glanced around the tent. "We're not doing it… but we're not getting rid of it either. Pelter, we need somewhere safe to keep them. Safe and hidden. A box and then buried and then kept under watch, maybe with a bug in a jar or something? I'm not sure."
I shook my head. "Some way so we know where they are."
"Why?" Greg asked, confused and dejected. He was slumping, his dreams of being a superhero dashed, and I felt bad for him.
Still, I had a plan to help cheer him up.
"Well, it's possible we could need it." I shrugged a little. "I don't know if I trust them, but whatever this is, it could be useful. Certainly, the Merchants are going to do something about it."
I frowned, thinking to the look on the faces of the PRT when we delivered all that we had. They'd showed up in force, perhaps expecting a fight, and found that somehow three members had become four, though Charlotte didn't have a name yet. That'd take time, I thought, stretching a little bit.
"Ah," Greg said, and I could see from the helpful and suddenly eager look on his face that he was going to keep on trying to get me to do it. Again and again. Now that he knew there was a chance, now that he knew we were keeping it in reserve…
Pelter didn't look too happy about the decision, but I don't think she'd disagree. Let alone bring up the good points that she could, about how it'd make us a target. After all, the Merchants had to know where it was: with us.
And three new capes was definitely better than six. As it was, they were going to be getting even stronger, as we spoke, as we tried to deal with it. But we'd ruined their wave and busted two of their newest members.
That had to hurt. Squealer, Dose, and Skidmark. If I took down Skidmark, would Dose take control? I didn't know what to do next. There was still Coil to watch, and the E88 were still a presence.
The camp, though. That was going to be the biggest problem. We were expanding so fast it was crazy. Cassie'd probably keep everyone posted on it, but counting the new people, we were well above five hundred members now. Perhaps they should move to the nearby abandoned apartments too. If so, I could watch them, but it'd be more to protect, so for the moment everyone was squeezing in.
Squeezing in was the word. The apartment buildings themselves…
Long after Greg had left, at least for the moment, Pelter talked to me about the problems. I listened, trying not to focus on everything else I could be doing, including talking to Charlotte. "So, there are eighty-four apartment units there. Say we fit three or four people in each one, and that's still hundreds of people camping out here. But if we take over those nearby apartments, it gets better, because it's not as if we aren't already stretched all along the street and the road and all the way over."
It was true, actually. We'd had to set up roadblocks of sorts for anyone coming from the north or south. They'd have to stop or wait for people to clear out, because there were just too many people.
"Would we get everyone in an apartment if we did that?"
"Well, the real concern," Pelter admitted, "is whoever the owners are."
"Fuck the owners," I said, with a shrug. "Would we get everyone if we did that?"
"We're still getting power and plumbing and water all set up for these ones, but if we occupied both? That'd still leave a community down here in tents, but not as bad of one."
"Make it so, then. How bad?"
"Oh, maybe a hundred, maybe less, down here. Though we would have to decide where you live if we start moving people in en masse."
"Don't worry about it," I said, baring my teeth at the world. "There's more people fleeing here every day. We're never going to run out of the camp until this city gets fixed." I shook my head. "And once that happens, we won't need the camp. I have no idea what we'll do next, but it'll be something."
"Well, I guess. Your range is good enough to watch both, but what if they attack one while we're…" Pelter bit her lip and shook her head. "We did a good thing earlier today, and I--I don't mean to doubt you."
"You doubt me?" I asked, trying to sound as if I wasn't aware of just how much I should be doubted. I… needed to keep up a facade.
"I thought that the attack on the mall was a bad idea, but I couldn't say no to rescuing one of our own. But what do we do when they come back in even greater force?"
That was a good question. It was as much luck as anything that none of us had died, and if Charlotte hadn't triggered, it would have been a lot bloodier. Skidmark wouldn't have had a reason to rabbit like the coward he was, and if Squealer had showed up, then… it could have gotten messy, especially if they got desperate and started using these "Cauldron vials" to create new capes.
As it was, assuming they used all of the vials as soon as they found someone willing, that meant that the Merchants would have eight members plus some of their pseudo-capes within a very short time. Probably by tomorrow, or the day after depending on how picky they were.
At that point, they'd outnumber us slightly more than two to one, but…
But? I wasn't that scared of the Merchants. Or rather, I thought we just might be able to match them. I could take out Skidmark, and Squealer wasn't that terrifying. Dose's danger wasn't as a fighter himself, it was for all of the drugs he made. And the other six? I didn't want to think about them just yet.
One thing at a time.
Next thing on the list?
******
"Hey, Greg, come with me," I said.
"Really?!" he asked, confused, frowning, a half hour later.
"We're going on a little walk to see Rachel when she gets back," I said, with a wave of my hand.
"Why?" he asked, blinking in confusion. "I-I mean, I'd love to talk to her, and all, but why?"
"Didn't you want to play some video games? I found a Game Box and some games." I looked at him for a moment, amused at the look of desperate hope on his face. "And I figured, what girlfriend would I be if I didn't give Rachel what she wanted. And Rachel likes playing games."
If I had personally kicked his puppy, Greg couldn't have been more devastated. He'd been coping well on his own, but I wondered: he had to know that his Mom was… well, she hadn't gotten in contact, and he'd sent out word, so there was every chance she was burnt up completely.
Which meant he needed a friend… and besides me.
"So," I said, realizing he hadn't gotten it. "If you ask Rachel nicely, you two can play together."
Actually, my scheme was slightly more clever than that, because then Rachel would say no. But I didn't want to tell Greg the rest, because then that'd spoil it.
Because the truth was simple and undeniable: Rachel was awesome. But I also knew she wasn't sociable. If I didn't try to do anything about it, she'd ignore the rest of the team, and while spending more time with me wasn't something I disapproved of…
Greg wasn't part of the team, but he was my friend. Cassie already had an in with her, and I could figure out how Pelter and Rachel could get along later.
Charlotte I still needed to figure out, first.
"Sure! I can do that!" Greg said, clearly trying to drown out the doubts in his head. I nodded, looking at him. He was jittering, as if he was a junkie about to get his video game fix.
"And while you're there, maybe she makes you help out a little. But dogs are cute, right?"
"Y-yeah," he said, keeping his enthusiasm up as we went through a walk through the ruins.
We didn't really get that much news from the outside world. We got plenty of people from the area, but I couldn't tell someone what percentage of the city was still here. I couldn't estimate how many people were without power, though I assumed there were tons. Still, it'd been over two weeks, and considering the way that Behemoth hadn't hit parts of the city, I assumed that there was progress being made on pulling the city together.
It just really wasn't here, and I wondered what the E88 were doing in all of this mess. Or Coil? I needed more data on what he had planned, because otherwise…
I brooded the whole way there, letting myself into the shelter and then waiting until Rachel came back in range.
I cared for the dogs, of course. "Okay, Greg. Now, start remembering names: Angelica, King, Stumpy… I think that new one is Louie, Ginger, Doon…" I pointed them out one by one as they greeted us. She had a lot of dogs. She'd been adding more every day, it sometimes seemed like, and all of them were… pretty used to me, mostly.
Which meant that I was assaulted by cold noses and wet tongues, and found myself on the ground fending off the happy hordes of dogs. Small, big, it didn't matter, and I let myself be buried.
"I'm not sure if I can… I mean. I'll try!"
"You can remember all of the names of that one Fantasy game," I said, rubbing a belly with one hand, while scratching an ear with another. I liked the dogs: if you weren't a dog person, and couldn't become one, then being close to Rachel was kind of a lost cause. They also kind of reminded me of her, so I just felt kinda happier messing around with them.
"...okay, well. Then..."
"It's not like they're going to blame you for getting their names wrong," I said, beneath the pile of dogs. In fact, they were sniffing around him, hopeful for a treat.
I could lay here for a long time, even though, yes, the dogs smelled like dogs. Some of them even stank to high heaven. But that's just how you took them, I thought. Though I was going to have to give some of them a bath.
"Hey, Greg. Can you go grab those mobile tubs in the other room? The ones you can carry around. I think Stinky--" an actual name, and a fitting one, "Could use a bath." I didn't know how the dog smelled that bad, because she could be given a bath and then a week later smell twenty times as worse as any dog. Despite the fact that she wasn't any messier than any of them.
"Oh, okay. When's Rachel getting back."
"Doesn't matter," I said. "I'll get a few of the shelter people to help us, if you're so worried."
*******
Cassie wasn't there, but it was amazing how many people were taking care of this dog shelter now. I bet that they'd have to either expand or start giving away dogs before too long, but Rachel entered my range just as we were getting the dogs into the baths, and she arrived as we were drying off the last of them.
My shirt was ruined, soaked with water, and I was a little grouchy after one of the dogs had gotten free and gone straight for the mud, but her almost being back made me hum,. and I could tell from the look on Greg's face that he could see it too.
"Rachel's almost back," I finally said.
"Honey, we could tell," a new woman, Marge, said. She was a big-boned woman, and she seemed to be one of those types of people who was gregarious and thought that everyone's business was her own.
"Oh?" I shrugged.
"Your bra's showing," Marge said.
Greg flushed as if he were lit on fire and looked away, even though he'd been glancing at me moment's before, and had to see that all that was showing was the outline of the bra. Taylor Hebert wears a bra, news at eleven.
Greg treating it like he needed to run out of the room and hide was somewhere between awkward and hilarious, but I knew he wouldn't take me laughing well. "Greg, can you go check that the dogs outside are fine?"
Of course they were, my bugs were there, watching them. Not fleas, of course, none of the dogs had fleas, or ticks, or anything like that. But just flies buzzing around their heads that many of them had sorta learned to ignore. Or didn't care about in the first place.
But he followed, anyways.
"I don't care," I said, with a shrug, as soon as he was gone. My face had flushed slightly, but only slightly.
"Just telling you," Marge said.
"Well, thanks. Rachel's coming in, could you give me some privacy?"
"Sure, sure," Marge said, in a knowing voice. Though the truth was that I didn't have anything of that sort planned. There was far too much to do today to get distracted. That was something that could be saved for later.
Rachel stepped in just a minute or two later, with Brutus in tow. She looked me up and down. I was covered in dog hair on top of the water. She nodded in an appreciative way. "Washing the dog?"
I knew better than to tease her about how obvious that was. "Yep. Also, I wanted to talk to you. You want a GameBox?"
"Yeah," Rachel said. "That's what you were getting?"
"Yes. I know it's traditional to get rather than give presents around your birthday, but I wanted to give it to you anyways." I held up a hand. "On one caveat. Actually, two."
"Huh?"
"First, what is your birthday?"
"Uh, I think it's early on August?" Rachel said, with a frown. "Never celebrated it none."
"Second… you have to play it and share it with Greg."
Rachel crossed her arms. She was dressed in a sleeveless shirt, and a pair of shorts, and looked very fierce, ready for a long fight.
"I figure, he's my friend, and he's good at playing video games. If he's annoying, just tell him to back off a little." I shrugged. "He wants to play, and I want you to be able to play too, if you find it fun. You do, right?"
"Yeah," Rachel admitted. It was good that she admitted it, because I'd watched her way, way too closely not to realize that as much as she had probably started playing just to have something to do with me, she was really into some of the games.
Not nearly as much as a lot of other things, but she got focused and then frustrated, and then, of course, triumphant when she won. She liked it that way. And she wasn't that bad at it. She was bored by RPGs, and her reading still wasn't good enough to easily parse some of the dialogue when it got a little complex. But still.
"So, yeah. Play with Greg. Get to know him. Just like… with Pelter. You could hang out, see if any of the people at camp need dogs. I bet she knows which people are jerks and which aren't."
"Sure, sure. One of the bitches is pregnant," Rachel said. "Gonna have a lot of puppies."
I must have been really busy to have missed it. "Ah, well."
"I'll try with Greg or whatever. And Pelter." Rachel shrugged, as if she'd given a huge concession. And maybe she had.
"I know you don't necessarily want a bunch of new team members, but if it'd just been us two, I'd probably be dead. And yeah, we could not attack the Merchants, but they deserve it."
Rachel's frown deepened. "Yeah." She knew druggies, and so of course she hated them. Rachel also wasn't the sort of person to ever back down, so the idea of not going after the Merchants wouldn't have really been her first thought. Or her second. It would have been far down the list.
"So, we work together. Like a pack, or something." I shrugged. "So we need to know each other."
Rachel didn't look as if she completely bought this. Certainly, nobody would leave just because Rachel didn't try to make friends with them. But people needed to see more of her, and I knew she was capable of making friends and being polite. She wasn't ever that rude to me, at least.
I wrapped an arm around her and said, "Kay? I need to go see Charlotte in an hour, but if you want to read, we could…"
"Yeah," she said. She frowned. "What book were we on again?"
"Oh, just whatever takes our fancy," I said, looking up at her with that smile in my eyes that made her relax.
"Got it."
******
"So what can you do?" I asked Charlotte, sitting cross-legged in my tent.
Charlotte looked a lot more cleaned up now, dressed in jeans and a baggy T-shirt that had belonged to someone else, but bright-eyed and eager to talk about it.
"It seems like I have to tell someone something to do it. Like, an order."
"That's not what I asked, but it's good that you've figured that out," I said, trying to smile at her.
"Sorry," Charlotte said, shaking her head, and looking a little put out. "Just, I've been thinking about it, and all I can do is heal and make people more durable. But it's weird. If they don't listen to the first order, they don't get the power. After that, they can flip me the bird all they like… or at least, they still have the powers. Though I can also sorta take it away? It's this resonance, sort of, that kind of vibrates through my voice…"
"Wow. Well, you could call yourself Amp, or Support Character, or Sarge…" I said, going for a joke.
Charlotte laughed weakly, even though it was a better joke than that, deserving of more than a weak laugh.
"Does it work over distance? I assume that if someone can't hear you, they can't take advantage of it," I said.
"I don't know yet."
"Then that's what we'll try next. If we had a walkie talkie, then you could give us healing from the comfort of home." I imagined what Greg would say about that. It did seem like it could be really, really powerful if all it took was a voice. It meant that we could go further, faster, and survive worse without having to risk another person. "Does it work on yourself?"
"No, it really doesn't. And not dogs, I don't think? I tried it on one of Rachel's dogs back at the mall," Charlotte said, frowning. "I don't get why it didn't work."
"Powers have weird limitations," I said. "Ask me why Rachel's power works on dogs and not cats. It just does." I made a waving motion of my hand, as if dismissing any of the weirdness as unimportant right now.
"Okay, then. If we can get a walkie talkie and test it, that's good, right?" Charlotte said. "I can help you guys without risking myself."
"Though, I'm not sure how Rachel would feel about that. But maybe she could come around," I said. I wasn't sure how likely that was, but we'd see. If it really could work via nothing more than a voice, that gave me a lot of ideas. "You should look around the camp for men with combat experience. Ex-marines, that sort of thing. You can designate them, and then if we get enough walkie talkies, they can be camp defenders." Deciding not to get ahead of myself, I added, "That's if it works this way. If it does, then that's amazing. So, how much can it heal? Have you tested how well it can protect?"
"It's like slicing up the… resonance into different packages when I hand it out. The more people I give it to, the weaker it is," Charlotte said. "But I can decide how it works. Um… hrm. I'm trying to see if there's more I can do than healing and durability."
"That's not all you need to see. Is it healing… or is it regeneration? Is it something that is ongoing, so that if I broke my leg, it'd heal, and then if I ran ahead and broke my arm, that'd heal too," I said. If so, that was the kind of power, same with the durability, that she could fire and forget on an ally and then…
"And what about how long it lasts?" I asked.
"I hadn't really had time to test that," she admitted. Charlotte smiled at me, and I suppressed any reaction. "I mean, I've thought of a lot of this kind of stuff, but… you're getting at it pretty fast."
"Hmm," I said. "If it did work through walkie talkies, than the only difficulty would be getting Rachel to agree."
"Her agreement matters that much?" Charlotte asked, a little wide-eyed. She bit her lip. "What's your…"
"You haven't asked someone yet?" I asked, snorting. "We're dating."
"Oh. Wait." Charlotte's mouth went wide, and she held a hand to her mouth. "Oh. Oh."
"What?" I asked, perhaps a little more annoyed than I should have been.
"I… if I tell you something, will you not hate me? You're… I want to work under you."
Under me? She'd been something of a leader to those girls, and some of them were staying with her, but… maybe she didn't like being in charge? If so, then her power was something of an irony, since it was the kind of power that couldn't work well without other people. But then again, she could just sit back and let others use her powers.
"I don't know. Will I hate you? You can't ask me not to judge things. But… just tell me."
"I was there. When you were pulled out of the locker. I mean, I figured out it was you. I wasn't, I didn't--"
Dark. Crowded. Terrified. I'd freaked out. I'd had to be watched, watched like some animal, to see if I'd hurt myself. It had closed in on me, all of my failures, my inability to control and understand things. If I'd been able to see the bugs with my mind, if I'd been able to stop Emma from turning against me, if I'd done anything other than what I did, things would be different. If I'd been different.
Trapped, and despite all of the company, more alone than I'd ever been. Isolated, scared, with nothing more than the moment to keep me company. It was as if past and future had cut themselves off at once, in favor of now, now, now. And even in that sense, I'd been useless. Rachel didn't plan ahead, didn't dwell too much on her past, but she still would have kicked down the damn door.
She'd seen me at my most pathetic.
I stared at her. I was angry, yes. I was furious, the kind of anger that meant that I backed away from her for a moment, just out of the knowledge that… I could punch people out of nowhere. I had before.
But there was something else. How could someone who had seen that want to follow me? How could they--
"And you want to follow me? Is this some sort of joke?"
"Please don't be mad," she begged.
I took a breath. Somehow, somewhere, I'd started yelling. I stopped just as quickly, and made sure to say in a calm, level voice, "I don't understand it."
"You've saved so many people. You've saved me. And all of that happened to you and you did it anyways."
"What was I supposed to do? Roll over and die? It's not like you did any worse," I spat. "But, were you planning on telling me this?"
"No. It's… the past." Charlotte flushed and looked away. She was sweating heavily, and the way the fear turned down her lips and tightened her look was not appealing, but the idea that I mattered enough to get that sort of reaction? I sort of liked it.
"That's a good answer." I hesitated, and then said, firmly. "Never talk about it again. I'm Arachne to you. So, you want to help me?"
"Yes."
"Then we'll have a lot of things to test. As far as other resonances go, how about super strength? It's pretty common to have durability and strength, so maybe your power has that as a… similar resonance? I'm not sure how it works," I said, trying to be brisk and professional. It was best to put this behind us, before I made some mistake or yelled at her. Still, I wasn't exactly happy about it.
...it was also something that I didn't want to tell Rachel.
"Well… I can work on that. And if we have walkie talkies we can test that. What about the regeneration question?"
I pulled out a knife from Rachel's bag. Knives were very useful things. "We can test it right here."
"Wait, don't!" she said. But I didn't listen to her, and pulled off my glove before pricking my thumb, "Oh, okay."
"What, did you think I was going to actually hurt myself? Make with the healing," I said, waving my hand. "No durability."
"Alright."
It felt really, really odd. It was a sort of vibration that was going through me. It was a little hard to cope with. At the very least, it was something I'd have to get used to, just like any other power. Which could be one of the drawbacks, of course. I wasn't sure. Either way, within a moment, my pricked finger healed. "It gets less dramatic the more people that are having it split between them, right?" Because it was pretty sudden. I literally felt my flesh knit itself back up: and that was just a slight cut. I pricked my thumb again, and it healed just as fast. "Alright, yes, this is regeneration. Now, can you leave it on me, and we'll see how long it lasts?"
"Of course," she said. Luckily she didn't seem to have any more questions about Rachel, at least not at the moment.
Now began the fun part, actually.
******
Cassie was very enthusiastic and supportive when I told her the plan, and knowing the whole community thing, I bet we'd have more walkie-talkies than we could use before the week was out. Getting one would take a while, but hopefully there'd be one in by Saturday.
I kept on pricking my thumb at random moments to try to test how long it'd last, because ultimately even if it stopped working--though the odd feeling was distinctive enough that I bet I'd notice when it stopped.
And I did. It seemed to take a few minutes, usually. How much, exactly? Always over a minute. Always under ten. And it seemed that she could renew or maintain the contact if she was nearby. It was… interesting, to say the least.
Besides that, I had a lot to do. Charlotte seemed active in seeing to people's welfare, and I did want to check out the camp. See how people were doing. Saturday was the first day that people moved into an apartment. A family of eight, rather more than could really fit in an apartment like that, but they said they'd make it work, and they seemed eager to get out of the crowded tents.
Of course, their tent was immediately snapped up by another family, one that had fled from Old Chinatown, which was the site of a lot of gang warfare ever since the ABB had collapsed.
That's how I learned things, now: refugees. Saturday brought almost thirty new people into the camp, which made it even more important that we got even more ground floor apartments working and began to get everything together.
But there were still rumors of the Butcher to deal with. People who came from Merchant territory had a message for me: "Skidmark's fighting against the Teeth, and he's building up an army, or something. He's recruiting."
So, he was using the vials, but the fact that the Butcher was in the way made me wonder whether he'd actually bother to try to attack our camp. If he were smart, he'd focus on the Teeth, if they were eating his lunch. That meant that there were pretty good odds he'd come after us instead.
Tomorrow was my birthday, but we weren't going to be really celebrating it? I was sure that Rachel had something planned to get me, and perhaps a few others would get involved, but I would have heard if there were any major plans, seeing as I had this whole camp heavily bugged. Plus, the average citizen of our little… community knew my face out of costume, but sure as hell didn't know my birthday.
It really was a community, for better and worse, and I tried to pay as much attention to it as I could. Stefanie and Charlotte were both setting an example in this respect, and maybe I should keep it up. I was the farthest thing from alone these days. I had so many people that I could talk to, so many people who were relying on me. I could watch all of them, see their struggles and challenges.
I could know that many of them looked up to me. That was bizarre. Kids talked about me the same way I might have talked about Alexandria. Despite the fact that they'd seem me walk through the camp in jeans and a T-shirt. For some odd reason, the lack of distance didn't seem to actually hurt the impression.
As long as I kept up the facade of being unflappable, at least. I knew how they talked about how I was hard to read, how I never smiled, and how I seemed to always have a plan.
...as if Charlotte getting her powers was part of the plan. As if I hadn't almost died. All they heard was how we'd busted up the entire Merchant gathering. Just walked in there and walked back out with Kayla. We'd saved the one person the Merchants had been able to kidnap, a family was reunited, and if you ignored the terror and mistakes and the vials and a thousand other factors, it looked like a very simple success.
I just wondered what would happen if we messed up. Would they forgive me, or would they turn against me? I knew what the answer would have been at Winslow: you had only one chance, and if you flubbed it, you were an outcast forever.
It was hard to unlearn shit like that.
"No fucking duh," Rachel said when I'd voiced the thought. "You see dogs that get beat, and they can't trust nobody ever again. Or when they do trust, it ain't the same kind of trust."
"You can't exactly put humans through training to get rid of that. Or if you can, it's called therapy."
"Eh," Rachel said, reaching out to run a hand through my hair. "You seem better."
"...I guess I am." I was at least able to project confidence, and I knew that she was trying to cheer me up. I also knew that she had to have been at least a little annoyed with what I'd told her about Charlotte's power. Yeah, being able to get tougher was interesting for her. I knew she liked getting into the thick of a fight: but that was just it. If Charlotte's power really worked that way, then the best place for her would be as far away as possible. As long as we could communicate the situation properly.
Heck. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. I couldn't really let Rachel's doubts get in the way if it really worked this way… and if it didn't and she had to be within a certain range? Well, then Rachel'd get what she wanted, and it'd still be a really useful power.
"Yeah, don't worry," Rachel said, gently.
"That's a little bit much to ask," I said. Rachel looked at me, and I could read a lot of different thoughts in her eyes. I knew it wasn't just the eyes, that there were complexities being conveyed by expression and just knowing her, but that's what it felt like. Like I was staring into her dark eyes and making out signs and meaning. "Maybe I can try, though."
"If you're too worried, go run or lift shit. Just keep doing it until you are too tired to think," Rachel said. She had weights at the shelter, actually. Somehow she'd gotten some, which meant my bugs had on occasion gotten the show of watching her exercise. Certainly, that and the dog training meant that she had plenty of exhaustion to go around.
I bit my lip, thinking of other exercise for a moment, and said. "We need to go back and monitor Coil some more. Maybe on Monday?"
Sunday was going to be a day of rest, not least because it was my birthday.
"Sure. Sixteen, huh," Rachel said. Rachel was older than me by almost two years. She'd been fourteen when she'd run away from home, but almost to her birthday. She'd been just about seventeen when she'd crashed into Brockton Bay, and she'd been recruited late in the fall… and so in two and change months, she'd be eighteen. It hadn't ever really seemed to matter.
"Sweet sixteen," I said. "Cars, GEDs, and other fun things." I shook my head, "It's not a big deal."
"Nope," Rachel said, almost too quickly. Was she hiding something? I supposed I'd figure out sooner rather than later.
"Though I'll have to wait until there's a test." I frowned a little. "Then I guess I could take a year or two off before I went to college." That was the idea, and Rachel nodded. There was no harm in not being college educated for a few years, especially if I was testing out of school early. We'd find a way: after all, I now knew that Rachel had this big following. Maybe we could live off of that support?
If not, I could always just get some dead-end job and suffer through it. It wasn't like hard work was beyond me. Plus, maybe one of the dog shelters would have a job. I was probably qualified, though I was pretty sure most of that stuff was volunteer? Still, I'd figure something out. The next year--well, there were plenty of things to worry about, but I decided that I'd care about none of them.
"Sure," Rachel said. "You're smart." Rachel would probably never go to college, but I wondered, if I helped her learn to read, and with math, and other things, whether she might not get a GED someday. Not that it mattered that much, she was known outside of her cape identity. She wasn't exactly going to… though she could always do something involving dogs, which was about as useful as me thinking I'd set myself up as an exterminator.
"Thanks," I said, giving her a brief hug. "I'll be gone for about an hour, see you then."
"Charlotte?" she asked.
"Yes. Amp's going to test her powers."
******
"Can you hear me now?" she asked. She was only a few dozen feet away, but she was whispering into her walkie talkie.
"Yes."
"Touch your nose."
I reached out and touched my nose, and felt the odd tingle of powers rushing into me. My skin felt a little odd, and I walked along a little further. Five hundred feet away now.
The feeling of the powers withdrawing was a little bizarre.
"And now?" she asked.
"Yes. Give the command."
"Touch your nose."
I did, and again, on came the power.
This was going to be boring and weird, but hopefully instructive.
******
In the end, I went almost five miles away without losing the ability to be effected, and when I went outside of radio contact to see how long it lasted, it didn't last any less time than when I was near her. A half-hour was a decent enough span of time to have a power, and I assumed that it would be possible, if she kept in radio contact, for her to withdraw and reapply a power as often as possible.
So there should be walkie talkies or radios or something in every household that needs it, just like some of the kids in camp were talking about distributing the fishbowls around the camp so that wherever I went, there'd be bugs to bring out. Which was kind of clever, though really I needed some sort of system, to keep the bugs from killing each other in their sleep. I was having to draw down a lot of bugs, and breed them as well, just to keep it up.
It was just rough, to say the least. Nothing I could do about that, I thought, as I walked back into camp just as the daily patrol came in.
This time, it seemed like it was Miss Militia, Weld, and Vista. Which was a good combination, I supposed. Vista could warp areas, which probably made Miss Militia's targeting even more effective if need be.
I didn't know whether they wanted to talk to me, or if they'd merely stop in on the way to other business, but I made sure that I was around when they showed up.
None of them looked run ragged, actually. This was the first time I'd seen Vista with my own eyes without just looking over her. The Endbringer fight was too busy to pay attention to any one person, and so I'd never really seen her. She was surprisingly intense, looking. It was something about the set of lines on her face, and the way her short blonde hair was out of the way. Maybe it was how she walked.
It was a little impressive, despite the fact that she was pretty young. Then again, Pelter was only fourteen. I loved her costume, the green armor, the white to add some details, the skirt… it all looked very effective at doing what it was trying to do, and of course I'd met Weld and Miss Militia before.
Miss Militia, for her part, nodded at me. "Arachne, I have a message for you."
"Yes?" I asked, using my bugs to look around and make sure that nobody else was listening that shouldn't be.
"Flechette would like to invite you, Pelter, and Hellhound to meet with her in Dolltown. She asked me to send this message to you, since she wanted to do it on Sunday."
"Bitch. And we're not going to be able to," I said, amused at the idea that Miss Militia was serving as a messenger. "Tell her we might be able to show up on Monday at noon, and that we'll get word to her soon."
"Very well," Miss Militia said.
I was curious, though, and so after a moment I decided to ask, "Do you know what it's about?"
"The E88 has been putting a lot of pressure on the area around Dolltown. She's probably worried. She's been trying to clear them out of the area," Miss Militia admitted.
"People are being pressed from all sides," I said. "I've heard that the Butcher is hurting the Merchants badly. I almost want them to stalemate each other."
"The Butcher…" Miss Militia shook her head. "Be careful with her."
"I know. She's so dangerous that if it wasn't for her side power… she'd have a kill order, right? That's what everyone says online."
"Yes," Miss Militia said. "Though I'm not sure why she'd want to stay here long-term. It just increases the pressure. But I don't understand the motives of people like her at all." Miss Militia looked troubled, thinking about people she couldn't quite understand, and probably all of the duties she was facing.
"Neither do I," I admitted. "Oh, and we have a new cape on our team."
"You do?" Miss Militia asked, surprised.
"I know you might have heard about her when everyone came to pick up those Merchants, but… Amp is officially part of our team now."
"Is this like New Wave all over again?" Vista asked, thoughtfully, looking around the camp. She didn't say much, and Weld didn't seem to be judging this place, either.
"I don't know. We don't have any large ambition like that. The only one who's unmasked is Rachel… is that going to be a problem?"
"At the moment, no." Miss Militia shook her head. "The Director has suspended any attempts to arrest her, pending further investigation."
"Ah, good," I said, aware that this meant that if she did go back to being a villain, they could easily reactivate all of the treatment in a matter of moments. And probably for me as well. She probably didn't mean it as a threat, but it was probably something that they wanted me to know.
The mask hid my face, so they didn't have to see the snarl there. The skepticism with which I took any of these claims. Any of this supposed leniency. "We have information on the power patches. The means of creating them seems to involve a number of highly specialized drugs, on top of the Tinker's contributions. If we can find where the pipeline of chemicals is coming from, we can cut them up."
Coil. He was bankrolling the Merchants, or rather Dose, who was about the only thing other than the 'Cauldron Vials' that the Merchants had going for them. Why was he doing that? The most obvious answer was the most likely: they were yet another piece that he could control in his bid to gain power over the city. And then at any moment he could cut them off, just like the PRT was hinting it could do with Rachel.
The difference was, Dose was happy to be a pawn, and worse, whereas I wasn't going to go gently if they turned this all against me.
Hopefully we'd continue to work together, but it was hard to trust them when they clearly had other motives.
Flechette, though, seemed genuine. Weld wasn't so bad… if I started listing members who were good people, it would probably include most of them. Now there was a real mystery, how an organization that had so many good apples was still rotten to the core.
"Anything else?"
"What's Amp's power? Are you going to register her as an independent cape?"
"Maybe when the city's a little less fucked. How well is that going?" I asked, my voice showing a little of that aggression. I was also not answering the question about her powers, at least, I was going to try to avoid them as long as possible.
"Progress is being made, except in the regions destroyed by Behemoth. There are parts of it that are irradiated."
Oh, well that sucked. I frowned a little, thinking about it. The majority of the city had power and maybe even plumbing back, sorta, but… jobs? Those would be a lot harder to get back, though at least the shoreline was mostly alright.
I assumed that there'd be a lot of supplies coming in by boat, since it was cheaper than driving through the mess that was the roads.
"Shit," I said, shaking my head. "With the E88, do you have the situation managed?"
"We're doing our best," Weld said. "Help would be appreciated--"
"We're on the front lines here," I said, waving my hand. "Who else is a problem?"
"The Undersiders have started setting up territory, taking over city blocks," Vista said.
Ah. That was the new suspicion, the new fear: that this was just an Undersider camp with better propaganda. But I really, really didn't give a shit about making sure they had the right idea. If they tried to go against us now when we'd done nothing? I doubted it'd go well for them. "Huh, well. Hopefully you can deal with them. Unless one of them is close to us."
"No. We've outlined where they are on maps," Miss Militia said. "None of it overlaps with your territory."
"Where?"
"Regent is well into E88 territory," Weld said, as if reciting from a report, "While Grue is at the edge of Merchant and Empire territory." He nodded. "We cannot determine where Tattletale is operating, but she's been seen up closer to the hill, and the ruined areas near Behemoth."
Separated, I thought. All spread out. In the margins. "Where's Accord in all of this?"
"Everywhere," Miss Militia said.
"Well, we haven't seen him around here." I shrugged. "I can only deal with the problems I have in front of me. There's only so many capes."
"We understand this," Miss Militia said.
"Not like we don't know the feeling," Vista added, looking at me a little skeptically. I knew what she was thinking, or I could imagine it had something to do with the way that it felt like I was held at the end of a long stick to get bitten at… while the Protectorate and Wards felt in a similar spot, only the person holding the stick was probably the Director. And I bet they--she, if I remembered right?--felt that way about the people further up.
Organizations all added up to a bunch of shit… then again, I was now part of a team of four heroes, in charge of a camp of refugees. So maybe that was hypocrisy. "Got it." I settled into a sort of waiting stance. Like I was about to try to dodge a punch. Weld seemed to tense at it, and I wondered if it came off more hostile than it should have.
"Arachne, what can you tell us about Amp's powers?" Miss Militia asked. So she hadn't been distracted from the matter, she'd just been focusing on other things.
"It's very useful, and we're still testing it," I said, as if I were some lawyer fending off the raving hordes of reports. "I'll tell you if it becomes necessary for you to know."
I could see them react to that sort of phrase. Necessary for you to know? But while I didn't think they were the enemy, maybe it'd be best to wait until we had a better idea of what was going on, and where we were going.
"Very well. But she is decided that she wants to be Amp?"
"Yes. She's very clear on that," I said. "Anything else, while you're here? Feel free to stop in for some coffee." Someone had raided a grocery store nearby, at the owner's permission. There were a lot of things to loot, and yet even despite all of that, we were definitely going to need to start getting food delivered unless we were going to retreat, and the longer we spent here, the worse it was.
If we left now, the Merchants would basically double in size and bleed out into other regions of the city.
"Very well," Miss Militia said, with a slight, uncertain nod. As if she were walking on eggshells, just from being around me.
Some allies we were turning out to be.
I made a note: Monday, I had things to do.
Sunday, though?
I was hoping that the Merchants and the rest of the world all decided to take the damn day off, just for once, and let me relax.
******
I woke up with a pressure on me, and when I opened my eyes, I realized it was my girlfriend. Now, of all the ways to wake up, with my girlfriend in nothing more than underwear on top of me was far from the worst one ever, and as a way to go to sleep, there were few worse. But she was kind of heavy, and while my gaze did stray, I mostly found myself annoyed and slightly hungry.
Ah, so this was the birthday present? "Rache… this is nice and all," I said, totally staring at her eyes and nowhere else, "But can we just wait until after breakfast?"
Rachel snorted, her eyes giving the broadest grin imaginable. "Heh." She reached down and ran her fingers along my neck, threatening to trail down further. "Wanted to get you up. Something else."
"Really?" I asked.
"Don't cheat with bugs," Rachel said, leaning in to nibble at my neck. She smelled of sweat, dog, and--
I squirmed a little, trying not to get distracted from my purpose.
What was my purpose, again?
"...fine."
"Get dressed," she ordered, in a firm voice.
"I'm not a dog," I said, with a playful tone I hope she understood. "But… if you so command… then please get the heck off me."
"Can't push me off?" Rachel asked, sounding amused.
"Nope. You're too strong. And handsome. And amazing." I didn't smile, but I wanted to so bad, because the look on her face was worth the heat that ran through my body at my own words. "So now get off. And then I'll get dressed."
It wasn't really possible to shut off my bugs. But I did make sure that they stayed in their bowls, the ones that were there, and any that were flying around when I woke up, I grounded. I kept up the perimeter, so any ambush would have to come from within the camp, but otherwise I allowed myself to be blindfolded.
Were they going to do some sort of birthday party?
Rachel rolled off and grabbed a shirt from the floor, and then with a fey sort of feeling, I grabbed one of hers as well, on top of a clean pair of jeans from my bag. She stared at me as I slipped on her shirt, which of course was way too broad and big for me. Well, not way too, but enough that it was kind of notable. "What?" I asked.
Rachel's face was slightly flushed, her breathing a little heavy as she stared at me. "You're really cute." She shook her head, as if this was something to be rueful about, and I slipped into some clean socks and the same shoes I'd been wearing this whole time. The tennis shoes had seen better days, but I really didn't care that much.
I was cute.
At least in the eyes of the only critic who mattered worth a damn.
******
I walked through the camp, blind for the moment. I wasn't really, but I felt so clumsy as Rachel guided me, as if any moment I'd have to grab onto her arm as if I were some sort of belle with the vapors.
She was leading me into one of the apartment buildings, and I hesitated, wondering, at the door, as I stared at it…
Was this some sort of big surprise party? How many people knew? Nobody had looked at me in the early morning light, or said anything about it. But… that's a surprise party.
I opened the door, and I saw who I'd missed coming in. I must have really slept in, because there was Greg, Stefanie… and Dad.
"Morning, birthday girl," Stefanie said.
"Oh. You're involved?" I asked, rubbing at me eyes as I looked at Stefanie, who was rather more dressed up than I was.
Dad was at the grill, making what seemed like a full breakfast. Pancakes were being made, eggs were being whipped up for omelets, he seemed to be managing half a dozen different tasks at once. Greg was sitting in the chair, with a video game.
"Hey, Rache!" Greg said.
"Rachel," Rachel said, firmly.
"You get to beat level 9 last night?"
"Nah. A little busy," Rachel said, not even blushing at what she was referring to, which was probably the reason I'd slept in late, all things considered. Was that part of some sort of strategy, or had Rachel just assumed that I'd want to sleep in, and waited to see if I got up.
"Oh…" Greg said, a little dejectedly.
"Also. The jumpy blobs sucks," Rachel said.
"Though now isn't really the time for video-game talk, is it?" Stefanie asked, with a bit of a smile. "I had to help organize all of this."
So, the room was pretty dingy. Just a single slightly large room, and then a second room for the beds. But there was a table, and it was loaded down with presents.
"Eh, whatever works," I said, glad that Rachel was talking to Greg.
"They're called Erglings, and they come from--"
"Taylor," Dad said. "Sit down."
I nodded, trying not to feel too nervous. I just kept on waiting for something to go wrong, because it was just so amazing, so--
When I was a kid, Dad always did birthday breakfast for me, before I got older and more 'mature' and we went out to nice places for dinner. When we probably could have afforded it less. I thought about the breakfast with Rachel, getting her to try new things, victory as sweet as the taste of her lips in a syrupy kiss.
There weren't dozens of packages or anything, but it was a birthday, and more than I expected.
"C'mon, open them!" Greg said.
"You can wait until after the breakfast, if you want." Stefanie then added. "Also, we have an ice-cream cake in a fridge in another room, if you want something like that tonight. Greg said you liked ice-cream?"
Of course I did. I licked my lips and looked at the packages. They weren't colorfully wrapped, but I took the one that looked heaviest, and began to shake it a little, curiously.
"That's mine!" Greg said.
"And that one?" I asked, pointing to a card.
"Rachel's," Stefanie said. "Though she also kinda split the big present there with Dad." The one wrapped in grey wrapping paper.
"And yours is the small red one?"
"I didn't know what to get you," Stefanie admitted, rubbing her hair in an odd nervous gesture. "So I just got some essentials for you. It's been a few weeks, but I thought… well. I asked your father, so it's sorta from here"
"I'll check yours out first," I said, politely, as I watched Dad flit around, clearly in a better mood than I'd seen him in for months.
A little bit of distance, I decided, had honestly kind of improved our relationship. Once there wasn't' the expectation for certain things, it could just continue on in its own way. I opened the box, and began to pull things out of it, one by one. Tampons, an IOU for some clothes she'd found that would fit me, a razor, toothpaste of my favorite brand, a shampoo that I really liked, a small purse and a money-pouch… it all seemed like little gestures that all meant one thing, that I was home here, and should make myself at home.
I liked it, and I looked up. "Thank you," I said, surprised that I could get so emotional over just a few things like that. But they were sort of part of being here, weren't they?
"I'll try yours next, Greg. Also, Dad!"
"Yes, Taylor?" he asked.
"How long is it till the food's ready?"
"Oh, about ten minutes," he said.
It all smelled great. "More than enough time."
******
So I opened Greg's next. Books, a lot of books. The exact sort of books I liked. Fantasies and old classics, about a dozen books in all, as Greg looked at me, eager for my reaction. I'd read some of them before, but that didn't really matter. I just nodded to him and said, "Thanks, Greg" and he acted like I was the Pope and I'd just laid hands on him.
Next came Dad and Rachel's, and that's when emotional crossed the line into teary as I opened it up.
The first thing I pulled out was the sheet music. I recognized it at once, almost. It was music for a flute, and it had my Mom's handwriting on it. Little notes. I stared at it for a moment, blinking back tears. "How…"
"Someone had stolen them. Not sure why," Dad called. "So Rachel got them back. And the photos, they were in the ruins, nobody had taken them."
Photos? I pulled out what looked like a photo album, and flipped it open. Mom at eighteen, posing for a class photo in High School. Mom in college, with a hairstyle that made her look a little like a hippie. Mom hugging Dad. Mom holding me as a baby. She didn't look as if she'd been all that pregnant, I'd been a small baby, if not quiet baby. But she seemed almost to glow, just off the page.
"It's… a family thing. I was going to give some of them, or maybe all of them, when you went off to college if you wanted them. Or, after that, when you got married," Dad said. "Same with a lot of these things…"
I looked in the large box. There were eight or nine books, and they were familiar ones. Absalom, Absalom, Breakfast of Champions… works she'd gone over again and again for her classes, the ones that mattered to Mom. Not the introductory ones where she had to talk about the literary canon and how to punctuate your sentences, but the ones where she could branch out. Not that either of the two were obscure, but they weren't something you gave to a Freshman, any more than you taught a Middle-Schooler Calculus. I flipped one open, and there was my mother's writing, through the blur of tears.
"Taylor, are you alright?" Rachel asked.
"Just…" I didn't know what to say. "Married?"
"You've moved out, so I'm offering them," Dad said, uncertainly, as he flipped an omelette.
There were a few sets of lecture notes, and I just touched them and glanced at them, and knew that if I read them I could hear them in her voice. Even the fragments, because she never wrote speeches, but points to say. I could hear her say: 'Intertextuality' as one line just said, underlined three times as if to remind herself. Or, 'Vonnegut=C, Discuss?' I didn't even know what that meant, I just knew that it was something she'd written.
I blinked away the tears. "Yes, I'm alright," I added to Rachel. "Thanks, Dad."
"I figured it'd happen someday," Dad said. There was a long pause where he bit his lip, and clearly didn't know what to say. I knew the dilemma. If he wished I got married, would it sound like he was wishing I broke up with Rachel? If it didn't sound like that, would it instead sound like he was pushing for two teenage girls to marry, without asking them about it."
"The last one's mine," Rachel said. "But we gotta go outside."
"Why?"
"Cause," Rachel added. "Just a minute."
She reached out and picked up the card.
"You've already give me something, getting this back… by force?"
"Sure," Rachel said. She reached up as if she were going to lift and carry me outside. I got up, and followed her, as she clutched the envelope.
Once we were outside, she said. "I bet all of 'em would want one once I said it. Be fucking annoying."
"One what?" I asked.
She just thrust the envelope at me. I opened it. It was a plain white card, but inside it read, '1 Puppy.'
"A puppy?"
"That bitch is going to throw a litter soon. Wanna raise one? Yourself? With me," Rachel said, biting her lip. "He or she, they'd be yours and shit."
I thought about it, wondering why she treated it so seriously. She seemed to be staring at me as if she'd proposed we try for children or… something. That serious, that important. It wasn't like I hadn't cared for a lot of Rachel's dogs before. But it'd never been my dog, per se.
"Yes," I said. "And… how about she?"
"Choose whichever one you want. She's a mongrel bitch, but that don't matter."
"No, it doesn't."
"And after breakfast, do you wanna fuck?" Rachel asked.
"I'll be stuffed after all of that. I'll hardly be able to move or--"
Rachel just stared at me, her own eyes cutting it off, as if she didn't see the big deal. And after a moment of thinking about it, neither did I.
Now I had a few other things to look forward to. I was sorta glad she'd told me all of this out here. I knew she wouldn't have hesitated to say it in front of everyone.
...but then, a part of me wouldn't have hesitated to say yes, even then, even there.
And best of all? Nothing went wrong that Sunday.
******
A/N: Take a breath. Take a break. Thanks to @NemoMarx.
While all of the new camp members and the others got settled in, Greg, Pelter and I stared at the bounty. Rachel had gone up to tend to her dogs, and perhaps something else, since I saw her moving like she was going to go straight past the shelter.
Charlotte was with 'her' girls, trying to manage them, and doing a decent job at it. Which left the three of us to go over the paperwork.
"This stuff's crazy! I mean... geeze. Congratulations on your newly purchased superpowers?" Greg asked. "We should totally take these or something. I mean, think about it Taylor--"
"No," I said. "The last person to take one… it's not something to just jump into. We'll keep these here, and…"
"Why should we keep them here?" Pelter asked, looking through another paper, which seemed to have specs on each of the twelve samples. Twelve? That really made me wonder. Why were there so many? If every single one of them was sold, then if they were sold to one group, said group would be one of the strongest, if not the strongest, in the city.
They each had names, it seemed. The three vials we had were labeled this weird way in the paperwork, each of them.
'Canister C1: C-2-1-B-2, 'Paragon', 55% mixture.
Added: O-0-1-2-1, 'Division', 30% mixture.
Added: C-0-0-7-2, 'Balance', 15% mixture.'
'Canister 2E: A-0-5-4-6, 'Hephaestus', 80% mixture.
Added: C-0-0-7-2, 'Balance', 20% mixture.'
'Canister FF: E-0-F-C-2, 'Deus', 60% mixture.
Added: C-0-0-7-2, 'Balance', 40% mixture'
What weird names? How was I supposed to know what they meant? Hephaestus was the smith god in Greek, I thought. Deus was God in general, and paragon? None of this really seemed to give me much to work on. I frowned, leaning back a little on my heels, glancing at this little group.
"Here? As opposed to giving them to the Protectorate?"
"Surely they can use it. To… help people?" Pelter said it thoughtfully.
"Then why not us! We could do it. I could take one, and Sierra--" Greg bounced up and down, his gestures wild and
"She'd say no," I told Greg. Not after what had happened to her brother. I glanced around the tent. "We're not doing it… but we're not getting rid of it either. Pelter, we need somewhere safe to keep them. Safe and hidden. A box and then buried and then kept under watch, maybe with a bug in a jar or something? I'm not sure."
I shook my head. "Some way so we know where they are."
"Why?" Greg asked, confused and dejected. He was slumping, his dreams of being a superhero dashed, and I felt bad for him.
Still, I had a plan to help cheer him up.
"Well, it's possible we could need it." I shrugged a little. "I don't know if I trust them, but whatever this is, it could be useful. Certainly, the Merchants are going to do something about it."
I frowned, thinking to the look on the faces of the PRT when we delivered all that we had. They'd showed up in force, perhaps expecting a fight, and found that somehow three members had become four, though Charlotte didn't have a name yet. That'd take time, I thought, stretching a little bit.
"Ah," Greg said, and I could see from the helpful and suddenly eager look on his face that he was going to keep on trying to get me to do it. Again and again. Now that he knew there was a chance, now that he knew we were keeping it in reserve…
Pelter didn't look too happy about the decision, but I don't think she'd disagree. Let alone bring up the good points that she could, about how it'd make us a target. After all, the Merchants had to know where it was: with us.
And three new capes was definitely better than six. As it was, they were going to be getting even stronger, as we spoke, as we tried to deal with it. But we'd ruined their wave and busted two of their newest members.
That had to hurt. Squealer, Dose, and Skidmark. If I took down Skidmark, would Dose take control? I didn't know what to do next. There was still Coil to watch, and the E88 were still a presence.
The camp, though. That was going to be the biggest problem. We were expanding so fast it was crazy. Cassie'd probably keep everyone posted on it, but counting the new people, we were well above five hundred members now. Perhaps they should move to the nearby abandoned apartments too. If so, I could watch them, but it'd be more to protect, so for the moment everyone was squeezing in.
Squeezing in was the word. The apartment buildings themselves…
Long after Greg had left, at least for the moment, Pelter talked to me about the problems. I listened, trying not to focus on everything else I could be doing, including talking to Charlotte. "So, there are eighty-four apartment units there. Say we fit three or four people in each one, and that's still hundreds of people camping out here. But if we take over those nearby apartments, it gets better, because it's not as if we aren't already stretched all along the street and the road and all the way over."
It was true, actually. We'd had to set up roadblocks of sorts for anyone coming from the north or south. They'd have to stop or wait for people to clear out, because there were just too many people.
"Would we get everyone in an apartment if we did that?"
"Well, the real concern," Pelter admitted, "is whoever the owners are."
"Fuck the owners," I said, with a shrug. "Would we get everyone if we did that?"
"We're still getting power and plumbing and water all set up for these ones, but if we occupied both? That'd still leave a community down here in tents, but not as bad of one."
"Make it so, then. How bad?"
"Oh, maybe a hundred, maybe less, down here. Though we would have to decide where you live if we start moving people in en masse."
"Don't worry about it," I said, baring my teeth at the world. "There's more people fleeing here every day. We're never going to run out of the camp until this city gets fixed." I shook my head. "And once that happens, we won't need the camp. I have no idea what we'll do next, but it'll be something."
"Well, I guess. Your range is good enough to watch both, but what if they attack one while we're…" Pelter bit her lip and shook her head. "We did a good thing earlier today, and I--I don't mean to doubt you."
"You doubt me?" I asked, trying to sound as if I wasn't aware of just how much I should be doubted. I… needed to keep up a facade.
"I thought that the attack on the mall was a bad idea, but I couldn't say no to rescuing one of our own. But what do we do when they come back in even greater force?"
That was a good question. It was as much luck as anything that none of us had died, and if Charlotte hadn't triggered, it would have been a lot bloodier. Skidmark wouldn't have had a reason to rabbit like the coward he was, and if Squealer had showed up, then… it could have gotten messy, especially if they got desperate and started using these "Cauldron vials" to create new capes.
As it was, assuming they used all of the vials as soon as they found someone willing, that meant that the Merchants would have eight members plus some of their pseudo-capes within a very short time. Probably by tomorrow, or the day after depending on how picky they were.
At that point, they'd outnumber us slightly more than two to one, but…
But? I wasn't that scared of the Merchants. Or rather, I thought we just might be able to match them. I could take out Skidmark, and Squealer wasn't that terrifying. Dose's danger wasn't as a fighter himself, it was for all of the drugs he made. And the other six? I didn't want to think about them just yet.
One thing at a time.
Next thing on the list?
******
"Hey, Greg, come with me," I said.
"Really?!" he asked, confused, frowning, a half hour later.
"We're going on a little walk to see Rachel when she gets back," I said, with a wave of my hand.
"Why?" he asked, blinking in confusion. "I-I mean, I'd love to talk to her, and all, but why?"
"Didn't you want to play some video games? I found a Game Box and some games." I looked at him for a moment, amused at the look of desperate hope on his face. "And I figured, what girlfriend would I be if I didn't give Rachel what she wanted. And Rachel likes playing games."
If I had personally kicked his puppy, Greg couldn't have been more devastated. He'd been coping well on his own, but I wondered: he had to know that his Mom was… well, she hadn't gotten in contact, and he'd sent out word, so there was every chance she was burnt up completely.
Which meant he needed a friend… and besides me.
"So," I said, realizing he hadn't gotten it. "If you ask Rachel nicely, you two can play together."
Actually, my scheme was slightly more clever than that, because then Rachel would say no. But I didn't want to tell Greg the rest, because then that'd spoil it.
Because the truth was simple and undeniable: Rachel was awesome. But I also knew she wasn't sociable. If I didn't try to do anything about it, she'd ignore the rest of the team, and while spending more time with me wasn't something I disapproved of…
Greg wasn't part of the team, but he was my friend. Cassie already had an in with her, and I could figure out how Pelter and Rachel could get along later.
Charlotte I still needed to figure out, first.
"Sure! I can do that!" Greg said, clearly trying to drown out the doubts in his head. I nodded, looking at him. He was jittering, as if he was a junkie about to get his video game fix.
"And while you're there, maybe she makes you help out a little. But dogs are cute, right?"
"Y-yeah," he said, keeping his enthusiasm up as we went through a walk through the ruins.
We didn't really get that much news from the outside world. We got plenty of people from the area, but I couldn't tell someone what percentage of the city was still here. I couldn't estimate how many people were without power, though I assumed there were tons. Still, it'd been over two weeks, and considering the way that Behemoth hadn't hit parts of the city, I assumed that there was progress being made on pulling the city together.
It just really wasn't here, and I wondered what the E88 were doing in all of this mess. Or Coil? I needed more data on what he had planned, because otherwise…
I brooded the whole way there, letting myself into the shelter and then waiting until Rachel came back in range.
I cared for the dogs, of course. "Okay, Greg. Now, start remembering names: Angelica, King, Stumpy… I think that new one is Louie, Ginger, Doon…" I pointed them out one by one as they greeted us. She had a lot of dogs. She'd been adding more every day, it sometimes seemed like, and all of them were… pretty used to me, mostly.
Which meant that I was assaulted by cold noses and wet tongues, and found myself on the ground fending off the happy hordes of dogs. Small, big, it didn't matter, and I let myself be buried.
"I'm not sure if I can… I mean. I'll try!"
"You can remember all of the names of that one Fantasy game," I said, rubbing a belly with one hand, while scratching an ear with another. I liked the dogs: if you weren't a dog person, and couldn't become one, then being close to Rachel was kind of a lost cause. They also kind of reminded me of her, so I just felt kinda happier messing around with them.
"...okay, well. Then..."
"It's not like they're going to blame you for getting their names wrong," I said, beneath the pile of dogs. In fact, they were sniffing around him, hopeful for a treat.
I could lay here for a long time, even though, yes, the dogs smelled like dogs. Some of them even stank to high heaven. But that's just how you took them, I thought. Though I was going to have to give some of them a bath.
"Hey, Greg. Can you go grab those mobile tubs in the other room? The ones you can carry around. I think Stinky--" an actual name, and a fitting one, "Could use a bath." I didn't know how the dog smelled that bad, because she could be given a bath and then a week later smell twenty times as worse as any dog. Despite the fact that she wasn't any messier than any of them.
"Oh, okay. When's Rachel getting back."
"Doesn't matter," I said. "I'll get a few of the shelter people to help us, if you're so worried."
*******
Cassie wasn't there, but it was amazing how many people were taking care of this dog shelter now. I bet that they'd have to either expand or start giving away dogs before too long, but Rachel entered my range just as we were getting the dogs into the baths, and she arrived as we were drying off the last of them.
My shirt was ruined, soaked with water, and I was a little grouchy after one of the dogs had gotten free and gone straight for the mud, but her almost being back made me hum,. and I could tell from the look on Greg's face that he could see it too.
"Rachel's almost back," I finally said.
"Honey, we could tell," a new woman, Marge, said. She was a big-boned woman, and she seemed to be one of those types of people who was gregarious and thought that everyone's business was her own.
"Oh?" I shrugged.
"Your bra's showing," Marge said.
Greg flushed as if he were lit on fire and looked away, even though he'd been glancing at me moment's before, and had to see that all that was showing was the outline of the bra. Taylor Hebert wears a bra, news at eleven.
Greg treating it like he needed to run out of the room and hide was somewhere between awkward and hilarious, but I knew he wouldn't take me laughing well. "Greg, can you go check that the dogs outside are fine?"
Of course they were, my bugs were there, watching them. Not fleas, of course, none of the dogs had fleas, or ticks, or anything like that. But just flies buzzing around their heads that many of them had sorta learned to ignore. Or didn't care about in the first place.
But he followed, anyways.
"I don't care," I said, with a shrug, as soon as he was gone. My face had flushed slightly, but only slightly.
"Just telling you," Marge said.
"Well, thanks. Rachel's coming in, could you give me some privacy?"
"Sure, sure," Marge said, in a knowing voice. Though the truth was that I didn't have anything of that sort planned. There was far too much to do today to get distracted. That was something that could be saved for later.
Rachel stepped in just a minute or two later, with Brutus in tow. She looked me up and down. I was covered in dog hair on top of the water. She nodded in an appreciative way. "Washing the dog?"
I knew better than to tease her about how obvious that was. "Yep. Also, I wanted to talk to you. You want a GameBox?"
"Yeah," Rachel said. "That's what you were getting?"
"Yes. I know it's traditional to get rather than give presents around your birthday, but I wanted to give it to you anyways." I held up a hand. "On one caveat. Actually, two."
"Huh?"
"First, what is your birthday?"
"Uh, I think it's early on August?" Rachel said, with a frown. "Never celebrated it none."
"Second… you have to play it and share it with Greg."
Rachel crossed her arms. She was dressed in a sleeveless shirt, and a pair of shorts, and looked very fierce, ready for a long fight.
"I figure, he's my friend, and he's good at playing video games. If he's annoying, just tell him to back off a little." I shrugged. "He wants to play, and I want you to be able to play too, if you find it fun. You do, right?"
"Yeah," Rachel admitted. It was good that she admitted it, because I'd watched her way, way too closely not to realize that as much as she had probably started playing just to have something to do with me, she was really into some of the games.
Not nearly as much as a lot of other things, but she got focused and then frustrated, and then, of course, triumphant when she won. She liked it that way. And she wasn't that bad at it. She was bored by RPGs, and her reading still wasn't good enough to easily parse some of the dialogue when it got a little complex. But still.
"So, yeah. Play with Greg. Get to know him. Just like… with Pelter. You could hang out, see if any of the people at camp need dogs. I bet she knows which people are jerks and which aren't."
"Sure, sure. One of the bitches is pregnant," Rachel said. "Gonna have a lot of puppies."
I must have been really busy to have missed it. "Ah, well."
"I'll try with Greg or whatever. And Pelter." Rachel shrugged, as if she'd given a huge concession. And maybe she had.
"I know you don't necessarily want a bunch of new team members, but if it'd just been us two, I'd probably be dead. And yeah, we could not attack the Merchants, but they deserve it."
Rachel's frown deepened. "Yeah." She knew druggies, and so of course she hated them. Rachel also wasn't the sort of person to ever back down, so the idea of not going after the Merchants wouldn't have really been her first thought. Or her second. It would have been far down the list.
"So, we work together. Like a pack, or something." I shrugged. "So we need to know each other."
Rachel didn't look as if she completely bought this. Certainly, nobody would leave just because Rachel didn't try to make friends with them. But people needed to see more of her, and I knew she was capable of making friends and being polite. She wasn't ever that rude to me, at least.
I wrapped an arm around her and said, "Kay? I need to go see Charlotte in an hour, but if you want to read, we could…"
"Yeah," she said. She frowned. "What book were we on again?"
"Oh, just whatever takes our fancy," I said, looking up at her with that smile in my eyes that made her relax.
"Got it."
******
"So what can you do?" I asked Charlotte, sitting cross-legged in my tent.
Charlotte looked a lot more cleaned up now, dressed in jeans and a baggy T-shirt that had belonged to someone else, but bright-eyed and eager to talk about it.
"It seems like I have to tell someone something to do it. Like, an order."
"That's not what I asked, but it's good that you've figured that out," I said, trying to smile at her.
"Sorry," Charlotte said, shaking her head, and looking a little put out. "Just, I've been thinking about it, and all I can do is heal and make people more durable. But it's weird. If they don't listen to the first order, they don't get the power. After that, they can flip me the bird all they like… or at least, they still have the powers. Though I can also sorta take it away? It's this resonance, sort of, that kind of vibrates through my voice…"
"Wow. Well, you could call yourself Amp, or Support Character, or Sarge…" I said, going for a joke.
Charlotte laughed weakly, even though it was a better joke than that, deserving of more than a weak laugh.
"Does it work over distance? I assume that if someone can't hear you, they can't take advantage of it," I said.
"I don't know yet."
"Then that's what we'll try next. If we had a walkie talkie, then you could give us healing from the comfort of home." I imagined what Greg would say about that. It did seem like it could be really, really powerful if all it took was a voice. It meant that we could go further, faster, and survive worse without having to risk another person. "Does it work on yourself?"
"No, it really doesn't. And not dogs, I don't think? I tried it on one of Rachel's dogs back at the mall," Charlotte said, frowning. "I don't get why it didn't work."
"Powers have weird limitations," I said. "Ask me why Rachel's power works on dogs and not cats. It just does." I made a waving motion of my hand, as if dismissing any of the weirdness as unimportant right now.
"Okay, then. If we can get a walkie talkie and test it, that's good, right?" Charlotte said. "I can help you guys without risking myself."
"Though, I'm not sure how Rachel would feel about that. But maybe she could come around," I said. I wasn't sure how likely that was, but we'd see. If it really could work via nothing more than a voice, that gave me a lot of ideas. "You should look around the camp for men with combat experience. Ex-marines, that sort of thing. You can designate them, and then if we get enough walkie talkies, they can be camp defenders." Deciding not to get ahead of myself, I added, "That's if it works this way. If it does, then that's amazing. So, how much can it heal? Have you tested how well it can protect?"
"It's like slicing up the… resonance into different packages when I hand it out. The more people I give it to, the weaker it is," Charlotte said. "But I can decide how it works. Um… hrm. I'm trying to see if there's more I can do than healing and durability."
"That's not all you need to see. Is it healing… or is it regeneration? Is it something that is ongoing, so that if I broke my leg, it'd heal, and then if I ran ahead and broke my arm, that'd heal too," I said. If so, that was the kind of power, same with the durability, that she could fire and forget on an ally and then…
"And what about how long it lasts?" I asked.
"I hadn't really had time to test that," she admitted. Charlotte smiled at me, and I suppressed any reaction. "I mean, I've thought of a lot of this kind of stuff, but… you're getting at it pretty fast."
"Hmm," I said. "If it did work through walkie talkies, than the only difficulty would be getting Rachel to agree."
"Her agreement matters that much?" Charlotte asked, a little wide-eyed. She bit her lip. "What's your…"
"You haven't asked someone yet?" I asked, snorting. "We're dating."
"Oh. Wait." Charlotte's mouth went wide, and she held a hand to her mouth. "Oh. Oh."
"What?" I asked, perhaps a little more annoyed than I should have been.
"I… if I tell you something, will you not hate me? You're… I want to work under you."
Under me? She'd been something of a leader to those girls, and some of them were staying with her, but… maybe she didn't like being in charge? If so, then her power was something of an irony, since it was the kind of power that couldn't work well without other people. But then again, she could just sit back and let others use her powers.
"I don't know. Will I hate you? You can't ask me not to judge things. But… just tell me."
"I was there. When you were pulled out of the locker. I mean, I figured out it was you. I wasn't, I didn't--"
Dark. Crowded. Terrified. I'd freaked out. I'd had to be watched, watched like some animal, to see if I'd hurt myself. It had closed in on me, all of my failures, my inability to control and understand things. If I'd been able to see the bugs with my mind, if I'd been able to stop Emma from turning against me, if I'd done anything other than what I did, things would be different. If I'd been different.
Trapped, and despite all of the company, more alone than I'd ever been. Isolated, scared, with nothing more than the moment to keep me company. It was as if past and future had cut themselves off at once, in favor of now, now, now. And even in that sense, I'd been useless. Rachel didn't plan ahead, didn't dwell too much on her past, but she still would have kicked down the damn door.
She'd seen me at my most pathetic.
I stared at her. I was angry, yes. I was furious, the kind of anger that meant that I backed away from her for a moment, just out of the knowledge that… I could punch people out of nowhere. I had before.
But there was something else. How could someone who had seen that want to follow me? How could they--
"And you want to follow me? Is this some sort of joke?"
"Please don't be mad," she begged.
I took a breath. Somehow, somewhere, I'd started yelling. I stopped just as quickly, and made sure to say in a calm, level voice, "I don't understand it."
"You've saved so many people. You've saved me. And all of that happened to you and you did it anyways."
"What was I supposed to do? Roll over and die? It's not like you did any worse," I spat. "But, were you planning on telling me this?"
"No. It's… the past." Charlotte flushed and looked away. She was sweating heavily, and the way the fear turned down her lips and tightened her look was not appealing, but the idea that I mattered enough to get that sort of reaction? I sort of liked it.
"That's a good answer." I hesitated, and then said, firmly. "Never talk about it again. I'm Arachne to you. So, you want to help me?"
"Yes."
"Then we'll have a lot of things to test. As far as other resonances go, how about super strength? It's pretty common to have durability and strength, so maybe your power has that as a… similar resonance? I'm not sure how it works," I said, trying to be brisk and professional. It was best to put this behind us, before I made some mistake or yelled at her. Still, I wasn't exactly happy about it.
...it was also something that I didn't want to tell Rachel.
"Well… I can work on that. And if we have walkie talkies we can test that. What about the regeneration question?"
I pulled out a knife from Rachel's bag. Knives were very useful things. "We can test it right here."
"Wait, don't!" she said. But I didn't listen to her, and pulled off my glove before pricking my thumb, "Oh, okay."
"What, did you think I was going to actually hurt myself? Make with the healing," I said, waving my hand. "No durability."
"Alright."
It felt really, really odd. It was a sort of vibration that was going through me. It was a little hard to cope with. At the very least, it was something I'd have to get used to, just like any other power. Which could be one of the drawbacks, of course. I wasn't sure. Either way, within a moment, my pricked finger healed. "It gets less dramatic the more people that are having it split between them, right?" Because it was pretty sudden. I literally felt my flesh knit itself back up: and that was just a slight cut. I pricked my thumb again, and it healed just as fast. "Alright, yes, this is regeneration. Now, can you leave it on me, and we'll see how long it lasts?"
"Of course," she said. Luckily she didn't seem to have any more questions about Rachel, at least not at the moment.
Now began the fun part, actually.
******
Cassie was very enthusiastic and supportive when I told her the plan, and knowing the whole community thing, I bet we'd have more walkie-talkies than we could use before the week was out. Getting one would take a while, but hopefully there'd be one in by Saturday.
I kept on pricking my thumb at random moments to try to test how long it'd last, because ultimately even if it stopped working--though the odd feeling was distinctive enough that I bet I'd notice when it stopped.
And I did. It seemed to take a few minutes, usually. How much, exactly? Always over a minute. Always under ten. And it seemed that she could renew or maintain the contact if she was nearby. It was… interesting, to say the least.
Besides that, I had a lot to do. Charlotte seemed active in seeing to people's welfare, and I did want to check out the camp. See how people were doing. Saturday was the first day that people moved into an apartment. A family of eight, rather more than could really fit in an apartment like that, but they said they'd make it work, and they seemed eager to get out of the crowded tents.
Of course, their tent was immediately snapped up by another family, one that had fled from Old Chinatown, which was the site of a lot of gang warfare ever since the ABB had collapsed.
That's how I learned things, now: refugees. Saturday brought almost thirty new people into the camp, which made it even more important that we got even more ground floor apartments working and began to get everything together.
But there were still rumors of the Butcher to deal with. People who came from Merchant territory had a message for me: "Skidmark's fighting against the Teeth, and he's building up an army, or something. He's recruiting."
So, he was using the vials, but the fact that the Butcher was in the way made me wonder whether he'd actually bother to try to attack our camp. If he were smart, he'd focus on the Teeth, if they were eating his lunch. That meant that there were pretty good odds he'd come after us instead.
Tomorrow was my birthday, but we weren't going to be really celebrating it? I was sure that Rachel had something planned to get me, and perhaps a few others would get involved, but I would have heard if there were any major plans, seeing as I had this whole camp heavily bugged. Plus, the average citizen of our little… community knew my face out of costume, but sure as hell didn't know my birthday.
It really was a community, for better and worse, and I tried to pay as much attention to it as I could. Stefanie and Charlotte were both setting an example in this respect, and maybe I should keep it up. I was the farthest thing from alone these days. I had so many people that I could talk to, so many people who were relying on me. I could watch all of them, see their struggles and challenges.
I could know that many of them looked up to me. That was bizarre. Kids talked about me the same way I might have talked about Alexandria. Despite the fact that they'd seem me walk through the camp in jeans and a T-shirt. For some odd reason, the lack of distance didn't seem to actually hurt the impression.
As long as I kept up the facade of being unflappable, at least. I knew how they talked about how I was hard to read, how I never smiled, and how I seemed to always have a plan.
...as if Charlotte getting her powers was part of the plan. As if I hadn't almost died. All they heard was how we'd busted up the entire Merchant gathering. Just walked in there and walked back out with Kayla. We'd saved the one person the Merchants had been able to kidnap, a family was reunited, and if you ignored the terror and mistakes and the vials and a thousand other factors, it looked like a very simple success.
I just wondered what would happen if we messed up. Would they forgive me, or would they turn against me? I knew what the answer would have been at Winslow: you had only one chance, and if you flubbed it, you were an outcast forever.
It was hard to unlearn shit like that.
"No fucking duh," Rachel said when I'd voiced the thought. "You see dogs that get beat, and they can't trust nobody ever again. Or when they do trust, it ain't the same kind of trust."
"You can't exactly put humans through training to get rid of that. Or if you can, it's called therapy."
"Eh," Rachel said, reaching out to run a hand through my hair. "You seem better."
"...I guess I am." I was at least able to project confidence, and I knew that she was trying to cheer me up. I also knew that she had to have been at least a little annoyed with what I'd told her about Charlotte's power. Yeah, being able to get tougher was interesting for her. I knew she liked getting into the thick of a fight: but that was just it. If Charlotte's power really worked that way, then the best place for her would be as far away as possible. As long as we could communicate the situation properly.
Heck. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. I couldn't really let Rachel's doubts get in the way if it really worked this way… and if it didn't and she had to be within a certain range? Well, then Rachel'd get what she wanted, and it'd still be a really useful power.
"Yeah, don't worry," Rachel said, gently.
"That's a little bit much to ask," I said. Rachel looked at me, and I could read a lot of different thoughts in her eyes. I knew it wasn't just the eyes, that there were complexities being conveyed by expression and just knowing her, but that's what it felt like. Like I was staring into her dark eyes and making out signs and meaning. "Maybe I can try, though."
"If you're too worried, go run or lift shit. Just keep doing it until you are too tired to think," Rachel said. She had weights at the shelter, actually. Somehow she'd gotten some, which meant my bugs had on occasion gotten the show of watching her exercise. Certainly, that and the dog training meant that she had plenty of exhaustion to go around.
I bit my lip, thinking of other exercise for a moment, and said. "We need to go back and monitor Coil some more. Maybe on Monday?"
Sunday was going to be a day of rest, not least because it was my birthday.
"Sure. Sixteen, huh," Rachel said. Rachel was older than me by almost two years. She'd been fourteen when she'd run away from home, but almost to her birthday. She'd been just about seventeen when she'd crashed into Brockton Bay, and she'd been recruited late in the fall… and so in two and change months, she'd be eighteen. It hadn't ever really seemed to matter.
"Sweet sixteen," I said. "Cars, GEDs, and other fun things." I shook my head, "It's not a big deal."
"Nope," Rachel said, almost too quickly. Was she hiding something? I supposed I'd figure out sooner rather than later.
"Though I'll have to wait until there's a test." I frowned a little. "Then I guess I could take a year or two off before I went to college." That was the idea, and Rachel nodded. There was no harm in not being college educated for a few years, especially if I was testing out of school early. We'd find a way: after all, I now knew that Rachel had this big following. Maybe we could live off of that support?
If not, I could always just get some dead-end job and suffer through it. It wasn't like hard work was beyond me. Plus, maybe one of the dog shelters would have a job. I was probably qualified, though I was pretty sure most of that stuff was volunteer? Still, I'd figure something out. The next year--well, there were plenty of things to worry about, but I decided that I'd care about none of them.
"Sure," Rachel said. "You're smart." Rachel would probably never go to college, but I wondered, if I helped her learn to read, and with math, and other things, whether she might not get a GED someday. Not that it mattered that much, she was known outside of her cape identity. She wasn't exactly going to… though she could always do something involving dogs, which was about as useful as me thinking I'd set myself up as an exterminator.
"Thanks," I said, giving her a brief hug. "I'll be gone for about an hour, see you then."
"Charlotte?" she asked.
"Yes. Amp's going to test her powers."
******
"Can you hear me now?" she asked. She was only a few dozen feet away, but she was whispering into her walkie talkie.
"Yes."
"Touch your nose."
I reached out and touched my nose, and felt the odd tingle of powers rushing into me. My skin felt a little odd, and I walked along a little further. Five hundred feet away now.
The feeling of the powers withdrawing was a little bizarre.
"And now?" she asked.
"Yes. Give the command."
"Touch your nose."
I did, and again, on came the power.
This was going to be boring and weird, but hopefully instructive.
******
In the end, I went almost five miles away without losing the ability to be effected, and when I went outside of radio contact to see how long it lasted, it didn't last any less time than when I was near her. A half-hour was a decent enough span of time to have a power, and I assumed that it would be possible, if she kept in radio contact, for her to withdraw and reapply a power as often as possible.
So there should be walkie talkies or radios or something in every household that needs it, just like some of the kids in camp were talking about distributing the fishbowls around the camp so that wherever I went, there'd be bugs to bring out. Which was kind of clever, though really I needed some sort of system, to keep the bugs from killing each other in their sleep. I was having to draw down a lot of bugs, and breed them as well, just to keep it up.
It was just rough, to say the least. Nothing I could do about that, I thought, as I walked back into camp just as the daily patrol came in.
This time, it seemed like it was Miss Militia, Weld, and Vista. Which was a good combination, I supposed. Vista could warp areas, which probably made Miss Militia's targeting even more effective if need be.
I didn't know whether they wanted to talk to me, or if they'd merely stop in on the way to other business, but I made sure that I was around when they showed up.
None of them looked run ragged, actually. This was the first time I'd seen Vista with my own eyes without just looking over her. The Endbringer fight was too busy to pay attention to any one person, and so I'd never really seen her. She was surprisingly intense, looking. It was something about the set of lines on her face, and the way her short blonde hair was out of the way. Maybe it was how she walked.
It was a little impressive, despite the fact that she was pretty young. Then again, Pelter was only fourteen. I loved her costume, the green armor, the white to add some details, the skirt… it all looked very effective at doing what it was trying to do, and of course I'd met Weld and Miss Militia before.
Miss Militia, for her part, nodded at me. "Arachne, I have a message for you."
"Yes?" I asked, using my bugs to look around and make sure that nobody else was listening that shouldn't be.
"Flechette would like to invite you, Pelter, and Hellhound to meet with her in Dolltown. She asked me to send this message to you, since she wanted to do it on Sunday."
"Bitch. And we're not going to be able to," I said, amused at the idea that Miss Militia was serving as a messenger. "Tell her we might be able to show up on Monday at noon, and that we'll get word to her soon."
"Very well," Miss Militia said.
I was curious, though, and so after a moment I decided to ask, "Do you know what it's about?"
"The E88 has been putting a lot of pressure on the area around Dolltown. She's probably worried. She's been trying to clear them out of the area," Miss Militia admitted.
"People are being pressed from all sides," I said. "I've heard that the Butcher is hurting the Merchants badly. I almost want them to stalemate each other."
"The Butcher…" Miss Militia shook her head. "Be careful with her."
"I know. She's so dangerous that if it wasn't for her side power… she'd have a kill order, right? That's what everyone says online."
"Yes," Miss Militia said. "Though I'm not sure why she'd want to stay here long-term. It just increases the pressure. But I don't understand the motives of people like her at all." Miss Militia looked troubled, thinking about people she couldn't quite understand, and probably all of the duties she was facing.
"Neither do I," I admitted. "Oh, and we have a new cape on our team."
"You do?" Miss Militia asked, surprised.
"I know you might have heard about her when everyone came to pick up those Merchants, but… Amp is officially part of our team now."
"Is this like New Wave all over again?" Vista asked, thoughtfully, looking around the camp. She didn't say much, and Weld didn't seem to be judging this place, either.
"I don't know. We don't have any large ambition like that. The only one who's unmasked is Rachel… is that going to be a problem?"
"At the moment, no." Miss Militia shook her head. "The Director has suspended any attempts to arrest her, pending further investigation."
"Ah, good," I said, aware that this meant that if she did go back to being a villain, they could easily reactivate all of the treatment in a matter of moments. And probably for me as well. She probably didn't mean it as a threat, but it was probably something that they wanted me to know.
The mask hid my face, so they didn't have to see the snarl there. The skepticism with which I took any of these claims. Any of this supposed leniency. "We have information on the power patches. The means of creating them seems to involve a number of highly specialized drugs, on top of the Tinker's contributions. If we can find where the pipeline of chemicals is coming from, we can cut them up."
Coil. He was bankrolling the Merchants, or rather Dose, who was about the only thing other than the 'Cauldron Vials' that the Merchants had going for them. Why was he doing that? The most obvious answer was the most likely: they were yet another piece that he could control in his bid to gain power over the city. And then at any moment he could cut them off, just like the PRT was hinting it could do with Rachel.
The difference was, Dose was happy to be a pawn, and worse, whereas I wasn't going to go gently if they turned this all against me.
Hopefully we'd continue to work together, but it was hard to trust them when they clearly had other motives.
Flechette, though, seemed genuine. Weld wasn't so bad… if I started listing members who were good people, it would probably include most of them. Now there was a real mystery, how an organization that had so many good apples was still rotten to the core.
"Anything else?"
"What's Amp's power? Are you going to register her as an independent cape?"
"Maybe when the city's a little less fucked. How well is that going?" I asked, my voice showing a little of that aggression. I was also not answering the question about her powers, at least, I was going to try to avoid them as long as possible.
"Progress is being made, except in the regions destroyed by Behemoth. There are parts of it that are irradiated."
Oh, well that sucked. I frowned a little, thinking about it. The majority of the city had power and maybe even plumbing back, sorta, but… jobs? Those would be a lot harder to get back, though at least the shoreline was mostly alright.
I assumed that there'd be a lot of supplies coming in by boat, since it was cheaper than driving through the mess that was the roads.
"Shit," I said, shaking my head. "With the E88, do you have the situation managed?"
"We're doing our best," Weld said. "Help would be appreciated--"
"We're on the front lines here," I said, waving my hand. "Who else is a problem?"
"The Undersiders have started setting up territory, taking over city blocks," Vista said.
Ah. That was the new suspicion, the new fear: that this was just an Undersider camp with better propaganda. But I really, really didn't give a shit about making sure they had the right idea. If they tried to go against us now when we'd done nothing? I doubted it'd go well for them. "Huh, well. Hopefully you can deal with them. Unless one of them is close to us."
"No. We've outlined where they are on maps," Miss Militia said. "None of it overlaps with your territory."
"Where?"
"Regent is well into E88 territory," Weld said, as if reciting from a report, "While Grue is at the edge of Merchant and Empire territory." He nodded. "We cannot determine where Tattletale is operating, but she's been seen up closer to the hill, and the ruined areas near Behemoth."
Separated, I thought. All spread out. In the margins. "Where's Accord in all of this?"
"Everywhere," Miss Militia said.
"Well, we haven't seen him around here." I shrugged. "I can only deal with the problems I have in front of me. There's only so many capes."
"We understand this," Miss Militia said.
"Not like we don't know the feeling," Vista added, looking at me a little skeptically. I knew what she was thinking, or I could imagine it had something to do with the way that it felt like I was held at the end of a long stick to get bitten at… while the Protectorate and Wards felt in a similar spot, only the person holding the stick was probably the Director. And I bet they--she, if I remembered right?--felt that way about the people further up.
Organizations all added up to a bunch of shit… then again, I was now part of a team of four heroes, in charge of a camp of refugees. So maybe that was hypocrisy. "Got it." I settled into a sort of waiting stance. Like I was about to try to dodge a punch. Weld seemed to tense at it, and I wondered if it came off more hostile than it should have.
"Arachne, what can you tell us about Amp's powers?" Miss Militia asked. So she hadn't been distracted from the matter, she'd just been focusing on other things.
"It's very useful, and we're still testing it," I said, as if I were some lawyer fending off the raving hordes of reports. "I'll tell you if it becomes necessary for you to know."
I could see them react to that sort of phrase. Necessary for you to know? But while I didn't think they were the enemy, maybe it'd be best to wait until we had a better idea of what was going on, and where we were going.
"Very well. But she is decided that she wants to be Amp?"
"Yes. She's very clear on that," I said. "Anything else, while you're here? Feel free to stop in for some coffee." Someone had raided a grocery store nearby, at the owner's permission. There were a lot of things to loot, and yet even despite all of that, we were definitely going to need to start getting food delivered unless we were going to retreat, and the longer we spent here, the worse it was.
If we left now, the Merchants would basically double in size and bleed out into other regions of the city.
"Very well," Miss Militia said, with a slight, uncertain nod. As if she were walking on eggshells, just from being around me.
Some allies we were turning out to be.
I made a note: Monday, I had things to do.
Sunday, though?
I was hoping that the Merchants and the rest of the world all decided to take the damn day off, just for once, and let me relax.
******
I woke up with a pressure on me, and when I opened my eyes, I realized it was my girlfriend. Now, of all the ways to wake up, with my girlfriend in nothing more than underwear on top of me was far from the worst one ever, and as a way to go to sleep, there were few worse. But she was kind of heavy, and while my gaze did stray, I mostly found myself annoyed and slightly hungry.
Ah, so this was the birthday present? "Rache… this is nice and all," I said, totally staring at her eyes and nowhere else, "But can we just wait until after breakfast?"
Rachel snorted, her eyes giving the broadest grin imaginable. "Heh." She reached down and ran her fingers along my neck, threatening to trail down further. "Wanted to get you up. Something else."
"Really?" I asked.
"Don't cheat with bugs," Rachel said, leaning in to nibble at my neck. She smelled of sweat, dog, and--
I squirmed a little, trying not to get distracted from my purpose.
What was my purpose, again?
"...fine."
"Get dressed," she ordered, in a firm voice.
"I'm not a dog," I said, with a playful tone I hope she understood. "But… if you so command… then please get the heck off me."
"Can't push me off?" Rachel asked, sounding amused.
"Nope. You're too strong. And handsome. And amazing." I didn't smile, but I wanted to so bad, because the look on her face was worth the heat that ran through my body at my own words. "So now get off. And then I'll get dressed."
It wasn't really possible to shut off my bugs. But I did make sure that they stayed in their bowls, the ones that were there, and any that were flying around when I woke up, I grounded. I kept up the perimeter, so any ambush would have to come from within the camp, but otherwise I allowed myself to be blindfolded.
Were they going to do some sort of birthday party?
Rachel rolled off and grabbed a shirt from the floor, and then with a fey sort of feeling, I grabbed one of hers as well, on top of a clean pair of jeans from my bag. She stared at me as I slipped on her shirt, which of course was way too broad and big for me. Well, not way too, but enough that it was kind of notable. "What?" I asked.
Rachel's face was slightly flushed, her breathing a little heavy as she stared at me. "You're really cute." She shook her head, as if this was something to be rueful about, and I slipped into some clean socks and the same shoes I'd been wearing this whole time. The tennis shoes had seen better days, but I really didn't care that much.
I was cute.
At least in the eyes of the only critic who mattered worth a damn.
******
I walked through the camp, blind for the moment. I wasn't really, but I felt so clumsy as Rachel guided me, as if any moment I'd have to grab onto her arm as if I were some sort of belle with the vapors.
She was leading me into one of the apartment buildings, and I hesitated, wondering, at the door, as I stared at it…
Was this some sort of big surprise party? How many people knew? Nobody had looked at me in the early morning light, or said anything about it. But… that's a surprise party.
I opened the door, and I saw who I'd missed coming in. I must have really slept in, because there was Greg, Stefanie… and Dad.
"Morning, birthday girl," Stefanie said.
"Oh. You're involved?" I asked, rubbing at me eyes as I looked at Stefanie, who was rather more dressed up than I was.
Dad was at the grill, making what seemed like a full breakfast. Pancakes were being made, eggs were being whipped up for omelets, he seemed to be managing half a dozen different tasks at once. Greg was sitting in the chair, with a video game.
"Hey, Rache!" Greg said.
"Rachel," Rachel said, firmly.
"You get to beat level 9 last night?"
"Nah. A little busy," Rachel said, not even blushing at what she was referring to, which was probably the reason I'd slept in late, all things considered. Was that part of some sort of strategy, or had Rachel just assumed that I'd want to sleep in, and waited to see if I got up.
"Oh…" Greg said, a little dejectedly.
"Also. The jumpy blobs sucks," Rachel said.
"Though now isn't really the time for video-game talk, is it?" Stefanie asked, with a bit of a smile. "I had to help organize all of this."
So, the room was pretty dingy. Just a single slightly large room, and then a second room for the beds. But there was a table, and it was loaded down with presents.
"Eh, whatever works," I said, glad that Rachel was talking to Greg.
"They're called Erglings, and they come from--"
"Taylor," Dad said. "Sit down."
I nodded, trying not to feel too nervous. I just kept on waiting for something to go wrong, because it was just so amazing, so--
When I was a kid, Dad always did birthday breakfast for me, before I got older and more 'mature' and we went out to nice places for dinner. When we probably could have afforded it less. I thought about the breakfast with Rachel, getting her to try new things, victory as sweet as the taste of her lips in a syrupy kiss.
There weren't dozens of packages or anything, but it was a birthday, and more than I expected.
"C'mon, open them!" Greg said.
"You can wait until after the breakfast, if you want." Stefanie then added. "Also, we have an ice-cream cake in a fridge in another room, if you want something like that tonight. Greg said you liked ice-cream?"
Of course I did. I licked my lips and looked at the packages. They weren't colorfully wrapped, but I took the one that looked heaviest, and began to shake it a little, curiously.
"That's mine!" Greg said.
"And that one?" I asked, pointing to a card.
"Rachel's," Stefanie said. "Though she also kinda split the big present there with Dad." The one wrapped in grey wrapping paper.
"And yours is the small red one?"
"I didn't know what to get you," Stefanie admitted, rubbing her hair in an odd nervous gesture. "So I just got some essentials for you. It's been a few weeks, but I thought… well. I asked your father, so it's sorta from here"
"I'll check yours out first," I said, politely, as I watched Dad flit around, clearly in a better mood than I'd seen him in for months.
A little bit of distance, I decided, had honestly kind of improved our relationship. Once there wasn't' the expectation for certain things, it could just continue on in its own way. I opened the box, and began to pull things out of it, one by one. Tampons, an IOU for some clothes she'd found that would fit me, a razor, toothpaste of my favorite brand, a shampoo that I really liked, a small purse and a money-pouch… it all seemed like little gestures that all meant one thing, that I was home here, and should make myself at home.
I liked it, and I looked up. "Thank you," I said, surprised that I could get so emotional over just a few things like that. But they were sort of part of being here, weren't they?
"I'll try yours next, Greg. Also, Dad!"
"Yes, Taylor?" he asked.
"How long is it till the food's ready?"
"Oh, about ten minutes," he said.
It all smelled great. "More than enough time."
******
So I opened Greg's next. Books, a lot of books. The exact sort of books I liked. Fantasies and old classics, about a dozen books in all, as Greg looked at me, eager for my reaction. I'd read some of them before, but that didn't really matter. I just nodded to him and said, "Thanks, Greg" and he acted like I was the Pope and I'd just laid hands on him.
Next came Dad and Rachel's, and that's when emotional crossed the line into teary as I opened it up.
The first thing I pulled out was the sheet music. I recognized it at once, almost. It was music for a flute, and it had my Mom's handwriting on it. Little notes. I stared at it for a moment, blinking back tears. "How…"
"Someone had stolen them. Not sure why," Dad called. "So Rachel got them back. And the photos, they were in the ruins, nobody had taken them."
Photos? I pulled out what looked like a photo album, and flipped it open. Mom at eighteen, posing for a class photo in High School. Mom in college, with a hairstyle that made her look a little like a hippie. Mom hugging Dad. Mom holding me as a baby. She didn't look as if she'd been all that pregnant, I'd been a small baby, if not quiet baby. But she seemed almost to glow, just off the page.
"It's… a family thing. I was going to give some of them, or maybe all of them, when you went off to college if you wanted them. Or, after that, when you got married," Dad said. "Same with a lot of these things…"
I looked in the large box. There were eight or nine books, and they were familiar ones. Absalom, Absalom, Breakfast of Champions… works she'd gone over again and again for her classes, the ones that mattered to Mom. Not the introductory ones where she had to talk about the literary canon and how to punctuate your sentences, but the ones where she could branch out. Not that either of the two were obscure, but they weren't something you gave to a Freshman, any more than you taught a Middle-Schooler Calculus. I flipped one open, and there was my mother's writing, through the blur of tears.
"Taylor, are you alright?" Rachel asked.
"Just…" I didn't know what to say. "Married?"
"You've moved out, so I'm offering them," Dad said, uncertainly, as he flipped an omelette.
There were a few sets of lecture notes, and I just touched them and glanced at them, and knew that if I read them I could hear them in her voice. Even the fragments, because she never wrote speeches, but points to say. I could hear her say: 'Intertextuality' as one line just said, underlined three times as if to remind herself. Or, 'Vonnegut=C, Discuss?' I didn't even know what that meant, I just knew that it was something she'd written.
I blinked away the tears. "Yes, I'm alright," I added to Rachel. "Thanks, Dad."
"I figured it'd happen someday," Dad said. There was a long pause where he bit his lip, and clearly didn't know what to say. I knew the dilemma. If he wished I got married, would it sound like he was wishing I broke up with Rachel? If it didn't sound like that, would it instead sound like he was pushing for two teenage girls to marry, without asking them about it."
"The last one's mine," Rachel said. "But we gotta go outside."
"Why?"
"Cause," Rachel added. "Just a minute."
She reached out and picked up the card.
"You've already give me something, getting this back… by force?"
"Sure," Rachel said. She reached up as if she were going to lift and carry me outside. I got up, and followed her, as she clutched the envelope.
Once we were outside, she said. "I bet all of 'em would want one once I said it. Be fucking annoying."
"One what?" I asked.
She just thrust the envelope at me. I opened it. It was a plain white card, but inside it read, '1 Puppy.'
"A puppy?"
"That bitch is going to throw a litter soon. Wanna raise one? Yourself? With me," Rachel said, biting her lip. "He or she, they'd be yours and shit."
I thought about it, wondering why she treated it so seriously. She seemed to be staring at me as if she'd proposed we try for children or… something. That serious, that important. It wasn't like I hadn't cared for a lot of Rachel's dogs before. But it'd never been my dog, per se.
"Yes," I said. "And… how about she?"
"Choose whichever one you want. She's a mongrel bitch, but that don't matter."
"No, it doesn't."
"And after breakfast, do you wanna fuck?" Rachel asked.
"I'll be stuffed after all of that. I'll hardly be able to move or--"
Rachel just stared at me, her own eyes cutting it off, as if she didn't see the big deal. And after a moment of thinking about it, neither did I.
Now I had a few other things to look forward to. I was sorta glad she'd told me all of this out here. I knew she wouldn't have hesitated to say it in front of everyone.
...but then, a part of me wouldn't have hesitated to say yes, even then, even there.
And best of all? Nothing went wrong that Sunday.
******
A/N: Take a breath. Take a break. Thanks to @NemoMarx.
I think too many fanfictions forget you need a nice, slow chapter like this every once in a while. Canon had that problem too.
Emma is not going to have a fun time when she goes back to school. A unmasked Taylor is bad news for Emma. Taylor won't do anything but the students saved by Taylor may.
Emma is not going to have a fun time when she goes back to school. A unmasked Taylor is bad news for Emma. Taylor won't do anything but the students saved by Taylor may.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Sorry it was so late. I wanted to do some writing before releasing it, and, uh. Yeah, that didn't go great.
- Location
- Florida
Never change Rachel.
I'm really excited for reaching that part of canon. Taylor isn't making a big deal about being unmasked. The moment Emma tries something is the instant she gets mentally shanked as the kids close ranks, if not literally. This reminds me of a one-shot where Emma and her dad meet the school principal to complain only to have the principal tell them how Emma would be lucky to not get beat up by Skitter's fans.
The lack of slow chapters was always one of the biggest issues with canon, so I'm a big fan of how you're pacing this out.
I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill here, but...
I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill here, but...
it almost sounds like Annette was aware of the Slaughterhouse 9 Cauldron Connection. I'm probably crazy though.
- Location
- Elsewhere
But the world ended on Monday.
- Location
- ⇙
A calm and fluffy chapter after a big fight is always nice. Seems like things are going well for the team and camp and the people are getting used to each other. Must be nice to know that for once your part of town isn't the one where all the fighting happens.
Did I miss something and they threw Bryce to the Protectorate already or where did he end up?
Did I miss something and they threw Bryce to the Protectorate already or where did he end up?
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sierra said he'd end up in the wards. Taylor isn't optimistic that it'll help him much, but she isn't responsible for fixing him, so.
Hotdog Vendor
Author of 'Sisters of Rail'
- Location
- (5 + 3 * sqrt(5)) / 8
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Agreed about the pacing.
As for the connection, if you're crazy I'm willing to be crazy with you. Cos that seems like a perfectly reasonable interpretation of what that note means to me.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm racing the sun.
- Location
- United States
Strongly agree. This is what you're comissioning fan-art of, right Laurent? Right?!
- Pronouns
- They/Them
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Okay, here's an actual question. The art coming up is of something that will only make sense after 5.4.
It's Pelter in costume, but the costume is only first mentioned in 5.4.
...I assume that's not too much of a spoiler? That Pelter won't just keep on wearing a non-costume? But at the same time!
Edit: So the question is: should I release it as soon as it's done, or after 5.4?
It's Pelter in costume, but the costume is only first mentioned in 5.4.
...I assume that's not too much of a spoiler? That Pelter won't just keep on wearing a non-costume? But at the same time!
Edit: So the question is: should I release it as soon as it's done, or after 5.4?
Last edited:
- Location
- France
Release it now!
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It's not ready *yet*. I said soon. I think there's just a few more changes?
- Location
- United States
After 5.4, I love the feeling of antici-
- Location
- kansas
After waiting won't be so hard :: incessant fidgeting::
Ganurath
Literal Enthusiast
- Location
- A Valid Location
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Bambina, attack!
*Over The Top Violence Ensues*
To be clear, I respectfully disagree with Fancy's position.