- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ultimately, she does have very real concerns? Like, there's an entire camp of people who might die or be sold into slavery or have horrible things done to it if she can't figure out how to defend it.
Wolf Spider (Worm) (Complete)
- Thread starter The Laurent
- Start date
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Update tomorrow!
Collar 6.4
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Collar 6.4
The morning began simply enough. I woke up, grouchy and still tired, and changed into my costume. I went around in it a lot more than I used to, just because it was a safe precaution.
Of course, the suit needed to be washed again, and I hadn't taken a shower the day before, so I probably smelled a little strong. I'd do it in a few hours, I told myself, getting up and heading towards the camp-fires. There were kitchens that were sort of functional in the apartment buildings, but relatively few of them, and most people were happy just to have running water and electricity back: giving them brand new stoves was rather beyond us, though we did have a bunch of microwaves that we used to heat up a lot of instant food.
Which was a decent investment, because we got a lot of donations that were like that, that couldn't really be said to be very healthy, but were quick and easy.
For my part, I sat myself at a chair near one of the cooking areas and looked up at the sky, which was slightly overcast.
Rachel was up and about, headed for the shelter, and I thought that after I got breakfast, maybe I could eat lunch with her, and this time I'd ask her about the lawsuits. And see whether Cassie had any good news. Or see what was happening. It was a lazy Saturday morning, and I felt tired and yet ready for something.
Maybe I'd see if Dad could come by again. I really did want to talk to him again. We'd gotten closer, yes, but we'd also been so busy, the both of us, that I hadn't really heard much from him at all after my birthday.
That was a shame, and one that I could do something about.
So when my bugs started dying, I was taken aback, and then panicked, standing up and calling out. "Butcher incoming!"
I couldn't be sure, of course, since my bugs couldn't see it, but they could hear the screams from Animos.
That got people's attention. They started running, as the word spread, people repeating and yelling it as Pelter came out of her tent fully dressed. Charlotte was asleep, and I raced towards her tent. She needed to get somewhere safe and out of the way of the fight to give orders… or maybe somewhere close to the fight where…
I cursed the fact that we hadn't done drills, though I was glad we had a walkie-talkie. We could request readouts from her.
The poles were here and there, and already people were starting to gather near them as I began to make my bugs crawl over Greg to wake him up. He'd need to get out of the way of a fight, because there was nothing he could do yet. No matter how much work he'd done, a few puny laser shooters weren't going to fix anything.
The people were hurrying in a swarm towards the apartment buildings, those of them who weren't one of the people Charlotte was going to be potentially working on.
Potentially, because she was asleep, and because if the Butcher came we might need her to focus all of her power-up efforts on a small group of people. Namely, the Parahumans, so that we could be tough enough to stand up to her.
"Whuh?" Charlotte asked with a yawn.
"The Butcher's coming," I said. "Get in costume, and then take something to listen in and get to one of the apartments."
"Oh," she said, leaping up. Charlotte looked like a bit of a mess as she got ready. I watched her, half-naked and all-panicked, as she got ready. The Butcher was already closing in, and Parian was suiting up, and gathering her dolls.
"I repeat: Butcher is coming," Pelter said into her by-now-decaying communication device with the Protectorate.
And I, meanwhile? I was swarming Rachel with bugs so that she knew what to do. Rachel and Cassie were both there, and Rachel was storming about, powering up three of her dogs as the circle shrank.
Five blocks, four blocks… three blocks. They were going rather slower than expected, honestly, as if the Butcher wasn't the main thrust of the attack, though I couldn't tell what was going on except by negation.
Charlotte became Amp as I strode towards Greg's tent, throwing it up. "Greg! You need to get out of here!"
"Okay, okay! It's the Butcher, right? The things should be working, and I have my guns. Maybe she wouldn't realize they were a threat, or her danger sense wouldn't include them?" Greg looked like a complete mess, and he was talking so loud and so fast that I had to hold up a hand.
"The guns won't be enough. But just in case, can you go find Charlotte? That way if something bad happens, or someone tries to attack her, you can stop it."
Two blocks.
"Right, right, can do!" Greg said, happy now that I'd given him what was in some ways makework. I stepped outside with him, glancing in the direction of the advancing wall of invisibility, and trying to track when it would show up.
Pelter was in costume and headed right towards us, and with a crackle, the speakers all started working too. Parian was about down at the ground floor of her building, and that meant she'd be here at any moment.
Artificer and Amp were hiding, as appropriate. Rachel was just a half-dozen seconds from arriving.
"Attention," Charlotte said. "Prepare for the attack. Arachne and Pelter, please touch your noses."
I touched my nose as it got within a half-block, and felt the strange tingling that came with the extra toughness and regeneration that was almost enough to shrug off one of the Butcher's bolts. Almost wasn't enough, but we wanted to have a group up in case…
Huh.
The first sign I saw that this fight was going to go differently than expected was when a man in ripped jeans and without a shirt flew around the corner, a patch very clearly on his arm. Then came others, on foot, almost two-dozen patched capes in all, as I gathered my bugs, on the lookout for Animos.
Pelter began throwing things at them already, and I watched as they advanced, heading right for us, hopefully not paying attention to the way that Rachel was racing with three dogs towards the fight.
Animos wasn't the only cape there. He was leaping into view, vicious and grotesque, but he wasn't really a threat except for the way he canceled powers. With him was a woman who was somehow already soaked in blood, her costume a disgusting mash of ideas without any sense or reason. I assume that the other three, half-blinded capes, were either not taking part in the fight, or weren't there.
I backed up, trying to get out of the way of any attacks, as Pelter peppered them and dodged the laser bolts and fireballs that were being thrown everywhere.
I took a breath, aware that twenty-something pseudo-capes meant that we were badly outnumbered, but only two or three of them could fly.
Which meant that when the doors of the apartment behind them burst open and a giant panda bear plushie started slamming its body into people, they couldn't just laugh it off or get away. I found a spot behind a tent, and knelt down as Pelter retreated to join me.
It was complete chaos, as people were still screaming, and all of the windows were filled with people trying to watch the battle as the enemy advanced, split between fighting against Parian and charging forward.
Pelter was forced to split attention between trying to stop the wave of enemies charging forward, some of them changing shape as they did, some of them blasting lasers, others of them glowing sickly… and the flying enemies.
"Clap your hands, Group D!" Charlotte ordered, as one of the groups of her volunteers surged forward with supernatural strength and toughness, and the two sides collided.
It really was something like a full-on battle here, considering that the number of fighters was now beyond easy tracking.
Aminos screamed, temporarily shutting down Parian's control over her dolls, as the monster surged forward.
I was trying to do what I could with bugs, but it was a chaos of bites and stings, and I tried to carefully ration out the flies and other creatures that had diseases to make sure I knew where they were as they flitted among the enemy, trying to get closer to the one in costume who was leading the charges, and who seemed to be lashing out with weapons made of blood.
It was a baffling fight, one far too little like the struggles I was used to, but Animos was so distracted in surging forward, that he basically missed Brutus roaring in and biting at him.
*******
And as Pelter fell back, skin singed from lasers that had hit, that's where, for a very brief moment, the fight seemed to stalemate. Rachel and her three dogs fought against Animos, and Parian tried to get her dolls up and running, even as Animos kept on screaming but found himself more and more hurt as he tried to fight.
Meanwhile, the flying capes had blown a few holes in the apartments, and the fight in the center of the camp was a bloody trade, the lasers, the sudden knockout-touches, the half-assembled pieces of tech that broke apart as quickly as they were used… all meeting Charlotte's forces, which poured in with each loss, replaced just as quickly, and met their match. My bugs were doing their work, and over the two-dozen seconds of chaotic fighting, it seemed as if perhaps Butcher wasn't going to show up at all. I couldn't see the Protectorate coming in, though for some reason Cassie was leashing almost a dozen dogs and hurrying down the street…
But of course, that was the point, wasn't it?
The Butcher wasn't stupid, she'd always had a plan and I almost missed it in the destructive fighting in which I could at most play a small part. Animos was a part of it, but the other part was that they seemed to be fighting smarter. They knew at least enough about their powers that I was glad I wasn't in the mix fighting, because some of them were even working together in a way that the Merchants never managed.
It was bad news, but even through all of that, we were winning in a way we might not have, before Amp joined.
Then the Butcher showed up.
Oh, not immediately, I wasn't that unaware, but she came from behind, from the 'safe' direction, teleporting with bug-killing explosions the whole way that ate up the distance in a matter of moments.
"Head's up!" I yelled into the walkie-talkie. "Butcher's coming!"
She just appeared, after her last jump, right in the middle of the assembled fighters, stabbing out with what looked like a katana. Three people went down in as many seconds, one of them bleeding so badly I wondered if she'd die.
My gut tensed as I realized it was Bonnie. Fuck. Rachel was still finishing off Animos, and the other cape was still alive despite all of the bug bites I was giving them. Pelter was in full retreat, but not fast enough for the Butcher not to pull out a pistol and shoot her repeatedly in the back before tossing it aside as soon as it was unloaded.
Without the toughness, Pelter would be dead. As it was, she shuddered and tumbled slightly, rolling around and throwing a rock at the Butcher from her pouch.
It sailed through the air right at her, and the Butcher exploded, teleporting over towards Animos as she slashed out at Rachel and her dogs.
Judas, though, bit at her, and she disappeared in another harmful explosion, this one actually sending Animos hurtling back.
I realized two things at the same time as I crouched behind that tent and tried to plan my next move.
First, Pelter was right: the Butcher was relying way too much on her teleporting. As if she was afraid of being hurt at all. It meant that she couldn't consistently stick around one place and hurt people.
Second, her power didn't really work that well with the rest of her team. Animos was on the ropes, and if he was taken out, I'd be more able to surround them on all sides with bugs and wipe them out.
Of course, the third point was that she had just teleported right in front of me with the rapier, and was slashing down.
"Taylor, duck!" Amp yelled.
I tried, but the rapier bit into my arm as I tumbled, and then--
I blinked in sheer shock. The Butcher seemed to be moving slightly slower. Not a lot, but whereas before she'd been a furious force of slashes, now she was doing it almost lazily.
I glanced left, confused, only to see that everyone was fighting with the same casual slowness, and that Amp, over the Walkie talkie, was talking so slow she might as well have been trying to do it…
Which meant that this was some sort of power. I dodged backwards, just barely, out of range of the swings, as my bugs buzzed… huh. My bugs were moving just as slowly as Butcher was, and everyone else was, roughly.
Which meant that what was actually happening was that I was moving faster than usual.
The Butcher grunted as my bugs tried and failed to sting her, and gave up mid-swing, teleporting away again as I backed up, taking a breath.
"Caaaan Yooouuu Heeearrr Meeeee…"
"Yes I can. Did you do that? Super speed?" I asked, confused. If she had done it, then that had been something she should have told me about before.
Then the world started moving back as fast as it ever had.
Parian was bringing her dolls around at the same time that Cassie jogged up with more dogs for Rachel to use, I supposed, a parade of dogs to help push the Butcher back.
The rest of Butcher's men except the two capes were fleeing, and I sent more and more bugs after the woman wielding that strange blade made of blood. It was grotesque, the way she moved and what she was doing, but the more bugs stung her, the less she could do.
The Butcher was popping here and there, shooting this, that, and the other person, but even Pelter wasn't down, just moving slower and more carefully as she peppered the one flying patch-user, and continued the push back.
Tons of tents were knocked over, there were fires all over the grass that were burning themselves out, but the Butcher hadn't yet killed any of us, and she didn't seem to have brought her crossbow with her. just a katana, a set of guns, and what looked like a fireaxe.
Though I didn't want her to turn her blade on us, I thought, as Rachel started pumping up more of the dogs.
Overhead, Charlotte ordered her people back, as part of their own retreat. They'd done all they could do, and considering how badly injured some of them were, I didn't blame their retreat.
But as long as we had Amp, it meant that we could just repair any damage short of death. At the same time, we hadn't done any harm to her, and now she was starting to use her secondary powers, warping into the line of wounded and slashing down or simply being there and causing screams of panic and pain. A single good slash could kill some of the people on the ground, which meant we needed to stop her. But she wasn't making it that easy.
In fact, she seemed to ignore the half-dozen colorful stuffed animals, ranging from gorillas to giraffes to penguins, in favor of causing pain, suffering, and destruction.
Cleo raced right at the Butcher, but instead of dodging, at least then, she waved a hand and Cleo turned on Judas, who was moving to support him and started lashing out at random, slobbering and biting with blind fury at anyone in range.
Fuck.
The moment I'd thought things were going well, she turned things against us, though I wasn't sure that we'd ever really been in control. I kept on backpedaling, my bugs going after her, and Pelter threw more and more rocks, this time the pointed ones, that she thought might serve as an even deadlier projectile, in order to drive the Butcher back. It worked for a matter of seconds, but each explosive transport meant that the downed fighters were suffering more.
Some of them were crawling away, and a lot of them were healing now, healing through the damage, but I didn't know if it would be fast enough, and I definitely didn't know if it would be able to stop her.
The only good sign of news was that I could feel Flechette, Kid Win, and Velocity hurrying along, though nobody other than that, each of them trying to race ahead to reach us in time. If their efforts would even help us.
Which is when I felt Greg start to race downstairs, guns in hand.
"Artificer, you…" Charlotte yelled, in a moment of high emotion as he went racing down the stairs.
My bugs tried to provide a cloud of cover as he burst out, firing lasers in the Butcher's general direction with one hand, while spraying a shower of energy with the other… and none of it with much accuracy. "Unhand them, villain!" Greg yelled, with far too much drama.
If Amp had somehow provided the power to see things in slow motion, it wouldn't have been any more obvious what was about to happen.
Butcher appeared right next to Greg, and shoved the rapier right through his chest. And then yanked it out. He collapsed in a shower of blood.
"Greg, roll over!" Charlotte demanded desperately, as I broke cover to try to distract her.
It was all falling apart as I raced forward, my bugs mobbing her just to try to force her to leave. But now, for once, she was ignoring everything, just grinning as my bugs tried and failed to bite through her skin.
She frowned, annoyed but not feeling any pain, when they tried to burrow in her nose and ears, or go through her eyes, which were tough enough that the bugs couldn't quite pierce, at least the flies I was trying to go for.
I stepped slightly too close as Greg rolled over, trying to crawl away as he healed, the blood still flowing so fast that I couldn't stand to watch it.
The Butcher, with a snort, waved an arm, and my world was reduced to pain.
I couldn't follow the rest of the fight, I just ordered my bugs to attack as I fell to my knees.
The pain had a character, it had contours. It was like the strongest pleasures, something that had a reality so pressing that there was no room for anything else. You were in the middle of it and all there was ahead of you and behind you was more of it. More moments of it, and you couldn't stand it, though at least with pleasure you loved that you couldn't stand it, you loved that there was nothing else.
Pain, though.
Pain lingered. Pain screamed and scratched and bit like a feral cat as I shuddered, my bugs doing their best, but their best wasn't enough.
I'd lost the plot entirely, and I didn't know or care what was going on anywhere else. The pain was too great, and I couldn't distract myself at all using the bugs. Every time I tried to focus on the movements and sensations of the bugs, the pain seemed to only grow stronger and stronger. Even my hearing seemed to be replaced by pain and the feeling of my heart. It felt as if it was beating fast, far too fast, straining to pump blood, straining to do anything as she approached.
I knew she couldn't kill me with pain. Not like the first Butcher, it wasn't that strong. But it felt as if she were about to kill me with pain, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, nothing I could do to push away the sensations that only seemed to grow stronger with time. I gasped, as she advanced on me.
Boots thudded on the ground. She was taking her time, confident and in control, which had to mean that Rachel and Parian were being held back.
She reached me and lifted me up.
I was floppy, broken, too in pain to do more than writhe a little as she pulled out a knife and began to slowly, almost methodically stab me. Once in the stomach, a slash across my chest, the cuts being resisted a little by the armor and a lot by the power that Amp had put into me, but it was still enough that I could feel the bleeding, though not the pain, because there was just too much of it.
Too much pain piled on top of itself, more and more until all there was was a scream that couldn't quite come out. She smirked, looking at me, clearly enjoying my pain. Where was everyone? What was…
She raised the knife. Up, up, up again some more. I'd been almost afraid she was going to lower it, to slash at my tendons, to tear at my body, to do… but the moment I saw the knife coming up--and it felt like it took forever but it was really a matter of moments--I knew.
She turned the wicked, disgusting looking knife over, flicking the blood out of it, as bugs bulged in and out of her nose without doing much. It was grotesque, but then everything about her was grotesque. Everything about her was monstrous and wrong, a being that hated and killed and didn't care about death, just kept on coming back endlessly, driving people mad if they didn't comply.
And I could do nothing as she pulled back.
She was going to take my eyes out. That's what this whole visit was about, or at least what this was about.
Vengeance.
I did something, she did it back.
It was so simple, so spiteful, a game that nobody won, in which everyone was blinded. But fuck it.
I screamed out, spitting in her face as she moved to stab me.
And then she stumbled. I dropped out of her hand, and I saw that a piece of diamond had torn into her arm. That's the strongest thing Pelter had, and from the way she stood as she threw more, she knew it.
I was hurtled back, the pain only starting to fade after I'd rolled, as the Butcher retreated back, but I wasn't done.
I was going to fucking kill her. My bugs swarmed the Butcher, the ones with diseases biting at the insides of her skin, where she'd been given a relatively minor wound. It was less deep and less serious than even a single stab wound, but it was the first time we'd hurt her, and I stood up slowly, regenerating already, gritting my teeth and baring them at the Butcher as I stepped forward. She had to dodge a half-dozen dogs running at her, and she couldn't do all of that and fight back, not when the rest of her team was running.
My bugs spread out, still trying to find purchase to hurt her further, now crawling in the wounds, and crawling out of them, or trying to push their way down her arms and down her veins.
I would kill her. Or at least fuck her up.
She teleported right next to Parian and backhanded her, the Butcher clearly in retreat mode as she dodged bugs, dogs, and dolls alike, firing off a perfect one-handed shot that caught Kid Win, who had just flown in, right in the elbow.
The boy fell, from twenty feet up, as Flechette yelled, "Parian!"
But the Butcher was exploding again, teleporting out of the way of the bolt that would have taken her right in the neck. Another bullet it Kid Win on the way down, and then the Butcher was retreating with her men, leaving dozens severely injured or possibly even dying.
No. Fuck that.
Rachel reached me, astride her dog, and I said, "Rachel! Let's go fucking end this!"
We'd almost lost, we'd almost died, but Rachel's vicious bared-teeth grin seemed to tell me she felt it too. We had to fuck her up. We had to not let her get the last word. She was running, and that meant we'd won.
I'd almost died, I was in no condition to fight, healing or no, but I'd do it. Because she was already diseased. We could finish off her men, and make her pay for what she'd done.
Maybe it'd be a risk, but I looked at Rachel and I believed we could do it. I believed we could stop her.
"Don't!" Amp said, through the walkie talkie. "It's a trap! She'll turn around and attack us. Don't do it, I don't want to almost lose someone else."
I frowned, pausing and looking up at Rachel. I shouldn't do it, I decided, because it probably was a trap. The fury was melting away already, replaced by the common sense that Amp was dealing out. "It is a trap, Rachel, maybe we shouldn't do it," I said.
Rachel looked at me, her eyes hard, unsure of what to say. She spluttered slightly and slid off of her dog, glaring at the walkie talkie and then stalking off towards some of her injured dogs, leaving me to watch her and wonder just what her problem was. I understood if she didn't like the choice, but it was my choice, and it was the right choice.
I tried to focus on pulling everything together. There were people to be healed, there were tents to put back up. There was a lot of work to do, and Greg almost died. I had people I needed to protect, now. I didn't want anyone else to suffer.
******
"Greg, don't ever do that again," I said.
"I'm… shoot. I think that maybe you're right," he admitted, quietly. "That didn't work like I thought it would."
"None of that did," I said. We'd managed to win, but at the same time, if she hadn't been trying to kill me, or at least blind me, in that dramatic way of hers we'd never have even touched her.
Nobody was dead… but plenty were hurt enough that without Amp, they would be dead. Civilians had fought capes, and it'd gone about as well as could be expected.
At the same time, I thought, heart racing: we'd won. If we'd done this once, we could do it again, especially if the Butcher started to get affected by the drugs I'd inflicted on her. She'd lost a few of her men, though they probably didn't know much, and she'd gained absolutely nothing.
Of course, I told myself with a sinking feeling as I looked at Greg, and then over at Stefanie who was trying to comfort some of the Butcher's victims, it wasn't as if she hadn't done damage. And she could repeat this as often as she needed until she got the right result.
Except… we were getting stronger too, weren't we? Whatever that weird time-slowing (or rather me-speeding-up) trick she'd used, I needed to figure that out. Because if I could, then Amp's power would be that much more impressive. It was annoying how she had to give an order before the power started working, but other than that, it was… it'd sorta saved all of our lives.
I'd need to thank her for that. I really do.
"But we… survived," I said, trying to keep positive.
Flechette was approaching. My mask was off, and I was trying to give a big grin, but honestly I was a little out of practice, there. It felt slightly odd to do. I'd been kinda avoiding smiling in general for a while: even when in other's company because of that 24/7 feeling to it, always around her, always with her.
Always trying to understand her. And whatever she was being bugged by.
Sometimes it was tiring. Sometimes I was exhausted. I knew what I'd do: I'd talk to her soon. We could have sex, that'd fix things. And then we could talk about whatever her problem was. It was probably not a big deal, just… jealousy or something. Things were going too well for it to be anything else, I tried to tell myself.
I tried to be optimistic, because I didn't want to feel trapped again. I wanted to kick my way out, but now I was in a place I wanted to be. I'd found my own locker and picked it. It had pictures of dogs on the inside, it had pictures of quite a few friends, it had bugs… it had all sorts of amenities, but I wondered if Rachel felt the same way.
Constricted, just a little bit, by the same things I wanted, by the same things that I was choosing to accept. The responsibilities and the burdens. It was more than just us, and I understood that. It had to be that way. No man was an island, and two men--or two teenage girls--couldn't be that way either.
"Hey," Flechette said. "I'm glad everyone was okay. Thank you for seeing to Kid Win…"
"That was Amp," I said, absently. He hadn't died either. He might have, actually, if Amp hadn't been there.
"Well, call us again if anything happens. Purity's gone, did you know that?"
"What? Where?"
"She fled town. The last of her followers got got. The E88's basically done," Flechette said. She sounded really happy about it, of course. "Just four or five members now."
Four of five, of a gang that had once been able to fight every other gang combined. That was really something… just another reason to be positive.
Just another reason to hope. Once the E88 were out of the way, of course the Teeth would be the next priority. Hopefully?
But then, how had the Butcher gotten around everyone like that? Without anyone noticing?
What about Accord, Coil, and the Undersiders?
"Ah, right. She's gone?"
"Yes. Couldn't take the heat," Flechette said quietly. "If only I'd hit the Butcher… wait, then if she died…"
"Yeah," I said. "Of course, we only barely managed to hurt her at all. But we'll do better next time."
It had to be.
******
It was a few hours before I could visit Rachel. She was checking up at the dogs at the shelter… including the puppies. I should go see them soon, I thought. As soon as I got less busy, I could spend an hour or two getting to know them.
...hopefully it'd be soon.
Rachel was crouched down, watching the dogs play.
Stiff, her back hunched. She was a lump, almost, but my heart still skipped to see her. My breath still hitched as I remembered and imagined--and the two were not all that different--the things we'd done and the things we could do.
I remembered that time, after a fight,when she'd asked me a question I wasn't expecting. I remembered it, and I wanted to take her in my arms and lose myself in pleasure the same way I'd almost lost myself in pain and rage.
She felt angry, or at least a little frustrated, but I walked up to her and crouched by her, breathing in. She smelled so strongly of dog it was almost distracting… though in an odd way the scent was comforting.
"Rachel," I said, quietly.
She turned to look at me, her face impassive, her eyes careful. She wasn't revealing anything, and I thought again about all of the things I had to talk to her about. The lawsuits, especially. Cassie hadn't yet gotten back with any more advice or information. We needed to lawyer up, we needed to ask her about the incidents.
I needed to say something. I needed to…
No, what I needed to do was relax. With Rachel. What I needed was to taste her, to touch her, to run my hands over her body, the sweat and the muscles, what I needed was for my lips to meet hers.
We'd talk about it after we'd… just. It'd work, I knew, it'd worked before: if I hadn't ever agreed to start having sex with her, we wouldn't have gotten closer emotionally.
"Hey, Rachel," I said.
"Yes?" she asked, turning to face me.
"Wanna fuck?"
She looked at me, and for a moment I was sure that she was going to say yes. Then her mouth turned down a bit, her eyes hard. She opened her mouth, briefly, then closed it again, and said, "No, not right now. I'm a little too busy, maybe later."
I recognized the words, just as she recognized the words I'd said.
I knelt there as she stood up and walked over to the dogs, who had started a fight over a toy, yelling out orders, leaving me to stand and watch her, and wonder what the hell her problem was.
*******
A/N: So, yay, they held off the Butcher! Everything is right in the world.
(Honestly though, the next update is on Friday, so you won't have long to wait and worry.) Thanks to @NemoMarx for beta-ing.
Violence, Excessive violence.
The morning began simply enough. I woke up, grouchy and still tired, and changed into my costume. I went around in it a lot more than I used to, just because it was a safe precaution.
Of course, the suit needed to be washed again, and I hadn't taken a shower the day before, so I probably smelled a little strong. I'd do it in a few hours, I told myself, getting up and heading towards the camp-fires. There were kitchens that were sort of functional in the apartment buildings, but relatively few of them, and most people were happy just to have running water and electricity back: giving them brand new stoves was rather beyond us, though we did have a bunch of microwaves that we used to heat up a lot of instant food.
Which was a decent investment, because we got a lot of donations that were like that, that couldn't really be said to be very healthy, but were quick and easy.
For my part, I sat myself at a chair near one of the cooking areas and looked up at the sky, which was slightly overcast.
Rachel was up and about, headed for the shelter, and I thought that after I got breakfast, maybe I could eat lunch with her, and this time I'd ask her about the lawsuits. And see whether Cassie had any good news. Or see what was happening. It was a lazy Saturday morning, and I felt tired and yet ready for something.
Maybe I'd see if Dad could come by again. I really did want to talk to him again. We'd gotten closer, yes, but we'd also been so busy, the both of us, that I hadn't really heard much from him at all after my birthday.
That was a shame, and one that I could do something about.
So when my bugs started dying, I was taken aback, and then panicked, standing up and calling out. "Butcher incoming!"
I couldn't be sure, of course, since my bugs couldn't see it, but they could hear the screams from Animos.
That got people's attention. They started running, as the word spread, people repeating and yelling it as Pelter came out of her tent fully dressed. Charlotte was asleep, and I raced towards her tent. She needed to get somewhere safe and out of the way of the fight to give orders… or maybe somewhere close to the fight where…
I cursed the fact that we hadn't done drills, though I was glad we had a walkie-talkie. We could request readouts from her.
The poles were here and there, and already people were starting to gather near them as I began to make my bugs crawl over Greg to wake him up. He'd need to get out of the way of a fight, because there was nothing he could do yet. No matter how much work he'd done, a few puny laser shooters weren't going to fix anything.
The people were hurrying in a swarm towards the apartment buildings, those of them who weren't one of the people Charlotte was going to be potentially working on.
Potentially, because she was asleep, and because if the Butcher came we might need her to focus all of her power-up efforts on a small group of people. Namely, the Parahumans, so that we could be tough enough to stand up to her.
"Whuh?" Charlotte asked with a yawn.
"The Butcher's coming," I said. "Get in costume, and then take something to listen in and get to one of the apartments."
"Oh," she said, leaping up. Charlotte looked like a bit of a mess as she got ready. I watched her, half-naked and all-panicked, as she got ready. The Butcher was already closing in, and Parian was suiting up, and gathering her dolls.
"I repeat: Butcher is coming," Pelter said into her by-now-decaying communication device with the Protectorate.
And I, meanwhile? I was swarming Rachel with bugs so that she knew what to do. Rachel and Cassie were both there, and Rachel was storming about, powering up three of her dogs as the circle shrank.
Five blocks, four blocks… three blocks. They were going rather slower than expected, honestly, as if the Butcher wasn't the main thrust of the attack, though I couldn't tell what was going on except by negation.
Charlotte became Amp as I strode towards Greg's tent, throwing it up. "Greg! You need to get out of here!"
"Okay, okay! It's the Butcher, right? The things should be working, and I have my guns. Maybe she wouldn't realize they were a threat, or her danger sense wouldn't include them?" Greg looked like a complete mess, and he was talking so loud and so fast that I had to hold up a hand.
"The guns won't be enough. But just in case, can you go find Charlotte? That way if something bad happens, or someone tries to attack her, you can stop it."
Two blocks.
"Right, right, can do!" Greg said, happy now that I'd given him what was in some ways makework. I stepped outside with him, glancing in the direction of the advancing wall of invisibility, and trying to track when it would show up.
Pelter was in costume and headed right towards us, and with a crackle, the speakers all started working too. Parian was about down at the ground floor of her building, and that meant she'd be here at any moment.
Artificer and Amp were hiding, as appropriate. Rachel was just a half-dozen seconds from arriving.
"Attention," Charlotte said. "Prepare for the attack. Arachne and Pelter, please touch your noses."
I touched my nose as it got within a half-block, and felt the strange tingling that came with the extra toughness and regeneration that was almost enough to shrug off one of the Butcher's bolts. Almost wasn't enough, but we wanted to have a group up in case…
Huh.
The first sign I saw that this fight was going to go differently than expected was when a man in ripped jeans and without a shirt flew around the corner, a patch very clearly on his arm. Then came others, on foot, almost two-dozen patched capes in all, as I gathered my bugs, on the lookout for Animos.
Pelter began throwing things at them already, and I watched as they advanced, heading right for us, hopefully not paying attention to the way that Rachel was racing with three dogs towards the fight.
Animos wasn't the only cape there. He was leaping into view, vicious and grotesque, but he wasn't really a threat except for the way he canceled powers. With him was a woman who was somehow already soaked in blood, her costume a disgusting mash of ideas without any sense or reason. I assume that the other three, half-blinded capes, were either not taking part in the fight, or weren't there.
I backed up, trying to get out of the way of any attacks, as Pelter peppered them and dodged the laser bolts and fireballs that were being thrown everywhere.
I took a breath, aware that twenty-something pseudo-capes meant that we were badly outnumbered, but only two or three of them could fly.
Which meant that when the doors of the apartment behind them burst open and a giant panda bear plushie started slamming its body into people, they couldn't just laugh it off or get away. I found a spot behind a tent, and knelt down as Pelter retreated to join me.
It was complete chaos, as people were still screaming, and all of the windows were filled with people trying to watch the battle as the enemy advanced, split between fighting against Parian and charging forward.
Pelter was forced to split attention between trying to stop the wave of enemies charging forward, some of them changing shape as they did, some of them blasting lasers, others of them glowing sickly… and the flying enemies.
"Clap your hands, Group D!" Charlotte ordered, as one of the groups of her volunteers surged forward with supernatural strength and toughness, and the two sides collided.
It really was something like a full-on battle here, considering that the number of fighters was now beyond easy tracking.
Aminos screamed, temporarily shutting down Parian's control over her dolls, as the monster surged forward.
I was trying to do what I could with bugs, but it was a chaos of bites and stings, and I tried to carefully ration out the flies and other creatures that had diseases to make sure I knew where they were as they flitted among the enemy, trying to get closer to the one in costume who was leading the charges, and who seemed to be lashing out with weapons made of blood.
It was a baffling fight, one far too little like the struggles I was used to, but Animos was so distracted in surging forward, that he basically missed Brutus roaring in and biting at him.
*******
And as Pelter fell back, skin singed from lasers that had hit, that's where, for a very brief moment, the fight seemed to stalemate. Rachel and her three dogs fought against Animos, and Parian tried to get her dolls up and running, even as Animos kept on screaming but found himself more and more hurt as he tried to fight.
Meanwhile, the flying capes had blown a few holes in the apartments, and the fight in the center of the camp was a bloody trade, the lasers, the sudden knockout-touches, the half-assembled pieces of tech that broke apart as quickly as they were used… all meeting Charlotte's forces, which poured in with each loss, replaced just as quickly, and met their match. My bugs were doing their work, and over the two-dozen seconds of chaotic fighting, it seemed as if perhaps Butcher wasn't going to show up at all. I couldn't see the Protectorate coming in, though for some reason Cassie was leashing almost a dozen dogs and hurrying down the street…
But of course, that was the point, wasn't it?
The Butcher wasn't stupid, she'd always had a plan and I almost missed it in the destructive fighting in which I could at most play a small part. Animos was a part of it, but the other part was that they seemed to be fighting smarter. They knew at least enough about their powers that I was glad I wasn't in the mix fighting, because some of them were even working together in a way that the Merchants never managed.
It was bad news, but even through all of that, we were winning in a way we might not have, before Amp joined.
Then the Butcher showed up.
Oh, not immediately, I wasn't that unaware, but she came from behind, from the 'safe' direction, teleporting with bug-killing explosions the whole way that ate up the distance in a matter of moments.
"Head's up!" I yelled into the walkie-talkie. "Butcher's coming!"
She just appeared, after her last jump, right in the middle of the assembled fighters, stabbing out with what looked like a katana. Three people went down in as many seconds, one of them bleeding so badly I wondered if she'd die.
My gut tensed as I realized it was Bonnie. Fuck. Rachel was still finishing off Animos, and the other cape was still alive despite all of the bug bites I was giving them. Pelter was in full retreat, but not fast enough for the Butcher not to pull out a pistol and shoot her repeatedly in the back before tossing it aside as soon as it was unloaded.
Without the toughness, Pelter would be dead. As it was, she shuddered and tumbled slightly, rolling around and throwing a rock at the Butcher from her pouch.
It sailed through the air right at her, and the Butcher exploded, teleporting over towards Animos as she slashed out at Rachel and her dogs.
Judas, though, bit at her, and she disappeared in another harmful explosion, this one actually sending Animos hurtling back.
I realized two things at the same time as I crouched behind that tent and tried to plan my next move.
First, Pelter was right: the Butcher was relying way too much on her teleporting. As if she was afraid of being hurt at all. It meant that she couldn't consistently stick around one place and hurt people.
Second, her power didn't really work that well with the rest of her team. Animos was on the ropes, and if he was taken out, I'd be more able to surround them on all sides with bugs and wipe them out.
Of course, the third point was that she had just teleported right in front of me with the rapier, and was slashing down.
"Taylor, duck!" Amp yelled.
I tried, but the rapier bit into my arm as I tumbled, and then--
I blinked in sheer shock. The Butcher seemed to be moving slightly slower. Not a lot, but whereas before she'd been a furious force of slashes, now she was doing it almost lazily.
I glanced left, confused, only to see that everyone was fighting with the same casual slowness, and that Amp, over the Walkie talkie, was talking so slow she might as well have been trying to do it…
Which meant that this was some sort of power. I dodged backwards, just barely, out of range of the swings, as my bugs buzzed… huh. My bugs were moving just as slowly as Butcher was, and everyone else was, roughly.
Which meant that what was actually happening was that I was moving faster than usual.
The Butcher grunted as my bugs tried and failed to sting her, and gave up mid-swing, teleporting away again as I backed up, taking a breath.
"Caaaan Yooouuu Heeearrr Meeeee…"
"Yes I can. Did you do that? Super speed?" I asked, confused. If she had done it, then that had been something she should have told me about before.
Then the world started moving back as fast as it ever had.
Parian was bringing her dolls around at the same time that Cassie jogged up with more dogs for Rachel to use, I supposed, a parade of dogs to help push the Butcher back.
The rest of Butcher's men except the two capes were fleeing, and I sent more and more bugs after the woman wielding that strange blade made of blood. It was grotesque, the way she moved and what she was doing, but the more bugs stung her, the less she could do.
The Butcher was popping here and there, shooting this, that, and the other person, but even Pelter wasn't down, just moving slower and more carefully as she peppered the one flying patch-user, and continued the push back.
Tons of tents were knocked over, there were fires all over the grass that were burning themselves out, but the Butcher hadn't yet killed any of us, and she didn't seem to have brought her crossbow with her. just a katana, a set of guns, and what looked like a fireaxe.
Though I didn't want her to turn her blade on us, I thought, as Rachel started pumping up more of the dogs.
Overhead, Charlotte ordered her people back, as part of their own retreat. They'd done all they could do, and considering how badly injured some of them were, I didn't blame their retreat.
But as long as we had Amp, it meant that we could just repair any damage short of death. At the same time, we hadn't done any harm to her, and now she was starting to use her secondary powers, warping into the line of wounded and slashing down or simply being there and causing screams of panic and pain. A single good slash could kill some of the people on the ground, which meant we needed to stop her. But she wasn't making it that easy.
In fact, she seemed to ignore the half-dozen colorful stuffed animals, ranging from gorillas to giraffes to penguins, in favor of causing pain, suffering, and destruction.
Cleo raced right at the Butcher, but instead of dodging, at least then, she waved a hand and Cleo turned on Judas, who was moving to support him and started lashing out at random, slobbering and biting with blind fury at anyone in range.
Fuck.
The moment I'd thought things were going well, she turned things against us, though I wasn't sure that we'd ever really been in control. I kept on backpedaling, my bugs going after her, and Pelter threw more and more rocks, this time the pointed ones, that she thought might serve as an even deadlier projectile, in order to drive the Butcher back. It worked for a matter of seconds, but each explosive transport meant that the downed fighters were suffering more.
Some of them were crawling away, and a lot of them were healing now, healing through the damage, but I didn't know if it would be fast enough, and I definitely didn't know if it would be able to stop her.
The only good sign of news was that I could feel Flechette, Kid Win, and Velocity hurrying along, though nobody other than that, each of them trying to race ahead to reach us in time. If their efforts would even help us.
Which is when I felt Greg start to race downstairs, guns in hand.
"Artificer, you…" Charlotte yelled, in a moment of high emotion as he went racing down the stairs.
My bugs tried to provide a cloud of cover as he burst out, firing lasers in the Butcher's general direction with one hand, while spraying a shower of energy with the other… and none of it with much accuracy. "Unhand them, villain!" Greg yelled, with far too much drama.
If Amp had somehow provided the power to see things in slow motion, it wouldn't have been any more obvious what was about to happen.
Butcher appeared right next to Greg, and shoved the rapier right through his chest. And then yanked it out. He collapsed in a shower of blood.
"Greg, roll over!" Charlotte demanded desperately, as I broke cover to try to distract her.
It was all falling apart as I raced forward, my bugs mobbing her just to try to force her to leave. But now, for once, she was ignoring everything, just grinning as my bugs tried and failed to bite through her skin.
She frowned, annoyed but not feeling any pain, when they tried to burrow in her nose and ears, or go through her eyes, which were tough enough that the bugs couldn't quite pierce, at least the flies I was trying to go for.
I stepped slightly too close as Greg rolled over, trying to crawl away as he healed, the blood still flowing so fast that I couldn't stand to watch it.
The Butcher, with a snort, waved an arm, and my world was reduced to pain.
I couldn't follow the rest of the fight, I just ordered my bugs to attack as I fell to my knees.
The pain had a character, it had contours. It was like the strongest pleasures, something that had a reality so pressing that there was no room for anything else. You were in the middle of it and all there was ahead of you and behind you was more of it. More moments of it, and you couldn't stand it, though at least with pleasure you loved that you couldn't stand it, you loved that there was nothing else.
Pain, though.
Pain lingered. Pain screamed and scratched and bit like a feral cat as I shuddered, my bugs doing their best, but their best wasn't enough.
I'd lost the plot entirely, and I didn't know or care what was going on anywhere else. The pain was too great, and I couldn't distract myself at all using the bugs. Every time I tried to focus on the movements and sensations of the bugs, the pain seemed to only grow stronger and stronger. Even my hearing seemed to be replaced by pain and the feeling of my heart. It felt as if it was beating fast, far too fast, straining to pump blood, straining to do anything as she approached.
I knew she couldn't kill me with pain. Not like the first Butcher, it wasn't that strong. But it felt as if she were about to kill me with pain, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, nothing I could do to push away the sensations that only seemed to grow stronger with time. I gasped, as she advanced on me.
Boots thudded on the ground. She was taking her time, confident and in control, which had to mean that Rachel and Parian were being held back.
She reached me and lifted me up.
I was floppy, broken, too in pain to do more than writhe a little as she pulled out a knife and began to slowly, almost methodically stab me. Once in the stomach, a slash across my chest, the cuts being resisted a little by the armor and a lot by the power that Amp had put into me, but it was still enough that I could feel the bleeding, though not the pain, because there was just too much of it.
Too much pain piled on top of itself, more and more until all there was was a scream that couldn't quite come out. She smirked, looking at me, clearly enjoying my pain. Where was everyone? What was…
She raised the knife. Up, up, up again some more. I'd been almost afraid she was going to lower it, to slash at my tendons, to tear at my body, to do… but the moment I saw the knife coming up--and it felt like it took forever but it was really a matter of moments--I knew.
She turned the wicked, disgusting looking knife over, flicking the blood out of it, as bugs bulged in and out of her nose without doing much. It was grotesque, but then everything about her was grotesque. Everything about her was monstrous and wrong, a being that hated and killed and didn't care about death, just kept on coming back endlessly, driving people mad if they didn't comply.
And I could do nothing as she pulled back.
She was going to take my eyes out. That's what this whole visit was about, or at least what this was about.
Vengeance.
I did something, she did it back.
It was so simple, so spiteful, a game that nobody won, in which everyone was blinded. But fuck it.
I screamed out, spitting in her face as she moved to stab me.
And then she stumbled. I dropped out of her hand, and I saw that a piece of diamond had torn into her arm. That's the strongest thing Pelter had, and from the way she stood as she threw more, she knew it.
I was hurtled back, the pain only starting to fade after I'd rolled, as the Butcher retreated back, but I wasn't done.
I was going to fucking kill her. My bugs swarmed the Butcher, the ones with diseases biting at the insides of her skin, where she'd been given a relatively minor wound. It was less deep and less serious than even a single stab wound, but it was the first time we'd hurt her, and I stood up slowly, regenerating already, gritting my teeth and baring them at the Butcher as I stepped forward. She had to dodge a half-dozen dogs running at her, and she couldn't do all of that and fight back, not when the rest of her team was running.
My bugs spread out, still trying to find purchase to hurt her further, now crawling in the wounds, and crawling out of them, or trying to push their way down her arms and down her veins.
I would kill her. Or at least fuck her up.
She teleported right next to Parian and backhanded her, the Butcher clearly in retreat mode as she dodged bugs, dogs, and dolls alike, firing off a perfect one-handed shot that caught Kid Win, who had just flown in, right in the elbow.
The boy fell, from twenty feet up, as Flechette yelled, "Parian!"
But the Butcher was exploding again, teleporting out of the way of the bolt that would have taken her right in the neck. Another bullet it Kid Win on the way down, and then the Butcher was retreating with her men, leaving dozens severely injured or possibly even dying.
No. Fuck that.
Rachel reached me, astride her dog, and I said, "Rachel! Let's go fucking end this!"
We'd almost lost, we'd almost died, but Rachel's vicious bared-teeth grin seemed to tell me she felt it too. We had to fuck her up. We had to not let her get the last word. She was running, and that meant we'd won.
I'd almost died, I was in no condition to fight, healing or no, but I'd do it. Because she was already diseased. We could finish off her men, and make her pay for what she'd done.
Maybe it'd be a risk, but I looked at Rachel and I believed we could do it. I believed we could stop her.
"Don't!" Amp said, through the walkie talkie. "It's a trap! She'll turn around and attack us. Don't do it, I don't want to almost lose someone else."
I frowned, pausing and looking up at Rachel. I shouldn't do it, I decided, because it probably was a trap. The fury was melting away already, replaced by the common sense that Amp was dealing out. "It is a trap, Rachel, maybe we shouldn't do it," I said.
Rachel looked at me, her eyes hard, unsure of what to say. She spluttered slightly and slid off of her dog, glaring at the walkie talkie and then stalking off towards some of her injured dogs, leaving me to watch her and wonder just what her problem was. I understood if she didn't like the choice, but it was my choice, and it was the right choice.
I tried to focus on pulling everything together. There were people to be healed, there were tents to put back up. There was a lot of work to do, and Greg almost died. I had people I needed to protect, now. I didn't want anyone else to suffer.
******
"Greg, don't ever do that again," I said.
"I'm… shoot. I think that maybe you're right," he admitted, quietly. "That didn't work like I thought it would."
"None of that did," I said. We'd managed to win, but at the same time, if she hadn't been trying to kill me, or at least blind me, in that dramatic way of hers we'd never have even touched her.
Nobody was dead… but plenty were hurt enough that without Amp, they would be dead. Civilians had fought capes, and it'd gone about as well as could be expected.
At the same time, I thought, heart racing: we'd won. If we'd done this once, we could do it again, especially if the Butcher started to get affected by the drugs I'd inflicted on her. She'd lost a few of her men, though they probably didn't know much, and she'd gained absolutely nothing.
Of course, I told myself with a sinking feeling as I looked at Greg, and then over at Stefanie who was trying to comfort some of the Butcher's victims, it wasn't as if she hadn't done damage. And she could repeat this as often as she needed until she got the right result.
Except… we were getting stronger too, weren't we? Whatever that weird time-slowing (or rather me-speeding-up) trick she'd used, I needed to figure that out. Because if I could, then Amp's power would be that much more impressive. It was annoying how she had to give an order before the power started working, but other than that, it was… it'd sorta saved all of our lives.
I'd need to thank her for that. I really do.
"But we… survived," I said, trying to keep positive.
Flechette was approaching. My mask was off, and I was trying to give a big grin, but honestly I was a little out of practice, there. It felt slightly odd to do. I'd been kinda avoiding smiling in general for a while: even when in other's company because of that 24/7 feeling to it, always around her, always with her.
Always trying to understand her. And whatever she was being bugged by.
Sometimes it was tiring. Sometimes I was exhausted. I knew what I'd do: I'd talk to her soon. We could have sex, that'd fix things. And then we could talk about whatever her problem was. It was probably not a big deal, just… jealousy or something. Things were going too well for it to be anything else, I tried to tell myself.
I tried to be optimistic, because I didn't want to feel trapped again. I wanted to kick my way out, but now I was in a place I wanted to be. I'd found my own locker and picked it. It had pictures of dogs on the inside, it had pictures of quite a few friends, it had bugs… it had all sorts of amenities, but I wondered if Rachel felt the same way.
Constricted, just a little bit, by the same things I wanted, by the same things that I was choosing to accept. The responsibilities and the burdens. It was more than just us, and I understood that. It had to be that way. No man was an island, and two men--or two teenage girls--couldn't be that way either.
"Hey," Flechette said. "I'm glad everyone was okay. Thank you for seeing to Kid Win…"
"That was Amp," I said, absently. He hadn't died either. He might have, actually, if Amp hadn't been there.
"Well, call us again if anything happens. Purity's gone, did you know that?"
"What? Where?"
"She fled town. The last of her followers got got. The E88's basically done," Flechette said. She sounded really happy about it, of course. "Just four or five members now."
Four of five, of a gang that had once been able to fight every other gang combined. That was really something… just another reason to be positive.
Just another reason to hope. Once the E88 were out of the way, of course the Teeth would be the next priority. Hopefully?
But then, how had the Butcher gotten around everyone like that? Without anyone noticing?
What about Accord, Coil, and the Undersiders?
"Ah, right. She's gone?"
"Yes. Couldn't take the heat," Flechette said quietly. "If only I'd hit the Butcher… wait, then if she died…"
"Yeah," I said. "Of course, we only barely managed to hurt her at all. But we'll do better next time."
It had to be.
******
It was a few hours before I could visit Rachel. She was checking up at the dogs at the shelter… including the puppies. I should go see them soon, I thought. As soon as I got less busy, I could spend an hour or two getting to know them.
...hopefully it'd be soon.
Rachel was crouched down, watching the dogs play.
Stiff, her back hunched. She was a lump, almost, but my heart still skipped to see her. My breath still hitched as I remembered and imagined--and the two were not all that different--the things we'd done and the things we could do.
I remembered that time, after a fight,when she'd asked me a question I wasn't expecting. I remembered it, and I wanted to take her in my arms and lose myself in pleasure the same way I'd almost lost myself in pain and rage.
She felt angry, or at least a little frustrated, but I walked up to her and crouched by her, breathing in. She smelled so strongly of dog it was almost distracting… though in an odd way the scent was comforting.
"Rachel," I said, quietly.
She turned to look at me, her face impassive, her eyes careful. She wasn't revealing anything, and I thought again about all of the things I had to talk to her about. The lawsuits, especially. Cassie hadn't yet gotten back with any more advice or information. We needed to lawyer up, we needed to ask her about the incidents.
I needed to say something. I needed to…
No, what I needed to do was relax. With Rachel. What I needed was to taste her, to touch her, to run my hands over her body, the sweat and the muscles, what I needed was for my lips to meet hers.
We'd talk about it after we'd… just. It'd work, I knew, it'd worked before: if I hadn't ever agreed to start having sex with her, we wouldn't have gotten closer emotionally.
"Hey, Rachel," I said.
"Yes?" she asked, turning to face me.
"Wanna fuck?"
She looked at me, and for a moment I was sure that she was going to say yes. Then her mouth turned down a bit, her eyes hard. She opened her mouth, briefly, then closed it again, and said, "No, not right now. I'm a little too busy, maybe later."
I recognized the words, just as she recognized the words I'd said.
I knelt there as she stood up and walked over to the dogs, who had started a fight over a toy, yelling out orders, leaving me to stand and watch her, and wonder what the hell her problem was.
*******
A/N: So, yay, they held off the Butcher! Everything is right in the world.
(Honestly though, the next update is on Friday, so you won't have long to wait and worry.) Thanks to @NemoMarx for beta-ing.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Fuckin' Amp. Like, among all the problems, this is just heartwrenching. A relationship shattering. A camp under siege. And Teacher's distaff counterpart.
Uresmania
Person
- Location
- Land of Always Winter
Man, this has been so heartbreaking to see over the last few chapters. Poor Rachel and Taylor.
I was initially skeptical about AMP mastering Taylor, but the turnaround from wanting to chase the Butcher to agreeing with AMp and immediately being concerned about the aftermath was too overt. It's definitely happening. We'll have to see how intentional it is on her part, and if she wants Taylor for herself and away from Rachel.
The way things are going Rachel is losing Taylor, her tie to being a legitimate hero. The threat of lawsuits may send her over the edge and back into running from the law.
I was initially skeptical about AMP mastering Taylor, but the turnaround from wanting to chase the Butcher to agreeing with AMp and immediately being concerned about the aftermath was too overt. It's definitely happening. We'll have to see how intentional it is on her part, and if she wants Taylor for herself and away from Rachel.
The way things are going Rachel is losing Taylor, her tie to being a legitimate hero. The threat of lawsuits may send her over the edge and back into running from the law.
- Location
- Chile
To be fair, Amp it's just a little part of the problem. As I see it, Rachel isn't really interested in being part of a hero group. She just wants to be with Taylor and Taylor has trapped herself into being the leader of the camp; her time becoming very limited.
It's sad but it's something they'll have to confront if they want to continue their relationship onwards.
Edit : i don't think Amp it's mastering Taylor. In the worst case, then the entire camp it's mastered.
It's sad but it's something they'll have to confront if they want to continue their relationship onwards.
Edit : i don't think Amp it's mastering Taylor. In the worst case, then the entire camp it's mastered.
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If a regular person killed the Butcher would that be the end of her?
Yeah regular people got trashed, no one had a gun that's the big difference.
Edit- Taylor has to decide if she wants to be with Rachel or on that crazy dream of her of being a hero.....like someone else said Rachel is being drug along.
Its really unfair they are only doing this because Taylor hasn't had a idea of what to do besides being a hero and couples make decisions together. As well as their impromptu team.
Yeah regular people got trashed, no one had a gun that's the big difference.
Edit- Taylor has to decide if she wants to be with Rachel or on that crazy dream of her of being a hero.....like someone else said Rachel is being drug along.
Its really unfair they are only doing this because Taylor hasn't had a idea of what to do besides being a hero and couples make decisions together. As well as their impromptu team.
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- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Pretty sure you'd just get a new Butcher with no new powers. At best, it would go to a random cape, like if an Endbringer kills one.
Darchias
Pokemon Professor
- Location
- Texas
Amp's power definitely is having an effect. It's so easy, really. You're used to listening to her for power, you know. Why not listen to her more? You're never really sure if the order will come with powers or not. Amp knows what she's doing, and her power is so useful. Really, the camp would have collapsed long ago without her. You wonder why Rachel doesn't like her. Yeah, yeah, "Talks too much." You love her, but honestly Rachel's just not a people person. Amp is. She just knows, you know? Always a voice of reason, that Amp.
Pleaaaase tell me at least Rachel heard that freaky moodswing that screeaaams Master, she has to at least be suspicious by now, seeing as she didn't want/get any boost in this chapter.
This is Taylor we're talking about, if she's going to switch from fury it will be into something more violent not "common sense".
This is Taylor we're talking about, if she's going to switch from fury it will be into something more violent not "common sense".
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Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, if Amp suddenly gets a pack of angry dogs lead by Rachel saying to leave, on pain of mauling....
- Location
- Australia
No.
WOG, if she died in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with a cape (Hard to do, I think she's got a trap tinker), she'd go to the nearest cape at random.
Endbringer kills also send her to the nearest cape at random, instead of to the Endbringer or to Eidolon.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-quotes-and-wog-repository.294448/page-11#post-19115968
Edit: WOG regarding Endbringer kills, ctrl-f 'Butcher' to get to it because it's badly sorted.
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But could a shard jump ship to a empty place? Cuz otherwise someone would have sniped the hell out of the Butcher by now. Unless its one of those really obvious things that the capes in charge missed for all of their thinkers.
- Location
- Australia
I posted just above you half an hour ago with what happens, please do keep up.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
But yeah, this updates tomorrow. We're going to be trying to really get the updates out all the time. Though I wonder if that might not cause some people to drop away. Eh.
Laurent, I know I haven't said much of anything on SV but I will state why I feel like this story went awry for most of the readers.
You sucker us in with SkitterXBitch. All of this is fine. Really good in fact. All the Bitch leaving Coil to be with Taylor. It's all cute and in character.
Then you get into the fight with
The camp leads to boring aspects that seems to be losing people. It is losing me. I know I have been excessively skimming the later chapters. Taylor starts to talk to everyone. Then the biggest issue is that Taylor starts to pointlessly (not in universe) fight the Merchants and the Teeth. I don't care about either of them. I understand the in narrative reason for the action, but I didn't read the story for another post
The shipping is down to a critically low level and then we get drama between the characters. While I would be interested in the drama alone, it's framed by a bunch of annoying gang war garbage. Even while writing this I feel bad however. I can feel your desperation to keep the readers interested because it's not like in a vacuum the story is boring. It's just outside of itself it's been done. Hell, even you have done similar with Split. We came for the relationship and then you gave us gang wars.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Posting wolf spider today for whoever cares. Just want to get this fucking story done with, so I can never ever do anything about it ever again.
Collar 6.5
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Collar 6.5
The weird thing about her disgruntled state was that it didn't, at first, seem to change anything. Or rather, it didn't change the fact that we slept in the same tent, even if we weren't… doing anything. I even asked her how she slept the next day and she answered, "Just fine. You?" It wasn't that sort of chill, it wasn't a fight, it was just something shaped a lot like a fight.
But while I did have to ask her about it, and while it was smart to do so, I shouldn't give in… or at least, it seemed as if maybe it'd get better on its own. There was a distance, still, but I went and helped out the dogs on Sunday, and she didn't seem to push me away, like I knew she could have.
But neither did she draw me close. She kept herself cold and closed up, and when I did see her open up, I don't… there was something hurt about it, something that made me feel guilty even though there wasn't any reason to. I hadn't done anything wrong, and yet she still seemed hurt.
It was a look on her face, it was a way she carried herself, and I hated to see that, and yet I didn't know what I was even supposed to do? Apologize for something I didn't know I'd done? And why apologize if I hadn't done anything wrong?
If anything, I was the one who was having to deal with…
No, I told myself, trying to get through another Sunday, terrified that the Butcher would be back, and that this time she'd not stop until we were all dead… I needed to just let it lie. She'd get over it, eventually, and then we'd go back to the way we were before. I knew it'd happen, I felt it.
So I tried to walk the camp, talking to the injured, relaxing and easing myself back into the temporary peace of a hard-won victory. I knew she'd attack again, but hopefully Butcher was also dealing with the ailments the bugs were going to give her: she couldn't feel pain, so how long would it take for her to realize that something was wrong?
I didn't know how it'd affect her, but we'd see there. So while we tried to prepare and I tried to deal with the withdrawal of not being close to Rachel, the world spun on.
The E88 was falling to pieces, and I wondered if the Teeth would try to go east and just try to push through the docks instead of going after us. Certainly, it was true that there wasn't any particularly great reason to go after us now that the entire E88 territory was opened up… or rather, potentially open, because I knew that Accord and Coil would both be making their own moves to take it over.
What would she do about that?
I spent time on Sunday staring at a map of Brockton Bay and starting to draw all over it. Trying to imagine just where one territory ended and another began. Coil, Accord, the remnants of the E88, the Undersiders, and the Teeth.
That's all that was left now, at least as far as I could tell. Nobody had any word of Skidmark… but they also didn't have word of the Merchants at all, which was probably a bad sign when it came down to it.
So, the Teeth had only a very few reasons to go after us. The first was revenge: obviously we'd hurt them, and obviously the Butcher wasn't someone who believed in the principle of charity. We shared that in common: we didn't turn the other cheek. We struck it. I'd proven that when I'd gotten suspended, and nothing about that had really convinced me that I was wrong to do so, even if Emma was setting herself up as my internet nemesis.
The second was, of course, slaves. If they were the assholes the Merchants were, this was still a huge collection of people to rob, imprison, and otherwise make miserable. But the third one I only ever thought of when it was pointed out to me.
By Lisa, through her little… parahuman friend.
'She might have. Trying to keep them from Coil's grasp. He wants them, but now that the Butcher has Dose, that means that she'll know about it. And want it too. Everyone wants it. You should talk to Accord.'
'No,' I wrote. 'First your cape.'
Then I'd waited and watched to see who came. When I was touched on my shoulder by a younger teenage girl just a half-dozen minutes after my hasty reply, I nearly leapt out of my skin.
There she was, in front of me. She wore a demon mask, a little like Oni Lee, actually, which set me on edge, and a black bodysuit with a black scarf. I couldn't tell much about her, but something about the way she bristled did make me think of it. "Heya, I'm Imp. I did kinda steal your vial, but don't worry. I mean, we'll pay you back. I'm sure TT will think of something."
"Imp?" I asked. "You're new."
"Not like you'd remember if I wasn't," Imp said teasingly. "So, uh, I have a… one sec." She pulled out a list of notes. "She did this cool, uh, detective thing where she wrote down a huge list of answers and words and stuff."
"Oh?" I asked.
"Predicting what you'd want to know," Imp said, with a shrug. She spoke in a slightly high-pitched voice, and the suit left relatively little to the imagination, at least when it came to revealing her curves, which made me revise her age up slightly, closer to mine.
"Alright, then, why are you taking the vials?"
"To use, duh. Eventually or something. Uh, cause we want to continue working with Coil or something without him, uh, abandoning us. Or something like that? There's some stuff I can't read, and you know what? They never tell me anything. It's lame."
"I can understand that," I said. I had a feeling that it was more as insurance once Coil was down, but maybe Imp wasn't allowed to know that. I didn't want to push too hard, not when I was getting answers. I wish I had paper and a pen to write it all down.
"So, yeah. We're getting vials, Coil wants some, maybe to replace us, maybe to add people to our team? And then Accord has all of them. Selling them from someone or something." Imp shrugged. "They're really expensive!"
"Powers in a bottle," I said, carefully. "Of course they'd be." I was frustrated at the fact that they'd stolen a vial, but at the same time I didn't know what I could do without giving them away. "I'm going to hold you to paying it back."
"Sure, I dunno how, but TT always knows something. She's sorta, like, taken over, almost." Imp shrugged, and I could almost imagine a pout beneath that mask. "Anyways, so like, she wants you to meet with Accord and give him a phone. And then… um." Imp bit her lip. "Uh, what if someone happened to steal one of your weird Tinker-phones? Ring ring ring," Imp said, talking faster now. "Would you hate them forever?"
"Are you asking permission to steal something from us again?" I asked.
"Uhhh… kinda."
Oh. Okay. So, I didn't know what to say to that. If she wanted to get in contact with Accord, that seemed like it'd be really important. But at the same time, I knew I was part of some sort of game, some sort of contest between two masterminds, evil or otherwise, and that was a shitty feeling.
It made me feel like I was the moron that was being talked over and around by people with clever tongues and nimble minds. As I were…
I grit my teeth and squared my shoulders, but I resisted any violent impulses. Hitting her wouldn't help, and yelling wouldn't help either. Besides, I wasn't strong enough to actually hurt her even if she couldn't just apparently make me forget she was even there.
I wasn't Rachel, with her big, strong, handsome muscles, I wasn't… I shook my head and pushed away those thoughts. That longing that couldn't be fulfilled. "Fine, whatever. One radio. And I'm going to write it down, so that if you steal more, then I'll know. And there will be a reckoning and a price for all of this."
"Sure, sure, I'll tell her that. Uh, what else. I had something else I needed to say." Imp shook her head, and she hunched slightly, as if she was retreating inside of herself to look for an answer. "Oh, TT says that she's monitoring the whole lawsuit situation. Oh, and that Butcher's likely gonna be busy for a while. Not, like, forever and stuff. But she's not going to attack just yet, unless something goes wrong."
Did that mean that she wanted me to attack Coil, if I had free time? I didn't know, and I knew that I could only wait so long. Dinah was there and I was fucking around, thinking of plots and schemes instead of taking the fight to the enemy. Any of the enemies, in fact. I was being held back, but if I'd followed Rachel we'd just have been hurt. If it was about that, then surely she got it?
If not, I didn't know how I was supposed to tell her without sounding like I was making fun of her or something.
Yet another reason to be careful around her. Just like I needed to be careful around Lisa, and around this Imp. All for different reasons. There was the Butcher, too. A lot of very, very dangerous people in my life: emotionally, intellectually, and then physically twice.
"Well, that's good. Do you use your power to go into Teeth territory?"
"Yeah, it really sucks there. Slavery and murder and all sorts of bad shit," Imp said. "Makes me wanna bring knives and stuff there, but Lisa says no, and Grue is all like, 'It's too dangerous, Ai… Imp.'"
She glanced away. Okay, so, her name was actually--
Wait, what was I doing?
*****
I eventually remembered and eventually figured out what had happened, which I assumed had something to do with her powers? But it was confusing and it definitely did the trick in getting me to stop pressing her.
Ai something. I'd keep that in mind, and go from there. From her hands, which had been dark, it wasn't something like Aiko.
Beyond that, who knew? I knew she was probably a natural trigger, because the vial had been stolen afterwards. That wasn't much to go on, really. Nothing of this was much to go on. I still knew nothing about how these vials had been created and where they were, except that if they were meant to be purchased before everything happened…
It meant that Dose definitely had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Which was interesting, and raised a lot of questions I couldn't answer.
But there was one thing I could answer.
I wrote a note and put it back into the apartment that we'd temporarily abandoned fixing up.
'Hey, Imp, can you tell Accord that I'll meet him Monday afternoon?'
********
Time passed, as time usually does. Greg was spending all of his time playing video games or working in his 'lab' and not always in that order. Stefanie and Charlotte still had to deal with keeping the camp running, Parian had to pretend not to be pining after Flechette, and Rachel had her shelter work to do, work that kept Cassie busy and kept me away, for the most part, except when I came to call her in for dinner. We ate together, but the warmth of the stew we were eating this time didn't really lead to any warmth in other ways.
We remained cool, but not frozen.
Monday came, another day in a routine that felt like it had been going on for far longer than it really had.
*******
When Accord came, it was not a surprise. He had no real way to fool my bugs, and so I knew his approach when I saw it, and I wondered at his timing. The Protectorate patrol team, Flechette in tow, had just left when he started in towards our camp, or at least when he reached within ten blocks of it, or maybe a little more: my range was only getting better with time, and the cold, strange mood only helped that, if nothing else.
Accord walked with half his team. Codex, Citrine, and Arthuras, each of them moving carefully and watching the area. I wondered whether he suspected a trap. If he did, he moved heedlessly into it, one of his men holding a white handkerchief. Arthuras fluttered it in the direction of clumps of my bugs, and I could guess that he had more backup, if all else failed. But instead of going on into camp, he stopped about three or four blocks from it, and then turned up towards my bugs and said, "Arachne, I am ready to meet. You may take as many as three or four of your associates with you for this meeting. This is a safe area. I know you have it monitored. Thus, I know that you know that this place is safe." He said it with disgust in his voice, looking around at the shabby setting.
It was one of the apartment complexes that had not been stable enough. The top floors had collapsed, and the only part of it I'd feel safe being in was the lobby, which was where he was staying. But indeed, I moved my bugs around and didn't see anything odd, though who knew with Imp. Then I let out a sigh and went to go get Stefanie… and then after a moment's thought about the stolen walkie-talkie, Greg and some of his tools.
Greg was babbling the whole way. "They said that Kid Win's going to show up tomorrow, is that right?"
"Well, that is what they said," I told him, distracted as I watched the team. We had just three people, but we had Amp on call too, and that meant that if it came down to a fight, we'd probably win. But because it was in range of the camp, if this was part of an excuse to attack us, we'd get back in no time at all.
So when I stepped up to the door inside with two capes at my back, I felt surprisingly safe, for all that most accounted Accord a madman, someone who wasn't very stable and wasn't very trustworthy.
I opened the door and stepped in, trying to ignore the detritus and debris that hadn't been cleaned up at all.
Citrine was sitting on a table in the lobby, while Codex was leaning against a far wall, and Arturas was posing right next to Accord, looking as if he were ready for a fight.
"Arachne, greetings. I hope we may negotiate. You brought two others. Good."
"Huh," Greg said, looking at them, and then opening his mouth.
"Artificer, please don't say anything." I could imagine him commenting on some fact he'd seen on PHO, and I didn't have time for this.
"And this is Pelter as well, hmm?" Accord asked, looking her over. "Her costume is rumpled."
He said it the way another person might accuse someone of being a thief, or a nazi.
"I apologize," Stefanie said, bowing her head. "I was in a hurry. I wasn't told to expect the meeting today."
"Lax," Accord said, and I could see the frown behind the mask, almost.
"Some things need to be carefully hidden," I said, with a shrug, stepping forward. Hoping that he didn't try anything dangerous. "Such as the vials themselves, beyond what I had to say. You want them back?"
"This would be preferable."
"What would you trade for that?" I asked. "Because I'm not sure I'd be willing to part with the vials unless there was something rather impressive offered."
"There are many things you want," Accord said, just as carefully. "I could give you a plan to take out the Butcher, to eliminate her without allowing any of your people to become the new Butcher, and which would lead to minimal losses. I could also give a similar plan to deal with the lawsuit problems that I have been informed you had. As well, if you had one vial, I could counsel you on who best to choose for the other one." He spread his arms. "And of course, if you needed help running the camp."
I held out one of the radios. "Besides the vials, there's something else I could trade. This. I don't know why you want it, but I assume there might be reasons."
I knew there were: if Imp had passed the message to him successfully, then it'd be bizarre if he didn't know about who else held a radio. About who else he could be working with. There was a lot going on here.
"Ah, yes. Though I would not be willing to trade a plan to eliminate the Butcher for it. Perhaps ways to deal with the lawsuit with the minimum possible harm?"
I wondered if it meant something: at the least, apparently the Butcher was a bigger obstacle than the lawsuit. Which wasn't that surprising, really. I bit my lip, glad that my mask hid more than that, as he watched me.
Dealing with the lawsuits would be a burden off me. Maybe it'd help with talking to Rachel if I had a way to sweep all of that aside. But… I shouldn't have to have this sort of problem.
"I have an alternate idea. I shall give you this walkie-talkie. And I will promise not to use either of the vials for the next while. We can see about future deals, but in exchange for holding off for now, and the possibility of a deal later, you need to tell me more about the situation on the other side. What New Wave is doing, what's happening to the rest of E88 territory, and I've been hearing things about this Coil and the Undersiders expanding. If need be, once the Butcher is dealt with, I'll have to deal with them too, won't I?"
"Deal with them?" Accord asked, glancing over at Arturas, as if indicating that he should be careful if this was the first step to an attack. It might be, and I could see the benefit of betraying and capturing him. I think I could do it, or at least it was possible, but I didn't know whether it'd benefit me any. The Protectorate, yes, but I wanted more than that.
"Yes, probably. I want a favor. I want to know what there is to know about conditions around your area in general… and I want your assurance that if the time comes when I decide to get rid of the Butcher for good, you might be able to provide aid. Such as updating whatever plan you have for taking out the Butcher as more information comes in. If you've made it, then updating a plan so that it survives contact with escalating events would be important, wouldn't it?"
"My plans are far more careful than that," Accord said, snippily. But he said, after another tense moment. "The price would still be one vial."
"I can pay it then, especially if you factor in this: would you be willing to use some of your assets for such a thing? Loan them to me? In exchange, you could get a vial, potentially two depending."
"I could consider this, as long as you made sure not to get rid of the vials," Accord said, carefully.
When I pictured taking the Butcher out, I pictured a huge network of people, I pictured the Undersiders and Accord and my own group all working together. Everyone finally pulling together, including Rachel getting herself together.
"Very well then," I said. "You can have the walkie-talkie, then. And then tell me more about what New Wave is up to."
"They have split, divided themselves. Panacea is a vigilante in her own right, and those that support her work with her, while those who don't try to encourage her to be safe. However," Accord said. "She does not want to be safe. She has changed her costume, to one more gaudy and less… pacific." Accord sniffed and added. "She has already been seen pushing several limits, and there are worries about her actions. Specifically about whether she was doing something to the criminals she captured."
Accord shook his head. "Either way, New Wave is not nearly as effective as they once were, and I am not worried about them. It is you and your group, your… organization that is a worry."
Neither Greg nor Stefanie were talking. They were deferring to me, I was in charge, I thought, trying to psych myself up and get out of there. I'd learned what I needed to, almost. "What business do you do in your territories?"
"Business, mostly. Protection, the selling of illicit substances, a number of other sources of income which should be of little concern to you," Accord said. "Are you done with your questions?"
"For now. Thank you for all of the help." I felt as if his own nerves were starting to fray, from the way he was looking at me. Was I doing something wrong? Saying something slightly off. I stepped towards him with the device, and then handed it to Arturas, when he flinched slightly away from me.
Had I not washed recently enough? I didn't know, but then I stepped back and Accord said, "You should leave now."
Almost a warning, but not quite. I was confused, but I backed off a little more and said. "Thank you for the meeting. I hope we shall meet again."
Accord said nothing as I hurried out, making sure to keep my bugs in the area in case anything happened.
The only hint I ever got as to what was wrong was when I was almost back at camp, and Accord muttered: "Something is incomplete about her wardrobe. And herself." Then he shook his head. That was it: my clothes didn't quite fit his stupid standards and so he wanted me to leave immediately.
Well, I thought to myself, that was Accord.
*******
Kid Win came in flying low, as if he hadn't fallen not that long ago, his facial expression hidden as he buzzed right over the camp, so low that people looked up in alarm, only relaxing once they'd figured out he wasn't one of Butcher's capes. I'd been temporarily a little agitated myself, staring up as my bugs had almost swarmed him before they saw who it was.
Then he'd landed down in front of Greg's pavilion, and opened the flap. He was sweating heavily, and smelled a little odd to my bugs' noses. "Hello, anyone in there? Oh, hey, Artificer…"
He stepped in, and I decided to at least get closer in case I needed to help anything.
Greg had been working on the suit and the lasers pretty much the whole time. "Oh, hey Kid Win! Uh, sorry about the mess but I swear there's some room, and I've been looking at something, maybe." He gestured vaguely towards the backpack with the power pack, the one that he had been working on. It looked slightly bigger, and when I saw the nozzles, I understood why.
I thought he'd been making rocket boots? Or did those not work out?
"Oh, is that a jet pack?"
"Energy rocket-pack, but there's two problems I'm dealing with. First, the conversion flow of the thing is faulty." Greg frowned, pouting. "So that it sometimes shoots out laser energy instead, which could hurt someone. And the second thing is that the balance is impossible! I just can't stay up for long enough…"
"How much have you practiced with it?" Kid Win asked, stepping forward, board under his arm.
"Just… thirty minutes? Last night, once T… Arachne had gone to sleep, because if I messed up… though now she knows," Greg said, realizing that of course I was watching him.
"Oh, right. I wonder, is it a little odd that she's listening in on everything? I mean." Kid Win shrugged, and I knew what he meant. The tone in his voice wasn't condemning me, but it was aware that I was always there.
"You sorta get used to it! I mean, I do. I do need more time to practice, but I don't want to be seen messing up, you know? If I'm going for some sort of super-duper honest thing like Law, then that's what it is," Greg said. "Arachne and Bitch and the others too, they're all so awesome, and I'm… uh."
I frowned, wishing I could go in and tell him it was alright, though I didn't know how I was going to do that. He had messed up, but he'd also done his job at least well enough that we hadn't all died. Yet if he'd died… what were we supposed to say? His mother dead, nothing else in his life, and he ran out into a stupidly obvious death.
Should I forbid him from fighting again? Should I tell him off? But for that matter, should I tell Rachel off? And if not one, then why the other?
"Oh," Kid Win said, frowning as he looked closer at it. "I think the nozzle is kinda tilted." He pointed at it, frowning. "Maybe we could just…"
I listened for a little longer as they danced around topics. Neither of them talked about how they'd both almost died. It wasn't important, or at least it wasn't what they focused on. Instead, they were getting their hands dirty showing off their technology and talking about it. They switched the topic constantly, and it seemed like Kid Win knew a little of everything.
They'd almost died, and yet instead they seemed to just be bouncing off of each other and exchanging ideas rapid-fire. They seemed to be building up to something, but every time I thought I was about to hear something entirely new, they veered in the other direction. For instance, Kid Win was very knowledgeable about the laser technology in general, and he had a few pieces of advice on how to work with limited resources, and how to better get through Brutes. Because a laser gun that did nothing more than hurt a few gang-bangers wasn't good.
Which got into talk of this gun.
"I need to find a better medication, because it's not working, or it wasn't. But I made an Alternator Cannon, and it was amazing. Just plain sweet," Kid Win said, clearly bragging. "But… it wasn't working out. In other ways. I almost wish I could have kept on taking it, but…" Kid Win bit his lip. "So I'm forced to struggle ahead with the stuff I have. I could come and show you the cannon soon… if I could just get permission to use it. It'd be pretty cool, right?" Kid Win smiled, and Greg seemed to fall further into his power.
"Yeah, I… I'm sorry that things suck," Greg said, biting his lip, looking as if he had a lot more words to say. But he was sometimes learning that it was best not to say things, that it was best not to do things. "I'm struggling too. There's not a lot of equipment around." Greg paused and then added, "I wish that I had a few spare weeks without having to panic and stuff, but I wonder if I'd just--"
Greg shook his head. "Anyways! Wanna see the Jetpack?"
"I'm not sure if I have time right now," Kid Win said, sounding a little nervous. His heart was racing slightly faster, in a way that surprised me. He seemed suddenly a little bit taken aback, a little bit uncertain.
"It'll just take a minute or two," Greg insisted.
I knocked on the flap of the tent.
"Oh, hey, it's Arachne!" Greg said, as Kid Win tried not to let out a sigh.
I stepped in and said, "I hope things are going well. I know you have to go soon, but Greg, if you want I could watch? Or we could take a video?" I frowned a little. "I'm sure we have a camera-phone around here somewhere, though the reception's pretty bad. But we can find a way to show Kid Win later."
"But why? We could just do it now and it'd be amazing and cool and!"
I held up a hand, as he was almost bouncing around. In fact, his windmilling arms had almost clobbered Kid Win, and he looked as if he was only going to get more and more hyped up on the idea of being able to finally show off to someone who could appreciate all of the nuances of what he was studying.
And there were a lot of them, truly. I hadn't understood half of what he said, but I'd understood what he'd meant. I'd understood where this was going. "Artificer," I told Greg, "Let him leave. It's good that you're enthusiastic."
Kid Win smiled at me. "Thanks for… the other day."
The other day, when we'd saved his life, when he'd fallen off his hoverboard, shot and then hurt worse than that.
That's what it was about: and it made sense. When someone was hurt, of course they didn't want to watch something like that too close. He'd been sweating, and that meant something, I thought. It meant that the stress had been gnawing at him, had been getting to him.
And Greg hadn't seen. People missed so many things, so many… I tried not to make it more than it was, but I wondered. "I hope you're recovering well," I said.
He smiled. Not bared his teeth. Smiled. I needed to think of it that way, I thought. To do otherwise… I don't know. "I am, I think. I shouldn't be here, but… wanted to see the new Tinker. I look forward to coming back here, and seeing what else Artificer has to show off! Next time."
Next time. Not now.
Greg nodded, and waved Kid Win goodbye, leaving the two of us. I turned to him. "Greg, can we trust you in another fight?"
"Why are you asking me this now?" Greg asked, sounding a little confused.
"Because I was reminded of it." Because talking to him and figuring out what was wrong with him was easier than talking about everything that… Rachel could improve on. "And because it matters. The Butcher will show up again. This isn't it, they aren't done."
"We won."
"We survived, and now we're locked up here, protecting these people," I said. "Trapped and pacing around waiting for the shoe to drop."
"Trapped? But we're the good guys," Greg said, in a voice that was pure whine.
"Yeah, yeah we are," I said.
"Is something up with you and Rachel? She doesn't mention you when we're gaming… or she didn't…" Greg said, frowning.
Wait. Really? I was pretty sure that everyone had noticed the chilling a long time ago, but apparently it had only just been evident. "Why would you say that?"
"...yeah, it is kinda silly. You help her out all the time, and…" Greg flushed.
"What?"
"The way you look at her. Uh. Yeah."
I hadn't noticed that, and it didn't matter: I felt the chill, I felt the uncertainty. I felt the way that I had so many things I wanted to confront her with, but then what would happen if it all failed? I shouldn't be afraid of a fight. I knew that if she were in my shoes she wouldn't hesitate for a moment to say what was on her mind. Right?
She was bold, nearly fearless, blunt and handsome and gruff, and yet… also violent. Also not very verbose. But… she'd asked me. She'd been the one to push it. She'd been the one that made it something more, and I loved her for it.
So what was… I don't know.
This was just so frustrating.
But I knew that if I found out a little more, it'd work. I just needed to find out how to solve this problem without involving her, and then it could go back to normal. To the way it was supposed to be, to the average.
We're O.K.
******
Flechette came by on Wednesday, and didn't even talk to someone. She just paced, nervous and sweating, and then walked away. She didn't even eat anything while she was there. There was just that feeling then of waiting.
That feeling of waiting for the locker to open up and the world beyond to be seen. I'd gone… not mad, no. But I'd gone frantic, I'd stopped thinking, I'd seen too much and knew too much at the same time and I'd had to be taken to the hospital for monitoring.
At the time, I hadn't known when it would stop, or whether it would get worse. It had dragged itself onward, those shambling, dark, grimy moments when I'd first felt what bugs felt, and known what bugs known.
And now I watched a camp in the same place.
Cassie helped out Rachel. Neither of them mentioned me as she shoveled shit and robbed the dog's noses and looked over the puppies, who were still so young and adorable, full of hope and dependent. In their first home. What did Cassie do, besides this? What was her life like other than this? She wasn't old enough that there shouldn't be parents asking where she was. But then, was it any different for Rachel and I? I wondered: what wasn't being said. Would Cassie know how to make this better?
Stefanie ran the camp, mostly just checking in with me on the rare occasion where she needed help. I was 'in charge' but she was the one who made the decisions. Who reported to her parents and handled the money. I wasn't really any more responsible: and for all this, she asked no salary, and asked for no explanations on which I wasn't around Rachel.
Charlotte had her groups, and she was still researching and studying her powers, and trying to think of better ways to use them. Better ways to save everyone. She'd almost lost people, and she was driven, charming… if she had any desire to lead, I had a feeling she'd wind up in charge, somehow or another.
Sierra, who came by once, just to check with Charlotte, talk to her about what had happened, try to find some peace. She had her own life, and this life was now centered on trying to fix her brother, who had done bad things. Though whether any of them still were numb in their legs after years…
Greg, studying and working and obsessing, alone and brooding. Greg who clearly hadn't learned anything, was clearly plotting to have his super-suit ready for when the next fight came. So that he'd be able to go toe to toe with the like of the Butcher. He never learned. Ever, it seemed.
Parian, who frowned and worked and sewed and didn't take even a few steps outside her door, even when there Flechette was, hurt and hopeful, wanting at least… I don't know, did she deserve anything? Wasn't that not how it was supposed to work. But I wanted it to work: but I could hardly blame her for not wanting to push the issue, to want it to go away on its own so that she didn't have to say no again, in a different way. Perhaps in even trying a second time, in even not just accepting it, Flechette was making it less likely that she'd actually get the girl. And maybe better for her. Nobody deserved… the thought trailed off, it ended like I was at the end of a long chain, and beyond which I could only bark at the world past such a thought.
Rachel. Rachel Rachel. On Wednesday night I went to sleep and I dreamed of her, of her mouth and the smile of her eyes, of her breasts and her arms, wrapped tight around me; it wasn't a dream of her mind, but maybe it should have been, firm and confident, but instead, no, instead it was her body I longed for, her touch that I needed, and so that is what I dreamed of: I dreamed for the purpose of having what I wasn't having, and woke up sweaty and embarrassed, to look at Rachel's face--I'd woken her up, in my sleep. My face red as I stumbled out into the morning. Thursday.
And then me. Myself. I.
******
"Hey, Taylor," Charlotte said, dressed up as Amp, talking to me from across the camp, her words thrown to a set of bugs. "I need to talk to you. I wanted to test a few things. With the new powers."
I didn't have anything else to do. I'd taken the shower, I'd refused to talk about it--not that anyone asked--and so now all that was left was to just pace around. Perhaps Flechette would come too, and I could pace next to her.
I didn't have any plans, that is to say. So I walked through the camp, glancing at the jars of bugs I had here and there and everywhere. There were a lot of them as I passed, signs that this place had become where I was. The bugs were all under my control, and ready to be unleashed if there was another attack. I didn't expect one today, but then wasn't that just the time to be afraid?
I suspected that the Butcher would have her hands full with her continued expansion, and I also had to wonder just what her plan was. She didn't have a home, she didn't have somewhere like this that she was chained down to.
What kept her from just packing up all of her men and riding out of here? Or driving or walking? Was she really going to stick around here for months at a time? She'd already been here for too long, by the standards of her previous actions. It was out of character for her, something that didn't fit.
That meant that something had to be keeping her here. And of course I knew what it was. But what happened when what was in this camp wasn't enough to actually keep her around, when the risks outweighed the rewards?
She was stubborn, I'd admit to that, very, very stubborn, and very vicious, willing to hurt other people all the time.
I felt like she wasn't ever going to stop until I stopped her, one way or another.
"Hey," I said, when I jogged up to Amp.
"So, I was trying to think of ideas, and I thought you'd be able to help," Amp said, her voice calm and thoughtful. She was sitting down at the corner of the camp, under the shadows of a building, and she looked tired. "Being able to go fast, and also strong, means that if I got the right combination, someone could go right up to Butcher faster than she could teleport…"
"Could they?" I asked. Then I realized I'd raised my voice and said, softer, "I'm not sure. The Butcher teleports out of the way pretty fast. It was just luck that we were able to do anything at all to her. So the answer is maybe. I wonder, could Flechette do anything against her? I don't actually know what her power involves, precisely…"
Which was embarrassing to admit, but while I'd heard a little about what she could do, the specifics were the kind of thing that a lack of internet access made it hard to deal with.
"Yeah, true. I also don't know how fast it can make you. Can I test it out on you for just a moment?"
"Sure, of course," I said.
"Taylor, clap your hands."
I did so, and the moment I'd finished clapping, the world seemed to freeze. She wasn't moving. I stepped backwards, and then began to walk away from her, looking at the world. In movies the world lost color when it was frozen, but instead everything was as it should be. And, when I looked closer, it was moving. Just so slowly it seemed almost not to matter. I tried to figure out how long was passing as I walked right back towards our tent and then turned around to walk back.
I glanced at a person who had slowly been raising the soup ladle to his lips. He'd only moved less than an inch closer to actually sipping it. I didn't even know how to define how fast that was, except that of course this was the maximum.
This was putting all of her power into making a single person really fast. If she divided it into four or five… and of course, I couldn't really control my bugs like this. They were there, and I could order them to move, but they could react only so fast.
So they just slowly crawled along.
This, surely this was fast enough to catch the Butcher? But then again, I'd need to cut it with strength just to do anything other than touch her.
So I wasn't sure. Still, it was incredibly fast. Probably faster than the speed of sound, easily. In fact, I wondered if my movement was going to leave--
The world sped up again, and Amp looked at me, blinking owlishly. "So, what happened?"
"I wonder, what would happen if I caused a sonic boom? Or would I? What did you see?"
"I saw you disappear into a blur that… moved places? Even then, it kinda feels like I was just looking for you. I could give you some healing and strength to go with it. You could test out how that feels."
"I could," I admitted. "But I'm not sure what I'd use as a target. I'd need to hit something to see what happens." I frowned and said. "What about your team?"
"I don't know if I want to risk them."
"You have to risk someone," I said. "So why not me? That's the logic?" I tried to smile, before realizing I was in my mask, and didn't have to bother.
"Uh… a little, I suppose, Taylor," Charlotte admitted quietly. "But how likely is it that she'll come back? Certain. And we need to know what to do when it gets there. I don't have any ideas for finding different chords right now, or vibrations. Speed, strength, healing, toughness… that's about all I could think of."
"Well," I said. "I suppose you could look for flying? Flying's usually pretty cool."
Charlotte frowned and then asked, "Are you taking this seriously?"
"Yes, I am. If we were able to fly, that'd certainly help with hitting the Teeth again. I wonder if we shouldn't go all-in on them. A series of raids, maybe ask for Protectorate backup."
"Don't do that, please," Charlotte said. "It sounds like it'd end in disaster."
I frowned, considering her words. She was probably right. But how would I know? "Maybe I won't," I said, deciding to drop the idea for now. "But she has to be dealt with, you agree with that, right?"
"Yes, it's just… everything has a risk."
"I know," I said, crossing my arms and stepping forward to stand by her, looking her over and trying to figure out what she was going to say next.
"And that includes you not making up with Rachel."
"Can we talk about anything else? We're not even fighting."
"Maybe you aren't, but…" Amp sighed, a soft sound, and she said, "Well, how about we walk a little way away and start wrecking a building that nobody's using?"
"Actually… maybe that's a great idea."
*******
It should be a lot more fun, tearing down a building with my bare hands. Catharsis and all of that. But instead I just got more and more frustrated, left alone with the work and my thoughts, even with Charlotte to talk at me.
I was just punching up against a wrecked apartment building, doing real damage that I… was it any different? Would someone sue me for the damages? At the least, the building wasn't in any decent condition already.
"Taylor, I think you should talk to her. Just present your position, state it clearly and honestly, and figure out what's wrong. What is wrong, anyways?"
I sighed, staring at a wall I'd been about to hit, and then turned. "There's her attitude, there's what she's done in the past, the lawsuits that we're facing, there's… so much to say." I shrugged my shoulders. "But I'm not going to ruin a good thing."
"You wouldn't be ruining it if you just got down to it, talked to her, and worked through it."
"Nah," I grunted, baring my teeth. "Not going to do it."
Charlotte took a breath and then walked over as I slammed my fist into a wall, punching a hole straight through it. "C'mon, Taylor, just do it! It'll be over quickly, and then you can make up. I believe in your relationship."
"Okay," I said. "I'll do it."
Charlotte looked baffled, "You… will?"
"Yes, of course," I said. It just made sense to go and talk to Rachel, and I didn't get why she had a deepening frown on her face. "I could go over there right now and sort it out. You're right that it shouldn't take long, just telling her what I think and that's that."
"I… you should at least get changed first, and not rush into things."
"Alright, I can do that," I said. She made a good point, I shouldn't be too hasty in rushing into this.
"Well… good," Charlotte said, then coughed. "Uh, are you sure you're feeling okay?"
"Yes," I said. "Why?"
"Just curious," Charlotte admitted, though my bugs could notice that for some reason she was sweating a bit. I didn't know why, but combined with the tone of her voice, it was a little odd. Not something worth worrying about when I had things I must do.
******
I was still changing when I felt Amp's powers expire. Not that it mattered, I wouldn't need strength to talk to her. Or at least, not that sort of strength. My costume was dusty and ruined from the random destruction I'd let out, the testing of just what her powers could do, and how little it took to break through a wall.
Of course, we didn't know what it was that'd help us beat the Butcher, and it probably wasn't just super-strength.
But I tried to ignore that and focus on changing for talking to Rachel. Jeans and a shirt, of course, and a shower first, but not more than that. I was trying to talk to her, not negotiate a surrender. Though I did hope she'd show sense when I talked to her and figure out a way to help me with this, instead of just… just getting in the way.
But that wasn't the same as asking her to surrender. We'd all be better off if she learned and we grew together, after all.
But I was also prepared for an argument. If we were going to have one, then I needed to win it. I needed to make things work the way they needed to work if us, if this camp, were going to keep working.
It was that simple.
Rachel was taking care of the dogs, and I could just see her. Literally. It really was odd, or at least hard to imagine, how being monitored at all times might feel. Well, pretty much all times. I tried not to allow my bugs to show any of my agitation, but it did feel as if they were buzzing and moving a little faster as I positioned them to watch Rachel
Then I jogged to meet her. I was well within the range of the camp, I could see so far in every direction it wasn't funny. I wanted to turn back. But I'd said I'd do it, and I supposed I had to follow through. She was right, after all. You couldn't just let something fester like I had, you couldn't just assume it'd get better.
Hadn't that been what Dad had done? If he'd confronted me, or at least talked to me about it, weeks before…
Maybe it would have gone better. Maybe things would be more okay. We got along alright, but not in the same way that I needed to get on with Rachel.
I jogged into the shelter, and then slowed down, taking a deep breath and talking my way through the people who worked at the shelter.
She interacted with them. She talked to them, and managed not to alienate them. Surely we could work through it.
She was kneeling and petting one of the dogs when I stepped up. They'd gotten too used to me to bark when I was around, too used to people, and the dog she was petting was one I'd seen here and there. Natasha, I think she was? She was a big husky, and slightly greying, and as far as I knew, she'd never been used in a fight. She was just a good girl that liked napping rather more than she'd ever like fighting, and when you had an embarrassment of riches like Rachel had with dogs, you could afford to bend in very specific circumstances to their instincts and age.
No doubt when Brutus, Judas, and Angelica got older, if they needed to they'd be retired, in favor of other dogs.
I liked that she cared for her dogs, but there were people here too.
I'd tried and tried… and I hadn't always failed, had I?
"Rachel," I said.
"Yeah?" Rachel asked.
"You've been avoiding me, and I wanted to talk."
Rachel frowned, and I could feel Natasha get the vibes from Rachel, understand that there was something to be worried about. But the dog was confused about what it could be. I knew her, I'd fed her treats and considering her personality, that made it doubly confusing as Rachel rose up to her full height. "What about?"
"I've been avoiding talking with you," I admitted. "But Charlotte's right, I need to just confront this now."
"Charlotte," Rachel growled, baring her teeth at me. "She talked to you?"
"Yes? That's what people do to communicate with each other. She's an important member of our team," I said, my voice raising slightly as I tensed, feeling as if I were about to attack… or perhaps be attacked.
"She's… doing something! With her words!" Rachel blurted it out. "She just talks and you do what she says."
"That's called convincing people," I said. "Just because you don't like talking to me about anything!"
"Then talk," Rachel said. "It's just words. What matters is…" Rachel trailed off, angry and inarticulate, and then I saw something I didn't expect. She backed down slightly, untensing just enough to tersely ask "What's wrong?"
"...there are lawsuits being directed at us. For what you did before, the people you maimed. I don't even know what we're going to do because they're going to be demanding everything. We'll go broke trying to pay it all out. This camp will go under, and I don't even know what I can do. I need to talk to you on which ones are true and which are lies, but I don't even want to know because I know you've done bad things before. I know you don't even regret some of them, do you?"
"I do," Rachel said, with a shrug, and I knew what she meant, and it only made me angrier. She regretted it the way I regretted not reading a book, or being a little too angry, or… I knew she didn't regret it the way of...
The way… and I'd been there, defending her, and it was true that she got a worse rap than she deserved. A worse rap then she could have been given. But that didn't mean she'd been innocent, and had she really changed? If this camp didn't matter to her, did I matter? Because this was what we were doing together, as heroes. The two were the same, weren't they? Everything I did for and with the camp was for her as well.
To protect her from consequences, to redeem her in the eyes of the world that, even if she didn't care about it, could hurt her. And yet, had I been the only one changing?
She wasn't any less violent: people had fought the 'bad guys' while… but then, wasn't she different? She wasn't Sophia, she wasn't any of the people my mind slipped to. "A little bit, that's all? It could ruin all of this for us. It's bad for the team, it's bad for the camp."
Rachel crossed her arms. "I didn't ask for the team. I didn't ask for the camp."
"I've already done so much," I said firmly. "I've changed, I ran away from my Dad, I've stuck around you, I've done plenty, and what have you…" I bit my lip, seeing the switch flip in Rachel's eyes, as she struggled to hold back the rage.
"You think I don't do enough?" Rachel asked, looking confused as I stalked forward, a little closer. "I've done plenty."
"What?"
"Read books with you. Be a hero. Talk to people."
"Were those all just things you did to win me over? Things that you didn't even like doing?" I raised my voice just a little as I said it, but then stopped, feeling a cold sort of chill stealing over me as I thought about it. What if she didn't even really like me? If she didn't like doing things with me, if the reading, if the heroism, if everyone else were all things she tolerated, then what about me did she actually love?
As opposed to lust for. We'd started with sex, and gone from there, so what if it was all just shallow desire?
I felt like I'd bridged the gap with her, but apparently not enough that she couldn't see what she was doing as doing things. As if she were paying her goddamn taxes, just doing things to earn me without really meaning them.
I knew I wasn't being fair, but I didn't think I was being wrong.
"I love you," Rachel said, firmly.
I was almost slapped by the words, almost stumbled back, but did it matter? "What about me? My taste in music, in movies? In books? I love you too, but I don't know if what you…"
Rachel frowned, stepping forward. "Can we just stop fighting and fuck?"
"And there it is! My body. There we go. Ding ding ding, I'll take 'Things you shouldn't say right now for five-hundred!'"
At some point I'd started yelling loud enough that the dogs were congregating, and I tried to take a breath. I was the reasonable one here, trying to discover if literally everything I'd based the last few months on was founded in nothing. "I like having sex with you. I like fucking you. That's not important right now. You're talking about little sacrifices like learning to read as if it's just something you had to do. Did you even--"
"I," Rachel began, brow furrowed, confusion mingling with anger. "It's Charlotte's fault."
"You think that Charlotte is doing... what, exactly?"
"Saying shit. Separating you from me with all of this camp stuff, this team stuff." Rachel gestured wildly. "I know she's doing something."
"Bull," I said. "Bull. I've spent plenty of time with you! Just because I'm not spending all my time with you doesn't mean don't I love you. Didn't love you."
Rachel stepped back, and somehow she caught the words I hadn't even intended to say. Even I realized I'd almost gone too far, but it also felt like I hadn't gone far enough. "Are you going to leave because I don't spend enough time with you?"
"No."
"You'll leave because you get tired of me, because what do we have in common, because--"
Rachel bared her teeth at me, and I returned the gesture. That gesture and only that gesture. We were different people, it felt like. How had I thought it could work? I could see it, I could see that she was through and I was through.
It wasn't going to go any other way.
"I won't," she insisted. "Charlotte's…"
"She wanted me to come here and make up with you. If she was really winning me over with her words, then I'd be forgiving you right now."
"Forgiving me? For what?" she asked.
"For hurting people. For causing us all problems and…"
Rachel's eyes were hard, and I knew what I was about to say. That she was the problem, that if it wasn't for her the rest of the team would be… but then, wasn't the.
No. No. But the words came out anyways.
"For." I paused. "For being a problem! You--"
"Get. Out." Rachel said it low, her voice a growl, her shoulders tensed, and for a moment I almost imagined confronting her. I imagined tackling her, subduing her, talking to her to get her to understand how absurd she was being, how she just needed to change a little and things would be better. How we needed to talk through her problems and then she could fix them.
But would she listen? I knew she wouldn't.
"Fine then!" I said, turning on my heels. "If you won't even be reasonable, if you're just going make these, accusations, going to treat me like...! Then…"
"Out. Now," Rachel said.
I turned on my heels, and I took my bugs with me. I didn't want to see what she did. I didn't want to see her go back to dealing with the dogs, who were agitated and worried and some of them already barking. I didn't want to see what I'd just done and what she'd just done.
She hadn't said it, but did she need to say it, I thought.
Did she need to say the words 'break up'?
They were spoken in the lines of her body, in the way she'd tensed. In a thousand little things.
So that was it then. I stopped outside the shelter, leaning into the wall. My hands shook, but I was still angry: she was wrong to smear Charlotte, wrong to imply that it was such a hard thing I was asking her to do, wrong to offer sex as if it fixed anything, wrong to demand I get out when I was just telling the truth.
Despite all of that, despite being completely in the right, my eyes were wet. My vision blurry.
Funny. Wasn't it?
I had my bugs. I didn't need to see through a veil of tears to make it back to camp.
Ignoring everyone. Ignoring everything.
I got into my tent, and I didn't leave for some time.
I was right. I knew I was right.
So why did I feel so sick?
Trapped. Yet again: this time by myself.
*******
A/N: *lets out a long, slow breath*
6.6 on Monday. The Arc isn't over.
Relationship Trouble
The weird thing about her disgruntled state was that it didn't, at first, seem to change anything. Or rather, it didn't change the fact that we slept in the same tent, even if we weren't… doing anything. I even asked her how she slept the next day and she answered, "Just fine. You?" It wasn't that sort of chill, it wasn't a fight, it was just something shaped a lot like a fight.
But while I did have to ask her about it, and while it was smart to do so, I shouldn't give in… or at least, it seemed as if maybe it'd get better on its own. There was a distance, still, but I went and helped out the dogs on Sunday, and she didn't seem to push me away, like I knew she could have.
But neither did she draw me close. She kept herself cold and closed up, and when I did see her open up, I don't… there was something hurt about it, something that made me feel guilty even though there wasn't any reason to. I hadn't done anything wrong, and yet she still seemed hurt.
It was a look on her face, it was a way she carried herself, and I hated to see that, and yet I didn't know what I was even supposed to do? Apologize for something I didn't know I'd done? And why apologize if I hadn't done anything wrong?
If anything, I was the one who was having to deal with…
No, I told myself, trying to get through another Sunday, terrified that the Butcher would be back, and that this time she'd not stop until we were all dead… I needed to just let it lie. She'd get over it, eventually, and then we'd go back to the way we were before. I knew it'd happen, I felt it.
So I tried to walk the camp, talking to the injured, relaxing and easing myself back into the temporary peace of a hard-won victory. I knew she'd attack again, but hopefully Butcher was also dealing with the ailments the bugs were going to give her: she couldn't feel pain, so how long would it take for her to realize that something was wrong?
I didn't know how it'd affect her, but we'd see there. So while we tried to prepare and I tried to deal with the withdrawal of not being close to Rachel, the world spun on.
The E88 was falling to pieces, and I wondered if the Teeth would try to go east and just try to push through the docks instead of going after us. Certainly, it was true that there wasn't any particularly great reason to go after us now that the entire E88 territory was opened up… or rather, potentially open, because I knew that Accord and Coil would both be making their own moves to take it over.
What would she do about that?
I spent time on Sunday staring at a map of Brockton Bay and starting to draw all over it. Trying to imagine just where one territory ended and another began. Coil, Accord, the remnants of the E88, the Undersiders, and the Teeth.
That's all that was left now, at least as far as I could tell. Nobody had any word of Skidmark… but they also didn't have word of the Merchants at all, which was probably a bad sign when it came down to it.
So, the Teeth had only a very few reasons to go after us. The first was revenge: obviously we'd hurt them, and obviously the Butcher wasn't someone who believed in the principle of charity. We shared that in common: we didn't turn the other cheek. We struck it. I'd proven that when I'd gotten suspended, and nothing about that had really convinced me that I was wrong to do so, even if Emma was setting herself up as my internet nemesis.
The second was, of course, slaves. If they were the assholes the Merchants were, this was still a huge collection of people to rob, imprison, and otherwise make miserable. But the third one I only ever thought of when it was pointed out to me.
By Lisa, through her little… parahuman friend.
'She might have. Trying to keep them from Coil's grasp. He wants them, but now that the Butcher has Dose, that means that she'll know about it. And want it too. Everyone wants it. You should talk to Accord.'
'No,' I wrote. 'First your cape.'
Then I'd waited and watched to see who came. When I was touched on my shoulder by a younger teenage girl just a half-dozen minutes after my hasty reply, I nearly leapt out of my skin.
There she was, in front of me. She wore a demon mask, a little like Oni Lee, actually, which set me on edge, and a black bodysuit with a black scarf. I couldn't tell much about her, but something about the way she bristled did make me think of it. "Heya, I'm Imp. I did kinda steal your vial, but don't worry. I mean, we'll pay you back. I'm sure TT will think of something."
"Imp?" I asked. "You're new."
"Not like you'd remember if I wasn't," Imp said teasingly. "So, uh, I have a… one sec." She pulled out a list of notes. "She did this cool, uh, detective thing where she wrote down a huge list of answers and words and stuff."
"Oh?" I asked.
"Predicting what you'd want to know," Imp said, with a shrug. She spoke in a slightly high-pitched voice, and the suit left relatively little to the imagination, at least when it came to revealing her curves, which made me revise her age up slightly, closer to mine.
"Alright, then, why are you taking the vials?"
"To use, duh. Eventually or something. Uh, cause we want to continue working with Coil or something without him, uh, abandoning us. Or something like that? There's some stuff I can't read, and you know what? They never tell me anything. It's lame."
"I can understand that," I said. I had a feeling that it was more as insurance once Coil was down, but maybe Imp wasn't allowed to know that. I didn't want to push too hard, not when I was getting answers. I wish I had paper and a pen to write it all down.
"So, yeah. We're getting vials, Coil wants some, maybe to replace us, maybe to add people to our team? And then Accord has all of them. Selling them from someone or something." Imp shrugged. "They're really expensive!"
"Powers in a bottle," I said, carefully. "Of course they'd be." I was frustrated at the fact that they'd stolen a vial, but at the same time I didn't know what I could do without giving them away. "I'm going to hold you to paying it back."
"Sure, I dunno how, but TT always knows something. She's sorta, like, taken over, almost." Imp shrugged, and I could almost imagine a pout beneath that mask. "Anyways, so like, she wants you to meet with Accord and give him a phone. And then… um." Imp bit her lip. "Uh, what if someone happened to steal one of your weird Tinker-phones? Ring ring ring," Imp said, talking faster now. "Would you hate them forever?"
"Are you asking permission to steal something from us again?" I asked.
"Uhhh… kinda."
Oh. Okay. So, I didn't know what to say to that. If she wanted to get in contact with Accord, that seemed like it'd be really important. But at the same time, I knew I was part of some sort of game, some sort of contest between two masterminds, evil or otherwise, and that was a shitty feeling.
It made me feel like I was the moron that was being talked over and around by people with clever tongues and nimble minds. As I were…
I grit my teeth and squared my shoulders, but I resisted any violent impulses. Hitting her wouldn't help, and yelling wouldn't help either. Besides, I wasn't strong enough to actually hurt her even if she couldn't just apparently make me forget she was even there.
I wasn't Rachel, with her big, strong, handsome muscles, I wasn't… I shook my head and pushed away those thoughts. That longing that couldn't be fulfilled. "Fine, whatever. One radio. And I'm going to write it down, so that if you steal more, then I'll know. And there will be a reckoning and a price for all of this."
"Sure, sure, I'll tell her that. Uh, what else. I had something else I needed to say." Imp shook her head, and she hunched slightly, as if she was retreating inside of herself to look for an answer. "Oh, TT says that she's monitoring the whole lawsuit situation. Oh, and that Butcher's likely gonna be busy for a while. Not, like, forever and stuff. But she's not going to attack just yet, unless something goes wrong."
Did that mean that she wanted me to attack Coil, if I had free time? I didn't know, and I knew that I could only wait so long. Dinah was there and I was fucking around, thinking of plots and schemes instead of taking the fight to the enemy. Any of the enemies, in fact. I was being held back, but if I'd followed Rachel we'd just have been hurt. If it was about that, then surely she got it?
If not, I didn't know how I was supposed to tell her without sounding like I was making fun of her or something.
Yet another reason to be careful around her. Just like I needed to be careful around Lisa, and around this Imp. All for different reasons. There was the Butcher, too. A lot of very, very dangerous people in my life: emotionally, intellectually, and then physically twice.
"Well, that's good. Do you use your power to go into Teeth territory?"
"Yeah, it really sucks there. Slavery and murder and all sorts of bad shit," Imp said. "Makes me wanna bring knives and stuff there, but Lisa says no, and Grue is all like, 'It's too dangerous, Ai… Imp.'"
She glanced away. Okay, so, her name was actually--
Wait, what was I doing?
*****
I eventually remembered and eventually figured out what had happened, which I assumed had something to do with her powers? But it was confusing and it definitely did the trick in getting me to stop pressing her.
Ai something. I'd keep that in mind, and go from there. From her hands, which had been dark, it wasn't something like Aiko.
Beyond that, who knew? I knew she was probably a natural trigger, because the vial had been stolen afterwards. That wasn't much to go on, really. Nothing of this was much to go on. I still knew nothing about how these vials had been created and where they were, except that if they were meant to be purchased before everything happened…
It meant that Dose definitely had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Which was interesting, and raised a lot of questions I couldn't answer.
But there was one thing I could answer.
I wrote a note and put it back into the apartment that we'd temporarily abandoned fixing up.
'Hey, Imp, can you tell Accord that I'll meet him Monday afternoon?'
********
Time passed, as time usually does. Greg was spending all of his time playing video games or working in his 'lab' and not always in that order. Stefanie and Charlotte still had to deal with keeping the camp running, Parian had to pretend not to be pining after Flechette, and Rachel had her shelter work to do, work that kept Cassie busy and kept me away, for the most part, except when I came to call her in for dinner. We ate together, but the warmth of the stew we were eating this time didn't really lead to any warmth in other ways.
We remained cool, but not frozen.
Monday came, another day in a routine that felt like it had been going on for far longer than it really had.
*******
When Accord came, it was not a surprise. He had no real way to fool my bugs, and so I knew his approach when I saw it, and I wondered at his timing. The Protectorate patrol team, Flechette in tow, had just left when he started in towards our camp, or at least when he reached within ten blocks of it, or maybe a little more: my range was only getting better with time, and the cold, strange mood only helped that, if nothing else.
Accord walked with half his team. Codex, Citrine, and Arthuras, each of them moving carefully and watching the area. I wondered whether he suspected a trap. If he did, he moved heedlessly into it, one of his men holding a white handkerchief. Arthuras fluttered it in the direction of clumps of my bugs, and I could guess that he had more backup, if all else failed. But instead of going on into camp, he stopped about three or four blocks from it, and then turned up towards my bugs and said, "Arachne, I am ready to meet. You may take as many as three or four of your associates with you for this meeting. This is a safe area. I know you have it monitored. Thus, I know that you know that this place is safe." He said it with disgust in his voice, looking around at the shabby setting.
It was one of the apartment complexes that had not been stable enough. The top floors had collapsed, and the only part of it I'd feel safe being in was the lobby, which was where he was staying. But indeed, I moved my bugs around and didn't see anything odd, though who knew with Imp. Then I let out a sigh and went to go get Stefanie… and then after a moment's thought about the stolen walkie-talkie, Greg and some of his tools.
Greg was babbling the whole way. "They said that Kid Win's going to show up tomorrow, is that right?"
"Well, that is what they said," I told him, distracted as I watched the team. We had just three people, but we had Amp on call too, and that meant that if it came down to a fight, we'd probably win. But because it was in range of the camp, if this was part of an excuse to attack us, we'd get back in no time at all.
So when I stepped up to the door inside with two capes at my back, I felt surprisingly safe, for all that most accounted Accord a madman, someone who wasn't very stable and wasn't very trustworthy.
I opened the door and stepped in, trying to ignore the detritus and debris that hadn't been cleaned up at all.
Citrine was sitting on a table in the lobby, while Codex was leaning against a far wall, and Arturas was posing right next to Accord, looking as if he were ready for a fight.
"Arachne, greetings. I hope we may negotiate. You brought two others. Good."
"Huh," Greg said, looking at them, and then opening his mouth.
"Artificer, please don't say anything." I could imagine him commenting on some fact he'd seen on PHO, and I didn't have time for this.
"And this is Pelter as well, hmm?" Accord asked, looking her over. "Her costume is rumpled."
He said it the way another person might accuse someone of being a thief, or a nazi.
"I apologize," Stefanie said, bowing her head. "I was in a hurry. I wasn't told to expect the meeting today."
"Lax," Accord said, and I could see the frown behind the mask, almost.
"Some things need to be carefully hidden," I said, with a shrug, stepping forward. Hoping that he didn't try anything dangerous. "Such as the vials themselves, beyond what I had to say. You want them back?"
"This would be preferable."
"What would you trade for that?" I asked. "Because I'm not sure I'd be willing to part with the vials unless there was something rather impressive offered."
"There are many things you want," Accord said, just as carefully. "I could give you a plan to take out the Butcher, to eliminate her without allowing any of your people to become the new Butcher, and which would lead to minimal losses. I could also give a similar plan to deal with the lawsuit problems that I have been informed you had. As well, if you had one vial, I could counsel you on who best to choose for the other one." He spread his arms. "And of course, if you needed help running the camp."
I held out one of the radios. "Besides the vials, there's something else I could trade. This. I don't know why you want it, but I assume there might be reasons."
I knew there were: if Imp had passed the message to him successfully, then it'd be bizarre if he didn't know about who else held a radio. About who else he could be working with. There was a lot going on here.
"Ah, yes. Though I would not be willing to trade a plan to eliminate the Butcher for it. Perhaps ways to deal with the lawsuit with the minimum possible harm?"
I wondered if it meant something: at the least, apparently the Butcher was a bigger obstacle than the lawsuit. Which wasn't that surprising, really. I bit my lip, glad that my mask hid more than that, as he watched me.
Dealing with the lawsuits would be a burden off me. Maybe it'd help with talking to Rachel if I had a way to sweep all of that aside. But… I shouldn't have to have this sort of problem.
"I have an alternate idea. I shall give you this walkie-talkie. And I will promise not to use either of the vials for the next while. We can see about future deals, but in exchange for holding off for now, and the possibility of a deal later, you need to tell me more about the situation on the other side. What New Wave is doing, what's happening to the rest of E88 territory, and I've been hearing things about this Coil and the Undersiders expanding. If need be, once the Butcher is dealt with, I'll have to deal with them too, won't I?"
"Deal with them?" Accord asked, glancing over at Arturas, as if indicating that he should be careful if this was the first step to an attack. It might be, and I could see the benefit of betraying and capturing him. I think I could do it, or at least it was possible, but I didn't know whether it'd benefit me any. The Protectorate, yes, but I wanted more than that.
"Yes, probably. I want a favor. I want to know what there is to know about conditions around your area in general… and I want your assurance that if the time comes when I decide to get rid of the Butcher for good, you might be able to provide aid. Such as updating whatever plan you have for taking out the Butcher as more information comes in. If you've made it, then updating a plan so that it survives contact with escalating events would be important, wouldn't it?"
"My plans are far more careful than that," Accord said, snippily. But he said, after another tense moment. "The price would still be one vial."
"I can pay it then, especially if you factor in this: would you be willing to use some of your assets for such a thing? Loan them to me? In exchange, you could get a vial, potentially two depending."
"I could consider this, as long as you made sure not to get rid of the vials," Accord said, carefully.
When I pictured taking the Butcher out, I pictured a huge network of people, I pictured the Undersiders and Accord and my own group all working together. Everyone finally pulling together, including Rachel getting herself together.
"Very well then," I said. "You can have the walkie-talkie, then. And then tell me more about what New Wave is up to."
"They have split, divided themselves. Panacea is a vigilante in her own right, and those that support her work with her, while those who don't try to encourage her to be safe. However," Accord said. "She does not want to be safe. She has changed her costume, to one more gaudy and less… pacific." Accord sniffed and added. "She has already been seen pushing several limits, and there are worries about her actions. Specifically about whether she was doing something to the criminals she captured."
Accord shook his head. "Either way, New Wave is not nearly as effective as they once were, and I am not worried about them. It is you and your group, your… organization that is a worry."
Neither Greg nor Stefanie were talking. They were deferring to me, I was in charge, I thought, trying to psych myself up and get out of there. I'd learned what I needed to, almost. "What business do you do in your territories?"
"Business, mostly. Protection, the selling of illicit substances, a number of other sources of income which should be of little concern to you," Accord said. "Are you done with your questions?"
"For now. Thank you for all of the help." I felt as if his own nerves were starting to fray, from the way he was looking at me. Was I doing something wrong? Saying something slightly off. I stepped towards him with the device, and then handed it to Arturas, when he flinched slightly away from me.
Had I not washed recently enough? I didn't know, but then I stepped back and Accord said, "You should leave now."
Almost a warning, but not quite. I was confused, but I backed off a little more and said. "Thank you for the meeting. I hope we shall meet again."
Accord said nothing as I hurried out, making sure to keep my bugs in the area in case anything happened.
The only hint I ever got as to what was wrong was when I was almost back at camp, and Accord muttered: "Something is incomplete about her wardrobe. And herself." Then he shook his head. That was it: my clothes didn't quite fit his stupid standards and so he wanted me to leave immediately.
Well, I thought to myself, that was Accord.
*******
Kid Win came in flying low, as if he hadn't fallen not that long ago, his facial expression hidden as he buzzed right over the camp, so low that people looked up in alarm, only relaxing once they'd figured out he wasn't one of Butcher's capes. I'd been temporarily a little agitated myself, staring up as my bugs had almost swarmed him before they saw who it was.
Then he'd landed down in front of Greg's pavilion, and opened the flap. He was sweating heavily, and smelled a little odd to my bugs' noses. "Hello, anyone in there? Oh, hey, Artificer…"
He stepped in, and I decided to at least get closer in case I needed to help anything.
Greg had been working on the suit and the lasers pretty much the whole time. "Oh, hey Kid Win! Uh, sorry about the mess but I swear there's some room, and I've been looking at something, maybe." He gestured vaguely towards the backpack with the power pack, the one that he had been working on. It looked slightly bigger, and when I saw the nozzles, I understood why.
I thought he'd been making rocket boots? Or did those not work out?
"Oh, is that a jet pack?"
"Energy rocket-pack, but there's two problems I'm dealing with. First, the conversion flow of the thing is faulty." Greg frowned, pouting. "So that it sometimes shoots out laser energy instead, which could hurt someone. And the second thing is that the balance is impossible! I just can't stay up for long enough…"
"How much have you practiced with it?" Kid Win asked, stepping forward, board under his arm.
"Just… thirty minutes? Last night, once T… Arachne had gone to sleep, because if I messed up… though now she knows," Greg said, realizing that of course I was watching him.
"Oh, right. I wonder, is it a little odd that she's listening in on everything? I mean." Kid Win shrugged, and I knew what he meant. The tone in his voice wasn't condemning me, but it was aware that I was always there.
"You sorta get used to it! I mean, I do. I do need more time to practice, but I don't want to be seen messing up, you know? If I'm going for some sort of super-duper honest thing like Law, then that's what it is," Greg said. "Arachne and Bitch and the others too, they're all so awesome, and I'm… uh."
I frowned, wishing I could go in and tell him it was alright, though I didn't know how I was going to do that. He had messed up, but he'd also done his job at least well enough that we hadn't all died. Yet if he'd died… what were we supposed to say? His mother dead, nothing else in his life, and he ran out into a stupidly obvious death.
Should I forbid him from fighting again? Should I tell him off? But for that matter, should I tell Rachel off? And if not one, then why the other?
"Oh," Kid Win said, frowning as he looked closer at it. "I think the nozzle is kinda tilted." He pointed at it, frowning. "Maybe we could just…"
I listened for a little longer as they danced around topics. Neither of them talked about how they'd both almost died. It wasn't important, or at least it wasn't what they focused on. Instead, they were getting their hands dirty showing off their technology and talking about it. They switched the topic constantly, and it seemed like Kid Win knew a little of everything.
They'd almost died, and yet instead they seemed to just be bouncing off of each other and exchanging ideas rapid-fire. They seemed to be building up to something, but every time I thought I was about to hear something entirely new, they veered in the other direction. For instance, Kid Win was very knowledgeable about the laser technology in general, and he had a few pieces of advice on how to work with limited resources, and how to better get through Brutes. Because a laser gun that did nothing more than hurt a few gang-bangers wasn't good.
Which got into talk of this gun.
"I need to find a better medication, because it's not working, or it wasn't. But I made an Alternator Cannon, and it was amazing. Just plain sweet," Kid Win said, clearly bragging. "But… it wasn't working out. In other ways. I almost wish I could have kept on taking it, but…" Kid Win bit his lip. "So I'm forced to struggle ahead with the stuff I have. I could come and show you the cannon soon… if I could just get permission to use it. It'd be pretty cool, right?" Kid Win smiled, and Greg seemed to fall further into his power.
"Yeah, I… I'm sorry that things suck," Greg said, biting his lip, looking as if he had a lot more words to say. But he was sometimes learning that it was best not to say things, that it was best not to do things. "I'm struggling too. There's not a lot of equipment around." Greg paused and then added, "I wish that I had a few spare weeks without having to panic and stuff, but I wonder if I'd just--"
Greg shook his head. "Anyways! Wanna see the Jetpack?"
"I'm not sure if I have time right now," Kid Win said, sounding a little nervous. His heart was racing slightly faster, in a way that surprised me. He seemed suddenly a little bit taken aback, a little bit uncertain.
"It'll just take a minute or two," Greg insisted.
I knocked on the flap of the tent.
"Oh, hey, it's Arachne!" Greg said, as Kid Win tried not to let out a sigh.
I stepped in and said, "I hope things are going well. I know you have to go soon, but Greg, if you want I could watch? Or we could take a video?" I frowned a little. "I'm sure we have a camera-phone around here somewhere, though the reception's pretty bad. But we can find a way to show Kid Win later."
"But why? We could just do it now and it'd be amazing and cool and!"
I held up a hand, as he was almost bouncing around. In fact, his windmilling arms had almost clobbered Kid Win, and he looked as if he was only going to get more and more hyped up on the idea of being able to finally show off to someone who could appreciate all of the nuances of what he was studying.
And there were a lot of them, truly. I hadn't understood half of what he said, but I'd understood what he'd meant. I'd understood where this was going. "Artificer," I told Greg, "Let him leave. It's good that you're enthusiastic."
Kid Win smiled at me. "Thanks for… the other day."
The other day, when we'd saved his life, when he'd fallen off his hoverboard, shot and then hurt worse than that.
That's what it was about: and it made sense. When someone was hurt, of course they didn't want to watch something like that too close. He'd been sweating, and that meant something, I thought. It meant that the stress had been gnawing at him, had been getting to him.
And Greg hadn't seen. People missed so many things, so many… I tried not to make it more than it was, but I wondered. "I hope you're recovering well," I said.
He smiled. Not bared his teeth. Smiled. I needed to think of it that way, I thought. To do otherwise… I don't know. "I am, I think. I shouldn't be here, but… wanted to see the new Tinker. I look forward to coming back here, and seeing what else Artificer has to show off! Next time."
Next time. Not now.
Greg nodded, and waved Kid Win goodbye, leaving the two of us. I turned to him. "Greg, can we trust you in another fight?"
"Why are you asking me this now?" Greg asked, sounding a little confused.
"Because I was reminded of it." Because talking to him and figuring out what was wrong with him was easier than talking about everything that… Rachel could improve on. "And because it matters. The Butcher will show up again. This isn't it, they aren't done."
"We won."
"We survived, and now we're locked up here, protecting these people," I said. "Trapped and pacing around waiting for the shoe to drop."
"Trapped? But we're the good guys," Greg said, in a voice that was pure whine.
"Yeah, yeah we are," I said.
"Is something up with you and Rachel? She doesn't mention you when we're gaming… or she didn't…" Greg said, frowning.
Wait. Really? I was pretty sure that everyone had noticed the chilling a long time ago, but apparently it had only just been evident. "Why would you say that?"
"...yeah, it is kinda silly. You help her out all the time, and…" Greg flushed.
"What?"
"The way you look at her. Uh. Yeah."
I hadn't noticed that, and it didn't matter: I felt the chill, I felt the uncertainty. I felt the way that I had so many things I wanted to confront her with, but then what would happen if it all failed? I shouldn't be afraid of a fight. I knew that if she were in my shoes she wouldn't hesitate for a moment to say what was on her mind. Right?
She was bold, nearly fearless, blunt and handsome and gruff, and yet… also violent. Also not very verbose. But… she'd asked me. She'd been the one to push it. She'd been the one that made it something more, and I loved her for it.
So what was… I don't know.
This was just so frustrating.
But I knew that if I found out a little more, it'd work. I just needed to find out how to solve this problem without involving her, and then it could go back to normal. To the way it was supposed to be, to the average.
We're O.K.
******
Flechette came by on Wednesday, and didn't even talk to someone. She just paced, nervous and sweating, and then walked away. She didn't even eat anything while she was there. There was just that feeling then of waiting.
That feeling of waiting for the locker to open up and the world beyond to be seen. I'd gone… not mad, no. But I'd gone frantic, I'd stopped thinking, I'd seen too much and knew too much at the same time and I'd had to be taken to the hospital for monitoring.
At the time, I hadn't known when it would stop, or whether it would get worse. It had dragged itself onward, those shambling, dark, grimy moments when I'd first felt what bugs felt, and known what bugs known.
And now I watched a camp in the same place.
Cassie helped out Rachel. Neither of them mentioned me as she shoveled shit and robbed the dog's noses and looked over the puppies, who were still so young and adorable, full of hope and dependent. In their first home. What did Cassie do, besides this? What was her life like other than this? She wasn't old enough that there shouldn't be parents asking where she was. But then, was it any different for Rachel and I? I wondered: what wasn't being said. Would Cassie know how to make this better?
Stefanie ran the camp, mostly just checking in with me on the rare occasion where she needed help. I was 'in charge' but she was the one who made the decisions. Who reported to her parents and handled the money. I wasn't really any more responsible: and for all this, she asked no salary, and asked for no explanations on which I wasn't around Rachel.
Charlotte had her groups, and she was still researching and studying her powers, and trying to think of better ways to use them. Better ways to save everyone. She'd almost lost people, and she was driven, charming… if she had any desire to lead, I had a feeling she'd wind up in charge, somehow or another.
Sierra, who came by once, just to check with Charlotte, talk to her about what had happened, try to find some peace. She had her own life, and this life was now centered on trying to fix her brother, who had done bad things. Though whether any of them still were numb in their legs after years…
Greg, studying and working and obsessing, alone and brooding. Greg who clearly hadn't learned anything, was clearly plotting to have his super-suit ready for when the next fight came. So that he'd be able to go toe to toe with the like of the Butcher. He never learned. Ever, it seemed.
Parian, who frowned and worked and sewed and didn't take even a few steps outside her door, even when there Flechette was, hurt and hopeful, wanting at least… I don't know, did she deserve anything? Wasn't that not how it was supposed to work. But I wanted it to work: but I could hardly blame her for not wanting to push the issue, to want it to go away on its own so that she didn't have to say no again, in a different way. Perhaps in even trying a second time, in even not just accepting it, Flechette was making it less likely that she'd actually get the girl. And maybe better for her. Nobody deserved… the thought trailed off, it ended like I was at the end of a long chain, and beyond which I could only bark at the world past such a thought.
Rachel. Rachel Rachel. On Wednesday night I went to sleep and I dreamed of her, of her mouth and the smile of her eyes, of her breasts and her arms, wrapped tight around me; it wasn't a dream of her mind, but maybe it should have been, firm and confident, but instead, no, instead it was her body I longed for, her touch that I needed, and so that is what I dreamed of: I dreamed for the purpose of having what I wasn't having, and woke up sweaty and embarrassed, to look at Rachel's face--I'd woken her up, in my sleep. My face red as I stumbled out into the morning. Thursday.
And then me. Myself. I.
******
"Hey, Taylor," Charlotte said, dressed up as Amp, talking to me from across the camp, her words thrown to a set of bugs. "I need to talk to you. I wanted to test a few things. With the new powers."
I didn't have anything else to do. I'd taken the shower, I'd refused to talk about it--not that anyone asked--and so now all that was left was to just pace around. Perhaps Flechette would come too, and I could pace next to her.
I didn't have any plans, that is to say. So I walked through the camp, glancing at the jars of bugs I had here and there and everywhere. There were a lot of them as I passed, signs that this place had become where I was. The bugs were all under my control, and ready to be unleashed if there was another attack. I didn't expect one today, but then wasn't that just the time to be afraid?
I suspected that the Butcher would have her hands full with her continued expansion, and I also had to wonder just what her plan was. She didn't have a home, she didn't have somewhere like this that she was chained down to.
What kept her from just packing up all of her men and riding out of here? Or driving or walking? Was she really going to stick around here for months at a time? She'd already been here for too long, by the standards of her previous actions. It was out of character for her, something that didn't fit.
That meant that something had to be keeping her here. And of course I knew what it was. But what happened when what was in this camp wasn't enough to actually keep her around, when the risks outweighed the rewards?
She was stubborn, I'd admit to that, very, very stubborn, and very vicious, willing to hurt other people all the time.
I felt like she wasn't ever going to stop until I stopped her, one way or another.
"Hey," I said, when I jogged up to Amp.
"So, I was trying to think of ideas, and I thought you'd be able to help," Amp said, her voice calm and thoughtful. She was sitting down at the corner of the camp, under the shadows of a building, and she looked tired. "Being able to go fast, and also strong, means that if I got the right combination, someone could go right up to Butcher faster than she could teleport…"
"Could they?" I asked. Then I realized I'd raised my voice and said, softer, "I'm not sure. The Butcher teleports out of the way pretty fast. It was just luck that we were able to do anything at all to her. So the answer is maybe. I wonder, could Flechette do anything against her? I don't actually know what her power involves, precisely…"
Which was embarrassing to admit, but while I'd heard a little about what she could do, the specifics were the kind of thing that a lack of internet access made it hard to deal with.
"Yeah, true. I also don't know how fast it can make you. Can I test it out on you for just a moment?"
"Sure, of course," I said.
"Taylor, clap your hands."
I did so, and the moment I'd finished clapping, the world seemed to freeze. She wasn't moving. I stepped backwards, and then began to walk away from her, looking at the world. In movies the world lost color when it was frozen, but instead everything was as it should be. And, when I looked closer, it was moving. Just so slowly it seemed almost not to matter. I tried to figure out how long was passing as I walked right back towards our tent and then turned around to walk back.
I glanced at a person who had slowly been raising the soup ladle to his lips. He'd only moved less than an inch closer to actually sipping it. I didn't even know how to define how fast that was, except that of course this was the maximum.
This was putting all of her power into making a single person really fast. If she divided it into four or five… and of course, I couldn't really control my bugs like this. They were there, and I could order them to move, but they could react only so fast.
So they just slowly crawled along.
This, surely this was fast enough to catch the Butcher? But then again, I'd need to cut it with strength just to do anything other than touch her.
So I wasn't sure. Still, it was incredibly fast. Probably faster than the speed of sound, easily. In fact, I wondered if my movement was going to leave--
The world sped up again, and Amp looked at me, blinking owlishly. "So, what happened?"
"I wonder, what would happen if I caused a sonic boom? Or would I? What did you see?"
"I saw you disappear into a blur that… moved places? Even then, it kinda feels like I was just looking for you. I could give you some healing and strength to go with it. You could test out how that feels."
"I could," I admitted. "But I'm not sure what I'd use as a target. I'd need to hit something to see what happens." I frowned and said. "What about your team?"
"I don't know if I want to risk them."
"You have to risk someone," I said. "So why not me? That's the logic?" I tried to smile, before realizing I was in my mask, and didn't have to bother.
"Uh… a little, I suppose, Taylor," Charlotte admitted quietly. "But how likely is it that she'll come back? Certain. And we need to know what to do when it gets there. I don't have any ideas for finding different chords right now, or vibrations. Speed, strength, healing, toughness… that's about all I could think of."
"Well," I said. "I suppose you could look for flying? Flying's usually pretty cool."
Charlotte frowned and then asked, "Are you taking this seriously?"
"Yes, I am. If we were able to fly, that'd certainly help with hitting the Teeth again. I wonder if we shouldn't go all-in on them. A series of raids, maybe ask for Protectorate backup."
"Don't do that, please," Charlotte said. "It sounds like it'd end in disaster."
I frowned, considering her words. She was probably right. But how would I know? "Maybe I won't," I said, deciding to drop the idea for now. "But she has to be dealt with, you agree with that, right?"
"Yes, it's just… everything has a risk."
"I know," I said, crossing my arms and stepping forward to stand by her, looking her over and trying to figure out what she was going to say next.
"And that includes you not making up with Rachel."
"Can we talk about anything else? We're not even fighting."
"Maybe you aren't, but…" Amp sighed, a soft sound, and she said, "Well, how about we walk a little way away and start wrecking a building that nobody's using?"
"Actually… maybe that's a great idea."
*******
It should be a lot more fun, tearing down a building with my bare hands. Catharsis and all of that. But instead I just got more and more frustrated, left alone with the work and my thoughts, even with Charlotte to talk at me.
I was just punching up against a wrecked apartment building, doing real damage that I… was it any different? Would someone sue me for the damages? At the least, the building wasn't in any decent condition already.
"Taylor, I think you should talk to her. Just present your position, state it clearly and honestly, and figure out what's wrong. What is wrong, anyways?"
I sighed, staring at a wall I'd been about to hit, and then turned. "There's her attitude, there's what she's done in the past, the lawsuits that we're facing, there's… so much to say." I shrugged my shoulders. "But I'm not going to ruin a good thing."
"You wouldn't be ruining it if you just got down to it, talked to her, and worked through it."
"Nah," I grunted, baring my teeth. "Not going to do it."
Charlotte took a breath and then walked over as I slammed my fist into a wall, punching a hole straight through it. "C'mon, Taylor, just do it! It'll be over quickly, and then you can make up. I believe in your relationship."
"Okay," I said. "I'll do it."
Charlotte looked baffled, "You… will?"
"Yes, of course," I said. It just made sense to go and talk to Rachel, and I didn't get why she had a deepening frown on her face. "I could go over there right now and sort it out. You're right that it shouldn't take long, just telling her what I think and that's that."
"I… you should at least get changed first, and not rush into things."
"Alright, I can do that," I said. She made a good point, I shouldn't be too hasty in rushing into this.
"Well… good," Charlotte said, then coughed. "Uh, are you sure you're feeling okay?"
"Yes," I said. "Why?"
"Just curious," Charlotte admitted, though my bugs could notice that for some reason she was sweating a bit. I didn't know why, but combined with the tone of her voice, it was a little odd. Not something worth worrying about when I had things I must do.
******
I was still changing when I felt Amp's powers expire. Not that it mattered, I wouldn't need strength to talk to her. Or at least, not that sort of strength. My costume was dusty and ruined from the random destruction I'd let out, the testing of just what her powers could do, and how little it took to break through a wall.
Of course, we didn't know what it was that'd help us beat the Butcher, and it probably wasn't just super-strength.
But I tried to ignore that and focus on changing for talking to Rachel. Jeans and a shirt, of course, and a shower first, but not more than that. I was trying to talk to her, not negotiate a surrender. Though I did hope she'd show sense when I talked to her and figure out a way to help me with this, instead of just… just getting in the way.
But that wasn't the same as asking her to surrender. We'd all be better off if she learned and we grew together, after all.
But I was also prepared for an argument. If we were going to have one, then I needed to win it. I needed to make things work the way they needed to work if us, if this camp, were going to keep working.
It was that simple.
Rachel was taking care of the dogs, and I could just see her. Literally. It really was odd, or at least hard to imagine, how being monitored at all times might feel. Well, pretty much all times. I tried not to allow my bugs to show any of my agitation, but it did feel as if they were buzzing and moving a little faster as I positioned them to watch Rachel
Then I jogged to meet her. I was well within the range of the camp, I could see so far in every direction it wasn't funny. I wanted to turn back. But I'd said I'd do it, and I supposed I had to follow through. She was right, after all. You couldn't just let something fester like I had, you couldn't just assume it'd get better.
Hadn't that been what Dad had done? If he'd confronted me, or at least talked to me about it, weeks before…
Maybe it would have gone better. Maybe things would be more okay. We got along alright, but not in the same way that I needed to get on with Rachel.
I jogged into the shelter, and then slowed down, taking a deep breath and talking my way through the people who worked at the shelter.
She interacted with them. She talked to them, and managed not to alienate them. Surely we could work through it.
She was kneeling and petting one of the dogs when I stepped up. They'd gotten too used to me to bark when I was around, too used to people, and the dog she was petting was one I'd seen here and there. Natasha, I think she was? She was a big husky, and slightly greying, and as far as I knew, she'd never been used in a fight. She was just a good girl that liked napping rather more than she'd ever like fighting, and when you had an embarrassment of riches like Rachel had with dogs, you could afford to bend in very specific circumstances to their instincts and age.
No doubt when Brutus, Judas, and Angelica got older, if they needed to they'd be retired, in favor of other dogs.
I liked that she cared for her dogs, but there were people here too.
I'd tried and tried… and I hadn't always failed, had I?
"Rachel," I said.
"Yeah?" Rachel asked.
"You've been avoiding me, and I wanted to talk."
Rachel frowned, and I could feel Natasha get the vibes from Rachel, understand that there was something to be worried about. But the dog was confused about what it could be. I knew her, I'd fed her treats and considering her personality, that made it doubly confusing as Rachel rose up to her full height. "What about?"
"I've been avoiding talking with you," I admitted. "But Charlotte's right, I need to just confront this now."
"Charlotte," Rachel growled, baring her teeth at me. "She talked to you?"
"Yes? That's what people do to communicate with each other. She's an important member of our team," I said, my voice raising slightly as I tensed, feeling as if I were about to attack… or perhaps be attacked.
"She's… doing something! With her words!" Rachel blurted it out. "She just talks and you do what she says."
"That's called convincing people," I said. "Just because you don't like talking to me about anything!"
"Then talk," Rachel said. "It's just words. What matters is…" Rachel trailed off, angry and inarticulate, and then I saw something I didn't expect. She backed down slightly, untensing just enough to tersely ask "What's wrong?"
"...there are lawsuits being directed at us. For what you did before, the people you maimed. I don't even know what we're going to do because they're going to be demanding everything. We'll go broke trying to pay it all out. This camp will go under, and I don't even know what I can do. I need to talk to you on which ones are true and which are lies, but I don't even want to know because I know you've done bad things before. I know you don't even regret some of them, do you?"
"I do," Rachel said, with a shrug, and I knew what she meant, and it only made me angrier. She regretted it the way I regretted not reading a book, or being a little too angry, or… I knew she didn't regret it the way of...
The way… and I'd been there, defending her, and it was true that she got a worse rap than she deserved. A worse rap then she could have been given. But that didn't mean she'd been innocent, and had she really changed? If this camp didn't matter to her, did I matter? Because this was what we were doing together, as heroes. The two were the same, weren't they? Everything I did for and with the camp was for her as well.
To protect her from consequences, to redeem her in the eyes of the world that, even if she didn't care about it, could hurt her. And yet, had I been the only one changing?
She wasn't any less violent: people had fought the 'bad guys' while… but then, wasn't she different? She wasn't Sophia, she wasn't any of the people my mind slipped to. "A little bit, that's all? It could ruin all of this for us. It's bad for the team, it's bad for the camp."
Rachel crossed her arms. "I didn't ask for the team. I didn't ask for the camp."
"I've already done so much," I said firmly. "I've changed, I ran away from my Dad, I've stuck around you, I've done plenty, and what have you…" I bit my lip, seeing the switch flip in Rachel's eyes, as she struggled to hold back the rage.
"You think I don't do enough?" Rachel asked, looking confused as I stalked forward, a little closer. "I've done plenty."
"What?"
"Read books with you. Be a hero. Talk to people."
"Were those all just things you did to win me over? Things that you didn't even like doing?" I raised my voice just a little as I said it, but then stopped, feeling a cold sort of chill stealing over me as I thought about it. What if she didn't even really like me? If she didn't like doing things with me, if the reading, if the heroism, if everyone else were all things she tolerated, then what about me did she actually love?
As opposed to lust for. We'd started with sex, and gone from there, so what if it was all just shallow desire?
I felt like I'd bridged the gap with her, but apparently not enough that she couldn't see what she was doing as doing things. As if she were paying her goddamn taxes, just doing things to earn me without really meaning them.
I knew I wasn't being fair, but I didn't think I was being wrong.
"I love you," Rachel said, firmly.
I was almost slapped by the words, almost stumbled back, but did it matter? "What about me? My taste in music, in movies? In books? I love you too, but I don't know if what you…"
Rachel frowned, stepping forward. "Can we just stop fighting and fuck?"
"And there it is! My body. There we go. Ding ding ding, I'll take 'Things you shouldn't say right now for five-hundred!'"
At some point I'd started yelling loud enough that the dogs were congregating, and I tried to take a breath. I was the reasonable one here, trying to discover if literally everything I'd based the last few months on was founded in nothing. "I like having sex with you. I like fucking you. That's not important right now. You're talking about little sacrifices like learning to read as if it's just something you had to do. Did you even--"
"I," Rachel began, brow furrowed, confusion mingling with anger. "It's Charlotte's fault."
"You think that Charlotte is doing... what, exactly?"
"Saying shit. Separating you from me with all of this camp stuff, this team stuff." Rachel gestured wildly. "I know she's doing something."
"Bull," I said. "Bull. I've spent plenty of time with you! Just because I'm not spending all my time with you doesn't mean don't I love you. Didn't love you."
Rachel stepped back, and somehow she caught the words I hadn't even intended to say. Even I realized I'd almost gone too far, but it also felt like I hadn't gone far enough. "Are you going to leave because I don't spend enough time with you?"
"No."
"You'll leave because you get tired of me, because what do we have in common, because--"
Rachel bared her teeth at me, and I returned the gesture. That gesture and only that gesture. We were different people, it felt like. How had I thought it could work? I could see it, I could see that she was through and I was through.
It wasn't going to go any other way.
"I won't," she insisted. "Charlotte's…"
"She wanted me to come here and make up with you. If she was really winning me over with her words, then I'd be forgiving you right now."
"Forgiving me? For what?" she asked.
"For hurting people. For causing us all problems and…"
Rachel's eyes were hard, and I knew what I was about to say. That she was the problem, that if it wasn't for her the rest of the team would be… but then, wasn't the.
No. No. But the words came out anyways.
"For." I paused. "For being a problem! You--"
"Get. Out." Rachel said it low, her voice a growl, her shoulders tensed, and for a moment I almost imagined confronting her. I imagined tackling her, subduing her, talking to her to get her to understand how absurd she was being, how she just needed to change a little and things would be better. How we needed to talk through her problems and then she could fix them.
But would she listen? I knew she wouldn't.
"Fine then!" I said, turning on my heels. "If you won't even be reasonable, if you're just going make these, accusations, going to treat me like...! Then…"
"Out. Now," Rachel said.
I turned on my heels, and I took my bugs with me. I didn't want to see what she did. I didn't want to see her go back to dealing with the dogs, who were agitated and worried and some of them already barking. I didn't want to see what I'd just done and what she'd just done.
She hadn't said it, but did she need to say it, I thought.
Did she need to say the words 'break up'?
They were spoken in the lines of her body, in the way she'd tensed. In a thousand little things.
So that was it then. I stopped outside the shelter, leaning into the wall. My hands shook, but I was still angry: she was wrong to smear Charlotte, wrong to imply that it was such a hard thing I was asking her to do, wrong to offer sex as if it fixed anything, wrong to demand I get out when I was just telling the truth.
Despite all of that, despite being completely in the right, my eyes were wet. My vision blurry.
Funny. Wasn't it?
I had my bugs. I didn't need to see through a veil of tears to make it back to camp.
Ignoring everyone. Ignoring everything.
I got into my tent, and I didn't leave for some time.
I was right. I knew I was right.
So why did I feel so sick?
Trapped. Yet again: this time by myself.
*******
A/N: *lets out a long, slow breath*
6.6 on Monday. The Arc isn't over.
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- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
This line just feels so poignant. Symptomatic in a way. I can't remember at what point in their relationship she started thinking like that, but the fact she's actively trying to return just feels so sad.
It's so goddam insidious. It's self correcting in a way, making Taylor overlook the signs. If this wasn't the aftermath of an Endbringer I could see her getting Canaried so fast.
And she didn't ask for this. Like, Canary did. It wasn't her choice how it manifested, but Canary did ask for powers. Charlotte didn't. But she's still a walking infohazard.
And she clearly doesn't want it. Well, she still uses it, but she's not happy about it. I think.
I think reiterating my past words should be useful: fucking Amp. It's not entirely her fault, but it has exacerbated like, everything.- Location
- Australia
I think it's more something Rachel could point to and say 'See'. If anything, you should be saying poor 'Rachel', given that this chapter rather forcefully shows how underdeveloped she is mentally.
pantherasapiens
you were always my best friend
- Location
- somewhere over your shoulder
Though it sounds like it's the first time Amp has noticed the long-term effects of her powers? She's apparently super surprised the way she's able to talk Taylor around into things. And at the same time, it took her more effort to get Taylor to go to Rachel than it did to, say, call off the follow-up chase-down of the retreating Teeth. So it looks like there are certain things it's harder for Amp to get at.
Poor Rachel, though. Poor Taylor.
Poor Laurent!
Poor Rachel, though. Poor Taylor.
Poor Laurent!
- Location
- United States
This story is very good and makes me want to cry some. Lot's of good writing showing how trapped Taylor feels. I like the angst and hope there's a good resolution along the line
I like the scenes with Amp realizing what she's doing. The Accord meeting was also good.
This is all some good stuff! Keep up the excellent work!
I like the scenes with Amp realizing what she's doing. The Accord meeting was also good.
This is all some good stuff! Keep up the excellent work!
- Location
- Nowhere
- Pronouns
- She/her
I'm kinda glad this fight happened. The previous chapters were getting stressful because we saw this building up, now that its out in the open things can start to heal.
umm, did you cut out a sentence or something here? Cause it seems like Taylor goes from yelling about how she and Rachel have nothing in common to randomly defending Charlotte.
Also for what its worth, I really am enjoying this fic. I think the serialized format is kinda working against you here, the camp narrative is important to the overall story but we've had this slow build up of dread that is turning people away and every update for a while has been worsening this general feeling of dread. So some readers stopped tuning in since they came for fluff and this fic is turning away from that and the waiting period of it to get better is too long.
umm, did you cut out a sentence or something here? Cause it seems like Taylor goes from yelling about how she and Rachel have nothing in common to randomly defending Charlotte.
Also for what its worth, I really am enjoying this fic. I think the serialized format is kinda working against you here, the camp narrative is important to the overall story but we've had this slow build up of dread that is turning people away and every update for a while has been worsening this general feeling of dread. So some readers stopped tuning in since they came for fluff and this fic is turning away from that and the waiting period of it to get better is too long.