by wildbow
They fled, running for the outdoors.
I gave them a second of reprieve. A few seconds where they could catch their breath and think they’d escaped.
“Your turn,” I told Regent.
Shatterbird attacked, calling forth a light flurry of glass shards. There weren’t many, far less than I had in the way of bugs, but our enemies couldn’t defend against them. My mosquitoes could smell blood as the shards sliced thin papercuts into their skin, impaled their cheeks and hands.
“Don’t hit any vital organs,” I said. “Or arteries. Keep it confined to the outer edge of their body.”
“You’re so finnicky,” Regent commented.
“If you kill them, this situation becomes something totally different. They’ll have a vendetta against us, and any friction within their group is going to take second seat to getting revenge.”
“I’m not saying I won’t be careful,” Regent sighed. “I’m saying you’re being picky.”
A section of building floated across the street to land at the midway point between Shatterbird and our targets. There were nearly twenty of them, and one of them was Rune. Okay.
Shatterbird extended her arms out to either side. The pelting hail of glass shards split in two, each half arcing well to the left and right, circumventing the obstacle entirely. He stepped up the intensity a notch.
“Feels like we’re going easy on them,” he said.
“Just weeding out the foot soldiers. If we can eliminate anyone with powers, so much the better.”
I nodded. We’d made our point with the glass shards. I set my bugs on them once again.
No point in playing fair, really.
One by one, they collapsed, losing their balance and falling, or simply giving way under the pain. The second one of them went limp on the ground, curling up in the fetal position or trying to cover themselves in their clothes, I let up. For everyone else, I made the bugs a little more aggressive with every passing moment.
“They’re going to retaliate soon,” Tattletale informed us.
A cloud of mist erupted and began to expand, squashing my bugs. That meant Fog was here. And if he was here, Night would be too. Night and Fog, Nacht und Nebel. I could sense someone who could have been her, running away from the collection of people.
“Rune, Night and Fog so far,” I said.
“That’s two different groups. Rune could be looking to join the Pure,” Tattletale spoke. “Purity’s not here or she would have responded already. You’re not sensing anything that could be Crusader? Your bugs wouldn’t be able to pass through his astral clones.”
“No Crusader.”
I sensed someone my bugs were unable to hurt. He ran forward through the swarm, the hail of glass and Fog’s cloud. “Incoming. Not Night.”
Victor. He was a talent vampire, stealing people’s trained skills, keeping them if he held on to them long enough, and leaving that person temporarily bereft of whatever skill they’d spent their lives learning. People like him had a tendency to pick up martial arts, parkour, weapons training and other combat skills. He tended to pair up with Othala, the girl who could grant powers, meaning Victor also had super speed, super strength or invincibility. If he was wounded, she could give him regeneration instead.
But her power demanded that she touch whoever she was using it on, and it limited her to granting one power at a time. If he had invincibility, it meant he didn’t have super strength, pyrokinesis or any of that.
I started tying him up in silk, drawing the lines out with my spiders and carrying them with flying insects.
He didn’t make it halfway to us before stumbling. A minute later he was caught. I began layering it on him, thicker.
“Victor down. Othala’s somewhere, only big problems are Night and Fog.”
“Okay. How confident you feeling?” Tattletale glanced at me.
“I could try my hand at dealing with Night. Not sure about Fog.”
“Regent?”
“That’s cool.”
“Going to see if I can bait them,” I responded. “You guys get back some.”
“Play safe.”
Our last run-in with Night and Fog had been ugly. That had been months ago, and we’d basically lost. I wasn’t content to simply lose, though. I’d replayed the scene over and over in my head since it had happened, doubly so since I’d found out Coil’s power. If he could create alternate timelines and choose the results, and if he’d used his power to save us, what had happened in that other timeline? Had we died?
I hated the idea that I owed my life to Coil, because I hated him. I hated that he’d turned something I could almost make peace with—being a villain—and he’d turned it into something that I was deeply ashamed of, something that gnawed at me. He’d used me, and he’d done it to abuse, manipulate and take advantage of a young girl.
That irritation had been one more nudge to get me thinking about how I could have handled this. With every new trick, strategy and technique I came up with, I tended to think about how they could apply to previous encounters, especially those encounters where we hadn’t come out ahead.
My bugs gave me a way of tracking Night. I could sense her change as she escaped the line of sight of both her allies and our group. I didn’t hurry after her, but I kept my attention turned in her direction as she transformed into that multi-legged, hyper-agile, lightning quick death blender of blades and claws and moved to flank us.
I called Atlas to me.
So long as I could see her coming, she wouldn’t be able to maintain that form as she closed the distance. That didn’t mean her human self was a non-threat. She was prepared to use any possible method to blind or distract so her opponents would take their eyes off her. Flashbang grenades, smoke canisters, a cloak that doubled as a net, complete with hooks to catch on costumes and hair.
Fog was in his cloud form, advancing inexorably towards us. He had the ability to adopt a gaseous body. He was capable of making the gas semisolid, even maintaining a crude hold on objects. If someone happened to breathe him in or swallow that smoke, and he made it solid while it was in their bloodstream, it was capable of doing horrific internal damage.
Shatterbird stopped driving the glass shards at our enemies and began collecting the nearby glass instead. She formed it into a barrier. The join wasn’t perfect, and Regent apparently lacked the fine touch the real Shatterbird had, because he didn’t strategically break the glass to make the joints fit better or create smaller pieces to jam in the holes.
Fog was slowed, but not stopped entirely. He seeped through the cracks.
The high-pitched sound of glass slapping against glass filled the area as Regent patched up the holes by pressing larger pieces of glass over the gaps. Still imperfect, but it was as good a barrier as we might hope for.
Night had paused. She’d clearly wanted to use the smoke cover or the distraction of Fog’s approach to attack, but with his approach delayed, she was slowed down as well.
I was already prepping my bugs, readying with a response of my own.
I was nervous, I had to admit. I’d fought against Leviathan, I’d fought the Nine, but Night was never going to be an opponent I could laugh off.
Fog managed to get enough of himself through the glass that he had leverage enough to break it.
“This power is so hard to use,” Regent complained. “So much to focus on.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“I’m doing fine because she’s helping. I think.”
“Be careful then,” Tattletale said. “Don’t rely on her power.”
“Kind of hard not to, unless you want to let him approach?”
Would Shatterbird cease assisting at the most critical juncture, getting us all killed? It would fit. Unless she was helping only because she didn’t want to die.
“I’m going,” I told them. “Hold down the fort, run if you have to. We’ve basically scored a victory here, it’s just a question of driving it home.”
I
climbed on top of Atlas and flew away from my companions. If my plan failed, I could fly, but Tattletale and Regent couldn’t. Better that she chase me with the others having a chance to escape than a scenario where I led her straight to them.
My swarm swamped Night, catching her alien, angular legs with strands of silk.
Lots of legs, only so much silk. It wasn’t really working. It might have been doable if I had a sense of how her body moved, or how the legs bent, but any time I looped silk around what I might consider a knee-joint, it turned inside out, the silk dropping to the ground.
Irritating.
My bugs weren’t finding anything I could identify as a sensory organ, no eyes or anything of the like. Nothing that pepper spray would have an effect on.
Okay. Something else. I held back with the bugs that had the silk lines, rearranging them as I closed the distance.
The second I rounded the corner to spot Night, she was human again. She pulled her cloak around herself, glancing around until she spotted me.
I swallowed, backing away slowly while keeping her in plain view. My bugs gathered, but not to the extent that they blocked my view of her.
In one fluid motion, she wrapped her cloak around herself and then cast it out so it billowed. She had a canister in her hand, whipping it in my direction.
I caught it in a net of silk strands buoyed by nearly two thousand flying dragonflies, beetles, wasps, hornets and cockroaches.
Night watched as the canister floated off into the air a distance away. I readied two more nets, placing them in the air to the right and left.
I knew what she would do next, but that was mainly because I hadn’t been able to come up with a good way to deal with it. I could trust Grue to handle it, but he wasn’t here. I could use my bugs, with some luck, but even then I wasn’t sure it would have an effect.
She used a flashbang.
Close my eyes or stare dead on into the flash, I’d be momentarily blind either way. I opted for the former, covering my eyes and flying both up and away.
With my swarm sense, I could feel her creating some distance, breaking away and heading for the general direction of the others, moving faster than any car, with far more raw mobility, turning on a dime and easily navigating obstacles. Even before the flashbang went off, I was turning to follow.
I could tell the others were distracted by Fog. Even some of the other members of the Chosen were slowly pulling themselves together. I stepped up the assault with my bugs to make up for the fact that Regent and Shatterbird were otherwise occupied.
That left me to catch Night. She was taking the long way, favoring alleys and going through the ground floor of buildings, which simultaneously let her maintain her monstrous form while forcing her to take just long enough that I could keep up. The fastest path between two points was a straight line, so I had that advantage at least.
So long as I had eyes on her, I could slow her down, keep her from assaulting my teammates. If I could catch her in human form, I might be able to bind her, or at least keep those flashbangs webbed to her belt.
There was the worst case scenario that she’d get close enough to kill someone in the span that a flashbang blinded us—I wasn’t oblivious to that.
I was gaining on her, slowly but surely. My heart pounded in my chest as I sensed her closing the gap between herself and the others, my eyes and my bugs scanning the surroundings so I could calculate the best position. It wouldn’t matter how close I got to Night if there was a building blocking my view of her.
She stopped.
Or, more appropriately, she shifted gears from zig-zagging from one piece of cover to another to running at human speed.
I caught up a few seconds later, stopping Atlas so we circled directly above her.
She glanced around, looked up at me, then bolted for a restaurant with a tattered canopy over what had been an outdoor patio.
She disappeared from my sight for an instant, but she didn’t change.
The smoke canisters came out, but my bugs had lagged behind. Anticipating another rush for my teammates, I piloted Atlas to a position between Night and the others.
The smoke spilled out around her, but again, she didn’t change.
She collapsed to the ground.
Wary of a feint, I approached with care.
Imp stood over Night, holding a taser.
“Got her,” she said. “Fuck yes. You can’t tell me that wasn’t awesome.”
“Good job. Now don’t take your eyes off her. She heals back to pristine condition the second you blink.”
“We take turns blinking?” she asked.
“Sure. Blink on five. One, two, three, four, five…” I said. I waited until the second count and started blinking on three.
We draped Night across Atlas and hurried back toward the others, continuing the count.
Shatterbird had Fog trapped in a box of glass, layers upon layers. Every time a puff of smoke escaped, a layering of glass shards covered the gap. My allies were all standing, and our enemies were soundly defeated. After a quick exchange to ensure we were sharing the duties of watching Night, I freed myself to check the scene with my eyes, rather than my swarm-sense.
Rune was kneeling, bleeding from shallow cuts across her face, chest, ribs, stomach and thighs. She was using her power on a scarf to bind the wounds tight.
Othala was standing off to one side, hurt as well. Victor was bound.
None of them were meeting our gaze. We’d won to the extent that it was embarrassing to them.
“You’re in our territory,” Tattletale told them. “Get out.”
“You’ve taken this whole fucking city as your territory,” Rune retorted, scowling.
“Your point being?” Regent asked.
“Where are we supposed to go?”
“Leave the city, retard.” Imp said.
“You can’t just take the whole city.”
I didn’t feel like Imp and Regent were giving the impression of strength. I spoke before they could. “We already have. We fought the Nine and played a pretty big part in taking out more than half of them.” I pointed at Shatterbird, “Case in point. You took advantage of that to try to claim some territory for yourselves. Not only is that awfully pathetic, but you proved yourselves hypocrites, doing exactly what Hookwolf accused us of doing.”
“We staked out our claim. It’s our right.”
“Your right? On what grounds? Strength? We have you beat there. Did you earn it? No. I think my team has you beat on both points.”
“Now,” Tattletale stepped forward, “Here’s the thing. We can’t let you get away with this unscathed. So we’re taxing you.”
“Tax?” Othala asked.
“Tax. Imp and I are going to step into the basement of that building over there,” Tattletale pointed, “and relieve you of every valuable we can carry.”
“You assholes!” Rune growled. She started to stand, then fell to the ground, hard. Imp had pushed her. I tried to hide my own surprise at the girl’s sudden appearance. The others looked somewhat intimidated as well.
“But that’s not enough, is it? So there’s another tax. We’re borrowing one of your teammates.”
The Chosen weren’t the only ones who looked shocked at the declaration. I snapped my head around to look at Regent. There was no surprise there.
Fuck them. They’d planned this, and they hadn’t told me.
Colony 15.3
“To use a cliché, you can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Tattletale said, a light smile on her face.
“Fuck you,” Othala snarled.
Tattletale hadn’t told me. I could understand if Regent didn’t inform me that they were hoping to enslave someone else, but I counted Tattletale among my few real friends. I had something of a sore spot when it came to being betrayed by friends.
They’d planned to do this at some point today, and I hadn’t been filled in. Was that accidental? We’d exchanged so many calls, I could almost believe that
I’d been forgotten, or that everyone had assumed someone else would be the one to fill me in.
But I couldn’t shake the other possibility. They could have left me in the dark because they knew I’d object. And now that I was filled in on this plan, I couldn’t object without making the group look weak. Tattletale would know that. She would know I wouldn’t screw us over, even with my objections, and this next part of the plan would go ahead whether or not I agreed or not.
Biting my tongue, I walked around until I stood at the very back of the scene, where I could see Night as well as everyone else that was present.
“Victor,” Tattletale said. “You’re the tax payment, so to speak. Your call.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed.
“Consider it an opportunity. You’re bound to pick up something you can use, talent-wise.”
“I won’t betray my team.”
Regent chuckled, not raising his eyes from Night. “Not really getting a choice.”
“The PRT trains its squads in resisting and reacting to master-category attacks. I’ve picked up some things,” Victor’s chin raised a fraction.
Victor had a kind of easy arrogance to him. It wasn’t just the arrogance of someone who thought they were better than everyone around them. It was the arrogance of someone who’d been born and raised thinking they were better, only to have that confidence reinforced and enhanced over the course of their lives.
Even bound by the spider silk, he managed to carry the demeanor of a prince from one of the monarchies of old, transported to the modern era. He had the look, too: a cleft chin, close-cropped hair that had been bleached to a platinum blond and a stare that managed to look simultaneously condescending and angry. He would be angry, obviously, but I’d seen him in situations where he wasn’t trussed up and lying on the ground, and he’d looked the same then. His costume reinforced the image of someone between eras, with a simple black-painted breastplate with a sharp stylized ‘v’ around the neck, a blood-red shirt and black slacks.
The color scheme extended to Othala, who wore something decidedly more traditional as superhero costumes went. Her bodysuit was skintight and tomato red, with a single icon in the center. Like the swastika, it featured a circle with a black border and white center, and a rune in black. It wasn’t a swastika, though, but a diamond with two legs extending from the bottom point, each turning up at the bottom. She’d taken to wearing an eyepatch with the same icon on it in white. Her hair covered enough of that side of her face that it wasn’t obvious.