by wildbow
I penned the final words:
I love you, dad. I’m sorry
—Taylor
I removed the flower from the vase, and laid it at the foot of the headstone. I rolled up the paper and slid it into the vase, then placed it upside-down so the rain wouldn’t filter inside. My dad would be the only one to see it. If someone like the groundskeeper investigated, I didn’t particularly mind.
I stood, stretching. Radley wagged his tail at me, excited to be moving again. He was a happy, easygoing little guy. Had Rachel sent him with me with his personality in mind?
I thought about saying something more to my mom, but the illusion had been shattered. I’d made a decision, and it wasn’t one I’d been prepared to make when I’d left the PRT headquarters. Talking had helped to clarify my thoughts. I didn’t feel as lost as I had, nor as frustrated. I’d been able to pen out an explanation for my dad. Not as long or as in-depth as he deserved, perhaps, but an explanation.
“Thanks for hearing me out,” I said, acutely aware that she wasn’t there, that she wasn’t listening. “I’m going to be busy, so it’ll probably be a while before I drop by again. Sorry.”
I walked away with a lump in my throat, my head held high, and a direction in mind.
Imago 21.3
Regent’s base was in the midst of renovations. The exterior was tame, unassuming, but the interior was becoming something else entirely. The floor and walls were being covered in stone tile, suits of armor stood on either side of the doorway, and I could see ornate chandeliers at one side of the room, each individual segment separated from the others by extensive bubble wrap.
There was a dais at the far end of the room, almost a stage, with a throne laying on its side on top. Four people were working in the room. Workers Tattletale had hired, who would get enough steady employment and money to reward their silence. Two were working on the walls, one worked on the floor, and the fourth was preparing the dais so the throne could be bolted into place.
“Found it,” Regent said. He raised his scepter, tossed it into the air and let it spin twice before catching the handle.
I winced. “Careful. You really don’t want to catch the wrong end and electrocute yourself.”
He only chuckled.
“It’s daylight. It’s fucked up that we’re doing this in the middle of the day,” Imp groused, as we ventured outside. Atlas was waiting, and started half-crawling, half-flying alongside us.
“What does it matter to you?” I asked her. “It’s not like it makes any difference with your power.”
“It’s the principle of it,” Regent said. He was walking briskly to keep up with Imp, Atlas, and me. Despite everything we’d been through, he wasn’t one to exercise or take care of his body, and he huffed just a little to keep his breath. “This is the sort of maneuver you pull in the dead of night.”
I shook my head. “Circumstances are ideal right now. You don’t handicap yourself by trying to conform to any preconceived notions. Keep a goal in mind, look at everything through the lens of that goal, and look for paths to get what you want. If they’re prepared for you, you strike from an unexpected direction. If everyone else is expecting a maneuver from an oblique angle, you take a direct route.”
“See, that sounds like a whole lot of work,” Regent said. “Constantly thinking about that stuff. When do you sit back and chill out?”
“Either you make that kind of thinking a part of yourself, you lose a little sleep to achieve that ‘me’ time, or you don’t get to relax,” I said.
“Doesn’t sound fun at all,” Regent said.
“If it was easy to take over a city, more people would have managed it,” I said. “This is work. There’s always more to be done, whether you’re dealing with your enemies, dealing with your subordinates or coordinating with your allies. If you find you have free time, you’re probably fucking up.”
“Or!” he said, raising a finger, “I could delegate.”
“That’s a recipe for failure,” I told him.
“My dad managed it.”
Heartbreaker, I thought. I was put in mind of the images of Heartbreaker that had made the web. The villain, by virtue of his personal, extensive harem, had a whole cadre of women virtually climbing over each other for the chance to fawn over him and worship him. The pictures were a consequence of that, released by his ‘girls’, as Regent had termed them. Each picture depicted a man in his thirties or forties, depending on the time the picture in question had been taken. He had black hair, the scruff of a beard, and was invariably seen sitting or reclining on couches and beds, often shirtless, with women at the periphery of the image. He oozed confidence and raw sexuality, languid, more lanky than athletic.
I could envision Regent in a very similar picture. Years older, grown to his full height and proportions, surrounded not by women, but by the people he had claimed as his tools. Capes he controlled with his power. Acceptable targets perhaps, people who would be destined for the Birdcage or long sentences in prison, but still people. A different underlying theme than sexuality: Regent would be sitting casually on his throne, pampered in a very different way than I’d seen with his father, having been fed, washed and dressed by a half-dozen pairs of hands working in unison. Regent controlled people so absolutely that he would essentially be pampering himself; it was a charade. Almost the inverse of his father, in some ways, but still narcissistic at its core.
The idea bothered me more than I wanted to admit, and it bothered me in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. Did I not want him to become that? I did. I wanted him to be powerful, and that was what he’d naturally become, given his personality and powers. I wanted him to customize his lair like he was, because he’d inevitably have people he was controlling in there, and it would be worth a thousand times the amount it cost if it helped him convey a certain image.
Maybe part of it was the ease with which I could put Imp in that imaginary crowd of people who were waiting on him hand and foot.
I’d have to talk to Grue about that.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Regent said.
“Oh!” Imp closed the distance between us, wrapping both of her arms around one of mine, “Did he win the argument? Tell me he won the argument.”
“We’re discussing, not debating,” I said.
“People say that sort of thing when they’re losing,” she said.
I ignored her. “I was just wondering, Regent… do you really want to follow in your dad’s footsteps?”
He didn’t respond right away. He looked away from Imp and I both, as if he were idly observing the scenery.
“You’re a little bit of an asshole, aren’t you?” Regent asked.
“Only when I have to be,” I said, mildly surprised at the reaction.
“Fuck it,” Imp said, letting go of my arm. “Us two lesser members of the group need a little victory here and there. Need to win arguments, get more rep.”
“That’s why we’re here,” I said. “If everything goes well, today should serve several purposes, and one of those was that I wanted to see how you two are operating.”
“Great,” Regent commented, giving Imp a look. “Mom’s watching over us, making sure we’re doing it right.”
“For any of our enemies with the sense to realize it, you two are the scariest members of the Undersiders,” I said. “Let’s focus on using that.”
“I’m already using it,” Imp said.
“Probably,” I replied.
“You mean this is about me,” Regent said. “You ask us both to come along to tutor us in how to freak people out, but Imp doesn’t need any help, so this has to be about me.”
I suppressed a sigh. These two. “Not only you. Imp was doing a terrific job of terrorizing troublemakers in the territory she shared with Grue. She graduated to owning her own territory, and the fact that she’s there has been keeping Valefor and Eligos at bay. That’s good. But it can’t hurt to get an objective opinion and find out how to do it better. I do that,
with Grue and Tattletale’s feedback.”
“I’m versatile,” Regent said. “Give me credit.”
“I’m not saying you aren’t, I’m saying we can always stand to improve,” I replied.
Regent tossed his scepter into the air and caught it. It bugged me, the idea that he might accidentally taze himself and collapse, with some bystander catching the thing on video. He knew it bugged me, and it was undoubtedly a very deliberate way to get on my case. I ignored it.
I thought about what Imp had done in Grue’s territory; Grue had filled me in on the basics and I’d heard more from people who’d been in that area. As standalone individuals, none of the members of our team had fully matured. We were finding our way, figuring out the roles we wanted and needed to take, adjusting our images.
Who would Imp be, a couple of years down the line? It was maybe bizarre to think about the future, with the way Tattletale had outlined the possible ends of the world, but it was defeatist to let things slide because things might end prematurely. I’d seen Imp change from someone on the periphery of the group, struggling to find a position, to a lesser terror. She’d cut down superpowered clones with ease, and she was fearless and reckless in a way that could only ease her journey down a bloodier path.
Would Imp become an assassin? At age eighteen or twenty, would she be an unholy terror, coldly and remorselessly executing enemies who couldn’t even be aware enough to guard against her? If Tattletale erased all records of Imp, if we employed measures to restrict people from tracking her on video cameras and the like, what might Imp become?
Both Regent as a successor to Heartbreaker and Imp as a murderer with a body count were possible. Even likely.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to do about that. With Imp, maybe I could have words with Grue, but Regent…
I was still thinking on the subject of Regent, searching for an angle I could use to convince him, when I was distracted. My swarm noted a number of soft movements, like a flurry of leaves in the wind.
Autumn was months away, there weren’t many trees around, and there wasn’t wind.
“Found them,” I said.
“Which?” Regent asked.
“Haven. The Fallen will be nearby. We’ve got Rosary in a combat mode, and Halo’s not in the air, as far as I can see, so they’re obviously geared up for a fight. In your territory,” I said, eyeing Regent.
“I could’ve done something if Tattletale called me first.”
I drew myself against a building, increasing the number of bugs I was using to scout for trouble. “What would you have done?”
“Waited until they were done fighting each other, go after the stragglers.”
“There’s a lot of flaws with that idea,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’m flexible. I could figure something out.”
The more I thought on it, the less sure I was that there was any way it’d really work. It was an easy way out.
I had a growing suspicion that Regent was interested in being in charge for more for the sake of being in charge than anything else. It made his position tenuous because he wasn’t doing much to hold it. If this was his modus operandi, then he risked being seen as more of a hyena that preyed on the weak than someone powerful.
“So… if Haven won, they’d arrest Valefor or Eligos, cart the pair off to jail and then leave. What would you do?”
“Don’t know. Would have to see the situation for myself.”
“Or if Valefor won, what would you even do? The members of Haven would be too dangerous to get near.”
“Again, I don’t know,” he said. He glanced at Imp. “Today’s going to be a fun day.”
I frowned.
Rosary wasn’t close, but her presence was unmistakable. Bugs I’d settled on a car were scattered into the air, carried aloft on paper-thin slices of stainless steel and glass. I had them take flight, returning in the general direction of the car, measured the progress of her power as more of the debris filled the air, surrounding her. I knew of her from some internet browsing and a few videos, but this was concrete information. They were details I could use in the event that I had to fight her.
Three or four seconds in all, for her power to erase the car, scattering it into the air as a storm of incredibly light, thin flakes of matter. Those same flakes flew around her like a tornado.
She raised one hand, covered in a fingerless glove with hard, metallic feathers or scales at the edges. The storm of petals altered in direction and intensity, the flakes flying forward. A small few of my bugs died where the flakes struck them at the right angle and speed. A storm of tiny, fragile blades. A lot of the petals were actually bouncing off of my wasps, bumblebees and cockroaches, leaving me suspicious that it would take a good while to kill someone with her power.
Up until the point where the petals converged together, reforming into a car tire, ten feet in the air. A man hurried to leap out of the way before it struck him. I realized it was Eligos. He wasn’t wearing the Endbringer costume. Something similar, but without the same theme. He hurried out of the way as more tires appeared above him.
“We’re going on the offensive,” I said. “We don’t come out looking like the top dogs if either of the two groups win.”
“We sucker punch them,” Regent said.
“Better to forewarn them just enough that it doesn’t feel like a sucker punch,” I told him.
“Don’t you get it?” Imp said. She feigned a condescending tone, “It doesn’t count if we don’t do it the hardest way possible.”
“It won’t be that hard,” I told them. I closed my eyes. “Let’s focus. Rosary. Deconstruction and reconstitution of matter, minor telekinesis with the fragments she creates. Apparently she can take things apart and then reform them so they fall on you.”
“Not a problem,” Imp said.
“Eligos manipulates wind, creates blades of telekinetically altered air that grow as they travel and boomerang back to him.”
“You’d be better at handling him,” Regent said.
“His wind will probably mess with my bugs. We take him together. One-two punch.”
“Right.”
“Halo packs a special ring. Kind of like Sundancer, but the thing doesn’t burn. It’s a hoop with a cutting edge, and it acts as a forcefield generator and spits out lasers.”
In the distance, Rosary was blocking Eligos’s path by reconstituting two trucks, blocking off one road.
“I take Halo?” Regent asked.
“Do. That leaves Valefor. I’ve got him,” I said.
I paused, bringing my swarm to the battlefield.
I’d used Atlas to travel to Regent’s territory, and I’d walked a short distance. Throughout, I’d been gathering flying insects and bugs. I’d been forming silk threads and cords.
Now they rose, flying in formations, just over the tops of the buildings, as they approached Rosary and Eligos. They meshed together into a barrier, nestled close enough to one another to filter out sunlight.
The area darkened visibly, and the droning of the bugs filled the air.
Rays of golden light speared into the swarm. They were persistent, unending, five steady beams that concentrated on areas where the bugs were thickest. Halo.
That left only one unknown. Valefor had to be somewhere nearby. The second he got a glimpse of me, it was over.
My swarm hit Eligos and Rosary. Eligos created a strong wind that whipped around him, driving the bugs away. Rosary used her power to shred the silk lines. In the face of the biting insects, however, she couldn’t do as much. The petals around her cut into the swarm, but it was minimal damage to a great many attackers.
She gathered the petals together to create a car without either wheels or a driver’s side door, and though she’d formed it with some bugs trapped inside, she climbed in and had the petals reconstitute into a door, creating a perfect seal.
Eligos put an end to that when he sent a blade of wind at the back of the car, shearing one corner of the veh
icle. My bugs flowed into the open area, covering Rosary from head to toe. Her mask was hard, around her eyes, cheekbones and nose, ending in a sharp point, an etched metal plate, worked into her hood. It didn’t cover her lower face and it surrounded but didn’t cover her eyes.
“Come, and stay close,” I said, drawing the bugs around us. I walked briskly forward. Rosary had her petals, I had my bugs. If Valefor wanted us, he’d have to be clever. “And Regent?”
“What?”
“I’m going to ask you a question later, and I’ll have my arms folded. I want you to lie.”
“Lie?” Imp asked, aghast. “So dishonest!”
“We’re honest villains, Skitter,” Regent said, taking a stern tone. “We earn our victories the right way, not through deceit and dishonesty.”
I rolled my eyes.
As we approached, I found Halo in my reach. My swarm approached him, and his halo zipped to his side, five feet in diameter and razor-edged. A force field protected the hero.
He was still rooted in place. One less person to deal with.
“Regent,” I said, touching his shoulder. My bugs spread out to create a clearing around us, and I pointed.
He turned to face Eligos, and I parted the bugs. Eligos was wearing only the bodysuit that went under whatever armor he’d been wearing, and a mask that covered his face, leaving only one eye exposed.
With a wave of his hand, Regent knocked Eligos over, causing one leg to buckle just as the other was involuntarily straightened. Eligos sprawled, and the wind briefly cut out. My swarm descended on him, and I began binding him in silk.
I had Atlas take to the air, as I worked more silk cords into the surroundings. “Be nice if this works.”
“What are you doing?” Imp. Her presence caught me off guard.
“Threads,” I said.
“He can cut threads,” Imp commented. “It won’t work.”
“I know he cuts threads,” I said. “Watch.”
Atlas passed over a space between two buildings, then dropped out of the sky. The string that extended between him and Eligos went taut. I had a series of threads strung between two buildings, and Atlas served as a counterweight, so Eligos could be hauled into the air.