Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “I’ve studied your powers,” Armsmaster told us, tapping the butt of his weapon on the ground. Every bug within fifteen feet of him dropped out of the sky, dead. “This was over from the moment you stepped into the room.”

  Miss Militia stepped out of the darkness beside the stage, with what looked like a machine gun in her hands, Regent as her hostage. He didn’t have his scepter.

  Fuck.

  6.06

  “Surrender,” Armsmaster ordered us.

  “No,” Grue retorted.

  “You’re only going to embarrass yourself if you prolong this.”

  “We have you outnumbered five to three, eight to three if you count the dogs,” Grue answered. “I can see your buddy Velocity lurking over there.”

  “What do you hope to accomplish? I admit, it was clever to control the battlefield, to dictate each engagement so it occurred on your terms, and to use our own weapons against us… but those weapons no longer work. None of your weapons work,” Armsmaster turned his head to look at where Miss Militia had Regent at gunpoint. “Which means you can stop trying to use your power on me, Regent. I’ve got a little blinking light in the corner of my H.U.D. telling me you’re trying something. I’ve set up psychic and empathic shielding, to protect myself from you and Tattletale.”

  I glanced at Tattletale. He was psychically shielded against her? How did that work?

  Then I remembered. When we’d gone up against Glory Girl and Panacea, hadn’t Tattletale said she read minds? And now Armsmaster had bad info and was figuring he was immune.

  “I don’t need to read you,” she told him, “You’re the only one with shields, so your teammates and the PRT staff don’t have any psychic shields up, and I can read them to get anything I need. You’re not the best inventor, but like most tinkers, you’ve got a knack. Yours just happens to be condensing and integrating technology. Only works in your immediate presence, but still, you can stick way more technology in a space than has a right to be there… like your Halberd.”

  Armsmaster frowned. “You’re lying.”

  Damn it. I wish I could’ve told her he had a lie detector built into his helm. But I couldn’t without explaining that I knew him.

  Tattletale took it in stride, grinning, “Sure, fibbed about the reading minds bit. Not about your weapon and power. Let’s see… to deal with my buddy Grue, you’ve made that thing a fancy tuning stick. Sensing vibrations in the air, translating them into images with that fancy helm of yours?”

  Grue cracked his knuckles. He’d gotten the message. Darkness wasn’t going to do much. Armsmaster, for his part, gripped his weapon tighter. An unspoken threat to Tattletale.

  “And the ass-end of that stick of yours is using the brass in between the floor tiles to help transmit an electrical charge to the area around you for fancy bug zapping. Did you set that up before coming here tonight, knowing the way the floor would be put together?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Guess not. Happy coincidence that the setup you put together works as well as it does in here, then.”

  Again, no reply. She grinned a fraction wider. She went on, “You can tell I’m lying, huh? That’s awesome.”

  Armsmaster’s weapon turned to point in her general direction. She didn’t back down.

  “So you’ll know I’m telling the truth when I say your team hate your guts. They know you care more about rising from your position as the seventh most prominent member of the Protectorate than you do about them or the city.”

  In the span of a second, the blade of the halberd broke into three pieces, reconfigured, and fired in grappling-hook style at Tattletale. The tines closed together, forming a loose ball shape as it flew, striking her solidly in the stomach. She crumpled to the ground, arms around her middle.

  The head of the weapon reeled in and snapped back into place atop the pole.

  “Bastard,” Grue spoke.

  “Apparently, according to your teammate,” Armsmaster replied, seemingly unbothered.

  I gathered my bugs, poising them near and above Armsmaster in case I needed them to act quickly.

  Armsmaster turned his head in my direction, “Skitter? You, especially, do not want to irritate me any more, tonight.”

  The bottom of his Halberd tapped the ground, and the bugs perished. I glanced at the floor as he did it. Sure enough, the broad tiles had little lines of metal -bronze?- dividing them.

  There was a flurry of action where Regent and Miss Militia were. She appeared to drop the machine gun, and Regent took that chance to pull away. He didn’t get one step before she regained her balance and dropped into a low kick that swept his legs out from under him. Her machine gun dissolved when it was halfway to the ground, turning into a shimmer of dark green energy that arced back up to her hand. It rematerialized into a gleaming steel machete. Regent stopped his struggles the second she rested the point of the bladed weapon against the side of his throat.

  Armsmaster watched it all unfold without twitching a muscle. Even if he didn’t care much about his teammates, he apparently trusted Miss Militia to handle herself.

  “Grue. You’ve shown you can dismiss the effects of your power,” Armsmaster spoke, “Do so now.”

  “Somehow,” Grue retorted, “I’m not seeing a major reason why I should listen.”

  “Um, got a sword pressing against my neck here, guy,” Regent pointed out.

  “…Not seeing a major reason,” Grue repeated himself.

  Regent let out a little laugh, “Fuck you.”

  Armsmaster dispassionately watched the exchange, then spoke, dead serious, “Look at it this way. If there are witnesses, Miss Militia will have a far harder time selling the idea that she stabbed your friend in the throat in self defense.”

  He glanced in the direction of his second in command, and Miss Militia gave a small nod in response.

  Would she? Probably not, I suspected. Could we risk it? That choice was up to Grue.

  Grue glanced over at where Regent lay. After a second, he made the darkness fade. The people in the crowd were mostly huddled on the ground, trying to fend off the stinging and biting swarm. The dogs lurked at the edges of the room, and Bitch was astride Angelica. Velocity, in his red costume with the racing stripes down either side and two stripes meeting in a ‘v’ at his chest, wasn’t that far from her. I suspected they had been squaring off.

  I found Emma in the crowd. Her dad was huddled over both of his daughters, as though he could shield them from any danger, and Emma’s mom was hugging her around the shoulders.

  Somehow, that really pissed me off.

  Armsmaster glanced my way, “And the bugs.”

  Reluctantly, I pulled them away from the crowd. I settled the flying bugs on the intact portions of the ceiling. I glanced up at the bugs and sighed. Then I glanced at Emma again.

  This was really not how I wanted this to end. Me arrested, my scheme a failure, Emma getting off scott free with a family, friends and no major consequences for all the shit she’d pulled?

  “Sir,” I spoke, trying to sound confident. Would Emma recognize my voice? “Let me check on Tattletale.”

  “You can do that once you’ve surrendered,” he spoke. He changed his posture so his Halberd was pointed in my general direction. I winced. I did not want to get the same treatment Tattletale had received. Or would he not do it with people watching?

  My eyes darted in the direction of the crowd, to Tattletale, who didn’t look up to talking. All eyes were on the scene. Why had he gone out of his way to get an audience? Could I use it? What had he been so upset about, when I’d met him at the ferry? What had Tattletale gone out of her way to stress to us about Armsmaster?

  Reputation.

  “I need to make sure you didn’t do any serious damage,” I spoke, just a hint of accusation in my voice.

  “She’s fine.”

  “I want to verify that for myself,” I said, standing. How far can I push this? “Please, she was surrendering and you hit her so
hard.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “The fuck she is!” Regent joined in, “Tattletale walks up to you, ready to be cuffed, and you smacked her across the room, you fucking lunatic!”

  I didn’t dare to glance at the crowd. Armsmaster was the person we needed to get a reaction out of, here.

  “Enough. This is a fabrication,” Miss Militia spoke, her voice raised maybe a bit to carry to the rest of the room.

  “Why do you think we’re so reluctant to surrender, if that’s the treatment we’ll get!?” Regent shouted, “It’s not like we’re not totally fucked!” Miss Militia moved the machete to remind him it was there.

  Armsmaster’s head turned toward me. This was my huge gamble. How would he respond? If he called me out as a traitor within the Undersiders, would people buy it, would my team buy it, or would it only hurt his credibility? He didn’t know that Tattletale would be able to tell it was truth.

  “Miss Militia has a blade at my teammate’s throat,” Grue broke the silence, “I think it’s pretty clear you don’t pull your punches.”

  Armsmaster turned to his teammate, “Perhaps a less lethal weapon would be more appropriate.”

  Miss Militia’s eyebrows knit together in concern, “Sir?”

  “Now.” He left no room for argument. Then, to ensure they still had control of the situation, he turned to his nearest available hostage.

  Me.

  I was flat on my back and couldn’t back away fast enough to escape, especially with my having to slip my arms from the straps that held the tank of containment foam to my back. He pointed the head of his weapon at me as he strode over to me, the threat of his firing it serving to keep me subdued. I glanced at Grue, but he was frozen, two of his teammates at the mercy of the city’s leading heroes. Tattletale was struggling to her feet, but she couldn’t accomplish much.

  Above Regent, the sword shimmered and turned into that black and green energy. In that moment, Regent struck, drawing his knees to his chest, then kicking up and to the side to drive both of his heels into Miss Militia’s upper stomach. A second later, he shoved both of his hands in the direction of her collarbone.

  The black-green energy of her power continued to arc around her without solidifying as the contents of her stomach began violently heaving their way out of her mouth, spattering into the flag-scarf that covered the lower half of her face and overflowing onto the floor. Regent had to roll to one side to avoid being bathed in vomit.

  I took advantage of the distraction and brought every bug in the room down from the ceiling, sending a fair majority of them toward Armsmaster. He swiped at his face to remove them, then lifted his weapon. I grabbed for the pole with both hands before it could strike the ground, and pulled myself across the floor to situate my body between the pole and the ground.

  It didn’t feel like I thought it might, the electrical charge. As the end of the Halberd made contact with my body, it was as though someone had dropped a handful of live snakes onto my chest and they were writhing in place there, a single tendril rushing up the skin of my right arm and over my fingertips. It didn’t hurt much at all.

  And the bugs around Armsmaster didn’t die. Very few of the ones on me, even, perished.

  I’d known spider silk was insulated to some degree. I was really glad that it was insulated enough. Really, really glad my interference was enough to stop the energy from conducting through the area and zapping the bugs out of the air.

  “Hm,” looming over me, Armsmaster made a noise of disapproval, “Not smart.”

  “Bitch! Dogs!” I hollered, “Grue! Shadow me!”

  Of all the times to lapse into caveman grammar. Still, he smothered me and Armsmaster in darkness.

  When Armsmaster managed to wrest the Halberd from my hands, I had enough bugs on him to tell he was bringing the bottom end of his Halberd down hard against the floor, away from me. My bugs didn’t die, and continued to settle on the exposed skin of his lower face, crawl up under his visor. The charge or whatever other stuff he had going on to direct it wasn’t conducting through the darkness.

  Before he could strike at me, I headed in the other direction. Staying in close proximity to Armsmaster wasn’t a good idea, with my power being one that worked at range, and him being the close-quarters combatant. I felt him move away from me, clawing the bugs away from his mouth and nose, heading out the opposite side of the cloud of darkness to strike the ground, kill off the swarm I’d set on him and then turn his attention to the charging dogs.

  I wasn’t two steps outside of the darkness when I had Velocity in my face.

  Battery and Velocity were both speedsters of a sort, giving them the ability to move at a ridiculous pace. They were very different kinds of speedster, though. As I interpreted it, from all the stuff I’d read online and in the magazines and interviews, Battery could charge up and move at enhanced speeds for very short periods of time, sort of like how Bitch’s power pumped up her dogs, but concentrated into a few brief moments. It was a physiological change, altering her biology and then altering it back before it became too much on her body. The actual act of moving at the speeds these guys could manage was an incredible strain on the body. There were only one or two parahumans on the planet who could manage that kind of movement without any workarounds or limitations, and Battery and Velocity weren’t among them.

  Velocity, in contrast to Battery, was more like Shadow Stalker. He changed states, and while I had no idea what this meant exactly, whether it was him shifting partially into another dimension or altering the way time or physics worked in relation to himself, I did know that it made him able to move very fast, without needing to rest like Battery did. Fast enough that my wasps couldn’t really land on him, and those that did were dispatched before they could start stinging.

  The drawback, though, was that while he was moving like that, he wasn’t hitting as hard, probably for the same reasons he wasn’t shattering his bones by hammering his feet against the ground ten times a second, getting torn to shreds by friction or running out of oxygen due to an inability to breathe. His speed came with a reduced ability to affect the world around him and be affected by it. He couldn’t hit as hard, couldn’t hold or move things as easily. An effective loss of strength proportionate to how fast he was capable of moving.

  So as fast as he was moving, having him hit me wasn’t much worse than getting punched by an eight year old.

  Problem was, he was hitting me a lot. His perceptions were ramped up, too, which meant he had the luxury of what must have been seconds in his own senses to see my reactions, calculate the best place to stick that next punch or kick to knock me off balance or inflict pain. It was less like being in a fistfight and more like being caught in a gale-force wind that had every intent of screwing me over.

  Velocity was forcing me to back up, stumble and overall just working to herd me in one direction – towards an open window. Either he’d force me through and leave me hanging from the ledge, helpless to avoid arrest, or I’d have to give up or let myself be knocked to the ground instead, at which point it would be pretty much over. Once I was down, he’d either keep up the onslaught until another cape could finish me off, or he’d turn off his power long enough to knock me over the head a few times with a chair or something.

  Across the room, Grue was working with two of the dogs and Bitch to keep Armsmaster hemmed in, while one of the dogs and Regent were keeping Miss Militia out of action.

  I couldn’t win this one on my own.

  “Grue!” I hollered. I got struck in the mouth three times before I could bring an arm up to fend Velocity off and speak again, “Need cover!”

  He spared me a glance and a blast of his darkness. In an instant, I was blind and deaf, with only my bugs to go by.

  But Velocity was slowed down, and I had my suspicions that it wasn’t just the fact that he had to use his hands to find me before striking. Grue had said that Shadow Stalker’s powers were somehow less effective in his darkness. Could t
hat apply to Velocity too? Or was it just the extra resistance of Grue’s power versus normal air, combined with Velocity’s low strength?

  My bugs were now successfully settling on him, oddly giving me a better sense of his movements than my eyes had, and I was directing them not to sting or bite, so he wouldn’t have an easy time finding them. They began to cluster on him, and somehow I felt like that was slowing him down even more.

  The onslaught had been softened, and he wasn’t half as effective at keeping me off balance, now. He couldn’t effectively see my posture to know the optimal places to strike, so I was able to get my feet firmly on the ground. I lashed out twice with my fists, but my hits lacked impact. Something to do with his power, I suspected, as well as his ability to move fast enough to roll with any hits he felt connecting.

  So I grabbed a weapon he couldn’t react to, my pepper spray, and directed a stream of it into his face. Then I instructed the bugs I’d gathered on him to bite and sting.

  The effect was immediate, and dramatic. You’ve never really seen someone flip out until you’ve seen a speedster flip out. He fell to the ground, stood, tumbled over a chair, then was up the next second, lunging for a table, blindly patting it down in the hopes of finding something to wash his eyes out with. I felt him slow down dramatically, increasing his own strength enough to allow himself to check the cups and pitchers.

  I had bugs on the table he was searching, and the only liquid there was wine. Anticipating he would continue looking for some relief, I moved closer to the table nearest me.

  Sure enough, he darted over to the same table and began searching. I took one long step to my left, reached behind my back, and gripped the foam handle of my extendable baton with both hands. Like a golf club, I swung it up and between his legs.

  My rationale was that I needed to hamper his mobility, but I didn’t want to deliver any permanent injury, which was a possibility if I hit him in the knee or spine. Besides, the Protectorate had top notch costume designers, and what male superhero with an expensive costume would go out without a cup? Right?