“Eidolon’s gone quiet,” Tattletale said. “He might be changing powers, chasing at a distance to safely keep track of her while he adjusts.”
“I’ll try to signal him,” I said. “Let him know we’re here, and that we’re engaging Noelle if and when we’ve managed the clones and we see an opportunity.”
“Hopefully he doesn’t accidentally wipe us off the face of the planet,” Regent joked.
“Hopefully,” I echoed him, except I wasn’t joking.
“Then I’ll suggest that this can be where we part ways,” Tattletale said. “I’ll take Imp, I can do more good with a phone and computer, and she’s no good to anyone right now.”
I nodded. I helped Imp climb down to the others.
“Good luck.”
Bitch whistled, and Bentley sprang into motion once more.
The people inside the building lobby were only now starting to recover from whatever Noelle’s power had done to them. Their clones hadn’t suffered any such drawbacks, though, and the abuse that had been heaped on the victims was more than making up for their recovery speed. They were helpless.
None of the victims were standing. I reached forward, putting one hand on the chain that Rachel was using to keep Bastard close.
She looked back at me.
“Clothesline!” I raised my voice to be heard over the rushing wind.
Rachel let some chain out and caught it under her left foot, forcing it lower. She managed to hook it on one of the growths of bone of Bentley’s ribcage.
We stampeded into the building lobby, through the hole Noelle had made, and Bitch whistled, flicking the chain as Bentley and Bastard passed through the space.
“Left!” she shouted, while steering Bentley right.
The chain was just low enough to catch the standing and crouching clones. The clones were caught by either the chain or by the bodies of their fellow clones, pulled back en-masse, drawn together into a tangle of bodies and distorted body parts. I moved my bugs through their midst to ensure they were all mutants. There was only one innocent who’d been dragged long with them. His clone had a grip on his clothing, and hadn’t let go when the chain had caught it.
“Getting down,” I said, sliding off the dog’s back. I hurried to the mass of clones before they could get themselves in order, drew my knife and slashed the hand that gripped the one innocent. I managed to pull him free without any of the clones hitting or grabbing me.
I was left coughing by the exertion and the pain in my side. Bitch steered Bentley to put his bulk between me and the clones.
“I got ‘em,” she said.
“I’ll handle the others,” I told her.
“Right,” she grunted the word. “Bastard, hurt ‘em! Bentley, kill! Kill!”
The canines threw themselves into the mass of clones the chain had caught.
There were three clones in the remaining group. One continued thrashing her alter-ego, while the other two stood to face me. I held my knife in one hand, drew my baton with the other and flicked it out to its full length. Not nearly as threatening as either of the canines, but I’d make do.
It was odd that Rachel was having Bastard hold back, being limited only to a ‘hurt’ command. Come to think of it, she’d had Bentley do the killing when fighting the Vista-clone, too.
My rib throbbed even now, just from riding Bentley and hauling the one victim out of the mass. I was left breathing hard, though the exertion had been mild. My stamina wasn’t a tenth of what it might otherwise be, to the point that I was worried I might get dizzy, start coughing or wind up too tired to fight if it came down to a straight hand-to-hand brawl.
I couldn’t afford to take it easy, though. Where I might otherwise have tried to distract them or buy enough time for Bentley to finish off the others and deal with these guys, the person that the female clone at the back was thrashing wasn’t going to last long. The two who were facing me were both men, both bigger and tougher than they might have been as humans, one fat, the other tall and broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted to the point of being a caricature.
My swarm was my best offense and my best defense, here. My bugs went for eyes and ears, and that was excuse enough for the two mutants to charge me.
They were half blind, and the mass of bugs that clung to me billowed out to mask my location. I started to move to my left, but I felt the fat one veer slightly in that direction and chose to head between them, instead.
The pair stumbled forward into my swarm, arms swinging wildly in a blind attempt to hit me. I ducked low, then moved forward to the mass of fallen and wounded. The female clone had her more normal self by the neck, and was repeatedly raising her and slamming her down. If someone else’s leg wasn’t in the way, she might have had her head dashed against the ground. As it was, a beating was still a beating, and something vital was bound to give sooner or later.
The clone looked up at me as I approached, still cloaked in a thick cloud of bugs. I realized why she hadn’t stood to face me. Her left leg was gone, barely a flipper. She raised her arms in self defense, and I batted one aside with my baton before stabbing her just above the collarbone.
They’re not people. They’re mockeries.
The small, helpless sounds she made as blood bubbled around the throat-wound weren’t helping my attempts to assuage conscience.
Damn Noelle, damn her for making me do this.
“You leave Steph alone!” the fat clone bellowed.
The words caught me off guard as much as the fact that he’d seen the attack. He charged, and I swiftly backed up, bringing my weapons to the ready.
He didn’t come after me. He stopped by ‘Steph’, the one-legged clone with the fatal throat wound.
“You care about her?” I asked.
“She’s Steph,” he said.
“I… what?” My train of thought was interrupted further by the snarling and gnashing of Bentley fighting the clones. One tried to break away from the group to come after me, but Bentley caught him, striking him flat against the ground with both front paws, like how a cat might pounce on a mouse.
“She’s Steph. She’s Steph. Of course I care. Fucking bugs!” He lashed out with one arm, as if he could hurt the swarm, drive them away. His arms folded around the clone-Steph.
I pulled the attacking bugs away, leaving only enough to track his movements. I wasn’t sure I wanted to open up a line of dialogue, but my conscience couldn’t afford to let me not. ”But… what about the person she was beating up? You don’t care about the real Steph?”
“Ignored me. Looked down on me because I was fat. Fuck her,” he spoke with such force that my bugs could feel the spit flying from his mouth.
“She’s still Steph, isn’t she?”
“Bitch. Brushing me off. Made it so we were friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend. Bitch,” he said.
He let the mutant-clone Steph drop limp to the ground, clenched and unclenched a fist. “Fuck her. Fuck you for killing Steph.”
“Why do this? Why hurt people?”
“I’m a soldier,” he said, his words dull. “It’s what I am.”
I sensed his girth, used my swarm to sense his equally heavy alter-ego. “You… don’t strike me as a soldier.”
“It’s what I am.”
“Is… is he a soldier?” I gestured in the direction of his other self.
“No. Fat fuck could never be a soldier. Kill him. Dig my fingers into that gut and rip and tear until he dies. Strangle him. No willpower, hide from the world behind that disgusting fat. Choke the life out of him. He’s useless anyways. Waste of air, waste of a life.”
Projecting much?
“And when he’s dead? What will you do?”
He moved toward me, and I backed away a step, bringing my bugs closer to him. He went still again, glanced around. “Kill others. Kill Dad and Mom and Sammy and the cats. Kill teachers and classmates and burn my house and burn the school. Fuckers. All of them. Looking down on me.”
His words st
ruck a chord, and it was the closest experience I’d ever had to the sort of flashback that happened in the movies. I could remember being in the school bathroom, dripping with juice. Being so frustrated, so angry, so hurt that I just wanted to lash out.
Was that all he had left? Was that all he was?
“And if they all die?”
“Kill others. Burn this fucking disgusting city. Burn this fucking country. Keep burning, keep killing.”
“Do you really think that’ll make anything better?”
“No.”
“Then why? Is there any way I can get you to stop?”
“No. Won’t stop. I’m a soldier.”
“Whose soldier? Hers? Noelle’s? The monster who spat you out?”
“No.”
“And you?” I asked, turning so my back wasn’t to the broad shouldered one in the midst of my swarm.
He didn’t answer. He charged for me instead. The obese one took the opportunity to come after me from a different angle.
Again, I drew my swarm around me, put each of my bugs on the offensive to distract, and used my swarm-sense to figure out where they were moving, getting out of the way.
Ducking low, I felt a sharp pain in my side. I grunted in pain and barked out a cough. The cough made me need to cough more, which only helped inform them of my position.
The coughing fit took the strength out of me at a time when I needed to move most. Swimging blindly, the fat one struck me across the face. My mask absorbed the worst of the impact, and I stuck my knife out in his general direction, sticking it into the general area of his chest, hitting bone rather than anything substantial.
“Bugs fucking hurt,” he growled, apparently oblivious to the pain of the knife wound. “Stop it!”
He swung again, but I managed to get out of the way. With the stinging, biting insects in his eyes, crawling into his mouth and nose as he talked to gag him, I managed to distract him enough that I could safely retreat. My entire body shook as I suppressed coughs, and I dropped to one knee to try and catch my breath. I hoped that being closer to the ground would mean I didn’t get hit; I was too breathless to move out of the way if he swung a punch at me.
The broad-shouldered one stepped close, his cheeks wet with the vitreous fluids of torn eyeballs and blood where my swarm had dug in deep. I suppressed another cough and slid my knife’s blade against the back of his knees. It might not have cut deep enough if he’d been wearing clothes, but he was naked, and there was nothing to stop the knife.
He collapsed just in front of me. I hesitated a moment, then stabbed my knife into the side of his throat.
They’re not real. Not real people.
Bentley had finished tearing apart the other eight or so clones, and at Rachel’s instruction was closing in on the fat clone. I moved my bugs to give her a clearer view.
I was ready for him to make a break for it. He didn’t. He turned toward us, clenching and unclenching his fist.
There’s no saving them. Whatever had happened to their heads while they were grown inside Noelle, they’re twisted. Their perspectives are warped.
“Stop him,” I said. “Finish them, Rachel.”
Rachel whistled, and Bentley leaped. The clone tried to come after me, but didn’t make it two steps before the dog got to him.
“Feels wrong,” I said. Rachel gave me a hand in climbing back up.
She didn’t offer a reply. It wouldn’t feel wrong to her.
I started searching with my bugs, looking in the direction Noelle had last gone.
Without even the ability to tentatively feel Noelle out with my bugs, I was having trouble keeping track of her. Every passing minute meant that there was more sunlight, but even with that I couldn’t see Noelle. It was as though a painter was working with white and black paint, throwing handfuls of it onto a canvas from three feet away. It didn’t convey a picture so much as a blurry, indistinct abstract.
I should have been able to follow movement, to track Noelle by the way the patches of light and dark changed. The issue was that there were countless things moving across my radius. Water was running where some streets were still draining, plastic bags blew in the wind and shadows shifted as the sun and clouds moved. Each changed the canvas, altered the blurry, muddy blotches of light and dark.
I could hear Grue give an order, and his group started moving with purpose.
“Grue just saw her, I think,” I said. I pointed the way.
I’d started another coughing fit by the time we caught up with the others, and I could feel my skull pounding as if it had a three pound heart inside of it instead of a brain.
“She found some of the other capes who were holding position,” Grue said, when I’d managed to get my breath. “Lights in the distance.”
“Fuck,” I said. I was about to comment on how we were too close to Ballistic’s headquarters for comfort, but remembered that Grace and Tecton were listening. I stopped myself before the words left my mouth and coughed instead.
“You okay?” Tecton asked.
“Little worse for wear.”
“Sounds like more than a little.”
I shook my head.
As we got closer, I tentatively moved the bugs closer, until I had them on the flying heroes. I made an effort to discover and eliminate the hostile bugs that Noelle had created, and tried to find identifying details on the capes we were approaching.
“One of the heroes is a guy with an emblem, I think it’s a book with chains around it,” I said.
“Maybe Chronicler,” Tecton said.
“Three more flying ones,” I said. “One with antlers on his chest emblem.”
“All guys?” Tecton asked. When I nodded, he said, “That’d be Strapping Lad, Intrepid, and Young Buck. And the one you mentioned before would definitely be Chronicler.”
“Seriously?” Regent asked. “Strapping Lad?”
“They’re from the Texas Wards team,” Tecton said, as if that was explanation enough. “Lad, Intrepid and Buck are all about the harassment. Flying, teamwork, hitting hard and adjusting their battle plans to match the enemy threat level, staying out of danger.”
“Up until they get too close and she grabs one,” I said.
“Could happen,” Tecton replied. “Eidolon’s probably up there too, too quiet. Might be waiting for new powers to finish manifesting before he makes any moves.”
“What can we do?” Grace asked.
“I remember those Wards from the Leviathan fight. Some of them,” I said. “They fly? All of them?”
“Yeah,” Tecton said.
“Then we support on the ground,” I said. “You, Grue and maybe Regent can slow her down. Bitch keeps us mobile. We stay ready to move at a moment’s notice if it comes down to it. Staying safe is a bigger priority than anything else.”
Noelle was limited to moving on the ground. It gave the young heroes a natural advantage: each of them flew, and two of the three were armed with long ranged tinker-made weapons. The guns weren’t anything flashy or spectacular, more the kind of laser weapon that a fan of science fiction might create, but the young heroes apparently thought it was worth keeping up the onslaught, and the guns didn’t appear to rely on any ammunition or reloading.
The one without the gun was apparently Young Buck, going by the raised image of antlers on his chest emblem. He would fly around Noelle, close to the ground, then turn himself, his gear and the bugs I’d placed on him into a living projectile. Or, maybe, he was using some kind of uncontrolled breaker power to go faster than the speed of sound, unable to change course or take any action while he traveled. Whatever he was doing, he flashed across the battlefield as a straight, living projectile before materializing again. The ground shook with his impacts he delivered to Noelle.
The one I took to be Chronicler was casting out a hazy field around himself and the other two with the guns. The field shifted, drifting closer to the ground, and then solidified in a semisolid image of the heroes, complete with the laser f
ire. A quick check with my bugs verified that the shots were just as real as what the real selves were creating. The aim wasn’t so hot. It was more of a replay of the actions they’d just taken than proper clones.
Young Buck moved beneath Chronicler, and passed through the field as he turned into a beam. When the images appeared, they mimicked the same beam attack, their paths a perfect parallel to the real Young Buck.
We stopped as she came into view. For the others, anyways.
“Fuck me,” Regent said. “Anyone else noticing what I notice?”
“Bitch’s dogs,” Grue said.
“Not that similar,” Rachel grumbled, but she didn’t sound confident.
“Pretty fucking similar,” Regent said.
I leaned forward, hand on Rachel’s shoulder, whispered, “What is it?”
“Her entire lower half, it looks like my dogs. Bit on the back doesn’t look like it, though. More like a hand, but same look.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“We good to go?” Grue asked.
“Go,” I gave the order.
Tecton slammed his piledriver-gauntlets into the ground, and a fissure opened beneath Noelle. The ground shattered around her, denying her the footing to move out of the way as Chronicler and Young Buck worked together to multiply Young Buck’s offensive power. Tecton repeated the process, disintegrating the ground beneath her.
“I can’t do a lot to her,” Regent said. “Only some of her is normal, and it doesn’t really connect together.”
“Try, or focus on the clones,” Grue ordered. He sent a blast of darkness my way, enveloping me. I could feel the quality of my bug-senses decline, my degree of control degrading.
A moment later, he withdrew the darkness. Did he just want the view? The sense of what was where?
Raising his hands above his head, Grue fired a thick stream of darkness at Eidolon.
The hero moved out of the way before the beam made contact.
“Work with me!” Grue growled. “Damn. I can’t throw darkness over Noelle without hurting our side as much as we hurt her. I need powers. Grace?”
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