Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

“Exactly, and they’re also considered one of the better teams. Maybe we all need to do that. Except New York can do it because they’ve got a lot of capes. Rest of us are making do. Other team leaders are going for versatility, to cover every base. I say fuck that. We build around a concept, a game plan. Once I decided on that, I went out of my way to ask for Annex, even though another team had already picked him up. Made my argument, Chevalier gave the a-ok.”

  “And where do I fit in? Defiant said you were the one team that seemed interested in including me. I guess I sort of fit into a shaker category, in a roundabout way.”

  “That, and we’ve fought on the same side. I saw what you managed with Clockblocker’s power and yours. You stopped Alexandria, too, and all that other stuff we were warned not to bring up.”

  I tilted my head to indicate mild confusion.

  “They didn’t want us to mention how you’ve kicked ass as a villain. Way Revel explained it, they wanted to see if you’d boast about it, to see just how badly you wanted a leadership role, where you’d get frustrated and how you’d act.”

  I frowned behind my mask, but I didn’t comment.

  “Anyways, the problem with this team going this route, focusing on the one thing, is we’re very weak against certain approaches, strong against others. We need a certain kind of leader for that, and I know you pulled it off with the Undersiders.”

  “I hope I can live up to that kind of expectation,” I said.

  “I know it’s lame of me, that it might look like I’m trying something experimental and setting you up to take the fall if it fails-”

  “No,” I told him. “I don’t get that vibe.”

  The ground tremored. I worried briefly that the construction would tip, but it didn’t. How long would it stand tall once it was at its full height?

  “Good,” he said. “Because that’s not what I’m doing.”

  I was watching the others work, The pad of metal was about twenty feet across, now. A circular disk with a flat surface on the top. “Okay. I think I can play ball, if that’s the case. It’s good. I like your line of thinking, about the team.”

  He offered me a ‘heh’ before answering, “Of course. I’m a pro when it comes to putting stuff together.”

  “Putting buildings together,” Wanton chimed in, forming back into his real body. Dust billowed around his feet.

  “That’s my power, but I’m not limited to that,” Tecton said. “You guys don’t need any help?”

  “Save your juice.”

  Golem started to put his hand into the plate of metal he’d been given, then hesitated, “I won’t be able to move my hand once it appears, if I go this big. What shape should my hand be?”

  “Middle finger extended,” Grace suggested. “A big ‘fuck you’ to the Endbringer.”

  “That’d look bad for the PRT,” Tecton told her.

  “Tell them it’s the most efficient form,” she said, with a shrug. “Have to make it as tall as possible.”

  “No,” Tecton said. “Index finger would work nearly as well, and New Delhi might take offense at a metal statue of an obscene gesture in the middle the disaster area.”

  “A ‘v’,” Cuff suggested, making the gesture with her index and middle fingers. Her voice was shaky, her confidence rock bottom. “For victory. Almost as good.”

  “A ‘v’ for victory,” Tecton answered, “Good. Thank you, Cuff.”

  That’s really lame, I thought, but I held my tongue. Too easy to become the bad guy, here, and it was a resolution to the stupid, petty argument, giving us the chance to move on.

  Cuff smiled a little in response to the praise, though, then winced as Grace punched her in the arm. I heard Grace mutter, “Spoilsport.”

  Cuff’s smile returned to her face a moment later.

  And maybe it’s good for Cuff, to have something constructive to offer. She looked a touch more confident, smiling nervously as she followed Grace. Cuff didn’t seem like she was growing numb to the sounds or vibrations of the destruction Behemoth was inflicting on us.

  Golem started to push his hands into the plate. The gauntlet’s fingertips were already emerging, a mirror-replica to Golem’s own gauntlet. A hand half as wide as a house, slowly rising from the platform.

  Annex dove into the ground, and circled the platform, binding it to the street. He disappeared beneath the ground, then emerged a few seconds later, pulling his cloak tight around himself. “Reinforcing, so it doesn’t fall over on us. Also, brought a spike of metal into the ground.”

  “I can help,” Golem said. He reached his other hand into the ground, and a smaller hand fashioned out of pavement lurched out of the ground to rest against the base of the arm. He withdrew his hand, leaving the pavement hand in place, then repeated the process, until six arms were supporting the spire. “Not sure how well that works as it grows.”

  “Good job, both of you” I said. I held my breath as the wind brought heavy smoke past us, waited for it to dissipate. There were too many variables to cover, and I wasn’t sure enough about this squad to believe I’d accounted for all of them. “Can you move while carrying the plate?”

  “Think so,” Golem said.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  “Starting to realize why all the capes are so fit, looking good in the skintight costumes,” Golem huffed, as we made our way towards Behemoth. “So much running around, the training, constantly going places, never time to have… decent meal…”

  He trailed off, too out of breath to speak. I eyed him. The armor made it hard to tell, but he might have been somewhat overweight.

  The hand rose into the air, a virtual tower, as we made our way towards the battlefield. Golem had to push his hand in gradually to achieve the effect, and it disappeared into the panel.

  It was working, though. For better or worse, they’d created a spire, a replica of Golem’s hand, spearing more than fifty feet in the air, with more room to grow. Sixty feet, a hundred…

  A lightning bolt lanced out from the midst of the cloud of smoke, striking the hand.

  There were whoops and cheers from the Chicago Wards. I managed a smile.

  Another lightning strike, curving in the air, hit the hand. Residual electricity danced between the two extended fingers.

  It was working, and as much as it was a success in helping against the lightning, it was working to help morale. To contribute something, anything, it mattered.

  “Air’s ionized now,” Tecton said, as if that was a sufficient explanation for everyone present. I got the gist of what he meant. The lightning would be more likely to strike there again. Lightning did strike the same place twice.

  I took flight. The Wards took my cue and followed on foot.

  We found the Undersiders at the very periphery of the battlefield. They had collected a group of wounded Indian capes and were draping them across the backs of one of the dogs. Two uninjured Indian capes were looking very concerned, staying at the dog’s side.

  I landed beside Grue. He’d used his darkness to form a wall. I wasn’t sure what it was for, but the smoke didn’t seem as bad here.

  “Skitter,” he said.

  I didn’t correct him. You’ll always be Skitter to me, he’d written. Or something like that.

  “Got a plan?” I asked.

  “Dealing with the wounded,” he said. “Nothing else.”

  I studied him. I could see how defensive his body language was, his glower, the way he moved with an agitation that didn’t suit him.

  Was he not holding it together a hundred percent?

  “Where’s Tattletale at?” I asked. “I kind of got distracted as everyone was moving out.”

  “At the command center with Accord. She just contacted us through the Armbands. They’re waiting to talk to Chevalier, fine tune the defenses. Accord thinks he can layer the defenses to maximize the amount of time we buy. Scion was occupied with some flooded farmlands in New Zealand, flew towards South America, last they saw. Wrong direction.”
r />   I nodded, my heart sinking. It didn’t seem we’d be able to count on him. Not any time in the immediate future. “And Parian, Foil? Citrine and Ligeia? With Accord and Tattletale?”

  “No. Those four split off into another group. They can put out fires, and Citrine can protect them from lightning strikes so long as they aren’t moving around too much. Flechette’s using the opportunity to shoot him, for all the good it’s doing. Our group wouldn’t be any use to them, so we’re doing what we can here, a little further away.”

  “Got it,” I said. “You have a way of communicating with them?”

  He tapped his armband, then pressed a button. “Relay this message to Citrine. All well, Skitter and Chicago Wards just arrived. Inform as to status.”

  There was a pause.

  “Message from Citrine,” the armband reported, the voice crackling badly. Then the crackling redoubled as the voice stated, “Status is green.”

  “Any objection if we assist your group?” I asked him.

  Grue shook his head. He started to reply, but was cut off as Behemoth generated another shockwave. A rumble drowned everything out, as every building without something to protect it fell.

  “No objection,” Grue said, when the rumble had dissipated. He echoed my question from earlier. “Got a plan?”

  “I wish,” I said. “More lightning rods, maybe, if we get the opportunity.”

  The smoke was clearing towards the battle’s epicenter. Legend and Eidolon were a part of that, as were the craft that supported them. The fires were dying out, extinguished or stamped out.

  Behemoth wasn’t that tall, hard to make out above the buildings that still stood. I chanced a look, and flinched as another bolt of electricity made its way to the lightning rod.

  The path of least resistance.

  Behemoth had noticed that time, or he’d decided to do something about it, because he lashed out at Legend and Eidolon once more, driving them back, and then made a beeline for the structure. He threw electricity outward, two bolts, continuous in their arc, and they briefly made contact with the tower. A second later, they broke free of the tower’s draw. He was paying attention to where he was shooting now, not simply striking across a distance with the goal of setting indiscriminate fires.

  Fire roared around Behemoth as he got away from the area that had already been scorched and blasted clear of any fuel sources. His dynakinesis fueled the flames, driving them to burn hotter, larger, and with more intensity. With a kind of intelligence, the fires spread to nearby buildings, ensuring that no place was safe, nor untouched.

  I could see the blaze making its way closer to us. Not a concern in the next minute, maybe not even the next five, but we’d have to move soonish.

  Legend and Eidolon hounded the Endbringer, Legend initially a blur that couldn’t even be pinned down long enough to strike, even with lightning. As the hero flew, he filled the sky with a series of lasers that raked Behemoth’s flesh and targeted open wounds to open them further. When Behemoth turned away to deal with Eidolon, Legend slowed, and the lasers grew in number and in scale.

  “What’s with the hand shape?” Regent asked, as he poked his head out from cover enough to peek at the scene.

  “A ‘v’,” Golem said, his voice small.

  “I get it. You’re calling Behemoth a big vagina.”

  “It’s for victory,” Cuff said, sounding annoyed.

  “That’s lame,” Imp said.

  “Really lame,” Regent echoed, “I prefer the vagina thing.”

  “Way you dress,” Grace commented, “I wasn’t so sure.”

  “Ohhhhh,” Imp cut in, she elbowed Regent, “Ohhhhh. You going to take that?”

  Regent only laughed in response, shaking his head.

  “Is the little princess feeling brave?” Grace taunted Regent. “Come on.”

  “It’s for ‘victory’,” Cuff said, her feeble protest lost in the midst of the exchange, and in that instant, she sounded surprisingly young, vulnerable.

  “No fighting,” I said, have to stop this before it escalates. “Regent, stand down. Grace, you too.”

  Regent snickered under his breath.

  “And no more banter,” Grue said. “There’s more people to help. Move. With luck, those guys can keep him busy long enough for us to clear out.”

  “Team’s mommy and daddy, reunited,” Imp commented, adding an overdramatic sigh. “So awesome.”

  “I’ll point you guys to the wounded,” I said, not taking the bait. “Go.”

  “No saying or doing stuff that’ll get us killed, like saying goodbye or getting laid,” Regent commented. “There are rules.”

  “Get us killed? What’s Weaver doing?” Cuff asked, sounded alarmed and confused.

  Regent glanced at her, “I’m just saying, Grue’s already screwed, he’s not a virgin, he’s bl-”

  Grue struck Regent across the back of the head. The crown and attached mask were moved slightly askew, and Regent fixed them. He told Cuff, “Regent’s being an idiot. Ignore him. Now go.”

  “This way,” Tecton said, setting a hand on Cuff’s shoulder, “Opposite direction from Regent.”

  Imp started to turn around to follow the pair, grabbing Regent’s wrist to pull him after her. Grue stepped in her way and physically turned her back around.

  “Sorry for our contribution to that,” Tecton said. “Grace gets hard to handle when she’s stressed.”

  “I understand. Regent and Imp…” Grue started. “Really have no excuse. That’s pretty much the status quo. They’ve been a little worse lately, but things haven’t settled down since…”

  He trailed off.

  “Since I left,” I said.

  Grue nodded.

  Tecton nodded. “I get it. Bygones. We’ll be back. You okay watching the injured on your own, or-”

  “We’re good,” Grue said.

  Tecton left, with Cuff at his side. Only Grue and Rachel remained, along with the Indian capes who were standing by the wounded. Rachel was giving water to the injured who were capable of receiving it, the conscious ones, people with broken legs and burned hands.

  I made eye contact with Rachel. I wanted to ask how she was doing, knew she wouldn’t like the implications that she wasn’t peachy.

  “I want to fuck this bastard up,” she said. “Last one killed my dogs. Killed Brutus, Judas, Kuro, Bullet, Milk and Stumpy and Axel and Ginger. When do we attack?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll try to find an opportunity.”

  “And I get to do something,” she said.

  “I…” I started to voice a refusal, then stopped myself. “Okay.”

  “Bitch, it’ll be easier to collect the bodies if you take the dogs to them,” Grue said. “Why don’t you see to that?”

  She glanced at me. I resisted the urge to nod. It would be an encouragement, without the complexities and ambiguities of speech, but it would also be supplanting Grue as leader, here.

  Neither he nor she needed that.

  “Sooner than later,” he added.

  She nodded. Anyone else might have taken that as rude, but she accepted it without complaint. She led the dogs away, and the Indian capes followed, not wanting to part from people who might have been teammates or family members.

  When everyone was gone, Grue approached me. I felt myself tense up. Despite the adrenaline that already pumped through me, my heart rate picked up as he closed the distance.

  He held my arms just above the elbows, very nearly encircling his middle fingers and thumbs around them. Large hands, thin arms. I’d put on a little muscle mass over the past few months, or he’d be able to do it for real.

  And he rested his forehead against mine, as if he were leaning against me, despite the fact that he was maybe half-again to twice my weight.

  It had been a long time since I felt quite so insecure as I had this past week. As Skitter, I’d had a kind of confidence. As Weaver… I didn’t yet feel on steady ground.

  But i
n this moment, somehow, I felt like I could be his rock.

  I wanted nothing more than to reach up, to put my hands around his neck, remove his mask so I could tilt my head upward to kiss him. To give him succor in basic, uncomplicated human contact, at a time he was on unsteady footing and couldn’t even say it aloud. I stayed where I was, our foreheads touching, my back to the wall, arms to my sides. The masks stayed on.

  The storm continued in the distance, and a detonation marked what might have been the destruction of one of Dragon’s craft. We didn’t move an inch.

  “I miss you too,” I whispered.

  He nodded in response, a hard part of his mask scraping against a part of mine.

  I could sense the others gathering bodies, starting to make their way back here, to our rendezvous point.

  “See,” Imp said, appearing right next to us, “This is exactly what Regent was talking about.”

  “We weren’t doing anything,” I said. I pulled away from Grue, annoyed.

  “You were being sweet. That’s probably a death sentence.”

  “They were snuggling?” Regent asked, rounding a corner.

  “Christ,” Grue said, under his breath. Firmer, he said, “Enough of that.”

  Imp only cackled, and she kept cackling. I was pretty sure she prolonged it just to be annoying, stopping and starting again until Rachel and the last of the Wards returned.

  “Let’s talk plans,” Grue said. “We’ve got a good roster here. Two teams. Almost three full teams, if we pick up Parian, Foil and the Ambassadors.”

  He sounds more confident. A little more balanced. The agitation isn’t so obvious.

  “There’s more wounded in the area,” I said. “And we’re running out of space. Each dog that’s loaded up with the injured is a dog you guys can’t ride. Fires are getting closer, so we pick up everyone we can, load them onto makeshift sleds, then hurry back to a place where we can get them medical care.”

  “It’s a plan,” Grue said.

  “And,” I said, “We need to find a better use for our strongest members. Citrine could be useful. Grue? If we get the sled going, you stay close to the wounded.”

  He turned his head my way.

  “We have about twenty here. Six or so capes. Maybe one’s got a power we can use.”