by John McCrae
Lizardtail’s power was pressing against me, even from the other side of the street. It penetrated my costume to the skin, making my skin tingle and ensuring that I was always aware of where he was. It was like the sensation of standing in front of a fire, just close enough to feel as though that heat had a physical form, just close enough to be bearable. It wasn’t hot, though. It was cold, if anything.
The rest of our forces were marshaled throughout the area. A handful of volunteers from my territory, surviving members of the O’Daly family, had made their way to rooftops, stood at the ready with walkie-talkies and binoculars. They’d have to make up for the fact that my bugs weren’t as mobile in this weather.
Tattletale’s mercenaries were here, though she was still largely incapacitated. Minor, Brooks, Pritt, Senegal, and Jaw. Regent had two followers, and I was doing my best to avoid paying attention to them. It wasn’t the time to investigate whether he was controlling people or legitimately hiring them.
Rachel’s underlings were present too, hanging back enough that they were out of sight of the building. Biter, Barker, the veterinarian, the boy with the eyepatch, others I didn’t recognize: a young teenager with darker skin, a tall man with a broad belly. Each of them held a chain -the tall man and Biter held two- and each chain had a dog harnessed on the other end of it, grown to a fair size by Rachel’s power. Only Bentley and Bastard were full size.
Inside the building, the Teeth were recuperating from a recent conflict with Miss Militia and the other heroes followed soon after by an attack from Parian’s stuffed animals. As a whole, the Teeth amounted to twenty or so unpowered troops, plus a half-dozen or so powered ones. Even the unpowered Teeth had ‘costumes’ of a sort, were dressed in a hodgepodge of armor that made it hard to tell them apart from the powered members.
As a whole, they were bandaging minor injuries, preparing food, talking, joking, relaxing. There were two televisions on, each playing something different, volume turned up, and the noise was discordant, even to the muted, confused senses of my swarm. Porn on one television, I was pretty sure. The other channel was either a cartoon or a news broadcast, judging by the words I was able to hear.
There was a fight in progress, a duel, between two unpowered members. One was getting the better of the other, pounding his face in while others jeered and laughed.
One of the female members of the Teeth, I suspected Hemorrhagia, was cooking food for her team. A distance away, Butcher was sitting on a stool, her feet up on a table, her mask off. She had a cloth in hand and was wiping her gun clean, oddly disconnected from the clatter and chaos of her team.
I supposed the thirteen other voices in her head kept her company.
It had taken time to analyze them, to assess what each of the Teeth were doing and make a note of every individual part of it. To do it discreetly, with no more than the bugs that were already in the building.
The Ambassadors were patient. I got the sense that they could have waited for two hours in this wind and rain, and their only concern would be that their clothes and hair were a little worse for wear. My teammates were a touch more restless. Rachel moved from dog to dog, enforcing her authority, keeping them in line, and making sure they were listening to the underlings. She was putting her trust in me, but I could tell she was getting tired of this. Tired of the minutes passing with nothing happening.
Regent, too, was reacting. He was maintaining a running commentary on everything from the weather to the surroundings, our allies and me.
“And… twenty minutes in, the rain’s still pouring, the wind’s still threatening to drop a house on our heads, and we’re still not doing anything. I think our fearless leader needs to remember that some of us aren’t as good at being imposing when we’re drenched and standing around in the dark. She does that whole schtick where being gloomy and creepy only make her scarier. You know how scary I am with a wet shirt clinging to me?”
“Shut up, Regent,” Grue said.
“I’m just saying. She could be more considerate. Maybe we could wait indoors, and she could stand out here in the rain, using her power to investigate our enemies. If she’s even using it. Maybe she fell asleep standing up. Been a hard week for her-.”
“Regent,” I said. “Be quiet.”
“She’s awake! Excellent,” Regent’s jovial tone was forced enough to border on the sarcastic.
“There are no vantage points that are also indoors,” I said. “I’d bet that’s why Butcher chose that building. The parking lot that surrounds it, the terrain, it’s all to her benefit.”
“So we pick a mediocre vantage point. Or a shitty one. So long as it’s dry. Or, here’s an idea, maybe we attack. We have them outnumbered, we have better powers than most of them-”
“We win absolutely,” I said. “Or we don’t fight at all. Too many of them have powers that could help them escape. Vex fills an area with her power and runs, Animos transforms and runs, or Spree masks their retreat with his power. This way, we take all of them down, or we at least affect them on a psychological level.”
“Then why don’t we have them surrounded?”
“Because we don’t need to,” I said. “Keeping Butcher from picking us off is a bigger priority. We do that by forming battle lines.”
“Huh,” he said. There was a pause. “Twenty three minutes, standing in the rain…”
Inside the building, Hemorrhagia called out, “…st ready.”
The Teeth collectively began to make their way to the kitchen, while Spree headed for the washroom.
There.
“We’re attacking,” I said, and I spoke through the bugs that were near each of my allies. “Be ready.”
The bugs I’d kept in reserve swept into the building, not from the direction our forces were standing, but from the opposite direction. They flowed in, swarming over the Teeth.
Less useful bugs plunged themselves into the food. They scattered money, where money was left out in the open, caught unattended weapons and pieces of armor and either buried them or started to drag them from sight.
“No!” Hemorrhagia shouted, trying to cover her chili with a lid, “No, no, fuck you, no!”
Hearing the shouting, Spree stood from the toilet, only to find a handcuff connecting him to the towel rack.
“Fight!” one of the Teeth shouted, rather unnecessarily. He was joined by others. “Kick their asses! Kill them!”
Spree managed to tear the towel rack from the wall and made his way out of the washroom, working to get his belt buckled, other armor gathered under one arm. I was well aware of how costumes made using washrooms a pain in the ass on the best of days: getting everything necessary off, getting it back on again, attaching everything essential… Spree had the added issue of innumerable trophies and pieces of armor in his suit, all loaded down with spikes and hooks, and he was now in a rush, running forward into a swarm of biting, stinging insects. He dropped one piece of armor, and bugs swarmed it. He cast one backwards glance at the item in question, an elbow pad or knee pad, and then decided to leave it behind.
It was the little things that would deliver a hit to their morale. Attacking while they were tired, spoiling a meal they were anticipating, throwing everything into disarray. If they happened to come out ahead in this fight, or if any of them slipped away, they might return to reclaim their things, they’d find cockroaches had chewed through the cords and internal wires of their televisions, that pantry moths infested their food supplies, and every article of clothing was infested with lice.
And if they entered this fight mad, all the better. It would mean they were gunning for us instead of running.
The first person out the door was caught by a tripline of spider silk. Others trampled over him. One fired a gun into the darkness beyond.
Wrong door, wrong end of the building. And the door had somehow closed and locked behind them.
The powered members weren’t in that group, though. As disorganized as the rank and file members were, the capes in the gang were only l
ooking to their boss, gathering in the kitchen.
Butcher didn’t react as bugs bit and stung, and capsaicin-laden bugs found her eyes and nose. Her skin was too tough, and she didn’t feel pain, thanks to Butcher twelve’s powers. She was composed as she lifted a gun that would normally have been mounted on the back of a truck. Without putting it down, she held it with one hand and donned her mask.
She turned our way, as though it wasn’t even a question. A sensory power.
Butcher two, the ability to see people’s veins, arteries and hearts through walls.
She had the powers of thirteen capes, watered down, plus her own. Some of those capes had possessed multiple abilities. By power or by cunning, each had managed to kill the last. This Butcher had the resources of each of them.
She led her group through the doors towards us, as silent as they were noisy. I’d almost expected her to do the inverse of what she was doing and send her foot-troops in first. Instead, she was the first through the doors, her powered allies immediately behind her. Her foot troops were last to arrive, traveling around the full length of the building, swearing all the way. They filled in the gaps of her group and gathered behind.
It was a different dynamic than some groups we’d fought. These weren’t loyal soldiers or people fighting because they had nothing to lose. They were opportunists, riding the coattails of the ones with the real power, hyenas picking at the scraps that were left behind after the lions had supped.
Spree was the first to use his power, and I got a sense of just how and why the group had arrived at this present strategy. It wasn’t just that Butcher was dangerous enough to walk face-first into danger. They had Spree to form their front ranks.
Four Sprees split off from him as he stood there, slightly hunched over as if bracing himself against recoil. They were produced with such force and speed that they briefly flew through the air, stumbling slightly as they hit the ground running. Three more Sprees were a fraction of a second after the first wave, with even more following a half-second behind them.
Fifteen or so Sprees in three seconds, before I’d even had a chance to call out an order. Duplicates produced at the rate that a machine gun spat bullets.
They ran, some screaming, others swearing aloud as they closed the distance between our two groups, charging as a mass, limbs flailing, weapons-
Weapons?
It was hard to see in the rain, but the Sprees were all subtly different. Some had knives or pipes they could bludgeon with, others had guns, and more had improvised weapons. The mixing and matching of their armor was different as well.
There was a drawback, though. Whatever they were, as solid and innumerable as they might have been, they were dumb, getting dumber every second they were alive. He was producing a living tide of bodies, but they weren’t capable. They were good for little more than sheer body mass and violence.
By the time the first ones reached us, they were barely able to put one foot in front of the other. One reached me, swung a table leg at me in a wide, predictable swing. I caught it, twisted his arm, and pushed him into a Spree that was stumbling forward from behind him. They both fell, and neither seemed to have the wherewithal to climb to their feet before they were trampled underfoot.
It was like fighting an infant with the size and strength of a grown man, except there were fifty or sixty of them. A hundred? The street was nearly filled with the bastards, from sidewalk to sidewalk, a mob between the Teeth and us.
They didn’t seem to be smart enough to realize they could actually shoot the guns, where the occasional Spree had one in hand, but the sound of a gunshot going off suggested that one had accidentally pulled a trigger. The shot rang through the air, cutting through the thrum of raindrops striking ground.
Like the gunshot that marked the start of a race, it was the moment that brought the real fighting to a peak. The Teeth and our side all jumped into action.
My bugs flooded into the group, condensing on the key members. I couldn’t seem to touch the Spree that was generating the mindless clones, as his body vibrated and rippled, but I could attack Hemorrhagia, Animos, Butcher, Reaver, Vex and the underlings. The press of near-identical bodies was almost useful, giving my bugs shelter and dry surfaces to move on.
Codex advanced, breaking away from the rest of the Ambassadors. She was a pale woman dressed in a white evening gown, wearing a simple, featureless white mask. A temporary costume.
She reached towards the crowd. I could see the eyes of the Sprees lighting up as the effect reached further back into the crowd. They stumbled, slowing, blocking the ones behind them from advancing. Groans and grunts echoed from the crowd, all eerily similar.
Their powers were new. Less than six hours old. Accord had agreed to lend them to us, though their costumes hadn’t yet been designed, their powers not fully explored. We’d offered Tattletale’s analysis of their capabilities in exchange. She’d barely been capable, hadn’t yet recuperated from the migraines she’d suffered earlier in the week, and the use of her power had only brought the migraines back with a vengeance.
Still, we’d talked it over and agreed that the assistance of the Ambassadors as a whole was that much more useful in this scenario than a worn and weary Tattletale. Tattletale’s feedback was essential, but we already had a sense of who the Teeth were, and Tattletale had been able to fill us in on the new Ambassadors just as readily as she’d filled Accord in.
Codex was a blaster-thinker hybrid. Tattletale had speculated that the woman caused permanent brain damage and memory loss , briefly augmenting her own processing power in exchange. The duplicates Spree was generating weren’t gifted with much in the way of brains to begin with. Even a little damage was having devastating results.
Jacklight was launching forth the miniscule orbs of light, each growing as it traveled before stopping in mid-air. Each warped space around it, accelerated movement, enhanced the output of certain forms of energy. Where one of his lights was set next to a wall, it redirected one running duplicate into a wall. Another, closer to the ground, swung a Spree that stepped over it into the ground face first.
It was Ligeia, though, who slowed down the enemy the most. She created water out of nothing, geysers of the stuff that drove the mob back and sent them sprawling.
Then she sucked up the water. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I got the impression she caught one or two duplicates in the process, drawing them into whatever place she’d taken the water from.
It took her a second each time she switched from creating water to drawing it in. Clones slipped through the gaps in the defensive line as she changed gears.
“Rachel!” I gave the order. Before Jacklight’s power makes it impossible to go further or more slip through.
Her responding whistle cut through the night. Bentley and three more dogs were released, charging forward, leaping over our defensive line to crash into a sea of duplicates. The duplicates were now too closely packed together to even fall down, and were literally climbing over top of one another. The dogs stumbled or slipped as the Jacklights tugged at one or two of their legs, then proceeded to tear their way through the crowd.
They were brought to a stop when they found the second of the Teeth’s defensive powers waiting for them. Vex’s forcefields were countless, numbering in the hundreds, each sharp enough to cut exposed flesh. Alone, they weren’t strong, but the shards had a collective, cumulative resistance. I’d hoped Rachel’s dogs would have enough raw strength to power through.
Still, we had the advantage here. The tide of the duplicates was slowed as the bludgeoning power of the dogs crumpled them underfoot or crushed them against one another, and both Barker and Biter were free to join the defensive line. I was able to step back and get a brief respite from the hand to hand fighting with the Spree duplicates.
“Kip up!” Rachel bellowed the words.
One dog leaped to the side, planting its feet on a wall, then leaped for the Teeth on the far side.
A four-legged creatu
re just a little smaller than the dog lunged into the air, brought the two of them crashing down into the midst of the sea of tiny forcefields. Animos.
Cape teams naturally found their own synergies and strategies. This was how the Teeth fought. Two defensive lines protecting the reserve forces while the truly dangerous members acted.
Butcher raised her gun, setting one finger on a trigger of her gun. It started spinning up.
“Butcher incoming!” I called out.
She teleported past the worst of Vex’s forcefield barrier. Flame billowed around her in a muted explosion as she appeared.
Butcher six’s explosive teleporting. It’s weaker than it was when six had it, shorter range, and the intensity of the explosion isn’t nearly what it once was.
She pushed past the remainder, and leveled the gatling gun at the nearest dog, pulled the trigger before anyone, Regent included, could do anything to trip her up.
Ten bullets were fired in a half-second. A moment later, the weapon jammed.
Wounded but intact, the dog turned and snapped at her.
She was gone a heartbeat before the teeth snapped together.
Butcher three’s danger sense. Didn’t do him much good. Driven mad, died in a suicidal attack against the Teeth. Window of opportunity is lower, application limited to more physical danger.
She reappeared in a cloud of rolling flame, reversed her grip on her gatling gun and swung it like a club, knocking Bentley clean off his feet.
Super strength, courtesy of one, three, six, nine, eleven and thirteen. Cumulative effects. A little bit of super strength from multiple sources added up.
Animos was pinned by another dog, a yellow light surrounding both of the unnatural beasts. He screeched at the dog, a high-pitched noise that made me wince, but the effect didn’t take hold. Animos’ scream could strip someone temporarily of their powers, but Citrine was dampening the effect. That, or there was nothing to take away from the dog. The mutation was Rachel’s power, technically.
Butcher approached the pair, and Citrine abandoned her assault, letting up.