Collateral Damage [Worm AU]

[One-who-reads]

I suspect it's a situation of "I will never put my life in the hands of any cape, ever again."

In any case, you can't blame her in this fic for failing to do what she refused to do in canon.

Click to shrink...

I can still blame her. It just isn't logical to do so.

 

[Ack]

I can still blame her. It just isn't logical to do so.

Click to shrink...

Because everyone is always logical all the time in the real world.

 

[Ack]

Collateral Damage

Part Six: Accidentally (Taylor)

[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: This chapter continues the theme of unintended consequences of power being thrown around.]

Taylor

It was nice to be in the open air on the Boardwalk, just strolling. Thoughtfully, I tucked the necklace Dad had given me into my shirt. No sense in drawing too much attention just yet. There would be time for that later.

Nobody seemed to be looking twice at me, which was good. I still had the bone-deep anger roiling inside me, and the urge to break something, but the interlude at Winslow had helped a lot with both. Despite it being midwinter, Brockton Bay's famously warm climate was in full swing. The sun was bright, the breeze was only a little bit chilly, and I was able to enjoy myself and forget about the bullshit of the world for just a little bit.

"This is total bullshit!"

Well, it had been nice.

I looked ahead to where an argument was going on between a teenage girl and her parents. They looked vaguely familiar, but I was pretty sure the girl didn't go to Winslow. Emma would've definitely had a rival for queen bee if she did. Another girl, probably the first girl's bestie, was leaning against the rail nearby, looking bored.

"Mind your language, Victoria," the woman said sharply.

"Well, it is," the girl retorted petulantly. "Ames and me should be able to help if we want."

"I said no and I mean no!" The girl's mother made a chopping motion with her hand. "End of discussion. We can't risk either one of you."

Just as I was beginning to parse that statement, the girl turned away from her parents. "Bull fucking shit!" Raising her foot, she stamped on the wooden boards. One cracked through with a loud report.

"Victoria Dallon!" snapped the blonde woman. "If you can't restrain yourself, you are grounded!"

Puzzle pieces began to drop together in my head. Brute strength … Victoria Dallon … shit, that's New Wave!

That was as far as I got before Victoria Dallon punched a light-pole with a loud "Grrrah!" of frustration, leaving knuckle-marks in the metal. All around, passers-by recoiled, either from the display of violence or possibly from something else. At the same time, I also felt … something. A gentle wave of sensation that was there and gone in an instant. And Victoria Dallon screamed and fell over, clutching at her head.

"Vicky!" shouted the frizzy-haired girl I had taken to be her bestie. If they were New Wave, and Victoria was Glory Girl, then that made her Panacea. She hurried to Glory Girl's side and knelt down. Placing her hand on Victoria's face, she concentrated.

"What is it?" asked the guy … if that was Victoria's father, that would make him Flashbang. He'd spent the entire previous conversation saying nothing at all, but now he was looking outward, a glow building around his hands. "Has she been attacked?"

"Looks like an aneurysm leading to a stroke," Panacea said curtly. "A bad one. Lots of bleeding in a short time. I've sealed off the arteries and reclaimed the blood, but I can't do anything about the damage it did before I got to her."

"An aneurysm?" The woman stared at her. "How could you have not detected this coming? And what do you mean, you can't fix the damage?"

"I didn't see it coming because there were no signs!" Panacea pointed at Glory Girl. "She went from nothing to a total intracranial aneurysm in the last two minutes! And I can't fix it because I can't do brains!"

The blonde woman took hold of her shoulders and shook her violently. "TRY!" she screamed, from a range of about six inches.

I wanted to walk away. I really did. This shit was not my problem. But right now Panacea wasn't a superhero who could handle herself. She was a teenaged girl who was being bullied by someone bigger and stronger, that she couldn't fight back against. That pattern had repeated itself far too often in my life, and now I couldn't stand to see it happen again.

"Hey!" I said sharply. Stepping forward, I grabbed the woman's arm. Brandish, I vaguely recalled. "Leave her the fuck alone, you bitch!"

I hadn't actually intended to swear like that. It was just how it came out. On the upside, it certainly got Brandish's attention. This was the only upside.

Without even looking, Brandish pulled her arm free of my grip and backhanded me. It was almost certainly an instinctive move, gleaned from countless combats. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it would've been the right move. This was the hundredth instance. The necklace flared under my shirt and a blast of kinetic energy knocked Brandish ass over teakettle, sending her tumbling half a dozen yards along the Boardwalk.

"Hey, you okay?" I asked Panacea, who was standing there looking a little shell-shocked.

"What the hell … who are you?" Panacea blurted, staring at me. "How did you do that?"

"Name's Taylor. I'm Ragnarok's daughter." I glanced at where Brandish was picking herself up, looking decidedly more ruffled than before. "Word of warning? She attacks me, she dies. Just saying." I didn't much care either way, but it had sucked to lose Mom, and I figured a shitty mom was better than none at all.

"Step back away from my girls." Flashbang moved toward me, his hands glowing more brightly. "I won't warn you a second time."

I sighed. "Ragnarok's. Daughter. Try to keep up." Did having powers make people deaf and stupid? It really seemed that way.

"Dad," Panacea said tensely. "Back off. I don't think you can take her." She glanced at Glory Girl, who was still unconscious on the ground, and back at me. "You hit her with ten times her aura, didn't you?"

"I dunno. Maybe?" I shrugged. "I felt something just before she collapsed, but it never affected me."

Panacea seemed to take that on board. "Did Ragnarok really blow up Brockton General and Winslow High School?"

"Nope," I said cheerfully. "That was me. PRT dicks were bugging me in the hospital, and there were people in Winslow who really needed to die." I waved my hand casually. "I left most of the hospital still standing. Just be glad it was me who got to the school and not my dad. A whole chunk of the city would be missing now if he had his way."

"I've heard enough," snapped Brandish. She had manifested a glowing blade as she stormed up alongside Flashbang. "You're under arrest for … well, you're under arrest. Surrender peacefully and you might just escape the Birdcage."

I rolled my eyes and yawned theatrically. "I'm not under arrest and you're not sending me to the Birdcage. Bored with this conversation now. I'm gonna walk away. Hope Glory Girl gets better."

"There are ways of imprisoning you without attacking you," Brandish snarled.

"Dad can teleport and pull me straight out of anywhere you try to put me," I retorted. "And he will fuck the shit up of anyone who tries. Just like he fucked up the CUI for killing Mom. Wanna try your luck? Go right ahead."

"Carol," said Flashbang tensely. "Amy's right. We need to stand down, right now."

"She's a villain!" shouted Brandish.

"A villain who was attacked by Vicky's aura!" Panacea retorted. "I've told her and told her to tone it down. She never, ever does!" She stepped in front of the blonde woman, her arms out to her sides as if to bar her way.

"She doesn't scare me," scoffed Brandish. "By her own admission, she's a murderer, probably several times over. She could've killed my daughter, just for having a little fear inflicted on her. That's vastly disproportionate."

"Hello?" I said theatrically. "Ragnarok's daughter, here. Of course we do disproportionate. It's how we roll. It's the only way we can make sure idiots like you understand that it's not worth trying to fuck with us. Because nothing else fucking works. Assuming they'll understand doesn't work. Asking doesn't work. Telling doesn't work. Screaming in their faces doesn't work. Giving them back one for one doesn't work. Going to the authorities doesn't work. People still fuck with us. So we give them back ten for one. That works. Worked with the CUI, worked with Behemoth, worked with the little bitches who spent a year bullying me. You'll notice none of them has fucked with anyone since."

All around us, unnoticed by all except me, I was building my swarm up. None of the bugs were landing on anyone, and they weren't clustering around peoples' faces, but they were there all the same. It would only take me a second to empower them, and they would be capable of blasting any given foe into pink mist.

I stared Brandish in the eye. "I've been trying to tell you not to fuck with me. You haven't been listening. Keep this shit up, and I'll stop telling you and just let it happen. One way or the other, you'll never fuck with me again. I guaran-fucking-tee it." Lifting my hand, I tapped my chest, just over where the necklace sat under the shirt. "So make your move or back the fuck off. It's all the same to me." I began to turn away.

"You can't threaten me. I'm immune to my own powers, you stupid child." Brandish's voice held more malice than I'd ever heard from anyone except Emma or her friends. "Get out of my way!"

"No!" shouted Panacea, at the same time as Flashbang yelled, "Carol!"

Something tapped me briefly on the right shoulder. The necklace flared, quite brightly. I heard a sound like the world's largest bottle of tomato ketchup unclogging itself. A wash of warm air rolled over me.

Slowly, I turned around. Brandish wasn't there anymore. Or rather, she was everywhere. Everyone within ten yards (except for me) was wearing her. There were no large pieces, no intact bones, no recognisable organs. It was almost as though she'd been spread like butter, or perhaps run through a woodchipper and sprayed evenly over the area.

Panacea was lying on the boardwalk, nursing her wrist. It looked like she'd been shoved roughly aside and fallen badly. She and Flashbang were both staring at me, eyes wide. Both were coated in a layer of Brandish. Intellectually, they'd known how dangerous it was to push me. But they hadn't known.

She might've been immune to her power, but she wasn't immune to my dad's tech.

I know for a fact that I warned her.

Whoops.

I was pretty sure that nothing I could say would fix the situation, so I turned and walked away.

Well, that could've gone better.



End of Part Six

 

[MaeHartchenko]

Uhg, this is so ridiculous I really don't want to like it but power wanks like this are too entertaining. Hope Amy gets over her brain thing for Vicky, and keeps her under control too.

 

[Scopas]

Haha, get fucked, Carol!

 

[PrinceJonathan]

Slowly, I turned around. Brandish wasn't there anymore. Or rather, she was everywhere. Everyone within ten yards (except for me) was wearing her.

Click to shrink...

YES!!!!! YES!YES!YES!YES!


Kind of hoping they get sick of being threatened with the Birdcage so often Danny just decides to blow it the fuck up. Teleport out the handful of innocent/redeemable capes, and then blow it up.

 

[Simonbob]

This story can be entertaining.

And somewhat disgusting.

 

[One-who-reads]

Suicide by Ragnarök tech. It's quickly becoming a leading cause of death in parahumans in Brockton Bay.

I like to think in the end, Carol found it deep within her heart, as it was spread all over her family, to forgive and forget.

 

[Vhalidictes]

Well, Ack, you've gone and done it:

You made Amy sad for/about Carol.


I hope you're proud of yourself.

 

[Prince Charon]

I suspect it's a situation of "I will never put my life in the hands of any cape, ever again."

In any case, you can't blame her in this fic for failing to do what she refused to do in canon.

Click to shrink...

Watsonianly, I can totally blame her, since she could have gotten psychotherapy, or accepted a medical discharge, or both. Doylistly, it just shifts which author I blame, since you're keeping to the character Wildbow gave her.

 

[Flightstrike]

Nooooooooooooo! Ack I want moooooorrrrrrreeeeeeee!!!!!!

 

[Ack]

Collateral Damage

Part Seven: Accidentally on Purpose

[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

[A/N 2: For those who are unfamiliar with the format of this story, I'm doing two shorter chapters per post instead of one longer one. This is the first of the two. The second will be coming up in 24 hours.]

Relevant Side-Story


Grue

The windows rattled again, and Regent frowned. "What the hell is doing that? It's very distracting."

"Some asshole cape doing asshole cape stuff." Bitch knelt on the floor next to her dogs, which were whimpering and whining and showing the whites of their eyes. "The dogs don't like it at all. I've never seen them this scared."

"Lisa?" asked Brian. "Any ideas? Some bomb Tinker, maybe?"

Tattletale chewed on her lip, looking extremely pensive. This got Brian's attention; usually, she was ready to dish all the revelations her power was giving her. But right now, she actually appeared to be worried. "Not a bomb Tinker. Well, not a Tinker specialising in bombs anyway. I'm thinking … something bad. The whole city might be in danger right now."

"What, like an Endbringer?" Regent scoffed and shook his head. "Behemoth's dead, remember? The others don't attack anymore."

"Oh, shit," whispered Tattletale. Grabbing her laptop, she frantically started typing. Her expression became more and more fraught with each tap of the Enter key. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit."

Her phone rang, and she snatched it up, still typing with her free hand. "Boss," she said curtly. "I know what you're going to say, and the answer is no." Ending the call, she dropped the phone beside her and kept typing. Her face was so pale by now that her freckles showed up vividly across the bridge of her nose.

"Wait, what?" Brian stared at her. Tattletale liked to stir the boss up from time to time, and pull his chain a little, but she'd never used that tone before, and she'd absolutely never hung up on him. "What did you just do? Why did you—?"

"Because he wants us to commit suicide!" Tattletale shouted. "This is—" Her phone rang again, and she picked it up. "I said, fuck off!" she screamed at it before ending the call a second time.

"This is what?" asked Regent blankly. "This is your life? This is the Twilight Zone? What is this?"

Tattletale ran her fingers through her hair, destroying her French braid, then scrubbed her hands over her face. "Uggggh. Okay. Pop quiz. Who's the scariest cape in the world?"

"Ragnarok, duh." Regent rolled his eyes. "A few years ago, he totally fucked up what used to be the CUI. Before that, he ganked Behemoth and blew up Houston. But nobody's seen him since China."

"Exactly." Tattletale typed some more into her laptop, looking more on edge all the time. "There's been explosions at Brockton General, Winslow High School, some house in the suburbs—still getting the skinny on that one—and someone splattered Brandish all over the Boardwalk about two minutes ago."

Brian's phone rang. He pulled it out, distracted by Tattletale's unfolding narrative, and looked at the number. It was one he'd never seen before. "Hello?"

"Hang up." Tattletale pointed at the phone. "It's the boss, and he wants us to do something truly moronic."

"Hello, Grue." It was a voice he didn't recognise. "My name is Coil. I pay your extremely generous retainer, and I make sure your sister stays out of your mother's hands. I have a job for you, for which I will pay each of you one hundred thousand dollars."

"Wait, I want to hear more about Brandish," Regent objected. "When you say 'splattered', is that a figure of speech, or—"

"Shut up!" Tattletale put her laptop to one side. "Brian, hang the fuck up. Whatever's going on, we do not want to get mixed up in it."

"Yeah." Bitch soothed her dogs with gentle touches. "They hate it, I hate it."

"A hundred thousand?" That was a real payday, but between Tattletale's pushback and the amount offered, Brian felt justified in asking for more details before committing himself to it. "What does this entail, exactly?"

"No!" Brian felt the phone plucked from his fingers; when he looked around, Tattletale was holding it. "Not a fucking chance," she said to the handset, then ended the call.

"Whoa, wait a second." That was Regent, his prurient expression replaced by one of distinct greed. "A hundred K? I definitely want to hear more about that."

"No, you don't." Tattletale shook her head.

Brian took a step toward her, clenching his fists. "One, you don't call the shots in this team. I do. Two, give me back my goddamn phone."

"Okay, here you go." Tattletale handed the phone back, then drew a deep breath. "Guys, the boss is probably gonna call one of you to try to get us to go and check on the person who's been causing the explosions. This is a really fucking bad idea."

"But a hundred thousand dollars …" Regent whined. His phone began to ring.

"It's Ragnarok!" shouted Tattletale. One of the dogs barked at her suddenly raised voice, then quieted as Bitch shushed it. "I don't know exactly what's going on, or why a hospital and a school got blown up, but Ragnarok's in the middle of it somehow. And we do not want to fuck with Ragnarok."

"Fuck …" Regent didn't even look down at his still-ringing phone before he declined the call. "You're certain about this? Not one of your wild-ass guesses that goes totally down the wrong rabbit hole?"

Bitch's phone rang; looking Tattletale right in the eye, she answered it. "Is it true?" she demanded. "Are you trying to send my dogs out after Ragnarok?" Coil got a dozen words in before Bitch ended the call. "Fucker talks too much and says nothing at all."

"I mean, I get Brandish, kinda," Regent mused. "She's always been just a little bit too trigger-happy. But why a hospital and a school? Ragnarok only blows up places that have pissed him off."

"Oh, shit," whispered Tattletale. "I think I just figured it out." By now, she looked positively ill. "They never said why he wrecked the CUI, but I think I know. He was married, and the CUI killed his wife. Probably tried to kidnap her or something just as fucking moronic."

Brian nodded slowly. "Yeah, that tracks. So why is he blowing stuff up today?"

Regent got there first; to be fair, she had given out the right clues. "He's got a kid. Someone fucked with them at school, so they ended up in the hospital. He went to get them, someone at the hospital fucked with him, he blew the place up and they went back to the school and blew that up …"

"Not just that." Tattletale shook her head. "The kid triggered. The PRT must've been pressuring them. He didn't blow up the hospital and the school. The kid did."

Brian felt the ice-cold chill spread down his spine. "Oh, fuck. There's two of them."

"And that must be what happened to Brandish," Tattletale added. "She'd know enough not to attack Ragnarok, but she thought his kid was fair game."

Regent was normally hard to push into any kind of worry, but right now he looked downright terrified. "Is it too late to find another universe to live in?"

Brian was pretty sure he wasn't kidding.

<><>​

Taylor

With the necklace still hidden safely under my top, I strolled on down the Boardwalk. Brandish's abrupt end had dealt with New Wave's aggression, and it had taken a little of the edge off my anger at the world, but not all of it. Not even most.

Life had been fucking with me since forever. It wasn't just Emma, as huge a malevolent bitch as she'd been. Someone or something had made her that way. Sophia was one of the major suspects, as was Madison, but they were no longer in the picture. Still, I couldn't see how a couple of teenage wastes of time and oxygen could've turned her so totally against me in such a short time, so there had to be something more.

Due to having been blown into pink mist by yours truly, Emma was unable to answer questions about what that could be, but no matter. She still had living parents. I could always ask them. While I was at it, I'd also ask them why they didn't do a goddamn fucking thing while their daughter was happily tormenting me for months at a time.

If they were lucky, I might even accept the answer they gave me.

A deep BOOOM rolled out over the city. I looked around and saw a mushroom cloud climbing into the sky from where I figured the top of the PRT building was. It wasn't big enough to destroy the whole building, so I guessed they hadn't been so stupid as to actually attack him. He was probably just finished with his business there, and was trying to get my attention.

I sent up a column of bugs, stretching a hundred feet into the air, using my other power to charge them all up so they glowed indigo even in the midmorning sunlight. When they went off in sequence, it was like the world's coolest string of firecrackers, ripping apart the morning quiet and scaring the fuck out of the birds. I didn't much like birds either, so that didn't bother me in the slightest.

Thirty seconds later, there was a smaller explosion about five yards away; Dad appeared in the middle of the cloud of flying splinters, none of which did anything to me (of course). The pedestrians around me had backed off when I did the exploding column, so they only ended up with light flesh wounds. As I went over to him, I noticed that he had a Manila folder in one hand.

"Hey. Got what you wanted?" I asked. A moment later, I heard the louder BOOM rolling in from the top of the PRT building; if I was any kind of judge, they were gonna have to resurface the rooftop.

"I did. Anything going on down here that I need to know about?" He shaded his eyes and peered down the Boardwalk. "Isn't that New Wave coming in for a landing?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Yeah, it is. Glory Girl was pitching a shit-fit and hit me with her fear aura, so she got a massive aneurysm out of it, then Brandish tried to hit me from behind when I went to walk away."

"Really?" His tone got dangerous—well, more dangerous than normal—and the glowing ball attached to his chest armour started spinning up. "Where is she now?"

"All over the place." I waved my hand casually. "Think 'chunky salsa' without the 'chunky' part."

"Nice." He nodded approvingly as the ball slowed its roll. "Rule number one: nobody fucks with us. Rule number two: nobody survives fucking with us."

I shrugged. "I tried to warn her. She didn't listen."

"What's this 'warning' bullshit?" He snorted and folded his arms. "People know who the fuck we are. They shouldn't need a 'warning'."

"No, they know who you are." It was only a minor point, but I felt it needed correcting. "Me, they've never heard of. If we don't educate 'em, they won't know enough to stay out of the way."

He snorted. "You're too soft-hearted. Survivors can learn. Next of kin can pass on warnings."

"Yeah, good point."

"Of course it is." He hefted the folder. "Let's go see what we've got here, shall we?"

I stepped up close to him, and he triggered the teleport. I was pretty sure that we were going to make a crater in the Boardwalk, but it wasn't my Boardwalk so I didn't care. When the indigo flash cleared, we were on top of Captain's Hill.

<><>​

Secret Underground Base

Coil

Thomas Calvert was both frightened and pissed off. He hadn't even had to split timelines to manage it. Merely having Ragnarok active in the same city had that effect on him.

Worse, his Tattletale had chosen this time to lash out and try to break contact with him. From the sounds of it, she'd influenced the rest of the Undersiders to also turn on him. Still, it was a better result than in the other timeline, where his mercenaries were right at this moment assaulting the infamous cape and dying in droves.

On an up-note, she had confirmed it was Ragnarok out there. He'd suspected it but not been certain. Now, he could turn his mind toward coexisting somehow with the insanely dangerous cape and, in time, working out a profitable arrangement with him.

He toyed with dropping the other timeline; after all, he had his answers. But there was still an outside chance that his men could kill Ragnarok, and in that timeline he hadn't alienated the Undersiders. And to be brutally honest, mercenaries were relatively easy to hire, while capes with useful powers were a lot more difficult to come by.

One by one, his men dropped off the radio net. One thing that puzzled him was how some of them were referring to 'they' instead of 'him' when it came to Ragnarok. Could it be that the man had a partner or a sidekick that he'd also equipped with his tech? That was an unpleasant thought.

The last mercenary standing didn't bother trying to kill Ragnarok where all his comrades had failed. Instead, he cursed Calvert over the radio link, ceasing only when Ragnarok got to him. The radio stayed open during Ragnarok's interrogation of the mercenary, which basically consisted of the mercenary readily giving all the information he had on Calvert's operation and the location of the base.

He was just making a note to ensure no important information was ever passed on to that particular man when the base in the other timeline was rocked by a tremendous explosion; Ragnarok had teleported into it. That version of him was thrown across the room, and suffered several broken bones. Parts of the other-timeline base were on fire, and a large chunk of concrete had shattered his computer desk.

At the same time, in the timeline he'd decided to keep (it really was no contest), he felt a tremor through his chair. A sprinkle of dust fell on the desk; looking up, he saw cracks snaking across the roof, right where the concrete had fallen out of the roof in the other timeline.

How in God's name …? He'd heard rumours that Ragnarok had once escaped exile in an alternate universe by shattering the dimensional barrier, but this was ridiculous! Nobody from a different timeline had ever affected him before! That was impossible!

The sliding door locking his office off from the rest of the base was already hanging off its tracks. The version of Calvert in the other timeline looked up weakly as Ragnarok loomed in through the doorway, the spherical chest-piece illuminating the darkened room with actinic indigo radiance. In his hands, the murderous cape held a sledgehammer with high-tech modifications, now glowing here and there with the same indigo light.

"Fuck around," growled Ragnarok. "And find out." He raised the sledgehammer high, then brought it down with earth-shattering force on the floor.

Even as the other timeline vanished from Calvert's perception, he was thrown across the room. The explosion in his office was nowhere as powerful as the one in the ended timeline, but it was sufficient to upend his computer desk and send him smashing into the wall. Breath driven from his body, he slumped to the floor, consciousness slipping away.

Distant sirens, combined with a recorded voice echoing through the base, dragged him back to wakefulness. He wheezed, out of breath, a sharp pain in his side suggesting fractured ribs. His computer desk was still on its side, the keyboard trapped under it, though one of the screens was still lit up and working.

beep

beep

beep

His head came up, eyes widening in alarm. The sirens and recorded voice finally made sense to his scrambled wits: the computer system had been set up to trigger the base self-destruct if it or the base were ever significantly damaged. The trouble was, the timer was only for five minutes, so he had no idea how long he had left.

Painfully, he dragged himself to his knees, then pushed himself to his feet. While he'd figured that if it ever came to this point, he would already be on the way out of the base, or have another timeline to fall back on, there was still a failsafe. He staggered over to the desk and pulled the one functioning monitor around so he could view the status of the countdown.

10

9

8

"Shit!" He scrabbled for the keyboard. It was half under the desk, so he strained to lift that for a moment before sliding it out and typing in the password that would halt the countdown.

5

4

3

Horror filled him as he realised that half the letters he needed to finish the password were shattered and useless from the desk falling on them. In his final few seconds of life, Thomas Calvert screamed and pounded uselessly on the keyboard anyway.

BOOOOM

<><>​

Captain's Hill

Taylor

The distant explosion drew my attention from the printouts Dad was examining, spread out on one of the picnic tables. I looked down at the city, finally spotting the cloud of dust rising from what looked like a collapsed office building. "Was that you?" I asked, pointing toward it.

He looked around briefly. "What do you think? I've been here all this time."

"Oh, yeah. Good point." I shrugged. "Place the size of Brockton Bay, I guess the chances of some idiot playing with matches is pretty high. Especially if they're pretty high, too."

"That's one way to put it." He tapped a sheet of paper lightly, so as not to shred it. "So, you're the reason I've come out of retirement. Who do you want to go after first? Big fish or little fish?"

I looked over the papers. As far as I could see, they contained all the best-guess information that Director Piggot had collected on the capes of Brockton Bay. Some of it was probably wrong, but that was always the case with anything that couldn't be directly verified.

Out of morbid curiosity, I looked up what she'd had on Shadow Stalker. The file had her name correct (unsurprisingly), and there was the suspicion that Stalker had killed a few people before the PRT hauled her in and threw her into the Wards program (also unsurprisingly). Someone had surmised that she was romantically involved with Emma, which I would've been more than happy to believe. But what interested me more was that there was no mention of the bullying campaign; if Piggot had known about it, it wasn't in the file.

I looked a bit further, then frowned. "Is it just me, or does your name not even come up at all?"

"I'd be surprised if it did." He shook his head. "After the total fuckup with your mother, the Chief Director made sure the local PRT didn't even know I was in town, much less who I was. They kept an eye on us while making sure Piggot and her goons didn't harass me. Given how riddled the local system is with backdoors, they wanted to make sure I didn't have to go scorched-earth with all the gangs to make sure nobody tried anything with you." He snorted derisively. "And yet, here we are."

"Here we are," I agreed. "I'm thinking we squash the bigger players then pick off the smaller fry, one by one."

"As good a plan as any." He began to gather the papers together again. "Biggest player in town is the Empire Eighty-Eight. Take out the big hitters first, or start at the top and work our way down?"

"Start at the top," I decided. "That way, the big hitters will come to us."

Slowly, he nodded. "That's not a bad idea. Saves us time and effort. If there's even one villain in this city who might decide to be stupid, they die."

I pointed at the papers. "Coil sounds like someone who might decide to be stupid. From what I read, he thinks he's some kind of criminal mastermind."

Dad rolled his eyes. "Ugh. Thinkers. They are honestly the fucking worst. Always 'I've analysed this fight a dozen ways and there's no way you can beat me,' and they're always so fucking surprised when I blow their guts out through their assholes. If Coil comes after us, I swear I am going to utterly destroy that smug sonovabitch. I'll unload so much whoop-ass on him that his alternate from Aleph will feel it."

I tilted my head. "How do you know he's smug? Did you fight him once?"

He waited for me to step up close to him. "They're all smug."

I couldn't argue with that. "We'll do him next. But first, let's go kill some Nazis."

"Way ahead of you." He triggered the teleport.

<><>​

Kaiser

There was something seriously wrong going on around Brockton Bay. Explosions had been going off all morning; one in the suburbs, one at Brockton General, a whole series that destroyed Winslow High, another that took the entire roof off the PRT building, and one that destroyed ten yards of the Boardwalk. Max had also heard that Brandish of New Wave was reported dead down at the Boardwalk, literally splattered over a hundred square yards by someone who claimed to be Ragnarok's daughter.

Ragnarok. There was a name to put a chill down the spine and an urgent desire to be elsewhere in the soles of the feet. His last public outing had involved the destruction of the CUI, and the one before had seen Behemoth demolished and Houston reduced to a radioactive crater. There was a persistent rumour that Heartbreaker's corpse had once been found in Brockton Bay, his brain half-melted and his eyeballs exploded, and that this was somehow linked to Ragnarok as well, but Max had always discounted it.

He wasn't discounting it now.

"James, no," he said urgently into the phone. "Listen to me. Ragnarok can't be bribed and he can't be frightened away. We need to move all our special holdings out of the city and—"

The explosion tore through his office; the lights shattered, every window blew out, and Max was thrown back against the wall. His desk stayed right where it was, mainly because it was built into the floor and was made of wood veneer over plate steel. Picking himself up dazedly, he peered through the smoke and dust that had been generated by the detonation. Two figures stepped forward, outlined against the light coming in from outside. One bore a swirling indigo sphere in the middle of his chest, while the other hefted an ominous-looking sledgehammer.

The one with the sledgehammer spoke; for all that she sounded like a teenage girl, the single word she said was the most ominous Max had ever heard.

"Dibs."



End of Part Seven



[A/N: Some people will be wondering exactly what happened to Coil.

Well, it goes like this. Disproportionate Retribution (my name for Ragnarok's shard) always finds a way to destroy anyone who attacks his host. When Coil's power (Simulation) modelled Ragnarok to fill in his part in the psychic flash that Simulation used to generate the other timeline, DR noted Simulation peering at it. So, when Coil was experiencing the modelled version of Ragnarok's retaliation, DR shoved a whole lot of energy into the model, to the point that some of it bled through into the real world. Not nearly as much as would have happened if Ragnarok had actually been there, but still enough to fuck over Coil. Because Disproportionate Retribution don't play.]

 

[Kehsem]

"I said, fuck off!" she screamed at it before ending the call a second time.

Click to shrink...

~ Alternate Timeline ~

The onslaught of profanity that left Tattletale's mouth was something none of them had ever witnessed before.

Filthy enough to rot the beard off the crustiest sailor, Rachel knelt wide-eyed as she took turns trying to cover the ears of her cowering canine friends. She didn't understand half of what was being said, but she didn't need to - she felt it.

At some point during the tirade, Brian had pulled out his cellphone and begun recording. If he survived the fallout from this, the monetization he'll reap when he uploads the video will more than make up for whatever revenue stream he'd lost. Downside: His little sister definitely has a new idol.

Alec had survived a lifetime of abuse so terrible it left him as incapable of attraction to other people as Lisa, if not moreso. But watching her tell their boss what she planned to do with his head after it's incredibly graphic defilement and removal....

A tiny ember bloomed in the darkness... Maybe they could go out for drinks?

 

[meloa789]

If Danny initiated a pre-emptive strike against CUI, would that be considered as a casus belli against the US?

 

[Lokdal75]

Happy New Years! Thanks Ack for bringing in the new year with a BANG!

This update just brings such a smile to my face!
I had to re-read it all when I saw the update since it had been a while since the last update.

Seeing Coil get fucked from his simulation is just an awesome way for that cockroach to die. Brandish getting salsa'd from her own issues and Piggot offing herself.. This fic has it all!

Thanks for the Words!

 

[Ack]

Collateral Damage

Part Eight: Totally on Purpose

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Taylor

"Dibs?" Dad turned to me disbelievingly. "You can't just pre-emptively claim a kill like that."

I snorted in derision. "Sure I can. You're just salty because I said it first."

"Are you honestly trying to compete with me on kills?" He still sounded like he was trying to make sense of it all.

"Compete? No. Catch up, maybe yeah." I gestured broadly. "You've got a massive head start on me. Behemoth, Houston, the CUI. I've got the Bitches Three plus Brandish. If you jump in every time we're facing someone who needs to die, I'll never get enough notches on my belt to ensure nobody's willing to fuck with me when you're not there."

"Hm. I suppose so. Have at it." He gestured magnanimously at the solid wall of steel columns that had appeared between us and Max Anders. He'd been strongly suspected to be Kaiser by Director Piggot, but never by quite enough margin to act upon; the barrier definitely proved it, but also blocked him away from us.

Or so he might have thought.

Stepping forward, I flexed my hands around the haft of the sledgehammer, then swung it into the face of the steel wall. The hammer wasn't light, but even if I'd swung a normal hammer with all my strength, there would've been nothing more than a dull clang and an embarrassing rebound. I could've pounded on that wall all day long and done nothing more than mar the finish here and there.

The hammer, being Dad's tech, was anything but normal. At the moment that the head made contact, the mechanisms he'd built into it flared with indigo light and released a truly staggering burst of kinetic energy. The harder the impact, the more powerful the resulting kinetic burst; I hit the wall even harder than I'd attacked the desk back in Winslow.

There was an explosion like a baby nuke going off (though my ears were protected from the worst of it) and when my eyes cleared, the wall had been shredded. So had the desk, the wall behind it, and indeed most of the top of the Medhall building. Chunks of concrete and steel and glass were likely raining down all over Brockton Bay, but that was kind of an ongoing theme with us.

I stalked forward, fully aware that Kaiser wouldn't have survived the blast if he was fully exposed to it, but interested in seeing if there were bits and pieces of him left behind. Instead, I found the square opening of an elevator shaft where there should be no elevator shaft. Supervillains and their secret exits: what can I say?

"Great," I groused as I kicked random bits of rubble aside and peered down the shaft. "He probably got away because you were pissed at me calling dibs."

"Me?" Dad gave me a Look, like I'd just tried to sneak an extra piece of pizza on TV night. "You're the one who called dibs in the first place!"

"And I was utterly within my rights to do it, like I already told you." I rolled my eyes. "You know what? Fuck it. I am totally over this argument already." Holding the hammer up out of the way—I didn't want to destroy the whole building, at least not yet—I jumped into the open shaft. However far down Kaiser had stopped, I figured, was where I wanted to be.

I fell for a couple of seconds, then I hit something hard. Just like when Dad threw me out of the hospital, the necklace flared indigo and blew a crater in my landing point, which happened to be the top of the elevator as well as the walls of the shaft. As usual, the explosion cancelled my downward momentum, which was useful because I saw a bunch of faces staring at me out of the hole in the side of the shaft, including Kaiser's. Faces I really, really wanted to talk to. (And by 'talk to' I meant 'blow the fuck out of'.)

However, I was about to start falling again, and I couldn't depend on the elevator to stop me, because me running into it had more or less destroyed it; what was left of it was falling too. I didn't want to fall all the way to the basement and have to climb all the way up again (because that would just piss me off more) so I did the only thing I could think of.

Twisting sideways, I pulled some bugs to the soles of my feet and exploded them to redirect my fall through the hole into the area the Empire capes were staring at me from. This wasn't controlled flight, or anything like it. I had only the vaguest means of steering, and it was dependent on having enough bugs for forward thrust, but in this situation it was good enough.

Blasting in through the gaping hole I'd blown in the wall of the elevator shaft, I landed awkwardly and tumbled on the floor. The hammer wasn't the easiest thing to hang onto, and I lost my grip on it. Striking sparks from the floor, it clattered away from me until it was stopped by a foot.

Hookwolf's foot.

I looked at it, and gauged the distance to it. Then, as I climbed to my feet, I watched as he leaned down and wrapped his metal-clad hand around the haft. For a moment, I hoped Dad had maybe built a Mjolnir effect into it, but no such luck. He picked it up just fine.

For some reason, the knowledge that I really needed to work on my landings pissed me off even more. "You're gonna want to give that back," I said.

He shook his head and grinned at me as he hefted the hammer. "You know, I don't think I will. So you're what, Ragnarok junior? The kid trying to step into the old man's boots?"

"Right for the first bit, wrong for the second. Learning the trade alongside him." I ignored the rest of the Empire Eighty-Eight as I walked up to Hookwolf. He was a fearsome sight, already bulking out into his metallic battle form, but I was more angry than scared. "You're gonna give that back right now, or shit is absolutely going to get real."

He looked at me for a moment, then he hit me with the hammer.

The necklace flared indigo as it absorbed the impact, but to my disappointment, it didn't explode Hooksy into a million shards of bloody shrapnel, or even send him flying. I was the one who was slammed backward, rolling across the floor until I hit the far wall. It blew out, of course, but I stopped first.

"Well, that was a bit underwhelming," Hookwolf said, looking down at the hammer. "Hey, Alabaster, hold still a moment."

"What? Why?" Alabaster frowned, then the penny dropped. "Uh, you think that's really a good—"

Holding the hammer in one hand, Hookwolf hit him almost casually with it. I wasn't entirely sure what he was expecting, maybe for Alabaster to be thrown back against the wall like I'd been. Instead, he got the Brandish treatment. There was a brief flash of indigo light and Alabaster exploded, like someone had shoved a live hand grenade up his ass and pulled the pin.

Make that two or three grenades; Alabaster went everywhere. It was actually pretty impressive.

"Jesus fuck!" After wiping some of Alabaster out of his eyes, Hookwolf stared at the hammer with a whole new level of respect, while the rest of them looked around as though they expected their teammate to just pop up again out of nowhere.

Off to the side, Othala gagged as she evidently realised what had happened. "I got some in my mouth!" she choked out, before she started throwing up.

"Give me that!" Kaiser, now wearing his trademark armour, reached for the hammer. "What were you even thinking?"

"That it wasn't turned on or something," Hookwolf protested, reluctantly giving up the weapon. "She took it okay."

"That's because she's his daughter, you inconceivable moron," Kaiser hissed. "Do you honestly think he'd give her a weapon she could be hurt by?"

All eyes turned to me; I carefully didn't look down at the pendant Dad had given me. I did, however, start belatedly gathering more bugs together. Making them bite people was plan A, while making them blow the shit out of people was also plan A. Call it plan A plus.

But if Dad came down here and saw that I'd lost the hammer to the Empire Eighty-Eight, I'd never live it down. So I had to get it back. And it seemed that even Hookwolf swinging it couldn't do much more than pinball me around; the pendant would save me from harm to anything but my dignity.

But I was totally done with assholes taking my shit and playing keep-away with it. "Hey, Kaiser," I said. "I'm gonna need that back. Hand it over right now, and I won't shove it up your ass and light you up like a road flare."

He hefted the hammer as he looked around at me. "You already tried to kill me once, girl. What makes you think I'm going to let you have a second chance at it?"

I was all out of fucks to give. "You're a villain in Brockton Bay. The fact you're not running for the city limits as fast as you can means you are gonna die. Nothing you do or say is gonna change that, so why be an asshole about it?"

Hookwolf let out a derisive bark of laughter. "Christ, girlie, you've got stones bigger than your father's. Do you even have a name?"

I shook my head. "I'm not like you. I don't have the urge to play dress-up, to put on a face that isn't mine. Now, I've asked you to give me my hammer back three times. I'm done asking."

"Oh, the fuck with this!" Crusader pointed his spear at me. "Just fucking kill her already!"

Kaiser shook his head. "Not a great idea. Any attack that hits Ragnarok bounces back on the attacker ten times over. I'm guessing she's got something of the same going on."

"But Hookwolf hit her with the hammer and he's still here!" Crusader turned to look at me, and I saw it happen. I'd seen it before and I'd probably see it again, but never quite so clearly as right then: the birth of a Truly Stupid Idea.

"It's her hammer, you ignorant fuck," Hookwolf reminded him. "You think it wouldn't be shielded against whatever the effect is, in case she accidentally hit her dad or something?"

"Don't call me ignorant! I know it's her hammer! Kaiser, give it to me for a second!" Crusader's eyes were alight with the fervour of his plan. It was clear as day to me: he thought he'd figured out a loophole.

Loopholes, Dad had once told me, were a great way to stick your neck out and get it chopped off.

"I wouldn't bother trying to hit her with it," Kaiser advised, handing over the hammer with more than a little reluctance. "Hookwolf tried, and it only knocked her around."

"And if you knock me off the building, I'll only blow a hole in the sidewalk, then I'll be right back up here," I added. "I will come after you, and I'll kill every one of you."

"Not if you're dead." Crusader looked around at his comrades. "Watch this."

"You forgot the 'hold my beer' part," I jeered. I had quite a few bugs gathered now. Hiding a bunch of them behind my back, I fired them up with the indigo glow. Whatever Crusader did now, I was going to get the hammer back.

"Shut up." He did something that pulled all his ghosts back into himself, then made them come out again. This time, they were carrying replicas of the hammer. "This thing hits really hard, and my ghosts bypass normal protection, so fuck you. You're going to die."

"You're forgetting one thing." I braced myself, knowing I'd get one chance at this before I had to call on Dad for help, which I'd never hear the end of.

"Yeah? What's that?" He didn't bother to wait for my answer. Two of his ghosts rushed me, swinging their hammers.

I felt the slightest tap of impact, then the pendant flared indigo. Crusader's armour flew off in all directions and he was crushed and torn apart bodily, like he'd just come between the collision of an eighteen-wheeler and a diesel locomotive. Even as the hammer slipped out of his grip, I detonated the bugs at my back, rocketing me forward so I could snatch it out of the air.

Hookwolf grabbed for me on the way past, but I was pretty sure that was more a reflex move than a consequence of considered thought. Given the way his arm explosively shattered all the way up to the shoulder, I got the impression that he probably hadn't meant to. He was armoured up, so the explosion caused a spray of shrapnel in all directions.

Kaiser and Menja and Fenja were protected, and Cricket did some cool acrobatic-ninja bullshit to get out of the way, but Stormtiger took a big hit and so did Purity. Both of them went down hard, with what looked like critical wounds. Othala was another unarmoured one, but Victor got in the way at the last moment, shielding her from the flying razor-edged steel.

"Never fuck with Ragnarok's tech," I said, and tapped the hammer into my palm. "Okay, who's next?"

"Secure her!" shouted Kaiser. "Nothing damaging! Nothing even remotely lethal!"

"Make me invincible," Victor said to Othala. "Make it so nothing can hurt me."

I raised an eyebrow. "You realise that even if I can't hurt you, I can spread her all the way across Brockton Bay. Then, once she's dead, I can hurt you. Moron."

"Dizziness isn't lethal," hissed Cricket. "And I'm real interested in seeing what it is that's flashing under your shirt."

"Too bad," I sneered. "You can die in ignorance." Note to self: get Dad to figure out how to block the glow.

Pivoting, I hefted the hammer in both hands, prepping to piledrive Victor into the next county. As he came in, Cricket opened her mouth again. I wasn't sure what that was supposed to achieve, but the pendant flared and Cricket was blown backward. Everything from her sinuses down to her lungs erupted from her body, leaving her face and chest a cratered mess of bone shards and steak tartare.

I swung the hammer at Victor, but he got his hands around the haft and pulled it out of my hands. So I punched him instead, in the face. It didn't faze him in the slightest, but Othala went over backward with a cry of pain, blood spraying from her nose. When I tried to punch him again, he got behind me and put the haft of the hammer across my neck. He was bigger and stronger than me, and I didn't have the strength to stop him.

But that was okay. I didn't need it. Grabbing the hammer with both hands, I lifted both feet off the ground and drove them back against his kneecaps. There was a double crack of bone shattering, and Othala shrieked with pain as she collapsed.

Still, he had that thing up against my throat and it was starting to press pretty hard. I tried to elbow him in the ribs, but he swayed to one side. Menja (or maybe Fenja) came at me, and I kicked upward at her; my foot made contact and she was launched upward through the ceiling in a welter of blood and gore, leaving one armoured foot behind. I wasn't sure if she'd make it out of the building, but I didn't much care either.

I was tall for a girl, but Victor was taller. This gave me an idea but before I could implement it, the other Valkyrie ran at me. Screaming a name that sounded like "Nessa!", she swung a sword overhand at me, carving a huge gash in the remaining ceiling tiles.

By the time the sword came down on my head, she was scraping what was left of the ceiling, but she could've been at full height and it still wouldn't have helped her. The pendant flared, and what she would've done to me happened to her, only ten times as lethally. Shredded down the middle as messily as if I'd used a circular saw, her head more or less missing in action, she fell apart into two extremely rough halves. Her sword clattered to the floor.

I jerked my head backward, thumping it into Victor's armoured chest. It wasn't a serious impact between me and Victor, but it was for Othala. Already on the floor due to her shattered knees, she was slammed onto her back by an invisible impact that caved her chest in. Lying there with blood leaking out of her mouth and nose, she turned desperate eyes toward where I was still struggling with Victor, reaching out toward him.

Even without looking at her, I could tell the moment the light went out of her eyes and her body fell limp. I had the nails of one hand digging into Victor's wrist and the other on the haft of the hammer, and between one instant and the next, the texture of his skin went from as unyielding as granite to the consistency of marshmallow. It wasn't that I was super-strong; Dad had explained that to me. But while I was wearing the pendant, anything that had the potential to do harm now did a lot of harm.

He was strong and he was trained, but all the will in the world was useless when I plunged my nails through his wrist and ripped half of it away. Letting out an ugly sound of agony, he let me and the hammer go, and fell away to the side. He stared up at me from his knees as he nursed his ruined wrist, and I thought I saw something in his eyes change. About one second later, I realised what I'd seen was his eyeballs melting and dribbling from the sockets as he screamed—briefly—and clutched at his head before falling over.

I didn't even know what that was about, but to be brutally honest, I didn't care either.

As I turned toward Kaiser, hammer raised and ready, he broke and ran. I didn't really blame him; the rest of the Empire Eighty-Eight had tried their best against me and failed utterly. The only one left alive was Hookwolf, still missing the arm, but stepping between me and his boss all the same.

If this had been a movie, there would've been a tense standoff between me and Hookworm. Something along the lines of me saying 'let me past' and him knowing he was going to lose but saying 'I can't do that'. There'd be a fight, which I'd win, but it would delay me long enough for Kaiser to get away until the ultimate clash in the third act.

Like I gave a shit about dramatic pacing. A bunch of my glowing bugs flew straight into Hookwolf's face, burrowed under his mask, and blew his head clean off. I didn't so much as break stride as I ran past him.

For a guy wearing forty pounds of articulated metal armour, Kaiser was pretty damn fast on his feet. All I could think was, he must have had a lot of practice. He dashed out through a door and slammed it behind him; I heard the lock click.

Of course, he'd neglected to recall that I was carrying the Hammer of Oh Fuck, which doubled as the ultimate lockpick. I took the door off its hinges, and the frame clear out of the wall, without slowing down. As I reached the corridor, I saw him ducking around the corner.

I decided to take a shortcut, so I hit the wall in front of me and shattered a massive hole through into what looked like a server room. The servers looked really expensive but they were also really in my way, so I swung the hammer a couple more times to open a path. Amid more sparks than the Fourth of July, I reached the far wall, opened a hole there, and emerged no more than a few yards behind Kaiser.

There was no way he could get away now, but he was going for it anyway. He bolted down the corridor to the stairwell exit, and slammed the panic bar to open the door …

… only to find Dad looming in the doorway.

I had to admit, Dad could do a really good loom. He had the 'silent menace' thing down to a fine art, and the glow of his chest-piece just put the icing on the cake. Kaiser certainly didn't go any farther, and he'd been the uncrowned king of the Brockton Bay underworld for years.

"Really?" I asked. "You're stepping in now, when I've basically got this over and done? You know I would've caught him anyway."

"I know." He shrugged. "I was just thinking we could hurry things along. I've got a reputation to uphold, and this is dragging on a bit."

Kaiser stared from him to me and back again. "So you were here all along?" he demanded. "Why didn't you step in earlier?"

Dad shrugged. "She called dibs. As childish as that might be—"

"Hey!" I objected. "It's a perfectly valid claim!"

He rolled his eyes. "And childish. But anyway, what sort of a father would I be if I didn't step back and let my daughter cut loose once in a while? So here we are." He turned to me. "Anyone left?"

"Only Krieg, I think." I frowned, thinking. "And Rune. Maybe Night and Fog. But everyone back there's either dead or dying."

Dad nodded. "Good. Okay, finish this and we can get going."

I grinned and hefted the hammer. "Okay, Kaiser. Any last words?"

"Wait, wait, you don't have to do this." Kaiser raised his hands in supplication. "I'll turn myself over to the PRT. Testify to everything the Empire's done. Work at fixing the damage."

Dad snorted. "Do we look like heroes to you?"

While Kaiser was looking at him, I swung the hammer. It hit Kaiser in the chestplate; there was a massive flash of indigo light, and a CRACK of the sonic boom as he went out through the wall. More precisely, all the walls. I wasn't sure all of him had made it out of the building, but I didn't much care either.

"Empire Eighty-Eight, done," Dad said, taking out a notepad and drawing a line through one entry. "We can mop up the remnants later. Coil next?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Do we even know where he is? The notes said he was fairly tricky."

He smiled in a way that boded ill for anyone crossing him. "They also said he was suspected of using minor gangs as his catspaws. Shall we go talk to them?"

I grinned in reply. "Let's do that thing."



End of Part Eight

 

[Kehsem]

~ Gonna' dig me a hole! ~

*pick*

~ Gonna' dig me a hole! ~

*pick*

~ Gonna' put a nerd in it! ~

*pick*

~ Gonna' put a nerd in it! ~

*pick*

"Taylor, where did you get that pickaxe?"

She shrugged, "Where did Bugs Bunny get his?"

"Um, sure, whatever. You know there are faster ways of getting to Coil, right?"

"Probably, but this way he has plenty of time to shit himself before I get there."

"Fair enough. Proceed."

~ Gonna' take a firecracker! ~

*pick*

~ Gonna' take a firecracker! ~

*pick*

~ And stuff it up his ass! ~

*pick*

~ And stuff it up his ass! ~


~ Meanwhile, in a wannabe Bond-villains lair ~

The echoes of profanity so vile the paint it peeled off the walls still fluttered through the air as the last sounds dimmed.

Coil, head in hands at his desk, just waited for the end to come.

 

[Xanderhunter]

Danny and Taylor when they realize Coil is already dead.

 

[Ack]

~ Gonna' dig me a hole! ~

*pick*

~ Gonna' dig me a hole! ~

*pick*

~ Gonna' put a nerd in it! ~

*pick*

~ Gonna' put a nerd in it! ~

*pick*

"Taylor, where did you get that pickaxe?"

She shrugged, "Where did Bugs Bunny get his?"

"Um, sure, whatever. You know there are faster ways of getting to Coil, right?"

"Probably, but this way he has plenty of time to shit himself before I get there."

"Fair enough. Proceed."

~ Gonna' take a firecracker! ~

*pick*

~ Gonna' take a firecracker! ~

*pick*

~ And stuff it up his ass! ~

*pick*

~ And stuff it up his ass! ~


~ Meanwhile, in a wannabe Bond-villains lair ~

The echoes of profanity so vile the paint it peeled off the walls still fluttered through the air as the last sounds dimmed.

Coil, head in hands at his desk, just waited for the end to come.

Click to shrink...

You do realise, he's already dead

Danny and Taylor when they realize Coil is already dead.

Click to shrink...

"What do you mean, he's already dead? I had PLANS for him! ... oh well, who's next?"

 

[Avernus]

"What do you mean, he's already dead? I had PLANS for him! ... oh well, who's next?"

Click to shrink...

Danny:

"Well, now I'm gonna have to figure out how to kill Death just so I can get Coil back and kill him properly."

 

[Apollo_Man]

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!! SKULL FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!!

 

[Ack]

Collateral Damage

Part Nine: Encountering Ragnarok

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Undersiders Base

Grue

Lisa was still obsessively delving into the internet, barely touching the coffee sitting on the chair arm. Brian had seen her worried before, but he'd never seen her objectively terrified. Until now.

"Uh … Coil's stopped trying to call us," he ventured. "Does that mean he's given up, or is he bringing some mercenaries over—"

"He's dead." Lisa's voice carved across Brian's like a bandsaw through balsa. "One of those explosions we felt a little while ago was his base, and he was inside it. He must've made a run at Ragnarok or the kid."

"Okay, that's good, right?" Alec had his controller in his hands, but he wasn't even pretending to play anymore. "Coil being dead means we can't be pulled into his shit. We just keep our heads down until they've killed everything and everyone who've pissed them off, then we keep on going the way we have been."

"And how long's that gonna be?" Rachel looked as jumpy as both of them put together. "My dogs are terrified, and I don't blame them. But we can't stay here forever."

"Watch me." Alec clutched the controller a little tighter. "I will totally live on ramen for the next year if I have to. I've done worse."

Brian took a deep breath. "I'm going to make a food run now, and collect Aisha on the way. She can stay here a few days. I'll sleep on the sofa." While he didn't think his bratty little sister would do something so monumentally suicidal as to seek out Ragnarok's attention, she'd done some pretty damn boneheaded things before.

"Probably not a bad idea." Lisa spoke absently, her mind on other things as she typed rapidly. "It'll be good for—" She paused, her eyes fixating on the screen. "Shit. No. Shit. Shit."

"What?" Brian asked the question at the same time that the other two did. They all really, really wanted to know what was going on.

"They blew the roof off the PRT building, then they took the top off Medhall. We're in trouble." Lisa was pale and shaking.

Alec frowned. "Uh … we don't live in a big building, and we're not stupid-ass rich like Max Anders. Why's that a problem for us?"

Lisa took a deep breath. "They went to the PRT building to get information on the villains in Brockton Bay. Information that never gets acted on, because it's too shaky. Black files. The first place they hit after that was Medhall. Because the file says Max Anders is a supervillain." Even as she spoke, Brian could see her eyes flickering as her power filled in gaps. "Kaiser. He was Kaiser."

"Wait." Something sounded off about that statement. "Why do you say 'was'?"

"Because he's dead." The 'duh' in Lisa's voice was audible even though it was unspoken. "If Ragnarok or his kid got to the Empire, they're dead." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "And if Ragnarok's decided to make the city safe for his child by hunting down every villain in the PRT's black file, then we're on that list too."

"Fucking what?" Alec discarded the controller and jumped up from the sofa. "He's coming after us? How do we get out of this? What do we do?"

Brian knew exactly how he felt. Terror sleeted ice water through his veins, and his knees weakened. "We have to get out of town." His own voice sounded foreign to his ears. "Now. Everyone, pack your shit." They'd just have to make a detour to grab Aisha, then head for the city limits at their best speed.

For half a second, he dwelled on everything he kept in his new apartment, and just as quickly dismissed it from consideration. None of it was worth dying for.

"Yeah, but where are we gonna go?" Alec seemed on the edge of outright panic, a far cry from his usual detached self. The thought of imminent and unavoidable death had that effect on a lot of people. "Hey, how about Canada? Heartbreaker's dead now. I can go back. If Ragnarok's got a list, I'm getting off it."

"What's Canada like?" asked Rachel. "Do they treat dogs alright?"

Alec headed for the corridor. "No idea, but I bet they'll treat 'em better after you get there."

Brian opened his mouth to say 'hurry up, you idiots', but the moment hung in the air like the silence just before a lightning strike. Or perhaps, he would decide later, it was merely his brain filling in events after the fact to make things appear more dramatic.

The explosion rocked the building; glass from the large windows rained across the loft. Even as he tried to maintain his balance, Brian saw Lisa yelp and cover her head with her arms. "They're here!" someone shouted; Brian would never be sure who.

A constellation of bugs, lambent in ominous indigo luminescence, flew in through the now-open gap and settled on each of them in turn. Frozen, Brian stared down at the one that had landed directly over his heart, and tried not to even breathe threateningly. Another one, he knew, was on his forehead.

"Don't touch them!" Lisa warned. "Don't even move! We die if we try!"

Brian smelled the sharp tang of fresh urine, and wondered who had pissed themselves. Maybe it was one of the dogs. He wouldn't blame them if it was.

There was a short, sharp explosion from downstairs; the floorboards barely shook, but he knew what it meant. Ragnarok was in the building.

Lisa gritted the words out. "Nobody. Do. Anything."

<><>​

Taylor

I followed Dad up the spiral staircase. It was actually a cool touch. Made the Undersiders' lair that little bit special.

This wasn't to say we wouldn't blow the fuck out of it if we had to. But I was allowed to admire little bits and pieces like that. If anyone wanted to claim otherwise, I had a whole swarm of bugs ready to present my counter-proposal. Let's just say, it would go over with a real bang.

When we got to the top of the stairs, we found the Undersiders waiting for us, not trying to run for it at all. Seems they were actually as smart as their reputation said. Colour me impressed.

We strolled into their hideout, broken glass crunching under our feet. Even out of costume, the Undersiders were easy to figure out. Grue, facing partially away from us, was a tall buff Black guy; he was about the same height as Dad, and a hell of a lot bulkier. Tattletale would have to be the blonde on the sofa with the laptop and Hellhound the auburn-haired girl crouching on the floor with the shivering dogs, which left by elimination Regent as the twinkish guy with the curly black hair.

"Good morning." It could have been a pleasant greeting. Dad didn't choose to let it sound that way. "You know who I am. This is my daughter. Cross her, and you cross me. The difference between us is, she'll think about giving you a warning before destroying you. I won't."

After giving them a couple of seconds to let that sink in, I took over talking. "You work for Coil. Where is he?"

Tattletale's head came up; glass shards sifted out of her hair as she stared at us. "Um, he's dead? I mean … you killed him, right?"

Dad frowned, and she blanched. Neither Dad nor I commented on the suddenly renewed smell of urine in the room. However, Dad did have something else to say. "No, I didn't. I'd know if I had."

I took a step toward Tattletale. "If you're covering for him, not a great survival tactic."

"Um." Tattletale shook her head. More glass tinkled out of her hair. "Not covering for him. Hated the bastard. He's been calling us, trying to get us to go see what you were doing. I told him to fuck off."

Dad moved up alongside me. "Get. To. The. Point."

Flustered, she spoke faster. "I've, I've been following the explosions around town. He had an underground base near Downtown proper, and it went up …" She tapped a few keys on the laptop, nudging aside bits of glass to do it. "… nine minutes, forty-three seconds ago. So, I figured he played stupid games and won stupid prizes."

That nudged a memory, and I glanced sideways at Dad. "That was when we were on Captain's Hill. I asked you if you'd done that, remember?"

"Hm." He nodded, acknowledging the point. "So, he's already dead?"

From the look on her face, she was trying not to hyperventilate. "That's what my power says …?"

"And is it often wrong?" Somebody had to ask the question, and I decided it would be me.

Her gaze flickered to her teammates, and she grimaced. "Sometimes, if I get bad data. Not often. I can call him, see if he answers. If he's alive, he'll totally take my call."

Dad nodded once. "Do it."

She took up her phone and turned it on. While Dad watched her fiddle with it, I cast my gaze over the Undersiders' hideout. For a supervillain lair, it looked … homey. Less Fortress of Doom, more what I imagined a frat house would look like. With dogs, even.

"Calling now." Tattletale hit the icon, and put it on speaker at the same time, without needing to be told. I got the impression she was definitely the brains of the outfit.

The phone didn't even ring once. Instead, I heard a voice directing the caller to leave a message. Dad nodded, and Tattletale hit the end-call button.

"So he either turned his phone off, which doesn't sound likely, or it got caught in the blast along with him." I looked up at Dad. "Sounds like they're telling the truth."

"Hm." It was a great sound. Totally noncommittal, but Dad could load it with any amount of menace if he wanted. "Looks like we're hitting Lung next, then."

If I hadn't known that my powers had nothing to do with emotion sensing (what a stupid fucking idea for a power, just saying) I might have sworn I could feel the relief radiating from all four teenagers in front of us.

"Looks like it," I agreed. We had Piggot's Black File, and I doubted the Undersiders had the skinny on the leader of the ABB.

But he made no effort to leave. "One thing, before we go." And just like that, the tension came back, ten times as strong. "Have any of these little shits ever messed with you, in any way?"

I was reasonably sure they hadn't, but 'reasonably sure' didn't cut it with Dad. Turning, I looked Grue in the eye. He had a nice face, but I didn't recognise him at all. Anyway, he didn't strike me as the sort of asshole who'd help bully someone like me. "Not him." Then I looked across the room at Hellhound. Rachel Lindt. She'd actually been in the news a few times. No secret identity. I'd definitely never met her before. "Not her." Tattletale had a mischievous expression, and I wouldn't put it past her to fuck up someone's day for whatever reason, but she'd never done it to me that I knew of. "Nope." And Regent … I'd never met him either. "They're all in the clear. I doubt they even go to Winslow." I paused. "Went to Winslow."

He nodded. "Good."

I knew Dad, so I knew what was coming next. He wasn't about to just walk away when he could teleport from right where he was. So, I pointed at the exit as I took my bugs off the Undersiders. "You've got ten seconds. Run."

Three seconds later, the room was clear of Undersiders; there was a clattering on the spiral staircase as they took it at a distinctly unsafe speed. Dad gave me an unimpressed stare. "You're actually giving them time to get clear?"

I shrugged. "They didn't fuck us around. Gave us all the information they had. Now they'll spread the word that if people cooperate, they get to live. It hasn't changed that to fuck with us is to die, but if we want something, people will have more incentive to give it to us."

"Hm." He didn't argue anymore, which I figured for him meant he was conceding without ever admitting that there'd been an argument in the first place. Totally fucking typical of the man, just saying. I stepped in close, and he triggered the teleport.

<><>​

Tattletale

Lisa was in third place as they hit the doorway. Brian was out in front, powering along with those unfairly long legs, and Rachel was right behind him. She whistled and pointed, and her dogs shot out past Brian. Behind Lisa was Alec, who never ran anywhere if he could help it; despite the ache in her own lungs, she grabbed his arm and dragged him along at her best speed.

'You've got ten seconds. Run.' She didn't dare stop to look at her phone, and she never wore a watch, so she had to estimate elapsed time with her power. As it ticked over to ten, she let Alec go, dived to the ground, and wrapped her hands over her head.

The explosion went off half a second later, washing heat over her legs and back. Pieces of debris began clattering to the ground all around her; she scrambled to her feet and flattened herself against the wall, to make for a smaller target.

Alec joined her there as larger bits of the roof crashed down into the street, then the fallout of the explosion petered out. She stared at where the loft had been; it was a smoking crater in the remains of the building. Whatever was left inside had to be extremely durable, or it simply wouldn't be in one piece.

Rachel and Brian came trailing back down the street; the three dogs sticking closer to Rachel than her own shadow. A whimper caught Lisa's attention and she stared at Alec. "What's the matter? Are you hurt?"

He shook his head, but looked more woebegone than ever. "My saved games. All my high scores. Gone."

Brian shook his head and rolled his eyes, then cuffed Alec lightly upside the head. "Seriously. Priorities. We survived the most terrifying cape in the world. This is a time for celebration. Now, we have to see how much of your stuff we can salvage from that mess, then get the hell out of here."

"So we're still getting out of town?" Alec sounded like he wasn't sure anymore.

"Definitely." Brian was. "Just because he didn't kill us this time doesn't mean jack when he gets down to our spot on the list. So we're leaving first."

Lisa shrugged. "Just look on the bright side."

Brian looked suspiciously at her. "What bright side?"

Her gaze cut sideways to Alec. "There's not going to be any arguments now about taking the big-screen monitor in the car with us."

"Oh, ha ha," growled Alec. "Very fucking funny."

<><>​

Taylor

Atop Captain's Hill once more, Dad gave me the side-eye. "You sure you aren't going soft already?"

"Not everyone's as rock hard as you Dad," I snorted, knowing I was the only one in the world who could talk to him like that and live to tell the tale. "Besides, I only gave them ten seconds to save themselves. All their stuff is still gone."

"They are still shit-scared of us," he mused thoughtfully. "And they think we did them a huge favour by letting them live, when all it cost us was ten seconds of our time."

"Exactly." I pounced on his words. "Now, no matter how far they run, no matter what rock they hide under, they owe us, and they know it."

"Hm. Maybe." He got the printed sheets out again and spread them on the picnic table. "Okay, let's see what she had on Lung."

I joined him at the table. "Here's some stuff," I offered, gently tapping one sheet. Over a certain intensity, and the pendant would do its work and shred the paper. Neither of us wanted that. "Some places we might find him."

"And here's some information about Oni Lee. Right. Let's go fuck up the ABB." He rolled up the papers again and stashed them away.

I grinned, hefting the Hammer of Doom. The Undersiders had been cooperative. Lung was pretty-well guaranteed not to be.

I was just fine with this.

<><>​

Lung

All was not well in Kenta's world. Despite the rumours that the Empire Eighty-Eight had been destroyed—which would've been a good thing at any other time—he was also hearing reports of explosions all over the city, from the suburbs all the way into Downtown. Even the PRT building had lost part of its roof, or so his people said.

Which was all well and good. He was fine with explosions. In his time, he'd caused more than a few. The trouble was, he hadn't ordered these ones, and he didn't know who had.

The number of capes in Brockton Bay with the ability and the willingness to blow up large chunks of the scenery was actually quite small, and he was one of them. It was possible, he supposed, that Squealer had built a vehicle-mounted howitzer with city-wide range in a drug-fuelled haze, or that Leet had constructed something equally dangerous for one of his stupid video game shows, but he didn't know.

And that worried him.

He pointed at one of his men. "You. Find out what's going on at the PRT. Who did this?" At another. "Find out what the police are saying." Then he gestured at three of them, and Oni Lee. "Go out there. Find who is blowing up buildings."

There was only one answer that any of them could give. "Yes, great Lung."

He'd just settled back into his chair when the one he'd told to query the police cleared his throat nervously. "Uh … something just happened, great Lung."

"Yes? What is it? What do the police have to say?"

The idiot swallowed. "It's not the police, great Lung. The … uh, the Ruby Dreams casino just … exploded."

<><>​

Taylor

We teleported into the middle of a burning mass of wreckage and rubble. Or rather, it hadn't been wreckage and rubble until we got there. Now, bodies lay all around, the closer ones somewhat shredded and burned, while some of the more distant ones had a chance of still being alive. I couldn't say which I'd prefer to be if I had the choice.

"Nice." I looked around, appreciating the sheer amount of damage we'd done just by showing up. "Where are we, anyway?"

"It's called the Ruby Dreams Casino." Dad started moving forward, kicking rubble out of the way. Said rubble exploded on impact, of course, because it was Dad doing the kicking. "Or rather, it was."

"Well, it still could be again, if it was rebuilt," I pointed out reasonably enough as I followed along.

He raised his eyebrows as he glanced back at me. "Who the fuck do you think's going to rebuild it?"

The obvious answer—Lung—was immediately discounted as he was the reason we were here. Which meant he wouldn't be far behind the Ruby Dream in terms of well-being.

"Yeah, good point," I conceded. See? I could totally accept when I was wrong. Unlike my father.

We emerged from the wreckage, only to come face to gun muzzle with about twenty pissed-off guys in red and green. Dad surveyed them, and they looked back at us. It only took a few seconds for most of them to recognise him; of those, about three-quarters bolted, half of them dropping their guns so they could run faster.

Dad and I looked at the five guys who were still facing us. One actually kept his gun pointing at us, while the others were a lot more circumspect about it. Dad gestured at the one brave idiot. "Don't see that very often."

"Well, there was that time with Brandish," I reminded him. "Maybe he just doesn't know who you are."

Dad shook his head. "Okay, now I'm just fucking insulted. I put a lot of effort into making sure everyone knew who I was. I mean, seriously? How many countries do I need to wipe out?"

I held up a finger, determined to head off Dad's butt-hurt feelings. "Wait one." Then I strolled across the intervening ground until I was only a few feet away from the moron with the gun. "Hey, do you know who that is back there?"

"Yeah." His gun was trembling slightly, but it was still pointed steadily at me. "Guy who blow up Ruby Dreams."

"Ask me his name," I said, with an evil grin better suited to Dad.

"Why?"

"Rag. Na. Rok." I waited for the light of recognition to enter their eyes. "Yeah," I said, once I saw it. "Ragnarok blew up Ruby Dreams. He also killed Behemoth and … well … China."

As they began looking at each other for guidance, I went on. "I'm his daughter. Do I really need to tell you what a bad fucking idea it is to be waving a gun at me right now, you idiot?"

English must not have been his first language, though he could understand it pretty well. I could tell that from the way he swore at me and his finger tightened on the trigger. One of his friends saw what was about to happen and shouted at him to stop, but he pulled the trigger anyway. Predictably, his chest exploded, and he hit the ground in several pieces.

"Anyone else want to take a dip in the stupid pool?" I asked the survivors. One by one, they all raised their hands in surrender. I gestured down at the mess of body parts at my feet. "What was his problem, anyway?"

One of the guys licked his lips, and I waited for his response. "Ah …" He wiped some of his friend's blood off his face. "We call Ragnarok something different in Korea. He only arrive six months ago."

"Right." I shook my head at how some people could totally lack any kind of survival instinct and still be walking and talking. "So, anyway. You get one warning." I pointed down at the dead guy. "That's your warning. Got it?"

Their heads nodded like those stupid bobblehead toys; as I strolled back to Dad, I could hear them heading for the tall timber.

"There's no fucking way he hadn't heard of me," he said by way of greeting.

"Oh, he'd heard of you," I agreed, and explained what had happened.

He was still laughing when Lung showed up.



End of Part Nine