Refractions (Worm Colab Dual SI)

[Santo]

The pungent stink of antiseptic was the first thing that I noticed.

An old, deep-set anxiety rose quickly and was squashed by equally old, familiar habit.

I woke up to the feeling of a pickax slamming repeatedly against my forehead, from the inside. I had clearly not drunk nearly enough water during whatever bender I did last night. Still, that was rather strange, as I was usually the designated driver, and when I wasn't, I was rather loath to drink beyond getting slightly tipsy.

I groaned and forced myself to sit up, opening my eyes caused unwelcome light to stab deep into my brain, adding variety to the sharp slams inside my brain pan. Fortunately, the headache did not hurt enough for me not to notice that my entire body felt like I had been worked over by a group of angry people with baseball bats.

As I flopped back down to the uncomfortable bed, I took stock of my pains.

In short, everything.

A more nuanced approach; my legs ached, my stomach and chest felt weak and like I'd had much too long a sparring session, my lower back was on fire. My arms felt noodly and sore. And I'd rather not talk about my head and neck right now. By the smell, I could tell I was in a hospital, and the headache did not feel quite like a hangover, but neither was it far.

Did someone slip me something on a drink? My scattered thoughts dredged up half-remembered stories of people who were roofied and woke up missing their liver. My brain informed me that I had a sharp, stabbing pain in the general area of my liver.

Motherfucker, someone stole my liver. How dare they? I use that.

I swallowed the subsequent wave of nausea, sat up, and forced my eyes open. "Anyone got the number of the asshole I'mma kill?"

"Language, young man." said a big blue blur that was probably scrubs.

The pain in my head made my anger spike. I glared in the general direction of the blur and tried to force my eyes to focus through sheer obstinacy. "Fuck you! Who the shit used my head for Futbol practice? Who stabbed me, and where the shit am I?" Some of my words dragged or were a little slurred, but I got my point across.

Looking to my left and blinking a bunch, I saw a kid laid out on another bed, he was out cold and his face was black and blue. Now that I thought of it, my face was a mixture of pain and numbness, so I probably didn't look much better.

I turned back to the blue blur, the former blue blur was a man in his mid thirties. He was reasonably fit, his arms had good definition but he had a bit of a paunch. Brown hair cut short, brown eyes, and for some reason he was not wearing a mask, last I checked those were supposed to be standard issue.

"Alright Kid, do you remember what happened?" The doctor asked someone as he sat next to me and fiddled with the bed, causing it to humm and start to tilt up. Kinda rude, this guy, talking to someone while standing next to me. Unless he's talking to me, in which case who is this guy calling a kid? I'm an old man well into his decline at the tender mercies of entropy! Proven by my gnarly beard.

"Kid? Everything alright?" He said, putting a hand on my shoulder and gently pushing me back into the bed turned backrest. This irritated me much more than it probably should have. My head pulsed particularly badly and I felt my lip curl over my teeth.

I shoved his hand off with a snarl. "Who're you calling a kid? Don't fuckin' touch me, I'll fuck you up!"

"Woah, easy, easy." the doctor said as he took a step back and held his hands up. "It's okay, you're not in any danger."

If asked, I would not be able to explain why, but that made me angrier. "Like fuck! Where the hell am I!? Who brought me here!? And who the fuck are you!?"

"Okay, okay, I'm going to answer you, so let's calm down." the damn doctor said in that stupid patronizing tone, like he was talking to a child. "In order, Brockton General, the Protectorate Rapid Response team brought you, and I'm Michael, I'm your nurse."

I glared death at not-a-doctor Michael. Then my anger vanished as the names he threw about registered, this made the pickax in my head swing harder, I brought a hand up to my temple and spoke in a much more subdued tone. "Did…Did you say 'Brockton General'?"

"Yes." Michael confirmed gently. "The Protectorate brought you in after recovering you. You're okay. You're safe"

"Brockton General…as in…Brockton Bay?" I asked as a fist of solid ice grabbed hold of my guts and twisted.

"Yes." This time the word was said slowly and filled with trepidation. Michael approached me slowly and looked worriedly at the monitor next to my bed. "Kid-Win?"

"Brockton…Bay…In…Earth Bet?" I asked as the fist in my guts gave them a solid yank.

"Okay, okay, I think we need to calm down. Breathe with me." Michael started to exaggeratedly inhale and exhale. "Can you do that?"

I started to breathe faster, my head felt lighter, I couldn't get enough air, without conscious thought I worked my lungs like bellows, filling them and emptying them, quick as I could. Shadows were crawling in the corners of my eyes. I felt sick.

"Shit!" That may have been Michael yelling that, I couldn't really tell with all the blood pounding in my ears. There was more yelling.

I had to leave, I had to go, I can't stay.

I tried to stand, but something pushed on my shoulder, I tried harder, and it pushed harder, so I punched it. It was a bad swing, bad position, couldn't put weight behind it. The shock made the pressure vanish, and I was on my feet and running the next instant.

Have to leave. Have to Go. Can't Stay.

My body felt wrong, too light, used too much force in the kickoff, my hip banged against something, sending things clattering, I used the impact to rebalance, too far, almost fell the other way but managed to bump the doorway with my shoulder. I saw the doors, and ran.

My legs felt wrong, I couldn't generate enough power, I was going too fast.

Someone got in the way, I lowered my shoulder and tackled them in the stomach, pushing up to get them off the ground so I could keep running.

I slammed into them, they were too heavy. Something was wrong. I could lift my bodyweight in a tackle, this person was smaller than me, but larger than I was. We fell in a tangle of limbs.

Hands were on me. I threw my elbow back. I felt it slam into something soft. Two hands on me disappeared. Still two left. I punched down. The impact shivered up my arm. The last two hands disappeared.

I threw myself up, too much force, stumbled. Legs were wrong. Pushed harder.

Must Leave. Must Go. Can't Stay.

I kept running. The doors were close, escape was near. Shadows moved in. I instinctively lowered my center of gravity, slamming into the first one, pushing against them. The impact didn't send them sprawling as I expected, they absorbed it and wrapped their arms around me.

I grabbed between their legs and squeezed hard, the arms vanished, only for someone else to slam into my back and wrap their arms around my front, lifting me off the floor. I threw my head back, I felt something crunch, the arms didn't vanish. More came, I kicked the first one before the second one grabbed hold of my legs.

Hands started wrapping around me. I kept struggling, but they kept dragging me back down. There was screaming, and I was reasonably sure some of it was me, but it might not have been. I wasn't getting enough oxygen.

I felt something stab me and redoubled my struggles. The arms grew stronger.

I was in Earth Bet.

This isn't supposed to happen.

I can't be here. This can't be happening. It isn't happening.

The darkness at the edge of my vision rushed in.

I can't breathe.

 

[Heroslayer]

Prologue 2

The first thing I noticed was the noise.

I had gotten used to the general noise of my neighborhood when waking up. Garage doors, cars coming and going in the morning as people went about their days, and the general natural noises of an active suburban cul-de-sac. For those few and far times I managed to catch a nap in the afternoon or evening, maybe I'd catch one of my housemates blaring whatever drama they were caught up in downstairs.

What I got instead was the distant noise of people walking around, conversations in the distance, wheels carting supplies around, and the faint clacking of a keyboard.

Okay, not in my room. Or my house. That's disturbing. Where am I even?

Thankfully, my room was rather quiet, so I was able to take in my surroundings. White room, blue curtains to divide the room into sections, and those high up outlets to plug in all the machines a patient should need. It was the typical hospital room. Sterile, though it was a bit beaten down from constant use.

"Okay, that answers one question." I murmured even as I felt my mind whirl. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The air passed through my lips shakily at first, but gradually smoothed out.

Don't panic. Calm down and repress this like a healthy adult.

I felt my brain start to settle as I forced my anxiety to compress into a mere sinking feeling in my gut.

"Okay, let's start with the obvious." I instructed myself slowly. "I'm in hospital. I'm a patient, though it doesn't look that serious."

I took a moment to examine my body. I felt a little pale, but that could be the dim lights and the panic. My arms felt a little sensitive and I could feel a bit of general body ache. Quick glance of the room showed no IV drip or complicated machinery, adding to my hunch that I was okay, hopefully.

Which only brought up more questions.

"Did my friends finally talk me into that bender?"

I didn't feel hungover so that probably wasn't the answer.

Thankfully for my sanity, a nurse walked into the room and let out a little gasp when she saw me sitting up. She was a mousey little hispanic woman. I would have focused a bit more on her other physical features, except I was distracted by something rather distracting.

"Oh! Mr. Gallant, you're up." The nurse spoke softly as she approached me. "Hold on, let me page a doctor and I'll check up on you."

I assumed that she was doing just that, but I was a little distracted by the glowing aurora that was shining around her body like some sort of halo effect. It was like a kaleidoscope of colors was just bursting out of her body. I could see a burst of green, well, multiple shades of green flicking around her excitedly, hovering over a foundation of bright happy yellow.

Okay, so I was seeing visual hallucinations now.

Fun. Just what I need in this situation.

I squinted a little and noticed some things off with the lights. None of the colors were lighting up the room. They were like a poorly rendered CGI light; just there and not naturally part of the environment. The lights were not reflecting off of any other surface, they were just there hovering ominously over the nurse.

Wait, what did she call me?

"Okay, I'm supposed to ask you if you remember how you got here." The nurse, whose name tag read Sunny, said. "Do you remember how you got here, Mr. Gallant?"

There it was again. That was not my last name. Did she think I was someone else?

"I'm going to be perfectly honest, the last thing I remember was working on some stuff for class the next day." I said honestly. I remember grading some papers before giving up and making the executive decision that I'd finish them in my planning periods.

"Okay, that seems to match with what we were expecting." Sunny nodded as a burst of worried orange flickered over her before it was eaten by the underlying happy yellow. "But that's okay, Mr. Gallant. We'll figure it out."

There's that name again. There's clearly something wrong with this situation. I know for a fact that I am not white enough to have a last name like Gallant.

So she thinks I'm someone else. Well, I guess I can play along until I figure out where I am.

"You're in Brockton General, you were in an incident early today involving Uber and Leet." Sunny explained to me. Not that any of that made any sense to me.

"Brockton General?" I asked in confusion. That didn't sound like any of the hospitals near me. Pretty sure all of them had gotten bought out by that one catholic sounding name. Was I that far from home? How long was I asleep?

The colors decided that I shouldn't be thinking about this too hard, there were pretty colors to examine. The outside of the aura exploded into a violent frantic orange that was creeping in and trying to infect the foundational optimistic yellow.

"Yes!" Sunny's voice pitched a little bit. "Is there a problem with that?"

She was panicking. That was the wrong answer. Was Mr. Gallant from Brockton Bay?

"Not really?" I lied as I scratched the back of my head. "I'm just making sure I heard right. My head's pounding."

"Oh!" The orange was still there, but the tendrils that were sinking into the yellow all retracted rapidly. The orange retreated and lingered on the outside of the aura, ready to invade again, but pushed back for now. There was a cautious new shade of orange that was flickering as a buffer between the frantic orange and the sunny yellow. "That's good. Um… the doctor will be in shortly and he'll explain the rest. I'm just going to check on all your vitals."

"Sure." I nodded as I let the nurse do her job. I had no real reason to stop her from doing anything, and it gave me some time to watch the colors in silence. A few minutes later, a caucasian man in a white coat and scrubs walked in. Obviously, by the stethoscope hanging out of his coat pocket, this was my doctor.

"Hello Gallant, how are you doing today?" The Doctor greeted me.

"I'm fine, but you're looking a little green." I blurted out.

"Excuse me?" The doctor paused as he stared at me. The spiteful red core that made up the foundation of the doctor's aurora flared angrily before it was eaten by the sickly green. His shoulders seemed to slump and I could see a tired blue just radiating off of him.

"No, no, I uh… think I'm still seeing colors. Did I hit my head?" I quickly shifted the conversation forward. I really wanted to know why I suddenly was seeing rainbows and sunshine everywhere.

"Yes, actually." The doctor nodded, a bolt of strong blue flickered into existence. "I'm sure Nurse Sunny has briefed you on how you got here?"

"Uber and Leet?" I repeated the terms. Were those supposed to be names? Dear God, did I get jumped by a couple of middle aged man child nerds?

"Correct."

The doctor then began to explain to me how I got there and why I was a patient. I nodded along and made sure to ask questions and repeat a few things so he could clarify, so it looked like I understood what was going on.

I had no idea what was going on.

Apparently, I had been fighting a duo called Uber and Leet, who had some video game theme or something, and they had a machine that exploded. The explosion hit me and some kid.

"And that about sums it up." Doctor Bob finished his explanation. "Do you have any questions?"

I have so many questions.

"No, I think I got the gist of it." I nodded and shot him a polite smile even as I lied my ass off. "Thank you, for you know, everything."

"Of course." Doctor Bob shined a positive yellow and a content blue. "We'll let you get some sleep and we can contact the Protectorate tomorrow morning to discharge you."

"Sounds good." I let the polite smile stay on my face unwavering until both Sunny and Doctor Bob left the room before it died a painful death.

"Okay… that answered a few questions and completely opened up a bunch more." I muttered to myself as I felt a headache beginning to form. I couldn't even be sure if that was from the information overload or if the painkillers they gave were wearing off.

"Okay, this is either the world's worst drug trip along with hallucinations and colors, or I am not in Kansas anymore."

My body started to shake as the anxiety I had healthily repressed decided that, hey, since you're alone and not doing anything important, it's time to deal with me. He also brought friends, they were named confusion, manic energy, and that wonderful feeling of freefall.

There was no denying it. I wasn't stupid. I was definitely not in Chicago anymore, nor did I seem to be in my own body. The pale arms, lack of glasses, and just general youngness of the body were a solid sign that this wasn't my body.

Note to self, don't look in a mirror unless you're ready for an identity crisis.

Right. Priorities. I'm in a new body. It already has an identity. First, I needed to make sure I had my story straight. Even as I trembled in panic and nausea from the sudden violent epiphany, I made sure to go over the conversation with the doctor and nurse over and over again.

Name (Codename?): Gallant.

Assailants: Uber and Leet.

Company: Protectorate.

Location: Brockton Bay.

None of these were immediately familiar, but they brought up a feeling of foreboding. I etched them into my memory, since they were key to keeping my story straight. And any good liar knows they need to make sure their story is consistent. This was my new identity and I had to make it work.

I was going to be okay. I was in a different body than the one I fell asleep in last night. I was going to figure out my identity, get an idea of what I needed to do next, figure out why I'm seeing technicolor around people and somehow not tip off that I had amnesia and had possessed this body.

Easy.

And like any good liar. I could even lie to myself convincingly.

Now if only I could somehow lie myself into sleeping. I let my brain whirl in possibilities until I exhausted myself to sleep. For just a brief moment, it felt like home.

 

[Heroslayer]

Intrusion 1.1

I stood in front of the building and just let the scene wash over me. I could hear various greetings as counselors and teachers alike greeted students and students threw their greetings back. A few of them were even sincere.

I was still adjusting to seeing that sincerity in color rather than in body language. It was a rather pleasing shade of yellow. Too bad it was so rare.

But I was getting distracted by the pretty colors again. I needed to make sure I had my new identity straight.

A quick check of my student ID reminded me of my new name. Dean Stansfield, some rich boy that had a bland personality. So me being paranoid and being extra polite to everyone got me a pass, so that was a plus.

Apparently, I was also Gallant, a member of the Wards. Which was some sort of teenaged superhero government program. Which if it was like any other government program that I've worked in, was underfunded, understaffed, and more of a babysitting program than an actual training one.

Sadly, this meant I was a teenager again, which was awkward since last I checked, I was a high school teacher. There was no question that sitting in a classroom was going to be an ordeal. Thankfully, Arcadia looked to be like a school I had zero chance teaching in, where the household income was in the six figures minimum, so maybe I could actually learn something new in class or at least, relearn something interesting.

Distressingly, I was no longer in the Midwest. Brockton Bay was firmly on the East Coast.

On one hand, it meant that I was a little closer to making that trip to New York City that I always wanted to do. On the other hand, it was another unfamiliar thing to add to the list. I missed home already.

Then there was the obvious problem. Other than the fact that I was the wrong age, I didn't need glasses anymore, and I was the wrong ethnicity. Everyone was shining in a kaleidoscope of colors.

A little bit of trial and error and some common sense had gotten me an answer. I had some sort of empathy vision. Which made sense, since I was in a government superhero program.

I messed around in my rather empty large ass home and found that I could also throw beams of light, which since they were colors too, I assumed were connected to emotions, but could just be concussive blasts. Also, if anyone asks, that poster I dug out of my new closet was always on that wall and not covering the new hole in my drywall.

"Okay, I can do this. I just need to go to school, make sure no one realizes I can't remember jack, and lie to an unknown amount of people that I have always been Dean Stansfield."

I could do this. I was ready for anything the world could throw at me.

"Dean!" Someone shouted. I will admit, I was still getting used to the name. So I was completely blindsided by the girl that tackled my right arm and wrapped around it like a clingy limpet.

"Woah." I yelped as I spun my arms to catch my balance. I caught the wall I had been leaning against so I didn't fall on my face. My first reflex was to yell at the person. Because A: that was sudden and rude, and B: I wasn't exactly someone that was comfortable with hugs on first meetings.

Whatever I was going to shout got stuck in my throat when I looked down. Wrapped around my arm was an irritated very pretty teenage girl.

The first thing that I noticed was the gorgeous blue eyes trained on me, tracking me, correctly assuming that I was ready to escape. Next was the long blond hair trailing behind her, it fell around her gracefully and framed her face perfectly, as if well prepared for movement. Then my eyes tracked down to the rest of her and my new teenage brain decided to short circuit for a moment. Yes, she was very pretty all over.

And I could see all of her prettiness in high def, since she was not at all radiating any color. All I could see was her.

"Wow, you look beautiful." Wait, shit, was that flirting? No wait, if she's clinging to me like this, we're probably close. Dating? Probably dating. Hopefully dating? She's really pretty. Wait no, focus!

"Thank you." Blonde-y chirped happily for a moment before she suddenly scowled at me. Oh great, she's angry at me and I don't even know her name. I was not ready for any of this. "Wait, don't try to distract me. I'm still angry with you."

"For what?" I asked. Did I inherit some dumb teenage drama?

"I've called you like a dozen times!" The girl poked me in the chest, hard. It actually hurt a little bit. Geez, she's strong. "I know you were discharged, so there is no excuse for not picking up."

"I'm pretty sure my phone's busted." I immediately lied. I had tried to access Dean's phone a few times before getting locked out. Pretty sure it was dead now. "There was… a thing." I finished lamely.

"Oh! Did it break in the explosion?" or this girl could completely ignore my attempts at subterfuge.

"Woah, Dean exploded?" A hyper yellow girl popped in and asked.

See, this is why I tried to be vague. I quickly came up with a lie.

"Nah. You know how you're not supposed to put aluminum foil in the microwave. Well, I wanted to see why." I smiled ruefully as I quickly threw out a ridiculous story. Just be confident and casual and no one will call you out.

"And it exploded?!" Hyper yellow said incredulously as some mischievous orange started to flare up.

"Something like that." I deflected. "I can tell you later, if you want the full story."

That would give me some time to actually come up with the full story.

"Sure!" Perky pink and gleeful yellow waved as she left. "I'll see you in history, Dean."

Damn. I was hoping that she'd slip me Blonde-y's name. Guess I'm going to have to keep talking around it for a bit.

Speaking of Blonde-y, the girl was still wrapped around my arm and she was shooting me an adorable pout. "Did your phone really explode?"

"No, no. It's just busted." If I can't access it, because I can't remember the code, that's considered broken, right? "I'm probably going to have to get a new one."

"Great, we can go shopping after school!" Blonde-y chirped happily as she started to guide me down the hall.

"Oh, yeah. Sure." I agreed, more politely than enthusiastically. I had no idea who this pretty girl was and or why I couldn't see any of the emotional colors around her, but what I could see was many shopping bags in my near future.

Now if only someone could tell me her name.

"Oh, hey Victoria." Someone said as an arm wrapped none too gently around my neck and shoulders. "Is that a cockroach on your skirt?"

The arms and two deliciously soft sensations wrapped around my arm vanished. "Geditoff! Geditoff! Geditoff!"

The now dubbed Victoria flew into the air and I mean that literally. She hovered up a few inches into the air as she shrieked and batted at her skirt in a wild panic. Wait, weren't we supposed to keep our powers a secret?

I tried to grab Victoria and pull her back down, but I was rather violently tugged away as the arm around my neck and shoulders tightened and dragged me away from my girlfriend (?).

"Okay cool, I see you have that in hand! I'm borrowing Dean for a moment!" Someone rapidly called back to the floating girl as they pulled me through a door, which closed and locked behind us.

He pushed me roughly forward and I stumbled before catching my balance. I whirled around and raised my arms up in a rough fighting stance.

In front of me was a boy. Though it took me a few seconds of focusing to actually parse his features through all the colors.

He was pretty skinny, though he was doing his best to throw what little body size he had in an aggressive pose. I could see a rather delicate nose and angular jaw all scrunched up in a scowl, his face unsuited for such an aggressive expression. I couldn't really make out his eye or hair color. It's been all of two seconds since I saw hair and eye color clearly and I was missing it already.

The angry redhead rudely pointed a finger at me. "Alright asshole, I'm only gonna ask this once. Do the letters 'MCU' mean anything to you?"

Did I just get assaulted so someone could talk movie trivia?

"Marvel?" I said slowly as I raised an eyebrow at the overly aggressive non sequitur.

The boy stalked forward in triumph and unsuccessfully attempted to loom over me. "Yes! Marvel! The company that is literally dead and gone in this world and has been for almost thirty years! That one!"

My mind quickly started to make connections. I was in a new world, there was the possibility that history and culture could be different. I had assumed things were the same. I apparently was wrong about that.

That's troubling. Note to self, actually read history textbook.

"Wait, did the comic industry die here?" I attempted to deflect for more time.

"Not important, asshole!" The kid growled, not giving me any time. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and tried to push me against the wall. "The important bit is you are not from here! Like I am not from here! And I have been trying to tell you this literally for days! But your dumbass don't know how to answer the fuckin' phone!"

Oh.

Oh!

This kid has answers!

He stood there, almost hyperventilating, his face white as a sheet. I could see angry red flicker around him, the other colors tried to suppress it, but the red would flare back aggressively and stronger than before.

"Yeah. Okay, I get you. We'll talk about this." I said calmly as I reached a hand up to try to untangle his grip on my collar. Okay, that wasn't happening. He had a vice grip. "But first thing is first."

Let's calm him down. I debated on soothing words, but I'll be honest, I didn't exactly have the patience for that. Thankfully, I had the perfect shortcut.

I let my hand slide down to the boy's chest and focused for a brief moment. The room flared a calm blue for an instant, in the actual visual spectrum and not just my own vision, as I fired a concentrated burst of calm into the kid's body.

The kid stumbled backwards winded since I forgot that my power also had kinetic force. I also forgot about his grip on my collar, so I followed him forward and just barely kept from falling and taking us both down.

His face regained a healthy color, bands of calm blue firmly suppressing the still flaring red. He blinked a couple of times. "You know, if I wasn't suddenly so serene, I would probably punch you for that. Pretty sure that counts as an attack…though now that I can actually think clearly I cannot fault you for that. I was being unreasonable." He finally let go of my collar and took a deep breath. "Sorry about that…and thanks, it's…it's been a couple days."

He regained his bearings as I got my own thoughts straight.

If I recall correctly, Gallant and Kid Win were both caught in the explosion from Uber and Leet. I guess that would make the boy in front of me Kid Win A.K.A. Chris… something, shit. I can't remember his last name. That would make the explosion the likely catalyst for our new bodies.

"Okay, so you're also not from here. Good to know." I acknowledged. It was rather nice to have a companion in this mind-bendingly weird situation. "Did you want anything else other than, like, confronting me, because this is kind of weird."

I gestured to the dark and empty classroom that we were standing in. I tried to ignore Victoria banging on the door. I would let Future Dean deal with that.

Chris shook his head. "Before that, do you have your phone on you? Or a phone on you?"

"Look, it's busted." I said crossly, having to go over this again. "I'm going to buy a new one. Pretty sure Victoria is going to take me shopping or something."

Chris nodded and began to pace back and forth. "Okay good, it'd be bad if this was recorded. I wanted to touch base about making a plan to, you know, stop the omnicidal space whale from killing all Earths. Yeah, bug-girl might be able to manage it, but the margin of victory was a little thin for my liking."

I blinked at that morbid and outlandish statement. Despite it sounding completely ridiculous and rather concerning, I was in another world, so I couldn't exactly throw anything out the window.

Note to self. Omnicidal Space Whales are a thing.

Response to self. What the hell?

"That… sounds like something we should eventually talk about, yes." I agreed, not wanting to sound like I had no idea what Chris was talking about.

He nodded again, "Yeah, that's why I was trying to call you all weekend." A tendril of frustrated red slipped its bonds, and with a severe struggle, it was once more suppressed. "I wanted to make sure you were…like me. For now, we should get to class, waste time, do stupid teenager shit so we don't lose time by being put in M/S."

Chris stopped pacing and I could see his colors start to even out now that he had a plan in mind. Well, it sounded like Chris knew what he was doing, which was good. Since my only plan of action was to basically play a teenage superhero until I could graduate into an adult superhero. I appreciate someone else here that has an idea of what we should do.

"Right. Now if we're done here," I gestured to the door that was rattling violently and the screaming girl I could see in the small window on the door. "I think Victoria is kind of angry."

Chris scowled at the door. "Oh right, don't tell your girlfriend about this. She's smart but I'm not sure she can keep a secret. She's an open cape, you aren't."

Oh, so she is my girlfriend. That sends my heartrate up and I'm not quite sure if that's panic or appreciation or some horrible mix of both.

He tilted his head. "You should probably break up with her."

"Is that smart?" On one hand, Chris was probably right. Not to mention the weird ethical dilemma. On the other hand, I am sixteen again, and she is very pretty. "Seems like a suspicious move to make right after a brain injury."

"Nah, you break up and get back together all the time." Chris shook his head and made for the door and a mischievous orange whipped around his body with glee. "Later. For now just come up with some stupid cover story. Tell her something about how we were making out."

He said that closing bit just as he opened the door.

Victoria froze in the doorway, mouth open as she stared at Chris in what I assumed to be disbelief.

Man, two days with the colors and my ability to read facial expressions was already kind of spotty. Maybe I could spend time with Victoria to get some practice in.

"Uh…" I had a cover story ready. Just something vague about the explosion. Victoria obviously knew about it and had powers too. It would have been a little rocky, but I was confident that I could have pulled it off.

But honestly, Chris' closing line had caused me to choke on my own spit and those few seconds of mortification cost me dearly.

Victoria's face contorted in anger and at the same moment that Chris' aura was shot through by a fearful neon yellow, the bands of calm around the very angry red shattered and it surged up, consuming the fear as fuel.

He stepped into her personal space and all but spat at her face. "If you don't turn down that fear-me field, I'mma punch you in the fuckin' mouth."

Note to self, Chris has anger issues. May need to calm him down again on next meeting.

Chris then slid past her as she stared at him, her eyes open wide and her face contorted in a mixture of confusion and anger. She stared at his retreating back, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and slowly let it out as she unclenched her fists.

Danger Will Robinson. Danger. Your girlfriend is angry at you. Damage control. Quickly.

"Sssooo," I began. "I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that his weekend was a lot worse than mine."

It was probably true in a way. Dean Stansfield's family was pretty loaded. So I had come home to a nice house, nice food, and rather distant parents that had checked up on me twice over the entire weekend. It was a rather lonely experience, since I expected parents to care a little more that their son exploded, but apparently it wasn't that big of a deal. On the plus side, I didn't need to lie to their faces that I couldn't really remember them, so silver linings.

Victoria turned her glare to me. "Are you cheating on me with Chris!?"

What?

"What?" I almost choked on my own words.

"He said you were making out in there!" Victoria all but shrieked.

"You could see us the entire time through the window." I pointed at the window on the door.

"Yes and the two of you got real close in there!"

"Because he was having a panic attack and I was calming him down!"

"By making out?!"

"No!" My voice cracked from the sheer indignation I felt. God, I could feel the blood rushing to my face.

"You're blushing!" She pointed at my face as she accused me.

"I'm embarrassed!" I defended myself and pointed out the hallway where a crowd of teenagers had gathered to gawk. "What the hell?!"

"Vicky, you're making a scene," said a thoroughly unimpressed voice. The voice belonged to the most depressingly blue person I've ever seen. She was a mousy girl with fizzy hair and freckles.

Dear lord, someone help this girl.

Seeing that much depression and apathy was an unpleasant shock of cold water in my system. I took a moment to calm my breathing and looked at Victoria who was still building up a head of steam.

"Look, Chris wanted to talk about something. He was kind of panicking and I calmed him down." I explained myself, like a reasonable person. "Nothing happened."

Victoria stared at me, face flushed with misplaced anger and frustration. She reached out and snatched my hand. Dear lord, she's strong. She tugged it and held out my hand towards the depressed mouse-y girl. "Amy. Check him."

"Check what?" Amy sighed. There was a resigned blue mixing with a subtle eager to please pink flickering about.

"If he's lying." Victoria demanded.

"Vicky, you can't be serious."

I let out my own sigh before trying to tug my arm free. I failed and stopped after Victoria shot me a rather venomous look. Instead, I offered my other hand to Amy.

"It's fine." I said and smiled ruefully, "If we don't get it out of her system, she'll be fuming all day."

"This is a grievous misuse of Powers." Amy sighed again. "Do I have your permission to touch you?"

That was a rather odd question. Still, she was apparently going to use some sort of lie detecting power on me, so I guess it was rather polite. How refreshing from a teenager. Now if only she didn't look so depressingly blue about it.

"Sure, I trust you." I smiled. I wasn't actually sure that I could trust her, but I doubted she'd do something crazy in front of her sister and a bunch of witnesses.

Amy seemed to react badly to those words. There was a flare of angry and indignant red before it was crushed by the blue that actually seemed to lash back at her.

"Amy?" I asked worried about what I saw.

Rather than answer me, Amy just snatched my hand out of Vicky's grip and glared at both Vicky and me.

"Were you cheating on me with Chris?" Vicky repeated her earlier question.

"No."

"Truth." Amy confirmed.

"Then was Chris just messing with me?" Vicky asked, disgruntled.

"Probably?" I said questioningly before I recalled that streak of mischievous orange that shot through him at that moment. "Probably." I said with more confidence.

"Also true."

Vicky signed in relief before she started muttering about payback. I was going to just ignore that. It was Chris' problem now. That and he deserved it after making me deal with this mess.

"Well, now that awkward mess is over, we can confirm that I was not cheating on you and everything is copacetic." Now if only I knew what the hell copacetic meant. Stupid brain.

"That's a lie." Amy chirped with a raised eyebrow.

"What?!" Vicky whirled and stared at Amy.

"The second part, Vicky." Amy sighed. There was a flare of resigned teal in there.

"Okay, so I have a head injury." I scowled. I was suddenly very uncomfortable with this lie detector situation.

"It's healing fine." Amy stated. I raised an eyebrow at that statement. How did she know that?

"You have a head injury?" Vicky suddenly forgot all her anger and flitted around me like a worried momma bird. Again, literally.

"Yes. Remember, exploding microwave." I reminded her of my cover story.

"And it's fine. There's some minor swelling, but nothing too bad." Amy frowned. "Now are we done, here?"

"Yes." I said, eager to escape the living polygraph machine. I looked down at our joined hands before giving Amy an awkward smile. "Uh, we can stop holding hands now."

It was a little too intimate for my liking. I wasn't that touchy feely with strangers.

Though I was reminded of how nice it was to hold hands with someone. Note to self, try to hold hands with Vicky. See if it's as nice as this.

There was a flare of angry red, and embarrassed pink before Amy threw my hand away and left in a huff.

Vicky dragged me away, apologizing, only pausing to shoot a glare at the crowd to disperse them. I let myself get dragged around, since that seemed like the polite thing to do.

Well, asked and answered. Holding hands with Victoria is pretty nice.

Okay, so life threw me a few curveballs. But I seemed to have caught them fine enough. Everything is fine.

Hopefully, one of these days I'll believe that lie.

I wonder if I had any classes with Chris. Where did he go, anyways?

 

[Santo]

And here is the next chapter! Hope you lot like. Let us know how we doing.

Would normally post this on the weekend. But I won't get a chance tomorrow and I'll be going out of town for the weekend and won't have access to my PC. So I'm posting this today.

Thank you for reading, and again, let us know how we doing! 8D

---

Intrusion I.II

Back when I'd been an adult and the world was still on the decline part of turning into a corporate nihilistic hellhole, I had promised myself I'd never go back to school. Mainly cause I hated it.

Well, I hated high school, felt like a big waste of my time. Didn't really feel like I learned anything useful until college. Probably objectively incorrect, but that's what it had felt like.

So, having been given the chance to re-experience the 'golden years,' something dreamt by a surprising number of people that I had known of. I did the only logical thing.

I skipped and went to gather evidence of harassment to throw a coworker firmly under the bus.

It's fine though, she's a bitch.

"And that's irrefutable proof of no less than seven separate instances of harassment, in one day." I said, working hard to keep my calm as the tub of rotten lard on the other side of the table glowered at me. "And I very specifically call it harassment, because there were multiple instances of physical assault, and at least two that could have resulted in a serious injury. I took the liberty of going through the school's records."

"What?!"

I raised my voice and talked over her. "And saw a history of complaints two years old, said complaints stopped after six months with no action being taken, or with punishment of the victim. This means that the principal of that school has given Sophia much freer reign than she was supposed to have, purely to keep the money from housing a failure of a Ward."

"Kid-Win," Piggot the Biggot growled as she ground her teeth. "We are not here to discuss Sophia."

"Yes, we are. I specifically said I needed to talk to you about another Ward and her frankly worrisome actions that I investigated." I interrupted, but she used my own cunning plan against me, and spoke over me.

"We are here so you can explain to me why Arcadia had to inform me that you skipped school, apparently, to break into a public institution and spy on a coworker." She growled.

I blinked, took a deep breath to center myself, and attempted to reign in my temper. "Well, if there is any justice to the world, you know, any of that protecting and serving I am supposed to do as an arm of law-enforcement. That little-" I cut myself off with a cough. "Sophia won't be my coworker for much longer, what with clear and irrefutable examples of harassment of a civilian, and signs of abusing her position for a long-running campaign of harassment."

"Kid-Win," Piggot began.

"I am here as Chris, putting forward something which has made me greatly concerned." I pressed.

"Kid-Win." Piggot reiterated. "You are now on punishment detail."

I felt my eye twitch, and tuned the fat bitch out while she babbled on about extra PR work or something about Console Duty or some other stupid shit. I let her peter out before leaning forward. "So is something going to be done about Sophia?"

"Add another three days to that punishment detail." She ground out.

"That's a no then." I said and stood up with a huff.

"Sit. Down."

I stared into her eyes, and rolled my eyes in the most teenage way I could muster as I sat down. Which was surprisingly teenage-ish, must be some muscle-memory from the kid I killed to be here.

"Make that two weeks." She growled, then launched into another diatribe about duty and other bullshit. The only important bit in the whole thing was that she finished with. "And we're rescheduling that console duty to now."

I (barely) resisted the urge to give her lip as I left the Director's office. I hawked and spat a blob of phlegm at the nearest trash can as I walked to the Wards room. It had taken me a while to find it the first time, but the building's layout was fairly intuitive, all things considered.

I changed into Kid-Win's ridiculous outfit (Seriously, what kind of name is Kid-Win? The PR guy who okayed it should be fired), and sat at the console. I then pulled out the manual and read through it.

Thankfully the other Wards were either busy, or out. Point was, they weren't here. Which was the only bit that mattered.

Gallant called in from time to time. He was going on a patrol with Clockblocker and Aegis. I was supposed to be on that patrol, but my impromptu meeting with Piggy the Biggy and subsequent benching had taken that away from me.

Good fucking riddance, everything on the radio was; Blah blah, autographs. Blah blah, PR shit. Blah blah, more autographs. Blah blah, tree-wait.

"Repeat, did you say that Gallant just got a kitten down from a tree?" I demanded into the microphone.

[Yes?] Gallant's voice returned uncertainly.

"Congratulations, you just won the 'Hero Stereotype Bingo'."

Great, at least my other universally misplaced companion was taking his cover story seriously. That was one of us at least. I probably should have tried a bit harder, but trying to get Sophia thrown into kiddie jail was frankly a much better use of my time.

[Don't clog the airwaves with chit-chat.] The liquidus punching bag immediately chastised me before I could tell Gallant what he'd won.

[Oh come on, bossman!] Clockblocker groused. [We never actually enforce that.]

[Hush you.]

"Yeah Cockblocker, stand up for the little guy!"

[Language!] Aegis' outraged voice was barely audible over Clockblocker's cackling laughter.

I smirked; hook, line, and sinker. "What? I said 'Clockblocker', what did you think you heard?"

[Uhh…]

Clockblocker's hyena laugh pulled Aegis from the PR friendly loop his brain had gotten stuck in.

Unfortunately, Aegis got extra party-pooper-ish after that little stunt. So the rest of the night was incredibly boring. Eventually, my extra long console duty ended as the three stooges got back to base.

Now I could do useful things. Like Tinkering. I was gonna need all the gadgets.

I stood up, popped my back, turned and almost ran face first into a livid black girl.

"What the fuck did you do you fucking nerd?!" She shoutspered, I felt the warm pinpricks of her spittle hitting my face.

Gross.

Sophia then launched into a diatribe I didn't bother keeping a track of beyond the word 'snitch' and some surprisingly creative racial slurs. At least until she said something about my useless Tinkering and a reflexive surge of anger had me twist my hips as I drove my fist into her chin, spraying spittle on the console.

No one insults the gadgets.

Sophia took a stumbling step back and fell on the ground, her brain rattled.

"Yeah, fuck you." I said as I threw a kick at her stomach. She turned into smoke and my foot went through her. It didn't feel like anything, but grossed me out all the same.

The smoke drifted away, rising from the ground and coalescing into Sophia, her eyes livid as she wiped spittle from her chin. "So what, that explosion made your balls drop or something?"

I fished a pair of batteries out of my handy belt pouches, and clutched them tightly in my fists, and spat back. "This coming from the coward whose only power is running away."

Her eyes flashed in anger and she threw herself into a side kick aimed at my stomach. I planted my feet and tightened my stomach to take the hit so I could get a free shot at her knee, but the unexpected power behind the strike sent me stumbling back.
No…the kick wasn't all that powerful. It just hit me harder than it should have. I shook my head and pushed forward to meet her charge, trading jabs and punches. Once I had an opening I planted myself and threw a right straight with all of my weight behind it, Sophia blocked it and took a stumbling step back.

I had expected her to go a lot farther, so I was left open for her reprisal, her punch had me stumbling back and left my ears ringing. She drove forward with another kick, so I pushed forward into a tackle, her kick stopped my momentum cold, so I wrapped my hands around her leg and threw myself backwards to the floor. She tried to phase through it, but I'd managed to keep hold of one of the batteries, the shock it sent up her leg canceled her smoke form and sent her flopping to the ground on top of me.

I took advantage of her spasming to transition into a mount, but made the mistake of driving the fist without the battery down. She turned into smoke and my fist hit the floor so hard that if I hadn't been wearing an armored glove, I likely would have broken it. In the time it took me to drive down my other fist, she'd already made enough distance in her smoky form to escape the mount.

She became solid again, breathing hard, she spat a wad of blood to the side, I must have split her lip at some point without noticing.

We both surged forward with a roar, I caught a glimpse of an american flag, then the ceiling became the floor, and the floor the ceiling, then back again, then I smacked into the ground and lost all the breath in my lungs.

"What the hell is going on here?!" demanded a dangerous contralto. I ignored it, surged to my feet and rushed back at Sophia. I was gratified to see that she was doing the exact same. We both ignored more demands for us to stop as she threw a fist at my nose that I countered by meeting it with my forehead as I threw a right hook to her left eye. She phased through my spinning backfist but was forced to abort her kick when I drove the fist with the battery down to meet it.

And then there was the sound of a fire extinguisher going off, except instead of smoke and powder, I got encased up to my waist in viscous foam, which quickly hardened to the point that I couldn't move. A quick glance showed that Sophia had been foamed as well, except she grinned, smoked out of her foam cocoon, and went for a big, showy, spinning roundhouse kick.

That is, until someone shot her in the back with a taser, she seized up and fell face first to the floor, where she spasmed ineffectually.

Being forced to take a moment to calm down and stop listening to my blood singing in my ears, I took a look around. I saw an attractive woman of middle-eastern descent glaring at me with intense brown eyes, she had an american flag scarf pulled down over her neck and her brown hair was disheveled.

I stared into Miss Militia's furious eyes and said the first thing that came to mind.

"I'm not apologizing." Judging by the way that her glare intensified, this was entirely the wrong thing to say. Well…in for a penny. "She deserved that and worse, and we both know it."

Judging by the fact that I ended up in an interrogation room, that was definitely the wrong thing to say.

 

[Santo]

Back from the trip out of town. Have chapter.

Loved the comments! I will have to think about how to integrate Power Boots into the fic somehow.

Here is the next chapter. Let us know what y'all think.

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Intermission - Miss Militia

"Now explain it to me one more time, why one of our Wards, who just came out of the hospital, is screaming profanities in a Master/Stranger Cell." Director Piggot asked as she rubbed her temples with her hands, a vein pulsing visibly and grotesquely on her brow. She glared at the two Capes from the other side of the desk.

Miss Militia furrowed her brow in thought as she considered how to answer the Director's demand. "Kid Win's prior behavior was a warning sign, but his blatant targeting of Shadow Stalker, and the fact that he not only opened hostilities, but continued them after a direct order to stop were the final straw. Adding to that, his…recalcitrance during the questioning, has led us to believe he may have been compromised by Uber and Leet for…a more nuanced attack than we've seen from them so far."

"Or more likely, there were complications from Leet's poorly constructed Tinker Tech that may have altered Kid Win's personality." Armsmaster cut in.

Miss Militia looked to her colleague and leader. It was no secret that Armsmaster had little respect for Leet's capabilities as a Tinker. The villain's rather infamous reputation was well earned after all. Still, she had to make sure that the possibility was considered.

"I'm guessing Kid Win was continuing his recent bout of insubordination." Director Piggot stated coolly. "What about the fight?"

"I have video," Armsmaster said, an instant later, before Miss Militia had a chance to intervene. The television screen on the wall of the meeting room turned on, revealing the image of Kid Win landing a brutal hook to Sophia's chin. "I took the liberty of going over his fight with Shadow Stalker, and noticed a number of discrepancies."

Miss Militia could not help but be impressed by how quickly Armsmaster had prepared for the meeting, the video showed side by side comparisons of Kid Win's prior spars with video capture of the fight. He explained differences in stance, differences in strategy, and even differences in body language and aggression.

The Kid Win on the older footage was not fearful, but he was skittish about taking a hit. He relied heavily on evasion and several times he hesitated when offered an opening to retaliate. It was something that they had been trying to train out of him.

The Kid Win of the recent video was almost the polar opposite, his every movement was aggressive. He did not block so much as attack the incoming limb, more than once he took a hit to create an opening for retaliation, but underestimated Shadow Stalker's strength, forcing him to retreat. His fighting was more awkward than the Kid Win of old, but it seemed to be a more complete style, if untested and too aggressive for someone of his size.

The video moved on to the interrogation room, showing the utterly unrepentant and angry teenager sitting opposite Armsmaster and Miss Militia. Kid Win began the session respectful if curt, but that degenerated quickly over a period of an hour, resulting in…

"But you have not answered the question." Armsmaster said in the video. "Why did you 'feel' it fell to you to 'expose' Shadow Stalker?"

"Well gee willikers Beardmaster," said Kid Win in an exceedingly saccharine tone. His lips twisted into a rictus snarl that was entirely alien to the normally affable and quiet boy, "maybe if Tiny-Titty Gun-Girl here could find two of her brain cells to rub together, I might not have needed to do your job for her!" He stood suddenly and slammed his hands on the table. "Or hell, when's the last time you did your job as the guy that teaches the Wards!? Or even better, remember the last time you mentored me in Tinkering!? ME NEITHER!"

The video stopped there, thankfully, skipping the part where Kid Win attempted to leave the room, then kicked the door down when it remained closed, resulting in him getting covered in containment foam again.

Director Piggot sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, "I am forced to agree with Armsmaster's assessment. I doubt that even Leet would have been this inept at an attempt to compromise the Wards. Get a Thinker on it, see if we can get a timetable for when he'll be back to normal."

"And what about Gallant?" Miss Militia brought up the other victim of Leet's incompetence.

"What about Gallant?" Piggot asked, lifting an eyebrow. "Has he shown any signs of altered behavior?"

"No." Armsmaster stated. "Gallant's behavior matches prior behavior to the accident. He shows the appropriate amount of respect for authorities and continues to complete his tasks with relative seriousness. The only note is a slight increase in his occasional bouts of inattention. However, that is more than likely due to the head injury. His armor most likely diffused the Tinker Tech effect."

"We cannot be certain of that." Miss Militia insisted. She did not like it, but it was important that they covered every avenue. The last thing they needed was the Wards being exposed to a potential sleeper agent. "Permission to put Gallant on Master/Stranger observation."

"Granted, but only for tomorrow." The Director said after a moment of deliberation. "Have Triumph run a training session with the Wards and observe Gallant for any odd behavior. If nothing comes up, we'll leave it as is."

"Yes ma'am." Miss Militia knew that was as much as she was going to get.

"I have sent the request for a session with a Protectorate Approved Thinker." Arsmaster said, and Miss Militia could tell that he was starting to get irritated, most likely impatient to get back to his workshop. "Is there anything else?"

"No." Piggot picked up some of the papers off the desk. "Dismissed."

---

"There are clear signs of altered behavior." Scrivener said with a sigh. "None of his answers seemed to match with the baseline on file. That said, his…" a vein visibly pulsed on Scrivener's forehead, "newfound insubordination seems to be aimed specifically at authority figures, so I have no honest way to know if he genuinely wouldn't have been able to answer the questions correctly, since he was clearly doing his best to make my job as difficult as possible."

Scrivener coughed into his hand and visibly regained his composure.

"However, there is a consistency to his behavior that can't be explained by a Master effect. There most likely would have been clear signs of deterioration if that were the reason for his altered behavior." Scrivener pulled up a copy of Kid Win's CT scans. "The most likely rationale is that his change in behavior is due to a mix of trauma, brain damage, and yes, some unknown effect from Leet's Tinker Tech. Sadly, due to Leet's Tinker Tech's high rate of explosive failure, we can't even examine it to be sure."

"So we can rule out a Master then?" Miss Militia asked.

"I'd like him to be under observation for a little longer, but all signs point to yes." Scrivener agreed.

"Then what do you recommend?" Director Piggot asked.

"Well, I would recommend that Kid Win be signed up for therapy." Scrivener shrugged. "Aside from that, he's going to need time and support to correct his behavior. But that's outside of my wheelhouse. I'm just here to see if he's under a Master effect."

Director Piggot's eyebrow twitched and Miss Militia waved Scrivener to continue.

"Well, I'll submit a formal review by the end of the day." Scrivener signed off from the video call. Protectorate Thinkers were in high demand, so Miss Militia had no doubt he was going straight to his next meeting.

There was silence in the meeting room for a few moments, before Director Piggot sighed. "Keep Kid Win under observation, toss him into a few public relation courses then put him back on the schedule for patrols."

Miss Militia frowned and protested. "Isn't that a little hasty? Scrivener said he needed time to adjust."

Director Piggot shook her head. "The Wards program has dealt with over-aggressive teenagers before. It was made for that specific reason, in fact. He'll be just like Shadow Stalker, give him an out to let off some steam and he'll settle down."

Miss Militia was not so sure about that, but she had her orders. Hopefully, Kid Win would be easier to manage than Shadow Stalker.

Miss Militia made her way to the Wards' lounge, hopefully Director Piggot was right and Kid Win would settle down on his own. Hopefully, the news that he could go back on active duty would calm him down.

She turned the corner to the sight of two PRT troopers in full armor dragging a struggling Kid Win between them.

"I have done nothing wrong! I do not consent!" Kid Win screamed as he latched onto the frame of the doorway. "I need an adult!"

"We are adults." One of the troopers grumbled.

"YOU DON'T COUNT!" Kid Win retorted before another PRT trooper came and broke his grip on the door frame. He clawed at the wall for any sort of support, but was quickly dragged away. "No. No! Noooooooooooo~!"

Miss Militia rushed into the lounge. Had Kid Win harmed anyone? The Wards in-base at the moment were Clockblocker, Vista and Gallant. Gallant should have seen a breakdown coming. The three of them should have been able to suppress Kid Win.

Unless Gallant was also compromised. No, Miss Militia shouldn't jump to conclusions before arriving at the scene.

She stepped into the lounge to the sight of Clockblocker cackling like a hyena, Gallant looking confused, and Vista looking scared.

"Report!" Miss Militia snapped, and ignored Clockblocker laughing harder and falling off the couch.

"Ma'am!" Gallant snapped with a sloppy salute. Miss Militia noted that he had never done such a thing before, but there were more important things to focus on at the moment. "I… uh… Vista?"

"That's a Stranger!" Vista screamed, pointing at the hallway that Kid Win had been dragged down. "That wasn't Kid Win!"

Miss Militia took a deep, calming breath, Gallant looked worried at the accusation, could he have missed the signs of an infiltrating Stranger? "How do you know this?"

Vista held up a piece of paper and presented it to Miss Milita as if it held all the answers. It was a math worksheet, with problems designed for a child of Vista's age. A quick glance showed several different handwritten answers on the sheet. Miss Militia noted three sets of handwriting on the sheet. Vista's graceful script, Gallant's blocky handwriting, and the sloppy handwriting was most likely Kid Win's.

"Your…math homework?" Miss Militia asked for clarification.

"Kid Win can't do math!" Vista stated with conviction. "He's got math-dyslexia,-"

"Dyscalculia." Gallant corrected.

"-but did those problems without trouble!" Vista finished.

Clockblocker took an enormously deep breath before laughing even harder.

Miss Militia took a moment to take in that explanation. On one hand, it did technically count as a warning sign and Vista had done the correct thing in reporting it, on the other hand, Kid Win had just been cleared of any signs of Master/Stranger screening. That meant this was most likely more consequences from Leet's Tinker Tech.

Which meant that she would need to explain things to the Wards, calm Vista down, then go down to M/S screening and get Kid Win out, deal with his new recalcitrant nature as she did this, then explain that the M/S screen had come out clean, but he had to go to public relations training before returning to active duty.

Maybe she could delegate this to Triumph?

Going over her memory of the roster, Triumph was off for the next couple of days. Which meant no, she'd have to deal with it herself.

Miss Militia had been correct in her initial thoughts. Kid Win was going to be much worse than Shadow Stalker, and she had the feeling that things were only going to get worse before they improved.

 

[Santo]

And Arc 2 ch 1!

As usual, please drop us a comment or three. They really do help keep motivation up.

We worked super hard on this one, so hope you enjoy!

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Ersatz II.I

I was not a religious person. Or perhaps, it is better to say I hadn't been a religious person. Because now I'm here, and the only way that this could have happened is if there is a malignant God, and he thoroughly enjoys shitting in my dinner in particular.
Fuckin' School.

I scribbled angrily on the blank page upon which I was supposed to be writing an essay on the subject of Romeo and Juliet. The story of the dumbass teenager that said he'd rather die than break up with a girl, then went on a killing spree, and the dumbass girl who saw said idiot suicidal serial murderer and started breathing heavily, before killing herself.

And the sad thing is. I just made the plot to that utterly awful waste of words, sound a lot better than it is.

Okay, fuck it, I can't goddamn do this right now. No, this time would be better spent strategizing. I had to start planning how I was going to save the multiverse's armpit from the autistic space-whale widower.

And to make matters worse, I was on the backfoot since the world decided, in true Worm fashion, to punish me for doing the correct and righteous thing. Snitch on Shadow Stalker.

Instead of the PRT throwing the book at the bitch, I was thrown into the box, AKA, Solitary Confinement, AKA, Master Stranger quarantine. The only thing I was allowed, had been a notebook and a pen.

I could have made some blueprints for Tinker Tech or started making notes on my plans for the future. Instead, I drew caricatures of Armsmaster, with a penis drawn on his armor. This was a horrid waste of my time, but I am a petty, petty man.

When I was released from the Hole, I thought I had a few days to actually prep for the first stone that started the proverbial avalanche of shit that is Worm canon. However, because this is Worm, adults ruined everything. When I finally got done with my public relations lectures and was allowed access to my lab again, Armsmaster brought Lung in, envenomed to the gills.

That had been the most aggravating night of my short though already infuriating stay in Brockton Bay. I tried to get information out of Beardman, but he was too busy taking credit for other's hard work to pay me any mind.

Of course, nobody had deigned to listen to me about how Lung seemed to coincidentally be stung roughly fifty million times by bugs, so he hadn't been given any antivenom for the fifty gallons of caustic bug juice injected in him. End result. His crotch rotted off.

Now no one will ever get to make a wish on the Dragon Balls.

This finally caused the PRT to go on damage control, which they wouldn't have needed to do had they done the smart thing and listened to me.

But what do I know? I'm just the dumb kid who informed them about Lung having roughly five hundred gallons of bug venom in his system. Bright side, I got to be in the room when Piggot gave BeardMeister the dressing down of all dressing downs for not properly testing his tinkertech tranquilizer.

If I had a proclivity to be unkind, which I don't, I am magnanimous; I'd say that Piggy was less worried about the possible death of numerous people, and more that the news might catch Beardy the Wonderman killing a perp and causing problems for her.

Which granted, valid concern. But still.

So I was now at the beginning of Worm with no preparation, which was mildly concerning.

My current and most infuriating obstacle to saving all worlds, the indomitable and awful 'Tinkering budget.' Which last I checked was two goddamn pennies. I could rub them together to feel better about not having money, but I was better off melting them for the little bit of copper in them.

Fun fact, Earth Bet pennies were still made of copper. Barbarians.

Still, it had taken me five whole days, but I had eventually managed to figure out what this body's Tinkering Specialty had been.

Yes, I had to tear apart my armor, skate board, pistols, every gadget in my 'lab', and I'd take care of the thing labeled 'Alternator Canon' later when I had the time. After that, I made just about all of their systems interchangeable with each other for ease of battlefield application, but in the process I figured out that I specialized in modular equipment with a dash of teleportation and anti-gravity.

Good news, I could now genuinely have a shoulder mounted laser pew pew, or grenade launcher, or coil gun, or laser pointer. If anyone asks, the melted corner of the lounge sofa was totally a test target and not because I mixed up the melty laser for the normal laser pointer. As a totally unrelated aside, the casings of the two were now color-coded.

Bad news, apparently I was supposed to ask permission to make shit, and run it past the plebs who did not have an alien supercomputer wired into their brain. Because that makes sense somehow.

But Piggy gonna Piggot, so I had come up with some half baked explanation on how much more effective I would be in the field the next time I totally did not run into any danger, because the Wards was a program where we get to experiment with our powers and certainly not for fighting gangsters or enemy capes. Or holding down criminals while we waited for the Protectorate to show up.

I mean sure, I now had the ability to lay down rapid fire non-lethal ordnance at a rate of fire roughly equal to a Squad Assault Weapon, but that's totally an accident, and never will ever possibly ever come up as a Ward in the Bay.

Miss Piggy did not appreciate my lip, but did at least appreciate that I had filled out my paperwork. Long story short, I got a slap on the wrist and my action figures were getting updated. Because apparently, having seven different shoulder mounted weapons made for an interesting action figure.

Truly, the PR Department is the brains behind the PRT.

I brought my head down from the clouds and looked at the no longer pristine white page in front of me.

Unfortunately, it was filled with a blueprint for a machine that would pump out Bolt rounds of different effects for my totally-not-a-bolt-pistol. Not the essay I was supposed to be writing. Seriously, I'm literally a killing machine factory. I should be stuck in a lab somewhere, given infinity resources, and told to outfit the crap out of every trooper with all kinds of neat shit. Why the flying fuck am I being made to take English?

It's not like the world won't end in two fuckin' years.

Thankfully, the bell rang and saved me from having to agonize over the fact that I, an en-guh-neer, who absolutely had no need to learn how to English gooder, was being made to write an essay on some Shakespeare thing or another, who fuckin' cares, it's not even one of the good Shakespeare plays.

I was the first out of the room, hopefully the 'fuck off' vibes I was trying very hard to exude, would convince the peanut gallery to leave me alone so I could plan in sweet silence.

"Man you really bolted outta there." Dennis said, dashing my hopes and dreams. "Also, you zoned out and started doing the Thing again. You know you're not supposed to do that at school."

"I was not zoning out," I grumbled, "I was meditating, imagining a better place. It wasn't hard, the better place was quite literally anywhere else, with anyone else."

Dennis laughed, he probably thought I was joking.

"Man, ever since the thing, you and Dean have been really space-y." Carlos 'The Beef Wall' Mendez said as he caught up to us with his stupidly long legs. How dare he be five foot ten? Learn to shorten your strides dammit! I used to be three inches taller than you, and I even learned not to outpace a little lady less than five feet tall! Stupid Carlos with his stupid height that should be shorter than me.

Also, fuck these tiny stumpy legs. First chance I get, I'm chopping them off and replacing them with jets, or rocket boots, or jets with rocket boots attached.

Sadly, Beef McWall-man continued to talk, snapping me out of the haze that had descended, making the blueprints for bionic limbs that could be reconfigured into twenty-seven different functions and systems melt between my metaphorical fingers. "You sure you guys got hit by Uber and Leet, and not the Merchants?"

I resisted the urge to spit. "At this point I'd welcome the psychedelic escape from this torrid hell."

Beefy McMan had the audacity to look offended. He was clearly about to say something, but he paused and perked up. I grit my teeth harder and convulsed in voluntary revulsion as the source of his distraction turned the corner.

"And now this is happening," I grumbled as Victoria's 'fucking love me' aura was running full power. I could feel the bone-deep ache to bask in her presence, an incessant demand for my adoration that my brain happily supplied.

My stomach roiled at the violation, I curled my fingers into tight fists, the thought of hurting her brought horror and pain, which is why I wanted to feed her her teeth just as much as I wanted her acknowledgement. Power Puff Pavlov should learn to keep a goddamn lid on her power.

"She must be riled up." Simp the Beefman said. "She's been a lot better about keeping that in check lately."

Denis snorted and pretended to tug on an imaginary rope. "Only when her boytoy is around to tug the leash. Guess Dean's not here at the moment."

I spat into a trashcan as we walked past. "For some inscrutable reason, she seems to have more trouble with keeping her aura in check whenever I'm around. Though I admit, the Pavlov Field is usually set on 'piss yourself' when she sees me."

"Well, you keep being pretty abrasive whenever you meet up with her," Wally McBeefington spoke in that 'older brother knows best' tone that never failed to get on my nerves. "You could try being nicer to her."

"Well," I shot back, "you could try pulling the stick outta your a–" the school intercom sounded and called a load of people to the principal's office, among them, all the Wards, and our 'body doubles' who 'totally made it so nobody knew who we were.'

Because it's not like you could just look at the ones that are no longer in the school and figure out who the Wards are.

"Well shit." I said as the intercom cut off.

"Language!" Beekcake McMom chastised.

I ignored him as the three of us turned around and made our way to the principal's office. We got sidelined by one of our PRT handlers and went to the room that had our equipment already set up for us.

Dennis gave a shit-eating grin. "Well gee willikers Legend, I wonder what this is going to be about."

"There's a bank robbery in progress." The Generic Government Suit said on cue.

That niggled something in my memory, that was important. "Which bank and which villains?"

He looked at his phone. "Brockton General is being held up by the Undersiders."

Wait what? But Lung was brought in like, two days ago! How the fuck? More importantly when the fuck!?

Wait, now that I recall…I did always have an issue with Worm's… super quick…pacing…

"MOTHERFUCKER!"

It wasn't until Carlos' scandalized, "Language!" that I realized that I'd said that last bit very much outloud.

"Where's Dean?" Dennis asked.

Government Stooge shook his head. "He did not answer his phone, and his ID was checked out for lunch. We'll have to deploy without him."

Dennis' eyes widened in horrified realization. "Wait, didn't Dean say he was going to Brockton General to grab some cash?"

And that sounded like an opportunity to get Beef Mom out of my hair. "Why do you think I shouted?"

"Still. Keep your language in check. The last thing you need is another session from the PR team."

I grumbled, but let him have that one.

"Huh, do you think Dean's caught up in this?" Dennis asked as he started to lazily undress.

"Probably." I grumbled. The world was setting me up for failure, so logically it would make sense that he would be in the bank and in trouble. "But I doubt we need to worry. Dean's the responsible one. He'll be fine as long as he doesn't do something stupid, like trying to play hero in the middle of a bank robbery."

There was a long moment of silence as we all looked at each other.

"Get ready, double time!" Carlos ordered.

I started pulling my armor on, then realized that for some reason, Dennis was putting on Carlos' leggings. "Dude, the fuck are you doing?"

"Oh! Carlos and I had this idea, we should swap costumes, that way when Hellhound sends one of her dogs at me thinking it'll tie up Aegis, I can freeze it and keep it out of the fight." Dennis said with a huge smile.

"That is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say." I stated, wiping the idiot's smile off his face.

"What? It's a good idea!" He said, scrunching his face up in anger.

"Yeah, until they hit you with an attack they know Aegis can survive, only, because you're not a Brute, you pop like a balloon!"

"I'll just tag them before they can hit me!"

I slapped the side of his head hard enough to make my palm sting. He looked outraged and Carlos looked furious, but I spoke before either of them could get a word in. "Didn't tag me, and I'm not ten tons of angry ass lizard monster."

"Uhh, I think they're dogs." Browbeat said as he finished pulling on his blue checker pattern body-glove that was kind of ratty. When had he gotten there?

"I know what I said." I spat back. "Your idea is good on paper, until you account for the little fact that you can make a mistake and get yourself splatted, probably on national television."

"Then we won't make a mistake." Carlos growled.

I slapped the side of Dennis' head again. This time he saw it coming, but I still managed to tag him in the temple.

"Stop it!"

"Not really seeing it. And I'm not a giant ass lizard, built like a truck. Or you know, a bullet."

The mention of gunfire seemed to bring them up short.

"The Undersiders are not known to carry firearms." Carlos said stubbornly.

I raised an eyebrow as I finished putting on my gauntlets. "So you're saying that the hundred and ten pound girl whose superpower is thinking hard at you, isn't going to go around armed in Brockton Fuckin' Bay. Yeah, that sounds super smart don't it?"

[Guys, I'm already at the truck, where are you?] Vista's voice said over the radio.

"And like that, we're out of time!" I said with a big grin. "Go with your plan if you want, but when Clockblocker gets his legs torn off by a superpowered monster thing, I will absolutely say 'I told you so' as I hold his head while he fuckin' dies." I put on my new helmet and reveled in the hiss as it pressurized.

"Wait, why are you putting on Gallant's helmet?" Carlos asked as he narrowed his eyes at me.

"Didn't you just say we shouldn't switch costumes?" Dennis sneered.

I tapped the helmet. "The difference between you two plebs and I, is that I'm not pretending to be Gallant. I'm just stealing his helmet. Also." I blink-clicked the icon on the HUD I'd added when I hacked the firmware three days ago, causing the paint to switch colors to match my new armor. "It totally fits my look now, so your point is invalid."

"Vista's gonna kill you." Dennis said.

"She's a professional. She'll kill me when we get back to base, and by then I'll have gotten Dean to use as a meat shield." I crossed my arms and held myself smugly at my superior logic.

Before either of them could respond, the door opened and the Government Suit's head popped in. He looked rather miffed at the fact that only half of us were in costume. "You do realize there is a bank robbery going on, right? Get your costumes on, and I do mean 'your costumes' and get going."

Thankfully, the command of an actual adult seemed to penetrate Carlos' and Dennis' skulls and they grumbled as they put on their own costumes.

The ride to the bank was bumpy. I do not know why I was surprised by this. Last I checked, we lived in the part of town that had the better roads, and if they were this bad here, how bad were they in the rest of this trash heap of a city?

"Vista," Aegis began giving orders, his back straight and looking far more regal than his pouty teenage ass had any right to be, "when we get there, make sure to twist space so the Undersiders cannot escape. Given the choice between fighting us and surrendering, a group that focuses on escape like them should capitulate."

Vista and Clockblocker nodded, I couldn't tell what Browbeat thought thanks to his mask covering his face. Also, he had gained twice his body mass in muscle since the last time I looked at him, it was kinda disgusting.

I raised a hand as if trying to get the teacher's attention. "Uhh, excuse me, that is literally the stupidest thing we could do. Nobody fights harder than when they're pushed into a corner."

Vista stiffened and snapped back at me before Aegis could say anything. "Our job is to stop the bad guys!"

The truck bounced a little violently, otherwise I would have gotten in the little girl's face. "Our job is to safeguard the hostages!" I could see that I hadn't convinced her, so I decided to twist the knife a little bit. "Like you know, our knight out of his shiny armor, who is stuck as a hostage." Vista recoiled and I turned to Carlos, hopefully he'd be smart enough to see reason. "We need to hand this over to the professionals, last I checked we are literally not trained for this shit!"

"All other Protectorate Assets are tied up." Aegis replied stiffly.

"Well, alright then, we'll hand it over to the cops."

Aegis shook his head. "Villains are Protectorate jurisdiction."

"And hostage situations are the cops."

Aegis shook his head again. "The moment Parahumas became involved, it landed on us. When we get there, fan out and we'll cut their escape options off, if they fight we'll take them on, take them down."

I sighed. "I'll get right on that, boss."

Aegis and Vista both looked mollified by my submission and they continued to talk strategy for the rest of the ride.

The moment the truck stopped, I threw the doors open, jumped down, and ran straight up to whichever cop looked to be relatively in charge. I proceeded to speak in the most obnoxiously loud voice I could get away with, without making it too awkward. "Wards present and accounted for, sir! We are ready to assist. Where do you want us?"

The cop blinked at me. "Aren't you kids here to bust up the Undersiders?"

I shook my head. "No sir! We're here in case the Undersiders attack or get violent on the hostages. Until then, this is your show."

The cop looked quite flabbergasted for a few moments, before grinning and giving me a friendly slap on the shoulder. "Good thinking Kid Win! Get your team set up around the cordon, please help us hold the crowd back, and keep everyone calm."

"Yes sir!" I said. Turning around, I saw the other four Wards, I could only assume Clockblocker and Browbeat were looking at me in shock, same as Vista. Judging by Aegis' glare, if he had heat vision, I'd be dead.

"What the hell was that!?" Aegis hissed angrily. "You agreed with the plan!"

I would roll my eyes but he wouldn't see it. Thankfully, my unparalleled genius has preemptively solved this immense issue. I used my new helmet and activated the hologram emitters I'd installed, causing a 'rolling eyes' emoticon to appear on top of my head. "It's called 'lying.' Do you really wanna start throwing blood, teeth, and fucking lasers around, with these many civilians gawking in the danger zone?"

Aegis pushed forward into my personal space, wholly ignoring my stroke of genius, rude. I could see the PR training kick in as he stopped and looked around. He took in the scene, with all the gawkers, holding their phones up and recording our every move. I heard one of his teeth crack as he grit them too hard. "This conversation is not over."

"It's over for now!" I tossed back at him and danced off to play babysitter to the crowd along with everyone else.

I had given my generic 'everything is under control' speech for roughly the five hundredth time when I spotted a man speaking on a phone by one of the cop vans. A little fiddling with my HUD revealed he was the hostage negotiator, and he'd managed to get in contact with the Undersiders. I heard him offer food and drink to the Undersiders in exchange for a few hostages, and I heard a young woman playfully refuse.

This gave me a wonderful idea.

 

[Heroslayer]

And here is the next chapter. It's not quite as bombastic as Kid Win's, but not everyone can be as in your face as alternate Santo/Kid Win. It's a study of contrasts.

---

Ersatz 2.2

I thought that adjusting to an entirely new life, with new family, new friends, a new city, and you know, super powers, would be fairly difficult. I expected struggle, complications, suspicion. Surely accidently replacing someone should necessitate some subterfuge, government kidnappings and being on the run as a criminal.

But no, my transition into my new life was actually going pretty smooth. Two weeks in and I haven't been strapped down on a table in a government building so I think I can call this a successful integration.

Chris, on the other hand, seemed to have issues.

Not counting the whole, Master/Stranger deal, he was irritated by every little thing. Vicky being around would set him off. Not Tinkering would set him off. Hero work set him off. Even his own actions seemed to piss him off. Like the fact that we really needed to talk about the pending end of the world, but he could never actually find the time to say more than two words to me.

The last time we spoke, he had mentioned something about a bank robbery before kicking me out of his lab since he was elbows deep in some sort of Tinker Tech and swearing like a sailor.

I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but it did ring as familiar. So I decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to check out all the banks in Brockton Bay. It gave me an excuse to squirrel away some pocket money in case of an emergency.

Which is why when Amy said she needed to stop by the bank during Lunch Hour, I figured it would be a good idea to go with and scope out a bank.

Why a high school had an hour lunch, I'll never know. Freaking fancy ass rich schools.

"So what's with the sudden trip to the bank?" I said as we both got into line for a teller. Apparently, even in the nicer parts of Brockton Bay, it was too much of a risk to have ATMs on the outside of the bank.

"Well, apparently I need money for the double date that Vicky sprung up on me." Amy said, a rare bit of purple annoyance bleeding into her aura when talking about her sister. It was quickly smothered, before it flared up again with a drop of spite when she looked up at me. "What about you?"

"Would you believe that it's the same reason?" I said with a beleaguered sigh. "I didn't even know we had a date until she mentioned it this morning."

I watched Amy's aura pulse with a dull red of annoyance and vibrant green envy that I fended off with a friendly tap to the shoulder and a slight pulse of acceptance. "Look on the bright side, free food." I joked, as Amy's shoulders relaxed from her bad feelings being bled away.

I was getting a lot of practice with small applications of my power. Mostly thanks to Amy.

Amy just shrugged, a fond smile on her face, "She's spontaneous like that."

"So, I'm learning." I said with a small smile. Despite her fickleness driving me up a wall, I liked being around Vicky. I always enjoyed being around enthusiastic people. That and it was nice to read expressions on a pretty face and not an aura.

I was about to bring up something about class when I saw her aura snap from a thoughtful blue into a neon bright yellow before swirling in a confusing mess. Surprise, fear, confusion. It all spun together way too quickly for me to parse.

"Amy, what's wr-"

"Ahem." I was cut off as I turned around to find a monster right in my face.

"Oh." I squeaked.

That is a very big, and very angry, dog right in front of me. In fact, I'm not sure I would call it a dog. I'm pretty sure dogs aren't supposed to have external bone plates and muscles bulging outside of their skin. Maybe in video games. Well, Earth-Aleph video games. Apparently the industry wasn't doing so hot here. Poor Japan.

No, focus. There was a monster dog in front of me. Like, it was as if someone took all the steroids in the world and decided they wanted to make the angriest and meanest dog ever. Seriously, Bloodborne had nothing on this doggo.

Even worse, animal emotions were a confusing kaleidoscope that gave me a headache.

"Uh… good dog?" My mouth said before I could process.

I winced as everyone took my comment as permission to start screaming at the sight of the demon dog from hell. I thought about sending out a pulse of calm to stop everyone from panicking, but hesitated. Stupid secret identity bullshit.

As I wrestled with my hesitation, the room was engulfed in pitch black darkness.

I reacted just fast enough to reach out and grab Amy's arm before I lost sight of her. She quickly latched onto it and I anchored myself around that sense of touch. I couldn't see her or her emotional aura through the darkness but I could still feel her.

I squinted my eyes for a moment, but the cloud of darkness completely obscured my vision. No colors, no light, not even any hint of Amy despite the fact I could feel her latched onto my arm.

I swallowed and tried to settle my racing heartbeat. I closed my eyes and instantly felt a little better. After all, it's normal to not see anything with your eyes closed. Now with that settled, I could think.

Pitch black super darkness. Who in Brockton Bay could do that?

Thankfully, part of being a government teenaged superhero was a regular briefing on the city's super villain population. So I could come up with a reasonable guess about the source of my sudden blindness.

"Grue." I said. Or, maybe I said. Concerningly, I couldn't even hear the words coming out of my own mouth. Like, I could feel the vibrations, but couldn't hear the audible sound. Very uncomfortable.

If this was Grue, that made this the Undersiders. Which made the giant monster dog one of Hellhound's dogs. They were a four man band, the last I recalled.

Just as I was starting to put my thoughts together, just as fast as it arrived, the darkness parted. It moved away from the room but clung onto the walls and blocked all the windows and doors. It left the room lit only by the harsh artificial lighting.

The Undersiders walk into the center of the room. My eyes quickly darted around each of them as I tried to go through my mental dossier. I made the extra effort to look past their auras to actually see them.

Grue was the one in the helmet and biker leathers. He was the source of the super darkness and leader of the small time gang. Puffy white shirt and the Renaissance mask should be Regent. The girl on one of the doggos from hell was obviously Hellhound, which left the attractive blonde in the jumpsuit as Tattletale.

Except that left one extra.

"Huh, they got a new member." I murmured as I took in the new girl. My gaze pierced through the waves of bright anxiety, worry, guilt, swirling around an iron core of concentration to look at her costume. She wore a greenish jumpsuit littered with armor plating, but the thing that caught my eye was the menacing mask with piercing yellow lenses for eyes.

"Dean." Amy hissed at me from the floor. Right, at the moment I was a civilian hostage, not a Hero. I quickly joined Amy on the ground.

The mysterious masked girl was apparently the spokesperson for the hostage situation and stepped forward to address the bank.

"Fifteen minutes. We won't be here any longer than that. Stay put, stay quiet, we'll be gone before fifteen minutes are up." I could actually see the conflict and anxiety rise up around the girl. She didn't want to hurt anyone. Good, that meant that we were probably going to get out of here without casualties. She continued, "You'll be free to give your statement to the police and then go about your day as usual. This isn't a TV show, this isn't a movie. If you're thinking about being a hero, don't. You'll only get yourself or someone else hurt."

I might have been overthinking it, but I'm pretty sure she looked right at me when she said that.

She raised a hand and I watched as a spider crawled up her arm onto a single finger. "If you are thinking about running, making a phone call or getting in our way, this is a good reason to reconsider. This little creature and her one hundred sisters that I just brought into this room are under my complete control."

"She's a black widow spider. A single bite has been known to kill a full grown human, or put them into a coma. You move, talk, try to find or kill the spiders I just put on your bodies, in your clothes, in your hair? I'll know in a split second, and I'll tell them to bite you several times."

Well, that was bad. I see the fear in the room smothering every single civilian in the bank. Thankfully, the bright red loathing sitting next to me was a nice palate cleanser. I made sure to give Amy's arm a reassuring squeeze. When she looked up at me, there was more surprise than anger, which was nice.

"Hey, she's not bluffing, but she's not planning on hurting anyone." I murmured gently, keeping my voice low enough so only Amy could hear me. Amy gave me a quizzical look and I raised a hand to tap right next to my eyes. She frowned and I could see a bit of that angry red loathing simmer down into a dull red annoyance.

"Look, the Undersiders are thieves. They're not the type to hurt people. This here, it's a threat to keep everyone settled. We sit still, they leave with the money and no one gets hurt." I tried to soothe Amy's righteous fury.

"Or we could stop them." Amy retorted. Right, I'm going to nip the teenage desire to do something reckless right in the bud.

"And the rest of the hostages?" I raised an eyebrow.

"I could cure a Black Widow bite." Amy scowled as she squeezed my hand tight enough to begin to hurt. "Think you can hit all of them at once?"

"Yeah, let's not gamble with everyone's lives." I cut her off. "I'll take the safe option that keeps everyone safe, which includes you, by the way." Amy looked extra annoyed by my concern for her wellbeing. Seriously, I cannot win with this girl. Fine, let's try another angle. "Let's say that the Undersiders get away. Who really gets hurt. The bank? Trust me, they can afford it. Hell, their insurance will probably pay for everything they lose and then some. Let's go with the option that keeps the most people safe and healthy."

Amy did not seem particularly impressed by my argument judging from her expression. But the jokes on her, I could see her actual emotions. The urge to act had dulled down and now she was just simmering in her own anger. I'd probably need to deal with that later, but for now, let's keep anyone from doing something stupid.

I did my best to keep the rest of the hostages calm. Amy tried to help, but the mousey girl wasn't exactly great at socializing. Which left me to soothe the rest of the hostages.

"Hey, we're going to be okay." I whispered to the woman next to me. She was close to sobbing and I laid a gentle hand on her leg and discreetly pulsed just a bit of hope into her.

"Y-yeah…" She looked up at me and I smiled encouragingly as I watched the spark of hope burn away some of the despair in her aua. .

"Most bank robberies end up with everyone walking away." Well, that was true back home. I had no idea what the cape statistics were on that. Something to look up later. "If we just keep quiet, they have no reason to hurt us. We're not the ones they're robbing."

"Really?" I stroked up the woman's hopes just a tad more as I nodded. The woman's terror and sadness receded just a bit and I shot her another smile before turning my eyes to the rest of the hostages.

Once everyone was settled, we just sat quietly and watched the Undersiders work. The big dogs covered all the entrances and seemed more occupied with snarling at us and standing guard. Every now and then, one of the Undersiders would pop into the room to make sure we were sitting quietly. I took note on each one in case the situation took a turn for the worse.

Grue seemed rather tense about the entire situation, but I couldn't get a good read on him other than that since he never seemed to stay in the room for more than a glance. Regent just seemed amused by the entire situation. The bastard even had the gall to flirt with one of the attendants before Grue yelled at him to get back to work. I didn't get a glimpse of Hellhound or Tattletale, so they were probably busy in the back. Which made sense, Brute force and Thinker for the vault in the back.

But mostly I watched Bug Girl, who was in charge of watching us.

I knew for a fact that she was more worried about something. The swirl of anxiety, fear, and self loathing was actually starting to get nauseating to watch, but she held her ground with an iron will that caged in all her other emotions. Not a sign of aggression or anger. I couldn't be completely sure, but I felt that I had guessed right. If we didn't do anything dumb, she wouldn't hurt any of the hostages.

So far so good. If things went smoothly, we'd all be out of here by the afternoon.

"Change of plans." Grue stepped into the room, pitch black darkness bleeding off the edges of his body. I could see yellow annoyance around him along with a small bit of blue relief.

I swore under my breath as everyone tensed up and Amy's slowly building calm burst into an angry red loathing. If Grue's next words were anything threatening, I would need to shoot her with a burst of calm before she did something reckless.

"Tattletale negotiated a hostage exchange." Grue said gruffly. "Women and children can leave."

Some people cheered and I could see a mother clutch her little girl with tears of relief in her eyes. I let out a small breath and dispersed the bit of blue calm I had started to gather around my fingertips, hidden in my jean pockets of course.

"See. What'd I tell you?" I said as the red loathing bled out of Amy. She shot me an annoyed look even as the green calm and disbelief built up in her. "No need for heroics. You're going to be out of here, safe and sound."

"Lucky guess." Amy groused. I'll take the win when I get them.

"Oh, sorry. One exception." I spun around and saw Tattletale saunter into the room and pointed a finger at me. No, not at me, at Amy. "Panacea and her little boyfriend have to stay put."

"Excu-" I began, but was cut off by the utter rage of the girl next to me.

"My what?!" Amy snarled at Tattletale. Wow, okay, you didn't have to get that angry at that. That's a real distracting mix of anger, annoyance, disgust, and self loathing that I am not going to try to sift through at the moment. Instead, I looked over at Tattletale.

"Why the two of us?" I said as I raised an arm protectively over Amy.

"We need a little bit of leverage to keep the Capes from just busting in here." Tattletale said as she leaned lazily against a wall with a smirk. "They won't risk harming Brockton Bay's premiere healer. As for you, well, you're just extra, Mr. Boytoy."

I bristled at that, but Amy had a much more violent response.

"He's not my boytoy or anything like that."

I could see amusement bubbling around Tattletale as she needled Amy. That particular bit of yellow isn't sunny for happy thoughts, no, that's an almost cruel yellow. Like when you are about to bait a puppy before pulling the treat away.

"Oh? Well, I guess tall, rich and handsome isn't really your type, is he?" Tattletale's aura gained a mischievous edge. "No, your type is blonde, blue eyed an-"

Oh no. Yeah, no. None of that. We're not pushing that button today. I could half recall what Amy's issues with her sister were and I really did not want that to be aired out in public.

I dragged Amy backwards and sent a wave of 'calm the fuck down' down her arm at the same time I took a step towards Tattletale. And stopped because one of the dogs looked intently at me.

Time to do something dumb and attention grabbing.

What would Chris do?

Oh, I know!

"It's kinda pathetic, you know," I cut off Tattletale with an aggressive drawl, "that you need to be the smartest in the room. It really reeks of desperation. Not a pretty look, even on a pretty girl."

A shocked silence fell over the bank room, replacing any sign of relief that the hostages felt as I decided to verbally throw down the gauntlet against a Villian.

I could see everyone's attention shoot over to me. I ignored the shock and horror from the civilians and forced my face into a rueful smirk.

"Sorry, did that come off too strong?" My mouth kept vomiting out words with only the smallest bit of input from my brain. "I thought we were playing the petty insult game. Petty insults for a petty thief, am I right?"

I could see the smug glee in Tattletale's aura bleed into a shock of indignant red before in an effort of will, it transitioned into an angry orange that I guessed was something along the lines of, 'challenge accepted.'

Good, she's paying attention to me and not Amy.

"I mean, really? You have the entire place locked down, you have Panacea in the room unable to help anyone and you feel the need to needle her about her dating life?" I raised an eyebrow and pulled up an expression of disappointment. "It's childish, but then again, I guess that's not that surprising with your name."

"Oh?" Tattletale's aura flickered for a moment, swirling around curiosity, anger, before settling back on that sinister smug feeling. "And here I thought you weren't going to play hero. Though I guess being the Knight in Shining Armor is more of your speed?"

I paused. Well shit. That can't have been a blind guess. She got my Cape identity fast from nothing. How did her powers work again?

I saw her smug satisfaction aura of bright canary yellow brighten at knocking me off balance.

Right, Thinker bullshit. But it was too late to stop now. All I could do was keep the conversation going.

"I dabble." I demurred and tilted my head with a sly smile. "The whole being a good person thing. It's actually pretty easy. Not that you've tried."

"Not my thing." Tattletale hummed as she started to walk towards me, curiosity and arrogance settling comfortably around her. "Though I guess in your case, guilt makes a pretty good motivator. As does that pride of yours. You've got to be better than that other guy, right?"

I suppressed a flinch and took a small breath to center myself as Tattletale pivoted and started to pace around me.

I noted that Tattletale was circling me, forcing me to follow her physically to give the impression she's controlling me, a classic mental power play. She couldn't pull answers out of nothing, I reminded myself. She pulled from everything, but she needed information. If I keep reacting so strongly, I may as well be shouting my answer to her.

I made sure to adjust and pivot, keeping me in between Tattletale and Amy. Tattletale's aura pulsed with annoyance, confusion, and alarm. But I had no idea what caused that.

I took that hesitation and ran with it.

"I mean, if you can help. Then help. If I had powers, I'd like to think I'd keep helping people." I smirked. "Less kicking down and more punching up."

"It sounds pretty, but the world doesn't work like that." I couldn't help the little twinge I felt at that. There's only so much you can do around a broken system. It was a sad truth you learned as an adult. "Less chance of a pointless death protecting the status quo."

"I'd like to think that dying trying to save people has a point. Much more than dying for, what, fifty thousand dollars?" I shot back. That got a response. Nothing physical, I'll give it to Tattletale, she had a hell of a poker face, but that meant nothing to my powers. Just a smidge of indigo that I thought was disgust swam through her aura. Something about this situation disgusted her. I needed to focus on that.

What was it? Something to do with this robbery?

That's right. Something floated up from the back of my mind. Chris mentioned a bank robbery as something important with saving the world. This couldn't be about money. Not when we remembered something about it. I didn't know what this robbery was about, but that's the thing, neither did Tattletale.

She didn't know. That had to be it. I saw a flare of surprise and dark annoyance. She knew that I knew something. I could see the gears accelerate as her aura quickly ran through a gamut of colors before honing down into a sharp focus.

No time to think. Let's see if I fell down the correct rabbit hole.

"I mean, it's kind of sad. You don't know why you're really here." I used every bit of acting talent in me to say those words with as much scorn as possible. Tattletale's emotions spiked and swirled. Bullseye. I pulled an expression from Chris' new handbook. I didn't smile, I showed my teeth. "All this heat, all this danger, all of this, and you don't know why you were sent here. Because I'll tell you something. Everyone knows that robbing a bank is more trouble than it's actually worth."

Judging from her aura and the glare I could see through it. I had her undivided attention. Her undivided and very angry attention. Note to self, attacking a Thinker's intelligence really makes them angry. Do not recommend.

"I mean, it must burn you," I pressed. I would have taken a step forward if it wasn't for the bright aggressive colors burning bright in my peripherals. Right, the rest of the Undersiders are still here. "All that intelligence, boosted by your Thinker powers, and you still can't figure it out. All the clues are there. But I guess that makes sense. I'd call you a Knock off Moriarity, but at least he was the mastermind, so I'll call you Budget Sherlock. After all, all you do is figure things out when it's too late to actually help."

Oh wow. I thought that the red I saw from Amy was loathing. No, real loathing is pitch black. It was just a moment, but man, that is a disturbing color to see in an aura of light. To her credit, despite the swirling emotional turmoil, Tattletale didn't miss a beat. I thought I'd knocked her for a loop there, but no, she processed that shock, hate, and absolute loathing right away and went straight for the throat.

"You're right. It does burn a little." Tattletale walked right up to me. I wondered if I could sneak an emotional blast, but the skitter of the black widow sitting on my neck reminded me that I was a hostage, not a superhero. "But that's fine. It probably doesn't burn as much as all the lying does."

I raised an eyebrow and smiled. "I haven't said a single lie, have I?"

"No. You haven't. Not to me." Tattletale turned to Amy. I moved to pull her away, but the sudden movement on the back of my neck reminded me of the very poisonous spider that could kill me and I froze. I watched with grit teeth as Tattletale leaned down until she was on the other side of Amy's head. "Did he tell you?"

"Tell me what?" Amy spat at Tattletale.

I felt all the blood rush out of my face. There was no way that Tattletale could know about the accident. Sure, there was public record that Gallant and Kid Win were caught in an accident, but there was no way for her to know that both of us had contracted amnesia.

Tattletale looked at me and all I could see was the sadistic glee roiling off of her.

"That he can't remember anything before the explosion." Tattletale whispered, just loud enough for me to hear as well. "If he doesn't have his memories, is he even Dean Stansfield anymore?"


Someone gasped. I wasn't sure if it was Amy or me.

Shit. I tried to think of something to say. Anything, just a lie or something to refute Tattletale's words. But I could only stare at Amy who tightened her grip on my arm. For a moment, I could see the colors swirl in confusion, disbelief, anger, worry, before settling on a mess of self loathing and realization.

Or at least, I think that's what she's thinking. The colors are swirling a little too much for me to keep track. Oh wait, that's not just Amy's emotions, the room's spinning a little too.

"Even he's not sure if he's still Dean or someone else." Tattletale continued to whisper poison into Amy's ear, a vicious smirk on her face as she stared at me from the corner of her eyes. "Me? I'm leaning on a fresh Stranger sitting in a new body. I wonder, does that make it murder?"

It did make it murder.

After all, Dean was dead. He wasn't coming back. I didn't even have any of his memories. Not a single one. Not even a hint. They weren't coming back.

And it wasn't just one murder. Afterall, I was slowly losing my memories of my previous life. Every day, bits and pieces disappeared; fading away like fog in the morning sun. Two corpses bleeding out into a brand new life.

And here I was. Born from the death of two people.

I watched Tattletale take a step back. She was smirking at me as she went back to the Undersiders and left the front room. I didn't know that Regent could affect perception too, because the room was starting to tilt.

No wait, that's me again.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

It was like all my worries and fears had just taken the form of an attractive blonde in a jumpsuit and aired themselves all out to the public.

Amy knew. She'd tell Vicky. Vicky would tell everyone.

The Wards will find out.

Shit. If they suspect me, they'll suspect Chris.

That'll add to the problem. They already think he's been Mastered.

They'll throw us in a cell to rot.

The world will end.

We won't be able to change anything.

And it'll be my fault.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

I can't breathe.

"Dean!" I felt my heart slow down. Like, physically slow down. My lungs started to even out and my brain slowed down from a thousand miles a second back down to a manageable highway speed.

"Ow." I grunted. That had actually hurt, but I used the pain as an anchor to center myself. "Thanks."

"Dean. You…" Amy looked up at me. There was concern, self loathing, happiness, hatred, exhaustion, and so many other things that I wanted to fix about Amy. I needed to make sure to get that rolling.

Shit. Promises to keep, and still so many miles until I can afford to sleep.

"Sit down." Amy guided me down to a corner. I guess the Undersiders had lost interest after I had a panic attack, since only Spider Girl was standing around. She looked particularly guilty, angry and look, more self loathing. I'm really starting to hate that shade of yellow. I've been seeing it way too often.

"'m fine." I grunted and slumped bonelessly against the wall. Amy said nothing as she kept a keen eye on me. I think she mentioned something about permission, which I nodded at and soon I could feel my heartrate start to settle against its own will.

The two of us just sat there, in the corner of the bank room, Amy gripping my hand and willing my anxiety and panic away and me just staring blankly as the Undersiders led the women and children out of the front of the Bank.

Right, hostages. I almost forgot about them. Good. They were safe. This entire shit show was hopefully going to be over soon. The sooner we were out of here the better. I needed to get to Chris and talk to him about this mess and I doubt he's about to walk in through the front door.

It was at that moment that a dark gray boot with red highlights kicked open the front door and Kid Win, in a brand new set of red power armor and my helmet with a new paint scheme slid into the room, his arms spread wide open like a character from a sitcom.

"Helllllllooooo, fellow hostages~!"

We're all going to die.

 

[Santo]

Aaaaand...STUFF!

Glad to see people enjoying my characterization of Kid-Santo. It warms the greasy, frozen, calcified lump of grit and callus I call a heart.

Now, more stuff! Let me know what you think about it.

Pretty please with a cherry on top.

---

Ersatz II.III

I took Taylor's wrist in a firm but gentle grip and moved it until she was pressing the knife against the side of my neck. "Yeah yeah knife on the front of the throat is threatening, but if you want to actually be dangerous, you hold it to the side, where the carotid is, that way, if they get uppity, they have literally minutes to live, and only seconds awake." I patted the back of her hand. "And that's how you hold a knife to someone's neck and remain the most safe."

I wasn't 100% certain what her expression was, her costume made an amazing job of hiding her reactions, and the fact that she wasn't speaking made it my job to carry the whole conversation by myself. Thankfully, this was not difficult.

Convincing the cops to 'exchange' me for the women and children had been somewhat difficult. But some bullshit I made up about not being able to rest easy while women and children were in the line of fire had them eating out of the palm of my hand. Now the Undersiders had one third the hostages, and I was in here, where I could keep an eye on everyone and make sure nobody spooked the giant dogs.

Wins all around!

I cast my suit cameras around the lobby, as I continued my impromptu class on proper knife wielding. I ignored the disbelieving stares of the twenty or so men in the room, and looked out for my partner in crime. Dean and Amy were huddled in a corner, out of the way of any possible debris from the Collateral Damage Barbie making an entrance. The fact that she hadn't shown up yet, did not mean she could not arrive and make the situation worse.

Dean looked rattled, kinda pale, for that matter so did Amy. Well, paler. Gingers abhor sunlight and all. I wonder for a moment if he had done something stupidly noble and had gotten spooked by the fact that his powers were not exactly applicable to his current situation. Then I remembered I was supposed to be giving a lesson in knife wielding.

"Now knife on the body, that's important too you know? After all, most people won't hold your hand and teach you how to properly hold a knife to their throat, most of the time you're using a knife, it'll probably be going somewhere in the torso, for that-"

The Undersiders came back. I was surprised at how pretty Reagent was. Like, dayum son, did you forget how to testosterone? Tattletale had a pretty killer bod and a pretty shitty everything else. Grue was more muscular than me, and I did not like this fact, at all. For that matter, I had a feeling that Bitch was more muscular than I was, and this I really didn't like, that said, she did look more feminine than I thought she was going to, so hey, little of column A, little of column B.

Speaking of.

"Hey Bitch!"

All the hostages twitched. The girl with the plastic dog mask turned to growl at me. Literally growled. "What?"

"Can I pet your dogs?"

"No."

"Okay."

And that was that for that conversation. Reagent and Taylor both looked rather confused by my blase attitude, Tattletale just looked like one smug bug. But fuck it, this was way better than spending two weeks in a Master/Stranger cell.

I waited for what felt like a few eternities, my HUD informed me it was exactly fifteen seconds, then I grew bored and turned to look at Taylor next to me. I kept expecting to tower over her, it was distressing that we were pretty evenly matched heightwise. "Sssooo. Just wanted to say, your hair? It's incredible. Mind telling me what conditioner you use? Cause holy hell, I haven't seen hair that good outside of a commercial."

Grue grunted, the smoke coming out from his clothes gave it an eerie echoey quality. "Hostages shouldn't talk."

Reagent barked a laugh. "Aww, what's that bossman? Worried someone's muscling in on your turf?"

I smirked and made my best effort to channel my inner mid-western black woman. I put a hand on my hip and waved a finger at him. "Okay, first of all, I prefer 'person of immense value', I find the word 'hostage' offensive…you racist. Second of all," I tossed my head as I flipped a hand over my shoulder. Thankfully, Taylor hastily removed the knife from my neck, that could have damaged some of the seals of my spanking new armor, "my hair is waaay better than Grue's, and deserves the best, hence asking the only one here with better hair than me how she managed that miracle."

There was a long silence as both the hostages and the Undersiders all looked from my fully helmeted head, to Grue's fully helmeted head, and back to me as I stuck to my pose.

"Uhhh." I turned to Dean as he raised his hand like he was in class. Because of course the idiot can't sit quietly like a good hostage. "Isn't that Gallant's helmet? I mean, it looks like it has a new paint job. But… it really looks like Gallant's helmet."

I scoffed. "Well if you must know, inquisitive civilian. Gallant was too busy for hero work today, and I thought to myself I did. 'Why gee willikers Kid Win, aren't you headed to a dangerous situ-ma-caation?'

"And then I answered myself, 'gosh, yes myself, t'would seem that I am.'

"'Well,' myself said all hesitant like, 'wouldn't it be a good idea to wear this sadly abandoned helmet? It might be a good way to prevent a tragic case of the devil's drain bamage.' And the rest, as they say, is history."

I could feel every eye in the room zeroed in on me, and man, it was a good thing that this helmet covered my face completely, because I would never have managed to deliver those lines with a straight face. I could feel the collective confusion as they all struggled to figure out what my game was.

Except Tattletale, she thought she knew.

Suddenly Reagent exploded with laughter. "Hey, bossman, can we keep this hostage? He's hilarious!"

They ignored my shout of "Racist!" as Tattletale smirked. "We'll get to keep him a little longer." Judging by the way Grue twitched and turned to look at her, he didn't like the fact that she took point on answering that question. "He'll be our safety net as we escape. Grue will throw out a smoke screen, he'll keep the cops and Wards off our backs and we'll drop the Super-Hostage-"

"Racist!"

"-off somewhere safe once we're clear." Tattletale finished, ignoring my interruption.

I shrugged, tough crowd. "Well, better me than a squishy civilian. Oh, now we can put the knife lessons to practice!" I said enthusiastically to Taylor. "Though for this situation, with a Hostage on the move," I magnanimously ignored Reagent pointing out I'd called myself a hostage, "knife at the back is safer, less chance of accidental stabbity or slashy. Right over the kidney is good if they're not wearing armor, which unfortunately for you, I am, so you'll just have to get creative."

In no time at all we were riding off into the, well, I would call it sunset but it was a little after midday, and all the goddamn super-smoke cut out all visibility. It also absorbed all of my armor's sensory output and returned nothing. The only things I could feel were the movement of the dog underneath me and the point of Taylor's knife as she held it to the softer part of my armor. The occasional bump as the dog stumbled on something caused the knife to jab painfully at my side, but whatever, not like it was gonna penetrate the armorweave.

We thankfully eventually came to a stop, and I jumped off the goddamn dog as the smoke dissipated. We were on one of the many rooftops, looking back, I could see a surprisingly sparse trail of property damage where the dogs had scrabbled and climbed as they ran on the rooftops.

"Well, can't say it hasn't been fun and all, bu-" I cut off as, when I turned around, the Undersiders were in a semi-circle behind me, stalking forward. I backed away and they didn't stop until I had reached the edge of the building.

Judging by Tattletale's cruel smirk, she wasn't done having her fun. "They should find you for a pickup, eventually." Her smirk grew to a full shit-eating grin. "I do so very much hope that you won't find it too hard a hit to your reputation. What with having been a helpless hostage to a group of villains."

I shrugged. "Meh."

Reagent huffed a laugh while Tattletale's eye twitched at my nonchalance. "Well, good luck getting your shit out of lockup. The BBPD is notoriously slow about those things."

Without another word. I jumped backwards off the edge of the roof.

"Wait!" Taylor's panicked plea came at the same time as she threw herself forward, hand stretched out. That girl really was a natural born hero. Fuck this world for messing that up so badly.

They all realized it wasn't a suicide attempt when I didn't fall, hovering in place as I opened a bit more distance between myself and their group. I blink-clicked the necessary icons on my HUD and raised my left hand as high as I could. "Eh, thanks for your concern. But I'll figure something out." I snapped my fingers and was engulfed in numerous flashes of green light.

I could see the realization of what had happened dawn on Tattletale's face as it twisted into a rictus of utter annoyance.

In the space of three seconds, I had gone from completely unarmed, to being armed with a pistol, a rifle with numerous Tinker Tech addons, and no less than two separate pintle-mounted weapons attached to the shoulders of my power armor. With a smirk, I activated the exchanger, just so Tattletale got to see that the rifle could have just as easily been a shotgun, and most of the things on me could change to be something else in an instant.

Why yes, you stuck up bint. I could have been perfectly equipped to deal with you lot at the drop of a hat. Because fuck you, powers are bullshit.

"Okay, boys and gals. Keep the thieving clean, hands mostly free of blood. Do your best not to drop any bodies, that way if you try to switch sides it'll make it much easier to get concessions and stuff. I'll even put in a good word for you." I blink-clicked an icon so the speakers on my helmet played a generic sound for a text message arriving. "On that note, I've got paperwork to fill out, so see ya!"

I gave them a sloppy salute and took off flying in the direction of the bank. Though I made sure to keep the cameras on my shoulder rigs pointed at them, who knows, maybe I'd get lucky and catch a shot of Tattletale looking surprised.

Now, every cape's favorite part of the job.

Paperwork.

 

[Heroslayer]

This chapter is out a bit late. Life decided to throw an emergency at me and I was too stressed to do the final pass on this chapter.

And now for the consequences of our actions, both large and small.

–

Ersatz 2.4

The clean up after a villain attack was kind of a bureaucratic bitch. There's a ton of processing that needs to be completed. There were witnesses to interview, general clean up, and making sure civilians don't take souvenirs from the battlefield. And all of that wasn't just grunt work, it also included paperwork. Piles and piles of paperwork. It was a pain in the ass.

On one hand, I was technically a civilian and a minor at the moment, so I got to circumvent most of that. Not sure if it was worth the verbal bitchslap and panic attack, but I'll take my silver linings.

On the other hand, I kind of wanted the grunt work, since it would give me a reason to avoid Amy, who was very persistent in trying to get answers from me. I couldn't even run away, since a PRT van had picked us up with the excuse that they would drive us back to school. So I was now trapped in the back of the van with her.

"You know, you really didn't need to come to the PRT building with me. Pretty sure all the Wards are uninjured. Well, maybe not Ch-Kid Win, but any injuries he gets, he deserves." I tried to joke, but my voice wouldn't cooperate and it just came out a monotone and dead rather than joking. I really didn't want to have to lie my way around Amy's suspicions and get thrown into a Master/Stranger cell.

While the time alone would be great for planning my next move, it would make it a lot harder to actually make that next move. Also, Chris had made it seem very, very tedious. Somehow, the second time was worse despite being much shorter.

"Dean," Amy's voice snapped me out of my thoughts. There was a lot of suspicion and confusion swirling around her. It made me nauseous just looking at it. I mentally sighed and braced myself for more social manipulation and emotional blackmail. "You had a panic attack."

"And I'm fiiiiine." I tried to wave off her worry. It did not go away. In fact, her feelings of worry only strengthened. Damnit, believe me. I resisted the urge to reach over and push just a bit of apathy and doubt into her so she'd leave me alone.

"Dean, you were running close to a heart attack." Amy said while glaring at me, "Which is rather concerning in a very healthy and active teenager."

"And you healed me. So I'm now fine." I tried to argue, but even to me it sounded more like whining. "Shouldn't you go and reassure your sister that you're fine. I'm sure that Vicky is worried sick. Heck, I'm surprised she isn't flying next to the van and trying to pry open the doors like a soup can." I managed to twist my mouth into a small smile, but it quickly faded at Amy's continuing suspicion. "I'm just saying."

"Did Tattletale…" Amy hesitated for a moment and I could see her inner battle. I mentally rooted for hesitation and caution, but sadly, suspicion and determination won out. "Was she telling the truth?"

Despite knowing that this was coming, I still hadn't thought of a way to explain myself. So I just blurted the first thing that came to mind.

"Would you believe me if I said I don't remember what she said?" I asked, jokingly. Amy did not take that well and I immediately wanted to reach out and grab those words out of the air and cram them back into my stupid mouth.

"Don't play dumb!" Amy snapped. I wondered if that hue of red was anger from worry or anger. I couldn't quite parse it out in my current mood.

"Okay. Okay." I raised my hands up in surrender. "Look, I'm not going to lie and say I'm not having some memory issues. But Tatttletale was lying. She's a villain. She does that." I lied as easily as I breathed.

I said it smoothly and with confidence and for a moment, I thought that maybe I had convinced her. Sadly, the con of having emotional vision is that you can immediately tell when you said something wrong.

"Don't lie to me!" Amy shouted.

Thank god these vans had soundproofing, or else the driver would have stopped to check out if a member of New Wave was throttling the neck of their pet Ward.

"Look, I don't know what to tell you-" I was about to spin another lie when I saw a flash of impulsive frustration shoot through Amy.

"Really? Fine." She snatched my hand into a firm grip and stared me in the eyes. "How did you first ask Vicky out?"

"Are you serious?" I stared at Amy in complete surprise. I really didn't expect her to be this impulsive. "A makeshift M/S test. Didn't you say that this is a severe misuse of your powers."

"Stop stalling," Amy tightened her grip on my hand. I thought about pulling away, but a quick glance told me that she wasn't going to just let me go. "And I'm just making sure that a Stranger isn't masquerading as Dean Stansfield."

Okay, fine. Polygraph test. I can do that.

Polygraphs work by reading biometrics. So I just needed to trick my body into not sweating, increasing my heartbeat and a few other things I can't remember. Sure, I can totally do that on the spot. I took a deep breath to calm myself down and made sure to look Amy steadily in the eye.

Easy. I'm just telling her the truth. As long as I believed that, I could make her believe that. Right?

Vicky and Proto-Dean's first date. I can make a guess from what little I know about Proto-Dean. He's polite to a fault and super passive about most things. Also, the Wards kept joking and calling me Vicky's Boytoy. Add that up.

"Trick question, Vicky was the one that asked me." I said, trying to will my body to accept that as truth.

Amy's suspicious and determined stare was killing me. I was suddenly very aware of every heartbeat in my chest, not that I could tell if it was beating suspiciously. Amy's aura broke open into a rainbow of colors. Everything was tinged in a deep blue sadness as it swirled around the suspicion, betrayal, and way too much self-loathing.

"Shit." I sighed and slumped just a little into the crappy van seat. "I guess wrong, huh?"

"No." I didn't need emotional vision to hear the sadness and anger in Amy's voice. "You were right. But you guessed."

"You can see that? How does your power even work?" I suddenly felt very vulnerable with Amy holding my hand. Even though I knew she wasn't going to do anything, the fact that she could suddenly was on the front of my mind.

"Who are you?" Amy demanded.

"Dean Stansfield." I said quickly. That did not seem to please Amy, so I raised my other hand up in surrender before she gave me the Super Flu or something. "No seriously, I'm not a Stranger or anything. I just have amnesia. I can't remember anything before the explosion."

Well, nothing about Dean's life. I didn't want to think about my rapidly deteriorating Swiss cheese memory of my previous life.

"So what, it was some sort of Master effect?"

"Maybe?" I honestly had no memory of the battle and neither did Chris. Which meant the report about the fight had been pieced together from witness accounts. "I just woke up one day in a hospital bed, dazed and confused. I didn't want people to worry so I was kind of hoping I could just, you know, pass it off as head trauma."

"So you decided to just suffer in silence? That…sounds like something Dean would do." Amy scowled and stared at my head. "Brain looks normal too, so that rules out most Master effects. And this is definitely Dean's body."

"That's because I am Dean." I tried to pull my hand back. "Are you done CAT scanning me?"

I'm going to be honest, I'm a little scared of what she might find up there. I had no idea if she could actually see biological differences between me and Dean. Would there be any signs in my brain? If there were, what did that mean for me?

Amy bit her lip before asking, "Were you ever going to tell anyone? Were you ever going to tell Vicky?"

Was I? I thought about it. I wanted to say yes, but…

"I mean… I was expecting my memories to come back at some point." I gave a half aborted shrug. "Then it wouldn't be a problem."

"But nothing came back?"

"No." I shook my head. "Not a thing. And then…"

I stole a dead boy's identity. I frankensteined together what little I could remember of my fading old life and slotted it into the missing pieces of this one.

"I just settled into being me." I smiled weakly. "I don't know if it was muscle memory or whatever, but I think I'm still him. Maybe. I don't know."

No one called me out. So I just thought I was doing a good job of being Dean.

"I can't believe no one noticed." Amy whispered. She must have blamed herself for something, since that brought up a fresh batch of self loathing.

"Hey, there's nothing to really notice. I'm still Dean. Just, you know, with a little baggage." I tried to convince her, but it sounded weak even to my ears. "Or maybe less baggage? Whatever. All in all, everything is fine."

Amy lifted both of our hands. "You don't believe that."

"Seriously? You are way worse than a polygraph." I said through grit teeth, very uncomfortable at being called out so accurately. "Fine. I'm not sure if I'm the same or different. I haven't thought about it."

"I will give you super acne if you keep lying to me." Amy threatened.

"God damnit." I swore as I rubbed my face. My first impulse was to keep lying, but that clearly wasn't going to work.

There was no more avoiding it. There was no other topic at hand to distract me from thinking about it. Unwelcome thoughts spiraled up from the depths of my subconscious and screamed their accusations into my mind. I felt that familiar feeling of panic build up alongside the physical feeling of Amy keeping my body from having another panic attack.

"I think about it a lot, but I repress it since it drives me nuts. I can't remember anything before the explosion and I'm stuck trying to play a role that everyone else knows but I don't. I feel like I'm surrounded by strangers since I don't remember any of the people around me. I feel like a fraud all the time since I can't remember who Dean was before the explosion and I'm constantly second guessing my every move."

I was constantly keeping an eye on everyone's auras around me. Especially my 'friends' and 'family.' I had to constantly act, constantly keep an eye on my faceless audience of colors and aura and adapt to every little change. Even if no one was suspicious yet, all it took was a single mistake before the entire house of cards fell down.

It was exhausting.

I missed trusting people. I missed being able to see faces clearly. Even when I was around Vicky, who I could see clearly, I had to constantly keep the Dean act up. Which was more draining without the colors to guide me.

"And then there's the identity crisis!" My voice cracked as I built up more steam in my panic fueled rant. "What happens if my memories come back? Am I just going to be Dean but with a few weeks of weird memories? Is the current me going to die? Did I kill Proto-Dean? This shit is supposed to be the plot of a crappy sci-fi novel, not my life!"

I must have sounded like a madman, since Amy was filled with worry and pity. An incredulous laugh slipped through my lips at this situation. Just a few hours ago I was the one worrying about her mental state and now she's probably debating on whether or not to throw me in a mental asylum.

No wait, I'm a parahuman. They'd just throw me into the Birdcage.

"Dean." Amy must have sensed my depression since she tightened her grip on my hand and suddenly went from pity back to self loathing.

Oh no. None of that. I can't remember why, but I knew that making sure Amy was happy and mentally stable was important. I could contemplate my identity crisis later.

Much later. Maybe never if I kept running towards different crises that needed solving. I gladly took my issues and crammed them deep into the back of my mind and turned my attention to reassuring Amy.

"Woah, woah, wait, I'm not blaming anyone. Except maybe Leet. But no one likes Leet so that's par for course." I reached over and held Amy's hand in both of mine and subtly weaved in some positive vibes into her aura. "Look, I'm fine. Sure, I'm going a little crazy with the identity thing, but I'm a teenager. I'm supposed to be going crazy over my identity and socializing. And it's not like I'm not connecting with people. Look, from what everyone tells me, we've never really had an actual conversation like this. And now we're having a heart to heart."

"Which I forced out of you by threatening you with my powers." Amy retorted guiltily.

No, bad self depreciative Amy. Shoo. I'm trying to build positive vibes here. Positive Amy only. I pushed in a little bit more positivity into her aura.

"Which okay, a little invasive, but totally normal for a Cape friend. Clockblocker still uses his powers on us for pranks all the time and I totally shoot Kid-Win with good vibes when he's being a jerk. I think it's just a Cape thing." I tilted my head for a moment as I contemplated that thought. It checked out. "And we're Heroes. We meddle. It's what we do."

"Some Hero I am." Amy said, voice full of self-disgust. "All I did today was mouth off to a Villain and cause you to have a second panic attack."

A sardonic smile slid onto my face. "You at least healed both of those. All I did was mouth off to a Villain and have two panic attacks. In hindsight, trying to verbally battle a known Thinker was not a smart choice."

"About that," said Amy. "Why did you start mouthing off to Tattletale?"

"Because she was about to verbally assault my friend and I'm way too Gallant for my own good." I explained smugly. Even better, it got a bit of amusement out of Amy.

"You're my sister's boyfriend, not a friend." Amy dismissed my friendship.

Ow. My feelings.

"Come on, we went through a hostage situation and had an uncomfortable heart-to-heart. I think that makes us friends now."

Amy actually took a moment to think about it. Thankfully, she was more amused than serious. "No, I don't think it does. I healed you twice and you protected me once. If you want to earn my friendship, you must be more than just a bit Gallant."

Ow, that one was a bit forced, but I'll take it. Even better, I have moved the conversation away from my amnesia. I surreptitiously began to pulse one last bit of good vibes and exhaustion into Amy so that she was too tired to go back to questioning my amnesia.

Amy signed and leaned back, exhausted by the day. Yes, good, relax and forget about asking me more questions I don't want to answer.

I felt my body relax once it was clear Amy wasn't going to press me any further. Okay, so this day has not been a total wash. Sure, a Villain basically knew my secret identity. Amy knew about my amnesia, and I should probably ask her to keep that a secret, and to make things worse, I didn't even get my money from the bank so I think I might have to cancel my date with Vicky. So that probably meant listening to her complain about that for an hour over the phone.

But hey, I had a heartfelt conversation with Amy and I think we're closer now. This day can only go up from here.

The door of the van snapped open and I looked over at the opening with a smile.

That smile died immediately.

Vicky floated menacingly in front of us. Her face was blank, but I could see it shift agonizingly slowly. Her eyebrows tightened into an angry furrow, her lips pursed and I could see her grinding her teeth. I imagined that if this was a cartoon there'd be building steam coming out of her head. I was a little rusty at expressions, but I was pretty sure she was angry.

Not worried angry. Angry, angry.

"It's not what it looks like!" Amy shouted in an embarrassed panic.

Not what now?

I looked around for a moment and then down. Oh. There's the problem. I was sitting next to Amy, right next to her since I had moved over when I was comforting her. Our hands were still intertwined and I had been smiling like an idiot.

Vicky took a deep breath before speaking. "Choose your next words, very carefully Dean. They will determine how slow your death will be."

My mind kicked back into high gear. I analyzed the situation. Thankfully, this was a simple problem. Vicky was stressed from worry and now she's found her boyfriend and sister holding hands and being happy. Stress leads to dumb and incorrect conclusions.

All I needed to do was to speak calmly and act like a rational adult.

"I can explain!" I squeaked and threw up my hands defensively.

Or I could panic and say the most cliché thing possible. Sure, thanks brain. You're batting ten out of ten today.

Vicky snatched my collar to drag me out of the van and immediately started throwing accusations at me while Amy screeched her defense behind me. I just let myself be shaken like a ragdoll and mentally braced myself for more pointless teenage drama.

Hopefully, once I dealt with this, I could finally get back to people that can act like adults.

 

[Santo]

All hail the backlog. Because work was murder.

Blegh.

Thanks to Hero for fixing (some of) my awful punctuation.

Lemme know what you guys think!

---

Ersatz II.V

I intently ignored the glare coming from Beef McAnger-Issues as I lounged in my reinforced chair at our post mission debrief.

For that matter, Vista was glaring at me too. And while I couldn't tell if Clockblocker was glaring at me or not, his helmet had not deviated from me once since I sat down oh-so-long-ago, also known as three minutes according to my handy-dandy HUD.

Not to mention, Piggot was glaring at me enough for two people and then some. After giving us the silent treatment for shits and giggles, she finally began to speak.

"As surprising as I find the fact. I see that I must commend all of you for your decision to delegate responsibility to the BBPD when no Protectorate Hero could be dispatched." Piggot reluctantly doled out our yearly supply of praise. I considered speaking up and letting her know that the good decision was all me, but she continued before I settled on a decision. "None of the Wards have received the necessary training to handle an active hostage situation, so defaulting to the proper authorities was the correct decision."

I snorted. Not that we've received any training whatso-fuckin'-ever for that matter.

"Still, the way you went about it could be said to be reprehensible." Piggot paused, clearly waiting for me to interject. (Un?)Luckily for her, I didn't wanna talk to her, so I would only speak when told to. It would help minimize my contact with my technically intermittent boss. She turned her glare to Carlos. "Even if Kid Win was insubordinate, he was correct in this case. What exactly were you thinking you were going to accomplish by your half-cocked plan to back the Undersiders into a corner while they had over three dozen hostages?"

I stopped paying attention as she tore into Carlos and Dennis, something about switching costumes without permission, bad plans, and starting a fight in an area surrounded by bystanders. Boy, did all of these points sound painfully familiar.

I'm relatively certain she also tore into me about something, but I kinda wasn't paying attention. She didn't ask me to speak and she took my silence to mean whatever she wanted it to mean. So she got to lord all over us and I didn't have to deal with more of her bullshit than absolutely necessary. A win-win for Kid Win.

She demanded a quick debrief from the team. Browbeat (when did he sit down?) gave a short, stuttering report. Vista delivered her report with a snappishness that would have made the most stringent NCO proud, though if Beardmaster were around he'd probably say her report was neither succinct nor thorough enough.

Angry Beef-McMan sulked through his, and Dennis cracked a couple of jokes and got yelled at for it. Par for the course really.

Then her eyes turned to me, and it was a good thing that I didn't give a single damn what she thought, because man, with a glare like that? If I actually had any respect for her other than what was contractually obligated, it might have made me squirm. "What in God's name possessed you to give yourself up as a hostage?"

I shrugged and leaned back until I was balancing on the back legs of the chair I was sitting in. "Seemed like a solid way to get good intel on what was going on inside, what with how I streamed it to the police van realtime, reduced the number of hostages we had to worry about to one and a half dozen. And lowered the chances of a violent altercation happening where a whole bunch of squishy bags of meat could pop like soap bubbles on what would quickly become national television."

I pushed myself farther back, then had to lean forward not to topple backwards. "Besides, the PR department can probably swing that to be my 'heroic ideals' pushing me to put myself in harm's way for the safety of the people of the city…or something. Spinning this is not actually my job.

"Besides, the Undersiders are thieves. Smash and grabbers, they wouldn't have wanted the heat that hurting a Ward would have brought down on them, so overall, it was fairly safe." I turned my head side to side, my neck eliciting several loud pops. "Yeah, it was rather reckless, but I balanced the reward and my power armor with the potential risks and decided the odds were good. Besides, if a fight broke out, it would have taken me all of one second to be armed to the teeth."

Piggot's brow furrowed more than it already was, which was honestly impressive. "Your teleportation technology hasn't been cleared for field use-"

I scoffed and cut her off. "We both know that Beardmaster has been using my teleportation technology on his halberds for months now. It's fair game."

For just a single, fleeting instant, Piggot's face went from its usual resting-bitch-face setting to open surprise, it then morphed to much more familiar anger, followed by quickly resettling into its default state. "R&D will either confirm that, or it's your ass. When the debrief is over, be sure to meet with the PR department to get the statements you'll release to the public." Her eyes narrowed. "And why exactly are you wearing Gallant's helmet?"

"Yeah PR, god forbid we say anything from the heart."

Piggot slapped the table with the palm of her hand. "The helmet, Kid Win."

"Well, I don't see Gallant's name on it, it doesn't match his paint scheme, and since the last time I was caught in an explosion that caused not insignificant head trauma, I decided to come up with a most ingenious answer to the arcane dilemma that is cranial protection." I pointed to my head. "Helmet!"

"And what exactly is Gallant supposed to wear?"

I pushed the chair farther back. "He'll have to use the greatest superpower of all. Money! With that power, he'll get a new helmet."

"You will return Gallant's helmet immediately. And, if you want your own helmet, you'll requisition PR for a costume change and build one yourself."

I scoffed. "Yeah no, this is my helmet now."

Piggot's glare intensified. "Kid Win…"

"No, I meant it." I said, unable to keep the smile from my voice. "He left his helmet in my lab and then I had a Tinker Fugue. It no longer slots into his armor, and I have no idea how to change it back. Either I use it, or nobody does."

I was, of course, lying out of my ass. All my equipment could slot into each other and Gallant's armor. But she didn't need to know that. But this way, I should be able to finagle some more Tinkering budget out of her.

Hopefully.

Piggot must have a very good dentist. With how hard she grinds her teeth on the regular, she should be down to nubs by now. "You will build Gallant a new helmet immediately."

And there's my opening. "I'd kinda need a budget for that." I said with all the innocence of a shark scenting blood in the water. "I seem to have gone through mine."

Unfortunately, the door opened before Piggot could explode and inevitably cede to my very reasonable needs. And in waltzed Dean, PanAmy, and the Pavlov Barbie, ruining my machinations.

Dean didn't even bother to change into his costume, he was just wearing one of those shitty domino masks that were more a polite fiction about protecting his identity than an actual mask. Neither the Plague Ginger nor the Mindrape Bombshell were wearing masks, but that wasn't unusual.

Sidenote, Vista visibly perked up when Dean came in, she also very visibly became annoyed when Dean's on/off girlfriend floated in.

Dean sat down with a grateful sigh. Man, being a hostage really did not agree with him. He and Amy both looked like they hadn't slept in days.

Piggot waited for a moment, before prompting, "Glad you deigned to finally join us, Gallant. Do you have anything to report?"

Dean looked at her with that thousand yard stare of a veteran remembering bad things. "I would like to state for the record that police questioning is long and pointless."

While Piggot's face didn't change, I could all but smell the vindictive glee coming off her in waves. "Well while Dean Stansfield has answered all his questions, Gallant still needs to fill out his after action report."

Dean took a deep breath, digging into a well of patience significantly deeper than my own, and visibility calmed down. He straightened up, looked straight at Piggot and spoke professionally. "I was visiting the Brockton Bay General Bank as a civilian when the Undersiders arrived to rob the bank. As you probably already know, they have a new member who threatened everyone into submission with her control over poisonous arachnids. Once the civilians were a nonfactor, the Undersiders worked quickly and efficiently, making sure to only threaten the civilians and using their powers for more awe than any actual danger."

Dean paused, his expression flickering to one of concern and concentration as he chewed on his next words.

"Continue," Piggot demanded.

"Not much more than that, ma'am. I decided that discretion was better than valor in this situation and kept the civilians calm. The Undersiders are known for robbery and avoiding civilian collateral. Other than a few mean words from Tattletale, they left with Kid Win and the money."

"You 'kept them calm.' Is there any danger of your identity having been exposed?" Piggot pressed.

Dean frowned and looked thoughtful for a moment. He pursed his lips and exhaled softly before looking back at Piggot. "I didn't use my powers at all nor did I do anything outside what a brave, but ordinary, civilian could have done. So unless they can connect a random rich boy to Gallant, I should be safe."

By the conflicted look that flashed on Amy's face, that wasn't the entire truth, but Piggot either didn't notice or chose not to press it. My money was on not noticing.

"Good." Piggot did not look happy or impressed, but she did look a step further from constipated. "We'll keep an eye on the Undersiders for now. This kind of blatant escalation cannot go unanswered."

I was very tempted to mention how we had a revolving door policy on our holding cells, but as Dean said, discretion is sometimes the smarter part of valor.

Piggot blew some more hot air, acted important, poured a little more salt on Sad Salty Beef-boy's demonstrably poor attempt at leadership. She also reminded us to do our homework, I mean write our after action reports (apparently, I couldn't just submit a video for mine. Truly we lived in the darkest timeline). She then waddled off to do Piggot things: like taking candy from babies, making small children cry, or scaring the intern of the week.

We all shuffled out of the meeting room and made our way to the Wards area. As soon as the door opened I started on my way to the lab; power armor was a bitch to take off without power tools.

Something grabbed my shoulder hard enough for my HUD to give me a warning about pressure, before a significant force turned me around and I was face-to-pec with Angry Beefwall.

"Hey! What the hell was that!?" He loomed over me. Bastard, I'm supposed to be taller than you.

I did not deign to tilt my head back and spoke at his pec. "What was what?"

"You know what." Beefy McGrowly grumbled deep in his chest.

I activated the small hologram emitter I'd installed on the top of the armor and blink-clicked the icon so it would display a 'raising eyebrow' emoji. "Well, there's me stopping your stupid costume switch plan and getting Dennis killed? Stopping you stupidly taking command of a situation you had no training for? Or stopping you from starting a stupid fight in the middle of collateral central? Honestly, I could keep going. You're going to have to be more specific."

"Why don't we start with the insubordination and then move on to the blatant lying to teammates." He bit out.

"Uh…" Dean tried to cut in as he stared at the two of us. "What happened ou-"

"Well, stop doing stupid shit and I'll stop going over your head to stop you doing stupid shit." I said, turning the emoji hologram to a frowny face.

"Seriously, what happened outside?" Dean repeated himself, but neither of us paid him any mind.

"As to why I 'blatantly lied,'" I brought my fingers up to do air quotes, kudos to EZ-Beef for the big word, gold star buddy, "after three separate attempts to speak sense to you failed, I deduced that my time would be better spent doing smart things around you. It turns out, I was right."

"What the hell, Chris?" Vista attempted to growl, but with her cute twelve-year-old voice, it really did not work for her. "That's not how we do things. You know that."

I looked down the non-existent nose of my helmet at her. "No, it turns out that how we do things is: back a bunch of criminals into a corner, get them desperate, and then if we're lucky and they don't start killing hostages, we have a throw-down and maybe squish a whole bunch of people like the fragile meatbags they are so they pop like overripe tomatoes. So sorry I stopped that from happening, I'll take notes and make sure to do better next time." I turned off the hologram emitter on my helmet, turned my back on them, activated my backward-facing speakers and resumed my walk to the lab. "I would stand here and continue to exposit why Carlos is an idiot, but if you'll excuse me, I've got actually important things to do: like stare at a wall, pick my nose, or maintain this literally futuretech wonder of technology wrapped around me like a perfectly fitted glove."

As I walked off, my bullshit futuretech microphones picked up Collateral Pavlov's mutter. "So he isn't an asshole only to me."

Unable to leave that unchallenged. I threw one last comment. "For the record. I'm an equal opportunity asshole."

I really wished I could slam the door shut, but it was one of those stupidly fancy doors that receded into the wall with an entirely superfluous 'swoosh' noise. Fuckin' waste of my taxmoney. Note to self: Tear that thing out first chance I get, turn it into something useful.

I had taken the armor off and was elbow deep in a special surprise for the first asshole that would need it when the HUD on my glasses informed me Dean was coming to the lab.

He walked in and stood behind me, eyebrow raised. I wonder, did he know I was looking at him through a video window on my glasses? How far could he push the Thinker aspect of his power?

And more importantly, how long would I get to enjoy the blessed silence before he started talking?

The answer was sadly only a few seconds. Dean's damn Thinker powers probably told him that his silent judging was doing nothing.

He sighed and put on that, 'I'm only sixteen but I'm going to pretend to be your father,' tone that grated on my nerves. "Okay, so I'm just going to go out on a limb and give you the benefit of the doubt that you had a good reason for being, in Carlos' words, 'an insubordinate asshole', right?"

"Depends on your definition of 'good,' as that is a subjective thing, not an objective fact. Like the fact that Carlos is an idiot." I stopped soldering and put the tools away so I could turn around and face Dean.

Dean stared at me with an open mouth, completely frozen by my witty rhetoric and sophistry. His brow furrowed deeply and I could almost see the headache slowly forming in his brain.

I kept talking before he could interrupt me. "The longer answer would be that he failed to impress me with his tactical acumen. I'd go into more detail, but you were there for the debrief."

"Okay, okay." Dean took a deep calming breath. He looked like he was running out of patience. Poor guy probably used most of it dealing with Bitchy Beefington and the Teenage Mutant Copper Dumb Dumbs. "And you couldn't just convince Carlos to use your plan?"

"I tried. Multiple times. He wouldn't listen so I went over his head." I shrugged. "Even Piggot agreed that was the right thing to do. So that's that."

"That is that, I guess." Dean scowled at me for a moment before shaking his head. He must have agreed with me since he let it go. "Screw it. I'm going to be blunt. I've calmed Carlos down enough that he's not going to rip your head off. Don't say anything stupid or I'll be forced to use the therapy laser."

Dean held up a single finger that glowed with a light teal orb of light. I think he meant it to be threatening, but it was just such a calming shade of blue.

"Worry not, the wisdom of the ages pours from my mouth." I spoke objective fact while trying not to laugh.

"Somehow, I doubt that." Dean muttered under his breath as he turned to leave the room. "Just talk as little as possible. I'm pretty sure what you consider wisdom, the rest of us consider being an asshole."

I chose not to dignify that with a response.

Dean led me back to the little office to the side of the Wards area where the rest of the teenagers were already brainstorming. I was surprised by the fact that the walking Plague-Cauldron and the Fuckup Barbie hadn't left. All eyes turned to me

You know what? Screw you, Dean. I can be diplomatic if I put my mind to it. I'll go through this entire meeting in a perfectly diplomatic manner.

 

[Heroslayer]

We've reached the fallout of this arc. The pieces have finally started to fall into place.

We'll tie up a few loose ends, and then the games can truly begin.

–

Ersatz 2.6

The Ward's main area was a modular room meant to be customized to the current situation. Detachable wall mounts, computers, monitors, the works. It was probably meant to be a prototype for some rapid response team able to adapt to any situation, but in reality, when you let a bunch of teenagers take charge of a room, it ends up in a barely functional mess.

Which made it the perfect background for a bunch of teenage heroes to have a meeting.

The rest of the Wards had already unmasked, but no one had taken off their costumes. Hopefully, the face to face thing would make communication smoother. I knew that I would be mediating a bunch, but hopefully Chris would take my warning to heart and make my job easier.

"I'm here, we can get started now." Chris sauntered into the room and I noticed that he didn't start with insulting everyone in the room, which meant he was trying. He was still annoying as shit, but he was trying. I'll take it.

Carlos flared with bright red anger at Chris' flippant attitude, but a pleading look from me managed to convince him to contain it. That relationship was going to blow up eventually, but hopefully it would be between the two of them and not drag the entire team into it.

There was a moment of silence, and I gestured to Carlos that he could start the meeting now that everyone was here.

That annoyed Carlos something fierce, but he stood up and determinedly started the meeting. I didn't need empathy vision to notice that he was annoyed with me as well, but the bruise-like purple that flared when he looked at me was aggressively noticeable.

I gauged the room. Everyone except for Chris was on edge. The tension was thick enough that it was making me nauseous. Carlos obviously was pissed at Chris. Vicky looked agitated, which was most likely aimed at me, but could easily also be at Chris. Amy was exhausted, which was par for course. Missy was annoyed at everyone. And Dennis was trying to keep up a strong front, but it did nothing to mask how worried he felt.

I noticed a distinct lack of bloodlust in the room.

"Are we going to wait for Shadow Stalker?" I asked even though I really hoped we wouldn't. Having Sophia and Chris in the same room was like having gasoline and a lit match next to each other.

"She's still at school. They didn't call for her, since she's so far away." Missy chimed in.

"Well, I guess she's not missing much." I nodded my thanks to Missy who lit up with a delightfully cute pink. Well, that's one way to boost Missy's mood.

Carlos rolled a whiteboard over and began aggressively writing on it. The loud squeaking irritated everyone's already bad mood.

"Okay, let's get this started." Carlos slapped a hand against the whiteboard. "I won't say that this mission was a complete failure, but there clearly was a bunch of things that we can improve on."

I saw Chris open his mouth and cut that off with a sharp elbow to his side and a discrete pulse of 'restraint.' I didn't need to see the sharp orange mix of mischief and spite to know that he was about to make things worse. He shot me an annoyed look, but thankfully kept his comment to himself.

Everyone else seemed to agree with Carlos. I don't think a hostage situation where everyone got out could be considered a failure, but I did the diplomatic thing and stayed silent.

"The Undersiders were mostly small-time thieves, but they've clearly escalated." Carlos started writing names down on the board. Grue, Tattletale, Hellhound, Regent, and then a series of question marks. "This is probably the best opportunity for intel on the Undersiders yet, especially since we had a man on the inside watching them work."

"I mean, it's not like they took me into the backroom with them as they robbed the place." I ran a hand through my hair. Carlos shot me another annoyed look and I could see his mood visibly worsen. Seriously, man, what did I do to you?

"I thunk he meant me, brah." Chris said. "You know? Guy with video evidence?"

"You mean, the several minutes of you teaching bug-girl how to gut you if you tried to escape? Because I'm pretty sure I have more intel than that." I cut Chris down before he could annoy everyone into fighting again.

"Eh, details." Chris shot back with a shrug.

"Wait, he did what?" Missy shrieked.

"Focus!" Carlos yelled and slapped a hand against the whiteboard. "Do we have a name for bug girl?"

"She didn't give a name." I shrugged. "She just threatened us with her bugs. She didn't say much after that."

"What, did she throw cockroaches at you?" Dennis grinned, valiantly trying to add some levity to the meeting. It was not effective.

"Enough cockroaches making a coordinated effort could strip a man to the bone in minutes." Chris piped in with a slasher smile. "But no, she used black widow spiders."

Dennis shuddered in fear and revulsion.

"Then we'll come up with a name." Aegis crossed his arms. "I'm open to ideas."

"Well, she used spiders. Clearly she's Spider-Girl." Chris said with an exaggerated sage nod.

"That's under copyright." Missy looked down at a laptop with a cape name database opened up.

Chris threw his hands up in the air, "How? Marvel went under like, fuckin' decades ago!"

"Yeah but the company that bought them still owns the copyright." Missy explained.

"Fuckin' Disney." Chris muttered.

"Didn't Warner buy Marvel?" Browbeat (what was his name again?) piped in.

"HISS!" Chris did not actually hiss, he spoke the word. "Speak not the Devil's name, lest ye bring its attention upon ye!"

Which kicked up an argument about Warner Bros and their latest movie. Vicky and Dennis valiantly tried to defend the latest Triumvirate movie, but Chris argued that they had trash tastes and that they should feel bad. According to him, Cinema was dead, and awful taste like theirs had killed it.

I ignored the teenage bickering and stared at the whiteboard in contemplation. I knew the name that came up from this meeting and I knew that Chris did as well. I wondered if it was even worth it to try to give Taylor a different name.

I shook off the brief bout of doubt. No, I should at least try. The last thing I wanted to believe was that there was no point in fighting Fate when I was trying to stop the Fated end of civilization.

"Well, if we want to keep the spider theme, Arachne wouldn't be that bad." I tossed out the first name that came to mind. "Though I'll be honest, I'm kind of hesitant to go all in on the spider theme. Seems a bit too specific for a cape power."

"Yeah, she had wasps in her hair, and I saw some flies flying in formation. Pretty sure she had every bug in the vicinity under her control." Chris said, surprisingly helpfully. I could see Vicky sulking in the corner of the room, so I'm guessing Chris won that argument

Dennis whistled in admiration and just a hint of fear. "Geez, that would make her what? Master 5?"

Carlos wrote bug control on the whiteboard next to the question marks. "Depends on her range, but that sounds about right."

"Stinger?" I offered.

"Already taken by a Tinker in New Orleans." Missy piped in.

"Chitin?" I tried.

"Taken by a Changer in New Mexico."

"Empress?" I threw out desperately.

"Pretty sure that was a really mean Master that got off-ed a few years back." Amy said.

Crap. I wracked my brain for a bug adjacent name that didn't sound like it was tailored for a villain.

"Skitter?" Dennis said slowly.

Double crap.

"It's not taken." Missy said after a few moments of looking through the laptop.

Crap baskets!

Chris shrugged. "I mean. It's pretty good. Bugs make skittering sounds. If she can control a whole buncha bugs, that skittering sound is literally the last thing you hear before the tidal-wave of ravenous chitin swallows you whole."

"Please stop insinuating that she's going to murder someone." I protested. "And it's kind of creepy for a name, isn't it? Like, it gives off very villain vibes."

"She robbed a bank with a bunch of highly venomous spiders." Amy said flatly. She was neither impressed by my defense of bug-girl, nor was she that invested in the conversation.

"One, it was Black Widow spiders. Girl had class and quality. And two, she looked really awkward and hesitant while doing that." Chris cut in again, then formed a fist and held it out toward Amy. "Believe in the heart of the cards Amy. We can turn her to the side of good!"

"You can't be serious." Amy nearly growled at Chris' suggestion. Her mood dipped out of apathy and into disbelief and vitriol. "She's a villain."

"And Sophia's a cowardly useless bitch who shot people with broadhead bolts, but we work with her nonetheless. At least Skitter tried to catch me when I jumped off the roof."

"She did what?" "You did what?!" "Oh my God!" "Dude!"

Everyone's voices collided into a mess of noise and I had to shut my eyes and take a deep breath before the kaleidoscope of colors gave me a migraine.

"What? I've got an anti-grav belt and rocket boots. It was perfectly logical." Chris seemed to ignore that his misleading words caused everyone to worry for his life and that by making light of it, especially when everyone was on edge, he just made all the Wards angrier at him.

"You. That." Carlos looked conflicted on whether or not he should feel worried or angry at Chris's nonchalance.

Chris didn't help by rolling his eyes. "Really? I used to fly around on a flying skateboard with zero safety features. Ain't nobody gave a shit then about the fact I was two seconds away from smashing my head on the sidewalk at terminal velocity! This is way safer!"

I could literally see the steam building in Carlos' head. Nope, none of that. I am not listening to another rant about Chris today.

I clapped my hands together, loudly. Everyone's eyes turned towards me and I could see surprise and confusion. Good, now that I have them off balance, it's easier to press forward. "Okay, I got a decent look at all the Undersiders. I'm not saying it's enough to build a profile, but I can give us a general range of what they were feeling."

I stood up and swiped the marker from an indignant Carlos. I quickly started writing on the whiteboard before anyone could regather their wits.

I wrote [focused] [annoyed] and [worried about the team] next to Grue.

Regent got [ambivalent] and [amused].

Hellhound just got some question marks. Next to it, I wrote [Emotional spectrum does not match human baseline]. I think I literally saw a Color out of Space from that girl. That or it was the panic attack giving me hallucinations.

I paused next to Tattletale's name but pushed forward and wrote: [confident] [playful] and [frightened.] I also added, [surprisingly spiteful] next to her name.

Finally, next to the question marks, I drew a little cartoon spider and added the comments, [worried about civilians just as much as teammates] [very determined] and [regrets robbing the bank].

"I'm not going to say that she'll suddenly be on the side of angels if we ask her, but it's clear that our Bug Cape was not feeling great about a life of crime." I stared back at everyone and dared them to oppose my insight. I could see that a few of them wanted to refute my argument, so I needed to hammer in my points. "She could have easily been a new recruit that didn't have any other choice."

Vicky huffed. "So what? They gave her an offer she couldn't refuse? Oh, maybe she needed the money for her mother's surgery. That stuff is just soap opera plots. Who would actually do that kind of thing?"

"I would." Chris stated immediately and with surprising conviction. "Hell, I'd do much worse for my family."

There was a moment of silence as everyone digested those words. While Vicky looked skeptical, it had actually gotten a few of the Wards thinking. Dennis in particular looked conflicted, but was learning towards agreement. Well, strike when the iron is hot and all that.

"It's a common trope because it's based on truth. When someone is pushed into a corner, their field of view narrows. They panic. They make bad decisions. Add in superpowers and the incident that gave them those superpowers," all the other Wards shuddered in unison, "and you have a recipe for a teenager in over their heads."

"So that just makes up for all her crimes?" Amy spat out, surprisingly venomously. So venomously that I actually had to pause before pushing forward.

"No, but it means that she might be able to make up for those crimes." I retorted and crossed my arms in defiance to her negative vibes. "The point of punishment is twofold. The first is to punish the criminal for the sake of the victim, but the other side is to allow the criminal the chance to reform. Ideally, the goal is to turn every villain into a hero."

It was something that I firmly believed in. I had to. I used to work with teenagers after all.

"Tch." Amy didn't seem to accept my argument. In fact, a lot of the teenagers in the room seemed skeptical of my idealism.

I was a bit too busy trying to cancel out the room's negative vibes with my own optimism, so I completely missed Chris opening his mouth to make things better and worse.

"What? A Villain rebranding as a Hero? That would never ever happen!" Chris said with a mixture of mischief and glee, and entirely too large a grin. "On that note. I wonder, what ever happened to Madcap?"

"Who?" Dennis asked. Everyone in the room was thrown off by the non sequitur.

"You know, the Villain that attacked Birdcage convoys and freed the villains that weren't utterly terrible human beings that the world was better off without? He was the one with that power that allowed him to store and redirect kinetic energy, you know the guy. He's absolutely unrelated to Assault, who only coincidentally has powers suspiciously identical to Madcap. Clearly Madcap and Assault are two very different people! After all, Madcap had a bunch of fights he won against Battery back in her vigilante days and early Protectorate career! Then she won and he vanished, only for Assault to debut a week later and partner with Battery! Tooooootally not the same guy!"

"Hey. Assault is a Hero!" Missy yelled angrily at Chris' audacity.

Chris' grin widened. "I know! That's what I just said! All I did was point out that Assault and Madcap are clearly and legally two different Capes!"

That ratcheted up the tension in the room as everyone suddenly had to grapple with the reality of that harsh truth.

"Oh my god, he's right." Missy looking up Madcap on the PHO database and seeing Chris had, in fact, not been full of shit, only exacerbated the issue.

"We're not here to debate what the Protectorate does with certain villains." Carlos did his best to regain control of the room. "So drop it."

Thankfully, Chris had already said what he wanted to say, so he just acquiesced and sat down in a golden glow of triumph. I could see everyone stewing on the information.

"Look, I just want to bring up the idea. I think she's in over her head and she could use a way out. If I needed help, I know I'd want someone to throw me a lifeline." I explained my perspective.

"Seriously, you're not even in costume. Is the Gallant thing just natural at this point?" Dennis quipped out. Out of everyone, he seemed to be the most accepting of the idea.

"What? No. I just… say things." I ignored the knowing grin on Dennis' face. He didn't need to know how much of my words were intentional. It looked better if it seemed natural. "Look, we'll leave the Bug Girl issue for later. Back to the bank robbery. We still need to figure out the 'whydunnit.'"

"What do you mean, why?" Dennis shook his head. "You rob a bank for money, duh."

"Okay, except robbing a bank for money is a terrible decision." I turned around and drew a crude bank diagram. "As someone who comes from an affluent background let me fill you in. Banks don't actually carry that much cash. Rich people keep their money in investments. Real estate, phony businesses, stocks, etc. The real 'money' that they do keep in a bank is electronic. No one actually keeps money in a vault like Scrooge McDuck."

Chris nodded, "They couldn't have made off with much more than, what, fifty thousand dollars, sixty tops? Not really all that much when you split it five ways, minus expenses."

"And Tattletale had to have known this." I added in. "She's not just a Thinker. She's smart. They weren't there for just the money."

Chris tilted his head toward me, acknowledging the point. "Not to mention the heat this will bring down on them."

"So maybe they're trying to build a rep." Missy offered. "Villains do this kind of thing all the time."

"Not in Brockton Bay." I disagreed. "All a rep does for you in the Bay is put a target on your back. The PRT have them on the radar now and if they try to stake some territory the gangs will eat them alive. No, this heist had a purpose. We need to figure out what."

I looked purposely at Chris.

Chris shrugged and walked over to one of the monitors on the wall. He typed on the keyboard the display changed to the city map along with recent Protectorate and PRT deployments. "What I find weird is that so much other crap happened at the same time, yeah, we have the off-town thing going on, but we had three whole Protectorate Capes still in the city, and they all simultaneously had to respond to other parahuman shit going on. It's almost like it was a…" He trailed off, his eyes widening as something sparked realization in his mind. He just remembered something important.

"A distraction." I finished for him as pieces slotted together in my mind. Tattletale's annoyance at being at the bank as well as not knowing why she was there. Someone was pulling the Undersider's strings, and we were pulled along with them.

Chris began typing frantically at the console. I watched in confusion as he worked himself into a panicked frenzy.

He continued to scroll through screen after screen of information as he shouted over his shoulder. "Someone call the cops! See if anything happened, a place that wouldn't normally be broken into got robbed on the quiet, a break in, something!"

Carlos was so startled by the sudden shift in mood and behavior that he forgot to be angry. "Kid, what are you talking about?"

Chris slammed a fist into the console, brought up a police report, then he punched the wall for good measure. "We just got played like a fucking fiddle!"

Staring us all in the face, was a police report of the kidnapping of one Dinah Alcott.

 

[Santo]

Sorry for the late post. Was busy Friday and Saturday. And most of today too.

On the bright side...stuff.

On even brighter side. More stuff very soon! Maybe even tomorrow!

Now, have yourselves the perspective of a very self-deluded 'hero.'

And maybe tomorrow, the perspective of another self-deluded...'hero?'

Man. Worm is weird.

Enjoy!

---

Intermission - Taylor Hebert

If someone had asked Taylor how she thought the robbery would go…

"Now knife on the body, that's important too you know? After all, most people won't hold your hand and teach you how to properly hold a knife to their throat…"

This would not have been it.

"It'll probably be going somewhere in the torso…"

Admittedly, she learned a lot about how to properly hold someone at knifepoint. But as an aspiring undercover Hero, that may not be among the things that she would be pertinent to learn.

Kid Win was a bit of an enigma. He'd never really stood out among the Wards. Not like Aegis and Gallant. He was usually just there, in the background or up in the air on his flying skateboard.

She'd never seen him as the one that would willingly put himself in peril.

"Hey Bitch!"

"What?"

"Can I pet your dogs?"

"No."

"Okay."

Yet he seemed so nonchalant in the face of danger. As if walking unarmed into an active hostage situation was an everyday occurrence. As if putting himself at the mercy of Villains and monsters, outnumbered and outgunned, in exchange for the safety of women and children wasn't a brave thing to do.

It was the type of heroism that Taylor had only ever read about. Keeping a strong facade in the face of adversity.

And here she was, holding a bonafide Hero at knifepoint, helping a group of villains hold people hostage while robbing a bank. Helping Tattletale use her Thinker powers to bully a brave civilian down to the point that he started hyperventilating.

For the first time, Taylor really saw that Tattletale was, despite her kind facade, a Villain.

Maybe this had not been as good an idea as she'd initially thought, but Armsmaster's words came to mind, and she firmed her resolve.

Taylor reminded herself that she was only doing this to learn who the Undersider's boss was then she was going to be a Hero.

"Ssssooooo. Just wanted to say, your hair? It's incredible. Mind telling me what conditioner you use? Cause holy hell, I haven't seen hair that good outside of a commercial."

Taylor at once was both very flattered that he'd noticed, and hated that she was holding such a nice Hero hostage. She had expected Kid Win to be completely sarcastic and difficult. But he'd done nothing but been polite and helpful the entire time.

Thankfully, she didn't have to hold him as a hostage for much longer. Grue declared the robbery a success and they left the bank under cover of Grue's darkness.

Her heart raced in her chest when they made their escape, fearing that the Wards would make a last-ditch attempt to capture them, even at the risk of one of their own. But Kid Win was as good as his word, they were allowed to leave without issue.

All that was left was what to do with Kid Win once they were in the clear.

When the Undersiders had circled Kid Win, she'd been forced to play along. And her heart had nearly leapt out of her throat when Kid Win jumped backwards off the building. Thank god he was a Tinker. The relief she felt when he simply hovered in place rather than falling the long distance to the ground, nearly drove her to her knees.

"Okay, boys and gals. Keep the thieving clean, hands mostly free of blood. Do your best not to drop any bodies, that way if you try to switch sides it'll make it much easier to get concessions and stuff. I'll even put in a good word for you." He'd said before complaining about paperwork and flying off.

Did he know? Had she slipped up somehow? Or would he say this to anyone to try and turn them away from the path of Villainy.

Would someone who willingly gave himself up to Villains for the safety of others lie about something so important?

"Tattletale," Grue growled, the smoke his power created adding an ethereal quality to his anger, "You said he wasn't a threat!"

"He wasn't!" Tattletale defended. "My power confirmed it! He was focused on flirting with Bug and not being a threat! He wasn't an issue!"

Taylor stared hard at Tattletale. Kid Win had been flirting with her? Tattletale must have gotten a bad read. Kid Win probably had some anti-Thinker tech or something.

Regent spoke up. "So he was focused on not being a threat, because, and I'mma need you to follow me on this one: at any moment he could have become a threat and thus was not worried about any of us?"

Tattletale glared at Regent and muttered something about fiddles.

"Umm." Taylor was very surprised that she spoke up at all, but the words tumbled out of her mouth without her input. "What about the boy? You know? The one that you said had amnesia, what was that about? It looked like you gave him a panic attack."

Tattletale rolled her eyes. "That wasn't some random guy, nor was he Panacea's boyfriend. That was a Ward, so it was fair game."

Taylor flinched. "Should you be telling us that? The rules…"

"Are more like suggestions." Tattletale retorted with a smirk that reminded her of Emma. "Besides, it's not like I told you which one. It's fine."

But…the only Wards that hadn't shown up were Gallant and Shadow Stalker, Kid Win had said as much, that Gallant had been 'too busy for heroics.'

He'd been too busy, because he'd been at the bank when the robbery started, and the first thing he did, out of costume, surrounded and covered in venomous spiders, was try to keep people calm and stop Tattletale from hurting one of the best healers in the country.

Like a hero.

Unlike the girl who had threatened all those people with said spiders and sat back as her teammate verbally induced him into a panic attack.

Maybe joining the Wards wouldn't be so bad after all? Not if Kid Win and Gallant were in them. Maybe Kid Win would help Taylor stay away from Armsmaster, screw that guy.

Whatever. Focus on the important things. The Undersiders got in, got out, nobody got hurt, and Taylor got to see a couple Wards up close. She didn't have to fight anyone, and if Kid Win was to be believed, she hadn't burnt any bridges.

It went well with the wins she'd had at school, with Emma and her cronies being forced to leave her alone by suddenly much more attentive teachers.

Yeah, definitely not a good day, but not a bad one either.

The Undersiders all split now that the job was done. Lisa had then dragged her along for pizza, though she was slightly thorny the rest of the day. Mentioning that the heist had gone the best it possibly could have only seemed to sour her mood further. Still, Taylor felt confident that things were going well.

 

[Santo]

Behold, as promised more stuff!

I did not at all almost forget.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Here is the other intermission before Arc 3, let us know what yall think.

---

Intermission - Amy Dallon/Panacea

Things were going terribly for Amy.

The last couple of days had been a whirlwind of activity, and Amy could find much to complain about.

She thought that there would have been a media circus around her being held hostage by the Undersiders, but everyone seemed more focused on Kid Win giving himself up as a hostage. Which meant Carol hadn't given her anything more than a cursory lecture about safety and image. It wasn't like one of her daughters had been in danger or anything.

Vicky had stuck to her side, which had been nice. The downside had been listening to Vicky complain about Dean. Vicky's gallant boyfriend had apparently been too busy for them to reschedule their double date. Thank god for small mercies.

Though Amy didn't miss that the longer it took for Dean to settle back down and have time to talk to Vicky again, the longer it took before Dean actually talked to her about his amnesia. It also meant the longer it took before Vicky had her look at Dean's brain because of his missing memories.

She didn't want to rehash the brain conversation with Vicky.

She didn't do brains.

"Ugh!" Think of the devil. Vicky floated over to the couch and dropped down next to Amy in a dramatic huff. How she made flopping onto the couch so graceful, Amy would never know.

"What did Dean do this time?" Amy sighed and prepared herself for another tirade.

"It's not Dean! We're just taking a small break because…" Because Vicky thought that Dean was seducing Amy and threw a fit. Even Amy had been a little annoyed at that leap in logic. She loved her sister, but what the hell. "Anyways, it's Chris. I just wanted to talk to Dean about meeting up this weekend and the little shit just kept cutting me off. He's been such a bastard lately. What the hell happened to him?"

Amy had noticed Chris' sudden distaste for Vicky. She hadn't really thought about it much other than some disdain thrown at Chris for his bad taste. But now that she thought about it, hadn't Chris' personality taken a complete and sudden shift? He was angry all the time now. Like he was trying to compensate for something missing in his life. Something important. Like…

Shit.

"Vicky, how long has Chris been a bastard?" Amy asked suddenly.

"What?" Vicky turned towards Amy and started counting on her fingers. "Umm… a few weeks, actually."

"Would you say that it was around the same time that Dean…" Lost his memories. "Got hurt in that cape fight?"

"I mean, yeah. That sounds right." Vicky looked thoughtful. "Hey, didn't Chris also miss a few days of school around that time?"

Yes. He did. Because he had been caught in the same Tinkertech explosion that Dean had been in. An explosion that could have done anything, because Leet's Tinkertech was so unpredictable.

It could have, hypothetically, wiped both of their memories without leaving any physical trace.

"Wait a second, didn't Kid Win and Gallant both get caught in that Tinkertech mishap with Leet a few weeks back?" Vicky questioned. Damnit, why was Amy's sister so smart? Wait, why was this a bad thing? Shouldn't Vicky know that Dean has been lying to her? But then that'll hurt her, because she didn't notice. She'll blame herself.

Amy wanted to drag Dean in here and take care of this himself. This was his problem, not Amy's.

But before Amy could throw Dean under the bus, Crystal ran into the room and snatched the remote from Vicky's hands.

"Hey!" Vicky protested reflexively. It wasn't like either of the sisters were watching the television, but it was the principle of the matter. Snatching the remote was grounds for a tussle in the Dallon household.

Crystal ignored her and turned the television on to a news report.

A news report that was showing a sky view of Brockton Bay. The reporter was trying to yell over the loud noise of the helicopter blades when they were cut off by a flash and a boom.

The ABB Villain Bakuda had just made her Brockton Bay debut, with a very literal bang.

 

[Heroslayer]

Alright, we've gotten to Arc 3 and probably some of my favorite parts of this story so far. Expect things to accelerate and boats to rock.

–

Derail 3.1

I was a rock of serenity in an ocean of chaos.

All around me, people were yelling at each other. Not because they had any good points, no, the time for coherent discourse ended fifteen minutes ago. Now everyone was just throwing emotions at each other in the form of words. It was actually a little painful to watch when you could actually see those emotions in technicolor.

Brockton Bay had debuted a brand new supervillain, and because this city was apparently a nexus of misery, it did so with a literal bang. Several of them.

Bakuda, the ABB's new Tinker, was some sort of bomb specialist. She showcased her technology by blowing up several buildings in the city. And because powers suck, they didn't just explode, they did random things too. One of the Medhall buildings was now encased in some sort of ceramic that seemed to freeze anything that came into contact with it for longer than a second and one of the city's DMVs was half in place and the other half was in the middle of the bay. Including half of a cashier.

So needless to say, everyone was rather on edge with Bakuda on the loose.

"-orders are to stay on base for the foreseeable future. Piggot wants us on standby to reinforce any Protectorate capes that find where Bakuda is hiding." I tuned back into Aegis repeating our standing orders for the nth time today.

Kid Win clicked his tongue. "So, translating to actual spoken English. You were told to go to your room and twiddle your thumbs while the adults continue to fail to take care of it and people continue to die. Like, I know 'Protect and Serve' is just a slogan, but come on!"

"Kid Win!" I've seen Aegis get pretty aggravated at Kid Win's lip, so I couldn't say if this was a bright shade of red for annoyance or darker red that meant he was actually spiteful, it all kind of blended together at this point. "I've had it up to here with your insubordination. Our orders are to stay on base, so that's what we're going to do."

"I mean, he's not exactly wrong, is he?" Clockblocker added. Aegis shot him an annoyed look, which cowed Clockblocker for a moment, before he gathered his resolve. "We're heroes, right? We shouldn't just be hiding in safety. We should be out there, helping."

"Also you used 'insubordination' wrong. I haven't disobeyed any orders recently. That was just plain disrespectful behavior." Kid Win added in his 'helpful' two cents.

Well, now I was sure, that shade of red was definitely spite. Aegis was building up to another explosion and it was only his pride holding it back. If he gave in and yelled at Kid Win, he lost, and they both knew it.

"We could at least request to go back on patrol, right?" Vista offered the only mature and constructive solution. "We need to at least ask. If Piggot says no, we can ask why and work from there."

Aegis's bad mood was not helped by everyone basically agreeing with Kid Win. I could see that he didn't really want to be the bearer of bad news and wanted to go out there too, but his job was to be the leader. So that meant being the target of everyone's restless mood.

"Fine, I'll put in a request to meet Piggot and discuss options." Aegis conceded, looking like he swallowed an egg.

Kid Win scoffed and threw his hands up. "Then piss into the wind, you'll get more done that way. I'mma go do something useful, you lot continue to sit with your thumbs up your ass until Piggy doesn't have a choice but to toss you into the meat grinder."

Kid Win got up and left in a huff. It was a familiar sight. So was the various annoyed looks everyone else shot his back and the general feeling of frustration that colored the room.

"The meeting isn't done." Aegis barked. He may as well have talked to a brick wall. Well no, the brick wall would have been polite enough to not talk back.

"Don't worry, I prepared a substitute." Kid Win clicked something on his armor, and a person sized clown balloon with 'Kid Win' crudely stenciled on it teleported to his chair. "See? Now we both get what we want. It's not like this meeting will be any different than the last five. In fact, I'll show I have Thinker powers. I hereby predict that the next meeting you will tell us we are to continue to stay in base, on standby, ready to reinforce the PRT or Protectorate when we are needed." Distractingly, his voice somehow came out of the balloon. "By the way, technically this is insubordination. Now you know!"

Kid Win left, leaving only silence in his wake. When the door to his lab closed, Aegis growled and threw a vicious jab at the balloon substitute. It bobbed right back up mockingly, seemingly unphased by the anger directed at its creator.

"Well, that was productive." I said my first words of the meeting after letting everyone scream at each other.

"Some help, you were." Aegis growled at me. He had been shooting me constant signals to intervene the entire meeting. Signals that I ignored. "You do realize that reining him in is going to be your job soon."

"Not for a bit, and not until after Clock has a run at it." I shrugged casually. Clockblocker blanched and I could actually see the horror flooding his head.

"Dude." Clockblocker choked out with fake humility. "It's just a few months. You're going to be the one in charge in reality. In fact, let's make it official. Gallant, you're in charge for those three months."

"Sure, sure." I nodded regally. "Then with my newfound leadership privileges, the first thing I'd do is make Kid Win's mood your responsibility for those months, Clock."

"What? You can't do that?" Clockblocker turned to Aegis. "Wait, can he do that?"

Aegis looked thoughtful, but I could see the spiteful glee and inspiration light up his aura. "Actually, why not. Gallant, I order you to go deal with Kid Win. In fact, that's now your job."

"I mean, it's not that hard of a job. Not like Kid Win spends that much time outside of his lab." I shrugged, and did my best to keep my face straight.

"Yes, but in those few minutes outside of his lab, he's done nothing but be a pain in my ass. If he's not being insubordinate, he's picking fights with Shadow Stalker, or pissing off one of the adults." It was a testament to the high tensions that Aegis completely forwent polite language. "You're the only one that can stand the guy at the moment. So he's your responsibility now."

Jackpot. I now have a perfect excuse to talk to Kid Win privately any time I wanted. I just needed to wait until he made a scene and left. Which I could probably time like clockwork.

"Hey, we're all supposed to be teammates." Vista once again decided to put a dent in my plans by being the voice of reason within this gang of misfits. "You can't just dump Kid Win on Gallant like he's a stray cat."

"But picking cats out of odd places is Gallant's new speciality," Clockblocker joked.

"Haha, funny. Still, we do need to do something about Kid's new attitude." Vista shot Clock an annoyed look which only got a finger gun in response. "And just throwing Gallant at him isn't a real solution."

"It's an attitude that Gallant is uniquely situated to settle." Aegis shot back, desperate to throw me under the bus here. Then again, I had been letting Kid Win needle him more and more over the last few days to thin his patience for the Tinker. So, fair. "I'm just being…uhhh…pragmatic and using my teammates efficiently."

"Right, I guess I should start on that." I made sure to look a little reluctant before agreeing with Aegis' mandate. Nobody likes to be manipulated, so the key was to let them think it was their idea. Vista looked like she wanted to help, but I waved her off. "He'll probably be worse if it looks like we're ganging up on him. I'll talk to him alone and try to get him to lay off for a bit."

"Please." Aegis looked done with Kid Win's shit and was ready to take any solution.

I wonder if I should apologize for letting it get this bad. There were plenty of opportunities to keep it from escalating this much. Nah. That would make things worse. Aegis'll just have to settle with Kid Win only being his normal amount of annoying rather than this extra dose.

—

The doors to Kid Win's lab opened with an eerily silent motion. Didn't these things used to swoosh?

"You have ten seconds to say something useful before I shoot you out of my lab." Kid Win was looking down at some sort of device that he was soldering and didn't even look up to greet me.

That was fine. I was done with the waiting game. I only had so long before the house of cards fell apart around me. So it was time for action.

"I think we should disobey orders and go after Bakuda ourselves."

There was a beat of silence as Kid Win froze before wiping down the soldering iron and putting it away. He spun his chair around and steepled his fingers in front of his face. I think he did something with his helmet since the eye portion lit up white as he stared at me.

"...You had my attention. Now you command my curiosity." I think he was going for cool and collected, but I could see the riot of emotions rolling through him.

I felt a little bit of glee at throwing him off, but suppressed it to get to the point. "We both know that we can't just sit around doing nothing."

"I have been saying this since literally the first day, yes." Chris said, both annoyed and smug at the same time.

"Right," I conceded that point. "So obviously, Piggot is not going to let us go out on patrol any time soon. Heck, when she is eventually forced to let us out, we're probably going to be relegated to spots far away from the ABB."

"Correct."

"So I was thinking, instead of sitting on our asses for a few weeks, we use this time to actually make progress with the whole… uh…" I wasn't quite sure which was more important. The mayor niece getting kidnapped by a supervillain or the crazy asian lady with a bomb fetish.

Chris decided to fill in with answer C. "Omnicidal space whale?"

Wait, was that a thing? That sounded familiar.

"Y-yeah… No… I mean… eventually, sure…" I guess Chris caught my hesitation there, because his mood suddenly sharpened and shifted from amused curiosity to sharp focus.

"What, exactly do you remember of our shared situation?" He demanded.

Shit. Okay brain, redemption time. Think fast.

"Okay, so this is a world of fiction, or at least it's based on a piece of fiction." I started spitting out words that meant nothing to buy time.

He shook his head. "The specific quantum mechanics of multiverse theory are not goddamn important to our situation."

Well, there goes that stalling tactic. Well, time to go blunt and hope for the best.

"Okay, Skitter is a villain. Skitter is a hero. Skitter is a villain again. Shit happens. Rocks fall on a lot of people. Skitter saves the day." I painted the entire saga in as broad of terms as possible. Which was a very simple way of saying I remember very little.

Kid Win stared silently for such a long time that it got awkward. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the kaleidoscope of colors he was emitting. "You remember…nothing. Don't you?"

Okay, no. But I'm not about to outright admit that to him.

"I remember that Bakuda is a villain and we need to stop her because something really dumb is going to happen with Skitter." I retorted.

He slapped a hand on his visor and rubbed it up and down. "Okay, okay. The situation is significantly worse than I assumed it was. But I can work around this. Because someone has to."

I really didn't like the mix of despair, anger and powerlessness oozing up into Kid Win's aura.

"Great, so why don't you fill me in then." I said slowly, keeping a close eye on Kid Win's emotions.

Kid Win continued, off on his own little world. "Okay. Okay. I see that it falls to me to be the power behind the Throne and steer things away from Armageddon. It will be considerably more difficult than I at first imagined, but I can adapt. It's fine, all you need to do is sit down, shut up, do as you're told, and everything will turn out alright. Probably."

Okay, now I was annoyed. He wasn't even joking. He genuinely was resigned to dismissing me as a minion. No, not even a minion, a tool or a liability.

"Yeah, I'm going to need you to step back on the martyr complex." I crossed my arms and huffed.

"It's not a martyr complex, dumb dumb. Not when it's the fuckin' truth."

"Sure, now if we can-"

"So it falls to me, to be as Hepheastus handing Harpe to some random asshat. I shall make you Mighty, and then you'll be useful."

I'll give him points for the literary reference, but that's all he's getting. "Okay listen here, bootleg Ironman."

"That's uncalled for."

"Let's get this straight. You're not a god and I'm not some dumb kid that can be tricked into a dangerous quest because you want to bang my mom. Now let's actually talk about what we can do to save the city, because this is going nowhere. Work with me here."

Kid Win snorted and dismissed me. He even went back to Tinkering as he talked.

"No see, here's the dealio. Original Gallant was fucking useless. Tragically, he had one chance to be useful, and blew it. I'd held some hope for you, but just like almost everything and everyone else in this armpit of a reality, you're a disappointment. So no, I will not," he raised one hand and did finger quotes, "'work with you.' You're fucking useless and it falls to me to fix that. So I repeat, sit down, shut up, do as you're told, I'll try to make sure your ex-girlfriend doesn't end up a blob."

Actual rage flared up in my mind.

I wasn't sure if I was hearing things, but there was definitely a snapping noise ringing in my head. I had been dealing with teenagers for weeks at this point and I was a little tired of the constant stupidity and drama. So being dismissed as useless by the boy that spent more time mouthing off to adults than actually communicating like a human being pressed a very specific button. Hard.

I decided that I needed to teach Chris a lesson in manners.

"I don't know what the hell is wrong with you." I snarled, "But I am trying to help."

Always leave them a lifeline, even when it's clear they will never take it. That way, when you cut them down, you have the moral high ground.

"And until you can stop thinking like Carlos, trying is all you'll manage. But until then, you remain largely useless, which is why I'll outfit you with useful shit. So be a good little meat shield and stay out of my goddamn way." Kid Win lifted a hand and waved dismissively towards the door. "I'll be nice, and try and make sure you live past your expiration date."

Good, now that he's doubled down, I can knock him down without feeling guilty.

"Okay, I'm tired of the god complex here. You're not invincible nor are you all powerful or some sort of god in the machine." I laughed humorlessly and stepped forward into Kid Win's personal space. "You're not infallible. In fact, you are so fallible I can break you with a single word."

"Yeah, right." Kid Win scoffed. He had already billed me as useless in his mind and thus harmless. I was the good boy that couldn't harm a fly. Fine, I'll prove him wrong right here and with the best target available. Him.

I called up a potent cocktail of despair, doubt and powerlessness and formed it into a pitch black orb. I condensed it onto the tip of my finger, ready to ruin someone's day. Now all I needed was a few words to help guide his mind towards the correct thoughts and you had a portal breakdown. I had to thank Tattletale for the inspiration.

In fact, thanks to Tattletale inducing a panic attack in me, I had just the line of thought to get someone in our situation to panic. Though I'd probably need a slightly different angle since Chris didn't seem the type to worry about the existential thought of murdering someone to live. Ah, I know.

"No, wait, I just need six words." I probably shouldn't model my wrath after a fictional character at his second worst, but I do love my homages.

Chris got up and stepped into my personal space. "Bitch, give me your best shot."

Cute.

I leaned down next to Chris' ear and paused for a moment. Both to build the tension and to make sure my next statement was actually six words. My hand snuck up and gently tapped his arm in support as I spiked the orb of despair into him.

"Do you remember your previous family?" I made sure to say those six words as friendly and gently as I could.

I stepped back to enjoy the fallout and the weirdest thing happened. At first he lit up an amused vindictive yellow, but then doubt began to creep into his aura, then worry. I could see Chris' brain start to wind itself into a circle as my little seed of despair crawled down his aura before planting itself firmly.

Then for the first time, I could see Chris without his Aura getting in the way. It was as if he'd gained whatever protection Vicky had. And then between one breath and the next, the blackest void swallowed the space Chris had been standing in.

I felt both incredible violent revulsion and immediate regret at the tangible sight of pure distilled despair.

"Shit." I whispered as I watched a literal emotional breakdown happen before my eyes.

What was I thinking? There had been a better way to do this. This was just cruel. That wasn't like me at all. I took a step forward to comfort Chris, to take back my words. Something. Anything to help.

"I'm sor-"

The last thing I saw was the barrel of a gun peeking out of the miasma.

The last thing I heard was a quiet bang.

 

[Santo]

Aight, was gonna wait until tomorrow, but this chapter's burning a hole in my...erm...that saying does not apply all that well here...hrm.

ANYWAYS!

Behold the exciting conclusion of the kerfuffle of last chapter.

Word of warning. This chapter is...dramatic. And if thoughts of suicide are a thing that you do not enjoy or may cause you issues, you might not want to read this one.

If that is not the case, enjoy, we worked super hard on this chapter.

---

Derail III.II

I looked at the unconscious body of Dean, his chest rising and falling. He was, thankfully, finally silent. No more of his barbed words could claw their way into my brain.

But that couldn't stop the ones already mauling my thoughts.

A moment of introspection was enough to see that the reason I had been working so hard, pushing myself to Tinker to exhaustion, was so I wouldn't have to think.

I was alone.

Worse, I couldn't remember when else I had been. I knew I had a family, a sister who was at once my best friend and my worst enemy, but I couldn't remember anything else.

I couldn't remember the sound of her voice, try as I might, her face was as smoke through my mental fingers. I knew I had a mother, but was she alive? I had a vague feeling we had been close, very close.

She must be so worried.

She must be.

Or was I as bad a son as I was a teammate? Was I as much of a disappointment to her, to them, as I was to myself? I knew that my parents got on my nerves, but that's what parents are supposed to do. Well, that and offer quiet support, which presumably they had and I had hopefully reciprocated.

The absence was glaringly obvious now that it had been pointed out to me. Like a cut, raw and bleeding, that I had failed to notice due to adrenaline and shock.

But try as I might, I could not remember their faces. The sound of their voice was a mystery. Their proper place in my life was only visible thanks to the gaping void they left in their absence. A void I'd been frantically trying to fill without acknowledging its existence.

I was alone.

I glanced down at the weapon.

I didn't have to be.

What even would be the point of continuing on? It's not like Kid Win got anything useful done on the first go-around. I wasn't lying when I said Gallant fucked up his one chance at usefulness, I just hadn't mentioned that Kid Win had not even had that much. I was not the Chosen One, I would not be the one snatching an impossible victory from the golden maws of defeat.

We were insignificant in every sense of the word. Utterly incapable of agency. Everything would play out the way it would play out. The Space Whale would go on a rampage, trillions would die. Taylor would kill it.

Hell, if anything, my being here would just sabotage that. Could I be certain that my stunt at the bank had not done so already? There are few bonds as strong as those forged in combat, combat I denied.

My being here would just make things worse, like a cancer subverting the body's immune system. The only moral thing to do would be to remove the cancerous cells. Cleanse the parasite so the organism lives on.

My loss would not cause any significant damage to the endeavor, after all, Kid Win had been utterly inconsequential, achieving nothing of note, his only victories a hollow misery. If anything, removing myself would increase the chances of those that remained, since my arrival I had been nothing but a disruptive force in the Wards, pushing them nearly to the point of dissolution. I had refused Taylor an opportunity to grow as a combatant, perhaps sabotaged her ability to bond with one of the few people who could give her necessary insight into defeating Scion.

I was alone.

The only moral thing to do was to remove myself.

I wouldn't have to be alone if I removed myself.

Gallant groaned as he opened his eyes. My non-lethal rounds only knocked people out for 20-30 seconds, anything powerful enough to last longer had the chance of complications. Vomiting, nerve damage, organ failure, aneurysms. And of course, the most common and severe side effect of all.

Death.

It would be immoral of me to remove myself, and leave the cancer healthy. Besides, there would be some poetic justice in two cancerous cells removing each other before they could metastasize. I might even do him the favor of leaving an option for an open-casket funeral.

He was shifting while I'd reached the conclusion of what must be done. I changed the pistol's setting to lethal, the necessary components teleported into place. I'd had to hide that setting pretty thoroughly to get it past Beardmaster, but as in all things, all I had achieved with my hard work was a way to hurt people, and ultimately inconsequential.

I looked down at Dean as he regained his faculties, his eyes moving back and forth as they gained clarity, as he realized where he was.

Ensuring an open casket would merely result in extending his suffering. And I had brought enough pain and unkindness to this world, if I had to put him down, the least I could do for him would be to ensure he did not suffer. I put the red-dot in the middle of his forehead.

A small ball of the most inspiring shade of blue I'd ever seen hit me in the chest.

Suddenly, against my will, I gained some perspective. Sure, there was the chance that I would make things worse, but there was also the possibility that I'd make them better. Do or do not is bullshit, everyone has the right, the obligation, to try.

But was that worth the risk? Trillions of lives hung in the balance, a balance I had already disrupted. If there is anything my existence in the last few weeks had made perfectly clear, it was that I very clearly lacked the wisdom to play God.

Should I really be the one to dictate the future? Me? The one who could not handle playing in the kiddie superhero league?

If not me, who?

I looked back at Gallant.

One should always strive to minimize cruelty.

It would undoubtedly be cruel to invalidate his struggle against the inevitable. But what is more cruel? To let him toil and suffer in a sisyphean task and put the totality of humanity in danger, or to kill him and let fate play out a tragedy I knew could be survived, sacrificing trillions so that millions may live?

My hands trembled under the enormity of the decision, only the servos in my armor ensured I could keep the pistol trained on Gallant's chest.

A second, bigger ball of blue light slammed into me, this one hard enough to make me stumble back a few steps.

Not only was I being cruel, I was being stupid. Defeatist. Taking, as an asshole like me would put it, 'the coward's way out.' If my sister knew what I'd been thinking, she'd clobber me.

I found the fact that I did not understand how or why I knew this, very distressing.

A third ball of blue light half again as big as the last hit me, this one hard enough to send me skidding back until my back slammed against the wall, and the world finally regained color. The last minute caught up to me, and I had to scrabble my helmet off so I could puke without drowning myself.

"I fucking hate you." I growled between heaves.

"That's fair," Gallant said slowly, a fourth ball of light sitting over his entire fist pointed at me. His other hand cradled his stomach, right over the spot my stun round had hit him. "I kind of hate you a little bit too."

That's fair. I was man enough to admit, I had, to a rather enormous extent, brought that upon myself.

The two of us stood there, in the most awkward Mexican Standoff ever.

I brought a hand up to my temple, my head didn't hurt, but it helped, somehow. "It was all so clear, I think. Looking back on it, it feels like a fever. Just cold, instead of hot." I absently put the safety on my pistol and set it down, not trusting myself to return it to non-lethality at this particular moment. I moved away from my puddle of vomit and sat down to hyperventilate in peace.

"So…" As usual, my peace did not last nearly long enough. "Do you feel like talking now?"

You know what? Fine, at least I can spread the misery.

---

Explaining the whole of how fucked we were to Dean took a while. "But we got lucky, and Golden Doodad can't do it because his other half got lobotomized. Otherwise we'd be majorly fucked. That's the short of it. Now you know." But I persevered, if only because fuck talking about this later.

"Okay, I'm going to shelf the hundreds of questions that the info dump brought up. Because, dude, what the fuck?" Gallant did not look like he was prepared for today, welcome to my last several weeks buddy. "And just ask the important question, which is what can we do to stop that."

"Nothing. We can't. Scion may as well be an Idiot God. But it knows fighting, if enough people get ready, it'll just kill us all." I said, taking a sip of water.

"Well, that's good. I didn't really plan on fighting a god." Dean still looked a little uncomfortable that the blunt and simple way was not an option. "But there still has to be something we can do."

"The only thing we can do to mitigate the apocalypse is make sure Skitter survives. She's the Chosen One. Our literal last and only hope for the continuation of civilization. Maybe try and make a few more people live through the End Times. Maybe save Dragon, she can help with that."

"So we can do things, you're just too depressed to see that as helping." Gallant said flatly.

I glared at him. "Trillions of lives hang in the balance, trillions we may have already doomed to die purely because we kicked the Chosen One off the correct path."

"Or, we could have made things better and a few trillion less people will die." Gallant spouted more hopeful bullshit. "Either way, if we're going to keep Taylor alive, we should probably stop the crazy bomber in the city that is blowing up places at random."

"Bakuda is not that important. We can leave her to her fate, we just need to make sure Skitter doesn't die during the chaos." I spat, trying to get the taste of vomit out of my mouth, the little wheeled drone I made a while back zoomed over and slurped up the vomit I had left completely unattended. That thing wasn't rated for organic waste, that would be a bitch and a half to clean up. "Though now that I think about it, the best way to make sure that objective is ensured, would be to blow Bakuda's brains out. Yeah, good plan. Glad we thought of it."

Dean looked flabbergasted at me when I mentioned the logical thing to do, then shook his head and said. "I'm going to ignore the murder vibes since you just had a breakdown." Rude, I thought we were ignoring that. "Why do you keep saying you're disagreeing with me when you agree with me?"

"Because you looked surprised when I said we should kill Bakuda." I said bleakly. "This isn't the time for Superpowered Cops and Robbers or Batman's 'thou shalt not kill even when it is fully and objectively justified' bullshit. We are literal killing machines, insignificant gnats trying to kill God for the privilege of continued existence. We don't have the time for kiddie shit."

"Okay, half baked Nietzsche, let's step it back." He countered. "If it looks bad and we need to kill her, I'm not going to shed tears for the woman putting bombs in people, but I'd like us not to default to murder. Tends to set a bad precedent."

I shook my head. "One, Nietzsche was a much kinder man than me. Two, and I'll repeat this until I drive it through your Carlos-rated skull-plate. The stakes are literally too high for the humane approach."

"You know what. Go ahead, murder a bunch of people. Get yourself labeled an S class threat." Dean agreed mockingly. "I'm sure that'll go great with the kill order on your head. What's your plan for that, dumbass."

I rolled my eyes. "The 'plan' is plausible deniability."

"Yes, because the world full of super powered Thinkers is going to fall for a teenager's first resort when something goes wrong."

"Well, when you use an entirely mundane IED or an entirely mundane rifle. And the third best Superpowered Thinker's input on this is 'somewhere between blue goat and red bubuu,' they're of course going to immediately go 'Kid Win did it.'"

"You're literally speaking gibberish now, which I'm guessing means you're running out of ideas." He stared at me like I was a particularly slow child. "I'm going to say this one more time, and hopefully you'll disagree but agree with this. Stop Baduka, yes. Kill Baduka, if necessary. Let's not be murderhobos, since that labels us as the Slaughterhouse. Dumbass."

I kept eye contact as I walked to one of my stations and printed a piece of paper I wasn't supposed to have access to. And held it out to him.

"The great basalt pillar rumbles in disquiet, the orchard shudders in its poisoned rampage, but stands tall." He read off in absolute confusion. "Okay, I'd say your poetry sucks, but even you're not this dumb. What the hell is this?"

"That's the warning Watchdog gave forty minutes prior to Behemoth showing up and nuking New York." I spat back. "That's the most coherent warning Watchdog gave."

"Okay, yeah, but aren't Endbringers just weird to Thinker powers?" He looked at the paper with a raised eyebrow. "That's not going to protect you."

I printed a second paper and held it out to him.

"'The Flesh Carver shall fall, and rise, and grow ever greater as its eye becomes unerring'…and 'something pretty bad is about to happen in New York.'" Dean read with increasing exasperation.

"And that's the warning they gave a few days before Quarrel killed Butcher the XIVth and became the XVth along with a bunch of other nonsense to muddy the waters." I said. "I could keep going."

"Okay," Dean looked at the papers slowly as the gears finally started to turn in his head. "So, I'm guessing that makes Tattletale something of an exception, because she was very coherent as she basically figured out my secret identity from small talk."

I blinked. "Okay one: Yes, she and Dinah are absolutely the exception. Two: Hee Hoo Hold the fuck up! Say what!?"

Dean had the audacity to look a little sheepish.

"Yeah, so Tattletale looked like she was going to say some pretty mean things to Amy, and I vaguely remember that being bad. So I kinda sorta said some mean things to her to get her attention. Long story short, she figured out I'm Gallant and then verbally bitch slapped me with my missing memories. It's kind of how I figured the whole six words thing might work since it gave me a panic attack myself."

I felt my eye twitch, but pushed it down, now was not the time. "Probably for the best, the Plague Cauldron is notoriously unstable. Tattletale tipping it over for the funsies could have led to disaster."

"Okay, seriously, you need to stop with the names." Dean glared at me, "And also, rude. She's a healer, not Bonesaw."

I pointed a finger at his nose. "One, no, they're how I cope with existential dread, I am owed this." I raised a second finger. "Two, the only thing stopping Amy from being Bonesaw on steroids is her own flimsy moral fiber and her current state of mind. I'm not sure what that state of mind is, but I recall that her moral fiber was pretty fucked up. You prevented the first step towards the plague apocalypse, so I take it back, you've managed to be a little useful. Congratulations, now you can go back to proudly babysit the Teenage Muta-"

Dean raised his fist, the (still very reassuring) blue energy sheathing it suddenly pointed at my face. I noted that this one was no longer the size of his fist, but now the size of a large watermelon.

On the one hand, it was a little intimidating, but on the other, it was just such a hopeful shade of blue.

"Okay, in your words. One, I'm a little too busy babysitting the idiot in front of me, so no." Dean countered, and I had to admit, if only to myself, I walked into that one. "Two, we've gotten off topic. Bakuda. Stop, yes. Kill, maybe. Your answer, yes or no?"

I gave him the most obnoxious grin I could, and resolutely called his bluff. "Maybe."

I had just enough time to take great pleasure in the displeasure that showed on his face, then the blue light shrunk to the size of an apple and slammed into my chest. The impact drove the air out of my lungs and made me stumble back, but despite everything, I felt that even if we had some trouble working together, we could do it.

Goddamnit, even when he's being blatant, his power is insidious.

Still, we could make a plan, hash things out so that idealistic stupidity buoyed deterministic nihilism. I felt that, even if our chance was minute, it was still a chance.

And we had the right and the obligation to try.

Fuck. I can't wait for his power to wear off.

 

[Heroslayer]

This is both simultaneously super late, due to life kicking both Santo and I's ass, and a little early since we typically post on Fridays. But since we're approaching a holiday, that's the break.

Little bit of reflection from Gallant, before we really hit the gas.

–

Derail 3.3

I had fucked up. The worst part about this particular fuck up had been that it worked out for the best.

"Hey, Kid Win, how come your armor's different?" Asked a man holding a child's hand.

Chris turned his head slowly, his new helmet's numerous cameras clicking, whirring, and clacking, when he spoke, his voice was an off-puttingly organic mechanical growl. [From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me.]

"Wait, did he clear this new schtick with HR? Browbeat asked nervously.

"Who cares? See the look on the kid's face." Clock said aside in his normal voice, and, indeed, the look on the face of the man's son was wide eyed and his eyes were all but sparkling as Ch-Kid Win went on.

Somewhere between his starting that spiel and my looking away, his armor had gained an extra arm, whirring and wiggly bits, and had several winking lights. I couldn't be certain if those were purely decorative or not, and Kid Win would absolutely not give a straight answer.

[-will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved. For the Machine is immortal.] He whirled around and power walked away, his armor emitting a deep, familiar sounding blast of noise. With the extra arm and the whirring glowing camera bits on his new helmet, he looked like an alien.

"HR is going to kill you." Clock said, forced cheer in his voice and judging by his Aura, ready for Kid to lash out at him.

"Meh," Kid Win said, his voice sounding completely normal, "maybe my direct handler will try, but the toys division have been salivating around me lately. Makes me fear for my chastity."

Clock laughed, the knot of anxiety in his Aura slowly loosening, playful yellow seeping in as Kid Win bantered back without viciously insulting him.

For all intents and purposes, my little discussion with Kid Win had worked out for the best.

Everyone else saw me walk into his lab and once I walked out, Kid Win had changed his tune.

He stopped verbally lashing out at everyone and was even able to enter a conversation without insulting everyone's intelligence.

Sure, he was still a pain in the ass, but he was a tolerable pain in the ass now.

So, I had received a good job from the team and everyone, for the most part, moved on.

I was still waiting for someone to cuff me for blatantly using my powers on Chris so liberally.

There had to be a recording somewhere. Chris had shot me, with a stun round sure, but that still should have caused some sort of investigation.

But despite my paranoia, no Sword of Damocles appeared, for either of us.

"Don't you think you should cut back a bit on the whole crazy robot thing?" Browbeat asked quietly. "Some people might get scared."

"Nah, the nerds are eating it all up. And since I'm a nerd, those are the only ones whose opinion I care about."

"Piggot is going to kill you." Dennis threw in his two cents in a singsong voice.

"She should be thanking me. Apparently sales of my action figures have quadrupled."

"Really?"

"Yeah, something about trying to get the 'classic' look before the range gets updated, I think. People are weird about toys."

No, instead of coming down on us with the hammer of god, the higher ups apparently listened to Vista's reasonable request and started to send us back out. Not for a patrol or anything useful, but we were allowed to do some PR runs in predetermined safe zones.

I did my best to act like the charming and Gallant hero, but if I was being perfectly honest, I couldn't really manage it. I let Kid Win's new buoyant mood take up everyone's attention and settled into the background to stew.

I watched the mischief dance around him, hovering over the undercurrent of annoyance at the idea of wasting time with what he called "useless pandering to the masses." My stomach roiled at the colors.

On one hand, it was a relief to see the kaleidoscope of colors around him, there was still a thin underlayer of blood red rage, but subdued, controlled, even leashed and harnessed. Proof that he was full of life and vigor. On the other hand…

My brain decided to overlay the black void of despair blossoming within Kid Win like some perverse, rotting flower, until it blotted him out completely, and I had to look away before I threw up in my helmet.

Fuck.

"You know, Piggot's going to lecture you if you spend the entire patrol brooding."

I looked down. Standing in front of me with her hands on her hips and trying to look unimpressed by my brooding, Vista scolded me. The corner of my lips tilted up just for a bit. She was trying so hard to look mature and steadfast, but I could see the worry swirling around her.

"Hey, Vista. I'm just letting Kid Win give some much needed fan service."

Sadly, my deflection did nothing but annoy Vista.

"Right, and that's why you're over here sulking rather than making sure he doesn't make an ass of himself, again."

I snorted. I probably should be next to him. Just because Chris was now civil didn't mean that he didn't occasionally still piss people off with a flippant comment. It just meant that the person typically deserved it now. So, yeah, I should probably be next to him and step in if a civilian or reporter aggravated him.

But it was hard to watch over someone when looking at them made you physically ill from guilt.

"Hey!" Vista snapped a finger in front of my face. "I just said, stop it with the pity party."

"I'm not having a pity party." I retorted. It wasn't a pity party or sulking. It was brooding. If I tell myself that enough times, maybe I'll believe it.

"Really? Because it looks like a pretty pitiful party."

Despite my sour mood, that did get a snort of amusement out of me.

"Thanks. But I'm having plenty of fun in my pitiful party, then." I waved her off. "It's an off day, I'll be fine tomorrow."

"Sure. That's what you said during training yesterday and the Wards meeting the day before that." Vista scoffed. "Sitting around and staring at Chris like he shot your puppy isn't going to solve anything."

I wasn't sure if Vista was simply more perspective than I gave her credit for, or if she was watching me that closely due to her crush. Either way, I was actually pretty annoyed that I couldn't simply lie my way out of this one.

"Yeah, well, I think I'd handle it better if he had shot my puppy. At least then I wouldn't be blaming myself so much."

"Seriously, what happened between the two of you?"

"Do you remember your previous family?"

I winced as the memory replayed itself clearly in my head. I hadn't sounded that cruel, had I?

"I… said some things I regret." I said, "It wasn't my proudest moment. We came to blows and well, I think I knocked something loose."

It was a gross simplification of the event, but not necessarily a lie.

"I mean, okay." Vista sighed. "I get it, you have that hero complex going, but… it worked out, didn't it?"

She didn't understand. And a part of me wanted to grab her and shake her. To yell at her about how badly I had fucked up. How I had abused my powers to pressure Chris into a breakdown, not because I was trying to fix his attitude, but because I wanted to knock him down a peg. Because I was feeling vindictive.

I had to be the smartest one in the room and I'd hurt anyone to prove that.

In that moment, I wasn't any better than Tattletale. After all, didn't she give me a panic attack just because I insulted her intelligence?

Fuck.

"Yeah. It worked out fine." I laughed and hoped that none of the bitterness I felt showed.

"Well come on. Without Kid Win taking all the flak for being an asshole, Piggot will yell at you if you don't wave the flag enough or whatever." Vista gripped.

I agreed and followed Vista over to the crowd. I put on my public face and thanked whatever god existed out there that my costume had a helmet, because I couldn't put up the effort to smile. I didn't exactly feel very heroic at the moment.

After we had signed enough autographs and took enough pictures to blind a man, we were ushered away. I trailed after the group, not really excited about being in a van with a bunch of teenagers in my poor mood.

"Hey." A heavy hand clasped my shoulder and startled me out of my thoughts. "You okay?"

Aegis looked down at me in concern. He must have doubled back to check up on me. Part of his last minute push to really step up as a leader in the final days of his term. I would be cheering him on in any other situation, but at the moment, it just pissed me off.

"Yeah. I'm fine." I brushed his hand off.

"Really? Because I don't know if you noticed, but everyone's been pretty worried about you." He paused, and I saw the streak of vindictive yellow win out. "Except for Kid Win."

"Well, he would be in the right. I'm not exactly worth the concern at the moment."

"Dude. I don't know what the hell you did, but it couldn't have been that bad." Aegis said, disbelief filling his being. "I know you hold yourself to a high standard, but you have to admit that Kid Win probably deserved whatever you did."

"Yeah. The ends justify the means." I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

Aegis actually paused, taken back by the bitterness in my words. I could see him mull over something for a few moments as he gathered his resolve. He squared his shoulders and stood up straighter as if to project maturity.

"I mean, sometimes. Yes. We're heroes and that means sometimes we need to make the hard choices."

I stared at him. He tried so hard to sound mature and leader-like. It wasn't even a bad line, either.

Too bad I was about to shit all over his attempt.

"Huh, you know. You and Kid Win are more alike than you think." My hand paused halfway up to his shoulder, before falling back down.

Instead, I left Aegis to sputter and rage at those words. I sat down in the van and settled in, half paying attention to the chattering and contributing just enough to pass muster. My actual thoughts were a mile away.

The ends justify the means, huh? The words and intent weren't wrong. I knew that. But still. Just because those words were correct, didn't mean they were right.

I believed that. I had to believe that. That belief was the only thing keeping me from sliding down a slippery slope. If no one was going to hold me responsible, then I just had to take up that responsibility too.

—

"So, you've been just… sneaking crap out of your lab into your garage?" I stared at the piles of half finished Tinkertech that littered Chris' garage. At first glance it looked pretty chaotic, but I could see some semblance of organization, even if I had no idea how to read it.

"Sneaking is a strong word. I prefer…uhhh…fuck it. Yeah, I've been sneaking things into my lab to work on them and then sneaking that out of my lab and into my garage."

"Huh. Man, Protectorate security is… inconsistent, huh?" I knew that Chris was paranoid as hell and probably took a lot of precautions, but that still sounded way too easy to me.

"I'd call it as secure as a bucket full of holes, myself." He said, typing away at something on a laptop that looked like a rats nest of wires. "It was embarrassingly easy. Honestly, I've got a full report written that details out plenty of security holes that could be plugged up and how to go about it." He looked over his shoulder at me. "Before you ask. No. I'm not requesting they plug those holes until I'm done sneaking crap out of my lab."

"Sure." I could see the hint of worry in Chris' aura, so I refrained from asking him if that felt too convenient to him too. "So, then I have got to ask. What's the plan for finding Bakuda?"

Chris stopped typing to stare pointedly at me. "I thought you had the plan."

"Plan is a… strong word." I winced at the burning glare that Chris shot at me.

"Back to plan A then." He sighed and went back to typing. "Assault ABB goons, get them to tell me who their boss is, work my way up the chain until something rattles loose. It's time consuming and risky, but it'll work."

"That sounds dumb as hell."

"I'm open to suggestions."

"Okay, so… how about we don't just attack people at random and target ABB members that actually look like they're leaders. Gangs have a hierarchy, right? I doubt Bakuda is telling the grunts or bomb holders anything important."

"I don't know who the lieutenants are or where they are, and they're not dumb enough to wear a nametag. And about the only thing the grunts and bomb chipped know is who they answer to. Hence, yanking on the chain."

"So our current plan is to beat up enough grunts until they send in the elites and hope that leads us to the boss fight." I summarized, putting as much disdain into my voice at the crappy plan.

"A bit more nuanced than that, but in essence, yes." He flicked his hand and his pistol appeared on the table with a flash of light. "Remember when I shot you with that?"

"I mean, I remember you pointing at me and then waking up on the ground, yeah."

"Any pain? Nausea? Erectile dysfunction? Sweats?"

"No. I mean, my mouth was a little dry, but I think that was the regret and panic setting in." I tilted my head to recall the minute details of the moment before my head snapped down. "Wait, did you shoot me with untested, unapproved ammo?!"

"Nah. I tested it quite thoroughly." Chris said, waving his hand. "That's what I'll use to 'beat up the ABB'. They'll take a short nap, wake up tied up, and I'll have as close to a civil discussion as I can. And let them know I plan to hang Bakuda up by her entrails and save their collective lives. No muss, no fuss, then they'll tell me what they know and I'll move on from there."

I opened my mouth to begin pointing out every single thing wrong with that plan before I paused. No, I don't need to lord over him about how dumb that plan sounds. Better to just nip that in the bud right now and move on.

"Maybe I should do the talking."

"Probably for the best, one little slap of the good ol' despair juice and they'll spill their guts to make you stop." He smirked at me. "I can tell you that from experience."

He turned back to whatever he was doing, missing my scowl as I tasted bile for a moment and had to swallow to keep it down. That black flower of despair flashed over Chris for a moment and I had to look away. Thankfully, he was too busy Tinkering to notice my slip up.

"Not exactly what I was thinking of, but close enough. Let's leave the manipulation to the Master and I'll leave the combat to the Tinkerer, alright?"

"Fine by me. I'm a misanthrope at heart."

God, wasn't that the truth. I stood up and stretched to get some feeling back into my limbs before turning to Chris.

"Alright, so then our next step is to… just wait around at night until we find some ABB guys?"

"Yep." Chris popped the 'P' in that word.

"I'll go buy a ton of canned coffee."

Chris looked up. "And sunflower seeds."

"Why sunflower seeds?"

"Cause I hate coffee."

I did too. This was going to be a looong stake out.

 

[Santo]

Hey, sorry about the delay. Life kicked Hero and I in the dick pretty hard last week, and the two of us legit just forgot about this story.

Our bad.

But consolation prize, next chapter! 8D

---

Derail III.IV

Sacred hell, how does Peter Parker manage this crap?

As it turns out, moonlighting as a vigilante was goddamn exhausting. Dean and I have been running around Brockton Bay for the last five nights. It would have taken longer for us to get started if I hadn't been working on a set of vigilante gear for the last few weeks.

Thank god that I already had a reputation for sleeping in class. But hey, my grades were good, so all I got was a slap on the wrist.

The hardest part of the process had been using the specialty tools in my lab without Hal-beard-ier catching me.

For once, his apathy towards the Wards worked in my favor.

Dean's own gear had taken a single day to put together. Sure, it wasn't nearly as awesome as mine, but I didn't have time to give him something better than rocket boots, and shin and arm guards with Tinker Tech bits in them. Though I am now deprived of my rocket boots, it was a fair trade for a half competent meat shield.

I had a far more awesome set of gear for him in the pipeline. If I weren't running around at night, using up all the time I would otherwise spend working on it, running around stalking and beating up Asian people, I could finish it in a week or two.

Wait. That sounded racist.

In fact, that sounded extremely racist.

"Dude, are we the racists?" I tossed over my shoulder.

"Wha?" Dean snapped out of the micro-nap he had fallen in and looked askance at me.

"You know, we've spent the last week stalking and beating up Asian people with relatively little justification and no little gusto." I brought a hand up and moved my finger in a circle. "I gotta be careful about that, we live in the Neo-Nazi capital of the US. I'm kinda worried here, maybe I'm turning into a racist? I don't wanna be stupid."

Dean stared at me. I couldn't really see much of his face because of the stupid medical mask he insisted on wearing, but I think he was looking at me like I was stupid. Oh god, it's already begun!

"Okay, I'm pretty sure that's the lack of sleep talking, but just in case it's not. The only people we've beaten up are gang members who are serving a Supervillian terrorist. They just happen to be Asian. We're not racists."

That sounded both right, and too good to be true.

"You sure? I don't wanna wake up tomorrow and start thinking the Empire has a point. I'm not entirely certain why, but I don't think I'll be able to live with myself."

"I'm sure." For some reason, I believed him. Good. That was that worry taken care of.

I turned back to the building I'd been staking out while Dean napped. The lenses of my faceplate whirred and the entryway jumped forward in my sight. I clicked through the different vision modes, eventually seeing five glowing humanoid figures making their way to the door. Adrenaline spiked through me and banished the cobwebs in my brain.

"Alright, we have five coming out. Two of these five don't have bomb chips. Which probably makes them important. I'd mark them in your HUD but…that's not happening yet." I clicked through a few more vision modes. "They're the ones armed with rusty revolvers, the others look to be armed with mall-katanas, but sharpened. Seriously, just bring a fuckin' machete, they are cheap at Wallmart."

We remained lying on the ground at the edge of the building. We had learned the hard way that the only thing that standing at the edge of a building got done, was silhouette you against the light-polluted sky.

The two gangsters and three possible conscripts exited the building and started walking down the street. The five looked friendly enough, for gangsters. They spoke quickly in a language I didn't recognize, but it did not sound like Japanese or Mandarin.

We followed along behind them, silently hopping from roof to roof until we judged them to be at a suitably isolated location.

"Okay, here's the plan." I said, leaning close so I could mutter into Dean's ear. "I'll lay down suppressive fire, that should get them to keep their heads down, hopefully I'll tag a few of them. While I do that, you flank them from the side and push them out of cover. After that it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel."

Now that I thought of it, why would someone shoot fish in a barrel? They're already caught. That's just a waste of perfectly good bullets.

"Alright, let's go." Dean's voice brought me back to the present as he double checked his Tinkertech gear. "On your mark."

I aimed my modified AR-15 at the gangsters. "Three, two, one, mark!" I said and I emptied half the battery in the rough direction of the ABB goons, tagging who I thought was the leader and one of the conscripts, the other three reacted fast enough to dive for cover.

They shouted something as their comrades fell bonelessly to the ground, but I couldn't hear it over the roar of the rocket boots that went off right next to me. There was a red blur of motion as Dean leapt into action. He had taken a few days to get used to the new equipment, but he had gotten the hang of them quickly enough, at least he only ran into a wall one of ten times now.

He landed and, with a quick shove, tossed one of the gang members into the open, who I immediately tagged with a stun round.

Ambush successful, the remaining goons began screaming at each other in fear. Sadly, they had just enough sense to dive under cover before I could tag any more of them.

"Drive them out of cover!" I shouted while I kept up the barrage to keep their heads down. Dean took advantage of the suppressive fire to dash at the closest gang member before leaping into the air with a rocket assisted jump.

The ABB members had just enough time to lift his mall-Katana up to guard his head before an armored boot shattered it. The man panicked now that his weapon was gone, but I couldn't get a clear shot with the both of them so close together.

Dean struggled against the gang member. It was surprisingly hard to knock someone out quickly without doing permanent damage to them. Movies always made that look so much easier.

There was more yelling, this time from Dean, but again, rocket boots are loud. Note to self, build sound dampeners.

I activated my anti-grav belt and jumped, trying to get a better shot at the guy Dean was fighting, and saw the last remaining gang member with a gun crawling along, trying to get a shot at Dean's back. I put a stun round into him, then landed on the roof behind the guy Dean was fighting and put a round into his back.

Dean looked up and probably said something, but my ears were still ringing from the rocket boots so I just nodded. I jumped down, feathering my anti-grav to soften my landing, and we set about zip-tying the gang members' arms together.

By the time we finished zip-tying the gangsters, the first one that got shot came around.

"You know." I said, changing the battery on the rifle once my ears stopped ringing. "You could just use your powers. You don't have to stick to hand to hand."

"I can't exactly turn off the emotional aspects." Dean sighed. "I'm pretty sure it's a dead giveaway when one of the gang members feels super happy or super angry after getting shot by a big colorful blast."

"You ever try hitting someone with 'meh'?" I asked as I dragged the ABB gangsters and manhandled them into a rough line. "Would that translate as close to pure kinetic damage?"

"Surprisingly, feeling nonchalance in the middle of combat is also noticeable."

"Touche." I said, and turned to the ABB goons who were finishing up on coming around. Dean looked at them for a moment before sighing.

"So… bad cape, emotionally manipulative cape?" He asked. I nodded, and turned to the gangsters.

[Alright,] I said, my helmet modulating my voice into an intimidating mechanical growl, [I've already heard all about the Dragon this and the Dragon that. We can skip past that bit. So here is how it's gonna go. I don't want a crazy bomb bitch in my city, you don't want a crazy bomb bitch putting bombs in your grandma. We can help each other.]

I'm pretty sure the words the guy spat at me were slurs. Rude.

I shot a stun round next to his pelvis, the pavement cracked. [Well would you look at that.] I said. [My helmet calibration must have been off, if you start speaking English and are helpful, I might forget to fix it the next time I am forced to pull the trigger.]

Beads of sweat began to visibly run down his face.

"Hey, hey, Gun Guy, we talk." The other ABB member spoke up with an accent, but sadly, he was cut off.

The guy I had threatened began what I can only assume was a semi-patriotic tirade, thankfully, Dean gripped his shoulder and whispered something into his ear. By the burst of exotic particles that my sensors picked up, he had used an emotion blast.

The guy shut up and started weeping. The other ABB guys looked particularly uncomfortable because of this.

I walked over to the guy that cracked while Dean started on the crybaby. I knelt next to him and clicked the theatrics off.

"Alright," I said with a nod, "I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I give you my word, Bakuda will go down, hard. I just need to know where I can run into her. The sooner we're safe from that bitch, the sooner we can go back to relative safety."

"She has deadman switch." He said, his accent almost too thick for me to understand. "The Dragon won't stop her. More people have bombs implanted each day."

I tilted my head in the direction of the two unchipped gangsters. "So, why don't they have bombs in them?"

"They lucky. Bakuda only has time for so many. But she got family members."

I nodded. "Alright. I can do something about the deadman switch. But where can I find the bitch?"

He looked stricken for a few moments, before another of the gangsters spoke up. "One of the Hyung talked while drunk. The Dragon is calling a meeting at Warehouse in three nights. He'll be there." He gave me the address.

I nodded. "Good enough. I'mma cut you loose, if you reach for those swords, I will get violent."

I cut him and his friend out of the restraints and turned to see how Dean was doing.

Two of the gangsters were hugging a visibly uncomfortable Dean while weeping into his chest. The last one was kneeling on the ground and apologizing softly to his parents. My helmet detected a large amount of exotic particles in all three of them.

Damn, his power is more insidious than I thought.

I took the opportunity to take the two rusty guns, unloaded the cylinders and tossed them into my backpack.

"Okay. Thanks for the info. We've held you lot up long enough." I said, nodding at the helpful gangsters. "Go on with your night, keep your heads down. Here is some aspirin for the bumps. If you have cold sweats, a fever, or an erection lasting longer than four hours, go to a hospital. It's exceedingly rare for an organism to react like that to the stun blast energy, it hasn't happened on a human yet, but one out of one hundred rats…had issues."

They nodded solemnly and looked surprisingly touched by my warning.

"Wait," Dean stopped his awkward reassurance of the gangsters and shot me a startled look. "I thought you said those things were safe?!"

"I did test it quite thoroughly. On rats. 99 out of a 100 is the definition of safe."

"Your sample size is small and you should feel bad." Dean deadpanned before turning to the gangsters and impressed on them the importance of taking my warning seriously. He was immediately caught up in another hug from the overly emotional gangsters.

I could see Dean recovering from the hug and was about to give some dumb inspirational speech, but he paused mid motion.

A moment later I felt the familiar cold hand of panic grip my guts and give them a tug.

I turned around, reflexively teleporting the necessary components in my weapon so that it shot actual bullets and aimed the barrel straight at Glory Girl, who had cracked the fucking pavement as she did an utterly moronic three-point landing.

Her 'fear me' field was on full blast, I took that fear and did my best to turn it into something far more useful, like rage at her daring to violate my mind with such impudence. The LIDAR widget at the corner of my HUD informed me that the gangsters were cowering behind Dean and I.

Not that I could blame them. The skinny, preppy, tiara-wearing, cape fluttering, miniskirt-swishing, dumb-blonde white girl could pick up a truck and tear it in two. She was actually pretty damn terrifying.

"So," she said, a bloodthirsty grin splitting her face, "the two of you are new ABB capes. Amy owes me five bucks."

If I denied being Asian…does that make me racist? Eh, fuck it. "We're not ABB, blondie. Now kindly fuck off."

Super Barbie decidedly did not fuck off and only amped up the 'fear me' aura a notch higher. My finger twitched on the trigger and it took an effort of will not to start firing.

"Right, I'm suuuuure you're not lying." She floated forward with a cocky grin on her face and popped her knuckles. "That's why you're just all hunky dory with the gangsters responsible for half the city being a warzone. Try the other one, it has bells on it."

The foreign fear pulsed higher, I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted salt and copper, and brought the rifle to her centermass. "Bitch, you're on the fuck around phase of finding out. Leave and I won't be forced to give you a belly full o' lead."

Her eyes narrowed into a glare, her mouth working as if she were chewing on something that tasted particularly foul.

As my head pounded and every part of my mind screamed at me to end the threat, I spared a thought to wonder why Dean was not stepping in to de-escalate the situation. Her injudicious use of the fear juice made me very much the not good option for talking to the bitch.

Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, I couldn't see his eyes past his sunglasses in the dark, but he had turned his head just enough to at least have me in his peripheral vision. I tilted my head slightly at him in a wordless question.

He tapped his throat. He then moved the hand downward repeatedly.

Crap, if he talks, Vicky will recognize his voice. Double crap, his voice modulator is part of his helmet, that helmet is currently a load of components and a few drawings in my notebook. Crap baskets, this means I'm going to have to take point in negotiating the dumbass blond down after I've already antagonized her.

Well, this can't possibly get that much worse.

Still, might as well get the collateral out of the way. I activated my backward facing speakers. "You lot, get out of here. Remember, keep quiet, keep your heads down."

The ABB gangsters were smart enough to turn tail and choose the better part of valor. Good, now that we didn't have to worry about them we just mi-

"Get her Hyung!" One of the ABB guys that had hugged Dean yelled out before continuing his run.

Vicky's predatory grin came back with a vengeance. "So, you're Hyung and I'm going to call the guy with the big gun Artillery. You were ABB capes after all. Come on, he's even wearing ABB colors!"

That's a terrible name. No way it'll catch on. Magus is much better.

"He is not weari–" I began, and stopped, "Wait…" I looked at Dean out of the corner of my eye. He normally wore his bright red hoodie and designer jeans. Today, however, he had altered his costume to a bright red hoodie and jungle camo pants. Red and green. ABB colors. "Well shit."

"Now, we can-" Glory Girl cut herself off and flung something at me. I felt like a boxer punched me in the cheek, the impact throwing my head back and making me take a few steps back. My HUD warned me that my helmet's integrity was compromised. The shrill alarm was drowned out by the roar of Dean's rocket boots.

Glory Hole flinched at the sudden sound and had to retreat as Dean buzzed around her like a hornet. He kept just out of her reach any time she threw a punch. The two of them danced around each other, giving me just enough time to shake off the headshot.

I teleported the damaged plate, swapping it out for a new one as I barely had the presence of mind to switch the components of the gun back to stun configuration and moved to pincer the blonde bitch between us. Dean did a dive kick, but Vicky flew sideways and dodged it by a hair's breadth, incidentally running into the stun bolt I put into her evasion vector more by serendipity than design.

Good news, I'm fairly certain her shield popped like a soap bubble.

Bad news, she immediately flew back, dodging the three other shots I sent her way and took cover.

Crap, while her cover would do fuck all against a bullet, it was more than enough to dissipate the stun shot.

If I put a few holes in her, Amy will fix them, right?

My next thought of potential maiming was cut off by the roar of rocket boots, a red blur and the rough impact of an arm going way too fast grabbing me and flying away.

Dean had taken Wonder Blonde's retreat as an opportunity to flee. On one hand, this was probably for the best, on the other hand, fuck Wonder Blonde and her stupid tiara.

Rather than waste time fighting the grip or feeling indignant, I activated my anti-grav and emptied my gun's battery in Battle Blonde's general direction, trying to keep her suppressed. I was fairly certain I nailed her between the eyes when she came flying out from behind her cover. Unfortunately, it did jack shit as her barrier tanked the hit.

This was a lot harder than I thought it would be. She could fly very quickly and could turn on a dime. It turns out, movies lied to me. Shooting a moving Superman is a lot harder when they take the time to dodge.

Dean pulsed another blast of his rocket boots, further fucking with my aim. Note to self, make an AA-version of my stun rifle, the semi-auto is proving to be utterly inadequate for dealing with flying Brutes.

Bottle Blonde went down. Weird, I could have sworn I didn't tag her twice in a row.

Wait. No, she's still moving, looks to be rummaging about for…

Oh.

Oh no!

 

[Heroslayer]

Whoops. Would you believe me if I said that I thought that this week's chapter was a Santo chapter?

This was done a while ago and I completely forgot to post it. I am not doing a good job of keeping up with our scheduled Friday releases.

My bad.

---

Derail 3.5

I bolted down the street.

The heat from the jet boots was starting to reach painful levels, but I didn't dare to ease up on the speed. If there were any cars on the street, I would have eclipsed them easily.

I knew it wasn't fast enough.

"She can fly!" Chris screamed into my ear.

Yes, I was aware. Glory Girl could not only fly, she could fly fast.

In hindsight, running was a dumb choice, but it was better than fighting. Glory Girl was Brockton Bay's Alexandria lite. A gun and a pair of rocket boots wasn't going to dent her, let alone knock her out.

"Why the fuck can she turn on the dime!? Stop fucking dodging!" I heard over the rapid cracks of Chris attempting to shoot down Glory Girl. Not that it would help since her barrier would stop any stun bullet even if he did hit her.

"There's got to be somewhere I can lose her." I wheezed as I hopped a crossing and weaved past one of the few cars still moving around the sleeping city. "Chris, do you have a map or somethin-"

"Dumpsterdumpsterdumpster!" Chris screamed and violently slapped at my back. I flinched and barely managed to recover my gait and slid to a rough stop instead of wiping out on the asphalt.

"Dude, what the he-ell!?"

My voice quickly turned from stern into a squeak of terror as I saw the large metal cylinder slam into the ground right ahead of me, carving a furrow in the pavement. If I hadn't slowed down due to Chris, that would have probably been where I was running.

What the fuck? Was that a trash can?

That would have crushed me. If it hadn't killed me instantly, it would have pulverized my organs and turned me into chunky salsa. I would have died.

Vicky had almost killed me. Why did she almost kill me? Did she think I was a Brute? No, I've only moved fast due to the rocket boots. She had no way of knowing whether I was durable enough to survive that.

Holy shit.

Did she just use this much force when patrolling? I knew she had a problem, but how the hell has she not killed anyone yet? How-

"-nap out of it already!" The screaming in my ear, along with the loud 'Crack! Crack! Crack!' knocked me out of my shock.

Oh right, Chris was here. When did he get out of my arms?

Oh god, Vicky almost killed Chris too.

Vicky, no, Glory Girl was approaching us to hit us with the full brunt of her Brute strength despite the fact that we were squishy non-Brutes.

Shit.

I thought all we were risking were some bruises and maybe a broken bone. I was supposed to be worried about Oni Lee or Lung killing me, not Glory Girl squashing me by accident.

This has gotten out of hand and fast.

Keeping our identities a secret would be nice and I'm sure that Chris would violently object, but I wasn't going to risk getting my insides turned into mush on that.

Vicky would probably be mad as hell at me playing vigilante, but I could probably convince her to keep it a secret. Probably.

I looked over at Chris and was about to tell him to stand down when a white and gold blur punched past me and hit him like a car going down the freeway.

I stared blankly at Chris' prone body and tried to convince myself that he was fine. His body was twitching because he was alive and his spine wasn't broken from getting hit by a flying brick at high speeds. That wasn't his armor shorting out and the servos just misfiring, it was twitching.

His armor protected him. He's fine. I thought in blind hope as I stared at him, trying to will him to rise up through sheer belief.

Unfortunately, he remained stubbornly still.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

Glory Girl wasn't going to give me time to speak. She was going to hit first and ask questions later. And I didn't want to roll the die on whether or not she'd hold back enough to leave me alive, let alone conscious.

Fuck it, we'll do this the Chris way. And apparently, the Vicky way. Hit first, talk later.

I pulsed the boots and threw a powerful round kick with a sharp shout. My foot was covered in armored metal, propelled by a Tickertech rocket. I could have kicked through a concrete pillar.

Glory Girl raised an arm and blocked the kick without flinching.

"Seriously?" Glory Girl smirked at me. "You're going to try to kick the Brute? It didn't work the first time, did you think it was going to work the second?"

I answered by jumping off my other leg and twisted my body to throw a second kick. The second kick slammed into Glory Girl's head, about as effective as a spitball. Glory Girl grabbed onto my boots as I fell onto the ground in a heap.

"Man, I thought Tinkers were supposed to be smart." Glory Girl mocked me, her grip denting the Tinkertech boots as she began to ascend into the air.

I had just enough time to flail in the air for a moment as Glory Girl began to spin. My vision became a whirl of colors before I felt her let go. Tumbling through the air, I hit the ground and barely managed to turn it into a painful roll rather than a painful splat.

My head rang like a church bell and I wasn't sure if my ribs were broken or if hitting the ground had just knocked the wind out of every sail in my body.

My lungs burned as they tried to will oxygen back into my body. I forced my body to uncurl and struggled to get back to my feet. It took a few tries, but I eventually succeeded.

My vision swam, and for a brief moment I panicked at the thought that I could suddenly see Glory Girl's emotional aura. No, my brain was just knocked around for a bit and needed a moment to refocus.

But I didn't need emotional vision to tell what Glory Girl was feeling. She was floating triumphantly above me, a smirk on her face as she effortlessly wielded the trash can she had thrown at me a minute ago.

"Looks like it's time I took out the trash in Brockton Bay." Glory Girl quipped before pulling back and chucking the metal tube at me with body crushing force.

She probably thought that I was too banged up to dodge.

Thankfully, she was wrong.

I had rocket boots. Said rocket boots didn't need me to do much to activate.

The roar of the boots and shattering crunch of metalon brick just below me thankfully covered my profanity.

I hit the ground in a heap and scrambled back to my feet just in time to pulse the rockets again. I leaped over a charging Glory Girl.

"All the dodging was fun at first, but it's starting to get annoying." Glory Girl said with a huff.

This was probably where I was supposed to have time to quip something back. Maybe even pull off my hood and turn this fight into a conversation. Sadly, life always finds a way to piss all over my plans.

"Help!"

"Fuck!"

"Fucking capes. Who the hell is fighting in the middle of the night, Michin-nyun!!"

The world suddenly expanded beyond just Glory Girl, and I looked around with clear eyes. The street was alight with yelling and screaming. All the windows were lit up and I could see people poking their heads out of doors or windows. Some were pointing and yelling and I could even see one particularly brave teen trying to record this on their phone.

Holy shit, there are people in the city.

I twisted my head and looked at the building behind me. The trashcan Glory Girl had thrown had taken a chunk out of the building. I could see people inside the building yelling and screaming even as more parts of the building collapsed around them.

We had to get them out of there.

"Shit shit shit! Keep her busy!" Chris screamed as he ran toward the hole.

Oh good. He's alive.

Focus. Rescuing people comes first.

Or at least, that's what I thought. Glory Girl seemed to have other priorities.

"Stop!" Glory Girl tried to grab Chris. He responded by tossing a small cylinder over his shoulder, not even pausing to look back. Glory Girl tried to barrel past it, trusting her barrier to take care of anything Chris threw at her.

She was not prepared for the cylinder to explode into a cloud of mist. So she flew right into a cloud of pepper spray.

"Shit!" Glory Girl screamed and flailed in the air.

I couldn't believe that she still wanted to fight. I glanced over at the building. Chris was helping people out of the building and propped up a wall with a weird gizmo. But otherwise, it looked stable.

Fine, Chris can take care of that. I'll keep Glory Girl off his back.

I started to harass Glory Girl. Quick circling steps to always keep out of her way and constantly darting in and out of her range. Occasionally throwing a jab or a kick to keep her attention.

"Argh!" Glory Girl screamed, throwing wild attacks in my general direction as the pepper spray burned her senses.

I danced around her blind swipes at me. A snap kick ineffectively slammed into her stomach before I pulled back to avoid the retaliatory haymaker. I ducked underneath a half blind tackle and threw a rabbit punch at her back. My knuckles protested that one. Right, no punching the impenetrable barrier.

My world narrowed down to Glory Girl, the roar of the rocket boots and the sharp pain of striking an unmovable object.

I was thankful that Chris had put inertia dampeners in the boots, because I was pretty sure I would have broken something kicking her barrier at full force so many times.

"You fucking bastard!" Glory Girl tried to snatch my foot after blocking a kick, but I made sure to blast the rockets to retreat.

Still, we reached a stalemate. Chris's pepper spray meant that Glory Girl was half blind and needed to fight defensively. However, I couldn't manage to do more than tag her barrier before she moved out of reach.

Even worse, while it was technically a stalemate, Glory Girl, half blind, was still at an advantage. I was hitting her over and over again, but I was probably hurting my own body more than her with each strike. She just needed me to screw up a single time and the fight would be over.

Secondly, stamina was quickly becoming an issue. Adrenaline had been flowing rather liberally through my veins, keeping the pain at bay and letting me keep up the breakneck assault without pause, but it was only a matter of time before my body began to fail.

I just needed it to last a little bit longer.

Ducking into a rocket assisted slide, just in time to avoid a wild punch that would have cracked my ribs, I tapped the rockets to kill my momentum. My ankles screamed as I pivoted on a dime and boosted into a rocket assisted dash back at Glory Girl.

I stomped on the ground and threw all my momentum into my right foot, trying to blast Glory Girl back with a side kick.

I may as well have tried to punt a mountain for about as effective it was.

It probably would have been easier on my legs too. Since this final kick seemed to have been the final straw. I tried to pull my leg back, but was met with a flare of pain and rebellion. Whatever mix of adrenaline, foolhardy courage, and pure guts had been fueling my offense had finally tapped out and my body was calling in the debt.

"Shit." I gasped in pain as all the muscles in my legs started to light up like fireworks. It was like the world's most painful set of dominos, the pain started at my feet and shot up through my spine.

Unfortunately, my opponent was not nearly as spent as I was.

"There you are." Glory Girl snarled as her hands snapped down and grabbed my foot in a vice grip. Metal groaned and sparks flew as she crushed the rocket boot. I tried to pull my leg back, but it may as well have been embedded in concrete. I threw a wild jab at her face as a last resort, but all that did was bruise one of my knuckles against her face. I couldn't really tell, since her face was bright red and swelling from the pepper spray, but I thought she gave me a wicked smile. "Hang tight."

Shit.

Glory Girl grabbed my leg with both arms and heaved up. I had the horrible feeling of vertigo and my body in the air against my will before gravity got a hard assist as Glory Girl pulled me back down.

I slammed into the ground. Hard.

The rest of the assault was nothing but colors and pain. I imagine that she let me go after the first slam since only my back was a blooming flower of pain, but considering how that was spreading out to my entire body, I couldn't be sure.

I felt Glory Girl release my leg. I tried to get up to follow, but all I succeeded in doing was cough up some phlegm and roll onto my side.

My head swam and I couldn't tell which direction was up. My hands could feel the ground, but my brain whirled, told me that up was down and decided that collapsing into a heap would be a better idea than standing.

Standing wasn't an option. Fine, I'll use this opportunity to look around.

Glory Girl was still standing over me. She was looking at someone else and yelling something while gesturing wildly. My ears were still ringing like church bells, so I had no idea what she was saying. All I knew was that she was distracted.

I used every last bit of strength left in my body to try to throw one final kick at her, full of defiance and grit.

What I managed was to weakly lift my one remaining functional rocket boot and press it limply against her left leg.

Oh well. That'll do.

The roar of the rocket boot filled the air one last time along with the crack of what I assumed was the boot finally giving up the ghost.

Unfortunately for me, inertia is a bitch. I had activated the rocket so all that force went back up my body and threw it backwards. Since I was lying in a heap on the ground, that meant I had blasted my body into a slide down the road. It wasn't even in a straight line as I did not have enough muscle control to keep my leg straight. So like one of those colorful tops, I was sent whirling down the road.

Ow.

I groaned weakly from the few feet I slid back and just did my best to gulp as much oxygen as I could fit into my body. Lifting my left leg two feet into the air shouldn't have taken that much effort, but I couldn't do anything more than just lay on the ground and try to ooze into the many cracks of the poorly maintained street.

After an eternity of suffering, I managed to lift my head up to see Glory Girl lying on the ground.

What the hell?

What did I miss?

"Good shit!" I felt something grab me and drag me roughly and unceremoniously across the pavement. "I saw you take out her barrier with the rocket boot and I got her. I fucking got her! Stun bolt will only last a minute. So time to move move move!"

Oh. Chris must have tagged her with a stun bolt. Did I damage her barrier enough for that? My head swam. I couldn't remember how Glory Girl's barrier worked.

"Come on, man. We need to gogogo!" Chris' voice said somewhere above me as he tried to pull me to my feet.

I wanted to stand and walk under my own power, but sadly, my body just continued to ooze downward.

"Chris…" I called out weakly.

"Move dammit!" Chris complained.

"Can't," I managed to gasp as my head lolled limply against him. "I think… broken…"

"Shit. What's broken?" He didn't sound overly concerned, but that was fine, I could see it in his aura. What a pretty shade of yellow.

My brain attempted to fire some synapses to do a status check. All I got were fireworks, both inside my body and in my mind.

Ow.

"Lots." I gasped.

I heard a number of clicks, then something wrapped around my chest. A moment later, I was no longer being dragged across the asphalt. My body felt weightless like I was floating. My muscles seemed to finally release their tension as they no longer needed to hold me up and it was a sweet relief.

The lack of pain was beyond any bliss imaginable and my brain could not handle it. After a long night of staking out, fighting, pain, and struggle, the flood of endorphins was the final straw. My vision went black.

 

[Santo]

Aight. Posting this early cause busy day tomorrow, also Merry Christmas/Happy Hannukah, and a happy Festivus (Hero told me to write that last one. I have no idea what it means).

Hope you lot like. Do feel free to chat about what you liked and didn't and stuff. That helps a lot with motivation.

...Yeah.

---

Derail III.VI

With one final heave, I deposited my extremely lazy and possibly quadriplegic partner in vigilantism onto the bed in my garage. Thankfully, despite my constant paranoia, no one followed us after that disaster of a night.

I still half expected Vicky to show up on my front door to finish what she started. Now, onto brighter news.

According to my doctorate in human booboos that I very scientifically granted myself. My ribs were not broken, the carbide-ceramic plate that could tank a .50 caliber slug with only slight flinching which protected my chest, had utterly shattered and thus saved me from Glory Girl caving my ribcage in.

This meant two things, one, I'd have to scrap the plate I'd prepared for Dean's armor so I could repair my own in time for our raid, and two, my chest was one singularly big purple bruise. I looked like I'd picked a fight with a truck.

Which, objectively, was better than Dean, who looked like he'd picked a fight with an eighteen wheeler.

All things considered? I'd call today's operation a tentative success. We'd achieved our objectives, we hadn't gotten caught by the authorities, and despite Collateral Damage Barbie's stupidity in knocking out a wall, there had been no serious casualties among the tenants. Plenty of minor injuries, but no casualties.

Yeah, definitely a success.

Almost as if to prove my point, the corpse cosplayer next to me showcased how alive he was by groaning and weakly trying to lift himself up. I could even see his arms and legs spasm a bit, so no broken neck.

Success.

I grabbed the belt I'd prepared for this very occasion, and put it in front of his face. "Bite down, I need to clean the scrapes and sanitize them and it's gonna hurt like a bitch. It's full of grit, asphalt, and fuck knows what. And that's how you get gangrene."

Dean's eyes were a little glazed, but he followed orders like a good drone and bit down. And with the belt in mouth, he only screamed a little while I cleaned his wounds.

Well no, he screamed a lot. But at least it was muffled enough that the neighbors wouldn't investigate or call the cops…probably.

Another success. Man, we're really racking up the wins!

"Fuck." Dean spat the belt out. "Oh my god, please tell me you have drugs."

"Yup. I've got the good shit. But you can't have any till I'm finished."

A small sickly yellow orb weakly flickered around Dean's left hand. "I will make you cry… like a bitch… if you don't give me… some damn painkillers."

If he didn't look like he'd have trouble hitting a particularly slow witted sloth, that would be an intimidating threat.

I bopped him softly on the head. "Not being an ass, I need you cognizant enough to be able to tell me if I got all the shit out. The meds I'm gonna give you work under the principle that you can't be in pain if you're in a medically induced coma."

"Excuse me!?" Dean suddenly made a lot more effort towards pointing that yellow orb at my face. Oh, he's panicking. Right, most people don't enjoy being drugged into a coma.

"It's called hyperbole, ya doofus. They'll knock you out for most of the day, and you'll be loopy for hours when you wake up. Also dry-mouth, but that's not important."

The yellow orb flickered and disappeared. Dean stopped being a baby, bit down on the belt again and let me get all the shit out of his cuts.

I worked diligently at cleaning his cuts. I did not try to cause him pain, but I wasn't being as gentle as I could be, my arms felt like they had lead weights attached. "Good news, it's the weekend. Bad news, our assault on Lung's meeting is going to take place on a school night. Also, we don't have that much time to recover from our run-in with your dumbass blonde girly-friend."

"I'm not sure you should be mocking the girl that literally wiped the floor with the both of us." Dean hissed around the belt between his teeth.

I snorted. "Well, she's not here and I'm not gonna tell her I spoke bad about her behind her back, after she nearly turned me into chunky salsa with a fucking dumpster. It's a miracle she hasn't killed anyone… and that miracle's name is Amy."

"That…" Dean squeezed his eyes tightly, not sure if because I hit a sensitive spot or because of the mental anguish of the fact he has a murderess-to-be as his girlfriend. "That makes sense. I'm not happy about it, but it makes sense. Not even counting the building, any one of those hits would have done major damage if we didn't have your Tinker Tech."

"Yup. One of the plethora of reasons I don't like her. Though I think she got better after a few years as a…uhh…cronenberg?"

"Wonderful. I'll add it to my long list of people that I need to help before we get ourselves killed or arrested." Dean griped. He closed his eyes for a moment before shooting me a sharp look. "Tonight was a shit show."

Dammit. No, no. Reject reality, substitute your own. "I see today as an absolute success."

I decided to take Dean's incredulous look as him being supportive of my statement.

"Dude. I'm pretty sure I was about an inch away from being crippled and I wasn't able to even make a dent on Glory Girl." Dean looked shaken by his run in with a Brute 5. Which, fair. Brutes are kind of bullshit.

Fuckin' Capes.

Wait…I'm a Cape.

Fuckin' Capes!

"Bah! We achieved all of our strategic objectives, protected the populace from reckless use of powers, took down the shittier Alexandria through the power of friendship, teamwork, and this gun I found. Wins all around!"

"Yeah, well, I'd rather not chance our encounter against either Lung or Bakuda on the power of friendship." Dean shot back.

"We also have teamwork and firearms. Those are very clutch. We'll be fine!"

"Great. How effective are those against a dragon?"

"Depends on how early I can put a slug through his Corona." I said as I dug the bloodstained towel against a particularly stubborn patch of tar and grit.

"Fuck!" Dean had zero appreciation for the work I was doing to keep him healthy. "Please tell me you have a plan B against Lung. Because my only plan is to shoot him with enough good vibes that he can't turn into a murder dragon."

I stopped scrabbling at his back for a few moments. Well, that's an idea. Not the good vibes, that's just Dean being an idiot.

The question is. Could I turn a plasma cannon into a delivery system for Dean-Juice?

No, that sounds awful…Gallant-Juice. Perfect.

I would need to build a new focusing lens, and entirely new capacitors. And I'd have to make sure I could swap them out easily for a more conventionally destructive payload. Just in case Plan 'stop being squeamish and kill the fucker' turns out to be the better option.

"Hey, hey. No Tinker fugue when you're cleaning out my wounds." Dean's voice snapped me out of my happy place.

I blinked away the blueprints. "I have a plan B." Now. "But I'mma need your credit card. A few cases of energy drinks, and I'll need you to run interference with anyone who wants to contact me for the whole weekend."

"So you need me to lie and manipulate the rest of the Wards and possibly our boss?" Dean said it like I was asking for something unreasonable. What a hypocrite, he was a manipulative asshole, this was right up his alley. "I guess I can do that. I'll make something up about your father. That'll probably keep them from asking too many questions, since I can say I didn't want to pry."

See, he barely had to think to come up with a workable lie that took advantage of Dead-Chris' awkward relationship with his father! Manipulative bastard.

"Also gonna need you around say…probably most of Sunday. Which, hey, drugs! You'll have to stick around anyways. Also I think I'm done, you still feel anything in there?"

"Thank God." Rude. At worst I only caused Dean a mild amount of agonizing discomfort. "No, it's fine. Drugs, please give me those." Dean reached out a hand and gestured weakly. "I'll call the PRT after I wake up so I'm not high off my ass while lying."

"Right right. At least we're off duty today." I said and reached for the prescription strength meds I'd appropriated.

I wonder if I should tell Dean that I bought these from a Neonazi at the nicer end of town, so there was only like… a twenty percent chance they were laced with something else. Nah. I'm sure he'll be fine. Worst comes to worst, he has Amy on speed dial.

About ten minutes after Dean took the pills I offered him, he was out like a light. Snoring relatively gently as they did their job.

This called for experimentation.

I gave his back a solid poke and he didn't so much as twitch. Well, that certainly made the next step much easier. I grabbed the spray bottle full of 99% alcohol and sprayed it all over his back. The skin very quickly turned bright red and irritated.

"Yeah…die you fuckin' bacteria. I have become death, destroyer of worlds." I muttered as I gave him a second dose.

Spraying my own scrapes and cuts was a much more painful experience. But that was fine, the pain helped me wake up.

Now that gangrene was no longer a concern, I could focus on the important thing. Tinker Tech. I had a Rage Dragon to counter and limited time to gadget my way to victory.

---

What even was the Alternator Cannon? It looked like Murdered-Chris had tried to make a variable output energy discharger and…something about electrons?

Anyways.

Point was, it was less a cohesive system and more a hodgepodge of five or six different weapons that emulsified into a working cannon…somehow.

I found it offensive. Which was why I was in the middle of tearing it apart to salvage what I could of it. Once Dean woke up, I'd have to see if that other project would work or not.

Hopefully it would, otherwise the new cannon would turn into plan C. And Dean tended to be a little squeamish about the more expedient options.

"Why the hell did Dead-Chris use copper wiring for this?" I complained to the rubber duck sitting on top of my monitor on my desk as I ripped out the copper wiring and tossed it aside.

The rubber duck said nothing, but continued to cheer me on silently.

Seriously. I suspect Chris blew just about all of his Tinkering budget on this piece of shit. Why cheapen out on the goddamn conductors? This thing was liable to melt after a couple shots!

Hrm… do I have any gold jewelry?

Yeeeeeh, I'm sure no one in the family will miss these.

Hrm…

Actually…if I move this here, and grab this thing from there and put it over there, and take these two things and cross them with these three things…yeah, groovy.

And now to make it so I can switch these parts out in a jiffy. Yeaaaaaah. That's the good stuff.

Hrm… this needs more plasma.

Bitches love plasma.

I needed to get a battery, I'll need the acid inside it to strip this, but in the meantime this goes there…yeaaaaaah. That's the good stuff.

Where did I leave my batteries?

Oh, there was a battery in the smoke detector. Could I use those?

Hrm…

I stepped away from the table, the guts of the Cannon spread around it, and the floor, and through the door from the garage to the living room, and most of the kitchen. I walked past the blonde whose mouth was hanging slackly, her eyes wide as saucers…wait.

There is a smoke detector, bonus points, I now have more wiring and another bit of silicate. Yeeeeeh.

I moved back to the Cannon and stopped next to the girl. Hrm…I need more gold.

I looked at the girl. The tiara had gold. Not much, it's probably only gold plated, but I can make it work.

I took the tiara. Something grabbed me and stopped me as I tried to get back to the cannon. Batting at it did not make it go away.

Hrm… suboptimal. There are a lot of different materials in this thing. I need only the gold for semi-maximal conductivity. I'd have to separate the metals. Then again…gold was easy to melt…I'd have to alloy it with something, make it sturdier…yeaaaah. Rugged is good, rugged is life. Yeaaaaaah.

I came to as something lifted me off the ground and shook me violently enough to rattle my brain inside my skull.

"What the fuck!?" I asked adroitly.

"Stop ignoring me!" Victoria Fucking Dallon screamed as she shook me.

A jolt of fear ran up my spine, I did my best to turn it into anger and only partially succeeded. I pushed away at her face, it didn't do much more than satisfy my ego. "Victoria!? What the unliving fuck are you doing in my house!? When did you even fucking get here!?"

Wait…she was here, and Dean was over there, and all my Vigilante Gear was…oh.

Oh no.

"Oh my God, Dean!" She screamed and dropped me to run over to Dean, who was passed out face down on the mattress I dragged in here because my secondary lab needed a bed more than my bedroom did. "What happened!? Did you run into a villain!?"

"Nah, we ran into a Hero." My mouth said without asking my brain for permission.

"You what? Wait… his back, and all these bruises." Vicky said slowly. I could see the gears moving in her head. Shit, I forgot that she's actually pretty smart for a dumb blonde.

Fucking hell Dean. I told you to put on a shirt!

"Those uhh…he uhh…he fell down some stairs."

"He fell down the stairs." Vicky said slowly, glaring at me. I could feel the insect part of my brain start to gibber in fear. God damn fear aura!

"Yep…he fell backwards. Down two flights. When we went uhh…skating. Which is how he got scratched up." If I continued to double down on the lie. It would work eventually.

Victoria began grinding her teeth. "He got brutalized, scrapped up and almost died, from ice skating?"

"Rollerblade skating. Is that how you say that? That's how you say that."

"Dean can't skate." Victoria growled.

"And now you know why he got hurt. I told him not to, but nobody ever listens to me."

Her glare intensified, as did the feeling of dread emanating from her. "And those rocket boots that Hyung or whatever used to fight me last night that I can clearly see are on the table over there, they had nothing to do with it?"

I looked. Yep, those were Dean's rocket boots. They were dented to shit because Dean has no respect for my equipment. Oh no, wait, I could see an outline of Vicky's hand on the metal.

As was often the case; It was all Vicky's fault.

"Those are mine." I lied quickly. Oh no, wait, I'm lending him those boots, they are mine! Not technically lying for the win!

"They're yours?"

"Yep."

"They're too big."

"I'm a growing boy."

Vicky looked back down at Dean. "And that cannon over there?"

"Pet project." I shot back.

"And that shredded, bloodstained red hoodie also worn by Hyung?"

I looked at the garment in question. "That's mine too."

Wait, all this does is incriminate me. This helps no one. Oh well, in for a penny.

Vicky seemed to be growing increasingly frustrated with my nonsensical answers. "And that armor on the corner that is worn by the asshole that shot me yesterday?"

I looked at the corner she mentioned, the component pieces of my armor sat on their stand, awaiting my TLC.

Shit.

"That…could be anyone's." Maybe if I kept saying these things fast enough, she'll believe them.

Victoria thankfully stopped grilling me and turned back to her injured unconscious boytoy. She placed her hand gently on Dean's face. "Oh my God…I nearly killed Dean."

"AAaaaanyone'sssss." I sibilated.

"And you shot me!" Victoria accused me, deciding that she would rather be angry than worry about Dean.

"I mean, hypothetically, if you had gotten in an altercation with two people, one of whom just happened to shoot you with a fully non-lethal, mostly non-side effect causing, stun round. I'm sure it was in self defense after you used lethal force on them. Clearly showing a level of restraint some people lack." I mentally patted myself on the back for both being completely honest, in a manner of speaking, and for not devolving into profanity.

Vicky glared at me.

My gorge rose up my throat, a hand crushed down on my neck, the room's walls bore down on me, darkness flooded into my vision as the certainty of my death squeezed down on my heart. Something divine had appeared in the room and had found me wanting.

I told divinity to fuck off. In fact, fuck metaphors.

"And for fuck's sake, reign in your goddamn Aura!" I roared.

The fear I felt pulsed higher for a second before it vanished like it'd never been. I tried to control my breathing, reminding myself that filling her guts full of lead would be a bad idea, even if I couldn't for the life of me remember exactly why.

I enjoyed the quiet for several seconds as Vicky cradled Dean. Then remembered one crucial detail.

"Also, for the record. You also almost killed some Tinker Vigilante…who is not me." I hedged.

"Why were the two of you out there?" Vicky rudely ignored my attempts to obfuscate my not-so-secret identity.

"We weren't." When in doubt, quadruple down. "But, hypothetically speaking. If there were some new intrepid, valorous, handsome, young strapping vigilante lads out there, beating up Asian people –in a completely non-racist way for non-racist reasons. Non racistally…racistcaly?"

"Get on with it." Vicky growled.

I continued, gracefully ignoring her interruption. "Anyways. It might stand to reason that these two unnamed Vigilantes may have been looking for information that could have led to the capture and neutralization of Bakuda, and maybe, maybe Lung if they're lucky."

"Then why were you protecting those gangsters!?" Vicky demanded.

"We didn't. Because we weren't out there." As long as I denied reality hard enough, it would eventually obey. "But hypothetically." Vicky growled again. I should maybe start using a different synonym from now on. "The two intrepid, unnamed Vigilantes may have assured the ABB guys, most of whom were drafted against their will once Bakuda put bombs in their heads or the heads of their babies and grandmothers, that they would deal with the problem and bring Bakuda down so they could go back to not being gang conscripts. And them being caught and going to jail, would have given the larger ABB a warning. And with the fact that just about all of their new recruits want Bakuda and Lung dead, said ABB conscripts may or may not still be feeding the two unnamed Vigilantes information when they can and it is safe for them to do so. A process that a certain skinny, preppy, tiara-wearing, cape fluttering, miniskirt-swishing, dumbass-blonde white girl interrupted, then nearly killed the two of us and a bunch of civilians to boot!"

Vicky stared open-mouthed at me as I took a deep gasp for air. I ran over what I said in my head as I tried to catch my breath after that impromptu rant.

Wait…

"Uhh…I mean nearly killed the two intrepid handsome unknown and unnamed Vigilantes. Well, nearly killed one and left the other in crippling pain."

Great recovery. Racking up all the wins today.

Vicky stared down at Dean and I could see her eyes quickly assess all the scrapes, bandages and blisters that were oozing blood. She stood up. "I'm getting Amy."

She immediately flew off, narrowly missing the wall as she flew out the door.

Huh, I probably should have stopped her.

Okay…suboptimal. But now we won't have to worry about recovery times!

"This is still a win," I said with a nod, then turned to Dean's unconscious body. "Right?"

Serendipitously, Dean groaned.

I magnanimously took that as agreement. "Right!"

There was the added problem of needing to keep Victoria and her time bomb of a sister from turning us in. Which would probably get us in a lot of trouble, and in the worst case scenario get us jailed for the foreseeable future. Oh well, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

Actually, I have a better idea. I proclaim that this is officially Dean's problem.

After all, he did say that he was going to take care of all the interpersonal stuff. I mean, I'm building all this Tinker tech to take care of Lung. Dean really should carry some of his own weight.

Which means I don't need to think about the clusterfuck of convincing two members of New Wave to not screw us over, and can get back to gadgeting. Lung wasn't going to defeat himself after all!

"Yeah. Everything's turning out Chris."

On the bright side, Vicky forgot her tiara.

Hrm…better get to melting that down. Those conductors won't alloy themselves.

I vanished the feeling that I was forgetting something important as I got back to work.

I held part of the guts of the cannon up at Dean. "Oi! You think this needs more plasma?"

Dean's unconscious body groaned again.

"You're entirely correct my good sir! Bitches love more plasma!"

 

[Heroslayer]

Author's Note:

Hero: Been a while. I had some changes to my daily life that pushed this chapter back a bit. It doesn't help that I have mixed feelings about this chapter.

Oh well. Let's see where this trainwreck goes.

---

Derail 3.7

There was something painful about going from blurred drug induced restful sleep and immediately snapping to wide awake because someone flushed all the drugs out of your body and replaced it with adrenaline to snap you into consciousness.

"Shit!" My brain synapses fired rapidly and tried to make sense of the abrupt change. I choked on my saliva and swung an arm in blind panic. It hit something hard and I swore as now I had to deal with the pain in my hand in addition to the catatonic colors and noise bombarding my senses.

Oh god, I'm having a drug trip. The drugs must have been bad. Why did I trust Chris with my dosage?

I attempted to curl up into a ball and huddle as my world would turn into a chaotic heap of my subconscious.

No wait, things were calming down. In fact, I could actually feel my heart rate slow down from 'Oh god, I'm going to die' to my resting heart rate.

Now that I no longer felt like my senses were being assaulted by the world, I took stock.

I was still in a garage with piles of mostly finished Tinkertech crap all over the place. Chris was half buried in some big cannon and was either taking it apart or putting it together. I could never tell.

All of that is good. I expected that.

What I did not expect was Vicky floating next to the bed, looking like she had slept with all her makeup on and never got around to cleaning it up, holding my newly bruised hand.

"Dean!" Vicky shouted and lunged at me.

"Wait!" I yelped and frantically tried to keep Vicky away. My ribs were cracked and I was covered in cuts and Vicky was a bear hugger. This would only end in pain.

I flinched and waited for the end.

Huh. No pain. Only warmth and softness. That's weird. I'm pretty sure I'm more bruise than teenager at the moment. This should hurt like hell, but all I feel is Vicky's slightly too tight hug and something squeezing my hand.

I looked down and saw a hand grasping mine tightly. Following the arm up, I found a two toned green aura of relief and familiar jealousy.

"Amy?" I gaped at the healer. "What? How? When? Why?"

Neither of them gave me an answer. Vicky was too busy hugging me while apologizing and Amy was too busy being relieved and jealous and then being angrily depressed about being jealous.

Why were the two of them here? This is our secret base. If they're here, they'll see everything.

I looked around the room again. Yes, all of our vigilante gear is out in the open. There was zero way that Vicky did not see all of that and connected the dots. Despite what the PHO liked to meme, Vicky was not in fact a dumb blonde.

I turned to Chris and snarled. "What happened?!"

He ignored me and welded something inside the cannon, whispering softly. "Yeeeeeh."

"Chris?" That was not the sarcastic, biting comment dodging responsibility that I expected.

"He's in a Tinker fugue." Amy helpfully explained, looking ready to be done with this entire situation. "He barely was able to give me permission to heal him before going back to work."

That made sense. The bulk of his emotional aura was all focus, except for a mix of worry, fear, and panic that had been shoved to the side. I think his brain was too occupied with Tinkering to actually process emotions. It was a little off putting.

So he was going to be absolutely zero help in this conversation. Great, all on me. Wonderful.

"Okay," I patted Vicky on the back as I tried to think of a way out of this situation. "Okay."

I needed to do damage control. First thing's first. I needed to figure out how much Vicky and Amy actually knew. This would be a great time for Chris to be lucid, but sadly that was not an option. So I was forced to work blind.

"Uh, so, I've been unconscious for a little bit. Last thing I remember was passing out on Saturday a little banged up and it's…" I said, trailing off, hoping that one of the two would fill in the silence. Amy, thankfully having good bedside manners, acquiesced.

"It's still Saturday." Amy answered, while keeping a firm grip on my hand. "Vicky came and got me after she found you unconscious and mangled in Chris' garage."

Well, at least I wasn't unconscious for that long. "Yeah… about that. I got into a fight and well, it didn't end well for me."

That's it. Start with little truths as a foundation and then build a house of lies on top of it. Easy.

"What did you try to fight, a truck?" Amy asked, annoyance and impatience really starting to build up from my delaying tactics.

"Dean, I almost killed you." Vicky sobbed into my neck.

"What?" Amy gasped, completely surprised by the sudden confession.

Well, shit.

"I mean, if we're being honest. I think I came away, pretty alright." I averted my eyes when Vicky looked up at me with accusing eyes. Yeah, even I couldn't sell that lie.

"You had several cracked vertebrae and it was easier to count how many of your ribs weren't broken." Amy quickly retorted, making Vicky flinch and tighten her grip on me to nearly painful levels. "If I hadn't been around you would have been in bed for weeks before walking normally, if you ever recovered."

"Okay, so maybe I was a little banged up. In hindsight, trying to fight Glory Girl without my power armor was a poor decision." I agreed ruefully and futilely tried to pull out of Vicky's grip. "But we can all agree that everyone in that fight made some poor decisions."

"Yeeeeeh." Came from the table's direction.

"See, Chris agrees. It was everyone's fault." He would probably deny that, but he was too deep in the Tinker Fugue to ruin my argument.

"Why were you fighting Vicky!?" Amy sputtered, looking rapidly between Vicky and me.

Wait, did she not know that? I saw genuine shock in her aura. She really didn't know that. Shit. What else does she not know?

"I mean, it was less of a fight and more of me running repeatedly into the brick wall that is Glory Girl." I tried to downplay the brutality that Vicky laid on me. "How did you think I got that injured?"

Amy let go of my hand to cross her arms. "She was babbling and crying so all I got was something about roller skating and older brothers. I just let her drag me here because it was easier than trying to argue with her."

She explained it tiredly, like it was a regular occurrence. The dark part of my brain whispered that it probably was.

"I said I beat up Hyung." Vicky tried to correct Amy.

"Look, I don't want to know what weird roleplay the two of you go through." Amy said through grit teeth and full of disgust and envy.

"What?" Vicky blushed and pushed me away. Thankfully, not with her Brute strength.

"Hyung means older brother." I pointed out. "Korean gang members call senior members older brother, or Hyung."

"Wait, you joined the ABB?!" Vicky spun around and grabbed my shoulders. She began to shake me like she could rattle the answers out of me. "How did you join a gang? Why did you join a gang?!"

"You did what?" Amy was going to get emotional whiplash with all the revelations she was getting today. Just like I was going to get actual whiplash if Vicky didn't stop shaking me.

"Okay, stop!" I barked, pushing as much authority as I could into my voice.

Vicky thankfully stopped shaking me in response. She let go of my shoulders and floated up so she could loom over me. Amy moved next to her and also loomed ominously over me. Geez, these two really were sisters.

"Talk." They said in eerie unison.

"Yeeeeeeh." Chris unhelpfully agreed with the two of them. Fine, I'm just going to say that he gave me permission to tell the truth. Not like he'll remember if he did or not.

"Okay, so it was the middle of the night and we found some ABB gangsters…"

—

I sighed as I finished explaining the entire night to the Dallon sisters. I tried to keep the nitty gritty details on the fight with Glory Girl sparse, but Amy was surprisingly insistent on hearing a blow by blow playback. Still, now that I actually put it into words, our plan wasn't that bad, right?

"That was the dumbest plan I've ever heard." Amy pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Hey. It wasn't that bad of a plan."

"Your grand plan was to beat up ABB members until one of them told you where you could find Bakuda. The same ABB members that all held bombs in their heads that Bakuda could have triggered at any moment." Amy mercilessly poked holes in our grand plan for solving Brockton Bay's Bomber problem.

"You know, when you say it like that, it does sound a little stupid." I weakly agreed. "But in our defense, the plan was working fine, until… you know."

"You ran into a Cape." Amy shook her head. "In Brockton Bay, which has more Capes per capita than any other city in the US."

"Yeah… maybe the plan could have used a few revisions."

"So this was just, what, some teenage boy stupidity?" Vicky floated restlessly back and forth. She couldn't even look at me for more than a second before snarling and restarting her flying back and forth. "The two of you thought that you'd fix the entire city by yourselves?"

"No." I snapped back. "But no one in the Protectorate was doing anything. Just patrolling and waiting wasn't going to stop Bakuda. So we did the proactive thing and went looking for her ourselves."

"Proactive." Vicky scoffed, "I'm pretty sure you mean stupid?"

"Excuse me?"

"So the two of you find Bakuda. Then what?" Vicky began building up steam, not letting me get a word in to defend myself. "She's going to be surrounded by hostages and probably with Oni Lee and Lung next to her. Were the two of you just going to fight all of them?"

"No. Do you think we're that stupid?" I spat back.

"The two of you thought that fighting one of the strongest capes in the Bay was a good idea. So yes!" Vicky angrily threw her arms up into the air, "You know how strong I am, Dean. What were you thinking?"

"That I was going to run away!" I snapped. "That I could try to get a clean getaway from a fellow hero and that even if I did get caught, I could fess up after you gave me a few lumps. I expected that New Wave's Poster Girl would show some restraint and not hospitalize a couple of capes that were just running away."

"You attacked me!" Vicky ignored my point.

"With a kick!" I threw my arms into the air. "You are a Brute!"

"You had rocket shoes!"

"Which did nothing!" I continued to press. "I attacked a Brute who can and has taken a truck to the face and walked away unscathed. You're not exactly an unknown in the city. Everyone knows you can take a hit!"

"And that makes it okay?!"

"Yes! No!" I took a breath. "I don't know. But it doesn't mean you can start hitting people like they're Brutes just because they hit you hard. You could kill someone. You almost killed me! But it's all good. Glory Girl has a safety net. How many times has Amy bailed you out from a murder charge?"

I fought to catch my breath. I didn't mean to say that last part.

Vicky flinched back as if I had stuck her.

I could see her mouth open and close, arguments rising and dying against my anger. I almost wished my damn powers would work on her so I could see if she was actually guilty about hurting me or if she was only guilty because she had hurt me.

The thought had crossed my mind after I fought her last night and a disturbed part of me needed to know. "This isn't the first time this has happened, you not pulling your punches, is it?" I probed.

"This isn't about me." Vicky quickly deflected my question and desperately turned to her sister for support. "Amy, back me up here."

I could actually see Amy's emotions at war with herself, which all but confirmed my suspicions. I wondered how much she was complicit in this.

"Vicky's right." Amy masked her discomfort and frustration and sided with her sister. "We're talking about the two of you almost got yourselves killed."

By Vicky, I almost pressed, but kept my lips shut.

"Why didn't you just tell me it was you?" Vicky shouted. I wondered, is the harshness in her voice due to the betrayal or because I had tried to turn this argument against her? Again, that unkind voice in my brain said it was both.

"It's called a secret identity for a reason, Vicky." I said as if I was explaining a concept to a five year old. "I know it's not a New Wave's thing, but the rest of the cape world runs on this idea."

"Except I know your identity, Dean." Vicky swung her hand out to the side and I resisted the urge to flinch at how close her hand passed by my face.

"You know Gallant is Dean, but…" I shook my head. No, arguing that point isn't going to go anywhere. "Look, I wasn't thinking. There was a lot of adrenaline pumping in me and-"

"You're lying." Vicky interrupted me before I could redirect the conversation. "Do you think I can't tell when you're lying? I know you, Dean. You don't act without thinking. You always have a reason for doing something. So why?"

Vicky floated down so she could look me in the eye. "Why didn't you trust me?"

I stared past Vicky and kept my face stoic, trying to mask my whirling thoughts. I knew why I didn't trust her. It was because she was just a dumb teenager and I didn't trust her as far as I could throw her. But I couldn't say that, I wouldn't say that.

I shook my head.

"Look, I wasn't thinking. I made a bad choice. It was dumb and I should have trusted you. I won't do it again." I took the easy way out and lied. I tried to turn away but Vicky grabbed my shoulder to keep me from looking away.

"No. We're not going to just brush this off."

"Why not? If we're going to ignore the other problem, why not this one?" I demanded, throwing her own deflection back at her face.

That was a dumb move, but I was too angry to take it back.

"This isn't about me." Vicky shook her head. "This is about you almost dying rather than just telling me you were a vigilante."

"Why are you so obsessed with this? It was dumb. I get it. I apologize."

The silence that fell on the room was suffocating.

This was fine.

We both made some mistakes, but everyone walked away from it.

We can learn from this.

It's fine.

I just wanted this argument to be over.

I ruffled my hair and exhaled, trying to let out some of the tension that was building in my body.

I avoided Vicky's glare, hoping that the bit of hurt in her eyes was just me reading facial expressions wrong.

Amy looked incredibly awkward as she sat between the two of us. I could see a swirl of discomfort, worry, hope, frustration, anger, and concern. This wasn't the first time she had witnessed us argue, but this argument was probably a bit heavier than our usual lighthearted bickering.

Chris was half leaning half sitting on his workbench, breathing deliberately slowly and evenly, finally having pulled his head out of the innards of the big gun he was reassembling. Though his face was impressively stoic as he stared disconcertingly at Vicky, it did little to hide his worry, anger, and a dangerous amount of fear. All worrying things, but even more so since he had a loaded Tinker Gun in his hands.

When did he exit his Tinkering Fugue? No, I don't have time to worry about that. I needed to calm him down.

"Hey, Chris." I tried for a jovial tone, but for once, my mouth failed me and the words came weak and full of worry. "How about we put the gun down?"

"Victoria." Chris grounded out, ignoring my suggestion, the corner of his eye twitching and the veins on his temple throbbing from fear fueled anger. "Control. Your. Fucking. Aura."

Vicky paused for a moment before she almost gleefully turned to the fresh and much more enticing target.

"You." Vicky floated off the bed until she was staring down at Chris. "This is all your fault, isn't it."

Chris' fear rose higher, which made the anger he was using to repress it flare stronger.

"Hey, wait-" I tried to step between them, but Vicky just bowled through me.

"Shut up!" "Be silent!" I flinched back as Vicky yelled and Chris hissed at me.

Chris turned back to Vicky and peeled his lips back from his teeth in a display that was most certainly not a smile. "Oh yes. I forced you to try to turn your fuck boy into chunky fucking salsa. I made you ram into me at a hundred and twenty seven miles an hour. I demanded you demolish an apartment building with plenty of families still inside. I did all this, it's all my fault you brainless blonde bimbo!"

It was like watching a train wreck. There was something mesmerizing about watching Chris angrily shout all the words I was trying to avoid. I knew that this would end badly. But there was something keeping my mouth shut.

Maybe a part of me wanted this to happen.

So I just waited and let them fight.

"You looked like Villains!" She shouted back.

"So that gives you carte blanche to hit me hard enough to tear my heart out of my chest!?" Chris roared back, spittle flying, he then stepped into Vicky's personal space, his arms spread as if for a hug. "Come on! Give me another! At least this time your enabler is here to make sure you don't suffer the consequences of your actions! When's the last time you pulled her out of doing something important to clean up another of your messes!? I'm going to guess last week!"

Vicky drifted back down to earth, anger and guilt pressing down on her. However, she puffed herself back up. She wouldn't take that from Chris. There was just too much bad blood between them, what with Chris' bad reaction to her aura and his constant sniping at her.

Vicky clenched her fists and for a brief moment, I thought she would take his challenge seriously and pop him like a zit.

It wasn't a gracious thought, but I did.

I wasn't the only one.

"Vicky!" Amy shouted, her voice full of fear and disapproval.

Vicky froze and looked at Amy in surprise. There was a brief moment of confusion before realization hit her.

"I didn't," Vicky looked at Chris who had moved the gun from resting on his leg to pointing at her. His hand was trembling. His whole body quivering as he fought the urge to pull the trigger, fear and anger battling each other.

She looked back at Amy who was just looking disappointed and flinched.

Finally, she looked up at me. Even without my powers, I could see the desperate hope that I would take her side, that I believed in her.

Shamefully, I avoided her gaze.

"I wasn't going to–" Vicky stammered, tears starting to gather in her eyes.

"Vicky." I said softly, raising my hand slowly towards her.

She flinched away from my hand like it was a viper.

"No." She whispered. "No. I wasn't. I didn't. I–"

Whatever she was going to say was lost to the wind as she fled. I had to shield my eyes from the dust cloud that her exit kicked up.

"Vicky!" Amy cried out pausing only to give Chris a death glare, before huffing and running in the direction Vicky had flown off.

Chris for his part, the moment Vicky left, had fallen to his knees like a puppet with its strings cut and alternated gagging and taking deep, gulping breaths. "Fucking Masters!"

I looked away from the empty space where I had reached for Vicky and looked down at Chris before looking back at the door Vicky had just left through.

Chris took a few more deep, timed breaths, his Aura going from uncontrolled sickening swirls to determination crushing down fear and anger remarkably quickly. He then stood up and shook his head.

"Well… that could have gone better." He spat into a trash can. "You know, you were right, I absolutely should leave the 'pehpoling' thing to you, cause man, I suck at it."

"Yeah." I agreed with him quietly. "You really do."

Not that I was as good at it as I thought I was.

He took a few more deep breaths. "We need to move out. They'll probably tattle on us. We can't afford to get caught before Tuesday evening."

I sighed. A part of me wanted to run out and find Vicky. To comfort her and to hash out whatever the building resentment she held for me before Chris had exploded that entire conversation.

The unkind voice in my head whispered that the damage was already done and that I should focus on the bigger picture.

I listened to that unkind voice. I was too tired to think of reconciliation, especially on someone I couldn't read. I just wanted this day to be over.

"Throw whatever you need into a wagon. We'll hide out in a motel or something for a few days." I ordered in a clipped tone. The armor Chris lent me flew through the air as I started to throw things into an easily moved pile. I wasn't going to take no for an answer on this one.

Chris spat again. This time I noticed the spittle was red. "Yeah aight, I know just the place."

I watched Chris start to move his pile of junk onto a cart for a moment before speaking up. "And when this whole bomb thing is all over, the two of us are going to have another talk."

"Oh no, are you breaking up with me?" Chris said flippantly, a small spark of amusement in his Aura. I ignored the small spark of fear that drifted alongside it.

"Depends on the talk." My voice on the other hand was flat.

Chris sobered and looked down at his box of junk. "For what it's worth. I am sorry. I didn't want it to get as far as it did. But it's difficult to think when the only urge in your mind is 'kill the threat before it kills you.'" He tossed another bit of scrap into the box. "Not an excuse. Just a fact."

My face may as well have been made of granite as I moved to help him. "Like I said, we'll have that talk after this is over."

I would listen to the unkind voice in my head for the moment. People were dying and I didn't have the luxury of being kind to everyone. But as soon as I could afford it, I would beat kindness into this damned world, even if I needed to break people to do it.

For now, we had a Dragon to slay and a bomber to catch. And we needed to do it on a limited budget, while on the run from friends, allies, and family.

Because nothing in this Godforsaken world can be easy.

 

[Santo]

Behold! Next chapter.

It's supposed to be up on Friday. But I've got a game Friday and won't make it home till like, two in the morning Saturday. So hey! You get it early!

Please please please, let us know what ya think. We worked pretty hard on it. XD

This story we was gonna do for funzies and not work hard at all.

...

We are not good at this 'do stuff to relax' thing.

---

Derail III.VIII

The wait before the moment of truth was supposed to be torture, and to be fair, the days leading up to this moment had been agonizing. Mostly because Dean had been very quiet the entire time. He only spoke to me when he absolutely needed clarification for something or other. I kind of missed the fuzzing. It made for good white noise as I worked.

Yet as go-time drew near, as I lied prone on the roof overlooking the warehouse the ABB were squatting in, all I felt was the itch in my knuckles that told me someone was going to lose some teeth tonight. My teeth prickled. My skin tingled. And try as I might, I couldn't stop my right trigger finger from tapping softly against my rifle's trigger guard. Tap, tap, tap, went my finger, perfectly matching the ticking of my digital watch.

A large part of me wanted to storm the place, run in guns blazing, trusting in my armor and my gadgets to see me through the day. I told that part of me to shut up. Only a fool gave up the element of surprise.

D (short for 'Dean' or 'Dumbass who still hadn't come up with a different cape name') bounced his leg up and down incessantly while we watched a surprising number of Asian people of numerous ethnicities slowly fill out the dilapidated building. Which I was fairly certain was condemned, which was very unsafe. These gangs need some OSHA.

Did Earth Bet have OSHA?

Questions for later.

It was thanks to our patience that we got to see a group composed of mercenaries in SWAT gear, a boatload of neonazis, half of Faultline's crew, and Bitch and Taylor walk down the street.

What.

And I cannot stress this enough.

The fuck!?

I blink-clicked the necessary icons on my HUD to put a notice on D's HUD lenses so he'd know to look in the direction of the incoming clusterfuck.

"What did we miss in the last few days?" D wondered in horrified amazement at the sight. "Because either Skitter left the Undersiders, or man, Tattletale is a lot dumber than I thought."

I chewed the inside of my cheek in thought for a few moments. "Either the savior of all realties turned very stupid. Or…wait…dogfights!"

D looked at me for a moment before looking up at the air. He looked back down at me in utter confusion. "What?"

Okay, maybe it would be a good idea to explain the somewhat convoluted logic. I double checked the math in my head and nodded. "Bitch is there! Big neonazi money in dog fighting rings. No way in any hell she'd join up with the 88. This is an alliance of convenience! That's why there's roughly equal numbers of any one group! They don't trust each other enough to have any actual concentration of force. The local big players probably called a truce to focus on the ABB. We must have missed it while we prepared!"

D continued to look at me like I had grown a second head. "What?"

Okay, maybe he was overwhelmed by my attention to detail. "Alright. All the local gangs agreed ABB bad for business. You know, what with the kill order on Bakuda. So they called truce. Gon' kick ABB ass. They shuffled the teams together so everyone gets a piece of the dragonball pie."

I could see the gears turning in D's head. I'd had to dumb it down to a fifth grade level, but I finally was able to get him to understand. He nodded sagely before saying, "And that means?"

I sighed. "Point is. It's about to get stupid down there. We have two options. Go in now and incidentally help the ABB. Or stay up here, let them fight it out, and attack the stragglers. Also overwatch and make sure Taaaaaay-kitter does not die."

It would be easier to remember to use cape names, if D actually chose one. I feel like I'm just using a nickname. And man did I have a lot of those for people.

Magus would catch on. This whole 'Artillery guy' thing was just a passing fling. I could feel it in my bones.

"So, considering our last outing, I'm going to vote for less combat." D said his piece. "We're equipped for the ABB, not a full on gang war. I'd rather not end up in traction again."

I don't know why he's complaining. The Plague Cauldron fixed him up real good. Better than the original, he no longer had that slight limp to his stride he'd had as long as I'd known him.

"Okay." I said and used my in-built teleporter to switch out the components on my rifle, and aimed down the new sight. I teleported my way through a few scopes with different vision modes before getting a semi-clear picture of what was going on inside. Mainly, a lot of people jam-packed into too small an area. "Man this is not going to go well for Lung."

"Honestly, I think I'd still bet on the Dragon." D shook his head. "Toe to toe with Leviathan is pretty hard to match."

"Nah, T-Skitter's here." I shot back.

"Yeah, I'm not going to hope that plot armor is still in effect." D harrumphed. "Things haven't exactly gone according to 'destiny.'"

I took my eye off the scope to tilt my head at him. "Actually, if I remember right. Word of god had it that he was actively trying to kill her off. But the dice kept coming up as killing every other potential protagonist instead."

"Even better. I'm not about to bet on a die roll." D scowled. "This isn't a tabletop session. These are actually people."

"Debatable" I shot back.

"Dude."

"What? It's all a matter of perspective really. By some definition we would certainly not be people. We're a pair of body-stealing liches. Only difference being we don't have a phylactery, and probably can't hop to a new and improved body if this one bites it."

I could see D's fist flare through a rainbow of colors before he took a deep breath and calmed himself down. After ten seconds without further comment, I considered the matter closed.

Ha. I won that argument.

Over the few minutes we had debated reality, metaphysics and philosophy. The Warehouse had been, in order, shot up, exploded, had a hole punched through a load-bearing wall, exploded some more, set on fire, had a huge metal sword-pillar grow out of it, been drowned in bugs, and exploded a third time.

Man, Cape fights moved pretty fast.

Another wall, this one not load-bearing thankfully, exploded out as a pair of very pretty valkyrie cosplaying neonazi giantesses stumbled out of it, with a tinier asshole in fullplate armor stumbling between their well-toned legs. He turned back and plugged the hole with a big sheet of spiky metal.

"Welp, looks like the 88 are trying to retreat. Aaaaan yep, there's Sabrina the Teenage Nazi." I said as Rune descended on a slab of concrete. "Okay, decision time. Do we wanna concentrate fully on Lung, or do we take a chance t-"

One of the valkyrie twins tossed a giant fucking spear at us.

We scrambled away from each other, I jumped to the next building over, and heard the roof behind us shatter into powder.

Well fuck you too.

I blink-clicked the icon on my HUD so that my shoulder cannon locked onto Rune, and spat out a continuous stream of taser bullets, the only sound it made being a low whine as the capacitors cycled.

Bright side, they were silent. So the first clue Rune had of the incoming attack was when she was hit by five of them and started doing the epileptic chicken dance.

She also dropped from three stories up onto a roof. Kinda lucky for her, otherwise she'd have become tomato paste.

"Fuck!" Said the giantess that had thrown the spear at us. I threw her a middle finger. I then shot her boss.

The 5.56 x 45 NATO rounds slamming into Kaiser were the first warning he received that he was about to get shot, a supersonic projectile being effectively silent so long as you were its target. My own ears were spared beyond the crack of the bullets flipping the bird to the sound barrier thanks to the magic of my suppressor.

Unfortunately, power-wrought plate armor is better than mundane plate armor, and what bullets didn't flatten against Kaiser bounced off his chestplate with loud pings, and whined away into the distance. Black-Naziman stumbled back under the barrage until the giant idiot with a shield crouched in front of him. I sent a few bullets at her head in response, hopefully her helmet rang like a gong.

I then had to scramble, because man, they were pissed, and the bitch with the spear was carrying spares.

At that moment, eighteen feet of scales and anger punched through the hole the Nazis had plugged with metal. The two twins and the black knight wannabe turned around to fight the dragon eunuch. I decided to be a cheeky dickwaffle and used my antigrav and jetboots to navigate my way to the roof where Sabrina had fallen.

Surprisingly, she was awake, which was too bad for her what with how her legs had a few extra bends in odd places. She also had a debris field rotating around her and shot some of it at me. I dodged as well as I could but my defense field flared nonetheless, teleporting away the more dangerous chunks, the smaller ones pitter-pattering off my armor.

I switched out my shoulder cannons for the stun-blasters, and let her have an unsafe dose of nervous system scrambling shots.

Bright side, she lost control of the debris field.

Down side, she lost control of the debris field.

Hopefully the buildings around us were insured. That unusually loud window shattering had probably been important.

Still, once the rain of projectiles petered out, it gave me the chance to land next to her and tase her directly with my gauntlet till she passed out.

Okay. Now to make sure she couldn't get away. I zip tied her arms and legs in a very uncomfortable position. Was that a bone sticking out of her thigh? Yep, that's a bone striking out of her thigh.

I put a bag over her head, then threw her over my shoulder and flew away from the fight so I could stash her somewhere out of sight.

Thankfully, the two giant ass valkyrie wannabes were distracted by the boy with rocket boots, who seemed to have given up the idea of secret identities and was just straight up shooting melon-sized emotional blasts at them.

They grow up so fast.

And then twenty-three feet of angry dragon with six legs and two wings sent an asshole in plate armor flying, tail-slapped one of the giantesses, and bit a few fingers off the other one. The three nazis collectively decided to make use of the better part of valor. The dragon was about to pursue, but then he got hit by an obnoxious radioactive-orange ball the size of a watermelon. This made the dragon pause and turn to the tiny asshole with the rocket boots.

Shit.

I clicked my communication app open and very calmly demanded. "What. The shit. Do you think you're doing?"

"Getting his attention. Set up the thing!" Dean screeched before dodging like his life depended on it.

Mainly because it did.

"I told you I'd need some lead time!" I said, tossing Rune to the floor and teleporting Cannon bits into place. "Goddamnit man!"

On the one hand, I couldn't rush this or the Cannon might explode, it needed at least another twenty to thirty hours of work before I was comfortable pushing the tolerances. On the other, I had to rush or my idiot partner would get himself killed.

Where's the plague of bugs when you need it?

---

Derail 3.8.2

I felt my mind narrow into a razor sharp focus.

There was no room for extra thoughts, like how long it would take for Magi or whatever Chris was calling himself, to put together the Anti-Dragon Cannon or where was Taylor in all of this chaos. No, my brain was focused simply on the foe in front of me. Not in any grand analytical fashion, but in a very simple and direct one.

'Claw!' My brain helpfully shouted.

I launched myself into a rocket propelled backflip, just in time to dodge the giant silver scaled claw that raked the ground in front of me.

'Tail!' My brain screamed in terror.

I threw my hands downwards and fired the widest emotional blast that I could manage. I didn't really focus on any particular emotion, I wanted kinetic force more than emotional strength for once.

The blast thankfully obeyed some of the laws of physics and the feedback slowed me down just enough to avoid the tail swipe that would have torn my legs off.

And so it would go. It was the world's most dangerous game of cat and mouse. Lung would strike at me and I'd use every bit of Tinker Tech assisted athleticism to just barely avoid the lethal strike.

Thankfully, this mouse had at least one fang to use against the cat.

I kicked off a wall that disintegrated just after I kicked off of it, due to dragon's breath and threw a hand vaguely in Lung's direction. "Please work."

A deep blue shimmering orb lit up my fist. I conjured up as much calm the fuck down energy as I could muster and fired it at the dragon's core. The deep blue orb roared through the air before slamming into Lung's chest. It struck with all the force of a speeding bullet. Which meant it did jack shit to the dragon's scaled chest.

For a brief moment, I thought it had done nothing and we were totally screwed.

Except for that same brief moment, Lung paused. It was barely anything, less than a second, but the blast did cause the dragon to hesitate.

'Teeth!' My head thankfully shouted before I could get lost in analysis and I scaled up a nearby wall to avoid Lung's attempt at cannibalism.

"Okay, this works. Good. Good to know." I had no idea if it would work or not and seeing my emotional blasts do something to the seemingly unstoppable cape was a good sign.

I could do this. We could do this.

'Fire!' My brain screamed.

Lung decided he was done trying to squash me and decided he wanted roasted mouse instead. He took a breath and opened his gaping maw and I could actually see an orange glow build up in his throat.

"Oh shit!" I shouted and planted my feet for a bit of stability. I cupped my hands together and pumped out as much emotional energy as I could muster. The orb this time was such a deep blue that it seemed to draw in and suck out the energy around it.

If calm didn't work, how about a larger dose of depression?

"Choke on this!" I threw my hands forward and fired the orb directly into Lung's gaping maw.

Lung gagged on the orb as it struck him in his vulnerable insides before it sunk deep into his body. The dragon convulsed as he gagged further, the fire in his maw sputtering out. Lung lashed out at the street in a wild rage, his claws gouging the street in his rage.

I had to squint for a second to make sure that I was seeing correctly, but there was no doubt about it. Lung had gotten smaller. It was just a little bit, but I could see that his height had shrunk down about a foot.

I could feel a grin stretch my lips up as Lung tried to maintain his rage and power.

That grin quickly died as Lung succeeded in maintaining his rage and fed the small bit of failure and weakness into the fire, burning even hotter now. He quickly regained the foot of height he lost and gained another two on top of it. The flames in his maw returned, now joined by flames spontaneously erupting around his feet and claws.

"Oh no." I was a victim of my own success.

'Fire, again!' My psyche screeched.

I didn't have a blast ready to shoot out and it would take too long to charge up a stronger blast than last time. Which meant I had to dodge.

I tapped my rocket boots and ran to the side. The exhausts on the armored greaves roared as I tried to dash around the dragon and get out of his range of fire.

Unfortunately for me, Lung wasn't just going to sit still and charge patiently. He twisted his body to keep me in sight before unleashing hell. Flames that were so bright that they lacked any color at all burned through the air right behind me. I pumped my legs harder as if that would help the rocket boots give me a bit more speed.

For a moment, it seemed to work. I gained a slight lead on the fire. But reality tends to be disappointing in ways you don't expect.

The flashing icon on my HUD reminded me of an important fact.

These rocket boots are only good for short bursts. They would overheat and melt my legs if they went on any longer.

"Shit!" I screamed as my brain raced. I could either stop running and burn to death, or keep running and have my legs melt and then burn to death.

No, I had to think. I had options. What else did Chris make for me?

"Okay, so this is a Tinkertech shield. Now, very important, you need to blah blah blah Tinkertech crap. Yap yap yap, sarcastic comment. Blah blah blah, plasma. Yap yap, insulting nickname."

Right. Tinkertech Shield, that'll help. I slid to a stop and braced myself as I slapped the button on my gauntlet. A large smooth white buckler warped onto my arm and emitted a bright blue glowing energy shield.

"Okay, this will work. Why didn't I think to use this before?"

My memory of Chris' voice continued to lecture me as if to answer my question. "But remember, whatever you do, do not use this against Lung's fire breath. Because bla-"

I was engulfed by fire.

---

Derail III.VIII.III

I watched the big wave of fire sweep over Dean.

Welp. He's dead.

Grieve later, deal with the dragon now.

I twisted the last set of wires, and skipped the safety checks. It was do or die time, and if Dean wasn't dead. Then he soon would be if I didn't bring down the thunder.

With a heave, I shouldered the large unwieldy cannon that should really be mounted on a vehicle. The gravity sled whining under its mass.

I stared down the scope, and waited.

I squinted, the titanic amount of flames that Lung was spewing was blinding my every sensor and biological sense. The light was so bright that my eyes watered behind my flash protected visor, even from such a long distance.

On one hand, Lung was large enough that I would probably hit him firing blind. On the other, I'd be exceedingly lucky to get two shots. More than likely, something important would melt after the first. I couldn't afford to waste it on a half blind shot from over 100 yards.

"Come on you big lizard." I muttered. "I just need a glimpse."

I concentrated on taking long, deep breaths, doing my best to keep my hands from trembling. Looking for the respiratory pause as I caressed the trigger. I banished my worries about my maybe-friend. Pushed away my concerns that this utterly untested weapon might fail.

I breathed. Sound falling away but for the slow thump of my heart, the bellowing of my lungs, and the minute whine of the cannon's capacitors.

The world around me slowly bled away. Until the only things that remained were myself, my gun, and my target. Until I, too, bled away, and there was only the target.

The faintest silhouette came into sight. The cannon bucked against my shoulder before my conscious mind registered the glitter of silver scales, a dark blue anti-light roared and banished all positive energy from the world.

---

Derail 3.8.4

A massive inferno raged across the street to burn away everything in sight. The asphalt melted into tar, any vehicle unluckily enough to still be on the street was pulverized and then melted, and any living thing would burn into cinders after a few agonizing seconds.

The only thing keeping me from that inferno was the impermanent shield flickering in front of me.

And it was just barely doing that.

'Hot!Hot!Hot!' My brain helpfully screamed as my arm burned from the sheer heat that bled through the shield.

For a brief moment, I thought I was safe.

Then I felt it. A jolt that ran down my arm. Not from heat, no, it was barely visible because of the sheer corona of flames that was everywhere around me, but I could just barely see the Shield Emitter begin to spark.

"Oh no." I barely managed to gasp, as the flames around me consumed all the precious oxygen in the area.

If that emitter broke, I was cooked. Literally.

The Shield Emitter began to glow orange and sparked erratically.

"No, no, no."

In the middle of an inferno, my brain raced at top speed. Sadly, in this moment where I was at death's door, it was focused on everything that could kill me.

Like the flames around me, or the fact that I was running out of oxygen in this wildfire, or that my feet were now stuck to the ground because the asphalt had melted into tar and I had sunk into the ground.

All I could do was watch as the Shield Emitter went from orange to dark yellow before giving up the ghost entirely.

I swore and slammed my eyes shut before bracing myself for hell.

Darkness engulfed my sight and I embraced oblivion rather than endure burning agony.

Or rather, that was the plan.

Because I didn't feel anything. And I didn't mean that in the weird tingly way when you're numb, because I could still very clearly feel my arm burning from the red hot Shield Emitter.

I carefully opened my eyes and found nothing.

Well, the entire street had melted into a hellscape. The street was actually bubbling and it smelled like death, but I didn't see a dragon ready to smite me for the heretical impulse to try to calm him down because he was throwing a hissy fit.

"I'm alive?" My brain helpfully reminded me of my searing arm and I quickly detached the Shield Emitter from my arm. When that didn't help, I took off the bracer as well and hissed as my burnt skin met open air.

"Jesus Christ, that hurts!" I wanted to jump from the pain, but I found resistance when my feet failed to move and had to windmill my arms rapidly to prevent myself from falling face first into melted asphalt.

"Okay, I'm in pain and feeling embarrassed from that. So I'm alive." I felt my lips curl into a giddy smile and any attempt to catch my breath were completely ruined by the nearly hysterical laughter that bubbled out of my lips.

After a few moments of that, I managed to wrench my boots out of the ground before the asphalt cooled and looked around at the devastated street. I noted the melted and on fire everything, all except for me and one other. The large and very naked Asian man that was sprawled on the street.

"And that's Lung. Who is naked." My brain helpfully noted as I gingerly walked closer to the sleeping dragon. I just barely managed to resist the urge to poke him and see if he was truly asleep. "He's out. So I'm guessing the plan worked? Holy shit, I can't believe it worked!"

The entire plan against Lung was that if his power scaled to the threat in front of him, the best way to neutralize him would be to make him not feel like anything is a threat. And hey, there just happened to be an emotion based Master in our duo.

Except I wasn't sure I could throw something that strong against Lung and make it stick for more than a few seconds.

Chris said that he only needed one to put a bullet in Lung's head, but really, we weren't even sure that would kill the bastard.

So we needed a way to amp up my powers. And would you look at that, we had a Tinker with a huge ass cannon that was built to shoot different and abnormal ammunition. So Chris jerry rigged a container could hold one of my blasts and had me shoot at the thing until my nose started to bleed from the effort, then had me take a break and do it again because the container wasn't at its limit.

So we had a gun that shot, "Calm the fuck down" at artillery caliber instead of peashooter which was my default.

"I didn't expect it to knock him the hell out, but I guess the extreme of calm is unconsciousness." I shrugged, but I had no real idea why it had knocked him out. "I'll take it."

I wondered what to do with the very large, naked, drooling man, who apparently was burn resistant even as a human, the lucky bastard. "Fuck, this day needs to be over already."

The shrieking buzz of hundreds of thousands of insects reminded me that while I wanted the day to be over, it was very much not over.

I watched in horrified awe as the ground and sky was suddenly filled with insects of all different kinds. Insects that did not have large enough brains to feel enough emotions for me to comprehend or influence. Insects that were under the control of the villain that was stepping out of the warehouse like she was ready to murder someone.

"Well, shit." I hummed and hawed as the bug Cape and her entourage of Bitch and a couple of those demonic dogs stomped towards me, only slowed down slightly by the cooling tar. "Well, hello there."

Polite is good, polite usually works.

Polite also did not seem to impress Skitter at all. I didn't even try to look at Bitch, she just gave me a headache. I had no idea what the hell the kaleidoscope of emotions she felt meant. So I focused on the very focused and very ready to commit murder Skitter instead.

"Is he dead?" And Skitter went straight to the point. Her voice overlapping with an inhuman buzzing that triggered something in the lizard part of my brain, making me cringe back.

"Nope." I said with a smug smirk. "My partner basically shot him with a super powered version of m- Gallant's Ma-Blaster power."

Way to go brain. I promise to give you more oxygen if you manage to get us out of this alive.

"He's going to come after you." Skitter hissed and the bugs all around me buzzed menacingly, almost in tune with her crimson fury. "As soon as he's out, he'll stop at nothing now that he knows you can stop him."

"Pretty sure Lung's out of chances. He's going straight to the Bird's Nest or whatever. And I'm confident that even he can't get out of that death trap." I hoped.

"He was supposed to go to the Birdcage after I beat him and Armsmaster dragged him away." Skitter spat out. "But look at where we are now?"

I scowled as I suddenly had a bad feeling about where this conversation was heading.

"And I suppose you have a solution for this?" I tried to keep Skitter talking.

Skitter drew a knife from a sheath on her back and started walking towards Lung. I followed after her as she stood over the gangster and stared down at him, the roiling anger inside her sharpening to a cold fury. "There is one way." She said, her voice flat and emotionless as the knife trembled.

It was kind of frightening how easily she said that. She really believed that she only had one choice about this.

"Why don't you walk me through this?" I resisted the urge to add, 'before you do something you'll regret' because I doubted it would help in this situation.

"Simple." She said, her voice still showing no sign of the storm within her. "He's escaped or been broken out every time he's gotten locked up." Her grip tightened on the hilt. "All we have to do is make sure he doesn't get another chance to get away. We might not ever get another chance at it."

That didn't sound unhinged at all. I scowled and felt my fingers twitch in anticipation, keeping a careful eye on Skitter's emotions for a flare or jump.

"I'm going to say that I'm not a fan of murder." I resisted the urge to grab her and pull her away. The buzz of the legion of insects that was surrounding me was a very good deterrent. "Not a big fan of letting it happen in front of me, either."

Skitter remained quiet for a long moment before speaking. "And even if the Protectorate were to take him. Can you babysit him until they show up? His gang might be running now, but they'll turn around and come back eventually. And the Protectorate doesn't come to this part of town. They'll just take him back and he won't even see the inside of a cell."

"Pretty sure it's standard operating procedure for a hero to sit and wait for the Protectorate to pick up the villain." I kept my voice even and steady. "As for the ABB, well, I'm pretty sure the hellscape and plague of insects you've got here will keep them at bay for another five to ten minutes."

She turned her featureless mask toward me, its yellow lenses glaring balefully in the dying fires. "I can't stay."

"Fair enough." I sighed. "Well, good news is that my partner has a very big gun to threaten people with. So I think we'll be okay."

She stared for a long moment. Her body was so utterly still that the only way I could tell she was not very happy, was thanks to my power. She turned around and started to walk away, and threw a parting word over her shoulder. "On your head be it, then. Though, word of advice, 'okay' is likely to get you killed."

"Maybe it will." I had just gotten into a pissing match with a dragon, so I wasn't going to defend the safety of my life choices today. "But that's the burden of a hero. Taking the hard options."

Her step faltered as her aura flared with too many sad and angry colors, but she did not say anything more as she kept walking, Bitch and her dogs at her heels.

I watched Skitter go, unsure what the clotting aura of regret and determination meant for her future.

 

[Heroslayer]

Derail 3.9

A few minutes after Skitter left, Artillery found me sitting next to Lung, keeping an eye out for the Protectorate or any Asians that decided it would be smart to come back to the blast zone.

Thankfully, whatever mechanical magic that Artillery did to my powers seemed to extend its shelf life. Lung was still unconscious, without a single waver in his dark blue aura.

The unwavering lifeless depression was as peaceful as it was disturbing to look at.

"I would make a joke about the very large naked man next to you. But you look like shit. So I'll magnanimously spare you." Chris said. I noticed, annoyingly, that beyond some scratching of his armor's paint job, he was unscathed compared to my lightly seared state.

"Wonderful. You can use the energy spared from not doing that and pour it into keeping watch. I'm exhausted." I let my body relax just a smidge now that I had back up, but kept my guard up. Even if Lung was down, that didn't mean we were completely safe. This wasn't a video game where defeating a boss gave you a reprieve.

It was thanks to that vigilance that I caught it in the corner of my eye.

The flash of metal and the click of a safety being removed. A flash of blood red and steel determination.

"Oi." I reached up and grabbed the barrel of the gun pointed at the unconscious villain. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The metallic gray of Artillery's aura did not at all shift, he didn't even turn to look at me. "What needs to be done."

I applied pressure to the gun to point it away from Lung's head, but met resistance. I scowled and stood, tightening my grip on the barrel. "I just talked one dumbass teenager down from murder. Why the hell are you making me do it twice?"

"Because this is the only way it'll stick." He finally turned to look at me, the blood red rage beginning to erode the metallic determination. "Skitter blinded him. But after all is said and done, he gets to live, he gets out, and he goes right back to being the piece of shit he is. I'm not letting that happen!"

"So you're just going to kill him?" I stared him right in the eyes as I pressed against the barrel even harder, the gun started to tremble as we fought over it. "Just because he'll go somewhere else and sit around until someone else is dumb enough to poke a sleeping dragon?"

"He's a murderer, a rapist, and a fucking slaver." Artillery growled, the blood red rage spiked erratically, as he laid accusation after accusation. "The gold pile this dragon sleeps on, is built on a bed of human bone."

"Great. Wonderful. I get it." I nodded sagely, before applying more pressure to keep the barrel of the gun away from Lung's head. "Prove it."

Artillery hesitated. There was a brief calculation going on in his head. Colors swirled in a balancing act, before orange frustration tinged the blood red.

"I'll be happy to. I have all the files in a neat little folder back at base."

I stared at him for a moment and fought the urge to pinch my nose. I needed that hand to keep the gun pointed away.

"I can see that you're lying."

"You need to get better with your power. You're getting a false read."

"And I can see that you're way too emotional to be making this kind of decision." I ignored the bait, he'd want to make this about our powers rather than this being the right thing to do. "We're trying to fix this place. We're not going to do that by piling up bodies just because it's convenient."

"Except, killing him will objectively make the world a better place!" Artillery's frustration wasn't diluting the blood red rage anymore, it fed into it. Making it burn hotter and more erratically. "I'm willing to dirty my hands, so that the next person he would have raped, or mutilated, or killed, will get to live without having him tear their life apart!"

"And then what? We just keep going. We pile on the bodies until there are no more bad people left?"

"No, we just get rid of the ones in our way. The rest will eventually reap what they sowed."

"How magnanimous of you." I spat out. "Like a warlord, you'll sit on top of your little fiefdom and kill whoever brings you trouble. Content to sit on your throne, until someone dumb decides to poke the sleeping dragon."

"Oh woe is I, I am becoming that which I hate, truly he was my dark mirror all along, what dramatic fucking irony." He jeered in a scathingly mocking tone. "Or, and follow me on this one. I'm killing a career criminal, and eliminating a future problem that'll come back to bite us in the ass. With fire!"

"Uh huh. So he'll escape the inescapable prison and be a problem?" I inquired, my voice full of skepticism. "You know that for a fact?"

"Yes!" He hissed. "And with the swiss cheese you call a brain you've probably forgotten, again, but we have more important things to tackle than a two-bit kaiju wannabe every time this dumbass wants a rematch!"

I kept my face blank as I thought about it. I couldn't recall Lung doing anything memorable past this point. Not that I could exactly trust my memory of the story. As Artillery often, rudely, reminded me, my knowledge of this story was full of holes. So he could be right. This could be a good chance to eliminate a recurring problem.

No. I had to draw a line in the sand.

"No." I shook my head. "We're not going to kill him."

"No, we are not." Artillery said, and for one beautiful moment, I thought I'd gotten through to him.

And then he punched me in the mouth.

"Fuck!"

It was a quick jab. Hell, if it hit anything other than my jaw, I probably would have endured it and hit him back. But a hit to the jaw is a hit to the jaw.

It had done its job. It had startled me and made me take a step backwards to nurse my wound, if for only a moment.

When I looked up, Artillery had already spun around and pointed his gun down at Lung.

"No you don't!"

I clicked the rocket boots and launched myself at Artillery. I hit him like a battering ram, the weapon in his hands fired into the empty air as his aim was thrown wildly off.

"Bitch!"

Artillery twisted and rolled with the blow, letting me slide off of him and keep flying. I tucked and rolled off the ground into a crouch only to see that Artillery was racing back over to Lung.

"I said," I asserted, breaking back into another rocket powered dash. "No. You. Don't!"

I dropped into a slide tackle, slamming into Artillery's legs and knocking them clean off the ground.

"Bitch!"

Both Artillery and I rose to our feet at the same time. Artillery was ready to make another break for Lung when he noticed a problem.

He had made a fatal mistake. When I had knocked his feet out from under him, he had dropped his gun. Before he could even begin to crouch to pick it back up, an angry red bolt slammed into it and sent it spinning away from him.

"Bitch!"

"I'll say it one more time for empha-" I was cut off by a small flash of light as Artillery summoned a fresh pistol into his hands. However, the slight lag as Artillery situated his new weapon gave me just enough time to pulse the rocket boots and dodge the first shot. "Fuck! Are you crazy!?"

I didn't hear Artillery's response, but I assume he either disagreed with my statement or was hurling more insults my way alongside the bullets.

I ran like a madman, pulsing the boots at irregular intervals to throw off Artillery's aim. It seemed to work as I managed to avoid the hail of, hopefully, stun bolts coming my way. But I couldn't keep this up forever. However, apparently, neither could Artillery. With a spark rather than a flash, the pistol in his hands finally ran empty as it either broke or ran dry whatever ammo it drew from.

"Dammit!" Artillery swore as he gave the pistol a brief look of complete betrayal. "Now of all fucking times!?"

Yes, now of all times. I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I rushed at Artillery before he had time to pull another gun out of his ass. I shot a side kick straight into Artillery's stomach and sent him sliding backwards.

I didn't let him have a moment to catch his breath or recover. I slammed a roundhouse kick into his side. My foot fell to the ground and the ball of my foot touched the ground only to snap back into the air and slam into Artillery's side again, and again, and again.

Artillery grunted as he raised his guard and tried to endure the repeated blows. For a moment, he looked confident, but after the third kick slammed into his guard and knocked him slightly off balance, he faltered. I could see the confusion and panic start to rise over him as I didn't let up and set into a rhythm.

Kick, rechamber, kick, repeat. Until your target is nice and tender.

Or at least, that was the plan.

Another kick connected into his guarded side as a burst of light flashed in his hand, he stabbed it forward, jabbing me painfully in the stomach, and with a snap-crackle, I felt my core muscles spasm painfully.

"Gah!" I grunted and I completely lost my form. I twisted and had to rapidly backpedal to keep from falling on my ass.

"All this, for him!? The rabid, rapist, murderous scum!?" Artillery growled as he alternated jabbing with the prongs, and swinging the baton. His aura blazing like red flames. "The world will be a better place without him in it!"

I found myself on the defensive as I backpedaled. I had to be careful to only block the baton and avoid the crackling prongs.

"Fuck off." I hissed as I mistimed a block and got a jolt of electricity for my efforts. "If you're going to try to take the moral high ground here, then give it up."

"I'm sure all the families he's broken will agree with you!" Artillery shouted. "He gets away with his shit purely because he can punch an Enbringer. And he refuses to do the one thing that excuses his behavior! Why shouldn't I put him out of this city's collective misery!?"

"And I'm sure you'll be so happy to do the moral thing and tell the families that they've been avenged." I retorted, my voice full of venom. Only partially due to the third shock I endured from his stupid baton. "Except you're not doing it for moral reasons, you're just looking to justify your fucking murder! So, fuck that, fuck off, and fuck your stupid baton!"

I raised my right hand and pointed forwards. The ball of pissed off crimson I had been charging up erupted out of my hand and slammed into the baton, blasting it out of Artillery's hand.

I stepped forward, ready to go on the offensive again, but Artillery beat me to it. Rather than take a step back from losing his weapon, Artillery drove forward and bum rushed me. A reckless tackle caught me right in the stomach and threw me onto the ground with him on top of me.

I tried to buck him off, but he was more slippery than a snake, somehow ending up behind me, with an arm around my neck, and the other pushing my head forward into the crook of his elbow. I awkwardly swung an elbow into Artillery's stomach, but the pressure around my neck didn't lessen in the slightest.

What was most disconcerting, was that I could still breathe. But the world immediately started to darken as my blood roared in my ears. He wasn't cutting off my oxygen. He was cutting off the blood to my brain.

I thrashed for a few moments, panic kicking in. But the darkness seeped in, slowly and steady, until it claimed everything.

Right before I completely blacked out, the pressure stopped. I gasped for breath and the world seemed to slam back into my body along with the air I greedily gulped down.

I looked up and the world spun in a kaleidoscope of mishmashed colors that I couldn't make left or right of. I held back the bile trying to make its way up my throat and tried to focus the colors into something coherent.

There. That was Artillery pointing something at Lung.

Fuck.

I raised my right arm and pointed a clenched fist at Artillery. Distilled despair pooled around my fist. For a moment, I remembered the blackened, rotten flower.

I can always apologize after.

The blackest bolt hurled out of my fist and slammed into Artillery's back before racing around his body, enveloping him, then vanishing.

Wait.

What?

My emotional bolts don't do that. They invade a body and insert themselves into their aura before infesting them with whatever emotion I plant.

There was a small shimmer around Artillery's body and I connected the dots immediately.

Artillery took the time to look down at me, full of contempt, disappointment and just a hint of regret.

There were three surprisingly quiet 'thuds' as Lung's head came apart in a welter of blood, bone and gray matter. Leaving behind a ragged stump that spurted arterial sprays into the ground.

I stared at the carnage in horror. I had seen dead bodies before, but nothing as grotesque as this. Not for real.

"You…" I stumbled to my feet and snarled at Artillery, colors crackling around my skin, begging to be unleashed. "You…"

I poured everything into one last shot, a rainbow bolt the size of a shopping cart, erupted out of my body at Artillery. But it hit the shimmering shield around him and parted around him, like water flowing around a rock.

That confirmed it. He built a shield to use specifically against me.

"So… it's like that, huh?" I snarled, swiping a hand to the side.

He turned to look at me, his aura losing the contempt and disappointment, leaving it as infuriatingly sad as his voice. "Did you really think that, having been given carte blanche to study your power, I wouldn't make a counter to it?"

"Yeah, I kind of believed that. We had more important things to worry about and I felt that was more important than making a weapon because I thought I'd need to fight my partner. But that's the rub, you were expecting to have to fight me from the start, weren't you?"

He had the audacity to turn away from me, studying his handiwork as he sighed. "You probably won't believe me. But no. I thought we were on the same page." He idly kicked Lung's corpse after it twitched. "That said, I'm a firm believer in hope for the best, prepare for the worst."

"Well, congratulations. You were right. We get to stress test this, right here, right now."

I took a step forward. Dark corroding despair, seeped black wisps out of every pore of my body ready to be unleashed.

'Thud!'

I looked down at the huge bullet embedded next to my foot.

"That's your last warning shot." Chris said, his tone unchanged. His aura was becoming tinged with that steel gray of determination from before. Maybe he was feeling other things, but I couldn't see anything else. He would shoot me if I tried to fight.

I thought about it. I would probably take a bullet, but despite what the media will tell you, a bullet won't kill you immediately unless you're really unlucky or get shot in the head. That meant it would be a gamble. Whether I could overwhelm his barrier with one shot before he filled me with more bullets.

I thought about it. At best, it'd probably be a double loss. I'd be badly wounded, but Chris would either be incapacitated, or dead. At worst, his shield held up and I'd join Lung in the ground because I had to play hero.

I took a step backwards. I wasn't willing to take that bet. I wasn't going to die here. Not to Chris. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"So that's it then?" I spat through grit teeth. I pointed down at Lung's body. "You're just going to murder your way to a better world?"

His shoulders moved in a minute shrug, the barrel not wavering for a moment. "Humanity has been doing that for the last twelve thousand years. Maybe this time it'll stick."

"Ahahaha… oh man, Einstein was right. You're insane." I wheezed. If I didn't laugh, I'd cry. And there was no way I was going to cry in front of this son of a bitch.

An infuriating twinge of amusement shot through Chris.

"Fine. Fine." I felt even that frantic painful laughter bleed out of me. Just seeing Chris amused even a little, by this situation just drained all the energy out of me. "I'm done."

I tore off all the Tinkertech that Chris had given me. The bracers, the boots, and the goggles were all dumped at Chris' feet. I'd need to make a petition to have Armsmaster take over Gallant's armor too. I didn't trust this fucker to not put a contingency in all of his damn Tinkertech.

"You can fuck off and murder villains on your own." I spat out. "The next time I see Artillery, I'm bringing you to jail or I'll die trying."

I didn't stick around to see Chris' reaction. If he wanted to shoot me in the back, he was welcome to do it. I wasn't going to waste my efforts trying to curb his dumbass anymore. I was going to do things my way. The right way.

Even if it kills me.

"Dee!" I forced myself not to pause, and girded myself for his final parting insult. "Try to stay safe! This city is treacherous!"

Fuck.

I pawed at my eyes, but just kept moving away. The Protectorate would be here soon. I was going to explain myself and deal with the consequences.

Alone.

Fuck.

---

Author's Note: Whelp, that happened. This chapter really earning that Arc title in many ways.

Things getting derailed on all sides. Funnily enough, even as the authors we aren't immune to that derail. This was very much not in our initial plans.

Anyways, have fun discussing the fallout. Next few posts will be interludes about said fallout.