HUZZAH! A day earlier than expected! FF will update tomorrow!
It's a little rough around the edges toward the end, but I like it that way. Really brings out the whole "these people are taking SAN crits left and right" tone I'm going for. All the same, any criticism is welcome!
On that note, fair warning for this chapter: bad [NSFW-lite] end involving HASTUR. Consider yourselves warned.
Sorry to keep you waiting so long! Without further ado…
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Worm: Babel
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Interlude 2
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Danny sighed in relief as his house came into view. It was still standing, the lawn was still there, and none of the windows were broken. So Taylor
likely hadn't gotten around to experimenting with her new friend, Amy Dallon.
Experimenting with her powers, anyway, Danny mused with a chuckle as he parked his truck in the driveway. All Taylor had been able to talk about, since starting at Arcadia, was Amy this, and Amy that, and Amy was Panacea; when she wasn't telling him about how she'd started a fashion trend – ribbons were in, apparently – Taylor was talking about Amy and all the time the two girls spent together.
Danny was just grateful that his daughter seemed like she was getting past Emma's slight at the end of last summer. Speaking of which, he thought while walking around to the back door – no sense disturbing the two more than necessary with his presence – he should give Allen a call, see how Taylor's best friend was doing with her therapy.
Danny sighed. He wished, not for the first or last time, that Annette was still here, to give their daughter relationship advice, if for nothing else.
He'd just turned the corner, slipping the back door key from his pocket, when a shape caught his eye. Danny looked up, body tensing for a possible attack by a ganger or worse…
…that was a big shadow.
It seemed a mass of absolute darkness, like someone cut a piece out of the world. It had horns – presumably – and long fingers splayed on the grass… and a tail, long as a bus and ending in a wicked barb, which had frozen in the act of straightening said grass.
Danny had the impression that this creature was looking at him, so he cleared his throat and spoke up kindly, "Hello," it nodded at Danny slowly, "Are you one of Taylor's then?" It nodded again, more vigorously.
The elder Hebert smiled in wry humor; maybe Taylor
had been experimenting a little. She could've been a little more discreet, in his opinion.
"Well, as much as I'd like to have a guard dog – not saying you're a dog, but I'm sure you know what I mean," he added when the shadow seemed to bristle, "but you're a
little bit obvious, and I'd rather someone not fly by and give my daughter's location away," he pointed up at the sky for emphasis.
The creature or whatever it was looked up, then back at Danny; it nodded solemnly, then…
Burst into a cloud of black smoke, which dissipated near instantly.
Chuckling, Danny decided to re-explain the philosophy of discretion when it came to using her powers. Entering the kitchen, he smelled pizza and garlic, but there was no sign of Taylor or Amy; he could hear voices coming from upstairs, though, so Danny helped himself to a cup of lemonade. It'd been a long day, after all.
The meeting with the Union president and the Mayor's secretary had gone well, though fleshing out the details of the proposed project – Taylor's plan to clean up the Docks and Boat Graveyard – had been tiring to go over. He'd scheduled an introduction and demonstration at 5PM this next Wednesday, by which time Taylor should have both a rudimentary costume and a name picked out.
Walking quietly through his house to put his shoes in their proper place, and subtly examine the living room – no sign of Taylor or Amy still, though the family tea service was left out – Danny allowed himself a feeling of pride; while Taylor admitted that she'd be able to clean the entire Graveyard by herself, she'd also allowed, due to the fact that her base would be in the Dockworker's compound, that the project could use more practiced hands.
That is, once the earlier meeting had ended, Danny had been promised the funds to hire over three hundred workers to help dismantle some of the larger ships and prepare the scrap for sale and transport. After all, it wasn't like they needed the construction equipment to bring the tanker and other large ships in.
They had Taylor, and Taylor had Shoggoths.
Helping himself to a slightly stale scone and ascending the stairs to the second floor, where it sounded like
four teenage girls were now conversing, Danny chuckled at the memory of Kurt's face after he explained what one of Taylor's Shoggoths was like. Sure, Danny hadn't seen one himself yet, but the picture of what Taylor insisted was a "bio-engineered architectural savant" had been both humorous and humbling.
Arriving at the top landing, Danny stopped. Examined his surroundings.
He calmly sipped his lemonade, and grunted, "Huh."
The walls of the upstairs had changed since this morning. He was fairly sure the wallpaper hadn't depicted a sunny forest with woodland creatures frolicking to and fro. It hadn't been moving as though it
was a woodland forest, either.
Danny looked at the half-full glass of lemonade in his hand, wondering if it'd expired, then noticed the floor. It was grass.
He knelt and ran a hand over it. Yep. Grass. With the wood tile he'd put in last year under it.
Danny sighed; he wondered if other cape parents had to deal with things like this.
Shrugging, because he was sure there was a logical explanation for this, Danny made for the guest room, where an unfamiliar voice gushed, "You could do it, though! You helped me and Elle, an-and – I just
know you could make a magic pill, like Miracle Max!"
He stuck his head around the open door… and couldn't stop himself from smiling wryly.
Taylor was sitting primly on the guest bed, legs tucked under on one side, next to a prone Amy Dallon, who was lying on her stomach, eyes pinched in focus as she caressed the petal of a shining lotus. Taylor's hand was stroking Amy's back absently as Danny's daughter blushed at the redhead's praise.
The redhead in question was sitting at the head of the bed, was wearing one of Taylor's sundresses, and had one hand on a crystalline orb that seemed to have a core of starlight. A blonde girl, also wearing one of his daughter's dresses, was seated in the redhead's lap, contenting herself with having the redhead's fingers run through her long platinum locks.
Around a blink, the blonde was the first to notice Danny's presence as he leaned in the doorway, looking up at the branches and leaves growing from the ceiling with some small amusement. She didn't do much, except shift and rise slightly, which brought the other three girl's attention to him.
"Daddy!" Taylor cheered in surprise and happiness, before she apparently noticed where his gaze was going and looked around in owlish shock, "Oh… uh, Elle?" the blonde girl looked up, "Could, um, you change the room back to normal please?"
Elle nodded slowly, almost mechanically, and suddenly everything was back to normal. Although, Danny noticed the redhead was now trying to hide behind Elle, looking at him in clear fear.
He decided to set their hearts at ease, "Taylor, Amy," he nodded at the brown haired girl, who kept looking between him and the dazzling flower before her; Danny smiled at the other two girls, "And… I don't believe we've met. Danny Hebert. I'm Taylor's father."
Elle smiled and waved happily at him, "Hi! Hi! I'm Elle!" she then turned and threw her arms around the redhead, who 'eep!'-ed cutely as her blonde
girlfriend swung herself across the taller girl's lap and grinned hugely at Danny, "Mimi! This is my Mimi! Taylor and Amy saved us!"
Danny took that last admission in with a good-natured chuckle and a return wave, then looked at his daughter with a questioning smile; she had the good grace to blush and look sheepish, "Saved them, Taylor?" He took a sip of lemonade, "Not that I'm about to chide you for saving damsels in distress," Elle giggled while Mimi blushed harder, "but didn't I tell you not to leave the house?"
"Technically, Mr. Hebert," Amy spoke up as she rose from her prone position, lifting that flower like it was made of glass and settled into a cross-legged position, "We were only going to visit Taylor's dreaming labyrinth. Things just sort of…" she winced slightly, "escalated, once we got there."
Danny looked at the Dallon girl, then his daughter; he felt his smile starting to diminish at Taylor's sheepish expression.
"I thought you said the labyrinth was safe." He
had allowed Taylor permission to bring Amy there, if it could be done; she might be grounded for putting Lung's slavers down, but he wasn't cruel. That place
was quite beautiful, even in picture form. But if it was unsafe…
Taking a deep breath, Taylor tried, "Maybe… you should sit down, Dad."
He blinked. She'd dropped the diction without him asking.
Something was
very, very wrong. Or something very serious had happened.
Danny gave all four girls another once over before asking the new arrivals, "You're both unhurt?"
Mimi nodded dizzyingly fast, "Yes! We're fine, uh, now," Danny sat down carefully in the room's only chair and went to take another fortifying sip of lemonade when Mimi merrily dropped a
nuke on him, "Amy healed us while Taylor dealt with the Slaughterhouse Nine!"
Danny choked on his lemonade.
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{/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\}
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Contessa looked at the carnage she'd caused within the strange pseudo-church the Path to Victory had led her to, and frowned.
Fifteen years ago, her Paths had begun to fail. Steps vanished between one moment and the next, prospective candidates for Cauldron vials went missing before their agents could reach them, Cauldron agents went missing mid-mission, and disastrous events that she'd committed to stopping were stopped before she could intervene, or escalated at unexpected moments.
Stranger still, when she'd tried to Path a way to finding the source of the interference, the steps appeared clear before her; so the source wasn't like Eidolon or the Enemy. Strange was the first step, however.
[Train yourself for battle.]
And so Contessa had trained her body and mind for conflict; she'd already been in fine shape before the problem arose, but now her body was taut with muscle. Contessa knew, without the aid of her power, that there were few in the multiverse who could take her in hand-to-hand combat; with Path to Victory… well, she could not lose.
Before, she'd simply used whatever tools were best for the job, according to the Path. Now, a Tinker-tech cavalry saber and a silenced .45 Colt 1911 with 12-round capacity magazines – Tinker-modified, of course – were Contessa's weapons of choice, and had stood her in good stead since her Paths had become skewed.
As the years passed and the interference continued, Contessa gathered what information she could from its actions. Even with the admittedly robust abilities her association with Cauldron granted, Contessa only ever found scraps of rumors and half-baked conspiracies spoken of in fearful whispers. Clairvoyant could not find the usurper, or usurpers, whoever they were, and Contessa could only follow what little trail they'd left behind.
But follow it she did, between her other duties, and told none of her associates of it; Mother, David and Rebecca could not be trusted with the weight of this secret, and if they knew her powers were weakening due to this interference, the consummate pragmatists would likely attempt to replace her.
Though matters had changed since that black day in a little girl's village, Contessa couldn't bring herself to betray Doctor Mother. Their cause was humanity's survival. So if Contessa had to keep a secret or two, to ensure the Path would not fail, so be it.
The little information she'd found, eventually, bore fruit: a cult, an organization, one which was even
more secretive and shadowy than Cauldron, one which seemed obsessed with human sacrifice in worship of strange and inscrutable gods, the pantheon of which was ever veiled to Contessa.
She did not believe in gods, or magic. Those were the innocent dreamings of youth.
There were no gods, and magic was nothing but slight-of-hand and trickery.
The sight before her spat upon Contessa's beliefs.
Thirty-seven red-robed cultists were scattered throughout the brownstone-walled room, all dead; several of them had exhibited unusually potent Parahuman abilities – one of them had used a Blaster-like power that rotted a person from the outside-in; she'd dodged it and killed the user – most of which required, strangely, an incantation of some sort.
At first, she'd simply thought it an artifact of these barbaric cultist's skewed beliefs.
Then she'd seen the altar.
Contessa had seen and done horrible things in the past thirty years, so many and often that the events bled together into a litany of horror.
What was before her vied for the top slot in Contessa's mental 'Things I'd Rather Not Have Seen' file.
Twisted letters glowed in a strange light upon the dais, forming a ring around the corpse of the pregnant woman this cult had acquired for… whatever the horrid purpose those letters fortold. Contessa didn't want to know. She still wanted to keep a part of her humanity, her sanity, and didn't want to know why the letters glowed.
Contessa didn't want to know why they'd cut the woman open, or why the sacrificial knife she'd shot out of the ritual leader's hand had been aimed at the pitiful mound of flesh they'd pulled from the woman.
The only consolation Contessa could give herself was that the woman had already been dead, and the mound had breathed its last before she'd finished slaughtering the cult.
Lip curling, she fired the last bullet in her cartridge at the dagger; the armor-piercing explosive round shattered the wickedly curved blade and blew a hole in the ritual circle. The light in the letters flickered and died without preamble.
A strange feeling drifted over Contessa; she hadn't Pathed that shot. In fact, her current Path, [discover the source of the interference], ended when she'd killed the last cultist.
Contessa reloaded quickly, the hairs on her neck prickling, then looked at her surroundings: there was only one entrance or exit to this underground redoubt, and no antechambers. Four pews were here stationed, facing the terrible circle, and bodies still littered the ground. A single candlelit chandelier hung above the room's center, near where she stood.
She tried to Path a way to more information. Nothing.
She tried to Path a way to find out who was watching her, for she felt someone watching her.
Nothing.
The door to the fell chapel opened.
"Path to victory," whispered Contessa, taking her saber in a reverse grip and pointing her gun at the opening door.
Around a small burst of pain in her left temple, Contessa received a single step from her passenger:
[Survive]
The sound of a silenced pistol firing kicked her mind into gear, followed a microsecond later by her body; the first bullet grazed her waist on the left side as Contessa returned fire at her opponent, their nature obscured by the low light of the chapel's chandelier and the darkness of the corridor. Her opponent moved as well, sparks flying from a wide, dark blade as they parried some of her bullets; more sparks came off the guard of Contessa's saber as she parried what bullets she could Path. Which wasn't many.
Another line of white fire tore across Contessa's right thigh before she heard a soft
click of the enemy's gun jamming open. They were out of bullets. She had three left.
She used them; two were deflected while the third sent a burst of red mist into the air when it skipped against the shadowed person's knee.
They stood there for a moment before Contessa's opponent sighed, dropped their gun carelessly to the ground, and stepped forward, black blade glinting in the candlelit room.
It was an olive-skinned man, eyes obscured by red sunglasses, dressed in a white suit and fedora; their lips were pulled into a small frown – annoyance, deduced Contessa – and, as he stepped fully into the light of the charnel-scented chapel, he flicked his right hand, the sheath of the cane-sword, held in his left hand, sliding out of the sleeve into the man's ready grip.
Contessa tucked her gun into the back of her pants – reloading subtly as she did so, the spent magazine falling into her back pocket and replaced by a full one from the same location – shrugged off her trench coat, tossed it onto a relatively bloodless pew, and took a defensive stance, bringing her sword into a ready position. The Path had led her here.
The man before her had the answers she sought. Contessa would make him talk-
[Survive]
-or else. Failure was not an option.
"I
had wondered what happened to that little gift," the man in white drawled, still advancing on Contessa, his expression still one of annoyed boredom, "Not that it isn't nice to finally meet the one who keeps thwarting my backup plans, but being reminded of my subordinate's past failures is just so irritating."
"Who are you?" asked Contessa, not taking her eyes off the man's chest or lowering her stance.
The man in white stopped… and grinned. His teeth were like a shark's.
"I am the Man in White, one of the Thousand Forms of Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos… who you may also know as Abaddon." He, Nyarlathotep, ended with a cruel chuckle.
Shock rippled through Contessa's body.
This was an Entity?! This was the thing that made the Thinker crash and destroy her home world?!
She'd heard that title, the Crawling Chaos, before, years ago in a run-down tavern, in another dimension. It had been spoken of as a cruel and uncaring force of nature, the source of calamities and plagues uncounted; furthermore, the one who'd whispered these facts fearfully to a group of listeners elaborated, it was known as the godhead of multiple death cults, wore many different faces to commune with those cults, and its worshippers were fanatical to the point of suicide, in their devotions.
That it claimed to be Abaddon, the mysterious third Enemy that some failed Cauldron experiments ranted madly about before their passengers consumed them, only verified that strange rumor. Moreover, this strengthened Contessa's resolve.
This thing needed to die.
Her initial shock was swiftly replaced with
anger, long suppressed by time and conflict, tearing up through her heart and into her mind. Contessa took a firmer grip on her sword and replied furiously, "You know why I'm here."
"And I couldn't care less, you little meat-puppet," sneered the abomination before her as it raised its blade, "Your very existence is detrimental to my greater plans, Fortuna, but, luckily for you, I find your pragmatism amusing. So…" it grinned in
hunger as Contessa ignored the use of her given name, in favor of preparing her mind and body for a fight, "amuse me."
Tinker-tech steel clashed with a blade black as the void. The two danced around each other, Contessa focusing with all her might on
not dying; her opponent claimed to be the force behind the Cycle that threatened humanity. She
could not die here!
Even so, this were the most difficult enemy she'd ever faced. Each of the Man In White's blows rattled her bones, every kick like a charging bull; after a teeth-gritting blow to her hip, that sent a line of cracking fire through her pelvis, Contessa focused more on dodging or rolling around the monster's blows. While the injuries it inflicted
did sting, they were nothing to the pain in her heart; this monster killed her world, her parents, and it was clearly human, or humanoid, in form and function.
It could bleed, Contessa knew, seeing the steady trickle leaking from its knee and the cuts she inflicted as their blades clashed again and again.
It could bleed. It could
die.
Around and around they went, both fighters stepping over corpses and leaping over pews in their attempts to kill each other; after a flurry of blows that saw Contessa take a deep gouge across her chest and the Man In White lose the fingers on his right hand, Contessa stopped, breathing hard at the exertion fighting this monster was putting her through.
Said monster didn't stop.
Snarling, the thing used its now-useless hand to fling their sword sheath at her; Contessa's body sang as she dodged the blow and parried their follow-up strike. She swept her sword at the beast's thighs, drawing a red line across them before bringing her sword back around to block the next-
The black blade tore through Contessa's shoulder, the spine-chilling cold it inflicted drawing a ragged scream from her mouth as she dodged away, switching her sabre to her left hand as her right arm went limp. Blood flowed freely down her now-useless arm as she gritted her teeth at the smirking
fucker. He hadn't screamed
once during their fight, not when she cut off his fingers, or sliced his chest and thighs!
He bled, but he wasn't human.
[Survive]
In a flash, he was upon her again; this time, Contessa knew that her only chance didn't lay in directly defeating her foe. He was too skilled, too strong, and her passenger was useless.
She needed to improvise.
His next slash cut across her abdomen, a line of cold fire lancing through Contessa's guts in the blade's wake; she'd dodged back, true, but that was according to plan. She stabbed her blade into his knee and ripped it sideways, aiming for the other-
The butt of the monster's sword hit her midsection like a speeding truck, sending her flying across the room to land on the ruined circle, her blade clattering to the ground behind her as Contessa vomited all over the corpse of the pregnant woman, clutching at her right shoulder. Her right tricep had torn when she landed, and was now hanging off her elbow.
Contessa quickly shoved the muscle back into place-
PAIN
and grit her teeth against the
searing-
PAIN
that seemed to encompass her entire body with every heartbeat, making her vision flicker-
PAIN
and forced herself to focus on the here and now-
PAIN
because if she died then everything she'd done with her life, since that blackest of days, was for
nothing-
PAIN
and to fail… was
unacceptable.
[Survive]
Through ringing ears and greying vision that blurred with unbidden tears, Contessa saw her fedora, which had come off when she'd landed; it had a cut on the brim. For some reason, the sight of her ruined hat made Contessa all the more furious.
She turned to glare balefully at the limping figure of the Man in White as he shambled toward her, a mad grin stretching across his damnable face. Cold metal mixed with warm blood against the knuckles of her good hand as Fortuna tried to stem the bleeding on her arm and shift away at the same time.
"I confess myself impressed, Fortuna," chuckled the beast wearing the skin of a human, drawing closer and closer to the altar, "Why, I can count on one hand the number of persons who have given me such trouble in the past and have fingers to spare. Such a pity," the smile vanished, "I'd expected more out of the Shard I gave to distract the Thinker."
Contessa drew her gun and pointed it at Nyarlathotep's head, a rage to quench stars burning in her eyes.
The monster chuckled without humor, raising its blade between the gun barrel and its condescending expression, "We already had this little dance-"
"You killed my world," accused Fortuna through a hateful sob of pain and loathing.
It grinned again, "Yes. So what?"
Fortuna fired twice. One bullet was casually deflected.
The other hit its mark.
The chandelier fell on Nyarlathotep, the monster letting out a rage-filled scream as its lower body was pinned beneath the cast-iron construction, its sword knocked away by the force of the unexpected blow.
Fortuna slowly found her legs and stood, searing hatred coursing through her veins as she limped painfully but resolutely toward the trapped Man in White, a strip of bloodstained cloth, taken from a dead cultist, providing a makeshift bandage for her upper arm.
While she did, the monster screamed vitriol and defiance at her, in a malicious voice that echoed off the chamber's walls, making it sound like a baying crowd was chanting the words in unison:
"
YOU THINK YOU'VE WON, HUMAN? I AM DEATHLESS! I AM NYARLATHOTEP! YOUR FICKLE WORLD WILL BE ONE OF UNCOUNTABLE MYRIADS I HAVE DEVOURED SINCE TIME BEGAN, A DROP OF WATER TO SLAKE MY QUENCHLESS THIRST! AND I HAVE COME TO THIS EARTH! ALL OF THESE EARTHS! MY THOUSAND FACES WILL FIND YOU, AND THIS PETTY VICTORY WILL TURN TO ASHES IN YOUR WHORISH MAW! MY AGENT, ANNOTATOR, WILL END YOUR CAULDRON'S CALLOUS TYRANNY! A WORD FROM HER LIPS WILL SAVE YOUR PATHETIC SPECIES, AND A WORD FROM HER LIPS WILL END EVERY WORLD! KILL HER AND SHE WILL-"
"Shut up and
DIE!" screamed Fortuna, shooting the Man in White in the face over and over again, "
DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!"
Click-click-click-click…
Breathing heavily, lightheaded from blood-loss, her body wracked with a complex spiderweb of
pain, Fortuna ran another Path, then winced at the first step. She clenched her teeth in preparation…
And pressed the barrel of her gun against her shoulder.
"
FUCK ME RUNNING!"
The smell of frying pork and smoke filled her nostrils as the wound was cauterized. Not that Fortuna noticed. She was a little busy screaming her lungs out in pain, her vision turning white as exposed nerves were burnt.
Collecting her hat and sword as fast as she could, Fortuna staggered over to her cloak and retrieved it as well; she needed to get out of here, try to heal herself – no. The security of Cauldron's assets came first. She needed to seal away Doormaker and Clairvoyant, Fortuna decided as she limped toward the door.
Then she could focus on…
A cold wind blew from nowhere, caressing the chapel's interior; paling in fearful realization, Fortuna looked over her shoulder.
One of the cultist's corpses was getting to its feet.
"Door me," her voice was a ragged wisp of autumn leaves scattering, but it worked regardless.
She was standing in the room that held Doormaker and Clairvoyant, the two insensate Parahumans staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
"Seal pattern Perseus-37-Quorum," hissed Fortuna, falling to her knees between their beds and staring at the floor.
It flickered, the composition and texture of the floor and room around her changing rapidly as Doormaker shifted the place through multiple dimensions over and over again. This was one of the first contingencies Contessa had put forward, in the event of Cauldron being threatened by an outside force, before everything had gone wrong with her Paths.
Before
Nyarlathotep interfered with everything.
The floor finally settled on a hardwood setting, just before Doormaker and Clairvoyant joined hands. Now, the only Doors that would open were ones that Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon, Number Man, and Doctor Mother called for, and even then, none of them would lead here; in fact, if any tears in space occurred in this dimension, Doormaker would create a door in front of them that led to an inhospitable Earth.
She was safe. Cauldron's most precious assets were safe.
The very thought made her want to scream, to rage, to cry. Fortuna did none of these.
Instead, she leaned against Doormaker's bed and spoke quietly, "Path to healing myself."
She was down an arm, had lost a lot of blood, and was probably bleeding internally. More than this, she was too tired from the fight, and too fraught at the revelations the Crawling Chaos presented to her – lies, possibly, but nothing could be discounted – to do more than collect the medkit from under Doormaker's bed and stare at it blankly.
The Path to Victory provided her with the first step.
It confused Fortuna, but she still grabbed the fire extinguisher from under the same bed and leaned her neck against their joined hands.
She opened the medkit and took out a Tinker-fabricated regeneration booster. She injected it near her wounded shoulder, ignoring the pain pulsing through her body with practiced focus.
It didn't work very well. A byproduct of the monster's blade, maybe?
Contessa shook her head; there was no time for thinking about the past minutes. First, she needed to survive.
Using her teeth, she tore the key out of the fire extinguisher and set in in her lap, aiming the nozzle where her power told her to, and removed another Tinker-fabricated regen booster from the kit.
And waited.
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{/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\}
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Days like these were rare enough as it was, in Jack's happy opinion.
Shatterbird's recruitment was quite the event, as was Crawler's, to say nothing of the joy recruiting his little Bonesaw a few months ago brought to his black and stony heart. The Siberian, Mannequin, and Hatchet Face… eh. Their joining was a foregone conclusion, really, given their individual dispositions for bringing pain and suffering.
But attacking an asylum, a place where, were it not for their powers, each of the Nine would've doubtless ended up? Ah, the irony was enough to make Jack almost giddy with anticipation, mostly because this place was dedicated to the "healing" – read: imprisonment – of other special people.
That there would
certainly be someone here to replace Winter, who'd been unfortunately beheaded by Jack after she tried to kill his Bonesaw, and maybe Chuckles – Jack had to chide Crawler for eating his brother – was all but ensured! Why, their little game was less a recruitment, and more a rescue of some poor troubled soul!
The government used this place to hide away those who didn't fit into their silly view of the world, many of whom were perfectly sane and innocent upon arriving, so it only followed that his family, paragons of all the best of humanity's virtues that they were, should mount a "rescue" of some of these wayward children.
As always, everyone had agreed with this plan, for each their own reasons. His Bonesaw was looking forward to finding a sibling to play with, Crawler, Hatchet Face and the Siberian just wanted to make people scream – a noble and right-thinking goal – Mannequin was curious about how the Parahuman asylum was run – and also wanted to find someone interesting to nominate, which Jack approved of – while Shatterbird was the only one who'd been neutral on the idea, though she still agreed to take out the place's communications and stand guard outside.
So off they went, plying their merry trade, and within minutes, they'd struck gold!
One was the Shaker 12, Labyrinth, who could alter the fabric of reality to suit her mood. A lot of potential there, but the girl would be difficult to turn, so said Jack's gut; Mannequin had pursued her, but the girl had apparently given Alan the slip, given the rather fascinating if unimaginative interdimensional portal before him.
It could use more impaled bodies and forbidding imagery, in Jack Slash's professional opinion.
The other golden child was
Burnscar. Such a pleasant name! And the poor, fraught dear's powerset was just
perfect for his family's purposes! Everyone was afraid of fire; it was ingrained into humanity's genetic memory, a warning from the dark days of crouching fearfully in caves as forests and fields burned, whether from volcanic eruption or drought-induced brushfires.
She was, as Jack estimated, a perfect new sister for his Bonesaw! Their chase had been fun, Burnscar flitting through her fires like a sprite as she avoided the Siberian and Hatchet Face's attempts to corner her, but once that bit of sport inevitably ended, with Burnscar cornered and whimpering…
Apparently Jack was a little off his game today. He'd figured the offer of a helping hand, a focus for the girl's art – and it
was artistic, the ways Burnscar played with fire – and a support structure that actually
worked, as opposed to medication and talking with suits about icky
feelings… well, Jack thought the girl would be putty in his hands, all ready to mold into the fine arsonist he knew she could be.
Instead, she'd fled again, when parts of the asylum began shifting; Labyrinth's doing.
Jack
had managed to wound the girl, however, and had been planning on offering to have Bonesaw stitch her up, in exchange for Labyrinth's surrender.
He hadn't expected the two to find outside assistance.
Their protector was…
beautiful.
A prim and proper young lady, well dressed and dreadful in her bearing, with a projection that revealed to Jack the deep darkness of her soul shrouding her and the Nine's prey from retribution. Not since Harbinger left had Jack seen such raw
potential for chaos and disorder; the girl was an avatar of annihilation, Jack could see it in her eyes. Here was his perfect understudy; a destructive fury dwelt in her heart, possessed of such cold calculation and decisiveness that even the Siberian was stilled by her voice.
She was a ruinous force of nature, an apocalypse waiting to happen.
Oh, yes, she'd require work to bring her true self to the fore. It would need the deaths of all she held dear and the destruction of her sense of propriety to accomplish, but Jack had a feeling that her beauty would only grow through such hardships, and the end result would
certainly be worth it.
If only he knew her name, he could begin.
"Oh, yes! Tell us your name! Then we can play! You, me and Amy! Burnscar and Labyrinth don't want to play with us anymore," clapped his Bonesaw, ever-so happy at finding such an agreeable and
dangerous young woman, "so I'll make sure they'll be
together forever!"
Ah, yes, Panacea was there. A good consolation prize, should the Master before him prove difficult. Siberian really needed to get her ass in gear, though; they might need the backup, if the girl protecting Labyrinth and Burnscar proved rebellious.
"You wish to know my name, Jack Slash?" spoke the scarfed – but
really quite well-dressed – young woman.
Every word, every
syllable, brushed against Jack's ears like knives against glass.
A rock formed in his gut, and he wasn't alone in his estimation of the mounting threat before him, if his Bonesaw's small gasp told him anything.
Suddenly, the girl's entire bearing shifted, and something in the back of Jack's mind began to scream at him as her voice tore through the air between them, "You can ask it from the ferryman, as he drags your vile soul to Tartarus!"
'So that's how it is,' thought Jack worriedly, sending a subtle blade at the girl's neck; the feeling in his gut was telling him to
kill the girl. His gut hadn't lied to him, ever.
Sparks flew from the Master projection's wings as it shielded her; his Bonesaw's preciously adorable spider-bots scuttled forward as Jack tried to breach the thing's defenses. Just a little closer and the girl would be paralyzed and asleep, which would dismiss her projection, and then-
A sound rippled outward from a gap in the wings.
It was
OBSCENE to Jack's ears; his very
mind felt dirty just for
hearing… what in the
solid red fuck did that girl just
say?! Was that a
sentence? On the other hand, there weren't any
obvious effects resulting from that eldritch heresy against the spoken word, save Jack's sudden and perfectly understandable desire to take a long,
long shower. With nitric acid.
Whatever his own feelings, the uncommon sound of his Bonesaw
retching made the rock that'd formed in his gut turn into a heavy boulder.
Then it came.
A tendril of green-black flesh, turgid and rippling like a fever dream, rose over the Siberian's still body. Row after row after
row of shark-like teeth appeared in a gaping maw that seemed to
grow from the fell limb…
And it ate the Siberian with a very final-sounding crunch.
Now feeling
quite justifiably worried, Jack grabbed his whimpering Bonesaw with one hand and slashed his machete at the
thing growing in the hallway, the blonde girl he was pulling to his side having her spider-bots fire analysis probes and several contagions into the mass of undulating ooze, in a bid to both understand its defenses and weaknesses, and hopefully slow the monster down as Jack steadily retreated from the massive, singing beast that was
still growing.
Whatever it was,
wherever it came from, Jack instinctively knew three things about it.
One, it wasn't a projection, but – Bonesaw screamed in fraught terror as eyes began opening and looking down at the pair like they were
ants – an intelligent, living thing.
Two, it was extremely durable – Jack swore as each of the wounds he inflicted healed in less than a second – and, if it was
that durable, it was likely also stronger than Crawler at his most joyous.
And thirdly…
it was hungry.
There were other realizations that flitted through Jack's thoughts like a swarm of drunken butterflies – the thing was
very old, it didn't understand English or the basic concepts of personal space, property, or hygiene, and it was giving Jack the same general vibes Tinkers usually did – but those were all tertiary worries, matters he would have to consider, parse and brood upon at a later date, preferably while engaging in his favorite relaxation exercise of making people beg for death.
Right now, Jack was
not at all interested in discovering what this particular creature's gullet looked like, and, loathe though he was to admit it, a beast such as this was a
little over his and Bonesaw's weight class. Also, his pet bio-Tinker was still screaming incoherently. Not an environment conducive to killing oozes of unusual size and spurious nature.
"Time to go!" shouted Jack; taking his Bonesaw in a bridal carry, he activated the emergency implants she'd added to his body, amplifying his speed and physical dexterity, and ran for the tunnel the Siberian and Ned had dug into this underground facility.
As he leapt up a series of stairs, several spider-bots leaping onto his body, his Bonesaw finally managed to get ahold of herself.
Wide-eyed and still clearly terrified, she informed him of her discoveries, "Fire! It's weak against fire!"
"Pity," grumped Jack with a sardonic smile as he leapt from railing to railing, "We could've used Burnscar against it."
"I can make something," squeaked Bonesaw, a spider-bot landing on her chest and opening to reveal several vials, "but I need tim-"
TEKELI-LI!
In the wake of a joyous, crazed roar that sent fiery claws down Jack's spine, the stairs below them were torn away by a limb of green flesh that was as thick as a redwood's trunk, wriggling pseudopods speckled with eyes glaring hungrily up at the two fleeing members of the Nine as further sounds of destruction quickly followed, heralding the beast beginning its pursuit.
"EEEEEEEEEK!" was Bonesaw's girlish, shrieking response to this most unfortunate event.
"AAAAHHHH!" yelled Jack manfully, doubling his efforts to get the hell away from the thing that, apparently, felt its lunch had enough of a head-start.
TEKELI-LI! TEKELI-LI! gleefully screamed the pursuing abomination against biology, language, and color-scheme.
Stone floors and walls shattered around Jack as he continued his mildly panicked flight, the beastly ooze paying no heed to property damage regulations – heroes usually followed those! – as it sang a song of happiness and
bloodlust; it was at this point, Jack realized something else, much to his horror.
It would
never stop chasing them, not until the Nine were slaughtered.
Swearing mentally, Jack tensely asked his Bonesaw around the sound of shattering Asylum, "Can't you dissolve it or something?! It's a
blob, for Scion's sake!"
Bonesaw shrieked back angrily, face twisted in rage as she ranted, "THAT
THING MAKES NO SENSE!"
TEKELI-LI! CRASH! BANG!
"ADAPTIVE BIOLOGY, RAPID REGENERATION, TOTAL REDUNDANCY THROUGHOUT, ABSORBS ANY FORM OF MATTER FOR GROWTH-"
TEKELI-LI! CRASH! CRASH!
"AND IT
HAS A MODULAR, QUASI-DIMENSIONAL INTERNAL STRUCTURE! IT'S LIKE A HUGE, TINKER-TECH
MACROPHAGE FROM HELL!" and she went back to her Tinkering, muttering caustically under her breath, while Jack, now
very annoyed, finally spotted the exit.
TEKELI-LI! TEKELI-LI!
And the thing was right on their heels; the ground fell away from Jack as he skipped over falling debris and dodged around a grasping swarm of teeth-filled tentacles. The hole in the wall seemed miles away, and the actually
rather impressive monster behind them
had to have a Mover rating to keep up with them.
Then Crawler appeared around a corner and spat a glob of black material onto the thing.
TEKELI-LI! shrieked the pseudo-macrophage, recoiling from the hit briefly.
That was enough to give Jack time to stop next to Crawler, who was grinning in glee at the sight of the ooze.
"No." barked the leader of the Slaughterhouse Nine.
Crawler looked so
dejected, looking between Jack and the ooze with a pleading lilt to his voice, "But I wanna fight-"
TEKELI-LI!
And then one of Crawler's legs was burned off by a red laser beam. A laser beam that
shot out of one of the ooze's many, many eyes.
That was really
too many eyes, for Jack's comfort.
"
FUCKING RUN!" this time, Jack and Bonesaw screamed in unison, and Crawler seemed to understand that he was not only outvoted, but outclassed by the thing chasing them. He spat another glob at the thing and joined his two compatriots in fleeing from the…
Halfway up the tunnel, which Crawler was collapsing behind them, in the hope of slowing the thing down-
TEKELI-LI! to little effect, clearly, as another laser beam shot over Jack's shoulder, drawing a rather naughty imprecation from Crawler and a startled
eek from Bonesaw.
-Jack realized, with a severe frown, that the lion's share of his annoyance with this whole situation stemmed from not knowing what the
hell this thing was called!
Then the Siberian appeared, wrapped one arm around Jack and Bonesaw ("Sibby! You're alive!"), grabbed Crawler with the other hand, and shot up the long tunnel into daylight with a furious
TEKELI-LI echoing at their backs.
Once they were set down near a floating, nervous Shatterbird ("What the hell did you two
do?!") and Hatchet Face, who was standing a way's off and making a rather nice sculpture from the bodies of the Asylum's resident PRT troopers, Jack got a good look at the Siberian's face.
She looked panicked. Her face was twitching, and her body was jerking at odd moments. He
swore she was drooling a little.
TEKELI-LI!
And the ooze was going to catch up to them before they could make good their retreat; if the Siberian was a projection – he'd suspected, and this event proved it beyond a doubt – then their usual tactics of scattering to the wind and regrouping later wouldn't work.
That, and Jack was
pretty sure the thing would chase them to the ends of the Earth anyway.
While the idea of leading this ooze on a merry chase throughout the country
would be pretty funny, Jack wasn't looking forward to the grey hairs he'd get from all the stress that came with avoiding this insuperable thing, so…
"Bonesey – ah, good," the smart girl has ensconced herself in a Tinker-tech shield they'd appropriated from a Toybox cache; turning to the others, Jack drew several knives and grinned, "Either we kill this thing or it kills us. Bonesaw has a way, but we need to give her time to create it."
Hatchet Face looked between the tunnel –
TEKELI-LI! – and Jack, "Just have the Siberian-"
"It ate me," the Siberian twitched.
Tying his long hair back, Jack faced the hole with determination, "Try not to let that happen again; use a rock or something," the Siberian darted away and returned with a Mack-sized boulder; Jack smiled, "Yes, just like that. Shatterbird, hold nothing back; take silicon from the
dirt if you have to. Hatchet Face, stay near Bonesaw and try not to die; I'm fairly sure your powerset won't help much against this beastie. Crawler, sponge up the damage, see if you can evolve to take it down, but keep your distance until that happens."
TEKELI-LI!
And then it came.
Not from the hole, but from out of the
ground, and Jack felt his stomach go cold at the sight of what his merry band had to face.
It was
massive, the size of an eighteen-wheeler truck with all the trimmings, covered in burning red eyes set into twisting green-black flesh that seemed slightly furry. Arms and grasping limbs reached for the remaining members of the Nine with another furiously screamed
TEKELI-LI!
A high-pitched screech stopped it cold, countless shards of glass and silica slamming into and cutting frantically through the mouth-lined pseudopods. Crawler danced around in front of the thing, spitting multicolored loogies into the fray from his many mouths. The Siberian screamed like a berserker that just witnessed its puppy get flattened by a mail truck and swung her boulder at the grasping limbs.
Hatchet Face just sort of stood there with an incredulous expression, shouting "
WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" over the din. Not that Jack noticed much, as he was a little busy swinging his blades into the openings Shatterbird was leaving in a bid to keep the beast from eating them.
TEKELI-LI.
Then a laser beam erased Hatchet Face and glassed the ground behind him.
More lasers, ranging in size from pencil-thin to
oh-shit-no thick, ripped through Shatterbird's glass storm to assail the Nine. The Siberian, unaffected by this most unfortunate development, just kept screaming and beating on the ooze with her boulder. Bonesaw, still in her barrier, ignored the fighting in favor of Tinkering. The dear.
Shatterbird swore and dodged around the beams as best as she could while Crawler tanked hits with aplomb; Jack bobbed and weaved between the death-rays, a smile forming on his face. This was getting
exciting; in fact, if it wasn't for the fact that his opponent was doing its absolute oozy best to murder them viciously, Jack Slash would go so far as to say he was having fun!
But, alas – a stray beam burned a shiny spot on Jack's shoulder, to which he replied by puncturing several of the thing's eyes – this wasn't much fun. Merely exciting, in the way good fights usually were.
A horrified, enraged scream from above was Shatterbird's response to losing her legs due to the beast's incessant Blaster attacks; to make matters worse, this caused her focus to fail for a critical moment. One which their opponent took immediate advantage of.
TEKELI-LI!
A mouth of razor teeth
exploded from beneath the Siberian, chomping both her and the boulder she was wielding in two bites; as this happened, multiple tendrils of green flesh snaked out and, despite Jack's efforts to keep them at bay, wrapped around Crawler.
Who began screaming, as the ooze proceeded to eat him, "GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF ME!"
Jack and Shatterbird did their best to oblige their teammate's progressively more panicked pleas for assistance, but there was
too much of the thing for the two of them to handle; that, and the beast was ripping up boulders to use as shields against Shatterbird, and was throwing clods of dirt and whole trees at Jack.
His knives blurred furiously into the mass of tentacles, a serious worry beginning to fill Jack as Crawler's pleas turned to horrified screaming; was fire
really its only weakness?! Where the
hell did it even
come from?!
The girl who called this unfathomable horror into the world hadn't given him the Tinker vibe. No, that girl was something…
other. Something stranger than superpowers, like Grey Boy, Sleeper, Nilbog, and the Faerie Queen.
Smile slipping into a focused glare, Jack promised himself something: if he survived this encounter, he was going to kill that girl. No games, no recruitment, no fun. She was too dangerous to allow to live in any capacity.
TEKELI-LI!
"EEEEAAAAHHH-KK!"
Aaaand, Crawler was just torn in half; mercifully, for Ned, the ooze gleefully devoured his remains with swift efficiency. Then the victorious beast let out another
TEKELI-LI and continued its assault.
The Siberian returned with a… bus. Not the Nine's bus, thankfully. She still used it as a baseball bat, and managed to knock the thing back a few feet, much to the gelatinous horror's roaring fury, giving Jack and Shatterbird a little breathing room.
The downside was that the Siberian looked even
more crazed than before; granted, Jack mused while digging a bleeding furrow in the creature which Shatterbird skillfully filled with glass, the Siberian
had been eaten by the monster twice now, and Bonesaw
had told him its interior makeup didn't make any sense.
Hopefully – he jumped over a mass of tendrils that exploded out of the ground and cut them to ribbons – Sibby would be more careful. Now that she had a bus, though, it
should be easier to keep the ooze at bay until Bonesaw could-
The Siberian vanished with a quiet pop.
"What."
Jack's humorless statement was obscured by the bus crashing into the ground, Shatterbird screaming in frustration, and another happy
TEKELI-LI from their opponent.
What did that word even
mean?! AND WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE-
Jack's danger-sense tingled.
And Eidolon appeared above Shatterbird with a green flash.
'Oh fuck,' thought Jack even as he roared, "SOMETIME
TODAY, BONESAW!"
Too late, it seemed, as the Triumvirate member encased Shatterbird in a cocoon of silver light.
Her glass fell, and revealed the monster in all its putrid glory.
Before Jack's horrified eyes, the thing regenerated all its wounds, its hundreds of mouths grinning and muttering in tongues alien to his ears and
laughing at him, wriggling limbs swaying around its massive form.
They'd barely inconvenienced the thing, Jack realized hatefully; all the work he'd put into the Nine, for
decades, and this thing thought their efforts
amusing.
TEKELI-LI~
Quicker than most eyes could follow, eight tree-trunk-thick tendrils shot into the sky, surprising an approaching Eidolon, and surrounded Shatterbird's cage.
Jack ripped his blades through the air, screaming incoherently at the ooze that
dared laugh at him.
Two things happened, then, simultaneously.
All eight of those skyward limbs grabbed something invisible and
pulled; Shatterbird came apart as the time-slowing field was split into pieces, the city-destroying woman's blood and organs raining down onto the battlefield.
Not that Jack had the time to appreciate this kill most impressive, as he was a little busy with the
fifty tendrils, large rocks, and laser beams that descended upon the serial murderer like the wrath of an angry god.
TEKELI-LI! Cried the ooze victoriously.
He met the challenge head-on, blades whipping left and right, leaping from ground to ground as he made his way back toward Bonesaw's barrier. A low
boom from above heralded the arrival of Alexandria from supersonic flight; this, in Jack's mind, was a good thing. If only one of the two heroes could get within shouting distance, he could turn them on this beastie and flee with his Bonesaw. After setting everything on fire, of cour-
TEKELI-LI!
A bladed whip knocked both of Jack's Bowie knives from his hands; he barely had the chance to draw his last machete when a second tendril
plunged into his sternum.
"Hrrk…" this, Jack Slash mused while cutting away another couple grasping vines, was a novel sensation; it wasn't everyday one could feel the sensation of multiple tiny mouths eating your lungs and ribcage, after all.
A metallic sound preceded a spider-bot latching onto his back, right as the tendril in Jack's chest tensed-
"I'm sorry, Jack."
Ah.
Jacob grinned, pulling a switchblade and slashing away into the horror as it reeled him in; he'd long wondered when one of his little projects would betray him. Usually, he saw such uprisings coming long before they actually happened.
Still, he continued to muse in what were surely his last moments, Jacob couldn't really blame Riley for sacrificing him. How
else would she get one of her spider-bots close enough to kill this myriad-eyed macrophage?
At the same time, Jack could do nothing but follow his gut.
With his machete, he cut off the tendril in his chest, making the monster recoil in seeming pain; not that this particularly mattered, due to the dozens of other tendrils coming his way, but his gut told him that they wouldn't
quite reach him.
A small
beep came from the spider-bot, right before Jack cut its legs off with his switchblade. It detached from his back as he continued to fly through the air.
Maybe he'd survive? No… no, Bonesaw had gone for broke on this attack. If he was lucky – and Jacob didn't
feel very lucky right this second – he'd be immolated quickly, a nice painless death.
Before he could think of a worse fate, everything was on
fire.
TEKELI-LI! TEKELI-LI!
And, to the sound of the beast screaming in shrill terror and pain, Jacob closed his eyes as the cold-but-hot feeling of flames began to embrace him-
-only to be let down as he belly-flopped onto hardwood flooring.
FWOOSH!
'Ah. That's nice and cold,' a searing pain, unlike any other he'd ever felt, burst in Jacob's ribcage, drawing a choking, wet sound from his throat,
'So this is Hell. Relief, then more pain. Funny, there's quite a lot of empirical, not to mention philosophic, evidence against-'
A sharp, invasive pain appeared in Jacob's shoulder, which was followed by the grasping, metal-flavored vines of a Tinker-tech regenerative tincture. Also more pain.
'MOTHER OF ALL FUCKS!'
A
lot more pain. Enough that Jacob promised a painful, slow death to whoever saved his life with this most barbaric of implements.
He had to stop thrashing and screaming himself hoarse first, however.
Luckily, the fits passed, allowing Jack to take stock of his body; he was still quite bit up and burned from all the near-misses the beast inflicted on him, but the gaping chest wound was, while red and raw, most decidedly
not a gaping, fatal chest wound.
And his ponytail was shortened. Jack sighed. Today was a terrible day, and it simply wasn't over.
'Ah well,' he decided, and looked over at his rescuer, a biting admonishment on his lips and a knife in his hand, thoughts of retribution and delightful stress relief spinning through his muddled thoughts.
The sight of the beautiful if quite pale and clearly dying woman, looking at him with a silent plea of assistance, brought those thoughts to a screeching halt against a concrete divide. It was a fiery wreck with no survivors, more at 11.
"Help…" weakly begged the woman in the bloodied fedora,
Contessa, a spent fire extinguisher rolling from her lap, an open medkit at her side.
Jacob sighed, mentally screamed a few dozen of his useless father's choicest obscenities, and reached for the medkit.
After injecting the first Tinker-tech regenerative into the woman, eliciting a pained groan from her bloodied lips, Jacob asked mildly, "I do hope you realize that this doesn't make us friends?"
"As if I'd call you friend," steadfastly replied Cauldron's boogeyman through a haze of painkillers and bloodloss, "No. I need you to heal me, and then we need to talk."
While she said this, Jacob saw the state of her shoulder, and grimaced. He still set to work on using those same regenerative needles to reattach her tricep; as he did, with much grunting and moaning of his erstwhile patient, Jacob observed, "What do we need to talk about, and why did my people have to die before you decided that this little chat couldn't wait?"
Both very good questions. Both were answered promptly.
"In… reverse order," slurred Contessa, "everyone… will think you're… dead, and that'ssss… a good thing, due to the… second reason.
"Our world… is going to end, and you'rrre… going to help me stop it."
While she said these things, Jacob bandaged her arm; the wound in her shoulder wasn't healing very fast, to say nothing of the other injuries covering her brutalized form. He kept his focus on stitching and bandaging the rest of her body, and didn't say anything on what she'd said to him.
Not until she flipped one of his bangs and chuckled brokenly, "I like… the white… nice touch…"
Jacob blinked. He picked up his switchblade and – oh. Well, yes, the shock of white in his hair
was a little fetching, but, all the same, this ruined his image! That was rather
annoying.
He needed to relieve some stress...
To wit, he laughed and put the blade against Contessa's throat; she never stopped smiling, even as he informed her, "If the world is going to end,
my dear, I'd much rather be on the side that ends it," Jacob grinned, "after all, that's where all the fun will be! But!" he lifted his blade slightly, smile slipping away, "As you've saved my life, I'll give you
one chance to give me a reason to help you."
She looked right into his eyes, still smiling drunkenly.
"It's not just the world that will end," spoke Contessa, her voice perfectly even despite her grievous wounds, "but our history. Our deeds, dreams and stories will be naught but ash in the wind," she laughed, a hollow and broken sound to Jacob's ears, "And
help them? Ha! What makes you think they
need you? You, me, all of humanity… we're
nothing but food for them."
While Jacob found the hatred in the woman's voice quite tantalizing, and while he wished to toy with the idea of turning her to the side of righteousness, Contessa wasn't finished, and expounded on her findings with a manic, furious gleam in her eyes.
"This is all a game, Jacob. First, one played with superpowers, but now the game has changed. Now the stakes don't so much hinge on humanity's survival, in the face of the source of our powers…
now the stakes are our very souls, and our enemy pays our resistance as much mind as one would pay attention to the aspirations of a
gnat. It
toyed with me," she snarled, "and it
toyed with you, through its agent; it fed us scraps of information, put us through trials, not because it wants us to succeed, or assist it, but because it is
amused by our efforts.
"Why should you help me?" Contessa's smile was a showing of teeth, the click of a gun's safety, and the pressing of cold metal against the raw skin on his chest.
"Haven't you wondered what would happen, if you killed a
god?"
Jacob looked up at the other two Parahumans in the room, quirking his lip and musing over what she'd told him.
On one hand, it really
irked him to find that the girl was only a symptom of something much bigger. That really messed with his plans for retribution; after all, the best way to deal with a problem was to cut the head off and let the body die. Or give the remains to Bonesaw; that would ensure at least an afternoon of quality entertainment, especially given the peanut gallery of himself, Crawler and Mannequin.
Good times. Shame he'd have to punish the girl for betraying him, but, eh,
c'est la vie.
But to kill a supposed god? Oh, now
that tickled Jacob's fancy like nothing else! To spit upon the natural order, to reach beyond mortality and slay the immortal despot! Here was a challenge… one which had, admittedly, nearly killed him not an hour and a half ago, BUT!
Now, he had quality help, in the form of this woman and the two likely versatile and useful Parahumans next to them.
On the other hand…
Jacob hummed thoughtfully and looked at the woman again, "You know, Shatterbird and I had a conversation, some time ago-" he was cut off by Contessa scoffing and rolling her eyes; Jacob grinned as he deciphered the message, speaking it aloud, "Ah. They don't know."
"As if I'd tell them," she replied venomously, "Or is the idea of being on the receiving end of a lobotomy enjoyable to you? Because I'm not looking forward to it myself."
He removed his knife from her throat. She removed the gun from his chest.
Jacob resumed his tending to Contessa's wounds. While he did, he regaled her with the tale of the ooze's attack, and she reciprocated with her own story. Of cultists and a nameless fear, of interesting rituals and deathless men in white suits.
Having fully bandaged her right arm, and with both of them quite flush on information about the girl, Annotator, and her mentor, this Nyarlathotep character, Jacob drew out his pack of black cloves and offered one to Contessa. She accepted with a grunt of thanks.
It annoyed him slightly that he couldn't read her very well, but he'd make do. Jacob was nothing if not charismatic.
"Oh! I do have a condition, in regards to my assistance," he told her, two hours after he'd been rescued; while Fortuna, as she'd told him her name, cleaned her equipment, he'd pursued the contents of one of the crates lining the room: a delightful selection of knifes and other bladed implements, "See, while not a simpleton by any stretch, I'm not much of a medic, and while we have quite a lot of supplies… well," he gestured at her body, "if you want to get back on your feet quickly, we'll need-"
"Bonesaw." Fortuna said flatly, affixing her cleaned silencer onto her gun again.
Jacob nodded, happy that she understood-
"Is compromised."
Ah. That was… not good.
"My dear," Jack's smile was back as he lifted a new kukri knife from a box, "I'm afraid you'll have to elaborate on that."
She did.
.
{/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\}
.
That evening
Sniffling to herself, Bonesaw kept walking through the park her teleporter had dumped her. She was so sad!
Everyone, her whole family – except her remaining bots, Twitchy and Screamy – was dead and gone, victims of that
fucking beast…
She shook her head. No, no, she shouldn't swear, even in the safety of her own head. Mr… Mr. Jack…
Bonesaw whimpered and hugged herself. She'd betrayed Mr. Jack! If only she'd been a little faster… a little better…
It was just like Riley and her family all over again! She wasn't fast enough, and now everyone was deader than dead! That monster had eaten them all, and Bonesaw couldn't go back to the bus, where all the cloning samples were, not that it
mattered because she was
all alone and with the heroes around…
Choking back another sob, Bonesaw trudged into a copse of trees, trying to think of something to take her mind off all the bad stuff that'd happened today, but it was just so
hard! They'd been having so much
fun and then that older girl with the glasses came along and ruined
everything!
Everyone was
dead and she was all alone! What was she supposed to do
now?!
'That's easy. Panacea lives in Brockton Bay, so she probably lives there, too,' Bonesaw thought with a serious frown while laying a cardboard box under a weeping willow's protective eaves; settling down and opening a lunchbox, Bonesaw removed her third-to-last peanut butter and jelly sandwich and began eating mournfully,
'I'll have to prepare more stuff this time, though. Some really fun things! Maybe… no… oh! A worm, made of people, all melted and stitched together, that gets bigger the more creatures it eats, oh, oh, and load it with plagues, just in case! Weaponized Ebola crossed with a zombie virus, slow-acting of course, and beefed-up versions of every other disease known to man to mask its release!'
Mr. Jack would be so proud of her… assuming she could pull it off, of course.
Because Bonesaw was all alone, and had to do all the hard work herself! Usually, Aunt Sibby or Uncle Manny would bring her all the material she needed to work with, but now they were dead…
'What should I do?' wondered Bonesaw, suddenly not very hungry; a chilly breeze whipped through the park, making the little homicidal girl shiver,
'The heroes are looking for me, I know they are, and without any help…' she sniffed and hugged her knees as the wind, heralding the oncoming winter, picked up,
'What should I do?!'
Clonk. "OWIE!"
Blinking the stars out of her eyes and leaping to her feet, her spider-bots chittering warningly, Bonesaw rubbed the top of her head and looked at the thing that bonked her head.
It was a book, wrapped in yellowed fabric.
She looked up. Yeah, that looked like a good place to hide a book, right between a couple branches.
'But why would someone hide a book?' thought the girl, kneeling next to it and making Screamy unwrap part of the fabric; it looked pretty plain, if somewhat wrinkled from rain.
Her family, except Hatchet Face and Crawler, all insisted that books were important to growing girls. Not only that, but Mr. Jack boasted that his best ideas came from books! Maybe this was a sign of some sort, from Mr. Jack, that she should read some books and, once she had enough new information, Bonesaw could make
her suffer.
Bonesaw giggled as she pulled the yellowed book closer; the leather it was made of felt weird. A closer examination revealed that it was bound in
human flesh.
Her grin exploded across her face. Any book that was bound in such a material would only have the
best ideas!
Silently thanking Mr. Jack, and promising to make a memorial to her fallen family, Bonesaw checked the spine. No title. Maybe the cover?
A three-limbed sigil, bright neon yellow against the brownish-yellow of the book's bindings, drew a small sound of awe from Bonesaw's lips. Yellow was a great color! Grinning, and happy that she'd given herself night vision, the young Bio-Tinker reclined against the tree trunk, brought over Twitchy and Screamy to keep her company, and opened the book.
Blank page. Oh, so this book was probably all
serious in its ways; all books that began with a blank page were to be taken seriously! Auntie Shatterbird said so, so it must be true!
Bonesaw turned the page, and beheld the book's title:
THE KING IN YELLOW
a three-part play
By 「 }__|__{ 」the Unspeakable
Oh! A play! Bonesaw clapped her hands and, full of delight, turned to the next page, expecting something worthy of, or hopefully surpassing, the boorish works of Shakespeare.
Act One, Scene One
Bonesaw picked up her apple juice and sipped it, just to make sure she had something to drink, and began reading.
…
…
…
Bonesaw mechanically sipped her apple juice, her hand shaking as she wept with delight.
…
…
…
Riley sniffed, then coughed out a loogie of snot and blood. It fell in her lap and writhed. That wouldn't do, not at all. She had Twitchy kill it.
Tears of red streamed down her young cheeks as she caressed the pages of the holy book, whispering, "So beautiful…"
She'd been right! This book, this play most decadent and dreadful, was the greatest idea
ever! Why would someone want to hide this?! Oh, well, if Riley was being honest with herself, she had to admit that most people wouldn't be able to appreciate the sublime aesthetic of Lord –
In the depths of her enslaved mind, Riley wailed in delighted, tantric agony as a being older than stars idly violated the trappings of her soul, making her toes curl as tendrils slid in and out of her brain, reaching down into her core and forcing a keen of pleasure from Riley's panting lips as it curiously fiddled with her ovaries-
-'s vision, but Riley would show those naysayers! She'd put on the play! Oh, but
first, she'd need actors! And an audience!
Oh, but she shouldn't be too hasty! And why should there only be
one showing?! The play was in three parts after all! So she could have three showings, in three cities!
She'd save Brockton Bay for
last.
With a grin that dripped blood mixed with pus, Riley closed the book and stood. There was a town not twenty minutes' skipping from here! That would provide her with a great place to do auditions and practice for opening night!
Tucking her Lord's masterwork into her pink backpack, Riley turned eyes that no longer saw
only light in the direction of the town, the fingers in her brain making her body start skipping merrily away from the park, Twitchy and Screamy bouncing along happily like ducklings following their mother.
Riley couldn't
wait to make her new Master happy!
.
{/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\}
.
Jacob stared off into space, as he had been for the past minutes, while Fortuna continued to clean her saber and fume silently at her new enemy's revelations.
This
thing, Nyarlathotep, had been active long before Cauldron ever existed; it'd conspired against the Entities, which reasoned that the monsters had upset Nyarlathotep somehow. Fortuna didn't want to think about it too hard.
Just like she didn't want to think about the 'gift' the Man in White mentioned. Her passenger…
Was there anything she could do? Yes. It meant working with Jack Slash, but Fortuna would do it.
Because, while neither of them could actually kill a god, they
could mitigate the damage the coming conflict would do doubt cause, and, in doing so, distract said god long enough to provide someone else with the opening to save them all.
Annotator, the girl who'd slaughtered the Nine, needed to be protected from Bonesaw's predations, as well as the ire of those who would either use or abuse her abilities. Which meant Contessa needed to report to Cauldron and tell them to keep their hands off the girl. Eventually.
First, she needed to heal and get back in the saddle.
Then she and Jack could go find Bonesaw and murder her with extreme prejudice.
Her ribs, pelvis… hell, her whole body
throbbed with pain as she breathed and went through the motions of cleaning her sword.
It wouldn't be that easy. But nothing worth doing, Fortuna knew, was in any way easy.
"You're telling the truth," Jacob finally rasped, the look in his eyes telling her he
wished she was lying.
Fortuna just nodded; even
that hurt.
"
Fuck me running," her interlocutor snarled, taking a long drag off his clove as he glared at nothing.
A black chuckle, more a sob really, left Fortuna's lips, "Yeah."
"So!" he shouted, knocking her grief aside as he stretched and looked at her expectantly, "What do we do first?"
Blinking, because the painkillers in her bloodstream were clouding her thoughts, Fortuna answered slowly, "Well, first, we need to kidnap an Asian schoolgirl and force her Trigger," Fortuna shrugged, then winced, "Ow. Shouldn't be too hard."
"Again, on one condition," Jacob grinned at her, twirling a butterfly knife in one hand.
Fortuna glared at him and deadpanned, "No. Jacob," she interrupted when he opened his mouth, "just… we'll leave that up to her, okay?" It was easier to compromise than fight this annoying bastard, so said her power; she might not be able to trust it against the bigger threats, but at least it allowed her to see through the asshole's plans.
"Fine," groused the other mass-murderer in the room, who then added with a grin, "But if she agrees, you have to wear a matching outfit."
Fortuna's glare intensified.
Jacob raised an eyebrow.
"If she refuses,
you have to wear it instead."
"I'm sure you'd
love that," laughed the former leader of the Slaughterhouse Nine, before a fire extinguisher sailed out of a Door and clonked him on the head, "OW! What the
hell was that for?!"
Fortuna blinked and looked at Doormaker, who had a small smile on his face. She turned back to Jacob, who was rubbing his head while glaring between the three Cauldron capes…
And she grinned, "Maybe you should develop a better sense of humor,
Sailor Slash."
"Oh,
fuck off," growled the man, rising and walking away as Fortuna giggled, only to be stopped by a pillow in her face, "And get some sleep, you drug-addled hipster!"
Fortuna kept laughing as she made herself comfortable. Oh, she couldn't wait to make that bastard god Nyarlathotep
scream.
.
{/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\}
.
A/N: I'm a lying liar who lies about content exclusive to this website.
It came to me suddenly: the Mythos is DARK.
So, I thought, why not have the incipient Old One who gets off on violating the genetic matter of its worshipers... do exactly that to its newest priestess?
Might have to move this to the NSFW boards, if only because of *ahem* certain future omakes and the edited color text above. Or make a separate thread for the omakes. We'll see.
Until the next chapter, QQ!
~Baked
