Worm: Necrotic Chronicles

Jesse K the Bubba · Mar 18, 2026

Decay

"I've got eyes on them," Armsmaster heard Shadow Stalker report, having sent the Ward to the rooftops to scope out the situation. Her 'patrol' this night had been unsanctioned, but rather than coming down heavy on her, he had thought to turn it into a learning moment, and perhaps make it feel less like she was rule-breaking and more like it was extra work, which may or may not brush up against her abrasive attitude towards authority. It had been something of a suggestion from Miss Militia, his second-in-command. "Three of them, surrounding Lung and... Holy- One of them has guns! Another's shooting... barbed wire?" What she said next was muttered too low for her comms to transfer to him.

"Say again. Barbed wire, then what?" he commanded while trying to close the distance, swerving into the next turn that should hopefully take him straight to the confrontation.

"She has some kind of chainsaw sword with bicycle gears, but it's... being spun by the barbed wire coming out of her skin."

...A creative if unusual application of Parahuman powers. At least he wouldn't be caught off-guard by her appearance, then.

"Other one has six arms. Third one's just dancing around with weird, metal feet. Should I take them down?"

"Negative," he quickly answered. "These may be new heroes if they've engaged Lung. If you have a shot, use the tranquilizer I gave you on him."

He was certainly glad he made enough of his specialized, anti-regenerator tranquilizer to have a spare dose for one of Shadow Stalker's bolts. It may not have the same look to it as him landing the blow, but the appearance of a hero and a protege working together to take down one of the more feared villains in the Bay was almost as good. Moreso, if they saved these unlucky people from his wrath in the meantime. He wasn't sure what possessed them to challenge Lung like this, but that didn't matter right now. These were questions for later, assuming there would be time enough for questions.

He came upon the sight of Lung being kicked by what appeared to be a young, teenage girl in a thrown-together dress and cloth mask from behind. Armsmaster could see, however, that she was not wearing any sort of footwear, but rather, had prosthetic feet with pneumatic pistons where the ankles would be and flexible material that made up the bottoms and heels. It was an overall interesting design that he wouldn't mind getting a closer look at. As the girl jumped away from the force of her kick, another swung the described chainsaw sword and impacted against his shoulder, tearing away pieces of flesh and then carving partly into the bone before he slung himself to rip it away, the wound healing over almost as soon as it was clear, though not quickly. The savage method of ripping through him may have hindered his regeneration somewhat. This was the same one Shadow Stalker described as having barbed wire coming from her skin, and Armsmaster could see that clearly now, though Stalker had somewhat under- and overstated it simultaneously. She did have barbed wire wrapped around her arms, legs, and chest, seemingly sprouting from within her body, but she also had spikes of bladed steel growing from her knees, shins, elbows, and wrists, along with a swirl of blades that seemed to sprout from her forehead and hang over her eyes like a mask. For some reason, this only made her blue-and-white dress stand out all the more. Gunshots rang, and Armsmaster's HUD systems briefly brought his attention to a woman with a metallic mask over her mouth and six arms. Three were wielding pistols, while three others were holding on to a rifle that looked to be built from piping and other scraps. It fired three shots, then a hand twisted off the barrel before she replaced it with a fresh one. Lung's right knee had a hole blown through it, forcing him to kneel, and the chainsaw girl aimed for it and severed the limb after a few seconds.

"Back away!" Armsmaster yelled as he dismounted. Lung looked at him, but the gang leader's attention was evenly split between all of his assailants. His leg was quickly starting to regrow, but then a small bolt of black hit his chest and rematerialized partially embedded there. He only had a moment to look down and notice it before the liquid within quickly disappeared, and his eyes began to grow groggy. Soon enough, he was falling onto his back and slowly shrinking down to his base size.

After only a moment's silence, the girl covered in barbed wire and blades raised her unwieldy weapon (which Armsmaster could now see was longer than she was tall) and whooped with joy.

"We did it! We saved the children!"

"Children?" he asked.

"Boss heard them talking about shooting some kids," the six-armed gun wielder said while putting her cobbled-together rifle onto her back. "Speaking of, I got these from his goons," she indicated the three pistols. Now that he got a closer look, he also noticed that two pairs of her arms had mildly different skin tones from the skin of her upper face. "Can I keep 'em, or..."

"They should be turned in as evidence," he told her, holding back from informing her that guns were usually a bad idea for Capes to wield unless they specifically pertained to their powers. Now was not the moment, and for all he knew, that's precisely why she had extra arms.

"Well darn," she muttered before letting them partly go and holding each by the barrel before placing them on the ground a few feet away from him. She had been wearing gloves on each hand, so that should hopefully make things simpler. Proving that they were fired by criminals tonight and not just her would be next to impossible, though.

At that moment, a smaller girl ran out of an alley, with another woman just behind her. Shadow Stalker also prowled out, crossbow loaded and held safely at the ready.

"Saw those two in there hiding," she reported to him. "And I saw the Undersiders, but Grue did his thing as soon as he spotted me."

"The Undersiders?" he intoned. Small-time thieves, as far as the reporting went. Mostly known for rushing in and escaping fairly thoroughly. He looked back at the other two. Both the child and the young woman were wearing caps with red crosses stitched into them, blue for the girl, black for the woman, and their outfits mostly matched the hats' themes and matching medical-style cloth masks. "And who are all of you?"

"I'm- I haven't thought of a name yet that doesn't sound pretentious, honestly," the woman admitted, though, hearing her speak, he was beginning to think she might be younger. A tall teen, perhaps.

"I still say Revival is good, boss," the shooter spoke up.

"But it sounds so... religious."

Armsmaster needed names for the records, though. Luckily, there were algorithms for this. He hadn't even needed to design them, just run them through a directory to ensure they weren't already in use.

"How about Revive, then?" he suggested. The look in her eyes told him she was considering it. "Less ostentatious, and I assume your power has something to do with healing."

"Uh, er, yeah. Um, like a healing... Tinker. But... it's kinda extreme?"

"Extreme?" He looked her over with his scanners, but nothing stuck out to him. A scan over the others, however, revealed quite a lot. It would take him quite a while to sort through all of that, but each of the other girls out here had apparently gone through some form of surgery to either reattach or replace limbs. The biggest one of note had to be that the chainsaw girl looked to have been cut into three pieces before being put back together, an observation he would be keeping to himself for now. "I see."

The girl with prosthetic feet raised up one leg to allow them to get a look.

"Lost them to frostbite."

"I got cut up," the chainsaw girl understated.

"Poison," the smallest added.

"Wait, hold on, are you some kind of Bonesaw-lite?" Stalker asked the girl, who flinched.

"What?! No! Nothing like that! They... They were hurt and I helped and they-"

"Boss, you ain't gotta answer that," the gunner spoke up.

"And what happened to you, huh?" the Ward directed to what seemed to be the oldest member of the team, despite her deference to the Tinker.

"I ain't gotta answer you, neither, hon."

"And what about you?" she directed toward the blonde-haired, blue-eyed chainsaw wielder. "You related to Hookwolf or something?"

"Hookwolf?!" she yelled, her hackles rising. "If ever see Hookwolf, I'll... I-"

"Shadow Stalker, asking such a question is inappropriate, at best," he admonished the Ward, which seemed to cut off whatever rant the other girl had ready. "I apologize for that."

The blonde just muttered while shifting her weapon to her shoulder, looking down at her feet while the barbed wires around her slowly spun in and out.

"Meh," the woman shrugged, her cloak hanging down in such a way as to conceal all of her arms and the rest of her body between the neck and her knees. "Used to kids mouthing off at this point. What's another?"

He could tell that Stalker bristled at the comment, but chose to hold her tongue. Good. She was learning. Still room for improvement, of course.

"On to more pertinent issues, transport will be here to pick up Lung soon. Do you all have preferred names I should use in the report and debrief?"

"God, my stomach feels like it twisted into knots," Taylor, now apparently known as 'Revive,' muttered as they made their way home.

"Wish I had a stomach," Larissa, now Sixshooter, complained.

"Sorry. We'll... find you one, soon."

Finding corpses had actually been their main goal when going out that night, with a secondary goal of stopping muggings or other such mundane crimes. They hadn't expected to run into trouble the likes of Lung plotting to kill children. Only for her and Tiana, or Pickmeup, to learn that the so-called 'children' were a bunch of teenage villains known as the Undersiders. It was a weird miscommunication.

"Tonight was still a good night, though," Alice reminded them, skipping happily on her silent, mechanical feet that Taylor had put together for her. She still thought that 'Steeldancer' didn't quite capture the spirit of what she could do with those and her aluminum spine.

"Yeah, we got to cut up a dragon man," Barbara happily chirped, the young girl far too happy about the act of dismembering a man. Taylor was also rather miffed at her for telling Armsmaster she went by "Barbed" of all things. That was just asking for a mix-up, but it was all on the record now; the five members of Team Rebuild.

So, the PRT knew or would soon know about them. Luckily, she managed to obfuscate enough. Arsmaster had called her something like a 'surgical, prosthetic Tinker.' It wasn't exactly untrue; she just left out an important piece of information: every other member of her team had been dead when she found them.

Revive wasn't a bad name. Necromancer would've been more accurate. Comparing her to Bonesaw wasn't an insult because Bonesaw was a little monster; it was insulting because Bonesaw had never been proven to take the dead and bring them back to full life. And not a mere semblance of life, either. Her friends were alive, if... changed. Apparently, they so strongly resembled Capes that it fooled Armsmaster of all people. Armsmaster! He was a nationally famous Tinker, possibly the second or third greatest living Tinker in the world, and the fixes and improvements she made for her friends passed his eyes and were met with... Well, maybe not approval, but he certainly didn't call any of it bad or shoddy. And she was sure he had enough instruments in his armor to get a good look at even the less visible pieces that went into them, like Larissa's spinal implants that she needed to be able to walk... which turned out to be good enough to support enough extra muscle groups for two more arm pairs. Taylor still had no idea why all those bodies were cut up like that, but she was sure that most of Larissa was her original self, minus the extras.

At least with a name out there, as well as a basic description, people would know that there were more heroes out there, ready to help. And maybe hearing about how they'd kept Lung busy long enough for Armsmaster and Shadow Stalker to take him down would give the people a little hope? Only time would tell.

Suddenly, a ping went off in her head, and Taylor knew what it meant. She'd read up on powers after realizing she had them, and knew that this was what they called a Thinker power. It wasn't separate from the fact that she was a Tinker, as almost every Tinker apparently had Thinker subratings, and hers definitely fed into her Tinkering. Suddenly, she turned left, and jogged down the alleyway there, shoving some trash cans aside to find what she was looking for. At first, she thought it was a new direction, as she had uncovered the corpse of a dog, the head looking pulverized, possibly by a shotgun. However, moving it aside, she found what her power must have really directed her toward.

It was a child, one even younger than Tiana. Her arms and legs were gone at the elbows and knees, her face had deep cuts crisscrossing each other, her ears had been cut away, and a line had been carved into her throat. Taylor's power told her that the wounds had all occurred before death, and that the eventual cause of death had been bleeding. Anger roared through her veins, but at the same time, ideas, knowledge, a series of blueprints, and words pounded into her skull.

"Bag," she called out, and Tiana rushed over, throwing the backpack she carried that could've fit her entire body around. Tools were plucked, and Taylor got to work, letting her power do the heavy lifting while focusing on what was important.

'I'll make sure something like this can never happen to you again.'

It had been a week since she was told she was going back. Two weeks have passed since she left the hospital. Three weeks since she entered the locker. She only had a weekend left, and then she would be back.

Like nothing changed.

And yet, something did, deep inside of her. She remembered, even if she didn't want to, what it felt like in there. Trapped in filth, with insects gnawing and biting at her legs. Maggots digging into her ankles. Flies buzzing around her face and into her nose and ears.

She wanted so badly for things to change, for all the problems of the past year to go away. She wanted her friend back. She wanted her mom back. She wanted her life back.

There had been that moment of madness, when she tried to reach down and around and crush them into her, to replace what she'd lost with what was there, force the little little biters to become her, part of her. To put life into death and reverse the rot.

Somehow, that had broken the lock and let her escape. Finally, she couldn't be completely ignored, especially when they saw her clawing away at her own feet, threatening with no words to tear them off. They had to hold her down until the ambulance arrived, and the paramedics had to apply anesthesia to get her to stop.

And the school district wanted her to go back.

She wasn't sure what she would do, but she couldn't go back, and her father had already capitulated to their demands. She couldn't recall what he had said after those four words: "You have to go back." It looked like it hurt him to say it, but it didn't hurt him enough to stop it. So, she packed up, and now, she was leaving. A part of her felt like she was letting them win, but... didn't they? She had already snapped. She had tried to rip off her own legs and smashed her way out of the locker in the attempt, and didn't stop trying to tear them off. 'What more could they do to her?' was not a question she wanted to learn the answer to. She didn't know why she felt the need to back up knives, wrenches, and other tools from the shed and the basement, but she did it. Maybe it was so she could pawn them off. Maybe it was so she could fix up an abandoned house somewhere for shelter. Maybe it was to defend herself. She didn't know. She didn't even know where she was going. She just followed her instinct. Maybe it'd lead her to safety. Maybe it'd lead to her death.

She just knew that she wasn't going back.

And then, she was somewhere, looking at a strange pile of trash that called out to her. She didn't know why. Was there something there? Honestly, it smelled putrid, even worse than normal trash, but after the locker... It just wasn't enough to make her gag. Still, she wanted to see if there was something. It might be a waste of time, or maybe she'd stumble across something useful. And so, she pulled away the topmost trash bag.

Beneath it was a girl's face, stiff, with glassy eyes. Taylor gasped in shock as she tossed the bag aside, then reached over slowly. Before she touched the girl's neck, her hand brushed across her face, and she could feel that she was almost as cold as the January night. She couldn't feel a pulse.

She had happened upon a corpse.

And yet, she didn't feel disgusted or repulsed by it. She felt grief for the lost life, rage at whoever would do such a thing, and injustice at the world for letting a girl so young expire so prematurely. She pulled the body out and looked around. No one could see this far from the road, even if they passed by and looked straight down. A dumpster and several cans blocked the way. She'd have to go and call it in.

And yet, she didn't move to do that. She reached over to the girl and placed a hand to her forehead while the other dug through her bag. She wanted to fix things. She wanted to make things right.

She wanted her life back.

Her old life was gone. Maybe it was time to start a new one?

The morning sun rose, and Taylor was no longer alone. The girl held to her was alive and warm, even if she wasn't sure why. Blood on her arms and stitches across the girl's bruised body were the only tells of what she'd done. A knife, a fire pit, and some burned residue told a little more, but offered no details. The girl had pulled a well-loved teddy bear from out of the coat pocket she had worn to her filthy grave and hugged it tightly.

"What's your name?" Taylor finally managed to ask her.

"I don't remember," the girl admitted, but her fingers pulled at the threadbare tag on her beloved possession. Whatever instructions it once held were long gone, with only "Tiana's" written on it in marker. "Does that look right?"

"Tiana," Taylor said aloud before rubbing her head and then slowly realizing what she had done. She had found a girl -- a dead girl -- and brought her back to life. She was a Parahuman, and she had a power that had... No one had ever outright brought the dead back to life before.

It rather made the weight of everything press down on her all the more.

'I won't go back,' she reminded herself. 'But if I... can get away.'

Winslow had been burned to the ground.

Taylor hadn't known it was burning until she heard the firetrucks and recognized the direction it was coming from. By the time she made the trip with Tiana by her side, it was already in flames, and the department had given up on putting out the fires and was focusing on containment. A police officer noticed them and asked some questions, but they weren't even suspects. She did admit to being a student, but apparently, that wasn't enough to bring down suspicion onto her.

The cops did insist on driving them back home, though. Luckily, they bought her story about Tiana being her little cousin, and Taylor's lie about how she'd gone to grab her for a sleepover to get away from another one of her parent's loud arguments earned them more than enough sympathy to not be questioned further about the heavy bag of clothes. The officer simply drove her home and watched as she unlocked the front door and stepped inside. But as they left, Taylor noticed a few things; her father's truck had a few of those gasoline barrels on the back of it that the docks used, and there was the faint scent of gas in the house. She tracked it down and managed to narrow it to the clothes washer, which was spinning with only a single outfit of her father's inside.

Before he came downstairs from bed, Taylor wasn't sure if she wanted to scream or hug him. When he finally did, she did both.

Taylor pulled herself out of her fugue and rubbed her eyes with the back of her sleeve, nudging up her glasses for a moment.

"Welcome back, boss," Larissa greeted her, able to spot the moment she came back to her senses. "So, uh, new rule! No animal bodies allowed in the vicinity when you get to work."

"Animal...?" She looked over and saw that the dead girl was alive again, only her legs and arms had been replaced with dog legs from the knees and elbows on, and her ears were replaced with a doggy variant as well. From behind, she had a dog tail wagging along with her smile, which had sharper teeth than most humans.

"...Yeah, you really went to town on that. Restitching the muscles together and stuff to make them fit. I tried to get you to use some spare arms, but you only used some finger bones from them."

"Hey, hey, don't forget," Alice inserted herself. "The facial reconstruction."

"Oh yeah. Boss, you didn't just give her the limbs. You picked out all kinds of pieces from the face to put into her, and a couple of organs. ...You also gave me her stomach and put the dog's inside of her."

"Is she... Is she just a dog in girl shape?"

"You didn't do much to the brain," Larissa pointed out. "Well, except the blood transfusion thing you always do. Figured that one out yet?"

"...No. Still mostly a blur." Ever since Tiana rejoined the living, she had helped Taylor to document what happens during her fugue states. Most of it was different between the other three, like the two forms of spinal reconstructions, or using steel plates and barbed wire to reinforce Barbara's broken bones and hold together her organs. One thing remained constant, though, and that was Taylor drawing her own blood and injecting it into the brain via an eye, into the heart, and just below the navel. For some reason, that seemed to be the catalyst that brought them back to life.

"So, we going after her killers?" Larissa asked. Taylor was about to ask what she meant by that, but one of her left arms came up and tapped the space above her nose. "She says she remembers how they smelled, but nothing else. You gave her, like, a dog's nose, boss. She can track 'em, we can double-check for veracity, and den..." She mimed pulling the trigger of a gun, and honestly, recalling how the little girl had looked before, Taylor couldn't blame her. If anything, she agreed with the sentiment. She highly doubted that whoever did this had only done it once, and even if they had...

Their operation wasn't a big one. They stored some drugs and weapons, but it was hardly a safehouse. More of a reloading station, really. Not close enough to ABB territory to be a forward position, not far enough away to be secure for someone to lay low. It wasn't a very exciting job unless fighting was actively happening nearby, which was rare for them, despite the reputation Brockton Bay had. Still, the three Empire 88 members found ways to entertain themselves, like reminiscing over their acts of cleaning up the scum of the city.

"Honestly, little sand monkey cried more over that dog than her own leg," one remarked while putting down a green seven.

"It was probably her boyfriend," the one across from him said before the other put down a blue seven, messing up his plan. "Or her dad."

"Or both." They laughed at that.

The door suddenly crashed in, smashing against the opposite wall and embedding itself there. They jumped to their feet and looked to see a girl who was practically the Empire's ideal, with blades and barbed wire coming from her skin. As one wondered if Hookworld had a daughter, he felt something tighten around and stab into his neck before he was flung forward and impaled through the eye by a blade at her elbow. The others tried to pull out their guns, but a crash through the window caused them to flinch, and one was kicked hard enough to go flying down the hall while another was kicked back across the face, snapping his neck. A brown blur rushed in, and Kurtis Halgar recognized the face of the thing pinning him down.

"Y- you," he ground out, then gasped out a chuckle as her saw the dog-like ears and teeth. "Back for revenge, mutt?"

"I. Don't. Know you," the beast growled out, sounding like the girl from yesterday had gargled rocks. "But. I. HATE YOU!"

And then her jaws opened wide and clamped down on his throat, biting down and tearing from side to side until they ripped through, then biting again for good measure. Kurtis slowly died in pain, blacking out as he drowned in his own blood.

A quick search revealed the place to be a supply depot, from which Team Rebuild 'liberated' a great deal of money and weapons, leaving enough for the cops to find, along with all of the drugs save a bag of something Taylor felt she could use for Tinkering. In their search, she had also come across a 'trophy room,' proving her suspicion that Ladybird -- as the new girl had self-named -- was not the first, but merely the latest. There were six other "cases" with bones and stolen goods set in a closet, with the last set still having pieces of flesh clinging to the bones. Taylor gingerly reached for a locket at the top of the pile of clothes and opened it, nearly crying when she saw the picture of a happy girl and a content-looking dog on one side.

It took a great force of will for her not to set the place on fire. They left, and she called in a tip with a payphone to the police so that they could find the remains of the stash and the murderers who had guarded it. She would not even deign to use them for spare parts. When that was done, and they found a place to set up and watch for the cops' arrival, she handed over the locket to the girl, who opened it up and read the name inscribed opposite the photo.

"Nasira," she intoned softly, a sad smile on her lips. "Nasira."

Jesse K the Bubba · Mar 18, 2026

Decay 2

Armsmaster had gone over the scans several times now, and yet each time that he did, it only brought more worry to his mind. Just as he had noted on the field, with the exception of Revive, each member of Team Rebuild had seemingly undergone extensive surgery, courtesy of the Tinker who they credited with saving their lives. But a thorough investigation of the scan results painted a much darker picture of what they had gone through.

Pickmeup, a preteen who was possibly younger than Vista, had simultaneously dense musculature and bones in key places that would prevent adrenal backlash, as well as some form of implants on her adrenal glands, kidneys, liver, and especially her heart. For a short time, he almost believed she had an artificial heart. She seemed designed to use 'hysterical strength' without worry and capable of processing any toxin that might enter her body. There was also a layer of an unidentified compound just below her dermis that seemed to be puncture and cut-resistant, going by the structure. He had no idea how resilient the unknown compound might be, but between that, her reinforcements, and the implants, he gave it good odds that the child was likely a Brute 4 equivalent.

Sixshooter, as he suspected, had additional arms grafted onto her. Where they might have been obtained raised several red flags, but the spinal mount that supported them and the needed secondary muscles was practically a work of art, from a Tinker standpoint. Every vertebrae below the third was replaced by a steel equivalent, and her clavicles were replaced by a three-pointed system that anchored the muscles for all six pairs of arms. The muscles themselves were dense enough to show up on hardened scans, saving space and giving Armsmaster some ideas on how to improve his armor's pneumatic movement enhancement system. It appeared to be similar to the design of Pickmeup's endensified muscles, though perhaps more focused on the one area. He could only guess how she got the nervous system to work with four extra limbs, as to look that deep would require far more invasive scans or even surgical observation.

Steeldancer had a similar spinal replacement, but with aluminum vertebrae and coated wire grafted into portions of her spinal cord. Her prosthetic feet were also more complex than he originally assumed, having a great deal of articulation that resembled ankle bones, including three 'toes' on each foot behind the rubber-coated fiberglass 'shoes.' She also had a similar heart implant and endensified muscles and bones to Pickmeup, though hers appeared to be more flexible rather than damage-resistant.

Barbed had to be the strangest and most extreme out of them all, though. Her body showed signs of being literally bolted back together horizontally at the diaphragm and at an angle below the navel, then again across each thigh, shin, and forearm. In other words, someone had cut her into pieces, and one of those pieces would have spilled her guts. And yet, Revive had managed to pull her back together. Though given what his scans showed, it looked like she did it with barbed wire, wrapping it all around her organs, before bolting her bones and skin back with steel plates. Somehow, this not only saved her life but also became the basis of her power.

The other three could have been marked down as 'Tinker-enhanced' with the information he had, but Barbed painted a different possibility, for herself if not the whole team. Parahumans gained their powers through Trigger Events, moments of great stress or crisis that have often been remarked as being "the worst day of a person's life." However, as a prerequisite, they needed to have a special part of the brain called the corona pollentia. And yet, not all who had the pollentia gained powers, even when faced with certain death. More than a few coroner's reports had remarked on there being an unactivated pollentia in their patients. Even among cases of people Triggering due to the likelihood of death, often from sustained damage, the activation of powers tended to 'fix up' the new Parahumans somewhat, at least to functionality. While Armsmaster didn't have the statistics right in front of him, he was willing to bet the ratio of people with pollentias dying to those gaining powers when they would have certainly died was not as good as someone might imagine. But, if someone could bring them far enough from the brink, keep them alive and out of death's hands for just long enough for their situation to really sink in and activate those particular neurons, could they instead live long enough to Trigger and finish up the good doctor's work, perhaps even adapting it into their power?

These ideas and more traveled through his mind as he typed up both his report and notes on his theories. More of a hypothesis, at this rate. To really understand how Revive's speciality worked, he'd have to observe it while in use. Of course, if she was accurate or understating how extreme it was, and his hypothesis held any water, then trying to observe it would likely mean there is at least one situation that would require his attention to be elsewhere, at best, and that there would be no way to test it in a controlled manner. Rather, he would simply have to ask and hope that they would build up enough of a rapport for her to divulge the details.

He then recalled something and verbally commanded his computer to play back a portion of the recording from earlier that night.

"Hookwolf! If ever see Hookwolf, I'll... I-"

It wasn't solid proof, but it did add some fuel to his theory. Of course, asking another Parahuman about their Trigger Event was practically a taboo, if it wasn't a matter of life and death. Even most villains didn't like to touch upon the Triggers of others, including enemies, unless they were simply that cruel and spiteful. But, given the damage she had suffered, the manner in which her power manifested, and her enmity towards Hookwolf, a broad stroke of a guess could be reasonably made.

Now he just needed to figure out how to word his suspicions to the director without overstating them.

"You have to be shitting me," Piggot mumbled while palming her face.

"It's only conjecture, ma'am," Armsmaster tried to reassure her again.

"Even if you're only a quarter right, there's still a Tinker out there who can bring people back from the brink." She sighed and let her hand fall to her desk. "Shadow Stalker wasn't entirely wrong in her blunt field assessment."

"Told ya," the obstinate Ward pointed at him.

"Don't speak to a commanding officer like that," Piggot snapped at her. "And it was still an inappropriate comment to make to a new, independent hero."

"I still stand that the comparison is ill-made," Armsmaster spoke up. "Bonesaw's creations are, at best, twisted forms of life outside of the 9, with the enhancements she's given them and herself being exceptions to her MO. Revive's work appears to be focused on restoring and strengthening life, using extreme methods, but I hypothesize that this may be more due to a lack of resources than her singling out those extremes."

"Yes, but comparisons get made, even bad ones. And given that Sixshooter had to get those extra arms from somewhere, it's not entirely focused on fixing. We know she can do more. What we don't know is how much, or how well." She pulled up one of the frames Armsmaster had singled out from Shadow Stalker's recording equipment. "You're sure that Revive and the Undersiders shared no connections?"

"Nope, er, no ma'am," Shadow Stalker quickly corrected her slip-up. "Miss Frankenstein there didn't even know who they were, kept asking for names. Apparently, they were the "kids" the Rebuilders thought they were saving."

"Yes, Armsmaster concluded the same in his report. So, the Undersiders approached them. Did Tattletale say anything important?"

"Just some thanks and asking what kind of villain gang theme they were going with. Then she starts shouting, "Villains?! We're heroes!" and I... might've been caught off-guard by that. That's about when Grue spotted me, and then they smoked out." She shrugged.

"Caught off-guard, yes."

The audio of the recording, of course, caught most of those words, but also Stalker's barely aborted laugh at the clear exclamation, which had been what really tipped the Undersiders off.

"Either way, those small fry hardly mattered," the director concluded. "All the better that we brought in Lung with nothing complicating his arrest. Still, Team Rebuild had been able to hold their own against him for a time. And if Armsmaster is right about Revive being a Trump, even one that takes all of the prep work a Tinker would need, that means they could grow in numbers and quality. I want them watched like hawks on a rabbit. Every time they show up, I want an analysis on my desk. Any little slip from Revive, march her up to HQ to explain herself."

"Ma'am, is it... wise to pressure them like that?"

"I told you, we don't know what all she can do. Maybe she's limited to working with human bodies. Maybe people have to be dying for her to do her thing. Or maybe she isn't nearly so limited and just has the good sense to fear what she can do. I don't want to chance it. Someone with this kind of power, I won't feel good about until they're put under red tape that Shadow Stalker's probation looks freeing, and they're transferred over to California to become Alexandria and Costa-Brown's problem.

Stalker muttered a small sheesh under her breath, then looked up to the frozen frame on Piggot's screen. "Waaaait. Can I hear that bit with Revive's voice again?"

"Hm, something you think you missed?" the director asked as she reached over and grabbed the mouse.

"Maybe. It's just that hair..." She heard the girl's exclamation once more and almost went stiff. "Oh damn! Hahaha holy sh-" She cleared her throat. "Hey, uh, so, what if I told you I might possibly know who that is?"

Soon after the burning of Winslow High...

School was different at Arcadia. There were still some similarities, but it was almost like escaping into daylight after being trapped in a dark, gloomy cavern for a lifetime. Of course, a few students had also come here from Winslow. Seeing Greg and Sparky was certainly a surprise; far less pleasant was spotting the familiar head of red hair in the sea of students.

'No. Why, even after escaping there, can't I get away from her?'

Emma's smile could have almost been mistaken for friendly. She practically bee-lined toward Taylor, a smaller-than-usual gaggle of girls in her wake.

"Taylor, I'm so surprised to see you here!" she exclaimed with false cheer. "I mean, as bad as your grades were last year, I half-expected them to send you to Clarendon."

"No way. The Empire scrubs would've smelled how nasty she was and thrown her out."

A few more falsified comments about why Taylor might be so nasty were raised by Emma's followers, the penultimate of which indicated that Taylor was likely walking the streets for her whole absence.

Emma giggled at that. "Yeah, so, what were you doing those two weeks you were away? Giving out free samples to... the..."

Taylor felt fear sinking into her, even as Emma's word trailed off, and she looked at something behind her with worry. Slowly, Taylor looked up and noticed a blonde, shapely girl who was floating just behind her.

'Glory Girl,' she realized, and her fear melted away as she took in the sight and felt... safe. 'Glory Girl and Panacea go to Arcadia!' she recalled. 'Rumors say the Wards do, too. Oh my God! I'm saved!'

"Jesus, are you some middle-school bullies or something?!" the unmasked, teen heroine demanded of the Winslow mean girls. "Buzz off with that trash! And you, you should be extra ashamed of yourself!"

Who was she directing that toward? Sophia? Couldn't be. Must've been that blonde girl behind her. Janie? Jamie? Didn't matter; they were all looking uncomfortable and trying to find somewhere else to be that wasn't in Glory Girl's sights right now. A few of them at the side were even trying to slink off. Taylor thought she might be witnessing the unraveling of whatever remained of Emma's posse.

"Vicky, aura," a freckled, mousey brunette said to the flier as she came close by.

"This one's on purpose, Ames," she told the girl before looking back at Emma and what remained of her group. "I know you know the rules here. I'm watching you."

Finally, they found that their legs could move again, and they quickly rushed away, though some of the girls seemed to be trying to find a path that didn't have them stepping alongside Emma. Glory Girl, or Vicky, sighed then and gave Taylor a reassuring smile.

"Hey, sorry if that was intense, but last time a bunch of girls tried to single someone out like that- Well, zero tolerance policies exist for a reason. Sorry, I don't even know your name."

"Uh, T- Taylor," she introduced herself. "Taylor Hebert."

"Taylor, nice to meet you. I'm Vicky," the heroine greeted her while shaking her hand. "And that's my sister, Amy."

"'Sup."

"She's nicer once you get to know her," Vicky assured her. "So, you're from Winslow? I don't remember seeing you with the transfers when they arrived."

"I was out sick," Taylor decided to explain while leaving out as many details as possible. "It was... pretty bad."

"Oh, well, I'm glad you're all right. You are okay, right? Amy, could you poke her, maybe?"

"Not at school, Vicky," the girl who had to be Panacea told her. "Unless it's an emergency. Wait, can you take your glasses off a sec?"

Taylor blinked and then did so, and Amy snapped her fingers.

"Psyche ward. You got stuck in something and tried to claw your own foot off."

"Wait, what?!" her flying sister exclaimed.

"Yeah, it was bad," Amy explained. "But like, I won't share any details if you don't want."

"I really don't," Taylor quickly said while putting her glasses back on.

"Understandable. Uh, glad to see you're all right though. Gotta get to class now."

"Oh shoot, you're right," Vicky realized before floating up, waving back as she flew above the crowd. "Nice meeting you, Taylor. Don't let 'em get to ya."

The night of Tiana's Revival...

Danny Hebert was a man torn. For years, he had watched his hometown decay. Several years ago, he had lost the love of his life. For the past two years, his daughter had wilted away under his gaze while he lay in his own misery. A few weeks ago, she'd nearly been taken, locked away in filth and driven mad, trying to rip her own foot off when she couldn't take the feeling of maggots digging into her anymore. Just this week, his calls and pleas to the school board had been overruled, and they demanded that his daughter return to school.

They wanted his baby girl to go back to the place that had nearly killed her.

At first, he thought they could endure it for a week or so. He was close to getting his case together, with help from several associates of the DWA versed in lawfare. Even Alan agreed that he had a good case against the school, despite it not being his speciality, and was starting to think of pulling Emma out as well if this sort of thing could happen there to Taylor. But then, he got up at night, hearing odd noises in the kitchen, and what he saw nearly stilled his heart.

Taylor was up, going through the cutlery, but her focus was on the knives. She kept picking them up, holding them up to the dim light, and turning them in her hand as if to judge them before setting them back down. First the steak knives, then the cooking knives. He nearly ran in when she had taken a far longer, harder look at the filleting knife before running against the sharpener and checking it again. Whether it was her own will or the intervention of some higher power, Danny didn't know or care, but she ended up placing the knife back down and started closing the drawers. It took everything he had not to release an audible sigh and to trust that she'd continue making the right choice. He retreated to his room and listened for the sound of footfalls in the hallway. Once again, he had to painfully hold back his audible relief at hearing her return to her room. Past that, he couldn't sleep. When morning came, he peered into her room to make sure she was still there, still wrote a quick note telling her that he was going to try again to get her away from Winslow.

Soon, he had called up his most trusted friends and gathered them together before explaining what the school board had said and what he had seen Taylor doing. Lacey practically demanded to go talk to her, but she was talked down, as Taylor was still reeling from her trauma and having been told she'd have to go back. Everyone, of course, called it out for the bullshit that it was, so when someone suggested burning the place to the ground, no one disagreed. Then some people talked about how they could pull it off. Then probably became a plan.

It took three days of preparation, with them carefully 'misplacing' some gas and oil drums meant for heavy equipment, and the planning of a party that many of the dockworkers were invited to. Ostensibly, it was a late President's Day celebration. Word was passed around that it was an attempt to get a certain someone out of his funk. That certain head-of-hiring would also be seen at the party, with plenty of people corroborating his and his close friends' attendance there. In reality, they were there long enough to be seen, and then they were gone, pouring the flammable liquids down every hall and stairway behind them that they could before lighting it and leaving. Their clothes would then be changed and washed, all bleachables, and they'd arrive at the party to announce that they were 'leaving.' It was heart-racing, nerve-wracking, but in the end, so very satisfying. Days later, they'd learn that the school's entire fire alarm system had been shot, though by neglect rather than by anything they did, with the arson investigation slowly turning into an insurance fraud investigation. Danny hardly needed the extra alibis.

The morning right after, however, he had come down the stairs after feigning sleep to see Taylor all dressed and looking like she'd just come out of the cold. Her eyes were gazing out the door of the garage to see the empty gas drums in the back of his work truck. He knew she was smart. She'd put it together the moment she heard about what happened, but of more concern was the little girl holding her hand, who looked like she'd been dug out of a trash pile.

"Hey, Dad," she greeted him softly, a ghost of a smile on her face, and it hurt his heart to realize he couldn't recall her smiling for the past two years. "Winslow... was on fire."

"It is?" he feigned ignorance. "That... might mean school will be closed for a while longer."

"Yeah." She nodded, then looked over to the girl before raising the hand she was holding. "This is Tiana. I... saved her... last night. While I was walking."

Given that the tote bag she was holding looked full, he doubted it was just a walk, and the thought of why she'd really gone out made his throat constrict.

'It was really that close,' he thought. 'So close to almost losing her again.'

"S- saved-?" he managed to choke out before swallowing, trying to dislodge the stubborn knot.

"I- We should... sit down."

One week after the burning of Winslow High...

Learning that Taylor had powers was one thing; seeing them in action was another. She had not gained laser eyes, super strength, or indestructibility. No, her body was mostly the same. She was a Tinker, like Armsmaster, Dragon, or Hero before his untimely death. They could still be mighty, thus safe behind their inventions and scientific wonders, but had to build them first. But Taylor needed a special ingredient, and it churned his stomach to think about.

Tiana had not been saved from dying. She'd been brought back to life after death. Taylor's power pointed her to her, just like it pointed her to this twisted mausoleum of a warehouse.

Danny tried not to be a violent man, but when the perpetrator of the crimes he saw here returned, he didn't feel bad about double-tapping him with the crowbar after Tiana had broken his knees with a pipe and started crying about what she'd done. The undead little girl was strong. He had yet to hand her anything she couldn't carry, and she'd managed to smash bricks into little pieces with a swing of a hammer before. When the lunatic walked in and started raving at his daughter -- who was elbow deep in some poor soul's organs at the time -- about how she was mangling his precious woman, he had no doubts that the man needed to be stopped. Danny was only sorry he didn't react as fast as the little one did when he charged at Taylor.

It was somewhat concerning, however, that she'd barely reacted to the death.

"Curved needle," she requested, and Tiana was there, finding it extraordinarily quickly from her pack and passing it over to Taylor's bloodied hands. "Saw." Again, instantly found...and somehow longer than the bag. "Boltcutters." Now those definitely couldn't have fit in there.

And then Taylor was pulling apart the refrigerators and the nearby motorcycle. She was also freely using the now-dead maniac's implements of murder, both as tools and as pieces. She was hammering out metal vertebrae to replace the ones he'd carefully saw in half while extracting them from his victims. Why he did that, Danny had no idea. The ideas of the insane were better left to them, and it's not like he could tell them even if he wanted to. Why Taylor didn't use his spine, he also didn't know. There were probably medical reasons.

After three hours, during which he tried to make sure his daughter was at least hydrated throughout, he watched her pull together a gutted torso, a pair of legs, a head, and six pairs of arms (which the man had been collecting and freezing, for some other sick, unknown reason) along with the steel spine and cocyx she had made into a full human person before putting all of the removed organs back inside, save for the missing half of the liver and the missing stomach.

"Syringe."

Before he could cross the warehouse (having long gone to the other side to get away from the stench of death), Taylor had found a vein on her own arm, jabbed the needle in, and drawn enough blood to nearly fill it faster than any plebotomist he had ever seen. When he'd finally crossed over to her operating table, she was piercing the sewn-up corpse's eye and injecting her blood, which he could now see was dark red with a strange shimmer of light through it, like a garnet in liquid form. And the place she had drawn it from was already healed and unblemished. She then repeated the injections in the chest, where he knew the heart would be, and in the belly, just below the belly button. When the last of it was gone, he could practically hear the woman's heart restarting.

Within moments, the body began twitching, and then she was gasping for air, her arms reaching around her and grabbing on to whatever they could, including Taylor. Danny had raised the crowbar, ready to defend his daughter from her own creation if he had to, but instead, Taylor cradled the woman's head to her chest, and she started to calm. Her arms stopped, and then they slowly reached over and embraced Taylor.

"What- What happened to me?" the revived woman asked with a clear Boston accent. "Where am I? H- Who dafuq am I?!"

The Monday after facing Lung...

School was great. Blabbing at other blondes about how much the Empire was a bunch of poser bitches was great (whether or not they agreed, it was great). Lunch was pretty excellent. And Barbara's knowing that she had been one of the people to kick Lung's ass was awesome! She even cut off his leg, and Pickmeup managed to bag it while nobody was looking!

No idea what Revive could do with it, but it was probably gonna be cool. Maybe an upgrade? Oh yeah, that'd be great!

Greg was neat. He just said whatever. It was freaking hilarious!

"Nah, there's no way she's Hookwolf's kid," he argued with some other guy. A Junior? Carl? She didn't care. "He's secretly gay."

"Pfft! Okay, now that's just dumb, dude."

"Besides, Barbed totally would shred his tin," Barbara responded through a bite of pizza. It was pretty excellent.

"Hey, ain't you named Barb?" Sparky asked, temporarily returning to his body in Brockton Bay to make sure his cover wasn't blown.

"Bro, I'm either Barb, Barbie, or Barbara. Barbed is a totally different name." The perfect cover!

"Uh-huh," Carl said while raising an eyebrow.

'What, does he need me to spell it out for him?'

"What makes you say she'd shred him, though?" Greg asked the real question, like the secret genius she knew he was.

"It's about balance and tools. Hookwolf ain't got nothing but his metal everywhere shtick, but it tires him out. Look it up! Never fights for more than five minutes at a time, 'cept when he does, and then you can see him flagging."

"Uh-huh," Carl repeated. Poor guy. Must be slow. "You don't suppose that's because he turns most guys into mincemeat within five minutes?"

"Nah, see, happens with Lung and Armedmaster, too."

"Armsmaster?"

"Sure. Ya see, Lung has his whole 'ramp up' thing. Or had, before Barbed chopped him up and handed him to Ar-master."

"Arms- Uh, yeah, but that was a team effort. News said there were three of them."

"Oh yeah, Steeldancer is totally a babe," Greg said with only a bit of dreamy-eyedness. Dude has good taste. Barbie was straight (or at least, she was pretty sure she was. Carl looked pretty good. Too bad he was slow), but even she knew how pretty Alice was. Not in a jealous way, either. Girl was just that pretty, even with the eye thing.

"Six-arms is cool," Sparky added, having not yet left again to go control his indestructible projections that kept Europe safe from constant encroachment of the Blasphemies. He was also correct.

"Oh yeah, she's totally a Case 53," Greg guessed.

'Close, but no cigar. Unlike them, we know where we're from. We just don't know anything else. Oh, shot-shoes, maybe that's where 53s are from?'

"Flip-flops! The 53s are the results of a biotinker dumping their experiments across the world at random!" Barbara declared in sudden realization. "That's so irresponsible of them." She took another bite of pizza.

She thought she saw Taylor facepalm from where she was eating next to the floaty girl who was almost as cute as Alice. Apparently, she realized how irresponsible her contemporary was in creating amnesiacs with power.

'No worries, Tay-bug. We'll kick their keisters and make them stop their bogus ways. Eventually. After we pound Hookwolf into the dirt. Gosh, I hate that guy!'

Carlos, now in costume as Aegis, approached the workshop of Armsmaster and pressed the button that would announce his arrival. Moments later, the door opened, and he walked inside to see the Tinker at work, going over his armor with some of the pieces on a workbench.

"Yes, Aegis, you said this could be important?" he asked without looking back.

"Sir, uh, I'm pretty sure that... one of the new students at Arcadia... is a member of Team Rebuild."

"I'll tell you the same thing Director Piggot and I told Shadow Stalker when she said something similar the other day," he answered. "Keep your suspicions about the identity of independents to yourself unless it's a matter of life and death or a similar emergency."

Aegis figured he'd get an answer like that. "Yes, sir, but I'd... feel remiss if I didn't mention... she's not really hiding it. Like, the bare minimum?"

"I see." He took one of the parts from the workbench and fit it into the arm of his armor. "Let's say, without revealing anything about her identity, what seems to be the issue?"

"It's... literally one letter. I know there's that refuge in audacity thing, but... It's one letter! And she keeps talking about how much she hates Hookwolf!"

"Ah." For a moment, he paused. "Well, we'll see if she keeps refuge, then."

Jesse K the Bubba · Mar 18, 2026

Decay 3

Alice found her time in school… mildly vexing despite the general air of relaxation. A part of her enjoyed attention, but another part hated how most of it was directed. Feeling beautiful and admired was one thing, lusted after was another. And to the side of both, there was the shock and pity.

The light brunette wore an eye patch over her left eye, and her skirt shifted just enough with her steps that people could see the metal rods that replaced her lower shins and connected to the plastic false feet in her shoes. And sometimes, she knew, from the way people behind her paused in their steps, that her hair had moved just enough to expose the scarring on the back of her neck.

And yet, she couldn't wish them away. She still wanted people to see her, see deeper. The idea of people growing comfortable with her – not just her scars and disabilities, but with her beauty as well – tingled a part of her spirit with longing. It was a juxtaposition and paradox that had taken root in her mind from the moment she awoke and understood the apologies Taylor was making. Maybe she wanted the same in the past, before someone had beaten her bloody, gouged out her eye, and strangled her to death, but she might never know.

"Hey Alice, settling in okay?" her best distraction and the measuring stick by which she could judge the scholastic zeitgeist asked her, and she turned to give her a smile.

"Well enough. The schedule's still taking some getting used to."

Vicky Dallon smiled back and nodded. "Yeah, from what I get from the rumor mill, Winslow was barely a school and more like a violent daycare. Is it true that some girl got trapped in her own locker for a whole day?"

"I didn't witness it myself, but heard enough rumors from both ends and about the aftermath to say it did," she spun the half-truth as easily as she might talk about some bad weather she slept through. "From what I understand, the Sophomores who did it had most of the teachers wrapped around their fingers and cowed most of their grade and the freshmen. They must have planned it out and timed it so that, by the time any upperclassmen willing to brush them off came around, she'd given up on trying to get people's attention."

"God, that's so messed up! Did those kids have anything to do with the girl who tried to claw her foot off after getting stuck in trash?"

Alice blinked. It seemed the actual rumor mill had caused an unexpected divide.

"That was the same incident," she explained to the open hero. "Her locker had been filled with trash, particularly used lady products, left over winter break, and then she was shoved and locked in with it."

Vicky went a little green, then quickly turned red. Alice felt a mote of apprehension, which she recognized as the leaking of Glory Girl's Shaker aura, before it disappeared as quickly as it came.

"That's fucking atrocious!" she quietly exclaimed. "They were bad enough separate, but at the same time?! I thought she was stuck in a dumpster or- or shoved into a trashcan or something not- Not that!" She shook her head and shivered. "I feel like that kinda thing should get someone sent to prison. Did anyone do anything about it?"

"As far as I'm aware, no," Alice admitted, holding back the theories she and others shared that there might have even been something of a cover-up. They had no proof anyway, and any that might have existed was likely now ashes in a ruined lot. "The school covered her hospital bills, but that was it. Some people joked she set the place on fire, but honestly, it's more surprising the place didn't burn down years ago with all those cut corners."

Incompetence or malevolence, the result was the same: insurance companies didn't want to pay out, so they investigated. Arson could have led to them having to pay for everything and then some, thanks to the suspiciously wide range of coverage Winslow had been paying for. The relative recency of the insurance package having been raised several tiers helped to grease those wheels. Now, the evidence of arson was being seen as evidence of insurance fraud.

Alice wished she'd been alive to see it happen.

"My mom's office is having a field day with all of that. She's not on the case, but the guy who is, he's been cackling like an evil overlord. Everyone keeps saying Mr. Barnes made the right call there." She laughed. "Hey, while I'm thinking of this, do you know that girl? The, uh, one who got stuck in the locker?"

"We've met." 'I literally owe her my life.'

"I ran into her earlier today. She just transferred in – God, they're so slow with all of that! – and I was thinking, maybe I could invite her to sit with us at lunch. Help her feel more welcome. I'll run it by some of the others, but how do you feel about it?"

"Sounds lovely, actually. You're right that she should feel welcome, and that should help."

Taylor would probably be nervous, but she needed to work her way out of her shell. She'd been shoved down for so long she kept her head bent out of habit. Alice knew what it felt like, wanting to hide away from a world that hurts to look at and be seen by, but somehow, knowing that she'd already tasted death made that fear seem so trivial compared to knowing that she could simply fade away unmourned. She could help her through it, perhaps with a bit of help from the metaphorical social butterfly that was Vicky.

"Knew you'd agree. I'll run it by everyone else and see what she says."

Taylor hadn't said no, apparently. Not any day after, either. Still, even after two months, she tended to look out of her element, muted colors and quiet among the bright and talkative upperclassmen. Amy and Alice provided a bit of a bridge, though Alice suspected it might be unintentional on the healer's part. Alice had her sit across and one seat to the left of Vicky, then took the one directly across from the heroine. Amy sat next to her sister, right across from Taylor, and so they made a square of odd gradients. It had been like this every day the New Wave girls weren't called away for something.

Nearby, Alice spotted Barbara chatting loudly with her new friends, some boys who were considered "outcasts" at Winslow, along with Taylor, by the girl's word. At Arcadia, they instead found themselves slowly becoming a part of the loose 'miscellaneous art kids and nerds' group. Barely two weeks in, and Barbara was all but embedded in that invisible social lattice. Alice found that she herself had some growing threads into that array of related niches, almost drawing her into the dance club. Unfortunately for them, she had her job to attend to.

Half days at Arcadia were offered for a bevy of reasons, including scholastic ones like AP classes, work-related (the number of teens helping financially support their families was not small), and the unofficial reasoning was that it was also used for the Wards. Alice managed to sign up for the program with a certificate from the DWA. Barbara as well.

Of course, that was just their cover.

"Dean, come here," Vicky called over while she gestured for a tall boy to join them. Alice recalled when they had been introduced.

"Guys, this is Dean, my boyfriend. Have you met Alice yet? I know you haven't met Taylor; it's her first day back in school and all, but I don't think you've had a chance to meet her either."

He had looked at her, and she saw the shock on his face, though he fought to hide it well, but his eyes widened again as he appeared to stare up above her head, as if there was something else there taking his attention from the eye-patched girl. It seemed that he'd been really horrified by his own reaction to her face. On the one hand, she didn't want him lingering on a natural reaction, but on the other, she was glad to see such reticence from a rich kid. He had a conscience, at least, though maybe an overcompensating one.

He had found her later that day to try to make a fumbling apology.

"Hey, uh, Alice, right? Listen, I'm, uh, sorry about earlier."

"Hm, oh, you don't have anything to be sorry for," she had told him, knowing exactly what he was talking about and where this was going. "Happens to everyone the first time."

"That- That doesn't make it right. I could tell that it hurt you."

"Yes, but that is how it is." She had shrugged. "It's always going to happen. I'm used to it by this point."

"But you-"

"Dean, please. You're nice, but this is how the world works. People are going to cringe when they see me for the first time. If not the eyepatch, then the scars." She touched the space under her eyes, stitching scars almost hidden by the thick, scarred skin that made a semicircle beneath it with a branching crescent that curved toward her nose. "If not these scars, then probably one of the many others. And who could forget my footwear?"

She had lightly lifted her skirt and kicked a leg forward. His eyes had landed on her metal ankle, and he flinched. Almost immediately, he looked panicked over it, then confused when he saw her light smile.

"As I said, it's natural. It's going to happen, no matter what. At least you apologized, right?"

She had thought that was the end of it, but as she turned, he had one more thing to.

"You don't deserve to be treated like that, though."

"No." What kind of argument could even be brooked to that? Honestly, it was true. But truth is made of many things. "But I will be, and I accept that."

She could see why Vicky liked him. It almost tore her when they "broke up" only to get back together after two days. Her classmates hadn't been lying when they said they just took breaks after some heated moments. The fact that they could come back together after a fight spoke well in her mind. Some people might say it's unhealthy, but it was dependant on the context.

Soon, her time at school was over, and she waved goodbye to other students leaving to do their own things. Part of her wanted to guess which ones could be Wards, but she refrained. There were rules, after all, even if they were unwritten, and much had told her that they were taken seriously and only ignored by those with the power to get away with it, and never constantly.

Lacey waved to her as she walked up and then jumped into the passenger seat.

"Have a good day?" the woman who had kindly taken her in asked.

"Pretty well, actually. Math test next week, but I could sleep in class and still ace that."

"Better not be sleeping in class, young lady," the dockworker warned her without a drop of heat to her tone.

"Perish the thought." She didn't need to sleep anyway. It was a leisurely thing for her.

They made their way down to the DWA offices, where Lacey headed to lunch, and Alice "clocked in." Everyone who needed to know knew enough when she entered, and everyone knew where to not look a few minutes later, when Steeldancer exited from a side door and hopped the fence in a single bound.

She was now clothed in her "costume". Along with the feet Taylor had built for her on the night of her rebirth, she wore a set of belly dancing pantaloons and a skirt with high sides and a dipped front, allowing her belly to be exposed. Her chest was covered by a short, cream blouse with a burgundy corset over it, all topped by a darker bolero. For her face, her eyepatch was replaced by a layered, opaque veil, and a matching one was set across her mouth and nose. And brand new to her ensemble was a recently finished tambourine, made from steel and tightened leather, with each of its disks sharpened to a razor's edge. It wasn't the most practical of weapons, but then again, little about Team Rebuild truly looked practical in the end. And yet, it all worked.

She had a feeling that so too would her instrument.

A short jog later, she began her patrol in earnest, skipping while drumming and shaking her new tambourine, the sounds of her steps, the drumming of leather, and the shakings of metal all coming together to make the music of her march.

Drum. Skip. Drum. Skip. Shake. Skip

Bap. Plakonk. Bap. Plakonk. Shkshkshk. Plakonk. Bap. Plakonk. Bap. Plakonk. Shkshkshk.

Her humming soon joined the percussion to craft a simple melody, and so the song went.

She passed a few passers-by here and there. A couple took pictures with their phones. One had a more professional-looking camera. Then there was the group of 'Cape tourists,' who had apparently come out to Brockton Bay in the hopes of spotting someone like her. She had taken the moment to pause in her rhythm to answer some questions and even sign a journal one of them carried with a long list of autographs of a multitude of Heroes, Rogues, and even a few less dangerous villains. The looks of adoration were quite something. They didn't really know Steeldancer or Team Rebuild, aside from their one public action that the PRT had only just announced and given them credit for, but it was apparently enough of a test to earn them some fame.

By the admitted Cape Geek's own words, they had gone "from complete unknowns to B-tier overnight," with the act. It wasn't a low rating despite how it might sound to some. She had described the A-tier as including Armsmaster, Challenger (when she lived), Assault, Lung, and Narwhal for a non-local example. S-tier included figures like Dragon, Strider, and technically the Triumvirate, though many considered them to be on another level altogether. Comparable B-tiers included Mouse Protector, Bastion, Miss Militia, and perhaps most of New Wave, though there were arguments online that their second generation were looking to be A-tier when judged on their own.

It was a rather flattering comparison, all told, and Steeldancer felt her heart sing at the beginnings of such recognition. It was different from the connections she craved as Alice. These were more of a one-way thing, to have an audience cheering for her and her actions, to praise the idea and the Mask of Steeldancer, all without knowing about the Alice under the cloth.

As she prepared to continue on her route, she heard one of the tourists gasp and began moving, turning, and bending as she started to cast her one-eyed gaze wide. By the time she heard, "Look out!" she was already grasping the wrist of the hand holding the Ka-Bar knife and sweeping her extended leg towards her assailant's shins. As steel impacted flesh and she tightened her grip, the body suddenly crumbled into ash.

She kicked through and spun to face her attacker again, this time slashing with her bladed tambourine, and he once again became ash. She swiveled her head back while jumping up, piston activating and sending her back farther than her muscles alone could have managed. This time, she managed to get a full look at her opponent. He was dressed mostly in black, with a bandolier of knives and at least two frag grenades, and his face was hidden behind a Japanese theater demon mask.

"Oni Lee," she called out in recognition. A Mover that left clones behind when he teleported. He tended to do as he'd nearly done to her for most, knife in the back or across the throat, depending on how much he wanted to kill the target. For harder targets, he might use a grenade, and thanks to the way his power worked, he could technically have infinite grenades, and he could even have the clones use suicide bombing tactics. She rather doubted he would instantly go for that, however. If he wanted to kill her with a grenade, he merely had to drop a primed one at her feet moments ago.

"You are one of Rebuild," he stated dispassionately. "You helped capture Lung."

"Indeed." She reached up with her free hand and undid the tie for the upper veil. "It was not easy, and we would not have been able to defeat him ourselves."

"You opened the way for the PRT. You will pay, and I will go to free him."

"I understand," she said while pulling the veil away and stashing it in a pocket. "Get clear now, you three," she called out to the tourists. "This is not a safe place for civilians."

From the way his head turned, Steeldancer could guess what he was considering.

"Listen here, Oni Lee," she called to get his attention. "Fight me, and you risk losing. If you go after innocents, I will find a way to make you regret it."

And then she opened all of her eyes.

Where her left eye had been destroyed in death – where an empty socket should have been – there were instead five smaller eyes arrayed like an X. Each of these eyes had a unique form of sight to them that Steeldancer had spent the better part of her existence practicing. While she found each one natural, combining them took some concentration, but with two months of working through how they mixed, she was now confident enough to use more than one in combat.

The first one had what she called bio-sight. It allowed her to look at any organic thing, living or dead, and see all of it and through it. She saw each layer of skin, and the muscle beneath layer by layer, and the bones, the outer white and the marrow inside, all at once. If she focused on this one sight, she could even "zoom in" to see individual tissues and make out the separate cells, as though her eye was a microscope. It had been of great help to Taylor for her to point things out with it when she saved Barbara and Nasira, and even when she'd done some repairs and adjustments on Tiana and Larissa.

The next one was electric sight. Rather than seeing it as zapping bolts running through things like media depicted, she simply saw it as a glow of almost spectral light. From this eye, she could see the wires that ran through everything glowing far brighter than the lights they fed, and lightbulbs in turn were about as bright as a human brain. Devices of all kinds showed up in her sight, from the appliances behind a nearby wall, to the phones and cameras being pointed her way.

The third was seismic, as she learned the phenomenon was called. It saw vibrations, but only in solid, non-living material. The ground and walls were almost always a dim grey through this eye, but became whiter and whiter the more they shook. Footsteps made ripples in this pattern of white and grey, and they could tell her when someone was walking nearby without having to look in their direction.

The fourth took the longest to figure out, but had the greatest potential in her mind. It saw things, from the moment she opened it, sped up to about double real speed. That is to say, it saw a potential, silent future. Potential, in that it became less accurate the longer she held it open and the further she saw. Anywhere from 10 seconds onward could be totally different from reality. But one to three seconds could be scarily accurate, so long as Larissa wasn't involved. For some reason, her potential future sight was blind to the six-armed girl. And it was literally silent, as no matter what, people never spoke in this sight. Their lips might move for food or a yawn, but they never tried to speak, no matter how talkative the real version was. But for most cases, spoken words wouldn't do much to change an incoming punch or an aimed gun with the trigger half-pulled.

And the fifth eye at the center, twice the size of its satellites, was the one with the most potential trouble. It gave her power sight, as she could see the powers of Parahumans through it. To her, they seemed like smoke woven into a thread, leading up from the head of the Parahuman she was looking at. As practicing had taught her, this thread would light up whenever someone actively used or activated their powers. She imagined each would pulse in their own way, but she didn't have a large enough sample size to confirm it, just her friends, Lung, Armsmaster, Shadow Stalker, and now Oni Lee.

There was another thing it could see, but that would be useless in combat. It took too much concentration and time to use for what promised to be a high-speed battle.

She closed two of her eyes, focusing on using seismic, time, and power for now. Time, she would have to blink often to get the best use, but doing so tended to make it watery. She needed to be careful about that.

She saw Oni Lee moving two seconds in the future, a moment before his power pulsed, and her seismic sight let her know he was behind and to the left. She turned and kicked, seeing the smoky thread of power pulse just before her steel foot connected to his chest and sent him, or rather, a clone flying backwards.

"And now, we dance."

Two days after Taylor's first day back in school…

"Amy, I think I need your help," Dean said as he approached his girlfriend's sister during break. In response, Amy frowned as she looked up from her pudding cup. It could never be a good thing when someone started a conversation like that.

"What is it, Dean?" she asked with barely restrained anger in her voice, making him wish once again that he could do something to help her, which she also knew he'd fail at miserably. Probably by helping Vicky try to get Amy set up on a date with some guy, again.

"It's about Alice," he began. "The other day, I tried to apologize about how I reacted to her-"

"Oh geez, here it is. Look, she's only been here for like, what, a week, and I can already tell you that she'll be more annoyed by you trying to 'make it up to her' than if you just forget it and treat her like normal."

Really, it wasn't that hard. Girl was quiet and soft-spoken when she did talk, and she tended to do it in a very… pleasant way. Amy couldn't put her finger on it, but when one of Vicky's friends, whose name she couldn't recall – Bess or Ness or something like that – said that she could make money reading books for those audiobook recordings, she was right on the money. Point was, she was a nice, unobtrusive feature in the Dallon sisters' lives. Amy could almost accept her being the third friend to whatever sitcom dynamic they'd be a part of if their life were a TV series.

"Amy, I think she's dying."

'Well, that's a leap!'

"You know people who aren't Carlos can survive with their feet or an eye missing, right?"

"I'm serious. I- The reason I reacted like that is because of her emotional aura. She's…. incredibly sad but content while saying that she just accepts how things are.

'Damn. Good for her. Sounds like she's got everything figured out.'

"So she's depressed but dealing with it?"

"No, it's more like… I've only ever seen auras like this on people who were suicidal. And not the kind who threaten to jump off a building, the ones who just do it without hesitation. I've only seen it twice, but they looked almost exactly like hers."

"I'm not… qualified to deal with that."

Fixing something like that meant messing with brain chemistry, and Amy did not do brains.

"That's the thing. She isn't suicidal. She's… happy to go through life, but at times, that cloud of sadness and grief comes in, followed by contentment. I tried to find out what it could mean and… Everything points to her dying of something, but having come to accept it."

'Wow. Beat around the bush for about 2 while minutes, just to tell me you think she's terminally ill. I can never get those minutes back now.'

"Okay, so you think she has cancer or something like that? Well, she hasn't brought anything up, and I figure if something was happening…" She gestured to herself.

"You've made it pretty clear you don't do requests."

"God damnit, Dean! That just means I'm not gonna fix a scratch or cure someone's gonorrhea at school! If someone's literally dying, then yeah, I'm gonna offer to heal them!"

"But… does she know that?"

'Okay. Probably the first good point he's brought up in this whole thing.'

"I'll make it clear next time I see her… probably lunch. Hopefully, Vicky hasn't adopted any more Winslow strays."

"Ames, really…?"

'Don't call me Ames!'

"What?"

"She's… in foster care? An orphan?"

"Ah shit. I forgot about that."

It's not like she ever complained about it. It got mentioned once when someone asked about her family, and it was never brought up again. Honestly, with the way the girl was, maybe Amy should make sure she didn't suddenly die of whatever. She was one of the few tolerable people in Vicky's group, the other one being that quiet Sophomore who tried to claw her foot off. That one must've spent her whole lifetime worth of loudness in the hospital. Amy still vividly remembered her screeching about how she would "take back what the maggots stole." Metal line for a book or song. Not something you wanna hear a patient saying.

"Still, I can't just bump into her and, 'whoops, fixed your spine.' Carol still reminds me of that guy who tried to sue us at least once a month. She needs to be the one to bring it up. Then, we'll see."

"It's been almost two months now, and nothing's changed," Gallant remarked as he and Glory Girl made the rounds on the Boardwalk.

"Maybe she's just really zen?" the Alexandria package figured with a shrug. "Like, just sorta hit enlightenment or something, and now nothing really gets to her."

"I don't know, Glory. I know it probably sounds rich coming from one teen to another, but she is a teen," he pointed out.

"Yeah, I dunno. She's just… chill. A bit flowery, but chill."

Her big knight was such a softy sometimes. Still, if there was something deep bothering Alice, Vicky was sure it'd come up, and then they could handle it. The girl probably just had some recurring sad thoughts that she had to talk herself through. Vicky couldn't tell what it might be, not that she didn't have anything to be sad about. The girl was honestly made of tough stuff, being able to come to school with a smile on her face every day the way that she did.

"PRT be advised, we've got a Cape fight down on Old Way Road between Fort Street and 6th." The two teen heroes felt their attention be instantly stolen by the police dispatch and listened in while checking their location. "Caller reported an indie hero getting attacked unprovoked."

"Hey, we're not that far from there," Glory Girl pointed out, showing Gallant her phone's map. "Let's call and get you permission to go."

"Got ya. Console, this is Gallant," he said into his mic after tapping it on. "We're about point-eight miles from the reported location. I have Glory Girl still with me, ready to fly. Should we get eyes on the situation?"

"Standby for response," Kid Win answered him. "Running it up the chain."

"Who do you think's fighting?" Glory Girl wondered aloud.

"I dunno. It's not really anyone's turf, although I've heard that the-"

"Gallant, this is console, we just got word that the villain attacking is Oni Lee."

"-ABB claims it. Well, that's basically a long way of saying 'no.'"

"Hold on, we can handle Lee. Well, I can take him. He can't hurt me, but I just have to nail the actual him once," the flier bragged.

"New info! Defender is Steeldancer! Civilian witnesses are saying she's on the back foot!"

"Gallant, Glory Girl, this is Armsmaster," the ENE Protectorate leader suddenly came through. "Glory Girl, we would appreciate if you could get Gallant to where he can help assist and provide overwatch while lending any further assistance you can to Steeldancer."

"Happy to help, chief," Glory Girl responded before grabbing the fully armored young man and taking to the air.

"Any word from the other Rebuilders?" Gallant chanced a question through the comms.

"Sixshooter has been reported returning a missing child via Brockton General Hospital while requesting assistance from Panacea," Armsmaster reported. "Barbed has been seen heading from the southern docks area toward the trainyard."

"They completely split up," Vicky noted before shaking her head.

The Rebuilders really were green if they had done it like this. Maybe she could get Aunt Sarah and her mom to come in and give them some basic pointers? Or maybe she could provide? Before she could ruminate on it any further, they caught sight of a belly dancer-looking girl pirouetting among a cloud of ashes before she jabbed a tambourine forward and caught Oni Lee in the gut as he appeared.

"We have eyes on the battle," Gallant reported.

"I see it through your camera. W- wow! She can move!"

"Keep unnecessary chatter to a minimum," Armsmaster admonished the younger Tinker. "Current status of Steeldancer?"

"She… seems to be holding her own. Oni Lee can't get the drop on her," Gallant explained, though really, he was not doing it justice.

To Vicky's eyes, the girl wasn't fighting; she was dancing. The way she twirled, jumped, and kicked seemed less a series of dodges and counter-attacks and more like a girl frolicking. She could hear her tambourine jingle even several stories up, and it didn't seem out of place or off-beat. In fact, she was pretty sure that the girl was doing it on purpose in an attempt to bait her opponent, like the red cloak of a matador. She didn't know if it was working because Oni Lee was just crazy like that, but it must have looked like it to the ignorant.

Like those tourists barely half a block away, recording the whole thing.

"We've got civvies! I'll drop you by them and try to lend a hand."

"Be careful," Gallant warned her. "Console, we've got civilians in the hot zone. I'm going to try to encourage them to evacuate the area."

She dropped him a few inches off the ground and turned back to see Steeldancer in the midst of a slow spin, wherein she was shaking her instrument slowly as though to match the motion. Lee 'ported in with his knife ready to stab, and the girl's raised arm and opposite leg seemed to unwind rather than swing, and her tambourine slashed across his arms, spilling blood.

'Oh shit! She sharpened it! That's kinda cool, not gonna lie.'

The dancing Cape made a short leap and slashed again, but Lee had already 'ported away, leaving her hitting ash. Three things happened at once then: a Lee appeared right in Vicky's face with a primed grenade and knife coming in for a stab, Steeldancer turned on a dime to face them like she expected him to go there, and her tambourine flew through the air on a collision course with Oni Lee's spine. Before he could finish his jab, the heavy instrument impacted him, earning a solid grunt of pain and canceling his attack. He disappeared before Vicky could react, but left his grenade and the bloodied tambourine behind. Realizing the danger, Glory Girl scooped up the explosive, flew straight up, and threw it into the first steel dumpster that she saw. Luckily, the garbage trucks must have come by recently, so little in the way of debris got sent flying.

"Phew!" she let out. "Close one."

Looking around, she could see no further signs of the stab-happy gangsters, so she sauntered back down in time to meet Steeldancer as the new Cape retrieved her implement of musical battle.

"Nice job there," she complimented the Cape. "You have good aiiiiiiieeee-"

She couldn't hold herself back from being startled by the girl's face. In place of a left eye, there were five little eyes. Three were closed, but the top-left and center ones were open. The smaller, top-left one then closed as the bottom-right one opened, revealing a yellow iris. The top-right one then opened, blinking a few times, letting Vicky see that the iris within seemed to be spinning. It blinked quickly as the one below it closed, and the bottom-left opened to show that it was completely black. It shut as well, and then the spinning eye closed, and the first one reopened, which she now noted was pink. All the while, the center one kept pace with her normal right eye.

Beyond her surprise, though, she could instantly see that Steeldancer was hurt by her reaction.

"Sorry, sorry. Uh, just surprised me. Something to do with your powers, right?"

"It's quite all right," the six-eyed woman answered as she fished out another veil that resembled the one covering her mouth. "And yes. They each see different things." She fitted the veil over the left side of her face and tucked the lower portion into the other, leaving only her right eye uncovered, which then narrowed and curved in that particular way Glory Girl was used to seeing Miss Militia do when she smiled.

"Uh, could you guys ask her what she means by that?" Kid Win requested through the comms.

"What can you see?" she heard Gallant ask from behind her before she turned to see he had walked over to them.

"Well, that would be telling, but you might want to know in case we work together," she said in contemplation while leaning and then patting the tambourine to her hip. She then held up a hand and started flicking up a finger in count as she listed things off. "Electricity, seismic shifts, bio-sight, and future."

"Future?" the Ward said in surprise. "You're a pre-cog?"

"Whoa," Glory Girl intoned. "So that's why Oni Lee couldn't get the drop on you?"

"In part. It's not the most accurate. The further it goes, the less so, and I can't see anyone speaking with it. However, he was not very imaginative or talkative."

"He usually isn't."

"Gallant, this is Armsmaster," they heard again and set their hands to their ears, more to let Steeldancer know they were being spoken to than anything. "Militia is about a minute away, and I can be there in five. Ask if Steeldancer would mind waiting to speak with us."

"Armsmaster wants to know if you mind talking to him," Gallant directed toward the new Cape. "He probably wants to take a statement himself."

'And try to get her into the Protectorate. Or maybe the Wards? She looks about our age. Definitely can't be over twenty, but she might be as young as sixteen. And those artificial feet don't look… Wait. Left eye. Feet. That hair.'

"Hold on, are you…?" she almost asked her aloud, but stopped herself when she recalled that they had an audience. "Uh, sorry, random thought. I can ask you later."

Steeldancer's eye smiled again, and Vicky could see it. It could probably fool everyone it needed to, but for her, someone who knew both light brunettes – or perhaps, both aliases of the one – the disguise was pretty easy to look through. Swap out the feet, give her a normal eyepatch, and she could see her easily being Alice.

'Now what Dean was talking about makes so much more sense,' she realized. 'A normal girl feeling like that is one thing, but a Cape, a Hero, makes total sense. Just gotta figure out when we can talk to her.'

'Ah, she knows,' Steeldancer thought, recognizing the look Glory Girl had on her face. 'Well, there are worse people to learn about my identity. I will have to speak with Taylor about it later. Make sure no one can draw a line back between us. It might be hard, given my cover is so close to hers.

'I should hope that Larissa has an easier time of it today.'

Tzardok · Mar 18, 2026

Will the QQ version differ from the SB version?

Jesse K the Bubba · Mar 18, 2026

Tzardok said:
Will the QQ version differ from the SB version?

As of this moment, I haven't any plans for anything that would require QQ. Maybe some gorier descriptions that get mod-clipped on SB? Omakes done by fans? Almost didn't make a QQ version, but someone asked, and it was basically just a couple of copy-pastes.

Jesse K the Bubba · Mar 18, 2026

Decay 4

Tattletale was apprehensive about this meeting. Not merely because her boss demanded that they do it, but because of what she'd already gleaned from looking at the new hero team. Of course, it was hard to believe they were looking to be heroes at first, with the whole macabre theme they had going on, but it seemed they were genuine and just embracing the more gruesome parts of themselves that they couldn't really hide all that well. There was also the one, singular member of "Team Rebuild," as the reports labeled them, who remained unaltered. Not an implant in her that Lisa's power could pick up on – and she was picking up on quite a few from all the others – yet, they all deferred to her.

Created and installed the implants. Tinker. Bionic specialization. Medical specialization.

Her power figured that out pretty quickly. A Bonesaw-lite in Brockton Bay? Given what she knew about the PRT Director, the girl was going to get a leash or a cage sooner rather than later at the mildest slip. And Coil was interested as well, though with a pique of worry that Lisa had barely picked up on in their conversation, which told her a lot, leading to a bit of information that could greatly help her own investigations if it panned out:

Elisburg survivor.

He wanted to know what Revive was all about, and so he was sending Tattletale into the proverbial lion's den to see if she would get eaten. He'd even been helpful enough to give her some pointers on what to ask for and how to ask for it. Commission some harmless tech. Just some utility tools that couldn't be used to hurt anybody. Offer a big payout, and he'd cover it. She even had permission to mention they had a powerful, resourceful backer if they needed to. From the outside, it looked risky for him to make these sorts of offers so directly, but given what Lisa thought she might know, she could see the reasoning behind it. He wanted to know what was going on in his backyard, and if someone was a few days away from making an army of loyal Frankenstein monsters that could box with Lung, that was something a person like Coil wanted to be on top of.

"Hey, I think I see our guest pulling up," Regent said through the walkytalky. "Oh, yup, it's the arm lady. Huh, she's got an old pickup truck. Why does that fit so well?"

"Ten-four. Come join us on the ground," she replied to the Master layabout.

Sixshooter, the six-armed gunwoman who really made Tattletale think they were a new villain group with how viciously she'd pummeled the ABB gangsters and blown holes in their legs, barely holding back from aiming up higher. At first glance, one might think the arms were her power, a strange form of Brute, but Tattletale saw that she was a Thinker. She had perfect aim at any still target around her, and perfect timing when she was watching the target. Her fellow, Steeldancer, was also a combat Thinker who'd been merely enhanced into a Brute, briefly unveiling her left eye before calling out weak points on Lung on three occasions that the team ruthlessly exploited. It was seeing them work together that let Tattletale deduce that Sixshooter also had some kind of minor, passive Stranger ability spoofing part of her teammate's Thinker power. It must have been to a specific kind, because Tattletale had no troubles outside of the norm when looking at her, and she found that Steeldancer had more than one type she was using. Completely unfair, honestly.

Sixshooter walked into the alleyway where they were waiting, no worries for herself, and fully confident despite being outnumbered. Given the items holstered to her waist and the small of her back, Lisa could see why.

IMI Uzi, MP5, Beretta 92, Browning HiPower, and two M1911s. All found and retrieved after Lung fight, before today. All cleaned and maintained. Recently sighted.

'If she has even a second on us, we'll all be full of bullet holes. Good thing we're not looking to start a fight, then.'

"Hiya," she greeted the woman as she approached. "I'm Tattletale, this is Bitch, Regent, and our leader, Grue," She introduced the team. "And you must be Sixshooter. We didn't get a chance to thank the rest of you for the other night, so… thanks. You guys really saved our hides."

"Eh, just don' get used to it," Sixshooter responded with a thick Bostonian accent, her Asiatic eyes flicking over the four of them. "Boss felt aggravated about it, havin' us fight someone like Lung when she was thinkin' 'the kids' were like Pick, but you're kids enough for one time, I guess. Bastard was getting it one day, anyways."

"Still, thanks," Grue spoke up from that. "You might've heard, but we're the Undersiders. We might be villains, but… I like to think we're better than the gangs that go around terrorizing people. We try to get in and out without hurting anybody. And we… wanna have a rep for paying people back for favors rendered."

And Brian didn't like feeling indebted to anybody, let alone some up-and-coming heroes. He was hoping to put them square before they got any momentum in the city and tried to call it in for something big. He didn't quite like the boss's idea of continuing business, but could understand from the point-of-view of learning more about them.

"So, your boss is a Tinker, right?" Tattletale trailed in. "Noticed some of the toys she made for you guys, but I guess you got some new ones since."

Sixshooter lifted the poncho she wore, using her arms like the spokes of an umbrella to do so before lowering it again. Rachel shifted, but she could tell it was more for confirmation than threat. It didn't mean there wasn't one, just a reminder of where the balance lay.

"Guns aren't really her thing. Had to do half the work for the pipe gun." She shrugged. "It was enough for a couple nights. Got better parts, now. You leadin' to somethin' here? I can take a guess, but I wanna hear ya say it."

"We happen to be in the market for some quality tools," Tattletale decided to cut to the chase. "Nothing dangerous. A few getaway items, perhaps."

"What, like a grapplegun?"

"That'd be perfect, actually." Grapple devices were at the top of the metaphorical list of things they could ask for without looking suspicious. "Maybe some other quality of life items? If she can make saddles that stay on a rapidly-growing, rhino-sized dog, that'd be nice."

"Saddles for a…? Okay."

There was a shift under the poncho and a small, scraping noise.

Taking notes under the poncho. Power ensures she's writing accurately and between the lines without looking.

'Oh, she's taking this seriously.'

"Honestly, I thought you'd take more convincing than this," she muttered.

"Ain't up for me. I ain't the one putting this stuff together. I'll let Revive know, but it'll be her decision, ya know. I'm mostly just running the message and makin' sure you're all… Huh, not really sure what she wanted. Think she was saying she wanted to keep an eye on ya 'cuz of villain stuff."

Revive was unsure of how to feel. Worried about Undersider's status as villains. Worried about the well-being of fellow teenagers. Wants to stop crimes. Does not feel Undersiders are serious enough danger to warrant direct attention.

'So, the new Tinker is aiming big? No time to focus on the little thieves running around? Good to know.'

"About that, what gives? Aren't you way older than her? I wouldn't exactly be comfortable taking orders from someone in high school if I were a grown woman."

Sixshooter's eyes narrowed for a moment, then she inclined her head ever so slightly.

"I ain't much on leadin'. I can make a quick decision out and about, but she's got a head for the kinda… bigger picture than me, and a plan on what we're gonna be doin'. You and Lung pushed us a bit ahead, but we ain't too off. Half her complainin' was about not getting to set up a big news announcement."

Were always planning to come out as heroes. Wanted a solid base of operation before going public. More recruits? More low-profile arrests?

"So, how'd you team up, anyways?"

Her eyes narrowed again, and Tattletale felt a line to push to get her talking.

"I mean, no need to go into detail. Just wondering how you-"

"She saved my life, all right," the woman cut in. "It's what she does. It may not be pretty," she paused and raised her arms, letting the Undersiders get a look at what lay under the hood, "but it's a sight better 'an what I did look like."

On her torso, she was wearing a loose, sleeveless tank top out of necessity, modesty conserved by a sports bra, because each of the six arms sprouted from her shoulders, melded together in angry, red scar tissue that somehow overlaid without interfering with each other. Tattletale felt her power focusing in, and she guided it to dig for detail, seeing the scar lines below her ribs and down to her sternum.

Muscles enhanced. Denser than normal. Weight requires skeletal reinforcement. Required for successful surgery. Surgery required to return to form. Organs removed and rearranged. Nervous system rearranged. Muscles rearranged. Entire body taken apart and put back together.

"What… happened?" she heard Grue mutter.

"What happened? Fucked if I know." She put her arms back down. "If I ever figure it out, maybe I'll give you a call.

Afflicted by amnesia. Genuinely cannot recall life before. Stated she looked worse before surgery. Symptoms match general description of Case 53s. Revive has successfully returned Case 53s to a more human state.

'Fucking what?!' Lisa screamed in her own mind as a headache started stabbing into her skull. The conclusion her power ran into was enough to make her almost miss when Rachel started walking forward.

"Bitch?"

"Dog nearby," she said without stopping. Sixshooter watched her go past and looked at them quizzically.

"So she's…" The woman scoffed. "Whateva."

"Hey, uh, sorry, I didn't mean to pry if it's a sensitive subject," Tattletale decided to try and be more diplomatic, offering her a smile. "And, uh, yeah, that's just Bitch being… Bitchy. She loves dogs more than people."

"That's nice." She huffed. "Yeah, don' worry 'bout it. Just been… a bit on edge thanks to this public shit. Revive's running around trying to get everything set up, and I'm the only one with enough time… Your friend is walking at my truck. Why is your friend walking at my truck?!"

"Uh, you got a dog?" Regent asked.

"Ah shit!" And then she was sprinting in the direction Rachel had suddenly gone with Judas in tow.

"Fuck," Tattletale muttered. This was not how it was supposed to go.

"We better keep Bitch from getting herself killed," Grue said before he jogged after them.

"Don't surprise her!" Tattletale called after him. "Six, we're coming with you! Don't shoot us!"

It took only a few seconds to get in view of the vehicle, so she wasn't quite out of breath, but she did nearly lose it when she saw Bitch looking ready to punch in the rolled up window, only to be stopped by the sight of a little girl with stitching scars on her face, across the bridge of her nose, and down from each eye, crossing the horizontal one. She was mostly wrapped in a blanket, but Tattletale could also see another scar across her neck.

She was also licking the window while staring at Rachel in a friendly manner.

"Ladybird, stop that!" Sixshooter admonished her while going around to the other side of the vehicle. "You're getting germs all- No! Shit!"

The girl had quickly turned and dashed when Sixshooter had opened the driver's side door, and slipped out of her grip by shedding the blanket she wore like a lizard's tail. There was a second of clattering nails, and then they saw her running from around the truck and towards Bitch and Judas. The dog was surprised, but Rachel held him back as the child came up and started sniffing around them, flopping onto her back even as her wagging tail brushed the dirty pavement.

Tattletale needed to blink and rub her eyes a few times, but they were not deceiving her. The girl had doglike legs, furry forearms, dog ears, and a tail. There were some stitching scars, but it almost looked as though the doglike and human parts had started growing into each other and melding. Her fingers were also human-shaped, if oversized for a girl of her apparent age. And her exposed belly had yet another set of scars crossing each other.

Furry appendages showing no signs of rejection. Stitching indicates bodily rearrangement similar to Sixshooter.

"Why is girl dog?" she heard Regent ask from behind her, the boy only just now catching up.

"It was the best she could do," Sixshooter muttered before picking the girl up with two hands and brushing her off with the others. "God, Lady, you can't just roll on the ground like that. Or run up to strangers!"

"But I had to say hello," 'Ladybird' responded. "Dog girl looked scared. Boy dog angry. Said hello. No bad. Good girl. Be friends. Inshallah."

Arabic phrase: God willing.

"Inshallah?" Grue asked aloud. "Wait, are you Muslim?"

"What's a Muslim?"

"She's like a dog," Rachel observed, reaching over and scratching behind one of the ears before Sixshooter pulled away.

"Hey, careful, that could still be fresh."

"Awww! But pets are good!" Ladybird reached toward Rachel and wiggled in Sixshooter's grasp. "Masha!"

"Do you know Arabic?" Tattletale decided to hazard a question.

"Wazzat?" the girl asked back.

"A language. Like English."

"English?"

"Look, she's kinda… new to everything, all right. And little."

"But what's up with that?" Regent asked. "She yours? Coworker's?"

"It's not any of our business," Tattletale told him.

"You just asked her about language!"

"That was because I was curious. You're asking about something private. Sorry about him." She smiled to Sixshooter, trying to keep her power from analyzing the two at the same time.

"...We found her, all right? Gonna try to find her family at some point." She opened the truck door and set the girl in the seat. "Stay!" she insisted before closing the door. She then rubbed her face with her three left hands and then peered over at the Undersiders.

"Look, you, you're good at figuring out stuff, right?" she asked while indicating Tattletale. "I'll see if the boss is willing to work with you. In exchange… we might want ya to find out some stuff. Missing persons or the like. But you'll need to keep 'em quiet like about it, a'right?"

"Yeah, absolutely."

"I'll give ya an email. The PHO thing was fine for getting us here, but we need a bit more secrecy. We'll be the only ones using it. Don' expect a response too quick."

"Understandable," Tattletale replied before a hand holding out a ripped piece of paper from a notepad was raised toward her, then another went to Grue.

"And don' go blabbin' 'bout what ya saw, right. Ladybird ain't ready for all of this," she gestured all around, "Cape shit. And eyes off my plates."

The woman walked back around to the driver's side and hopped in while passing the blanket back over to Ladybird and wrapping it around her, hiding her furry features from the world. The little girl tried to get back to the window, but Sixshooter gently pushed her back down and buckled her in, forcing the girl to settle with a wave from beneath her blanket. After they drove off, Lisa released a deep breath and stumbled toward a wall to lean against.

"Tattletale, you want to let us in on what you think you figured out?" Grue managed to ask her after a moment of quietly contemplating everything.

"It's a lot more than what I thought before. She was telling the truth about being aggravated about rushing around, but when I saw… her and Ladybird's scars. Those body parts aren't acting like foreign grafts; they're settling in as though they belong there. And my power told me Six's everything has been rearranged. Muscles, nerves, organs. The implants are holding her in place or replacing what she didn't have. And their memories… She said she doesn't know what happened to her, and Ladybird didn't know what Muslim, Arabic, or English meant. Now, I could buy a five-year-old not knowing language names, but not knowing if she's Muslim after saying things like that? I think they're suffering from amnesia. And, apparently, their bodies used to be completely wrong."

"...Case 53s? Monster Capes?" Grue asked.

"She felt like a dog," Bitch told them again.

"Have you ever been around a doglike monster Cape, Bitch?" Tattletale asked her, and the other girl shook her head. "We'll have to see if we ever hear of one, then. Just to test."

"You're saying Revive actually… fixed up some 53s?" Grue asked as the implications of the statement seemed to slowly sink into him.

"For a given value of fixed. Six can probably walk around with a big coat on, assuming her mouth is normal." It probably was, given she bothered with a mask. "Pickmeup and Barbed looked like some pretty good successes, in comparison. I have no idea how she's doing it, exactly, but the implants are probably a big clue. Pickmeup had several, while Steeldancer only had something in her spine and her metal feet. Switch the weaponized feet for regular prosthetics, and she'd fit right in. Pickmeup just needs to not pick up anything too heavy for a girl her age. Barbed retracts her metal as easily as she brings it out. Ladybird wasn't as successful. …Or, she hasn't gotten everything she needs."

Sixshooter did say that she was new.

'Bespoke implants and surgeries to bring a Case 53 back to a semblance of humanity? Almost imperceptible in some cases to regular Capes? If that's what it is, then Faultline's going to scoop her up if the PRT doesn't. And if Coil knows about this… No, letting him know about this could be a bad idea. Two more Thinkers on his payroll would be bad enough, but if he gets Revive under his thumb, then it's only a matter of time before he gets anyone she fixes loyal to him through proxy. I can't just tell him about this. He'd have to torture this kind of info out of me.'

Coil did not even bother to clean off Tattletale's blood before he collapsed the reality where he'd made sure to extract as much information as he could and run it against her counterpart in the one he kept. It was an unusual occurrence, not something he'd normally risk, but he had his reasons this time. For one, the potential information she wanted to keep close to chest was too important to leave hanging. If Piggot's suspicions held water, then there could have been a second Bonesaw gestating right in the middle of Brockton Bay, and he was not about to lose this city to another mad Bio-Tinker.

His worst fears turned out to have maybe been overestimatimg the threat, it turned out. Still, he now had certainty, and that was worth a bit of risk. Besides, he was still careful. If he had been forced to keep the suboptimal reality, that Tattletale would have lived. She just would have found it hard to move around for a few days. And, to be honest, a part of him enjoyed the double Schadenfreude of having her at his mercy in one world while throwing the secrets she tried to keep back into her face in the other. Still, he preferred his Tattletale to be on her feet for the near future. She may not have been '100 percent sure,' but even her power's misses tended to be close and hold some grains of truth to them.

"Thank you, Tattletale. Do try and get a few samples of her technology in the meantime. Something to help cover an escape from a very public robbery should be good."

"Sure, boss," she answered, trying to hide how shaken she was that he'd somehow found out what she had been hiding. "Public, though?"

"Try to think of what could help you to escape after a successful bank heist in the early afternoon. I'm sure you have some ideas."

He then hung up and leaned back in his chair as he contemplated what he had learned. His worries weren't quite dashed, but if it panned out, he could sleep a little easier.

'Fixing Case 53s?' he pondered. 'With someone like that, securing Faultline's services could be a breeze, and after I manage to take charge of the local PRT, I can have her sign up for the Protectorate and show her off to the world. She'd be second only to Panacea if she could perform a little cleaner.

'It's obvious, though, that her limitation is with resources. Her team might be helpful in that regard, but they're still limited to trash, scraps, and whatever they can get out of the local markets. I can get her much higher-quality parts as Coil, and, once the Director's seat is mine, the likes of Armsmaster and Dragon could fuel her further.'

And the fact that they hadn't spontaneously remembered their past lives meant that, whatever was behind the 53s in the first place – and did he ever have a suspicion about that – wouldn't feel threatened by her work. If he could cultivate her as a resource, she could bring even greater fame to the ENE. Even if they were wrong and it was just as she told Armsmaster, healing extreme injuries, that would still be something worth investing in.

It did leave the questions of amnesia and the girl's doglike parts unanswered, but answers would come in time with some effort.

More importantly, he needed to find out who they were, at least, who Revive is, and find what made her tick, what made her work, and what she really wanted to accomplish. Carrots were always his preferred method, but sticks remained an option.

If nothing else, an upcoming acquisition of his should make it trivial to figure out.

Larissa wondered if she should get a child leash for Nasira. It'd probably earn them too many looks, but they were already getting some stares, being an Asian woman with scars on her cheeks leading from the corners of her lips and a small, Middle Eastern girl wearing a jilbab and silk scarf. It might've been risky in a city like Brockton Bay, but they kept in the visible parts, and Larissa always had a gun up one sleeve and a knife in the other. Besides, the girl needed to be let out to run. They found out the hard way that she needed to burn off her energy one way or the other. At least like this, there was less noise for the neighbors, minimal damage to the floors, and she could keep an eye on her.

'Alice and Barbie should be out of school soon,' Larissa thought as she came upon what looked like some puppet or animatronic show. Actually, those things were too fluffy and jumping around too lightly to be any kind of robots, but some of them were way too big to be puppets. Not to mention the lack of strings or puppet masters.

"Huh, wazzat?" she muttered as Nasira stopped circling her and zoomed over to join the crowd of kids watching.

"Oh, you from out of town? That's Parian," some kindly Korean lady answered her. The woman hadn't even looked away from her phone, which had its camera pointed at the display. "She does some shows… like…" The woman had glanced at her, noticed her scars, and then stuttered. "Uh, she does shows for shops and things. Promos? Yes."

"Huh. Neat."

She kept her charge in her sight while getting a little closer, careful not to get in anyone's way or put anyone in hers. If she had to guess, the promo was about donuts or something. The little critters seemed to be 'making' donuts that were represented by unfilled cloth getting dipped into a grey cloth representation of a fryer, which would then 'inflate' into full donuts that some other plushies would pretend to eat. Once those disappeared, they'd dig out some more 'dough' from a pile and repeat the process.

Seemed to be working, too. Plenty of people were going in to get one or a dozen, and not all of them were being pushed by their own little terrors. Larissa feared she was about to get roped in, but honestly, some sugar and cake sounded good to her right about now.

As the show wound down, and the plushies all started bowing out, some packing themselves away, Larissa saw Parian do a double-take and felt the world slow as she followed the doll-like Capes' gaze.

"Nasira," she heard the woman gasp, snapping her out of her battle-ready tenseness. She blinked and looked down at the little girl, who waved a mitten-covered hand.

"Hello!"

Quickly, Larissa stepped up.

"Hey, you recognize this kid?" she asked her pointedly.

"I- Yes, I- Who are you?"

"Doesn't matter right now. You know her? You know her parents? Where they are?"

"Umma? Baba?" Nasira asked excitedly.

The woman muttered something Larissa couldn't make out, looking side to side as though expecting something.

"We… need to speak somewhere quiet. Private."

Larissa raised an eyebrow, but one of her second hands easily slipped into her oversized coat sleeve and palmed the 1911 strapped in there.

"A'right. Lead the way. Nasira, we're gonna follow the nice doll lady, 'kay?"

"'Kay."

"Thank you. Uh, just let me pack up real quick."

It was quick. All of the smaller pieces went into a trunk carried by a giant teddy bear, and then it was just that and a giant rabbit. Parian led them down the street and took a few turns before they reached a building that she quickly unlocked and waved them into. Larissa pushed Nasira along, then turned as Parian's stuffed animals float-walked in and set down the trunk before falling over, and the woman was locking the door again. The place was full of threads, yarns, and various clothes on racks, seemingly the Cape's personal storage.

'Shit. I'm surrounded by her stuff.'

Larissa didn't quite know what the woman's power was, but she could guess that cloth-control was the main piece. She didn't know how strong or quick it could be, but honestly, if the woman piled it on fast enough, there wasn't much she could do short of shooting her dead, which she'd rather avoid at the moment.

"Look, you don't need to be afraid," Parian said reassuringly. "I- I can tell you've been gripping a gun this whole time, but your finger is off the trigger, right? You're just cautious."

"And a little creeped that you… Ah, you can feel all the cloth."

In other words, she could yank Larissa's clothing around, maybe even restrain her with her own coat.

"Only what I choose, and I was just being cautious, like you. But you don't have to worry, if… Nasira, are you okay?"

"Uh-huh. 'M fine. Kinda warm."

"Okay, well, I need you to keep a secret for me, Sisi. Please?" The woman then reached up and removed the Victorian doll mask she wore, revealing a substantially browner-toned face beneath.

Narisa gasped and reached over the pat at Larissa's thigh.

"She's me-colored!"

"Sisi, it's me, Sabah," the woman said, almost sounding pleading.

"Ah, sh-oot, lemme explain real quick," Larissa said while reaching down and patting the little one's shoulder. "We found her pretty badly hurt. You see where the stitches were, right?"

"Oh, God! What… What happened to her?"

"Short version: Nazis."

"Empire?"

"Yep. Found the proof and all that."

"I bited one," Narisa proudly boasted while showing her teeth, which made the woman flinch. "Bad man hurt a lot of people. Made him stop."

"We found her, and the boss, Revive, tried to fix her up, but there were some… side effects."

"She doesn't remember me? Anyone?"

"I rember a bit," the girl admitted. "Um, you look… You look like I, um, like I know you, but I can't remem-ber all. Um, oh!" She clapped her mittened hands. "I remember a dog! You said… she was a good girl!"

"Oh fuck me dead," Larissa whispered to herself. She did not want to bring up the dog.

"Yes, Collie. You kept saying we had to call her Collie even though she was a retriever."

Nasira nodded emphatically. "She's good girl, masha!"

Sabah burst into laughter.

"Oh! Oh, you sounded just like Uncle! Uncle… We have to call up uncle and auntie, let them know you're safe!" She then bent forward and wrapped the small girl in a hug, pausing when her hand brushed across her head. "What?" She then pulled back the silken headscarf and saw the dog ears on her head. "What?!"

"Side effects!" Larissa quickly said while raising her front arms. "Okay, so, you showed me yours, I'll show you mine, all right?"

She then pulled the metal mask from an inner pocket and clamped it around her face. Originally, Taylor had made the thing to help her keep from opening up the stitches next to her lips, but it looked too good in Larissa's eyes to abandon once she fully healed, so they cut the bottom out to let her continue using it as part of her persona. She then took off her coat, holstering her hideaway gun and sheathing her knife with her secondary hands and freeing her layered poncho from its own hidden pocket with the third pair.

"Revive does good work, but it ain't always pretty."

She could almost swear the other woman was blushing, but ignored it in favor of softening the explanation of Nasira's condition.

"When we found her, she was in a bad way. Badly cut, arms and legs gone. Revive got to work, but once she gets going, she doesn't really stop until it's done. We tried to find the rest, but there was a dog's body there, looked like they shot it in the head. It was the closest thing, so Revive used it."

Sabah muttered something. Larissa had no idea what it was, so she just guessed it was the Arabic equivalent of 'Jesus fucking Christ!'

"After that, the priorities were clean out the scum, then help the girl. We found a locket with her name in it after we got the ones who did it, and left them for the cops to scrape up." Dead went unsaid. It might be problematic if the law found they'd killed them, but no one was mourning those monsters after they found their collection, and she doubted they looked too far into it.

"This is… This is a lot."

"I imagine."

"Can we… Can Revive fix her?"

"Uh, maybe." Sixshooter shrugged. "Takes her time to figure out things after the whole… 'revival.' The stuff that happens in emergencies like Ladybird here is kinda a blur ta her."

"Ladybird?"

"Is my hero name," Nasira told Sabah. "Ooh, look!" She then manuevered off one of her mittens and pulled the other away, showing her furry hands to the woman.

"Sisi, you… You look like… a little werewolf," Sabah said slowly while taking the girl's hands in hers and looking over her digits. "These aren't dog toes."

"One of the little fixes," Sixshooter decided to half-lie. She didn't really need people judging Taylor for having ignored the hands she'd been offered by Pickmeup from her stash, except to pry out the bones from one pair and stuff them into the dog's skin. If the girl could have helped it, she would have used the mismatched human parts or thrown together some mechanical ones like with Alice.

"What… What about Panacea?"

"The healer?"

"She could do something. Maybe… Maybe turned her parts human?"

"I… honestly hadn't thought about that. Izat how her power works?"

"We can ask. I… No, I can't go as Parian." She looked Sixshooter over. "But you can go in costume, right? The news said you helped bring in Lung, so you're a Hero. She'll listen to you."

"Maybe. Never talked to her before." Sixshooter rubbed the mask over her chin and thought it over. "Could work, I guess. All right, so you're… her cousin." Sabah nodded. "Right. So, we've been looking for her family. You recognized her, but if anyone asks, we, well, I was in costume, and you were just being regular ol' Sabah when you saw her and recognized her face."

"Yes, that sounds like it'll work." She nodded and stood up. "Just give me a moment to get out of costume. And… I guess Nasira should change?"

"I can take my clothes off?" the girl asked hopefully.

"Go for it, kiddo."

"Wait, what, not like-"

Nasira practically yanked off her jilbab and tossed it in the air. Parian's control caught it, but the girl was already running for freedom, kicking off the socks and sandals when she thought she was safe.

"Fur keeps her warm, so she gets hot easy," Sixshooter explained.

"Does she just run around in a tank top and spats all the time?"

"It's about as much as she can handle. But, uh, keep that while we go," she said while indicating the floating garb. "Maybe put something together for her? If it works, she won't have the fur too much longer, right?"

"Yes. Right."

Sabah led them to Brockton General Hospital after some checking online, with Sixshooter taking point. Some people stopped to stare at the canid child and the obvious Cape, a few taking pictures, but no one got in their way as they entered the place.

"Hey, we've got a big one here," she decided to call out as they entered the lobby. "I dunno how this all works, so I'ma lay it out. I'm Sixshooter, Hero from Team Rebuild. I got a weird case that needs Panacea's magic touch. Please call her down or send us up."

"Oh, uh, well, uh, Miss… Sixshooter?" the nurse at the desk stuttered out. "Miss Sixshooter, we don't… Panacea doesn't just… get called up unless it's an emergency."

"I mean, I don't wanna take her away from somebody dying, but how big of an emergency. Bullet to the kidney? Gutshot?"

"M-ma'am?!"

"I can probably take one to the lung. Don't wanna hit my liver, though, I need that. And I just got this stomach… Oh, almost forgot about that thing."

'Should I mention to Sabah that I accidentally got her cousin's stomach stitched into me when I wasn't looking?'

"Ma'am, please, don't harm yourself!"

"All right, I won't, but can someone at least give me some direction to go off of?"

Despite what anyone might say, Sixshooter was not intimidating anyone. She simply set her SMGs on the coffee table so that she wouldn't sit on them. Once she was assured Panacea was on her way, she calmly sat down with Sabah and Nasira, who had taken to playing with that weird children's toy that had the beads and cube pieces on twisty metal rods.

Soon, an Iraqi couple in modern American clothes entered the place, looking around with worry. They spotted Sabah quickly and rushed over to her at the same time that she started calling over Nasira.

"Sabah, did you find-" the man started, only to stop his words and steps at the same time he saw Nasira.

"Baba?" the little girl asked before looking over at the woman, who had covered her. "Umma?"

"Nasira?" the woman began, kneeling and reaching out to pull the girl closer and get a better look at her. "What has… What happened? Who did this?"

"The Empire, Auntie," Sabah whispered, patting the woman on the back. "They… Sixshooter and her team found her. They saved her."

The parents looked over at Sixshooter, who had set down the magazine she had been using to pass the time and sat up straight.

"Th- thank you," the man croaked out. "I cannot thank you enough. By God, I will- I will find a way."

"Don't worry about it," she reassured him with a wave of her second left arm. "Just… make sure to get your girl some help. And buy a lot of soft but tough pillows."

They'd given up on letting her have normal pillows after the second night. None of them had restful sleep, but hers had to have been among the worst night terrors, and she brought her teeth to bear on the dreamed threats. And unlike Larissa and Alice, Ladybird needed sleep.

"Tickles," Narisa giggled out as her mother investigated her ears.

"Collie? What did those sick-otic Nazis do to her?!"

'Ah, shit. I hate explaining these-'

"Okay, who decided that threatening to shoot themselves in the kidneys was a good idea?!" a girl in a white robe with red crosses yelled as she entered the waiting room.

"I ain't threatened nothin'! Who fibbed?" Sixshooter looked across the staff present at the moment. "For shame, you guys! Ain't you got ethics and stuff about this kinda thing?"

"Okay, who are you?" the girl shot at her. "If you're a hero, you should've asked the PRT for help. If it needed me, they would have gotten me through their channels."

"Didn't know that. Anyways, Panacea, the one that needs ya is here," she pointed four index fingers at the family reunion happening about five feet from her, particularly the tiny girl in the middle being checked over and hugged by relieved parents.

"I… What the shit? Is that a…" She blinked a few times. "Fur."

"Panacea?" the mother said while standing up. "You can help our daughter? Please, we- We thought we lost her, but Sabah said she found her and that she brought her to the hospital and now we see her and she has dog ears and she-" The woman stuttered before slipping into Arabic and couldn't seem to get herself back to English as she continued begging.

"Hey, hey, okay, I'll see what we can do. Um, this might take a while." She looked back at the staff still present in the lobby. "Let's get an exam room for them or something. Give 'em some privacy and me somewhere quiet to work."

"Exam room 4 is open."

"Cool. Let's go there. Uh, someone wanna tell me what happened while we walk?"

"She told me about it," Sabah offered, giving Sixshooter a look that told her she would handle it.

"Cool. Walk and talk. I'll get you to repeat it if I miss anything important."

As she led the family away, seemingly forgetting about the Sixshooter in the process, Nasira turned to wave at her fellow resurrectee.

"Buh-bye, Six. See you later."

"Have a good one, kiddo."

With that, Larissa felt that her job here was done. If they needed help from Team Rebuild, Sabah had her phone number, and the Rogue Cape had given hers to Larissa as well.

As she stepped out of the hospital and her eyes adjusted to the afternoon light, she saw red and white-grey spandex-wearing figures slowly approaching her.

"Fancy meeting you here," Assault greeted her with a wave. "You wouldn't happen to know about someone threatening to shoot themselves in the lungs and kidneys, would you?"

"Lies and slander," she answered quickly and evenly. "I was askin' what constituted as an emergency, and people started takin' me out of context. Honestly, professionalism done gone down the drain."

"So there were zero threats of self-harm to get Panacea's attention."

"Absolutely none. I just asked very normal like if they could get her."

"Okay, you're lying through your teeth," Battery inserted. "What was so important you had to go threatening yourself to pull her away from her volunteer work?"

"I ain't lyin'. Check de cams if ya don't believe me. Not once did I eva say I was gonna hurt myself if they didn't get Panacea to look at a little girl what got tortured by Nazis."

"...Shit," the masculine half of the duo muttered low enough that most couldn't hear.

"A tortured little... Why didn't you lead with that?!" Battery demanded.

"Uh, 'cuz they have eyes?"

Joben123 · Mar 19, 2026

Well, if it makes Taylor feel better, it seems that she's not Mastering those she revives; they're just genuinely loyal to her for bringing them back to life. If anything, she'd be useful against Endbringers (provided the capes consent and their corpses are intact, given that Nasira has amnesia, probably from how badly she was hazed).

Jesse K the Bubba · Friday at 4:28 PM

Made a small edit to Coil's section to fit canon better

Jesse K the Bubba · Tuesday at 6:16 AM

Decay 5

"All right, dudes, this is a stick down! Drop the drugs and the guns, and prepare to be lawfully wrested! I'm placing you under citizen's arrest for all the… drugs and stuff!"

The group of scraggly men holding pipes, bats, and bags of what Barbed witnessed to be drugs all looked at her like she was crazy, which was dumb of them. She was wearing a mask made of metal razors that grew out of her skin. Obviously, she was a Cape, and her placing them under arrest meant she was a Hero. Proof that drugs were bad: they made people so slow that it made Carl look fast.

"You shouldn't be out here, little girl," a dark-skinned man tried to warn her. "Don't you know this ain't a safe place to be?" Well, at least he was somewhat decent, worrying about her.

"Tommy, I think that's a Cape," a white guy with a newish-looking beanie said. So, at least he had some brains.

"What? They don't let Wards out here."

"Could be indie."

"Or from a gang," a guy too dirty to be ethnically placed spoke up.

"Nah, she said arrest. That's hero-speak."

"Well, she don't look like she's leaving. What do we do?"

'Encouragement time! Gotta make the "wow factor" to drill the point in.'

"Time's about up, guys!" she announced while pushing the barbed wire from her body, making it rush out and around her arms in a spiral, the ends free in the air before they angled down and hit her ankles, where they spun a loop around her legs. It was a useful trick she picked up to keep them from whipping about when she didn't want them to, and they unspun from her legs pretty quickly, so there was no real issue there.

"Shit! It's Empire!"

"Hey, what the fuck?!" she objected. "Just 'cause I'm white, you think I'm with the Empire!"

"You-! You're liter'ly a little girl Hookwolf!"

She screamed in rage, shaking her fists at the sky.

"I am not! I don't even know that guy! But I am going to kick his ass one day and show everyone that I'm better than that poser, wherever he is!"

With a tug, her left arm shot up, and her wire followed, unwinding from her ankle and whipping out to grab the wooden bat one of the drug dealers was wielding. She pulled it away, and the guy tripped over as his bat went flying. The others tried to rush her, but after her wire retracted, she focused on bringing out plates to her forearms and shins, careful not to give them the sharp edges her power defaulted to.

She blocked two pipe swings and punched the third man in the face, laying him out from the blow.

'Never punch at someone, punch through them,' she reminded herself as she kept her momentum, stepping forward and twisting into a kick that smacked into a guy's ribs. 'Kick with the heel, not the foot or ankle.' She jumped back from the retaliatory swings, then lanced a leg upwards, impacting her heel into the man's chin as he tried to charge her again.

"Now! You bozos stay down while I get the-"

"Take this, you bitch!" she heard and turned to see the bat-guy she'd disarmed had pulled a pistol out of somewhere.

"Whoa, hey, he's got a gun!" she yelled in warning as she tried to expand the metal on her left arm into a shield. Her power didn't quite like making things wide and long, but she managed to send out four blunt 'blades' next to the armor already there, and raised it up while crouching to protect herself and the guy she had just sent up to the floor.

Shot after shot was fired from the gun, the loud staccato piercing her eardrums with each one as she held firm and ground her teeth. However, she didn't feel anything impacting against her shield, which confused her all the way until the 'bangs' stopped and were replaced by empty clicks. She looked back up and saw that the man was checking over his pistol and looking around at them with fervent fear. Suddenly, she burst into a quick bout of laughter.

"Ya missed, numbnuts!" she called out before flicking both of her wires forward. They wrapped around the guy's wrists and his gun, and she yanked them both forward. The gun reached her first, which she caught and dropped before punching forward and nailing the man right in his jaw. He actually flipped and fell onto his front, groaning in pain and doing that little slow twitch that people did when they fell sometimes.

"There! Well, looks like The Barbed has brought down some lowlifes and saved them from their own buddy's stupidness." She looked around at the groaning drug dealers and shrugged. "Now for the part they don't show in the movies!"

The girl reached into a pocket and pulled out a packet of extra-strength zip ties before opening it up and counting out three for each of the four miscreants. She went for the gun guy first, since he'd proven to be a danger to his own buddies and possibly himself already, putting his arms behind his back and tying them together by slipping one tie through the other and tightening them just enough that her finger barely fit under them at the thinnest point of his wrist, just like the dockworkers taught her. She got the second one done when 'Tommy' stumbled up to his feet and tried to run.

"Hey, none of that!" she called out while whipping a wire after him. It got one of his ankles, and he fell over, effeminately screaming. "Great, now I've either gotta drag you back or-"

"No draggin'! No draggin'!" he begged while hopping and scooting his way back towards them. "I'll be good!"

"See, that's learning. Do some more of that," she told him while she finished up the second guy, then went over to him.

Soon, all four were properly secured, and she was dusting off her hands before calling the PRT hotline. She figured the cops should be called, since they were normal, but apparently, since she was a Cape, then that made busting the guys Cape-related, so they'd have to pass it down the line to the BBPD after going over them.

"Hey, what're you doing to our guys?!" she heard a voice demanding, and looked over to see a walking pile of trash coming at her, weird stretchy things reaching out from it and grabbing more trash as it approached. She quickly told the operator what she was seeing, and they confirmed that it was not her hallucinating from a contact high.

"The description matches Mush, a known villain and member of a minor drug gang. Please be cautious. We'll try to call for assistance."

"Is he dangerous?"

"He's very resistant to damage and has been known to hit hard enough to knock out grown men."

"Okay, cool. I got just the thing for this! I'll call you back."

She then hung up and held up a hand.

"Hold on, Mush, I gotta get something!" She then sped off toward the alley where she stashed her stuff while planning her takedown of the drug dealers. It wouldn't have been good to get her medical supplies messed up in the scuffle, or scare them with things not meant for normals and non-Brutes.

Taylor was very clear about the rules of engagement.

She then ran back, holding up her favorite gift, narrowly beating out the old bass guitar Mickelson gave her after they found out she knew how to play.

"Okay, now I'm ready!" she said to the trashmanthing that had frozen in his steps.

"Is that a fucking chainsaw?!" he yelled.

She scoffed. "No. It's a chainsword. See the handles," she pointed out.

She then used the little trick that made it economical on top of being badass, spinning out a barbed wire from the top of her sternum that kept both ends inside at her clavicles. It whipped out a few feet, and then she caught it with one hand before wrapping it into places on some bicycle gears. With a tight pull followed by a loose push and tug, she was able to get her wires to start spinning the gears. Picking up a little speed, she soon had the chain of blades whirring about as fast as any gas or electric-powered chainsaw. Maybe even faster.

"Let's go, trailer trash!" she called out, but Mush just turned and ran.

"Fuck that shit! I'm out!"

Well, that was a little disappointing. But you know what, she was a bit proud that he wasn't that stupid. Of course, if he was that scared of the chainsword, then maybe she shouldn't have brought it out?

'Eh, it'll be fine. Now I know for next time.'

Several minutes later, a PRT van arrived alongside the Hero she was pretty sure was Velocity, since he was the fast guy, and she was asked to give her statement.

"So he saw your chainsaw-"

"Chainsword," she corrected.

"Chainsword. My mistake. He saw that, and he started running away while yelling, 'Fuck that shit! I'm out!'?" the PRT officer asked her.

'Man, they really do double-check everything. No wonder the movies skip over this part.'

"Exacto. Just louder and junk."

"...Well, I think that's all we need." He lowered his clipboard and looked over to Velocity, who nodded.

"Say, would you mind coming in for power testing?" the Hero suddenly asked her.

"Would I?!"

"So you didn't convince her at all?" Armsmaster asked. "She just agreed to come in at the first suggestion?"

"She's one of the more… simple personalities," Velocity decided to share. "Not saying she's dumb, but she's very… She's a face value evaluator. She heard 'power testing' and just figured it was a way to test her powers."

"That is what they are, but it's not everything."

"That's just it. She never really considered there might be more. I almost feel dirty for it, like I tricked her."

"But you didn't," Armamaster assured him as he used a holographic device to bring up some deeper scan results of Barbed. "You asked if she wanted to come in for testing, and she agreed. And now we can see how her power works. Definitely a Brute with minor Changer elements, but I almost want to label her as a Breaker with the way her body interacts with the metals inside of her." He pointed to the dark patches over her arm, leg, and rib bones. "Certain metals flow through her body, causing no damage despite passing through muscles and organs. The barbed wire, specifically, is even stranger. It wraps around the organs in her torso, and not in a manner that suggests holding them together, but rather, around each organ individually. Most of it can be found spun around her small intestine."

"Yikes."

"And yet, none of it harms her, even as it runs around these organs when activated or comes out of her skin. Perhaps Breaker 1 or even 0, since it has little in relation to any threat assessments. Brute 4 at the lowest, possibly 6 depending on how much damage she can take or heal from. Striker 2 from the blades she can produce, which, combined with her increased strength, makes them far more dangerous than regular bladed weaponry."

There was a loud bang, and the two turned to see that Barbed had jumped back and fallen out of the lift-strength-testing device, two strands of barbed wire leading from her shoulders and under the pneumatic safety weights.

"Sorry!" she called out apologetically. "Got scared!"

"Is that Mover, Thinker, or just part of the Brute package?"

"I'll need to check the footage, but I'm doubtful it's a Thinker ability. Most powers come with an instinctual understanding of how to use them. Whether it's Mover or not depends on how fast she can go."

"Got it. And the… chainsword?"

"Hm, oh, it's not Tinkertech," Armsmaster answered the unsaid question as they walked over to where Barbed was recovering herself. "Just well put together. Something a skilled mechanic could craft in a garage with no powers whatsoever. Perhaps it works better than it should, but that would require more testing than I can excuse."

They reached Barbed, who had just managed to pull herself up and was reeling in her wires from the machine.

"You know, they took your benchmark," Velocity pointed out while grabbing one handle and effortlessly picking up the press to where she had allowed it to be placed. Above that point, it would increase the pressure, but below, there was no more pressure than the ten pounds of the press head.

"Uh, yeah, I just kinda panicked, sorry," she apologized sheepishly. "But hey, I know how to get outta the way if one of those giant people tries to squish me."

"True," he admitted before looking at the measurement and nearly balking.

"Although you should be able to hold up one of the Valkyries if they try that," Armsmaster observed, having run the numbers. "I would not suggest it, however, as you may sink into the ground, or they may use it to pin you in place for another attack."

"Ah! Good point, big man! This is why you're A-tier!" she said while reaching up and patting his armored shoulder. "Brains and bronze."

"...Right."

"Assault to Armsmaster, we've got Sixshooter here. She's saying she's come to pick up her teammates, but… Panacea is also here. We may have a situation."

"You couldn't restore her?" Armsmaster asked, looking over the dog-like child with a scanner of some type.

"I could, but she reverts back, like a Case 53, but even more rapidly. The way they shift back takes time, but this thing didn't wait at all to turn her back."

It was thanks to something that Panacea couldn't quite figure out within the girl's body. It was like a living organism, but without DNA or genetic material of its own, pseudo-protoplasmic, almost a liquid, flowing through the body like a secondary bloodstream and slipping in between tissues without harming them, branching out and back into itself like a three-dimensional web. The nearly-living substance seemed to be why the child's body had not rejected the dog-sourced body parts and organs. It was working to spoof the immune system while slowly changing them on a genetic level, restructuring the DNA of the replacement limbs and organs to better fit and function with the core of the girl.

Amy tried to use her power to simply convert the dog pieces into human, making it match with Nasira's torso sans guts, but that seemed to cause the strange fluid to react quickly. It rushed in and changed back what she'd tried to convert, making it something in between human and dog that was somehow compatible with the girl's systems, likely what it was slowly aiming for in the first place, all across the body. It didn't stop Amy, but it did undo her work in that regard. After she tried changing one dog foreleg into a human arm, only for the fluid to swiftly change it back, the parents saw how painful it was for the girl and begged her to stop.

"I could still heal her scars, but I can't get rid of the dog parts completely."

"And this fluid is biological in nature?"

"Sure, but… It's like the simplest stuff that makes up cells, but with something else I can't really make out with my power, and a cell membrane that morphs to make horizontal gene transfers when they change a cell inside of her. There's a control system there directing it, but I don't know what it is. I thought it might be the implants in her face, but that seems to be connected to her olfactory system. Like a filter for smells."

"Yes, I see them," Armsmaster noted as he observed the small pair of implants behind the girl's nose. At a glance, their function seemed to be to act as a filtration medium, possibly so that Nasira was not overwhelmed by her new, doglike sense of smell. "Could you stop the fluid directly?"

"It doesn't respond right," Panacea admitted. "Like… I don't know how to describe it. It was like another power bumping up against my own. It pushed against me, but didn't get forceful until I tried changing her back. But it lets me heal other stuff. Heck, healing her was easier than normal as long as I left the DNA alone."

It was strange to Amy. Healing had felt sluggish for a while, but with Nasira, it came easily. Almost like she was being invited to do it. The girl's scars straightened out easily, and now, rather than suture marks, she had little pale lines on her face that would even out with time and sunshine. It also made the gradient furriness of her limbs meld into smooth skin more evenly, which hadn't been Panacea's intention, but it's what her power wanted, and the weird fluid-thing seemed to approve. It was certainly an interesting feeling.

"Is there anything you can do, sir?" the Middle Eastern father asked with some desperation in his voice.

"Directly, no," the Protectorate Hero admitted. "However, Sixshooter had said that Revive was likely planning to replace these… emergency measures with more acceptable alternatives. If we can call her in, we may be able to facilitate such a procedure."

"And maybe ask her what's up with that stuff," Panacea griped, though not as much as she could have.

Really, she was curious about the sorta-kinda living substance. If Revive could make more of it and mass-produce it, maybe hospitals could make use of it? Even if it was temporary, ran out, or stopped working past a point, a substance that could ensure that organ transplants weren't rejected without broadly weakening the immune system could be a godsend. And it was giving Panacea ideas that she needed to push away. She wasn't going to be making some sort of symbiotic slime any time soon, as cool and useful as it might be.

"Did Sixshooter call her, then?" Amy asked. She hadn't gone wherever Assault and Battery had taken her. Or really paid attention to it. She was too taken with Nasira's situation and wanted to know more about that.

"No, she called their lawyer," Armsmaster answered.

"...What, why?"

"Aw, so Reevee's not coming?" Nasira groaned in complaint. "I wan'ed her to meet Umma and Baba."

"Why their lawyer?" Panacea asked again.

"Are they in trouble?" the mother asked.

"They… did this," Armsmaster gestured at Nasira, whose ears flickered as she looked at him in confusion.

"What?! No!" the woman yelled while waving her hands about. "That was the Nazis!"

"Ma'am, I don't mean your daughter's… attack. I meant the unregistered surgery she performed on your daughter to connect these dog limbs and organs."

"She saved her life!"

"Sir," the man stepped in, "we know it is… not ideal, but our daughter is alive because of them. I would rather her be alive and half-dog than human and dead. We are not… That should not bring… trouble."

"I understand, sir," Armsmaster responded. "However, Sixshooter of Team Rebuild likely understands that they are in… a gray area of legal precedent and would rather be prepared in that regard. I can assure you that the Protectorate and PRT would not press unwarranted charges against a Hero who saved someone's life. However, her methodologies are in question at the moment."

"Her methods brought back our daughter!" the man began raising his voice.

"And next time, we would like her to be better prepared, to save the next person with… less questionable results."

The parents were getting red in the face now. Panacea knew what it looked like when loved ones were about to start screaming. Usually, it was after she'd told someone she couldn't help them (stupid brain tumors being in the brain). She'd just let it run its course, normally, but seeing that they were about to explode at Armsmaster…

Eh, better help the guy out.

"Hey, so, Nasira, you wanted to go by Ladybird, right?" she asked the kid, who turned her wide-eyed attention to the healer. "Where'd that come from? You know that's another name for ladybugs, right?"

"Uhm, well, birds are cool. An' I'm a lady. And um, they um, Ladybird is fun!"

"That King Hill cartoon," the father grumbled out, his temper coming back under control as he focused on his daughter. "The dog's name. You heard it and loved it. You said… Collie had a new middle name: Ladybird."

'Oh, they're switching to wetworks. That might've been… No, it's better.'

Armsmaster looked relieved at the distraction. Relatively. Amy found it hard to tell with the guy sometimes.

"I apologize for what I said," he got out when their emotions seemed to come back to balance. "You are correct. The important thing is that Nasira is alive and well. We'll work with Revive to see what she can do going forward."

"Thank you," the man choked out before coughing to clear his throat. "We would… like to thank her, when we can."

Between Armsmaster's report on the Khayat family and the appearance of Alan Barnes, who was apparently working as a legal intermediary for Team Rebuild, Piggot realized that this was not the one. Oh, she'd find a way to get Revive to sign in and get her under the lens, but it was not to be today.

Granted, she could push, but it would quickly become an uphill battle, legally and in the court of public opinion. People had seen the little girl with dog limbs, but they also saw the heartfelt reunion and heard an exclamation of Nazis being the perpetrators. PHO was already filled with competing conspiracies about a supposed Mengele in the Empire 88 and a 'Doctor Frankenstein Healer Hero.' The parents were clearly and understandably on the side of the girl who saved their child's life. There wasn't even any need to ask them, given how they were acting. And legally speaking, Revive had a bevy of Good Samaritan laws on her side, though a good lawyer could argue she'd overstepped them by using a dog's corpse and unregistered Tinkertech to do it. Finding a jury to convict would be impossible, however, and Barnes or one of his associates would let the Tinker know that if they hadn't already.

"And why was Barnes even working with them?"

"Inconclusive," Armsmaster admitted, cupping his bearded chin in thought. "A similar situation as Shadow Stalker isn't impossible, though what they could have done is unknown at this time."

"Well, while I have complaints about Stalker, we can't say the man is inexperienced with Capes." The girl was annoying, but effective when she got her head in the game. "Did he say anything about pushing Revive in our direction?"

"I believe they have indicated that they have a plan going forward." He tapped something on his tablet and showed it to her. "They mentioned that Channel 5 and Channel 8 News will be assisting them with an announcement tomorrow, and that they will meet with the PRT in an official capacity afterward."

Piggot sighed, knowing where this was going and powerless to stop it. "They're debuting, publicly and visibly. That's what they were complaining about when they stopped Lung. They went public before they were ready, and now they're being rushed by expectation."

"And then they'll sign on as affiliate heroes," Armsmaster realized with a hum.

"Not what I wanted, but I'll take it," Piggot groaned. "Gives us some power over them, but they'll still be too loose for my liking."

"I will be able to call in any of her technology for review," Armsmaster pointed out.

"But she can make whatever she wants without the red tape, as long as it doesn't cross any red lines."

In Emily's opinion, there weren't nearly enough of those red lines, and independent Tinkers shouldn't be given so much leeway in the first place. It was obvious things, but nearly none of the ones that slipped under the radar until it was too late. The not-quite-alive thing that was apparently inside of Nasira was certainly one of those. Panacea said it couldn't grow or even sustain itself outside of the girl's body, but was it the only one? Was it doing anything that she couldn't see? Was Revive right now working on making another, better version?

The director already had requests going up the chain, but it was a crapshoot if the better options ever panned out. There were still complaints about how she'd handled Panacea's appearance on the Cape scene, only mitigated by the girl's adoptive mother agreeing that she needed monitoring. That didn't stop detractors from pointing out how she'd 'overreacted' to the situation and occasionally fighting to remove her options. Luckily, it was just as hard to retract them as it was to establish them, and most people figured the contingencies would never need to see use anyway.

Well, she hoped they were right about that at least.

"And most of the team will be out of town when the announcement goes out," Armsmaster realized. "I doubt they were planning for that, but it means our own responses will be scattered and late."

"Christ, I never thought I'd complain that we captured Lung too soon," she sighed and scoffed. "The sooner that case is done, the better. I'm going to see if we have enough men to send a few to keep an eye on whatever Team Rebuild is planning. Are the three still here?"

"They appear to be lingering in the lobby, speaking to Mr. Barnes."

"Get someone to ask them about their event. Tell them to approach it casually. We don't need to trip their lawyer's Fifth Amendment senses."

"Barbed, you dumb… Urgh, you seriously just showed them everything?" Sixshooter ground out while rubbing her temples with four hands.

"I mean, what's everything supposed to mean?" the ferrokinetic asked in response, genuine curiosity in her voice. "Cuz like, I did some weights and showed off some blades, but like, I didn't take off my dress or nothing like that."

Steeldancer chortled. "No, she doesn't mean that sort of everything. Just what you can do powerwise."

"Oh, that? Well, I dunno. I figure out new stuff all the time, you know. Like, I just figured out something when Armsmaster was telling me about Breaker stuff and Manton Limits. Lookit!"

Barbed pushed some of the barbed wire out of her wrist, but attached to the end was a small, curved blade.

"My metal counts as part of my body, so my blades can grow blades," she explained before drawing it back in.

"That is useful to know," Steeldance admitted. "Perhaps going through their power testing is more beneficial than we thought."

"Yeah, but let's not floor 'em with discoveries," Sixshooter argued. "We wanna get the team established before we start playin' ball with the big guys. This whole thing with Nasira is gonna have them eyein' us hard if they weren't already."

"I am glad you found her family," Steeldancer commented.

"Me too. Wouldn't change a thing 'bout it if I could, but that don't mean we ain't gotta walk it tight for a bit. Look, after tomorrow, we'll be set to skip up here, but right now, let Barnes do all the chattin' with the super cops."

"Hey now, no need to try and cut us out," Assault said as he, Battery, and Miss Militia entered the room. "We aren't after other Heroes."

"It's just for a day or so, until we have officially debuted," Steeldancer responded diplomatically.

"Speaking of, I was wondering about that? Where are you guys doing your whole thing?"

"Oh, the DWA place," Barbed answered.

"Barbed!" Six admonished.

"What? We got news vans coming. They're gonna see it tomorrow on TV." She looked over at the three older heroes. "You guys are gonna catch it on TV, right?"

"Hm, might miss the live broadcast, but I'll watch a recording," the red-clad man answered.

"So what's your connection with the DWA?" Battery asked.

"You'll see tomorrow," Sixshooter quickly stated, cutting off the other two from elaborating. "It's a whole thing. Explains all the important stuff."

"You're rather… dodgy," the Heroine noted of her counterpart.

"It's parta the MO."

"Mysterious type, I getcha," Assault butted in. "Sorry if it sounds like we're trying to interrogate you, we're not. Just hoping to get to know the new guys on the block. And hey, you've all done a great job so far, helping kick Lung down a peg and saving that girl. For your first week, that's some amazing work."

"I can tell you her parents are happy beyond words," Miss Militia added. "They would also like to thank Revive personally, once she has a chance to meet them."

"Where is she, anyways?" Assault rhetorically wondered aloud.

"Oh, she was in sc- Urmph!"

Three of Sixshooter's hands slapped over Barbed's mouth to silence her, but she sighed as she realized it was too late. The cat was out of the bag.

"Right! School," Assault said with a snap of his fingers. "Well, we figured she was school age, so it's good to know she's taking her education seriously." The man looked surprised. Apparently, he hadn't expected an outright answer and was trying to make it seem like nothing had really been lost or gained in the exchange.

Six sighed and removed her hands from Barbed, who continued to look taken aback at her teammate.

"All right, that's everything for now," Alan Barnes announced as he walked to them from the desk. He nodded politely to the ENE Heroes, then looked over at the members of Rebuild. "Should be a lot shorter for you three tomorrow than otherwise. Just need the final signatures for Revive, Pickmeup, and their guardians."

"That's still required?" Sixshooter asked in surprise.

"For obvious minors," he explained. "The paperwork is done through some kind of system that confirms guardianship while maintaining secret identities. Tinkertech paperwork: it's a thing. Who knew?"

Barbed perked up at that. "Ah, I bet it's being run by some AI that's hard-coded to keep it all a secret, except there's definitely people who can access it thanks to their super secret backdoors into the system."

The others all considered her outlandish idea for a moment, then silently agreed to ignore it.

"So, we're clear to go?" Sixshooter asked the lawyer.

"Any time you want."

"Good. We got stuff to do. C'mon, ladies. 'Vive's gonna need us to move stuff."

"I thought Pickmeup was the moving person?" Barbed asked as they made to leave.

"We're a team, Barbed," Steeldancer reminded her.

"And we ain't leavin' that all to the kid," Sixshooter sharply added.

The belly dancing-style girl turned and gave the Heroes a curtsy while the other two simply waved and gave their verbal goodbyes. Barnes once again nodded and wished them a good day, then followed them out of the PRT HQ.

"Could've gone worse," Assault concluded after the team and their lawyer departed.

"What's going on with the DWA, though?" Battery asked aloud. "Are they trying to be some kind of corporate Cape team?"

"The DWA is a union, not a company," Miss Militia told her evenly.

"I know that. I meant… Are they being backed or funded by a private organization? Doesn't have to be a company or corporation."

"I think I see what you mean," her husband decided to answer her. "Huh, I mean, maybe? Never heard much about those guys aside from "still haven't been taken over by a gang." Interesting…"

"Aren't there laws about this, though?" she asked.

"You mean NEPEA?" Assault asked, not which she nodded. "There's a lot of regulations, but… I don't know if there's anything about Capes being part of unions."

"If there are, they are being prepared. They have a lawyer," Militia pointed out. "Alan Barnes has dealt with the PRT before, but never quite in his capacity as a lawyer. He vouched for Shadow Stalker as a character witness, and he's a part of the same firm as Carol Dallon."

"Brandish?" Battery realized, shaking her head and crossing her arms. "Then they probably know exactly what they're doing, legally."

The Heroes understood that, even with only secondhand guidance from the experienced members of New Wave, Team Rebuild would receive a massive leg up on starting their Hero careers from that connection. That was before considering how friendly Glory Girl and Steeldancer had been to each other when she came in for questioning. Poor Galant looked like the third wheel in that situation.

"Heh, kinda glad we won't be here to hear the director blow up on that," Assault exaggeratedly quipped, earning a small punch from his wife that his power ensured he barely felt. "Ow!" he continued to exaggerate.

A few days earlier…

Dinah was feeling hopeless. She had narrowed it down to next week: she was getting kidnapped. Her power only told her the likelihood, never a name or a face, and there were too many names but never enough questions. Part of her wanted to stay out of school, because what was the point? But trying to stay at home and hide in her room wasn't going to help. It just increased the chances that one or both of her parents would get killed. She checked. Several times.

Now, she spent her time in misery, barely pretending to learn or pay attention to her lessons. The teachers had talked about calling her parents, but she'd be gone by the time they decided they needed to bring them in to intervene. She had given up, and now she used a few of her daily questions on a silly game she made up, looking at random schoolmates and asking her power if they could help her. A surprising number had a greater than zero chance, but only one ever had double digits: Missy Byron with an outstanding 19.726% chance of success. That's how she figured out Missy was definitely Vista. But even a Ward working for the Protectorate could only do so much, it seemed. Whoever was out to kidnap her meant business. Probably because they learned about her stupid, headache-inducing power.

At lunch, Dinah looked around, her aura of misery nearly palpable. Her eyes got caught on a peculiar girl she was sure she had seen before, but hadn't really noticed. Her hair was cut so short that Dinah only really knew she was a girl thanks to the pink blouse she wore. The girl seemed really intent on studying her peas and carrots, staring at them as though they were incomprehensible.

'One of those Tuesdays,' Dinah figured before asking her question. 'Chances that she can keep me from getting kidnapped?'

86.947%

That… was impossibly high! What? How could it even be that high from a girl that Dinah was pretty sure was younger than her? Was she a secret Cape? Wait, better not waste questions. She needed to go talk to this girl.

"Who's that over there?" she asked a different girl sitting at her current table, who just took a glance and then frowned while looking back at Dinah.

"Um, I don't know. I'm new."

"Oh, sorry. Uh, what's your name?" she decided to ask her, just to be polite.

"I'm Tiana."

"Nice to meet you, Tiana. I'm Dinah. Sorry, but I wanna go meet that girl. I might talk to you later, okay?"

"Oh, okay. Thanks," the new girl quietly answered as Dinah got up to move tables.

She was in good spirits now. This had to be the best news she'd gotten since getting her powers. She needed to focus the rest of this week on maximizing her chances and getting to know her potential savior.

She lay down her tray and sat across from the girl, apparently surprising her greatly, as she jumped in her seat a little and stared at Dinah, slack-jawed, revealing her jagged-looking teeth. It seemed like half of them on one side had grown in crooked, but they were mostly baby teeth, so here's hoping. Dinah offered her best smile.

"Hi, I'm Dinah. What's your name?"

After a few seconds, she wondered if the girl had heard her. A few more, and she got kind of worried. Just when she was about to ask her if she was okay, the girl worked her jaw, winced in concentration, and made a noise somewhere between a groan, a moan, and a whine. While Dinah took that in, she finally uttered half a word.

"Na-" she struggled to get out. "Naaaaaahm- Naaaammiiii. Naaaaami. Nami," she finally got out clearly, clenching her teeth and then smiling. "Nami!"

"Your name's Nami?" she asked, getting a quick nod in response. "Nice to meet you, Nami. I'm Dinah. Wait, I already said that. Um, I noticed you were staring at your food and thought you might want someone to talk to. But… Do you have… trouble talking?"

After a few seconds, Nami slowly nodded, and Dinah started to feel bad about what she was doing. She wasn't a little little kid, so she understood that sometimes there were people who are handicapped and had special needs, but she never really interacted with any of them directly. Getting help from another kid was one thing, but doing this felt almost like she was taking advantage of the girl.

"Hey Dinah," she heard and looked behind herself to see a couple of her classmates, with Edgar being the one who'd just spoken. "What're you doing sitting with Zombie Girl?"

"Ed, that's so mean," one of the girls admonished him half-heartedly.

Dinah felt herself cringe from the cruel nickname. She could see how hard it was for Nami to speak, and it wasn't the girl's fault at all. She then heard a whine from Nami and looked to see she had winced and scrunched her face up, holding back anger and sadness that felt more tangible than any of Dinah's earlier misery.

"That was terrible, Ed!" she decried, looking back to face the boy. "Her name is Nami, and you hurt her feelings. Look at her! Apologize!"

"What? I didn't mean nothing by- It's just a-"

Edgar was receiving no assistance from his peers. In fact, Dinah's anger seemed to have started a domino effect of peer pressure, which was now pressing itself upon the boy.

"I'm- I'm sorry, uh, Nami," he said to the girl. "I just, uh, heard other kids saying it and-" He rubbed the back of his neck while looking away in shame. "Yeah, sorry. You okay?"

The girl sniffled and rubbed at an eye, but nodded solemnly. As the moment passed, her classmates slowly filed away, with a couple of girls commenting that Nami was a nice name, but Dinah could tell that their hearts weren't really in it.

"I'm sorry about all of that," Dinah apologized as well, though internally, she felt more shame for why she brought that situation on her, unintentional it may have been. "It's just a mean nickname. Don't let people hurt you with it."

Nami looked at her for a moment. It wasn't as long as that first time, but Dinah couldn't help but feel a bit of anticipation for her partner's response. In the back of her mind, she wondered what it was like for Nami, only to find that she couldn't picture that at all. She just didn't have the imagination for it.

Suddenly, the girl shook her head and reached into a pocket, pulling out a packet of cards that she opened up and flicked through, slowing down to look at a few in concentration. From where Dinah sat, she could see that each of them had words and phrases in big, bold print on their faces, with little pictures on the back that matched the emotion conveyed. She picked out one and held it over for Dinah to see.

Thank you

Dinah smiled and nodded.

"No problem. Like I was saying, he was a jerk to call you that."

Nami nodded before putting the card back in the same place and then flicking through for another, which she showed to Dinah.

You're nice

Dinah giggled a little.

"You're nice, too."

The card went back, then Nami pushed through to find two, pulling them out of the stack carefully to keep their places marked, and then set them in front of the other girl.

Friends

?

Dinah could almost feel the anticipation from Nami in the size of that question mark.

"Yeah, I'd say we're friends now."

Nami smiled brightly, her teeth on full display, and then she burst into laughter. It was a split second of pure, unbridled joy, like one might expect of an infant, but from the mouth and lungs of a girl who had to be at least ten. The cafeteria went quiet for a moment, but then the kids went back to their meandering. Dinah decided to laugh as well, though far more subdued.

"I'm happy to meet you, too."

Nami, it turned out, was actually an interesting person behind the long pauses, the wordless communication, and the seemingly uncontrollable bursts of emotion. In fact, Dinah was coming to appreciate the honesty of her expressions. She didn't hide her anger or annoyance so much as hold it back. She wasn't dumb, either. In fact, she was probably better at math and science than Dinah despite being a year younger. Aside from her struggle to communicate, she was just as capable of playing games, doing lesson work, or almost any other activity as her peers.

The special needs teacher, Mrs. Bethlehem, explained it to Dinah when she found a way to ask that didn't sound… coarse. Nami literally had brain damage. Years ago, her father hit her in the head with an iron fire poker (thankfully not a hot one) and cracked her skull. While she healed and recovered in almost every other way, she never could firmly grasp the ability to talk, even though she could understand what people were saying. At least, when she wasn't having an episode, what Dinah thought of as her 'pauses'. They usually came when things changed around her too quickly for her to keep up, but once she managed to catch up, she could usually keep pace pretty well.

She was also learning a lot about the other girl's favorite subjects: rare flowers and martial arts. The flowers made sense. She had pictures, books, and a pressed petal collection of all sorts of flowers from around the world. She had four different spider lilies' petals, photos of more orchids than Dinah thought there could be, seeds and petals from a dozen different kinds of roses, and had a nice little garden of more common flowers that she tended to during recess. Compared to that, martial arts seemed out of place, and Mrs. Bethlehem made it sound like she just really, really liked old kung-fu movies.

The Dinah saw her perform some katas.

There's a sort of sense people can have about other people practicing martial arts that can be hit or miss, about how it can look like someone's just fooling around or if they actually know what they're doing, and Nami didn't look like she was just copying what she saw on television. Dinah had seen Rory and some others practicing karate at times, and saw the difference between an amateur and someone with experience. Nami was moving more like how she remembered Rory's instructor.

It was so genuinely interesting that Dinah almost forgot her worries and why she had approached the girl in the first place. Then it would come back to her, and she would ask some questions, trying to narrow down the possibilities. It was as she was thinking over what to do about Thursday, when her power was 99.629% sure the kidnapping attempt would take place, that Mrs. Bethlehem and Nami approached her.

"Dinah, dear, how are you today?" the kindly old lady asked her.

"I'm good. No headaches today." Not until she got home, maybe.

"That's good to hear. I… I just wanted to thank you for spending so much time with Nami these past few days. She's had a hard time making friends, but… Well, you've just been a sweetheart."

The words almost made Dinah want to shrink in on herself out of the guilt that was stabbed into her heart, but instead, she just smiled and nodded.

"Well, I think people just need to give her a chance. She's pretty cool."

It wasn't a lie, and it made Nami all bashful.

"I still can't thank you enough. Ah, she wanted me to ask you. It's a little sudden, but… she wanted to know if you wanted to do a sleepover. She never had one before and got so excited when she was showing me her cards."

Only a week, and Nami saw her as her best friend, ready to have a sleepover and everything. Just one week of being a decent person to someone who had a bad accident. Kids really were mean sometimes.

"That sounds awesome!" she said with real excitement. "Uh, is it okay if we started Thurdsday, since we have a long weekend? We could hang out after school and-"

"Ah, I had almost forgotten. Nami?" she said to her charge, waiting for her to turn her attention over to her fully. "Would you like to go to Acorn Park Thursday? I know you love that one stall with the Turkish meat, and he's always there on Thursday."

"Haaaaaaa," Nami moaned out with happiness and agreement. She nodded, then looked at Dinah expectantly.

'A park with a friend. Chances I'll be kidnapped if I go with them to Acorn Park on Thursday?'

9.496%

And that meant the inverse was over 90!

"I'd love to come!"

"All right, dear. Let's just clear it with your parents, all right?"

Dinah had a feeling they'd agree. They'd been complaining about her not getting outside as much. Going to a park with a teacher and a friend? No need to ask her power for that.

'I still feel a little dirty about all of this, but… Nami's happy, at least. I'll make it up to her extra hard once the kidnapper guy is stopped.'

The darkness came often, lately. There wasn't much to hold it back. She didn't fear the darkness or the weight it brought anymore. In a way, it was comforting, a blanket against the world. A safe and secure thing, protecting her from the worst it had to offer. The darkness may come in and push down, but she could only sink so far, and she could always climb back out.

In its opposite, the light could be frightening, even as she longed for it. To feel free and airy, exhilarated and joyful. But there was always that fear, that she might float away. She would only ever sink so far, but somehow, she knew, that if she floated too high, she would never come back down again, lost and blinded beyond the sky. And yet, she still wanted it. Freedom and joy against safety and comfort.

She had her things. Her flowers and their beauty, common and exotic. She had the lessons and stories of the masters of martial arts. Wonderful things and gloriously bright, but not so much to make her float away forever. It lifted her spirit in a comforting way that she could see and understand. The flower grows, blooms, and withers, leaving seeds behind for future plantings. Her arm moves across, under, and forward, and force is thrust upon the world. She could see them, understand them, and repeat them. A lovely gray speckled in colors.

Not like the gray of words, like saws and sandpaper against her mind. She knew words. She could hear words, but they ran against her throat like swallowing gravel in reverse. She struggled to say her own name.

And yet, when Dinah Alcott had approached and pulled her out from the darkness to ask her what it was, she knew she had to answer.

Nami couldn't remember the last friend she had her own age. Perhaps in kindergarten, when they were all little and could be friends with anything that moved, she had some. But then the man happened, and mother had to go to the hospital, where she still hasn't come back from. Nami was sick for a while, but she got better. She just couldn't remember how to speak, and when she finally learned how to make noises from her throat, they were rarely right.

It remained hard to be present in the now, to not go sinking back into darkness, where the world seems to move ahead and not wait for Nami to catch up. Things just go too fast when she's there, and when she pulls herself up, people tend to look angry, annoyed, and like they are running out of time. And yet, when she made a noise to let them know how she felt, they got angrier or even scared! It wasn't fair! And the ones that grabbed at her acted like she was violent when she pushed away, bit, or screamed because she was scared! It wasn't fair!

Sometimes it felt like only Mrs. Belinda Bethlehem even understood that she was different. That… something was broken, and doctors couldn't fix it. Mrs. Bel always said, always reminded her that she – Nami – is not broken, just different. But what made her different was what was broken. The darkness that pulled her down and away from the world, trying to let it all pass her by, and the oh-so-frightening light.

Dinah didn't get impatient. She looked worried, and Nami knew the difference. Fear is what the other kids did when she got angry and screamed. Worry was what Mrs. Bel showed when she thought Nami was hurt. And Dinah was worried.

And when the boy called her 'zombie,' like so many others, like the girls who put sand in her shoes and gum in her hair, like the mean man at the grocery store, like that lady at the hospital who couldn't fix her broken brain, Dinah told him off. Made him stop. Made the others stop before they started.

The darkness always returns, but it stayed away a while after that, after Dinah spoke to her and smiled. She had felt so light, threatening to float away from the ground and into the sky. But she needed to stay. She wanted to stay, because she had a friend. Her friend liked her flowers, visited her garden, and watched the moves she learned from films, books, and a dojo so close to her and Mrs. Bel's home that it was like a neighbor. She saw awe and happiness.

She had a friend!

Mrs. Bel asked for her about a sleepover, about hanging out and playing after school, and Dinah agreed! She looked so excited! She had a friend, and they were going to hang out! Mrs. Bel talked to her parents on the phone, and they agreed!

The darkness was always reaching, but she didn't need its comforting embrace right now. The light was always threatening, but she didn't fear it right now. She had a friend!

Behind her home, her dark brown hair lightened, becoming blonde, and then she leapt, floating in the wind for as long as she dared before her hair darkened again, becoming black as she crashed back into the ground, her body more than strong enough to take it. It faded back to normal, and she jumped up and danced into a kata, starting at the parallel stance, then flowing into the steps of the Choong-Moo. As the 32nd step came to a close and she returned to her stance, she burst into a giggling fit.

She was just too happy! Too light! She was bound to float off like this!

But she would stay with her feet on the ground, because she had a friend to see. Tomorrow, when they got out of school, she was going to introduce Dinah to the grumpy man who made delicious kebab. Maybe even the chicken man would be there?

The darkness was going to reach her. It always did. But she could never sink too far. And now, there was someone else out there who could pull her back up. Back to the center, where her friend awaited.

QuestOverlord · Tuesday at 7:46 AM

lol, Barb is not very bright at all, except when she breaks the fourth wall.

Radek · Tuesday at 10:15 AM

"Less than 10% chance" is not "will never happen". Dinah will come to learn the difference the hard way.

Jesse K the Bubba · 2026-03-26T00:32:23+0000

Decay 6

Taylor felt frazzled, stretched, and like they were pulling through all of this by the skin of their teeth. Tomorrow was the big day, shoved ahead two weeks early thanks to their run-in with Lung. She had half a mind to keep their part in it quiet, but Larissa had explained to her and the rest of the team why that cold backfire in the long run, so they took partial credit for his arrest, and now people were waiting to hear more from Team Rebuild. She was only just now packing up the last vestiges of her "lab" in the basement, mostly via handing things over to Tiana, who then put them in a cardboard box. To make matters more stressful, the rest of the team had to go for a debrief at the PRT HQ, and their lawyer, Roger Waters, was still busy preparing a boatload of documentation that would allow them to act as an independent Hero team to the greatest extent possible. When her dad said he had it covered, she thought that maybe he meant handling it himself or getting someone with legal experience. She didn't realize he meant he was asking for a favor from Alan Barnes!

Too many thoughts, too many worries, too much to do, and not enough time for any of it. She couldn't even work on her newest attempt at power armor, consigning it to Tiana's cardboard contained pocket dimension until they could unpack at the new base. And the unpacking was going to be worrisome on its own, because while a lot of it could wait, they needed enough for a front, to make a small showing and a bit of misdirection. The 'facade base' would be a little ways away from everything and anything important, but the real one was far more hidden among several other warehouses that actually saw some light use, with the few people using it being in on the secret.

Taylor had been touched – and worried sick – when she realized what her Dad had done about the Winslow problem. It was extreme, dangerous, and could get him in a lot of trouble, but it was also the nicest thing anyone had done for her in years, and it let her know that, in the end, he was in her corner. Then, he explained (with language full of plausible deniability) that he hadn't acted alone. Almost two dozen members of the DWA had helped him, and more were probably in the know. Strangely included was Alan Barnes, who apparently her father had started reconnecting with at some point. It made her heart jump into her throat when she thought about it, but she'd come to realize that, everything Emma was doing at school, she was keeping it all a secret from her family. Just like Taylor had kept Emma's part in the bullying a secret from her own father.

Whoops.

But that was past them, now. By the time she realized how big it was getting beyond her family, she had brought two girls (a little girl and a woman, really) back from the dead, and she knew that more were to come. Joe had been a mistake, but she could avoid a repeat of that easily enough. Alice was a bit much for the house to hold, but just before they found the bag with Barbara's pieces inside, Taylor learned that a few of Danny's coworkers were almost in on everything.

Kurt and Lacy figured it out with a single visit. One look at Larissa's stitched-on jaw and Alice's then single-eyed, scarred face, and they knew the girls weren't just schoolmates spending some time at a friend's house while the schooling situation was sorted. They also recognized Tiana from the back-to-back missing person's case and the immediate follow-up story on her former foster parents' arrest that had taken over the local news for three full days. They didn't immediately finger her for a Cape, but it was clear that something was going on here.

Taylor figured, if these two could help her dad pour gasoline on the school before lighting it on fire, then maybe they could be trusted with one more secret. Somehow, it also got Alice and Larissa a place to stay.

Before Taylor knew it, it was basically a conspiracy. Almost the entire DWA was working to help 'a new hero team' get themselves set up to defend and protect the community, many of them united behind a different conspiracy of 'burning out some rot'. Instead of bringing it home, Taylor had brought the leaf and lawn bag full of human body parts to a warehouse in the docks, where she put them back together into Barbara, along with steel plates to hold her bones together. The barbed wire seemed like the right thing at the time, but for the life of her, Taylor couldn't explain what thought process led her to that conclusion. It worked out in the end, though, seeing as Barbed's power made use of it and the plates. And at least five people saw her take a girl that had been chopped into pieces and just… fix her, and only two of them knew what she could do before that.

At least the security guard, George Mickelson, was understanding. He'd run back to his place to grab some of his daughter's old clothes and a package of wet wipes. Now Barbara was staying in the spare room at his and his wife's house while Lenora Mickleson was off to college.

She was half-expecting to need to find somewhere for Nasira to stay, only for Larissa to find her family while going for a walk. It was a good thing and something they certainly wanted, but it was a bit of a problem since she was definitely the most visibly altered person Taylor had saved yet, and the PRT had certainly noticed. At least it went to show that they could find their families if they looked. Hopefully, her deal with Tattletale led to something there. She didn't like working with villains, but the Undersiders were just small-time robbers. Giving them a grapplegun was hardly a huge risk as long as they didn't point it at anyone, and maybe they could get drawn away from crime over time. If not, she had given them fair warning: if Team Rebuild found them committing a crime, they'd still move to stop and arrest them. Outside of that, they would act like they didn't know them. As far as any records showed, she wasn't even working with Tattaletale, but some independent Rogue Thinker going by Insight.

Sometimes, Taylor felt like she was just two more secrets away from becoming the center of a real, actual conspiracy.

"Okay, that's everything," Taylor noted as she handed her hand-made electric minisaw to Tiana, who packed it away before effortlessly lifting the box Taylor knew would be impossible for her to pick up at this point. She took one last look at the basement and released a sigh now that the signs of Tinkering were removed from her home.

"After tomorrow, all the work happens in the base," Taylor said while they climbed up the stairs. "At home, we're just Taylor and Tiana."

"We're always Taylor and Tiana," the younger girl pointed out.

"But in costume, we're Revive and Pickmeup," she responded. While her own aliases still kinda came off as bland, it was somewhat the aim. Tiana's was kinda cute, though. It came from a brainstorming session between the girls when they were out patrolling, and Alice had mentioned how it worked with her powers and her visible role as an assistant to Taylor.

They all also agreed that it sounded cute, thus fitting, which made Tiana blush.

The drive to the docks went by quickly, and the girls did their level best to slink away out of sight before reaching their base and 'dressing up'. Taylor's costume could best be described as dark scrubs, dyed red and black by some volunteers to keep the messes she might make while working from showing against them. She also had some thin lab coats for inside work, along with a bandana to tie back her hair and medical masks to hide her face. She wanted to add some googles to further obscure her identity, but those were still in the mail, as they needed to fit over her glasses.

Luckily, she had some old frames she had disguised and reshaped to fit her current lenses, making small alterations to her current ones that let her easily remove them and change them back and forth with no risk of accidentally coming loose. She wondered why more Tinkers didn't mention the little helpful things like this. Her power always seemed to swing from "anybody could make this, it was just easier for me" to "Frankenstein has nothing on my abilities."

Revive and Pickmeup then made their way over to where the last meeting before the big day was being held. The stage was all but set, a few people from the news channels were checking to make sure they'd have a good spot to film everything, and the people heading up the plan were talking while waiting for her.

'Oh, I feel those butterflies!'

Weird how these things work. She saw decaying bodies, disembowled organs, rummaged through both, stitched them together, and even stored a woman's severed head in a pocket dimension at the base (she'd get a body for her eventually), all without even a twist in her guts, but the idea of public speaking was shaking her!

"Revive, glad to see you," DWA President Amos Filer greeted her while shaking her hand. "And Pickmeup, too," he repeated with the younger Heroine, now costumed in her dark-dyed nurse-like outfit, complete with an old-fashioned nurse's cap. She also had her "work backpack" in tow, which was an expensive, leather hiking pack with a wide mouth at the top. In their world, it just had some styrofoam inside, but Pickmeup had already used it to stow away several field supplies, tools, and spare parts. In an emergency, she could even stuff a body into it if its shoulders weren't too wide to fit.

"Good to see you, too," Revive answered the man.

"Things are just about ready here. Wish we had more time to rehearse, but it seems we'll just need to go over the important parts. Now, you're still sure you want Danny to handle all the introductions?"

She nodded. "Yes sir. I trust him, and I'm… not really well-practiced."

"Fair enough. If we still had those two weeks, we could've gotten you some of that practice, but better to have Lung in a cell than not."

She couldn't disagree there.

"And, honestly, it's about time we got something going like this. I'm just sorry it took young ladies like yourselves to give us the final push. That school fire should have really opened our eyes, but I guess having superheroes on your side really does make a man braver. Ah, Danny, there you are! How's everything?" the man greeted his union's spokesperson as he walked from where he'd parked in the opposite direction of the base. "How's your girl doing at her new school?"

"Good. Really good," he answered without looking over at her. Filer was one of the few people helping who hadn't been a part of the 'fire crew,' a position that might have made it easier to hide everyone else's participation if anyone came asking and he answered truthfully. "She tells me that Glory Girl herself wants to be her friend."

Filer laughed at that, partly in incredulity and partly in good humor. Really, Taylor found it unbelievable herself at times. At least it kept Emma away.

She hoped Emma kept away, honestly. Taylor had real friends again, even if she had to make some of them herself, technically.

Emma burned inside as she considered her stance at Arcadia. Back in Winslow, she was the undisputed Queen, despite her age. No older girls made for the spot, too scared or not strong enough to take it, and all her peers and freshmen bowed to her or got trampled. But at Arcadia, it was more than disputed; it was dominated by others. The cheerleading squad had their popular, senior, brunette captain who was getting Honors in her classes and was setting the stage for her freshman sister to take over her throne when she left, and that girl was basically her clone, and they ruled the jocks. Academics specifically had a pretty, red-headed girl who somehow made braces work while being head of the chess club and one of the star mathletes. An absolute heart-throb for every nerdy boy and role model for the girl equivalent. Even freaks and disabled kids had an unofficial representative in some Junior that had been a total unknown at Winslow, but apparently rose from the ashes. A missing eye and lost feet didn't stop her from walking the halls proudly and sitting at the cool kids' table with the other queens and their Empress.

That was really the only way to think of Victoria Dallon, aka Glory Girl. An open Cape who was pretty, popular, smart, and had been part of the junior girls' basketball team before getting her powers. Emma could cleary see it; all the others bowed to her, looking to sit at her table alongside her rich, pretty boy toy and her less pretty but still world-famous healer sister. Under different circumstances, Emma would look for a way to join them, to earn her spot as a Queen in her own right and get a spot at the table.

That fell apart before it could even begin, all because she had decided to make sure Taylor didn't get any sudden ideas now that they were at a new school. Sophia had suggested against it, but she brushed off the warning. She wished she hadn't, because Victoria Dallon caught them and told them off, all while that stupid Shaker effect made all the girls too scared to try and explain or cover for her. It practically destroyed her reputation, being singled out by the Empress of Arcadia like that. She managed to maintain a circle, but the nice ablative social armor she once had was all but gone. Emma had been the big fish at Winslow, but at Arcadia, she was barely medium-sized. There wasn't much Sophia could do about it, either. The Wards were here, and that meant they were watching her. Her athletic friend seemed miserable about it, as her go-to in social conflict was to switch to the physical, and that wasn't nearly as applicable now.

But the piece that burned the most was where Taylor Hebert fit into it all. She spent a week and a half trying to figure out how weak, pathetic Taylor had gotten picked up and taken in almost directly by the Empress. Sure, Alice Martinet seemed to like her, and she just might qualify as one of her little pariah followers, but it wasn't like Casey Berensen was bringing over random lacrosse players or Dora McFinnster was introducing them to Greg Veder.

Then Sophia explained it when Emma finally vented her frustration one Friday evening as they headed to the mall.

"Shit, yeah, I hadn't mentioned it," the girl had said before deeply sighing and looking around. "Look, I'm not supposed to say anything, so you didn't hear this from me. You just figured it out, got it?"

"Figured it… Got what?"

"I'm about to tell you," she said after fishing out her phone and beginning to tap away. "You know how I was there when we caught Lung?"

"Hell yeah! You should've gotten way more credit for that," Emma honestly stated. Sure, some other heroes wailed on him, but that was only going to make things worse for them. It's how he worked: you wail on him until he enbiggens, then he wails on you.

"Well, there's something else. Trust me, it'll make sense."

She tapped a few more times, then held out her phone before giving it one more.

"Villains?! We're heroes!" a recorded voice yelled.

"Sound familiar?"

"Uh, hold on, play it again."

Sophia did so, and Emma listened intently, but questioned if she was hearing correctly as she started concluding what her friend was telling and showing her. She tapped it herself to give it another listen two more times before it fully dawned on her what was happening.

"...No."

"Yep. I was half-sure when we were debriefing, but then Glory Hole started treating her like a lost kitten, and now I'm totally sure. The little worm is Revive."

"Revive?" Emma blinked. "Wait, which one is Revive?"

Sophia gave her a look, and she shrugged.

"I'm not some huge nerd like Madison was, and they're brand new. I only recall 'Barbed' because it's such a dumb name for a cool Cape power."

Sophia shook her head, but she had a light smile. "Yeah, all right. Well, Revive said she's a Tinker. Made implants and did surgeries on the others to make 'em stronger."

"Wait, like Bonesaw?"

"That's what I said, but they keep telling me off. Don't wanna 'alienate the new heroes,' even though Piggy's shaking in her chair about it. But yeah, the whole team basically said that Revive saved their lives. She called it "extreme healing,"" Sophia explained while making air-quotes. "Barbed said she was literally chopped into pieces, and when I said she was like Hookwolf, she got mad. I think Hookwolf cut her up, and Revive put her back together before she kicked it."

"...Taylor? Hides in the bathroom for lunch, Taylor? Sits in juice and just accepts it, Taylor? Got stuck in a locker and tried to rip her own foot off, Taylor?"

Sophia paused in her steps at that, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkkkkk!" she very quietly exclaimed, keeping the curse under her breath.

"...What?"

"That was it. Her Trigger Event. Shit, we are so fucked if she ever goes villain."

"What?" Emma felt a little lost. "How could she even hurt us? Make us bulky with muscle?"

"Emma, think!" her friend demanded of her. "She's got four Capes following her like puppies, and one of them is a mini-Hookwolf, while another is off-brand Miss Militia. I don't even know what Steeldancer does aside from kicking, but the kid, Pickmeup, Armsmaster says she can toss a truck and tank gunfire. If Taylor's Revive, and she decides she wants to get back at us, what's stopping her from taking a trip down Archer's Bridge and just working on every methhead about to croak from OD'ing before sending them after us?"

Emma considered that implication while going a little pale at the thought.

"M- maybe it's not her?" she hoped aloud. "B-besides, you're Shadow Stalker!"

"Yeah, but she doesn't know that, and even if she did-" Sophia checked around again. "Even if she did, Armsmaster and Piggy think, and let me emphasize, think, that Revive might be a Trump. Otherwise, she's somehow only done her thing on other Capes, or her work with normals is easier to hide. After seeing Sixshooter, I doubt that. She makes one crackhead with lightning powers…"

Well, the results of that went unsaid.

"And you've known her for years," Sophia pointed out while holding up her phone once again. "You tell me that doesn't sound like her."

"Villains?! We're heroes!"

Emma winced. No, she couldn't deny it. It was definitely Taylor.

"Yeah," Sophia said when she saw her expression. "At least we know how she got a seat at the table. Glory Hole and Panpan must be in on it. Probably thanks to their lawyer mom."

"Their lawyer… Wait, my dad works with Carol Dallon!" Totally different fields, but they worked in the same firm. "If she knows, maybe…"

"If he knows, he can't tell you," Sophia reminded her. "It ain't like with me. I don't even know know, but I do know you won't go spreading it."

"But it's just… Urgh!" Emma was feeling a ton of emotions about this whole thing all at the same time. On the one hand, there was fear, but also a weird sort of vindication. "Hmph, Taylor somehow gets powers, and all she does is fix other people." She snorted a little laugh. "Heh, like a worse Panacea."

"Panacea doesn't give people powers," Sophia pointed out.

"Yeah, but that's not something you know she can do," Emma countered. "Maybe she just works weird with Capes, but fixing normal people ends up with them looking normal."

Sophia mulled that tidbit over. "Pickmeup looked pretty normal."

"What kind of name is Pickmeup, anyway? She trying to be cutesy?"

"She looked ten," Sophia told her. "So, probably. Also, can toss trucks, remember?"

"Oh yeah."

Sophia then chortled. "Great, now I want to see her meet Vista and bug the crap out of that kid. Vista hates how everyone tries to make her the cute little kid of the group, but if Pickmeup's all about it." She laughed evilly. "Ah, that'd be great."

Emma didn't know Vista, so she couldn't comment on that, but if the fated meeting happened where Sophia could witness it, she was sure she'd tell her all about it.

Still, she wanted to figure out the whole thing with this Revive situation, and maybe see for certain if it was Taylor behind the mask.

"A big announcement from the DWA," the TV and her daddy had called it. Sophia said that Team Rebuild was planning to announce something today, and it just happened to be at the DWA's proverbial front door. A bunch of the Heroes were out of town for a meeting, her friend had said, so the new heroes were going public right when the others were away. Shrewd timing.

Really, she was only here because her daddy brought her and her mom along. The promise of some barbecue afterward only sweetened the deal. And maybe she was also curious to see if she could put the uncertainty about Revive to bed, finally. Just no reason not to show up, really.

"-and that is why I am proud to announce that we've established our very own project to give back to the people, the Brockton Docks Community Outreach Center!" Danny Hebert proudly proclaimed

The cloth covering a sign fell away, and the words glowed above the doors of a building converted from old offices into something Emma wasn't quite certain about. He said something about free clothes, warm food, and some kind of exchange. The crowd clapped and cheered, and Emma joined in. She was starting to wonder, though. Sophia was certain this was supposed to be about Team Rebuild, not some glorified homeless shelter.

"And as one of the first members of the Center, allow me to introduce five very special people who helped to make this all possible. Give a round of applause for Brockton Bay's newest heroes, Team Rebuild!"

The Team appeared then, though Barbed seemed to be missing from their lineup. Through process of elimination, as the others were easy to identify, Emma pegged the one leading them up as Revive, and that was certainly Taylor's hair being held back by a red bandana. The team waved as they approached the podium, and then Danny nodded his head before looking back to the crowd and waiting for them to calm down.

"Now, I'll let them introduce themselves. Please hold your questions until it's time. Take it away," he indicated to the black-haired girl, who stepped up while clearing her throat.

"Hello, everyone. We are Team Rebuild. You may have heard about us from the PRT's announcement about arresting Lung." There were some whoops and clapping there, but it quickly went back down. "I'm Revive, and the team has nominated me as the leader of our group, but really, I just feel like the first out of a team of some very amazing people. So, let me introduce you all to the team. Sixshooter!"

The tallest of them, wearing a metal mask and a gray shawl, waved three right hands to the clapping crowd. Emma was a little surprised. She knew the woman had six arms, of course, but she didn't expect them to fit so well.

"She has perfect aim and a great head for tactics. Without her, I wouldn't know half of what to do. Steeldancer!"

The svelte, masked beauty suddenly went on one foot and made a single, slow pirouette as the applause returned, this time joined by some whistles, before she stopped and curtsied.

"She has four extra senses and is extremely agile, although I think the latter is just from practice, honestly. Our youngest member, Pickmeup!"

The little girl waved at the cheers before Sixshooter gestured for her to do something, then she took the large backpack from behind her, opened it, and pulled out a lamp. A lamp that was way taller than the bag, in fact. She then pulled out a car tire, a spoiler, a large hunk of concrete that was also longer than the backpack, and then she slowly pulled out a refrigerator and set it down.

"She can store as much as she wants in any bag, box, or pocket, and she's super strong on top of it all," Revive explained to the clapping crowd as Pickmeup bowed. "Really helpful when I need to move equipment around the lab, you can imagine." The girl then started repacking her things, the items disappearing faster than they appeared. "And last but not least, we have Barbed."

Just as Emma wondered where Barbed could be, a line of barbed wire shot forward from the opposite side of the stage, wrapping around a beam support, and then the blue-dressed Brute swung in. At the height of her swing, the wire unwrapped from the support, and she did a flip before coming down and landing on her feet, the flap of her dress showing off leggings underneath as her barbed wire whipped in the air as she drew it back in.

"This show-off can produce metal from her body in blades, shields, armor, and barbed wire," Revive explained just before Barbed raised her arms, and steel blades shot out from her skin and clothes, giving her the appearance of a girl-shaped reverse pincushion. She cheered along with the crowd, which certainly got worked up at the sight, then the blades sunk away, and she stood proudly with her fists against her hips as she basked in the applause.

Emma could admit to quite a bit of jealousy there.

"She's also the strongest out of all of us, benching train cars for fun sometimes.

"And that's us: Team Rebuild! We're here to help the Bay by doing just that, rebuilding. I've lived here all my life, and I've heard and seen how this place has slowly fallen apart, wishing that someone would do something about it. But now, I've decided, I'm not just wishing anymore. I'm doing something about it, and my friends have agreed to join me, and the DWA is working with us to establish the Brockton Docks Community Outreach Center, which Barbed has been so lovingly referring to as "Breadcooker" after trying to make an acronym for it."

The crowd laughed as Barbed tried to fuss that she wanted to tell people that from just at the edge of the mic's range, which made Emma laugh.

'Oh my God, she's so dumb, I love her,' she thought humorously.

Revive looked to Danny, and he nodded before coming back up to the podium.

"Are there any questions at this time for Team Rebuild?"

Several people tried to get their attention for the first question, and another person with a wireless mic approached the crowd and held it out at the person pointed at by Danny.

"Steven Coldstein, with Channel 8 News. Miss Revive, you did not explain what your own power was. Could you tell us anything about it?"

Revive blinked. Did she forget? That was hilarious.

"Ah, yes, well, I'm a Tinker," she said into the podium's mic.

"Do you have a specialty or specific focus?" Coldstein asked her to clarify.

"Yes. I design… implants and prosthetics to help heal people with serious injuries. I can also perform the surgeries needed to install them or help heal up other injuries, like reattaching severed limbs. It's… not a pretty sight at first, but once I've gotten someone stable, I can work to smooth it out and…" Her attention was caught by Steeldancer, who was telling her something out of the mic's range. "Oh, um, yes. Dancer just said I could mention that, after she lost her feet, I built her replacements." The extra-sighted beauty raised a foot, helpfully showing off the Tinker's work. "The first gen were kind of clunky, but I managed to slim them down, make them quieter, and even more responsive."

"Do you plan to offer your services to hospitals like Panacea of New Wave?"

"Occasionally. My power is more suited to extreme cases, but after a prototype, I can usually figure out how to scale something up or down or make it more practical. Also, most surgeries are better handled by actual surgeons. I'll be retaking first aid courses, but I doubt I can be certified for the sort of surgeries a hospital might perform in a timely manner. Uh, let's give someone else some questions? Yes."

"Terrence Waller with BBC. This question is for Sixshooter. Ma'am, are you aware that guns are frowned on in the Cape community unless a power specifically requires them? What do you say to people who would argue you are escalating unnecessarily by going into potential combat situations with firearms?"

Sixshooter managed to look incredibly unamused as she came up to the podium.

"I only hit what I'm aiming at."

After a few seconds, it was clear that she wasn't going to elaborate, so Wallace went with a follow-up.

"Many people would argue that guns are too lethal in the hands of a Parahuman."

She turned her head to the rest of the team.

"Pick, dart bag," she said, and the little girl reached into a side pouch on the backpack, pulling out a pencil case and opening it. Sixshooter reached in and pulled out a handful of sharp metal darts. She dropped a few into her other hands, turned, and threw one into the dot of an 'i' in the writing of the backdrop. Three more quickly followed it, with the second piercing through the back end of the first, and the third doing the same to the second. She then turned around and threw one over her shoulder, piercing the third to the audible astonishment of the crowd.

Not finished, threw a dart straight up, causing some gasps, and then she twisted to look up and threw dart after dart, each one hitting the first and piercing the side of it while knocking it into a different course. She then turned slightly and held the last dart, watching the falling mass and throwing the final one, hitting the others and pinning them to the end of the dart chain she'd made on the back wall, which finally gave out and fell from the weight.

Sixshooter turned back and leaned toward the podium again.

"I hit what I aim at," she reiterated.

Taylor felt like it went better than expected. Six's little passive-aggressive show might've been insulting to the one anchor, but he's the one who insisted on raising a stink a bout her using guns. Honestly, she might be more dangerous with darts or throwing knives. Barbed's suggestion of ninja stars was right out, because those were almost guaranteed to be worse when they got stuck in someone. And as she said, she hits what she aims for.

Now, the fund-raising lunch was going down. Fifteen dollars for a styrofoam plate with barbecue, a burger, or a pair of hot dogs, along with some side dishes. Proceeds go in part to buy essentials for the homeless, and partly for expanding the "Breadcookers."

She still couldn't believe that name was sticking.

"Hey, Revive," she heard Barb whisper before looking over to her. "That redhead is looking at ya, again."

Taylor raised an eyebrow, then looked over to where she was nodding and went still.

'Fuck's sake, why?!' she internally screamed when she saw Emma Barnes standing across the crowd, looking right at her while eating a barbecue sandwich.

Alan and Zoe were there as well, talking and mingling among the dockworkers, volunteers, and various people from around the block. Emma was asking her father something, which made him look up and offer a smile before speaking to his daughter and starting to head their way.

"Huh, I think she likes you," Barbed commented before scooping up a spoonful of corn.

"I think I need to get out of here," she muttered.

"But you ain't got a plate yet," her friend pointed out.

"Team Rebuild, come in," she heard Mickelson from a nearby walky-talky. "Team Rebuild, we've got an emergency on the bands. Over."

Snatching it off the table like a lifeline, Taylor responded. "This is Revive. What's the situation?" she asked, recalling after a short delay, "Over."

"Brockton Bay Central Bank is being held up by Villains. Wards are OTW. PRT's asking for open Hero assistance. Over."

Bank robbery? Well, that's almost cliché. Still, a perfect excuse to get out of here.

"Copy that. Tell them we're on our way and get Driver. Who're the Villains? Over."

"Copy. Passing it along. I believe they said it was the Undersiders, plus Circus and one unknown. Over."

'The Undersiders? Those idiots!'

She practically scoffed, but instead chose to address the people who'd overheard the conversation.

"Looks like we're needed. Sorry to leave early, but duty calls."

That got cheers, for some reason. She just set the walky-talky down and started heading out, joined by her team as she made her way to the parking lot, where Kurt, disguised with a motorcycle helmet and thus in his Driver persona, was cranking up the van. It wasn't an impressive thing, but they could all fit inside easily enough, and Taylor had once or twice had some ideas about installing an emergency medical table in the back.

They took off, and Taylor once again sighed, though not totally from relief. She wasn't looking forward to trying to burn a potential resource like Tattletale, but the girl should've been smarter than to try something like this. It was honestly a miracle that the Wards were moving in and not any of the more experienced heroes. Speaking of, why weren't they?

"All units, be advised," the ham radio suddenly announced, set to the open Hero frequency. "Situation developing at Acorn Park. Parahuman involvement suspected."

"Acorn Park?" Sixshooter asked.

"What? You know the place?" Barbed asked her.

"...I know someone headed there."

Worm: Necrotic Chronicles

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