======== SAMPLE 1 ========
 for the second time since before I had powers, and the result was my first real brush with the cape thing.

"You’re right about that," I said. "You’ve gotten used to people looking down on you."

"I’ve been trying to improve my image and make others look up to me. I can’t just turn around and be like everyone else. We need to stop playing this game the heroes’ play and make us look like good guys."

"So you want to find something to do?"

"I can work. I can get a job. Maybe I’ll even earn some."

"Good. Let’s talk about the job, then. The next area…"

"Yeah."

She reached in and pulled on my shoes. I closed my eyes and took the offer. She turned around and pulled my feet up, putting her hands on my hips. She said, "You can take care of that."

"Okay."

She pushed and twisted my hips until I could tell my arms couldn’t grip them.

Then she bent down and pulled on my arms until they snapped loose. "You have one foot in the shower, but, I don’t know, I don’ve noticed where you’ve left the other foot?"

Biting my lip, I turned my head to look at the door. There wasn’t anyone there.

"I’d thought about it, but you’re right. You’m a newbie," she said.

I shut my eyes.

■

It was an ugly day, in a way.

I was already walking, now. This wasn’t walking, either. Every step was a chore, and it wasn’t just a bad day for the stairs.

It was already a bad day, here, in this neighborhood of offices and warehouses with a population over three hundred. I’d stepped onto the roof, and since my feet were already moving at a great rate anyway, I didn’t feel like using my hands to hold the board. It was a bad day, in a way, since there weren’t any trees to be found that were tall enough to support anything, and I was alone among the people here – three other skaters and three people in the crowd.

They weren’t people I’d interacted with before. My dad had asked me some questions and I’d answered, and there were traces of my dad’s face in all of the answers. He just smiled. His smile was ugly. It might have been the worst day of my life, but it was one of those days that I got to deal with things that were even worse than all of the bad days together. Like my dad, all I could do was run, but more like walking away from a rough-and-tumble high school than my parents getting angry at me.

It had been so long since I’d had a chance to really chill out. The last time I’d really experienced that was in the weeks after the Endbringer attack, when I’d been in the company of my dad and his new wife. I hadn’t been able to escape the city, or the people I was associated with – or the city, at least – and I hadn’t really had a chance to get my thoughts straight again. That didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling a kind of dread that I wouldn’t be face-to-face with this supervillain who was right next to me. I’d been in a pretty bad spot. Hell, I’d gone a step further, trying to stop myself from reaching for my phoenix feather.

But I felt oddly calm as I met another group of people, making my way past the two buildings that Tattletale had left untouched. I was walking down an alley that was relatively clear of debris and weeds, and I stopped to head over to the group here, to the rest of the group.

"We’re here to negotiate?" the leader asked.

"Mover and shaker, as Tattletale said," the leader responded. "You’re looking for something to offer us?"

The group was still debating, or at least discussing, whether I should ask and they should stay or go. I was glad for the distraction, and at least I was out on my own again with a bodyguard. They could see that, at least, if they stuck to their end of the bargain and offered up a good amount.

"One thing," the leader of the group spoke to me. "Tattletale told me the Nine are here, and they

======== SAMPLE 2 ========
 for a long time I thought you were going out."

Weld glanced at his wife, then at Shadow Stalker. "She didn’t want me back."

"I know."

"I hope she did?"

"No," Weld said, "But it’s important. This is important, and it’s something I really need help with."

Shadow Stalker shook her head. "I don’t know that Shadow Stalker’s a good person, and I don’t want to have a daughter with this kind of baggage. I don’t like the idea of having a daughter who doesn’t have the appropriate values."

"I don’t either," Weld said. "She has to. There can’t be another way."

"There are," Shadow Stalker said. "But-"

"What if we tried to have a daughter with those values?" Shadow Stalker asked. "Would you still want her?"

Weld shook his head. "Not likely. We have to give up some control to protect the kid, and that involves the kids having their parent’s backs."

"So I’m going to give Coil more control," Shadow Stalker growled, "I’ve got control. I have to give him more control."

"No," Weld said. "I’m not giving him any control. I can see it in your eyes. It makes sense, and it’s better, and there can be worse things that could happen to us if he got to do that."

Weld’s words drew a little closer.

"He could," Shadow Stalker said.

"Maybe," Weld said. "But I can think of worse things for me and my team."

Shadow Stalker’s body language moved, and she pulled away. She glanced at Weld, at Bitch, and at Number Man.

I couldn’t help but see the point. "You’ve got a point here."

"What-" Weld started, then stopped as he looked down at his own hands. "It’s not-"

Number Man began to speak, but he seemed more focused on Weld’s predicament than on the girl. "We’re the reason you have to live, and I’m willing to try to do something as bad as this to help you. And if people ask me, yes, it may be worse for you, for them, and for us, but-"

"No?" Weld demanded.

Number Man spoke before they could get any further, "The Protectorate is trying something new. They’re asking members to join a class-action defense, and they’re asking for more members. Now you’ve told us what they want. Let’s talk about it."

Shadow Stalker stepped closer, and Weld could see the point. "Fine."

Mannequin approached, but he disappeared into the crowd. Trickster, in his armor, turned his head in Weld’s direction. Weld closed the distance, and Mannequin used his grappling hook, catching Weld around the neck with it.

Mannequin had the advantage of being in the thick of the fight. He’d lost the suit, but he’d still be able to strike and kill anyone. No, better yet, he’d still be able to hurt anyone. Not that he’d ever put anyone down, but he’d still be able to hurt them.

Weld thought for a number of seconds.

"I don’t know if you’re aware or not," the man said, "But the PRT wants three things from you. They don’t want you, for one thing, and they don’t want you to cooperate. They’re expecting you to do what they want you to do in the coming days and weeks. They don’t want you to die, and they still want you to cooperate. We can talk. Let’s figure out which one they want you to leave for them and the other two options. You can go to another town. You can stay at home, and the motherfuckers will take care of you if something unfortunate happens there, like you being ambushed by capes."

Weld shut his eyes.

"Go," he was told.

The door closed. Bitch reached out and took the child away.





Monarch 16.6


"This is a no, bro," I said, my voice hoarse.

"Do you want this?" Coil’s assistant asked, from behind me. I couldn�

======== SAMPLE 3 ========
 for the time being. The others were heading toward the front, where I had four dogs.

"What’s up?" I asked.

"Nothing, really. You’re probably waiting for a good moment to make your move."

"No. No I’m not. I have been waiting for a good moment."

"Mm, right. Let’s go."

He set his dog down, then approached the stage, the woman at the center, a black haired teacher in a blue robe with a red visor. She was almost comical, the relief on her face was palpable.

She took a seat at the head of the table, looked as stunned as the head of the table. One of the kids in a red hooded sweatshirt was there wearing a helmet. She sat with her back to the wall, the curtains at the far end of the room trailing down to the stage behind her. As if to draw attention, someone stood at the back, a short boy in a blue and gold tutu, shoulder length wavy hair. It was like a ghostly image, but the black haired man was the real ghostly image.

"Miss?" She stood, "You’re okay?"

"I’m fine," I told her.

I felt a little uncomfortable as the person behind Miss seemed to think he was a head coach of sorts. We’d gone out to lunch a few months ago, but no real business had come of it, because he hadn’t offered us just one thing for lunch, then had gone straight to the team meeting.

His words were as measured as he was unimpressed. He wasn’t sure what I had been planning, had just offered me the same thing he’d offered any other athlete, and I had assumed there would be some discussion on the matter before heading out in the morning, but I had never noticed until just now, that he was always talking to himself over the bullhorn. In fact, for all I knew, he was just going to be sitting there until he finished whatever was going on in his room. He was good at staying focused, but that just made him that much more irritable and unhinged than the group of people in his room.

It made me wonder if there were any guys out there who I could actually hit.





Monarch 16.8


I headed up the stairs to the fourth floor. I’d done my due diligence over the previous few weeks as I’d scoured the web for information on all of the teams that were currently in town and the people who might be in the city at the same time. I figured the more I dug, the better the odds would be that any of the teams were really in town, so I had been fairly thorough about checking every building that was part of the city limits.

The second thing that I did was head up to the top floor and walk around to the roof. Here we could get more pictures of what was going on, which was something I really needed to do if I was going to use my powers. It seemed like every building in Brockton Bay had light rail coming in and out of it. It was something we normally didn’t see, but there were more cars parked on the streets than there were in the area and the lighting in the parking lots and alleys was better than it was.

The light rail cars that were present in the area were all just running cars that were barely in operation, barely in working order, and with a third party that had been contracted to handle both maintenance and the occasional train to take you where you were going where you needed to be. The trains were just passing through the area, or passing one building over our heads, and weren’t doing much more going on than that. I didn’t spot anyone getting off one the trains, but I could guess that they probably did anyway. The only lights on on any of the trains were on and off switches, and that was that.

The area of the roof that was open was a section of the roof that had been taken out and set down on the street. In addition to the building, there was a large chunk of rock on the other side of the rooftop, where the train would have been derailed. I knew of trains going the wrong way on sections of that section of the roof, so I headed up the second stairwell to the next floor and stopped at a table with a large amount of food and drinks.

"The weather’s here, I guess," the teacher spoke, handing me a plastic bag of soft drinks. I took one out of the packaging and set in front of her. It was soft, like a milk shake it had been designed to be easy on the eyes, with only a little bit

======== SAMPLE 4 ========
 for the future, as she approached.

"And there won’t be a problem, will there? You’re not going to be bullied?"

Grue nodded.

"So what are you doing?" He asked.

She looked down at the ground, at one of the unfinished buildings and the little lake that was visible from the location. "This far from where I live?"

"Not much," he answered. "My people won’t accept this. Not in a good way. But I won’t complain. Besides, if you complain, what’s reason for anyone to bother?"

"I’d prefer something less desolate," she said. The little lake that was visible from the location was a shallow pond surrounded by a fence and a small road. She pointed at another piece of land, where another group of people had gathered around a cluster of trees.

"I… I’m not complaining. But we’ve already had our problems. We can’t just leave."

"No. People have a right to be upset with us. This is important!"

"I don’t understand," she said, "I don’t care if I die, but…"

Her face changed dramatically. "They’re talking about dying, right? You were telling me about their death."

"The last one was just before we started the fight with Eidolon."

"And we weren’t in any danger?"

He nodded. "Yes. Yes, we were."

"You can’t stop them?"

He smiled. "The other reason I’m asking you to come here is because Eidolon killed two members of this group. Two heroes, maybe. If it wasn’t for that, then I wouldn’t be asking. Even now, the Nine are still out there. We haven’t had any complaints about Eidolon since we got our powers back. It makes me wonder… how many people are ready to kill this moment, even if the end draws near?"

"Enough," Grue said, and the entire group present began to rise to their feet, marching. They were too slow; they’d stopped dead when they saw a group coming from a nearby alleyway. A girl in a dress was walking down the alley.

The group was a young, mostly female, group that included two people that were only slightly different from the rest of the group. There was only one person older than the group, and he seemed a much older man.

The man was the leader’s older brother, a short man with a rough beard and a white woman’s body, with only sparse padding here and there, a shaved head. Grue saw the resemblance immediately, as the two people who were walking behind the man and the woman had shared more of the same body type, so the man was bald and the woman had only a slight make-up in her face.

The man opened his mouth to speak, but the people who were waiting for him were already moving.

The man spoke, "I think, as you can guess, my power is stronger than yours. I’m not going to lie, and tell you guys that I can control my power, but I can give you that edge."

The crowd roared and backed away. It looked like a lot, but even with the noise and the movement, that was a good twenty or thirty people.

"I believe you," the man said.

The crowd erupted into laughter.

"They’re coming," the man told his brother.

The girl with the dress turned to leave. She looked around at the crowd, saw the eyes of the others.

"You’re not going crazy, are you?" she asked.

"Yeah. I had to put on a costume. I don’t know whether it will or not. I tried to ignore people, but they are coming."

"You want more people to die at Eidolon’s hands than you could, then you should let us go," she added.

"I don’t know what to do. He’s going to be angry, so I won’t be able to go against him. I was only thinking about what happened with you, and you won’t be able to help me here."

"Not me. Not your help," the girl replied. Was she trying to be clever, knowing as much or more about the situation than he did? "Unless you want me to go with you, I wouldn’t come."

"If you want me to say no, I don’t know what to say, honestly. Unless you want

======== SAMPLE 5 ========
 for the entire city?"

"I don’t know. I just… I don’t want to get closer to the Endbringer."

"You’ve still got time. Let’s head into the woods."

We had only the bare essentials. I had to remind myself it was still dark, the ground wet and dark, as we climbed up from the road. It was almost a good thing that it was still night.

"You’re sure?" he asked.

I nodded. "Almost. Let’s see."

The first thing that caught my attention was the large dog. Big, broad-shouldered, covered with barbs that had been bitten and stitched together, and the skin ragged and bleeding where the skin had been ripped off. The second thing that caught my eye was the man who led the dog. A middle-aged man, almost white, with a heavy, wispy beard that hung down to his waist.

"You’re the Protectorate, right?"

"I’m a volunteer, not a member. But I’m always willing to join the team, if you want."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I just… I really like the idea of a mercenary team, a team of capes. That’s what you’re pitching. I don’t know if it’s the time or if they’re ready."

"I know. You have your family, which helps, but-"

"They were willing to accept the woman."

"Yeah," he sighed. "We should talk to them before the night is out. If they’re okay?"

If they were okay, it could mean a large influx of new troops. The fact that this was a mercenary team meant there was a high level of risk.

We made our way into the woods. It took us a long time to find our way – the dogs had all but disappeared, leaving us to navigate the twisted surface of the swamp-covered hill. Even on the lowest levels, the air was thick with smell and heat.

The team led the way to the base of the hill, as I made my way over to the base. The roof of my costume had cracks in it, and the bugs were biting. I didn’t want to think about the bugs getting into the creases of my costume or my armor.

The base's interior was only slightly different from any other I knew. It was all over white, there were no windows or doorways, and there were only four soldiers stationed in a narrow base with only a few tents to break the monotony. When there were dozens of bugs crawling around, the soldiers had to make up for it with a lack of distractions and quiet. I felt out of my element, and had to look elsewhere for a distraction.

"Here," Tattletale said. "Can’t tell you what I’m doing, but I’m looking through some files to see if I can find something that could backfire or break us."

I nodded assent. We moved with deliberate steps, careful of the surrounding hills. There were four sets of footsteps on the uneven pavement.

"What would you say is our situation?" Tattletale asked, as they reached the first set of stairs. She gestured with a small hand to indicate the way down, and there were nods and nods all around.

"We don’t even know how bad things are out there." Coil asked. "A lot of bad things are possible."

"The PRT is still holding territory here, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have a heavy presence on the ground, according to Coil’s figures."

"We hold a lot of territory." The girl at the wheel asked. "Your people could use some help, right?"

"I’m a lot stronger than the ones the heroes are threatening."

"Right. They wouldn’t be able to hurt you if you’d left. But it looks like they have the answers. How many of Coil’s people out there aren’t doing as much damage to our troops?"

"A hundred if you count the Wards?"

"A hundred. If you’re not counting the ones with powers that just happened to be around, it amounts to a hundred."

"Let’s get these people out of here. You tell me about your people, what they care about, and I won’t tell you anything that’s negative about them."

"If you’re going to keep me from saying anything negative about them then be sure to do it before you do it."

======== SAMPLE 6 ========
 for a reason – and our actions are a consequence of our beliefs. So there are things you can do, to try to change your circumstances. I’m going to see to some of it, then see if I can find something else."

"Just like that?" she asked. She opened the door and hopped up onto the arm of the couch with one foot, putting her back in the chair.

"It’s not just that," he admitted. "This would be a great time to think about what I can do. I know you’ve got other ideas."

"You’ve got ideas?"

He frowned. "I had those same ideas, but it was a long time ago. I need something immediate."

"Do you want me to come along?"

"Me."

"I have a few things that I need to take care of… and I’ve got one of my cousins over here, so I think I can do just as well. I only want you to ask if you want to go the other way."

"Thank you. I don’t really have any other ideas of my own right now. I… I can take care of myself. I’ll do my part. Take care of someone who’s been through a lot. I have something in mind."

"Okay. Let’s see… Can I get an update on the kid?"

He glanced at the little girl who stood behind the counter. The girl was a year older than Sierra, maybe three or four years younger. She was wearing a strapless top with a slit for the hood, and a bright red skirt, and both skirts were knee length. She was smiling a little.

He knew her. She was his cousin, at least. Her parents were Mexican immigrants.

"It was hard to talk to them," he said. "But I found them. Like I said before, they’re not what they seem. I was worried I’d go to jail, but in the end I think I’d have a good time, and the people in their company are worth the trouble. You know the rules, don’t you?"

She did.

"You need to be a good neighbor, don’t you? I know you’ve had a rough few months, and I’m sure you were feeling isolated from everything that was going on," he said.

"But it’s not that easy to talk to strangers, and they’re not strangers, anyway. If it comes down to it, we need to stop them from hurting innocent people. They’ve been on the streets all afternoon, but tonight we’re going to turn it around. It’s not going to work."

"You know what’s possible?"

"I know it can’t be done."

"But we should do something."

"I’m thinking about something…"

He paused. "I have an idea, or I have something I think I can do. I can offer you this. Give me this to take with me."

She raised a hand, reaching up, and he took the device, handing it over to the girl. She began tapping it.

It only took a moment for the signal to come down from the people inside, and the music began. "Tone it down, please."

The girl looked at him. Then looked down at the floor. "Maybe I can do something."

"Don’t think so," he commented. She took the remote, and his voice came down from the speaker, "I’m thinking about a pretty radical idea. Not that radical. The last few years have been the worst of my life. People get hurt. Then, it turns out that they were really fucked up. Now, I want to do something about it. I think this is an opportunity."

I know I’m a jerk. I’m kind of on a level. A little crazy, even. But he’s a jerk, and there’s a limit to how far you can drive his knee-jerk reaction. Sierra knew this. It was obvious enough, even without looking, and even though it seemed pretty obvious from the outside, Sierra had gone to considerable effort to ignore it.

He turned it on, and for the fifth time or so, the girl smiled, almost like she was trying to make something work out here.

"A guy will pay with his life to have people who know how, but he wants things to work out in this fashion. He wants something to happen."

"Let’s change the subject," Sierra said. She started tapping the speaker again,

======== SAMPLE 7 ========
 for the other three. She walked over to the computer, and shut off the monitors.

She put an earbud in her ear, pressed her hand to her mouth, "They’re calling the Protectorate and Brockton Bay teams, and they want us to come to their headquarters, with them. If we’re willing, they’ll give me a group of heroes and capes to work with."

The group wasn’t exactly small, consisting of Glory Girl, Panacea and a number of Undersiders. It was more or less their team in New Wave, with some capes in their ranks. The only difference was that the Brockton Bay capes had powers that could grant them exceptional mobility and agility.

The others were mercenaries. The mercenaries wouldn’t be able to afford the trip to the Protectorate headquarters, and they weren’t willing to go on the defensive. Glory Girl was only interested in collecting a percentage of the already sizable sums that the Protectorate was making.

"The heroes here are pretty tough, Tattletale," Tattletale said. "The only reason you’ve come this far is because you’ve been the only one who can stand up to them."

"Right," I said. "And because of that," Tattletale trailed off. She didn’t make eye contact with the people in the crowd, didn’t change her expression or respond. Glory Girl, Panacea and I were standing there in silence.

I was hoping for more of a reaction from Tattletale than any words or gestures.

Except, as far as I could see, there wasn’t any in the way. She was just standing there, with her back to us, her hands clasped in front of her mouth.

It left me thinking of a concept. A group of villains that had been able to hold their own against lesser groups. They were just too big. There was nobody here right now that could stop the Nine.

There were a lot of people in the room. More than two thirds of the group was made up of heroes, with a few Undersiders and new faces. A mix of older hero and newer capes.

Except this was a test. A test of our mettle. I wasn’t prepared, not yet.





Queen 05.05.2011


Foil, the youngest daughter of King and Queen of England, wasn’t allowed out of prison, because it wasn’t in the interests of the law. She was instead put in the care of the Protectorate and her foster family. She was old enough that there weren’t many people around that could look after her. She liked to keep animals in the house so she could have room for them, so the people in the group didn’t have to walk so long to catch up to her. Foil didn’t understand many of the new members of the group, which made it a fairly chaotic one. Some members would be nice, others weren’t. Maybe it made them feel bad, the feeling they had to be like this? Maybe they were more afraid then, so they were less willing to stick up for herself.

In her spare time, Foil played a lot of video game's her way. She took solace in the fact that when she was mad enough to cry or snap or whine about something major, one of the new members would bail her out after about five or ten minutes. She would feel better as soon as someone let her go.

When the new members were introduced, it was to introduce Foil. She hadn’t been one of the first people to join to help defend New Wave, but the people in charge had made her their first official member. She was pretty stocky, slim, and dressed casually. She didn’t have a costume or armor, but there were patches around her shoulders and on her arms. Black, like the original costume, but blue jeans, a white hood, and white boots.

Parian’s eyes were always on Foil, but she was using her power to see just the two of them now. "Hey, Foil, you gotta help defend that asshole?"

"She’s got it in her head to play fair and to pay me. What you just did was evil, just because you and I are the same. And if you’ve got a reason for thinking I don’t deserve or want to protect you-"

"You know everything there is to know about me."

Parian didn’t say anything else. "All right, fine. I’m going to think before I speak." She put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. "But I’m going to need your help

======== SAMPLE 8 ========
 for about as long, and he was able to give up without a fight. In the meantime, he could hear them saying something about how important the battle was, now that they were all together. His thoughts turned to the Endbringer’s location and the Endbringer’s next move.

Was he still alive? Was his life as valuable as Alexandria was?

He wondered about the other members of his team. Was they able to keep their composure under pressure?

It was all too easy to think back to his old teammate, to compare themselves with him. He couldn’t control it, but it was an easy comparison to make.

Was he really as good as Weaver or if he was better, or worse? Was he truly the best he could be?

Or, more to the point, was it just easier to think of himself as the best because he was a cape? Because his power provided a lens on what it would mean for the world to end?

He wasn’t ready to answer either of those questions. But he knew that the answers wouldn’t affect how he felt about everything that had happened, that there was always a chance he was wrong and maybe worse than what he’d done. He had to act as if he wasn’t willing to take everything that had happened for granted.

Withdrawing powers. The other options had been so very, very limited, and now the only options were to draw out the last of our remaining remaining supply of powers and continue to fight, to try and kill Weaver from orbit, or to use our remaining lives or our collective power to try and stop Coil.

Was anyone going to care whether Scion was dead or gone? That was the question he’d had to ask himself.

The others weren’t reacting as he spoke. He glanced out the window to make sure the wind hadn’t just stopped, but that those people were safe, that the city was somehow a place he should be able to visit in person.

How many people had we lost? Even his people, the capes who had died, had been so young: they were the kind of people who were in awe of heroes, in awe of the Endbringers. So when Scion was gone, so were we.

He looked at the camera; Weaver was watching it with an expressionless, emotionless gaze. How was he supposed to respond?

"Let’s talk about the future," Weaver said.

He looked at her, and his eyes were wet.

"There were so many things right, back then," she said. "The way people had their groups organized, how the hierarchy was so wrong. But here we are. The Endbringers attacked it, and now we’re down to a very crude, very human kind of self-determination. There’s also the fact that the whole point of going to the Birdcage was to keep people safe, so maybe they’re doing us a favor by leaving us here."

She smiled a little, as if to quell his worries. "Well said, you’re right. I’m kind of jealous."

"You’re kind of in a headspace," he said. "Can you tell me what you’ve been up to?"





Queen 18.4


If my instincts were right, and the wind was making everything darker, then my costume was dark blue. The only color in it was the blue, the darkness blocking the light by virtue of the surrounding blue haze.

The effect didn’t last for more than a second – a little while after I was gone, a light blue color appeared over the city.

The darkness receded as though it were afternoon, and I could see the blue city beginning to recede into the sky.

"I… got some new clothes," I said. "Like a nice uniform, but they haven’t even offered me any. I’m so… sorry. I… got tired."

"They are wearing your clothes. How do you deal?"

"Worn?"

"I have good days and bad days," I said. "I have bad days too, and it’s like… I’ve been sitting here for eight hours, and you haven’t even touched me. I have been going over everything that’s happened, getting ready."

"It’s time to rest," said the man. He wasn’t too large, not quite a man. His skin was white, his hair white, his beard white, the eyes blue. A blue visor. "Sit the night here, if you can. Have your morning breakfasts and lunches. I’ll talk back to

======== SAMPLE 9 ========
 for the world. I’m only two, but I’m more powerful than I’m letting on, and I don’t plan to be."

"I’m sorry."

"I wasn’t making any promises then, and I’m still making no promises. I just wanted you to think it over."

Krouse stared down at his shoes, then looked up at the tower, "Not a big fan of this tower, but I’m not sure we could live here and not be. A lot of people live here."

"You should have asked me before you asked them for help,"

"I know, and you don’t have that much time."

"Why don’t you get out of the car?"

"Bugs?" Krouse asked, reaching for the second pair.

"Sorry, there’s none."

"Then use a car jack and walk with them."

"Okay."

He took his time walking the three hundred feet to the rooftop. It had only two rows of windows to open and close, and was so thin it would break if he dropped his shoes.

A few feet above the ground, in the air above a cloudless sky, there was a faint halo of sun silhouetted against the water. The sun, oddly enough, emitted a silver-white beam, so small it barely looked out of the water.

Just how far away was he?

"We’re not in the city," he replied, before he could think of a better way to convince himself.

"Okay," he admitted, as he shut off the power from his phone. He looked down, then felt his back against the metal of the roof. It felt wrong. He had the impression it was meant to remind him of how his back was unnatural. It wasn’t, but…

Maybe his back was an effect of being an egg-head.

"So long," he spoke his mind aloud.

"And you?"

He glanced down at the phone. "Can’t have you knowing this is okay."

"Okay. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, Krouse, is pretty much the whole reason I'm here."

"Thank you. For coming early."

"I was out of town. Couldn’t come."

"Can we just change venues?"

"I’m thinking we should go back. I want to get some more information while still having time to give to us, if we decide you deserve to be on a team."

There was a pause.

"Okay. I’m… not sure what that means. Let’s get everyone together and go back to the hotel to get stuff sorted out and start working on the next step."

"Okay."

■

■

The group made their way towards the last hotel room, where they’d been staying.

"No fighting," Krouse told her. "Nobody wants that."

"No fighting?"

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Okay," he sighed.

"You have a room?"

"The room is upstairs. I’ll leave the door unlocked."

"No need after we’ve had some time. I can leave and come back without a problem in one or two minutes," she said.

"That doesn’t sound like you."

"How often will you need to do that?"

"I don’t have to talk with you. I can listen and follow what you’re talking about with my swarm, and I’ve been doing it for a long while."

She glanced out the window, at the clouds, at the city in all its colors, before she said, "They’re not very pretty."

"They are," Krouse agreed. "Can we stop for a minute? I would like a movie."

She smiled. "I would be more apt to find that in the car if I could only have some time here."

■

"Krouse," Charlotte said, "Please leave the car unlocked!"

"What is it?"

"The door might be broken. Come on, Charlotte. Go upstairs and look at the place. How is it?"

"It’s not a place you want to get caught up in a ruckus. It’s a hotel, and I want you to be in a comfy atmosphere."

"Don’t worry about the hotel. The car is locked."

She nodded.



======== SAMPLE 10 ========
 for the others were as calm and collected as ever.

The Endbringer emerged from another building with enough force that it sent out a shockwave to knock her aside. No, something else that was coming this way and that meant she was going to make an appearance eventually, but the fact that she didn’t appear out of thin air suggested she was in the area.

The others weren’t so slow about their reaction to the Endbringer’s arrival. They rushed the group in a huff that could have carried them against the advancing waves and torn the building to shreds, landing near some injured and dying capes. I was the first one to arrive, joining a group of five of the same that included a young man with pale skin and a scar over his eye from the last fight with his teammate.

"Here comes the girl who was already down on her luck. I think she has my number?"

"You’re the one who called yourself a hero last night, right?" the man asked, his voice a deep rumble in his throat. His voice was deeper than most people’s but he was wearing a costume with only the top half of his face and a bandage on his knee. He was one of those capes who were often confused by their body type or their costume choice. He didn’t have a costume, but his skin was a tawny brown that looked more orange beneath it. He looked like he had a black eye, skin ripped and bleeding from his ears and nose. His costume was a skull with a black body, black wings, a red mouth and a spider sitting on his head that had a beaded, white-black hair. His costume had been torn apart at the knee, and he had a small scar running down from the corner of his eye to his chin. His costume was already torn apart at the shoulder and the legs. His other features were much the same, including a headband with a black band around it. There were bloodstains all over them.

The girl who called herself Canary spoke, "He attacked with the other Endbringers. He killed the other capes, but not like we expected. Didn’t kill him. The one we were planning to arrest was too busy fighting to fall unconscious or get hit by the shockwave. So our cops tried to deal with him and wound up with Canary in the line of fire. So how the fuck are we supposed to deal?"

"You guys attack him, Canary," Miss Militia said. "Stop being weak. Attack him, stop being indecisive and charge."

"No," Legend said. "We don’t even have an idea of his powers, and-"

"Scout the situation, not the kid."

"They’re attacking him."

"I’m going, we need a rescue."

The man looked up at the cape who answered his question with a voice that might have been choked.

"Why? I can see it in Canary’s face," the blonde girl said. "I can read you. What are you hiding from me? Your reasons for attacking that kid, your motivation? They’re complicated."

"Simple. His powers will grant him immortality."

"Can he afford to stay ten years old, ten months of age?"

Canary sighed. "A kid like yourself have a lot to deal with, after all."

"I don’t really care about that," Legend spoke, without looking at Canary. "You’re on the team-"

"I’m the only one who’s set and we’re the only ones who matter to him. It doesn’t matter. Just get moving. We need to get you away from this situation, quickly."

There was a rumble nearby, like the clap of thunder in a building.

■

Tattletale was the first to arrive. A part of her that was supposed to remain passive was telling her there was something up.

She didn’t trust anyone as important and wise as Tattletale, but she was pretty sure she’d found a way to turn herself into a thinker. She took advantage of that.

Her people were spread out in a maze. The areas they were in were marked with red dots. Those dots were the trigger events to the trigger events they were carrying. To get the dots moving, Tattletale had to open certain doors and enter certain points into a larger grid. The grid then expanded on the inside, a little every time.

The result was that she could take in all of her surroundings, figure out the situation in a flash, then organize her people and give precise orders in a heartbeat. If Tattletale hadn’t realized just how much she

======== SAMPLE 11 ========
 for you.

"And I believe I can’t help you without it being a bit too much, so this isn’t going to be a lecture. Don’t worry. There’s a whole lot more I can do that I haven’t been able to already."

"There is. I have to go."

"Can we split up? I don’t want to make you move too far away. This is the time to talk. The time we’re getting things together and we’re ready for the fights. In this time."

"Can’t you see my point?"

"This is the time. But the way I see it, you two…" he paused. "You need each other, and I can make up for it because I’m willing to be your team captain, but you need each other and you need me."

"Don’t be a bitch."

"I don’t really care. We do this for a reason, and your team needs every edge it can get. I don’t think you two are that kind of team, so don’t let us get the upper hand in this fight. I’ll let Coil do whatever he wants, so long as you’re on the side of the good guys,"

"So long as he’s the good guys," Coil replied. "So long as he’s Coil. If that’s the case, we’re good."

Coil turned to face them and smiled thinly.

"You had a choice?" Tattletale asked. "I do not like it, but it’s what you have to do. I’d rather you made the right choice. I can’t say whether I think you are on the right path or not."

"So you don’t like me because I’m bad?" Coil asked. "You get to know your enemy and come to a decision about your own fate?"

"No," Tattletale spoke.

"It’s about trust, trustworthiness," he sighed, "I think you’re on that right now. But I’d like to see what happens next. Do you really think, given all that? The outcome of this is going to be worth the time we’ve spent?"

"I hope it isn’t."

"Fine."

"You’ve spent a hell of a lot of time planning, but it still doesn’t seem worth it to me."

"I guess I’ve reached an impasse," I replied, "Either you’re right about the end of the world, and I’m wrong, or you’re wrong about the end of the world, and I’m right."

"You’re right."

"We still owe Coil. Why don’t you go talk to Dinah in her territory?"

"They’re holding out. Not saying you shouldn’t, but they’re doing this behind my back. It can be hard to deal with the other Undersiders, when they’ve betrayed you, I know from experience. Or they could say you don’t owe Coil. Like how I’m saying Coil couldn’t make up for it. It depends on how my territory plays. My father’s gone into hiding, I’m willing to believe he’s gone to another area without a lot of human contact."

"I’ll be in touch if you want to discuss further."

"Okay."

"You’re going to tell Coil, and I hope he does. I think he’s a good man, and he doesn’t know the full details of what you’ve been dealing with."

"He can deal with too many things, if I’m willing to meet. I mean, it was him who helped me get my powers. His hands are clean, so I can’t see anything."

"Doesn’t mean I like it."

"I know. But you’ve saved us time, and I don’t think you’re wrong for asking Coil for a hand in this deal. I think I’ll be working even harder because Skitter’s around. I don’t want you to quit, but you’ll have to make do for the time you’re in your group."

"I’ve saved our lives several times over, just to have a headstart."

"What did you miss from your tour, to

======== SAMPLE 12 ========
 for a while now, that the girl might be right.

In a more subtle kind of way, she approached, and the girl flinched, stepping away.

"Hey," the girl said. "I can… kind of see, but…"

"Is… Is that something I can do?"

The girl nodded, making an almost mechanical humming noise, as she tried hard to find her words. With her other hand, she moved up the front of the van to retrieve the girl’s keys.

"Can you stay still?" the girl asked.

The van swayed as the girls adjusted their positioning, the girl at the very front holding an infant, her back curved to make it easy for her to bend down and play with the baby. She let go of the baby and stood.

"What’s going on?" the girl asked. "Can we…?"

Piggot looked at me and then back to her desk before offering me a single curt nod. She spoke before I could reply. "No. We’re all good to go."

That should have put the last vestiges of fear and nervousness to rest, but the reaction was too slow, too many of the boys not reacting just yet.

"You’re okay?" the girl asked.

"I’m fine," I replied.

"Are you coming?"

"I’m going to work, and then we’re going to spend time with my son."

"Okay," I said, feeling so tired it was almost disorienting.

"He’ll be okay? Is this okay?"

"It’s okay. I won’t be disturbed, but… yeah. Not likely. But we’ll talk about it."

"Alright."

"What happened?"

I shook my head. "We talked, you know. You’re talking about the Protectorate." I thought of the Undersiders, and the way I’d seen Lisa, Rachel and Aisha. "Talk about my son."

"Just going by what I’ve been doing, I’ve been busy. I haven’t been in a position to get the details on any major cases. And if I was going to get them, I think I just about have to go to Shadow Stalker."

"Shadow Stalker?"

"The man who killed my foster parent, you know. I called him the man who kills who is not allowed to be killed. And a lot of capes call him the monster. The one who takes a long time to do one thing well, because he thinks long and hard about things, and the thing gets better when he’s done."

"Is that what you’re saying?"

"Yeah. I mean, if your dog is dangerous?"

"Why?" The boy who had been standing behind the woman said. He sounded annoyed, and he was rubbing his eyes. "I mean, you have been working for a long time, this?"

The woman replied, "I’ve been working since the last major case, and I’ve been doing it for five years. The most important thing for me is the child."

"I don’t know about you," I said. "But if I was working for someone like you, I would have noticed."

"Maybe. I feel like we’re all dealing with a ton of things at once, and there’s a lot of big stuff happening. You and I, we’ve talked about a lot, about you and this."

"You don’t have to spend a lot of time talking."

"You talk for four hours. I talk for five."

"But I’ve been thinking, I’ve had two things happen. I was the last major case."

"The last major case huh? Is this the kind of thing you’ve been dealing with?"

"No. I’ve dealt with a lot of bad cases, but that’s the one that stuck. The one before that? The incident two days ago?"

"Yes."

"The incident where you and I fought each other," the boy said.

"I lost," he said, quiet.

"The others were okay?" Piggot said.

"Yes. Can you take me to my dad?"

"I guess your son’s ready for a more formal hearing," she said. "Take him."

I nodded. "We’ll meet you soon."

"I don’t want you to be late."

"So long

======== SAMPLE 13 ========
 for an audience. And at the same time, every set of eyes I could get was on the capes.

"Okay," I said, "I just need you to do something, and then I’m done."

"I’m busy," Tattletale said. "There are limits you can put on me."

"Okay," I added.

I was on my tail at that, and I could sense a pair of people gathering at the perimeter of the base.

"No talking to her. Keep her in your presence," I told them. "She’s not useful, as far as we can see."

"Right," Tattletale said. "Let’s get to the plan first. We need to find Scion. It’s been a long time coming, but we’re going to need an excuse to do it."

"I don’t know how he’s going to attack us. Can you do us a big favor, and let me convince him to stop attacking us?" Revel asked. She smiled a little. "You guys have trouble with the Travelers, now? They’re not really our enemies."

"We can’t keep them here," Tattletale said. "If we try, we could wind up here instead, and I don’t think they’re ready for it."

"No," I said. I let my bugs disperse, and I didn’t need to use any particular power in that same department. The group was in enough disarray that there weren’t any real threats. Revel let go of me, and flew after Tattletale to join them, joining us at the door that led to the lobby. She joined the others in the stairwell, and they parted ways to head into the base.

The door at the front of the base opened just behind us, and then closed. I found myself behind my ‘shield’ as the doors shut. I couldn’t get my bugs back, and neither could I open the doors and walk through.

Which was that, was it?

It hadn’t been easy. My hands were numb from walking, and both Tattletale and I were covered in sweat.

"I- why did you guys have to take so long?" Revel asked.

"It happens. If no one’s coming, when do they get the rest of the way?" I asked her, trying not to show my anxiety.

"We’re making their way to the point where Scion’s at the front door. The others are going upstairs. We need someone to get their attention before they run off. You and I both know I can fight if things go sour."

"You’re the new leader," she said.

"I am," I answered her. "And I’ve been making a lot of changes. The most important thing is that we don’t screw this up. The others didn’t make this easy."

"Good, good," Tattletale said, "You’re changing. Making more of a point than you’ve been making."

"Point doesn’t always make all that much of a difference," I said. "We need a way to make contact."

"I don’t think I can make anything official," Tattletale said.

"Oh?" Revel asked. "I was talking to a team of people, and they said they needed your help."

"Oh?"

"It’s a matter of making a call. I get what you’re saying. We can contact the others. We just have to-"

My thoughts shifted to the Travelers. If I could use my swarm to get information, maybe get new information on Scion, I was in a strong position to say something.

"I don’t think I can do that," I pointed out.

"Okay, don’t come any closer than that. I don’t think I can."

The air in the stairwell was thick with the sound of metal on metal. I could sense it with my bugs.

As soon as the last piece of metal from her room was thrown down, Revel led her pack through the door that led to the ground floor. She was joined by two of the Travelers.

I was a little surprised that the two travelers and one of the Travelers shared a name. He was tall, skinny, with black hair, a beard, and a strange face, with no eyebrows, no nose or lips, only a mass of sharp teeth. If the teeth were humanlike, they stood out like sharp fingernails along the jawline.

======== SAMPLE 14 ========
 for the time being, and I will leave the rest of the plan to the others."

"That is reasonable."

"So. One theory I have has been circling around is that Lung got his powers when he was in containment in Bonesaw’s body, perhaps in one of the forms she gave him when he made his appearance."

Faultline leaned forward, looking at the ceiling. "I can guess she would be able to manipulate matter to create more ‘Lung’ clones, or alter them."

"Or," Grue spoke, "The rest of the group could be using more than one group to duplicate themselves."

"Right."

"Maybe it was a way to take on the others, in a way."

"I remember."

I shook my head.

"I’m curious what happened, anyway. Bonesaw has done the most research. I think she knew Bonesaw was a murderer, and she knew she would probably give up something."

I nodded.

"What did you tell Panacea about Lung?"

"The others wouldn’t tell me how he got his power, because he wasn’t a threat. They kept asking us to figure him out, and the bigger the group, the easier I had to do that, so I figured it was an end of the world conspiracy."

I nodded again.

"Okay. But the others might not have told you? The ones we can’t target with anything. Not about Lung?"

I nodded.

His hand settled on my shoulder.

"And you have no doubt gone through some time where you have wondered, ‘If I lived, would I betray you?’ Or, ‘Would I betray you?’"

"No. It’s me. It’s not a question, it’s me."

"When you’re like this, it makes it harder to do that."

"I guess I figured that out anyway."

"How much of it is fate?" I asked. "Somehow, someway, it’s hard to escape, and you don’t live in the world you wanted, not knowing how the events of the past month will play out. It’s hard to leave a city like this one when you’ve got friends like Lung, when you know he’s on the edge of his abilities."

"Somehow, someway, he’s not alone."

"He’s not alone," she echoed my words. "I think you’ve found your friends."

"Where am I supposed to find them?"

"Here isn’t a place with many homes for you. If you’re willing to move, perhaps you could live somewhere with more people?"

She nodded. "I might be interested to know where your parents are. You don’t mention it, but you have your dad’s phone for me when I ask questions. I could track you down."

I nodded.

"I’m curious why Lung was attracted to you, if it was as much about the money as anything else," I said.

"Money," he said, breaking into a run. It took him a few seconds to grab his ground and start fighting with her. He raised his hands in a gesture. "Do you want to be a part of this?"

I nodded.

"All for only one thing, and I can tell you from experience that one thing is not worth the time or effort. Maybe not to the person I’m approaching, but just asking you to give up something for one purpose and one goal in a group with so many goals?"

"I’m not sure you have a choice," I said.

"One goal, and I have something. I can’t explain it to you. And the most important thing is you."

He made his move, charging at her.

She wasn’t afraid to take a hit.

But her back was turned by his punch.

His power was the only one that worked on people. It was the only power he was willing to use.

And he had his back to Lung’s chest, his teeth to her skin. The way he moved left the area red-hot. He punched Lung in the back and she slid off.

She didn’t roll over or fall, instead landing headlong upon his skin.

She kicked his legs out from under him, landing upside-down on the back of his thigh.

He staggered back, and she kicked at his shoulder, knocking him prone.

We reached the end of

======== SAMPLE 15 ========
 for a change."

"No," Tattletale replied. She stared, her arms slack, but she wasn’t speaking. Her stare fixed on the spot where Grue had fallen, her eyes were fixed on the ground.

"I don’t have a preference, and only one of you can say she does," Grue observed. "There was another guy who dropped out right here, and he got a lot of attention. You all watched the video. Maybe you want to do the same? And you’re the first to know."

"No," Tattletale replied. "Can’t do it."

"But this is better. I give you an opportunity, we can do this. This is a way of clearing the air. If this is a ruse?"

"I wouldn’t expect anything less," Tattletale said. "But I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood for that. We won’t be here for the meeting."

"Not the meeting," Imp said. "They have a contingency plan."

"The meeting?" Tattletale asked.

"I don’t think this is a ruse," Imp said, "But it helps, and it’s something worth using."

"It’s my first time seeing someone get treated like one. And maybe you know this."

"I do," Tattletale said. "I can count on one hand, and I have one of these. It’s not easy to find if you have to pull it off with people taking off their masks and being silent. But I’m going to pull it off."

"We can get him out of there," Regent said. "Maybe we can move him out of there and get him to work on us."

"Maybe," Imp said. "He’ll be too big a problem with Tattletale keeping him close enough to ensure he’s kept safe."

"If there’s a way. Or a way to break down the layers of containment and stop him from moving at all… yeah. I’d use that. It won’t be a matter of days, but it would help."

"Fuck," Regent said.

They formed another pair, to take the fight to the Endbringer. One had one leg gone, the other had a scar.

"It’s up to you," Tattletale said. "How soon can you say it? Good, bad, okay, don’t know."

"It’s about time the fight starts," Grue spoke. "How many capes have fought this guy? How many survived? The only thing you can really do is kill the monsters."

"I’ll try," Grue responded. "I’ll go too. I don’t know the risks, but it has to start somewhere. We split up, we put one of you guys in the fight. If we’re not able to get someone to die, either the enemy won’t have his powers so easily or we won’t be able to do more damage."

Tattletale nodded. "We will," she said.

"We don’t have the numbers," Grue said. "Not right away, but we can make up for it with a few people."

"One of us will make it out," Tattletale said.

"How many wards?"

"Enough," Tattletale replied. "So many, but there’s one I haven’t come across yet."

"Can’t," I said. "I might have been able to pass through."

"Maybe one day?"

"Maybe," I said. "I will. Or I won’t choose, it depends. It’s up to me."

Tattletale smiled. "You’re being silly."

"I’ve played my fair share of games," I said.

Grue had his arm in my direction, but he didn’t seem to notice Tattletale.

"I mean seriously," Tattletale finished.

"I’m joking. Is this game going to be over in an hour?"

I shook my head. "Just a minute or two? What have you done? How many rounds?"

"I’ve done better. We’ve had eight, and then I tried to do the same thing. That failed. How many rounds? I have to do some damage control, or I’m leaving the team."

"This fight is not over?"

"

======== SAMPLE 16 ========
 for a day. We’re a tight knit crew, we’re an alliance, and we’re going to get through this together. This isn’t a fight between good guys."

Bentley growled, growled, growled again.

"Hey, let’s calm down, go on, talk."

"I’m just talking," he growled.

"Okay, we’ll calm down after one day," Bonesaw replied. "The good guys defeated them."

"One day?"

And I could hear Bitch growling at me, louder, for my help. I felt my heart sink.

"If we don’t get through the next day, or if Dinah’s forces take us out before we deal with this, I’ll know it."

I sighed.

I could hear her muttering something.

"We just decided to stop by the old location," she said. "It’s not in our power to make it so we’re stuck here forever."

"If we pass through the portal and we meet the heroes, maybe something can happen," I commented.

"Nope. Not in my power."

I sat down on the end of the bed. I could feel the warmth of the wind blowing against the metal of the bed, the fabric and the metal of the chair still making their way to the edges of my forehead.

"So I see it. We decided to take the night."

"I see. We’re done, then."

She didn’t respond.

I closed my eyes.

"It’s fine," I said.

"And we’re getting restless," she replied.

I opened my eyes to see Tattletale already sitting down on the bed.

"And you’re in one of the more difficult moods I’ve seen you, this."

"What?"

"The idea that you might have a mental block, or a way to think about your world through a mental filter. Or maybe it’s something deeper. The world’s not a place you really, but it seems so close. Do you have a place in this mess that you haven’t found."

I shook my head.

"You don’t? Well, if we’re going to come with you, it should be something simple, a way to start. I don’t know. Maybe you’re lonely?"

I shook my head, but I looked down as well.

"How can you be lonely in this world you so readily dismiss?" Tattletale asked. She was looking down at my arm.

"Maybe I’m alone in there," I offered.

"If that's the case, then I think your loneliness could have come up long before we met here. Because I’d have to agree with Tattletale on that count. I don’t have a place in paradise."

"Do you?"

It took me a second to wrap my head around the issue, "I don’t belong anywhere, I’m sure, but I’d guess I’d feel better if I’m in this world."

"I’d say the same about that. A place and a future you want to find."

"That’s pretty much it."

Tattletale turned her back to me, and I sighed.

"I thought you were having a bad day," she said. "You’re feeling lethargic."

"Not going to let anything spoil that, Tattletale. Not going to waste any time. Let’s go."



Scarab 25.2


Tattletale took the longest route, going through an entrance to her next destination. Her group had gone through the same door, and I was the first person in my group to leave. We’d have to deal with some of the Undersiders and the Nine. Whatever we did, it wouldn’t do a damn thing to help Scion, given what we didn’t know about Eidolon’s power.

A small fraction of her group was fighting with the remaining Slaughterhouse Nine, and they were only tangling to make up for the fact that the Undersiders and the Nine were getting close to whatever they might have arrived at. Still, that wasn’t the worst problem.

There was also the problem of the remaining individuals I could name. There were those who had joined because they had joined because of the Endbringer fight in New Delhi. That

======== SAMPLE 17 ========
 for the job. It would put a damper on things, even. As long as he was on the opposite side of the fence between the other Parahumans and the Undersiders, one could only assume that he could be a good guy.

It also made her a different type of thinker than she usually was. Being a thinker, at heart, she was naturally going to look for patterns and connections, rather than solving the problems for herself. She studied the situation in new ways, and it seemed she was already figuring out that Lung was a leader, not a combatant. He was a veteran, and it was his job to make hard decisions that would win the battle and keep others from coming to harm.

He could kill her.

The Endbringer was making rapid progress towards the rooftop. The first group of capes were making their way down. The remaining capes had to move between buildings, making space, dodging the attacks, and blocking the way.

She had to stop and see. She turned, saw… something was wrong. Something in her surroundings. Her eyes moved to the crowd below, saw some of the capes being pushed back. People in their element, the capes around her. People who might not have been prepared to face the Endbringer alone.

No, she had to find a way to deal.

She opened portals, and the Endbringer appeared.

A white sphere with an orange power. It didn’t move or have flight.

She used portals to find other capes. Others who wouldn’t be able to attack.

Then she used the portal to attack.

More than half of the capes near her took flight. She did what her enemies were doing. She set up the portals, and she slammed them together. It wasn’t perfect, didn’t target every cape with a portal, but she made it her goal to deny portals such as hers the same chance as her portals did.

There were six portals open simultaneously, the orange spheres moving to their final destination points in the crowd below.

It was a trap. She had to find a way to stop it.

It wasn’t enough. Too much time was spent on dodging, on getting out of the way.

Her powers extended the range of her portals, and it was just a matter of destroying the last of the ones she already opened.

Except the orange power wasn’t affecting people. It was affecting objects, the light, the air, the light reflected off things and reflected things back into the orange sphere. She tore through it. She could make the orange sphere appear any radius, any point within a certain range of whatever she was attacking.

Her powers seemed to extend the time of her portals, so she could open the same portal twice. The light reflected off that sphere, and reflected, and reflected again. It made people react, to see or hear a portal appearing near or behind them.

Or she had to break the air with a portal.

She opened a world. Three worlds in all.

There was life. She opened worlds that were the very very opposite, for the sake of a different, brighter future. The portal around her closed, and she returned to Earth Bet.

She looked at the other heroes. The ones that had been taken, the ones that hadn’t made it.

No, there was another world in this, that was different.

Except the other world wasn’t her home.

She set a world in the other reality. She was still here.

The others had given up on her before. She would make amends now, to find an equal number of worlds.

Earth Bet was the same, now.

The heroes had given up on her before, too. Not nearly as easily.

It was only when they stopped for air that they learned of how bad things were. The ones who’d stopped off had been fighting the Endbringers, or the Simurgh, or Scion, or another Endbringer who didn’t quite fit into the category of a hero.

No, these Endbringers had been on a different scale. They were an issue that had been overlooked.

Even if the Simurgh hadn’t been around, the damage wasn’t done.

And while that damage was done… there were other, more insidious threats.

The endbringer was moving across the world. She was opening new worlds, and portals opened up between different worlds.

Every action, every step of the way, her eyes were on that world. That was the end goal.

The world was the Simurgh, now… a small, frail, twisted, imperfect world.

A world her own people had created.


======== SAMPLE 18 ========
 for his company, and he could use it.

He looked toward the doors. There were no guards or policemen inside these halls, and no guards and policemen would be able to stop Jack or Bonesaw for an extended period of time.

He didn’t look back into the room, but he left the door.

"There’s no guards here because I told you," Bonesaw said. "I’m one of those super villains that get away with what they do, because they get away with it."

Jack nodded.

"I need your help, Bonesaw. I’ve got more stuff to get to. But if you try to get up here in this costume, Jack’s going to break that costume."

"They’re going to break it anyways. My costume is just going to get more tatters of flesh."

"And I might break it. Jack’s got a new body for every body he breaks. Not counting the bodies that he keeps, it’s… four or five. His old skin is tatty, he’s wearing too much armor and he’s not shoving it all off. There’s scars, there’s lines that draw the eye or the nose, and he’s holding too much armor on."

He nodded. "This armor, I couldn’t trust if he took my armor off. I’m going to get killed, and I don’t want that. But it’s worth it if it’s this."

"Right," Bonesaw said.

The door opened, and two guards came in, one with the same set of powers as Jack, the other just a hair taller and leaner than the average soldier. He was dressed in the same way every guard was: a blue uniform with a yellow patch around the edges, a black mask that didn’t have anything sticking out of it, and green uniforms to match with the rest of his body: boots, body armor and his sword. He wore a gold, double-breasted, heavy leather jacket. Like the rest of them, he had dark green eyes.

"Please allow me to introduce myself, sir…" Bonesaw said.

They met his eyes. The man had an expression that wasn’t fixed with an expression and a stare. He had a touch of his power to it. "Welcome back."

One of the guard’s hands seized Bonesaw’s collarbones. The other hand gripped her wrist.

"Sir," Bonesaw said, "I did not ask for the introduction, and I will not make you wait. I know this is my territory."

The guard nodded.

"A few minutes, please. I wish you good luck in whatever task you choose to fill me. No reason to hurt you. This is just me, taking in what happened while you’re out of commission."

The guard turned to leave. Jack’s voice sounded through the comms. "Miss Militia? Let’s go."

There was a brief pause in the hallway.

"You’re not coming?" a girl asked.

A short answer. "She’s not ready."

"Good."

In the background, the gunfire raged.

"I should have expected this," Jack commented.

■

Jack had a gun. He had an idea who he’d shot. He pointed it at the guards and asked, "They’re not moving from their positions?"

"They’re staying where they are, so don’t worry about it," Bonesaw responded. "And my guys? There’s nobody they can hit."

Jack didn’t wait for an answer before he shot at Bonesaw. It didn’t hurt, but it served as a reminder. She’d done it with the same precision he’d done with the gun, and that was killing.

"Bonesaw and I are going," Jack said. "To check out the scene and see if anyone made any moves."

Drapetown stood. The streets crumbled into ruin, and everything else was slowly collapsing into it. Buildings came down in places nobody had ever been knocked into before.

Jack wasn’t about to stop and take cover while Dinah was being taken away. "We had better go. I’m going to take you over to take care of the injured and the sick that come after us. See you around."

"Thank you," Drapetown said. "You’ve been a friend."

That didn’t say much. He felt an uncomfortable flush, and there

======== SAMPLE 19 ========
 for the job.

They reached the front door. It marked the entrance to the school, and was in ruins. The paint wasn’t nearly as thick as it should have been, and the bricks and board had rotted away. The carpet had been stripped off, and it hadn’t been the same carpet I’d seen in the basement, where I’d been trapped. This was the actual school. A dilapidated building with no roof, no running water. The school was mostly vacant, except for one small section that had been turned into an art studio. A lone student’s head hung out, a little dazed as she looked at the empty space.

We all knew in advance that we’d get separated. It was the nature of the job, and the nature of the job was that there were people out there who had jobs, lives, careers and families they couldn’t contribute to. I thought of how I’d seen the other Undersiders in my short time in Brockton Bay, how Lisa had been a wreck. Lisa had had a life.

But I was happy to leave them be. The rest of us had our tasks.

■

Friday, January 25th, 2009, 11:08



It’s like a dream come true, Taylor Hebert. This is it; it’s not the last day of my life. I have the key to the building, it is unlocked, and I have access to everyone else’s stuff. I can ask to take anything and leave anything. I’ve got a spare bedroom, some bathroom and closet space upstairs, and more storage spaces upstairs to round out my outfit. I mean, at least, it is what I wanted. My costume and its associated gear is pretty standard for a costume of this basic size. I wore the white dress and a loose black jacket over a length of metal. I hadn’t planned on wearing a mask, but the metal frame around my eye had a light gray tint, making it a little harder to see without it, and the light gray panels in the armor of my costume made for good reflections.

I was wearing my original uniform, and was about to change into the clothes I’d had on the day I was arrested when I noticed that my right arm was broken. I thought maybe someone had dropped it as I’d done the bulk of the work on putting it on as I’d planned. Still, I didn’t feel worried. It was like it would be just a little worse with the new skin.

As odd as it was, my right hand got hit pretty hard, and I didn’t have any kind of gauze on my costume where it should have been easy to catch the bleeding. I thought maybe I’d be okay, then got a little worried. It didn’t feel like they’d hit that hard. Was it just that I was hurt and it looked hard? Did they get caught off guard by my costume? Whatever the answer was, I don’t think any of us were able to stop them.

I could only guess, but at what point did a superhero come into play?

We were arriving at the PRT headquarters on time, I might add, but at the same time, that was only because we were supposed to. We arrived before dawn, and the PRT was already in progress. The building wasn’t in terrible shape, as far as I could tell, but one wall of the building didn’t quite stay straight, as each of the sections of the building had been reinforced over the course of the summer. There was one section that didn’t completely follow the general shape of the rest of the building, where the brickwork and plasterwork weren’t properly reinforced for the construction season, and the cracks that marked the cracks where the concrete and plaster were failing were present and accounted for.

The building was a little more interesting than the rest of PRT headquarters. It had a garage, the interior of which had been modified to resemble a mini-dungeon, with a set of double doors and two massive blast doors that I wasn’t terribly familiar with and a revolving carousel with a hundred metal carts. It was surrounded by steel doors, and the interior had an area that was set against the wall of the garage, so it was a nice distance from any of the main floor.

We stepped into the basement and proceeded down two flights of stairs. There were two smaller rooms with a small library and training facility. In one, there was a small desk with an oversized mouse sitting on it. The mouse was on a chain, which reminded me of my earlier thought on the mouse.

I thought on it, and decided that the mouse deserved a name. No, he

======== SAMPLE 20 ========
 for the group. The bugs were the only things still, and they were only a part of it.

She stood by the front door, then stopped short as she looked inside. The house was still on the corner, but the interior had changed. The bedding had been removed, and the carpet was dark red with the faint smell of fresh food. There were no windows or open spaces in the front yard. There was a small garden in front, but it was all burned orange, with only occasional small trees or shrubs standing. A houseplant had sprouted from the base of the mailbox, just below the front door. She had no doubt guessed this one would be here before.

When she spoke, her voice came from her own throat and not her partner’s. "That’ll do. Come on. It’s not important that you leave. What I’m after are your tools. You’ve got your dog’s life, and we can’t leave it as it’s right now. I’ve put some money in there, and I want this done as soon as possible."

The dogs moved their heads around a bit. She smiled, looking at them. "The deal I’m offering you is going to require you to use what I’m paying for. If I had another two seconds with you, I’d give you the whole neighborhood."

There was no reply, no question, only more paperwork and paperwork and more paperwork…

She sighed, "I’m offering you a deal. I’m asking you to walk away, if you’ve got more than half the neighborhood you want."

They glanced over their shoulder at the building before them, then began walking with a brisk run. She let out a slow breath. "I just got back."

"Want to come inside?" The Dog Protector approached a little ways in the back. The other three were already gone.

She was still uncomfortable around them. So much information to wrap her head around.

"I don’t have anything to offer," she said. Her heart sank.

"You’ve got money, right? We can give it to you, help you out. If you need something, or if-"

She shook her head. "No. It’s not that."

"Right. And you can go."

"I can’t leave them behind." She nodded and walked away.

"Wait, so that’s what’s going to happen? There’s a trap there?"

"No," she said. She let her dog follow her as she returned to the front door. "There are no traps."

"But if we’re wrong?"

"No. No traps."

As she gathered up her papers, she saw him in his human shape sitting on the front steps.

She nodded at him again. Then, behind a corner, she whispered, "There’s a way you won’t get your hands on everything you need."

His expression split, then he nodded. "A way or something we can use, before this place is all the way done, before we come inside."

"Thank you," she said.

■

"I’m just going to go inside, to check everything is okay," the first aid kit girl said.

"You’re going to do yourself a favor?" the young Doctor asked. "And if you do it with the help of other people-"

"No. Your first aid stuff is good."

"You say that right. The first aid stuff I don’t use, I know you already. I would rather not have this little girl in my care. We’re going to have to talk, maybe some of the others."

"They’re not exactly friends."

"What?"

"You’re going to start doing this thing you’re talking about?"

"What?" "You want to use my hands."

"It won’t be easy."

When she turned her back to the Doctor, it was just the Doctor and the girl, the Doctor giving the woman a hand. "The girl will stay here. You leave? Find a place. I have some ideas."

"The Doctor?"

"We’ve had some good conversations and we’re going to continue them, because we’ve got a lot of bad ones to sort out. Let’s see… I go out there and I guess we go to the man at the far end of the street with no problem."

"Can you find a place?"

"If

======== SAMPLE 21 ========
 for the first half of the night. A man and a woman ran upstairs after Coil, and Coil pulled them out into the hallway. He let out a long string of unintelligible wordless screams, not quite comprehensible, and then he pulled his arms back.

"You’re going to make this easy," he told the man and woman, and he took the advantage of the pause to do it, making his sound as if he was holding a match pressed to his lips, trying to imitate a firecracker, "Give me your number, and I’m going to give you the number on my phone. You want any? I got them."

The man and woman looked like they were going to argue, but then Coil was out of earshot, and they began debating just how quickly we would be able to catch on and stop him.

"Fuck you, bitch," the woman started, but he silenced her in a way that suggested he’d heard her. She looked like she was going to faint if he didn’t pay attention to her.

"I’m glad you got the number," Coil said, his voice soft. "Do you know this one?"

"No," the woman shook her head.

"Oh, I knew it," Coil said. "I thought you did too. Can you give me the number? Hell, give your number to any of us."

The woman had a look in her eyes, but she looked over at the man, "No."

"Come on," Coil said. "Give my number to anybody else and we’ll be able to track you down and stop you before you do any damage."

"I’m not sure a fucking minute it’ll take me to get you a cell phone," the woman said.

Coil sighed, "The deal with Coil has been done, he’s made a deal with you. We’re not going to force you to get the number, but you need to understand I’d rather you got a cell phone than not."

The woman raised her eyes from the phone to the ground. Maybe she was about to scream.

"I can’t give you the number," Coil said, "And I can’t give anyone the number."

"I know Coil," the woman said, "But I want us to take you into custody."

Coil turned and walked back up the side of the stairwell until he was directly behind the woman.

"We should talk this through tomorrow."

"Yeah," the woman said.

■

There were too many.

The building had been put on blast after Shatterbird had made contact with our world.

It wasn’t the first time the city had gotten that kind of treatment. It had been a way of managing things, a way of managing the people, with people being relocated more for their own sake than because it was necessary. If they had been killed in a fight, they had been killed in the hope that they would be the next casualties.

I was a little late. We had the opportunity to look over the previous night’s work. People had already started moving indoors, construction finished, but there had been so much that had gone on already, it hadn’t felt like a chore.

It had been a lot of dead weight, but we managed to sort through most of it anyway, and pulled the remaining pieces together by the time we made our way upstairs.

Coil and I were the first people into his office. A group of capes had already gathered outside. Eidolon, Panacea, Glory Girl, Triumph, Kid Win, Labyrinth…

"I’m surprised your name isn’t Eidolon or Panacea," Coil commented.

"I’m Eidolon. I have a reputation for being a little off," Eidolon said, his voice a growl, but he ignored the others for the moment. His power let him create force fields, and when he’d started doing that with his creations, people had noticed.

"We know who you are," Coil said. "We’re glad to find you here."

Eidolon didn’t answer him, instead turning his attention to the group waiting outside. He held out his palm towards them, and a forcefield started to form around the group’s individual bodies. The same principle that had produced the forcefield around Dragon’s group was working to seal it away.

"I don’t know what my power does, exactly," he pointed out, "But I can give you my power, and it gives me a sense of where my power is. When I get my power, and I have

======== SAMPLE 22 ========
 for a brief moment, I was reminded of what I’d heard from my dad. He’d been close to Lung, too, but he was the one who had let Skidmark bite that throat before we could get help, back when Lung had been the leader of the group. I got the impression that Skidmark was similarly reticent about using his influence on kids these days, lest they set his children against another group or make trouble for themselves.

Then again, maybe he still felt that way, after so many tries with kids under his wing, a little too much, too many times…

I opened my eyes, but was told not to look up. The doctor was going through my file to locate the files with more information.

"I’ve heard, written and spoken in on this same subject, but this is the first time that I’ve truly had to confront a patient, to talk to a patient on this subject. This is the first time I’ve really had a chance to get my hands on you."

I nodded slowly.

"I- I think I might have found you if I didn’t meet you in person. I hope I don’t give you a headache. Let’s have a look inside."

I didn’t protest – I was pretty sure I didn’t want to. My eyes shut without even looking at the monitor, the video already gone. My dad was only halfway through the procedure.

"I’m not a doctor, at least not in the broadest sense. This isn’t a diagnostic or surgical evaluation, or anything like that. I’ve only worked with parahumans, heroes and villains, and this is something that goes on behind the scenes. I don’t know what you’re going through, because I can’t ask, but I want to understand it to see if I can find my way to that part of things the patient is going through."

"That doesn’t even touch on the bigger issues we’ve all been dealing with, Taylor."

"If it helps, can I look away? How many nights and nights of nights of nights ago had my thoughts been about Taylor?"

"You could take some time."

"I wasn’t looking to sit through another five-minute process," I answered.

"What? Four minutes? You just interrupted because two minutes passed and you wanted to ask a question about the process-"

I had a little bit of a headache. Better late than never.

After the doctor checked me out and I gave my brief, impish greetings, he turned his attention back to me. "Let’s take a break, then we’ll be right back."

I didn’t have a chance to explain what a break was, before he began his usual rundown of the steps involved with a case of terminal bladder cancer.





Buzz 7.1


I could sense my dad in the next room of the hospital. I felt a moment’s trepidation, and when he turned his eyes to me, I saw that I had a pretty bad headache. I knew the headaches wouldn’t disappear with the necessary time to rest, but I didn’t feel much better when I took a break from trying to figure out exactly what he was talking about.

My dad wasn’t wearing any hospital scrubs. That said, his skin was scabbed raw and he was covered in a brown haze that was dripping down from his eyes and across his mouth. His mouth was open at the moment my dad started tapping a finger on the corner of his mouth with a mallet to help keep him steady.

My dad had two sets of braid on his face, one on each of his upper arms and lower legs. I doubted he even needed the extra help.

He looked up at me, "Taylor. I met the doctors in charge. You were in the ICU last night?"

"Yes," I said, carefully. I knew my dad was checking each of the medical files for obvious, glaring flaws, and that he was checking for stuff that wouldn’t work, things that might even have gone wrong with Coil. "I didn’t make things out the way Coil described."

"I can hear it. He was in there with you?"

It was a hard question to answer without giving the wrong answers. "I can hear it, but I don’t think I really feel it." It wasn’t so unusual to find myself thinking that things were getting clearer and that my dad was getting more distant as I shifted my weight from one ankle to the other, but having no real conversation going in a logical direction was something

======== SAMPLE 23 ========
 for the first time," I said. "And I’m not sure just how much you can know about those things, and how it all fits together."

"What do you mean?" Tattletale asked. "I feel like I’m getting less and less informed. Less and less involved in the whole cape thing, and I’ve kind of given up. And maybe a little while ago, I was really excited about it."

"Maybe," I said.

"We could talk about it," Tattletale said, "Now."





Sting 27.8


I didn’t have any real plans, and I’d already decided to get started before I had anything to say about them. I took my time entering, and I stopped by the front desk. A number of people were waiting, and it made one small, but noticeable, difference in the amount of people who were already present. There were tables set out with chairs and a small tv in them, and people were already setting up on the far end of one table. It was more people than there might be in a large group of people in a group bathroom, and if I’d been sitting down that way, I would have fallen flat on my face.

There were at least two people I knew from school. I approached the guy who looked like a senior, and knocked on the door of the office.

"No answer," I said.

The man looked shocked.

I walked up to the door, and I heard the click of a key. The door opened a bit.

The man and his friend stood in shock as I entered, and for a moment, I thought they were going to rip at their jeans or get punched in the nose while I was there. I was glad for the disguise, I felt a little betrayed. They took the time to put their phones away and hold their hands in their pockets.

"I was just going to talk to Miss Militia," I said, as I glanced around for the reception desk, "She’s on site."

"You’re in costume?" he asked.

"Yeah. I guess it’s just a question of whether we meet her or not."

"You’ve had the Protectorate all to yourselves," he said.

"Maybe not all of us, but I’ve certainly received help," I said.

"You’re going to help Coil?"

Okay. Coil was going to figure out our intentions here, and now the heroes were just going to get hurt or killed. "Tattletale found a way around your Endbringer curfew. Tattletale has given me the details on how she’s bypassed our anti-vandal laws. I have every reason to believe the Protectorate could step in and stop Coil as soon as today."

"The Protectorate is too far away?"

"The Protectorate in Brockton Bay. I suspect that’s where Coil is holed up, probably still in costume, though with more muscle and weapons at his disposal. I can’t be sure, but I can check out the records at the bank and newspaper accounts I already know he hasn’t set up shop for a while. There’s a reason he hasn’t set up shop for five years if the odds are he’s at the bank or the newspaper. So this is about the local heroes, and it’s the least bad option."

"That’s crazy talk," the guy from the front desk said.

"Right," Tattletale said. "So this is our real option. Help Coil."

There were murmurs of agreement. I left them sitting down on two couches, but they didn’t argue with Tattletale. The two students from Brockton Bay were just as curious as they were when Tattletale started talking about Coil. In terms of the overall situation, the heroes were better off with Coil. He was playing favorites, and the heroes were a little too willing.

"Coil’s a big dude," I said, and the response was a bit hollow.

Tattletale was already getting down from her stool. She was getting ready to walk through to the reception desk, and then looked at me, "You wanna talk."

"Talk to Weaver," I said. "We can go now. I can tell Coil he’s probably not doing anything wrong here, and I’d expect that from him."

"Okay," she said. "I think I want to meet Armsmaster."

"We’re here because he’s the head of the Protectorate," I said.

She looked around for a second, then

======== SAMPLE 24 ========
 for a small chance of catching the eye of a major player in a game that had reached a critical point."

"We’d better do it." I spoke, putting as much emphasis as I could put on it.

"Not an option," Tecton said.

"We have the advantage of power. If we can find someone, it’s going to be good. If-"

"No," Tecton said, looking at me. "I take that as my signal. All three of them."

"We," Imp said, looking at the crowd. She was the closest, but the others had been making noise as they approached.

We’d found out where Noelle was. "Crawler?"

There were a fair amount of chuckles in response. Was she mocking us? Had someone noticed Tecton’s snarling?

Regent laughed, but he made it worse, "A joke?"

"Nah," Imp said. "But she did notice us. Tagg has the numbers."

"Not exactly… but he might be able to change it up, given enough time. If my power is right."

"He was the one who came into the city, then," Tecton said, "Before Noelle, in other words."

"We have to," Tattletale said. "Not just the heroes here."

"I don’t think we have a choice. You were here for a reason, Tattletale," Grue said, "And I know you’re close, I can count on my arms. And now you’ve decided on a way to punish them?"

"I’ve considered punishment before," Tattletale said.

"Can I make one thing crystal clear, without changing how it’s supposed to play out?"

"You’ll be able to do better than this. We’re good enough that the people in charge expect us to make some sacrifices. They won’t be the kinds you’ve made here. The kind you’ve made elsewhere. I think the number of people here is going to be pretty damn high enough in light of the stakes to take it out of us, to put it on your shoulders. You can help, and you can stop the Slaughterhouse Nine, but you can’t stop Scion. I’m saying this."

Spitfire’s face turned red, and her hands shook violently as she pushed one outstretched finger at the hand of another.

Buckwheat looked at us, but the man with the goggles didn’t turn away from the crowd. His eyes were glowing like starlight, and he offered a low grunt at his reaction to the gesture.

She pushed a girl who was clutching her arm. She wasn’t fast enough that it was going to matter.

"The last time these guys were here, I had to kick one of them," Grue said. "And it’s not worth the pain to kick this one any further."

"That’s not the issue," Tattletale said. "It’s this. What we do here. Where do you stand?"

We couldn’t do as much harm as was necessary, and we could probably do more harm than we’d put to good use. But we could be more effective than we were.

"I’m in the front lines. I’m the only one here with a body armor and guns," Revel said. She was talking to Tattletale, her eyes glowing, moving so her arm was pointing at the crowd. She shouted, "Go!"

The hand of a girl reached through the front of the crowd, moving to attack Buckwheat with a claw. He staggered and turned away.

"Can you use your power on him?" Regent asked.

"Yes. With a touch. But his arm is stronger."

"So we take the best of the two," Grue said, adding his voice to the crowd’s. "You and me?"

Nobody responded.

"Right. Tagg wants the Undersiders on his side. What do you guys think? Can you see the situation?"

Cuff. "You think he’ll die before all of us die?"

I couldn’t see everything, but I could see the Undersiders.

"Yes, we can put him down. If I can reach my other dogs, I could take him out. But I don’t trust the other dogs."

Foil’s voice chimed in. "Shatterbird’s power?"

"You won’

======== SAMPLE 25 ========
 for a lot of money."

"Why?" Lisa asked. She shrugged, "My dad is working on getting this situation resolved. I want to look after all of the little ones right now, while I go to school."

"I don’t want to leave you to pick up the slack," Alec said.

"You’re asking me to take care of a group of people who I don’t know. This is a dangerous mission, and we do it well-before we know all of this. It’s unfair of me to expect you to fill that need," Lisa said, her head tilting down to look down at her plate. Alec shrugged nervously, then made a small laugh, "It’s kind of creepy, getting food on camera while I have a stomach ache."

They all looked at him as if to say, "Yeah," but no sign of an agreement. Alec shrugged, "What am I supposed to do, here? My dad might be interested in taking a look at this, and his power isn’t doing me much good if he figures out I’m undercover. You guys aren’t talking about taking down the Nine, are we? What do you have to gain?"

Lisa raised a hand to stop Alec from speaking. With her back to Alec, the girl didn’t even have to lift her head to look up at Alec.

"There’s always something," Lisa said. "And if we all run, the Protectorate might not even show."

"It depends on the Protectorate," Alec said.

"We don’t really have a chance here," a girl said. Alec wasn’t sure she was really there. Could he trust the people around him?

"There’s another option," Alec said. "The PRT. The Protectorate runs off whatever money we need and buys us stuff, and I’d be willing to help fill in the gaps."

"You think?"

"I’m not here to ask for help," Alec said.

"Is your power bad?" Alec asked. "Bad for the people on our team?"

Alec shook his head. "There’s way too many of us, and the way my power works, everyone has a sort of power that they use to get a greater range out of me. It only works if I’m close enough. If I can get farther away, I reach people faster. I can go for hours without food or rest if I need to. I’ve never been outside, and we’ve only had the dogs for a few days, but… it only works if everyone is in sync, if everyone is in the right zone."

"I know that," Alec said, staring in wonderment. "But your power is… isn’t it too much for just those two of us to do? I mean, this is the sort of thing that gets your attention, that’s why we’re here." Alec leaned forward, elbows on the table.

"Alec, we don’t have time for this," Lisa said. "We can stop."

"Stop is… not possible in two minutes."

The PRT had gathered their group, and were waiting for Alec to speak. His voice had gone stiff.

"You… think?" Lisa pointed at the ground, and Alec couldn’t help but blink.

Lisa paused, "I have a solution that might work. And Alec?"

I didn’t have a more direct answer for her, so I used a smaller subliminal, subtler method to ask. "You said your dad thinks you should join the group?"

Lisa frowned slightly. "I would have guessed he would. But I guess he’s different here."

Alec nodded slowly. "So if I don’t get my wish, and I get my power for a more indirect way, does that mean I can stop this before it happens?"

Lisa shook her head.

"Why the hell didn’t you say a word?" Alec asked.

"We’re on the same side," Lisa answered him. She shifted position in her chair, and a pile of papers appeared under her feet. "He likes a challenge."

Alec leaned forward, staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide.

As far as I could tell, Lisa didn’t even react from how she’d been sitting in her chair.

"You’re going to have to try this out for yourself, Alec," Lisa said.

Alec nodded slowly.

The pile of papers was more like a giant black lump than anything else. Alec opened


======== SAMPLE 1 ========
, and it doesn’t do me any good if I can’t share this with you."

"If she were dead, I don’t know how long the paramedics would be able to get to her."

"You wouldn’t," I admitted. "But you’ll give her the best care you can. And I’m willing to pay the price to show you that."

"You’ll just lose us the subject of tomorrow’s topic."

"We’ll find out. You guys get back to work tonight, and we’ll start planning tomorrow night’s battle."

Taylor frowned, as if she couldn’t fathom what that conversation meant, and yet she was still taking it. I was at her mercy.





Hive 5.6


"You’re giving orders to Miss Militia?" I asked.

"She’s my commander," Taylor said. "I’ll give her the okay, let her know what we’re doing, and she’ll give me the go-ahead for every cape in her area to make an attack. I might want to keep you updated on the status of anyone we’ve captured, so you know when to expect another attack."

"A lot of pressure on you, Taylor."

I chuckled a little and pointed at Tagg and his gang-mates. Everyone in the building groaned.

"Yeah," Amy said, as she raised her head to look at me.

"It’s like you’re in charge and everyone else is subordinate," I said. "Which is why we’re here, we’re trying to help you guys. You guys are too smart for this. But I’m not a submissive kind of ‘slave’, and you aren’t either. You’re supposed to fight. Which is why you’re in power, and why I’m making this effort. Every other cape I’m looking after doesn’t. They’re obedient, not brave. You’re going to get them right out of my face, and I’m going to make you answer for it."

"But-"

"You take Tagg’s position. You tell him Alexandria wasn’t a hero."

Tagg shrugged. There was a hint of irritation in his posture.

I leaned forward and kissed the top of his head, then parted our mouths. Tagg didn’t have the heart to protest, and we stayed like that for a few long moments.

"Look at things from a different perspective," I told her. "It’s your business. You’re going to follow through on what you said I couldn’t. But if you’re going to sit on the sidelines or take any action while I lead the fight, you need to start doing your job. Make sure people are taken care of, that people aren’t going to be hurt or killed just because of your efforts."

"That’s not what I’m doing," he said. When I told him. I was still biting his lip.

That wasn’t a situation we wanted, but maybe it would be kind to the capes? I sighed.

"Let’s not kid ourselves," I said.

"What?"

"When the war starts, I’ll be there. I’ll make sure everything’s done as it should be."

"And if it doesn’t?"

With that in mind, I gave Tagg a curious look. Was I signaling him with my silence? Was he too focused on the frontlines? We don’t have that many of our own, do we?

"What happened to your team at the train stop?"

"The Endbringer attacked," Taylor said. "We got in a fight, and we were wiped out. I just got back from a week on the road. We couldn’t go back to the way we were because of it."

"This isn’t the sort of situation you’d be worried about," I said.

"That kind of thing gets to other people. I’m not good at it. I can’t let myself do that. If you want to ask, you let me know."

I was a little caught off guard, but I didn’t get frustrated over not having a more definitive answer. I just got caught up in how she was doing what she was doing. Making people do what she wanted, knowing that it was only in retrospect that she wasn’

======== SAMPLE 2 ========
, but that was in comparison to where we were on paper.

We weren’t quite on the same page on everything. I had my priorities, and my job was to figure out who I needed to be working with, how and why. The way I was structured right now wasn’t exactly up for debate.

I looked to Behemoth. A monster who sprawl out of reach of any conventional attacks. I’d seen him fight Leviathan. I was aware of how he moved. His limbs were talons of a scythe, his upper body was covered in impenetrable plates of plates of the same weapon. Even in his head, the edges of his head, back and throat were a single piece of metal.

The only reason he could move at all, I was left to figure out after seeing him for myself. He didn’t have body armor, didn’t have any special features that would protect his midsection. He was the kind of creature who got eaten alive with knives and axes.

Aisha’s mom had been gunned down in the line of duty. My mom had come from my church to help me. My dad had given his all, going to the ends of the earth to help people. I felt like I had to be more heroic than I felt right now. Even if I was justified in being heroic. I looked at the man, and he had pale skin tanned by the sun, a beard that hung just to his shoulders and shoulders, and a scar on his forehead from when I’d been going up against Alexandria and the Slaughterhouse Nine.

He carried a weapon, and it didn’t look like he was packing much. Not a weapon that had come in the original package. Something more versatile.

I looked around. Where I’d had a group of people to form a defensive line between me and Behemoth, I’d had this.

My teammates around me, they were all in costume. Not just Eidolon, Atlas, Flechette and Myrddin. There were five clones of me, with a team of two clones of each, plus a fifth who was only in the group’s imagination, having only been created for the fight against the Nine’s leader.

Four of them fought Behemoth, and that was not because they were mercenaries or because they had access to any special tactics. The four that fought were pure intimidation, all about keeping other people on their toes.

Tattletale was a copy of me, and was the only clone that we didn’t make the whole ‘she’ thing to ourselves, so to speak. There was the potential for an argument about the ‘she’ to be able to see what I was up to, because she wasn’t as comfortable out of costume. I didn’t see any point in trying to stop her, but if she got the impression that she could be hurt, the clones would be on her case. Another possibility was that she thought she could use the clones’s perception and reflexes to protect herself without actually physically shielding herself against the threat of the clones.

Eidolon and Flechette were pure telekinesis powers. Eidolon was a copy of me, though I didn’t use it. Flechette was telekinetic.

Trickster was a copy of me, only I needed to touch him for the effect to have an endpoint.

Regent was a power that would let me change direction.

Blasto was another power that let me alter my direction.

I didn’t really have all that much of a grasp on the details the way I was going. To get my feet under me quickly, I was going to have to rely on instincts from those who had already started in the form of thinking about how things would play out, and instincts from the people around me. If I didn’t have my bugs, I’d have to rely on instinct from the people I was keeping close. If I didn’t have my bugs, then I couldn’t communicate and coordinate with them.

Elevating my head up above the street meant I had to figure out what to do with the bugs. I’d used the bugs to see how Behemoth had started up, so I knew what to look for.

The thing about the way the buildings were arranged was that they forced one thing at me and it forced it on me. The first time I’d had a sense of where I was going and I’d thought I’d been unlucky. It had left me feeling really angry and frustrated at the conclusion of my day. The anger wasn’t like there wasn’t anything I could do, but it had been with me being

======== SAMPLE 3 ========
, a small smile on her face as she smiled back. They’d finally found someone they could care about. Taylor Hebert, they’d found their next saviour.

■

The others entered as the massive figures emerged from the darkness. Clockblocker, Genesis, Chevalier, Triumph, Flechette and Flechette.

The figure stopped midway through the tunnel and shifted position once more before continuing down the length of the complex underground.

Clockblocker approached his partner, his face twisted in an angry expression. It was so out of place, it was almost perverse, but he’d seen the expression from a long time ago. No doubt a reflection of some painful past, a reminder of how that emotion had affected them when the other members of their faction had found them wanting and turned on them.

And now? Now he was here, alone. His partner, he said something, and Clockblocker couldn’t make it out.

It was like stepping into an incredibly unpleasant childhood memory, he realized.

He turned and smiled slightly, and it was only a reminder of how it had come across to him. It wasn’t enough, not the thing they were about to share.

■

The figure stopped short of the center, just before the doors began opening.

Flechette.

Her gun was loaded.

"What-" Triumph gasped, "What’s it worth?"

Flechette had her shoulder pressed to his chest, the fingers holding the trigger, thumb and forefinger working in tandem. She raised one foot and pressed it to Triumph’s collarbone. "It’s not worth the trouble, but we’ll resolve my business with this. What do you think?"

He tried again. "You’re joking."

"It’s dangerous, you know. We aren’t close. We wouldn’t be if we were on the opposite side of this thing. So if it’s funny to you, maybe you should watch your step. Maybe I should too. We’re in another world, after all."

"No fucking way. You’re threatening us, and we’re not armed."

"I’m not threatening you. I was just saying, if you had to make a call on whether you’d kill me, and I’d been an enemy soldier, I don’t think you’d kill me, even with my power… but if I was an ally? If you had to kill me, I wouldn’t care."

"You hate me?"

"You’re the type to be afraid of the unknown."

"You’re not interested in a peaceful solution!" Triumph spat the words. "I’d be interested in a peaceful solution!"

"I’m asking you something, boy," Flechette told him.

His head snapped around to face her. "You’re a villain. Of course. Of course! You kill people because they’re unimportant. You’re the reason things haven’t got better since the Endbringer came! You’re the reason people aren’t better, now!"

"It hurts," Triumph rasped the words, "Because my people deserve to live, because if they’re not better than we are, we should hope they’re better than they’re. I don’t want to go to any more worlds, where they’re worse than we are. But they’re worse because of me!"

"It’s true," Flechette answered him.

"The world’s worse because of me!" Triumph shouted, still in his chair, the gun in his hand. "No! No, it’s not true! I’m not that type! It’s not about the world improving for my people or my group. It’s about us fucking getting worse as a group!"

"You should be very scared," Flechette said.

"Yeah! And you’re asking me to do something I don’t want to do. To stop you!"

"Stop me!"

She slammed the door behind her, locking it. "Stop! You do not deserve to-"

"I’m asking you an obvious question," Triumph cut the interruption in with one word.

"I’m asking you an obvious question!" She raised one fist, glaring at him. Then with a growl, she holstered the gun.

His head snapped around to face her. She didn’t budge an inch,

======== SAMPLE 4 ========
, one leg attached to his elbow and the other knee jointed behind his back, his hands clasped behind his back.

The cape I had not seen wore a suit of armor, having been repurposed over a span of thirty years. The cape I had seen wore a uniform that covered the upper half of his body, over the chest, arms and the like. It would have been red or black, but it left me less certain. The cloth was thick, the design was stylized, and the design itself was a monochrome image. The only thing that could take the black of the uniform and make it dark was a black costume. It would be hard to tie into any particular pattern, and black would look out of place regardless.

If I’d known about the power before coming here, I might have asked questions to get the details on where powers came from, how and why people got powers in the first place. I’d ask questions to get specific information on powers and ask why people got powers in the first place. I wanted to know who these people were, why they became villains and what kind of people they were.

The cape I had not seen wore only his hat, but the ‘capes are not to be confused with the parahumans.’ symbol appeared across his chest. ‘Capes are not to be confused with the ‘powers’ ‘



I was left wondering how I would feel if I finally got the chance to fight them.

In a way, I felt pretty confident I would win. My fight with Dinah was going well, even if I hadn’t yet fought them. I still had the weapons I’d had him fix and enough raw strength to do some damage. I had the knowledge I’d picked up in the past months and years.

It was a fight between two different kinds of heroes.

The cape I had not seen wore only his hat, but the ‘capes are not to be confused with the parahumans.’ symbol appeared across his chest. ‘Capes are not to be confused with the ‘powers’.

He’d gone easy on the PRT. His costume and mask were exactly how I’d seen Parian wearing it, with the addition of a green visor that covered most of his face, but that wasn’t it. He wore a green robe and was sporting dark brown shoes that looked like they had just been rained on. He had a mask like the one I’d seen in Alexandria, but covered up with a robe instead of mask. A short horned helmet with an upside-down star in the midst of the top of it was engraved with a stylized ‘S’.

He’d gone easy on me. In a city like Brockton Bay, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d had to do more than get offed by that guy that was wearing the mask.

He’d been in a position where he could use his power, he’d had friends, and the people in his territory were all either heroes or people who went out of their way to help others.

He was one of the kind who would go easy on me. He was one of the kind who would use his power on others. The people who relied on him, the ones who depended on him most in particular situations, those groups he gravitated towards when there was more blood on his hands. People who had made up their minds about what they’d do.

It wasn’t much of an adjustment. But I’d only spent two minutes sparring against one of them. For much the same reason I’d been having trouble remembering to do homework before leaving school, I was having trouble grasping what he was doing.

He made his move. He made his way towards my teammates.





Interlude 24


"What the hell!?"

"What the hell!?"

"This is the sort of thing you make excuses for yourself, after you’re found guilty. I mean, fuck it! The guy is big and mean! Fuck it! Let’s go!"

Trouble?

The kid was the size of a mountain goat, the head snouts reaching into the side of its neck. A goat could have carried that, but a boy wasn’t so graceful. A short tail marked the point where its body parted at the middle, its broad shoulders supporting the shorter head. Its legs, large by boy standards, extended beyond its thighs, and the tail, long enough that it rested on its sides, was tipped with a sharp horn that stuck out of the top of its head. The horns extended down the length of its body, and

======== SAMPLE 5 ========
, the man behind her, and the two men who were hurrying after me.

They were a young, thin Asian-looking guy and a young, thin Asian woman. My attention fell on their bodies, just to make sure they weren’t tricking me.

I thought of how I’d barely touched the pavement, and how it had smelled as if someone had doused me in gasoline and let it all out. It was all I could do to not care about the smell and focus on what my bugs were doing.

The woman was yelling something. I could see how her fingers and hand were shaking. She was going up against the man that had held her back.

No fucking way I could lose here.

A forcefield of flesh with four arms emerged from the man behind the woman.

And a forcefield of flesh, three times as tall erupted from the woman’s chest and then began moving towards me, four times as far as I was tall, moving with enough speed that I might be out of sight in a matter of minutes.

He was hitting me!

I moved out of range before he had a chance to get a grip on me.

It was as good a chance as any of everything.

I had my bugs. I had the right bugs to form the right range. I could fly, I’d been trained. It was just a question of getting the right spiders and building enough of a wall.

I found a spider, found a large enough orb to form a web around, and I landed in the right spot to catch the spider’s web into place between my legs.

I’d used spiders to build a small raft, now I had to construct a bigger thing.

I’m not good at being on top of life.

A forcefield of flesh appeared in the shape of a figure eight, and it drew a line in the side of my opponent’s back and into the spider’s web.

The spider collapsed in on the other side of the web, drawing in more silk, but the forcefield held and kept it stable, no longer vulnerable to the attacks of the spider.

The forcefield extended further still, and I could feel the inertia it created as the web was pulled into place by the spider and pulled in as it went around the forcefield. My opponent didn’t even react.

It was only a fraction of a second away before the web began to tear away from the web I’d constructed. I tensed, hoping the movement would cause the gravity to tear off enough from the web that the web would tear free. It didn’t. It just continued growing on the ground beneath me, taut, a hundred and fifty or a hundred and fifty thousand times the mass it should be.

I was able to maintain the web in place, but it would tear as it was pulled in and torn free, leaving me dangling. I would have floated free if the spider hadn’t been so large around the perimeter where the web wasn’t completely severed.

The gravity knife? Had it only taken a dozen blows?

I didn’t have enough spiders to build the raft. I had to find a bigger target. A woman. No. Not the woman with the scarf, the one with the scarf I’d seen at the train station.

Her head hung, my swarm couldn’t see through the gap to her lower face. Her hair, the fabric over her shoulders, she wore a scarf over her entire body, and the cloth that covered the backs of every limb, as well as the soles of her boots, was a simple black-painted black with white lettering that made it almost look like a tattoo.

As if she’d asked me to kill, in a more intimate way, I had to kill.

I pulled myself up onto her back, nearly falling on it. She managed to keep it in place with her hands, but I couldn’t. The silk didn’t hold. I was pushed down, landed on my back, and toppled. My thoughts were scattered.

In the moments before I could react, I thought of what Coil had said. "You could have died."

"I’m sorry," she said.

"Are you? Are you strong enough to walk again? To run?" I asked.

"I can," she spoke, her voice heavy with emotion. It came out shaky, "I can walk. I love this city, and I love this country. I’ll never leave it. I’ll never leave this city. I’ll be standing here when the world ends."

Not that there really would be any time to get used to that

======== SAMPLE 6 ========
, a little disorienting, but I didn’t feel like I was about to fall to the ground or slip into unconsciousness.

"You’re back?" he asked. He tried to lean across, and I pushed him instead.

"Yeah," I lied. My body was caught between him and my neck, and he was holding onto me with one arm, trying to keep me from falling over.

"That was unexpected, I should confess, but I’m glad I came back."

"It’s okay," I said. "You’re okay?"

He nodded. "Pretty much. I have to say. You were just a little rough, on the costume set."

I frowned and let my head rest against his chest. "No grudges. I’ll probably stick it out. Might not get in the way, but I don’t want to draw attention to the place. I’ll come back, but I’ll try to avoid making a scene."

He frowned, then frowned again. "You feel better, by the way. Better to be awake than asleep right now. Are you thinking? Or-"

"It’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s-"

"I get that. What am I supposed to do? It’s not like it’s going to get any better. Maybe you shouldn’t wake up?"

"It doesn’t matter," I said. If I don’t have to wake up, then I don’t need to. If I have to wake up, I’ll do it anyways.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Kind of."

"You’re not feeling fine," he said, "Maybe that’s normal. Don’t know. But you look like you could be dying. Maybe your chest hurt anyway. Maybe you haven’t been drinking enough? No idea."

"It’s not that bad," I answered.

"Good. Then why don’t we go get a blanket?"

"Just to sleep."

"Sure."

Two of us made our way upstairs, while I stayed in Room F.

"Okay," I told him.

He looked at me, shrugged. "We’ll find a bed to you in a minute, and I’ll try to get you back out of bed to make sure you don’t sleep any more."

"Okay."

That got me through the next few moments. I started making my way towards my room. I stopped at one of the beds that had been set aside for my bed.

"Room 205," I said, when I had my fingers crossed. My finger felt like it had the wrong grip, I had to hold on to the other hand to get it to move. I didn’t put much faith in my power. I was okay with bugs in the room, but I could have done without some. It was just a pain in the ass to get things sorted out.

I got myself settled in, and I found the covers to lay down on.

My room was neatly furnished. My bed had a mattress, a cushioning over the middle of the mattress, and a half sheet that looked to have holes through where the sheets had been ripped up. It smelled fresh. Clean.

I could feel the morning’s smells waft through the room. A faint smell of the flowers I’d picked. That might have been something in the air, but it was still there. I had to admit that the room smelled like the flowers had done some damage to the walls, and the furniture had a little stain where the furniture had been torn. There were pictures of flowers sitting on the edge of the bed, with a little girl lying on the couch and one arm wrapped around her legs. The pictures weren’t the prettiest, with barely a hundred or two hundred hairs growing between them, but that was the kind of taste I smelled as I woke up.

I was glad for the privacy. One of the big problems with living with people was the anxiety of being constantly up at night, unable to rest or even to lie back and take the day’s breaths. It was something to deal with, in a world where the world was a hell of a lot bigger than I was, or people were the size of you’d think.

"You’re awake," I said. I was wearing my costume. The only thing I had covered my body were my costume and my armor panels that covered it.

She snored. "Merry Christmas."

"My mistake," I replied, and the

======== SAMPLE 7 ========
, and then you’ll be able to ask questions. You’ll know me. I can find answers. I’ve seen what happens when things go wrong. I know you’ll be fine. You’ll be okay."

"If you say she doesn’t matter."

"If I say she does matter, and you can stop talking, right about now, because I don’t want you wasting any time. Get out of the way. We’re going. It’s too dangerous to stay here."

"We don’t have time for that. She’s just left the bathroom, past that one door that doesn’t exist, and I think we’re going home."

"No," Alexandria said.

"Just hurry. We’ll get you on a helicopter."

Alexandria made a beeline, but the helicopter never arrived. The passengers had made their way to a nearby field and unloaded the dog. They were loading it up and returning to London in a few hours, but they still had weeks and months.

■

It took time to track down the last pieces of the puzzle. There was no telling how the others would respond to their presence. Maybe they would be confused and lose their bearings. Maybe they would react violently, as Leviathan had. There was no telling. But they would be here. Somewhere, someway.

They had to find a way to communicate. No use leaving Behemoth to fight his way through the city, no point in having him chase them through the sky. They could do what they were doing now: destroy Behemoth. The only thing that mattered was finding him as they began their scheme.

The first stop – not necessarily the first place they should visit. They checked with numerous others. Some cities had no problems with animals, some cities had problems with rodents, some cities had problems with flying, some cities had problems with people. There was no single city that had problems everyone else had. Some cities had more problems in general. They might have made their way to another city for the rest of the road, for example, but they found a way to keep the car going.

The car was moving forward, but they didn’t want to disturb Leviathan. They pulled over and began discussing the best route.

Alexandria slowed as she saw the large reptile behind the wheel. A city-wide emergency response force was assembled, each of them trained in other things. Weapons were ready, and other capes were on standby.

Alexandria glanced over her shoulder. The city was being evacuated, and the car with Dragon and Legend inside was making a hard right and a hard left. They’d be the quickest. From Alexandria’s perspective, she could focus on the three things at hand, focusing on the cars as a whole. If her power gave her the ability to measure distances, she could look at each individual car, and the roads they traveled on. It would keep them clear of Behemoth, while she maintained a general sense of where the cars were going. If this was a city with plenty of buildings close together, it could keep him off of the streets where they weren’t traveling.

She thought of the emergency vehicles they’d need, the armored transports.

They slowed to stop where they stood, ready to move.

"There’s water on the roads," Alexandria said.

"It’s not that bad."

"It’s worse. It’s almost a five, and this storm is only getting worse. Cars are sliding under carports and into rivers, and water is rising in the streets."

"This storm’s the worst it’ll ever be," Legend said. "The coastline will dry out and crumble. New England will be left dry, and much of America is going to be left in a state."

Alexandria gave him a small whistle. "Any ideas? Any suggestions?"

"No. I think they’re looking at options in the Northeast," Legend said. "Could be worse."

"They’re looking at alternatives," Alexandria said, continuing, "But with our power, we have a hundred billion ways Behemoth can get us down. If he’s in a city, we’re safe. If he’s in somewhere inaccessible, he can still get us down."

"And if we’re in Brockton Bay?" Legend asked.

"We’re safe," Alexandria said. Her voice was normal for a teenage girl. Even with the costume she wore, which included the hood, it made Alexandria look more like a high school senior than a superhero. A little too comfortable in her pajamas. She

======== SAMPLE 8 ========
, but I have to ask, what are your thoughts on the topic of power? How do you view yourself?

I don’t have a lot of power. I think most would agree I’m doing my best. If I have powers, I won’t use it to its full potential. If it’s good, if it works, then that’s all I need.

But at the end of the day? The guy who’s sitting next to me? He doesn’t care about power. He cares about being cool. Being cool is supposed to work.

Why is he sitting there like he is? Does he need to look cool? Does he need to act cool?

It’s cool. I can look better. If he’s willing, I can look better, at least until some stupid reason he gives excuses for why he’s not cool, I’ll look even better for taking up the slack.

A lot of what’s good about us? The way he talks, he’s one of the last people you’d want to piss in. The way he looks at things? He’s the guy who’s looking through your mirror and judging you the way he does.

And he’s… well, maybe he’s one of the last people, but one of the guys you’d want to piss on a hot day.

The other two are… I dunno. Is he one on a lot of levels?

The other guy’s powers? Maybe? Probably.

You wouldn’t want to be the guy who was the butt of any jokes, huh?

No. It’s cool. I’ve had to weigh that up, try to think of the worst times to be the butt of a joke and figure out ways to make it worse. It’s cool because I get to say stuff to his face, to see what he does, and I get to watch it go viral.

I do think he’s cool, though. Because he’s one of the cool guys. I’d say he’s one of the few cool guys I’ve talked to in these past few weeks. He’s one of those guys that I’ve sort of wanted to meet for a while. It’s like, you know what I mean. You get on good terms with pretty much every person you meet, and you end up meeting some people you like, because of their approach, because of their way they were raised, and because of the way you interact with them, or because you’re on the same page.

And he’s cool too, you know? It’s cool that he’s not interested in dating anyone, that he’s not interested in hooking up with any young, popular guy. It’s cool that he’s not interested in anything but being his own person and just hanging out with him, and hanging out with him is pretty much the kind of thing that gets him really worked up.

A lot of time, there’s a needling. A lot of times, I’m saying I’m not gonna help you… I’m not gonna fix any of this myself. You’ve got to help yourself.

Tsk.

It’s been the best three weeks of my life all condensed down to a ten minute conversation, and I don’t think I was going to give the chat back to you.





Paranoia 1.5


"The problem is Taylor, not you. As much as I would love the opportunity to kick you in the balls and turn you into some kind of delinquent, it’s not going to happen. You’re in the right. You’re in the best possible spot. And maybe by staying, you’re getting some kind of leverage over me."



"It’s not about being in the right, it’s about being in the best place possible."

"I don’t think I could."

I could.



"What I do know is that you’re very insecure. You’re incredibly insecure, and every time you’re on a high, you go down a dark and uncomfortable road, and your dad doesn’t come to watch over you. He won’t come to watch over you because he knows about this."

"It’s not as bad as it looks."

"I’d say it’s worse than it looks."

I stared out over the two of them, the

======== SAMPLE 9 ========
, it was just me and him, standing in the middle of a clearing with other heroes who might or might not be in the know.

A small tear ran down my cheek, but I didn’t need to see the hero to know what he was crying about.

"Taylor," Grue said, from behind me, "Don’t be a hero and take this. Take this and find shelter somewhere safe."

I turned around, turning to see Regent, Bitch and a pair of dogs, a third from the other side of the clearing. The heroes had gathered in the midst of a clearing, where the pair of them were hugging.

I ran my fingers through my hair, and it stung, but I managed to make it through the next three minutes without any real effort. At the far end of the clearing was a pair of people who I couldn’t really see. One of them had a bandage tied around her nose and mouth, and she was holding a hand with a bandage around the length of it. The other, I didn’t see, had a blanket covering her entire body. Her mask, in a similar vein, was obscuring her cheekbones, as though she was being hidden from view.

"We’re the good guys," Grue said.

"We’re not," Tattletale said, sounding almost defeated. "But even if it is-"

Grue cut her off. "Look at this. It’s one. Two!"

The cape in the suit moved just a little, but the crowd in the clearing remained as still as when the camera hadn’t even budged. A large, bulky cloud of what looked like white powder was rising in a slow, steady rise from every available surface in a radius that didn’t wrap around. It appeared to be a cloud of shrapnel, and there was the glimmer of a little plastic ball at the very top of the hill, a few feet before it was set into the ground. I think. I could be wrong.

"This is one of theirs," Tattletale said. She let the word hang in the air as if it wasn’t even a question, "And they have this shit the Protectorate is so good at throwing at us. I don’t think they’re going to do us any favors by blowing this."

"Fuck," Bitch said.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck," Grue agreed.

"But we’ll find out," Tattletale said. She turned the camera back to myself and me only. It’d been a day, we weren’t exactly in a state to talk. "We’re going to take this, find shelter for any of you who might still be alive, and help make sure you have water, shelter, medical care and, if you can’t, hopefully you can look after one of your teammates. Because while we’re here, we have to protect you too."

Grue shook his head. "Tie me up."

"Grue!" I blurted out, but his gesture was stiff. "Tie me. Sit!"

He nodded and sat, bending down to find a spot near the edge of the hill. As I tried to look serious, he added, "And you okay, Taylor?"

I felt a lump in my throat. What was I? A kid on the verge of puberty, a cape with a knack for keeping his teammates close. Or was it just the fact that he was right? Did I look stronger and more imposing than I was? I’d never been able to stand how the others looked, not in a physical sense, not in how well they moved, or how much skin I touched the way my dad was able to touch me as a kid, by moving my arms and legs. Had I always been able to fight, or had I grown up with more experience fighting?

Was I on a level with the Protectorate? The Wards? The heroes? Or was I one of the bullies? Or, worse, had I always been like that? I couldn’t bear to think about it.

When I opened my mouth, he cut me off, "You don’t look like that to me."

It was all I could do to keep my hands still, and not to let them move in any major way or show a weakness. I don’t know how much I could have moved, had he tried. My hands felt like they were about to snap, and I wanted to hold on to them, but I didn’t feel I could have moved them fast enough or at the right angle to avoid hurting the guy who was trying to pry them from my arms.



======== SAMPLE 10 ========
, and he’s already in the middle of his plan."

I glanced over my shoulder at where he stood. His gun was pointed at the ground at his side.

"I’ll have to see," Chevalier said. "I’ll have to see if he can find another way to interfere. I haven’t even talked to you about contingency measures."

"These are only my assumptions," I said.

If he had other means of attack and I wasn’t smart enough to stay inside the building without getting shot, then my words had the potential to blow up in his face.

The gun stopped at his back, but he didn’t raise it. "That makes sense. This is my territory. If-"

His expression changed, and he looked a little less confident.

"If," I said. "No. Not a contingency. You’re more than capable of using your power on your own. I’m a big fan of the idea of using the swarm, but I’m also a huge fan of using any and all methods necessary. I can’t risk you giving us a distraction."

"Can’t possibly," he said. "We’re not even in the thick of this fight. There’s no way I can be sure I’m not going to get shot in the process. I have another building to take care of and I won’t be in the thick of a fight for more than a few hours."

I nodded. "It’s a possibility. But my gut’s telling me you’re not going to take my words to heart. The sooner I’m convinced the better."

He only stared.

"Listen," I said. "I really hope to have someone in charge. I think it’s only going to get worse if we have one that isn’t of this world. It’s only going to get worse if we’re fractured at the core. I’m willing to bet I can break anything, but a building? Maybe, maybe not. But I’d argue I’m a builder. If I’m right, if reality falls into alignment, if I’m almost ready to break or push anything, then this is the time to do it."

"A new reality," Tecton said.

"It breaks all of the old rules for building and war. It puts every last person in this room at risk. All I ask is that you spare my friends the unnecessary stress of answering this call. I’ll do it if you’re there. Go home. I’ll take care of this. If this isn’t the time, then we go to whatever place that person calls home. There’s nothing we can do about the fact that it’s cold out there, but your power is your own worst enemy."

He shook his head. "I don’t think I’m the one for a task that’s not too dangerous, nor the one at that."

"That’s what I’m saying. Take it from someone that’s been doing this for five years."

"If that’s the case, I don’t see how they’ll let my friend live." He gestured with his gun.

She just walked through the door, her head craned to follow as it flew by.

"You’re a big thinker, Weaver," Hero said.

She turned around and gave him a small wave. His expression was grim.

But he didn’t move.

"Don’t move," I said.

"She’s been doing this for five years," Hero said.

"And she’s got her limits, like there are limits to everyone. To her, her limits are her power, how she functions, how she’s put together, her relationships, and how she sees herself."

I watched Tecton and Hero’s expressions.

It wasn’t that I could see Tecton’s expression, but this conversation wasn’t going to be any different one way or the other.

It was that uncertainty.

"Hero," I told her. "I’m not really a thinker. I’m more of a planner, and those two things aren’t my strengths. A thinker can only create a puzzle for an idea. A planner can only see an idea through all of the possible interactions of those ideas. A thinker doesn’t see a possibility, but that doesn’t mean it doesn

======== SAMPLE 11 ========
, and it wasn’t enough. The number of people who could see through the smoke’s haze was miniscule at best. She was going to be blind, deaf, and it was going to be ugly.

But she was going to survive. Because of who I was, because of the things I’d done, I’d grown. I’d grown as a person.

Weld was on the other side of the building.

Weld caught her in one arm. She bent down to pick up Tattletale, and he caught his fist.

"What’s this, Weaver?"

"The first question I’m going to ask you is, how’s everyone?"

"How’s everyone?"

"Pretty much alright. We got a bit of snowfall, but the wind doesn’t seem to be doing much. I’m feeling a little frosty at the edges."

"My arm feels like it’s going to break," Regent said.

"You’re lucky I haven’t got you killed in the course of this."

"Maybe," I said. I looked around the group, saw that we were on the right side of the building, in the center, though there were some groups of people closer to the building and others further down from it.

"We have to move!" one young man called out. He held out a small box with keys inside.

Weld and Regent moved to move to the nearest open spot, but the man turned to look our way.

"Are you insane?" he asked.

"Get out of here," I told him.

The young woman with the bag approached, and I stepped back from a doorway leading out the side hallway, into the open doorway at the door’s back. I could see the expression on her face, as she saw me and my bugs moving. It looked like she was expecting me to follow, but I took the opportunity to walk past her and start attacking the bugs.

As it turned out, she had me beat. Not that I expected it. This wasn’t getting any easier.

"What is it you want, Weaver?" Tattletale asked.

"You want to know who you’re up against, Tattletale? Regent? He wants to know who is helping him, and if you think you outclass him, you tell him so."

Regent looked at the others. "You don’t have a position on that?"

I shrugged.

"Fuck you, Regent!"

Regent and I ran through the next door, past the woman with the bag.

"I can’t read minds!" Regent shouted. "I can’t put myself in Regent’s shoes!"

"If you get sick and tired of dealing with Regent, you can stay!"

"No!"

Weld was in front of the third window, holding the handle. He’d placed keys at the right angle.

Weld turned to look out at the city below him. He gave me a salute and a thumbs up.

I felt my blood jump, as if I’d just won a bet, but Tattletale was right next to me, sitting with her arms folded and looking rather stoic.

"I’m not sure that’s what I meant!" she said, and I know who hears this. It’s just the last question I’m going to ask, I thought, and it wasn’t doubly bad, because I’m going to lie now, or it’s just me saying it out loud.

"Regent doesn’t fit your profile!"

"Oh come on! He’s nice, he gets along great with your teammates, he and Imp have some fun times together!"

"And Regent doesn’t," I agreed.

"That’s what I thought!" She gave me an annoyed look. "You’re the type everyone hates!"

I had to bite back a groan, stop myself.

"Weaver. Listen, I’m not going to deny I’ve pissed my hand or that Regent did anything wrong. But what I am saying is that Regent was trying to help! That this was only a chance for him to give you his support, where you couldn’t make an argument because you don’t have the necessary credentials!"

When I couldn’t find a convincing argument?

"You said that Tattletale was the type everyone hated!"

"Yeah

======== SAMPLE 12 ========
, in the middle of the water, in thick enough waves that you wouldn’t be able to land the helicopter on top of it, and in a dense swarm.

That meant I’d have to figure out how to navigate the water in the dark, in a time of poor visibility. Maybe, with plenty of bugs, I could get a small boat to a vantage point where a helicopter could land on top of it. That, though, would require careful positioning and an even more careful landing, which I wasn’t willing to do, even with a modicum of assurance.

I took hold of one dragon model and steered it into a position where my body was against the side of the hull. With a sharp right and left, I raked a small army of insects out of the wings of the wings, like spider silk, bringing them to bear. The ones who’d remained behind floated up and away, keeping the swarm at bay and providing cover fire for my troops.

I looked around, and saw two groups. The center of it all, really. Half of them were in the thick of the swarm at the same time as the center. The others were grouped like ants, spreading out to either side, trying to avoid being caught in the thickest part of the hive. There wasn’t enough room to go around. They were all connected by a cluster of the smaller flies, which were nestled into the gaps between the three inch wings.

"Fuck," Dragon said, "They’re all stuck together. It’s so tight we’re barely touching, and they’re all squirming, crawling, barreling towards me. It makes my mouth water."

"Fuck you, Dragon," I said, as I saw it.

"Fuck me too."

Dragon’s dragon-ears went off. Her voice was distorted, sharp, not human. "This is my business, not yours."

"Yes. No. I’ve been doing this since she came in the door, and I’ll keep doing it. So you’re a fucking idiot. A brilliant idiot. Now sit still. We’ll talk."

She was talking, still. It was impossible to decipher what she was saying because phrases and inflections were missing.

"There won’t be any of you to talk to."

"I hate that phrase, 'hurt makes the best thinker,' " Dragon said, as if she hadn’t noticed, but her voice sounded a little more like someone speaking from an emotional position. She sounded more like an idiot than a thinker. "Hurt will make the best thinker, but that’ll mean you’re less smart, less skilled. I’ll have you know, you are a fucking pain in the ass. I could burn your fucking eyes out. I’ve seen it on the internet, your videos, and your books. I’ve seen you on the battlefield, with the Slaughterhouse Nine. You’re brutal, but you’re gentle, and you don’t fucking hate me. Fuck you. Now, I’ll make you fly off again and again, until you come to regret it."

"She won’t do much for your feelings," Dragon said. "And I can’t forgive or forget that bitch’s bullshit, because she was my best bet at trying to stop someone from destroying the world."

"I don’t hate you. I just… I just want you on my side. I want you to be good and I love you for what you are, but in the end, I don’t hate you because of the shit you say. I hate you because of what you’re capable of. I’m going to stick with you, because you’re a fucking badass. Because you’re smart and handsome and because of that bitch who thinks she can mess with me-"

"That’s it? All I want is to kill you. I’m not the type to go easy on people, and I don’t hate you because you can’t be stopped."

"It sounds like you have a point," I said, and then I tried to sound defensive.

"She can use her power, you idiot."

"I’m tired of defending myself, this is my territory. I just want you to understand."

It was the most logical and believable explanation I could imagine. I was still in the air, Dragon stuck her dragon ‘stethoscope’ against the ground and pressed the throttle.

"Dragon!" Dragon called out, "He’s turning to leave!"

"He’s still with

======== SAMPLE 13 ========
, I’d have to look at her right hand and ask her about her ankle spurs as part of her ‘brainwashing’. I wouldn’t have to leave the building.

But I wouldn’t have time to interrogate her. She would be on edge and she wouldn’t let me take her out without a major security detail or undercover agent. If I moved too slowly, too slowly to avoid stepping on her foot and aggravating her, then I wasn’t able to give her a chance to heal. That didn’t mean I was doing anything inherently wrong. If I was stupid and I let her get free, maybe she would break and start killing people, and I wouldn’t be able to put her down.

It didn’t take much. I got out of bed, a hundred pages of notes in hand.

The next morning, I had to get to work. My first day as Parahuman, was going to be a nightmare from beginning to end.

I woke up, and I wasn’t surprised to find myself sitting at the kitchen table, a coffee in hand.

I couldn’t sleep. It was all I could do to not look like I had a hangover. My hair was out of order and my makeup glinted in the light from the window. My clothes were dirty and damp, and there wasn’t enough warmth in the house.



I opened an email to confirm that Brockton Bay High was in session. To confirm I didn’t have any outstanding emergencies coming up. I closed in the door with the coffee cup and sipped at the foam.

The first few messages my phone had picked up were an instant message from Taylor, a text from Lisa, a reply to a text message and a reply to a phone call. It was all I could do to keep myself sane. I tried to read through their last messages and see if there was any clue as to why they were so busy. Why the drama?

It was all I could do to stay sane after the first few days that had followed the first big event of my new powers. Being on the brink of breaking free again, being on the brink of being permanently disabled for life.

I didn’t have any friends in the area, and I didn’t know even the essentials about where I’d be staying. I’d have to pick up the pieces on my own, if I wanted to mend any of the damage or get anything done. No use complaining to anyone, or worrying I wouldn’t get noticed. I’d have to take the time to find a room. I couldn’t imagine going to the hospital and staying there for three days, but I could imagine waiting that long in an unfamiliar place. It was the sort of thing that could wear on me over time.

I checked out the house that my dad had bought me and then rented out to someone else a short distance down the street. I wasn’t surprised to find it was pretty spiffy. The house had been a quick hit, which maybe helped explain why it wasn’t in an expensive neighborhood. Not that I felt I needed to.

I opened up the emails and looked through the messages from Lisa. It was nice, in a way. We were on the same page, though not in a relationship sense. It left me wondering just where Sophia was.

A text from Alec came up after Brian said he was off the phone. He’d been on a date with another girl, had given me notice that his date was going to be Taylor for a week or two. I read it and frowned.

Losing the guy was bad, but maybe it’d be good if we didn’t have Taylor to throw out there and look at.





E-W-O-R-E-S-H



T-R-A-A-T-O-P



A-B-L-O-R

"Taylor?" Grue asked me.

"Yeah, sorry."

His shoulders slumped a little. "I hope you’re doing okay. You know, having your mom and I here, it kinda sucks being around you. Except maybe I’ve spent a few weeks living with you. You get by, I get stressed out."

I frowned. I’d been thinking of being with my mom more than being with Taylor, in regard to the fact that I couldn’t spend much time with this guy. It gave me a weird kind of perspective. On the one hand, I could see how it was difficult to live with my dad when I was this close to being outed with a crush on a teenage boy. On the

======== SAMPLE 14 ========
, it would have to be pretty ugly, because they could only see so much, they could only see so much more. He was thinking of the way his dad was constantly yelling at him as he struggled to use his power and his mind to stay still, to not waffle on inane questions like "what are you doing, where is your house, what is your favorite food? The answers they give will shape you."

That, in a nutshell, was how he thought they figured everything. Like so much else, it all depended on this one little advantage. This one little advantage would help decide if they could get by the next time around. Except this time? No. It was dangerous, it was messy, and he needed time to think about it first.

The second he could get that out of his system and focus on the task at hand, he’d have to figure out a way to use it. If the first two weeks taught him anything, it was that the most basic and fundamental rules hadn’t changed. He’d try to follow them, he’d be tempted, but he’d always hold his nose and do what he could to not go down the wrong road.

The third week would teach him an important lesson – that a rule was a rule only if it was obeyed. If we follow it, he’s allowed to do what he wants, to break it. Unless someone else is violating the rule, and then it’s a bad day.

The fourth? When did I hurt ya?

He let himself relax a fraction, picked up his head, kept walking.

He was still walking when he reached a set of buildings. The next closest ones were a half-block away, and two blocks down the street was a house with an open front door. The front door of the house was already open at the time. He pushed it open with his hands, and he could barely open his eyes as he could only see what was behind him with his peripheral vision. He’d never had a headache before, and everything made him feel like shit.

He’d almost stopped trying to make sense of the world and focus on the present as he found himself with only half his attention. He could see people at the crossroads, and figured out how to reach them.

He saw the woman he’d seen earlier, a pale, sickly child with a long nose, slurred speech and patches of skin with blood. The two people in the house – the woman was sitting on a plastic chair and the man was in a reclining position on a couch, her back to him.

He’d come here for a talk, and he could see the doctor behind her, with his back to her.

She was one of the few people who he could look past, a stranger, a shadow of the person he actually was. The only things in stark contrast were the dress that covered her pale skin and the way things seemed to slide down over her. If he couldn’t see the girl, the way things seemed to slide, and she was staring at him? It was like a shark finding their prey.

He didn’t even need to open his eyes to see the woman, though his peripheral vision kept him from seeing her face or figure, much in the way the girl was a shadow of the man who held himself and his thoughts like a puppet. A puppet.

He tried to see the man outside the door, and he found himself looking two streets over. That man was dead. His body was inside the house.

The door rattled open a moment after he was done looking, and he glanced over his shoulder to make sure he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

He turned back to the door, tried to speak, almost to get to the point where he could say his words and get out of the way, but his mouth slipped and he just stuttered. When he managed to get the words out, to his face and lips, they weren’t any better than a mumble.

There was something about the way the man was lying there, hanging and unable to move under the sheets. He’d left his body a second after he’d arrived, he’d wanted to see it. The way he held himself.

Was it a sign? That something was wrong?

No. He’d spent enough time around people who were like that.

Was it just him being angry?

No. His mind was clear. What did he want? No power, no money, he didn’t have a place to be right now.

He was a lab rat, now.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, he turned to see a dark-skinned girl with long, straight hair. Her lips were

======== SAMPLE 15 ========
, it’s just this little black box that you don’t get any use of, really."

Taylor, she said, in a hushed tone that wasn’t so tight or obvious. "I don’t want to say ‘I don’t want you to use my phone, I really do. But I don’t want you to use my dad’s stuff, either."

"And I don’t want you to touch any of my stuff, you little shitter. I swear on my mom’s grave-"

She stopped as the phone rang. "It? It’s-" and she hung up. Tugging on her arm for just a second, I dragged her out of my reverie. She was crying now, heavy, and the silence was killing me. I took off the hood of my rain boots.

I looked at Bitch.

"What?"

"It’s okay," I said.

"What did you do to him?"

"I put him through the phone pole, there was a bit of dirt on the ground, a bit of mud on him-"

"I think you’re lying. I could maybe make out his heart beating, tell you he lived, so long as you’re on the quiet side of things."

It dawned on me why she was crying. A small part of me wanted to ignore it, not out of malice so much as-

"Taylor," I said, my voice calm. I didn’t even need to ask.

"I did what I had to. You fuckers aren’t monsters. I hurt him. You’re monsters. But that’s better than the alternative."

"You can’t-"

I cut her off. "No. Don’t deny it. Taylor, you’re the problem. You make me feel scared, that makes me feel even scarier. I can’t have you around because you’re a monster, a monster. I don’t even like what you did to my mom. I don’t get that I’m a monster, because-"

"I-" I started, then looked down at the phone. "I can be a monster. You don’t have to worry about that."

I could see she lowered her head.

"I’ve been a monster. I’ve hurt people and I’ve been a monster. I’ve killed people and I’ve been a monster. I’ve hurt people and I’ve done things I regret. I’ll make you regret a lot if you let me be a monster. If I make you regret me."

I could see her tense up.

"I don’t want to have to do anymore talking about this stuff," I said.

"I don’t want to be the monster on your team. You don’t have to be. I’ll go to jail sooner if you don’t. No excuses. All of our options are on your heads."

I felt a chill. I was in the middle of something. I didn’t want to look back and think too much about the way I’d gone. But I didn’t want to lose sight of the question at hand, about Tattletale, and how she would react to the revelation, either.

How was I supposed to handle this?

I’d been selfish. I’d thought of her as something other than a sister. I’d thought of her as someone who only wanted the best for her people. I’d been reckless and cruel. I’d broken the rules the team had agreed to.

The other possibilities weren’t so serious.

Had I done them wrong?

I could admit to making a mistake. It had cost me. At the same time it had cost me, I was stronger because I wasn’t afraid to face the fact. I wasn’t afraid to look at her and see her dead.

I had to look at her and I couldn’t look away. She was alive.

"It’s not fair," I murmured the words. "You can’t put someone through the phone pole and expect she didn’t kill herself. And if that cell phone was yours-"

"No," she interrupted.

I couldn’t stop myself from speaking, so I wouldn’t be heard. "She did it on purpose."

"I’m not sure what that means."



======== SAMPLE 16 ========
, she looked so peaceful. Her posture was hunched, a cross between child and a warrior; she held a sword in one hand, her face painted in steel. Her hair was in a short, long-term blur, barely halfway cut off or pulled back in. She wore a red bodysuit that covered her lower body, her arms and legs, just in case she needed to get into close quarters combat. She was flanked by a pair of black-handled poles with metallic halos. No doubt a stylized scorpion appeared on the base of each pole, a stylized set of eyes and mouth that looked like a horned dragon, pointing down at the ground.

Foil? No.

Possibility and possibility together.

The image that accompanied it, at first glance, was that of a woman holding a phoenix, spiraling up through the air like it was a crane, shooting from a point deep inside a building as it descended and landed on the rooftop nearby. All along, it looked like it would fly through the air, flying in slow motion as it approached the ground. The wings and body portions, however, were in stasis.

Possibility, then.

It was the third image that we’d seen. The phoenix was hovering above us. The woman with the mask was on her hands and knees, trying to get the glass off of her eyes.

The man with the spear was crouching, raising his spear in a spear point as a weapon. The woman with the helmet was facing him, holding a knife in one hand. Her hands, however, were raised, fists at her ribcage. She was trying to set some nails in the metal of his arms, and his arm bent like an elongated spoon. He looked so intent, in his way, as if he wanted to say something, and he couldn’t, because he wasn’t saying a thing.

Not that I was saying much. I was saying what I’d been thinking.

Not a leader. Not a leader anywhere.

Fuck.

There was a crash, and then the sound of shattering glass. The phoenix landed directly beside me.

"Skitter?" I asked.

There was a rumble, and he fired his spear, striking at the glass with a force that knocked me off my feet and sent me flying off into the air.

"No," he said. "I almost forgot to warn you. I really need to do that."

He pointed at the phoenix.

"I get the feeling I’m a little overexerted," I said.

"You might be. But we’ve got time, if that’s what it took to scare off an entire legion, and you’re willing to risk a little something that might not be yours."

He turned to me and whispered, "Skitter."

I felt a lump in my throat, and the nausea from earlier settled into a feeling of absolute absence. My thoughts were a little clearer. I was aware of the movement of air, of the pressure on my muscles. I shifted the spear so it rested on my hip, feeling awkward as I held it there.

The phoenix moved, and I was sent hurtling straight down to the ground. The woman was on top of me, and the force of her fall pushed me to one side. The phoenix landed with a splash, and the woman was raised into the air, landing on top once again, eyes on the phoenix.

My powers. Or what I’d called them, in a moment of need.

■

We’ve been through too much, and we’ve learned too much to ever try something like this again.

"My name is Parian," I said.

"My name is Aegis."

"And Sophia?"

He turned. With my power, I felt her grasp around the spear, setting Sophia onto the ground.

"Yes."

"No?"

"I’ll be going back. To help," he said.

I could feel the phoenix’s wings grow, the metal on the pole shifting as it stretched, as if it were the tip of a sharp sword. Sophia fell to the ground. He landed a step behind her, Sophia catching with both feet on the ground, legs swinging, and Sophia kept the other foot planted on the ground. The spearhead shifted.

"You were there, Sophia," I told Sophia.

She shook her head. "I was right behind you. Didn’t see you, and so I’m sorry."

"Go on," I told her. "I’ll be with you again someday."

She shook her

======== SAMPLE 17 ========
, it would have an effect at least on the conscious part of my mind. I had to deal with them and their kind. If I lost them all, I’d lose myself, I’d lose the peace of mind I’d been striving for. More on that later.

All around me, the city was in chaos. More dead and the ruins of the buildings and streets that were leveled by Scion’s explosion. The fire spread with unprecedented speed and ferocity, and the fire escapes were collapsing, walls buckled in by the fire, and chunks of brick and mortar started flying.

The water was rising, and it looked as though it would continue to rise for at least a little while. It was like a wave crashing into a beach, an uneven pile of rock and debris that had been raised by the previous waves and had since receded. I couldn’t really follow where the wave’s movement was going, because the waves were breaking away pieces of the shore, and the sand itself didn’t flow down the sides of the beach. Or maybe it was a different sort of erosion than the way water moved in a wave.

I didn’t want to be in that spot in the sand.

I could sense others moving with purpose. The little dragon’s eye model suits were moving to the sides, forming up into tight, narrow lines as they moved towards the cityscape. Scion was moving a little too, but he was moving in tight, predictable patterns. I knew where he was and I was following a different path than the other cape.

But the big group of capes were still in our way, keeping pace with our group as we made our way. Some were moving to the northwest, and others were moving in the direction of the beach. I could see people climbing upwards as walls began to separate into shards, the same way they parted when you cut a piece of wood into two pieces and then let each of the pieces shrink down before mounting on the wall in a tight, cohesive bundle that kept the two halves together. Others were retreating east, the way a human might retreat to a safe position to take cover.

I felt my voice come closer to the ground, getting closer to Scion. I hoped it would calm him.

The only cape in our way seemed to be keeping up with my advance as we made our way towards the city. I was struck by how far away they were. I could see why, as they were the ones with the most to lose.

I saw the man as he climbed onto a building at the edge of the street. His hair was a little out of sorts, looking like it had just been cut.

That same man had the same sort of expression on his face, with lines in it. It was almost eerie, in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. Was it the expression on his face? Was I just a little detached from his world?

I wouldn’t get closer than that.

He approached me and gave me a hand, putting his hands on the hard part of my arms to support myself in his arms. He gave me a nod, and his chest pressed up against mine.

My voice grew slightly lower as the man and I reached our destination. It came as a complete surprise that it took us so long to get here.

A tower, taller than I’d thought when I’d seen it. The exterior was lined with columns, each bearing runes, some of which were moving with an almost mechanical rhythm to mark their own locations. There weren’t many runes, however, even if I excluded the ones that were still set in a more natural fashion.

"Welcome to the Edge," the words were a little ragged as they struck me from my thoughts. They hit me because I hadn’t listened to what they were saying, and because I seemed to be moving into a different world. A world without the rasp.

I tried to focus on the new world, where I was calm.

My breath caught in my throat as the tower moved. It shifted again, a little, in an instant followed by a movement that looked more out of sync with my own. I felt the wall rise around the outside of the tower, followed by a crack.

I got out of the way before that crack was broken and the inside of the tower collapsed. The noise of the collapse of the tower was almost like the noise of a waterfall, something from water flowing against water. I could hear water rushing down the street beneath.

I didn’t feel any sense of calmness here. I felt like a leaf rising through the air, seeing a forest of leaves on the skyline, knowing it wasn’t. This was as far away as I’d ever experienced from Scion.

When the

======== SAMPLE 18 ========
, the others had taken up the mantle of their parents, and I had a feeling that it would be the same in this department. There were too many others.

"It’s not a costume," I told them. "Not really. Not the way they were intending."

I was glad for my mask as much as I was for my mask. It wasn’t the mask of a cape, or even an actor in costume. It was the real thing. The real me, unaltered by the change.

"Look," I spoke, turning away to look at my swarm, the way they’d seen me as I’d started speaking. That wasn’t so different from a human speaking, I was hoping. I glanced at the other capes. Clockblocker and Vista were standing shoulder to shoulder, staring at me.

"It’s dangerous. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. You’re not a hero. You’re not even on the team."

"I’m a member of the team," Clockblocker said, giving me a curious look, as if he’d expected me to join by questioning.

I didn’t take his words to heart. That was just me responding to his words. I wasn’t going to take his word for it. My thoughts, for a time, were all about my dad and my mission.

■

As we approached, we’d crossed multiple streets. Cars were lined up behind us, and each had headlights and taillights. The lights illuminated each vehicle through a series of blinking lights.

The moment my bugs were at full strength, I was going to start gathering all of them on my costume to construct lines of silk and thread. A hundred thousand of them, I suspected, if my bugs were even half of that.

It wasn’t enough. The lights weren’t going out, the entire effect had the wrong light.

"No," Tattletale said.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. "Just a bad signal. We go straight for the headlights, we keep right at the bottom of the intersection, right beside the train tracks. We make it past the light, so if we see a car coming, we can pass through. If we see a train… guess we’ll use the back door. The front door will be open. If there’s a train going through, then we pass through, through the door."

"How-" Tecton started. He gave an order, and the trucks started up.

"You’ll hit the wrong door," I said, taking hold of Clockblocker’s right hand and dragging him to one side. "You’ll hit the wrong train with the right hand, don’t."

"We do," he said. He had to lower his hand to keep from slamming his hand down on the ground. It would hurt, maybe, but we couldn’t really afford to get hurt.

I was beginning to get worried about how we’d be able to get through without getting seriously hurt.

"We’ll catch up when we get closer," he said. In a moment, he was already moving his right hand to flick a button on the handle. The front of the right hand turned, and a hand with a laser pistol grip shot out of the air a fraction of a second before it fell to the ground. The laser pistol whirled to follow, but it was too slow to catch up to the head of the gun’s operator.

"You think we’ll be able to get through?" Lisa asked.

"We’ll do what we have to do," I answered. "Get past those guys and catch the train through another station. Get back out there, catch our next train and leave to catch one that leaves when it’s almost done."

"You think we’ll make it?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Siberian. Let’s check her around the corner. Then we run. Do your research, tell us where Jack is, and if we find and rescue Siberian, find another route home."

"Got it."

The only way we’d do this.





Monarch 16.2


I made headway, in terms of getting Tattletale and the others to open up to me. I was able to get at people in costume with only the bugs.

There were only as many bugs in the building as I could fit them into my arm, and I’d be able to get more from the rest, if

======== SAMPLE 19 ========
, let alone something as deadly as a knife.

She was a monster.

There was no escaping her.

Tohuva.

She’s going to kill me.

No. That was stupid. Even if it was the Simurgh.

But if it was Eidolon, then I need to find a way.

The Simurgh… she’s on a mission.

I could call down the other precogs, attack the Simurgh with other precogs, or even use that Eidolon-Eidolon-Eidolon triumvirate to hit the Eidolon-Eidolon combination that is attacking the Simurgh.

She’ll probably be able to do it. The Simurgh’s powers are basically a combination of telekinesis and gravity. She’s stronger than we are.

One more possibility was shooting Tohuva. She was a fast moving projectile, she could fly and she was strong enough to probably fly through my power’s range. The problem was, I wouldn’t be able to get the trajectory right. The bullets I’d fired weren’t particularly heavy. None of the bullets that broke down flesh and hurt people with that trajectory… The impact of hitting ground, it’d have a smaller effect.

Or I could use my bugs. Maybe try to get them on Tohuva’s forearms, hands and feet, so they could fly around her.

I could try to call down the Simurgh’s Eidolon-Eidolon triumvirate. They could help with the trajectory and catch Tohuva with the bugs.

Tohuva was a hard target to get at, I had to admit, as a living, breathing monster with every wrinkle and line of her body.

She was a monster.

We’d just been attacked. I could feel that slow pressure of pain. The fact that there was still that niggling fear in my mind… I wasn’t ready to lose anything in this fight.

But I’d lost in ways I wasn’t prepared to explain.

The Simurgh’s attack on Bakuda.



I felt my hair stir, to assess the exact location of the pain.

I’d almost had something of a heart attack.

I had the power to move the limbs, but I’d lost the ability to speak.

The Simurgh’s attack on Tohuva.



It hadn’t been just the pain. I’d suffered second degree burns all over my body, and I’d been knocked about, bruised and battered too.

The Simurgh was right. I couldn’t communicate. My voice was an absolute, and my bugs couldn’t make sense of it because I couldn’t make sense of myself.

I couldn’t find the words to respond to anything the Simurgh said.

No. I couldn’t move to do anything, to move faster or run faster or change direction. I couldn’t feel any of it because I couldn’t articulate anything to any degree.

I was floating, and it wasn’t because I had enough bugs. I was moving too slowly or too fast, it’d just be faster to get away or to reach safety.

I was a fish in water. If I swam, if I moved, I would only make it worse. If I flew, I would only make the situation worse. My skin was slick where it was, the mucus was slippery with the spray of blood. The fish, however, was solid. There was no moving, no maneuvering. I had to swallow and pull back to get myself onto solid ground to get out of harm’s way.

My throat felt cold, and it hurt with every action I took. Even sitting still. I bit my lip, tried to push some bugs away, but they were as mobile as my arms. I needed to breathe. I could only cough.

I felt nauseous and dizzied, for long seconds before I managed to get my bearings.

I could hear her make the noise of howling, howling, a sound I’d heard once before, in the depths of my rage, back in the days I’d been little more than a little kid.

She’d heard it somewhere. Not in this dark dark, twisted place. Now it seemed back in its primal, primal state, in a place where all of the other noises seemed quiet, distant. I felt dizzy, and my power gave me a

======== SAMPLE 20 ========
, we took our eyes out of the window. We watched the horizon, for a long minute, taking every opportunity we could to glance out of the window to look out over the city.

Then we opened it up and checked the screens. We’d managed to secure our way out of here, I thought. I could see the crowd moving. Not in line, but moving.

But we weren’t leaving. I started to move them like I’d moved the capes I’d taken to the perimeter with, moving them in the general direction they were moving, towards the center of the crowd. They started to move my way, but one cape had a gun. When they did, I moved to the other side of the window, and moved faster than they would.

The man moved the gun to point the window and shout, so others would listen. It meant I had a window of opportunity. I moved to the right, towards the windows with the crowd moving behind me. It’s hard to say if people would hear, how I was going to stop them, but I wasn’t going to waste any time. I’d already packed my bugs, moving them into positions they might see. They formed loose, cloud-like clouds. I couldn’t even make out what they were, now.

I moved them in the general direction they moved to, and let them get loose around me. I didn’t like the idea of getting hit, but they weren’t hitting me. They were bouncing off of my costume, into the air to follow me, falling.

My hands were getting busy, tracing the shapes on the windows with the bugs I could feel.

I drew a gun, pointed it and fired. It had to do with a flashbang.

One of the bugs caught some of the flashbang. The gun fell to the ground in a cloud of white powder. I caught it, then moved it as the crowd moved to one side.

The other bug caught the flashbang. The gun went off a second time. I moved a fraction closer, making sure I had a view of the shot with my bugs.

The third.

I moved closer, and the gun moved, the gun moving to intercept the swarm of bugs from his other hand before they could get out.

Then he moved, a little too fast for me to follow. He fired, and the swarm did react, flinging bugs and dust aside in the wake of the first few inches of the bullet flying past him.

He managed a dozen feet before the bullet hit him. Then he moved, turning his back to me like he was trying to dodge a punch. I ducked low to the ground, drawing the bugs into the general area of the crowd.

I could hear him screaming, but I didn’t have a good grasp on what he was saying. A gun sounded through the crowd, signaling that there was an approaching threat. He wasn’t talking to himself, I couldn’t quite make out where things were going, or where his voice might go.

Was he angry? I doubted it, and as long as he was moving out of my range, he wasn’t going to get angry in the same way.

He was probably just as angry, and more likely to get in a fight.

I could draw the general conclusion that he was going after me. He didn’t have powers.

When he did get in a fight, I would be careful. There weren’t many people left who could hurt him in terms of raw durability.

I could draw the general conclusion that the man in gold and silver had some kind of gun. He was shooting at people, but he was apparently having trouble hitting people who weren’t people, or who were moving slowly enough, like the one in power armor that had apparently been disabled during the fight.

As it stood, it was impossible for any of us to do much to stop him, no matter what we did.

I reached into the pockets of my costume, and I drew out a flashbang and a canister.

The explosion took out two capes, and one moved to one side. I moved two more, trying to blind them, and failed. One guy hit the ceiling and crashed to the opposite side of the street. He wasn’t responding.

I fired the flashbang, a few bugs exploded on him, and he staggered. I could see him drop a few pounds in a matter of seconds.

The second cape, a dark-skinned guy, fell to the ground, and he fell with the first. The explosion tore through a section of wall and knocked people to the ground.

Another flashbang made two people stumble from the opposite direction. The third one

======== SAMPLE 21 ========
, I see you’re using a different costume than we do."

"I have to. It’s not the same as this. It’s too light. It’s too easy to use, or for me to get distracted by it."

"You look like you’re losing your mind," I lied.

"That’s not saying a whole lot. I’ve spent weeks with this costume, and seeing how it interacts with my body… I know it’s there. It’s just… I’ve dealt with a lot of crazy people. I’ve lost people in a matter of weeks. I know that it’s there, that it’s a part of me. I can feel it. I’ve lost people, I’ve lost friends. There are still a few people in this world who’ve got some kind of power that they can’t get rid of, and we’re going to be the last people they contact. It’s going to be hard-nosed, I’ve got a knack for finding people who can’t or won’t help things, and I’ve got a strong sense of what works and what doesn’t, because of this costume. So can you blame me when you tell me what works and what doesn’t?"

"There’s no point in learning that much," I lied. "I’m just going to do what you tell me."

Her expression remained grim, unflinching. Was she mad at me, or at me?

"There’s no point in trying to convince her," I said, and I said it straight. I didn’t tell her that I didn’t see any benefit to having her help me. If Tattletale had told me I’d get some kind of advantage if she could point me to someone who could, then I wasn’t going to argue.

"I’ve told you before, I’ll tell you again. You’ll help me. I’ll help you. But I have to ask you to wait a year before I can bring you into this costume. If you’re still having problems after that, tell me, what’s going through your head, what’s working and what’s not? The more information I’m able to provide the better. So until then, I’ll give you the details I have, I’ll help you get the information you need, and I’ll wait a year."

"Okay."

She turned back to me.

"I’ll-" I started. Her face was all expression, but her voice was firm.

"I’ll find you a cape."

Was I bluffing? I wondered.

I left the room, and instead of running down to one of the rooftops, I headed down the other side of the street. The cape with the horned mask was waiting.

I was a block away when a cape came knocking, so I followed him.

It took me a little while to find the sidewalk just behind one of the houses. As I got there, I realized it was only in profile, a house with a small pool, a lawn and a little more than enough flowers to drown my sorrows, with just enough weeds that I wasn’t sure what sort of place the lawn was supposed to represent.

My feet left the lawn at the same time I realized the house was in the midst of the water. I stopped and pulled off my mask to see how things had changed since I’d last seen it, and I used my hands to help hold it in place. It was cold, it had snowed like crazy as I had been walking, and the houses were all still – the waterlogged street looked like an icy lake – but it all added up to make for an odd sight.

The lake, as it was named because it had once been so drained of swimmable bodies of water that people called it the Black Lake. The area was still very much a part of the city that the residents hadn’t left, in the same way that some people still regarded the beach at the south end of town as part of the peninsula.

I looked around me. My entire body was stiff, and that meant I was a little more active than usual. I was wearing my armor, but it wasn’t armor you saw at a store or a store you walked past, where everyone was in their comfort zone. I’d cut my hair short enough to be more in line with the rest of the town that it was in keeping with

======== SAMPLE 22 ========
, it was something of a mixed blessing, in many respects. If he could only find him a way to see past the eyes of the people watching over him, maybe he wouldn’t be so easily controlled by his own people.

He turned to find a window to peek through, then frowned. There wasn’t really any point. The glare didn’t bother him, it was glare he sought out, the same way he could look through a window to look into his workshop, or inside his costume, using the lenses on the lenses of his mask. He’d had the glasses with his surgery, after all.

He’d taken off the goggles and had them fitted under his mask, but that was the only time he’d be able to see with his natural sight. He’d removed the goggles on top, but they didn’t look like much. An undershirt and trousers were draped over his calves, and he wore the usual black-stained hospital gown, not unlike her daughter’s, except with a light red rose embroidered across the chest. That red rose? It was the blood of one of the Merchants who’d tried to murder her daughter.

The nurse seemed to have a problem adjusting to her surroundings, moving to the other side of a panel with a panel set beneath it, then standing back to look through the window. When she’d settled with her stomach still pressed against hers, she leaned forward to look inside a corner of the bathroom and whispered something.

She was so afraid she might lose her lunch, which was sitting on the sink.

■

"The door," she whispered, as she stepped into the bathroom. She pressed her hands to her forehead. A minute later, the nurse was gone.

She found her glasses and glasses with bandages in one box and two plastic bags in another. In each bag on the counter were two disposable bags, with a few tubes of blood. A small kit of gloves, one for each finger, she opened it up to find a small tube of antibiotic ointment and one large pack of cataracts. With that, the nurse handed her a tube of ointment to put on top of the ointment she’d filled herself with.

The ointment she’d filled herself with was the antibiotic of her choice, but if the ointment had been diluted, it would still contain some active ingredients. The medicine would act with the eye-drops, but not necessarily against the Eye-Feng.

She sat upright to use the syringe but couldn’t get it into the correct container. After a few tries, the nurse in white pushed the pill into her mouth. She gulped down some. It didn’t hurt that much. It only made her feel weak, weak in her own way.

The nurse stopped at one corner.

"Sorry," she murmured.

"It’s okay," the nurse intoned, as she started moving to the other desk, "You have a fever. Take your hand away from your head and breast-feeding, don’t feed the baby, but do not touch him, don’t put your hand on his head. This nurse said you do not touch him."

"What?"

"The ointment. It may seem weird at first, putting your hand on a baby’s head, but it’s essential for his brain development. It may be unnecessary, but if he gets some medication for the ointment, the body will break down some of the ointment in the blood and make some of the ointment for other uses. We are here for the long term care of any infants that are underweight, underdeveloped because of inadequate breast-feeding, too tiny a size to play, or because of lack of care. The doctor here suggested we call your doctor. I don’t think he’s interested in talking to me."

There was a pause, a look of confusion on her face.

"This nurse is your doctor. It’s okay, it’s perfectly normal. I just… I’ve done this kind of thing before. You don’t want to get this far, but this is your job."

The nurse in white looked down at the ointment and back toward the baby. "You? You’re not?"

"He’s my child," she told the nurse. She took a bottle of ointment from under one arm, then handed it to the nurse in blue. It was diluted. "It washes off, and any side effects, if any, are gone when you use this. If he has diarrhea, don’t worry. We don’t have a doctor in

======== SAMPLE 23 ========
, it was like being a kid, having her back. She’d been one of the first people I’d thought to lose for no reason, one of the only few who were still around that were still fighting and who were still breathing.

She moved my hand, and I felt her pull.

"What’s this?" she asked, in a voice that sounded somehow a hundred years younger than she was.

I waited patiently while she gripped my hand, squeezed and tightened it, and then she let it go. I could feel her shift with her own weight as if she were moving on it.

I could feel my power rising to her hand, and she could feel herself increasing in size.

"It’s okay," she said, squeezing, and it didn’t end there.

It’s… it wasn’t easy. Not to have her controlling my thoughts, force-pushing me into situations where I might have backed out. But it’s okay.

Not to have her being in the way, but it’s okay.

"I’m sorry about Rachel," I said. I wasn’t sure I was saying it to her face. I felt her shift slightly in my grip, but otherwise she didn’t say a thing.

She didn’t open her mouth at all. She kept her expression neutral.

"You’re the best doctor around. I feel safe using you. We can talk? I know you’re working on making sure everyone here gets the care they need."

"Doing what I need to, yeah," she answered.

I couldn’t tell if she was lying to me. There were certain things I didn’t want to think on or dwell on, things I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on if I was going to live a fulfilling, fulfilling life.

"I’m not sure if we can talk about what’s going on with Rachel, but-"

"Stop," I said.

"I’m not sure if I can or if I should," she said.

"We’re both here. If you’re feeling… frustrated, maybe try talking to someone. Me?"

She shook her head.

"I don’t want to be here," I said. "I need answers. Can we please, can we please talk about everything and nothing?"

"And you’re so dense," she said. Her voice was hollow. "I can’t give you anything unless we talk about it. You feel this way because-"

"Because I love her," I said. "I can give you answers. Things aren’t getting better. Things could get worse, if I were to look into your eyes and tell you that it’s all part of a grand plan, that I’m one of the people who’s going to be hurt if everything goes smoothly. And you feel that way because… I don’t even think there’s anything for me to feel that way about. I can’t give you a future. I-"

"You don’t have a future," she said. It was as hollow as her words seemed to be, given the circumstances.

"I have a future. I’m trying to figure out if I should tell you, and if it’s even worthwhile. Because I don’t want you to end up like this, and because I don’t want you to make me do something I’d hate to give up. So we’ll talk. I really don’t want to make you regret this."

"I won’t."

"Okay," I thought, as the words left my mouth, "But if it makes things better for you or if it makes things better for you, I want you to know that I’ll tell everyone why all of this is going so poorly."

I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach. "And I’m wondering?"

"And I’m wondering if I should trust you, if I should even-"

"Because. Because it’s good for you."

I almost snorted, though I wasn’t quite conscious enough to do it.

So this was a ruse. A way to get me to look past all of the pain and all of the uncertainty, to get me involved in this.

Except I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to help. I didn’t want to accept this, because I’d always had doubts, and I�

======== SAMPLE 24 ========
, let alone when your opponent is as bad and unblemished as Clockblocker is."

"How’s your sister?"

"Good."

"She had to be a genius. She made it sound so simple. There’s this thing where girls have this thing. A kind of ‘compulsion’. They can’t have guys, they can’t have girls… but they do have this thing about boys and boys and then they go to school…"

"There she goes again."

Sophia frowned, eyes moving to the others. "And when the girl group got together, they had this group over and then they had this group stay after school, watching? Some games, some books… there was no real curriculum, just games, reading…"

"And you were a girl?"

Sophia shook her head, "A girl group member. I’m not sure I ever really understood what that even meant. It’s like there’s this whole movement, and we’re fighting over who gets to read a book, or who gets to watch a movie. Or who gets to join in a game. Games, movies, books, they’re all fighting for their identity and their place in it. They’re playing this long and hard war. The thing they have going for them most is the way they act and the looks in their eye."

She looked around, "When they have these meetings, does this get discussed?"

"Yeah," Alec said. "If the older members do stuff like watch some movies and have some group activities, we’re talking about things they’d want to put some group’s ratings in as well. Group’s on, and so long as they don’t make us feel like assholes, we don’t get called out."

Sophia smirked, "Then they’re on. When they’re not fighting, they’re watching movies, maybe playing video games, or going out for a walk to get where we are."

"You and the rest of your sister’s ‘group’-"

"We call them ‘shèntu’, or the ‘sworn’, because it’s like… we’re like sworn enemies, no lie. We’re in this for power. For influence, to get people to do things we want them to do. We’re not in this to get a rise out of assholes. The rest of you are like the sworn enemies that aren’t, because you’re doing your jobs for the people who pay the bills. We’re doing ours."

"No shit?"

"Yeah," Sophia said.

"I just want that power and this position so badly, I need to say thank you."

Sophia extended her hand, "I’ve said my piece. Good luck."<|endoftext|>If you do have a lot of time and can spare the time to read, it’d be great if you could share this with your teammates, friend or guild mates to give them the idea or give yourselves the motivation to get your team out there. Here in Canada, there’s a fair few members who are just starting out in the Guild, finding out about the more competitive scene, just to hop on a plane and find themselves without the context of what their guild is about.

So if you and three of your friends can spare a minute to get yourselves sorted and ready, and if you have time, I’d suggest making it a community event for the rest of us.

What do you get? A day’s worth of food for every seven people in your household; coffee, tea, water for at least two drinks; a pen or penholder if you have a card in front of you; a printed calendar for four people, or if you can’t give your birthdays up for a good amount, we could set you up with a gift certificate for whatever your pay stubs are worth; enough coffee to go four to six hours, to give you about an hour to make your coffee, set aside for you and your friends to get to know each other and get to know each other well enough that you can both do a bit of shopping, find a spot to sit in a café, or both.

If you’re feeling generous, you could have your friends bring their dog from home, a fenced in area so it can keep out the dog poachers, bring their dog's crate or a kennel for them to sleep in. Or you could go to the shelters. The places that do are small, so you have people who are more geared for the shoplifting

======== SAMPLE 25 ========
, I’m going to need a bit more on it. Maybe I’ll send them a short message on the way back. Then we’ll check on the other three, see what has changed. If they’re alright?"

I nodded again, "Good to have that in mind."

"Best if we don’t make any trouble, of course," Grue said, when I had shut off his lines, "I’m glad we didn’t. But keep the information in mind until we discuss it in person."

"Okay."

We didn’t get a chance to discuss the subject. One of three explosions ripped through the center of the street, knocking out most of the vehicles. Armsmaster fired a barrage at the explosion, and Armsmaster’s laser sight snapped to focus on the target, a large brick building.

It exploded from the roof, with a force that sent everyone running for cover.

The laser sight snapped to focus on Armsmaster, who was making a beeline for Lung, the boy’s target.

The second he saw it, he turned, and used one of his grappling hooks to slam it down through the crowd. In the process, he threw the roof over the building, splitting it in half. A third hook caught out of the corner of the building on top of Lung’s back.

The man who was still on top struggled to get free of the ledge, but got slammed forward as he tried to scramble to his feet, a chunk of one building falling onto him and knocking him off of the building.

More crowd was trying to leave, and the roof that was behind a group of teenagers, but Armsmaster caught the last of them out of the way.

Lung fell from the sky, landed on the roof, and slammed his knee into the group of teenagers, breaking a half dozen or so fingers.

All except an elderly man, who rolled on the roof, trying to throw himself down. He was caught.

"You won’t get out of this situation alive!" Armsmaster roared.

Someone screamed and kicked the man in the face, knocking them off of the roof. He stumbled around and fell to the ground, unconscious.

"Hey! Get up!" Armsmaster barked out orders into his megaphone. "Weaver!"

A crowd on top of Lung, Armsmaster, the woman and a teenager tried to move, only for the man to slam down and knock them into each other, knocking the older man down.

He was still unconscious. The man who was still climbing away from the roof tried to rise and was knocked down too.

He tried to climb to his feet and was thrown by Armsmaster. It hurt, and he’d almost fallen from the third building without realizing it.

His arms flew out and he sent a laser to the boy with a flash of light, but it blindsided him, and he nearly stumbled in falling out of his stride, catching his balance with one leg and not the other. He landed on the roof again, and he sent a grappling hook through the roof to cut the boy free.

Lung, the boy on the roof and the old man rolled on the pavement, and climbed to their feet.

Lung used his hands to sweep the old man free of the way the laser sight snapped to him, and then slapped the boy down for going after his teammate.

The man crawled free, one hand pressed to his side, but he hadn’t had any time to heal. He was injured beyond repair, but he was still alive.

The girl that had been on the roof with the other two rolled onto the ground, face red, arms outstretched. Lung pushed the man away. He was bloodied, but still alive.

One of the three exploded on top of Lung, and he scrambled away from the man he had just kicked, sliding with a barely controlled clapping motions of the knife’s sheath. The knives were still in one sheath as he backed out.



I felt a growl behind me, but I could hear Lung and the others behind me. A moment later, they were joined by the other three. I saw Bitch, her eyes wide, her arms bound behind her as she bent over a wounded Bitch and prodded his jaw.

She held and slashed at his face.

He thrashed, staggered, then came to a stop on his end.

Her hands went to her mouth, the two knives going out the other side of her knife holder.

One of her eyes was covered by her mask, and the movements of her head, shoulders, and neck were masked under a black bandana.

I couldn’t see through it with