#kind of a Wings of Fire hivemind situation

[angelic-ish-phantom]

Order

Day 3

If Danny had to describe his ghost half in a word, it would be hungry.

Not in any familiar way; there was nothing painful about it, no clawing feeling in his stomach.

There was only craving.

Ever since he’d seen those first ectopi come through the portal, he had felt that deep seated need, that urgency.

To consume.

It felt strange and a little too inaccurate to call it an instinct. It was so much less complicated, foreign…

Trying to describe it in human terms made feel confused. Thinking about it with his human mind made him feel nauseous. He’d much rather just stew in his core as it whirred intricately, whispering impulses into his very ectoplasm.

Danny understood that his core worked like a second mind, intimately so. But is wasn’t a brain… wasn’t human. It was such a foreign way to think, if you could even call it that.

But Danny had the compulsions that came with it under control. Really he did! Sure, he still reflexively bit the odd monster in a fight, and couldn’t help drinking in emotions when he was particularly drained, but it was fine! He could ignore it. It wasn’t a problem.

At least it hadn’t been until Lunch Lady. Not until the first ghost that was a person came through the portal and Danny was just as hungry as he’d ever been.

oOo

“It’s really not as bad as I’m making it sound!” Danny groaned into his hands. This was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to tell his friends; it was hard to put into words that didn’t make it sound sick.

Sam’s eyes narrowed, “Isn’t it? Danny, wanting to… eat the ghosts your fighting doesn’t sound bad to you?”

“Sounds like it’s just another mostly harmless ghost thing. I mean, you’re all made out of ectoplasm, right? So you need more ectoplasm to ‘live’? As established, other ghosts just happen to be a source of that.” Tucker suggested, trying to rationalize his hunger. “All ghosts have cannibalistic tendencies confirmed.” He joked, but Danny could (taste) see he was unnerved.

“But Danny doesn’t need to eat ectoplasm to live.” Sam said, before whirling on Danny, concern under her alarm, “You don’t do you?”

“…I don’t need to, no.” Danny surrendered. “It’s nice though. Not that I would eat a person for it. That’s not why I would want to at least. It’s not- it wouldn’t be for ectoplasm energy. It’s just- guys I swear, this isn’t a bad thing!”

“…You know those monster and animal ghosts have to eat you before. I just thought they were doing what they do, but this could be the reason. But I don’t think any of the ghosts that talk have ever tried that.” Tucker said, shaking off his unease at Danny’s prior words.

He was wrong. Technus had definitely tried to. And Lunch Lady. Box ghost made a pitiful attempt to every time he was alone. Even Spectra had made to, but she’d seemed almost repulsed.

“Probably because they wouldn’t eat another person!” Sam explained, as though it were obvious.

Danny thought they would. If they were feeling what he’d felt, they only wouldn’t eat him if he was too big.

And Danny wondered, what if there was a ghost big enough to try and eat him, and win?

(That should have been a more worrying thought than it was…)

What about the reverse; what about a ghost small enough that eating it wouldn’t be a challenge for him.

Not that he ever would.

oOo

Danny really hadn’t meant to do it.

He’d thought he’d had a pretty good handle on the whole urge to consume any ghost in front of him.

But just he’d been so tired. He hadn’t known the time exactly, just that it was dark, and he’d been operating on so little sleep even before he’d had to take care of the beastly looking ghost that had crawled out of a natural portal in the dead of the night.

And after shooting a quick text to his friends, telling them he’d come out of the fight in one piece, he’d come back to his room.

And glowing softly in center of his bed, was a blob ghost.

Danny had seen blob ghosts before—massive, shapeless, wailing things. But this one was different. It was like the round, ones he glimpsed crawling through the shadows of Skulker’s island, and slipping in and out of the walls of Pointdexter’s lair.

He’d never seen one on the side of the portal before.

Danny looked down at it, a bit suspicious. It appeared to be harmless, but it was also a ghost. One that had been in his room while he wasn’t there.

The thing tilted it’s head curiously as though inspecting him back. Well, not it’s head considering it didn’t really have one; the entire front part of his body shifted, it’s eye spots wide and empty.

Danny couldn’t help but find it cute. Still he raised the thermos and-

The blob ghost flopped over as though in submission, core thrumming a low pitch that made that ever present hunger Danny felt rise to the forefront.

Danny bit his tongue, stepping back a bit. What was it doing, did it want him to- to-

He couldn’t stop himself from lowering the thermos, from locking his eyes on the blob and practically prowling across the space between them.

What was he doing? The thought almost stopped him, but it was too fleeting. Too irrelevant in the face of the ghost’s dull glow.

Danny needed it. Need the strength it could give him, however small. He needed the knowledge. The completeness that would surely come with consuming it, making it an extension of himself.

It trilled as he got closer still, soft approval.

It was so tiny. So weak. It needed him. It needed to be bigger, to be part of him. That way he could protect it.

That thought ran through his obsession in all the right spots. Danny shivered as his human mind expressed the utmost repulsion. Danny licked his ectoplasm-green tongue over ghostly fangs.

Danny opened his mouth.

oOo

For the record, Danny had been going to tell his friends what had happened that night, what he’d done. Really he had been!

But then he’d thought of how exactly he would say that. How would he even broach the topic? Just drop in at lunch and go, ‘Oh hey guys! remember how I was obsessively considering cannibalizing my enemies. Well I tried it out and now I think I’m not gonna stop-‘?

Yeah, no.

He couldn’t stand the thought of how Sam might look at him. At how even Tucker had been unnerved at the idea of his unconventional appetite before he had given in to it. They’d put up with his his weird half-ghost things before, had stuck with him this long, but… this felt like a lot.

Danny didn’t want them to see him, the way his parents saw Phantom.

He knew he was being paranoid. Probably. Especially considering ‘eating’ definitely wasn’t the right word for what he’d done.

Danny distractedly watched the blob ghost loop through his legs amiably.

It had kind of just fazed back out of him in the morning. Or rather Danny had fazed it out of him.

He had taken hold of its body and suddenly extremely susceptible, suggestible mind and had just made it move.

He could let go, and the blob didn’t seem to mind when he did it… it seemed to enjoy it actually.

It was safe and taken care of. Danny could take care of it. It could help Danny, and Danny could help it. It was mutually beneficial and perfectly fine. Danny would tell his friends exactly how fine it was.

Eventually.

oOo

The thing is, the blob ghost could ask Danny for help in a roundabout way. It could need help and Danny would understand.

So when another ghost had been chasing it around dusk, and Danny had already been transformed from an earlier fight, he had swept in to save it.

And as Danny fought the ghost, an odd wolf like animal with snakes instead of a tail, the blob had gotten some very tempting urges. It had actively pushed its thoughts onto Danny. It had told him to eat, to expand his self. To be stronger so he could protect it, to make it so this other ghost wasn’t so mindless and wouldn’t do any more damage.

And Danny would have been able to ignore the hunger as he always did if it weren’t for the argument proposed, if there wasn’t another smaller mind assuring him, wanting him to take and never stop.

And Danny gave in.

oOo

Ghosts that look like monsters out of some mythology are hard to hide. Even with their forms shrunken slightly, even when Danny willed them invisible most of the time, someone was bound to realize there was a ghost lurking around Amity Park that he hadn’t gotten rid of.

Or well, ghosts.

Which brought Danny to his second issue. When a ghost had already ‘eaten’ other ghosts, and that ghost then too gets eaten, it turns out it makes a chain of command.

First was Danny. Then his blob and the wolf ghost. Then the wolf ghost’s ghosts. And then their blob ghosts.

The control Danny had over them wasn’t overwhelming. They were like limbs with their own minds; Danny could move them as he pleased, but they had their own independence and took comfort in this relationship.

They were much less noticeable that an entire extra arm though. More like a big toe. Toes with toes. Something he could move, and could always feel was there. He would notice if they were missing, but he didn’t always notice they were there.

That made sense. It made enough sense for him to be comfortable thinking about it like a human.

Danny was constantly aware of this order, but was also content to just let them roam with little interference. The odd nudge away from people here, turning one invisible there, using one to handle a smaller ghost fight while he’s in school.

It was useful. It was nice.

Sure it was strange to get used to have so many senses, and the range of emotions they were all feeling at any time was complicated to say the least.

His first blob was a lot more smug lately, about being so high in the order, about being so close to Danny, above ghosts many times stronger than it. Many of the others were content to laze around and explore the living world, bathing in the feeling of being protected. Others kept spooking humans for fun, and causing quiet mischief which was harmless enough that Danny didn’t often stop it.

Being so connected to them all made him feel complete. He couldn’t imagine anything more satisfying, satiating that this.

oOo

When Danny’s core had awoken he didn’t fly into the ghost zone blindly. It had been the impression of knowledge from one of the lowest ghosts in his order, a lizard like creature with a form the consistency of sand.

And then Danny had been taken to the Far Frozen. And he had met Frostbite.

Danny had never been exactly scared of what might happen if a ghost ‘ate’ him. He knew what it was to be at the top of an order, but despite feeling the comfort of his charges, he couldn’t imagine liking being in that position.

He’d have nothing to gain the way his ghosts did, minds going from stilted to simple but fast, aware. He’d just have his aim a massive amount of his autonomy stripped from him.

It made him feel bad about having taken his ghosts when he thought about it like that. Like a human would.

Then in Frostbite’s presence, he’d understood.

He’d known intimately in that moment, why his blob ghost had lured him closer in the hopes he would add it to himself. He felt every bit as small as it must have been in his presence.

Frostbite was bigger than he appeared, Danny could see that. He was letting shrunken yet he was still the largest yeti in the Far Frozen, and every member of that place was part of him.

Danny could only imagine the security they all felt under something so all-encompassing. He could feel Frostbite’s hunger, drawing him in, restrained if only because Danny was a hero to them.

It was a strange thing to want to be eaten.

Danny might have even asked. If it weren’t for his obsession and obligations, he might have forgotten humanity entirely and joined this wonderfully hidden, protected place.

But he had his haunt, his humans, his home to go back to. Then he did.

And despite how amazingly he’d been treated in the Far Frozen, despite how kind and affectionate the yeti’s were Danny stayed away. Because he didn’t know when he might not be able to pull himself away.

[imdoingthismspaintadventure]

Worm 1.6 - In which we meet futuristic techno Dredd

II heard the cape arrive on his souped up motorcycle.  I didn’t want to be seen fleeing the scene of a fight, and risk being labeled one of the bad guys by yet another person, but I wasn’t about to get closer to the street either, in case Lung was feeling better.  Since there was nowhere to go, I just stayed put.  Just resting felt good.

Yeah it’s better you stay and try to explain what went down. Fleeing after all this..wouldn’t be a good look. And let’s try to stay far away from  the knocked-out fire demon while we’re at it.

If you’d asked me just a few hours ago about how I thought I would feel meeting a big name superhero, I would have used words like excited and giddy.  The reality was that I was almost too exhausted to care.

You have experienced a loooot of things just today girl. It’s not everyday you get into a life or death fight and then meet some people of dubious character, all in the span of like 20 minutes. Shame your first encounter with a bona-fide superhero is in a situation like this.

It looked as though he flew up onto the roof, but the six-foot long weapon the man held kind of jerked as he landed.  I was pretty sure I saw the tines of a grappling hook retreating back into the end of the weapon.  So this was what Armsmaster looked like in person, I thought.

Armsmaster! So...master of weapons? He seems to have a pretty badass one in one arm, which seems to have multiple uses. Good old Grappling Hooks! The way for grounded super heroes to keep up with flight-types!

The largest superhero organization in the world was the Protectorate, spanning Canada and the States, with ongoing talks about including Mexico in the deal.  It was a government sponsored league of superheroes with a base in each ‘cape city’.  That is, they had a team set up in each city with a sizable population of heroes and villains.  Brockton Bay’s team was officially ‘The Protectorate East-North-East’, and were headquartered in the floating, forcefield-shrouded island that you could see from the Boardwalk.  This guy, Armsmaster, was the guy in charge of the local team.  When the core group of the top Protectorate members from around Canada and the States assembled in that classic ‘v’ formation for the photo shoots, Armsmaster was one of the guys in the wings.  This was a guy who had his own action figures.  Poseable Armsmaster with interchangeable Halberd parts.

Wooaaah. So he’s a really big shot! Leader of the local Protectorate which seems to be this universe’s version of the Avengers/Justice League/big main hero organization. He lives in that badass flying fortess! And seems to be pretty marketable as well. Meeting him in the flesh like this in your first day, woah .

He really did look like a superhero, not like some guy in a costume.  It was an important distinction.  He wore body armor, dark blue with silver highlights, had a sharply angled v-shaped visor covering his eyes and nose.  With only the lower half of his face exposed, I could see a beard trimmed to trace the edges of his jaw.  If I had to judge, with only the lower half of his face to go by, I’d guess he was in his late twenties or early thirties.

High-tech superhero armor and professional gear! Sweet!

He’s giving me a mix of iron man and judge dredd vibes with that costume. Either way he seems to exude “veteran and skilled super” a lot.

His trademark and weapon was his Halberd, which was basically a spear with an axe head on the end, souped up with gadgets and the kind of technology you generally only saw in science fiction.  He was the kind of guy who appeared on magazine covers and did interviews on TV, so you could find almost anything about Armsmaster through various media, short of his secret identity.  I knew his weapon could cut through steel as though it was butter, that it had plasma injectors for stuff that the blade alone couldn’t cut and that he could fire off directed electromagnetic pulses to shut down forcefields and mechanical devices.

HE HAS A MASTER WEAPON WHICH CAN ACT AS ALL OF THE WEAPONS AT THE SAME TIME. THAT’S SO AWESOME

I knew he was gonna be technologically-focused, with that badass floating island and all!

A spear-axe hybrid strong enough to cut through steel, with plasma injectors and EMP blasts?? Fucking sweet.

“You gonna fight me?” He called out.

“I’m a good guy,” I said.

Stepping closer to me, he tilted his head, “You don’t look like one.”

Oof. That’s true. Miss looking-like-a-living-bug with dark colors and yellow lenses doesn’t seem very heroic at... all

Also I really like how that line was delivered for some reason. You don’t look like one

That stung, especially coming from him.  It was like Michael Jordan saying you sucked at basketball.  “That’s… not intentional,” I responded, not a little defensively, “I was more than halfway done putting the costume together when I realized it was already looking more edgy than I’d intended, and I couldn’t do anything about it by then.”

Your power is very hard to use in a kid-friendly way! You command a swarm of biting, stinging, maybe-venomous, maybe-flesh eating bugs! That grimdark look is actually apropiate

I wonder if this work will explore heroes who want to do good things but have characteristically “evil powers”. Taylor could easily be one!

There was a long pause.  Nervously, I turned my eyes from that opaque visor.  I glanced at his chest emblem, a silhouette of his visor in blue against a silver background, and was struck with the ridiculous thought that I had once owned a pair of underpants with his emblem on the front.

Pfft! Taylor your young fangirl self is adorable

Also gave me Deku flashbacks, as with the hero journals

“You’re telling the truth,” he said.  It was a definitive statement, which startled me.  I wanted to ask how he knew, but I wasn’t about to do or say anything that might change his mind. 

Lie-detector?? God his suit just has everything

I love technology based powers by the way. When a hero stacks himself up to the teeth in sweet tech it’s a sight to behold

He approached closer, looking me over as I sat there with my arms around my knees, he asked, “You need a hospital?”

“No,” I said. “Don’t think so.  I’m as surprised as you are.”

“You’re a new face,” he said.

“I haven’t even come up with a name yet.  You know how hard it is to come up with a bug-themed name that doesn’t make me sound like a supervillain or a complete dork?”

Hmm that’s true! Swarm sounds villanous, same with Plague, Sting, Hivemind, Pestilence...

Bug is probably too simple. (Insect) Queen maybe? Eh Queen is so general that it’s probably taken already. Control? Probably taken  and sounds villanous.

He chuckled, and it sounded warm, very normal, “I wouldn’t know.  I got into the game early enough that I didn’t have to worry about missing out on all of the good names.”

There was a pause in the conversation.  I suddenly felt awkward.  I don’t know why, but I admitted to him, “I almost died.”

“That’s why we have the Ward program,” he said.  There was no judgement in his tone, no pressure.  Just a statement.

Hmm, what is that? Some sort of superhero training?

I nodded, more to give a response than out of any agreement with the answer.  The Wards were the under-eighteen subdivision of the Protectorate, and Brockton Bay did have its own team of Wards, with the same naming convention as the Protectorate; The Wards East-North-East.  I had considered applying to join, but the notion of escaping the stresses of high school by flinging myself into a mess of teenage drama, adult oversight and schedules seemed self-defeating.

Oooh so it’s like the Teen Titans, and other young superhero groups! Young teenage superheroes! Nice!

Also yeah, that would probably be similar to school, and you wanted escapism with this. I don’t think you would get bullied though, but I understand your reticence.

“You get Lung?” I asked, to change the subject from the Wards.  I was pretty sure that he was obligated to try and induct new heroes into either the Protectorate or the Wards, depending on their age, to promote the whole agenda of organized heroes who are accountable for their actions, and I really didn’t want him to get on my case about joining.

He probably is obligated to ask, yeah. I suppose they don’t condone vigilantism. So changing the subject to the dragon man is probably a good idea!

“Lung was unconscious, beaten and battered when I arrived.  I pumped him full of tranquilizers to be safe and temporarily restrained him under a steel cage I welded to the sidewalk.  I’ll pick him up on my way back.”

“Good,” I said, “With him in jail, I’ll feel like I accomplished something today.  Only reason I started the fight was because I overheard him telling his men to shoot some kids.  Only realized later that he was talking about some other villains.”

Armsmaster turned to look at me.  So I told him, walking him through the fight in general, the arrival of the teenage bad guys, and their general descriptions.  Before I finished, he was pacing back and forth on the roof.

“These guys.  They knew I was coming?”

Yeeah that was a pretty epic misunderstanding there.

Also they probably knew you were coming thanks to the kinda-omniscient know-it-all in their team soooo yeah.

I nodded, once.  As much respect as I had for Armsmaster, I wasn’t in much of a mood to repeat myself.

“That explains a lot,” he said, staring off into the distance.  After a few moments, he went on to explain, “They’re slippery.  On those few occasions we do manage to get in a toe to toe fight with them, they either win, or they get away more or less unscathed, or both.  We know so little about them.  Grue and Hellhound were working on their own before they joined the group, so there’s some information there, but the other two?  They’re nonentities.  If the girl Tattletale has some way of detecting or tracking us, it would go a long way towards explaining why they’re doing as well as they are.”

Insteresting! So Regent and Tattletale are very well hidden! I imagine it must be easy for Tattletale to do so, but I still don’t know what Regent does... He’s definitely the most misterious of them all at the moment.

Heh, and he uses Hellhound for Bitch, he’s a hero so of course

It kind of surprised me to hear one of the top level heroes admitting to being anything less than perfectly on top of things.

“It’s funny,” I said, after a few moment’s thought, “They didn’t seem that hardcore.  Grue said they were kind of panicking when they heard Lung was coming after them, and they were casually joking around while the fight was going on.  Grue was making fun of Regent.”

“They said all this in front of you?” he asked.

I shrugged, “I think they thought I was helping them out.  The way Tattletale talked, I think she thought I was a bad guy too or something.”  With a touch of bitterness, I said, “Dunno, I guess it was the costume that led them to that assumption.”

“Could you have taken them in a fight?” Armsmaster asked me.

I started to shrug, and winced a little.  I was feeling a little sore in the shoulder, where I’d tumbled on the roof after being blasted by Lung’s flames.  I said, “Like you said, we don’t know a lot about them, but I think that girl with the dogs-”

“Hellhound,” Armsmaster said.

“I think she could have kicked my ass on her own, so no.  I probably couldn’t have fought them.”

Yeah they didn’t really seem evil per se, they were pretty nice to us! Maybe because they confused us for a villain...

And yeah I don’t think you could have beaten them. Of the two powers I sorta know of them, hellbeasts and kinda-omniscience beat bugs, I’m pretty sure. So yeah.

“Then count it as a good thing that they got the wrong impression,” Armsmaster said.

“I’ll try to look at it that way,” I said, struck by how he easily he was able to employ the whole ‘take a negative and turn it into a positive’ mindset I’d been trying to maintain.  I envied that.

Heroes tends to be more optimistic than most.

“That a girl,” he said, “And while we’re looking forward, we need to decide where we go from here.”

My heart sank.  I knew he was going to bring up the Wards again.

Yeaah and he’ll put you in an awkward spot again...

What do you want to do Taylor? Start as a standalone hero and then work your way up through your acts and deeds? Could you even do that and still be well-regarded by the Protectorate?

“Who gets the credit for Lung?”

Caught off guard, I looked up at him.  I started to speak, but he held up his hand.

“Hear me out.  What you’ve done tonight is spectacular.  You played a part in getting a major villain into custody.  You just need to consider the consequences.”

“Consequences,” I muttered, even as the word spectacular rang in my ears.

Oh, so he wants to talk about who gets the credit? Huh, didn’t expect that. It could be a good first step for her hero career, but it could also be dangerous to let villains know about her existence, especially if she’s going solo

“Lung has an extensive gang throughout Brockton Bay and neighboring cities.  More than that, he has two superpowered flunkies.  Oni Lee and Bakuda.”

I shook my head, “I know about Oni Lee, and Grue mentioned fighting him.  I’ve never heard of Bakuda.”

So he has two liutenants with powers! Oni Lee was mentioned before and now... Bakuda. Baku- makes me think explosions from Bakuha, so it could be explosions-based?

Seems to be a new member, anyways.

Armsmaster nodded, “Not surprising.  She’s new.  What we know about her is limited.  She made her first appearance and demonstration of her powers by way of a drawn out terrorism campaign against Cornell University.  Lung apparently recruited her and brought her to Brockton Bay after her plans were foiled by the New York Protectorate.  This is… something of a concern.”

Damn, terrorism against a University and a conforntation with the New York Protectorate? She seems to have some infamy even before joining

“What are her powers?”

“Are you aware of the Tinker classification?”

I started to shrug, but remembered my sore shoulder and nodded instead.  It was probably more polite, too.  I said, “Covers anyone with powers that give them an advanced grasp of science.  Lets them make technology years ahead of its time.  Ray guns, ice blasters, mechanized suits of armor, advanced computers.”

Oh sweet

So tinkers are the inventors, the tech-based superheroes who use futuristic technology and all kinds of high-specs gear, and that is their superpower?

Oh I love technology-based powers so much.

“Close enough,” Armsmaster said.  It struck me he would be a Tinker, if his Halberd and armor were any indication.  That, or he got his stuff from someone else.  He elaborated,  “Well, most Tinkers have a specialty or a special trick.  Something they’re particualrly good at or something that they can do, which other Tinkers can’t.  Bakuda’s specialty is bombs.”

I stared at him.  A woman with a power that let her make bombs that were technologically decades ahead of their time.  No wonder he saw it as a concern.

So Armsmaster is a tinker! Makes sense with his impossibly-amazing plasma spear-axe, lie detector and super armor. I suppose a tinker’s threat can vary a lot depending on prep time and current gear. I like them!

Super-advanced explosives? Oh boy, that sounds like potencially a fucking nightmare

“Now I want you to consider the danger involved in taking the credit for Lung’s capture.  Without a doubt, Oni Lee and Bakuda will be looking to accomplish two goals.  Freeing their boss and getting vengeance on the one responsible.  I suspect you’re now aware… these are scary people.  Scarier in some ways than their boss.”

“You’re saying I shouldn’t take the credit,” I said.

“I’m saying you have two options.  Option one is to join the Wards, where you’ll have support and protection in the event of an altercation.  Option two is to keep your head down.  Don’t take the credit.  Fly under the radar.”

Yeah I could see how Taylor could become the target of these two underlings, which would probably be more than she can handle.

So Armsmaster is offering her the possibilities of

a) Joining the teenage super-squad and take the credit for Lung or

b)Keep going solo but maintain your involvment in this a secret

I wasn’t prepared to make a decision like that.  Usually, I went to sleep at eleven or so, waking up at six thirty to get ready for my morning run.  At my best guess, it was somewhere between one and two in the morning.  I was emotionally exhausted from the highs and lows of the evening, and I could barely wrap my head around the complications and headaches that would come from joining the Wards, let alone having two insanely dangerous sociopaths coming after me. 

Aand one of those options is already giving Taylor a headache

On top of that, I wasn’t so ignorant as to miss Armsmaster’s motives. If I opted to not take the credit for Lung’s capture, Armsmaster would, I was sure.  I didn’t want to get on the bad side of a major player.

....True, politics could be at play here

Athough I don’t know if Taylor has just a bad view of power structures in general, considering she thought that autobiographical book she read was probably all propaganda

...Which could be true, and the whole system could be corrupt at least a little, and Armsmaster is offering her two options where he hopes he gets the credit and the glory

“Please keep my involvement in Lung’s capture secret,” I told him, painfully disappointed to have to say it, even as I knew it made the most sense.

He smiled, which I hadn’t expected.  He had a nice smile.  It made me think that he could win the hearts of a lot of women, whatever the top two-thirds of his face looked like.  “I think you’ll look back and see this was a smart decision,” Armsmaster said, turning to walk to the other end of the roof, “Call me at the PHQ if you’re ever in a pinch.” He stepped off the edge of the roof and dropped out of sight.

He seems very pleased at her decision, which reinforces my belief that he did want to get the credit after all. Or he’s happy she doesn’t get in trouble. Or both.

Armsmaster seems like an ok guy, probably a little vain, or glory-seeking, but in a way, all superheroes are a bit like that. I have defintely seen much worse examples.

You get a thumbs-up, cool plasma-spear man

Call me if you’re ever in a pinch.  He’d been saying, without openly admitting, that he owed me one.  He would take the lion’s share of the credit for Lung’s capture, but he owed me one.

Before I was all the way down the fire escape, I heard the thrum of his motorcycle, presumably carrying Lung towards a life of confinement. I could hope.

Oh true! Nice, you can call in a favour of a team leader of the superhero mega-alliance! Good start to your superhero career, Taylor!

And he just took away Lung so it seems she was indeed the push the situation needed to get him into custody! Yes!

It would take me a half hour to get home.  On the way, I would stop and pull on the sweatshirt and jeans I had hidden.  I knew my dad went to sleep even earlier than I did, and he slept like a log, so I had nothing to worry about as far as wrapping up the night.

It could have gone worse.  Strange as it sounds, those words were a security blanket I wrapped around myself to keep myself from dwelling on the fact that tomorrow was a school day.

It could have gone worse is a good mentality to have!

Let’s hope the three bitches aren’t too insufferable tomorrow.

[cloudbatcave]

Eye of the Beholder

The sun has barely started to rise across the sky when Tuuya’s phone buzzes.

Automatically, they reach out for it, only to slap the lid of their...bed, instead. It’s a bed, not a coffin. They are not a vampire.

Just because it happens to be filled with dirt like a shallow grave means nothing. It’s a quirk thing, okay. They’re not exactly thrilled that it’s comforting for them.

Blinking sleep away, they push the lid off (otherwise they’d spray dirt everywhere in their restless sleeping) fumbling with a grimy hand until they grab the phone off their short side table.

When they unlock the screen, there’s a picture waiting for them of a kid tied to a chair. The image is too blurry and dark to tell much about them, but from their size they can’t be older than five or six.

Tuuya starts throwing their costume on before they read the text below - who knows what state that kid’s in, if they’re even still alive. As long as there’s a chance...

Why did it have to be a small child, though. First that teenager the other day and now this. 

The underground hero knows trauma is an inevitability of dealing with them, and they don’t take joy from it anymore. The sense of power it once gave them to shock and horrify dulled into boredom, into weary realization that a momentary rush still left them in the same position they’d always be in.

As they step out the door, vaguely noting early morning shadows and work-rush traffic, they check the text.

Be here in half an hour or the kid dies. Bring no one else. I’ll know if you do.

That’d be ominous enough on its own, but the fact that they’re not asking for money or something is worse; at least then Tuuya would have something to negotiate about. This implies a more personal vendetta, and given their colorful past, that doesn’t exactly narrow it down any. 

They’re unfamiliar with the address given too, which is just fantastic. GPS time it is.

This adversary could also have a scrying quirk, or some other way to monitor the worm hero; while the last line might be an idle threat, it could also be very un-idle, and they can’t take chances.

They can however abuse loopholes, and they do so while humming as they tap away a few coded text messages before switching to their phone’s map.

It’s not far, at least - they’ll make the deadline just fine.

Their eyes narrow. That’s a little too easy, unless their adversary doesn’t know where they live after all. 

No time to overthink, they muse as they get on their motorcycle. Opponents can be overestimated as well as underestimated.

Even with the annoyingly low speed limits (which they’re always careful to obey) they make it with ten minutes to spare and use it to look around.

Despite their texts none of Oculus’s pets can be sighted, or perhaps they’re hidden very well. 

There are no obvious traps outside either - no hazards they can see that could be tripped, or bombs. There could be hidden ones, but for all intents and purposes the place looks like a normal junkyard.

Not that they trust it one bit.

Cutting open their hand with their fangs, they kneel down and release several worms, directing them to fan out. The information they receive from them isn’t very sophisticated, but the little things can feel heat, light, and react to signs of life. It’s far better than no warning at all, and they wriggle quickly across the concrete.

Their life outside Tuuya’s body is limited and dependent on the weather, among other factors. It rained yesterday, so the creatures have several minutes before they pass.

After a minute or two of waiting, all of them die within seconds of each other.

Good to know stealth is useless.

Whistling jauntily, Tuuya taps their fingers against their arm in short and long bursts as they stroll inwards, keeping it up until someone covered up to the nines, scarf and sunglasses included, steps out from behind a junk pile with a gun.

“What’re ya waiting for? Get over here.”

The voice - likely male, but it’s hard to tell - sounds bored, as if they have a million better things to do than wave a pistol at somebody. They probably do.

Still no sign of Oculus’s pets. There’s no tracks to see on concrete, but Tuuya can’t hear any telltale skittering or chirps.

The worm hero really hopes they’re just hidden as more thugs file in from different locations, all of them dressed identically. 

All of them oddly bored.

They move in strange unison, too, as if...

Oh goody, a copying quirk. 

Any hope of them being illusions is dashed by the smell of their bodies and the sound of their shoes pressing against the hard gray surface.

It also explains the worms’ nigh-identical death moments.

The billion-yen question is: are they all controlled by a single intelligence, or do they have their own individual ones?

Are they a real hive mind?

They round a pile and see the child still tied to the chair. 

They’re bloody, but they seem to be alive. 

Hatred surges in the worm hero, but they sink back into the old years of indifference, washing it away for a moment and not allowing their expression to change. 

The woman standing next to them is unfortunately familiar, though given her gaunt face and crazed expression, it’s safe to say life hasn’t been kind to her since Tuuya saw her last.

“Mei-san! You look well.”

“You piece of shit. You should’ve gone to rot with the old man.”

They put a hand to their chest in mock affront, pale skin looking paler against their white costume striped with black.

“Is that any way to treat an old friend?”

“You sold us all out. Every. Single. One.”

“Mei-san, what would you have done in my position? Wasted away in that place for refusing to cooperate? I’m delicate, I couldn’t have managed.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten caught! Because I’m not a fucking idiot!”

Her hands are clenching and her teeth are bared. She’s quirkless, but with the five gun-wielding goons on her side (even if two are currently chatting with zero apparent interest in the situation) she definitely has the advantage. 

Plus there’s the kid to worry about.

“That brat is your telekinetic pal’s niece, and she’s going to die while you watch.” She gloats, switching abruptly to smug from enraged as she paces back and forth, but her eyes are still alight with resentment.

“Oh, poor Shifter, she’s never been so insulted in her life. You’re lucky she can’t hear you.”

A brief look of puzzlement flashes over Mei’s face, but she snorts and then grins. 

A flutter of wings flashes behind her and the goons.

They tap their arms again, twisting in place.

“So, how’s the kid going to bite it?”

Mei looks taken aback by your casual tone, which is funny in its own way. Then she smiles slyly, worn and yellowed teeth showing.

“Huh; you just let them think you changed. Still have to do this, but I guess it’ll be easier on you.”

A pair of great eagles swoop down and carry the child off, chair and all. Their wingbeats are unsteady at first, but avoid the late gunshots of the goons as they fly away.

Tuuya uses the distraction to tackle her to the concrete.

Mei swears and writhes and digs her fingernails into their skin, but she’s thin from stress and likely drug use as well.

Several bangs sound and Tuuya’s grateful for their earplugs.

Blood runs onto the concrete from a hole in Mei’s throat, a gleam of crushed bone and ragged windpipe visible through the torn muscle.

They feel themself riddled as well, the worms already working to push them out.

Looking up, they see the goons all positioned at near-perfect pentagonal points, one oddly large gap between two of them. All the shots seem to have been fired at the same time.

They’re riddled again. Gritting their fangs through the pain, they swing their head back and forth, watching, scanning.

More shots, more crushed bone and writhing worms. They’re approaching their limit.

One goon’s hand twitches before the rest of them do. Then the other two, then the other two a fraction of a second later. One is calling the shots.

Just like them when they send worms out. 

Tuuya lets a flood of writhing white creatures spill from the holes, flowing out toward what must be the original. Their eyes close, but they can feel the pulse of the original’s blood, the breath that’s stopped by worms in their nose, their mouth.

No more shots.

Can’t let them die. Redirect the worms.

No matter how fun it would be. 

Tuuya’s not a vampire, but they can only ingest liquids. Sometimes smelling blood makes them curious in a way that they’ve never had a good explanation for.

It’d be so easy. Let them die. See what it tastes like.

Oculus could still be watching, they remind themself. 

Still the original thrashes, airways full of white squirming creatures.

It’s when they think of the child that the worms at last go their hands and tie them together, and the goon takes ragged gasps. Might have throat damage.

Tuuya can’t really bring themself to care.

With fewer worms in their body, it’s harder to push out the bullets. So they lie there, surrounded by four stock-still copies and one restrained original.

They soon pass out.

--

“Come on, honey - you already thanked the other heroes.”

“I want to thank them!”

They open their eyes, but the harsh light and lack of comforting dirt means they shut them again.

A hospital. How laughable.

And if that’s who they think it is, better to pretend to be aslee -

A small hand prods them in the arm before being scolded.

“But I saw them looking!”

“Let’s leave the...mix Hivemind to sleep, okay?”

The kid’s complaints get further and further away until Tuuya deems it safe to open their eyes for real.

Shifter’s here too, sitting in a chair and looking over at them over the magazine she’s holding.

Her face is unreadable.

“You were almost dead when we found you. Try wearing some kevlar.”

They smile dryly.

“That would restrict my quirk, and you know it.”

“Would restrict you looking like a colander too.”

“It turned out fine, didn’t it?”

“Chain Gang got away.” She says flatly. “So did the other watcher Oculus and Feathertouch had to fight. That’s why the birds were late; they had to keep them distracted, and Ichika almost didn’t make it.”

The worm hero opens their mouth to ask who that is before they realize the obvious answer.

“Ah. I’m sorry. She seems all right now, at least.”

“Her dad begged for her to get her memory wiped. Can’t blame him. My sister didn’t like it, but she gave in.”

Relief washes through them. She won’t tell anyone what they said. 

Guilt nips at its heels, as well as wondering why they can’t have that done for everyone they save.

Their thoughts must leak to their face, because Shifter’s becomes uncertain, not an expression they’re used to seeing on her.

“This didn’t turn out great, but you’re not in trouble. No one expected you to take out five men with guns on your own. We didn’t even know Chain Gang was in the area; he’s from way further north, small-time crook.”

“He killed Mei.” they spill, unsure why they mention it. Unsure why their chest is tight at the thought. 

“That was her name? You should tell the cops; they wanted a statement from you about the body as soon as you were conscious.”

“He killed her and he didn’t even have to.” They mumble. 

Mei was one of Ryouji’s contacts; she brought him a lot of the supplies he needed for his experiments. She’d never had much time for Tuuya, but she’d always flick a cigarette their way. Never at their face. Just in their direction. 

When they were young, Tuuya had always watched for her, waiting to meet her eyes. Scaring her was off-limits, but that had been almost as good.

They hadn’t paused when selling her or the rest of his contacts out to the heroes in return for staying out of jail. The choice had been simple.

So why did they keep seeing her torn open throat and burning with fury? Why should it matter to them?

Shifter looks awkward, but also thoughtful.

“This is his first murder, as far as we know. He’s way higher priority now, we have teams searching. Wonder why he decided she was worth it?”

“She wasn’t.”

They swallow, then speak again.

“She wasn’t worth killing. It doesn’t make sense.”

Shifter stares, until her face relaxes slightly with a faint ‘hm’ noise.

“You knew her, back then?”

“Not really.” They pause. “I didn’t know anyone then, except Ryouji.”

“What did your tap message mean, ‘no more’? If you sent others, Oculus didn’t get them.”

“Ah. I’d sent ‘no more - limited copies’ because I didn’t see any beyond those five, and I wanted to confirm there weren’t any more reinforcements.”

Shifter’s mouth moves into a grimace.

“From his records, Chain Gang’s limit is actually six, including the original. That’s how he got away - another came and grabbed the other ones, pulled the original out of your worms and got them in a car. By the time we could pursue, we lost them.”

Tuuya whistles in admiration. Smart villain, even if he is a complete bastard. What did motivate him to shoot his own co-conspirator?

“Anyway. Ichika won’t shut up about wanting to thank you. Just let her do it quick so she can move on and forget.”

“Is that smart, Shifter? I don’t want to piss off her parents.”

The short, muscular hero rolls her eyes.

“The more you tell a kid no, the more they want something. Easier to let her do it so she’ll stop fixating, especially since no one wants to tell her why.”

Tuuya blinks, puzzled.

“Just say I’m a monster. Easy, simple.”

More or less true.

“We can’t.” says Shifter, lips pulling back in irritation. “Not without risking more trauma. She doesn’t remember you, but she overheard enough that she knows you came to help her, and she already thanked Oculus and Feathertouch.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes. It’s a mistake to let the kid think positively of them. What will people think if she babbles of a hero with worms in them? A heteromorph of the most disturbing kind?

A creature who sleeps in earth because the hospital bed they’re lying on isn’t dark and comforting enough, not reassuringly crumbly to their skin and the little creatures swarming inside them.

A former villain.

“Let her come back in. Like you say, I’m sure she’ll forget.”

Shifter sighs, but gets up and goes to fetch her niece.

The little girl is so clean and bright and curious that Tuuya hardly recognizes her at first, but their hesitant fanged smile turns into a full one as they take in how healthy and happy she is now. They must have used a healing quirk on her along with the memory wipe.

“Hello, Ichika-san. I’m Hivemind. How are you doing?”

She clutches her stuffed panda and smiles shyly.

“M’good.”

“I heard you wanted to tell me something.”

She looks up at Shifter, mock furious, then giggles.

“Thank you!” she pipes. “Can I see your quirk? Look - I can do this - “

The child’s hands turn to furred paws, complete with claws. Bearlike ears sprout from her head. Then both fade away.

Ah.

Hesitant, careful, Tuuya allows a single worm to push through their skin, waving back and forth.

The child is captivated and reaches out to touch it with a finger before they can warn her back.

The sensation is so, so strange. So gentle. Ichika pokes it, and it retreats. She giggles. 

“Bye!” She says, and runs off, her aunt muttering under her breath as she goes after her.

Tuuya lies back in the uncomfortable, perfectly suitable bed, staring at the white ceiling.

Shifter’s definitely going to hate them for this.

They wish they could find the will to regret doing it. 

[gryphons-of-aentha]

The Approximate Plotline of the Gryphonverse (pt. 2)

Because this is what you were getting yourselves into when you followed me.

Right, so, Talon and Iadra join up with Kyran to overthrow Kyran’s asshole father, who happens to rule the country. They end up working well together and form a sizeable group of aquei and one or two additional gryphons who Iadra managed to convince. If not for the fact that it was all being headed by a seventeen year old with absolutely no martial experience at all (not to mention a much greater talent for dividing people than uniting them, which was great for starting the rebellion but not finishing it), it might have worked. Unfortunately, it was being headed by a seventeen year old, and he doesn’t believe in stealth or subtlety because he’s melodramatic enough to want an audience when he confronts and in theory usurps his father. While they do manage to make a heavy dent in the king’s guard/soldiers and cause a lot of problems for him, they’re overpowered without much effort in the end. Talon and Iadra manage to escape the aftermath mostly unscathed, though not all the gryphons do, and Kyran is arrested and very promptly exiled on the spot. The king’s hope was likely that the humiliation of such a complete and public defeat would prevent him from ever showing himself in Andolia again, but as it turns out humiliating Kyran has roughly the effect of throwing water on a grease fire, and he was already plotting revenge before he’d even finished storming out of the room. 

Meanwhile, Talon and Iadra are trying to figure out where to go from here because this whole fiasco has made the Andolian impression of gryphons even worse (largely because the king is actively pushing the narrative in that direction to throw the blame off himself, since Kyran managed to make himself into a massive PR disaster). Even Talon is finding himself less welcome in a lot of places than he used to be, and distances himself from the places he is welcome to avoid bringing unwanted attention to them, so he mostly hangs out in the no-man’s-land with other gryphons unless his town has some kind of monster-of-the-week situation he needs to deal with. Iadra does have to rescue his ass more than once when he overestimates the goodwill of a few villages, because he’s entirely too optimistic when it comes to judgement of character, but while she's more wary about which aquei she’ll interact with, she enthusiastically jumps on the reputation-grinding sidequest train (gryphons are very fond of three things: proving how badass they are with dangerous heroics, being complimented about it, and receiving shiny things, so this is really the gig they were made for) and even becomes cautiously friendly with Talon’s hometown.

Barring the occasional snag, they do this pretty successfully for a couple years until who should show up again but Kyran, with an even bigger chip on his shoulder and an even more horribly ill-conceived plan to get back at the king.

Among the many powerful eldritch forces and arcane loci that can be encountered in the wilderness around Andolia is what I vaguely dubbed the Powers of Darkness and then never got around to actually naming properly. Anyway, the Powers of Darkness are a sort of multi-consciousness/hivemind/sentient form of malicious energy that feeds on suffering and conflict, generating from and partially comprising what I equally vaguely refer to as the Eleventh Dimension. Just don’t ask too many questions about this one. Obviously, Kyran looked at this extremely powerful malevolent force that has no agenda other than causing more misery that it can feed on and a resume of imprisoning souls via impulsively-made contracts as long as time itself and thought “yeah I can probably use that and deal with the consequences later” because he has learned nothing in the last two years and is still holding a massive grudge about his previous defeat. He proceeds to summon and make a bargain with this thing, certain that if he inflicts enough collateral damage along the way it will satisfy whatever price the Powers of Darkness would otherwise take from him.

He doesn’t tell Talon or Iadra this, he just states that he’s found a source of power that can potentially raze the capital to the ground, to which both are like “okay, no, committing war crimes over your unresolved daddy issues would be bad, actually.” Iadra has been pretty thoroughly done with him since he almost got them killed last time and is wary of burning the bridges they’ve been carefully rebuilding, but Talon, giant stoic golden retriever that he secretly is, still thinks that Kyran has potential if he could just be steered off the wildly destructive path he keeps going down and probably would be, if not a good king, at least a better king than Shale given a few years to mellow out. Two years ago this was probably true, but now he’s strongly underestimating how much Kyran should not be put in charge of anything. This leads to the first major conflict Talon and Iadra have ever had, which eventually ends in Iadra just throwing her hands up and going back to Talon’s town to brood about it and continue what they’ve been doing, assuming Talon will come to his senses after the plan inevitably goes to shit, having known him long enough to be confident that he’ll survive the consequences just fine. 

Those would have been safe assumptions if not for the fact that Kyran was much more dangerous and stupid than either of them were prepared for, and even Kyran wasn’t prepared for the fact that the Powers of Darkness also possess the more subtle tendency to slowly get into peoples’ heads and drive them to extremes they’d never reach on their own (not that this absolves him of wanting to destroy a city but he was very much under their influence by that point). Now granted, his desire to work with Talon was sincere; they’d become very close during the first rebellion attempt because Kyran’s lack of a competent father figure matched up well with Talon’s deeply ingrained Mandalorian Instinct™ and there was a good reason why Talon was so willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here. The problem is that Kyran didn’t think to read the fine print while making deals with actively evil eldritch forces and was confronted with the consequences of his actions much earlier in his plan than expected. Suddenly realizing that he’s much less impervious to said consequences than he flippantly assumed, and pretty thoroughly cornered, he does the last thing available to him that doesn’t involve actually dealing with his own shit and paying the price himself, and turns on Talon to sacrifice him instead. Normally a moderately competent but inexperienced teenager against an adult gryphon whose day job is fighting things would be a laughably unfair fight, but the Powers of Darkness have a vested interest in Talon losing, and to the surprise of both of them he falls very quickly to Kyran, who hacks off one of his wings (unfortunately for Talon, the Powers of Darkness don’t feed on death or amicable defeat) and leaves him to bleed out, then flees into the hills, very much traumatized (albeit not as traumatized as Talon) but confident that he’s off the hook and determined to now proceed with his plan.

Luckily for Talon, this all went down not far from a fairly isolated aquei homestead, and he’s found by the couple who lives there, who heard all the crashing and screaming and are both 200% ready to throw down until they arrive on the scene and find nothing but an unconscious gryphon hybrid in a puddle of blood with one of his wings laying several yards away. Given the current state of interspecies relations, they probably would have killed him had they not recognized him as that guy from that one weird town, but fortunately all the sidequests have paid off. They haul him back to the farm and he eventually makes an impressive physical recovery, though due to the circumstances of losing the wing he’s kind of stuck between forms and can no longer shift to fully humanoid or fully gryphonic, which is an unusual state to get stuck in but still very livable in his case (he mostly just looks a lot more like a winged aquei than an regular half-gryphon). Still, losing an entire limb and all ability to fly is a lot, and he’s down for the count both physically and psychologically for a good chunk of time.

Iadra, when she doesn’t hear from him or Kyran for a while, starts to wonder if maybe something went wrong. Eventually word reaches her that Talon is dead (which even Kyran believes to be true, since the only two people who know otherwise are keeping their mouths shut) and she immediately decides to hunt down Kyran herself and absolutely murder the shit out of him. He’s not easy to track down, as he’s currently laying low and gathering power for what he’s determined will be the final assault on the capital and his father, and she has to increasingly rely on her human form the deeper into Andolia she goes, but Iadra is extremely determined and Kyran is pretty bad at being subtle, and she eventually tracks him straight into the capital. The ensuing fight between an accidental evil warlock who’s also the king’s bastard son and a horse-sized flying apex predator with fairly recognizable plumage almost immediately causes a scene and also a lot of property damage, and the king’s guard arrives quickly to apprehend both of them (or they will, just as soon as everyone stops flailing claws and dangerous forces around). Kyran, who this time lacks both the biased support of the Powers of Darkness and the element of surprise, fares much worse against Iadra than he did against Talon. So, in a last-ditch move of desperation, he calls on much more power than he’s already paid for to try and portal himself out of there.

Which is how he, and by extension Iadra, find out that Aentha has an inherent interdimensional connection to the planet Earth, and specific humans who live on it. And unfortunately, this is getting too fucking long again so I guess there’s going to be a part three.