Chapter 1
Taylor Hebert's head was splitting. Dizzyness and confusion dominated her consciousness. Images of her past, her life spun before her like fragments of a broken mirror. The Locker, Emma's betrayal, fighting with Lung, her joining the Undersiders, Bakuda, her head spun with images and memories evoking fear, anger, revulsion, hate, hope. Fighting Echidna, turning herself in and joining the Wards, hunting the Nine, fighting the golden Man, becoming a half spider thing to survive, Khepri, taking the freewill of all those around her to satiate her need to destroy, to win to dominate at all costs. Two gunshots, brilliant light and blinding glare, the feeling of peace, of falling, this should be the end.
"Can we be fwendths?" A voice, high and pitchy like a small child's
The pain of splinters in her hands as she clutched the roughhewn old step centered her. Her vision cleared somewhat as she smelled the unmistakable mustiness of her basement, the coal chute where she kept her costume, the costume she had just made, she was getting ready to go out tonight for the first time, wasn't she?
"Awe you OK?" That voice didn't belong here, she tried to focus.
Vision still blurry she made out the dark outlines of her basement, it was dark but familiar. The throbbing of the bruises on her palm and shin told the story of how she had fallen against the stairs. Her hand clutched the stair with a death grip it took her a few moments to release as her balance returned.
Her gaze searched the darkness for the source of the voice. A deeper darkness seemed to be the source. Trying to parse what was going on she asked. "Who are you?"
"Hi Nice to meetcha. My name is 'Nee-say'. Awe you OK, uwe fell. Can I hewp you up?"
XXX
"Naw I got this." I said as I focused on the voice. I swayed as I stood but my motor reflexes were starting to report in as operational. I started noticing the input from my swarm, something definitely felt off though.
"Oh Ok. I jutht wanna hewp, sowwy if you got hurt." The voice continued to lisp, it was a little girl, maybe missing a few teeth. I resisted the bizarre urge to ask her to sing 'All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.'
I stood fully and towered over the diminutive munchkin. I remembered Bonesaw and my experiences in Vegas and suddenly felt much more cautious. What the hell was she doing in my house? Wait what the hell was I doing in my house, I thought I was dead, my house should have been destroyed in the Golden Morning. My clearing senses swam in confusion for another moment.
"Oh don't fall down again!" Well at least I'm getting used to her lisp. I thought as a started to fall against the wall.
I was caught by a familiar substance. It was a single filament of spider web, maybe an inch wide. My face was stuck to it, just shy of the wall. I noted several other filaments caught the rest of my body and held me firmly in place.
My brain froze in horror for a moment, froze in horror and math. A single spider's thread is thousandths of an inch across. This was big, impossibly big, a spider maybe ten thousand times bigger than a decent sized black widow would maybe make something like this if modern biology didn't have a seizure before letting that happen.
It had also happened near instantly. So fast it happened before yours truly could manage to fall/slide a foot or so into the wall. It was impossibly large, at least as fast as I've seen normal spiders weave and throw silk but at the larger scale that was terrifyingly fast.
It was sticky and also still warm, at least body temperature. I noted my swarm felt oddly fuzzy as I reached for them, something like a drugged euphoria on all the arachnids on the block. The insects and arachnids further out seemed normal. I took a quick stock of the situation, adrenaline fueling my reasoning at this point. Diplomacy I thought might be my safest bet.
I prepared what swarm I could as I asked. "Um thanks, could you let me go I think I'm stuck."
"Oh sure, sowy didn't want you bumpin youw head." She replied instantly. I noted the webs just seemed to vanish. Thankfully my body having gone somewhat rigid from the situation helped me to not continue my descent into the wall. I stood and ascended the stairs, perhaps a little quickly.
I turned and somewhat reflexively shut the door to the basement. It certainly looked like my house. Everything felt right, shabby but familiar. I noted I was shorter than I remembered, but not, this was as tall as I had gotten, except I remembered being taller. I leaned my head against the door and closed my eyes a moment willing things to make sense again.
"Feeling bettew?" The voice uttered in innocent concern, the girl was immediately behind me. I thought maybe she was a giant spider in the basement or maybe the girl was controlling a giant spider in the basement. She was not in the basement, she hadn't moved, the solid door had given me an illusion of safety for a moment. But I had sensed her presence; I knew she had been at the foot of the steps till the very instant she talked.
She was a giant spider girl who could teleport? Wonderful I was feeling, hurt, confused, having some sort of identity crisis while a little girl who was somehow a giant spider was trying to make friends with me in my childhood home.
I turned and looked at what appeared to be a young girl. Maybe 7 years old with a wide face, big eyes, black hair and goddamn pigtails. She had on a silk robe/dress that looked a bit like Panacea's old costume, all light greys with black trim. Ornate silk filigree on the robe in black and an hourglass symbol in silver was distinct on the front and back of her clothes.
"STOP just STOP for a minute, I'm trying to get my bearings." I ordered.
She looked at me with gigantic puppydog like eyes and seemed to tear up.
I stared at the cute terrified girl and tried desperately to wrap my head around where and who I was.
It was clear as mud, which meant I needed answers. My only clue was this girl, who was very much not what she looked like. I couldn't even figure out when I was, I remembered different things that, while consistent didn't line up.
I sighed.
"Ok, 'Neesay' is it?" I began.
"Yup it's spelled N I C C E, but it's not pronounced like Nice, or Nicky it is Nicce, so like nice but not." She explained as if people got her name wrong a lot.
"OK Nicce, I'm not feeling very well, would you be willing to sit down and answer some questions?" I asked politely.
She leaned forward and her eyes got enormous as she got excited and said. "So you'll talk to me, so you maybe wanna be friends? Ooh can I play with your hair?"
She looked at me with all the excitement of a child. I began to believe that whatever strange powers this girl might have, she may actually be the age she looked. I also recognized a deep seated need for attention and friends, be cause I knew what that was like and I had seen it before in a lot of younger parahumans.
"Ok Nicce let's have a seat and relax. So… why are you in my house?" I began calmly as I and the girl sat on the couch. I noted she sat beside me. She was paying rapt attention to me as I talked like I was the most fascinating thing in the world.
"Soo cool." She subvocalized. "Um, I mean I came in where I could, an I wanted to meet you an I heard you were awesome so I thought I'd get you here so I could meet you, but you seemed not OK an fell an I was like oh no you OK and you were like I'm good even though you weren't and then we came up here and you said I could play with your hair… I hope maybe?" She wheedled.
I couldn't help but smile even as my mind tried to sort the facts. "So you know you are a parahuman right, what is your power?"
"Nope, I'm not a human silly. I'm more like a spider; I make webs an I can make stuff out of em or use em to grab things." She said.
"You can also teleport." I prodded her.
"Nnoo.. I can move on webs, like the big one in the basement and the lil one at the top of the stairs." She explained defensively.
"OK but the door was closed and I didn't see any webs there." I offered.
"Oh, I didn't say all the Webs were only three dimensional, I can move whichever way the webs go and there are webs all over the place, not everywhere, but usually close to somewhere." She explained nonsensically.
I was already thinking, ok she has spider themed powers, odd teleportation, webs maybe telekinesis, or webikinesis or something. I've never quite heard of her power set but given the number of parahuman powersets I had memorized as Weaver I knew there were more than a couple of similar precedents. Her teleportation sounded like Mouse Protector's and her web projections weren't that odd.
Wait a minute, I remembered all I had learned from my tour in the Wards, in Chicago. I was sitting on my old couch, the one Dad would get rid of a few months after I left home, and I was reasonably sure I wasn't old enough to have done any of that… yet.
"Timetravel? Seriously?" I said aloud.
"Nuh unh I only dimensionally travel I don't do that time stuff it's dangerous.. unless.. how does time work.. around… here?" Nicce said with worry creeping into her voice.
"I Don't know. My powers don't affect time. Can your powers affect time?" I asked trying not to scream.
Nicce looked around and stuck her tongue out of her mouth like she was trying to think as hard as she could. "uh Unh… oh no. Uh I did try an grab you, like YOU you, if you weren't You yet I got You and then you got hit with You and now you are You." The young girl said on the verge of tears.
"I 'almost' followed that. So I am effectively back in my Body when I was younger, with all my memories of the future." I said the ramifications dawning on me.
"I'm sorry! I'll try an fix it!" The cute spider girl sobbed.
"No… No I can work with this… hmmhmmhmm hahahah! Nice." I tried not to villain laugh… and failed.
"No it's Nicce." The girl protested between sobs.
XXX
After a big dinner I made for myself and Nicce I did some checking and discovered this was indeed the Day I went out and ended up saving the Undersiders from Lung. I easily convinced Nicce to accompany me on my excursion, both because I wanted to keep an eye on her and I had a feeling having her along might make things easier.
A half hour later I crouched in the alleyway looking at my young conspirator, my sidekick?
"OK so the Undersiders are going to be coming through here in a while, being chased by Lung. He's basically a dragon. Between the two of us I figured we could set up some traps and get ready to jump him." I explained.
"A D-Dwwwagon!" Nicce's lisp seemed especially pronounced when she panicked. Her voice also rose to the point that I'm pretty sure Bitch's dogs now knew our location… from anywhere in the city.
I winced but took both the young girl's shoulders in my hands. "You don't have to fight, I can handle him. With your powers I'm surprised you aren't more gung ho though?" I reassured then tried to draw her out. Most Parahumans were over eager to engage in any kind of fight. Is it possible she was one of the rare ones whose natural leanings were strong enough to resist the parahuman call to battle.
"I'm not a warwior, I don't do fighting and Dwagon's are super scary. There was a dwagon back in the castle I'm from, he had breath so hot it could burn through even my bestest webs. If there's a Dwagon coming here an if he's bad, we should evacuate the city and get some shiny elves or something to handle it, good riddance pah."
"Castle? Shiny elves? Nevermind I can use any help you can give me but I just need some webs to slow him down or anything else you can do to help." I said trying to encourage her to think on her powers. She seemed to insist everything was webs, webs and more webs. There was more to her powers, I mean she nabbed my mind out of the future somehow, that boggled my... never mind. The more I talked with her the more info I got, and I had gotten her out here nice and early in the hopes of using this to both save my future/potential friends and figure out what she could do. Her stubborn pacifistic streak was confounding my efforts, I had never trained with a less aggressive parahuman, and I included Golem in that assessment.
"Well they'll probably die pretty bad, but I can summon a couple of big spiders, they might slow him down. I can summon a bunch of medium spiders and lots of small ones but they can't bother anything nearly as tough as a dragon. I mean they'll come back next time I summon them but I don't like seeing them get hurt, but if it's to help you I guess I can do it." Nicce meekly offered.
OK insect summoning good to know. Unfortunately I had been gathering my swarm for a while now, and with all my new/old tricks I was looking forward to this do over. Nicce's bug summoning was useful I guess but an extra handful of spiders wouldn't make a large difference.
Still I encouraged her. "Summon your spiders over there and try to scare off the minions when they get here, have the big ones throw some webs at Lung from different angles and then attack."
"OK but they don't last long so give me a sign when they're here, I'll be setting up a hidey spot in a building I can see the spots you want the bugs summoned, once we get the webs set up.
"Right, so for the webs I was thinking we could block off the escapes, here, here and here. Make some barriers here and a few traps." I said pointing to a crude map I had made on the alley floor.
"OK, show me with the spiders and I'll help out, do you want fire resistant webs or nearly invisible ones, or maybe a combination. Can't have ones that do both the fire resistant ones are dark colored." Nicce conspired, I got the sense she didn't make heads or tails of my map though.
OK fire resistant on the buildings, invisible in the traps and alleys and definitely give me some strands of that fire resistant stuff for my swarm and my armor." I said impressed. I have no idea if fire resistant webbing was much of a thing but hey, worth a shot, I knew how this had gone, with my improvements it would hopefully go much smoother.
"I already gave you fire immune webbing for your armor." Nicce said petulantly "I said I made it as strong as I could didn't I." She bragged.
"Wait if you can make fire immune webs, how did this 'Dragon guy' burn through it?" I asked sensing a hole in her earlier story.
"His name is Memnon, and he is really big and scary and his fire did stuff it shouldn't be able to because of how powerful his magic was." Nicce whispered as if mentioning his name may draw his attention.
Great another Myrrdin, believes powers are magic. I didn't have time to argue the matter so I let it go. I got us set up. A few of my many bugs were with Nicce to give her signals, I was wondering if her cowardice act was going to turn on its head once the fighting started. I had initially planned to push her to stay out of the fight and safe, instead I had to argue for aggressive action.
I heard the far off alarm of the casino being robbed, it wouldn't be long now. I sensed through the swarm that Nicce was cocooned in a black layered sphere of webbing almost 8 feet in diameter. The room she was in was reinforced with more of her black webbing, some of it so dark it seemed to almost be a hole in the world.
I mentally added a helping of paranoia to her cowardice, I wondered if she's be able to help in the fight at all. I sensed she was still in her web, curled up in the darkness that seemed to swallow light itself and she seemed oddly comfortable.
I didn't have a lot of room to judge though I was often most comfortable while coated with swarms of poisonous bugs. I got my swarm clone ready, right where I had been when I first heard him.
Things went to script after that, I tried remembering just what I said, no reason to change things more than necessary.
The ABB thugs had just started having their encounter with my swarm when Nicce let her spiders loose to help out. I was expecting a few dozen tarantulas or so. Instead a surge of massive abominations against nature, some of them 3 or 4 feet long without counting the long hairy legs. Also they could jump, like 30 foot horizontally and 15 feet vertically. It was only by taking direct control of the lot of them we avoided mass casualties, these things were out for blood.
The ABB thugs largely escaped screaming into the night, (because I let them) where the traps we had set caught them. Snares in a few of the Alleys and snap up barriers reinforced by Nicce's webbing proved more than strong enough to hold them.
Everything went well, even if it was a bit excessive, setting those huge spiders on the thugs was against plan, but things were still going well.
Then the five twenty two foot long spiders arrived to surround Lung just as he was beginning his ramp up. I think he was maybe alive after taking a bite, but the paralytic poison delivered by the bucket load seemed to do an excellent job of slowing him down.
Only then did I detect the large spiders Nicce had said could slow down a Dragon. They looked like a fuzzy variety of kaiju spider, almost 50 feet long without counting the legs. As planned they threw a mass of spun webs at Lung, blanketing the block in half a foot of net like webs before moving in to attack. They were standing on and over buildings as they did so, almost 6 stories tall with slender legs the diameter of a small car (I know because they stepped on one)
Their mandibles were literally larger than the 8 foot tall and shrinking paralyzed and probably needed a medical assistance, buried in webbing, Lung.
I noted the Undersiders, seeing the three Kaiju sized spiders looming over the buildings, detoured and ran for it in an expansive cloud of darkness. The Dogs making better time than I think I ever remembered.
Ok, now definitely not to plan.
I heard Armsmaster's motorcycle a ways out.
The good news is, this at least could not go worse than last time.
XXXLast edited: 24/12/2017 Award ReplyReport433DMfromTheAbyss17/11/2017Add bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 2: Seek not Safety in alternate timelines View contentDMfromTheAbyssConfirmed Dungeon Master26/11/2017Add bookmark#12Not Nice
Chapter 2
XXX
It did not go as well as last time. Fearing Armsmaster taking myself or Nicce into custody, I had my swarm clone talk to him.
Apparently that creeped him right the hell out. I introduced myself and told him about Lung and the attacking children bit. He was still talking about me joining the Wards till he saw one of the big spiders in the background. I was just handing Lung over to him when he kinda lost his shit.
Man what is it with people and spiders? OK maybe the size was a bit of a 'big' deal. Still he wigged out and started swinging. He looked pretty cool too; using his grapple to get in range of the body. Swinging on top of the colossal spider like some video quick time cut scene. The fact that the spider poofed out from under him as soon as he hit it was actually pretty funny, till I saw how hard he hit the ground, ouch.
He was still alive, though something definitely broke when he hit the pavement from five stories up. I had my swarm take his vitals, do some basic first aid and web him to keep him from moving to aggravate his injuries.
I decided we would not stick around to take credit for tonight's activities. I pointed the PRT emergency team to Armsmaster with my swarm as I walked over to Nicce's cocoon of doom. She was already folding it up and started towards me with angry little steps.
"What whas that? That was some fire sorcerer dude, not a dragon. And we didn't kill anybody, they all survived. You even saved that last guy who attacked Fezzy for no reason. What da heck kinda fight was dat? I thought you were good at this?" The young girl squeaked at me; adorable even in her anger.
"That was us not killing anyone, because we are not murderers. What the hell kinda spiders were those, you said small medium and large not Impossible, house sized and Nightmare fuel." I ranted back.
"OK maybe we bof need to communicate bettew. I said they were small, like smaller than a person, medium like about half way between the big and lil ones and then Big, you know like Big enough to slow down a dragon; Big. You didn't say we were trying to 'catch' em. I'm really good at jus catchin em, you said to jus get im."
"I did say that didn't I" I said in an uncertain tone as my head swam.
"sowy Sowy! You OK? you don't look ok." Nicce said anger forgotten as she looked concerned.
"Just take us home I need some rest." I said deflecting, maybe some more rest would help finish off this bout of headache and dizziness.
XXX
My dreams were troubled. I was in a nightmare landscape of fleshy mountains and a violet alien sun. Trapped in a fleshy cocoon that tried to wrap itself around me, my swarm tried to dig me out, only the swarm stung and bit me as it did my prison of flesh.
Suddenly I sensed an alien darkness in the sky and the whole of me was consumed.
Then I heard singing, not in a language I'm familiar with. Lots of soft sounds and vowels and a light behind my eyelids I associated with laying in the sun, resting with Emma, my Mom calling us in for lunch.
"Oww!" I said as something pulled my hair in a strange way.
"Sowy! Sowy I didn't mean to hurt you. Um but I think I'm about done, wadya think?"
I opened my eyes to see a cheerful wide face and a hand mirror I remember as being broken.
I saw graceful black enamel in a web pattern seemed to cover the handle of the mirror, especially dense around where the handle had cracked.
"You fixed it." I said still waking up. Then I saw my hair… at least; I think it was "…my hair?"
"Cool huh? You said I could last night so I gave it a try. You like it? I could try something different?"
I was silent as I traced the outline of my hair with my gaze, or tried to. It was like a graceful flowing Escher Painting in 3D with parts unsupported, or connected woven around and braided with little black bows at the ends.
I sat up and saw that Nicce was sitting at the head of my bed with a pair of old combs in either hand.
I still hadn't said anything, my hair was beautiful, confusing, and ornate without constraints but in a pattern my brain told me should be deeply unsettling because it clearly broke several laws of physics to achieve the effect.
"Um, it's neat, yeah. That might be a bit much for school though. Crap School!" I said as I lunged out of bed. I saw the clock; I was going to be late. I smelled food on; my dad had forgotten to wake me up.
Oh and I had an Escher painting made of my hair on my head.
"OK Nicce can you fix it back the way it was." I said as nice as I could while trying to hurry.
"Yeah OK. You didn't like it then?" She said with naked disappointment in her voice.
"No no it was interesting… cool, but my school doesn't allow hair like this. " My dimension didn't allow hair like this.
"Oh OK, just gimme a… there you go." Nicce said, and there was a flurry of motion and I noted the hair was suddenlt back to normal and the brushes in her hands were just gone. Looking in my newly fixed hand mirror I saw my hair, though it still looked a bit different. More vibrant maybe, but recognizably mine.
"You didn't DO anything to my hair did you?" I asked.
"I brushed it a lot, it is really nice hair." Nicce said dreamily.
"Taylor, Breakfast is done. I thought you were up? Do you need a ride to school?" My Dad's voice echoed from downstairs.
"I'm just feeling a little tired, I can still make it." I lied as I answered my father.
Priorities. OK first, I talked to Nicce much more quietly. "Nicce can you teleport me, er web me to my school?"
"Where is it?" She said openly.
"About that way, big run down school." I said pointing.
"Mmmm yeah no problem it has lotsa webs." Nicce said as she squinted at my wall then perked up.
Wait so she can see places through her webs that go everywhere, So she was a high rank Mover, Master, 'sensory' Thinker, what else? Maybe breaker for moving her hands way too fast to see, Blaster or shaker for the webs?
"Umm, before we go can you grab breakfast for me." I said slyly, waiting for another power to become apparent as she perhaps grabbed my breakfast plate from my room?
"Nu Uh. Your dad's down there, you said not to let him see me." Nicce complained.
Suddenly my door was yanked open and my father poked his head in. I turned, still feeling dizzy and was about to explain Nicce's presence when I saw his gaze go right over her, focusing on me and say. "You OK Taylor, your color doesn't look too good.
I glanced over at Nicce who was suddenly standing on one foot with not two, but four visible hands holding bunches of webs, almost like bouquets between her and my father. The webs got fainter and fainter as they stretched towards my father; and oddly her extra hands had a washed out half visible effect to them.
I may have stared a moment too long, my father looked back at Nicce, trying to figure out what I was looking at.
Nicce hopped back a step and I saw the webs seem to grow from second to second almost as if yet more unseen hands were stacking more bundles of, what, invisible strands bending light around her?
Stranger, definitely stranger, she could manually and near instantly make not just invisible threads, but threads that could make you invisible.
Fuck school, I was learning things today.
"Taylor are you OK?" My father asked as he waved his hands in front of me. Nicce was nearly falling over and whimpering as she adjusted the webbing to block my father's vision with difficulty. She hopped back on one leg and I realized she had some of the webbing braced against her other leg to cover her lower legs and feet.
"Dad, I'm feeling a little dizzy and out of it from, you know girl stuff… Maybe I should stay home." I lied through my teeth to avoid honest and open conversation about a problem that probably wouldn't be a big deal if I was honest… story of my life.
"Oh, if you are sure, if you need anything you know I'll get it for you right?" He said, twisting the knife in my hypocrisy.
"Yeah dad I'm fine. Just go to work, have a nice day, nothing us girls aren't used to." I said shooshing him out of the room by power of will.
He finally relented and left asking, "Did you hear something when I came in, sounded like a voice?"
"No Dad, it was probably my headphones or something, I better find em, go… GO!" I closed the door behind him, wondering if I could even find my old headphones, Emma had wrecked my tape player anyways so it didn't really matter.
I looked over to where Nicce was hiding in a cocoon of bent light. I sensed her through the few bugs in my room easily picking her up from enough directions to let me know right where she was.
"Nice trick Nicce." I said as I started getting dressed in earnest. It was time we talked for real without any distractions. It was weird but till just now I hadn't really thought about asking her a few really basic questions.
"OK Nicce you mind if we play 20 questions?" I asked forthright.
"Um ok how do you play?" She asked suddenly a curious kid, mention anything as a game and she perked right up.
"I ask you a question, and then you ask me a question. It's really just some getting to know you stuff." I said, hoping that her questions would reveal as much as her answers.
"Is this a thing friends do? I only had one friend an she never played this with me." She said sounding heartbreakingly insecure. That… that kind of hit me where I live.
"Sort of, it's a game you play when you want to get to know someone. It's sort of a pre friend thing." I explained.
"Ohh does that mean if I answer them we can be fwends?" She said, her lisp returning in her excitement.
"Yes, it means we'll know each other better, an important step to being friends." I replied cautiously. I'd far rather an impressionable young and obviously powerful cape like her be my friend, and it sounded like she needed a new friend by her very act of hunting me down to attempt to make friends with me.
"OK question one, how did you decide you wanted to meet me to be friends?" I began.
"I ahhh heard about you, just whispers and things. You sounded like me, but like cooler and older and more awesome so I figured maybe you could use a friend too?" She said nervously.
"I see; but HOW did you hear about me?" I reiterated.
"Oh… ahh I heard about you on the Web." Nicce hedged.
"I'm willing to bet you don't mean the internet." I pointed out.
"What's the internet? Sounds neat!" Nicce responded innocently.
"So you can hear things through webs then, does that extend through time or just space?" I asked getting to the crux of my worries right off the bat in case I needed more questions to figure out the details.
"Interdimensional Webs, everything connects if you go high enough dimensionally. It does get harder to get details about anything you want though so it's sorta random what you might sense. I did hear about you killing a god though, that's awesome, an you were lonely like me, an we are both spider-y so we could be great friends I thought. I was a little fuzzy on the when what happened to you; which is why I think I screwed up so bad. I'm still reallllllly sorry about that, but we can fix it, or maybe I can ask for some help. I don't have many friends, but I do have some people who are like family, so I guess adopted family? An they're really cool an can fix stuff if I mess it up an they help teach me things. They all agree I need more friends though." She spewed and I tried to pick up the threads of her story to make sense of them. "I gotta ask you a question now, so what's it like to ah, be a 'para-human'? I never had a para-human friend before."
"Parahuman's are like regular humans with a bad thing that happened to them, then they get a power that looks like it will help them, only it really doesn't help, usually it makes the problem worse." I said seriously, hoping she'd realize this applied to her too. Having the ability to sense things, even bits and pieces of higher dimensions was a crazy power. I don't know about useful, but conceptually powerful at least. This may also explain her odd take on things and thinking she was a spider… maybe.
"So do you have any family? Do they know where you are? Is anyone going to be looking for you? I asked.
"Hey that's three questions… OK so my mom, she left me but I was found by some nice people, they helped me an sometimes if I need help they help me. Rill is my teacher; she's like a mom to everybody. They know I left looking for a friend an I don't think they're too worried, if they wanna find me they can.
"What is your family like?" Nicce returned the question.
"Oh you know, it's just me and my Dad, he's a bit depressed so I have to take care of him some." I vastly over simplified.
"So, are you really a spider?" I asked somewhat facetiously.
"No, silly I only have 2 legs, spiders have 8." She said holding up fingers as if demonstrating that she could indeed count that high. "I'm not a spider, I am like a spider."
"What do you like to eat?" Nicce asked with a serious face.
"Pasta though I think a variety of food is both healthy and keeps things tasting better." I offered.
"I like sweets, but everyone keeps telling me the same thing, eat lots of normal food." Nicce freely offered.
"OK, how many arms do you have?" I said catching her at her little throw me off the scent answer. I had seen four arms earlier and hints of at least a few I couldn't see from her stacking of more webs.
"One Hundred and Twenty eight!" Nicce shared happily.
I stopped for a moment, that is not the response or attitude I expected.
"Do you like hugs? Can I have a hug?" Nicce asked.
"Ok but first how strong are you?" Multiplied out by 128 she could possess an obscene strength.
"Not very, I'll show you." And she looked around my room and tried moving my desk. My desk was old and worn, but fairly heavy, this should be… nope she couldn't budge it, barely got it to wobble. Pulling on it she didn't manage to even overcome its inertia. I saw her try with multiple arms, and then she looked for something easier, lifted up some of my books, well like three heavy ones. The addition of Math proved to be too much for her when added to the others and she toppled. It was rather pathetic and totally adorable.
"See this is why I don… why I don… heh dose tings are heavy." She started weezing like she had a nightmare workout.
I picked her up and gave her a hug. She squeezed back weakly with first one then multiple invisible sets of arms. It was creepy but not dangerous. She felt like she was made of silk over skin and bone, She was light for a five year old child, at what seven? she was seriously underweight. "Last night must have been the first good meal you got in a while, how about we go down for breakfast."
XXX
I had Nicce take me down to the Library, to show her the internet and see if I could get back on track with the Undersiders. Maybe Lisa left me an e-mail, or maybe somebody knew something about Nicce. I doubted it, she was powerful enough and had powers that by both her own admission and reading between the lines told me she was not from around here.
I quickly gave Nicce a few pointers about safely surfing the web, she caught on quick and before I knew it she had found cartoons and was watching a show about animated ponies. She kept talking to the screen like it was real, thankfully she was a cute little kid and the librarian investigating simply told her to talk to her pony friends more quietly.
I got onto PHO and checked for messages. Nope. A lot of comments on the Spiders seen terrorizing the City. Some people were suggesting Lung had been fighting to protect the city from them. Gah I hate the internet sometimes.
Normal threats, posturing, I for one accept our new Spider Overlords etc etc. Nothing terribly relevant.
Apparently the official news was that a new parahuman had attacked Lung and the ABB. There was talk of a new territory of the Spider Queen being formed, but no one knew where of course. Warlord Skitter perked up at this, it had potential, we'd see though, things were still a bit early for that.
I messaged AllSeeingEye, Tattletale's online handle and attempted to set up a meeting. I got zero response. I did suddenly get a chat from someone called Winged_One. They asked if I had heard from AllSeeingEye, they thought something might be wrong. They also said I should check out the local news, something about a jump in paranormal news in the last few days. They seemed to think the disappearance might be related.
Damned hackers, how the heck did they know, unless they were an alternate account for a mod maybe? This was concerning. Had Coil done something to Tattletale, to the Undersiders?
I could check out the Undersider's Hideout. Despite never having been there I remembered its location and could go there as long as no one asked how I knew. Or I could go directly to Coils base and cut the problem off at the head.
My head still buzzed with pain at the borders of my consciousness. I massaged my temples briefly. It was slowly going away by itself. Not like there were alot of temporal-parahuman power issue doctors around anyway.
I took a quick look at the paranormal part of the boards only to discover basically what Winged_One had said. Apparently Shielder of New Wave fame was spouting about all the ghosts and ghoulies spotted in the last several days. A lot of other posters were confirming everything from ghost sightings to miracles at one of the local churches. Sounded like a lot of confirmation bias to me, ask a board full of people who believe in the paranormal what's going on, get a paranormal response. Still I didn't remember anything like this from before, then again when did I check the paranormal section of the board, it might have been something I just didn't notice.
I went for a walk, telling the nice librarian to keep an eye on the cute spider girl. I grabbed a quick trip on the bus and wandered past the Undersider's base. It was cleaned out with the exception of Bitch. She was there comforting her three dogs. Things were definitely not OK. I debated going in to talk with Bitch, but remembering how that first conversation went, I decided to swing by Coil's secret base first.
I picked up Nicce at the Library, where she said goodbye to the nice pink pony on the screen and we headed out. We ducked what I thought might be a truancy officer via Nicce's invisibility trick and got a snack at the strip mall near Coil's base.
We walked over the top of the Bond villain base. I confirmed that Echidna wasn't there yet. Man that was another threat I had to potentially deal with, I should totally make a list.
Then I saw Lisa, she was in a cell and looked like she was being methodically tortured.
I turned to Nicce. "Nicce, one of my friends, a sorta nice girl named Lisa is in trouble in the secret base below us, there is a bad man and a lot of guys with guns. Can you get us to her and help me take out the bad guys?"
Nicce looked back with huge serious eyes and nodded once. A fierce grin on her adorable features looked strange. "Capture or Get im?" She asked grimly.
"Get Im!" I responded.
She nodded once and started making strange weaving motions with her hands. She did this for almost thirty seconds before taking my hand.
I had not teleported with her before, it was definitely different, I saw a darkness blur by and the feel of cobwebs parting around me for an instant.
We were in the cell with the abused looking Tattletale. Unfortunately so was Coil and a thin bodyguard.
Things happened fast. Suddenly there were greyish silver webs everywhere, a gun went off and I felt a pressure in the center of my chest. Then the room filled with Nicce's 'small' spiders. There was screaming. I took control of the Spiders and a rampage became a systematic takedown of the entire base. I looked down at my chest as I leaned against the wall, how had I gotten against the wall? My chest looked fine. I wasn't too happy with it but it was OK. I mean there were not any holes in it but the smoke coming from a wide circular patch dead center of the chest all the way down to the armor was somewhat concerning. I heard distant gunfire and didn't see Nicce around.
I staggered to my feet. The armor Nicce had modified looked intact under the burning hole, my chest felt bruised, breathing twinged a bit but wasn't too painful. Cracked ribs and shock I self-diagnosed.
"You are going to live, might want some pain meds and a week to lie down though. You are the Spider Queen from last night right?" The badly beaten and bruised Tattletale spoke as she offered a hand to help me stagger to the door. I looked at her and by unspoken mutual agreement we leaned on each other to get out of the room.
"Call me Skitter" I said, "Just need .. to .. find.. my friend.. and we can get out of here." I offered to Lisa.
"You guys are a team of Spider themed Capes, that's um hey what are the odds, little sister is it.?" Tattletale still couldn't help yakking it up with possible hostiles in a war zone. Man I had missed her.
The base was suddenly quiet. The mercenaries and spiders had stopped. The spiders dithered around the edges of the base. No prisoners had been taken, it was a shocking amount of carnage for the thirty seconds it had taken.
We started towards the entrance which I remembered, which in turn had Tattletale raising an eyebrow. That was when we heard crying. It was Nicce, I sadly recognized her sobs. I looked at Lisa and we turned back around without a word to stagger back the way we had come.
We got into Coil's office. The guards had died to the spiders in the initial burst of carnage. Coil, recognizable from his costume lay over his desk with webbing covering his arms, a Tinkertech pistol still clutched in his hand. He had always been thin but he looked positively withered. I surged forward away from Lisa and rushed to Nicce's side. She was collapsed just behind Coil, blood covered the front of her. I did a quick search for wounds but found none. There was blood and viscera though, brains if I'm not mistaken. Looks like someone had gotten a headshot on Coil… again.
"Are you OK Nicce?" I held her and she looked up at me.
Her eyes welled up into dark wet pools and she cried. "He, He tasted Goood!"
I turned and saw the back of Coil's head missing, looked back down to see the gore down the front of Nicce and as the cute little girl looked up at me for support I noted just the hint of retracted mandibles still visible in her wide cheeks.
"Everything OK?" Tattletale asked.
"Trust me Lisa, you do not want to see this." I uttered without thinking.
"How?" Tattletale uttered before backing out of the room hesitantly.
"I don't wanna be a bad guy, I don't wanna eat people, I don't wanna be a monster" Nicce sobbed.
I held her for another moment before my mind worked out anything to say to that. "You can choose not to be, you always have the choice, you can be a good girl." I said. I helped her up, mostly picked her up really. If she wasn't so light my ribs would kill me for that. I helped her out of the room, walking back past the entrance to the room Tattletale had been in I did a double take, there was another Coil there. Dead from repeated spider bites by the look of him.
Well you could detestably say the same about the Coil in this room. Body double? But would each of them have a tinker tech pistol like that? Weird.
We got out of the room to Tattletale, I kept Nicce huddled against me as she was still wracked with sobs.
Tattle tale mouthed 'Cannibal parahuman? She safe to be around?'
"She wouldn't be crying if she was OK with it." I answered out loud.
"Ah well if she's the transportation? Then I know a spot we can get some medical attention on the sly." Tattletale offered.
I nodded and described the doctors office that the Undersider's used to Nicce. Tattletale looked on in confusion and asked, "So wait, ARE YOU a Psychic?"
"Nope I'm just good at putting the clues together." I said in jest of Tattletale's usual explanation of her power.
She looked confused, I laughed.
Nicce teleported us to the Doctor's office. Tattletale was visibly nervous if you knew her anyway. Nicce probably just thought she was being chatty. I noted Tattletale trying not to look directly at Nicce. Tattletale got us seen to and cleaned up, no questions asked. My ribs were bandaged and I got some pain pills. Tattletale looked like a veritable mummy with the bandages, gauze pads and a leg cast that necessitated a crutch. Nicce just needed to be cleaned up, mental damages were not so easily bandaged.
We got almost the whole way out before Tattletale gave me a recruitment speech. It wasn't quite what I thought it would be.
"So you guys are big news, room on the team for one more? Slightly used thinker looking for work now that you saved me and killed my Boss." She sounded remarkably lighthearted given the damage she had received.
"What about the Undersiders, Bitch, Grue, :sigh: Regent?" I asked.
"What about them, they mostly left town already, Coil disbanded the Undersiders and…" Tattletale looked at first me than Nicce, trying to be persuasive as a girl on a crutch could be, no doubt using clues from us to gauge what to say to get on our good side.
She stopped while looking at Nicce. Nicce looked back with an uncertain smile trying to be friendly.
Then Lisa lunged to the side and threw up noisily into the potted plant at the entrance. Her entire frame shaking in reaction she retched again and again till she heaved dry.
Hobbling away on her crutch she yelled back, "Sorry notfeelingwellgottagonicemeetingyou bye!"
"She seemed nice." Nicce said plainly, while Tattletale sped away on a crutch towards the bus stop.
"Yeah she's OK." I said deadpan.
We started walking down the road the other way. It wasn't the way we needed to go but I didn't want to risk panicking Tattletale anymore. I'd ask her online later. Thinking about it I thought out loud. "Time travel sucks."
"Yup, Sowy again." Nicce commiserated as she held my hand.
XXXLast edited: 26/11/2017 Award ReplyReport386DMfromTheAbyss26/11/2017Add bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 3: Family New View contentDMfromTheAbyssConfirmed Dungeon Master29/11/2017Add bookmark#29Chapter 3: Family
AN: This one got away from me and went in a weird direction. Sorry it ran longer and more serious than intended.
XXX
Back at home I took stock. Nicce was once again fascinated by the childrens programming on TV so I had time to think.
I needed some way to explain her to Dad, I was reasonably sure she had nowhere to stay and frankly a dangerous Parahuman like her out on the streets was a terrifying prospect. The potential for it to be terrifying and disastrous for the person on the street, her and the other parahumans that would no doubt end up involved was so high as to be a certainty. So letting her to her own devices was not an acceptable option.
Damnit I wish I had a fraction of the resources Weaver had as a Ward, or that I had had as a Warlord. Money didn't solve everything but it sure helped. I could start taking stashes from the ABB, the E88 and the Merchants. It would be totally legit, maybe get some captures on our respective records to look good, keep the heroes off us.
Nicce, however was a problem, almost the same problem I had faced starting out but worse. Her powers were if anything less socially acceptable than mine were; not to mention her Echidna like taste for people would make her instant Birdcage material at best. She needed therapy and people willing to keep her on the side of humanity.
My options were limited, it's not like I had the contacts I once did.
Or did I? I still knew them, knew who they were. Could I ask for help from someone? Dragon or perhaps someone in the Protectorate could potentially help.
Did it all matter, I knew about Scion and Cauldron, the world was ending soon anyway. With my knowledge could I change things, help more people?
Or should I take this opportunity to spend time with my father, to make amends for my previous mistakes.
I understood a lot more about what was going on, who was really doing what, could I leverage that?
The door swung open, I half stood from the table where I had my notebook and a pen and a lot of blank paper. Dad walked in energetically.
I floundered for anything to say, to do to keep things under control. Lie, misdirect to keep Dad away from the living room; till I could Get Nicce's attention with my swarm.
Loud giggling from the living room told me that Nicce was getting a bit of much needed catharsis.
Unfortunately that sunk any hopes I had of avoiding this. Shit. Shit.
My Dad had said something, my mind was stalled out of gear and he had clearly heard the giggling.
I stared at my Dad for several more seconds as the giggling in the living room continued with the barely heard sound effects of a cartoon playing giving context.
I stood and addressed my father formally. "Ok, you know how you said you'd help me with anything?" I began sheepishly. I gestured to the table and sat back down. He sat, one eye quirking as something on the TV had Nicce laughing even louder.
"Ok, well that's my new friend Nicce, she needs to live with us for awhile." I held up a hand to fend off his question. "She is a powerful new Parahuman in Brockton Bay. I met her because, well because I'm one too, a Parahuman, a Cape."
Man for all the angst and ennui I had felt about not telling my Dad about things right off the bat, it was really cathartic for me to be able to be honest with him. Would things have been better, well we were about to find out.
He seemed to be absorbing things, not saying anything for a minute as he tapped the table in time with his thoughts as I looked back at him. He started to say something then stopped himself, several times.
Eventually he asked. "What can I do to help my daughter?" in a serious tone of voice that told me he was there for me. Really had I been that stupid to avoid him the whole time, so childish to never ask for help from the one person I could trust, my family.
I teared up a bit as the feeling of relief washed over me.
"Now explain what happened." My father said clearly.
"Well I went out last night to try the whole independent cape thing out. Ran into Nicce and then we kinda ran into Lung. You know that whole Spider Queen nonsense they're talking about, yeaah that was us."
He seemed to struggle with this, but to my surprise he kept quiet and nodded before asking. "She doesn't have a home does she, and you helped her take out Lung on your first night out?"
"Basically. She summons spiders, some of them nightmare fuel sized. I happen to be able to control bugs so between the two of us we're sorta a good team." I replied with a slight hint of bragging.
"She doesn't have any family or parents?" Dad asked.
"No, by the sound of it she has a guardian of some sort, and she has implied that guardian knows where she is, but there are some, uh issues with her story. If you could help me figure them out I'd appreciate it, but she's really just a scared little girl who needs help." I pleaded with my father and couldn't help but feel as if I was asking if I could keep the puppy that followed me home.
"Considering what I heard today, we better keep this from the Protectorate, at least at first. So the Wards are out, but you haven't done anything illegal yet right." My father prodded.
I thought of what had happened in Coil's secret Base, the mass of deaths, Nicce biting through the back of Coil's head, me getting shot. Actually Nicce had only gotten personally violent when I got injured. My Wards training told me this was a good case for it being self-defense. "No nothing but self-defense and helping people. Admittedly with Lung we went a little far, but it was Lung."
"Sending out these spiders doesn't put you two in danger?" Dad speculated.
"Safer than the majority of Parahuman powers actually. We can hang way back and stay unseen." I soothed his worry.
"Well OK, after the day I had, I thought I'd have to shock you with something, and you had to turn the tables on me first thing. Together we'll figure this out ki.. no Taylor." My father told me as he came around the table to give me a heartfelt hug.
Holding me at arms length he then looked into my eyes, squeezed my shoulders and said "My bit of news in that, in a way, your mother is home."
I blankly stared at him. "Huh!?"
"Go get this friend of yours you can introduce us both at the same time." My father said with words that were being registered by my ears, while all I could hear was 'mom is home!' I dully registered him walk back out to the car and start a one sided conversation.
My mind whirled, something it was getting accustomed to at least. I called out. "Nicce come here I want you to meet my dad.
Moments later that was how I found myself standing there facing my father, telling him. "This is my friend Nicce." And gesturing to Nicce who stood just behind me, and invisible due to the strands of light bending webs held before her as if warding off attention, which I suppose she was. "Nicce you can drop the invisibility webs, it is OK if he sees you now."
"Nuh unh, you said not to let im see me, so I won't till you thay otherwise" Nice stomped cutely.
"You mean… like I just did. I just didn't want to surprise him earlier, it's OK now." I cajoled.
"Oh, unh, well I'm shy, an I uh, like the invisible-ness . Yeah." She fabricated poorly.
Well Nicce it is nice to make your acquaintance. I am Taylor's father Danny and this is her mother Annette."
I stared, I expected, something, someone.
I didn't see Mom, or a woman pretending to be mom taking advantage of my addled, mastered or mentally ill father.
Instead there was nothing there. Like at all, and I had enough bugs to have a very good idea of where everything around here was, there was no one there. I checked, twice.
"Nice to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Hebert, my Name is Nicce. You have a vewy pleasant house, thank you for youw hospitality." Nice said in a formal fashion that had me wondering if I had been mastered, or something, it just sounded very, rehearsed I guess.
She was still holding up the webs though, so you couldn't see her from the front, where I and my father were.
{The pleasure is ours Nicce make yourself at home.} There was a moment of quiet and then my Dad nodded.
I prodded the elephant in the room. "Um dad you know Mom is dead right?"
{Crap, I don't think she can hear me.Danny, tell her I love her and to watch}
"Um why can't uwe heaw hew." Nicce muttered confused.
"Your mother says she loves you and to watch" My father informed me looking oddly at the china cabinet."
{These things are such a waste, I don't know why you didn't get rid of these things Danny-boy. Though to be honest I don't remember why I didn't get rid of them either, habit I guess. Ah well before the poor little owl consigns you to a mental hospital I suppose I should get on with it.}
That's when I saw the china cabinet open up. I was about to scold Nicce, when I turned to look at her she was finally peeking out from behind the invisible webs, and looking at my dad.
I turned quickly to see a single cup levitating over the floor at eye level. It tipped up in the casual salute my mother would once make with her cup when she had acknowledged a good point. I would always remember that because it had more than once gotten her tea spilled.
"Mom?!?" I said to the empty space in front of me. The cup tilted again. "You're a… ghost or something?"
{Yes my dear, I'm proof of life after.. well no not life per se but continuity of the soul after death at least.}
"Wait youw a gh-gh-ghost?!" Nicce said ruining the moment only somewhat. I turned to see her drop the invisibility webs on the ground and she ran shrilly squeeking in fear all the way to my room. Odd that she didn't use a web, huh.
"Welcome home Mom, I need to go make sure the spider girl is OK. Oh and I love you too."
I spent the next half hour chasing a frantic Nicce as she hid around the house like a game of hide and seek. Eventually I talked her into watching a movie.
It was Casper the Friendly Ghost, by the end of it Nicce was sitting between me and Mom and translating Mom's bad jokes.
I've never cried more at a movie in my life. It wasn't because of the movie, it was because I was watching it with Mom.
XXX
The aftermath of that pretty much scrapped that day. It turns out having your ghost mom turn up in your house, when you Dad just found out you are a Parahuman, and you have a new house guest, well two if you counted Mom, well it really ate into my planning time.
Over the course of the day I did conclude that I knew what I had to do. Take this one step at a time, one crisis at a time. Trying to solve all the world's problems in a day was not going to work. Give me a few weeks with my knowledge and some back up from Nicce and I just might make a dent in my list though.
It turns out I couldn't see or hear Mom. The only thing my bugs could sense was an area of cold right where she stood. Dad and Nicce could see and hear her however so it was just me Mom couldn't talk to. Unfortunately Mom had a bit to say to me and with Mom spilling the beans on my situation at school with dad( yeah that was some yelling) I would have been grounded for life if not for Mom's intercession. She said she would handle the 'Emma' situation. Dad offered to call in to school and arrange a few days off due to family issues.
Despite the addition of a ghost to the house, it was much more full of life and noise than before. Dad gave the place a good cleaning after getting Nicce set up with the approximation of a room. Thankfully we didn't need a mattress as Nicce said she preferred hammocks anyway (which she could make herself out of those weirdly almost glowing black webs I had seen.).
I still wasn't one hundred percent convinced that it was actually Mom's ghost. But having verified it knew things about me that Dad didn't had me questioning many of my assumptions about life. My pet theory was that either mom was a parahuman that triggered on her near death and it just took her forever to get back up, or Dad had triggered and had mom's spirit bound to him. He did mention that she had haunted him since she died, I now wondered how literal he meant that.
At Mom's insistence the house was cleaner and sturdier than I'd seen it in my life. Nicce was not great at cleaning, but she was good at fixing things with her webs, which were soon invisibly reinforcing most of the house. My swarms unleashed had the whole place clean in minutes, Dad applied the cleaning sprays and chemicals, leaving us a tired family in a very clean threadbare house. Still it felt more alive than it had in years.
Dad made a police report about Nicce, reporting her as a lost child. Him and Nicce talked to an officer for a while out front of the house before the officer agreed to leave her with us. I think they were just happy someone was looking after her. That and I think he may have known my dad from work and trusted him. I told Nicce that if anyone besides her actual guardian showed up, she could always just web back to us after they left.
XXX
The next day I got back on track and started tracking down info on Bakuda. I shared information with Mom through Nicce while Dad went to work and we had a plan.
This plan would not involve much fighting. It was however the sort of viciously effective plan Weaver was known for, and I now knew where I got my vicious streak. Knowing what Bakuda had done I was disinclined to obey any of the unwritten rules and let her go another day, though it would have to wait for tonight.
Apparently Mom could follow me or Dad, but once she was in an area she could loiter about some. She had, or 'was' a minor TK effect but during daylight she was extremely weak.
With Mom, Nicce and my Swarm the actual plan was simple. A short stake out once we found her. We would attack once she was asleep or when we had a good opportunity. Nicce's Spiders were our answer to Oni Lee or any other violence required, while Mom would get close enough to haunt Bakuda and wait for an opportune moment, it wouldn't take a lot to mess up a bomb tinker.
The approach would be through webs, then with invisible webs, I and Nicce would be able to hunker down quite a ways away and send support as necessary. I could follow mom's progress via tracking her cold spot.
That's how we ended up with my Dad Driving us around the bad sections of ABB territory after dark. After Dad mentioning ducking any bullets by sitting low in the seats, Nicce panicked and gave us some very dark but see through webs over the windows and doors. She insisted they would not be damaged by a siege ram, I think that covered bullets?
I had a strange moment as I realized I was part of a team, My dad was the Driver with the super power of being an responsible adult. We had Nicce and Me as the team power houses and Mom was totally a high rank Stranger with almost permanent invisibility and intangibility.
We got stopped and Nicce summoned 'small' spiders to run off the gangmembers three times before I found Bakuda with my swarm. Nicce made some invisibility webs and covered us while we walked Mom up to the front door. She entered and said she'd signal my bugs or make it real obvious if we needed to either swarm the place or run.
My swarm gathered, and waited. I could sense Mom walking right around Bakuda via the cold. Time passed. I've done stake outs before, Dad was a trooper, Nicce however got bored and started playing Eye Spy, which my Dad had taught her during the drive.
I noted Bakuda was alone in her workshop, building the bombs that would later be used to kill so many people.
I saw Mom make a move. Bakuda had a mirror laid down flat that she was using to help look at the undersides of her bombs to cut down on having to flip them. Mom managed to frost over the mirror somehow. Bakuda noticed and thought it was a leak of some kind. Mom started writing on the Mirror.
"How much force does it take to set one of these off?" she wrote with her finger.
Bakuda slowly stood then set off several small grenades near her. The variety of effects was less than I expected, but then I had confronted her later. Many of my bugs died and I rushed more into position. I had Nicce summon the medium spiders and I directed them to close off the building.
Oni Lee made an appearance and I asked for more backup. Nicce summoned more small spiders and the Three big ones. Fezzy, Wuzzy and Paul (Yeah when I asked their names she had said he just looked like a Paul to her).They appeared on the battlefield looming over the small buildings. They definitely caught Oni Lee's attention. He began circling with suicide bomber clones. He had taken out Fezzy (Did everyone gun for Fezzy first or was he just lucky?) and was chipping away at Paul with incendiary grenades when I finally got lucky. I had maneuvered the small spiders around the periphery of the battle.
Oni Lee stopped for a brief second and turned to assess the damage he had done. He had plenty of time as Paul and Wuzzy lumbered towards him. However he didn't see the spider at the base of the wall, concealed in the gloom. He was close enough so the four foot long spider leapt and sank it's fangs into the original Oni Lee's leg.
He staggered then teleported again, taking out the spider that had gotten him with a frag grenade. He was slowing down now though. He repeatedly teleported leaving clones to explode around Wuzzy and Paul. Arachnids the size of buildings can take quite a bit of damage though and he was fading faster than they were. He finally stopped moving on a roof a ways away from the spiders and beyond my range.
Meanwhile the explosions stopped. Bakuda was looking desperate and my few surviving bugs heard a literal pin drop in the silence. Bakuda flipped out raining grenades everywhere. She was hit with some of the effects, looking burnt and blasted she was nevertheless still alive. Something took out the lights and in the resultant gloom I made out a strange ghostly light. It looked like a faded image of my mother, I heard Bakuda's hoarse scream and the skeletal Frame of my mother was suddenly visible under the image. She walked over to Bakuda and I could see she had a grenade in her hand.
"You will never hurt another child, never threaten my Daughter and never leave this place." Mom said with a vindictive chill that beggared description.
She calmly tucked the grenade into Bakuda's shirt, then helped her like she was a child getting her ready to go out in the cold. She buttoned the shirt an instant before there was a flash of light and Bakuda was no longer there, just an ashen imprint on the ground. Of Mom there was no sign.
Amidst the crying and cursing from my father we heard the sirens of approaching emergency services. Dad somehow managed to drive us home.
The smell of Pinesol and a nice clean, though threadbare house greeted us on our return.
XXXLast edited: 13/2/2018 Award ReplyReport255DMfromTheAbyss29/11/2017NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Spider and the Unicorn New View contentDMfromTheAbyssConfirmed Dungeon Master5/12/2017Add bookmark#39XXX
The next five days passed in a blur, they didn't seem real. Pain, wrenching emotional pain was a standard state when not feeling too empty, too spent to feel anymore. Losing Mom for the second time had simply been too much, I think it broke us both again to relive it. Me and my father were together at least, though our method of dealing with the pain was to close up and ignore the world.
I was alone with my pounding headaches. Migraines really that were only offset by the very lack of caring for myself that being in a different sort of pain brought. I spent my time curled up and under my blankets for what I think might have been the first two tear stained days.
Dad was different this time, he ranted and raved and swore at the world. Instead of withdrawing into work, he withdrew into rage at the meaningless cruelty of life in an existential crisis. Maybe time would prove that it was cathartic, but it was hard to see anything useful coming out of him breaking things as he ranted. Still he would occasionally come to clutch at me in my bed as if to reassure himself that I was still there. We cried together between his rants and my nightmare filled dreams.
If not for Nicce prodding me and my father I think we might have starved. At first she attempted to cheer us up and take care of us. Only Nicce's attempt at cooking for us shocked us back into even the attempt at normalcy. I don't mean to imply that she was a bad cook. No for someone to be a bad cook they have to first understand the idea of cooking to at least attempt it. Nicce did not. Her idea of taste and flavor seemed alien and her fear of fire left her thankfully unwilling to set the house ablaze.
Eventually after hours of tutelage I managed to instruct her in the making of peanut butter sandwiches. She had to go through the motions almost like a ritual, repeating the simple steps out loud to pull it off without 'complications'. The attempt at including jelly into the recipe had so horrified me that she was forbidden to 'mix' ingredients henceforth.
The nearly indestructible wafers that were the result of her 'mixing' peanut butter and jelly on two pieces of bread had resulted in something that looked like a sandwich and had the approximate density of steel. I checked and it literally etched glass, and when dropped it fell slower than it physically should have been able to almost like it was only partially affected by gravity.
Sometimes it takes something weird to make you curious. Sometimes you just take it as is and move on. With Nicce I was getting to the latter point. I was almost curious enough to send it in to the Protectorate for analysis. I didn't bother, it would probably just confuse them too.
Dad had stopped going to work. His friends in the Union had checked up on him, after being rebuffed I wasn't even sure he still had a job. A day later or so Kurt left a message to the point that he was finally getting some usage out of all that accrued time off, so I suppose he was covered at least for a while.
I was a tad worried about money, till I realized I had all the weapons and gear from Coil's base to sell. After a few days I imagine the smell would be horrific, but it might make a good secret base for us in the future.
In the meanwhile the large amount of bread and peanut butter stocking our shelves mysteriously had me suspecting Nicce would not let us starve. Die from malnutrition perhaps, though peanut butter had a decent amount of vitamins I think, so we could do worse. Still I had to wonder where she had gotten it all, though again I wondered but didn't care enough to find out. Though strangely I imagined Nicce's tiny little hands pulling them out of dark shelves in the middle of the night from stores all over the region.
I would be concerned about the future, if Nicce was so willing to steal and break the law to accomplish her goals. After everything I had seen it seemed so inconsequential. If I cared about the future at all, it was largely beyond the scope of my pained musings at present.
That was until on the Sixth day Dad suddenly, shockingly seemed better one morning. Energized, he had hugged me, told me everything would be OK and went to work.
This improvement, this change in the depressing status quo worried me. It wasn't like him. Still the shock had me up and I decided to take a shower. As I was in there removing the sour sweat of another night of dark dreams I heard Nicce talking to someone downstairs. I tuned my flagging attention to the noise and listened through my swarm. I didn't sense anything or anyone downstairs but Nicce. She felt worried.
"Mrs. Hebewt, Taylor hasn't been doing so well what can I do?" The innocent voice of the spider girl lisped.
I just about killed myself rushing out of the shower. Clothes be damned I ran for the door only to glance at the mirror and stop in shock.
My hair; my one feminine feature, my pride was 'different'. Lavender curls in strips down the back of my head, strands of my hair in the same alien color of my fever dreams. My bloodshot eyes focused and I saw the blood dribbling down my left ear.
A wave of distant thoughts and emotions passed in front of me and there was a light. I felt myself falling. In confusion and desperation I tried to call out.
[Help]
XXX
(Nicce)
I was just talking to the nice ghost lady, trying to figure out how I could help my friend, her daughter, when I heard a loud thump from upstairs. I would have leapt straight there along the ever present webs but the recent emotional turmoil seemed to have cleared out most of the webs in the house save the Basement.
Still I made as good a time as I could on my two little legs.
Sure I couldn't have 128 legs, it would make moving so much easier. My arms barely helped, most of them were at the wrong angles to give me any useful leverage in three dimensional movement. Still I used what I could to pull and push myself the tiniest bit faster.
Arriving at the bathroom I peeked in the door to see Taylor collapsed.
She looked awful, her color was bad, she had limp conduits and filaments everywhere and her pinnaces even seemed to droop a bit. Her hair looked tangled and was a funny color and there was blood. I rushed inside but had a moment of panic. I didn't know what to do.
"She's Hurt, what do I do What do I Do?!" I panicked.
"Get her to a Hospital Nicce." The still weak ghost uttered; she was only audible because of my hearing her through the ethereal plane directly.
"A Wwhat?" I answered the ghost. She was older, wiser, despite living on not as many dimensions as me or her daughter she was a lot older. Honor your Elders Rill had always taught me, because they usually know a lot of cool useful stuff.
"A Medic, a Physician, a healer?" Taylors dead Mom advised me. "If you can't help her go get someone who can!" She said starting to use her stern teacher voice. This cut through my panic.
"OK um, I'll go get help." I said as I reversed course and flung myself back down the stairs.
I didn't know any healers around here, but there was usually a few back at Falling Star Castle. It was a long trip, but I knew the way.
I wrestled open the door to the basement and continued my rush down more stairs. Hopping over some old boxes of stuff I got to the coal chute and crawled into the deep webs there, into the great void between worlds.
XXX
(Nicce-Renedge)
I felt the thrumming of clashing dimensions and arcane geomantic emanations and I knew I was home, or at least in the right dimension of space.
"If I screw up any more time stuff Rill is gonna mertalize me." I worried out loud.
I got my senses about me, alright, dead on right where and when I had left. I crawled out of the dungeon pit around the remains of the lich and started pulling on webs. Soon I was back at ground level and inside the Castle. It was still confusing how the castle had been put together from many disparate places by magic. It had taken me awhile to get used to the twists and turns, but now it felt like home. The caverns underneath the castle, The dungeons and the underground lake with the Dark Siren crooning into the stygian waters. The layers of paranoid death traps and disconnected dungeons filled with the strange collections of interdimensional brica-brac the elven lich Koz had collected in dozens of centuries of research. The myriad tunnels leading into the endless underdark, still filled with my defensive webworks against the drow invaders. I noted some of the invaders were still stuck where they had been many months before, unable to make progress against my superior webworks.
Atop it all a gothic fortification thrust into the sky, high atop it's own plateau. Myriad towers, an elven garden with Grimbough the trent gardener who sometimes let me spin webs on him because he thought them pretty. The massive serpentine dragon statue in the central courtyard surrounded and interwoven with the terraced fountain that itself concealed a hidden passage to the dimensional gateway nexus and portal to the negative energy plane below.
The Rook, an Inn built to the side of the courtyard out of massive logs that somehow looked sturdier than the solid stone walls it abutted. I guess it had better be sturdy; it was made to be an adventurer bar.
I started dashing for the Inn. There would be adventurers there, help, healers. Legs don't fail me now.
"Nicce, where do you think you are going… and why are you wheezing?" An unwelcome melodic female voice asked me from behind.
Oh gods of darkness and woe, why her. My former best friend had a rival and her name was "Um Vasea, hi, um need help… friend hurt. Needs healing." I gasped. C-mon work lungs.
"What friend? Lica back from her adventures with her crazy half elf boy toy Darien yet? Wait you didn't let out that timestopped Balor did you?" Vasea said with her too pretty voice as she glowed her too shiny glow in wrath. I shielded my eyes from her pearlescent radiance. I noted she hefted her club in one hand as if offering to bop me on the head with it.
That massive club could easily end my life, so casually hefted by the young woman who was my best friend's rival. She usually beat Lica in their spars too which meant that she was terrifyingly good with it. I winced and backed away knowing it was futile. Then I stopped. My base reaction tempered by my need to help my friend. Didn't she have some healing powers. Didn't the ponies I had met say that you should do anything you could to help your friends. some of them were Unicorns even.
Not Unicorns like her. I gazed up into her glowing eyes that held a radiance I found repulsive on some innate natural level. "Can you…" I gulped "please help, my friend Taylor is hurt." I winced and waited for the inevitable squish. Without Lica here to stand up to her, I don't think I stood a chance against the confident young woman with the glare of alien and terrifying magicks at her beck and call.
"Wow, ok, sorry Nicce, yeah, lead on."
XXX
"Gah that's really creepy Nicce." Vasea complained for the fifth time as I webbed us to the next spot.
"Muhehew" I whimpered as she teleported us at my direction across the cavern to the next web.
This method of movement, my webs interspersed with her line of sight teleportation was fast, we would be back only a few minutes after me leaving Taylor, with most of that being me getting to Vasea. Minus my shakes and twitches and Vasea's heebeegeebees at our respective modes of movement through reality we had made it back to the portal in less than half a minute.
I pulled us through the Great void between worlds and felt a weird pressure. Pushing with all my might I dragged Vasea through the coal chute and out into Taylor's basement.
There was a crash. I turned to see Vasea in her Unicorn form wedged into the coal chute.
She angrily surged forward, smashing her way out of the confines of corner of the basement. Once clear into the open area of the basement she resumed her elven form. Shaking herself off she brushed dust and mortar out of her mane, her hair now.
I looked behind her and noted the web into the Great Void between worlds was ripped open a touch larger and I could see dim sparkles of light in the infinite darkness beyond. That was new, and also, Fine I was suure it was fine.
"C-mon this way!" I urged Vasea to follow me as I made my way up the stairs at my exhausted best speed.
"A touch of warning next time, c-mon you're slowing me down just point." Vasea said as she scooped me up as she effortlessly bounded up the stairs. Bursting through the door she bounded at terrifying speed, she was through the house in what felt like three bounding steps.
But it got me back towards Taylor faster so I limited my complaints to a simple shocked "Meep."
Once in the bathroom I saw Taylor's mom's ghost staring out the window like she was waiting for someone.
Vasea wasted no time and cradled the stricken Taylor in her arms and brought her forehead forward to touch Taylor's temple.
I winced as the bright light that was not fully physical filled the room. I absently noted the holy light threw Taylor's mom out through the window like she was launched from a ballista. She was a powerful cursed ghost, short of solving the meaning behind her haunting or a powerful priest I'm sure she'd be fine. Might just take her a little longer to reform again.
Man dead people have no sense of self preservation. Then again they also hunger for the life force of the living as the only thing that satiates the eternal anguish they suffer as part of the process of being bound to the negative energy plane so maybe they don't really want to keep existing.
I turned back towards the light as it faded and saw Taylor looking much healthier. Her connections and filaments looked much more robust now. Her color was a little different, but showed much better energy flow and circulation.
"That took a lot more effort than usual, but she should be ok, I think." Vasea said as she pulled Taylor back to the vertical.
She supported Taylor easily with one arm and Taylor started to groggily wake up. I noted that Taylor was a few inches taller and broader than the Unicorn in her elven form. Not wanting Taylor to forget me, I rushed in and hugged her while trying to avoid touching the Unicorn.
Taylor, her eyes a weird grey-purple, scanned the room uncertainly.
XXX