XXX
(Taylor Hebert, Crime Princess of Brockton Bay)
When I got back with my crates of loot and my magic dagger I did not expect the next challenge to confront me to be the threat of being grounded.
Mom took offense at the level of damage I had taken and, regardless of the success of the mission, she was threatening me at volume with a lifelong grounding.
I had gotten hurt worse than I had thought. The melted lenses had kinda burned out my eyes. The burns on my legs and arms were also worse than I had let on. I had just literally not realized how badly hurt I was. Adjusting to using my swarm when blinded was almost automatic at this point. I mean if I thought about it I may have noticed my real eyes were not working, but I just sort of adapted and moved on with what was important at the time, which was apparently not what condition my body was in.
My new ability to ignore pain was troubling and new to my current configuration. If my whole body had burned, would I have felt it or simply kept going till I was crippled by the damage? As if I were dealing with a minor cut, I had ignored the pain as not important and not thought about it afterward. Would I have to consciously take a damage report from my own body every now and then and get regular post battle checkups to see if there was anything I missed? After the adrenaline had faded the pain hadn't gotten worse or even made another appearance in any way.
The pain had not been noticeable past the first moment when I pushed it aside.
Apparently, I could consciously turn it back on though. My brief involuntary gasping scream from Bonesaw's medical room was disturbing enough that my mother started crying and others around the base winced, some of them even coming to investigate.
OK, it hurt a lot to have what were effectively hot pokers burned into your eyes. Having the melted lenses which had cooled into jagged barbs extracted afterward was not a lot of fun either.
Bonesaw ended up taking out my eyes entirely, saying that she'd clone me a new set if necessary. The other burns were fixable with some repair work. I quickly shut off my body's pain receptors and let Riley get to work. As I contemplated the dangers of having my pain response system under conscious control, I looked around the base with the local bugs. There was no reason not to get something accomplished just because my main body was out of action for a bit.
I formed a swarm clone and tried to wheedle my mother away from locking me up in the same vault Echidna had once been in; or rather throw me in with her, as I detected the warmth of the distinctive large fleshy form within. While I had been gone, Noelle had somehow gotten moved into the containment vault she had eventually escaped from in my original timeline. Though thinking about it, with her being willing and with the help of the other Travelers it wouldn't be that hard to get her quickly moved in. It probably helped that Noelle was presently much smaller than I had been envisioning her, as I had last seen her as I killed her in her titanic form. Though she was big by human standards, her lower half seemed to be closer in size to a large bear than to the African elephant I'd first seen her as in my timeline.
I noted a few other additions to the base, mostly furniture and guest quarters personalized for the Travelers, Dinah, the stuffed knight whose name I learned was Sir Rupert, my mom made herself a villain/teacher cave, more computers including a few servers and the removal of a lot of the dangerous weapons and the self-destruct from the base. A central area with some maps of the city and country also alluded to my mother having some serious ideas about planning for the future. Connections for some sort of computer projector over the middle of the table hung empty, doubtless prepared for some new hardware that was still on order.
Thinking of the computers I tried to get online with my swarm. It was slow going, but it was still far better than I was expecting: My ability to interpret the video screen seemed much improved, so either we had better screens or my own new hardware upgrade made seeing the screens easier. Typing everything out and checking it was still a pain, though, since I had a limited supply of bugs heavy enough to depress a key, and not all of them did well with repeated impacts. Eventually, Nicce saw what I was trying to do and helped me. I spelled out what I wanted her to type and she got to practice typing. That she was as young as she was and had the language skills she had was remarkable. I wasn't surprised at her initial inability to type, but it did slow things down even further as I explained everything. Still, she sped up dramatically over the few minutes it took for me to vicariously construct a post for Dragon about the removal of Ascalon as a threat. Nicce was incredible in her ability to pick things up quickly.
My post on PHO in the 'Connections' section was simple and to the point.
//
Dragon, I recently ran afoul of Saint and the Dragon Slayers. I don't believe they will be giving you problems in the future. (We may have inadvertently lost them in another dimension.) I'm a big fan of your work and hope that without the distraction they provide you will be able to accomplish even more amazing things in the future.
Skitter, Brockton Bay Rogues
P.S. Any way you could hook a girl up with a sweet insect-themed flight pack?
//
I really wanted to be up and about. However, given my current lack of eyeballs, I decided to take a little time off. What with the evil god wandering around in Sophia's body and Leviathan's attack being about a month out, I could use this time to network with my allies as I considered my next move. Thankfully Scion should be quite a ways out what with Jack being dealt with, long enough that I had time to learn and build up to him. I'd need some serious planning to kill him while minimizing loss of life, and Cauldron making a mess of things also needed to be addressed. Perhaps I should focus on dealing with Eidolon instead of Leviathan.
While plotting and waiting for Bonesaw to finish fixing my eyes, she was now considering it faster to repair them using the cloned eye bits for parts. I decided to make the most of my time. If I was going to socialize I may as well do as much as possible, right? Spend some time with Mom and Nicce via swarm clone, talk to the S-class threat in the basement, maybe call up Tattletail?
I cackled at my own mental pun. Maybe I'd edit her PHO page with the newly fitting moniker.
I started several conversations around the base just as Riley started speaking to me.
"It is really creepy for you to smile and laugh like that with no eyes in. The whole 'not feeling any pain' thing, the being friends with a 'girl' like Nicce and having all this going on, and you giggling about it is starting to creep me out, and I'm a little girl serial killer who is wrist deep in eye goo." Riley said in a serious tone.
"Sorry, just thought of a play on Tattletale's name. Tattletail, with an A, I, L. She did tell you she's a fox now, right?" I explained with a smile.
She didn't budge from her half-lidded stare. "See, making bad puns for names I would expect if you were loopy on the sort of pain meds one might normally administer for someone whose eyeballs are currently in my hands. You aren't under any pain meds at all. That's grade-A inhuman levels of creepy there. I know, I used to be something of a connoisseur of creepy myself. That right there is a step past what Jack Slash might consider good taste." Riley lectured as she focused on my eyeless face.
I was taken aback for a moment. Being admonished for being creepy by Bonesaw was not an accomplishment I had ever sought.
"Are you even a little bit human in there? Or did you change on a fundamental psychological level to match some of the physical changes?" Bonesaw asked.
"My hair and eyes changed colors, is that really so weird when we have case 53's who are made of metal, fire or tentacles?" I challenged back.
"Oh, that's not all that changed. Your eye color is literally just the tip of the weirdness tree your central nervous system has become. Did you know you have different types of nerve cells now? They are very similar, but just these optic nerves show different mechanisms of function. You are physically pretty much alien to whatever you started as. The nerves also don't connect the same way. They have a different system of remote... I'm guessing magnetic or maybe even quantum entanglement transmission. I might just do some more tests while I have these out if you don't mind." Riley briefly fiddled with her tools and diagnostic computer.
After a very brief time, Riley started talking again as she worked. "Anyway, your hair is no longer dead protein strands, you have living hair closer to a sort of cilia that act as some sort of electromagnetic wave detectors. I would say you are a full-on alien or alien hybrid except that your body, skeletal structure, and musculature are all pure human. You're like an example of an alien nervous system transplant that somehow didn't kill the host." Riley said as she tickled a probe of some sort into my empty left eye socket.
"So do I have a really good reaction time now?" I asked, trying to focus on how I could leverage this, and not think about Bonesaw examining my brain.
"Your brain is different, but it's not necessarily more efficient. It's like hooking a computer up to a robot. What matters isn't the speed or power of the computer, it just matters how fast the signal travels back and forth with usable and hopefully good directions. Yours doesn't seem any faster than normal. It is actually kinda neat that you can effectively nerve block yourself, but that may be what led you to not taking action to save yourself from damage and slowed your body's reaction to the damage once inflicted. In this case, it actually made it worse. You let your eyes, slow cook, instead of, say, screaming and yanking the burning stuff away from your eyes like a good mammal. Basically, you are no tougher or faster than a normal girl your size and weight. You just have very strange thinky parts that don't operate as usual for a homo-sapiens, or like anything evolved on earth. Your nerve impulses might work better for something needing more distance between nerves…" She maneuvered the probe slightly and I felt a slight sensation. "...Yup, your nerves would be way better to send signals faster over long distances, like about here to the Midwest. Too bad your brain is so small, all that advantage wasted."
Changing to a cheery voice, she chirped "OK hold still!" and poked what I thought was some sort of probe into my forebrain through the back of my empty eye socket.
"Is t-that strictly necessary?" I remained very still as the world's most feared biotinker had a metal spike in my brain, though I was in a surprising lack of discomfort.
"Relax, I'm just poking around while I figure out how to reattach these here eyeballs. Your brain looks more like a giant twisted purple veiny fruit than a human brain. Neat! Hey, try to move your not currently attached eyes." Riley instructed.
"Oh, Kay…" I tried to move my eyes up then down, left then right.
"Aha, I think I got it. I knew this stuff looked sorta familiar. It looks like your optic nerves and your whole brain are basically melded with what the other side of a Corona would look like. So instead of sending signals to a human brain, whatever's connected to the Corona got sucked into your head and replaced your brain." she said in an almost sing-song voice.
"Replaced... my brain?" I asked, somewhat in shock. Though I'd realized I had physically changed, I had thought my Taylor meat brain would still be at least present.
"Oh it's functional, I can see it right now, your power operating, this is really super interesting seeing it from the other side." Riley was visibly fascinated.
"So my brain is gone, it's just the shard, er, the power bits that are left," I said, somewhat dejectedly.
"Oh don't worry, it looks like this bit here handles most of your conscious thoughts, it's a bit human-ish, maybe? Not like the rest anyway. I think you may have gotten spliced and parts of you are on the other side too. Out of all the parahuman brains I've seen yours is definitely the most interesting." Riley concluded as she retracted the probe and in a few short moments reattached my eyes with deft movements of what looked like dentist's tools.
I blinked, only to have Riley's fingers stop the eyelids. "Not done just yet, little adjustment…" she said. As she stood over me in the chair with one hand her fingers wrenched on my eyeballs in turn, while with the other she was reattaching the muscles with an odd curved tool that looked strangely like a spoon and manually turning them to align them so I was looking forward. Pain block or no, the reattachment process was intensely disturbing, and I let out a sustained inarticulate noise of discomfort as I wondered if she would ever be done.
"There you go, might be a human in there after all. You had a normal response and even experienced discomfort, congratulations." Riley smiled up at me with as she wiped off her surprisingly clean little hands on her surgical smock.
I looked forward with my own eyes for the first time in a while, wary about moving them at first, and thought about what it was to be human, especially after all I had been through. Assuring myself that everything worked for a moment, I sat up.
"Thanks for the eyes, Riley," I said as I reached out to her to give her a short hug. She seemed shocked at first but relaxed after a moment.
"Just tell Mom… your mom that I did a good job, OK," she said, sounding surprisingly sheepish. I nodded to her and gave her a smile as I got up to leave. Mom was really getting through to her huh?
XXX
While I was talking to Riley I found I was unable to play Mario Kart (well and keep my cart on the track, the bugs were just not strong enough to give me good control. Sundancer and Dinah were understanding about my handicap, unlike a certain Jester themed cape.) or be heard with reasonable clarity on the phone with my swarm clones, so instead I infiltrated my swarm into the vault and talked to Noelle.
It was a lot lighter in here this time around, had Coil never installed enough lighting down here? Noelle and Oliver, her pretty boy keeper, were deep into a game of cards as the insects I had infiltrated formed me a body. I had brought a few extra to provide extra volume for speaking.
"Greetings, I'd offer to play but I'd have a hard time with the cards." I spoke from a distance so as not to spook them too much.
"Not a problem, Noelle here has the same issue. I have gotten quite adept at handling both sides. I will deal you in next hand." Oliver said, quick to adapt.
Watching Noelle struggle to even play cards, her body making it difficult to even interact with normal-scale people I began to appreciate her issues. She had hands but her body shape seemed to conspire to keep her out of reach and her lower anatomy struggled under her directions to not attack those around her. If my Khepri range wasn't stuck to my meat body I'd consider getting a look inside her nervous system to see if I could help (if she even had nerves for her lower bits). I also wondered how her shard worked. It was one of those that belonged to the Thinker, possibly messed up by the human/Cauldron vial process. Still, it was obviously still powered, and the ability to clone and even make slight alterations to the shard connections suggested that she might have a bit of the [Thinker]'s shard control apparatus as her shard, my opposite number as it were.
I shook my proverbial head, my focus broken for a moment as I considered my own issues. As I looked at the cards they were using to play, the alien writing seemed to writhe under the view of my multitudinous eyes. Coming back into focus with an effort of will, I could make them out as regular playing cards again. Still, perhaps I should make a note to deal with some of my own issues before trying to help others with theirs. Regardless, I was here and I doubted a conversation could hurt my relationship with Noelle much; Judging by her uncomfortable glances, she was already having issues with my presence.
"Well, maybe I should keep this to a meet and greet. I'm just down for a little while as I get my eyes repaired. While I had the chance, I just wanted to meet you and ask if there was anything I could do for you. We don't want you getting worse before we can fix you." I tried to keep my tone lighthearted, but Noelle still winced at the reminder.
Memories flashed of her death and all the chaos in the aftermath.
Noelle spoke for herself for the first time this conversation. "Yeah, Coil has been the perfect boss. We're getting taken care of, we may get to go home and from what we've gathered you have a biotinker who says they can fix me. Unless you can speed that along, I'm doing OK for now, and if worst comes to worst you can lock me in here." She pointed to the massive vault door.
"I'll see what I can do, but our biotinker has been really busy, though your project might explain all the new gear she has been getting. We will get you better one way or another. In the meantime, maybe we can get you some computer games or access to the internet? Hopefully, something to let you have a bit of a mental break from your, uh, issues," I said uncertainly.
"I'd like that… but with my body anything as delicate as a computer tends to get wrecked so it might not be worth it," Noelle explained sadly.
"Nicce might be able to help on that front. She is really good at 'reinforcing' things with her webs. We can get you a computer, hook it up high enough, maybe even get a platform so people can talk to you eye to eye. We'll have you hooked up in no time." I'd hopefully only slightly exaggerated. Waving an arm-like appendage made out of flying insects I discorporated my swarm clone and had my bugs exit the vault.
I did talk my mom into it shortly thereafter, with Nicce's help reinforcing the scaffolding to put everything including a computer, three monitors and a few chairs at Noelle's human head height some twelve feet off the ground. All of it was sturdy enough to stay together and get Noelle online. It was weird talking to her upper part; with the more monstrous bits just out of sight one could almost imagine she was normal. I'm not sure if I was a good judge of what normal was anymore though.
XXX
I was still convalescing officially, but my newly fixed eyes were in and functional. I had tried explaining to Mom that I operated fine without them, but she just gave me a motherly stare that made me feel guilty, logic be damned.
The Undersiders and two figures I remembered came back into my range. Using an unmarked van they dropped off Bitch, her dogs and the Black Legion Mercenary named Nicky, the one who was a werewolf. Then I noted a small vulpine form with them. They made for the entrance to the base. Grue, Regent, and the ever quiet creepy girl Whirligig exited the van after it parked. Had Whirligig changed her hair color again? The tips were now a dayglow toxic green. The group was armed and armored only slightly less than when they had left. Now they were sporting ominous black clothing and dark sunglasses like some sort of goth criminal hit squad. It didn't help they were walking together with a slow confidence, almost a brag in pure body language. Apparently, the Undersiders now thought they were badass, or maybe they were just happy they finally got the other children of Heartbreaker out of their hair. The fact that Aisha was playing a song on a music player did not make the whole vulgar display of attitude any less obvious.SpoilerI rather envied their show of solidarity as I was seeing it from the outside.
Behind them in the almost opposite style of outfit was Valier, the Runepriest who had healed us. She came in like the adult chaperone, wearing office casual and walking apart from and behind the group, perhaps keeping an eye out for stragglers or signs of threats following the group.
Tattletale made the requisite code alliteration as she transformed into a mostly human. "Nicce needs nice noodles next." My swarm watched as Nicce ferried the Undersiders and their guests into the base.
I went to talk to them. Having info on Heartbreaker's involvement in town might be important, I did not want to overlook something that could wreck my still uncertain plans.
I sat on a convenient couch and waited for them. They walked past, Grue strode on purposely to Coil's office while the rest peeled off towards the gaming or kitchen areas. The feeling of smug satisfaction seemed to almost radiate off the whole group of them. Smugness personified, Tattletail, complete with nascent fox tail and ears flopped onto the couch beside me.
"It went well?" I asked almost unnecessarily.
"Let's just say it is really nice when this whole magic thing bites someone else in the ass for a change." Lisa spread her hands as if to frame the event, a sure sign it was story time. Did she not realize her tail and ears were showing?
"We found them, well 'I' found them. We went in, we were getting all set to do violence unto Regent's siblings. Somewhere between kneecapping and murder was the plan, though as upset as we were we were leaning towards the murder. Fortunately, our mercenary friends showed up right out of a portal to offer support at the last minute… Did you know that Bitch's power works on foxes, I'm not very big but it is nice to be able to go in and mix it up." Lisa deflected, delaying the story with interesting tidbits to drag it out and build suspense.
I gave her a 'move it along' hand gesture and Lisa continued. "I'm kinda small, not even quite as big as Bitch's usual dogs. But what do you suppose Bitch's power does to Nicky, the werewolf… who starts at about fifteen feet tall?" Lisa asked rhetorically.
Just to be a wiseass and because my shard brain did the math for me I countered with "Proportionally if he were that tall standing on two legs he wouldn't be much larger than Bitch's usual dogs who are more like six feet at the shoulder as quadrupeds while transformed. Assuming he was he'd only be about as big as Brutus post-transformation, then add the size increase. I'm going to say it put him in at close to twenty-five feet tall/long," I approximated.
"Nope! Apparently, Bitch's power doesn't understand proportional, because he came out close to seventy-five feet tall! Bigger than your spiders! There is a new kaiju in town and the Undersiders have him. So given that it was pretty much overkill we sent in Kaiju Nicky to terrify them while we moved into position. Shutdown, Cherish and Gaslight was in there with a bunch of whammied guards, local gangers who were mind-screwed into being thralls basically. Well, they must have been out of their minds because they attacked Nicky, he swatted them like bugs, the Kids of Heartbreaker panicked and tried to get into his mind…" Tattletale stopped as I saw the ghost of regret pass over her features.
"Go on..." I encouraged.
"Well, we had kinda figured on him having the Prot Evil, prot mental protection spell whatever that we all got as part of our sign up bonus. I mean did you see his bling he has more holy symbols and necklaces than a church choir. Well, it turns out he didn't have anything like that and they tried to get into his head and…"
"Fuck, is he OK? Is that part of the city wrecked? Did Legend get called in?" I considered the ramifications and possible blowback. This could be bad.
"No! No, sorry, relax… Nicky didn't have anything like that because as Valier described it he is sorta haunted by a whole slew of forgotten and dead ish gods that 'help' him out. The Heartbreaker brats tried to get into his head and found it rather full already. They must have gotten the attention of some of those somethings in there because they all started freaking out and screaming. So, Grue knocked them out as a mercy and we turned them in at the PRT building. Could not have happened to nicer people. Almost enough to make a person start believing in Karma."
"Right, well at least that's one less thing to distract us. We don't have to worry about Heartbreaker doubling down do we?" I asked, hoping it was true.
"Well with Alexandria in town, Heartbreaker would have to be an idiot to show his face. Then again he did leave a detachment of his kids here despite that." Tattletale reasoned as her fox ears slowly grew out giving her normal vulpine smile a much more literal quality.
"So it would be stupid, but a level of stupid we can possibly expect? Good. In the meantime, do you think the Undersiders are up for scouting out Lolth and the Merchants? If we all work together we may be able to put together something similarly karmic for her." I gestured broadly, taking in the base, the travelers, Coil and all the rest of Coil's resources.
"We might want to be careful, maybe keep a low profile for at least a few days, but we can at least put our ear to the ground and see what we dig up. The Undersiders owe you for your help, we will be ready to give a hand when the moment comes." Tattletail said as her ears grew to the point she noticed them and she gave a strange surprised start followed by an oddly self-conscious grin as she tried to pass it off like she knew she was doing it. She quickly stood and with a sweeping bow turned and rejoined the other Undersiders.
XXX
(Taylor Hebert, out of shape Parahuman Warlord)
I tried to arrange for an attack, an assault, hell even a probe into Merchant territory over the next few days and ended up accomplishing nothing of the sort.
This was ridiculous; I had more resources at my indirect disposal than I had enjoyed at any time in my career short of when I had become Khepri. Both my parents had a number of groups of parahumans under their influence. I had Nicce, who when she wasn't being a cute little lazybum was probably one of the most powerful beings Earth Bet was home to.
Dad had Ruin and his whole conspiracy that started with the Dockworkers Union and ended halfway through what seemed like every business in Brockton Bay. Dad had the ABB and the E88 effectively call a truce and they were picking at the Merchants' criminal resources.
Mom had the Travelers, the Undersiders, Riley, Dinah, Sir Rupert and the contact info for another half dozen rogues (or independents that wanted to be called rogues) This group of unknowns was all calling themeselves 'The Brockton Bay Rogues'.
The Protectorate was being run fairly directly by Alexandria at this point and they were making moves to catch, control and box in the Merchants. The heat was on and any sane group would have been crushed between the Law and Criminals of the Bay. We had the manpower, the capes, the information and a blessed lack of other distractions or conflict.
Still, we could not pin them down. Every lead led to a trap or a dead end. Thinker powers were brought up short and plans were ruined with an ease that belied belief. The Merchants were still randomly hitting and fading around the city, causing an uproar, damages and running the defenders ragged putting out fires (sometimes literally). The only time I had seen the whole city nearly this unified had been taking out Bakuda. At least the tagging and random violence the Merchants were causing, while terrible, was not nearly as disturbing or effective at killing people as Bakuda's bombs had been.
The Merchants just kept up enough activity despite all the city being against them to make the point that we couldn't catch them. They were taunting us and making the Protectorate look foolish. They couldn't be making any money, the situation was unstable and they couldn't keep it up, yet day after day they did. They weren't even using Squeeler's vehicles, just small groups on foot attacking and disappearing before anyone could respond.
Amidst all this chaos I felt I needed to do something. I finally got Mom and Nicce to start joining me on my morning jogs and start working on getting into some sort of shape. It didn't solve our issue with Sophia but at least it was preparing to do something while we waited for an opening or for something to change.
Mom had at first begged for my help in this, then when I told her we'd be jogging around the city she had changed her tune and forbade it. However, I had talked her around and the next day before dawn we were off.
The first day was the saddest showing. I could easily drive my body to exhaustion by simply ignoring the feedback my body gave me, but I now knew what a terrible idea that was. Instead, I embraced all the feelings and [data] my body had for me, and got to realize how very out of shape the three of us were. I had literally been better off when I started last time. Was there something about doing magic that made one intrinsically weaker physically? More likely I had just been less active as magic tired one out mentally without any physical exertion being required.
Huffing and puffing I and my Mom gave out early on. I thought maybe Nicce's childlike energy was helping her out, but of course not. I discovered she was also cheating and using webs (what else) to keep herself in the same position relative to us. It was easy to see if you tracked her [location] relative to us and of course saw how badly she was pretending to be tired. An actress she was not.
I had a flashback to Rill talking to her about stealing and bracing myself I tried to do my best impersonation as I explained why cheating for exercise (and in general) wasn't a good idea.
"Nicce... it's not nice or useful to cheat with exercise. You don't get the effects of the exercise if you don't use your own body to do it, and you don't see any improvement. Use your own body and suffer with us, and eventually, you might even think running around everywhere is fun. Lots of children do. The only times you should cheat…"
To my surprise, my Mom took over at this point as I took a bit to catch my breath. "The only times you should cheat in a game is if you don't care about or trust the people you are playing with. Also, don't cheat and get caught, it's no fun. Even if you think you can definitely get away with it there's always a chance you can't. So don't cheat if you have better options. The only other times you should cheat are if it is important to win at any cost, like a fight or life and death… because then it's not a game," my mom wheezed.
"So, this is like playing a game, an you wanna play with me. If you cheat at a game an get caught you feel bad, like I do now. So unless the game is bad or I'm with bad people I shouldn't cheat" Nicce said a spark of understanding as she clearly thought through the situation.
"Yeah so come on and go running with us, it's not fun right now but it will be if we put in the actual effort."
"So it is not fun, but is something to do with being friends." Nicce spoke as if talking herself into it. She did a long intake of breath and seemed to find a bit of inner resolve.
She then ran with us and I cheated a bit to help her out by showing her how to move with my power to make her rather awkward running more efficient. But we made it around the few blocks I had marked as a good starter course at a good jog, mostly. We were only stopping to talk for the discussion, honest.
"Wen dos dis git fun?" Nicce panted as she crossed the finish line.
"Good question!" my mom seconded.
"...maybe a week?" I answered lamely to groans and the both of them glaring knives at me.
XXX
(Taylor Hebert, wielder of Ascalon)
After our morning run I was still getting dirty looks from Nicce when mom took us out to get breakfast. We went in costume, partly to wave the flag and partly because mom had plans for after breakfast.
So after chocolate chip pancakes at IHOP I wasn't shocked when mom guided the two of us to a little strip mall where we went into a closed commercial space that was still covered in boards. We were let in by a gentleman in heavy workout clothes, tattoos and a long thin beard that made him look like some sort of heavy metal Viking.
Inside there were several more people including a pair of PRT officers in gear that had the unmistakable gleam of black high impact plastic that the PRT liked to use for training. There were pads on the ground and one wall like I would expect for a martial arts class and several benches and boxes with humanoid plastic targets in a variety of materials.
I looked over at Nicce and she gave me a bored expression. So this was power testing or some variation on training. Mom had warned us that we were getting some professional training.
Still I had no idea where she had gotten this guy.
The Viking guy introduced himself. "Hello I am the parahuman known as Skullgard, I'm something of a sword and medieval combat expert from Canada. I'm here at the behest of the PRT and Miss Coil to train you and test you and basically help you with being able to defend yourself better. My power is to basically summon any hand to hand weapon, and have a better than base level of proficiency with it. Good for training, bad for crime fighting as all those criminals have those 'new-fangled' gun things."
The two boxy looking PRT agents in their armor nodded and I noted body cameras on them as well as a camera on the room. This whole setup had the looks of this being an attempt to assuage some ruffled feathers with the PRT as much as get us training. I noted the surroundings, including the few people off site monitoring us from down the block.
Still it looked above board and if we had access to some Protectorate resources this could even be fun.
"OK to get us started, you called me in because your focus was on armed combat, let's see what weaponry you are dealing with." The Viking man said in an engaging fashion.
I moved to one of the tables and unloaded, placing my cans of pepper spray, daggers, zip strips and first aid gear on the table. I then placed Ascalon, looking like a sci-fi gleaming special effect, gently on the table.
As I set it down one of the lights in the room burst ominously, leaving a trail of brilliant flashing sparks for an instant in the suddenly dimmer room.
Every eye in the place seemed to focus on that dagger, it was a large, simple, business like modern tactical blade with a chisel like blade that made you think every millimeter of the design was for simple brutal efficiency. The design flairs along the blade and making up the handle seemed incidental, circuit board patterns and jagged silver-white flairs of color that didn't detract from the simple effective design. Like the patterns on a snake it seemed like the monochrome pattern was to warn of danger as opposed to looking pretty.
The ominous, menacing feel of the thing was noticeable and everyone took a moment to 'appreciate' it.
The Viking man seemed to be looking at my mom and Nicce. My mom looked back embarrassed and Nicce just still looked bored with her little arms crossed defensively.
"OK we work with what we got." Skullgard said as he strode up and took a look at my gear. "So you like knives, almost small swords really. Most look more like tools than weapons except for this…" He carefully almost reverently took hold of Ascalon and brought it up in an attempt to look carefully at the blade.
A second light bulb burst, an acrid tang was suddenly in the air.
One of the PRT troopers whispered something into his comm and I noted the team down the block was having a fun time with an equipment malfunction. The squeal of feedback was unmistakable through my swarm as I made out some inventive swearing from the young man down the block that had to be Kid Win.
Skullgard slowly placed Ascalon back down.
My mom had found her sword. She was showing the PRT agents the blade as she slowly turned it in her hands. Handing it off to the agent the blade disappeared instantly.
I returned my attention to our expert. "So, you are something of an expert in armed combat?" I directed my question at Skullgard before he could check out my mother's now disappeared wakizashi.
He nodded. "I was something of a weapon collector before I got my power, my power made that collection sort of pointless as I can now summon and use just about any hand to hand weapon. It does give me a good idea of the capabilities of any weapon I handle; and let me say that dagger of yours is terrifying." He nodded at Ascalon.
"How so?" I didn't want to let him off the hook so easily.
"Well let us put this in practical terms. If a standard knife is like this." Skullgard produced a simple switchblade out of thin air. He then approached one of the rubber torsos set up by a helpful PRT trooper.
"It does a cut maybe up to an inch deep if you are lucky." He slashed at the torso several times horizontally. Dropping the knife which instantly disappeared he poked into the resultant cuts with two fingers.
"Nasty but survivable, maybe a few stitches but what you would expect from a typical mugging."
He then made a near duplicate of Ascalon and first stabbed, then slashed at the torso again. The far deeper cut from the much larger blade wasn't as bad as the triangular hole made by it's thrust.
"See that will kill you, maybe thirty seconds and you bleed out, unless you are already in the hospital you are not making it out if you take a decent slash or stab. And that is before whatever the special power adds to the blade, and I got the impression from my power that it should be… impressive." He then gestured for me to take up Ascalon.
"Why aren't you testing it directly?" I asked as I grasped Ascalon. Despite it being a sizable dagger it was unnaturally light in my hands, eager seeming as it almost hummed with energy.
"Well when I handled it I got a read on it and I got the feeling it didn't like me, so I will let you handle your own knife. I get the feeling your knife has its own powers or is the result of someone's powers… so yeah, I'm not mucking around with it unnecessarily. I can show you a few moves, some strategies for self-defense, but seeing you move I'm thinking you have had some experience so mostly we are going to want to see how the knife works." Skullgard nodded to me and with his near copy showed me again the slash and stab he had earlier done unto the now quite perforated rubber torso.
"Alright." I nodded and stepped up. I took a lunging step up and stabbed for the center of the rubber chest. The blade passed through the flesh substitute like there was nothing there and into the hard plastic spine. I yanked the blade back out to do the follow up slash and ran into a problem.
The torso was basically gone. The spine had split and the flesh parted as if from a much larger cut and the unmistakable crack of an electrical discharge hung in the air as several large chunks of rubber made their way to the ground.
"Wow! …Well that is pretty conclusive, lets try with something tougher." Skullgard immediately motioned for another armored torso to be set up.
I looked over to see Nicce poking my mom as if to indicate where her blade had gone and the other PRT agent was trying to keep from laughing as mom was twisting around and trying to find her sword again.
As soon as they were ready I slashed at the armored torso.
The blade bit deeper than where the physical blade even touched. Steel and rubber parted and we were left with a nearly vertically bisected torso held together by the armor in back.
The PRT agent and Skullgard conferred and noted the failure of the sensors on the dummy. So while they were resetting to try to get better readings I watched as they turned their attentions to my mother and Nicce.
Skullgard offered to teach Nicce how to defend herself better and handle a knife and instead got rebuffed by her.
"I don't wike weapons, I got webs. If I wanted to get bettew at defendin people I would go work with Parian, she's been showing me all sorts of neat new stitches and tings to do."
When Skullgard tried to get her interested by asking "What would you do if you or your friends were threatened…" I almost felt bad when he suddenly found himself tied up with webbing and lifted off the ground in physics defying fashion before he could finish his statement. He was a good sport about it and simply said. "That works, very effective." From his awkward perch mid air with his arms akimbo.
That Nicce could spin webs with such speed meant she should not have to really worry about combat. Unfortunately in real combat she tended to panic and not be terribly willing to use what she had to defend herself effectively. She was getting better, but she was still wildly inconsistent. Maybe adding some personal combat training to our daily runs would be a good idea. It may get her used to using her webs in combat type situations and stop her from biting someone again by necessity.
While I coaxed Nicce into freeing our expert/instructor Mom was getting tips from the PRT trooper now that she had again found her sword somehow, she was having to literally call it like a puppy. He was teaching her to use a stance and how and where to swing to be effective. Mom had some practical experience, but was struggling to learn what sounded like a first lesson of some strange version of Kendo.
Despite her blade being supernaturally sharp and strong it seemed to mostly match up with their expectations, and with her subpar sword skills she wasn't going to be a major threat on the battlefield.
Well except she could create explosions. She seemed to have some control but after an accidental flash burn that lightly cooked the ceiling when she tried to make her blade catch fire, everyone decided to move things to a safer venue before exploring those aspects of her sword's power.
Still we started having a bit of fun once we started including Nicce in the testing more, as Skullgard politely asked Nicce to help him move the targets around and we found she was not only able to, but could make some of her own targets for our use.
We noted a significant difference in how Ascalon dealt with those different targets. Against the artificial targets provided by the PRT the dagger not only slashed through far more material than it should, it also tended to destroy any sensors, gear or mechanical components, often with an accompanying electrical discharge. Against the Nicce web targets Ascalon was merely a hyper sharp cutting implement capable of taking an arm off. No power discharges or effects killed the webbing targets.
Skullgard even talked Nicce through making some simple test swatches that we could use to judge weapon sharpness. We concluded that Ascalon was by far the sharpest thing we had by over 35%, followed by Coil's wakizashi which was only marginally sharper than the best modern titanium hi tech blades that Skullgard could summon.
Then we started having some fun and Nicce ran us against some targets and even some summoned spiders which I controlled to keep things menacing but safe. Skullguard was quite impressive, he sold himself short as he was clearly expert in several varieties of hand to hand combat. The big surprise was our PRT bushido practitioner proved to be very adept, and showed up both me and my mother at games we devised to test our speed and accuracy. I was limited by my not using my proprioception abilities with insects and mom by her lack of skill. Both of us were out of shape, but this PRT guy was freaky good. Even our trainer commented on his exceptional abilities.
We went rather over our allotted time and ended up getting our PRT agents/trainers in trouble. We also found out the kendo instructor was the Protectorate cook from the Rig who did 'swords as a sort of hobby'. Holy crap he was more impressive than Armsmaster in some regards since he was vanilla human with no augmentations or powers backing him up.
The being late to end our session did result in us getting to meet with Kid Win and Armsmaster who arrived to ascertain if we had taken our trainer's hostage.
Nicce's webs in addition to fireproofing and keeping everything safe did a great job of blocking comm signals, if there were any still functioning comms in several blocks after me swinging around Ascalon.
I got Kid Win and Armsmaster to take a look at Ascalon directly. I was curious what they would make of it.
I was rather disappointed that the local Tinkers could not make much of it beyond that it seemed to have a unique intermittent energy field around it that disrupted and destroyed some technological items and that Kid Win thought it might be a semi-intelligent weapon. He didn't go into too much detail on what that meant other than to say it didn't talk, at least it had not yet, but it clearly had an attitude and an agenda.
Armsmaster was decidedly cautious about even being near Ascalon, Kid Win handled most of the direct contact. This was proven to be a good idea as several gizmos hidden about Kid Win seemed to react adversely to being in close contact and one even started on fire.
Kid Win did invite me to a conference with the Wards to discuss the whole magic and Gods coming back into the world. As the only known local wizard they wanted my input. With all the Merchants' attacks the Wards had been on a short leash. I got the feeling they wanted to discuss a lot more about what was going on. Maybe if I got some more information from them, it might help with the Lolth problem. They had mentioned that they were looking for a solution on their last trip to Renedge. Kid Win indicated they had brought something back.
The card he slipped me had a time, address and tomorrow's date. I guess we would see tomorrow.
XXX
(Taylor Hebert Princess of the Criminal Underworld)
The next day I barely managed to get up and get Nicce and Mom out for our jog. Really it was more of a stagger and pant, but we made better progress than the day before which is what counted.
Still I found it frustrating that I was so far behind what I remembered accomplishing with my fitness. I was out of shape even compared to what I had accomplished last time with less than a month till Leviathan hit.
He was going to hit again. If anything with all the issues magic was causing I imagined the Endbringers would find our target priority higher than last time.
So after jogging I had Nicce play with us some more with some target practice for our blades. This should get me and Mom in better shape and provide Nicce important positive reinforcement for the sort of combat activities she might need later.
Heading home we took turns in the shower, Nicce taking a long bath last. I had just enough time to get ready to get to the meeting place the wards had set up.
Leaving Nicce to soak and play in the tub, I started out the front door only for dad to almost run into me.
"Taylor! Just the girl I was looking for. You going to be around later today? I could use your help with something." He said as he steadied me and grasped my arm in a comforting gesture.
"Yeah I'll be back in a few hours, just off looking for info." I said as I went to swing past him.
"Eh. Just stay safe, maybe take Nicce with you." My father offered sagely.
"But I'm going to be late! Nicce takes forever in the tub." I said in a complaining tone as I started out again.
"Well as it happens I have someone offering to give you a ride. So you can take your time. Besides with all these Merchant attacks it is important we all start playing it safe.
"Fine." I said and leaned up to get a quick hug from my father. Having mom back and dad running a cult that was taking over the city was really good for him, sad as that was to say.
I got Nicce ready to go and we were in costume as we left the house. Not like everyone didn't know who we were and where we lived, hero and villain alike. Dad was long gone but there was a limo waiting for us parked across the driveway. The limo's back door opened and a young woman's hand waved us inside.
My swarm had detected a somewhat familiar driver and two occupants in the limo. I did a quick check to make sure I could control either of the potential parahuman threats and concluded they had no potential countermeasures for me. My eyes narrowed in suspicion as I recognized one of the costumes (and the power) and what was going on here. The girl wore a red and black wizard's outfit with a simple mask that seemed far too fitting for the recent reintroduction of magic into the world.
Looking at the time with my swarm I sighed and brought Nicce into the back of a very nice black limo with the city's youngest superpowered white supremacist.
I had been a bit surprised to sense the other teenage girl in the spacious back of the limo. A pretty girl dressed up in white asian inspired sorcerer's robes with a pure white paper hat demurely covering her face. Her power was a strange bit of limited TK. I wondered if the two rivals realized they shared the same [shard] power source.
"Well this is awkward." I began as Nicce looked around the spacious interior of the limo and pulled herself into the seat next to me.
"Actually thewe is pwenty of room." Nicce contradicted me in a confused manner as she looked at the other two occupants.
Rune looked back and flopped back in her seat with a huff.
Rune didn't seem to be in any hurry to talk. The asian sorcerer girl in the back just gave us a slight nod and looked away.
Wonderful. I had my father setting me up on play dates with his local parahuman villains. Even odds he thought I'd be a good influence on them, or them on me.
"Driver I need to get to 1405 North Atlantic Ave." I said concisely. We might as well take this awkward party on the road.
The driver replied instantly "Sure thing Taylor." and the limo pulled away from the curb.
Was the driver Kurt? Huh… On the one hand I should know all this from my swarm making me damned near omnipresent. On the other hand after determining what weapons and threats were in my area I wasn't really worried about that level of detail. Or I hadn't been. Really I had just not recognized Kurt in the dark fancy uniform and haircut.
Eventually the silence was broken by Rune. "So where might we be going Princess?"
"Princess?" I said in a challenging interrogatory tone as I looked sharply at her.
The Asian girl in the back turned to follow the conversation with concealed interest. By the look she was giving us she was just waiting for us to kill each other.
"Yeah, the new criminal princess of Brockton Bay, a magical princess too from what we heard. Between the connections with organized crime and the take over of the E88 and all the competition your father basically owns the local underworld. That would make you the daughter of the local king of crime… thus 'Princess'." Rune explained as I looked at her with no small amount of disbelief and caution.
"Can I be a Pwincess?" Nicce asked with undisguised wonder in her voice.
Rune quirked an eyebrow and her eye twitched a bit at the interruption and the frank wide eyed seriousness Nicce brought to the question.
"Yes, you can be a Princess." I addressed Nicce before slowly turning my gaze back to Rune, my face a mask of seriousness.
"The Spider Princess as a title would differentiate her from the shadow thing claiming to be the Spider Queen. You know; the one running the Merchants." The quiet serious tone and lack of accent surprised me. Damn but with that much ethnic costuming I was almost surprised she spoke English. As it was her accent was pure local. She sounded quiet and intelligent, her voice clipped and precise.
OK so I was in a strange social situation with two parahumans. My recent encounters with the Undersiders told me that despite my newfound power, knowledge and experience I had a crap record of making friends. I could go with prison rules and assert my position with threat of violence or try to curry favor…
I sighed. I was so sick of this. Fine blunt honesty it was, if they wanted to give me shit I could always control them and deal with them as necessary.
"Hi my name is Taylor and I hope we can get along despite our differences. This is Nicce, she is both as young as she looks and a spider girl, so be nice to her. Rune I am familiar with by reputation, you not so much." I gestured to the young Asian girl dressed as a sorceress.
"Ah we are doing introductions and getting everything out in the open then?" Rune looked at me for confirmation.
I nodded and noticed the other girl and Nicce both give slight nods in response, followed by Rune inclining her head in a slight affirmative.
There had to be some happy medium for information. Having my swarm give me a kinesthetic sense of everyone around me gave me access to a wealth of information, but deciding how much I was interested in actually consciously processing was a whole other thing. Wait my shard had always handled most of that processing so I didn't have to, and now that I was one and the same with my shard, but with much more limited mental resources… ok sorta more limited as I could pay attention to everything it was simply difficult to hold focus. Maybe that is why I've been a bit off my social game. Subtle clues and body language I simply didn't bother paying attention to were important. I was probably coming across as alien, uncaring and-or some sort of sociopath.
Kinda like I was now, Shit! That silence had extended well into the uncomfortable range.
Breaking the silence before I could figure out something to say Rune pulled off her mask and revealed a surprisingly normal girl with long blond hair, slight freckles and blue eyes, she faced me with confidence. "Cassie Herren, I'm under orders to be your friend and get a read on you, maybe make you more inclined to be sympathetic to our cause, but mostly just make nice and be your bodyguard for the sake of looks. Yes I'm a Neo-Nazi, but more of a looking after our own and protecting us from outsiders than trying to go out of my way to hurt other um people."
Not to be outdone, her ABB rival floated her white hat/mask off and I saw an asian girl you could maybe put just under Madison's benchmark of cute. She looked at me with serious eyes for a moment then bowed, closing her eyes and stated. "I am Aki Kobayashi. Known as Shikigami I control paper. Much as "Cassie" said my organization wants me to keep an eye on you and befriend you if possible, making dealings with your organization more comfortable. I am also to inquire about and seek to learn what I can of magic directly from you."
"Oh yeah me too on that heh almost forgot, thanks 'Aki'." Rune retorted sharply.
Nicce seemed to puff up a bit and huffed. "My name is Nee-say spelled N I C C E. I am the Spidew Pwincess and Taywer's best fwiend. Don't twy to wepwace me orw I will have spidews eat you."
"As you command Spider Princess." Aki answered without missing a beat, adding a respectful bow. Nicce just sort of stared at her for a moment before giggling.
Rune looked at me and asked in an informal tone. "So, just what are you and your mysterious organization out to accomplish?"
"Depends on which organization you are asking about. With my father's organization we are saving the world by introducing knowledge of magic and worship of the god Melkor, who will hopefully see to Earth Bet not getting run over by the first big threat we face. With the Brockton Bay Rogues, which I will remind you I and Nicce are publicly and officially members of, we are uniting parahumans for mutual defense and safety in these difficult times and seeking to make our powers profitable for ourselves and our community… I think that's what the brochure said anyway." I spouted off with full and exact knowledge of what the brochure said.
"Right, So I've learned some magic, and been taught some by Ruin. Where the hell did you dig that old bastard up anyway? I thought Krieg was a hardass," Cassie confided in me as she unsubtly dug for information.
"I think my Dad summoned him in our basement, Ruin had mentioned being in charge of some underground fortress of evil back in the day so dug up might be somewhat appropriate." I informed her both to unnerve and educate.
"Well he is fucking terrifying, if that's any measure of the kind of bullshit out there." Rune gestured widely to the greater multiverse. "Then we need all the 'magic' we can get our hands on if we are to survive."
"That's what it's all about, our secret main goal is just that… survival. So put aside your petty issues with your fellow man, we are in this together if we want to live." I inclined my head to Aki and the world at large.
Rune nodded an apparent understanding achieved between the two of us. Meanwhile Shikigami, or should I say Aki was playing with Nicce and the two were waging a tiny war of folded paper dolls fighting tiny webbing constructs across one of the unused bench seats in the limo.
"So how much magic has Ruin taught your people. You guys have any burgeoning wizards yet?" I asked curious on their rate of progress. Ruin was a talented teacher and the more people capable of helping out the less likely our being wiped out by Leviathan in a month.
"Well I dunno about the ABB, but the E88 has two dozen candidates with some talent in magic. Not counting me of course, Ruin said I had some talent, but also said I could learn a lot from you. So here I am."
"What level of spells are you up to? Your guys get to third level spells yet?" I asked for clarification with hope in my tone.
"Spells up to level three? Shit everyone is still working on level one. The Cantrip exercise is tough and I've been making real slow progress. Most I've heard is a few guys have gotten to actual first level spells so far. Ruin says our progress is good as we have some exceptionally talented people. I have not heard of anyone getting past level one spells yet though.
"Great, I'm the greatest wizard in town and I have access to level two spells," I said dejectedly.
"Level two, and you've only been training for a bit longer than me. Holy shit, I guess you are good, don't the spells get exponentially more powerful and difficult as you go up in level?" The shocked look Rune had was almost comical.
"Yes and yes. However level three is about average for what most parahuman powers would be equivalent to. Level two to level five is the usual range for the equivalent for the vast majority of parahuman powers, and remember spells are one offs, you get one brief use per day per spell you can cast. We have what twenty four and whatever the ABB has training." I cut off as I looked to Aki whose defenses had crumbled before the onslaught of countless cute webbing attackers.
Aki looked up and with a smug smile that told me she had been listening to our conversation said "Sixty two plus myself."
Rune gave her a sour look and said. "Yeah but half of theirs are children."
"Regardless that gives us what eighty apprentice wizards out of the whole city?" I said still unhappy.
"Hey that's fantastic, we have almost as many wizards in one city as parahumans that usually show up for an Endbringer fight. Out of one city that is a game changer. If we weren't out ahead of this we'd have gotten crushed in a few years." Cassie argued with my lack of enthusiasm.
"Yes but will it be enough? Do we have that sort of time? I'd say we need more." I finished in a serious tone of voice that silenced any further discussion and made the girls distinctly uncomfortable in what seemed at least to be a thoughtful way.
The limo pulled to a stop shortly thereafter. We were in the parking lot of a large gothic church. Kurt opened the window to the driver's compartment and said "This is the place."
The girls looked up in confusion. Nicce seemed less than enthusiastic about our location. I had mixed feelings myself. I never did have much faith in religion.
"You know you are desperate for help if you come to a place like this," Cassie said with sarcasm in her voice.
"Alright I'll just go see what's going on, the Wards said to meet them here for some kinda magic conference. You girls can stay here, come on Nicce." I did not expect the reaction I got.
Nicce shook her head violently to the negative and said "Nuh uh dis is a gwowy pwace, Bad tings are lookin at dis pwace an I don't twust em. I'm not goin in dere."
Meanwhile Cassie and Aki had taken off their respective costumes. (A big robe for Rune was easily pulled over her head and tossed into one of the limo's seats and paper robe for Shikagami just drew under her clothes like some sort of sea anemone retracting its body in an instant. Underneath both were dressed conservatively as if for school.) They had then gotten up and exited the limo via the door as if it were assumed I had meant the opposite of what I had just said. Also villain quick change costumes, I could see the utility.
I sat there confused for a moment before exiting the limo and gesturing for Nicce to come with. She came with me reluctantly. Peering up at me with a petulant glare that told me she was following me grudgingly and was not happy about it.
Outside I looked at my 'gang provided bodyguards' "What part of stay here there are Wards and thus probably PRT troops and Protectorate members inside do you not get."
"The secret identity part. I'm just your friend Cassie, this is Aki, two of your friends who might admit to doing magic but don't know anything about teen parahuman villains. We are with Nicce as far as we don't trust this so there is no way we are letting you go in alone. Besides would anybody believe the two members of rival racist gangs would be hanging out with each other and the two of you?"
I considered a moment and nodded. "OK that actually makes sense, so I guess welcome aboard, just don't cause a scene. Now Nicce, what exactly is the problem here?" I said with concern as I took the small spider girl's shoulders in either hand and kneeled down to look her in the eyes. Cassie and Aki moved away slightly, giving us at least some illusionary measure of privacy.
"Dis whole pwace is gwowy. The building is Gwowy, the people awe gwowy. I don't like it. It's dangewous Taywer." Nicce said in an intense voice that showcased her fear rather effectively.
"So by glowy do you mean holy? Do you have some sort of fear of gods and holy objects?" I attempted to say in a supportive voice while getting to the bottom of this. Maybe Nicce would end up staying in the car?
"No, I mean kinda? Gwowy means I can see it but not good, it is all indistinct. Like it is hooked up to other stuff I can't see and if I can't see it I can't stowp it. Gods are generally bad people who can hurt me and don't like what I am so I don't like em either but I'm not afwaid of em. Wowf twied to steal my body and I beat er dough. So I'm not afraid of gods, I can beat gods. It is da Gwowy dat bofers me. I don't wike what I can't see through da gwowiness." Nicce blustered, her tiny body going into a confident stance that belied the obvious fear she felt.
"Um Nicce… you can see things in what like a hundred dimensions and you can't see things that are glowy? Is it some sort of effect that blocks your perceptions?" I asked for clarification and gave Nicce a slight supportive hug as I felt her shiver as she looked toward the church.
"I can see in lots of dimensions, depending on whewe I am and which ones connect, but not all of em. My fwiend Lica could see and go in ALL of dem and she could always step around my webs. She wasn't afwaid of GWOWY stuff either. But I can't see it and pwotect myself fwom it and it usually means dere is a god awound and I don't wanna get huwt or squished dead," Nicce squeaked nervously.
Through long practice I ignored the physics breaking terrifying scope of the universe revealed to me by Nicce and concentrated on what was important.
"I'm here for you and won't let anything happen to you Nicce. I'm your friend. I'm used to dealing with terrifying existential threats and if anything tries to squish you they have to go through me. That didn't end well for the last godlike being that tried. We also have Cassie and Aki here. And you have Mom and Dad, they would come to help you if you needed it. Dad has a god on his side too. You are not alone. This place is supposedly safe. Well 98.476% safe according to Dinah. I checked with her yesterday after they invited me. It should just be heroes and maybe if we are lucky a friendly god in there."
Nicce sniffled and clutched to me like a limpet. I noted Cassie and Aki approaching and Cassie reluctantly handing Aki a twenty dollar bill.
"Damnit she's a real little girl not some sort of projection or inhuman summons." Cassie muttered loud enough for me to hear without swarm assistance. Aki just grinned and pocketed the twenty.
"You ready to go in Nicce? We will be right with you." I said supportively.
Aki bent down and handed Nicce a thick paper doll. "Here this will be an extra surprise if anything gets through all your defences." With a wink Aki made the paper doll into a needle thin shiv that could have easily killed a person in front of Nicce. This was made obvious by the fact that it put a tiny neat perfectly circular hole in the car that was there, some old boat of a Cadillac that was built of heavy steel going by the look of the hole. Near instant paper-kinetic that can pierce steel with paper and control its shape, transmitting quite a bit of force through it, dangerous but takes an instant of concentration, power [shard] noted.
Not to be outdone Cassie gestured to the car for a few moments and looking around activated her power when she determined no one was looking. (I quickly covered the local cameras that might have caught her at it, sloppy of her but I'd cover for her this time.) The car raised up on its wheels slightly before resuming its placid weighty immobility. "You have heavy backup kid." Cassie said trying to be tough and impressive to Nicce.
"Well if it makes you feel better you can hold my spiders too. This way I can provide an extra surprise and some protection if you need it." I transferred over half the spiders I had to Nicce's robe. In my costume I held quite a bit, the new black robe was perfect for concealing insects and my old costume below it provided both protection and more space to hide insects in; and Black Widows were very well represented.
Aki took several panicked steps away and Cassie looked suddenly ill. Nice to know I still have it.
A false confident smile on her cherubic face Nicce finally nodded and said "ok, just to keep you guys safe I wiww go in wif you."