Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  “What am I supposed to do, then?”

  “Look at how I’m standing. Arms up, bent, then I just extend my arm, wrist straight. Fast enough that whoever I’m hitting generally can’t step out of the way, so they’ve got to either take it or block it.”

  “But you weren’t standing like that ten seconds ago when I was punching you,” Alec complained.

  “I left an opening to see if you would take advantage of it,” Brian replied.

  “And I didn’t,” Alec noted with a sigh.

  Brian shook his head.

  “Well fuck this then,” Alec said, “If you’re going to go easy on me and still kick my ass, I don’t see the point.”

  “You should learn how to fight,” Brian said.

  “I’ll do like I have been and bring my taser,” was Alec’s response, “one poke and they’re out cold. Better than any punch.”

  “And if the taser breaks or you lose it?” Brian asked. He needn’t have bothered. Alec was already sitting himself down in front of the TV, remote in one hand and game controller in the other. Brian’s disappointment was palpable.

  “Mind giving me a few quick and dirty pointers?” I asked.

  Alec sniggered, Beavis and Butthead style.

  “Grow up, Alec,” Brian said, “If you want to quit, fine, but don’t be a dick.” He turned to me and flashed that boyish smile. Then we started.

  I knew he was going easy on me, but he was still a damn tough teacher.

  “Make two fists. No, don’t wrap your fingers over your thumbs. You’ll do more damage to your hands than you will to the person you’re hitting, if you do that. That’s better. Now jab at me, okay?”

  I tried to emulate what he’d been describing to Alec. Arms up, bent, and extending my fist with a snap. He caught my right hand in his left.

  “Okay, now you’re going to do two things different. Step into the jab so you’ve got your body’s momentum behind the hit, on top of your arm’s power. Second, I want your left arm up as you’re jabbing with your right, and vice versa. If I see the chance, I’m going to pop you one on the shoulder or ribs, so be ready to fend me off.”

  I winced at the idea, but I played along. I jabbed, he stepped away, and he jabbed me in the shoulder. He didn’t hit as hard as he could have – I think he only hit as hard as it took to make it hurt and drive the lesson home, but I suddenly felt a stab of sympathy for Alec.

  Things continued in that vein. Brian didn’t stay on one topic for long. When I started struggling with something, he shifted gears to another area that complemented or built on what I was having problems with. When I failed for the fifth time to fend off his retaliatory jabs at my shoulders and ribs, he started talking about posture.

  “Rest your weight on the balls of your feet.”

  I tried it, then told him, “I feel like I’m going to tip over backwards if you hit me.”

  He bent down to check, and I lifted my toes two or three inches off the ground to demonstrate how I had my weight balanced on my heels.

  “No, Taylor. The balls of your feet. He raised his bare foot and pointed at the padded part between his toes and the bridge of his foot.

  “How is that a ball?” I asked, raising my own foot to point at the vaguely spherical part of the foot where the ankle met the ground, “this is the only part that looks ball-like.”

  “You guys are so lame,” Alec chimed in, without turning around. Brian swatted him in the back of the head.

  We moved on from posture, Brian’s recommendations on balancing did help, to self-defense again. From there, we changed topics to the mental side of things, both for me and my opponent.

  “So I throw a punch like I’m aiming to put my fist through them?” I confirmed.

  “Right,” Brian said, “Instead of just trying to make contact with the point where your hand meets their body.”

  “What about when they’re attacking me?”

  “Best bet? Don’t give them a chance. Stay aggressive and keep them on their heels. If neither of you have formal training, then that’s going to give you the best odds. They won’t be able to turn the tables on you unless you make a mistake or they can guess what you’re going to do as you do it. Which is why you mix it up. Rights, lefts, punches, jabs, elbow, knee, kicks and if you’re bigger and stronger than them, you can try tackling them to the ground. With all of that, you stay on them until they aren’t in a position to fight back.”

  “Are you formally trained in anything?” I asked. I suspected he was, since the only other way for him to know as much as he was demonstrating was to have actually been in a good number of fights, and I wasn’t thinking that he seemed the type to fight without reason.

  “Ehhh,” he hedged, “Some. My dad was a boxer when he was in the service, and he taught me some when I was little. I moved on to other stuff on my own – Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Krav Maga – but nothing really held my interest. I only took a few weeks or a month of classes for each. I know enough and keep in shape, which is enough to hold my own against anyone who isn’t a black belt in whatever, which is the important thing, I think. Keeping up with the more serious martial artists is a full time job, and you’re still going to run into people who are better than you, so I don’t see the point in stressing too much over it.”

  I nodded.

  We moved on to key areas to attack.

  Brian pointed to the body parts in question as he explained, “Eyes, nose, temple, chin and throat are the areas above the shoulder. Teeth or ears if you can hit hard enough. I can, you can’t.”

  “Sure,” I said. I wasn’t offended by his bluntness. He was stronger than me, so he had more options. Tip toeing around it didn’t do either of us any favors.

  “Below the shoulders, diaphragm, kidney, groin, knee, bridge of the foot, toes. Elbow is a good one if you can do anything with it,” he took my wrist in his left hand and my shoulder in his right, extending my arm straight as he brought his knee up to gently tap the outside of my elbow. I could see how he would have screwed up or broken my arm if he’d done it full strength. He went on, “But in my experience, it doesn’t come up often enough to worry about.”

  It was a little disquieting to hear Brian methodically describing how to break a human being. I saw him as a nice guy, if I ignored his career choice.

  Not entirely by accident, I changed the subject, “I was thinking about investing in a weapon for hand to hand. When I was fighting Lung, fists were no good and I found myself really wanting a knife or a baton or something. Don’t know if they would have been any good against his armor, but you know…” I trailed off.

  Brian nodded, “Makes sense. You don’t have a lot in the way of upper body strength, no offense.”

  “None taken. I tried to get something like a push-up routine going, but I got sick of it fast. At least with running, there’s that sense of going places, you get the scenery.”

  “Push-ups get repetitive, yeah. Well, the boss is good about supplying us with gear. Lisa’s the one who talks to him, she’s talking to him right now, in fact. Put in a word with her if you want something like that. It’s untraceable too, so the good guys aren’t going to be tracing any serial numbers or whatever from your weapon back to your purchase.”

  The fact that Lisa was talking to their boss made me very curious, all of a sudden. That said, I couldn’t really traipse in to eavesdrop without being suspicious. Instead, since Lisa was out of earshot, I thought I’d seize the opportunity to ask, “So who is this boss of ours?”

  Brian and Alec exchanged a look. When they didn’t immediately say anything, I wondered if I’d pushed it too far. Had I been too nosy?

  “Figured you’d ask,” Brian said, “Thing is, we don’t know.”

  “What?” I asked, “We have an anonymous sponsor?”

  “It’s really fucking weird, yeah,” Alec said, then he hammered a button on the game controller, “Boom! Triple headshot!”

  “Alec, stay focused,” Brian sighed the words, with a tone sug
gesting he didn’t expect to be listened to.

  Alec bobbed his head in a nod, his eyes not leaving the television, before adding, “It’s weird but it’s basically free money, a good team, contacts, access to everything we need for stuff, and pretty much no drawbacks.”

  “Lisa knows, I think,” Brian grumbled, “But she says that when she joined the Undersiders, she made a deal that she was going to keep quiet on the subject. I’m not sure if that means she knows who he is or if it’s just to keep her mouth shut if her power tells her.”

  “So let me get this straight,” I said, “This guy gathers you all together, offers you a salary and what? Doesn’t ask for anything in return?”

  Brian shrugged, “He asks us to do jobs, but most of the time it’s stuff we’d do anyways, and if we say no, he doesn’t make an issue of it.”

  “What kind of jobs does he ask us to do?” I asked.

  Lisa’s voice just behind me startled me, “This. Pull up your socks, boys and girl, because we’re robbing a bank.”

  3.03

  “No,” Brian intoned, “Such a bad idea.”

  Lisa still had the phone in her hand. Bitch had arrived just behind her, and stood in stark contrast to Lisa’s jeans, sweater and tight ponytail, with an army jacket, and virtually no attention paid to her hair. The littlest of the dogs, the one-eyed, one eared terrier, trailed after her.

  “Come on,” Lisa wheedled, “It’s a rite of passage for dastardly criminals like us.”

  “Robbing a bank is moronic. We’ve been over this,” Brian closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, “You know what the average haul is for hitting a bank?”

  Lisa paused, “Twenty thou?”

  “Exactly. It’s not millions like you see people getting away with in the movies. Banks don’t keep a lot of loose cash on hand, so we’d be pulling in less than we would for most other jobs. Account for cost and the fact that this is Brockton fucking Bay, where banks have a little more reason to keep the amount of cash in their vaults to a minimum, and we’d be bringing in twelve to sixteen thou. Divide five ways and it’s what, two or three thousand bucks each?”

  “I could do with an extra three thousand dollars to spend,” Alec said, putting down his game controller and shifting his position on the couch to follow the conversation better.

  “On what?” Brian asked. When Alec shrugged, Brian sighed and explained, “It’s a horrible payoff for the amount of risk involved. There’s three big superhero teams in this city. Figure there’s another dozen heroes that fly solo, and we’re almost guaranteed to get into a fight.”

  “So?” Bitch spoke for the first time, “We win fights. We won before we had her.” She raised her chin in my direction as she said that last word.

  “We won because we picked our battles. We wouldn’t have that option if we were cooped up in the bank and waiting for them to come to us, letting them decide how and where the fight happened.”

  Lisa nodded and smiled as he spoke. I thought for a second that she was going to say something, but she didn’t.

  Brian continued, getting pretty passionate as he ranted, “We won’t be able to slip away like we have when things got a little out of control in the past. Can’t avoid the fight if we want to get away with anything worth taking. The bank is going to have layers of protection. Iron bars, vault doors, whatever. Even with your power, Lise, there’s a limit to how fast we can get through those. Add the time we have to spend managing hostages and making a safe exit, and I pretty much guarantee that there will be time for a cape to get wind of the robbery and slow us down even more.”

  Alec said, “I kind of want to do it anyways. Hitting a bank gets you on the front page. It’s huge for our rep.”

  “The runt is right,” Bitch said.

  Brian grumbled, “Not fucking up is better for our reputation in the long run.” His deeper voice was really good for grumbling.

  Alec looked at me, “What do you think?”

  I’d almost forgotten I was a part of the discussion. The last thing I wanted was to rob a bank. Hostages could get hurt. The fact that it would potentially put me on the front page of the paper wasn’t a high point, either, if I ever wanted to drop the supervillain ruse and become a hero in good standing. I ventured, “I think Brian makes a good case. It seems reckless.”

  Bitch snorted. I think I saw Alec roll his eyes.

  Lisa leaned forward, “He does make good points, but I have better ones. Hear me out?” The rest of us turned our attention to her, though Brian had a frown that made it seem like it would take a lot to convince him.

  “Ok, so Brian said similar stuff before, before we hit that casino a few weeks ago. So I was kind of expecting this. But it’s not as bad as it sounds. The boss wants us to do a job at a very specific time. I got the sense he was willing to offer a fair bit if we went the extra mile, and I negotiated a pretty good deal.

  “The bank robbery was my idea, and he liked it. According to him, the Protectorate is busy with an event on Thursday, just outside of town. That’s part of the reason the timing is so important. If we act then, there’s almost no chance we’ll have to deal with them. If we hit the Bay Central, downtown-”

  “That’s the biggest bank in Brockton Bay,” I interrupted her, half-disbelieving.

  “So everything I said about them having security and being careful is doubly true,” Brian added.

  “If we hit the Bay Central, downtown,” Lisa repeated herself, ignoring us, “Then we’re hitting a location just a mile away from Arcadia High, where most of the Wards go to school. Given jurisdictions, New Wave won’t be able to jump on us without stepping on the Wards’ toes, which pretty much guarantees we go up against the team of junior superheroes. With me so far?”

  We all nodded or murmured agreement.

  “Figure that’s happening in the middle of the school day, and they won’t all be able to slip away to stop a robbery without drawing attention. People know the Wards are attending Arcadia, they just don’t know who they are. So everyone’s constantly watching for that. Since they can’t have all six or seven of the same kids disappear from class every time the Wards go off to foil a crime without giving away the show, chances are good that we’d go up against a couple of their strongest members, or one of the strongest with a group of the ones with less amazing powers. We can beat them.”

  “Okay,” Brian begrudged, “I’ll accept that we’d probably do alright in those circumstances, but-”

  Lisa interrupted him, “I also got the boss to agree to match us two for one on the haul. We bring in fifteen grand, he pays us thirty. Or he gives us enough money to bring our total up to twenty five, whichever is more in the end. So we could walk away with two thousand dollars and he’d pay us twenty three thou. So as long as we don’t wind up in jail, we’re guaranteed five thousand dollars apiece, bare minimum.”

  Brian’s eyes widened, “That’s insane. Why would he do that?”

  “And,” Lisa grinned, “He’ll cover all our costs, just this once. Equipment, information, bribes if we want ‘em.”

  “Why?” I echoed Brian’s earlier question, disbelieving. Lisa was throwing around sums of money that I couldn’t even wrap my head around. I had never even had more than five hundred dollars in my bank account.

  “Because he’s sponsoring us and it stands to reason he doesn’t want to fund a team of nobodies. We manage this, we won’t be nobodies. That, and he really wants us to do a job at that particular time.”

  There was a few moments of silence as everyone considered the deal. I was frantically trying to think of a way to try to convince these guys it was a bad idea. A bank robbery could get me arrested. Worse, it could lead to me or a bystander getting hurt or killed.

  Brian beat me to it, “The risk to reward still isn’t great. Five grand each for hitting what may well be the most fortified location in Brockton Bay and an almost guaranteed confrontation with the Wards?”

  “Second most fortified location,” Lisa counte
red, “The Protectorate Headquarters is the first.”

  “Fair point,” Brian said, “But my argument stands.”

  “It’ll be more than five grand for each of us, I guarantee you,” Lisa told him, “It’s the biggest bank in Brockton Bay. It’s also the hub of cash distribution for the entire county. Said cash gets transferred in and out by armored cars on a regular schedule-”

  “So why don’t we hit one of the cars?” Alec asked.

  “They have ride-alongs or aerial cover from various members of the Wards and the Protectorate, so we’d be caught in a fight with another cape from minute one. Same problems that Brian’s talking about, as far as getting caught up in a fight, difficulty accessing the money before shit goes down, yadda yadda. Anyways, the Brockton Bay Central has cars coming in twice a week, and leaving four times a week. We hit on a Thursday just after noon, and it should be the best day and time for the sheer size of the take. Only way we’re getting away with less than thirty thousand is if we fuck up. With what the boss is offering, that’s ninety thou.”

  She folded her arms.

  Brian sighed, long and loud, “Well, you got me, I guess. It sounds good.”

  Lisa turned to Alec. There wasn’t any resistance to be found there. He just said, “Fuck yeah, I’m in.”

  Bitch didn’t need convincing any more than Alec had. She nodded once and then turned her attention to the scarred little dog.

  Then everyone looked at me.

  “What would I be doing?” I asked, nervously, hoping to stall or find holes in the plan that I could use to argue against it.

  So Lisa outlined a general plan. Brian made suggestions, good ones, and the plan was adjusted accordingly. I realized with a growing disappointment and a knot of anxiety in my gut that it was almost inevitably going to happen.

  Arguing against the bank robbery at this point would hurt my undercover operation more than it helped anyone. With that in mind, I began offering suggestions that – I hoped – would minimize the possibility of disaster. The way I saw it, if I helped things go smoothly, it would help my scheme to get info on the Undersiders and their boss. It would minimize the chance that someone would panic or be reckless and get a civilian hurt. I think I would feel worse if that happened than I would about going to jail.