Was it odd that this place freaked me out ten times as much as nearly getting offed by Oni Lee? Drugs had always spooked the hell out of me. One of the first times I’d ever ridden a bus, when I was around five or six, I’d seen a methhead freak out, making enough of a ruckus that the driver had to stop and force him off. I’d never really gotten over that first impression, where just the idea of being around someone that was high made me sort of anxious.
It wasn’t just that, either. In grade school and junior high, I’d had classmates drop off the face of the planet, hearing only rumors and hints from other classmates or my teachers that there were drugs involved. Either my classmates themselves getting caught up in things, or parents or siblings dragging the kid into their mess to the point that the kid couldn’t come to school. One as bad as the other. Almost from the beginning, I’d had this sense of drugs as this unstoppable black hole of fucked-up-ness that swallowed in anyone close to the addict.
Yet people did it. It was something common and profitable enough that in an area like Brockton Bay where there were as many people unemployed as not, the ABB needed a money counting machine in this very office. Profitable enough that they had an open safe with stacks of bills inside.
My bugs weren’t doing much, so I set them the task of collecting the money. Within a second or two of my having the thought, the mass of roaches, centipedes, pillbugs and ants flowed into the piles of money and began pushing it all off the desk or into paper bags. Houseflies and wasps gathered on the bills that tried to fly through the air and retrieved them. It wasn’t perfect, it was a little clumsy, but it still caught me off guard just how well they were able to coordinate for something like that, without any conscious direction on my part.
I couldn’t let myself get distracted. I could put my bugs on autopilot and have them finish the job while I focused on more important things. Pulling off the bedsheets, I uncovered a plastic sheet. The kind you used when your kids wet the bed. Doped out drug addicts, too, maybe. The top of the plastic sheet looked kinda grody, but I wasn’t in a position to be picky. I pulled it off the mattress, balled it up in my hands and hurried back into the hall.
“Help me,” I ordered Sundancer. With her help, I laid out the plastic sheet, bottom side up, at Newter’s feet. By the time we had it flat and ready, Bitch was returning.
“Found two pairs of plastic gloves and some rubber gloves under a sink,” she said, “First aid kit, too, but it feels light.”
“Open it,” I said, taking a pair of plastic gloves. It was awkward, fitting them over my normal gloves, but I managed it. Sundancer just pulled off her costume gloves and put on the plastic ones. She was caucasian, I noted, pale. “Tell me what’s inside, fast.”
“Got some tape, bandages, thermometer, safety pins, rubbing alcohol, soap…”
“Needle, thread?” I asked.
“No.”
“Gauze pads? Big bandages?”
“No.”
With our plastic gloves on, Sundancer and I managed to haul Newter onto the plastic sheet. The moment she let go, Sundancer winced and reached up to her shoulder, but she stopped short of actually touching it.
I turned to my teammate, “Bitch, go downstairs. Those people who were in here took their clothes off and my bugs say they stashed the clothes in a room below us. Find me some purses, as many as you can grab, as fast as you can grab them.”
She didn’t move, this time. She just glared at me.
“Fucking move!” I shouted at her. She gave me the evil eye before she left again.
“Bandages are going to be too small,” Sundancer said, as I tried to wrestle Newter’s blood-slick tail onto the plastic sheet.
“Douse them in the alcohol, use them to clean the injury of blood. Use the dry bandages to pat it dry so the tape can stick. Don’t be afraid to get into the wound, just be gentle.”
She nodded, and began working on it. I grabbed the tape and began fumbling with it. Two pairs of gloves on, and I couldn’t lift off the end of it. I grabbed my knife and used the edge it to get the job done. Once I had the tape, I began holding the wound closed and taping crosswise across it.
I could only hope I was doing the right things, here. A month of weekend first aid classes had not prepared me for this.
Bitch arrived with purses and practically threw them at me. I could have gotten pissed, but Newter couldn’t afford for me to. I began emptying the purses onto the ground beside me and sorting through the contents. Pens, wallets, headphones, books, tampons, pictures, receipts, more receipts, change, keys, yet more receipts…
“What are you looking for?” Sundancer asked.
The third purse turned up what I needed. Sanitary pads. I tore one open and pressed it to the wound, then began taping it down. Unasked for, Sundancer grabbed another and opened it so it would be ready for me.
“Sterile, absorbent, covers more area than the bandage can,” I got around to answering her question. “If he lives, his teammates might give him a hard time, but it’s better than nothing.”
“You didn’t tape it down all the way,” Sundancer pointed out.
“Only three sides,” I agreed, “So it can breathe.” I only vaguely recalled some instruction on that front. I was hoping it was right.
If I failed here, what right did I have to call myself an aspiring hero?
When the wound was bandaged as much as I could manage, the three of us bundled him up in the sheet and lifted him. Bitch and Sundancer had an injured arm and shoulder, respectively, so they both took his head and shoulders while I took his feet With agonizing slowness, we carried him down the stairs. then as carefully as we could manage with a body weighing half again as much as any of us, we draped him across Brutus’ shoulders.
A bone-jarring crash nearly undid all of our hard work. Brutus nearly lost his footing at the impact, and I know I would’ve fallen if I hadn’t already been holding onto him.
A gauntleted hand as wide across as my armspan had crashed through the wall. The whole building shuddered as another hand punched through the brick of the wall twenty feet from the first hole. Fingers gripped the building, and pulled the entire section of wall out in one piece.
“Go!” I shouted at Bitch, “Take him to the others! Call Tattetale, get the number for that cape doctor, get medical attention for anyone who needs it!”
She hesitated, opened her mouth to protest.
I raised my voice, “Do not fuck with me here!”
There was a rumble outside as the removed section of wall was thrown against the ground outside, hard.
Just an instant later, a half dozen ABB members retreated into the warehouse through the hole, taking cover from the giantesses. They saw us and stopped short, wary, weapons ready but not raised or pointed at us.
Lung followed his thugs into the room. He was bigger than I’d seen him yet at nearly fifteen feet in height, and was covered in layers of scales that left him barely recognizable as human. Spearlike growths stuck out of his shoulders in what I realized were the beginnings of wings. His mask had been torn off at some point, and the features of his face had been warped by his transformation. The shape of his skull and face were more catlike than human, and his nose and mouth were a single X-shaped opening, bristling with pointed teeth that stuck in every direction.
I could see why he usually wore the mask.
“Bitch,” I murmured, “If you don’t leave now, I don’t think you’re going to get another chance.”
“But-”
“Which do you want more? To fight, here and now, or to make sure Faultline and the other groups don’t have an excuse to do anything to our teammates?”
I saw her hesitate. The fact that she even had to think about it… I could have slapped her.
Kaiser strolled in, unworried, unhurried. Lung moved like he was going to lunge for him, then stopped just in time to avoid impaling himself on the narrow blade of steel that had erupted from the ground, pointed at his heart. I wasn’t sure if it would have penet
rated his covering of scales, but if I were Lung, I don’t think I would have gambled on it either.
Fenja and Menja reduced their size to fit through the hole they’d made in the wall, then grew again as they had the headroom. They settled at a height of eighteen or twenty feet. Fenja carried a sword and round shield, while Menja had a spear. Or the other way around, whatever.
In the corner of my eye, I saw Bitch hop onto Brutus, then ride in the direction of the sniper team and Labyrinth, a wrapped-up Newter lying limp in front of her. Judas and Angelica remained behind, not far from Sundancer and I. Their entire bodies were taut with tension, their heads low, as they glared at the new arrivals.
Lung turned to survey the room. His men were arranged in a loose circle around him, facing us. His eyes settled on me.
“Ooo,” he rumbled, his words were distorted by the shape of his altered mouth, but it was easy enough to guess what he’d just said. You.
5.09
“Yeah, me,” I answered Lung, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt.
“Some history?” Sundancer murmured.
“I made his crotch rot off.”
She turned to stare at me.
“Accidentally.”
“How do you-” she started, then she stopped as Lung’s growl rose in volume enough to turn her head.
Angelica and Judas advanced steadily until they were on either side of me.
“Step down, Undersider,” Kaiser spoke from the opposite end of the room, “My girls and I have this in hand.”
“Do you?” I challenged him, not breaking eye contact with Lung, “Because Lung looks like he’s in pretty good shape there. You know how this works, right? He only gets stronger the longer you fight him. If you haven’t finished him off by now, you’re probably not going to.”
Lung chuckled, low and gravelly. He craned his neck to look at Kaiser, and I shivered. His neck alone was nearly as long as my torso and thicker at the base, tapering down to a more or less normal sized head. What was creepier was that he’d bent his neck in a ‘u’ shape to look behind himself. It was a movement that a gymnast would have been hard pressed to perform with their back. It wouldn’t be long before he just wasn’t recognizable as something who had once been human.
The six of his thugs that were gathered around him looked like they were almost as scared of him as they were of us.
“What would you propose, then?” Kaiser asked me.
“Sundancer and I will help out,” I told him. I glanced at Sundancer, and she nodded.
Lung laughed again. “Ooo? Ug gurr?”
Before I could figure out what he’d just said to me, he lunged straight at me, passing between two of his people, moving on all fours.
I’d sent the flying insects and wasps into the room to help Bitch search for supplies, and I directed them straight for Lung as soon as I realized what he was doing. Too little, too late.
Then Judas intercepted him. The pair of them rolled and tumbled, and I couldn’t tell which of them was making which snarling or growling noise.
When the momentum of Judas’ pounce had stopped carrying them across the floor, Lung managed to get his footing first, and physically heaved Judas across the main floor of the warehouse. Judas slammed into two sets of the long tables, sending clouds of white powder billowing around him.
When Angelica made her move, Lung was ready for her. He caught hold of her snout and foreclaw before she could do any damage and leveraged her forward momentum to throw her too, straight at Judas. There was an almost judo or akido kind of style to the throw, except I doubted either of them were human enough for normal moves and techniques to apply. What was more likely, I thought, that his reflexes, flexibility and strength were on a level where that sort of thing came naturally to him.
In any case, my bodyguards, if you could call them that, had been tossed aside away like they were stuffed animals. Lung didn’t drop to all fours again as he advanced toward me. Instead, he flexed his right hand, and my eyes were drawn to the foot-long blades that tipped each finger.
“Sundancer?” I asked, quiet, “Help me out?”
“If I used my power, I’d probably hurt you worse than I hurt him.”
“That line is getting old fast.”
Lung lunged again, and I threw myself to one side, too slow, too short a distance.
With the sound of swords being drawn out of their sheaths, a barrier of blades and spears rose up from the ground between Lung and I. I found traction on the asphalt with my hands and feet, and I managed to half-crawl, half run away from him.
Lung started to move around the barrier of blades, only to be blocked by another bristling growth. He roared, then leapt for the rafters up at the ceiling. I knew what he was doing almost right away, and ran for cover – once he had a grip up there, it would be a matter of using his grip on the steel girders that lined the ceiling to jump straight at me. I wasn’t two paces before I knew there was no cover I could get to fast enough.
Except he didn’t get that far. A square pillar of steel as tall and long as an eighteen wheeler speared downward from the roof, straight at him. It caught Lung in his midsection and shoved him down into the ground, hard. A few seconds later, the weight of the block of steel tore it from the section of ceiling it was rooted in. It didn’t hit anyone as it dropped down but I could guess it would’ve killed someone: I could feel the impact of it striking the ground in my bones.
I looked at Kaiser. He was standing where he’d been when he walked into the room, hands clasped behind his back.
“Fenja, Menja,” Kaiser’s order wasn’t shouted, but it could be heard across the warehouse. If you could call it an order.
But the two eighteen-foot tall valkyries seemed to know what he wanted. They advanced towards Lung with their weapons drawn, and Lung’s people began backing slowly away. I felt a pang of sympathy for Lung’s rank and file, mainly for the ones who’d been coerced into this. They’d probably seen what Fenja and Menja were capable of, earlier, but they couldn’t run without risking their boss’ wrath. Caught between a rock and a hard place.
Lung wasn’t quite down and out yet, though. He started climbing to his feet, only to have a pyramid of criss-crossing blades spear up around him. Blades appeared under and over his arms, just beneath his armpit, behind his knee, by his groin, with dozens more rising above and around him. Before he could find his way out, he was trapped. Buried and hidden beneath the layers of steel.
Kaiser inclined his chin, looking toward the ceiling, and I saw a shimmer. The tip of a blade began to emerge from one of the iron girders above, revealing itself at a glacial pace. It was no more than a half foot thick, but nearly twenty feet wide. I wasn’t sure if it was an optical illusion from the rippling energies of Kaiser’s power or not, but I thought maybe the ceiling was sagging under the weight of it. If he wasn’t careful, he’d bring the roof down on our heads.
Then Kaiser lowered his head to face the area where Lung was trapped and the massive sword he’d manifested in the ceiling plunged down into the pyramid in a heartbeat. Sparks showered as the gargantuan blade sheared through the trap.
But there was more hot metal that wasn’t a result of the impact. When I looked again, I saw Lung had avoided the blade. The side of the pyramid closest to me glowed a white-orange, the blades curling and sagging in the intensity of the heat. He’d softened the metal enough with his pyrokinesis that he could use his monstrous strength and push his way free. Enough, at least, to avoid being divided in two.
Lung roared as he climbed free. As Kaiser raised more blades around him, Lung swung his claws and shattered the metal, sending the pieces sliding across the floor.
“Aiiihurrr,” Lung growled.
“You’re an animal, Lung,” Kaiser answered him, “Even without your power making you into… this. Go down!” As if to punctuate his statement, a spear of solid steel erupted from the wall and slammed into Lung, carrying him to the end of the room opposite where Judas and Angelica were. Lu
ng managed to grip the spear and move himself so the spearpoint wasn’t pressed against his chest when it punctured the concrete of the wall.
“Your people… animals.” Kaiser intoned.
Not six paces away from me, one of Lung’s thugs let out a raw scream and collapsed to the ground. Dagger-like blades had pierced the tops of his feet mid-stride. As he used his hands to break his fall, another set of blades punched through his palms. The screams of the other thugs echoed his. He was on his hands and knees, unable to move with his hands and feet effectively nailed to the ground.
“Kaiser!” I shouted, “No!”
“Not your business, little girl,” Kaiser told me, turning in my direction.
I took an immediate step back, fearing blades would appear under my feet.
“This is wrong,” I said, as I watched a sliver of steel sprout out of the ground and rise with a controlled speed to the base of the thug’s throat. He was forced to arch his back and raise his head to the absolute limits to avoid getting a very unnecessary tracheotomy. I glanced at Lung. He was watching what was happening, but I couldn’t read his alien expression.
“Wrong?” Kaiser chuckled, “As far as I’m concerned, the moment you need to fall back on morals to argue something, you’ve already lost the argument. This is war.”
Lung moved for Kaiser, this time. He virtually rolled to one side to avoid an outcropping of spearpoints angled in a way that he might have run himself through on them, then resumed his charge.
One of the giantess twins stepped in, kicking Lung into and almost through a wall. Lung bounced back almost immediately, drawing on his pyrokinesis to direct a column of blue-yellow flame at her. The other twin intercepted the fire with her shield.
A few seconds later, she was stumbling back and away from Lung and throw her shield away to avoid having the heated metal burn her arm.
Kaiser’s team wasn’t going to win this on their own. As much as I despised stepping in and helping him…
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