Kid Win looked up, saw Sundancer with her orb hovering a good fifteen feet off the ground, keeping it away from the walls of the building and the corpses that were hung above them. Even though it was fifteen feet up and thirty feet away, he could feel the heat of it prickle his exposed skin. He knew from the Endbringer fight that she could make it bigger, move it faster.
As the burning sphere drifted forward, staying at roughly the same height, Flechette and Glory Girl were forced to scramble away. Shadow Stalker leaped off of the top of the wall and into the alleyway next to the building to get away from the heat. Only Vista remained where she was, caught under debris that she was striving to shrink down and push away.
It dawned on Kid Win. Sundancer and Ballistic, at the very least, were holding back. Because they were strong enough that going all out would leave corpses.
The revelation didn’t make him feel any better. In fact, it was just the opposite. If these guys got desperate or panicked, they might stop being so polite about it.
Trickster and Genesis were tangling with Weld and Clockblocker – Clockblocker was putting paper in the air, freezing it to give himself footholds to go after his flying opponent. Any time Genesis moved to attack, Clockblocker set paper in her way, edge towards her, or he tried to duck in close enough to touch her. Giving up on more physical means, she exhaled a cloud of the choking smoke. Clockblocker and Weld both worked together to minimize the spread of the cloud, using paper and plywood, freezing it in place with Clockblocker’s power.
Kid Win decided they had a handle on that. It was up to him to help against Ballistic and Sundancer.
As he climbed to his feet, breaking into a run before he was even standing straight, he raised his spark pistol and fired off a series of oversized blue sparks at Ballistic.
Trickster managed to teleport him again, swapping his position with Ballistic’s. The forward momentum of his sprint was enough to get him out of the way of his own gunfire.
His spark pistol sported a small power core that used spatial warping technology to magnify and then reabsorb a steady electrical current. The barrel was wired with a helix-shaped electromagnetic rail, based on some of Armsmaster’s old data on the ‘hard’ light Purity and Dauntless created. Nanomolecular, ionically charged rifling on the barrel’s interior was arranged to guide the fired charges into a rough elliptical shape, which sustained their shape and consistency the longest.
In laymen’s terminology, it was not unlike a power bar that was plugged into itself, with a small addition that made each revolution of the current larger than the one before. An attached battery kept the current going. The shots themselves were ‘hard’ electricity condensed into balls, which meant they had a physical impact to them, due to how they carried and transferred kinetic energy. Given how the weapon charged, waiting a few seconds between shots meant the next shot hit harder, up to a limit.
I can make something like this, which is brilliant, then I go and dismantle my fricking hoverboard to get parts for a project I never even finish. Idiot.
Ballistic marched towards Vista, who was trying to climb to her feet. He was intercepted by Glory Girl, who slammed him into a wall. She punched him, drove her knee into his gut, then slammed him against the wall again, to keep him off-balance and hurting.
Ballistic slumped against her and grabbed at the collar of her costume for support. A second later, Glory Girl was a blur, disappearing into the skyline. His attacker gone, Ballistic fell onto his hands and knees with a grunt.
Flechette threw a handful of darts at Sundancer, pinning the girl against the wall. Somehow Flechette had avoided Trickster’s attention. How? Kid Win turned to look, saw that she was standing so her body blocked Trickster’s line of sight to both the darts and his teammate.
So he can only teleport what he sees?
Kid Win moved to mimic Flechette’s technique, running to a position where he would be between the injured Ballistic and Trickster. He cocked his spark pistol.
He was nearly lined up for his shot when his gun disappeared from his hand, an awkwardly sized piece of wood taking its place. A second later, his mask and visor cracked against a hard surface. He had to grip the wall to steady himself and keep from falling. He’d been teleported.
Then the wall moved beneath his hand, and he heard Clockblocker shout, “Get down, Kid!”
He let himself fall, simultaneously realizing he had been leaning against Genesis, in her gargoyle-like form. Weld slammed into the villainess, his left hand in the form of a heavy miner’s pick. It did a surprising amount of damage, but she didn’t seem to care. She gripped Weld around the face with a claw, raked his chest twice with criss-crossing slashes of her other hand, leaving deep gouges in the metal. The same noxious black smoke that she had been breathing began to billow out of the hole the pick had made in her chest.
Clockblocker charged, but Genesis shoved Weld so the two heroes stumbled into one another, delaying them long enough for her to leap into the air. She beat her wings to keep herself aloft and out of reach.
Kid Win unslung his laser rifle and fired at the villainess. His first shot grazed her, as one flap of her wings carried her higher into the air, but the next two hit the mark. One struck her in the shoulder, leaving a hole large enough to fit his hand through, the other struck her in the side of the head, doing a similar amount of damage.
Genesis dropped from the sky, exploded into a mess of dark smoke and pebbles as she struck the ground.
Feeling a moment’s panic, he checked the settings on his gun. Normal levels, no anomalies. It could heat metal and other inorganic materials, cut through more fragile materials, but against a person, it wouldn’t do more than hurt and maybe leave the mildest kind of burn.
That’s her power, he reminded himself, you didn’t kill her.
But his gun had done a surprising amount of damage. Was it some interaction with how she pulled her new shapes together? A specific wavelength, a weakness to lasers?
He wasn’t about to complain. He wheeled around, fired on the other villains.
An injured Ballistic opened fire on Vista, discharging a series of pieces of rubble at an angle. It struck the ground just in front of the girl and fallout from the impacts showered her. Each shot drove her back further, buying him a chance to limp to Sundancer’s side. He touched the darts that were fixing her to the wall, sending them flying into Weld’s face.
“Fuck!” Weld cursed, the metal spikes of the darts jutting out of his jaw, cheekbone, eyebrow and forehead, “Takes forever to get my face right after something like this!”
Trickster’s teleportations had placed the enemy’s group in the interior of the building, with the Wards surrounding them.
Surrounding one’s enemy wasn’t quite an advantage when the enemy could teleport, but for a moment, they all paused where they were, various weapons at the ready. It was the kind of momentary peace that fell when everyone was waiting to react to what the others were doing.
A wind blew past them, and Kid Win blinked as a fat droplet of water spattered against his visor. It was starting to drizzle. He glanced up at the corpses where they hung on the walls of the building.
“The water’s going to wash away the evidence if you don’t let us go and hurry to check on the bodies,” Trickster spoke.
“Crime scene techs can’t get here in time with the roads like they are,” Weld spoke. “And we’re not allowed to touch the evidence anyways. Rules.”
“Rules? You shouldn’t sweat those things so much,” Trickster chuckled, “Here, I’ll help you out.”
Weld disappeared, and the burned corpse flopped to the ground.
“Shit!” Clockblocker shouted, running forward.
Weld dropped from the wall for the second time in a matter of minutes as the restraints intended for the woman’s corpse tore free of the concrete. Vista reshaped the wall to ease his descent. Kid Win raised his laser rifle to fire at Trickster.
Dumb. He regretted it the second his finger left the trigger.
It’s not lethal, can’t do any permanent harm, you had it vetted, tested on pig meat.
The balance of the fight had abruptly shifted. Clockblocker, Flechette and Vista were where the three Travelers had been, and vice versa.
“Nuh uh uh, kiddo,” Trickster spoke, as the gap in the wall began closing behind his group, “Up you go.”
The flayed corpse appeared in Vista’s position.
No! Kid Win turned, saw Vista on the wall. She’d gotten tangled in the loops of wire that had been holding the corpse up. The metal wire was coiled around a shattered part of the wall, and more than one wire had caught around her neck. Another looping of wire bound her body, one of her arms caught against her side. She struggled to pull at the wire on her neck with her free hand, but it was little help. The wire pulled so tightly against her throat that Kid Win feared it would cut her skin.
“Trickster!” Sundancer cried out, horrified.
“Just run!” was the villain’s only reply. The three villains started running, leaving the building behind, their footsteps sloshing and splashing.
Kid Win raised his laser pistol, aimed carefully, then fired, landing the shot a half-foot to the right of Vista’s throat. The wires heated and split, freeing her, and she dropped a foot before catching on more wires. Nothing dangerous, this time, but it was a fair distance to fall and one slip could see her getting cut on the wire, strangled or cracking her head open as she fell.
Shadow Stalker materialized behind Trickster, catching him around the throat in a headlock. She used one foot to kick his feet out from under him, and then forced him face first into the water.
Kid Win hesitated. Help her or help Vista?
Vista. Shadow Stalker would say she could handle herself. Made a point of trying to.
He fired more shots to free Vista, missing the wires one or two times. The heroine, for her part, focused on angling the wall beneath her to allow herself to slide down instead of falling the full distance.
Ballistic shot Shadow Stalker, driving her back. The attack had left a gaping hole just below her heart, the edges wispy. The gap closed, but the attack had separated her from Trickster, and hurt her badly enough that she crumpled to the ground, a hand to her chest.
Kid Win fired a salvo at the retreating villains, grazed Ballistic. Sundancer turned, directing her orb between their groups. She dropped it into the water. Massive clouds of heated steam rose where the orb met water, obscuring the battlefield.
By the time it cleared, the villains were gone.
It took a minute to check that none of them had suffered any permanent damage. After some debate, they moved the bodies to a more secure, dry spot, inside the building. Glory Girl managed to make her way back two minutes after the Travelers were gone, helped with the last body that still hung on the wall. By the time they were done, the rain was pouring down.
Kid Win stared down at the corpses, an ugly feeling in his gut.
He was dumb, easily distracted, prone to leaving his projects unfinished, and it was moments like this that this knowledge hit him particularly hard. His dad had made him get tested, and the doctors had labeled him with ADD and dyscalculia. He held to the opinion that the ADD diagnosis was way overused – he liked to think that he was just a daydreamer, prone to getting lost in his thoughts.
The dyscalculia was something concrete that he couldn’t deny or explain away. He couldn’t keep numbers in his head, couldn’t make the most basic intuitive leaps or connections with them.
All of that had been before he got his powers. Nothing had changed, except that now he could visualize something, instinctively know how he could put it together. His disability or disabilities put him a step behind the rest. His daydreaming was worse, because his thoughts were so damn interesting, now. He couldn’t take reliable measurements without using computers to do it. Couldn’t finish half his projects without feeling compelled to move on to something else.
The PRT staff insisted he was exceptional with antigrav and guns, had it even marked in his file, but he knew it wasn’t so true. He finished his guns because they were simple, in their own way. It was easy enough to take three half-finished gun projects and mash them together. Create something with multiple settings, even. As far as he was aware, he was the only Tinker in the PRT’s records that didn’t have a defined specialty, gimmick or trick. He was increasingly worried that his special talent as a tinker was being able to occasionally make something despite his learning disability. Which would suck, if it were true.
There were exceptions. He’d finished bigger projects. His hoverboard, driven by the idea of how awesome it would be to fly. Even then, it had been a chore. Monumentally stupid of him to dismantle it. The idea and motivation driving the action had been good: he was graduating the Wards in a little while, he’d be expected to change his name and adjust his methods, because an adult calling himself Kid Win was lame. He’d had an idea about a harness with a floating array of turrets that could fire different munitions depending on what gun he holstered in the main slot. Self adjusting and adaptive the way his Alternator Cannon was. Except he’d gotten frustrated at a snag in the testing, put it down to take a break and hadn’t picked it up again in six days. His hoverboard had effectively been destroyed for no reason, when it might have made the difference in getting the Travelers into custody.
His Alternator Cannon was the real gem. It had been the result of a medication the PRT’s doctor had prescribed, which he’d been forced to stop after two weeks when he began to get increasingly dizzy, anxious and nauseous. While he’d been taking the pills, he’d been focused, had a glimpse, maybe, of what he could do if it weren’t for his distractibility and daydreaming. When Piggy had spoken of destroying the thing, the mere thought had been crushing. Then Leviathan had destroyed it for real, maybe the only truly brilliant thing he’d be able to make. He harbored fears it might even the only brilliant thing he’d ever be able to make.
He wasn’t the worst hero ever, he knew that. He had things he could do. He could let the worries and the dozens of unfinished projects alone, most days. That changed when his team got thrashed. Thoughts like that had been plaguing him since the Endbringer event a week ago. He couldn’t shake the notion that he was in the running for the weakest member of the team. The notion that he was dumb, second-rate. That this loss, here, was his fault, because he had dropped the ball. The people of this city deserve a better hero, a more focused one.
Weld spoke, disturbing him from his thoughts, “I just got a message. PRT is on their way. We head back now.”
Hearing the unenthusiastic replies of his teammates, Kid Win realized that the rest of the team wasn’t in any better of a mood than he was. Losing had a way of doing that.
Strangely comforting.
■
“Got word from the Protectorate. They’re handling the case with the bodies, we’re not to touch it or get involved in any way,” Weld spoke, folding his arms. He had what looked like acne – blisters of extra-shiny metal on his face where the remainder of the darts hadn’t yet been fully integrated into his ‘skin’. He reclined in an expensive, custom-made office chair, capable of supporting his dense, heavy body. Everyone else had found seats in the central room of their headquarters. Everyone, that was, except for Glory Girl, who had gone home. She wasn’t yet an official member of the team.
“No word on what’s going on?” Clockblocker asked.
“They’re staying quiet on the subject,” Weld spoke.
Vista leaned forward, “Maybe a serial killer?”
“We should focus on what we do know,” Weld shook his head. “As far as tonight’s patrols-”
“Actually,” Kid Win cut in, “Sorry. But I have one theory.”
“Wha
t?” Clockblocker asked.
Kid Win glanced at Weld, checking to see if their leader was ok with it. Weld didn’t say anything, which he took as assent to continue.
“There were two other crime scenes, right? Any idea if there were the same number of bodies at each crime scene?”
“Same number-” Weld raised an eyebrow, “Why… Oh. Shit. I think I follow.”
Smarter than you’d think, given his brute-force power and his appearance, Kid Win realized. Or I’m just that bad with numbers. The connection took me twenty minutes to make.
“Three crime scenes with three bodies each. So it’d be nine bodies?” Clockblocker asked, “Each killed in some different way? I don’t see what killer that would fit with.”
“Not one killer,” Kid Win answered, “Nine bodies, each for different killers.”
“The Slaughterhouse Nine,” Clockblocker leaned back in his seat, groaning, “Fuck, that’d be all we needed.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time they’ve arrived at a location in the wake of an Endbringer event,” Flechette pointed out.
“Maybe it’s them,” Weld conceded, “And maybe the Protectorate figured that much out, with the clues they have from the other two scenes. It could be someone or something else. Either way, it’s not our case, not even in our league, and we should stay as hands off as we can manage. We need to talk about patrols and tonight’s duties.”
“The grunt work,” Flechette offered a literal grunt to punctuate the statement. Kid Win and Clockblocker chuckled.
“Vista’s due for a patrol, and as a young member, she has to go with someone. Lily?”
Flechette smiled a little, “Quick to make me pay for the snark, huh? No, it’s cool, I’ve been wanting a chance to shoot the shit with Vista.” She extended her fist, with index finger and thumb extended to form a gun, mock fired it at her junior teammate. Vista rolled her eyes.
“Clockblocker, you and I will handle the night’s shifts after that. Your call if you want to patrol with me or not, we can cover different routes and go for a wider area if you’d rather.”
Worm Page 97
