Regent and Imp made a break for it. Imp ducked around to the left, coming within a hair of being caught by the spray Dragon turned her way, then used the cover of the bookshelves to stay out of the line of fire as she ran for the window. Dragon half-turned away from the rest of us in pursuit. Regent moved as if he were going to try to move beneath Dragon using the distraction Imp had provided, clearly intending to step on her metal foot. He changed his mind when a crackle of visible electricity flashed down the mechanical limb. He turned a hard right, picking up a piece of bookshelf, and used the wood to block the majority of the spray as he passed beneath one of the stray streams. From there, much as Imp had, he had a clear route.
Dragon moved to bar more of the window with the bulk of her body, her back arching. Her upper body and head now pointed almost down at an angle, the streams from her shoulders reorienting to block off the escape routes available to Bitch, her dog and me.
So I did something risky and borderline stupid. I lunged forward and stepped onto the metal foot of Dragon’s armored suit, like Regent had been planning to do until he discovered it was electrified.
I had known the same spider silk I’d used for my costume was insulated against electrical charges, had even put that into practice in my fight against Armsmaster during the fundraiser. This was something altogether different.
I could feel the faint tendrils of electricity snake over the surface of my body, though I only stepped on the metal foot once. I couldn’t tell if the source of the electricity was the gun Tattletale had rigged and thrown – Dragon’s tail was close enough to it for the electricity to flow to her – or if it was from Dragon’s body itself.
Though the footing was unsteady, I was careful not to touch the metal leg with my upper body, and even turned my head away, risking throwing myself off balance, so my hair wouldn’t make contact with it. As I understood it, the biggest danger the electricity posed was that my body would become part of a circuit. If the circuit included vital organs, I’d be a goner, and that kind of closed circuit could happen if the electricity could run from my hand and through my heart on the way to my foot.
The gamble and assumption I was working with was that electricity followed the path of least resistance. Insulated costume vs. vapor in the air? It would travel through the vapor. Insulated costume vs. metal leg? It would travel down the leg.
Either way, I was glad when I didn’t burn my foot or have it get fried or go numb. I was damn glad I didn’t die.
With all of this consuming my attention, I was caught off guard when something large brushed against me while I was mid-leap.
The impact threw my airborne momentum off, drove me to one side. My first, most immediate, thought, before I even considered the source of the attack, was where I was about to land. It was reflexive, but I sent a spray of bugs out from the armor near my glove, scattering them onto the area just in front of me.
Before I had even figured out what my bugs were sensing, I reacted to their signals. I slammed my arm out, rigid, my hand splayed, and felt a jarring pain as I tried to absorb my entire body weight with one arm and force myself away. I felt a lack of traction as my hand made contact with something soft and squishy. My maneuver was too minor to make a real difference, but I managed to buy myself a precious few inches.
My hand, arm and shoulder were caught in the containment foam.
I tried to raise myself to see Dragon looming above, but the foam offered only a rubbery resistance. It had set with the contact, bonded to my costume. I was pinned face down on the ground.
What I did see, as I raised my head as high as I was able? Bitch was astride Bentley, who’d grown large enough to ride, and they were standing near the window leading into the street. I could only see her eyes behind the plastic of her mask, and everything else was communicated through her bearing, her posture, the angle of her head. I’d seen something similar when I’d first met her.
It hadn’t been Dragon that knocked me into the foam.
Dragon turned her upper body to strike at Bitch. As she moved, her back leg was close enough that some of the vapor was getting on me, slowly liquefying the foam. It was too slow to matter. Dragon had me.
Her stainless steel jaws snapped for Bentley, but the dog was already slipping out the window. Bitch had dismounted and was running to one side, heading off in a different direction to exit at the far end of the window.
Which left me in the gift shop with Dragon.
“I have a sworn responsibility to protect that data,” she said as she turned her attention to me. She sounded surprisingly normal. Her voice was clearly digitized, but it was still too human to match the massive metal frame.
“Can’t help you there. One of my teammates has it.”
“Where are they taking it?”
I stayed silent.
“Your teammates left you behind. I’ve read the file on what happened after the Endbringer attack. Hard feelings?”
“Something like that.”
“If they aren’t going to be loyal to you, why protect them?”
Because someone else was depending on it. But I wasn’t going to say that out loud.
The whine of the lightning gun increased by an octave. I saw Dragon’s upper body shift in reaction.
“Move the insects away from my suit, now,” Dragon ordered me.
“Why would I-”
“Now,” she ordered, and there was an urgency in her tone that banished any suspicion on my part that there was a ruse or that somehow it might serve my interest to disobey. I withdrew my bugs, but I kept them poised to return if needed.
Dragon moved back, and her body coiled around the spot where the gun had fallen, segments meeting to loosely interconnect with one another, forming a dome-shaped encasement. Two shoulder turrets began dispensing foam directly downward, into the dome.
“Count yourself fortunate, Skitter. I’ve never killed a criminal without explicit permission and all the filed paperwork, and I’m not about to start with you. I’ll be in contact.”
“What?” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the high pitched whine. I couldn’t figure out what she meant.
“Think about what I said. Take a close look at those priorities of yours.”
The vapor had melted enough foam that I could pull myself free and stand. I got five paces away before the whine ceased. A second later, lightning began to spill from the gun in overtime. Dragon’s body served to block the vast majority of it, but a few arcs slipped through the cracks in her body.
The full meaning of her words struck me the moment the gun detonated. A large portion of her suit was destroyed, as was one of the limbs. Dragon fell to one side.
She’d saved me?
Regent had said Dragon was inside, piloting it, hadn’t he? I stepped closer, trying to see if she was okay.
Regent was right. There was someone – something – in the suit of armor.
It looked like a fetus, the features were crude, barely humanoid in any sense of the word. The eyes were half-formed, and it had no nose, only a beak-like mouth. The head was half-again as large as the body below the neck. Wires wove in and out of orifices.
It turned to look at me, then made a low mewling sound. The metal around it began to glow red-hot, then white-hot. Burns consumed the thing and the flesh changed to a charred black texture as the metal of the frame began to melt and dissolve. Whatever had happened with the Dragonslayers, it seemed Dragon was dedicated to eliminating all traces of her work when her suits were damaged.
But was that Dragon?
No. She’d seemed to know she was sacrificing her suit, but she’d also said she was going to get in contact with me in the future. I backed away, then ran for the window.
So what the hell had I just seen?
Had that been someone who was physically affected by their powers? I wasn’t even sure if it was human.
I had a growing, uneasy feeling that this wasn’t related to powers and trigger events in the conventional sense.
I pushed it out of my mind. I had something more pressing to focus on.
I set my foot on the bookcase, then stepped up and through the window to exit the building. I could see the others dispatching two members of the Protectorate. Tattletale hurried towards me, said something about the explosion, that she thought I’d be out by now. I barely registered it. My attention was on one person as I strode forward.
Bitch.
10.06
The residual foam on my glove made my hand sticky as I reached into the compartment at my back and grabbed my baton. It took me two tries to get my thumb onto the button so I could whip it out to its full length.
I strode towards Bitch, weapon in hand. Tattletale hurried to catch up to me, turning to keep an uneasy eye on the ongoing fight with the Protectorate.
“Hey, Skitter!” Tattletale grabbed my shoulder.
I whirled to face her, hand clenching my baton. I could see the change in her expression as some piece fell in place for her.
“Shit,” she swore, “Hey, listen-”
She didn’t get a chance to finish. White smoke billowed around us. My first thought was that our adversaries were using some sort of bug spray.
The way today was going, it would be just my luck.
I held my breath and hurried out of the cloud, Tattletale following, and searched for the source. Assault was taking on Regent and Imp, while Grue and Shadow Stalker were dealing with Battery and Weld. Bitch and her dogs, on the other hand, were facing down Triumph. Not the matchup I would have chosen, taking on the guy with the sonic shout using dogs with sensitive hearing.
I almost went after Bitch right then and there, but self-preservation won out over any desire for retribution. As Tattletale and I made our way around the cloud, I spotted Miss Militia.
A black-green energy crackled in her hand, and she lobbed a grenade my way. I scrambled back, only for it to turn out to be another canister of smoke, billowing out between Miss Militia and me.
Why the smoke?
The bees I had in the smoke were acting funny. I was surprised to find out why. I’d known that beekeepers used smoke to pacify the bees before collecting the honey. My assumption had been that it acted as a tranquilizer, putting them to sleep. In reality, it was forcing them to revert to instinctual behavior. It made them want to eat and feed and to flee. For those near enclosed spaces or even the corners of walls or the foundations of buildings, it made them adjust their wingbeats to divert the flows of oxygen.
If she’d been intending to use the smoke to screw with my insects, she’d underestimated my power. I canceled out the instincts and sent the bugs through the smoke, blind, feeling out for her. I found her running towards us, through the smoke.
“She’s coming!” I shouted.
In retrospect, that was a mistake.
Much as I might have warned Tattletale and the others, I’d also informed Miss Militia on my location. I turned to run, but she was already raising her gun to fire with an ear-shattering crack.
From the way it cut past my bugs, and the wake of disturbed air the pellets left behind them I could only guess she’d just grazed me with a shotgun. I collapsed sideways to the ground, and the pain came a heartbeat later, radiating over half of my upper body, from my shoulder to my right butt cheek. I was guessing it was nonlethal ammunition – it could well have been lethal, for the sheer degree of hurt it delivered, if my costume had prevented it from penetrating.
Before she could shoot again, I directed my bugs to her hands and eyes, hoping to incapacitate her. I still had a small few of the capsaicin-loaded bugs, and sent them all her way.
As hard as it was to see in the smoke, there was still faint light. That light disappeared the instant Grue used his power.
Miss Militia was staggering and reeling as her hands and face lit up with stings and burns. The gun wasn’t in her hands anymore, which meant we weren’t at risk of getting shot. I sent more bugs across to the other members of the Protectorate, to try to disable them.
Tattletale fumbled around and found me in the darkness, clasped her hand around the same hand I held the baton with, and helped me to my feet. She gave me her support as we limped away. Nothing seemed to be broken, judging by what I felt.
The darkness disappeared after we’d traveled across the street. Grue greeted us. “Dragon?”
“Kaput, thanks to Tattletale,” I spoke.
He looked back the way we’d come, “Damn that smoke. Listen, Tattletale, head down this street, wait for us. Skitter and I are going back in to find and retrieve the others.”
I supposed that would be another benefit of using the smoke. If you didn’t expect to be able to see, then it didn’t hurt to deny your enemy that same privilege. Miss Militia had been thinking about this. If her team wasn’t so sparse on members, she could have done a lot more damage.
“My bugs are telling me they’re over there, there and there,” I pointed in the direction of our teammates. “That’s all I can do for you. I kind of got shot, not sure I’m up to running around.”
His head snapped around to face me, “Shot?”
“I’m okay, it was nonlethal. I think,” I assured him, “Go!”
He did, glancing over his shoulder to look at me before disappearing back into the midst of the darkness.
Tattletale and I made our escape. We got three blocks away before we found a spot to hide. Tattletale got out her phone and began sending messages, presumably to Grue and Coil.
Our hiding place was the lobby of an apartment building. Boards had been placed over the windows, and there were signs that some people had camped out here, not long ago. It was otherwise similar to Grue’s apartment complex. Less tidy, obviously.
“You okay?” Tattletale asked me.
“That question seems to come up a lot.”
“I’m sorry. I knew the gun would inevitably overheat, and what little I could read off of Dragon told me she’d deal with that above anything else. I didn’t think you’d be stuck there, too.”
“No. Your gun thing there saved my skin. The real problem was…” I trailed off. I still had the baton in my hand – the residual containment foam meant I’d probably have to peel the glove away from the weapon. I clenched the weapon tight.
We sat in silence for nearly ten minutes before the rest arrived as a massed group. Shadow Stalker was limping, and two of the dogs were their normal size, draped across Bentley’s back, but everyone was more or less intact.
Bitch’s eyes widened fractionally as she saw me.
I was already standing, barely feeling the hurt from where I’d been grazed. Blood pounded in my ears, and I could feel the buzz of my insects.
“How-” she started. I didn’t let her finish. My baton held in both hands, I struck her in the upper thigh. When she didn’t fall, I let go of the baton and backhanded her. She toppled, and protests and shouts echoed around me.
It hurt. Damn it, I’d never really hit someone with my hands before. I wondered if I’d managed to break something.
There were still bugs on some of my teammates. I could sense them approaching, Grue and Imp moving to stop me. I ducked out of the way of their hands before they could grab me, and then held up my baton, menacing them. I cast a momentary glance towards Shadow Stalker, then augmented my voice with the buzzing and chirping of my swarm, “Don’t.”
“What the hell are you doing!?” Grue roared.
“Ask her,” my response was barely above a growl.
Grue glanced down at Bitch, who was rubbing her chin, opening her jaw wide, as if testing it.
I dropped down to a crouch so quickly that my knee slammed into the ground. I grabbed the upper end of the baton and pulled it over Bitch’s head, forcing the bar between her teeth, pulling back hard.
Grue moved to stop me once more, and I shook my head. He hesitated, then stopped.
Bentley was pacing towards me, snarling at the attack on his owner. I met his gaze with my own, unflinching, and he didn’t lunge to attack, mayb
e because he didn’t want to hurt his master in the process. I didn’t break eye contact with the dog as I spoke with the swarm buzzing in accompaniment, “Regent, this isn’t for Shadow Stalker’s ears.”
“Got it,” Regent spoke. Shadow Stalker moved to the bench by the elevators, sat down, and buried her face in her arms, covering her ears. Regent informed me, “She can’t hear much of anything, now.”
“Bitch,” I pulled on the bar, eliciting more struggling from Bitch, “Just tried to fuck me over in the fight with Dragon. Shoved me into the foam.”
Bitch made a muffled noise, then jabbed me in the side, where I’d been grazed by Miss Militia’s shotgun. It hurt, and in the interest of keeping her from doing it again, I shifted my position so I could force Bitch onto her back against the ground, her head pinned down by my baton. She could still hit me and jab me, but my shins could take a lot more abuse than her jaw could. I belatedly realized I’d taken my eyes off Bentley, but he didn’t maul me. When I looked up, I saw Tattletale had a grip on his chains.
“You’re a coward, Rachel,” I spoke, “You just did the very same thing you hate me for almost doing. You stabbed me in the back. You fucked over your own teammate.”
She mumbled something around the bar. The look in her eyes made me seriously worry she would kill me when I let her go.
“I’m in a position to hurt you now, and I’m pissed enough to do it,” I spoke, my voice low. “But I won’t. This vendetta against me ends, now. You got your shot at me, you fucked it up. If you’re still mad at me, you fucking better cope, got it!?”
She snarled out two muffled words. I suspected they were rude.
When I spoke next, I bent low and whispered the words for her and her alone, “When you’re tossing and turning and trying to sleep, remembering what I did and said here and getting pissed off about it? Remember that you were the weak one. You embarrassed yourself, fucked up, you were the weakling, the wuss who couldn’t even confront me face to face. And knowing you like I do? I’m betting it’s going to gnaw at you. That’s as much a punishment as I could inflict, I think. That’s on you, not me.
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