The ones who did land in his vicinity were on him in moments. One was the little space-warper, another was a copy of the firebreathing acrobat with the rich smell, and three were copies of the unpowered people she’d absorbed. They mobbed the armored tinker.
She hadn’t included the Undersiders in that stream. Until they were more fully absorbed, there was a good chance that she’d spit them out if she tried to copy them. Using any one person too frequently carried the same risks, and she suspected that it would be more difficult now that she was so full.
The girl in silver armor, with white flowing clothes was dashing toward her from the other side, not any slower for the shattered ground underfoot. Noelle picked out unpowered individuals she could afford to lose, closed her muscles tight around them, and spat out the partially formed nuggets along with a mess of the internal fluids.
The girl ducked low, landing on a fragment of road, using her forward momentum to skid toward Noelle as though she were snowboarding. There was an explosion of debris as she kicked off the ground, and the girl soared toward Noelle, twisting in the air to land a kick with that same foot.
It felt like getting hit by a cannon. Noelle’s stride broke and she had to plant one foot to the side to keep from falling over.
She’d lost ground, and Bitch was swiftly increasing the distance between them.
Noelle hesitated, then decided to let the girl go for the time being. Better to defend herself, establish a better position. While stationary, she could spit up an Undersider, swallow them back up again. She’d read up on them, had talked to Trickster about them. She had a good sense of what they were capable of.
But which one? She had three. Regent might work against this girl in white, but his influence would be too minor in the big picture. His smell was weakest of the three.
Not that it was really a smell… but she was peculiarly aware of the people with powers, active or otherwise. Each had a texture and a tone and a flavor, something she felt like she could come to understand. She might have said it was taste, might have compared it to when she’d tried wine that one time and tried to see what the wine aficionados looked for when they sampled a vintage. Except the word ‘smell’ worked better, because smell and taste were really very similar and smell worked over distances.
There was a difference in Skitter, Grue’s and Eidolon’s smells, along with a handful of the other visiting capes. A smell that set them apart from the other parahumans in the same way that the other parahumans were set apart from the people who could have powers but didn’t. An intensity.
She wished she’d spent more time researching the powers. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to, had wanted only to distract herself from the thoughts of what was happening to her.
Which one to use? Skitter was more dangerous in a general sense, but she wouldn’t stop the girl in white now. That left Grue.
She didn’t spit, but simply contracted and let the body spill forth. Sure enough, the real Grue tumbled out, prostrate, unable to move. A tongue snaked out of her center-mouth and caught him before he could try to escape. She’d swallowed him by the time her Grue was on its feet.
Noelle only had a glimpse of her Grue’s real form before he started cloaking himself in darkness. He was muscular, broad-shouldered, his long hair slicked to his head by the fluids of the vomit. Angry red ulcers studded his dark skin at set intervals.
He cast a glance over his shoulder at her as the darkness crept up over his shoulders and the back of his head. His eyes were black from corner to corner, his teeth too large, misshapen much like his fingernails were, tangled together to the point that he couldn’t open his mouth. It forced him into a perpetual grimace with his teeth bared.
He turned his back to her as the darkness covered his face, squared his shoulders. The body language was clear. He was protecting her.
He’s one of the useful ones, then. Her copies of the little space warper had been like that. Naturally inclined toward teamwork, disciplined. The other three were more likely to run off. They were still useful, but they did things in their own way.
Spheres of darkness appeared in her Grue’s hands. One after the other, he hurled them at the girl in white. The first missed, and the second seemed like it might do the same, until it arced in the air to strike her from the side.
The darkness was more like gum than smoke, and she struggled. Noelle’s Grue closed the distance, moving over the surface of the road much as the girl in white had.
Then Noelle saw why and how. A thread of darkness, barely thicker than a finger, extended from the sticky darkness to her Grue. That would be how he’d moved the projectile in the air, and how he was absorbing her power.
The boy in armor created a fissure that spat debris into the air as it parted, aiming to separate the Grue and the girl in white. By intent or accident, he cut the thread of darkness in the process. Noelle’s Grue stopped, turned to face the tinker and created more spheres in his hands.
Those two were occupied. Noelle turned to see Trickster dealing with the flying heroes. Two were on the ground, prone. That would be the result of Trickster baiting them into shooting one another. The remaining hero had a weapon in hand but wasn’t shooting.
Eidolon was there too. His smell was interesting. Complicated, but somehow off. If he was using any particular method of attack on Trickster, then Noelle couldn’t see it.
Trickster disappeared from the skirmish with the flying heroes, putting one of her creations in his place.
She sniffed him out. He was in the midst of the one batch of bodies that had piled up against the tinker’s makeshift wall. They were turning on him, grabbing for his arms and legs. He teleported to keep them from getting any serious leverage, but the escape was slow.
“Leave him!” she ordered, and her voice came out with surprising volume.
They didn’t listen. They struck him, gripped his costume and dragged him to the ground.
Trickster shouted in alarm as he was submerged in the mass of clones.
Noelle advanced on her creations in as threatening a manner as she could, the ground shaking with her advance. They noticed and backed away.
Trickster, for his part, didn’t even flinch as she closed the distance between the two of them, stepping within a few feet of him.
It would be all too easy to just snap her tongue at him. Catch him, swallow him.
She held off. Instead, she faced Eidolon and the other flying cape.
Trickster adjusted his hat and did the same. The two of them against the world.
■
“It’s not you, it’s me,” she said.
Krouse folded his arms. ”You can’t blame me at least a little?”
“No,” Noelle said, shaking her head. If I could only explain, I would… She could feel her throat seize up. Worrying that her voice might crack if she spoke at the normal volume, she lowered her voice to a hush as she said, “You’ve been great.”
He spread his arms, “I don’t get it. I thought we were doing fine.”
Doing fine? How many hours had she spent lying awake in bed, agonizing over this relationship? Hating herself?
She’d relapsed because of it, and recovering was proving to be a long, hard road.
“We aren’t!” Noelle said, “This is… it’s not working.”
“I’m okay with it. I enjoy spending time with you, and I didn’t get any impression you were having that bad of a time, either.”
“But we don’t- we aren’t-” She stared down at her feet. ”We’re stalled. It isn’t fair to you.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?”
Only part of it.
“Don’t dismiss my concerns,” she said, and the anger in her own words surprised her.
“No’, it’s fine. It’s cool. I get that there’s stuff you’ve got going on that you don’t want to tell me about,” Krouse said.
Her breath caught in her throat at that. Had Marissa told him? Or had he figured it out? It wasn�
�t like she hadn’t left signs.
He continued without a pause, “…I can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, but I’m not an idiot. And I’m not going to twist your arm to get you to share, either. That’s your stuff, and I figure you’ll tell me in time. Or you won’t.”
“It’s not fair to you.” Noelle knew she was repeating herself, but it was the only argument she could make. All of the others would involve discussing other topics, her issues.
And she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Marissa knew, would keep quiet because she got it. Marissa knew, wouldn’t bring it up, would back her up when needed.
Noelle loved Krouse, but she knew he wasn’t so graceful. It would become something jarring, intruding on their everyday interactions.
“I’m not saying things have to be equitable or balanced or fair or any of that. So who cares if things aren’t fair?” Krouse asked.
“Don’t do that!”
She could see his expression change to bewilderment at her reaction. He spread his arms, as if he were asking a question without opening his mouth. I’m being irrational… but that’s the disease at work.
It took her a long time to find the words.
“Someone said, a little while ago,” Noelle spoke without looking at Krouse, “That I can’t really forge a good relationship with others until I have a good relationship with myself.“
“You don’t?” He asked. “I think you’re fantastic, if that counts for anything.”
The words stung, nettled her, as if they personified his lack of understanding. She said as much, “You don’t know me.”
“I’ve been getting to know you some. And I have yet to see anything that’s going to scare me away.”
She couldn’t keep going down this road, couldn’t have an argument, or she’d let something slip. She stared at her feet. ”…I don’t think we should date.”
“Okay. If you think that’s for the best. But I just need you to do one thing. Look me in the eye as you tell me that.”
Noelle glanced up at him, then looked back down. She tried to find the words, but both brain and mouth failed her.
“Because,” he went on, “I think you’ve seemed happier than I’ve ever seen you since we started going out. Marissa said so, too.”
It’s… it’s a bad time for me, she thought, as if voicing the words in her head would let her utter them out loud. The wrong moment. Any earlier or later in my recovery…
He continued, “If you really feel like us dating is making things worse in the long run, then I’m perfectly okay with breaking it off. I can leave the club if that makes things easier on your end. It was your thing before it was mine, and you’ve got enough on your plate with being team captain.”
“I don’t want you to leave the club,” she said, meaning it.
“Okay,” he said. He paused very deliberately. She didn’t take the invitation to speak.
He sighed, ”Listen, I get the feeling today is a bad day. Don’t know why it is, but it is. And that happens. Fine. But I’m not willing to end this if it’s because the stars aligned wrong. So I’m asking you to tell me that you’re worse off because we’re together. Not asking for an explanation, just-”
Can’t do this. Can’t break it off. Not when he’s being this good about it. Not when it’s making the both of us this miserable.
“Never mind,” she said, abrupt. I’ll find another way.
“Never mind?”
“I’m- just never mind. Can we forget this conversation happened?”
“Sure,” he said.
Her feelings were a chaotic storm. Relief, quiet joy, fear, misery, self loathing, panic…
I’m not well, she thought.
”Want me to walk you home?” His voice was gentle.
She nodded mutely, unable to find the words to speak. A simple five word confession would simultaneously explain everything and spoil the tone of their relationship. She knew it, knew she was being irrational, that her recent relapse was making her that way, was making her nasty and emotional and unpredictable.
How could he not notice? The way she picked at her food, the way Marissa got on her case about eating? The countless other clues? Yes, she’d been in recovery for much of the time they’d known each other, but… hadn’t he been paying attention?
She simultaneously loved and hated him, in that moment. He was the best thing in the world for her, and the worst thing in the world for her, both at the same time.
And it wasn’t fair to him, putting that on his shoulders.
■
She was fighting with Eidolon. The realization startled her. She’d been adrift in vivid memories, and she’d lost time.
She sniffed, for lack of a better word, and found Skitter prone on the ground. Her tongue snatched the girl up, and she swallowed the girl anew. The taste and smell were right. Good.
That spooked her. Her body wasn’t making good decisions when it was on autopilot. Or, at least, it wasn’t making decisions she’d accept. Almost losing an Undersider? No.
She double checked. Skitter, Grue, Regent and the little space warper were safely ensconced inside her, each tucked away in neat little wombs, unconscious and helpless and safe from the ongoing fighting.
Why did you show me that? Why was that so important?
There was no reply. Never a reply.
Eidolon reached out with one hand, and she instinctively rushed out of the way.
The gravity effect hit her, and she could feel her flesh tearing, feel the extremities ripping: her ears, nose, lips and all the little pieces of her monstrous lower half. At her shoulders, the top of her head, the flesh above her spine on her lower half, the flesh was pulled down and away until it started to rip.
Eidolon fell out of the air, hitting the ground hard.
Noelle turned her head, saw Regent. Her Regent. He was only half-formed, one arm missing, the features of his face more like a fetus than a teenage boy.
She smiled. Maybe her other half had made some good decisions.
Her flesh was already knitting back together, everything shuffling into their proper places or shifting around to fill in gaps. The fluid that welled from a bottomless source in her monstrous lower half bubbled up and coursed through her veins to supply the needed materials.
The girl in white hit her again, striking the joint of one outstretched limb. Noelle swiped at the girl in mid-air with her other forelimb, came within inches of making contact.
The ground underfoot shattered. Noelle leaped before the tinker could repeat the effect and sink her into another sand trap.
There was another explosion from beneath her. She leaped to avoid the worst of that one. She vomited in the direction of the tinker, but he was anticipating the attack. He provoked an eruption of rock shards and dust midway between them. The bulk of the flying bodies and fluids were knocked off course by the plume of debris. With a third strike he raised a barrier around himself. Two of the three bodies that hadn’t been stopped by the debris were caught on the shards of pavement. One suffered a broken back, the other hit the edge of a fragment with enough force that his stomach was ripped open.
The third flew over the barrier. The tinker caught it with a punch, and the piledriver in his gauntlet extended twice in an instant, punching two neat holes through the upper body.
He didn’t even wait for the body to hit the ground before striking and creating another fissure that extended beneath the barrier and beneath her. She leaped out of the way before it opened wide enough to catch her or one of her feet.
It was bad timing. She had been distracted by the recent vision. Eidolon hit her square-on with another gravity attack. Her flesh was savaged and split, she was almost immobilized under the force of it. If the tinker used his power now-
Trickster broke Eidolon’s contact with the gravity field by teleporting him. The hero reacted in an instant, releasing a half-dozen blue sparks from each hand. They grew until they were each three feet across, crackling with electricity, moving
at a walking pace as they slowly homed in on Trickster.
He had to teleport to avoid the closest one. Only some of the orbs followed him to his new destination, the others remaining where they were.
Noelle opened fire on the tinker, two streams of vomit, each directed to one side of him.
She considered vomiting on the electric orbs, then thought twice about it.
Trickster teleported again, trying to maintain distance, but Eidolon had created more of the sparks, and the things were spreading out evenly across the battlefield, moving closer to Trickster if he got within ten paces of them.
It threatened to hamper her own movements too, Noelle noted.
Eidolon raised a hand in Trickster’s direction, and Trickster was quick to teleport away. The gravity slam hit one of Noelle’s creations instead. Trickster wound up within two paces of one orb, and had to scramble back before it touched him.
Noelle looked at him, remembered the scene from the most recent memory. In this moment, with so many other people to be angry at, so many others to hate, she didn’t feel that bottomless resentment for Trickster that she’d experienced ever since the transformations started.
It wasn’t you, she thought. I keep saying it was your fault. It wasn’t.
She was already moving towards him as the thought came to her.
I blamed you for giving me the elixir. The potion. Whatever you call it. But it was me. I heard you guys talking about how the people who drank the stuff were supposed to get tested for psychiatric issues. I didn’t tell you the Simurgh showed me visions of my worst days, of my relapses, my lowest points. That she drove me into a state where I was reluctant to take the full dose, eager for a compromise.
She started running.
I knew all this, and if I’d only had the courage to say it, maybe this all would have gone a different way.
Oh, the irony, that this was what she’d become.
She crashed into the first of the lightning orbs. She felt the current surge inside her, settle in her bones, latent.
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