Chapter Text
It looked like we weren't doing anything in particular. This was a lie. I'd thought my powers would be wasted in the Wards - that wasn't why I hadn't joined, at first, back in my world. But it had been a worry. A spectacularly ignorant idea, but, then again, I'd had a lot of those six months ago. A good thing Sophia had helped me deal with them.
Of course, if you'd told me that six months ago, I would have kicked you. Hard.
I still flinched, sometimes, hearing her voice. Didn't mean to, obviously didn't, and pressed the instinct down. Not in this world, where she was my fiercest advocate and friend. Not in this world, where any hint that she distressed me brought on apologies and anger at her counterpart in my world in equal measure. The anger, I could share in - until I let it out into my swarm.
Handy, that.
The insects flew around us as we patrolled. Weaver and Shadow Stalker, the former in white-and-blue carapace, the latter cowled, black-armoured and caped. Contrast beyond contrast, but we worked well together. The swarm found targets in a swathe for blocks around, acting to my command but not needing great attention. Minor crimes and how depressingly many there were of those, the bugs dealt with without issue. Major ones, we responded. It was a good system.
"Hey," Sophia's voice crackling in over my headset, apropos nothing. Benefit or disadvantage of a full-face mask - take your pick. "You see the Hobbit trailer?"
"The Aleph thing?" I asked. "Don't think it looks any good, so no."
"How can you know it doesn't look any good if you haven't seen it?" she said, half-teasing.
A shrug. "Aleph. They're stuck with CGI, we've got the real deal."
"Oh come on," Chris cut in - back in the base, listening in from the console. "Parahuman effects aren't that good."
Weird thinking of him as Chris, not as Kid Win. Not as the cape I'd - well, best not to get into detail about what I'd done in my world. I'd told mom, and that was a simple thing still staggering, and I was pretty sure Sophia had figured it out. Piggot hadn't asked, some Thinker verification meaning it wasn't necessary. Maybe it was cowardly. But I liked my life here. No point risking it over - no point risking it.
"Really? Did you not see Ancalagon in the last season?"
"Okay, fine, that part of the Silmarillion adaption wasn't terrible - "
"I'm pleased to hear it."
"But the Fall of Gondolin was useless. Sophia agrees with me, don't you, Sophia?"
"Taylor's right," she said. "She - Blink liked Gondolin."
That set a pall over the conversation. I could almost see Chris, shuffling his feet, red-faced, trying to come back from it. I didn't try, just let it sit. If he didn't know what to say, I didn't to an even greater extent. Sophia had said my being there was a comfort, a reminder of the Taylor she'd lost. I hoped she wasn't lying. I worried she might be. I'd offered more, before. When I heard her weeping, through the thin walls at the Wards HQ. She'd been polite, and kind, and turned me away.
A reminder, not a replacement. A comfort, not a bulwark.
She'd helped me a lot. If that was how I could repay the favour, then I did it gladly.
I focused in on my bugs, sending them out further, to the edge of control where conscious direction mattered. Searching - searching - huh. Snapshots, impressions through segmented, shadowed, hidden eyes. A golden orb, floating above an empty parking lot. Two figures. Snatches of a bombastic voice, announcement-grade. Some mess of tinker-tech.
"Uber and Leet," I said, a snap judgement. "Two blocks east, one north."
"You're sure?" Sophia asked. I glanced over - her hands were tight on the grips of her crossbows.
"Positive." Then. "Chris, you hearing?"
"Kicked it up to Protectorate dispatch, wait - Velocity and Miss Militia are en route with a PRT squad. Go in for a closer look but don't engage unless they're getting away."
"Got it," Sophia said. "Taylor, lead the way."
I did, with arrows of bugs we both followed, off the main road through a dilapidated alleyway - the dubious benefit of urban decline. My baton, white-and-blue like the rest of my costume, nestled into my hand. With the Undersiders on the back foot following the events of my arrival - it was a minor miracle I'd gotten away so soon, so cleanly, before the reality of what they were in this world, at least, had poisoned my future - and Accord's arrivistes battling the Empire, the city had seen a flowering of minor villains.
Uber and Leet were the most annoying, though. Some things stayed the same regardless of the dimension.
My swarm gathered as we walked. In public, for the PR which was a necessity - so easy to see why, now that I was on the inside, had been on the inside - I had to use butterflies and ladybugs. In actual cape combat? Hornets and horseflies, black widows and brown recluses. Dennis laughed, a little nervously, said 'she's going Biblical!' whenever it properly massed, which made Carlos frown, because of course it did.
"Situation?" Sophia asked, quieter. We had a routine worked out. Best Ward pair in the business. Took pride in that, even if - again - it would have sounded beyond farcical not so long ago.
We were closer in, at the boundaries of the derelict lot, wooden fencing largely rotten through my height and half again shielding us from their view. But not them from mine. Crawling termites gazed up, perching flies down.
"About ten metres of open ground from the fence to them," I said. "They've got that camera drone but it's focused only on whatever it is up they're up to. Don't know what Uber's doing, Leet's got a - looks like a grenade launcher, but all done up in orange and blue. Fiddling with it. No henchmen I can see."
"Clear."
We waited. Reinforcements were still minutes away, and we were far too close to risk idle chatter. Besides, we could hear what they were saying.
"You said it would work, Leet."
"And it did, I'm telling you - "
"Look, man, I'm not judging. But I don't know how long the commercials will hold the fans off. We can't - wait. Do you hear that?"
"I don't think I hear anything?" Leet said, glancing around tremulously. The rest of my insects, the swarm hidden with Sophia and I behind the walls, settled down yet further. None in the air, none ready to move. It'd slow them but that was a price I'd pay to avoid detection.
Too late.
"You know what," Uber said, sounding decisive. "Let's move to the other set. It'll buy us some more time with the audience, anyway."
I blocked out whatever else they said. Opened the channel to Sophia, Chris, and Protectorate dispatch. "They're getting ready to move, I don't know how much time we have. Can we go in?"
Buzzing static as we waited.
Then, Miss Militia, put through dispatch. "You're clear to engage. Our ETA is 3 minutes."
"Roger," that was Sophia, speaking for her and me and I could hear the smile in her voice. She liked this work best. "Breaching now."
And then we moved.
She dashed forward, phasing through the fence, crossbows up. I pursued the simpler expedient of kicking it down - one, two, three blows - even as my swarm descended. Wood splintered and gave way, crashing back, a gangplank and I stepped through, on.
I caught Uber around the face, the nose, the mouth with squadrons of hornets, dive-bombing in. Sophia's tranq-bolts whistled past, barely dodged. Leet was standing apart, separate, and I blocked him with a cloud of flies - sent another tendril in towards him even as the ground seemed to erupt with ants, spiders, centipedes. This wasn't like that fight in front of the storage lockers, so long ago. They'd given me time to prepare and space to do it. Their mistake.
"Leet!" Uber's voice, high and panicked. "Do something - "
Leet swore, loud and furious as my swarm came in. Turned a dial, raised his launcher and I yelled - dived - something thumped - a crackling wave of blue-red-green energy, coruscating and arcing out from - somewhere - I thudded to concrete. My bugs were - still there. Not swarming, not the ones in the immediate vicinity. I called on them, cast about, was Sophia; Sophia was fine, too.
"What the fuck?" That was Leet. A nasal tone. Standing a bare handful of metres from me, but he hadn't been that close.
"What - you're a - " Uber. Backing away. No weapon in his hands, no mask on his face. That wasn't - what had happened? What had Leet done?
Sophia sprung at Uber, dropping her bows, wielding a bolt like a knife. Over in moments, Uber unprepared, collapsing to the ground unconscious even as my swarm re-gathered itself around Leet. He raised his hands. They were shaking, and he moved stiffly, as though recently injured. None of that hesitancy before. "Please, Skitter, don't hurt me."
The name stopped me dead in my tracks. No one should know that. I hadn't told anyone. And certainly not Uber and Leet. Had they - was I -
"Weaver?" Sophia asked, out loud. Tilted her head at the prostrate cape. "Think this is some kind of game?"
"I don't know," I said. Blanketed their camera drone, bobbing up towards the scene, with a cloud of flies, filled its audio. Looked at Leet. "Who did you say I was?"
He gulped. "I - you're - you're Skitter. Aren't you? In a new costume? With the Undersiders?"
I spoke into the radio channel to Sophia. "I think," I said, with a quietness born of shock, and confusion, and a strange bubbling half-delight half-fear, "that we've been thrown into the world I came from."
A pause. It stretched.
"Mind if I tranq this one?" she asked, out loud. Not responding. Leet's eyes widened, a hand raised - the bolt found exposed flesh. He was out cold in seconds. The blinded camera drone took a second bolt, pin-point accurate, moments later.
She took off her mask. That alone spoke volumes.
"Are you sure?" she asked, dry and flint-sharp and precisely, definitely controlled. Apportioned into a tidy box. Therapy technique, I was pretty sure.
Mine clicked off too, overpressure seals disengaging with a hiss. "I don't know for certain. Maybe it's another universe altogether with another me but - I don't know." I was about to say that was unlikely, improbable, but - so was everything that had happened to me since, well, since I'd been put in that locker.
Probably could have interrogated Uber and Leet. Not that I thought they'd be very useful.
"PRT radio bands are the same," she said. "I can still listen in. Just heard Missy balling out Dennis. Weird."
"If this is my world," I said, and the notion still made me clumsy on my feet. I pushed everything away into the swarm. "If this is my world," I said again, "then I'm Skitter. I don't know how much time has passed or - or anything. But I'm a villain."
The fear was too obvious to need to point out.
Sophia stepped closer, raised a hand - stopped herself before she touched my shoulder. Something she did with - with the old Taylor.
"Hey," she said, softly. Not acrid evaluation, not holding herself together. "We know the regs. Maybe you were a villain, but you've been a Ward for a lot longer, you've helped a lot more people than you ever hurt. It'll be alright."
"You're sure?"
"Only one way to find out." A quick smile, half-strained, another flash of Blink. "Besides, not like you have the best track record with dimension hopping. Just saying."
I snorted a laugh at that, some minor distraction and it worked. She wasn't wrong.
"Okay," I said. "Probably best if I make the call." A deep breath, a toggled switch. Then. "Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is a dimensionally displaced PRT asset, Directive 507 Section 45. I say again, mayday, mayday, mayday - "