Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

2010

A giant serpent humped unnaturally out of the waters of Boston Harbour. If it were anything else, Splicer figured that there would be panicking civilians, but at this point, most everyone had been desensitized to the presence of Fauxgopogo — as Blasto had affectionately named him.

In a way, Splicer was a little disappointed. It had been fun making crowds run away screaming from her hyperefficient algae-eating pet, but it was also nice when she could just wave to people as she was ferried down the Charles River. There was something to be said about reactions. It was important to play to the crowd, to riff on or subvert expectations; to know when to give them what they wanted to see, and when not to.

In most cases, they wanted to see the heroes win, which was always a crowd-pleaser, but boring if overused. Fortunately, giant monsters didn’t lose their charm, and she could use that to balance things a little.

Back when she first got her powers, she struggled with the conundrum of how to use them. There were a nigh-infinite number of applications for her abilities. Fortunately, before she’d thoroughly neutralized him, Jack Slash had taught her a very valuable lesson, and when she met Blasto some months later, he helped her refine it: Superpowers weren’t about good vs. evil, or right vs. wrong. They weren’t about making the world a better or worse place. Superpowers were about the opportunities they presented, and figuring out how best to apply them. While monologuing like a smug dimwit, Jack had claimed his work was art, and Blasto seemed to share that opinion, though he was far less stupid about it. However after seeing the population of Boston cheering for their Wards as they wiped the floor with one of Blasto’s monsters, Riley had what she could only describe as an epiphany:

Powers were theater! And life was the stage.

2005

When Riley left home, she was only six-years-old. She felt a lot older, though. She couldn’t exactly stay with mommy and daddy though. She’d miss them, and her brother, and Muffles, but after what she did to save them, she didn’t know how to face them. Also, she wasn’t feeling right.

She had, after all, sort of filleted a grown man on her kitchen counter and put his brain in mommy’s food processor for safekeeping. And then buried his body by the tree in the backyard. But that was only part of it.

After hours, or maybe days, of desperately trying to fix mommy and daddy and Drew and Muffles as Jack killed them all over and over again, she’d finally realized that he wasn’t going to stop killing them.

The words ‘Be a good girl’ as her mother died again etched themselves into her mind like a curse.

“What’s wrong, Poppet? Don’t you love your mommy?”

The smug self-assurance coating his voice like oil had stopped making her scared or angry or sick. 

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No. I don’t love mommy.”

Not enough to do what she said.

When the paring knife she was using as a scalpel suddenly dug into Jack’s neck, he hadn’t seen it coming. And that was because she wasn’t looking to hurt Jack Slash. She was going to make him better.

When she was finished, Jack Slash’s entire nervous system had been recoded to function as a five-legged machine she’d rigged up out of a mixmaster and the aforementioned food processor. The mixmaster was for the plastic casing. The food processor was for Jack’s brain. Not that there were any sharp implements that he could use, or even create. The nerves from his arms and legs were all attached to rubber handles from a set of serving utensils. Attempting to sharpen them would not be a fun experience. The legs were also detachable, so if he started making a fuss, she could just immobilize him.

Putting her family back together had been so much easier after Jack stopped cutting them apart. She’d also pulled all the memories of the attack out of her family’s brains, with the exception of the first few minutes, just to explain their injuries. But there was still a problem. Life couldn’t just go back to normal now. She realized she wouldn’t be able to stay with mommy and daddy. She wasn’t lying to Jack when she said she didn’t love mommy anymore. She didn’t know where those feelings went, but she couldn’t find them anymore. So she did the only thing she could; she went looking for them with her new friend.

Then she made sure that he could never get his body back by deboning him and filleting him like a salmon. Something about that seemed like it should have felt very wrong, but again, she wasn’t feeling right. It was for the best anyway, right? This way he had no chance of hurting anyone ever again. She found about a hundred and fifty dollars in his jeans pocket. She wasn’t sure why Jack would need money considering that he killed almost anyone he met. He’d just take stuff from dead people. The more she thought about it, the creepier the possibilities became, so she stopped trying to figure out that puzzle, and just took his money. She’d use it better than him, anyway.

Riley didn’t bring much with her when she left the house. A few packages’ worth of granola bars, some of her daddy’s tools, like his set of tiny screwdrivers, a regular philips-head  screwdriver, a wrench, and some needle nose pliers. She also took her toothbrush and toothpaste, some dental floss, several rolls of thread, and some sewing needles. Her sleeping bag from that one sleepover day from day camp hung from the back. She packed her spare clothes in the sleeping bag.

At the very bottom of her backpack, buried under everything else, were Jack’s ‘spider-box’ as she called the mechanical creation with his brain inside it, and a box containing Jack’s skull. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt like she might need it. Something about his teeth. The last thing she brought were the paring knife, and Jack’s knives. She beat him fair and square. That meant she got to take his stuff.

Jack probably wasn’t too thrilled with his new body since it couldn’t swing a knife, but it was so much more efficient! He didn’t need to eat, or sleep, and he could see and hear without eyes or ears. Also, his old body was buried in her backyard, and that took forever, so there wasn’t much she could do about that.

Eventually she found herself in Boston, and that was where she found herself caught on the fringes of a fight between a branch of the city’s Wards and a gigantic creature that by her estimation was an ingenious creature that looked like no animal she’d ever seen. It was roughly the size of a city bus, and had a lithe body coated in reddish fur. Quills flared up along its spine as it reared up on its hind legs and took a swipe at one of the defending capes with bear-like claws. Four of them and a dewclaw. Its head was roughly tube-shaped, almost equine, but for its long muzzle with jagged teeth, and pitch-dark eyes. Riley was fascinated. Chances were that the creature was either not going to survive, or be captured and retained by the PRT for study, but it had to be the creation of another biotinker, she was sure of it. She had to find the person who made it! She just had to!

Once the threat was dealt with, immobilized in containment foam and carted off in a truck, and people started to come out of hiding, she wandered over to one of the capes who’d fought the creature.

“Hello, sir. I’m new here. I just moved to Boston with my papa and mama. Are there a lot of funny monsters like that one here?”

The man sighed.

“Yeah, Blasto churns out a new freak of nature every couple of weeks. We’re usually able to contain them, but if you ever see one, make sure to call the PRT immediately. And never — …wait. No. Always make sure to keep a safe distance between it and yourself. Can you remember to do that for me, little girl?”

“Uh huh!” she said, eagerly nodding along, playing into her appearance as much as she could. Fortunately, he didn’t ask what she was doing all by herself in the middle of Boston, and she didn’t have to fumble for an explanation. He was probably preoccupied dealing with the aftermath of the whole messy affair.

But she wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. It had been way easier than she expected, and she had what she wanted.

Blasto.

It was a place to start. Now all she had to do was get herself situated.

It took a few days, but she eventually found the storefront from a bakery that had probably gone out of business only a few weeks earlier. The lock wasn’t a problem for her, and once she was inside, she found that it wasn’t unbearably dusty, and the power was still on. It was also an especially lucky find because the break room still had a fridge and a microwave. She obviously couldn’t stay there forever, but it would be a fine stand in until she had a better place to go.

In the meantime, now that she had a fridge, she was going to do something she had wanted to do ever since she left home:

Spend all of Jack Slash’s money!

She may not have thought this through.

She had bought milk, waffles, soda, and all the cereals that her parents would only buy for her once a month. Oh, and neapolitan ice cream. Everything, including running away, was better with ice cream. And because she was being a good girl, she bought a few bags of peas and corn, too. Some pears and bananas, and a juicy watermelon. Then three loaves of bread, peanut butter, and seedless strawberry jam, because the clumpy stuff with seeds was gross. She also bought a bunch of toiletries, because soap was important.

There was no way she was getting all of this stuff back to base. Willikers, she was only twice as tall as the shopping bags!

Using Jack’s money was one thing, but how was she going to do this? She didn’t want to throw all her new food away. Could she convince someone to drive her back to the bakery? No, she didn’t want to get too much attention. She only had five dollars and twenty cents left so she couldn’t get a taxi. Maybe—

…Was someone shouting?

She looked up from the shopping bags laying on the sidewalk in front of her to see some weirdo with lots of metal accessories and too many piercings on his face run past her carrying a shopping cart.

Hmmmm…

Stealing was bad.

Buuuuuut… what if she just stole it from the person who stole it first? Was it still bad if she stole it from a bad guy? Because she could really use that sho—

—scrrEEEEECH!—

—thud—

Riley wasn’t sure whether it was worse that the boy was probably bleeding out, or that the driver that hit him stopped for a moment, but then still drove off. That implied understanding and making a choice not to care. Whoever was in that car was a bad person and their mother would be ashamed.

Fortunately, she could fix this. She’d kept the sewing needles from the day when she left home with her ever since, and one of the things she just bought was more dental floss. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it’d be good enough. She ran to a payphone, called 9-1-1 just like she’d been taught in school, named the intersection, and then hurried back to her patient.

The truth was that she didn’t want to operate on people again just yet. Not after last time. But she didn’t want this boy to die, either. Actually, she found she didn’t really care, but she knew she shouldn’t want the boy to die. Even if he was a weirdo with four lip piercings and wearing so much eyeshadow that he could probably drink it out of a thimble.

She got to work quickly, and by the time the ambulance arrived, she had managed to ensure that he wouldn’t die on the way to the hospital.

And, you know, run off with the shopping cart he stole. Her ice cream had melted by the time she got home, which kinda sucked, but she did a good deed today. And if anyone questioned why he had floss holding a bunch of his muscles together, they’d hopefully just pass it off as some passing cape and would never suspect a little girl of stitching internal wounds shut.

Since she was being a good girl, she said thank you to Jack for letting her use his money. How he had money on it was a question she didn’t want to ask herself, mostly because if her feelings went back to normal, she didn’t think she’d want to know.

Jack had never explicitly stated that she could use his money anyway, but his opinion was fairly low on her scale of Important Things To Pay Attention To.

Now that she had food and a roof over her head, it was time to get to work.

It was going to take some doing. If her Mysterious, Interesting Biotinker Future-Friend #1 a.k.a. Blasto-Probably was smart, they wouldn’t just push their creations out their front door. She started by recruiting a few seagulls. Sure, a few people would be confused by the sight of seagulls wearing cybernetic implants, but it wasn’t like they were shooting lasers from their beaks or anything.

Wait…

Laser seagulls… The very notion gave her butterflies in the best possible ways. The things you could do with an army of seagulls with lasers… With power like that, she could… dare she consider it? Rule the world!

…okay, probably not the whole world, but maybe at least twelve square yards of it? Yeah, that sounded reasonable.

For now though, just little cameras on top of their heads. The cameras were set up to broadcast a neural signal that went directly into her left eye as long as she had some light. If she kept it covered, she wouldn’t see anything. So she could wear an eyepatch to keep from getting disoriented. It still took some time to get used to seeing dozens of different viewpoints all at once, though.

Laser seagulls… her mind kept wandering back to that idea. She could definitely add them as a feature.

Until then, she had to find a way to keep herself afloat. There were already rumors circulating Boston about a mysterious cape who had sewn up an injured teenager using nothing but dental floss, so she decided to play into that. She went to the library and created a PHO account on one of the computers there. And then she had to go home because she couldn’t think of a name. After three days of wracking her brain, she just gave up and went with The Surgeon. She chose not to verify herself. The folks online would do their speculation, and she would be off the hook because no one was going to expect this cape to be a child.

Unfortunately, a few days later, not only did the power cut out, but she got caught. By a cape, no less.

…

Why was she a cartoon?

“So, Riley, you can’t go home?” said the woman with the curiously cartoony face. She had said her name was Sylvan, which was probably her cape name. “Can you tell me why?”

“I don’t think you’ll believe me,” said Riley.

They were sitting in the back of the bakery, the room only illuminated by the glowing neon lines running along the woman’s red tinkertech armor.

“I dunno. I’d believe a lot of things.”

“It’s sort of a many-part not-believing sorta thing,” she added.

“We live in a world with superpowers. Look, I’m carrying a sword that’s as tall as I am,” the woman gestured over her shoulder with her thumb at the admittedly massive slab of metal. She smiled at Riley, and it was more reassuring than she expected it to be. “So try me.”

“Jack Slash killed my parents.”

The smile on the woman’s face withered and died.

“Oh.”

“And my brother and my dog. I fixed them, but not before he messed me up. I can’t feel things right anymore.”

Sylvan’s expression had grown deadly serious.

“What do you mean by ‘fixed?’” she asked. She sounded scared, though Riley didn’t understand why.

Riley shrugged.

I sewed them up, restarted their brains, and they’re fine now, but I don’t really think I want to see inside another person for a while.”

“Wait, you’re a cape? No, forget that, you can bring people back from the dead?! ”

“Um… I guess? But I don’t want to join the heroes.”

“Why not?”

“Because I also sort-of killed someone.”

Sylvan’s face was… conflicted? Was that the right word? She needed to get an English textbook as soon as possible. Even if she wasn’t going to school, she couldn’t fall behind in everything.

“How did it happen? Was it when you triggered?”

“No, it was just a little after. I realized that Jack was never going to stop killing mommy and daddy and my brother and Muffles — he was our dog. So I cut his head off. He’s still alive, technically, but he’s a brain preserved in a sealed jar. I wanted to study him later.”

Riley was worried this would happen. Sylvan looked upset. Was it because she killed Jack, or did she say something bad?

“Okay, stop it. Riley, people have been trying to kill Jack Slash for decades. No one’s been able to do it. It’s not that I don’t believe your family got hurt, but there’s no way you were able to overpower Jack Slash.”

“I didn’t. I just cut into his neck and he didn’t see it coming. He would have gone into shock, passed out, and once I repaired the brain damage and sealed him up in mommy’s food processor, he was trapped. He’ll never hurt anyone again, but I’m keeping his brain. There are so many things I could learn about parahumans using it. He wasn’t that hard to beat either. I’ve been wondering ever since why he’s been such a big deal.”

“Yeah, you and everyone else. But there’s no way you were able to do that.”

“I have his skull in my bag over there.” She pointed to the wall where she left her bag. “It’s in a box. I also have his knives. Do people know what kind of knives he used? The rest of him is in my family’s backyard. I kind of cut up the body a lot to make sure that if he ever managed to escape from me, which is unlikely since I can remove his legs, so he’d never be able to get it back.”

Silence.

Sylvan’s mouth hung open.

“Do you want to come with me for a few hours?”

“Ummm… why?” Riley asked.

“You have an urgent appointment at the bank.”

Huh?

She had an appointment? Who made it? When was it for?! She didn’t know! Wasn’t someone supposed to tell her if she had to see someone? Also, why the bank?

“I’m going to show you something,” said Sylvan, pulling her phone out of a slot in her armor, she tapped a few things on the touch screen and turned the phone around to show Riley the text on the screen.

Jack Slash

Wanted for:

• Murder in the first and second degrees
• Conspiracy to commit murder
• Manslaughter
• Vehicular manslaughter
• Torture, both physical and psychological
• Public indecency
• Disturbing the peace
• Various other crimes

Reward: $19,000,000.00

“Oh,” said Riley, staring at the number. That was a very big number. How many boxes of Froot Loops would she be able to buy with nineteen million dollars? She could afford lots of snacks if she could get the reward. But… “How do I collect the reward if I don’t have a bank account?”

“That’s why we’re going to the bank before we hit up the PRT.”

Oh. Okay, that made sense. But wait…

“Aren’t you worried about me having a human skull in my backpack?”

“Normally I would be very concerned, but if it really is Jack’s, then I don’t think we have a problem. Also, I feel like killing Jack Slash is less like committing murder than it is like committing community service.”

Riley considered that for a moment, and decided she agreed.

Sylvan made her a bank account without any trouble. Just a small account that she could use to keep her allowance, but that very importantly didn’t have an upper limit on how much money could be stored. There was a very low rate of interest, which apparently meant that by leaving money in her account, it would turn into more money, but that didn’t seem very important. Even with lots of money, it was only a few extra dollars every year.

Once they moved on to the PRT to collect Jack’s bounty however, things got more complicated than she expected, though not for the reason she had expected. Instead of questioning her age, the PRT sent her to a holding cell while they identified the skull. Sylvan was nice enough to hang around outside with her, after fetching her a blanket, a pillow, and a few books that she offered to read to her. Riley decided that she liked Sylvan. Even if she did have a funny cartoon face.

Riley was wrong, though; they weren’t able to figure out who he was by checking his teeth, although they did ask him where the rest of him was, and she gave the agents who met with her her family’s address and told them to dig up her backyard around the tree.

“The DNA sample came back with a match,” said the PRT representative they sent to speak with her. “Jack Slash didn’t actually have any dental records or health records, but we still got one. There were a few instances where people managed to at least get a hit in against him, so there are blood samples we were able to compare against the organic material still left on the skull.”

“Stop,” Sylvan interrupted, holding up a hand. “What do you mean he doesn’t have dental records?”

“I mean he’s been to dentists, and he’s killed all of them the second they finished with him. There are no X-rays, there are no records, and he did the same to every doctor he ever visited,” the PRT representative explained. “Up until he was fifteen, he actually had never seen a doctor or a dentist in his life.”

“What the hell? How does that work?”

“Language, Ms. Sylvan.”

“Sorry.”

“It seems like he was never taken to a doctor or a dentist.”

“What?! And they weren’t arrested for child abuse?” Sylvan shouted, “…not that I give two shhh… uhh… not that I care what happened to that psychopath.”

“No one found out,” explained their host. “They lived in Plumsteadville. It’s a very small town in rural Pennsylvania, less than three-thousand residents. We’re investigating the situation, but it’s looking FUBAR. It seems likely that his mother gave birth at home and they kept the child hidden.”

“So, no medical records at all?” Sylvan confirmed.

“None. Anyway, once he made his first public appearance… well, you can imagine what happened to any health professionals he visited.”

Riley definitely could. The image her mind painted for her was actually more gruesome than what he did to her family. His only motivation was to hurt as many people in as many ways as he possibly could. It wasn’t like she had any particularly lofty ideals or anything, but he was irritatingly far below the baseline for what anyone should want to do.

At least they let her out of the cell after a few more hours. She was able to stop thinking about it. An important looking man shook her hand on the way out the door. That was silly.

Riley was just finishing up her latest operation when Sylvan came back to her lab. Mr. Pigeon #3’s stitches were all secure, and all that was left was to put the cast on. The poor thing looked pretty sad with most of the feathers on his left wing plucked, but she’d set the metacarpals, which was more important. The feathers would all regrow within a year, and after a few weeks, the broken bone would be fixed, and… well, pigeons didn’t really fly very much, but at least now not flying would be his choice, instead of his requirement.

It had been a few days since the visit to the PRT, and she wasn’t surprised that Sylvan had that ‘conflicted’ look on her face.

“The police are looking for you, and they know I’ve been helping you,” she said. “I can sort of understand why you’re worried about going back to your family, but are you sure you can’t at least visit to tell them you’re okay?”

“No. Mommy told me to be a good girl,” Riley murmured. “I know that a good girl would come home when her mommy and daddy call her, but a good girl also doesn’t tell lies. And a good girl also wouldn’t kill someone. Not even bad people. I don’t think even a bad girl would usually kill someone.”

What would she tell her parents if she saw them? Would she have to say she wasn’t hurt? That she was safe? Were they worried about her? Or maybe they were scared that she might do something bad? Good girls weren’t supposed to kill people after all. Not even bad people.

“I don’t think that they would hold it against you for stopping Jack Slash, of all people,” said the tinker.

“But things wouldn’t be the same. I wouldn’t be able to talk to them,” Riley whined.

Why did Sylvan have to take their side? She just didn’t get it. How could she understand what it was like not to be able to feel things like she was supposed to?

“Can’t you see that I’m too dangerous to be around my family?”

“You know, a lot of parahumans aren’t conscious of that. I mean, they can’t tell. That you can already gives you a leg up over them.”

On an intellectual level, Riley understood that Sylvan was trying to help. She probably saw a girl who had run away and actually wanted to go home despite claiming otherwise. What Sylvan didn’t know was how much Riley’s power was actually telling her.

Didn’t know what sorts of things she dreamed up just because she knew she could make them. Things like flesh-eating locusts that self-replicated upon exposure to sunlight. A virus that could wipe out humanity in a matter of months, completely asymptomatic until the host suddenly dropped dead. A bacterial strain that could turn living flesh necrotic and could spread unchecked throughout any living organism’s body.

These things weren’t things she would have difficulty with. They weren’t things she even felt an aversion to creating. She wanted to make them just to see if she could, and she knew she could. All it would take were a few petri dishes and some blood. Changing the As, Cs, Gs, and Ts in the DNA sequences in the right places, and she could unleash these things on the world. And Sylvan thought it was a good idea to send her back to her parents?

No way. It was obviously too dangerous. She wasn’t going. Riley could at least use money now, though. And she wasn’t blind to the fact that as long as the police were looking for her, she was putting Sylvan in a bad position. And even if the older tinker was being annoying about this, Riley liked Sylvan.

The truth was that she didn’t have much choice. If she didn’t want to mess with Sylvan’s life, she needed to leave.

How does a six-year-old human survive without food or water?

The answer, of course, was obvious: Just embrace autotrophy! Hair was tricky because it was on her head, but she managed. She just cooked up some dangerously powerful chemicals, got in the shower, and washed her hair with them in an experiment that she was compelled to inform Sylvan should not be tried at home.

There weren’t any nearby children, so she made do with the eighteen-year-old tinker.

Anyway, her hair would grow back in a few weeks, and until then, the autumn-colored leaves on her head would support her daily activities with photosynthesis! She really should have thought of this sooner: Everyone was going around eating three meals a day when they could just pour a bucket of water over their heads and stay out in the sun! Suckers. Everyone should have photosynthesis hair-leaves! Why would anyone take the less fuel efficient option?

So what if the compound she’d used on herself had a 40% chance of causing skin cancer within three days? Cancer was easy. Also, it had been five days now, so she at least was in the clear. The fish she had tested it on? He was having a bad day. And was probably going to have several more bad days before not having any more days of any kind whatsoever.

Luckily he was just a fish. Very few people cared about their opinions, and those who did often weren’t taken very seriously.

All in all, she was basically out of the danger zone.

…at least as long as bananas didn’t start growing from her ears, then she’d have a completely different but equally serious problem.

The important thing was that without using any of her money, she was able to avoid a lot of attention that she would normally get. She could start making withdrawls once the correct authorities forgot why they were watching her account. Riley wouldn’t have any trouble hiding from police trying to send her home.

The next time a big monster showed up, she caught it immediately via her aerial surveillance network. It was basically a giraffe if giraffes were lizards. And in a world where superpowers and biotinkers existed, who really had the right to tell a giraffe it had to be a mammal? She was sure this one’s parents told him that he could be anything, and he decided to be a brontosaurus.

Its neck was more snakelike than a giraffe’s, and far, far more flexible. It also had the ability to spit globs of what looked like regurgitated food suffused with some sort of biomass capable of electrogenesis. Icky. But also way cool. What did that thing have in its stomach?

Unfortunately, just because she was interested didn’t mean she had the time to check it out. And just because she saw where it showed up didn’t give her an easy means of finding where it actually came from. It had climbed out of a runoff drain from the city’s sewers. Meaning that Blasto, whoever he was, could be anywhere in or under Boston. This complicated things, but she wasn’t a quitter. She just poured herself another bowl of Froot Loops, and started working on a new plan.

What Riley churned out after a few hours was similar to what she had done when she first arrived in Boston; after settling in — though before finding her defunct bakery hideout — she made it her first order of business to say hello to all the local fish. Even the ones at the supermarket, staring up at her in that forlorn way that only the recently aquatically deceased were capable of. Why she did that she couldn’t remember, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

This time, she was going to make friends with all the local rats. From her lair inside the bakery’s back room, she concocted a pheromone pill that would allow her to produce a scent that would make the rat population docile and friendly while she was around. She could take one tablet to produce the pheromone passively from her pores, and two to make the effect more potent. Three tablets and she’d be able to understand the rats like they were speaking English, but she’d have a terrible headache afterward and start feeling the effects herself though. And she didn’t want to drug herself. You were supposed to say no to drugs. That’s what they taught her in school.

She also went to the library and did an online search on the kinds of diseases sewer rats typically carried, and then made counters to all of them. After mixing them together and putting them into a spray bottle, she was confident that Boston was going to have the healthiest rats ever.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to find any more raw materials to build spy cameras out of, so she found herself faced with only two options: Either start asking around town like a very suspicious little girl, or take three pills and talk with the rats.

Decisions, decisions…

‘Food first! Then tell big rat where big not-rat thing is!’

Riley dropped a banana on the floor of the sewer, and the rodent in front of her dug into it with gusto.

It took her a while to give the rats their shots, but fortunately, thanks to the pheromones, they didn't hold it against her.

Rats apparently had very simple thoughts. Most of them thought almost only about food, mating, and avoiding predators, and their ‘speech’ came in halting patterns of simple words. Ultimately, the closest she could get them to understanding what she was looking for were with the words ‘big’ ‘scary’ ‘thing,’ all of which were simple enough concepts for them to grasp. They all pointed westward with their snouts.

It got a little awkward after that. After getting back aboveground she went through several variations of ‘what’s over that way?’ before getting the answer; Allston. The neighborhood was apparently home to Blastgerm, which seemed to confirm what she got from her rodent intelligence network. She had narrowed the range of her search down significantly. Victory was in sight.

Or so she thought.

Blasto was pretty good at staying hidden from people who wanted to find him. It made sense, she guessed. If he wasn’t hard to find, he’d probably be in jail.

This delay did mean that she had to move back in with Sylvan after two months when her leaves fell out and her hair started growing back. She decided that next time she needed to achieve photosynthesis, she was going to make her hair into a wig first.

2007

One-and-a-Half Years Later…

Riley groaned, stretching out behind her worktable. This was getting kinda wacky. She’d been hanging around town forever and all she had achieved was…

Well, actually, she’d gotten a lot done while living with Sylvan.

Claire. Her name was Claire. Riley was still getting used to that. As long as they were living in the same house together, Claire had decided to trust her with her civilian identity. Riley knew she should be touched, but like everything else, it felt muted. Still, she appreciated it.

…although it had been kinda freaky when Sylvan took her head off and it turned out that the cartoony face wasn't really her face, but a boring helmet with a tinkertech projector. Claire's real face had asian features that would probably be considered attractive, and mousy brown hair. The rest of her armor was equally boring when her tinkertech was turned off. Everything about her appearance was either holographic or illusory. Tricky tricky. And super cool.

The year was 2007, and she had done all sorts of strange things with her power since she’d gotten it.

First off was her inoculation of the local pigeon population against Bird Flu, Regular Flu, Centaur Flu (her own invention) and syphilis.

She also invented Centaur Flu. It was like the Regular Flu, but with more man…horse…(?)ness…(?) Also a fatality rate of 20% among her lab fish, which were genetically predisposed to have human-like immune systems.

She kept Centaur Flu behind glass. She didn’t want it getting out into the wild.

Oh! She had updated her spider-box design. They could now provide safe injections of deadly diseases (and the vaccines to deadly diseases) while playing Bicycle by Queen. For some reason, she couldn’t get the rest of the playlist to work…

Jack’s model couldn’t play music, he hadn’t earned the privilege.

Creating Banana Syndrome was largely an accident that happened while creating her photosynthesis leaves. It wouldn’t solve food shortages since the banana growth consumed nutrients from the organism the bananas were growing on, but it still could work well as a prank.

Oh! Right! How could she forget?! Laser seagulls! They were seagulls! With lasers! Seagulls! Lasers! They just went together. Like peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and bananas. Or peanut butter and rotisserie chicken! Okay, that had been a horrible mistake that she and Claire had agreed never to speak of again, but the point was that she had done it, it was possible, and they could go together even if it was a horrible idea and hazardous to the natural ecosystem. Even at her early age, she knew there were mistakes so dangerous that you just couldn’t admit to making them.

The seagulls came in really handy, too! When Glass Jaw got into a fight with Aerobat, he managed to subdue the Protectorate cape… right up until an army of seagulls with burning-hot laser beams swarmed him like he was an abandoned cart of french fries on the beach. Glass Jaw was known for his ability to collect glass to wear like armor, and then detonate it outward if something managed to pierce it. Her seagulls’ lasers were successful in that regard. They were less successful when it came to surviving his glass explosion, but there were few things more humiliating than winning a fight with your assailants only to find yourself covered in three square feet of dead seagulls. They truly were rats with wings, and as fun as they were, Riley wasn’t going to deny that they didn’t waste five minutes finding new diseases to riddle their bodies with after she had given them their shots. Rude!

Didn’t anyone care enough to show some real appreciation? Truly, tinkers were cursed with being rejected by those they sought to impress. In Riley’s case—that day, at least—it was the seagulls. For Armsmaster, it was Hero. Though in Hero’s defense, it wasn’t his fault that he was dead and couldn’t appreciate the work of one of his biggest fans. For the now Birdcaged String Theory, it was herself.

As it turned out, laser seagulls did not give her the power to rule the world. It was simple really. As that British guy in that movie she watched the other day said, supreme executive power derived from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. By that logic, it only made sense that a farcical avian ceremony with funny birds shooting laser beams probably wasn’t going to work either.

Speaking of seagulls, she had long since removed the neural transmitter allowing her to see through their eyes. It was useful in a pinch, but until she finished working on a control module for ocular implants, she was leaving it out. Come to think of, she probably should have started with that.

As an homage to Claire, Riley had decided to invent the world’s first ever biologically projected hologram. It worked, too! She could now project holograms of her memories from her eyes. Unfortunately they only worked if she consumed twice her body weight in pistachios within twenty-four hours, so it was kinda useless. That had been a pretty bad day. Cool experiment, though.

She’d even temporarily cured the common cold. Which resulted in her learning something that she probably would never have discovered otherwise: Among the things your powers don’t warn you about is that the common cold will remember your insult and will return carrying the unquenchable fires of vengeance. She didn’t get a fever, but she was sneezing so often that she could barely get any tinkering done for almost two weeks.

Her crowning achievement to date though, was Coyotemera. She was Riley’s first pet since Muffles and was a completely symbiotic organism made from the pieces of several other animals. Regrettably, many, Claire included, saw poor Coyotemera as a Frankensteinian monstrosity due to her three heads, but Riley made sure to love her unconditionally. Even if she did scratch up her arm that one time.

Coyotemera started out as a local coyote and a raccoon that had gotten into a fight, rolled into the road, and been struck by a car. Neither would have survived had she not cannibalized both bodies for parts. Only about half of her internal organs came from her original body, and the others were transplanted from the raccoon. This wouldn’t have worked if Riley had been a normal veterinarian. The coyote’s body had taken a real beating on both ends. The raccoon’s tail replaced the coyote’s as did the raccoon’s forepaws.

The coyote had also sustained significant brain damage, and while Riley could repair some of it, there was no chance of a complete recovery. Thus, the Coyote’s head was shifted slightly to the left, and the raccoon, whose head was undamaged, became the dominant head. She also got a great deal on a live chicken intended for slaughter at home — for the discerning individual with obviously disturbed tastes — so she put the chicken’s head to the right of the raccoon’s. From the chicken, Coyotemera would receive the savagery of its direct ancient ancestor, tarbosaurus, of the tyrannosauridae family.

Or maybe she’d just develop an inherent taste for corn. These sorts of things were unpredictable. You could never tell how they would work out. Whatever the result, there was no question that the chicken was the most aggressive head.

Riley had worked very hard to ensure that the animals in question would get along no matter how nature dictated they should interact. She had the raccoon’s innate intelligence and penchant for cleaning her food, while maintaining the coyote’s natural aggression, territorial behavior, fondness for anvils, and trust in ACME Corp.

It was almost time for Coyotemera’s daily walk when something shook the house around them. Riley looked up from her current project and looked at Claire, who was doing some tinkering of her own at the workstation opposite hers. They nodded with tacit understanding and hurried outside. A massive pillar of smoke billowed into the sky from the direction of downtown Boston.

“That’s a lot of smoke,” Riley noted. It didn’t look like anything was on fire, but obviously something pretty bad had just happened.

Riley heard a strange whistling sound. Before she had chance to figure out what it was — or what hit her — Claire had picked her up and took off at a sprint.

And then everything was exploding.

Chapter Text

2007

The street was exploding, and it wasn’t her fault.

What? It was true!

Claire had just barely managed to grab Riley and make a few strides before she was blown off her feet and everything was heat and sound and pain. The older girl was helping her to her feet before she really regained awareness, which is probably why she didn’t notice that they started running back toward Claire’s house. She felt the garage door open as much as she heard it, but Claire had needed to force it up over her head to get it out of the way. Apparently the mechanism had been damaged in the blast.

“Do good girls break the speed limit?”

Be a good girl.

Riley’s daze abandoned her, replaced by sudden nausea and brief sensation like ice running up and down her spine that she couldn’t quite place. Well that hadn’t happened for a while. Weird.

Then her brain decided to process what Claire had asked her.

“I guess it’s probably okay when things are being explodey.”

She found herself being hoist onto the back of Sylvan’s motorcycle, just as a group of two men and two women appeared at the end of the driveway. All of them wore clothes with incredibly weird cuts. One of the girls’ outfits looked like it was all a single piece of fabric that had been wrapped around her body in a very specific way. Even the segments that covered the important parts were just more wrapping. The strips rarely overlapped, and didn’t crease anywhere, not to mention it managed to look like it was fitted to her, so despite its chaotic appearance, it was highly likely that putting it on required a very specific routine.

“Wow, look at you. And people tell me my fashion statement is out there,” said Claire.

“I think you hit the wrong house, Gunsmith,” said a woman with half of her face covered in painful-looking, brightly coloured pustules.

“Hmph. The barrel shifted. Doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not like anyone in this fancy little development deserves any better,” growled a man carrying a large… thing. It could have been a gun, if it didn’t look like it was made out of coral. It was also weirdly floppy.

“Fair enough. Just more props for the show. And we caught our target anyway.”

“What gave me away?” huffed Claire.

“Might not be you. You’re both carrying some very specialized tools on your belts. You could both be capes, or one of you could be a friend. Won’t save you anyway,” said the disfigured woman. “Word on the street is that there’s a biotinker playing veterinarian to all Boston’s stray animals. If you can do that, then it stands to reason that you can probably heal humans, too. Even if you can’t, it’s still a risk we’d rather not take.”

Claire hopped onto her bike. “Hold on as tight as you can, kid.”

“Oh, you won’t be getting away.”

“Try and stop me. This motorcycle finished the Kessel Run in only twelve parsecs.”

One of the capes scoffed.

“A parsec is a unit of distance, not—”

“Not the point,” Claire shot him down.

“You know what moves faster than a motorcycle?” said Gunsmith. “Bullets.”

“You know what leaves a mark no matter what it hits?” Claire snarked back. “A motorcycle.”

She turned the key, and gunned the engine, tearing out of the driveway. The four parahumans trying to box them in barely avoided being made into roadkill.

“They broke the Unwritten Rules.”

Right. Riley remembered Claire telling her about those. The gist was that you didn’t expose the identities of other capes, and didn’t go after them in their homes. These creeps did one of those things. Possibly both.

A heavy thunk sounded behind them and Claire swerved. Something burst into a cloud of bright blue gas just behind them. Several more thunks and Claire started to turn at the next corner, only for it to suddenly be blocked off by a thick cloud of multicolored gases.

“Dammit!”

“Language.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, not now,” growled the tinker, manually turning the bike aside and accelerating out of the way, hopefully before whatever was in the gas reached them. Riley decided that she was going to run some tests once they were out of danger anyway.

Another cloud of brightly colored gas erupted in front of them and this time there was no chance of avoiding it.

“Fuck!”

“I’ll deal with it, don’t freak out! I’m more worried about why there are new villains in town.”

“The local Protectorate recently did a crackdown on the local villains. They removed most of them from power, but it was a really shortsighted move on their part. They just created a power vacuum. A crack-ton of new villains have been spotted around town already. These lunatics must be another new group. Do your gums hurt?”

Uh oh.

“Yeah. Um… they do.”

“Shit.”

Riley didn’t bother reprimanding her for foul language this time. This was bad. Regular gum disease was often linked to heart conditions, but with tinkertech, who knew what it could do?

There was silence for a minute, then—

“We have to assume we’re infectious.”

Claire was probably right.

“Can we go to a drug store?” Riley asked anyway.

“How many people would we infect by doing that?”

“Less than we will if we don’t.”

It wasn’t necessarily true, but if it gave Claire some peace of mind, that was good enough. Riley wasn’t going to lay down and die to whatever chemical compound or tinkertech disease those capes had concocted.

The older tinker was quiet for some time. Riley started to worry that she wouldn’t allow her to get resupply.

“I have a better idea.”

Claire started by calling her parents, probably to tell them not to go back home for a few days, or even to the neighbourhood, then called someone she called Tattoo, or something like that. She also told him to get a good gas mask.

They didn’t meet up, but whoever this guy was, he managed to get them a bag full of syringes, rubbing alcohol, bleach, detergent, oil, several hypodermic needles, eyedroppers… really, it was the works. Fortunately, she still had her knives, so she could draw a sample of her blood without needing a specialized machine.

The simplest solution to their lack of a base of operations was to rent a motel room. Fortunately for their situation, the attack on Claire’s house wasn’t made in a vacuum. Even now, Riley could hear distant gunshots, and the explosive impacts of cape fights. It seemed like Boston had fallen into anarchy, and they clearly weren’t the only victims. It was annoying, though, not knowing what was going on.

It took Riley half an hour to get things up, and two hours to finish running her tests, by which point she had already lost two teeth and was seeing some pretty disgusting gum discoloration. Actually curing the tinkertech illness wasn’t as easy, but it was just a matter of time. If it wasn’t a perfect organism, she’d find a way to kill it without too much risk.

Claire spent most of this time making calls to various people. The PRT was going to send in a team of people with hazmat suits to run their own tests on the neighbourhood’s air quality.

A few hours into their stay, someone dropped off some new clothes for both of them. Claire was really thinking ahead. She also spent a lot of time in the parking lot cleaning her bike. Fair, but Riley was still going to suggest she leave it covered in biohazard warnings for a few weeks before returning for it.

By the time she finished working, in addition to losing teeth and the horrible, itchy gum decay, they were both experiencing weakness in their extremities, seeing bruising in their arms, and having chest pain. All signs of arterial damage. A quick injection put a stop to that.

“Whew,” Claire breathed a sigh of relief, “I’ll admit, I was getting a little worried.”

“Aww, don’t you have any confidence in me?” Riley said in a false whimper. “Still, our clothes are infection vectors. Once we clean ourselves off, we can burn our old stuff, and rent a new room. Then I’m going to start working on fixing our teeth.”

“Wait, you can do that?”

“Normally your permanent teeth start developing at the same time as your baby teeth. Natural tooth development takes almost twenty years from the time of conception, but I can cut that time into quarters with some minor gene therapy and tinker nonsense. It means that once your gums heal, the rest of your teeth are going to fall out again over the next five years, but you’ll get new permanent teeth. Until then, well, luckily, it wasn’t our teeth rotting, just our gums, so until we get properly healthy teeth again, I can clean our lost teeth, and just stick them back in. Were you keeping your teeth or just spitting them out?”

“I kept them. I didn’t get my hopes up, or anything, but… you know. Just in case.”

“Good. I’ll start disinfecting them while you clean yourself off.”

They both took showers and scrubbed every inch of their bodies with soap. Once they were in fresh clothes, they burned their old ones, and called the police to inform them that everything in the room needed to be disposed of using biohazard procedures. Riley decided that would only be fair if she payed for the lost property considering she had more than enough money to reimburse the motel.

Riley abandoned everything still in their first room, including her new tools, and decided that she had probably waited long enough to use her money safely to stock up on clean replacements. She visited Home Depot and Walgreens, carted everything back to the motel where she checked out, and checked back in with a new room. People in hazmat suits were already putting up caution tape around their first room.

After setting up her new lab, she whipped up some dental adhesive, engineered a bacteria that would stimulate gum repair in a petri dish, swished that around in her mouth, and bonked her noggin on the floor, which suddenly got really energetic at the same time that she lost the strength in her legs.

Riley woke up the following morning with a wonderful dream fresh in her mind. Unfortunately, she knew she had important grown-up problems to deal with, so she just wrote herself a note to remind herself.

It would have to be good enough for now.

Also unfortunately, Claire had moved her to a bed. Maaaan, she wanted to test whether the floor was actually comfortable or if she was just that tired.

Once she was sufficiently not-asleep, she painstakingly identified and reinserted the missing teeth into their mouths. No one would be the wiser, and they could both stop talking with annoying lisps.

Then they got to work figuring out who their attackers were. This proved much easier than expected. The group had an online fanbase dedicated to them.

They called themselves The Four, and despite their laundry list of gruesome crimes, it seemed that there were people who idolized them because they looked cool, their weapons were colorful, and they didn’t tolerate slavery.

Good for them? Had they ever left the U.S., where slavery was at least illegal? Oh? No? What a surprise!

So in the end, their morals didn’t matter because they would never use their horrifying weapons on the people they claimed deserved them the most.

The really creepy bit started when they discovered a pair of year-old posts circulating the PHO boards in The Four’s fan thread regarding one of their triggers.

■

►Truckpet
Replied On Feb 9th 2006:
When I was in college, there was this girl there. Everyone called her ‘Easy Erica,’ and yes, she got that name exactly how you think she did. For the record, Erica’s not her real name either — I’m not looking to out a cape.

Erica was at all the frat and sorority parties, but didn’t spend much time dancing. It was always an excuse to bang. I even remember thinking it was kind of a shame that she was so focused on sex when she brought me back to her room because she had some pretty neat drawings all over her walls. Dresses, cape costumes, and even just ordinary-looking clothes that she gave unique touch. I’ll spare you the details about what happened that night. However, some context:

Around that time, Erica had been boasting about how she was going to sleep her way through my whole dorm. No reason not to think so, since I kind of had a muffin top at the time. I wasn’t attractive, but she would stand outside my building every day between her classes, waiting for anyone she hadn’t seen before to come out. Boy or girl, she didn’t care. She also insisted on doing it without protection.

If you've attended a high-school health class, you can probably see where this is going.

Just as a note about her, by the next morning, she was basically pretending she couldn’t even see me. I tried to talk to her, but she ignored me. Like, aggressively. When calling her name didn’t work from five feet away, I waved my hand in front of her face, and she pretended she didn’t see me. Basically, she had my notch on her bedpost, and therefore no longer was of any value to her. And I realized I had actually seen other people get the same treatment, and hadn’t really noticed it. TO her dubious credit, she did at least acknowledge those conquests who were very physically attractive.

I guess people probably should have seen the signs of nymphomania as an actual psychological disorder that she was suffering from, but that’s a moot point now. Anyway, a week after that, I ended up at the doctor, and wouldn’t you know it, the doctor mentioned that more than a dozen other people in my age group had been to see him suffering from the same thing.

Specifically, I had chlamydia.

Oh, and herpes.

And syphilis.

And… look, I’m sure you get the picture. It was like a fucking laundry list of STDs. And around the same time, Erica dropped out of college. After trashing her room, and tearing all the work she’d displayed on her walls.

[THIS] is what she looks like today.

Yes, that is Plague Woman of The Four. So, yeah, this girl has been spreading disease since before she was even a parahuman, and when she became one, she apparently decided that was a better use of her time than finishing her fashion degree.

So, fanboys-and-girls, that is why I don’t echo your praise of these bioweapon-toting lunatics. I knew one of them personally, and she wasn’t the sort of person you’d want to hang out with. I’d sympathize with her problems, but then again, she gave me six STDs, and I have to live with herpes, now. So she can go to hell. I’d say ‘fuck her,’ but no, I wouldn’t touch her again if you paid me, and there are well over men and women who share that sentiment.

►C_Wells
Replied On Feb 9th 2006:
That is unfortunate. I’m sorry to hear about your circumstances, Truck. However, I can confirm that ‘Erica’ decided that spreading disease was a worthy use of her time.

I used to be her gynaecologist. She came to me complaining about experiencing pain in her pelvic region (to keep the conversation PG). I’ll spare you the details of the diagnosis, but she had the three illnesses you mentioned, and a great many others. She lied about the extent of her sexual activities twice before I gave her the full picture of what she had. I suppose that she had the good sense to be embarrassed.

However when I took a look to assess the damage, well, again, I’ll spare you the graphic details. I was put in the unfortunate position of being the one to inform her that her pain would not be ‘going away.’ She had continued engaging in sexual activities even after she was already in significant discomfort, and continued amassing various infections. The result was that she had damaged that part of her body beyond repair. She would retain at a minimum, constant discomfort, severe scarring of external and internal tissue, and actually attempting to engage in any form of sex ever again in the foreseeable future would likely be excruciating.

She did not take this information well.

By which I mean that was her trigger event. She claimed I was lying, or that I had conspired with her parents to try and force her to be more responsible, and that I *obviously* had to be able to fix her mistake. I couldn’t imagine a lifetime of pain, not at the time, at least, but this was something she brought on herself. Worked herself into a screaming frenzy, and by the end of it, I was coughing up blood, and my office was sealed off as a biohazard for well over a month

The tests came back with a completely unknown disease, because, of course, ‘Erica’ had created it on the spot. Vomiting blood was unfortunately only the first symptom. By the time someone had managed to create an antibiotic to treat my symptoms, I had already sustained enough nerve damage to prevent me from practicing.

Plague Woman began her career by ending mine. Similar to her, I am in constant pain, but I also lack the ability to move anything below my knees, and only the thumb, index, and middle fingers on my left hand still function. I cannot move any other part of my arms. Fortunately, I can still speak, which is how I wrote this message.

■

It was unpleasant, but it painted a picture of Plague Woman as someone who was vain, and very focused on appearances. Also an addict who was starving for a fix. And she clearly didn’t have any concern for other people.

But those posts weren’t the only ones. While this information didn’t help them find where The Four had holed up, it did lead them down a hole of a different sort. Specifically, the proverbial rabbit hole, and scrolling through the thread revealed that a full three of the members had witnesses to their trigger events come forward online to defame them, to the great fury of their many vapid defenders.

It became clear that Plague Woman wasn’t alone in her stuck-up, entitled behavior.

Anti-Body was a medical student who was caught in a cluster trigger. The other people in the cluster trigger were actually just coincidental — a few minutes prior to his trigger event, an underground gas pocket nearby breached the surface, emitting highly toxic gases into the air in a small area outside the building where Anti-Body was situated. Despite the area being small, several people were still affected. A few went blind within seconds, most of them found themselves struggling to breathe, a few even suffered brain damage. Two men triggered from this incident.

Anti-Body however, was just denied entry into medical school.

The reason his professor denied him was simple: Anti-Body had genuinely thought it was owed to him. He saw being a doctor not as a means of helping people, but as a status symbol. He regularly used his status as a medical student to get into people’s good graces, and while he put a fair bit of work into getting into medical school, he had some very unfortunate traits that no doctor would ever condone. While shadowing at the local hospital, he’d flirt with female patients, he was very partial to giving quick answers to people who wanted them, even if they were wrong. He treated the medical wards like an extension of his frat house, playing the popularity game always the first thing on his mind. If he was ever needed to give hard news to anyone, he would bail. And worst of all, he’d made a habit of misdiagnosing patients if he saw them too frequently. To his peers, it was painfully obvious that he would never get in.

He was from a rich family, and had floated through life with everything being handed to him on a platter. He did okay in pre-med, but his GPA wasn’t nearly high enough to actually get any further, not to mention his unfortunate personality defects and the fact that he had made a name for himself as a workplace hazard. 

Unfortunately, he wasn’t okay with the idea that he needed to do better. Even less that ‘jealous fuckers’ were ‘slandering’ him, when his professor explained why he hadn’t graduated.

It was the first time anyone had ever said no to him, and he triggered at the same time as the young men choking outside. One of them became a biotinker capable of manufacturing gasses. Anti-Body wanted that ability, and when his research on grab-bag capes informed him that a member of a cluster trigger killing another member could result in the killer gaining the victim’s power, he didn’t actually realize that he had committed murder until after he had done it, so focused was he on getting what he wanted. He was also very surprised that a heartfelt apology didn’t fix the problem. Nor could his lawyer, when he kept running his mouth. Also, for whatever reason, he had really hated the guy. He couldn’t bring himself to mean the apology, no matter how convincingly he sold it.

Of course, then Plague Woman found him, and they just really clicked. They understood each other. So he joined her, stole a ton of money from his parents’ bank account, and they started a team.

It would have been more accurate to say they validated each other’s toxic self-centredness, but they thought they were just great minds thinking alike.

The third was Gunsmith’s.

He also triggered at a university, but unlike Anti-Body, he was a professor. He was researching the medical uses for the toxins found in coral, and was apparently on the verge of a breakthrough when a colleague he’d worked with for almost a decade came in, shot him, and then exposed him to the concentrated substances he was studying. Apparently, the man had hated him ever since they met and had just been waiting for the day when he could steal his research.

It would have been a tragedy, except that a few days after triggering — which was really the only thing that saved his life — Gunsmith went to the traitor’s home, and murdered him, his wife, and his three daughters.

Then he went after their extended family, hunted them down, and killed them, too. Obviously, his need for vengeance was still woefully unsated, because after that, he went on to hold the university hostage, demanding that all work being done at the time be credited to him in recompense for the sleight. Either his power changed him, or he had always been a simmering powder keg just waiting for the right spark to ignite his rage. He always looked angry in photos.

There wasn’t much on Gaslight beyond her name and that the attacks she started were less lethal, but resulted in far more injuries and scarring.

Their modus operandi seemed to just be spreading disease. What they gained from it was anyone’s guess, but they sure looked cool doing it. No, seriously, they did look really cool.

So, yeah, Riley didn’t like the guys very much. They broke her stuff and probably stole from her Froot Loops supply. The former she could probably move past given time, but the latter? Even with their undeniable awesomeness that was Unforgivable. Vengeance, were she in a petty mood, would be swift, painful, and completely lacking in nutritional value!

Oh right, and they almost killed Sylvan, that was also supposed to be Very Bad™. Yeah, the more she thought about that one, the angrier she got. Hmm… given the additional context, did she even want to try forgiving them for breaking her stuff?

Before she could put any more thought into that, she had a great idea! How much would it cost to buy a toucan? She could name him Sam, add a gene to turn his feathers blue, and graft colourful stripes onto his beak! Ohhhh, she was just such a genius she sometimes couldn’t even believe it!

It was almost two weeks before the Claire got a text from the city informing her that her house and the surrounding neighbourhood had been given the all clear. Riley had been waiting for this moment with a grim curiosity. They weren’t going to be able to just go back. Considering that the Four had been specifically looking for them, they were expecting the place to be in very poor condition. When a cape found an enemy tinker’s workshop, it was just common sense to destroy it. Even so, Riley was still a little incensed by this blatant disregard for common decency.

The house was a disaster. Cabinets had been torn open, food, dishes and all manner of objects thrown on the floor, and left there. It was a systematic sort of mess. The Four came here looking for anything that could be used by a cape, and they’d made sure that anything they left behind wasn’t functional. They had probably only gone through the kitchen to be thorough. They’d stolen all the medications and first-aid materials in the bathrooms, and any tools left in the bedrooms, and had torn through the drawers and closets just to be sure nothing was hidden.

Their workshops were in a similar state of disarray, with items smashed and thrown on the floor with the haphazard carelessness of a drunken roommate. All of their tools were missing or broken beyond any hope of being salvaged. Fortunately, Riley had gotten most of her tools replaced, and just had to move them back to the house from the motel room. I took a while to clean the house, but a good girl wouldn’t just refuse to help when Claire was letting her live there for free.

Strangely enough, despite the house having been ransacked, the spider-box with Mr. Jack’s brain inside it was completely unharmed. There was something obviously wrong there. Why would they destroy all their stuff except the obvious tinkertech device? Could it have something to do with why Jack had survived for so long?

She should probably run some tests.

The whole incident put a few unfortunate things into perspective. The first was that she was a mostly defenseless little girl. The second was that her idea of preparation was sorely lacking.

The solution? Surgery.

What? There was no problem that couldn’t be solved by cutting open a body, making some adjustments, sewing it back together, and doing a blood transfusion. Or if there was, she hadn’t found one yet. She admittedly hadn’t been looking very hard—that wasn’t the point! Anyway, it was time to go under the knife. It wasn’t pretty to look at, but weaving in subdermal mesh would make her frighteningly sturdy. Like, shooting a little girl with a creepy smile in the head and then having her whine about how much it hurt would probably scare the pants off a typical Boston gangster, or even some capes.

It would be cumbersome doing the work using her own arms, so she built off the neural connection she had used to track the seagulls way back when. She started with her chest and torso, then put her conscious mind into one of her spider boxes to work on her arms. She could already look through something's eyes. Moving its body was just the logical next step. In this case, there wasn't even a mind to resist her, either.

When she woke up back in her own body, she felt… denser. The subdermal mesh had been threaded through most of her body, though thickest around her torso. She was bulletproof now, which was very cool. She could get used to the faint feeling of resistance whenever she moved. It wasn't enough to require a greater effort to move, it just felt… different. The real trick had been ensuring that the mesh would gradually come apart. She was a growing girl and if she made the mesh completely solid, it'd stunt her growth, which would be a terrible loss for the world. With the procedure complete she got to work on her next project.

Power studies!

It seemed like nobody really knew where powers came from. Yes, they were linked to the corona gemma, which formed after a person with a corona pollentia experienced a trigger event, but why would a small growth in someone's brain allow them to punch through steel or fly?

She grinned, mischief written all over her face. Even as she was taking notes on what was presently known, she conceived a convenient plan to investigate how it all worked. Her plan would be groundbreaking, exciting, and entertaining!

And Mr. Jack probably wasn't going to share her opinion!

Mr. Jack’s brain was a very useful test subject, although once she started examining his gemma, she couldn’t help but feel like she was discovering secrets that were meant to remain buried.

The gemma didn’t seem to be the source of his power. Instead it channeled energy from… ‘somewhere’ else. Except it wasn’t somewhere. It wasn’t connecting to a ‘place,’ by her definition, or if it was, it wasn’t somewhere on Earth Bet. So, it was connected to something that wasn’t wholly in her reality? She’d need more test subjects to be sure.

On a more productive note, she discovered that she could elicit responses from Mr. Jack's power by introducing electrical impulses to certain parts of the brain. Technically speaking, she could actually control another human being like a puppet if she fitted enough electrical nodes around their brain. She should probably keep that information to herself if she didn't want to get slapped with a Master rating. By stimulating a fear response, she discovered that the… uh… thing… connected to his corona gemma would react, triggering a faint response from the gemma, and at the same time, she felt a powerful urge to leave Mr. Jack's brain alone, like something horrible would happen if she didn't. It was extremely subtle, and she couldn't resist giving in to the inexplicable sense of trepidation. She stopped working for several hours before trying again and the same thing occurred. After three tries, she finally noticed the pattern. The sense of unease, and the urge to leave Mr. Jack alone were not just unfortunate coincidences: They were happening at the exact same time that her instruments were noting activity in his gemma. It wasn't him making a futile attempt to extend a blade that wasn't there; his brain-connected 'thing' was transmitting something to her own gemma and making her feel something. It was fascinating! Mr. Jack actually was a Master!

This explained everything! Of course a group of unhinged parahuman psychos deferred to his judgement. They were being made to. They wouldn't have the faintest hope of noticing they were being controlled because the effects were so faint that the thoughts couldn't be differentiated from their own. How did anyone ever believe that a guy whose powers began and ended with making a knife into a bigger knife was keeping maniacs like The Siberian and Shatterbird in check?

When Claire mentioned how she was feeling weirdly paranoid for the past few hours, Riley took it a step further. It was an area of effect, rather than a targeted response. Although maybe he could target someone? She wouldn't want to give him the opportunity to try, though. Of course, he probably couldn't even tell he was doing it, not even when he'd still been in his original body. When Claire's parents came home, she provoked the fear response again to expand her test subject pool. They didn't feel anything, but she and Claire did.

No wonder he was never caught! People sent parahumans to deal with other parahumans, but as long as his opponent had a corona gemma, his… thing — she really needed a better word for it — could mess with their brains. He just thought he was clever, but it was his power basically cheating to keep him safe. It also meant that other 'things' were prioritizing Jack's survival over their own hosts! That was more than a little bit disturbing. But good gravy, all these years of the Protectorate building strike teams specifically designed to fight the Slaughterhouse Nine, only to be annihilated, and all they'd ever needed to do was send an ordinary sniper to shoot Jack Slash in the head. Then his whole circus of serial killers would tear each other apart. She did a quick search online and was more than a little gratified to see that her theory was correct. The only current members of the Slaughterhouse Nine still at large were Crawler, the Siberian, and the Siberian hadn't been seen in months. Probably in hiding for whatever reason.

Apparently Hatchet Face had also made it out in one piece, but it seemed like people weren't very worried about him. Riley couldn't say she was surprised. Without the power of the Nine, he was basically a normal axe murderer who couldn't be killed by capes at close range. Sure, he had a brute rating, but that could be worked around.

But back to important things. Jack's power was a cheating cheater who cheated!

“Oh boy, I can’t wait to tell the whole world about this!”

Just one thing to do first.

She put Jack’s brain together, reactivated his auditory receptors, and dialled up the PRT. No no no, no walking away, Jack-in-the-Spider-box. She tucked the phone between her shoulder and her ear the way she’d seen mommy do it and pulled the brain back toward her. This would be easier if the PRT didn’t immediately forward all calls to their automated system. She waited through the options, until one of them finally gave her the option to speak with a real person. It wouldn’t matter who. They’d know who to send her call to.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Parahuman Response Team. How can we help you today?” asked the operator.

Riley pulled the spider-box closer.

“Hi there, I'm Riley. I’m the girl who stopped Jack Slash? I know it’s not very important anymore since he lives in a pickle jar now, but I have some very interesting information about Jack Slash’s powers that I think your organization would be very happy to have. Can you forward me to your R&D department?”

Things weren’t cooling down in Boston. In fact, if anything they were getting worse. Apparently, a big Japanese gang had moved in and were taking over a big part of the city’s underworld. She didn’t remember where, so she just took to bringing Coyotemera with her when she went more than a few blocks away from her house. To her dismay, the coyote head was gradually deteriorating. She had apparently made some sort of mistake while reconstructing its brain, or maybe the damage had just been more severe than she realized, but in any case, the head had about a year left before the other two heads would have to attend the third head’s funeral.

To that end, she was making sure to take Coyotemera out on plenty of walks to make sure she could see as much of the world as possible. The rooster wasn’t all that enthusiastic, but he was always grouchy. the other two heads were having a ball as they marched down the sidewalk with Riley holding their leash. She was dressed in a long sleeved t-shirt with denim suspenders and a mask she’d made by crudely sewing together various bits of fabric together and then cutting out the outline of a plastic domino mask.

Sylvan had joined her for this particular outing, riding along on her bike and waving to the occasional fan. as they turned a corner.

“Holy shit, what the fuck is that thing?!” screamed a grown man, making direct eye contact with Coyotemera’s chicken-head before whirling around and heading back the way he came at a dead sprint. Rude.

“This is why I suggested using my tinkertech to hide the extra heads,” Claire noted.

“Coyotemera shouldn’t have to hide who she is just because some people are intolerant of recapitation! That’s dis…crim…in…atory. Yeah. Discriminatory! I can say that word now.”

“Um… yes, you can. But isn’t it better if we don’t send the occasional passersby running away screaming?”

“What?! But that’s half the fun!”

Riley wasn’t mean. She just had very refined tastes when it came to entertainment via interpersonal relations. She needed to look a few of those words up in the dictionary before she was able to string such a refined sentence together, but it was definitely worth it.

Suddenly, a for-real samurai skidded around a corner being chased by a flying Eskimo.

Wait, no that was just a guy in a blue parka, with a winter hunter’s cap and a scarf. So they weren’t a samurai or an Eskimo, they were just capes. Yeah, that was Aerobat. She just hadn’t seen him for a while.

“You’ve both disappointed me!” she called after them, but they didn’t respond, too busy trying to beat each other up. Why did all capes try to do that anyway? Maybe she could put some study into that.

Only one of them reacted quickly enough when they heard the report of a sniper rifle. It was neither Riley nor Sylvan.

Coyotemera put itself between her master and the incoming bullet, the projectile utterly destroying the coyote head on impact and sending the rest of the animal tumbling backward like a ragdoll. Riley stared in shock at the bleeding stump for a few moments before getting to work sealing up the injury. Sylvan drew her oversized sword and put it between herself and the shooter. It wasn’t hard to guess who it was.

“You weren’t supposed to survive that initial attack,” growled a familiar voice.

“Hi there, Plague Woman,” Riley waved, not looking up from her work as she sealed blood vessels and cleaned dirt out of the wound with a handkerchief. “I’m missing a head. Would you like to donate yours for science?” Darn, she sounded almost earnest in her request. She’d been aiming for ominous and threatening, but it looked like she’d missed her opportunity.

“You can go right to hell. We don’t care how old you are; we don’t accept people looking down on us. How exactly do you think it would look to the people in our territory if some prepubescent little nobody could just solve all their problems for them? We’ve taken it upon ourselves to ensure everyone gets what they’re owed. And you won’t get in our way. Next time we meet, you won’t have your anime girl around to protect you.”

From his sniper’s nest, Gunsmith fired some sort of grenade at them and it exploded into a neon blue plague cloud. Plague Woman stepped into it and by the time it had cleared, she was gone.

“Seriously? Smokescreen and run away? What is this, the nineties?” Sylvan scoffed.

“I dunno. Seems pretty effective to me,” said Riley, finishing up with the impromptu surgery. “They mask their exit path while also ensuring that no one follows them, because going into that cloud would’ve been a very bad idea.”

Sylvan didn’t share her enthusiasm. She picked up the unconscious frankensteinian creature, and placed her in front of herself as she mounted her bike.

“Hop on. We should get out of here in case they plan on taking another shot.”

Riley nodded and got on behind her. But something was bugging her now.

“Gets what they’re owed… what do you think they meant by that?” she asked.

“Not sure. They seem to just commit acts of terror.”

“Yeah, I looked them up. About half of their attacks use lethal toxins, while the other half of their attacks are with plagues that are just painful. They usually result in crippling injury or disfigurement. I’m surprised they don’t have a kill order yet, considering that they’re parahuman terrorists.”

“As much as they have the capacity for massive damage, they usually are more precise when targeting people. They don’t like doctors, for obvious reasons, but they at least have the sense not to go attacking hospitals. They hit private doctors’ offices, universities… usually go for the staff in both cases not the patients or the students.”

“That matches what I’ve read about them. I guess they hold grudges against the kind of people who—OH! That’s what they’re doing!”

“Wait, so they just attack people that remind them of the people who made them trigger?”

“To an extent. Can I see the files the PRT gave you?”

Riley was right. The Four were motivated by spite. Once Gaslight joined the group however, they started attacking anyone. They all had some sort of disfigurement except for Anti-Body, and they apparently had taken it as an insult that only they should have to suffer lasting consequences from illness or injury, so they spread it around. Basically letting their trigger trauma rule their behavior.

Something about that annoyed her, but there was also something to be said about cool heads prevailing. With this in mind, Riley stood on a chair, and stuck her head in the freezer before taking to the internet to make some searches that she thought could be construed as hotheaded.

Claire caught her anyway. She had stepped away for a minute to get a cookie when the older tinker tapped her on the shoulder.

“I’m sorry, but I’m having another moment where you scare me.”

“Huh. Why’s that?”

“Well, it has to do with a few of your Yahoo search history.”

She went over to her computer to check the screen. Come on, she was smarter than to show her previous searches in full view of— oh. Okay, never mind, she was not quite as smart as she thought.

Well, this was embarrassing.

“You can’t just go around killing people!”

“I’m not killing people. The Four are…” what were The Four anyway? They obviously weren’t people, because people weren’t so terrible. Were they vegetables? No one liked brussels sprouts, right? But they weren’t made of plant matter… oh! “…pets.”

No, that didn’t make sense either, and Claire was giving her a look now.

“Look, I promise I’m not dangerous to civilians. It’s just that four evil capes in evil costumes tried to kill me and my benefactor. I’m not sure, but I think I’ve taken it personally,” her jaw dropped in glee and she could practically feel her eyes sparkling as she came to a delightful realization. “I’ve never had a grudge before! I wonder what the detrimental effects on my psyche will be? I should run some tests!”

“Wait! Riley, I think that we should ta—“

Okay, maybe running off while Claire was in mid-sentence was rude, but she was having such great ideas! Claire would forgive her.

There was a distant explosion, and looking out the window, Riley saw a big purple orb roughy twice the size of a house materialize and then vanish somewhere in the direction of…

…Allston?!

Followed by a pillar of acid-green smoke!

Oh, heck no, they couldn’t have found Blasto before her. Could they? No. Definitely not. That was silly. Nuh uh. Nope. They couldn’t possibly—

“Hey, Claire, can you drive me over to that explosion?”

“Against my better judgement, I will do this. But you’re putting all of your retroviruses back in their cabinet first.”

“Aw, maaaan!”

Chapter Text

In the end, they compromised.

Sylvan had allowed her to bring vials of eczema with her, and by the end of the week, Plague Woman would have itchy dead skin inside her eyelids!

Who said that fates worse than death all had to be unspeakable horrors? Simple packages could be so effective! Which wasn’t to say that she was only going to bring the eczema.

She wasn’t able to find her scariest virus anyway. She must have misplaced it. So all the better that she save her better work for a more serious problem.

More importantly, she couldn’t hightail it over to Allston fast enough. It didn’t take long for her and Sylvan to find the source of the disturbance, what with the giant green plague cloud billowing into the air like a reverse S.O.S. beacon. Even if The Four had already left by the time they arrived, Riley could only imagine a single reason that they would be in Allston. They were willing and eager to kill an eight-year-old girl to eliminate competition from other biotinkers. Blasto wouldn’t even be a blip on their dubiously-existent consciences.

They reached the site of the purplesplosion — or whatever that thing was — though Sylvan stopped her bike a few blocks away just to be safe before they both crept up toward what looked like a warehouse with a curved roof that had a gaping hole in it as well as part of its upper wall.

In front of it were a familiar group of individuals, who looked like they weren’t in complete agreement about something, though Riley couldn’t quire hear what they were saying yet. She and Sylvan discreetly ducked out of sight before they were noticed.

Sylvan pulled out her cell phone and hit a few buttons.

“Hey, Tatsunami. Can you meet me in Allston? Site of that blast a few minutes ago. It’s the same villains who tried to kill me and Stitcher… yeah… yeah… not sure. It looks like we’re rescuing Blasto… No, not on purpose, but given the option between macroscopic and microscopic monsters, I’ll take the ones that won’t eat my lungs before I know what it’s doing… uh huh… Parking lot near this big building near the corner of Western and Telford. Don’t worry about being subtle. Thanks. See you soon.”

She hung up and tapped Riley on the shoulder.

“We’ve got backup incoming. Should be able to limit their offensive capabilities, too.”

Riley gave her a thumbs up. 

“Stitcher, huh?” she asked.

“You needed a cape name, and it seemed appropriate. I was going to suggest it when you were ready to officially debut.

On one hand, it was kind of annoying that Sylvan had picked out a name for her without telling her first. On the other, Riley didn’t have any better ideas. Surgeon had already been forgotten, and her only other idea, Scalpel Wizard, just sounded dumb.

They took the long way around the block and crept closer to the fearsome biotinkers, finding them in the middle of a disagreement of sorts.

“—won’t catch me complaining about anything that’ll make people as ugly on the outside as they are on the inside, but Jesus, you could have told us that you were planning on stealing a giant fucking monster!”

Wait, giant monster? That sounded promising. Riley leaned in.

“She’s got a point. You told us we were eliminating Blasto as a competitor, not trying to appropriate his extremely dangerous work. Gaslight, you wouldn’t be able to control that thing just using chemicals, right?”

Blasto! How close was his base? Wait, eliminate him?! …She really hoped they failed. Also, what the H.-E.-Double-Hockey-Sticks! She’d spent months trying to hunt this guy down and these bozos managed it in a few weeks? Shenanigans! She was declaring shenanigans! She was owed fair compensation! …and ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream.

Of course, if his base was nearby, she was totally ready to join his organization.

“I don’t know. My focus is on gasses, not neurology.”

“Look, guys, I need you to trust me when I tell you that there’s a plan. I can guarantee that if you follow the instructions I give you, we won’t be settling for a neighbourhood or a district. We’ll be the kings and queens of Boston if you can put your doubts aside for a few days. I have a plan, and the only capes that could possibly stand in our way are Blastgerm and that indie brat.”

Brat? Was Plague Woman talking about her? That was a rude thing to say.

The three other villains stared at Plague Woman, mouths agape.

“Do you have a way of controlling Blasto’s monster?” asked Gunsmith.

“Not exactly, but it’s close enough to get the job done.”

“Sounds kickass. You’ve got my vote,” said Anti-Body, giving her a thumbs up.

“Quiet down, frat-boy,” Gaslight scoffed. “You know, there’s an actual reason we drop your vote when we need to break a tie. I’m not risking my neck for a plan that Plague won’t even tell me.”

Plague Woman stepped between her two teammates before they could get too heated.

“We don’t have time to be fighting right now. Better things to do. Also, we have an audience.”

Riley almost jumped out of her skin thinking she’d been caught, but to her surprise, someone else stepped around a nearby corner — A pale, dark-haired man with bags under his eyes that gave him a kind of ‘overworked’ look.  

“What, do you want some sort of credit for noticing?” he scowled. “Do you have any idea how much you just cost me?”

Gunsmith wasted no time levelling his organic firearm at the man’s head and scowling.

“A lot less than we were hoping, but I appreciate you giving us the chance to correct that.”

“What? What the fuck?! Who even are you, and what’d I ever do to you that you had to go and trash my lab?!”

“We are The Four. And we take a scorched earth approach to eliminating our competition,” said Anti-Body. “We don’t have to kill you, but we’d rather you didn’t come back. Gaslight just hates dealing with the same problems twice.”

Riley’s eyes widened, a delighted grin stretching across her face even as her mouth hung open in surprise. She’d done it! She finally found Blasto! All these long months of following his attacks and tracking his awesome creations instead of studying them had been worth it!

Except for the part where a bunch of evil people somehow found him first. How the heck did they manage that?

Shenanigans.

Oh, wait, was Gunsmith about to murder him? She might have to step in—

She was jolted from her thoughts by a roar, and for a moment, Riley thought that Blasto had brought one of his monsters with him, except that the sound had obviously come from the torrent of water that slammed into the pavement ahead of them.

“Hi. You must be The Four,” said a man who looked about Sylvan’s age. He was wearing a deep green diver’s suit with a bright blue Chinese dragon emblazoned on the front.

“Unfortunately for you, we are,” nodded Plague Woman, raising a hand. Caustic fog began emanating from her body, and Gaslight dropped several plague grenades around herself, Anti-Body touching each of his teammates in turn, presumably to boost their immune systems.

“That’s the thing. You guys hurt a friend of mine. I can’t just ignore that, not to mention, you’ve been using tinkertech chemical weapons on civilians.”

Sylvan tapped Riley on the shoulder again.

“Hang back for a minute. We’ve got this covered.”

“Oh, boo hoo, your friend got hurt by something we made?” scoffed Gaslight. “Now they have to live out the rest of their life almost as ugly as me!”

Riley squinted at the snarling tinker. Gaslight had some scars on her face—very pronounced scars, in fact—but she wasn’t ugly. Not remotely. The scars were along her neck and jawline, but they didn’t take away from her features. In fact, they made her more distinctive, if anything. It seemed more likely that she just had issues with self-image. Kind of sad, honestly, but by the same token, that made the things she did that much worse. Disfiguring people to feel less ugly when you were actually reasonably pretty seemed kind of gross.

“Sorry to disappoint,” said Sylvan, striding over to the conflict, “but he’s actually just annoyed that you attacked me. I survived, and so did the kid. And all we lost were a few teeth.”

“I meant to ask last time, but why are you a cartoon?” asked Gunsmith.

“Why aren’t you a cartoon? I think that’s a better question.”

A beat.

“Are you an idiot?” asked Anti-Body.

“I might be. But I’m also laughing at your expense, so either way, you lose.”

“I’m still here, you know!” shouted Blasto. He appeared to be feeling ignored.

“Call me Tsunami. Tatsunami in full, but I’m not picky,” said the hydrokinetic.

“And I’m Sylvan. I’m guessing you know that already, though.”

“The two of us are the Shinsei Sentinels,” said Tatsunami, “And, honestly, we’re one of the more forgiving teams around here, but you four have basically been raising hell everywhere you go, so you’re gonna have to not do that.” He paused. “Go, I mean. …like, please get out of Boston, you’re polluting.”

“Pfft. Your voice is polluting my ears,” drawled Anti-Body.

In the next second-and-a-half, everyone was glaring at him.

“Maybe just leave the insults to us, frat-boy?” Gaslight suggested. Anti-Body didn’t seem happy about that, but he didn’t say another word. “As for you two, what kind of sad excuse for a team has only two members. Is she your sister, kid?” she faux-whimpered, drawing a canister out of a small crate at her feet. “Was she the only person who would help you when you wanted to go out and play hero? Nerd.”

Gaslight showed her teeth in a savage grin, twisting the nozzle off the canister, and releasing a teal fog. Luckily, a sudden breeze started blowing it out over the street instead of toward the heroes.

Meanwhile, the hydrokinetic pulled all the water back toward himself, striking a pose and manifesting the water he’d splashed down with as a roughly human-shaped thingamajig that floated just behind his back. It had the rough outline of a knight, and had disproportionately large fists that hung from arms that could easily reach around his body.

“Quick word of advice, if you say ‘muda,’ even once, I’m jumping ship,” said Sylvan.

“Fine, ruin my fun, why doncha,” said Tsunami, but he took a few steps forward anyway. Gunsmith raised his weapon of the hour, a nozzle attached to a backpack with some sort of organic hose, all of which was encrusted with that strange coral, but the watery knight minion batted the weapon aside, and the shot went wide, launching a spurt of sickly grey fluid into a brick wall, which immediately began to melt like ice cream. Plague Woman’s toxic cloud was starting to spread, but the hydro minion handled that, too. A tail extended from its back, growing a gigantic fin which swept through the cloud, catching all the contaminants within the water.

“Hey!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, do I happen to have a great counter to your abilities?” Tatsunami jibed at The Four.

“Gunsmith, heads up!” Gaslight tossed some sort of cartridge at him, which he snatched out of midair. His weapon reconfigured itself before Riley’s eyes, appearing to decay and regrow from his fingertips, taking on the appearance of a familiar grenade launcher: It only took him a moment to plug whatever Gaslight had given him into his gun, but by then, Sylvan had closed the distance between them, hefted her giant sword off her back and slammed it down on the gun. It sheared through the organic material like… well… like a giant sword through coral. Riley didn’t have much to compare against that, and it was nothing like a knife through butter, going by the tortured crunch the gun’s components made as they were ripped apart.

Gunsmith swore, instead of immediately regrowing his weapon, it started twisting and collapsing in on itself.

“I’m seeing some evidence that you’re not really big on close combat,” said Sylvan.

“Oh, really? What gave it away?” growled the gunman, swinging the heft of his launcher at her. She took the hit, blocking with the flat of her weapon. Riley knew that the weapon wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but against coral, there was no chance of her tricks coming to light. Meanwhile, Gaslight adjusted the nozzle on a tank she wore on her belt. One of several.

“Crap.”

Tsunami moved to intercept the plague cloud as it was deployed, only for Plague Woman to put herself in his way, leaping in front of him and tracing a line of caustic gas in the air with a grim hiss. His guardian blocked it, but he couldn’t reach Sylvan, who had to retreat a few steps.

“I’d get out of here if I were you,” Sylvan said to Blasto, shielding herself from a sudden hail of gunfire from Gunsmith, now holding a much smaller firearm. The moment the barrage ended, she peeked around the flat of her sword. “Regular bullets?! Since when can you do that?”

“I can grow my own weapons. Your own fault for thinking I was limited to the ammo my team makes for me.”

“Yeah, well— actually, I can’t really argue with that logic.”

It seemed like Tsunami’s construct was doing a good job of keeping him safe from Plague Woman’s clouds, and it was gradually growing discoloured from accumulating the various gasses she and Gaslight were trying to infect him with. So far, the two sides were relatively evenly matched. It seemed like Anti-Body didn’t have any intention of joining the fight unless he could cripple an opponent. Mostly a defensive player, then. Riley hoped that the others had figured that out. And then Blasto started running away.

She had to go after him! She stood up and made to—wait a sec. A good girl wouldn’t just abandon her friends. Not even the ones she made by accident. Darn it! Fortunately, she did have something she could use, but not from where she stood.

After a few sweeps of toxic gas, Plague Woman found herself getting too close to Sylvan. With an easy step, she pivoted just as another burst of gunfire came to a halt and took advantage of the opportunity. Her weapon drew a grim red line across Plague Woman’s body. She let off a string of curse words, and Sylvan pressed her advantage, swinging like a maniac. If anything could have given away that she was using illusions and holograms, it should have been the way she whipped that massive sword around like it was nothing. Luckily, people didn’t tend to think about these things when it looked like a square ton of iron was flying at your carotid arteries. Still, Riley was getting annoyed at having to sit around doing nothing while her accidental friend risked her life, and short-term romantic prospects for her sake.

She’d come prepared for this. Riley was a good girl. This was a fact as solid as the Rock of Gibra-whatever. That didn’t mean she was always obedient to the spirit of her instructions. She promised not to bring her retroviruses with her, and she did keep that promise. She did not promise, however, not to bring a high-pressure super soaker loaded with delicious HCl.

Hmm… maybe she should go somewhere that she could aim better? She would probably hit Sylvan or Tsunami from here. Luckily, there was a small shed nearby with some sort of dumpsters with doors beside it. She clambered onto the metal box — truly the cape of garbage can society — and then grabbed onto the ladder. Once she was up, she scurried her way to the roof.

“Alrighty, time to play with dangerous chemicals,” she said. “Don’t try this at home, kids-and-Sylvan.” She pulled her super soaker out of her backpack, pumped it up, aimed using the new implant she put in her right eye for this exact purpose, and fired.

“Hiii~” she shouted down at the combatants. “Remember me?”

The spray hit Anti-Body square in the back, the material of his collar/cape began to give off smoke and with a start, he grabbed the material and held it away from himself as it dissolved.

“Jesus! Close shave. What even was that?!”

Sylvan looked up at her.

“Oh god, you brought the hydrochloric acid super soaker didn’t you?” she asked.

“I brought the hydrochloric acid super soaker,” Riley nodded, her smile threatening to split her face in half. Gosh-golly, she was having a wonderful time!

“Acid?! Talk about your lucky breaks—whoa!” he just barely avoided another shot from Riley, leaving a sizzling hole in the concrete.

Then a burst of gunfire hit her in the face and knocked her flat on her back.

“OW!”

“STITCHER!” Claire shrieked.

Riley’s head swam as she struggled to get up. She settled for raising her arm in a thumbs up. That subdermal mesh was paying off already!

“I’m okay!” she cheered.

“Don’t you ever worry me like that again!” cried Sylvan.

“No promises!”

Then she sat up and looked out over the alley. “That was terribly mean of you, Mr. Gunsmith. That’s gonna hurt in the morning. You could have really hurt someone like that.”

“What in God’s name…” he gasped. Riley just shot him her most dazzling smile. And then she shot him with her super soaker, hitting him square in the chest.

Parts of his costume immediately began to dissolve, and in the next second, a high-pitched screech tore its self from his throat.

“Get it off! Get it off me! Fuck!”

“Language!”

He collapsed, rolling along the ground like he was trying to put out a fire. Unfortunately, acid didn’t work that way.

“Fuck!” Plague Woman snarled. “Anti-Body, take care of Gunsmith. Dunk him in the river down the street or something. All I know about acid is that you’re supposed to add it to water. Hopefully that’ll work. I’ll deal with that little shit. Even if she’s bulletproof or some shit, she’s not immune to our plagues.”

“You say a lot of bad words!” Riley shouted. “Your mommy would be ashamed!”

Below her, Tatsunami stifled a giggle.

Plague Woman roared, gas erupting from her hands, and launching her high into the air before landing on the roof. It seemed unnecessary, but it was dramatic. The water guardian behind Tatsunami transformed into a gigantic serpent, coiling around him and Sylvan and blocked the massive cloud from reaching Sylvan, devouring as much of the plague cloud as it could contain before returning to its knightly form with oversized fists. It had turned almost completely black from all the contaminants by this point, but Riley had a bigger problem to worry about now.

“You just made a big. Fucking. Mistake,” growled Plague Woman.

“Cool! I’m about to make another one!” she hadn’t stood around watching the fight after all. She was pumped and ready, and didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. A jet of acid hit Plague Woman right in the face. Mostly on the disfigured side, luckily for her. Though judging from her shrieking, Riley wasn’t sure she appreciated it. It was pretty annoying.

“AAUGH! FFFUCK! UUURRGH! I’ll kill you, you little shit! YOU INSECT-SIZED CUNT! I’LL RIP YOUR FUCKING FACE OFF WITH MY FINGERNAILS!”

“Look, I promise, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just thought you would be annoyed if I didn’t take you at least as seriously as you took me. I still can’t match the power of your plague clouds. This is just a toy I found lying around and filled with the byproduct of one of my experiments.”

But Plague Woman was just stumbling around, clutching at her face. Riley didn’t think she was listening, which was awfully rude of her. She was going to break Riley’s delicate little heart at this rate.

Oh well.

The grown woman staggered to the edge of the roof and made her way down. Riley didn't worry about her. She was more worried about Sylvan and Tsunami's fight now.

Below, Gaslight had actually managed to hold off Sylvan and Tatsunami by using her toxic canisters and grenades in clever configurations. She lay traps right in front of them, and as long as they were trying to contain the damage, they had to trip them and try to get around the poisonous clouds.

“Heads up! Plague Woman’s back!” Riley shouted.

“Thanks for the warning!” called Sylvan, turning to her partner. “I’ll handle Plague. You take down Gaslight.”

“Got it.”

Tatsu struck another pose, and then… Holy moly.

He didn’t walk.

He didn’t run.

He strutted toward Gaslight.

…but why?

Riley didn’t understand.

“Huh. You think you can get in close, do you?” asked Gaslight.

“I can’t beat the shit out of you without coming closer.”

“Oh no. He’s gonna say it,” Riley heard Sylvan say from somewhere below.

“Oh? You think so? Then come as close as you want.”

“Oh, come on!” Sylvan shouted. “How the heck did she manage to play right into the meme?!”

Wait a sec, was that Plague limping her way toward the Charles?

“Sylvan! Plague Woman’s very slowly running away!”

“Wait, what?!”

“Open wide!” Gaslight cackled, spraying a plague cloud at Tsunami just as his guardian swooped in front of him and took the blast. Then she noticed the figure fleeing down the alleyway. “Wait, Plague, where’re you—”

He wound up, and threw a single uppercut.

“USELESS!” he shouted, the guardian swinging back around and mimicking his movement, knocking Gaslight into the air.

“Tatsu,” Sylvan groaned, “The bancho, or the vampire. Pick one.”

She didn’t spend any more time bantering before going after the fleeing terrorist.

Needless to say, Riley had no idea what anyone was talking about anymore. Tatsunami sure looked cool ‘juggling’ Gaslight with a flurry of punches from his polluted water construct.

What Riley couldn’t have known however was that Plague Woman wasn’t fleeing at all. Sylvan sheathed her sword on her back, took a running jump, and tackled the suffering villain. The suffering villain, who removed her hands from her face to reveal a surprising lack of acid burns. More worryingly though, was the additional eye just below her right one.

“What the fuck…?” Sylvan gasped.

“That’s what I should be saying,” rasped Plague. “Interesting. And more importantly, derivative.”

And then Plague Woman opened her mouth, and bit clear through Sylvan’s gauntlet, sinking her teeth into Sylvan’s hand. Throwing the shocked hero off of her, Plague gave a humourless bark of laughter, and ran off.

It took a lot of metal drums before the contaminated water was all stored away safely. The PRT brought quite a few of them in when they came to pick up Gaslight.

Then they had to go through containment procedures while the PRT checked them for contaminants. And it took forever to convince the troopers that she had the only cure for what they were going to find in Sylvan’s body. Luckily, Tsunami’s water construct had been an effective guard against the rest of The Four’s weaponry, but it still took a long time. When all was said and done, it was already evening and Riley definitely wasn’t going anywhere. Tsunami volunteered to stay back at the PRT building to ‘give a statement,’ whatever that meant, so Riley rushed Sylvan back to her parents’ house.

The house felt sad in a weird way when she got back. Nothing had changed, and it still felt as welcoming as always. Whatever was missing was something she couldn’t perceive with her five usual senses.

She had to take Coyotemera for her walk, but Claire was more urgent right now.

“I don’t get it, isn’t it better that you know what Plague Woman infected me with?”

“No, not really. I noticed that I was missing one of my retroviruses earlier, and thought I just misplaced it.”

All but throwing the doors to her disease cabinet open, Riley checked her retroviruses. There was still one missing; a very specific one. And now she knew why.

“Plague Woman stole one of my retroviruses, and judging from her new eye and jaw strength, she infected you with a mutagen. Get out of your armor fast. Does your arm itch?”

“Just my hand.”

“You have to cut it off.”

“ARE YOU NUTS?!”

“You’ll change your mind when you see how it looks.”

Riley stood on a step-stool to get Claire’s helmet off for her, and then very carefully helped her remove her right gauntlet.

“Don’t scratch. More than just your skin will come off.”

“Wha—o—mmphh!” She clamped her still armored hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Her hand had turned purple, and more cuts than the bite had opened seemingly on their own. They smelled like a dead animal, which only made sense, because the flesh of her hand was effectively dead. And necrotizing.

“She stole my Superzombie Virus. It transforms you into a super-durable monster, but I won’t go into details because they’re really gross. Luckily, unlike all the zombie viruses in the movies, I made sure that there was a cure for this one,” she got back up onto the step stool and disconnected the shoulder plate of her healthy arm and then rolled up her sleeve. She pulled a loaded syringe out of her disease cabinet and jabbed it into Claire’s left arm just below the shoulder.

“Am I good?”

“Not quite. Bad news or good news first?”

“I’ll go with the bad news,” said Claire.

“You’re still going to lose the hand up to your elbow. Despite staying functional because of the virus, your necrotizing tissue is already dead and I’ve never considered how to fix that before. Also in about an hour you’re going to throw up something fierce.”

Despite her difficulty reading people, Riley could tell Claire was now very afraid.

“Don’t worry!” she smiled. It was surprisingly difficult to force the expression. It was like her scowl didn’t want to move. And when did she start scowling, anyway? Good girls didn’t scowl at people. “The good news is that I can make you a new arm just like your original one.”

“Wait, are… are you serious?”

“Oh, easily! It’ll take a few weeks, but I can definitely make a new one. Ideally, I’d just chop off Plague Woman’s and give you hers, but considering that she’s technically a zombie now, that would defeat the purpose of curing you. You won’t be able to tell the difference, and no scars, or your money back!”

“I wouldn’t want her arm anyway.”

“Not even for revenge?”

“No. Look, are you going to keep me waiting until I lose my nerve, or are you going to amputate my arm already?!”

“What?! Here?! The last person I used my bonesaw on had feathers! We need a normal hospital for this. Also so that they can properly dispose of your orally expelled virus remains.”

Riley called 9-1-1, and that was that. She also gave the paramedics written instructions on how to dispose of the arm and whatever came up when Claire started throwing up.

Leaving while Claire was recovering from the amputation would have made things a lot easier, but going off of her memories, that would be mean. A good girl wouldn’t do that.

A good girl also wouldn’t start cooking up the a truly unholy infection that even Anti-Body would be helpless to counter, but Plague Woman had made her very upset. She didn’t kill Sylvan this time, but now she was traumatized from losing her arm. And being bitten by a perpetually angry lady. They were both pretty bad.

Yeah. She could stay with Claire’s family for a few more days.

Coyotemera’s walks were pretty uneventful compared to the previous week’s excitement. Was it better if things were boring if it meant people weren’t being suddenly having their limbs stolen by angry capes in stylish costumes? Were the rest of Boston’s new villains this nasty, or were The Four special™? Surely someone must think they were special. Maybe their dumb fans? Their parents? Gunsmith’s strangely adorable sheltie? Seriously, how did a man end up with a profile that went:

• Always angry
• Never forgets and never forgives
• Will enact revenge against the offending party’s relations to a minimum of two degrees of separation
• Loves puppies

Seriously, Coral the Dog had his own Facebook page! And more fans than The Four. Which was entirely justified, of course. He was a puppy and they were evil capes in evil clothes. With evil hairstyles. Obviously their dog was superior to them.

Coyotemera clucked, drawing her out of her reverie, and Riley noticed notice a few of her cybergulls making grouchy faces at her. Weird. Could The Four have tampered with them somehow? It’s not like she was using them very much anymore. Wait, what if they had grown discontent and envious of Coyotemera’s special treatment and were plotting revenge?!

One of the angry birdies stared at her and chirped in dissatisfaction.

‘Why should Coyotemera get to have banana pudding while we subsist on but the soggiest of french fries?’ his eyes seemed to say. Though he could also have been saying ‘there is no salt,’ or ‘I will devour thy breakfast, foul varmint.’ Or anything, really. Riley didn’t speak Engullish.

…

Riley could really feel all those fantasy novels she was reading for inspiration paying off in unexpected ways. She was discovering so many new words! Learning was so much fun!

She was just doing some tinkering before lunch when she heard a car pull up. She hurried to the living room to look out the window and saw Claire and Tsunami walking toward the front door. As expected, she was now missing her right arm below the elbow.

Without his mask on, Riley noticed that Tatsunami lacked any distinctive qualities out of costume. Physically speaking. He was extraordinarily average in terms of height, build, and seagull affinity. They didn’t hate him, but they didn’t like him either. Black hair, and the same off-white complexion as Claire, and perfectly straight teeth. Nothing out of the ordinary with this boy, no sir.

“I still can’t believe Gaslight managed to play right into the ‘Oh, You’re Approaching Me?’ Scene,” groaned Claire.

“It’s her own fault. She got me started.”

“Liar. You were already doing the Joestar Strut.”

“Hey, don’t knock it. I took down Gaslight with it.”

“That’s the thing, though. Plague Woman ditched her. Something’s wrong here. When Stitcher and I got there, they were talking about stealing something from Blasto. Some sort of monster. Judging from the hole in the nearby building, I think they’d already succeeded. Plague Woman said they were going to be the kings and queens of Boston. Considering the powerhouses that have been moving in ever since the crackdown, I just have a really bad feeling about this.”

Riley flung the door open, with a smile she didn’t quite feel, but thought was the right thing to wear for the occasion.

“Welcome back!”

“Good to see you too, Riley.”

Claire’s parents were home, so discussion about what Plague Woman was cooking up was saved until after for when they had more privacy. Tatsunami—Aizen as a civilian—offered to cook lunch, but he was shot down hard and fast.

“Is he that bad?” Riley asked.

“He can’t make instant noodles without burning them.”

“That was—”

“—a year ago? Yes. But it’s not the only time. I’m not risking it. Wanna go to the Commons? I haven’t had Greek food in a while.”

Riley had never had Greek food at all. Oh well. If she never tried new things, she’d never learn stuff. This would be an exciting new experience!

Pietro’s Food Truck was not the best Greek food in Boston. However, it was definitely in the top five. It was also considered neutral territory, and that apparently drew a lot of cape business.

The eponymous chef was a bear of a man. He had dark skin, or was at least heavily tanned, and had a stocky build from a combination of fat and muscle. His hair was black, just starting to go grey, and looked kind of scruffy. Scruffy was an even better descriptor for his beard, though, which was wild, bushy, and surprisingly expressive. When he smiled at Claire, his whole face tilted upward.

So, less a bear than a teddy bear, probably.

Claire ordered for all three of them, as per their requests — Riley choosing a falafel, because that was the only thing she had heard of before. Mr. Pietro suggested that she at least have some tahini on it, but she wanted to try it plain first.

“You know, you’ve been pretty calm about losing half an arm,” said Aizen.

Claire shook her head.

“I freaked out when I was still in the hospital. You weren’t there for it, and a bunch of nurses ended up interrupting me. I’ll probably lose it again when I get home, but I don’t want to have a panic attack while a bunch of people are watching me.”

“You know I won’t judge you, right?”

“Doesn’t matter. Not doing it with you around. Heck, I’m only even keeping it together right now because I’ve been assured this,” she gestured with her stump, “is temporary.”

“I could probably make a robotic prosthetic that would be better than your original arm, if you wanted,” Riley offered. “It could have all sorts of features! Electronic multi-tools in the fingers, built-in hairdryer, arm-cannon like that one video game!”

“Thanks for the offer but I’ll pass. I like having my arm made of meat, not metal.”

“That’s understandable, but consider this: deployable grappling hook!”

“Riley!” Claire shouted. Blinked. Shook her head. Sighed. “Riley, if I get my arm back and discover that you’ve secretly upgraded it, I won’t care how cool it is, I’ll be extremely mad at you. I might never forgive you, even.”

“I don’t get it! Why would you rather have a boring normal arm if I can make something better?”

“Because it’s not just about the arm. It’s how I’d feel about it.”

Riley needed a moment to process this. Feelings were hard to work with ever since whatever Mr. Jack did to her messed hers up. Still, if she didn’t understand something and couldn’t test it safely, maybe it would be better to just do as she was told? Once The Four were dealt with, she could always upgrade her own arms or something.

She really needed more materials. She couldn’t just wait around to find more roadkill and bring it back to life but better. Besides, what if the roadkill was a skunk? She’d have to file down its teeth, remove its stink-fluid, maybe alter its stripe to look different…

She sighed.

“Hey, what were you guys talking about when you came home?” Riley asked. “What’s a Joe star strut? Some kind of dance move?”

Aizen erupted into a snickering mess.

“Oh, calm down,” Claire rolled her eyes. “We’ll have to show you JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure sometime. I’m not actually as into anime as my cape theme makes me look, but that show is a special one.”

“What does it have to do with banjos and vampires? You were pronouncing banjo wrong, by the way.”

Claire stared into space, uncomprehending, though Aizen’s lips were curling into a grin. Claire raised her right arm to scratch her head, but dropped it with a huff when she remembered her hand was missing. After a bit more pondering, she shook her head. “I give up,” she said. “I don’t remember saying anything like that.”

Aizen stifled some more laughter. “It was when I followed up, ‘I can’t kick your ass (“Language!”) if I don’t come closer,’ or whichever variation I used, by shouting ‘Useless!’ You told me to pick ‘the bancho or the vampire. Pick one.’”

“Oh, right, now I remember.

“It’s not a banjo. ‘Bon-cho.’ It’s a Japanese word that roughly means ‘delinquent.’ The character who said the thing about beating someone up was a delinquent, but the character who said ‘Useless,’ was a vampire.”

What?

Like… what?

Was that supposed to make any sense to anyone? Maybe if she watched the show it would stop sounding completely whack?

“Keftede wrap, chicken gyro, and a plain falafel!” called Pietro.

They went to grab their food.

“Enjoy, kids,” said the big man.

There were a lot of free tables, so finding a place to sit was easy. The hard part was keeping the seagulls away. Several among the nearby flock were her cybergulls, and they were eyeing her food with undisguised interest. Definitely rats with wings, these gulls. No gratitude toward their creator whatsoever. Come to think of it, Boston’s rats were actually much more polite than its seagulls.

Claire tore the foil off of her pita wrap and looked at it like it was some sort of undiscovered species of clam before setting it down on the table. Riley was going to miss eating with Claire. Aizen was more careful in removing the foil from his gyro, but immediately dug into it. Someone was hungry.

Riley looked inside her pita, finding what looked like a charred meatball except that it smelled fresh and distinctly not-burned. She took a bite and decided that she really liked pita bread. A few bites later, she decided that she didn’t like plain falafels. She was still a good girl, though, so even if she didn’t like her food, she’d still clean her plate. The falafel was stiff on the outside and chewy on the inside, with some sort of green veggie slaw inside it.

Now, obviously Riley had to build up to the part about how she was looking to apprentice herself to Blasto. If she just jumped right in, Claire might panic like a jackrabbit, and Riley didn’t want anyone to yell at her. She started by asking about Claire’s projects, and what she was doing with her neurological studies using the brain of a serial killer. Claire started eating.

“I can feel the heat in my eyes from here. How are you eating that?” asked Aizen.

“Easily. Not my fault that you don’t like spicy food.”

“I think I’ve found a new space for a workshop,” she said, taking a bite of of her falafel. “It’s spacious, comes with its own furniture and completely empty of human life.” She took another bite and decided that she didn’t like plain falafels.

Riley couldn’t identify the emotions on Claire’s face, so she decided to go with ‘concern.’ That usually encompassed everything Claire felt that didn’t fall under her go-getter attitude.

“Have you stolen Blasto’s lab?” she asked.

“Wow, you caught on way faster than I expected you to.”

“My lack of intelligence is purely theatrical. I’m actually a genius,” Claire reminded her. “Also, The Four left a gaping hole in his lab, so it’s easy to get in. I wouldn’t do that, though.”

The pita wrap slowed just before reaching Riley’s teeth. She tried to figure out what Claire was thinking again, but it could have been anything. Her empathy was a mess of puzzle pieces that no infer fit together. Or if they did, it was now the kind of abstract art that could only be displayed at the MOMA. Riley didn’t care how expensive it was, a single black bar on a white canvas was not art! Also, her brain was overheating trying to pick up on what Claire felt about this. At this rate, her thoughts would be replaced by fried chicken. She took a bite.

“Whay noth?”

“Because Blasto is a dangerous biotinker,” said Claire. “He could really hurt—wait… Blasto’s supposed to be really high all the time… would he even notice an intruder? No, no, this is just a rabbit hole of hypotheticals.”

Riley waited until she finished chewing before she answered. She wasn’t supposed to talk with her mouth full: That was impolite.

“I didn’t understand half of what you just said,” Riley smiled.

“It just means that he’s unpredictable.”

“No, what does ‘high’ mean? And what’s living in a rabbit hole?”

“It means he’s on a lot of drugs. And nothing’s living in—”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why is he using drugs? Drugs are bad. They say that in all my cartoons.”

Claire smiled at her, which was reassuring because Riley usually knew what that meant.

“I can’t say for sure, but Blasto’s a parahuman. With how we get our powers, I would guess that he’s using drugs to avoid thinking about what happened to him.”

“But why can’t he just… what was the word for breaking a big problem into smaller problems—”

“Umm… dividing?”

“—and putting them into boxes?”

“Oh! Compartmentalizing?”

“That’s it.” Riley shoved the remains of her pita in her mouth. Claire looked happy, but she stopped eating. Riley wondered what she was missing. “Why can’t he just do that? It’s what I do. I just don’t think about them.”

“Some people find that more difficult than others do, I guess,” Claire shrugged.

“So, like, he can’t stop thinking about his trigger unless he alters his brain chemistry?”

“Not necessarily that exactly, but something along those lines.”

“Poor guy. That probably sucks.”

“Maybe, but he makes monsters that hurt people, so I don’t sympathize.”

“Neither do I, but that’s because I’m a functional sociopath. I want to, though,” she pointed at Claire, “Sympathize for me!”

It didn’t take much longer before the conversation had been completely derailed, but that was fine. She’d told Claire where she was going, and it was more important that she and Sylvan had a good time at their last lunch together, right?

Her tummy rumbled, and she felt her ears heat up. Hmm… she should have put in an override command to stop her from blushing when she added in her subdermal mesh.

“You want to try one of ours?” asked Aizen.

She looked between the two other pita wraps. Too much lettuce in Aizen’s.

“What was yours called again?” she asked Claire.

“A… uh, keftede wrap. I think they’re meatballs in sauce,” she said, offering her the sandwich.

“Careful, Riley, they’re spicy,”

Riley took a bite.

HMM! Tasty! Perfect chewiness. Juicy. Good aftertas—ohmylordWHATISTHAT?!

“Ahh! AUGH! Hot! AAAHH!”

She dropped the wrap on the table and leapt from her seat, dabbing at her tongue with her napkin while Claire reclaimed her lunch, staring at it in bemusement. How did she not find that hyper-spicy?!

“Riley?! Riley are you okay?!”

She hopped around like a cartoon rabbit.

“It’s like there’s a party in my mouth and EVERYONE IS ON FIRE! EEE!” Riley screamed. Suddenly—

“More please,” she held her hand out, eyes sparkling in expectation.

“I think you’ve had enough.”

She started packing right after she got home. Claire didn’t say very much and just sort of hung around, but she didn’t help her organize her stuff inside her shopping cart. She wondered how the weirdo who stole it first was doing, and whether he still had dental floss in his arm. Or whatever it was of his that she’d patched up. She didn’t understand why she already felt like she missed Claire. It wasn’t like she was leaving Boston, and she’d be able to visit whenever she wanted, right? Claire was nice.

There was no sense worrying, though. It had taken her a long time, but she had finally found Blasto. It was time to pay him a visit.

After leaving the house, it was time to go back to Allston. She donned her mask, and wrapped Coyotemera’s leashes around her arm. She’d only been using two, but she’d kept the third anyway. It didn’t feel right to throw it away when it belonged to her original head.

But that was one of the benefits of having Blasto’s tech available to her! Because surely she could convince Blasto to teach her his ways of monstromancy.

“Are you excited to get your head back?!” she asked, scratching Coyotemera behind her raccoon ears. “You’ll feel good as new, I promise. And then the next time you see Gunsmith we can both laugh at him!”

Coyotemera nodded with both of her heads.

They continued heading west when her pal tugged on her leash.

“Hm? What is it, girl? You smell something?”

Coyotemera stared at a package of salted peanuts at the bottom of the shopping cart.

Man, that was a lot of stuff to dig through. Oh! She took her scalpel and cut a hole in the plastic, then squeezed the peanuts out one at a time before holding them out to her adorable quadrupedal amalgam. She nibbled them up and sneezed contentedly. Then she started sniffing again before turning and pointing with one paw back the way they’d come.

“Something interesting over there?”

Both heads nodded.

“You don’t mind waiting a bit longer to have your coyote head back?”

She didn’t see how they answered because something stupendous and wiggly — and with big antlers — galloped between the buildings a few blocks away. Riley grabbed her shopping cart, and ran to see if it wanted to be friends.

Chapter Text

April 10th, 2007

It turned out that Blasto wasn’t crippled even after having his workshop vandalized. Either that, or… he might be crazy.

Riley found herself caught on the fringes of a fight between the Protectorate and a gigantic creature that by her estimation was an ingenious symbiotic amalgamate of a very damp moose and several XL-sized octopi. The octopi were attached to the moose’s back, but seemed to be having a good time tossing the heroes around. Unfortunately, he was too busy to be her friend, but she was sure that if he didn’t have to wallop those heroes, he’d be happy to join her for tea and biscuits. Or at least banana pudding, though that was mostly just Coyotemera’s favorite.

Did the octopi have their own respiratory systems or did the moose handle all of it? What about their pulmonary and circulatory systems? They all seemed autonomous in terms of behavior, even when they occasionally synchronized their movements. How was the moose generating water? Was it excreting it through sweat glands or an alternative means?

She’d been keeping an eye on Blasto’s creations for a while. They tended not to last very long, so Riley tried to enjoy them while she could.

Boston’s resident biotinker was in his private laboratory, engineering his latest, if-not greatest creation, when someone cleared their throat.

“Jesus!” Rey screamed. “How’d you get in here?!”

“Hello to you, too! Blasto, right?”

A young girl with blonde hair was suddenly standing in the middle of Blasto’s workshop, smiling up at him. And not answering his question. She wore a pair of baggy, beige cargo pants, and a navy hoodie with a cartoony elephant on it holding a knife in its trunk. The caption read ‘An elephant never forgets… and he never forgives.’ The pockets of her cargo pants were bulging with how much stuff was in them, and she was carrying a backpack.

“Okay, kid, seriously. Who are you and how did you get in here?”

“I came in through the door? Using my legs?”

“That door was locked and completely nondescript.”

“I’m very determined.”

He shook his head. That didn’t explain anything. Maybe a different line of questioning was in order. He sighed, putting his tools down, and giving the girl his full attention.

“Right. …clearly. But why are you here? That’s the real question of the hour.”

“Oh! That’s easy! I saw your big moose-monster!”

“Of course you did,” Blasto grumbled. “Look, I’m not really in control of the things I make, I just point them in a direction and they do whatever they want.”

“Yeah, I could totally tell! It was so cool!”

“That’s very nice, but I’m—” hold on a minute. What did the kid say? Did she say his Octomoose was cool? Was the world having a cosmic aneurysm, or something? People, humans in general, things that could be referred to using proper nouns, didn’t appreciate his work. It simply wasn’t done. It wasn’t like he was seeking validation with it, of course, he just had the Tinker’s urge to express himself regardless of whether it was a rational decision to do so. But this was an unprecedented turn of events.

The conclusion was obvious. This child was clearly either insane, or deeply traumatized, and it was his civic duty and his responsibility as a misanthropic but not completely horrible human being to take her to the local police station and help her find her parents.

“There were eight octopi on your Moistmoose, right?” asked the girl. “I tried to get a good look at it before the PRT came and carted him off, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“Yes, there… uh… were eight of them. And it was called the Octomoose, by the way.”

“Oh. Okay,” she looked thoughtful. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to call it an octomoose if it were just a regular moose with tentacles?”

“Why not pedipalps and a giant spinneret?” Blasto countered, almost automatically.

“Because that kind of octomoose would freak me out every time it climbed down from its web,” said the girl. He fought down the urge to laugh, managing to turn it into a convincing cough.

“Are you laughing at me?” the girl narrowed her eyes, standing up just a little straighter and gaining maybe half an inch of height.

“Of course not. Just surprised. Very surprised. You’ll have to excuse me for not being very receptive to your presence. No one likes the things I make, and people aren’t easy for me to work with, so I don’t get much practice interacting with other people. It’s better for everyone this way, honestly. I don’t like other people, and other people don’t like me or things I’ve had a hand in.”

“You like me!” Rotten Apple called down from the loft.

“Not helping!” he shot back.

“I like the things you make,” said the girl.

“Sure you do,” he rolled his eyes. It wasn’t entirely intentional, but he had a lot of practice dealing with people not stating their true intentions. It hurt a little that someone this young was being manipulated like this, but that would be someone else’s problem as soon as he managed to get rid of her—what the hell did she think she was doing?!

“Is this a hermetically sealed preservation locker?!” she asked, running her fingers along the computer keys on its steel and brass base.

“Yes, don’t touch anything, it’s very sensitive equipment! The material in there—”

She wasn’t paying attention anymore.

“Ooh! Are these what I think they are?!” she squealed looking at the centerpieces of his lab. “Growth chambers! It’s just like in that one movie! What was it called?”

He shrugged. He got the idea from his power, not from pop-culture. He wouldn’t know.

“The Matrix?” he suggested.

“Nah, that’s not it. What are you making now that the Octomoose is in moose jail?” she asked. Blasto sternly refused to laugh no matter how funny the phrase ‘moose jail’ objectively was. Besides, this kid was hopping from topic to topic like a kangaroo, and there wasn’t nearly enough coffee in his base for him to handle this much energy.

“Trade secret. Look, kid, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but really, you can’t be here.”

“B-But I’m like you! I’m a biotinker, or whatever people call our version of the power.” Apparently she wasn’t expecting this kind of response. “I mean, I-I can do some things with technology, too, but my main thing is that I can perform miracle surgery. That includes grafting pieces of one lifeform to other lifeforms.”

“Okaaay, but what do you want from me? I don’t know where you’re from, I don’t know who might be looking for you, and as nice as you are, I don’t want to give the authorities additional incentive to find me and throw me in jail.”

“But our powers would work so well together!” she protested. “Really, Mister Blasto, I don’t know where to go. I don’t feel things right anymore, and if I go back home, I might hurt my family.”

He did not feel sympathy. He did not feel sympathy. He did not feel sympathy.

“Couldn’t you go to the PRT?” he asked wearily.

“I guess, but I’m not really hero material. I mean, by my power’s very nature, I’ll prob’ly get blood on me a whole lot. I don’t think that fits the ‘hero look’ they want from their guys.”

She looked down at her shoes.

“I’m sure they’d be fine with you. Doctors work with blood, too.”

“Yeah, but… well, I don’t think I want to operate on people for a while, and if I join them, I’ll probably have to…”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no. Did this honest-to-god elementary schooler Trigger by having to operate on someone she cared about? That’s an awful trigger. Poor kid—

—Wait! NO! NO SYMPATHY! Don’t do it. Don’t do it, Blasto, you know this is a bad idea! You don’t take in strays. Think of the fucking consequences.

He groaned, dragging his hands across his face.

“So you’re saying you want to stay here?”

“I… um… I guess? I’m not sure. I just hoped that you might be able to teach me a few things about my powers, but I really don’t have anywhere to stay. I’ve been homeless for a few weeks now, but I think I’ve handled it pretty okay.”

There was no way that was true. If she was really homeless for weeks, she wouldn't be alive. Not at her age. He accidentally made eye contact and came to the immediate conclusion that this child had weaponized the concept of puppy dog eyes.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

Rey sighed. He couldn’t believe he was doing this.

“Okay. I’m not able to support another person with all the expenses that my work comes with, but I’ll put you up for a week. No more than that, though.”

“That’d be great! Thanks so much, Mister Blasto!” she clapped her hands together, bouncing on her heels.

“You got a name, kid?”

“I’m Riley. My cape name is Stitcher, but it’s only been used in public once and that was as a rogue. I’m also… well, I’m not good at naming things.”

“We can work on that while you’re here I guess.”

He was not nearly high enough to deal with this shit…

Riley stayed for a week. Getting in that first time hadn’t been easy. After getting in through the giant hole proved unworkable, she had to use alternative means of ingress.

Even in that brief initial period, she learned a lot about how to work with various different organisms, and all too soon it was coming to an end. But then one week turned into two. Two weeks turned into three. She’d been ready to leave, as per their agreement, but Mister Blasto always seemed to have something for her to do. And despite claiming he was short on funds, he even ordered her a pizza one time.

After a month, Blasto had admitted that she might have grown on him just a little. It didn’t hurt that she was proving to be a stellar lab assistant, though. It was inevitable that he would ask about her spider-box, but she was a good girl who didn’t tell lies, so she told the truth.

“You’re saying that Jack Slash made you trigger… and you put his brain in a jar?”

“It was really waaaay too easy. I’d heard he was supposed to be unstoppable, but I just decapitated him and put his brain into my spider box.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Language, Mister Blasto.”

“Fine, fine, but you can’t possibly be serious. I mean, I’d heard that the Nine self-destructed or something, but that couldn’t have made Jack Slash that vulnerable, right?”

“Oh, no, it was the other way around. I’ve been studying Jack Slash’s brain, and he actually had a Master power. I thought that this was released on PHO weeks ago. The only reason they all deferred to his judgement was because his power was making them very open to suggestion as long as he was the one speaking.”

“Huh,” Blasto muttered. “Creepy.”

“You want me to introduce you?”

“I’d rather face death by piranhas.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame you.”

Blasto had some really impressive technology in his hideout. It had taken less than a week to clone a new head to replace Coyotemera’s missing one using accelerated cloning techniques. The girl was barking up a storm within minutes of getting her head back. Technically, it was an entirely new head, but the other two heads made up the difference, so even if the new coyote head didn’t remember Riley on its own, she didn’t have anything to worry about.

She was also growing Sylvan a new arm. That was a slower process. While it was possible for her to sculpt an arm that would fit Claire from available raw material, Riley’s plan had always been to use Blasto’s resources. That way, she could just deposit a hair sample into one of the growth pods and get a perfect copy of Claire’s right arm. The cloning chambers could generate a single body part much faster than a whole body, especially if brains weren’t involved, but it was still going to take a while. Brains were extraordinarily, beautifully, fascinatingly complex organs, and it took quite a long time to develop them properly. It could take almost a year to foster the development of a human brain properly, longer if you were implanting memories. But that was beside the point. Riley was getting things done.

She even had a timeline. It would take approximately five months for the arm to reach adult-size to Blasto had cloning tanks of varying sizes, and Claire’s arm would need a human-sized one, and luckily, those ones weren’t used very frequently. Blasto tended to go with a ‘bigger is better’ mentality, so his creations usually were grown in the extremely large growth tanks. And boy oh boy, those were some massive synthetic growth chambers. Two of them alone filled up almost half the warehouse. Most of Blasto’s workshop was underground. The living spaces were upstairs in a loft with fogged windows. There was actually a surprising amount of free space for a guy living by himself and who tended to only ever have one visitor. Riley had no trouble carving out a small place for herself.

For now, her room was grey and sterile. It was something she would fix later on. However, in the moment, she had stuff to do. She had some big plans. Big plans!

Extremely-large-growth-tank-sized plans!

“Uncle Blasto, where do you keep the snakes?”

“That’s a prefix I was never expecting to hear attached to my cape name. Uhh… third cryo-locker on the right!”

“Yay, thank yyy—Is that a whole anaconda?!”

“I just cloned it from some snakeskin I bought on e—”

“I LOVE THIS PLACE!”

Once it became clear that she wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon, Blasto and Rotten Apple, who seemed to come by frequently, had sat down with her and helped her brainstorm some names. They immediately rejected Scalpel, Forceps, and she had taken down her Surgeon account on PHO, but while that had been available for a few months, it had apparently been claimed by some cape in the U.K.

“Stitcher seems about right, but you’re sure it’s been used in public?” asked Rotten.

“Yeah, Sylvan posted about me online.”

Unfortunately, Rotten Apple’s suggestions weren’t much better. Also, they were all fruit-based. People would be expecting her to show up with a ballistic cantaloupe launcher or something. She felt like she’d be lying to the public. Good girls wouldn’t weave a gigantic web of lies or commit unspeakable fruitrocities to ensure their name made sense. That would be bad.

“I was actually hoping to work with genetic manipulation. I want to make monsters, just like you do,” said Riley. “Maybe we could go with something that sounds more mad-sciencey?”

“Okay… how about Synth?” Blasto offered. “Like synthetic life forms?”

Riley actually liked the sound of that, but Rotten shook her head.

“That makes her sound like she’s some cheap new age musician.”

“No it doesn’t?” Blasto tried, then grimaced. “Thanks a lot, now I can’t unsee it.”

“Good.”

Wasn’t picking out a name supposed to be more fun? Surely people didn’t all have as much trouble as she did.

“Maybe… umm… Hack Job?”

“Do you plan on using a cleaver, or something?”

“What? No. That would be clumsy and unacceptable for use in an operating theater.”

“Then that’s out.”

“Splinter?”

I can’t really see either of you working with wood,” Rotten mused.

“Huh? What does wood have to do with this? I meant making splints.”

“Oh. Sorry, kid, I don’t think anyone else will see it that way,” Blasto said, shaking his head.

“Incissor?”

“Major ick vibes on that one,” said Blasto. “Wait! I’m getting an idea!” He jumped to his feet. “Crap, it’s gone. Wait, no, it’s back! I just… can’t remember the word. It’s not ugly, but also not too tame. Definitely fits the mad science and geneticist themes. It sounds like that last one…”

“Incissor?”

“No, the one before that.”

“You mean ‘Splinter’?”

“That’s the one.”

Riley held her breath. She had enjoyed bouncing ideas back and forth for a bit, but she really wanted to get back to making Sylvan’s new arm.

“Got it!” Blasto roared triumphantly. “How do you like ‘Splicer’?”

Riley’s inaugural project as the newly coined Splicer, was Tortinator. He was a tortoise, of course, albeit one the size of a bungalow. Despite his outward appearance, and his core genes coming from a Galapagos tortoise, he had a lot of new features that his turtley brethren probably couldn’t get in the wild.

For one thing, his skeletal structure was dramatically different. Fun fact: Turtle shells are attached to the turtle’s spine and ribs. They are not detachable like in cartoons. Which meant Riley needed to change her plans, but she could adapt.

Turtle shells were dense and effective against predators, but they weren’t entirely solid. They were divided into air filled chambers surrounded by the shell’s keratin. One wouldn’t expect that to be a sturdy defense, but a natural turtle shell could withstand a good 1,000 pounds of force before cracking. Of course, if an ordinary turtle shell cracked, it would bleed, and it wouldn’t heal. Moreover, a gunshot was way more than 1,000 pounds of force, so in addition to shell thickness, Riley needed extra armor. She wasn’t letting her gigantic new pet get hurt just because people were predisposed toward fearing gigantism. That was just prejudice.

Riley started her work by making the spine significantly thicker so that she could increase the thickness of the shell. In a normal tortoise, this would have been about a quarter-of-an-inch thick. At Tortinator’s size, that translated to about two inches if she’d grown him naturally. Instead, his shell was five inches thick. Or at least, his carapace was. His plastron was still two inches, but his comparatively delicate underbelly wouldn’t be particularly accessible unless he was defeated, and if that happened, she’d be beating a hasty retreat, and he’d be following her in short order. Using careful dosages of vitamins and minerals injected into his body during his post-embryonic development, Riley ensured that his shell would be entirely bulletproof by the time he was fully grown, which only take a few months in one of Blasto’s growth chambers. Turtles just matured faster than humans.

The skeletal structures of the hind legs was also adjusted slightly. Tortinator had saurischian hips, and gaps in his plastron that were highly atypical of a tortoise. Specifically, his hind legs were a little shorter, but they were directly beneath his body rather than to its sides. This meant that very uniquely to a tortoise, he was able to lope forward at a steady gallop, if not a full run.

Once he was ready to get pulled from the tank, she was ready to start grafting. He just needed one adjustment: A long, prehensile tail that was twice the length of his body. It was basically just a pair of partially distended anacondas. Well, most of them, anyway. She removed the heads and their necks, and they were now in a stasis pod, waiting for the day she wanted to make a more traditional chimera. Or a hydra. Or an elephant with a snake for a trunk and purple feathers!

She’d removed all the snakes’ organs and the original skeleton, and replaced them with larger vertebrates and additional muscle. The tail was twenty-eight feet long, and could hit like an eighty kilogram noodle! Due to its weight, it dragged along the ground but that didn’t mean it was too heavy to move. That was just energy conservation. Heavily armored, with sturdy muscles, he could actually use his tail like a whip.

Additionally, he had extremely powerful senses. DNA from a bald eagle — the only specimen Blasto had on hand — improved his eyesight dramatically, and she had manually improved his circulatory system.

The cybernetics weren’t visible, but they were still necessary. Specifically, she needed four things:

The first was an auto-injector array for various stimulants, antivenins and tranquilizers, depending on what kind of emergency presented itself. It was built into his shell, right behind her saddle. While Tortinator himself was fairly relaxed, all living things could panic in unexpected circumstances. Tranquilizers would make sure that if she lost control over him, he wouldn’t go on a(n unplanned) rampage. Antivenins prevented him from getting poisoned, and stimulants could bulk him up in a pinch, or keep him awake if they were hit with soporific attack. She liked that word. Sop-por-riffic. It sounded fun.

The second was a metabolism switch. At the adjustment of a dial, she could increase his body’s production of thyroid hormone, cortisol, aldosterone, and a few other more specialized hormones to ensure that he could gain nutrition faster and be more active when necessary.

An ordinary Galapagos tortoise could go for a year without needing to eat, and that would be fine for the most part, as long as Tortinator was just being a tortoise. But Riley had made Tortinator not only much larger, but also warm blooded, to allow activity on-demand. This meant that he wasn’t dependant on sunlight or a heat lamp to move, but would need to bring in more nutrients more often. Of course, he would be able to laze around most of the time, but when he got active, he’d be really active. Which was situational, but nevertheless, would result in him eating a vast amount of food after deployment. Luckily, the spider-boxes were taking very good care of her new greenhouse, and she would have a good supply of yummy leafy herbs for him.

Of course, an ordinary Galapagos tortoise would also be very passive. Not something you could ride into battle atop. Although by the same token, Tortoinator could also stop battles by lumbering into the middle of the road and taking a nap.

The third thing was a cockpit. Tortinator was very big, so just sitting on top of him at all times could result in unexpected personal injury, she needed a dedicated space for herself. Preferably one that wouldn’t bother Tortinator. She’d had to extend the length of his neck, but she made it work:

Now, common sense, biology, and animal rights advocates dictated that it was impossible to put a trapdoor in a turtle’s shell. Luckily, Riley had ways around that. Like overextending the carapace’s ‘saddle’ to form a small box, so that she could open up a hatch and hunker down if someone started shooting at her or throwing rotten tomatoes. This secondary par to fate shell meant that he needed two additional spinal columns that extended from the peak of his carapace to above his head on either side of the hollow. Because she lengthened his neck, it wasn’t immediately apparent that his shell had a hidden compartment, and as an additional benefit, he could tuck his head in to stay out of the rain.

Finally, the fourth thing was a highly concentrated heat ray built to fire from his mouth.

Look, it worked for the seagulls.

Uncle Blasto, what would you do if you ever saw one of your creations again after it was defeated?”

“I don’t know. Never really given that much thought. Why do you ask?”

“Because an unmarked white van just dumped the Octomoose by the side of the road outside your hideout.”

“HUH?!”

. . .

. . . . .

“He’s missing a kidney.”

“HUH?!”

August 19th, 2007

One of the most important things that Blasto taught her when it came to capes echoed what she’d learned from Jack, and from Sylvan’s Tinker specialty: Appearances were everything.

Every time Blasto released a creature into Boston, it made a huge splash, making headlines across the eastern seaboard. As long as the PRT and the heroes responded appropriately, he would terrify everyone without becoming a threat that needed to be taken down. His outlook wasn’t entirely rational, but he obviously liked making a spectacle. Riley took this lesson to heart. If capes were a superpower circus, she wanted to be a ringmaster.

Sylvan’s arm was finally ready, and it was the last hurdle she needed to clear before she could redebut. Now that was going to be an exciting day. But for now, she had an arm to deliver. Which incidentally meant consensually kidnapping Claire because unless Claire’s family had made some dramatic lifestyle choices since she went to live with Blasto, they probably didn’t have their own operating table.

She rang the doorbell.

The woman who answered was a familiar woman who was clearly from the side of the family that Claire got her pale complexion from. She had her dad’s eyes and her mom’s hair,

She raised her hand in a wave. “Hiya, Mrs. Nakamura! Is Claire around?”

“Riley, dear! It’s been months! Where have you been this whole time?”

“Didn’t Claire tell you? I found a new workshop with more space, so I decided to take it while I had the chance.”

It wasn’t really a lie, just not the whole truth. She was still being good.

“Oh, now I remember, she did mention something like that, but it’s just been so long. Are you getting enough sleep?”

“Usually. Sometimes I stay up all night. Tinkering is exciting! That said, I want to get the new arm to Claire before it starts going bad.”

“Arm?”

“Yup! I made her a new one since Plague Woman ruined her old one by stealing my stuff.”

There were many things that Riley couldn’t easily identify, but it cave her some measure of comfort to know that she could always tell when a person looked puzzled. Mrs. Nakamura looked very puzzled indeed.

“She’s… inside. You can really just… give her a new arm? I thought Panacea was the only one who could do things like that.”

Riley had never heard of this Panacea, but if she could do what Mrs. Nakamura said she could, she was probably worth investigating.

“Uh huh. I don’t know how she does it, but I grew it in a lab from Claire’s cells.”

Mrs. Nakamura was looking puzzled again.

Riley found Claire in her workshop, tinkering away with something using her singular arm. Truly inspirational. And highly indicative of the Tinker condition.

“Guess what day it is~!” Riley sang. Claire, having been intensely focused, fumbled her screwdriver and grumbled something under her breath as she rooted around under the table for her tool.

“Sunday?”

“That too, but I was gonna say New Arm Day.”

“Oh thank god, trying to tinker with only one arm is agonizing.”

“I can imagine. And it’s not like you can just stop either. I’ve theorized that the Tinker’s itch has a lot in common with addictions.”

“It’d make sense.”

They stood in companionable silence for a few moments.

“So, I’m going to have to bring you to my new workshop because I don’t have the necessary tools to perform a complete operation here.”

“Did you ever? That thing you made to work on the seagulls was like a Rube Goldberg machine made of belts.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

It took some work convincing Claire to put on the blindfold. Still it was kind of a dealbreaker. She couldn’t very well have a law-abiding cape knowing where Blasto’s Evil Lair was.

She didn’t think Blasto’s lair was particularly ‘evil.’ It was closer to ‘inoffensive.’ But in a spooky, Sy-Fy Channel sort of way.

Even so, it was bad enough that the bus’ automated stop announcements gave her a pretty good idea of where they were. So she led Claire along a winding path between a few buildings before bringing her inside. Once they were inside her operating theater, Riley took off the blindfold and replaced it with a domino mask and hair bandanna

“Welcome to the scariest room in the building!” she said, clapping her hands excitedly. Coyotemera gave a few enthusiastic yips from behind the door, but she knew she wasn’t allowed in the operating room by now. The operating theater was a spacious room with a number of cupboards along the walls, and painted in soft whites and greens, but the important thing was that the lights could turn green or red depending on how mad the science being done inside of it was on a scale of one-to-ten.

Then she removed the freshly grown right arm from its container and placed it on the operating table — identifiable as such by the heavy-duty restraints — in front of Claire, who rolled it over to inspect it.

“Wow, it’s exactly like I remember it. How did you manage to even makes those two freckles on my wrist?”

“Genetic predisposition. It was always going to end up looking exactly the same. But I’m glad to know it meets your specifications!”

“And there are no cybernetic surprises?” Claire narrowed her eyes.

“None whatsoever. This is one-hundred percent meat. No heavy metals, and no artificial colors or sweeteners!”

“I hesitate to ask, but have you created an arm that did have artificial colors and sweeteners?”

“I did. And it was delicious!”

Claire recoiled.

“According to the seagulls that ate it. They can’t speak, but they were very enthusiastic.”

Claire unrecoiled.

Riley went over to a minifridge in the corner of the room and came back holding out a small unlabelled package and a plastic spoon to Claire. “Now, Before we start, I need you to eat this.”

“Is this an anesthetic?” she asked, looking at the cup.

“No, it’s chocolate pudding!” she said, pulling the sealing paper off.

Claire gave her a look that she tried — and failed — to identify. “Why?” she asked.

“Because everything is better with pudding!” Riley exclaimed. “Duh. Come on, this is first grade stuff.”

“What if I don’t like pudding?”

Huh?

Riley didn’t have an answer to that. She repeated the words in her head. Used separately, she knew what they all meant, but used together in that way, they just didn’t make any sense. It was like asking if a lobster was more like a toaster or a skateboard.

Still, if she didn’t want the pudding, that would speed up the timetable.

“Anyway, I can’t use too much anesthetic because connecting your nerves can be a tricky process. Technically speaking, the less I use, the more of your nerves I can manually connect, and the quicker you’ll be able to regain proper use of your hand. That said, it’ll still be attached with stitches, and it’ll fall off if you’re not careful with it, so after this, my recommendation would be that you go to the hospital and get a cast for your arm.

“I’ll be starting by knocking you out, but I’ll wake you up when I start attaching things.”

“Okay?”

Riley put the arm down on the table, opening up a cupboard and retrieving her bonesaw, the anesthetic needles, a tourniquet, alcohol swabs, and her all-important suturing kit. She also wheeled a large machine containing with a propofol compound of her own design for general anesthesia over to the operating table. Fortunately, she had a human-shaped mask in addition to several specifically meant for animals.

“I’m going to have to open your arm back up, but fortunately, I only need you to be awake while I’m attaching the arm, not while I’m making a new injury. But it’s going to sting when you wake up.”

Claire shuddered, but took a deep breath. It seemed to steady her, at least a little.

“I want my arm back. I can deal with a few minutes of pain.”

“Alrighty! I’ll get started, then!” chirped Riley. She tore open an alcohol swab, dabbed it against Claire’s arm, removed the cap from her hypodermic needle full of anesthetic, and performed the injection perfectly. She could have done it with her eyes closed, but she didn’t because it was possible that someone else might panic if they saw that.

Then they watched the first fifteen minutes of something called Blade Runner, which Claire said was her favorite movie, and which starred a startlingly cool male human as the main character. She used this time to take several measurements of Claire’s left arm, comparing it against the new right arm, and using the reference to determine how far above the stump she would be cutting, and finally drew a line on Claire’s right arm to mark the spot.

“Okay, onto the table you go.”

The operating table was admittedly not the most inviting place to lie down, but Claire just took a deep breath and lay down.

“Hold out your arm.”

Claire held out her right arm, and Riley strapped the tourniquet on tightly an inch above the line she drew above the stump, before getting started doing up the torso restraints, then the leg restraints. The belts for Claire’s left arm were left a bit looser, but her right arm was restrained as tightly as she could manage it.

She placed the anesthetic mask over Claire’s face, and opened the valve to release the gas.

“Count to ten for me,” she said.

Impressively, Claire managed to get to eight before passing out. It wasn’t a natural resistance; Riley’s anesthesias were very powerful. She put it down to Sylvan having a very strong will.

“Now then, I’ll fix you up before ya know it. Literally, even!”

She turned on her bonesaw.

Fifty minutes, one mop, and all this blood later, Claire was awake again and trying not to stare at what was happening to her right arm, because while it was obviously the best case scenario, having your arm only partially attached to your body was, by its very nature, an extremely scary thing.

“Okay, can you feel your thumb and index finger yet?”

Claire nodded, looking equal parts rapturous and scared out of her mind.

“How the fuck—”

“Language, Claire.” Riley pointed a bloody finger at her nose. “Being zonked out is no excuse for bad manners.”

For some reason, this made Claire all grouchy and grumbly, so Riley just went back to working on the arm. Sewing it on was meticulous work, and if she made a mistake and only realized once she was finished, she’d have to chop the arm off and reattach it all over again. Which would be excellent practice for her, but she couldn’t be sure how Claire would feel about it. Surely, she’d be okay with helping Riley out for science, right?

Surely…

Best not to risk it. People were unpredictabubble. Heehee.

“So how the… ffff-heck does… whatever this is… even work?”

“I am so glad you asked that!” exclaimed Riley, continuing to stitch up Claire’s biceps brachii with a giant smile on her face, “I started by reattaching the bone, of course, since it’s sort of like the foundation I’m working with. I could have used polymethyl methacrylate, which is really useful for this sort of thing and used in hospitals for hip replacements all the time, but if heated to much, it can cause a monomer to leach into the nearby tissue that can cause necrosis, and then you’d be back where we started. Mostly. It’d be mostly the same except you wouldn’t be turning into a zombie.”

“Uhh?”

“So I’m using compounds that I designed based on polyurethane. On its own, it’s better for short-term applications, but I’ve made a degradable version that contains hormones that promote bone growth. I call it Bone Stuff. As the bone connects, it’ll squeeze the bone cement out and into the surrounding tissue where it’ll dissolve. At that point, your arm won’t be at risk of falling off anymore. Isn’t that great!”

“Um… yes?”

Aww, c’mon, Claire, this was simple stuff, you gotta keep up here.

“So after the bone, I grafted your arteries to the ones in the new arm using a similar polyurethane base. Which according to the security footage is why you’re alive now.

“Huh?”

“I adjusted it for vascular use. Normal polyurethane isn’t as good for long term use. Without my adjustments, it’d be prone to oxidation, and then the connections would crack or calcify, would could cause blockages or internal bleeding. Like my Bone Stuff, my Vein Stuff contains hormones to regrow the natural material and then breaks down like the stuff holding the bones together once it’s done. As a rule, nothing really beats what the body does naturally, even if it’s not being done the way it normally would, so what I’m doing is mostly holding your pieces together while getting your body to fix itself. Working with the rest of your veins is pretty much the same.”

“Aren’t there… like, a crazy number of veins in the human body?”

“Oh, absolutely, it took me almost twenty minutes to connect them all the superficial veins on the back half of your arm.”

“Twenty minutes?! I thought she just did surgery efficiently! That’s not efficient, it’s freakin’ witchcraft!”

Aww, that was such a nice thing for Blasto say, and for Coyotemera to agree with. Coyotemera had started agreeing with everything Blasto said ever since he bought her the meat explosion at Burger King.

It was especially flattering considering he could grow an octomoose from scratch. Speaking of which…

“Would you be willing to donate your kidney for science before we finish up here?”

“No, thank you.”

“Awww… spoilsport,” she pouted, but didn’t stop weaving her needle in and out. “what was I saying? Oh, right, blood vessels. Mostly finished.”

“By comparison, your musculature is waaaaay easier. I’ve stitched a few together already, which is why you can feel about half of your hand, and almost feel the rest of it. Unless something’s gone terribly, terribly wrong, but if that were happening, the mad science lights would have turned red.

Anyway, the really tricky part was making sure the nerves were all connecting properly, and that’s what all those needles were for a couple minutes ago.

Claire shook her head.

Between attaching her musculature, the superficial veins, and finally stitching up her arm, the rest of the procedure took another hour or so, and by the time Riley was putting in the last stitch, Claire was staring at her right arm in awe. It took another half-hour to fit her with a sturdy cast.

“I… I honestly can’t believe it,” she murmured.

She flexed her fingers, unable to hide the elation on her face. Happiness was a good emotion, Riley decided: It was easy to identify.

“Now, I’ve put it back on, but remember, you’re not healed yet. This isn’t like a broken bone. Now that it’s in  a cast, it’s unlikely to get torn off, but still avoid being too rough with it. Keep it elevated whenever possible, and keep the cast clean and dry. Also, I’m pretty sure its fine, but don’t drink excessive amounts of alcohol or caffeine. I’m pretty sure than anything that’ll show up in your bloodstream won’t have any affect on my Vein Stuff, but just in case, avoid that sort of thing for a while.”

“So, when do I remove it?”

“Three-to-four months. That’s when Bone Stuff and the Vein Stuff should finish working. It’ll still be delicate for about a year after that, so while you can still go caping, don’t let brutes and strikers hit your arm. Maybe add some extra armor there.”

Claire grinned.

“I-I don’t know what to say,” she sniffled. “Thank you so much for this.”

Wait, she was crying—why was Claire crying, what went wrong here? Also she was hugging Riley. With her left arm only, to be responsible. Claire was cool.

“Why are you crying?” asked Riley.

“I… look, I d-don’t mean to sound like I didn’t have confidence in what you can do, b-but there’s a pretty big difference between putting teeth back in my head and replacing an arm. I think… I think that as much as I told myself I was going to get my arm back, I didn’t really let myself believe it. I’m really, really happy right now.”

“People cry when they’re happy?” Riley gasped.

Well, so much for happiness being an easy emotion to work with. Happiness sucked. Friendship over.

After a few more minutes of chatting and awkward hugs, Riley put the blindfold back over Claire’s eyes, and led her out of Blasto’s workshop.

“You know, I already know where Blasto lives, right? I brought you here myself the first time.”

Oh. Right. Because of The Four’s attack on his lab earlier in the year. Gosh darn it! She’d never needed to take precautions in the first place. Man, she’d wasted half an hour leading Claire around in random directions.

August 25th, 2007

(Roughly one week later)

Costume?

         Check!

Stitchy mask?

         Check!

Tools?

         Check!

Gigantic reptile?

         Super check!

Megaphone?

         Check!

Peanut butter?

         Like roughly half of all things in her life involving peanut butter
         these days, she wasn’t sure why she had gotten it out in the
         first place, but check!

Drainage pipe?

         Arrived!

Actually, no this was a terrible idea!

…

She discarded the bottle of Skippy’s… into her knapsack, because what else was she going to do? Drop it in the middle of the Charles? Only bad girls littered.

There, that was much better!

She was wearing her new costume: They were doctor’s scrubs, dyed a bright red and fitted for the vertically impaired. She’d picked the color to be ominous, while keeping it bright enough that it didn’t immediately bring blood to mind. She also was sure to add giant, haphazard-looking stitches crisscrossing all over it. She was definitely going to grow out of it sooner or later, but she wasn’t one to do anything by half-measures. When she outgrew this one, she’d make another one.

The mask was made of several different domino masks, each in a different color that had been stitched together. She’d made it by placing the masks on top of each other and slicing them up at random angles so that all the pieces were irregular, but all had equivalent proportions. Then she reassembled them out of the equivalent parts from different masks, making sure that none of the colors touched a matching section.

She had several different masks, all different combinations of green, blue, red, black and white. The green and blue were both the color of doctors’ scrubs, with the red being the bright color that matched her costume, and the white was off-white to look sort of like bone.

She was all dressed up, had her scariest doctoring tools with her, and Tortinator was raring to go! It was time to roll up the curtain!

Now, while Tortinator wasn’t the strongest swimmer, he’d be able to make it to shore, and from there, she could commence her attack! All of Boston would fear her! And in the unlikely event that she failed, at the very least, she’d have the love and adoration of turtle enthusiasts everywhere!

“Onward!” she patted Tortinator’s shell, and he waded into the river, paddling toward land and coming aground at Riverbend Park. There weren’t a lot of people around, but there were enough that it was time to turn on her megaphone. Besides, they were all staring at Tortinator, and she didn’t want him to get stage fright. She patted his shell. He probably could barely even feel it, but it was the thought that counted.

Then she cleared her throat and took a deep breath.

“LADIES AND GENTLEHUMANS! WELCOME TO BLASTGERM’S FIRST EVER MONTHLY RAMPAGE! Starring me! Splicer!”

People immediately started screaming and running for cover, so she was off to a good start.

“Please do not attempt to participate if you do not have a brute rating, or at least have a weight category twice as high as super heavyweight! Also, monthly monsters are apparently not guaranteed.”

A lady in expensive clothes ran across the street and jumped into the Charles. This was why panicking never solved anything. Really, half these people were just running in random directions. Were they expecting Tortinator to teleport behind them or something? After the second collage-aged-person crashed headlong into his legs, she remembered that she had something for exactly this sort of thing.

“Um, excuse me? Hello? Mister?” she said, not bothering with her megaphone so that she didn’t blast out his eardrums by surprise. “You with the black hair and the fancy tie? You’re going the wrong way.”

The man adjusted what looked to be a very expensive tie, and craned his head back to get a proper look at her since he was trying to get past Tortinator, but kept getting blocked by his shell or his leg. Really, just wait for him to pass by. Oh wait, but his tail was probably scary, too.

…nah, people could duck. It was easy!

“And who the hell are you to tell me where I should be going?!” the boy shot back.

“Well, according to the self-preservation instinct that comes built into most living organisms, the correct direction for you to travel is ‘away,’ but an equally correct answer would be ‘not directly at the supertortoise.’”

Her erstwhile victim seethed at her as she continued romping along toward the road.

“Oh! Right!” she held her megaphone back up and dug a slip of paper out of her pocket. “Uncle Blasto told me to say this: ‘Blastgerm takes no responsibility for any injuries sustained while fleeing if the injured party in question was fleeing toward the monster!’”

Someone across the street grumbled something but she only caught ‘think…idiots.’

“‘Does he think you’re idiots?’” she asked through her megaphone. “Well, I didn’t at first, but now I think the best answer to that question would be to look at Tie Guy over here!”

He was still trying to get ahead of Tortinator, who was now intentionally blocking his way with his neck, and surging forward every time the man tried to start running. Heheh, his face was turning red.

She reached the street, and started following it, checking the street signs at the nearest intersection to find that she was in Memorial Drive. What it was that was being memorialized here she had no idea, but she was sure it was very important.

Eventually, Tie Guy decided to stop playing chicken with a tortoise, and slowly retreated toward the river, as though expecting to be followed. She couldn’t imagine any reason why she would do that. He looked more and more baffled the further away she got. Was he expecting Tortinator to come after him? Maybe he was an important person? What if she’d insulted him by ignoring him? Oh dear!

Anyway!

She continued following Memorial, passing Western Avenue to make sure that no one drew a line between her and the warehouse that had been blown up sort-of-but-not-really a few months ago.

Which way was she going? She resolved to buy a compass, a map, and a box of animal crackers to eat while looking at her compass and map. And instructions for how to read a map.

Ideally, she’d be heading toward the local Protectorate HQ, but she really didn’t know. She was so focused on knowing where Allston was for so long, but she never learned how to find any other parts of the city. That might have been a little shortsighted. On the other hand, it looked like Memorial Drive followed the Charles River, and if she followed the river, she had a vague recollection that she’d be heading deeper into the city, and that would get her closer to the heroes.

Surely someone would have called them by now, right?

She suddenly noticed the chorus of honking from behind her.

Oh! Oops! She was probably holding up traffic! Wait, that was a good thing. It was behavior most nefarious! Hmm… if she wanted to be a villain but also a good girl, she’d need to work out some rules for how that all worked. For now, she just got out of the road, and moved over to the riverbank. And the sidewalk. Because Tortinator was big enough to take up all that space.

Uh oh. She was running out of room on the riverside. If she crossed the street, Tortinator could fit on the boulevard.

…she might have to knock over a few trees, but it was for a good cause.

Also, people were finally starting to figure out that ‘away’ was very good direction to run in. No more Tie Guys. That was a relief. He could have gotten very badly hurt and she didn’t have time to put him back together while on a rampage. Actually she wasn’t really doing much damage. Did this even count as a rampage at all? Oh! Would the trees count? She decided they would. Kerchunk! they went as Tortinator bulldozed through them.

Hmm, the road was starting to look more like a highway and the buildings were getting fancy again. Oh, there was a sports field over there! Tortinator could run around!

Tortinator’s stroll through town had been pretty uneventful. Aside from a few damaged cars, and the occasional group of frightened pedestrians at least. She checked her watch, and then remembered that she didn’t have one. But it had probably been twenty minutes, or something, right? And these soccer fields were having a really bad day. Shouldn’t the Protectorate have arrived by now?

Something bright red caught her eye as a familiar motorcycle started coming down the street. Aww, she was hoping for someone new. Also, what was Claire doing?! It had only been three days, her arm was totally gonna come off if she used her sword! Had she gone totally nutso, or something?

Where was Tsunami when you needed him?

“There you are!” he asked splashing down nearby.

Oh, that’s where he was.

The bike rolled up toward her, and Sylvan raised an eyebrow.

“Hi, Sylvan! Hi, Tsunami!”

“Seriously?” she asked. “I leave you alone for a few weeks and suddenly you’re making a mess of MIT.”

Seriously what? This was the plan. Also, what was an MIT?

“Okay, I can see you’re not getting it, so I’ll be clearer. Stitcher, you just caused over a dozen car accidents. I… I can see your very excited about your new turtle—”

“—He’s a tortoise! And I’m Splicer now,” Riley interrupted.

Sylvan sighed. “Okay, I can see you’re excited about your tortoise, but you’re actually hurting people.”

“Isn’t that what villains are supposed to do?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have brought you to that cape fight,” grumbled Sylvan. “Even if it was Blasto’s tech that got me my arm back, he’s obviously not a good influence on you.”

Riley grinned.

“Apple says that I’m a good influence on him, though.”

“Apple? Rotten Apple? Doesn’t she manufacture drugs and poisons?”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to worry. Drugs are bad, so I won’t take any.”

“Look, can you just stop smashing up the MIT campus? I’m trying to get in here, and I’d really appreciate it if you don’t get overexcited and smash a bunch of buildings.”

“Are you sure? I can pay for it if I have to.”

“You know you’re going to get slapped with a serious threat rating if you don’t stop,” said Tsunami.

She blinked. Wasn’t that the whole point?

She took a few minutes to terrorize some passersby with an adorable gigantic tortoise before deciding to follow, while Sylvan and Tsunami followed her around making what were probably valid complaints about her conduct, but generally not being very effective. This was the worst cape fight ever.

“Is this my fault?” asked Sylvan. “I knew you were interested in Blasto’s monsters. Should I have payed more attention to you? Done more to help? Known you’d wanted to get to know him?”

“Nah, it’s nothing you did. This was always the plan, ever since I ran into one of his creatures on my first day here. Were you hoping that I would join your team? Try to understand, Sylvan. Blasto inspired me!”

“Inspired you to make more monsters?” Sylvan raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah! And other things. Like the laser seagulls.” Oh, right, she brought something important with her today! “I also made someone special just for you, but you can’t have him unless you can beat Tortinator.”

Sylvan cringed.

“But you’re riding on its back! How am I supposed to fight it without hurting you?”

Riley shrugged.

“I dunno. How did you plan on fighting me with only one arm?”

Sylvan grimaced. “Jeez. This is gonna suck,” she muttered. “I guess I’m not going to be able to talk you down?”

“I can’t back off now. Think of the disappointed potential fanbase! But are you sure you should be fighting? Like I just said, you’re still down an arm. If you get energetic, your arm could come right off.”

“If you’re going to present a threat to civilians, then as a hero, I can’t stand around on the sidelines.”

“Well said, Sylvan,” nodded Tsunami. “Now—”

“Laser time!” Riley cheered. Tortinator opened his mouth, and a light red glow built up in its mouth before launching a crimson beam at the heroes. Tsunami easily redirected the laser with his water construct, but Riley just had Tortinator surge forward, charging through the shield and bucking the hydrokinetic into the air. His construct caught him, then fired a pressurized jet of water at Tortinator’s head. He had time to land steadily on the ground as Riley’s reptilian friend reeled for a few moments. Fortunately, they were both otherwise unharmed.

Her supertortoise stomped down on Sylvan with a heavy foot, and she managed to just barely deflect the strike with her sword. “Stitcher, I don’t want to fight you!”

“But Sylvaaaan, that’s what caping is all about! We fight each other with super lethal powers, and then the loser either dies, which is sub-optimal, or has to sit in the time-out corner, which is better because it means we can play again later!”

Sylvan shook her head. Why didn’t she understand? Maybe Riley needed to use smaller words?

Was that a shadow?

Tortinator shot forward just a little too late to avoid the giant robot that dive-bombed her?! Riley gaped. She was feeling all the emotions right now. This was awesome!

“Wow, that is so cool!” she gushed.

The robot, shaped like a very tall person, was jet black with red accents, and was taking a low, and aggressive stance.

“If you feel that way, maybe you should have considered joining the Wards instead of trashing Massachusetts Avenue, you diminutive goblin.”

Well, that was an interesting way of expressing anger.

“Cool. Thanks for being polite while threatening me. It’s nice to know that some people are prepared to put away the dirty words and will try to kill me like civilized people.”

The robot shook its head.

“Sorry to say I’m not avoiding foul language. I just don’t think you’ll be much of a problem.”

Riley gave the robot her best Cheshire grin. “Are you suuuure?” she asked, pointing at Tortinator’s shell beneath the robot’s feet.

It looked down.

“I hit this thing at almost terminal velocity. There’s no reason this monster’s shell should be intact.“

“We at Blastgerm Incorporated like to make our products durable and built to last. Tortinator’s shell is so strong that he can walk off having a building fall on him.

It suddenly occurred to Riley that she was within grabbing distance of the giant robot. That probably wasn’t very safe. Fortunately, Tortinator wrapped his tail around their attacker and swung it into the ground, bouncing off the concrete, landing on top of a grey Chevy Impala, and costing a hard-working family man thousands of dollars in car repairs. That wasn’t very heroic. Robot Lady needed to put more effort into her airborne recovery.

And Chevrolet needed to work on their car design. That thing didn’t look like an impala at all!

The damaged car crumpled further as the machine stood back up, and took a low, defensive posture, stepping off the former car to circle Tortinator, who watched with casual interest. There was a reason she designed him to have droopy eyes and a vaguely smile-shaped beak. He was very relaxed, and had every reason to be. You’d be very relaxed, too, if the minimum requirements for bodily harm was being struck by a loaded cement mixer.

He looked away for a moment to investigate a tap-tap-tapping sound against his shell. Sylvan seemed to be testing the strength of his carapace by gently hitting it with her sword to test it for weaknesses. She wouldn’t find any. Tortinator went in with a hip check, and Claire went sprawling across the street. Luckily, her cast was sturdy and she’d even adjusted her armor to account for it, but she really shouldn’t have been fighting at all. Tortinator swept his tail to the side and there was a crash as someone’s car alarm went off.

“Oh, for— Stop smashing cars, Stitcher!” Tsunami’s water construct collapsed into the grass, and Riley looked around for a hint at where it went.

Also, what was this about cars? Tortinator had been very polite and hadn’t stepped on anyone without her express permission. Sylvan did say that she’d caused a few car accidents, but she hadn’t noticed them.

Moisture in the grass suddenly began condensing underneath her as Tsunami’s guardian manifested again, throwing its arms forward and grabbing Tortinator under his plastron, attempting to flip him over onto his back. To her dismay, it was actually working. Slowly but surely, her new friend was being lifted off the ground. That guardian had a brute rating, too? It was made out of water. How did that work? Luckily, Tortinator was still able to raise his tail and used it smash through the construct’s arms and get all four of his feet back on the ground with a tremendous crash, and staggering both of the Sentinels. The supertortoise stared at the disoriented hydrokinetic for a moment, then continued ambling ambling away down the road.

The mech, evidently not one to be outdone, charged at them. “Where do you think you’re going?” the pilot demanded.

“I dunno,” Riley shrugged as Tortinator blocked a punch with his armored cranium. “I think he’s bored.”

“Should I be insulted?”

“Would you mind if I said yes? It’d be great to make some enemies professionally.”

“I’m gonna go with no. You’ve got some seriously weird standards for politeness..”

“Aww…”

Torinator continued on his way. or at least, he tried. The robot kept getting in his way.

“Do you even realize how many cars your monster flipped into the river by swinging its tail?” demanded the pilot. “You’re lucky no one’s dead, to say nothing of all the property damage. You’ve made a catastrophic mess of Memorial Drive. Are you aware of just how much you’ve cost the people of Boston in the past fifteen minutes alone?”

Riley was, in fact, not aware of how much she cost the people of Boston in property damages. However—

“I think I can pay for it with my allowance.”

“Your— Kid, cars cost way fucking more than a pack of M&Ms.”

“Language, Miss Robot Lady. So… umm… a couple thousand for each right?”

The machine made strange noise, that Riley suspected was its vocoder filtering a scoff.

“Using ill-gotten gains to reimburse people does not absolve you of criminal activity. Now I can tell you’re extremely young, but I can’t just let you off after causing this much damage either.”

“I don’t think it was very ill-gotten. I only killed the one person for it,” Riley blinked innocently. She was impressed by how responsive the robot was as it cringed immediately upon hearing the she had killed someone.

“Okay. I have no idea what you did before coming to Boston, but I can’t possibly allow you to walk if you’ve actually committed murder.”

“I was told that I had committed community service,” Riley rebutted.

“Well, whoever told you that was not a good person.”

Somewhere behind them, Sylvan smacked her forehead. Impressively, there was no indication that she had struck metal against metal. Auditory illusions? She’d never heard of that, but Sylvan was definitely full of surprises.

“I think you owe someone an apology. That wasn’t a very nice thing to say about Sylvan!”

“WHAT?!” screeched the robot, the internal speakers releasing some ear-splitting audio feedback.

“Stitcher—”

“—It’s Splicer now!” Riley interrupted.

“As long as you’re tormenting the local Wards, I’ll call you whatever I want. Now can you please just be honest about your money?”

“Aww maaaan! Also, this is a Ward? But she’s super huge!”

“Aren’t you riding a tortoise the size of a small house?” Sylvan countered.

She made a pretty good point.

“Sylvan, are you saying she can actually afford to pay for this shit?” demanded the robot.

“A little too easily, if you ask me,” said Tsunami.

“So where’d she get it?”

“She claimed a high profile bounty,” said Sylvan.

“How did someone her age claim a bounty?!” sputtered the giant robot.

“No idea.”

The machine’s shoulders slumped.

“I still have to at least take her in for… all this,” she gestured to the torn up soccer fields, and the damaged infrastructure beyond. “You guys aren’t going to stop me, right?”

“I don’t really like my chances against your Gundam,” said Tsunami, and she could actually hear him smirking.

“It’s not a freaking Gundam!” roared the pilot. “Anyway, I’m taking you to the PRT even if I have to drag you there.”

“Don’t worry. I get it. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. But I feel a little bad about it, Miss Robot,” she offered the Ward her warmest smile. “It’s just… that if I was able to bury Jack Slash in my backyard, what chance do youhave?”

Behind her, Tsunami turned a laugh into a cough.

Wow. Riley needed to give the tinker that built the robot some credit. It was downright amazing that she managed to make a machine with a solidly immobile face look like it was gawking.

“Okay. Sylvan… now I know she’s fucking (“Language!”) with me. But why are you enabling this?”

“Yeah, about that. Jack Slash didn’t have any medical or dental records, but when I met her, she had his knives in her bag. And what she claimed was his skull. I’m not sure I believed her at first, but after I checked the news about the Slaughterhouse, I was pretty convinced.”

“Please stop,” the Ward grumbled.

“She also has his brain in what amounts to a walking food-processor.”

“That’s enough! I am done with you all screwing with me! Why are you even siding with a villain who I at least think you were just fighting?!”

“I just figured… you know? I’d be honest. Stitcher—(“Splicer!”)—fine, Splicer is a really weird kid. But she’s also frighteningly competent. And I’m not siding with her. I’m trying to get her to stop, but she’s not listening!”

“Well then someone’s going to have to force the issue. Stand down and come with me, Splicer, or I’ll pluck you off of your not-so-little turtle and carry you to the PRT myself.”

“He’s not a turtle, he’s a tortoise,” Riley huffed. “And he has a name!”

The mech shook its head. “I warned you,” grumbled the pilot, before her machine shot toward them at an alarming speed.

Riley just pointed at the aggressor.

“I don’t think so! My name is Splicer! I’m Blasto’s apprentice, and you will fear me! Tortinator! Fire at will!”

She wasn’t sure who Will was, but it was a vocal command that he understood easily, and was hard to say by accident.

Tortinator opened his mouth, revealing red light pooling within it. Then he reared back, and fired a scintillating ray of pure heat directly at the incoming robot. The beam cut across the machine’s torso, cutting it in half from hip to shoulder, and sending it tumbling down the road behind her. She noticed someone appear on the edge of a nearby rooftop.

“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!” they shouted in a voice very similar to the one coming from the machine.

“Holy crap,” Sylvan gawked. “Glad you were able to redirect it, Tatsu.”

“In her defense,” called Tsunami, “I can’t think of a single possible reason why she should have been expecting anything even remotely like that to happen.”

“What he said!” shouted the girl on the roof.

Riley grinned.

That was awesome!

“Actually, Angrboda, the turtle (“Tortoise!”) did that once already. It would have been in the incident-in-progress report you should have checked before jumping into this. Speaking of which, are you even allowed to be here?” Sylvan called up to the figure in the roof. Riley took out a handy pair of binoculars to get a better look.

The figure on the roof, probably a girl about twice her age, clenched her fists. She was wearing a black armored bodysuit with the same red accents as her robot. Odd. She wasn’t wearing a full helmet. Just an opaque visor.

“Uh oh!” Riley chimed in, “Someone’s breaking the ruuules~!”

“You! Not helping!” quipped the anime woman.

“Spoilsport.”

“I am not taking flak from a kid who just went on a destructive rampage down the highway and vandalized the MIT campus,” Robot LadyAngrboda seethed.

Having grown tired of all Angrboda’s shouting, Tortinator decided to do something about it. He raised his head above the top of his carapace in defiance of the cape looking down on him from the rooftop, without her giant robot that was nevertheless not as tall as him. Apparently, this was how Galapagos tortoises fought—or so claimed National Geographic. Whoever could stretch their head highest won the dispute. It made sense, since a regular tortoise’s only natural weapon was its mouth, and it’d be pretty hard for them to bite each other effectively.

Unfortunately, while Tortinator was eager to get started, Angrboda apparently hadn’t been reading the right magazines and didn’t even realize she was being challenged. Come on, Robot Lady! Look at how high Tortinator was raising his head! This was his equivalent of calling her mom ugly! Learn to speak Tortoise, dummy!

She felt a sudden jolt.

“What was that?” she wondered. Also, why was the street moving?

She turned around and found Tortinator’s tail extended straight out while some invisible force dragged him backward. She didn’t know of any invisible capes in Boston. Well, not unless you counted—ohhhhh.

Riiiight. Illusions. Neat!

Sylvan was wearing a confident smirk on her animated features.

“I don’t need my sword to help out, remember?”

“Yeah, I probably shoulda considered that,” Riley agreed.

Well, she was losing her bonus round, but that was less important than her initial victory, not to mention what she’d accomplished today. She’d finally debuted as Blasto’s apprentice!

Wait, she needed to make a closing statement! Hmm… what would a Bad Guy say in this situation?

“Umm…” she fished around for her megaphone, turned it back on, and shouted. “This isn’t over! You haven’t seen the last of Splicer! I will claim victory… or something… over… uh… you guys. Oh! And there’ll be peanut butter! I was supposed to mention that there would be peanut butter everywhere. Not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time!”

Okay, she was clear.

Aww, look at Tortinator— he was tucking his head into his shell and taking a nap! In all fairness, how often did someone of his size get a belly rub?

“So, where are we going?” she asked.

“The Charles. You’re going to march your way back home with this gargantuan amphibian and put him away.”

“Hey, Sylvie? Have you always had mom vibes, or is this a new thing?” asked Tsunami.

His answer was a light smack in the back of the head.

“I do not…” she trailed off. “Dammit. Okay, fine. It’s new, and it’s all St-Splicer’s fault.”

Wait a sec. Did Claire and Aizen… like each other? Like, like-like each other?! Oooh! Claire and Aizen sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G! To Riley’s credit, she only sang it in her head.

“Anyway, I’m still eighteen, so what I’m about to say is going to make all of our heads explode.”

That sounded interesting!

“You have my complete and undivided attention!” Riley blurted.

“Good. You’re grounded.”

“D’oh!” 

Her story was far from over, but it started with a bunch of Tinkers in Boston. There were mishaps. Friends were made in multiple senses of the term and not necessarily intentionally. A cyberpunk fan with an RGB motorcycle discovered a little sister. A quartet of bioterrorists met an unspeakable horror clocking in at four-feet-tall and less than eighty pounds. A serial monster maker got an unexpected houseguest and became an uncle without anyone asking his opinion on the matter. And the seagulls with their cybernetic enhancements began to plot for the day that they would overthrow their creator. Or at least, Splicer was expecting them to start any day now. They had been useful for a time, but it wouldn't be much longer before she understood that seagulls were inherently evil.

And that was how Splicer, formerly and (with luck) eventually Riley Davis, became a regular fixture in Boston Harbour, cruising along on a sea serpent and waving at confused onlookers.

Chapter Text

August 25th, 2007
(a few minutes later)

“C’mon, Sylvan, don’t feel bad. There was never anything you could do to stop me from choosing this. You were just the road I took to get here. I still appreciate all your help. You know, intellectually.”

“I’m fine, just annoyed that you’ve apparently decided your talents are better suited to macroscopic vandalism.”

Riley considered that.

“Nahhh,” she waved the idea off. “Look, I told you there was a prize for winning, right?”

“Uhhh…”

“I said I had something for you that you could only have if you beat Tortoinator. And you did!”

“I’m not looking for… I dunno? What is this? Compensation? The problem is that I feel a little betrayed.”

“I know. But I don’t want you to feel too bad about it, and I found an elegant solution to the problem.”

“Ditching Blasto?” Sylvan raised an anime eyebrow.

“Better! Pop quiz! What can’t ever fail to make your day better?”

“I have no idea what answer you’re looking for,” Sylvan shook her head.

“Puppies?” asked Tsunami.

“Close! I was going to say a rotund marsupial!” Riley said, sounding altogether delighted.

“This girl isn’t all there, is she?” muttered Angrboda.

“Gosh! That’s rude! You’re going on the naughty list. No presents for you. Not even if you defeat me in an overwhelming and ironic victory.”

“I see that as a good thing.”

“Well I disagree. Everything is better with a rotund marsupial,” she beamed, opening up a box hanging from Tortoinator’s neck. “So, since life’s getting you down, wouldn’t you like a nice, soft, emotional support wombat?” she said, offering Sylvan an emotional support wombat.

He was so round, it was adorable! Also, he was waaay softer than a normal wombat.

Sylvan agreed. Obviously.

“You’re still grounded, though.”

“Awww…”

August 26th, 2007

“Sorry, I’m obviously missing something here,” said Lauren. “Why would you be grounded?”

“Because Sylvan said so,” said Splicer. “I caused too many car accidents and someone was very upset. Probably.”

“And you’re following a hero’s oppressive demand because…?” Lauren prompted.

“Because good girls do as they’re told. And I’m a very good girl!”

This didn’t really clarify much. Lauren shook her head. While she didn’t distrust the little girl with the surgical tools, she couldn’t say that she understood her, either.

“Do you have any idea what she means by that?” she asked Rey.

“Don’t look at me,” he shrugged. “I barely understand what she’s talking about at the best of times. Including when I’m sober.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”

Rey shrugged. Again.

“Look, she brought in enough money to make fixing this place up look like pocket change, just by volunteering. And after Damsel ruined our old HQ, I really don’t want to move again. I’ll take looking after a hyperactive kid with a scalpel any day of the week if it gets me out of doing more logistics.”

“Wish they’d stayed in Hyde Park like they said,” Lauren grumbled, thinking of The Four.

“We should’ve known they wouldn’t follow through on any agreement they made. They’re not gangsters, they’re terrorists, after all.”

“And how is Plague Woman in charge, anyway? Her power is just mine but with less fine control.”

“Actually, she can also absorb, assimilate, and redistribute any disease that comes into contact with her,” Splicer corrected her. “You just make poison grenades.”

“Gee, thanks,” Lauren rolled her eyes. She didn’t care if knowing was half the battle. This correction was not appreciated.

“Oh. Did I say something wrong? I thought you were complaining because your power is useless on them.”

Well, obviously, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be called out for it! Now she just in a bad mood.

“Okay, if none of us are doing anything, I’m gonna go downstairs and check on the fake capes,” said Rey. She wanted to gripe at him for blowing her off, but in his defense, Damsel’s attack killed a bunch of the ones in progress when she blasted the machinery.

August 26th, 2007
(Later…)

Tortinator’s runaway success had left Riley feeling inspired. She was already working on several new projects, none of which were PETA approved, and all of which were going to delight and/or terrify people enough to hide the women and children! Coyotemera was almost as excited as she was, but that might have been because it was almost time for her regularly scheduled banana pudding.

Inspiration being what it was, today was an auspicious day!

For one thing, Riley learned what the word ‘auspicious’ meant. For another, she came up with a name for the ‘things’ she theorized on the existence of while studying Jack Slash’s brain.

Passengers!

This would make it way easier for her to write up reports about her findings. She still didn’t have any means of directly observing them, though, so such findings wouldn’t be particularly groundbreaking for some time. For the time being, she was focused on finding a way to make the passengers react to stimulus provided by their hosts.

Since Tortinator was still tuckered out after his first big event, Riley was still feeding him regularly. Right now, she was pulling a gigantic basket on wheels behind her, and it was loaded with all sorts of tasty veggies straight from the greenhouse. It was time consuming, but this was basically the equivalent of tinker maintenance for her. And she wouldn’t have to do it all the time, either. Once his metabolism readjusted back to passive-mode, Tortinator would be able to go for months without eating.

She brought it up to the makeshift enclosure she’d made for him, and dumped the greens into his trough. She looked around the lair. If she was going to make more supersized critters, she might have to expand her stables. She could afford it, and it wouldn’t be too hard to dig additional basements.

As she was considering how best to ask for such accommodations, Riley came to the startling realization that she had forgotten the names of the bones in her spine. And the rest of her bones, too, for that matter. In fact, she came to the abrupt, and disturbing realization that she had no idea how bodies worked at all anymore. It was like losing a sense she didn’t realize he had, comparable to being struck blind or deaf with no warning whatsoever.

There was suddenly a shadow looming over her desk. She turned around to see a heavily disfigured person-thing standing over her. That was a lot of facial damage. How could he buy Froot Loops looking like that? He had leathery skin pulled taught over rippling muscles in a way that just didn’t look natural. Or comfortable for that matter.

“Hi there, Mister,” she said amiably, “Would you like me to fix the severe damage to your dermal layers?”

“Fuck you, you prissy bitch.”

“Whoa, mega-language!”

“Fuck off! Yer just like the rest.” He pulled a large axe from a sling on his back. “You stole somethin’ from me, girlie, so now I’m gonna spread yer guts all over the walls.”

“Are you sure it was me? I feel like I would remember stealing from someone as large and unique as you.”

“You killed Jack Slash. You took that from me.”

Someone who knew Mr. Jack and had an axe? Wait, she knew this. There was a parahuman who fit that description, too, who could cancel out the powers of other nearby capes.

“A few days after he disappeared, I realized that ol’ Jack was jerkin’ me around more than anybody ever had before. It was obvious, really. I still don’t know how I didn’t see it. He’d always talk down to me, or make stupid demands. But I’d do them. Like a fuckin’ meat puppet. He always thought he was so damn clever. Well I was gonna show him just how much his smarts were worth.”

“You’re Hatchet Face, right? I don’t think you’d have been able to.“

“Think yer hot shit, girlie? I been doin’ this fer years. Ain’t fuckin’ nothin’ you can do I can’t. I was gonna mount ol’ Jack on spikes by his arms and legs before choppin’ ‘em off and rippin’ out his guts. Make him squeal like the shit-eatin’ pig he is. But I can’t do that anymore ‘cause you took ‘im out first.”

“Super-mega-language! There’s a child present Mr. Hatchet Face.”

“Quit yer whinin’! Yer just like all those other fuckers. They all thought they were better than me. So I killed them. Not so shit-hot now.” He waved his axe in her face, his scowl stretching the warped skin of his face in a way that looked unnaturally painful. “Any last words before I send ya to hell, bitch?”

“Yes, thank you so much for asking. Do you have any last words, Mr. Hatchet Face?”

“The fuck? Are you high? I’m about to chop yer fuckin’ face—GAAACKPTH!”

Not what she would have chosen, but she didn’t judge. He was, after all, suffering enough from crippling insecurities, lack of self-worth, and being stomped flat against a warehouse floor by an angry mutant tortoise.

“GHAAGH!” roared the serial killer. “YOUBITCH—GRRK!”

This was weird. Riley had to give Tortinator orders to get him to fight during her debut the other day. It was one thing for him to swing his tail around — he was happy to do that — but actually using his bulk to strike something was another. Even when Angrboda slammed down on his shell and tried to punch him, he mostly just ambled around and shoved her using his snout until she told him to laser her. Where was this coming from?

Hatchet Face was still trying to get away, but every time he did, Tortinator reared up and flattened him like an increasingly gristly pancake.

…wait.

Oh!

Aww, he wanted to protect her from the scary bad guy!

“Aww, Tortinator! You’re such a good boy! Who’s a good supertortoise? Is it you? Yes it is, yes it is!”

Tortinator preened under the praise… while still stomping on the frighteningly durable serial killer. And as durable as Hatchet Face’s brute ability made him, Tortinator was designed with brutes in mind. As long as he could see you clearly, he could beat you. It was why Sylvan was such a good counter to him with her Mk. III illusion engine. Hatchet Face however, had no way to hide from the beastly tortoise, and as such, was well on his way to becoming an ugly flapjack.

Riley took out a pen and a sheet of lined paper and started writing.

<blockquote>‘Hatchet Face — last words: The fuck? Are you high? I’m about to chop your fucking face—Gackputh! Grah! You bitch! *incomprehensible snarling and cursing.*’</blockquote>

She smiled as she neatly dotted the last asterisk. Surely, hundreds of years in the future, kangaroos would look back on this event and laugh.

Because, of course, kangaroos were eventually going to become the dominant species on earth. That was obvious, right?

Tortinator stepped on Hatchet Face again. Ooh! He’d even left his head intact, that was so considerate of him. Tortinator was such a good friend!

August 27th, 2007
(Laterer…)

The following day, Riley was running some very informative tests on Hatchet Face’s brain. She’d gotten him set up in a comfy spider-box and put him into a deep sleep. Perhaps too deep. It seemed unlikely that he could wake up without medical intervention. However, she could turn his powers on or off at the push of a button now, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do her tests by hand since standing within his anti-power field would make her forget how brains worked.

Then she brushed her teeth, because good girls had good habits. Mmmm, watermelon toothpaste. There were a few weeks where she’d stopped because she couldn’t handle the mint flavor, but the discovery of different toothpastes had opened her mind to a whole world of options, and Riley was now a happy tooth-brusher.

Unfortunately, this did not mean that she could go outside.

Which in turn meant that she had to call in Hatchet Face’s bounty over the phone. Compared to Jack’s, it was a paltry $4,000,000.00 but that was still a very high number according to Blasto’s accountant.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Parahuman Response Team, how can we help you today?”

“Hi, this is Splicer. I’m calling because Hatchet Face decided to visit me today.”

“Wait, go back for a second,” said the operator. “You’re who, and who’s with you?”

“Oh, he’s not here anymore. He had a terrible accident with a ginormous reptile. Do I need to notify his next of kin, or can I just bury the body in the backyard in a giant shoebox?”

There was a clattering sound from the other line that Riley couldn’t quite identify. Then she heard the shouting.

“—my god! I don’t fucking believe it! Someone call PR! The Slaughterhouse’s survivors are down to three! Huh? Oh, it’s Hatchet Face. Hatchet Face was killed. That horrifying surgeon kid—” and she couldn’t make out the rest.

Two days later, Riley received a message in her PHO mailbox from the PRT’s accounting department informing her that a sum of $4,000,000.00 had been forwarded to her bank account and that she was strongly advised to use it only for legal purposes.

And also that if the PRT hadn’t already retrieved the body, that they would greatly appreciate it if she refrained for burying him in a shoebox.

If history gave any indication about what course the future would take, then Riley suspected that the money would be used in ways that whoever sent the message wouldn’t approve of. On the bright side, her bank account was now at twenty-million.

August 30th, 2007
(Latererer…)

“Ta-daaa~!” she held her arms out toward her second creation. “I call him a reverse-gryphon. Because it’s a lion in front and an eagle in back.”

That was indeed what it was, and Blasto did not look very impressed. Taking another look at it, she was starting to see why. What was the point of a gryphon without wings, after all? It was all lion in front, and then she’d taken half of a heavily modified ostrich and stitched its hindquarters to the lion’s body around its waist. Technically, she wasn’t committing animal cruelty, because prior to being operated on, neither the lion nor the ostrich had ever been conscious. But since it couldn’t do much beyond scamper around and look silly (unless it roared), it just felt like a missed opportunity. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time!

In order to minimize wasted resources, she also made sure to use the back half of the lion and sew it to the back of a truly gigantic eagle. After connecting all the appropriate gastric, pulmonary and respiratory systems, of course, because not doing that could create a terrible mess at a very inopportune time. Making the normal-gryphon had more functional results, but it just hadn’t lit that spark of creativity within her. Still, this one could fly. And now that Riley had Coyotemera, Tortinator, Backward-Gryphon, and Regular-Gryphon, her ego and the EPA now required her to spend roughly two-million dollars on building a proper stable. And there was half of Hatchet Face’s net worth… gone, just like that. She needed a way to get money. She suggested that she could charge viewing admission for her planned stable, but Blasto refused her proposal with a passion rivalled only by his tinker fugues.

She was just putting the last stitch into Regular-Gryphon when the idea struck her. Lions… There was a new Ward named Weld. She read about him on PHO. He was made of metal. Now all she needed was—

Alright.

It was official.

“I’m a genius!” she squealed.

“Uncle Blasto! Uncle Blasto!”

Rey looked up to see Riley charging into the lab looking like she had seen the Ghost of Christmas Future.

“You alright, kid? You’re white as a sheet.”

“I think I may have broken the law,” she shivered.

“Okay, calm down. You’re living with a criminal already. You can afford to break a few laws.”

“I don’t know. I feel like I broke an important one.”

“Huh? You… know which law you broke?”

Riley never failed to surprise Rey with her intelligence and breadth of knowledge, but this was particularly out there.

“Just out of curiosity, which one?”

She shrank back.

“Conservation of mass?” she squeaked.

. . .

For a moment, Rey regarded Riley like she was talking crazy again. But only for a moment.

Then he cackled.

“C'mon, kid, you almost had me worried for a sec. Tinkers have been violating that one for decades. Just look at String Theory. I heard she was doing it daily before she got Birdcaged.” He tried to give her a reassuring smile but with his features, he probably just looked like he was bored, yet somehow smug about it. Luckily, it worked anyway. “Heck, a lot of parahumans in general break that one into a million pieces.”

“Oh…” Riley murmured. “So the universe isn’t about to implode, or something?”

“Well, I’m not exactly checking the numbers, but I’m inclined to doubt it. Or if it is, it’s not your fault.”

“That’s a huge relief. I guess I can get back to work. Wow! It’s kind of amazing how debilitating just a little existential dread can be.”

“Meh, try living with it twenty-four-seven.”

What was that wide-eyed look for?

Wait.

“Did I say that out loud?”

Riley nodded.

Oops.

A child should never have to look so conflicted. What was she thinking about to give her such an intense expression even with her lack of empathy?

“Do you wanna raid my Froot Loops stash?”

“Yes, please.”

What could he say? O.D.ing on sugar tended to pour gasoline on negative thoughts and then play with matches.

October 2nd, 2007
(One Month Later…                                …ererer)

Riley was downright amazed by how productive she could be if she never went outside. She didn’t believe that Claire could enforce her grounding at first, but then Riley noticed Angrboda camped out on the roof of the apartment building across the street with a sniper rifle and decided that there were better ways to tempt fate. Better to play by the rules for now. Besides, good girls did as they were told. Especially after breaking cars.

“I really am a genius,” she giggled.

She’d set up five tanks, and they were all set to deploy in 3… 2… 1…

“CAW!”

“Holy shit!” Blasto screamed as a huge raven swooped past his face.

So, Scare Crow had done what he was supposed to and startled a helpless bystander right out of the tube. Riley wrote that down. Scare Crow was roughly the size of a red-tailed hawk, and had a vocoder built into his larynx to make him louder, and with the push of a button, slightly musical. It was powered by blood. Unfortunately, the battery was so effective, that it would actually outlive Scare Crow.

Meanwhile Cowardly Lion had taken five steps out of his tank, saw Scare Crow, and wasted no time cowering in the corner. While he wasn’t necessarily more easily scared than any other large feline, but she had adjusted his brain to give him a shot of dopamine every time he exhibited a simulated fear response. This meant that he was unlikely to ever learn how to catch his own food, but on the bright side, he was equally unlikely to maul untargeted passersby. So he was also working as intended. Riley wrote that down, too.

Tinman was a weird situation, because while he was vaguely human in form, he was actually 90% cow. She hadn’t realized how much this would affect his behavior. As a much smaller organism, Tinman didn’t need to chew his cud, or spend his days moving his food between four stomachs. She suspected that she would get a lot of information about what cows would do if they were more efficient with a modest amount of study. She didn’t write this down, but there would be important data to record later.

Dorothy and Toto were a pair of ordinary cairn terriers. There wasn’t much to say about them, beyond the fact that they were adorable, and destined to lead happy doggy lives together with Claire’s parents.

Wizard was a gluten free, sourdough chocolate muffin. In other words, a tragic disappointment that deserved to be thrown in the trash, much like his namesake.

There wasn’t much to say about the Wicked Witch of the West. Riley already drank her half-an-hour ago.

Okay, so maybe the witch wasn’t water herself, but that was beside the point. Uncle Blasto wouldn’t let her use more than five chambers and one oven at a time so corners had to be cut.

Anyway, now that Backward-Gryphon, Regular-Gryphon and Cowardly Lion were all alive, biologically speaking, it was time to import cows from that weirdo from Kentucky that she emailed. The rancher didn’t even name them. Which was good because it would be a lot harder to feed them to her pets if they had names, but it was still weird for the guy not to have done it. Everyone deserved to have a name. And a perogie.

What was a perogie, anyway? She’d have to look that up. But surely it was something that everyone deserved to have.

One thing that Riley noticed was that Jack was apparently not happy. She couldn’t be sure because he refused to communicate. She had even added a (very dull, and very thick) stick of graphite to one of his legs. Still, she figured it was possible to give him some wiggle room. She knew that if she gave him an inch, he’d take twelve miles, a car, and probably her family again just to be mean, though, so she went with a careful, but artistic choice.

This came up mostly because she discovered halfway into her biggest project to date that she was going to need far, farless of the original animal than she thought. The difference in size just made it unfeasible to use the subject’s actual body. The monster that she was creating was important: Tortinator had been a nice debut, but Project MCZB was how she was going to really showcase what she could do for the local and perhaps national cape scene, so it had to be good work. This meant no cut corners or taking shortcuts so that it would be functional in appearance but not fit for future deployment. Project MCZB, also known as Jeff to his zookeeper, needed to be just as comfortable in the body she was making for him as he was in the one he was born with.

She went to the Franklin Park Zoo, flying in on her normal-gryphon, and committed one count of zebranapping. Getting it back to Blasto’s lair had been difficult, but not impossible. There was zebra barf in front of the newly installed garage door, and its spine broke in several places due to the extremely rapid descent from above the clouds, but those were minor details. She cleaned up the sick, and twenty minutes later, after a quick operation, the zebra was once again a fully armed and operational quadruped. Or he would be once the morphine wore off. She made sure Jeff the Zebra was well fed, and then it was time to do some dry tinkering. It was unfortunate that she needed to retrieve the animal himself before she could do anything, but she needed samples so that Uncle Blasto could clone various body parts, and then modify them to be three times their original size. Otherwise, the new body wouldn’t feel natural to Jeff, and that wouldn’t do at all. If the patient was uncomfortable, it would come across in its behavior, or it might even lash out, no matter how many precautions were taken beforehand to ensure it remained under control. Also, she’d feel bad about it.

The project was far bigger than she’d expected — both figuratively and literally — and not quite within her power’s area of expertise, but by using her anatomical knowledge and the ability to create artificial nervous systems, she managed to pull off the creation of her first very own cybernetic life form. It was going to be great! Most of the body was made of metal in the general outline of a zebra, with an internal nervous system mapped to be a 3:1 replica of Jeff’s original body, so he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference until he noticed that he didn’t need to eat. There was a lot of empty space in the cyborg’s head that she was going to be filling with an additional brain. Entirely artificial, but better than the original in every way. That being said, there was no replacing Jeff’s original brain. That was the core of his very being, but the secondary brain meant that within a month, he’d be able to read and understand english, and within two, he’d be able to grasp that something had been done to him. That’d be the point where she’d find out whether Project MCZB was going ahead, or if she was going to have to restart with a different zebra.

And on that note, who named a zebra ‘Jeff,’ anyway? Riley knew she was bad at giving names to things, but ‘Jeff’ was Not Zebra Compatible.

Once everything was ready, Riley set up her workstation, put Jeff the Zebra under the knife, and very carefully transferred his brain over to the cyberzebra.

Then, going back to the subject of Jack’s situation, she decided that he’d be far more tolerable as a zebra than he was as a person. He’d be easier to keep under observation, more manageable, and most important of all, less talkative. Contrary to Jack’s obvious opinions from her horrendous first encounter with him, Riley didn’t think he was much of a people person. Heck, he was barely a person at all.

…he might have qualified as an insurance salesman or internet service provider staffer, but remaining in those particular fields for more than a year tended to result in the complete loss of humanity anyway.

Also, he’d be waaaay cuter as a zebra!

And now that Jeff’s brain was in Project MCZB, she just happened to have a zebra body available just for for him. He was going to love his new body, Riley just knew it! Or at least, he would compared to his current living situation. Her spider box was useful and incredibly fuel efficient, but she realized it would probably get aggravating not being able to eat after having thirty-plus years of getting used to eating several times a day. He was probably getting hunger pangs just from being conditioned to expect them. The brain was truly a marvellous thing.

By that evening, the equine once known as Jeff the Zebra had become Jack the Zebra.

He looked discontent. That made Riley smile.

Also, for the first time in her life, Riley had come up with a good name for something, so now that Jeff was securely in Project MCZB, it was almost time for her to start calling him by his new name. In a way, it was sort of like his cape name. Though he’d be an open cape.

What was the name? Well, as she told Uncle Blasto, that would remain a surprise for the debut the following week, because she actually managed to come up with a good one this time. She couldn’t ruin the surprise just yet.

October 10th, 2007

“Ladies, gentleman, kids and pets of all ages, I’d like to have your attention for a few minutes!” Riley spoke into her megaphone from atop her new creation as she marched down Broadway. “My name is Splicer, and I am visiting you today to make my second public appearance as Blasto’s apprentice. I’ll be your host for this afternoon!”

People were already running for cover, and in their defense, she was sitting on top of an eighteen-foot-tall cyberzebra.

There weren’t any car accidents happening. She was making sure of that and paying closer attention this time. Although she accidentally flip a few minivans that had been parked by the curb. She was pretty sure no one was in them because there was no prolonged screaming.

“Please do not be alarmed. I’m just here to introduce you to my latest and greatest creation! Isn’t he amazing! You may have read in the news that a certain zebra from the Franklin Park Zoo went missing. Jeff the zebra is in Mechagodzebra now. Don’t worry, he doesn’t have radioactive breath. Although he can calculate polynomials in his head now, which is arguably scarier.”

No one laughed. Their silence was deafeningly expected.

Nothing happened. Maybe she just wasn’t close enough to downtown? Splicer picked up her pace, galloping along Broadway until she reached Longfellow Bridge. The identity of this so-called longfellow was a mystery to her, but she was more curious about just how long this longfellow was.

The bridge was a little precarious. She needed to step very carefully between the cars, but once she was off the bridge, she was in downtown, and that was where she needed to be.

She waited.

Again, nothing was happening.

“Okay, where’s the Boston Protectorate? I got Mechagodzebra all dressed up for his debut today, and nobody came to my party!”

—BOOM!—

“Wanna bet?” came a familiar voice as a large figure rose to its full height, having just fallen from the sky. The result was underwhelming, as the machine wasn’t actually as tall as Mechagodzebra. 

“Oh! Robot Lady, you’re here!”

“It’s Angrboda, brat.”

“I know, I just want you to really fight me this time.”

“Last time, I had to worry about collateral damage. I’ve brought backup this time, and if you don’t want to be peeling yourself off the asphalt like a burned tire, I’d run while you have the chance.”

“I’d rather not give her that chance in the first place,” said an older man in silver armor with orange accents. “I think it’s safe to assume based on its appearance and its name that it’s capable of posing a serious threat to civilians. It’s armed to the teeth with tinkertech, and designed to show it off.”

“You can tell all that with one look?!” Splicer gasped. “Who are you, mister?”

“Bastion. Leader of the Boston Protectorate. We’ll be confiscating your toy, now. A child can’t be trusted to use powers like yours responsibly.”

“Laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?”

Splicer jumped. Whoever said that was right behind her, and looking back, there was—the flying not-an-Eskimo?

“You are a kid, after all. We can’t be too hard on you. But you’re coming with me.”

“Nope!” Splicer shook her head, flipping open a hatch in Mechagodzebra’s chassis and climbing inside. The benefit of him only needing the front half of his gastric system. She put some implants in his stomach that did the work of his liver and kidneys, while also converting all the matter taken in into energy. With no waste, there was no need for intestines, and that left a lot of additional space for other stuff.

Adding a cockpit sounded like a funny idea, and who was going to stop her, anyway?

The flying cape darted toward her, and very nearly caught her, too but she managed to lock the hatch with less than a fraction of a second to spare. Several monitors flickered to life, giving her a real-time 360-degree view of her surroundings.

“Well, that could have gone better,” said the not-an-Eskimo.

“Aerobat! What were you thinking?!” shouted Bastion. “You would have had her if you hadn’t given away your position!”

“I think we can deal with her. Between the three of us, and everyone in reserve, we should be fine. And that’s not accounting for any villains who decide to help us because they want a piece of this bucket of bolts.”

“He’s not a bucket of bolts, he’s a zebra!” Splicer shouted into a microphone, her voice projecting from Mechagodzebra’s external sound system.

“What it is, is a dangerous weapon, regardless of your childish opinion. Aerobat, Angrboda, I’ll remind you, biotinkers are exceedingly dangerous. Tear her out of that machine and bring her in! We can’t afford to leave her alone if this is the kind of monstrosity that she’ll be sending our way every few weeks!”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Angrboda growled, her machine lifting off the ground.

“Oh! Are we starting?” Splicer asked.

Angrboda’s answer was to launch herself at Mechagodzebra’s face. He bucked forward, but the other tinker just caught the blow and used it to propel herself back to a safe distance. Riley flicked a pair of switches on the side of her console, and the back of Mechagodzebra’s chassis flipped inside out revealing a dozen laser turrets.

Not waiting for her to start shooting, Bastion waved his hands and multiple forcefields appeared, covering the nearby buildings. “Angrboda, I’ll cover you. I’m giving you authorization to use your maximum firepower as long as Splicer remains inside that obnoxious machine.”

“He’s not obnoxious, he’s beautiful. And you’re mean!”

Bastion scowled. This was optimal.

Despite the heroes’ efforts, Riley wasn’t worried. She’d designed Mechagodzebra with multiple capes in mind. Aerobat was being kept busy by the spray of lasers from the dorsal turrets, and Mechagodzebra was handling Angrboda on his own, staying too close to her for her to get in a good shot with her weapons while thrashing around and headbutting it. Not bad for a quadruped!

Then again, he stood much taller than Angrboda’s Trailblazer.

That just left Bastion, and he was mostly focused on keeping people in the area safe, covering buildings in multiple layers of pretty orange forcefields. Riley wondered if he did parties. …Nah, he was kinda uptight.

There was a sudden impact as Angrboda raised her arm, extended a large blade from her forearm and slammed it down on Mechagodzebra’s neck in an axe chop. His armor held. He reared back on his hind legs with a deep neigh, pivoting on the spot before it slammed back to earth. The pavement crumpled into a deep pothole and the cyberzebra proceeded to kick out with its hind legs. Angrboda didn’t react fast enough, but luckily for her, Bastion did, putting up a forcefield between them. Maybe if he’d had time to layer them it would have been enough, but as Bastion had ever-so-tactlessly pointed out, Mechagodzebra was actually a dangerous weapon, even if his primary function was to be a regular giant cyberzebra. The kick tore through the barrier, and knocked Angrboda’s machine flat onto her back.

“Thanks for the shield!” Angrboda said as she got up. Bastion grunted in response.

Without the barrier, that kick probably would have totalled Angrboda just as surely as Tortinator’s laser.

Boston’s Protectorate head was obviously very good at using his power. Riley wondered how it worked. If he went villain, could she get away with extracting his brain? Actually, as the majority of Blastgerm capes proved, Blasto could create his own capes, complete with powers, even if the ones he made for the Boston Games were only barely functional as people. Could he clone other capes? She’d have to ask. Now, how to get a sample…

Something showed up on her monitors. A strange zone that they couldn’t pick up, and distorted into static on-screen. It struck Mechagodzebra’s left foreleg with a sound like a deflating basketball played through a vocoder, and tipped over diagonally, his armor starting to buckle. That didn’t make sense. She added implants to his vestibular apparatus that ensured that he could balance on one leg if need be. They even monitored the endolymph in his inner ears, so there was no reason that he should even be able to get disoriented.

“Nice shot, Gaze!” shouted Angrboda. Another cape? She couldn’t see him on her monitors. Was he firing from a distance? Did he have telescopic vision or something?

Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to ponder any of these questions, because Angrboda was already climbing onto Mechagodzebra’s flank. He and Splicer struggled, but with his leg fully locked down, there wasn’t anything she could do. Especially while Aerobat was distracting her targeting system. Angrboda jammed the edge of her blade between two armored plates, and started trying to pry the metal away. Not good. She overrode the turret controls and started firing at Angrboda directly, but evidently, her machine’s armor was at least sufficient for the smaller guns. Though maybe if she used them more efficiently…

No longer harried by her guns, Aerobat dropkicked her zebra in the head, which did… well, not much, really. Mechagodzebra was trying to drag himself to the right for some reason, and while there all this activity, she couldn’t actually put any thought into figuring out what this Gaze cape had actually done. All the while, Bastion was putting up forcefields to box her in. This wasn’t looking good.

Oh, right, and Angrboda was trying to peel Mechagodzebra like a shiny cheese string. Splicer removed a safety cap from a big blue button labelled ‘The ZAPPER’ and slapped it, shooting a three-hundred volt electrical current over her cyber-zebra’s chassis. This would likely have hurt anyone touching him pretty badly, but fortunately, his interior was insulated, and Angrboda piloted her machine remotely. This did the trick, and Angrboda was blasted off of Mechagodzebra, though not very far, static bursting from her vocal speakers as she shouted something that Riley couldn’t identify but was probably impolite.

“Language, Robot Lady!”

“C-n y-oo-oo …-op ca-a-a-a——ing me …-at?!” snapped the tinker.

“But why, though?”

All of a sudden, Mechagodzebra stood back up. This still didn’t make any sense. However, she didn’t have any more time to think about it now than she had moments earlier. Bastion had taken the opportunity to start boxing her in with his forcefields. She could deal with that now that she wasn’t immobilized, though. One kick! And down went a pair of forcefields. Two kicks! There went two more! She had her cyber-zebra backpedal until he was out of the translucent orange box, and Bastion dropped the rest of them with a scowl.

She rushed forward while he didn’t have his shields up and had him stomp at the defensive shaker, forcing him to dodge out of the way. Aerobat clearly wasn’t a threat anymore, so she continued ignoring him, but Angrboda’s machine was starting to get back up.

“Your machine can repair its systems on its own after being short circuited?! That’s so cool!” she cheered.

“God, thi-i-i-i-…kid anno-o-oys me.”

Angrboda stood up, and leapt into the air, drawing a rifle from her back, and after a moment of charging, firing a sustained laser at Mechagodzebra. This one actually did some damage, and some of his exterior plating started to melt. Splicer held her breath as the considered the possibility that the laser might breach his chassis, taking control of all her zebra’s guns and fired them at once, aimed at a single spot on the giant machine.

Its flight faltered. Another few seconds, and the laser rifle struck again, but she interrupted with her own fire this time, the concentrated barrage hitting Angrboda’s rifle this time, knocking it from her grasp. The tinker swore, diving at Mechagodzebra with her armblade extended. He swung himself to the side, and then performed a hip check before Angrboda recovered from her landing, putting her flat on her back again. Splicer made to stomp on the robot, but more forcefields started manifesting everywhere. Mechagodzebra bucked and thrashed like a bronco, shattering the barriers with his weight and leaving Bastion out of breath. Angrboda still hadn’t stood up so it was back to Plan A. Stomping time! He reared up on his hind legs—

—only for another one of those weird distortions to slam into Mechagodzebra’s flank this time, and he collapsed backward and toppled over with a spectacular crash and a mournful whinny. Wait… he hadn’t fallen naturally; he’d just gone straight down at first, like he’d somehow crashed into a wall with only his hind legs. Did Gaze shoot gravity beams? That was interesting.

A whole lot of good knowing was going to do her now, though. She really should have planned for this. She probably needed more long-range capabilities.

Already, Bastion was boxing her in with his forcefields. Wow. She wasn’t expecting to get caught this fast.

“I’m sorry Mechagodzebra. I was really hoping we’d get to be friends for longer than this,” she sighed.

Angrboda picked herself off the ground, grumbling something that Splicer couldn’t make out, picked up her rifle and stomped toward her, examining the hatch, and firing the rifle at it. Mechagodzebra struggled to pull himself away, but the force keeping him stuck to the street was stronger this time.

There was a crash from somewhere nearby.

“What?!” Bastion blurted, putting a hand to his ear. “Repeat that, I’m… not sure I heard correctly.”

The other heroes stared as he listed to whoever was contacting him.

“Is this a damn joke?! Because I confess I’m not laughing.”

Another pause.

“Because we’re fighting a gigantic biotinkered zebra with guns on its back, and you’re telling us we, the Protectorate, have to respond to a regular zebra?”

That sounded… concerning. There was yet another pause.

“I don’t care how much damage it’s doing, or how close we are, non-powered incidents in Boston are the jurisdiction of the BPD! Call the fire department!”

The gravity distortion vanished.

“What?! Gaze?!” Angrboda shouted. “What happened? Gaze, answer me!”

Yep, this was exactly what Splicer thought it was.

“He’s right. Normally, you wouldn’t want to send capes after it,” said Splicer. “But this is my mess, and good girls clean up their messes. It can’t detect me anyway, so I can take care of this.”

Mechagodzebra got his hooves back underneath him and burst into motion. She really should have included a pair of jet engines. It would have made this easier. Finding the problem was easy. Just follow the sounds of screaming and mayhem, and there was the seemingly ordinary zebra angrily mauling random passersby in the Boston Common. The park was off limits to cape fights, so this was truly egregious, though somehow, Splicer figured that was exactly why Jack the Zebra had decided to attack people there. What was more fun than turning a safe space into a place where people die? There was a word that people on PHO used for people like Jack. Edgy. More and more, she was coming to see Jack as a really emo kid who hadn’t grown up. Well, unfortunately for him, she’d made sure to put an implant in her head that would, if her theory was correct, block most master powers.

When Jack looked surprised and rather disappointed to see her, she suspected that it was working. How had he managed to cut so many people?

“Well, well, Mr. Jack. You’ve been very naughty, haven’t you?” she chirped.

One of his hooves, somehow sharpened to an edge in the past few days shot out. And did exactly nothing. Even with the face of a zebra, he seemed to be scowling. Quite honestly, she didn’t understand what he needed to be so mad about. He’d gotten his murder fix. He should have been happy. Unless that wasn’t the point. Could he somehow tell that he hadn’t yet permanently ruined the Boston Common for everyone? Maybe that was the problem? It seemed more likely.

Jack turned to gallop away into the wild blue yonder.

Splicer and Mechagodzebra’s guns took aim and fired.

Never bring a hoof to a gunfight.

October 11th, 2007
(One day later)

“I should really kick you out for this, kid.”

“But you won’t!” Riley grinned.

“Well, obviously not. I mean, come on! I’ll admit, I really like this new Jack Slash even more than yesterday’s. And yesterdays was the shi-zzz…?”
She’d give him a pass just this once.

“Yes, his new shoes look adorable, don’t they?”

After returning home, Riley had chained Jack up, checked the lab over very carefully to make sure he hadn’t killed Uncle Blasto or Rotten, and then fixed the third degree burns, the ruptured spleen, the welded intestines, and the sudden onset diabetes in her smaller equine friend. She gave Mr. Jack her brightest smile as he regained consciousness.

“Good news, Mr. Jack! It turns out I don’t have to send to the glue factory!”

He stared up at her nonplussed.

Her smile widened.

“Just a few pieces should be fine.”

And then she took her bonesaw, ignored the overwhelming feeling of dread that nestled into her gut like a poisonous centipede, and chopped off Jack’s hooves to the (situationally) delightful music of agonized neighing.

She kind of wanted to keep the bloodstains this time since no one got hurt to produce the effect, but she also didn’t want to have infections running around her lab unsupervised, so with a reluctant hand, she had cleaned away the splatter.

Jack the Zebra’s hooves were now made out of rubber. They were bright red, and looked intolerably stupid attached to a zebra. Also, she’d added some raw nerve endings to the phalanxes in his fetlocks, so if he ever tried to tear off his new hooves and sharpen the bones, it would feel comparable—by her estimate—to vigorously rubbing his heart against a rusty cheese grater. Made of bees.

He’d actually managed to twist his zebraface into a proper scowl when she explained that.

And now it was time to put in a containment protocol that she really should have thought of sooner: Her day plan moving forward would be an exciting adventure implanting a shock collar inside Jack’s zebraneck that would electrocute him something terrible if he got more than a third-of-a-mile from either her or Blasto’s Evil Lair.

She still didn’t think Blasto’s lair was particularly ‘evil.’

October 12th, 2007
(Yet one more day later)

—BRZZT!—

“So, Mr. Jack, have we learned our lesson?”

“Neeeeiigh…”

“Oh, good, I was hoping you’d say no!”

—BRZZZZZT! BRZZZZZT!—

Chapter Text

November 30th, 2007

There was an attack on the downtown PRT building. People knew it was The Four, but the thing drawing speculation was that after breaking out Gaslight, the culprit had seemingly knocked out dozens of troopers and kidnapped all of them. There was security camera footage on the news that showed Plague Woman biting a PRT trooper, and running off. The man collapses a few moments later. It’s consistent with the virus she stole. The trooper would have flatlined in five minutes, had his vitals restarted at six, and by ten, he’d be stumbling around looking for new infection vectors.

Cool!

Riley frowned. Weren’t kids her age supposed to be afraid of zombies? Riley blamed Mr. Jack.

—BRZZT!—

Man, using the zappy button never got old.

Still, if Plague Woman was building an army of mutants, Riley needed to make sure she was prepared.

She looked up disappearances in Boston in 2007—and that was a pretty sharp uptick since April. That basically confirmed that Plague Woman wanted a zombie army. Over two hundred missing persons cases. If even half of those were Plague Woman victims, it could be a serious problem.

It only made sense that Plague would come after Blastgerm after Riley humiliated her and her friends. Luckily, she’d designed the virus so that it couldn’t evolve, and its generic structure would actually collapse if it wasn’t perfectly stable, so altering it in any way would kill it, even if Plague Woman had made herself into a perfect host.

The problem was that, while making a pathogen that caused microevolution in the cells it infected would cure the disease, it’d also cause unpredictable mutations in multicellular organisms. Which wouldn’t be that different from her Superzombie Virus. The only reliable way to make a vaccine would be to use her original formula, which she didn’t have anymore. Attempting to recreate it wouldn’t be reliable.

So, she had to find Plague Woman, kill her, and drag her and her friends’ bodies back to Blasto’s Evil Lair for dissection.

Shouldn’t be too hard. Boston’s new villains were getting settled in, but The Four wanted to be big fish, and were refusing to stay in Hyde Park. Which, according to Uncle Blasto, meant that Accord was having conniptions. And apparently people died when Accord had conniptions.

Riley didn’t really get it. She thought that Accord was Uncle Blasto’s accountant.

She’d have time to puzzle it out later. In the meantime, she had a show to do!

“What is that?” Sylvan demanded.

“This guy?” Splicer asked, patting her new weapon’s furry foreleg, “your worst nightmare, probably.”

“Look, Splicer, your previous creations were all dangerous, but this is the first one I’ve seen that’s actually, genuinely terrifying.”

“That’s the point. It came to my attention a few weeks ago that I’m too invested in my pets, which is good for their lifespans, but bad for business, so I made something really cool that probably no one will like!”

Her weapon growled at her, stood up on a pair of short, but thick hind legs, and bellowed at the three assembled heroes. The only thing holding it back was a neural ‘leash’ that was stopping it from acting on its murderously aggressive urges.

“That is the angriest looking bear I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Aerobat.

“It’s probably the only bear you’ve ever seen in your life,” Angrboda rebutted.

“No need for the attitude. And no it’s not. Haven’t you been to the zoo?”

“I actually haven’t. Never really found the time for it.”

Aerobat shrugged. “Well, for you frame of reference, this horrifying creature must be more than twice as big as the grizzly bear over at the Franklin Park Zoo.

“Unbearable here is—”

“Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait!” Sylvan interrupted. “You named him a bear pun?!”

“That can’t be legal,” said Aerobat. “Not to say that weaponizing a bear isn’t illegal, but naming conventions need to have standards.”

“Yeah, this thing needs to be euthanized before it starts causing… psychic pollution, or something,” said Sylvan, which Splicer found encouraging. No one was experiencing any positive feelings for her new creation, so she could actually fight to the death this time.

Was it weird to be excited about a duel to the death with bears? It probably didn’t bear thinking about.

“Rotten actually suggested Unbearapple, but Blasto vetoed it, and when I took Rotten’s side, he threatened to jump off the roof. And then he did anyway to invoke the principle of free will. Just to prove that it exists.”

“Is he dead?” Angrboda said with what sounded like hope.

“Nah, (“Dammit!”) Regular-Gryphon caught him and then carried him to his room and tucked him into bed. He hadn’t slept in twenty-six hours, and in Rotten’s words, ‘he was on enough hash to send an elephant on a barhop.’ Does that mean anything to anybody?”

“No. And now I’m imagining a mythical creature sitting by labcoat-weirdo’s bed, pulling a blanket over him with its beak. Thank you for that deeply ridiculous mental image,” Angrboda deadpanned. “Can I put your new toy out of our misery yet?”

“Normally I’d say that wasn’t very nice, but Unbearable and I had a frank exchange about political structures in the United Kingdom and came to the conclusion that we had violently irreconcilable differences. I don’t know what half of those words meant, but the important thing to take away from it, according to Blasto, is that Unbearable doesn’t attack me, not because he doesn’t want to, but because he physically can’t. He genuinely wants me to be his first homicide.”

“Kid here’s talking about homicides like kisses in high school,” muttered Aerobat with a shake of his head.

“But yes, you can start fighting as soon as I get to cover because if he sees me, once I let him off his leash, he will eat me. And also kill me. Hopefully not in that order.”

Then Splicer scampered two blocks away and rounded a corner, and pressed a button on her customized RC remote. There was a roar and a string of expletives that were certainly not okay to repeat in polite company as she shouted “Okay! You’re good!” They probably didn’t need the extra incentive. Peering around the corner, she could see Angrboda was hammering ineffectually at the monstrous bear grappling her machine with her mechanized fists. Unbearable had a thick and durable hide that wouldn’t tan easily., and Aerobat for all his punching and kicking was on a clock right from the start. Sylvan smirked and then multiplied by six, which was pretty cool. It would have been cooler if all five of them were real, but until Splicer could generate variable, remote operated biomass at the push of a button, she’d settle for the illusions. The fakes all charged at the bear, with the real Silvan somewhere in the middle while they all proceeded to make very different moves. From Splicer’s experience, Sylvan’s illusion engine had a decent range; at least fifty meters in every direction, so the fake copies were able to move with significant variation.

Designed to rely primarily on his eyesight, Unbearable was understandably confused by the multiple versions of the same colourful snack that weren’t going kersplat no matter how many times he hit them. Then Splicer saw one of the Sylvans actually guard against one of his swipes and knew that he’d found the real one. Angrboda jumped in at that moment, raining lasers down on Unbearable’s back. He reared back and tried to stomp on his larger attacker only for the mech to catch the paw and flip him onto his side. It was an impressive move that nevertheless completely failed to achieve anything as Unbearable rolled over the pavement and was back on all fours the next second. He didn’t give them a moment’s retrieve before charging straight through all three of the heroes and smashing through a storefront. Splicer could hear screaming, but the heroes would take care of any problems, surely.

“Over here, ugly!” Angrboda roared, not back on her feet, but still pointing a rifle at the raging bear. She fired off multiple shots. Splicer didn’t see if they hit, but considering Unbearable loped out of the store and started clawing at Angrboda relentlessly, she probably got him a few times where it hurt. He was only distracted when a giant sword bit into his side. Which he then wrenched away from its owner, while leaving the weapon embedded in his abdominal cavity. And probably his intestines. So, yes, Unbearable’s life expectancy had just been reduced dramatically, but that didn’t mean couldn’t take down the heroes before he ran outta juice. Splicer believed in his savage desire to tear apart anything that moved while he was breathing!

It was a little sad to see the only full Protectorate hero present struggling to make a dent while a Ward and an independent hero handled all the real work. He really was better suited to fighting human opponents. Good thing that she wasn’t controlling Unbearable, or he’d be after her like a (flying) jackrabbit on a hot summer morning. He was probably only here because Bastion had gotten overly emotional when he fought Mechagodzebra. Of course, with Unbearable loping around the street, Sylvan was now being forced to chase him to try to recover her weapon, while using illusionary versions of herself as bait. Luckily for Sylvan, he was basically 90% aggression and didn’t really think things through. If it lived, he needed it to stop doing that, and that basically summed up his whole life, brief as it was slated to be.

One bulky foreleg swung back before raking trenches through Angrboda’s Trailblazer with brutally sharp claws. She backed away only for Unbearable to pounce, latching onto her left arm with both forelegs.

“GET! …OFF!” she shouted. The bear didn’t listen, and instead, wrenched the whole arm off at the shoulder. “FUCK! This thing must weigh a goddamn ton to deal this kind of damage to my suit!” she snapped.

“Well, actually he’s only about two-thousand-two-hundred pounds, so… oh. Just over a ton. Never mind, you’re right!” Splicer called from her hiding spot. Then she remembered that Unbearable had known her the longest out of everyone preset, which in turn meant that he had hated her the most out of everyone present. So it was altogether very predictable when he turned away from bashing Angrboda’s machine to ‘death’ with its own arm to charge directly at her. He seemed very eager to exact vengeance for… his own creation, probably? Maybe she just looked extra murderable today?

Before he could reach her, Aerobat intercepted, flitting down in front of the monstrous bear’s face, and kicking him in the head. Unbearable swatted at the flying blue nuisance but Aerobat managed to deftly maneuver away from every claw swipe directed at him… for a time. Unfortunately, while Unbearable was dumb, that didn’t mean he never learned. Eventually, one strike landed. Then another. Then another. Soon Aerobat found himself floundering to keep from getting bisected by increasingly accurate attacks. Luckily for him, Angrboda and Sylvan had gotten their wits about them again, and pursued, turning the fight into a three-on-one match again. Sylvan didn’t waste any time yanking her sword out of Unbearable’s side, prompting a roar of unsuppressed rage as she vanished, only to reappear somewhere else. She probably wasn’t there and was just invisible now.

Even down an arm, Angrboda’s machine was still dangerously effective, and she grabbed the massive bear by the scruff of its neck and fired another salvo of lasers at it, more concentrated this time. A single swipe of his claws sent the whole Trailblazer tumbling back down the road. A bloody slash appeared on his side, but he ignored whatever had caused it in favour of charging at Angrboda while she was still pushing herself to her feet. He trampled her, leaving her flat on the ground again. She swore. Before he did anything else to her, Aerobat intervened and provided another distraction. He stayed a bit further out of range this time, rising higher into the air between strikes. And then the bear did something that surprised everyone.

It jumped. Straight up. More than twelve feet. Aerobat dodged easily, but Unbearable had gotten used to these tactics, now, too. The bear turned in midair, changing directions despite physics definitely not working like that, and brought one giant arm around and swatted Aerobat through a window and into a jewelry store.

“I don’t even know what just happened,” he groaned, removing gas shards and a pair of expensive ruby necklaces from around his neck.

“I knew I needed to set up something to do instant replay,” Splicer muttered. Still, aside from that, the show was going very well.

Bouncing bears? Scrambled heroes? Defiling the laws of physics?! Splicer couldn’t have made this show better if she’d planned it like this! She decided that this event needed popcorn, so she pulled out the bag of freshly popped Orville Redenbacher’s she kept on hand for just such an emergency and shoved a handful into her mouth, munching enthusiastically.

It needed less salt. But it was all about appearances, anyway, so she kept it up. She took another handful. Bleh. Oh! Maybe she should have brought her blue and red 3D glasses? She got this idea right as Angrboda crashed into the giant bear. Unfortunately, her attempt at grappling was countered by the seemingly unstoppable ursine menace. It didn’t help that she only had one arm. The bear proceeded to suplex her. Because of course he could do that.

How did Unbearable even get this powerful? He wasn’t supposed to be capable of soling three heroes at the same time. Or of performing pro-wrestling moves, that was also very strange. Future examinations of the instruments and saved files used in Unbearable’s creation revealed no evidence of tampering and Riley would eventually determine that bears were simply far more capable than anyone ever expected. Angrboda wasn’t ready to give up, though, boosting away from the hyperbolic bear using thrusters in her machine’s boots, putting some distance between herself and her enemy—that Unbearable quickly took back by launching itself at her like a missile. It landed a few feet short and the Ward used the very brief reprieve to take to the air. When the beast leaped again, its claws and fangs came up short, and Angrboda peppered it with gunfire. The next time it landed, Sylvan was waiting for it and slammed her sword down onto its shoulder. However, for reasons that Riley didn’t comprehend, despite Sylvan being the one to harm him the most, he continued focusing on Angrboda, even for the brief moment Sylvan became visible. Did Angrboda speak bear or something? Did she insult his taste in fantasy novels?

“So, what are you planning on doing now, dick!” Angrboda shouted at the bear. “Can’t kill me if you can’t touch me!”

Unbearable scowled up at her and roared.

Angrboda’s Trailblazer began to spark violently, catching fire in a few places, before falling from the sky like she’d been hit by a physical blow.

“You’ve gotta be KIDDING MEEEE!”

There was a prolonged crash as the Trailblazer hit the ground.

If Splicer wasn’t watching it with her own eyes and eating her own popcorn she would have thought so too. Unluckily for Unbearable, he had focused too much on the largest opponent instead of the most dangerous, and even with her arm still mending, Sylvan managed to swing her weapon with surprising efficacy. It was, of course, not a solid mass of metal, and had a number of hollow chambers within it. A bit like a tortoise shell, actually. This didn’t stop it from cleaving deep into Unbearable’s neck. Yep, that was fatal. The evil bear turned and made as though to reach for her. For help, or one last desperate maiming attempt? Probably the second, but the truth would remain a mystery, and he collapsed before even coming close.

“That was wicked!” squealed Splicer, watching Claire heave out a sigh and fast-walk toward her.

‘Yes, that’s very nice, but if you ever make another bear, we’re going to have a very big problem,” said Sylvan.

“Maybe even a… beary… big problem?” Splicer offered.

“Don’t start. I don’t know what the hell you were thinking, or what kind of unholy fusion of animals it took to make something that could move like that—”

“It was 90% bear, I’m serious! The data I’ve collected from this points to the possibility that bears all have terrifying abilities that they’ve never allowed humans to witness.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know!” Splicer gushed. “Isn’t it amazing?!”

Sylvan was about to reply but was interrupted by a howl containing the rage of at least seven generations of ancient Byzantine warlords.

“SPLICER!”

Uh oh. Angrboda sounded like she was very upset. And approaching in-person.

“I hate you Splicer! I absolutely hate you! Do you know who else has managed to break my Trailblazer? Go ahead, TAKE A GUESS!”

She gave the query some thought and eventually decided she had a plausible answer.

“Has Faultline from Brockton Bay been in town re—?”

“NO ONE!” Angrboda shrieked, her voice swiftly reaching the point of hysteria. “No one has ever broken my machine! And yet almost every time I see you with one of your DEMENTED CIRCUS ANIMALS you somehow manage to turn my poor Trailblazer into a pile of FUCKING SCRAP!”

Luckily, Riley had a solution for this exact problem on hand.

“Have you considered praying to the god of biomechanics before using it?”
Angrboda slapped her in the face.

“I’m taking that as a yes.”

Sylvan hung her head.

December 2nd, 2007

There was a knock at the front door. Riley was working on Blasto’s next project—some funny monstrosity that was basically a giant ball of snakes, except they weren’t really snakes—and saw him reluctantly get up and cross the lab to collect the delivery. No one knocked if there wasn’t a package. She heard the clunk-squeak of the door opening, and then a familiar hiss. Blasto looked down and recoiled.

“Oh! Real fucking mature!” he snapped, slamming the door closed and then collapsing like an unbalanced action figure. A few wisps of magenta-colored smoke made it into the room before dissipating. Riley narrowed her eyes.

“What just happened?” she asked, keeping her voice level.

“I’ll… check the security footage,” said Lauren, making her way over to a monitor connected to a tower PC with a myriad of wires plugged into it. There was some clicking before Lauren gave an answer. “Someone left some kind of canister in front of the door, knocked, and I guess activated it remotely when Blasto checked the door. Some kind of prank?”

D’arvit! These creeps were really persistent, but she had prepared for them deciding to keep coming after her and her friends. Fortunately, it wasn’t time sensitive, so she could get to that after she had figured out what was killing Blasto, and either made it see reason, or eliminated it with extreme prejudice. She was always told that prejudice was bad, but extreme prejudice always worked out really well when she eliminated things. Grown-ups were weird. But before she did anything she had to make sure they knew she was coming for them. Oh! Wait! She had a better idea. She logged onto PHO, navigated to their fan thread, and posted a polite notice of attendance.

■​

►Splicer (Unverified Cape)
Replied On Dec 2nd 2007:
Dear Plague Woman, Anti-Body, Gunsmith, and Gaslight,

You are eagerly invited to attend my biotinkering party, but it has come to my attention that it would only be polite to let you choose the location. In the event that you can’t make it on time, Blastgerm will be forced to assume that you have been killed by one of the other factions, and will be extra respectful while taking all your stuff.

Cordially yours,

Splicer :D

►banditSmokey
Replied On Dec 2nd 2007:
who is this?

►#1 Plague Woman Fan
Replied On Dec 2nd 2007:
some poser definitely

►Splicer (Unverified Cape)
Replied On Dec 2nd 2007:
I assure everyone that I’m the real person. I can even confirm where and what kind of burns Gunsmith secretly has.

(They’re hydrochloric acid burns, and they’re on his chest. I put them there!)

►Gaslight (Unverified Cape)
Replied On Dec 2nd 2007:
You want to fight? We’ll fucking give you one, you STUPID INSECT! If you don’t show up outside Fenway Park tomorrow at noon EXACTLY, we’ll exterminate your whole fucking customer base. So, Allston? Harvard Business School? That whole section of the Charles? We’ll make it uninhabitable for fucking decades! Enjoy your last night on earth you little shit.

►Sporkular
Replied On Dec 2nd 2007:
Man, she is SO DAMN CUTE when she gets angry.

►Splicer (Unverified Cape)
Replied On Dec 2nd 2007:
You people are WEIRD!

■​

Fighting The Four was out of the question. As far as Riley was concerned, this was a given. After all, a fight implied that both sides stood a chance at winning. No, after determining that killing them was both the safest thing to do and the best way to avoid more needless death, Riley decided that she would just execute them.

Everything that she had learned about The Four indicated that they had gotten to where they were by always being the scariest thing in the room. They had an immense amount of force, and fear was a potent weapon, especially when they were eager to resort to violence and didn’t have to stick around to kill you slowly and painfully.

Rules of nature, really. Survival of the fittest.

Which meant that, like every other animal that abruptly slid down the food chain when confronted with a bigger, scarier thing, they would get chomped on. And Riley was determined to be the bigger and scarier thing in the room. To be fair, this little biotinker had much bigger claws than any of them.

She decided that she’d start by taking their powers away, and she knew just how to do it.
The prion gas was almost trivially easy to make. She researched it, refined it, and prepared it for deployment all before lunchtime the next day! It would disconnect them from their powers, and once they couldn’t resist, she’d give them one chance to surrender. Only one.

December 3rd, 2007

She rode to the designated meeting spot on Tortinator. The prions wouldn’t do anything to him, and he’d been inoculated against her new disease, affectionately named Descension. And they were just the cutest little superpredatory microorganisms, yes they were, yes they were! It was almost a shame that they died en masse when exposed to oxygen for more than a minute outside of a living body. They also weren’t contagious. There was such a thing as making something too dangerous.

It was why she kept her zombie plagues inside layered steel vials, and kept them in a locked, clearly labelled safe. Those ones were contagious. Including the one that Plague Woman was currently infected with. Look, she hadn’t considered the consequences when she was making them, she was just tinkering! And while Hank the Flesh-Eating Zombie Horse would probably like more friends, it was probably better to let her test subject deal with isolation. Fortunately, she always made a vaccine for every disease she created. And added it to the compounds the decontamination chamber sprayed. Even if Hank bit you, as long as he didn’t escape, everything would be fine. The wound would still have other natural infections, though, so get to a hospital stat before ya die of gangrene!

But she was getting distracted. Focus on the here and now. Because The Four were standing her up! Or were they? It took her a few minutes of sweeping the area around the baseball stadium. Before she found them in a small parking lot two blocks away.

So now there were four mass murderers with radical outfits were standing in the middle of the road ahead of her. She pulled her prion canister out of her knapsack, and unscrewed the nozzle.
“Not a smart move to meet us head-on like this,” smirked Anti-Body. “Whatever’s in this smoke, it’s not going to do anything to us.”

“Oh, yes it will!” Riley retorted. “I promised I’d give you one chance to surrender. If you don’t take it, then you’re all going to die.”

“The kid thinks she’s cute. She can’t do anything to us,” Plague Woman leered at her through all three of her eyes. “In a few hours, this whole city will be our personal property. And we can finally give Accord and his holier than thou Ambassadors what they’re owed.”

Based on her previous conversations with the superpowered bugaboos, Riley didn’t think that they wanted to punish the Ambassadors for any of the actual crimes they’d committed. It was kind of embarrassing if she tried to think too hard about it.

“So is that a no?”

“What do you think, pisshead?” snapped Gaslight.

“I just want to be sure, since as soon as I open my other canister, you’re all as good as dead,” Riley answered cheerfully.

“Fuck off. Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Plague Woman, flexing her left hand, which Riley suddenly noticed was twice as large as it should have been and tipped with some very sharp claws. Fascinating! “We’re going to give you the finger, not even bother pretending that whatever acid spray or whatever you’ve got in there scares us, and then I’m going to grab you by the head. Then I’m going to slowly peel your face off, but I won’t kill you. Not yet. You’re going to beg for it. You’re going to beg me to kill you, you little shit! And even then, I’m not going to do it! I’m going to make you suffer for a whole day for every second I spent with my face feeling like it was on fucking fire!”

Wow, did she just use the ‘beg me to kill you’ line? Wasn’t that supposed to be worn out to the point of being comical at this point? Oh, well! She would have chastised them for foul language but that felt like overkill since they were all about to be eaten alive by microscopic Bruce from Jaws.

“Cool,” said Riley. “That sounds like fun. Seriously, though, you’re that confident?”

“It’s not confidence kid,” smarmed Anti-Body. “You just suck ass compared to us.”

“Uh huh… riiight,” she nodded slowly at him. Just to make sure he understood that she was being very sarcastic. Anti-Body was the dullest tool in The Four’s shed, and she didn’t want to deprive him of the embarrassment of being murdered by a little girl he thought was helpless even after she had nearly burned his face off with acid the last time they met. “Anyway, meet Descension! Blasto named it after I stopped his immune system from responding to exposure to ultraviolet light by attacking everything.”

Then she took the Descension canister and unscrewed it. There was a grace period of roughly fifteen minutes between losing consciousness and death, so she brought a few needles of a cure.

The Four didn’t even try to get away from the black gas. Anti-Body had no idea what he was talking about. It was absolutely confidence. Specifically, overconfidence. Then again, the mere act of thinking this implied that Anti-Body ever knew what he was talking about, and Riley doubted he’d done a lot of that since he dropped out of university.

“You stole from Blasto, smashed up my city, tried to kill the friend I accidentally made. Several times,” said Riley in an almost clinical monotone. It sounded weird. She was usually more enthusiastic. But she just wasn’t feeling it right now. “And then you tried to kill Blasto, too.”

“Yes. We did. And you tried to stop us,” spat Plague Woman.

‘Well, I never! How dare you stop us from murdering whoever we please, thou ignorant trollop!’ Riley giggled as she imagined Plague woman in a petticoat, scorning her with the exact same lack of self-awareness. Gosh, it was weird to be an eight-year-old biotinker and be more mature than people almost three times her age. Maybe she was a good girl, after all!

Gaslight suddenly clutched at her head. Plague Woman either didn’t notice or ignored her. With her personality, there was an equal chance of either.

“No one jerks us around,” she continued venomously.

“I did it before, and I’m doing it now,” Riley shot back. “I gave you the chance to surrender and you didn’t take it, but I’m not as nasty as you are, so one super last chance and then I’ll just watch you die, I guess, since Descension just started killing all of you. I’ve got plenty of medicine that’ll completely eradicate it from your systems, but if you don’t promise to leave Boston right now, and never hurt my friends again, then you’ll have to pry it out of my hands through your muscles spasming.”

“Maybe you weren’t listening,” Plague Woman snapped. “We’re resistant to everything. We can poison this whole city and still be guaranteed to recover faster than everyone else. More than long enough to take what we want.”

“Yes, I heard you. So that’s still a no?”

“That’s a fucking no, you fucking toddler. And now, since you were stupid enough to meet us here, we’ll be removing you from our list of competitors.”

“You have it backwards. By all means, come and kill me. Gimme your best shot! Do your worst — heh, you won’t.”

Plague Woman’s eyebrow twitched and she held out her hands. Predictably, nothing happened.
“Plague, what are you waiting for? Take her out,” said Gunsmith.

“Oh, fuck off, I’m trying!”

“What do you mean, trying? You’ve been doing this for four years.”

“Something’s wrong,” Gaslight winced. “I-I can’t feel my power!”

Riley smiled and closed the valves on both of her canisters.

“What? That’s impossible. Nothing even a biotinker can do can take powers away,” Anti-Body scoffed.

“That might have been true a week ago, but I doubt it, and even if it was, it’s not anymore” said Riley. “The medication to get your powers back is in my room. Assuming you can’t fly, it should take you twenty minutes to get there. You’ll all be unconscious in ten. You should have taken my offer.” The cloud of Descension had dissipated. No more biohazard, and everything was going according to plan.

“If there’s anything you really wanted to do before you die, you should probably do it in the next ten minutes,” Riley suggested with a smile.

By the time they got around to choosing, they’d already be dying, and would have minutes at best to take the cure for what she released with the prions.

Gunsmith put a hand to his head and swayed on his feet.

“This is… different,” he muttered. Was Riley misinterpreting his tone, or was he really tired? That wasn’t supposed to set in for a few more minutes. “What in god’s name… the hell have I been doing this whole time?”

“Oh, give me a break!” growled Plague. “What now? You still have your gun! You can use it even if you can’t change it, right?”

“Actually, my power also produced the chemical or mechanical reactions necessary to make my guns function, so no, kid, I can’t use the gun.” He let out a bone-deep sigh. “Why would I even want to anyway? To kill this kid for having the chutzpah to not roll over and die when the big scary mutant lady told her to?”

Plague Woman opened her deformed mouth to bite back a no-doubt venomous response, but Gunsmith didn’t wait for her to answer.

“That was a rhetorical question. I… really don’t care what you have to say. I don’t know why it took losing my powers to see it, but I’ve been angry every minute of every day ever since… ever since…” he paused. “I-I don’t even remember. Maybe ever since I got the fucking thing. Jesus, maybe it was making me angry. I have seen it theorized that powers want to be used. If whatever the kid did to us takes that away, maybe it’s better this way.”

“What the hell are you saying?! Even if it kills us?!”

“Yes! Even if it kills us. God knows there’s enough gun violence in America without me making it worse.”

Gosh, this made things a full 25% easier! A tiny, distant voice in Riley’s head reminded her that she could just find a way to take his powers away without killing him if he was prepared to surrender, but she brushed that thought aside. She was still angry at them. Something jingled at her feet, and she looked down to see a pair of keys.

“Motherfucker! What are you doing?!”

“Keys to my apartment. 446 Belgrade Avenue, apartment. Room… 312. If you can’t take care of my dog, at least find a good home for him. His name’s—”

“Coral. Um. Yeah, I know.”

Riley considered tossing his keys back, but on the other hand, Coral hadn’t done anything wrong.

Another minute more. Then another, and another…

She knew she’d won when Plague Woman coughed up blood. Her intestines were now fertilizer. The additional eye below her left cheekbone was bloodshot and no longer under her conscious control.

“You little bitch. You might have killed us… but we planned for it as a possibility. Boston was always going to burn… just a… matter of when. And once we’re gone… nothing can stop the Plague Titan. Who knows… It might not even stop with Boston!” she descended into another coughing fit, spewing discolored blood everywhere.

“Plague Titan?”

Before anyone could answer, Gaslight cracked.

“I… I don’t want to die!” Gaslight suddenly blurted. She staggered over to Riley and dropped to her hands and knees. “Please. Please give me the cure, I’ll do anything!”

Riley considered it.

“Nope. I’m okay with this.”

“Please, please! I—”

She froze as a clawed hand grabbed the back of her neck.

“After everything we’ve done… you’re just giving up?” Plague Woman snarled into Gaskight’s ear. “No, you don’t get to do that. And even if I’ll be dead in a minute, that’s still enough time to deal with a traitor who backs out the moment things get a widdle scawy.”

“N-No, p-please—”

Plague Woman bared her teeth, a vein pulsing in her forehead as she tried to reach for the powers that weren't there. She needn't have bothered: Gaslight hacked up blood all over herself a moment later and started choking on whatever hadn't made it out of her mouth. Plague lost her grip, and her next hacking cough knocked Plague off her feet and she struck the ground, hard. She struggled, but failed to rise again. Riley felt something too muted to identify as she saw Plague’s breathing come to a halt. her whole body spasmed, and then went still.

And then, like nothing was wrong with her, Plague Woman got up. Oh, right, she was a super zombie. Biological death wouldn’t stop her from moving. However, even that virus was just food to Descension.

“I don’t just create diseases,” Plague Woman snarled. “I can sense any illness in a range of six city blocks. Not only that, but I understand them instinctively. More than that, I can assimilate any disease into my biology,” she gagged, blood spraying from her lips.

“That’s why you weren’t mutating as much as you should have!” Riley exclaimed. “By assimilating my super zombie virus you simulated the effects of a perfect host!”

“Exactly. You were a genius. I’ll give you that. But you don’t get to say you beat me. Doesn’t matter how smart you are when my trump card wakes up. Not that you’ll live long enough to see it.”

“Well, it’s too bad it doesn’t matter for you, either.”

“Huh?”

“My super zombie virus. You’re not controlling it anymore,” Riley grinned like the Cheshire Cat in Alice In Wonderland.

Plague woman looked at her uncomprehending for a moment. Wait for it… waaait for it… there it was! Abject horror! According to the internet, that was the appropriate reaction.

“Anyway, as a medical professional, it’s my responsibility to inform you that in a few minutes, you’re going to… well, actually, the virus’s effects were being repressed for a while now, probably. This could get pretty brutal. Besides turning into a mindless eating machine looking for infection vectors, you’re also about to mutate. A lot.”

“You little shit,” Plague Woman hissed, stomping toward her and reaching out with a clawed right hand. Then something bulged upward inside her chest, and she gasped, doubling over and hyperventilating. She figured out how to breathe again pretty quickly.

“Huh… pain response? But you’re already technically dead even if your brain is still working. That’s interesting.”

“I’ll… sh-show yyooo… in- inter…” the rest of Plague Woman’s invective trailed off in a throaty, predatory hiss.

Plague Woman’s arms and legs swelled, her muscles expanding as her body simply responded to the previously repressed gene alterations. Her costume stretched, and started to tear as additional biomass grew in from her shoulders and her hips, leaving her original torso slightly off-center of her body, partially covered in thick musculature, and tearing the rest of her costume away. Her head was now jutting out from her right shoulder. And that was only the start. Moments later, a giant clawed arm tore its way out of Plague’s back, as another did the same from her left shoulder, both bulging with ripping muscle. Plague Woman screamed as her jaw stretched, fangs pushing several of her teeth out of her head seemingly at random. Her tongue snaked out as though of its own accord, opening up like a three-petaled flower into a ring-shaped maw lined with dozens of sharp teeth like a lamprey.

Several orifices with functions that Riley couldn’t identify without a more thorough examination. They could be anything from additional nostrils to gonads, or might even contain sensory organs that generally didn’t exist in nature on Earth. The former villain roared, its voice nothing like the woman it had been mere moments earlier. The Plague Mutant lurched forward multiple times as though grasping for Riley, but she scampered away just in time, right before the creature vomited something that sizzled on the concrete. Boney spikes broke through the skin, and only then did the mutations slowed down, but Riley knew that her virus wouldn’t stop changing her until Descension ate at least fifty percent of her biomass, and with the way she just expanded, that wouldn’t be for a while.

“Well, that’s not good,” said Riley, pulling out her phone and dialling Sylvan’s number. “Hi, can you meet me at… uhhh…” she checked the closest street sign. “Jersey Street and Private Alley 935? It’s near Fenway Park. I took away The Four’s powers but I forgot how that would affect Plague Woman’s physiology as technically a super zombie and she just mutated into a nine-foot tall behemoth. Of the derogatory kind, not the Endbringer kind.”

“Can you go back to the part about how you took their powers away?”

“No, we can talk about that after there isn’t a rampaging zombie with four arms, vomit of doom, and jaws that bite and claws that snatch! Or however that poem went.”

“Shit,” Claire grumbled.

“There is a child on the phone with you,” scolded Riley, channeling the imaginary Plague Woman from a few minutes ago. “Have you no manners?”

“I’ll admit, that I don’t want to lose my arm again after I just got it back,” she sighed.

“Then just drive nearby and use your tinkertech to mess with her senses. Does your stuff do olfactory illusions?”

“You laughed at me when I told you my engine could do that!” Claire whined.

“Well, you sure showed me, didn’t you!” I need your help fast, before she starts trying to eat people, because that won’t be—uh oh…”

The Plague Mutant lumbered over to Anti-Body who was unconscious by now. It lowered Plague Woman’s distended mouth toward him, spittle sizzling on the ground, before it jerked forward and bit into his neck. Well, if he wasn’t dead minute ago, he certainly was now! Hooray? Probably? The Mutant continued devouring Anti-Body, which was good because it was adding additional Descension into its system, but kinda gross to watch.

“You still there, Splicer?”

“Yeah, but I probably shouldn’t talk too much or it’s going to notice me, and even though I can make monsters, I personally am still squishy enough that something more than three times my size will hurt me a lot if it grabs me. She has very big hands now.”

“Damn. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Sylvan hung up and Riley gulped. This wasn’t good. Had she messed up? She felt like she messed up. One of the nearby car alarms went off, and the Mutant shrieked, ripping Anti-Body in half and lurching toward the offending noise. Using three of its massive arms, it lifted the car over its head and threw it at a few of the others.

Tortinator had the good sense to retreat into his shell. Smart move. He might have been immune to Descension, but the super zombie virus could infect him. She made to sneak around behind him, only for her foot to catch on her other ankle. She yelped as she fell over. Gosh darn tinker powers not improving her coordination—

Oh. She scrambled to her feet and turned around.

The Plague Mutant had noticed that. It was staring right at her. It looked angry.

Chapter Text

December 3rd, 2007
(The same day)

Four months of suppressed mutations all taking effect at once. The only reason Plague Woman’s body hadn’t been destroying itself from all the energy it was accumulating and not releasing was due to her passenger’s influence. Even without Descension devouring her from the inside out, what had happened to her could be described more as a meat explosion as much as a mutation. Her overall mass as Plague Mutant was more than three times the mass of her original body. Without her power allowing her to stabilize her own physiology, that amount of physical trauma in such a short timeframe had to cause catastrophic damage to her whole body. The Mutant wasn’t going to last long.

That didn’t make Riley feel much better with the creature that used to be Plague Woman stalking toward her. Also that prehensile lamprey tongue was kind of creeping her out.

On the bright side, the mutant didn’t seem to notice Tortinator, or otherwise considered him too much work to infect.

“Oh, great. It’s you again,” came a familiar voice, and Splicer found herself very relieved to see Angrboda drop from the sky. “Also, I don’t even know how to ask what that… thing… is.”

“Dangerous,” Splicer answered. The Mutant was actually taller than the Trailblazer. “Why’s your robot still missing an arm?” she asked.

The mech was definitely looking worse for wear. It still had all the damage from yesterday’s fight with Unbearable.

“Normally I’d ask how long you think it takes to make repairs to my Trailblazer, but I actually couldn’t even get into my workshop. I don’t suppose you’d have something to do with the Downtown PRT headquarters being under quarantine, would you?”

“No, that’s Plague Woman’s fault,” said Splicer, pointing at the Mutant.

Before Angrboda could make a biting comment, the Mutant grabbed another one of the parked cars, hoisting it above its head, and Splicer barely had time to sprint out of the way before it crashed into the Ward.

“Why would you even create something so ugly?!”

“It was an accident!”

“How do you make something like that by mistake?!”

“I took Plague Woman’s powers away, and then the zombie virus that she stole from me and infected herself with went out of control.”

“You know what?” snapped Angrboda, catching one clawed hand with her remaining arm. “I’m not even going to ask.” She kicked the Mutant in the knee before it could follow up with its other three arms. The joint bent backwards in what should have been an agonizing injury. It followed up anyway. Angrboda extended her armblade, and managed to take one of the oversized hands off, but took the other hits straight, knocking her back a pace. “Fuck this. I’m tired of looking at you.”

Splicer decided not to chastise her for foul language. The armblade retracted, and Angrboda unslung her rifle. Unlike Unbearable, the Mutant took a slower approach. This gave her time to build up a charge with her weapon, a series of colored bars lighting up along the barrel. The Mutant was well within striking distance when she released the shot. It swung both of its extra arms at her.

“Eat this, asshole.”

She fired a single charged shot, hitting the monstrosity right between the eyes. Plague Woman’s twisted head exploded. The Mutant dropped to its knees, then fell over dead.

“Good riddance,” she said.

“I agree,” added Splicer.

The body twitched.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding.”

A single giant hook made of serrated bone burst from the stump of the severed arm, and the Mutant climbed back to its feet. And then another head pushed itself out of the Mutant’s chest.

“God, it’s disgusting.”

The monster suddenly lunged. One clawed hand found her shoulder, while another picked her up by her leg. The hooked appendage stabbed into her torso and the last remaining claw took hold of her remaining arm.

“Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare!” the Ward screamed. “Get the fuck off me you disgusting fucking meat balloon!”

The Mutant roared in her face(plate) and started tugging with its arms.

“C’mon, Sylvan… hurry up,” Splicer whispered.

Angrboda screamed in incoherent fury as she tried to break free without success. Her Trailblazer started to creak, sparks flying and some sort of fluid beginning to leak from its internals as the machine’s chassis warped under the Mutant’s brute strength. The creature roared again, and there was the shriek of tortured metal as with one last tug, it ripped Angrboda’s machine to pieces. What was left was half a torso, ripped diagonally, the limbs were scattered, tossed carelessly into cars.

With the threat dealt with, the Mutant started flailing at Angrboda’s remains in a fit of mindless rage.

Was that a motorcycle engine Splicer was hearing?”

“I guess you really are just a stupid animal now. But you know the really funny part? The thing that makes me look down on you even after you turned my Trailblazer into scrap?”

Yeah, that was definitely a motorcycle. It was getting closer, too. Splicer crossed her fingers. The mutant turned back to her, and Splicer slowly began to back away.

“The best part of Plague Woman as a fucking joke of a hulking, aggro, zombified freak show is that you haven’t changed all!”

One of Plague Mutant’s legs stomped down on Angrboda’s faceplate, and turned back to Splicer.

Then there was a screeching sound at the corner of the street, and there was the bright red Yamaha motorcycle with its multicolored running lights. A scrape of steel, and Sylvan had her sword drawn.

“HEY! UGLY! I’VE HEARD YOU'VE DONE SOME QUESTIONABLE THINGS!” she shouted. Then she gunned the engine, the front wheel of her bike lifting off the ground as it shot forward. Splicer heard a crack, and Plague Mutant’s legs collapsed on either side of its body.

“How late was I?” asked Sylvan.

“– f-w min-t-s,” grumbled Angrboda through her damaged speakers. “The b--ch ruined -- Trailblazer.”

“So, that’s really Plague Woman?”

“What's left of her,” said Splicer.

The Mutant shrieked. The sound had no resemblance to any noise a human could make.

Tortinator, seeing that the monster’s primary means of locomotion were now history, poked his head out of his shell.

Then the Mutant reconfigured itself. Bones snapped, muscles twisted as the body adapted to its new situation. The arms on its back became legs, propelling it toward Sylvan. She just brought her sword down on its new head, splitting it in half, lengthwise. Again, it dropped. Sylvan swung her sword, severing one of the arms with a heavy slash. Then the next. Then—

A giant maw full of fangs that probably used to be Plague Woman’s ribs opened up in the Mutant’s chest, and the two remaining arms shoved itself on top of Sylvan. She brought her sword up in an overhead slash, splitting the thing that used to be Plague Woman fully in half.

“Fuck… Off… You psycho…” Sylvan gasped. “Recover from that.”

Plague Mutant immediately attempted to do exactly that.

“Tortinator! Laser time!”

The giant tortoise opened its mouth and fired a scintillating heat ray at the right half of the body, and roasting it in a matter of moments.

“C-n some-… explain … me why sh-she tur…… into that?” asked Angrboda.

“I told you before,” Splicer chirped. “I took Plague Woman’s powers away, and then the zombie virus that she stole from me and infected herself with went out of control. Her power was kind of holding it in. Like it was suppressing dark fantasies.”

“Uh… huh… you’re going to have to explain that now, by the way,” Sylvan ordered her.

No getting out of it. Splicer sighed. At least prions were a fun topic. Which reminded her, she needed a sample of Plague Woman’s cell culture. Removing and opening a sealed container from her backpack, she took her scalpel and cut away a chunk of meat from the Plague Mutant’s body, stabbed it, and then dropped both items into the container. Then she closed it and stowed it away. She’d need to call the PRT to set up a biohazard containment zone near the body.

There was a crackling sound and the screech of electrical feedback, and Angrboda’s voice suddenly got clearer.

“That’s better. No point routing power to anything except audio and video feeds with my machine in this state. I’ll probably blow out the speakers entirely in a minute, but I’ve basically gotta restart from scratch anyway. Your fucking fault, by the way. But as I was saying before that thing interrupted, the best part of Plague Woman as a hulking, mindless zombie is that ultimately, she hadn’t really changed that much.”

“Okay, that’s a little funny,” Sylvan agreed. “But can you maybe not interr—?”

And then Fenway Park exploded.

“Oh, come on, what now?!” Sylvan groaned.

“What’s happening?” said Angrboda. “There’s too much dust to see anything from my—” There was another shriek of audio feedback, something crackled, and smoke started emanating from beneath Angrboda’s ‘face.’ She blew out her speakers after all.

A gigantic hand reached out of the debris, grasping at the roof of the main entrance, as an utterly gargantuan figure pulled itself out of the interior and crashed through the buildings separating the ballpark from the surrounding streets.

“No, no, please no, not a fourth one!” whispered Sylvan.

“Huh?” Splicer asked.

“What do you mean ‘huh?’” gawked Sylvan, “That’s a fucking Endbringer!”

“Umm… no it’s not?”

“And how would you know?! It looks like one, and it sure as hell is big enough!”

“Because I’m pretty sure it’s just Plague Woman’s deadman’s switch.”

The monster stood on two legs, but it had a heavily hunched posture. If it hadn’t slouched so much as a child, surely it would be almost seven stories tall instead of just over four. Splicer kept trying to find its head, but as far as she could tell, there were just a pair of eyes and what might have been a mouth jutting from between its shoulders. No visible ears or nose, but those might have been hidden beneath the moss that covered much of its body. What wasn’t covered in moss had a chiseled texture that might have reminded Splicer of stone, but for the fact that it was decaying, and stank of rot. Nasty!

It took a step toward them… and stumbled. It weighed too much to balance properly, and was forced to use its hand as an additional leg. Hand, singular, because its other arm up to the shoulder was a wriggling mass of tentacles.

Then it swung the writhing arm, the tentacles unfurling and, spewing black fumes from a number of orifices lining their interior like an octopus’ suction cups.

“Plague Titan…” mused Splicer, remembering what Plague Woman had mentioned earlier. She snapped her fingers. “Oh! It has everything that she was carrying! Neat! We should definitely run or we’re going to die pretty horribly.”

Something crawled through the breach. It was much smaller, and pale as a corpse. Probably because it was one. She looked like she might have been an office lady, but had definitely changed her career focus since becoming a zombie.

“Oh, and we just found Plague’s kidnapping victims,” Splicer added. The creature gurgled, stumbling toward her before collapsing. It continued dragging itself closer, a hiss coming from the back of its throat. The zombie’s left hand had claws that had grown over three of its fingertips. “Uh huh, we really need to get out of here.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Same thing as Plague Woman, but less bad because it wasn’t suppressed and then activated all at once. Come on, we’ve gotta go!”

“What about the people in these buildings?”

“That’s what I got the sample for!” Splicer called back, already riding away on Tortinator. “Get on your bike faster, Sylvan!”

“Uncle Blasto? There’s kinda something big going on, and I think you should probably check on it,” Riley said, as she got back to the Evil Lair. If he heard her, he didn’t show any outward indication of it. Before she could repeat herself, Lauren, all costumed up, grabbed both of them by their wrists, shoved her into her car, and started driving.

Blasto complained, as he apparently had just baked something. Riley didn’t understand why that mattered. And while she hadn’t chosen to get in the car, as long as she was in a moving vehicle, she was going to do up her seatbelt. Safety first! Besides, Lauren was grouchy, but she wasn’t a stranger. And she never offered candy to anyone, so her car was safe.

“Where're we even goin’ Laur?”

“Accord called a meeting. Your attendance was strongly recommended. And coming from Accord, that usually means mandatory upon pain of death.”

Accord. Riley knew that name! Wasn’t he—

“Why? What’s the problem? What’s goin’ on?!”

“You’re looking out the window. Stop staring into space and actually see what’s in front of you!”

Riley, who was on the same side of the car as Blasto, but in the back seat, had a great view of the Plague Titan. Its tentacles were all submerged in the water as it waded through the Charles, sucking in water through the writhing mass while smashing anything that got too close to the south bank with its other hand. It was slowly getting closer to the city center. It’d be pretty bad if it reached Downtown Boston… 

“Nice cityscape,” said Blasto.

Uncle Blasto was different after he consumed narcotics. Not bad different, but he got kinda loopy.

There was a faint creaking sound coming from Lauren.

“You shouldn’t grind your teeth, Lauren, it’s bad for them,” Riley helpfully suggested.

“Kid, a word of advice,” said Lauren. “Do not offer advice to anyone when we arrive.”

That was silly. Good advice was good advice.

The meeting hall was on the top floor of a very tall building in upper Boston in a wide-open room. There weren’t any chairs, which bothered Riley. She wanted to sit down. There were a lot of people there, though. There were even representatives from the heroes in the room. This was so cool. Splicer wished she had thought to bring syringes; she could get so many samples here! And then Blasto could clone them, and then she could study their brains!

“Hey, kid?” said a tall, skinny man with man with styled brown hair. His beard on the other hand was just a little too long and unkempt to look even half as cool as his head-hair. “Stop staring at me. It’s creepy.” Despite what he seemed to be telling her, he sounded delighted. He had a placid grin on his face, and his eyes were dull and kinda glassy, like he wasn’t interested in being here. He was wearing a nice coat, though. It was a black leather trench coat with a silver branch-like design on it. 

“Says the guy in the pedo-coat!” snapped Rotten. “Stare at Bough all you want, Splicer, just don’t let him touch you. He’s half of Orchard. You know, kidnappers and slavers. Almost everyone in this room wants to see him bleeding profusely from a gaping head wound.”

“And you never will because of how much money I bring into this city,” Bough smirked.

“If you don’t shut your damn mouth, I’ll widen it by three feet,” snapped a girl in a black dress with stark white hair.

“All of you be quiet, so that we can get our affairs in order before that thing outside starts causing irreparable damage. Blasto, thank you for gracing us with your presence. Good to know you weren’t too busy to help clean up your mess! Or I should hope you’re not, at least. You see, if you don’t, I’ll be forced to clean it up for you, and you will not like what happens if you choose to make me clean it up.”

“Can you? I am kinda busy—urk!” Rotten jabbed him in the side. “Oh, uh, right, I mean, yeah. Sure, I’ll help. Whaddya need?”

The entire room was silent.

“Taking all bets, folks!” shouted a boy in a dark red costume. “Who’s gonna punch, kill, or otherwise maim the biotinker first?! Who’s it gonna be?!”

“I call Damsel,” muttered Rotten.

“We’ve got Damsel of Distress! Will you refute?”

She didn’t.

“Damsel of Distress with one vote! Do we have—”

“SILENCE!” Accord roared into a microphone, and the rowdy capes quieted down.

“Is that your accountant, Uncle Blasto?” Splicer whispered.

Blasto shook his head aggressively and made a number of panicked hand gestures so wild in form that they could have been an interpretive dance.

“I have no idea what you think you’re doing,” said Accord, “but stop it before you force me to do something drastic. So help me god, if you don’t screw your head on straight right this second, I will murder you the spot!”

Blasto’s accountant was yelling at him. Accord wore a funny mask, and was a loud, angry, and ugly man. Or at least his mask was ugly. Also he was super mean.

“I don’t even know what we’re talking about here,” Blasto wibbled.

“No one on this planet has time for you to play games with us! Unless that brat you’ve taken in has been sewing rocks together for the past six months, you are the only person in this city capable of unleashing that violation of common sense!”

“Look, I’m just tryin’ to chill, man. Smoke a joint, tinker for a few hours, maybe order some Taco Bell—”

Maybe Accord was just cranky because Uncle Blasto was being silly during a crisis? But wasn’t that also one of the reasons he was so much fun?

“That’s enough, Blasto! If you don’t start explaining what the hell that thing in the Charles is supped to be, I will have every cape at my disposal ensure that the only thing left of you is a fine, red mist!”

“You got a way with words, Accord.”

“Try flattering me again, and there won’t even be mist left.”

“Brah, I don’t even know what ‘that thing in the Charles’ is. I haven’t been outside all day except to come here and I was kinda zoned out.”

“Then look out the window, you perpetually blasted troglodyte!” Accord jabbed a finger at a window looking out over the city.

“Alright, alright, I’m going, I’m going!”

He walked over to the window, and Splicer trotted after him. He stared, squinting against the glare. The Plague Titan was easily visible from this vantage point.

“Wait a minute…” he muttered. “Wait one fucking minute!” he growled. His eyes sharpened, and he looked like he’d just gotten a lot of focus. “Anyone have some binoculars?”

“So you do recognize it?” grumbled one of the heroes. Splicer thought he was called Licit.

“Can’t be sure. Binoculars. Anyone?” Blasto muttered.

A woman in a gold dress handed Blasto what looked to be a pretty expensive pair of binoculars.

“Thanks,” he said, picking them up. Then he dropped them, managed to catch them on his shoe before they hit the floor, and picked them up again.

“You came very close to being murdered with extreme prejudice, I hope you know that,” growled Accord.

“Yup,” said Blasto. He looked through the binoculars for about three seconds before screaming, “MOTHERFUCKER!” and handing them back to the woman in the gold dress.

After Splicer and Sylvan had run away, a number of heroes had arrived to harry the Titan into the river to keep it from spreading more of its toxins and diseases around the city. There was already a nearly six block radius around Fenway Park that was smothered in noxious fumes. The section of the city was quarantined as soon as Sylvan called in that the Titan was Plague Woman’s handiwork.

Because Riley thought it was Plague Woman’s handiwork. It evidently wasn’t.

“Dude, what the fuck?! That’s my Giant! What did The Four do to him?!” he wailed.

“So, it is your creation after all. As I thought.”

“Not like this, he’s not! Also, in my defense, I thought he was dead. I had a whole big thing planned out, I was going to release him into the Charles over the summer, and I’d be in charge of all of Southern Boston, except then Plague Woman and her… psychotic fashion show, or whatever, blew him up with some sort of tinkertech machine! Or I thought they did. Look, the point is that this isn’t my fault, it’s Plague’s. Yell at her instead.”

Riley thought he was there when The Four mentioned stealing it. did he forget? Or did he just miss it?

“Grow up. How can we kill it?”

“It’ll eventually die without access to water—”

“Not an option,” said Accord, “Every time it removes its tentacles from the water, it spews some sort of compound that kills anything that it comes into contact with in a matter of minutes. And some of the corpses get back up. Keeping it in the Charles is about the only way to minimize the damage, and it’s still attacking anything it sees moving on the south bank.”

“Hmm, that’s a problem,” mused Blasto.

Riley suddenly remembered something.

“Hey, wait a minute, if Bough is a slave trader, why didn’t The Four kill him?” she asked. “I thought they hated slavery? It was their only redeeming quality.”

“Mostly because they’re far too busy chasing their own personal vendettas against doctors and pretty people to do anything about their one moral qualm,” smirked Bough.

“Not anymore,” said Splicer. Oh. She felt a sneeze coming on.

“Come again?”

“They’re dead. Plague Woman lost control of a—” Off, it was a big one. “—a virus she stode frub me. Thed she—” she looked in Bough’s general direction, “Ha-CHOO!” Okay, that was much better! “Then she went totally crazy and killed the others. And ate Anti-Body. It was very graphic, and definitely rated R for gore, cannibalism, and jaywalking.”

Bough doubled over in a fit of laughter. That wasn’t very nice, but he seemed like a guy so terrible that you probably needed to sing about it.

“Wonderful. In addition to this catastrophe, now Hyde Park is up for grabs,” muttered Accord. “I suppose the silver lining is that I won’t have to deal with the bioterrorist barbershop quartet anymore, but I don’t need any more problems today. Is Plague Woman dead, too?”

“Yes. Tortinator, Sylvan and Angrboda killed her.”

“I’m not familiar with the first name.”

“He’s a giant tortoise who shoots lasers. I made him with Blasto’s help.”

Accord massaged his temples.

“Okay. With these… distractions out of the way, can anyone tell me what is being done to contain the creature?”

“The Protectorate has deployed Baldr, Gaze, Dovetail, and number of other heroes to keep it relatively under control. Gaze and Dovetail are both having a great deal of success in preventing it from moving, but they can only keep this up for so long.”

“Gaze? I thought he was a Ward. And wasn’t he… ugh… trampled by a zebra recently? I would have thought he’d be in the hospital.”

“He is injured, but he doesn’t have to move to get a clear view of the giant. That’s all he needs to shoot it and keep its tentacles from spewing that gas.”

“What’s Bastion doing? Shouldn’t he be making barriers?”

“The downtown PRT building is under heavy quarantine. I don’t have the details, but he is being restricted to the building at this time.”

“Fantastic, I do love it when the head of the local Protectorate is sitting around doing as much nothing as humanly possible while his city is going through an existential crisis.” Accord grumbled something else under his breath.

“We can’t afford to send our creations to fight it,” Bough interjected. “People pay in advance for our product, so each and every one of those beauties is tailor-made to perfection. It wouldn’t do to throw them away.”

“As expected,” Accord grumbled. “Is that all you came here to say?”

“You make us sound so crass. Orchard just doesn’t want you press ganging us into burning our investments.”

“‘Investments,’ he calls them,” growled a woman in a winged mask.

The discussion was derailed for another few moments as people aired more of their Orchard grievances. 

“I can—”

“You will not!” Accord interrupted Damsel before she could say another word. “I’m sure you could destroy the giant, but you won’t do anything if it doesn’t go into Dorchester. And I have less than no interest in convincing you.”

“But I could be convinced,” Damsel smirked.

“And no one here feels like bargaining with you and your delusions of grandeur. Rather, we all refuse.”

“You’re just afraid,” she snarled, “You’re a coward who doesn’t want to work with someone who has real power. But since you don’t want to take my generous offer, you can go right to hell! Let’s see what people really want. Show of hands, who’d prefer I destroy Blasto’s giant.”

“Not my giant anymore,” Blasto interjected. “Just sayin’.”

No one raised their hands. Damsel looked distressed.

“You won’t hear me begging you to do it,” said a skinny guy in a mask that wrapped around the sides of his head and had a dozen knives sheathed against his legs.

“Not at the expense of another district,” said Rotten Apple.

“Fuck off! No one cares about your opinion. You’re just pissy because I wrecked your base a few months ago,” Damsel snapped.

“No, she’s right. Stay in Dorchester. Please,” said one of the other capes.

“Indeed. We just got settled here,” said a man with what Splicer thought were either Japanese or Chinese letters on his costume. “We are not interested in giving over so much as a single building to a little girl who thinks she is important because she breaks things.”

“SHUT UP!” Damsel shrieked. She whirled around and stormed out of the room. She pulled the door open, and then used her power to slam it shut, blasting the door off its hinges. Everyone waited for the sound of another door opening and they all breathed a collective sigh of relief when they heard it shut. Apparently, she didn’t want to use the elevator. That was a healthy lifestyle choice!

Gosh, that was sudden, though. Damsel was hard to read. One moment she was smiling, and the next she was super angry.

“Would she really be able to destroy it?” Splicer asked Rotten.

She nodded, as more people continued talking about what to do about the monster barely being contained in the river.

“Why don’t we want her help?” she asked.

“I’ll explain when we have time for that. Damsel of Distress is, well, an annoying subject.”

The meeting ended a few hours later. A few villains had volunteered to help, including Riley. She and Blasto had just finished working on a way of making Descension even more deadly, but only transmissible through water. This one would devour the Plague Titan in a matter of minutes to the point of being at least visible with the naked eye. It’d still be lethal if it got on someone, though, so Splicer had taken all the appropriate precautions, and come wearing a hazmat suit. Blasto and Rotten Apple were wearing them too, except they looked better in them because theirs actually fit.

Since they were starting with a complete base, Riley was able to finish adjusting the parameters in two hours. It was easy once she gave each cell an additional mitochondrion. This also made the cells less stable because cellular life usually wasn’t meant to have more than one of those.

Once they were done, they poured it all into a very airtight drum, put it in a harness around Tortinator’s neck. She could hear a motorcycle outside, which meant that her ride was here. Blasto would be riding on Tortinator today, while Sylvan would be driving her to the release zone.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” shouted Riley.

Sylvan stepped inside and just as she did, a very excited snake-person with big knives swung down from the ceiling and attempted to murder her.

“Wait! Slither! She’s a friend!”

Unable to adjust his trajectory, Slither the Snake-person fell past Sylvan who yelped and recoiled from him. He landed right on his funny bones. Owwie!

“What the hell was that?!”

"Slither the Snake-person,” said Riley.

“That explains nothing.”

What? No, that explained everything! That was his name, what he was, and his personality! It even implied his hopes and dreams, and where he saw himself in five years!

“He’s security,” said Rotten Apple. “One of our capes. Can’t have people just coming and going.”

“But Sylvan’s a friend!”

“Not to Rotten and Blasto, clearly,” Sylvan growled. “I know you’re not good at grasping emotions, so I’m going to tell you outright, I’m running out of patience with this.”

Sylvan had patients? Did she get a new power? Riley asked, and was regaled with an explanation about homophones.

Slither hissed in pain and picked himself up. He glared at Riley in what looked like disappointment but snakier, and then turned to look Sylvan in the eyes. He gestured at himself with two fingers, then turned them to jaw toward her eyes, then back at his. Then he waddled off. His legs were basically a pair of tails. It was an experiment. It worked better for him when he was climbing.

“Anyway, are you ready to go, Riley?”

“Yup. Uncle Blasto can have Tortinator cross the river, and we’ll meet him on the other side.”

Just as they were about to get moving, Rotten got call on her cell phone. She picked up and scowled.

“How exactly does the PRT have my number?”

“Thinkers,” said a familiar voice. It sounded like Bastion, though Riley couldn’t be completely sure. “Are you with the other members of Blastgerm?”

“Yes?”

“Put me on speaker.”

“Why should I?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll keep you trapped in your headquarters so long that you’ll need to eat your raw materials just to survive. Speakerphone. Now.”

Rotten lowered the phone to her side.

“Christ, take a pill, asshole,” she muttered. Then she turned on speakerphone.

“We heard about Splicer’s plan to remove Blasto’s fake Endbringer,” said Bastion, his voice more obvious at this volume, “But we weren’t expecting the cure to be worse than the disease.”

Wow, that was an interesting expression. Splicer liked that one. But the internet had taught her stuff, too.

“It’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission,” she said.

Sylvan rolled her eyes.

“Bastion, what would you suggest? I think that it’s the best option. We need to get rid of this thing in its entirety, and Splicer’s giving us an easy solution. There could be casualties, and if there are, Boston will at least survive long enough to blame her. If Plague Woman’s colossal last fuck you to the world doesn’t get contained fast, we might be looking at something worse than just Boston being erased. Plague left a zombie virus in that thing. We have to kill it.”

Under normal circumstances, Riley would have condemned Sylvan’s use of foul language, but it seemed like she was on a roll there, and Splicer didn’t want to interrupt.

“Plague left a zombie virus inside PRT HQ and I can’t defend my city, don’t talk to me about best options!” snapped Bastion, “I have a lot of misgivings about leaving this city’s fate in the hands of a villain whose irreverence borders on willful obliviousness.”

“We don’t have time to be picky, Bastion,” said another voice. “Someone needs to be out there, now, doing something about that thing. Hell, we need to be out there an hour ago, and we’re just lucky that enough of us weren’t inside the building and we have the other district branches to rely on. If the kid says she has a solution, I’ll take anything that leaves most of the city alive.”

“The director’s got a point, sir,” said a third voice. Riley recognized it as Aerobat. They hadn’t gotten to know each other very well, but she was finding that she liked Aerobat more than his boss.

There was a tense silence.

“If no one else can offer a solution, then I’m afraid Splicer’s bacteria is our only option,” sighed the director.

“Director Armstrong, I cannot in good faith allow—”

“Like the independent said, Bastion, we can blame her for the deaths she’ll be responsible for if we survive. If we keep dithering trying to figure something out where no one dies, by the time we agree on something, it wouldn’t even matter anymore.”

“Because everyone would be dead already!” Splicer added cheerfully.

“Yes, that was implied,” said Blasto. “You, uhh… didn’t need to clarify.”

“Oh,” Splicer shrugged. “Well then, we should get a move on.”

“Yep. Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of the tortoise,” Blasto agreed. “Yo, Armstrong, or whatever your name is, get as many blasters as you can to come out and start shooting the Wo-uhh…Plague Titan. Try and keep it in the same place. Fuck, I hate this, why am I helping people kill my project! I hate The Four! I hate Plague Woman! I hate whoever sold her that tinkertech, and I hate Fenway Park! How the fuck did they manage to fit my giant underneath it?!”

“Sorcery,” Aerobat deadpanned over the phone. There was a pause. “What? Look, sir, all due respect, you’re hurting morale. I think the people outside can feel your glare.” 

“Aerobat,” said Bastion. “Please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop talking.”

“Are we done here?” asked Rotten, “Because you guys are just wasting time, and it’s not like you’re going to be able to stop us if we decide to go through with this without your permission. Just put out a citywide alert to not go near the Charles River for the next… how long is the stuff going to survive?”

“It’ll lose the ability to reproduce after around twenty hours, give or take,” said Riley, putting on her mask, and then closed up her hazmat suit. “Ready to roll!”

She left with Sylvan while Blasto rode out on Tortinator.

Splicer and Sylvan caught up with Blasto within twenty minutes, the cost of the supertortoise being able to swim across the river. He wouldn’t be able to do that on the way back. A large drum full of the scariest microorganisms anyone in Boston would ever smell hung from around his neck. A few miles out, Gaze was still shooting the giant as it lumbered toward Boston Harbor, and murdered just about everything within fifty meters of the south bank of the River. Angrboda threw a grenade at the monstrosity which exploded mostly harmlessly in a cloud of yellow gas around the thing’s head.

The Titan swung its free arm about with the plodding clumsiness of a mindless drone, not fully understanding that its attackers were out of punching distance.

“Okay, if anyone wants to get turned turn into a skeleton really quickly, don’t stand back,” Splicer warned the others. Everyone promptly retreated to what was likely more than a safe distance. Including Angrboda despite being there in robot form. Weird.

Then, Blasto took a crowbar and pried the top off the drum. Splicer didn’t wait before dumping it into the river.

A red stain slowly began to spread through the water, as the bacteria consumed the microbes in the water and started propagating. They multiplied quickly, and within a few minutes, the whole river was dyed the color of blood.

“Ho-lee shit, it’s like the first plague. The one where… whatshisname… hmmm… oh! Moses, him, it’s like when Moses turned that river in Egypt into blood.

“You mean the Nile?” asked Sylvan.

“I’m not in denial, I’m entirely comfortable with my status as an addict.”

Splicer and Sylvan slapped their foreheads in stereo.

“What?! What’d I say this time?!”

“Does he have selective hearing?”

“No, but he hears it from Rotten every now and then. It’s a memetic reaction.”

“What are we talking about, now?” he asked.

“When did he last smoke? Because if this keeps up, I’m either going to either destroy his stash, or I’ll need him to smoke more.”

“Not sure. I think it was before we left, but drugs are bad, so I avoid them while in the lab.”

The red water continued spreading, the current carrying it closer to the Plague Titan with each passing second. Dovetail had it restrained. Her barriers broke easily, but they kept it from actually going anywhere, while Gaze held its tentacles down with his gravity shots.

“Tortinator, laser time!” barked Splicer, and her tortoise fired his heat ray, blasting it along its spine. It didn’t do much damage, but it caught the Titan’s attention. It tried to turn around, but couldn’t pull its tentacle arm away. Then, contact. The Plague Titan stumbled, the craggy body starting to degrade, the devouring microbes would be spreading throughout its body now. It flailed its free arm, splashing it against the river, but all that did was add more Super Descension to another part of its body.

Then it turned around. Had Gaze passed out? Dovetail dropped another barrier around it, but it smashed it with a crumbling fist, pieces of stoneflesh falling into the river as it freed itself.

“We should probably get outta here,” Splicer noted, but it was already too late. The Plague Titan dragged its tentacles arm through the river, and then swung it upward…

…revealing a wriggling mass of stumps, spilling toxic sludge, no longer capable of throwing anything. Never mind. They were safe. Plague Woman and her stolen pet were officially donezo!

A heavy crumbling preceded its collapse as its legs started dissolving into the water. Its other arm fell off at the elbow, and the rest of the Titan followed, sinking into the Charles as more pieces fell from around its hunched chest and shoulders. There was a moment where what she had thought might have passed for a head was faced in her direction as it continued breaking apart, but if it was even capable of comprehending what was happening to it, it certainly didn’t know why. If it saw her in its final moments, it was only because it was facing her.

And then it was gone.

“That was just anticlimactic!” Blasto complained. “Now I’m gonna have to do this all over again!”

“I’d suggest you rethink that idea,” ordered Sylvan.

“It wouldn’t even be toxic! Just big! What’s the problem?”

“Collateral damage! Also, if you ever create another Endbringer, by any definition, I will chop you in half.”

“Holy shit. Damn killjoys lurking everywhere these days,” Blasto grumbled. “Fine, but I won’t be happy about it.”

“Honestly, that just sweetens the deal for me.”

With everything out of the way, it was time to head back to the lab.

“Oh, right, you need to go through decontamination,” Splicer told Sylvan.

To her surprise, Sylvan growled at her.

“Is there going to be another evil snake waiting to stab me when I walk inside?”

“Oh, no, no, not at all, probably.”

Chapter Text

As it turned out, Slither did not attempt to jump them.

Though in Sylvan’s defense, that was probably because Riley slapped him on the snout and gave him a stern talking-to on her way in.

Sylvan didn’t hang around, much to Splicer’s disappointment, but that just meant that she could illegally retrieve the bodies of The Four. Anti-Body’s brain probably wasn’t intact, but Gaslight, Gunsmith, and whatever was left of Plague Woman could definitely be salvaged.

Grabbing the Plague Mutant required her to make an additional trip on Tortinator, who was probably going to be all shagged out after running around all day, but it was worth it. Once The Four The Three(?) were out of the way, she could focus on her bonus prizes! They were going to cement her status in Boston as someone who was terrifying, and yet was too useful to put in a cell. This was gonna be good.

But first, naptime. Good girls went to bed on time.

It wasn’t easy to doze off that night. There were police cars driving around with bullhorns warning people to stay away from the Charles River. In the city’s defense, she had released what could be described as the mega-piranha of single-celled organisms, but man, she was hoping to get up early. The notice was being sent out over all the local news stations, various websites including YouTube, NBC.com and parahumans.net, and was even on the radio. Who was going to miss it?

…

Tie Guy. Tie Guy was definitely going to miss it. She should go out on Tortinator and scare him away from the Charles. Surely that wouldn’t backfire horribly, right?

No, it’d probably backfire horribly. Tie Guy always ran in the wrong direction.

December 4th, 2007

(The next day, but after 11:00 am because of those pesky police announcements)

Splicer sneakily stalked her way toward Orchard’s super-secret headquarters. It was really easy to find when her sneezes contained tracking agents! Also, it was inside a Taco Bell. Uncle Blasto was going to be devastated… maaaan!

She was so excited! In the span of a single week she was going to get more test subjects than she had in her whole first two years as a cape!

She quickly dialed Sylvan’s number. There were a few moments where she thought Claire wasn’t going to pick up, but then there was a click.

“Splicer,” Claire’s voice was steady and professional. Not as friendly as it used to be. Riley didn’t understand.

“Hiya, Sylvan! I was wondering something.”

“Oh god…”

“Would people be upset if terrifying, Frankensteinian things happened to Mr. Bough?”

“Bough?! Ugh, thank god, I thought this was going to be another exercise in compromising my morality. I’ll put it this way: Bough and Drowsing do have basic human rights, but everyone wishes they didn’t. If you’re planning on getting rid of Orchard, it wouldn’t matter what you did to them. People will just be happy they’re gone.”

“Sweet! Thanks, Claire!”

She hung up. Orchard wouldn’t be gone gone, but they sure wouldn’t be kidnapping anyone anymore.

She pulled an R/C remote out her bag, followed by a pair of skeeters; creatures that were like if you crossed a pelican with a horrible four-inch mosquito. They weren’t pretty to look at, but they got the job done. She had them fly over to the doors, and then she waited. After about two hours, Bough stepped out. Splicer landed one on the back of his neck and had it deliver its payload—a powerful tranquilizer and paralytic agent. He flailed about wildly for a few moments, then dropped like a sack of kidnapped potatoes. She grabbed him, hogtied him—wearing the appropriate safety gear, of course—and then slung him over Regular-Gryphon’s back. Then she went back to the door, rang the buzzer, and ran off, giggling like an ordinary prankster.

When Drowsing opened the door, presumably looking for whatever the mailman left him, Skeeter Two got him, injecting its own payload. With Orchard successfully neutralized, she clambered onto Regular-Gryphon’s back, and brought her new test subjects back home.

Good-golly-gosh, it was like Christmas was coming early this year! And happening five times!

She flew home both literally and figuratively, washed her hands, thanked the Lord for this gift she was about to receive…

…and then, because life was unfair, she was interrupted before she could start doing exciting surgical procedures! Interrupted by an angry man with too much money and broken legs. He wheeled himself into Blasto’s lab, ranted at her for half-an-hour about a cape out in Las Vegas, and then demanded she amputate his legs. She questioned whether this was a good idea, or how this weirdo found out about her, but as Uncle Blasto said; ‘Who are we to argue with a guy smacking us in the face with a giant wad of money?’ And Angry Guy was smacking her in the face a lot. Well, mostly throwing wads of bills at her, but same difference.

By the time Angry Guy stopped ranting, Bough had woken up and was screaming at Drowsing to help him, but that wouldn’t happen because Drowsing was a kidnapper and a master, and therefore couldn’t be trusted with conscious thought in the presence of children. Which was why she connected him to an IV full of tranquilizers. Eventually Bough just started screaming for help. Rotten obliged him and offered him some minor entertainment by pulling up a lawn chair, sitting back, and telling him about all the things that were probably going to happen to him, while eating popcorn.

Waitaminute… that was one of her emergency packages of Orville Redenbacher's! And she couldn’t even protest because she was in the middle of performing surgery that she hadn’t questioned despite her better judgement!

Swapping the surface layers of Angry Guy’s head out for a goat’s however, she questioned even while she was doing it. This guy was weeeeeiiiird.

December 5th, 2007

Riley used the key that Gunsmith had given her to get into the building. She really wanted to do surgery, but she remembered that there was a dog starving in Gunsmith’s apartment, and said dog didn’t have a criminal record.

…yet.

The security guard at the door gave her a wary eye, but she ignored him. It would take more than his standard-issue firearm to pierce her if he realized she was technically an intruder.

She took the elevator up because she planned to take the stairs coming down.

She could hear the sound of whimpering from behind the door before she opened it. When she did, she was greeted with the sight of a sheltie as his fluffy tail stopped wagging, and he slumped down on the floor and whined some more. Coral the dog stared up at her with big, sad eyes. She knew dogs had a good sense for things, and Coral was obviously a clever one. He obviously knew that Gunsmith wouldn’t be coming home.

“Hey there, Coral,” she said, kneeling down and patting the listless dog on the head. He didn’t react. It was well documented that the way to a dog’s heart was through their stomach, though. Operation Head Scratches was a bust, so she started on Plan B.

She went inside and opened the fridge. Coral hadn’t eaten in almost two days now, so he trotted over to her at the sound of the magical meat-box being opened. According to Coral’s Facebook page, his favorite human food was turkey. Gobble-gobble-gobble! And conveniently, there was a yummy turkey leg wrapped up in the deli-drawer! Well, Gunsmith might have been an angry man who she theorized was heavily influenced by his power, but it was more than clear he cared about his dog.

While she was heating it up in the microwave, she also put out a water dish for Coral who started lapping it up with gusto. Thank goodness. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if she had brought the dog to water but couldn’t make it drink. …which wasn’t the correct use of that expression. Either way, you died of dehydration way before you died of starvation, so Coral’s life expectancy was going way back up.

The problem started when she put the turkey on his food dish. Coral looked more forlorn than ever as he stared at the turkey leg. He licked his chops but didn’t eat it. Riley didn't know what to do. Turkey was his favorite. Coral said so himself on the internet! He just… looked at it. Sadly.

Riley took the turkey leg and held it out to him, and he took a few uninspired nibbles, a few bits falling from the sides of his mouth.

Maybe he had good memories of eating turkey legs with Gunsmith and didn’t want to eat it without him? She’d just find something else! She opened the fridge again, and obtained a steak.

It was raw.

Hmmmm…

Okay, so, she’d never cooked before in her life, but it was never too early to try something new using someone else’s appliances after technically breaking into their home while they were away and/or dead.

She turned on the stove, hunted through the cupboards until she found a frying pan, then put it on the heated element. Then she went and found a chair, because she wasn’t tall enough to reliably reach the pan or consistently observe the dead cow she was heating to temperatures that would make it delicious for some reason.

After probably half-an-hour of staring at it and wondering how she’d know when to flip it over, the beef started to smoke. She flipped it over, needing to scrape it off the pan with the spatula, and found that it was very crispy. Perhaps too crispy. It was black on one side, and pink on the other, and she was pretty sure that was how her daddy once described a really bad steak once in a memory that she couldn’t identify. Maybe when she was three? Either way, the steak had certainly proven that smoking was bad for you. It turns you all grey-black and flaky. She threw the steak away, then went back to the fridge and found another, and saved some time by mourning the previous steak’s tragic accident while cooking the next one.

This time, she timed herself, waited for ten minutes before flipping it over, and then waited for another ten minutes. Then she flipped it over again. After another five minutes, she went looking for a plate. She found them earlier while looking for the frying pan, so that was easy enough. After trying several times to use the spatula to move the meat from the pan to the plate, she just settled for lifting the pan with both hands and tipping it over, and letting it fall onto the dish.

It was a bit singed around the edges, but she just cut those off. And then took a bite, because why not? It was kind of tough, and took her a while to chew, but Coral probably wouldn’t mind. She slid the steak off her plate and into the doggy dish. Again, Coral wouldn’t eat it. This was confusing.

He was obviously hungry. Why wouldn’t he eat any of the food she'd given him? And after she had taught herself how to steak!

“Coral!” she barked.

Coral looked up at her.

“You are dying! ” she said slowly, pointing at him, then laying down on the ground and miming being dead. Coral sneezed and pawed at her until she got up. She took the steak and pointed at it. “Food! Eat!” she waved it in front of his nose and he watched it with rapt attention, presumably waiting for it to run away so that he could chase it, or maybe sing a broadway show tune. “Eat! Live? Steak, meat! Nummy!”

Coral stared at her. She took a few bites of the overcooked meat and held it back out to him. He nudged it aside with his nose and then looked at her with a deeply accusing gaze. Of what, she wasn’t sure, but that looked like a non-verbal accusation in her unprofessional opinion. Then he trotted over to a cupboard and hopped up to rest his forepaws on it, looking back at her. It was one she hadn’t looked in while looking for the frying pan. She opened it to find a large bag of Iams™ dog food.

Riley looked down at Coral. Then back at the bag. Then down at Coral. Then at the bag. Oh! Oh! Comprehension achieved!

“Ohhhhh!”

She took the bag out and poured a full dish for Coral, who immediately chowed down. He started perking right up after that. Then he ate the turkey leg, which was conveniently still in the bowl. Then he hopped up on her leg, trying to reach the steak. so she gave him about half of it, so that he didn’t overeat.

So that’s how it worked. He ate his dog food before he ate his people food! Good to know. Now to find out if he’d get along with Coyotemera, and if not, to leave him in a box on Tsunami’s porch, ring the doorbell, and run away.

She left the frying pan and the dish in the sink, and fetched Coral's leash.

“Okay, Coral! Wanna go see your new home?”

He quirked his head at her.

“C’mere, Coral!” she said.

He stared at her.

Riley didn’t get Coral. Wait!

“Oh! Wanna go for a walk?!”

Coral barked, and scampered up to her. She was learning how to communicate!

She also had no idea how to get home, having only the vaguest idea how she arrived in the first place when Lauren dropped her off at the building. So, after Coral did his business—and she picked up after him and tossed it in a park trash can, because good girls picked up after their pets—she called Lauren again. It was Wednesday, so Sylvan had school, and this was a dog emergency, not a cape emergency.

“Lauren, can you come pick me up? I’m lost and scared,” she whined.

“You sure are one of those things. You really took your time over there,” said the older girl.

“I needed to figure out how to make him eat.”

“Dogs eat anything!”

“Coral only eats his people-food after he gets his dog food,” Riley explained.

Lauren didn’t believe her for some reason.

After what was surely most of the day, but turned out to only be half-an-hour, she drove up in her Jeep.

“Cute dog,” she mused, as Riley opened the back door and got in, letting Coral lay down between the seats. “Weird to think that it was owned by a freak like Gunsmith.”

“Don’t be mean to Coral, he can’t help being owned by an evil gunslinger.”

“If it causes trouble, we’re sending it to the pound.”

Uh oh.

They headed back to headquarters.

No sooner had the door opened had Coral bounded inside and started exploring his new surroundings—Slither didn’t attack him because he had four legs—running from station to station showing minimal interest. It took a while to coax him upstairs to the living area. Shelties were sheepdogs, Riley remembered, so he was used to being the herder, rather than the herdee.

Luckily, it looked like he and Coyotemera got along just fine. Coral was a good dog who didn’t judge Coyotemera for having three heads.

Coyotemera on the other hand was used to being the only furry friend on the second floor of the lair, and stared with three sets of eyes at the fluffy interloper.

Coral barked. Coyotemera chittered.

Then he curled up in a corner and lay down. Coyotemera followed him with a cluck and prodded him with her coyote nose. He didn’t react. Was he still sad about Gunsmith? How long was it going to bother him? Emotions didn’t make sense.

But , now that Coral was taken care of, Riley could finally—Oh, right, she had to cure hundreds of people from being zombies or the PRT was probably going to just euthanize them.

…and then people would be all mad because of civilian casualties, and then she’d get a kill order, and then she’d never be able to experiment on the brains of Mr. Bough and Mr. Drowsing, and that would just be a tragedy!

Maaaaaan , these chores just never ended!

December 10th, 2007

That took way too long. And there was still a quarantine up along the south bank of the Charles from Park Drive all the way to Clarendon Street, but the PRT had more than enough of the cure for her superzombie virus to handle the response without her. Though there were a lot of deaths that couldn’t have been avoided because they hadn’t known there was a cure in the first place. Uncle Blasto and Lauren were both out at the movies, or something, so she was alone in the lab.

And she had taken Coyotemera and Coral on their walks already.

“Okay!” she shouted to the mostly empty building. “I’m about to perform exciting surgical procedures!”

Nothing happened.

“I have nothing I have to do right this second!”

No leopards jumped through the windows and attempted to drag her off to the African Savannah. A meteorite did not crash through the ceiling of Blasto’s lab and cause the underworked and depressed scientists at NASA to co-opt the lab to study it.

“I’m ready to have some fun with science!”

The carrots didn’t stage a revolt. The sky didn’t fall. The combined Protectorate forces of the East coast didn’t fall upon Blastgerm’s HQ like a storm. No potatoes even exploded in the microwave.

Riley could only conclude that the universe had given her permission to Do Stuff™ again.

She washed her hands, prepared her tools, sterilized the room—there was a knock at the lab door and Riley started screaming.

“What! What do you want from me?! I saved Boston when all I want to do is make a zoo full of critters made from other critters while possibly destroying the seagull menace! What else do I have to do?!”

A man in a USPS uniform, slightly overweight and bearing a distinguished-looking greying mustache stared back at her. He was halfway to placing a few letters in the mailbox, but removed them and held them out to her instead since she came to the door. They were probably bills, or some other grown-up thing.

“This is the mail for this address, miss,” he said without missing a beat.

He had a pleasant voice. Seemed like the sort of man who knew he was just a cog in the system but still took pride in his job.

At least, that was what Uncle Blasto said about the guy, once.

“Thank you, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” she mumbled.

She took the offered letters, and went back inside.

Whew.

That was a close call. Now she just had to do one last thing… she took out a video camera and set it up as Blasto had instructed.

And now… it was time to do some science!

December 25th, 2007

“Hey, Rotten Apple, how much anesthetic should I use while operating on Bough?”

“BOUGH?! Fucking NONE!”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, that depends. Did the anesthetic corrupt the bodies of everyone you love and sell you to separate warlords across continental Asia for fun and profit?”

“No?”

“Then FUCKING NONE!”

“Well, if you’re sure…”

There were muffled sounds that could have been invective, protests, or begging, but the gag in Bough’s mouth kept it entirely unintelligible. Then a sound like a very angry electric razor turning on—

“AAAAAIIIIIEEEEEE!”

—Followed by the now very familiar sound of Bough shrieking his poor, depraved heart out.

Accord leaned back in his chair, listening to the music of a problem being handily dispatched. He took a deep breath

…and remembered he was going to have to thank Blasto for providing him with a copy of the recording for Christmas in spite of their mutual enmity. There went his good mood.

Chapter Text

■

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■

♦ Topic: Is It Over Yet? (Boston Games)
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Boston Discussion (Public Board)
Tired_Iron  (Original Poster)
Posted On Jan 5th 2008:
You know, when the PRT did its crackdown on crime here in Boston, I actually thought things were going to get better. I put my whole life into car maintenance. Had my own shop, worked nine to five and all that. I knew there was crime, but it never affected me beyond a hint of anxiety. Nothing I couldn't live with.

Then mass arrests of parahuman criminals and within a week, my shop is totalled, there's a gaping hole in my apartment from where Baldr threw some samereye, or however you spell that, and my landlord is charging me extra now because somehow my damaged apartment has a high value because it's a 'safe' neighborhood. Give me a fucking break!

Did the heroes actually make any arrests at all, or did they just release a bunch of villains on boston so that they could all go hog-wild with their fucking cape fights?

I'm so tired of this shit. I just want it to be over. I want my LIFE back!

(Showing page 1 of 58)

 

►Xyloloup 
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:

Wow, cry more. you lost your store and haven't been able to repair your apartment, you're truly one of the greatest martyrs of our time. You know, some of us get to worry that the ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS who live down the block from us might decide we look Jewish enough to stab and leave in a ditch.

Boston sounds like paradise. At least your life isn't ruled by one gang or another if you're not middle class or above.

 

►Bagrat  (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:
No need for the histrionics Xylo. I get that Brockton isn't a nice place, but suffering isn't a contest. You have your problems, he has his.

 

►ForRealAnimeGirl 
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:
Thanks for being the voice of reason here, but I'm in Boston, too, and this guy still just sounds whiny. He got unlucky. Why does he have to vent at everybody?

 

►WishingWill 
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:
Also wtf is with his whole 'did the heros release villains so the they could fight them?' crap? That is some conspiracy theorist bullshit. Sound like the kind of thing that could be used for a crappy straight-to-TV movie that'd go on the syfy channel.

 

►Bagrat  (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:
Maybe a bit more merit than a straight to SyFy. Not much, but a bit.

 

►Third_Story  (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:
Yes, OP, the Boston Blowback seems to have been winding down in the past few months, and with the destruction of The Four's bioweapon, most of the villains who got entrenched are trying to avoid attention in the aftermath.

 

►Tired_Iron  (Original Poster)
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:
Blowback? You talk about this like it was unexpected. Don't you peple have capes who can see the fucking future?! Was no one predicting this?

 

►Antigone 
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:
This guy thinks that you need a thinker to tell the PRT what'll happen if they create a power vacuum in a big city...?

 

►Lolitup 
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:
Besides, aren't precog powers notoriously finicky?

 

►Therewolf  (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 5th 2008:
That's what people say.

Truth is that we might be in better shape now than before, (hell if I know) but that won't matter much to the people who got hurt in the process.

 

►cowards_way_in 
Replied On Jan 6th 2008:
OP, if you're feeling down, just believe in the me that believes in Therewolf.

 

►LeaveYouInStitches 
Replied On Jan 6th 2008:
Does that make any sense to anybody?

 

►Therewolf  (Veteran Member)
Replied On Jan 6th 2008:
If anyone says yes, I will call them a dirty liar.

 

►Stegomancer 
Replied On Jan 6th 2008:
I'll get the hose and a pressurized soap dispenser.

 

►WishingWill 
Replied On Jan 6th 2008:
Do we know what the PRT has been doing to inhibit our new criminal underworld?

 

►Wobblesworde 
Replied On Jan 6th 2008:
@Third_Story Your time to shine, friend.

 

►InexorableToaster 
Replied On Jan 6th 2008:
I miss the days when gang violence just meant you might get shot and left in a ditch. These days you might get thrown into the neighbouring state by a guy trying to use you as a bludgeoning weapon.

There's been an incredibly dumb joke circulating the boards lately that goes 'axes are melee weapons, like swords, or shotguns, or short Italian men.'

To the cape that used me as a club: Your muscles are ugly, and I don't approve of being swung around like a baseball bat.

 

►Stegomancer 
Replied On Jan 6th 2008:
For someone claiming to have been subjected to horrendous physical abuse, you've taken it astonishingly well, based on the tone of your message.

 

►InexorableToaster 
Replied On Jan 6th 2008:
I'm more surprised than you are! I got away with a few bruises and a twisted ankle.

Statistics say that civilians caught in the crossfire of cape battles have a 60-to-80% chance of sustaining serious injuries. I walked it off, still got to work on time and my wife doted on me for hours. Best day ever. All you can do is laugh.

 

End of Page.   1, 2, 3... 56, 57, 58

■

♦ Topic: Lot of Blastgerm Capes Around Lately. . .
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Boston ► Teams ► Blastgerm
Stegomancer  (Original Poster)
Posted On Mar 2nd 2008:
Has anyone noticed a lot of Blastgerm capes around town?

And, like, actively. I saw something shady going down near the wall by the Plague Containment Zone, and all of a sudden, the dealer or whatever gets grabbed by this unholy rat thing the size of a tiger and get dragged off into a manhole.

I'm also noticing a theme in here. No Blastgerm cape looks human except for Rotten Apple, Splicer, and Blasto. Those that aren't obviously Case 53s look like they've been stitched together from different animals.

Is it possible that Blastgerm is behind the Case 53s?

(Showing page 4 of 23)

 

►DarthIcthyos
Replied On Mar 2nd 2008:
@MacaroniStoat Everyone knows that Case 53s are aliens.

 

►Snail_Mail_24
Replied On Mar 2nd 2008:
That would be a nice, convenient answer.

Why do they only know earth languages?

 

►Gandalf the Tie-Dyed
Replied On Mar 2nd 2008:
lmao because they're trying to blend in. Obviously.

 

►DarthIcthyos
Replied On Mar 2nd 2008:
To avoid attracting more attention.

EDIT: Damnit, sniped.

 

►MacaroniStoat
Replied On Mar 2nd 2008:
How'd they get here in the first place?

 

►Gandalf the Tie-Dyed
Replied On Mar 2nd 2008:
@DarthIcthyos I was actually being sarcastic…

@MacaroniStoat In spaceships that the fucking smurf shoots down. We get them every couple months here in Roswell lol

 

►Disaster_Zone
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
I've investigated this possibility, but determined that Blastgerm is absolutely not the source of Case 53s. And what I have found doesn't make sense. Either Blastgerm is hiring Case 53s to fit the monster aesthetic, or they're not even capes and just monsters Blasto made.

That said, I want to emphasize that Case 53s aren't monsters: they're human beings who've suffered transformations while triggering.

 

►Promethiac
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Okay, I get that this is poignant and interesting, but aren't we all forgetting something really important? Blastgerm has R.O.U.S.es!

 

►ForRealAnimeGirl
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist.

 

►Ferrinox the Squirrel Titan (Not a squirrel)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*ducks as a massive rat attacks ForRealAnimeGirl.*

You had to say it didn't you?

 

►LeaveYouInStitches
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
@ForRealAnimeGirl YOU'D LIKE TO THINK THAT, WOULDN'T YOU?!

 

►DarthIcthyos
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
What the hell is everyone talking about?

 

►Wobblesworde
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares*

 

►ForRealAnimeGirl
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares*

 

►MacaroniStoat
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares*

 

►Stegomancer (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares*

 

►LeaveYouInStitches
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares*

 

►Xyloloup
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares*

 

►Gandalf the Tie-Dyed
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares*

 

►Eel_on_a_Hovercraft
Replied On Mar 4th 2008:
*stares*

 

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6... 21, 22, 23

(Showing page 5 of 23)

 

►ghost_salsa
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares in shock*

 

►InexorableToaster
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares aggressively*

 

►Promethiac
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*stares judgementally*

 

►Therewolf (Veteran Member)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*mostly just stares*

 

►DarthIcthyos
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
What!? What did I say!?!!

 

►Therewolf (Veteran Member)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
He's never seen The Princess Bride.

Inconceivable. . .

 

►ForRealAnimeGirl
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Oh hell. Ferrinox was right.

There's a giant humanoid rat sitting in my front yard with a boombox playing Don't Stop Believin'.

 

►LeaveYouInStitches
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
They are! I double-checked my sources and everything! This is super weird!

DarthIcthyos is probably an alien.

 

►Ferrinox the Squirrel Titan (Not a squirrel)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
@ForRealAnimeGirl INCONCEIVABLE!

(At least it has good taste)

 

►Therewolf (Veteran Member)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
I thought people who hadn't watched The Princess Bride were just an urban myth!

 

►Antigone
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
@Ferrinox the Squirrel Titan You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

(Am I too late to stare judgementally at the fish Sith?)

 

►cowards_way_in
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Unfortunately yes. The chain has been broken.

 

►InexorableToaster
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
*continues quietly judging DarthIcthios*

 

►DarthIcthyos
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Princess Bride is a chick flick!

 

►cowards_way_in
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

►BadSamurai
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Ummmmmm, nope!

 

►Antigone
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
What kind of sociopath told you that?

 

►MacaroniStoat
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
That's a terrible thing to see.

 

►CatKit (Moderator: Boston)(Assembly required)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Where did you hear that? No, The Princess Bride is not a chick-flick. There's something in that movie for everyone.

 

►DarthIcthyos
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
No one told me, it's right there in the name! The PRINCESS BRIDE!

Stop trolling me!

EDIT: Even the mods?!

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ... 21, 22, 23

■

♦Private message from Eel_on_a_Hovercraft

Eel_on_a_Hovercraft:  [LINK]
ForRealAnimeGirl:  WHOA! Nice! When did you start working out?
Eel_on_a_Hovercraft:  Oh no. Tell me you didn't only just notice the abs.
ForRealAnimeGirl:  …
Eel_on_a_Hovercraft:  CLAIRE! .·°՞(˃ ᗝ ˂)՞°·.
ForRealAnimeGirl:  Oh god, I'm sorry! …kinda weird not being the one with body image issues in this relationship. I thought that was more of a feminine thing.
Eel_on_a_Hovercraft:  Man, easy for you to say. You can look like whoever you want with that armor. Also I've gotta work hard because I know you have [a type]. You know, sharp features, brown hair, long-ish nose, strong jaw, WHITE, name being Harrison Ford...
ForRealAnimeGirl:  Nooooo! That's not fair! You can't hold yourself to those standards! NO ONE is as hot as Harrison Ford!
Eel_on_a_Hovercraft:  ??? Not even you? (⸝⸝⸝O﹏ O⸝⸝⸝)

■

(Showing page 6 of 23)

 

►CatKit  (Moderator: Boston)  (Assembly required) 
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
I'm dead serious. Not a chick flick.

 

►Stegomancer (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Yeah, no it's not.

 

►Blasto (Verified Cape)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Princess Bride is a swashbuckler.

I come to the new thread about my gang and this is what I find. It's a sad day to have a functioning brain.

 

►CatKit (Moderator: Boston)(Assembly required)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Okay, everyone, lay off the guy. He hasn't seen a movie, there's no reason to dogpile him.

Besides, isn't missing out on The Princess Bride punishment enough?

 

►Eel_on_a_Hovercraft
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
I dunno about that (˵ ¬ᴗ¬˵)

 

►ForRealAnimeGirl
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Guys, I was serious, you know? About the rat-creature.

 

►WishingWill
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
@DarthIcthyos You need to see it, quick, before something terrible happens!

 

►Blasto (Verified Cape)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
I'm the leader of the gang this thread is about! Pay attention to me!

 

►Xyloloup
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
Meh. Maybe in a minute lmao

 

►Ferrinox the Squirrel Titan (Not a squirrel)
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
@WishingWill

Will demons will rain from the sky, and the earth be rent asunder beneath our feet?

 

►ForRealAnimeGirl
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
The rat left, if anyone cares.

 

►WishingWill
Replied On Mar 3rd 2008:
@Ferrinox the Squirrel Titan No, and save the endbringer talk for somewhere else, but surely everyone on the block is having nightmares from the malignant psychic resonance caused by Princess Bride deprivation.

 

►Snail_Mail_24
Replied On Mar 4th 2008:
This conversation has gotten quite derailed. I had hoped to see something about Case 53s. I'm a little disappointed.

 

►Sandwich of DOOM!
Replied On Mar 4th 2008:
If Blastgerm has giant rats, what else do you think they have?

 

►Stegomancer (Original Poster)
Replied On Mar 4th 2008:
I've also seen a cape that looked like a human-shaped tree, and two different werewolves.

 

►LeaveYouInStitches
Replied On Mar 4th 2008:
Weird. You'd think they'd be more original.

 

►ForRealAnimeGirl
Replied On Mar 4th 2008:
I look out my window first thing this morning and what do I see?

An R.O.U.S.! Dammit Blastgerm!

 

►InexorableToaster
Replied On Mar 4th 2008:
@LeaveYouInStitches And what exactly would you suggest?

EDIT: Actually, don't answer that. Blasto's in here. I don't want to give him ideas.

 

►ForRealAnimeGirl
Replied On Mar 4th 2008:
There's a for-real rat-person on my lawn and everyone's ignoring me.

This probably says something profound about the human condition, but I can't be bothered to puzzle it out right now.

EDIT: Okay, it's not like anyone else here's a close friend, but you, too, Eel? I dated you for a year and you just abandon me with the first rat to squat on my property.

 

►ghost_salsa
Replied On Mar 4th 2008:
I got freaked out by something with the head of an alligator the other day getting into a fight with Baldr. Didn't go well for Alligator Man, but it was scary as all hell when it crept up behind me. The SOB was damn near silent.

@Eel_on_a_Hovercraft WTF, man, that is seriously not cool! The hell is wrong with you?

End of Page.   1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8... 21, 22, 23

■

♦Private message from LeaveYouInStitches

ForRealAnimeGirl:  Can you stop?
LeaveYouInStitches:  Doing what? (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)
ForRealAnimeGirl:  You know.
ForRealAnimeGirl:  There is a rat the size of a motorcycle doing the Sixteen Candles thing outside my bedroom window.
LeaveYouInStitches:  Sixteen candles?
ForRealAnimeGirl:  It's an 80's movie.
ForRealAnimeGirl:  Wait, no, you have to have heard of it, it's even the same kind of boombox.
LeaveYouInStitches:  Now I'm just confused. I thought I was being original.
ForRealAnimeGirl:  Then this is a bizarre coincidence of the highest order and I still want your darn rat-thing off my parents' property ya wippersnapper.
LeaveYouInStitches *New Message*:  Awwwww.

■

♦Private message from Eel_on_a_Hovercraft

ForRealAnimeGirl:  What do you mean, not even me? ( ￣＾￣) Hmph. Do *I* look like I was carved out of marble by the gods themselves?
Eel_on_a_Hovercraft:  (⸝⸝⸝O﹏ O⸝⸝⸝) ---------->
ForRealAnimeGirl:  Awwwwww . . . . (>/////< " )˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
ForRealAnimeGirl:  Wait, you're not just teasing me by saying I look like a dude, right?
Eel_on_a_Hovercraft:  Holy crap, we suck at this whole flirting thing, don't we?
ForRealAnimeGirl:  Yeah, we kinda do.
Eel_on_a_Hovercraft:  Hey!! You called me up within five minutes and I've been on overwatch all day!
ForRealAnimeGirl:  What do you mean?
ForRealAnimeGirl:  Oh my gawd! I swear I wasn't expecting such a dramatic response! No one was saying anything! RED ALERT! RED ALERT! DAMAGE CONTROL MODE!
Eel_on_a_Hovercraft *New Message*: LOL it's fine.

■

March 8th, 2008

Blasto joined her in the lab the next morning with a sleep-deprived wave.

“Hey, Splice,” he yawned. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Oh no,” Riley gasped. “It’s the seagulls, isn’t it?! They’ve realized that their creator is a puny, laserless mortal and have come for revenge! I knew it was only a matter of time!

“Don’t worry, Uncle Blasto, I can fix this. I just need those dancing penguins from Mary Poppins.”

“Those were cartoons, kid.”

“I can make it happen!” Riley shouted.

“It’s also not the seagulls.”

“I see. They’re still biding their time.”

“No, they’re just seagulls. …Shouldn’t have agreed to let Lauren show you The Birds.”

“Then what could be wrong?”

“You know the tank that was supposed to be growing a swimming hawk for underwater recon?”

“What? Where’s the problem? What’d we do wrong?”

“See for yourself,” he brought her around the corner and gestured to one of the growth tanks, where a tuna was twitching uncontrollably.

“Huh. That’s not a bird,” observed Riley.

“No it is not.”

“Interesting results though: Instead of getting a swimming bird, we got an aquaphobic fish.”

Riley scratched her head, walking slowly around the tank, observing the creature from as many angles as possible before checking its vitals on the attached monitor. Things didn’t look good.

“What’s the moral imperative now that he’s conscious?” she asked. “Do we put him out of his misery and have tuna for dinner? Or do we give him therapy?”

“I’m not a licensed fish psychiatrist.”

“That’s no excuse not to try,” Riley grinned, pulling out a pad of paper. “Now, Mr. Tunafalcon, can you describe how it feels for you when you’re fully submerged in seawater?”

The tuna stubbornly refused to answer. He was still shuddering, though.

“I don’t mean to crush your hopes, but I don’t think it’s going to answer you.”

“You can’t prove that.”

Mr. Tunafalcon suddenly pulled a gun and did something that shouldn’t have made sense for many reasons. The same sorts of reasons that you wouldn’t expect to see a halibut punch a giraffe. On the bright side, he’d solved Riley’s dilemma for her.

Of course, now she had to plan a funeral for Mr. Tunafalcon. Or at least destroy the evidence.

“I’m kinda getting a hankering for sushi, all of a sudden,” she noted. “I think I might be tunacidal.”

“There are worse things you could be,” Blasto shrugged.

■

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■

♦ Topic: The RISE of BAPHOMET!!!!
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Boston
LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Posted On Apr 8th 2008:
I am Baphomet. I am all powerfull! Neel beforeth me

Fear the Power of the great defilereth!

(Showing page 1 of 4)

 

►cowards_way_in 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
oh fuck another fallen freak

EDIT: nvm panicked at the goetia reference. its just a clown.

 

►FishesAreWishes 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
Pardon me for not taking you at your word.

 

►Sarah_not_Connor 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
I can speak ye olde english too, forsooth!

 

►DoubleCrit! 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
You're doing it better than the OP.

That is, admittedly, an extraordinarily low bar.

 

►For_RealZ 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
LMAO so low that you'd need heavy duty excavation equipment just to trip over it.

 

►InexorableToaster 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
Does anyone know who this guy is? Troll? For-real idiot? Previously unknown Fallen leader who just revealed himself after taking a piece of rebar to the cranium?

 

►damned_Dan 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
Probbaly a comibantion of 2 and the second part of 3 lol

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
I was killed by that retch satyrical but I came backeth from a pit of fire to take my revengeance on him! All of thy who thinkth he can protect you will be next!

 

►DoubleCrit! 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
The grammar. It hurts my eyes.

 

►Roastbuster 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
Why would we be counting on a guy on the opposite side of the country to do anything for us? We've got Bastion, Aerobat, and dozens of other heroes.

 

►Sarah_not_Connor 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
Isn't Satyrical in, like, Vegas? Why are you posting this in the Boston boards?

 

►Dr. Welkin  (Not a doctor)
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
I'd ask why he's posting at all, or maybe how, since he's obviously a moron, but I don't want to be impolite. Oh. Oops.

 

►Tin_Mother  (Global Moderator)
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
Okay, calm down everyone, no need to gang up on the new user. Are you looking for the roleplaying boards?

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
What? You're tellingth me I can [Mod: BEEP] on this website?

User has received an infraction for this post: Profanity is usually allowed, but the context was especially inappropriate.

 

►Tin_Mother  (Global Moderator)
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
@LordBaphomet I think you've misunderstood.

 

►Roastbuster 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
no shit.

 

►MacaroniStoat 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
Yeah, this is painful to watch.

 

►Tin_Mother  (Global Moderator)
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
Additionally, thou art behaving in a manner most brutish and uncivilized. We have nevertheless afforded thee much courtesy in spite of thine crude prattlings. Thou should be aware, however, that our charity is not without limit. We would advise thee watch thy tongue, lest it cleave to the top of thy mouth.

 

►For_RealZ 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
Man, Tin_Mother is the greatest.

End of Page.   1, 2, 3, 4

(Showing page 2 of 4)

 

►Sarah_not_Connor 
Replied On Apr 8th 2008:
And I am officially done here. See you literally never, goat boy.

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
@Tin_Mother The fuck does that mean?

@Sarah_not_Connor Oh yah? I don't needeth you bitch. I can have any girl I wantth! Girls fuckin throw themselves at me! They BEG to [Mod: VERY LONG BEEP]

User has received an infraction for this post: I haven't seen a post this inappropriate since before I became a mod.

 

►InexorableToaster 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
My dude really spent 24 hours writing almost thirty agonizingly poorly written paragraphs about how much girls want him... VERY specifically sexually... more than a dozen times. Holy motherfuck. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a virgin.

 

►Monica Cabernet 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
Wow. Tell me you're an incel without saying you're an incel.

And here I was worried that this was a new Fallen. That's a relief.

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
This post has been deleted.

User has received an infraction for this post: Death threats are NEVER allowed.

 

►Tired_Iron 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
Pretty sure it's worse. he's not an incel: He's just that fucking dumb.

 

►Cirque du Glacias 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
@LordBaphomet You wrote a 7,522 word screed about the violent and sexual acts you want commit against unwilling female participants, as well as the size of a certain part of the male anatomy on your body. But no, WE'RE totally the problem.

 

►Tin_Mother  (Global Moderator)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
@LordBaphomet I apologize. I didn't mean to confuse you. I was just playing along with your bravado. I was giving you a warning that your behaviour was very crude and that you now have a mark against your account. Enough of those and you won't be able to log onto the site for a while.

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
eat shit, I have infractions now. I'm actually important! you can'tth do anything to me

 

►CatKit  (Moderator: Boston) (Assembly required)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
Wanna bet?

 

►Stegomancer 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
Oh god, someone. Anyone, if you have any sympathy for humanity's plight, please put this idiot out of our misery.

 

►Tin_Mother  (Global Moderator)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
Are you aware of what the word infraction means?

 

►ghost_salsa 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
Not sure why shes humoring him. Admirable if maybe misguided.

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
What are you callingth me stupid? Just look at how good I talketh! This whole site must be full of people with less than half brains to thinkth I look stupid!

 

►Tin_Mother  (Global Moderator)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
No, I'm not saying anything about you, sir, I just wanted to know if you know what that word means.

@ghost_salsa Call me curious.

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
What word?

 

►DoubleCrit! 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
This can't be real. It's performative. It HAS to be, right?

 

►Tin_Mother  (Global Moderator)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
The word 'infraction.'

 

►Cirque du Glacias 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
It's like watching a parent talking to her kid. Tin_Mother, I know you've heard it before, but you have the patience of a saint.

 

►BadSamurai 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
I tried to ask her out once. Like, just an online thing, but she rejected me. I couldn't even feel bad about it. She's probably already married.

End of Page.   1, 2, 3, 4

(Showing page 3 of 4)

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
If course i know what infraction means! It means that I got an award for being good at math.

 

►Roastbuster 
Replied On Apr 9th 2008:
Someone MAKE IT STOOOOOOOOP!!!!!

 

►Tin_Mother  (Global Moderator)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but an infraction is a notice that you've broken the rules of the site.

@BadSamurai I'm not married. Simply not ready to date anyone. You were very nice, though.

 

►BadSamurai 
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
A complement from Tin_Mother. I'll treasure this day forever.

 

►LordBaphomet 
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
You think I care about your rules! I do what I want!

 

►CatKit  (Moderator: Boston) (Assembly required)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
I want to confirm that you understand that your behavior will have consequences if you keep this up.

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
What areth you gonna do? hit me?

 

►CatKit  (Moderator: Boston) (Assembly required)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
We can ban you. That means we can stop you from posting.

 

►LordBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
You can't hurteth me! I am Baphomet! I am emmortal! I am INVINSABLE! I'LL [Mod: Enough.]

User has been banned for this post: Thank you for that vivid imagery of what you think you'd do to a certain relation of mine. Enjoy your six month ban.

 

►BadSamurai 
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
Nice. Got him. Not eager to see that weirdo any time soon.

 

►ghost_salsa 
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
thank goodness. thta was painful to watch.

 

►Cirque du Glacias 
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
Praise the mods!

 

►CatKit  (Moderator: Boston) (Assembly required)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
Just doing the job. Not like we actually WANT to ban anyone.

@Tin_Mother, that said, you didn't have to humour him.

 

►Eli Stanse 
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
Normally when people get banned, there's at least a bit of controversy about whether they should be banned or not. You know, friends who pick sides and all that. I've never seen anything this one-sided.

Be honest Cat, you kinda did want to ban this guy, right?

 

►Tin_Mother  (Global Moderator)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
@CatKit I wanted to leave my options open before jumping to a conclusion over a new user who didn't start with copy-and-pasted spam. Disappointing, but I can move on.

 

►CatKit  (Moderator: Boston) (Assembly required)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
Okay, fine, yes. THIS time. usually, we only do it when we have to, though. But this was such a parade of broken rules, I'll admit it felt a little personal.

 

►TheBaphomet  (Banned)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
HA! What areyou gonna do NOW you [Mod: I'll do this.]

User has been banned for this post: Sockpuppeting, or otherwise making a second account to evade a ban is against the rules, and as we have just demonstrated, these can be enforced, whether you care or not.

 

►BadSamurai
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
Oh my god, he can't be serious. WTF!

 

►ThegrateBaphomet  (Banned)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
This post has been deleted.

User has been banned for this post: Did you think you'd get away with it by waiting ten minutes?

 

►RealBaphomet  (Original Poster) (Banned)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
This post has been deleted.

User has been banned for this post: Or by waiting an hour?

End of Page.   1, 2, 3, 4

(Showing page 4 of 4)

► DoubleCrit!
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
Here he is again. Does he not learn, or is he just that aggressive?

 

►Promethiac
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
Both, plus he's just an asshole. Don't censor yourself for something you'd scrape off your boot not just because it's disgusting, but because it doesn't deserve the honor.

 

►TheREALBaphomet  (Banned)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
This post has been deleted.

User has been banned for this post: Really?

 

►LeaveYouInStitches
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
Oh, wow... Well! Mistakes were made.

 

►XxTheREALBaphometxX  (Banned)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
This post has been deleted.

User has been banned for this post: I can do this all day.

 

►CatKit  (Moderator: Boston)  (Assembly required)
Replied On Apr 10th 2008:
This thread has been locked.

End of Page.   1, 2, 3, 4

■

April 13th, 2008

“Hey, Uncle Blasto,” Riley arrived in the lab as he finished converting a DNA sequence to binary. “Where do we keep the caffeine?”

“Good morning to you, too, Splicer,” said Rotten Apple with a wan smile. “Though if there’s anything we’ve learned since meeting you, it’s that you probably shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the stimulants.”

“Even sugar makes you hard to handle,” Blasto agreed. “I’m not letting you have coffee.”

“Oh, it’s not for me. And I don’t mean coffee, either. I need actual, straight caffeine,” Riley gave them her most angelic smile, hoping that they’d see it the way it was intended and not as an invitation to madness.

Look, it wasn’t her fault that some of her ideas were wild, crazy, and hyperbolic.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” muttered Blasto.

“I’ve put a bright light in front of Jack the Zebra, and every time he blinks, my apparatus will inject one milligram of caffeine directly into his bloodstream. I want to see how long he can stay awake before he develops a heart condition and needs a new one. Jack Slash heart palpitations, let’s do this! Woohoo!”

See? Perfectly sane and well-adjusted!

June 1st, 2008

“Oh no…” she stared at the mostly monochrome fuzzball. “Okay, I give up, what kind of horrible thing does it do? It looks like a completely normal giant panda cub to me and I don’t want to get blindsided when it spits acidic blood from its eyes.”

“I’m glad you asked! The answer … is that he sells at a premium! This is as big as he gets, and I’ve added in some dog brain to make domestication and training easier. Do you have any idea how much money people will spend to own exotic pets without having to deal with the EPA or Greenpeace? Neither do I, but it’s probably a lot! And giant pandas are an endangered species, too, making him even more valuable, and I’ve got dozens of these guys cued up. Are you seeing it, Claire? I’m so much scarier than a regular supervillain now: I’m a businesslady!”

“Okay… but there are no secret diseases? No cybernetics? No lasers? No adaptive biology, or super-extendible claws, or flaming spit?”

“Not for these guys. Do you want a free sample?”

“I think my hands are full with Wumbo already.”

“Who?”

“Emotional Support Wombat. We didn’t mean to name him Wumbo, but Aizen said it, and then the name stuck.”

Riley found herself almost vibrating with excitement.

“You named him Wumbo?!”

“Again; not intentionally.”

“I didn’t know you had a wumbology degree.”

“Please don’t say the line.”

“But you love quoting Blade Runner!”

“That’s totally diff—”

“I wumbo,” Riley interrupted, “you wumbo, he, she, they wumbo! And now a fluffy wombat Wumbos, too! Hooray!”

“So you’re just going to sell these artificial pandas? That’s all?”

“It’s a totally legal business practice! I don’t even sell them directly. PetSmart is the initial customer. I sell them the cubs, people buy them from pet stores, and they can eat just about anything, though since they’re pandas I made them prefer bamboo.”

“I can’t even imagine eating bamboo. How don’t they get splinters in their mouth?”

“Oh, they do, they just don’t really feel them. They have a tough lining on the insides of their mouths and their esophaguses, so the splinters don’t hurt them.

“Anyway, I saved the lasers for a new unit in Blastgerm’s new ground forces. I needed new minions who wouldn’t inevitably betray me. Seagulls are inherently untrustworthy and have a natural impulse to commit deicide.”

“That sounds more paranoid than anything I’ve ever heard come out of anyone’s mouth,” Claire deadpanned.

August 21st, 2008

The evil lab’s phone rang. As opposed to the evil lab’s evil phone. That one was in the lab proper. Blasto picked up.

“You’ve reached Blastgerm Incorporated, and I’d just like to say that if you’re dissatisfied with any of our products, that’s, uh… not our problem. . . . What? . . . . Well, that’s a terribly mean thing to say, and my day is ruined now,” he turned to look at Riley. “It’s for you.”

She bounded over to take the phone.

“Hyello! What’d you say to him?”

“I just said that I could make a better monster than him in holographic CGI,” answered Claire, in a significantly better mood than she’d been in the last time they’d talked for some reason.

“In his defense, it’s way easier to animate a giant monster than it is to actually grow it from a cell culture that doesn’t exist until you manufacture it.”

“That’s fair, I guess, but his gigaraptor killed six Ambassador grunts and two civilians, and still managed to die of heart failure before the Protectorate could even arrive.

“What?! He never told me that part! I told him that gigaraptor wasn’t ready but he wouldn’t listen to me!”

Blasto’s eyes widened, and then he scurried out of the room like a spooked ferret.

She was going to have to have a talk with Uncle Blasto later about not rushing through incubation. She knew giga’s heart was underdeveloped. Blasto’s creations didn’t always grow naturally, so letting something out of the tube early was always a serous risk. To be fair, he usually didn’t do that, but he was kinda loopy that day.

“Anyway, I’m not calling to talk about that.”

Riley waited for Claire to elaborate, but she didn’t.

“Aren’t you going to ask?” she added.

“I thought you were going to tell me,” said Riley.

“Oh. Okay, then. Guess who’s one third of an officially licensed independent hero team?”

Riley gasped. She didn’t like the new third member because she seemed kind of standoffish, but that didn’t matter too much when it came to the performative nature of caping. So she gave her honest opinion, as she always did, whether it was wanted or not.

“Woohoo! The Sentinels had gone official?” Riley shouted. “That’s totally awesome! I’ll cook up a giant snake just for you guys to slay!”

“Umm, could you maybe not do that?”

“But that way when you debut and the merch wagon starts up, you can have a fifty-foot long ophidian villain to slay!”

“I wasn’t very enthusiastic about being covered in evil bear blood that one time.”

“What if I made it a for-real dragon instead?”

“Then there would be massive civilian casualties.”

Yeah, civilian casualties were bad. Claire had really drilled that in when she took away her TV privileges for a whole month the first time she made a zombie virus. It didn’t stop her from making more, but it did convince her not to talk about them and to keep them locked up really well.

Man, Plague Woman had been really determined to have gotten around three separate locks, the incredibly lethal poison needle that sprung out no matter who opened the box or how they did it, and her guard seagull. Especially the guard seagull. He was always angry from being locked in a box without any air holes. Not that he needed to breathe. He produced his own oxygen. On the other hand, maybe it was naïve to think that a poison needle would stop someone who used to drink toxic organic substances for fun before she was

“You aren’t planning on making a dragon, right?”

“Umm… not anymore?”

“All I can ask for at this point. What about the snake?”

“Fiiiine, I’ll shorten him to fifteen feet.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Claire urged. “make the snake, I mean, not shortening it.”

“But if I do, I can buy an opheodrys vernalis and put your action figures in his terrarium! Think of the merch! The merch, Sylvan! Ooh! And I could get royalties on the snake figure, but Blasto would have to name him because every time I try to name things I come up with something like Bone Stuff tee emm.”

That got a laugh out of Claire, which was good because that meant that Riley was off the hook. Probably?

“I want to say ‘never change,’ but honestly, I do wish you’d stop making monsters.”

“And I wish you’d ditch Shinobi because she’s shifty and I think her eyes are scary, but she’s also made the Sentinels more than two pals and a wombat, which is more important to me than you’d expect, so I guess we’ll both just have to move on.”

September 28th, 2008

“No!”

“Just give it a chance!”

“I’m not going anywhere near it!”

“It’s heartwarming!”

“Claire, I am a sociopath, and the mere suggestion that anyone could create something like that provoked a visceral emotional response in my cerebral cortex that I was easily able to identify. And that emotion was terror!”

“Some background info:” said Riley to her audience.

Riley had been reading comics lately. Mostly Calvin & Hobbes, because that was objectively the best comic strip ever written, and Riley would make Jack the Zebra fight anyone who disagreed to the death, armed with only a spoon.

She was also, however, reading Peanuts, which is how she was sitting on the couch, ignoring Jeremy the Cussing Goat, and enjoying an early strip about the importance of folding over the bread instead of cutting it, when Rotten Apple walked by, took one look and scoffed.

“What’s the matter? It’s an American classic!” said Riley.

“Classic? A pushover, a snobby girl, and the most annoying dog to ever tarnish their species’ reputation? Give me a break.”

That was both the first and last straw. Lauren had called Snoopy annoying. Dems wuz fightin’ woids. Riley got up off the couch and spent the better part of four days balancing hormone production, testing chemicals, reading up on safety regulations and how much caffeine could really be injected directly into the bloodstream before surprise heart failure, and of course, playing with prions. Another four days of working with these things, and she left her lab looking sleep deprived but victorious! In her left hand was a vaccine. In her right was a cure. And in her other right— uh oh. She was having another one of those weird hallucinations where she thought she was Lakshmi, wasn’t she? Or maybe was she just falling over?

She woke up on the floor with a minor stab wound twelve hours later and decided that it was probably the latter.

Anyway, after disinfecting both of her needles, she went over to Claire’s apartment because Claire trusted her more than Lauren.

The older tinker answered the door wearing a t-shirt and a pair of black leather pants that cursory examination revealed to be replicas of Han Solo’s in A New Hope.

“Claire, do you like Snoopy?” Riley asked.

“Not how I usually greet someone when I knock on their front door, but okay…? Sure, yeah. Who doesn’t?”

“Rotten Apple. Anyway—“ she injected Claire with the vaccine.

“OW! Goddammit, Riley, you go months without doing that and I finally let down my guard, and you immediately give me another shot. This has to stop.”

“Look, it’s just a precaution to make sure that if a terrible accident with statistically unlikely consequences happens, you won’t blame Snoopy for it.”

It took Riley a moment of staring at Claire’s blank expression to register that what she said had only made sense grammatically.

“I really don’t think there was ever a danger of that happening. And the only reason I’m not reporting you for creating a preemptive mastering injection is because the requirements for them to take effect are so statistically unlikely that I can’t imagine that they’d ever happen.”

Ohhhh yeah… this was a mastering ability, wasn’t it? She hadn’t thought of that… meh, whatever, Lauren insulted Snoopy, she earned it.

“You know it’s kind of a coincidence that you made something involving Snoopy since Aizen just showed me this heartrending fanfiction about his life, Like, it was literally called The Life And Times of Snoopy The Dog.”

Aww, that sounded adorable, though the fact that it was fanfiction immediately made her suspicious.

“Does the quality hold up to the Hardy Boys?”

“Not really. Didn’t have an editor. It was heartwarming, even if it was sad.”

That was funny.

“Why would a story based on Peanuts be sad?”

Claire told her.

“Huh?”

She needed a minute to process that information.

Loading.

Loading. .

Loading. . .

Okay, she had a calm and reasonable response to the sounds she just heard coming from Claire’s face.

…ahem…

…

“They killed Snoopy?!” she shrieked, recoiling in what was definitely horror. “What kind of anti-lagomorphic maniac would DO that?!”

“What?! No! No one killed Snoopy! The fic is both a coming-of-age story for Charlie Brown from Snoopy’s perspective, while he learns what it means to grow up faster than all his friends. He still has a long and happy life. Also, isn’t a lagomorph a rabbit, or something?”

“Yes, but that’s not important. It’s still wrong! Like, fundamentally!”

“The last chapters are just about his battle with cancer and arthritis while doing his best to spend as much time with the adults he used to spend so much time with when they were kids.”

“Arthritis?! They stole dancing from Snoopy?!” she recoiled further.

“No, he could still dance,” Claire assured her.

“But Snoopy still dies at the end,” said Riley with what was probably a wild-eyed expression.

“Well, yeah, but…“

“Holy moly, that’s like saving the Xenomorph from Ripley at the end of Alien!” Riley objected.

In all fairness, Riley absolutely would save the Xenomorph from Ripley. It didn’t kill Riley’s friends, and taking preventative measures in case of escape were a lot safer when you were on a planet with an atmosphere and piercing its hide was a lot less likely to result in non-consensual explosive decompression. Granted, it’d still be very dangerous. As tough as she was, Riley’s subdermal mesh wouldn’t protect her from the infamous ‘head-bite’ attack. Not when most of the attacker’s head was a giant piston. Nope. No sir. That’d be crazy lethal.

Claire disagreed though.

“The heartbreak is why the story is good, though. It means that it took an already culturally relevant comic strip and made it meaningful in a different way.”

“Yes, by having the dog die at the end!” Riley rebutted. “Stories where the dog dies at the end are bad stories!”

What? It was a well-known fact.

“It’s not like it’s canon,” Claire tried to assure her.

“But you’re still trying to get me to read it!”

“You should give it a try, at least.”

“And that’s where you came in, earlier," said Riley.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, or how you got in here!" groaned Shinobi, still half-under her comforter cover.

“I know! It’s great, right?"

“Fuck, 2:33?!” Shinobi waved her hand at her alarm clock. Riley had to agree that she was out long past her bedtime. Good girls went to bed at a reasonable hour, after all, but she was on a schedule here.

 

“No!”

“Just give it a chance!”

“I’m not going anywhere near it!”

“It’s heartwarming!”

“Claire, I am a sociopath, and the mere suggestion that anyone could create something like that provoked a visceral emotional response in my cerebral cortex that I was easily able to identify. And that emotion was terror!”

Claire sighed, shaking her head.

“Don’t I at least get some sort of retribution for getting stabbed with a Snoopy appreciation drug?”

“No, it was for your own good!” said Riley, running across the room, opening up Claire’s bedroom window, and as she had done many times before, hopped out onto Spider Newt’s back, who scooted down the side of the house with practiced ease and lack of concern for panicking onlookers. The neighbors were used to his sudden, brief, and startling-but-ultimately-harmless appearances.

Anyway, the vaccine probably worked, so she was going to use the cure on Lauren, now.