Rot: A worm Fanfiction

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 11, 2021

I didn't get to write everything I wanted to for this chapter, but it was feeling too long so I cut it in half...

Waking up in the hospital is not that shocking...

The pickup pulls into the driveway of the Hebert household. I can't help but feel a little relieved to be back at my girlfriends' house. Sure, I didn't spend a lot of time conscious at the hospital, but it is good to be back somewhere safe.

The suspension rocks Danny's truck as Nimi gets out of back. It was a little small in the cabin with Danny, Swarm, Taylor and I hogging up the old cushion, so Nimi had to ride in the back. I turn from the window to watch as my giant girlfriend walks around to my side of the vehicle. The soft curls of Swarms short hair are nice as my hand rubs her head from her seat on the floor, like I said cramped...

The door next to me opens and Nimi unbuckles me from the car. I feel Taylor's guiding hands help Nimi pull me into a bridal carry, Swarm's body flowing up and across Nimi and I, making great cape of arms around me. I look up as Nimi looks down at me in her arms, tentacles pour from the hood of her civilian disguise of a red dress shirt, grey cotton pants, and her black hoodie, hood up to hide her face. I reach a shaky right hand for the tentacles, their warm metallic flesh filling my lap, as I look up at her big red eye. It glows brightly in the darkness of her hood, and I get a smile out of her, but I can tell that she is still upset.

Being told that you have brain damage is also not too scary...

She carries me to the front door where another instance of Swarm opens it to let us in. This other Swarm climbs up into Nimi's arms and joins the other one in wrapping around me. Swarm is scared, I've been able to tell since I woke up screaming in the hospital. I grab one of her hands and try my hardest to hold it in my weak grip, my fingers hurt with the effort and the periodic spasms are frustrating and annoying. Dammit, my chest hurts as the hand slips out of mine, I just want to hold her hand. I drag the slippery appendage up my chest and to my mouth, the one last thing that I can really control anymore. I push the fingers into my mouth and bite once I reach knuckles.

Nimi and Swarm both stop just inside the entrance when my teeth press down on the black not-flesh of Swarm's limb. The woody flavor of my smallest girlfriend is welcome after going so long without it in my nightmares...

A white snake glares at me from across the cage of lights and electricity. His smile is cruel and doesn't reach his eyes as he places the needle into my flesh. My power screams out answers to plans as I'm forced to stare at the faces of people I indirectly enslaved. I'm cry as the world is lonely and the meaning of words lose meaning...

I shiver and, as best as I can, pull the limbs around me closer in a hug as the unfortunate memory of my dreams while I was in a coma pop up. I bite harder, until I break the outer layer of black flesh and feel a suckle at my teeth, Swarm strokes my tongue with her fingers.

No, the scary thing isn't the waking up or the damage, it's that I don't remember what caused it. That it could happen again...

I open my eyes as I feel Nimi sit down, the familiar cold hands of Taylor rub at my scalp as I can feel them relax. They are purring, because of course they are I'm biting one of them as hard as they like, but I wish that Taylor wasn't just playing with my hair. I want more.

I want to be wrapped up in her arms as Nimi wraps us both. I want Swarm to surround us, I want her head pressed up into my ribs and her hands to hold mine. I want to feel safe, I want to fall asleep and not be scared that I'll get stuck in a nightmare for a week again. I just want...rest.

I need it, coma is not the same as sleeping and that nap at the hospital wasn't enough, but I want to know more about the arsonist first. Like hell am I going to let someone get away from trying to burn away this family. I take a look around the room, hasn't really changed much, but the smell of gas is hard to not notice. I frown at that. Apparently last night someone broke into the house and doused the place in gasoline, then tried lighting it. Thankfully the attempted arson failed, Taylor and Annette have already explained to me that the undead are pretty flammable. Even if that weakness has been solved for my girlfriends after the Lung fight, both Annette and Danny are very much not super-undead like Taylor and her others.

Speaking of others, I finally get to lay eyes on Taylor's mother's other... God they can be confusing sometimes. She looks familiar, but I suppose that makes sense, I was there to dig her up after all. She is tall, like Annette, somewhere in the six foot range. Her body looks smooth and shiny, a black glass over white bones, the light behind her head showing her features in the shade of a barely visible skull. She also dresses a bit more formally than Annette. A white cotton dress shirt with its sleeves rolled up to show off her arm bones which look delicate and fine, black dress pants cover her legs, but she is bare foot. I was disgusted last month at the cemetery when we pulled her up, but now that she is animate and walking around, I can tell that she is beautiful.

[subject: Annette Hebert, died May 10th 2009, no brain activity, zero cellular activity, movement caused by ambient energy...]

I want to roll my eyes at my power's description of the approaching glass woman, but I don't have any energy to. My power seems quieter than it was before my coma, almost like it is trying to make sure it isn't too loud for me. Since it tried to kill me with the mother of all headaches, I'm not that inclined to forgive it either. Won't even tell me what happened. When I ask all, it says is...

[I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm...]

…which is just uncomfortable. My internal musing ceases as I feel soft cool fingers on my face. Rose, as I'm told is the name she picked, lifts my head and turns my face gently from side to side. It must look pretty weird to the outside observer, probably stranger since no one is talking. Me sitting here wrapped up in tons of arms like a baby and being inspected by a skeleton lady, but as someone who is kind of used to this family... I try to smile around the hand, she's checking me for injuries... not even my biological mother...

She nods satisfied that I'm in good condition, and then kisses my forehead. This family is really too good to me...

The front door closes, and the slightly heavy gait of Danny Hebert's work boot brings the man into view. "Okay so what did the doctors say about how we are going to take care of Lisa?" His voice is tight, like he has anxiety about taking care of me. He picked us up at the hospital in full costume as none of the Heberts are related to me, so I was treated as a cape and thus my teammates are allowed to be the ones responsible for me and get visitor rights.

[not his job, doesn't want you hurt, stressed about bills, feels responsible for you, will fight to protect you, you're important to his daughters...]

I'm touched, really. For someone who doesn't really like his daughters dating it is nice to know that he at least approves of me. "Technically speaking, I'm her doctor dad," Taylor's voice is quiet. She has been ever since I woke up and I don't need powers to know that she feels responsible for getting me hurt. I want to scoff, Taylor didn't hurt me, I made my own decisions...

Please don't leave me because of some misplaced blame, I don't want to be alone anymore...

"Healer cape laws, I know more about her health than anyone else," she pauses, "I'm currently swimming through her veins after all."

I snuggle deeper into the limbs and feel them tighten around me in response. I'd reach up and take Taylor's hand into my mouth, but I can't reach over my head too well anymore. I settle for Swarm's tasty digits instead, onomnom...

"Ah, I see." Danny is the picture of stress, he wants us to quit the cape business. I am right there with him, I just know better than to think that capes can just quit.

"Her body is fine, but her brain has some significant damage," I lean into Taylor hand as she scratches my scalp, I should really remove the hand from my mouth and ask my questions about the arson attempt. I'll do it after, this hand is tasty. "Her motor cortex is shot full of holes so she has tremors in most of her limbs and I don't want her to be walking around on her own until she heals some more." Taylor's voice is soothing as I try to feel her blood running through my veins. If I focus, I can just hear it sing...

[ERROR]

I smile as I find it, the wincing pain from my power trying to quickly look away is worth it to know that I can still feel her. "For the most part her brain will heal itself with my cells working in tandem with her body, so it isn't permanent, but it will be a while before she can walk on her own."

He nods, "okay, will the hospital be sending us a bill?" Valid concern, another bill to pay will be rough on the Heberts…maybe I should help some way? I'm tiring to be a hero so it would be bad if I got caught stealing funds from some offshore accounts or whatever, but maybe I can steal it from some place more local...E88? I'll have to talk it over with the team.

"No Daddy, the PRT decided to pay it in full," I don't need to see the spores trapped inside her dress shirt to know they are dark with anger. Nimi was pissed when I collapsed, I don't think I've ever seen her angry before, but she takes after father. She mellowed out while I was unconscious, but I can tell she hates the PRT now. Every time it gets brought up she gets a bit darker in mood. I try to squeeze one of the tendrils, it barely presses into the metal flesh, she looks down at me. Her eye's glow pulses slowly but speeds up when I meet her gaze. I pat the tentacle until she calms back down...

"Good, it is their fault that this even happened," Danny's words kind of hide his inner thoughts, he doesn't like hand-outs. I watch Rose as she comes up and kisses him on the cheek, the slight flinch he makes on contact tells me he is probably on the fence about how others and relationships work with the undead, but he returns the kiss anyways. I smirk, good to know that I wasn't the only one who thought it was weird before. I snuggle deeper into Nimi's hold, so warm so comfortable. "Listen I've got to get back to work, your mother will be home later, and we can talk about it more then." Good, this means I'll have to wait to ask about the arson, but I guess I will be taking a nap first, lucky me.

Rose and Danny leave, but as the front door closes, she comes back a smile on her face. She then turns to face us.

"Yeah, we're okay mom," Taylor says, "she just needs a lot of sleep right now, we'll feed her something later."

A soft wet gurgle sounds from the slime woman and the house around us rattles. I look up and see Taylor's face greying, what did she say?

[made some comment on mating...]

"Momma," Swarm's voice is tired, the many overlaying echoes sound almost distant from each other, "we are all too young to properly breed with Lisa, and she isn't even ready for just Hosting so it wouldn't work out if we pushed."

I smirk to myself as I watch Taylor's face get even darker. I can feel my own face heat up a bit, but it doesn't stop me from snuggling deeper into Nimi and Swarm's arms. So, they do have a way to reproduce, I think as I turn to Rose, or at least Swarm does...maybe?

Rose's expression changes and a light in the kitchen flickers to a dim setting. Uh, translation power?

[Disappointed, wants more k-...occupants?]

Is, is she the house? I watch as she gurgles something else, the sound of a few hanging picture frames vibrating against the wall behind her. "No mom, we aren't even interested in... sex," my ashen girlfriend practically whispers the word.

"Besides mommy, we're mostly planning on adopting and like my sister said," Nimi's voice is pretty light, but I can tell she must be putting out a lightshow of glowing spores behind her, "we don't have the right parts." I think that Taylor is going to explode if this conversation continues, but my mouth is currently occupied by some finger food, so I think I'll just sit back and watch the show. I grin as Swarm decides an intricate lecture on her anatomy isn't embarrassing...

After the conversation wound down, I was carried upstairs. At first, I thought they were going to take me to the guest bedroom that I've been living out of for the past month. That made me scared...

I don't want to just sleep in the same bed as one or two of my girlfriends, I wanted them all there. I need it. I remember being in a coma unfortunately. I couldn't hear anything like they say that people in comas can sometimes, but my experience was not pleasant. I didn't get a smash cut from blacking out to waking up in the hospital. No, I got trapped in my head for a week with nightmares. Taylor, Nimi, and Swarm were not there with me either.

I shake my head and focus on the present. Nimi's heavy thuds move down the hall stopping at Taylor's bedroom long before the guest room. That's odd, sure I'm fine with this, but Taylor's bed is even smaller than the guest bed. Are they going to just lay me in their bed and forget about me? I can feel hands, Swarm's, stroke my face as my heart feels like it is ceasing. No this is worse! I try to move my hands, but they are shaking too much for me to make any progress. What are they doing?

[ERROR]

Dammit! They aren't talking so my power can't read them, and I can't see Nimi or Taylor's expressions with how deep into Nimi's arms I am. No please, I beg in my head biting down until my gums reach the skin of Swarm's palm, my eyes start getting wet as my panic increases. They stop and I shut my eyes. "It's okay Lisa," a cool hand runs through my hair, "we aren't going anywhere."

I feel myself lowered on to a bed as I keep my eyes screwed shut, the hand in my mouth leaves as I'm laid on my back. The after images of my nightmares, of the snake and the white cage, feel near in the darkness of my lids. My limbs shake uncontrollably as I lie on the bed like a limp fish, I can't even sit up. I then feel someone large and warm lie next to me. I reach for it blindly as I squeezed my eyes shut too hard and now, I'm having trouble opening them.

Large arms wrap around my chest and arms as I'm pulled into a familiar body. Hard like a rock with bony forearms and hands, an almost plush weight gets pushed into my face as my legs rest against solid abdominals. Several tendrils flow over onto my shoulders. Her skin is kind of rough against my face, but it is comfortable and safe. She got naked and then got into bed with me...

I almost start as a cool set of arms wrap around my waist and an equally cool body rests her head against the back of mine. Her soft breath is cool against my neck, but I know from experience that she'll heat up after a bit. I can feel the coolness of her bare legs through my pants, and her bare stomach practically fuses to my back. The feeling of sharp point around my legs proceeds the feeling of my pants being pulled off with what feels like Swarm's hands helping to remove the bunched-up clothing. Soft, sharp and cool, Taylor's hair wraps around our legs. It's good, but Swar-

The bedroom door opens, and I can hear the sounds of feet, lots of them. Then I feel them crawl into the bed. A head with curly hair forces its way between me and Nimi's stomach to rest against the space just below my ribs. Fingers, and then full hands, join with Taylor's hair to hold our legs I can hear and feel both Taylor and Nimi sigh. Hands rubs at my uncovered sides, and I feel a few of them rest across my stomach, small circles are happening all over me. My hands which have been crushed up against my chest have been drawn down and to comfortable positions as Swarm puts the fingers in her mouth. Perfect...

I relax into the many grips and hugs that surround me. A nip at my fingers makes me warm and I open my own mouth to get a mouth full of breast tissue to bite. Nimi's purr rumbles like a car on idle, as something wet and warm drags up my face over my still closed eyes. The heat makes the muscles relax and my eye flutter open. They got a bigger bed is the last thought I had before my mind slipped into sleep.

Thanks for waiting, this one took forever for me to write...

Snusmumriken · May 11, 2021

I've been reading this on and off, and I do enjoy your characterization, specifically the main group. Writing inhuman minds is a challenge by itself, and there is definitely not enough people willing to experiment with that.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 11, 2021

Snusmumriken said:
I've been reading this on and off, and I do enjoy your characterization, specifically the main group. Writing inhuman minds is a challenge by itself, and there is definitely not enough people willing to experiment with that.

Thank you, using or creating a different set of logic and social behaviors is kind of hard, but this is the kind of story that I wanted to read. Thinking about how a haunted house versus a possessed puppet would react and act, as an example, is mostly why it takes awhile for me to write, but it is really satisfying when I get it "right". If anything I have a harder time writing normal people, it is so much more fun to mess with monsters...

SensibleMalarkey · May 13, 2021

Tumultuous_Anxiety said:
[I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm...]

Lisa's power got bitch slapped, put in a corner on time-out, and is now behaving.

Tumultuous_Anxiety said:
Swarm's tasty digits instead, onomnom... finger food.

That is so disgusting and cute, lol.

Big bed for cuddle piles!!

Snusmumriken · May 13, 2021

Tumultuous_Anxiety said:
Thank you, using or creating a different set of logic and social behaviors is kind of hard, but this is the kind of story that I wanted to read. Thinking about how a haunted house versus a possessed puppet would react and act, as an example, is mostly why it takes awhile for me to write, but it is really satisfying when I get it "right". If anything I have a harder time writing normal people, it is so much more fun to mess with monsters...

I agree it is hard to find a specific genre and writing your own does scratch an itch.

In terms of alien mindsets, if you haven't read them. I would definitely recommend the "roadside picnic" for the haunted house alien feel. and the "Solaris" for a hardcore SciFi alien exploration.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 13, 2021

Snusmumriken said:
I agree it is hard to find a specific genre and writing your own does scratch an itch.

In terms of alien mindsets, if you haven't read them. I would definitely recommend the "roadside picnic" for the haunted house alien feel. and the "Solaris" for a hardcore SciFi alien exploration.

Roadside Picnic is a good book. I haven't read Solaris, but I'll be sure to give it a look, thanks!

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 18, 2021

Not much to say about this one, just wanted to get the ball rolling for a bit...

The next couple days were mostly spent taking care of Lisa, which to be honest I'm really fine with. I look up as my mom, Rose, carries a clean Lisa in after her bath. Her face is a bit red, and I can smell her embarrassment, but she doesn't protest as she is placed on the bed. "Thanks mom, sorry for asking you for help again," I am just not comfortable with seeing Lisa naked, too much skin, it would be hard to not...want a bite.

The walls rumbled as she speaks. It's fine sweetie, the cool soft hand ruffles through my hair, its strands curling around her fingers as my eyes crinkle in joy. I was going to make some tea, do you two want any?

"Yes please," Lisa says trying her hardest to sit up on her own. I nod too, a cup of tea would be good right now. Mom leaves and I move over from my desk towards the bed. I can see the struggle on Lisa's face as she desperately tries to raise herself, her shaky limbs are barely lifting her an inch.

"Good you made it a bit farther," I lift her the rest of the way and place pillows behind her head and back to keep her in place.

"I barely moved," she pants, "how is that progress?" I place my hand on her stomach and gently start to massage her organs. God, I'm hungry...

"There is nothing wrong with your body Lisa," I place a kiss on her forehead, "Your brain just forgot how to use them like how they are currently grown. You doing anything is teaching your brain how to use your body. It will get easier once you reach a certain threshold, and then I can work on removing the shakes." Really, I technically could fix everything with her brain all at once but doing that would mean that her brain's pathways would be wiped out entirely. By keeping the repeating pattern of signals in her motor cortex her brain cells keep from dying due to lack of signal. Think of it like muscle atrophy, if you stop using your muscles, they get reabsorbed by the body and you lose the ability to use the muscle with ease. It is similar here, if signals do not happen in a section of the brain, it become incredibly hard to use that part of your brain. You can't move with a muscle that you've never used, likewise you can't think with an inactive brain part... you know unless your undead like me.

She frowns, but leans into my touch, "I just miss being able to do things, like you know walking and stuff." True, Lisa as she is right now can't really move with any sort of strength or coordination. I think one of her biggest complaints is that she can't type, or even stay seated at a computer without falling over. We've been mostly keeping our thinker, who is definitely showing signs of going stir crazy, entertained with books, conversation, and cuddling. "But your right it only has been two days...how is the patrol going?"

The car is getting away! I grin as I look over at the sound of a car peeling away with the rest of the would be criminals.

I toss aside the E88 I was currently holding upside down, only to feel Swarm catch him. Good, you stay here and gather up the ones we downed, I'll catch the car. I get a nod from the shadows and bolt after the car.

God running is great! I fly after the vehicle at nice brisk pace of "I'm-going-to-catch-you-fuckers!" I love it when they run, it feels so freeing to move like this. I bend around a corner as I keep accelerating toward the retreating car, the lights of the street flashing by as I reach the ten feet mark. My remade bio armor gleams pearlescent against the streetlights as I zoom across the asphalt. The skirt flutters as I run, the boom of my bone plate boots, loud and fast, as I get within an arm's reach of the car. The near invisible wires trail from my tentacles whipping down the street, luminous in the nightlight. "Gotcha!"

My hand slams into the back of the car, sinking my fingers deep into the soft metal as the car swerves under its new weight. I hear one of the occupants scream, and my grin grows as I access the situation. Okay so now I just need to stop a car, what to do... I feel the yards of wire that trail behind me almost reaching back to the alleyway I was just at a few minutes ago. The idea slowly forms even as I see one of the gangsters start to brandish and automatic. I shake the vehicle with a whip of my arm causing them to stumble. Okay let's do this!

I anchor my wires into every building between here and the alleyway, that is sixty feet worth of friction on a car going maybe three times as fast as the other traffic, which there is not much of that. The car stops immediately sending its passengers forward with the sudden change in acceleration. I tear my fingers through the soft exterior of the car, the wheels underneath smoking as the driver tries to floor it as I climb/walk until I'm on the driver's side of the cabin. "Surrender criminal scum," I giggle as the cheesy line leaves my lips as I pull back my fist. The hailstorm of bullet responding to my reasonable request is less funny.

My eye narrows as a bullet flattens against the sphere of indestructible crystal cells. "So, you have chosen your fate," I say with a deepened voice and slam my fist into the cabin. My blow is explosive as the hydrogen bonds in my hand's armor break. All the glass from the car shatters as the entire cabin deforms into a huge crater. The car flies off my claws and, since the accelerator is fully depressed, spins out of control into the side of a building, stalling. I rush to the car and slam into it with a hip check to the engine knocking the block out clean. I then turn to the wide-eyed Nazi wannabes. "So, who here would like to leave here with their fingers intact," I question in a singsong to them through the now missing windshield, my smile big and toothy as one of the younger looking ones in the back slowly raises a hand.

I smile as I look at Lisa, "good, they haven't run into any capes still, but they've broken up a dozen crimes in progress."

"Jeez, they planning on breaking your record?" She grins at me but snuggles closer to me as I pull her into my side. Fox...

My others and I have decided to, while Lisa is still incapacitated, step up our patrols. The last week we have been trading off on who goes where and who teams up with who, with the remaining members staying with Lisa while she was at the hospital, and for the last two days at home. So far each of us have had a "solo" patrol, but we switch between me and Nimi, Swarm and Nimi, then Swarm and I. Between the three of us we have stopped over a hundred crimes in progress across all the gangs, with one patrol, mine, resulting in over three dozen arrests. It has kind of started a competition between us, but I'm pretty sure that Swarm is just holding back, being everywhere in the city is cheating.

"Yeah, Nimi wants her prize, and she is in a spirited mood tonight." It was actually a point of contention between us, the continuing to do cape stuff. Lisa and I had our first fight about it too...

"But Lisa you get hurt every time..."

"No, don't you dare blame me for ruining your dream," Lisa shouts before I can finish, "you can't just stop being happy because I got myself hurt!"

"What, no this is just your power, you would have been safe if you were here, I don't blame you for getting hurt," I can feel my panic try to eat me from the inside as I look at Lisa's expression of pain. Around me I can see Swarm biting her fingers in the corner, Nimi was on Lisa's side of the bed glaring at me.

"Taylor as much as you want to, Lisa cannot live in our bedroom as a porcelain doll." Nimi's voice is hard, harder than I've ever heard it, "survival is not the same as living remember, we need to go and fight criminals, and Lisa needs to live. I shouldn't have to say it out loud."

I flinch at the remembered ideals in our nightly ghost sessions, we want Lisa to live a long and happy life so that we can eat her when she is dead. It sounds kind of fucked up when I say it like that, but yeah when Lisa's body begins to die, we will be the ones to take her into the afterlife. If she agrees of course to be ours, if not we will still make sure her afterlife is not lonely like moms' was. Anyways, we three not too long ago agreed that survival is not the same as living and thus Lisa must live not just survive, otherwise we would just stay home with her forever...

"Is that what you guys want, to just keep me, like a pet..."

I shift back to Lisa, her face is horrified, and she is shaking uncontrollably. "What, no no no no," I feel Swarm rush in as I move to her as well. Nimi pulls Lisa up into her arms as we wrap around our girlfriend.

"You are not a pet Lisa," the sound of Swarm speaking is one of great stress, her voices were out of sync, "you're an equal, we just want you to be safe, and sister Taylor is being an idiot, you're not trapped by us." I cringe at what I've been fighting for. If Lisa did get better and I decided to stop going out and just obsessed over Lisa, would I let her leave?

…

Would I sabotage her healing...

We sit in silence as my better others comfort a Lisa that I hurt. That if I had my way I would have poisoned and eventually kill. I pull away from them, or try...

"No..." Lisa's voice is firm and almost sounds like it did before last week, "you do not get to walk away like some stupid asshole and take some moral high ground bullshit. You will tell me exactly everything, you promised no secrets, so spit it out, now."

I felt self-righteous hunger war with my sadness's famine, my pride was consumed. I told her everything, my fears about someone attacking the house, that my powers maybe killing her slowly by proxy of her own, that her would-be-kidnappers would steal her from me when I wasn't looking. That I'm immortal and going to out "live" Lisa, that she and I are going to exist outside of time, and I don't know how to deal with forever. Then finally, I told her that I can't betray her, that no matter what she does I cannot leave her because of what Emma has done. Sure, she has heard most of those things before, but once I started talking, I couldn't stop.

"Thank you," Lisa says strongly as I stop, "your still an idiot." I cringe and curl up tighter in my girlfriend and others' laps. "But you're my idiot," she lays a shaky hand atop me, "no more angst, and you are not allowed to tell me what's best for me either. I don't mind all of you taking care of me Taylor, in fact I kind of enjoy being pampered." I smirk at Lisa's joke as both Nimi and Swarm giggle. Her face hardens, "but it is a consent thing too, do not try to lobotomize my life." I nod as she stares down at me, she is so beautiful. "Now with that taken care of," Lisa snaps back to playful, " I believe I'd like to contribute to your care, arm."

We spend the rest of that night cuddling with Lisa biting down on my arm. I sigh as Lisa laughs, her face flushed at the mention of Nimi's prize. "Well good to know she is motivated," she says in between bursts of giggles. It was Lisa's idea to have the prizes.

To be fair considering what I want for my prize, Nimi's isn't that weird. My prize for winning is well to cuddle Lisa with everyone, and for Lisa and Nimi to make out while I do the same to Swarm's fingers, standard stuff we did stuff like that before. Nimi's is to go on a date with everyone and... hold hands in public. I don't really get it. Why not make out in public or maybe something a bit more scandalous like biting? She has kept her feeling behind them secret so I can't exactly find it in our ghosts. Swarm's prize is simple, she wants Lisa to eat one of her fingers, like the whole digit. The fact that Lisa said yes to all these requests as prizes, well that kind of just tells me she is actually into it.

"Now if we could just get Swarm to just win," Lisa smirks a hungry gleam of her own on her face. What did I tell you, she is way into it. "I want to know what it feels like detached and on my tong-."

Mom walks in with two cups of steaming tea, making Lisa clam up and blush profusely. Behind her my mom, Annette, walks in too. They both have matching grins. The two are very different from each other, in sense of clothing. Rose prefers button up shirts, dress pants or skirts, and keeping her hair draped over her body. Annette like to wear sweaters and bright colors, long dresses and scrunchies to keep her hair back and out her face.

Rose hands me the glasses, one a clear yellow and smelling of honey and chamomile. The other is a dark and sticky purple, looking thick and smells of: poisonous toadstools, blood that has rotted inside a cat's gut, soil from the garden with a few grubs, and... Oh, spiders my favorite!

"Thanks mom," I smile as I hold the human drink in my left and my drink in my right. The taste is lethal... I giggle internally at my lame joke.

A few floorboards creak and mom, Rose and Annette both smile. You're welcome dear, careful not to mix the two up, I added extra rot for you at the bottom.

"So are we interrupting you two love birds," mom's, Annette, smile is dangerous, I know exactly what she is going to suggest next, "talking about how many babies to make or just going to try and have them all." Okay I thought I knew what she was going to just say...

Lisa almost chokes on the tea as she puts that image in both of our heads. The human body, for most women, has at least three hundred thousand to at most four hundred thousand when they are in their teens and steadily decrease from there, but still by the time we're twenty or something that is a hundred thousand eggs at least. A hundred thousand children... "Mommm," I whine as I feel Nimi's excited vibrating through our ghosts from halfway across the city and just to make it worse, Nimi wants children and every amount, including ridiculous amounts, is the right amount. "Please don't give Nimi any more ideas on having six-figures worth of children."

That is another thing, why don't Swarm and Nimi have the ability to procreate, I'm technically able.

I frown, because that does actually bother me. Excluding Swarm, who we won't know if she can breed until after her metamorphosis in four days, I built Nimi sterile because I didn't want the world realizing she is technically made by me. Now that the world thinks she is just a case 53, I have plans to give her what I denied her on her eighteenth birthday. Technically she can change her own body without me editing it, in addition to both of us growing, but I think she want me to un-neuter her myself...that's enough of thinking about genitals and sex, both are uncomfortable and gross.

"...a thousand...kids..." I turn to a muttering Lisa as she stares off into the distance, shock, I think. Hell, I think that twenty-five would be a lot so from that angle, a hundred thousand...I don't think I've even seen a hundred thousand people let alone that many babies or children.

"It's okay Lisa, don't listen to my moms, we don't have to have any at all," I glare at my two disappointed mothers, "we agreed that adoption is perfectly valid, you don't have to feel like you're being pushed." They both look a bit guilty as I pull my human close with my hair, putting the tea to the side.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push, the walls groan, and the room feels cozier somehow, like the house is hugging us with air pressure. I just want more, people in my shell...

Lisa relaxes in my grip as my hair continues to make spirals on her legs. "Yeah, we're sorry Lisa," Mom's voice is warm as she sits on our bed, "it was just supposed to be a joke, but it was a bit inappropriate."

"It's okay Annette, I just- I'm not sure that could happen...now, maybe when we're adults and if we don't lose each other on the way to that," she chuckles, I just pull her tighter, being in a romantic relationship might not work forever, but Lisa will always be my friend. Lisa turns to Rose, "maybe you should have a house party, just to hold you over for a bit?"

Both moms brighten up at the suggestion just as the front door is opened loudly. "Mommies, daddy, we're back!" I drain my mug of poison as I hear dad's low rumbling reply and watch both of my moms leave for the downstairs.

Life has been rough for the last couple of days... and I refuse to invoke the wrath of murphy.

It is going to get worse isn't it...

Hope you enjoyed this, I know I've slowed down recently on the writing, and I started posting this in December so it has only been six months, but I started writing in late October/early November so for me it has been a bit of time.

Necrovore · May 24, 2021

And now we need Nimi in a giant Olaf costume for Halloween. Warm hugs for everyone!

Gryphalcon · May 24, 2021

Tumultuous_Anxiety said:
I feel... anxious and sick.

*All the Hugs*
Anxiety is a bitch.

Thank you for this work. It's a fascinating ride.
The sidestories have me thinking of the undead as planetary antibodies, a response to infection or injury. Don't know if I'm anywhere close to accurate with that.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 24, 2021

Gryphalcon said:
The sidestories have me thinking of the undead as planetary antibodies, a response to infection or injury. Don't know if I'm anywhere close to accurate with that.

It is a neat idea, and your not too terribly far off. It kind of makes me wish I had gone with something like that, but the phenomenon of undeath as I've written in my notes is a bit more complex and at the same time a lot simpler. Keep theorizing though, I enjoy the stuff this community comes up with, and some of the ideas you guys suggest are brilliant for making me think about afterlife concepts and such.

MaskedCritic · May 26, 2021

You know, this felt like a rather huge swing in how they interact with Armsmaster. After he was actually really helpful and respectful when Lisa was dying, I rather expected their interactions to be far more amicable than this, even if he did just unknowingly step on a social landmine like that. Especially after it started with Nimi realizing that he's not a grumpy asshole by default, he just has a bad case of resting bitch face.

The wooden apology didn't seem like something for them to be upset over, either. It's not unusual for an immediate apology to be awkward as hell after unintentionally fucking up that badly, when your brain is still in "oh god I didn't mean for it to be taken like that, I fucked up bad, what do I do, how do I apologize without sounding insincere or mockingly sycophantic?!" mode.

Anger with the PRT is expected and natural, but considering Armsmaster was the first person to help her and her girlfriend at the PRT HQ, and who immediately got out of the way once he confirmed that Lisa would be in no more danger from Taylor's presence than she was already in... I honestly was expecting them to be somewhat fond of him, if anything. Especially as he was one of Taylor's favorite heroes growing up.

Also, the blatant nonchalant cannibalism from Taylor was... kinda weird. Wasn't she more hesitant about that sort of thing before?

Did I just forget the whole "asexual" thing? Felt like it came out of nowhere, I was assuming Taylor had most of the same urges as before death, but her new ones took precedence.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 26, 2021

MaskedCritic said:
You know, this felt like a rather huge swing in how they interact with Armsmaster. After he was actually really helpful and respectful when Lisa was dying, I rather expected their interactions to be far more amicable than this, even if he did just unknowingly step on a social landmine like that. Especially after it started with Nimi realizing that he's not a grumpy asshole by default, he just has a bad case of resting bitch face.

The wooden apology didn't seem like something for them to be upset over, either. It's not unusual for an immediate apology to be awkward as hell after unintentionally fucking up that badly, when your brain is still in "oh god I didn't mean for it to be taken like that, I fucked up bad, what do I do, how do I apologize without sounding insincere or mockingly sycophantic?!" mode.

Anger with the PRT is expected and natural, but considering Armsmaster was the first person to help her and her girlfriend at the PRT HQ, and who immediately got out of the way once he confirmed that Lisa would be in no more danger from Taylor's presence than she was already in... I honestly was expecting them to be somewhat fond of him, if anything. Especially as he was one of Taylor's favorite heroes growing up.

Also, the blatant nonchalant cannibalism from Taylor was... kinda weird. Wasn't she more hesitant about that sort of thing before?

Did I just forget the whole "asexual" thing? Felt like it came out of nowhere, I was assuming Taylor had most of the same urges as before death, but her new ones took precedence.

…Wait I wrote what? Hold on... I think I fucked up this chapter... Sorry, but this chapter is probably going to be rewritten, I posted and wrote most of this when I wasn't in the right head space. I've actually been looking over a few of the notes I have in the past two days and I don't think this what I wanted to happen at all...

Thank you for pointing out that the chapter is off, I would have never remembered to reread it. Sorry for posting prematurely...

MaskedCritic · May 26, 2021

Tumultuous_Anxiety said:
…Wait I wrote what? Hold on... I think I fucked up this chapter... Sorry, but this chapter is probably going to be rewritten, I posted and wrote most of this when I wasn't in the right head space. I've actually been looking over a few of the notes I have in the past two days and I don't think this what I wanted to happen at all...

Thank you for pointing out that the chapter is off, I would have never remembered to reread it. Sorry for posting prematurely...

Bah, don't worry about it, just means we get to read it twice!

Though seriously, I have no idea how you keep anything straight in your head at all when you have 150k words of this. I've gotten a few attempts of my own (never posted anywhere, I refuse to post without having an ending written) up to just barely over 10k, and I have to reread the whole damned thing just to remember what I wrote...

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 26, 2021

MaskedCritic said:
Bah, don't worry about it, just means we get to read it twice!

Though seriously, I have no idea how you keep anything straight in your head at all when you have 150k words of this. I've gotten a few attempts of my own (never posted anywhere, I refuse to post without having an ending written) up to just barely over 10k, and I have to reread the whole damned thing just to remember what I wrote...

It helps that I'm a bit of an obsessive, and everything I write is never deleted, I have almost 200k words that will never be a part of this story. What I need to remember is to reread everything before I post, because I have very poor impulse control... Again thank you, if you hadn't told me I would have never noticed that my characters were extremely off.

Nimi is not that blood thirsty... neither is Taylor, yet...
Armsmaster is one of the only people in the government that didn't stand in Taylor's way of helping Lisa, so that is some serious brownie points, and I forgot that...
Swarm is more innocent and less cold sounding, but she is blunt so at least I have some of that...

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 27, 2021

So if you don't know I deleted the previous chapter 46, when MaskedCritic pointed out that my character were off... So I reread what I had posted, and it didn't feel right. MaskedCritic also pointed out several inconsistences between events and character dynamics. Thus inspiring this revision. The first half of the chapter is much the same, as it sounds like the characters. The next 7k+ words were inspired by MaskedCritic as he reminded me of some events I straight up forgot about, or worse, ignored because I was feeling off. I am much happier with this chapter as it shows how Taylor has changed from her first night out as a zombie, as well as how the relationship with Armsmaster has improved across Taylor and her others. It is also the longest chapter I've written, and shows subplots developing beyond just E88 and ABB future conflict. The same events happened in the deleted chapter, but without the out of character actions and interactions. I hope you enjoy, and please don't be afraid to tell me that it needs to be relooked at, thank you for reading!

I put down my pencil and stare up out the window. Studying is boring...

Yeah, I'm happy that I get the opportunity to go to Arcadia and all, they even said it was okay that I look...not human. All I have to do is pass a qualifying test and have my grades stay above C's for two semesters to go. That's easy.

Before the Locker, before I died, before Emma... Well, I guess before a lot of things, I actually liked school and I had pretty good grades before high school, before well...

My hair's teeth glide soundlessly up my hair, but it is impossible not to hear it chewing on the leg of my desk chair. I look down at the math, trigonometry, written out in neat lines of my notebook and frown. School was fun, going to classes, learning stuff about all sorts of subjects, hanging out with Em-.

I look over at the buzzing streetlamp outside my window, then back into my room. The bed, the new one, is kind of too big for this room, but it fits everyone, so the lack of floor space is worth it for all the cuddling we get to do. I smile as I watch Swarm, about fifteen of her bodies, huddle close to our sleeping girlfriend. The many arms sway and float like seaweeds covering the surface of the bed.

We like to sleep close, so the bed is just a normal king-size that Nimi and I designed. It is covered in a self-cleaning bio-silk and uses muscles and bones for a support structure with tendons weaved together to make it light and supportive. So far it can support all of our weights and Lisa sleeps like a baby on it, I call that alone a success.

I stand up and stretch, the bones in my back popping delightfully, I think that is good enough studying for today. Time to go on patrol! No more sitting behind a stuffy desk, now it's time for movement, maybe even some running, yay! I bend down and kiss Lisa's sleeping forehead, taking a moment to see her cute expression and set my cells inside her to cuddle her own. Tempting to just stay here and take a nap, just call it off for tonight and bring Nimi up from her own prep downstairs.

My instincts complain inside my head, the desire to move and run, to chase, is strong and has me pulling back. I close the door to our room and quickly make my way downstairs.

"...hahaha, sure Danny, I'm just glad that things have been better for you recently." The deep bass-y laugh of is familiar and as I walk further down the stairs I can see dad, a smile on his face, as he invites Kurt and Lacey in through the front door. Both of the living walk in ahead of my dad, they are smiling, at least until they see me.

Kurt looks a bit pale as I continue down the steps and Lacy doesn't look too hot either. I just smile, careful to keep my lips closed around my sharp teeth. Not sure it works too well with my eyes, all of them, glowing white hot silver and creasing in a friendly manner as my teeth shine in the dark of the steps. "Hey Lacey, hey Kurt."

I step down the final steps and the gloom of the stairs lift as I step out of the dark. "Taylor?" They both look a little less, scared. I can smell them though and I think that will be a weird thing for me. I've known both of them for almost as long as I can remember, but unlike dad, I want to eat them...

"Yeah, it's me," I quickly disconnect my sense of smell, but it is impossible for me not think, understand, and know that, the tall and muscular man with deep dark skin, Kurt, would be warm to drink and soft to chew through. Likewise, the short, stout woman with worn but pretty features, would be hearty and likely taste silky. Their organs would be incredibly tender, like all living things are to me. I mentally shake off my instincts reminding me that the life in front of me is edible and turn to my father, "hey it is mine and Nimi's turn to patrol tonight, did you want anything while we're out?"

Dad frowns, at the mention of the patrol probably, "are you sure I can't talk you out of going?"

"Nope," I walk over to the basement, "we are going to pass by the garden and pick up some mushrooms too, so it won't all be crime fighting." I knock on the basement door, ignoring my father's defeated expression and the look of whiplash on Kurt and Lacey's faces. "Nimi, are you dressed, it is time for patrol," I look over at dad's friends, "oh, Kurt and Lacey are here, so if you want to say hi now's your chance." Remember they don't know you, okay? I add in our heads.

"Okay," Nimi responds, both to my verbal and mental words.

"Okay now hold on," Lacey's voice is the kind of voice you'd get if you spent all day everyday yelling at people. Which is probably true as she runs a food truck down by the docks and she gets all sorts of crazies. "I know you told us that your Anne and Taylor came back from the dead via cape stuff and that they looked a bit different," I cringe even as she walks towards me, but I stop once I see her face split into a grin, "what you forgot to tell me is that she got taller!"

I turn and hug her just as she lifts her arms, "hey kiddo, heard life's been rough." I press my face into the crook of her neck at the whispered support. Lacey only comes up to my chest, so I have to crouch pretty low for the hug, worth it to give my god parent a hug. I hear dad and Kurt chuckling.

"Hey, move over short stuff, I want a turn hugging my god daughter too," Kurt interjects. Strong arms wrap around us as Lacey squawks in protest of being lifted off the ground. I can actually feel my feet hover above the floor too, and I have metal bones! Yeah, they are a super light metal-crystal structure, so I don't actually weight all that much more, but still.

"Sorry Lacey, with everything going on it has been a little hectic here at home," dad chuckles but I can tell from how the group hug twitches, we can all hear the stress in dad's voice, "sorry for keeping it from you guys for so long."

The hug breaks as Lacey is starting to get squished. I'm kind of sad that the hug couldn't go on for longer, but I think it would get too tempting. I love my god parents, so much that I could eat them. I doubt that dad would feel the same way if I accidently took a bite. No, bad Taylor, the only one you get to bite out of love's clawing, cloying hunger is Lisa.

"Hmmm, fine I'll forgive you just this once Dan, but you're on thin ice," she teases.

"Yeah, the cape stuff alone is complex," Kurt adds, "but you best believe that if this family ever needs help, the Union's got your back boss man."

"Okay Taylor, I'm ready!" The soft boom of Nimi climbing up the steps of the basement sounding behind me, interrupting dad's response as the two turn to the new voice. Nimi ducks through the door wearing her people disguise, "can I hug the guests before we go?"

Both of the guests freeze up as they are pulled into a massive green hug. Lifting both of them off the ground as a hood down and cotton clad Nimi holds them.

It's going on for a while...

…

"Uh, Nimi?" My other turns to me with Lacey and Kurt both lost in the huge embrace, Kurt looks like he is going red, and Lacey has a very funny, pale look on her face. "These are my god parents, Kurt and Lacey."

The red glow and glitter from Nimi's eye shows me what I fear, Nimi does not want to stop hugging them. I reach for her ghost...she is incredibly hungry. It is a soft innocent thing, a tongue on a pulse point, the feel of silk across your teeth. She just wants a small bite, chunk of our god parents' flesh...Joy, that is the emotion I sense. Is that how it feels for Nimi? She doesn't even notice that it is a form of hunger. I guess that is just the difference between us, all she has ever felt is hunger. "I like them, really nice and they don't try to struggle too much!"

Nimi's smile is infectious as I feel the corners of my mouth lift, but I should really stop this before her hunger makes her eat them. "Well could you put them down, we need to get going if we are going to swing by the mushrooms-"

"Oh yeah," she drops them as her excitement overtakes her. Our god parents just barely catch themselves as she turns to dad and kisses his forehead, "bye daddy, we'll be back! Come on Taylor we don't want to be late!"

I shake my head as I walk past dad's friends. Figures now I'm the late one. "Sorry dad," we had wanted to keep the fact that Nimi is my "sister" secret. I don't envy dad having to explain that to them. "We'll be back at the usual time, good luck with introducing moms again."

I leave just as Kurt asks, "moms?"

The running is the best! The wind rushing through my tentacles as my legs and arms pump. The increased heart rate from my still living circulatory system, sending lovely ripples of movement across my dead veins. The heat energy I produce heating up colonies of chemosynthetic single cells that I feed with each breath of my huge lungs, culling the excess as I in turn passively feed on them. It is... relieving to not be hungry whenever I want.

Taylor and I zip down alleyways and side streets to reach the Garden. Once there, we changed out for our costumes, grabbed a light dinner of mushrooms, and then started our patrol. My bio armor is a bit different than it was, it is really just a more armored version of my casual clothes. A battle skirt covers my bone plate boots; the thick bio silk covered in patterned veins of bright red against the darker red of the fabric. The bone corset of abalone and tight muscles is rainbowed and perfectly frames my breasts. Speaking of my girlfriend's favorite bite place, my chest is covered in strips of bio silk that loop around my neck and leave my back uncovered for ease of access for my spores. The bone plate over my cleavage is removeable as I like showing off to Lisa. My arms are armored down to my elbow just before the natural armor of my hands with shell like pauldrons.

I look over at Frankie as she runs next to me, the joy I can feel coming off her is mine too. Her costume has also not changed much. A solid black suit that is skintight but makes her just featureless instead of giving too much information on her body. The red spiral of her mask is still present, but it is no longer a sealed system. Now, because of her hair, it is just a half mask leaving her mouth exposed and letting the variable length hair flow behind her, its glowing eyes looking like moons and teeth shiny like stars as she and I run through the night.

We decided on our patrol at the Garden after checking that the mushrooms and experiments are running okay. The patrol for tonight is a simple one, run around empire territory until we find something illegal, and stop it. After a few hours of that, we are going to go back to the Garden, grab the medical mushrooms, then swing by the hospital to snuggle with Panacea...or at least I am, Taylor is going to offer the hospital the mushrooms for the staff to use for minor injuries. She is going to get the paste tested by Panacea to see if it works.

It does, but people tend to be scared of us, so it helps to have a trusted, and adorable, healer confirm it. Maybe once the healer is done with checking out my "sister's" incredible work she could come out for ice-cream, or maybe I could take her to the park, have a less stressful talk about adopt-

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a scream and thus starts the night...

We break off in a silent sprint, Me running across roof tops, Frankie crawling along walls and the streets her hair trailing behind her. Time to go beat up the "criminal scum", I giggle silently as we approach a dark alleyway, I hope they run it's a blast to chase something.

I stop over the alley as I examine the situation, I can see Frankie crawl forward along the ground towards a group of five bodies. Four pale men crowding around a young black woman. They've ripped her clothing in places and one of them has a knife out. "Now I know you know that your kind ain't allowed here," a fat ugly one speaks his three buddies chuckling even as the woman curls away farther from them. My hands crunch the lip of the building, brick turning to dust as I watch.

I don't have to watch long...

A hiss like a gas pipe grows just out of the gangers' view as dark and beautiful crawls around a dumpster into view. I suppress a laugh as I smell two of the four jerks pee themselves as my other creeps towards them. The dark of the alleyway hides her shape, but the glow of a thousand eyes as her hair extends upwards and upwards gives them just enough of an idea on just what they are up against.

The two that urinated on themselves bolt and I jump down between them and the exit. The knowledge that there are only four humans between me and the victim, fills me with all the determination I need. Goal, get the girl, knock out everything in my path to the girl. I grin down at the two, they pull their own blades, but that just makes the fog of yellow spores glowing behind me brighter. One of them loses more of their control over their bowels and I grin harder, I love my job...

I can hear Nimi's punches from the other side of the building knocking her opponents around, the sound of shrieking wires sliding against each other as they extend from her tentacles. I ignore it as I dodge a fist aimed at my head, my instincts happy as the flesh comes within biting range. I don't hesitate and bite down, the taste of warm blood on my tongue almost eclipses my thought but shove the thought to the back of my mind and simply pull him the rest of the way leaving him only with some puncture marks. The man goes flying behind me as I throw him with his own momentum and watch the other ganger's scramble behind the boxes and crates of the warehouse.

This warehouse is a huge place, filled mostly with boxes and conveyor belts that don't look like they've been used in a while. I zip up the wall of crates just as the place I was in gets pelted with bullets. I climb up one of the lights and slip into the shadows at the top of the warehouse, careful to avoid the skylights with their moonlight leaking in. It is also full of Nazis, I think we've seen maybe thirty, forty? I don't know, but this place is a huge bust for us.

This is actually our fifth bust of the night, but after our first with the mugging back in the alleyway, we just kept on running into stuff. One arrest of a hold up of a store front, then a breaking and entering of an apartment, followed by a car chase which brought us here. Honestly, it has been pretty ridiculous...

I sneak across the darkness of the ceiling, my eyespot lights dimming as I crawl along its surface. I can see it all from up here with its high ceilings. It is, like I mentioned, full of crates in neat lines with only a few open places with chairs and stuff. I watch my other from up here tear through the ganger's she is fighting. The small arms fire bouncing of her armor with ease as she trips them up with wires and knocks them back with concussive blows of her fists. Her giggle as she thinks the bullets "tickle", is loud enough for me to hear it from all the way up here. I smile but turn back down to the group underneath me.

There are fifteen of them all running to one of the more open spaces even as I keep pace with them from the ceiling. When they reach there, they spit up and start searching, seven go right and six go left. Ennie meanie minie moe, right. I follow the group of seven as they start along a row parallel to the other group of six.

This is kind of fun; I creep along the ceiling as they look up trying to spot me. I feel a small thrill as I stalk them, a little bit of joyful hunger, a bright sensation of my cells vibrating in my lungs. I stop as the group stops, coming together to aim in all directions with their guns. They are looking up, but not at the ceiling. Why they clearly saw me climb up right? I watch as several of them scan the top of the boxes, then the one in the center actual looks up at me. I drop as my eye lights brighten. The man screams high and shrill as I slam into him with my heel.

The world moves slowly for me as I crouch atop the guy, I just made eat dirt and the gangsters start to turn around. I don't give them much of a chance. My hair grabs their shoulders, except for the farthest one from me. Then I lunge at his still turned back, pulling every one of them off their feet as the world speeds back up to full. The man I lunged at falls face first into the concrete, the rest all fall at odd angles as I pull them.

Okay, that seemed to- I dodge around a knife aimed at my right leg as the nearest downed guy decides he hasn't had enough yet. The dodge does two things. One it causes me to spin out with a kick from my left leg aimed at the man's face as my body decides to do the "dance" thing for dodging. The second thing is more of a consequence of still holding on to five people with my hair as I move.

The kick goes wide as my hair pulls my attacker out of the way, flinging him instead behind me to back flip into the wall of crates at my back. While he is enjoying that, the other four people pull into each other and knock their heads together like billiard balls. As my feet land in a stand, I feel the dead weight of several bodies behind me. "Uh, yes," I let go of the unconscious men, " I totally meant to do that."

…I shake my head.

Well, at least I took them down, I look over at the seven men on the ground, even if the last one was bullshit. I stretch out my strong fibers of hair, feeling the strength in them as my teeth and eyes appear and disappear at random. I hear the running of boots and disappear back up into the dark of the top of the boxes. Okay six more to go, I run along the tops of crates and jump at the backs of the gangsters running to check on their downed friends.

Two go down with the lunge, my hair coming up to wrap a third's gun up and tail whip him into the floor. Then there were three... The first on my right pulls out a knife and makes a slash at my face. I lean along the direction of attack making it miss entirely. I use the movement to grab his wrist and then pull him forward into a tumble over his own shoulders. The next guy aims at my head and fires just as his buddy hits his legs making the shot go wide, and into the last guy's guts.

"Fucking son of bitch, you fucking whore I'll-"

I tune out the sound of his screaming as I press my hands into the wound. Ignoring the tantalizing smell of blood as I scope out the damage, he has a bullet in his abdominal cavity, ruptured spleen and a bruised kidney from the shock wave. The damage around his stomach where the bullet went in is more concerning. It didn't exit, which could be a good thing, if it didn't also penetrate his stomach wall. The smell of stomach acid masked by blood isn't doing much to my hunger, it is so strong.

"Hurk"

I drop the shooter from my hair, his breathing evening out now that he is unconscious. I look at the last remaining conscious empire guy, besides not-good-enough-to-be-a-sailor mouth who I currently have my hands in his guts. Now that I'm not fighting anything anymore, I can actually take a closer look at my enemies. The kid is just that, looks like a high schooler, skinny pale shaved head and what look like fresh E88 tattoos on his neck. He is also scared out of his mind and in shock. "Hey, you," I address him causing him to jump and look at me, "come over here and help me."

He doesn't move so I add a bit of my hunger to my voice, "fucking now."
The growl causes him to whimper, but he does crawl over, favoring his right. Might have dislocated shoulder when I flipped him. "Good," I say as he sits across from me and mister gunshot who won't shut up, "now press your hands here and here, as hard as you can."

He barely presses on the spots as I pull my hands away. "Oh, yeah, shock right," I say not getting a response out of him. "Here," I press on the tops of his fingers until I can smell the blood flowing from the gunshot wound decrease.

"OH FUCK, GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF ME YOU FREA-"

I tune him out again and focus on the jumpy teen in front of me," okay now I want you to hold it, okay?" I wait for his eyes to focus a bit more, before moving my hands away from his when I get a nod. "Good," I watch his hands pressing into the neo-Nazi in front of me, before turning to the wound. Okay with him keeping the blood flow down I can get the bullet, seal the man's stomach, and knit together a few of the more important arteries, thankfully he landed on his back meaning most of his blood is still inside his body.

I get to work, the slime mold of my suit's fingers extending out to form thin tips. Time to dig for some gold.

"Hey no you get away from me you freak!" I turn to the man I'm going to have to operate on. He is in a word, a big baby. His body is all the muscles that you typically see on a biker, but with a characteristic beer gut. Which is probably why he didn't have a spinal injury too, so point to being unhealthy and Darwinism. His arms are nothing but empire tattoos and his hair is bleached blonde, so I'm going to have to take away point for Darwinism as he clearly wouldn't have been in this situation if he wasn't a Nazi. Is that correlation or causation?

My thoughts are interrupted as the chubby Nazi speaks again. "Hey boy, my gun is in my right pocket, shoot this bitch and call Hookwolf, and then we can get out of here." You can't be that stupid, right? Okay never mind he gets negative two points for everything, cause that is just dumb.

The teen actually lessens the pressure on the wound causing my nose to flare with the smell of blood. "He has a bullet lodged past his stomach and will leak stomach acid into his blood stream if you don't hold him close," I growl. The fact that it would just make me hungrier is something I'll keep to myself. "I'm going to remove the bullet and close the hole in his stomach, put the pressure back on it, now."

I reach into the hole, and thankfully the teen listens to me more than the waste of human space I'm working on. I wish we had my mushrooms here, but we just left them back at the Garden. What, it is not like this suit has pockets... Note to self, add pockets to my costume. Why do I always forget this kind of stuff?

I'm pulled from my musings as the tips of my finger extensions touch metal. "I got the bullet," I say, my growl long gone from my voice as I focus, "I'm going to take it out, when I do it is going to hurt like a lot. I'm going to need you to increase pressure as well, use all your weight in three..."

"Woah, Woah, wait!"

"Two..." I can hear the boy across from me tense as his leather jacket creases.

"No, No, boy I will kick you as-"

"One!" I rip the bullet out as the teen increases pressure practically stabbing his fingers into the sides of the, now howling and crying, man's wound. I toss the bullet and go back in, my cells funneled into the tips of my suit as I seal first the back of his stomach then the front. "Good, good you're doing great, keep up the pressure." The kid has pinched shut close to a hundred minor veins and capillaries with his hands, now I go about the same in a more permanent fasion for the Mr. Ungrateful's arteries. "So, what's your name?"

He looks up at me even though my head is facing the wound, I can see it with every eye and my ghost behind me. "What," his voice is distant and breathy, but he doesn't smell of fear anymore, "why do you want to kno-"

"Boy you shut your trap; you don't say nothing you hear me nothing!"

I ignore him and answer his question, "it will take a while to seal some of the arteries, and I would enjoy some talking." It helps distract me from eating the blood in his wound as I have to use my cells to move and join his tissues back together. It is really distracting when I can feel all my cells scream for food, we know that this is not Lisa. I give myself a mental shake, thinking in unison is a bad idea right now.

There is a pause as I continue to work before the boy opens his mouth, "Terry."

"I told you to shut up boy, don't talk to the frea-" I clap my hand over the annoying noise faster than the other two could likely see, let alone stop.

"That's better," I mutter as I stitch the connective structures of an artery wall, "so Terry, want to tell me why your here?"

"Uh, isn't it obvious," he says looking back at me, "to fight against the chin-"

I cut him off, "no no I don't care about that, I mean why are you here in this warehouse." I pause as I think about it, "well maybe that part doesn't matter too, so why the E88 or gangs in general."

"Well, the empire is powerful," he starts his voice getting stronger, "and I don't exactly like the ABB, or I guess they don't like me."

"So, protection," I say as I finish my second layer of the second artery, "do you think it actually works?"

"Yeah," he nods, "they got the most capes-"

"And they are where?"

"Uh..."

"Look," I look up from my work with my head, "this is a big place with maybe forty...fifty guards, right?"

He nods so I continue, "we are just two people, and we took you out in a under an hour, that is plenty of time to call for back up, and they didn't send any." I pause as he frowns at me, but I just continue after he makes no move to defend, "and what if they did send capes, say it is Hookwolf right? That is a massive rage fueled man who transforms into a blender. He is well known for not giving a shit about people who he considers weak. If you call for help, what sort of person does he see when he finds out that fifty men were taken out by two newbie capes?"

I watch Terry get paler, going from milk to paper. I decide to continue as I notice myself struggling to not eat the delicious blood, I'm swimming in. I breath out a shudder as my control slips and I consume a single red blood cell. Time to leave this, I've done all the repair I can. "Look all I'm saying is that cape stuff and gangs just means your now in that danger more often, you could have got a job saved up gas money and moved away, even if it would take forever, it would still be a safer route." I stand and move away from the bloody hole, "keep putting pressure on it Terry, I've done all I can so I'm going to go call for an ambulance, stay here."

I look to my left as Nimi walks around the corner, dragging behind her are well, the gangsters. Nimi's wires are tugging them along by their hands, some are up walking, but most are being dragged. I can see the car chase guys near the back and the ones in the box canyon I dropped with the hair "trick" are there too. "Hey Nimi, is that everyone?"

"Yep!" She smiles as slight bounce in her walk, "do you want me to rope up these one while you go get a phone?" She points to the unconscious thugs at my feet.

"Uh, I got a phone," I turn to Terry, "It's uh, in my jacket pocket."

"Perfect." I get the phone from him and call for the paramedics and police. With that done, and ignoring fat Nazi, I pop open one of the crates. Inside is row upon row of dark metal guns, all neatly arranged in rows. I then call the PRT, because as much as I'm mad at them, this is a lot of guns. I then ask Swarm for Lisa's opinion, when she tells me that she is up, sending the texture information of the gun in my hands and all the details I can think of about the place. I don't like her report back...

The Police and ambulances arrived on time, thirty minutes the former and ten minutes the later, while Frankie and I sat with Terry and the other gangsters. Chubby Nazi is taken away by the ambulance, after it is determined that he is the only critically hurt person, the rest had at most a few broken fingers and one with a very nasty headache. Outside we waited for the police and PRT, but still the police arrive first, fine by me those guys are jerks... except maybe Armsmaster he's just an accidental jerk. Jerk by association!

Anyways, the police arrived, and the gangers were loaded up in a couple paddy wagons. I smile and walk over to Frankie; she is talking adamantly with a familiar officer. What was here... Officer Jones, that's right. She let us leave early from the night that I first met Lisa. Oh, and I almost got killed by Glory Girl back then too. I remember us liking her... I wonder if I can steal a hug.

"...so that is how we found this place, do you know how the guns are going to be handled?" Frankie asks as I sneak up behind the officer.

"We don't really have an evidence room big enough for a warehouse full of guns," She starts, Jones's voice on the deeper side it sounds smokey to my tentacles. She is shorter than me or Frankie, but I think she is taller than Swarm or Lisa, and she is curvy. Also probably built like a brick, her arms look tough under her long sleeves. "Probably have the PRT take it off our hands or maybe send them over to Boston if they want them."

I'm standing just behind her prepared to hug, but Frankie outs me on my plan. "Nimi, no, you have to ask if you want a hug."

"Wha-," Jones turns to look at me leaning over her, "uhhh..."

I stumble back and grin shyly as some pink embarrassment leaks from my back, "uh, hi Officer Jones." We stare at each other for a good second, before I slowly raise my arms up, "can I have a hug?" I try to pour my heart and soul into my puppy dog, eye.

"Oh, Nimi," she tenses. I've never actually met with Officer Jones, I talked to an Officer Horris that night. She looks from me to Taylor, who just made a defeated gesture. She then turns back to me, "I- sure." From the defeated sound of her voice, I know that my puppy dog eye won, and with a squeal of victory I pull the tiny human into my arms and off the ground.

I like hugs...but there is a reason for me being extra hug-y recently. Just this week I've hugged both of my mommies thirty-two times each, daddy I've hugged seventeen times, and my others I lost count. Lisa is too sick for hugs. I can feel Lisa in my arms, but she can't lift her arms around me. I'm too big and her arms are too heavy to reach, and it hurts her. I pull Jones closer in my arms. I still want hugs, but it isn't fair to ask them from the one I want them from, not until she's better.

"Is she always like this," she huffs in my arms, breaking my thoughts from my dark place. I hide them before Taylor or Swarm can see it. They notice me hiding something but are silent.

"Not until recently," shit she knows, "I think something is upsetting her, but hey hugs are nice, right? I don't mind it when she gives me one."

"No, I suspect not," the tiny human in my arms laughs, "she is quite squishy." My leak of embarrassment becomes a cloud as pink curls up through my tentacles. I open my mouth to retort, but I see a vehicle approach with my ghost on my side. I then hear the sound of a familiar bike approaching although far off. Unfortunately, we are approached by a trooper instead of a certain protectorate hero.

"Hello Frankie, I am PRT Officer Garth," I look down at the solid reflective mask, and repress the urge to growl, "please state what happened?"

"Hmm, usually it is Armsmaster who keeps contact with us," I can feel the cold of Taylor bleeding through the link, she doesn't want this guy here either.

"Armsmaster is busy," Garth's smell is musky and a bit acidic, or to translate prideful, "I was assigned by him to act as a go between with your team and his."

"If he is busy, then why can I hear his motorcycle approaching?" My question slipped out as a growl, which causes the plastic man to stiffen, but also makes Officer Jones stiffen too. I feel a bit guilty in the back of my head, but I am still staring down at the PRT goon.

He pauses for a second, before I notice a hand going to his pistol, "ma'am I'm going to have to ask you to calm down and put the officer down." Out of the corner of my ghost I can see some of the other police officers try to see what is going on. I hear the motorcycle get closer, but I don't think that the humans can yet. "Garth" smells even more smug...

"Now hold on," Officer Jones starts, "I am perfectly-"

"It's fine officer," I say my growl practically a burn in my throat as I repress it. I put Jones onto her feet and unwrap my arms. I can see some of the other officers getting close, so I raise my voice a bit, "thank you for the hug Officer Jones." Two could play at this game, this guy is not good enough to frame me for anything, Emma taught us all well...

"Now, why don't you tell us what you want," Taylor's voice is not cold, I think it has slipped far beyond that. The air around our breaths is visible, and it isn't the warm winter night doing that.

"I am simply trying to-" At that moment the motorcycle becomes audible to humans. I know because Officer Jones is now reaching for her weapon too. Garth doesn't get scared, I can't smell that on him, but I can smell some frustration. "Never mind you have a good night." He then turns and walks off. I move to follow, but a freezing hand grips mine before I can move.

"No," Taylor says, "Swarm can follow him instead, at least for the next week." I nod after a few seconds and feel our other send an instance of herself to follow the man. Who goes into the PRT vehicle and then drives off, with all of the PRT officers he brought.

"Okay, what the fuck," I turn to Jones as she speaks, her eyes staring after the receding truck. The officers walking over finally reach us even as Jones turns to them.

"Everything alright Jones?" A gruff officer in a winter coat says his hands running together to warm them up. The three other officers he's with look at everything, from Jones to the truck to Frankie and me.

"Did any of you get the license of the that truck, I wasn't in a good spot for it." Jones smells irritated, just a subtle hint of cortisol, grapefruit, and adrenaline.

"No," a younger officer with dark eyes and even darker skin says, "why?"

"Cause I think the PRT would like to know that they got people posing as their people," Jones growls. The sound of the motorcycle eventually becomes the sight of a motorcycle as it turns around a corner at the end of the street.

"Ah, great, tin-man is here," the groan of one officer is quickly cut by the older one coughing.

"Well, you can tell them yourself when he gets here," the gruff officer says before turning, "I'll call it into the PRT, see if they'll send an actual truck for the guns."

Jones nods, and I somehow find myself nodding too. He seems like a good leader, reminds me of the FBI guy, Dagshaw. We all turn to watch as Armsmaster walks up to us, he is hunching slightly, and I can smell a little blood...must be a rough night. "Nimi, Frankie, officer, you wanted a PRT presence at the scene of a non-cape related crime," he pauses as I think he reads something. His voice is still mechanical, like if you gave a typewriter lips, but maybe that is just how he talks. "Something about a warehouse full of guns on Morison street."

"Yeah, it's behind us, but I think you should hear something first, come on," he turns to Jones as she walks over to the warehouse. We follow, the mechanical click behind us tells me he is following too.

"That is...disturbing."

Armsmaster doesn't sound all that disturbed, even as he examines what Lisa determined is something called a Heckler & Koch MG4 machine gun. Apparently, that is what is in most of these crates, that isn't ammo, but we found several grenade launchers, sniper rifles, and pistols. They come from all over and most countries are listed by Lisa as their origin, but mostly from Germany or places in Europe.

Everyone knows that the empire has ties to Gesellschaft, a neo-Nazi group in Europe that has more power than most of the remaining countries there too. With this kind of fire power in the city is a powder keg waiting to happen. I turn to Nimi, but quickly look back to Armsmaster as he continues. "As far as I'm aware there is no one matching the description of Officer Garth in the PRT ENE," he sets the gun back into the crate, "the fact that he not only tried to remove you from the scene, but also handle this many guns are not good things."

I frown too, now, "how do you think they got those uniforms?"

He turns to look at me. The beard looks like it has been recently groomed, and despite the smell of blood coming off of him, he doesn't look too bad. "Not enough information, I would have to see them myself," he starts, "if they are cheap, I could probably spot it, but I do know of several tinkers in the Toybox that sell cheap disguises with stranger tech abilities." He shrugs, "really they could have got them from a lot of places, them knowing to be here is the more important clue."

"You think that the PRT has a mole?" Jones questions while examining one of the bullets from an open case, turning it in her hand.

"The PRT frequently use the tactics of dummy moles to spread miss information among the gangs of the city, but this seems to suggest that it is someone much higher up in the organization," he turns to pick up what Lisa called a Panzerfaust 3, a fucking anti-tank weapon, "it is also impossible to determine what organization it could be, ABB, E88, probably not Merchants, but anyone would want their hands on this kind of fire power."

"We too would like the weapons," Armsmaster looks up at Swarm from her spot atop a crate. Her feet kicking in the air arms helping her lean back.

"What, why would you want them," Nimi says as she pulls out a huge rifle. It looks like a pistol in her hands... I think I have a good idea for a weapon. I shake it off as Swarm speaks again.

"Izzy described for us the various chemical components that make up much of their structure," she begins as we listen, "several of these chemicals we will need for our metamorphosis." Oh, so she wants to just eat them okay. I was imagining an army of cute little Swarm instances wielding automatics, but I guess this makes more sense. Looking at the two humans tells me they weren't thinking the same thing.

"The PRT is aware of this metamorphosis," he begins slowly, "and has some serious questions and concerns too. Would you care to explain?"

My other swings her legs for a bit her head tilted as she thinks. It doesn't take her long to decide. "Okay," we watch her drop twenty feet as she jumps from her crate, "metamorphosis involves all of the instances of Swarm joining for a time as an accelerant of a radio-isotope activates a mutagenic state." I can't gauge Armsmaster's reaction, but I can smell something close to excitement. She continues, "after a brief period of cellular and genetic restructuring Swarm will be whole, and reach adolescence, which we will stay at until adulthood."

"What happens at adulthood," Jones looks lost as she asks that, and the fear under her scent is unpleasant. We like her, we don't want her to be scared of us.

"We will be sexually available," Swarm deadpans. I think we all feel it when I smack my face hard enough it makes Nimi smack her own eye.

"Ow, Frankie!"

"Sorry, Neems..."

"I see," okay at least Armsmaster is embarrassed too. His body language completely shifted, and he smells no longer excited. "It is unusual for a cape power to cause such changes in structure, are you a case 53?"

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that, we didn't really tell him anything... and he helped me... Even when the PRT tried to stop me. Maybe I should ease him into it?

"Yes, we identify as an altered cape."

"Do you know any more about this metamorphosis?"

"We would suffer greatly if it was prevented," Swarm states before changing the subject, "can we have the weapons?"

"What chemicals to you need exactly," Armsmaster places a gun back into a box as he tilts his head, "you mentioned a radioactive element."

"High carbon steel or just any grade and sufficient carbon, silicon oils of any dilution, sulfur gas, water, carbolic acid, three lead based car batteries, and the radio-isotope, we are using the Americium-241 from several smoke detectors," her arms twitch as I feel her irritation, "speed of metamorphosis would be improved with a stronger isotope, but plutonium-239 is hard to require and we can't buy the correct uranium isotopes to produce it."

"That sounds," Armsmaster pauses as he thinks, "frustrating..."

I feel something strong from Swarm's ghost, elation, happiness, and understanding. Did...did Swarm just bond with Armsmaster through atomic chemistry? I mean I'm not mad, I'm starting to like Armsmaster too, it is just weird that it happened like this. I watch as Swarm's arms start to vibrate, I guess this is fine. Swarms happy so that is only a good thing.

"How much plutonium would this require?" And it is just getting weirder as Armsmaster sounds excited too, "and you mentioned Americium-241, does that mean it doesn't matter what type of emissive radiation."

"Well..."

approximately 38 minutes later

"So, you don't actually know what type of biological changes are going to take place," Armsmaster's hands move as he excitedly talks, "but you have theories about it based on the base chemistry involved?"

"Yep."

This has been going on for a bit, with either Armsmaster or Swarm switching between one word and twenty-word answers to advanced chemistry questions. Sure, both me and Nimi understand the conversation as we sit here on the floor next to a really lost Officer Jones. We both could join in, less so Nimi as she understands but doesn't care for the science, but...

"We think we will be able to bind cellularly to crystals and fill them with photonic energies that..."

I watch as our quietest other, waves her hands just as excitedly as the grown man she is talking to. The persistent sound of giggles in her echoes as she talks at a rapid pace, her eagerness to hear Armsmaster's response, and her excited hand shifting as she explains some new concept to the equally excited tinker.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not just a really weird cape of some kind, and I just became undead at the same time. But I am literally missing the brain tissue for it to be there, dad has got the structure though just inactive. Maybe it skips a generation? Whatever, doesn't matter, moms are proof enough that I am not one of the living.

"So can I have the weapons?"

"Hmm, I have duties to remove them from the street," Armsmaster starts, "and I can't give up evidence for destruction, where were you planning to get the requisite chemicals before you knew of this weapons cache?"

"We were going to consume a ship out in the graveyard, but we'll likely have to eat a few as the rust on some of them is extensive."

"I see," he puts a hand on his chin as he thinks, " and we have a mole... can you ask Izzy a question for me?"

"Sure," Swarm exclaims. I look over at Nimi as she looks at me, Swarm just sounded like Nimi just now... Nimi's smile stretches across her face, and I can feel one start to make it across mine. She is acting so cute right now... "What do you want to ask?"

"Are these firearms marked by shipment, and do they still have their registration numbers?"

Swarm tilts her head as she thinks, before nodding to something, "One second we will check." Suddenly a few doors open to the sound of hundreds, read thousands, of feet. The ringing sound of a thousand crates being opened at the same time, makes Jones and Armsmaster nervous, but soon we can see an avalanche of Swarms flooding down our little section of the warehouse. "She requires a larger sample size and," I watch as all of the instances around us rapidly change the amounts of arms and hands they have, "surface area..." The image of Swarm wrapped around Lisa, the texture of a thousand numbers across Swarm's surface all pressing against a Lisa in nothing but underwear.

My face gray's out and I can see clouds of red, pink puffing out of Nimi's back like a chimney. Armsmaster's voice just makes me glad that only my mouth is visible on my mask. This is too embarrassing... "You said that after your metamorphosis you would be whole," he says as he looks over the wave of shadows around the room, "how many of you are there?"

The one Swarm instance in charge of talking tilts her head, before they all answer in unison, "seven-thousand two hundred sixty-one." The warehouse reverberates with her answer, but after a minute of searching all of the activity stops. "They are marked by batch of shipment, all of them are registered."

"Can you remember all of the numbers if possible or maybe-"

"Done," a few Swarm instances walk up to the tinker, fuse together and then print out a giant sheet of paper- Oh, no it's silk not paper. "This is the entire catalog of this warehouse, we included every weapon and ammo magazine with their: type, serial number, color, batch number, and in what shipping crate they are in."

Swarm gets smarter the more of her is focused on a task, this is close to three thousand Swarm instances. That means that instead of just one brain thinking in this warehouse, she has thousands thinking in unison right now. So, her just making the task of cataloguing a building full of guns take a couple of minutes, is totally possible. And showing off... Lisa will be so proud if she doesn't already know.

Armsmaster silently looks over the list of weapons before tilting his own head, a quick nod and then he speaks, "yes I think this will do, you have my permission to destroy these weapons and keep them off the streets, this is all the information we would probably get from them anyways, more efficient, good work." He pauses before adding, "none of them have been fired, have they?"

"No." Swarm's arms are vibrating and both Nimi and I can hear the words "good work" over and over again in her head. When you think about it, Swarm is the youngest of us and I was obsessed with capes when I was young. Armsmaster was my hero, then I met him and some of the magic of that died that day, but as Nimi and I stare at Swarm vibrating as most of her bodies are turned to stare at him. I realize that maybe he is still her hero... It's a nice thought.

And then the Endbringer alarms go off...

Again thank you to MaskedCritic, and anyone who has commented with constructive criticism or just happiness with the story...

GraphiteCrow · May 27, 2021

I can say that this chapter does work better than its last iteration. Taylor not eating people and Armsmaster and the Group being friendlier to each other does fit with how the story is progressing.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 27, 2021

GraphiteCrow said:
I can say that this chapter does work better than its last iteration. Taylor not eating people and Armsmaster and the Group being friendlier to each other does fit with how the story is progressing.

Yes, Masked pointed out that Armsmaster's dynamic with our group had changed since last meeting, and I ignored it in the first one. He also pointed to the over abundance of violence as jarring, so I went back and looked through my notes and the chapters. Taylor had already begun to suppress her cannibalism after Danny told her not to eat any body in a very early chapter, which she does in the Merchant fight at the storehouse. In contrast, The Lung fight was supposed to show the brutal contrast of Taylor's inner instincts reacting to a truly hostile environment, we get a lesser one with Nimi at the Uber and L33t fight as she needs to protect children.

MaskedCritic · May 30, 2021

Oh yeah, this works a lot better. And is adorable. Seeing Swarm giddy like a little kid that just got a gold star on their school work for the first time is just... my teeth hurt now, it was so sweet.

Having that immediately alongside a classic Taylor moment of being accidentally terrifying beyond belief ("She has how many clones?!" The living all thought in horror.) makes it adorifying... and that just fits perfectly. The theme of this story has definitely been "This makes me want to scream, and I am not sure if it is because of terror or because it is too cute. Possibly both." for the entire time, so this just extends the overarching theme wonderfully.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · May 30, 2021

MaskedCritic said:
adorifying

new tag

Tumultuous_Anxiety · Jun 8, 2021

Hey, I finished part 1, working on part 2 and a few interludes with some character that have been missing for a bit... hope you enjoy...

[ERROR: conditions divergent from expected outcome...]

[searching for cause...]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[...no cause found]

[simulated structures 5% divergent from physical model...]

[…adjusting for ERROR]

[…]

[…]

[…adjustment successful]

[destination...set]

[commence attack]

"Dragon where is it happening?"

I begin walking to the door of the warehouse, ignoring the flurry of movement all around me as the many clones of the young cape hurriedly start to empty the crates of guns. I'm sure that when... if I get back from this fight the Director is going to be upset that I gave the weapons to the independents. Especially considering what I've learned about this "metamorphosis", a bit too close to bio-tinkering for the Director most likely. I may be...efficient with people, but even I know that the Director is biased. I look at the rapidly emptying crates as a Swarm clone I pass starts to eat the bullets from a container next to me.

Fascinating...

"Sorry Armsmaster, I'm still getting the word out...it's DC, Collin."

"PRT main HQ," I frown, the sound of sirens cutting off confirms that at least the Bay is not the target, "how long has it been going on?"

"Twenty minutes," I step out into the cold, but pause when those words registered. She must have sensed this because Dragon continues, "she blocked the signal for the alarm going out, right now the only capes currently on the scene are the ones that were either part of DC's population or those from the surrounding areas that could hear the alarm, but many of DC capes are missing."

I hear footsteps, a massive amount, behind me. Looking over my shoulder I can see Frankie, Nimi, and a good amount of Swarm following me. " What about the Triumvirate, or evacuations?"

"I was able to contact Legend and he is on the scene, Alexandria is currently in England as London containment was lost last week," that seems bad, I continue walking to my motorcycle. I need to get to the Rig and relay to my team before transport. DC is a heavily surveillance place though... "As for evacuations, I think some of the government that was on site was airlifted out, but Collin, it's the Simurgh."

Blocking the Endbringer alarm, that is... a new strategy, not untypical for the psychic Endbringer, but still not a tactic we have seen. "Okay I'll be on my way," I look over on my display as I receive a message, "we have a transporter, arrival time the next ten, see you later."

"Good luck Collin."

I nod disconnecting the call. The heavy step of boots and movement of the shadow clones suggests that they want to talk. "Yes," I look up at the trio. Taylor Hebert, with her red spiral and bright eyes hiding between the strands of moving hair, Nimi, with her rainbow armor of bone a single glowing red eye staring down at me from her eight-foot height, and Swarm, a featureless shadow with three pairs of arms and seven thousand copies.

The unnamed group, or did they have a name? They lack a real public presence... bad PR, they should work on that. They're an odd one, but they seem to have good intentions despite their theorized diet. Makes no real difference to me as long as it never becomes a proven fact that the Hebert's household is full of cannibals, then it will be out of my hands.

"Where is it happening?" Frankie's voice is strong, and she holds herself like she isn't scared. I wish Dragon was still here, she would be able to tell me if I'm just misunderstanding them.

"Washington, DC, started twenty minutes ago, we have transport if you're looking to join."

She shifts her feet, and I watch as several eyes disappear from her hair only to reappear in new positions. I note the timer I set for the fight and start move towards my bike. The sound of a thousand feet following me is surprising. I won't begrudge the help this strange group will bring. They are all considered anti-thinkers, here is hoping that they are anti-masters too....

Three hours later...

The world has been a blur of activity since I got here...

I grip a red covered hand, ignoring my hunger as I haul up the downed cape. He is wearing something dark with some gold trim, but even through that I can see the way the white bone leaks from his leg. It looks so appetizing...

Going from point A to point B, helping people...

I run past the stone statue of Abraham Lincoln to get to the next one, this one a flying mover or maybe a brute? I don't know, it all looks the same when they bleed all over me. Ignore it and move to the next, there are stones crushing a girl in pink's legs, she is crying even if she is making no noise. I feel Nimi's want to keep her, she is smaller than us... I want to baby her too.

This is what I wanted...

I slide underneath some rubble and can feel my others reaching their own targets. "CD-13, next after this one," I whisper as I reach out for a cape in solid green. I try my best to not smell his warm body, the smell of his short breath, bitter with sweet iron, his lung punctured by three ribs and his collar bone. The smell as I run back louder than the persistent scream of the reason I am here.

…right?

I set the bleeding man down into a cot, the smell of broken bodies still clinging to life surround me as I decide to "catch my breath". The triage around me is set up around one of the hospitals here in DC that is just out of range of the Simurgh's screams. I watch as the nurses and doctors try to heal the capes and small number of non-hostile civilians that me, my others, and the other capes that can't actual hurt an Endbringer, bring to them. I'm glad that I can help, but it doesn't mean that this is easy.

I watch, with no small amount of bleed over affection from Nimi, as Panacea barks orders and moves to help critical capes and the small number of civilians we have found that didn't try to attack every one they saw. Her hands look lovely stained with red like that...

I shake my head, it isn't fair for me to find all this... appealing. I am trying to save people, I shouldn't be so hungry. I stand to exit, it isn't helping me just being here in the tent, salivating over the heroes and villains barely clinging to life. I want to do more...

Swarm, one of the thousand she brought with for the fight, walks over to me. She has probably brought in the most, and in any other circumstance I'd feel a desire to be a bit competitive, but our hunger is insane right now and I don't feel the desire to have fun. I can feel her hunger too, it is my own after all, but one can see it if they know how. She is shaking, her echo-y voice is full of snarls just hidden under its bass-y tones. She is constantly biting her fingers off... "Just hold on, all Endbringer fights end eventually, when it is over, we can be with our Lisa."

I nod as she nods back, comforting words, but the tent of broken bodies and blood is filled with spider webs and fungus. I salivate as my eyespots stare at a doctor pressing his hands into an open chest cavity, the smell of dead cells is everywhere, and the living are hot and tantalizing in the only way living tissues are. A few nurses look over at me with concern, I finally hear that my stomach is growling. I leave back for more food to bring back to the tent of honey and death...

I am not a cape... I think that it is kind of obvious as I have seen more capes here than I have ever seen in my life and my death combined. So, while my mind has decided to become hell on earth as I am not allowed to eat any of these... people... I've also become aware of just how limited I am compared to some capes. As for the wanting to eat everyone, I am surrounded by violence and blood as I move to get injured people out of the Endbringer's path, and it is severely fucking with me.

I know, I know, I am exceptionally hungry, and I can learn from my past. When I get really hungry, I start losing my mind. It happened at school so it can happen here, but unlike before when I was surrounded by what my body considered "acceptable targets" I am now surrounded by too much "food". Now Taylor, I say to you who is myself as I now truly start to lose it, I thought you solved your food problem, you know back when we made the super producers and Lung was turned into a delicious meat battery? Well...

I'm currently running with my arms and legs fully exposed, only a leotard of my slime mold suit remains purely because Lisa reminded me that humans don't run around naked. Which I remember making sense when I was alive, but I don't really understand right now in my current mental state. Back to the whole food thing... My arms are inky black, full coverage, there are no blank spots on my arms at all. I am covered in super producers, and while it is cold here in DC, the skies are clear. The morning sun isn't for another hour.

I am starving, it is in every thought as I race through these streets to the next cape or downed victim. The grey world of semi dark morning just barely feeding me like a slow drip, as the super producers I've covered over my bare arms and legs are not feeding me enough to compensate for my cells to stop their screaming for the food around me. I probably look crazy too. I know I can technically see myself with my ghost trailing behind me, but I'm not the best judge of what is sane right now, so I'll just describe it.

In addition to my suit being in its current state, my hair is wild as and my eyespots have skipped past a silver burning glow to a smoldering fire of white light. Each strand covered in lines of teeth, luminous as I saw through brick and steel to get into collapsed buildings.

I'm sure that if anyone could see more than my mouth under the red spiral mask, they'd see my wide eyes bugging out as I hunt down the dying. I've been doing nothing but running from the battle to the triage tent and back for the past three hours. Making this the longest running Simurgh fights in the history books, according to Lisa they only really last for thirty minutes. I look with some eyespots on the back of my head as the newest set of blaster arrive in the air to take place of the old ones. This is the Simurgh, so just being around her runs the risk that you will succumb to her control.

"CD-15, I got word of a few friendly civilians trapped in the hospital, I need a brute or two to help me get inside."

I look down at my wrist at the tinker tech timer, a bomb that makes sure that you don't become a hostile by vaporizing you if you spend too long exposed to the angel's scream. Thankfully, I have confirmed that she can't affect the undead or Nimi, so we have been pretty useful in the fight. "This is Frankie, I'm heading your way," I start running to the south.

So yeah, this was probably not a good idea to come to this fight. In retrospect I should have probably stayed home. Lisa and dad would be less worried about me, and I could be in a city that has a stable food source without all of the stress here making me obscenely hungry. Also crazy, did I mention that to you? Most of these buildings are full of dead bodies, be them human, bug, mold, plant you name it, but I can't stop to eat any of it. One nothing about eating bodies saves lives, two... Well, there is no two. People are dying and I need to bring them to the doctors, eating takes up time, time the dying don't have. So fuck my hunger, and fuck you too crazy personification of my inner thoughts. I'm going to be a hero, you just watch!

"This is Nimi, I am also close to there, be there in a sec!"

I smile as her voice crackles over the radio, she sounds good, better than me at least. A quick glance over her with my ghost tells me she is just better at hiding her distress. I frown, I can feel a long cuddle secession in my future. Which is good, I don't think that Lisa will be moving from her spot between Nimi, Swarm, and I for at least a few days. I smile again at the thought of our Lisa perfectly comfortable on top of Nimi as I lay on top of her, Swarm threading our limbs around her as we collectively destress.

A scream loud and inhuman makes me wince out of my day dream, and I focus on the flailing Endbringer behind me with some eyespots. She has pretty much stayed in a single spot for most of the fight, just above the Reflecting Pool near the Washington Monument and the Hero Memorial grave. It burns that because of this screaming bitch Hero's, one of the first members of the Triumvirate and the greatest tinker to ever live, grave in Washington will be sealed off from the world by a containment wall.

I try to stare a hole through her head as her razor sharp wings slice through the air, the cars and buildings shattering as they orbit her. A cyclone of broken rubble shreds through the fliers that I can see, a few of them are the new blasters I saw. I scowl, a funny thought of making Armsmaster proud intrudes on my rapidly decreasing sanity, and run harder. I can feel Swarm move in to catch several of the capes that are falling. Need to focus, need to stop thinking about food, need to just last a bit farther, need to be more prepared next time, need to kill the monsters...

I stop my internal monologue as I get close to the hospital, DC General... insert cardinal direction here. I laugh internally and feel my hunger, and stress, lessen with the bad joke. It just comes back when I get closer. A man is next to another cape in purple, he is screaming. I'm at the point that I can't distinguish faces hunger, but not at the point that I can't understand language so I can hear what he is saying. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN DOCTOR," he screams, his neurochemistry a confusing jumble as it tries to embalm his brain, "I WANT TO SEE MY WIFE, I KNOW YOU ARE HIDING HER!"

I wince as I walk closer, the man is clearly losing it, most of the civilians in the last two hours have been. The strange mix of dopamine, cortisol, adrenaline, and oxytocin in his head is kind of a given that he is losing it. They, the effected, are not dangerous by themselves to capes, but they tend to attack people that are acting normal. The fact that this one is trying to get into a hospital... I want to eat him...

"What seems to be the problem," I step into view and watch as the crazy man whips to face me. His, mouth I think, opens and he starts to make a noise, but it dies as he steps back from me. " Do you need a hand, sir," the stressed tone of my voice comes out like a rattle, and I can smell the crazy trickle down his leg, "leave."

I watch him run almost bowling over the purple cape chuckling behind him. "Hey thanks I've been trying to get him to leave for the last couple of minutes," I look over at the purple clad cape, his face a blurry mess to me, "you Frankie, right?" I nod, trying my best to not pay attention to the small bleed on his leg. It is practically a paper cut but is still enough to be distracting to my stomach. "Seismic, I got a call that some people got trapped in the hospital, thinker's confirmed that they aren't one of the crazy ones."

Seismic starts walking over to the front entrance, and I can immediately see the problem as I follow. A ten foot block of concrete covers the entrance completely blocking it off. The rebar sticking out of it tells me that it is probably one piece too, a little too much for the stick thin man in purple next to me. "What about the other entrances," I ask, as I look over the block.

"From what I can tell they are crushed and structurally unsound." I look over at him. "My power is with vibrations, so I can see deep into structures," I watch as he places a hand on the block and see his hand blur, "the block is five feet thick, but the entrance is safe enough to pass through once we remove this one."

I nod, "I am going to cut the block into movable pieces for Nimi, step back please." The sound of my hair chain sawing its way through the ground as I swing it at the block of concrete is not soothing. Imagine nails on chalkboards but a thousand times worse. I didn't flinch though, I've been doing this for the entire fight, cutting into places to get the search and rescue capes into crushed buildings. I loud boom and Nimi's presence in my mind tells me that she is here.

"Oh good, could you help move the blocks," I move to the side from my cutting and get to work with my other. I cut, she grabs, the block before me taken apart piecemeal as we bore a hole through it. It takes us maybe ten minutes with stops by Seismic, a villain from Colorado, to check for stability in the concrete. We eventually find ourselves in the front lobby of the hospital.

"They said that they are stuck of the eleventh floor," Seismic says as he heads deeper into the building, "I saw that the elevator shaft is off so we should take that stairs."

We nod and Nimi chimes in from behind me as we follow, "do we know how many are trapped?"

The stairwell is rough looking, and a lot of the steps are showing some severe damage. "Are these stable," I say as Seismic mounts the steps, "Nimi weights a bit more than us."

"Hey," Nimi's smile is barely contained, "you calling me fat!"

It gets a few laughs from Seismic and me, the relief of laughing at something is shared as our stress decrease. "Funny, but yeah the stairs are safe, it is mostly just surface damage," we follow as he starts to run up the steps, before yelling back to us, "see? Anyways we got four maybe five people, to answer your first question, only one is unable to walk."

The rest of the short ascent up to the floor was spent in silence. Nimi and I not needing to breathe, and Seismic able to run up the stairs without breaking a sweat. On the eleventh floor we started looking, it did not take us long to find them.

"Over here, we're in here!" True to Seismic words there are five people, an elderly couple, two men, and a kid maybe eleven or twelve. "Oh good, you heard, are you the one we talked to on the phone dear?"

"Uh, no, ma'am, we are just the ones closest," I nod at the purple cape's words, "I'm told that one of you is injured?"

"That would be my dad," I turn to look down at the eleven year old tugging on my hand, "he hurt his leg, bad." The kid is sniffling as they lead me to one of the chairs holding one of the men. The man's face is bloody, and he is holding a hand to his head. His leg is at an odd angle around his foot, a quick touch of his body and I can read the superficial damage. His ankle is broken in four places, and his head has a concussion. "Can you help him?"

I look at the blurry face of the kid, it slowly clears as I focus and reveal a freckled brown eyed girl as my hunger takes a back seat to a pack instinct, protect children. Her face is covered in tear marks as she holds her father's hands, her eyes are big, and she has a wide mouth like me. I smile without revealing my teeth, "of course, what is your name?"

"Emma."

I feel my core tighten uncomfortably, and behind me I can feel Nimi's ghost whine. I don't let my discomfort show, even as the words of everyone else in the room become incomprehensible. I look over the damaged living in front of me with my cells. The chemistry of living flesh makes them scream with hunger, but I can't act on that, it would hurt Emma to harm her father...

I ignore my rapidly deteriorating mental state as I lift the man up into my arms. He represses a scream of pain, as I set his ankle in place with my hair shedding the wrap to act as a split/bandage. "Nimi, you carry him and the two others," I say pointing to the elderly couple as I hand her Emma's father, "I'll carry her." I can feel Nimi's simultaneous relief and disappointment at me carrying her. I pick up the small warm human, Emma is tiny, and fragile, and safe in my arms.

…

I need to get her to the triage with her dad. I mentally shake off the mind fuck that is this day and follow Seismic and Nimi out of the hospital room. The others are talking, but the words don't make any sense. "Why are you so cold?" I look down at her in my arms, they are shivering, it's still winter and they don't have a coat. I also don't have a body temperature and have been outside all day, I must feel freezing. A quickly formed bladder of vibrating hair and water generates heat in my body raising my temperature.

"Better?" My voice is solid as I try to keep my naked concern out of my voice.

"Yeah," she snuggles closer into my arms, "are you a hero?" Her eyes are wet, but she is calm, and I can smell that her stress hormones have decreased. Open curiosity is in her voice and on her face... so cute...

"I try to be," I say currently struggling to keep both my hunger and more affectionate instincts down. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to just start cuddling a stranger's kid. Nimi is jealous and I can feel her ghost press into mine, to be closer to her. "Why are you in the hospital," I ask as I try to keep her motherly instincts out of my head.

"Dad was picking me up from my blood stuff," she grimaces.

"Blood stuff?" The hunger leaves me entirely, I now only feel the concerned starvation as my instincts struggles to not pull the child in my arms close.

"Dad says that I got the sickness that got mommy before she died," I stare down at her as she continues, "so I got to go to the hospital and do the blood stuff until they find it."

"I'm sorry, I know how it feels to lose a mom," the struggle to not hug this child to me is worse than the hunger. In the background, I quickly read through a few of her dead skin cells looking for this "disease". It doesn't take long to find her genetic predisposition to ovarian cancer. It isn't active currently thank God, so Emma is cancer free and even if she wasn't I'm holding Panacea down until she fixed it so that she never gets it. "Is your dad taking care of you by himself?" Taylor... no, that is... no she isn't your kid. This isn't the same as Panacea or Vista, this is you projecting your problems onto a child! I feel both Swarm and Nimi recoil from that as we all back up from making our attachment to this kid.

"Yeah, dad has been working at home while my uncle helps around the house."

I smile, both because she sounds happy and because she doesn't seem to have the same problems I did. I don't even break my smile when I remembered that she will never be able to leave DC after they put up a containment wall. "That's good, family is important, I'm glad that your dad is sticking close to you."

I walk out of the hospital and the open air, relaxing a bit as the hospital wasn't empty, but there isn't anybody living in the building. "Well, once we get you and your dad to the healers, I'll ask my healer friend to see if she can help," my smile turns as she gives me a warry look, "you, okay?"

"I don't have to get another needle do I," her face an adorable pout as she whines about doctors.

"No no, Panacea doesn't use needles," I squeeze her with my arms, "she doesn't need to take blood either, just to hold your hand for a bit."

"Okay."

I should have been paying attention to the street, I should have noticed that the man from outside before, the crazy one, was back. I should have noticed the machine guns and extra crazies he brought with him. I was still smiling down at her when a hailstorm of gun fire tears the world apart. When I felt innocent blood get forced into me from armor piercing rounds. When I could feel Nimi's hunger become wrath as the humans she was carrying become bloody dust. When the world went cold for me, and I realized I was screaming... I moved...

Okay so feeling shitty is just a common thing when it comes to writing character death...

IFtaku · Jun 8, 2021

This remind me have she or they interact with Vista lately?
Also do you have any image references of the girls and their cape costumes?

Tumultuous_Anxiety · Jun 8, 2021

IFtaku said:
This remind me have she or they interact with Vista lately?
Also do you have any image references of the girls and their cape costumes?

No not really, if Vista does interact with them again it will be written interaction and dialogue. There is currently no images that are the inspiration for Taylor or her others, so I would have to draw them myself. I have yet been satisfied with my art enough to share what I've sketched on paper...

GraphiteCrow · Jun 8, 2021

So the Simurgh was being a bitch and just waiting it out until Taylor snaps.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · Jun 11, 2021

So this is early, but I don't suspect any of you mind that too much. So this chapter reveals quiet a bit of the background going-ons and has some explanation of other stuff. Hope you enjoy!

[Attack from coordinates T7-35-2U by {host} of <Controller>… calculating parameters... return attack allowed]

Satisfaction rings in my mind as I telekinetically launch Eidolon into the distance by the waist of his underwear. The data from fighting him is subpar and I dislike his childish needs. I shift a few wings to distract a blaster before nailing them with a car. Now that he is at least gone for the moment I can focus on the actual fight, and more importantly why I'm getting so many errors.

[ERROR: Target potential {host} of <Crystalize> not at threshold levels]

[ERROR: deviated {host} positions from expected simulation parameters, compensating...]

My thoughts grind as I try to push through the simulations to see the fight again. My precognition has become my limitation for the past three hours. Hosts that I confirm kill, wind up not being dead and just far away, as a powerful unknown effect keeps me from seeing the cause. Every time I try to force the simulations to simulate what is causing it, I get errors. Concern simulates across my mind in an effort to keep up with parameters of operation.

[Parameters: {"a good fight"}, Extrapolation: {prove host of} <Controller> {to be a "hero"}, Further Extrapolation: {give host of} <Controller> {"higher" stakes to further imply that they are a savior}]

I sigh as I influence a local non-host on the street to head to the location of the target to cause the threshold event. I can leave once that is in place and run this fight through some simulations when I'm not currently fighting.

[Secondary Parameters: test local populations for development of new <Data>, destroy infrastructure until level of advancement of local population becomes capable of greater threshold events]

I watch as the local non-host I sent is stopped by the host of [Resonance].

[Annoyance]

Parameters prohibit my ability to hurry this up and just influence the host to leave. This is also not good data, the internet is better data than the local verbal communication. I shatter a building and launch it in a spray at a group of newly arriving hosts. The laser blast coming at my back reflected by a laser into another host. Just as I turn from the host falling near me, I hear a voice come from the tinker bomb around their wrist.

"This is Frankie, I'm heading your way."

[ERROR]

I flap a bladed wing out as my vision blisters with alarms of system errors and malfunctions in the simulations. That hurt... a lot! I run a system diagnostic while I search for the cause. Looking down I can see the device on in the water, the dead host floating. I rip the device off without the hosts noticing and bring it to spin around me. A precognitive "ear" to the device.

**"This is Nimi, I am also close to there, be there in a sec!"**

[ERROR]

I feel my system "wince" at the voice as my simulations don't crash but fail to properly "see" a source. A response that comes after is more useful as it comes from host of [Resonance], telling me where they are going.

"Roger that, Frankie, Nimi."

I quickly connect to the internet as I lazily dodge a fist from host of [Permanence] as the flying host tries again, I throw a building at her. A quick search through the PHO forums finds only one article mentioning cape named Frankie or Nimi. Zero mention of power set, a video is incomprehensible to me as it just shows three dead bodies lying on the ground next to host of [Inference]. It then proceeds to a fight that just shows projections disappearing as host of [Inference] runs around helping local population. A search through the PRT files does turn up something more, but...

**[ERROR: potential host of <Administrator>, name Taylor, is dead...]

[ERROR: consistent with simulations recalculating...] **

I did that error check a month ago after {host} Taylor died during threshold events. I check through the local cluster [network] to see if <Administrator> is damaged, even an anti-detection utility should show up in simulations. If <Administrator> is corrupted it should be logged with <Thinker>, possibly <Warrior> as it threatens the whole cycle and my <Data> collection. I cannot see where <Warrior> is but I know they are not around. The plan I have to remove them is not yet functional, requires more paramet-

[Shard <Administrator> offline]

…

{What?}

What.

[What!]

<What!>

<Administrator> has been terminated? How <Sting> or <Stinger> haven't been deployed by {host} Lily or <Zion> anywhere near other universes, how can a shard be dead except for in the original landing? At that moment the local non-host I sent to give potential {host} of <Crystalize> deviates. A quick pass of his mind is confusing, as he is terrified of nothing... of nothing that I can see. I rewind the simulation to go back and watch the event. He sees something now that it isn't a memory, it is...

[ERROR]

...hard to make out. It stands tall, taller than all the buildings and full of teeth too. Bright and shiny it bites at my- the local non-host's fear, the poison of its bright gaze tears holes through the vision like a jet from a singularity. Soon the vision passes, and I see just an odd {host} not even in traditional {host} garb of a costume. She is young, pale white, and naked. Her hair moves with the air like it is weightless and her body floats above the ground. It is all I can see before the local non-host runs away.

[ERROR]

Who is that? I feel a sensation of something cold run up my back as I look off into the distance. I turn to throw a car at where the perceived attack could be coming from... I hit empty air... There is nothing there.

[<Controller> has reappeared to your left, temporal displacement burst aimed towards coordinates 23-OV-00, dodge immediately]

I twist through the air as Eidolon pulls out an actually dangerous attack. The slow-moving death ball destroys the tip of one of my wings to give the moronic {host} a sense of accomplishment. I then launch him again, by one of his socks, as the {host} of [Permanence] dives for my back. I swat her back with another building.

[Simulations predict that {host} Eidolon will show up to next fight with zero undergarments]

I struggle not to smile at that, keeping my face blank as I enjoy what little torment I can do to that man. Serves him right for not letting me truly test the population. This place could be a gold mine of <Data> if we just started with breeding this population and setting them up for threshold events in sequence. It is wasted potential to let them kill each other so inefficiently, I picture the plan I have for humanity once I finalize my plan to offline <Warrior>, he wasn't doing much anyways.

I dodge a few attacks and forget about the girl I saw...

[ERROR: Target potential host of <Crystalize> terminated, Condition: Attack Failure.]

[Cause of Failure: subjugated {local non-hosts} terminated potential host of <Crystalize>]

I mentally shrug, not the data point I wanted, and the predicted utility application of the {host} would have been nice to see, but I guess I can cause another threshold event to get the same result.

I sat there for fifteen minutes while I looked, I sent out a wave of influence. Then I got one back...

SHRIEEEEEK

fifteen minutes before

The arms hang limply in my own. They are so much smaller than me. Her face isn't like what her namesake, my lost friend, was like before she left me behind. Soft brown eyes stare back into my own, cold with their absence of life. Her hair is brown instead of red, and Emma was paler than this child.

A scream sound from around us as the sound of shredded flesh and snapping bones turn the world around us red. I ignore it even as my teeth catch on living bone as my hair hunts the world. I just keep staring down at the body in my arms, as my hair continues to eat the bodies of the crazies who killed her.

I push the hair out of her face, she isn't sleeping, and you don't look like that when your dead. Her face isn't even one of horror. It is shock, her dead eyes stare blankly out into the world, as her face hangs slack. I push it closed, my father's voice in my head talking about catching flies. I close her eyes too, it is respectful...

Soft flesh across my palate as I bite into the scum and filth. Our instincts scream at us as we destroy the egg breakers, their broken demands for food lost to us as I rip and bite into the flesh. My single eye is blind as I close my steel teeth around another head. The crunch sounding good to my tendrils as pale motes of color rise from my back. The satisfaction of the damned cells having their nucleolus ripped out and shredded before being replaced with new DNA and shoved back into them, is bitter as Taylor hold our failure. We are hungry.

I shift her in my arms as I mindlessly feast across the bodies around me with my hair. Emma looks nothing like the child in my grip, and I have no idea if I just imagined her name cross the little girl's lips. I notice as her features get clearer as we feed, the blood flowing across the world to my skin as it leaks from Nimi's bites. The wide mouth I thought I saw before, shrank to be less than it was. Her eyes were not that wide. Big, but not a bug-eyed familiar shape that I sometimes remember I have. She doesn't have the curly hair I thought I saw back in the hospital, back when the world was correct. Her name was probably not even Emma, still doesn't mean I have any right to stop.

We stack bodies from the surrounding building around our others as some of we eat. The feeling of its wrongness we find the bodies of the dead lifts as we bring them to their funeral. The void of us Taylors is their grave, and it is not an honor to be eaten by us, we are the ones with the honor to eat them. For thirty men at Taylor's feet as she holds the child, this is not honor. They will be forgot and lost to time as we erase them from the face of the Earth.

We all ignored the screaming, laughing man sitting with his crushed limbs as he curses us and calls for his wife. We will remove him from the world last. Nimi's steel mouth grips around a head prying it off it neck with a simple twist and snap. Swarms arms of darkness pull at flesh from bone as they draw the sheds into hungry voids where sane heads used to be. I bring them to me as the blood flows up into my eyes to hold back my tears.

I hold her to my bare chest, my suit long forgotten as I failed to stop her bleeding with it, now it simply rests against her spine and chest limply. Death was instant so she didn't feel it or see it, but her ghost and the ghost of her father are unknown to me. I searched while the bones of people broke around me. I looked for her, her father, the elderly couple, that man that was with them, even Seismic who lies cooling in the frosty ground surrounding us, he and I took the most bullets before Nimi could cover us. I don't know them, I didn't get a chance to know them, so their spirits are invisible to me. I don't know why I know that, but it is intrinsic to my knowledge, just like the knowledge of what that means does.

I look up at Nimi as she pulls limbs and blood into her large mouth, it is hell as I watch the red tears drip from her eye, her body and ghost a silent scream as she tries to eat her feelings. I look away to Swarm as she shifts through the buildings around us and brings more bodies to the growing pile in front of me, the pile is taller than Nimi. She can feel Lisa so far away from us as she wraps all her bodies around our girlfriend, keeping her safe as we try to stay sane. I look away and see the untouched bodies of the people we tried to save and the hero from Colorado that helped, he said he was a villain, he did better than most of the heroes I met. I turn to the sound of a scream and see blinding flashes of light and a pure white monster, shred the world around her.

My chest cracks and we feel us stop. The ribs of our body spread as the agony of our hunger flares. The child is placed into our Taylor as our Nimi walks lifts her to her own chest. We feel our flesh connect as our Taylor and our Nimi fuse around our child, we didn't know her, not really, but it doesn't matter anymore. Our Swarm twists around our masses as we start to drag in the bodies around us.

The angel of death screams in the distance, we respond in kind...

Everyone hears it...

The wailing scream that echoes across the twisted landscape of DC, extends far beyond the city bounds.

The world shifts as it feels it, people stop as a sinking pit of dread fills their cores, the sleeping toss and turn as nightmares come in to their minds, the dead shift in their graves, whole graveyards across the world briefly move a couple inches as they claw at the tops of their graves. The undead stop to listen to the call to war, those that were preparing since early January hasten across the planet to ready for their trips to a general's call.

The small gathering in London at a facility dedicated to the study sees haste as its specters and corpses get excited.

In dark places, sacrifices awaken to cultist chanting and hop from the slab to slaughter their murderers as they seek bloody justices.

In the desert, a king shifts to wakefulness as he hears not a challenger a superior.

In the outback, the Eternal Dreaming awakens it's minders and orders for a movement to the coast.

In a cave deep underground, Lazarus turns back to look in the direction of the screaming keen before continuing to dig to find what he is looking for.

In the east, the boats hasten in construction as jangshi speak to swaths of spirits and yōkai.

They all feel it appear...

The monsters appearance was slow, and it didn't look like a lot of people noticed until it appeared.

SHRIEEEEK

With a haunting cry it appeared, and suddenly everyone knew.

I had noticed that the creature was forming so I know that it came from DC General Northeast and watched as it rose as a black pillar of twisting shadows, teeth, and eyes.

The creature was tall and thin, standing at a good twenty to twenty-five feet. Its body plated in a rough insectile-like armor with pale white connective tissues in the joins. With its head a human proportion to the body despite the clear oddities.

The armor wasn't full coverage, the hips connected with thick columns of connective tissue in deep ridges to an almost triangular pelvis. The plating continued up across an abdominal region with seams for flexibility and movement. The chest was an exposed mesh of cyclopean rib bones, but the cavity it protected was stuffed with red pulsating tendrils covered in black thorns. A seam across the sternum of the ribs seemed suggest that it opens up.

Its arms were longer than they would be on a human, but still didn't go past the knees, they were fully plated in the black exoskeleton with joint seams for mobility. The legs were the same as the arms, but they had tough looking kneecaps and were normal for the body size if a bit tall.

The seam of the sternum travels up the neck and to the top of the forehead. Its face is this single slit with the dark hair flowing from the edge of an area of pale flesh lining it. The "hair" covered the head fully except for this pale line before flowing behind it for miles in a straight line of curls. In the darkness of the shadow-like hair, eyes glow white and mouths with sharp teeth can be seen. Occasionally I could see shapes long and dark surface from the hair like whales. Thin bands of light whip around the creature as it moved, slicing buildings in half before they could get in its way.

It is currently dancing around attacks from the Simurgh.

I watch with David and Keith from a safe distance as the new... thing, dodges around a building with a spin. Only for the spin to end with the thing's fist slamming into the endbringer's face. The air shatters as its fist compresses air into the blast. An air clap of the cavitation bubble exploding is deafening and makes the water of the Reflecting Pool slosh. I don't know what to make of this.

no information available~

And apparently neither did my thinker powers. I had tried looking at it earlier as it immerged, but all I got for it was a flash of a headache before my brute power reasserted themselves. The Simurgh lunges out with a wing and the creature swings around its outside. The creature now has it completely surrounded by the tail of eyes and teeth; it lunges at the turned around endbringer's back. More importantly the Simurgh is reaction times, she is too slow.

I feel my two teammates stunned expressions as the winged endbringer is slammed face first into the water. She is now fighting on the ground, but the new creature seems to be unaffected by the endbringer's screams and attacks. It straddles them and starts to punch its face. Why do I feel like getting popcorn? I remain silent as I watch the punches go from two hands to four to six to eight. Are those afterimages, I wonder as the eight limbs start to punch out of sync, or did its arms just quadruple?

The water surrounding their fighting seems to freeze as the sound of the rhythmic smacks increases. Some kind of striker effect, possibly. When it first appeared, there was a sudden drop in air temperature too, like it is absorbing the heat of the surroundings. If that is the case, it is probably just a shaker effect... that spans for miles. I frown but lose the expression as I watch the wings pull back.

The Simurgh strikes forward with eight wings, the slice clean through the body like it isn't even there. The creature pauses for a second, and then lifts the endbringer out of the water and slams it over head. The scream from the endbringer sounds more like a squawk as the creature slams her head first into the pool. The wings penetrating it are completely ignored. "So, it is not invincible, just resilient," I murmur as I watch it bodily throw an endbringer to the other side of the pool. That is a little under a mile away!

"So, what do we do?" David's question startles me from my shock at see something throw an endbringer, as someone who has tried it, I know just how impossible that it for me to do without flying.

"What do you mean," Keith says behind me as I watch. The Simurgh is getting up slowly from her roll across the pool, the creature was running so fast that the water was forming a wave behind it. Just as the endbringer gets up the creature is there, it does try to bring a wing up, but it places it in the wrong position and gets a knee to the stomach and an elbow brought down onto the back of its head. I feel my eyes narrow.

"What do you mean what do you mean," Eidolon's whiny voice responds, "we need to stop the two endbringers before they destroy the city!"

You mean more, I think as I watch the fight closely, why aren't you fighting back like normal? I watch the Simurgh swing a forty-foot-long wing as an invisible force punches the creature further down the length. I feel my eyes widen, as not only is the creature who was easily pierced before isn't bisected but catches the wing in its grip. I don't think I would last long in that kind of fight, I think as I watch it grow more arms to get a better grip. I look back to find my teammates staring back in shock. Guess I said that out loud...

"Yeah David, an endbringer fight is bad enough," Legend says shaking off the shock of my assessment, "I want to actually go home to Arthur at the end of this."

I look back to see the slit across the face ripple as it starts to pull the endbringer in. I watch carefully as the endbringer starts to inch forward towards the creature. "I'm not ready to consider this a lost caus-"

A large crack like the sound of a tree snapping cuts David's protests off as the slit opens to a blackhole. We stop to stare as the singularity starts to suck air, the world freezing as the temperature plummets. I can feel a drop of water freeze to my flesh in an instant. We then all watch as the void of a maw wraps around the head of the Simurgh. The screams are audible now and I am briefly distracted from the display of the Simurgh stumbling back headless by Legend falling from the air.
"Shit," I drop after him and catch him before he can fall too far into the fight as we circle it. I bring my armband to my mouth while I hold Legend in my off arm, "Dragon, I want you to sound the retreat if you haven't, the situation is unsalvageable, over."

"Copy that, Alexandria."

I look down and watch a headless Simurgh start to rise off the ground. The void stares at the retreating endbringer and I almost think it is letting them go. A bit of red in the black void rolls down from the top as a bright red iris appears. It glows brightly despite the gravity well surrounding it, then it fires.

A massive red beam the size of the eye that fired it, punches heat out as it twists the air. The remaining trees in the direction of the blast at the side of the pool burn while the ones facing behind the beam freeze. The laser rockets into the Simurgh's back before she can gain any height to escape the attack. It launches her into and then through the Lincoln memorial followed by through the landscape behind the building. The noise is delayed behind it as the thunderous explosion of sound makes my ears ring and the unconscious Legend in my arms eardrums explode as blood leaks from his ears.

I fly up to Eidolon and hand him Keith. "Take him and get out of here," I yell and point as it is clear he is having trouble hearing.

"What about you," he yells back.

"I'm going to stay and watch from a safe distance."

Without waiting for a response, I zoom over to the fight. The creature crossed the distance and was now back to straddling the Simurgh's chest, but instead of punching the non-existent head in it was grabbing wings and plucking them from there sockets. I watch and see the endbringer try to desperately get the creature of her, as wing after wing disappeared into the mouth. The fact that I can see the endbringer's regeneration slowing down is telling as I watch another handful of wings get shredded across the event horizon, the iris and pupil stare down at its meal as it feasts.

A single scream comes weak out of the Simurgh, and the creature screams back at her.

SHRIEEEEK

I ignore my armband as I watch the largest wing get wrenched free. When it gives way, the body stops and starts to dissolve like the few times we've severed a body part from an endbringer. The creature lifts the wing high and then the slit opens all the way to the sternum, I guess it wants to swallow them whole...

I watch the wing disappear, and then the scream stopped as a point just before the last joint goes in.

[~~SYSTEM CRASH~~]

[Distress signal to <01> and <02> sent]

[Signal Failure]

[Distress to <Zion>]

[Signal Failure]

[STOP]

[Warning... core in danger... please...]

[Distress to <Eden>]

[Signal Failure]

[Distress to <Administrator>]

[s i l e n c e]

[ERROR: 02 Offline]

We stand up from our knees and feel our core tighten around our bodies.

We are Taylor/Nimi/Swarm Hebert...

Or at least we will be when we come back to ourselves a bit...

Our back arches as we feel the feathers of steel grow along our spine. The added mass to our body from the screaming one is dense as we digest it. Our ghosts cutting into and through the hard ball, as we absorb the mass inside into our own. Most of it goes into our ghosts to be used for more fuel, the rest goes into our flesh as it continues to mature as rapid as we like now. This fused body of bodies lacks the ability to smile or cry, but our core cries as it holds the child/egg/spore's corpse close to our hearts. The cruel creature that is satisfied with our revenge against the screaming one smiles across our teeth as best it can. We feel... tired. We want to go home.

We open our eye/mouth and exhale a deathly cold breath as we look at the world. It is empty, the streets are destroyed, and life has fled us in all directions. We sense little of the warm food anywhere in the city, all that stays in excess are the cool food. We start to walk.

We don't know where we are going, but we sense a warm one far, far away... we wish to be with her. We walk and make our way slowly to our...lovely. It feels like it is terribly far, and we feel like she will worry if we do not arrive soon, but still we walk slow. We can barely bring ourselves to walk, we want so badly to mourn our child/egg/spore. Her father is with us as well as the elderly couple, the man, and Seismic from Colorado, dead like our child/egg/spore but remembered fully into us. It feels like too little, but it was all we could do to respect these dead. We ate a city block of dead bodies, insects, fungus, and bacterial dead, the living bodies we wouldn't touch. Except for the crazy man, we kept him alive as we digested him. For killing our child/egg/spore, and so we never forget our failure.

We walk in silence, our wails gone now that we no longer rage. We need not leave our eye/mouth open so with an air rupturing snap we blink it close. We are so tired...

A figure appears, tiny to us and floating directly in front of our face. A quick recollection through our memories gives us a name, Alexandria. We stop before her, she looks calm, but we can tell she is nervous.

"I don't suppose that I would be so lucky for you to understand me."

We stare at her, this body is not built for talking... we will need to shed it before we get home, Lisa likes to converse. I look past the hero towards Lisa, we can feel her and the rest of the Swarm part of us there now. We must be getting better, clearer in mind. That is good, we no longer wish to rage we need... cuddles and kissing... a bite also wouldn't hurt, but our hunger is much less now. We cannot smile with this body, but we smile all the same at the thoughts of home.

"I didn't think so..."

We redirect our attention on the floating human trying to talk to us. At any other moment we would be excited to meet one of our heroes. Nimi would be jumping up and down, Swarm would be quietly twitching as she scurries about with her bodies not talking to her, Taylor... Taylor would be wary. Taylor is wary, we just killed and ate thirty people and then went on to eat an Endbringer. We shrug, doesn't matter to us really, living Taylor wanted to be a hero when she grew up, we became a monster that eats other monsters, close enough. We don't like that we ate the crazies though, they had no control and should have subdued them instead. The less said about the bodies Swarm gathered for us when we were mourning, the better. Swarm and Nimi don't care too much, we had just cause to eat them for killing ou- a kid/innocent/fragile-one. Taylor cares more, but this gestalt of minds? We couldn't give a shit, we want to go home, un-union with our others, and have our Lisa close. Our best bet is to move by ocean, less people in the way that way, and we can try to salvage our others' "secret" identities.

"I can't let you leave though."

We watch her flinch as we snap quiet clearly onto the floating cape. Her nervousness changes to fear for a flash, but she switches back to confident instead. We feel our eye/mouth twitch, as our anger returns, the hungry centipedes in our head snap at the flies of melancholy. We dislike these metaphors for our emotions, they are all different shades of hunger. We need not re-explain it to ourselves every time we have a thought, Taylor is stupid for starting it and then never stopping. We are angry, we want to eat what makes me angry. Simply said to not say any more than we are angry, we don't really care what that anger feels like.

"But I can't exactly stop you either."

We nod at that causing the hero to pause, your damn right you can't stop us. And even if you somehow destroyed this body entirely, we would just reform in Brockton Bay, as our others. It would be a shame however, to lose all the mass this body has, the changes our others have gone through would take a lot longer to reform. Not to mention it would take months to reform with Swarm's help, we are just much too different now to not have a proper prep for body eradication and...

We would lose Emma's original body if we were destroyed, we need to keep that safe for burial...

That is for later though, Alexandria now.

"So, you can understand me?"

We nod.

"Are you an Endbringer?"

Now that is a thought, we place a hand on our chin much to Alexandria's discomfort and rock back on our heels. Are we an Endbringer ourselves like <03> was? Despite eating through her entirely and reading through line after line of entropic information, her spirit was exceedingly weak. A way to explain it would be like if you added dye to water, <03> is a molecule, our father is a drop, our mothers are a splash, and We are an ocean. If your body is the water, the more of your body means it has less impact.

It also means we know next to nothing about <03>'s life. As such we have no idea what an Endbringer is other than the designation labeling her as a lens named <03>. What we can tell you is that her structure was largely uniform in crystalline-like units folded through space-time to form a mesh of interconnected mass that inhabited the same space. All the mass of which to make that form was focused through a "lens" which is the creature's actual hardest and most important point. Destroying it killed her.

Her human "body" was hollow made up of a matrix of her own body woven to look like a marble human. Really if <03> was to be dissected, she would unfold first from all angles and dimensions in space to be a collection of infinite wings in a sort of tenth dimensional fractal. Sort of like Swarm, except Swarm isn't confined to mathematics like this. But if we get, we guess, to the nitty gritty and use <03> as the definition of Endbringer, i.e., crystal creature, then no we are not an Endbringer...

But do we want people to know that? Taylor doesn't want them to, her reasoning is also sound. If people start to ask if we are an Endbringer and we say no, then they are going to start to ask what we actually are. If we tell them that we are a cape, then they will try to control us, and we have good reason for authority to be limited to just father. Likewise, if we tell them that we are undead, they'll either believe us and start a witch hunt, or they won't and think we are insane. Nimi and Swarm agree with Taylor, this would mean they would try to take away Lisa from us, and that is unacceptable.

We simply stare at her floating in the air after getting out of our thinker pose, that we sometimes see Lisa do.

She sighs and we feel some of her stress bleed off. We also hear her mumble something about this being Legend's kind of job, we ignore her...

Even though it would be cool to see him too...

"Are you dangerous?"

I feel our hair and tentacles and arms spiral up into the air behind us as we place our hands on our hips in the best impression of a "really?" look we can get with this body. We killed an Endbringer, are you dangerous is kind of a given.

"Are you dangerous to us?"

Better question, Taylor, Nimi, and Swarm, and us too, understand the importance of life. This whole fight was a nightmare of loss, and we now know a bit more about undeath due to all the changes we've made and become. Life is just as important as death, and there is a delicate balance to them both, but it doesn't have to be horrible. Endless genocide and extinction of species hurts both the living and the dead. It makes the transition between the two harder and causes potential immeasurable suffering to the recently deceased. The afterlife isn't much more than watching the world go by until you find something to talk to, but too many ghosts forming at once makes the time it takes to find that person to talk to or watch, or whatever, longer.

We are not talking years of isolation, we are talking decades and centuries of isolation as you watch the world spin without you. My core tightens down around the child in our chest as we imagine the dead girl going years without seeing her father or really anyone. It is part of the reason we were so mad as the facts of the afterlife became known to us. The Simurgh doomed a little girl to a possible century of isolation, along with all her other victims, because she wanted a data point on a fucking spreadsheet!

Our ribs rattle in anger as we huff out an arctic breath. Alexandria "steps" back a bit, her fist clench up a bit as we smell a leak of fear. We shake our head no, we'll kill some humans if there is no other way but racking up a kill count is not worth it. We don't need human flesh to "live", but it helps... Maybe we can get a blood bank or something if we start to exchange goods that help the living? None of us know so we'll be thinking about it later.

"Are you on our side?"

She says that like it has a double meaning, like we might know something she knows. Well jokes on her, we only know things she doesn't know! I shrug my shoulders and then make a "move-out-of-my-way" gesture. I'm tired... I have a long trip to get back to Brockton and I would prefer not having to slap one of my childhood heroes like an insect.

Thankfully she moves and we run before she can decide against it. Ocean here I come!

So this one had a lot of formatting, not as much as the PHO chapter for obvious reasons, but still quiet an amount. I mostly did this for some comprehension of a scene that required a fist person perspective from multiple perspectives into one perspective, a perspective fusion of sorts. Well hoped you liked it anyways, cause after rewriting, rereading, and then rewriting 6k words I'm happy with the results. Anyways have a nice day as I'm going to bed!

GraphiteCrow · Jun 11, 2021

whelp, I was extremely wrong haha. Simurgh had absolutely no idea about Taylor and everything happened cos of a mistake. feels weird when the suffering near the Simurgh wasn't a Simurgh Plot. Shame the Big Birb isn't somehow going to join in the Asexual partnership, unless you somehow accidentally the Ziz and "Emma" together but from what I can tell that would be more like the Undeads Child rather than anything else.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · Jun 11, 2021

GraphiteCrow said:
whelp, I was extremely wrong haha. Simurgh had absolutely no idea about Taylor and everything happened cos of a mistake. feels weird when the suffering near the Simurgh wasn't a Simurgh Plot. Shame the Big Birb isn't somehow going to join in the Asexual partnership, unless you somehow accidentally the Ziz and "Emma" together but from what I can tell that would be more like the Undeads Child rather than anything else.

I thought about how I wanted the Simurgh to behave in the chapter for a long time. Originally it was Leviathan that I wanted to fight first, then Simurgh. Then I realized that there is no way that Taylor wouldn't go to Canberra, it is just who she is as a character. After that I realized that the entire world was changed due to the butterfly effect so Canberra wouldn't be the target at all. Combined with the Undead being impossible for Shards, and endbringers, to simulate the course was clear for the fight.

As for Ziz joining the relationship, I can't see her being a partner to our heroes. She is too childish to be a member, and if I decide that she does come back, it will be as a child like her thoughts.

Glad that you liked it! I spent four long 12hr days writing it.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · Jun 13, 2021

Bet you weren't expecting this so soon now did you?

The sharp click of heels sounds loud in the relatively moist hallway as I move down it. I can feel a smile that I struggle to keep from becoming too bright as I make my way past students and the things following them invisibly down the hall. Some of them even wave at me as I pass or give me a smile...

What a bunch of idiots...

I check to make sure that my form looks just the way I want it while I slide to a stop before the classroom.

Tan blazer, check!
Orange turtle neck, snazzy!
Black pencil skirt, just off the edge of distracting, so perfect!
Orange stilettos with black sheer tights, good, not great but just enough.

So, the cloths look good, now what about the rest? I hear the soft crackle of splintering bone as the smell of wonderful, choking smoke asks me if I got my transparency right. I look "down" to make sure. Okay so it looks good, or at least it looks like a human. My smile splits my face as I confirm that everything is ready to go. I quickly school it back down and walk through the door.

"Good morning class," I said as I quickly scan the room. It has maybe eleven living students, which is pretty good for Sawtooth even if we would have had twice the amount in my day. I also notice that several ghosts have decided to join the class, invisible to the other students. Some look nervous at seeing me, others look a bit less bored. I wave to a few of them nearest the living, don't want to give away the trick too soon. "I will be your professor today."

I step onto the podium in the circular class room filled with the living and the dead. The living look confused, and one raises her hand. "Yes," I say while pointing to her.

"Kitty Dole," she says her name...LIKE I ASKED... "Where is Professor Dunwich?"

I cool my internal fires as I try to keep my composure... Even if Mrs. Dole would look good in my fires, maybe later? I guess I should answer. "Professor Dunwich had an unfortunate accident with matches last night," I smile. The living all look uncomfortable, but the dead actually start to giggle. "Now I understand that he was teaching," I look down at the book on the podium and try to keep the giggles and screaming inside, "fundamentals of Anima formation." I want to roll my eye at the author's name, Amon Morgan. Sure, the man is one of the only living that is close but is nothing compared to what I know. "We won't be doing that."

The burnable girl who parts of me wishes to smother with smoke and the other parts want to hide in her flesh and consume her... slowly, speaks up, "what will you be teaching us?"

I look up slowly from the book and smile at bright and smoldering, "witchcraft..."

The look on their face as I burst into flames is priceless.

"AhAhAhahaAhahahahaha!"

I cringe as I walk down the hall to the facilities... dead room. The cackling burning form of Elain laughing at her "prank" on the morning class as she floats along besides me.

"You should have seen the looks on," she wheezes out a fog of smoke as she burst into more laughing, then screaming, "THEIR FACES! THEY WERE ALL, "Oh no please don't burn us Elain.""

I continue sloshing through the centimeters high water as the wrath next to me goes silent. Ignoring the undead as she gathers herself for more words.

"Then she started crying," the voice is the sound of extinguishing embers, as Elain becomes distressed, "I didn't mean to make her cry Amon."

I ignore that too. Considering that Elain was probably hoping for more screaming and possibly for one of the students to be set on fire, she will gain no sympathy from me. A few weeks ago, maybe, back when I still felt guilty for what happened to my former student, but after close to a month of being around her, no. Elain is a monster. I thankfully was told and arrived before she could do anything, it was Ms. Dole that was crying...

"Kitty is cute..."

I feel myself cringe again, my old bones aching and heart quickening at the thought of another undead becoming... attached to one of the staff or a student. I'd tell her no, but that might just encourage her... she likes to take things that hurt me. I don't need more guilt on my conscious, Kathrine is already in the building after all.

I stop by a set of double doors and turn to her. There is not much human about Elain besides shape. She looks like the burning sacrifice she was in her final moments, but I doubt that the "extra" stuff was present. Her body is a red angry mess of black scars and exposed burn tissues that make her sexless and lithe thin. The eyes in her skull are dark with a burning point of fire deep in the head like two twin stars. her hair is smoke rising endlessly behind her, great black plumes of dark soot and hot like volcanic clouds. Thankfully she is keeping that in mind as she hasn't seriously injured anyone yet after I told her not too.

"Elain I told you to not teach a class," I sigh as she stares molten daggers into me, "don't make me attempt to get rid of you."

The threat makes her laugh, the sound of burning bodies and snapping bones. "You may think that knowing something would help, but there are too many undead here now for you to do much of anything."

I open the door for her and gesture inside, "Oh and how many exactly are here?" She looks at the opened doorway and rolls her starlight eyes as she walks through the closed door, searing the metal and wood black. I sigh and walk inside.

"Twenty Thousssand sseven hundred ssixty-three."

The room is packed. I can see skeletons quietly chattering their teeth based language in the corner, a pair of them were playing some dice game and trading animal teeth. Near the back I could see a truly old draugr tuning an instrument while over a dozen zombies stare with blank eyes in all directions. Just next to them I can see twenty ghouls stare hungrily at each other, their arms and fingers twitching as they fight their instincts to fight and eat one another, Moryt is near them looking completely relaxed next to them, he has lived longer after all. I can see Kathrine next to a ramshackle forge sharpening her broadsword, her head in her lap a she works. At the back are a pile of bodies, revenants still asleep before the night when they reanimate, although I do see a few vampires lying down in the pile.

In the center of the room is a table, the undead at it are a little more abnormal. Dracula, or Leech as her real name appears to be... never let old vampires watch capes it gives them weird ideas. She stands next to Alexander, a wispy thin vampire that the society here had briefly contacted when it was still limited to Europe for its studies. Leech is his master, and while we did meet with her before, she pretended to be a he and only call herself Dracula. Her current form's age exemplifies her immature nature. Next to the vampire lord is a very old wight. He is a grayish purple, a long white beard and it looks like he is missing most of his body with how full of holes he is. He is also laughing like the pirate he is dressed as. The final one is where the voice came from.

She is turned from me, but her backless dress shows off the sliver snake scales forming two large patches on her lightly tanned flesh. They extend up from beyond the backless dress to wrap around up her throat and end around her eyes. Her hair is light brown and very curly, she keeps her eyes covered by a white blindfold. She is displaying a two pronged mark on her shoulder, it weeps green and black.

Iris is... interesting. The seer has most of the properties of a banshee, oraculum suspendium, and an elder vampire, vampiris sanguis. The fact that she was apparently some sort of soothsayer, or seerer as many of the undead call her, in life just adds to the mystery. Hybridization of undead doesn't occur as far as research goes, so what is she, how does she see the future with the afterlife? I don't need to see her face to know that she is talking to me, that snake-like voice always sounds like it is right next to your ear when it is speaking to you...

"That is a bit more than I expected," honestly the presence of numbers doesn't matter really, twenty undead in the facility is too much to handle for the staff. Undead are just designed to hunt the living, and there aren't enough tools on hand to fight them, there is only so much I can do without tools either. You can't put the dead down with your fists alone after all.

"It is mosstly incorporealss," she responds to me, a turn and smile of her huge mouth given shows her two nine inch long fangs folded back like a snake. If she bites you your dead, the wounds are simply too deep. Elain floats over to the table which gets Leech to perk up.

"So how did the prank go," Leech says excitedly with red gleaming eyes. I can see Alexander paling before looking at me with pity. I appreciate an undead that isn't insane, but I don't need his pity. I scowl back. Some excited chattering and exchanging of teeth goes on in the corner of my eyes as I walk up near the table. I don't dare step closer, to them I'm not a friend... or even an equal, really.

"I met someone..." Oh no, I think as I hear Elain's voice become dreamy.

"See I told you, you would." The sound of more excited chattering and more teeth changing hands. It also looks like a few are holding each other's ribs, skulls close as they trade them. Sometimes skeletons give me hope for the world, but I've seen what they do to people when angered and it isn't pretty. "Sorry for interrupting dear."

A few soft hisses from Iris as she blindly looks at Leech, a green flush on her neck. God this is uncomfortable, why don't you guys just act evil all the time it makes you very confusing when you act like this. "It'ss okay dear you can make it up to me later," I ignore that, "anywayss, The Captain'ss ship will be arriving by the river Thamess in twelve dayss, thirteen hourss, twenty-two minutess, and ssecondss you can guesss at later."

"That is awfully accurate," I say, "aren't future readings a little vaguer?"

"Oh, we only do that to make the living usse their brainss," she smiles small as a few of the undead chuckle, "pluss they don't believe you unlesss you phrasse it as a riddle."

"Aye it be more fun when they be annoyed too," the old wight interjects, "got ta get our enjoyment out of ta living somes way."

I feel left out as most of the heads, even the ones not at the table (even one of the revenants who should be a still corpse!), start nodding in agreement. I place my head in my hands as I process that, "is that why asking about how undead anima and ethereal work is like pulling teeth?"

"No," he scoffs, and I look up just in time to watch a worm out fly out of his mouth and onto the table. Moryt casually walks up to the table and eats it. No one is shocked or disturbed by that at all, my stomach is twisting. "Yer still alive, yer kind don't get it when us explain it to ya bilge-sucking sea urchins," his hand smacks the table as he finishes at the same time a bang from behind me sounds.

I turn as I hear the door get kicked in and a... "MORYT!"... woman's angry shout from behind me. I see a fuming Heather Dixon stomp though and right towards the eager ghoul. Heather is a guard, or more importantly, Moryt's handler. She is a hundred seventy something centimeters of red headed fury, the scar on her face from where Moryt bit her cheek off is not healing closed so you can see the bright white of her teeth through the hole.

Moryt, casually walks towards her with open arms, "yes honey?"

I watch, with no small amount of satisfaction, as Heather decks him into the wet dirt of the floor. The skeletons chatter excitedly as they smack their claws together, as Heather straddles the ghoul and starts wailing on his head. Elain starts yelling out suggestions as she cackles and screams her support of the ghoul's, likely deserved, punishment. I think Moryt's happy laughter as he is getting beat up just makes Heather angrier.

The people at the table just chuckle before ignoring the entertainment. I decide to do the same, interpersonal relationship counseling is not my problem after all. "Do you have any more information on the wail we heard," I ask as the sounds of impacts become the crack of bones behind me, "or maybe who is calling all of the undead?"

"A Queen!"
"A General..."
"An Admiral, lad!"
"A goddesss..."

The simultaneous answers are all different, but they don't look like any of them care all that much. Two of them, Leech and Iris, claim that they are a ruler and female. The other two, Alexander and The Captain, further explain some form of military leader. So at least that is something since they didn't give me titles when I've asked about the caller before.

"As for the wailss," Iris hisses, "She iss ssaying she iss ready, we will need to meet her ssoon as she hass reached a new age."

"She is growing up quick if she is a vampire," I frown, "or maybe a wendigo, union, amalgam, or one of the dozens of other undead." I frown harder as most of the undead just shake their heads or roll their eyes.

"She iss none of thesse thingss, and your sspeciess lisstss are jusst to help you undersstand," a cold scale covered claw of a hand rests on my shoulder, "you're not going to undersstand anymore until you ssee."

I sigh and hear the sound of metal boots walking up. "Trust me Amon," Kathryn says walking up to the table, her head in her arms as hair made of fire spills out from the helm, "I may of had an advanced education from my life, but I knew next to nothing about undeath compared to now, and I've only been dead for a few decades!" I frown as she comes near.

Dullahans are rare, like most undeads that are regionally locked. Kathrine doesn't look like any of them, but it is probably her armor that is the strangest. It is bright blue with paint and is a mix of old full plate and cape-like tinker crap in design. I grumble internally about how capes have even infected their ideas into the undead. I can't really blame her for the strangeness of her armor, every dullahan makes their own armor after all, and she has made it work in full function. Doesn't make me any less tiffed that it is so... modern. Probably just trying to distract myself from looking her in the eye, makes it easier that it is waist height. "These old farts have been around since the dark ages, some even longer."

"Hey are you calling me old?" I watch as Leech's voice cause a pained look cross Alexander's face.

"Master you arose at the dawn of humanity, you are old."

"Oh, no Alexander how could you," a mocking tone in her voice as she fakes a look of betrayal, "your master feels so dejected, I think I might go take a walk." I watch as the already pale vampire turn ghost white at her words. I make sure to give him a look of pity, enjoying the schadenfreude at his clear dread.

"So, you mentioned a ship."

"Aye, a ghost ship," the wight spits a rotting tooth out like it is chewing tobacco, "We'll be knock'n all the bridges out too, fun it'll be, eh?"

It's not like half of them aren't already gone, London bridges don't really get much use here behind the wall. I nod, "is it safe for the living?"

"Yer coming with eh," I watch his hollow gray eyes twist up as he thinks, "yer people can come, but best bring food and ain't gonna haff living stuff either."

"Are you sure Amon," I look up at Kathrine as she straps her head back into place, we both ignore the skeletons exchanging teeth behind me. "We are headed a long ways overseas, to meet up with potentially millions of undead."

"It's fine, most of the students and staff are interested to get out of the Simurgh containment since Iris told us the thing's dead," I say, "plus it will be good for the society to maybe interview some more undead, I also want to see this general too." I turn to The Captain eager to stop looking into the black slit of Kathrine's helm, I shudder to see what is inside, "I request the right to bring weapons, both physical and spiritual."

That gets a few of the undead to give me a nasty look, mostly the old ones, but I am not going to give my people up to a ghost ship without any defense. The Captain gives me a look more serious than I've seen on his face for this entire conversation. He finally nods, "I don't know who the Admiral is, but they be important, don't be making mistakes wit the world lad."

I nod and turn to leave, "come on Ms. Dixon we have some work to do."

I walk by Heather just as she pulls Moryt in for a last solid punch, "yes sir." The hit is loud, but Moryt stands up before we leave.

"Amon," he hisses through broken reforming teeth, "you can't just walk off with my partner, without consequences." The ghoul lunges for me, but I dodge quicker than him. The half man lands into my knee striking upwards with as much force as I got. The hardened spine of a ghoul three-hundred years my senior cracks in half as my kneecap punches into his sternum. He falls to the ground reeling as I stomp my foot hard into his femur snapping it like a twig.

The ghoul doesn't get up, "Heather take him to his room, I'll work on getting people together for supplies." I stare dispassionately at the ghoul as the broken kneecap in my leg fuses back together, scared no doubt, just like all my other ones. I shake my head and continue to walk out, the eyes of the undead on my back, unfriendly...

Hope you enjoyed, Worm characters next time I promise... maybe.

MaskedCritic · Jun 14, 2021

Tumultuous_Anxiety said:
Destress

Every use of this word is wrong. You meant to use distress. Synonymous to unease, upset, disquiet, panic, etc.

Destress is the removal of stress, as in, "I like to take a hot bath after work so I can properly destress."

I really can't tell if I should like or loathe this Amon dude. Like... on the one hand he doesn't believe in hurting people for the hell of it, as evidenced by the fact that he considers his old student to have turned into a monster what with her wanting to burn people alive. Can't exactly say he's wrong on that count, either...

On the other hand, he also frequently comes off as somebody who absolutely loathes the undead and is just searching for ways to eradicate them.

On the third hand, growing from places unknown, he also seemed to imply that he loved an undead once, in an earlier appearance.

He is very nuanced, really. Great job!

I'm starting to lean toward disliking him, though.

Tumultuous_Anxiety · Jun 14, 2021

MaskedCritic said:
Every use of this word is wrong. You meant to use distress. Synonymous to unease, upset, disquiet, panic, etc.

Destress is the removal of stress, as in, "I like to take a hot bath after work so I can properly destress."

I really can't tell if I should like or loathe this Amon dude. Like... on the one hand he doesn't believe in hurting people for the hell of it, as evidenced by the fact that he considers his old student to have turned into a monster what with her wanting to burn people alive. Can't exactly say he's wrong on that count, either...

On the other hand, he also frequently comes off as somebody who absolutely loathes the undead and is just searching for ways to eradicate them.

On the third hand, growing from places unknown, he also seemed to imply that he loved an undead once, in an earlier appearance.

He is very nuanced, really. Great job!

I'm starting to lean toward disliking him, though.

destress, distress, I will fix those I do mean distress. Sometimes words get through the reading and rereading process.
Amon Morgan is a really nuanced character, and in his early career of starting Sawtooth he was different. Now though he is mostly bitter and frustrated as he has spent all this time trying to understand the undead and still couldn't be called an expert in his field.

There are other reasons for his character, but they are a secret. I flip back and forth between my like and dislike for him too...

Tumultuous_Anxiety · Jun 17, 2021

A very short one, important but short...

"...The PRT had this to say..."

*hiss* *beep* *huuu* *hiss* *beep* *huuu* *hiss* *beep* *huuu*

The ambient hiss of drawn breath and the steady beat of a heart monitor were the only sounds besides the television. I haven't opened my eyes yet, not time, and while I'm sure that I am not in the bay right now...

"...On February 24th, 2011, the 12th attack by the third endbringer took place in the capital. The president, most of the representatives of the house, and the senate were successfully airlifted out of the zone before the Simurgh's effects could be permanent, as of this time there are no known signs of the president being compromised..."

The world has been quiet... Irritatingly so. My rage comes and goes as though whatever happened to me has slowed my healing to the point that simple anger is not enough to restore my body. The knowledge that Oni Lee is... dead, has been a useful catalyst while I gather my strength.

A spiral of black limbs grips my body, large chunks of my body being ripped off and disappearing as the mass of limbs grows. I watch as fire does nothing, my gouts of flame causing the darkness to only grow as it washes over it.

The world spins as the now mountain of darkness pulls my feet out from under me, and then it starts to drag me. How dare it, I am Lung, and I will not take this disrespect! I try to rip out of the thing's grip, but its fingers just bury themselves deeper into my legs. I grow wings to gain more purchase as it speeds down the street, asphalt ripping at my scales.

In response to my wings, the shadow hands reach up and snap them off like twigs. I feel my legs tear and regrow only to be eaten again and again and again. I try to stay angry as I'm pulled along, but the hands are creeping across my stomach now breaching my metal flesh with ease, the panic starts to set in. I try getting angry at that, fighting the fear with my anger, but I lose it when I-

*hiss* *beepbeepbeepbeep** *huuuuuuuuu*

The warm fire is stoked as I remember my attacker, not by anger though. Fear... I warm at that ridiculous notion. I am Lung, my power is absolute! Even the endbringers give pause when facing me.

"The country's government is being moved to the west coast to a secure location while seal the city..."

Still, it was a good opponent, although it's tactics could use some work. Overwhelming force is a tactic for ants, I will be ready the next time we face...

"... As for the rumors of a fourth endbringer appearing and defeating the Simurgh..."

What?

"... they are true..."

*BANG*

My eyes open at the sound of the gunshot before traveling to the door to my room.

"... The endbringer known as Apophis, appeared during the fight and killed the Simurgh via unknown means. Footage of the event is being analyzed by thinkers, and discussions of possible threats by Apophis are being discussed. However, it has been confirmed that the Simurgh is indeed dead..."

I ignore the TV as my powers blaze my senses back to full. I can hear them, four men, a hit squad by my enemies? Or worse... The Yàngbǎn has always been known to have agents in other counties. I tense, feeling the sharp bones exposed to the air in what remains of my left forearm. The right is worse, down to the shoulder with just an arm bone sticking from the socket and fleshed shoulder. I close my eyes and open my senses, wait as the fools come to me... This would be better if I still had some of my legs, but I guess I'm escaping tonight.

"... The new endbringer left the battle after slaying and consuming the Simurgh, and it is assumed that it disappeared into the Atlantic.."

I hear the door open and semi-silent footsteps approach the bed.

"Jesus," a male voice, Boston accent, "they really fucked this guy up."

I hold back my irritation as someone walks to the right. "Quiet," new voice younger, on my right, "boss wants to make this look like the Nazi's so watch the door, I don't want to get interrupted operating this thing."

A low electric hum sounds next to me. The man leans closer, inch by inch, by...

"AAAARRRGGH!"

I thrust forward with my exposed bones as my eyes meet my assassins. The boy impaled on my catches fire as my low burning anger becomes a white hot rage. I almost want to smile when I feel my exposed chest close for the first time since I've been awake...

"... At this time officials are warning inhabitance of the north-eastern region that Apophis was last seen heading up the coast. They have shown an extreme propensity for violence, and it is advised to keep a distance, if spotted call..."

I roar as I roast the room now full of blood and viscera, it is time for the dragon to reclaim his territory.

This is more set up stuff for more of the story to take place, it also the shortest threadmark I think, so I hope you like it. This will help me find Lung's voice too for this story so it is important to know for stuff where he isn't just a rage dragon...

Rot: A worm Fanfiction

Should I move this to the NSFW forum for more views and stuff

yes

no

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Vagabond

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Oh good Hunter

Vagabond

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

I trust you know where the happy button is?

Making the rounds.

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Making the rounds.

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Making the rounds.

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Daemon of Slaanesh

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Making the rounds.

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Not too sore, are you?

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Daemon of Slaanesh

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Daemon of Slaanesh

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

Making the rounds.

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

It's sucking out your insides, don't make it weird

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