Wyvern Pt 9 (Patreon)

“Oh, you have got to be kidding.” I put my hand over my eyes. Well, I put my power gauntlet over my helmet visor, but it came to much the same thing. “Seriously? What part of 'press red-red-green to disarm' did you not understand?”

“Sorry, boss,” Winston babbled. “I musta heard wrong. I thought you said 'green-green-red'.”

“Which is the firing sequence, you technology-illiterate australopithecine.” I gestured at the missile test rack, which was notably empty, then at the side of the derelict vessel, which was just as notably decorated with a large flame-rimmed hole. “And now, not only have you managed to waste a missile that was worth significantly more than your annual salary, but you've also sent up a huge red flag to any do-gooders that might happen to be in the area.”

“That's, like, not too much of a problem is it, right, boss?” Winston looked at me hopefully. "I mean, Brockton Bay's smaller than San Francisco, right? Less heroes, yeah?"

I sighed, not even bothering to correct 'less' to 'fewer'. “Winston. Please try to keep up. You are indeed correct that we're not in San Francisco any more. Being there would be an improvement. In case you weren't aware, this city has the seventh highest cape-to-normal ratio in the United States. If some hero isn't on their way to investigate right now, I will be extremely -”

“Surprise!”

The voice was bright and cheerful. It promised a very chirpy beating at the hands of the teenage girl who had just swept in through the flaming hole that my idiot minion had thoughtfully opened up for her. She paid no attention to the fire; that, and the details of her costume, clued me in that I was now up against Glory Girl, of New Wave.

New Wave. I ask you. It's bad enough that Brockton Bay has independent capes patrolling the city, but an entire family of them? Whatever is the world coming to?

In any case, I already had my right arm pointing at the hole – not entirely by chance, I assure you – and so it was a simple matter to send a welcoming gift her way. In this particular instance, I judged that a flash-bang with a good solid HE punch to it – sans shrapnel, thank you very much – would be just the ticket. Such a missile was one of four already queued up, once again due to foresight on my part. The carousel in my right-hand missile housing rotated a quarter turn, lining the missile up with the launch rails.

Glory Girl, it was well-known, was an Alexandria package, so I had no qualms about shooting her with such a payload. After all, I may be a ruthless villain who can't see a bank without wanting to rob it, but I'm not a complete monster.

The missile left the carousel and scorched off the rails approximately half a second after the teen hero made her appearance. I had just enough time to appreciate the look of startled shock on her face, transmitted via the tiny camera in the nose-cone. She tried to dodge, of course; unfortunately for her, I have redefined the term 'smart missile' several times since I got my powers. The missile followed her all the way, matching her every move with precision and grace.

As intended, the explosion blew her back out through the hole in the side of the ship. With anything resembling luck, she would be stunned and deafened for the next few moments, enough to buy us a breathing space. I intended to make full use of that time.

“Winston!” I snapped the order, and my minion looked around vaguely, shaking his head in an odd fashion.

“What, boss?”

I suppressed a groan. He had neither covered his ears nor looked away from the explosion, two extremely simple precautions which I had thought that I'd long ago drummed into his admittedly idea-resistant skull. As a result, as well as being hard of thinking, my idiot minion was now suffering from a ringing in his ears and spots in front of his eyes.

Neither of which was bothering me, of course; my visor was designed to darken in the case of bright flashes of light, and the sound pickups had cutouts. As I said, simple precautions. But this had rendered Winston even more useless than he normally was, which I had to admit was quite a feat.

Some may be asking at this point, why exactly do I keep Winston around? To even the most casual of observers, it would be plainly obvious that he is a millstone about my neck, an obstacle to the smooth execution of even the simplest of plans. Virtually any other villain would have given the boy his marching papers by now; indeed, some of the less ethical would have included a nine-millimetre lobotomy in the deal.

There are three main reasons that Winston remains in my employ. The first is simple; a Tinker such as myself quite often requires a second set of hands. This may be to hold components in place while I apply the soldering iron, to fetch another tool when needed, or even to simply stroll to the nearest coffee shop and bring me back my chai latte. Whichever way, such assistance can be absolutely crucial at the right moment in time.

The second reason is a little less obvious, but essential all the same. Once in a while, even such an outstanding mentality as mine needs a sounding board. Devising new schemes for extracting my unfair share of wealth from the financial institutions of California takes up a not inconsiderable amount of my time. In order for such time not to be utterly wasted by an overlooked error in the planning stage, I habitually run my plans past Winston before I set them in motion. If he can pick out a flaw that I cannot compensate for, I ditch the concept before ever setting it in motion. He does not find flaws in every single one, of course, but this practice tends to save me slightly more time, expense and aggravation than I suffer in cleaning up after his blunders. He is, in truth, rather like a not quite housebroken puppy, only less appealing.

As for the third reason … well, I will merely say that his original employment was a favour to my sister to get him out of her basement, and leave it at that. May we close the topic now? Thank you.

“Pack. The. Equipment. Away,” I told him, leaning close and increasing the output volume on my speakers. “I shall hold off the scary teenage girl until you are finished.”

I was being sarcastic, of course. There were several more missiles queued up that would be perfectly satisfactory when it came to subduing even an Alexandria package. I doubted that she was in the company of the rest of New Wave; even as durable as she was, it was unlikely that the adults would have sent her in first. So, given that she was almost certainly flying solo this night, I foresaw little in the way of difficulty in keeping her occupied while Winston bumbled his way through the packing-up process. Especially given that there weren't any more live missiles on the test rack.

A moment later, I was reminded of the old axiom regarding assumptions making an ass out of all concerned. For through the hole swept not Glory Girl, but something quite outside of my experience.

What in the name of Einstein, Tesla and Rutherford is that thing? But even as my mind threw up the startled query, I was reacting.

The creature was in no way human. It was … I hesitated to use the word 'saurian', but there it was. Lizardlike head with an erect crest, widespread wings, red-gold scales, and a long whip-like tail. Where it had come from, I had no idea, unless it was one of those Case 53s I had been hearing about. Opening its mouth to display an inordinate amount of undoubtedly needle-sharp dentition, as well as a remarkably pink tongue, it unleashed a threatening screech. I am neither a superstitious man, nor one given to baseless fears, but that screech ran straight to my backbrain and gave me chills all the way down my spine.

Shoving Winston down so that he sprawled alongside the workbench, I ignited my flight pack and took to the air. The ship's hold in which I had set up my temporary base was not tremendously spacious, but I was able to fly around to a certain extent. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it needed to use wings, the aerial intruder also seemed able to manoeuvre freely within that space.

As I had intended, my sudden movement drew the creature's attention away from Winston and toward myself. Even as it banked toward me, I designated it with the target pipper and fired off a containment-foam missile. My initial estimation was that one should do the job – the creature wasn't that large, after all – but I followed up with a second one, just in case.

My precaution was proven timely as, just a moment later, the creature spat a small bolt of fire from its open mouth. Considerably surprised, I revised my earlier judgement. It's not a dinosaur. It's a dragon.

The fire bolt was obviously aimed at the first missile; I allowed myself a confident smile, as there was no way that my missiles would permit themselves to be decoyed into just such a mutual-destruction ploy. Fulfilling my faith in my programming skills, the missile being targeted jinked aside so as to skim past the oncoming attack … which promptly exploded into a small but intense burst of flame, destroying it anyway. Oh, that's just rude.

The second missile, having been given more lead time to respond to the dragon's fire breath – not a phrase that I had ever thought I would need to make use of – swung out wider, evading the perimeter of the fiery burst. Given the relative motion of the missile and its scaly target, the draconic interloper was through the area where the first missile had been destroyed before the second one had begun to swing back in.

This was actually a good thing; by the time the missile reacquired its target, it was actually behind the flying creature, in a tail chase. Such a pursuit would be necessarily brief; manoeuvring space was limited, the missile was obviously much faster in straight-line flying than the airborne lizard, and the thing would have had to look back over what passed for its shoulder in order to target the oncoming attack.

Still, I did not allow myself to become complacent; the creature had already surprised me twice, after all. Just a moment later, my caution was rewarded as it increased its speed, arrowing toward me, pinions beating faster than ever.

My armour is almost certainly proof against its claws and possibly resistant to its fire breath, but if it engages, then we both get struck by the missile …

That was a sub-optimal scenario. I popped a cloud of smoke and veered to the left so as to clear its path. My helmet switched to IR tracking, of course; for a flying reptile, the thing was remarkably warm. Behind it, the pursuing missile was a smaller, brighter spark.

The dragon-thing plunged into the cloud of smoke where I might have expected it to fly around; to my astonishment, it swerved toward me. I flung out my arm defensively; there was a wrenching impact then it was gone, out the other side of the smoke. Warning messages began popping up in my HUD, even as I became vaguely aware that the draconic creature had altered its course to put me between it and the missile that was still gaining upon it. Its intent was clear; the missile was supposed to be decoyed into hitting me.

Less than a second later, the missile whipped past me, following its own curving path to line up once more on the interloper. I permitted myself a brief smile – haven't heard of IFF, have you, brute? - but there was precious little to smile about in the messages on my heads-up display. On its way past, the flying reptile had latched on to the missile housing on my right arm and torn it completely off of my armour.

By now, I was revising my initial impression of the dragon-like creature. It was in no way a dumb animal, appearances notwithstanding. By its very actions, it was fully capable of recognising a threat, acting to deny me of a weapon and even attempting to turn said weapon on me. There was a human intelligence at work behind that scaly brow.

Talking of human intelligences, I turned my head to check on Winston. He was just at that moment pulling himself to his feet by way of the workbench, looking around dazedly to see what was going on. I watched as the draconic being swooped low over him, causing him to duck again. The missile, following the creature, also swooped low … and exploded, delivering its payload to Winston. Blobby yellowish foam scored a direct hit on my hapless minion, attaching him firmly to the floor and the workbench. Perhaps, in future, I would equip him with an IFF as well.

With what I had no trouble in interpreting as a screech of triumph, the creature began a long swooping turn, obviously intending to get back to grips with me. And well it might feel triumphant; in its first pass, it had defeated two of my attacks, removed the launcher housing from my right arm, and rendered my minion hors de combat, using my missile to do so. However, I still had a few tricks that it had not yet seen; with a grim smile of my own, I sent the self-destruct signal to the missing launcher housing.

The housing exploded, all the remaining missiles inside adding their propellant fuel to the detonation. Enveloped by the massive burst of flame that resulted, the interloper was flung through the air by the shockwave. It hit the deck plates and rolled over and over. I could not determine the extent of its wounds, but at that moment, I was not feeling particularly charitable.

And then, yet another surprise occurred. As the dragon lay sprawled upon the deck-plates, it began to shift and Change. Within moments, an unconscious teenager lay there, skinny and lanky but undeniably feminine. She wore a costume not unlike a bathing suit in basic black; thinking back, I recalled seeing the black colouration on the draconic being and assuming that it was part of the creature itself. This was obviously not the case.

The fact of her being human, at least part of the time, changed matters considerably; I began to descend toward the floor, to see if she was badly hurt.

“Leave her alone, you bastard!”

Too late, I recalled the other half of the equation; specifically, the Alexandria package known as Glory Girl. She came rocketing in through the hole in the side of the hull; I found myself suddenly overcome by fear and trepidation, quite unlike my usual sang-froid.

With an impact that rang throughout my armour, she slammed into me and drove me across the width of the hold, toward the far bulkhead. I still felt the terror, but I seemed to recall that it was actually part of her powerset, to make her foes fear her. In short, I was being made to experience these emotions.

I am my own man. I will not be made to do anything.

At the last instant, I activated the side-jets on my flight pack, driving us around in a half-circle. She reacted too slowly, obviously driven more by emotion than careful planning. Before she could bring us to a halt, I had slammed her into the bulkhead, driving quite a respectable dent into it. To aid in keeping her off balance, I ejected a series of flares into her face before backing off.

As I had suspected might happen, with her confusion came a slackening in the desire to run away and hide. It was still present, but not in the near-overwhelming levels that I had been feeling before. However, she still posed a not inconsiderable problem for me; someone who was able to make me feel emotions not my own, and also physically match up to me, was in no way my preferred opponent. With that in mind, I levelled my left arm, and the missile housing mounted on it, at her; a containment-foam missile, I judged, should suffice to immobilise her for long enough for me to collect Winston and vacate the premises.

An actinic streak of blue-white plasma cut across my field of vision; my visor managed to block most of it out, but I was still left with a blob of orange in front of my eyes. This was not enough to block me from seeing the new error messages now popping up on my HUD; to my now-increasing annoyance, I saw that I had now lost the other missile housing.

For variety, this one had not been torn off; instead, the plasma burst had cut it in half. In addition to loss-of-function messages from the housing itself, I was also getting excess-temperature readouts from the servos in the left arm of my power suit. That plasma blast had been hot.

Looking around, I saw that the teenage girl was back in her beast-like form; crouching, she had her wings spread and her mouth open, aimed in my direction. Judging from the temperature readings I was getting from her throat, there was little doubt regarding the origins of that actinic plasma stream. Well, she's all right. That's a good thing – I suppose.

I was beginning to regret ever having come to Brockton Bay. Not that I had been intending to commit any crimes here; given that the city held so many villains, I suspected that I would have to make an appointment to rob the local bank. As it was, my presence was more to do with making deals with some of the local criminal element. My overall aim had always been to return to San Francisco once my business in Brockton Bay was done; however, it seemed that said business was going to come to an end much sooner than anticipated.

The time had arrived, I judged, to go from an offensive stance to a defensive one. With undamaged armour and free flying room, I believed that I would be able to match up to Glory Girl on her own. Against her draconic companion, I would have more of a problem, but at the very least, I would be able to outdistance the creature so long as my fuel held out; this was the advantage of flight pack over wings. But against both of them, lacking my primary missile launchers, I was at a severe disadvantage.

With this in mind, I turned away from Glory Girl and cut in full power on my flight pack, heading for the hole in the side of the hull. I did make one slight deviation in my trajectory, to pass over Winston on my way out. As I did so, I sprayed him liberally from a nozzle secreted in the left arm of my powersuit. Within moments, the imprisoning foam would dissolve and release him to complete the evacuation procedures, as he had been drilled.

Why, yes, I do keep a reservoir of containment foam dissolver in my armour. I, like the PRT, make use of containment foam; to have the means to counteract it is merely a sensible precaution.

Knowing that I had done all I could on that front, I aimed for the hole. It really was quite impressive; I was heartened to learn that my calculations regarding the missile had been accurate. Now, all I had to do was reacquire the components to build it, and I'd have something capable of punching through the side of the average bank vault.

Of course, to do that, I would first have to extract both myself and Winston from this predicament. Step one was to take the fight outside and away from him. Step two would be to either win the fight or evade both of my erstwhile opponents; I was not overly optimistic about the former, but reversals had been known to happen. However, the latter was always a good Plan B.

Step three, of course, was to rendezvous with Winston at our prearranged location, so that I could forever shake the dust of Brockton Bay from my boots. Most of the heroes I was prepared for, but going up against a teenage girl masquerading as a fire-breathing dragon was not in my life plan. Especially since said dragon had already done a remarkably good job of disarming me of both primary missile launchers.

This was not to say that I was entirely unarmed; even as I flew out through the hole into the night air, my secondary missile pods motored from their stowed positions on my back up on to my shoulders. Each held three missiles, which could be ripple-fired or independently launched.

The upside of this confrontation was that both of my opponents seemed to be rather durable; I would not have to worry so much about pulling my punches, either figuratively or literally. The downside was that I had two opponents and six missiles to go between them. After the admittedly brief confrontation, I did not trust the capability of my missiles to perform a one-shot disable on either Glory Girl or the dragon. Moreover, with the dragon's flame-breath capability factored in, I was less than confident that I could even hit the creature, much less disable her.

A lesser man would have chosen surrender at this moment, while a more stupid man would have chanced an all-or-nothing attack on them as they emerged from the hole. I did neither, having acquired a certain amount of respect for the both of them. Instead, I went for distance, not wanting to delay their exit. Winston would be free of the foam soon, after all, and the last thing I wanted was for them to realise this.

Once more, I was proven correct. A tiny fireball emerged from the hole, travelling a little way before exploding with quite surprising force. Had I been waiting nearby to ambush them, I would have been caught in the explosion and accompanying fireball, quite likely to my subsequent detriment. It appeared now that the dragon girl was not limited to small explosive bursts, making her all the more formidable an opponent.

As the fireball dissipated, the dragon emerged from it, not unlike a phoenix arising from the ashes. She let out a loud screech; in response, Glory Girl flew from the hole and rose to join her. From my vantage point, I targeted each with a flash-bang/HE missile, but did not fire as yet. I wanted to draw this out as long as possible.

A screech from the dragon-like creature – I refuse to believe that actual dragons exist – alerted me to the fact that she was aware of my whereabouts. This was quite impressive, considering that I was at that moment crouching in the shadows behind a large winch on the deck of another ship altogether. I was right. She does have some kind of sensory enhancement. Her attack on my missile housing in the smoke had not been a lucky fluke, after all.

She began to fly directly toward where I was concealed; Glory Girl quickly caught up, then flew ahead. I triggered both of my previously targeted missiles, then launched myself away with my flight pack.

The missiles swiftly closed with their designated targets, but the dragon girl was swifter still. She banked aside so that Glory Girl was not in her line of sight, then unleashed another one of her fire-bolts. I had planned for this; both missiles detected the oncoming bolt and performed evasive manoeuvres. Glory Girl did not slow down; the fire bolt sped ahead of her and detonated, missing both missiles and dissipating just as she got there. But her missile was now streaking in from the side, and the other was still on course for the dragon girl. Who are you going to save now, yourself or your friend?

For the longest moment, I thought that the answer would be 'neither', as the dragon girl merely banked sideways. Right up until the moment when she vaporised both missiles with a single actinic tongue of blue-white flame. Well then, that answers that question.

One-third of my remaining armament having been disposed of with almost contemptuous ease, I decided to go with the adage of discretion being the better part of valour. Activating my terrain-avoidance software, I got down to deck level and aimed myself at the nearest large freighter.

All three of us could fly, which negated that as an advantage. However, in order to capture me, they would have to catch up with me. If I made that too risky, then the chances were that they would break off the chase sooner or later. In the case of the dragon girl, I hoped for 'sooner', given that there was the distinct chance that she was still annoyed with me over the exploding missile housing.

Glory Girl was close behind me when I reached the ship, with her draconic partner some little distance behind. We raced over the deck, between masts and containers and what-have-you, my terrain-avoidance software kicking in my guidance jets at just the right times. The teenager was less agile, but she was able to keep up through sheer recklessness and bull-headedness. Until, that is, I used one of my remaining missiles to target a winch. As I rocketed past, the end of the cable spool blew off, spilling coils of metal cable into a great tangle. I heard her curse as she flew headlong into the metal snarl, and I smiled to myself.

As it happened, I was celebrating too soon. One of those all-too-familiar firebolts exploded on the deck ahead of me, forcing me to swerve hastily. With a loud screech, the dragon girl dropped in behind me, uncomfortably close. I tried to accelerate, but that overtaxed my terrain-avoidance systems; clipping a corner, I nearly flung myself into a wall, but managed to recover and correct in time. Despite the close quarters, the dragon girl didn't seem to be overly hampered; at least, the flapping of her wings behind me did not falter.

I targeted my next missile at the base of a radio antenna; this should, I calculated, fall into the laneway behind me, blocking all passage, whether by humanity or annoyingly-persistent teenage dragons. At the triggering signal, the missile launched away, dead on target. The muted explosion showed that it was dead on target; the antenna began to fall.

A firebolt shot past me, toward the a point above the toppling antenna. Her aim's off if she wanted to delay that thing from falling …

Too late, I realised that her aim was precisely on target. The explosion propelled the antenna downward, blocking off the through-way to me as well as the dragon girl. There was just one place to go; upward. So I went upward. Right to where Glory Girl was waiting for me.

“Hi,” she greeted me brightly. “Give up?”

At this point in time, a stupid man would have kept fighting. I had been outwitted and outmanoeuvred; with a sigh, I raised my hands.

I would be transported back to California, to face trial for my crimes there. On the way, there would undoubtedly be opportunities for escape. Winston, I was reasonably sure, would meet me at one of my safe houses, once I had freed myself.

But there was one thing of which I was certain.

You couldn't pay me to come back to Brockton Bay.

<><>

Taylor

“Well, that was fun,” Vicky declared brightly as the PRT officers loaded Stinger into the back of the transport van. “What did you think, Wyvern?”

I let out a non-committal chirp, looking down at my now-tattered costume. While it wouldn't quite be indecent when I changed back, there was somewhat less of it than when I had started the night.

“Oh, come on,” she chuckled, slapping me on the shoulder. “Costume damage happens. I lose my skirt all the time.”

Yeah, but you wear bike pants underneath. My squawk wasn't quite as nuanced as that, but it got the message across.

“I guess you have a point,” she agreed. “My force field protects my clothing pretty well. On the other hand, you're just tough. When that thing exploded, I thought you were really badly hurt.”

The concern in her voice touched me; I put a wing around her shoulders. I had been knocked out for a moment, and had woken up in human form. When I saw Vicky in peril, my Change had been swift and immediate; I hadn't even had to think about it.

“So anyway,” she went on, “that was awesome, what you were doing with your flame-breath. Did you figure all that out before you did it, or was it spur of the moment?”

I shrugged and let out another chirp. A bit of column A, a bit of column B.

She was getting pretty good at guessing what I meant. “Yeah, I suppose so. But anyway, one more question before we head home.”

I tilted my head interrogatively, looking down at her slightly.

“Didn't you used to be shorter?” 

Part 10