Celestial Worm Pt 2 (Patreon)

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Danny

Even from where he was, Danny could see the bleeding gashes on the girl's leg. Worse, her arm was bent in a place where arms normally don't bend, with a shard of white bone protruding through the black costume. Fortunately, he was fairly sure he could also see the rise and fall of her back under the cape that was draped untidily over her. Which meant she was alive, even after a crash-landing that left a crater in the dockside he could've parked an RV in.

Tucking the camera away in his pocket, he skirted around the raised berm until he found a spot he could climb over. What am I even doing? he asked himself. The answer was simple; rendering aid. She didn't look any older than Taylor, and if she ever ended up as a cape and got hurt in a fight (God forbid), he hoped that some other good Samaritan would help her out.

He was just beginning to clamber between two uptilted slabs when an odd sensation made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. There was a crackling hiss and he looked up to see a monstrous creature dragging itself through a hole in space, about twenty feet above the ground. Around the edge of the hole, pale purple lightning was arcing in all directions, dissipating into the air or grounding in the concrete below.

"What the—" he began, but he hadn't even finished speaking before it dragged itself all the way through and dropped to the ground. Or rather, on to his car, which was directly beneath it. Any hope that it was lighter than it looked died instantly, along with the car. There was a rending crash, then the creature stalked forward. It left the car with its roof crushed in, the chassis crumpled and all four wheels either splayed outward or burst from the excess of pressure.

The size of a rhino but with a far higher proportion of claws, teeth, horns and just plain sharp bits protruding from its sleek black scaly hide, it looked like nothing he'd ever seen before. A long whip-like tail, waving in the air, sported bony blades not far from the end. Where the hell did that thing come from? he wondered. Earth Aleph? Or is it a cape projection of some kind? Then it raised its lizardlike head and sniffed the air.

For a horrified moment he thought it had smelled him, even as he crouched down behind a slab to escape its attention. But as it topped the rim of the crater, its glowing red eyes were fixed on the helpless girl lying in the centre of the depression. Please be a pet, please be a pet, please be a pet, he prayed.

A grinding crunch signalled one of the slabs that had blocked his way being shoved aside almost effortlessly. The thing sidled down into the pit, almost oozing from step to step, sniffing the air and watching the girl with unblinking eyes. Danny had a bad feeling about this. Almost without his conscious volition, he reached down to the rubble-littered ground. One hand closed around a chunk of concrete, while the other found a piece of rebar.

By the time he straightened up, the creature was poised over the girl. Slowly, its jaws opened, exposing even more teeth to the air. It pulled its head back, ready to lunge downward—

"Hey!" Danny heard the yell, and realised it was him. His hand stung from the force of his throw. As the creature raised its head at the sound, the chunk of concrete bounced off its head right about where its ear should be.

Almost as if it couldn't believe what had happened, the beast turned slowly and fixed its crimson gaze upon him. Warned by some obscure instinct, he ducked just before the whip-tail whistled over his head. The bone blade bit deep into the concrete slab beside him, right where his head would've been. Coming up with the rebar, he swung it two-handed, striking the tail-blades and shattering one. The creature roared in what he hoped was the sort of pain that would make it retreat.

No such luck. The monster yanked its tail free of the concrete, leaving part of the blade behind, but that didn't hamper it at all. It started moving toward him, vicious intent showing clearly in its glowing eyes. He raised the rebar again, seeing the deep scar in the steel where the bone blade had gouged it. The bone cut the steel? What the hell?

As it neared him, he took a careful step back, then a second one. "Back off, whatever the fuck you are," he said, trying to sound confident. "I will beat the fuck out of you with this." In all honesty, he was beginning to doubt his ability to do that, but he'd gotten out of more than one fight with the judicious use of bravado in the past.

Unfortunately, either the beast didn't respond to bravado, or it could tell just how scared he was underneath it. Whichever it was, he swung the bar more by instinct than design when it lunged forward, smashing the bar against its nose. With a bone-shaking growl, it darted its head forward a second time, snapping its teeth closed on the bar. To his horror, its gleaming teeth tore through the steel with a grinding shriek, leaving him holding a foot-long stub of metal with a shiny-smooth section where it had been severed. The red eyes glowed even more brightly as it spat out the mangled metal, then moved even faster than it had before. Danny fell backward on to his ass, but it followed him anyway. Just before the fangs reached him, he clenched his eyes shut. He had just enough time for a single thought to crystallise in his mind.

I'm sorry, Taylor.

Hot breath washed over his face, making him gag then realise he wasn't actually dead. As he moved his head, sharp points dug into his forehead and under his jaw. Cautiously, he opened his eyes, to find himself looking directly into the gullet of the monster. Its breath came again, redolent of a gust of wind from a slaughterhouse manned by zombies. It didn't seem to be biting his head off, despite its very obvious capability to do just that, so he shuffled himself backward until he was no longer breathing its foetid exhalations.

"Oh, you're alive," said the girl, who was now standing alongside the creature with one hand grasping a body spike. For its part, it didn't seem to be reacting to her, to him, or to anything really. It was frozen in mid-lunge, not even moving its eyes. "I'm kind of impressed, actually. There's crap-all mortals who've come face to face with a talot, even a cub like this one, and survived to tell the tale."

Danny breathed deeply, trying to get his hammering heart back under control. Almost dying had that effect on him. Though there were a lot of things trying to get his attention right now. Such as how the girl, who had been unconscious and badly injured just moments ago, was up and around now. And why the creature was just … frozen there.

"T … Talot?" he ventured. "What's a talot?" Part of his brain clicked into gear and he focused on her. Costume. Duh. "You're a cape!" he blurted. "Is that how you're doing this?"

Janesha

Janesha snapped awake to see the hindquarters of the talot and hear its frustrated growls. She didn't bother wondering what it was growling at; dealing with the current threat seemed the best idea right then. Restoring herself to full health with a stimulation wave, she sat up and latched on to its animal consciousness, then told it to freeze! As a junior member of the ruling house of Mystal, her ranged mind-bending abilities were easily sufficient to dominate a talot's brain, so it obeyed her order even though she'd checked it in mid-lunge.

Well, that was easier than I thought it'd be, she decided as she climbed to her feet. Wonder what had it distracted. Just as she took hold of a body spike preparatory to using her shapeshifting on it, she heard a shuffling noise. A tall, thin, balding man came into sight ahead of its muzzle, wearing the shell-shocked expression that anyone would have in his position. Anyone apart from a Mystallian, she amended silently.

She was impressed, and she told him so. Mystallians tended to hunt talot in the celestial plane. If the hunt went to the mortal plane, they confined the revelries to uninhabited planets or the space between stars. As a result, very few mortals ever laid eyes on one. Which was a good thing for mortals, because a single adult talot would slaughter a mortal city in less than an hour. Especially since they were thirty to forty times the size of this cub.

After swapping out her ranged mind control of the talot with her touch shapeshifting, she went into the mortal's mind with the intent of wiping the knowledge of her existence from his mind. But as she casually looked over the last few minutes of his memory to find out how much he'd seen of her arrival, what she saw changed her mind. "By the Twin Notes," she breathed. "You've either gotta be stone-cold nuts or have a brass set the size of Uncle Griffith's. Who the fuck throws a rock at a talot?" Then she got to the bit about how he'd hit it with a metal bar. She knew full-well that it could've stood still while he belaboured it with that bar, and he would only have chipped its horns a little. But that didn't change the fact that he'd actually fought it to save her life, and succeeded. He definitely had manly bits worthy of a celestial. In fact, they deserved their own event horizon.

"Well, that changes things a bit," she declared looking to see what his name was before she pulled out of his mind and let outside time start up again. She still had the talot under tactile control, but she knew she had to do something with it. Either kill it or let it go, and letting it go was risking that it might return. Normally, killing a talot came at the end of a hunt, but these were unusual circumstances. Making her mind up, she pushed harder with her shapeshifting. It died instantly and painlessly (she wasn't a monster, after all), slumping to the ground as rocks and dirt. The spike stayed in her hand, and she reshaped it into a tiny replica of the creature, rendered in platinum.

This didn't help the mortal's state of mind in any way. He sat there, blinking owlishly behind his glasses, until she stepped forward and held out her hand to help him up. "So, yeah. Thanks for helping me out, Danny. That could've been nasty."

For saving her life, he deserved a bit more of a reward than a simple thank-you, so as she easily hoisted him to his feet—as a celest in the mortal plane, her dead-lift weight was in the tons—she exerted her shapeshifting once more. By the time she let his hand go, his skin was as durable as it was capable of being in this realm, as was the rest of his body. Which, she noted with some surprise, was far stronger than she'd expected to be able to make him. Who the fuck set up this realm, and what other weird physical laws did they put in place? She'd be able to ignore them selectively, as was her right and capability. But that didn't mean she would be ignoring the fact of their existence. And just wait till I get back to the Known Realms. The look on that glory-stealing blowhard's face when he hears that a mortal stood up to a talot where any ten of his fellow Asgardians would run screaming from them …

"I, uh … you're welcome," he said awkwardly. "I've got a daughter about your age, actually. I couldn't not do something, you know?" He grimaced as he looked toward his totalled car, then an entirely different grimace crossed his face as he returned his attention to the remains of the talot. "What was that thing, anyway? I think it was about half a second away from biting my face off."

"It's called a talot," she said dismissively. "They're very rare." Hopefully extinct in this realm, she amended to herself. "Here," she said, handing the statuette to Hebert. "Souvenir."

Which reminded her. During her previous excursion into Danny Hebert's mind, she'd recognised that his memories of this realm bore an uncanny resemblance to a realm run by one of her cousins. Which made no sense at all. While Earlafaol was also out in the Unknown Realms, and this place looked the same, there was no realm-damned way she'd mistaken one realm for another. And yet, these weren't just accidental parallels. Something weird was going on here.

The only way to resolve this was to go back in. Diving into his memories, she got an idea of the local planetary geography and what language he spoke, both of which fitted with Earlafaol. The nearby buildings and constructions only bore out the resemblance even more.

However, despite the physical similarities, there was one glaringly easy way to tell that this wasn't Earlafaol. Janesha had visited her cousin a couple of times, and there were always a few members of her family in the realm somewhere. Celestials always had a distant awareness of any blood relatives within the same realm, in an 'I know you're there but not exactly where or who you are' kind of sense. The pings of familial contact just weren't here, so although this looked like her cousin's realm, it wasn't. The fact that the crystalline landscape she'd seen on the celestial plane had no resemblance to the unsettled (though normal) terrain of Earlafaol simply bore out her conclusion.

So why does here look so much like there? She dived deeper into his mind, irritated that her laziness on the first two passes necessitated doing the same thing over again. This time, she really looked at the information she was getting.

Planet's called Earth … Bet? Okay … that kind of fits?

Country's called United States. That fits.

Country to the north is Canada, to the south is Mexico. That sounds about right.

City is called Brockton Bay. Never heard of it.

Okay, so what's a cape and why did he call me one?

She went in search of the answer, and when she found it, it was so ridiculous and stupid that for a moment she suspected that Uncle Avis' smartass grandsons had decided to play some sort of long con on her. It had more in common, in fact, to one of the 'comic books' she'd perused during her visits to Earlafaol. She'd spent a lot of time giggling over how idiotic the 'superheroes' looked next to actual gods, and how most of the pantheon of Asgard would probably burst a collective blood vessel if they ever saw how those same comic books portrayed them.

The truly amusing thing was that because Earlafaol had been set up as a kind of embassy where all pantheons could establish power bases (unlike every other realm in existence, where the gods jealously hoarded their mortals against any interlopers) it was solely due to their efforts that these comic book writers even knew about them.

But this was no longer stupid or ridiculous. She was there, inside a comic-book world, face to face with a mortal who actually lived here.

When she emerged from his head, she immediately felt the mental pressure that indicated an incoming blood-link. Janesha's mother had been checking on her at odd intervals over the last few weeks and she'd been careful not to give her parent the excuse to delve into her mind and find out where she really was. However, Yasadan had probably told her of the self-imposed three-week time limit, and she'd reached that today.

If she finds out where I am, she'll want to yank me home straight away. I don't want to go. I've still got to find Cloudstrike. And once she did that, there was a mystery here, and she intended to get to the bottom of it. And even after she sorted everything else out, there was still the fact that she'd just found an unattended Realm, fully stocked with semi-trained mortals and no apparent gods running things. Basically, it was the equivalent to handing a mortal teenager an unlimited charge card and letting them loose inside a multi-level shopping mall …

Nobody's gonna blame me if I indulge in a little 'me' time, after all.

Thinking fast, she turned so that one of the concrete slabs was behind her, then reached back and changed its consistency to granite, with a little ice sheened over it. Asgard had plenty of granite and even more ice; she knew that for a fact. As an afterthought, she changed her uniform back to the cold-weather version she'd been using each time she spoke to her mother, to foster the illusion of still being in Asgard. Good thing I'm not trying this on Aunt Clarise. She'd see through me in an instant.

The mortal called 'Danny Hebert' went to speak, but she reached out and put a finger to his lips in a 'shush' directive. Then she accepted the blood-link. The image of her mother appeared before her. "Hi, Mom," she said brightly. "How are things at home?"

"Oh, we're fine," her mother replied, a single wrinkle of concern marring her brow. "Why haven't you blood-linked home yet? It's been three weeks."

Janesha worked to maintain the facade of being an undecided teenager. "I dunno, Mom. It's nice out here with just me and Cloudstrike, and I guess I'm still a bit pissed off at that red-headed asshole." Which was also true, though she was far more worried about Cloudstrike than that pretentious blowhard of a thunder god, right then.

"You do realise that if Thor realises you're still in Asgard, he's going to make it his mission to find you, right?" Her mother's tone was concerned.

"Don't worry, Mom." She made her tone as light and cheerful as she could. "I've got it handled. He'll never find me, and even if he does, I'll …" … make him think he's a gerbil and escape while he's trying to figure out how to lick his own butt … "… just zip home straight away. Anyway, did Aunt Yasadan tell you what he said?"

Her mother sighed. "Yes, as you have reminded me. Repeatedly. But what's done is done. It's not as if he issued your grandmother with a challenge …"

Janesha snorted. "Wish he had. Then he'd find out what a real war was like. Anyway, thanks for checking in but as you can see, I'm fine. Gotta go, love you lots, bye." Without giving her mother a chance to protest, she dropped the blood-link then reverted her winter clothing to normal and let out a small sigh of relief. Still got it.

When she looked next at Danny Hebert, he had his arms folded and one eyebrow raised. She recognised Parent Mode straight away; even coming from a mortal, it got her attention. "So, where are you supposed to be?" he asked. "Remember, I've got a teenage daughter too, and I know a verbal two-step when I see one."

Busted. Only one excuse came to mind. "Uh, gotta go look for Cloudstrike." Before he could say another word, she stepped straight into the celestial realm.

Danny

Danny opened his mouth, then closed it again. Well, that happened. He studied the metal statuette in his hands. It snarled in horrifying likeness to the creature that had nearly killed him, right down to the needle-sharp fangs. With a shudder, he looked away from it at the slab of concrete which was now made of granite and covered with melting ice. Whoever that girl was, he decided, she was the most powerful cape he'd ever heard of, except for the Triumvirate and Scion. It was an article of faith, of course, that those four were the benchmark against whom all other capes were measured.

Still, she wasn't much weaker than any of them. She'd survived an impact that would've pulverised a normal person, turned a monster into dirt and platinum, and changed concrete to rock and ice. And, of course, simply vanished in front of him. Teleportation or invisibility? Teleportation, he decided. Turning invisible was great for dramatic departures, or so cape soaps would have him believe, but then she would've had to sneak away down a slope consisting mainly of crushed concrete. And with everything else she could do, he was quite willing to believe that she could teleport as well. Not to mention she's got access to some kind of Tinkertech bluetooth videophone, based on that call with her mom. Or maybe her team leader. Teenagers have been known to be sarcastic from time to time, after all.

Still holding the statuette of the … 'talot', he descended into the crater and began to climb out the other side. The thing had moved one of the slabs so he didn't have to go the long way around, but when he got to the rim, it became painfully obvious that he had no need to hurry. The car was just as much of a wreck as he'd thought when the beast first arrived. He'd be taking the bus home for sure.

Heaving a gusty sigh, he went over to the car and crouched down to try to access the glovebox. He didn't need to open the door, as all four had sprung open with the impact, as had the hood and trunk. The interior of the vehicle now had a vertical space of about two feet, of which he could use six inches to open the glovebox. At first he thought the latch was jammed but with just a little effort, the whole thing fell off into the footwell. Huh, the damage must've been worse than I thought. All the paperwork pertaining to the car was in there, and he shoved it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Though how he was going to claim 'a monster fell on my car and destroyed it' for the insurance payout, he wasn't sure. There probably wasn't a form for that.

Janesha

Stepping in from the mortal realm, Janesha found herself in a forest of those crystals. Odd ghost-like shapes slowly moved within each one, but she was more interested in getting out into the open and finding Cloudstrike. The edges of the crystals looked sharp, and she wasn't okay with the idea of getting her blood on them. There was more to them, she was certain, than a fancy light show.

"Cloudstrike!" she called out in the hope of getting an immediate answer. None came, which probably meant the mystallion was circling around to come in from another direction. Or that she'd given up on Janesha already, but that was exceedingly unlikely. Mystallions were intensely loyal, even in the face of death.

Moving with a certain amount of care, she eased her way out from between the crystals. Just as she got into the clear, she heard a distant whinny. "Cloudstrike!" she called again; she would've known that sound anywhere. "Here, girl! I'm here!" Raising her fingers to her lips, she let out a piercing whistle that would hopefully guide the mystallion to her.

In another moment, Cloudstrike appeared, gliding in from around a particularly massive crystalline monolith. The mystallion whinnied again, the note of relief plain in her voice. She came in for a fast landing, backwinging at the very last instant to drop her hooves to the ground beside Janesha. Then she was nuzzling Janesha's face, with anxious nickers, as if to be certain she was really there.

"Yes, yes, I'm all right," Janesha half-protested, half-laughed, running her hands over Cloudstrike's muzzle and up over her head. Ducking her shoulder in under the mystallion's chin, she put her arms around Cloudstrike's neck and held her close. "The talot's never going to hurt either one of us again. I got him good."

Which reminded her of Cloudstrike's injuries. Calling on her shapeshifting, she gave the mystallion the same treatment she'd given herself, healing the gashes in her flank and giving her an all-over tune-up to make her feel better. As she did this, she noticed droplets of blood that had alighted on Cloudstrike's tail and frozen in place as opposed to congealing.

"Clever girl," she said fondly, running her hands through the mystallion's mane. "You went looking for me on the mortal plane, didn't you?" It wasn't Cloudstrike's fault she hadn't found Janesha; planets were very small on the cosmic scale, after all. Janesha was sure that if she'd stayed in the same place much longer, the mystallion would've located her anyway. In fact, she was willing to bet that Cloudstrike had shown up in low orbit and had been circling the planet, looking for her. When Janesha had gone back to the celestial plane, Cloudstrike had followed.

The mystallion nickered again and nudged Janesha with the side of her head. Come on, she seemed to be saying. Why aren't you in the saddle yet?

"All right, all right," Janesha chuckled. Taking a handful of the shining mane, she vaulted into the saddle. "You're never going to believe the mortals on this world." With a simple nudge of her knees, Cloudstrike was airborne.

Janesha had an odd moment of indecision when she went to return to the mortal plane. There wasn't just one such plane, she realised, but dozens of them. It seemed that whoever had set up this realm had decided he needed lots of near-identical planets in parallel realities, and the physical laws that governed the realm had rearranged themselves to allow this to happen. Why he wanted it this way, she had no idea. Maybe he's trialling different power bases? It was a stupid idea, but this whole realm was failing to make sense on a lot of levels.

With a minor effort of will, she picked out the correct one and urged Cloudstrike forward. Between one wingbeat and the next, they were back where she'd started from. Danny Hebert now crouching next to the wreckage of his car, apparently examining the damage. I'm kind of the reason his stuff got broken, so maybe I should fix it or something.

Danny

"I could repair that for you, if you wanted." The voice was the girl's, and it came from behind and above him. Because of course she was back, just as he'd figured she'd decided to go somewhere else. Turning, he raised his arm to shield his face against the sudden wind that had sprung up. And then he saw that no, it wasn't a sudden wind. It was the downdraft from the wings of … a flying horse. That she was riding. Because why the hell not.

"Uh, if you could, that would be great," he ventured. Right then, it didn't surprise him in the slightest that she had a flying horse. It might be a … a projection, that was what they were called. Or a bioTinker construct. He figured the latter was more likely, given the existence of the talot. What got him the most, though, was how matter-of-fact she was with her powers, given how young she was. Most new teenage capes were all "woo! Look what I can do!" but this girl was … pragmatic about it. Like she'd been doing it all her life.

"Well, you did save my life, so it's the least I can do," she said cheerfully. The pegasus landed on the cracked concrete with four distinct thuds, so close together that Danny could barely tell them apart. It was … beautiful. No, it was magnificent. A burnished-gold coat set off huge wings that were blue underneath and a murky grey above. As the girl jumped lightly out of the saddle, the beast fixed Danny with the most intelligent gaze an animal had ever turned on him. I'm watching you, it seemed to be saying. The wings folded away alongside the flying horse's flank, more neatly than he would've imagined.

"Nice, uh, nice pegasus," he said, for want of a better thing to say. "What's its name?"

"Her name is Cloudstrike, and she's not a pegasus, she's a mystallion," the girl said absently, stepping up alongside him to study the wreck. "Wow, cars and talots don't mix well, do they?" She seemed to find the observation funnier than he did.

"No, they don't." He stole another glance at Cloudstrike. The pegasus—no, she's a mystallion—was still eyeing him suspiciously. He thought it was a little odd to call a female pegasus a name with 'stallion' as part of it, but he wasn't about to correct a superhero on her terminology. Your flying horse, you can call her what you want. "Oh, um, sorry, but you seem to know my name and I don't know yours."

"That's true." The girl turned from her inspection of the car to give him a disconcertingly mature gaze. "I'm Janesha of Mystal." Then she reached out and put her hand on the roof of the car.

"I'm pleased to meet yooouuuu …" His voice trailed off as his eyes widened. He'd known she was powerful, but this was ridiculous. Before his very eyes, his car was inflating back to its original shape. No, better than its original shape. Faded paint was being replaced by show-room floor quality colour, chrome gleamed once more, and even the seats were back to their pristine condition. By the time she took her hand away from the roof of the car, it quite honestly looked better than it had when he'd first bought it. "Holy crap," he managed, for want of something better to say.

The girl blew imaginary smoke from her fingertips. "Well, you're half right."

"Uh ... what?" That didn't make any sense at all. Of course, not everything she was saying or doing did make sense, even when Danny factored in cape strangeness. Take for example the talot and the mystallion. Two different creatures, one able to shear through steel with its teeth and the other an honest to goodness pegasus, complete with functional wings. He'd never heard of either one before today—well, he'd read about things like that, but strictly as mythical creatures—much less seen them.

"Never mind." Her amusement was back in full force. "So why were you out here today? Taking pictures of old sinking ships and rusty cranes in the hope that someone would listen to you long enough to help get the port back into shape?"

He blinked at her. "How do you know that?" he asked. His camera was safely in his pocket, and had been since her crash-landing. The only way she could've deduced that was … "Cape powers," he said. "Did you just read my mind?" This didn't make him at all comfortable. The only reported mind-reader was the Simurgh, and nobody wanted to be compared to her. Not to mention the fact that doing so was about the most definitive invasion of privacy there was.

"Yes," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I'm a mind-bender. It's what I do."

"Well, don't do it to me," he said roughly. "That's way beyond acceptable." He grimaced. "I mean, thanks for fixing my car and saving my life, but … don't do it again, okay?"

Janesha

Before Janesha answered, she went into his mind to find out why he had such a distaste for having his thoughts looked at. Most mortals basically expected celestials to be able to perform miraculous tasks like that as a matter of course. If it became a real issue, she could always smooth away the memory of his knowledge that she'd read his mind in the first place. Mind-bending was kind of cool like that.

The first thing she came across was a reference to a celest that she knew. What in the name of the Unknown Realms is Simurgh doing here? The last she'd heard, the immense bird-like goddess was resident in her home realm of Gaokerena with no intention of going anywhere.

Looking deeper, Janesha followed a trail of memory impressions to a TV image of the feared Simurgh. What she saw was a bizarre shape that, while Simurgh could probably assume it (like the Asgardians, she was descended from shapeshifting stock) Janesha could not imagine her ever doing so. And from the tone of his thoughts and memories, this 'Simurgh' was a mind-bender of some sort, using a psychic song to drive men mad. Simurgh had many talents, but mind-bending and needlessly hurting mortals were both beyond her. Oh, she'd be so pissed if she ever heard about this. Somehow, I don't think I'll be the one to tell her.

Apparently in Earth Bet, to become a 'Simurgh victim' meant a life of suspicion and paranoia as everyone around you expected to erupt into violence at the worst possible moment. Mortals had been slaughtered en masse for being driven insane by her song. I'm not established yet, but even I know that's not the way to gain converts. When she was about to pull out of his mind, she caught references to two other 'Endbringers', which was also what the faux Simurgh was supposed to be. While she'd never met the real Leviathan and Behemoth, she had no doubt they'd be equally unhappy at this co-opting of their names.

"Sorry about that," she went on without pausing. "I'm kinda used to doing it among my folks. It's not a big thing with us." For the moment, she decided to go along with his mistaken impression that she was part of a team of superheroes. "But I'll stay out of your head because it's so important to you." Unless it's necessary, of course. That went without saying, but it was time to change the subject. She waved at the ships and cranes. "Do you really think you're gonna succeed with just a few photos?"

Danny

"I don't know, but I've got to try," Danny said. "The Dockworkers are depending on me. I've got to do something." He hated the helpless tone in his voice, especially since his thoughts slipped back to Taylor as he said it.

For the first time, he saw that her eyes had tiny points of light in them, far back within. He wasn't quite sure why she smiled. "Well, your troubles are over. Even heroes need help from time to time, and since you're a hero, I'm here to help. Or rather, we can help each other get what we want."

"Wait." Danny's head was getting turned around. "I'm not sure what's going on here, but I've got a job to do and a child to take care of. So if you don't mind making a little sense here, I'd greatly appreciate it." He frowned at her. "And don't think I missed that little two-step you pulled earlier, miss. On your team leader and on me."

She blinked. "Team leader?"

"The one you called 'Mom'," he reminded her. "Or is she really your mother? Is 'Mystal' another family team, like New Wave?" It would explain why she was going unmasked, he supposed. Though hadn't they learned anything from what had happened with New Wave, back in the day?

"Mystallians support each other," she said flatly. "If we have 'team leaders', they would be Uncle Avis and Aunt Clarise, and Uncle Amaro and Aunt Yasadan."

Now he was totally lost. "Avis? Like the rental-car company?"

She looked at him strangely then burst out laughing, leaving him wondering what he'd said that was so funny. "Oh, wow, you have that here too? Oh, that's amazing. He's gonna be so pissed." She shook her head. "That whole thing was a prank because he irritated a couple of his grandsons and that pair of wiseasses took matters into their own hands."

Her double-talk was starting to irritate him. "Do you call yourselves 'mystallions' after your pegasus things, or did you name them after the team name?"

Cloudstrike looked up from where she'd been cropping some of the weeds that grew through the cracks in the concrete, and stamped a hoof. Danny stared as the solid slab fractured into several parts from the impact, then resisted the impulse to step back from the glare of death directed at him by the pegasus; or rather, mystallion.

Janesha, when she spoke, sounded just as irritated as the animal looked. "Calling Cloudstrike a 'pegasus' is like calling everyone in the world a 'Danny', and the next time you refer to her as a thing, I'll let her bite you." As if to underline the threat, the mystallion took up a chunk of concrete that had snapped free by her hoof. With her eyes fixed on Danny's, she crushed it to powder in her teeth, then made an obvious show of spitting it to one side.

"Uh, nice mystallion?" Danny ventured, raising both hands placatingly. He glanced over at Janesha. "Does she know what we're saying, here?"

Janesha shrugged. "More or less. As I was saying, Pegasus was the name of a mystallion that made it into your legends, once upon a time. And we call ourselves Mystallians because we are of Mystal."

That didn't quite explain everything, but he decided not to ask any more of what she obviously considered to be silly questions. "Okay," he said. "But how come I've never heard of Mystal before? If you're an established family team like New Wave, you should be all over the news. Especially with your mystallions. I know reporters who would crawl a mile over broken glass to interview you just about those."

"Oh, we're from a long way out of town," she explained with an airy wave. "You wouldn't have heard of us before."

Which was a non-answer as far as he was concerned, but if he knew teenagers she would dodge and dissemble on that topic until the cows came home. "Okay," he said again. "So what are you doing in Brockton Bay without adult supervision? And what was with your dramatic entrance? Was that talot chasing you? Where did it come from, anyway?"

"It was chasing me because it was chasing me," she said, as only a teenage girl could. "Nobody really knows where they come from, to be honest." She dusted her hands off as if ridding herself of the topic then waved again, this time encompassing the ships and cranes with the gesture. "So, would you like me to help you fix all this?"

Janesha

That got his attention, as she'd known it would. His gaze narrowed, then he looked at the ships and cranes, then back to her. "When you say 'help me fix it', what exactly do you have in mind?" he asked cautiously. But despite his air of reserve, she knew damn well she had him hooked.

"I mean fix it," she said impatiently. "Refloat and repair those ships you think are worth it. Junk the rest. Clean up the port and get the machinery back into working order. Give your Dockworkers some docks to work on." She cracked her knuckles. "I call it a day, tops."

His jaw dropped, just a little. "You can't be serious." Turning his head, he stared at the rusting, rotting hulks and the dockside machinery which (if she was being honest) wasn't much better off. Then he looked back at her. "You can do all that in a day?"

She didn't need to go into his mind to read the doubt there. It practically radiated off of him. Mildly irritated, she nodded. "Oh, ye of little faith." She knew full-well she was borrowing the favourite saying of one of her cousins, but she didn't care.

With firm strides, she led the way to the crater she'd dug out when she first arrived. Slabs of concrete had been smashed up and out of the way by the impact, but that was mainly due to her being a celest. The mortal plane of any realm did its best not to harm celestials in any way, but she had no doubt confused matters by being in a throwdown with the talot—which also counted as a celestial creature that just so happened to want her dead.

Crouching down, she laid her hand flat on the closest undamaged slab to the crater. This wasn't something she did very often, but she knew how to do it. Her power radiated out from where she was touching the concrete, flattening and smoothing down the disrupted paving. The dirt shuffled itself back into the crater as if ashamed of itself, and one by one, the concrete slabs rebuilt themselves over it. She had to make the concrete a little thicker and denser to accommodate the extra mass from the talot, but that was no particular effort for her. Thirty seconds after commencement, she stood up and looked at him, one eyebrow raised slightly.

For his part, he was staring at the pristine concrete in the same way he'd watched her rebuild his car. This time, his jaw did drop. Enjoying the moment, she strutted out on to the freshly-rebuilt slab and stamped on it; only the dullest of thuds answered her. "You were saying?" she asked with a smirk.

He closed his mouth then opened it to speak, but at that moment, Cloudstrike tossed her head and snorted. Janesha looked at her mount, and saw that the mystallion was staring toward what was presumably the entry gate to the dockyards. She retuned her ears so that she could hear more effectively, and then she heard the rumble of some sort of engine, moving fast and coming closer. "I think we have company," she said. "Are they likely to be heroes or villains?"

"Around here?" Danny Hebert shrugged helplessly. "After the entry you made, it could be anyone. Cops, PRT, heroes, villains, gangers, wannabes, Rogues …"

"Ah, right." She nodded. That made sense. From his memories, the city wasn't quite awash with crime yet, but it only missed that description by a narrow margin. This was very much a city where the bottom line was 'grab what you can, and to Hell with anyone else'. Mystal was both like that, and totally unlike it. While any Mystallian was expected to go after whatever they wanted, deliberately trampling innocents into the dirt in the process was severely frowned upon.

"Stay close to me," she said, moving back toward him. If they were no more than fifteen feet apart, she could institute what she called 'emergency-god' procedures, but she didn't want to do that quite yet. Especially not with Danny Hebert. He'd been living in Brockton Bay all his life, and while he was by most standards a good man, he also had a strong dose of cynicism in his makeup. Also, she was a child in his eyes. Which meant that for a situation requiring absolute and unswerving belief in her capabilities, he wasn't the most suitable candidate.

However, she was short on other options, so if she had to, she would.

Pursing her lips slightly, she whistled a short note that had Cloudstrike trotting over, reins dangling. Janesha gathered them up and stood at her mystallion's head. If things went badly pear-shaped, she knew she could step back into the celestial plane and take the other two with her, but she didn't really want to have to go that far. If I thought he was full of questions before …

She tilted her head as she realised there were two different engine noises. One of them was fairly big, if the vibrations she could feel through the ground were any indication. A moment later, Danny Hebert also seemed to figure that out as well. "Who the hell is that?" he asked out loud, apparently without meaning to.

A moment later, he was answered by a rending crash from behind one of the storehouses. Less than a second later, another crash followed, this one sounding like sheet metal being shredded. Then the large sliding doors at the front of the storehouse exploded outward, revealing a monstrous vehicle with a bulldozer blade on the front and several weapon turrets. Its engine bellowed as the heavy treads on the oversized metal wheels bit into the concrete.

"What … the … fuck?" Janesha blurted in astonishment. She was no expert on machinery, but that vehicle looked like it had been designed by someone who'd had either too much or too little ambrosia, and who knew less than her about how motor vehicles were supposed to go together. Yet still, somehow, it managed to drive and steer. Of course, given its unique method of entry, she was prepared to rule out the 'steer' aspect.

"Squealer," Danny Hebert said flatly. "The Merchants." He took a step toward his car. "In case you were wondering, they're bad guys."

She had just enough time to note that he hadn't said 'the' bad guys, when another vehicle swept into sight from the direction of the gate. From the lack of a crash, she presumed that Danny had left said gate open when he came in.

The newcomer was riding a motorcycle, but what a motorcycle. Big and bulky with a blue and silver colour scheme, it matched the armour the rider was wearing. Moving faster than the mechanical monstrosity, the cycle closed the distance to Danny's car rather quickly. Janesha tightened her grip on Cloudstrike's reins, but the rider seemed to know what he was doing. Still travelling at some speed, he leaned the motorcycle over and performed a sliding stop that ended him up within a few yards of where Danny and Janesha stood with Cloudstrike.

The Merchant vehicle also skidded to a halt about ten yards away, the heavy metal treads ripping chunks out of the concrete. "Oh, for fuck's sake," muttered Janesha. "I just fixed that."

The armoured rider climbed off of the bike. Reaching back, he detached some sort of polearm from his armour; with a smooth click-clack that would've made her great-grandmother salivate, it unfolded into some kind of high-tech halberd. "Skidmark!" he bellowed. Janesha had to admire his self-control, given that he was standing three yards from the only mystallion on the planet and he wasn't staring in disbelief. One glance was all he gave them, then he had his full attention on the armoured hulk before him. "I'll give you the count of five to leave or surrender!"

Well, that answered a question which had been hanging at the back of her mind. Danny wasn't the only one in Brockton Bay with balls of pure neutronium. Either that, or they're all crazy here.

A hatch on the mechanical monstrosity popped open, and a dark-skinned man wearing a blue mask stuck his head out. "Go shove your dick up your motorbike's tailpipe, Armsmaster!" he yelled back, accompanying the words with a universally rude gesture. "We saw 'em first!"

Beside her, she saw Danny shake his head slightly. "Ah, crap," he muttered. "Can you do something about this?"

Janesha grinned predatorially. "Oh, yeah."

Part 3