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Part Six: Back to Civilisation

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

The Next Day

I shook hands with Riley, ignoring the prodding of the retractable needle in her palm that kept trying to inject me with something. I was pretty sure she wasn’t doing it on purpose. Or maybe she meant it as a joke. Which gave me ideas of my own.

“It was nice meeting you,” she said, smiling shyly at me. “And I’m really glad you want to go back to Brockton Bay.”

I knew she didn’t want me around to take her spot as Jack’s favourite, but I didn’t take offence. My father could go screw himself, as far as I was concerned. Riley was happy with him, and I wouldn’t have been. Or rather, I would’ve gotten irritated after a while and tried to kill him for real. I might even have succeeded, and then I’d be faced with the choice of either taking over the Nine or going on the run from them, and then where would I be? Not sleeping in my nice warm bed every night, that’s where.

“Eh, Dad would probably miss me after a while,” I said. “It’s been interesting, though. Especially when we went swimming.”

“While it lasted,” she agreed with a roll of her eyes.

That morning, I’d wandered out of Chipmunk cabin—rather, Honey Badger cabin, after Riley had asked the Siberian to change the name for me—to find the Nine were still there. Riley had decided that Jack needed twelve hours of rest before he could be moved. We still had a few hours to go till midday, so we’d decided to go for a swim. After we located bathing suits that fitted us, we’d splashed around squealing in the chilly water for a while. The Siberian joined us (minus bathing suit, of course) but just stood there in the water, watching but not joining in. Riley loved the water slide; by my count, she’d come down it no less than thirty-four times, to my twenty-five. So I like water-slides, too. Sue me.

The rest of the Nine had taken a little time to notice us, but when they did, Shatterbird and Burnscar also wandered over in bathing suits. However, they didn’t get to dip so much as a toe in before Crawler apparently launched himself from orbit into the pool with a multi-toned bellow of “CANNONBALL!”

Let me tell you: when Crawler pulls a cannonball, he puts his all into it. And he has a lot of ‘all’. Half the water in the pool went AWOL, the slide was destroyed, Burnscar and Shatterbird were drenched and I found myself skidding to a halt twenty yards away. We located Riley on top of the main cabin, laughing so hard she could barely hold on.

Of course, Burnscar and Shatterbird then spent the next fifteen minutes chasing a still-cackling Crawler around the camp, doing more property damage than had taken place over the entire previous night. Which meant that I was the one who had to climb up and get Riley down, after I discovered that my newfound Brute strength didn’t mean I could jump that high. Or rather, I had to climb down with her after the Siberian helpfully tossed me up on the roof. This also put an end to any more thoughts of using the pool; even if we’d been able to repair the slide and refill the pool in the short time they were here for, Crawler’s acidic drool would’ve rendered any farther swimming into a very briefly exciting experience.

Note to self: never invite Crawler to your pool party. Someone else’s pool party, sure. Just make sure it’s someone you don’t like. Also, being tossed anywhere by the Siberian is a weird-as-fuck experience.

But now the Nine were getting ready to move out, in a motorhome they’d liberated from somewhere. How they’d even gotten it up the road to Camp Puckatawney was a mystery for the ages. I suspected Mannequin may have modified it for off-road travel. In any case, Jack was already aboard and strapped in for the trip. Riley had said she was going to wait as long as possible to wake him up, so he’d be less likely to come back looking for me.

I’d offered to use my power to suppress Hatchet Face’s power so Riley could reattach his hand, but he’d sneered at me and said he’d take his chances. I figured that was his option, so I hadn’t pushed the matter. Besides, he was a cheat and a dick.

So I stood and watched the motorhome roll out of the campsite. Riley leaned out one of the windows and waved goodbye. I lifted a hand and waved back, and then they were gone. Dusting my hands off, I reached into my pocket and touched the going-away present she’d given me. Then I turned and looked around at the half-wrecked camp. I had to call for help, but first I had to set the scene.

<><>

Three hours later, the first PRT chopper came swooping in toward the campsite. A second one orbited the area, obvious gun barrels protruding out the side door. From my hiding place under Honey Badger cabin, I watched as the first helicopter touched down briefly, dropping off heavily armed and armoured troopers. Brightly-coloured figures landed at the same time. Capes, obviously, but I didn’t recognise them.

Under barked orders, they spread out and began to efficiently search the area. The capes lifted off again, out of my line of sight, probably backing them up from the air. Or at least, so I thought until someone yelled out something, and half a dozen troopers started converging on Honey Badger cabin. As per the plan, I huddled deeper into the dusty nest I’d dug for myself under the cabin, clutching at the carving knife I’d liberated from the main cabin.

The knife was just for show, of course. It was something the troopers could take away from me. My real weapons were stuffed in my pockets, strapped to my leg, or stored at the bottom of my new backpack. My old one, of course, had been thoroughly clogged with paint, so I’d swapped it out for another one.

As part of the cover, I’d set fire to Raccoon, Deer and Squirrel cabins, tossing all the incriminating evidence in there to go up in flames as well. This included my old pack. I didn’t want to have to answer awkward questions about why I’d brought a dye bomb to summer camp. This wasn’t something normal kids did.

“You, under the hut!” It was a masculine voice, calling through a bullhorn. “Come on out! We won’t hurt you!” Unless I was a member of the Nine, was the unspoken addendum. Then they’d hurt me plenty. I didn’t care either way; I just stayed where I was.

There was a sharp hissing sound followed by a loud thump, and I looked around to see a pair of boots made of segmented red metal standing right where I’d crawled under the cabin. The person wearing the boots crouched, revealing blue metal armour, red metal gloves, and a red helmet with elaborate lenses covering most of the front of it. “Hi,” he said. His voice was also metallic, but wasn’t the same one who’d called out before. I figured that one had to be PRT. “I’m Tracer. Want to come out so we can make sure you’re okay?”

I didn’t answer. I just burrowed down into my earth hollow a little more. Almost as an afterthought, I let him see my knife.

“Okay, then,” he said quietly. Without looking away from me, he raised his voice. “Okay, guys, we’ve got a trauma victim here. Be warned, she’s got a kitchen knife. I’m guessing she’s having trouble seeing anyone as friendly, right now.”

“Well, that’s not exactly surprising,” I heard someone say from behind me. “Is she injured?”

“Gimme minute,” Tracer replied tersely. I saw some of the lenses turn in their mountings. “No fresh blood. She’s active and aware, so I don’t think she’s got any long-term injury going on.” He cleared his throat, which sounded like a food processor trying to puree a rock. “Honey, what’s your name?”

It was almost time for me to capitulate, but I had to show one last spark of irrational fear. I shook my head and ducked down so that he could only see my eyes. My knife came up a little more, so that he could see my white knuckles around the handle. I could feel and hear the handle creaking under my grip.

“Subject is non-cooperative,” Tracer reported. “Do it.”

I was not given more than a second or so to wonder what ‘it’ was, before there was a gurgling hiss from behind me. Even as I twisted to see what it was, yellow foam engulfed me. I had to hand it to them; even though I’d intended to let them talk me down anyway, this was a smarter and more efficient way of getting me from under the hut. It also made my job of pretending to be horrifically traumatised somewhat easier.

They dragged me from under the cabin, then used something to dissolve the foam around my hand so they could disarm me. I let them go ahead and do this with only a token show of resistance. Once the rest of the foam had been dissolved, I climbed to my feet and stood there, silently staring at them. “Go ahead,” I said. “Kill me. You killed everyone else. I watched you.” I tilted my head back, exposing my throat. “Finish the job.”

As hardened as the PRT troopers seemed to be, they flinched at my words. One stepped forward, his hands up in an unthreatening fashion. “We’re not going to kill you,” he said. “We’re here to help. You’re the one who made the phone call?”

I nodded, very slightly. “Prove you’re not the Nine,” I said. “You could be wearing those uniforms to trick me before you kill me. Jack Slash and Shatterbird pretended to be camp counsellors.” I pointed at Tracer. “I think he’s Mannequin.”

“What?” If I was in the habit of expressing humour, Tracer’s outraged voice would’ve made me chuckle, at least a bit. “I’m not Mannequin! Tell her I’m not Mannequin!”

“It’s like you said,” the PRT soldier told him. I could definitely hear the grin in his voice. “She’s having trouble seeing anyone as non-hostile.” He reached up and undid a latch, letting his faceplate swing upward. “See?” he asked. “I’m not Jack Slash, or any one of the Nine. My name’s Lieutenant Forbes, and we’re here to rescue you.”

“Oh.” I still wasn’t showing any emotion; that is to say, my natural state of affairs. “I need to have a shower.”

“Sure thing,” Forbes replied, readily enough. “Sergeant LaSalle, front and centre!”

As he lowered his faceplate once more, a trooper who was even wider than him in the shoulders (though not quite as tall) trotted over to us. “Sir!” she reported in a voice that was definitely female.

“Escort the young lady to the showers, and bring her back here when she’s finished.” Forbes nodded to me. “Sergeant LaSalle will protect you.”

“Oh,” I said again. “Thank you.”

<><>

It turned out that fooling them was pretty easy with the assistance of my blue field. It even made LaSalle gullible enough to hand my new clothes in to me after I’d finished scrubbing off what I could of the foam residue. I transferred my weapons to their new hiding places, stuck the machete in the new pack (the handle just barely fit inside) and went out to greet my rescuers.

When Forbes asked me what happened, I told them I’d run and hidden when the Nine first showed up. I gave him a version of the truth about the gauntlet Jack Slash had set the kids, only I made out that nobody won, even the one kid who made it to the flagpole.

After the Nine left (I said) I’d sneaked out to make the phone call for help, then I’d gotten scared that the Nine would know I’d called and come back, so I got a knife and hid. I told them that I didn’t know why they’d torched the cabins or wrecked the pool.

By the end of this, I was feeling fairly wrung out; maintaining the blue field to cover for any slips was more effort than I’d counted on. But I managed it, and  remembered to ask them not to tell the news organisations who I was. The last thing I wanted was to be famous, after all.

Lieutenant Forbes gravely agreed that it would be better for my safety if word never got out that Jack Slash missed a victim. I would be discreetly transported back to Brockton Bay by the PRT, and reunited with my family. With time and therapy, he said, I would probably be back to normal in no time.

I had other plans.

<><>

Five Days Later

“Ballet, horseback riding, modeling classes or violin. Pick one, Emma. One.

Emma smirked at her father’s long-suffering voice from the driver’s seat of the car, then grinned at me. Surreptitiously, she mimed reeling in a fish, then cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice was pure innocence. “Or, or, or, maybe …”

I interrupted her, raising my voice to speak over her. “Mr Barnes, I think that was a wrong turn.” We were now driving down a narrow one-way street, the type that delivery trucks trundle down.

“It’s a short-cut, Taylor.” He spoke much more gently with me than with Emma, as if I needed to be coddled. Which he thought was the case, and I wasn’t really about to disabuse him of the notion. So long as they thought of me as a ‘victim’, it would shape their perceptions of me. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“No, it’s not.” I pointed ahead, through the windshield. “There’s a dumpster in the way.” I had my backpack on the floor between my feet, and I leaned over and reached right down to the bottom for my trusty piece of iron bar. As I slid it into my sleeve, Emma turned and looked over her shoulder. “There’s a van behind us!”

This surprised me not in the least. Ever since I’d spotted the dumpster, I’d expected something like this. Straightening up in my seat, I turned to look. Teenagers were getting out of the van. They wore red and green gang colours. “Huh. ABB. I didn’t see any tags around here.”

“Girls, you’d better hang on.” But Alan Barnes didn’t ram the dumpster. Instead, he rolled up to it and tried to nudge it out of the way with the car’s bumper. Predictably, it didn’t budge.

“Mr Barnes,” I said. “Back up, now. Floor it. If you can push the van back into the street, we’re free and clear.”

“I can’t run them over!” he protested. As I pulled the switchblade from my pocket, I glanced back again. The little shits were running after us. We weren’t going to have a second chance to ram the dumpster.

“Daaad …” Emma had a high-pitched note of fear in her voice.

“We’ll be all right.” But he sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than her. “Call 9-1-1. Call the cops, now.”

The first guy came up on the right. He swung something heavy and Emma screamed as her window shattered. The safety glass didn’t cut her, which was my only real issue. As he reached in to grasp her by the hair, I popped the switchblade and swung it in a short arc, stabbing it through his hand and into the metal of the door. His scream was even higher-pitched than Emma’s.

“Get down, Emma!” I snapped, pushing her to the floor. Yanking at the handle, I opened the door and scrambled out past her. The clasp-knife was ready to my hand and I pulled the blade open while the first asshole was still screeching and flailing with his hand nailed to Mr Barnes’ car. Then I let the iron bar drop out into my other hand.

“What the fuck?” blurted the second one to reach the car. A blade snicked open and he swung at me, but I stopped short to let it go by. Then I swung with my bar at his wrist and heard the meaty crack that says someone’s gonna be left-handed for the foreseeable future. Just to really fuck up his afternoon, I slashed with the knife and took two fingers off of his left hand as well. Brute-level strength was awesome. Then I kicked him in the crotch, also with Brute strength. After all, why let it go to waste?

Which reminded me. I linked the white bubble to the grey field and pushed it out, just to make sure that any ABB capes that showed up wouldn’t have powers to go along with their shitty attitudes. And then I turned to the rest of the ABB punks and smiled. What with the extra two inches of mouth, the coaching Riley had given me on how to seem more insane than I was and the high-pitched giggle I gave them, I was pretty damn creepy.

As number one finally wrenched his hand free of the switchblade (blood spraying everywhere) and number two collapsed in his own personal universe of please-let-me-die, I observed the effect my preparations had on the ABB. With my head tilted forward and eyes opened wide, I could observe them from under my eyebrows and instil the impression that I had very personal (and very painful) plans for each and every one of them.

Which I did, but it was so useful to be able to project that kind of thing.

I took a step forward and giggled again, this time in a masculine basso. At this point, the guy with the bleeding hand tried to stab me in the back with my own switchblade. In fact, he made it all the way through my hoodie and shirt before my skin stopped it. I made sure he didn’t have a chance for a second attempt, by backhanding him into the brick wall. In all honesty, he was lucky; after all, I could’ve taken his head off with the clasp-knife or the iron bar (same end result, one was just a little messier than the other). But if I was going to turn down Jack Slash as a first kill, then some no-name ABB punk definitely wasn’t going to make the grade.

“Who’s next?” I asked, Riley’s modifications making my voice into a little girl’s. The giggle seemed to be really paying off in spades, as was the enhanced smile. It was a pity that it was still light out, or I would’ve been able to use the other thing Riley had given me.

Still, it was definitely enough. The girl broke first. Letting out a high-pitched shriek, she ran off down the alleyway. I got in among the rest of them and started swinging, trying to make sure I did less than lethal damage. Several broken bones and a couple of shallow but painful cuts later, they came to the same conclusion as the girl. Limping, staggering, supporting each other, they retreated down the alleyway. Two were left behind, and I looked down at them, wondering exactly how best to make an example of them that they’d still survive.

A hand fell on my shoulder. “That was—”

Adrenaline flared in my gut. There was someone behind me. Someone had managed to sneak up on me without making a sound, which made them competent, which in turn made them dangerous as fuck. I didn't recognise the voice, which meant it wasn't a friend. I turned and stabbed, all in the same motion.

It was a girl about my height, wearing a black-painted hockey mask and a cloak. Whatever she was using for body armour slowed the knife down, but only for a moment before my enhanced strength punched it through. I saw her eyes behind the mask, watched them go wide as the clasp-knife went in to its full length. She pawed at my hand for a second, then fell backward as I let the knife go. Flopping to the ground, she arched her back weakly a couple of times, grasping feebly at the handle of the clasp-knife, gasping for breath that she just couldn’t seem to draw in. I wasn’t surprised; while assisting Riley with her surgeries, she’d shown me where the diaphragm was, and explained how useful it was to the act of breathing. It appeared I’d nailed it on the first try.

“Taylor, my god!” Emma put her hand to her mouth as she stared at the two unconscious gangers, as well as the dying girl. “What have you done?”

“She shouldn’t have come up behind me without announcing herself.” It made sense to me. “Sucks to be her. I mean, she’s gotta be a villain if she’s gonna dress like that, right?”

“She’s not a villain!” Huh. Oh, well. Emma was always a bigger cape geek than me. “That’s Shadow Stalker! She’s a hero!”

Which put her in a weird place if she was going to be my first kill. I would’ve been okay with offing a villain—they usually had it coming—but killing a hero who’d been stupid enough to come up behind me? Not exactly what I’d been looking for. Still, if she was going to die anyway …

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll just put that knife in this guy’s hand over here, and he goes down for stabbing her.” I turned to Emma. “I mean, killing someone doesn’t count as murder if it’s the wrong person, right?”

“Yes, it does!” She was getting right in my face. This was totally unlike Emma. “What’s gotten into you?” she demanded before I could ask the very same question. “You were always a bit weird, but since they cancelled your summer camp you’ve been smiling a bit funny when you thought I wasn’t watching.”

Huh. I’d thought I was more careful with practising the smile than that. At least the PRT’s cover story about a ‘cancelled’ camp was holding up. But hey, this was as good a time to tell her as any. “Nothing, really.” I decided not to tell Emma about Jack Slash being my biological father, at least until she calmed down. “So, we’re cool?”

“No, we’re not cool!” She turned to her father. “Dad, help me get Shadow Stalker into the car! We need to get her to the hospital!”

Wow, really? They were going to try to save her? On the one hand, it meant I didn’t have to worry about having an idiot for my first kill. On the other, this was getting tedious. “Don’t bother. She’ll die before you get there.” I knelt beside Shadow Stalker and rummaged through her utility belt. Two phones, neither one of interest to me, so I dropped them on the ground beside me. A pack of aspirin, which she didn’t want right now, aspirin being a blood thinner. A tiny first-aid kit with a folded bandage. I pulled the knife out, wedged my fingers into the slit I’d made in the body armour and heaved, tearing it wider. Pushing the bandage on to the cut, I grabbed Emma’s hands and placed them on top. “Hold that there and press down hard. Mr Barnes, can you do chest compressions?”

“It’s been a long time since I did a first aid course, but I think I still remember how.” He looked down at me as if he wasn’t sure whether to shout at me or thank me for helping the idiot in black.

“Yeah, do that thing. You might want to call the paramedics too. The way I stabbed her, she’d never make it to the hospital.” I got up to make way for him. “Anyway, I think I’ll go home now.”

“I don’t care what you do!” Emma yelled over her shoulder as she pressed the bandage hard on to Shadow Stalker’s torso. “Just go away! Forever!”

"Wow, overreaction much? Stab one idiot vigilante and suddenly I'm the worst person in the world." I wiped off the knife and folded it, trying to figure out where Emma’s head was at. She was usually pretty chill with whatever I did. This hostility was totally out of left field. I didn’t get it. She liked slasher movies just as much as I did, probably more, but she watched them for the jump scares. I tended to see them more as a cross between a comedy and a slapdash ‘how-to’ manual, with a lot of unnecessary screaming and human interaction thrown in, than actual entertainment. You don’t enjoy things like that; you just watch them.

I suddenly realised what the problem was. This was like when Riley was going to take a sample of my brain to fix Jack Slash. They just couldn’t see why acting like this was a bad idea. Linking the white bubble to the blue bubble, I pushed it out to encompass them both. “Guys, you’re being unreasonable about this. I just did it to save you. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make a big thing about it.” As I said this, I pushed hard on the field to make it as blue as I could.

Mr Barnes sighed as he started the chest compressions. Right now, he was using one hand because he was dialling his phone with the other. Really, he was taking this a lot better than Emma, even if I didn’t understand why she was taking it so badly. “Taylor, I’m sorry, but I think you’d better go. We’ll get help for Shadow Stalker, and we won’t tell anyone who did this.” He looked to Emma. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

Emma gave me a dirty look. “Sure, but I don’t think we can be friends any more.”

I shrugged. “Sure, no problems. See you around.” Leaning into the car, I retrieved my pack. The nearest bus stop wasn’t too far away, and I figured I had enough for the fare.

As I strolled off down the alleyway, I wondered how long it would take Emma to get over whatever it was that was bothering her.

Part 7

Comments

Dominyx Black

Ow. I hurt from laughing too much. Just ow! LoL