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Rating:

Mature

Archive Warnings:

Graphic Depictions Of ViolenceMajor Character Death

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Gen

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Parahumans Series - WildbowPrototype (Video Games)

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CrossoverConsequencesVillainsMorally Ambiguous CharacterMoral DilemmasShapeshiftingSuperpowersLiesCorruptionEldritchCannibalistic ThoughtsDeveloping FriendshipsHeroesVigilanteGrimdarkStealth Fix-FicObliviousHiding in Plain SightSerial KillersScience ExperimentsHuntington's DiseaseCharacter DevelopmentCharacter StudyPunching NazisAngst and HumorActs of KindnessSchemingMonster - FreeformWorm Spoilers (Parahumans)Alex Mercer is a jerk (but not irredeemable)Minor Original Character(s)Being Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver Is SufferingBut Glory Girl Won't Stand For ItCannibalismCanon-Typical ViolenceParahumans (Parahumans Series)Case 53s (Parahumans)The Protectorate (Parahumans)Alex Mercer is a JerkHorrorBody HorrorAction/AdventureCrossovers & Fandom FusionsManipulationSecrets

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English

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Published:2020-06-02Updated:2024-05-24Words:179,353Chapters:34/?Comments:200Kudos:486Bookmarks:175Hits:27,349

Compulsion

Lead_Zeppelin

Chapter 2: Incubation 1.2

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Incubation 1.2

It was just past midnight, and I was headed into the bad part of town.

My parents' warnings about sticking to the Boardwalk and avoiding the Docks were ringing in my head, but I was here for a reason. I was searching for the kinds of criminal activity this area became famous for after the local shipping industry collapsed.

By day, the difference between this part of town and the rich parts of town was obvious, even if the line between them was thinner than one might think. By night, though, the difference was even more obvious. The Docks were, first of all, dark. Besides a few indoor lights here and there that accidentally provided the majority of the street's illumination, most of the buildings didn't seem to have any power at all, and the street I was walking down didn't have working streetlights. It was a sharp contrast from the lively glow of downtown visible on the horizon.

There were plenty of places for squatters around here, apartment buildings and warehouses left over from the district's heyday back when the cargo ships weren't rotting in the Boat Graveyard, so there weren't exactly many homeless people to avoid out on the streets. The only people out and about would be the crack whores, drunks, and gangsters.

It was easy enough to steer clear of people while I looked for likely targets, aided by the bugs positioned all around me. I'd been continuously building up a swarm as I ventured further into the Docks, my power individually controlling each of the countless thousands of bugs within a roughly two-block radius of me. Almost every kind of flying insect and silk-spinning arachnid had some sort of use. Even harmless midges helped bulk out the swarm, and I used my sense of all the bugs' positions to provide a rough topographical map of my surroundings, helping me navigate and search all at the same time. Maybe some of the bugs' behavior was a little suspicious, but it was late enough that I doubted anyone had noticed yet.

I crept along, confident my freshly dyed superhero costume and expanded awareness would keep me hidden in the dark.

There was no warning for the piercing pain that split my skull.

I tripped and fell with a choked gasp. My chin hit the dirty sidewalk, making me bite my tongue, but the agony in my head was so overwhelming I was barely even aware of the taste of blood in my mouth. Did I just get shot?

No, it's coming from my power, I realized belatedly. There was something off in the distance that was causing this feedback. It quickly became clear I was getting pummeled with an open connection to its sensory data, like my brain was hooked up to a fire hose on full blast. I struggled to rein in the deluge of information my power was receiving. Almost immediately, the pain lessened from being blinding to a mere residual headache.

My first coherent thought after the shock wore off was that this was some kind of attack from a different cape, but that didn't seem quite right. It felt like it had come from inside my power. The buzzing at the edge of my awareness honed in on the new sensation, tentatively at first. I was forced to reduce the connection almost as far as it would go, like squinting in the glare of a spotlight, then I began to make sense of it.

My swarm had somehow exponentially increased in complexity in the space of an instant, all from a single new organism entering my power's radius. I tried to let my power get a handle on what it was, the way I could instinctively understand an insect's anatomy.

Bizarre information flooded into me. Its biology was like no other insect I'd felt, nor like any living thing I'd ever heard of. Despite that, some distant part of me couldn't shake a feeling of familiarity, or maybe déjà vu. To my power, it was a sensation like performing a rote motion or slipping on a pair of perfectly broken-in shoes.

The thing seemed to be some kind of colony. I couldn't tell exactly where one part of it ended and the next part began. It was a dense amalgamation, formed of millions of tiny, bright nodes of simple awareness that somehow networked together. The basic shape that repeated over and over was something like tendrils or roots, but they were animated and alive, moving around and sliding through one another almost like a liquid. They fused into a singular entity in a pattern that repeated at different scales, like those computer animations of fractals. The tiny, worm-like tendrils seemed to branch off and continue down to sizes smaller than my power could discern, yet they all linked together to create larger tendrils, which themselves networked together to form the gestalt whole, which was far too complex for me to grasp.

I sank further into the information overload before I recognized and understood the shape the mass of tendrils took. It was humanoid, but it wasn't a human being, just the façade of one. Outwardly, he—and it was probably a he, if I was interpreting the general outline of his body correctly—had a solid but thin outer layer. However, on the inside, his body was mostly decomposed into a thin liquid slurry, leaving behind those seething fungus-like tendrils, which still formed the vague outlines of the rotted muscles, skeleton, and organs. The tendrils were all squirming in their fluid-filled skin sac in an alien, sickeningly boneless way, like a corpse teeming with maggots, only upright and walking.

It was all too much. I recoiled from my power's contact in horror. I didn't consider myself squeamish, certainly less so after getting my powers, but the thing's insides were so far beyond hideous and revolting it was almost unbearable to perceive, even in my imagination. I felt the urge to vomit rising in the back of my throat.

What the hell? Was it some kind of cape? No, that couldn't be, my power never worked on humans, so why should parahumans be any different? It didn't even work on things as complicated as rats. Was this some kind of parahuman-made parasite? A mad scientist Tinker's creation? Or maybe it was just one of those inhuman-looking capes masquerading as a human?

Whatever he was, I could feel the potential control I could exert over him, as effortless as moving a fly. In fact, my power thrummed with the potential to control him, or at least control the tiny, simple nodes of awareness that his body seemed to be made of.

Reluctantly, I withdrew my power's attention from this cape-worm-thing entirely, excluding him like I excluded my bugs' more difficult senses. His presence became reduced to an indistinct droning sensation off in the distance, a powerful presence that reminded me of the science class demonstration of gravity that placed a heavy rock on a bedsheet, showing how it drew in everything nearby the strongest, but left the edges mostly the same. My headache subsided completely, leaving me feeling shaken.

I took a minute to gather my thoughts. The thing, for lack of a better descriptor, was walking south on a course that would take him down a parallel street to me. He didn't seem to be aware of me at all, judging by his unhurried pace, so I was in no immediate danger.

What should I do? I had no idea who or what this thing was. I was afraid to get any closer to him, but what if it was some kind of villain or monster? I had to at least make sure he didn't attack anyone. I needed more information, and it wasn't like I had any other leads to follow. If something bad happened, I could always try to stop him using my power. The feeling of potential control over him was doing a lot to prevent me from freaking out more than I already was.

Moving as quietly as possible, I made my way to intercept him. I hid in an alley and waited for his presence to pass by so I could follow, and kept pace once he was half a block away.

I couldn't make out much from this distance, but the next street we walked down had a few working street lamps that helped me see him. He was wearing a black leather jacket with white bands around the upper arms and a red pattern on the back like wings, a dark gray hood, and dark pants. I still couldn't make out much in the way of his clothes' color from the dim street lamps, and since his hands were in his pockets I definitely couldn't make out any skin, making me wonder if he had a human skin color or something unnatural instead. My restricted overview of his biology and relative position only gave me the vaguest sense of his shape, really more like an intuitive description rather than a mental image, so I had no idea what his features looked like, but I gathered he was a parahuman. There wasn't much else he could be if he was walking around pretending to be a normal person.

After a few minutes of walking, I started to feel awkward. He wasn't even doing anything, just walking, and here I was acting like some kind of stalker. Should I go up to him? Confront him? What would I even say?

I was still debating how to approach him when I noticed he made a sudden deviation in his path. Apparently, he'd seen the trouble before I did.

Down the street, there were two men standing in front of one of the two-story brick apartment buildings that littered the area. The parahuman I was following was crossing the street to avoid them, but apparently they saw him.

"Oi! Don't move!" one of the men yelled in heavily asian-accented English. On second glance, there was no doubt they were members of the Azn Bad Boys, dressed in red and green hoodies. The one that shouted pulled out what was unmistakably a gun from his waistband and pointed it squarely at the parahuman, who had made it halfway across the street.

My heart started pounding in overdrive and I immediately started repositioning my swarm, almost forgetting to exclude the parahuman from my power's control.

The parahuman slowly raised his hands, and made no other move.

The two gangsters rushed over into the middle of the street, the second one pulling out a butterfly knife.

"Fucking Empire," the second one snarled in much better English, holding his knife up to the thing's face. "The fuck do you think you're doing here?"

I could barely make out the parahuman's reply, but it sounded like "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

The knife-wielding gangster spat into the parahuman's face. "You think you can bring your pasty bitch ass here alone in Empire colors without the other faggots to protect you?"

Shit, they thought he was a gang member because of his race and clothes. Maybe they were even right, but I couldn't take that chance. I had to distract them. In that moment my confidence in my costume's bullet-resistance dropped down to nothing, but my armor and bugs were all I had to work with, so I needed to make the best of them.

I started sprinting at an oblique angle across the street, hoping to throw off the gun's aim. "HEY! OVER HERE!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

Sure enough, all three of them looked right at me, the gunman subconsciously turning his gun to face me.

"Shit! Cape! Shoot—" that was all the knife-wielding gangster managed to get out before a tsunami of bugs fell on him and the gunman from above, causing them to choke and sputter as countless flies and moths forced their way into their mouths, eyes, ears, and noses.

The parahuman didn't waste the opportunity. He tackled the gun-wielding gangster and grabbed his gun arm in both hands, bearing him to the ground. There was a loud crack that echoed up and down the street as the gun went off, but the gun wasn't pointed anywhere near anyone else. The parahuman easily ripped the gun out of the gangster's hands and got back to his feet, backing up and pointing the gun at the two gangsters, both of which were now down on the ground and writhing, trying to clear away the insects that were attacking them.

"What the fuck?" the parahuman said, staring at the mass of insects. Now that I was closer and had a better angle, I could tell his face in profile looked like a normal white guy, despite his disfigured insides.

"Don't shoot!" I said, holding up my hands.

The parahuman's head snapped to the side to look at me, but his stolen gun remained pointed at the two gangsters on the ground.

"Who are you? What's with the mask?" the parahuman demanded.

I momentarily blanked. I didn't have a cape name, and I couldn't just blurt out my real name. "I'm... I'm a hero. I set my bugs on those two so you could get away," I said.

The parahuman did a double-take between me and the insects. "You're saying you did this? How?"

"I can control bugs," I said, gesturing at the men on the ground. "It's safe now. They aren't going to attack you."

There was a tense silence for a few seconds as the parahuman alternated between staring at me and staring at the retching, bug-covered gangsters.

"I can't believe I'm actually entertaining the idea you're doing this," the parahuman said disgustedly, before putting the gun—a stubby revolver, I noticed—into his right jacket pocket. "How are you controlling them? Some kind of spray, or pheromone?"

"I, uh, just give them mental commands. It's my power. I'm a parahuman." I said, lowering my hands as I grew more confused by the second.

The parahuman gave me a look reserved for the stark-raving mad. "Para—did you just say parahuman? The hell is that supposed to be?"

I was shocked by his apparently genuine ignorance. "You know, a person with superpowers? Um. How can you not know that? You look too young to remember the time before they existed. Are you... feeling okay?"

The parahuman growled in frustration. "Fuck. You're insane. Or I'm insane. This has to be some kind of bad trip or hallucination or something. Look, I can't even remember who I am or how I got to this city, but I know that superpowers aren't real."

I felt a cold chill race over me. "Wait, do you not have any memories?"

The parahuman hissed through his teeth and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Ffffuck. Forget it. This is just so... God damn it."

"Maybe I could help?" I suggested. "I could call the Protectorate, maybe they'll know someone who can fix your memory."

"No. This is crazy. I'm leaving." the parahuman said, starting to walk away at a brisk pace.

"Wait! It might not be safe!" I said, hurrying to walk alongside him.

The parahuman pointed at the outline of the gun in his jacket. "If this thing isn't just another hallucination, then I can take care of myself."

"That's not—hold on, I've heard of something like this, new parahumans with no memories waking up in strange cities! Aren't you a parahuman too? Don't you notice anything strange about yourself?" I said hurriedly, trying to remember the foggy details from my internet browsing. I'd researched Faultline and her team before, and the technical term they'd used for Gregor and Newter was Case 53, or so I thought. I didn't pay much attention to the cape jargon, preferring to know names, costumes, and powers, but if I remembered correctly, Case 53 referred to a group of parahumans with physical mutations and amnesia that showed up out of the blue, just like this guy.

My question certainly got the parahuman's attention. He stopped in his tracks and looked at me, the shocked expression on his face quickly morphing into a focused intensity.

Before either of us could say anything, though, we were interrupted by the roar of an engine echoing down the street. A white sports car, one of those wedge-shaped ones from the '90s with rounded edges and pop-up headlights came tearing onto the street, its tires shrieking as it slalomed into view and accelerated right towards us.

I started looking for an escape route, but the car had already slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt about forty feet away. The Case 53 drew the revolver out of his pocket.

A hulking, tattooed man wearing nothing but jeans and a metal eastern dragon mask got out of the passenger's side, followed by three gangsters.

I'd never seen him beyond news reports and online articles, but I recognized the leader of the ABB immediately. Lung, the man who had gone up against whole teams of heroes and won.

"Empire," Lung spat the guttural word at us, punctuated by an actual tongue of fire that shot out of the mouth of the dragon mask.

"Run!" I yelled, withdrawing my swarm from the prone gangsters and diverting them to Lung and his reinforcements to cover our escape. I started to flee, but the Case 53 was only backing away from Lung instead of running, distracted by aiming the revolver.

Lung charged at us. While the more useless bugs attacked the other gangsters, I dropped every wasp, bee, spider, brown-tailed moth, and fire ant at my immediate disposal onto his bare skin, each biting or stinging as much as possible, but he didn't even break stride.

The Case 53 managed to get four rapid shots off before the gun clicked empty, but the bullets only made matters worse. Lung wasn't stopped by the four spurts of blood that appeared on his tattooed chest, nor by the wasp that managed to sting him in the left eye. Instead, he blazed up in flames and swelled in size. Lung's fire illuminated half the street as he plowed into the Case 53 like a runaway freight train. Lung grabbed him by the throat in one hand and smashed him against the wall of the apartment building hard enough to leave cracks in the brick, then slammed him into the ground like a rag doll. The empty gun clattered away from the Case 53's grip.

I hesitated for only a moment before I turned and started running back, fishing in my armor's convex storage pack for my canister of pepper spray, desperately hoping that if I could distract Lung for even a moment, we might both get away.

Lung wasn't even looking in my direction. He had set himself fully on fire and was growing before my eyes, sprouting metallic claws from his fingertips as the flames roared up from his feet all the way past his head. The fire wasn't burning him, it just roiled off his heavily tattooed skin in great billowing plumes, but I could see it scorching the Case 53's neck and face, turning the skin from white to red to black.

The Case 53 responded by bellowing in pain and fury, and with no gun to fall back on, he instead brought his knees up to his chest and kicked.

Lung was launched into the air like a flaming comet, reaching twice as high as the apartment building across the street before he hit his zenith and began to fall, crashing onto the roof. I skidded to a stop and stared at the Case 53 in shock. He was clearly some kind of Brute, to use the derogatory-sounding term that had stuck for people like Alexandria and Glory Girl, parahumans with enhanced strength.

The look on the Case 53's burned face was blank for a moment, but then he bared his teeth in triumph. His neck and face blurred for an instant, replaced by a flash of black tendrils, and suddenly his skin was undamaged, though his clothes remained scorched. He felt at his chin appreciatively, then got to his feet and cast an incredulous glance at me.

"Holy shit," he muttered.

I shook my head frantically, snapping out of my surprise. "We have to go! He only gets stronger the longer you fight him!"

As if summoned by my words, Lung appeared on the rooftop across from us. He must have been eight feet tall by now, and his body was starting to distort. His neck and arms were getting disproportionately long, and his shoulders must have been three feet across. Even as we watched, rows upon rows of spade-shaped metallic scales burst from underneath his skin, radiating out from his chest and shredding the last vestiges of his disintegrating jeans. The scales then lay flat, overlapping to form an armor that looked impenetrable.

"You've got to be kidding me," the Case 53 said, sounding almost resigned.

With a single, powerful leap, Lung launched himself off of the roof and landed mere feet away from us.

This time, we scattered in different directions. I could feel the Case 53's rapidly retreating presence behind me as he dashed away at a speed impossible for a human. Fast as he was, he didn't make it three long strides before Lung was upon him with another superhuman strength-fueled leap.

Lung plunged into the Case 53 like a pouncing tiger, piercing his torso and upper arms with ten searing claws and smashing him into the pavement. I sent in more wasps and bees, hoping I might incapacitate Lung's remaining eye, but a huge burst of fire rushed over him, and even from a distance I could feel the heat like standing next to a blast furnace. I reeled back, feeling every nearby bug in my swarm die in the wave of heat.

I watched helplessly as the Case 53 was impaled by a prison of claws, held facedown on the pavement as Lung burned him alive. He tried to push himself up, impaling himself further on the claws, but Lung just raised a foot and smashed him down again. Lung didn't seem as strong as the Case 53 yet, but he had reach and an advantageous position that he exploited to the fullest, and time was on his side. The biggest disadvantage Lung had was the fact that his heat and flames naturally rose, making his attempt to burn the parahuman below him less effective.

I rushed forward, unaware of even making the decision to do so. I had to help, or else the Case 53 was going to die. A lucky wasp sting had already disabled one of Lung's eyes in my opening attack, and I still had my pepper spray. I made sure I was aiming the nozzle correctly, careful to control the shaking in my hands.

Okay, new plan.

I began drawing my bugs around Lung's head like a miniature tornado, just out of reach of his flames. I set them to buzzing and chirruping, whatever noise they could manage.

Lung's inhumanly serpentine neck twisted around to look right at me, his remaining luminous orange eye glowing like molten metal behind his mask.

I froze before the monster out of nightmares. I'd never felt such fear, never even imagined it.

Against every instinct, I broke out of my petrification. I whipped my hand up, took aim at Lung's face, and sprayed the concentrated capsaicin directly into his eye. There was a flare as some of the pepper spray caught fire, but the majority hit the mark.

Lung screamed with enough force to vibrate my teeth, then he tore one of his hands out of the Case 53's chest and blindly lashed out, his arm trailing fire.

I threw myself to the ground, just barely avoiding the gout of flames, but my arm was positioned wrong and I landed on my right shoulder badly. The sharp spike of pain deep in my bones jarred me for a few heartbeats, then I came back to myself. I didn't think I broke anything or hit my head too hard, but now with my one trick expended I was pretty much defenseless.

I gracelessly scrambled to my feet and started running, but I couldn't help looking over my shoulder to see what effect my attack had.

Lung was having more difficulty pinning down the Case 53 now that he couldn't see what he was doing. Once the Case 53 forced enough of an opening, his entire outline blurred. He became a writhing mass of tendrils, pulling in his outer layer of burned skin and clothing and flowing around Lung's claws, as if Lung was trying to grasp a stream of water. The Case 53 reformed himself like new, clothes and all, just outside of Lung's grip. Adroitly rolling to his feet, the Case 53 drew back his right arm, fist clenched, just as Lung wrenched his claws out of the melting asphalt.

Several things happened at once. The actual punch was too fast for me to see, but for just an instant, I saw how the Case 53's fist sank through Lung's chest, as if there was no resistance at all. Metal bent and thick bones cracked, and beneath the Case 53's feet, the asphalt crumbled as tendrils kept the parahuman rooted in place. Lung was again launched across the street like he'd been fired from a cannon, this time at a lower angle. He skipped across the street like a stone across a lake and impacted against the first floor of the ABB members' apartment building in a small explosion of dust, debris, and flame, leaving a huge hole in the wall.

I looked to the Case 53 to see how he was doing. His whole body was steaming in the night air, and even though he looked undamaged, he seemed incredibly fatigued. I chanced letting my power give me more information, and I found he had big gaps on his insides, hollow spaces strewn with a threadbare scaffolding of tendrils to shore them up. Whatever process he'd used to 'repair' himself only seemed to be redistributing the damage inward.

Lung reappeared in the hole, framed by flames that were already starting up inside the building. He stepped out of the building, revealing his sternum was a shattered ruin only held together by mangled metallic scales, but it was visibly regenerating. He repeatedly blinked the orange eye that I had sprayed, the other screwed tightly shut, and with a sinking feeling I realized I'd only bought us seconds with pepper spray that was supposed to last half an hour.

With an inhuman roar of challenge, Lung hunched forward and his back split apart, accommodating a new row of scales and muscle growth with the speed of flowing water. Two scaly mounds jutted out from his shoulders, reminding me of the wild rumors I'd read online that Lung could eventually grow wings. Lung straightened back up to his full, towering height, now taller than the first story of the apartment building, and rushed forward, faster than ever.

Snarling wordlessly, the Case 53 met Lung's charge, but this time he couldn't stand his ground. The tendrils he used to cling to the asphalt were uprooted by Lung's immense strength and inertia, and without that grip, the Case 53 had no weight or leverage behind his strikes. In the contest of pure strength, Lung was finally winning. The two tore into each other with animalistic speed and ferocity, but the Case 53 was clearly losing.

I felt my dim hopes extinguish at the sight. This was not going to end well. Lung simply didn't have an upper limit. The Case 53 was being shredded by claws and blasted with fire, hemmed in from all sides. Lung had grown so big that his opponent couldn't even strike past the length of Lung's elbows, much less hit Lung's body. The Case 53 could only try to hit and parry Lung's limbs, which didn't send him flying like before. Even as I watched, though, Lung's blows started to become clumsier, and the flagging Case 53 managed to get a few more good hits in, crushing scales and breaking bones.

Then, out of nowhere, a gigantic lizard-shaped monster landed on the street with a huge crash that shook the ground. I'd depleted my swarm so much I hadn't even noticed it approaching. The bony, sinewy leopard-lizard-thing came barreling up the street and before I could even comprehend my impending death, it went right past me, close enough that I was buffeted by the wind of its passage. It plowed into Lung, grabbing his arm in its jaws and knocking the charred Case 53 aside like a child's toy. Lung struggled to free his arm and slashed at the monster's head with his claws, causing the monster to rear away with an unearthly howl.

I didn't waste time staring at the spectacle. I took the unexpected opportunity to run.

I made it halfway down the block before my escape was cut short by the arrival of two more monsters. Each held a pair of costumed riders, two girls and two guys from the looks of it. They slid off their mounts, and one of them, a stocky, homeless-looking girl with short auburn hair and wearing a Rottweiler mask, gave a sharp whistle. The two skinless creatures bolted off to join the fight against Lung, surrounding him and baiting him like hunting dogs around a boar. The Case 53 had staggered away, burned and blackened into an unrecognizable silhouette by Lung's flames, and even though he'd been given a reprieve, he wasn't running away or healing back to normal.

I jogged to a stop in front of the new group, trembling and aching all over.

One of them, a tall man clad in black motorcycle leather and wearing a black skull helmet, stepped forward. He looked exactly the opposite of his frilly ren-faire costumed teammate.

"Hey. Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?" he asked in a deep, masculine voice that was a little muffled by the skull-patterned helmet.

I had no idea what to say to these people, so I defaulted to silently shaking my head.

"Can you speak? You, uh, you might be in shock—hell, I nearly had a heart attack myself when I heard Lung was coming after us, but it looks like you and the other guy did a number on him, and Bitch has the rest well in hand. You're safe now, okay?"

I knew I should probably say something, but in that moment I was just amazed at how soothing and calm he sounded, especially for someone wearing a black skull helmet and standing on the fringes of an active cape fight.

Skull-mask was still waiting for an answer, so I spoke up. "I'm not hurt too bad. I'll be okay."

He nodded, relaxing his posture a bit. He leaned over, looking past me to take in the fight. He spoke without turning to look at me. "Jesus Christ. How is your friend even still alive? I think I can see through him in places. Tattletale?"

"The new guy's a regenerator, but he's pretty much at his limit right now. Not much we can do aside from keeping the fight away from him. Also, they're not actually a team," the second girl said, answering the question for me. She was dressed in a skintight black outfit and domino mask with pale blue or purple accents—I couldn't really tell in the dark—and she had long, dark blond hair. She frowned and added, "Lung is pretty far into his transformation, but he's not doing too well either. There's a whole bunch of different venoms in his system, thanks to our friend here, and it's really starting to get to him. His regeneration isn't fast enough to filter it all out, and he'd need to be even bigger than he is now to dilute it enough."

The man in black suddenly turned to look at me. "Introductions. That's Tattletale, I'm Grue. The girl with the dogs—" he pointed to the other girl, the dog-masked one who had whistled and directed the monsters. "—We call her Bitch, her preference, but the heroes call her Hellhound. Last, we have Regent."

"Last but not least," Regent said, idly twirling a scepter in his hand. He looked like he was much more interested in watching Lung getting mauled by the monsters.

My brain struggled to process this conversation, comprehension lagging a few words behind. I was still in fight-or-die mode. Then it caught up to me that these mutant monsters they'd been riding were dogs.

After a few uncomfortable seconds, Grue leaned in a little closer to me. "Hey, are you sure you're okay?"

"That's not why she hasn't introduced herself. She's shy," Tattletale said with a grin. "Oh—and the extra crispy guy over there is moving. He's about to try something."

My train of thought derailed at that. Wait, how did she know all these things?

Tattletale's mouth thinned into a tense line. "I... huh. Hold up. Bitch, call off the dogs."

Bitch's head whipped around to look at her teammate.

"Just do it. Venom or no, Lung's too far into his transformation for the dogs to bring him down before he kills one of them, and I'm not liking the vibe this new guy is giving off. He's losing control." Tattletale said, all traces of levity gone from her voice. She sounded genuinely worried, which was a jarring contrast to her earlier, almost singsong tone. "Grue, we gotta scram. This fight is only going to get uglier, and we've got another cape incoming."

Bitch gave a high-pitched whistle, one short and two long, and the dog-monsters disengaged from Lung. He was much worse off, badly mauled and seeming almost dazed. He was getting smaller, and his flames were weaker than before. The Case 53 tackled him, and they began fighting just as viciously as before, but now Lung's injuries were really hindering him, so neither of them really had the upper hand. In a few massive bounds the dogs returned, and the team began to saddle up.

Lung seemed to give up on trading blows and instead rammed the Case 53 into the apartment building, just as he had been before, and followed him inside. Lung stoked the fires already burning in the building, seemingly intent on burning down the Case 53 along with it, and I lost sight of the two even as I felt the Case 53's presence still fighting inside.

Grue's voice startled me from my observations. He was looking down at me from his perch atop one of the mutated dogs, and I belatedly realized he'd been talking to me. "Hey, want a ride?" he asked.

I took one look at the nightmarish, oozing, flayed-looking abomination of muscle and bone spurs, and shook my head.

"Hey," said Tattletale, seating herself behind Bitch, "What's your name?"

I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, "I, uh, haven't decided yet."

"Well, Bug, you did us a solid by helping us against Lung, so take my advice," Tattletale said, fixing me with a serious look. "Those two are determined to finish this fight, with or without you. Nothing you can do about it now. Trust me, one way or the other, you do not want to be here to get mixed up in that mess, much less when more capes arrive."

I felt a chill at that.

There was no time to ask for more details. Bitch whistled again and the dogs charged down the street, leaping to the rooftops and then disappearing.

I looked back at the apartment building, which was now fully ablaze, and I felt the waning presence of the Case 53 inside. Still fighting, still dying.

Tattletale was right. There was nothing more I could do. He'd had his chance to run, but he'd chosen to keep fighting instead.

I hesitated for only a moment, then I burst into a full sprint. I ran, and no amount of logic eased the terrible guilt twisting inside me.

Notes:

In which we visit the penultimate Station of Canon for this fic. One station down, one to go before Taylor makes a choice that departs from canon completely. I hope I did enough to make this ubiquitous fight seem fresh. Thanks for reading, and please let me know where you think this is going! I love reading your theories and speculation.

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