Mar 3, 2018
#1,994
It started the night after the broadcast. Taylor sat in Jaya's recliner, watching the evening news with the smallest fraction of her attention. Lisa lay on the couch beside her, a BBPD issue radio tucked under one arm and a laptop balanced on her belly. Muffled police reports mingled with the sound of the television anchor's voice. The lights were off but the room was still well lit. The illumination came in part from the television, its bright LEDs bathing the couch with light, but most came from the softly glowing portals surrounding Jaya.
Taylor took a moment to check on her friend, buzzing a few flies past the girl before turning around to use her own eyes. Jaya was seated Indian style, legs crossed and arms resting on her knees. Her breaths were slow and even, a far cry from the pained grunts that began this exercise, and her eyes were closed. Half a dozen tiny shimmering holes in reality surrounded her, each less than a foot across, each linked to the very edge of Jaya's range. Through each portal was an expanse of sky wrapped in gold, repeating endlessly; doors leading to doors leading to doors spread across the city. The edges of the portals flickered violently, and the glow was less steady than pulsing, but they never completely faltered. They were still a work in progress. Life could not move through them; some kind of energy inherent to the process fried every bug Taylor experimented with. Just the act of maintaining them taxed Jaya. She couldn't even move, much less use other aspects of her powers, as her mind could just barely process the massive amounts of information it received. Even so, Taylor couldn't help but marvel at the utility the portals brought.
Taylor's body was in Jaya's apartment, but the rest of her was split among a hundred million tiny minds. Taylor was vast. She had never really thought about the limits of her power. She had never really considered the numbers she could control. She had never really understood how far she outstripped everyone in sheer processing power. Now, with her power tunneling through gaps in reality, with her eyes filling the entire city, she felt what it was to be strong. She had more bugs than Russia had people, each and every one of them united in purpose.
They searched.
She spread herself across rundown streets and dirty buildings, across empty rooftops and vacant houses. She combed through warehouses and restaurants and bars and clubs, searching for hints of trouble, searching for signs of distress.
Big Sister is watching you.
Taylor had to stifle a giggle. She wasn't that bad. Her real goal was the Teeth. Butcher was seen leaving Boston mere hours ago. Lisa predicted that the unstable gang leader would soon rile up her minions and send them into the city to cause chaos. It was a common tactic for the Teeth. It was not in their nature to wait, to hold back and make elaborate plans. The Teeth were about aggression. Taylor had to find them while they were still gathering. Vanguard could not show even the slightest weakness if their plans were to hold. Their victory had to be overwhelming, effortless, and more importantly, independent of Jaya. It couldn't just be Catalyst that held the line. The city had to see every member of the team as strong. Tonight would be a one-woman show, Weaver's chance to shine.
The Teeth were only the first test. They were the loudest, the most overt of the madmen who would want Jaya dead. They were the least patient, the least likely to cause anything other than random mayhem. Taylor intended to stop them cold.
Finding them wasn't exactly simple, though. Taylor's attention wasn't quite infinite. She could not see through every eye she controlled, she could not hear through every ear. What she could do is send a simple order to the swarm.
Hunt.
Blood and bone and formaldehyde, the common scents of the Teeth. Her bugs knew it well enough. They stuck to abandoned areas, spread out enough to be subtle but close enough to swarm if needed. Bugs were small, malleable. They fit between the cracks, they went unnoticed. They would find their target.
"Found them," Lisa announced.
Darn.
Lisa shifted the radio closer to her ear, locking it between her shoulder and head while she typed on her laptop. "There was a disturbance called in near the Trainyard: a noise complaint, low priority. My power says there's a good chance the Teeth are using the area as a base of operations."
Jaya sluggishly opened an eye and looked to Lisa. The blonde stared blankly back before jerking in realization. "Oh. The Trainyard is about four miles that way," she said, pointing a finger northwest.
Taylor began shifting her swarm. Her strongest flyers carried spiders, three or four at a time, each attached with tiny silk gliders. Wasps and bees took to the skies in droves, flying under the cover of darkness, dangling chains of fire ants from their mandibles or their legs. A massive force of roaches crawled through the sewers, unseen by all save the rats. It was slow going, but her army moved ponderously towards the Trainyard.
Orders given, Taylor shifted her attention to the area in question. So far her tiny troops had found nothing of note. There were old boxcars scattered around the yard and cargo containers by the dozens nearby. Most were long abandoned, though some had signs of use by the Bay's homeless population.
Well that was as good a place as any to start. She felt for skin mites and fleas, tiny unnoticeable bugs with senses too fuzzy and alien for her to utilize. She could feel where they were gathered, hundreds of them in close proximity. Vibrations reverberated through the tiny bodies. Voices perhaps? Flies moved towards their locations, with larger eyes and better senses. She could hear shouting now, repetitive chanting interlaced with the high pitch of screams. Taylor sent roaches after the flies, carrying what few black widows were in the area, racing towards the disturbance. Her mites continued to feel what she now recognized as drum beats, a slow and steady thoom thoom thoom translated into crude vibrations. People blurred into view of her flies, dozens of them, hooting the same words over and over.
"Fight! Fight! Fight!"
"I think I found them," Taylor announced grimly. "Give me a map."
Lisa scrambled off the couch brought over her laptop, a map of the Bay pulled up. Taylor circled the crowd with flying insects as Lisa zoomed in on the Trainyard. The men were garbed in rags and red paint, bone necklaces and mummified digits swimming into focus. She could practically smell the embalming fluid.
The mob stood in a circle, surrounding a group of blurry humans—those were the homeless people. Fuck. Flies zoomed closer to the action, trying to discern innocent from enemy, and rebounded off something slick and sharp. Several lost limbs, and another was shredded entirely, ripped in half by an invisible wall covered in tiny thorns.
"Vex is there," Taylor said, pointing to the general area she was surveilling. Lisa nodded, pulling the laptop away and flipping open her phone.
Roaches arrived, crawling through the crowd. Taylor could make out shapes fighting each other within the improvised arena. The area was lit by large fires blazing from metal cans, casting just enough light to see. The crowd howled in pleasure as a blurry shape hit the ground, their shadows dancing like a kaleidoscope in grayscale. Taylor's roaches approached the edge of the field, gently probing for holes. The effect seemed to dig into the ground. A pair of roaches died trying to slip beneath it, and a few more flies killed themselves approaching from the sky. The shapes within the ring were growing more frantic, their movements jerky and desperate. There were over fifteen men in all, attacking each other in a frenzy. A few of Taylor's mites could taste blood.
"I can't get around Vex's field," Taylor hissed, pushing her frustration into the swarm. Her minions accelerated, straining themselves to obey her will. The closest squadron of stinging insects clumped together in a swarm the size and mass of a dump truck. She could hear the dull drone of a million angry wings. "They've got a group of people, homeless I think, fighting inside."
"How many capes are there?" Lisa asked quietly. "Have you found Butcher?"
"I can't tell," Taylor replied. "They all dress the same! How do I know the difference?" Her stingers approached from the sky, countless eyes working in tandem to find the flickering fires of her target. "There's an easy way to find out."
"They'll scatter," Lisa said, putting her phone to her ear.
"They won't get far." Taylor started tagging the crowd, hiding flies in their clothing, moving fleas into their hair. Wherever they ran, she would find them. "Who are you calling?"
"The PRT." Lisa grinned cheekily at Taylor. "They're living in our city, the least they can do is their job. They can round up the stragglers while you deal with any capes."
"There won't be any stragglers."
Taylor's roaches arrived, spilling out of a sewer grate like floodwater. They poured into the street, a living tide, and swept towards the Trainyard. Had the Teeth bothered to post lookouts, they would have seen the undulating ocean of bodies blotting out the ground, moving forward with singular purpose.
"Yeah, the Trainyard. Right now! No, I don't want to talk to the director—oh for fuck's sake."
High in the sky teams of spiders began to weave. They spun thick lines of silk into vast nets, held aloft by hundreds of thousands of wasps. Teams of ants crawled along safety lines, lining the inside of the web with sharp mandibles, eagerly acting as living fishhooks.
Taylor's flies searched deeper into the Yard, searching for weapons and vehicles. Spiders jammed silk into fragile mechanisms and roaches hurled themselves into car engines by the thousands.
"No Director Piggot, I didn't think we needed to inform you about Vanguard business, but that's not what I'm calling about."
A high pitched wail split the night, as a man was forced into the arena's sharpened walls. Taylor couldn't make out his face, but she could see the blood. She was done waiting. Her roaches spread themselves, easily circling the forty or so gang members chanting for blood. The less useful flyers arrived. Grasshoppers and cicadas and moths took the high ground, covering cargo containers like fuzzy wallpaper. Her stinging insects, still circling in the sky, began to drop.
"You've got maybe ten minutes if you want a piece of the action. Weaver's about to start and she looks really pissed off."
Millions of bodies moved in tandem. The sound started low, just a soft hum, a whisper at the edge of hearing. It grew to a low drone within seconds, and Teeth members started to slow their debauchery. The drone became a roar as her stingers swept into view, crashing down upon the gathering like an anvil. Screams erupted from every direction, as great silken nets entangled people by the dozens.
Jaya had mentioned something about Sophia, what felt like a lifetime ago. Taylor never quite grasped the meaning until today. Some people only understood violence, Jaya had said. It was a sad thought. Taylor hoped that things would change, eventually. Not today, though. Today, these people only understood violence.
Today, they would learn well.
Her swarm hurled itself at the Teeth. Biting, stinging, clawing, any insect that could conceivably hurt a human did its level best to accomplish it. Those that could not, her flies, her moths, her harmless vegetarian bugs, they hurled themselves at eyes and ears and noses. They poured into every orifice they could reach and only retreated when their target was in danger of dying.
People tried to run, to break through the thick veil of insects, and were descended upon by walls of spiders. It took hundreds of spiders working in tandem to cocoon the average man with any sort of alacrity. Taylor brought upwards of forty thousand.
The air was thick with insects. Taylor began to spiral them upward in a giant cylinder as the Trainyard simply didn't have the space to accommodate her swarm. The sound of beating wings was deafening. It drowned out all else, yells and gunshots and angry roars, all were obscured by the buzzing sound of Taylor's righteous anger.
Still, capes were not so easy to bring down. Angry screams emanated from the center of her swarm. Blotches of red tore into her bugs, knocking holes into their formation. A shrieking woman stood at the center of a storm of blood. She swept her hand, and the liquid rocketed forth in a wave, clearing space around her. There were bodies on the ground, blood pouring from their wounds. Hemorrhagia drained her allies dry and sent crimson lances blindly into the distance. Most hit air, but one clipped a Teeth member, tearing a gash across his chest and dropping him in a heap. The cape screamed something, a challenge or an insult, Taylor didn't care. She sent dragonflies zipping down the woman's throat. They latched on to her esophagus, holding tight as she choked. Blood exploded out from her like a grisly shield, wiping away Taylor's probing insects, but her focus failed as she asphyxiated and Taylor's spiders descended upon her. She was cocooned in silk two feet thick.
Near the border of her swarm, a massive shape was moving. Animos, transformed into some twisted four legged abomination, swiped ineffectually at the insects battering against him. Wasps stung at his flank, but thick skin blocked their efforts. Taylor directed a few thousand spiders towards him, and hurled moths into his ear canals to stall for time.
The roaches pressing against the shielded arena fell forward as it popped. Vex was either down, or injured enough to have lost her focus. The homeless men stared in horrified fascination as Taylor's swarm flowed past them, leaving them untouched.
A thousand bugs died at once, as an engine backfired and incinerated them. Taylor's attention fell on the driver: a woman, tall and muscled with a bone mask. She paid no attention to the wasps stinging at her face.
"I found Butcher," Taylor said, ordering huge chunks of her swarm towards the van the villain sat in.
Butcher turned the key again, and the vehicle's engine gave a shudder and a tired groan. Its tank held more bugs than fuel. It was going nowhere. Butcher turned to the back of the van, pulling open a metal container and withdrawing a—
A Gatling gun. That needed to be dealt with.
The woman kicked open the van's door, bringing the gun with her like it weighed nothing at all. She scanned the surroundings, searching for something through the fog of insects, and began to move forward.
Taylor dropped two tons of bugs on the woman, a ball of writhing black carapace fused together with webbing. She took it without flinching, bending her knees slightly at the impact, but otherwise shrugging the blow off. Her weapon took it significantly worse, as bugs splattered against the metal and clogged the internal structure with their corpses. Hundreds of spiders, hidden within the swarm, dashed forward to envelop Butcher, but the woman simply tore free of the clinging silk. She was too strong to be restrained with those numbers, but she couldn't teleport while every inch of space was filled with bugs. A new strategy was needed.
Butcher took long strides towards the border of Taylor's swarm, and towards her only standing ally. Animos struggled to free himself from a small mountain of silk, tearing at his bonds with the desperation of a cornered animal. Taylor let him, pulling back her spiders and allowing the monster to rip through his bindings. The spiders began to weave thick, heavy ropes, stronger than she'd ever made before. They remained hidden from view within the swarm, while Taylor formed a rough bug clone next to Animos. The changer lashed out at the human shape, but Taylor's bugs flowed around his head like water, taking the time to sting at his eyes and nose.
The Butcher continued to move, jogging with her eyes closed to protect them from stings. The tough skin of her eyelids protected her from the worst of it, and she felt no pain besides. A massive force of roaches skittered around her, joining with Taylor's spiders. Lines of silk were lashed to each individual bug, tens of thousands of strands woven in moments.
Taylor's clone reformed behind Animos, her bugs sweeping away from his face to clear his vision. They coalesced into a thick wall, surrounding the changer and blocking the outside view completely. Taylor raised the misshapen hand of her clone, positioning herself between Animos and the incoming Butcher, and gestured impudently.
Come at me.
Animos snarled, then screamed. Butcher flinched halfway through his motion, turning to dive out of the way, but Taylor's roaches were already there. They wound themselves around the woman's legs, pulling silken chains with them, tangling her for half a second as she strained against the material.
The veil of insects parted, Taylor's clone dissolved, and Animos scream hit the Butcher straight on. The villainess dropped in a heap, screaming as all her pain hit at once, and Taylor's spiders piled themselves onto her.
Animos froze as his leader was buried beneath heavy webbing, and Taylor reformed her clone next to Butcher's prone form. One foot rested triumphantly on the cocooned body, while her clone's torso leaned unnaturally forward, leering towards Animos with a smile made of centipedes.
Animos took a single step back, and Taylor pounced.
The fight did not last much longer than that