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Clary woke up to a roar of breaking wood, her heart speeding up. There were multiple impacts as the wall caved in, and the sounds of the cars over the flyover came through in the silence after. They’re breaking the door down.
She rolled off her piles of rags and stolen, stained pillows onto the floor. There was an impulse to find slippers - but no, she had to run, fuck the glass and splinters on the floor. There weren’t any windows in the room she’d decided was her bedroom, nowhere to run even if she could have escaped out of one -
She’d barely stumbled to her feet and gotten her bearings when her own door was thrown open, and figures in dark clothing reached for her.
“No!” She screamed stupidly, throwing out her hand and sending a wave of yellow gas at them. The bright little specks dissipated into the air, but she knew they would wriggle under the masks and into any exposed skin.
The big lady with the shoulderpads stepped forwards, her skin turning spiky and black. The other three clicked a button on their gas masks and a thin astronaut-like helmet popped up over their heads.
Barefoot, barely dressed, and tiny, Clary didn’t stand a chance.
It was the first time she’d ever flown, and it was cold and awful. The guy creating the flying power was called Fleet, she knew. “Aren’ you a ‘ero?” She muttered through a running nose. He ignored her, leading them all as they swooped down and hit the ground. He was a hero, she’d seen him on magazines and online and shit. His power was to give other people flight or something.
They hadn’t bothered letting go of her armpits or the back of her shirt while they flew, and she hit the cobblestones and immediately toppled onto her knees. Tears started in her eyes as they dragged her onward. Useless… They’ll see me…
The doors flew open, and glorious warmth rushed out, caressing her frozen nose and cheeks. But the relief didn’t last, as dozens of eyes turned to see her. Her body seized up under the gaze of…
That’s gotta be the leaders of every villain gang in the city. Anyone not here was outside, fighting.
Her kidnappers didn’t stop with her, dragging her in when her legs wouldn’t work. She had no choice but to step forwards, one foot after another. The room was some kind of old church, abandoned but recently enough that it was furnished with the electric lights and heaters. Sounds from the corner came from a man with flames on his head and beard crouching next to a bonfire. Around him, the Adepts of the city were crouched and muttering, one or two guys in the C-Crew’s uniform standing around too.
“Well, there she is.” Constrictor’s midwestern drawl was even more apparent in person. Clary remembered hearing her roar in anger from afar as her Crew ran into the fog she’d left in their way. She’d stolen bags of cash right out of their hands, found a car key, and driven the van as far as she could before she crashed it. It could have lasted her a good while, but that was back when she was still trying to make rent. Is this payback for her?
“Really? She doesn’t look like much. You want us to put ourselves in her hands?” Brightling, of the Adepts. Two of her kidnappers joined the group behind him. He had an upper-class kind of voice, maybe? “God, she even lives up to her name.”
“That’s her power, it just smells like that in small concentrations. Of course, I hope she’s not stupid enough to use it here.”
“It’s good to meet you, Stinx.” A man in a black-and-white suit said. He stood apart from the others, a few men in tinker tech behind him. He could have been a lawyer, or a G-man, but G-men didn’t wear sparkly domino masks, even if it did look ironed - oh fuck, right.
“Hi.” She coughed wetly right after.
“My name is Othello. We - myself and my associates here - have come to you with a request.”
“Yes?” Oh, sure, a request. He sounded nice, though, if not entirely there.
“You’ve seen the battle outside, I’m sure.”
“Yeah, it’s - yeah. Kind of messed up.”
“Quite. We’re fighting an outside group who have attacked this city to take control of a store of tinkertech here. While the threat of that entity remains, the existing powers of the city - myself and the leaders you see here - are in a state of agreement.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure what to say to that. Like, an Endbringer Truce? Could she ask about Fleet, because she didn’t see any other heroes here.
“And you’re gonna fight for us.” Contrictor added. Othello’s forehead creased at her interruption, but he took a deep breath and continued.
“As she said. We can take care of most of it. We just need you to handle one individual who is causing us some trouble. Blind him, knock him unconscious, and then call us to drive him out of the city.”
“Oh. Can - can I say no…?” She’d never won a straight fight before, she was pretty sure she couldn’t.
Constrictor burst out laughing.
They flew her in again, at least letting her be on her own this time. She tried to work up some confidence as she followed Fleet and Constrictor. She could fly better now, getting the hang of using the power Fleet had given her - as they crossed houses with the battle hidden far below, she practiced swooping and rising, landing on the tips of roofs and hopping off like a frog. She had a new belt with an impressively fat tinkertech handgun. She had body armour on her knees, elbows and hands - useful, hopefully, for more than making her look like some kind of skinny-ass skater kid. Her face was still exposed and covered in runny nose, and her hair was loose and only held back by its own stiffness and oil, and she was in sweatpants and a shirt, but - focus, you got this, you’re gonna make it.
They turned slow and wide through the air, towards a kind of shopping neighbourhood, with repair workshops and parts stores. The houses below them turned into ruins with the roofs opened up to the cold night sky, metals torn apart and bricks shattered to pieces, and wood burnt black from the fighting that must have happened down there. There were no cars anymore - a few enthusiasts were standing near the edge of the destruction aiming cameras inside, but if Stinx couldn’t see any bloodshed from her birds’-eye-view, she doubted they could.
“Hey.” She craned her head to look at Constrictor. “We chased the bastard down towards this end of town, got him pinned down. Like the Ambassahole said, you’re gonna blind him, knock him out, and try to send him running, but do not - do not - kill him. Got that?” Stinx nodded rapidly. “And don’t let him go to those offices.” She pointed out a group of workshop-or-shop-or-office buildings. “Those are mine, I got my own shit in there.”
“You’re already making me fight this guy,” Stinx muttered. “Dunno if I’ll be able to make him stay out of them. I ain’t exactly a bruiser.”
“I can see that. You’re going to listen to me, or make no mistake - you’ll wish you died keeping him away, with how I’ll end you.”
Fleet looked away. Stinx squeezed her hands into fists.
They swooped lower, to where a thin haze of fog covered the ground. The buildings around here were barely more than walls by now. The ground was blackened with dust and ash, but it was oddly shiny - and when she landed, she realised it was a thin layer of ice - ice and dirt-slush. She barely kept her balance, and wobbled around to look at the others. “So. Uh. When’s the guy coming?”
“He’s already here. Look with your eyes.” Constrictor led the way. There had been a faint thumping sound that she’d ignored as part of the city, but as they walked through broken buildings it got louder, and louder.
Fleet leaned lower to whisper at her. “Hey. Do not kill this guy, got it?”
She would have hit him if she dared.
They reached a fat rectangular structure, about the size of a toilet stall and made of huge slabs of concrete. A rotund woman in costume stood in front of it. Echo, Constrictor’s right hand woman. And the concrete looks like Constrictor’s power.
“We’re here!” Constrictor called. The other woman turned, looked at Stinx, looked back at Constrictor and nodded once. Her mask was a less shiny copy of her leader’s, and no expression could pass through.
She began to walk away, and some connection snapped into place.
“Don’t go.” Clary’s voice was rough from the cigarettes and high and desperate. “Please, you gotta help me out here, I - you’re the strongest fuh- villains in the city! You’re badasses! You could fight this guy - you could beat him! I’m - I -”
I’m nothing.
Once upon a time, she’d said that same two words and been hugged, pulled close into sweaty, antiseptic-smelling arms, told sweet lies about how it wasn’t true.
There were no lies here. Constrictor and Echo were already walking away, Fleet had taken off.
“You… You fucking COWARD! YOU’RE TOO SCARED TO FIGHT ON YOUR OWN?!”
Her rage met no response either.
The next thump on the prison shifted a wall. Dust flew out of the edge, scattering in the air. Stinx tensed her legs and tightened her sweaty fists until they hurt. At least she still had -
She realised the warmth from Fleet’s power was gone.
Motherfu-
The prison burst open.
She was moving before she fully realised it, throwing herself aside and nearly skidding on the ice, to dodge the pieces of shattered concrete and rebar. She barely got a glance of the person underneath before they were shooting away, but he looked - big. Like, huge. Under 6 feet but ripped. And he can fly. What’s that got to do with ice powers?
The blur landed, flipped over - and a face in a torn-up canvas mask, a messy helmet studded with dull white stones turned towards her. Stinx raised her hands and opened her fists. Yellow-green dust like pollen seemed to almost glow in the dark before it dissipated, and the nauseating, burnt-oil, rotting-meat smell of her power made its reappearance. The cape huffed once, and twisted his body around. He wasn’t wearing much, and it made the dark blue of his absurd muscles clear. What little he was wearing was metal, a skeletal form along his arms and legs and a big backpack with glowing bits. Tinker shit, why he was here.
His jaw shifted into a snarl, and they both moved at once. He threw himself at her, but Stinx was already dashing left. She got a faint hint of ice-cold mist as he passed her, but she didn’t stop running, casting off more gas behind her as she raced for cover. Teeth chattering, biting her tongue, limbs unwieldy.
She heard a roar and changed directions fast. He flew past her again and into a wall, crashing into it - but not through. One hand was over his face, clawing at his eyes - but the other hit a rebar at a bad angle and tore open. Stinx’s heart leapt into her mouth in hope.
But there was no blood. The skin tore open but what came out was mist. Ice cold, it seeped out of the torn flesh and towards the ground it was heavy. Anything it touched froze. Even ten metres away, she thought she could feel it.
I can’t hit him, she thought. He rose to his feet, snarling and half-sobbing, the other arm - considerably bigger than the torn one, which flopped like a balloon or a badly beaten sausage - rubbing his face. His eyes. So her dust did work on him, that was good. He’d flown into a full-scale fog of it, and he was still standing, which was bad. Getting a noseful of her dust was painful, and people who could push through that were tougher fighters than her.
He turned towards her, and she nearly pissed herself, but his eyes were wide, so bloodshot it was obvious even in the night, and didn’t stop at her at all. He was blinded, and his nose had got to be killing him right now.
He took a deep breath of air, and Stinx tensed her legs, ready for another flight or some kind of ice-breathing attack. Instead, he simply sighed it out.
He looked almost as dirty as her, she noted. Apart from the tech skeleton, he just wore tattered pants and a tribal-looking necklace of yellow-white stones, the same kind that were on his helmet. His body hair was white and he had a lot of it, though his brown hair on his head was just past his ears, and curled slickly under the mask. He sighed, and then a flicker crossed his face, his mouth. It wasn’t a snarl or a scowl or a twist of pain.
It was a smile.
“Gonna enjoy killing you,” He growled, almost laughing, and unhooked something from his backpack. It was twisted and broken metal, but she knew for a fact that that thing was a gun. A scream built in her throat and she began to run.
“I hear you!” The cape roared, laughing even as he focused on twisting his gun back into shape. Stinx ducked behind a wall and scattered dust everywhere she could. “Just you wait, little brat!”
She pushed her hair out of her face and pressed herself close to the wall. He wouldn’t be able to shoot her or fly at her from this angle.
“Come out and fight me!” The cape roared. “I’ll even make it quick if you do!”
Make it quick. Go fight him. Fight him. Constrictor’s mask flashed into her mind.
Breathe in. The stink of her power snapped her back to reality.
Her enemy was making crunching sounds, still far away. She tiptoed over to have a look - he had removed his helmet, and was doing something with a small item and his backpack. He dropped it, picked up a rock, and began banging on it. She squinted, trying to figure out if the gun was ready. Movies always made it look like villains’ tinkertech was blowing up every five minutes and in real life those explosions might take the bastard with them.
Maybe she could get away, while he was still blind. She stood and began to step away as quietly as possible, wishing for the noise and chaos of the rest of the city to hide in. Everyone would be asleep this time of night, or avoiding the obvious gang war.
A bang - not a gunshot - followed by a roar of sound, followed by silence. She snapped her head around at the cape.
Even in the middle of the night, there was still enough light to see in, from the reflections off the clouds above. It tinted the world faintly purple-grey, but not black. Not black anywhere except the little ball sitting on the concrete, looking like a circle with no solidity to it, like a paper cut-out.
She could hear the cracking of rocks against the ground as they were lifted up and pulled in, but when the ground ripped open under it, there was no sound.
The cape sighed out a puff of steam, and smiled. “Ready or not, sweetie.”
He stepped towards her, cocking the rifle.
That’s… four powers, now. Who gave this bastard tinkertech?
She turned and began to run, but something that felt like a strong wind roared in her ears and pulled at her clothes and skin from the side. He’d shot another black hole, this one floating in place mere feet to her left.
Her feet crunched on the ground, slipped on slush or dust or a brick and she fell as she tried to pull herself away, ankle twisting. He roared behind her, all playfulness dissolved into rage and hate, and she knew he was coming. Three or four long strides of running, and then she threw herself to the ground. He flew right over her, turning a somersault in the air and circling back, rifle raised. She lifted her own gun and shot without bothering to aim.
It hit him in the gut, twice, bending him over like a punch. He was still in the air. There were no bullet holes, no blood, again, instead the blue muscles covering his front popped open, spilling gas into the air. Fucking unfair, was the pointless thought in her mind. He was so powerful, while she would have killed for her gas to be that powerful.
It’s not even bullets in this thing. She should have been past feeling betrayed by now, but she still did. They couldn’t even give me real fucking bullets.
She aimed for his face, hoping the needle-like ammunition would do better in a sensitive spot, but one went wide, and the other hit his head and snapped.
He raised one fist in her direction and shot down at some absurd speed.
I’m going to die.
To her shock, though, he didn’t just shoot into and through her. Instead he slowed with a jolt and landed less than a metre away, stumbling on the ground and barely catching himself. He stopped, staring sightlessly into the air, and began to sniff.
Oh, go to hell.
He was tilting his head to one side and then the other, muttering to himself. She caught a few words… ‘aunt’? ‘Teeth’? ‘Kill’? OK, that last one sounded most relevant, and she began to inch away, frostbite climbing into her limbs.
His head twisted at a sound and he swung at her. But he was too tall - basically a foot over her - and she ducked it. He nearly toppled, stopped at an odd angle with his flight, and tried to headbutt her. She hopped away, and he roared again as he fell face first into the dust behind her. It was climbing in intensity now, or should be, stinging his eyes and making his breaths shallow.
His next flail actually caught her, his arm twisting at an unnatural angle, too fast, grabbing her. It was the one already torn, and she felt her bones and his crunch with the force of the impact. Her flesh screamed in burning cold as he dragged her, but she had reached her goal.
The barrel of the rifle almost slipped through her fingers, but she held on tight and pulled it away from him. As he twisted her away, she twisted it, round to point at him, and jabbed it into his side like a spear.
His nails tore at her, but she wouldn’t be stopped. She pulled the trigger and heard a click.
His supernaturally strong grip loosened, and without looking back she began to run.
Her hair flapped over her face, but any pain from the fight or the many times she tripped running was beyond her.
He would be behind her. He would tear himself away and regenerate and be back behind her. He would remember how to turn off his gun, and then he’d be behind her.
She ran and ran and -
PAIN.
The force of it, after she’d been so cut off from her own, nearly made her fall.
- Kill that bitch.
- It hurts like a bitch, take off after her.
She saw herself, wide-eyed and tiny, raising a gun towards - herself.
- Some kind of tranquiliser. Wait, ‘me’?
- We thought of the little freak as us. But that’s not…
- HA! Oh god.
A trickle of awareness in her brain, like an answer in a test she didn’t know the reasoning for.
- We jumped again!
- No. NO!
She nearly tripped.
What’s going on? No, focus on running.
- Which one of you is that?
- Neither. It’s her.
It was her. Her thought. Then, the other voices weren’t her?
- We are now.
Why was she thinking that?
Focus on running.
- What are you, bitch, a track star?
- She’s trying to keep her focus. She didn’t know she killed me, and I reckon she’s got dissociative tendencies.
Killing herself? A jolt of rage and hate and fear-
- It’s not fear, freak, it’s the memory of pain.
- The pain you caused us. Take some responsibility.
- Don’t you fucking take that TONE with her, demon woman.
- Rachel-
- Butcher, Kama, shut the hell up. Hey, girl.
That was her. She felt every inch of her body twinge upwards in alertness, and then she felt a wave of nasty amusement. And shame, right after, because who could that be aimed at but her?
Focus on the runni-
Her head exploded in pain and she almost fell. Her calves and thighs were still tight and screaming, feeling like they were tightly bound despite her loose pants.
- They are, freak girl.
- You, calling someone a freak, Yeti?
She looked down, ignoring the blurriness of her eyes and the noise in her mind.
It took a long moment for her to recognize her legs. The knees were as skinny and twig-like as before, but her thighs, calves and buttocks were pressing against the cloth.
- Go on, take a look.
- Yeah-hahaha, go on, strip!
- Strip, strip, strip, stri-
She closed her eyes with a helpless scream. It was all so loud, so loud-
- Get used to it. This is your life now, for the rest of time.
- Strip, strip, stri-
Her feet tripped, and it was getting harder to move - it felt as though there were giant boils on her soles, and bags tied to her calves blocking her knees from bending.
- Go on. Focus on running.
She didn’t know which voice it was, or if it was her own. It was idiotic anyway. Running, run where, run why, it wouldn’t solve a thing…
She was running.
- Ugh, why are we running. We can go faster than these tiny little legs with our flight.
Flight?
- Come on, you can’t be this stupid, you little drug-addled dumbass. Fly!
- It’s actually telekinesis.
- Shut up, Sucker. Named yourself Suck-N-Blow and died to this pile of twigs-
Fly? She’d… she’d wanted to fly. Curled up in the corner of the bus, waiting in traffic while her mother died, she’d wanted to fly away from it all. The memory came out in little bits and pieces, attached to others - the first time she’d been homeless, the day she found what was meant to be a temporary shelter but was still her home, Fleet and the others coming to rip her out of it…
- Who are those people?
They-
But the answer was there as soon as she thought of it, the memories of all the pain she’d been through tonight. That they’d put her through. Even that voice, the oldest and most dry of them all, was telling her the same - this was what she was, small and pathetic and worthy only of being a pawn, this was all she was…
- Well, we know what we’re doing tonight.
What?
- Nothing, focus on running.
- FLYING!
Her knees buckled under the weight of her body. Her vision was blocked by more than just tears, but it felt like half of… one eye, maybe, was covered by something blue.
- I guess we know what my power looks like on a tiny thing like you.
Nothing they were saying was worth anything - in the same moment she fell forwards, she let her feet leave the ground and reached for a pressure that she hadn’t realised was there, like turning a tap. And like a tap, she did not expect the sheer force with which the power came, and she was off her feet and shooting forwards, the dark surroundings turning to a blur.
- Go up! Fuck, go up! You’re going to crash into something-
- Not too high though-
- Fuck you, go high!
She went high. The world blurred and spun - it was nothing like using Fleet’s power, it was more like going down a hill on a bicycle, more like falling than walking. She could feel every inch of her body from the outside. Fleet. She thought of his face - his chrome helmet - glowing down at her from a poster, and her path was set in that instant, every freezing inch of her on fire.
- Careful, you can only keep it up for a minute-
Right on cue, the force on the outside of her body gave out, and she was falling.
Still, she could see the gangs now, bits of light and fire and the sounds of breaking. Those bastards have our Teeth.
She let herself fall - not like she could do much else - and readied herself.
The instant she sensed her connection to the power return, she threw herself at them.
- Wait, don’t crash into-
Even with her vision half-gone, she saw the shock on Contrictor’s face seconds before her body ripped into hers. She felt what must have been her shoulder shattering from the impact, giving out and splintering where her body had rammed the villain leader. The next moment she was out of juice again, falling to the ground.
- You know, if you kept the fucking murder weapon you killed me with-
She blinked and waited for the noise to clear, crumpled against one of Constrictor’s concrete creations. I’m not dying? Her body felt weird where the shoulder and her ribs and her face had been hit. Instead of the pain - well, on top of the pain - there was an odd pulling sensation, like she was a piece of cloth she was pulling a loose thread from, bunching it all up.
- That’s the healing.
- That’s mine. Stop using Rockets’ and get into close combat, you’ve got the hair for it.
“Thank you?”
She tried to stand up but fell over. Her legs were… they were almost gone. She could barely see them, hidden under bulging masses of blue skin, faintly dusted with white, on her thighs, calves and her ass. They were appearing all over her, on her chest and belly, on her arms and the one on her face.
She lay on a layer of ice, that blue liquid-gas floating around her. She’d fallen on something sharp and pierced a boil on her back, she could feel it regenerating even now. When she lifted a sausage-thick hand to clumsily push hair out of her face, it was hard and stiff as a rod, and refused to be brushed back. She followed it to its end with a finger and thumb that couldn’t close, and found a wire-thin hook at the end.
Constrictor was struggling to her feet, the left side of her face a bloodied mess. Echo was beside her, helping her up.
She saw Echo’s hands holding her carefully, supporting her on her arm and back. Her disgusting, ruined club-hands tightened.
Echo’s eyes widened as she saw her shooting towards them. “Wake up-!” Her voice cut off as Stinx jerked upwards, ripping through her own fingers with the tip of the hook. She barely avoided the two women, but the shooting gas didn’t - it splattered against their heads and shoulders, and she heard them scream as she passed, skidding to the ground like she was playing leapfrog.
They may have been avoiding her before. Now, all hell broke loose. They threw themselves at her - C-Crew and Adepts, heroes and henchmen.
She raced along the edge of the crowd, narrowly avoiding tinkertech shots of every variety.
- What the hell are you doing?
Shush! Her palms were open, but they didn’t need to be, really. Yellow dust scattered and disappeared in her wake - at the speed she was going, even a minute of flight was plenty.
She threw her body into the air to avoid a man - a Brute - with his arms open to catch her. She could hear him scream in pain, covering his eyes as she passed - he was already covered in reeking blood, and her dust would work its way in through whatever path it found.
Nobody here is escaping.
She landed with her feet ripping under her, but grinned anyway.
Her clumsy fingers tried to braid her hair - with one of the boils gone, it was easier. The strands were each hard and barely bendy, but they stuck together like velcro. That’s nice. No need to braid them.
It hung down her back like a whip, the end curling on its own into a sickle shape.
- It’s a kama.
She ignored the noise, the muttering, the crazy laughter. Instead, she pushed herself onto her feet. Her tears froze before they could fall, but her smile was wide, and her belly was painfully hot.
Nobody here is escaping me.