Arcanum, Rough 1-2

It had not even been a minute since the door shut behind the villain duo, Miho and Shen just barely able to pick up the exchange occurring just beyond the boundaries set by the glass door. Neither the rain nor the rising murmurs of the crowd were helping. Seeing outside was also a struggle because Skitter was keeping most of her bugs under the bank’s eave, soggy wings were clearly something of a problem for an insect Master.

“Hello Brockton Bay Wards and PRT! As I’m sure you’re aware, we, the Undersiders, have taken everyone currently within the Brockton Central Bank hostage. Now, if you all cooperate, we can ensure their safety. However, if any of you start making aggressive moves towards us, well, I’m sure you all know where I’m going with this!” 

Shèn didn’t need eyes on the scene to see the teenage merc gesturing grandly. How much he was hamming it up because Cape rules and how much it was just being a huge fucking nerd of a teen, only god and perhaps Aisha knew. Either way, she had enough common courtesy not to comment on how he sounded like a theater kid taking his first baby steps into a lead role. 

The ensuing silence was good. Great, even! It means that the PRT and their superpowered teens were doing the responsible thing and talking out a plan of action. This was only confirmed when another teen’s voice spoke up, this time through a megaphone and with a faint Puerto Rican accent. “Understood, Undersiders. Give us a moment to put the hostage negotiator–”

“STALKER, YOU SCUM-SUCKING–!” A girl screamed like a miniature Drill Sgt, although even her prodigious lungs were drowned out by the all-consuming buzz of Skitter’s swarm going berserk.

The writhing mass of chitin did nothing to keep her and everyone else from watching Grue’s silhouette twist and get a crossbow bolt appendectomy. God, Shèn hoped it was just an appendectomy, all she could tell was that the kid was on his knees with the silhouette of a broadhead through his torso. He had jerked right before the silhouette of a broadhead punched through his gut, so maybe– 

She blinked rain out of her eyes. That was a lot of troopers. And Wards. And pissed off bugs.

“Bug, get yourself together and get you and yours out of here. Shèn and I will handle the fucking cops. Of course they employ the murderous vigilante, the goddam fucking morons. In exchange, I expect that the hostages will be safe, understood?”

All of it was ignored as the wind blowing water into her face. Shèn had a bleeding, unresponsive teenager in her hands. There was already a tracery of white-green light floating over her fingers, her support Ahriman having apparently followed her out of the bank during that almost fuge given how it had just chomped off the broadhead sticking out of Grue’s back. Nevermind how images of slow internal bleeding, shock and a kidney missed by two inches were filling her head courtesy of the monster’s glowing eyeball. A moment later, there was a copy of her healing spell’s schema floating over its massive iris, ready to be applied on the other side of the wound. 

Shèn breathed in, breathed out. 

Yank, pressure, Physik. Good news, he wasn’t going to bleed out. Bad news, either she or Ahriman had to sustain the spell to keep it that way. Worse news, he was going into shock. Worst news, Aegis reported septic leakage so the man also needed an Esuna to purge that within the hour or he was gone. The only silver lining was that Resurrect would fix the first two issues and buy a hell of a lot of time for the third.

“Barrier on both, now.” The hissing growl underlining her words was more at home in a two hundred pound alligator than a human, but Shèn’s body gave as little of a shit about it as her right now. What mattered was that she didn’t have to worry about these idiot kids getting turned into swiss cheese as she switched to the agony of slow-filling a Resurrect schema. Every fiber in her body wanted to speed it up, only for the grimoire at her hip to mercilessly shoot her down. A drawn out thrum from her book to the magic coursing through her veins whispered in her ear that this was the fastest someone of her skill could go without the spell shitting itself. She had never loathed an inanimate object so much, but she swallowed it through her stress grin and kept doing her hardest to keep the poor bastard and the spell steady. This was NOT made easier by a legion of centipedes, wasps and god alone knew what else swarming over them. At least they’d be harder to shoot at like this but don’t fucking distract the medic you twat.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Regent made his presence known again and only didn’t get a glare fit to burn through five feet of concrete because Shèn refused to take the eyes off her patient. The kid’s voice was strained to the point of turning shrill, his words coming in a great rush, “But Shadow Stalker doesn’t look like she’s satisfied with just that– she’s coming over to finish him off– I’m doing my best to buy as much time as I can by tripping her up but she’s still coming!”

“MIHO!” The dragon roared and like the answer to a prayer, lightning came.

“–I expect the hostages will be safe, understood?” She declared firmly, her voice boyed by confidence and bravado she didn’t feel. It seemed to be enough to snap the teen out of her oncoming panic attack, and, almost hesitantly, Bug nodded.

With the confirmation that the girl that would become Skitter had received her message, Miho turned her attention towards the developing situation outside. Electric purple eyes assessed the situation with tactical expertise she had not possessed until she had woken up here, the alien thoughts in her mind whispering potential problems and their solutions in a way that spoke of years of dedicated studying; studying Miho could not remember doing. Because of course she would wake up worlds aways from everything she had ever known and loved, because that was just the kind of-

‘Put it in a box, worry about it later.’ Miho forced the oncoming bout of anger at her situation aside with a firm mental hand. She had bigger fish to fry, especially since the absolute fucking cunt that was Sophia Hess would be going for broke now that she’d screwed the pooch. She didn’t trust the traumatized Darwinist to do literally anything else, nor the need to moderate her paranoia given what she was stepping into.

That wariness was vindicated moments later as Regent shouted in warning, his arms twitching as he did his absolute best to foul up her approach. Before she realized what she was doing, her feet were beating against the floor. Before she could process the former, she was calling out firmly to all but her unaspected Carbuncle, firmly ordering them into action. In what felt like an instant, she was through the door, all but smashing it clean off its hinges with a shoulder check, Her Amethyst Carbuncle leaping to her shoulder as she raced against the clock.

She could see space bending like a pretzel in a dizzying display of power. She could see a wispy form that vaguely aped a teen’s silhouette, racing through each obstacle placed in front of her with an expertise that would be much more admirable if the intent behind wasn’t so decidedly murderous. She could see a deluge of assorted arthropods, crawling all over Grue and Shen in a fruitless effort to shield the pair without getting in the way of the latter’s work as Bug panicked, her irritation a palpable force filling the air with the buzzing of insects. Miho’s mind whispered to her that she wouldn’t make it in time, that she wouldn’t reach Shèn and Grue before her foe did. As she pushed her body to the breaking point, straining through her limits with nothing but adrenaline and pigheaded stubbornness, a thought danced through her mind,

‘I don’t need to reach them. I just need to shoot down Stalker. I’m an Arcanist, not a Pugilist.’

“MIHO!” Shèn thundered, her cry briefly rippling the rain as Miho’s spine stiffened. Adrenaline pumped through her body as she barked out a firm command towards her Amethyst Carbuncle. Moments before Shadow Stalker lined up a shot to deliver the coup de grace, she was upon the murderous bitch with an inarticulate battlecry. The Carbuncle on her shoulder leapt forth, loosing a wide bramble of lightning; one that Shadow Stalker had no real way to dodge with the dizzying amount of spatial distortions surrounding her, each twist in space akin to wrongness in the visual spectrum. Despite the amount of lighting poured forth, only a limited amount hit Miho’s target, the rest sent flying into the sky or ground by the distortions that her foe had just now broken clear of, her body twitching as she was knocked out of her near ethereal state.

Within a half a breath the Kitsune was upon the teen, her shoulder slamming into the Ward and sending her tumbling ass over teakettle away from her target. Shadow Stalker’s crossbow tumbled onto the concrete with a satisfying thunk. Even before the former vigilante came to rest, Miho was unsheathing her grimoire with a practiced movement full of alien familiarity. Pushing the complicated feelings that arose without prompting aside, Miho interposed herself between Shadow Stalker and the others, ears flat against her head and her tail lashing from side to side in a blatant display of furious aggression.

‘Keep Shèn safe. Gotta buy her enough time for her to work her magic. Make sure the kid doesn’t die, and that his little sis isn’t left with no options but shitty ones.’ She told herself, only for her ears to twist over backwards. 

“Right. I can do the whole song and dance about thanking you after we get into cover.”

“And I can make sure you don’t have to get your intestines unzipped once we’re in there, come on.”

She couldn’t quite help her toothy smile, now that they were inside the bank she had a lot more options.

Shadow Stalker leapt back up to her feet snarling something that Miho didn’t bother listening to for a second, unsheathing a pair of knives. It didn’t matter when she drowned it out with a barked, “ルイン!” poisonous purple eyes all but glowing as she practically spat a Ruin. The bundle of impossible black light sailed like an arrow– and promptly swerved up into the sky when it got within ten feet of Shadow Stalker.

“Stand DOWN, Shadow Stalker!” A young, female voice roared with authority, sounding more like a drill sergeant than the twelve year old it had likely come from.

Taking only a moment to be impressed at Vista’s efficiency and skill, Miho’s eyes narrowed as she stared into the spatial distortions surrounding the Ward she had been combating only a second ago. It would have to be enough. In the interest of deescalating, she reigned herself in, pulling back from her aggressive stance as she stood at attention, her body still tense as she prepared to spring back into actions should it prove necessary. Not that Stalker seemed to care, content to play at being cooperative. Those probing eyes weren’t fooling the fox for a second.

Miho quickly cast her gaze around, trying to get as much information as she could get on the PRT and Wards cordon as she could without giving her opponent a proper opening. Focusing first on the PRT cordon, they had it set up professionally as far as she could tell, each individual agent keeping their cool as they did their assigned tasks. Tense, yes, but not twitchy.

Turning her attention then to the Wards, she was immediately disappointed sans two exceptions. Their nominal leader, Aegis, was… doing nothing. He was frozen in place, what little of his face she could see screwed up in indecision. Perhaps he was instead communicating with someone on the comms, but the point was that he wasn’t doing anything to take charge. Gallant, on the other hand, was so torn on something that she could read it clear as day despite only having body language to go off of. Given that Miho wasn’t in the habit of assigning something her potential enemies could be doing, she shoved the immediate thought that he was debating whether to attack her aside, instead opting to keep an eye on him. Clockblocker looked about ready to sprint over to his waffling teammate to do god knows what, coiled up tighter than a spring. There was another she didn’t recognize in the slightest. Built like a strongman carved from marble, clad in a blue bodysuit with a diamond thematic, the only sign of his actual age was that the face was a teenager’s idea of pure masculinity. The exaggerated lantern jaw gave it away. Unfortunately, that was about everything she could piece together, the looks and consume weren’t ringing any bells. He was just standing there with his arms crossed over a barrel chest, so she just set the matter aside. Especially because she suddenly had to worry about the team’s Tinker aiming a gun at her. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything. 

Vista, however, wasn’t about to take that lying down. How she noticed, Miho had no idea, but the yells came across the street loud and clear. “Kid Win, lower your gun right now or that ball lightning will be tickling your prostate!” It was perhaps a petty use of her powers to shove knife hands in the face of someone behind and to her left, but damn if it wasn’t effective. Kid Win took several steps back, almost fumbling his gun which of course treated him to even more of a dressing down. 

Miho quietly turned her attention away from the Wards and back towards the jumped up vigilante pretending to be part of them, only for her eyes to shoot as wide open as they’d get. Between muscleman and the Tinker, her attention had slid almost entirely off of Stalker. Together with Vista’s lapse to berate Kid Win and confiscate his gun, that had been enough for the Breaker.

The spatial maze hadn’t budged an inch despite the Shaker’s multitasking, but that wasn’t enough to contain a dimensional phaser who had trained and fought with Vista for nearly half a year. One moment she was standing there, the next a cloud of smog was contorting and phasing through the dimensional maze.

The vixen played up her panic, three Amethyst Ruins screamed towards Stalker fruitlessly, each one sent into the sky or the earth without so much as a twitch from the none-too-happy Shaker at the back. Growling to herself, Miho searched for an opening even as the most veteran Ward multitasked herding her rogue teammate away from the bank and keeping the idiot in question from getting hit by an unknown Blaster. The only thing remotely approaching a flaw was that Shadow Stalker was ‘only’ slowed down rather than deadlocked.

A flicker of respect bloomed in the fox, for all it didn’t stop her from relentlessly probing the defenses with her lightning. Slowly learning what this or that bend in the downpour and the air itself meant for the twisted space. 

“Sit your ass down, Gallant! I don’t have time for your bullshit!” The de-facto Wards leader roared, her attention pulled away as she was forced to redirect a barrage of heartjacking lasers. 

Miho needed no further invitation, aether flowing clear and smooth through her grimoire before screaming out as a lance of violet lightning. Even with Vista’s reflexes, all that changed was that the electrocution began from the shoulder instead of the gut. Once again, Sophia Hess was ripped away from her power and thrown onto the pavement to convulse.

The flicker of respect kindled into a flame, the she-fox ever so briefly casting her gaze towards the general direction of the Wards. With a quick pulse of aether, she ordered her Carbuncles retreat as she withdrew back towards the entrance, keeping a sharp eye on all the parties still somewhat involved in the conflict. For now, she would stay out here, on guard… but something was niggling at her. She was forgetting something.

All the more reason to stay on guard, even as Stalker remained limp on the ground and Vista wrangled her team into a semblance of cohesion.

Lightning had just struck twice when the arcane schema covering Shèn’s flattened hands finished charging, releasing into Grue’s chest with a jolt that rattled her arms to the shoulder. Under other circumstances, she may’ve been amazed at turning her yellow mitts into magical defibrillators. As it was, the only tangential thought she allowed herself was a silent thanks to Regent for stopping the convulsions on the sly. 

Grue jolted upwards with a gasp, patting himself down and looking completely mystified at y’know, not having a crossbow bolt sticking out of his gut and two inches away from perforating his kidney. To nobody’s surprise, the patch job of Resurrect was very tender. She’d have to give him a focused Physik to make sure he didn’t have complications down the line, going by the diagnostics Aegis was feeding her. 

For now, though, she sprang back to her feet with a flex of her tail. Just in time for the merc to finish getting a grip on the situation and throw her a thankful nod, “Right. I can do the whole song and dance about thanking you after we get into cover.”

“And I can make sure you don’t have to get your intestines unzipped once we’re in there, come on.” As much as it was nice to watch Shadow Stalker convulse like a beached fish on the pavement, they had more important things to do. 

Wordlessly, she took point. Grue followed behind her and Regent closed the formation while Quartz Ahriman kept its massive eye on the battle, ready to spring a barrier if something went way wrong.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first thing Shèn clapped eyes on her way in was Skitter. Or rather, Skitter being kept from rushing at Grue by Tattletale. The Thinker was urgently whispering something into the other girl’s ear as they entered, her eyes gazing around the room before she finally greeted the trio with false cheer, “Welcome back you three! I take it negotiations went poorly?”

“You can say that again.” The dragon groaned, a flare of aether ordering the barrier Ahriman to switch with wind in keeping an eye on the door and windows. A glance of her own at the crowd left her decidedly conflicted. On one hand, they weren’t scared at all, which was good! On the other hand, they were feeling well enough to be back to recording this whole thing, some of them aiming their phones at her while others looked at the windows. Whatever, she’d take it. Bigger things to worry about. “Mind finding yourself a couch to lay down on, Grue? I got you stable but if I don’t finish up the job you’ll be dying of sepsis in a day or two.”

Immediately, Grue tensed, only for a firm shake of Tattletale’s head to put that to rest. Her tone offered no avenue for defiance, “She’s completely serious, Grue. Get on the couch. Regent, Bug and I can keep an eye out.”

“Right this way, big guy.” Shèn said, tapping him lightly on the shoulder with her tail as she moved towards a big three seater. She may be half a head taller than him, but she wasn’t about to literally belittle a poor teen who’d been convulsing on the ground less than a minute ago. 

With an exasperated sigh that sounded a touch exaggerated to her knife ears, Grue almost grudgingly trudged along behind her. If she were a betting woman, she’d put good money on it being a strong front too. ‘Don’t let them see you flinch’ and all that.

“That lightshow from a moment ago is for reviving people, it took care of the internal bleeding and purged most of the gunk so you aren’t keeling over anytime soon, but it’s only really meant for getting someone footslogging to safety where they can get proper treatment.” The dragon started explaining, tapping index and middle on her thumb’s talon, the satisfying clackclackclack grounding her a bit. She spun on her heel as she reached the sofa, tail a whirling blur of pearlescent scales and two-toned fur as it followed the movement and kept her steady, “Siddown. I just need to put a hand to your chest for this next one, so no need to lie down yet.” 

Without any of the earlier protests, the Shaker sat down. The dragon made the executive decision to take that as her attempts at being reassuring or at least distracting working somewhat. Which meant keep going.

“Now, I’m going to finish mopping up the leakage from your lower intestines first. This schema is called Esuna,” Shèn said as her talons lit up with prismatic light. She put her outstretched fingers together, before rolling her wrists to trace out a large circle, hellishly complex patterns and symbols in every color of the rainbow. Idly, she cut away most of the sections, leaving purple and red to shine all the brighter. He didn’t really have any mental conditions to clean up and she only had so much aether to go around. Thank god that her Ahrimans didn’t need any upkeep. “It is a multipurpose purger that will take care of both the toxins, bacteria poised to cause an infection, and any pockets of spilled blood that could go necrotic.”

Grue nodded wordlessly and she decided it was safe to assume a relatively experienced parahuman would be paying attention when the healer Cape talked about the procedure. A quick glance told her that Tattletale was, unsurprisingly, watching her like a fucking hawk from behind the counter. Skitter was by the hostages, Regent was keeping Aegis-the-Ahriman company and Bitch was presumably at the back carrying bags full of money by now.

There were also a fuck of a lot of cameras pointed at her and the bank was definitely quiet enough for them to pick up what she was saying. She’d feel awkward if she wasn’t too busy keeping a teenager’s life from here on out from being misery.

“Once that’s done I will use a more focused version of Physik, the schema I used to seal your wound then Aegis over there,” A taloned thumb hooked over her shoulder to the Ahriman, the other hand busy feeding power to the magic array. The overgrown Beady Eye chirruped in response, waving with its tail in lieu of turning around, “Used to keep you from dying of internal bleeding while I charged up Resurrect. Anyways, I’ll use it to massage, for lack of a better word, the scar tissue into what should actually be there. You aren’t about to burst something from stretching up to grab something on a high shelf and end up in the ER, but without this you’d be staring down the barrel of a few months of rehab minimum to keep the scar tissue from turning into a rock, constantly feeling tight and restricting your movement. And there’s nothing to really do about the permanent weakening of your core muscles with conventional medicine, one of your abdominal lumps got skewered and don’t get me started on your lumbars. Good thing you’ve got me here, aye? Speaking of, I probably headed off the chronic pain and swelling whenever it rains or it gets cold with what I did already, but this will make completely sure you don’t ever have to deal with it.” 

As if on cue, the spell matrix compressed into a swirling ball of light. She wasted no time pushing the fist-sized mass into Grue’s heart, a twirl of her other hand unfurling a diagnostics schema. The tiny bit of skin visible around his neck lit up, a pulse of red then purple racing through the veins. Shèn’s smile rivaled the sun despite the draconic dentature on display. “All clear! I considered having it clean up all the stress hormones you’re stewing in, but between you and me? People get really skittish about anything supernatural that messes with their brains, even if it’s just a glowing chill pill. Hell, I can see your cortisol spiking just from me talking about it.”

Although, honestly, she could see it even through the motorcycle leathers. Guy tensed up something fierce, even if he forced himself to react right after. The crowd kicked up into murmurs, too, which she decided to handle in the best possible way, “So please, if you fall to my eeevil mindcontrol, proclaim your love and eternal worship of my august self within the next five to ten business days. I will email you some forms you have to fill in triplicate for tax fraud reasons.”

Now the only question would be how hard the R34 artist took her up on that. They’d better, she had even twisted her tail into a big ol heart shape while doing that bit.

“Tattletale. It’s done.” The curt report from Bitch cut into the break of chuckles, some awkward some not, that had fallen over the lobby. 

“Good. We can start thinking about our–” Tattletale began, interrupted seconds later by the phone within the bank ringing furiously. With a raised eyebrow, the Thinker moved over to pick it up, her eyes widening minutely before she controlled her expression. After listening to whomever was on the other side of the phone for a moment, she responded, “This is Tattletale, Vista. I’m sure that, as you’re aware, all we want is to leave in peace.”

“Right, let’s get you sorted out while Mastermind there negotiates.” Shèn told Grue once it became clear that they weren’t being warned about Kid Win firing that Death Beam of his. “Lay down, I can get this done faster if those muscles are straight and relaxed.”

“Is this necessary?” The nominal leader of the Undersiders grumbled, not quite protesting but also most certainly not cooperating quite yet.

“Yes, if you don’t want to risk delaying your team.” The dragon replied evenly, her tail gesturing for him to sprawl out already while her hands flitted around a freshly conjured Physik schema, pruning some lines while thickening others. More the former than the latter, literally all the bits about casting it at range or across the whole of the body went away in favor of doubling and tripling down on its ability to repair dama–

“INCOMING!” Came Miho’s yell, followed immediately by the woman herself as she all but threw herself through the door. The fox’s eyes were wild as they raked through the room, finally landing on the freckled hostage from earlier.

It was at that moment that the sound of shattering glass filled the bank’s lobby as a tiara clad blonde burst through the window furthest away from the crowd, then through the barrier turquoise Ahriman had erected to stop the superhuman missile. It at least succeeded in stopping the spray of glass shards, not that the parahuman even seemed to register the screen of light she’d burst through, eyes wild and screaming, “AMY, ARE YOU OKAY?”