Orb Weaver Plague: Chapter 11

Fun was in the past when I sat down in the truck next to Dad. “Madison,” he said. “Madison who may be as strong as Alexandria.”

“It’s…” I paused. “At higher levels it’s hard to directly compare Brutes becaused it’s no longer just about—“

“Taylor… Please.”

I shut up.

“You promised to try and stay out of cape events, just be The Investigator and I admit, you’ve tried.”

As The Investigator he was right. Now was not the time to bring up Orb Weaver.

“I have.”

“You know, I heard a joke,” Dad said as he turned right, heading for home, the HQ behind us.

I was not wishing Director Piggot was going to call us back so I could avoid this. I wasn’t.

“It was?”

“The risk I took was calculated but man I am bad at math.”

“That implies it wasn’t pure chance.” I said.

“What would The Investigator say?”

I sighed. “That there is every probability that even if it was chance that I encountered Tattletale, now I am known to her boss…and I probably have been.”

“Oh?”

“Dinah. A planned abduction. One that… indicates penetration of the local PRT.”

“So maybe it is time to leave?” Dad asked. “The Investigator can have a career anywhere. And the same factors that made you decide LA was safe for Dinah apply to you, correct?”

I didn’t say anything for a few moments. Dad was right. Whatever issues here, they wouldn’t exist elsewhere. Sure every city had its villains, but the Bay was… pretty bad.

“What about you?” I finally asked.

“I can always find a new job.”

I blinked, and as we drove through the streets, but bugs coming into my influence froze. I hadn’t expected that.

“You’ve… you’ve always been dedicated to the DWA, to the city!”

“Maybe missing my daughter getting bullied to the point of being stuffed into a locker. Director Piggot mentioned the questions you might have asked. One of them was how could people miss what was happening to you. I missed it.”

“You…”

“If Annette was alive, she’d be kicking my ass from one end of the city to another. I failed. Failed the most important duty I have.” Dad took a deep breath. “LA doesn’t have Hookwolf. LA doesn’t have a protectorate so outgunned that they are asking a 15-year-old for help. Dinah didn’t want to leave the Bay. She was scared and… Well, I’m afraid to say that is the same with your old Man. I’ve poured… everything into this job, and it just doesn’t get any better, and Annette wasn’t the only reason I missed so much. Maybe it’s time to try something new.”

I just blinked. I’d never expected Dad to just… decide to leave? For me? A tiny bit of anger that he hadn’t done this before the Locker rose, and died, because I knew how much he loved the city. How dedicated he was.

And that meant that if he was even talking about this…

“What about Kurt and Lacy?” I finally said. “All of our friends. If someone tries to murder a black girl, who will be there to help them?”

“I think Orb Weaver can find someone else.”

Well, fuck. I’d never expected my little identity game to come back and bite me in the ass this way. And I really doubted “I am Orb Weaver” would go over well.

“Maybe Orb Weaver can. But what about Taylor?” I finally said. “Remember? I mentioned it a while ago, all those people passing by. Helping me might be inconvenient. Might put them at risk.”

“Taylor, that’s…” He shook his head. “Nobody expects you to risk dying to Hookwolf.”

“It’s not about… expecting.” I don’t say anything for a moment, as we pass the road. “Expect isn’t the right term. It’s about understanding… I can’t run. Because yes, nobody expects me to. But if everyone leaves the shitholes because nobody expects them to stay, finds a better place… Who is left to try and make their home better? If I leave, if we leave, we’re saying that the Bay deserves Lung and Kaiser, and everything else. That we should just accept that the only way I could help Dinah was to get her out of town.”

“And if you die?” Dad asked.

“I could have died in the locker,” I said. “My heart, panic, or just cut myself on a sharp piece of metal and bleed to death. Even in LA, I could die. After all, Dad, I’m a parahuman and that means I’m a target. I always will be.” I shook my head. “But there’s one big difference.”

“Which is?”

“Here, I can make a difference. I didn’t intend to get into fights with the E88,” At least in this identity, “But because I did, right now there’s a parahuman who may be as strong as Alexandria, at the PRT HQ.” I sighed. “I know how you feel Dad, and believe me, I wasn’t having fun, at all. But if we don’t fight, don’t stand our ground, and just run… Hookwolf, Kaiser, Lung… They win. And one day, we’ll find that there’s no place left to run.”

Dad opened his mouth, then blinked. “Is that… your old principal’s car?” I looked up. It was beyond the range of my bugs, but… yeah. That was Thomas’ old bug.

“It is…” I murmured. “I wonder what he’s doing here.” Not that I was unhappy. It’d give Dad time to think about what I said.

We pulled up to the driveway, where Thomas was, leaning against his car, a box on the roof.

“Figured you’d be here. Sorry about the timing, but we need to talk.”

Dad frowned. “Taylor doesn’t go to Winslow anymore.”

“Nope, and I’m not talking as a Winslow admin—I’m talking as Marquis’ ex-right hand man.” He shook his head. “Well you didn’t bring any fights to my school, but you’ve sure as hell poked the hornet’s nest, and we need to talk.”

Dad and I looked at each other, and Dad nodded. “Would you like to come in?”

****

Mr. Thomas looked around our room, and I noticed that the way he was looking, he was…

Evaluating it. Dad got him some tea, and we sat around the old table.

“I take it you know of my identity?”

He nodded. “Thought you were Orb Weaver at first, but then… yeah, Orb Weaver used you to help Aisha and, well, you’re not like him. You were providing him information about the school.”

Under the house my bugs whirled as I quickly came up with a story. “He… wasn’t overly happy that I had missed Mr. Quinlin’s attitudes.”

“Not your fault.” Thomas shook his head. “But here’s the thing, I keep up with things and right now a lot of people are noting that Orb Weaver didn’t bail you out.”

“Does that mean much?” I asked.

“Yeah. See, in the short time that Orb Weaver is here, Squealer vanished, he’s mastered Mush, captured Alabaster, and of course nearly killed Skidmark.”

“But… Sherrell isn’t…”

Mr. Thomas laughed. “Not according to the word on the street.”

Ah, well, I’d been trying to make a legend, I had just assumed that they’d be a little more clever…

“But the thing is, Orb Weaver doesn’t just scare the shit out of people—nobody knows who he is or what he can do, and even the smart sorts like Kaiser aren’t going to casually risk a fight where he could get the first punch in, because for all they know, he has the kind of power where the first punch is the last punch.”

“And now they assume that isn’t an issue with me.” Lovely. I had tried to separate our identities and I’ve succeeded.

“We were considering leaving.” Dad glanced over at me. I said nothing.

“Bad idea,” Thomas said. “Wherever you go, local parahumans will know you ran—and they’ll assume that makes you vulnerable. If you were going to do that, I’d suggest just joining up with the Wards… but they’ll want you to pull your horns in. Way in.”

“And Kaiser?” I asked.

“Well, word is that he’s not overly happy with Crusader. Rumor has it that the plan wasn’t to go after you, but you really pissed Crusader off.”

“To the point he’d disobey Kaiser?”

“Who knows? Maybe his ghosts listened to him. I didn’t deal with him, back in the day, but there are rumors that they can respond to what he thinks—take it as you will. Also. Nazi.”

“And you ran with Marquis,” Dad said. “I remember picking up some bodies out of the bay.”

“Guilty. There’s a reason why I kept my head down after the amnesty.” Mr. Thomas sighed. “But here’s the thing. That’s not gonna last. You’re on the radar, and sooner or later, no matter where you go, you’re gonna run into someone who isn’t interested in talking. And because of that…” he opened up the case. “Some presents. Marquis had these made for me, back in the day.”

I looked down, and two 1911 automatics were in the case.

“You want Taylor to pack guns?” Dad said. “She can’t even get a license to drive!”

“Yeah, well nice thing about Parahumans, there’s sort of an informal rule that if they just carry, nobody’s gonna ask.” Thomas looked at me. “But you need more if they come for you.”

“Guns won’t stop Hookwolf.”

“Oh you might be surprised. These were made special. Take a look.”

I glanced down, and frowned. There were some differences, the barrels looked—“Two barrels.”

“Two barrels.” He gestured. “Lower barrel is a stun gun—taser that has a range of oh, about twenty meters. It ionizes the air to carry the charge. Upper barrel fires bullets, but the magazine has three feeds you can use.”

“Tinkertech bullets?”

“It can take normal bullets, but yeah, some of the loads I have are tinkertech. Tangler, explosive, and incendiary…” he shrugged. “Armor piercing isn’t, technically, tinkertech, just a APC round fired out of the gun—the special loads are accelerated through the barrel by a magnetic field.”

“Tinkertech tends to be not maintainable…”

“Yeah, Boss paid premium. How much do you know about this stuff?”

“Enough.”

“Okay, if they get broken, yeah, you can’t fix them, not without a Tinker’s help. The tangler and other specialty rounds are one shot—they pack more of a punch then a normal round that size could. But the gun itself? It’s made from Tinkertech materials, but as long as you do the proper maintenance, it’ll work.”

I stared. Dad might not know, but that kind of durability… I expected these guns… Mr. Thomas could have sold them for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Why?”

“Remember what I said about lipstick on a pig?” Mr. Thomas asked.

“Yes?”

“These guns did a lot of damage. Marquis wasn’t running a charity.” Thomas looked down at the pristine tools. “There’s blood on ‘em, not all of it the blood of bad guys.”

“So why are you even considering giving them to Taylor?” Dad asked.

“Well, first of all, she may need ‘em. I expect even Kaiser might not enjoy being shot, and the stun gives you a nice out if you don’t want to get beaten up—like by a mob of drugged-up Empire sorts.”

“True, but not the entire reason,” I said.

“You could have gotten Madison Birdcaged. I know thinkers. Say the right thing—or hell, just decide it wasn’t your problem. You talked her out of a fight with the Empire, got her to the PRT.”

“It was…” I paused. “My responsibility.”

“And I know what she helped do to you,” Mr. Thomas said. “There are guys back in the day who would have let the city burn rather than help someone who did that. Hell, the biggest question on PHO about “locker girl” was what would be funnier, give her to the Slaughterhouse or just have her star in an initiation for the E88.”

I shuddered in disgust. I’d seen those posts. “That was not me. Never.”

“Taylor…” Dad shook his head. I took a deep breath.

“That’s why,” Mr. Thomas said. “You’re gonna run into bad guys, and I’m sorry, Mr. Hebert, but I’ve seen a lot. You may have as well. Look me in the eyes and tell me your daughter can just decide it wasn’t her problem and walk off and leave someone to ‘em—no matter where you go.”

Dad sighed. “No.”

“I couldn’t give ‘em to you, not at first. I couldn’t give ‘em to anyone which is why they were buried. But you paid. And you had one of the people who made your life hell at your mercy, and you didn’t go for revenge. You went for justice.” He looked at me. “Lipstick on a pig, Taylor. All of our codes and rules and the only thing it did was convince people we weren’t “that bad.” Marquis didn’t kill women and children, but we—I—sure as hell made a lot of widows and orphans. I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to undo some of the harm we’ve done to the city.” He looked at the guns. “So it’s only fair I do one more thing. Use ‘em, bury ‘em, but they’re yours now, and maybe you can help wash some of the grime off of them.”

I looked at him, and suddenly had a vision of a much younger man, face shining as a super villain gave him the guns, full of pride that he was to be so trusted.

And never imagining that one day his face would look so old and weary as he gave me what had become a mark of shame.

“I accept,” I said, and Dad didn’t say anything. “I’ll have to learn to use them, but the stun setting alone can help.”

“And the rest, Taylor?” Dad asked.

“I won’t say I will not kill,” I told both of them. “If it comes down to the choice between a victim and attacker, I will kill. But I swear I will never do so casually, or as anything but the very last resort.”

“Well, you’re smarter than I was,” Mr. Thomas said.

Dad was just staring at the guns. “I guess we’re not leaving,” he said.

“No.” I looked at my father, seeing a mixture of pride and terror on his face. “The job’s not done.”