Chapter Text
“No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“I mean absolutely not,” I barked, pacing out back of Papa’s house. “There is nothing I can contribute, zilch, zip, nada. If you want me along as a body, fuck off. The only thing I’ll be good for is dying.”
“Amaranth, this is serious,” Tattletale bitched. “We need all hands on deck for this, everyone needs to pull their weight. You can figure out what he can do, then go back and—”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” I cut her off sharply. “Even if I was willing to do that, and I’m not, it wouldn’t matter. Advanced warning just means they hit somewhere else, I already know that. And since he can teleport, there’s literally no point even trying.”
“He can teleport huh?” she mused.
“Uh, yeah, duh?”
“He hasn’t yet,” she said, sounding amused. “See, you’re useful, you know things even I don’t. Come on Amaranth, I know you’re sour about getting called a villain, but this is a chance to do something absolutely heroic. You know what Amy—”
I crushed my phone in my hand, then threw the wreckage across the yard. That was an overreaction, I knew, but it wasn’t even enough to satisfy the bubbling pit Tattletale had opened in my stomach with half a sentence. ‘You know what Amy would do’. Fucking bitch. She was right of course, that made it so much worse.
I slammed my knuckles against the bricks of Papa’s house, letting out a yell of pain and frustration as the skin split. It had been on purpose, but it still hurt. I shook it out, clicking my tongue at the mess I’d made of my hand. Oh well, it wasn’t actually serious. Probably should take care of it though. I headed back inside, nearly leaping out of my skin as Joy pounced on me.
“Did you see the TV?” she demanded frantically, eyes wide with terror. “It’s—”
“Another Endbringer,” I cut her off. “I know.”
“We...are we…” Joy swallowed and looked at the ground. I realized her shoulders were shaking and reached up, gripping her forearms tightly.
“We’re staying home,” I said firmly. “You’re not ready, and I can’t contribute.”
“I- I’ve got medical training,” she mumbled. “I could maybe do something, I don’t know.”
“We’re staying,” I repeated myself, squeezing her arms. “I’m not losing my team to something we can’t actually help with. This isn’t our fight.”
“Are you sure?” she asked plaintively.
“I’ve fought two of these guys,” I said, lowering my voice. “And I’ve done it multiple times with both of them. This is miles outside our league. Anyway, we need to plan our next move here. The heroes are going to be responding to this, and I’d bet you my share of the next haul that the Nazis aren’t; besides Bifrost to teleport and we both know that doesn’t matter.”
“I...okay.” Joy’s shoulders slumped and I let her go.
“I know it feels bad,” I offered. “But honestly, I’m afraid of losing you, losing everyone. Always on my mind, when we’re working, dealing with...this stuff. So you can blame me, okay? I’m the boss after all.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said quickly shaking her head. “I just, I wish it was different.”
I nodded solemnly and followed her into the living room. We watched as a new Endbringer, half-remembered, laid waste to Japan while the heroes fought in vain. It was an ugly sight, but I forced myself to watch, since I decided we were too good to go. Little, black motes began drifting over the screen, and I gasped when I realized what they were.
I clung to Joy as dozens of spiders spun webs over the screen, telling me it was my fault.
I stared at the ceiling, eyes feeling heavy, but unable to sleep. Three days, Khonsu had been spreading chaos and destruction across the world, always one step ahead of the heroes harrying him. Had it really gone this badly in the story? Unless I’d majorly fucked something up along the way...well, I had hadn’t I? So there was a good chance it was only going this bad because Taylor was dead instead of helping with the effort.
And here I was, annoyed that I couldn’t get to sleep. Straight rotten, that was me. I sighed and pressed my palms into my eyes until I saw stars. Maybe I should have gone to the fight, maybe Tattletale was right about me remembering something. Of course I hadn’t despite watching the destruction rage on, so maybe not.
God, if I’d maybe done something in the mean time, hit a new target, but Tattletale was busy. I couldn’t exactly fault her either, Endbringers were a bigger priority. The sole bright spot was he hadn’t hit Brockton Bay, so I could pat myself on the back knowing I wasn’t that high up on their target list.
Things were picking up though. What was next, more Endbringers? I had a feeling the answer was yes, but still didn’t have any idea of exactly what that meant. But it was a reminder that time was ticking inevitably on, and the end of the world was coming faster than I ever thought it would. I wasn’t ready, wasn’t good enough to stop it. Maybe by then I’d be okay, but I could only hope.
I’d be alone in it, besides my team, and maybe the heroes. I knew Cauldron wasn’t going to step in. They hadn’t when I’d let Alexandria die, even though my nature had been revealed to them. Either they didn’t care, or didn’t think I was worth the attention. And maybe I really wasn’t, after all I—
“Contessa.”
The single word made my eyes fly open and my stomach plummet. I jumped off the couch, fists raised as I saw a person dressed in a suit, a hat on their head. Behind them was a bright doorway leading into a room beyond I couldn’t see. Without a word, the figure turned around and went through as it finally clicked. ‘Contessa’, Cauldron’s boogeyman. So that doorway was…
I shook my head. They’d come for me after all? Things must be pretty fucking dire. I chewed my lip, staring at it. I cursed under my breath and ran over to grab my costume, stuffed in my bag. My vest went over it, and I quickly grabbed a couple magazines and loaded my carbine; no way I was walking into that den of lions unarmed. Armed and dress, I stood in front of the glowing doorway, breathing slowly.
A movement at the edge of my vision made me flinch back, and looking down I saw a black widow crawling around the edge of the doorway. Patrolling. I took aim at it, following it in my sights as it paced back and forth, I glanced at the doorway, then back to the spider. I took a deep breath and lowered my gun, forcing myself to ignore my hallucinations and focus on what was in front of me. The most important choice I’d probably make until it came to fighting Jack Slash.
Here went nothing. Here went everything.
I stepped through, wincing as my ears popped and a wave of dizziness washed over me. The hair on my neck stood on end, and I raised my carbine, sweeping it over the empty hallway. I started as Contessa gestured with her hat, at the corner of my vision, to a doorway on the left. I gave her a look, then scanned it briefly. A spider in the corner…
Walking into the room, I barely managed to suppress a gasp of surprise. I wasn’t alone, not remotely so. There were more than a dozen people all together, a couple silhouettes I recognized as Dragon and Defiant, some other heroes including Chevalier. There were more villains though, Tattletale and Grue to my right, and plenty more I didn’t recognize but wore prison fatigues that marked their status out in bold, red text.
There were others too, ones I didn’t know but were probably villains. A man with flowing, glowing circuits on his face that formed a cross, a black woman with a massive, hideous monster beside her that felt hungry, others dressed in robes that vaguely reminded me of the Indian cape that had blasted Behemoth.
Contessa walked up to the front of the room, joining a woman dressed in a spotless lab coat. Panels behind them glowed softly, keeping me from seeing their faces, but the woman seemed to be staring at me specifically. I tried not to flinch as I saw a spider walk across her desk and up her arm. Chewing my lip, I took a couple steps over to Tattletale, eyeing the heroes who were staring back at me.
“At least you decided to show up here,” Tattletale said bitterly, shooting me a glare.
“You’re on the front lines,” I retorted. “How much could I have done there?” She sighed.
“Not a lot,” she admitted. “But the advanced notice—”
“Would have meant he attacked China, or Vietnam, or Russia,” I cut her off sharply. “Trust me, I can’t actually change this shit or I would.”
“Would be a lot easier to believe you if you tried,” she said quietly.
“I did last time,” I replied simply.
“Ms. Alcott declined to join us,” the woman in the white coat said as another panel lit up. Glancing over I saw a cape in a welding mask, flanked by several Case 53s. “As did Adalid. The three blasphemies and Jack Slash were unreachable, but we would have far fewer problems if they could be reached so easily.” I narrowed my eyes at her. They wanted Jack Slash for this?! “We reached out to a number of major powers and sources of information, and you are the ones who responded. Thank you for coming. I go by Doctor Mother, and I am the founder of Cauldron.” I blinked. She looked way younger than I thought she would.
“You wanted Jack Slash,” I said incredulously. I couldn’t help myself. “Are you serious?”
“Completely,” Doctor Mother replied evenly. “We cannot afford to discount any potential assistance against this new threat.” The black woman with the monster spoke in a language I couldn’t understand.
“I gave you the ability to speak English,” a man dressed in prison fatigues said flatly. “It would cost you nothing to use it.” She said something back that I still didn’t catch, but understood the inflection of someone being insulted.
“I think everyone here knows why contacting Jack Slash to do anything but kill him is a bad idea,” I said sharply.
“Admittedly, I would be interested in knowing,” another prisoner said, stroking a neatly trimmed beard. His curly, dark hair reminded me of someone… “We don’t get much news in the Birdcage.”
“He’s—”
“We can talk about irrelevant crap later,” Tattletale cut me off, driving an elbow into my ribs. “Right now I’d like to get into the nitty gritty of tactics, before this devolves into a bunch of posturing and bullshit.”
“Agreed,” Chevalier said, booming voice carrying easily across the small space. “Amaranth, you can say your piece after we have decided what to do about the immediate threat, the one you refused to respond to or warn us about.” I glared at him, shifting my grip on my carbine.
“I did warn you,” I spat. “I called Dragon and Defiant months ago.”
“Without any useful detail,” Defiant countered. The monster controlling cape said something and chuckled coldly.
“Enough,” Doctor Mother said. “Tattletale is correct, this meeting is regarding the threat we face today.”
I crossed my arms, cradling my carbine and glowering at the heroes standing across from us. I understood wanting to focus, but there was a point when even I had to look at something and say it was short-sighted. Maybe I was just throwing rocks from my glass house, but tapping the man responsible for the apocalypse seemed a billion times more insane than anything I’d done.
Negotiations quickly began in earnest, nothing I really cared about. They didn’t bother asking me what I wanted to join the fight against Khonsu, I guess that wasn’t why I was here. I did learn who the bearded, well-spoken prisoner was, and why he seemed familiar. He was Amy’s father, Marquis, a man who’d probably killed more people than most in this room.
I studied him carefully, fiddling with the safety on my gun. He didn’t really look like Amy, except in the hair and a little in the face. In the darkness though, I could see it, and it just made me feel worse than ever. Eventually I just shut my eyes, preferring seeing nothing to a living reminder of the people I’d loved and hurt.
Negotiations, I could hear, weren’t going well. The heroes objected to paying any price to get the villains on-side, but Cauldron didn’t seem to care all that much. I couldn’t say I did either, it was all academic if the heroes were going to make it a fight. As the conversation carried on, I felt pricking over my skin and knew the spider on Doctor Mother’s desk had made its way over to me.
I stood stock still, just trying to look normal...or as normal as a girl carrying a rifle half her size could. More tickling, prickly feelings told me that it had friends and they’d joined in. I could feel them walking over me, slowly laying silk lines and binding me in place. I couldn’t help the slight whimper that escaped my throat.
I flinched as Tattletale gripped the back of my arm. She whispered, breath hot against my ear, that I was okay, that there weren’t spiders on me. It didn’t help since I could still feel the fuckers. She didn’t let go though, and after a painful few minutes, the sensation vanished and I let out a breath, sweat taking the place of the silk that had been tying me up just moments ago.
“Thanks,” I muttered under my breath, wiping sweat from my eyes.
“You settled?” Tattletale asked quietly, and I offered a small nod. “Good, because they’re waiting on you.” I glanced around and realized almost every eye in the room was staring at me.
“Uh,” I stammered. “What?”
“It didn’t escape notice that you said you predicted this attack months ago,” Doctor Mother said, cocking her head slightly.
“Did you withhold information because of your change in status?” Defiant demanded, arms crossed.
“Amaranth’s an idiot, not a schemer,” Tattletale of all people said, swooping to my rescue. “The only thing she knew was that he could teleport, and she told me before he ever did. The only time she holds something back is when it’ll piss me off.” Or when it would get my ass killed.
“She’s right,” I said, clearing my throat. “And even if I knew the exact date, which I didn’t, it would just change.”
“How do you know that?” Chevalier asked. I just shrugged.
“I’ll vouch for whatever she’s saying, and call her out when she’s full of shit,” Tattletale offered. “In this case, yeah, it wouldn’t happen how she predicted.”
“And you’re still refusing to help in this fight?” he said. An accusation, not a question.
“What’s my carbine going to do?” I retorted. “What are my hands going to do when he floats and traps people in time? The only thing I’ll be good for there is getting trapped and putting a bullet in my own head. So no, I’m not refusing to fight, I’m refusing your assisted suicide.” That got a dry chuckle from Marquis.
“And there’s nothing we can offer to entice you?” Doctor Mother asked.
“You already know there’s not,” I said, shaking my head. “I suspect I’m here for something else, something happening next year, right?” She pursed her lips and gave a microscopic nod. “Then we can talk about that whenever you want.”
“Very well.”
The meeting turned back to the other capes, but more than a little attention stayed on me. Defiant and Chevalier were practically ogling me, as was a short, robed person standing beside Marquis. I glanced down and saw my hands were soaked, dripping with blood and grimaced. Well that explained the stares at least…
The capes from the Birdcage were the first to go. The heroes weren’t letting them out to fight, and Cauldron had acquiesced. The others went too, in small groups, Tattletale leaving me with a warning to watch my back. The fewer people there were in the room, the more spiders seemed to creep down from shadowy corners, skittering over me more than a few times. I did my best to ignore it, and before long it was just me and the three people from Cauldron.
“Contessa, Doctor Mother,” I said, nodding to each of them. “I guess that means you’re Number Man?” The bespectacled man who hadn’t spoken at all during the meeting gave me a nod. “So what do you want?”
“That’s our question for you,” Doctor Mother replied evenly. “We have been watching, Amaranth, taking note of where you intervene and where you don’t. What will it take for you to do everything in your power to prevent the apocalypse?”
“I’m already doing that,” I countered. “Except you people wanted to bring in the guy responsible.”
“Jack Slash,” Contessa said. “Bringing him to this meeting would not have resulted in an acceleration of the time table.”
“I don’t even remotely believe that,” I retorted. “And if I did, I’d call you an idiot because the only way we can stop this thing is killing him.”
“Explain,” Doctor Mother said.
“There’s nothing to explain, besides he’s the one that makes Sc—” Contessa’s hand snapped forward and covered my mouth in an instant.
“Even here, there are too many ears,” she warned me, voice cold. I gave a nod and was let go.
“Okay, okay, fine,” I sighed. “Look, I’m already trying to survive so I have a chance at stopping this. I don’t know enough details to stop it right now, so I’m just trying to get stronger in the mean time. You could help me with that, I guess.”
“What would you need?” Doctor Mother asked. I considered it a moment.
“My city has a problem that I’m dealing with,” I began. “The Protectorate labeled me a villain for trying to take care of it. I don’t really care about that.” Much. “But if you want to get me on your side, you could try and keep their hands off me. Or just tell me where the Nazis live and I’ll take care of it in a couple days.”
“Yes, Werwolf, we are aware of the organization,” Number Man said. He sounded incredibly dull, like he read spreadsheets for titillation. “Their connections with Gesellschaft run deep, removing them is likely to be beneficial overall.”
“So you’ll help?” I asked, hopeful despite myself.
“What will you offer in return?” Doctor Mother said.
“I...cooperation?” I said hesitantly. “We both want the same thing: to stop the end of the world. I guess I’ll just avoid telling people about you and about how it happens?”
“Your confidentiality would be appreciated,” she agreed. “Especially regarding the nature of things. We shall see what we can offer to help you combat Werwolf. The Protectorate may be more willing to listen to us if we speak on your behalf.”
“And intel?”
“Potentially, in exchange for a favour.” I pursed my lips, fingering my carbine as I considered it.
“Fine,” I said at last. “Call me Faust, I guess.” A wry grin touched Doctor Mother’s lips.
“I would hardly equate myself with Mephistopheles,” she said, sounding amused. A glowing doorway opened next to me, leading back to Papa’s dark living room. “We will see you again, Amaranth.”
As I walked back home, I shivered at how much that sounded like a threat.