Chapter Text
Taylor Hebert/Weaver
March 31st, 2011
I don’t have a choice.
I know a lot of people say that, they shout it in courtrooms and forums and fights and it’s always a hollow justification, but this… this is different; real.
I don’t have a choice.
I could lie about that, I could turn around, I could run, I could pretend I never thought about what I’m going to do tonight, and I could just… I could leave this to someone else.
But that’s not a real option. That’s not a realistic option.
I don’t need to wonder what doing nothing would mean for me, all I’d have to do for that is look around for that.
Sirens wail in the distance, the air is thick and gray with smoke, the only reason people aren’t screaming up to the sky in horror is because they know that’ll just mark them as easy targets. But the lack of screaming doesn’t mean a lack of pain.
They’re dying out there.
I can feel that, walking through the ruins of downtown, I can feel their pain, their agony, their suffering. My swarm moves with me, gathering more and more with every step and what they find paints an even grimmer picture.
I’d like to say I only find a few dozen dead bodies, I’d like to lie and say there aren’t anymore. But every time I turn a corner, my bugs crawl over the clammy dead like debris. They’re scattered, ripped apart, their bodies collecting in places they’d thought would be safe.
But where even is safety when a dragon decides to destroy your town?
Lung had been— everyone knew about him when he came to town last year, disgraced Sentai Elite, wanted in six countries, and he’d done enough damage here that most were pretty sure he deserved the manhunt.
His ABB might’ve been young, but they’d traded blows with the Ambassadors, the Empire, and even the Undersiders from time to time. Sure, mostly they lost if Lung himself wasn’t there to bolster them, but the fact they’d been surviving at all said a lot.
And looking around at the caved in buildings, the green and red dragons turned into jigsaws in the rubble, all I can think is how fucking stupid he must’ve been.
I thought Lung would have been— I thought he’d be smart.
But the way today escalated? How it went from a minor skirmish to a near A-Class disaster in just under six hours?
Now I’m sure he was an idiot.
His gang might’ve carved themselves a bloody notch in the wall of this city but with just him at the helm, how long could that really go? How long would it be before the hammer came down?
I thought he would have had a plan for that.
A man like him— a hero like him— who fought Leviathan again and again, I thought surely he must’ve had something prepared.
But when the Protectorate finally moved to take him down, when the Sentai flew in to join them, when the fucking Kingsman brought in their best agents, I thought…
I thought he’d have a better plan than ‘keep fighting until I kill them or they kill me.’
But he didn’t.
And Brockton burned for it.
And that’s why I have to do what I have to do.
Lung killed the Guardian.
That’s the only real reason the heroes pulled back, he’d been a monster before, two heads and wings that stretched down the block, but he’d at least been a predictable enemy at the start. Just fire and brute strength, that’s all he’d been.
But then he picked up eleven other powers and…
That’s about when everything went to shit.
“Ma’am!” Someone shouts after me and I draw my hoodie closer, my hair and mask covered by the drab green. “Ma’am! This area isn’t safe! We need—”
He screams when my swarm rises away from me, spewing out from my sleeves and turning me into an indistinct blob of chitin. When he manages to collect himself, I’m already gone, to him it probably looks like I just teleported.
Good.
I don’t need anyone thinking I can be tracked.
It’s why I left my phone back home, I’m sure Armsmaster’s gonna be pissed about that, but he can scream at me after I save everyone.
It’s one of his favorite things to do I think.
My steps are surprisingly sure as the road changes from cracked sidewalk into cracked and smoking rubble. It’s a little hard hiking over and through the ruined buildings but it’s quicker this way and as my swarm finds a new ABB haunt to inspect, my breath catches at what they find.
He’s different than I expected. He’s still tall, still broad, but a bit less than I would have thought just hearing about him.
He tosses and turns on his bed, the mosquitos and gnats just small enough to escape his notice. His mattress is torn and ruined and there’s actually a few bed bugs lurking in the filling, their little bloody bodies pulping like rotten berries beneath his bulk.
It’s standing there, bringing the deadliest members of my swarm inward, that I realize what it is I’m about to do.
I’m going to kill someone.
The thought takes my breath away.
Lung is a monster, the worst of the worst, he might’ve been a hero most of his career, but the ABB have done so much in the little time they’ve been around that even standing next to a mountain of good deeds I just…
Maybe it’s fucked up to know that some lives just aren’t worth as much as others.
And Lung? He’s as bad as you can be without throwing yourself to the Nine.
A man like him, a monster like him, he can’t keep the mantle.
He can’t be The Guardian.
So… I have to kill him.
I don’t have a choice, the others— the Protectorate, they might be better suited for it than me but Lung can’t be confronted one on one, he’ll just grow beyond them, but me? I can slip in quietly, I can wait until he’s got his guard down and I can fill him with enough venom to bring down a small town.
Compare my swarm to someone like Alexandria, it may not be impressive, but it’ll get the job done.
For some odd reason, my legs give out and I fall to the ground, my knees scrapping against the still warm concrete as I take a breath.
I’d thought— I thought I knew what I was going to do.
But now that I’m sitting here, finger on the trigger, it feels…
It feels so much bigger than me.
Not the killing thing— that’s it’s own problem— but the…
Becoming the next Guardian.
The Thirteenth Guardian.
That’s something I hadn’t really digested yet.
I know Lung can’t keep the mantle, a monster like him, maybe the voices— the other Guardians— maybe they can lead him back to being a hero again, maybe he can atone but that could take months and while he’s disoriented and out of control, who’s to stop some villain from coming to town, thinking they can turn the symbol of hope into a symbol of fear?
It wouldn’t be the first time.
I— I can’t let Lung stay the one in charge, I just can’t but can I really—
The monster six blocks away from me rolls over and I feel his limbs stretch with Spiral’s power, his wrists taking chunks of the wall with each impact.
He’s not going to sleep and if he wanders again the Protectorate will move in and—
The smoke stings at my eyes and some weird tight noise draws its way out of my throat.
I don’t want to be the Guardian.
That’s not a job anyone wants, it’s less a job and more a curse. A lifetime of servitude, a neverending battle constantly on the frontlines, and even when you die, you don’t— you don’t go anywhere!
You’re stuck, immortal, a passenger in a body that isn’t yours and—
What the hell am I supposed to do?
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” I repeat, shaking my head as I look out into the dull horizon, the smoke getting thinner by the second. “What the hell am I—”
The edge of my power pushes a little farther, into the neighborhood beyond and I try to steel myself as I bring the swarm in closer.
I need to do this.
I don’t have a choice.
It sucks, it’s— it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me but what am I supposed to do?
He can’t keep it, he can’t, he needs to go, he needs to—
The edges of my vision swim and just past the sound of my own heart I can hear… an engine?
Armsmaster.
“No,” I shake my head as I feel my range expand just a little more, just in time for a beetle to pulp against a windshield.
I bring the swarm in around him, the beetles and flies and wasps and spiders all moving as one, moving like he helped me figure out just last week. They form the lose figure of a person and Armsmaster growls as the cloud of bugs just barely manages to keep up with him, their bulk swapped out every other second by a new tide of my power.
“Weaver,” he barks, voice harsh and angry. “You are not doing what I think you’re doing.”
“It’S tHe ONly—” my swarm tries to reply but he shakes his head, screaming over the roar of his bike and the droning of my insects.
“No!” He orders, “No! You are not doing this, you are going home this instant! You aren’t—”
I know there’s no point in arguing with him, once Colin has an idea in his head, he won’t stop until it’s either done or the opportunity is taken from him.
I feel a little bad filling up his bike with my bugs but there’s no other way he’ll stop to listen to me.
And as he dismounts, jumping from his smoking motorcycle, I realize it’ll take more than breaking a million dollar bike to slow him down.
The moment his feet touch the road, he’s running, the servos in his suit still half melted from today’s brawl but still solid enough to get him running at damn near forty miles an hour.
It be admirable if he wasn’t trying to get in my way.
“Weaver—” he starts and then shaking his head, he continues, voice softer even as he breaks into a dead sprint. “Taylor, please, I promised your father you wouldn’t die, I promised—”
“I’m NOt GoinnnnG tO,” the swarm replies, “nEVeR GonnA dIE.”
“That’s not—” he tries and looking down the road, I’m pretty sure I’m about to see him crest up that hill. I don’t know how he found me but at least him being here’s given me enough wherewithal to get myself under control.
No more second guessing.
I think Lung screams when the tile above him gives way, I think he tries to summon his power when the tide falls over him, the roaches opening up their wings and revealing ten spiders each.
Their fangs aren’t quite able to sink in as much as they need to but with him screaming, the flesh inside is a little less durable than the skin itself.
It’s funny, Black Widows aren’t nearly as deadly as some books want you to think but if a fully grown widow actually wanted to kill you, it wouldn’t take her more than a single bite. It’s just most of the time, they don’t inject all their venom, hell, most of the time they don’t inject any at all.
But I’m using dozens and every single one of them wastes their entire supply.
“Weaver!” Armsmaster shouts again, louder this time and it’s only when I turn my head to face him that I realize I heard him with my own ears.
The Tinker rushes towards me, his helmet cracked and dented, visor half broken and revealing a single terrified blue eye.
“What did you—” he skids as he drops down next to me. “Weaver, what did you do? What did you—”
“It’s okay,” I reply, voice a little hoarse as he grabs my face, twisting my neck from side to side, inspecting me for injury. I smile underneath my mask, what’s the point of this? “It’s already— I did it.”
“No,” Colin shakes his head as he pulls me forward and for a second I think he’s trying to hug me before I feel his hand grab at the compartment at the base of my neck. I’m not officially a Ward, my debut was supposed to be next week, but I still have the epi-pens they gave me. “No, where’s— where is he? I can—”
“I’m sorry,” I shake my head as I pull away from him, I know I made the right call. Lung was already stirring before he got here and if Armsmaster had been just a little closer I’m sure Bloodhound’s power would have kicked in and then Lung would’ve ramped up already. “I need to— can y-you—”
I don’t know why my mouth is working right, why my throat is so choked, but I push it down as Lung drops back to the bed, foam collecting in his mouth.
“Can you tell my dad that I’m sorry?” I ask, thinking about Winslow, about how long I kept everything from him. “That I didn’t— that I didn’t want it to go this way?”
“Taylor,” Armsmaster replies and looking up into his visor, the edges of him getting blurry, I see his eye grow still. Determined. “Okay. I’ll— is there anyone else I should talk to? A best friend— a um—” he coughs in that way he does when he doesn’t know what to say. “A boyfriend?”
“No,” I almost laugh at his awkwardness, I’ll still never get over how the man I had posters of could be so dead in conversations. “I didn’t— I didn’t get the chance to have any. I um, I did…”
No. Emma doesn’t need to know about this, she’d probably stalk me even worse.
“Nevermind,” I shake my head, “Just make sure my dad is taken care of, okay? And…”
I pause as Lung grows still. I move a roach to his throat, its hairy legs on his pulse, feeling it get weaker as my own starts to thrum louder and louder.
“Yes?” The Tinker in front of me squeezes my hand and I swallow down something I don’t want to call a sob.
“Tell the Wards they seemed great,” I order, half remembering the team. They really did seem nice. “The Protectorate too, make sure they all know that, and…” I blink as I lean against him. “You were pretty great too, y’know?”
“That’s…” Armsmaster stills before his suit whirs again, his metal arms wrapping around me. “That’s nice.”
I hum as Lung takes one last, shaking, breath.
For an eternity it feels like nothing happens, the moment stretching just long enough that maybe I can pretend I did it wrong.
But then something in my head snaps.
The world fades away, the cracked and ruined city bleeds into starlight. Three massive beings float in the void and below them is a monster of identity.
Twelve faces, twelve torsos, twelve sets of legs and arms and hearts and brains and minds and souls, all fused and screaming but as they reach out for me, something in me, something greater lances out.
This thing, this petty fusion, it is nothing compared to the being grabbing for it.
It is me, it is a being of a million million arms and a billion billion eyes and as it reaches for the monster with the precision that would boggle a god, the hands of that thing inside me get to work.
The monster, the twelve not-people split apart, their faces unfused, their arms split away like seedlings on a daffodil, their torsos melt and mold like candlewax and the souls, too transparent to count, are slowly unravelled before—
I jolt, my eyes wide as something— someone— whispers.
"Well,” he says, voice awed as a crowd moves behind him. “This is different.”