Celestial Worm Part 3

Taylor stopped sipping her rootbeer long enough to look at the blonde teenager that was approaching her. "No."

"No?" Lisa asked. "I just need a minute of your time."

"I'm not interested in working for a villain," Taylor replied, having read the girl's thoughts about her dangerous and possibly insane boss and the fact that she was supposed to investigate new capes.

"How?" Lisa asked in confusion as she studied the red haired girl with a steampunk style costume, wondering what had given the game away since she wasn't in costume.

"I'm psychic," Taylor replied with a slight grin that turned into an actual smile when she realized that she'd unintentionally stolen her line, thanks to her Telepathy.

'That's just as bullshit as Coil's claim that he always wins,' Lisa thought as she gave the red haired cape a doubtful look. "Can you prove it?"

'Always wins?' Taylor mused as she thought about the parahumans she'd noticed while flying around looking for trouble. Sadly or not, things had been strangely quiet since she'd finished the paperwork and the agents had let her continue with her patrol, which had left her free to grab something to drink. 'That matches up with the precog that can pick the best of two paths.'

'Recruited at gunpoint?' Taylor mused as she used her Clairvoyance to find Coil, finding him relaxing in front of his computer in what looked like a secret lair fit for a bond villain. 'You'd think he could figure out something better to do than Solitaire, then again, maybe he's doing something more interesting in his other 'timeline'. Should I even call it a timeline when it's just a simulation?' she mused as she dropped her Clairvoyance and focused on Lisa. "Your boss is playing Solitaire."

"That's your proof?" Lisa asked.

"I'm under no obligation to prove it," Taylor replied as a fly landed on the napkin dispenser, giving her an idea.

'It's worth a shot,' Taylor mused as she focused on the fly and used her power creation ability to give it Telepathy. She used her own feeble Telepathy to poke it, causing the fly to reflexively link with her power and give her a bunch of static. She used her modified Focus ability to boost her absorption ability then absorbed the residue the fly was creating with its new power, managing to acquire an insane amount of Telepathy.

"Fuck!" Taylor sputtered out as she promptly twisted the mental 'volume' control as countless minds started trying to talk at once.

'What the fuck was that?!' a voice asked in Taylor's head.

'A bad plan,' Taylor replied, not realizing that she hadn't asked the question thanks to the headache that was quickly fading.

"Thinker headache?" Lisa asked, recognizing the signs.

"Bad experiment," Taylor replied as she checked her new power and sighed in relief when she realized that her new version of Telepathy didn't have a duration on it which meant it was permanent. 'Rank 5,000, there's no way that range is right. How big is the solar system?' She used her Telekinesis to crush the fly as it flew away, wanting to make sure they didn't end up with telepathic flies because they’d be an even bigger pain to swat when they could sense when you were going to swat them.

"What did you do?" Lisa asked.

"Give me a minute," Taylor replied as she focused on Coil and used her Telepathy to check what he was doing in the other 'timeline', she promptly stopped reading his mind when he realized that he was torturing a woman in the other timeline that was chained to a bed. 'I need brain bleach,' she complained as she used her Clairvoyance and Illusion abilities to create a dark robed cape in his office.

Coil pulled his gun and pointed it at the robed cape. "How did you get in here?!"

"Teleportation, what are your current evil plans?" Taylor asked, using her Telepathy to fake the fact that her image couldn't actually talk, finding it a lot easier to deal with when she wasn't trying to scan billions of minds at once. She absently worked on finishing her soda as she checked his thoughts and was more than a bit relieved that he'd dropped the other 'timeline' and created another in an attempt to learn more about her projection. Of course, that relief turned to ashes when his mind jumped to his current projects and she realized that he was keeping a dangerous and unstable cape in his base that could create evil clones of people, evil clones that had powers if she copied a parahuman. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

"Why would I tell you anything?" Coil demanded.

"Because villains like to monologue and you're going to kill me?" she asked via Telepathy, wishing she had the power to project her voice. She wasn't particularly surprised when he started shooting in his other 'timeline' while just staring at her in real life, quickly realizing that there wasn't a point.

"You're not actually here," Coil told her, hoping that she'd make a mistake and reveal information that he could use to get her under his thumb.

Lisa frowned slightly, wondering why her power was telling her that the girl was currently blind and didn't have powers, never mind the evidence that she obviously had powers of some sort, unless she was just crazy. 'Great, it's on the fritz again.' She glanced over as Brian and his sister walked into the cafe. 'Maybe they'll be able to get something out of her.'

"Bank accounts?" Taylor asked Coil via Telepathy and smiled when he thought about his computer and the passwords he needed to get into his accounts.

"You’ve got some balls, no common sense, but some balls," Coil replied as he pushed the button on the desk to activate a base wide alert, suspecting that the projection was a distraction.

Taylor dropped the Telepathic connection when she caught his thoughts about what he was going to do to her when he found her. 'Fuck it, I'm not giving you a chance to torture me.' She used her Magnification ability to temporarily tweak Coil's ability to predict possible events so that he could predict thousands of timelines at once without boosting his ability to handle the increased mental processing, curious if his power would break or if his brain would melt.

'This is going to make a mess,' Taylor thought as she used her Manipulation ability to temporarily twist her ability to teleport herself into something that would let her teleport other people and objects. She teleported Coil to a PRT holding cell and then teleported his laptop and the folder with his account information that he kept in a secret compartment to the roof of the cafe where she could pick them up once she finished her soda. She dropped her Clairvoyance effect and focused on Lisa, doing her best to ignore the attractive black teenage male that was standing next to the villain with an attractive black skinned girl that was probably a year or two older than her judging by her bust and her clothes.

"Are you a cape?" Aisha asked when the girl wearing a steampunk outfit opened her eyes and looked at her.

"I'm psychic," Taylor replied as she used her Telepathy to listen to the girl's thoughts. "Five, that's the number you were going to pick when you decided to ask if I could guess a number, of course you were going to lie about it so I'm not sure that actually helps."

"Hey!" Aisha complained, wondering if Lisa had set something up since that sounded like something she'd do and she'd guessed the number she was going to say.

Brian shook his head. "I'm not sure that proves anything."

"I'm not in the business of providing proof," Taylor replied as she stood up and tossed her empty soda into the trash can, "I'm in the business of making interesting steampunk style gadgets."

"Do you sell weapons?" Aisha asked, thinking about her mother's boyfriend.

"I'm afraid not," Taylor replied as she used her Clairvoyance to check on the asshole that had threatened her. She wasn't sure if she should be surprised or not to find him in bed with a girl that wasn't even close to legal unless she was a shapechanger since she looked about Aisha's age. She took a quick look at the girl's mind, wanting to figure out what was going on before she just assumed that he was a complete bastard since she was tied to the bed. 'Yeah, that's a fucking mess, he's paying her and threatening to tell her parents, lovely,' she grumbled as she used her Clairvoyance to check on Mexican prisons.

Thankfully, it didn't take all that long to find a 'suitable' prison that managed to make Winslow look like the Hilton. She teleported the asshole into the prison then used her Telekinesis to loosen the ropes enough that she could escape.

“You just did something to whoever it was she wanted a weapon to defend herself against,” Lisa said, eyes narrowing.

“I’m not in the business of providing proof,” Taylor said with a smirk.

“But you are in the business of travel?” Lisa asked and shook her head. “What?”

"Hawaii?" Aisha asked hopefully.

"Hawaii sounds interesting, I've never been," Taylor replied with a shrug as Aisha vanished.

"Did you just send my sister to Hawaii?" Brian asked in disbelief. “Please bring my sister back, she gets into trouble just walking down the street unless I’m within arms reach of her.”

“And even then she still gets in trouble a third of the time,” Lisa added ‘helpfully’.

Aisha reappeared holding an enormous crab away from her that was irritably snapping at the air.

“It’s only been five seconds,” Brian groaned in disbelief.

“Look, lunch!” she said brightly.

0o0o0

"I'm going to rip your dogs apart then I'm going to fucking kill you!" Hookwolf shouted as he advanced toward Bitch and the dogs she was trying to hide behind a concrete planter, furious with the way she kept hitting his dog fighting rings and ruining what had been a rather profitable operation before she'd gotten involved. "If the dogs run or start growing, shoot them!" he ordered his men.

Rachel carefully held the puppy that was trying to escape her grasp while she carefully fed Angelica energy, trying to keep her alive despite the gunshot wounds that the assholes had caused when the empire goons had opened fire on her and her dogs.

"This is going to be fun…" one of the goons trailed off as a figure in hot pink power armor slammed into the ground in front of them.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Vicky demanded as she glared at the dozen thugs that were standing on the street with pistols and rifles.

"She fucked with our shit, we're going to fuck her up!" offered one of the less intelligent goons.

"And you're going to kill the puppies?" Vicky asked, her voice going flat as she tried to keep her rage in check.

"Fuck yeah, we can always steal more," the thug replied with a smirk.

"Get out of the way or I'll kill you," Hookwolf told the tinker, having a hard time taking the girl seriously because of the color of her armor but not seeing a point in fighting two capes at once if he didn't have to.

'Screw it.' Vicky thought as she used her Power Manipulation to twist Hookwolf's power, wanting to make sure she didn't have to fight the asshole since she had puppies to save and kneecaps to break. "Kneecaps are a privilege, if you drop your weapons and get on the ground where you belong, I'll let you keep them," she announced, not particularly interested in accepting their surrender but wanting to make the offer since it would save her a bunch of lectures about excessive force.

"Light her up!" Hookwolf ordered.

Vicky smirked as the bullets bounced off her armor and the helmet's systems cut the volume of the gunfire down to something reasonable. "Activating aggressive self defense mode!" she shouted as she charged toward the goons, happy that they'd tried to kill her since it meant that she could respond with an 'acceptable' amount of force.

'Shit!' Jimmy thought as he bounced a slug from his shotgun off her helmet and she didn't even hesitate or stop charging them. His second shot hit her in the neck with no apparent effect. He froze when Hookwolf turned into a metal statue and fell over rather than turning into a whirling dervish of death like he should have.

Rachel took the opportunity to cautiously push more power into Angelica, hoping it would be enough to save her, fairly sure that pushing too much into her would probably kill her due to her injuries.

Hookwolf changed back to flesh and blood and pushed himself off the ground, pissed that the bitch had messed with his power. "I'm going to fucking kill you!"

"Did you learn a new trick? That's not very useful," Vicky offered, pretending that she hadn't been the one to screw up his power.

"Kill her!" Hookwolf snapped.

Vicky lunged forward and kicked Hookwolf in the nuts as he instinctively turned back into a statue with human eyes. She watched the statue crash to the ground twenty feet behind the thugs then glared at the idiots that were pointing guns at her. "Surrender or die!"

"We surrender!" Jimmy blurted as he quickly dropped his shotgun, not seeing a reason to keep shooting at someone in power armor, especially when nothing they'd done had even scraped the armor.

Vicky sighed as the entire group dropped their weapons and surrendered without a fight, leaving her feeling annoyed and frustrated. 'That was anticlimactic,' she thought as she turned her head to look at the young man that said they'd surrendered. "Make sure they don't go anywhere, the PRT doesn't like it when I rip people's legs off."

"We're good," Jimmy quickly assured the cape, not interested in having his limbs ripped off by an insane cape and not convinced that they could outrun her considering she'd appeared out of nowhere and moved like greased lightning.

Vicky used her Power Manipulation ability to remove Hookwolf's ability to turn back to normal then headed over to where Hellhound was hiding. "I can heal your dogs if you let me, are you injured?"

"Heal my dogs first, I wasn't shot," Rachel told her, not seeing a point in worrying about possible bruises when the puppies and Angelica weren't in good shape.

'Glad I don't have to understand biology,' Vicky thought as she used the healing ability that Taylor had given her to regenerate the dog that had several gunshot wounds, causing Angelica's wounds to quickly vanish. 'It's not as versatile as Amy's power but at least I don't have to worry about screwing something up.'

Rachel sighed in relief when several bullets fell out of Angelica's wounds before the wounds vanished as if they'd never been there in the first place. Her relief turned to surprise as Angelica's missing eye regenerated along with her ear, leaving her looking healthy. "The puppies."

Vicky used the suit's internal communication system to call the PRT while she worked on healing the puppies, not seeing a point in trying to arrest Hellhound when she had dogs with her and hadn't been causing trouble. 'At least I captured Hookwolf and Amy should be happy that I didn't use excessive force.'

0o0o0

"This is a stupid plan," Jake grumbled as he adjusted the pair of work gloves that Vinny had handed him.

"Relax, we have protection," Vinny argued with a grin, not taking his eyes off the girl wearing a white robe that was talking to a nurse near the entrance to the ER. "She can't fuck us if she can't touch our skin."

"Glory Girl is going to fuck us up for taking her," Jake warned him, wondering how the hell he was going to avoid getting turned into an accordian by Glory Girl as she was known to be overprotective when it came to her sister.

"Man up, bitch," Vinny complained, pissed that Jake didn't see the brilliance of his plan. "My plan is foolproof, we drive up, rush out of the van and take the nurse hostage. Panacea is a hero, she'll have to come with us and heal Skidmark and then he'll stop trying to kill everyone that gets near him."

"We should just hit Skidmark in the head with a wrench and take him to the hospital," Jake suggested, annoyed that Skidmark was blaming everyone for the fact that he'd hit himself in the junk with a wrench because he'd been trying to be dramatic.

"If we knock his teeth out she probably wouldn't even recognize him," Lance offered reasonably from the back of the van they'd stolen for the operation.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Vinny asked in annoyance as he turned around and glared at the large man in the back of the van that he'd brought for muscle.

"I'm just saying it would be easier and we wouldn't have to worry about Glory Girl using us as pinatas," Lance replied. "Besides, are you honestly telling me that you don't want to hit Skidmark with a wrench?"

"He's going to put us on the map," Vinny told them.

"I haven't fucked a nurse lately," Ralph mused, sounding entirely too happily with the idea for Jake's comfort.

"I'll hold her down," Ben offered.

"If Panacea doesn't come quietly, you can do whatever you want to the nurse," Vinny assured Ralph and Ben.

"Everyone screams," Ralph said smugly.

'There have to be better ways to get shit to sell,' Jake thought as the guys argued about which part of the 'plan' they were supposed to be responsible for. "I'll grab the nurse, I don't trust Ralph to not fuck things up."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ralph complained.

"You can't keep your rotting dick in your pants. Give me a minute to explain the situation and then you can drive over and grab Panacea. If she starts to run, everyone else can jump out and grab her."

"Fine, but I'll fucking shoot you in the balls if you fuck this up," Vinny warned him.

"Sure," Jake replied as he got out of the van and headed toward the nurse and cape, wondering if he could talk his way out of getting his limbs ripped off when Glory Girl caught up with them.

Panacea frowned slightly as a man in a black jacket wearing work gloves got out of a van and walked over, looking rather annoyed. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah," Jake replied once he was about eight feet away from the two of them, "a couple of idiots with guns told me that they'd shoot my girlfriend if I didn't hold the nurse hostage while they kidnap you because Skidmark managed to crush his testicles while being completely retarded and needs you to heal him. I told them kidnapping you was a really bad idea but they're not exactly stable or rational. So can I talk you into pretending to be a hostage for five minutes?"

"I'm not going anywhere with you," Clara told the dark haired man that was probably in his early twenties.

"No shit, we're just going to stand here for a couple of minutes, then you're going to run into the ER and call the police," Jake told her.

"Don't worry about it, I'll be fine," Amy assured her, deciding that it was time to pay a visit to Skidmark and explain why leaving the healer alone was a good idea.

"Are you sure?" Clara asked.

"Skidmark might be an idiot but he's not insane," Amy lied, more worried about Clara's safety than her own thanks to her Body Resistance and her armor that she was wearing under the illusion of her normal costume.

"I'm really sorry about it," Jake told them as the rest of the group came out of the van.

"Not your fault," Amy told him as she walked toward the group of idiots, deciding to play along. "If you hurt me, my sister will kill you."

"Don't worry, if you don't cause trouble, we'll let you go," Ralph lied with a shit eating grin on his face.

"Fine," Amy complained as she headed for the van, happy that she wouldn't have to track Skidmark down.

Jake made a go away gesture, making sure the nurse and Panacea couldn't see it. "I'll watch the girl, just don't hurt Jessica."

"Deal," Vinny told him, playing along since it would mean less trouble with the cape.

'Glory Girl is going to fucking murder them,' Jake thought as he watched Panacea get into the van and van pull out of the parking lot like the hounds of hell were after them. 'They should have just left quiet, fucking idiots.'

"Now what?" Clara asked.

"Don't move, don't look around and don't talk. Give it a minute to make sure no one is watching then head into the ER and call the police," Jake told her then quietly started walking away, wanting to get out of sight before someone reported the van or his presence. 'Fuck it, time to spend some time in another state, maybe Florida.'

0o0o0

'Oh, that's how that works,' Taylor thought as she telepathically watched Lisa use her phone to run a hacked copy of Coil's account managing software with her left eye while focusing on the laptop with her right. 'She's starting at that end of the list of accounts, I might as well start at the other end,' she mused as she used Coil's laptop to drain one of his accounts into the account she'd set up for her Tinker persona. 'I probably should have stuck around a bit longer and tried to copy her power, then again, I'm not sure it's worth it unless I tweak things to include an off switch and I think she'd notice.'

She giggled in delight as the program finished transferring the money from half a dozen accounts before Lisa’s program could reach them, leaving Taylor’s new account with 5.2 million dollars. 'This should be enough to buy lab equipment, especially if I can steal Coil's base,' she mused as she started transferring money out of one of his other accounts. She chuckled in amusement when Lisa started cursing up a storm because someone else had emptied the remaining accounts.

'Huh, he probably had something set up or maybe the PRT found his accounts?' Lisa asked herself.

Taylor swapped to scrying on Coil and realized that he was still twitching on the ground in his cell where she'd dropped him.

'That's annoying, was this random or did they start looting his accounts when they realized the PRT had him or did they start because they noticed the accounts were getting drained?' Lisa asked herself and made a mental note to check on it later.

Taylor waited until the program finished transferring the money then deleted the information on her account, happy that Coil was paranoid enough to have a program that didn't keep any records, so she didn't have to worry about the PRT or Lisa finding out her account information when she gave them the laptop. 'Is it worth trying to keep his base when I can probably make my own underground base or use an old garage in the middle of Kansas and just teleport everything?'

'How many mercenaries would I have to deal with if I took the base? That sounds like something I should leave to an expert.' She went back to scrying on Lisa with her left eye as she pulled up a document and wrote a quick note, glad that she'd worn gloves so that her prints weren't on the computer, 'This computer probably has information that you'll want to give the PRT. You should probably keep your nose clean, there are plenty of villain-run businesses that you can hit if you need the money or the excitement.'

She teleported the laptop to Lisa's table along with the account information when Lisa turned to look at Aisha. She grinned when Lisa turned back and noticed the laptop that was sitting on her table, causing the Thinker to twitch. 'I'll check back once I've found Noelle,' she mused as she turned herself invisible, flew up in the air and headed toward Coil's base, while making whooshing noises and doing barrel rolls… for training purposes.

0o0o0

Squealer glanced at the message on her phone as she left the scrapyard and realized that her already shitty day was about to get worse. 'We're fucked,' she thought as she made a left instead of a right, heading toward the garage to grab her road tank and cloaking device. "No point heading to the base, New Wave is going to level the place," she muttered as she absently flipped off the asshole that had run a red light and almost hit her.

"Assuming the heroes get to him first," she admitted as she took the battery out of her phone, using her knees to steer. She dropped the phone on her extra shirt in the passenger seat and tried to think of the best place to hide until the heat died down and she could skip town.

0o0o0

"Armsmaster is going to bench us," Chris complained over the comms as he watched the monitor showing the view from Dennis' body cam.

"Relax, we have permission to check it out," Vista assured him, knowing that the only reason they had permission to check things out was because Panacea had been kidnapped and she was important enough that the PRT wanted to make sure she escaped unharmed.

"Vicky is going to murder them," Clockblocker voiced as he followed Vista towards the abandoned tourist trap lighthouse shaped building where he could hear furniture breaking and people screaming in pain.

"Yep," Vista agreed as a black man tumbled through a window, sending glass everywhere. "Do you think Vicky is already here?"

"She's still a minute out," Chris told them.

"Someone is fucking people up…" Dennis trailed off as he saw a furious looking Amy leap out of the window. "What the fuck?!"

"Get back here!" Amy ordered as she stalked over to where Skidmark was trying to pick himself up, despite his broken leg and crushed testicles. She stomped on his 'good' knee, catching it at just the right angle to break it then kicked him in the ribs as he tried to scramble away from her.

"Are we supposed to stop her?" Vista asked.

Dennis shook his head. "We were told to show up and get a read on the situation, stopping her would require engaging and putting ourselves at risk," he said in his smug ‘just obeying orders like a good little boy’ voice.

"I don't think she'd attack…" Vista trailed off as Amy curb stomped Skidmark's arm, breaking it in two places and making Skidmark scream in agony before she started kicking him in the ribs with the occasional shot to the groin to make sure he stayed conscious.

"Look out!" Dennis shouted when he saw someone stagger up to the shattered window of the tourist shop with a gun in his hand.

Amy grabbed a beer bottle off the ground and flung it at the man, causing him to drop to the ground when it shattered against his forehead, his finger tightening on the trigger and getting off a single shot. "Do not test me!"

"Is she wearing armor?" Vista asked, having heard the bullet ping off something metallic.

"I think so," Dennis replied as Amy kicked Skidmark in the ribs once more then turned and sprinted for the window, moving faster than he thought she should have been able to.

"This is why you don't fuck with the White Mage!" Amy called out before cannonballing through the shattered window and probably bowling over several people from the sounds that floated out.

"Can we put this up on PHO?” Dennis asked with a grin as he used his phone to post the video. “Opps, too late!”

"You're going to get in so much trouble for that," Vista warned him, trying really hard not to giggle.

0o0o0