Interlude: Tattle Tale

Well Sarah... you’re probably fucked. She thought to herself biting her lip as she tried her damnedest to think of a way out of the hole they’d found themselves fallen into, head pounding from the thinker headache she’d incurred. Fucked right in every fucking pore.

This was bad.

No nix that, being hunted down by Lung while covered in oil was bad, this was on a whole nother level of FUCKED. And she knew it, almost intimately. This should have been just another job, easy enough, she figured, get in grab the things that Coil wanted grabbed, and dig themselves deeper into the social fabric of the city… and into trouble with the authorities. More a test than a utility, but a test which provided utility in its wake.

She couldn’t help but hyper ventilate a bit.

It should have been simple, but no instead she’d gotten the first glimpse of something desperately wrong. And now their newest recruit lay unconscious in the back of the van, draped over their least trustworthy member’s lap, even as Rachel sat behind them with her dogs, glaring hard at the passed out young woman as she did.

“You tried to kill her.” Brian spoke even as he drove the van, his darkness obscuring the totality of the inside such that only he could see out of it, or more importantly inside, a coat of it all around. He left the air clear of it so that at least people could hear each other clearly.

“Yeah... I’m pretty sure I didn’t manage to though.” She replied lightly, her mouth drawn into a grim line as she contemplated what they’d just done. Rain pelted down as they continued on, the gray clouds covering the city overcast until day was all but darkened away. “Oh and don’t drive straight to the hideout… we need to make a stop somewhere with lots of water and grab some cleaning chemicals.”

She didn’t need her powers to recognize the anger in his controlled tones. And she was sure he didn’t need to have her powers to hear the lack of flying fucks which she was giving in hers.

“You fucking tried to kill Panacea. Tattletale... you’re probably the most reasonable person between us, between everyone on this team. I thought that you were the most stable as well... at least more than Bitch and Regent.” The young man’s fingers clenched hard against the steering wheel even as he drive quickly, dodging his way through traffic which you had to put your total trust in him to see.

His snarled slightly even as you suppressed your powers desire to examine it and the connections which it inspired.

“Hey I resemble that remark!” Alec unhelpfully chimed in a playful foolishness.

“But now… now I’ve got to wonder about you. About why the fuck you tried to murder the most loved and protected cape in the entire fucking city? If the answer to that question isn’t really fucking good…” He let the words linger, anger evident in every line of his body even as kept on driving.

“Short answer. I’d do it again… will do it again if needs be, as soon as I can if I don’t get the chance to run away right now.” She spoke, her voice trembled slightly even as she delivered that proclamation. Grue did not calm down. “Long answer is... she’s an S-class nightmare waiting to happen. Some it’s still hints and guesses, but from what I saw, she’s a fucking biological time bomb, waiting to make even more time bombs in the process. She wanted to own us...”

“... ahh, fucked up but not fuck her head in and leave her for dead level here.”

“No you don’t get what I’m saying. She wanted to own us Heartbreaker style keep us as her playthings. Everything I saw suggested that she’s already done it people before. And what’s worse that her powers are far, far more extensive than anything anyone even started to think about.” She dropped her head back against the seat within the darkness of the van, breath ejecting from her lips heavily in a sigh. “If I’m not off track, then it wouldn’t even take her five minutes to put together a disease that could wipe out a good chunk of life on earth if she put her mind to it.”

“… and this conversation just took a legit turn for the scarier.” Alec chimed in once more, a light smile across is his lips.

“Ok, so she’s more dangerous than the average cape. More dangerous than normal… we could have just escaped and called in the PRT about what you learned.” Grue seemed to have calmed down a bit, the revelation still working its way in.

“Hello, PRT? Yeah Bunch of criminals here, we robbed a bank and got away, oh and your precious Panacea is going to be the next Nilbog.” She answered sarcastically. “Yeah, I think it would be the easiest way to get her to abandon whatever’s left back from letting her loose herself on everything is to make sure the good guys know what the fuck she is without preparing a precision strike to put her down.”

A groan came from behind.

Taylor was waking up it seemed, a bit of good news at least. “… ugg… I feel like I’m going to be sick. What the hell happened?”

“The girl in the armour... turns out that she’s about ten thousand times worse than just a random bystander cape...” She delivered to their still dazed companion. “First off... it was Panacea.”

“What? But Panacea doesn’t do tinker armour…” She couldn’t help but smile at the confusion in her pet project’s voice.

“Yeah... about that. That’s the second thing. Apparently she’s started exploring facets of her powers now... the armour was her first attempt, and it seems she’s only getting better, hell she’s getting better fast as fuck. I don’t know how long exactly, but it couldn’t be more than a month since she started this thing up. And it’s not even the worse news.” She sighed in the darkness.

“Yeah... you haven’t actually started to elaborate on the worst part. Because you know… you fucking tried to kill her!” Brian injected, quite inconveniently; the soft gasp from Taylor almost inaudible.

“Well beyond what I haven’t caught Taylor up on yet… like the fact that Panacea can apparently bust out plagues on a world ending scale considering the true extent and control of her powers... I didn’t finish letting Brian know just how fucked everything is.” You dropped with as calm a voice as you could.

“So what?” Bitch chimed in for the first time, looking up from her ‘babies’ as she tended to them.

“So the crazy bitch who we apparently just ticked off also apparently has really fucking poor impulse control. Somehow it all links up to her being willing to use her powers for more than healing orphans and fixing people up after Endbringer events. To surmise she’s got apocalypse level power in her hands and is going cray cray in a way that’ll make her want to use it.” Flippant as she tried to sound, Lisa couldn’t keep the tremor completely out of her voice. And by the muffled grunts of her still driving teammate, she figured the others had realized.

“She caused the headache?” Oh her innocent little bunny asked, the girl working though her desire to be a hero and her mortification at being so caught out during the heist.

“Baby, she was planning way more than a headache for you... she’s kinda focused on you. And apparently she’s enslaved someone before.” She gripped her seat even as she delivered the message to their newest recruit. A fate worse than death had been reflected in the crazed eyes of the ‘hero’. And a plan to catch up to them all as well.

Lisa figured she planned to smell you our something somehow.

There hadn’t been enough time to suss out exactly what she’d done, not with the potential arrival of heroes which was incoming almost on time. She’d just made them go dark and tried to scramble their way out ASAP.

“How did she do it to me?” Ah her little bird sounded particularly concerned.

“Apparently she has some way of jacking into your powers, and a hot line to DOSing your brain though any insect that she’s touching… and apparently she just turned part of the armour into enough insects to fuck you over with a rusty pipe.” She sighed, mind still racing as to how the hell she was going to deal with this issue without it blowing up in everyone’s faces.

The path of least damage was feeling like that shit-hole boss of hers. Coil would use this to take a deeper grip into her soul, which much she knew for certain; especially if they were to call in and try to gain his protection and support against their new problem. The very fact that Panacea apparently could enslave others made her a threat to his organization; her own capture a potential disaster for him.

But she knew that he’d simply abandon the others to their fate, throwing them to the hungry bitch in hopes of keeping his own ambitions on track if it suited his plans.

“Wait... wait. You tried to kill her?” Their newest member implored, clear distress in her voice as she did.

"If you'd seen what I did, hon, you'd have tried to do it yourself." She spoke with absolute conviction even as she considered if calling Coil or turning herself in was the safest course of action. Taylor would come with her easily, her delusions of being a hero still firmly intact despite being shaken by last night’s events, and the closeness which she was starting to feel with the team.

“You tried to kill a hero in the middle of the bank. What the fuck!” Ok so her little grasshopper and Grue were in on this one together.

“I’ve already stated my case on that front. But more important is what we’re going to do in order to keep this from becoming a nightmare. Because right now, we could expose her but it would only make things harder for her, push her timetables up, make us that much closer to facing a full Nilbog situation.” Her heart beat hard within her chest even as she tried to affect calm.

“You’re scared.” The Bitch interjected with a growl.

“Fuck yes I’m scared, I’m more scared now than I’ve ever been in my entire fucking existence. And right now the only choices I see are to turn ourselves into the PRT, hand ourselves unconditionally into our benefactor’s hands, or somehow kill her ourselves When… and I fucking stress WHEN… she shows up looking for us.”

“So we dodge her like we dodged Lung and everyone else then.” Alec spoke up. “We know where she sleeps, and she doesn’t know where we do.”

“Then we’ll be fighting her family as well. No we need to discredit her... somehow.” She winced a bit. That good ole Thinker headache was hitting her hard enough to make things difficult even now. Having used her powers for minutes of time trying to figure out more about the para-human who’d scared them off… and her little dalliance on the bank computers.

No one seemed to have any real answers...

“Ok… one other thing guys. Now that everyone’s awake, we need someone to grab some cleaning products from the seven 11 or something, just grab everything you can. There’s a dammed good chance that she’ll be following us by scent or something like that. We need to confuse that, and we need to dunk everything we’re wearing, and possibly bathe in it too.” She sighed.

“… You know I don’t particularly like the idea of being naked in here with the rest of you.” Brian spoke up.

“And I like it even less. But fuck it, this is serious.” She spoke, her suit already halfway off as she peeled it off. She was butt naked in moments. “Alec, your costumes the least distinctive without the mask on, you jump out and go buy everything you can get.”

“And if I don’t particularly want to?” He asked, curious and lazy it seemed more so than defiant.

“Then we all get caught by someone who’s shaping up to be even worse than your father... except she can immobilize us and our powers in the process.” She herd the grunt of acknowledgement in the dark.

“Fine. But what about our flee mongers here?”

“Bitch, this is pointless if everyone doesn’t do it.” Lisa spoke. “Look I’ve already taken it all off ok?”

“And I’m supposed to believe you and your skeevy bullshit?” Bitch barked.

“I hope you do… because the alternative is we put you out of the van ASAP, and hope that you lead the scary fucker who’s coming after all of us away long enough that the rest of us can get out of this.” She grinned in the darkness, her teeth just barely visible in what little dim light originated within the van itself.

“Alright guys… come on. No fighting with each other. We’re fairly fucked, your benefactor’s jobs have screwed us now twice in a row Tattletale. If we survive this, I don’t know if there’s going to be an Undersiders any longer.” Brian spoke frankly, but even he was wrestling with his clothing, having stopped the car on a corner.

“Fuck...” Bitch spoke up again. Surprisingly she’d begun to obey even as Alec bounded out from the van without letting out any of Grue’s darkness to go get the cleaning stuff which Lisa had demanded. Taylor too looked extremely uncomfortable with this, but she was doing it either way, her mouth shut as she pulled off her suit, and exposed her underwear, only to then remove those as well.

It would be a long journey back to the hideout, a quick carwash, and then parking it several blocks away only to ride bare-assed on the horny armoured hides of the dogs all the way to the hideout in the middle of the night, a bucket of their clothing sealed inside of a mixture of cleaning chemicals.

Still she was debating in her head if to call in on Coil about this now or not... fingers hovering over the phone as she considered, all the while she could only hope that the bath and maneuvers which they’d gone though had been enou...

Oh fuck...

Oh fuck fuck fuckety FUCK!!

She’d accounted for being hunted down. She’d accounted for being followed, being attacked by a deranged parahuman with access to all kinds of biological tricks and such. She’d known that there was someone that the insane cape had had her way with…

But a single glimpse of their security camera brought it all into focus for her.

They hadn’t managed to shake their pursuer. No… infact she’d come with all the reinforcements she needed. A biological power armour, perfectly responsive to her body, and with enough brute power to be considered on par Bitches dogs at the same size.

Oh god. Oh fuck… and the creature which she rode. Much the same, only more so… and a Parahuman.

It was a fucking parahuman. A thinking person made into a monster for that sick fucker’s purposes.

... All over it’s body Tattletale could see breathing holes, her already strained power telling her that those were put together in an apparatus which would comb the air for particles of scent... that there was a brain behind that which was fully dedicated to JUST processing and identifying every little part of the scents which it caught. And that all scouring they’d done to their bodies had been for naught.

Fear and despair set in alongside of the head splitting ache between her eyes as she stumble out to the others in a cry of despair.

“Fuck me… She’s HERE!”




[][]][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]





You were in a rush.

Your blood pounding as you rode the bus as close to your lair as you dared, whispering into the phone for your first thrall to hurry over.

You'd left her 'hunting body' dormant within the lair, waiting for her to come and be fuse and transplanted into it... You hadn't the time you'd needed to put the full suite of every augmentation you could think of to enhance her fully... but you managed to add one or two special features which you felt would aid in this fight to come.



Choose two special features to add:
[][Features]
-[] Echolocation - You'll have to fight in the dark, every aspect of sound you could be a boon here where your senses are senseless.
-[] Enhanced Muscle Mass - With the potential combat with Bitch's brutes you figured you could use some extra power for your punch.
-[] Aggressive Enzymes - A stew of various proteins which act together with the acid generated to take apart organic structures. Very effective at decimating both living and dead flesh.
-[] Sleeping Sickness - A short lived viral infection which quickly infiltrates and restricts blood flow, quickly putting said organism to sleep based on it's own struggles.
-[] Guided Lifeforms - Allows Rune to launch guided missile creatures from her body carrying all manner of paralytic agents.
-[] Write in?



How will you approach this hunt?
[][Approach]
-[] Write in?


Who will you focus your attention towards most?
[][Undersider]
-[]???