The Web of the Weaver: 12

Getting ready to talk to Mush during his drills was going to be difficult. I’d set up several listening devices, my cheap walkie-talkies, in the place, but in all honesty, I’d have to make certain Much didn’t move too far away, or I’d lose my ability to hear him.

I wasn’t on the property, of course. There was a little nook that wasn’t visible to any casual visitors. That was where I was. I had one of my burner phones taped up to the roof and was using its camera. The visual wasn’t… very good, but it was good enough.

Mush came walking into the dock warehouse, looking at the old, wrecked machines. I’d done some studying. They’d been due to be shipped in for an expansion of a number of manufacturing plants, taking advantage of the dockyards. The owners had assumed that the decline in trade would be a short-term thing and had banked on everything blowing over.

They’d gone bankrupt, and the creditors hadn’t even bothered picking up the material.

The DA only owned this particular place, because the owners hadn’t bothered to pay taxes, writing everything off.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Mush,” I said. “At some point, you’ll have to choose a better name.”

“Yeah, well, it sort of fits me.”

“If you say so,”I told him. “Did you check out the rehab center?”

“Yeah. They, um, are willing to talk to me, but I’m gonna be out of it for the next week.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“Sure. Got clean. But… What’s the point? I mean, I’m Mush, and getting high makes things go better.”

“Not now they don’t.”

“Right…” I could hear the doubt in his voice.

“So,”I said. “You pick up garbage, form it into a new body, and you can use sand. Have you tried other materials?”

"Like what?”

I gestured at one of the bins. “Ceramics?”There were shattered plates in there, and I’d dropped by before and put in some pellets I’d found in another warehouse. It was quite interesting what you could find around here. More importantly, I’d read that some powers were very… idiosyncratic. Mush might onlybe able to handle trash. Why that was the case…

I’d read a few books, and the more advanced books used larger words, but the general consensus appeared to be: “we have no clue.” But it was important to find out if that was the case regarding Mush’s power.

But he stuck his hands into the bin and slowly, then quickly, started pulling matter up into his body, tendrils seeming to adhere to them.

It was hard to tell through the video, but it didn’t look like the tendrils were touching every bit.

Some sort of shaker effect? I didn’t know. But then the materials were flowing over his body, including the pellets. A few moments later, and where there had been a short man, there was a hulking mass of ceramic, just over eight feet tall.

“Good. Do you need to breathe air?”

“I… yeah.”

“We’ll have to do something about that. Someone could use tear gas or something similar on you.”

“Am I gonna be fighting someone like that?”

“It pays to be prepared. Now, I have some other materials here for us to test.”

The day passed, and Mush, to his credit, didn’t complain. Much. Ball bearings would also adhere to him, as would steel filings and fragments. He could even layer his body, putting some things on the outside and some things on the inside, as well as concentrate his mass over certain areas. He didn’t need eyes to see, or rather anything I could tell were eyes. Mush had never thought about that, just accepting it.

I wonder if that means he could form eyes on other parts of his body, or create a 360 visual radius? Time to worry about that later. I had one last test.

“Mush, see the little fire extinguisher?”

“Yeah?”

“Incorporate it.” Moments later, it was invisible, save for the nozzle. “Can you use it?”

“Um… sort of… I mean, I can feel… let me…” Moment’s later, Mush shrieked in surprise as a cloud of white enveloped his form. He flailed around, and then suddenly, the extinguisher went flying across the room. There was a loud clanging sound and then everything fell silent.

“We’ll… work on that some more later. Let’s start moving stuff and see how strong you are.”

It amazed me that Mush had done so little with his power. Here he was, a mass of metal and ceramic, probably immune to most weapons, and I had ideas on how he might be able to regenerate, say by keeping caches of material around for him to use to replace lost material… but he’d never tried it.

Because he was just Mush. Just Garbageboy. Why try if you know how it’s going to end up.

Was every parahuman like this? Sure, Mush, Myself, and Squealer weren’t exactly an unbiased sample, but three for three… Were heroes like Armsmaster products of a more positive environment, or were they just stronger?

Speaking of that, Mush walked forward to the first bin, and picked it up, grunting a little. That container was full of the remains of machine tools. Easily a few tons, and he lifted it.

“Wow, I’ve never done this before,” he said.

“The matter you’re using is different,”I told him. “Steel and ceramic are stronger than random garbage.” I stared at the way he was moving. “Be careful. If you throw that at someone, you’re going to kill them.”

“Heh…I guess you’re right.” Mush said. He walked to the loading dock and put down the bin, and walked back for another.

By the end of the hour, there were twelve containers waiting for the scrap man. Not a lot of effort, but the DA would have had to hire someone to come over, get a forklift and move everything, and at the current price for scrap, they’d be lucky to break even.

“I’ll be giving you the money we got for this.”

“Don’t you get some?” Mush asked.

“You did the work, you get the money,”I said. He seemed a little confused at that. “Don’t forget, you can’t just attend the rehab center once.”

“Right yeah,” he shook his head. “I get it.”

Do you? The books I’d read warned that everyone started out eager. But sooner or later, they felt bad, lonely, or just got bored, and it was then that the drugs beckoned. They also warned that staying with the old peer group was a good way to fall back into bad habits.

Well, I was taking care of that.

We wouldn’t do much more. Not only did I have other places to be, but I didn’t want Mush to clean everything up in a few weeks. That was another thing my quick read-through had told me. Regular work, rewarding work, was another way to hopefully work against falling into bad habits.

And while the fire extinguisher hadn’t worked, not yet, it did give me a thought—what if I had Mush incorporate CO2 cylinders in his hands, set up to be punctured when he punched someone? It’d be a partial fix for fighting brutes.

But now, I had to notify the DA that we had their salvage, and then go visit a man.

*****

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE THOSE FUCKING CUMSTAINS!” Skidmark was shouting. Behind him was the pile of drugs and money he’d brought back with him. I was going to have to pick up some more walkie-talkies. I had a book on radio work at home, but no time to read it. For now, I would make do. I had also prepared a special present for Skidmark. I wanted to end things on a high note.

I couldn’t easily detect shapes, but my bugs were on those around him and I felt him chuck one man across the floor.

“Skidmark!” the guy said. “He was like a ghost! I dunno what happened to Mush, but Squealer turned herself in.”

“Fuck you, you cumdrop!” Skidmark shouted. More profanity followed. Much of it repeated.

It was time.

My laughter started out soft, so that hardly anyone could hear it. Then slowly got louder. Skidmark didn’t notice, in the middle of his temper tantrum. The other man and women started looking around.

My bugs set off some smoke bombs in the vents, and the thick gray clouds started pouring into the trash filled “HQ” he’d chosen.

Suddenly Skidmark fell silent, listening to the unnerving laughter. I laughed, my bugs filling the air with the sound, as some of Skidmark’s thugs looked around. A few had guns.

That was good. It’d be a good little bit of show.

“Skidmark, Skidmark, Skidmark…”I spoke. “I wondered if you’d be foolish enough to return. You don’t need to worry about Squealer. She’s with the PRT now. I made her an offer… she couldn’t refuse. As for Mush, I doubt any of you will ever see him again.”

In the dim room, I set my bugs to flying around, forming into unnerving shapes.

Suddenly, one man lost his nerve and opened fire. The shots echoed through the room until he emptied the magazine.

“Do you think you could hit me?”I asked. “Or maybe you did…” I laughed again. “Do you want to try again, or is it my turn?”

The man lost his nerve and ran for the exit. I let him go, his shrieks vanishing into the distance.

“Does anyone else want to depart? My business is with Skidmark…”

“Fuck you!” Skidmark shouted and started drawing his fields. I could sense the air being pulled over them. He kept layering his fields. I waited. After all, he was aiming in the wrong direction, even if I had been in the building. Which I wasn’t. He tossed nuts and bolts down onto the fields and they zipped out, smashing into the walls and some of the furniture.

I laughed. Louder.

“You missed, Skiddie, but then, that’s your thing, isn’t it? You want everyone to respect you but who respects a druggie like Skiddie? That’s why Squealer turned herself in.”

More bolts went soaring through the room.

“It’s anticlimactic in a way,”I told him. “You weren’t even my main objective. Just… practice. On the easy bits…”I laughed again. “You were so very easy, Skiddie. No drugs, no money… what will your suppliers think?”

“I’ve got fucking drugs and money!”

“Not anymore…”I’d been sending my bugs down. Each one holding a tiny piece of lighter fluid-soaked cotton. Individually, insignificant. But there were thousands of bugs in that relay race. Each one adding a little bit to the baggies of cocaine, and the stacked money.

I could use the money, but this was about making a point.

My last bug landed, this one carrying the fuse I’d pulled out of one of the smoke bombs.

“…in fact, I think they are going up in smoke.”With that, my bugs moved, and I could smell the smoke rising, as the bugs on Skidmark showed him spinning around to see his bundles of drugs and money cheerily burning.

“What the fuck did you do!”

“You are in my city, Skidmark, and there is nothing you have that I cannot take. As I have.” The rest of his followers were also decamping out the doors.

“You fucking cumstain! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you—“ He shrieked as I sent a roaring mass of insects through the smoke, both from the drugs and my smokebombs, and then rose over him, the fluorescent bugs forming glowing “eyes” as it loomed over him.

“Kill me, Skidmark? Would you like to try? Of course, if you fail… I might… just… take… a BITE!” That last was a roar, and he shrieked again, stumbling back and then…

Went sailing across the room, his scream dopplering away until he slammed into a bunch of chairs and boxes.

I didn’t say anything for a moment.

Did he—did he actually stumble into his own fields?

“Oh God, my legs, my legs…” I sent my bugs down and put them on him, getting a layout of how he was…yep, legs don’t bend that way.

Outside, I sighed and opened my phone.

“PRT, how may we help you.”

“This is Orb Weaver. I have secured Skidmark and the last of his drugs, but you might want to send an ambulance.”

“Are there injured?”

“Skidmark appears to have broken both his legs. He managed to stumble into his own fields.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was.”

There was what sounded like a laugh at the other end. “We’ll be there in a few moments. Is he suffering any other injury?”

My bugs didn’t smell blood, and from the volume of his cursing…

“Unlikely. I will leave this to you. Ah, you might wish to bring masks. I’m afraid that his drug stash suffered an accidental fire.”

“Right.”

With that, I left, once again discarding the burner phone.

I was three blocks away when the first police car dropped by, and could observe them doing in, and then a few minutes later, an EMT unit drove up, along with Assault and Battery in a PRT vehicle, and a cursing Skidmark was dragged out. Evidently the pain had faded and now he was letting everyone know that the Cumstain Orb Weaver was dead! DEAD!

I didn’t need to stick around any longer, and it was getting late. Being grounded would be a poor epilogue to the destruction of the Merchants.

*****

Later, lying in bed, I struggled against a sense of… irritation.

I had brought the Merchants down in a few weeks. The Protectorate could have done the same. Why hadn’t they?  Oh, I knew the reasoning, that there would always be someone like the Merchants…

But that was like refusing to prosecute murderers because, well, someone would always commit murder.

An excuse.

And even if they were right, the Merchants had grown like weeds, out of the poverty of the Bay.

Beating Skidmark, had been easy, especially since he’d… beaten himself.

Keeping another group from rising, would be hard. It would require changes not just among the criminals, but the people.  And I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t have enough time in the day, and burning up drugs—

Wait a minute.

My bugs could smell drugs, and detect the difference between the chemicals.

In a moment, I was out of bed, reaching out for one of my school books. I opened to a random page, and then moments later, it was covered by my bugs. Endless bugs…

And they could taste the difference between the written word and a blank page. I lay back in bed and closed my eyes. It was hard to get what the words were saying, at first, but I could unite the bugs covering the page, and I knew where every single bug was. I could…

I strained to try to just reach out and graspthe concept, and slowly the strange senses the bugs were feeding me…

Made sense.

“The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy was a devastating blow to an America already reeling…”

I could read it. And I could read it… Controlling all my bugs, I could read more than one book! And this gave me some ideas on how to see—and even hear from my bugs. It’d be hard, but now…

I fell back into the bed and laughed. The sound was alien.

I guess Skidmark had done something for society after all. He’d given me that little thought that was gonna make me somuch more effective.