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Tag Archives: Cozen
Sting 26.1
One of Rachel's dogs growled, long and loud, an alien, unsure sound.
She shushed it, setting her hand on the side of its head.
"Ugh," Cozen mumbled, "The smell."
The smell. Summer heat, the mingled scent of blood, shit and overripe bodies, with traces of other things in the wind. Caustic chemicals, ozone, smoke, burned flesh and plastic.
It wasn't unfamiliar. Not an exact combination of smells I'd smelled before, but it put me in mind of Brockton Bay in the days soon after Leviathan had attacked.
I looked up at the man who'd been strung up overhead, spread-eagled. Chains stretched from his wrists to buildings on opposite sides of the street, and more chains extended from his ankles to the bases of the same buildings. A number was carved on his chest. One-seventeen.
Beneath him, the sign from outside the town limits had been slammed down onto the hoods of two cars so it stood upright.
Welcome to Killington. Heart of the Green Mountains.
They probably thought it was funny. Especially with the bloody handprint on the word 'heart'.
"They got the children too," Cozen whispered, as she averted her eyes from a mother who had died holding her child, both burned black. The only parts of their body that hadn't burned were patches of skin in the shapes of numbers. Two-fifty-four. Two-fifty-five.
Two of the Red Hands, Getaway and Rifle, had come along for the ride. They were sticking close by her, and formed a small contingent with Grue as a consequence. Getaway wore a cowl with a hood that peaked in the front, to the center of his mask. His costume had straight, clean lines, as though he'd modeled it after a car.
Rifle, by contrast, didn't look like he wore a costume. He was dressed like a special ops agent, complete with a complicated night-vision mount around his eyes, a number of scopes with lenses glowing in hues ranging from blue to red. Violet scopes were currently fixed over his real eyes. He carried a weapon, a modified gun that wasn't, as far as I could figure it, an actual rifle. It looked like it was set to fire specialized loads from canisters.
Of course they got children, I thought. I had to bite back a retort. Why was she here, if she wasn't ready for this?
But she wasn't a fighter. None of the Red Hands were, really. They were professional thieves. Break in, get out, sell the goods.
They were, maybe, what the Undersiders might have been with a little more luck, slightly different personalities, and a quieter existence.
Without me, even.
The Undersiders had made it for a year and a few months with their original strategy, avoiding fights, slipping away, staying off the radar. They would fight when they had to, but they didn't make it a thing. The fact that they didn't have firepower meant they couldn't make it a thing. If anyone got into trouble, it was the dogs.
And then I joined. Starting with the bank robbery, I pushed them to switch up tactics, catch the enemy off guard.
If I'd never joined, what would have happened? Maybe the bank robbery wouldn't have worked out, and one of them would have been picked off and arrested. Maybe they would have taken a different direction with the robbery.
Bakuda might have killed them, Coil might have pushed them to be more aggressive as he scaled up his plans. Or they could have found a way, could have continued going the way they did, less violent in general.
Some good, some bad. Rachel might never have reached the point she was at now. Grue wouldn't necessarily have gone through what he did. Regent might be alive.
I glanced again at Cozen, saw her looking at me in turn. Catching me looking, really.
"What?" she asked.
You don't need to be here. You'll be happier in the long run if you aren't.
"Nothing," I responded. She looked annoyed, but she didn't say anything.
There was a kind of art to the setup. No doubt at all that it was a display, a showpiece. Trails of blood, ash and other substances marked where bodies had been moved. They were spaced out just enough that we would run into a fresh one just as we left the last behind.
I might have missed it if not for my swarm-sense. The bodies were placed at positions high and low, the methods of death differing here and there, but there was a pattern to their distribution. The kind of pattern that might become clear if one were to set up a map and note the location of each body on it. A spiral.
I pointed the way to the central point of the spiral. I could see a plume of smoke in that general direction. Not the middle of Killington. Skewed off-center.
"Weaver, report," Revel's voice.
"I'm here," I responded. I kept a finger at my ear to make it clear that I wasn't talking to myself.
"Killington?"
"Yes. Progress is slow. I'm sweeping the area for traps and potential ambush, and I'm marking a path to travel for when the others get here."
"We saw the two traps at the outset. There are more confirmed?"
"Yeah. I'm not touching anything. Pass on word that any capes entering the area should be hands off. I activated one and it was only a decoy, a prelude to a gas attack. One of Bonesaw's, I think. Grue warded it off. No casualties."
"I'll make doubly sure to pass on word about the traps and about the route you've cleared. I would have warned them anyways. The initial casualties were enough, with the helicopter and first responders. Give me a second."
I led the way as our group rounded a corner, and saw the smouldering wreckage of the helicopter, smoke still streaming skyward.
The collision apparently hadn't been enough to topple the corpse that stood upright in the middle of the intersection, desiccated. A number was drawn on the mummy's chest in blood. Number thirty-six.
I could make out a tripwire strung between him and another corpse, a woman. She had apparently been shot execution style, propped upright on her knees. A number, again, had been drawn out in the midst of the blood spatter from the original wound. Number two-sixty-five.
The tripwire was almost obvious, coated in congealed blood.
Red string, I thought. In Japanese superstition, it was the string that bound lovers.
The pieces suggested Crimson and Winter. Neither was Japanese, but the idea of mingling romantic imagery with violence in that way fit them. The red knight and the soldier.
"I've got the feed open now," Revel said, "Seeing what you're seeing."
"Only part of it. The way the bodies are laid out, it's a spiral. I think it all points to something. Making our way in."
"Technically you aren't. You've stopped."
"Tripwires," I said. "Being very, very careful."
"I like being careful," Imp commented. She'd only be hearing one side of the conversation. "Careful is good. Keeps us alive."
"Being too careful gets you killed," Rachel commented. Of everyone present, she seemed least concerned with the amount of death that surrounded us. Then again, that didn't surprise me. "Have to act when you see the chance."
"You want to hop on your dog's back and charge ahead?" Imp asked. "Go activate every trap between here and wherever?"
Rachel frowned. "No."
"I like careful," Imp restated, for the record. "Let's be careful."
"Yeah. Fine."
I pointed to indicate. "Obvious tripwire here. Covered in blood. Connects to the two bodies and… I think claymores, at the base of that building over there. There are other tripwires around it. Look too hard at it, miss the others. I think there's a pressure plate, too. I'm not sure what to call that."
"I don't see anything that could be a pressure plate," Grue observed.
I pointed at a pane of glass at the base of a pile of rubble. It was broken, with a narrow thread of wood still attached along the one edge that was straight and unbroken.
"Maybe. Kind of hard to believe," he said.
Because we could see through it? Yeah. But it was situated beside a pile of rubble, and the balance of the glass with the surrounding brick and concrete seemed too convenient.
Was there something attached to the edge of the glass where we couldn't see? If the glass was broken, would the wood weigh the remaining fragment down and pull something?
"Let's play it safe. We avoid the tripwires, we avoid the glass."
"Whatever you say. I'm all for playing safe," he responded.
I led the way around the trap. I left a trail of dead bugs behind us as we made our way to the center, murdering them with larger bugs and mashing them into the ground. A path.
I wondered about Grue. Couldn't read his expression, couldn't note his tone either. Was he thinking about the same thing I was thinking?
We'd already fallen for one trap. Not here, but back in Brockton Bay. Back then, when he'd had his second trigger event.
It had been the Nine, back then, and though he wasn't giving me any clues there was something wrong, he wasn't indicating that he was his old self, from back in the good old days. I suspected he hadn't fully bounced back, even after all this time, might never.
We circled around eight teenage girls, sitting in a circle, crowns of splintered wood nailed through their skulls. One had fallen over in response to the wind, but the others were still upright, propped up with wooden planks nailed into their spines. Less blood than the head wounds, I noted. Some pre-death, others post?
The numbers were on the pieces of wood, registration numbers or something from the crate that had been smashed for materials. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine.
I looked up. Number eight sat on the bulb of a street light, a long dress blowing in the wind, directly above the circle. Her crown was the tallest, and for her to be so rigid, there had to be a whole assortment of planks nailed to her.
"Nine Kings," I said.
"A woman king?" Imp asked.
"She's the victim," I said. The killer is her… husband, for lack of a better word."
"They've resurrected all of the old members. Cloned them," Revel said.
Clones, I mused, agreeing. My suspicions were confirmed, and I wasn't surprised. I'd hoped for different, but the reality of what we faced had been hinted at early on, when it had been revealed that the Nine had hit a tinker's laboratory and made off with materials that could be used to mass produce lifeforms.
King. The leader, the founder of the group. Were the numbers in an order corresponding to when they had joined, then? Would the second member of the Nine be ten through eighteen?
"Got a live one!" Imp called out, interrupting my thoughts. "…Kind of alive."
I turned to look. A fat man was shifting in a restless way, his chest rising and falling quickly in unsteady movements. One arm jerked.
"Leave him," I said. "Don't touch."
"He could be a witness," Rifle said.
"Or a trap," I responded. "I doubt he's in a state to fill us in on anything. We'll move on, wait for heroes to follow the path I'm marking. They'll handle medical care for wounded."
"That's fucked up," Rifle said. "We could at least put him out of his misery, then."
"I'm not willing to get close enough to check," I said. "And I'm not willing for you to get close either."
"I-" Parian started.
Then she stopped. The fat man deflated in an instant as a small collection of what looked like trilobites found their way out of his rear end. Slick with gore, they darted forward a short distance on their hundreds of little legs, then turned our way, bristling with spines. Tails trailed behind each of them, twice as long as the foot-long creatures, narrow, with stingers on the ends.
I could hear a hissing, but I wasn't sure if it was from the creatures or the way the spines rubbed against one another.
"Oh… god," she said. She took a step back, with Foil stepping forward, as if to defend her.
"Breed's power," I said. "They're mostly harmless, for now."
"For now?" Rifle asked.
I watched as they made their way up the side of a building to a corpse that was hung there. The corpse had been cut into sections, the arms and legs each severed at the joints and reconnected with lengths of chain. Breed's creatures found their way into the body through the holes in the neck, mouth and rear end. It jerked a little as they worked bodies the size of footballs into apertures only a fraction of that size, then went still.
"For now," I answered Rifle. "They start off the size of a lemon, lurk in spots where they can get access to orifices or sites of injury, or like you see here, corpses. Inside beer bottles, in toilet bowls, bedcovers, on the underside of kitchen tables, even inside food. Then they burrow inside, wait until the target is still and quiet for an hour or two, paralyze the target, and emit pheromones to call others of their kind to them. They devour the target from the inside out, molt once or twice as they digest the fats and proteins they ate, then find a new target. It's a process that takes a week to two weeks, depending on the availability of food sources."
I could see Getaway shift position, folding his hands behind his back, as if he could shield his rear end. His mouth had shut into a firm line.
His nose was still unprotected, I noted.
Even Rachel seemed a little concerned. She glanced at her dog.
"They aren't a danger to us," I said. "Probably. They choose easier targets over harder ones, and there are enough corpses around here that we aren't worth the trouble. What we should worry about is the later stages. When they're about the size of a full-grown human being, they'll do two or three major molts with big physical changes, gaining some natural weapons, including a pellet-spit that kind of acts like a shotgun blast with fragments that dissolve into flesh-melting acid."
"Um." Rifle said.
"You know this how?" Imp asked.
"Read his file," I answered.
"Shouldn't we kill them before they get big?" Foil asked.
"Not worth the time it would take to track them down," I said. "We don't have any strong offensive powers, they're durable against stuff like conventional ammunition and physical blows, and he generally produces about nine or ten per day."
"That was ten," Getaway said.
"Even assuming it's only been one day since Breed woke up," I said, "The scenes they've left behind suggest there are nine clones of each copy of the Nine. Going by the numbers-"
"Twenty-nine copies, at least," Revel said.
"Twenty-nine copies," I said. "Two-hundred-and-fifty-plus members of the Nine currently active. Nine Breeds among them, meaning there're probably nine other clusters around here, taking advantage of abundant food."
"Breed's creatures. Can you control them?" this from Revel, taking advantage of the stunned silence.
I glanced up at the body the things had invaded. I tailored my response so both Revel and the Undersiders could make sense of it. "I can't control those things, and I can't sense them either."
"A shame. That would simplify things just a little."
It would. I wouldn't have minded the firepower, either, even with their particular diet.
"Let's keep moving," I said. "If we stop for every horror show, we might be stuck here a while. My gut's telling me time is of the essence."
"I'm feeling a little out of my depth," Getaway said, his voice quiet, as he fell into step to keep up.
"That's a good instinct," I replied without looking at him. "Trust it."
"You're telling me to leave?"
"I can't make you do anything," I said.
"But you think I should leave?"
"If you feel like you should, yeah."
"And does that extend to me and Rifle?" Cozen asked, her tone cold.
"I don't know. Yeah, if your instincts tell you to go, then get going now," I said. I pointed at the ground around a hose. There was a puddle that had spread beneath the hose's opening. My bugs had died on contact with it. "Acid, not water. Don't walk in it. Rachel, watch your dogs."
Rachel grunted acknowledgement.
"Don't change the subject. You want us gone," Cozen said.
"No. All the help we can get is appreciated," I said. I glanced at her. "At the same time, if push comes to shove and you can't hold it together, it's going to hurt us all."
"You don't think we can hold it together?" Cozen asked.
"You're an unknown quantity. Anyone else that's here, I can trust them to hold their own because I know how they operate. I don't know you. I don't know how you react in a crisis, how you'll respond if you're pushed to the edge, one way or another. Grue and the others are vouching for you, so I'm shelving those concerns and trusting they have a good sense of your abilities. I'll maintain that trust until you give me an indication I shouldn't. Getaway saying he's spooked is an indication."
"I'm spooked," Imp said. "Can I go home and sit on the couch in my underwear, eating cake? I'll cross my fingers for you guys, if you want."
"You're talking like you're in charge," Cozen said. "Grue leads the Undersiders."
"I'm not an Undersider," I said. "It doesn't matter. I'm in charge anyways."
And Grue can speak for himself, I thought, but I didn't say it aloud.
I could see her reacting to that, even without the extra quip. I watched expressions cross her face: irritation, anger, indignation, and a trace of fear.
"Grue is a good leader," I said, "But this is my project. Something I've been working towards and thinking about for the last two years. Leaving the Undersiders, making contacts, helping hold things together, maintaining the peace and eliminating possible issues. Everything I did, it's been to prepare for this in some fashion."
"A little unilateral, don't you think?"
"It's her project," Grue said. "My orders are to follow her orders."
I could see how little she liked that.
But she maintained a professional demeanor. "Accepted. You realize we don't have to follow your orders?"
Grue nodded, silent.
Cozen seemed to come to a decision. "We will anyways. As Weaver pointed out, this is unfamiliar ground for us. We'll defer to your experience."
"Thank you," Grue and I said, almost in sync.
I turned away to hide my smile, in case it could be made out beneath the fabric of my mask.
Progress was slow. The traps seemed to accrue in number as we drew closer to the center, as did the corpses. More than once, we were forced to take the long way around, as traps or pools of acid barred our paths.
We passed an area with rows of identical looking cabins, then ran into the Protectorate. Chevalier, Exalt, and others, examining the area, a block and a half away.
I got their attention, then pointed in the direction we were headed. It wasn't much more effort to mark out traps around them as well. I made sure to mark each with a cluster of bugs, and bug-letters spelling out the nature of the danger. Less trouble to move in parallel directions than reunite.
The center of the spiral wasn't the center of the town in a geographic sense, but in a sense of where the town's heart and focus were. We closed in on the front steps of what looked to be a town hall. Empty ski racks stood to our right, two draped with corpses that had been flung and broken over them.
By the time we were halfway through the plaza, navigating a maze where we tried to find a path that didn't force us to tread on potential traps or corpses, Tecton and the others had caught up, reaching the edge of the area.
"Thoughts?" Revel asked. "Before you reach the center of the display?"
"He wanted to present this for effect," I said. "It's why he set up Pyrotechnical's stuff to blow any aircraft out of the sky. The traps are to force us to take our time, force us to savor it."
"Savor?" Grue asked.
"Everything Jack does is for effect. The same way a dog sort of raises its hackles to look bigger, tougher, or the way we used our reputation to seem more unstoppable than we were, Jack keys his actions for psychological effect. All of this is to scare, to drive us to hesitate when it comes to confronting him, push us to think of ways to avoid dealing with him instead of ways to catch up to him and beat his face in. Or, conversely, some personality types might get pushed to be reckless, to deal with him so he couldn't bother them anymore."
I glanced at Rachel as I said that last bit. She'd instructed her dogs to stay, so they wouldn't trip any of the traps in our way.
I made my way over a hump of bodies. The members of the Nine who'd spilled acid all over the place had melted nine police officers and left them in a heap. Crawler? Only one that fit.
Our destination was the kind of spot, like a courthouse's steps, where someone could give a speech. There were two objects covered in tarps, a man who was in a reclining position at the far end of the stairs, and ten dead bodies arrayed in a star shape, limbs bent to mark the direction of the spiral.
I checked under the tarps, then bit my lip.
I turned around and gave Golem instructions as he made his way past the traps. He created platforms to step over to serve as a shortcut. Grace, Tecton, Wanton and Cuff hung back, looking grim. They were joined by Chevalier and the others.
Golem joined me at the top of the stairs.
"How's your headspace?" I asked.
"Terrified."
"In a way that's going to impact our job here?"
"No. No. You told me what to expect. Kind of. I didn't imagine this."
I shook my head. "No."
There was a voice from beneath the other tarp. A strangled scream.
"A recording," I lied. Then I elaborated. "It's a trap. Two tarps, have to guess the right one. Guess the wrong one and you blow up. This one. Move the tarp."
He hesitated.
"Trust me," I said. Even as I lie for everyone's benefit.
Rachel and Golem worked together to move the tarp aside.
A television.
"The tape's already in the machine, you can hit play to start it," the man sitting at the edge of the stairs said.
"Wait, Weaver, stop. Who was that?" Revel asked.
"Who?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
"Look to your right."
I did. The other tarp, more corpses, the man who was now standing at the edge of the stairs, the little crenelation at the top of the stair's railing, then beyond that, cabins, restaurants, hotels and motels, the rest of the town, and mountains in the background.
"Not sure I get what you're saying," I said.
"What's wrong?" Grue asked.
"I don't know. I'm getting communications from Revel, and she's acting funny."
"Here," the man said. "Let me get that for you."
The others stepped out of the way as he approached me, Golem, and the television set. He reached for the play button.
I caught his wrist.
"He's dangerous," Revel said.
"I beg your pardon?" the man asked.
Attack?
I shook my head a little, releasing the man's wrist. "I appreciate the offer, sir, but let's be safe and make sure this isn't a trap."
"Can't argue with that," he said, smiling.
"This is what hell is like," Revel said. "Listen to me."
"Tattletale, are you there?" I asked.
"Tattletale?" Revel asked. "Damn all of you. It doesn't matter. Listen, Taylor, Master and Stranger protocols are in effect. Your perceptions are altered, understand?"
I felt my heart quicken a little at that. "I understand."
"There is a person to your right. Not a teammate, former or current. I need you to kill that person, don't ask why, don't think too much about it. Draw your knife."
I drew my knife.
"Look. I'll tell you who to attack."
I glanced to my right, my eyes falling on Rachel. It was a bit presumptuous to say she wasn't a teammate. Not a team player, but she'd done her share.
"No, to her right."
I looked past the man and set my eyes on Golem.
"I'm more inclined to think you're a voice in my head that's fucking with me, than to suspect Golem's up to something, but-"
"Oh hell," Revel said.
"I got this. Taylor, do me a favor, give the order to 'go dark'."
"Go dark," I said.
To my left, Grue surrounded himself in thick darkness.
Nothing happened.
A spray of blood leaped from the man's throat. We each stepped away, and I hurried forward to stop Rachel from backing into the other tarp. We watched in stunned silence as blood poured from the wound.
"Hey," a female voice said, "Do me a favor, let me know if there are any traps at the bottom of the stairs?"
"Who-" Golem started.
"Acid," I said, raising my knife so I could defend myself if I had to.
Imp appeared as she booted the bleeding man in the small of the back. He rolled down the stairs, leaving spatters and sprays of blood as he made his way down, and then collapsed in a pile of bodies. He started screaming, a gurgling sound.
I could see Chevalier and the others staring in shock, adopting fighting stances, unsure of how to proceed. It looked like Chevalier was talking to someone, gesturing with his free hand. Was it Revel, on the comms?
"My schtick," Imp spat the words at the dying man.
I could mark the moment he died, because the blanks in my perception began to fill in.
Nice Guy, I thought. I'd badly underestimated the severity of his power. I'd known he would be in their roster, had kept it in mind throughout, even told myself to be ready for him, and then the moment we ran into him, well, he was another face in the crowd. The connection wasn't possible.
I watched as the acid ate away at him, burns creeping upward and spreading across his flesh, bubbling as it reached the cartilage of his nose and ears.
"Thank you, Tattletale," Revel said.
"I… think I can tolerate your presence on this channel for the moment. Provided you don't cause any trouble that makes me regret it."
"I'd do that anyways. So. One more trap down. Keep in mind there are eight more of him."
"What was he going to do?" Golem asked.
"Probably ask you all to stand there and stay still while he murdered each of you in turn," Tattletale said.
"Tattletale," I said. "Call my phone, and I'll put you on speaker."
"Okay. Let's see."
"Six-three-zero-five-five-" Revel started.
My phone rang. I picked up and put Tattletale on speaker, as Revel sighed audibly in my ear.
"Is the video player safe?" I asked. I turned my head towards the television.
"Yeah. All the rest of this, it's to scare. It's also meant to delay. Jack probably expected the heroes to take a little while to find this, to get by the traps. The spiral you mentioned, it would have been maybe a day or two before they put the pieces together, then another three to six hours before they navigated it to the center."
"Yay us," Imp said.
She got more powerful, I thought. She'd been able to speak while using her power. Nuances.
"Press play."
I hit the button.
It was Jack, here, in the center of the plaza. The camera wobbled as someone followed him, recording. I could see shadows of the other Slaughterhouse Nine in the background. Hookwolf. Skinslip. Night Hag.
"This message is intended for Theodore Anders. Kaiser's son. Stop the video here and go find him. Time is of the essence, I should say. How much essence and time you have available depends on how incompetent you heroes are. Hurry now, I'll wait."
"No need to wait," Tattletale commented. "He's standing right here."
There were a few looks of surprise at that. Eyes fell on Golem.
There was a pause, then Jack started speaking. "You missed the deadline, Theodore. Simple game of hide and seek, and you had two years to do it, to find and kill me. You failed."
Golem's gloves made a small creaking sound as he clenched his fists.
"You remember the deal, right? Two years to find me. Two years, you fight past my minions, you look me in the eye, and then you kill me. And if you fail? A thousand people die. Your sister joins them, and you're the last on the list."
"Golem," Revel said. She started to say something else, but Jack cut her off.
"That pain you feel, that self loathing? The fear and dawning realization of what you've done? Capture that, Theodore Anders. Hold on to that feeling and use it, because I'm pulling your leg."
Golem startled as if he'd been slapped. His eyes had lowered, and now they returned to the screen.
"Circumstances beyond my control delayed me. So I'm going to do you the favor of extending the deadline, and you're going to do me the favor of forgiving my lateness. Agreed? Agreed."
"Can we not agree?" Imp asked, uselessly.
Jack continued. "This is a prelude. See, all of these guys just woke up, and they needed a chance to stretch, flex their abilities and make sure everything works right. Turn the camera around, Bonesaw dear."
The camera panned around. There were other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine present, standing in a loose half-circle. Hundreds of them. Nine of each. Thirty groups. I recognized most, could guess as to the others, who didn't have their powers or full transformations going.
In the middle of that semicircle, lying on the ground, civilians had their hands folded on the backs of their heads. In many cases they'd been stacked like cordwood. Many bound, others too terrified to move.
"Oh god," Golem said.
Jack spoke, his voice calm, clearly relishing this. The camera returned to him, focusing on his face. "I promised a thousand bodies. A thousand kills, if you failed to meet the challenge we set in our bargain. Except there's a bit of a problem. See, things have changed. The Endbringers have apparently doubled down. Terror is a fact of life. As commodities go, this one has depreciated quite a bit in the time I've been gone. We've really got to step up my game if I'm going to pass muster and get on the front page of the paper, don't you agree?"
"No," Golem said.
Silent, I took his hand, holding it. My eyes didn't leave the screen as I studied it for details, matching members of the Slaughterhouse Nine to the files I'd studied in recent months.
"Now, I'm still a man of my word," Jack said. "The original deal stands, of course. That's why each member of my army here is going to walk away with three or four of the locals here. We've whittled down the number to an even nine hundred and ninety-nine. Let's say you have… hmm. Until the twenty-fourth. Five days."
We watched in silence.
What's the rub, the trick?
"If you fail to kill me, I disband the Nine."
"What?" Imp asked. "What?"
I frowned. Not what I expected.
"That's not an enticement to leave me alive," Jack purred the words, sounding pleased with himself. "See, Bonesaw did a very good job of putting my army together. Each is in the prime of their life, fit, in fighting shape."
"Aw shucks," a girl's voice said, offscreen.
"Their psychologies are close to what they should be, all things considered. Except for tweaks, here and there. I'm good when it comes to wrangling the wicked, but Bonesaw apparently felt two hundred and eighty would be too many, even for me. She's made them loyal. They'll listen better. The most unpredictable and dangerous have been touched up, the edges rounded off. While interacting with me, anyways. I won't sully your experience on that front.
"No. They're obedient and servile only when I require them to be. If you fail in your task, then I'll give them one last task, to kill the one thousand people we agreed to in the terms of our wager, and then I'll disband the group. They'll be free to run rampant, to do as they see fit. Wreak chaos. I'll take a vacation, sit back with a Mai Tai and watch the show."
"Fuck me," Tattletale said.
"Fuck," I echoed her, agreeing.
Golem, for his part, had gone stone-still.
"I'll be leaving members of the Slaughterhouse Nine behind at regular intervals as I beat a not-so-hasty retreat. Your choice if you deal with them or leave them be. But if I get one report from them that you're getting help, one report that you're using others as a crutch, then that's it. Order goes out, hostages die, Nine go off leash, and you get to watch the body count rise."
"Five days, Theodore. Noon on the twenty-fourth. I look forward to meeting you."
The video cut out.
"Tattletale?" I asked.
"Already on it. Word's going out to all the major players."
I noted Chevalier's approach. He had used Golem's platform to reach the base of the stairs, stepping around Nice Guy.
"Major players?" Grue asked.
"Everyone Tattletale's been meeting with," I said.
"I heard through the feed," Chevalier said. "The restrictions stand."
"The restrictions stand," I agreed. I explained for the benefit of the others. "We treat this as a Simurgh situation. Control feedback, control exposure. Anyone and everyone that potentially comes in contact with Jack could be a factor in Dinah's end of the world scenario. Powerful individuals are especially important in this. The more powerful they are, the more important it is to minimize or prevent contact."
"Um. I probably sound dumb as I ask this," Imp said, raising a hand as if she were asking a question in class, "But what about the nearly-three-hundred lunatic psycho people with crazy powers that he's threatening to unleash on the world?"
"We'll deal with them," I said. "With your okay, Chevalier?"
He fell silent.
"Chevalier, I thought-"
"Yes. You proposed your strike squad. You've shown their ability to deal with different situations. Fine. But I'm assigning two tertiary squads to you."
"Chicago and Brockton Bay teams."
"I was going to say-"
"They're teams I'm familiar with," I said. "Please."
He fell silent again.
"Work with me here, and if we're all standing at the end, I'm yours. Whatever you want to use me for, however, it doesn't matter. If this blows over and the end of the world doesn't happen, like some think it won't, then the deal stands."
"I'll get in contact with Miss Militia and Crucible."
"If it's alright, can we have Clockblocker take control of the Wards for this excursion?"
"Whatever you need," Chevalier said. "You realize we're pinning a lot on you?"
"On Golem more than me," I said. "We're going to cheat our way through this, bend every rule, but it all hinges on Golem being able to hold his own."
"Jack's going to try to set Golem up with a long chain of lose-lose situations," Tattletale said. "Force him to either let the innocents die and maintain the chase, or let Jack pull away. We already got one big advantage by getting to this tape as fast as we did. Let's not show our hand. Dragon's on the line. We've got Dragon's Teeth and Azazel models moving to the front."
"Close in the net, then act decisively," I said. "Coordinated strikes. If the Thanda are willing, a meteor strike in the right time and place could do wonders."
There were nods of agreement from around the group.
Golem turned around and walked away.
"Golem," I said.
He was already halfway down the stairs. He used the panels at his waist to form an even footpath, with hands turned at right angles, positioned where he could put his feet on them.
"Golem!" I called out. I handed my phone to Grue, then hurried after him.
He stopped as he set his foot on the first outstretched hand of pavement, but he didn't turn around. His voice was low, barely a whisper. "Stop, Taylor. Leave me alone. Please."
"You're running?"
"I'm… no. I'm definitely in. I have to be, don't I?"
"But this is a lot to take in. Jack, he talked to me about ripples. About stuff extending outward, the lives that are affected."
"I remember. You told me that."
"Right here, in this dinky little ski resort, he murdered a few hundred people, just as a warm up. How many people on the periphery of it all are affected? How many people across America, across the world, know people in Killington? Or know the people who know people in this town?"
"You can't think about things on that scale."
"I have to. Jack does, and I have to understand him. If I don't pay attention to it, if I ignore it all, pursuing only the end result, the target, then I'm acting like my dad. Kind of. Either way, I lose."
"You care about the people who died, and you're thinking about them that way for a good reason. That's not putting you on a path to being like either of them."
"But that kind of consideration, letting it really sink in, it eats away at you, doesn't it? Shouldn't it?"
"It should," I said.
"There's a reason we go numb, and I get that, but I don't want to go down that road, not so quickly. Not knowing just how easy it would be to revel in it, or to stop caring about the dead. I'm there, and I'm…"
The stoic face on his helm stared down at the ground.
"Theo?"
"I hear you guys talking about it, and you're right there, in your element. This is something that you've been working on for a long time, and there's almost an excitement to you. Like you've been in a kind of stasis for the entire time I've known you, and only now are you really coming back to life."
"It's not like that," I said.
"No. I mean, I'm not blaming you, or saying you're a bad person. You're good at this, at taking a challenge head on, finding workarounds, manipulating the system to our advantage. You're doing it for good reasons, to help, to stop bad people. I saw glimmers of that excitement, of the real Weaver, while you were dealing with our bosses, and making connections, offering deals to the bad guys you thought you could bring to our side. But I've spent a long time thinking about Jack and watching old footage of him, and figuring out my enemy, my nemesis, and it's like… that's you."
"You're his nemesis, Weaver. I'm the reason he's here, the reason these people died like this. But you're his counterpart, his mirror. You've got that same excitement Jack has, you think along the same lines, in strategy and counter-strategy. You thrive on conflict, just like he does. And I… I'm not like that."
I couldn't muster a response.
"So right now? You should go back. Forget I said this, because it's… I'm regretting opening my mouth already. Work on formatting the strategies you already worked out to fit around the rules of Jack's game, because that's a good thing. It's what we need. But let me have half an hour or an hour or however long I need to myself. Until we stop waiting and stop letting Jack think we haven't found the tape yet. Let me take a moment and think about these people."
"You're not to blame for them," I said. "The Nine would have killed anyways."
"I know. I get that. But I played a part in the sequence of events, and maybe these people wouldn't have been the ones to die if I hadn't made that wager with Jack… and I guess I think everyone else that cares has better things to do. You trained me, the others trained me. I- I guess I'm as ready as I could ever be. I'll fight when the time comes, wade through the gauntlet he sets in his wake and I'll succeed or fail. But I'm not a strategist, and these people need someone to mourn them. Let me be useful in my own way, right here, right now."
I opened my mouth to voice a reply, then shut it.
A moment passed, and Golem set about walking on the hands he'd raised from the ground, just two or so feet above the bodies and the streets that were painted with blood.
I stood where I was, watching as he steadily made his way to the safe zone I'd drawn out on the ground. He stopped only to gesture for Tecton and Grace not to follow, then walked on, out of sight.
It's not that I don't care, I thought. But-
But what?
I couldn't articulate my thoughts.
But… we need a strategist, we need a plan, before all hell breaks loose, I thought. Developing that, coming up with answers, fighting, it's going to do a lot more good in the long run than compassion all on its own.
I looked down at Nice Guy, at the foot of the stairs, a fleshy mess that was slowly dissolving into the acid pile, which only spread and served as more acid to melt flesh. I realized I was still holding my knife, from the time of the brief skirmish. I sheathed it.
Then, as Golem had told me to, I pushed him, the dead, the maimed and the lost out of mind and turned back to the core group, to offer my services, to coordinate and administrate.
Posted in 26.01	| Tagged Bastard, Bitch, Chevalier, Cozen, Cuff, Grace, Grue, Imp, Jack Slash, Nice Guy, Revel, Tattletale, Taylor, Tecton, Theo, Wanton	| 432 Replies
Khonsu allowed himself to be struck by Alexandria, using the impact to float back at a higher speed. The act gave him the positioning he needed to draw his spheres closer to the Jaguars' contingent.
A lack of coordination, a simple error, and ten capes were caught, to be killed in moments. Moments they experienced as weeks, months and years. Some had brought food and water. I almost pitied those capes.
Moord Nag appeared, riding her shadow's skull like a surfer might ride a wave, except there wasn't any joy in the act. Her arms remained still at her sides, her head not fully erect, eyes almost looking down, as if she watched the skull with one eye and Khonsu only merited her peripheral vision.
She didn't wear armor. Her top was a simple t-shirt with the sleeves removed and bottom half cut off. There was a faded image of a rock band on the front, her bra straps showing through the gaping armholes. Her dress was ankle length, frayed a little at the edges. Her feet were bare, her hair in braids and tied back behind her neck.
The skull dipped close to the ground, and the warlord stepped off as though she was getting off an escalator. The shadow's head had taken on the appearance of a serpent's skull, complete with fangs, and the body was a column behind it, stirring around Moord Nag without touching her.
It lunged, and fragments flew off Khonsu's shoulder as the shadow made contact, rubbed against him. It was as though the shadow's body were a series of circular saws, a rasp.
Khonsu's field made contact with the shadow's body, catching the middle of its body. Moord Nag didn't even flinch as her serpent was trisected, the middle section dragged away.
The serpent was winding around Khonsu now, maximizing the surface area that was making contact. Khonsu elected to ignore it, floating forward to put himself in reach of more of the defending capes.
Califa de Perro used his massive spear to sweep a squadron out of the way before striking the ground, using the impact to throw himself back out of the way. He landed and straightened. He was shirtless, and had no doubt oiled his skin, though dust had collected on it, turning him a gray-bronze. He had bracers with fur tufts near the elbows, and a dog mask that covered the upper half of his face, extending a distance forward. The only other affectation he wore that made his outfit resemble a costume was the mount at his waist, too large to be a belt buckle, with a molded dog's face jutting a rather generous handspan in front of him. He smiled, his teeth white and perfect, as the capes he'd batted aside climbed to their feet.
Apparently deeming that the circles weren't working in this situation, Khonsu banished all three. Moord Nag's shadow was freed, and rejoined the remainder of the mass. Khonsu's forward advance was momentarily paused by the impact. He created the circles anew, placing them in spots where people at the epicenter couldn't move fast enough to escape.
That was the moment I advanced.
"Weaver, how the fuck did you get to South America?" It was Tecton. "The Director is flipping out."
"Someone gave me a ride. Chevalier will explain later."
"You completely dropped off the radar for half an hour. We were convinced someone had come after you to take revenge for the work we've been doing cleaning up."
"Not revenge. It doesn't matter. I-" I stopped short as a fresh circle appeared. The placement, the timing… Legend had been caught.
"Weaver?"
Legend became a blur within the field. Then, in a matter of two or three seconds, the entire space filled with a red light. It slowly became white. Khonsu's power apparently affected all of the space above the bubble, reaching into the stratosphere. It was like a pillar of light.
Eidolon created a forcefield, much like the one he'd fashioned to contain Phir Sē's time bomb, only this one was open on one side, a 'u' shape with the opening facing Khonsu.
Khonsu seemed to notice, because he moved the column. It intersected Eidolon's forcefield, and Khonsu's power won out. The forcefield collapsed. This wouldn't be an effect Eidolon could contain.
"I'm in the middle of something, Tecton. I'm wearing the same camera I had at the last fight, so ask for access to the feed, or get over here. We think we've got a way to pin him in place."
Eidolon was shouting something I couldn't make out. Alexandria joined the fray, fighting to keep Khonsu in place, pummeling the Endbringer, dodging the columns that closed in on her.
It was impossible to say exactly how he did it, but Eidolon managed to catch the light before it could turn the battlefield into a smoking ruin. It condensed into a ball, swinging around past Eidolon as if he were a planet and it was in orbit, and then flew into Khonsu and Alexandria with a slingshot turn.
It wasn't a long, steady stream like the one in New Delhi had been. It was a white bullet sliding out in a heartbeat, cutting past Khonsu, Alexandria and a good mile of landscape, before driving into the ocean at the horizon's edge. Steam billowed out explosively.
Eidolon crossed the battlefield in a flash, weaving to the left of one of the two remaining columns of altered time, the right of the next, and erected a wall to keep the steam from frying the flesh from our bones.
It couldn't have been precognition that let him move that fast. Enhanced reflexes? Something else entirely?
And he'd been saying his power had been getting weaker.
Alexandria had been stripped of much of her costume, but she fought on without a trace of modesty. Legend, too, seemed unfazed, unaffected by however many years he'd spent in Khonsu's trap.
And Khonsu, for his part, hadn't suffered nearly as much as Behemoth had. Five or six layers had been stripped away, and what was left was glimmering with a light that danced around the outside of his body.
The hue and intensity of it matched the light at the edges of his time fields. It slowly faded.
I reached the battlefield proper, but lingered near the back, beyond the reach of the time fields. This wasn't a scenario where I'd be on the offensive. At best, I was a helping hand. My bugs spread out over the area, and I was able to track the movements of the time fields, the combatants. I started drawing out the spools of silk I had on my costume, extending them between me and the various combatants, using the arms on my flight suit to manipulate them and ensure that neither I nor my threads got tangled up.
Spider silk extended between me and the various capes around me. These guys were South American. Three out of four would be in league with the various criminal factions and cartels. One in four were 'heroes'. I couldn't tell the difference between them. The cues and details in their costumes weren't ones I was familiar with. The choices in color, style, attitude and more were too similar. A cultural gap I couldn't wrap my head around, in any event.
Things were confused further by the fact that, by many accounts, the villains running or serving within the cartels were the ones sponsored by the government. The 'heroes', in turn, were rogue agents.
Califa de Perro, King of Dogs, howled and joined the fight, ready to capitalize on the success. In the same instant, I sensed my bugs being eliminated. Not dying, per se, but being eradicated from existence. The ones who'd been following after the column had been caught inside.
It hadn't changed direction. It had stopped, in preparation for a change in direction. I didn't even have to look to see Khonsu's target. I caught an earring of the King of Dogs with my silk, tugged.
He stopped, yelping as he looked in my direction.
"Run!" my voice was no doubt lost in the cacophony. I tugged again.
He used his spear to move. A second later, the time field veered into the space he'd just occupied.
It was moving faster. A third circle appeared, and the movement had accelerated.
Sensing that Khonsu was about to beat a retreat, the Thanda made their move. A piece of rubble descended from the heavens, striking Khonsu with a force that knocked half of the defending capes off their feet, myself included.
Another of the Thanda used their power to anchor themselves to the rotating circles. They floated through the air, equidistant to the circle, effectively untouchable, waiting, watching.
When they reached a certain point in the rotation, they caught a small hill so it could join them, anchored to them as they were anchored to the circle. It swung into Khonsu like a wrecking ball.
The falling star, such as it was, had broken through more of the exterior. Not a lot, but some. As the dust cleared, I could see glimmers of light, dancing through the space beneath the injury.
It was the moment I realized that the motherfucker was reinforced. He had forcefields set between layers, so he couldn't be wiped out in a matter of good hits like Behemoth had been. It was eerily reminiscent of Glory Girl.
Still, he was feeling the hurt. Moord Nag's shadow ripped into the site of the injury, widening it, danced back as Khonsu swung one arm at the skull, clipping and shattering one antler, and then lunged again, driving itself into another injured area.
It caught Khonsu off-balance, and he landed on his back on the ground. The shadow flowed over him, the skull butting him in the face to knock him down once again as he tried to rise. It simultaneously extended out, reaching across the battlefield to push Moord Nag back out of the way of a swiftly approaching Khonsu-field. She stumbled a little as she was deposited a hundred feet back, but she didn't really react. The shadow had more personality than she did, here.
Khonsu had apparently had enough, because he extended his hands out to either side, lying with his back to the ground.
The Thanda member who was rotating around the Endbringer reached out, and each and every one of the defending capes was swept up in his power, drifting counter-clockwise around the Endbringer. My feet lifted off the ground as he rose, and all of us rose with him.
The Endbringer teleported, and thanks to the Thanda, we were collectively teleported with it. My bugs, Moord Nag's shadow, and several tinker-made mechanical soldiers were left behind, as we found ourselves on a beach riddled with stones the size of my fist. Silos bigger than most apartment buildings loomed just over the hill.
The fight resumed in heartbeats, capes closing the distance to fight the instant the Thanda deposited them on the ground.
My phone rang. I felt only alarm for a brief second, my blood running cold.
I sighed and struck a key on the keyboard. The window with the video footage of the Khonsu fight closed down.
I let the phone ring twice more before I made myself check the screen. Tecton.
I wouldn't pick up for most others, I thought. Hell, I'd have left the phone off if I didn't fear that there'd be a critical call. I'd seen most of it anyways. I answered the phone.
"Weaver, where the fuck did you go?"
I smiled a little to myself. It was an eerie, amusing parallel to what he had said in the video, except he was a little more frayed, a little more weary with me.
"You know where I'm going," I said. "So do the bosses."
"We haven't even- you're going to screw this up for yourself. Why now?"
"It's fine, Tecton," I said.
"It's not fine, it's…"
"They don't have to like it. I don't think it matters if they don't."
He seemed to be lost for words at that.
I didn't push the offensive. I'd been working on that in the therapy sessions, not treating social interactions like fights. Calm, patient, I dragged my finger down the side of the screen. The text scrolled down.
Canberra, Feb 24th, 2011 // Simurgh
Notes: Scion no-show. Legend/Eidolon victory.
Target/Consequence: See file Polisher Treatise. See file Lord Walston and file King's Men.
Brockton Bay, May 15th, 2011 // Leviathan
Notes: Scion victory.
Target/Consequence: Noelle? See file Echidna. No contact made.
New Delhi, July 26th, 2011 // Behemoth
Notes: Scion Victory, ENDBRINGER KILL.
Target/consequence: See file Phir Sē.
Flight BA178, November 25th, 2011 // SimurghNotes: Loss? Plane destroyed, Eidolon/Pretender drive off Endbringer. Marks start of guerilla tactics from Simurgh and Leviathan.
Target/Consequence: Incognito Chinese Union-Imperial heir. See files:
America/CUI conflict 2012 A
UK/CUI Conflict 2012 A
America/CUI conflict 2012 B
Yàngbǎn
Indiscriminate, January 20th, 2012 // Khonsu
Notes: First appearance. Scion/Moord Nag victory. List of all one hundred and sixty three targets and casualty numbers here.
Manchester, June 5th, 2012 // Simurgh
Notes: Defeat, no kill.
Target/consequence: still unknown. Tie to Lord Walston?
Tecton interrupted my scrolling, finally speaking. "I kind of hoped we'd gotten to the point where we were okay, that you'd trust me."
"I trust you," I said. "But-"
"But," he said, echoing me as he cut me off. "Take a second and think about what you say next. Grace asked me to call because, I'd like to think, I'm a pretty calm, laid back guy. All things considered, anyways. But I'm on the verge of being pissed at you, and saying the wrong thing now will push this from me being angry in terms of something professional to me being pissed because of something personal."
"Think for a second before you talk, Taylor. You start talking right away and you'll find your way to a really good argument, and I'll concede this argument, this discussion, but it won't get us any closer to a resolution."
"Right," I said. "Thinking."
"I'll be on the line."
I mulled over his words. I was anxious on a number of levels. Terrified might be the better word. I stood on a precipice, and the meeting I was running the risk of missing was only part of it. I continued scrolling down as I thought, as if the individual entries could give structure to my thoughts.
Rio de Janeiro, August 15th, 2012 // Leviathan
Notes: Guerilla strike, mind games. Travels from site to strike Cape Town and Perth after faking retreats.
Target/Consequence: no target apparent.
I stopped at the entry that followed. I clicked it. The one for Bucharest.
The video box opened up, but it was dark, the camera covered by my hair at the outset. There was only audio.
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit." It was Grace.
"Are you hurt?" Tecton's voice.
"Golem is. Shit."
The image wobbled as the camera mounted on my mask did, and the me on the camera moved the hair aside, allowing the camera to record the video. The streets were empty, old stately buildings loomed close on all sides, my bugs crawling along the face of each of them.
There was a beep. The camera was mounted on the right side of my face, the armband on my left wrist, so the glimpse was fleeting. A yellow screen.
"Heads up!" the me behind the camera called out.
"For what!?" it was Annex responding, breathless. "Oh! Oh shit!"
It was only a second later that it became clear just why Annex was swearing. The city shifted. Roads narrowed, doors splintered and were virtually spat out of the frames as the door frames themselves narrowed.
The image on the camera veered. I'd seen the shift coming, and the bugs on the faces of the buildings let me know that the attack was coming a fraction of a second in advance. As buildings on either side of me lunged closer together by a scale of five or six feet each, spikes sprung from the elaborate architecture, from gargoyle's mouths at either side of a short flight of stairs, from the sign that bore a store's name, a blade rising from a manhole cover… ten or twelve spikes, for me alone, each fifteen or twenty feet long. They criss-crossed, came from every direction.
The camera had gone very still. Then, slowly, it moved again, examining the surroundings. Blades and prongs surrounded me, poised ready to prick and gouge like the thorns of a rosebush, all around me. My fingers rose to the camera's view, wet with blood.
I'd only dodged as much as I had by virtue of the ability to sense where the bugs that clung to the blades were moving, and enough luck to be able to move into a space that escaped the various thrusts. The blood had been from a glancing blow, along the underside of my right breast. I traced it now, as I sat in front of the monitor, feeling the spot over where the scar would be. The fucking things were sharp enough to pierce my armor and silk both.
I could remember my outrage at that fact, the stupid, silly comment that had run through my mind, that I'd refused to say in fear that this video would somehow leak as well.
Can't believe the blade hit such a small target.
"Everyone okay?" I asked, on the screen.
I listened to the various replies of confirmation. I followed by relating how the armor I'd made them wasn't sure protection.
Then the camera's view shifted as I freed myself of the spikes I'd so narrowly avoided –mostly avoided-. I took two steps forward, and then threw myself to the ground as a figure sprung from the wall, a woman, moving so fast she could barely be glimpsed. The camera veered again as I rolled on the ground, avoiding two blades that plunged from the underside of her 'body' to the ground, punching into the earth.
She had carried forward, uncaring that I'd dodged, slamming into another wall, and she had left a piece of herself in her wake. Or a piece of what she'd made herself out of, anyways. She'd become the city, and this small fraction of herself had been formed out of the light gray brick that formed the building to my right. She'd left the pillar behind, three feet across, barring my path.
My head whipped around as I followed her progress. One more of the rushing figures appeared a block down, two more behind me, simultaneous. A pillar, then a short wall and another pillar, respectively.
"Heroes, be advised," Dragons A.I.'s voice came over the armband, "The Endbringer Bohu appears to follow a strict pattern. The city is condensed in twenty-four minute intervals, followed almost immediately by the miniature Endbringers producing barriers, walls, pillars, blocking apertures and more. The next phase, occurring gradually over the next ten minutes, will produce deadfalls, pitfalls and a smoothing of terrain features. Following that, we should expect more complex mechanical traps to appear, after which point the cycle will start anew. Be advised that she attacks with the spikes as she enters each phase. Disparities in reports suggest that she is feinting in some cases, feigning an inability to do so."
"Good news," Annex said, over our comm system. "She can't affect what I'm affecting. Bad news is I wasn't entirely submerged. I'm bleeding pretty badly."
"We'll get to you," Grace promised.
I shut my eyes for a moment. Empty promise, I thought.
There was a distant sound of something massive crumbling. I now knew it was Tecton, tearing through the area. I'd be using bugs to direct him to trapped citizens. I was avoiding the terrain features, he was simply plowing his way through them, doing maximum damage.
The image veered as I approached an archway the Endbringer had created. I paused before entering, circumvented it by going over, avoiding the traps I'd noted with my smallest bugs.
I could see her. Bohu. She was a tower, spearing into the sky, gaunt and stretched thin to the point where her head was five times longer than it was wide. Her body widened as it reached towards the ground, reached into it, extending roots and melding into the landscape. Her narrow eyes were like beacons, cutting through a cloud cover that was virtually racing towards the horizon in the gale-force winds. Her hair, in tendrils as thick around as my arm, shifted only slightly, heavy as stone, despite everything. She dwarfed the other Endbringers in scale, one thousand three hundred feet tall, and her body extended into the city. I couldn't even guess at the radius she controlled.
Beside her was her sister, Tohu, who would have been almost imperceptible if it weren't for the glow around her. Tohu, with three faces. Legend's white and blue mask, Eidolon's glowing shroud, and Kazikli Bey's red helmet, each twisted to be feminine, framed by the long hair that wove and wound together to form her body. It condensed into cords and ribbons, and the ribbons and cords, in turn, condensed into her chest and lower body, two torsos made with overlapping versions of the hairstuff, small breasted, with only one pair of legs at the lower half. The colors were extensions of the costumes she was copying, predominantly white here, but with streaks of crimson, green and sky blue highlighting the ridges and edges.
Her four hands were long-fingered, claw-tipped extremities in shapes that served as mockeries of the people she was mimicking. Two of Eidolon's hands with the blue-green glow around them were holding a forcefield up to protect her sister, while a white-gloved one focused on using Legend's lasers to target capes who thought flying up and out of the city was a good idea. Not that it was easy to fly in winds like this. Not the sorts of winds that an aerokinetic like Kazikli Bey could make, capable of slicing someone with air compressed into razorlike ribbons. A hand in a red gauntlet was gesturing, redirecting the wind to blow down, across, and in crosswise currents that formed brief-lived whirlwinds.
The me in the video made a small sound as she took the brunt of that cutting wind, hopped down from the arch, entering the city once more. It was just now starting her third phase, the pitfalls and deadfalls, eliminating cover, cleaning up rubble, and slowly, painfully crushing anyone who had been trapped in either of the previous two phases. If crushing wasn't possible, she would apparently settle for suffocation.
I closed down the video. There wasn't anything more to hear in the exchange between the Wards, and it wasn't a good memory.
Another counter to Scion. All too often, he was late to arrive, and once Tohu had chosen three faces and Bohu had claimed the battlefield, well, the fight was more or less over.
"I could hear," Tecton said. "You were watching one of the Endbringer videos."
"We've been through a lot," I said. "I owe you a lot."
"And we owe you in turn. We're a team, Taylor. You have to recognize that. You know that. We've been together far, far longer than you were with the Undersiders."
I sighed and scrolled down.
Bucharest, October 10th, 2012 // Tohu Bohu
Notes: First appearance. Loss. Tohu selects Legend, Eidolon, Kazikli Bey. Target/Consequence: see file Kazikli Bey.
Paris, December 19th, 2012 // Simurgh
Notes: Victory by Scion.
Target/Consequence: see file The Woman in Blue. See file United Capes.
Indiscriminate, February 5th, 2013 // Khonsu
Notes: Victory by Eidolon/The Guild. List of the twenty-nine targets here.
Los Angeles, May 17th, 2013 // Tohu Bohu
Notes: Victory by Eidolon/The Guild. Tohu selects Alexandria, Phir Sē, Lung. Target/Consequence: unknown.
We'd participated in more than half of those fights. My eyes fell on the clock in the top right hand corner of the screen.
8:04am, June 19th, 2013
"Listen," Tecton said. "I'm not demanding anything here. I just need a straight answer, so I know what to tell the others. If you say you're not going to be here, that's- I'll understand. Except not really, but I'll…"
He trailed off.
"You'll accept it," I said.
"I'm going to lie and say yes," Tecton answered me.
I looked at the list of recent Endbringer fights, flicking my finger on the screen's edge to scroll up, then down.
"I'll be there at two," I told him.
"You will?" He almost sounded surprised.
"We've been through too much, and you're right. I can't throw it all away."
"I'm glad."
"See you in a couple of hours," I said.
"See you, Taylor. Have a happy birthday."
"Thank you," I said, hanging up.
Eighteen, I thought. I stood and stretched, swaying a little as the craft changed course. A two-fingered swipe on the screen showed the craft's course and our ETA. Another two-fingered swipe returned me to my desktop.
C/D: Endbringer
C/D: End of the World
-16:21:56:50
Sixteen days late. The only person more freaked out than me was Golem.
I'd revised the countdown clock to assume that Jack Slash would appear on the date he'd set with Golem. June fourth was the deadline he'd given, for Theo to find him, to kill him, or the madman would kill a thousand people in some spectacular fashion, ending with Aster and Theo himself.
No appearance, no mass murders.
June twelfth was the date the Slaughterhouse Nine had left Brockton Bay. The day that was supposed to start the two year countdown.
It wasn't supposed to be precise, but watching the clock tick with each second beyond the supposed deadline, knowing that something could be happening in a place I wasn't aware of, the mere thought made my heartbeat quicken, an ugly feeling rise in my gut.
Dinah had confirmed to the PRT that things were still in motion, that it was imminent, but the idea was swiftly losing traction.
I'd heard people joke about it. PRT employees who had likened Dinah to the evangelical preachers who promised an endtime, then scrabbled to make up excuses when the date in question passed.
My bugs could sense the insects within the city as the craft descended. Sand billowed in dramatic clouds the Dragonfly settled on the beach.
It wasn't my ship, but the name was a joke, due to the degree Dragon had been sending me this way and that. Defiant was busy now, so it was mostly her doing the chaperoning, when the Protectorate couldn't oblige.
The ramp finished descending, and I stepped down onto the beach, feeling the sand shift beneath the soft soles of my costumed feet. I could have flown or floated, but then I wouldn't have felt like I was truly here.
I ascended a set of wooden stairs to rise from the beach to the street proper, joining the scattered residents who lived here. Men and women on their way to work, starting their day, children on their way to school, many in their Immaculata school uniforms.
I walked, taking it in. The smells, the feel, even the subtleties in pace and general atmosphere, they were familiar, comfortable.
Not good, but they were things I associated with home.
It was an unfamiliar area, but I had studied the satellite maps. I no longer wore my tracking device, but the PRT no doubt knew exactly where I was, for just that reason. If they couldn't monitor the Dragonfly's location, they would have found it on my computer.
I could see additions in the distance, the white tower that speared into the sky, the blocky, windowless structure that contained the scar. It wasn't visible, but I knew I could make my way to the crater and see how they'd drawn up a border around it, done construction work underground to contain the contents and keep the water from eating away at the city infrastructure. I'd read up some on changes in Brockton Bay, had heard more from my dad in our regular visits.
Here, the area was marked with graffiti, always in the same variants, no two pieces alike. Devils, castles, angels, hearts. I suspected the arrangements and combinations meant something. The buildings here were new, quaint, the layout intuitive.
And in the midst of it, they'd wedged in space for an addition. It made for a break in the flow of the footpaths. It forced an abrupt turn, a hesitation as you tried to work out the way to your destination. Accord had drawn out the city plans, and the Undersiders had altered it to make room for this. For a marking.
It fit, somehow, the way it broke the rhythm, the way it didn't really jibe.
The fact, I thought with a slight smile, that it irritated.
Two masks, resting against one another, one almost resting inside the other. One laughing, the other not frowning, but the expression blank. They were cast in bronze, set on a broad pedestal, four feet high.
I approached, my eyes falling on the objects that had been placed on the pedestal. Wedding rings, a weather-beaten gold that didn't match the bronze. Twenty, thirty. I might have obtained an exact count, but I didn't want to dirty it with my bugs.
I turned, looking around, and saw how the buildings surrounding the edifice were marked with graffiti. Castles and landscapes with blue sky above.
"I thought I'd see you first, Regent," I said. "A kind of apology, for not coming sooner. For not being there at the funeral, if there was one."
The empty eyeholes of the solemn mask stared down at me.
"I've thought about a lot of things in the time I've been gone. Framing stuff, stepping back to consider just how fucked up it was that I was spending time with you, condoning what you'd done. You took over small-time gang lords, I know. Took over Imp, even. So why did I let it happen?"
The wind blew my hair across my face. I noticed that there were people staring, looking at me from the other side of the street. Whatever. It didn't matter anymore.
"Then I think about how you went out, and I think… you know, it doesn't balance out. One selfless deed, after all the shit you did? No. But that's your cross to bear, not mine. I don't believe in an afterlife or anything like that, but, well, I guess that's the mark you left. When we die, all that's left are the memories, the place we take in people's hearts."
I reached out to touch one of the wedding rings. It was partially melted into the surface of the edifice. I imagined someone could strike it free with a hammer.
Not that I would do that.
"Sounds so corny when I say that, but it's how I have to frame this, you know? You lived the life you did, with a lot of bad, a little bit of horrific, and some good, and now you're gone, and people will remember different parts of that. And I think that would sound arrogant, except, well, we're pretty similar on that score, aren't we? It's where we sort of had common ground, that I didn't have with any of the others. We've been monstrous."
I let my finger trace the edge of the wedding ring.
"I've hurt people for touching those." The voice sounded just behind me, in my ear. I jumped, despite the promises to myself that I wouldn't.
Then again, she wasn't someone you could anticipate.
"Imp," I said.
I turned around to look at her.
She'd been attractive in that dangerous too-much-for-her-age way before, and to judge by her body alone, she'd grown fully into it. She was statuesque, wearing the same costume I'd given her two years ago, when she'd been shorter. A quick glance suggested she'd cut off portions to adjust, wearing high boots and elbow length gloves to cover the gap, and wore a cowl to cover the gaps in the shoulders and neck. It might have looked terrible, but it fit. Her mask was the same as it had been, gray, noseless, long, disappearing into the folds of the cowl as the fabric sat around the lower half of her face, with only hints of teeth at the sides marking the mouth. The eyes were angled, with black lenses, curved horns arching over her straightened black hair.
"Tattletale said you'd be back today."
"I figured she'd know," I said.
"Was it worth it? Leaving?"
I hesitated. "Yes."
I hesitated, I thought.
"I told the others. They're on their way."
"Okay," I answered. Fast response.
No. Too fast. I reached out with bugs, and I sensed the crowd, the way they were standing.
Here and there, there were people who shouldn't have been paying attention to the scene. A young girl inside one of the buildings with the graffiti-mural on the exterior, holding a baby. A boy was standing a little too far away to see, but he didn't approach to get a better view.
There were a small handful of others.
I looked at the rings on the memorial. "Heartbreaker's."
"He collected them. I uncollected them."
"I'd heard he died."
Imp nodded slowly. "Said I would. I told you I'd kill his dad for him."
An admission. I felt a kind of disappointment mingled with relief. Not a set of feelings I wanted to explore. I suspected the sense of relief would disappear under any kind of scrutiny.
"People keep prying them loose, but there's usually someone nearby to keep an eye out and get a photo or description. I track them down and bring the rings back. Once every few months, anyways. Kind of a pain."
"It's how he would want to be remembered, I think," I said.
No snark, no humor? I wondered how much of that had been a reflection of her friendship and almost-romance with Regent.
"And you recruited the kids," I said. I used my bugs to track the bystanders, my eyes to note more who fit the criteria. Boys and girls, some narrow in physique, most with black curls, others with that pretty set of features that had marked Regent and Cherish. Some were fit on all counts, others mingled two of the qualities and skipped a third. Heartbreaker's offspring, unmistakably.
"I recruited some. They needed a place to go, and it's kind of nice, having them around," Imp said. "They're good enough at fending for themselves. One or two, you get the feeling they're almost like him. In a good way."
"I'm glad," I replied. Glad on more counts than I'm willing to say.
Then, as I realized that any number of those kids might have taken after their father in the powers department, I was struck by the thought that they might know that, that they might report that relief I was experiencing back to their de-facto leader.
If that was the case, they would also report the way I felt ill at ease, just a little creeped out, as I eyed Imp's followers.
Imp was eyeing me. I cocked my head a little, the best expression I could give without taking off my mask, hoping it conveyed curiosity.
"I like you better than her," Imp said.
Like me better than who? I wondered. Than Lisa? Rachel? I didn't get a chance to ask. I was distracted as I sensed an approach and turned to look.
"Bitch is here," Imp said, noting the turn of my head and the figure at the end of the street, ignoring traffic as her dogs made their way to us.
Rachel, I thought.
"She's been going to the fights, helping out here when we send for her. I haven't been going to the fights, so I dunno how much you've seen her there. She's been checking in on me, wandering around here with her dogs and scaring the everloving shit out of people until I come to say hi, then she leaves for another few weeks. I've probably seen her the most."
"I've barely seen her at all," I said. Even with the Endbringer attacks.
The dogs weren't running, and it took me a moment to realize why. There was one dog that was larger than the rest, with half of a bison's skull strapped over the left side of its face, the horn arching out to one side. Armor and bones had been strapped on elsewhere. It didn't seem like something Rachel would have done, dressing up her dog. One of her underlings?
It's Angelica, I realized. The dog lumbered forward, moving at a good clip, but certainly not the speed the dogs were capable of when they went all-out. Rachel was controlling the speed of the other dogs to allow the wounded animal to keep up.
She was riding Bastard, I recognized. It was different from the others, symmetrical, the alterations flowing into each other better. Two other dogs accompanied her. Bentley wasn't among them.
The onlooking crowd, Imp's underlings included, sort of hurried on their way as the dogs approached Regent's monument. Rachel hopped down as they reached our side of the street.
Rachel was taller, I noted, browned by sun, the jacket I'd given her tied around her waist, a t-shirt and jeans, with calloused feet instead of shoes or boots. Her auburn hair, it seemed, hadn't been cut in the two years since I'd seen her. Here and there, hair twisted up and out of the veritable mane of hair, no doubt where tangled bits had been cut away. Only a sliver of her face and one eye were really visible through the hair, a heavy brow, an eye that seemed lighter in contrast to the darkened skin.
And damn, I thought, she'd put on muscle. I'd gained some, working out every day, but even with her frame and her natural inclination towards fitness, I suspected she must have been working hard, all day, every day. Maybe not quite what a man might have accomplished, but close.
"Rachel," I said. I was overly conscious of how we'd parted, of the way I'd left the group and the awkward conversation during the New Delhi fight. "Listen-"
She wrapped me in a hug, her arms folding around me.
I was so caught off guard that I didn't know how to respond. I put my arms around her in return.
She smelled like wet dog and sweat, and like pine needles and fresh air. It was enough that I knew the new environment had been good to her.
"They told me to," she said, breaking the hug.
They wouldn't be the Undersiders, I gathered. Her people, then.
"You didn't have to, but it's… it was a nice welcome," I said.
"Didn't know what to say, so they told me to just do. I wasn't sure what to do, so I asked and they told me to hug you if I wanted to hug you and hit you if I wanted to hit you. Yeah."
I'm guessing she only just decided, I thought. I'd been gambling by wearing my Weaver costume, but then, I hadn't expected them to converge on me like this. I would have changed before seeing Rachel.
"It's good?" I asked. "Over there?"
"They're building, it's annoying to get in and out. But its good. Tattletale made us bathrooms. We've been building the cabins around them."
"Bathrooms are good," I responded.
She nodded agreement, as if I hadn't just said something awkward and lame.
"I remember you complaining about the lack in your letter," I added.
"Yeah," she said.
Wasn't the easiest thing in the world, to carry on a conversation with her.
"Others are checkpointing in," Imp said. "Just to give you a heads up."
"Checkpointing?"
"Teleporting, kinda. Limited. Um. We've only got a second, but you should know in advance that they're married."
But Imp didn't respond.
Foil and Parian appeared in a nearby building, the same building the girl with the baby was watching from. Two others had arrived with them.
Them? I wondered, mildly surprised. Then again, it made sense.
They approached, holding hands, and a bear managed to form itself from the roll of cloth Parian had bound to her back, without anyone, the stuffed creature included, really breaking stride. They'd barely changed, but for a little more height. Foil carried the crossbow that the PRT was apparently maintaining for her, and Parian had donned less dark colors, though the hair remained black.
The two capes with them each wore red gloves as part of their costume. I knew who they were from the stuff on the forums. The Red Hands. The alliance had gone through, apparently.
"So. You draw me over to the dark side, and then you flip," Parian commented.
"I hope it's working out," I said.
She shrugged. "It isn't not working out."
"We're fine," Foil said. "I suppose I should thank you. If you hadn't left, I don't think I could've come."
"You may be the only person to thank me for leaving," I said.
"Don't be so sure," Imp added.
Tattletale arrived next. Grue appeared at the location with more Red Hands as she stepped outside. Where the others had been modest, approaching with a kind of leisure, she almost skipped for the last leg of the approach. She hugged me briefly, then kissed me on the cheeks. The mandibles, really, where the armor framed my jaw. Whatever.
Of everyone, I was least surprised at the changes with her. Her hair had been cut shorter, and she wore a mask that covered the entire upper half of her face, coming to a point at the nose. Her shoulders, elbows and knees had small shoulderpads on them, and there was a definition to the horizontal and vertical lines of black that marked her lavender costume. She wore a laser pistol at her hip, which bounced against her leg as she ran. PRT issue. Extremely illegal to own.
"Jerk!" she said, after she'd kissed me on the cheeks, "You've barely responded to my fan mail!"
"It's kind of hard to reply to it without drawing attention," I said. "You don't know how much I wanted the details on what's being going on here."
"Jerk," she said, but she smiled. "But I should warn you-"
She didn't get a chance to finish before I saw.
Grue approached. Of everyone, he was the least changed. Physically, anyways.
But the Red Hands walked in formation around him, and one, a young woman, walked in step with him, close enough that their arms touched. They could have held hands and it would have been just as blatant.
I'd faced Endbringers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, I'd taken down who knew how many bad guys… and I had no idea how to face this.
He'd moved on, and I was glad he'd moved on. He maybe needed someone to lean on, to give him emotional support, and maybe she was that. I told myself that, I tried to believe it, but I was jealous and hurt and bewildered and…
And I bit back the emotion, approaching, ready to hug.
When he extended a hand for me to shake, I had to fight twice as hard to suppress any reaction to the hurt. I could tell myself that he'd at least done it before I'd raised my arms to hug him, but… yeah.
I took his hand and shook it. Then, on impulse, I pulled on it, drawing him forward and down a little, and put my other arm around his shoulders. Half of a hug, half a shake.
"Happy birthday," he said, after I stepped back.
The others echoed him. Welcomes and happy birthdays. He'd remembered, but… that choice of words.
I eyed the young woman. She was a rogue, in the dashing villain sense, wearing a mask around the eyes, and old-fashioned clothes with lace around her ample cleavage. Her jacket and slacks were festooned with belts, bearing utility pouches and knives. The glove that wasn't red had a knife attached to each fingertip, a brace around it to keep everything in place.
She met my own gaze with one of her own, a narrow, hard look.
"Oh. Skit- Taylor, meet Cozen. Second in command to the Red Hand."
"Nice to meet you," I said. They don't really match.
"Pleasure's mine," she said. "I'm meeting a legend, after all."
Awkwardness followed.
And in the midst of that, Imp's statements finally caught up with me.
I like you better than her.
Don't be so sure, Imp had said. Well, Cozen would be happy I'd left.
Then, with a realization like a dash of cold water to the face, I remembered.
They're married.
"Taylor," Tattletale said, rescuing me before I could say something dumb. She hooked her arm around mine and led me around and away. "Much to talk about."
"The end of the world," I said. "Endbringers. Finding Jack, or the designer-"
Safe topics, somehow more reassuring than this.
"I don't know," she said. "Everyone's playing it safe, keeping things quiet."
"What was the plan?" she asked. "When you came?"
"I've got six hours before I need to be in New York. They're swearing me into the Protectorate."
"Congratulations," Grue said. He sounded genuine.
"I should be saying that to you," I said, glancing at him and Cozen.
"Oh. Thank you," he answered, in his characteristic eerie voice. I couldn't read his tone, and felt a little grateful that at least one of us was spared sounding awkward.
"Six hours," Tattletale said. Another rescue.
"I was going to visit everyone in turn to catch up, visit my mom, then see my dad."
"Well, we're all here. We can go somewhere together," Tattletale said. "There're stories to tell, I'm sure."
"I'm sure," I said. I almost wished my original plan had gone ahead, that I could have a really short visit with Grue, a longer sit with Rachel and her dogs, then a long discussion with Tattletale about what was going on, before I headed off to see my mom's grave and my dad.
"Come on. We'll walk, see the sights," Tattletale said. "figure out what to do for breakfast or brunch."
"Okay," I said. I glanced at the others. Would they be down, or would they back out? Parian and Foil weren't close to me, but they were sticking around. Cozen wasn't making an excuse and leaving, and neither was Grue. I could see him exchanging murmured words with her.
I must have looked a little too long at him, because Imp fell in step beside me.
I glanced at her.
"I was just fucking with you," she whispered. "I thought you probably deserved it."
My stomach did a flip flop at that. Anger, relief, bewilderment, more anger. Still more anger.
"Man, the way your bugs reacted. Hilarious. You act like you're all stoic, but then I just have to look over there and over there and I see bees and butterflies circling around like eagles ready to dive for the kill."
I opened my mouth to say something, but she cut me off.
"She is pregnant," Imp said.
My mouth shut.
"Kidding. This is fun. Come on, butterflies, I see you over there. Do your worst, I know you want to kill me."
I considered jabbing her with my taser, and the thought was vivid enough that I imagined it buzzing at my hip.
Except it wasn't my taser. It was my phone.
As it had so often this past month, I felt my heart leap into my throat, that pang of alarm. A very different kind of alarm than Imp had been provoking from me. More real, more stark.
I drew the phone from my belt, then stared down at the text that was displayed. A message from Defiant.
"Endbringer?" Rachel asked. Something in my body language must have tipped her off.
I shook my head, but I said, "Yes. Sort of."
"Sort of?"
"An endbringer with a lowercase 'e'," I said. "It looks like Jack may have made his challenge to Theo. It's starting."
Posted in 25.06	| Tagged Angelica, Annex, Bastard, Bitch, Bohu, Cozen, Golem, Grace, Grue, Imp, Khonsu, King of Dogs, Tattletale, Taylor, Tecton, Tohu	| 483 Replies


text:
Q: OpenLayers 3 : map doesn't display anything while working with EPSG:2169 instead of EPSG:4326 I'm currently doing a Proof Of Concept involving OpenLayers and I'm facing an issue.
I follow this official sample to try to load a map with raster and WFS layers : http://openlayers.org/en/latest/examples/vector-wfs.html
I can make this sample works fine with EPSG:4326, I take exactly the same code, only things changed are :

*

*vectorSource.url = taking my WFS

*raster.Source = OMS instead of BingMaps

*EPSG:4326 instead of EPSG:3857 from the sample

Here is the JavaScript code :
    var vectorSource = new ol.source.Vector({
        format: new ol.format.GeoJSON(),
        url: function (extent) {
            return 'http://localhost:8090/geoserver/ANF/ows?service=WFS&' +
                'version=1.1.0&request=GetFeature&typename=ANF:PARC_BIODEM_SP&' +
                'outputFormat=application/json&srsname=EPSG:4326&' +
                'bbox=' + extent.join(',') + ',EPSG:4326';
        },
        strategy: ol.loadingstrategy.bbox
    });

    var vector = new ol.layer.Vector({
        source: vectorSource,
        style: new ol.style.Style({
            stroke: new ol.style.Stroke({
                color: 'rgba(0, 0, 255, 1.0)',
                width: 2
            })
        })
    });

    var raster = new ol.layer.Tile({
        source: new ol.source.OSM()
    });

    var map = new ol.Map({
        layers: [raster, vector],
        target: document.getElementById('map'),
        view: new ol.View({
            center: [6.13, 49.845],
            projection: 'EPSG:4326',
            minZoom: 10,
            maxZoom: 28,
            zoom: 10
        })
    });

Now, I want to display the map in EPSG:2169.
When I set the new projection to the WFS layer (vectorSource), it doesn't display it anymore on the map. And when I set the new projection to the map view itself, the HTML page stays white, and the debugger says an error : "ol.js:68 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'H' of undefined"
This is the JavaScript code I would like to have, but that is not working :
    var vectorSource = new ol.source.Vector({
        format: new ol.format.GeoJSON(),
        url: function (extent) {
            return 'http://localhost:8090/geoserver/ANF/ows?service=WFS&' +
                'version=1.1.0&request=GetFeature&typename=ANF:PARC_BIODEM_SP&' +
                'outputFormat=application/json&srsname=EPSG:2169&' +
                'bbox=' + extent.join(',') + ',EPSG:2169';
        },
        strategy: ol.loadingstrategy.bbox
    });

    var vector = new ol.layer.Vector({
        source: vectorSource,
        style: new ol.style.Style({
            stroke: new ol.style.Stroke({
                color: 'rgba(0, 0, 255, 1.0)',
                width: 2
            })
        })
    });

    var raster = new ol.layer.Tile({
        source: new ol.source.OSM()
    });

    var map = new ol.Map({
        layers: [raster, vector],
        target: document.getElementById('map'),
        view: new ol.View({
            center: [6.13, 49.845],
            projection: 'EPSG:2169',
            minZoom: 10,
            maxZoom: 28,
            zoom: 10
        })
    });

My WFS layer comes from GeoServer, and data from an Oracle database, and I'm sure that the data are well available in EPSG:2169. GeoServer says that the native SRC is EPSG:2169, and an OpenLayers preview (always from GeoServer) shows well the layer.
Any idea of why my WFS looks like well working from GeoServer in EPSG:2169 (OpenLayers preview), but not in my web page with OpenLayers ?
Am I missing something ?
Many thanks !

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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text:
<?php

namespace Concrete\Core\Updater\Migrations\Migrations;

use Concrete\Core\Page\Stack\StackList;
use Concrete\Core\Updater\Migrations\AbstractMigration;
use Concrete\Core\Updater\Migrations\RepeatableMigrationInterface;

class Version20150616000000 extends AbstractMigration implements RepeatableMigrationInterface
{
    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     *
     * @see \Concrete\Core\Updater\Migrations\AbstractMigration::upgradeDatabase()
     */
    public function upgradeDatabase()
    {
        \Concrete\Core\Database\Schema\Schema::refreshCoreXMLSchema([
            'Stacks',
        ]);

        if (\Core::make('multilingual/detector')->isEnabled()) {
            StackList::rescanMultilingualStacks();
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
How 40-Year-Old Dirk Nowitzki Is Giving the Mavericks Life From the Sideline
Weekend Read
In the latest edition of the Weekend Read, we catch up with the Mavericks' forever star, highlight our favorite stories of the week and dig up a scrumptious photo from the SI Vault.
By The SI Staff
After participating in his first full practice of the season, Dirk Nowitzki was feeling economical. The rest of his teammates and coaches walked in waves from the practice facility to the Mavericks' business offices, literally next door, for a team function. Nowitzki pulls up in his SUV, having driven over instead. "No extra steps!" he shouts on his way in, having saved himself a walk of maybe 50 feet from door to door.
Challenge his methods if you will, but there's only so much one can say to a man who has played in 92% of his team's games over 20 years. You don't make it to 50,573 career minutes–third-most in NBA history–without good fortune and proactivity. Time, however, comes for even the most mindful athletes. "Ankle surgery was something we all felt was necessary after last year, where I couldn't really move much," Nowitzki says. "So it was either retiring or trying the surgery. We tried for the surgery."
Nowitzki's initial recovery was promising, and even allowed for him to play in pick-up games when the Mavs reconvened in September. Soon after, the tendons surrounding his surgically repaired ankle had inflamed to the point that Dallas all but shut Nowitzki down. "I guess this is normal," he says. It's a miracle that this process–of injury, surgery, and recovery–is still somewhat foreign to Nowitzki, two decades in. Dirk has seen everything there is to see in this sport, but until his last few seasons, he hadn't seen all that much of it from the sidelines.
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"I hate being out," Nowitzki says. "I've gotta say. I don't love it. I'm not the coach guy that pulls guys over left and right and tells 'em something. It's not really my personality." There are other roles for Nowitzki to play, even while out of the lineup. He'll always be an ambassador for Dallas and the Mavericks, as was the case when he was presented with the key to the city on Wednesday night. During games, Dirk is often among the first to lumber off the bench in celebration of his teammates' exploits, making him one of the NBA's most highly accomplished cheerleaders. Nowitzki has become a prop, too, for teammate DeAndre Jordan, who has taken to bear hugging and lifting a suited Nowitzki as he's announced for the starting lineup.
When Jazz center Rudy Gobert got the benefit of a questionable call against Jordan last week, Nowitzki turned into a full-on lobbyist. "Complaining to the referees ..." Nowitzki says, "I'll always be good at that, no matter how far the arthritis has gone in every joint." It doesn't hurt to have a future Hall of Famer as a sideline advocate, but Nowitzki's best in-game work may come from heckling teammates and old friends alike. After 20 years, much of the league is within a few degrees of separation, having either played with Dirk or played against him enough to get razzed. "Mostly," he says, "I'm focused on making fun of our guys."
It helps when the Mavs are winning (as they have in five of their last six games), though Nowitzki is close enough to the end of the road to appreciate how fleeting all of this really is. Soon he'll be back on the court, perhaps even before the end of November, according to Mavs coach Rick Carlisle. Then comes the chore of finding his wind, the attrition of the season, and the kind of maintenance that brought Nowitzki this far. It's the labor of a life's work. "The only thing I can do in this situation is stay positive, remind myself to work everyday, take it day by day, and sorta enjoy the grind, too. You never know. Next year might not be there. So just enjoy being around the fellas and the camaraderie. Enjoy my time." — By Rob Mahoney
• Duke won't go undefeated, but they're well represented atop our first NBA mock draft. (By Jeremy Woo)
• The Markelle Fultz saga grows more complicated by the day. The latest twist could include legal ramifications. (By Michael McCann)
• The late Roy Halladay should be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. (By Tom Verducci)
• No, Condoleezza Rice will not be the next NFL head coach. So who might really be in line as the carousel starts to spin? (By Jenny Vrentas)
• While Fall of a Titan: The Steve McNair Story takes a break this week, catch up on the first five episodes of our serialized SI True Crime podcast.
• How does a blind golfer attempt a 63-foot putt? Let Chad NeSmith and his coach Andy Church show you on SI TV.
Vault Photo of the Week: Caught in the Act
The only thing better than Thanksgiving dinner is ... Thanksgiving leftovers. Two days after Turkey Day 2004, this member of Virginia Tech's Corps of Cadets gnawed on a turkey leg as the Hokies took on in-state rival Virginia. SI's Bill Frakes captured this delicious, mid-bite moment on Nov. 24, 2004.
Virginia Tech won this edition of the Commonwealth Clash by two touchdowns (and a turkey leg).
Editor's note: Below are some of our favorite stories of the week not published by SI. This week's list is curated by Rob Mahoney.
• A public service announcement: The Memphis Grizzlies, defense-first holdouts to the NBA's offensive revolution, hold the best record in the Western Conference, notes Dan Devine of The Ringer.
• How chess became a spectator sport in Norway and, in the process, kind of cool. Andrew Keh of the New York Times has the story.
• From Michael Pina of Vice Sports: Meet Heat guard Rodney McGruder, who played in Hungary just to be different, found employment with the Heat, and has turned into one of this season's best stories.
• In a league defined by miserable job security, unreasonable expectations, and the amplified pressures of the modern media cycle, Damian Lillard is more than a star. He's a rock, says ESPN's Zach Lowe.
• A fun diversion into the life of Keith Dambrot, whose life was forever changed when he coached LeBron James at a Jewish Community Center in Akron, Ohio. Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal has the story.
• Larry Nassar is a monster, a criminal, and only a part of the systemic problems at work within USA Gymnastics, writes Liz Clarke of the Washington Post.
Gift Guide Season
With the holiday season officially kicking off, your wallet's about to get a little thinner. Over the next handful of newsletters we'll highlight one of our gift guides to make that year-end shopping a little bit easier.
To celebrate the nationwide devouring of turkey, potatoes, pie and more this week, let's highlight our Best Gifts for Foodies, Cooks and Eaters.
Philips Avance Smokeless Indoor Grill
Not everyone has the luxury of a backyard, a reasonable climate and an outdoor grill on the patio, but that doesn't mean you need to sacrifice the taste of grilled meats, fish and vegetables. Using infrared technology and reflectors, this indoor grill heats up to a consistent 446°F and cooks food without any smoke.
Editor's note: What kind of stories and content would you like to see in the Weekend Read? Let's chat at SIWeekendRead@gmail.com.
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