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The Skittering Rider

or

A Contract is a Contract

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By DireSquirrel

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Eight year old Taylor Hebert didn't really understand what was going on. Her mother had something called "cancer" and it was bad. So bad her mother might go away forever. Even as smart as she was, Taylor didn't really understand what was going on, why her father cried when he thought she couldn't hear him, or why her mother started hugging her so much.

Still, she was a trusting child, even when interacting with those who didn't deserve the trust.

"Taylor Hebert," he said in a smoky voice. His eyes seemed to twinkle as he smiled down at her. "You don't want your mother to die of cancer, do you?"

"No," Taylor agreed.

The man pulled out a piece of paper. It looked really old, like the pictures you saw of old pirate maps. She was starting to read really well, but she didn't understand all the words.

"Sign here and your mother will never die of cancer," the man said. "Cancer will never make her go away."

"Really?" Taylor asked.

"Really," the man said with a smile, holding out a quill for her. It dripped red ink, and it stung a little but she grabbed it and signed her name as well as a precocious eight year old could. It smoked when she finished, seeming to gleam with fire. "Contract... Complete. Thank you, Miss Hebert."

"Will my mom really be okay, Mr. Barnes?" Taylor asked.

Emma's father patted the girl on the head. "Annette Hebert will never be troubled by cancer again."

The results were miraculous. The cancer, which had seemed on the verge of metastasizing, had gone into complete remission. The Hebert family was overjoyed and in the celebrations, Taylor completely forgot all about the contract.

Less than a handful of years later, Annette Hebert was dead. Killed in a car crash.

She had been trying to call home on her cell phone.

Taylor blamed herself.

The loss broke Taylor's spirit and the next few years would grind her into a dry powder. It would take blood, water, sweat and fire to reform the clay of her person.

Leviathan had come and gone. At the behest of Coil, the Undersiders and Travelers were sent to divide the city up amongst themselves. It wasn't long before Brockton Bay had nine new visitors.

But contracts are contracts, and there comes a time when they must be fulfilled.

Taylor returned to her lair one day after days of horror and death. She fully intended to put Atlas to bed and collapse into her own. She did not, however, expect to see the father of her former best friend sitting on her couch, smoking a cigar. He was dressed immaculately as he did on those days he had to go to work, his coal gray suit pressed and crisp, his blood red tie sharp against his white shirt.

"Miss Hebert," he said with a smile. "It's been a while."

"What are you doing here?" Taylor demanded. "Not satisfied with your daughter ruining my life?"

"Emma's little games are her own, Miss Hebert," Mr. Barnes said with a ghost of a smile. "Children play games. You an me, Miss Hebert? Neither of us are children anymore."

"What-are-you-doing-here?" Taylor enunciated as she called up her swarm. There was no point in pretending, she was still in her costume, just sans masque, and she had a right to protect herself.

He clearly knew exactly who she was and he didn't show the slightest bit of fear.

"Do you remember this?" he asked, pulling an ancient looking scroll out of his jacket. It unrolled and Taylor recognized her childish scrawl at the bottom. "A contract's a contract. Time to fulfill your end of the bargain."

"What bargain?" Taylor asked.

"As per the contract, your mother would never be bothered by cancer again," Mr. Barnes said with a smile.

"She died!"

"But not of cancer," Mr. Barnes said, leaning forward. Taylor let loose her swarm but found it unable to touch him. "Now, now, none of that," he said, putting out his cigar on the arm of the leather couch. "All you need to do is one little thing for me and I'll leave you alone."

"What?"

"Honest," he said, holding his hands up to show no fingers were crossed. "Do me this little favor and I'll never unmask you. I'll keep Emma away from you forever. Heck, I'll even throw my considerable support behind the revitalization of the ferry your father so desperately wants." He smiled a dark smile. "Just one little favor."

Taylor looked at him darkly as he sat there in the red glow of the setting sun leaking in from the western window.

"What favor?"

"Johnathan wanted a life of fun and games," Mr. Barnes said, blowing a smoke ring even though he'd put the cigar out. "He wanted to see his version of the world and be with those of like mind. He made a contract for ten years. It's been ten years and one day. You are going to collect ole Johnathan for me and bring him to my office alive."

"'Johnathan?'" Taylor asked. "I'm going to need more than that."

Mr. Barnes grinned like a shark.

"You've met him," the lawyer said in a voice laced with just a touch of amusement. "He goes by 'Jack' now."

Realization dawned.

"Jack Slash?" Taylor demanded.

"Right on the nose," Mr. Barnes said with a wild smile. "You always were a bright child."

"You are responsible for Jack Slash?" Taylor hissed, both through her throat and through her swarm. She sent them into attack, but he just brushed them off his shoulder like a bit of dust.

"Not anymore," he said, taking his cigar out of his mouth. "Now you are, Miss Hebert."

"You think I can take him? You think I can take alive the man who has a reputation nearing the endbringers?" Taylor exclaimed with more than a bit of anger, she was struggling to keep her temper.

"You won't be doing it as you are," Mr. Barnes said. "You'll have a little more. A little something to make you special."

He held a hand palm up and blew on it ever so slightly. Flames appeared and shot towards the teenage supervillain. It didn't burn her, but seeped inside her, making her sweat like she had a sudden fever. A moment later the sensation was gone, but she had the distinct impression she was missing something, something intangible.

"You'll need it," he said. He stood up and walked towards the door even as Skitter's swarm continued it's ineffectual assault. It was as useless as it was against Siberian. She glared after the man, watching him with thousands of eyes as he hummed an old Rolling Stones song under his breath as he opened the door. Just as he was stepping through the doorway, he paused. "Oh, and Miss Hebert? You have one week."

"Mr. Barnes," Taylor said through gritted teeth.

"Yes?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I am going to hurt you," she replied in a low voice. "It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow. But I will come for you. You are going to pay for what you have done to me, to my mother, to every victim of Jack Slash and for every other 'contract' you made up. And when I come for you, I will look you in the eyes and you will know the suffering you have caused."

"You're welcome to try, my rider."

And then he shut the door behind him.

As far as Taylor could tell, he vanished in the same instant. Taylor balled her hands into fists and stared through the window.

"How much innocent blood as been spilled because of him?" she asked the empty room as the last sliver of red sunlight sank below the western horizon. As the shadows engulfed the room, she smelt the faint scent of brimstone wafting through the room.

It took Taylor a moment to realize the smell was coming from her.

Taylor stumbled around the room as the smell of brimstone and cooking ham increased. Flames started to burn off her flesh and she looked on in horror as she flexed her boney fingers without tendon or muscle to make them move. Taylor stared at her face in the mirror as flesh and cartilage melted away like the Nazis at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie. Her hair, already long and flowing free, was consumed in flames that trailed behind her.

Her costume was darker, twisted into a mockery of the hard work she'd put into it, almost like a hybrid of gleaming silver spider webs and ebony tinted leather, without suggesting she was a walking skeleton. Even as thin as she had been beforehand, the outfit seemed to show off her muscles even more. Taylor summoned her swarm to her, only to find them transformed into countless burning embers that flew on skeletal wings, still the obedient servants that they had been since the locker.

Feeling compelled, Taylor opened the double doors to find Atlas transformed into a giant beetle of black steel, gleaming chrome and a massive blood red horn.

"It's time, my Rider," Mr. Barnes' voice whispered on the wind.

Taylor climbed aboard and they took off, every bug following behind like a cloak of flames.

Outside, Lisa Wilbourn looked up into the sky to see a sight she never thought she'd encounter. Skitter looked quite a bit different than they'd last seen each other. Her hair trailed after her, all flames, even as Atlas left a trail of smoke behind.

"What the fuck?" one of Coil's loaned henches demanded.

"It's-" Tattletale said before her gorge rose and emptied her lunch onto the street. And there was the massive headache. The henches grabbed her before she could fall over. She wiped the bile off her chin and looked up at them.

"Take me inside."

AN: unfinished, but I do want to come back to it sometime. I rather like this false start.