Firefly

The first wave of my insects died abruptly in a swirling flash of flame which told me exactly who had just walked in on the scene of my victory. The high I had been riding just a moment ago? Gone. I suddenly aware of the throbbing in my thigh and the bruise that was no doubt forming the right side of my rib cage. My right hand was pretty much useless. That's what happens when you try to catch a bullet without the necessary durability. It felt like all the bones in it were broken and I tried not to think about it. The only thing I really had were my bugs.

You do not fight Lung with bugs. You do not fight Lung, period.

I only knew about her from what I had heard on the news and read online, but I recognized her immediately. She was a bit shorter than me from what I could tell, standing even with most of the gang members I had just put down. She had an ornate metal mask over her face and was wearing one of those silk Chinese half dresses despite the chill, dyed crimson with a gold dragon snaking up her side. A lick of flame hovered around her head as a reminder of what kind of power she could bring to bear with a thought. And the ABB was her gang.

I was in so much trouble.

Lung came to a stop at the other end of the street and looked around. She didn't look like she was growing or sprouting scales so she must not think I was much of a threat. And I didn't want to be because Lung crushed threats. I wanted to get home alive.

"You did this." It wasn't a question. Her voice was accented and higher than I thought it would be given her reputation. I thought about not answering, but her men were covered in bug bites and I was standing among them injured. It was pretty obvious that it was my fault. The only hope I had was to be polite.

"Yes. Sorry." I winced. Why did I apologize?

She nodded. "They all live?"

"Yes!" I gasped, appalled. I just wanted to stop them, not kill them. I said as much. "They were going to kill kids! I couldn't just - " Then I remembered who I was talking to and shut my mouth with a click.

Lung actually chuckled. "Short sighted." I don't think she was addressing me with that because she seemed to home in on the defacto leader of the small group. He'd gotten a face full of pepper spray and had gone down cursing. He, like the others, had gotten very still and quiet once Lung had started speaking. "You do not burn down house to get rid of pests." Her mask turned back to face me. "You poison them." Her flame flashed out and atomized a fly I'd been trying to sneak by her. "Or you crush them."

This was Lung. Undisputed ruler of the Docks. She could and has faced down entire teams of heroes, handing them their asses and then there was me, with my bugs.

"The Undersiders would have defeated you or fled," she raised her voice. "Look! This one embarrassed you! One!" She hauled the leader to his feet with a swift move, not bothered by his weight. "Where is Oni Lee?"

He mumbled something back.

Lung's head tilted. "I will." Then she dropped him. "You."

I pointed at myself unsure.

She nodded and started walking out of the alley towards me. "Come."

I opened my big mouth. "But I just took down your gang members!"

"You stopped them from being stupid. With bugs." Lung confirmed. That was about when it hit me that for some reason, I wasn't in trouble. Lung had, in a round about way, praised me. Twice. I honestly wasn't sure how to feel about that. "I saw." She stopped in front of me. "What is your name?"

I stared at her. My voice caught in my throat before I was able to get the words out, "I don't...I haven't picked one yet."

Lung looked me over. The metal dragon face was intimidating in the circling light of her flame. "Hachi."

My brain stalled. "Um, what?"

"Bee." She began to walk past me. "You wish that the ones who wronged me live? You will come."

I slowly began to follow her, wary of doing anything that would upset this strange situation I had found myself in. I went over her words in my mind, realizing what she was implying. She was giving me a chance to stop her. No, allowing me to stop her. That didn't make any sense. It was like one of those loaded questions where every answer was the wrong one. What was her game?

Lung's purposeful strides quickly carried her away from me and I hesitated. I could refuse the invitation and not cooperate with a notorious criminal but that would also mean walking away from multiple murders. I couldn't do that. I wouldn't do that.

Lung looked over her shoulder at me and I picked up the pace. The ABB was the biggest gang in Brockton Bay with the second highest number of people with powers if the internet could be believed, just barely beaten out by the E88. Not that there was any real contest, not when Lung was Lung, rumored to get stronger the longer she was in a fight with no upper limit. It was how she stomped all of the smaller gangs at the Docks until they fell in line. ABB stood for 'Asian Bad Boyz' but that was an artifact of one of the larger sub groups, and it really said something about the leadership that the gang included Flipinos, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, even Indian and didn't splinter. ABB meant Lung.

It also meant Oni Lee, a scary sociopath who could teleport or create doubles of himself – I wasn't a hundred percent sure on the details – Aswang, a shape shifter that turned into a horrible dog like monster and a woman named Snake. No one knew what her power was, just a lot of speculation, but everyone agreed she was terrifying. Kali was not someone you want to meet in a dark alley either, specializing in blades. There were less notorious capes but those were the big four.

I honestly wasn't sure if Lung showing up was the best of five or not. Meeting her was still bad news but she didn't have the same kind of vicious reputation her lieutenants did. With them, it was guaranteed you were in for a world of hurt. But Lung didn't need to garner that kind of fear or intimidation. It was more a matter of inevitability. You lose.

I'd been gathering insects as we walked, replenishing the ones I'd lost to Lung's flame. Not that I was thinking of trying again, I was not suicidal, but having options made me feel a bit better about this whole thing. My hand had starting screaming in pain as the adrenaline wore off, but I kept quiet about it. A second ball of flame had joined the first around Lung's head, which was now dead even with mine, and in a few steps, taller. Her hair was bound in a tight bun with a vicious looking needle through it and she was barefoot.

A couple of feet back she had stepped on a piece of broken glass and she didn't even flinch, the bloody glass ejected from her sole mid step as a testament to her regeneration. She was anticipating a fight and it was showing.

Her head turned suddenly. "I hear..."

That's when she grabbed me and tossed me over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

You don't properly appreciate what superhuman strength means until someone carries you in a leap from the sidewalk to the second floor of a building on the far side of the street. She didn't make it all the way to the roof, but then she didn't need to. She just punched with her free hand into the wall and used that as a foothold to make a smaller hop to the roof.

Her hand was mangled but visibly and audibly straightening itself out with pops. Pain wasn't a thing for her apparently. She leapt from that roof to the next one over and then again, before I heard the gunshot. Lung sped up and the very air around her began to heat.

She threw herself over the edge, hoisting me up. "Lee!" And tossed me like a football.

Before I could scream, the distinctive yellow outfit and oni masked man caught me roughly and set me down on the ground hard enough to jar my knees. I didn't go splat, so there was that. The Oni Lee beside me crumbled into ash and I saw him again down the street, gun in hand and I saw the Undersiders.

A man wearing what looked like black motorcycle leathers and helmet cursed, backing up and black smoke started to pour off of him. A blonde haired girl wearing a domino mask was at the back, directing a vaguely female shaped suit wearing a gas mask that spit out flames. The fourth wasn't really wearing a costume, unless a cheap plastic Rottweiler mask counted standing by what looked like monsters, bloodied bone tips sticking out and gashes in their fur.

Lung crashed in front of them like a meteor, literally exploding in fire, detonating like a bomb of roiling fire that set her clothes alight and leeched the water from the air. Underneath the fire eaten holes, silvery scales were sliding out of her skin.

I didn't know what to do. Run? Attack? Attack who? Lung? I was supposed to stop her from killing, wasn't I? But she was on fire and somehow fireproof. What was I going to attack her with?

Rottweiler girl snarled loudly. "Hurt!"

The huge nightmare leaping towards me with its mouth opened wide made up my mind for me. I scrambled backwards and immediately called on my bugs. I had the vague idea of stinging where the skin was split, hoping it was at least a little sensitive, and that led to my current plan: taking advantage of the wide open mouth heading my way. My bees and hornets surged forward ahead of me aiming for the tongue and soft gum tissue.

The monster yelped as stingers sunk into soft flesh in its mouth and in the vulnerable gaps in its skin, sounding a lot like a dog. It shut its mouth with a snap, skidding to a stop. I pressed my advantage. The bugs I'd gotten onto it's back didn't seem to be doing much so I relocated them to it's face, specifically the eyes and nose. If it was anything like the dog it sounded like, those were vulnerable areas.

They were.

It whined as it's paw reflexively came up, trying to brush off its face, sending it crashing to the ground. I felt a vindictive thrill go through me. I wasn't helpless.

As soon as I thought that, a thick cloying darkness swept the street stealing my vision, even the sounds of Lung's fire were muted and up/down seemed to warp. Almost as a reflex I reached out to my insects and I could feel them. And through them the ground they were standing on.

Lung's throaty chuckle echoed quietly. "I can hear you..."

There was a whump sound and the darkness dissipated. The man with the helmet had been thrown bodily into a wall, a streak across his midsection of burned leather. Unconscious, I hoped. Just because I wasn't sure what it was I was supposed to do, didn't mean I liked the thought of failing.

The woman with the gas mask went ballistic, spewing a large wall of flame as the blonde dashed off her mount to grab their fallen team mate. I'd already gotten to my feet again, running forward. Lung was at least seven feet tall now and wreathed in flame. I spared a moment to question whether or not she needed to breathe before I got close enough to really feel the heat. I didn't know the exact temperature but papers on the ground were simply igniting.

Oni Lee blinked to the other side of the napalm wall and was instantly tackled by a dog monster. A second later all it had was a mouthful of ash as he reappeared on the roof of an adjacent building with a torn sleeve. It threw itself at Lung instead and instead of meeting it head on, Lung swayed to the side, grabbing on to a spike of bone and helped it swing past her. Really helped it. It crunched into the dumpster down street and lay still.

Rottweiler girl didn't appreciate that, screaming.

"Bitch, no!"

"She -" the girl – Bitch? - couldn't get the words out.

The blonde shook her head harder.

Gas mask spit out more flames, hot enough to eat through the concrete at Lung's feet. The gang leader simply took a step. Yup, fireproof. Gas mask back pedaled.

"Shit shit shit, guys! Need to go!"

Bitch whistled and a crushing weight crashed into me from behind. The dog, I'd forgotten about the one I'd fought! I panicked, lashing out with everything I had, feeling my breath being crushed out of my lungs and drool drip into my hair.

Then the weight was gone, replaced by stifling heat. I rolled over.

Lung.

She'd dropped the aura of flame just enough to keep from singing me. I couldn't see the expression on her face because of the mask but she didn't look at me for long. I tried to wrap my mind around what had just happened. She turned her head and I could see her scales receding. "Lee."

Oni Lee blinked down to the street. I could vaguely make out the Undersiders making their escape on foot, the man draped over a dog. The one that had been knocked off me slunk to its feet, growling but retreated.

"Let them go," I coughed.

Lung studied me. I couldn't see her expression through the dragon mask but I was getting that impression from her quiet stare. I, on the other hand, tried to ignore just how much of her clothing had burnt off. Not an easy feat considering I was still on the ground and she was standing over me. I sat up.

Thank god for my mask.

"Ah." She said, a drawn out sound. Then she walked past me in the opposite direction of where the Undersiders had gone, and was shrinking steadily in height, her wreath of flame becoming three balls of fire, then two. That was a yes then, I thought. And in spite of this being the outcome I wanted, Lung actually listening to me, the fact remained that Lung listened to me. I didn't have to bodily hold her back from caving in someone's head, not that I could have even if I had tried to.

But now this was really not making sense.

Oni Lee crumbled into ash, popping back up on the roof once more, then popped down. "Militia."

Lung stopped walking and chuckled. "Hachi."

I wanted to scream. Hachi was not my name! And I was pretty sure that was a number, not an insect! However, what I wasn't about to do was accuse Lung of bad Japanese. I just pointed at myself again to be sure.

She nodded.

Great.

I rolled onto my feet, biting back a scream when I accidentally put weight on my broken hand. And it was definitely broken. I had no idea how I was going to explain to my Dad how I managed to shatter my dominant hand while I was supposed to be home asleep. I was going to have to cross that bridge when I came to it.

By the time I reached the end of the street, Lung was back to baseline and Miss Militia's jeep came roaring around the corner, a stylized American flag prominent on it's hood. I knew what this looked like. Me, in my dark costume not attacking nor being attacked by Lung and Oni Lee. And Lung could say with complete honesty that I had helped her fight off a rival gang.

This was...this was just what I needed tonight. Really.

Miss Militia left her jeep running idle as she climbed out of it and the pistol at her side transformed with a flash of shaped green light into what I think was a kind of Asian sword, complete with a yellow threaded tassel hanging off the pommel and a dragon's head as the hand guard.

Her "street level" costume was a simple camo uniform tailored to emphasize that she was a woman, a sash with the red, white and blue pattern around her waist and a matching scarf covering the lower half of her face. She had shoulder length dark hair and expressive eyes underneath furrowed eyebrows. She'd always struck me as being personable on her interviews, I could only hope that carried over to real life.

Miss Militia was one of the Superheroes, capital S, part of the largest superhero organization in the world called the Protectorate. Brockton Bay's team was government sponsored, officially 'The Protectorate East-North-East,' and were headquartered in the floating, force-field shrouded island you could see from the Boardwalk. They were also the last corner on the triangle of power between the E88 and Lung.

The reality of it all was that Brockton Bay was in the middle of an arms race between the major parahuman groups, and when that happens, there isn't a lot of room for the little guys. The Merchants had been the first to go. They used to infest the really poor parts of town and were heavy into the drug trade but they had a habit of, well, poking the sleeping dragon.

Said dragon took offense.

And if it wasn't that, it was Nazis. I was sure the only reason the Undersiders lasted this long was because they were good at the smash and grab, but if tonight told me anything, was that they had definitely bitten off more than they could chew. Either they learned or they were gone.

I'd wanted one night before I was forced into a group, one way or another. Just one.

But I got this instead.

Miss Militia approached, nodding politely. "Lung."

"Militia."

I could see faces in the windows, looking out and a few civilians, Asian, trickled onto the street. Lung adopted a particularly lazy posture with not a care in the world that she was beyond half naked in front of a crowd. I assumed modesty was a pipe dream when your powers had the habit of depantsing you. Not like anyone was going to arrest her for public indecency anyway.

Some of the tension bled out of the hero's eyebrows. "We got a disturbance report with the key word being 'fire.' Would you mind telling me what went on here?"

"I told Aswang to keep control of his men, did I not?" Lung commented idly, completely ignoring the hero's question. I didn't get the feeling that it was a rudeness born of disrespect, as strange as it was, more like she was leading up to something.

"Yes," Oni Lee said.

"He already received his warning." Lung pointed at me. "Hachi stopped them from hunting down the Undersiders." There was an alarming grinding sound until I realized it came from my own teeth. This was not the way I wanted to receive credit for my heroics. "I would handle it but his fear is to be caged. I will give him to you."

Miss Militia sighed. "I understand. Where?" Lung stared and she rushed to clarify. "So that we can be there for the pick up to make sure that he..."

"You misunderstand. He will not be moving."

The silence after that was a bit awkward.

Miss Militia coughed once. "I see."

Lung nodded. "And you can tell Armsmaster that he need only ask for a fight and I will give it to him."

"That..." Militia pinched the bridge of her nose. "That really won't be necessary."

"So he would rather provoke me into one."

"He was not trying to..." Militia visibly thought about her next words when Lung's floating flame switched directions. This was actually a lot more cordial of a meeting than I had expected but it also made a depressing amount of sense. It was the exact same thing I had done: Be polite. It really said something when a government sponsored hero used the same survival tactics a complete rookie did. "He's been under a lot of pressure lately. I am sure he meant no offense."

"That is why they send you now."

Militia sighed again. "No comment."

That got an amused snort. Lung held out her hand and Miss Militia drew her sword and placed the handle in the upturned palm. Lung inspected the weapon in silence. She hefted it lightly, bringing the blade up to the mask before handing it back. "The blade needs more flexibility, but better."

The corners of Miss Militia's eyes crinkled and I felt like she was smiling. "Thank you." She cleared her throat and shifted to face me. "Do you mind if I speak with Hachi here?"

My dreams of choosing my own cape name died a fiery death.

Lung waved magnanimously and Militia's eyes crinkled again. "So..."

"I'm not actually ABB," I blurted out immediately.

"Appropriated?" Militia finished for me with a slight laugh to her voice. "You should have seen Vista after she was temporarily recruited."

Vista was the name of a Ward, a junior hero in the Protectorate several years younger than me but the only thing I could think was: Jesus, she even did it to heroes?

"Were you planning on joining the Wards?" Militia sobered, dropping the volume of her voice. I wasn't sure if her efforts meant anything, not when I remembered Lung's amused proclamation while cloaked in darkness that she could hear.

"Eventually," I admitted. Escaping the stresses of school by throwing myself into a mess of teenage drama, adult oversight and schedules seemed counter productive, but what choice did I have? "I just wanted one night to myself, you know?"

Miss Militia hummed and I was struck by how nice she seemed. Understanding, like I could tell her anything and she wouldn't judge me for it. How much of that was my hero worship and how much of it was her I wasn't sure, but it was a really nice feeling.

"Lung has her eye on you."

I swallowed hard. "I figured."

"Call me at the PHQ," she offered. "If you would like any advice or just to talk, alright? I can make the time." I nodded, not trusting myself to respond around the lump in my throat. Her eyes crinkled happily again. "I only ask that you make an informed decision." She nodded to Lung, turning to walk back to her jeep. "Lung."

"Militia."

"Are you going to make a pitch too?" I said bitterly as the jeep drove away.

"I do not compete." Lung said harshly.

Shit. I backpedaled. "I mean, what would you want with me? I...I control bugs. I'm not strong or fast or can build things," I was rambling.

Lung cut me off. "You wish for strength?"

My favorite heroine Alexandria came to mind, invulnerable and physically the strongest cape in the world. At one time I had wanted nothing more than to be like her, tying towels around my neck and pretending to fly. Then I get super powers and not only did it send me to a psychiatric hospital but when I got back to school nothing had changed. Bugs.

"Disappointing."

That stung.

"I don't understand, why not? I mean, I could barely take care of myself against someone else's pet, what if I had to fight you?" Then I hastily added. "For example."

"Think of something," she said drily. "Flexibility, creativity. The hornet is not a weak creature. Do not trap yourself saying you can't." Her voice turned a bit hollow. "And do not focus on an enemy so closely, you miss the ground washing away beneath your feet. Do you understand?"

I nodded.

She inclined her head to me and it felt like recognition. Lung was a cape that could stand next to the Triumvirate. Alexandria. Legend. Eidolon. She was on the TV roughly every three months in some place around the world. On my first night out, Lung knew I existed. That should be terrifying. I couldn't work up the words to respond, my mind spinning in circles but soon I realized I didn't have to say anything. The silence was comfortable. I had to be exhausted out of my mind if I felt this way. It must be at least two in the morning and if I was feeling camaraderie with Lung I really needed sleep.

Oni Lee was first to go, leaving just ash on the wind.

"Do not interfere with my people again."

"Why?" Lung turned back and I took that as a sign to continue. "Why did you say all that? Why did you..." save me, I didn't say.

Lung took two long steps right up to me and reached out. Her hand came down on my shoulder and it was a pulsing heat, seeping all the way through the layers of spider silk and it felt like into my very bones. When she spoke, it was slow, purposeful and it resonated. "This is your springtime."

She dropped her hand and walked away. An old woman on the corner held out silken red robe reverently. Lung took it, they bowed to each other and wrapped it around herself without missing a step. She took the needle out of her hair, spilling it and twirled the metal spike in her fingers absently.

I stood there on the street corner, stunned. My shoulder was still warm as if branded. Marked. I was ashamed to admit, even in the privacy of my own head:

I almost followed her.