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Chapter Text

"--Bipedal, anthropoid with canine or lupine characteristics, digitigrade, seven to eight feet tall-- no, it's hard to say exactly due to his stance-- yes, it's definitely him. The radar and cameras on the Rig tracked his trajectory from that airburst--"

Bayleaf came to. He was lying on his back in the sand, tingling and aching in a most extraordinary fashion from… what was it?-- oh yeah, Armsmaster had TAZED him. What a great guy. Wait. An airburst? Explosion? He must have made one hell of an entrance. And over the airspace of a superhero base, no less. That explained a little of why Armsmaster was so quick on the trigger.

Bayleaf lay very still. He had no intention of acting in any fashion that got him zapped like that again. He carefully thought out his next course of action…

Suddenly it dawned on him. He had an "in," now. He had Armsmaster, the Protectorate's walking recruitment poster, right here. Give him five minutes-- assuming the tinker cape didn't have an itchy trigger finger and tased him again-- Armsmaster would be hardselling him to enlist. From there it would be smooth sailing, right through the PRT doors. Hi there, I'm a new Cape, golly gee I always wanted to be in the Wards...

"--the suspect made aggressive moves..." Armsmaster was saying, his finger pressed to the corner of his visor. Bayleaf could hear a faint, but clearly agitated voice arguing with him. "--He bared his claws and fangs at me!" Armsmaster protested.

Bayleaf considered the pros and cons. Pros: immediate legitimacy. Food, clothing, shelter, and funding. Access to materials for his "tinker powers" as an enchanter and engineer. Close proximity to several of the important individuals in his little quest… not the least of which was being within throttling distance of Shadow Stalker aka Sophia Hess. he could potentially intimidate the girl into leaving Taylor Hebert alone. Failing that, put her in a hammerlock and force her to behave herself. Or straight up outing her to the PRT for her criminal actions.

"Regardless of what it looked like to YOU, Dragon--"

Downsides: some real biggies. The PRT was secretly run by Cauldron. It was also currently infiltrated by Coil. Its Director in Chief was a Cauldron cape named Alexandria who was a borderline sociopath who would snap an innocent's neck in an eyeblink to keep Cauldron's secrets; The regional director was a bigot who'd rather slowly die of kidney disease than let a Cape heal her. Her potential replacement was a xenophobic warhawk that made her look reasonable just by contrast.

"--I'm requesting permission to use Tinker tranquilizers on this one-- Because it will be more efficient to let him regain consciousness in an environment under our control--" Bayleaf heard teeth grinding. "On what grounds?"

Then there was the petty bureaucracy. The administrators, lawyers, and bureaucrats would be watching his every move and dictating when and where he could work, sleep, or take a pee. It would be impossible to perform his mission with all that breathing down his hairy neck.

And he wasn't sure he could put up with Glenn Chambers for five minutes without killing him. If he was anything like in canon, the PR idiot would tie a ribbon around his neck or something 'to make him more approachable by the kiddies.'

"---send out prisoner transport, along with containment foam. Tell them to send the news crews out here too--" more chatter. "It's not about taking credit," Armsmaster said stiffly. "I just want them to assure the public that the cause of the disruption has been dealt with--"

And he'd be working with this doink. He growled silently to himself; that did it, no sale. He'd go full Indy and stay that way.

He must have growled a little less than silently because he heard Armsmaster jump. There was a whir of micromotors from his armor. "Freeze!" Armsmaster barked. "Do not move, do not attempt to come any closer."

Bayleaf raised himself up on his elbows and glared at the man. "You TAZED me," he said in disbelief. His new voice, surprisingly, was not a raspy growl like he suspected, but a low, smokey bass, almost like James Earl Jones.

"That dart should have had you out for at least another 10.25 minutes," Armsmaster said, clearly displeased. His grip tightened on the haft of his weapon.

"Guess it wasn't as efficient as you thought," Bayleaf couldn't resist needling him. Thanks to his wolf ears he could literally hear the egotistical tinker's teeth grinding together. One thing canon got correct: Amsmaster's Tinker ability had a specialization in making things more efficient. Anything with overlap, lag, leftovers, or superfluity grated on his power's nerves. He would, canonically, burn weeks on end for a tenth of a percent improvement in weight or battery life. And Armsmaster's ego was practically flammable if you suggested his work was inefficient in any way.

"You're being detained," Armsmaster grated out, "For invading the restricted airspace over the Protectorate base in the Brockton Bay harbor--"

"Invading the-- I was plummeting to my doom from umpty thousand feet up!" The hero's officious, authoritative attitude was getting on Bayleaf's nerves.

"You will be interrogated," Armsmaster said impassively, "and if your story clears than you will be released without incident. If you resist arrest it will go poorly for-- do NOT move!" In the middle of his little speech, Bayleaf had casually flipped to his feet and taken a step towards him. "I SAID FREEZE!"

"Yeah, I heard you," Bayleaf said, holding up his hands, palms out. "Freeze." His palms swirled with forest green light. The ground around Armsmaster's feet erupted, and in a twinkling he was cocooned in the coils of thorny green vines as thick as his armored thigh.

In World of Warcraft, Entangling Vines was a low-level power, so badly nerfed by timid designers obsessed with "game balance" as to be literally worthless. Here though, it was pretty darned effective. The thick, woody vines were so rigid and tough that the armored hero was completely immobilized. Not that it kept him from trying though; he grunted and strained with all his might, barely making the leaves adorning him rustle. "Computer! Emergency Escape Code--"

Bayleaf darted his hand in and crushed the microphone embedded in Armsmaster's chin strap with his claws. He hooked his fingers around and stabbed out what he suspected were the eye motion tracking sensors in the visor for good measure. "Ah ah ah," he said. "You're in time out, Mister." With those out of commission, Armsmaster would be unable to use voice commands or eye motion to activate any of his surely countless nasty little gizmos. Hal-beard was going to stay put until the cops showed up to free him and Bayleaf was long gone.

"That was Protectorate property you just destroyed!" Armsmaster yelled.

"Really… Don't… Care." Bayleaf turned to go. "Later, Hal-beard."

"Wait!" the voice was tinny and clearly feminine. Surprised, Bayleaf stopped. One of the lenses on Armsmaster's helmet was swiveling to track him. "Please, don't go."

Bayleaf bent over and squinted into the lens. There was only one person that he could think of that it could be. "Dragon, I assume?" he said. Dragon was another individual from canon: an artificial intelligence built by a very paranoid Canadian Tinker, who incredibly became a Tinker herself when her creator died in the Endbringer attack on Nova Scotia (at least, that was what happened to him as Bayleaf recalled it.) Unfortunately, the Tinker in question had apparently spent too much time reading bad sci fi about robots overthrowing their masters, and had put countless poorly thought out "safeguards" into her programming that effectively crippled her, and even threatened her life. Finding a way to free her was on Bayleaf's rather extensive to-do list.

As it so happened, she was also close friends with one Colin Wallis, aka Armsmaster. She collaborated with him often via internet, and actually dreamed of moving their friendship into a more romantic arena... possibly because she was the only sapient being on the planet who could tolerate his presence for more than five minutes.

"Indeed," the A.I. said. "I am Dragon, an associate of the Protectorate and PRT."

"You hacked my gear?" Armsmaster looked utterly offended.

"Needs must as the Devil drives," she said to him. "Now hush. Please, sir, allow me to apologize for Armsmaster's…. precipitous actions. Your arrival caused a bit of alarm, and it put him a bit on edge. You do understand."

"He fired on an unarmed man," Bayleaf growled grumpily. "And then got on the phone to call the five o'clock News to brag about it." Armsmaster stiffened-- well, as much as he could stiffen, wrapped in wooden vines.

"Again, I apologize," Dragon said. "I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding. You are apparently a new Trigger, a Case 53, and out of your element. Please reconsider. I know this is a poor first impression, but the Protectorate and the PRT can be a real boon for new capes such as yourself. If you cooperate with the Protectorate they can help you out."

Bayleaf realized that this was another golden opportunity: a chance to drop a few important bugs in a very important pair of digital ears. He decided to seize it with both hands. He let an expression of disgust cross his face. "Your local director is a bigot. Your PR office is run by idiots. You have a bullying psychopath in the local Wards --" (Armsmaster's bearded chin twitched; ding ding, he obviously already had his suspicions who was being referred to)--" and word is on the street that you're riddled with Coil's spies."

"Spies?" she said faintly. Hook, line, and sinker, Bayleaf thought smugly. That ought to set the super-intelligent AI to sniffing around for Coil's fingerprints months ahead of schedule.

"--and even without that, you're so tied up with red tape you can barely move, much less DO anything," he snorted. "So no thanks." Once again he turned to go.

Of course, Armsmaster couldn't let that go. The Man With No Personality had to stick his oar in. "I don't know where you came from," Halbeard yelled at his retreating back. "But things will go a lot easier for you here in Brockton Bay if you work with us heroes and not against us!"

Bayleaf stopped, turned back and got up in Armsmaster's face, looming over him. "Get one thing straight, you tin-plated, cereal-box-top Judge Dredd wannabe," he rumbled, his muzzle threatening to curl into a snarl. " You're no hero. You're a grand-standing, glory-hogging, rent-seeking Prima Donna, and I'd rather be shot with a taser again in the DICK than work with you."

Someone behind him spoke. "Holy--!" He spun around. Standing there on the beach were a couple of teenagers in heavy coats and hoodies and carrying backpacks. Bayleaf had no idea what a couple of kids would be doing out in the Ship's Graveyard on a freezing cold day like this. Worshipping crack and smoking Satan, for all he knew or cared. But they had obviously just stumbled on their little tableau and were staring in astonishment at the sight of the lead hero of Brockton Bay being held at the mercy of a bedraggled seven-plus foot tall wolfman. "Hey!" Bayleaf barked. They jumped. "Either of you got a cell phone with a camera?" The one on the left nodded.

Bayleaf loped over with his hand out. The kid pulled out a smartphone and very nervously handed it to the worgen. "Thanks." Bayleaf loped back to where Armsmaster still stood wrapped in vines, fiddling with the buttons. "Camera, camera-- how do you—ah!" He threw one beefy arm over Armsmaster's shoulders, held up the camera, pulled the goofiest expression he could think of, and clicked. The armored hero made a sound suspiciously like 'arrrgh.'

"Congratulations, pal," Bayleaf said, tossing the camera back to the kid-- who barely caught it; he and his friend were now laughing fit to split a gut. "Enjoy your instant million-hit blog post." He heard sirens faintly in the distance. "Later." He turned, started to run, and in between one step and the next transformed from an enormous black wolf-man into an enormous black sabertooth tiger. To shouts of "cool" and "awesome," he hit all fours still running-- and then faded away, vanishing into thin air.

"That camera is now legal evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation," Armsmaster shouted at the teenagers in a warning tone. They ignored him, the phone's owner gleefully working the keyboard.

"Too late, Colin," Dragon murmured in his ear. "They've already posted it to Facebook."

"Arrrrrghgggh."

Notes:

It is only fairly recently that I realized: A story about a world being savaged by giant indestructible monsters who are only vulnerable at their cores; a defense force that is nothing but a false front for a malevolent, all encompassing world conspiracy led by amoral masterminds; and the only ones who can save the world from annihilation are a bunch of horribly traumatized teenagers---

Worm is just Evangelion with capes!