Worm 1. Exterminator 1

Exterminator

1\. 

A car pulled up, and another three guys got out and joined the crowd. I couldn't make out their faces in the glare of the front lights. Shortly after, the group – twenty or twenty five in total – started walking north, passing below me as they walked down the street.

I was out of time to consider my options. As much as I didn't want to face it, there was really only one option that I could have no regrets about.

I shut my eyes and focused on every bug on the neighbourhood, including the sizable swarm I had gathered on the way into the Docks. I took control of each of them.

Attack.

It was dark enough that I could only tell where the swarm was with my power. That meant I couldn't even tune out the swarm if I wanted to have any idea about what was going on. My brain was filled with horrendous amounts of information, as I sensed each bite, each sting.

As the thousands of insects and arachnids swarmed over and around the group, I could almost see the outlines of each person, just by sensing the shapes of the surfaces the bugs were crawling on, or the areas the vermin wasn't occupying.

My concentration was shattered when a few hundred bugs of all sorts simply disappeared, only to pop back into my power's range in the open air high above me.

Shit!

Oni Lee had been on site after all, and now I had to fight not only one impossibly strong parahuman, but a freaking teleporter too. I still controlled the insects which had gotten under Oni Lee's clothes though, so maybe all wasn't lost yet.

Inspiration struck and I directed the dozens of spiders hanging on to Oni Lee while he was falling back to earth to crawl in the direction of his face.

Blinding someone by injecting spider venom into their eyes was an extreme measure, but I had to get him out of the fight as fast as possible to concentrate on his even more dangerous boss.

It was too little too late - I felt him teleport again through my bugs, and this time he appeared on the roof beside me, just twenty feet away and blocking the fire escape. My spider attack squad had reached his face by now, but he was furiously wiping them away with his left hand while his right fumbled for something in his pockets.

Maybe he was going for a gun, maybe for something even more sinister, it didn't matter.

I had to act now and my power reached out to every flying insect of the swarm, ordering them into kamikaze attacks. I would pump up his hands with wasp and bee venom until he couldn't even put a finger on the trigger of a gun, but the bugs would need precious time to reach us up here.

Down in the street, a fireball erupted from Lung, and hundreds of my insects, many of whom I had just recalled to my aid, were burned to crisps, distracting me for a decisive second by falling out of my perception.

When I turned back to the foe at hand, I realised my mistake- Oni Lee had found what he was searching for and he didn't hesitate to use it. It was a grenade, shining ominously in the orange light of Lung's pyrokinetic eruption as he tossed it in my direction.

I threw myself backwards with all the leg strength I had built up through months of running, desperately hoping to get out of the blast zone. Then I was basked in white light and knew no more. 

I came back to consciousness a mess, wet from head to toes and shivering from an all encompassing cold. The ague was terrible, locking up all my muscles and making me a prisoner in my own body. I could see nothing but darkness and the only sounds besides the clattering of my teeth were irregular animal calls I couldn't identify.

I must've drifted back into a near coma, because the next time I opened my eyes, I was blinded by the intense rays of a summer sun standing above me. The shivers had fallen away, probably due to the warmth from the life spending orb in the sky.

I felt as if a train had hit me and when I remembered the actual events, I realized that the metaphor wasn't that far off, with Oni Lee's grenade and all. I concluded that I should be happy to still be alive and even without crippling wounds, as far as I could tell. I contemplated that thought lazily and quite happily, ignoring the irritating wetness still clinging to my costume, until the meaning of „sunshine" and „daylight" penetrated my still hazy thoughts.

Dad! He would be worried to death about me when he found my bed at home empty and not even a note from me about „leaving early" or something. I had to get back as soon as possible!

My body rejected any commands to rise up and jog home rather insistently though, going as far as giving me black spots in my field of view for my struggles. I fell back to the wet and spongy ground, exhausted and terrified by the thought of my dad calling in the cops to search for me.

How would I explain the costume, the mask? Could I deal with my dad and random police officers knowing that I was a parahuman? Would they expect me to join the Wards, throwing me from one cage - highschool - into another?

To distract myself from those wretched possibilities I couldn't do a thing about at the moment, I tried to focus on the here and now. Where exactly had I ended up following the explosion? And why was I still alive at all, after provoking two ruthless villains?

The answer to the first question might entail the one to the second, but I grasped that only much later, after I had fought back the shock I got when my still addled senses revealed the reality of my situation.

I found myself in a vast, stinking landscape of mud, grass, moss, stunted trees and ponds, with no hint of civilization in sight. No traffic noise, no contrails in the air, nothing.

It must've taken me more than a few minutes to fight back the utter confusion at the sight in front of my eyes, but before I managed it completely, thoughts of my dad, the cops and my utter helplessness returned, throwing me into another loop of anguish.

Tears streamed down my cheeks under the mask and my body shook with random but painful hiccups. Dad, the foul wasteland around me, my weakness, Lungs firestorm, the cops, a white hot flash, all formed a horrible kaleidoscope of emotions, impressions and shreds of rational thought that made me feel as if I was a pinned down insect on a wheel of fortune, spun by unimaginable forces.

Then, I threw up everything left in my stomach - luckily only bile, it could seep from my mask without suffocating me - and passed out for the third time in a day. 

There must be some truth to the proverb that „One gets used to everything", because the third time I awoke from a blackout, I stayed that way. My body felt frail, but the shivers hadn't returned and the sun was still up, although much less warmth reached the ground than before.

I sat upright with some difficulty, fought down the spinning motion my distorted sense of balance produced, and finally managed to stand up firmly, or at least as firmly as the soaked ground permitted. I had to get to my house, try to do some damage control, everything else was secondary.

But where to go? The area around me was so full of undergrowth, muddy ponds and other features strange to a city girl like me, that I couldn't make up my mind. While I turned around on the spot and pondered my options, a mosquito landed on the left lense of my mask and tried to jump its sucker into my eyeball.

I slapped it away reflexively, but it had given me an idea. I was a cape after all, maybe not with a very impressive power, but still. I stretched out my „sixth sense", and immediately uncountable tiny bulbs lit up in front of my „inner eye".

The number of invertebrates around was humongous. Nothing I had ever felt in Brockton Bay, even after gathering huge swarms for my cape work, could compare to this sensation.

There were literally millions of mosquitos in my range, and an unbelievable number of other bugs: Horseflies, bees, spiders, dragonflies, all kinds of beetles, wasps and hornets living off them, even some strange crustaceans under the murky water.

I struggled with mental overload for a moment, but my new multitasking abilities were up to the challenge, sorting the most useful bugs out, giving me a feel for their location relative to me and ignoring pointless things like earthworms and crabs.

My understanding of the environment improved by leaps and bounds, but my mood took the opposite direction. There was not a single sign of human habitation in the range of my power, no people, no houses, no cars, nothing artificial at all.

I was stranded in a huge tract of wilderness where Brockton Bay should be, and there was not even a hint which direction would lead me home or at least to the nearest village.

The part of me clinging to rationality as if it was a life belt started to analyse the data I'd gathered and came up with several scenarios that could explain my current situation. Maybe Oni Lee's weapon had just been a stun grenade and he deposited me in this miserable swamp to die? Or had I manifested another power in my moment of need, transporting me to the largest aggregation of insects within reach?

I speculated and hesitated for an eternity of torturous indecision, until I resolved that I simply had no choice but to start walking in the direction from which my swarms reported less water and more firm ground. This was a swamp after all, and I felt no desire to end up as an especially curious bog woman for future archaeologists.

Luckily, the summer heat - I decided to ignore the fact that it should be a cold January day in North America - must've dried the marches considerably, because I could traverse most areas without being sucked into bottomless mud.

From time to time I decided to take detours around especially ominous looking patches of so called „land", but I could hold to a surprisingly direct route. I utilised my bugs to prevent me from walking in circles, following straight chains of dragonflies I formed in front of me and stretching them out constantly to the limit of my power's range.

I had to take rests every few minutes, a combination of my general weakness, the difficult terrain and the emotional mess I was constantly battling down slowing me to a crawl. When the sun finally dipped behind the horizon, I hadn't hiked more than five miles, but felt as if I'd been on a forced march of thirty.

With the twilight came a feeling of being constantly watched, reminiscent of long forgotten childhood fears about monsters hiding under the bed. The tactile senses of my bugs showed no threat, nothing bigger than some pheasants and other swamp dwelling birds were near, but my uneasiness didn't go away.

I pushed on, grimly determined to use any last ray of light I could to get out of the mess I found myself in. Half an hour later, I regretted my thoughtlessness very much, when the solid surface I was walking on suddenly vanished and my next step threw me into a slimy pond of disgustingly smelling fluid.

It wasn't deep, the brackish water only coming to my shoulders, but I felt with bone deep fear how my feet were sinking into the mud on the bottom. As if the earth itself wanted to suck me in.

Maybe I would've drowned there in my exhausted state and wearing my armoured costume, never to be heard about again, but my flailing arms caught hold of the solid branch of a bush that protruded over the edge of the water.

I struggled, my heart pounding rapidly, trying to keep my nose above the water line. An adrenaline rush gave me additional power and I started to simultaneously push into the mud enclosing my feet and to pull on the lifesaving plant.

The hold on my feet lessened and with the most powerful pull I could manage, I got myself onto save ground again.

I lay in the dirt, spent beyond anything I'd ever experienced. It took long minutes until I could drag myself a few feet away from that damned hellhole, roll myself into an embryonic position to preserve body heat, and fall into an uneasy sleep. 

My empty stomach woke me up. It was growling like an angry bear and for a few moments, I imagined how I would feed it with a nice cheese sandwich and bacon while dad was drinking his coffee. With that thought of my father, reality caught up with me.

When I opened my eyes, I found that I was still lost in an unknown and much too boggy part of the world, without any idea how I came here and where I could find the nearest outposts of civilization. With the light of day, the horrible anxiety I'd felt yesterday returned in full force.

I was a useless „hero", a loser who had botched her first fight. For a moment, I thought I could almost hear snickers and whispers, Emma and her friends gossiping about stupid Hebert, who thought she could play hero, but would only drive her father into an early grave, as she'd done with her mom. I shook my head to get rid of such self- defeating fantasies.

Still, I had no doubt that dad would be out of his mind with worry by now, he would surely have called the police and given a missing person report. Maybe he had already mobilised his friends in the union to tape search posters on street lamps with my bony face on them.

My eyes teared up again, but I forced the guilt, fear and hopelessness back. I couldn't dwell on such feelings if I wanted to get out of here. It was no use. If I wanted to survive this swamp, which had nearly killed me already only hours ago, I had to concentrate on the practical side of things.

Like food. After three months of intense running, I had no fat reserves left on me and I didn't carry any eatable – or otherwise useful – items in my costume.

If I didn't get enough calories into my still weakened system, I would only get worse until my body went into lock down and I died a horrible death out here. What could I do to prevent that? I started to list options, every new idea less palatable than the last one.

I could try to find eatable berries or mushrooms, sure. But how did I know they were actually not poisonous to humans? Trial and error might end deadly.

Or I could simply use my powers and hunt a few birds... only to pluck and butcher them with my bare hands and eat their raw meat? Or even find the species of bugs that tasted best uncooked? I shuddered.

Finally, I decided that I should take a look at the crabs which were living in the ponds of this trice damned swamp. I'd remembered from a TV show that raw seafood was a delicacy in parts of the world, especially Japan. Maybe I could bring myself to kill and eat crabs?

When a small group of the animals followed my command and marched up to me for inspection, I gave up the thought. They looked disgusting, with mud everywhere on their tiny bodies and not enough meat to actually bother. It might well be better to go hungry today in the hope that I would find other people in the next 12 hours. Yes, that would surely be better than cracking crab armor and picking out the flesh.

Water was another, even more pressing problem. My throat was parched and I felt an intense thirst, even stronger than on that one occasion in my early running days, when I'd forgotten to hydrate myself beforehand.

Looking at the swamp water in the nearest ponds, I had the terrible thought that I would have to drink this stuff before long. Not only disgusting to look at, but guaranteed to be full of germs and parasites. The only alternative to imbibing that was to find flowing water in time.

I started todays hike without further ado.

Finally some luck! After three or four hours of walking and wading through the seemingly endless swamp, I stuck gold in the form of a small river, maybe a dozen feet wide, that was meandering across my way. The water wasn't moving fast, but the current was visible and the water less murky than that of the ponds. I didn't hesitate to drink from it, using the useless paper from the small block I carried in my costume as an impromptu filter against suspended matters

I drank my fill and felt much better, at least until I realised that I had nothing to carry the relatively clean water with me. Maybe it would be prudent to change my direction for the first time since I began my hike and follow the little stream, instead of crossing it? Who knew how long it would take to find another source of (barely) drinkable water?

I was sitting on the riverbank, resting in the shade of a stunted birch tree, and tried to make up my mind, when a deep humming sound entered my consciousness. I stood up, closed my eyes and threw my focussed perception into my power, but the insects around me weren't encountering anything unusual.

The sound grew louder, until I suddenly knew what it must be- a massive airscrew plane had to be flying in my direction. I hadn't identified it at first because those planes were very rare today and their noise was unfamiliar. Elation and hope surged through me- if I could somehow get the pilot's attention, I was as good as saved.

Stepping out of the birch's shadow, I faced the direction from which the engine sounds approached. Nervous energy flooded my whole body. I simply had to make them see me, and my powers were the best bet to achieve that, regardless of problems that might arise from being outed as a parahuman.

I clenched my teeth, closed my eyes once again and called upon every flying insect in a radius of 200 feet. They rose from the ground, the swamp water, the undergrowth, first thousands, than hundreds of thousands, finally more than a million bugs of all species.

I formed them into three titanic spherical swarms and had the individual insects fly close together, to make the mass as opaque as the globes of living chitin had formed, I ordered them to rise into the air above me, stopping them at a height of about 300 feet.

It took all my concentration to control so many bugs in such a precise way, but I somehow managed and started the next stage of my plan: Let the balls, with a diameter of more than 20 feet each, dance around each other in a complicated pattern that had nothing in common with the usual ways insects moved. Yes, that should do the trick.

I didn't have to wait long until I could see the plane in the distance, speeding towards me with droning motors. On the current route, it would pass maybe a mile to my right. It looked quite peculiar, with a very short hull which was reflecting the sunlight from dozens of windows and hung suspended between two long nacelles, that ran backwards and formed a rectangle with the elevator.

I instructed my swarms to dance even more energetically around each other, providing a bizarre spectacle that looked as unnatural as I could make it.

If the pilot missed this, he should be fired for incompetence, I thought.

He didn't.

The plane changed course and dived down, until it was flying as low as 600 feet when it passed overhead.

From this distance, the huge, white coloured swastikas on the wings were impossible to miss. 


	2. Exterminator 2

AN: Yeah, here is the second chapter of "Exterminator". Have fun and remember- Worm belongs to Wildbow, I'm just using his creation without any intend to make money.

2.

„What the heck is going on?" was the first coherent thought that shot through me as soon as I recovered from the utter outrage and disbelieve that the Nazi emblems on the plane had produced.

I turned around to keep the strange craft in my sight as the range to it grew, and tried to formulate a hypothesis, any idea really, what this meant. Maybe my still unexplained transportation to the swamp had left me in the middle of a historical re-enactment?

Or, more plausible with my current luck, I had stumbled into the personal playing field of the Empire 88. A shiver ran down my spine despite the warm morning and I started to summon more bugs to me from further afield than before, while I ordered the three huge swarms high above me to stop their now useless dancing and come back to the ground.

I had already half convinced myself that Kaiser or one of his henchmen was sitting in the departing plane's pilot seat, when it reached a distance of about a mile and went into a sudden, very tight and therefore quick turn back to my position.

At the same time, it started to dive even deeper than before and my view of it was blocked by the intense reflection of light from the cockpit windows.

Everything about my displacement into this bog felt wrong and surreal, but swastikas on an aggressively flying vintage plane went a step further and made the hairs on my neck rise up.

Flight or fight reflexes set in, but I fought them down while I wrecked my brain how to react to this as of yet merely potential threat. After all, I couldn't just attack the plane with my bugs while it was still possible that some wacky rich lawyer-cum-wargamer was flying it.

A sound I had until that moment only heard while watching TV broke through the humming of the airscrews.

„BRATATAT!"

I had half a terrified second to stare at the bog water that fountained into the air mere feet in front of me, then my breastplate was hit by an giant hammer and I was thrown backwards into the mud.

Pain like I'd never felt before stabbed into my chest, driving tears into my eyes and deadly terror into my heart. I could … not … breathe.

I tried to roll towards the river, but my confused, adrenaline fueled efforts only resulted in flopping around like a fish on dry land in the slippery muck.

My panic rose to a fever pitch when I realized that my lungs kept refusing to inhale fresh oxygen, suffocating me. Animal instincts sprang up and I crawled towards the river on all fours, hoping against hope that I could disappear in the water.

„BRATATAT"

That fucking asshole was still shooting at me!

There were no more strikes like the first devastating one, but I felt fifteen bullets which produced very hot channels of displaced air passing just yards behind me, before smashing into the dirt.

My lungs burned like fire, my ribs throbbed terribly and I was sure that I wouldn't make it to the stream.

I was going to be murdered here, in this godforsaken quagmire, shot down like a duck by someone I hadn't even seen face to face and never harmed in any way. Dad would be devastated if he ever learned about my inglorious end...

Wait- how had I known about the number of slugs and the change in air temperature their passage left behind?

My bugs!

Somehow, while I was reeling from getting hit by a plane- mounted weapon, the swarms had reacted, swirling around me and shielding me from view.

Upon realising this, I felt my power swell rapidly inside my head until it „clicked" in an as of now unknown pattern - and without any conscious effort, four human shaped swarms sprang into being and left the irregular formation that centered on me, moving away swiftly in all compass directions.

„BRATATAT"

„BRATATAT"

The gunner poured out longer sheaves of fire now, obviously confused by my swarms and trying to make up for the uncertainty of his target with large quantities of ammunition.

For now, the bullets rained down on the two clones moving perpendicularly away from the planes' flight path – and, luckily, from me.

After another torturous and seemingly never ending span of moments, I found myself on the bank of the river, with spasming lungs and spots in front of my eyes. I had only seconds left before I lost consciousness!

With a last effort, I managed to slip into the water between two thick bushes overhanging the bank, finally getting some cover other than the very conspicuous swarm still hovering above me.

My fingers fumbled as I tried to weave some of the bushes' elastic branches around the straps of my mask, to keep my head over water when I passed out. I did the same to the piece of armor protecting my left elbow so I didn't drift away in the very weak current.

Sluggishly, I pressed my right hand to my chest and tried to massage the area over my solarplexus, but the chestplate that had saved my live just a minute before hindered my efforts.

I felt unconsciousness rushing towards me, and with my last thoughts, I directed a few hundred spiders in the vicinity to secure my improvised hold on the bushes with their silk, while the rest of the amorphous cloud of insects was ordered to slowly move downriver, as if following the current. After that, darkness claimed me.

Falling unconscious all the time really sucks, especially when you aspire to be a hero, but a bullet to the solarplexus might excuse my nearly dickensian proneness to „faint" in this case.

When I came back to myself with a start, I found my body softly swinging in the river current and quickly learned that I was unable to move my head or my left arm.

Obviously, my spiders had followed their orders even after I passed out - a feat I hadn't managed before - because my left arm and the branches woven through my mask straps had been mummified with spider webbing, securing me from being carried away and/or drown.

Before I got myself free of my impromptu „cocoon", I focused all my senses to detect the madmen who had tried to kill me, but after a minute, I hadn't been able to see or hear the plane, and the bugs in my range didn't detect anything unusual.

I relaxed a fraction and had the small army of spiders that was still hanging around in the two life- saving bushes – feeding on themselves – come back to me and start to dissolve their work.

While my minions were busy, I distracted myself by trying to puzzle out the newest insane facet of my very involuntary „swamp adventure", but didn't get anywhere. Without knowing who the pilot and crew were, I could only speculate and come up with increasingly unlikely explanations.

It occurred to me that the swastika was not only the symbol of Nazism, but also a religious sign in Buddhism, as I had learned from my mom when I was about ten, following a rather embarrassing incident involving a waiter at a Chinese restaurant and a swastika adorned bronze Buddha.

But would a bunch of nihilistic gangsters like the ABB use swastikas while they were engaged in fighting the Empire88, who used the same markings? That sounded like a recipe for disaster to me.

I concentrated back on the here and now when I felt my bugs cut through the last threads of silk binding me. I still had to leave the bog behind ASAP, now with the added complication of air raids and possibly other hostile activity.

I began to haul myself back to what constituted „land" in this environment, but was stopped cold by terrible pain stabbing into my chest where I'd been hit. I clung to the branches desperately, fighting back tears and afraid to move.

When the torment in my ribcage finally abated, I tried to use only the muscles in my arms to pull myself from the water, so that I could go easy on the areas most affected by the kinetic energy of the bullet.

I had some false starts and further attacks of horrible agony, but finally I got my body back to the bank of the river. This normally insignificant task had exhausted my so much that I didn't try to move further for a long time, just lying there in the rays of the descending sun.

It would be dusk soon and I would need to survive another wet and clammy night in the quagmire from hell. Better to search for a somewhat sheltered area now, one where I wouldn't run the danger to roll into the river in my assuredly restless sleep.

I tried to sit up, but my injury had other ideas and pierced my whole chest with pain, making me scream out loud. When I was able to form coherent thought again, I realized that I was going nowhere in my current condition. I would be lucky if the affected rips weren't broken in a dozen places.

"Damn, if I can't even stand up now, I won't be able to walk another mile tomorrow, not to mention get out of this place!" I thought with rising dread. And if I couldn't get out, I would still end up dead.

No, this would not happen, I wouldn't allow it.

There had to be a way to get to safety and I would find it- but not now. Spent and wounded as I were, I needed rest more than anything else. Closing my eyes, I ordered my army of spiders to secure me to the ground of the riverbank, did a last check of the landscape around me via my other bugs, found nothing dangerous, and let myself drift into sleep.

As I had predicted, my sleep was interrupted many times by the uncomfortable conditions of the swamp and the dull aching of my ribcage, but when I woke up at sunrise, I felt at least somewhat better.

While my spiders dismantled the silk lines that had prevented me from becoming fish food, I fought to get the growing pangs of hunger and the aftereffects of being shot from my mind and concentrate on a solution that would save my live.

I pondered several options, from staying put and eating bugs to crawling through the bog in short legs, but they were all unbearable and unlikely to be successful. When my body was free of its security web again, I had another go at sitting up, but was met with the same result of excruciating suffering.

No, moving under my own power was impossible and my bugs, even in in huge swarms, weren't able to lift me even a few inches.

But wait… lifting up? There was a river right in front of me! If I used the current, I could actually do what I had feared yesterday - drift on the water. The only problems with that plan were the facts that I couldn't move for shit, was still weak and didn't know a thing about conditions downriver, like rapids, falls or dangerous human construction.

Entrusting myself to the stream would be an enormous risk, that was a sure thing, but maybe I could mitigate it at least a bit by using my powers. After all, my costume had stopped a slug from what was most likely a heavy machine gun, why not try my hand at another bug made item?

I thought about what I needed, made up a basic concept and got started. There was no time to waste.

I expanded my awareness, took control of several hundred swamp crabs around me and directed them to come out of the water. At the same time, I gathered more and more spiders of all species to my location, until thousands of them surrounded me.

Following my orders, groups of crabs started to attack bushes, sizeable weeds and tree saplings with their scissors, cutting them down and towing the pieces in my direction.

I had them lay out the thickest and straightest pieces of green wood in a parallel pattern on a flat area of the riverbank, mere feet from the water. When the base of my construct was about six feet long and three wide, I set the crabs to add another layer crosswise.

Now the spiders came into play - I used them to weave the two layers of wood and other durable plant matter together, while I sent the crabs out to do another round of micro- lumbering.

I repeated the process several more times and had the crabs tighten the integrity by knotting branches together until I was satisfied that my new "raft" had enough mass and solidity to keep me afloat.

It was a hack job, rough and ugly to look at, but I hoped it was good enough to carry me out of the marches.

The last mission of my crabs was to find me a long stick that I could use to stay in the middle of the river and get obstacles out of the way.

The sun had risen to its apex before the crustaceans had felled a sapling that fulfilled my needs, cut off all branches and hauled it to my float. Launching the raft and getting on the product of my labor proved to be a stretched out and utterly torturous process, mostly because I had severely underestimated its weight.

After two hours of agonizingly slow and embarrassing fumbling around, including crawling and crying like a baby, I was finally able to push off the riverbank with my staff and start what I called "invalid rafting adventure" in a fit of gallows humor.

The raft stayed afloat reasonably well and even kept me somewhat dry. I drifted downriver undisturbed for a long time, the current staying slow and sedate. The landscape hadn't changed much, but then, I didn't make more than three or four miles per hour.

I used my powers to keep a lookout in every direction and kept a small but potent swarm of wasps and hornets close to me so that I could react rapidly to threats on the ground.

I also formed huge clouds of mosquitos and flies on several fixed points around me, dissolving them when they dropped out of my range and building up new ones immediately. I wouldn't be surprised in the open by a hostile plane a second time.

More time passed and after five or six hours, I noticed that more and larger trees grew on the banks, hopefully indicating that the marchland started to give way to firmer ground around me. Shortly after my attention was sharpened by this observation, I found the first signs of human habitation in the form of fences corralling lush grazing land.

When I spotted barns and dirt tracks, I sighed in bone deep relief - it had been the right decision to confide myself to the river, I could never have walked the twenty miles or more I had traveled on the water to reach this place.

Only minutes later, I came into control of an impressively large group of insects that had gathered of their own volition, attracted by several large buildings full of pigs and cattle. I had discovered an occupied farmstead and hence the first ground bound humans since I arrived in the swamp.

And to my intense pleasure and comfort, it was only a hundred feet away from the river, obviously depending on it as a source of water for the animals. Without delay, I started to steer my float to the right riverbank, angling to land at the point from which I had to cross the shortest distance to the farm.

When the houses came into view my happiness got knocked down several steps – sure, this was an inhabited farm, with at least five people inside as I sensed through my bugs, but it looked nothing like the ones I knew from TV.

Most of the buildings were old and in poor repair, the roof ridges hanging through as if under a great weight and there was no machinery or other modern equipment in sight.

Well, regardless of their economic standing, here lived people who could help me, who would surely feed a wounded parahuman and get me in contact with my dad or at least some local authorities. I was as good as rescued from my ordeal!

I landed safely next to a small pier that had a boat tied to it, letting out a breath of relief as I crawled back onto firm ground. Mobilizing my reserves, I started to drag myself in the direction of the houses.

I'd considered to use bugs to get the attention of the people inside the farm, but had decided that I didn't want to frighten them with my rather creepy power if I could help it.

The same went for shouting loud enough to reach them in the farm. That would only scare them and make them wary before they got a good look at me.

When I had crawled about 50 feet, roughly half the distance, I had to pause due to the constant pain the movement produced in my ribcage. Luckily, a huge lime tree stood next to me and I crawled the few feet over to rest against it in the long shadow of the mild evening.

Twenty or thirty minutes passed while I recovered. I was just preparing to take the last leg of my awful journey, when my power alarmed me to unusual movement on the brink of my range.

I concentrated and discovered that a group of a dozen riders were coming in my direction, the smell of their horses luring scores of flies and other insects to them and giving me a very good "view" of them.

Their clothes were of the same cut, they wore iron helmets on their heads and every single one had a long contraption of iron and wood strapped over their shoulder, most likely guns.

The hairs on my neck rose up as the logical conclusion of my surveillance hit me like a ton of bricks – these were soldiers or maybe a band of bandits, and they were coming down the dirt track that led only to one destination- the farmstead before me!

There was no chance to get back to the river before they reached the farm, I realized with rising fear and anger. Why the fuck did those strange guys with guns come to this of all places at the same time I was hoping to get rescued by its residents?

I summoned my "contingency"- swarm from the riverbank and hid it in the crown of the lime, while I gathered more swarms around the house, holding them in reserve. If this situation developed as I suspected and feared, I would need them.

Having done everything I could to get ready, I focused back on the riders, who were about 200 yards away by now. If they were really wearing uniforms, I reasoned, I may be able to identify them by their national emblems or other symbols. I send a group of horseflies to explore the uniform of the soldier in front, probably their leader, and let them move over his shoulders and collar.

Then I froze and a deep dread rose up within me. There were indeed signs on this soldiers' collar – my bugs had crawled over them and sensed their slightly elevated form. I knew them all too well, they were known around the world as an universal symbol of evil: SS.


	3. Exterminator 3

AN: This chapter is pushing the T rating. If you think I should go up to M, let me know. Also: I really like reviews, they keep me motivated and help to improve my writing. It would be very kind if you would leave me some, even if its negative, even if you want to flame me. Thank you.

3.

The last days had taught me some hard earned lessons, amongst others, that being passive and undecided was deadly.

That's why I pulled myself together quickly after the fresh shock, and soon my power hummed with barely restrained aggressive energy as I summoned more and more bugs to me, placing swarms in treetops, high above the farmhouse and inside its walls.

Whoever the approaching men really were, E88 goons, unhinged reenactors or "soldiers" of some sort, whatever their intentions and possible connections to the plane crew who attempted to murder me, I would be ready for them.

I highly doubted that they were here for a courtesy call anyway.

When the riders entered the wide yard in front of the farmhouse in a light canter, their horses blowing and foaming at the bridle, I peered around the tree of the lime, trusting in the lengthening shadows and the mass of lime tillers growing from the trunk to conceal me.

Their uniforms were gray, not black like the SS garb I'd seen in historical pictures, but their whole bearing screamed "danger" to me, not to mention the obsolete but deadly guns, grenades, daggers and pistols of their equipment.

I watched as a handful of men slid off their mounts with graceful and practiced ease, handing their reins over to some of the others, who formed a semicircular perimeter around the farms' front entry, still on horseback and guns in hand.

Two more rode off to the back of the main building, where they took guarding positions.

One of the men now on foot was the guy I'd identified earlier as their leader. He was tall and muscular, quite young, had piercing blue eyes and very handsome features that might've made me blush under different circumstances.

I named him "Goon 1" when he marched up to the entrance as if he owned the farm, followed by another "soldier" who was holding a submachine gun at the ready, backing him.

"Goon 1" used his gloved fist to hammer a threatening staccato against the door.

"Kontrolle! Sofort aufmachen!"

Hearing him bellow those words in what I clearly identified as German was like a flashback to some old war movie, but before I'd fully realized the surrealism of the situation, the man covering him began to yell too, this time in a language I couldn't determine. It sounded like something from Eastern Europe though- perhaps Russian?

Maybe the fellow was a translator?

Had that damnable grenade of Oni Lee thrown me to the other side of the world? Or, might I entertain the devastating thought I'd suppressed since I had noticed the changed seasons, even further, onto another earth?

After the menacing shouting, the leader started to pound the door again, even harder and faster than before.

The people inside the farm had reacted to the sudden commotion in their front yard by hurrying to a small room at the back of the house, where four of them, of whom two were quite short, most likely children, were closed in by the fifth, a stocky man wearing rough homespun clothes.

When the shouting started, he went back to the door hesitatingly, but stopped short of opening it, instead using a small hole in the wood to take a look at the uninvited "guests".

In the meanwhile, "Goon 1" seemed to have lost his patience with the farm's inhabitants, because he stepped back, gave the translator a wink to follow him and called out a one word order.

"Kolben!"

I didn't speak German, but the meaning became instantly clear as the three other soldiers on foot rushed forward, turned their guns around with deft moves, and started to batter the door's lock with their weapons' butts.

Whatever these thugs thought they were doing, the farmer on the other side of the door wanted no part of it.

I could hear him protest over the hammering and the dozen bugs I had positioned on him sensed his rapid breathing and the perspiration breaking out all over his body.

Part of me was sorely tempted to intervene, to show the men in Nazi- uniforms what I thought of their actions and attire, but an attack of my bugs might cause them to open fire or throw grenades before they were fully incapacitated, possibly torching the house with the civilians still inside.

I couldn't risk the life of children just for my personal satisfaction in taking the goons down and so I resolved to wait, watch and muster as many bugs as possible to my swarms.

Also, my last attempt to save "kids" hadn't worked out that well, if I was honest with myself.

If the thugs showed any intent to harm the residents permanently, I would attack them.

After a few more hits, the lock gave way with a loud "Crack!" and wood splintered in all directions. The "soldiers" pushed the door's remnants out of their way to enter the house.

The farmer had taken a few steps back and raised his hands shoulder high in an appeasing manner, but the first "soldier" to reach him struck him in the face with his rifle's butt, knocking him out instantly and sending him to the floor.

More goons dismounted, charged into the house and started to ransack every room.

I sat behind the tree and gnashed my teeth in fury, observing how they opened every closet, ripped bedding apart, smashed kitchenware and finally found the small room where the rest of the farming family were hiding.

They made short work of that door too and herded the terrified women and children out with rough pushes and rougher words.

Not five minutes after they'd arrived, six of the German speaking henchman held the whole family at gunpoint in their own yard.

The children were crying and the younger woman, presumably their mother, tried to soothe them while the older looked after the farmer, who was probably her husband, and showed signs of coming to.

The rest of the gunmen were still on a rampage through the farmhouse and the barns and I began to fear that they would find me despite the lime tree hiding me standing off to the side.

If they searched the property as thoroughly as the buildings, they couldn't overlook me, even in the faint daylight that remained.

To my relief, "Goon 1" and the translator guy came back to the front yard only moments later.

The leader had obviously signaled an end of the brutal search operation to the other men, who returned shortly after and took back control of their horses from the two who'd stayed back to hold the animals.

They secured the mounts outside one of the barns, binding the reins to a rope one of them had stretched between two pegs swiftly hammered into the ground.

A few of the men pulled storm lanterns from their saddlebags and lightened them, giving me a much better look of the events unfolding. That was good, because I couldn't read facial expressions and slight changes in body language with my insects.

My light relaxation at the end of the rummaging turned into renewed alarm when "Goon 1" walked over to the prisoners in his confident gait and started to interrogate the groggy farmer.

He barked his first question in a tone that threatened bodily harm if he wasn't answered to his fullest satisfaction.

"Wo sind die Versprengten?"

The translator did his job and the farmer answered haltingly, struggling to speak with his swollen lips and likely broken jaw.

When the words had been put into a long and unintelligible German sentence, "Goon 1" stood still for a moment, as if in thought, before he walked over to the young woman with her children.

He crouched down in front of the smaller kid, a little girl of maybe three years, who'd hidden her face in her mothers' apron at his approach.

"Was für ein hübsches Kind." he said, turned his head around to the rancher and grinned widely, showing white teeth that reflected the lanterns radiance eerily.

What happened next would stay forever burned into my mind.

The man I'd internally designated as "handsome" only a quarter of an hour ago sprang back to his full height like a jackknife, gripped the child's long hair with his left hand and dragged the screaming girl away from her helpless mother, who looked on in terror.

He was fast, too fast for me.

In front of the horrified eyes of the farming family and my unbelieving, paralyzed gaze, "Goon 1" pulled a massive black pistol from the holster on his left side, pointed it at the toddler, and shot the little girl in the head from less than a feet away.

The anguish, anger and sheer hatred that rose inside me when I witnessed this murder of an innocent was indescribable. Even the news of my mother's death and all of Emma's torments paled into insignificance compared to the emotional impact of this abominable act.

And... I had been here all the while, I could've stopped this when they attacked the door. I could've saved the girl's life.

But I'd been overcautious and unsure of myself and let THIS happen.

My guilt burned as hot as my anger, fueling it even more, until I felt as if I would explode from the pure fury inside.

In that instant of extreme emotional upheaval, I became one with my power.

The massive swarms I'd gathered didn't any longer feel like external agents I could order about. No, they had been transformed into extensions of my own body, into muscles, arms and fingers as dexterous as my own.

And those virtual body parts were itching for action.

When I used bugs against Lung's normal gang members, I had made sure not to kill anyone or maim them permanently.

But this was different.

I didn't give a fuck if the child murderers I was about to stomp into the ground had even a chance to survive. This was war now. And I was an agent of swift and devastating justice.

Tens of thousands wasps and hornets I had gathered in the top of my lime catapulted themselves forward. They needed less than ten seconds to reach the killer and his confederates, and the wrath with which they attacked was mine.

35.000 flying insects bunched together sound like a possessed lawnmower, and the thugs noticed something was wrong a moment before my swarm was upon them, but they could only look around in confusion to find the cause of the noise, without time to do anything more than stare.

The first targets my hornets hit were the men's eyes. A dozen of the largest specimen I could find in the swarm emptied their poison glands into each single eyelid - in a simultaneous attack, producing well deserved but still stupendous pain, with the convenient side effect of blinding the henchmen.

The Nazis – what else could they be after the disgusting casualness with which their leader extinguished a small child's life - reacted by crying out in pain and terror, but I'd only waited for that.

Filling their mouths with stinging wasps, I literally poured winged death down their throats, with the intent to suffocate them. Through the senses of my dying minions, I could feel the flesh in the men's wind pipes swell up rapidly.

They fell to their knees one after the other, ejecting strange sounds, a mix of coughing and screaming. To an observer from further afield, who couldn't see my bugs, it would've looked like an attack by chemical weapons.

While I controlled the strike against the killers with most of my awareness, I'd set a small part of my versatile, multitasking brain the responsibility of getting the civilians out of harms way.

A huge swarm clone made of harmless looking butterflies and fireflies rose up in front of the women and the farmer, who was still lying on the ground.

They were in a state of shock, understandably, the young mother kneeled on the earth holding her dead daughter, tears streaming down her cheeks and falling on the still warm, broken body.

She didn't seem to notice what was going on around her, but the farmers wife reacted to my swarm body instantly, making a strange sign with her hands in front of her.

I let my pseudo- human multitude of insects make urgent signs with its "hands", pointing towards the house.

After a second, the farmer's wife seemed to understand, she started to haul her husband and the still living child to the entrance, screaming for the younger woman to follow her. I dissolved the swarm clone, trusting the older woman to complete the job.

Some of the SS- thugs tried to fire their weapons or fumbled for the grenades hanging on their munition belts, but you lose light-fingeredness very fast when every square- inch of your hands is relentlessly pricked, injected with toxins and bitten by sharp mandibles.

Hundreds of my bugs were swept away by their hands, or crushed when they threw themselves to the ground, but the men could struggle all they wanted, I had enough bugs to envelope them in whole clouds of "kamikazes".

All twelve of the goons were rolling around the yard now, slowly asphyxiating. It looked like I'd won an easy victory, but I couldn't take any risks, couldn't accept even the slightest chance that one of them managed to set off a grenade and harmed the farming family further.

I commenced the second phase of my assault, sending an army of ants I had stored in the house's walls forward, filling the Nazis' underwear with the fire of their acid.

The death struggle intensified for a few seconds, but even the enormous pain in their nether regions couldn't keep their abused bodies going on for long. One after another, over long minutes, the thugs fell silent, utterly still except for the occasional twitches of dying nerves.

Silence settled over the scene, only disturbed by the loud humming of my swarm. The young peasant women had been dragged into the house a few minutes ago, but the corpse of her toddler was still there, surrounded by the cadavers of her murderers.

"I have just killed a dozen man." a curiously monotone voice stated in my head.

I had difficulty to recognize it as my own, because I was still too "deep" inside my power, inhabiting my swarms. It was a curious detachment, being there and not there all at once, loosing myself in the control of myriads of insects and nonetheless finding a sort of self reflected in the clouds of bugs, a self that felt more satisfaction than uncertainty at what had happened.

Knowing the danger had passed, I still reveled in the new quality of my connection to my power. Even my range had increased, about a hundred yards in every direction, if my memories of my former capacity were correct.

Now that my focus wasn't solely on the fight, I noted that my perception of the bugs' senses had changed too, yielding even more tactile information and miniscule hints at other possibilities, random sounds and lights dancing in my hindbrain, waiting for an integration that had seemed utterly out of reach up to now.

Well, I could find out about the exact changes in my power later, it was more important to get myself something to eat, a dry place to rest and to get my injury treated.

The farming family was again hidden inside their home, and I needed them to come to me if I wanted their help.

How I could achieve that after the massive and quite murderous display of my power they'd witnessed was anybody's guess, though.

I lay back against the lime tree for a few minutes, and felt my power slowly withdraw from the forefront of my mind. With this relaxation came the heavy realization of what I'd really done, the undeniable and irreversible fact that I was a mass murderer.

Yes, the leader had brutally killed a little girl, but what about the other men? It could well have been that one or more of them had disapproved of the action. I hadn't given them even ten seconds to react, had just started to slaughter them like sheep. What would my dad say when he heard of this?

Hell, what would the PRT or the equivalent cape organization of this place do to me when they inevitably found out? They'd send me to the birdcage, throwing this former aspiring hero to the wolfs.

Fighting back tears of shame and despair, I bucked up and decided that I couldn't allow myself to dwell on such questions any further. Angst and selfdoubt wouldn't get me out of this, only actions could.

I reached out with my power to the butterflies I'd used to signal the family members, and formed a huge butterfly out of hundreds of small ones. Then I sent this new and harmless looking construct through the farm's door.

The four surviving people were huddled in the same small room as before, holding each other closely. My maxi- sized butterfly navigated the house slowly and finally arrived at their hiding place, which was illuminated by s few candles in a holder.

I let my swarm "hang" in the air over the doorstep of the destroyed entrance and let it produce only the soft sound of beating wings until the older woman moved her head and looked up at the apparition in front of her.

She made the same warding sign I'd seen her use before, but this time, I had the need and the opportunity to actually communicate with her.

A few dozen of my insects disconnected from the larger construct and flew to the wall of the room.

I landed them and started to shape a hopefully universal sign of peace and cooperation with them: two shaking hands.

All the reaction I got out of this was a flourish of more hand gestures and an increasing agitation of everyone in the room, no small "feat" considering what'd happened outside just minutes ago.

After thinking for a moment, I pulled the maxi- butterfly back out of sight and left only my signaling and observing insects in the room. Perhaps that would be taken as an act of restraint and show of trust.

Trying to find a better way to get through to the peasant family, I steered the butterflies to form the words "NO FEAR. NEED HELP!", but the people's reaction – increased heart rates and movements - told me that I was still unsuccessful at reaching them.

It was agonizing to be unable to communicate, and I came up with and discarded half a dozen ideas until a more promising thought flashed through my mind.

I may've been unable to pantomime something complex like "Come to me and help me!" with a clone swarm, but what about a two- dimensional "play" that showed them what happened to their farm in order and pinpointed where I was?

I started instantly and sent some more butterflies back into the room, in addition to a few cockroaches I'd found in the kitchen and a huge ladybug I intended to be the symbol for myself.

When the "cast" had been assembled on the wall and the people had calmed down slightly, I began.

First, I used most of the butterflies to "paint" the layout of the farm, including the barns, my lime tree and the river. Then I positioned some fireflies in the outlines of the house and made them move around.

A moment later, my ladybug had its great entrance, wandering along the "river" until it reached the farm, then hobbling very slowly and on only three legs to the butterfly standing in for the lime.

I let the family – everyone was watching my performance by now, even the younger woman – take in what I'd shown them, then I made the till then hidden group of 'roaches scramble up the wall, a living wave of ugliness.

In the following minutes, I showed them exactly what had happened: the arrival of the thugs in front of the house, the search of the buildings, the swarms - represented by fruit flies, I didn't want to bring any wasps into the room - gathering to the ladybug. All the while, the fireflies had mimed the families actions.

At last, I displayed the assault of my insects on the Nazis, which I ended by letting one 'roach after the other fall to the floor, "dead".

Now came the moment of truth- had my – literal – puppet show made the hoped for impression?

I formed a huge arrow with a few remaining bugs and pointed it at the ladybug beside the "lime tree". Then I let the fireflies come out of the house very slowly and made them walk to the the ladybug's side.

Nothing happened.

I sat there, still leaning against the lime, a bunch of dead people lying just feet away, and fought against a renewed attack of doubt and despondency.

It looked as if the family members were just too frightened by what had happened to them, by what they witnessed when my swarms attacked, to move out of the illusionary safety of their hiding place.

But I wouldn't give up yet, I promised myself.

I replayed the last scene of my drama, and this time the fireflies carried the ladybug back into the house with them.

A debate commenced between the family members, the older woman gestured wildly with her arms, while the farmer tried to get to his feet. He used the wall to prop himself up, until he was actually standing there, slightly swaying but obviously determined.

He picked up one of the candles, then began a slow and painful walk through the house.

A minute later, his wife decided she couldn't stay put when her man was getting himself into danger, and followed him. When she reached him, they talked animatedly for a moment, then she let him put an arm around her shoulder and helped him the last few steps to the destroyed door.

Hope blossomed in my heart - they were coming for me.


	4. Exterminator 4

4.

When the wounded and fatigued peasant and his wife entered the yard, they stopped again, taking in the scene of wholesale slaughter my swarms had left behind.

After a moment, the man started to utter short, monosyllabic words in a harsh tone, a whole torrent of them.

A second later, I realized with a mental hiccup that he was cursing like a sailor.

His wife stood still beside him until he seemed to run out of expletives, then she started to pull him in the direction of my hiding place.

I felt anticipation and mild anxiety run through me, but they spiked into outright fear when I sensed the farmer bend over next to the corpse of one of the thugs, only to come back up with a submachine gun in his gnarled hands.

The pair started walking again, and I had only seconds before they would spot me.

"I won't die at the hands of my would be saviors, no way!" I resolved fiercely, battling back the scared teenager inside and pulling up my "hero mindset", however flawed it had shown itself to be by not rescuing the toddler in time and mass murdering a dozen people.

Their first look at me had to show them a hurt young girl in urgent need of help, not a freak hiding behind a scary mask. Without further deliberation, I reached up and took the disguise off - better to be known by people whose lives I'd saved, than to be shot by them at point blank range.

My still slightly wet hair fell down, framing my face, which I forced to show a weak but visible smile. No time like the present to meet your destiny, right?

Flickering candle light fell on me.

They were there, two people in their mid- forties, he with broad and weathered features, the left side of his face swollen and his eyes wide in shocked disbelieve as he mustered my appearance.

The gun hung loosely in his hand, pointing at the ground and obviously forgotten.

His intense gaze traveled over my whole body, first to my face, then down, stopping at my breastplate and my legs, and I felt my face flush from utter embarrassment. What was his problem?

The woman, who was wearing a head scarf and a traditional costume, including a checkered apron, had stood back and looked on warily, but now clucked with her tongue in obvious disapproval of her husband's fascination with me.

In swift, determined motions, she untied her skirting, stepped up to me, and threw the cloth over my midriff, so that only my head and my feet could still be seen.

"Wow, my rescuers have some very strange priorities," I thought with a mix of lingering abashment and a tiny bit of humor. What next, would they scold me for inappropriate attire in the midst of the carnage that was their yard?

But no, the farmer had taken control of his senses again at his wife's intervention, and said something to me, just a few words that I interpreted as a greeting.

The tone of his voice didn't give me any hints at his further intentions towards me, it was rough but not unfriendly, cautious and neutral seemed a fitting description.

Well, maybe he or the woman spoke English as a second language? Hope springs eternal, after all.

"Hi, my name is Taylor and I'm glad to meet you," I said pleasantly, with the same fake smile I'd kept plastered to my face for the whole time.

Going by the very confused looks they exchanged, I could forget about an easy way to get through to them. Damn!

I pointed to myself with a shakily lifted finger and repeated only my name, going for the clearest possible pronunciation.

This seemed to work better- the farmer thumped his chest with his gun hand and declared himself to be "Jaromierz".

I nodded in understanding and looked over to the woman, who finished our little naming ritual by introducing herself as "Basia".

It fit with what I had surmised before about the language used by the translator - these were clearly eastern European names. I'd had some lingering doubts about my whereabouts before, but now it seemed pretty darned sure that I wasn't „in Kansas anymore", as the saying goes.

"Stop woolgathering!" I told myself.

There was no time just now to dwell on my utterly bizarre displacement to wherever this was. I urgently needed shelter, water, food and to see a doctor.

I laid a hand onto my chest carefully and grimaced, pantomiming pain as best as I could.

The farmer and his wife looked on uncomprehendingly.

Ugh, they were dense!

I pointed at the MP in his right hand and produced a series of rapid "Bang, Bang, Bang!" noises that sounded more like beat boxing than the terrible snarl of the real machine gun that hit me.

I trained the finger back at me and stabbed myself into the chest with it.

"Ahh!"

There was no need to fake the hurt expression this time, because I'd overdone the motion in my eagerness to explain. The injury ached as if someone was prodding my ribcage with a dagger.

My impromptu bout of self- harming had gone through to the pair, because after an exchange of a few words, the farmer - „Jaromierz" was his name, I reminded myself - walked away as quick as he could, while Basia kneeled beside me and started to talk to me in a low and soft tone that was obviously meant to sooth me.

The pain faded only very slowly, and for a minute or two, I just concentrated on Basia's murmuring.

It was a foreign language, but Basia had a mother's knack to induce calm through her voice alone, and it was like a balm to me, especially after being isolated from any human contact for days.

Jaromierz returned shortly, pulling a hay filled trolley behind him.

He had visible difficulty to manage the work due to his injury, but carried on determinedly until he had placed the small vehicle directly by my side.

The next minutes were filled with a lot of embarrassment and pain, as the two tried their best to help me into the cart without either hurting me or touching my privates.

I sighed in relieve when it was finally done and I rested on the hay, surrounded by its fresh herbal scent.

Jaromierz started to pull the cart towards the house while Basia pushed from behind.

I closed my eyes quickly when we reached the yard, horrified by the view of the dead goons and murdered child from close by.

Yes, I had done this, by hesitating too long and lashing out with lethal force, but that didn't mean I had to see the swollen blue faces and glassy dead eyes right now.

Bile rose in my empty stomach in reaction to the shit- stench of death hanging over the place, and I had to force it down several times as the trolley bumped its way through the butchery I'd done.

The low but nearly constant neighing of the tethered horses made the atmosphere even more eerie, and I was relieved when we arrived at the smashed front door.

Luckily, the cart was small enough to pass through the entrance, and Jaromierz simply went on into the house.

They brought me to a small room beside the kitchen, furnished with just a wooden bed and a roughly timbered side table.

A gruesome crucifix hung on one of the whitewashed walls, the deep suffering on Jesus' bloody face reflecting my the pain I felt as Basia and her husband hoisted me onto the bed.

They'd been as careful as possible, but moving my torso sent stabs of white hot agony through me and tears to my eyes.

I lay on the soft mattress, totally winded and unable to utter a single word, not to speak of miming.

When the slow ebbing of the pain allowed me to concentrate on something else than keeping my screams of distress inside, I noticed that my two rescuers were still standing beside the bed, whispering to each other.

They looked helpless and confused, and were surely as overwhelmed by all that had happened to them as I myself.

I didn't blame them, they had just lost a grandchild, seen a massacre committed by bugs, and been "spoken" to through butterflies and cockroaches.

It was a miracle that they had come out of the house to safe me at all.

"Basia!" I said softly, to get the woman's attention.

They both looked over, and I mimicked taking up a glass, putting it to my lips and drinking. I went on by simulating the use of cutlery, and put morsels of imaginary food to my mouth.

I added a "Please!" in my most polite tone, and struggled to express need and thankfulness in equal measure.

She nodded decidedly, as if she was rather happy that the moment of total strangeness between us had passed, and left the room in quick strides.

Jaromierz stayed back, the thug's gun slung over his shoulder and his hands deep in the pockets of his work jacket.

He leaned against the wall, obviously exhausted by his injury and the exertion of my transport, but there was still a cautious intelligence in his eyes when he examined me with his gaze.

I looked back with fake confidence, trying to put the most open and trustworthy smile I could produce on my face.

There was so much I needed to find out, starting by where I was and not quite ending by the real identity and background of the goons I'd killed.

Despite of that, I couldn't even tell the man in front of me how sorry I was for his granddaughter's murder, how I wished that I'd stopped the Nazi- scum in time.

No, our communication had to happen in an excruciating snail's pace.

There was no break for me, it seemed.

Thinking of the people whose bodies littered the yard outside made me aware that I – or maybe "We" was the operative term now – needed to get rid of them.

There were unknown numbers of those bastards out there, including ones in warplanes.

They would come looking for their comrades, and if they found a single trace of what happened here, they would probably kill everyone in the farm without a thought.

I couldn't leave this place before I had at least eaten my fill and rested, but I would really prefer to stay until a doctor could see me.

Trying to run from armed men in my condition and in unknown surroundings was stupid, and if I was honest with myself, quite impossible.

Deciding that solving the "corpse problem" should be my first priority, I summoned a crew of bugs into the room, to act as my supers in another act of improvised theater.

Jaromierz jerked away from the wall when the butterflies came in, but he calmed down somewhat when he saw them landing on the wall in a familiar pattern.

When the likeness of the farm had formed, I pointed at it, then back to me, indicating that I was responsible for it.

He nodded slowly, but I could tell that Jaromierz was still very much bewildered and scared by the displays of my power he'd seen.

That didn't bode well for me, because it probably meant that he had never heard about capes and powers before, but I pushed that thought down.

Concentration!

Gesturing in the direction of my bugs, I snipped with my fingers, and started to play out everything that had happened.

It went exactly like in my first "bug show", but after my rescue had been shown, I added a huge group of cockroaches that descended on the farm from every direction.

They "found" the ones symbolizing the bodies outside, and instantly stormed the "farmhouse", tearing it apart and killing the "inhabitants".

Jaromierz looked back and forth between me and the bugs, baffled and scared, and I felt my frustration rise another notch.

The man had seen the first "play" and had reacted as if he understood its meaning! Why was he faltering now that we needed to act and hide the corpses?

Maybe I should've shown him what I wanted him to do, not what I feared would happen?

Getting replacements for the killed insects into the room took only minutes, which I used to run a short check on everything in my range.

I sighed in relieve when my bugs couldn't find any living humans or other threats in the surroundings of the farm. There was still time.

Basia came in a moment later and put a huge mug full of cool water into my hands.

She didn't look at the bugs on the wall, just waited until I'd taken a deep draft of the deliciously clean liquid and thanked her, before she bustled out again, all business now.

The second attempt to make Jaromierz understand what needed to be done went better.

Maybe it was because I pointed back and forth repeatedly between him and the firefly playing his role, maybe because he had just needed time to wrap his mind around my alien bug- drama, but he finally grasped what I wanted.

I could actually see how realization set in on his roughly hewn features, because his face fell and he closed his eyes with a despondent moan that spoke of both his fatigue and emotional turmoil.

When he looked at me again, he shook his head slowly and pointed to his swollen face and to his legs.

It understood that he didn't feel ready to do the clean-up, but that didn't make it less necessary or urgent.

Waiting for morning would be a suicidal risk, and I tried to make him understand that by nodding firmly and looking as severe as I could.

I pointed at the frozen scene on the wall, where several fireflies had shoved "dead" Nazi- cockroaches into the pretend- river.

"This must be done now!" I declared, emphasizing the pressing need through my deep inflection and clipped tone.

Jaromierz started to deny my demand again, but was interrupted by Basia, who came in carrying a tray filled with heavenly smelling food.

My stomach reported for duty at once and grumbled like a bear, which made both Basia and her husband smile a bit.

She placed the tray on my lap and I felt my mouth water at the mere sight.

There was steaming broth in a huge terrine, a big chunk of brown bread, some huge onions and even a sliver of butter.

This meal was probably be a rich one, going by the standards of this family, at least judging by the condition of the farm, and I thanked Basia insistently, despite her gestured prompt to just start eating.

When I felt I had made my gratitude for their generosity unambiguously clear, I attacked the food like a starved girl.

Reflecting on it while I stuffed myself, I realized that I could actually be counted as "starved" after three days without nourishment.

While I inhaled the soup, I heard the two discuss lowly, and I could see Jaromierz point to the still "paused" bug show out of the corner of my eye.

"Maybe Basia will come up with an idea." I thought hopefully.

Some confidence in my future seemed to return with every spoonful of soup and bite of bread, it was quite peculiar.

And here I thought endorphin was only discharged when you ate chocolate!

The warmth of the broth and the filling bread worked to make me drowsy within minutes, I had to fight to keep my eyes open while I ate everything in front of me, even the onions. They weren't as fiery as I'd expected.

When I finally finished and leaned back into the pillow, I saw that one of the couple had fetched the younger woman into "my" room.

She stood between them and stared at my bug display, while Basia and Jaromierz talked at her by turns. Their voices were lowered, but I thought I caught urgency in their tone.

Something was going on between them, but I couldn't motivate myself to think about what this meant.

Simply put, I didn't care just now.

I felt safe and full for the first time in ages, and it would be so nice to just close my eyes and drift…

Worm/ Worm/

Worm/

I came to with a start, but kept my eyes shut, informed to do so by an instinct I didn't know I had.

To my consternation, there were three men in the room with me.

I could hear them talk between themselves in the incomprehensible language of this place, but what really startled me was the data gathered by my bugs.

The corpses of the thugs were gone, as were most of their horses.

Only three of the animals remained, and they were tended to by a man in civilian clothes.

The horseflies scurrying over his chest sensed a bulge on his left side - he was carrying a concealed pistol under his jacket!

There weren't enough swarming insects for it to be after sunrise, and I felt sure that much had happened in the short hours since I fell asleep.

I really regretted that nap right now.

The farming family had made up some plan, and the new situation was surely a result of it, but due to my own phlegmatic behavior, I'd missed the crucial moments.

I squinted through my eyelashes to get a good look at the men in my room, and felt relieved when I spotted Jaromierz sitting right next to my bed.

He looked very exhausted, but wasn't harmed further than he had been, or constrained in any way.

On his right sat a man in his forties, who wore blue workingman's trousers and a fitting coat.

His flat cap was fatty and threw shadows over his features, but what I could spot of them sent a shiver down my spine.

This guy was something else – he had the look of a hungry wolf, muscular and lean, with deep creases in the tightly spanned skin of his face.

His eyes were a piercing gray, and the expression he wore while talking to Jaromierz was fierce and demanding.

Combined with his body language, he gave of a vibe I'd only noticed on very few people until now – tense but self- assured, ready to jump at a moments notice and at the same time slack as a resting leopard.

He reminded me of Sophia Hess, and that wasn't a compliment.

The third person in the chamber was a man in his early twenties, who was standing up at the wall, and was evidently junior to the tough guy.

He wore the same blue- collar clothes as his older companion, but they didn't fit his elegant hairstyle and the silver-coated eyeglasses resting on his nose.

His face was open, and his soft brown eyes, slightly enlarged by his glasses, seemed to reflect a friendly and outgoing character.

While I'd mustered them stealthily, I had ordered bugs of all variations into the room, just in case.

I'd placed some of the flying ones on the newcomer's bodies, and now found that they too were armed, in the case of the older, scary guy, with both a pistol and a long dagger strapped to his lower leg.

Whatever had been arranged, whoever these new people were, I wouldn't find out about it through playing possum.

I yawned loudly, blinked like I thought a waking person would, and looked at the three men in front of me.

"Ah, awake now," the older guy said in a gruff, heavily accented voice, and gave me a rather sharkish smile.

It took a few seconds until my thoughts had caught up to my senses, then I jerked in surprise.

I stared at them open mouthed, still not fully realizing that my time of ridiculous pantomiming was over.

At least one person here spoke English!

"Who are you?" I sputtered finally, crossing my arms in front of me, and wishing that I had my mask at hand to hide my identity, as well as my shock and accompanying weakness.

When he answered, his tone was a mixture of amusement and practiced assertiveness.

"My name is Commander Komarov, Red Army Partisan Batallion of Pinsk."


	5. Exterminator 5

Disclaimer: Worm still belongs to Wildbow, and I really hope he starts to make some money with it.

AN: Have some more antifascist fanfiction.

5.

I gaped at the man who purported to be a "Commander" in the "Red Army", struck speechless once again by concepts totally outside my frame of reference.

"Silence is good." Komarov said in his rudimental English.

"Because we," he nodded towards what I assumed to be his subordinate, "are asking questions."

The young man came forward, stood beside Komarov, and took a long moment to gaze at my face, his eyes searching mine, as if he tried to take a look into my mind.

I was pretty sure that the only thing he actually saw was a confused and wounded teenage girl, but he made the whole process seem like a ritual, something he had done countless times before.

When he had watched his fill, he addressed Komarov, and they exchanged some words in whatever language they used, before he turned back to me.

"I'm Lieutenant Jazyk, the Batallion's scribe." he introduced himself with a very slight bow.

"And for now also the translator, it seems." Jazyk continued with a dry smile on his lips. His English was indeed much better than Komarov's.

I didn't know how to reply, or if I should say something at all, because I was still reeling from their words and the implications they would have for me, if true.

I hadn't heard the name "Pinsk" before, but I assumed it was a city, or maybe a region, and it sounded decidedly Eastern European.

More importantly, if those two men and the third one outside were really partisan soldiers of the Red Army, then it became much more likely that the goons I had killed weren't some modern day Neo-Nazis in the mold of E88 or "Gesellschaft", but the real deal, actual members of a SS death squadron.

In fact, that would mean... but no, it couldn't be...

"You have the advantage of us, Miss." the Lieutenant interrupted my frantic thoughts brusquely, his tone becoming demanding and much tenser than before.

His pleasant brown eyes underwent a transformation while he talked, they became flinty and penetrating.

But he was right, even if I didn't like his attitude, and I'd given the farming family my first name anyway.

"Call me Taylor, at least for now." I said firmly, hiding my insecurity the best I could.

"We know that." Komarov said roughly and leant towards me, not quite threatening, but close.

"Give us name of family, where you from, tell why you here, what you do to fascists"

He frowned at me, his eyes glittering with impatience.

The atmosphere in the room had started to shift from neutral to dangerous, and I felt totally exposed, despite the fact that a swarm of wasps and hornets hid in the dark corners under the ceiling, waiting soundlessly for my command.

I was sure that I could take the two men apart in the open, but they had guns, and the room was very small. They might well shoot me before they succumbed to my bugs.

These people meant business.

If I wanted to stay safe and get more information, I would need to cooperate with them, not to mention my longing for painkillers and medical treatment.

Provided my most dreadful - and increasingly probable - suspicions about my new location in space-time were true, they wouldn't get any use out of my civilian identity anyway.

"Where I come from, it's unthinkable to ask a hero about his or her real name." I explained hurriedly, to fend of further aggressive questioning.

"But if you really must know, I'm Taylor Hebert from Brockton Bay, United States of America."

I paused, deciding what else to tell them.

They had surely seen the condition of the corpses in the yard, and it was highly likely that Jaromierz had told them everything he knew about me and my abilities.

"I can control insects with my thoughts. When I came to this house to seek help, and saw what the Nazis were doing, I attacked them with wasps and other bugs until they died from suffocation."

I said these spare sentences haltingly, consciously leaving out all details.

The two partisans shared a quick look, but neither seemed ready to comment immediately.

A moment of silence passed between us.

It was a surreal feeling, telling these strangers things about me I hadn't even shared with my dad, but I had to bow to necessity. What else could I do?

After long seconds of staring at me from a distance of just a foot, Komarov leaned back into his chair, a skeptically lifted eyebrow the only expression on his otherwise blank face.

"Show me. Now!" he challenged.

Well, if he needed a demonstration, I would give him one he'd not forget anytime soon!

"Don't be afraid, I have them under absolute control." I warned, then dived into my power and got the show rolling.

About 1000 wasps and hornets had congregated in the corners of the room.

I let them start into the air in a single movement, and their loud buzzing filled the cramped chamber from one second to the next.

Komarov and Jazyk flinched and looked up at the cloud of bugs hastily, their eyes growing wide in astonishment.

I had formed the swarm in the midst of the room, directly under the ceiling, but now I ordered half of them to the wall beside my bed, while the others sank down to me.

Showing total confidence in my ability was important, and I couldn't think of a better way to do it than being covered in wasps and hornets from head to toe, leaving only my face and ears free.

They stared at me in horrified fascination, as if they weren't sure if I, or they themselves, had gone mad, but this was just the beginning.

I formed half a dozen small balls of wasps on my palms, and started to "juggle" them.

Ordered to fly slowly, the insects' movements made the stunt look like I was under water, or in the weightlessness of space.

When the "balls" had changed hands several times, I started to form them into different shapes, pyramids, cones and even crosses.

The living geometric shapes danced in increasingly complex patterns around each other, until I sent them upwards again, and towards the wall, where they joined their nest mates and completed the huge world map I had begun to construct on it.

There was no doubt in my mind that my unexpected visitors were stout men, especially Komarov, courageous and hardened in battle, but when I looked at them now, they were very pale and still.

"I think this should be proof enough." I said with satisfaction, barely able to stop myself from smirking at their dazed expressions.

This was my chance to get more information out of them, while they were rattled.

I turned to the wall as far as my injury permitted, and formed a visible bulge of hornets at the place were Brockton Bay would be on a real map.

They had followed my movement with their gazes, and were staring at the detailed outline in consternation.

The oceans were shown using the white of the wall, but the land masses had the very unusual black and yellow coloring of my bugs.

I had always liked Geography, and we had learned about the contours of the continents in primary school, when I was still a happy and attentive student without bullying problems.

"That bulge on the east coast of the United States is Brockton Bay." I explained.

I felt a pang of homesickness and an even more daunting desire to see my dad, but suppressed it quickly.

Later!

"Could you show me where we are now, approximately?" I asked, addressing both men.

Lieutenant Jazyk moved slowly towards one of the room's corners, as if he still feared to provoke the wasps into attacking him.

He grasped the broom standing there, came back towards the bed, and used the handle to point at an area in Eastern Europe.

I hadn't included national borders in my rendition of the earth's surface, mostly because I didn't know them well enough, but I thought he was indicating an area in western Russia.

"We are a few kilometers north- east of Pinsk, in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic."

He hesitated, as if discussing with himself what to say next, but continued only seconds later:

"And also more than 200 kilometers behind the Nazi front lines."

Jazyk's tone was hushed, and I got the strong feeling that he felt equal measures of fear and hate when saying the words.

Similar emotions to my own after hearing this, if I was honest.

I'd more or less expected it by now, sure, but there's a huge difference between speculating and knowing.

He could still be lying I supposed, but I believed him.

On the one hand because there was no need for subterfuge regarding such general information, on the other because he was still unsettled by what I'd shown them of my power.

All this put together meant one thing: as much as I didn't want to ask, wanted desperately to stay ignorant, my next question had to be about the date.

I had to swallow to moisten my suddenly dry throat, and the sweat breaking out all over my body wasn't a reaction to the wasps still covering my costume either.

Gathering my courage, I pressed out the sentence I needed to ask.

"This may sound crazy to you, but could you tell what time it is - not only what hour, or day, but also the year?"

"There are no "crazy" questions anymore after what I just saw." Jazyk said earnestly.

"Today is the 31st of July, 1941. Thirty-nine days after the German pestilence invaded the Soviet Union." he pronounced with heavy finality.

I didn't outwardly react, but my mind descended into utter turmoil.

Dad was gone, my whole world was gone!

There were no other capes here, no tinker who could build another space-time bending hand grenade of doom to send me back.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, I had been thrown into the midst of "the most brutal fighting in the annals of humanity", as my history teacher, Mr. Night, had called the German-Soviet war once.

Waves of despair and horror rolled over me, and a trace of my piercing inner torment must've shown on my face despite my best efforts, because Komarov, a rugged soldier who had surely killed many, took my hand into his and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

I had barely time to get my wasps out of the way.

"You safe with us, Miss Hebert." he said reassuringly. "Will get doctor for you, all ahh... protection of Batallion for you."

I gave him a tremulous smile, fighting back the tears that threatened to start falling, which would become a torrent if I gave myself over to my anguish.

When a few minutes had passed, I had calmed enough to talk without breaking out in uncontrollable sobs.

"Thank you, Commander Komarov." I said gratefully, giving him an appreciative squeeze of my own, before taking my hand back.

He might be a freaking communist partisan, but there was no other choice aside from following the example of Churchill and Roosevelt - the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I would need to play along for now if I wanted to get out of this mess alive.

Jazyk took over the conversation again, his now genial tone an obvious result of the changed conditions after I revealed my power.

"I assure you that the Commander will help you with everything you need. You will be welcome to join our unit, especially if you tell us some more about you, and of course that astonishing insect control."

He gave me a chummy grin, but it couldn't hide the desire shining in his eyes. Not for me of course, not as a person or even a girl, but the potential of my power.

This was no surprise, I had seen it at home, read about it while I did research for my cape career.

Everyone wanted to control a new super powered individual, the gangs, the government, even Big Business or religious groups.

I couldn't begrudge these two men their transparent intentions to use me as a weapon for their own ends - they were fighting Nazis, after all.

It was the logical thing to do, I would've tried the same in their shoes.

That's why I started to recite some of my story to them, leaving out the fact that I came from the future, and some other "minor" stuff, like the exact range of my power or the features of my costume.

Keeping some aces up my sleeves seemed to be prudent.

Naturally, they asked how an American teen girl could suddenly appear in war- torn Byelorussia, and I fed them a heavily edited tale of my fight with Oni Lee, suggesting that an interference between his teleportation power and my own had catapulted me into the swamps.

I wasn't sure they bought all of it, but when I finished, their eyes were nevertheless bright with new hope and wonder.

I felt tired out from the long talk, as well as the emotional upheaval, and ready to go back to sleep, but there was one thing I'd really wanted to know since I woke up and found my room filled by these people.

"How did you come to be here? I can't imagine that just everyone knows where to find the partisans?"

Lieutenant Jazyk laughed in genuine amusement.

"It was indeed quite a, ahh... let's call it surprise to us, when comrade Grabowski here," he pointed at Jaromierz, who had been sitting next to my bed, waiting and observing in silence, "found us in our bivouac, and started to, uhm... "rant" is the word, I believe, about a German patrol killing his granddaughter, only to be wiped out in turn by swarms of insects."

He shook his head, as if he still couldn't believe what he'd heard and seen this night.

"We finally followed him back here, because he had a German MP40 in his possession, and one of our comrades is, ahh... rather fond of his daughter. That soldier will also be disciplined for giving away our hiding place."

Komarov waved at Jazyk and rattled of some sentences in Russian.

His subordinate just nodded, while he kept his focus on me.

"The Commander reminds me that we must leave very soon, before first light. But we will be back next night, with a doctor who can examine and treat you."

"What if the Nazis come looking for their patrol before you return?"

"We'll leave Sergeant Misha, who is waiting outside, as a lookout at the track through the woods. Should he spot Nazi- scum, he will warn you with a shot. Dealing with them will be up to you, but that shouldn't be a problem, correct?"

I nodded, satisfied that I could rest without fear of surprise attacks on the farm.

Komarov stood up from his chair, tipped his cap in salute, and walked out of the room crisply.

"Goodbye comrade Hebert, until we meet again." the Lieutenant said, before following his Commander.

Worm/ Worm/

Worm/

I spend the next day mostly sleeping, eating and sleeping again, and there weren't even any bad dreams to wake me up.

That alone was quite astonishing, if I took all the horrors and stress I'd suffered through into account - maybe my body's utter exhaustion could explain the very welcome lack of nightmares.

I stayed awake for a few hours in the late afternoon, trying to come to terms with my situation.

If that process consisted mostly of pushing the miasma of negative feelings away into deep recesses of my mind, and concentrating on what I could remember about the time period I found myself in, that was just my personal way of dealing with stuff.

We had gone through the topic of the European theatre of the Second World War just last year, but I didn't remember much from that besides Mr. Night's impressive comment about "the most brutal fighting in history".

It had been right after the bullies got their hands on my mother's flute, and I had other things on my mind – a deep depression, to be exact – than learning about murderous tank battles or bombing raids.

I was in "luck" though - having no friends and a lot of lonely evenings to fill had given me motivation to watch tons of TV, including the occasional show on the History Channel.

Much of that stuff was bombastic edutainment, but after sifting through my memories, I came up with a very rough time- line, mostly with facts I remembered from a broadcast called "Battlefield Russia".

The Nazis would roll over the Soviets in the next months, killing and capturing millions of Red Army soldiers, that much I recalled clearly.

Their advance would only be stopped in front of Moscow – leaving me and my new partisan "friends" in very deep shit, 500 miles or more behind the front lines.

Even if I healed up quickly and without complications, there was no easy way to leave this place, because most of Western Europe was under Nazi occupation.

The next neutral states were Sweden to the North and Turkey to the South, if I remembered correctly, but to reach them through thousands of miles of Nazi held territory, including large bodies of water, was pretty much impossible, at least without intense preparation.

On the other hand, staying in Byelorussia was an even worse idea, because it would mean staying alive and outside Nazi hands for literally years, before the Red Army could liberate the area, some time in 1943 or thereabouts.

I gave up figuring it all out in my head as a bad job, reasoning that I needed to write everything down before I could even begin to get a clear picture.

After Basia had fed me another of her frugal but filling meals, I drowsed away the hours, waking up now and then to check the farm's surroundings for threats.

In every instance, I only detected the sentry left behind by the partisans, and went back to sleep, appeased.

Worm/ Worm/

Worm/

When I woke up next, I found my room once again filled by people- Komarov had arrived, this time without Jazyk, but as promised, he had brought a doctor.

"Good evening, comrade." the partisan leader greeted me cordially.

"Have doctor for you." he pointed to an older man with snow-white hair, a thick beard of the same color, and a huge black doctor's bag in his right hand.

"His name Wronya, he not speak English, but good, ah... medico."

The old guy offered me his hand and smiled at me when I returned the gesture - I saw that he had many laugh lines around his eyes.

When our silent greeting was over, he turned to the Commander for a minute and spoke to him in an intense tone.

"Wronya says must see injury, but also speak to you. I will stay for translate, but look away."

I nodded my understanding, not entirely sure this was a good idea, but eager to finally get a diagnosis of my injury from a professional.

When Komarov had positioned himself on a chair facing the door, the doctor started his examination.

At first he just checked my pulse, my eyes and my throat and seemed satisfied. Then he said something in his melodious voice, which Komarov translated as "Now wants to see your chest".

I blushed, but reminded myself that Wronya couldn't help me without a proper look at the damage.

With the doctor's aid, I struggled to get out of my costume, but the pain was so terrible that we had to stop several times.

I made a mental note that wearing a skin tight costume had its disadvantages when you were wounded.

After a lot of cursing and suffering on my part, we managed to peal the spider silk suit from my upper body.

I was horrified to find that I stank like an old sock, but Wronya just ignored the smell, giving me a break.

A thorough hygiene operation was in my near future, I resolved, regardless of the torture it would inflict on me.

I felt quite embarrassed to be nude, but the old man had a comforting air of cool professionalism about him when he started to examine me closely.

At first he listened to my lungs with a stethoscope, then he ran his surprisingly gentle hands about the gigantic black and blue hematoma that covered nearly all of my chest.

He murmured to himself as his fingers traced my ribs, light as a feather, shaking his head from time to time as if in wonder.

After this had gone on for several minutes, he spoke to Komarov again, much longer than before.

I tensed up when I realized that he was giving him his diagnosis of my condition.

"Wronya say you are miracle." the Commander explained at length. "No hole by bullet, no broken ribs. You shall recover."

I took a deep breath in relieve, but regretted it instantly when pain stabbed into my chest.

"He will put, ah... bandaje on you, give you things contra pain."

I wondered why he used Spanish words for some terms, and where he'd even learned two foreign languages - I'd thought the Soviet Union to be a severely isolated place.

"Very well. Could you ask him how long this will take to heal?"

A quick conversation later, I learned that I had to put up with the pain and severe impairment of my mobility for at least a week, likely longer.

This was terrible news for someone caught in a war zone, but it could've been so much worse.

It took another half an hour before my chest was cleaned up with a washcloth, bandaged, and I'd been helped back into my costume.

Komarov had kept his promise not to peep, and only turned around to me after I'd taken one of the huge pills Wronya provided, and was again leaning back into the cushions.

He fixated me with his grey eyes.

"We hope to take you to deep trees with us, but it much painful on, ahh... equino. Understand?"

I nodded, happy that I'd taken Spanish 101 and could understand his meaning - I wasn't at all eager to ride a damn horse in my condition.

Komarov stood up and stretched, showing off his lean physique through his baggy worker's rags.

"We keep one man here, look for enemy, as before." he decided. "Come back in seven days, take you with me."

Vanishing into the swamps and boondocks I had just escaped from sounded unappealing, but there didn't seem to be an alternative, so I signaled my acquiescence.

At least I had a week to enjoy the meager benefits of what counted as "civilization" in these parts.

Worm/ Worm/

Worm/

Time passes very slowly when you are bound to a bed, have no TV, no books and no one to talk to.

Getting a full wash down and changing into a nightgown had been excruciating, even with Basia's help, but had broken the tedium for just one hour.

Following the third day of total boredom and near constant drowsing, I had employed all my not inconsiderable miming skills and bug theatrics on Basia and Jaromierz, until I wheedled a small batch of loose paper and a pencil out of them.

I went to work on a timeline, penning down every scrap of memory I had about the Second World War in general, and the Eastern Front in particular.

It surely didn't lift my spirits to think of stuff like Stalingrad, the Normandy landings or Auschwitz, but it was something to do. I was a part of this now, and I would need to make decisions soon.

The fourth day had gone by with writing, thinking and tentative planning, and I had just eaten my lunch on the fifth, when my convalescence was rudely interrupted.

The door banged open without warning, shocking me out of a light drowse, and I brought the swarm I held ready into attack position instinctively.

Lieutenant Jazyk was standing in the door frame, his lungs pumping air in mighty heaves, one of the German machine pistols I'd captured in hand.

There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

"What's the meaning of this?" I snapped in irritation, but he just waved at me, signaling that I should wait until he caught his breath.

I leaned back, frowning at him angrily, not only for waking me in this outrageous way, but also for the pain he'd caused me when I jumped up in bed.

My chest and ribs were getting better, and the good doctor's painkillers helped a lot, but moving so abruptly still felt like being mauled by a tiger.

Jazyk was leaning over, his hands on his knees, still winded.

"I just spoke with one of our sympathizers from Pinsk." he panted.

"The Nazis have taken hostages... hundreds of Jewish hostages."

I jerked, caught by surprise.

There were of course notes on the Holocaust in my papers, with multiple exclamation marks and underlines, but I hadn't thought that I'd be confronted with the most gruesome and perverse part of Nazi rule this soon.

Wasn't the conference planning the so called "Endloesung", the gas chambers and death camps, supposed to happen in 1942?

Damn those evil maniacs to hell!

Lieutenant Jazyk stood up from his crouched position, and inhaled deeply, evidently at least as badly shaken by the news as by his bodily exertion.

"They threaten to shoot the hostages, unless every Jewish male between 16 and 60 assembles at the train station, that's at least 10.000 men." he explained in agitation.

"The Jewish community is in an uproar right now, with rumors flying every which way, but they are obeying. They have no choice."

A knot started to form in my stomach- all of this sounded familiar.

But before I could grasp the memory that started to rise in my mind, the young partisan continued.

"The fascist town commander says that he needs the men for a "work detail," - I could hear the sarcastic quotation marks he put around that word clearly, "but everyone with good sources knows what this really means."

Something clicked in my head at his words, and suddenly I knew what had eluded me before.

There'd been a short part in "Battlefield Russia" about a place called "Babyn Jar", where the Nazis had shot to death every single Jew in the city of Kiev, using the pretext „evacuation for work in the east" to lure their victims to their graves.

I shuddered.

"You don't believe forced labor is the real purpose behind this, right?" I asked softly.

Jazyk shook his head wildly, while constantly wringing his hands.

"There is no time to talk around it, so I'll be honest with you, comrade." he said.

"I worked as a translator at several secret NKVD radio stations along the border to Germany, I've seen intercepted messages. They murdered tens of thousands of Jews and Poles in the last two years."

Falling silent, he went over to one of the chairs and sat down heavily, but sprang up again just seconds later, too upset to sit still.

"I was on leave with my family here in Pinsk, when the Germans invaded." he went on, while he paced up and down beside my bed.

"Reporting to the local post, I learned that they had already started to massacre Jews, in Lwow, in Bialystock, everywhere."

He hid his face in his hands for a moment, then looked up at me with red eyes.

"I confiscated a car from municipality services, and sent my parents and sisters to the east, but nearly everyone else is still in the city, my uncles and aunts, my cousins, my friends. They didn't want to leave their homes and many thought I was exaggerating."

My heart went out to the young man in sympathy. His whole private world and wider community was on the brink of destruction, thousands of lives would soon be ended by the incomprehensible German malice.

As I began to realize the magnitude of what was about to happen, just miles from here, I also understood why Jazyk had barged in on me like he did.

The Lieutenant confirmed my thoughts with his very next words:

"Comrade Hebert, the Jews of Pinsk need your help, you must safe them - I don't even know how much time we have before the killing starts!"

He said it urgently, his voice rising with every word, until he was nearly screaming at me.

There was no question in my mind that I had to intervene, that I needed to put a stop to this imminent mass murder, but if my fight with Lung and Oni Lee, and my subsequent failure to safe the life of Jaromierz's granddaughter, had taught me one thing, it was that I had to find a balance between jumping in and waiting too long.

It was essential to get a better understanding of the situation, but as soon as I had it, I would have to act with determination.

"I'm willing to come with you, but I'm still wounded and unable to move by myself." I told him grimly, hardening my own resolve while I was speaking.

"If I'm going to fight however many SS killers they concentrated for a massacre of this size, I will need all the support I can get. What about Commander Komarov and the other partisans?"

Jazyk stood in front of me and balled his fists, a desperate man if I ever saw one.

"They won't come. I went to our hideout and made my report, but Komarov has only 70 men, he isn't willing to risk them for "A bunch of cowardly Jews who will not fight for themselves", and that is a direct quote."

Wonderful - the one man in the area who commanded armed resistance fighters was a cynic, and – at the very least - a closeted antisemite. To think that I'd started to actually like the Commander!

No matter, if the partisan "Batallion" wasn't coming, I had to work with what was at hand.

"Get Basia!" I ordered firmly, taking control.

He stormed out of the room and returned swiftly, the old woman in his wake.

"Tell her that she has to help me into my clothes, then go over there," - I pointed towards a corner - "and don't dare to peek."

While I struggled into my costume with Basia's aid, I forced myself to think clearly through the distress the process caused.

We would need a fast transport to reach the intended victims in time, preferably one that spared my injury as many bumps and shakes as possible.

"Did you come all the way here on foot?" I asked my up to now only ally in the oncoming fight, while I fastened my mask and Basia let herself out, her job done.

"No, I hid my horse a few hundred yards inside the woods, we don't have time for any interference by the sentinel Komarov left behind."

"That was sound thinking." I complimented.

"But we have to get our hands on something else - any idea where we can hijack a car from the Nazis without alarming them all?"

Jazyk pondered for a moment, frowning in concentration.

"There is a place about ten kilometers west of here, where enemy vehicles were spotted yesterday. It was said that some auxiliaries were doing earth work there."

I stared at him, unsure if I'd heard correctly.

"Don't you think that sounds suspiciously like the place where they plan to commit the massacre?"

He scrunched his whole face into a self-recriminating grimace, and hit his own thigh in frustration.

"That didn't occur to me, I was so fixated on getting help." he admitted apologetically.

"No matter, we have to get there as quickly as possible." I decided.

I grabbed my painkillers from the side-table, swallowed another one, and stashed the rest inside my spinal armor.

Then I stretched my arms towards Jazyk, indicating that he should help me up.

"Let's go!"

Worm/ Worm/

Worm/

Getting up on a horse behind a rider, and clinging to him while the animal goes full tilt, is a bad idea at the best of times, doing so when your whole upper body is a single bruise is a horrible way to torture yourself into semi-unconsciousness.

I gnashed my teeth in pain as we streaked through thick patches of birch trees, sandy underbrush, and crossed the occasional dirt-path.

The only thing keeping me from stopping this mad rush was the life-or-death nature of our task.

To get through my personal hell, I concentrated on my bugs, maintaining the dense swarms of fast flying and potent hornets I'd brought with me, and collecting still more, which flew low above our heads.

Constantly checking the moving perimeter of my power for enemies and other dangers had become second nature by now, but I hadn't found more than a few peasants doing field work 'till now.

I partly opened the blocks I'd erected around the bug's finer senses, blotting out some of the physical pain through its mental equivalent, with which I could deal easier.

To my surprise, I got back a few instants of discernable perceptions, a bird call, the rustling of leaves, gurgling water. In every instance, these blocks of sense data emanated from areas with particularly high and tightly packed bug populations.

I remembered that something similar had happened when I killed the SS-goons, but I got the impression that my "bug- hearing" had improved since then.

Definitely something to ponder and experiment on later, but it wouldn't help me in the battle ahead.

My heart pumped faster and faster the closer we came to our target area, and I felt a mix of emotions I couldn't even have imagined back in Brockton Bay.

In the next minutes, I was going to attack dozens, maybe hundreds of unpowered humans with deadly force, I would face an enemy that was surely not as powerful as Lung or even Oni Lee, but utterly ruthless and with thousands of innocent people he wanted to kill in front of his guns.

Not only my own life would hang in the balance, but the existence of a titanic number of people who depended on me - me alone – to rescue them from certain doom.

This was a responsibility as huge as the ones confronting heroes like Alexandria when they battled Endbringers, and I was entirely unprepared to shoulder it.

The horse shied from jumping over a rather broad brook, shaking me from my morbid musings, and I was barely able to hold on as Jazyk fought to control the animal.

We turned back to the stream in a half-circle, and he lashed the horse on with a willow twig he must've cut on the way, while I was lost in "bug space".

The hard landing on the other bank made me cry out and see exploding stars of pain in my field of vision, but the young partisan didn't stop the terrifying race.

An undefinable, agony- filled span of time later, I "spotted" the first enemy soldier as he crossed the edge of my range.

It was a sentry, who lay in a flat depression he had evidently dug himself very recently, at least going by the high number of earthworms moving through the small parapet he was hiding behind.

I thumped Jazyk's back to get his attention, and held a finger over my lips.

"There's a Nazi-guard 300 yards in front of us, let's stop for a second." I whispered hoarsely.

I took in the landscape around us with my own eyes, and realized with a sharp pang that I had made a serious error – what had I been thinking, to allow my bugs to fly over us, heightening our profile to more than 12 feet?

It was lucky for our continued health that Jazyk knew the lay of the land, and had approached the designated killing site from behind a dense copse.

Otherwise that sentinel would've spotted us by now.

Being in constant pain might be a good excuse for my oversight, but it wouldn't help anyone if I got us killed!

I lowered the swarms down to hip height, spreading them into flat "pancakes" that covered a lot of ground.

"Should I just kill that guard, so we can go on?" I asked Jazyk, feeling insecure in my judgment after making such a stupid error.

"When you have one watch stander, you'll probably find a whole perimeter of them around." the young spook-cum-partisan explained knowingly.

"I think we should leave the horse behind, and sneak up on the fascists on foot. That way, you can get closer to the actual target, and put down most, if not all, look-outs at once."

"It will also take a lot of time in my condition." I objected.

"Not if I carry you." he answered with a small smile that vanished as soon as it had come.

He slipped out of the saddle, adjusted his newly "acquired" submachine gun, and tied the horse to one of the thicker trees around us.

"I think we aren't too late." Jazyk informed me when he'd helped me from the horse and held me in front of him, bridal style.

"Why do you think that?"

"We can't hear any shooting, which we would if my people had already arrived."

I nodded in silent agreement, slightly relieved by his logic.

We started to walk in the direction of the sentry, using every tree or huge bush to hide our approach.

Gradually, more Nazis appeared on my "inner radar", they were positioned in a rough semi-circle, facing away from a muddy field that was pockmarked by rows of huge pits, each at least 60 feet long and six deep.

Further to the side, I spotted several cars and trucks, which were parked close together, with a dozen soldiers sitting in their shadows.

A dusty path constituted one border of the field, which was surrounded by barbed wire on the other three sides.

Behind one of the barbwire fences, the Germans had dug a line of machine gun nests, giving them a free field of fire without endangering their own men.

This was a killing field, designed and built only for one purpose- to drive innocent people along the path, and into the open field, so that they could be murdered with impunity.

Just "seeing" this abomination through my bugs made me want to throw up, and the same wrath I'd felt when killing the goons at the farm came over me again.

I battled it down, restoring my self- control to form a clear headed tactical assessment.

We were about 100 yards away from the outermost sentry, and were rapidly nearing the border of the copse in which we were hiding.

It was midsummer, and there were flies, mosquitos and myriads of other bugs everywhere, more than enough for my purposes.

I decided that it was time to give the monsters in uniform a dose of their own medicine.

"Set me down." I breathed into Jazyk's ear.

He did without question, and I signaled him to sit beside me.

"I have the whole killing installation inside my range." I explained to him.

"There are several cars which we can get our hands on when I'm done with their owners."

He nodded in understanding, then leaned towards me to whisper something in return.

"Do it!"

And I unleashed my fury.


	6. Exterminator 6a -Interlude HSSPF-

AN: If you have problems with the German words and ranks thrown into this text, I'd advise you to google them. I didn't translate anything, so that a certain "alienness" of the whole thing was retained.

Disclaimer: Oh yeah, the setting and main character still belong to Wildbow. Even if you won't recognize it reading this chapter.

6.a

Interlude

HSSPF

_Gruppenführer_ Erich von dem Bach sat on a folding chair in the shadow of his _Fieseler Storch_ utility plane, and listened in concentration as _Hauptsturmführer_ Charwat explained the particulars of the coming _Aktion_.

The young, energetic leader had proposed that they could inspect his men's work directly, but von dem Bach had already seen the preparations from the air, when he arrived half an hour ago.

He'd been present at so many _Entjudungen_ in the last weeks, that he'd come to understand the necessary arrangements very well.

The type of hard work his subordinates were doing always demanded certain safeguards, but von dem Bach trusted Charwat and his _1st Schwadron of the 2nd SS- Kavallerie-Regiment_ enough to leave the details to them - moreover, it was too hot and sweltry to run around and examine technicalities.

He was much more interested in numbers: how many male subjects had been rounded up in Pinsk today?

How much money and valuables had been confiscated from them?

What timeframe had Charwat, and his direct superior, _Sturmbannführer_ Magill - who was in Pinsk at the moment, organizing the „evacuation" - set for the whole _Sonderbehandlung_, including Jewesses and the other dependents?

Scribbling notes down for his own report to the _Reichsführer SS,_ he wiped his wrinkled forehead and receding hairline with the monogrammed handkerchief his youngest daughter, Gretchen, had presented him with last Christmas.

The reminder of his family made his thoughts wander away from the discussion for a moment.

His blonde, blue eyed baby girl would turn eight next month, and he'd acquired some very nice children's jewelry for her when he inspected the _Aktion_ in the town of Khomsk.

Gretchen would be so happy with the golden necklace, and would surely put a picture of her _Papa_ into the heart shaped pendant... never knowing that it had belonged to the daughter of a Jewish goldsmith.

The tear filled eyes of that little girl had been widened in horror when he sent her on to the pits... but there surely had been not a iota of similarity between the Jewish-Bolshevik runt and his own girls...

No, there had been none, everything else was sentimentality unbecoming a high SS officer!

One couldn't leave children alive anyway, or they would surely raise their hands against the Arians again, just as their parents had.

No, the whole race of _Untermenschen_ had to go, even when the work hurt him and his men more than them.

Von dem Bach struggled away from that memory with some effort, and focused back on Charwat, who was just explaining his cooperation with the _Ortskommandant_ of Pinsk, a _Sicherheitsdienst_ man called Worthoff, in taking hostages.

A very sensible tactic, von dem Bach mused, one that had been employed time and again in other situations where huge masses had to be eliminated.

"When will the _Judenschweine _arrive?" he asked, taking a quick look at his pocket watch.

It was 11.30.

He had to be in Minsk at six o'clock at the latest, to examine the newest recruits of the auxiliary police force he was building.

There was simply not enough German security personnel to keep the occupied territories under strict control, and to additionally apply _Sonderbehandlungen_ to the numerous groups of subhumans.

"According to the last radio report, the first 2000 Jews have been marched off, they should be here very soon, _Herr Gruppenführer_." Charwat said.

Von dem Bach nodded, then gazed around quickly.

There was no one in hearing range, the platoon of soldiers who had prepared the landing strip had fanned out into guarding positions, and his trusted pilot, who was refueling the plane, knew of his habits.

"Very well, how about a little fortification before the labor starts?"

He pulled his pocket flask out and offered it to his subordinate, who accepted it with an appreciative grin.

"To the health of the _Führer_!" Charwat toasted, and took a deep drought of the fine Vodka, which had belonged, not so very long ago, to a Bolshevik _Kommissar_, who had no need of it anymore.

The junior officer handed the bottle over to von dem Bach, who gulped down half the content in turn, greeting the numbing effect it produced like an old friend.

"What's your opinion on the polish _HiWis_?" he asked Charwat, his steady "command voice" only minimally effected by the strong alcohol.

"They are eager to work, but at least as eager to get their hands on some Jewish jewels, or even women. We can use them, but in the end, they are dirty Slavs, and I don't trust them enough to show them my back."

Von dem Bach nodded, satisfied by the younger man's insight. It was essential to keep the auxiliaries status firmly in mind, unless...

His deliberations were suddenly interrupted by alarmed shouting from the sentinels. They were pointing towards the field of pits in the distance, their expressions ones of shocked disbelieve.

Before he could form an understanding of the situation, a noncom approached them in a dead run.

"_Herr Gruppenführer_, we're under attack!" he shouted, and gestured towards the killing field.

"Give me your field glasses, _Oberscharführer_!" von dem Bach ordered calmly.

He accepted the binoculars, and took a look in the stated direction.

What he saw made the blood in his veins freeze.

The prepared killing site was more than a kilometer away, because his plane needed firm ground to land - which was hard to find in a swampy area - but the trusty _Zeiss Feldstecher_ zoomed the frightful scene close.

Every single of the men he spotted was in panic - they were running in circles, stumbling around like drunks, hitting themselves over and over, but most terrifyingly, grasping their throats as if something they'd swallowed was stuck in their windpipes.

He'd seen such symptoms before, in fact, he knew what the poor soldiers he was watching felt from his own experience.

"This is a gas attack!" he told the men who had gathered around him hurriedly, but with the assurance of a veteran of World War One trench warfare.

"_Hauptsturmführer_!" he addressed Charwat. "Have the platoon in their gas masks in thirty seconds. Lead them over there, safe as many of your men as you can, and keep a look out for the enemy."

The officer nodded briskly, and instantly began to fire off orders to his men.

Seconds later he was back, putting on his own gas mask with the same practiced moves his soldiers used.

"This was surely a sneak attack using bottled gas - we would've heard explosions if they'd employed mortars." von dem Bach mused aloud.

"I concur with that, _Herr Gruppenführer_, the bastards are most likely running back into the marshes as we speak." Charwat snarled, his anger and frustration still audible in his distorted voice, despite the grotesque, insectoide gas mask hiding his features.

"I'll take the _Storch_ up," von dem Bach decided "and start a search for the escaping bandits, especially in the eastern direction, where the deep Pripjat marches begin."

He gave the _Hauptsturmführer_ and his masked platoon a snappy _Hitlergruß_, and wished them "_Gute Jagd!_" as they departed on the double.

His pilot was ordered to expedite the refueling process, then von dem Bach jumped into the plane as if he were the young man he'd been when he first encountered the terrible curse that was gas warfare.

A few minutes later, the pilot joined him in the cockpit and began the pre-flight checks.

"We are going on a hunt," von dem Bach told his trusted man, his tone chillingly cool "and someone is going to pay the price for this Jewish treachery!"


	7. Exterminator 6b

AN: It's not _really _Sunday anymore, at least where I am, but I had to watch that soccer game.

6.b

For a heady moment, I felt like the invisible hammer of god, hanging above oblivious mortals, ready to smite them.

Small clusters of about fifty hornets were already lurking on the ground just meters in front of the sentries, while their brethren - or rather sisters, I suppose - did a "silent run" towards every German soldier in range.

I orchestrated the bugs into nearly transparent attack groups in the low hundreds, perfect "strafing formations" that could navigate just centimeters above the ground, stretched out over a dozen square feet each.

While my strike forces were traversing the murder installation unhindered and undetected, I started to gather less potent bugs close to the enemies.

These mosquitoes, flies, and ants would be the second wave, the ones sealing every windpipe the hornets had missed.

Somewhere deep down in my soul, I could hear mom and dad protest against my intentions, explaining that "Violence is no solution" and insisting that I was not a killer.

Just days ago, these "voices" of my super-ego would've prevailed, would've stopped me dead in my tracks, but now they were just faint whispers, superseded by my newest experiences.

When in Rome, do like the Romans do – especially if thousands of lives depend on it.

Three minutes after Jazyk had given me the "go ahead", my last insects reached their staging areas.

I sensed a total of forty-five SS thugs on, or surrounding, the killing field, and 212,567 invertebrates of all kinds under my control.

Hardening myself further, I pushed every shred of doubt, every scruple away, and dove into my power.

It was even easier than the last time.

My control was absolute, and I used basically the same tactics that had worked back at Jaromierz's farm, adjusting for the initially smaller number of potent bugs per soldier through a higher rate of stings.

The hornets went for the eyes first, spearing eyelids with their spikes, pumping them full of the pain inducing neurotransmitter Acetylcholin, the stuff that made hornet stings more hurtful than those of most other flying insects, despite the fact that bee venom was much more toxic..

Being ruthlessly and constantly on the attack had worked for the Nazis in their Blitzkrieg conquest of Europe, now the tactic was turned against them.

The thugs had no time to protect themselves - they were blinded in seconds, and tripping over each other in pain and confusion before they had even a chance to fire their weapons, useless as that would've been.

Loud screams of alarm and anguish opened the way for the next, the deadly stage of my ambush.

A mix of hornets and very small flyers - to close gaps - entered the soldiers' mouths in suicide runs of lethal chitin, mosquitos and horse flies went for their nostrils, clogging them and inflicting even more suffering with their suckers.

Some of the more pain-resistant soldiers managed to keep the first invasion of their respiratory system at bay by clamping mouths and noses shut, but their adrenaline filled bodies needed lots of oxygen, and these individuals too succumbed swiftly when I swarmed them.

In short, it was a massacre, as torturous for the targets as my earlier annihilation of the patrol, but on a much greater scale.

If I'd been a cynic, I may even have complained about how boringly predictable the assault unfolded.

Not one of the famed Teutonic warriors got off a single unaimed shot. Pathetic, really.

After about three minutes, most of the thugs had lost consciousness, while some were still squirming on the ground, albeit weakly.

One of them had fallen into the pit nearest to his machinegun nest, a grimly gratifying turning of the tables.

I opened my eyes and looked at Jazyk, who was staring at my gruesome handiwork through a gap in the foliage.

What was he thinking and feeling, after he witnessed the deadly application of my power with his own eyes?

Was he disgusted with me and my somewhat "creepy" parahuman ability, or exalted by the destruction of his enemies?

I nudged him, and he looked at me over his shoulder, brown eyes wide in astonishment.

If there was wariness or fear in his heart, he hid it well.

"Most of them are dead or will be very soon." I said, my voice raspy. "It's time to move and get us some wheels."

He nodded jerkily, stood from his resting place, and lifted me up into his arms.

Jazyk trotted along as fast as he could while carrying me, and we left the trees behind in seconds.

The scene in front of us was of such devastation that it could've sprung from the apocalyptic imagination of a modern Hieronymus Bosch.

Bodies were laying everywhere, sometimes heaps of them together, their twisted arms and legs intertwined in the agony of death, the young faces under their helmets swollen and blue-black, frozen in pain-filled rictuses.

For a second, I imagined to faintly hear the propellers of the plane which had attacked me in the swamps, but that was surely just a physiological reaction, a realization that my own death in this war-torn world could be as swift and arbitrary as those of the young soldiers in front of my eyes.

I looked away quickly, and concentrated on our task – we needed a vehicle, and there was half a dozen of them available to choose from, beginning with a huge armored half-track and ending in two motorcycle combinations.

I thought the half-track would be too ponderous, we needed a swift car, but the only ones here filling that category were open-topped, not the best choice if we wanted to get the drop on the Nazis who accompanied the column of victims.

Coming to think of it, I might've spared one of the fascists to drive us - that could've granted us priceless moments until the enemy looked through the charade.

Too late for it now though, the last of the thugs had just stopped his feeble movements.

Maybe we could pilfer an uniform for Jazyk from one of the bodies?

We had nearly reached the parking cars, when a sharp "CRACK!" broke through the graveyard silence surrounding us.

Before I had even realized what was happening, that someone was shooting at us from beyond my ability to detect them, Jazyk broke into an all out run towards the vehicles, jolting me painfully.

As we were about to duck behind the huge hulk of the armored truck, another shot rang out.

Jazyk's body was propelled forward as if hit by an iron fist.

He screamed in agony while we were catapulted behind the bulk of the vehicle, and I was thrown from his suddenly limb arms, only to crash into the ground.

The resulting torture was unbelievable.

I'd thought that the cursed horse riding had brought me to the brink of my endurance, but this ordeal taught me otherwise.

My lungs were burning once again, as if filled with napalm, and the ribs felt like daggers stabbing at my inner organs.

Jazyk hadn't gone down, but stumbled some faltering steps towards me, blood already soaking his jacket from a coin sized hole in his left shoulder.

He stared at me, uncomprehending and dazed - and then, he simply collapsed.

Naturally, he had to fall upon me like a ton of bricks, pushing me into the shadowy realm of semi-consciousness through sheer pain.

I came back to myself slowly, driven on by an alarmed buzzing in my brain.

Something was wrong - yes, I knew that from the raging pain in my ribs, but it was more than that

.

It took nearly a minute of scrambled thoughts, suppressed tears of agony and increasingly intense droning in the back of my head, before I could wrap my mind around the situation.

_Crap! _

There were thirty-eight new presences in my range. Thirty-eight Nazi presences, to be precise.

They were about 200 yards away, running parallel to one of their own barbwires, but they still closed in rapidly, racing like hounds that had scented their pray.

The still throbbing pain, my muddled mind, and the knowledge that a troop of murderers was quickly approaching us, threw me into a panic.

I started struggling to get out under Jazyk's body, resulting in some pained grunts from his limp form, but every movement hurt like hell, and was ultimately futile - he was just too heavy.

I sunk back to the ground, winded and frantic. What to do, what to do?

The buzzing in my head spiked suddenly, and finally sliced through my hysteria, enabling rational thought once again.

The first thing a clear mind brought was a wave of shame that rushed over me - I had panicked while thousands of hornets were still around, and a myriad of other bugs were at my beck and call.

I had acted really dumb even before that, waltzing onto the killing field like a cocksure idiot, solely relying on my power to safeguard our lives, only to be caught off guard by enemies who were outside my range.

Utter stupidity on my part, but luckily, it was not too late to act and give the new horde of Nazis a bloody nose in return for their actions.

With my resolve, the full control over my power returned to me.

Huge swarms which had been standing by rose from the ground and the bodies of their victims.

I threw them towards the Germans with a renewed fury - which was as much a product of my embarrassment over falling apart, as of my fear - and went straight for their faces, for the kill.

Only to learn that there was something blocking the way.

The vanguard of my bugs found the men's visages covered by hard plastic and tough rubber, and I was stumped for a second, before the main body of my onrushing swarms revealed the exact shape of their protection to me.

They were wearing gas masks!

With a sinking feeling, I realized that my deadliest weapon was rendered useless by this.

I couldn't get any bugs into their windpipes, and the Nazis were only a hundred yards away.

In seconds, they would turn the last corner of the fence, and have an open line of fire towards my position.

It was terrifying how they were cutting through my momentarily rudderless swarms, like hot knifes through butter.

I needed to change tactics. Fast!

If I couldn't kill them instantly, I had to at least stop their rush and keep the armored half-track between me and them.

With a single act of will, thousands of midges landed on the transparent eye-pieces of the goon's masks, effectively blinding them through their mass.

The Nazis stumbled to a halt and started to wipe the insects away, but I rendered their efforts useless by surrounding every soldier's head by an dense, fully opaque ball of bugs.

By doing so, I also sensed something I'd overlooked in my stupefaction over the gas masks.

The inventors of German chemical warfare equipment had made a crucial error, at least when it came to the - admittedly improbable - task of defending against swarms of insects.

Necks and ears of the soldiers were totally unprotected!

With a savage snarl of satisfaction, I ordered my hornets back into the fight.

Dozens of the huge insects descended on every fascist, attacked each square-centimeter of uncovered skin.

The hornets were too big to get deeply into the extremely vulnerable parts of the enemies ears though, which inspired me to ferry groups of the tiniest ants I could find onto the Nazis' heads.

I directed them to penetrate the ear canals as far as possible, before releasing all the formic acid their glands could produce.

As a result of my doubled-down assault, the air filled with grotesquely damped cries of pain and horror.

Thousands of my bugs found their way under the enemies clothes, mostly through the collars, and added even more sources of exquisite pain.

The attack degenerated into an utter mess, and while the thugs were effectively distracted, I had a few moments to devise a method to deal with them in a much more permanent way.

I knew that dozens of enemy weapons were laying around, the nearest was a heavy machinegun mounted on top of the half-track, but I had no training with, or even theoretical knowledge of guns, a severe oversight in my preparation for cape work.

I was sure Jazyk could handle any of the German weapons, but he was still semi-consciousness and pressing me into the ground.

Thinking of him in this rather … instrumental way made me realize that I hadn't done a thing to stop him from bleeding out – he was dying on me, quite literally.

"Jazyk, can you hear me?" I asked, squeezing and prodding all over his body in order to get a reaction.

"It hurts." he mumbled, slurring the words.

"I know, and I'm sorry for that, but you need to roll over and get off me, or I can't help you."

He grunted again and started to move, at first very slowly, but suddenly he gained momentum using his calf muscles, and slipped down beside me.

I sighed in relieve as the pressure of his weight was lifted, and rolled over to him, clenching my teeth to stop me from screaming in pain from my bruises.

"Do you have any first aid stuff on you?" I asked Jazyk breathlessly when I came to rest beside him.

"Bandage in my trousers." he whispered, his face white from blood-loss and shock.

I started to search him, while my bugs were still busy tormenting the SS thugs, who were slowly going insane under the constant assault.

Applying a pressure dressing to a bleeding bullet wound was harsh, especially with my own injuries interfering at every step, but doing it while a platoon of young men was stumbling around in horrendous agony caused and sustained by me, was a downright paradoxical experience.

They were murderous Nazi scum, but to inflict this kind of suffering onto them made me feel queasy nonetheless, maybe because I'd buried most of my feelings about killing so many human beings using the rationalization that it would at least be as fast as I could make it.

Damn these gas masks!

After long minutes of fumbling and fighting through my own pain, I'd done all I could for Jazyk, who had been somewhat roused by the excruciation produced by putting pressure on the hole in his shoulder.

"You need to kill the fascists who shot you." I told him, trying to infuse my voice with fierce determination and appealing to his desire for revenge at the same time.

He chuckled listlessly, then grimaced in pain as his shoulder was jolted by the movement.

"Even if I can get up by some miracle, I'm in no shape to fight anyone."

"There's a machinegun just feet away, soldier." I urged, and pointed to the truck.

"You won't even have to deal with the recoil, it's installed in a gun-pod."

"Why can't you deal with them yourself, Ms. Bug-Queen?"

The resentment he felt about being shot because I'd given an premature "all clear" was evident in this tone, but I ignored it - he was entitled to it, after all, I had fucked up.

"They are wearing gas masks, I can't kill them because I can't block their lungs and I have no really poisonous insects at hand."

"Fuck this mess!" Jazyk cursed, but started to crawl in the direction of the armored truck.

I dragged myself along beside him, giving him moral support and the occasional push when he slowed down.

When we had reached the back of the half-track, I got a view of the Nazi soldiers with my own eyes.

Many were down in the dust, rolling around as if possessed, some much too close to us for my taste, others had tried to flee, only to fall into the barbed wire they'd installed for their intended victims.

Very few had managed to run further, and those individuals had learned the hard way that fire ants and male gonads don't mix well.

I wasn't proud of these tactics, but I couldn't let them leave my range, it would've enabled them to recover and attack anew.

We had been lucky that none of the SS thugs who'd stumbled closer to our position had been driven to a suicidal use of hand grenades yet - probably because they didn't know where they were.

It was time to put an end to this.

I supported Jazyk's wounded left side when he opened the the rear hatch of the vehicle and started to climb in, but he had to do most of the work by himself, cursing and moaning in equal measure.

When he had finally managed to get into the truck, he propped himself up on the right wall, and began a painstakingly slow move to the gun-pod in front.

The bed of the half-trek, which featured strong steel walls on both sides, was curiously open to the air from above, and stuffed with soldiers personal equipment, munitions and something that looked like a very bulky radio unit.

That specific sight reminded me that we would have to face many more SS goons in the near future, that in fact our self-set task was not over by a very long shot.

We still needed someone who could drive the heavy truck, which I had decided to hijack despite its likely low top-speed, simply because I appreciated the armored hull that had kept Jazyk and me save from fire for crucial moments.

But driving this thing was a job Jazyk wouldn't be able to tackle with just one functioning arm - there was surely no servo-steering in SS - vehicles.

It would be great if I could get my hands on an officer with high rank and an enlisted soldier for the driving, that would make our approach to the column look like a legitimate mission.

I directed my bugs to find the thug with the most elaborate epaulets, and found him laying on the ground about 70 yards away, pretty close to another man who seemed to be a simple trooper.

Encircling those two with an opaque wall of bugs was a matter of seconds.

"Don't shoot at the area I enclosed with insects!" I shouted after Jazyk. "Our driver and ticket into the marching column are inside."

He grunted an acknowledgement through his tightly pressed lips, obviously fighting with his weakness and pain all along the way to the machinegun.

When he reached the deadly looking product of the Nazi arms industry, he checked it over diligently, especially the munition belt and the boxes feeding it.

Satisfied that the engine of death would work, Jazyk turned the gun-pod towards the SS goons, pressed the stock to his right shoulder, took aim carefully, and started to fire short bursts at the pain-crazed soldiers.

The following minutes were just brutal.

My partisan ally went over the field systematically, shooting every single Nazi without mercy, even those who had entangled themselves in the barbwire.

I couldn't condemn his relentlessness after what I had done myself, but the execution-style killing of blinded and helpless men left me with a feeling of deep disgust, as if I had eaten half-rotten rat because I was starving.

Our actions were necessary, because the SS - men were genocidal killers, and we two couldn't take a whole platoon prisoner anyway, but shielding yourself with such ruthless logic while looking on as man after man is ripped apart, is a cold comfort at best.

When it was done, and only the two thugs behind my veil of bugs were still alive, Jazyk leaned back against the truck's wall, and shuddered.

Even he, a soviet secret agent and partisan soldier, wasn't immune to the crudeness of our deeds, it seemed.

I interrupted the short but heavy silence that had followed only reluctantly:

"We need to pick up those two and be on our way."

"And how do we do that, with us both crippled?"

"I'll withdraw the bugs around their heads so that they can see again, then you'll fire a few shots into the ground, and demand that they take off their masks."

For cases like this, it was quite convenient to have a NKVD translator at hand, who had learned the two most important languages of the "class enemy", I thought.

He signaled his agreement by simply taking aim, and I pulled the swarm back a few yards, simultaneously halting the attacks of the bugs against the SS men's skin and ears.

Before they had any time to recover, Jazyk plowed the earth just yards in front of them with a long salvo of bullets, making them scramble back on all fours.

"_Ergeben Sie sich und nehmen Sie die Masken ab!"_ Jazyk shouted with all the power he had left, but he must've felt that he still sounded too feeble, because he emphasized his words with another volley from the MG.

To my surprise, the soldiers didn't surrender, but grabbed for their guns.

"Don't kill them!" I shouted to Jazyk, while my swarm closed in again and I scrambled up to get into the protection of the truck.

Landing on the half-track's bed chest first hurt like hell, but it was worth it, because the Nazis actually managed to get off a few shots in our direction, before my hornets attacked their already swollen fingers once again.

"That did work like a charm." Jazyk said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

I ignored him in favor of attacking the two Germans with every bug around, literally bathing them in insects from head to toe, weighing them down with the mass of tens of thousands of my minions.

I had to make them understand that resistance was futile, but Jazyk's gunning down of everyone else must've convinced them that there was no chance of survival at all, which made it that much harder to take them prisoner.

Having so many bugs on them, even on every square-inch of the impregnable gas masks, made me aware that there was a possible weakness in their protection.

I couldn't get even my smallest flies or fleas though the filters, or inside them, but I could use them to block the air flowing in through very small holes in the masks filter cartridge.

I gnashed my teeth in frustration, realizing that the whole terrible scene of the last fifteen minutes could've been resolved much quicker, and without Jazyk's stint as executioner.

While my bugs started to deprive the two SS thugs of their oxygen, I fumed on silently, berating myself for my lack of observational skills and deductive clarity.

I had to own up to the fact that despite all my thinking and planning in the last days, I was still biased to approach fights in terms of small- scale battles in urban areas, the simple "cape-work" I had expected to find myself doing.

There was a distinct difference between just controlling my bugs in what amounted in most cases to a high powered brawl, and actually registering all the important sense data while fighting off mass attacks by heavily armed military formations.

After a minute had passed, I pulled my swarm back once again, and let only those small insects in place which closed off the tiny airholes in the masks's filters.

Now the two goons could either suffocate under their masks while fresh air was a few simple motions away, or follow my orders.

The officer broke first, and ripped the mask from his face, pumping in deep breaths, and his subordinate followed suite.

Without hesitation, I drove tendrils of hornets from my slowly rotating swarm towards the recalcitrant Nazis, and stopped them just inches in front of their face.

I wouldn't give them a chance to get the masks on again.

"Order them to leave their weapons on the ground and come over."

Jazyk shouted some more German words, and the two goons, confronted with thousands of aggressively buzzing hornets threatening their eyes and mouths, complied.

There were still hundreds of my smaller bugs beneath their uniforms, which made me aware that the officer kept a hidden dagger in his jackboot, while the other soldier put his gun, bayonet and hand grenades on the ground, and kept nothing back.

"The guy with the fancy epaulets has a concealed blade in his left boot." I warned Jazyk.

"_Das Messer raus aus dem linken Stiefel, Du Sauhund!" _my companion shouted.

Revealing such impossible knowledge finally destroyed the man's determination to resist, and he pulled the dagger out and let it fall on the heap of other weapons.

The two started to shuffle over to us, while I kept my swarm in striking distance, ready to teach them another lesson at a moment's notice.

They reached the truck, and Jazyk ordered them to a halt a few yards from the rear hatch.

I pulled myself up the side wall with great difficulty, and spied at the Nazis by peering over it.

From this close, they looked terrible, the skin that had been unprotected was strewn with angry red pustules, hundreds of them, and their eyes were not only terrified, but also slightly feverish from the hornet venom.

Their ears had swollen to nearly double their original size, an absurd sight that made me think of "Dumbo" for a moment, before the severity of our situation caught up to me again.

"Ask the officer who he is, his rank and unit."

A quick exchange of terse words informed us that the he was _"Hauptsturmführer"_ Charwart, leader of something called a _"Schwadron"_ in a _"SS – Kavallerie-Regiment"_.

I was sure that this guy was a treasure trove of information, but there wasn't any time for an interrogation - maybe I could get something worthwhile out of him while we drove towards the column of victims, but that remained to be seen.

"Could you give me your pistol, please?" I asked Jazyk, and he handed the weapon over without question, and gave me a thirty seconds instruction on its use.

He kept his own submachine gun.

I had my swarm on the ready of course, guarding the Nazis, but before we ordered our prisoners into the truck, I wanted something in my hands that could kill them in just a second.

Pulling myself forward, I got into the built-in chair beside the radio with Jazyk's help,

"Tell those two bastards that they shouldn't dream of trying something, or I will pump their asses full of lead and venom at the same time. When they know their place, have them come in here, we need to be gone."

The Red Army partisan did as I said, and soon after, the two defeated SS- men entered the half-track.

Their terrorized eyes grew even wider when they got a good first look at my masked and unambiguously female form, but I ignored their astonishment, pointing the muzzle of my pistol towards them instead.

This clarified that I was not a helpless girly, and we sorted the situation out quickly.

The trooper was forced to go forward and start the vehicle, under Jazyk's watchful gaze from the front passenger's seat, while I threatened Charwat with my new gun as well as the tens of thousands of hornets and other bugs I kept pouring into the truck.

I settled the insects along the walls and on every other surface, keeping them ready to lift off in a second.

I'd have liked to bind the enemy soldiers until they couldn't move a muscle, but that would work against our purpose in taking them with us in the first place.

I signaled the _"Hauptsturmführer"_ to close the rear hatch, then I had him kneel on the other side of the truck, pointing my gun at him and landing hundreds of hornets all over his body, ready to attack at the drop of a hat.

He didn't like that one bit, and I was sure he was trying to figure me and my strange powers out in his head, but I could just ignore that as long as I was calling the shots here.

The strong motor of the half-track roared into live, and the SS trooper steered us unto the dusty lane that lead towards Pinsk.

"We need to know how many soldiers are guarding the column!" I cried over the noise of the engine and the rattling of the tracks.

Jazyk nodded and asked Charwat, but it soon became clear that the guy wouldn't tell us another word without force.

Well, I had already killed 81 people today, if one included the platoon Charwat had used to attack us, so why exactly would I be above some "forceful questioning"?

The SS- Hauptsturmführer might've assumed that he could resist our inquiries, but half a dozen hornet stings to the soft flesh of his upper lip persuaded him of the opposite.

He frantically signaled that he would cooperate, then started to stammer out his story, the already swelling lip not helping him in the effort.

"He claims that there are more than 500 men of his own and another _Schwadron_, who are bringing my people here," Jazyk shouted over the din "but I think 200 or 250 is a much more realistic number, if you consider that they must've left some troops behind, securing Pinsk. The sucker is trying to bluff us."

I nodded in thanks towards my translator/ally.

He was really a priceless resource, and I would need to take a much better look at his injury as soon as the Jews of Pinsk were set free.

Leaning back against the wall of the rumbling and shaking vehicle and staring at the Nazi officer, I tried to formulate a coherent plan that would save the Jewish man in the column without any, or at least with very few, casualties.

Forcing our captive SS- officer to order the people released would never work, the guarding forces would look through such an attempt in seconds.

If the column was really 10.000 strong as Jazyk had claimed, that complicated the issue further, because it would surely be longer than a mile, preventing me from attacking all guards - even the majority of them, really - at once, and leaving the Jews outside my range without any protection.

The only way I could think of that might actually work, was to have Charwat claim a pressing mission in Pinsk, then have the truck drive along the column, and deposit detachments of hornets every ten yards or so, naturally with the additional complication to keep them undetected until they were needed.

When we had traveled the 600 yards that constituted my current maximum range, calculated from one end of my circular field of control to the other, we would have to turn around under some made up reason, stop in the middle, and begin the assault.

Putting it this way, it sounded less like a good plan, and more like a sure way to get the people in the back of the column murdered, but what else could I do?

Maybe with more time and resources, I could've come up with something better, but I had to deal with the situation as is.

But wait! I was no lone wolf cape anymore, I had an ally with me, who was a real deal partisan soldier.

Getting his input on this before deciding for us both was the smart move, I'd made enough errors for one day.

I told him what I'd come up with, and he stared at me, clearly in disbelieve.

"Your plan is much too complicated." he rebuked.

"You should just start to position your bugs in the underbrush right now, on both sides of the path. When we have traveled 600 yards, we'll double back, hide, and just wait until the column arrives, let them pass until the head nearly reaches the first hornets you left and..."

I never heard what else he thought I should do, because he interrupted his own explanation with a heated "Damn!".

We had just passed a curve of the road, and faced a long stretch of straight lane, when a heavy gray car came into view on the other end, accompanied by a few riders, and closely followed by a train of running men.

"They have surely seen us already." Jazyk declared agitatedly.

I just nodded, accepting the point. There was nothing to be done now but wing it.

I turned to Charwat, who was unsuccessfully trying to hide the hope our upset faces and tone had given him.

"Tell this Arian _"Übermensch"_ here that I will shoot off his manhood if he doesn't transform himself into the best impromptu actor of the _"Reich."_ I told my partner.

Jazyk translated, and seemed to add his own threats to mine, because _"Hauptsturmführer"_ Charwat began to nod and gesture placatingly.

"He'll tell the men in the vanguard that he has urgent business with Worthoff, the Pinsk city commander." Jazyk explained his orders to the prisoner with grim determination.

"That's a sound idea, but additionally, we shouldn't slow down much, just enough that the other Nazis can recognize him and understand his words." I suggested.

We approached the head of the column speedily, and rearranged our positions, so that the driver had a gun poking his side, while Charwat was jabbed by the barrel of my pistol in a much more private location, making clear that their first wrong word or action would be the last one they ever produced.

Following Jazyk's order, the man at the wheel slowed down and pulled to the edge of the way, so that the closing in formation could pass without problem.

Through the small port that enabled the driver to see where he was going, I got a short look at the two man in the lead car and the riders.

_Shit, shit, shit!_

They were wearing gas masks, as did every single of the horsemen, and even their mounts!

Charwat must've given them some kind of warning via radio before he attacked.

This previous contact made it even harder, if not impossible, to accomplish our deception, but at least I knew how to deal with the masks now.

When we reached the head of the column of half running, half stumbling men, which was seemingly going on forever into the distance, the half-track's speed was lowered to a fast walking pace.

Charwat, who was standing upright beside the machinegun-pod, gave the officers in the front vehicle a Hitler-salute over our truck's wall, while Jazyk and me stayed behind it, hidden from view.

"_Dringende Angelegenheit mit Kommandant Worthoff in Pinsk, Sturmbannführer Magill!"_ Charwat called , keeping his face - at which I was staring like a hawk, looking for any treacherous play of his features - calm as if he was sitting at home talking about the weather.

It looked like a pistol to the family jewels was nearly as good as a hangman's noose to focus the mind, or sharpen the theatrical skills, in this case.

Before the other Germans, one of whom might me a superior of Charwat, if the saluting conventions were the same in the fascist SS as in modern militaries, could react in any form, we had passed them and rode on, speeding up again.

While we left the column's front behind, and I started to deploy my swarms in widely diffused, mostly transparent clouds, I got glimpses of the Jewish men we'd come to rescue through the driver's hatch.

They looked scared to death by the SS goons, and most faces were studies of agony and exhaustion, pearls of sweat standing on their brows.

As I watched, an older man in his late forties or early fifties, who was about 60 or 70 yards ahead of us, collapsed to the ground on the edge of the track.

Seconds later, a German motorcycle combination drove by.

The co-driver leaned out of his cart, took aim with the pistol in his hand, and shot the old man from less than ten feet away.

The poor victim was hit in the back several times, rolled over once, and lay still, dead or dying.

I clenched my fists in impotent rage at the display of SS cruelty, but kept my power under control, if barely.

It wouldn't help the thousands of other men in this death march if I attacked before I'd reached the best possible position.

Suddenly, a slightly slurred voice erupted from the radio in the back of the truck:

"_Hier ist Magill, was genau sind Ihre Befehle vom Gruppenführer, Charwat?_"

I shot Jazyk a questioning look, and he translated the now repeating message as:

"This is Magill, what are your exact orders from the Gruppenführer, Charwat?"

It seemed that our time was running out quickly.

And who was this superior officer Magill was talking about in his lazy tone, which reminded me of nothing more than the drunk street people I'd overheard in the Docks?

Nevermind that, I told me, it was a question for later.

We had only driven along about 200 yards of the column yet, and needed to go another 400, before we could start turning around.

Our only chance was to play for time.

"Tell him," I pointed at Charwat "that he must invent something convincing and radio it back, or face execution in 30 seconds."

Jazyk gave our prisoner the gist of that, and he hurried over to the radio under my watchful eyes, my pistol following his every move.

"_Hier Charwat, Herr Sturmbannfüher, meine Befehle sind klassifiziert und betreffen den Gasangriff." _

There was a long pause from the other side of the connection, while we drove on, and Jazyk told me that our prisoner's answer had included hints about secret orders concerning the so called "gas attack" that had ostensibly happened, at least in the Germans' own perception.

We had nearly reached the 300 yards mark, when I sensed the lead vehicle slowing down.

The whole column started to halt at the head of it, and my heart fell.

It had taken them surprisingly long, maybe because this "Magill" person was actually as drunk as he sounded, but the Nazis' reaction to our more than fishy way of bypassing their superior officers was here at last.

"_Es war wie sie befürchteten, Herr Gruppenführer..."_ Magill's befuddled voice crackled from the radio, before it was cut off abruptly.

I didn't need my steadfast ally's translation to know what this meant, and 90 percent of all bugs I had left with me took off at once, catapulting themselves towards the column's end at their highest possible speed.

At the same moment, the infiltrating clouds of bugs I had left behind on our way started their attack, supported by every fly, ant, spider or dragonfly I could get my metaphorical "hands" on.

Midges and horseflies blocked the gas masks' viewing sockets as well as the filters air holes, and my hornets hit motorcyclist's fingers, cavalry horse's anuses and Magill's driver all at once, pouring on the pain like there was no tomorrow.

Deep down, I feared that this was actually a probable outcome for most everyone around, if I couldn't overwhelm the trap we found ourselves in with brute force.

I signaled Jazyk to stop the half-track on the side of the road, while clumping some of my remaining bugs around Charwat's head, an unmistakable signal for him to stay put.

If we went even 20 yards further, I would loose control of the bugs at the head of the column, giving Magill and his men the opportunity to kill every Jewish man and boy in their reach.

This situation was a fuck up of monumental proportions - the Germans had clearly been warned that something was coming.

The only thing that might save the day was the fact that they expected a gas attack or a conventional ambush, not the perfect storm of lethality I could unleash with my bugs.

I sensed as motorcycles rammed trees, strewing their screaming passengers across the landscape, as horses already made jittery by their humongous gas masks, reared up, and smashed their riders to the ground.

Magill's motorist managed to stop his car despite three dozen hornets pumping venom into the hands with which he was clawing at the steering wheel, but all he achieved with that was to transform himself and his passenger into even better targets for my slower bugs.

Damped screams of surprise and agony rose from the fascist thugs all along the forward part of the death march, while uncounted Jews took the opportunity to escape their would-be-killers.

A few dozen heroic man, mostly younger ones, threw themselves onto their SS tormentors with bare hands, pummeling the blinded, suffocating and pain-stricken men with their fists, or even taking their weapons away to turn them against the former owners.

But in the backwards elements of the column, where my bugs hadn't arrived yet, a very different horror reared its head.

Shots rang out, then whole salvos of machinegun fire, and a panicked screaming from thousands of throats rose into the air, that chilled me to the bone.

The Nazis at the rear of the march had heard the hollering of their fellow soldiers, the few shots that rang out, and the scared neighing of the horses.

It was entirely possible that someone back there had even received a radio call by Magill or the mysterious _"Gruppenführer"._

Regardless of their reasons, the murderers had obviously decided to do what they had come for in the first place.

I needed to stop them without delay, but it was simply impossible.

Even my hornets made only twenty m/ph, or about eight yards a second, it would take them nearly 40 seconds to reach the farthest reach of my power towards the end of the column.

The people still beyond that would have to wait until I'd permanently dealed with the Nazis in my range.

While I was pushing my swarms down the road, the first explosions rang out from the direction of Pinsk.

They were caused by handgrenades, which were thrown into the mass of unarmed people - I sensed the inhuman effects of the explosives through the bugs, which arrived at the first scene of such an atrocity just seconds too late to safe anyone.

I had started this intervention, with the best intentions of course, and everyone back there was paying the price now, most with their lives.

Bile rose in my throat and I had to use every trick I had learned in the time since I became a cape, especially in the last week of horror, to fight it back down, to keep the offensive rolling despite the knowledge that I had already failed.

As I was fighting against the Nazis and my own despair, another machine of murder arrived from the East, in the form of a small, low flying plane.

It began to fire streams of bullets into the crowd of fleeing civilians, mowing them down like the scythe of Death.

When it passed directly above us, at a height of not more than 100 feet, I could see the gunner behind his Plexiglas window, an older man in a rather fancy uniform.

At the same moment, the machinegun of our truck opened up with a long salvo.

Jazyk gave a shout of triumph as we saw the glass of the pilot's cockpit shatter, spraying shrapnel into the plane.

The pilot tried to evade our fire, banking sharply to the left, and the killer behind the gun slumped in that direction, it was obvious that…

the titanic shape in front of my eyes was dying.

The outermost extensions of the creature were flaking off and breaking into fragments, as it swam through an emptiness without air..

TBC


	8. Exterminator 7a

Dear readers - as is so often the case, a mixture of RL and writers block stopped me from continuing "Exterminator" for a long time. I'm trying to get back in the saddle now, and am therefore changing the format a bit. Instead of really lentghy chapters, I'll try to produce shorter, but more frequent installations of the story.

Disclaimer: "Worm" belongs to Wildbow.

7\. (a)

_Have you ever felt that existence is a malicious conscious being with a maw full of gigantic teeth, gnashing on your bones? _

_I had this feeling several times, first when my mom died in a senseless car crash, then again when my best friend turned against me without a word of explanation, and bullied me for the next two years. _

_But first and foremost, I'd felt it after the locker incident, where I was actually "eaten" by that leathery old monster, and digested in its iron stomach full of blood and bugs, only to be puked back with a power that made me into the Queen of Creep._

_This awareness of being the plaything for a maleficent universal force hadn't returned to me when I was flung into the past by some freakish event in the middle of a cape fight, not because this didn't qualify – it sure did – but because I was just too busy staying alive to have an attack of existential angst._

_But now, in the midst of an utter madhouse, fighting for the live of thousands of innocents against the SS machinery of murder, the ancient monster returned for me with a vengeance..._

Coming back to awareness with a painful jerk, I discovered that I had collapsed to the bed of the armored half track.

Everything hurt, even my head, which must've hit the floor with the unarmored back.

But despite the pain, I noticed these things only peripherally, because the impressions I got from my body were only a drop in the monsoon of crystal clear sense data that was flooding my brain.

Biting mandibles, incessant screaming, horrified human eyes staring back from behind transparent plastic lenses...

I was getting more intelligible information from my bugs in every moment than I'd ever dreamed of, but the vast majority of it was simply dreadful, terrible beyond description.

Just my luck, to get a mysterious boost to my powers while in the midst of absolute carnage.

I battered the incoming stream of terror with all my mental might, fighting to stay sane in a deluge of terrifying madness, until I got at least some control over the torrents of sensations.

Not only my receptivity and my understanding of the bugs' senses had undergone a massive change, but also my range.

After establishing some fixpoints in the data, I was sure that there was nothing in a perimeter of more than a thousand yards in every direction - more than three times my former radius! - that I couldn't see, hear, smell or even taste, at least if I focused enough bugs on it.

And deep down, under the enormous input generated by my bugs, I caught a short glimpse of something else, something spiraling in infinitesimal glory and titanic complexity, a thing that would grant me so much more power than I had now, if only given time and attention.

But my minions were on the attack everywhere, widely beyond the area I had covered before, and I had to concentrate on the here and now.

My subconsciousness - or some incomprehensible aspect of my power - must've started their assault while I was incapacitated through whatever had befallen me.

As a result, hundreds of German soldiers were writhing on the ground all along the dirt path, suffocating behind masks which they had believed to be the perfect safety measures moments ago.

Judging by the state of the SS thugs who were beyond the old limits of my range, I couldn't have been out for more than two or three minutes.

Towards the back of the column, where the Germans had more time to react to my attack, Galleons of hot blood, reeking disturbingly of nourishment, were soaking the earth, and even more entrancing odors emanated from the multitude of stomach wounds.

The strange secondhand pseudo-olfactory sensations made me gag, and I shut them down reflexively, with a mighty mental heave, but without actually understanding how I was doing it.

It was surely interesting that there was some kind of bleed-through of my bugs instinctual reactions to "tasty" smells, but I decided to ponder it later.

Much later.

Instead, I forced myself to take stock of the situation systematically, filtering out the numerous flows of sensation that were just trivial or disgusting.

After a few seconds of concentrated multi-sensing, I knew more than I ever wanted.

Of the Jewish men from Pinsk, more than 600 lay dead or dying, hit by Nazi bullets or grenade shrapnel, some even murdered with the cold steel of bayonets.

Bile rose in my throat at the stinging realization that this was my fault. My idiocy had caused these fathers, grandfathers, husbands, brothers and sons, to die.

My eyes began to tear up, and I felt like an enormous weight was settling on me, crushing my soul without mercy.

I pushed back, pushed it away instinctively, to stop the guilt from paralyzing me, at least for a time, for this moment when I needed to be strong.

Experience helped me - I had suppressed feelings of guilt many times before, mostly when I agonized over my relationship to my dad.

But this time, something totally unexpected happened- the unwanted and harmful emotion was rapidly purged from my mind, and was dispersed into my swarm within a few seconds.

I felt a rush of intense satisfaction, a feeling of empowerment that quickened my pulse and sent adrenaline through my whole body.

On some level, I was aware that another new and ominously thinker-like aspect of my power had just manifested itself, but before any dread over this could muddle the brilliant clarity I'd just achieved, I made it follow the guilt into the oblivion of my swarm.

I refocused on the fact that my tactics hadn't been a total failure.

Not a single SS killer had escaped my swarm, and the majority of the victims had been freed and were fleeing in every direction.

Some of the more lucky or crafty ones had even gotten their hands on horses, and were streaking away from the slaughter as fast as the animals would go.

I hoped the partisans could pick them up later to strengthen their ranks.

This wasn't a clear cut victory, but no shattering defeat either.

I was beginning to form a complete picture of the situation, when I finally understood that Jazyk and I had worked under some kind of severe misconception.

With an estimated length of not more than 1500 yards, the column of prisoners couldn't have contained more than 4000 people.

In other words, over 6000 Jewish men were missing, presumably still in the hands of the SS, if they were alive at all, that is.

The possibility of another massacre going on right now somewhere in the vicinity of the city horrified me for about three seconds, until I effortlessly dissolved the obstructive emotion into my bugs.

This angst-busting feature was very practical!

It made it possible to reach the conclusion that immediate action was required, without loosing my head again.

I concentrated all my willpower to force my body into motion, and struggled against the pain in my chest, as if it was just another of the myriads of enemies I had "acquired", just by being dropped into this time and place.

When I was leaning upright against the troop carriers sidewall, I glanced towards the front of the vehicle, from where Jazyk, who sat slumped in the passenger seat, was staring at me with a troubled look on his still ghastly white face.

"What happened to you? For I moment I feared I would lose control over this bastard," he gestured towards the Nazi officer, whose head was still encased by hornets, "while you were having a fit, twitching and shaking around like a madwoman."

I didn't like his reproachful tone, but decided that any detailed explanation, which would put my so called "fit" in perspective - if I could think one up - would have to wait until later.

"I don't know what really happened, the only thing I'm sure of is that something knocked me out and changed my power while I was unconscious." I said curtly, holding back any specifics I had discovered.

He looked taken aback for a moment, obviously still not entirely sure about the whole concept of superpowers, but he recovered quickly, and signaled me to go on.

"While I put down all the Nazis who were guarding the column, I discovered that this death march couldn't have contained even half the people they took prisoner in Pinsk."

"What do you mean?" he asked, aghast.

"The column wasn't nearly long enough, the Nazis must've kept most of the men in the city. I suppose they didn't have enough soldiers to control everyone in the open field."

"Damn them! We have to be sure about where the rest of my people are before we can decide what to do next."

I simply nodded in agreement, but Jazyk in his agitation and weakness from his injury, interpreted that as reluctance, maybe because he couldn't see my face behind my mask, and started into a passionate speech about rescuing "everyone we possibly can."

While I listened with one ear to my upset partisan ally, most of my attention was suddenly captured by about a dozen survivors, who gathered not far from our position, and seemed to form an impromptu group.

Most of these men were those who had taken the opportunity to charge their SS tormentors while my bugs attacked, a fact attested to by the weapons they were holding in their hands.

I monitored them even more closely when they began a hesitant approach towards our vehicle.

Through my bugs, I heard them whisper agitatedly in a language that sounded a bit like the German I'd encountered piecemeal since finding myself here, but was clearly not identical to it.

Every few moments, one of them pointed towards our armored truck, expressions ranging from wonder to fear on their faces.

They were indicating the huge swarm of hornets I kept hovering above us as a reserve, and for our close protection.

A gentleman in his forties, who was wearing a slightly rumpled, but still elegant suit, and had a neatly trimmed black beard, gestured between the insect covered SS goons at the roadside, who were by now in the last throws of their deserved agony, and the swarm hovering over our heads, making clear to me that he at least was beginning to connect the dots.

I wondered what these mostly young men would do when they were confronted with a girl in an edgy, skintight suit and demonic looking mask, who was the person behind the inexplicable display of power they had witnessed, the damn near "miraculous" killing of hundreds of SS soldiers.

But before I could get overly nervous, I flushed the emotion out of my head, and into the tiny brains of several million bugs.

In my estimation, the approaching men were very brave, as was proven by their resolve to first fight their would-be murderers, and then stay at the site of this horrible massacre to investigate.

That staunchness would have to be enough, would have to pass another test when faced with me.

Finally, Jazyk's rant ran out of steam, and he noticed that I wasn't giving him my full attention.

Before he could react negatively to any perceived slight, I held my finger to my lips.

"Look outside, there are people you must talk to!" I hissed, hoping to get a conversation between him and his fellow citizens going as soon as possible, preferably without any misunderstandings due to my costume and lacking language skills.

He quickly peered out of the small driver's hatch, too fast to catch my exasperated pointing towards the dirt track on his right hand side.

When he didn't spot anyone who might've caused my warning, he turned around and opened his mouth, but I shook my head and pointed at the truck's side again, insistently.

Clearly irritated by my clumsy direction-giving, he used the machinegun-pod to hoist himself up, all the while grimacing from the pain every movement caused his injured shoulder, until he had a free view over the truck's side in all directions.

When he turned towards the dirt track, he jerked in surprise, then started to shout out to the group with all the strength he had left.

I ordered my hornets down, and hid most of them on the other side of the vehicle, while Jazyk kept hollering at the men, who started to run the last yards over to us, now that they saw a known and friendly face.

Jazyk retreated from his perch on the gunpod, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste, then came over to me walking backwards, while pointing his machine-pistol at the driver.

He nearly stumbled over the handgun he had given to me before our reckless assault began, but I snatched it up at the last moment, embarrassed that I hadn't taken it back as soon as I awoke from my blackout.

"Don't worry, I know at least half of them, and three are even good communists." Jazyk whispered in a rather counterproductive attempt to reassure me, before he opened the rear hatch of our half-track.

Forming a semicircle around the back of the truck, the men stared at me with wide eyes, weapons in hand, but not aiming at us.

This close up, I saw that many of them were still in shock from what had happened to them, their eyes slightly glassy, and their hands shaking, but the older gentleman I had noticed earlier didn't seem to be as affected as the others.

He mustered me for a at least half a minute, before he took a step forward and bowed deeply towards me, without saying a word.

I looked at Jazyk, who seemed to be as confused as I by this behavior, but pulled himself together in moments.

He indicated the older man with his left hand, before gesturing towards me.

"Principal Alper, may I introduce you to..." he began, but to his shock, the obviously highly respectable man interrupted him with his baritone voice.

"No introductions are necessary, Jazyk. I would have to be blind and deaf not to recognize _The Shamir_ in the flesh."


	9. Exterminator 7b -Mikveh-

Disclaimer: "Worm" still belongs to Wildbow.

A/N: This time around, I'm especially interested in your opinion on the way I handled the whole religion/manipulation situation. But I love all reviews of course, so keep them coming.

7 (b)

Mikveh

I stood there and stared at the old man, unsure what was going on.

If this had been any other situation but the meeting of survivors after a Nazi massacre, I would've thought that he was making an obscure joke, but that was out of the question.

"I'm sorry principal Alper, but I think you might be mistaking me for someone else." I said slowly, unsure how good his English was after the one grammatically correct, but heavily accented sentence he had uttered.

Mr. Alper frowned, then a slightly puzzled expression spread over his handsome face, as if he were a reader of poetry, who understood the regular meaning of every single word before him, but had to work out the subtle undertones or metaphors in the text.

I considered repeating myself, but before I could decide if I should take such a potentially insulting step, a bright, knowing smile blossomed on his lips.

He lifted his hands to his sides and balled them into fists, the whole movement fluid, as if it was a ritual.

Then he spoke again, and his suppliant tone made the words sound like a prayer:

"Oh _HaShem_, you are testing me still, I am on trial for my disbelieve. Making _The Shamir_, your chosen protector of this people, speak in a language of gentiles, making it refuse to acknowledge its name, those are your challenges for me. But I have come back to you."

He paused for a moment, then covered both his eyes and began to pray again, this time in what I thought to be Hebrew.

Well, I had been wrong.

The old gentleman, who had somehow managed to look well-dressed and collected even after surviving the Nazi death march and my ill-conceived rescue attempt, wasn't at all "unaffected" by the horrible experience.

Jazyk and I stood in the back of the half-track and gaped at Mr. Alper's strange behavior.

It had been odd enough that he called me _"The Shamir in the flesh"_, whatever that meant, but the invocatory declaration that _"HaShem"_, presumably God, was testing him with my lack of language skills and my denial of being _"The Shamir"_, catapulted the whole affair into the land of the surreal.

Alper finished his prayer, bowed deeply towards me, and promptly turned away and towards his companions, as if his business with me was finished.

He started to talk to them in a loud and practiced voice, accompanied by wide gestures and in an inspiring tone that send shivers down my spine, despite the fact that I couldn't understand a single word he was saying.

I shook my head, shoving my surprise and growing disquiet into the swarm, and addressed Jazyk.

"_The Shamir"_ doesn't mean "bug girl" or something similarly trivial, right?"

My only ally in all of this madness didn't react for long moments, but just stood there, his mouth still hanging open.

He stared at Mr. Alper and his audience, who were getting more and more animated.

Some were whispering to each other with shining eyes, while others hung on every word the principal said, bizarre exultation on their mostly young faces.

One small group of three man stood out of the crowd by bodily distancing themselves from the others, their perplexed faces testament to the fact that I wasn't the only one here who found this whole development troubling.

After two or three minutes, Jazyk seemed to have heard enough of Mr. Alper's speech, and he turned towards me, grimacing as if he felt highly embarrassed.

"I'm really sorry, but "The Shamir" is everything but trivial." he said haltingly.

Sighing deeply, he pointed towards the preaching principal.

"This highly educated headmaster of a secular Hebrew school, whom I always looked up to as one of the most enlightened people of Pinsk, is right now telling these impressible lads that you are the god sent embodiment of a mythological force from the _Talmud_."

He started to chuckle mirthlessly, obviously shaken by his role model's mental breakdown, but stopped himself with a visible effort.

"If I remember my _Bar Mitzvah_ lessons correctly, _"The Shamir"_ is either a small, but powerful worm, or some sort of "essence", which King Salomon purportedly used to cut stone and iron while building his temple."

After uttering this explanation, Jazyk shook his head slowly, clearly in disbelieve, and for a moment he wasn't the tough as nails partisan, who kept fighting with a bullet in his shoulder, but a dejected young man who had to watch the slaughter of hundreds of his people, and the highly irrational reaction to it by a teacher he admired.

I didn't know if I should laugh out loud at the outlandishness of Mr. Alper's theologically inspired "explanation" for the events he had witnessed, or start crying about the horror and indignity brought to everyone here, living and dead alike, by the Germans.

Doing neither of those things, I pushed it all away, into the myriad of insects under my control.

My new ability to manage my own mental state, of which I had started to think as a minor thinker power in its own right, was very addictive, especially under the circumstances.

I had no time to mourn for the murdered, to grieve for Mr. Alper's mental health, or to worry about being spoken of as some supernatural creature.

No, Jazyk and I had to focus on the thousands of people who were still in mortal danger, and getting information from Alper or his rattled people was absolutely imperative.

"Let me guess, those guys," I pointed towards the three men who had separated themselves from the group, neither of them older than eighteen or twenty, "are the "upstanding communists" you were talking about earlier. Correct?"

"Yes, they are all in the Komsomol, the party youth. The large one," Jazyk pointed towards a huge teen, who was surely six and a half feet tall "is Moishe Postmann, a dependable comrade who should've had some weapons training."

The vulnerability had vanished from Jazyk's face as he focused on answering my question, and I felt pleased to get his thoughts back on track.

"Tell them to come here and ask them if they know where the rest of the prisoners are held." I ordered him firmly, following the insight that it was my task to take the muddled situation in hand.

Jazyk nodded and called over to the small group in what I thought could be Polish or Russian, but was definitely not the German-like language Mr. Alpert was using with his "disciples".

They came over slowly, lead by the huge guy, Moishe, who looked like a perfect basketball player, and had an open face that was framed by thick brown hair and dominated by a pair of wide grey eyes, which clearly showed how shell shocked and confused he still was.

His black haired comrades were much smaller in size, about average, and had wiry frames.

Their sharp features looked very much alike, so much so that I figured them for fraternal twins, or at least brothers.

All three looked harmless enough, not like my mental picture of fanatical, brainwashed party-drones who excelled in denunciating "traitors", or mindlessly applauding a Stalin address till they fell where they stood.

My impression was changed in a negative direction when I saw that neither CPSU instructors, nor their parents, had taught these guys that openly ogling young girls just because they wore skintight clothing made them look like lechers.

I was uncomfortably aware of their roving eyes, and felt myself blush under my mask, but reminded myself that this was 1941 in a backwards area of Eastern Europe, where things like gender equality and the emancipation of women would be at best tales from far away cities.

When they came to a halt just a yard in front of us, they seemed to realize what they had been doing, and looked at the ground, obviously embarrassed.

Jazyk ignored the awkward moment, introduced me shortly, and started to rattle of questions, which the trio's huge leader answered in a surprisingly soft voice.

He came over as candid and smart, but that was of course just my gut-feeling, because I couldn't understand what was said between him and Jazyk.

This _"depending on the translator"_ thing was getting really annoying.

The other two didn't interrupt, but shot me what they thought to be "hidden" glances from time to time, which I simply ignored.

There wasn't all that much to see anyway, due to my beanpole figure.

After some precious minutes had passed in rapid and animated back and forth, Jazyk seemed to have formed a picture of the situation.

"He says that all the other men were still pent up on the plaza in front of the train station when their column was marched off, but he doesn't know if they were to wait there, or if the fascists intended to bring them somewhere else."

"Does that mean we have to drive all the way into the city center?" I asked him.

"It looks like it." he replied with a worried expression. "I think we should abandon the half track here, it's too slow, and also very unwieldy if we have to use back alleys."

"But it's armored and has that nifty machine-gun." I objected half heartedly, remembering how the bulky vehicle had saved our lives when that damn Nazi sniper started shooting at us.

"The longer the Germans in the city don't hear from the units sent out, the more likely it get's that they realize what happened here, and start killing everyone in reprisal, even in the midst of town." Jazyk explained his thinking.

He pointed towards one of the cars used by the enemy, which stood abandoned just a hundred yards away, with no visible damage.

"We should take that _Kübelwagen_, it seats four, even five taking your thin frame into account. Moishe and the Segal brothers," he pointed to the other two men, "can drive with us. They all got shooting instructions right after the invasion began, so they can keep a lookout and cover us while you do your thing."

I pondered that plan for a moment, thinking through the repercussions.

"What about my bugs? There won't be all that many potent ones - like hornets and wasps - in the city, and none of them are fast enough to keep up with a car."

"That's no problem at all" Jazyk insisted. "We can use the trunk and every other empty space, and you can land bugs on yourself and on me, maybe even the other guys if I can convince them that you have the bugs well in hand."

A jolt of surprised pleasure shot through me at his words – Jazyk trusted me enough to let me cover him in naturally aggressive and poisonous bugs as if it was nothing!

"That sounds as if it should work." I said, and hoped he could hear the gratefulness for his extension of trust in my voice.

Somehow, that seemed inadequate though, after I got him shot and hundreds of his people killed.

Spontaneously, I stepped over to him and gave his unwounded shoulder an awkward hug.

Before he could react to the gesture, I realized how he and the others might misinterpret it, and practically jumped back to my side of the truck.

I ignored the pain which shot through my chest at the quick movements, and leaned back against the truck's wall.

The four men stared at me with varying degrees of amazement, and I silently cursed the conservative gender roles prevalent in this time, as well as my own lack of social skills.

"We need to get our prisoner's under guard, there's no room in the car for them" I burst out with the first thing that sprang to mind.

I was sure Jazyk saw right through my clumsy attempt to divert attention away from my blunder, but I had raised a valid point.

"We can just tie the fascist pigs up and leave them here" Jazyk proposed an easy solution, one I should've thought of myself.

I listened only with half my attention as he began to elaborate on the idea though, because thinking of loose ends had reminded me that there was another huge problem we hadn't dealed with at all, one we had actually forgotten over all the _"Shamir"_ Mumbu-Jumbo.

Interrupting my ally, I put my finger on the sore spot: "Someone has to take a look at the wounded civilians, and treat them, so that they have a chance to survive."

Jazyk grimaced to my words, visibly agitated by our oversight, but he quickly recovered and soldiered on.

"I'll try to talk with Principal Alper, he has enough men with him to provide first aid to those who need it."

It was obvious that he felt some doubt about this proposition though, and I agreed heartily.

Alper and the others, who had been joined by at least two dozen stragglers of the flight, were still having what amounted to a religious awakening experience, totally ignoring the fact that I, their so called _"Shamir"_, was standing right here.

Seeing them pray and sing to each other, while there were so many urgent problems to be tackled, disturbed me, and made me doubt their willingness, or even ability, to provide any help at all.

I didn't know much about Judaism, but I was pretty sure that the behavior they displayed was more motivated by shock, then by anything distinct to their culture.

A few pieces of nebulous half-knowledge shot through my brain as I thought about their reactions.

Hadn't there been huge swarms of insects coming to the aid of the biblical Israelites?

My family wasn't particularly religious, but I had of course seen a number of Christian movies and shows, and some of it had stuck with me.

I remembered it now!

That one guy who followed instructions from a burning bush had cursed the Pharaoh of Egypt, and alongside other gruesome plagues that had befallen the land, gigantic swarms of locusts had devoured the harvests.

It seemed plausible that this legend might have influenced Mr. Alpert's and his fellows perception of my power, but that insight didn't bring me one step closer to motivate them to take action for the wounded.

Maybe if I had that blazing bush around to give them orders ... wait!

I was no pyrokinetic of course, but I had my bugs, and they could make a lot of different noises.

About six weeks ago, when I had hit my stride in the use of my powers, and was training my fine control, I had gotten a few dozen flies to buzz the Alexandria theme music to myself, while I indulged in phantasies about my upcoming hero career.

Here, in the Russian summer and inside a swampy area, I commanded a much greater diversity of bugs than at home, even cicadas, who had their own sound-organs.

And in addition, my power had just gotten a huge boost when I blacked out – I could actually give this hunch a try!

Too many had already died, I couldn't let it happen to those wounded I could still see, hear and smell inside my range, they had to be saved.

If doing so took a little misdirection and the use of religious superstition, I was more than willing to do it, especially because I as the only cape in this area, maybe this world, could easily refute Alpert's delusions once the Jewish people of Pinsk were rescued.

"Wait a moment, Jazyk." I stopped him before he could try to engage Mr. Alper, who was deeply lost in his reverie.

"I might have a way to get the men moving without alienating them or taking too much time."

He looked bewildered, probably asking himself how I could do so without speaking their language, but I overruled any objections by asking him how "Help the wounded!" was said in Hebrew, and how it was pronounced.

While he told me, still confused about my plan, I formed a small swarm of bugs next to my head, which included every species that produced audible sounds.

After explaining my idea to a skeptical Jazyk, who nonetheless agreed to give me a short time to try it out, I started to practice without delay.

The fast-track development of my „bug voice" idea went even better than I had hoped!

Before my power had somehow changed on this very battlefield, I would've needed hours to experiment and adjust, and to fine tune the resulting "voice", but now it just came to me.

My power fueled intuition, informed by the feedback I got over my bug senses, was such that I could tell which sound any individual bug produced.

Within the span of two or three minutes, I sorted out which bugs were usable, checked the sound range in which they could emit, and amalgamated the resulting noise together until I could generate discernable words.

I navigated the swarm close to Jazyk's left ear, and gave him a sample of my insectoid Hebrew.

The tone of my new "voice" made him flinch, but after a few tries, he confirmed that he could understand it and that my accent wasn't that far off.

Satisfied by his approval, I pumped the experimental swarm up to ten times its previous size, and let it coalesce above the heads of the rapturously praying crowd.

Following a sudden and reckless inspiration, I went all out, and shaped my bugs into the likeness of a burning bush, hovering in midair.

Then I ramped up the volume of the bug's natural noises, and started to modulate them.

"Lˈzvr lftsvˈym!" my swarm ground out, a sound so deep and on the edge of amorphousness that it send shivers down my own back.

Everyone stopped in their prayers and talks to stare upwards, and I used their full attention to repeat my "supernatural" message, this time even louder and more demanding than before.

For a few moments, no one reacted at all, and I started to fear my ploy wouldn't work, but then Principal Alper called out something that sounded incredibly dramatic, and the paralysis was broken.

Before my eyes, the mass-hysteria the men had fallen into was transformed into sudden coordinated activity.

In minutes, they formed groups, took off shirts to rip them apart for bandages, and spread out in every direction, looking for still surviving wounded.

Satisfied, I dissolved the "burning bush" swarm and ordered the more potent bugs to come back to my side.

While keeping much of my attention on the groups of rescuers, showing them the positions of wounded men with arrows formed by my bugs, I heard Jazyk speak to Moishe and the brothers Segal, and they, too, sprang into activity.

The two smaller men climbed into the truck, pressed through between Jazyk and me, and manhandled the still bug infested Hauptsturmführer Charwat and the driver to the truck's bed.

Soon, the SS thugs lay bound and gagged, tied with their own belts, shoelaces, and the straps of the officer's gun holster.

In the meantime, Moishe jogged over to the Kubblwagn, or whatever the car was called, and got it started without a hitch, a clear proof that he must've gotten more than just gun training before the war came to Pinsk.

Just seconds later, he came to a screeching halt beside the truck.

He had sped over like a lunatic, jolting the car and himself on the dirt track as if he was in a stock-car race.

He was grinning from ear to ear, the first sign of happiness he had shown since we were introduced, and in the face of such good humor, I stopped begrudging him his fun, even it probably meant a rough ride into Pinsk.

Swiftly, the three young men filled their jacket pockets with magazines from the ammunition boxes stored in the half track, dismounted the machinegun from its pod, and put it into our new vehicle.

The brothers helped Jazyk down from the truck, while Moishe pantomimed doing the same for me, looking quite bashful while doing so.

I nodded somewhat reluctantly, sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, and offered him my hands.

For long moments, he tried to help me without actually touching more than my hands and arms, but that approach didn't work.

Without asking for permission, he stepped forward, grabbed me at my shoulders and hips, and lifted me up bodily before I could even think to protest.

Confronted with the reality of the well toned arms holding me, and the firm chest muscles I was pressed against, I somehow forgot any objections to his audacity, and let him carry me bridle style to the co-driver's seat, where he settled me down gently beside Jazyk.

While Moishe got behind the wheel, I ordered thousands of hornets and wasps to land on the car, formed solid clusters of them on the carriage, which would hang on even against the head wind, and let even more settle in the trunk and every other free cubic inch of the Kubblwagn's interior.

After a word of warning, I let the bugs land on Jazyk and myself, but spared the newest additions to our group the experience.

And then we were off, tearing down the dirt road towards Pinsk, and the deathly fight awaiting us.


	10. Chapter 7c -Nachtmahr-

A/N: I know that everyone is waiting for the big, climactic battle of the first arc - and it is coming! - but the liberation of Pinsk needed some more context from the Nazi side of things.

Disclaimer: As always, I very much emphazize that the brilliant "Worm"- universe belongs to Wildbow. I'm just using it for fun and without intention to make money.

7 (c)

_Nachtmahr_

_Obersturmführer_ Hermann Worthoff, newly instated security chief of Pinsk, stared at the loudspeaker of the silent _Telefunken_ radio with bone- deep dread.

He was sure that everyone in the still rather improvised looking communications center of the _Stadtkommandantur_, the former _NKVD _headquarters of the city, shared his feeling.

The terrible, very final silence in the connection stretched, only interrupted by occasional atmospheric flutter, and he felt cold sweat break out on his neck and in his armpits.

With a supreme act of will, he looked up from the radio, and met the eyes of _Scharführer_ Uhlmann, his stone cold and pretty much unflappable right hand man.

Even Uhlmann, who had quickly built a reputation as merciless interrogator in the local _Sicherheitsdienst_ branch, was obviously shaken, his angular, square- jawed face ashen.

It was a facial hue he shared with the radio operator, who was leaning back from his device as if the horror that had been happening on the other end could grip him through the connection and wring his neck.

The young _Blitzmädel_ at the telephone switch board - which had been set up next to the radio - her name was Magarete Something-or-Other, had tears running down her pretty face.

"Maybe she was the _Liebchen _of one of Charwat's men," Worthoff thought irrelevantly.

He knew he had to take action, had to react to the drastic change of conditions in his command area, but he couldn't even formulate a clear idea of what to do now.

The situation was unprecedented in his experience.

What duty and rational thought demanded of him would mean acknowledging the nightmare they had just witnessed remotely, would make it all real.

He didn't want to, no, he _couldn't_ do that, and so he remained mute like a statute.

It was Uhlmann who finally ended the hush, after what seemed like an eternity, and pulled everyone present into the new, very unpalatable reality.

"It's obvious that both _Gruppenführer_ von dem Bach and _Sturmbannführer _Magill have fallen out of communication due to enemy action."

He hesitated for a moment, then went on even more bluntly.

"We have to assume that the same chemical weapon that killed _Hauptsturmführer_ Charwat and the men with him got to Magill's detachment as well, despite the gas masks they were wearing after _Gruppenführer_ von dem Bach warned us so timely. It is also very likely, based on what we heard from the _Storch's _channel, that the plane was shot down, or at least heavily damaged by enemy fire."

Uhlmann slumped into himself after uttering those words, and gave Worthoff a grave look, as if he hadn't fully realized the import of his own words until saying them out loud.

The death of a _SS- Gruppenführer_ – a rank equivalent to the _Generalleutnant_ of the army – in their area of responsibility, not to speak of the loss of hundreds of SS troopers, would most likely mean the end of their careers.

But soon Uhlmann's unquenchable sense of duty won out over his distress, and he straightened his massive figure to its full, impressive height, probably reminding himself in the process that he was still the man who was known and feared as _"Knochenbrecher"_ by the many unlucky prisoners in the basement's cells.

The black SS uniform, tailored by _Hugo Boss_, fit Uhlmann perfectly, and made him look like the Germanic ideal, ready to conquer everyone and everything in his way.

After a few seconds of the strange, animal- like puffing up, the _Scharführer_ relaxed, and spoke up again.

"I suggest that we send the Poles to the train station to free up our men who are on guard duty there, we have no time to lose if we want to..."

"Your conclusions are solely based on what we got from the radio!" Worthoff interrupted him sharply, mostly because he was furious that he had only managed to break out of his own torpor due to his subordinate's initiative.

"We can't know what has really happened before we investigate it ourselves."

In truth, Worthoff didn't hold out much hope for Magill's survival after the terrible, frantic screaming and choked gurgling they had listened to for long minutes, but he clung to the belief that at least some of the men must've escaped, and would retreat into town.

If, on the other hand, no one was coming back alive, Worthoff would have only an understrength platoon's worth of soldiers left in the city.

He didn't include the Polish auxiliary police in his count, their already shaky loyalty would be further weakened when the destruction of a whole company of _Waffen SS_ soldiers became unavoidably known.

Worthoff would count himself lucky if these _Minderrassige_ didn't turn against their betters at this opportunity.

No, if the whole of the _1st Schwadron_ had been wiped out, the Bolsheviks would have a good chance to raid Pinsk and kill every last German in town, provided of course, that they had managed to hide more than just a few small teams of chemical weapon operators in the swamps nearby.

That wasn't an impossible feat, he knew, just a few days ago, a patrol searching for dispersed enemies had vanished without a trace, and the _Pripyat_ marches were so vast and unaccessible that thousands of men could hide in them indefinitely.

Uhlmann's assessment of the situation was made even more disquieting by the fact that Worthoff would be forced to humiliate himself if it was true.

He would have to admit the SS's defeat to _Hauptmann_ Rüntzel, the local military administrator, who was not only from a rival organization, but also a prime example of the flabby _Etappenschweine_ Worthoff despised.

As a rear echelon bureaucrat, Rüntzel wouldn't be of much use, of course, but he had to be informed.

The _Wehrmacht_ officer had no more than eighty men inside Pinsk, mostly supply and railroad people with very limited combat proficiency.

These middle aged, unfit and inexperienced "soldiers" would be little help in fighting off a determined Soviet attack.

While Worthoff was still pondering what was to be done, Uhlmann took his _Luger_ from the holster attached to his belt, unloaded it, and began to check the weapon.

His tone was clipped when he broke the silence again, and continued the path of thinking he had been following when his superior interrupted him.

"With respect, Herr _Obersturmführer_, it doesn't matter what we know with certainty, it's only prudent to assume that most, if not all, of the _1st Schwadron_ has been killed by Ivan's new weapon. We must prepare ourselves to defend this city with what we have."

His subordinate's words made Worthoff very uneasy, but he couldn't deny that he had a point.

And if he didn't react quickly and in ways that were tactically sound, it could mean not only the end of his advancement through the ranks, but of his life.

"Very well, you will implement your suggestion to rotate the Poles and our men in guarding those damn Jews, than you will deploy on the northern edge of town, where I will join you with everyone I can drum up from the Wehrmacht. We are going to block the road to Posienicze, then I'll decide, based on conditions there, if we can risk to send a reconnaissance team forward."

„_Jawohl, Herr __Obersturmführer_." Uhlmann confirmed, visibly pleased by the decision.

He saluted, turned on his heel, and stormed out of the room like a _Panzer_ in human form.

Worm/Worm/Worm

Five minutes later, Worthoff found himself on the third floor of the _Stadtkommandantur_, gnashing his teeth while he paced in front of _Hauptmann_ Rüntzel's office.

The _Hundesohn_ had the audacity to make him wait!

After what seemed like an eternity to Worthoff, the door was at last opened, and a very disheveled young girl slipped out, a small bundle of foodstuffs under her arm.

Worthoff had to suppress a hearty curse at the sight.

Fraternization with enemy civilians was frowned upon even in the occupied states of Western Europe, but here in the Slavic East, relationships with local women bordered on _Rassenschande_.

Ignoring the fleeing concubine, and beating down his ire and distaste for Rüntzel, he entered the room.

The _Hauptmann_, who was a short and nearly bald man in his late forties, sat behind a massive mahogany desk - inherited from a very unegalitarian _NKVD_ commissar – and exhibited an extremely flushed face and pulsing veins on his temples.

The glare with which he received his SS rival was murderous.

Ignoring Worthoff's _"Heil Hitler!"_, Rüntzel went on the verbal offensive immediately.

"What is so damn important that you can't use the phone, but must barge in here like a uncouth peasant, Herr Leutnant?" he asked snidely, using the _Wehrmacht_ rank analog to Worthoff's SS title, and thereby reminding him that he was, at least nominally, the _Obersturmführer_'s senior, even though they were in different services.

Repeating to himself that he _really_ needed this bastard's cooperation just now, Worthoff swallowed all threats with the SD's special powers that came to mind - he could easily bring down some unimportant army officer, if he really wanted to - and made his voice totally even as he replied.

"There has been an incident while we were conducting our anti-partisan operations north of the city. It appears that the Bolsheviks, using what seems to be chemical weapons of unknown type, have ambushed our forces and killed most or even all of them. We have also lost contact to the plane of _Gruppenführer _von dem Bach, who was here to inspect our progress."

He went on to give more details of what had occurred, and watched with some satisfaction as Rüntzel's anger was quickly transformed into barely concealed fear.

"And what is it that you want from me?" the Hauptmann asked when Worthoff had finished.

"We don't know how many Soviet troops are involved in this, and it may well be that they plan to raid Pinsk. We need every German soldier available to secure the town's northern perimeter, including your men." the SD officer explained, annoyed at Rüntzel's plainly feigned ignorance.

Wringing his hands, Rüntzel ranted at length that he had too few troops as it were, and that he couldn't spare anyone from guarding his depots of "critical supplies".

"Your depots will be worth less than nothing if they fall into enemy hands." Worthoff argued, his voice rising slightly as his patience with the fool started to run out.

Rüntzel seemed to sense this, and he quickly decided to cut the haggling short.

"If you must, you can have the rail and supply personnel, about 60 men, but my headquarters staff must stay here with me, to defend the communications center." he conceded.

The _Obersturmführer_ hadn't expected more than that anyway, and so he left the frightened Rüntzel, who had begun to pack his documents and belongings "just in case", with a hastily written order for the man's subordinates to follow Worthoff's instructions for "the duration of the crisis."

Worm/Worm/Worm

After gathering the _Wehrmacht _troops in a whirlwind of alerts and commands, Worthoff set out on the northwards road to Posienicze at the head of a much too short column of underequipped soldiers.

They had only three machine-guns between them and no heavy weapons at all.

His _Mercedes_ rumbled slowly over the cobblestones of Pinsk's deserted streets – all civilians had been ordered into their houses while the _Aktion_ against the Jews went on, so that Jewish valuables, which would be confiscated for the _Reich_, weren't plundered by the Polish, Ukrainian and Russian populations.

The _Obersturmführer_ had no eyes for the mostly one-storied brick buildings at the roadside, and didn't notice the frightened eyes that peeked out at him from behind barely lifted curtains.

Instead, he was focused on the tactical map on his lap, and tried to think of some way that would enable him to secure all approaches to the city with so desperately few armed men and against an enemy with chemical weapons at his disposal.

The driver had to actually raise his voice into a shout, before Worthoff registered his alarmed tone, and looked up.

They had halted at a cross-way, still inside the city. and the driver was staring out of his left side window.

"What is it, why have we stopped?" Worthoff demanded curtly.

"Herr _Obersturmführer_, there's a column of riders coming from out west!"

His heart jumped into a furious gallop at the words, and he silently prayed that this wasn't the anticipated Soviet attack.

If the enemy had entered Pinsk by circumventing Uhlmann's positions to the north, he would be able to attack and defeat the two German units piecemeal, first Worthoff's less than fully battleworthy _Wehrmacht_ troops, and then the better trained and equipped SS men from behind.

He grabbed for his field glasses, leaned over towards the driver to get a better view, and calibrated the lenses until he got a good look at the tiny figures coming down the road from Bielawszczyzna, which went parallel to the railway track just on the border of Pinsk's city limit.

"They're ours!" he exclaimed, relieve flooding his mind and very much audible in his voice.

Worthoff stepped out of the car hastily, signaled his soldiers, many of whom were already out of breath from the short march, that the approaching column was friendly, and leaned against the vehicle's hood to wait.

A short time later, the first cavalry man rode up, the white SS- runes on his helmet reflecting the rays of the noonday sun, and further lightening Worthoff's mood.

He greeted the man with a friendly _"Heil Hitler!"_ and received one in return, then he learned to his pleasure that the whole _4th Schwadron, 2nd SS Cavalry Regiment _was nearing his position.

These were 280 fresh men, under the command of _Obersturmführer_ Wegener, who had with them a broken field radio, which explained why Worthoff hadn't known of their approach, and - to his great delight - a platoon of 80mm mortars.

In other words, the ideal instruments to engage the enemy teams who were deploying the mysterious gas weapon from the save distance of several kilometers, and catch them with their pants down.


End file.
