Worth the Price Ch. 33 (Worm AU) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Squealer has a Bad Day™.

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Squealer, real name Sherrel Bailey, groans as she rolls out of bed, slipping out from under her boyfriend’s arm in the process. Skidmark, real name Adam Mustain, doesn’t even react, completely and utterly dead to the world after last night’s bender.

Of course, it wasn’t like last night was anything particularly special or rare. Each night tended to be a bender more often than not, with the only real distinction being how many other people they were sharing that bender with. As Squealer throws on a top and some shorts she finds on the floor, she stretches and glances at the bed. Its just Skidmark there, no other women (or men) this time around.

But that doesn’t mean last night hadn’t still been a party, because it had been. Indeed, after grabbing some pills from the dresser, Squealer steps out of their bedroom to find people draped over every piece of furniture in the house. Most aren’t moving, a couple are groaning, and only a handful are actually awake and active.

One or two are guards, armed and dangerous and even sober for their protection. Or… well, they’re supposed to be sober. A look into a couple of their eyes tells Squealer that they’re tweaking, probably on uppers to keep awake and active all night long.

That should be worrying… someone with a firearm shouldn’t be on drugs, or whatever. But then, this is the Merchants. Everyone is on some kind of drug at most times and anyone who isn’t is inherently suspicious. Only a narc would actually be sober right? And you didn’t want Skidmark to think you were a narc.

Snorting in amusement at her own internal thoughts, Squealer makes her way to the house’s garage to find her latest baby waiting for her, half of its internals still exposed. The moment she lays eyes on it she’s all smiles… there wasn’t much in this world that truly made the blonde happy anymore, but her tinkertech projects definitely did.

Licking her lips she gathers her tools and approaches in order to get to work… only to furrow her brow in consternation as shit starts getting a little weird. Fuck, had those pills she’d taken been laced with something else? That’s really the only explanation Squealer can think of for why parts of the walls suddenly look like they’re made of stone and the garage door rapidly transforms into a portcullis of all things.

“Um… what?”

Squealer blinks rapidly… only to realize she’s hearing shouting. Even as the garage turns into some sort of medieval dungeon, she turns back the way she came, only to find the door to the rest of the house has become a set of bars as well. Eyes widening, Squealer rushes up to it and tries to push them open, only to find herself trapped.

In the hallway beyond, she sees similar stonework and changes going on, as well as a weird female statue at the end of the hall. She also sees guards shouting and freaking out as they try to figure out what’s happening, which means it’s not just her having a hallucination.

“HEY! Get me out of here!”

One of the guards turns to her, eyes wide and blood shot and for a moment Squealer thinks he’s going to listen. Only at the last possible second does she realize he’s freaking out, the combination of their surroundings changing plus whatever upper he’s on causing him to have a panic attack. She barely ducks out of the way as he raises his gun and fires at her.

“FUCK! SHIT! FUCKER!”

With a growl, Squealer rushes back to her current project. That, at least, has not been changed. The tinkertech vehicle she’s working on remains untouched by whatever the fuck is going on around her. The thought that they’re probably under attack suddenly manages to make its way through the haze of her thoughts and Squealer grits her teeth as she begins frantically working.

The problem is… her latest project isn’t done yet. Its got four wheels and an engine and can technically move, but the armored plating isn’t completely on it and also the device that would have allowed the huge truck to turn completely invisible isn’t completed yet either. It’s all just… not ready.

Still, she’s not about to stay trapped here or anything like that. Fuck that shit. She needs to break out of the garage-turned-dungeon, regroup with Skidmark, and figure out what they’re going to do. Are they going to run or are they going to fight? Mush is away at their second location, so might be best for them to run to him and either regroup and retreat or make their stand with their full power.

… But that was for Skidmark to decide. Squealer, as he was always primed to ‘so helpfully remind her’, didn’t make decisions. She kept her head down, worked on her babies, and did what she was told.

As she works, Squealer is distantly aware of gun fire from the rest of the transformed house. Her being imprisoned in the garage alone is a bit of a blessing in that regard, because at least nobody can get to her easily in here. And unfortunately for whoever was behind this, they left her with all of her shit!

In short order, Squealer has gotten her truck as ready as it can be. A bunch of internals are still exposed, but she has the armored plating installed on the front in a wedge in short order… giving her the perfect escape vehicle.

With a vicious grin, she hops behind the steering wheel and starts up her baby. The roaring of the massive diesel engine is like music to her ears as Squealer looks out at the large portcullis that has replaced the garage door. After a moment, she roars with it.

“LET’S FUCKING GOOOO!”

With that, she puts the peddle to the metal and slams on the gas, her unfinished baby lurching forward and picking up speed with dangerous swiftness. Squealer doesn’t have a seatbelt, so she braces herself against the steering wheel and her seat as the armored wedge at the front of her vehicle slams into the portcullis.

Luckily it’s not some sort of unbreakable power bullshit. Obviously its power bullshit… but its not immovable object type crap. Squealer’s mostly unstoppable force rips right through the portcullis and she finds herself out on the street, crowing in victory as she wheels the truck around with a laugh.

“GET FUCKED, FUCKERS!”

Finally, she gets a look at what’s happening. The house that the Merchants have been using as their main base has been completely transformed into a castle-like edifice. A bunch of merchants are out on the front lawn and look to be utterly unconscious, including some of the guards… and Skidmark.

Squealer’s eyes widen at the sight of Skidmark face down in the grass, but her eyes widen even further when she sees just who’s attacking them. That orange skin is unmistakably Newter of Faultline’s Crew as he moves around touching people and using his power to keep them all completely knocked out.

But… that didn’t make any sense! Faultline’s Crew was supposed to be like… unbiased or something. Impartial? Neutral? Fuck if she knew, she’d been sucking Skidmark’s dick for a reward while he’d rambled on ‘explaining’ it to her.

But from what little she did remember, Faultline and her crew specifically didn’t pick fights in Brockton Bay. They didn’t start anything in the city, only taking jobs outside of the Bay. Squealer remembered that Skidmark had been derisive about their ‘cowardice’… but she also remembered thinking that he’d probably just been angry that they’d banned any and all Merchants from the Palanquin.

Regardless, its not just Newter. Gregor the Snail is there as well, tanking shots from the handful of Merchant Guards still trying to fight back. It’s not going well for them of course, based on him roaring and slamming one of them into the stonework behind them.

And further back… Faultline and Labyrinth. It finally dawns on Squealer what’s happening. This is Labyrinth’s bullshit. The whole house transforming crap was literally Labyrinth’s power. Get her and it all went away and that… that would probably be good, right?

Everyone is finally starting to react to her breaking free. Heads are swiveling, eyes are turning, and all are orienting towards her. Squealer has to act fast, so she does exactly that, pointing her truck at Labyrinth and Faultline and sneering from behind the wheel.

“GO FUCK YOURSELF!”

Slamming on the gas again, Squealer drives the truck forward, aiming for the two defenseless women. Or rather, she thinks they’re defenseless. Labyrinth doesn’t have very good control over her power, Squealer remembers that. And Faultline has to touch things to use her power. Kind of hard to reach out and touch a half-ton truck as its barreling down on you at high speeds, isn’t it?

Only… to Squealer’s shock, a wall immediately rises into existence in front of her. She breaks through it, but there’s another wall behind it. The wedge slams through that one of course, but then there’s a third wall. In the span of mere seconds, Squealer finds herself completely unable to see Labyrinth and Faultline as wall after wall spawns in her line of sight.

Here’s the thing… the armored wedge she’s put on the front of her baby is up to the task of breaking through the stone walls. It really is. The problem isn’t the wedge… it’s everything else. It’s her and the rest of her unfinished baby. Each broken wall sends shockwaves through Squealer’s unprotected body and the machinery beneath her. If she’d had time to armor the cabin of the truck, if she’d had time to finish it all, it wouldn’t be a problem. But…

“FUCK!”

A cry of pain leaves Squealer’s lips as her foot slips off the gas pedal and she slams her face into the steering wheel in front of her. As she groans, dazed, bleeding from a broken nose, the truck is slowed down by the subsequent walls, until it comes to a full stop.

And then, before she can get her foot back on the gas pedal and get moving again… Faultline is there at the side of the vehicle, staring at her through the opening in the cabin where a door was supposed to eventually go.

“No… don’ you fuckin’ dare…”

But Faultline doesn’t listen to Squealer’s beleaguered protests. The mercenary just reaches up and brings her hand down on the side of Squealer’s baby… immediately, dozens of cuts begin to filter through it, slicing it and tearing it apart around Squealer. Faultline’s powers are Manton Limited, Squealer vaguely remembers, even as her seat gives out under her, cut in half.

By the time the other woman is done… Squealer sits untouched save for her broken nose, surrounded by the remains of her baby. As Faultline looms over her, she can’t even be bothered to feel angry… she just feels despair, tears leaking out of her eyes as blood drips from her ruined nose.

It’s just not fair!

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Funnily enough, Lucas had assumed the hard part would be locating the Merchants in the first place. Taking them all down… that was always going to be easy so long as they didn’t fuck around or take their victory for granted.

But actually… it turned out that locating the Merchants was also surprisingly easy. All Lucas had to do was weaponize his deal-finding power. The people most desperate to make deals with him lit up to his perception, which expanded across large sections of the city. And from there, he just had to find the greatest concentrations of such people.

The druggies led them to the drug dealers who led them to the Merchants, who it turned out were having a party that looked like a massive fucking bonfire to Lucas’ senses. Dozens upon dozens of desperate people who had all ruined their lives and would have happily leapt at the chance to make a deal with him.

In the end, the difficult part… was figuring out how they were going to split up, because there turned out to be two locations. One had Skidmark and Squealer at it, the other had Mush. In the end, Faultline had convinced Lucas to leave the first location to her and her crew, so it had been Lucas, Sveta, and Emily who took down Mush.

Well, mostly Sveta. Her power was uniquely suited for the encounter, her hair tendrils extending and lashing through his junk golem exterior with ease. Thanks to her fine control, she was able to strip Mush down to his core body again and again until eventually he’d just given up and sat on the ground, crying and surrendering. It was… rather pathetic.

But then, pathetic was all the Merchants truly were. Even as they group back up with Faultline and her Crew at the primary location, Lucas isn’t that surprised to find they’ve had similar success. Mush is knocked out by Newter the same as Squealer and Skidmark and all the rest, with every Merchant that they know of laid out on the lawn in front of them.

It’s a testament to how utterly trash the neighborhood is that there are no police or even PRT or Protectorate out here by this point. The entire operation had taken less than an hour, but still, the response time is atrocious to say the least.

“Pact. What do you want to do next?”

Pact tilts his head to the side consideringly at that, his arms crossed over his chest as he mulls Faultline’s question over. Truth be told, he HAD been intending to just give everyone to the authorities. But their total absence at this point was a little egregious, wasn’t it? Maybe he should call someone like Dragon in instead. Let the Guild handle things…

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A/N: Remember to Vote, leave a Like, and let me know what you think!

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13ytbhEyeeU4QcBuf69yCJFVgwpDRP31z0fjRrwWsKxk/edit?tab=t.0