The River King 21 (Patreon)

The River King 21

Taylor Hebert

I dragged Emma to my hideout, just as I’d done with Cricket and Stormtiger. I watched her with detached interest. She backed away on hands and knees, pajamas covered in the filth and grime that hadn’t been cleaned in decades.

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure what I should feel here. This was Emma Barnes. My bully. My trigger. Once, in a season of life that seemed so far away, this was the girl I swore was my best friend, my sister from another mother. Had I been born a boy, we probably would have been the kind of childhood friends who swore to get married when we grew up.

She held me when mom died as I cried myself to sleep. Aunt Zoe practically adopted me when dad became a zombie. She made sure I was fed, had clean clothes to wear, and even slapped dad back into something resembling functionality. In those days, their family kept mine going.

When I first triggered, I told myself that she was beneath me. I told myself that I wasn’t the same little girl anymore. I was different now, a brand new person. I was going to be a hero. Heroes didn’t take petty revenge. I’d outgrown her. 

A part of me really believed that. It even had the benefit of being mostly true. I fought for my life multiple times. I killed to protect myself and the city. I was, if not respected, feared. I was strong, so strong that I hadn’t thought about her in weeks.

But seeing her now, shivering in the corner, I couldn’t help but feel something. Maybe this was what Tahm Kench meant. The old Taylor, the one who still prayed desperately for reconciliation, wasn’t dead, not fully. Even as Monarch, I couldn’t deny that Emma had a defining role in shaping my past.

Slowly, I removed the mask, letting my damp hair cascade down my shoulders. I… I didn’t know what kind of face I was making right now. “Hello, Emma. Did you miss me?”

“T-Taylor? You’re Monarch?” she stammered. Her eyes bugged wide, shining green in the dim light. Her vibrant, red hair clung to her face in sweat-soaked clumps.

“I am. Thanks for that, really. Thanks to you, I can make a real difference in this city.”

“Y-You can’t be Monarch. This can’t be true. You’re weak. You’re–”

“A hero. A violent vigilante. Murderer. Monster. I’m a lot of things to different people, but ultimately, you made me who I am.”

“No. I’m the survivor. I’m the strong one. I’m–”

“You know, I never understood what that’s about, though I guess it doesn’t really matter now,” I mused. Her pupils were dilated. She wasn’t really looking at me anymore. “You are my past. You are the one who shaped me, and the one who’ll help me cut away that part of me.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded. She seemed to collect herself. For a moment, the old Emma, the cruel, beautiful queen bee, was back. “You think the heroes won’t find you? They’ll send you straight to the Birdcage! They’ll–W-What the fuck is that?”

Then, Tahm appeared. He rose out of the murky River, just like a monster out of a movie. He looked her over with a hungry grin, mouth full of sharp, uncomfortably large teeth.

“This is Tahm Kench. He’s going to eat you,” I told Emma blandly. She was here. There was no sense getting broken up over it now, not if this would get me dad back. “Tahm, you said I need to sacrifice my past. Here she is, the person who most clearly represents that part of me.”

“So she is, Taylor,” he said with a cheery chuckle, utterly at odds with the situation. I knew now that Tahm was a monster, just like me. For him, there was the trade, the deal. “Yes, this will buy you your present.”

A part of me wanted to resent him. He’d given me just enough to succeed, coaxing me with the next best deal. Always, he’d pushed me onto greater deeds, for both good and ill.

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to hate him. He was a merchant to the core, and that was what merchants did: They tempted customers. In the end, every murder, every sacrifice, every choice, had been my own decision. If he was a monster, so was I.

His tongue reached out, wrapping around Emma’s slim waist. He said it wasn’t about the lives, but he also seemed to have a fixation on food. Whenever he came back from his travels, he always talked about the culinary culture of wherever he’d been. 

Emma’s eyes widened in terror. She shrieked like a banshee and thrashed helplessly. She flailed and clawed at everything she could reach. She even thought about biting Tahm for a moment, before she remembered that it was his literal tongue.

It was finally sinking in for her; there was no escape from this. No lawyer daddy. No pretty privilege. No high school cliques or biased school administration. She was going to die here.

“No! Don’t do this, Taylor! Taylor!” she screamed. “Please! Y-You can’t do this to me.”

“If it makes you feel better, this has nothing to do with revenge,” I told her honestly. I didn’t even feel good about this, not really. Each time I looked at her face, I felt as if I was excising something of myself. “I’m just a girl who loves her dad.”

“Please… Aunt Annette wouldn’t want this. She loved me. We’re sisters, Tay–”

“Are we? Were we? When you broke mom’s flute? When you told everyone I was a Merchant whore?” I whispered, anger mounting. How ironic, that I’d so desperately wanted to hear those words for the better part of two years. “How about when you sent your fanboys after me, tied me up and left me for whoever to find? Or when you stuffed me in a locker full of used tampons?”

“Please…”

“Were we still sisters then, Emma?”

“Please, s-she wouldn’t want this. She’d never forgive you,” Emma begged one, final time.

I caressed her tear-stained cheek. “I know, sister, but that’s all in the past.”

X

The moment Tahm swallowed a sobbing Emma, I put on my mask again and threw myself into the River. My insect network I’d woven over the course of months slotted into the back of my mind like a hive welcoming its queen.

I stretched out my senses. Dad’s time bubble wasn’t far from our home. It was still there, an inviolable bubble that my insects could not enter. But that was what I could sense with my bug control. I’d long since learned that the River played by its own rules.

The water flowed into the bubble. I understood what Tahm had been talking about. Dad, Kurt, and Lacey had been driving home. They looped over and over again as Bakuda’s grenade went off. And within that loop, there was the passage of time. Repetition, yes, but passage nonetheless. And so long as there was time, there was the flow of the River.

It was a slow process. The River seeped into the bubble, more and more with each iteration of the loop. I didn’t know how I knew, but I felt the moment the bubble no longer became forbidden territory to me.

I did not wait a second longer. I burst into the time bubble like a manic dolphin. The River coated me like armor. I could not breathe, but holding my breath was a familiar task by now.

All around me, color faded into grayscale as the loops continued on. The car drove onward. The grenade bounced before them. There was confusion, then surprise, then horror.

There was no conversation between them, not anymore. There was nothing to say. In the hours since the battle, through countless loops, they’d all come to know the truth. Words of comfort meant nothing when eternity awaited them all in that same, neverending cycle.

I moved to stand in front of the car when it spawned again. Dad’s beat up Ford screeched to a stop as watery tentacles forced the doors open. Even this was so much harder here, as if I was swimming through molasses. I supposed I was; time was a cruel bitch.

Their eyes widened in disbelief. I wanted to cry out, to tell dad that I got him. Still, the River drowned out my words as I strained against the flow of time. Instead, I dragged them beneath the currents and allowed them to be ferried away from this awful stillness.

We emerged right outside the bubble, spat out from the portal like Jonah from his whale. I took in deep, forceful breaths as my father and his friends hacked up their lungs.

“We’re out,” Kurt muttered in disbelief. “H-How? Time–”

“Thank you,” Lacey said, turning to me. She always was the one who kept them on track. “You’re Monarch, right? Thank you for doing… whatever you did back there.”

I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. I couldn’t say anything past the lump in my throat. I quashed the nearly overwhelming need to hug my father, sending the nearby bugs into a frenzy.

In the end, I said nothing. I was Monarch, not Taylor. With a stiff nod, I turned and sank back into the River. 

X

I waited for dad back in my house. He, Kurt, and Lacey barged in like the hounds of hell were after them. The first thing he did was hug me and check me over.

“Dad? What happened outside?” I asked, as if I hadn’t executed an entire villain team for that exact shitshow.

“Taylor! Oh, god, you’re okay. Thank god,” he muttered into my hair. I was pretty sure he was crying. Or dripping snot.

I returned the hug. “I’m fine. There were explosions and gunshots, and I saw some black smoke nearby so I stayed inside.”

“I told you there’s nothing to worry about with her, Danny,” Kurt said soothingly. “Your baby girl’s smarter than the rest of us.”

“She’s got a good head on her shoulders,” Lacey added fondly.

“Right… Because I don’t want to get caught up in a gang shootout?” I asked skeptically. “I grew up in Brockton too, dad. I’m fine.”

Dad took a shuddering breath. “Yeah, you’re fine. You’re a smart girl. You’re okay…”

Dinner that night was full of desperate energy. The three of them devoured ready-made meatloaf and mashed potatoes as if they’d been starved for days. Or as people who thought they’d never enjoy such things again.  They laughed and retold the same stories I’d grown up hearing. They were insistent on filling the silence with anything at all, just to hear each others’ voices.

I simply leaned back and allowed the conversation and its palpable relief to wash over me. It was nice. I had my family back. Not far from here, only a few blocks further than the range of my bugs, Alan and Zoe Barnes were probably looking for their daughter.

I’d done an evil thing. Tahm painted it as a bargain, my past for my present, but was it truly mine? Emma’s life wasn’t really mine to give away, and innocent people would feel the gaping hole of her absence. In the end, the plain truth was that I’d destroyed her family to save mine.

I raised a glass to my lips and let my mouth fill with cool water. Now that I had the chance to reflect, I understood that to paint that choice as the “past or present” was a deeply selfish perspective.

I chuckled dryly. Tahm was a fantastic businessman. Even so, it wasn’t as if I’d make a different choice. There was nothing I wouldn’t give to hear dad laugh like this. And if I had to rescue every single person from Bakuda’s time bubbles to ease my conscience, then so be it.

Actually, that would be a good thing to do in the first place. If dad, Kurt, and Lacey were the only ones freed, people would ask questions: Why them? What did they mean to Monarch? I couldn’t have that. I refused to allow any more eyes on dad. 

First the bubble victims, then Coil. I’d initially sought out Oni Lee and Bakuda, but I understood now: He’d never leave me alone. Well, if he wanted to make himself my problem, I’d just have to oblige.

Besides, I was a hero.

X

Thomas Calvert

What the fuck happened?

Everything had been going so well. The trap was perfect. I had an insider in the ABB arrange for Oni Lee to encounter the Undersiders. They were to lead him on a merry chase into the general area of Monarch’s territory.

Trickster was assisting the Empire’s kill squad. They set up nearby, knowing that Monarch had been trying to kill Oni Lee for a week now. I was positive that if I dangled that bait in front of her, she’d come barking like a well-trained dog.

Then, the moment the two began fighting, Trickster was to teleport in with the Empire hit squad, hitting them both. Ideally, both would die. I would have been happy to see Monarch in a time bubble. Hell, even if they only managed to injure her, I had men on standby near her haunts in Oldtown, ready to hunt her down if she managed to retreat.

None of that happened.

Somehow, despite my best efforts, the Protectorate found the Empire contingent. I had spies inside the PRT to prevent exactly this. I was the spy inside the PRT. And yet, the heroes had arrived at the most inconvenient time to interfere with my newest assassination plot.

Worse, the Undersiders were hit by Oni Lee. They hadn’t been fast enough despite Grue’s power being a direct counter to the teleporter. I wasn’t sure exactly what happened in the smoke, but they slowed and were forced to engage the teleporter long enough for Monarch to swoop in and kill them all.

Now, my deniable assets were all dead. Oni Lee had left, no worse for wear and ready to harass the Empire at the next skirmish. Monarch was fine as a fiddle. My timelines had never broken like this before. It was as if the universe was conspiring against me.

Amidst all of this, he appeared, a toad-like Case-53 that no one had ever seen before. My men watched as Monarch fed my pet thinker to him. It was exactly like feeding a mealworm to a toad. And suddenly, I understood: She’d never been alone.

Monarch always had two, disparate powers: bug control and hydrokinesis. Her use of crabs as pilots for her water constructs had bridged the gap somewhat, but her powerset always seemed too varied. I wasn’t the only one who noticed; multiple PRT analysts cited her as an anomalously powerful grab-bag cape.

Here was the truth, a Case-53 that traveled through the water, just like her. Or rather, I suspected that she was like him. And since Case-53s could not be part of a cluster trigger, as that implied we knew of their points of origin, he had to be a power-granting trump.

He’d been her partner in the shadows for a long time. It was only now that the use of his trump power was caught on camera. She fed him and he made her strong. A bargain, or perhaps some kind of sacrifice that fed off deceased parahumans.

This was further supported when, later that night, Monarch freed everyone locked in Bakuda’s time bubbles. Somehow, Tattletale’s death had resulted in Monarch getting stronger yet again. It certainly explained why no one found Cricket or Stormtiger’s bodies.

I took a deep breath. I hadn’t been blindsided this thoroughly in a long time. Knowing about her partner would have been helpful months ago, when I could have brought him under my control and empowered my own men. As it was, I had no way of tracking him or buying his loyalty.

Nor would another attempt like this work. I didn’t have the Undersiders to mobilize anymore. The Empire capes were licking their wounds after their run-in with the Protectorate. I was left with no choice but to return to the drawing board to main incremental gains off Bakuda’s gang war.

X

Monarch had gone to ground. It’d been a week and no one had seen nor heard from her. No crabs. No swarm. No vengeful brute beating gangsters unconscious with watery tentacles. She never once interfered in a battle between the Empire and ABB.

Public opinion of her had shifted for the positive after she rescued people from Bakuda’s time bombs. But rather than try to capitalize on this and force the Protectorate to cooperate with her, she’d vanished from Brockton Bay’s cape scene.

Which wasn’t to say the city had ceased to implode. Alabaster and six Empire grunts got locked in another of Bakuda’s time bombs when he led a strike into ABB territory. He’d heard rumors of Bakuda’s workshop, which for once had nothing to do with me. The Nazis were still in that time bubble. To no one’s surprise, Monarch did not break her silence to free them.

Oni Lee lost an arm when Victor shot him from afar with a sniper rifle. It was as much luck as skill, but the Empire paraded their hero around, desperate for anything that could be called a win. That celebration lasted a single day before Lung struck back personally.

Lung’s retaliatory rampage burned down a city block and killed forty-three people. That included Triumph, who tried to stall him while people fled from a burning building. The heroes arrived in force, but much too late to save him.

That was the last straw. Rory Christner, the mayor’s beloved son, was dead. Mayor Christner declared a state of emergency despite Director Piggot’s empty condolences. He beseeched the governor for aid, calling for both outside PRT assistance and the national guard.

It was almost funny. I had nothing against Christner, but he and his family had ended up as some of the big losers of this gang war. His heroic son was dead and the search for his missing niece had been all but forgotten.

And still, no Monarch. The woman who’d gleefully lit this powderkeg had vanished with the wind. She was annoyingly good at hide and seek.

X

Taylor Hebert

Coil was annoyingly good at hide and seek. Finding his base took some doing.

Tattletale was the first clue. The Undersiders were Coil’s pawns. She said that the bank robbery was a smokescreen so Coil could kidnap a little girl, a thinker. Looking through outstanding AMBER alerts, I learned that one was announced by the BBPD a day after the bank robbery: Dinah Alcott, the mayor’s niece.

I did some more research and learned that Trickster, the teleporter who’d been trying to kill me, wasn’t Empire at all. He led a nomadic, mercenary gang called the Travelers. The red and black color scheme just happened to be an unfortunate coincidence.

Coil sure had a lot of pull for a gang leader most everyone overlooked. He had the knowledge and skill to kidnap the mayor’s niece while keeping the PRT busy. He could bring together the Undersiders, Empire, and even an out of town gang to make attempts on my life. Hell, he even dragged Oni Lee into this.

I had to assume that this wasn’t everything. He had been supplying the Undersiders somehow. He still had the Travelers on his payroll. Not to mention, he was keeping Dinah as his pet thinker. So, he must have a base somewhere in the city.

PHO said Coil had a handful of streets patrolled by paid mercs in the downtown area so I began there. When my bugs found only office buildings and the Forsberg Art Gallery, I realized he must have a base belowground, possibly an underground parking garage.

I wasn’t sure-sure, but it was worth examining. And, as it turned out, I was right. I saw some people entering a parking garage that had been closed off. There was a hidden entrance in a “broken” elevator shaft, which was the most Bond villain thing ever. After that, all I had to do was to wait for someone else and slip a bug with them.

That bug became my beacon. If time itself couldn’t stop the River from seeping in, a few dozen feet of concrete wouldn’t, either. I moved the bug into an unmonitored maintenance closet before opening a portal. From it poured out more and more of my insects. They spread out across the base, mapping each hallway and allowing me to open new portals.

It took hours. Coil’s bunker was almost certainly a decommissioned endbringer shelter, one of the bigger ones designed to hold a few thousand people in relative comfort. How he got it to himself was a mystery, but I had a lot of bugs to cover all that space.

I refused to be hasty. He’d already proven to be the most cunning villain in the bay. I wouldn’t attack until I knew that he was in the bunker and I’d cut off every last exit.

As I worked, I noticed something strange. Two things, actually:

First were the bombs. For some paranoid reason, Coil rigged his own base to blow. He likely had a secondary base elsewhere. If attacked, he could evacuate and collapse the bunker on his enemies. Which made it all the more important to strike only when I knew for sure that he was here.

Second, there was a door. It was a solid steel affair that belonged on bank vaults. I could see something like this being attached to an endbringer shelter too, but for the whole thing, not just to section off one room in particular.

Which meant this was an addition Coil made. Which meant there was something he wanted to protect inside and I doubted it was a pile of gold. Or, the opposite might be true: There might be something he wanted to imprison.

I found an air vent. From it came the scent of rotten meat. I sent a few cockroaches inside. They explored an unadorned chamber until they touched something, and died. No warning, just sudden death.

So Coil was holding something. That thing was immediately lethal to the touch, at least for a cockroach. I had no doubt the same would be true for a person, too. That thing ate meat, so some kind of monster, then.

Further, this monster was uncontrollable. Coil would not need a vault door otherwise, and I could tell by the sheer stink of rotting flesh that the chamber had not been cleaned lately, if at all.

And, as if I needed any more proof, there were bombs in nearby corridors. They were hidden well, but my cockroaches picked up the slight scent of explosives in the walls. It was as if Coil wanted to be able to close it off at a moment’s notice.

Hours passed and I continued to prepare. I located Dinah and planned to move her once the fighting began. I found secure places to put my crabs and entire nests of venomous insects.

Soon, it would all be over.

Author’s Note

RIP Emma.

Can Tahm violate a time bubble? Eh, probably not? Possibly? Debatable? Time magic exists in League of Legends, but Tahm has never interacted with characters who use it. I’m just rolling with his “deals” having no magical counterpart in this world.

Animal Fact: Chickens, and pigeons, wobble their heads as they walk. They've evolved instinctual twitch muscles that jerk the head in the opposite direction of the motion their body is experiencing, keeping their heads stable.

This is because their eyes are too big. They’re packed too tightly into too small sockets and cannot rotate. Usually, we think of owls being like this, but it’s true for a lot of birds as well. That bobbing motion paradoxically provides them a stable vision when they’re walking.