“Please,” I prayed.  I swung one leg over its thorax and gripped the horn.  It was an awkward posture, making me feel like I’d fall forward and face-plant on the ground with the slightest excuse.  “Come on.”

I’m imagining Bitch seeing this fusion later and being vaguely offended. “Giant rideable creatures are my thing.”

It ran on the ground, slower than me.  Its shell parted behind me, revealing an overlarge, complicated set of wings.  They began to beat, thrumming with sixty or seventy flaps a second, powered by an efficient machine of what I took to be a combination of biological hydraulics and musculature.

Good fucking work, Amy! 😀

“Come on,” I begged it.

I felt it begin to lift.  I even pushed with my toes, as if that could give it what it needed.

Hehe.

We accelerated, my hair whipping behind me as we gained a dramatic boost in speed.  But our trajectory was almost directly forward, not up.  I kicked at the ground as we landed, as if that could lift us into the air.  It wasn’t working.

Well, at least you’re successfully moving away from the center faster than you were.

Boing. Boing. Boing.

It dawned on me why.

My bugs normally had ingrained knowledge of how to function.  This was a new lifeform.  It had all the necessary parts.  Amy had probably scaled everything up, given it every advantage in design I could want, counteracting all the problems that came with being proportionately larger.

So… you’re saying this thing doesn’t know how to fly with a weight on top?

But at the end of the day, it didn’t know how to fly.

Or how to land, explaining the skidding earlier. Makes sense.

Come on, come on.

We met each other halfway.  Listening to my power, it turned in midair, so its back was to me.  It skidded on the ground.

What does it look like!

Clearly it’s got wings… does it just look like one enormous fly or wasp or something?

Six and a half feet long, five feet across and five feet tall.  A giant beetle.

Close enough and just as awesome!

It looked like she had used a Hercules beetle as a starting point, but built it broader, with larger, longer legs and two forelimbs with what looked like praying mantis style blades.  Sporting a black shell that looked almost ragged, the tips a gray-white, it also featured a single large horn that curved overhand, pointing down at the ground.

This is really awesome. I’d like to see fanart of this!

(Please tell me we’re getting a shot of Taylor flying away from explosions…)

Their chances were about as good as mine.

Amy.  She was turning to run.  The others crossed her path, shouted a warning.

Right, we want her to get out of the way too, yeah.

She used her power on the bug she was touching, making a final, haphazard connection.

Please tell me it’s a fusion steed!

My grip over the relay bugs had been tenuous.  This wasn’t much better.  One bug, and I couldn’t sense enough about it.  I didn’t have that innate grasp of its biology, of how it operated, or the instincts that drove it.

It’s really sounding like it’s a fusion, at least!

It would have to do.

I chanced a look over my shoulder and regretted it.  Crawler was bound tighter than ever, caught by my bugs, but the look threw me off-balance.  I stumbled, nearly falling over.

Whoops.

I managed to keep my feet under me, righting myself, but the movement of my leg made me aware of the strain.

Coddammit, I told you to get that leg fixed!

I couldn’t take the chance it wouldn’t work.

Aww.

Fair enough.

The one minute mark had surely passed.  I was on borrowed time, now, trusting my fate to luck.

Could Genesis form a new body in time?  It took her minutes, and I didn’t have that time to spare.  She would have to find me, too.

Yeah, that’s not very likely.

No.  Genesis couldn’t help.

And the heroes?  I searched in the direction of Jack and Bonesaw.  The heroes were fending off a group of people.  The group was larger than it had been the last time my focus was on them.  She was recruiting civilians?

Of course she is. She’s Bonesaw.

Or, wait, is the point here that she’s still recruiting them? And thus must have gotten them from somewhere nearby?

The heroes were falling back, gathering in formation.  Cache was using his power, if I was judging right.  I felt some of my bugs disappear from existence as he used his power on members of his team.

Looks like they’re packing up. Not much time left.

Putting them in some extradimensional compartment.  The others around him, one member of the Wards, Ursa and Weld.

The good guys were preparing for an imminent bombing run.  Jack and Bonesaw were making a run for it, too.  They’d sensed something was wrong from the way the heroes were acting.

Makes sense. Jack’s a smart dude.

“Run, little girl!”  Crawler’s broken voice carried, a rumble so low I could feel it.  “I’ll get free!  I’ll catch you!  I’ll hold you down and lick your skin until it melts!  I’ll pluck your eyes out with the tip of my tongue!  I have your scent and you cannot ever stop me!  You cannot ever escape!”

And here I was about to mention the possibility of Crawler not caring about Taylor.

Although… it is still possible that he’s talking to Sunny.

Even the practiced motions of running couldn’t take the edge off.  Running had been my reprieve for so long, my escape long before I’d had costumes and the distractions of everything that was involved there.  It wasn’t doing anything to help the panic that was taking hold of me.

Yeeeah, that’s very understandable.

I wracked my mind for something, anything that might serve as an option.  Sewer?  Could I get down into the sewer or storm drain?

Ooh, that might work. Though we’re talking Bakuda bombs, which could majorly fuck up the infrastructure where they hit, even more so than regular bombs.

It was a possibility, though with the structural integrity of the city being what it was, it could just as easily be suicidal.

Yeah, and that’s before considering further damage by the bombs.

My bugs.  Could I lift myself up the same way I’d lifted up the small tools?  More silk, millions more bugs?

Oh fuck, are we actually doing this after all this time?! I’ve been semi-jokingly entertaining this idea since Gestation!

Though I didn’t think of using the silk.

Easier to lie when I was shouting, my face hidden.

Oh.

They picked up Ballistic and bolted.

I was left behind in moments.

Now what, Taylor?

Between the four of us, I doubted Sirius had it in him.  Not if we wanted to move fast.

“Grue!”  I called out.

“Don’t you fucking dare!”  He turned his head around.

What. You’re not thinking of trading places, are you?

To be fair, unlike Ballistic, Skitter is a runner who didn’t just get dropped 15 feet.

I disentangled from Bitch’s grip, avoided Grue’s clutching hand and slid to the ground.  I didn’t land with both feet under me, so I tipped over and rolled.

Taylor, you’re not on fire yet, you don’t need to stop, drop and roll!

“Ballistic, take my seat!”  I shouted, as I got my feet under me.  I glanced behind me at Crawler and broke into a run.

Yeah, I can understand why Grue doesn’t like this (his something is potentially sacrificing her life for Ballistic), but it does mean a better overall chance of team survival than Ballistic running.

“Skitter!”  Grue barked the word.

“Just go!  I have a plan!”

You do?

Have you sensed something Amy produced that can help you out?

For now, at the very least, I had the advantage.

“Genesis, can you run?”

“Fuck.  No,” Genesis spoke.  “Made these claws for grabbing.”

These claws are made for grabbing, and that’s just what they’ll do…

True enough, her forelimbs and rear limbs were more like clawed hands than feet or hooves.

So to recap, she’s a winged gargoyle with clawed monkey hands.

“Imp, Ballistic, run!”

It wasn’t enough.  We had too much distance to cover before we could be sure of our safety.  Or of Imp and Ballistic’s safety, anyways.

Well, fuck. These two may come out of this with some nasty changes courtesy of Bakuda if they’re unlucky.

Even with another two minutes, or another five- well, people weren’t that fast as a rule, and neither Imp nor Ballistic were runners.  It looked like Imp had hurt herself in the fall.

That certainly doesn’t help.

“Tattletale!”  I shouted.  “Take Imp!  Bentley’s strong enough to take four!”

Desperate times call for desperate overloading of doggos.

“Got it!”  She cried, steering Bentley around and their group scooped up Imp, pulling her up onto Tattletale’s lap.  Four people, but three of them were girls in good shape.

Sirius wasn’t as strong, and Grue was heavy, Bitch wasn’t exactly slight, and Ballistic was built like a football player.

Trickster ain’t gonna be happy.

Ballistic even less so.

No.

Crawler’s pause to grab concrete had bought me time to get my bugs into position.  They swept over Crawler, laying down braided ropes of silk joined by adhesive lines and thin gossamer.

Still not sure these are going to be strong enough.

Even caterpillars began offering their assistance, using the silk they produced for cocoons.

Using every resource available, I see.

He was a big guy, but it was a lot of silk.

Hm. I suppose so.

I could see how it hampered his movements.  There was even something approximating surprise on his face as he dropped down so all six legs were firmly on the ground, and his forelimbs didn’t extend as far as he’d expected.

Alright, I can accept this. They’re not strong enough to stand in his way, but they can weigh him down.

He tried to run and found himself hampered further.

And make his legs sticky.

Crawler sported two or three tons of physical prowess, and his power had fine tuned him into a physical specimen like few others.  My bugs had millions of years of evolution to refine the quality of their silk and their ability to produce it.

True enough. It’s good stuff.

“Damn it!”  Grue swore.  “Go!  Go!’

One minute, give or take.

We ran.  There was the sound of more rubble shifting out of place, and then a guttural laughter.  It sounded more like it came from multiple gargantuan people laughing in sync than it did from the one monster.

How many mouths does he have?

“More!”  His voice was even more unnatural, a jumble of individual sounds that only barely came together into something like a word.

Wait, what? Did he actually get hurt somehow? Or is he just thrilled by the fight?

Not so different from when I spoke through my swarm.  “Fight me!”

The impacts of heavy footfalls were audible as Crawler broke into a run, giving chase.  They were even tactile.

Is it perhaps that he’s seen the results of Sundancer’s power and wants to touch?

He was more than a hundred feet behind us, but I could feel his impacts shake Sirius.

Damn.

As my bugs struggled to catch up, my swarm sense felt Crawler stop, rearing up on his two hindmost legs.

Hm? What’s wrong, kitty? Timmy fall in a well again?

He caught at one corner of a building and tore, twisting his body to throw a chunk of brick.

Oh. That’s not good.

“Look out!”  I shouted.

My words were too slow.  The rock collided with Genesis, catching one wing.

Shit!

(One rock, three Undertravelers, yada yada…)

She collapsed to the ground, and both Ballistic and Imp fell the fifteen or so feet to the ground.  Imp shrieked as she landed.

Hey, Imp, at least you have the super useful power in this situation that you can avoid people noticing your embarassingly painful landing!

Or maybe Ballistic could stick his hand down and launch the Earth out of orbit!