Saving damsels.

Dinah Alcott was bored. An odd thing to say when you're being held captive by a supervillain, but the facts were facts.

When she wasn't answering Coil's questions, and high on candy, all she could do was sit there, chained to her bed, Mr. Buddy her only companion.

She gave the teddy bear a tight squeeze and felt his comfortable softness.

A memory flashed through her mind, of a time before, of her mother, her house her room. Crayons and coloring books.

She felt a deep sadness well up within her, but no tears fell from her dead eyes. She had learned the hard way. Coil did not like her cying. The scars on her body were testament to that.

But the sadness just wouldn't go away.

No matter what she tried.

Actually, that was a lie. There was one thing she could do.

She looked at her pillow, and reached into it, feeling for a candy.

She grabbed it, feeling it's wrapper crunch and rustle in her hand.

It was one of three candies she had saved from earlier.

She was saving it for when she got another headache.

She got those when she asked too many questions.

Though, she hadn't had as many of those lately.

She knew why. She had stopped asking.

Not the questions Coil brought her.

No, those she asked, and answered.

The ones she had stopped asking were the ones she couldn't stop asking when she had first been brought here

Will I escape?

Will my parents miss me?

Will the heroes save me?

Will I die here?

It had been months now, that she had been here.

And the months of torture and isolation had worn her down to a whisper of what she had once been.

She knew no one was coming to save her.

She knew there was no escape.

This was her fate. Ironbound to her.

Just thinking about it made the hole in her chest feel like it was sucking the life out of her.

Her breath sputtered, and fear pricked at her. She was scared.

She was scared. So scared.

She felt the cold on her skin, the chill inceasing every minute.

She shivered.

She didn't like this.

No. She did not.

The craving grew stronger every moment she felt the candy in her hand.

Just one. A voice whispered in her ear.

Just one. It'll feed good again.

It'll feel so good.

"No!" She wanted to scream at it.

"Liar." She wanted to call it.

But she knew. She knew it was true.

When she ate the candy, all her problems seemed to melt away. She felt all floaty, like she was on a swingset. For a choice moment, she felt ....happy again. Like she wasn't here. Like she was back home.

She couldn't hold it any longer!

Dinah eagerly pulled out the candy from her pillow, and began to unwrap it, when suddenly she heard hurried footsteps. Out of instinct she stopped, stuffing the candy into her pillow again.

The door opened, bringing the welcome glint of the hallway lights into her dim chamber, and a man in a snake print leotard walked in with hurried, unsettled steps.

"Pet." He called out, coming up to her bed.

"I need some numbers."

"I want candy." She asked.

"Alright. Candy after six questions." He said.

"First. Chances the base is invaded within the next day?"

She looked with her power and the answer arrived.

"85 percent."

"Tsk. Chances it is invaded in the next two hours?" Coil clicked his tongue in annoyance.

"88 percent."

"How is that higher than the-...No. Chances that the invading force survives the encounter?" He asked, diplomatically.

Dinah suppressed the urge to scoff.

She knew what he meant by that.

Chances the invaders defeat him.

"91 percent."

She answered, almost as shocked at the answer as he was, though, in her case it was in a positive light.

A smile almost broke on her face, something that didn't go unnoticed by him.

Coil raised a hand at her and she cringed, curling up, faced away form him, her eyes squint shut.

But the blow she was expecting never came.

She looked back at the man towering above her and boticed a bloody spot on his mask upon his nose.

The spot was growing, she noticed, when the man fell to his knees and collapsed in a pile.

"Chances he is dead?" She asked.

99.8 percent. Her power answered.

A wave of relief flooded over her, as she shook like a leaf in the wind, hugging her teddy bear firmer.

Then, as the alarms began to blare in the hallway, soldiers rushing about with laser rifles, and sounds of combat neared her, she plucked up the courage to ask the final question.

One she hadn't asked in months.

Something she had lost all hope would ever happen.

"Chances I am saved from here today?"

As the answer came to her mind, a new hope blossomed in her heart.

And for the first time in months, she let herself cry.

Tears of relief, flowed down her cheeks as she looked back at the answer.

100 percent.

.

I checked the time space fuckery detector watching the creases in the timeline increase, as I tossed a spare grenade down the hallway.

Three for three, it went on the changes in the future.

I checked Coil's location with the nanobots I had placed in his head again.

Yup. Coil was here. And he was doing something that was changing the future.

But his brain activity readings clearly showed he wasn't using his own power.

That meant only one thing. I had hit the jackpot. This was it. The base where he kept two of his most prized prisoners.

Dinah Alcott, the third most powerful thinker in the world, second actually, now that I had killed Simurgh.

And the other one, whose abilities I desired greatly.

But first, let's focus on saving Dinah.

I flinched a bit as a swarm of bugs flew past me, burrowing into the helmets of soldiers, chewing away at the wiring of their laser guns, pulling the pins from their grenades, leaving a path of blood and gore through the building.

Wow. Taylor is surprisingly brutal here.

Almsot as if she's compensating for not being able to do this sooner.

Tattletale and Paige for their part dutifully followed behind me, keeping a safe distance from the action, and the shoudler mounted cannons of mine that perpetrated it.

The alarms had started blaring somewhere between the door and here and I could here more squads of soldiers coming up the stairs.

I clapped my hands.

"Alright. Enough playing around. Taylor!" I called out, even as I silently ordered the nanobots in Coil's head to turn his brain to mush.

Taylor rushed over, her bugs following close behind, as I pitted down the stairs and whistled.

"Something wicked this way comes. You want it or....?"

"Whatever's faster." She said, panting.

"Well then." I said, dropping my new D-grenades down the stairwell, technokinetically exploding them near the soldiers, disintegrating them and the stairwell into flaky blue dust.

I looked down the stairwell, as Taylor barked at me.

"How are we going to get down now?!"

I looked at her as if she was an idiot and pulled out my portal gun.

"Oh... right. Sorry." She muttered shying away.

I smiled, as Paige giggled.

"Happens to the best of us." I said, opening a portal to the bottom.

Exiting the portal below, we cane upon an empty hallway, littered with blue dust and laser rifle parts, blood spalttered on the walls, and little shards of metal lodged into the cement fron the explosion.

"Careful. There's broken metal down here." I said, as we made our way through the hallway, coming upon an unlocked room that pinged on my nanobot net as the final resting place of Coil.

A little girl stood there by the door, her teddy bear in hand, matted hair covering her face, all skin and bones.

"Dinah?" I asked.

She nodded, her hair shifting enough to reveal still wet cheeks, and scars of abuse visible faintly through her thin dress.

Poor kid. I thought.

If someone did this to my Star I would burn their planet to cinders, I swear.

I pulled out a microfiber shawk from my pocket and rushed over to her side, draping it over her shivering form.

"Break the chains." I ordered my nanobots, as they began to chew through it, leaving behind only rust and dust.

"You're safe now." I said, as she seemed lost in thought, probably using her power to determine the truth of my statement.

Then, she gingerly raised her hand, extending a fist at me.

She opened it up to reveal a candy, that she handed to me.

I got the message and took it, before jabbing her with a cure for her addiction, as her muddled eyes cleared up, ever so slightly, the pain and weariness visible within them.

Her voice was barely above a whisper as she stared down at the ground between us, she spoke.

"I've been waiting for this for so very long. I almost lost hope."

It didn't sound like an accusation. More the words of someone who had been forced to watch the clock for days, weeks, months. Anticipating a possible moment that might never come.

"I'm sorry," Taylor said, "I'm sorry it took so long."

"But we're here now." I continued, rubbing her back gently.

"And you're safe."

"Come now. The base is probably rigged to collapse." Tattletale said, jokingly.

I chuckled, picking Dinah uo in my arms, as we made our was out of the hallway, and around a bend.

"Just one more thing before we leave." I said, stopping at the bend.

"What now?" Taylor asked.

"I was wondering when you would bring it up." Tattletale poked.

"Well...now, actually.

There is one more girl trapped in here that we have to meet before we leave. And I have to do it alone. In the meantime, Tattletale, why don't you, Taylor and Dinah..." I said, handing Dinah to her, "...go and drain Coil's bank accounts? Meet me here in ten?"

Tattletale nodded.

"Might as well. Why let good money go to waste!" She smiled greedily.

"That's the spirit!" I said, pumping my arms.

"Paige, with me please." I asked as the other three left.

"So who's this other girl we're meeting?" Paige asked, curious.

"That's a surprise~" I said, "Wouldn't wanna spoil it!"

"Hmmm.....I do like surprises." She said, smiling mischievously, teasing, "Almost as much as you like to rescue damsels in distress."

"Only the beautiful ones." I replied, playing along as we descended further into the belly of the beast, coming up on a huge door made of reinforced steel, bolted to the walls like a bunker door....in a bunker.

This is the place.

I connected to the accesspad and forced the door open.

The door parted with a signature ominous hiss, reminiscent of old horror movies from the 30s, wispy mists flowing out from the room beyond, carrying with it a sickening stench of rotting fish and polluted sea.

Looks like someone likes to be theme appropriate.

Nice.

I raised a flashlight to the room, as it bounced off the walls, revealing within a writhing mass of flesh, glistening and moist.

The flesh, an appendage, slithered away from the light almost out of instinct as Paige gagged by my side, trying to peek into the room curiously.

"Watch out!" I shouted, pushing her back as the appendage ripped towards her at blinding speeds, hitting her projected position.

It slapped loudly against the floor, a thundering sound of flesh hitting concrete sounding out, echoing through the tunnels behind us before it dragged itself back into the darkness.

I could feel Paige shaking with fear behind me, disgust clear on her face.

Her gagging now turned to retching, as she retreated further back, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the floor.

I turned the light further inwards, as the tentacles in the room, seemed to cringe away, hesitantly.

From inside the room, then came a concerned and guilty voice.

"Sorry....."

It sounded weary, burdened with guilt and undue responsibilities, the unspoken sigh almost omnipresent in the tone.

I felt pity for her, as I stepped further in, illuminating her full form, that of a middle school girl stitched onto an eldritch horror, a writhing mass of tentacles and mouths, ever hungry for blood.

Noelle Meinhardt. Echidna. The baby Endbringer. Part of the Travelers, an itinerant group of villains that were actually from a parallel reality, kidnapped and unleashed here by the Simurgh.

Now the high school mercenaries seek to return to their world and undo the tragedy that is their life. And the prime victim of it was her. Noelle. Twisted into an uncontrollable monster, forced to rampage, falling to her lower half's hunger and madness.

"It's all fine. No one's hurt. So don't worry." I assured the resident.

"No. You don't understand....you have to go away.... I'll... I'll hurt you...kill you! Or even worse!" The girl warned, even as her lower half lunged at me, wrapping around my body, trying to pull me into itself.

"No!" She cried out, covering her face, looking away as the tentacles began their work.

"Jay!" Paige shouted rushing towards me, only to be stopped by my raised palm.

I smiled.

"As I said, no need to worry. You couldn't hurt me if you tried." I replied, as a crackling sound emerged from my body, and a dazzling blue web burst from within me incinerating the tentacles away, turning them to ash.

"See? You're no threat to me, miss Meinhardt. Or should I call you Noelle?"