User: The Roachpeople

Civ: Bullet with Butterfly Wings

The user is able to fire bullets out of their skin at anything making noise. These bullets grow stronger in relation to the sound being targeted. When one of the user’s bullets enters one of their victims, it causes that object or person to grow some of the user’s body parts. The user can also grow or replace any of their body parts with those of their victim, allowing them to take control of that object. Any individual who has become fully turned by the user gains a copy of this Civ. The user’s changes are reversed upon their death.

Oh, God. We have to help Piotr, Rio thought. He had thought Piotr would be fine—unconscious and maybe a little bloody but ultimately fine. All of them, in fact. Rio touched the spot on his forehead, and something grabbed his hand. His forehead was wriggling with dozens of cockroach legs, flailing in the air and brushing against his fingers. He looked at the hole in his hand. It had healed over, replacing itself with hard chitin, but despite this, it was still exceedingly painful. His blood and everyone else’s was going to turn into cockroach blood unless they killed these things quickly.

Blair ran her tongue along the inside of her mouth after seeing what had happened to Rio. Then, something clamped around her tongue, sending waves of pain through her body and widening her eyes as she crumpled to the floor, putting her hands in her mouth in an attempt to free her tender tongue. Then something clamped on her fingers, trapping her hand in her own mouth as she bled into it. The holes in her cheek were healed, but the inside of her mouth was filled with mandibles. Her heart started to burn. She could only imagine what could be happening in there.

One roach was near the pool of water, sitting perfectly still, and one was still in the bathroom. Rio didn’t know where the third one was. It could have mutated a hundred people by now. Who knew. But once they killed these two, they’d be safe from the mutation that was currently underway. Suddenly, Rio saw Piotr stand up from inside the washroom. Rio almost vomited at the sight of it. Piotr’s face was almost entirely roach, with mandibles coming out of his mouth and his right eye replaced with a bulging antenna that was slowly twitching as he walked. Walking wasn’t really the right word for it, though. Piotr’s legs weren’t moving, rather he was being carried by a swarm of cockroach feet that were sitting under his own, moving him slowly out of the bathroom like a pair of Heelys with bug legs instead (Feelys). And he was about to Feely right towards the window, most likely shattering it and either filling himself with bullets or falling out of the window. He’d be dead either way. He had to do something.

Suddenly, Piotr was on top of the pool of water, sloshing it around. He might slip, but more importantly, Rio knew how to stop Piotr. But it was going to hurt. It might even kill him. He had to activate his Civ. Piotr was over the water now; he was getting close.

“Wet Hands.” Rio attempted to move out of the way as two bullets flew in his direction, but he couldn’t. They tore through his right shoulder, the force of which combined with two of them at once caused it to almost sever, dangling by only a bit of flesh, but a collection of watery tentacles arose from the pool and grabbed hold of Piotr’s body. Despite the gravity of the situation, however, Rio could no longer contain the pain.

This is it. I’m dead. I thought I was too cool to listen. I thought I could handle this! But now I’m going to die! I’m going to die! I’m going to scream, and they’re going to fill me with bullets! Rio thought as tears started to stream down his face and he frantically clutched his bloody shoulder, horrified by the sight of his torn tendons and muscles. Just a few minutes ago, he’d felt the worst pain in his entire life and the second worse just before that. But this made them both look like chump change. Because Rio also felt the pain of a boy who didn’t want to die. And then he screamed, tears flowing down his face as he let out a high-pitched cry!

But nothing happened. Rio opened his eyes as he sobbed and saw through tear-filled eyes that Blair had thrown a glass bottle at the roach in the kitchen, and its body had been filled with the bullets of the other. Piotr was standing upright, completely human once more, holding his finger out at the wall. He had fired a perfectly aimed marble the second after the one that was controlling him died—and the second before Rio would have been ripped apart.

The three were breathing heavily, tears of pain and relief leaking from all of their eyes as they let out a nervous chuckle of exhaustion. The fact that they had all barely made it out alive was something to be celebrated. Blair cauterized their injuries and Rio walked out of Thomas’ apartment with a towel wrapped around his denim clothes, still wet from the sink, and if Rio was being honest, a little bit of pee in that last moment.

“Sooo . . . I’m guessing Thomas has gone back to being an assassin. Because I can’t think of another reason why those things would be there,” Blair mused. “And I need to ask to meet his boyfriend. And a lot of other stuff.”

The group stepped outside the main doors and was greeted by the sound of scheduled rain pounding the ground on the other side. Blair stopped as she approached the large black metal doors, instinctively nervous about their automatic nature but moving forward anyways.

And she got hit by a wave of bullets the second the door opened.

Rio and Piotr looked out in horror at the footpath. It seemed the roaches had calmed down about the water, as about two dozen of them were standing completely still out in the rain. The wounds in Blair’s chest weren’t deep as the door opened so quietly, but they were there. And Blair was going to turn into one of those things unless Rio and Piotr managed to kill all of them. Oh God, I just had such a good moment about not wanting to die too! And now it’s going to happen!

Hudson Beaudoin saw his son in the doorway to Night 41 Apartments. There were also two dozen disgusting roach people out there, but Hudson was more concerned about his young boy. It looked like one of his friends had just been shot, and it looked like he might be shot next. Nero, that bastard. Rio saw a man standing out in the rain in a dark jacket. He didn’t recognize him. Hudson could see his son looking at him. Not as a son looks at his father but as two strangers. That sadness—that anger about not being known—made him want to kill these things that were threatening his precious son, even if he wouldn’t be able to say who he was afterwards.

“Heavy Rain, Water Jet Cutter.”

Suddenly, Rio saw something strike the cockroaches. A bullet? No, it was coming from above. The roaches were split open, filled with more and more holes as the rain battered them, sending the monsters into the air and causing them to vanish. Rio didn’t understand what had just happened. Did his Civ do that? No, he hadn’t activated it, and he had activated it in the rain before and it had never done something even a quarter as powerful.

Hudson Beaudoin walked off into the night, pulling his dark hood over his head. He snuck one last glance at his son, who he knew would be a powerful Civ user someday—and an even better man. But he couldn’t see it in person—it would be too dangerous. So, he would return to his weather station, watching his son become a better man than he was and hopefully living to forget him.

“WET HANDS! What just happened?” Rio shouted into the rain. But Rio didn’t get an answer in the form of a Civ or a visual in the puddles.

“Your father loves you. Hope that helps.”

Blair had just gone inside to return Rio to his mother. Piotr was perfectly content to wait outside, observing the empty streets. The weather was one of the things he had taken for granted before he went to prison and taking it all in, the gentle tap of the raindrops on the metal footpaths, the smell of water and dirt in the air, and seeing the reflections of nearby objects in the rain reminded him that he was truly free now. He wasn’t entirely sure why nobody was coming after him. They had probably just assumed he was dead out in the caverns somewhere.

Piotr’s gaze shifted through the raindrops as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. And then through the raindrops, he saw a man in a dark jacket walking on the street opposite him. He was looking at Piotr, standing still from the other side of the street. Do I recognize this man? Piotr pondered as he saw the figure draped in a dark raincoat stare up at the apartments, trying to get a glimpse into one of the windows. He didn’t seem to notice Piotr eyeing him through the rain. This man was at Thomas’s apartment. He was the only other person there . . . at least from what I remember. Why is this guy following us? All of a sudden, the figure turned and walked off, nearly disappearing into the thick cloud of deep blue rain.

Piotr slowly followed behind him, ducking behind walls and masking his heavy footsteps as he slowly followed behind the man in the raincoat. Did this guy kill those roaches? What kind of Civ can do something like that? Piotr got an answer as he saw a hole in the ground open up, a messy pit that led down into the waterways below Neonight. And then he vanished, the rain tearing his body apart as it struck him. Piotr ran over in shock, the rain pelting him in the face as he attempted to figure out where the man had gone. And Piotr looked down nervously into the hole leading into the sewers and jumped.