Once again he rushed towards her, glowing sword in hand. Aria wanted to scream. Attacking a baron really would make this an unforgivable offence and it’s not like she wanted to hurt one of the heroes she looked up to. This guy saved lives, he didn’t deserve that.

  Yet when the sword came down upon her leg she felt the instinctual urge to fight back. This was a threat to be eliminated. She was able to clamp down on the strange impulse only because the sword slash had done absolutely nothing to her. The chitin protecting her leg was much stronger than his sword. In fact, he seemed to have taken more recoil in his wrist than any sort of impact she felt. She could convince this new voice in her head that he was not a threat, what was this pitiful little man going to do to her anyway? That… came a little too easily. Aria had to wonder if she really felt that way.

  “Calamities truly are formidable.” Baron Gareth grunted as he absorbed the impact on his sword. “No matter, if I cannot limit your mobility then I must block you.” He sheathed his sword and pulled out the shield on his back.

  Aria was getting annoyed at this point, since the man was doing nothing but putting himself in harm’s way for no good reason. She wanted to just brush past him. His shield had grown in size to the point it was taking up almost an entire street, one that happened to be in the direction of the exit to the city. She could likely get him out of the way but she wasn’t sure if that would hurt him. Unconsciously she hissed in annoyance and the wings on her back flittered with a buzz. Which was when she remembered she had those.

  They unfolded from beneath her fan and her titan-like form began taking to the air. Only one problem. The wind generated by the force required to do so was blowing away nearby civilians and some of them were about to get really hurt.

  She covered the nearby buildings in webs as a stopgap measure but she stopped beating her wings immediately. It was clear that wasn’t going to work. Baron Gareth paused once more at this choice, was this thing really a monster? That was clear signs of both empathy and intelligence. He opened his mouth but closed it and shook his head. No, he had been given a mission by the king and he would see it through to the end, he would reason with it when civilians were not in danger. He gripped the sword handle tightly, reminding him of his duty.

  Aria noticed the hesitation and tried something. She couldn’t speak but she could try the universal sign for peace. She raised two of her front legs into the air. Unfortunately this only furthered the Baron’s misunderstanding and he used that tight grip to charge her once more. She sighed, it came out as a low buzz.

  She clearly couldn’t escape without hurting anyone, unless she could somehow evacuate the civilians from the nearby area. At this point she was ok with a little property damage.

  This was London and villains broke stuff all the time. So did heroes, though mostly by accident. Still she couldn’t figure out how she could evacuate the civilians without just webbing them up and throwing them out. She didn’t know how good her webbing was at absorbing impacts. Plus even with her new ability to multitask that would take forever. The king was going to arrive any time now. She didn’t have time for that.

  Looking over her new body with her 360 degree vision she found a solution, though it wasn’t one she liked.

  The human hero recoiled at the idea and the instinct demanding it chittered back. ‘The fact that she hadn’t yet was a travesty’, it whispered, ‘a hive queen without their swarm was just plain madness’… she did love a good hive rush strategy but in real life… A little much. It was also a perfect solution. It would be irrational to avoid using it simply because of the image it evoked and her father had taught her better than that.

  Reluctantly she released her egg sac. As she did so, she felt the weight of a major decision made weigh upon her. She had started her hive… Maybe they’d conquer the world now? Nah, she was still her, though thankfully the idea was funny enough to let her shake off the unease and refocus.

  They splashed onto the ground and out of the several dozen eggs popped creatures entirely new to the world. They were all different but shared several common features. Just like her, they were pulling all of their physical characteristics from various pests.

  The legs of rats, wings of mosquitoes, mandibles from termites and various other features. Each one was unique in their design. Some were a little too unique in fact, to the point that their bodies couldn’t actually stand up or perform other normal functions. Some of them straight up drowned on the spot. Thankfully she had a large egg sac so there were quite a few of them. She could feel the egg sac slowly regenerating as well which she would think about later. For now she could feel the presence of these creatures within her mind.

  Perhaps more accurate would be that they were adjacent to it, a united consciousness that she could tap into at will. She did so. These minds were childish, they did not have fully formed thoughts or emotions just yet and were marvelling at everything around them. She didn’t have time to let her drones adjust to the world.

  ‘Get the civilians out of here.’ She commanded the hivemind and it buzzed in response with various forms of affirmation. Without words they all responded to the hive queen’s command. Their loyalty was the only thing that had been developed from the start and it began showing fruit as the ones that could move stumbled towards the nearby civilians on shaky legs. Even those who had malformed bodies tried to do the same. Aria however, hadn’t realised how terrifying it was to have these half-formed chimeras stumble towards you on malformed feet. Of course, the civilians screamed. “Noblesse, please save us.”, “What is that thing?!” “Of course a calamity would have minions. Oh, we are so doomed.”, Aria only then realised what this looked like, for some reason she had forgotten others wouldn’t find their first steps cute. Even the Baron seemed to misunderstand.

  “I shan’t let you threaten the common people!” He shouted before shrinking his shield only to enlarge it again once he was standing in front of the civilians. Albeit unintentionally Aria had just achieved her goal in another way.

  Unlike her though, the drones she created were very much vulnerable and capable of being sliced by Gareth’s sword. He immediately cut one in half. Aria could feel the child-like presence die and though muted, she even felt death from its perspective. She let out an angry hiss. How dare they murder a child of her swarm, she should eradicate them for this! Her leg snapped up to crush the pest... before she suddenly halted. Why was she so angry, she knew this was going to happen and sure they were child-like but they were also monsters?

  Stolen story; please report.

  Regardless of that fact her mind demanded vengeance. A hero, one of the people she should have admired and respected, had just murdered a child in front of her eyes. It certainly didn’t give her much motivation to hold back.

  Yet there was still the rational part of her mind that recognised this was a human being, one who was protecting people. That was the only reason she didn’t swat him there and then. Instead she blasted webbing from her spinneret at the Baron. He noticed, not that he was in time to do anything. He brought up his shield but that was the wrong move, his shield was too heavy for him to move with. Not heavy enough to keep him attached to the ground with the web’s momentum though. He went flying into the wall, stuck there and trying to wriggle himself free. It brought horror to the onlookers. Most of them anyway. The drones started noticing what their mother did and those who had given themselves similar spineretts began to start weaving webbing that they clumsily threw at the civilians.

  Some of them stuck and the drones used this to start dragging the civilians off. It… wasn’t the kindest way to evacuate people. Very much likely to leave a few scrapes and bruises by the time they were out of the way but she was being expedient.

  Aria reasoned with herself that this was better than being blown into a nearby building by her wings when she took off. Preferably soon, she didn’t know the response time for nearby heroes.

  The civilians did. Shelters began to empty. The civilians who just emerged began to look up into the sky and cheer, pray or kneel. Aria noticed several new scents on the wind at the same time. She looked up, not in a dissimilar manner, allowing her new eyes to see all 5 figures descending from the heavens at speeds she didn’t know were humanly possible.

  At their head stood a figure she knew all too well. The man at the head of most posters advertising heroes’ bravery and the most powerful man in all of England. King Marcus Oberon also known as The Submission Regeant.

  His rugged face was twisted in a grin hidden beneath a small beard. He slung his white cape over his shoulder more like a decoration than the symbol of authority it truly was. The cape was beautiful with trimmings of all the royal colours. Gold, rose gold and purple. His costume meanwhile was a pinstripe suit you might have seen on a mobster in the olden days, with fur lining the inside like some barbaric tribe’s chieftain.

  In his hand was a large, battered cudgel. It was covered in all the fancy decorations you would expect in a king-ranked hero’s weapon but Aria could see the signs of use. The wood had been splintered, repaired then splintered again. She could even see the remains of what might have been people on the weapon, in a display of its history.

  He rocked up with his dukes, carried by the manipulator of gravity among them. Duke ranked heroes were all famous. She knew their abilities off by heart because these were the strongest individuals in all of England…. Currently they flew in formation straight towards her. Was she awed or scared? No focus. Ok, what did she remember about their abilities? Good guys or not, if they were going to kill her then she needed all the advantages she could get. She was a barely trained heroine with powers she didn’t understand. The drones were carting off the civilians at a decent pace but it wasn’t nearly fast enough to avoid a fight… She would have to fight that?

  Her many eyes all focused on the group and she froze. Seeing them in person was a lot more… imposing than she thought. ‘Heroes don’t run.’ She reminded herself, even if she wanted to find the nearest clearing and curl up in her nest.

  First The Submission Regeant, given the name for his ability to make subjects out of those who submitted to him or his subordinates. Wouldn’t she count as one of those? Didn’t she hear that he could impose edicts on his subjects, absolutely binding rules that they couldn’t avoid? Now that she thought about it, there was a weight on her mind. She brushed it off but…

  No, Aria didn’t want to think about it. The more you thought about it, the more pull they had on your mind. She remembered that from her classes on Psychics. Maybe it didn’t apply here but that didn’t mean she would take that chance.

  Not to mention this man gained a bit of power for everyone underneath him and who knew how many counted for that number now. The man ruled pretty much all of England. Ok, weaknesses… Uh… He’s more of an all-rounder so Aria guessed he didn’t have any specific traits to watch out for. That was a plus. Calamities had also been rumoured to resist most forms of mental manipulation so, maybe that would apply to her too… assuming she believed she actually was a calamity… Now she was conflicted about that.

  Then there were the dukes. Procession was just the transport, according to all the advertisements anyway but as a former rookie hero Aria knew better. Even now she could see his effortless control of gravity. The platforms he made without even thinking about it, each one precisely in the location of his teammates next step. It was even more impressive to her newly enhanced senses, given the almost prescient precision she saw.

  Eggcentric meanwhile was a duke who did what he wanted. The masterful manipulator of centrifugal force was spinning like a top and making procession work to keep those footholds in place. He waved to the crowd with every spin. There weren’t many civilians who waved back and barely any acknowledged him at all. Of all the dukes people admired… he wasn’t one of them. The man had enough scandals under his belt that even the other heroes had started to distance themselves from him. Unfortunately he was good at his job. A dizzy criminal was much easier to capture and he could hit like a spinning truck if that little trick failed. Aria just hoped her carapace was strong enough to resist the kind of force he could output.

  Next to him was a man popping pills. Living poison was a duke of vices and a support type hero who could enhance the power of other heroes. Of course, the news didn’t tell you his power was addictive. The barons, knights and even a few of the viscounts in his territory however, would warn you constantly not to work with him especially in your rookie years. Also, he was an addict himself. Of every substance imaginable.

  The stare that forced Living poison to stop popping pills came from Enforcement, the muscle. The kind of guy you’d see in a biker club from one of those old movies. Bald, muscular and wrapped in chains. He even wore the typical leather jacket you might see a thug wear, though he was anything but a thug... Probably. Aria bet he had forced the Duke of vices to make an unbreakable oath with those chains of his, so he’d stop getting high on missions. At least unlike the submission king, he’d have to trap Aria before he could force an oath upon her. Not that he didn’t have a myriad of ways to do that. The guy was a masterful fighter and a hard hitter in his own right, with his body being just as unbreakable as those chains.

  When Eggcentric spun straight into a red wall that appeared out of nowhere, Aria knew exactly who had done that. Aria’s favourite, though only because of the ad campaign she ran a couple years back for a charity in her district. The Duchess of the Crimson Fortress, a powerful psychic capable of creating forcefields. In fact, she could create so many it looked like a miniature fortress and the signature red just looked so cool.

  Their arrival caused cheering from the few civilians who had ignored the warnings and were stalking the rooftops of nearby buildings. The reaction brought Aria back to herself.

  Aria shook her head, looking around at the evacuation and realised the heroes would arrive long before her drones were done. It looked like she really would have to fight the dukes. She would get to meet the most powerful heroes in all of England and of course all of them were here to subjugate her.

  This was not how she wanted to meet her heroes, or face her first challenge. Would her parents cheer for her?

  In the back of her mind, she almost thought she heard a loud ‘You bet I fuckin’ would.’