Bain had been sleeping for fourteen hours.
Nahma hadn't moved an inch.
It was no major inconvenience to the great centipede. He could command all of his sheddings from anywhere in his tunnels, and lying here in comfort was as good a place as any to provide that instruction. The decision had very little to do with the small black shape passed out under the canopy of his powerful limbs, although the creature was far easier to deal with when it was in a state of partial torpor. It made no noise and it didn't try to claw anything. It just lay there.
Nahma listened to the dull murmur of the thousands of sheddings spread throughout his tunnels, watching through countless eyes. A particularly large rat, quickly subdued and eaten. An errant super, who was rapidly discouraged from using the tunnels by one of the larger sheddings. A collapsed tunnel that would have to be excavated later.
Information ebbed and flowed through Nahma in waves, and he absorbed all of it, briefly granting his attention to issues that required his immediate attention and ignoring those that did not. His will was spread thin among the forces of his army, and as their ranks grew, the task was growing more and more difficult to manage. His skill was still leagues ahead of where it’d been when he first began shedding limbs, but it would be difficult to take over much of the upper crust without a sizable army.
Supers had been around for as long as Nahma had been, although they’d been quite a lot more dangerous when in his younger days. Some heroes gave zaps of electricity, a few rare ones hurled lightning, but the original brutes could pull the sky down.
A shiver ran down Nahma’s back in spite of himself. It took a few minutes to reach his tail.
Superhumans were bad enough as they were, constantly testing the limits of how far Nahma would permit them to travel in his tunnels. Despite the fact they were removed from his domain as quickly as possible, they never stopped trying. The sole comfort he took from their futile efforts was that they could only pose a real threat if enough of them banded together, and if what’d he’d seen of them was any indication, few of them possessed the will or cooperation to put their lives on the line in a battle against a monster who more or less kept his business to himself.
Bain shifted, and then sat up. Nahma opened his eyes, breaking out of the fugue he'd put himself into, and looked down at the small monster. It stretched, limbs extending to their limits and twitching slightly. Pulling its arms and legs back to their natural position, it opened its mouth in a wide yawn. Squinting around the cave, Bain's eyes landed on Nahma's head looming over it.
A quiet shriek ripped out of its mouth as it backpedaled, pushing harder against Nahma's armor-clad side. Turning, it began scrabbling in a panic at the impenetrable carapace, trying to dig through.
Nahma figured out what it was doing after a moment. It'd fallen asleep under his legs thinking it was a strangely shaped outcropping, or perhaps a group of stalactites. That it hadn't figured out the segment Nahma's head was attached to was not, in fact, a part of the cave came to Nahma as a pretty good measure of its intelligence. At least he'd been proven correct - it hadn't gone to sleep knowing that it was Nahma it slept beside.
A faint feeling of disappointment bloomed inside Nahma. He promptly crushed it, wondering where it'd come from.
Leaning even closer to the creature, Nahma opened his mouth slightly. It pushed away from his head, slamming its eyes shut as its chest rose and fell rapidly, breathing hard.
Nahma took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of the creature. Information invaded his mind, rushing through his olfactory system and slowly settling.
His hunch about its youth had been correct. The meat hiding under its carapace was fresh and supple, as opposed to the dense cords of an adult or stretching muscle of an adolescent. If his nose was correct - and it hadn't been wrong yet - there was bone hiding under the black shell. It seemed Bain had an inner skeleton as well as a carapace. Nahma thought it was redundant, but redundancies could be helpful.
Another important piece of information had been obtained: Bain was male. It wouldn't have been the first time Nahma had encountered some genderless creature roaming the tunnels, but Bain did not appear to be one of them.
Nahma backed away after a moment, forcefully exhaling as he did. The smell was lingering in his nostrils, and while it was informative, it was hardly pleasant. Bain stank of sewage and long-dried blood.
Cracking one eye open, Bain evidently realized that Nahma wasn’t going to eat it - no, him - and relaxed noticeably.
Nahma glared at him. “You reek.”
Settling on his haunches, Bain tentatively released a quiet growl, almost as though he were asking a question. Nahma shook his massive head, standing and moving more of himself into the cave. Bain shrieked in shock as Nahma’s legs moved from where he’d been sleeping, and the monster practically hurled himself out of the way.
Ignoring him, Nahma pulled himself even further, lying on his side so he could better observe his legs. The first seven were perfectly normal. Fifteen feet long, a massive shield of carapace tapering to a point wrapped around the bottom-most section. A blackened husk occupied the spot where the eighth should have been, a reminder of both a learning experience and a risk.
Looking a little further down, he chose the thirtieth leg down. This one should be powerful and intelligent, but not exceptionally so.
Raising an antennae, he modified the tip into a narrow blade and brought it down. The edge bit into the base of his leg and sheared straight through. He barely noticed the pain, invested in the task, but part of him still noted the startled chirp from Bain’s direction.
The severed limb immediately began wriggling, the armored carapace on the end cracking into pieces and gradually redistributing itself along the entirety of the leg’s length.
Nahma knew he had to work quickly.. Focusing on the limb, he placed both antennae on top of it and pushed down, funneling his will into it. It would indeed be powerful and intelligent, but loyal most of all, and a critical bit of common sense. Few sheddings required any input on Nahma’s part to have loyalty, but after the screwup that was Worst, he’d decided to make sure they knew not to make their own decisions without always requesting permission.
He actually growled as he thought about that accursed shedding, but refocused after a few seconds. Now was not the time to think about the chemist’s mistakes.
The wriggling leg suddenly sprouted legs of its own, several dozen fine limbs extending from its sides with a spurt of blood. They began frantically flailing about, unable to even attempt fighting against the inexorable force exerted by Nahma’s antennae.
The carapace shield finally divided, spreading and moving downward as it split into even sections. A dull forehead plate formed at one end, quickly followed by a pair of mandibles. Flesh melted in four perfect circles and reformed into eyes just as quickly. The last thing to form was the mouth, a hole ripping open with an agonized scream.
Nahma winced from the sound, lifting his antennae. The brand-new shedding flailed across the floor, senseless garble streaming from its mouth as its vocal cords tested every sound they were capable of, eyes rolling in their sockets as every limit was found.
A glance at Bain saw him with his back flat against the opposite wall, as far away from the new shedding as possible, breathing faster than ever. His eyes were stretched wide, and his claws grated at the wall.
Returning his attention to the shedding, Nahma focused his will on it and paused its uncontrollable flailing.
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It lay there for a long moment, panting with its eyes closed.
Nahma poked it.
It twitched, a jerky motion that made its entire body wriggle. Painfully getting to its feet, the shedding looked around the small cave, and then looked up at Nahma.
The shedding tensed, straightening its body and pulling itself up. It had shrank noticably, down to around ten feet in length or so. It gazed up, and after a few seconds, a pair of antennae damp with fluids stickily rose from the back of its head.
It croaked, a hoarse noise which rapidly changed, sharpening and softening before dying out. Swallowing, it hacked something out onto the ground, an object which appeared to be a part of its own bone, and then cleared its throat.
“Heh… hello.”
Its voice was hoarse, Nahma noted unconcernedly. Leaning down, Nahma put his face right next to the newborn. “Hello. Do you see that creature?”
The shedding followed Nahma’s antennae as he pointed at Bain, and the small monster actually hiccuped in terror. Nahma had never heard anything do that before.
Turning back to Nahma, the shedding nodded. “I… see it.”
“That is Bain,” Nahma told it. “You will follow him, and I will watch through you.”
The shedding nodded. “I… understand.” Legs akimbo, it awkwardly stumbled towards Bain, still getting used to the fact it had… anything. In response, Bain scrambled away, sprinting on all fours - sixes -away from the shedding.
The newborn turned, looking up at Nahma in confusion. “It… runs.”
Nahma huffed irritably. “Then run faster.”
It obediently set off at a good pace, trying to catch up to Bain. The monster let out a yelp, redoubling its efforts to get away from the shedding, which sped up in turn. In mere moments, the cave was reduced to a chasing ground, the shedding barreling across the stone in an attempt to catch Bain, who was surprisingly nimble for his age.
Nahma sighed. Evidently he hadn’t given the shedding enough common sense.
Both monster and minion were lifted off the ground, floating for a moment. With a thought, Nahma firmly placed them on the floor next to each other before him. “You,” He told the shedding, “You only have to watch him. And you,” He snarled at Bain, withering under his many eyes, “Behave.”
His words filled the room, nearly exerting a physical gravity. Both of them shrank, dipping their heads under the pressure, and Nahma snorted in satisfaction. “Good.”
Something caught his attention, and he turned his head, antennae twitching. The sensory input of pain, singed extremities and scorched antennae accompanied by the vision of a man wearing a red and orange suit.
Nahma let out an audible groan. It startled Bain, who had been trying to sidle away while Nahma was in his fugue.
Looming over both of them, he growled, “Stay here.”
Turning, he set off through his tunnels, wondering what on earth the biggest pain in his neck he’d ever had the frustration of meeting was doing on his property.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Nahma took a sharp turn and knocked a good chunk of the wall off. He didn't care this time.
He knew exactly which brute was in his tunnels, and it wasn't one he liked very much at all. If not for his desire to avoid an all-out war, he would have had no issue with slaying the man. In fact, he disliked the hero named Firestorm so much that he possibly wouldn't have even eaten him, given the chance.
This was hardly the first time he'd been discouraged from entering Nahma's tunnels. This was the flame-thrower's third incursion, and Nahma had warned him off through a shedding both prior times. What made this delve different from those occasions was that he had actually attacked the sheddings. If the great centipede hadn't known better, he would have thought that the hero was trying to start another war.
Antennae gently twitching, Nahma followed the signals to the tunnel underneath 38th and Wilson. He didn't like the higher levels. They were too shallow, too close to the surface and the infinite sky far above. All he had to do was think back to his early days to know that bad things came out of that endless blue.
He smelled the stench before he saw it. The smell of burning centipede was one he knew well, although it wasn't him that was on fire this time.
Turning the corner, he saw Firestorm taking casual potshots at the sheddings, small fireballs leaping from his palms and splashing across the ground and walls. Nahma began watching how he did it out of sheer habit more than anything else, filing it away in case he would have to battle the super later.
Barreling out of the darkness, Nahma rose to a greater height, baring his teeth. Firestorm ignited his hands, defiantly standing his ground.
Scanning the ground, Nahma realized that the hero hadn't killed any sheddings yet. The worst injury was a scorched antennae on one of the larger sheddings, but that would heal quickly enough.
Fixing his attention on Firestorm, Nahma growled, "Get out."
Firestorm's eyes narrowed behind his mask, and he slowly raised his hands in surrender. The flames extinguished, but his suit emanated a soft yellow glow. "I need to go down there."
Nahma almost laughed. "You will die before that happens."
"Is that a threat?" He shouted obstinately, taking a step forward.
Nahma rushed forward until his face was directly in front of the hero. He could have eaten him and had room to spare in his mouth. "Consider your words very carefully, hero." He let his warning sit in the air, loading it with tension.
Firestorm's face wrinkled in barely restrained anger, hand clenched into fists. He seemed to struggle for a moment, and then deeply exhaled. He extinguished the flames, shaking his head. "Look, Nahma. My daughter went missing and eyewitnesses placed her last position as heading down here. You've got your…" He trailed off, staring at the sheddings. "...spawn, right? You get what I mean?"
"What is a daughter?" Nahma snarled. "If your pets wander down here, then they are only prey."
"She's not a pet!" The hero snapped, sparks flying from his shoulders before immediately relaxing again, taking rapid breaths. Nahma wondered how much self-control it was taking for him not to attack Nahma, and part of him wanted to see if he could goad the hero into doing so.
Teeth gritted, Firestorm told Nahma, "My daughter is my heir. She's the inheritor of my legacy, the one who's going to be the greatest hero the planet's ever seen."
Nahma genuinely doubted that. He'd seen the most powerful creatures the world had to offer and he had no desire to meet those abominations twice. "And why should I care about this?"
"I don't think you can," Firestorm muttered under his breath, quietly enough that Nahma suspected he wasn't supposed to have heard it. Louder, he told Nahma, "I only need to find my daughter, and I swear on my honor as a hero I'll get out of your hai- tunnels. Have you or your spawn seen her?"
Nahma was already shaking his head. "You will go no deeper than where you stand. Leave now."
Firestorm ignited, his entire body lighting on fire. "Then I'll-"
An antennae blurred through the air and came to a dead stop next to Firestorm's head. The resulting gust slammed into the hero a moment later, blowing him out like a candle. A light layer of smoke rose from his clothing, matching the furious expression Nahma saw on his face. "You will do nothing," Nahma commanded. "These tunnels are mine, human. Know your place."
For a moment, Nahma really thought the hero was going to attack him. Even through the mask covering the upper part of his face, veins stood out, and Nahma could hear the material of his gloves crunch as his fists clenched.
Finally, he turned and stiffly headed back for the exit a block away, firing a final statement over his shoulder. “My place is wherever you aren’t, monster.”
Nahma watched him leave, temporarily mystified.
...Was that supposed to have been an insult?
Shaking his head, Nahma turned and began crawling away, mind already moving away from the eyesore that was Firestorm. Some of the hero’s words stuck, though.
A daughter. An heir to a legacy.
...Was Bain a daughter?
He mused over the concept a little while longer before deciding that no, the small monster wasn’t anywhere near powerful enough to qualify as an heir. He was loud, though. And annoying.
It took the great centipede some time to return to the basalt cave where he’d left Bain and the newborn shedding. Pushing his head through the entrance, he shook the dust from his antennae and observed the cave.
Neither shedding nor monster were anywhere to be seen.
Nahma slowly inhaled a deep breath through his nose, releasing it in a jet from his mouth.
It seemed as though another inconvenience had arisen.