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Taylor Hebert had a problem.
Not a small problem that could be easily hidden or solved, and in the physical sense, it was actually quite a large problem indeed.
"Okay, okay, run this all by me one more time?" she asked, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice even as she glanced at the side. On the floor, the remains of her chair were left, practically hacked in half by an errant swing of the gigantic axe in front of her face.
"A'right boss, well, me and Morkuz are bored."
Said problem was the nine-foot tall muscle-bound green-skinned and tusked maniac in front of her.
Gazrakka, the... 'Ork' who had pulled her from the locker.
Well, pulled was an understatement; it had grabbed the door and ripped it clean off its hinges with ease.
She had no idea quite what an Ork was, she had heard of orcs, but Tolkein never described Orks as being superhumanly strong, nine-foot tall football hooligans with the attention spans and destructive instincts of a teething puppy. But Gazrakka was just the first of several Orks that had appeared in the last few days of her life, and through a minor miracle, she had somehow managed to avoid them being discovered by the wider world.
Hiding several hundred pounds of easily distracted meat that found beating other things senseless entertaining was a difficult proposition, but fortunately, there was one silver lining to all this---
"Boss?"
They all seemed to unilaterally think that she was some manner of leader... somehow, they looked at all 5'8 of gawky Taylor Hebert and thought, 'yup, that is our boss.'
She sighed, and reached down to pat her new pet.
The small creature, which was apparently a normally extremely aggressive species called a 'face-eating squig' gave a burbling sound that she was (relatively) sure was akin to a purr.
The fact said squig savaged anybody else who tried to touch her had given her a nickname among the 'boyz'...
Taylor 'Mad Squig' Hebert.
"I don't know! Go stop a mugging or something!" she said, trying to keep a hint of desperation out of her voice. This as not what she had been expecting from getting powers! Where were the cool lasers, or the Brute rating that would let her tank bullets and be a hero!
Like, all she could do was corral these green idiots!
What was her life coming to, that the main people she had to speak to were these utterly destructive maniacs!
Actually, she really should not send them out into the city.
She turned around to tell Gazrakka not to go out... only to see that he was gone. For once, the Ork had been silent in his departure, and internally, she screamed.
Gazrakka, proud Ork Boy and Morkuz, Ork Kommando, had been given a job by the boss.
"I don't know! Stop a mugging or something! Just... don't cause any trouble, okay!?" she had shouted in his face, which took serious gutz.
"Whatz a 'muggin'?" he asked Morkuz.
Morkuz used to live in a human Hive, and he was a right smart boy compared to him (not that brains mattered when he could swing an axe better!)
The kommando rubbed its chin thoughtfully at the question.
"It's when humies stab each other and take their money, I saw it in a Hive, looked right fun."
Morkuz was grinning, revealing sharp teeth (but not as long and sharp as Gazrakka's!) as he lowered his goggles.
"Alright, we go in, we find some muggerz."
It was surprisingly hard to find humans fitting the right criteria for the bosses demand, but with the enthusiasm that can only be achieved in a race of beings that love what they do (and love who they're doing it to) the intrepid heroes of anti-mugging justice did have some luck.
"OI, STOP MUGGIN'!" shouted Gazrakka even as he charged forward with a speed frankly alarming for a lifeform not far off a wildebeest in aggression, intellect and thickheadedness.
The criminal in question promptly voided his bowels and screamed like a little girl even as the Ork drove his axe into both the mugger... and the wall on the other side of him.
Gazrakka; tough on crime and even tougher on the causes of crime.
The victim of the crime fainted.
"Look at dat! We'z dun it, Mokuz!"
"The boss is gonna be happy," the kommando said, grinning even as he took the unconscious victims wallet. It was all part of the process, right?
"... A'right.. wot now?"
"We stop more!"
And with a whoop and a cheer, they moved on.
A half hour later, something far more interesting than human muggings turned up to distract the two intrepid dealers of Ork justice.
"Look at that warbike!"
Morkus the kommando focused his goggles and made a sound not far off of a whistle, except it was quiet because he was a sneaky boy.
"Bet some Speed Freak boyz would love to get 'old of that," he said, even as his attention was more on the man in blue armour. The human wasn't one of them Ultramarines, not big or bulky enough, but the kommando had survived enough purges to be wary of such things. Plus, blue was lucky, so this human must be very lucky indeed.
Speaking of which---
"Morkuz... I have a right smart idea...."
The Kommando looked at its fellow; were he a human, he may well have raised an eyebrow at the famously stupid ork making such a bold declaration... especially about something so dangerous as thinkin' because any ork knew that thinkin' was better left to the smarter boyz.
"Sneaky as a table squig about to steal food?"
"Smart'er."
"Smart'er than the boss?"
"... Almost as smart."
Morkuz shrugged. Might as well give this very sneaky, very smart plan a go. If it came down to it, they would just beat up the blue human.
Twenty-five seconds later...
"OI! HUMIE!!!"
Armsmaster, Protetorate Head for the ENE, aka Brockton Bay, turned sharply on his heels to face the source of the voice, and found himself being charged down by a nine-foot tall, green-skinned man(?) wildly swinging an axe the size of a small table at him.
Justifiably, he cleared some ground, rapidly deploying various functions of his halberd to keep the unknown Parahuman at bay, because this person could only possibly be a Cape.
Namely, a dart with enough tranquilliser to put down a horse.
The giant looked down at the dart, picked it out and threw it away.
"You call that a bullet, humie?"
It sounded almost insulted!
Before Armsmaster could question exactly why the man had such a reaction, and wondering how long it would take the incredibly potent cocktail of drugs to take effect, his thought processes were interrupted by the roar of an engine---
Wait a minute!
Armsmaster turned around just in time to see that there was a second green-skinned person, smaller than the other but still over seven and a half foot and dressed for... well, stealth, sat on top of his bike.
It wasn't the first time somebody had tried to steal his vehicle, and fortunately, he had constructed a comprehensive suite of mechanisms to prevent the casual joyrider from managing to get away with his creation---
The green-skinned creature, having fiddled with a few buttons and failed to get the bike to release its lock, promptly punched the delicate tinkertech dashboard---
And the bike broke into a wheelie as, somehow, all of the carefully crafted wheel locks released.
The taller green-skin promptly leapt over, getting onto the back of the bike, whose suspension gave a painful dip from the added weight that had been added to it.
"WAAHEY! THANKS, BLUE BOY!"
The larger, less stealthy of the two giants shouted, waving his axe in triumph even as the bike set off, and with a far greater speed than it should be reasonably able to achieve given its current encumbrance.
"COME BACK HERE!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs, even as, from console, demands for information were coming through about the situation.
How in the hell was he going to explain this!?
Being in charge of a Quarantine Site was a mixed bag; you lived under constant anticipation of something happening, and were responsible for containing some manner of threat so dangerous that the Protectorate could not destroy it...
But most of the time, it was incredibly boring.
The cruel juxtaposition between constant vigilance and absolutely nothing happening did things to a man.
Especially in Ellisburg.
The day of Site Director Daniel Darcy was going from bad to worse.
He did not envy his fellow Site Directors who managed more active sites, but for the longest time, despite the fear his name generated... Nilbog really did not do much on a day-to-day basis.
The Quarantine Site covered a vast area, but much of that was wide open countryside, ruined villages and hamlets that had been consumed by the Goblin. When the walls went up, new sources of easily accessibly biomass disappeared; by all accounts, Nilbog required flesh rather than vegetable matter for his powers to function. If not, then a great tide of lifeforms would have overwhelmed them long ago, surely?
They were slowly starving him out.
At least, that was the conventional wisdom on the matter.
Ninety percent of his time as Site Director, nothing had happened. Every day he read over reports describing jack shit, and occasionally, he would call in help to deforest areas near the walls.
But beyond that, Ellisburg was easy enough to handle.
Until now.
The first signs of something going wrong was when a new ecosystem seemingly took root.
A fungus-based one, an ecosystem filled with life that, by all accounts, was generating protein. It was rapidly spreading as well, and whilst it was not an immediate cause for concern, they were looking at something new... and new was often a bad thing in this field.
"Alright, what are we looking at? New development?" Daniel demanded from his seat at the head of the table.
This emergency meeting had been organised just last night, whilst he had been away in Washington for a conference with a number of important officials, one that he had been forced to leave early.
"We've got some new videos' sir, probably best you just see them before we go into specifics," his second-in-command said with a grim voice as he picked up the little remote with a button and pressed it, causing the projector screen to light up.
"This is from the north-west quadrant."
The footage was just a little grainy; despite rapid advancements in the field of drone technology, it was not perfect. Quarantine Site-04 relied a great deal on such drones for reconnaissance, and whilst the Tinkertech ones were the best, Nilbog's creations had gotten very good at bringing them down over the years, so they kept to cheaper alternatives.
The footage showed a shrubland, a form of terrain increasingly common since Ellisburg had been enclosed, and moving through it were a large number of the man's creations.
And on the other side---
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
---Was a veritable army of green-skinned humanoids.
Dressed in a manner more befitting some un-contacted human tribe, if each tribe member was the size of an NFL player, the green horde charged forward towards Nilbog's creations. They seemingly cared not for the hail of barbs, spines and other biological weapons deployed against them, whooping and cheering as their members fell.
And then---
An ear-splitting roar split the din as a titanic, four-legged beast the size of a small house burst from the treeline.
The Site Director watched, jaw slightly agape, as the creature lumbered forwards. Upon its back was a great howdah replete with gigantic ballistas made of wood and bone, which fired at the line of combat, seemingly uncaring about hitting friend or foe.
At the front of the howdah was a green-skinned man larger than all the rest, spear in hand and a flag in the other, depicting a crude image of a dark-haired human...
Well, it looked human.
"FOR MAD SQUIG!" they bellowed, and said cry was met by their fellows;
"MAD SQUIG MAD SQUIG MAD SQUIG---!" chanted the army in a frenzied unison.
In the end... the battle lasted just a minute or two.
Both sides ended up retreating with considerable losses. Nilbog's various creatures dragged the dead, both their own and a significant number of the slain green-skins, and their foes, including the one atop the giant, four-legged monster, went whooping and cheering back into the forest.
The video came to an end.
"That was yesterday, sir. This morning there was almost double the number on both sides, seems the bodies Nilbog's side reclaimed were suitable for his power, and the other side... well, we're not sure how they replicate, but they seem to mostly congregate in the 'mushroom forests'," his second in command said, voice grim.
The site's Parahuman scientist spoke up.
"We think some self-replicating creation of Nilbog has gone rogue, seeing all the fungus about, it's possible that they are generating new sources of protein that were not previously available. Might have been an experiment, too different from the norm for him to control."
Daniel reached up and rubbed between his eyes.
"Code eight?"
"Looks like it, sir."
One of the various hypothesised ways in which containment could be broken; Nilbog managing to find a new source of suitable biomass and building up his army to the point that he could overwhelm the defences. It certainly appeared that such was happening here, even if his creations and this rogue element were currently at war.
"I need to report to Costa-Brown; at this point we might need to burn the entire place down, this can't be allowed to escalate."
The burning would happen just two days later, and fail utterly to exterminate the 'rogue element'.
Indeed, all it would really do is throw spores into the atmosphere.
"What in the living fuck is this," Taylor 'Mad Squig' Hebert asked with a voice as dead as she felt inside... actually no, all she felt inside was a mounting sense of dread.
The moment Gazrakka had told her 'boss, we made you something' she had felt nothing but absolute trepidation and the sure knowledge that whatever she was about to be confronted with was bad news.
Even her pet squig, 'Squiggles' sensed her mood and was being unusually quiet, only biting Gazrakka twice in the brief journey from her room to the garage.
"We built you'z a warbike, boss!" Gazrakka sounded incredibly proud of himself, and looked at her with one of those big, crooked grins that would probably make anybody else on earth shit themselves and run away.
Taylor stared with dead eyes at what could only be Armsmaster's bike, except now it was painted an eye-searingly bright shade of red, had a pair of guns welded onto the handlebars (where did they get those!?) and had a pair of rockets haphazardly welded on.
Just... what?
"Fix'd it up real good boss, the 'umies did a good job, but I made it more Orky!" the mechanic... Mekboy, said proudly, raising the welding mask (where did it get that?) to grin at her. It looked so proud of its work, and frankly, it was rather impressive that an Ork had managed to weld rockets onto the side of a vehicle without taking out the entire building.
"Where... how did you get this!?" she asked, voice just a little shrill as she lost her composure.
"Looted it."
It was an explanation that, for the reactions of the Ork's around her, did not warrant a longer response.
"... Why is it red?"
"Makes it go faster."
Again, nods, as if it was just common knowledge. Personally, she rather thought that the pair of rockets attached to it would do more to make it go faster, but at this point she had learned that it was pointless to try and argue with the majority of her 'boyz'.
Only the Weird Boy and Morkuz the Kommando had any degree of thinking power... and that was stretching it.
"Okay. I have a bike now," she said, simply.
Now let us never discuss this again.
...
...
...
Taylor was changing.
It had been subtly at first... but when she accidentally crushed a glass in her hand and realised that she was developing god-damn biceps despite never lifting a weight in her life, she had to ask.
"Why am I stronger than before?" she asked aloud, and predictably, there was an Ork there to answer her question.
"Becuz' you're the strongest, boss!"
"What?"
"You're the boss, which means you are the strongest and biggest and baddest Ork!"
"But I am not an Ork."
It was something she had argued before... and yet, just like those previous times, it had the same argument prepared.
"'Course you're an ork, boss, you're the boss! And only Orkz can be bosses, so you're an Ork."
It was logic so profoundly circular that it could only make sense in the mind of an orc. Taylor was pretty sure that if she were to break open the head of one of her Ork's (sorry, Orkz) she would find a brain the size of the average walnut.
So rather than argue with the conveniently placed Ork, she went to go and see an Ork with a brain the size of a pomegranate instead.
"Well you see, boss, we Orkz, we work like this. Whoever's the boss is the boss, and the boss is the biggest and strongest, and the more Orkz believe it, the more it has to be true, right?" her 'Madboy', Madlub, explained, nodding very seriously. "It's like why things painted blue are lucky, or things painted red are fast, the more Orkz believe it, the more it has to be correct!"
... So all her Ork's thought of her as strong, and now she was literally getting stronger? What in the sweet fuck was her life.
Now that she had gotten Madlub talking, he was turning into quite the font of information.
"And when we get the big Waaaaagh going, the boss is going to be the biggest and baddest boss around!"
... What the fuck was a waaaaaagh?
She just knew that asking this question was going to give her a headache, but at this point, she had to do so.
She found herself in utter despair and yet, once again impressed at the sheer idiocy of her Orks. At this point, she might as well go to the PRT and turn herself in as a potential Master problem in the making... at least it was just the five or so green skins around her for the moment, she could handle that.
Hiding them was becoming a growing problem as it was.
So long as it didn't become an army, things were fine.
Across the country, things were escalating.
It wasn't just Ellisburg anymore, the 'Ork' menace was now in Eagleton.
On the upside, they were doing a surprisingly good job of keeping the Machine Army contained, sheer numbers and brutal, primitive technology more than enough to keep up with the machine's production and steady escalation. It turned out that an axe heavier than an adult human did just as good a job at breaking robots as it did killing Nilbog's creations.
On the downside, unlike the Ellisburg population, the Eagleton group was rapidly escalating in terms of technological prowess.
"LETS GO BOYZ WE GOT THA GARGANT!!"
The pioneering spirit of any Ork to loot, adapt and put anything to good use was on display as any piece of junk destroyed or brought down was rapidly used to build stuff.
The same ambulatory buildings created by the Machine Army were promptly taken control of with considerable loss of Ork life and then transformed into weapons, painted garish colour's and pushed into battle.
"ORKS ORKS ORKS ORKS ORKS ORKS---"
The various traps and war engines of the Machine Army were being pushed back by sheer numbers and entrepreneurial spirit. The Machine armies historic tactic of 'seeding' areas with small fragments of generative ore weren't working so well when the environment was already being ripped apart and put to use by the Orks.
Site Director Randalf was already starting to feel for his equivalent in Ellisburg; the Orks were a nightmare!
Except in Ellisburg, they were still... primitive. There, their numbers had increased with ridiculous speed, and they had those giant, dinosaurs-like monsters... Meanwhile, he was on the verge of requesting full military support to deal with the problem in his site, their technological advancement was terrifying.
"How many are we thinking?" he asked, fingers steepled.
"Current estimates put the population at close to five thousand, sir. Seems they are setting up farms and other practices as well, we've identified three main settlements... They've also got planes now."
"They what."
"You remember that reconnaissance jet they shot down the other day? Well, they've already converted it into their own... the 'Speed Freak' group in the west."
A picture was shown.
"... How the hell can that thing fly!"
"We don't know, sir. But it does."
Like with many things to do with these creatures, 'it just does'.
From haphazard vehicles that, by no means, should stick together, to the strange Parahuman like powers a select few of them displayed.
Watching several hundred Ork's teleport half a mile into battle amidst a storm of green light and chants of 'ERE WE GO ERE WE GO ERE WE GO!' was an experience that had probably shortened his life by several months for the stress it caused.
Fortunately, the Ork that was listed as the probable cause had been killed when its head spontaneously detonated whilst trying to vomit green flame on a robot.
"We also have the latest threat assessment that has been released for the Orks, sir."
He glanced at the paper, gratified to see that the threat-rating had been upgraded from A to S. A single letter opened up a world of increased ordinance when it came to dealing with the problem...
His eyes moved on, seeing a new section at the bottom of the page, detailing the proceeds of recent interrogations of captured Orks.
They had a leader.
As in, a leader behind all this, and which the disparate populations all followed.
An individual named 'Mad Squig', who was their supreme 'warboss.'
No doubt a single leader who was now in some way directing them from afar... whilst it was gratifying that they had only turned up in the Quarantine Sites and Brockton Bay, this situation could not be allowed to stand!
This 'Mad Squig' was a threat and a menace that had to be stopped before things could escalate further!
Meanwhile, in Brockton Bay, Taylor 'Mad Squig' Hebert slammed her head down on a desk.
Back to school.
She wasn't sure whether she was more worried about the threat of continued future bullying from the various girls surrounding her... or what her loyal but pigheaded Orks might get up to. She had left them behind with firm orders not to do anything stupid... whether they would actually follow her instruction was another matter entirely.
At least there were only like... four of them.
Gazrakka, Morkuz, Madlub and the Mekboy could all be somewhat hidden around the house, or in the basement... even if the Mekboy had been increasingly eyeing up some of the old, broken appliances in the room.
The last thing she needed was another 'genius invention'
In her first period, she had been so consumed with worries about what the Orks might be getting up to that she had been unable to focus on the lesson or her bullies, who now seemed so utterly minor by comparison---
There was a faint creak above her.
With a sense of dread and just knowing that she would regret this, Taylor slowly turned her gaze upwards.
Peering back through a hole in the cavity of the drop ceiling was the face of Morkuz.
The several hundred pound Ork gave her a grin from where he was hiding, before covertly replacing the piece of thin ply board.
Dead inside, Taylor turned her attention back to class.
Don't panic, don't panic.
Not far away, she could practically feel the eyes of Sophia and Emma on her.
She glanced over. They were both staring at her with varying degrees of shock, and it took Taylor a moment to realise that, with how tense she was feeling... her new muscles were standing out.
Her efforts to curtail her new muscle growth had not gotten far, actually, it was only escalating.
Her Orks were so delusional that they were passively making her into some sort of hulk!
The rest of the day was relatively quiet in terms of school, even if it dragged on for an eternity with her anxiety about the Orks and Morkuz hanging about in Winslow's various hidden crawl spaces.
Whilst heading to her next class, Taylor was cornered by the gruesome threesome et al.
... Man, Sophia was actually quite a bit smaller than her.
She had been shooting up like a bean sprout in recent years, but now that she wasn't hunching... and with the efforts of her Orks, she loomed over Sophia.
"Been working out, Hebert?"
"Please fuck off and leave me alone," Taylor said, voice dull. She really, really did not have time to deal with this bullshit, the bullying seemed like nothing compared to everything else, and she really had no time for this...
Sophia took issue and pushed her.
It didn't move her.
The girl's hand remained on her chest, a slightly awkward silence filled the air at the failed attempt. Taylor had not tried to find out just how much she could deadlift... but evidently, she was even stronger than her new muscles implied.
"... I'm flattered, Sophia, but there's no need for that," Taylor grabbed Sophia's hand and easily moved it aside, before stepping past her. An attempt was made to trip her, but Taylor bulldozed through the attempt and made it to her next class.
After that, the day was almost peaceful.
Frankly, she was just glad that Morkuz hadn't felt the need to intervene
Later that night, Taylor's day went from bad to worse when she turned on the news to distract herself.
"---Reports across North America describe the creatures as between three and eight feet tall with large tusks and green skin. Anybody encountering these creatures is advised to call the Protectorate immediately, and should consider them to be extremely dangerous. Currently, these creatures have been reported in thirty-two states, with unconfirmed sightings in Alaska, Guatamala and Brazil---"
It wasn't just the five Orks in her house...
"How... how are there so many!?" she asked, voice cracking as she began to hyperventilate.
Squiggles the Squig was laying in her lap, belly up and accepting scritches, but her hand had paused utterly in its stress-relieving ministrations as her eyes were focused on the screen.
"Well, Spores, boss," Gazrakka said, simply with a sort of half shrug.
"... Spores?" she asked, voice just a little faint.
"Yeah! You know, spores!"
"We don't breed like humies boss, we just release spores, they land on the ground and grow and form new Orks," Madlub, ever the intellectual, explained. "Grow better in areas with plenty of good fights, though."
They were breeding by spores like god-damn fungi, carried on air currents and landing in random forests and growing from there.
Like, could she even do anything to stop this process now? Maybe if, by some miracle, she had managed to kill and burn the bodies of the Gazrakka and the other Orks the moment they arrived? But now there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Orks on earth.
"Oh, fuck my life..."
She idly wondered whether she should just throw in the towel and accept her new life as Ork Warboss.
The doorbell rang.
"Oi! It's that blue boy again! Armsmasta!"
Taylor screamed into her hands.