Alright. I've said I'd make a thread of this for months now, and I figure it's about darn time I...
A Finely Honed Blade [Worm/Kara no Kyoukai | Garden of Sinners]
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Dissociation 1.1
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Alright. I've said I'd make a thread of this for months now, and I figure it's about darn time I delivered on that promise.
This is a Worm alt-power fic. Knowledge of Worm is assumed. Knowledge of Kara no Kyoukai –which this story is influenced by– isn't, but is recommended . The only outright elements taken from Kara no Kyoukai are Taylor's Eyes and 「 」.
Now let's do this.
Summary:
What would you do if you could see death, knew how to end anyone and anything? What would you do if you had touched emptiness itself, had it infest your soul, invade your mind, and whisper in your ear? How would you handle knowing you could never escape it?
Because for Taylor, that's her reality every day.
Omake Index:
Taylor vs. Crawler
Art of Escalation (or "How Taylor tried to de-escalate") by Castage
Taylor vs. Leviathan by JefferyG
Taylor-chan's Funhouse of friendship by globalwarmth
The Sharpest Caddie by Virgo with cheer
When Broadcast Met QA by UltimateGrr
Fractals: An Essence of Fine Steel by James D. Fawkes (Crossover with his own Worm/Nasu story, An Essence of Silver and Steel)
Jack Slash has Unique Problems by SystemicHatter
Flickers in the Kaleidoscope:
Context Erasure ??.1 (always quiet ghost)
- To Stare at Death by James D. Fawkes
Context Erasure ??.2 (ever empty soul)
Dissociation 1.1
April 2011
If you've ever stared at a seven-foot tall man who is looking at you with promises of assured pain in his eyes while you have nothing except the effective equivalent of a butterknife in your hand, you might have some idea of what I was feeling.
If not, I can tell you:
terror
…
You know, there's something about the human mind to be said for the fight-or-flight response. It's quite a handy evolutionary adaptation. Unfortunately, it seems that thanks to the amazingly advanced and improved cognition that the giant mass of grey matter between our ears gives us, we have a tendency to also freeze up and simply shut down instead of reacting like we should.
For example, the thoughts running through my mind were approximately something like this:
ohgodohgodohgodI'mgonnadieIdon'twannadie
…Not very coherent.
"I'm going to kill you, you fucker!!"
…Yes. Thank you, Lung. As if I hadn't already figured out that that's what was going to happen.
Who's Lung? Oh, just the leader of one of the most notorious gangs in the city. And an absolute monster. No, literally. He turns into a fucking dragon as he fights, growing larger and larger the longer it goes on. Even now, he was already a foot and a half taller than when I'd seen him.
With that in mind, there's also something to be said about the difference between seeing a picture or video, and true experience. For example, there are more than a few pictures of Lung all dragon-ed up online. There's a couple videos too. However, unless you're actually there, the little details just slip past you. Like the fact that Lung is heavy, even while still human-shaped. His muscles must get a lot denser before they even start bulking up, because each time he took a step, I could practically feel it.
It was around this time that I raised my feeble excuse for a weapon in front of my face.
I know I should have tried to run. To get away. To escape. But my hind-brain was also screaming at me not to turn around, not to turn my back to this monster. Because if I did, it would be over before I had a chance to blink, and I'd be just a bloody smear on the street.
I really, really didn't want that.
My hand shook, the tip of the cheap knife held in reverse grip shaking even more thanks to the angular movement.
And then Lung laughed, even as he kept moving towards where I was rooted to the ground.
"You think that puny thing will do you any good here?" He managed to sound amused even while continuing to slowly grow in size.
The chances of me living through whatever was about to happen were pretty close to nil.
The question at this point was whether I was going to lie down and take it, letting him kill me without a fight, or at least attempt to do something, however futile it ultimately ended up being.
I literally had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
There had never really been a choice in the first place.
I took a breath, letting it out slowly, keeping my eyes on him even as he continued to cross the twenty-foot gap between us. And just like that, the knife-point stilled.
He must have noticed, because his eyes narrowed slightly, even while gaining a sense of… recognition? respect?
Well, great. At least if I was going to die, I would know that the guy who killed me respected me in some way.
…And then he was in front of me, right arm cocked back in an obvious telegraphed move, that even I could read.
I swallowed, preparing myself for the immanent disorientation…
and Looked.
Red lines crisscrossed over his body, like ever-shifting jagged wounds that would never, could never close. Small, large, curved, straight: they all stood out to me like florescent neon, practically whispering to me here, this is where it needs to be.
They were wrong. So very wrong. Something that didn't belong. That shouldn't be. Something that defied reality, defiled it, and left me feeling simultaneously sick and anxious from just looking at them.
But I had no choice but to use them, if I wanted even a sliver of a chance at surviving this.
His fist accelerated, and I ducked, allowing my body to follow its instincts while dragging my knife's edge across one of the lines on the underside of his forearm. Rolling forward into a crouch, I scrambled forward and away from him before spinning around, my knife held back up in its ready position. There was no time to let myself think about what I was doing. The moments it would take to consciously react to him would be the last ones I experienced. So I relaxed, trusting myself and the small fighting sense and muscle memory that I had seemed to gain to try and get me through this as much as it could.
Lung growled, turning to face me.
This time, he gave me no warning, crossing the distance almost instantly and whipping his left hand across to backhand me. I ducked again, feeling the air pressure of his movement as it whistled only inches above my head. If his hand had hit me, the force of it would have made my head explode like an overripe watermelon.
…Shit.
Wasting no time, I pressed forward, my knife sinking into his thigh before I moved sideways and to my right, the blade pulled with me along the axis of the bright red line I had impaled with only token resistance.
Lung roared in pain as I rushed to get to a safe distance again, and he looked down at the wound. He paused, as if realizing something was wrong, and then looked up to face me, his eyes narrowing dangerously as silver scales crept across his skin.
But why was he so surprised by the cuts I had given him? They were just bleed–
Oh. Holy fuck. Regeneration. Lung was supposed to heal as he fought and grew, but the wounds I'd given him weren't closing at all.
"I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU, BITCH!!"
Oh god.
Before I had just been a nuisance. Now I was a threat to be taken seriously. This was bad.
Lung rushed me again, reaching out with his right arm to grab me, but I rotated around his hand and jumped, flipping my knife around and bringing it down in a two-handed motion with all of my weight behind it. If the red lines didn't cut like butter the blade would've shattered, as the place I was cutting had already been covered in scales. As it was, the knife nearly wasn't long enough to actually slice through his entire upper arm, but with the red lines little things like that didn't seem to matter if you were actually trying.
I moved to place my foot so that I could kick off of his side and away, but then I saw how his eyes were looking at me.
And then Lung exploded.
I was thrown away from him like I weighed nothing, tossed easily fifteen feet and nearly into one of the brick walls on the side of the street. I almost didn't manage to get my feet under me so that I could roll and not die from having my neck snapped on impact. Still, I felt something in my left ankle give way, and almost fell down, barely catching myself. I prayed I hadn't just broken it.
Gasping for breath, I looked over at the eight-foot tall scaled man in the middle of the street. The entire thing looked like a scene out of hell. The black tar at his feet was sagging, heat waves rolling off of the visible corona of red flame that Lung had covered himself in.
Right. Pyrokinesis. Lung has fucking pyrokinesis.
Because he wasn't enough of a dragon already, and he had to have control over fire too.
The arm that I'd amputated lay on the ground, while the blood that was coming out of his brachial artery turned to steam almost the instant it hit the air.
"YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!"
The next thing I knew, he was in front of me, and I couldn't stop myself from shutting my eyes in preparation for what was going to happen next.
Dad, I… I'm sorry. I wish we'd talked more before these past months. Not drifted apart after mom's death like we had. And my friends… the friends I'd made and only had months to know, who had become so important to me. I hoped they'd forgive me for all of this, for dying, for leaving them behind.
I waited, waited for the blow I knew was coming. The blow that was going to kill me, just like Lung had promised.
"–gurk"
…
…
gurk?
I opened my eyes. My arms were held in front of me, fully extended, steadying the cheap knife that I held like a lifeline.
The knife that was buried up to the hilt in Lung's scaled chest.
I released my grip in shock as he began to fall, legs folding underneath him before he toppled forwards, head colliding with the sidewalk I stood on with a gigantic thud. His eyes were glazed over, not looking at anything, and the blood that had been evaporating into the air was now sluggishly spreading out beneath him.
He's… dead? My mind was fuzzy, hazy from the sudden unexpectedness of this turn of events.
…I killed him.
I recognized it, registered it, but I couldn't bring myself to feel anything other than relief that it was I who was still alive, and not him, that I'd won. I started laughing, the adrenaline high I was feeling and endorphins in my system making me lightheaded and giddy.
I collapsed next to him, sitting down and just staring at the cooling silver-scaled humanoid body next to me.
It was only then that I started feeling the pain in my hands, and I looked down at them. It turns out that when your hands end up in fire, they get burned. Huh.
My skin was blistering all over, some areas peeling away and bleeding freely. It looked like it should hurt a lot worse than it did. …That was probably not a good thing. Nerve damage is never good.
There was a noise at the end of the street and my head snapped up towards it without thinking. My body was tensing and still on edge, ready to act at any sign of threat. Three huge shapes melted out of the shadows, figures resolving themselves into pairs on top of the large creatures. Two girls and two guys, though one was completely covered and I could only tell because he was so tall.
"H-holy shit." The words came from one of the girls, a blonde dressed in a skintight outfit of purple and black.
She was staring at where I sat, or more accurately the body on my left, and sounded both awed and slightly terrified at the same time, which was probably a sane reaction all things considered. "She… she killed him."
"Lung's dead."
A/N:
For those of you who've never read/seen Kara no Kyoukai, Taylor's power in here is the ability to see "death" (or more accurately, the metaphysical flaws that represent the conceptual death of some thing the wielder considers "alive") as lines and interact with them such as through slicing them with a knife. The interactions are irrevocable and absolute, meaning if she kills something through them it stays dead. Panacea couldn't regrow that limb sort of dead. It could be cauterized and replaced with a prosthetic but not regrown, as the concept of having that limb no longer exists for that person/body.
Taylor (if she were to be accurately labeled by the PRT right now) is a Striker 8 (Mover 1, Thinker 2, Brute 1). Shiki Ryougi would be Striker 12+ (Mover 6, Thinker 4, Trump 12+, Brute 2), Bullshit 17. Taylor has the potential to get to Shiki's level. Maybe even further with the amount of conflict she gets into and the way she pushes herself. We'll have to see.
This is a Worm alt-power fic. Knowledge of Worm is assumed. Knowledge of Kara no Kyoukai –which this story is influenced by– isn't, but is recommended . The only outright elements taken from Kara no Kyoukai are Taylor's Eyes and 「 」.
Now let's do this.
Summary:
What would you do if you could see death, knew how to end anyone and anything? What would you do if you had touched emptiness itself, had it infest your soul, invade your mind, and whisper in your ear? How would you handle knowing you could never escape it?
Because for Taylor, that's her reality every day.
Omake Index:
Taylor vs. Crawler
Art of Escalation (or "How Taylor tried to de-escalate") by Castage
Taylor vs. Leviathan by JefferyG
Taylor-chan's Funhouse of friendship by globalwarmth
The Sharpest Caddie by Virgo with cheer
When Broadcast Met QA by UltimateGrr
Fractals: An Essence of Fine Steel by James D. Fawkes (Crossover with his own Worm/Nasu story, An Essence of Silver and Steel)
Jack Slash has Unique Problems by SystemicHatter
Flickers in the Kaleidoscope:
Context Erasure ??.1 (always quiet ghost)
- To Stare at Death by James D. Fawkes
Context Erasure ??.2 (ever empty soul)
Dissociation 1.1
April 2011
If you've ever stared at a seven-foot tall man who is looking at you with promises of assured pain in his eyes while you have nothing except the effective equivalent of a butterknife in your hand, you might have some idea of what I was feeling.
If not, I can tell you:
terror
…
You know, there's something about the human mind to be said for the fight-or-flight response. It's quite a handy evolutionary adaptation. Unfortunately, it seems that thanks to the amazingly advanced and improved cognition that the giant mass of grey matter between our ears gives us, we have a tendency to also freeze up and simply shut down instead of reacting like we should.
For example, the thoughts running through my mind were approximately something like this:
ohgodohgodohgodI'mgonnadieIdon'twannadie
…Not very coherent.
"I'm going to kill you, you fucker!!"
…Yes. Thank you, Lung. As if I hadn't already figured out that that's what was going to happen.
Who's Lung? Oh, just the leader of one of the most notorious gangs in the city. And an absolute monster. No, literally. He turns into a fucking dragon as he fights, growing larger and larger the longer it goes on. Even now, he was already a foot and a half taller than when I'd seen him.
With that in mind, there's also something to be said about the difference between seeing a picture or video, and true experience. For example, there are more than a few pictures of Lung all dragon-ed up online. There's a couple videos too. However, unless you're actually there, the little details just slip past you. Like the fact that Lung is heavy, even while still human-shaped. His muscles must get a lot denser before they even start bulking up, because each time he took a step, I could practically feel it.
It was around this time that I raised my feeble excuse for a weapon in front of my face.
I know I should have tried to run. To get away. To escape. But my hind-brain was also screaming at me not to turn around, not to turn my back to this monster. Because if I did, it would be over before I had a chance to blink, and I'd be just a bloody smear on the street.
I really, really didn't want that.
My hand shook, the tip of the cheap knife held in reverse grip shaking even more thanks to the angular movement.
And then Lung laughed, even as he kept moving towards where I was rooted to the ground.
"You think that puny thing will do you any good here?" He managed to sound amused even while continuing to slowly grow in size.
The chances of me living through whatever was about to happen were pretty close to nil.
The question at this point was whether I was going to lie down and take it, letting him kill me without a fight, or at least attempt to do something, however futile it ultimately ended up being.
I literally had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
There had never really been a choice in the first place.
I took a breath, letting it out slowly, keeping my eyes on him even as he continued to cross the twenty-foot gap between us. And just like that, the knife-point stilled.
He must have noticed, because his eyes narrowed slightly, even while gaining a sense of… recognition? respect?
Well, great. At least if I was going to die, I would know that the guy who killed me respected me in some way.
…And then he was in front of me, right arm cocked back in an obvious telegraphed move, that even I could read.
I swallowed, preparing myself for the immanent disorientation…
and Looked.
Red lines crisscrossed over his body, like ever-shifting jagged wounds that would never, could never close. Small, large, curved, straight: they all stood out to me like florescent neon, practically whispering to me here, this is where it needs to be.
They were wrong. So very wrong. Something that didn't belong. That shouldn't be. Something that defied reality, defiled it, and left me feeling simultaneously sick and anxious from just looking at them.
But I had no choice but to use them, if I wanted even a sliver of a chance at surviving this.
His fist accelerated, and I ducked, allowing my body to follow its instincts while dragging my knife's edge across one of the lines on the underside of his forearm. Rolling forward into a crouch, I scrambled forward and away from him before spinning around, my knife held back up in its ready position. There was no time to let myself think about what I was doing. The moments it would take to consciously react to him would be the last ones I experienced. So I relaxed, trusting myself and the small fighting sense and muscle memory that I had seemed to gain to try and get me through this as much as it could.
Lung growled, turning to face me.
This time, he gave me no warning, crossing the distance almost instantly and whipping his left hand across to backhand me. I ducked again, feeling the air pressure of his movement as it whistled only inches above my head. If his hand had hit me, the force of it would have made my head explode like an overripe watermelon.
…Shit.
Wasting no time, I pressed forward, my knife sinking into his thigh before I moved sideways and to my right, the blade pulled with me along the axis of the bright red line I had impaled with only token resistance.
Lung roared in pain as I rushed to get to a safe distance again, and he looked down at the wound. He paused, as if realizing something was wrong, and then looked up to face me, his eyes narrowing dangerously as silver scales crept across his skin.
But why was he so surprised by the cuts I had given him? They were just bleed–
Oh. Holy fuck. Regeneration. Lung was supposed to heal as he fought and grew, but the wounds I'd given him weren't closing at all.
"I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU, BITCH!!"
Oh god.
Before I had just been a nuisance. Now I was a threat to be taken seriously. This was bad.
Lung rushed me again, reaching out with his right arm to grab me, but I rotated around his hand and jumped, flipping my knife around and bringing it down in a two-handed motion with all of my weight behind it. If the red lines didn't cut like butter the blade would've shattered, as the place I was cutting had already been covered in scales. As it was, the knife nearly wasn't long enough to actually slice through his entire upper arm, but with the red lines little things like that didn't seem to matter if you were actually trying.
I moved to place my foot so that I could kick off of his side and away, but then I saw how his eyes were looking at me.
And then Lung exploded.
I was thrown away from him like I weighed nothing, tossed easily fifteen feet and nearly into one of the brick walls on the side of the street. I almost didn't manage to get my feet under me so that I could roll and not die from having my neck snapped on impact. Still, I felt something in my left ankle give way, and almost fell down, barely catching myself. I prayed I hadn't just broken it.
Gasping for breath, I looked over at the eight-foot tall scaled man in the middle of the street. The entire thing looked like a scene out of hell. The black tar at his feet was sagging, heat waves rolling off of the visible corona of red flame that Lung had covered himself in.
Right. Pyrokinesis. Lung has fucking pyrokinesis.
Because he wasn't enough of a dragon already, and he had to have control over fire too.
The arm that I'd amputated lay on the ground, while the blood that was coming out of his brachial artery turned to steam almost the instant it hit the air.
"YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!"
The next thing I knew, he was in front of me, and I couldn't stop myself from shutting my eyes in preparation for what was going to happen next.
Dad, I… I'm sorry. I wish we'd talked more before these past months. Not drifted apart after mom's death like we had. And my friends… the friends I'd made and only had months to know, who had become so important to me. I hoped they'd forgive me for all of this, for dying, for leaving them behind.
I waited, waited for the blow I knew was coming. The blow that was going to kill me, just like Lung had promised.
"–gurk"
…
…
gurk?
I opened my eyes. My arms were held in front of me, fully extended, steadying the cheap knife that I held like a lifeline.
The knife that was buried up to the hilt in Lung's scaled chest.
I released my grip in shock as he began to fall, legs folding underneath him before he toppled forwards, head colliding with the sidewalk I stood on with a gigantic thud. His eyes were glazed over, not looking at anything, and the blood that had been evaporating into the air was now sluggishly spreading out beneath him.
He's… dead? My mind was fuzzy, hazy from the sudden unexpectedness of this turn of events.
…I killed him.
I recognized it, registered it, but I couldn't bring myself to feel anything other than relief that it was I who was still alive, and not him, that I'd won. I started laughing, the adrenaline high I was feeling and endorphins in my system making me lightheaded and giddy.
I collapsed next to him, sitting down and just staring at the cooling silver-scaled humanoid body next to me.
It was only then that I started feeling the pain in my hands, and I looked down at them. It turns out that when your hands end up in fire, they get burned. Huh.
My skin was blistering all over, some areas peeling away and bleeding freely. It looked like it should hurt a lot worse than it did. …That was probably not a good thing. Nerve damage is never good.
There was a noise at the end of the street and my head snapped up towards it without thinking. My body was tensing and still on edge, ready to act at any sign of threat. Three huge shapes melted out of the shadows, figures resolving themselves into pairs on top of the large creatures. Two girls and two guys, though one was completely covered and I could only tell because he was so tall.
"H-holy shit." The words came from one of the girls, a blonde dressed in a skintight outfit of purple and black.
She was staring at where I sat, or more accurately the body on my left, and sounded both awed and slightly terrified at the same time, which was probably a sane reaction all things considered. "She… she killed him."
"Lung's dead."
A/N:
For those of you who've never read/seen Kara no Kyoukai, Taylor's power in here is the ability to see "death" (or more accurately, the metaphysical flaws that represent the conceptual death of some thing the wielder considers "alive") as lines and interact with them such as through slicing them with a knife. The interactions are irrevocable and absolute, meaning if she kills something through them it stays dead. Panacea couldn't regrow that limb sort of dead. It could be cauterized and replaced with a prosthetic but not regrown, as the concept of having that limb no longer exists for that person/body.
Taylor (if she were to be accurately labeled by the PRT right now) is a Striker 8 (Mover 1, Thinker 2, Brute 1). Shiki Ryougi would be Striker 12+ (Mover 6, Thinker 4, Trump 12+, Brute 2), Bullshit 17. Taylor has the potential to get to Shiki's level. Maybe even further with the amount of conflict she gets into and the way she pushes herself. We'll have to see.
Last edited:
Bisection 0.1
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Bisection 0.1
January 2011
It's said that when we're pushed to our limits, broken, crushed, to the point where we can't fight back, that's when we find out who we really are, what defines us. And if we survive, we can come out stronger for it.
For me, that moment was the moment I died.
I died surrounded by nothing. No friends. No family. Nothing except for the cold metal walls that pressed against me from all sides and the disgusting rotted waste beneath me. It smelled like death warmed over underneath the sharp tang of rust and hydrochloric acid, all thanks to the fermented blood and my late contribution of the contents of my stomach.
The maggots certainly liked it.
I died the third night. Feverish. Delusional. Defeated.
Alone.
Destination.
I saw a vision. Two things large beyond imagination traveled in an empty void, particles trailing them like a contrail, twinkling like the dust and shards of diamond left over from a jeweler's cutting. They were somehow both [there] and [notthere] at the same time. The didn't just move forwards, but sideways, folding and rotating inwards on themselves only to expose other organs and tissues, even as they spiraled apart from each other.
Agreement, the other replied to the first.
Hive.
They spoke, and somehow I understood.
Agreement, the other repeated.
The creatures came to an understanding, using their language without words or phrases but instead pure concepts, agreeing where their helical dance would take them, converging on a blue marble that grew as they got closer.
Danger, the first warned.
Confident.
But something was wrong, the number of just-as-incomprehensibly-large-yet-smaller pieces falling off of them increasing. My view shifted so that the blue sphere was at my back. One of the pieces, the shards, the fragments, descended towards me.
<Integra–>
And then there was nothing.
A veritable sea of nothing, yet also everything. Limitless possibility and infinite existence. A place where time was meaningless, but encompassed all instants.
「 」
If the creatures I had seen were incomprehensible, then this was impossible to even consider. But I still somehow perceived it:
A vortex. A maelstrom. The rotation of Totality; a collection of [everything], revolving into a compressed central point.
The universal singularity.
It drew me in. But instead of falling into, I fell through, like water through sand. And at the moment that I was in, before I was through, I saw.
I saw Nothing, and was changed for it.
<–tion>
<Failure>
<Error>
<Revival>
<Integration>
<Success>
January 2011
It's said that when we're pushed to our limits, broken, crushed, to the point where we can't fight back, that's when we find out who we really are, what defines us. And if we survive, we can come out stronger for it.
For me, that moment was the moment I died.
I died surrounded by nothing. No friends. No family. Nothing except for the cold metal walls that pressed against me from all sides and the disgusting rotted waste beneath me. It smelled like death warmed over underneath the sharp tang of rust and hydrochloric acid, all thanks to the fermented blood and my late contribution of the contents of my stomach.
The maggots certainly liked it.
I died the third night. Feverish. Delusional. Defeated.
Alone.
Destination.
I saw a vision. Two things large beyond imagination traveled in an empty void, particles trailing them like a contrail, twinkling like the dust and shards of diamond left over from a jeweler's cutting. They were somehow both [there] and [notthere] at the same time. The didn't just move forwards, but sideways, folding and rotating inwards on themselves only to expose other organs and tissues, even as they spiraled apart from each other.
Agreement, the other replied to the first.
Hive.
They spoke, and somehow I understood.
Agreement, the other repeated.
The creatures came to an understanding, using their language without words or phrases but instead pure concepts, agreeing where their helical dance would take them, converging on a blue marble that grew as they got closer.
Danger, the first warned.
Confident.
But something was wrong, the number of just-as-incomprehensibly-large-yet-smaller pieces falling off of them increasing. My view shifted so that the blue sphere was at my back. One of the pieces, the shards, the fragments, descended towards me.
<Integra–>
And then there was nothing.
A veritable sea of nothing, yet also everything. Limitless possibility and infinite existence. A place where time was meaningless, but encompassed all instants.
「 」
If the creatures I had seen were incomprehensible, then this was impossible to even consider. But I still somehow perceived it:
A vortex. A maelstrom. The rotation of Totality; a collection of [everything], revolving into a compressed central point.
The universal singularity.
It drew me in. But instead of falling into, I fell through, like water through sand. And at the moment that I was in, before I was through, I saw.
I saw Nothing, and was changed for it.
<–tion>
<Failure>
<Error>
<Revival>
<Integration>
<Success>
Last edited:
Dissociation 1.2
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Dissociation 1.2
April 2011
I suppose I should explain exactly how it is that I ended up going toe-to-toe with (arguably) one of the world's strongest capes.
… I would also like to preface this by saying that it totally wasn't my fault. At all. Nope. Nuh-uh.
See, it turns out that a side effect of seeing wounds in the fabric of reality 24/7 is that it makes nightmares worse, not better. I can usually ignore it all, just… not focus on them so that they sort of fade from my perception even though I know they're still there. But sometimes, it gets really, really hard.
Tonight was one of those nights. The really bad nights. The ones where I wake up shivering, drenched in cold sweat, my pajamas clinging to by body, and the first thing I notice is everything around me falling apart, without even opening my eyes.
sliced apart, separation along oblique transverse plane, velocity 4.905 m/s
I found out the first week that I don't actually need my eyesight to see any of it. The cracks are still there in the darkness. I can never not see them. Just ignore them. It took some research, but the best description I have is that it's like some warped, unholy version of synesthesia, except that whatever my visual perception is crossed over with isn't something that normal people have.
It isn't something that anybody should have.
When I was growing up, Alexandria was my favorite cape. Not Eidolon, and his seemingly-unlimited plethora of powers that let him adapt to any situation. Not Legend, who did things with lasers that make absolutely no fucking sense. It was Alexandria, the woman who stood at the top, indomitable.
And so, obviously, I wished I could be like her if I ever got powers. I'd be able to fly, to weather anything thrown at me, to be strong enough to fight whatever I had to. My powers would be freeing, they would let me be better.
But no. It just wasn't in the cards, I guess.
Instead, I got saddled with this… thing that forces me to see every single flaw around me, and haunts even my dreams. A living nightmare. A lucid dream that I can never wake up from. Because if I don't pay attention, if I don't focus on not focusing, seeing would become seeing. And if it got too far, everything would begin falling apart, as if separated perfectly along their lines by steel wire.
There is nothing more disturbing than watching your father's heart fall out of his suddenly-bisected chest into three pieces, still beating, while the rest of his body slowly slid apart, revealing perfect cross-sections of bone and chest and brain-in-skull and–
Stop.
Most of the time, it doesn't happen anymore. I've gotten to the point where I can control my focus and all the falling-apart stuff doesn't show itself as often. Most of the time. Waking up emotionally distressed is one of those times where I fail.
It's worse in places with lots of things. More things means more cracks. More cracks means more places for things to… break down. Go to pieces.
My room has lots of things. Bookshelves crumble, beds collapse, desks fall apart, etcetera etcetera. And that's not even counting the small things like the books themselves or the pictures and their frames. Outside, on the other hand, doesn't have lots of things. At worse, I can see a tree fall, a hydrant split apart, or a car separate along random axes and reveal its six-cylinder engine.
It also helps when it's the dead of night, and there are rarely any people.
I'm not stupid, though. It's Brockton Bay. Home of three seriously fucked-up gangs. I have my pepper-spray and my pocket-knife. 'Course, that wouldn't really do me much good against a gun, but I figure that if somebody's able to get close enough that I'm worrying about the gun even when their eyes are full of capsaicin, then I'm pretty much done for anyways.
Although after tonight, I might have to reevaluate the whole "not stupid" thing. Because not paying attention to where you're walking, wandering into the Docks, ending up in the middle of ABB territory, and then getting into a deathmatch with Lung is pretty high up there in the list of possible fuckups.
I mean, yeah, I have the excuse that I was more focused on getting myself to calm down, and Ihad by the time I ran into Lung, but still.
Whatever. It's not like I can do anything about it now.
Drawing myself out of my thoughts, I shifted my head from the blonde on the giant red meat-monster thing to look back down at Lung. A cooling, dead Lung.
…There was probably a good joke in there somewhere. If there was, it more than likely involved me being part of the punchline.
I don't know if I just have some of the worst luck in the world or what, but the chances of all of this happening, me running into Lung when he already seemed agitated and more importantlyalone, had to be astronomical. And yet I defied standard logic and managed to get myself caught up in it anyways.
Once he'd seen me, I'd known that I was fucked. A white girl, by herself, in the middle of the night, deep in ABB territory, in front of a pre-pissed-off Lung? Yeah. You get the idea. Worse, for some reason he seemed to think that I was deliberately there to face him or something. Which is why he'd gone from 'boiling pressure-cooker' to 'exploding dragon of doom' in 0.6 seconds.
Looking at the people on the quadrupedal monsters, I was starting to think that maybe he hadn't been wrong, that there was a good reason he had been as angry as he was, but I was just the wrong person.
"Wait… what?"
I looked up at the words, the sound having broken my reverie. The voice this time came from the shorter of the two guys. He was dressed in a very ren-faire costume, skintight leggings and everything, with a simple silver crown on his head. "She fucking did what!?"
"Killed Lung," the purple girl answered, like that was all that needed to be said. And then she shook her head, as if clearing it, and dropped off of the side of the creature-thing to land on her feet with a solid 'thump'. The ren-faire boy clambered off after her, following behind as she walked towards where I still sat on the gritty cement sidewalk.
I kept my eyes on them, but let my left hand creep towards where my knife was still embedded up to the hilt in Lung's chest, trying to avoid wincing from the pain I could feel from my burnt hands.
The other two people got off their mounts and followed at a distance, the gigantic creatures seeming to gravitate towards the one I assumed was controlling them.
The blonde girl must have seen my hand drifting, because at ten feet away, she stopped, raising her hands in a placating gesture. "Hey, easy, we're not going to do anything to you, we just wanted to see what was going on." I was still wary, but allowed my muscles to relax slightly. It helped that I really didn't want to move. My muscles were making their displeasure with my attempt to push them too far known. "I'm really sorry about all of this. Nobody else was supposed to get dragged into it."
It? What was she talking about about?
She smirked, but then it melted off of her face into a grimace. "This was between us and Lung. He was aiming for us because we hit one of his casinos. We were trying to figure out how to deal with him, but it looks like we didn't need to bother, huh? …Thanks for that, by the way."
I didn't really know what to say, so I stayed quiet, trying to see where she was going with all of this.
Except she didn't continue, instead she glanced over at the guy in the black outfit and gave him an incomprehensible look.
"Oh. Yeah, thanks." He didn't say anything else, instead just staring at Lung and all of the blood that had leaked out of his stump of a right arm. It was easy to tell where he was looking, even with the skull-mask motorcycle helmet, just because the faceplate was facing exactly towards the body. I guess if I were in his place I'd be staring too.
It was the first time I'd heard him speak, and all it did was make me wonder what he was like underneath the mask. His voice was deep and smooth, and I struggled to come up with a face that might match what it sounded like.
The blonde rolled her eyes and looked back at me. "Ignore Grue. I'm Tattletale. That's Regent," she pointed over at the boy with the crown who was poking the giant dismembered arm in the middle of the road with his foot, "and behind me is Bitch. Or Hellhound if you want to be PC."
The girl who was being referred to growled from her place next to one of the big creatures, her arm on its head. I got the sense that she didn't really like the second name.
The thin boy (Regent) turned around and walked over to Tattletale, looking down at me. "So who're you supposed to be? You got a name?"
I opened my mouth, but Tattletale cut me off. "Of course she doesn't. Can't you see the way she's dressed?" What was wrong with the way I was dressed? It was just my normal clothes: jeans, a t-shirt and a dark-colored hoodie.
"Hey, I was just curious," he defended.
Tattletale sighed. "Either way, you should probably get those looked at," she noted, looking pointedly at my hands. "Go to a hospital or something."
I followed her line of sight. Were they really that bad? …Well they looked pretty bad, and I probably shouldn't be trusting my sense of pain right now. But how the hell was I supposed to explain burns like this to my Dad? 'Hey Dad, I got into a fight with an eight-foot dragon-man and got my hands burnt so badly they're numb. But don't worry, I totally got him back for it.'
The girl's face shifted to an expression of… sympathy? And then her head twisted to the right, looking down the street. "Damn. We've gotta go."
Her eyes returned to me, flickering down to my hands and back up. "…Fuck," she muttered, as if resigning herself to something. "Alright. C'mon. We're not leaving you here to deal with them yourself just for saving us. Will you let us take you somewhere, at least?"
I thought about it.
I could either take them up on their offer, which seemed to be in good faith, and go wherever they took me, or I could try walking home, bleeding, with my possibly-broken ankle, despite not knowing where the hell I was.
…Yeaaahh, no. I'm not that dumb.
I slowly nodded. "Okay," I agreed. The girl grinned slightly, showing teeth, and crossed the ten feet between us, moving behind me.
"Here, I'm going to help you up, okay?"
Not waiting for me to respond, she grabbed my right upper arm and helped me stand up, letting me take my own weight once I was balanced. I winced from the pain that shot through my leg, but Tattletale helped me walk forward, not letting go of my arm as she led me towards the giant creatures. "Regent, grab her knife. Grue, stop staring at the dead man and help me get her up on Brutus."
'Regent' dutifully followed her order, simply walking over to Lung, rolling him over with his foot, and pulling my knife out from between his chest with a wet sucking sound before wiping the blade off on the tattered remnants of Lung's pants. That seemed to shock Grue out of his trance, and he strode quickly over to where we were next to one of the giant things. Tattletale climbed up first and held out a hand for me. I reached for it, but unlike what I expected she grabbed my wrist, Grue lift-slash-pushing me up as I moved to be in front of her.
"Where're we taking her?" he asked.
"Home." Grue stopped mid-stride, having been walking back towards one of the other beasts. "It's not like we can take her to her house like this, it'll be easier if we drive her home." She sighed, sounding exasperated. "And yes, by we I mean you. If it really bothers you that much you can keep your costume on. But we really need to go. Now."
He stood there for a moment, before his helmet jerked up then down mechanically. "Fine."
Grue turned around and continued over to the creature where Regent was standing, both of them getting on while Bitch mounted her own creature. Tattletale reached around my waist and gripped some of the bony protrusions that stuck out of the red muscular flesh, holding me in place. Bitch whistled, and the animals beneath us began moving away from where we'd been in bounds, turning a corner at the end of the road and then picking up speed.
I heard the distant sound of a motorcycle engine behind us, but it quickly faded at the speed we were going.
I'd like to say that I could remember everything about what it was like. But the reality of it was I was more focused on not falling off than anything else. The lights and sounds were a blur, and the ride was jerky due to the creature's gait. I think we were moving North, out of the south end and more into the heart of the Docks, but I couldn't really tell.
Before I knew it, we were slowing down in front of an old factory made of red brick. It was huge, at least half a block long, and two or three stories as well, with a large, rusty metal door at one end.
Once we'd stopped, Tattletale hopped off and then held out a hand. I tried to get off as gracefully as possible, but something in my foot gave out just as I was using it to clamber downwards. So instead of merely stepping off, I more half-slid-half-fell into Tattletale's arms, yelping in surprise as she actually caught me and managed to get me on my feet without falling over herself.
When I looked over at her, her grin was even larger than the last time I'd seen her face. I flushed in embarrassment and looked away. Turning my attention elsewhere, anywhere else, I saw Regent walking towards a small door set in the building's side. He opened it and strode in, the door closing behind him soundlessly. The creatures around us were shrinking, the red muscle and bony plates disappearing. Bitch whistled, and I guess there was something different than the one she'd done before, because all of the now mini-monsters bounded over to her, where she started looking them over.
Something grabbed my wrist, and I jerked my head back around to find Tattletale holding it. "C'mon, over this way." I took a painful step forward, and hissed. It felt like it was swelling up. I heard a muttered "Tch", and then she'd put my arm over her shoulder, supporting me as I stumbled alongside her to wherever she was leading.
Honestly, it wasn't exactly like I had a fucking choice.
She brought me over to a largish shed I hadn't noticed early that had one of those metal doors that slid upwards and halted. "Hey, Grue, can you get the door?"
A grunt came from behind us, and then the leather-clad figure walked around Tattletale towards the lock at the base of the door, pulling a key from a pocket somewhere. He popped the lock off, and then lifted the door silently, against all odds. I'd expected it to screech a little, based on the rust on the outside of it, but I guess that was the point, hiding that there was anything there.
A generic blue sedan sat just inside, and Tattletale walked me over to the passenger side door before I got a chance to really look at it. It was a bit tricky getting in, but it was managed and I was finally sitting on the cheap beige pleather seat.
"Alright. A couple things. First: You didn't meet us. We were never at the south Docks, and you want to hide what happened from whoever you're going home to. So, two: Stay at home or play sick or something tomorrow so they don't find out about tonight. Third: tomorrow night, Brockton General, six o'clock. If you go there then, you'll get treated, okay? Take a cab or something, you can do that, right?" I didn't have a chance to respond before she continued. "No, of course not."
She bit her lip, and then unzipped a pocket I hadn't even seen on her suit and pulled out a few bills, taking one and putting the rest back. "Here, use this for the fare. Least we can do. Seriously. You don't know just what you saved us from." She held out the money, and then winced and put it in my jacket pocket for me. "Put some ice on your hands and ankle as soon as you get home. In ziplock bags or something. Try and keep it there overnight if you can."
I nodded, accepting her advice.
"And, for what it's worth, I'm sorry about getting you into this. Really." Tattletale grinned. "But it was nice meeting you, even considering the circumstances."
The door on the other side of the car closed, and I looked over to see Grue, still in costume, sticking a key in the ignition and turning the engine on. My own door closed, courtesy of Tattletale, and she walked out of the garage to stand at the side as we pulled out.
Grue pulled onto the road without a word, and I looked out of the mirror on my right only to see Tattletale disappear into the factory.
The trip home was done in silence.
I don't think there's ever been a more awkward car ride in the history of car rides. I didn't try to say anything to Grue other than how to get over to my house when he had asked, and I got the feeling that he was even avoiding looking over at me.
Like I said. Awkward.
We pulled up in front of my house, and I expected to have to try and painfully fumble my way out of the car on my own, but surprisingly Grue got out and came over to open the door for me, helping me stand up by pulling me out by my wrist.
He didn't walk me any further, though.
I heard the sound of the door closing behind me as I hobbled to the front door, and then the driver's side door as well, before he pulled away, driving off down the road.
He could've at least waited and made sure I got inside, right?
Getting the door open was a bit difficult, but I managed and slipped inside, closing it behind me as quietly as possible. Not turning on any lights, I went into the kitchen and made some bags of ice like Tattletale had suggested, shoving them into my jacket pockets before going up the stairs. I tried to not make any sounds, which was a bit hard with my ankle throbbing the way it was and feeling like I would collapse at any moment. Against all odds, I made it to my room without waking my dad up or any other incidents.
I gave up on getting my clothes off after the ridiculous effort and even greater amount of cursing removing my jacket and shirt off had involved, deciding it was a wash. Because fuck it, I'd just have to get them back on tomorrow, and I didn't want to deal with that shit.
But wouldn't you know it, lying under my covers, ice on my hands and ankle, staring up at the ceiling, I couldn't regret going outside, even with everything it had led to. Even the slight persistent pressure in my head that I got from the cracks wasn't there, silent for the first time in months.
I smiled despite myself, and fell asleep easier than I had in years.
A/N: Taylor has a tendency to take Very Enthusiastic Walks.
April 2011
I suppose I should explain exactly how it is that I ended up going toe-to-toe with (arguably) one of the world's strongest capes.
… I would also like to preface this by saying that it totally wasn't my fault. At all. Nope. Nuh-uh.
See, it turns out that a side effect of seeing wounds in the fabric of reality 24/7 is that it makes nightmares worse, not better. I can usually ignore it all, just… not focus on them so that they sort of fade from my perception even though I know they're still there. But sometimes, it gets really, really hard.
Tonight was one of those nights. The really bad nights. The ones where I wake up shivering, drenched in cold sweat, my pajamas clinging to by body, and the first thing I notice is everything around me falling apart, without even opening my eyes.
sliced apart, separation along oblique transverse plane, velocity 4.905 m/s
I found out the first week that I don't actually need my eyesight to see any of it. The cracks are still there in the darkness. I can never not see them. Just ignore them. It took some research, but the best description I have is that it's like some warped, unholy version of synesthesia, except that whatever my visual perception is crossed over with isn't something that normal people have.
It isn't something that anybody should have.
When I was growing up, Alexandria was my favorite cape. Not Eidolon, and his seemingly-unlimited plethora of powers that let him adapt to any situation. Not Legend, who did things with lasers that make absolutely no fucking sense. It was Alexandria, the woman who stood at the top, indomitable.
And so, obviously, I wished I could be like her if I ever got powers. I'd be able to fly, to weather anything thrown at me, to be strong enough to fight whatever I had to. My powers would be freeing, they would let me be better.
But no. It just wasn't in the cards, I guess.
Instead, I got saddled with this… thing that forces me to see every single flaw around me, and haunts even my dreams. A living nightmare. A lucid dream that I can never wake up from. Because if I don't pay attention, if I don't focus on not focusing, seeing would become seeing. And if it got too far, everything would begin falling apart, as if separated perfectly along their lines by steel wire.
There is nothing more disturbing than watching your father's heart fall out of his suddenly-bisected chest into three pieces, still beating, while the rest of his body slowly slid apart, revealing perfect cross-sections of bone and chest and brain-in-skull and–
Stop.
Most of the time, it doesn't happen anymore. I've gotten to the point where I can control my focus and all the falling-apart stuff doesn't show itself as often. Most of the time. Waking up emotionally distressed is one of those times where I fail.
It's worse in places with lots of things. More things means more cracks. More cracks means more places for things to… break down. Go to pieces.
My room has lots of things. Bookshelves crumble, beds collapse, desks fall apart, etcetera etcetera. And that's not even counting the small things like the books themselves or the pictures and their frames. Outside, on the other hand, doesn't have lots of things. At worse, I can see a tree fall, a hydrant split apart, or a car separate along random axes and reveal its six-cylinder engine.
It also helps when it's the dead of night, and there are rarely any people.
I'm not stupid, though. It's Brockton Bay. Home of three seriously fucked-up gangs. I have my pepper-spray and my pocket-knife. 'Course, that wouldn't really do me much good against a gun, but I figure that if somebody's able to get close enough that I'm worrying about the gun even when their eyes are full of capsaicin, then I'm pretty much done for anyways.
Although after tonight, I might have to reevaluate the whole "not stupid" thing. Because not paying attention to where you're walking, wandering into the Docks, ending up in the middle of ABB territory, and then getting into a deathmatch with Lung is pretty high up there in the list of possible fuckups.
I mean, yeah, I have the excuse that I was more focused on getting myself to calm down, and Ihad by the time I ran into Lung, but still.
Whatever. It's not like I can do anything about it now.
Drawing myself out of my thoughts, I shifted my head from the blonde on the giant red meat-monster thing to look back down at Lung. A cooling, dead Lung.
…There was probably a good joke in there somewhere. If there was, it more than likely involved me being part of the punchline.
I don't know if I just have some of the worst luck in the world or what, but the chances of all of this happening, me running into Lung when he already seemed agitated and more importantlyalone, had to be astronomical. And yet I defied standard logic and managed to get myself caught up in it anyways.
Once he'd seen me, I'd known that I was fucked. A white girl, by herself, in the middle of the night, deep in ABB territory, in front of a pre-pissed-off Lung? Yeah. You get the idea. Worse, for some reason he seemed to think that I was deliberately there to face him or something. Which is why he'd gone from 'boiling pressure-cooker' to 'exploding dragon of doom' in 0.6 seconds.
Looking at the people on the quadrupedal monsters, I was starting to think that maybe he hadn't been wrong, that there was a good reason he had been as angry as he was, but I was just the wrong person.
"Wait… what?"
I looked up at the words, the sound having broken my reverie. The voice this time came from the shorter of the two guys. He was dressed in a very ren-faire costume, skintight leggings and everything, with a simple silver crown on his head. "She fucking did what!?"
"Killed Lung," the purple girl answered, like that was all that needed to be said. And then she shook her head, as if clearing it, and dropped off of the side of the creature-thing to land on her feet with a solid 'thump'. The ren-faire boy clambered off after her, following behind as she walked towards where I still sat on the gritty cement sidewalk.
I kept my eyes on them, but let my left hand creep towards where my knife was still embedded up to the hilt in Lung's chest, trying to avoid wincing from the pain I could feel from my burnt hands.
The other two people got off their mounts and followed at a distance, the gigantic creatures seeming to gravitate towards the one I assumed was controlling them.
The blonde girl must have seen my hand drifting, because at ten feet away, she stopped, raising her hands in a placating gesture. "Hey, easy, we're not going to do anything to you, we just wanted to see what was going on." I was still wary, but allowed my muscles to relax slightly. It helped that I really didn't want to move. My muscles were making their displeasure with my attempt to push them too far known. "I'm really sorry about all of this. Nobody else was supposed to get dragged into it."
It? What was she talking about about?
She smirked, but then it melted off of her face into a grimace. "This was between us and Lung. He was aiming for us because we hit one of his casinos. We were trying to figure out how to deal with him, but it looks like we didn't need to bother, huh? …Thanks for that, by the way."
I didn't really know what to say, so I stayed quiet, trying to see where she was going with all of this.
Except she didn't continue, instead she glanced over at the guy in the black outfit and gave him an incomprehensible look.
"Oh. Yeah, thanks." He didn't say anything else, instead just staring at Lung and all of the blood that had leaked out of his stump of a right arm. It was easy to tell where he was looking, even with the skull-mask motorcycle helmet, just because the faceplate was facing exactly towards the body. I guess if I were in his place I'd be staring too.
It was the first time I'd heard him speak, and all it did was make me wonder what he was like underneath the mask. His voice was deep and smooth, and I struggled to come up with a face that might match what it sounded like.
The blonde rolled her eyes and looked back at me. "Ignore Grue. I'm Tattletale. That's Regent," she pointed over at the boy with the crown who was poking the giant dismembered arm in the middle of the road with his foot, "and behind me is Bitch. Or Hellhound if you want to be PC."
The girl who was being referred to growled from her place next to one of the big creatures, her arm on its head. I got the sense that she didn't really like the second name.
The thin boy (Regent) turned around and walked over to Tattletale, looking down at me. "So who're you supposed to be? You got a name?"
I opened my mouth, but Tattletale cut me off. "Of course she doesn't. Can't you see the way she's dressed?" What was wrong with the way I was dressed? It was just my normal clothes: jeans, a t-shirt and a dark-colored hoodie.
"Hey, I was just curious," he defended.
Tattletale sighed. "Either way, you should probably get those looked at," she noted, looking pointedly at my hands. "Go to a hospital or something."
I followed her line of sight. Were they really that bad? …Well they looked pretty bad, and I probably shouldn't be trusting my sense of pain right now. But how the hell was I supposed to explain burns like this to my Dad? 'Hey Dad, I got into a fight with an eight-foot dragon-man and got my hands burnt so badly they're numb. But don't worry, I totally got him back for it.'
The girl's face shifted to an expression of… sympathy? And then her head twisted to the right, looking down the street. "Damn. We've gotta go."
Her eyes returned to me, flickering down to my hands and back up. "…Fuck," she muttered, as if resigning herself to something. "Alright. C'mon. We're not leaving you here to deal with them yourself just for saving us. Will you let us take you somewhere, at least?"
I thought about it.
I could either take them up on their offer, which seemed to be in good faith, and go wherever they took me, or I could try walking home, bleeding, with my possibly-broken ankle, despite not knowing where the hell I was.
…Yeaaahh, no. I'm not that dumb.
I slowly nodded. "Okay," I agreed. The girl grinned slightly, showing teeth, and crossed the ten feet between us, moving behind me.
"Here, I'm going to help you up, okay?"
Not waiting for me to respond, she grabbed my right upper arm and helped me stand up, letting me take my own weight once I was balanced. I winced from the pain that shot through my leg, but Tattletale helped me walk forward, not letting go of my arm as she led me towards the giant creatures. "Regent, grab her knife. Grue, stop staring at the dead man and help me get her up on Brutus."
'Regent' dutifully followed her order, simply walking over to Lung, rolling him over with his foot, and pulling my knife out from between his chest with a wet sucking sound before wiping the blade off on the tattered remnants of Lung's pants. That seemed to shock Grue out of his trance, and he strode quickly over to where we were next to one of the giant things. Tattletale climbed up first and held out a hand for me. I reached for it, but unlike what I expected she grabbed my wrist, Grue lift-slash-pushing me up as I moved to be in front of her.
"Where're we taking her?" he asked.
"Home." Grue stopped mid-stride, having been walking back towards one of the other beasts. "It's not like we can take her to her house like this, it'll be easier if we drive her home." She sighed, sounding exasperated. "And yes, by we I mean you. If it really bothers you that much you can keep your costume on. But we really need to go. Now."
He stood there for a moment, before his helmet jerked up then down mechanically. "Fine."
Grue turned around and continued over to the creature where Regent was standing, both of them getting on while Bitch mounted her own creature. Tattletale reached around my waist and gripped some of the bony protrusions that stuck out of the red muscular flesh, holding me in place. Bitch whistled, and the animals beneath us began moving away from where we'd been in bounds, turning a corner at the end of the road and then picking up speed.
I heard the distant sound of a motorcycle engine behind us, but it quickly faded at the speed we were going.
I'd like to say that I could remember everything about what it was like. But the reality of it was I was more focused on not falling off than anything else. The lights and sounds were a blur, and the ride was jerky due to the creature's gait. I think we were moving North, out of the south end and more into the heart of the Docks, but I couldn't really tell.
Before I knew it, we were slowing down in front of an old factory made of red brick. It was huge, at least half a block long, and two or three stories as well, with a large, rusty metal door at one end.
Once we'd stopped, Tattletale hopped off and then held out a hand. I tried to get off as gracefully as possible, but something in my foot gave out just as I was using it to clamber downwards. So instead of merely stepping off, I more half-slid-half-fell into Tattletale's arms, yelping in surprise as she actually caught me and managed to get me on my feet without falling over herself.
When I looked over at her, her grin was even larger than the last time I'd seen her face. I flushed in embarrassment and looked away. Turning my attention elsewhere, anywhere else, I saw Regent walking towards a small door set in the building's side. He opened it and strode in, the door closing behind him soundlessly. The creatures around us were shrinking, the red muscle and bony plates disappearing. Bitch whistled, and I guess there was something different than the one she'd done before, because all of the now mini-monsters bounded over to her, where she started looking them over.
Something grabbed my wrist, and I jerked my head back around to find Tattletale holding it. "C'mon, over this way." I took a painful step forward, and hissed. It felt like it was swelling up. I heard a muttered "Tch", and then she'd put my arm over her shoulder, supporting me as I stumbled alongside her to wherever she was leading.
Honestly, it wasn't exactly like I had a fucking choice.
She brought me over to a largish shed I hadn't noticed early that had one of those metal doors that slid upwards and halted. "Hey, Grue, can you get the door?"
A grunt came from behind us, and then the leather-clad figure walked around Tattletale towards the lock at the base of the door, pulling a key from a pocket somewhere. He popped the lock off, and then lifted the door silently, against all odds. I'd expected it to screech a little, based on the rust on the outside of it, but I guess that was the point, hiding that there was anything there.
A generic blue sedan sat just inside, and Tattletale walked me over to the passenger side door before I got a chance to really look at it. It was a bit tricky getting in, but it was managed and I was finally sitting on the cheap beige pleather seat.
"Alright. A couple things. First: You didn't meet us. We were never at the south Docks, and you want to hide what happened from whoever you're going home to. So, two: Stay at home or play sick or something tomorrow so they don't find out about tonight. Third: tomorrow night, Brockton General, six o'clock. If you go there then, you'll get treated, okay? Take a cab or something, you can do that, right?" I didn't have a chance to respond before she continued. "No, of course not."
She bit her lip, and then unzipped a pocket I hadn't even seen on her suit and pulled out a few bills, taking one and putting the rest back. "Here, use this for the fare. Least we can do. Seriously. You don't know just what you saved us from." She held out the money, and then winced and put it in my jacket pocket for me. "Put some ice on your hands and ankle as soon as you get home. In ziplock bags or something. Try and keep it there overnight if you can."
I nodded, accepting her advice.
"And, for what it's worth, I'm sorry about getting you into this. Really." Tattletale grinned. "But it was nice meeting you, even considering the circumstances."
The door on the other side of the car closed, and I looked over to see Grue, still in costume, sticking a key in the ignition and turning the engine on. My own door closed, courtesy of Tattletale, and she walked out of the garage to stand at the side as we pulled out.
Grue pulled onto the road without a word, and I looked out of the mirror on my right only to see Tattletale disappear into the factory.
The trip home was done in silence.
I don't think there's ever been a more awkward car ride in the history of car rides. I didn't try to say anything to Grue other than how to get over to my house when he had asked, and I got the feeling that he was even avoiding looking over at me.
Like I said. Awkward.
We pulled up in front of my house, and I expected to have to try and painfully fumble my way out of the car on my own, but surprisingly Grue got out and came over to open the door for me, helping me stand up by pulling me out by my wrist.
He didn't walk me any further, though.
I heard the sound of the door closing behind me as I hobbled to the front door, and then the driver's side door as well, before he pulled away, driving off down the road.
He could've at least waited and made sure I got inside, right?
Getting the door open was a bit difficult, but I managed and slipped inside, closing it behind me as quietly as possible. Not turning on any lights, I went into the kitchen and made some bags of ice like Tattletale had suggested, shoving them into my jacket pockets before going up the stairs. I tried to not make any sounds, which was a bit hard with my ankle throbbing the way it was and feeling like I would collapse at any moment. Against all odds, I made it to my room without waking my dad up or any other incidents.
I gave up on getting my clothes off after the ridiculous effort and even greater amount of cursing removing my jacket and shirt off had involved, deciding it was a wash. Because fuck it, I'd just have to get them back on tomorrow, and I didn't want to deal with that shit.
But wouldn't you know it, lying under my covers, ice on my hands and ankle, staring up at the ceiling, I couldn't regret going outside, even with everything it had led to. Even the slight persistent pressure in my head that I got from the cracks wasn't there, silent for the first time in months.
I smiled despite myself, and fell asleep easier than I had in years.
A/N: Taylor has a tendency to take Very Enthusiastic Walks.
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Bisection 0.2
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Bisection 0.2
January 2011
"I need a four hundred ccs of nitro and ventilation!"
"We're losing her!"
An erratic green line. A lack of proper punctuation, of rhythm, of the previously incessant beeping, replaced by a loud blaring alarm. "We've got v-fib!"
There was a flurry of activity, of haste and motion drowned out by the monotonous, seemingly never-ending tone.
"Clear!"
A sharp jolt, and the girl's back arched.
"No response! Increase it to thirty-five hundred!"
An audibly harsh buzzing, the sound of a rising charge.
"Clear!"
Another burst, a second movement.
And finally, the flat sound of death was replaced by the steady pulse of life.
I woke up staring at a white ceiling, the sound of electronics and smell of rubbing alcohol surrounding me.
Hospital, my mind supplied.
I turned my head towards the beeping on my left, seeing a heart/oxygen monitor, wires trailing down towards me. An ethernet cable appeared from behind it, plugged into the wall further back. I puzzled at why that was there.
An intravenous drip was next to the monitor with a number of bags, but I could only make out the one that read "SODIUM CHLORIDE FOR IV INJECTION 0.9%". Sodium chloride was salt… so a saline solution, then.
I felt something weird down by my crotch and pulled up the sheet that was over me, simultaneously lifting the blue dressing gown I was wearing–
Oh god. Is that a catheter?
I had a fucking catheter in me. With a tube trailing over the side of the bed and everything. I barely managed to resist the urge to shudder and immediately let go of the cloth in my hands, covering myself up again.
The door to the room at the far corner of the room on my left suddenly opened –thankfully taking my attention away from the feeling of the goddamn fucking tube in my urethra– a young woman appearing. "Oh. Good, you're awake."
She stepped through the entrance, shutting the door behind her and walking to my side, picking up a clipboard of papers (charts) at the end of the bed on the way. A nametag was stitched onto the white uniform, a monogrammed "Alyson" inside the patch.
"Now, Ms… Hebert," she began, actually managing to get my name right and glancing down at the charts, "You're currently at Brockton General Hospital. It's the eighteenth of January, and…" She looked at a clock on the walk. "…three nineteen in the morning. Do you know why you're here?"
Brief flashes in my mind, darkness, walls closing in on me, and then nothing. I shook my head. She frowned. "Well, memory loss isn't unexpected. Would you like to know everything?"
I nodded.
"You were locked in an enclosed space with biological waste for what we think was a period of at least seventy-two hours. An anonymous call was given to emergency services, and first responders found you on the floor of Winslow High at 1:41 A.M. on the tenth of January, unresponsive and surrounded by the toxic waste with a fever of 102.4 and low blood pressure. You suffered heart failure twice, once in the ambulance and a second time here, in the intensive care ward. You were exhibiting all the symptoms of toxic shock syndrome and when the diagnosis was confirmed you were ventilated and put on antibiotics, as well as undergoing renal replacement."
She looked up from the clipboard and must have noticed my blank look. "All of your blood was filtered via dialysis."
Oh.
"The infection had taken root in your lower leg muscles, and the sites were drained but you weren't showing much signs of response to the antibiotics, and although you didn't progress to organ failure beyond your heart, you were still catatonic. Panacea was here for healing last night, and resolved all complications, including your nearsighted vision according to these notes."
For the first time I noticed that I wasn't wearing my glasses, but I could still see perfectly. Better than I had been able to before, even.
Huh. That was nice of her.
And then I saw the lines.
They appeared suddenly and without warning, reminding me of the lines you'd see in those plasma-ball globes or the pictures of lightning-strike scars I'd come across online. But instead of being bright blue or brownish color, they were red, practically florescent neon.
They were everywhere, the walls, the bed, the clock, the monitoring equipment. Everywhere, including Alyson.
As soon as I saw them on her, the lines began widening slowly, and then split. Her arm detached from her shoulder, white bone and red muscle plainly visible. Her jaw fell off, fingers separating as if cut from her hand by a knife.
"Taylor?"
I saw her tongue move to make the sounds without anything else around it. Her chest split diagonally, revealing yellow fat from her breasts and pinkish organs (liver, spleen, stomach, small intestine) that began tumbling out of her abdomen before they too were bisected along the lines.
I think I screamed.
Shutting my eyes tightly to block out the vision, I was rewarded with my mind replaying the scene over and over behind my eyelids. I could still sense the lines, feel them somehow. I knew exactly where they were, knew the very layout of the room solely by how they were placed and crawled across all surfaces and even through objects.
I heard noises around me, incoherent voices, and then there was a sudden rush of cold in the crook of my arm, spreading through my veins, and I slipped under once again.
"Any second now…" A masculine voice, right next to me. I felt a plastic mask over my face, a band reaching around my head to hold it in place
Opening my eyes, I turned my head in the direction of the voice and saw a man who had to be in his early thirties looking at me.
With red lines slashing across him.
I immediately twisted my head back to facing the ceiling, where the lines still flickered in and out with a terrible sense of wrongness, but nothing was falling apart.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to avoid looking at them, instead paying attention to the areas they didn't cover.
"Taylor?"
I glanced over at the man, intentionally looking over his shoulder and not directly at him.
"Hello, I'm Doctor Michaels, the on-call infectious disease specialist, and I've been handling your case for the past week since your admittance."
"Um… hi," I rasped through the oxygen mask. Huh. Figures my voice would be weird, I hadn't used it in over a week. Well, except for the completely-justified screaming.
"Now, I'm going to shine this light in your eyes, okay?" he asked, taking out a penlight from the front pocket on his white coat and showing it to me. I nodded. "Look straight ahead, please."
I acquiesced, and he quickly waved the light in each eye.
"Good. Normal dilation, no signs of any residual effects from the sedative." He clicked the penlight off and put it back in his pocket. "Do you remember any of what happened?"
Well, yeah. But I got the feeling that telling him I was suddenly seeing lines and people fucking falling apart would get me labeled as crazy pretty quickly.
So I lied and shook my head.
"You were awake for five minutes, speaking with one of the orderlies when you started screaming. You weren't responding to anything so we administered a deep sedative to induce loss of consciousness. That was about twelve minutes ago."
That short? I'd expected it to be longer if they actually knocked me out.
The doctor chuckled. "I know what you're thinking. It's not quite like movies and television make it out to be. Most clinical sedatives have a pretty short active duration, even the strong ones."
I made a sound of understanding.
"Do you have any idea what might have caused that?"
I shook my head again. He frowned slightly, but then the expression disappeared
"Well, do you remember what the orderly was telling you about? She reported that she'd been informing you of the circumstances of your hospitalization." I nodded. "Good. Honestly, thanks to Panacea, you're physically good to go. We want to keep you here another night just to make sure everything's working properly and that there's no more episodes like the one that just happened, okay?
"Since I won't see you again, I'll just tell you now: There is some aftercare you need to be aware of from Panacea's healing. Eat more than you usually would, focusing on carbohydrates and proteins. She had to use a bit of your muscle mass to heal you, and you've been on intravenous nutrients since you arrived so you're going to be pretty hungry anyways. You'll get some food today, and that should help a little bit."
"Alright," I croaked.
He smiled, and I tried to ignore the line that cut across his mouth like a bright red scar.
I gave a weak smile in return, hoping he'd attribute it more to my state than anything else.
"Your father will be called in the morning to let him know you're awake, unless you'd like us to call him now…?"
I shook my head. No need to wake him up in the middle of the night when there's nothing life-threatening. I yawned. Now that I thought about it, I was feeling pretty tired too.
"Ah. That's pretty normal. Your body's just trying to conserve energy, at this point. Get some sleep. I'll just let myself out. As I won't see you again, I'll just say it was a pleasure to finally get to talk to you." He smiled warmly, and then turned around and walked to the door, opening it and then turning around. "Good night."
I nodded, and he closed the door. Yawning again, I allowed my body to relax and closed my eyes, surrendering to my weariness easily.
I woke once, around four-thirty.
As soon as I saw the time on the clock, I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the lines I could feel and focus on everything else. That sterile hospital smell. The pressure of the oxygen mask against my face.
The feeling of people moving around in the halls outside my room.
I paused.
That… that was new.
I shifted my full attention to this new thing, focusing on it. I could literally feel the people moving outside, even without the lines. I knew where they were located, how far away from me they were.
A person suddenly appeared, walking towards my room from down the hall, and I knew they were thirty-six feet away. It was like how I knew where my arms and legs were positioned, but more… exact.
What was this?
Was I… Did this mean I had powers?
I knew about trigger events. That people who went through really stressful, traumatic experiences sometimes came out of it with superpowers. From what I'd been told, the locker certainly counted as that, though it was honestly a struggle to remember it. I knew that in the beginning I'd been angry, upset, and more than a little afraid. But later that had given way to hopelessness and crushing loneliness and a heat that had spread from my legs through my body, which I now knew had been the infection.
But… that was ultimately it. And even that was fuzzy and disconnected.
I suppose I should be glad for that.
The question, though, was had I gotten powers?
I had a feeling I already knew the answer to that, because I was pretty sure normal people couldn't just feel people around them in a thirty-six foot radius, tracking their movements.
My thoughts were only reinforced by the fact that I sure as hell hadn't been able to feel people like this before the locker.
And then there was the elephant in the room…
The lines.
The lines I could see and feel that felt like deathandnothingandemptyemptyempty, a feeling that I had to ignore because it made my stomach twist and turn nauseatingly. I wanted them to go away, but truthfully, I knew that they never would.
(they were part of me, after all)
I yawned, and before I even fully realized it I was falling back asleep.
When I woke again, there was sunlight hitting the blinds and indirectly illuminating the room. I immediately noticed the presence of a figure in a chair by it. My father. His eyes were slightly glazed over like he was in deep thought, looking at the linoleum by the side of my bed.
"Dad?"
His head jerked up, and he smiled. "Hey, kiddo."
I could hear the tiredness and slight strain of stress in his voice as he spoke to me. Trying to hide my reaction to the twisting bright lines on his body, I focused on his face and felt myself smile at the nickname.
"You gave me quite the scare, there, you know?" I didn't, really, but I wasn't about to tell him that. "Thank God for Panacea. They said you're completely healed and everything thanks to her."
"Yeah," I said quietly, trying to ignore the lines and red slashes that flashed around me.
"Well, I've got a deck of cards and a book from your room here so you won't get bored. I've got some clothes here for you too, for whenever they'll let change into them. The doctors said they wanted to keep you here another night, something about you having some sort of episode?"
I grimaced. "I… I can't remember." I hated lying to my dad, but I didn't want to explain or even think about what I'd seen. What I was seeing, trying to ignore.
"Well, the important thing is you seem alright," he stated. "I brought some paperwork from work to do so I could keep you company, if you don't mind your old man hanging around."
I felt my chest warm up as I nodded.
The next twenty-four hours were a blur. Or a haze?
My dad sat with me for three hours while he worked and I read, just enjoying the company. I'd told him to go get dinner after that, and he'd conceded, going home.
I tried to ignore the lines and people-sense as much as I could, but they were there, ever-present. How do you consciously ignore something when every little thing reminded you of it?
The hospital food was weird, and before I'd eaten it there was a nurse and a doctor who came by, the first disconnecting the glucose drip and standing by while the second (thankfully a woman) removed the fucking catheter from my body.
That was not an experience I ever wanted to go through again. Because fuck. that.
After I'd eaten I'd called the orderly and asked if I could stand up, and they'd gotten a different nurse, who'd lowered the rail on the left of my bed and helped me stand up on shaky feet, hovering close by while I readjusted to being upright after so long.
Using muscles after being in a coma? Another thing I never wanted to deal with again. The next few days were not going to be fun.
I only really walked around my room, not feeling adventurous enough to venture out into the hallway, and the nurse had left once it was apparent I wasn't about to fall over or collapse or something.
They told me it was okay to take a shower, just putting a water-proof seal over where the IV needle sat inside my elbow, and that I could change my underwear. I couldn't get my shirt on because of the IV, and I figured they wanted to be able to see my legs tomorrow before I left.
The shower felt amazing, but when I stepped out I noticed I was a bit thinner in the mirror than I had been before.
As if I need anything else to help cement my already-convincing impersonation of an underfed teenage boy.
Sighing, I pulled my clean underwear on and managed to maneuver into the new hospital gown the nurse had given me. Leaving the bathroom, I climbed back into the bed, staring at the ceiling. The silence surrounded me, soothing me alongside the easy regular motions of the people I could feel in the halls, but it was tainted by the presence of the red cracks all around me, and eventually I just allowed myself to fall asleep, once again exhausted.
When I woke my dad was already there, sitting in the same seat he'd been in the night before. He'd smiled when he saw me, and told me he'd just been waiting for me to wake up as the doctors had decided I was okay to be released.
Yet another, different person (a technician this time) had come in to remove my IV, only leaving an annoying red dot behind.
As I'd expected, my clothes hung looser on my body than they had before, and I gave up trying to comfort myself about it. All I could do now was what that doctor had told me: eat a lot to gain back the muscle mass.
My dad had stepped out of the room so that I could change, and when I was done I poked my head out of the main door to the room. He was sitting in a chair right outside of it, so I stepped out all the way, causing him to pick up his head to look at me.
We had to check out at one last place on the first floor, but it took less time than I expected, and within fifteen minutes we were out the door and in my dad's car.
We were already halfway home (I'd been staring out the windows and trying not to look at the fucking lines on them) when he cleared his throat. "So, uh, the school offered to pay the hospital bill if we didn't press charges or anything."
I whipped my head around to look at him and blinked in shock.
He glanced over at me, his expression darkening. "I told them they could go fuck themselves."
Whoa.
Holy shit. He must have been pissed.
"But… then how are we going to pay for the medical stuff?"
"The Dockworker's Union has medical insurance that'll cover some of it, and I've got a little bit saved up. If we really need to we can use some of your college funds. But I'm not going to just shut up and roll over to please them when my daughter almost died and was in a coma for a week."
Yeah, I don't know what they'd been expecting when they'd offered him that.
"The police actually decided to start an investigation over it, and I let them see your room," he said calmly.
My journal. Oh fuck.
"They found that book of yours."
Ice rushed through my veins. This was not a conversation I really wanted to have right now.
I noticed my dad's knuckles whitening from his grip on the steering wheel. "Why didn't you ever tell me about Emma?"
Struggling to form a coherent sentence, my mind raced to think of something, anything, but I came up with nothing.
A few minutes passed, and then he sighed, grip loosening slightly. "Apparently once the police got involved some of your classmates actually stepped forward to give witness statements once they heard what happened. One boy in particular started it; Greg something-or-other."
Greg Veder!?
Wow. Talk about unexpected.
"They tell me there's a pretty good case if we want to press charges. Harassment and, uh… aggravated assault and battery, I think." He looked over at me for a second.
Did I want that? Honestly, I just wanted them to leave me alone. But then I had the thought that if they didn't get in trouble now, they'd never change and someone else would suffer because of it.
Dad seemed to see I was thinking about it, because he followed it up with, "We don't have to decide now. It'd only be in juvenile court anyways."
Oh. Okay.
"…But you're not going back to that school." Wait, what? "I already pulled you out and sent in an application to Arcadia. They pretty much accepted you immediately when they heard what'd happened."
My thoughts ground to a halt, and it took a bit before I started processing what he'd just said.
Arcadia. Not Winslow.
I was going to Arcadia.
Oh my fucking god, no more Winslow.
I pinched myself.
Nope. Nothing. This wasn't a dream.
No more Sophia, no more Emma, no more Madison.
It felt like all my problems had just gone "poof" in a cloud of smoke. …I looked down at my flat chest. Well, okay, maybe not all my problems. But certainly most of them.
"You've got a month off before they said you had to go back," he added.
A month? I was supposed to be perfectly healthy now (save for the annoying weight I'd lost that I'd have to get back), and I was going to Arcadia. Why the fuck would I want to wait a month?
I might be able to wait a few days, or until next week, but I felt that if I was home all the time I'd get cabin fever. No, my high school career had been ruined enough already. Sophomore and Junior years were supposed to be the most important ones for colleges, so I needed the grades if I wanted a scholarship anywhere. Especially if now we were going to be using some of my college money for the hospital.
I shook my head. "Next week. I want to go next week."
Dad looked over at me in surprise. "Next week? That soon?" I nodded. "Well, okay. If it's what you want."
We pulled into the driveway of our house. I hadn't even noticed us getting that close. I opened the door to get out, but noticed Dad hadn't even turned off the car, so I turned and looked at him.
"Sorry, Taylor. I've got to get back to work," he said, answering my unasked question. "I couldn't actually get today off and the best they could give me was a couple hours this morning."
Oh.
I didn't let the slight dejection I felt show, instead closing the car door and watching my dad put the car in reverse and pull out of the driveway before driving off in the direction of the docks.
My stomach growled loudly, abruptly bringing my attention to the gnawing hunger in my gut.
I sighed. Well, I wasn't going to make up any of my lost weight just standing there. Might as well get started. And maybe I should try exercising too. I looked at my spindly arm muscles.
…Yeah, I think I'd do that.
A/N: This chapter is subtitled "I Wanna Be Sedated". Courtesy of the Ramones.
January 2011
"I need a four hundred ccs of nitro and ventilation!"
"We're losing her!"
An erratic green line. A lack of proper punctuation, of rhythm, of the previously incessant beeping, replaced by a loud blaring alarm. "We've got v-fib!"
There was a flurry of activity, of haste and motion drowned out by the monotonous, seemingly never-ending tone.
"Clear!"
A sharp jolt, and the girl's back arched.
"No response! Increase it to thirty-five hundred!"
An audibly harsh buzzing, the sound of a rising charge.
"Clear!"
Another burst, a second movement.
And finally, the flat sound of death was replaced by the steady pulse of life.
I woke up staring at a white ceiling, the sound of electronics and smell of rubbing alcohol surrounding me.
Hospital, my mind supplied.
I turned my head towards the beeping on my left, seeing a heart/oxygen monitor, wires trailing down towards me. An ethernet cable appeared from behind it, plugged into the wall further back. I puzzled at why that was there.
An intravenous drip was next to the monitor with a number of bags, but I could only make out the one that read "SODIUM CHLORIDE FOR IV INJECTION 0.9%". Sodium chloride was salt… so a saline solution, then.
I felt something weird down by my crotch and pulled up the sheet that was over me, simultaneously lifting the blue dressing gown I was wearing–
Oh god. Is that a catheter?
I had a fucking catheter in me. With a tube trailing over the side of the bed and everything. I barely managed to resist the urge to shudder and immediately let go of the cloth in my hands, covering myself up again.
The door to the room at the far corner of the room on my left suddenly opened –thankfully taking my attention away from the feeling of the goddamn fucking tube in my urethra– a young woman appearing. "Oh. Good, you're awake."
She stepped through the entrance, shutting the door behind her and walking to my side, picking up a clipboard of papers (charts) at the end of the bed on the way. A nametag was stitched onto the white uniform, a monogrammed "Alyson" inside the patch.
"Now, Ms… Hebert," she began, actually managing to get my name right and glancing down at the charts, "You're currently at Brockton General Hospital. It's the eighteenth of January, and…" She looked at a clock on the walk. "…three nineteen in the morning. Do you know why you're here?"
Brief flashes in my mind, darkness, walls closing in on me, and then nothing. I shook my head. She frowned. "Well, memory loss isn't unexpected. Would you like to know everything?"
I nodded.
"You were locked in an enclosed space with biological waste for what we think was a period of at least seventy-two hours. An anonymous call was given to emergency services, and first responders found you on the floor of Winslow High at 1:41 A.M. on the tenth of January, unresponsive and surrounded by the toxic waste with a fever of 102.4 and low blood pressure. You suffered heart failure twice, once in the ambulance and a second time here, in the intensive care ward. You were exhibiting all the symptoms of toxic shock syndrome and when the diagnosis was confirmed you were ventilated and put on antibiotics, as well as undergoing renal replacement."
She looked up from the clipboard and must have noticed my blank look. "All of your blood was filtered via dialysis."
Oh.
"The infection had taken root in your lower leg muscles, and the sites were drained but you weren't showing much signs of response to the antibiotics, and although you didn't progress to organ failure beyond your heart, you were still catatonic. Panacea was here for healing last night, and resolved all complications, including your nearsighted vision according to these notes."
For the first time I noticed that I wasn't wearing my glasses, but I could still see perfectly. Better than I had been able to before, even.
Huh. That was nice of her.
And then I saw the lines.
They appeared suddenly and without warning, reminding me of the lines you'd see in those plasma-ball globes or the pictures of lightning-strike scars I'd come across online. But instead of being bright blue or brownish color, they were red, practically florescent neon.
They were everywhere, the walls, the bed, the clock, the monitoring equipment. Everywhere, including Alyson.
As soon as I saw them on her, the lines began widening slowly, and then split. Her arm detached from her shoulder, white bone and red muscle plainly visible. Her jaw fell off, fingers separating as if cut from her hand by a knife.
"Taylor?"
I saw her tongue move to make the sounds without anything else around it. Her chest split diagonally, revealing yellow fat from her breasts and pinkish organs (liver, spleen, stomach, small intestine) that began tumbling out of her abdomen before they too were bisected along the lines.
I think I screamed.
Shutting my eyes tightly to block out the vision, I was rewarded with my mind replaying the scene over and over behind my eyelids. I could still sense the lines, feel them somehow. I knew exactly where they were, knew the very layout of the room solely by how they were placed and crawled across all surfaces and even through objects.
I heard noises around me, incoherent voices, and then there was a sudden rush of cold in the crook of my arm, spreading through my veins, and I slipped under once again.
"Any second now…" A masculine voice, right next to me. I felt a plastic mask over my face, a band reaching around my head to hold it in place
Opening my eyes, I turned my head in the direction of the voice and saw a man who had to be in his early thirties looking at me.
With red lines slashing across him.
I immediately twisted my head back to facing the ceiling, where the lines still flickered in and out with a terrible sense of wrongness, but nothing was falling apart.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to avoid looking at them, instead paying attention to the areas they didn't cover.
"Taylor?"
I glanced over at the man, intentionally looking over his shoulder and not directly at him.
"Hello, I'm Doctor Michaels, the on-call infectious disease specialist, and I've been handling your case for the past week since your admittance."
"Um… hi," I rasped through the oxygen mask. Huh. Figures my voice would be weird, I hadn't used it in over a week. Well, except for the completely-justified screaming.
"Now, I'm going to shine this light in your eyes, okay?" he asked, taking out a penlight from the front pocket on his white coat and showing it to me. I nodded. "Look straight ahead, please."
I acquiesced, and he quickly waved the light in each eye.
"Good. Normal dilation, no signs of any residual effects from the sedative." He clicked the penlight off and put it back in his pocket. "Do you remember any of what happened?"
Well, yeah. But I got the feeling that telling him I was suddenly seeing lines and people fucking falling apart would get me labeled as crazy pretty quickly.
So I lied and shook my head.
"You were awake for five minutes, speaking with one of the orderlies when you started screaming. You weren't responding to anything so we administered a deep sedative to induce loss of consciousness. That was about twelve minutes ago."
That short? I'd expected it to be longer if they actually knocked me out.
The doctor chuckled. "I know what you're thinking. It's not quite like movies and television make it out to be. Most clinical sedatives have a pretty short active duration, even the strong ones."
I made a sound of understanding.
"Do you have any idea what might have caused that?"
I shook my head again. He frowned slightly, but then the expression disappeared
"Well, do you remember what the orderly was telling you about? She reported that she'd been informing you of the circumstances of your hospitalization." I nodded. "Good. Honestly, thanks to Panacea, you're physically good to go. We want to keep you here another night just to make sure everything's working properly and that there's no more episodes like the one that just happened, okay?
"Since I won't see you again, I'll just tell you now: There is some aftercare you need to be aware of from Panacea's healing. Eat more than you usually would, focusing on carbohydrates and proteins. She had to use a bit of your muscle mass to heal you, and you've been on intravenous nutrients since you arrived so you're going to be pretty hungry anyways. You'll get some food today, and that should help a little bit."
"Alright," I croaked.
He smiled, and I tried to ignore the line that cut across his mouth like a bright red scar.
I gave a weak smile in return, hoping he'd attribute it more to my state than anything else.
"Your father will be called in the morning to let him know you're awake, unless you'd like us to call him now…?"
I shook my head. No need to wake him up in the middle of the night when there's nothing life-threatening. I yawned. Now that I thought about it, I was feeling pretty tired too.
"Ah. That's pretty normal. Your body's just trying to conserve energy, at this point. Get some sleep. I'll just let myself out. As I won't see you again, I'll just say it was a pleasure to finally get to talk to you." He smiled warmly, and then turned around and walked to the door, opening it and then turning around. "Good night."
I nodded, and he closed the door. Yawning again, I allowed my body to relax and closed my eyes, surrendering to my weariness easily.
I woke once, around four-thirty.
As soon as I saw the time on the clock, I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the lines I could feel and focus on everything else. That sterile hospital smell. The pressure of the oxygen mask against my face.
The feeling of people moving around in the halls outside my room.
I paused.
That… that was new.
I shifted my full attention to this new thing, focusing on it. I could literally feel the people moving outside, even without the lines. I knew where they were located, how far away from me they were.
A person suddenly appeared, walking towards my room from down the hall, and I knew they were thirty-six feet away. It was like how I knew where my arms and legs were positioned, but more… exact.
What was this?
Was I… Did this mean I had powers?
I knew about trigger events. That people who went through really stressful, traumatic experiences sometimes came out of it with superpowers. From what I'd been told, the locker certainly counted as that, though it was honestly a struggle to remember it. I knew that in the beginning I'd been angry, upset, and more than a little afraid. But later that had given way to hopelessness and crushing loneliness and a heat that had spread from my legs through my body, which I now knew had been the infection.
But… that was ultimately it. And even that was fuzzy and disconnected.
I suppose I should be glad for that.
The question, though, was had I gotten powers?
I had a feeling I already knew the answer to that, because I was pretty sure normal people couldn't just feel people around them in a thirty-six foot radius, tracking their movements.
My thoughts were only reinforced by the fact that I sure as hell hadn't been able to feel people like this before the locker.
And then there was the elephant in the room…
The lines.
The lines I could see and feel that felt like deathandnothingandemptyemptyempty, a feeling that I had to ignore because it made my stomach twist and turn nauseatingly. I wanted them to go away, but truthfully, I knew that they never would.
(they were part of me, after all)
I yawned, and before I even fully realized it I was falling back asleep.
When I woke again, there was sunlight hitting the blinds and indirectly illuminating the room. I immediately noticed the presence of a figure in a chair by it. My father. His eyes were slightly glazed over like he was in deep thought, looking at the linoleum by the side of my bed.
"Dad?"
His head jerked up, and he smiled. "Hey, kiddo."
I could hear the tiredness and slight strain of stress in his voice as he spoke to me. Trying to hide my reaction to the twisting bright lines on his body, I focused on his face and felt myself smile at the nickname.
"You gave me quite the scare, there, you know?" I didn't, really, but I wasn't about to tell him that. "Thank God for Panacea. They said you're completely healed and everything thanks to her."
"Yeah," I said quietly, trying to ignore the lines and red slashes that flashed around me.
"Well, I've got a deck of cards and a book from your room here so you won't get bored. I've got some clothes here for you too, for whenever they'll let change into them. The doctors said they wanted to keep you here another night, something about you having some sort of episode?"
I grimaced. "I… I can't remember." I hated lying to my dad, but I didn't want to explain or even think about what I'd seen. What I was seeing, trying to ignore.
"Well, the important thing is you seem alright," he stated. "I brought some paperwork from work to do so I could keep you company, if you don't mind your old man hanging around."
I felt my chest warm up as I nodded.
The next twenty-four hours were a blur. Or a haze?
My dad sat with me for three hours while he worked and I read, just enjoying the company. I'd told him to go get dinner after that, and he'd conceded, going home.
I tried to ignore the lines and people-sense as much as I could, but they were there, ever-present. How do you consciously ignore something when every little thing reminded you of it?
The hospital food was weird, and before I'd eaten it there was a nurse and a doctor who came by, the first disconnecting the glucose drip and standing by while the second (thankfully a woman) removed the fucking catheter from my body.
That was not an experience I ever wanted to go through again. Because fuck. that.
After I'd eaten I'd called the orderly and asked if I could stand up, and they'd gotten a different nurse, who'd lowered the rail on the left of my bed and helped me stand up on shaky feet, hovering close by while I readjusted to being upright after so long.
Using muscles after being in a coma? Another thing I never wanted to deal with again. The next few days were not going to be fun.
I only really walked around my room, not feeling adventurous enough to venture out into the hallway, and the nurse had left once it was apparent I wasn't about to fall over or collapse or something.
They told me it was okay to take a shower, just putting a water-proof seal over where the IV needle sat inside my elbow, and that I could change my underwear. I couldn't get my shirt on because of the IV, and I figured they wanted to be able to see my legs tomorrow before I left.
The shower felt amazing, but when I stepped out I noticed I was a bit thinner in the mirror than I had been before.
As if I need anything else to help cement my already-convincing impersonation of an underfed teenage boy.
Sighing, I pulled my clean underwear on and managed to maneuver into the new hospital gown the nurse had given me. Leaving the bathroom, I climbed back into the bed, staring at the ceiling. The silence surrounded me, soothing me alongside the easy regular motions of the people I could feel in the halls, but it was tainted by the presence of the red cracks all around me, and eventually I just allowed myself to fall asleep, once again exhausted.
When I woke my dad was already there, sitting in the same seat he'd been in the night before. He'd smiled when he saw me, and told me he'd just been waiting for me to wake up as the doctors had decided I was okay to be released.
Yet another, different person (a technician this time) had come in to remove my IV, only leaving an annoying red dot behind.
As I'd expected, my clothes hung looser on my body than they had before, and I gave up trying to comfort myself about it. All I could do now was what that doctor had told me: eat a lot to gain back the muscle mass.
My dad had stepped out of the room so that I could change, and when I was done I poked my head out of the main door to the room. He was sitting in a chair right outside of it, so I stepped out all the way, causing him to pick up his head to look at me.
We had to check out at one last place on the first floor, but it took less time than I expected, and within fifteen minutes we were out the door and in my dad's car.
We were already halfway home (I'd been staring out the windows and trying not to look at the fucking lines on them) when he cleared his throat. "So, uh, the school offered to pay the hospital bill if we didn't press charges or anything."
I whipped my head around to look at him and blinked in shock.
He glanced over at me, his expression darkening. "I told them they could go fuck themselves."
Whoa.
Holy shit. He must have been pissed.
"But… then how are we going to pay for the medical stuff?"
"The Dockworker's Union has medical insurance that'll cover some of it, and I've got a little bit saved up. If we really need to we can use some of your college funds. But I'm not going to just shut up and roll over to please them when my daughter almost died and was in a coma for a week."
Yeah, I don't know what they'd been expecting when they'd offered him that.
"The police actually decided to start an investigation over it, and I let them see your room," he said calmly.
My journal. Oh fuck.
"They found that book of yours."
Ice rushed through my veins. This was not a conversation I really wanted to have right now.
I noticed my dad's knuckles whitening from his grip on the steering wheel. "Why didn't you ever tell me about Emma?"
Struggling to form a coherent sentence, my mind raced to think of something, anything, but I came up with nothing.
A few minutes passed, and then he sighed, grip loosening slightly. "Apparently once the police got involved some of your classmates actually stepped forward to give witness statements once they heard what happened. One boy in particular started it; Greg something-or-other."
Greg Veder!?
Wow. Talk about unexpected.
"They tell me there's a pretty good case if we want to press charges. Harassment and, uh… aggravated assault and battery, I think." He looked over at me for a second.
Did I want that? Honestly, I just wanted them to leave me alone. But then I had the thought that if they didn't get in trouble now, they'd never change and someone else would suffer because of it.
Dad seemed to see I was thinking about it, because he followed it up with, "We don't have to decide now. It'd only be in juvenile court anyways."
Oh. Okay.
"…But you're not going back to that school." Wait, what? "I already pulled you out and sent in an application to Arcadia. They pretty much accepted you immediately when they heard what'd happened."
My thoughts ground to a halt, and it took a bit before I started processing what he'd just said.
Arcadia. Not Winslow.
I was going to Arcadia.
Oh my fucking god, no more Winslow.
I pinched myself.
Nope. Nothing. This wasn't a dream.
No more Sophia, no more Emma, no more Madison.
It felt like all my problems had just gone "poof" in a cloud of smoke. …I looked down at my flat chest. Well, okay, maybe not all my problems. But certainly most of them.
"You've got a month off before they said you had to go back," he added.
A month? I was supposed to be perfectly healthy now (save for the annoying weight I'd lost that I'd have to get back), and I was going to Arcadia. Why the fuck would I want to wait a month?
I might be able to wait a few days, or until next week, but I felt that if I was home all the time I'd get cabin fever. No, my high school career had been ruined enough already. Sophomore and Junior years were supposed to be the most important ones for colleges, so I needed the grades if I wanted a scholarship anywhere. Especially if now we were going to be using some of my college money for the hospital.
I shook my head. "Next week. I want to go next week."
Dad looked over at me in surprise. "Next week? That soon?" I nodded. "Well, okay. If it's what you want."
We pulled into the driveway of our house. I hadn't even noticed us getting that close. I opened the door to get out, but noticed Dad hadn't even turned off the car, so I turned and looked at him.
"Sorry, Taylor. I've got to get back to work," he said, answering my unasked question. "I couldn't actually get today off and the best they could give me was a couple hours this morning."
Oh.
I didn't let the slight dejection I felt show, instead closing the car door and watching my dad put the car in reverse and pull out of the driveway before driving off in the direction of the docks.
My stomach growled loudly, abruptly bringing my attention to the gnawing hunger in my gut.
I sighed. Well, I wasn't going to make up any of my lost weight just standing there. Might as well get started. And maybe I should try exercising too. I looked at my spindly arm muscles.
…Yeah, I think I'd do that.
A/N: This chapter is subtitled "I Wanna Be Sedated". Courtesy of the Ramones.
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Dissociation 1.3
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Dissociation 1.3
April 2011
My father woke me up the morning after my deathmatch with Lung with a sharp knock on my bedroom door.
"Taylor? You getting up?"
"Um… I'm not feeling so well. I don't think I'll be able to make it to school today," I replied.
He opened the door a crack, looking in, frowning slightly, but then the expression shifted into a grimace when he saw me. I guess I didn't look the best, though I was feeling quite a bit better than last night.
"Yeah, you're looking a bit pale. Well, if you think you're really not going to be able to make it, I'll call the school and let them know."
I nodded fractionally. "Thanks."
He smiled. "Of course. I'll leave you to get some more rest, then. I'll be heading out for work soon."
"Okay. See you later."
"See you, kiddo. Hope you feel better," he said, closing the door and walking away towards the stairs.
I let out a sigh of relief. Good. He hadn't noticed anything weird. That could have been bad.
Yawning, I let myself fall back to sleep to try and make up for what I hadn't gotten last night.
When I woke up again, it was about ten in the morning. Dragging myself upright, I removed the bags of ice. Well, they had been ice, now they were just bags of water. My ankle was significantly less swollen and didn't hurt nearly as much. My hands must not have been as bad as I'd thought, because while they did still hurt, I could feel things if just barely.
Swinging my legs over the side of my bed and lethargically pulling myself into a standing position I made my way to the bathroom and cleaned myself up, only now noticing the slight burnt-hair smell I had. I was able to get most of it out, but it still kind of clung to me, and I figured it would for the next couple of days.
I… I know should have felt something about Lung. About his death. About the fact that I had killed him.
(skin and flesh and bone effortlessly parting beneath my knife's blade)
(the smell of iron and rust hanging in the air)
(the feel of his warm body next to mine, slowly cooling as blood flowed from his wounds and stained the sidewalk a dark sanguine red, almost black)
But I didn't. I… I couldn't. Because his death had filled something in me. Something I hadn't known was absent, and only recognized now because it was there. But I also knew it wouldn't last. That it would slip away.
(how do you fill something that has no beginning or end? how do you satisfy the「 」in your soul?)
There was something wrong in that, yes. In not being horrified that I had killed, in not being disgusted that I had been entranced with what I had seen. I could acknowledge that consciously, recognize that I hadn't always thought that way, but that no longer mattered.
(how do you reject the definition of your existence? how do you deny the reason of your being?)
It had made me feel so alive. Alive in a way I hadn't truly been ever since that day.
(it made me so happy)
It was my first taste of death.
(I was glad it had been done by me)
Once I was done with my shower I got dressed and headed downstairs, mechanically going through the motions of preparing myself a bowl of cereal. I started eating standing up, walking over to the table to sit down when I froze with a mouthful of wheaties, staring at what I saw in front of me.
Section C: Local News
Lung Dead
Shit.
I swallowed, setting my bowl down and sitting, pulling the paper so it was facing me.
Early this morning, an anonymous tip was phoned in, telling us that Lung, the leader of the infamous gang "Azn Bad Boys" had been found dead by a member of the Protectorate. This has been personally verified by one of our own, though the PRT and Protectorate have refused to comment on the circumstances.
It went on, really just speculating about what might have happened, until it ended with To continue, see LUNG, page 2C. For more information on the gang "ABB", see ABB, page 3C
Well. That didn't take very long.
I blinked. Wait. If it had been the Protectorate who found him… I had heard a motorcycle last night when we were leaving. So that would have been Armsmaster? Well, now I know why Tattletale had been so eager to leave.
…And despite how awesome would have been to meet him, it'd also probably been for the best that I hadn't hung around. Because on the one hand, Armsmaster. But on the other hand, just-dead Lung with me being the obvious reason why.
That's the sort of situation I wouldn't want to meet a childhood hero in, you know?
Pushing the newspaper away from me, I focused on eating my cereal before it got too soggy.
It was a bit uncomfortable using my hands, and I wished I had some gauze or something to wrap them, but we didn't really have any medical supplies in the house. Some antibacterial cream or something would have been handy too.
Well, Tattletale had said that if I went to the hospital tonight I'd get treated, and so far she hadn't done anything to make me think I shouldn't trust her (hell, she'd given me the money to get there). I'd just have to tough it out until then.
Finished with my breakfast, I rinsed the bowl and left it in the sink to soak, wandering back up to my room. Having nothing better to do, I sat down at my desk and turned on my computer, booting it up.
The hard drive ground away and I idly examined the damage to my hands until the desktop appeared. Opening a browser, I headed to PHO, curious what their reaction to all of this would be.
By the looks of it, a combination of (initially) skepticism, incredulity, confusion, fear, and morbid curiosity about who could have done it and how. There had been a rumor in the early pages that it had been a knife wound, and it was confirmed later by some guy that said he'd talked to a PRT employee who wanted to remain anonymous.
Honestly, it was pretty amusing seeing how they were acting, if just because they were all talking about me (even if they didn't know it). Apparently the PRT had even given me an internal codename, though they didn't know what it actually was. I didn't really mind; it wasn't like this was ever going to happen again.
I checked my email, closing it down when I saw there wasn't anything new, and spent the rest of the morning browsing the internet and working on the little Java networking project that my Intro to CS class had assigned.
The afternoon was largely uneventful, at least until around 4 when I went out and got the mail. A large envelope was sitting in the mailbox, addressed to me.
"Huh." I got out a knife and cut it open. Turning it upside down, I was rewarded with an object landing on the table with a hearty thump, and a note falling out along with it. Picking up the note, I looked it over. One side was neat, methodical handwriting , the other blank.
Hey, it read, just wanted to thank you again for what you did from us last night. Regent never gave you your knife back, so I figured I could help you out and get you something a bit better than that flimsy thing. Especially if you're going to start taking on seven-foot dragons of doom. Take care of it, alright?
- Tattletale
P.S. You probably won't hear from us anymore, we don't involve civvies if we can help it.
P.P.S. Oh, and remember: Brockton General, six o'clock.
I picked up the paper-wrapped object and tore off the wrapping. A black swath of fabric with a collection of velcro strips, and then inside of it…
A knife.
Lifting the small bar of spring-held metal that kept it in the reinforced sheath by the guard, I slipped it out. Jet-black, the blade was longer than half a foot, seven inches if I had to guess, and had a slight dip at the end. It was attached to a round black rubbery handle that fit perfectly in my hand, the entire thing just under a foot long. I flipped the blade over. Near the joint of the blade and the guard was an engraving, solid letters that spelled out KA-BAR.
This… was a seriously nicer knife than the one I'd had.
Putting the weapon down –because there was no doubt this was a weapon compared to the knife I'd had– I picked up the thing that had wrapped it, spreading it out on the surface of the table.
It was a harness. A harness with the sheath I'd pulled the knife out at what looked to be the lower back. There were even other places where it looked like other sheathes could be attached to the straps in the front, underneath my arms, and my back.
I blinked. Because holy shit. I don't know what Tattletale expected me to get into, but clearly she thought I should be ready for it.
Heading up to my room, leaving the rest of the mail on the kitchen table, I stripped off the t-shirt I was wearing. It took me a couple minutes to figure out how to put the thing on, but when I finally did, I found it surprisingly comfortable. There was a pair of over-shoulder straps, and two others: one that went around my ribcage just below my (non-existent) chest, and another that sat on my hips connected to that one by v-shaped straps in the front and back. It felt slightly weighted so it wouldn't hike up accidentally.
I'm not going to lie, I felt like I was goddamn Rambo or something.
I'd stuck the knife back in the sheath, and tested how quick I could get it out. The answer: about a second. Nearly as fast as I'd been able to get my switchblade (fine, "spring-assisted knife") out and flick the blade open.
Replacing the knife, I pulled my t-shirt back on. The harness was nearly invisible, the shoulder straps lining up just next to my bra straps so that they didn't even seem to be there. I realized this was probably illegal, but I didn't really give a fuck. Better to be prepared than caught off-guard.
Lying down on my bed felt a little weird on my back, but it wasn't like I was going to sleep with this thing on or anything. Levering myself up, I went over to my desk and picked up the phone I had there. Calling a cab for 5:45 was relatively painless, and I ended up wasting my time until then looking up information about knives. Apparently the one Tattletale had gotten for me was the same kind of combat knife they used in the Marines. There were a couple things on proper care, like oiling it every so often to make sure it didn't rust if it got wet, but it all seemed pretty simple.
Before I knew it, it was 5:40, so I closed everything down and shut off the computer, grabbing the money Tattletale had shoved in my pocket the night before heading downstairs.
The cab arrived right on time, and I kept my hands in my hoodie pockets so he wouldn't notice anything was wrong with them. We made it to the hospital even faster than I'd anticipated, the trip only taking ten minutes, so I headed inside anyways.
There was a small line at the intake counter, but soon enough I was at the front of the line.
"Name?"
"Taylor Hebert." The woman behind the counter typed on the computer for a second, and then turned back to me.
"Reason for visit?"
"Um, I burned myself," I told her, deciding that was the worst of the two injuries (sprained ankle being the other), and that it'd be the best to tell them.
She looked at me over her glasses. "How severely?"
I blinked. "Uhh… I can't really feel anything?" Which is kinda fucking bad, I know.
She looked at me for a second before sighing in what appeared to be exasperation. "Well, you're in luck. Normally you'd go to the burn ward after getting the damage evaluated. But tonight Panacea's making her rounds through here. Wait for someone to call you, and you'll be taken to the back where we've got the non-life-threatening cases for her to heal."
I nodded, and walked away to sit down at one of the generic plastic chairs in the room as she called out "Next." behind me.
Well. It made sense why Tattletale had told me to come here now. Amy could easily deal with whatever I had going on.
I knew her only in passing, really. She was in my history class, but sat on the other side of the room and two rows in front of me. She seemed to be around her sister most of the time, and I'd never had any real reason to talk to her. She was just in a different social circle than I was.
"Taylor He.. Hebert?" I looked up at my name towards the heavy double-doors that led to the hospital proper, where a younger guy stood with a clipboard. Standing up and walking over to him, he held open the doors for me to go through. "If you'll just follow me, I'll take you to where everybody else is."
I nodded, and walked behind him as he traveled forward, noticing that we were staying in the ICU area. We soon enough reached another waiting area, and he directed me to sit down, saying "it'll probably be only ten minutes or so." I went and sat down as he disappeared back in the direction we came, I assume to handle someone else. There wasn't really anything to do but wait, the few magazines on the corner-table next to me being generic tabloid rags that talked about celebrities and so-and-so suddenly changed their hairstyle so we all should know.
A figure in a white robe with red crosses that I'd seen before stepped into the room, and I looked over at them from the movement.
I'd never really seen Amy in her costume other than in photographs, and it seemed kind of strange. Like I was crossing some indiscernible line by knowing her both in and out of costume.
She made her way around the room, counter-clockwise, which meant I was the last one left as I'd sat in the corner of the room right by the door.
When she got to me, I finally got to have a really good look at her. And then felt strange.
Something seemed… off about her. There were almost-imperceptible shadows under her eyes, and I just knew that she didn't want to be here for some reason.
If she doesn't want to be here, why is she doing any of this?
"Do I have permission to heal you?" she asked flatly, like at this point it was just routine, a rote memorized action that she didn't even put any effort into.
"Uh, yeah, sure."
"Hand, please." She held out her hand palm up, and I pulled my own out and placed it in hers.
For the first time, her eyes focused, snapping down to my hands and then back up. "Why didn't you come in sooner? You should have gotten treatment before now."
"What?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows scrunch together in confusion.
"These burns are days old, why didn't you come in before now?"
"I… only got them last night," I told her.
Her eyes narrowed on me, and then went back to normal. "Whatever. Here, they're done. Your ankle too."
There was a tingle in my hands, and the ever-present red lines jumped out at me for a second before I was able to push them back again. Amy blinked, momentarily freezing, and then looked at me curiously.
"You're–" She cut herself off abruptly, and I could almost see the gears spinning in her head. "Do I know you?"
"Uh, well, I'm in your history class," I supplied.
Her gaze sharpened. And then she relaxed, but I could tell it was forced. "I see."
"Um. Do you mind if I ask you something?"
The girl in front of me seemed slightly irritated at the question. "Fine."
"Why…" I tried to figure out the best way to ask it. "Why do you do this if you don't like it?"
I could tell I'd caught her completely off guard, and she faltered before her face hardened. "What does it matter to you?"
I tilted my head. "I… I don't know? I just… I guess I wonder why someone like you would do this if you didn't want to. I mean, I get that there's a lot of people that you can help, but… why? If you don't like it, why?"
She snorted. "What, so I should just give it up? Ignore everybody that wants to be healed by 'Panacea'?" I could hear the quotes in her voice. "Fat chance."
"But, couldn't you like, do it less? Take a break or something? Just… I don't know, have time to recharge? I'm an introvert, and I know it'd be exhausting for me if I had to be around people all the time and live up to their expectations."
Her eyes narrowed. "Don't act like you know anything about me." I opened my mouth to tell her I wouldn't mind getting to know her, but she cut me off. "Now, do you need anything else or can I go home now?"
I shook my head.
"Fine. Then I'll see you later, I suppose. Good night."
She turned away sharply and walked towards the hallway, leaving me sitting there by myself.
I let out a heavy breath, and knew that I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about this easily. Just as I hadn't been able to stop thinking about my other friends until I'd finally gotten to know them.
But right now, there was nothing I could do about it.
"Yeah. 'Night."
A/N: Oh look, bitchy Panacea.
April 2011
My father woke me up the morning after my deathmatch with Lung with a sharp knock on my bedroom door.
"Taylor? You getting up?"
"Um… I'm not feeling so well. I don't think I'll be able to make it to school today," I replied.
He opened the door a crack, looking in, frowning slightly, but then the expression shifted into a grimace when he saw me. I guess I didn't look the best, though I was feeling quite a bit better than last night.
"Yeah, you're looking a bit pale. Well, if you think you're really not going to be able to make it, I'll call the school and let them know."
I nodded fractionally. "Thanks."
He smiled. "Of course. I'll leave you to get some more rest, then. I'll be heading out for work soon."
"Okay. See you later."
"See you, kiddo. Hope you feel better," he said, closing the door and walking away towards the stairs.
I let out a sigh of relief. Good. He hadn't noticed anything weird. That could have been bad.
Yawning, I let myself fall back to sleep to try and make up for what I hadn't gotten last night.
When I woke up again, it was about ten in the morning. Dragging myself upright, I removed the bags of ice. Well, they had been ice, now they were just bags of water. My ankle was significantly less swollen and didn't hurt nearly as much. My hands must not have been as bad as I'd thought, because while they did still hurt, I could feel things if just barely.
Swinging my legs over the side of my bed and lethargically pulling myself into a standing position I made my way to the bathroom and cleaned myself up, only now noticing the slight burnt-hair smell I had. I was able to get most of it out, but it still kind of clung to me, and I figured it would for the next couple of days.
I… I know should have felt something about Lung. About his death. About the fact that I had killed him.
(skin and flesh and bone effortlessly parting beneath my knife's blade)
(the smell of iron and rust hanging in the air)
(the feel of his warm body next to mine, slowly cooling as blood flowed from his wounds and stained the sidewalk a dark sanguine red, almost black)
But I didn't. I… I couldn't. Because his death had filled something in me. Something I hadn't known was absent, and only recognized now because it was there. But I also knew it wouldn't last. That it would slip away.
(how do you fill something that has no beginning or end? how do you satisfy the「 」in your soul?)
There was something wrong in that, yes. In not being horrified that I had killed, in not being disgusted that I had been entranced with what I had seen. I could acknowledge that consciously, recognize that I hadn't always thought that way, but that no longer mattered.
(how do you reject the definition of your existence? how do you deny the reason of your being?)
It had made me feel so alive. Alive in a way I hadn't truly been ever since that day.
(it made me so happy)
It was my first taste of death.
(I was glad it had been done by me)
Once I was done with my shower I got dressed and headed downstairs, mechanically going through the motions of preparing myself a bowl of cereal. I started eating standing up, walking over to the table to sit down when I froze with a mouthful of wheaties, staring at what I saw in front of me.
Section C: Local News
Lung Dead
Shit.
I swallowed, setting my bowl down and sitting, pulling the paper so it was facing me.
Early this morning, an anonymous tip was phoned in, telling us that Lung, the leader of the infamous gang "Azn Bad Boys" had been found dead by a member of the Protectorate. This has been personally verified by one of our own, though the PRT and Protectorate have refused to comment on the circumstances.
It went on, really just speculating about what might have happened, until it ended with To continue, see LUNG, page 2C. For more information on the gang "ABB", see ABB, page 3C
Well. That didn't take very long.
I blinked. Wait. If it had been the Protectorate who found him… I had heard a motorcycle last night when we were leaving. So that would have been Armsmaster? Well, now I know why Tattletale had been so eager to leave.
…And despite how awesome would have been to meet him, it'd also probably been for the best that I hadn't hung around. Because on the one hand, Armsmaster. But on the other hand, just-dead Lung with me being the obvious reason why.
That's the sort of situation I wouldn't want to meet a childhood hero in, you know?
Pushing the newspaper away from me, I focused on eating my cereal before it got too soggy.
It was a bit uncomfortable using my hands, and I wished I had some gauze or something to wrap them, but we didn't really have any medical supplies in the house. Some antibacterial cream or something would have been handy too.
Well, Tattletale had said that if I went to the hospital tonight I'd get treated, and so far she hadn't done anything to make me think I shouldn't trust her (hell, she'd given me the money to get there). I'd just have to tough it out until then.
Finished with my breakfast, I rinsed the bowl and left it in the sink to soak, wandering back up to my room. Having nothing better to do, I sat down at my desk and turned on my computer, booting it up.
The hard drive ground away and I idly examined the damage to my hands until the desktop appeared. Opening a browser, I headed to PHO, curious what their reaction to all of this would be.
By the looks of it, a combination of (initially) skepticism, incredulity, confusion, fear, and morbid curiosity about who could have done it and how. There had been a rumor in the early pages that it had been a knife wound, and it was confirmed later by some guy that said he'd talked to a PRT employee who wanted to remain anonymous.
Honestly, it was pretty amusing seeing how they were acting, if just because they were all talking about me (even if they didn't know it). Apparently the PRT had even given me an internal codename, though they didn't know what it actually was. I didn't really mind; it wasn't like this was ever going to happen again.
I checked my email, closing it down when I saw there wasn't anything new, and spent the rest of the morning browsing the internet and working on the little Java networking project that my Intro to CS class had assigned.
The afternoon was largely uneventful, at least until around 4 when I went out and got the mail. A large envelope was sitting in the mailbox, addressed to me.
"Huh." I got out a knife and cut it open. Turning it upside down, I was rewarded with an object landing on the table with a hearty thump, and a note falling out along with it. Picking up the note, I looked it over. One side was neat, methodical handwriting , the other blank.
Hey, it read, just wanted to thank you again for what you did from us last night. Regent never gave you your knife back, so I figured I could help you out and get you something a bit better than that flimsy thing. Especially if you're going to start taking on seven-foot dragons of doom. Take care of it, alright?
- Tattletale
P.S. You probably won't hear from us anymore, we don't involve civvies if we can help it.
P.P.S. Oh, and remember: Brockton General, six o'clock.
I picked up the paper-wrapped object and tore off the wrapping. A black swath of fabric with a collection of velcro strips, and then inside of it…
A knife.
Lifting the small bar of spring-held metal that kept it in the reinforced sheath by the guard, I slipped it out. Jet-black, the blade was longer than half a foot, seven inches if I had to guess, and had a slight dip at the end. It was attached to a round black rubbery handle that fit perfectly in my hand, the entire thing just under a foot long. I flipped the blade over. Near the joint of the blade and the guard was an engraving, solid letters that spelled out KA-BAR.
This… was a seriously nicer knife than the one I'd had.
Putting the weapon down –because there was no doubt this was a weapon compared to the knife I'd had– I picked up the thing that had wrapped it, spreading it out on the surface of the table.
It was a harness. A harness with the sheath I'd pulled the knife out at what looked to be the lower back. There were even other places where it looked like other sheathes could be attached to the straps in the front, underneath my arms, and my back.
I blinked. Because holy shit. I don't know what Tattletale expected me to get into, but clearly she thought I should be ready for it.
Heading up to my room, leaving the rest of the mail on the kitchen table, I stripped off the t-shirt I was wearing. It took me a couple minutes to figure out how to put the thing on, but when I finally did, I found it surprisingly comfortable. There was a pair of over-shoulder straps, and two others: one that went around my ribcage just below my (non-existent) chest, and another that sat on my hips connected to that one by v-shaped straps in the front and back. It felt slightly weighted so it wouldn't hike up accidentally.
I'm not going to lie, I felt like I was goddamn Rambo or something.
I'd stuck the knife back in the sheath, and tested how quick I could get it out. The answer: about a second. Nearly as fast as I'd been able to get my switchblade (fine, "spring-assisted knife") out and flick the blade open.
Replacing the knife, I pulled my t-shirt back on. The harness was nearly invisible, the shoulder straps lining up just next to my bra straps so that they didn't even seem to be there. I realized this was probably illegal, but I didn't really give a fuck. Better to be prepared than caught off-guard.
Lying down on my bed felt a little weird on my back, but it wasn't like I was going to sleep with this thing on or anything. Levering myself up, I went over to my desk and picked up the phone I had there. Calling a cab for 5:45 was relatively painless, and I ended up wasting my time until then looking up information about knives. Apparently the one Tattletale had gotten for me was the same kind of combat knife they used in the Marines. There were a couple things on proper care, like oiling it every so often to make sure it didn't rust if it got wet, but it all seemed pretty simple.
Before I knew it, it was 5:40, so I closed everything down and shut off the computer, grabbing the money Tattletale had shoved in my pocket the night before heading downstairs.
The cab arrived right on time, and I kept my hands in my hoodie pockets so he wouldn't notice anything was wrong with them. We made it to the hospital even faster than I'd anticipated, the trip only taking ten minutes, so I headed inside anyways.
There was a small line at the intake counter, but soon enough I was at the front of the line.
"Name?"
"Taylor Hebert." The woman behind the counter typed on the computer for a second, and then turned back to me.
"Reason for visit?"
"Um, I burned myself," I told her, deciding that was the worst of the two injuries (sprained ankle being the other), and that it'd be the best to tell them.
She looked at me over her glasses. "How severely?"
I blinked. "Uhh… I can't really feel anything?" Which is kinda fucking bad, I know.
She looked at me for a second before sighing in what appeared to be exasperation. "Well, you're in luck. Normally you'd go to the burn ward after getting the damage evaluated. But tonight Panacea's making her rounds through here. Wait for someone to call you, and you'll be taken to the back where we've got the non-life-threatening cases for her to heal."
I nodded, and walked away to sit down at one of the generic plastic chairs in the room as she called out "Next." behind me.
Well. It made sense why Tattletale had told me to come here now. Amy could easily deal with whatever I had going on.
I knew her only in passing, really. She was in my history class, but sat on the other side of the room and two rows in front of me. She seemed to be around her sister most of the time, and I'd never had any real reason to talk to her. She was just in a different social circle than I was.
"Taylor He.. Hebert?" I looked up at my name towards the heavy double-doors that led to the hospital proper, where a younger guy stood with a clipboard. Standing up and walking over to him, he held open the doors for me to go through. "If you'll just follow me, I'll take you to where everybody else is."
I nodded, and walked behind him as he traveled forward, noticing that we were staying in the ICU area. We soon enough reached another waiting area, and he directed me to sit down, saying "it'll probably be only ten minutes or so." I went and sat down as he disappeared back in the direction we came, I assume to handle someone else. There wasn't really anything to do but wait, the few magazines on the corner-table next to me being generic tabloid rags that talked about celebrities and so-and-so suddenly changed their hairstyle so we all should know.
A figure in a white robe with red crosses that I'd seen before stepped into the room, and I looked over at them from the movement.
I'd never really seen Amy in her costume other than in photographs, and it seemed kind of strange. Like I was crossing some indiscernible line by knowing her both in and out of costume.
She made her way around the room, counter-clockwise, which meant I was the last one left as I'd sat in the corner of the room right by the door.
When she got to me, I finally got to have a really good look at her. And then felt strange.
Something seemed… off about her. There were almost-imperceptible shadows under her eyes, and I just knew that she didn't want to be here for some reason.
If she doesn't want to be here, why is she doing any of this?
"Do I have permission to heal you?" she asked flatly, like at this point it was just routine, a rote memorized action that she didn't even put any effort into.
"Uh, yeah, sure."
"Hand, please." She held out her hand palm up, and I pulled my own out and placed it in hers.
For the first time, her eyes focused, snapping down to my hands and then back up. "Why didn't you come in sooner? You should have gotten treatment before now."
"What?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows scrunch together in confusion.
"These burns are days old, why didn't you come in before now?"
"I… only got them last night," I told her.
Her eyes narrowed on me, and then went back to normal. "Whatever. Here, they're done. Your ankle too."
There was a tingle in my hands, and the ever-present red lines jumped out at me for a second before I was able to push them back again. Amy blinked, momentarily freezing, and then looked at me curiously.
"You're–" She cut herself off abruptly, and I could almost see the gears spinning in her head. "Do I know you?"
"Uh, well, I'm in your history class," I supplied.
Her gaze sharpened. And then she relaxed, but I could tell it was forced. "I see."
"Um. Do you mind if I ask you something?"
The girl in front of me seemed slightly irritated at the question. "Fine."
"Why…" I tried to figure out the best way to ask it. "Why do you do this if you don't like it?"
I could tell I'd caught her completely off guard, and she faltered before her face hardened. "What does it matter to you?"
I tilted my head. "I… I don't know? I just… I guess I wonder why someone like you would do this if you didn't want to. I mean, I get that there's a lot of people that you can help, but… why? If you don't like it, why?"
She snorted. "What, so I should just give it up? Ignore everybody that wants to be healed by 'Panacea'?" I could hear the quotes in her voice. "Fat chance."
"But, couldn't you like, do it less? Take a break or something? Just… I don't know, have time to recharge? I'm an introvert, and I know it'd be exhausting for me if I had to be around people all the time and live up to their expectations."
Her eyes narrowed. "Don't act like you know anything about me." I opened my mouth to tell her I wouldn't mind getting to know her, but she cut me off. "Now, do you need anything else or can I go home now?"
I shook my head.
"Fine. Then I'll see you later, I suppose. Good night."
She turned away sharply and walked towards the hallway, leaving me sitting there by myself.
I let out a heavy breath, and knew that I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about this easily. Just as I hadn't been able to stop thinking about my other friends until I'd finally gotten to know them.
But right now, there was nothing I could do about it.
"Yeah. 'Night."
A/N: Oh look, bitchy Panacea.
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Bisection 0.3
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Taylor's knife harness is basically a tactical vest with all of the pockets and armor removed. Just for if you were trying to imagine it.
In response to how far I plan to take this: All the way. I've got plans for Levi, Butcher, S9, plus a few other events that I'll keep as a surprise for now.
Bisection 0.3
January 2011
"Daaaad, I'll be fine. You don't need to come in."
My father gave me an inscrutable look. "Well, if you say so."
I wanted to roll my eyes, but made do with just grabbing my backpack and throwing it over my shoulder while opening the car door and stepping out. "I'll be fine. Promise." He was already going a step further than normal by driving me to school instead of taking the bus, and that was enough for me.
"Alright then. Have a good day, kiddo."
I nodded, closing the door and stepping back away from the car and onto the sidewalk as he put it in first and pulled away from the curb. As soon as he was out of sight, I let out a sigh and turned around, looking at what was going to be my school for the next few years.
It was four stories tall, two long buildings with a short section between them that supposedly made the whole thing look like an 'H' from above.
Hiking my backpack up on my shoulders, I started forward towards the main entrance, a set of four glass and metal double doors. The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside was that it was clean. Clean and bright. Which probably said more about the state of Winslow than Arcadia, but still. It wasn't like I needed anything more to tell me that Winslow was a fucking cesspool. I'd come to that conclusion early enough on my own.
There were helpful signs for the main office with arrows pointing off to the right, and I followed them until I reached what, indeed, appeared to be the administrative offices.
"Uh… Hi?" I greeted half-heartedly, standing at a counter where a woman sat, filling out paperwork.
"One second, sweetie. I'll be right with you."
She finished about fifteen seconds later, giving a signature at the bottom of the papers, and then looked up at me. "Yes? How can I help you?"
"I'm… new. I mean, I'm a transfer. From Winslow." I fidgeted uncomfortably.
The woman smiled warmly. "Name?"
"Taylor. Taylor Hebert. 'H', 'e', 'b', 'e', 'r', 't'," I told her, spelling out my last name so that there wasn't any confusion.
She rolled her seat over to a computer to the side. "Hmmm… You're here in the system, but it says that you weren't expected to transfer in for a few weeks."
"I was in the hospital and got released early, and… I haven't really got anything to do at home."
"Lonely?" she asked knowingly. "Don't worry about it, I understand." She made a few clicks with her mouse and the large copy machine at the back of the room spun up. The woman got out of her chair, walked over to the copier and retrieved a sheet of paper, bringing it to me and setting it down on the counter. "Alright, here's your schedule. Your locker number's up here." She pointed to the top right corner where a three digit number sat. "You'll have to come by the office after school to get your ID made. Now, if you'll wait a moment I'll get someone over here with the same schedule so you won't be lost. Oh, and I'll send out an email to all your teachers to let them know you're here, okay?"
I nodded, and she walked back over to her chair and sat down, picking up the phone and dialing in some number while looking at her screen.
"Mrs. Cressman?" she asked into the receiver. "Yes, I've got a new student here and was wondering if you could send Alex over?" A pause. "Thank you." She replaced the receiver and looked back at me. "If you'll just wait a couple of minutes there'll be someone here to help get you on your feet."
"Thanks," I told her, meaning it. Something like this would have never happened at Winslow. Already I was starting to see the difference.
Maybe this'll actually make up for being in that fucking hellhole.
I took a seat in one of the chairs off to the side, looking around the room while still trying to keep the jagged red lines out of focus. It'd gotten better over the last week, and I was now glad I'd waited until today to go to school, since in the beginning it would sometimes just happen, even progressing to that horrific falling-apart vision before I could shut it down. But I'd gone through all of yesterday without them highlighting themselves and I was hoping there wouldn't be any new surprises today.
I had assumed Alex would be a guy, so when a short blonde girl stepped into the room I didn't pay much attention to her. "Ms. Johnson?"
"Hello, Alex. She's over there," the woman behind the counter said, pointing over at me. I blinked, and looked closer at the new person. She had to be only 5'1", and her skin was bronzed like she spent a lot of time out of school in the sun.
I stood up, trying to hide how nervous I was feeling. "Uh, hey?" I greeted, raising a hand awkwardly.
The girl walked over to me, tilting her head back so she could look me in the eyes. "Wow. You're tall."
I shifted uncomfortably. Being 5'9" isn't exactly normal for a girl (and I had the feeling I wasn't done growing), and I was a bit self-conscious about my height, expecting her to say something about how it was weird.
Instead, a grin broke out on her face. "That's awesome. The basketball team's totally going to try and get you to join. I bet you'd be great in soccer too. You've totally got that whole runner's build thing going on. You'll have to wait until next year if you want to do cross-country."
"I… don't really know, I've never done sports," I admitted. It would have been just another thing for them to use against me, and I'd rather escape home than hang around Winslow more than I had to. I also hadn't exactly been coordinated before, but now I was finding it easier to move around, like I was lighter on my feet, and I hadn't stumbled once since getting out of the hospital. Maybe I'd had an inner-ear imbalance or something that had gotten fixed along with everything else in the hospital.
Alex looked thoughtful. "Well, you've seriously got the build for it. I thought you did track or cross-country just from looking at you. All I can really do is soccer and softball." She pouted. "It sucks being short sometimes."
"Alex. You can pester Taylor about joining the athletic teams all you want later, but you girls should be getting to your first class," Ms. Johnson said, looking over at us.
The short girl winced. "Right. Sorry, Ms. J." Alex spun on her heel, looking at me over her shoulder. "C'mon, Mrs. Cressman's pretty nice, as long as we're not too late there's nothing to worry about." I nodded, easily catching up with her in a few steps in the hallway.
"We can go by your locker now, or after class, …or before lunch." She glanced over at me. "Actually, here, let me see that," she said, holding out her hand to me. I handed over my schedule. "Okay, your locker's in the same hall as mine, so that makes things easier. We'll go after class, 'kay?"
"…Alright," I agreed, taking my schedule back.
I was slightly overwhelmed by how outgoing this girl was, but also found it nice. It was a breath of fresh air, completely different from anything I'd experienced at Winslow. I still felt a bit uncomfortable, paranoid that this was all just an act and suddenly I'd be right back where I'd been before, at the bottom, but I was trying to ignore that as best I could.
"So where're you coming from? You new to Brockton?" she asked as we walked up a flight of stairs to the next floor.
I shook my head. "Winslow."
Alex made a face. "I have a friend from middle school who's there. She says it's terrible. I can't believe half of the stories she tells me."
"They're all true." The girl looked at me incredulously. "It's… bad. Really bad."
She grimaced. "Well that sucks. But at least you're here now, right? You must've been lucky, I hear it's really hard to transfer in because of how full the classes are."
Flashes through my mind. Dark spaces. Walls closing in. The stench of rotting blood.
"…Right. Lucky," I echoed weakly.
Alex didn't seem to notice, though, and she pulled up short outside of a door labeled '216'. "This is it. You ready?"
I nodded, knowing that I couldn't trust my mouth right now.
The shorter girl opened the door, and I was immediately met with the chatter of a full classroom before the bell had rung. Alex walked in nonchalantly with me trailing a few feet behind her, significantly more on edge as I noticed people looking over at me curiously while still in conversation.
A woman who looked to be in her late forties sat at a desk at the front of the room, organizing papers.
"Mrs. Cressman," Alex said, making a beeline towards the front of the desk.
The teacher looked up. "Oh, good. You got back before class started." She looked over to where I was standing. "And you're Taylor?"
I nodded, swallowing nervously. "Yes, ma'am."
"Well, seeing as I'm your first period today, I suppose I'm the one that should say welcome to our school, hm? Now…" She stood up and went over to the podium by the whiteboard, looking at what I guessed was a seating chart. "You can take a seat back by Ryan." She pointed towards a seat at the back of the room next to a boy who had twisted to talk to two other guys on his left. "Oh, and thank you, Alex."
"No problem. I'll see you after class, 'kay Taylor?" she said, turning around and heading to the other side of the room towards an empty seat in the second row.
"You've got the textbook, right? The red one with the torus on it?"
I turned back to the teacher. "Oh, um… yeah."
"Great, well, I won't make you stand up here and introduce yourself or anything embarrassing like that–" I sighed to myself in relief. "–so you can go ahead and take a seat if you'd like," she told me.
I nodded, and made my way over to the desk she'd pointed out, dropping my backpack next to me and sitting down. A girl a row forward and seat to the right looked back at me and opened her mouth like she was going to speak, but the bell went off and she closed it, shrugging apologetically with a half-smile.
I made a resolution right then to try and not push people away and just be normal, to actually get to know other people and maybe make friends. Emma had been part of the old me, but after everything with the locker and the hospital, I felt different, and now I had the chance to start over with a clean slate.
And I wasn't going to let that go to waste.
"Look, all I'm saying is that that woman is out to get me. I swear she glares at me for no reason." One of the girls at the lunch table, Emily, pointed her fork across the table at Alex, who was sitting on my left. "At least she grades fairly," she muttered, stabbing said fork into the bean salad she'd gotten out of her lunchbox.
Alex rolled her eyes. "You're just imagining things."
"No! I swear to God!" Emily insisted.
The girl across from me, Sarah, sighed. Turning to me, she looked exasperated. "So how's your day going Taylor?"
I shrugged awkwardly. "It's… school."
The blonde on my left snorted. "Isn't that the truth."
"I mean… like, I haven't even finished my first day. All of the teachers seem pretty nice so far…" I explained.
She nodded. "Yeah, you've got, what? Cressman, Roberts, Carboni, and…"
"Brunner," Alex completed around a mouthful of pasta.
Sarah nodded. "Right. Brunner. They're all great. What've you got after lunch?"
"Chem and CS. So McCann and Shannon," Alex told her, having swallowed her food.
I'd been surprised someone like Alex, who seemed so interested in sports, was taking CS, but she'd told me she was only doing athletics for fun and actually wanted to go to MIT.
"Wow. Yeah, you two've got great schedules. I'm actually a little jealous," Sarah told us.
Alex smirked, throwing her arm around my shoulder, even though it looked odd as she had to reach up to do it. She did it so quickly I didn't even have a chance to react, but that didn't stop the sudden discomfort I felt from suddenly being in close contact with someone after a year and a half of abuse. "That's right. You should be jealous. Cause we're awesome."
"Pfft," Emily giggled, breaking out into laughter, Sarah also smiling. "You're so full of yourself."
The blonde took her arm off my shoulders, grinning. "You know it."
Emily just laughed, eventually calming down. The redhead turned to me. "So, I bet this pint-sized egoist has already sunk her claws in and talked you into joining every sport team under the sun."
I shook my head, smiling.
"No, I'm still working her over. There's a process, you know," Alex told her.
"Of course there is," the redhead responded flatly.
The blonde nodded sagely. "You have to wear them down gradually. Can't go too fast."
"What is that, dating advice?" Emily asked, laughing.
Sarah looked across at me. "You should just give in. There's no fighting it. Eventually, she'll get you to think it was your idea all along. Better to agree and keep your sanity while you can."
"Yep!" Alex agreed brightly. "And the soccer season just started, so you could totally join as a reserve at the very least." She looked at me, widening her eyes. "Please? Pleeaaaaaseee? We could be soccer buddies. Oh, and Sarah's there too."
The aforementioned girl shook her head, "Of course that's the last thing you say." She looked at me. "If you do join, I'll protect you from her. Promise."
Alex somehow managed to widen her eyes further against all logic, making her look even more pitiful. I couldn't stop myself from laughing at how ridiculous she looked.
"Fine," I agreed impulsively, wondering what the fuck I was doing even while speaking. "I… I'll try it."
The short girl's eyes went back to their normal size as she nodded. "Exceeellllentt. Another one falls to my superior plans," she cackled jokingly.
"'Wear them down' is not exactly a complicated plan," Emily told her.
Alex scoffed. "Psh. What do you know? And it worked, so I'd say I'm right and you're wrong," she said, sticking out her tongue at the redhead.
"Very mature," Sarah deadpanned. "You're the height of sophistication."
The blonde waved her off. "Eh, who wants to be sophisticated anyway? Sounds boring."
I shook my head, smiling at the antics.
I'd needed this. I hadn't even known it, but this… I'd missed this. More than I thought I would have. I still felt slightly awkward, but the three girls I was sitting with were so open. Welcoming. Accepting. My darker thoughts said they could just be leading me on, but there had been no signs of anything like that. And why would they do that anyways? They felt too genuine in the way they'd included me.
Of course, Alex could have just been trying to get me to join the soccer team, but that felt off too. She had no idea if I would join or not, and she'd still invited me to sit with her friends.
For the first time in a long while, I felt happy. Actually happy.
I had good feelings about this.
"What. The. Hell." I gasped breathlessly, staring at Alex while I leaned on my knees, bent over. Sweat was dripping off of my face. I could just feel it.
Holy fuck
Two days after my first day, and after talking to both my dad and the soccer coach, I'd been accepted as a reserve. And this was my first day of practice.
The girl grimaced, trying to catch her breath as well, face red. "Sorry," she panted. "Didn't know we'd be doing suicides today." I regarded her flatly. "Still, you're doing really, really well."
"Alright girls! Two laps and then cool-down!" the woman on the sidelines yelled out. Coach Miller. My new personal demon.
I sighed in gratitude and started over towards the track that circled the football field, which had been turned into a soccer field for the season. Alex lagged behind me, catching up once I was on the rubber surface. "Well, at least you know how bad it can get. Conditioning days are the worst. Everything else is easier, I swear."
I nodded, already feeling my heart begin to slow down and my head start to clear halfway through the first lap. Sarah was a couple meters in front of us, and noticing us she slowed down until she was on my right.
"So. What'd you think?" she asked. I gave a pained smile in response. "Yeah, that's about how I'm feeling right now too. It gets better, trust me."
"That's what Alex said," I told her.
She nodded. "Well, she's not wrong. Although I'm hesitant to agree with anything Alex says on principle."
Alex mock-glared at her. "You're being mean." She looked up at me. "Taylor's nice to me, though. Aren't you Taylor?"
"Uhhh…"
"Just say yes."
"Yes."
Alex looked back at Sarah. "See? Taylor's not mean. Why do you have to be mean?"
The other girl huffed. "I'm hesitant to accept the opinion of someone who's been told what to say."
"Naaaah. It's totally valid."
"If you say so…" Sarah said, obviously just humoring her, but also smiling.
We completed the laps and then joined the rest of the team on the field, going through cool-down stretches that Alex said would keep our muscles from clenching up painfully for the rest of the day and tomorrow. Afterwards we changed out of our "practice uniforms" (really just loose, breathable shorts and a t-shirt the coach had given me the day before when I signed up) and said our goodbyes.
Since the school's buses were only active at the start and end of the school day, I had to make my way to one of the city bus stops, swiping my ID when I got on so I didn't have to pay the fare. The ride was only about twenty minutes, and it left me a couple blocks away from my house, a distance I easily covered quickly.
Dad wasn't home, his car missing from the driveway, so I got out my key and unlocked the door, heading upstairs after locking it behind me. Reaching my room, I let my backpack drop to the floor at the foot of the bed, and collapsed onto the soft surface.
Surprisingly, I didn't feel as bad as I'd expected I would after my first day of practice, but that could be because I'd been exercising just about every day since I'd gotten home last week. Resting for a few minutes, I eventually rolled out of bed and got my homework out, going over to my desk and spreading everything out.
Trig wasn't too hard, History was only a few short-answer questions, and Chem was just stoichiometry. It was when I got to Latin that I got frustrated. I'd never been good at foreign languages, and this one was no different. Plus, Winslow had been slightly behind Arcadia in this class, so I also had to deal with catching up.
Frustrated at my lack of progress, I felt my control slip as my vision suddenly shifted, with bright red lines popping out at me. Annoyed, because I'd been doing so well with no incidents this week at all, I started pushing them to the back of my mind before I realized it wasn't progressing to where anything was falling apart right now.
It was like a half-way point between fully seeing everything (the possibilities, the planes of division) and not focusing on them.
Blinking, I got curious. This was a power. I'd known I was a parahuman ever since the hospital, but it hadn't really sunk in until now. My ability to feel people around me simply was, feeling completely natural, there just wasn't anything to do with it. But the lines... so far all I knew was that I could see these things, but there had to be a reason behind what I was seeing.
Looking down at my worksheet, I focused on one of the lines that jumped around the corner of the page, examining it closer. When there were no hidden secrets revealed, I poked it with the point of my pencil and was shocked when the pencil sunk into the line.
Worried that I'd done something to my homework, I quickly retracted the pencil, but nothing seemed different.
Did I have to do something with the entire line?
Getting out a blank sheet of paper so I wouldn't accidentally ruin my homework, I looked at it and the neon-red lines that flashed around, giving off a sense of finality. Placing the sheet on my desk, I pushed my pencil into the end of the line at the side of the page, again the point sinking in slightly.
And what is every kid taught to do with lines?
Trace them.
Dragging the pencil along the line, which had frozen as soon as I'd impaled it, I was surprised when the page parted along the path I followed like I was using an exacto-knife and not a pencil.
Weird.
Did that mean I could do this with any of the lines?
I looked around my room for something else. Frowning when I couldn't immediately see anything, I started digging through my desk. I settled on a pack of cards and a bag of marbles, also taking out a ruler since it felt like my pencil wouldn't be sharp/wedged/long enough, as I'd used the very point of the pencil for the sheet of paper.
Standing the pack of cards up on edge, I chose a line that angled from top right to lower left, catching the end of the line with the metal edge of the ruler and then dragging down. It felt like there was almost no resistance, like the proverbial hot knife through butter. Sure enough, the pack fell into halves, a perfectly straight division between all of the cards.
All of the lines pulsed, and suddenly I didn't want to see any more.
Shaking my head as if to clear my mind, I pushed the lines away again, still unnerved by them. They felt like nothing.
They were something that shouldn't exist, but did. They were like cracks and flaws in the world, and looking at them I could see exactly how everything could come apart. Humans… humans weren't supposed to be able to see that.
It was overwhelming, and I noticed I was starting to hyperventilate. There… there was just so much. Too much.
I squeezed my eyes tight, but the lines rose up again, flashing around me in a way that I couldfeel, not needing to see them. It was wrongwrongwrongwrong.
Fuck!
Gulping a breath of air, I tried to slow my rate of breathing down, focusing on the tick-tock of the clock in my room instead of the ever-present cracks in the world that I'd never be able to fully escape.
It felt like eternity before I finally calmed myself, pushing away the bag of marbles, bisected card deck, and paper pieces, reminders that I didn't want, didn't need. What had I been thinking?
I made my slightly-shaky fingers pick up my pencil again, looking at my Latin worksheet and throwing myself fully into conjugation, trying to wash the lines from my mind.
But I knew that it would only ever be a temporary measure at best.
I fucking hated it. Hated that I'd even considered it, but in the end I knew that it was the best option.
I'd asked my dad to get me a pocketknife for protection, and he'd come home one day with one that he said he'd gotten from a friend. He seemed more at ease with my morning runs after that, also having gotten me a small can of pepper-spray.
The truth was I knew that if I ever needed to use the knife, I wouldn't care how much I disliked looking at the lines because I'd be in a bad enough situation that the pepper-spray hadn't worked.
Still, it made me feel safer.
Three weeks into soccer practice, and Alex was already saying she was jealous about what it was doing to me. I hadn't expected it, but I could definitively say that I was in much better shape than I had been. It seemed like my combination of a fast metabolism and good genes from my dad had actually combined to make it so that whatever I ate –combined with the constant exercise– contributed to helping me get stronger, all of it going straight to my muscles.
Now that I was away from Emma and her cohorts, I wasn't constantly dealing with the words they used to tear me down and my self confidence had been growing, if very slowly, helped along by Alex, Emily, and Sarah. And now… now I could actually admit to myself that I looked good. I'd never be a model like Emma, never have that perfect hourglass figure, but I'd started wearing clothes that fit me better at school at Alex's prodding, and actually gotten compliments. Me. Compliments. It felt unreal, like some sort of dream.
But I knew it wasn't because I'd been living it for almost a month.
This was what high school was supposed to be like. Granted, there was the usual teenage drama, but it never seemed to affect my little circle of friends. I was still a reserve on the soccer team, but the coach had told me that she was considering me for being a starting forward, depending how well I did in the first few games. It was exhilarating playing scrimmages both with and against Alex and Sarah, and the endorphin high I got from it was probably no small contributor.
Even if all the happiness was dulled by the nightmares I had and the occasional sleepless nights that I'd learned to solve by going for a walk, I was still happier than I'd been in three years. I had friends, people who cared and liked me for me. I had a life outside of just going to school and then sitting alone at home. I talked to other people, and could actually carry a conversation now.
I had what I'd always wanted.
And damn if I wasn't going to fight to keep it that way.
A/N: Taylor isn't being a complete social snail. How about that.
In response to how far I plan to take this: All the way. I've got plans for Levi, Butcher, S9, plus a few other events that I'll keep as a surprise for now.
Bisection 0.3
January 2011
"Daaaad, I'll be fine. You don't need to come in."
My father gave me an inscrutable look. "Well, if you say so."
I wanted to roll my eyes, but made do with just grabbing my backpack and throwing it over my shoulder while opening the car door and stepping out. "I'll be fine. Promise." He was already going a step further than normal by driving me to school instead of taking the bus, and that was enough for me.
"Alright then. Have a good day, kiddo."
I nodded, closing the door and stepping back away from the car and onto the sidewalk as he put it in first and pulled away from the curb. As soon as he was out of sight, I let out a sigh and turned around, looking at what was going to be my school for the next few years.
It was four stories tall, two long buildings with a short section between them that supposedly made the whole thing look like an 'H' from above.
Hiking my backpack up on my shoulders, I started forward towards the main entrance, a set of four glass and metal double doors. The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside was that it was clean. Clean and bright. Which probably said more about the state of Winslow than Arcadia, but still. It wasn't like I needed anything more to tell me that Winslow was a fucking cesspool. I'd come to that conclusion early enough on my own.
There were helpful signs for the main office with arrows pointing off to the right, and I followed them until I reached what, indeed, appeared to be the administrative offices.
"Uh… Hi?" I greeted half-heartedly, standing at a counter where a woman sat, filling out paperwork.
"One second, sweetie. I'll be right with you."
She finished about fifteen seconds later, giving a signature at the bottom of the papers, and then looked up at me. "Yes? How can I help you?"
"I'm… new. I mean, I'm a transfer. From Winslow." I fidgeted uncomfortably.
The woman smiled warmly. "Name?"
"Taylor. Taylor Hebert. 'H', 'e', 'b', 'e', 'r', 't'," I told her, spelling out my last name so that there wasn't any confusion.
She rolled her seat over to a computer to the side. "Hmmm… You're here in the system, but it says that you weren't expected to transfer in for a few weeks."
"I was in the hospital and got released early, and… I haven't really got anything to do at home."
"Lonely?" she asked knowingly. "Don't worry about it, I understand." She made a few clicks with her mouse and the large copy machine at the back of the room spun up. The woman got out of her chair, walked over to the copier and retrieved a sheet of paper, bringing it to me and setting it down on the counter. "Alright, here's your schedule. Your locker number's up here." She pointed to the top right corner where a three digit number sat. "You'll have to come by the office after school to get your ID made. Now, if you'll wait a moment I'll get someone over here with the same schedule so you won't be lost. Oh, and I'll send out an email to all your teachers to let them know you're here, okay?"
I nodded, and she walked back over to her chair and sat down, picking up the phone and dialing in some number while looking at her screen.
"Mrs. Cressman?" she asked into the receiver. "Yes, I've got a new student here and was wondering if you could send Alex over?" A pause. "Thank you." She replaced the receiver and looked back at me. "If you'll just wait a couple of minutes there'll be someone here to help get you on your feet."
"Thanks," I told her, meaning it. Something like this would have never happened at Winslow. Already I was starting to see the difference.
Maybe this'll actually make up for being in that fucking hellhole.
I took a seat in one of the chairs off to the side, looking around the room while still trying to keep the jagged red lines out of focus. It'd gotten better over the last week, and I was now glad I'd waited until today to go to school, since in the beginning it would sometimes just happen, even progressing to that horrific falling-apart vision before I could shut it down. But I'd gone through all of yesterday without them highlighting themselves and I was hoping there wouldn't be any new surprises today.
I had assumed Alex would be a guy, so when a short blonde girl stepped into the room I didn't pay much attention to her. "Ms. Johnson?"
"Hello, Alex. She's over there," the woman behind the counter said, pointing over at me. I blinked, and looked closer at the new person. She had to be only 5'1", and her skin was bronzed like she spent a lot of time out of school in the sun.
I stood up, trying to hide how nervous I was feeling. "Uh, hey?" I greeted, raising a hand awkwardly.
The girl walked over to me, tilting her head back so she could look me in the eyes. "Wow. You're tall."
I shifted uncomfortably. Being 5'9" isn't exactly normal for a girl (and I had the feeling I wasn't done growing), and I was a bit self-conscious about my height, expecting her to say something about how it was weird.
Instead, a grin broke out on her face. "That's awesome. The basketball team's totally going to try and get you to join. I bet you'd be great in soccer too. You've totally got that whole runner's build thing going on. You'll have to wait until next year if you want to do cross-country."
"I… don't really know, I've never done sports," I admitted. It would have been just another thing for them to use against me, and I'd rather escape home than hang around Winslow more than I had to. I also hadn't exactly been coordinated before, but now I was finding it easier to move around, like I was lighter on my feet, and I hadn't stumbled once since getting out of the hospital. Maybe I'd had an inner-ear imbalance or something that had gotten fixed along with everything else in the hospital.
Alex looked thoughtful. "Well, you've seriously got the build for it. I thought you did track or cross-country just from looking at you. All I can really do is soccer and softball." She pouted. "It sucks being short sometimes."
"Alex. You can pester Taylor about joining the athletic teams all you want later, but you girls should be getting to your first class," Ms. Johnson said, looking over at us.
The short girl winced. "Right. Sorry, Ms. J." Alex spun on her heel, looking at me over her shoulder. "C'mon, Mrs. Cressman's pretty nice, as long as we're not too late there's nothing to worry about." I nodded, easily catching up with her in a few steps in the hallway.
"We can go by your locker now, or after class, …or before lunch." She glanced over at me. "Actually, here, let me see that," she said, holding out her hand to me. I handed over my schedule. "Okay, your locker's in the same hall as mine, so that makes things easier. We'll go after class, 'kay?"
"…Alright," I agreed, taking my schedule back.
I was slightly overwhelmed by how outgoing this girl was, but also found it nice. It was a breath of fresh air, completely different from anything I'd experienced at Winslow. I still felt a bit uncomfortable, paranoid that this was all just an act and suddenly I'd be right back where I'd been before, at the bottom, but I was trying to ignore that as best I could.
"So where're you coming from? You new to Brockton?" she asked as we walked up a flight of stairs to the next floor.
I shook my head. "Winslow."
Alex made a face. "I have a friend from middle school who's there. She says it's terrible. I can't believe half of the stories she tells me."
"They're all true." The girl looked at me incredulously. "It's… bad. Really bad."
She grimaced. "Well that sucks. But at least you're here now, right? You must've been lucky, I hear it's really hard to transfer in because of how full the classes are."
Flashes through my mind. Dark spaces. Walls closing in. The stench of rotting blood.
"…Right. Lucky," I echoed weakly.
Alex didn't seem to notice, though, and she pulled up short outside of a door labeled '216'. "This is it. You ready?"
I nodded, knowing that I couldn't trust my mouth right now.
The shorter girl opened the door, and I was immediately met with the chatter of a full classroom before the bell had rung. Alex walked in nonchalantly with me trailing a few feet behind her, significantly more on edge as I noticed people looking over at me curiously while still in conversation.
A woman who looked to be in her late forties sat at a desk at the front of the room, organizing papers.
"Mrs. Cressman," Alex said, making a beeline towards the front of the desk.
The teacher looked up. "Oh, good. You got back before class started." She looked over to where I was standing. "And you're Taylor?"
I nodded, swallowing nervously. "Yes, ma'am."
"Well, seeing as I'm your first period today, I suppose I'm the one that should say welcome to our school, hm? Now…" She stood up and went over to the podium by the whiteboard, looking at what I guessed was a seating chart. "You can take a seat back by Ryan." She pointed towards a seat at the back of the room next to a boy who had twisted to talk to two other guys on his left. "Oh, and thank you, Alex."
"No problem. I'll see you after class, 'kay Taylor?" she said, turning around and heading to the other side of the room towards an empty seat in the second row.
"You've got the textbook, right? The red one with the torus on it?"
I turned back to the teacher. "Oh, um… yeah."
"Great, well, I won't make you stand up here and introduce yourself or anything embarrassing like that–" I sighed to myself in relief. "–so you can go ahead and take a seat if you'd like," she told me.
I nodded, and made my way over to the desk she'd pointed out, dropping my backpack next to me and sitting down. A girl a row forward and seat to the right looked back at me and opened her mouth like she was going to speak, but the bell went off and she closed it, shrugging apologetically with a half-smile.
I made a resolution right then to try and not push people away and just be normal, to actually get to know other people and maybe make friends. Emma had been part of the old me, but after everything with the locker and the hospital, I felt different, and now I had the chance to start over with a clean slate.
And I wasn't going to let that go to waste.
"Look, all I'm saying is that that woman is out to get me. I swear she glares at me for no reason." One of the girls at the lunch table, Emily, pointed her fork across the table at Alex, who was sitting on my left. "At least she grades fairly," she muttered, stabbing said fork into the bean salad she'd gotten out of her lunchbox.
Alex rolled her eyes. "You're just imagining things."
"No! I swear to God!" Emily insisted.
The girl across from me, Sarah, sighed. Turning to me, she looked exasperated. "So how's your day going Taylor?"
I shrugged awkwardly. "It's… school."
The blonde on my left snorted. "Isn't that the truth."
"I mean… like, I haven't even finished my first day. All of the teachers seem pretty nice so far…" I explained.
She nodded. "Yeah, you've got, what? Cressman, Roberts, Carboni, and…"
"Brunner," Alex completed around a mouthful of pasta.
Sarah nodded. "Right. Brunner. They're all great. What've you got after lunch?"
"Chem and CS. So McCann and Shannon," Alex told her, having swallowed her food.
I'd been surprised someone like Alex, who seemed so interested in sports, was taking CS, but she'd told me she was only doing athletics for fun and actually wanted to go to MIT.
"Wow. Yeah, you two've got great schedules. I'm actually a little jealous," Sarah told us.
Alex smirked, throwing her arm around my shoulder, even though it looked odd as she had to reach up to do it. She did it so quickly I didn't even have a chance to react, but that didn't stop the sudden discomfort I felt from suddenly being in close contact with someone after a year and a half of abuse. "That's right. You should be jealous. Cause we're awesome."
"Pfft," Emily giggled, breaking out into laughter, Sarah also smiling. "You're so full of yourself."
The blonde took her arm off my shoulders, grinning. "You know it."
Emily just laughed, eventually calming down. The redhead turned to me. "So, I bet this pint-sized egoist has already sunk her claws in and talked you into joining every sport team under the sun."
I shook my head, smiling.
"No, I'm still working her over. There's a process, you know," Alex told her.
"Of course there is," the redhead responded flatly.
The blonde nodded sagely. "You have to wear them down gradually. Can't go too fast."
"What is that, dating advice?" Emily asked, laughing.
Sarah looked across at me. "You should just give in. There's no fighting it. Eventually, she'll get you to think it was your idea all along. Better to agree and keep your sanity while you can."
"Yep!" Alex agreed brightly. "And the soccer season just started, so you could totally join as a reserve at the very least." She looked at me, widening her eyes. "Please? Pleeaaaaaseee? We could be soccer buddies. Oh, and Sarah's there too."
The aforementioned girl shook her head, "Of course that's the last thing you say." She looked at me. "If you do join, I'll protect you from her. Promise."
Alex somehow managed to widen her eyes further against all logic, making her look even more pitiful. I couldn't stop myself from laughing at how ridiculous she looked.
"Fine," I agreed impulsively, wondering what the fuck I was doing even while speaking. "I… I'll try it."
The short girl's eyes went back to their normal size as she nodded. "Exceeellllentt. Another one falls to my superior plans," she cackled jokingly.
"'Wear them down' is not exactly a complicated plan," Emily told her.
Alex scoffed. "Psh. What do you know? And it worked, so I'd say I'm right and you're wrong," she said, sticking out her tongue at the redhead.
"Very mature," Sarah deadpanned. "You're the height of sophistication."
The blonde waved her off. "Eh, who wants to be sophisticated anyway? Sounds boring."
I shook my head, smiling at the antics.
I'd needed this. I hadn't even known it, but this… I'd missed this. More than I thought I would have. I still felt slightly awkward, but the three girls I was sitting with were so open. Welcoming. Accepting. My darker thoughts said they could just be leading me on, but there had been no signs of anything like that. And why would they do that anyways? They felt too genuine in the way they'd included me.
Of course, Alex could have just been trying to get me to join the soccer team, but that felt off too. She had no idea if I would join or not, and she'd still invited me to sit with her friends.
For the first time in a long while, I felt happy. Actually happy.
I had good feelings about this.
"What. The. Hell." I gasped breathlessly, staring at Alex while I leaned on my knees, bent over. Sweat was dripping off of my face. I could just feel it.
Holy fuck
Two days after my first day, and after talking to both my dad and the soccer coach, I'd been accepted as a reserve. And this was my first day of practice.
The girl grimaced, trying to catch her breath as well, face red. "Sorry," she panted. "Didn't know we'd be doing suicides today." I regarded her flatly. "Still, you're doing really, really well."
"Alright girls! Two laps and then cool-down!" the woman on the sidelines yelled out. Coach Miller. My new personal demon.
I sighed in gratitude and started over towards the track that circled the football field, which had been turned into a soccer field for the season. Alex lagged behind me, catching up once I was on the rubber surface. "Well, at least you know how bad it can get. Conditioning days are the worst. Everything else is easier, I swear."
I nodded, already feeling my heart begin to slow down and my head start to clear halfway through the first lap. Sarah was a couple meters in front of us, and noticing us she slowed down until she was on my right.
"So. What'd you think?" she asked. I gave a pained smile in response. "Yeah, that's about how I'm feeling right now too. It gets better, trust me."
"That's what Alex said," I told her.
She nodded. "Well, she's not wrong. Although I'm hesitant to agree with anything Alex says on principle."
Alex mock-glared at her. "You're being mean." She looked up at me. "Taylor's nice to me, though. Aren't you Taylor?"
"Uhhh…"
"Just say yes."
"Yes."
Alex looked back at Sarah. "See? Taylor's not mean. Why do you have to be mean?"
The other girl huffed. "I'm hesitant to accept the opinion of someone who's been told what to say."
"Naaaah. It's totally valid."
"If you say so…" Sarah said, obviously just humoring her, but also smiling.
We completed the laps and then joined the rest of the team on the field, going through cool-down stretches that Alex said would keep our muscles from clenching up painfully for the rest of the day and tomorrow. Afterwards we changed out of our "practice uniforms" (really just loose, breathable shorts and a t-shirt the coach had given me the day before when I signed up) and said our goodbyes.
Since the school's buses were only active at the start and end of the school day, I had to make my way to one of the city bus stops, swiping my ID when I got on so I didn't have to pay the fare. The ride was only about twenty minutes, and it left me a couple blocks away from my house, a distance I easily covered quickly.
Dad wasn't home, his car missing from the driveway, so I got out my key and unlocked the door, heading upstairs after locking it behind me. Reaching my room, I let my backpack drop to the floor at the foot of the bed, and collapsed onto the soft surface.
Surprisingly, I didn't feel as bad as I'd expected I would after my first day of practice, but that could be because I'd been exercising just about every day since I'd gotten home last week. Resting for a few minutes, I eventually rolled out of bed and got my homework out, going over to my desk and spreading everything out.
Trig wasn't too hard, History was only a few short-answer questions, and Chem was just stoichiometry. It was when I got to Latin that I got frustrated. I'd never been good at foreign languages, and this one was no different. Plus, Winslow had been slightly behind Arcadia in this class, so I also had to deal with catching up.
Frustrated at my lack of progress, I felt my control slip as my vision suddenly shifted, with bright red lines popping out at me. Annoyed, because I'd been doing so well with no incidents this week at all, I started pushing them to the back of my mind before I realized it wasn't progressing to where anything was falling apart right now.
It was like a half-way point between fully seeing everything (the possibilities, the planes of division) and not focusing on them.
Blinking, I got curious. This was a power. I'd known I was a parahuman ever since the hospital, but it hadn't really sunk in until now. My ability to feel people around me simply was, feeling completely natural, there just wasn't anything to do with it. But the lines... so far all I knew was that I could see these things, but there had to be a reason behind what I was seeing.
Looking down at my worksheet, I focused on one of the lines that jumped around the corner of the page, examining it closer. When there were no hidden secrets revealed, I poked it with the point of my pencil and was shocked when the pencil sunk into the line.
Worried that I'd done something to my homework, I quickly retracted the pencil, but nothing seemed different.
Did I have to do something with the entire line?
Getting out a blank sheet of paper so I wouldn't accidentally ruin my homework, I looked at it and the neon-red lines that flashed around, giving off a sense of finality. Placing the sheet on my desk, I pushed my pencil into the end of the line at the side of the page, again the point sinking in slightly.
And what is every kid taught to do with lines?
Trace them.
Dragging the pencil along the line, which had frozen as soon as I'd impaled it, I was surprised when the page parted along the path I followed like I was using an exacto-knife and not a pencil.
Weird.
Did that mean I could do this with any of the lines?
I looked around my room for something else. Frowning when I couldn't immediately see anything, I started digging through my desk. I settled on a pack of cards and a bag of marbles, also taking out a ruler since it felt like my pencil wouldn't be sharp/wedged/long enough, as I'd used the very point of the pencil for the sheet of paper.
Standing the pack of cards up on edge, I chose a line that angled from top right to lower left, catching the end of the line with the metal edge of the ruler and then dragging down. It felt like there was almost no resistance, like the proverbial hot knife through butter. Sure enough, the pack fell into halves, a perfectly straight division between all of the cards.
All of the lines pulsed, and suddenly I didn't want to see any more.
Shaking my head as if to clear my mind, I pushed the lines away again, still unnerved by them. They felt like nothing.
They were something that shouldn't exist, but did. They were like cracks and flaws in the world, and looking at them I could see exactly how everything could come apart. Humans… humans weren't supposed to be able to see that.
It was overwhelming, and I noticed I was starting to hyperventilate. There… there was just so much. Too much.
I squeezed my eyes tight, but the lines rose up again, flashing around me in a way that I couldfeel, not needing to see them. It was wrongwrongwrongwrong.
Fuck!
Gulping a breath of air, I tried to slow my rate of breathing down, focusing on the tick-tock of the clock in my room instead of the ever-present cracks in the world that I'd never be able to fully escape.
It felt like eternity before I finally calmed myself, pushing away the bag of marbles, bisected card deck, and paper pieces, reminders that I didn't want, didn't need. What had I been thinking?
I made my slightly-shaky fingers pick up my pencil again, looking at my Latin worksheet and throwing myself fully into conjugation, trying to wash the lines from my mind.
But I knew that it would only ever be a temporary measure at best.
I fucking hated it. Hated that I'd even considered it, but in the end I knew that it was the best option.
I'd asked my dad to get me a pocketknife for protection, and he'd come home one day with one that he said he'd gotten from a friend. He seemed more at ease with my morning runs after that, also having gotten me a small can of pepper-spray.
The truth was I knew that if I ever needed to use the knife, I wouldn't care how much I disliked looking at the lines because I'd be in a bad enough situation that the pepper-spray hadn't worked.
Still, it made me feel safer.
Three weeks into soccer practice, and Alex was already saying she was jealous about what it was doing to me. I hadn't expected it, but I could definitively say that I was in much better shape than I had been. It seemed like my combination of a fast metabolism and good genes from my dad had actually combined to make it so that whatever I ate –combined with the constant exercise– contributed to helping me get stronger, all of it going straight to my muscles.
Now that I was away from Emma and her cohorts, I wasn't constantly dealing with the words they used to tear me down and my self confidence had been growing, if very slowly, helped along by Alex, Emily, and Sarah. And now… now I could actually admit to myself that I looked good. I'd never be a model like Emma, never have that perfect hourglass figure, but I'd started wearing clothes that fit me better at school at Alex's prodding, and actually gotten compliments. Me. Compliments. It felt unreal, like some sort of dream.
But I knew it wasn't because I'd been living it for almost a month.
This was what high school was supposed to be like. Granted, there was the usual teenage drama, but it never seemed to affect my little circle of friends. I was still a reserve on the soccer team, but the coach had told me that she was considering me for being a starting forward, depending how well I did in the first few games. It was exhilarating playing scrimmages both with and against Alex and Sarah, and the endorphin high I got from it was probably no small contributor.
Even if all the happiness was dulled by the nightmares I had and the occasional sleepless nights that I'd learned to solve by going for a walk, I was still happier than I'd been in three years. I had friends, people who cared and liked me for me. I had a life outside of just going to school and then sitting alone at home. I talked to other people, and could actually carry a conversation now.
I had what I'd always wanted.
And damn if I wasn't going to fight to keep it that way.
A/N: Taylor isn't being a complete social snail. How about that.
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Dissociation 1.x
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I love how some people are like "Taylor's happy? Uh oh… [prepares for impending apocalypse]". You guys. So silly. What could possibly go wrong?
In all seriousness though, I'm glad people are enjoying the brighter chapters. Like Bl4nk noted, I'm not really going for Warhammer levels of grimdark ("life sucks, the world sucks, and you're never going to be happy before you die horribly at the end of a chainsaw").
I'm going for KnK darkness, which is admittedly pretty dark at points but more supernaturally dark ("omfg he's eating people!"), not characters getting their lives torn apart at every possible moment. I think the worst the Nasuverse ever gets is Matou Sakura. But I value contrast. Contrast is important. Dark content balanced by fluff. If everything is dark, you get inured to it, and boredom is the last thing a writer wants in their story.
Dissociation 1.x
April 2011
Lisa Wilbourn
Lisa massaged her temples, still trying to integrate all of the information she'd gotten in the past few hours as she stared at the laptop screen in front of her. It was full of text, text that relayed what had happened and what she'd seen tonight, as well as her own personal thoughts.
"So… knife girl seemed pretty cool. We gonna ask her about joining?"
The blonde looked up, turning to face Alec who was sitting on the sofa. "No." It would be a terrible idea to even try to involve the girl –Taylor– as a cape.
"No?"
"No," Lisa repeated.
The door to the hideout opened, Grue entering and closing it behind him as he removed his helmet. "No what? All I heard was 'no'."
"Tt over here doesn't think we should invite knife-girl to join the club," Alec complained.
Brian's expression became stony. "I agree." He turned sharply to walk to his room.
"What? Wait. Hey! You can't just say something like that and then leave!" Alec yelled after him. "Why the fuck shouldn't she join?"
The taller boy turned around. "Did you see her? That wasn't some random girl or new cape. She wasn't even upset over the fact that she killed a man tonight. In fact, I'm pretty sure she enjoyed it. And I don't want someone who would rather kill than incapacitate on the team. She could be a serial killer for all we know," he said harshly. "There's something seriously wrong with her."
Was extremely disturbed by casual killing. Thinks Taylor is mentally unstable. Thinks Taylor could be a major risk. Doesn't want Taylor on the team. Thinks that if Taylor joined, Undersiders would be considered a greater threat due to her presence and become targeted by Protectorate.
Lisa looked over at Alec.
Is aware of Taylor's abnormalities. Doesn't care. Finds Taylor intriguing. Is a sociopath. Thinks Taylor might be a sociopath. Wants to understand her.
Great.
Brian continued to his room, not saying another word.
Taylor wasn't a sociopath, as evidenced by the emotions that Lisa had seen her show tonight, but she had been extremely blasé about everything that'd happened. Lisa knew that she hadn't killed anyone before tonight, but if Taylor had to do the same thing tomorrow, she'd do it with absolutely no regrets or feelings other than excitement and satisfaction.
A natural killer.
Alec looked over at Lisa. "C'mon Lisa," he whined.
She just turned back to her computer, causing Alec to groan and splay out on the couch, his head tilted back to stare at the ceiling. "You guys are boring. Fuck all of you."
Honestly she was just as disturbed as Brian was about Taylor, but her feelings were less disgust and more… concern. Taylor had issues, even if it seemed she was well-adjusted in most ways.
It wasn't a big problem now, but if the girl ever lost touch with her humanity, lost the ties that kept her sane and grounded, Lisa's power told her that Taylor could easily become the next Black Kaze.
And Lisa didn't entirely know what to do about it.
"She… she killed Lung."
Tattletale just stared at the tall, disheveled girl on the side of the street in shock. The girl's head was tilted forward, hiding her face under the failing yellow streetlamps that illuminated the scene like something out of a noir film. But that didn't prevent Lisa from reading her body language.
Killed Lung. Did not intend to. Is satisfied with result. Enjoyed it. Would do it again.
"Wait… what?" Regent questioned.
"Killed Lung," Tattletale repeated mechanically, climbing off of Brutus while surveying everything around her: Giant amputated arm in the middle of the road. Slightly sagging asphalt at the same place. Stress fractures in the road at various spots around it.
Christ.
She walked warily over to the dark-haired girl, and then noticed the hand creeping towards the knife embedded up to the hilt in the chest of the giant, scaled man who lay unmoving on his side.
Is extremely dangerous. Thinks we might be enemies. Would fight us. Would seriously hurt us. Could kill us.
How?
Tattletale looked at the stump of Lung's arm where warm blood flowed lazily onto the concrete, pooling in dark puddles.
Negated regeneration factor. Cuts caused permanent damage. Cuts have zero resistance.
She turned back to the girl. For just a moment, the girl's eyes flashed electric-blue, a purple ring around the pupil.
Evaluating us for weaknesses. Is a k̶̴͢il͝lσ̵͝κ̧͘ο̛͡τ̢͞ώ͠͡σ̸́ε̴̨͢ιm̶̛͞e̕͜m͠b̕u̕͟n̴u͠͡h杀́z̛͞u̡ţ͢ǫ̴̨̈t̀͡en̡ق͠ت̧̧ل̛у̀б͜͠ѝ̵т͠ь killer. Sees dɢ̶̴͡1̷̕0̸͢7̴̨̧̛́α̡͏҉͜И̛̛χ͠͞͏̨̧ʏ͘͏̢͟β̷̧̡҉͡β̨̨͝Δ̵̡̢̛͡ʏ͟5̀͟͠4҉͡͠͡͡ʓ̧͜͠Ƶ̵̴̡χ̷͝Ѳ̴̀͠ʌ̸̸̨͞Ƨ̨͝ω̴̕̕ʓ͜͢͢͟͡ʌ̢͟͞͡Ѵ̴̷̡́͢Ʋ͢͟Ɯ–
What.
What the fuck?
She didn't even get a headache from that, her power had just… failed. It was like she'd been listening to a telephone conversation and then suddenly a fax came through on the same line.
Tattletale noticed the girl was still inching towards her knife and raised her hands up. "Hey, easy, we're not going to do anything to you, we just wanted to see what was going on."
The girl halted, and then deflated slightly. Believes me. Doesn't want to fight. Is injured. Would fight if necessary. Could be ready to fight in under a second. Could kill us.
Alright. She could do this. Tattletale wasn't usually the one who would be defusing a situation. Usually she'd be getting under the other person's skin or trying to find weaknesses. …That wasn't what she wanted here. No antagonizing the person who'd just killed one of the strongest capes in the world. That would be bad.
"I'm really sorry about all of this. Nobody else was supposed to get dragged into it," the blonde apologized. She decided that would be a good place to start out.
The girl on the sidewalk looked confused.
Tattletale smirked reflexively, thinking about why Lung had been so pissed and the haul they'd gotten. …And then she remembered that it had gotten this complete innocent involved.
"This was between us and Lung," she explained. "He was aiming for us because we hit one of his casinos. We were trying to figure out how to deal with him, but it looks like we didn't need to bother, huh?" Can't get much more 'dealt with' than 'dead'. "…Thanks for that, by the way."
She looked over at Grue, trying to prompt him to start talking. This was definitely more his thing than hers. C'mon! You're supposed to be the leader for crying out loud!
He must have felt her glaring at him, because he glanced up at the brunette and then went back to staring at Lung's body. "Oh. Yeah, thanks." Is stunned. Is uncomfortable. Is disturbed by dead body. Is disturbed by girl casually sitting next to dead body.
Well, he could at least pretend to act normal.
Tattletale rolled her eyes, turning back to the girl. "Ignore Grue. I'm Tattletale. That's Regent." …Who was playing with the giant amputated arm in the middle of the street. Fantastic. "…And behind me is Bitch. Or Hellhound if you want to be PC," she introduced.
Bitch growled, but other than that was being almost surprisingly subdued compared to how she normally acted around new people. Sees girl as lone alpha. Does not want to challenge authority. Does not want to get in fight. Knows she would lose.
Would wonders never cease. Regent was quiet, Bitch was practically amicable, Grue was speechless, and Tattletale herself was trying to placate someone. It was like a mirror-world from a lousy Aleph B-movie.
Regent had apparently grown tired of prodding the scaled arm, because he walked over to where she was. "So who're you supposed to be? You got a name?"
Tattletale wanted to stare at him. He knew better than to ask an unknown cape not in costume for their name. Either one. And this girl obviously wasn't in any kind of outfit, since she was just wearing street clothes.
Doesn't want to be a cape. Doesn't want to go out as a cape. Didn't intend to get in fight.
Then how did she? The blonde studied the other girl's face. There were dark circles under her eyes, like she hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in a while.
Taking a walk because of nightmares. Nightmares most likely related to trigger event and/or caused by powers.
Tattletale wanted to wince. That was something she had experience with.
The girl in front of them opened her mouth to respond. Is going to give real name. Real name is Taylor Hebert. Oh shit.
Goddammit Alec!
"Of course she doesn't," Tattletale preempted, interrupting Taylor. "Can't you see the way she's dressed?"
"Hey, I was just curious," he said nonchalantly.
The blonde sighed in exasperation, looking back at Taylor and going over the girl's state and cataloging her injuries. Burned hands in fight. Cannot feel with hands. Nerve damage. Twisted ankle. Has extremely high pain tolerance. "Either way, you should probably get those looked at. Go to a hospital or something." Will not regain full use of hands without parahuman intervention. Will be permanently scarr–
Fifteen minutes since start of fight. Lung's heat signature did not go unnoticed. Protectorate aware. Protectorate inbound. Armsmaster arriving in less than five minutes.
"Damn," Tattletale hissed, looking in the direction of the Rig. Great. Just great.
Taylor would be detained. Taylor would be questioned. Taylor would be forced into Wards. Taylor does not want to be a cape. Taylor is extremely unsuited for Wards. Taylor would eventually suffer psychotic break and k̶illk̶͡í̷l̀l̸͘k͡i̧̛ll͏͟ḱ̡il̀͠l̷̶͞k̡̀il̢l̵ḱi̸͡ĺ̴͞l̢̛͞k̴i͏l̸̀͝l̨kill–
Oh fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
She was not going to let that happen if she could help it. It was the least they could do to pay her back for saving them from Lung's wrath.
Just "…Fuck," she cursed. Tattletale looked back at Taylor. "Alright. C'mon. We're not leaving you here to deal with them yourself just for saving us. Will you let us take you somewhere, at least?"
Please say yes, please say yes.
Taylor nodded slowly. "Okay."
The blonde villainess grinned, thankful she hadn't had to resort to anything else. Crossing the gap between them, she reached down for Taylor. "Here, I'm going to help you up, okay?"
Not waiting for an answer, she hoisted the taller girl –for it was obvious as soon as she stood that she was much taller– to her feet, and then also helped her walk when it became apparent that even if she couldn't feel the pain very much, her ankle still wasn't in good shape.
Tattletale's mind spun. What else, what else? Evidence. "Regent, grab her knife. Grue, stop staring at the dead man and help me get her up on Brutus." Because there was no way she was going to be able to lift the hundred-fifty pounds of solid muscle that Taylor seemed to be made of.
Grue finally responded, and he hurried over to the pair of them as Tattletale climbed onto Brutus and helped pull Taylor up by her forearms so that she was sitting in front of the blonde.
"Where're we taking her?"
"Home," the purple-suited girl answered, fully aware of how Grue would feel about her plan, but it was necessary. "It's not like we can take her to her house like this, it'll be easier if we drive her home." She sighed. "And yes, by we I mean you. If it really bothers you that much you can keep your costume on. But we really need to go. Now."
Armsmaster arriving in less than a minute.
God they were cutting it close.
Thankfully, Grue and Regent managed to get on Judas quickly enough, and they left with thirty seconds to spare, Armsmaster's motorcycle just becoming audible as they departed.
It was a short trip to the factory, and when they got there Tattletale slid off first, offering a hand up to Taylor. The girl must have misjudged her ankle injury, because she almost fell off of Brutus with the blonde barely managing to catch her and stand her up.
Taylor glanced back at Tattletale, her face flushed. Is attracted to females. Is bisexual. Finds me attractive. Well that was flattering. The blonde couldn't help the grin that spread across her face, and Taylor turned away. Is embarrassed.
Sometimes her power gave her really redundant information.
Taylor was quickly distracted by the giant dogs returning to their usual size, however, and watched them interact with Bitch until Tattletale grabbed her wrist to get her attention. When the brunette looked back at her, she tugged on her arm. "C'mon, over this way."
Taylor took a step, and then hissed. Oh. Duh. Tattletale helped her after that, guiding the two of them along to the shed that stored their communal car while Grue trailed behind them at a distance.
"Hey, Grue, can you get the door?" The leather-clad boy grudgingly complied, and Tattletale led Taylor to the passenger side, helping her in.
"Alright. A couple things," Tattletale began. "First: you didn't meet us. We were never at the Docks, and you want to hide whatever happened from whoever you're going home to." Father. Mother deceased. Mother died within last decade.
Tattletale barely managed to keep herself from wincing at that, forcing herself to continue instead. "So, two: Stay at home or play sick or something tomorrow so they don't find out about tonight."
And now for the big one. "Third: tomorrow night, Brockton General, six o'clock." Tattletale had Panacea's schedule completely memorized, just in case shit really hit the fan. She already felt bad about Taylor getting involved in all of this, and the girl clearly didn't need permanent scarring or nerve damage on top of everything else. "If you go there then, you'll get treated, okay? Take a cab or something, you can do that, right?" Family is lower-income. Does not have extra spending money. "No, of course not."
Tattletale bit her lip, and unzipped the hidden pocket on the right side of her costume, pulling out a few of the bills she kept there for emergencies. This definitely counted.
Peeling a hundred off, she tucked the rest away. "Here, use this for the fare. Least we can do. Seriously. You don't know just what you saved us from." Tattletale held out the money, and then winced. Hands. Right. She put it in Taylor's hoodie's pocket for her. "Put some ice on your hands and ankle as soon as you get home. In ziplock bags or something. Try and keep it there overnight if you can." That should help with some of the swelling and numb what was immediately painful.
Taylor nodded in acceptance of the advice.
"And… for what it's worth, I'm sorry about getting you into this. Really." Tattletale smiled at her. She didn't believe this completely made up for what the girl had gone through, not in the slightest, but it was a step in the right direction. "But it was nice meeting you, even considering the circumstances."
Grue climbed into the other side of the car, still in his leathers and helmet, and started the car. Closing the passenger side door, Tattletale walked out of the garage and watched as they pulled out, moving onto the road and then out of sight as quickly as possible.
Once they were gone, she let out a sigh.
Taylor Hebert. She'd heard that name before, somewhere.
Hebert. Hebert, Hebert, Hebert.
And then it came to her. Three months ago. The Winslow incident. It'd been quickly covered up, but something had happened and a student –Taylor– had been hospitalized. The upper administration had been found to be criminally negligent towards students and ended up being dismissed. She hadn't seen any information about what had happened exactly, but she also hadn't really been looking.
Tattletale made her way into the factory, peeling off her domino mask once she was inside. Wearily ascending the stairs, she thought of what this night meant for Brockton Bay, and more specifically, for Taylor.
The purple-suited girl sighed, knowing there was no way she could leave the girl alone now that she knew everything about her.
Stupid guilt-complex.
Lisa stared at the screen in front of her, and her nearly finished report for Coil. She'd ultimately decided to completely omit Taylor from it, only explaining that they'd found the body and what it had been like. Only bad things could come of him knowing about her. Plus, keeping her a secret meant she would have someone who might actually be able to help her in her plan to escape Coil's clutches.
She'd tell Brian later, once he wasn't as upset about the whole Taylor vs. Lung situation, but as Coil wasn't even in contact with anyone on their team other than her, the information should be safe. If she could keep this girl from the same fate as her, she would.
Not to mention Lisa had a feeling that Taylor would not react well at all to any attempts to force her to do what she didn't want. She wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone in her way if she had to. How her power worked was also a complete unknown, other than the fact that it had negated Lung's regeneration and allowed her to cut through scales as strong as steel with a cheap knife.
Blinking, Lisa looked up at Regent. "Regent, do you still have her–" He was playing with it, flicking the blade in and out with the little slider on the side almost hypnotically.
She sighed.
They'd need to return that tomorrow. Or maybe… maybe she could do one better.
She started pulling up knife websites. If Taylor's power relied on a knife and it was her only method of self-defense, she definitely should have something better than that dinky thing.
And then she'd start planning how to really help the girl out.
Colin Wallis
Colin Wallis' night started out uneventful. It was a Sunday, and Sundays were typically patrol nights for him, barring anything unusual that came up with the Protectorate or Wards
As usual, he was on his motorcycle, following the streets that were part of tonight's route. It was one of his first projects over twenty years ago, actually, and unlike his halberds, which he had a number of for different circumstances, it was special to him.
"Console to Armsmaster." Assault's voice came through the earpiece in his helmet, a direct encrypted link to the Rig that he'd worked on himself as a side-project a few years ago.
"Yes?"
"Heyyyy Armsy." Armsmaster suppressed the eye-roll that rose at Ethan's usage of his favorite nickname for Colin. "The computers here just registered a heat pattern that your program said is Lung."
"That's… odd. There hasn't been much activity from him or the ABB lately. Do you have a location?"
"Do I have a location?" Assault scoffed. "'Course I have a location. You should know, you wrote this thing. It's in the South Docks. Here's a marker." A dot appeared on the HUD in his visor, and the software he'd worked into it drafted a navigation route to the coordinates.
"Anything else?"
"Mmm… Not that I can see. Just give me a call if it gets too serious and you need backup or something. This is Lung we're talking about, after all. Console out."
Hopefully he wouldn't. He'd been working on a fast-acting sedative that was extremely potent, specifically concocted for countering class-A regenerators like Lung. As long as the gang-leader wasn't too far gone, it should knock him out cold. The problem was administering it, especially if Lung had gotten to the point of full-body scales. If that was the case he'd have to go for mucus membranes like the inside of his mouth or his eye, which would be …difficult.
Never let it be said he wasn't up for a challenge, though.
Even going as fast as he could and following the path his nav system had set, it took him thirteen minutes to get to the place Assault had tagged. Once he was only a few blocks away, he popped open the compartment that held his alternate halberds and swapped out the one on his back for the one with the sedative. It had a couple other tricks for someone like Lung as well, but those would be even less effective if the gang leader was at the point of being fully scaled, primarily because of how hot his fire could get at that point.
Pulling up to the location, he propped his bike up and surveyed the scene: flickering orange streetlights, graffiti-stained walls of abandoned buildings, cracked cement sidewalks.
But no Lung.
Getting off of the bike, he moved forward cautiously, holding his halberd in front of him and keeping an eye out for any sudden movements or the glow of Lung's pyrokinesis.
However, there didn't appear to be anything, and everything was dead quiet. Extremely unusual for Lung, considering the amount of damage he caused and how loud any fights involving him typically were.
Armsmaster kept moving forward, and it was only around twenty feet that he finally noticed something out of place. There was an odd lump in the middle of the road, and it was only at ten feet away that he could finally make out the object.
An arm. A large arm with metal-like scales. Blood stained the area around the stump, speckled spots around it in a splatter pattern that showed it had been severed cleanly where it was. A depression was next to it in the asphalt, looking recently melted.
He looked around for any other signs. Anything that could shed light on what had happened, because at this point it seemed like the fight was already over and done with, though he still kept his weapon ready just in case.
It was twenty feet to his right that he found something, something he hadn't expected at all. Haphazardly splayed out on the sidewalk, lay Lung himself.
His grip tightened on the halberd, and he warily moved closer towards the prone figure.
Within five feet, everything was visible
The thick pool of blood spreading over concrete. The stump of an arm that hadn't even begun to heal. A deep gash on his right leg. And perhaps most importantly, a knife wound in the man's chest, a trail drying blood immediately drawing attention to it.
Still on edge, he moved to Lung's neck, placing two fingers over his jugular and feeling for a pulse to confirm what all of his equipment was telling him.
There was none.
Lung was dead.
Lung was dead.
Lung was dead.
Fuck.
Armsmaster hastily looked around. The person who'd killed him could still be in the area. But his proximity and infrared heat sensors informed him there was nobody, only himself and Lung. Who was dead.
The blue-suited man lifted a hand to his earpiece and pressed the button that would connect him to the Rig.
"Armsmaster to Console."
"Console here," Assault's voice came through. "'Sup Armsy? You get the big bad dragon?"
For a moment he struggled with what to say, and then decided the simple facts were probably best. "Lung is dead."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What?"
"Lung's dead," Armsmaster repeated, understanding Assault's disbelief. Hell, he was still trying to believe it.
"You can't drop a bomb like that without some details! What happened? You do it?"
"…No. It appears to have been done by an unknown," he said, eyeing the strange wounds on Lung's body.
"Huh. Well, that's not concerning at all. Alright, I've alerted the PRT and shot off a memo to Piggot since she'd probably be interested in this. You got anything else?" the former villain asked.
"No," Armsmaster reported, looking around and double checking, but he still saw nothing out of the usual other than Lung.
"Okay, seeya." The line went dead, leaving him in silence.
Folding his halberd and attaching it to his back, he crouched down, examining the body in front of him.
Infrared told him it was still warm, and he'd only been alerted to Lung using his pyrokinesis fifteen minutes ago, which corroborated with everything else he could see. The stump of Lung's right arm was a clean cut, almost disconcertingly clean, and running a quick analysis with his visor showed that it was a perfect planar division. If he hadn't known any better, he'd have sworn that this cut had been performed by the experimental blade he was developing with Dragon.
But that didn't explain the lack of regeneration. The cut on Lung's leg was through the scales, and was a cut the man should have healed from within seconds, but he hadn't. And Lung had been known to replace missing limbs before, hell, he'd seen it happen, but that meant that the arm's stump should have begun to show signs of cell growth, which it didn't.
And even stranger still was the stab wound on Lung's chest. It would have only punctured the man's lung, another wound that should have healed near-immediately with Lung having reached the point of becoming scaled.
The sound of engines and sirens came from behind him, and Armsmaster stood, turning towards the source.
A set of large vans appeared, their headlights temporarily affecting his vision before his visor adjusted to compensate for the brightness. They stopped fifteen feet away, the rear doors opening and PRT officers spilling out. Unexpectedly, Miss Militia also stepped out of the first truck along with the company.
Armsmaster walked towards her, nodding in greeting. "Miss Militia."
"Morning, Armsmaster," she returned. "I was at the PRT building when the notice came in. You're the one who found him?"
"Mmm," he hummed in affirmation, looking back towards the body.
"Any idea of what did it?"
He shook his head. "There's a number of knife wounds, but nothing that should have been fatal to Lung."
The woman walked towards the body, looking it over. "That's …odd. And it almost looks like he wasn't healing," she noted.
"I came to the same conclusion."
Miss Militia nodded absently and pulled out the green combat knife at her back, the weapon shifting fluidly between different knife shapes while she stared at the various cuts across the dead man's body. The weapon eventually stopped changing when it became a rather thin blade that could only be five inches long at most, attached to a rectangular handle.
"The weapon was either a fixed-hilt knife, or more likely, considering how prolific and easy to acquire they are, an out the front switchblade." Miss Militia frowned, her knife shifting back to its initial shape which she replaced in its holster. "In either case, the blade would barely have been long enough to cause this," she said while pointing to the arm-stump, "Did you see any knives in the area?"
"I didn't, but I'll admit I wasn't looking for one. It seems unlikely that whoever did this would have left the weapon behind, though," he said.
Miss Militia nodded. "Well, perhaps the MEs will be able to tell us something more." She glanced back at the PRT personnel who were standing behind them at a distance. "We probably should let them get to their business."
Armsmaster stepped away from the scene, allowing the other men and women forward to do their jobs.
Both he and Miss Militia remained in the area for the entirety of the clean-up, the woman dealing with a nosy reporter that had somehow found out about the event within twenty minutes. Armsmaster frowned in annoyance as he thought about the most likely reason: that over-confident blonde teenage villain who thought she was smarter than everyone else. Tattletale.
How she'd have found out he had no idea, but it was almost certainly her, even if nobody on the Undersiders had been involved in this. As much as he was loathe to admit it, killing didn't fit their MO at all. They were small time criminals, almost exclusively involved in robberies, and they intentionally avoided harming others when possible, only incapacitating at most.
The rest of the night passed quickly, as everyone was involved in the after-event field report and there was little time for much else as plans had to be considered and fallout to be prepared for. The fall of the leader of the ABB was not about to go unnoticed, and it would have the gang in turmoil. The problem was there was no guessing the actions of Oni Lee nor the bomb-tinker Bakuda that they'd heard rumors about.
In the end, all they could do was wait and see.
Colin stared at his halberd on the workbench in front of him, but for once he wasn't actually working on it.
"Colin?"
A voice came out of one of the screens at his left, the avatar of a young woman appearing.
"Morning, Dragon."
She smiled slightly. "How are you?"
Colin sighed, resting his elbows on the metal surface in front of him and rubbing his eyes. "At a bit of a loss," he admitted. Dragon was one of the few he felt truly comfortable with and could relax around.
"I read the report. It's quite the mystery, isn't it?" she asked, sounding slightly excited.
"Yeah," he agreed. The lack of information they'd gotten from the crime scene was frustrating, but there wasn't really anything that could be done about it. He turned to the computer screen. "It makes no sense."
"Well, there have been stranger things known to happen," Dragon said. "But I can understand how this might be worrying."
"The cuts look they could have been caused by a monomolecular blade. Like the nanothorn project," he said, turning around in the swivel-chair and looking across the room where the blade they'd been iterating on sat.
"Yes," Dragon agreed, and Colin could have sworn her eyes were twinkling in excitement. "Isn't that interesting though? If someone managed to achieve what we've been working on, but sooner? A tinker with a specialty in bladed weaponry, perhaps."
Interesting might not have been the first word he'd have used to describe it, but he couldn't deny that he was curious. New tinkers were rare, and one that could achieve an effect like the nano-thorn blade could potentially be very helpful, all things considered.
"That still doesn't explain the lack of Lung's regeneration," he countered.
"Hmm." Dragon looked thoughtful. "What if they specialized in fields? Force fields, area-of-effect, etc.?" she mused. "If that were the case, they could have created a field that suppressed cell division, and then used a cutting tool with a force-field edge like Narwhal's. He could have bled out, then."
Colin had to admit that it was the best explanation he'd heard so far tonight, and accounted for how the man had actually died, unlike the other leading theory.
"The PRT think that it might have been a Striker/Shaker, one that could have triggered directly in response to Lung himself. A field that stopped his regeneration, and a power that lets them the cut through any biological material. But that wouldn't explain the cause of death. If it was just his healing being negated and not his growth, he shouldn't have bled out because he'd be constantly replenishing his blood cells."
Dragon nodded. "I saw that in the notes, it was how I came up with my theory. But until we find more evidence, that's really all they are."
Colin sighed, and the woman on the screen looked at him fondly.
"You should get some sleep. How many hours have you been awake?"
"…thirty-eight," he mumbled, admitting the fact evasively.
Dragon looked at him in exasperation. "Go. Get some sleep, Colin. You shouldn't do this to yourself. Maybe it'll help give you a fresh perspective."
For once, Colin just nodded, taking a deep breath and beginning to turn off the many monitors around him.
"Have a good night," Dragon said, her avatar winking out a few moments later.
"…Good night, Dragon," he said quietly to the empty screen, turning it off a moment later.
He got up from his seat and walked to the door, shutting off the lights and then heading down the halls in the direction of the Rig's garage so he could go home.
"I know it's early and you've all got school in less than an hour, but considering the circumstances I thought it would be best if you all were informed, instead of having to find out second-hand." Armsmaster took a breath and pointed to the board at the front of the room which had a map of Brockton with a single dot on it. "At approximately 12:18 AM, Lung was found dead, on a sidewalk on East Cypress." He looked at his audience, evaluating their reactions.
They all appeared to be stunned.
"Lung bit it?" Dennis was the first to recover. "Holy shit."
But it was Dean who managed to gather his wits enough to ask the question Armsmaster had been waiting for. "How?"
"It looks like he was in a fight with another parahuman and died from knife wounds he acquired in the fight. He couldn't heal his injuries, but they still shouldn't have been able to kill him, only incapacitate him at most."
Unless Dragon's theory is true.
"Could it be some kind of power-negation? A Trump ability?" Carlos thought out loud.
"No. Lung was still able to grow and manifest scales. The PRT thinks it could be an anti-healing power or effect of some sort, but there aren't any capes we know about in the area with that kind of ability."
"…But if the person triggered right then, they could have gotten whatever powers they needed to survive," the boy reasoned, and Colin was a little surprised that he had come to the conclusion so quickly.
"That's one of the leading theories, yes."
"So what, now we've got to deal with Jack Slash 2.0?" Dennis asked. "Well, I'm not going to be volunteering for patrols anytime soon. I'll be happy with the console, thank you very much."
Dean glanced over at the younger boy. "That's not funny, Dennis."
"No, seriously," Dennis defended. "Out of the blue, some new guy appears, and the first thing he does is kill Lung? I don't care what you say, that's not an accident, that's a statement. They're telling us they can take out capes like Lung easily. I don't want to go up against someone like that on any day."
Colin admitted that Dennis had a point. It had come up during the emergency Protectorate meeting the night prior. "In any case, we've figured out that the person responsible is between five-eight and five-ten based on the injuries Lung sustained. They've been labeled 'Switchblade', and have a tentative rating of Striker 4."
"Four? Shouldn't it be higher?" Dean questioned. Personally, Colin agreed. But the PRT was hesitant to label threats higher than a four –which would require parahuman assistance– without evidence that it was actually warranted.
"It looks like Switchblade requires a tool, but there's really no knowledge of how their power works other than it allows them to cut biological material perfectly," Colin told them. "And if you somehow come in contact with them, for God's sake, do not approach. You are to immediately retreat and notify whoever's on console.
"The biggest problem Lung's death presents is the extremely high likelihood of a gang war breaking out from the sudden power vacuum. If that occurs, you are to either come here or go to the PRT building, whichever is closer, and not attempt to fight. Is this understood?"
Everyone in the room nodded.
"Alright, good. Dismissed."
Claire Hanazawa
She couldn't believe it. She couldn't fucking believe it. She'd only been in this gang for two and a half weeks and already their fucking leader was dead.
Fucking Lung was dead.
She wouldn't have even considered it true except for the fact that one of her moles in the PRT had confirmed it, the entire organization in an uproar over the event.
And now all of the sycophantic assholes in the ABB were scrambling over themselves like some snotty kid had come and kicked over an anthill.
Pathetic.
Of course the first person they turned to was her. They had no idea how to manage themselves, and Lung had always been the one at the top, a cape. So, like the idiots that they were, they came to 'Bakuda' to save them.
Oni Lee was completely useless. He had less emotional capacity than a nematode. All he could do was act as a front-line combatant, not a competent leader, which is what they needed.
Claire wasn't about to let this opportunity pass. With Lung gone, she could finally have a chance to show what she could do. To show Brockton why she was to be feared and respected, and that she was now the leader of the largest gang in the Bay.
…The biggest problem was that the other gangs were practically foaming at the mouth to destroy her own, and that was not something she could allow to go unanswered. They wanted a fight?
She'd give them a fucking fight.
They wouldn't even know what hit them.
Bakuda's specialty may have been explosives, but that was about the only limitation. As long as an explosion was somehow involved, she could build things that would make Kaiser shit himself in fear.
And that was exactly what she was doing.
Time-locks, singularities, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, pain-receptor agonist, molecular decohesion, absolute-zero freezing, acoustic sonics, plasma, EMP, bombs that exploded into personal force-fields, she could do it all and more.
And with Oni-Lee to deliver them, there was an effectively infinite supply as long as she built at least one of each.
She needed to make an initial statement, too, of course. Let Brockton Bay know who was the new leader of the ABB. Wouldn't be good to do all of this without anybody knowing who had done it.
The other thing she needed to do was draw out the asshole who killed her former boss and return the favor. Couldn't have people thinking they had a chance going against her.
That plan she'd let stew for a few days. She wanted to come up with something… special for them. Maybe something that replicated Gray Boy's punishment. But she'd figure it out.
But for now, she needed to show her poor, ignorant underlings exactly why they should fear her. Which was why she was currently knuckle-deep in some poor bastard's cranium. Cool thing about brain surgery: no nerves. No need for pesky anesthesia that could accidentally end up killing whoever she was working on.
Picking up the small pill-like explosive device from the stainless-steel tray at her side, Bakuda pushed it into the guy's skull, so that it was sitting right between the two hemispheres of his brain. Taking the coin-size piece of bone she'd cut out, she put some medical glue around the edge and stuck it back where it had come from, replacing the small flap of skin and gluing that down as well.
Moving around to the front of the man she'd been working on, she looked at his wide, fearful eyes and smirked. Unclasping the ball-gag in his mouth, Claire put a single finger against his lips, keeping him silent. "Do you understand your situation?"
The man nodded quickly, as much as he could with the head brace in place, which was barely anything, but it was enough. "Good." He looked like he was about to piss himself and pass out. Patting his cheek, Claire smiled. "Don't worry. If everything goes according to plan, nothing'll happen to you and your friends, wakaru?" He nodded again, causing her smile to become a grin. "Excellent. Just remember: no funny business or pan!" She mimed an explosion with her hands, and then started undoing the straps that held him in place.
He stood up slowly, and began shakily walking towards the door until she pushed him forward to hurry him along.
She had a hundred other assholes to do this to, and no time to waste.
And then she'd get to show the world her art.
Amy Dallon
Standing in her darkened room, Amy sighed, laboriously removing each part of her costume and hanging it up in her closet until she was down to her underwear. Reaching around her back to unclasp her bra, she threw it in the hamper and got out a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt, putting those on and then climbing into bed.
Staring at the white stucco ceiling didn't do anything for her, but it gave herself something to focus on since there was no way she was about to fall asleep.
The day had started weird and just gotten stranger.
First, there was the news that Lung was dead. Lung. Dead. The man who had personally driven off the entire Brockton Bay Protectorate. And it was only after Victoria had asked Carol about what happened that they found out he'd been stabbed. Stabbed in the lung (talk about poetic irony), a wound that should have been non-fatal to most people, and especially to the Dragon of Kyūshu.
It made no sense. Brandish had told them that the PRT was thinking it was a new trigger, someone who had triggered in response to Lung himself, gaining a power that allowed them to perfectly counteract Lung's abilities. It made sense, and the cape had been labeled a Striker based on the damage to Lung's body.
At school, it was all anybody could talk about. Speculation as to who could have done it, how powerful they were, what they were going to do now. Like if they were going to take over the ABB. Amy had snorted at the last one. But then, considering it seriously, she realized it could very well happen, and wouldn't be all that unexpected.
The news had even come up in the Parahuman studies class –which she was only taking because Vicky was too– and her history class. The first had recognized what had happened and teacher seemed resigned to the discussion, and they had talked about the morality of capes and why there were much fewer cape deaths in cape vs cape fights than there were collateral casualties. The second had used it as a tool to talk about major power plays, how little things could have huge effects, with a particular example being the death of Franz Ferdinand acting as the catalyst that pushed an already-strained Europe over the edge and into World War I.
Honestly, Amy hadn't really cared. Gang wars happened. It may be unexpected and unusual that the cape leader had been outright killed, but gangs had collapsed from fallen leadership before. It wasn't anything new.
And so the school day had ended uneventfully, and Amy had prepared herself for –yet another– visit to one of the local hospitals in the evening. Tonight had been Brockton General, and it was the same thing as every other visit she'd done. Smile mechanically at the doctors who thank her for doing such miraculous work, and don't show how tired she was of the continually monotonous actions: "do I have permission to heal you?", heal, move to the next, "do I have permission to heal you?", heal, next, ad infinitum.
The life-threatening cases had been first as always, and she couldn't even remember what she'd actually dealt with today, other than it seemed longer than usual. And then she'd moved to the non-life threatening cases, going through them just as robotically as she'd dealt with the ICU, plastering a fake smile whenever she got the inevitable "thank you" or something to that equivalent. And then she'd gotten to the last person.
It was a tall, lanky girl with curly brown hair who'd sat in dim lighting of the corner of the room. As with the previous patients, this one had started off as just yet another unremarkable healing. At least, until she'd actually touched the girl's hand.
"Do I have permission to heal you?" Amy asked the girl flatly.
It was ridiculous that she had to ask it in the first place. The people wouldn't even be here unless they wanted to be healed. But she had to in order to prevent any lawsuits from happening like that one comatose asshole she'd saved from critical organ failure due to alcohol poisoning who'd then turned around and sued New Wave because he apparently had wanted to die there.
"Uh, yeah, sure," the girl replied.
"Hand, please."
The girl reached out, and Amy could see she'd been badly burned. She idly noted that the girl didn't have a wristband, so she wasn't an inpatient, and the fact that she was wearing street clothes only further cemented the idea. As soon as the girl's damaged skin touched Amy's, her awareness exploded, every minute detail and process available.
The first thing she noticed was that the girl was healthy. Extremely healthy. No signs of previously broken bones, with the lung capacity and muscle density that you'd expect from a person who'd been playing sports since they were a kid. The girl had to be seriously active normally.
Clearing her thoughts, Amy pulled away from the big picture and looked for the damage she'd seen externally. She noted that most of the girl's nerves weren't functioning properly beyond either of her wrists, and her ankle was slightly swollen from an overextended set of ligaments.
Amy focused further on the hands, witnessing the constant cell division, the lymphocyte reactions handling any possible pathogens, the keratin structure buildup of the beginnings of scar tissue, the layering of new epithelial cells that were trying and failing to fully replace the ones that had been burned so severely. Everything pointed to these burns being nearly a week old at this point.
Why the hell hadn't this girl gone to the ICU? She would have expected with the way this girl had to take care of her body she would have immediately gone to see someone. But what she was seeing told her a different story: that this girl had waited until now to have them dealt with.
The healer looked up at the brunette's face, pinning her where she sat. "These burns are days old, why didn't you come in before now?"
The girl looked confused. "I… only got them last night."
No. No way. The girl had to be lying, and Amy didn't know why. Was she trying to hide something? Amy pushed the thoughts out of mind. If the girl wanted to hide something, let her. It didn't affect her or anything.
"Whatever. Here, they're done. Your ankle too." Even as she spoke, she manipulated the various molecular constructs and proteins, altering cells and repairing damaged tissue, turning keratin into proper skin. A slight pulse of activity traveled up neural paths when she reconnected the sensory and motor nerves.
Done, Amy looked up at the girl. And felt her heart nearly stop.
Instead of the dark chocolate brown they had been before, the girl's eyes were a luminescent, shockingly-bright cerulean with cyan-colored fibers woven within. A violet ring sat in the blue, circling just around the pupil and standing out violently from the rest of the iride. Wisps of color from the ring –purple and magenta and fuchsia and every shade in between– seemed to flow into the pitch-black pupil at the center, sucked into a void that felt like it could swallow you whole, never to be seen again.
The image was gone in a blink, brown eyes back as if there had never been anything else.
"You're–" Amy barely managed to cut herself off before she could finish with a parahuman, heart pounding with the thought that she'd almost outed a completely unknown cape in a public setting, with no idea of how they'd react.
She hadn't looked at the girl's brain before by habit, an action that was specifically so that situations like this wouldn't happen. But now that there was evidence, her suspicions were confirmed almost without thinking, the fully-developed Gemma nestled in the girl's brain becoming visible to her.
Something tugged at her memories, and Amy would have sworn she was experiencing déjà vu except for the fact that she knew it wasn't. There was something there, she just couldn't remember it, but it felt important.
Concentrating on the girl before her, she weighed the risks and decided that if the girl tried anything she could simply knock her out through the contact they still had.
"Do I know you?"
The girl blinked. "Uh, well, I'm in your history class," she answered innocently.
Amy looked her over again, and knew she wasn't lying. She could see it, and it felt like the girl's name was just on the tip of her tongue, out of reach. Something with a 't'. Tracy? Tabitha? Tara? But the healer also knew that it wasn't the connection she'd been looking for. There was something else. Something more, but the girl wasn't saying anything else.
"I see," Amy responded diplomatically, without any emotion.
She dropped the girl's hand, and was about to step away when the brunette opened her mouth again. "Um. Do you mind if I ask you something?"
Yes, Amy wanted to say. She wanted to get out of here. Away from this unknown new cape. Up to the roof where Victoria would pick her up and she'd get to enjoy the few minutes of being held in her sister's arms before she had to deal with being home.
But instead she looked back at the girl in annoyed resignation. "Fine."
"Why…" the brunette seemed to struggle with her words. "Why do you do this if you don't like it?"
Amy's thoughts halted. How did she know?
She managed to fool everybody, even Victoria, so how did she know that? And even for that matter, what business was it of hers? "What does it matter to you?" she questioned pointedly.
The girl cocked her head, as if trying to figure out the answer herself. "I… I don't know? I just… I guess I wonder why someone like you would do this if you didn't want to. I mean, I get that there's a lot of people you can help, but… why? If you don't like it, why?"
Amy snorted. Like it was that easy. This girl was seriously naïve. "What, so I should just give it up? Ignore everybody that wants to be healed by 'Panacea'? Fat chance."
"But, couldn't you like, do it less? Take a break or something? Just… I don't know, have time to recharge? I'm an introvert, and I know it'd be exhausting for me if I had to be around people all the time and live up to their expectations."
What, did the girl think she hadn't thought of that? Breaks didn't help. Every patient wore away at her, every day scraping away layer after layer until she felt like she'd be shaved down to the bone. At first it may have been rewarding, but now she saw how greedy people really were. She wasn't a person to them. She was just another cape. Another tool that was the solution to all of their problems. 'Panacea'. The universal cure.
Amy's eyes narrowed on the tall girl in front of her. "Don't act like you know anything about me." The other girl opened her mouth, but Amy was done with this conversation, and she cut her off before she could start. "Now, do you need anything else or can I go home now?" she asked harshly.
A shake of the head was the only response.
"Fine. Then I'll see you later, I suppose." And I'll find out how I know you.
"Good night," Amy ended with finality, turning around and walking out of the door, only a quiet "Yeah. 'Night" drifting behind her.
The girl's words wouldn't leave her mind. "If you don't like it, why?" They circled ceaselessly, and Amy was forced to admit to herself that she might have been harsher than she could have been. The girl had treated her like an actual human, not just a healing machine. She'd seen her as a person who had limits, and that was something Amy was unused to, and hadn't been prepared for.
The only people she saw as really doing that were Victoria (beautiful, perfect Victoria) and the one or two acquaintances at school. And even then, those were more Vicky's friends than hers. Before she'd thought of Victoria as being enough for her, that she was all she would need. But now she was wondering. Even normal people needed outlets, right? And… as much as she hated to admit it, she couldn't share everything with Victoria. Vicky had other friends, other people in her life.
Amy's thoughts immediately flew to Dean, and she pushed them out of her mind before the pain and depression and jealousy could set in, trying to ignore how her Victoria would never feel that way. Never return her feelings. Never want Amy like Amy wanted her. Wrestling with her spiraling control, she forced her thoughts back to the girl from the hospital.
Right before she'd cut the girl off at the end, reviewing the events she got a sense that the girl was about to ask if they could be friends. Amy wanted to scoff at the girl's sheer nerve and impulsiveness, but for some reason, the idea didn't seem all that disagreeable. In the heat of the moment she would have doubtlessly refused, but now that she actually considered it, she… she might accept if the girl asked again.
The loneliness when Victoria wasn't around could become crushing, especially in the house under Carol's constantly disapproving frown. The only escape Amy had was her healing, but even that had become something she resented, tainted by both Brandish's expectations along with the responsibility that she hated she felt. She knew that it wasn't her responsibility to heal every person in Brockton, but that didn't change Carol's unrealistic expectations nor the conscience that had been conditioned into her, constantly nagging and eating away at her.
"If you don't like it, why?"
The question that always came back around. Why the fuck was she doing this? Because of the overbearing "responsibility" she had, and the unrealistic hope that maybe, someday, she could get Carol to look at her the same way she looked at Victoria. But that did nothing for her.
"Can't you just… take a break?"
Hah. She wished. She wished she could. If only it were that easy. If only she could say "no". If only she could put her foot down and tell everyone how she really felt. But she couldn't, because she didn't want to bear the look in Victoria's eyes or the sheer disapproval she knew would come from Carol.
But this girl had been about to offer, hadn't she? About to offer to be something like that, someone who Amy could tell how she really felt, dump all of her feelings on to and rant all day.
It was unnerving how this one tall, lanky girl could get under her skin like this. But just like Amy had gotten irritated at her for presuming she knew about what she was going through, who was she to know what the other girl had gone through and dealt with? She was a parahuman, and first generation triggers could be horrific, terrible things.
Amy shivered, thinking about how she'd discovered what the other girl was.
Those eyes. Those hideously stunning eyes that felt like they could look into the very depths of your soul. It was like the image had been burned into Amy's mind. What would give someone a power like that? It had to be some kind of Thinker ability. They were the sign that this girl was a cape, but she'd never heard of any capes with eyes like that, and there hadn't been any recent transfers. It was completely possible that she simply didn't want to use her power publicly, that she didn't like it similar to how Amy was coming to resent her own. And that had a greater sense of rightness than the possibility that the girl was trying to hide her abilities for some ulterior motive.
The question became what should she do now? What should she do tomorrow? They'd be in a class together tomorrow, so it would be possible to learn the girl's name, which might in turn remind her of that annoying thing she couldn't seem to remember.
Amy decided she wouldn't actively seek the girl out, but if the brunette came to her she wouldn't be as harsh. Honey and vinegar and all that.
After all, what was the saying? 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer'?
Potential, Amy amended. Potential enemy.
But even that felt wrong, and she tried to ignore the feeling. She'd figure out who and what this girl was, why she felt she could remember her.
And then she'd go from there.
A/N: Negotiator kinda derped there with the Root.
In all seriousness though, I'm glad people are enjoying the brighter chapters. Like Bl4nk noted, I'm not really going for Warhammer levels of grimdark ("life sucks, the world sucks, and you're never going to be happy before you die horribly at the end of a chainsaw").
I'm going for KnK darkness, which is admittedly pretty dark at points but more supernaturally dark ("omfg he's eating people!"), not characters getting their lives torn apart at every possible moment. I think the worst the Nasuverse ever gets is Matou Sakura. But I value contrast. Contrast is important. Dark content balanced by fluff. If everything is dark, you get inured to it, and boredom is the last thing a writer wants in their story.
Dissociation 1.x
April 2011
Lisa Wilbourn
Lisa massaged her temples, still trying to integrate all of the information she'd gotten in the past few hours as she stared at the laptop screen in front of her. It was full of text, text that relayed what had happened and what she'd seen tonight, as well as her own personal thoughts.
"So… knife girl seemed pretty cool. We gonna ask her about joining?"
The blonde looked up, turning to face Alec who was sitting on the sofa. "No." It would be a terrible idea to even try to involve the girl –Taylor– as a cape.
"No?"
"No," Lisa repeated.
The door to the hideout opened, Grue entering and closing it behind him as he removed his helmet. "No what? All I heard was 'no'."
"Tt over here doesn't think we should invite knife-girl to join the club," Alec complained.
Brian's expression became stony. "I agree." He turned sharply to walk to his room.
"What? Wait. Hey! You can't just say something like that and then leave!" Alec yelled after him. "Why the fuck shouldn't she join?"
The taller boy turned around. "Did you see her? That wasn't some random girl or new cape. She wasn't even upset over the fact that she killed a man tonight. In fact, I'm pretty sure she enjoyed it. And I don't want someone who would rather kill than incapacitate on the team. She could be a serial killer for all we know," he said harshly. "There's something seriously wrong with her."
Was extremely disturbed by casual killing. Thinks Taylor is mentally unstable. Thinks Taylor could be a major risk. Doesn't want Taylor on the team. Thinks that if Taylor joined, Undersiders would be considered a greater threat due to her presence and become targeted by Protectorate.
Lisa looked over at Alec.
Is aware of Taylor's abnormalities. Doesn't care. Finds Taylor intriguing. Is a sociopath. Thinks Taylor might be a sociopath. Wants to understand her.
Great.
Brian continued to his room, not saying another word.
Taylor wasn't a sociopath, as evidenced by the emotions that Lisa had seen her show tonight, but she had been extremely blasé about everything that'd happened. Lisa knew that she hadn't killed anyone before tonight, but if Taylor had to do the same thing tomorrow, she'd do it with absolutely no regrets or feelings other than excitement and satisfaction.
A natural killer.
Alec looked over at Lisa. "C'mon Lisa," he whined.
She just turned back to her computer, causing Alec to groan and splay out on the couch, his head tilted back to stare at the ceiling. "You guys are boring. Fuck all of you."
Honestly she was just as disturbed as Brian was about Taylor, but her feelings were less disgust and more… concern. Taylor had issues, even if it seemed she was well-adjusted in most ways.
It wasn't a big problem now, but if the girl ever lost touch with her humanity, lost the ties that kept her sane and grounded, Lisa's power told her that Taylor could easily become the next Black Kaze.
And Lisa didn't entirely know what to do about it.
"She… she killed Lung."
Tattletale just stared at the tall, disheveled girl on the side of the street in shock. The girl's head was tilted forward, hiding her face under the failing yellow streetlamps that illuminated the scene like something out of a noir film. But that didn't prevent Lisa from reading her body language.
Killed Lung. Did not intend to. Is satisfied with result. Enjoyed it. Would do it again.
"Wait… what?" Regent questioned.
"Killed Lung," Tattletale repeated mechanically, climbing off of Brutus while surveying everything around her: Giant amputated arm in the middle of the road. Slightly sagging asphalt at the same place. Stress fractures in the road at various spots around it.
Christ.
She walked warily over to the dark-haired girl, and then noticed the hand creeping towards the knife embedded up to the hilt in the chest of the giant, scaled man who lay unmoving on his side.
Is extremely dangerous. Thinks we might be enemies. Would fight us. Would seriously hurt us. Could kill us.
How?
Tattletale looked at the stump of Lung's arm where warm blood flowed lazily onto the concrete, pooling in dark puddles.
Negated regeneration factor. Cuts caused permanent damage. Cuts have zero resistance.
She turned back to the girl. For just a moment, the girl's eyes flashed electric-blue, a purple ring around the pupil.
Evaluating us for weaknesses. Is a k̶̴͢il͝lσ̵͝κ̧͘ο̛͡τ̢͞ώ͠͡σ̸́ε̴̨͢ιm̶̛͞e̕͜m͠b̕u̕͟n̴u͠͡h杀́z̛͞u̡ţ͢ǫ̴̨̈t̀͡en̡ق͠ت̧̧ل̛у̀б͜͠ѝ̵т͠ь killer. Sees dɢ̶̴͡1̷̕0̸͢7̴̨̧̛́α̡͏҉͜И̛̛χ͠͞͏̨̧ʏ͘͏̢͟β̷̧̡҉͡β̨̨͝Δ̵̡̢̛͡ʏ͟5̀͟͠4҉͡͠͡͡ʓ̧͜͠Ƶ̵̴̡χ̷͝Ѳ̴̀͠ʌ̸̸̨͞Ƨ̨͝ω̴̕̕ʓ͜͢͢͟͡ʌ̢͟͞͡Ѵ̴̷̡́͢Ʋ͢͟Ɯ–
What.
What the fuck?
She didn't even get a headache from that, her power had just… failed. It was like she'd been listening to a telephone conversation and then suddenly a fax came through on the same line.
Tattletale noticed the girl was still inching towards her knife and raised her hands up. "Hey, easy, we're not going to do anything to you, we just wanted to see what was going on."
The girl halted, and then deflated slightly. Believes me. Doesn't want to fight. Is injured. Would fight if necessary. Could be ready to fight in under a second. Could kill us.
Alright. She could do this. Tattletale wasn't usually the one who would be defusing a situation. Usually she'd be getting under the other person's skin or trying to find weaknesses. …That wasn't what she wanted here. No antagonizing the person who'd just killed one of the strongest capes in the world. That would be bad.
"I'm really sorry about all of this. Nobody else was supposed to get dragged into it," the blonde apologized. She decided that would be a good place to start out.
The girl on the sidewalk looked confused.
Tattletale smirked reflexively, thinking about why Lung had been so pissed and the haul they'd gotten. …And then she remembered that it had gotten this complete innocent involved.
"This was between us and Lung," she explained. "He was aiming for us because we hit one of his casinos. We were trying to figure out how to deal with him, but it looks like we didn't need to bother, huh?" Can't get much more 'dealt with' than 'dead'. "…Thanks for that, by the way."
She looked over at Grue, trying to prompt him to start talking. This was definitely more his thing than hers. C'mon! You're supposed to be the leader for crying out loud!
He must have felt her glaring at him, because he glanced up at the brunette and then went back to staring at Lung's body. "Oh. Yeah, thanks." Is stunned. Is uncomfortable. Is disturbed by dead body. Is disturbed by girl casually sitting next to dead body.
Well, he could at least pretend to act normal.
Tattletale rolled her eyes, turning back to the girl. "Ignore Grue. I'm Tattletale. That's Regent." …Who was playing with the giant amputated arm in the middle of the street. Fantastic. "…And behind me is Bitch. Or Hellhound if you want to be PC," she introduced.
Bitch growled, but other than that was being almost surprisingly subdued compared to how she normally acted around new people. Sees girl as lone alpha. Does not want to challenge authority. Does not want to get in fight. Knows she would lose.
Would wonders never cease. Regent was quiet, Bitch was practically amicable, Grue was speechless, and Tattletale herself was trying to placate someone. It was like a mirror-world from a lousy Aleph B-movie.
Regent had apparently grown tired of prodding the scaled arm, because he walked over to where she was. "So who're you supposed to be? You got a name?"
Tattletale wanted to stare at him. He knew better than to ask an unknown cape not in costume for their name. Either one. And this girl obviously wasn't in any kind of outfit, since she was just wearing street clothes.
Doesn't want to be a cape. Doesn't want to go out as a cape. Didn't intend to get in fight.
Then how did she? The blonde studied the other girl's face. There were dark circles under her eyes, like she hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in a while.
Taking a walk because of nightmares. Nightmares most likely related to trigger event and/or caused by powers.
Tattletale wanted to wince. That was something she had experience with.
The girl in front of them opened her mouth to respond. Is going to give real name. Real name is Taylor Hebert. Oh shit.
Goddammit Alec!
"Of course she doesn't," Tattletale preempted, interrupting Taylor. "Can't you see the way she's dressed?"
"Hey, I was just curious," he said nonchalantly.
The blonde sighed in exasperation, looking back at Taylor and going over the girl's state and cataloging her injuries. Burned hands in fight. Cannot feel with hands. Nerve damage. Twisted ankle. Has extremely high pain tolerance. "Either way, you should probably get those looked at. Go to a hospital or something." Will not regain full use of hands without parahuman intervention. Will be permanently scarr–
Fifteen minutes since start of fight. Lung's heat signature did not go unnoticed. Protectorate aware. Protectorate inbound. Armsmaster arriving in less than five minutes.
"Damn," Tattletale hissed, looking in the direction of the Rig. Great. Just great.
Taylor would be detained. Taylor would be questioned. Taylor would be forced into Wards. Taylor does not want to be a cape. Taylor is extremely unsuited for Wards. Taylor would eventually suffer psychotic break and k̶illk̶͡í̷l̀l̸͘k͡i̧̛ll͏͟ḱ̡il̀͠l̷̶͞k̡̀il̢l̵ḱi̸͡ĺ̴͞l̢̛͞k̴i͏l̸̀͝l̨kill–
Oh fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
She was not going to let that happen if she could help it. It was the least they could do to pay her back for saving them from Lung's wrath.
Just "…Fuck," she cursed. Tattletale looked back at Taylor. "Alright. C'mon. We're not leaving you here to deal with them yourself just for saving us. Will you let us take you somewhere, at least?"
Please say yes, please say yes.
Taylor nodded slowly. "Okay."
The blonde villainess grinned, thankful she hadn't had to resort to anything else. Crossing the gap between them, she reached down for Taylor. "Here, I'm going to help you up, okay?"
Not waiting for an answer, she hoisted the taller girl –for it was obvious as soon as she stood that she was much taller– to her feet, and then also helped her walk when it became apparent that even if she couldn't feel the pain very much, her ankle still wasn't in good shape.
Tattletale's mind spun. What else, what else? Evidence. "Regent, grab her knife. Grue, stop staring at the dead man and help me get her up on Brutus." Because there was no way she was going to be able to lift the hundred-fifty pounds of solid muscle that Taylor seemed to be made of.
Grue finally responded, and he hurried over to the pair of them as Tattletale climbed onto Brutus and helped pull Taylor up by her forearms so that she was sitting in front of the blonde.
"Where're we taking her?"
"Home," the purple-suited girl answered, fully aware of how Grue would feel about her plan, but it was necessary. "It's not like we can take her to her house like this, it'll be easier if we drive her home." She sighed. "And yes, by we I mean you. If it really bothers you that much you can keep your costume on. But we really need to go. Now."
Armsmaster arriving in less than a minute.
God they were cutting it close.
Thankfully, Grue and Regent managed to get on Judas quickly enough, and they left with thirty seconds to spare, Armsmaster's motorcycle just becoming audible as they departed.
It was a short trip to the factory, and when they got there Tattletale slid off first, offering a hand up to Taylor. The girl must have misjudged her ankle injury, because she almost fell off of Brutus with the blonde barely managing to catch her and stand her up.
Taylor glanced back at Tattletale, her face flushed. Is attracted to females. Is bisexual. Finds me attractive. Well that was flattering. The blonde couldn't help the grin that spread across her face, and Taylor turned away. Is embarrassed.
Sometimes her power gave her really redundant information.
Taylor was quickly distracted by the giant dogs returning to their usual size, however, and watched them interact with Bitch until Tattletale grabbed her wrist to get her attention. When the brunette looked back at her, she tugged on her arm. "C'mon, over this way."
Taylor took a step, and then hissed. Oh. Duh. Tattletale helped her after that, guiding the two of them along to the shed that stored their communal car while Grue trailed behind them at a distance.
"Hey, Grue, can you get the door?" The leather-clad boy grudgingly complied, and Tattletale led Taylor to the passenger side, helping her in.
"Alright. A couple things," Tattletale began. "First: you didn't meet us. We were never at the Docks, and you want to hide whatever happened from whoever you're going home to." Father. Mother deceased. Mother died within last decade.
Tattletale barely managed to keep herself from wincing at that, forcing herself to continue instead. "So, two: Stay at home or play sick or something tomorrow so they don't find out about tonight."
And now for the big one. "Third: tomorrow night, Brockton General, six o'clock." Tattletale had Panacea's schedule completely memorized, just in case shit really hit the fan. She already felt bad about Taylor getting involved in all of this, and the girl clearly didn't need permanent scarring or nerve damage on top of everything else. "If you go there then, you'll get treated, okay? Take a cab or something, you can do that, right?" Family is lower-income. Does not have extra spending money. "No, of course not."
Tattletale bit her lip, and unzipped the hidden pocket on the right side of her costume, pulling out a few of the bills she kept there for emergencies. This definitely counted.
Peeling a hundred off, she tucked the rest away. "Here, use this for the fare. Least we can do. Seriously. You don't know just what you saved us from." Tattletale held out the money, and then winced. Hands. Right. She put it in Taylor's hoodie's pocket for her. "Put some ice on your hands and ankle as soon as you get home. In ziplock bags or something. Try and keep it there overnight if you can." That should help with some of the swelling and numb what was immediately painful.
Taylor nodded in acceptance of the advice.
"And… for what it's worth, I'm sorry about getting you into this. Really." Tattletale smiled at her. She didn't believe this completely made up for what the girl had gone through, not in the slightest, but it was a step in the right direction. "But it was nice meeting you, even considering the circumstances."
Grue climbed into the other side of the car, still in his leathers and helmet, and started the car. Closing the passenger side door, Tattletale walked out of the garage and watched as they pulled out, moving onto the road and then out of sight as quickly as possible.
Once they were gone, she let out a sigh.
Taylor Hebert. She'd heard that name before, somewhere.
Hebert. Hebert, Hebert, Hebert.
And then it came to her. Three months ago. The Winslow incident. It'd been quickly covered up, but something had happened and a student –Taylor– had been hospitalized. The upper administration had been found to be criminally negligent towards students and ended up being dismissed. She hadn't seen any information about what had happened exactly, but she also hadn't really been looking.
Tattletale made her way into the factory, peeling off her domino mask once she was inside. Wearily ascending the stairs, she thought of what this night meant for Brockton Bay, and more specifically, for Taylor.
The purple-suited girl sighed, knowing there was no way she could leave the girl alone now that she knew everything about her.
Stupid guilt-complex.
Lisa stared at the screen in front of her, and her nearly finished report for Coil. She'd ultimately decided to completely omit Taylor from it, only explaining that they'd found the body and what it had been like. Only bad things could come of him knowing about her. Plus, keeping her a secret meant she would have someone who might actually be able to help her in her plan to escape Coil's clutches.
She'd tell Brian later, once he wasn't as upset about the whole Taylor vs. Lung situation, but as Coil wasn't even in contact with anyone on their team other than her, the information should be safe. If she could keep this girl from the same fate as her, she would.
Not to mention Lisa had a feeling that Taylor would not react well at all to any attempts to force her to do what she didn't want. She wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone in her way if she had to. How her power worked was also a complete unknown, other than the fact that it had negated Lung's regeneration and allowed her to cut through scales as strong as steel with a cheap knife.
Blinking, Lisa looked up at Regent. "Regent, do you still have her–" He was playing with it, flicking the blade in and out with the little slider on the side almost hypnotically.
She sighed.
They'd need to return that tomorrow. Or maybe… maybe she could do one better.
She started pulling up knife websites. If Taylor's power relied on a knife and it was her only method of self-defense, she definitely should have something better than that dinky thing.
And then she'd start planning how to really help the girl out.
Colin Wallis
Colin Wallis' night started out uneventful. It was a Sunday, and Sundays were typically patrol nights for him, barring anything unusual that came up with the Protectorate or Wards
As usual, he was on his motorcycle, following the streets that were part of tonight's route. It was one of his first projects over twenty years ago, actually, and unlike his halberds, which he had a number of for different circumstances, it was special to him.
"Console to Armsmaster." Assault's voice came through the earpiece in his helmet, a direct encrypted link to the Rig that he'd worked on himself as a side-project a few years ago.
"Yes?"
"Heyyyy Armsy." Armsmaster suppressed the eye-roll that rose at Ethan's usage of his favorite nickname for Colin. "The computers here just registered a heat pattern that your program said is Lung."
"That's… odd. There hasn't been much activity from him or the ABB lately. Do you have a location?"
"Do I have a location?" Assault scoffed. "'Course I have a location. You should know, you wrote this thing. It's in the South Docks. Here's a marker." A dot appeared on the HUD in his visor, and the software he'd worked into it drafted a navigation route to the coordinates.
"Anything else?"
"Mmm… Not that I can see. Just give me a call if it gets too serious and you need backup or something. This is Lung we're talking about, after all. Console out."
Hopefully he wouldn't. He'd been working on a fast-acting sedative that was extremely potent, specifically concocted for countering class-A regenerators like Lung. As long as the gang-leader wasn't too far gone, it should knock him out cold. The problem was administering it, especially if Lung had gotten to the point of full-body scales. If that was the case he'd have to go for mucus membranes like the inside of his mouth or his eye, which would be …difficult.
Never let it be said he wasn't up for a challenge, though.
Even going as fast as he could and following the path his nav system had set, it took him thirteen minutes to get to the place Assault had tagged. Once he was only a few blocks away, he popped open the compartment that held his alternate halberds and swapped out the one on his back for the one with the sedative. It had a couple other tricks for someone like Lung as well, but those would be even less effective if the gang leader was at the point of being fully scaled, primarily because of how hot his fire could get at that point.
Pulling up to the location, he propped his bike up and surveyed the scene: flickering orange streetlights, graffiti-stained walls of abandoned buildings, cracked cement sidewalks.
But no Lung.
Getting off of the bike, he moved forward cautiously, holding his halberd in front of him and keeping an eye out for any sudden movements or the glow of Lung's pyrokinesis.
However, there didn't appear to be anything, and everything was dead quiet. Extremely unusual for Lung, considering the amount of damage he caused and how loud any fights involving him typically were.
Armsmaster kept moving forward, and it was only around twenty feet that he finally noticed something out of place. There was an odd lump in the middle of the road, and it was only at ten feet away that he could finally make out the object.
An arm. A large arm with metal-like scales. Blood stained the area around the stump, speckled spots around it in a splatter pattern that showed it had been severed cleanly where it was. A depression was next to it in the asphalt, looking recently melted.
He looked around for any other signs. Anything that could shed light on what had happened, because at this point it seemed like the fight was already over and done with, though he still kept his weapon ready just in case.
It was twenty feet to his right that he found something, something he hadn't expected at all. Haphazardly splayed out on the sidewalk, lay Lung himself.
His grip tightened on the halberd, and he warily moved closer towards the prone figure.
Within five feet, everything was visible
The thick pool of blood spreading over concrete. The stump of an arm that hadn't even begun to heal. A deep gash on his right leg. And perhaps most importantly, a knife wound in the man's chest, a trail drying blood immediately drawing attention to it.
Still on edge, he moved to Lung's neck, placing two fingers over his jugular and feeling for a pulse to confirm what all of his equipment was telling him.
There was none.
Lung was dead.
Lung was dead.
Lung was dead.
Fuck.
Armsmaster hastily looked around. The person who'd killed him could still be in the area. But his proximity and infrared heat sensors informed him there was nobody, only himself and Lung. Who was dead.
The blue-suited man lifted a hand to his earpiece and pressed the button that would connect him to the Rig.
"Armsmaster to Console."
"Console here," Assault's voice came through. "'Sup Armsy? You get the big bad dragon?"
For a moment he struggled with what to say, and then decided the simple facts were probably best. "Lung is dead."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What?"
"Lung's dead," Armsmaster repeated, understanding Assault's disbelief. Hell, he was still trying to believe it.
"You can't drop a bomb like that without some details! What happened? You do it?"
"…No. It appears to have been done by an unknown," he said, eyeing the strange wounds on Lung's body.
"Huh. Well, that's not concerning at all. Alright, I've alerted the PRT and shot off a memo to Piggot since she'd probably be interested in this. You got anything else?" the former villain asked.
"No," Armsmaster reported, looking around and double checking, but he still saw nothing out of the usual other than Lung.
"Okay, seeya." The line went dead, leaving him in silence.
Folding his halberd and attaching it to his back, he crouched down, examining the body in front of him.
Infrared told him it was still warm, and he'd only been alerted to Lung using his pyrokinesis fifteen minutes ago, which corroborated with everything else he could see. The stump of Lung's right arm was a clean cut, almost disconcertingly clean, and running a quick analysis with his visor showed that it was a perfect planar division. If he hadn't known any better, he'd have sworn that this cut had been performed by the experimental blade he was developing with Dragon.
But that didn't explain the lack of regeneration. The cut on Lung's leg was through the scales, and was a cut the man should have healed from within seconds, but he hadn't. And Lung had been known to replace missing limbs before, hell, he'd seen it happen, but that meant that the arm's stump should have begun to show signs of cell growth, which it didn't.
And even stranger still was the stab wound on Lung's chest. It would have only punctured the man's lung, another wound that should have healed near-immediately with Lung having reached the point of becoming scaled.
The sound of engines and sirens came from behind him, and Armsmaster stood, turning towards the source.
A set of large vans appeared, their headlights temporarily affecting his vision before his visor adjusted to compensate for the brightness. They stopped fifteen feet away, the rear doors opening and PRT officers spilling out. Unexpectedly, Miss Militia also stepped out of the first truck along with the company.
Armsmaster walked towards her, nodding in greeting. "Miss Militia."
"Morning, Armsmaster," she returned. "I was at the PRT building when the notice came in. You're the one who found him?"
"Mmm," he hummed in affirmation, looking back towards the body.
"Any idea of what did it?"
He shook his head. "There's a number of knife wounds, but nothing that should have been fatal to Lung."
The woman walked towards the body, looking it over. "That's …odd. And it almost looks like he wasn't healing," she noted.
"I came to the same conclusion."
Miss Militia nodded absently and pulled out the green combat knife at her back, the weapon shifting fluidly between different knife shapes while she stared at the various cuts across the dead man's body. The weapon eventually stopped changing when it became a rather thin blade that could only be five inches long at most, attached to a rectangular handle.
"The weapon was either a fixed-hilt knife, or more likely, considering how prolific and easy to acquire they are, an out the front switchblade." Miss Militia frowned, her knife shifting back to its initial shape which she replaced in its holster. "In either case, the blade would barely have been long enough to cause this," she said while pointing to the arm-stump, "Did you see any knives in the area?"
"I didn't, but I'll admit I wasn't looking for one. It seems unlikely that whoever did this would have left the weapon behind, though," he said.
Miss Militia nodded. "Well, perhaps the MEs will be able to tell us something more." She glanced back at the PRT personnel who were standing behind them at a distance. "We probably should let them get to their business."
Armsmaster stepped away from the scene, allowing the other men and women forward to do their jobs.
Both he and Miss Militia remained in the area for the entirety of the clean-up, the woman dealing with a nosy reporter that had somehow found out about the event within twenty minutes. Armsmaster frowned in annoyance as he thought about the most likely reason: that over-confident blonde teenage villain who thought she was smarter than everyone else. Tattletale.
How she'd have found out he had no idea, but it was almost certainly her, even if nobody on the Undersiders had been involved in this. As much as he was loathe to admit it, killing didn't fit their MO at all. They were small time criminals, almost exclusively involved in robberies, and they intentionally avoided harming others when possible, only incapacitating at most.
The rest of the night passed quickly, as everyone was involved in the after-event field report and there was little time for much else as plans had to be considered and fallout to be prepared for. The fall of the leader of the ABB was not about to go unnoticed, and it would have the gang in turmoil. The problem was there was no guessing the actions of Oni Lee nor the bomb-tinker Bakuda that they'd heard rumors about.
In the end, all they could do was wait and see.
Colin stared at his halberd on the workbench in front of him, but for once he wasn't actually working on it.
"Colin?"
A voice came out of one of the screens at his left, the avatar of a young woman appearing.
"Morning, Dragon."
She smiled slightly. "How are you?"
Colin sighed, resting his elbows on the metal surface in front of him and rubbing his eyes. "At a bit of a loss," he admitted. Dragon was one of the few he felt truly comfortable with and could relax around.
"I read the report. It's quite the mystery, isn't it?" she asked, sounding slightly excited.
"Yeah," he agreed. The lack of information they'd gotten from the crime scene was frustrating, but there wasn't really anything that could be done about it. He turned to the computer screen. "It makes no sense."
"Well, there have been stranger things known to happen," Dragon said. "But I can understand how this might be worrying."
"The cuts look they could have been caused by a monomolecular blade. Like the nanothorn project," he said, turning around in the swivel-chair and looking across the room where the blade they'd been iterating on sat.
"Yes," Dragon agreed, and Colin could have sworn her eyes were twinkling in excitement. "Isn't that interesting though? If someone managed to achieve what we've been working on, but sooner? A tinker with a specialty in bladed weaponry, perhaps."
Interesting might not have been the first word he'd have used to describe it, but he couldn't deny that he was curious. New tinkers were rare, and one that could achieve an effect like the nano-thorn blade could potentially be very helpful, all things considered.
"That still doesn't explain the lack of Lung's regeneration," he countered.
"Hmm." Dragon looked thoughtful. "What if they specialized in fields? Force fields, area-of-effect, etc.?" she mused. "If that were the case, they could have created a field that suppressed cell division, and then used a cutting tool with a force-field edge like Narwhal's. He could have bled out, then."
Colin had to admit that it was the best explanation he'd heard so far tonight, and accounted for how the man had actually died, unlike the other leading theory.
"The PRT think that it might have been a Striker/Shaker, one that could have triggered directly in response to Lung himself. A field that stopped his regeneration, and a power that lets them the cut through any biological material. But that wouldn't explain the cause of death. If it was just his healing being negated and not his growth, he shouldn't have bled out because he'd be constantly replenishing his blood cells."
Dragon nodded. "I saw that in the notes, it was how I came up with my theory. But until we find more evidence, that's really all they are."
Colin sighed, and the woman on the screen looked at him fondly.
"You should get some sleep. How many hours have you been awake?"
"…thirty-eight," he mumbled, admitting the fact evasively.
Dragon looked at him in exasperation. "Go. Get some sleep, Colin. You shouldn't do this to yourself. Maybe it'll help give you a fresh perspective."
For once, Colin just nodded, taking a deep breath and beginning to turn off the many monitors around him.
"Have a good night," Dragon said, her avatar winking out a few moments later.
"…Good night, Dragon," he said quietly to the empty screen, turning it off a moment later.
He got up from his seat and walked to the door, shutting off the lights and then heading down the halls in the direction of the Rig's garage so he could go home.
"I know it's early and you've all got school in less than an hour, but considering the circumstances I thought it would be best if you all were informed, instead of having to find out second-hand." Armsmaster took a breath and pointed to the board at the front of the room which had a map of Brockton with a single dot on it. "At approximately 12:18 AM, Lung was found dead, on a sidewalk on East Cypress." He looked at his audience, evaluating their reactions.
They all appeared to be stunned.
"Lung bit it?" Dennis was the first to recover. "Holy shit."
But it was Dean who managed to gather his wits enough to ask the question Armsmaster had been waiting for. "How?"
"It looks like he was in a fight with another parahuman and died from knife wounds he acquired in the fight. He couldn't heal his injuries, but they still shouldn't have been able to kill him, only incapacitate him at most."
Unless Dragon's theory is true.
"Could it be some kind of power-negation? A Trump ability?" Carlos thought out loud.
"No. Lung was still able to grow and manifest scales. The PRT thinks it could be an anti-healing power or effect of some sort, but there aren't any capes we know about in the area with that kind of ability."
"…But if the person triggered right then, they could have gotten whatever powers they needed to survive," the boy reasoned, and Colin was a little surprised that he had come to the conclusion so quickly.
"That's one of the leading theories, yes."
"So what, now we've got to deal with Jack Slash 2.0?" Dennis asked. "Well, I'm not going to be volunteering for patrols anytime soon. I'll be happy with the console, thank you very much."
Dean glanced over at the younger boy. "That's not funny, Dennis."
"No, seriously," Dennis defended. "Out of the blue, some new guy appears, and the first thing he does is kill Lung? I don't care what you say, that's not an accident, that's a statement. They're telling us they can take out capes like Lung easily. I don't want to go up against someone like that on any day."
Colin admitted that Dennis had a point. It had come up during the emergency Protectorate meeting the night prior. "In any case, we've figured out that the person responsible is between five-eight and five-ten based on the injuries Lung sustained. They've been labeled 'Switchblade', and have a tentative rating of Striker 4."
"Four? Shouldn't it be higher?" Dean questioned. Personally, Colin agreed. But the PRT was hesitant to label threats higher than a four –which would require parahuman assistance– without evidence that it was actually warranted.
"It looks like Switchblade requires a tool, but there's really no knowledge of how their power works other than it allows them to cut biological material perfectly," Colin told them. "And if you somehow come in contact with them, for God's sake, do not approach. You are to immediately retreat and notify whoever's on console.
"The biggest problem Lung's death presents is the extremely high likelihood of a gang war breaking out from the sudden power vacuum. If that occurs, you are to either come here or go to the PRT building, whichever is closer, and not attempt to fight. Is this understood?"
Everyone in the room nodded.
"Alright, good. Dismissed."
Claire Hanazawa
She couldn't believe it. She couldn't fucking believe it. She'd only been in this gang for two and a half weeks and already their fucking leader was dead.
Fucking Lung was dead.
She wouldn't have even considered it true except for the fact that one of her moles in the PRT had confirmed it, the entire organization in an uproar over the event.
And now all of the sycophantic assholes in the ABB were scrambling over themselves like some snotty kid had come and kicked over an anthill.
Pathetic.
Of course the first person they turned to was her. They had no idea how to manage themselves, and Lung had always been the one at the top, a cape. So, like the idiots that they were, they came to 'Bakuda' to save them.
Oni Lee was completely useless. He had less emotional capacity than a nematode. All he could do was act as a front-line combatant, not a competent leader, which is what they needed.
Claire wasn't about to let this opportunity pass. With Lung gone, she could finally have a chance to show what she could do. To show Brockton why she was to be feared and respected, and that she was now the leader of the largest gang in the Bay.
…The biggest problem was that the other gangs were practically foaming at the mouth to destroy her own, and that was not something she could allow to go unanswered. They wanted a fight?
She'd give them a fucking fight.
They wouldn't even know what hit them.
Bakuda's specialty may have been explosives, but that was about the only limitation. As long as an explosion was somehow involved, she could build things that would make Kaiser shit himself in fear.
And that was exactly what she was doing.
Time-locks, singularities, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, pain-receptor agonist, molecular decohesion, absolute-zero freezing, acoustic sonics, plasma, EMP, bombs that exploded into personal force-fields, she could do it all and more.
And with Oni-Lee to deliver them, there was an effectively infinite supply as long as she built at least one of each.
She needed to make an initial statement, too, of course. Let Brockton Bay know who was the new leader of the ABB. Wouldn't be good to do all of this without anybody knowing who had done it.
The other thing she needed to do was draw out the asshole who killed her former boss and return the favor. Couldn't have people thinking they had a chance going against her.
That plan she'd let stew for a few days. She wanted to come up with something… special for them. Maybe something that replicated Gray Boy's punishment. But she'd figure it out.
But for now, she needed to show her poor, ignorant underlings exactly why they should fear her. Which was why she was currently knuckle-deep in some poor bastard's cranium. Cool thing about brain surgery: no nerves. No need for pesky anesthesia that could accidentally end up killing whoever she was working on.
Picking up the small pill-like explosive device from the stainless-steel tray at her side, Bakuda pushed it into the guy's skull, so that it was sitting right between the two hemispheres of his brain. Taking the coin-size piece of bone she'd cut out, she put some medical glue around the edge and stuck it back where it had come from, replacing the small flap of skin and gluing that down as well.
Moving around to the front of the man she'd been working on, she looked at his wide, fearful eyes and smirked. Unclasping the ball-gag in his mouth, Claire put a single finger against his lips, keeping him silent. "Do you understand your situation?"
The man nodded quickly, as much as he could with the head brace in place, which was barely anything, but it was enough. "Good." He looked like he was about to piss himself and pass out. Patting his cheek, Claire smiled. "Don't worry. If everything goes according to plan, nothing'll happen to you and your friends, wakaru?" He nodded again, causing her smile to become a grin. "Excellent. Just remember: no funny business or pan!" She mimed an explosion with her hands, and then started undoing the straps that held him in place.
He stood up slowly, and began shakily walking towards the door until she pushed him forward to hurry him along.
She had a hundred other assholes to do this to, and no time to waste.
And then she'd get to show the world her art.
Amy Dallon
Standing in her darkened room, Amy sighed, laboriously removing each part of her costume and hanging it up in her closet until she was down to her underwear. Reaching around her back to unclasp her bra, she threw it in the hamper and got out a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt, putting those on and then climbing into bed.
Staring at the white stucco ceiling didn't do anything for her, but it gave herself something to focus on since there was no way she was about to fall asleep.
The day had started weird and just gotten stranger.
First, there was the news that Lung was dead. Lung. Dead. The man who had personally driven off the entire Brockton Bay Protectorate. And it was only after Victoria had asked Carol about what happened that they found out he'd been stabbed. Stabbed in the lung (talk about poetic irony), a wound that should have been non-fatal to most people, and especially to the Dragon of Kyūshu.
It made no sense. Brandish had told them that the PRT was thinking it was a new trigger, someone who had triggered in response to Lung himself, gaining a power that allowed them to perfectly counteract Lung's abilities. It made sense, and the cape had been labeled a Striker based on the damage to Lung's body.
At school, it was all anybody could talk about. Speculation as to who could have done it, how powerful they were, what they were going to do now. Like if they were going to take over the ABB. Amy had snorted at the last one. But then, considering it seriously, she realized it could very well happen, and wouldn't be all that unexpected.
The news had even come up in the Parahuman studies class –which she was only taking because Vicky was too– and her history class. The first had recognized what had happened and teacher seemed resigned to the discussion, and they had talked about the morality of capes and why there were much fewer cape deaths in cape vs cape fights than there were collateral casualties. The second had used it as a tool to talk about major power plays, how little things could have huge effects, with a particular example being the death of Franz Ferdinand acting as the catalyst that pushed an already-strained Europe over the edge and into World War I.
Honestly, Amy hadn't really cared. Gang wars happened. It may be unexpected and unusual that the cape leader had been outright killed, but gangs had collapsed from fallen leadership before. It wasn't anything new.
And so the school day had ended uneventfully, and Amy had prepared herself for –yet another– visit to one of the local hospitals in the evening. Tonight had been Brockton General, and it was the same thing as every other visit she'd done. Smile mechanically at the doctors who thank her for doing such miraculous work, and don't show how tired she was of the continually monotonous actions: "do I have permission to heal you?", heal, move to the next, "do I have permission to heal you?", heal, next, ad infinitum.
The life-threatening cases had been first as always, and she couldn't even remember what she'd actually dealt with today, other than it seemed longer than usual. And then she'd moved to the non-life threatening cases, going through them just as robotically as she'd dealt with the ICU, plastering a fake smile whenever she got the inevitable "thank you" or something to that equivalent. And then she'd gotten to the last person.
It was a tall, lanky girl with curly brown hair who'd sat in dim lighting of the corner of the room. As with the previous patients, this one had started off as just yet another unremarkable healing. At least, until she'd actually touched the girl's hand.
"Do I have permission to heal you?" Amy asked the girl flatly.
It was ridiculous that she had to ask it in the first place. The people wouldn't even be here unless they wanted to be healed. But she had to in order to prevent any lawsuits from happening like that one comatose asshole she'd saved from critical organ failure due to alcohol poisoning who'd then turned around and sued New Wave because he apparently had wanted to die there.
"Uh, yeah, sure," the girl replied.
"Hand, please."
The girl reached out, and Amy could see she'd been badly burned. She idly noted that the girl didn't have a wristband, so she wasn't an inpatient, and the fact that she was wearing street clothes only further cemented the idea. As soon as the girl's damaged skin touched Amy's, her awareness exploded, every minute detail and process available.
The first thing she noticed was that the girl was healthy. Extremely healthy. No signs of previously broken bones, with the lung capacity and muscle density that you'd expect from a person who'd been playing sports since they were a kid. The girl had to be seriously active normally.
Clearing her thoughts, Amy pulled away from the big picture and looked for the damage she'd seen externally. She noted that most of the girl's nerves weren't functioning properly beyond either of her wrists, and her ankle was slightly swollen from an overextended set of ligaments.
Amy focused further on the hands, witnessing the constant cell division, the lymphocyte reactions handling any possible pathogens, the keratin structure buildup of the beginnings of scar tissue, the layering of new epithelial cells that were trying and failing to fully replace the ones that had been burned so severely. Everything pointed to these burns being nearly a week old at this point.
Why the hell hadn't this girl gone to the ICU? She would have expected with the way this girl had to take care of her body she would have immediately gone to see someone. But what she was seeing told her a different story: that this girl had waited until now to have them dealt with.
The healer looked up at the brunette's face, pinning her where she sat. "These burns are days old, why didn't you come in before now?"
The girl looked confused. "I… only got them last night."
No. No way. The girl had to be lying, and Amy didn't know why. Was she trying to hide something? Amy pushed the thoughts out of mind. If the girl wanted to hide something, let her. It didn't affect her or anything.
"Whatever. Here, they're done. Your ankle too." Even as she spoke, she manipulated the various molecular constructs and proteins, altering cells and repairing damaged tissue, turning keratin into proper skin. A slight pulse of activity traveled up neural paths when she reconnected the sensory and motor nerves.
Done, Amy looked up at the girl. And felt her heart nearly stop.
Instead of the dark chocolate brown they had been before, the girl's eyes were a luminescent, shockingly-bright cerulean with cyan-colored fibers woven within. A violet ring sat in the blue, circling just around the pupil and standing out violently from the rest of the iride. Wisps of color from the ring –purple and magenta and fuchsia and every shade in between– seemed to flow into the pitch-black pupil at the center, sucked into a void that felt like it could swallow you whole, never to be seen again.
The image was gone in a blink, brown eyes back as if there had never been anything else.
"You're–" Amy barely managed to cut herself off before she could finish with a parahuman, heart pounding with the thought that she'd almost outed a completely unknown cape in a public setting, with no idea of how they'd react.
She hadn't looked at the girl's brain before by habit, an action that was specifically so that situations like this wouldn't happen. But now that there was evidence, her suspicions were confirmed almost without thinking, the fully-developed Gemma nestled in the girl's brain becoming visible to her.
Something tugged at her memories, and Amy would have sworn she was experiencing déjà vu except for the fact that she knew it wasn't. There was something there, she just couldn't remember it, but it felt important.
Concentrating on the girl before her, she weighed the risks and decided that if the girl tried anything she could simply knock her out through the contact they still had.
"Do I know you?"
The girl blinked. "Uh, well, I'm in your history class," she answered innocently.
Amy looked her over again, and knew she wasn't lying. She could see it, and it felt like the girl's name was just on the tip of her tongue, out of reach. Something with a 't'. Tracy? Tabitha? Tara? But the healer also knew that it wasn't the connection she'd been looking for. There was something else. Something more, but the girl wasn't saying anything else.
"I see," Amy responded diplomatically, without any emotion.
She dropped the girl's hand, and was about to step away when the brunette opened her mouth again. "Um. Do you mind if I ask you something?"
Yes, Amy wanted to say. She wanted to get out of here. Away from this unknown new cape. Up to the roof where Victoria would pick her up and she'd get to enjoy the few minutes of being held in her sister's arms before she had to deal with being home.
But instead she looked back at the girl in annoyed resignation. "Fine."
"Why…" the brunette seemed to struggle with her words. "Why do you do this if you don't like it?"
Amy's thoughts halted. How did she know?
She managed to fool everybody, even Victoria, so how did she know that? And even for that matter, what business was it of hers? "What does it matter to you?" she questioned pointedly.
The girl cocked her head, as if trying to figure out the answer herself. "I… I don't know? I just… I guess I wonder why someone like you would do this if you didn't want to. I mean, I get that there's a lot of people you can help, but… why? If you don't like it, why?"
Amy snorted. Like it was that easy. This girl was seriously naïve. "What, so I should just give it up? Ignore everybody that wants to be healed by 'Panacea'? Fat chance."
"But, couldn't you like, do it less? Take a break or something? Just… I don't know, have time to recharge? I'm an introvert, and I know it'd be exhausting for me if I had to be around people all the time and live up to their expectations."
What, did the girl think she hadn't thought of that? Breaks didn't help. Every patient wore away at her, every day scraping away layer after layer until she felt like she'd be shaved down to the bone. At first it may have been rewarding, but now she saw how greedy people really were. She wasn't a person to them. She was just another cape. Another tool that was the solution to all of their problems. 'Panacea'. The universal cure.
Amy's eyes narrowed on the tall girl in front of her. "Don't act like you know anything about me." The other girl opened her mouth, but Amy was done with this conversation, and she cut her off before she could start. "Now, do you need anything else or can I go home now?" she asked harshly.
A shake of the head was the only response.
"Fine. Then I'll see you later, I suppose." And I'll find out how I know you.
"Good night," Amy ended with finality, turning around and walking out of the door, only a quiet "Yeah. 'Night" drifting behind her.
The girl's words wouldn't leave her mind. "If you don't like it, why?" They circled ceaselessly, and Amy was forced to admit to herself that she might have been harsher than she could have been. The girl had treated her like an actual human, not just a healing machine. She'd seen her as a person who had limits, and that was something Amy was unused to, and hadn't been prepared for.
The only people she saw as really doing that were Victoria (beautiful, perfect Victoria) and the one or two acquaintances at school. And even then, those were more Vicky's friends than hers. Before she'd thought of Victoria as being enough for her, that she was all she would need. But now she was wondering. Even normal people needed outlets, right? And… as much as she hated to admit it, she couldn't share everything with Victoria. Vicky had other friends, other people in her life.
Amy's thoughts immediately flew to Dean, and she pushed them out of her mind before the pain and depression and jealousy could set in, trying to ignore how her Victoria would never feel that way. Never return her feelings. Never want Amy like Amy wanted her. Wrestling with her spiraling control, she forced her thoughts back to the girl from the hospital.
Right before she'd cut the girl off at the end, reviewing the events she got a sense that the girl was about to ask if they could be friends. Amy wanted to scoff at the girl's sheer nerve and impulsiveness, but for some reason, the idea didn't seem all that disagreeable. In the heat of the moment she would have doubtlessly refused, but now that she actually considered it, she… she might accept if the girl asked again.
The loneliness when Victoria wasn't around could become crushing, especially in the house under Carol's constantly disapproving frown. The only escape Amy had was her healing, but even that had become something she resented, tainted by both Brandish's expectations along with the responsibility that she hated she felt. She knew that it wasn't her responsibility to heal every person in Brockton, but that didn't change Carol's unrealistic expectations nor the conscience that had been conditioned into her, constantly nagging and eating away at her.
"If you don't like it, why?"
The question that always came back around. Why the fuck was she doing this? Because of the overbearing "responsibility" she had, and the unrealistic hope that maybe, someday, she could get Carol to look at her the same way she looked at Victoria. But that did nothing for her.
"Can't you just… take a break?"
Hah. She wished. She wished she could. If only it were that easy. If only she could say "no". If only she could put her foot down and tell everyone how she really felt. But she couldn't, because she didn't want to bear the look in Victoria's eyes or the sheer disapproval she knew would come from Carol.
But this girl had been about to offer, hadn't she? About to offer to be something like that, someone who Amy could tell how she really felt, dump all of her feelings on to and rant all day.
It was unnerving how this one tall, lanky girl could get under her skin like this. But just like Amy had gotten irritated at her for presuming she knew about what she was going through, who was she to know what the other girl had gone through and dealt with? She was a parahuman, and first generation triggers could be horrific, terrible things.
Amy shivered, thinking about how she'd discovered what the other girl was.
Those eyes. Those hideously stunning eyes that felt like they could look into the very depths of your soul. It was like the image had been burned into Amy's mind. What would give someone a power like that? It had to be some kind of Thinker ability. They were the sign that this girl was a cape, but she'd never heard of any capes with eyes like that, and there hadn't been any recent transfers. It was completely possible that she simply didn't want to use her power publicly, that she didn't like it similar to how Amy was coming to resent her own. And that had a greater sense of rightness than the possibility that the girl was trying to hide her abilities for some ulterior motive.
The question became what should she do now? What should she do tomorrow? They'd be in a class together tomorrow, so it would be possible to learn the girl's name, which might in turn remind her of that annoying thing she couldn't seem to remember.
Amy decided she wouldn't actively seek the girl out, but if the brunette came to her she wouldn't be as harsh. Honey and vinegar and all that.
After all, what was the saying? 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer'?
Potential, Amy amended. Potential enemy.
But even that felt wrong, and she tried to ignore the feeling. She'd figure out who and what this girl was, why she felt she could remember her.
And then she'd go from there.
A/N: Negotiator kinda derped there with the Root.
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Sever 2.1
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sever 2.1
April 2011
I stared at the ceiling of my room, shadowed in darkness. I had been right, in the hospital: I couldn't stop thinking about her.
New Wave wasn't really a team you heard all that much about anymore. They got involved in a fight if it was needed, went to Endbringer battles, etc. Oh, there were still threads on PHO with funny meme images about "Photon Mom" and stuff like that, but nowadays you only really heard about two people: Glory Girl, aka Victoria Dallon, and her sister Amy, Panacea.
Victoria had a tendency to get a lot of attention, though whether that was good or bad appeared to depend on the day, and she seemed to have no end of people just waiting to start arguing about the latest thing she'd done.
I suppose being Alexandria-lite didn't hurt.
Amy, though, was different. At least to the public. Whenever her sister drew attention, Amy seemed content not to be a part of it.
The media gave her a million nicknames in the first year she went public. "Miracle worker". "Healing Wonder".
She could heal practically anything, anyone, and by now easily held the record for highest number of lives saved through personal intervention.
And I was one of those.
It was strange, thinking about it. That a girl in your history class had saved your life, but didn't even think anything of it.
Without her, they said that the chances of me coming out of the coma had been slim to none, that the infection –while seemingly contained for the time being– likely would have killed me given a week or two longer.
I lifted my hands, looking at them and flexing them. As good as new, nothing to indicate that I'd had third-degree burns on them less than four hours ago.
She hadn't been anything like I'd imagined. I hadn't thought she'd have a smile or be super happy or anything, considering how quiet and introverted she was in history class, but I'd at least expected her to find some satisfaction in what she was doing.
Instead, she'd been so tired. Worn out. Disillusioned. Jaded. Cynical. Way too much for a girl who was only a year and a half older than I was. It was honestly fucking ridiculous.
"Don't act like you know anything about me."
Her words had been like knives, sharp and accusatory. Acidic.
And yet…
There had been something else there, as well. Something I knew, and knew all too well, at that.
Loneliness.
I'm not sure how I knew it. How I could see it, underneath the way her eyes had hardened and almost sparked with anger.
But I could. I could feel it, and knew that she had nobody she could truly rely on.
It reminded me of myself, less than half a year ago.
It reminded me of what I'd been like before Arcadia. Before three girls (and wasn't that fucking hilarious) had accepted me, and showed me that I hadn't been doing anything wrong. Everybody else had been.
Alex and Sarah and Emily. And then the others who had joined us, John and Michael and Ayame and Sayaka.
My friends. My friends.
I wouldn't have believed it a year ago, but now that I had them, I couldn't imagine being without them.
"Why do you care?"
Why shouldn't I care? Why the fuck wouldn't I care when I saw someone looking like I had a before? Why the fucking hell would I ever want to let someone else have to go through that?
I knew exactly how hard it was to go through the same thing, day in, day out, wearing down at you and crushing you until you felt like you would break, without anybody to be there for you.
And I hated the idea of anybody else going through that the way I had.
Alone.
"Taylor~"
I shut my locker door and didn't have any time to react when a blonde blur rushed up and hugged me from behind. After a few seconds, she released me, and I turned around.
"Hey Alex," I said smiling.
Her eyebrows scrunched together. "You weren't at school yesterday. And you missed practice!" She huffed, trying to frown.
I grimaced. "Yeah. Sorry. I wasn't feeling well. I'm doing fine now," I fibbed. It wasn't a total lie. There's no way I would have been able to play with my ankle the way it had been.
She couldn't keep the expression up for long, it quickly turning into one of her wide grins. "Well, I'm glad you're okay. The others were worried about you too. You seriously need to get a cell phone already."
"Yeah, I know," I muttered, internally wincing at the thought of the conversation that would require having with my dad. Not one I particularly wanted to have.
"Just do it! I know your dad's all weird about it 'cause of your mom, but seriously! What if you got in some horrible accident or something? How would I know where to go to save my favorite soccer buddy from a terrible fate at the hands some of a vile villain?"
I snorted to myself. If only you knew.
Looking at her flatly,"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean," she said.
I smiled. "Yeah, yeah I do." I sighed. "I'll do it soon, promise."
"If you need backup, just let me know and I'll be there!"
"If you say so," I ceded. Though I doubted I'd take her up on the offer, it was still nice to know she'd support me if I needed it.
Alex grinned. "Most excellent." She hooked her arm through mine. "Come, Taylor! It is time to conquer the dastardly land of polar coordinates and cosines!"
I shook my head in amusement and allowed myself to be dragged forward by the energetic blonde to our first period class.
School managed to capture my full attention for once, as people around me were still talking about Lung. I'd have thought it would have mostly blown over thanks to short teenage attention spans, but I'd apparently been wrong.
It wasn't too hard to feign as much ignorance as everyone else, though some part of me –for some completely inexplicable reason– wanted to claim responsibility, to let everyone known who'd done it, even though I knew that would be monumentally stupid.
The first two periods passed quickly, and after a deep breath at the door, I walked into history praying to God that I didn't look as nervous as I felt.
And then I saw her.
Amy.
For a moment I froze, all of my thoughts leaving me like the worst case of stage fright. Alex looked over to me in confusion, and that helped snap me out of my stupor, waving her attention away to let her know there wasn't anything wrong.
Amy was engrossed in a paperback, but when I finally made it to her desk, she turned and looked at me. Her eyes widened slightly, and then she sighed.
Okay Taylor, just fucking say it.
"I… I'm sorry about last night. It wasn't my place to ask you that stuff," I apologized. "And… I really don't want to leave things like that."
Amy grimaced, and seemed to wrestle with herself for a second. "No, it's not your fault." She sighed, looking down. "I was a bit harsh. I'm not exactly used to people asking how I'm doing." She looked back up and met my eyes. "Look. Why don't we just start over?" She held out a hand. "Hi, I'm Amy Dallon."
Grinning, I shook her hand. "Taylor Hebert."
She smiled faintly.
I glanced at the clock and noticed we only had a minute or so before class started. "L-look, this might be a bit forward but, um, if you want, you could come sit with my friends and I for lunch?" I half said, half asked, looking over at Alex.
Amy followed my line of sight, and the blonde must have felt us looking because she looked up at us, and then grinned and waved when she saw who I was talking to. Amy looked back at me. "Who was that?"
"That's Alex. She's one of them," I told her.
Amy bit her lip, looking conflicted. "I… I guess so."
"Only if you want to," I told her quickly. "I-I know you'd probably rather sit with your sister, so if you don't I totally understand!"
Her lips formed a thin line, and something in her eyes changed, becoming resolved. "No," she said quietly, shaking her head. "No," she repeated. "I… I'll sit with you guys for today."
The bell rang."Okay, well, um, we're at those round tables at the front of the cafeteria. It's pretty easy to see." She nodded. "I, I guess I'll see you then," I hurried out, and then made my way to my seat.
Once I was there I let out a sigh. That had been much more nerve-wracking than I'd expected, but I really hadn't wanted to fuck it up again and end up having her hate me.
That would have been extremely counter-productive.
But everything had gone fine, and the first step of my plan was complete. Now… now I just had to figure out the next one.
Fucking fantastic.
Thankfully, the round tables sat ten, which meant we didn't have to do anything weird like trying to fit a chair between two of the little round plastic seats that were eternally attached to the table itself.
Amy was actually the third to make her way over, after Alex and Emily, Alex on my right and Emily on hers. Amy looked a bit nervous as she walked towards us, but with every step she became more sure of herself.
"Hey," I said as soon as she was within five feet.
"…Hello." She seemed to be a mixture between resolute steel, cold anticipation, and wary nervousness.
She sat down on my left, placing her generic lunchbox down as she looked at the two on my right.
"Um, introductions. Amy, Alex and Emily. Alex and Emily, Amy."
"Hi!" Alex chirped, while Emily's own "hi" was more subdued.
"The others should be along pretty soon. The twins and Michael normally buy food here," I told her.
She looked incredulous. "How many are there of you?"
"Uh… eight," I said after mentally tallying everyone.
Amy looked incredulous. "To be honest I'm surprised they've stuck around this long with Alex's charming personality," Emily told her.
"Hey! I resent that," Alex protested.
The other girl scoffed. "More like 'resemble' that."
A pair of girls walked up to the table, sitting across from us, a boy who arrived seconds after sitting in the empty seat between the pair and Emily.
One of the girls blinked at seeing Amy, but before she could say anything Sarah and another boy arrived simultaneously, Sarah sitting next to Amy and the boy sitting on the other side of the girls.
"Alright. Um, so. Sarah, John, Saya, Aya, Michael, Emily, and Alex," I introduced, going around the table clockwise and pointing out each in turn. "Everybody, Amy."
A chorus of greetings, and then Saya looking between Amy and I before turning to Alex. "New girl?"
"New girl," Alex, Emily, and Sarah chorused, with Alex sounding significantly more chipper than the other two's deadpan responses.
"What?" Amy asked in confusion, looking at everyone who'd spoken and sounding slightly offended.
Michael sighed. "Don't worry about it. It's really nothing."
I could tell Amy didn't really feel satisfied with the answer and was slightly annoyed, but she didn't say anything else.
Saya and Aya, really Sayaka and Ayame, were identical Japanese twins who had immigrated to America with their parents as Japan's economy collapsed in 2000. Michael was Hispanic, Peruvian on his mother's side, I think. And John had been born in New York right after Behemoth had hit it, his father having died in the attack and his mother deciding to move here to get away from it after he'd been born.
Thankfully, everyone seemed to have picked up on my rather informal introduction of Amy and the not-so-subtle hint that I did not mention her cape name.
"So what held you two up?" Emily asked, looking across at Sarah and Michael as we all started eating.
"Mucci," John said, as if it was all that was needed in explanation –which it really was as apparently he had a tendency to go over the bell–, Sarah nodding in agreement.
Amy wrinkled her nose at the name. "Do you have him too?" I questioned.
She nodded slowly, as if debating if she should really answer. "…Yeah. Unfortunately."
"Spanish or Greek?" Sarah asked.
"…Greek," she replied hesitantly, and the brunette winced.
"I'm sorry?"
The girl on my left sighed and shook her head. "It's… It's my third year with him, so I'm used to it."
"Oh, yeah, you're a year ahead of us, aren't you?" Emily asked. "How'd Taylor manage to lure you over here?"
"AP World History," I said, causing John to nod knowingly.
"Yeah, that would make sense," he commented. "I'd forgotten you were in that one."
We had a choice of AP courses for our history requirement after freshman year, as well as the order we took them in: Comparative Gov/Pol, US Gov/Pol, Modern European, and World History. It was required to take either the standard, honors or AP US History course our first year.
"So how's the test in Art History?" Sarah asked the twins.
"Hard," Saya reported gravely.
"The stupid aho wouldn't even admit that he messed up one of the questions! One more time and I swear I'll kill him." Aya angrily stabbed a potato slice on her lunch tray, fuming and muttering under her breath.
"Shit," Sarah cursed. "I studied, but now I'm worried."
Saya glanced at her sister before looking back at the brunette. "You'll do fine. Aya is just being a perfectionist."
"Business as usual, then," Alex quipped.
Sarah just nodded.
Amy looked at me. "Is it always this… lively?" she asked quietly. I could tell she was very off-balance by it all, and didn't really know how to feel.
"Pretty much? I mean, with Alex there's no real chance of it not being," I told her.
"I hear you talking about me over there," the mentioned blonde said, peeking around my shoulder "Anything good?"
"Not really," I replied.
"I'm hurt," she said, feigning offense.
On the other side of Amy, Sarah snorted. "Of course you are. You wouldn't be you if you weren't."
"Tayylorrr. Sarah's being mean to me again!" the blonde whined, like a child complaining to their parent about some other kid.
I gave Amy a flat look. "See what I have to deal with?"
For the first time since she'd sat down, a small smile appeared on her face.
"I see how it is. Hmph," Alex said, turning to the girl on the other side of her. "Emily~"
"Uh-uh. I'm not part of this, so don't go dragging me into it," the redhead said.
Alex drooped.
Amy laughed softly, and then froze, seeming shocked at the sound she'd made. I smiled at her. "It… might be lively, but there's never a dull moment," I told her.
She nodded slowly, as if trying to figure out her own feelings, extremely unnerved at the slip she'd made, almost annoyed at herself.
I decided it'd be best to let her brood everything over rather than push, and left her to her thoughts as I turned back and focused on my food.
Lunch had passed easily after with that, Amy mostly just watching everybody talking to each other instead of actively interacting. She'd answered a few innocuous questions directed at her about what she was doing in school, but other than that was mostly left to herself, the others having recognized that she was more than a little guarded. We'd all been the same initially.
"That was… nice," Amy admitted as we threw out our trash on the way out of the cafeteria.
"Yeah," I agreed. "They are."
Now that we were away from everyone else, she seemed to be regaining her emotional balance.
And I was losing the confidence I'd had from being around my friends.
Just get it over with!
"Look I… I was wondering if maybe we could… You know, I mean…" I stumbled out. God damn this fucking shit was harder than I'd expected. Turns out asking a world famous superhero if they'd like to be friends wasn't easy. "Get to know each other?" I finally managed. "You. Not, not…"
"Not 'Panacea'?" she asked flatly, the harsher personality that I'd seen last night surfacing again right before my eyes.
I winced. "Yeah. Right. That."
She'd sure as hell regained her emotional balance alright. It was like the difference between night and day.
Amy sighed. "Look… I…" Her jaw tightened and she placed a hand over her eyes, holding her face.
After a moment, she spoke again. "Yes. Okay." She sighed again, sounding defeated. I blinked. That easy?
She took her hand away and looked me in the eyes. "Alright." Her voice was firm. Amy took another breath, letting it out slowly. "After school. The gates. Today's one of my few free days."
I nodded, trying to keep myself from grinning. We had practice everyday except Tuesday and Friday, so this was fucking perfect.
The early bell rang, and I looked at the clock. Shit. My class was on the other side of the school. "I've um… I…"
She rolled her eyes and huffed. "Go."
I nodded again, this time unable to keep the smile from my face as I quickly turned and made my way to class.
I got held up a little in my CS class and ended up running a couple minutes late. I hurried to get all my stuff from my locker, and after saying goodbye to Alex and everyone that was still around, I made my way out of the building. I tried not to be too obvious I was in a rush, but I really was.
I made it down the front steps of the school and out the gates and looked around. I almost missed her in the crowd of students walking by, but she had a cellphone out and seemed to be reading something.
"Hey," I greeted, walking up to her and making sure I didn't startle her or anything.
She glanced up at me. "Oh. You're here."
"…You make it sound like you didn't expect me to actually show up," I looked at her for a moment. "Were you hoping I wouldn't?" I asked, not really offended but more worried. I didn't want to be overbearing.
Amy froze for a few seconds. "I… I don't know. Okay?" She dragged a hand down her face. "Look, how about we get going?"
I nodded. "Where to?"
She sighed. "Let's just go to the Boardwalk and get food or something. I really need a cup of coffee right now."
The dark circles under her eyes I'd seen last night were still there, so I could understand why she might want the caffeine.
We caught a bus to the boardwalk, and made the ride in an awkward silence. Well. It was awkward for me. Amy seemed to be crashing from the day, staring out of the bus' window blankly.
She was aware enough to realize when we got to where we wanted, though, because I didn't need to get her attention or anything.
We got off at the west end of the boardwalk, Amy leading me directly to a café a few blocks away. She got coffee. I got green tea. Actual green tea, something I was surprised they had, but I wasn't about to waste the opportunity. The twins had introduced it to me, and I'd found myself actually liking it despite how weird it looked being a solid bright green color.
We sat down in a booth, Amy sipping at her drink, life slowly returning to her eyes. After a few minutes, she looked markedly better.
Glancing up at me, she winced. "Sorry. I… I needed this."
I shook my head. "I get it. It's gotta be hard for you."
Her expression darkened slightly, head tilted down so her eyes were shadowed. "Yeah. Right."
Shit.
She shook her head as if clearing it. "Anyways. What were you thinking to do?"
"I,I don't know? U-um. How about introductions, I guess?" I sat up straighter. "I'm Taylor Hebert…" I thought about what to say. "I'm fifteen, I like talking to my friends and playing soccer, and my favorite color is red."
(Slowly dripping, spreading across cracked concrete. Rust and iron and warmwarmwarm.)
Amy looked at me in curiosity. "You're only fifteen? I would've guessed sixteen."
I nodded. "I… I'm a bit tall for my age."
The other girl snorted and muttered something like "no kidding."
"Soooo what about you?" I asked.
Amy rolled the coffee cup between her hands. "Amy Dallon. Seventeen. But you knew that, I'm guessing. I like… I like flying with my sister." A smile crept across her face as she said that. "And my favorite color is blue."
Now we're getting somewhere. "Why blue?"
She shrugged. "It's… the color of the sky. And the ocean. They're so…empty. Freeing."
She was probably talking about flying, considering what she'd just mentioned.
"A place where you can just let go?" I asked, wondering if I was right.
Amy nodded. "Yeah."
There was a pause, and I tried to think of what else to talk about, running through everything before landing on something I decided was good enough.
"What were you reading today? Before class?"
"Looking for Alaska" She took a sip of coffee.
That was rather… interesting. Darkish and philosophical, but I could see the appeal for her. A good amount of suffering, which I was unable to keep myself from relating to her. Denial of authority and a contrast between action and inaction and their consequences.
…Having a mother who'd been an English professor made it hard for me to read a book and not analyze the fuck out of it.
"It's a good book," I commented.
"Yeah." She rolled the cup between her hands again. "I'm liking it so far."
Another moment of silence.
I slumped onto the table. "God this is harder than I thought."
Nobody said it would be easy.
Amy smiled wryly, shrugging. "You're doing alright so far."
I rolled my eyes. "Greaaat. At least I'm not making a complete ass of myself."
She laughed. "Well, I'll ask something then. What do you do in your free time?"
I thought it over. "Soccer practice after school takes up a lot of time. Homework, unfortunately. Reading. I run in the mornings. Hanging out with friends. You?"
"Reading. And… that's really it. Well, except for…" She gestured at my hands and I nodded in understanding.
Healing.
It brought my thoughts back to the night before. How she'd looked. The dullness in her eyes.
And she'd brought the topic up, right?
"Do you mind if I ask…?" I started, hoping I wasn't making a mistake.
She seemed to understand what I was saying, thankfully not reacting the way she had last night.
"'Why?'" Amy finished.
"Yeah."
She sighed. "Yeah. It's fine. I'm sorry for snapping at you last night too. I'm not used to having people…" ask. care. "Honestly? I…" She seemed to waver for a second, on the edge of something. I nodded, encouraging her.
Amy took a breath, letting it out. "I hate it."
I blinked.
"I hate it," she repeated, stronger. "There are some days I just want to tell everybody to fuck off, but I can't because I'm…"
"Panacea," I completed, and it was like some wall crumbled inside of her.
"Right," she said distastefully. "'Panacea'. God. Even the name is telling. 'Cure-all'. What, do they think I'm some sort of answer to every goddamn problem? Just because I can heal doesn't mean I fucking want to!"
It appeared she had quite a bit of unresolved anger and bottled up feelings.
"It's like… like, because I can heal people with my powers, I have to. You don't see Othala going around and volunteering at hospitals, do you? So why the hell do I?"
'Can heal people with her powers'? She made it sound like that wasn't the only thing she could do. That there were others.
"You can do other things?"
She looked at me in pure shock. "W-what?"
"You just said 'can heal people', like you could do other stuff," I explained. A sudden thought came to me. "You can make things, can't you? They said you had to use some of my muscles–"
"They 'said'?" Amy interrupted. Her eyes narrowed sharply, and her voice suddenly became arctic. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Had I not told her that yesterday? I went over the conversation in my mind, and realized I hadn't.
"You um… you saved my life." I guess she wouldn't have remembered me I. was only one of many people she'd dealt with that day, and doubtlessly one of hundreds that week. It would have been ridiculous to expect her to.
Her gaze hardened. "Is that why you're doing this? Because you feel like you owe me? Because you pity me and you're paying off some kind of debt?" She stood up suddenly, grabbing her bag, with her jaw clenched in anger. "You know what? Fuck this."
W-what? No! Shitshitshitshit!!
My hand snapped out and grabbed her wrist just as she was turning to walk away from our table. I felt a pulse travel through me, and all of the bright red cracks jumped.
Amy turned back to me, and the blood drained from her face.
I pushed the lines out of focus, trying to think of what I was going to say.
"I swear to God, Amy! This isn't about that! I mean, yeah, I'm grateful, but…" I struggled to express myself. "Damn it, I wouldn't do that!"
She swallowed and then sat down slowly, putting her bag down at the same time. "F-fine, then."
Why was she so on edge all of a sudden?
"If it's not because of that, then why are you doing this? And how exactly did I save your life?" Amy looked down at her wrist. "And… and can you please let go of me?"
I quickly pulled my hand away as if I'd been burned, trying to stop the blood I could feel rising to my face.
"Alright," I agreed, hesitantly. "Alright." She'd told me about herself, right? And this couldn't be one-sided. This would just returning the favor. And if I opened up to her, maybe she'd do the same. "It's because… it's because I know."
Her eyes narrowed. "Know what?"
"What it's like, to be stuck somewhere you don't want to be," I said haltingly. "I… I was bullied for a year and a half." I looked down at my hands. I was fidgeting.
"I don't like talking about it, but it was really, really bad," I admitted. "Alex knows, but she's the only one."
I took a breath, trying to disperse the tightness in my chest and slight claustrophobia I was feeling. "Everyday, they'd do something. It never got physical except for a few times, it was mostly psychological stuff. But there was never a way to escape, and I couldn't stop it. Nobody would help me. I was all alone. On my own. And I couldn't stand up to them."
I looked back up at her, meeting her eyes. "Before winter break, they suddenly stopped. I thought maybe they'd given up on me, decided to move on. And then when I came back to school after break, I found they'd stuck used tampons and other stuff in my locker right before break, letting it sit there the entire time."
Her face turned slightly green.
"When I opened it and saw everything, the smell made me throw up. Sophia, the one who had always been more physical, shoved me into my locker from behind as I was leaning over, and then locked me in." I grit my teeth.
I hated telling this, but if this was what it took for her to believe me then fuck it, I would.
"They tell me I was in there for three days. That the scratches I got on my shins from being pushed in were infected from kneeling in all the shit. When they found me, I was barely alive," I took a breath, forcing myself to continue. "They say my heart failed twice before they could stabilize me, but I think it happened in the locker too, because I blacked out and everything was so cold."
I died.
I don't know how I knew it, but I did. I knew I'd died, been gone completely, but somehow my heart restarted and my body stayed alive.
(But I was already gone. Gone gone gone.)
"I had TSS. My muscles and shin bones were infected. They had to filter all my blood. I didn't have any of my organs fail after my heart, but it was touch-and-go and I was in a coma for a week straight."
(Floating down into 「 」. A place of nothingnothingnothing. No light or darkness. No sound. No time, no meaning, but I still saw. Only death and 「being」. Nothing living, but I was alive, still alive. At peace at the center of 「death」, at the center of 「emptiness」.)
"And then I woke up."
(Life once more, but I could still see death. The 「emptiness」 and 「death」 that invaded my mind, my 「self」, my 「origin」 and would always be a part of me.)
"They said you healed me, and that you used some of my muscle mass to do it. But… that would require breaking them down, moving the proteins and stuff, changing them, and then using them for something different, making them something else."
Amy flinched, and then stared down at her hands, mumbling something.
"What?"
"I don't want it. I wish I didn't have my powers. I wish I hadn't triggered." Now wasn't that something I could empathize with.
She looked up and pinned me where I sat. "But no, I have to use them because it's my 'responsibility'," she continued bitterly, like she was quoting someone else. "Because what would people think if 'Panacea' didn't heal?" Amy scoffed, and then shook her head mirthlessly. "I fucking hate it."
She turned and looked out of the window at her right, watching the people go by. "And they have no idea."
"But I do."
She turned to me and gave me a half-hearted smile. "Yeah. You're the only one, you know. The first one I've told. The first one who even fucking noticed."
"Thank you," I said sincerely. "For trusting me."
Amy picked up her cup of coffee and drained the rest of it. "Yeah. Well." She sighed. "I figure we're not so different."
"What?"
She ran her fingers through her hair, taking a breath. "Fuck it. As long as we're sharing stuff, I should probably tell you. You deserve to know anyways."
"Tell me what?"
"I know."
I blinked. "Know what?"
"Taylor. I know."
My heart stuttered for a moment. What was she talking about? Did she know I killed Lung? Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Why was she even talking to me then?
"H-how?" I asked cautiously.
"I saw. Yesterday. And in your head."
Huh?
"What are you talking about?"
She rolled her eyes, leaning over the table slightly. "Your Gemma," she said quietly. "And it's not exactly inconspicuous either."
"What?"
She sighed. "God, Taylor. Your powers."
I blinked.
"O-oh." Shouldn't I feel worried, or concerned, or something? One of my biggest secrets, and yet I couldn't seem to bring myself to care about her knowing. She hated her own powers as much as I did, so if anything, she'd be the only one I was actually comfortable knowing about them. I probably would have told her eventually anyways. Not for a few weeks, depending on how well everything went (it was going really well so far), but sooner rather than later.
Wait.
"What do you mean 'not inconspicuous'?"
She looked at me strangely. "The glowy thing your eyes do."
What!?
"What are you talking about? They glow?" I felt my voice raise an octave.
Her expression changed to disbelief. "You didn't know?"
I shook my head, even as she reached into her bag and pulled out a small mirror.
"Here."
Taking it from her, I looked into it. My eyes were brown, just like always.
And then I allowed the lines to rise up.
As I watched, electric-blue bloomed from the center, growing and taking over the brown. A circle of violet formed around my pupil, and it looked like wisps of the rings were sucked into the dark points, they themselves having dilated to twice the size they'd been before.
And yes, they glowed.
"Whoa."
They were so pretty. Mesmerizing.
"You see now?"
I nodded, and forcibly pushed the lines down, my eyes fading back to their usual color.
"I,I had no idea," I told her, looking up. "I don't… I don't exactly like my powers at all. I've never had a reason to look in a mirror. It just happens sometimes, but I can stop it almost immediately now."
Not that that helped with the tremors and cold sweat and anxiety and restlessness I got at night.
"What is it?" she asked. "What does it do?"
"I… see things," I said, shuddering. Things. Yeah. More like the death and destruction of every thing around me and how to kill it all.
(Such beautiful things.)
I didn't really want to talk about it, and thankfully Amy seemed to pick that up. "You… The locker?" she asked.
"Yeah." Swallowing, I thought about what I'd seen in the mirror. If that was what happened, it meant I needed to try twice as hard to keep the lines away when other people were around, and shut my eyes as soon as possible when they popped up.
"Please, don't tell anyone?" I had a feeling she wouldn't but I needed to make sure.
Amy looked affronted. "Why would I even want to? Not to mention it's against the rules."
I tilted my head. "The rules?"
"The unwritten rules. You seriously don't know?"
I shook my head. "Don't want to be a cape. I hate it."
Her expression softened, becoming slightly sympathetic, and some of the tension in her body dropped away. "Well, you should know anyways. The rules are that we don't expose other capes even if we know who they really are, and that we don't go after each other in secret identities. Which… shouldn't apply to you if you really stay out of it. But the first one does."
"Oh."
So that was why New Wave never got attacked out of costume even though everyone knew who they were.
Amy nodded, raising her cup but then realizing it was empty and looking at it mournfully before putting it back down.
"What's it like? Your family, I mean. It's got to be different, right?"
Her expression changed again, this time to mild pain, frustration, and a hint of helplessness. "No. I don't think it's any different from a normal family."
I looked at her curiously. "What do you mean?"
She opened her mouth, and then shut it, shaking her head. "Never mind. Just… it's nothing. Typical family drama."
I knew that she wasn't telling the whole story. That there was more she wasn't saying. I was tempted to push, to see if I could get her to open up any more, but I was also slightly afraid of losing whatever little progress I'd made so far. Push too far, and…
Well, let's just say I wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing the cold, cynical personality Amy had when she clammed up. She could be vicious.
I nodded as if I understood. "Well… um. If you ever want to talk about it, I'm here?"
Amy looked at me with her brows furrowed, like she was confused and trying to figure out if I had some ulterior motive. "Al…right, then."
Fuck. "No, I'm serious. Just…. look, here."
I grabbed a paper napkin and scribbled my number and address on it with a pen from my backpack.
I slid the napkin over to Amy, along with the mirror she'd handed me earlier. "My number and address. My house number, 'cause that's the only phone I've got. I'm going to be trying to get a cellphone, and if I do I'll give you that one too. If you just need to talk to someone, call me. Anytime."
She nodded slowly.
"And… I know this might be kind of weird, but if you ever need a place to go and get away from anything, you can come over. I… I know what it's like when you've got nowhere you can go to just get away. I usually end up at Alex's or the twins' place, but at this point my Dad half-expects someone to crash on our couch at least once a week. Just…" I sighed. "I know how much I would've liked someplace to escape from life back then."
"I'm… not the first one you've done this to, am I?" she asked, looking from the napkin to me.
"No," I admitted, mildly guilty. "But it's different. They're not you. You're not them? I mean, I know you've probably already got people and places but every little thing counts, if that makes any sense?"
There was a flash of expressions, confusion, wariness, longing, sympathy, and a stab of understanding, and then Amy's emotions appeared to stabilize, settling back down. "Yeah. I get it." She paused. "Thanks," she finished softly.
It may have been small, but it was progress.
Amy was… less guarded after we left the café. Not a lot, but enough that she was pointing out shops she'd gone to with her sister, and telling a couple stories of things they'd done.
I got the sense that Amy was around her a lot. More than she was at school, even. Eventually she looked at the clock on her phone and told me she had to go, not realizing it was already five.
I waved her off, saying it was fine.
We ended up parting around the middle of the boardwalk, and she headed towards the end we'd come from and the bus, saying we'd do it again soon.
I was left wandering around, really just staring at clothes and stuff inside of windows, and I even walked into one phone store just to look around and see what was on the market right now and what we could afford.
It was around three-quarters of the way down the boardwalk towards the bay that I saw something in a window.
It was a jacket. A bright red fitted leather jacket.
And it looked fucking awesome.
"Pretty nice, huh?"
I looked over to the girl on my left that had walked up behind me as I'd been staring through the window.
She was blonde, a braid running down her back, with bottle-green eyes and freckles dusted over high cheekbones.
Turning back to the window and looking at it again, I agreed. "Yeah, it is."
I felt a hand slipping into mine, and looked in surprise at the girl, who'd turned towards the door of the shop.
She looked over her shoulder. "C'mon, I want to see you in it, I think you'd look good."
I was slightly surprised by her action, but at this point I was pretty desensitized thanks to Alex's random bouts of spontaneity.
Without even giving me a chance to protest, she pulled me into store, a bell dinging.
It was relatively large inside, jackets on just about every wall and racks.
There were pants, too but I highly doubted I'd look any good in those with my spindly long legs, despite the surprising amount of muscle I'd built up in the last three months.
A guy walked over to us, with a nametag that read 'Robert'.
"Can I help you ladies?"
The blonde dropped my hand, pointing at the red jacket in the display. "Yeah, have you got that in medium? It's for her," she said, tilting her head and jerking it in my direction.
The young guy leaned to the right and looked over her shoulder. "Yeah, I think we do. Over here."
I was speechless, unable to say anything to the two in denial, simply following behind the blonde who was drifting after the man.
We ended up at a rack, and he shifted through a collection of the same type eventually pulling out a medium.
"Aaaaand… here," he said, holding it out to me. I took it from him wordlessly. "Do you need anything else?"
The blonde shook her head. "Alright then, I'll be over by the counter if you need any further assistance."
He walked off, and I was left standing there, holding the jacket awkwardly. The other girl turned around to me. "Well? Come on, try it out!"
I blinked. "Um… okay?"
Setting my backpack down, I pulled my sweatshirt over my head, making sure the harness I was wearing underneath my shirt didn't get exposed with my t-shirt being pulled up along with the hoodie.
She looked me over appreciatively, and I blushed. "You're pretty fit, huh?"
I just nodded, unzipping the leather jacket to take it off of the metal and wooden hanger, putting that back on the rack, and then slinging the jacket around my back, slipping an arm first into the right sleeve, and then into the left.
The girl walked around me, eyeing everything. When she got back to my front, she pulled down on the two sides, straightening it, and then zipped it up about three-quarters so that the collar still folded over.
She nodded to herself. "Nice. Much better on you than that thing was," she said, waving at the dark blue hoodie on my backpack. "Alright. Come on."
"W-what?" I asked.
"Let's get it. I knew you'd look good in it as soon as I saw you checking it out," she said, as if it was the only conclusion.
I spluttered, shaking my head. "I-I can't…"
The blonde rolled her green eyes. "Fine, then I'll get it for you. But there's no way I'm letting something like this," She lightly smacked my abs with the back of her hand, causing me to flush even more than I had before, "go to waste by being hidden by something like that." She looked pointedly at my hoodie.
"N-no, I couldn't…"
"Good God, I'm doing this for you. If you don't accept right now my ego's going to end up being bruised and I'll start taking offense," the girl said.
"A-ah. Alright?" I agreed hesitantly.
She nodded, dragging me over to the counter, me barely managing to grab my backpack and other jacket before we got too far away.
"She'll take it," the girl told Robert, who was standing behind the register.
He nodded, and rung it up. "That'll be three hundred even."
I nearly choked. WHAT!?
I hadn't even gotten a chance to look at the price tag, the blonde having distracted me.
The girl didn't bat an eye, pulling a wallet out of her purse and pulling out three bills, handing them over.
H-holy shit!
He punched a few buttons, and the register slid open with a 'ding'. He stuck the bills in, and then closed it.
Robert looked at the girl in front of me, and I realized I hadn't even gotten her name yet. "You need a bag?"
She shook her head. "Nah. Thanks!"
He nodded. "Have a good day."
The girl smirked, and turned to me. "C'mon, let's go."
I hurriedly took my backpack off and shoved my sweatshirt in it, because there was no way I was going to risk wrinkling something as nice as what I was wearing right now.
She led me out of the store, and I just trailed behind as she wandered through the crowds, before suddenly turning and looking back at me. "I never gave you my name, did I?"
I shook my head, unable to say anything.
"I'm Lisa," she said with a grin.
"Uh… Taylor."
Her grin widened, "Nice to meet you, Taylor. Wanna walk around with me?"
I just nodded. Seriously, this girl had just paid for a three-hundred dollar jacket for me and wasn't even saying anything about it. Did she normally go around buying random strangers stuff or something?
"Awesome. Come on, I know this pretty nice park that's only a couple blocks away."
She turned and strode away, and I rushed to catch up to her.
We made it to the park, and she sat down on a bench at the edge, me joining her a few seconds later.
"So. Tell me about yourself."
Déjà vu, much? I'd just gone through this only hours ago with Amy, now I was doing it again. But if this was what she wanted for buying me that jacket, then I'd tell her anything she wanted without complaints.
"Um, Taylor Hebert. I'm fifteen. I'm a sophomore at Arcadia, and a starting forward on the JV soccer team." I paused, and Lisa nodded encouragingly. "My dad's head of hiring for the Dockworker's Union, and I read a lot in my free time."
"Oooh, what sort of stuff?"
I shrugged. "Anything? Classics, Young Adult, Sci-fi, philosophy, obscure fantasy. Mostly stuff that's been reviewed pretty well."
Lisa 'hmm'-ed. "Tolkien?"
I looked at her flatly. "What do you think?" I'd read that the summer before Emma– I mentally shook my head to clear it, pushing those thoughts out of my mind.
She laughed. "Yeah, I guess that was a little obvious. What other kind stuff?"
"Asimov. Herbert. Anne McCaffrey."
"Yeah, Dragonriders is a pretty good series," she agreed. "Bit of a cult classic, though." She looked at me, silently asking me to continue.
"Uh… Harry Potter, at least until it started getting worse in the last few books." Apparently the Aleph versions were a lot better, but I hadn't gotten a chance to look for them. "Vonnegut. Carl Jung. Kim Harrison. Patricia Briggs. John Green. Rainbow Rowell. Jay Asher. Zusak, though I didn't really like his stuff, actually."
"Basically the full gamut," she noted.
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Nice," Lisa commented. "I can't say I've gotten a lot of time to read lately, but I've heard of a bunch of those."
I nodded in understanding. My time lately had been taken up by soccer, leaving me less time for reading. Not that I was really complaining.
The green-eyed girl tapped her chin. "Hm. I'm seventeen. I graduated early by getting my GED. I study." She looked at me. "I'm trying to get a college degree online." She grinned. "Behavioral psychology."
That was pretty neat. I could see it too.
"I do a lot of computer stuff too, actually." I looked at her in interest. "Some programming, but mostly security," she clarified. "Penetration testing and stuff."
Hacking. Well, legal hacking where you get hired by a company to test their firewalls and stuff. It was something I'd only really heard about. It also paid really well. No wonder she had the kind of money she did.
"And I like watching mysteries. Reading them, too, but like I said, I haven't been doing that much."
"Cool. I take a CS class, but that's really it."
She nodded, and then shrugged. "Eh. It keeps me busy. I don't like getting bored."
Well, she was certainly hyperactive enough to remind me of Alex. So I could believe that.
"So you got a cell number?" she asked. "So I can text you if I find a really good book or you'd like to ask some fancy computer question?"
I blinked, and then shook my head. "No, I don't have a cell phone."
Lisa looked at me incredulously. "Seriously? Seriously? It's 2011, you're a fifteen year-old, and you don't have a cellphone?"
I shook my head again.
"Well." She got a glint in her eyes. "Let's fix that, shall we?"
"W-what?"
Lisa stood up. "Come on. You heard me. Cellphone. Chop chop." She turned to start walking away, expecting me to follow.
I stood up quickly. "Wait!"
She turned back to me. "What?"
"Why… Why are you doing all of this?"
She shrugged. "I dunno. I just saw you and was like, 'I bet she's interesting. She seems like she'd be a cool person.' And then I saw you were looking at that jacket." She rolled her eyes. "It's not like I can't afford it or anything."
I guess when she put it that way…
"Relax, Taylor. I don't expect you to pay me back for it or anything. Just consider it a favor. I don't exactly get out and get to talk to people much, so… well, if you're really uncomfortable with it, just think of it as bribery or something. Say I kidnapped you and forced you to accept my generosity," she said with a grin.
And then she gave me a stern look, her eyes twinkling. "But there's no way I'm letting you go without getting a cellphone. That is a travesty that needs to be fixed."
"A-Alright."
I thought about my dad, and how uncomfortable he'd be with it. But, better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?
Lisa nodded decisively, and then turned on heel once more. I grabbed my backpack and walked after her. "So, anything you'd like?"
She was asking me?
I just shrugged.
"Jeez, you aren't going to make this easy, are you? Fine then. I'll decide."
I suddenly felt a cold shiver travel down my spine. Why did I feel like I'd just condemned myself or something?
I'd been right. She'd ended up ignoring any protests I had and getting me some kind of black smartphone that I thought was completely unnecessary, but according to her, was.
Lisa was even more stubborn than my father, throwing the box out and pushing the phone and charger into my hands as soon as we got out of the store so that I couldn't quote-unquote "try and return it".
As I'd put the cable away, she'd taken the phone back and fiddled with it, handing it back once I was done, telling me she'd put her contact information in there.
After that, she'd walked me to the bus stop, surprisingly giving me a hug and then waving me goodbye on the bus.
It left a warm feeling in me, something that I didn't expect. It wasn't a crush or anything, but a comforting feeling from the thought that some completely random stranger had picked me out and become my friend in less than two hours.
When I got home, my dad was already home for once, and upon seeing the jacket, had been curious where I'd gotten it. That had led to telling him the story about Lisa over dinner, ending with the confession that she'd basically forced me to get a phone.
Unlike what I'd expected, he'd just sighed and said that it was probably time he get one too.
The day had been full of surprises like that.
But you know what?
In the end, I wouldn't have had it any other way.
A/N: Complex Amy is fucking complex. Jeezus. Also, creepy subconscious continues to be creepy.
April 2011
I stared at the ceiling of my room, shadowed in darkness. I had been right, in the hospital: I couldn't stop thinking about her.
New Wave wasn't really a team you heard all that much about anymore. They got involved in a fight if it was needed, went to Endbringer battles, etc. Oh, there were still threads on PHO with funny meme images about "Photon Mom" and stuff like that, but nowadays you only really heard about two people: Glory Girl, aka Victoria Dallon, and her sister Amy, Panacea.
Victoria had a tendency to get a lot of attention, though whether that was good or bad appeared to depend on the day, and she seemed to have no end of people just waiting to start arguing about the latest thing she'd done.
I suppose being Alexandria-lite didn't hurt.
Amy, though, was different. At least to the public. Whenever her sister drew attention, Amy seemed content not to be a part of it.
The media gave her a million nicknames in the first year she went public. "Miracle worker". "Healing Wonder".
She could heal practically anything, anyone, and by now easily held the record for highest number of lives saved through personal intervention.
And I was one of those.
It was strange, thinking about it. That a girl in your history class had saved your life, but didn't even think anything of it.
Without her, they said that the chances of me coming out of the coma had been slim to none, that the infection –while seemingly contained for the time being– likely would have killed me given a week or two longer.
I lifted my hands, looking at them and flexing them. As good as new, nothing to indicate that I'd had third-degree burns on them less than four hours ago.
She hadn't been anything like I'd imagined. I hadn't thought she'd have a smile or be super happy or anything, considering how quiet and introverted she was in history class, but I'd at least expected her to find some satisfaction in what she was doing.
Instead, she'd been so tired. Worn out. Disillusioned. Jaded. Cynical. Way too much for a girl who was only a year and a half older than I was. It was honestly fucking ridiculous.
"Don't act like you know anything about me."
Her words had been like knives, sharp and accusatory. Acidic.
And yet…
There had been something else there, as well. Something I knew, and knew all too well, at that.
Loneliness.
I'm not sure how I knew it. How I could see it, underneath the way her eyes had hardened and almost sparked with anger.
But I could. I could feel it, and knew that she had nobody she could truly rely on.
It reminded me of myself, less than half a year ago.
It reminded me of what I'd been like before Arcadia. Before three girls (and wasn't that fucking hilarious) had accepted me, and showed me that I hadn't been doing anything wrong. Everybody else had been.
Alex and Sarah and Emily. And then the others who had joined us, John and Michael and Ayame and Sayaka.
My friends. My friends.
I wouldn't have believed it a year ago, but now that I had them, I couldn't imagine being without them.
"Why do you care?"
Why shouldn't I care? Why the fuck wouldn't I care when I saw someone looking like I had a before? Why the fucking hell would I ever want to let someone else have to go through that?
I knew exactly how hard it was to go through the same thing, day in, day out, wearing down at you and crushing you until you felt like you would break, without anybody to be there for you.
And I hated the idea of anybody else going through that the way I had.
Alone.
"Taylor~"
I shut my locker door and didn't have any time to react when a blonde blur rushed up and hugged me from behind. After a few seconds, she released me, and I turned around.
"Hey Alex," I said smiling.
Her eyebrows scrunched together. "You weren't at school yesterday. And you missed practice!" She huffed, trying to frown.
I grimaced. "Yeah. Sorry. I wasn't feeling well. I'm doing fine now," I fibbed. It wasn't a total lie. There's no way I would have been able to play with my ankle the way it had been.
She couldn't keep the expression up for long, it quickly turning into one of her wide grins. "Well, I'm glad you're okay. The others were worried about you too. You seriously need to get a cell phone already."
"Yeah, I know," I muttered, internally wincing at the thought of the conversation that would require having with my dad. Not one I particularly wanted to have.
"Just do it! I know your dad's all weird about it 'cause of your mom, but seriously! What if you got in some horrible accident or something? How would I know where to go to save my favorite soccer buddy from a terrible fate at the hands some of a vile villain?"
I snorted to myself. If only you knew.
Looking at her flatly,"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean," she said.
I smiled. "Yeah, yeah I do." I sighed. "I'll do it soon, promise."
"If you need backup, just let me know and I'll be there!"
"If you say so," I ceded. Though I doubted I'd take her up on the offer, it was still nice to know she'd support me if I needed it.
Alex grinned. "Most excellent." She hooked her arm through mine. "Come, Taylor! It is time to conquer the dastardly land of polar coordinates and cosines!"
I shook my head in amusement and allowed myself to be dragged forward by the energetic blonde to our first period class.
School managed to capture my full attention for once, as people around me were still talking about Lung. I'd have thought it would have mostly blown over thanks to short teenage attention spans, but I'd apparently been wrong.
It wasn't too hard to feign as much ignorance as everyone else, though some part of me –for some completely inexplicable reason– wanted to claim responsibility, to let everyone known who'd done it, even though I knew that would be monumentally stupid.
The first two periods passed quickly, and after a deep breath at the door, I walked into history praying to God that I didn't look as nervous as I felt.
And then I saw her.
Amy.
For a moment I froze, all of my thoughts leaving me like the worst case of stage fright. Alex looked over to me in confusion, and that helped snap me out of my stupor, waving her attention away to let her know there wasn't anything wrong.
Amy was engrossed in a paperback, but when I finally made it to her desk, she turned and looked at me. Her eyes widened slightly, and then she sighed.
Okay Taylor, just fucking say it.
"I… I'm sorry about last night. It wasn't my place to ask you that stuff," I apologized. "And… I really don't want to leave things like that."
Amy grimaced, and seemed to wrestle with herself for a second. "No, it's not your fault." She sighed, looking down. "I was a bit harsh. I'm not exactly used to people asking how I'm doing." She looked back up and met my eyes. "Look. Why don't we just start over?" She held out a hand. "Hi, I'm Amy Dallon."
Grinning, I shook her hand. "Taylor Hebert."
She smiled faintly.
I glanced at the clock and noticed we only had a minute or so before class started. "L-look, this might be a bit forward but, um, if you want, you could come sit with my friends and I for lunch?" I half said, half asked, looking over at Alex.
Amy followed my line of sight, and the blonde must have felt us looking because she looked up at us, and then grinned and waved when she saw who I was talking to. Amy looked back at me. "Who was that?"
"That's Alex. She's one of them," I told her.
Amy bit her lip, looking conflicted. "I… I guess so."
"Only if you want to," I told her quickly. "I-I know you'd probably rather sit with your sister, so if you don't I totally understand!"
Her lips formed a thin line, and something in her eyes changed, becoming resolved. "No," she said quietly, shaking her head. "No," she repeated. "I… I'll sit with you guys for today."
The bell rang."Okay, well, um, we're at those round tables at the front of the cafeteria. It's pretty easy to see." She nodded. "I, I guess I'll see you then," I hurried out, and then made my way to my seat.
Once I was there I let out a sigh. That had been much more nerve-wracking than I'd expected, but I really hadn't wanted to fuck it up again and end up having her hate me.
That would have been extremely counter-productive.
But everything had gone fine, and the first step of my plan was complete. Now… now I just had to figure out the next one.
Fucking fantastic.
Thankfully, the round tables sat ten, which meant we didn't have to do anything weird like trying to fit a chair between two of the little round plastic seats that were eternally attached to the table itself.
Amy was actually the third to make her way over, after Alex and Emily, Alex on my right and Emily on hers. Amy looked a bit nervous as she walked towards us, but with every step she became more sure of herself.
"Hey," I said as soon as she was within five feet.
"…Hello." She seemed to be a mixture between resolute steel, cold anticipation, and wary nervousness.
She sat down on my left, placing her generic lunchbox down as she looked at the two on my right.
"Um, introductions. Amy, Alex and Emily. Alex and Emily, Amy."
"Hi!" Alex chirped, while Emily's own "hi" was more subdued.
"The others should be along pretty soon. The twins and Michael normally buy food here," I told her.
She looked incredulous. "How many are there of you?"
"Uh… eight," I said after mentally tallying everyone.
Amy looked incredulous. "To be honest I'm surprised they've stuck around this long with Alex's charming personality," Emily told her.
"Hey! I resent that," Alex protested.
The other girl scoffed. "More like 'resemble' that."
A pair of girls walked up to the table, sitting across from us, a boy who arrived seconds after sitting in the empty seat between the pair and Emily.
One of the girls blinked at seeing Amy, but before she could say anything Sarah and another boy arrived simultaneously, Sarah sitting next to Amy and the boy sitting on the other side of the girls.
"Alright. Um, so. Sarah, John, Saya, Aya, Michael, Emily, and Alex," I introduced, going around the table clockwise and pointing out each in turn. "Everybody, Amy."
A chorus of greetings, and then Saya looking between Amy and I before turning to Alex. "New girl?"
"New girl," Alex, Emily, and Sarah chorused, with Alex sounding significantly more chipper than the other two's deadpan responses.
"What?" Amy asked in confusion, looking at everyone who'd spoken and sounding slightly offended.
Michael sighed. "Don't worry about it. It's really nothing."
I could tell Amy didn't really feel satisfied with the answer and was slightly annoyed, but she didn't say anything else.
Saya and Aya, really Sayaka and Ayame, were identical Japanese twins who had immigrated to America with their parents as Japan's economy collapsed in 2000. Michael was Hispanic, Peruvian on his mother's side, I think. And John had been born in New York right after Behemoth had hit it, his father having died in the attack and his mother deciding to move here to get away from it after he'd been born.
Thankfully, everyone seemed to have picked up on my rather informal introduction of Amy and the not-so-subtle hint that I did not mention her cape name.
"So what held you two up?" Emily asked, looking across at Sarah and Michael as we all started eating.
"Mucci," John said, as if it was all that was needed in explanation –which it really was as apparently he had a tendency to go over the bell–, Sarah nodding in agreement.
Amy wrinkled her nose at the name. "Do you have him too?" I questioned.
She nodded slowly, as if debating if she should really answer. "…Yeah. Unfortunately."
"Spanish or Greek?" Sarah asked.
"…Greek," she replied hesitantly, and the brunette winced.
"I'm sorry?"
The girl on my left sighed and shook her head. "It's… It's my third year with him, so I'm used to it."
"Oh, yeah, you're a year ahead of us, aren't you?" Emily asked. "How'd Taylor manage to lure you over here?"
"AP World History," I said, causing John to nod knowingly.
"Yeah, that would make sense," he commented. "I'd forgotten you were in that one."
We had a choice of AP courses for our history requirement after freshman year, as well as the order we took them in: Comparative Gov/Pol, US Gov/Pol, Modern European, and World History. It was required to take either the standard, honors or AP US History course our first year.
"So how's the test in Art History?" Sarah asked the twins.
"Hard," Saya reported gravely.
"The stupid aho wouldn't even admit that he messed up one of the questions! One more time and I swear I'll kill him." Aya angrily stabbed a potato slice on her lunch tray, fuming and muttering under her breath.
"Shit," Sarah cursed. "I studied, but now I'm worried."
Saya glanced at her sister before looking back at the brunette. "You'll do fine. Aya is just being a perfectionist."
"Business as usual, then," Alex quipped.
Sarah just nodded.
Amy looked at me. "Is it always this… lively?" she asked quietly. I could tell she was very off-balance by it all, and didn't really know how to feel.
"Pretty much? I mean, with Alex there's no real chance of it not being," I told her.
"I hear you talking about me over there," the mentioned blonde said, peeking around my shoulder "Anything good?"
"Not really," I replied.
"I'm hurt," she said, feigning offense.
On the other side of Amy, Sarah snorted. "Of course you are. You wouldn't be you if you weren't."
"Tayylorrr. Sarah's being mean to me again!" the blonde whined, like a child complaining to their parent about some other kid.
I gave Amy a flat look. "See what I have to deal with?"
For the first time since she'd sat down, a small smile appeared on her face.
"I see how it is. Hmph," Alex said, turning to the girl on the other side of her. "Emily~"
"Uh-uh. I'm not part of this, so don't go dragging me into it," the redhead said.
Alex drooped.
Amy laughed softly, and then froze, seeming shocked at the sound she'd made. I smiled at her. "It… might be lively, but there's never a dull moment," I told her.
She nodded slowly, as if trying to figure out her own feelings, extremely unnerved at the slip she'd made, almost annoyed at herself.
I decided it'd be best to let her brood everything over rather than push, and left her to her thoughts as I turned back and focused on my food.
Lunch had passed easily after with that, Amy mostly just watching everybody talking to each other instead of actively interacting. She'd answered a few innocuous questions directed at her about what she was doing in school, but other than that was mostly left to herself, the others having recognized that she was more than a little guarded. We'd all been the same initially.
"That was… nice," Amy admitted as we threw out our trash on the way out of the cafeteria.
"Yeah," I agreed. "They are."
Now that we were away from everyone else, she seemed to be regaining her emotional balance.
And I was losing the confidence I'd had from being around my friends.
Just get it over with!
"Look I… I was wondering if maybe we could… You know, I mean…" I stumbled out. God damn this fucking shit was harder than I'd expected. Turns out asking a world famous superhero if they'd like to be friends wasn't easy. "Get to know each other?" I finally managed. "You. Not, not…"
"Not 'Panacea'?" she asked flatly, the harsher personality that I'd seen last night surfacing again right before my eyes.
I winced. "Yeah. Right. That."
She'd sure as hell regained her emotional balance alright. It was like the difference between night and day.
Amy sighed. "Look… I…" Her jaw tightened and she placed a hand over her eyes, holding her face.
After a moment, she spoke again. "Yes. Okay." She sighed again, sounding defeated. I blinked. That easy?
She took her hand away and looked me in the eyes. "Alright." Her voice was firm. Amy took another breath, letting it out slowly. "After school. The gates. Today's one of my few free days."
I nodded, trying to keep myself from grinning. We had practice everyday except Tuesday and Friday, so this was fucking perfect.
The early bell rang, and I looked at the clock. Shit. My class was on the other side of the school. "I've um… I…"
She rolled her eyes and huffed. "Go."
I nodded again, this time unable to keep the smile from my face as I quickly turned and made my way to class.
I got held up a little in my CS class and ended up running a couple minutes late. I hurried to get all my stuff from my locker, and after saying goodbye to Alex and everyone that was still around, I made my way out of the building. I tried not to be too obvious I was in a rush, but I really was.
I made it down the front steps of the school and out the gates and looked around. I almost missed her in the crowd of students walking by, but she had a cellphone out and seemed to be reading something.
"Hey," I greeted, walking up to her and making sure I didn't startle her or anything.
She glanced up at me. "Oh. You're here."
"…You make it sound like you didn't expect me to actually show up," I looked at her for a moment. "Were you hoping I wouldn't?" I asked, not really offended but more worried. I didn't want to be overbearing.
Amy froze for a few seconds. "I… I don't know. Okay?" She dragged a hand down her face. "Look, how about we get going?"
I nodded. "Where to?"
She sighed. "Let's just go to the Boardwalk and get food or something. I really need a cup of coffee right now."
The dark circles under her eyes I'd seen last night were still there, so I could understand why she might want the caffeine.
We caught a bus to the boardwalk, and made the ride in an awkward silence. Well. It was awkward for me. Amy seemed to be crashing from the day, staring out of the bus' window blankly.
She was aware enough to realize when we got to where we wanted, though, because I didn't need to get her attention or anything.
We got off at the west end of the boardwalk, Amy leading me directly to a café a few blocks away. She got coffee. I got green tea. Actual green tea, something I was surprised they had, but I wasn't about to waste the opportunity. The twins had introduced it to me, and I'd found myself actually liking it despite how weird it looked being a solid bright green color.
We sat down in a booth, Amy sipping at her drink, life slowly returning to her eyes. After a few minutes, she looked markedly better.
Glancing up at me, she winced. "Sorry. I… I needed this."
I shook my head. "I get it. It's gotta be hard for you."
Her expression darkened slightly, head tilted down so her eyes were shadowed. "Yeah. Right."
Shit.
She shook her head as if clearing it. "Anyways. What were you thinking to do?"
"I,I don't know? U-um. How about introductions, I guess?" I sat up straighter. "I'm Taylor Hebert…" I thought about what to say. "I'm fifteen, I like talking to my friends and playing soccer, and my favorite color is red."
(Slowly dripping, spreading across cracked concrete. Rust and iron and warmwarmwarm.)
Amy looked at me in curiosity. "You're only fifteen? I would've guessed sixteen."
I nodded. "I… I'm a bit tall for my age."
The other girl snorted and muttered something like "no kidding."
"Soooo what about you?" I asked.
Amy rolled the coffee cup between her hands. "Amy Dallon. Seventeen. But you knew that, I'm guessing. I like… I like flying with my sister." A smile crept across her face as she said that. "And my favorite color is blue."
Now we're getting somewhere. "Why blue?"
She shrugged. "It's… the color of the sky. And the ocean. They're so…empty. Freeing."
She was probably talking about flying, considering what she'd just mentioned.
"A place where you can just let go?" I asked, wondering if I was right.
Amy nodded. "Yeah."
There was a pause, and I tried to think of what else to talk about, running through everything before landing on something I decided was good enough.
"What were you reading today? Before class?"
"Looking for Alaska" She took a sip of coffee.
That was rather… interesting. Darkish and philosophical, but I could see the appeal for her. A good amount of suffering, which I was unable to keep myself from relating to her. Denial of authority and a contrast between action and inaction and their consequences.
…Having a mother who'd been an English professor made it hard for me to read a book and not analyze the fuck out of it.
"It's a good book," I commented.
"Yeah." She rolled the cup between her hands again. "I'm liking it so far."
Another moment of silence.
I slumped onto the table. "God this is harder than I thought."
Nobody said it would be easy.
Amy smiled wryly, shrugging. "You're doing alright so far."
I rolled my eyes. "Greaaat. At least I'm not making a complete ass of myself."
She laughed. "Well, I'll ask something then. What do you do in your free time?"
I thought it over. "Soccer practice after school takes up a lot of time. Homework, unfortunately. Reading. I run in the mornings. Hanging out with friends. You?"
"Reading. And… that's really it. Well, except for…" She gestured at my hands and I nodded in understanding.
Healing.
It brought my thoughts back to the night before. How she'd looked. The dullness in her eyes.
And she'd brought the topic up, right?
"Do you mind if I ask…?" I started, hoping I wasn't making a mistake.
She seemed to understand what I was saying, thankfully not reacting the way she had last night.
"'Why?'" Amy finished.
"Yeah."
She sighed. "Yeah. It's fine. I'm sorry for snapping at you last night too. I'm not used to having people…" ask. care. "Honestly? I…" She seemed to waver for a second, on the edge of something. I nodded, encouraging her.
Amy took a breath, letting it out. "I hate it."
I blinked.
"I hate it," she repeated, stronger. "There are some days I just want to tell everybody to fuck off, but I can't because I'm…"
"Panacea," I completed, and it was like some wall crumbled inside of her.
"Right," she said distastefully. "'Panacea'. God. Even the name is telling. 'Cure-all'. What, do they think I'm some sort of answer to every goddamn problem? Just because I can heal doesn't mean I fucking want to!"
It appeared she had quite a bit of unresolved anger and bottled up feelings.
"It's like… like, because I can heal people with my powers, I have to. You don't see Othala going around and volunteering at hospitals, do you? So why the hell do I?"
'Can heal people with her powers'? She made it sound like that wasn't the only thing she could do. That there were others.
"You can do other things?"
She looked at me in pure shock. "W-what?"
"You just said 'can heal people', like you could do other stuff," I explained. A sudden thought came to me. "You can make things, can't you? They said you had to use some of my muscles–"
"They 'said'?" Amy interrupted. Her eyes narrowed sharply, and her voice suddenly became arctic. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Had I not told her that yesterday? I went over the conversation in my mind, and realized I hadn't.
"You um… you saved my life." I guess she wouldn't have remembered me I. was only one of many people she'd dealt with that day, and doubtlessly one of hundreds that week. It would have been ridiculous to expect her to.
Her gaze hardened. "Is that why you're doing this? Because you feel like you owe me? Because you pity me and you're paying off some kind of debt?" She stood up suddenly, grabbing her bag, with her jaw clenched in anger. "You know what? Fuck this."
W-what? No! Shitshitshitshit!!
My hand snapped out and grabbed her wrist just as she was turning to walk away from our table. I felt a pulse travel through me, and all of the bright red cracks jumped.
Amy turned back to me, and the blood drained from her face.
I pushed the lines out of focus, trying to think of what I was going to say.
"I swear to God, Amy! This isn't about that! I mean, yeah, I'm grateful, but…" I struggled to express myself. "Damn it, I wouldn't do that!"
She swallowed and then sat down slowly, putting her bag down at the same time. "F-fine, then."
Why was she so on edge all of a sudden?
"If it's not because of that, then why are you doing this? And how exactly did I save your life?" Amy looked down at her wrist. "And… and can you please let go of me?"
I quickly pulled my hand away as if I'd been burned, trying to stop the blood I could feel rising to my face.
"Alright," I agreed, hesitantly. "Alright." She'd told me about herself, right? And this couldn't be one-sided. This would just returning the favor. And if I opened up to her, maybe she'd do the same. "It's because… it's because I know."
Her eyes narrowed. "Know what?"
"What it's like, to be stuck somewhere you don't want to be," I said haltingly. "I… I was bullied for a year and a half." I looked down at my hands. I was fidgeting.
"I don't like talking about it, but it was really, really bad," I admitted. "Alex knows, but she's the only one."
I took a breath, trying to disperse the tightness in my chest and slight claustrophobia I was feeling. "Everyday, they'd do something. It never got physical except for a few times, it was mostly psychological stuff. But there was never a way to escape, and I couldn't stop it. Nobody would help me. I was all alone. On my own. And I couldn't stand up to them."
I looked back up at her, meeting her eyes. "Before winter break, they suddenly stopped. I thought maybe they'd given up on me, decided to move on. And then when I came back to school after break, I found they'd stuck used tampons and other stuff in my locker right before break, letting it sit there the entire time."
Her face turned slightly green.
"When I opened it and saw everything, the smell made me throw up. Sophia, the one who had always been more physical, shoved me into my locker from behind as I was leaning over, and then locked me in." I grit my teeth.
I hated telling this, but if this was what it took for her to believe me then fuck it, I would.
"They tell me I was in there for three days. That the scratches I got on my shins from being pushed in were infected from kneeling in all the shit. When they found me, I was barely alive," I took a breath, forcing myself to continue. "They say my heart failed twice before they could stabilize me, but I think it happened in the locker too, because I blacked out and everything was so cold."
I died.
I don't know how I knew it, but I did. I knew I'd died, been gone completely, but somehow my heart restarted and my body stayed alive.
(But I was already gone. Gone gone gone.)
"I had TSS. My muscles and shin bones were infected. They had to filter all my blood. I didn't have any of my organs fail after my heart, but it was touch-and-go and I was in a coma for a week straight."
(Floating down into 「 」. A place of nothingnothingnothing. No light or darkness. No sound. No time, no meaning, but I still saw. Only death and 「being」. Nothing living, but I was alive, still alive. At peace at the center of 「death」, at the center of 「emptiness」.)
"And then I woke up."
(Life once more, but I could still see death. The 「emptiness」 and 「death」 that invaded my mind, my 「self」, my 「origin」 and would always be a part of me.)
"They said you healed me, and that you used some of my muscle mass to do it. But… that would require breaking them down, moving the proteins and stuff, changing them, and then using them for something different, making them something else."
Amy flinched, and then stared down at her hands, mumbling something.
"What?"
"I don't want it. I wish I didn't have my powers. I wish I hadn't triggered." Now wasn't that something I could empathize with.
She looked up and pinned me where I sat. "But no, I have to use them because it's my 'responsibility'," she continued bitterly, like she was quoting someone else. "Because what would people think if 'Panacea' didn't heal?" Amy scoffed, and then shook her head mirthlessly. "I fucking hate it."
She turned and looked out of the window at her right, watching the people go by. "And they have no idea."
"But I do."
She turned to me and gave me a half-hearted smile. "Yeah. You're the only one, you know. The first one I've told. The first one who even fucking noticed."
"Thank you," I said sincerely. "For trusting me."
Amy picked up her cup of coffee and drained the rest of it. "Yeah. Well." She sighed. "I figure we're not so different."
"What?"
She ran her fingers through her hair, taking a breath. "Fuck it. As long as we're sharing stuff, I should probably tell you. You deserve to know anyways."
"Tell me what?"
"I know."
I blinked. "Know what?"
"Taylor. I know."
My heart stuttered for a moment. What was she talking about? Did she know I killed Lung? Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Why was she even talking to me then?
"H-how?" I asked cautiously.
"I saw. Yesterday. And in your head."
Huh?
"What are you talking about?"
She rolled her eyes, leaning over the table slightly. "Your Gemma," she said quietly. "And it's not exactly inconspicuous either."
"What?"
She sighed. "God, Taylor. Your powers."
I blinked.
"O-oh." Shouldn't I feel worried, or concerned, or something? One of my biggest secrets, and yet I couldn't seem to bring myself to care about her knowing. She hated her own powers as much as I did, so if anything, she'd be the only one I was actually comfortable knowing about them. I probably would have told her eventually anyways. Not for a few weeks, depending on how well everything went (it was going really well so far), but sooner rather than later.
Wait.
"What do you mean 'not inconspicuous'?"
She looked at me strangely. "The glowy thing your eyes do."
What!?
"What are you talking about? They glow?" I felt my voice raise an octave.
Her expression changed to disbelief. "You didn't know?"
I shook my head, even as she reached into her bag and pulled out a small mirror.
"Here."
Taking it from her, I looked into it. My eyes were brown, just like always.
And then I allowed the lines to rise up.
As I watched, electric-blue bloomed from the center, growing and taking over the brown. A circle of violet formed around my pupil, and it looked like wisps of the rings were sucked into the dark points, they themselves having dilated to twice the size they'd been before.
And yes, they glowed.
"Whoa."
They were so pretty. Mesmerizing.
"You see now?"
I nodded, and forcibly pushed the lines down, my eyes fading back to their usual color.
"I,I had no idea," I told her, looking up. "I don't… I don't exactly like my powers at all. I've never had a reason to look in a mirror. It just happens sometimes, but I can stop it almost immediately now."
Not that that helped with the tremors and cold sweat and anxiety and restlessness I got at night.
"What is it?" she asked. "What does it do?"
"I… see things," I said, shuddering. Things. Yeah. More like the death and destruction of every thing around me and how to kill it all.
(Such beautiful things.)
I didn't really want to talk about it, and thankfully Amy seemed to pick that up. "You… The locker?" she asked.
"Yeah." Swallowing, I thought about what I'd seen in the mirror. If that was what happened, it meant I needed to try twice as hard to keep the lines away when other people were around, and shut my eyes as soon as possible when they popped up.
"Please, don't tell anyone?" I had a feeling she wouldn't but I needed to make sure.
Amy looked affronted. "Why would I even want to? Not to mention it's against the rules."
I tilted my head. "The rules?"
"The unwritten rules. You seriously don't know?"
I shook my head. "Don't want to be a cape. I hate it."
Her expression softened, becoming slightly sympathetic, and some of the tension in her body dropped away. "Well, you should know anyways. The rules are that we don't expose other capes even if we know who they really are, and that we don't go after each other in secret identities. Which… shouldn't apply to you if you really stay out of it. But the first one does."
"Oh."
So that was why New Wave never got attacked out of costume even though everyone knew who they were.
Amy nodded, raising her cup but then realizing it was empty and looking at it mournfully before putting it back down.
"What's it like? Your family, I mean. It's got to be different, right?"
Her expression changed again, this time to mild pain, frustration, and a hint of helplessness. "No. I don't think it's any different from a normal family."
I looked at her curiously. "What do you mean?"
She opened her mouth, and then shut it, shaking her head. "Never mind. Just… it's nothing. Typical family drama."
I knew that she wasn't telling the whole story. That there was more she wasn't saying. I was tempted to push, to see if I could get her to open up any more, but I was also slightly afraid of losing whatever little progress I'd made so far. Push too far, and…
Well, let's just say I wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing the cold, cynical personality Amy had when she clammed up. She could be vicious.
I nodded as if I understood. "Well… um. If you ever want to talk about it, I'm here?"
Amy looked at me with her brows furrowed, like she was confused and trying to figure out if I had some ulterior motive. "Al…right, then."
Fuck. "No, I'm serious. Just…. look, here."
I grabbed a paper napkin and scribbled my number and address on it with a pen from my backpack.
I slid the napkin over to Amy, along with the mirror she'd handed me earlier. "My number and address. My house number, 'cause that's the only phone I've got. I'm going to be trying to get a cellphone, and if I do I'll give you that one too. If you just need to talk to someone, call me. Anytime."
She nodded slowly.
"And… I know this might be kind of weird, but if you ever need a place to go and get away from anything, you can come over. I… I know what it's like when you've got nowhere you can go to just get away. I usually end up at Alex's or the twins' place, but at this point my Dad half-expects someone to crash on our couch at least once a week. Just…" I sighed. "I know how much I would've liked someplace to escape from life back then."
"I'm… not the first one you've done this to, am I?" she asked, looking from the napkin to me.
"No," I admitted, mildly guilty. "But it's different. They're not you. You're not them? I mean, I know you've probably already got people and places but every little thing counts, if that makes any sense?"
There was a flash of expressions, confusion, wariness, longing, sympathy, and a stab of understanding, and then Amy's emotions appeared to stabilize, settling back down. "Yeah. I get it." She paused. "Thanks," she finished softly.
It may have been small, but it was progress.
Amy was… less guarded after we left the café. Not a lot, but enough that she was pointing out shops she'd gone to with her sister, and telling a couple stories of things they'd done.
I got the sense that Amy was around her a lot. More than she was at school, even. Eventually she looked at the clock on her phone and told me she had to go, not realizing it was already five.
I waved her off, saying it was fine.
We ended up parting around the middle of the boardwalk, and she headed towards the end we'd come from and the bus, saying we'd do it again soon.
I was left wandering around, really just staring at clothes and stuff inside of windows, and I even walked into one phone store just to look around and see what was on the market right now and what we could afford.
It was around three-quarters of the way down the boardwalk towards the bay that I saw something in a window.
It was a jacket. A bright red fitted leather jacket.
And it looked fucking awesome.
"Pretty nice, huh?"
I looked over to the girl on my left that had walked up behind me as I'd been staring through the window.
She was blonde, a braid running down her back, with bottle-green eyes and freckles dusted over high cheekbones.
Turning back to the window and looking at it again, I agreed. "Yeah, it is."
I felt a hand slipping into mine, and looked in surprise at the girl, who'd turned towards the door of the shop.
She looked over her shoulder. "C'mon, I want to see you in it, I think you'd look good."
I was slightly surprised by her action, but at this point I was pretty desensitized thanks to Alex's random bouts of spontaneity.
Without even giving me a chance to protest, she pulled me into store, a bell dinging.
It was relatively large inside, jackets on just about every wall and racks.
There were pants, too but I highly doubted I'd look any good in those with my spindly long legs, despite the surprising amount of muscle I'd built up in the last three months.
A guy walked over to us, with a nametag that read 'Robert'.
"Can I help you ladies?"
The blonde dropped my hand, pointing at the red jacket in the display. "Yeah, have you got that in medium? It's for her," she said, tilting her head and jerking it in my direction.
The young guy leaned to the right and looked over her shoulder. "Yeah, I think we do. Over here."
I was speechless, unable to say anything to the two in denial, simply following behind the blonde who was drifting after the man.
We ended up at a rack, and he shifted through a collection of the same type eventually pulling out a medium.
"Aaaaand… here," he said, holding it out to me. I took it from him wordlessly. "Do you need anything else?"
The blonde shook her head. "Alright then, I'll be over by the counter if you need any further assistance."
He walked off, and I was left standing there, holding the jacket awkwardly. The other girl turned around to me. "Well? Come on, try it out!"
I blinked. "Um… okay?"
Setting my backpack down, I pulled my sweatshirt over my head, making sure the harness I was wearing underneath my shirt didn't get exposed with my t-shirt being pulled up along with the hoodie.
She looked me over appreciatively, and I blushed. "You're pretty fit, huh?"
I just nodded, unzipping the leather jacket to take it off of the metal and wooden hanger, putting that back on the rack, and then slinging the jacket around my back, slipping an arm first into the right sleeve, and then into the left.
The girl walked around me, eyeing everything. When she got back to my front, she pulled down on the two sides, straightening it, and then zipped it up about three-quarters so that the collar still folded over.
She nodded to herself. "Nice. Much better on you than that thing was," she said, waving at the dark blue hoodie on my backpack. "Alright. Come on."
"W-what?" I asked.
"Let's get it. I knew you'd look good in it as soon as I saw you checking it out," she said, as if it was the only conclusion.
I spluttered, shaking my head. "I-I can't…"
The blonde rolled her green eyes. "Fine, then I'll get it for you. But there's no way I'm letting something like this," She lightly smacked my abs with the back of her hand, causing me to flush even more than I had before, "go to waste by being hidden by something like that." She looked pointedly at my hoodie.
"N-no, I couldn't…"
"Good God, I'm doing this for you. If you don't accept right now my ego's going to end up being bruised and I'll start taking offense," the girl said.
"A-ah. Alright?" I agreed hesitantly.
She nodded, dragging me over to the counter, me barely managing to grab my backpack and other jacket before we got too far away.
"She'll take it," the girl told Robert, who was standing behind the register.
He nodded, and rung it up. "That'll be three hundred even."
I nearly choked. WHAT!?
I hadn't even gotten a chance to look at the price tag, the blonde having distracted me.
The girl didn't bat an eye, pulling a wallet out of her purse and pulling out three bills, handing them over.
H-holy shit!
He punched a few buttons, and the register slid open with a 'ding'. He stuck the bills in, and then closed it.
Robert looked at the girl in front of me, and I realized I hadn't even gotten her name yet. "You need a bag?"
She shook her head. "Nah. Thanks!"
He nodded. "Have a good day."
The girl smirked, and turned to me. "C'mon, let's go."
I hurriedly took my backpack off and shoved my sweatshirt in it, because there was no way I was going to risk wrinkling something as nice as what I was wearing right now.
She led me out of the store, and I just trailed behind as she wandered through the crowds, before suddenly turning and looking back at me. "I never gave you my name, did I?"
I shook my head, unable to say anything.
"I'm Lisa," she said with a grin.
"Uh… Taylor."
Her grin widened, "Nice to meet you, Taylor. Wanna walk around with me?"
I just nodded. Seriously, this girl had just paid for a three-hundred dollar jacket for me and wasn't even saying anything about it. Did she normally go around buying random strangers stuff or something?
"Awesome. Come on, I know this pretty nice park that's only a couple blocks away."
She turned and strode away, and I rushed to catch up to her.
We made it to the park, and she sat down on a bench at the edge, me joining her a few seconds later.
"So. Tell me about yourself."
Déjà vu, much? I'd just gone through this only hours ago with Amy, now I was doing it again. But if this was what she wanted for buying me that jacket, then I'd tell her anything she wanted without complaints.
"Um, Taylor Hebert. I'm fifteen. I'm a sophomore at Arcadia, and a starting forward on the JV soccer team." I paused, and Lisa nodded encouragingly. "My dad's head of hiring for the Dockworker's Union, and I read a lot in my free time."
"Oooh, what sort of stuff?"
I shrugged. "Anything? Classics, Young Adult, Sci-fi, philosophy, obscure fantasy. Mostly stuff that's been reviewed pretty well."
Lisa 'hmm'-ed. "Tolkien?"
I looked at her flatly. "What do you think?" I'd read that the summer before Emma– I mentally shook my head to clear it, pushing those thoughts out of my mind.
She laughed. "Yeah, I guess that was a little obvious. What other kind stuff?"
"Asimov. Herbert. Anne McCaffrey."
"Yeah, Dragonriders is a pretty good series," she agreed. "Bit of a cult classic, though." She looked at me, silently asking me to continue.
"Uh… Harry Potter, at least until it started getting worse in the last few books." Apparently the Aleph versions were a lot better, but I hadn't gotten a chance to look for them. "Vonnegut. Carl Jung. Kim Harrison. Patricia Briggs. John Green. Rainbow Rowell. Jay Asher. Zusak, though I didn't really like his stuff, actually."
"Basically the full gamut," she noted.
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Nice," Lisa commented. "I can't say I've gotten a lot of time to read lately, but I've heard of a bunch of those."
I nodded in understanding. My time lately had been taken up by soccer, leaving me less time for reading. Not that I was really complaining.
The green-eyed girl tapped her chin. "Hm. I'm seventeen. I graduated early by getting my GED. I study." She looked at me. "I'm trying to get a college degree online." She grinned. "Behavioral psychology."
That was pretty neat. I could see it too.
"I do a lot of computer stuff too, actually." I looked at her in interest. "Some programming, but mostly security," she clarified. "Penetration testing and stuff."
Hacking. Well, legal hacking where you get hired by a company to test their firewalls and stuff. It was something I'd only really heard about. It also paid really well. No wonder she had the kind of money she did.
"And I like watching mysteries. Reading them, too, but like I said, I haven't been doing that much."
"Cool. I take a CS class, but that's really it."
She nodded, and then shrugged. "Eh. It keeps me busy. I don't like getting bored."
Well, she was certainly hyperactive enough to remind me of Alex. So I could believe that.
"So you got a cell number?" she asked. "So I can text you if I find a really good book or you'd like to ask some fancy computer question?"
I blinked, and then shook my head. "No, I don't have a cell phone."
Lisa looked at me incredulously. "Seriously? Seriously? It's 2011, you're a fifteen year-old, and you don't have a cellphone?"
I shook my head again.
"Well." She got a glint in her eyes. "Let's fix that, shall we?"
"W-what?"
Lisa stood up. "Come on. You heard me. Cellphone. Chop chop." She turned to start walking away, expecting me to follow.
I stood up quickly. "Wait!"
She turned back to me. "What?"
"Why… Why are you doing all of this?"
She shrugged. "I dunno. I just saw you and was like, 'I bet she's interesting. She seems like she'd be a cool person.' And then I saw you were looking at that jacket." She rolled her eyes. "It's not like I can't afford it or anything."
I guess when she put it that way…
"Relax, Taylor. I don't expect you to pay me back for it or anything. Just consider it a favor. I don't exactly get out and get to talk to people much, so… well, if you're really uncomfortable with it, just think of it as bribery or something. Say I kidnapped you and forced you to accept my generosity," she said with a grin.
And then she gave me a stern look, her eyes twinkling. "But there's no way I'm letting you go without getting a cellphone. That is a travesty that needs to be fixed."
"A-Alright."
I thought about my dad, and how uncomfortable he'd be with it. But, better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?
Lisa nodded decisively, and then turned on heel once more. I grabbed my backpack and walked after her. "So, anything you'd like?"
She was asking me?
I just shrugged.
"Jeez, you aren't going to make this easy, are you? Fine then. I'll decide."
I suddenly felt a cold shiver travel down my spine. Why did I feel like I'd just condemned myself or something?
I'd been right. She'd ended up ignoring any protests I had and getting me some kind of black smartphone that I thought was completely unnecessary, but according to her, was.
Lisa was even more stubborn than my father, throwing the box out and pushing the phone and charger into my hands as soon as we got out of the store so that I couldn't quote-unquote "try and return it".
As I'd put the cable away, she'd taken the phone back and fiddled with it, handing it back once I was done, telling me she'd put her contact information in there.
After that, she'd walked me to the bus stop, surprisingly giving me a hug and then waving me goodbye on the bus.
It left a warm feeling in me, something that I didn't expect. It wasn't a crush or anything, but a comforting feeling from the thought that some completely random stranger had picked me out and become my friend in less than two hours.
When I got home, my dad was already home for once, and upon seeing the jacket, had been curious where I'd gotten it. That had led to telling him the story about Lisa over dinner, ending with the confession that she'd basically forced me to get a phone.
Unlike what I'd expected, he'd just sighed and said that it was probably time he get one too.
The day had been full of surprises like that.
But you know what?
In the end, I wouldn't have had it any other way.
A/N: Complex Amy is fucking complex. Jeezus. Also, creepy subconscious continues to be creepy.
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Sever 2.2
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sever 2.2
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
When I woke, it was still dark out.
For a moment, I was confused, as my clock said it was only three in the morning, and I hadn't woken up on my own. There hadn't been any nightmares last night, thankfully. They seemed to be happening with less frequency anyways.
There was a low rumble outside, and I sat up. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I easily made my way to the window, pulling the blinds up and looking outside. Another rumble, and I saw a cloud of smoke lift up over the horizon and then slowly get pushed sideways.
There was a boom, much closer, and I felt it in my bones, the windows rattling in their casings. I couldn't see the results of that one, though.
A popping sound started up, piercing the night with a sharp staccato that started and stopped at random intervals. It was seconds before I registered it as gunfire.
I looked towards the door just before my dad opened it, an expression of worry on his face as he first looked towards my bed, and then around the room, becoming visibly relieved when he saw me.
"Taylor–"
"I know, Dad," I said. "Gang war."
He just nodded. "It's looking pretty bad. I called Kurt and Lacey, and they're saying it's even worse closer to the docks. That asian gang's at the center of it all, apparently."
I turned back to look out the window, and the clumped, dull orange light I could see on the horizon, with smoke trailing above.
Fires.
"Good thing we went out and got food pretty recently, huh? I'm hoping it'll blow over quickly, but with Lung gone…"
Without Lung, the ABB would likely be in total disarray unless some other cape stepped up and took his position. Either way, the two other gangs, the Empire Eighty-Eight and the Merchants, would be out for blood, looking to grab as much of the weakened gang's territory as possible. Not to mention Tattletale's group (I'd learned they were called the Undersiders from some web research last night), which was near the center of the docks and would probably want to maintain some form of control on their area.
To be honest, I was surprised it had taken everyone this long to decide to attack, but I suppose it would make sense if they were gathering the forces to do it, and even Skidmark –who was apparently an absolute dickhead, but that wasn't exactly surprising with a name like 'Skidmark'– would recognize that it'd be better to launch an assault with more people and some planning than less and none at all.
Still, I had no idea what the fuck these explosions were supposed to be, it was like someone had gotten a hold of military-grade C4 or something. Because pipebombs sure as hell didn't make explosions that large.
"Well, I suppose we should try to get back to sleep, if we can. Not much else we can do except leave it all to the authorities and hope it's over soon."
"Yeah…" I agreed quietly.
He moved away from where he'd been behind me, walking to the door and closing it most of the way. "Get some rest, Taylor."
I nodded where I was at the window, still looking out of it at the horizon where fires were blazing.
Dad shut the door, moving into his own room across the hall.
After a few moments, I lowered the blinds, closing the scene and returning to my bed. Under the covers, though, I made no effort to go back to sleep, staring at the ceiling.
I caused this.
Indirectly –well, actually very directly– I had caused this gang war. It was a bit hard to comprehend, thinking about the power and impact such a little action as killing Lung had.
I had thrown a city into chaos with only four cuts.
Underside of the right arm.
Front of the left thigh.
Severing of the upper right arm.
And finally, a single stab to the chest between the sixth and seventh ribs.
(it had been so beautiful)
Four cuts, one death, and it had such profound ripples. I wasn't usually very philosophical, but this really got me thinking. I wondered what would happen if I killed any of the other gangs' leaders.
Well, being Brockton Bay, probably nothing in the long term. My dad had told me stories before, telling me about how there used to be other cape gangs in the city. That it seemed to be simply a fact of life. Brockton had gangs, and the best thing to do was to stay out of their way.
But why did they have to be the way they were? Dad's stories of Marquis had made him sound like he was pretty decent for a villain, he just also happened to be utterly ruthless against anyone who crossed him, something I could sympathize with.
What would happen if instead of Lung, there was some decent person in charge of the ABB?
It was much more likely the ABB than the E88 or the Merchants. The Merchants were basically washed-up dregs of society and bums, and the E88 were neo-nazis for fuck's sake. Can you imagine the leader of a neo-nazi gang actually being a nice guy to everyone?
Yeah, no.
But what could happen? Safer drugs? Less prostitution? Those were things I could get behind. It would mean a better Brockton in general, which was something we could seriously use.
It's funny, you know? Capes, superheroes, the Protectorate… They were supposed to be doing good stuff, but the ones in Brockton never seemed to make an impact. They were always fighting to stay with the group, not ahead of it. You heard about cape fights every so often, but if anybody did get captured, there was a 95% chance they'd get out and be back on the streets within a week.
It felt like a game, almost. Amy's description of the "unwritten rules" only made that feeling even stronger. Like, I understood there was the escalation factor. Go after villains when they're not in costume, and you're asking to have the same done to you.
Then again, some people practically lived as their cape identities, from what I understood. Skidmark, and his girlfriend Squealer. Armsmaster. The Triumvirate. Oh, and those "monstrous" capes who apparently got the short end of the stick and wound up with some serious mutations. Those were the only ones I could think of off the top of my head, but there had to be more.
Why did they all do that? Was it just that much easier to not have a secret identity at all?
Another loud boom outside drew my attention back to reality, and I sighed, resigning myself to trying to get back to sleep, even if it wasn't going to be easy.
"—The mayor urges the public not to go outside if possible, to keep all windows and doors locked. Please inform the police of any suspicious activity you notice."
There was no school that day. Apparently when there's a gang war, they don't want kids on the street. Shocker, I know. So school was canceled and the mayor had declared a state of emergency. The explosions had slowed, but they were still going off randomly about once an hour.
My group of friends was safe, made sure through texts once I'd convinced them that yes I was in fact who I said I was and yes, hell had actually frozen over and I now had a cellphone.
There was nothing to do other than read and browse the internet on our lousy DSL connection. And of that, well, the only really interesting thing was PHO and their discussion of everything that had been going on.
The threads had exploded (ha ha, yes I know I'm funny), and had more information than anything else I'd seen so far, including the news.
Apparently the explosions were the work of some bomb-Tinker named 'Bakuda', the same person who had been behind the Cornell bombings over a month ago. She'd taken control of the ABB, and was somehow managing to temporarily hold off both the Merchants and the E88, with only the help of Oni Lee.
Pretty impressive, I had to admit. Especially for someone nobody had even really known about until now.
Still, innocents had gotten caught in the crossfire of her bombs, and there'd been more than a few civilian deaths. It was currently under fifty, but was still rising.
The worst thing? Amy was working at one of the hospitals healing people.
After our talk yesterday, it made me think about just what kind of stress that would put on her. Because there was no doubt that healing people was just going to wear her down further and further and further.
I'd… be lying if I said I wasn't worried about her a little bit. With something like this gang war going on, with being forced, pushed to her wits' end to heal people when she'd outright stated she didn't even want her powers…
It wasn't a very good situation.
I didn't have her number or anything. I'd given her our house phone on that napkin, but she'd never given me hers.
Not that I'd even contact her. Amy was a very tricky situation. She was defensive as all hell, which meant that while I had been able to reach out, I couldn't do that a second time. It was frustrating, because what I had done yesterday was literally all I could do. I couldn't force her to accept my help, all I could do was let her know that I would, but only if she wanted, only if she asked for it.
…Fuck my goddamn savior complex.
This was not the first time it had showed up. You wonder about how everybody in our little group got together? Yeah. Me. Me and my fucking inability to leave things alone. It was a recurring problem, yet I couldn't even really hate it, because in the end it had brought us all together, and I wouldn't trade that for anything.
Still, Amy… I couldn't stop thinking about how she had looked Monday night before she'd healed me. Her eyes had been just… dead, glassed-over.
A mirror image of what I'd used to see every day, myself.
It was strange thinking that I could relate to a world-famous cape like Panacea, in such a mundane, normal way. But… she wasn't Panacea. I mean, yes, she was, but she wasn't. For her, Panacea was just a name, it was associated with her, but it wasn't her name. She didn't think herself as Panacea, because she refused to be defined by her powers.
And… I actually really respected her for that.
For her, she was just Amy. I think that she actually came closer to what New Wave had been going for than any of the others. Amy had powers, but she wouldn't be any less Amy if she didn't, and she wasn't any more than Amy because she did.
I pulled my knife out from its place hidden in my desk as I sat in front of it. Checking it over, I played with it for a couple seconds, twirling it around before flinging it up and grabbing it out of mid-air, looking at my reflection in the blade's edge. At my beckoning the lines rose up, and I watched the bright, supernatural blue overtake the brown in my eyes.
…Even with powers, I was still Taylor.
And I always would be.
The day passed slowly, punctuated by intermittent explosions. The fact that I was now able to talk instantly with my friends made it pass quicker, but not by much. And it was all spent inside.
The number of casualties by lunchtime was forty-eight people.
Forty-eight.
Apparently Bakuda wasn't just fighting back, but also engaging in some sort of terror-campaign against the other gangs, and it was working. Kaiser was organizing his capes, and already a few fights had gone down. The Merchants… well, the Merchants didn't really have a chance if Bakuda could go up against all of the E88 and hold them off.
Lunch was with Dad, an irregularity that almost never happened, but we made sandwiches and ate at the table together
Afterwards I headed back upstairs, entertaining myself by reading and the novelty that was texting. Eventually, though, I grew bored, and started calling people just so I wouldn't feel so… alone.
Alex had been busy watching a movie with her younger brother, so I'd switched to Emily and then Sarah, who were both on the southern side of the city. Apparently the explosions were closer –and therefore louder– to them, and they were staying in their rooms. Emily in had seemed particularly spooked, as a bomb had gone off only two blocks from where she was, and she said her family was actually considering getting out of the city if it kept up.
Michael lived only three blocks away from me, and so he was in much the same boat as my Dad and I were: stuck inside, but not particularly worried.
And then there was the twins. Aya was a bit prickly at times, and suspecting this would be one of those, I called Sayaka instead.
"Taylor?"
I smiled, though she couldn't see it. "Hey Saya. How're you?"
There was a heavy sigh on her end of the phone. "Alright. Ayame's getting irritated from being forced to stay inside, but my parents agree that it's the best option right now. Not to mention there've been these creepy rumors of people disappearing on PHO."
That was news to me. People going missing in the middle of a gang war? What the hell could be doing that?
Bringing my attention back to the conversation, I spoke. "And you?"
"I'm fine. A little similar to Aya, but not so bad. Hanging in there. I'm just frustrated. There isn't much to do, and it's boring. Hanafuda are only so interesting for the first five games."
I chuckled. "I can imagine." The twins had talked me into learning, and I'd somehow managed a winning streak for the past few weeks against Aya. But the games could be long.
"So how are you, Taylor?"
"I'm doing oka–"
I heard a bang in the background, like the sound of a door being forced open, the wood breaking.
"Saya?"
"Taylor!" Saya yelled. "I think there's someone he–" She was cut off by a loud crack.
I could hear indistinct shouting, lower-pitched voices that I couldn't recognize, and a different language that I recognized as Japanese from my time with the twins.
"Saya!?"
A sharp scream came through the line, causing me to wince in pain before the sound was abruptly muffled. Thudding sounds grew louder, and then something plastic scraping against something else, like a floor.
Without any warning the phone in my hand went silent, the screen lighting up and backing out to the previous frame that displayed my recent calls. As soon as it had loaded fully, I pressed the green phone next to Saya's name.
It went straight to voicemail. No ringing, nothing.
I pushed Aya's dial icon the next time, and the same thing happened.
FUCK.
Okay. Okay.
I took a breath.
Alright. Gotta stay calm. Put the facts together.
I was on the phone with Sayaka. She was fine. There was a noise, and she was telling me she thought that someone was in the house. And then… all of that happened.
It looked like there was a pretty fucking high chance her suspicions were right.
I was still breathing quickly. Focusing, I started forcing myself to slow my breathing.
Okay. Alright. What to do. What the fuck should I do?
Call the police?
I switched over to the number pad and punched in '911' as soon as I had the thought, hitting call as fast as possible. There wasn't even a pause, it just went immediately to a busy signal.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
They were probably completely tied up with everything going on in the city right now, and I doubted they'd even have anyone they could dispatch in the next hour, if the emergency lines were even open.
And this couldn't wait.
I didn't know her family's neighbors' numbers, and if they hadn't noticed anything wrong already, I had doubts they were going to.
Shit. Shit!
I was moving over to my desk before I entirely realized what I was doing. My knife and its harness were where I'd stored them the night before, in the top right drawer, and I pulled them out, taking my shirt off and working my way into the collection of straps, tightening everything down. Once I'd gotten everything settled and secure, I pulled my t-shirt back on, hurrying over to my closet. Inside, I grabbed the surplus boots I'd gotten with Sarah one day and quickly laced them up over my jeans before reaching for my jacket hanging on one of the hooks behind the door..
My hand halted inches away from the familiar dark blue hoodie. Half a foot to the side, my new red jacket sat on the other peg.
…Fuck it.
Grabbing it, I pulled it on, hastily going over myself over to make sure I had everything.
Phone? Check.
ID? Check.
Knife? …Right where it was supposed to be.
Grabbing a pen and a piece of paper from my desk, I hastily scratched out a note for my dad. There was no chance of making it downstairs and out the front door without him noticing, so…
I looked in the direction of one of windows. Great.
Unlocking it and lifting it open wasn't the hard part. Nor was actually getting out of the window. The hard part ended up being sitting outside on the sill and closing it behind me.
Once it was closed as quietly possible, I pushed myself off of the windowsill and fell the fourteen or so feet to the ground. The height hadn't looked too bad, and I'd been right, as I easily landed in a crouch, dead silent, something I never would have managed three months ago.
Powers that came with fighting abilities were oddly handy in other places.
Standing up, I looked around and made sure nobody had noticed. Thank God for small mercies. The last thing I needed right now was someone asking me what the hell I was doing. There wasn't any time for me to deal with something like that.
Sides, back, or front?
Sides. Dad would most likely be in the living room, and the twins' house was southwest. Running towards the wire fence at my left, I gripped the top edge and jumped while shifting my weight, lifting my legs up to my side and over the fence. I relaxed once I was past the halfway point, allowing momentum to pull me the rest of the way over, again landing silently on grass.
This time, however, I didn't pause. I ran straight for the sidewalk in front of the house and turned right, following our street south, and then turning and beginning the route I made at least once a week, but usually at a much easier pace.
It normally took me a good forty-five minutes of walking to get there.
I didn't have that kind of time.
From my time with Alex and Sarah on the soccer team, I'd learned that Alex's initial assumptions of me had been right: I was a fast runner. Like, really fast. I had a suspicion part of that was tied into my powers somehow, and tried not to stand out, though I also felt that I could go much faster than I had in practices and games.
Considering my current times, I was pretty sure people would start looking at me funny if I did run any faster, because at that point I'd probably be pushing Olympic speeds effortlessly and that was a sign of two things: taking steroids, or being a parahuman.
And I did not want people figuring out I was a parahuman. I didn't need that kind of attention.
So I held back.
But now? Now I didn't, because this was my fucking friends, and if there was any reason to risk being outed, it was them.
Pushing myself, my trip to their house was significantly quicker.
Once I was within three houses, I slowed down, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
There was a pair of vehicles in the driveway I didn't recognize: a white-panel van and a black car. Even as I watched, the van started pulling out, and then the car.
Oh, fuck no.
I ran towards them, but they were already out on the street, and whoever was driving must have seen me, because suddenly tires were squealing and they were both racing away as fast as it could. They must have gotten up to at least thirty miles an hour by the end of the street, and showed no signs of stopping or slowing down, leaving me standing there in the middle of the street, staring off in the direction they'd gone.
With absolutely no chance of me being able to catch up.
A/N: Taylor continues to wax philosophical. And manages to turn not being a "real" cape into a personal statement. God, Taylor. /rolls eyes
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
When I woke, it was still dark out.
For a moment, I was confused, as my clock said it was only three in the morning, and I hadn't woken up on my own. There hadn't been any nightmares last night, thankfully. They seemed to be happening with less frequency anyways.
There was a low rumble outside, and I sat up. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I easily made my way to the window, pulling the blinds up and looking outside. Another rumble, and I saw a cloud of smoke lift up over the horizon and then slowly get pushed sideways.
There was a boom, much closer, and I felt it in my bones, the windows rattling in their casings. I couldn't see the results of that one, though.
A popping sound started up, piercing the night with a sharp staccato that started and stopped at random intervals. It was seconds before I registered it as gunfire.
I looked towards the door just before my dad opened it, an expression of worry on his face as he first looked towards my bed, and then around the room, becoming visibly relieved when he saw me.
"Taylor–"
"I know, Dad," I said. "Gang war."
He just nodded. "It's looking pretty bad. I called Kurt and Lacey, and they're saying it's even worse closer to the docks. That asian gang's at the center of it all, apparently."
I turned back to look out the window, and the clumped, dull orange light I could see on the horizon, with smoke trailing above.
Fires.
"Good thing we went out and got food pretty recently, huh? I'm hoping it'll blow over quickly, but with Lung gone…"
Without Lung, the ABB would likely be in total disarray unless some other cape stepped up and took his position. Either way, the two other gangs, the Empire Eighty-Eight and the Merchants, would be out for blood, looking to grab as much of the weakened gang's territory as possible. Not to mention Tattletale's group (I'd learned they were called the Undersiders from some web research last night), which was near the center of the docks and would probably want to maintain some form of control on their area.
To be honest, I was surprised it had taken everyone this long to decide to attack, but I suppose it would make sense if they were gathering the forces to do it, and even Skidmark –who was apparently an absolute dickhead, but that wasn't exactly surprising with a name like 'Skidmark'– would recognize that it'd be better to launch an assault with more people and some planning than less and none at all.
Still, I had no idea what the fuck these explosions were supposed to be, it was like someone had gotten a hold of military-grade C4 or something. Because pipebombs sure as hell didn't make explosions that large.
"Well, I suppose we should try to get back to sleep, if we can. Not much else we can do except leave it all to the authorities and hope it's over soon."
"Yeah…" I agreed quietly.
He moved away from where he'd been behind me, walking to the door and closing it most of the way. "Get some rest, Taylor."
I nodded where I was at the window, still looking out of it at the horizon where fires were blazing.
Dad shut the door, moving into his own room across the hall.
After a few moments, I lowered the blinds, closing the scene and returning to my bed. Under the covers, though, I made no effort to go back to sleep, staring at the ceiling.
I caused this.
Indirectly –well, actually very directly– I had caused this gang war. It was a bit hard to comprehend, thinking about the power and impact such a little action as killing Lung had.
I had thrown a city into chaos with only four cuts.
Underside of the right arm.
Front of the left thigh.
Severing of the upper right arm.
And finally, a single stab to the chest between the sixth and seventh ribs.
(it had been so beautiful)
Four cuts, one death, and it had such profound ripples. I wasn't usually very philosophical, but this really got me thinking. I wondered what would happen if I killed any of the other gangs' leaders.
Well, being Brockton Bay, probably nothing in the long term. My dad had told me stories before, telling me about how there used to be other cape gangs in the city. That it seemed to be simply a fact of life. Brockton had gangs, and the best thing to do was to stay out of their way.
But why did they have to be the way they were? Dad's stories of Marquis had made him sound like he was pretty decent for a villain, he just also happened to be utterly ruthless against anyone who crossed him, something I could sympathize with.
What would happen if instead of Lung, there was some decent person in charge of the ABB?
It was much more likely the ABB than the E88 or the Merchants. The Merchants were basically washed-up dregs of society and bums, and the E88 were neo-nazis for fuck's sake. Can you imagine the leader of a neo-nazi gang actually being a nice guy to everyone?
Yeah, no.
But what could happen? Safer drugs? Less prostitution? Those were things I could get behind. It would mean a better Brockton in general, which was something we could seriously use.
It's funny, you know? Capes, superheroes, the Protectorate… They were supposed to be doing good stuff, but the ones in Brockton never seemed to make an impact. They were always fighting to stay with the group, not ahead of it. You heard about cape fights every so often, but if anybody did get captured, there was a 95% chance they'd get out and be back on the streets within a week.
It felt like a game, almost. Amy's description of the "unwritten rules" only made that feeling even stronger. Like, I understood there was the escalation factor. Go after villains when they're not in costume, and you're asking to have the same done to you.
Then again, some people practically lived as their cape identities, from what I understood. Skidmark, and his girlfriend Squealer. Armsmaster. The Triumvirate. Oh, and those "monstrous" capes who apparently got the short end of the stick and wound up with some serious mutations. Those were the only ones I could think of off the top of my head, but there had to be more.
Why did they all do that? Was it just that much easier to not have a secret identity at all?
Another loud boom outside drew my attention back to reality, and I sighed, resigning myself to trying to get back to sleep, even if it wasn't going to be easy.
"—The mayor urges the public not to go outside if possible, to keep all windows and doors locked. Please inform the police of any suspicious activity you notice."
There was no school that day. Apparently when there's a gang war, they don't want kids on the street. Shocker, I know. So school was canceled and the mayor had declared a state of emergency. The explosions had slowed, but they were still going off randomly about once an hour.
My group of friends was safe, made sure through texts once I'd convinced them that yes I was in fact who I said I was and yes, hell had actually frozen over and I now had a cellphone.
There was nothing to do other than read and browse the internet on our lousy DSL connection. And of that, well, the only really interesting thing was PHO and their discussion of everything that had been going on.
The threads had exploded (ha ha, yes I know I'm funny), and had more information than anything else I'd seen so far, including the news.
Apparently the explosions were the work of some bomb-Tinker named 'Bakuda', the same person who had been behind the Cornell bombings over a month ago. She'd taken control of the ABB, and was somehow managing to temporarily hold off both the Merchants and the E88, with only the help of Oni Lee.
Pretty impressive, I had to admit. Especially for someone nobody had even really known about until now.
Still, innocents had gotten caught in the crossfire of her bombs, and there'd been more than a few civilian deaths. It was currently under fifty, but was still rising.
The worst thing? Amy was working at one of the hospitals healing people.
After our talk yesterday, it made me think about just what kind of stress that would put on her. Because there was no doubt that healing people was just going to wear her down further and further and further.
I'd… be lying if I said I wasn't worried about her a little bit. With something like this gang war going on, with being forced, pushed to her wits' end to heal people when she'd outright stated she didn't even want her powers…
It wasn't a very good situation.
I didn't have her number or anything. I'd given her our house phone on that napkin, but she'd never given me hers.
Not that I'd even contact her. Amy was a very tricky situation. She was defensive as all hell, which meant that while I had been able to reach out, I couldn't do that a second time. It was frustrating, because what I had done yesterday was literally all I could do. I couldn't force her to accept my help, all I could do was let her know that I would, but only if she wanted, only if she asked for it.
…Fuck my goddamn savior complex.
This was not the first time it had showed up. You wonder about how everybody in our little group got together? Yeah. Me. Me and my fucking inability to leave things alone. It was a recurring problem, yet I couldn't even really hate it, because in the end it had brought us all together, and I wouldn't trade that for anything.
Still, Amy… I couldn't stop thinking about how she had looked Monday night before she'd healed me. Her eyes had been just… dead, glassed-over.
A mirror image of what I'd used to see every day, myself.
It was strange thinking that I could relate to a world-famous cape like Panacea, in such a mundane, normal way. But… she wasn't Panacea. I mean, yes, she was, but she wasn't. For her, Panacea was just a name, it was associated with her, but it wasn't her name. She didn't think herself as Panacea, because she refused to be defined by her powers.
And… I actually really respected her for that.
For her, she was just Amy. I think that she actually came closer to what New Wave had been going for than any of the others. Amy had powers, but she wouldn't be any less Amy if she didn't, and she wasn't any more than Amy because she did.
I pulled my knife out from its place hidden in my desk as I sat in front of it. Checking it over, I played with it for a couple seconds, twirling it around before flinging it up and grabbing it out of mid-air, looking at my reflection in the blade's edge. At my beckoning the lines rose up, and I watched the bright, supernatural blue overtake the brown in my eyes.
…Even with powers, I was still Taylor.
And I always would be.
The day passed slowly, punctuated by intermittent explosions. The fact that I was now able to talk instantly with my friends made it pass quicker, but not by much. And it was all spent inside.
The number of casualties by lunchtime was forty-eight people.
Forty-eight.
Apparently Bakuda wasn't just fighting back, but also engaging in some sort of terror-campaign against the other gangs, and it was working. Kaiser was organizing his capes, and already a few fights had gone down. The Merchants… well, the Merchants didn't really have a chance if Bakuda could go up against all of the E88 and hold them off.
Lunch was with Dad, an irregularity that almost never happened, but we made sandwiches and ate at the table together
Afterwards I headed back upstairs, entertaining myself by reading and the novelty that was texting. Eventually, though, I grew bored, and started calling people just so I wouldn't feel so… alone.
Alex had been busy watching a movie with her younger brother, so I'd switched to Emily and then Sarah, who were both on the southern side of the city. Apparently the explosions were closer –and therefore louder– to them, and they were staying in their rooms. Emily in had seemed particularly spooked, as a bomb had gone off only two blocks from where she was, and she said her family was actually considering getting out of the city if it kept up.
Michael lived only three blocks away from me, and so he was in much the same boat as my Dad and I were: stuck inside, but not particularly worried.
And then there was the twins. Aya was a bit prickly at times, and suspecting this would be one of those, I called Sayaka instead.
"Taylor?"
I smiled, though she couldn't see it. "Hey Saya. How're you?"
There was a heavy sigh on her end of the phone. "Alright. Ayame's getting irritated from being forced to stay inside, but my parents agree that it's the best option right now. Not to mention there've been these creepy rumors of people disappearing on PHO."
That was news to me. People going missing in the middle of a gang war? What the hell could be doing that?
Bringing my attention back to the conversation, I spoke. "And you?"
"I'm fine. A little similar to Aya, but not so bad. Hanging in there. I'm just frustrated. There isn't much to do, and it's boring. Hanafuda are only so interesting for the first five games."
I chuckled. "I can imagine." The twins had talked me into learning, and I'd somehow managed a winning streak for the past few weeks against Aya. But the games could be long.
"So how are you, Taylor?"
"I'm doing oka–"
I heard a bang in the background, like the sound of a door being forced open, the wood breaking.
"Saya?"
"Taylor!" Saya yelled. "I think there's someone he–" She was cut off by a loud crack.
I could hear indistinct shouting, lower-pitched voices that I couldn't recognize, and a different language that I recognized as Japanese from my time with the twins.
"Saya!?"
A sharp scream came through the line, causing me to wince in pain before the sound was abruptly muffled. Thudding sounds grew louder, and then something plastic scraping against something else, like a floor.
Without any warning the phone in my hand went silent, the screen lighting up and backing out to the previous frame that displayed my recent calls. As soon as it had loaded fully, I pressed the green phone next to Saya's name.
It went straight to voicemail. No ringing, nothing.
I pushed Aya's dial icon the next time, and the same thing happened.
FUCK.
Okay. Okay.
I took a breath.
Alright. Gotta stay calm. Put the facts together.
I was on the phone with Sayaka. She was fine. There was a noise, and she was telling me she thought that someone was in the house. And then… all of that happened.
It looked like there was a pretty fucking high chance her suspicions were right.
I was still breathing quickly. Focusing, I started forcing myself to slow my breathing.
Okay. Alright. What to do. What the fuck should I do?
Call the police?
I switched over to the number pad and punched in '911' as soon as I had the thought, hitting call as fast as possible. There wasn't even a pause, it just went immediately to a busy signal.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
They were probably completely tied up with everything going on in the city right now, and I doubted they'd even have anyone they could dispatch in the next hour, if the emergency lines were even open.
And this couldn't wait.
I didn't know her family's neighbors' numbers, and if they hadn't noticed anything wrong already, I had doubts they were going to.
Shit. Shit!
I was moving over to my desk before I entirely realized what I was doing. My knife and its harness were where I'd stored them the night before, in the top right drawer, and I pulled them out, taking my shirt off and working my way into the collection of straps, tightening everything down. Once I'd gotten everything settled and secure, I pulled my t-shirt back on, hurrying over to my closet. Inside, I grabbed the surplus boots I'd gotten with Sarah one day and quickly laced them up over my jeans before reaching for my jacket hanging on one of the hooks behind the door..
My hand halted inches away from the familiar dark blue hoodie. Half a foot to the side, my new red jacket sat on the other peg.
…Fuck it.
Grabbing it, I pulled it on, hastily going over myself over to make sure I had everything.
Phone? Check.
ID? Check.
Knife? …Right where it was supposed to be.
Grabbing a pen and a piece of paper from my desk, I hastily scratched out a note for my dad. There was no chance of making it downstairs and out the front door without him noticing, so…
I looked in the direction of one of windows. Great.
Unlocking it and lifting it open wasn't the hard part. Nor was actually getting out of the window. The hard part ended up being sitting outside on the sill and closing it behind me.
Once it was closed as quietly possible, I pushed myself off of the windowsill and fell the fourteen or so feet to the ground. The height hadn't looked too bad, and I'd been right, as I easily landed in a crouch, dead silent, something I never would have managed three months ago.
Powers that came with fighting abilities were oddly handy in other places.
Standing up, I looked around and made sure nobody had noticed. Thank God for small mercies. The last thing I needed right now was someone asking me what the hell I was doing. There wasn't any time for me to deal with something like that.
Sides, back, or front?
Sides. Dad would most likely be in the living room, and the twins' house was southwest. Running towards the wire fence at my left, I gripped the top edge and jumped while shifting my weight, lifting my legs up to my side and over the fence. I relaxed once I was past the halfway point, allowing momentum to pull me the rest of the way over, again landing silently on grass.
This time, however, I didn't pause. I ran straight for the sidewalk in front of the house and turned right, following our street south, and then turning and beginning the route I made at least once a week, but usually at a much easier pace.
It normally took me a good forty-five minutes of walking to get there.
I didn't have that kind of time.
From my time with Alex and Sarah on the soccer team, I'd learned that Alex's initial assumptions of me had been right: I was a fast runner. Like, really fast. I had a suspicion part of that was tied into my powers somehow, and tried not to stand out, though I also felt that I could go much faster than I had in practices and games.
Considering my current times, I was pretty sure people would start looking at me funny if I did run any faster, because at that point I'd probably be pushing Olympic speeds effortlessly and that was a sign of two things: taking steroids, or being a parahuman.
And I did not want people figuring out I was a parahuman. I didn't need that kind of attention.
So I held back.
But now? Now I didn't, because this was my fucking friends, and if there was any reason to risk being outed, it was them.
Pushing myself, my trip to their house was significantly quicker.
Once I was within three houses, I slowed down, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
There was a pair of vehicles in the driveway I didn't recognize: a white-panel van and a black car. Even as I watched, the van started pulling out, and then the car.
Oh, fuck no.
I ran towards them, but they were already out on the street, and whoever was driving must have seen me, because suddenly tires were squealing and they were both racing away as fast as it could. They must have gotten up to at least thirty miles an hour by the end of the street, and showed no signs of stopping or slowing down, leaving me standing there in the middle of the street, staring off in the direction they'd gone.
With absolutely no chance of me being able to catch up.
A/N: Taylor continues to wax philosophical. And manages to turn not being a "real" cape into a personal statement. God, Taylor. /rolls eyes
Last edited:
Sever 2.3
ensou
Magical G̶i̶r̶l̶ Servant Mordred-chan
- Location
- NEW YORK CITY!??
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sever 2.3
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Fuck!
I was at home already, having come back after realizing with a absolutely frustrating certainty that there was nothing I could do at that moment.
It felt like giving up, and I hated it.
I hadn't even needed to look inside the house to know it would be empty. Saya had said people were going missing for some reason… and then… and then…
And then my friends had been kidnapped. Their entire family.
Why!?
I felt helpless. For the first time in my life, even including my time with Emma and the others, I felt truly helpless. I had no options, no choices. The situation had been taken out of my hands, stolen away from me.
I hadn't seen the vehicles' license plates. I hadn't needed to in order to know who had done it. There was only one group of people who would be speaking Japanese while invading somebody's home.
The fucking ABB.
I knew that they forcibly inducted members, but I hadn't thought they would go to the extent of kidnapping families from their own home.
My anger simmered below the surface, like a pot of water that was right on the edge of boiling, as I tried to think of what to do.
Shit.
Why? Why did this have to happen? Everything had been going so well. I'd been happy, had friends, everything. But then Lung happened. And then all of this came from that. I guess in Brockton Bay, you could only avoid insensate cruelty for so long. What a fucking shitshow.
Grinding my teeth, I glared at my desktop,
This made no sense. Why the fuck would the ABB kidnap the twins' family? There wasn't anything special about them. They were a pretty average family, a bit better off than Dad and I, but not significantly. Their father worked at the university, some sort of low-level administrator or lab technician or something, and their mom was an assistant at a bookstore.
Completely average, unremarkable, normal people.
That high pitched scream, Saya's scream, still echoed through my mind, and I momentarily lost control of my vision, the lines snapping into view. The sound wouldn't leave me alone.
And it made me so. fucking. angry.
My first impulse was to go after the ABB now, instead of waiting. Find the first hideout I could, take all of the men out that were there, and question them. And if they happened to lose a couple limbs in process? Well, they always said gangs were hazardous for your health.
But I couldn't do that. Because a) my dad would notice me missing, and b) the ABB had guns, and I wasn't bulletproof. They also seemed a bit trigger-happy with the gang war going on.
Yes, I was fast. Yes, I seemed to have some sort of fighting sense of where everybody was around me in nearly a half-block radius. Yes, I had an almost uncanny intuition about what was about to happen in the next instant, enough that I might be able to dodge a bullet.
But I didn't want to test that.
I slammed my fist down on my desk. This was so frustrating. I couldn't do anything except wait, and I had no idea what was happening to them in the meantime.
Damn it all.
"Dad?"
He looked over at me. We were sitting eating dinner, leftover lasagna and some green beans.
"What's up?"
"Can you… can you tell me more about what it was like before? The gangs and stuff, I mean. It couldn't have been this crazy? You always said the Marquis was even pretty honorable."
My dad leaned back in his chair, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin.
"Yeah. He was a hell of a lot better than the current ones. The E88 was around, but he kept them in line. The Archer Street Merchants weren't nearly as much a bunch of washed-up bums, and that Asian gang, the ABB, wasn't even here," he said.
I nodded.
"He was the one here, actually, in this area. In charge of the Docks and stuff. Always seemed like a nice kind of guy. Never gave any of the Dockworkers any trouble. Kept his men in line. Street-crime rate was at an all-time low. Rapists were punished horribly, abuse wasn't tolerated, it was… it was a good time, until New Wave got him.
"Never would have guessed that would happen. Every time so far that they'd fought he'd come away none the worse for the wear. He even fought off the Slaughterhouse Nine. That… I think is what really it drove it home. That out of all of the"bad guys" out there, he was the least of all evils.
"I mean, don't misunderstand me, Taylor," my dad said, looking at me. "Marquis was a villain. He wasn't a Robin Hood hero or anything. But he kept things sane. Kept them stable. You could predict what he was going to do, and that made getting through the days that much easier."
Dad sighed.
"It was after he went to the Birdcage that everything started going rotten. Little Asian gangs started popping up in the area, and then when Lung came here he gathered them together." Dad shook his head. "The ABB aren't anything like Marquis. I mean, there're always going to be gangs. People will be people, and when they're unhappy they get together for better or worse. Gangs are that 'worse', depending on what they're like, of course.
"I was just hoping someone good would step in, clean everything up after Lung died. Looks like that isn't going to happen. It's a damn shame, too, because we could sure as hell use it right now."
He sounded disappointed. I suppose when you lived through something like having the Marquis in charge, everything would fall short.
He was just reinforcing the ideas I'd had earlier, too. If someone were in charge of the ABB that actually cared about the city, what kind of good could they do with that sort of manpower? Probably no small amount, even while still dealing in the shady stuff that Brockton would always have.
It looked like that just wasn't going to happen.
The hours passed slowly, nervously. I didn't tell any of the others what had happened, not wanting them to freak out and worry. I would get the twins back.
The TV was on in the background, never having been shut off. I was too invested in seeing what was going on, knowing who the innocents were that died because of my actions. Really, I was just going over everything in my head, brooding and trying to think of what I could even do about all of it, how I could get the twins back.
"I… I'm getting word that we've suddenly received words from the alleged leader who has orchestrated the recent attacks. We… have gotten a video through an anonymous email."
I looked over at the TV in surprise.
"This video has not been screened," the news anchor said, holding her hand to her ear. "Please be warned that there may be content not suitable for sensitive viewers."
The image cut suddenly. A woman appeared, a plain white wall behind her. She had straight black hair, and wore a gas-mask with separate, large opaque red goggles. A set of braided wires ran over a heavy coat that sat on her shoulders.
"Hello, Brockton Bay." Unlike Lung, she had no accent, sounding distinctly northeastern. "My name is Bakuda. And I am the leader of the ABB, and the one responsible for all that has happened today.
"To the Empire Eighty-Eight and the Archer's Bridge Merchants: You have tried to subdue us. You have tried to steal from us. You have tried to take what is ours. And for that, you have paid in blood. It isn't even close to over yet.
"To the one who killed Lung, our former esteemed leader: Every two hours tomorrow, a bomb will go off in a major civilian center. After a day, it will become once every hour, on the hour. Their blood will be on your hands unless you decide to come forward. We will be waiting for you."
The screen blanked suddenly, and then the female news anchor was back. Her face was pale. "I… I think that's all for now. Thank you."
The TV cut to a static image with the channel's logo.
…Holy shit.
Fuck.
She was crazy. Bakuda was bat-shit fucking insane. If I didn't go to them they'd blow up someplace every two hours?
No. No.
I may have been responsible in part for what had happened today, but if I could prevent something like that just by going to her, I would.
She needed to be put down.
And I was the one who was going to do it.
I'd kept my knife harness on the entire day, so all I needed were to put my boots and jacket on again. Once more, I slipped through my back window, my dad already asleep.
Instead of going right this time when I got to the street, I turned left, heading towards the Docks. And I also took my time, rolling everything over in my head.
Bakuda would die tonight. She was like a rabid dog, and couldn't be allowed to pose such an unstable threat to the city, holding it hostage.
Instead of dread, I felt a sense of electric apprehension and excitement, a tensing, almost vibration in my muscles as I anticipated the fight and what would be happening.
I was going to enjoy this.
As soon as I hit the shadier parts of the Docks, I started looking for people in red and green. It took a few blocks, but eventually I found a group of three standing around and muttering to each other.
One of them noticed me and nudged the guy next to him, and the trio started walking towards me, sneering. "You shouldn't be around here, little white girl." He leered. "Bad… things can happen late at night, you know."
I stared at him impassively. "Where's Bakuda?"
His expression shifted to aggravated confusion. "What the fuck do you think you're tryin' to do?"
One of his buddy's nudged him and whispered something in Chinese. The first man's leer came back, and he started towards me. "You know… If you do us a little favor, we might tell you."
In a second I was in front of him, holding my knife to his crotch and looking down at him. "How about you tell me where the fuck Bakuda is, or I cut your dick off?" His face drained of blood.
I let the lines rise up, and I knew the sight of my eyes turning blue unnerved them all, because the third guy suddenly pulled a gun out and pointed it at me. I glared at him.
"Fuckin' cape!" he yelled, his hand shaking.
"Tell. Me. Where. Bakuda. Is," I said, punctuating each word.
"You got a death wish or something?" the man I was in front of asked nervously.
"…You could say that." A death wish for Bakuda, more like. "And while you're at it, where the fuck are the people you've been kidnapping?"
He scowled. "I don't know. They go to her."
It was the ABB. I felt my anger towards Bakuda rise. Yet another reason to kill the insane bitch.
"So, where is she?"
His jaw tightened. "Eight blocks north. Three blocks east."
I nodded, pulling my knife away and stowed it at my back, simultaneously pushing the lines back down. "Don't worry. She wanted to meet me anyways."
I turned around, keeping my ears peeled on the men behind me. I may have turned my back on them, but that was more of a power play than anything. To show them that they didn't intimidate me. But I wasn't stupid. The moment I heard a hammer cocking I'd be running. I doubted that they were good enough shots to hit me at thirty, forty feet.
But there wasn't any sound like that, instead, hushed nervous voices in the same language they'd been speaking when I'd walked up to them.
I turned left at the corner, heading north, and followed it for eight blocks, sticking to the shadows when I could to avoid any attention. Eight blocks up, and then three over.
As I got closer to the location, I noticed there were actually less people around, not more. Interesting. I wondered what that meant.
The location I'd been sent to was a warehouse. Long and made of sheet metal, with a barely-peaked roof. Rust was all along the bottom edge of the walls, and there were even a few holes in them.
Moving down the side of the building, I looked for a smaller access door, and eventually found it two-thirds of the way down.
Cautiously, I tested the handle, and was surprised when the door opened an inch, not even having been locked.
What the hell?
I opened it far enough that I could slip through, and then eased it closed behind me so it didn't clang shut.
It was dark, with only a few bare, flickering bulbs hanging in a hallway that went left and right. I went right, looking for someplace to get into the warehouse itself, because I knew that there had to be some way to access the larger inner area that the doors at the front of the building opened to.
I found one, and repeated the process to get through it, drawing my knife. The hairs on the back of my neck were starting to rise, and the fact that the warehouse proper was lit similarly to the hallway wasn't helping.
I stepped quietly through the row the door had opened into, trying to find something of significance, and once I reached a crossing I went left, heading in the direction of the center, where it felt like something might actually be.
There was a scratching sound, and I spun around, searching for the source. When nothing happened, I warily lowered my knife.
The sound repeated and I was instantly on guard again, trying to find where the hell it had come from. The second time had been closer, on my right.
And then suddenly a rat ran out from under one of the metal shelves. It moved across the floor in front of me, and I heard the scratching sound again, coming from its nails.
Just a rat.
I tried to calm my rapidly beating heart, taking slow, even breaths.
Once the rat was gone, I turned around again, and continued forward. After five or six more rows, I came to the end of the aisle, finding a metal wall that stretched in every direction, with yet another door in front of me. Standing to the side, I slowly pushed on the crossbar, the door being surprisingly thick once I started actually getting it open.
That was a good sign there was something there.
But instead, I found a large open room that had to be the width of the entire warehouse and at least half the length.
Where…?
I looked around cautiously, and saw nothing on the sides or corners. There was a table in the middle of the room, and something was placed on it haphazardly. It wasn't bomb shaped, so I walked towards it, trying to see what it really was.
A small tablet. My eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.
Looking around again and finding nothing, I picked it up with my left hand. It was largely featureless, looking to be just a generic tablet you could find in an electronics store. I pressed the power button with my right hand, holding my knife away at an angle, and the screen lit up, displaying a simple "slide up to unlock".
Biting my lip as I debated what to do, I slid the lockscreen up.
The resulting screen was blank, except for a single word, dead center.
"Hello."
Dropping the tablet on the table, I spun around, searching, looking for anything that could possibly be there.
Suddenly, a row of harsh florescent lights switched on at the end of the room opposite where I'd come in with a heavy 'thnk'. A second later, and another row came on, closer. Each second another row lit up, traveling in my direction, reaching me after six.
I gritted my teeth, my heart speeding up again, and I could feel the flash of adrenaline that spread through me like electricity running through my veins. I was squinting, trying to adjust to such brightness after being in the dark so long. Once the lights had reached the side of the room I'd come from, there was a sound from above and behind me.
I rotated around so fast it was almost instantaneous, prepared for anything.
I wasn't disappointed.
"Bakuda."
She stood on a catwalk near the ceiling, looking down at me as she leaned on the rails, her arms straight. "You know, you aren't at all what I expected. But I doubt any other cape that nobody's ever heard of and carrying a knife would try to find me. Occam's Razor and all."
I was instantly evaluating how to get up to her, my mind flashing through routes bouncing between the steel posts at the wall and then jumping across to her.
I didn't waste any time and immediately moved to do just that, running towards the wall when suddenly a blue barrier appeared in front of me.
I bounced off of the barrier, hard, and shook my head to get my bearings.
"Naughty, naughty."
Grinding my teeth, I pulled the lines forward, staring at the sudden wall in front of me. They were there, crawling across the surface, and it took less than a second for my knife to flash out and slash through one, the whole barrier disappearing as soon as I'd traced the entire length.
"What the fuck!? SHIT!" the woman yelled.
And then the world around me turned gray as I was running forward.
Colorless, sapped of all saturation, leaving only contrasting shades and mixtures of black and white behind.
Without warning, I was eight feet back.
"Good fucking God." Bakuda swore breathlessly, her voice muffled.
I ran forward.
"I thought I'd get more time than that," she said, running her fingers through her hair. "But you're definitely, the one, aren't you? I wasn't sure, but you just fucking cut through a forcefield that could have held against an armor-piercing tank round like it was nothing."
I ran forward.
"No wonder you were able to kill Lung if that's what you can do," she said. "I have to thank you for that, by the way. Being leader of the ABB is the best present someone's ever gotten me."
I ran forward.
"You want to know what that is?" There was a grin in her voice. "I replicated Gray Boy's bubbles. It took a fuck-ton of effort, but it was definitely worth it for you, I'd say."
I felt a sinking sense of dread as I ran forward.
"Well. I think that about wraps it up. Enjoy the next few millennia. Ta-ta," Bakuda called happily, waving her hand in my direction and then turning and walking away on the catwalk.
I glared at her as I ran forward.
There were no lines around me. Nothing. For the first time in three months, they were just… gone.
Row by row, the lights switched off in a reverse of their previous movement.
After ten seconds, I was left shrouded in complete darkness, all alone.
And I ran forward.
A/N: Ah, Bakuda. Such a wonderfully stereotypical villain. You really fucked up this time.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Fuck!
I was at home already, having come back after realizing with a absolutely frustrating certainty that there was nothing I could do at that moment.
It felt like giving up, and I hated it.
I hadn't even needed to look inside the house to know it would be empty. Saya had said people were going missing for some reason… and then… and then…
And then my friends had been kidnapped. Their entire family.
Why!?
I felt helpless. For the first time in my life, even including my time with Emma and the others, I felt truly helpless. I had no options, no choices. The situation had been taken out of my hands, stolen away from me.
I hadn't seen the vehicles' license plates. I hadn't needed to in order to know who had done it. There was only one group of people who would be speaking Japanese while invading somebody's home.
The fucking ABB.
I knew that they forcibly inducted members, but I hadn't thought they would go to the extent of kidnapping families from their own home.
My anger simmered below the surface, like a pot of water that was right on the edge of boiling, as I tried to think of what to do.
Shit.
Why? Why did this have to happen? Everything had been going so well. I'd been happy, had friends, everything. But then Lung happened. And then all of this came from that. I guess in Brockton Bay, you could only avoid insensate cruelty for so long. What a fucking shitshow.
Grinding my teeth, I glared at my desktop,
This made no sense. Why the fuck would the ABB kidnap the twins' family? There wasn't anything special about them. They were a pretty average family, a bit better off than Dad and I, but not significantly. Their father worked at the university, some sort of low-level administrator or lab technician or something, and their mom was an assistant at a bookstore.
Completely average, unremarkable, normal people.
That high pitched scream, Saya's scream, still echoed through my mind, and I momentarily lost control of my vision, the lines snapping into view. The sound wouldn't leave me alone.
And it made me so. fucking. angry.
My first impulse was to go after the ABB now, instead of waiting. Find the first hideout I could, take all of the men out that were there, and question them. And if they happened to lose a couple limbs in process? Well, they always said gangs were hazardous for your health.
But I couldn't do that. Because a) my dad would notice me missing, and b) the ABB had guns, and I wasn't bulletproof. They also seemed a bit trigger-happy with the gang war going on.
Yes, I was fast. Yes, I seemed to have some sort of fighting sense of where everybody was around me in nearly a half-block radius. Yes, I had an almost uncanny intuition about what was about to happen in the next instant, enough that I might be able to dodge a bullet.
But I didn't want to test that.
I slammed my fist down on my desk. This was so frustrating. I couldn't do anything except wait, and I had no idea what was happening to them in the meantime.
Damn it all.
"Dad?"
He looked over at me. We were sitting eating dinner, leftover lasagna and some green beans.
"What's up?"
"Can you… can you tell me more about what it was like before? The gangs and stuff, I mean. It couldn't have been this crazy? You always said the Marquis was even pretty honorable."
My dad leaned back in his chair, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin.
"Yeah. He was a hell of a lot better than the current ones. The E88 was around, but he kept them in line. The Archer Street Merchants weren't nearly as much a bunch of washed-up bums, and that Asian gang, the ABB, wasn't even here," he said.
I nodded.
"He was the one here, actually, in this area. In charge of the Docks and stuff. Always seemed like a nice kind of guy. Never gave any of the Dockworkers any trouble. Kept his men in line. Street-crime rate was at an all-time low. Rapists were punished horribly, abuse wasn't tolerated, it was… it was a good time, until New Wave got him.
"Never would have guessed that would happen. Every time so far that they'd fought he'd come away none the worse for the wear. He even fought off the Slaughterhouse Nine. That… I think is what really it drove it home. That out of all of the"bad guys" out there, he was the least of all evils.
"I mean, don't misunderstand me, Taylor," my dad said, looking at me. "Marquis was a villain. He wasn't a Robin Hood hero or anything. But he kept things sane. Kept them stable. You could predict what he was going to do, and that made getting through the days that much easier."
Dad sighed.
"It was after he went to the Birdcage that everything started going rotten. Little Asian gangs started popping up in the area, and then when Lung came here he gathered them together." Dad shook his head. "The ABB aren't anything like Marquis. I mean, there're always going to be gangs. People will be people, and when they're unhappy they get together for better or worse. Gangs are that 'worse', depending on what they're like, of course.
"I was just hoping someone good would step in, clean everything up after Lung died. Looks like that isn't going to happen. It's a damn shame, too, because we could sure as hell use it right now."
He sounded disappointed. I suppose when you lived through something like having the Marquis in charge, everything would fall short.
He was just reinforcing the ideas I'd had earlier, too. If someone were in charge of the ABB that actually cared about the city, what kind of good could they do with that sort of manpower? Probably no small amount, even while still dealing in the shady stuff that Brockton would always have.
It looked like that just wasn't going to happen.
The hours passed slowly, nervously. I didn't tell any of the others what had happened, not wanting them to freak out and worry. I would get the twins back.
The TV was on in the background, never having been shut off. I was too invested in seeing what was going on, knowing who the innocents were that died because of my actions. Really, I was just going over everything in my head, brooding and trying to think of what I could even do about all of it, how I could get the twins back.
"I… I'm getting word that we've suddenly received words from the alleged leader who has orchestrated the recent attacks. We… have gotten a video through an anonymous email."
I looked over at the TV in surprise.
"This video has not been screened," the news anchor said, holding her hand to her ear. "Please be warned that there may be content not suitable for sensitive viewers."
The image cut suddenly. A woman appeared, a plain white wall behind her. She had straight black hair, and wore a gas-mask with separate, large opaque red goggles. A set of braided wires ran over a heavy coat that sat on her shoulders.
"Hello, Brockton Bay." Unlike Lung, she had no accent, sounding distinctly northeastern. "My name is Bakuda. And I am the leader of the ABB, and the one responsible for all that has happened today.
"To the Empire Eighty-Eight and the Archer's Bridge Merchants: You have tried to subdue us. You have tried to steal from us. You have tried to take what is ours. And for that, you have paid in blood. It isn't even close to over yet.
"To the one who killed Lung, our former esteemed leader: Every two hours tomorrow, a bomb will go off in a major civilian center. After a day, it will become once every hour, on the hour. Their blood will be on your hands unless you decide to come forward. We will be waiting for you."
The screen blanked suddenly, and then the female news anchor was back. Her face was pale. "I… I think that's all for now. Thank you."
The TV cut to a static image with the channel's logo.
…Holy shit.
Fuck.
She was crazy. Bakuda was bat-shit fucking insane. If I didn't go to them they'd blow up someplace every two hours?
No. No.
I may have been responsible in part for what had happened today, but if I could prevent something like that just by going to her, I would.
She needed to be put down.
And I was the one who was going to do it.
I'd kept my knife harness on the entire day, so all I needed were to put my boots and jacket on again. Once more, I slipped through my back window, my dad already asleep.
Instead of going right this time when I got to the street, I turned left, heading towards the Docks. And I also took my time, rolling everything over in my head.
Bakuda would die tonight. She was like a rabid dog, and couldn't be allowed to pose such an unstable threat to the city, holding it hostage.
Instead of dread, I felt a sense of electric apprehension and excitement, a tensing, almost vibration in my muscles as I anticipated the fight and what would be happening.
I was going to enjoy this.
As soon as I hit the shadier parts of the Docks, I started looking for people in red and green. It took a few blocks, but eventually I found a group of three standing around and muttering to each other.
One of them noticed me and nudged the guy next to him, and the trio started walking towards me, sneering. "You shouldn't be around here, little white girl." He leered. "Bad… things can happen late at night, you know."
I stared at him impassively. "Where's Bakuda?"
His expression shifted to aggravated confusion. "What the fuck do you think you're tryin' to do?"
One of his buddy's nudged him and whispered something in Chinese. The first man's leer came back, and he started towards me. "You know… If you do us a little favor, we might tell you."
In a second I was in front of him, holding my knife to his crotch and looking down at him. "How about you tell me where the fuck Bakuda is, or I cut your dick off?" His face drained of blood.
I let the lines rise up, and I knew the sight of my eyes turning blue unnerved them all, because the third guy suddenly pulled a gun out and pointed it at me. I glared at him.
"Fuckin' cape!" he yelled, his hand shaking.
"Tell. Me. Where. Bakuda. Is," I said, punctuating each word.
"You got a death wish or something?" the man I was in front of asked nervously.
"…You could say that." A death wish for Bakuda, more like. "And while you're at it, where the fuck are the people you've been kidnapping?"
He scowled. "I don't know. They go to her."
It was the ABB. I felt my anger towards Bakuda rise. Yet another reason to kill the insane bitch.
"So, where is she?"
His jaw tightened. "Eight blocks north. Three blocks east."
I nodded, pulling my knife away and stowed it at my back, simultaneously pushing the lines back down. "Don't worry. She wanted to meet me anyways."
I turned around, keeping my ears peeled on the men behind me. I may have turned my back on them, but that was more of a power play than anything. To show them that they didn't intimidate me. But I wasn't stupid. The moment I heard a hammer cocking I'd be running. I doubted that they were good enough shots to hit me at thirty, forty feet.
But there wasn't any sound like that, instead, hushed nervous voices in the same language they'd been speaking when I'd walked up to them.
I turned left at the corner, heading north, and followed it for eight blocks, sticking to the shadows when I could to avoid any attention. Eight blocks up, and then three over.
As I got closer to the location, I noticed there were actually less people around, not more. Interesting. I wondered what that meant.
The location I'd been sent to was a warehouse. Long and made of sheet metal, with a barely-peaked roof. Rust was all along the bottom edge of the walls, and there were even a few holes in them.
Moving down the side of the building, I looked for a smaller access door, and eventually found it two-thirds of the way down.
Cautiously, I tested the handle, and was surprised when the door opened an inch, not even having been locked.
What the hell?
I opened it far enough that I could slip through, and then eased it closed behind me so it didn't clang shut.
It was dark, with only a few bare, flickering bulbs hanging in a hallway that went left and right. I went right, looking for someplace to get into the warehouse itself, because I knew that there had to be some way to access the larger inner area that the doors at the front of the building opened to.
I found one, and repeated the process to get through it, drawing my knife. The hairs on the back of my neck were starting to rise, and the fact that the warehouse proper was lit similarly to the hallway wasn't helping.
I stepped quietly through the row the door had opened into, trying to find something of significance, and once I reached a crossing I went left, heading in the direction of the center, where it felt like something might actually be.
There was a scratching sound, and I spun around, searching for the source. When nothing happened, I warily lowered my knife.
The sound repeated and I was instantly on guard again, trying to find where the hell it had come from. The second time had been closer, on my right.
And then suddenly a rat ran out from under one of the metal shelves. It moved across the floor in front of me, and I heard the scratching sound again, coming from its nails.
Just a rat.
I tried to calm my rapidly beating heart, taking slow, even breaths.
Once the rat was gone, I turned around again, and continued forward. After five or six more rows, I came to the end of the aisle, finding a metal wall that stretched in every direction, with yet another door in front of me. Standing to the side, I slowly pushed on the crossbar, the door being surprisingly thick once I started actually getting it open.
That was a good sign there was something there.
But instead, I found a large open room that had to be the width of the entire warehouse and at least half the length.
Where…?
I looked around cautiously, and saw nothing on the sides or corners. There was a table in the middle of the room, and something was placed on it haphazardly. It wasn't bomb shaped, so I walked towards it, trying to see what it really was.
A small tablet. My eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.
Looking around again and finding nothing, I picked it up with my left hand. It was largely featureless, looking to be just a generic tablet you could find in an electronics store. I pressed the power button with my right hand, holding my knife away at an angle, and the screen lit up, displaying a simple "slide up to unlock".
Biting my lip as I debated what to do, I slid the lockscreen up.
The resulting screen was blank, except for a single word, dead center.
"Hello."
Dropping the tablet on the table, I spun around, searching, looking for anything that could possibly be there.
Suddenly, a row of harsh florescent lights switched on at the end of the room opposite where I'd come in with a heavy 'thnk'. A second later, and another row came on, closer. Each second another row lit up, traveling in my direction, reaching me after six.
I gritted my teeth, my heart speeding up again, and I could feel the flash of adrenaline that spread through me like electricity running through my veins. I was squinting, trying to adjust to such brightness after being in the dark so long. Once the lights had reached the side of the room I'd come from, there was a sound from above and behind me.
I rotated around so fast it was almost instantaneous, prepared for anything.
I wasn't disappointed.
"Bakuda."
She stood on a catwalk near the ceiling, looking down at me as she leaned on the rails, her arms straight. "You know, you aren't at all what I expected. But I doubt any other cape that nobody's ever heard of and carrying a knife would try to find me. Occam's Razor and all."
I was instantly evaluating how to get up to her, my mind flashing through routes bouncing between the steel posts at the wall and then jumping across to her.
I didn't waste any time and immediately moved to do just that, running towards the wall when suddenly a blue barrier appeared in front of me.
I bounced off of the barrier, hard, and shook my head to get my bearings.
"Naughty, naughty."
Grinding my teeth, I pulled the lines forward, staring at the sudden wall in front of me. They were there, crawling across the surface, and it took less than a second for my knife to flash out and slash through one, the whole barrier disappearing as soon as I'd traced the entire length.
"What the fuck!? SHIT!" the woman yelled.
And then the world around me turned gray as I was running forward.
Colorless, sapped of all saturation, leaving only contrasting shades and mixtures of black and white behind.
Without warning, I was eight feet back.
"Good fucking God." Bakuda swore breathlessly, her voice muffled.
I ran forward.
"I thought I'd get more time than that," she said, running her fingers through her hair. "But you're definitely, the one, aren't you? I wasn't sure, but you just fucking cut through a forcefield that could have held against an armor-piercing tank round like it was nothing."
I ran forward.
"No wonder you were able to kill Lung if that's what you can do," she said. "I have to thank you for that, by the way. Being leader of the ABB is the best present someone's ever gotten me."
I ran forward.
"You want to know what that is?" There was a grin in her voice. "I replicated Gray Boy's bubbles. It took a fuck-ton of effort, but it was definitely worth it for you, I'd say."
I felt a sinking sense of dread as I ran forward.
"Well. I think that about wraps it up. Enjoy the next few millennia. Ta-ta," Bakuda called happily, waving her hand in my direction and then turning and walking away on the catwalk.
I glared at her as I ran forward.
There were no lines around me. Nothing. For the first time in three months, they were just… gone.
Row by row, the lights switched off in a reverse of their previous movement.
After ten seconds, I was left shrouded in complete darkness, all alone.
And I ran forward.
A/N: Ah, Bakuda. Such a wonderfully stereotypical villain. You really fucked up this time.