Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Are you sure you're not thinking of Helminths?ggs said:
An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
And here we have the confusion produced when someone attempts to metagame, rather than take the narrative as it stands.Blade4 said:
I thought it'd be fun to show them in their natural - or perhaps unnatural - environment, which is to say, "not just part of the Skitter Show".TempName said:
Who knows? Grue might even get to do things (as long as he keeps away from Taylor, at least).
Well, not identical, but functionally nearly-so. Certainly from an end-user/target viewpoint, they look pretty much the same, even if some of the backend machinery may or may not have been changed.RazorSmile said:
And yes, when Bitch's dogs are being kept small enough to be able to lurk on a low roof watching their escape and go inside a building, I declared that they looked rather more canine than they do when they're the size of a bus.
Or perhaps they were scrawling runic things which they got off the front of a heavy metal album which they use for arty-looking gang tags.mastigos2 said:
Who knows?
It is kind of nice to see something different being done with the AZB. I mean, in canon, I could kind of buy the whole pan-Asian thing as a sort of "Lung is just that fucking scary" deal, but apparently they have a presence not just in Brockton Bay, but in several of the bordering cities.
I could only really suspend my disbelief that Lung could manage to quell all the inter-Asian tensions in a very local area (as in, turn into a giant dragon and smash any Asian who doesn't like that other group of Asians, rinse and repeat until racial harmony). That really only works if he's on site and capable of, you know, seeing that stuff happening.
Being more generous, I suppose that Leviathan could have caused butterflies, but then, I think the refugee situation would probably have caused greater tensions between Chinese people and Japanese people over the short term.
I could only really suspend my disbelief that Lung could manage to quell all the inter-Asian tensions in a very local area (as in, turn into a giant dragon and smash any Asian who doesn't like that other group of Asians, rinse and repeat until racial harmony). That really only works if he's on site and capable of, you know, seeing that stuff happening.
Being more generous, I suppose that Leviathan could have caused butterflies, but then, I think the refugee situation would probably have caused greater tensions between Chinese people and Japanese people over the short term.
confusopoly
Metaphor Overextended. Ow.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- he/his
And the canon ABB seems pretty Japan-centric when it comes to parahumans anyway. Lung is Japanese, Bakuda as well. Oni Lee is probably also Japanese. So it's not as if he needed to unite gangs from different Asian countries in order to get his parahuman manpower up.
Yes. Hence, the Bomei, which Lung heads up the Brockton Bay wing, is an ethnic gang/organisation/support network which recruits mostly from the first generation Japanese refugees who managed to make their way to America one way or another. It has branches in various East Coast cities, and is customary for first generation immigrant organisations in that it talks a lot about preserving values, takes protection money from shopkeepers (and then actually does attack anyone else who tries to muscle on the businesses who are paying them), and offers high interest loans to immigrants who can't get credit elsewhere. And also will help smuggle family members out of Japan, in return for moderately ruinously expensive debts which can be paid off by service.confusopoly said:
You know, pretty customary for a first-gen immigrant criminal group.
By contrast, of the two prominent Chinese gangs present in Brockton Bay, one's a local grouping with history which is run by Chinese-Americans, while the other is a real life organisation run almost franchise-style, centred in Hong Kong but with a global presence. Neither appreciate upstart Japanese immigrants trying to muscle into their territory. Both of them have their own parahumans, and as a result, while the Bomei own Little Tokyo, there's a slow-burning Cold War between them over areas of the Docks. Which is further complicated by the presence of the various other small gangs and of the nationalist groups who hold their own territory. And of the Coil, which as far as anyone has been able to deduce is basically a "white-collar" local American group with ties to local industry, quite a few cops on the payroll, and which has its fingers in a lot of pies. And the existence of parahuman mercenary gangs, who sell their services and which allow mundane gangs to get a trump card for a conflict.
The Thinkers of the FBI have a full time job keeping track of the broad strokes of the criminal underworld.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Or he could be an unstoppable monster that doesn't take 'no' or 'I hate his guts' for an answer.TheLastOne said:
That might be a subtle bit from canon. Lung talks a great speech of pan-asian unity but when you look at the membership it's just Japanese parahumans running the show by intimidation and later, terror.confusopoly said:
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Okay, so do you imagine that Hookwolf could, if he were so inclined, force his gang to accept black members/black members to join his gang?Guile said:
I mean, okay, if you want to break down the barriers between different Asian nationalities and help them work together in harmony, irrespective of creed or culture, a giant mutant dragon with weird racial ideas is better than a pamphlet in the letterbox. But that's pretty handwavey. Even with that, it's far more likely that the non-Japanese Asian gangs would just... pick up their own parahuman thugs. Most of whom would have been there rather longer than Lung, seeing as he's a relative newbie to Brockton Bay. And sure, they probably wouldn't be able to take him down, because his power gives you only a thin margin of combat where that's really possible, and Lung is smart enough to make use of that margin. But they could certainly hold him off, in the same way the Merchants, Undersiders, and other, even smaller gangs do.
Or, even if they are oddly devoid of parahuman support, they could operate the same way countless gangs do elsewhere, and be small and mobile enough that Lung can't wander up to their HQ and lean on them personally - without him around, it's basically standard gang warfare, since Random Japanese Gang Member #17 is not particularly likely to share his dragon-boss' insane desire to unite all Asians into one happy family, and will probably just cap Random Korean Gang Member #24 if he gets the chance.
Or just, y'know, fuck off to a city that lacks a giant mutant dragon taking Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Taiwanese, Mongolians, Tibetans, etc and shoving their heads together while going "NOW KISS".
Judging by what someone said about Tattletale in that update . . . Is that what she's actually like in Worm? Because, holy shit, I would love nothing more than the opportunity to punch her in the face. She's insufferable.
Anyways . . . I haven't read any of it, so the surge in Worm crossovers on Spacebattles over the last few months is my only exposure to the setting.
Anyways . . . I haven't read any of it, so the surge in Worm crossovers on Spacebattles over the last few months is my only exposure to the setting.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It should be noted that, according to Lung's interlude and elsewhere, the ABB were initially a small branch of a larger group of gangs that had presences all across the East Coast. Then Lung joined up in the Brockton Bay branch, took over, and then started taking over the rest of the local ethnic gangs. The other gangs did, in fact, have parahumans of their own. Oni Lee is the last surviving one of those.Revlid said:
It's a minor theme in Worm, I think, that parahuman support for a fringe ideology makes that ideology relevant. The ABB is as much an example of this as E88, as, I suspect, is the fact that China is for some reason ruled by a resurgent Qing Dynasty. There's a group of actually relevant Nazi supervillains active in Germany that were briefly in danger of acquiring nuclear materials, and have minor ties to E88. And then there's the entire conspiracy plotting to bring back feudalism.
In Worm, she's relatively sympathetic because she's on the protagonist's side and only uses her mindfuck powers on people that are fighting her, and by extension the protagonist. So it tends to be more of a good feeling when she tears into someone, even though that person is usually sympathetic and has hopes and dreams of their own.ForeverShogo said:
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Her power is super-intuition to the point she can guess your PIN number based on how you move you hand and the way you dress, and her power, like all powers, drives her to conflict. Usually by being a superior ass when she doesn't need to be. She gets forgiven a lot for being a champ for Taylor and backing her all the way when she was in a bad place. But she's an utter asshole to anyone who isn't her friend.ForeverShogo said:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is the absolute best mental image.Revlid said:
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Probably.Revlid said:
I mean, all he has to do is threaten to.... "educate" anyone who refuses to accept them.
And by educate, I mean rip them apart grusomely. Admittedly, it'll kill any chance of them being loyal and probably lead to them leaving in droves, but he could.
In theory.
Probably some BS psych tactic that she knew would hurt the officer's psyche.Whale said:
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
She was trying to make sure she shut up and didn't ask questions because no one wanted anyone poking at it. That didn't actually help Tattletale - she knew the officer would be shut-up so it was no skin off Lisa's back either way.Night_stalker said:
That is to say, she was being benevolent, for assholish values of benevolence. It would have gone better for Jamelia if she let herself be bullied. Still, despite her huge dicepool, people can ignore Tattletale for just a couple willpower like any other natural mental influence. Jamelia was principled enough not to be shut up even if she was demoralized.
So. Anyway, this is the post people have been waiting for.
I'm not entirely sure everyone is going to like what I'm about to say.
So. The crossover is the core new World of Darkness setting.
Note the phrasing. It is very specific. What I am admitting to is that it is a cross with the New World of Darkness core book [1]. That is to say, in several ways, it is more akin to a full-on genre replacement, recasting the entire superhero milieu of Worm into the dark urban fantasy setting packed full of conspiracies and things lurking in the shadows. I am specifically not doing a WoD multicross. You're much more likely to see something from an obscure core-line book than you are to see anything from Vampire: the Requiem (and if you see anything from Requiem, it's probably something from The Wicked Dead, being absorbed by Worm-ness and more used as inspiration [2]). I'm going to steal stuff from all over, but just as Helminths is a Warframe-flavoured Worm AU, so all I am admitting to is that this is a nWoD coreline-flavoured Worm AU. [3]
Hence, there are also narrative and genre reasons for what I have done to the gang structure, as well as any dissatisfaction I may or may not have with the canon set-up of gangs and politics and economics and... well, a lot of things. Imago rejects the "great man" theory of history, and canon Worm buys into it totally - hence why in millions of words you can count the number of normal human beings who matter to the narrative on your fingers and toes and have plenty left over. Imago rejects, at a fundamental level, a lot of the axioms and conventions of the superhero genre, even as it uses its aesthetics - or otherwise it takes the convention, but provides it no plot protection and thus leaves it to live or die whether or not humans would follow it.
Imago basically cares a lot less about superheroes fighting, and a lot more about societies, economics, social inequity, the means of control, and how the superman cannot stand above society; that he is fundamentally born of it.
Now, there has been widespread guessing that Taylor is this or that, and many of those guesses are that she's an Awakening Mage. Is she?
Good question. Some of the evidence would suggest that. Other bits would would disagree. If you asked her, she wouldn't say she is. There are certainly distinct ways that she seems to be doing things which Awakening Mages wouldn't do them. It would certainly be possible to conclude that just as in Helminths, she's a parahuman who just happens to resemble a Nyx warframe, in this, she's a parahuman who just happens to have a power which resembles some of the things a mage can do. Or maybe she is a mage. Or maybe she's something else. Maybe I've just taken several powers given classically to creepy girls in horror series and smushed them together into a parahuman framework.
But no, I won't give you a clear answer to that. Certainty and knowledge denies horror. And in a very real sense, it doesn't matter if she's a mage or not. She's certainly not getting a handy explanation of what her powers are precisely. So neither will you.
[1] It is not in any way a cross which uses the God Machine Chronicles, which is mechanically fucked up and the product of a rote copying of FATE-like design principles without actually thinking of how that affects the Simulationist nWoD. I detest the GMC. Likewise, nDemon can fuck right off because it in no way belongs in the nWoD (while fitting right in the oWoD).
[2] Or Cymothoa sanguinaria, which is a nasty little thing which canon Skitter could have done dreadful things with, and which has its horror coming from the fact that it's completely mundane.
[3] There has been a lot of use of Damnation City, but that's because Damnation City is... like, the best book ever for writing urban settings, especially horror-tinged ones, and anyone who is writing a Wormfic should, IMO, read Damnation City because it's basically a book on cities, power and influence, neofeudal hierachies, and territory control.
I'm not entirely sure everyone is going to like what I'm about to say.
So. The crossover is the core new World of Darkness setting.
Note the phrasing. It is very specific. What I am admitting to is that it is a cross with the New World of Darkness core book [1]. That is to say, in several ways, it is more akin to a full-on genre replacement, recasting the entire superhero milieu of Worm into the dark urban fantasy setting packed full of conspiracies and things lurking in the shadows. I am specifically not doing a WoD multicross. You're much more likely to see something from an obscure core-line book than you are to see anything from Vampire: the Requiem (and if you see anything from Requiem, it's probably something from The Wicked Dead, being absorbed by Worm-ness and more used as inspiration [2]). I'm going to steal stuff from all over, but just as Helminths is a Warframe-flavoured Worm AU, so all I am admitting to is that this is a nWoD coreline-flavoured Worm AU. [3]
Hence, there are also narrative and genre reasons for what I have done to the gang structure, as well as any dissatisfaction I may or may not have with the canon set-up of gangs and politics and economics and... well, a lot of things. Imago rejects the "great man" theory of history, and canon Worm buys into it totally - hence why in millions of words you can count the number of normal human beings who matter to the narrative on your fingers and toes and have plenty left over. Imago rejects, at a fundamental level, a lot of the axioms and conventions of the superhero genre, even as it uses its aesthetics - or otherwise it takes the convention, but provides it no plot protection and thus leaves it to live or die whether or not humans would follow it.
Imago basically cares a lot less about superheroes fighting, and a lot more about societies, economics, social inequity, the means of control, and how the superman cannot stand above society; that he is fundamentally born of it.
Now, there has been widespread guessing that Taylor is this or that, and many of those guesses are that she's an Awakening Mage. Is she?
Good question. Some of the evidence would suggest that. Other bits would would disagree. If you asked her, she wouldn't say she is. There are certainly distinct ways that she seems to be doing things which Awakening Mages wouldn't do them. It would certainly be possible to conclude that just as in Helminths, she's a parahuman who just happens to resemble a Nyx warframe, in this, she's a parahuman who just happens to have a power which resembles some of the things a mage can do. Or maybe she is a mage. Or maybe she's something else. Maybe I've just taken several powers given classically to creepy girls in horror series and smushed them together into a parahuman framework.
But no, I won't give you a clear answer to that. Certainty and knowledge denies horror. And in a very real sense, it doesn't matter if she's a mage or not. She's certainly not getting a handy explanation of what her powers are precisely. So neither will you.
[1] It is not in any way a cross which uses the God Machine Chronicles, which is mechanically fucked up and the product of a rote copying of FATE-like design principles without actually thinking of how that affects the Simulationist nWoD. I detest the GMC. Likewise, nDemon can fuck right off because it in no way belongs in the nWoD (while fitting right in the oWoD).
[2] Or Cymothoa sanguinaria, which is a nasty little thing which canon Skitter could have done dreadful things with, and which has its horror coming from the fact that it's completely mundane.
[3] There has been a lot of use of Damnation City, but that's because Damnation City is... like, the best book ever for writing urban settings, especially horror-tinged ones, and anyone who is writing a Wormfic should, IMO, read Damnation City because it's basically a book on cities, power and influence, neofeudal hierachies, and territory control.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Please, its ES. Of course there's gonna proper worldbuilding and politics and whatnot. Thats like his trademark. No, seriously, its the one thing everything he does or co-writes has in common, from NGE/Cthulutech crossovers to ZnT/Overlord crossovers.Peanuckle said:
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Those are in no way mutually exclusive, the Mage would just think about the deeper Supernal symbology behind the runes and their combination as seen on the album.EarthScorpion said:
The one that mainly gives rules for playing as mortals who know precisely dick about anything? Fair enough.EarthScorpion said:So. Anyway, this is the post people have been waiting for.
I'm not entirely sure everyone is going to like what I'm about to say.
So. The crossover is the core new World of Darkness setting.
Note the phrasing. It is very specific. What I am admitting to is that it is a cross with the New World of Darkness core book [1].
Your rejection of the idea that individual humans can matter almost certainly contributes to your talent as a horror writer.
Well, Taylor has no idea what an Awakening Mage is. I hope you'll forgive me for reading this as "yes, but with some changes to fuck with people and none of the external society that normal M:tA PCs have access to." The uncertainty is a part of why I only rarely enjoy horror for its own sake, though I'm willing to endure it for more delicious ES writing.
Though honestly, even if her powers can theoretically do more, "powers that creepy girls have in horror" is probably the direction that Taylor will take them. She is Taylor.
EDIT: Okay, that's not entirely fair to Taylor's munchkinry skills. More accurately, if her powers have any non-creepy applications, she will probably make them creepy by being herself or out of deliberate effort.
slybrarian
Creature of Fable
- Location
- A Far and Sunless Land
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The day that Skitter discovers any Cymothoa is the day it's time to move to a new reality. Maybe one made of bees.EarthScorpion said:
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Amusingly wrong. It's a good story, though, you should read it.Mage_Man.1842 said:
Superhero: the Suffering?RazorSmile said:
Ah. Interesting thought process. I also agree to avoid splat crossover. Shame about GMC though. You don't like it, I understand. Me, I hate Simulationism with a passion, but I don't denigrate you at all, it's just my personal tastes. I'm actually glad you're forswearing nDemon, as that leaves more territory for me to explore... (Seriously though, complaining it fits the old WoD better than the new one is the first time I have ever heard that complaint, and yet it makes perfect sense. I don't agree, but it makes sense regardless).
(Seriously though, complaining it fits the old WoD better than the new one is the first time I have ever heard that complaint, and yet it makes perfect sense. I don't agree, but it makes sense regardless).
That's not quite what I was saying. Individual people can matter - but those people are fundamentally a product of their society. You won't get a sizeable group of superpowered racists without a general groundpool of popular support/people who already held that opinion and then got superpowered.Winged One said:
Oh, come on. What's wrong with the way that those species synergise so well with her skills at getting bugs into peoples' mouths?Slybrarian said:
wkz
Probably on the other side of the world from you
Both ideas could work beside each other actually.WyldCard4 said:
Just think about it: where best to generate conflict: a small group of rebels against "the system" getting powers just because they're different and outcast, and going against mundanes? Or a person with the backing of a country-wide hate-crimes group getting powers right opposite his Asian powered peer with their large imported support base??
The unpowered minions would encourage their powered leaders to point them towards "them" to hate, kill and destroy, just as the powered will get a support base to justify them performing their feats of conflict...
Disclaimer: I do believe that's what EarthScorpion meant IMO. I may be wrong thou.
2.01
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Arc 2 – Namakarana
Chapter 2.01
It was the howl of the wind against my window which woke me. Groggily I massaged my eyes and reached for my glasses, clambering out of bed.
The weather was vile outside. I couldn't tell if the sun had risen or not. I checked my clock again. 6:14 flashed at me. Well, it wouldn't be up, but it should have been getting light. It could have passed for midnight. It didn't even have the decency to be a dramatic thunderstorm. It was just relentless rain, apparently trying to conquer the land in the name of Poseidon.
I blinked, tugged my glasses down to the brink of my nose, and shifted my vision to the Other Place. Oh. It was raining blood. How wonderful. I stared out through gore-covered windows, barely able to see through the layer covering the dirty glass. The coppery scent crept in, just at the edge of my perception. Now, what on earth did that mean?
Probably nothing good. Well. That was a pretty shitty omen to start off any day, but it was particularly bad for the day of my evaluation. My chance to get out of here, to be free, for the first time in seventeen days. Two and a half weeks. Almost two-thirds of a month. And now that I'd thought that, I'd completely ruined any chance of getting back to sleep. I could feel butterflies in my stomach. And I quickly dropped out of the Other Place, in case that metaphor was literally true in that place.
At least I'd slept well. I was now on sleeping pills and they really helped. I simply felt better now I was getting seven hours rest a night, minimum. Usually more, because I was finding myself going to bed early simply because I was bored. And I wasn't remembering my dreams, either. I may have still been dreaming, because I often found my covers twisted around my legs when I woke, like I'd been trying to run, but I didn't remember them and that was good enough for me.
Of course, now I'd be thinking all day about how it was raining blood in the Other Place. That had been something I really didn't want to see. It was the smell which was the worst bit. When I was looking out through the glass, I could convince myself that it was just like something on the television. But the coppery ironness crept up on me, reminded me that it was as real as anything in the Other Place – and wasn't that a question?
I couldn't believe it was raining blood out there just because I was nervous. That made no sense. And I really didn't want to think about what else could be making something like that happen.
But if I was going to get up, it was time for my self-imposed exercise regime. Even if it was cold. And it was cold. I glared out at the weather, quietly cursing it for waking me up. And being cold. But I couldn't change that – well I almost certainly couldn't change that – and if I was going to get up, I had to follow my routine. I had to get in shape. If I'd been stronger, maybe I could have fought the Emma-Sophia-Madison-demon thing. And the diet in the canteens here was horribly unhealthy. I half-suspected it was designed to keep the patients feeling too bloated to think of acting up.
Grumbling to myself, I began the first of many sit-ups.
When I was done, I was aching all over, and had almost managed to put what I'd seen out there out of my mind. Of course, as soon as I thought about how I'd put it out of my mind, I was thinking about it again, which wasn't the most helpful thing my mind could do. But I couldn't do anything about that.
Wait. Yes, I could. I took a deep breath, shifted my senses to the Other Place, and frowned. This had just been something I'd stumbled on in the past fortnight, when I'd been practicing – okay, playing around – with my power. It still wasn't easy. So, what would I need to do for this? What kind of construct would I need to build?
I would be affecting myself, so I looked over to the dirty mirror. I'd found it was easier if I just copied what I saw, rather than starting from scratch in my imagination. After a moment's concentration I exhaled, and my twin from the mirror stood in front of me. She was drenched in blood – it was all she was thinking of – which made her look sort of like Carrie. Her expression was locked in a grimace like a... no, it actually was a theatrical mask, like one of those Greek ones, made of some pure white material. It was untouched by blood, apart from two dribbling streams coming from the corners of the eyes. It made her look like she was crying in fear.
I breathed in and then out, long and slow, and she flinched, masked face darting from side to side. Good. The construct hadn't fallen apart, like a few I'd tried. She would be able to sustain what I did next. I built iron chains around her, trapping her so she could barely move, and then her shape blurred as I inhaled her. She swirled like water down a plughole, and I felt the worry just drain away. I was smiling when I was done. Good. I couldn't let my worry ruin things for me today.
I changed from my sleeping-pyjamas to my going-around-during-the-day pyjamas, and then realised I really should have a shower. Gathering my things, I headed for the bathroom. I was in luck; waking early meant that I didn't have to wait for it.
The shower may have been vaguely patronising in how it was clearly designed to stop us from doing anything but going in and pulling the 'on' lever, but it was warm and I had it all to myself. My missing fingernails were starting to grow back, but I still had to wear latex gloves because they weren't meant to get wet. The pink of new skin was everywhere on them, but at least they weren't infected. I had to keep an eye on them, though. I'd hate to lose a finger.
By the time I was done, I could hear other people stirring. I dried myself off, and went to grab breakfast from the canteen. Just a small one. Hopefully this would be the last breakfast I had here, and it wasn't nice enough that I wanted to relish it. The toast tasted like cardboard in my mouth. It was bad enough that I flipped to the Other Place, but that just managed to add a metallic taste to the cardboard. I went and groaned in the bathroom for a bit, but didn't actually throw up, so I just returned to the common room in Wilson.
Sam and Leah were awake, sitting next to each other on the couch. It looked like they'd picked up breakfast already, but were eating it through here.
Sometimes I sort of thought there was something going on between those two. I wasn't sure, though, and they'd tried to talk to me about boys – which had been a pretty short conversation, because I didn't have much to say beyond 'Boys don't seem to be as bad to each other as girls'. It confused me, but it'd be really awkward to pry, so I did my best to ignore it."Nervous?" Leah asked, half-turning to look at me.
I nodded mutely.
Sam nodded at me, looking over the top of today's paper. She had managed to get one of the copies from breakfast today. "Don't muck this up," she said. "If you come back here in tears, it'll be really embarrassing."
"I'll try not to," I said, smiling weakly. "I don't want to be in here any longer than I have to." I paused. "Not that I want to be rid of you, but…"
"Oh, spare me that," she said, stretching. "I've got an evaluation next week too, if my next lot of blood tests pass. If you're out, then I'll have someone to talk to." She winced. "That'd be nice. It was Leah making herself ill that… uh, got me wobbly. So pass it and we can meet up weekend after next or something."
That was life in a short-to-medium-wing ward, from what I'd seen and heard. There was a pretty constant flow of new faces. Emily had left a few days ago, and there were two new girls, Tori and Henna, who'd come since I'd arrived. "I wonder when Kirsty has her next evaluation?" I said.
Sam looked back up from her paper. "Who?" she asked, distracted.
"Kirsty. Next evaluation?"
"Who?" She frowned, a blank expression on her face.
I stared back just as blankly. "Kirsty. Scars on her face. Worse than mine. In Room Four."
"Oh! Her." Sam blinked, still looking somewhat blank. "No idea," she said. "I don't talk to her."
"I can't recall a single conversation I've had with her," Leah chimed in. "Just the…" she traced lines on her face, and winced, looking at me. "Sorry," she said quickly, "at least yours are just sort of… pink. Not like hers."
I gave a one-shouldered shrug. No, Kirsty didn't talk to people. She just stayed in her room. I hadn't seen her in any of the sessions, either. I'd signed up for quite a few, because – dear God – the boredom was the worst thing in here. And it also meant that I appeared to be keen and willing and taking active control of my wellbeing and everything else that Hannah, as the wing supervisor, said we should be.
I'd set myself the goal that I'd be out of here as soon as possible. And if I managed it today, it'd be just seventeen days.
I was fairly proud of myself for that.
I looked at the clock. "Well," I said, "about two hours to go. I… I think I'm ready. I just want it to be over and done with."
"Oh dear, no!" Leah said, frowning as she looked at me. "You can't go to your evaluation meeting looking like that!"
"Like what?" I said, confused.
"Like that!" She stood up and she put her too-thin hands on her too-thin waist. "You're coming with me, and I'm going to brush your hair properly!"
"They don't let me have a hairbrush or a hairdryer," I protested. "I know it's not that great, but it's the best I can manage."
She grinned at me. "Not the best I can do. Let me go ask Hannah for them."
I smiled back. It was strange. I'd missed this kind of thing so badly. Emma and I used to be like sisters. I hadn't had any real friends for a year and more.
"Technically, it's not breaking the rules," she added. "After all, I'm the one who's using them. So I won't even get in trouble." She paused. "Hopefully."
Yes, that was the worry. Because I was one of the patients in the wing marked in my files as a suicide risk, there were little perfectly normal things which they didn't let me have. But hopefully I'd be out of here soon.
And when I was out of here, I'd be able to keep proper notes on what my powers could do, without having to be worried about nurses reading them and getting worried about legitimate observations. I couldn't trust them not to read anything I wrote. I was sure they read my homework. Especially some of the science homework, where I'd got help from one of the nurses. I just knew, somehow, they'd misunderstand perfectly innocent and accurate records like 'Dr Samuels is bloated – rotting flesh around lips. Strong smell of alcohol mixed with gasoline. Blood stains on fingers'.
It was very unfair.
I had concluded that probably meant that either he had a drinking problem which he was trying to cover up, or had killed someone in a drink-driving accident. Or possibly both. I wasn't sure what the rotting lips meant. Maybe something romance-related, like 'he's lying when he says he loves his partner' or 'his lips are rotting because he's a habitual liar'. Or possibly just mouth cancer. But I was just guessing there.
That's what a notebook which I could actually record my observations in would help with. There were some elements of shared symbolism – for example, another girl in another wing who also had anorexia had shared symbolism with Leah – so if I could keep a list of shared elements, it could help me work out what each thing meant.
Stupid useless obtuse power which didn't give me straight answers.
My evaluation was at 10:15, and apart from the fact that I'd spent the hour beforehand feeling sick to my stomach with nerves, I was feeling ready. My hair was washed and dried and brushed, I'd spent time in front of the mirror making sure I didn't look crazy, and I'd practiced some of the questions that Sam and Leah had been asked before. I wasn't sure what this entailed, but I was about as ready as I could be.
I had set myself some ground rules for this meeting. No looking into the Other Place. No wool-gathering when I was meant to be listening. No breaking down into tears or anything like that. I was going to be on my best behaviour. My dad was waiting for me, and I didn't want to let him down.
"How are you feeling?" he asked me, just outside the room where it was going to be. That was the first thing he said.
"Nervous," I admitted.
"You'll be fine," he said. He was trying to assure me, I could tell, and checking the Other Place I could see that his fires were damped, wavering and flickering in a fretful way. In the fire, I could see images, dancing like ash. Putting them together, most of them seemed to be him, staring into space. I thought he'd been missing me. I'd been missing him too.
"I'll try to be," I said weakly, returning my vision to the normal. He gave me a hug, and I hugged back.
"Good luck," he said.
Going into the room, Dr Vanderbough was there, and Hannah, and a few other people I couldn't remember the names of or didn't recognise. There was one of the doctors who I'd seen around the place, a woman in a neat black suit and glasses who looked like an administrator and who was probably there from the school trying to get me out of here ASAP if she wasn't from the Men in Black, and a few others.
I sat up straight. I was careful to look attentive and smile. I was a perfectly well-balanced and normal girl who had just happened to have a nervous breakdown when locked in a locker filled with fermented tampons. Which, when you thought about it, was a perfectly natural and understandable reaction.
Honestly, I was pretty surprised I wasn't more traumatised by it. I think I would have been, if it hadn't been for the thing with the insects and the nails, which sort of made mundane things look rather less meaningful, and also gave me something else to focus on. So what if I had nightmares? I could live with them.
I'd considered what would have happened if I hadn't got superpowers from that experience. That would have been, like, possibly just the worst. Wow. That would have been just terrible. Emma and co almost certainly wouldn't have done it if they knew they were going to give me psychometry and the capacity to make invisible monsters which obeyed my every order.
Well, they had done it. And here I was now. It was just as well I was a good person, I thought to myself. If I was as bad as them, I could probably make their lives very unpleasant and they wouldn't even know it was me.
So they had better not try anything again.
"So, Taylor," Hannah asked. "How are you feeling?"
I put on my best brave face. "A little bit nervous," I said. "But generally better apart from today and," I spread my hands, "this whole thing."
"That's good, that's good. And don't worry, it's okay to be nervous. We're just going to have a talk – I've already showed them my notes on your progress… which is very promising, by the way. So, shall we get started?"
"And… well, that's about it," Dr Vanderbough said. "I don't believe she's at any immediate risk to herself, and so she can be safely discharged."
I wasn't listening to that conversation. Well, okay, clearly I was. But I wasn't listening to it in any normal way. I'd had my talk, and then they called my dad in. I was waiting in the anteroom, eating biscuits one of the nurses had left me and drinking hot chocolate. The chair was quite comfortable, even in the Other Place where it was overstuffed and slightly warm to the touch. Considering the weather, I didn't mind a little extra warmth. The blood-rain in the Other Place had thinned, and most of the liquid coming from the sky was now water. I couldn't bring myself to be curious about it, though. Not when I had other things to think about.
I looked very normal staring out of the window, especially if you couldn't see what I was actually staring at. A pair of little eyeless china-doll cherubs, holding up a cracked television screen. I'd sent an angel made of barbed-wire with a CCTV camera for a head into the room to observe where my dad was meeting with the doctors and staff to talk about my future.
With a little experimental fiddling, I'd even managed to get the TV-screen to show me the normal world, rather than the Other Place.
Actually, now that I thought of it, that seemed like a very promising development. I had just shown it was possible to see things in the normal world, while in the Other Place. So maybe I could overlay the normal world on the Other Place, or have the normal world shown on my eyelids, so I could change between the two by opening and closing my eyes?
Thoughts for later. This was what I needed a notepad for. Right now, I had a meeting to spy on.
"So she's better?" my dad asked.
Dr Vanderbough pursed his lips. "We believe she doesn't need to be an in-patient anymore," he said cautiously. "As I said earlier, I would strongly recommend that she have regular meetings with a therapist for at least a few months. She improved notably when I put her on some mild sleeping pills so she was getting proper amounts of rest – she was having nightmares every night, and the hallucinations seemed to have been contributed to by that. Ideally, her doses should be lowered so she doesn't become dependent on them. They should only be a short term measure."
I didn't like the sound of that. I liked being able to sleep. Also, I was 'better', because I'd never gone crazy in the first place.
"She's going to need you through the next bit," Hannah said, folding her hands on her lap. "Here, things are stable and calm. She may find it more difficult in normal day to day life. The return to school will be especially stressful."
"I've observed she has trust issues," Dr Vanderbough says. "She doesn't open up to anyone. I've had to coax every little step we've made out of her. I'm fairly certain that she's telling the truth about the bullying, with no more exaggeration than would be normal. A long-term, systematic bullying campaign like that would explain several things I've noted about her. It's a very normal reaction, but it's getting in the way of her recovery. She seems to care about you – she talked about you fairly frequently. You're going to have to be a solid place for her to stand on, someone who won't judge her for what she tells you."
The betrayal stung. How dare he tell my dad I had trust issues? What gave him the right? He'd said that things in that room were between me and him, and then he'd gone and – how dare he! That nasty man-spider, worming his way in to…
… huh. A bit of self-awareness caught me. Wow. That chain of thought had been outright paranoid.
Maybe… uh. Maybe they had a point.
I slumped down, cupping my hands over my mouth, and tried to control my sudden hyperventilation. So he thought that the way I had no reason to trust anyone, adults or children, was getting in the way of my recovery? That was ridiculous, surely. But why… why hadn't I told my dad I was being bullied earlier? Why hadn't I tried harder to get help from the school?
Oh, I had my reasons. I had plenty of reasons. He couldn't have done anything. I didn't want him to worry. I was ashamed. I'd tried to tell the school earlier, when it had been less bad, and it hadn't helped. If I told on those three now, no one would help me and they'd just step up the bullying, so I'd just tough it out until I graduated and could go off and leave them behind. All part of the familiar litany of reasons which I'd repeated again and again.
At what point had the reasons taken over from trying to do anything?
Well. He knew about the bullying now. And I'd bet anything that the school did, from the police and him kicking up a fuss. In a twisted way, I had leverage now. After all, if they let it go on, and I really did kill myself, they'd be in deep PR shit. I wasn't going to do that, of course. I'd never been suicidal. But they didn't know that. And I had my collection of notes on the bullying, all those records of phone calls, and a diary of events.
At the very least, I should let my dad know about the existence of the diary. That thing with the locker… that was a step up. Way, way up. I could have died from that. I still didn't have full feeling in my hands. I'd never thought Emma would do something like that. Adults might want to shrug off name-calling and stealing my stuff as childish things. They couldn't shrug off this kind of thing. Especially men, I bet. I'd just have to say 'locker full of used tampons' and they'd be freaking out.
I didn't think they'd try to kill me, but I hadn't thought they'd do something which could really hurt me right up until they did. It wasn't paranoia when they might actually be out to get you.
The door to the meeting room opened, and my dad was the first one out. He was smiling widely, in an open, relieved way which managed to make me feel guilty about how much he must have been worrying. I rose, and forced myself to smile back.
"It's good news?" I asked.
And there was just a little bit of me which pragmatically pointed out that if I owned up to some things which didn't matter, it would be easier to keep the fact that I was a parahuman from him. I'd really be protecting him from that. He didn't need to know I was a more bizarre Thinker/Master mix than anyone I'd been able to find online. Not yet. Not until I was sure I wanted anyone to know. I couldn't let him be threatened by people who might want to use me.
Compared to that, telling him the truth about the bullying would be nothing.
One small step at a time.
Arc 2 – Namakarana
Chapter 2.01
It was the howl of the wind against my window which woke me. Groggily I massaged my eyes and reached for my glasses, clambering out of bed.
The weather was vile outside. I couldn't tell if the sun had risen or not. I checked my clock again. 6:14 flashed at me. Well, it wouldn't be up, but it should have been getting light. It could have passed for midnight. It didn't even have the decency to be a dramatic thunderstorm. It was just relentless rain, apparently trying to conquer the land in the name of Poseidon.
I blinked, tugged my glasses down to the brink of my nose, and shifted my vision to the Other Place. Oh. It was raining blood. How wonderful. I stared out through gore-covered windows, barely able to see through the layer covering the dirty glass. The coppery scent crept in, just at the edge of my perception. Now, what on earth did that mean?
Probably nothing good. Well. That was a pretty shitty omen to start off any day, but it was particularly bad for the day of my evaluation. My chance to get out of here, to be free, for the first time in seventeen days. Two and a half weeks. Almost two-thirds of a month. And now that I'd thought that, I'd completely ruined any chance of getting back to sleep. I could feel butterflies in my stomach. And I quickly dropped out of the Other Place, in case that metaphor was literally true in that place.
At least I'd slept well. I was now on sleeping pills and they really helped. I simply felt better now I was getting seven hours rest a night, minimum. Usually more, because I was finding myself going to bed early simply because I was bored. And I wasn't remembering my dreams, either. I may have still been dreaming, because I often found my covers twisted around my legs when I woke, like I'd been trying to run, but I didn't remember them and that was good enough for me.
Of course, now I'd be thinking all day about how it was raining blood in the Other Place. That had been something I really didn't want to see. It was the smell which was the worst bit. When I was looking out through the glass, I could convince myself that it was just like something on the television. But the coppery ironness crept up on me, reminded me that it was as real as anything in the Other Place – and wasn't that a question?
I couldn't believe it was raining blood out there just because I was nervous. That made no sense. And I really didn't want to think about what else could be making something like that happen.
But if I was going to get up, it was time for my self-imposed exercise regime. Even if it was cold. And it was cold. I glared out at the weather, quietly cursing it for waking me up. And being cold. But I couldn't change that – well I almost certainly couldn't change that – and if I was going to get up, I had to follow my routine. I had to get in shape. If I'd been stronger, maybe I could have fought the Emma-Sophia-Madison-demon thing. And the diet in the canteens here was horribly unhealthy. I half-suspected it was designed to keep the patients feeling too bloated to think of acting up.
Grumbling to myself, I began the first of many sit-ups.
When I was done, I was aching all over, and had almost managed to put what I'd seen out there out of my mind. Of course, as soon as I thought about how I'd put it out of my mind, I was thinking about it again, which wasn't the most helpful thing my mind could do. But I couldn't do anything about that.
Wait. Yes, I could. I took a deep breath, shifted my senses to the Other Place, and frowned. This had just been something I'd stumbled on in the past fortnight, when I'd been practicing – okay, playing around – with my power. It still wasn't easy. So, what would I need to do for this? What kind of construct would I need to build?
I would be affecting myself, so I looked over to the dirty mirror. I'd found it was easier if I just copied what I saw, rather than starting from scratch in my imagination. After a moment's concentration I exhaled, and my twin from the mirror stood in front of me. She was drenched in blood – it was all she was thinking of – which made her look sort of like Carrie. Her expression was locked in a grimace like a... no, it actually was a theatrical mask, like one of those Greek ones, made of some pure white material. It was untouched by blood, apart from two dribbling streams coming from the corners of the eyes. It made her look like she was crying in fear.
I breathed in and then out, long and slow, and she flinched, masked face darting from side to side. Good. The construct hadn't fallen apart, like a few I'd tried. She would be able to sustain what I did next. I built iron chains around her, trapping her so she could barely move, and then her shape blurred as I inhaled her. She swirled like water down a plughole, and I felt the worry just drain away. I was smiling when I was done. Good. I couldn't let my worry ruin things for me today.
I changed from my sleeping-pyjamas to my going-around-during-the-day pyjamas, and then realised I really should have a shower. Gathering my things, I headed for the bathroom. I was in luck; waking early meant that I didn't have to wait for it.
The shower may have been vaguely patronising in how it was clearly designed to stop us from doing anything but going in and pulling the 'on' lever, but it was warm and I had it all to myself. My missing fingernails were starting to grow back, but I still had to wear latex gloves because they weren't meant to get wet. The pink of new skin was everywhere on them, but at least they weren't infected. I had to keep an eye on them, though. I'd hate to lose a finger.
By the time I was done, I could hear other people stirring. I dried myself off, and went to grab breakfast from the canteen. Just a small one. Hopefully this would be the last breakfast I had here, and it wasn't nice enough that I wanted to relish it. The toast tasted like cardboard in my mouth. It was bad enough that I flipped to the Other Place, but that just managed to add a metallic taste to the cardboard. I went and groaned in the bathroom for a bit, but didn't actually throw up, so I just returned to the common room in Wilson.
Sam and Leah were awake, sitting next to each other on the couch. It looked like they'd picked up breakfast already, but were eating it through here.
Sometimes I sort of thought there was something going on between those two. I wasn't sure, though, and they'd tried to talk to me about boys – which had been a pretty short conversation, because I didn't have much to say beyond 'Boys don't seem to be as bad to each other as girls'. It confused me, but it'd be really awkward to pry, so I did my best to ignore it."Nervous?" Leah asked, half-turning to look at me.
I nodded mutely.
Sam nodded at me, looking over the top of today's paper. She had managed to get one of the copies from breakfast today. "Don't muck this up," she said. "If you come back here in tears, it'll be really embarrassing."
"I'll try not to," I said, smiling weakly. "I don't want to be in here any longer than I have to." I paused. "Not that I want to be rid of you, but…"
"Oh, spare me that," she said, stretching. "I've got an evaluation next week too, if my next lot of blood tests pass. If you're out, then I'll have someone to talk to." She winced. "That'd be nice. It was Leah making herself ill that… uh, got me wobbly. So pass it and we can meet up weekend after next or something."
That was life in a short-to-medium-wing ward, from what I'd seen and heard. There was a pretty constant flow of new faces. Emily had left a few days ago, and there were two new girls, Tori and Henna, who'd come since I'd arrived. "I wonder when Kirsty has her next evaluation?" I said.
Sam looked back up from her paper. "Who?" she asked, distracted.
"Kirsty. Next evaluation?"
"Who?" She frowned, a blank expression on her face.
I stared back just as blankly. "Kirsty. Scars on her face. Worse than mine. In Room Four."
"Oh! Her." Sam blinked, still looking somewhat blank. "No idea," she said. "I don't talk to her."
"I can't recall a single conversation I've had with her," Leah chimed in. "Just the…" she traced lines on her face, and winced, looking at me. "Sorry," she said quickly, "at least yours are just sort of… pink. Not like hers."
I gave a one-shouldered shrug. No, Kirsty didn't talk to people. She just stayed in her room. I hadn't seen her in any of the sessions, either. I'd signed up for quite a few, because – dear God – the boredom was the worst thing in here. And it also meant that I appeared to be keen and willing and taking active control of my wellbeing and everything else that Hannah, as the wing supervisor, said we should be.
I'd set myself the goal that I'd be out of here as soon as possible. And if I managed it today, it'd be just seventeen days.
I was fairly proud of myself for that.
I looked at the clock. "Well," I said, "about two hours to go. I… I think I'm ready. I just want it to be over and done with."
"Oh dear, no!" Leah said, frowning as she looked at me. "You can't go to your evaluation meeting looking like that!"
"Like what?" I said, confused.
"Like that!" She stood up and she put her too-thin hands on her too-thin waist. "You're coming with me, and I'm going to brush your hair properly!"
"They don't let me have a hairbrush or a hairdryer," I protested. "I know it's not that great, but it's the best I can manage."
She grinned at me. "Not the best I can do. Let me go ask Hannah for them."
I smiled back. It was strange. I'd missed this kind of thing so badly. Emma and I used to be like sisters. I hadn't had any real friends for a year and more.
"Technically, it's not breaking the rules," she added. "After all, I'm the one who's using them. So I won't even get in trouble." She paused. "Hopefully."
Yes, that was the worry. Because I was one of the patients in the wing marked in my files as a suicide risk, there were little perfectly normal things which they didn't let me have. But hopefully I'd be out of here soon.
And when I was out of here, I'd be able to keep proper notes on what my powers could do, without having to be worried about nurses reading them and getting worried about legitimate observations. I couldn't trust them not to read anything I wrote. I was sure they read my homework. Especially some of the science homework, where I'd got help from one of the nurses. I just knew, somehow, they'd misunderstand perfectly innocent and accurate records like 'Dr Samuels is bloated – rotting flesh around lips. Strong smell of alcohol mixed with gasoline. Blood stains on fingers'.
It was very unfair.
I had concluded that probably meant that either he had a drinking problem which he was trying to cover up, or had killed someone in a drink-driving accident. Or possibly both. I wasn't sure what the rotting lips meant. Maybe something romance-related, like 'he's lying when he says he loves his partner' or 'his lips are rotting because he's a habitual liar'. Or possibly just mouth cancer. But I was just guessing there.
That's what a notebook which I could actually record my observations in would help with. There were some elements of shared symbolism – for example, another girl in another wing who also had anorexia had shared symbolism with Leah – so if I could keep a list of shared elements, it could help me work out what each thing meant.
Stupid useless obtuse power which didn't give me straight answers.
My evaluation was at 10:15, and apart from the fact that I'd spent the hour beforehand feeling sick to my stomach with nerves, I was feeling ready. My hair was washed and dried and brushed, I'd spent time in front of the mirror making sure I didn't look crazy, and I'd practiced some of the questions that Sam and Leah had been asked before. I wasn't sure what this entailed, but I was about as ready as I could be.
I had set myself some ground rules for this meeting. No looking into the Other Place. No wool-gathering when I was meant to be listening. No breaking down into tears or anything like that. I was going to be on my best behaviour. My dad was waiting for me, and I didn't want to let him down.
"How are you feeling?" he asked me, just outside the room where it was going to be. That was the first thing he said.
"Nervous," I admitted.
"You'll be fine," he said. He was trying to assure me, I could tell, and checking the Other Place I could see that his fires were damped, wavering and flickering in a fretful way. In the fire, I could see images, dancing like ash. Putting them together, most of them seemed to be him, staring into space. I thought he'd been missing me. I'd been missing him too.
"I'll try to be," I said weakly, returning my vision to the normal. He gave me a hug, and I hugged back.
"Good luck," he said.
Going into the room, Dr Vanderbough was there, and Hannah, and a few other people I couldn't remember the names of or didn't recognise. There was one of the doctors who I'd seen around the place, a woman in a neat black suit and glasses who looked like an administrator and who was probably there from the school trying to get me out of here ASAP if she wasn't from the Men in Black, and a few others.
I sat up straight. I was careful to look attentive and smile. I was a perfectly well-balanced and normal girl who had just happened to have a nervous breakdown when locked in a locker filled with fermented tampons. Which, when you thought about it, was a perfectly natural and understandable reaction.
Honestly, I was pretty surprised I wasn't more traumatised by it. I think I would have been, if it hadn't been for the thing with the insects and the nails, which sort of made mundane things look rather less meaningful, and also gave me something else to focus on. So what if I had nightmares? I could live with them.
I'd considered what would have happened if I hadn't got superpowers from that experience. That would have been, like, possibly just the worst. Wow. That would have been just terrible. Emma and co almost certainly wouldn't have done it if they knew they were going to give me psychometry and the capacity to make invisible monsters which obeyed my every order.
Well, they had done it. And here I was now. It was just as well I was a good person, I thought to myself. If I was as bad as them, I could probably make their lives very unpleasant and they wouldn't even know it was me.
So they had better not try anything again.
"So, Taylor," Hannah asked. "How are you feeling?"
I put on my best brave face. "A little bit nervous," I said. "But generally better apart from today and," I spread my hands, "this whole thing."
"That's good, that's good. And don't worry, it's okay to be nervous. We're just going to have a talk – I've already showed them my notes on your progress… which is very promising, by the way. So, shall we get started?"
…
"And… well, that's about it," Dr Vanderbough said. "I don't believe she's at any immediate risk to herself, and so she can be safely discharged."
I wasn't listening to that conversation. Well, okay, clearly I was. But I wasn't listening to it in any normal way. I'd had my talk, and then they called my dad in. I was waiting in the anteroom, eating biscuits one of the nurses had left me and drinking hot chocolate. The chair was quite comfortable, even in the Other Place where it was overstuffed and slightly warm to the touch. Considering the weather, I didn't mind a little extra warmth. The blood-rain in the Other Place had thinned, and most of the liquid coming from the sky was now water. I couldn't bring myself to be curious about it, though. Not when I had other things to think about.
I looked very normal staring out of the window, especially if you couldn't see what I was actually staring at. A pair of little eyeless china-doll cherubs, holding up a cracked television screen. I'd sent an angel made of barbed-wire with a CCTV camera for a head into the room to observe where my dad was meeting with the doctors and staff to talk about my future.
With a little experimental fiddling, I'd even managed to get the TV-screen to show me the normal world, rather than the Other Place.
Actually, now that I thought of it, that seemed like a very promising development. I had just shown it was possible to see things in the normal world, while in the Other Place. So maybe I could overlay the normal world on the Other Place, or have the normal world shown on my eyelids, so I could change between the two by opening and closing my eyes?
Thoughts for later. This was what I needed a notepad for. Right now, I had a meeting to spy on.
"So she's better?" my dad asked.
Dr Vanderbough pursed his lips. "We believe she doesn't need to be an in-patient anymore," he said cautiously. "As I said earlier, I would strongly recommend that she have regular meetings with a therapist for at least a few months. She improved notably when I put her on some mild sleeping pills so she was getting proper amounts of rest – she was having nightmares every night, and the hallucinations seemed to have been contributed to by that. Ideally, her doses should be lowered so she doesn't become dependent on them. They should only be a short term measure."
I didn't like the sound of that. I liked being able to sleep. Also, I was 'better', because I'd never gone crazy in the first place.
"She's going to need you through the next bit," Hannah said, folding her hands on her lap. "Here, things are stable and calm. She may find it more difficult in normal day to day life. The return to school will be especially stressful."
"I've observed she has trust issues," Dr Vanderbough says. "She doesn't open up to anyone. I've had to coax every little step we've made out of her. I'm fairly certain that she's telling the truth about the bullying, with no more exaggeration than would be normal. A long-term, systematic bullying campaign like that would explain several things I've noted about her. It's a very normal reaction, but it's getting in the way of her recovery. She seems to care about you – she talked about you fairly frequently. You're going to have to be a solid place for her to stand on, someone who won't judge her for what she tells you."
The betrayal stung. How dare he tell my dad I had trust issues? What gave him the right? He'd said that things in that room were between me and him, and then he'd gone and – how dare he! That nasty man-spider, worming his way in to…
… huh. A bit of self-awareness caught me. Wow. That chain of thought had been outright paranoid.
Maybe… uh. Maybe they had a point.
I slumped down, cupping my hands over my mouth, and tried to control my sudden hyperventilation. So he thought that the way I had no reason to trust anyone, adults or children, was getting in the way of my recovery? That was ridiculous, surely. But why… why hadn't I told my dad I was being bullied earlier? Why hadn't I tried harder to get help from the school?
Oh, I had my reasons. I had plenty of reasons. He couldn't have done anything. I didn't want him to worry. I was ashamed. I'd tried to tell the school earlier, when it had been less bad, and it hadn't helped. If I told on those three now, no one would help me and they'd just step up the bullying, so I'd just tough it out until I graduated and could go off and leave them behind. All part of the familiar litany of reasons which I'd repeated again and again.
At what point had the reasons taken over from trying to do anything?
Well. He knew about the bullying now. And I'd bet anything that the school did, from the police and him kicking up a fuss. In a twisted way, I had leverage now. After all, if they let it go on, and I really did kill myself, they'd be in deep PR shit. I wasn't going to do that, of course. I'd never been suicidal. But they didn't know that. And I had my collection of notes on the bullying, all those records of phone calls, and a diary of events.
At the very least, I should let my dad know about the existence of the diary. That thing with the locker… that was a step up. Way, way up. I could have died from that. I still didn't have full feeling in my hands. I'd never thought Emma would do something like that. Adults might want to shrug off name-calling and stealing my stuff as childish things. They couldn't shrug off this kind of thing. Especially men, I bet. I'd just have to say 'locker full of used tampons' and they'd be freaking out.
I didn't think they'd try to kill me, but I hadn't thought they'd do something which could really hurt me right up until they did. It wasn't paranoia when they might actually be out to get you.
The door to the meeting room opened, and my dad was the first one out. He was smiling widely, in an open, relieved way which managed to make me feel guilty about how much he must have been worrying. I rose, and forced myself to smile back.
"It's good news?" I asked.
And there was just a little bit of me which pragmatically pointed out that if I owned up to some things which didn't matter, it would be easier to keep the fact that I was a parahuman from him. I'd really be protecting him from that. He didn't need to know I was a more bizarre Thinker/Master mix than anyone I'd been able to find online. Not yet. Not until I was sure I wanted anyone to know. I couldn't let him be threatened by people who might want to use me.
Compared to that, telling him the truth about the bullying would be nothing.
One small step at a time.
Last edited:
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Hmn, Taylor self-reflecting without loads of rationalization and totally obliviousness to how other people see her? Now that's just crazy.
Love the contrast between the reasonable-sounding Doctor and Taylor's... resentment? of him.
Love the contrast between the reasonable-sounding Doctor and Taylor's... resentment? of him.
Huh. Right in the second chapter she's started to take steps to actually address some of her issues. Can't say that I expected a story with a start like... that... and with a powerset like... this... to result in Taylor being more stable than canon, which this could very well result in.
Not that I'd bet on her newfound resolve to try and address her issues lasting through the chapter, but it's still more than expected.
Not that I'd bet on her newfound resolve to try and address her issues lasting through the chapter, but it's still more than expected.