Oh, FYI, i'm going to continue reading, i'm just giving a few critiques. Also i've never read WoD, just Worm.
An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's certainly notable that this is a crossover, not a Worm fic, and that expecting it to act like a lot of other Worm crossovers do - that is, "Worm with bits from other series added" - would be a mistake. This isn't Worm with extra flavour, it's very much a halfway point between Worm and the new World of Darkness. Expecting it to act like Worm more than half the time would be a mistake, and the fact that you can mistake the nWoD bits for Worm in a lot of places doesn't mean that they make up less of what's there.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Just some advice for next time. Mention what you do like too. Otherwise, you come across as just trying to shit on someone's writing and story.
And the main thing that you need to know about the World of Darkness is that it lives up to it's name. Vampires, Werewolves, Demons, and Changelings are all running around fucking up the world as we know it. Some of them practically run the place. Also, the Mages have limited ability to rewrite reality, kill you with coincidences, and/or blow you up with lightning. This limited ability gets less limited as they learn. Some of them can literally rewrite your mind through the internet.
Its World of Darkness. Thought control on a large scale and the thought police are a thing. In fact the thoughts of what is real or not actually make reality. So do not think that the thoughts of the world are contingent upon reality when the opposite is true. Reality conforms to the thoughts of the world - and that is why there is a thought police in WoD.
At least as fare as I recall. Its been some time for me with the whole WoD thing.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
It's new World of Darkness.
nMage doesn't use "belief defines reality" as its central conceit. In nMage, reality really is real, but the unAwakened can only see part of reality (and there are forces which seek to keep things that way).
Magic in nWoD comes from a few different sources. The MAGE magic important to this story functions very similar to how powers work in Worm, though not exactly the same. In nWoD a mage uses a sympathetic connection to an extra dimensional plane with different laws of reality and their ability to perceive and understand them to draw them from that place into the world. The type of mage determines what is easy or hard about magic, and the use of mana makes magic either simpler or more powerful. There's some stuff about paradox, the abyss, disbelief, and the 'sleeper's curse' but those don't seem to be relevant to this story.
LoserThree
Finds writing poorly easy
- Location
- Greater Seattle Area
- Pronouns
- he/him
Do you mean cliché? I think you might be confusing 'references' and maybe 'tropes' with clichés.
Or do you mean 'clique writing' in that he's writing for an exclusive group of writing-appreciators that doesn't include you? If this is the case, then I totally get you. Threads here and on SB suggest the author is very choosy about whom he will accept feedback and criticism from. Since this is the Internet, that is probably a good thing: out of the set of people that read, say, this particular runon, most are dumbfucks and most of the rest are not good writing critics, anyway.
So the author has ended up writing for an audience that appreciates specific things at some depth. So someone like me might find his Mythosy NGE works pretty accessible, and the Zero stuff too -- when Exalted doesn't get in the way too much and with the exception of that weird poetry chapter that I'm sure was amazing if you're into that sort of thing -- but might find Imago a bit impenetrable.
('Cause I do. But it's awfully readable and this author has done very enjoyable things before, so I'm still here for whatever that's worth.)
But is "clique writing" really the best way to say that, if that's even what you mean? If you wanted to be flippant about it, would it be better to accuse the author of writing for hipsters or something?
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Oh, indeed. She's a veteran of government black ops wetworks teams. You know how I mentioned that there's the hyperelite wing of the military with all the advanced totally anachronistic tech? Yeah. She was one of them. She's dealt with men and women like this before, and is blasé about their mannerisms. It's not like these are the only two with these very idiosyncratic behavioural traits.
And yes, their behaviour is straight out of the Men in Black conspiracy theories. Not the film. The original material. And yes, I am pillaging conspiracy theories for use in Imago. Hence why I unironically made FEMA a group with black helicopters who run resettlement camps [1].
(So, yes, I am saying that the last attempt with Tinkertech teleport-capable vessels went Philadelphia Experiment on everyone)
[1] Because, let's be honest, the federal disaster management group is going to be worked off their butts with the Endbringers around and so is going to end up pretty powerful.
FinalPyre
Ennui Engine
Hmm I also agree that the Agents in the last chapter felt pretty far-fetched. They struck me as a bit... ill fitting for the world building thus far, or something like that. My SoD bounced around a bit, but I have good shocks on those things. Pretty intriguing story so far, especially with the powerset being so atypical.
I'm guessing there is eventually an explanation for why the agents are so stereotypically... secret-agent-like.
Honestly when I first saw them I thought "Oh boy! HardBoiled Assault and Battery!".
I'm guessing there is eventually an explanation for why the agents are so stereotypically... secret-agent-like.
Honestly when I first saw them I thought "Oh boy! HardBoiled Assault and Battery!".
earthboy
(verified ape)
- Location
- NYC
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Heh.
Now I'm curious if FEMA attempted to have all Parahumans branded "Federal Emergencies".
"Hello! I'm your local FEMA operations handler. You are on fire, and therefore constitute a Federal emergency, and I'm here to manage you. Or the gentlemen standing behind me, holding assault rifles, could manage you. Your choice."
RadiantPhoenix
Trudging up the Hill
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"Just spray me with the goddamn fire extinguishers already!"
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
Thinking about it...
Since Slaughterhouse is apparently mememtic, and these agents are in-charge of tracking instances of it. Could they have be somehow, I dunno, partially-lobotomized?
Since Slaughterhouse is apparently mememtic, and these agents are in-charge of tracking instances of it. Could they have be somehow, I dunno, partially-lobotomized?
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
That makes a scary amount of sense...
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Those wondering why these government agents are acting like total weirdos might be served to familiarize themselves with the other half of the fic's source material - that is to say, nWoD and specifically Mage: the Awakening. I have my suspicions, though ES is probably altering the exact details somehow, just to throw us off.
It gets... worse, from there. Don't open the door, Danny.
Summoners said:
It gets... worse, from there. Don't open the door, Danny.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
If they're trying to contain it, that's unlikely.Or maybe they're already infected.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
They say they're trying to contain it.
Words do not have to be true.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Point. Let's wait for them to do something that we can analyze before we take this any further. Right now, all we have is suspicion and opinion.
EDIT: Let's discuss a new topic. Like which canon characters (who may or may not ever show up) would fit which nWoD splats and sub-splats. I could definitely see Regent and Tattletale being Acanthus Mages. Bitch would fit well as a Werewolf, I believe. And Piggot would be interesting as a Hunter.
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Okay, I'm going to stop you there. I do understand that you've probably been introduced to the WoD from a more superfriends-like perspective, where at the very least all the splats exist in the same setting and do their stuff while mysteriously not interacting much, but that's very much not the default assumption in the nWoD. Especially as per the core setting, where if you see a thing drinking human blood, you're mostly concerned about 'What the fuck is going on?' rather than whether it's from Vampire: the Requiem, The Wicked Dead, Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss, Changing Breeds, Predators, Saturnine Night, War Against the Pure, Shadows of Mexico, Second Sight, Night Stalkers, Witch Hunters, Skinchangers... [1]
When I refuse to even confirm whether I'm using any major splats (and if I'm using them, how much I'm remixing them), it's... probably not a great idea to start assigning splats to figures who've barely appeared. Especially since... uh, parahumans have enough of their own "mythos" that you can basically treat them as Parahuman: the Caping. Complete with a number of inborn splats based on how you got your powers, and the traditional White Wolf totally-imbalanced-chargen-process where some people come out of chargen at a much higher effective XP level than others.
(PS. The term for "baseline human with anachronistic weaponry" is "member of the US military" or "criminal", not "Hunter".)
[1] All nWoD books which off the top of my head have things in them which drink human blood, counting each unique creature only once. Assuming that just because it's drinking blood, it's a Requiem-style vampire is... a mistake in a mortals game. Or, hell, most nWoD games. Even Mage. In Mage you should at the very least check their aura and read their Resonance before drawing conclusions.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
@EarthScorpion
Fair enough. I wasn't trying to say that anything I was speculating on would be true, just assigning things based on personality in an attempt to start a discussion that wouldn't be just a massive paranoia wankoff.
And yes, most of my WoD exposure has been through Panopticon, which is definitely "superfriends". I was doing a lot of extrapolating from there. (And yes, I am aware that that's oWoD and this is nWoD.) Other than that, all I've done is read through the books, mainly the mage ones.
Fair enough. I wasn't trying to say that anything I was speculating on would be true, just assigning things based on personality in an attempt to start a discussion that wouldn't be just a massive paranoia wankoff.
And yes, most of my WoD exposure has been through Panopticon, which is definitely "superfriends". I was doing a lot of extrapolating from there. (And yes, I am aware that that's oWoD and this is nWoD.) Other than that, all I've done is read through the books, mainly the mage ones.
3.01
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Arc 3 – Lines
Chapter 3.01
"… reports are coming in from Washington DC that feared crime boss El Diablo Blanco may have been captured by a PRT led by Justice after a high speed car chase. Eye witness reports are sketchy, but if this is true, it could be the end for the infamous narco-lord." The radio stopped blathering as Dad turned the dial, obviously preparing for a pep talk.
The sky was black as tar, and hail and thunder lashed down as if the world wept bitter tears for the dreadful things which were about to happen. Screams had echoed through the sleeping city last night, but they'd just been an omen for further horrors, yet to come.
Okay, I was stretching the truth a bit. The weather was actually pretty clear. It had even warmed up. But it was metaphorically a thunderstorm of portentous evil and doom and stuff. Not metaphorically in the Other Place, which was its normal grey rusty decaying self, but just… metaphorically. Literally metaphorically.
Yes.
I was going back to school.
"Are you feeling okay?" my dad asked gingerly, as he turned onto the road leading to Winslow. I could see the school ahead, lurking on the right. The parking lot fronting it was full of other cars dropping people off.
"Yeah," I said in a small voice. "Well, no. But I'm going to have to do it some time."
He almost went to pat me on the shoulder, but he had to grab the wheel again as some maniac cut ahead of him in the lane. He let out a faint growl, knuckles whitening.
For all that I made light of going back, it really wasn't a laughing matter. I'd found myself doing that more and more, mocking things that scared me. I guess considering my powers, it was only natural. They showed me that everything sucked, showed people as monsters, showed me how everyone was suffering. I either had to try to find some humour in what I saw, or I'd go mad for real. Then I'd wind up back in the psych hospital and we couldn't afford that. I couldn't afford that.
Speaking of madness, I could see a street preacher, taking advantage of the start of the school day to hand out leaflets just outside the gates. He was dressed in a dirty green coat covered in hand-drawn sketches and scrawlings that he'd stuck onto the coat with masking tape. He might have been going for holiness, but it made him look like a walking newspaper. The other students were ignoring him, and he'd probably be moved along pretty soon. Him and his placard, marked
Yeah, they'd probably have him shunted along pretty damn quickly. Or maybe they'd even call the police. There'd been that school shooting a few months back by an Endbringer cultist, and let's be honest here, wandering around outside schools threatening the unrighteous was creepy at best.
Dad saw him too. "You want me to walk you past the gates?" he asked in a low voice as we pulled to a stop. His green eyes were worried as he looked between me and the preacher, his hands unconsciously clenched into fists.
I pursed my lips. "I'll be fine," I said back. "I'll just ignore him and go straight past." I swallowed. "I'm going to the principal's office straight away anyway, so I can tell them that there's a creepy guy outside the gates."
He nodded. "Probably a good idea," he said. Reaching out, he went to squeeze my hand, remembered himself, and squeezed my shoulder instead. "Taylor. It'll be fine."
"I hope so," I said in a tiny voice. I didn't think it would be. I felt sick, and the butterflies in my stomach were a whirling maelstrom. They were probably actual butterflies in the Other Place, too. The image didn't help. "I'll…" I swallowed, "I'll see you this evening," I said, my voice coming out rather higher pitched than I meant.
"Yeah," he said, sounding a bit choked up. "Good luck. I'll be back later today because I'll be visiting Tim in hospital, but if you need me, call me and I'll come straight away."
"Thanks," I said, slipping out of the car. I walked straight past the crazy preacher at the gates and his cry of 'God loves you! He sent his beloved Son, his heir and scion, to die for us!'. I wasn't alone in doing that. Most of the other students were similarly pretending he didn't exist, and walked on by when he tried to thrust fliers covered in red text at them. Even the ones who acknowledged him only did it to mock him.
I didn't need to check the Other Place to guess that he was probably mentally ill, but I couldn't really sum up the resolve to feel bad about how he was treated. He was creepy. He could have anything under that coat. Or nothing at all, which was a mental image I really didn't need.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge that thought, and waved Dad goodbye before heading inside. Despite the warmth, I was wearing a big baggy sweater. It covered up the bands on my wrists, and meant the fact that I was wearing gloves looked a little less strange. Other girls might have had a problem with this covering up their figure, but since I didn't have one to speak of it wasn't much of a loss. At least I'd put on make-up this morning. I'd have to get used to that. It covered the scars on my face, which were only really pink lines now, but would take years to fade.
At least that wouldn't stand out. Lots of other girls were wearing the same amount of make-up. Although they weren't wearing it to cover self-inflicted scars, so I still thought they were using too much.
Gloved hands in my pockets, I sloped through the halls trying not to catch anyone else's eyes. I didn't have any friends to welcome me back, so anyone who was looking to give me a greeting didn't mean well. That meant that I spent time staring at the red linoleum. It was filthy with footprints, the colour faded and grubby. I had no idea how bad it was in the Other Place, and I wasn't sure I wanted to check.
God, I hated this place. And I felt like I was going to be sick from nerves.
I darted into the nearest bathroom. The air stank of cigarettes, and a glance at the ceiling revealed a gutted smoke detector. Several Japanese girls were glaring at me, cigarettes in hands, leaving a cold feeling on the back of my neck as I turned away. I had the distinct feeling this had been a mistake.
Fuck, I was out of practice at day-to-day life in Winslow. This had been one of the safe bathrooms before. One of the gangs must have colonised it when I was away.
Sidling up the nearest sink, I ran the cold water and went to wash my hands before I realised I was still wearing my gloves. I changed the movement to trying to scrub an imaginary stain out of my jumper. I could feel all of them staring at me and talking to each other in Japanese and I really really wanted out of here. Anyway, I was in the bathroom – the wrong bathroom, not a bathroom someone like me ever normally went into – and so I might as well do what I had to do.
Namely, exhale out a cloud of tens of shaking butterflies with rust-red wings, and then trap them in a cage made of barbed wire. I left the cage in the bathroom when I stepped out, rid of the nerves. I could always use it for something later.
I was thinking more clearly now, and wasn't feeling sick. I called upon Isolation, thinking of everyone deliberately looking past the preacher, and made my way up to the principal's office surrounded in an aura of see-me-not. I had to report there, to talk about some of the new arrangements they had in place to 'protect me'.
Cover their asses, more like.
I had to wait in the pale green antechamber for ten minutes before I was let in to see the principal. It gave me some time to think about my life and what I was going to do next. I had the rest of my time at school all planned out, of course. I'd just need to work on my grades and pass unnoticed and hide from anyone who wanted to make trouble for me. I could do that. I had Isolation on my side, as well as any other tricks I might be able to pull out. I just had to wait out high school. I could do that.
No, what I really had to do was think about what I'd be doing in my newfound other life. I wasn't quite sure what had given me the idea to pretend to be part of a secret government conspiracy. Okay, that was a lie. It had probably been Foucault's Pendulum that had put the idea into my head. After all, that had been about a fake conspiracy – at least from the bits that I'd understood.
Maybe it had been a mistake. I didn't know. After all, if I was thought to just be a junior member, I'd get in less trouble if I was caught, right? I could tell them I'd just been following orders, and maybe my powers would even let me make myself believe that, if they used lie detectors.
And there was a wild, almost manic edge to it. The idea that I was tricking the government into thinking there was a secret agency working in Brockton Bay… it made me want to laugh to myself. Here I was, someone who couldn't even stop herself from being bullied at school and who'd spent weeks in a psych hospital eating what I was told when I was told, and I was fooling the government. It was a little form of power. I might not even be worth a proper investigation after almost dying in a locker, but at least I could do this!
And I had made a difference! I had missed the police raid on the sweatshop. That was annoying me, because I'd been planning to watch it. I'd stayed up late every night after sending a barbed-wire cherub to get the information to the PPD, watching the warehouse on a crackling CRT monitor in the Other Place. Despite that, they'd done the raid sometime early in the morning last Thursday, after I'd gone to bed. It had probably been a 'dawn raid', if TV didn't lie to me about what cops did when raiding a location where dangerous criminals were hiding out.
Still, the place was now gone. Shut down. It had been in the news, as an 'and in other news' kind of story. Which was wrong because it should have been more important, but at least it had made the news even it hadn't been a lead story. I was still saving the article for my scrapbook. I needed to buy a scrapbook.
After it was over, I'd checked the location in person, and although it was still terrible and rotten, it was… it was bad in a dead way, if you get what I mean. It was like it was a scab in the landscape of the Other Place, rather than a raw wound.
It would heal in time. I hoped.
I was interrupted from my thoughts when I was called in by the principal. The office was the same as the last time I saw it. This included the heater by the wall being on full blast, which left it stuffy. There was a plump bearded teacher wearing a turban in there with her, and he was clearly sweating in the warmth. I was feeling the heat too. I wanted to take my jumper off, but I wasn't about to show my arms and the wristbands I was wearing to cover the scars.
I should have remembered to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt, I thought to myself.
"Ah, Taylor," Principal Blackwell said, shooting an undoubtedly false smile at me. "Welcome back. How are you feeling?"
"Fine," I said. It wasn't a lie. After all, my nervousness was currently trapped in a wire cage in one of the girls' bathrooms. "How are you?" I asked, to cover up my momentary distraction as I slipped into the Other Place and took in her office. It hadn't changed much in the week or so since I was last here.
"Oh, fine, fine," whined the dog-faced monster which now stood in her place. Still a bitch in the Other Place, I noted. She gestured to a stinking, rotting seat that smelt of guilt and worry. How kind of the chair to tell me what the people who'd sat in it had felt. Exhaling, I sent out the silvery worm of Sympathy to gnaw at the principal's ear, and knew even without looking that her expression was taking on an apologetic cast. One I knew to be genuine, thanks to Sympathy crawling into her head. "Taylor, this is Mr Kaur."
He rose and shook my hand. He was a stony-faced old statue, cracked and blackened in places as though by heat. One part was even half-melted, like a gummy bear someone had sucked on. I had no idea what that meant – maybe that he was hard and tough, but also prone to very hot rages? I set a second Sympathy on him, and then dropped out of the Other Place.
"He's heading up our… ahem, new anti-bullying drive," the principal added.
"I'll also be your new English teacher," he said. His accent was strongly Bostonian, which surprised me. You wouldn't have thought that to look at him. It didn't seem to fit his appearance at all.
Then I felt a bit racist for thinking that.
"Hello," I said. "So… um, I guess we'll be seeing each other quite often?"
He smiled at me, as Sympathy got to work. "Yes," he said. "Don't worry. If everything goes right, we'll only have to interact as teacher and pupil. But you should come talk if you're having problems."
If everything goes right? Hah. I doubted that would be the case.
"Yes," I said.
So I sat and sweltered and Mr Kaur sweated as Principal Blackwell went on and on about the procedures they were putting in place and how I was to report any trouble to him and how 'there had been failings' but 'there's no reason we should let this ruin the rest of your time here' and lots of other meaningless platitudes. They wouldn't help me.
"Excuse me," Mr Kaur interrupted to my great relief, clearing his throat, "but Taylor and I have to get to our scheduled lesson."
"Oh, of course, of course," the principal said, her head bobbing as she nodded.
It was a relief to get out of that room, back into the white walls of the corridors where the teachers had their offices. Mr Kaur blotted at his forehead with a handkerchief. "It was like an oven in there," he said. "I swear, that woman has something wrong with her if she needs an office that hot."
I nodded. "It's warming up a bit," I said. "Outside, I mean. Not in there. That was warm enough already."
"Yes. Maybe we're seeing spring," he said. "Well, I'll know when I can move my plants out of the greenhouse." He paused. "So, anyway," he said, as we headed towards the classroom, "I've read and marked your assigned work. It was nice to see you'd actually done it. Some people try to hand in catch-up work and would you believe it, they clearly hadn't read the book."
I swallowed. "It… it wasn't like I had anything else to do," I said. "And… well, uh, I'd read To Kill a Mockingbird before."
"Ah, good, good," he told me with a smile. "A regular grade-A student, eh?"
My mother had always been insistent I read a lot. She used to read to me when I was younger, and she didn't believe in going easy on the books. They were meant to expand my vocabulary and leave me appreciating literature. Admittedly, I'm not sure how many other people's mothers read them Down and Out in Paris and London when they were little, but that's an occupational hazard of your mother being an English lecturer. "I just like reading," I said.
He grinned at me. "Well, the odds were that there had to be someone who liked reading in this school," he said. "Clearly I'll have to fight off the other English teachers when word gets out." He paused. "And then I'll get shot when Lewis pulls out his gun, because I just have my kirpan, so maybe that's not the best course of action."
He expected me to laugh, clearly. I managed a smile. Trailing behind him, I was rather more preoccupied by how this was going to just be one of my new classes.
Room 2c could have been almost any of the other rooms in Winslow. The walls were faded and cracked, and the chalkboards were gray with accumulated dust. The grubby windows looked out over the parking lot outside the school, with a row of bare trees failing to obscure the road on the far side. It was noisy, with everyone talking to each other. It got slightly quieter when we stepped into the room and some people noticed the teacher was here, but only slightly.
"Ahem!" Mr Kaur said loudly. "Ahem! Everyone, be quiet! Yes, that does mean everyone. Jay, that means you too," he said, glaring at a tanned boy. The other students returned to the two-person desks. "This is Taylor. She's transferred to this class for the rest of the year. Taylor… ah, sit with Luci," he said to me, pointing over at a girl with no one sitting next to her. "In my classes, you sit where I tell you to, no excuses. If you want to move, you check with me first. Do you understand?"
I nodded. It seemed like a little thing, but it was actually a good sign. Only the stricter teachers did that at Winslow. That meant he was one of the ones who kept his classes in order, and would punish people who acted up in his lessons. Those classes had always been a respite for me, because my bullies were 'good girls'. They didn't want to get caught doing anything bad, and were smart enough to know when to hold off. It wasn't like that with teachers who didn't care, or wanted to be friends with their students. The worst was when the teachers let students talk to each other, and I'd spend the whole lesson in earshot of insults and whispers spoken deliberately loud enough for me to hear.
I put my bag down next to her, and she shuffled her chair up slightly, to make space for me.
"Hi," she said, adjusting her wire rim spectacles. Luci had coffee-coloured skin, and her hair was tied back into pigtails. She was wearing a faded purple-and-white t-shirt, and jeans. She was quite pretty. Certainly she was prettier than me, even if she was nearly as skinny. Not being a freakishly tall beanpole helped her case a lot. I glanced at the desk before her. She'd laid out all her pens neatly before her, and had three different colours of ink. Her working book had curling twirly vine-like symbols drawn over the covers.
"Hi," I said back, sinking into the Other Place. There, she had far, far too many eyes, glowing bright yellow in the gloom, all somehow looking down on me. It seemed she'd already decided I wasn't as good as her. The eyes covered her face and her hands, and the glows from under her ragged and tattered clothes suggested they were there, too. Her fingers were almost as long as her forearms, were splattered in paint, and twitched all the time. Paranoia, maybe? Or was she a thief with those twitching fingers? I wasn't sure. There was a judgmental cast to her features, and spurs of bone erupted from her skull like a crown.
So she was Daddy's little princess. Great.
Either way, if I was going to have to sit next to her, I'd have to take precautions. It only took a moment for me to think up what I'd need to do. A doll with a TV screen for a face, to stream words like 'BE NICE' and 'TREAT HER WELL' right into each and every single one of her eyes. I vaguely remembered her face from crowds, but I didn't think she'd actively ever done anything to me. I didn't want another enemy. I left the doll flashing its messages into her eyes in the Other Place, and returned to normalcy.
"Did you just transfer in?" she asked, playing with one of her pens.
"Um… no," I said. "I… I was off ill for a while and they moved my classes around." I didn't want her knowing of me as 'the girl who got shut in the locker full of tampons'. Of course, she had probably already heard, but maybe I could at least save myself a few days of mockery about that.
"Ah, tough luck," she said, as I rummaged through my bag, looking for my pencil case. She paused. "Forget your locker key?" she asked, looking at my bag. "There's probably still time to go dump it, if you run." She had quite a notable New York accent, I noticed. Well, that wasn't surprising. A lot of people had moved away when the Leviathan had hit Manhattan, and Brockton Bay had picked up some of them. After all, it wasn't like we were too far, relatively speaking, from New York.
Of course I wasn't going to be using my locker. They'd probably just scrubbed it down, but I couldn't have even if they'd totally decontaminated it. I… I couldn't. I just couldn't. "I'm fine," I said.
"Okay!" Mr Kaur announced to the class. "So, everyone. Does everyone have their copies of Death of a Salesman with them this time? If you don't, share with your partner. If you both don't, raise your hands. Everyone else, turn to the start of Act II."
I pulled out my old, yellowed copy. It had originally been my mother's, and there were some of her annotations in the columns. I was scared to take it into school like this where it might get stolen, but Dad had insisted that I take it. I was going to send a barbed-wire cherub to take it home immediately once this lesson was over.
Then the lesson was in full flow, and I was trying to avoid being asked any questions. It was hard enough work keeping up with the notes. I was out of practice with writing. By the time the bell rang, my hand was aching and stiff.
Still, it could have been a lot worse. No one jabbed me in the ribs, no one loudly whispered rumours about me, and the only time I had to pick my pens off the ground was when I actually really dropped them.
"Everyone, before the next lesson, I want you to read up to the bit in Act II where Willy enters Howard's office," Mr Kaur told us, as we prepared to move on to the next lesson. I sent a barbed-wire cherub to dump my book at home and then trailed out, hanging back so I didn't get pushed or shoved in the crowds.
"So, what was she like?" I heard one girl ask Luci.
"Who?" There was an awkward pause, and then Luci coughed. "Oh, the new girl? Taylor? Oh yeah. Quiet. Didn't talk with her, like, at all." She snorted. "Could be worse. If Mr Kaur's not going to put me next to a friend, someone who doesn't go on and on, does the work, and doesn't try to beg answers off me is the next best thing."
Like I'd need to ask her for answers, I thought, feeling outraged. I wasn't the one who'd spent the lesson drawing in the margins of her book.
"And doesn't smell. Like Suzenne. What's her problem? You doing anything after school?"
"Working. Again."
"Your uncle is a real slave-driver, you know that?" and that was all I heard before I lost them in the crowd. Despite that, I was smiling to myself. I didn't have those three in my classes any more. I'd just have to dodge them in the halls, and I could do that. I could be quiet. I'd just do my work and I'd… I'd find people like that who just wanted to be sitting next to someone quiet. I wouldn't draw attention to myself and things would just go fine. Wrapping myself in Isolation again, I headed off to History.
And History went fine, too. The teacher told me that he had received my assigned work but hadn't marked it yet, and then I found a free desk by the window and hid myself in a weaker version of Isolation. No one tried to talk to me, no one whispered about the new girl, and I got my work done.
Of course my luck had to run out. And it did so in the lunch line, where I couldn't use Isolation if I wanted to be served.
"Oh, look. Do you smell something bad around here?" a very familiar voice said behind me. "It smells even worse than the usual cooking."
I didn't need to turn to see who it was. That was my former best friend, Emma Barnes. I balled my hands into fists, ignoring the pain, and tried to control my breathing. I hated her. I hated her so much. And in the reflective metal of the food counter, I could see that she'd brought my other two least favourite people with her.
From now on, I was taking packed lunches.
Arc 3 – Lines
Chapter 3.01
"… reports are coming in from Washington DC that feared crime boss El Diablo Blanco may have been captured by a PRT led by Justice after a high speed car chase. Eye witness reports are sketchy, but if this is true, it could be the end for the infamous narco-lord." The radio stopped blathering as Dad turned the dial, obviously preparing for a pep talk.
The sky was black as tar, and hail and thunder lashed down as if the world wept bitter tears for the dreadful things which were about to happen. Screams had echoed through the sleeping city last night, but they'd just been an omen for further horrors, yet to come.
Okay, I was stretching the truth a bit. The weather was actually pretty clear. It had even warmed up. But it was metaphorically a thunderstorm of portentous evil and doom and stuff. Not metaphorically in the Other Place, which was its normal grey rusty decaying self, but just… metaphorically. Literally metaphorically.
Yes.
I was going back to school.
"Are you feeling okay?" my dad asked gingerly, as he turned onto the road leading to Winslow. I could see the school ahead, lurking on the right. The parking lot fronting it was full of other cars dropping people off.
"Yeah," I said in a small voice. "Well, no. But I'm going to have to do it some time."
He almost went to pat me on the shoulder, but he had to grab the wheel again as some maniac cut ahead of him in the lane. He let out a faint growl, knuckles whitening.
For all that I made light of going back, it really wasn't a laughing matter. I'd found myself doing that more and more, mocking things that scared me. I guess considering my powers, it was only natural. They showed me that everything sucked, showed people as monsters, showed me how everyone was suffering. I either had to try to find some humour in what I saw, or I'd go mad for real. Then I'd wind up back in the psych hospital and we couldn't afford that. I couldn't afford that.
Speaking of madness, I could see a street preacher, taking advantage of the start of the school day to hand out leaflets just outside the gates. He was dressed in a dirty green coat covered in hand-drawn sketches and scrawlings that he'd stuck onto the coat with masking tape. He might have been going for holiness, but it made him look like a walking newspaper. The other students were ignoring him, and he'd probably be moved along pretty soon. Him and his placard, marked
ROMANS 3:5
THE UNRIGHTEOUS
FEAR GOD'S
RIGHTEOUSNESS
THE UNRIGHTEOUS
FEAR GOD'S
RIGHTEOUSNESS
Yeah, they'd probably have him shunted along pretty damn quickly. Or maybe they'd even call the police. There'd been that school shooting a few months back by an Endbringer cultist, and let's be honest here, wandering around outside schools threatening the unrighteous was creepy at best.
Dad saw him too. "You want me to walk you past the gates?" he asked in a low voice as we pulled to a stop. His green eyes were worried as he looked between me and the preacher, his hands unconsciously clenched into fists.
I pursed my lips. "I'll be fine," I said back. "I'll just ignore him and go straight past." I swallowed. "I'm going to the principal's office straight away anyway, so I can tell them that there's a creepy guy outside the gates."
He nodded. "Probably a good idea," he said. Reaching out, he went to squeeze my hand, remembered himself, and squeezed my shoulder instead. "Taylor. It'll be fine."
"I hope so," I said in a tiny voice. I didn't think it would be. I felt sick, and the butterflies in my stomach were a whirling maelstrom. They were probably actual butterflies in the Other Place, too. The image didn't help. "I'll…" I swallowed, "I'll see you this evening," I said, my voice coming out rather higher pitched than I meant.
"Yeah," he said, sounding a bit choked up. "Good luck. I'll be back later today because I'll be visiting Tim in hospital, but if you need me, call me and I'll come straight away."
"Thanks," I said, slipping out of the car. I walked straight past the crazy preacher at the gates and his cry of 'God loves you! He sent his beloved Son, his heir and scion, to die for us!'. I wasn't alone in doing that. Most of the other students were similarly pretending he didn't exist, and walked on by when he tried to thrust fliers covered in red text at them. Even the ones who acknowledged him only did it to mock him.
I didn't need to check the Other Place to guess that he was probably mentally ill, but I couldn't really sum up the resolve to feel bad about how he was treated. He was creepy. He could have anything under that coat. Or nothing at all, which was a mental image I really didn't need.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge that thought, and waved Dad goodbye before heading inside. Despite the warmth, I was wearing a big baggy sweater. It covered up the bands on my wrists, and meant the fact that I was wearing gloves looked a little less strange. Other girls might have had a problem with this covering up their figure, but since I didn't have one to speak of it wasn't much of a loss. At least I'd put on make-up this morning. I'd have to get used to that. It covered the scars on my face, which were only really pink lines now, but would take years to fade.
At least that wouldn't stand out. Lots of other girls were wearing the same amount of make-up. Although they weren't wearing it to cover self-inflicted scars, so I still thought they were using too much.
Gloved hands in my pockets, I sloped through the halls trying not to catch anyone else's eyes. I didn't have any friends to welcome me back, so anyone who was looking to give me a greeting didn't mean well. That meant that I spent time staring at the red linoleum. It was filthy with footprints, the colour faded and grubby. I had no idea how bad it was in the Other Place, and I wasn't sure I wanted to check.
God, I hated this place. And I felt like I was going to be sick from nerves.
I darted into the nearest bathroom. The air stank of cigarettes, and a glance at the ceiling revealed a gutted smoke detector. Several Japanese girls were glaring at me, cigarettes in hands, leaving a cold feeling on the back of my neck as I turned away. I had the distinct feeling this had been a mistake.
Fuck, I was out of practice at day-to-day life in Winslow. This had been one of the safe bathrooms before. One of the gangs must have colonised it when I was away.
Sidling up the nearest sink, I ran the cold water and went to wash my hands before I realised I was still wearing my gloves. I changed the movement to trying to scrub an imaginary stain out of my jumper. I could feel all of them staring at me and talking to each other in Japanese and I really really wanted out of here. Anyway, I was in the bathroom – the wrong bathroom, not a bathroom someone like me ever normally went into – and so I might as well do what I had to do.
Namely, exhale out a cloud of tens of shaking butterflies with rust-red wings, and then trap them in a cage made of barbed wire. I left the cage in the bathroom when I stepped out, rid of the nerves. I could always use it for something later.
I was thinking more clearly now, and wasn't feeling sick. I called upon Isolation, thinking of everyone deliberately looking past the preacher, and made my way up to the principal's office surrounded in an aura of see-me-not. I had to report there, to talk about some of the new arrangements they had in place to 'protect me'.
Cover their asses, more like.
I had to wait in the pale green antechamber for ten minutes before I was let in to see the principal. It gave me some time to think about my life and what I was going to do next. I had the rest of my time at school all planned out, of course. I'd just need to work on my grades and pass unnoticed and hide from anyone who wanted to make trouble for me. I could do that. I had Isolation on my side, as well as any other tricks I might be able to pull out. I just had to wait out high school. I could do that.
No, what I really had to do was think about what I'd be doing in my newfound other life. I wasn't quite sure what had given me the idea to pretend to be part of a secret government conspiracy. Okay, that was a lie. It had probably been Foucault's Pendulum that had put the idea into my head. After all, that had been about a fake conspiracy – at least from the bits that I'd understood.
Maybe it had been a mistake. I didn't know. After all, if I was thought to just be a junior member, I'd get in less trouble if I was caught, right? I could tell them I'd just been following orders, and maybe my powers would even let me make myself believe that, if they used lie detectors.
And there was a wild, almost manic edge to it. The idea that I was tricking the government into thinking there was a secret agency working in Brockton Bay… it made me want to laugh to myself. Here I was, someone who couldn't even stop herself from being bullied at school and who'd spent weeks in a psych hospital eating what I was told when I was told, and I was fooling the government. It was a little form of power. I might not even be worth a proper investigation after almost dying in a locker, but at least I could do this!
And I had made a difference! I had missed the police raid on the sweatshop. That was annoying me, because I'd been planning to watch it. I'd stayed up late every night after sending a barbed-wire cherub to get the information to the PPD, watching the warehouse on a crackling CRT monitor in the Other Place. Despite that, they'd done the raid sometime early in the morning last Thursday, after I'd gone to bed. It had probably been a 'dawn raid', if TV didn't lie to me about what cops did when raiding a location where dangerous criminals were hiding out.
Still, the place was now gone. Shut down. It had been in the news, as an 'and in other news' kind of story. Which was wrong because it should have been more important, but at least it had made the news even it hadn't been a lead story. I was still saving the article for my scrapbook. I needed to buy a scrapbook.
After it was over, I'd checked the location in person, and although it was still terrible and rotten, it was… it was bad in a dead way, if you get what I mean. It was like it was a scab in the landscape of the Other Place, rather than a raw wound.
It would heal in time. I hoped.
I was interrupted from my thoughts when I was called in by the principal. The office was the same as the last time I saw it. This included the heater by the wall being on full blast, which left it stuffy. There was a plump bearded teacher wearing a turban in there with her, and he was clearly sweating in the warmth. I was feeling the heat too. I wanted to take my jumper off, but I wasn't about to show my arms and the wristbands I was wearing to cover the scars.
I should have remembered to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt, I thought to myself.
"Ah, Taylor," Principal Blackwell said, shooting an undoubtedly false smile at me. "Welcome back. How are you feeling?"
"Fine," I said. It wasn't a lie. After all, my nervousness was currently trapped in a wire cage in one of the girls' bathrooms. "How are you?" I asked, to cover up my momentary distraction as I slipped into the Other Place and took in her office. It hadn't changed much in the week or so since I was last here.
"Oh, fine, fine," whined the dog-faced monster which now stood in her place. Still a bitch in the Other Place, I noted. She gestured to a stinking, rotting seat that smelt of guilt and worry. How kind of the chair to tell me what the people who'd sat in it had felt. Exhaling, I sent out the silvery worm of Sympathy to gnaw at the principal's ear, and knew even without looking that her expression was taking on an apologetic cast. One I knew to be genuine, thanks to Sympathy crawling into her head. "Taylor, this is Mr Kaur."
He rose and shook my hand. He was a stony-faced old statue, cracked and blackened in places as though by heat. One part was even half-melted, like a gummy bear someone had sucked on. I had no idea what that meant – maybe that he was hard and tough, but also prone to very hot rages? I set a second Sympathy on him, and then dropped out of the Other Place.
"He's heading up our… ahem, new anti-bullying drive," the principal added.
"I'll also be your new English teacher," he said. His accent was strongly Bostonian, which surprised me. You wouldn't have thought that to look at him. It didn't seem to fit his appearance at all.
Then I felt a bit racist for thinking that.
"Hello," I said. "So… um, I guess we'll be seeing each other quite often?"
He smiled at me, as Sympathy got to work. "Yes," he said. "Don't worry. If everything goes right, we'll only have to interact as teacher and pupil. But you should come talk if you're having problems."
If everything goes right? Hah. I doubted that would be the case.
"Yes," I said.
So I sat and sweltered and Mr Kaur sweated as Principal Blackwell went on and on about the procedures they were putting in place and how I was to report any trouble to him and how 'there had been failings' but 'there's no reason we should let this ruin the rest of your time here' and lots of other meaningless platitudes. They wouldn't help me.
"Excuse me," Mr Kaur interrupted to my great relief, clearing his throat, "but Taylor and I have to get to our scheduled lesson."
"Oh, of course, of course," the principal said, her head bobbing as she nodded.
It was a relief to get out of that room, back into the white walls of the corridors where the teachers had their offices. Mr Kaur blotted at his forehead with a handkerchief. "It was like an oven in there," he said. "I swear, that woman has something wrong with her if she needs an office that hot."
I nodded. "It's warming up a bit," I said. "Outside, I mean. Not in there. That was warm enough already."
"Yes. Maybe we're seeing spring," he said. "Well, I'll know when I can move my plants out of the greenhouse." He paused. "So, anyway," he said, as we headed towards the classroom, "I've read and marked your assigned work. It was nice to see you'd actually done it. Some people try to hand in catch-up work and would you believe it, they clearly hadn't read the book."
I swallowed. "It… it wasn't like I had anything else to do," I said. "And… well, uh, I'd read To Kill a Mockingbird before."
"Ah, good, good," he told me with a smile. "A regular grade-A student, eh?"
My mother had always been insistent I read a lot. She used to read to me when I was younger, and she didn't believe in going easy on the books. They were meant to expand my vocabulary and leave me appreciating literature. Admittedly, I'm not sure how many other people's mothers read them Down and Out in Paris and London when they were little, but that's an occupational hazard of your mother being an English lecturer. "I just like reading," I said.
He grinned at me. "Well, the odds were that there had to be someone who liked reading in this school," he said. "Clearly I'll have to fight off the other English teachers when word gets out." He paused. "And then I'll get shot when Lewis pulls out his gun, because I just have my kirpan, so maybe that's not the best course of action."
He expected me to laugh, clearly. I managed a smile. Trailing behind him, I was rather more preoccupied by how this was going to just be one of my new classes.
Room 2c could have been almost any of the other rooms in Winslow. The walls were faded and cracked, and the chalkboards were gray with accumulated dust. The grubby windows looked out over the parking lot outside the school, with a row of bare trees failing to obscure the road on the far side. It was noisy, with everyone talking to each other. It got slightly quieter when we stepped into the room and some people noticed the teacher was here, but only slightly.
"Ahem!" Mr Kaur said loudly. "Ahem! Everyone, be quiet! Yes, that does mean everyone. Jay, that means you too," he said, glaring at a tanned boy. The other students returned to the two-person desks. "This is Taylor. She's transferred to this class for the rest of the year. Taylor… ah, sit with Luci," he said to me, pointing over at a girl with no one sitting next to her. "In my classes, you sit where I tell you to, no excuses. If you want to move, you check with me first. Do you understand?"
I nodded. It seemed like a little thing, but it was actually a good sign. Only the stricter teachers did that at Winslow. That meant he was one of the ones who kept his classes in order, and would punish people who acted up in his lessons. Those classes had always been a respite for me, because my bullies were 'good girls'. They didn't want to get caught doing anything bad, and were smart enough to know when to hold off. It wasn't like that with teachers who didn't care, or wanted to be friends with their students. The worst was when the teachers let students talk to each other, and I'd spend the whole lesson in earshot of insults and whispers spoken deliberately loud enough for me to hear.
I put my bag down next to her, and she shuffled her chair up slightly, to make space for me.
"Hi," she said, adjusting her wire rim spectacles. Luci had coffee-coloured skin, and her hair was tied back into pigtails. She was wearing a faded purple-and-white t-shirt, and jeans. She was quite pretty. Certainly she was prettier than me, even if she was nearly as skinny. Not being a freakishly tall beanpole helped her case a lot. I glanced at the desk before her. She'd laid out all her pens neatly before her, and had three different colours of ink. Her working book had curling twirly vine-like symbols drawn over the covers.
"Hi," I said back, sinking into the Other Place. There, she had far, far too many eyes, glowing bright yellow in the gloom, all somehow looking down on me. It seemed she'd already decided I wasn't as good as her. The eyes covered her face and her hands, and the glows from under her ragged and tattered clothes suggested they were there, too. Her fingers were almost as long as her forearms, were splattered in paint, and twitched all the time. Paranoia, maybe? Or was she a thief with those twitching fingers? I wasn't sure. There was a judgmental cast to her features, and spurs of bone erupted from her skull like a crown.
So she was Daddy's little princess. Great.
Either way, if I was going to have to sit next to her, I'd have to take precautions. It only took a moment for me to think up what I'd need to do. A doll with a TV screen for a face, to stream words like 'BE NICE' and 'TREAT HER WELL' right into each and every single one of her eyes. I vaguely remembered her face from crowds, but I didn't think she'd actively ever done anything to me. I didn't want another enemy. I left the doll flashing its messages into her eyes in the Other Place, and returned to normalcy.
"Did you just transfer in?" she asked, playing with one of her pens.
"Um… no," I said. "I… I was off ill for a while and they moved my classes around." I didn't want her knowing of me as 'the girl who got shut in the locker full of tampons'. Of course, she had probably already heard, but maybe I could at least save myself a few days of mockery about that.
"Ah, tough luck," she said, as I rummaged through my bag, looking for my pencil case. She paused. "Forget your locker key?" she asked, looking at my bag. "There's probably still time to go dump it, if you run." She had quite a notable New York accent, I noticed. Well, that wasn't surprising. A lot of people had moved away when the Leviathan had hit Manhattan, and Brockton Bay had picked up some of them. After all, it wasn't like we were too far, relatively speaking, from New York.
Of course I wasn't going to be using my locker. They'd probably just scrubbed it down, but I couldn't have even if they'd totally decontaminated it. I… I couldn't. I just couldn't. "I'm fine," I said.
"Okay!" Mr Kaur announced to the class. "So, everyone. Does everyone have their copies of Death of a Salesman with them this time? If you don't, share with your partner. If you both don't, raise your hands. Everyone else, turn to the start of Act II."
I pulled out my old, yellowed copy. It had originally been my mother's, and there were some of her annotations in the columns. I was scared to take it into school like this where it might get stolen, but Dad had insisted that I take it. I was going to send a barbed-wire cherub to take it home immediately once this lesson was over.
Then the lesson was in full flow, and I was trying to avoid being asked any questions. It was hard enough work keeping up with the notes. I was out of practice with writing. By the time the bell rang, my hand was aching and stiff.
Still, it could have been a lot worse. No one jabbed me in the ribs, no one loudly whispered rumours about me, and the only time I had to pick my pens off the ground was when I actually really dropped them.
"Everyone, before the next lesson, I want you to read up to the bit in Act II where Willy enters Howard's office," Mr Kaur told us, as we prepared to move on to the next lesson. I sent a barbed-wire cherub to dump my book at home and then trailed out, hanging back so I didn't get pushed or shoved in the crowds.
"So, what was she like?" I heard one girl ask Luci.
"Who?" There was an awkward pause, and then Luci coughed. "Oh, the new girl? Taylor? Oh yeah. Quiet. Didn't talk with her, like, at all." She snorted. "Could be worse. If Mr Kaur's not going to put me next to a friend, someone who doesn't go on and on, does the work, and doesn't try to beg answers off me is the next best thing."
Like I'd need to ask her for answers, I thought, feeling outraged. I wasn't the one who'd spent the lesson drawing in the margins of her book.
"And doesn't smell. Like Suzenne. What's her problem? You doing anything after school?"
"Working. Again."
"Your uncle is a real slave-driver, you know that?" and that was all I heard before I lost them in the crowd. Despite that, I was smiling to myself. I didn't have those three in my classes any more. I'd just have to dodge them in the halls, and I could do that. I could be quiet. I'd just do my work and I'd… I'd find people like that who just wanted to be sitting next to someone quiet. I wouldn't draw attention to myself and things would just go fine. Wrapping myself in Isolation again, I headed off to History.
And History went fine, too. The teacher told me that he had received my assigned work but hadn't marked it yet, and then I found a free desk by the window and hid myself in a weaker version of Isolation. No one tried to talk to me, no one whispered about the new girl, and I got my work done.
Of course my luck had to run out. And it did so in the lunch line, where I couldn't use Isolation if I wanted to be served.
"Oh, look. Do you smell something bad around here?" a very familiar voice said behind me. "It smells even worse than the usual cooking."
I didn't need to turn to see who it was. That was my former best friend, Emma Barnes. I balled my hands into fists, ignoring the pain, and tried to control my breathing. I hated her. I hated her so much. And in the reflective metal of the food counter, I could see that she'd brought my other two least favourite people with her.
From now on, I was taking packed lunches.
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Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Yes, Taylor. This girl doodled on her book the whole lesson, and has paint all over her twitching fingers, so clearly that means she's a paranoid kleptomaniac.
At some point, you need to start taking responsibility for your pessimism. Your power can only account for so much.
(also kind of odd that a "Daddy's little princess" would have ragged and tattered clothes, but Other Place gonna Other Place)
RazorSmile
ROB Used To Be A Knife Missile
... And things were going *so* well.
Also, goddamit Taylor. When are you going to figure out the Other Place hates you and wants you to hate everything? Those eyes could mean she doesn't like being watched or that she does or that she has a Thinker power or ... anything really.
Also, goddamit Taylor. When are you going to figure out the Other Place hates you and wants you to hate everything? Those eyes could mean she doesn't like being watched or that she does or that she has a Thinker power or ... anything really.
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I enjoy her steady growth and acceptance of her power. Setting a "be nice to me" creature on the girl was a nifty trick, though full of fridge horror. She'd make a frightful monster if she sent out creatures like "kill people" or "do horrible things." It'd be almost impossible to trace it back to her, as well.
Her reaction to Sophia in the Otherworld will be a real hoot, I'm sure.
Her reaction to Sophia in the Otherworld will be a real hoot, I'm sure.