serra2
Himouto! Sylvanas-chan
....Which clearly means she is weak to fluffy things, like pillows. Which leads to Taylor accidentally killing her during the sleepover after they reveal identities to each other.
An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
That... is not a good assumption to make without good enough evidence. Unfortunately Taylor seems to believe that she has good enough evidence to justify that and such treat it as a fact. I hope GG tells Taylor the fine points of her power before she gets invited to an ongoing gang war full of automatic weapons.
Sasha
Not the Leader
- Location
- The Ever After
It's certainly not a good assumption to make with regards to Glory Girl's continued health, but it is a reasonable one given the "Next Alexandria!" image shown to the public (and Taylor) that she does nothing to dissuade. After all, no one but New Wave knows that her invulnerability is from a force field that can be shorted out.
Not going to be too much of an issue. In canon GG's force-field reset fast enough to tank full automatic weapons-fire. It was only in cases where there was something horrible already stuck to her field (acid or insects) that problems started.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Pretty sure EarthScorpion is way off the reservation though. I doubt you're going to see more then the general outline in common - especially since we've seen his Glory Girl before and her shield wasn't as good as canon's there.
3.08
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter 3.08
A few weeks passed without anything major happening. I'd learned my lesson. I might have caught a criminal, but the cost had been too high. I couldn't just quit, or it'd all have been for nothing, but I wouldn't forget what had happened with Charles Haythorn. I hadn't rushed out to stop any more criminals, even if the papers had reported how Lew Chong had been handed in by unknown parties and was currently awaiting trial. I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.
So instead I'd put my time to good use. I'd spent some time practicing with my powers. I'd felt out the limits of what I could do, got a better grasp on how much I could risk before things started hurting.
Mostly, though, I'd wandered around Brockton Bay. I'd taken up jogging, partly to get fit – I didn't want that angel-door to be my only way to make an escape – and partly as an excuse to get out of the house, away from Dad's fussing.
It also gave me a totally legitimate reason to comb the streets and look around. I took my notebook with me on runs, so I was building up a whole backlog of suspicious addresses. By this point, my map was thick with new stickers marking places of interest. Down in that forgotten basement, I'd started sticking up photos and newspaper cuttings in the dance studio between the two mirrors.
I had real plans for that room.
Just last weekend I'd found another sweatshop, down by the docks. A trail of rot and gory filth had led me to it, and I'd snapped pictures of some of the people working there. Well, not the actual workers - the bosses, the guards, the guys with phones and folders. I'd sent constructs to track them to their homes. This weekend, I'd go on an evidence-gathering run and break in wearing my costume. This time I'd be able to take proper pictures of their books, and I'd even bought a high capacity floppy. I'd be able to transfer choice files off, and hand them straight into the police along with my polaroids.
It was annoying that I couldn't do anything myself, especially after how they handled Haythorn, but they'd handled the first sweatshop well enough. There was no way two teenage girls could handle a place like that, even if we had superpowers. There were tens of people involved in running that place. It was too big for the two of us. Victoria seemed to be getting antsy when I spied on her, but I wasn't prepared to go make up some raid for her. I wouldn't get anyone else killed.
And of course, I still had school, so there was homework taking time away from my heroing. There was always homework.
Wednesday afternoon found me in the library after classes were over, working my PS group project with Luci. Yes, I was totally aware of the irony – and the irritation – that researching parahumans for this project was stopping me from going out and researching parahumans. Unfortunately, the fact that I was a legitimate crime-fighting superhero didn't exempt me from schoolwork. The Wards probably got homework, too.
The two of us occupied one of the old, whirring computers, as well as half a desk covered in books. The room smelt of paper, air freshener and a hint of cleaning fluid. It was a comforting smell. I'd gotten pretty good at hiding in the library over the past few years. You just needed to find a seat obviously in sight of the librarian, and people couldn't mess with you without incurring her wrath. It helped that most of the population of Winslow was scared of too many books in close proximity. They probably found the thought of so many words to be intimidating. The books might be plotting to abduct random students and make them participate in spelling bees.
I brushed back my hair and adjusted my glasses. "Okay, so let's go through this. Make sure we're hitting all the key points. I think we can basically call this the first draft right now, but let's just make sure there isn't anything really stupid."
"Yeah," Luci said. She rummaged through the papers and found the print-out of the thing we'd been working on for a week now. Twiddling a pen in her fingers, she underlined the title. "Our topic question is, 'Analyse the changing public perception of parahumans from 1984-1989. How did views change throughout the decade and how was this affected by their impact on wider society? '. And the notes say that we need to consider four to six different topics and there's a 3000 word limit. So, we start. Introduction paragraph. State that we're doing the project on this question."
I frowned. "I don't think we should repeat the question like that there. It's… clunky. Anyway, it's in the header. And we are over the word limit."
"Leave it for now," she said dismissively, adjusting her wire-rim glasses. "It's a first draft. So. Introduction. Say that the viewpoint changed significantly, note that economic changes, political changes… maybe something else?"
"Pop culture?" I suggested. "Things sound better in threes."
"Yeah, sure," she said, adding that to the document. "Okay, so then we've got our headers. Early years, Cold War, 'Golden Age', Reagan Assassination, Silver Age. Five sections feels about right. Then we have our concluding paragraph."
Pursing my lips, I leaned forwards. "I think we're still doing too much 'describe' and not enough 'analyse'. We'll lose marks if we're just recounting things." I jabbed my finger at the offending paragraph. "Maybe if we fold Cold War into Golden Age, we can just talk about how superheroes were military heroes too and then that'll save some words."
"I still think we should go into more detail about CANE," Luci muttered.
"That's an entire section, basically," I argued. "It's over the entire eighties, not just that one event. I bet they phrased the question like that to catch out people who only talk about that." That's totally what I'd do if I was setting essay questions. Put something in which the stupid people could use to get a few marks, but which'd trap them if they ignored the main part of the topic. I adjusted my glasses, and resumed reading. "Oh. 'Too'. Not 'to'," I said.
"Huh?"
"Wrong word there, about half-way down the… look, give me the pen." I made the correction. And then noticed another mistake where we'd used 'curt' rather than 'court'.
Luci frowned. "Why didn't the spellcheck get that?" she asked.
I sighed. "Because 'curt' is also a word. It means…" I waved my hand in the air, "not saying much. Being blunt and to the point. Being direct in how you talk."
Luci flashed a grin at me. "It's great having a walking dictionary like you for this kind of thing," she said. "You read so fast, too."
"I read a lot," I said ruefully. "I'm sort of running out of shelf space in my room. Again. I probably should spend my allowance on something apart from books."
Beside me, Luci stiffened up fractionally. "Yeah, I don't read much. Except at school," she said. "Or to try to make my bratty kid brothers and sisters go to sleep." She laughed, but there was an odd note in her voice. "Anyway, I need to get to the cafe soon, so we better wrap this up."
"Yeah," I agreed. I had afterschool activities of my own, after all. We finished working our way down, with only a few extra corrections and a note to reduce the amount on henchmen culture among young people. Which, huh, was something my parents had been into. Weird. Why on earth did they think those tight outfits in contrasting colours had ever looked good? "So… I think it's looking okay-ish? Apart from the Golden Age-Cold War merger thing." I reached for the print out. "I'll take it with me and find all the other spelling mistakes and bits which need to be rephrased, yeah?"
Luci nodded, starting to stack up the books in front of her. "Yeah, thanks," she said. "You're way better at that than me."
"It's only fair," I said. "You've done more of the actual typing." Which was probably where a bunch of the mistakes had crept in, but I didn't say that out loud. She typed faster than me. Even if I was going to have to clean up the phrasing and spelling later on.
She huffed. "Yeah, that's true," she said. "Okay, so lunchtime again tomorrow?"
"Yeah," I agreed, reaching under the desk for my bag. I always kept it out of view where no one else could grab it, even in the library. I didn't put my coat on, though. I'd need it later, but right now it was actually pretty dry outside. The city's weather gets unpredictable in the spring. It's probably something to do with the shape of the bay. I turned to leave and all-but ran into someone.
It was Madison. Just my luck. Five foot four of false-adorable petite cuteness looked up at me with big eyes. I could taste blood and filth in my mouth. The raw evil bubbling off her must have been escaping the Other Place. Could anyone else taste it, or was it just me who knew how horrible she was?
She'd been right behind where I was sitting, I realized with a chill. What on earth had she been doing? Obviously she'd been up to something, but what?
"What?" I demanded of her. "What do you want?"
The lights in the library flickered and dimmed, leaving us both in the half-gloom. Slowly, piece-by-piece, the paint flaked off the walls, exposing the bare rotting concrete. Everything smelt of damp, soggy paper. Dark water crept up my trouser legs, chilling me to the bone. I could hear whispering in my ears. Screaming, pleading echoes. They sounded like my own voice.
I could taste the locker when I breathed in. She wore the smell of it like a cloak. At least she was alone. She didn't have Emma here. I just couldn't face Emma. She knew everywhere that hurt me most. She'd have ways of getting to me. I just had to run from her. But Madison couldn't hurt me, not in the same way.
"What's your problem?" she retorted, and things spilled out of her mouth. Crawling, glistening black shapes. Lies, so many of them, like flies. They hissed as they crept out of her mouth. No, her mouths - her second face she wore in the Other Place was taking shape, slowly. "I'm just doing my homework," she said, raising her voice over the buzzing of her falsehoods.
"Liar," I breathed. Oozing black smoke crept out of my mouth, reaching out to her through the Other Place. To do what, I didn't know. I just had to stop her lies. The whispers, the bugs, told me she was a liar. That she lied to everyone close to her. Not just about me. That she lied and lied and lied and lied. She had her pencil case in her hand. "You were going to jab me in the back of the neck with a sharp pencil again, huh?"
I had her there, I knew it. I could taste her fear even over the smell of rot and wet books. "Look, just, go away, weirdo," she retorted, backing up. She was taking shallow, gulping breaths even as her face twisted into its real shape. Leaning away from the spreading Other Place, it was like she could smell the filth all around her. Staining her hands. Staining her forever.
"You won't be able to keep on lying," I said. My own distorted voice begged me to tell her, insisted she had to know. "I know what you did. So will everyone else. What'll you do then?"
She shot me a brittle, porcelain smile. Patronising. Nervous. Put to lie by how she was still backing away. Always the little liar. "Look, go be creepy elsewhere. Some of us, h-have Lit essays to do."
I saw red, and nearly went for her. How dare she? Only the fact that I was in front of Luci held me back. That, and the library was a precious haven. People got banned for starting fights. If I hit her… I wouldn't be able to come back. I didn't know what I'd do then.
I couldn't do anything to her. I had to get out of here. As soon as the anger faded I'd start crying and I had to let the anger go or I'd be banned from the library but I couldn't cry in front of her because then she'd win so I had to hold onto the anger but if I didn't let the anger go I'd get kicked out and the loop ran over and over in my head.
I stormed off through the rotten, stinking little hell of the Other Place, through corridors filled with monstrous children. I didn't even need to deliberately create Isolation. It was already here, the rust-red butterflies flapping around. Keeping me safe like nothing else could. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't go home, not when there was even the smallest chance that Dad might see me in this state. I couldn't go to the teachers. No one would believe me if I told on her. They'd call me crazy. Say she might have been telling the truth about her homework.
She wasn't. She was a liar.
There was somewhere I could go, though. Somewhere she wouldn't find me. Somewhere no one would find me. Even if anyone would bother to look.
I didn't get a complete grip on myself until I was all the way down in my hideout. The pain of using a barbed-wire angel cramped up my gut, but it was a good pain. An honest pain. Barbed wire angels never pretended they weren't made out of spikes. I knew what I was getting into each time I used one. They didn't lie. I got to deal with them on my own terms.
Compared to them, it was much more painful to deal with people.
Hugging my knees, curled up in a ball among the long shadows cast by the glowsticks that hung from the ceiling, I let it all out. I felt better after that. It was what they meant when they said 'a good cry'. I blotted my eyes on my sleeves, and dug through the trash and scraps I'd accumulated to see if I'd thought to keep some tissues down here. It turns out I had, for dealing with my makeup. Yeah, I'd practically turned this dusty little space into a hidden home away from home. If the home in question was an abandoned, underground gym with a bare few amenities I'd managed to steal or very covertly buy.
I headed through into the canteen, which was the most 'homey' of the rooms. It had started off as an echoing hollow space with off-yellow peeling walls. They'd probably been another colour at some point, but time hadn't been kind. Some chairs had been left down here, and I'd arranged them around one of the floor-bolted tables. I'd even added some blankets and cushions, so I could at least make a token effort at being comfortable. Most of the lighting was from my sickly glowsticks, but I'd added a desk lamp to the table after I found out there was still power running through the canteen's sockets. I guessed they'd just hooked the power supply in the new building into the same circuits or something.
Paper was strewn across the tables. Better quality maps of the city. Smaller ones, which showed more detailed areas. Documents I'd printed out at school on the local PPD heroes. My project with Luci had actually been useful as an excuse there.
Pride of place was my 'Hero Diary', where I was recording everything I could about my powers. A lot of my experiments over the past few weeks had ended up there. Everything I could make my constructs do, everything I definitely couldn't make them do, all the things that hurt me when I did them, all the common themes in the Other Place and what they meant. I'd even made a few attempts at different names for the Other Place, but none had stuck.
It'd be nice if I could draw like Luci. That way I could include proper pictures of my constructs. I'd tried my best, but my best wasn't very good. My barbed-wire angel had wings, sure, but it was mostly a stick figure I'd shaded in grey and put spikes on.
A few other tables were covered in junk electronics from grey market shops, plus stacks of tape and glue and other design store stuff. I was building myself some gadgets. Some fake tinkertech. I was calling it Taylortech. It was pretty clever. Instead of showing off my powers, I'd use this technology to look like I had a team providing me with tinkertech gear. If they existed, they'd be outfitting someone else with gear, so they'd be more like a tailor than a tinker, and it fit that old rhyme, and my name was a homonym for tailor, so... it was pretty clever.
I raised a remote I'd wrapped in wire and painted black, and pressed a button. The red bead on the top lit up. That was going to be my 'emotion ray'. That kind of thing existed anyway. I'd seen it on TV. And if someone spent their time trying to get the remote away from me instead of trying anything else, the time I'd spent would have paid off.
After – ha ha – tinkering for a bit, I remembered to check my watch. I needed to get home soon. I'd told Dad that I was working at school because… well, I had been. It was easier than lying. But that excuse would only work so long, and I was getting hungry. And the time I'd spent doing hero things and thinking about other things than school and Madison meant I'd calmed down. It had been like leaning on a scab. A sudden spike of raw emotional pain. Now that I was away from her, things were better.
There was something I'd been wanting to try out for a few days. While experimenting, I'd found that I could only make corridors through the Other Place if I knew where I was going. I had to be able to sense it, to feel my destination with Sniffer's strange eyes. If it was beyond the reach of the flat, grey vision she gave me then I just couldn't do it, even with the help of a barbed wire angel. A corridor would start to form, but it always collapsed before it opened properly.
Still, I could make smaller rifts over longer distances using a cherub, as long as I had something to 'lock on' to. Wasn't that what I'd done with my flute, back when I'd just got out of hospital? The psych hospital, not the one I'd actually needed.
So if I couldn't reach that far with my corridors, it wasn't because the range was an innate limitation of my power. I'd tried a few other tests, but hadn't worked out anything concrete. Maybe it was just that the corridors stressed the Other Place more, just as much as they stressed my body? I was working with 'materials' that couldn't take the strain? If that was the case, then I'd just need to take things more slowly, and reinforce the corridor so it didn't collapse.
And if that worked out, maybe passing through a stable corridor wouldn't hurt me, either. That'd be nice.
The thought was enough to set me in motion. Grabbing a marker pen and a handful of green glowsticks, I headed to the old dance studio. It just felt right to try to try it in there. It was a big clear space, sure, but I was thinking about the mirrors. They were almost like windows, and you can climb out of a window. The way they reflected each other endlessly, over the grey floor – well, they looked half-way to the blank greyness of the Other Place corridors already.
"So," I told my reflection. The green light from the glowsticks cast long shadows over her face, leaving her looking macabre and skull-like and yes, a bit like the Wicked Witch of the West. "I want to make a corridor through the Other Place between here and…" I considered my options. A few of my test-runs had made me think it'd be easier if I was aiming at something similar. "Between here and the mirror on the closet in my bedroom," I decided. I smiled at myself, thinly, wishing I had a tape recorder going or something. "It's not quite Narnia but it'll just have to do."
Uncapping the pen, I made marks on the mirror for where the edges of the corridor would need to be, and then connected them up. The survival kit had come with a tape measure for some reason, so I could at least keep the lines straight.
It was… freaky. Yeah. That was about the best word I had to describe it, and I hadn't even entered the Other World yet. The pen marks were reflected in the mirrors, over and over again. I could see a corridor stretching away in the real world, into the green-grey darkness. It was just an optical illusion, two mirrors reflecting each other over and over, but that didn't persuade my brain. If it weren't for the glass against my hand, I'd think I should be able to walk through it already.
I couldn't, of course. Not yet. Now came the hard part. I cracked my knuckles – which I knew I wasn't really meant to do because it could give you arthritis but it made such a satisfying popping sound – and sunk into the Other Place.
The world never changed much down here in my lair. The only difference was that the writing on the mirror distorted and twisted. Nothing much.
…
No, I was wrong. Right now it was talking. To me. The writing was talking to me.
Around it were butterflies drawn in red. Not blood, just red marker pen. Even more words surrounded them, written in red, in a different style of handwriting. My own handwriting, actually. My own, properly spelt, not-randomly-capitalised handwriting.
If my own handwriting disturbed me more than those crude rantings, maybe I was getting too used to the Other Place. Sure, it'd tried other freak-out games on me before, but that red text was the first writing I'd seen here which was… normal. It made sense, it was properly punctuated, it was even kind of relevant. The fact that it was my own writing just made it weirder.
I tried to calm myself down, practicing the breathing tricks they'd taught me in the psych hospital. There had to be a sensible explanation. And as soon as I thought one up, I'd realise there was no need to be freaked out by my own handwriting. After all, near as I'd been able to tell, the Other Place just reflected what people did – there had to be some kind of reason behind everything it did. Yeah, that actually made sense. It was just me. No one else could have been down here in years, so I was leaving my mark. And since it was isolated – and since I was the one with control over the Other Place – the signs of my presence would obviously be clearer. Maybe the text was only incoherent elsewhere because it was obscured by the 'noise' of so many other thoughts, all from different people?
See! A perfectly sensible explanation. Sure, it was a bit weird, but all of my powers were a bit weird. I'd come to terms with that. I didn't need to have a heart attack just because the Other Place looked like it was talking to me, telling me I was the only real person. I knew exactly what was going on.
I threw myself into making the corridor, cutting off any further thought. It was hard – harder than anything I'd ever done before, like forcing one of my strongest constructs to obey. It turned out one barbed-wire angel wasn't enough. I'd need two. One to tear open the hole in space, and another to shape the grey Other-stuff I breathed out, to give it a structure that wouldn't just fall apart. Could they even do that? Was that what they were for? Or would I need something more specialised? I'd developed Watcher Doll out of my porcelain cherubs – perhaps I needed something similar here.
Needles, maybe? Not the medical sort, the kind you used for sewing, to knit the walls of the corridor together, and stop them tearing apart at the seams. I let myself sink back into the shadows of the Other Place, and exhaled. A rough mound of mist condensed into a spidery hunchback, a woman made of wire with long sewing needles for fingers. I could see the similarities to my barbed-wire angels. That probably meant I'd made her right for what I wanted.
She clicked her fingers together, staring at me. Déjà vu squirmed in the back of my brain. I'd done something like this before – but I just couldn't remember when.
"Uh," I said. Fuck, I needed a name for her. I hated having to name my constructs. I wasn't very good at it. "Needle Hag," I said. "Hold the walls of the corridor together."
She hissed like a bellows, her chain-hair falling in front of her face. Clicking over to the mirror, she clambered in past the wire-angel, and started plucking out her hair with one of her hands. I winced. I couldn't imagine doing that. It was a good thing she was probably not exactly real. The other five hands worked to weave the hair into chain-cobwebs over the walls, holding the corridor together. She visibly degraded as she tore herself apart for raw materials, which meant I had to focus on strengthening her, breathing out more and more smoke to replace what she lost.
God, my brain must be a fucked up place.
By the end of it, my brain was aching and my throat felt raw. I felt like I was coming down with something, and I was sure I had a temperature. If not, I was just shivering uncontrollably. Annoyingly, I could feel abdominal cramps, although it shouldn't have been that time of the month yet. Still, it was done. I could suddenly see light at the end of the tunnel. Literally.
I forced myself to walk through it, step by step, as the chill of the Other Place sunk into my bones. It was much worse than normal, almost as bad as when I'd been carried by an angel. Surrounded by chain-coated walls, the door of light ahead was my only reminder me that the real world existed. My legs were feeling weak and the sheer stupid recklessness of what I was doing was nagging in my brain. I hunched in on myself as I moved, shrinking back from the spikes that bristled from the walls. God only knew what would happen if I snagged myself on this barbed wire.
Cold, shivering, aching, I stepped out of the corridor, out of the Other Place, and collapsed onto my bed. It took two tries for me to roll over, but I was just in time to see the corridor seal itself. The air was hazy and foggy for a few moments, but that faded too. All that was left was a dusty smudge on the mirror, but checking through Sniffer's eyes, I could see a scar on the world – and behind it, the tunnel was still holding strong. I could open it again with an angel. Good. I wouldn't have to go through all that again.
I spent whole minutes lying there, curled up into a ball, eyes shut against the evening sunlight, clutching my stomach. It was only the noise of footsteps downstairs that told me that Dad was home – he must have been home for a while, too. I hadn't heard his car.
Crap. I'd spent the last few hours in a dust-coated old cave, and I looked the part. I kept on meaning to clean the place up, but I never had. Instead, I'd tracked dusty footsteps on my carpet and my clothes were a mess. Especially my jeans, where I'd been sitting and kneeling.
I groaned. I'd need to clean up, or at best Dad would be asking some inconvenient questions. I'd need a shower, too. My hair was thick with dust. I just wanted to lie down for a little longer, but I had to snap to it.
After a shower and a change of clothes I was feeling much more human. I headed downstairs – slightly alarmed when I saw the time – and got stopped at the foot of the stairs by Dad.
"I didn't hear you come in," he said.
"Just tired," I said. "I was doing work with Luci in the library for a project. You know? Like I told you this morning." I sighed. "And yeah, it took longer than expected but she's working tomorrow and we had to get stuff done, you know?"
"Okay. But you still should've called me," he told me.
"I told you I'd be in the library 'till quite late."
"Yes, so you should've called me and told me when you were going to be back." He sighed, slumping slightly, and gestured me through into the kitchen. The lights were on and it was warm from the oven – such a contrast to my lair. Still, I'd rather have been down there than up here, facing a round of awkward questions. "Taylor?" my dad asked hesitantly. He coughed, and shuffled his feet. "Are… are you feeling okay?"
"Me?" I asked, rather stupidly.
"I don't think anyone else in the house has that name."
"Well, unless my evil hunchbacked twin brother escaped from the basement again," I tried. He just stared at me. "Sorry, was I not meant to know about him?" I tried again, looking to brush this all off. He frowned, so I guess I misread the mood.
"I'm being serious here," he said, shuffling around to block off the door like I wouldn't notice. "You've just been… I don't know. Distant."
Of course I've been distant. I've been 'distant' for years. And you didn't notice.
I didn't say that. Instead, I said "I'm fine".
"Have you been having any more trouble at school?" he asked, not moving from his position in front of the door. "It's just… I noticed that bruise on your wrist, and… it looks like someone grabbed you."
A bruise? I looked at one wrist, and then the other. Sure enough, there was a pink mark all around it, over the top of the scars. It did really look like a hand mark, too. It even had a thinner bit which would totally be the thumb.
Where the fuck had that come from?
I looked up at Dad, eyes wide. "I don't know," I said. I really didn't. Where could it have come from? I… I didn't have a clue. Had one of my constructs touched me there? That was the only thing I could think of. I hadn't been grabbed by anyone. Had it been the nightmares? I… I wasn't sure. I hadn't noticed it in the morning, but then again – I prodded at it – it wasn't hurting.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" he demanded, voice rising.
"I mean I really don't!" I protested. "It's not from school. You didn't see it last evening, right? And I didn't see it either." I thought hard. "I did trip over the kerb when I was walking and hit my wrist," I lied, "but… no, that wouldn't leave that kind of mark."
It had to be linked to my powers in some way, or to the pain and nausea which hit me when I pushed myself too far. I wasn't feeling great even after the shower.
"It doesn't hurt, whatever it is," I said thoughtfully. I worked my wrist. "It looks bad, but it's just pink. And itching a bit," I added, because it really was itching now. "Maybe it's from the wristbands." Yeah, I realised, I had put them through the wash. "Are you using a new washing powder?"
Dad relaxed. "Yeah, yeah," he said after a moment's thought. "Sorry. I found rust flecks on my shirts, so I put some cleansing agent in for a cycle. It was meant to come right out, it said on the box," he said sheepishly.
Rust. My blood ran cold and my breath caught in my throat. But no. It had to be a coincidence. This wasn't a new house. It couldn't be related.
I had to believe that.
"I hope I'm not getting… like, eczema or something," I said, trying to sound like I was only concerned about that. "That'd suck."
Dad mostly looked relieved at my genuine confusion. "Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah, that would." He frowned. "There was something I was going to tell you. Oh yeah, that was it. Phone call for you. From Sam. Girl-Sam, that is. It was about… uh, six or so? A bit after I got back."
"Did she say what it was about?"
"I think she just wanted to talk," Dad said. He leaned towards me. "You're going to call her back, aren't you?" he said, in the kind of question which wasn't really a question at all.
"Yeah," I said. I didn't really feel like it. I still felt pretty bad from the way I'd made the corridor. But if I didn't do it, Dad would totally be more of a pain about stuff and then he'd act all disappointed with me and that'd take far more effort to deal with than just calling her. "Let me just find her number…"
"I wrote it down by the phone," he said.
Urgh. I was going to delay things a bit. Damn. I grabbed the portable phone and sat down in front of the TV, playing with my still-damp hair. We who are about to die salute you and all that.
Actually, it mostly wasn't too bad, once I got over the tiny hot knot of nerves I tend to hit whenever I talk to someone on the phone. Sam was fine. Fine was a word which was used a lot. School was fine. The amount of catch-up work she was having to do was fine. She was getting on with her parents fine.
I was answering in much the same way, which raised the question of how much she was lying just like me. Probably less. After all, she was at Arcadia. Arcadia wasn't Winslow. Just by being in Arcadia one of my major issues would have been fixed.
There was a lot of um-ing and err-ing. God. I couldn't talk casually to girls my own age at all. Or boys, because – ha ha ha no. The closest thing to a normal conversation I had most days was with Luci, and that was about schoolwork.
It wasn't that I couldn't get on with Sam. I got on with her okay. The fact that we had almost nothing in common apart from the psych hospital actually worked out. It meant we could be… acquaintances. Not really friends, but I could handle this kind of 'occasional chat' level of interaction. Maybe things might be different if we went to the same school – but if we did, she'd have much more ammunition if she turned on me. And much more reason to.
"So, uh," Sam said. She'd obviously been dancing around this for a while. "Listen. Next weekend, I'm going to see Leah. Look. Uh." She took a breath. "Do you want to come along?"
My stomach tied itself up all over again. Objectively, I'd got on okay with Leah. And if I'd had anyone out there when I'd been in the psych hospital, other than Dad, I'd have wanted them to visit me. It was just…
… I didn't want to go back. Not at all. Not one bit. I wasn't crazy. I didn't need that place.
"Uh," I said.
"It'd mean a lot to her," Sam said. "I mean… like, you two got on pretty well, right? You… you could talk about books. And she's lonely there and… and… and I've been reading up and… and what she has… she's going to be in there for quite a long time, okay? She's going to get better, of course she is, but… it'd mean a lot."
The guilt and fear churned in my stomach. I… I didn't want to go back there. But I… I couldn't…
"I'll… um, s-see if I can make it," I stammered. "I'm not sure and… and I'll need to talk to my Dad and… um…"
"If you'd have problems getting there, I can pick you up," she said.
"I'll have to see," I said.
I scraped my way through the rest of the talk and then sat there, staring at the wall blankly.
I was really a horrible person. Such a… a fucking coward. Why was I scared of going back there? I wouldn't be going as a patient. Just to see someone who was sort of a friend.
Hugging my knees, I sighed. I knew why I was scared. There was the lurking fear that I'd go back and have to stay. It was the same fear which gnawed at me when I thought about Luci, and what she might think about me after Madison's little game in the library. People didn't target me in the same way at school, but only because I hid from them with Isolation. I knew what they must be thinking. I was the disturbed one. The kid who'd been outright committed for a while. They had to know. I bet Emma would have made sure everyone knew I was crazy. To defend herself if nothing else, because if I was crazy I couldn't be trusted.
But I wasn't crazy! I saw things, but they were really there! Hell, if I was crazy, I'd be able to see it in myself with my powers and I couldn't! Even if I did go insane, I'd be able to cut it out of me, just like I did with tiredness!
I'd show them they shouldn't be scared of me. I'd show them that I didn't have anything to be scared of. I'd be able to face a trip to a psych hospital as a visitor. I was a hero. I deserved to feel like a hero, not a scared little girl who nearly burst into tears at the sight of a bully.
So that evening, I told Dad I was going for a run in a park. Then I went and lurked around one of the nearby-ish National Guard posts. They'd knocked down two blocks and tarmacked over the rubble when they'd built the place, and put up ugly grey-green prefab buildings in their place. There were high barbed wire fences around the perimeter, and soldiers with guns at the checkpoint. They definitely didn't want people coming in.
It didn't stop me. By the time I headed home, I had some women's body armour and a crate of smoke grenades down in my secret base. I'd wanted flashbangs, but they didn't have any of them. Smoke grenades wouldn't hurt anyone, but they'd let me drive people out of rooms without needing to use my powers, and I'd have a great excuse to call firefighters on any building I wanted the police to investigate. I wouldn't need to go back and forth with evidence and photos and phonecalls if I found a drug den, not when I could have a cherub drop a smoke grenade on the roof. One emergency call later, and the firefighters would find the lab.
Yeah, this had been a productive use of an evening. I'd gotten over the unpleasantness with Madison entirely. It wasn't bothering me at all. I'd totally forgotten about it. She could just sit at home and do her meaningless petty things. She probably spent her evenings talking about boys or doing her nails.
I was a hero, making the world a better place. I was better than her.
Chapter 3.08
A few weeks passed without anything major happening. I'd learned my lesson. I might have caught a criminal, but the cost had been too high. I couldn't just quit, or it'd all have been for nothing, but I wouldn't forget what had happened with Charles Haythorn. I hadn't rushed out to stop any more criminals, even if the papers had reported how Lew Chong had been handed in by unknown parties and was currently awaiting trial. I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.
So instead I'd put my time to good use. I'd spent some time practicing with my powers. I'd felt out the limits of what I could do, got a better grasp on how much I could risk before things started hurting.
Mostly, though, I'd wandered around Brockton Bay. I'd taken up jogging, partly to get fit – I didn't want that angel-door to be my only way to make an escape – and partly as an excuse to get out of the house, away from Dad's fussing.
It also gave me a totally legitimate reason to comb the streets and look around. I took my notebook with me on runs, so I was building up a whole backlog of suspicious addresses. By this point, my map was thick with new stickers marking places of interest. Down in that forgotten basement, I'd started sticking up photos and newspaper cuttings in the dance studio between the two mirrors.
I had real plans for that room.
Just last weekend I'd found another sweatshop, down by the docks. A trail of rot and gory filth had led me to it, and I'd snapped pictures of some of the people working there. Well, not the actual workers - the bosses, the guards, the guys with phones and folders. I'd sent constructs to track them to their homes. This weekend, I'd go on an evidence-gathering run and break in wearing my costume. This time I'd be able to take proper pictures of their books, and I'd even bought a high capacity floppy. I'd be able to transfer choice files off, and hand them straight into the police along with my polaroids.
It was annoying that I couldn't do anything myself, especially after how they handled Haythorn, but they'd handled the first sweatshop well enough. There was no way two teenage girls could handle a place like that, even if we had superpowers. There were tens of people involved in running that place. It was too big for the two of us. Victoria seemed to be getting antsy when I spied on her, but I wasn't prepared to go make up some raid for her. I wouldn't get anyone else killed.
And of course, I still had school, so there was homework taking time away from my heroing. There was always homework.
Wednesday afternoon found me in the library after classes were over, working my PS group project with Luci. Yes, I was totally aware of the irony – and the irritation – that researching parahumans for this project was stopping me from going out and researching parahumans. Unfortunately, the fact that I was a legitimate crime-fighting superhero didn't exempt me from schoolwork. The Wards probably got homework, too.
The two of us occupied one of the old, whirring computers, as well as half a desk covered in books. The room smelt of paper, air freshener and a hint of cleaning fluid. It was a comforting smell. I'd gotten pretty good at hiding in the library over the past few years. You just needed to find a seat obviously in sight of the librarian, and people couldn't mess with you without incurring her wrath. It helped that most of the population of Winslow was scared of too many books in close proximity. They probably found the thought of so many words to be intimidating. The books might be plotting to abduct random students and make them participate in spelling bees.
I brushed back my hair and adjusted my glasses. "Okay, so let's go through this. Make sure we're hitting all the key points. I think we can basically call this the first draft right now, but let's just make sure there isn't anything really stupid."
"Yeah," Luci said. She rummaged through the papers and found the print-out of the thing we'd been working on for a week now. Twiddling a pen in her fingers, she underlined the title. "Our topic question is, 'Analyse the changing public perception of parahumans from 1984-1989. How did views change throughout the decade and how was this affected by their impact on wider society? '. And the notes say that we need to consider four to six different topics and there's a 3000 word limit. So, we start. Introduction paragraph. State that we're doing the project on this question."
I frowned. "I don't think we should repeat the question like that there. It's… clunky. Anyway, it's in the header. And we are over the word limit."
"Leave it for now," she said dismissively, adjusting her wire-rim glasses. "It's a first draft. So. Introduction. Say that the viewpoint changed significantly, note that economic changes, political changes… maybe something else?"
"Pop culture?" I suggested. "Things sound better in threes."
"Yeah, sure," she said, adding that to the document. "Okay, so then we've got our headers. Early years, Cold War, 'Golden Age', Reagan Assassination, Silver Age. Five sections feels about right. Then we have our concluding paragraph."
Pursing my lips, I leaned forwards. "I think we're still doing too much 'describe' and not enough 'analyse'. We'll lose marks if we're just recounting things." I jabbed my finger at the offending paragraph. "Maybe if we fold Cold War into Golden Age, we can just talk about how superheroes were military heroes too and then that'll save some words."
"I still think we should go into more detail about CANE," Luci muttered.
"That's an entire section, basically," I argued. "It's over the entire eighties, not just that one event. I bet they phrased the question like that to catch out people who only talk about that." That's totally what I'd do if I was setting essay questions. Put something in which the stupid people could use to get a few marks, but which'd trap them if they ignored the main part of the topic. I adjusted my glasses, and resumed reading. "Oh. 'Too'. Not 'to'," I said.
"Huh?"
"Wrong word there, about half-way down the… look, give me the pen." I made the correction. And then noticed another mistake where we'd used 'curt' rather than 'court'.
Luci frowned. "Why didn't the spellcheck get that?" she asked.
I sighed. "Because 'curt' is also a word. It means…" I waved my hand in the air, "not saying much. Being blunt and to the point. Being direct in how you talk."
Luci flashed a grin at me. "It's great having a walking dictionary like you for this kind of thing," she said. "You read so fast, too."
"I read a lot," I said ruefully. "I'm sort of running out of shelf space in my room. Again. I probably should spend my allowance on something apart from books."
Beside me, Luci stiffened up fractionally. "Yeah, I don't read much. Except at school," she said. "Or to try to make my bratty kid brothers and sisters go to sleep." She laughed, but there was an odd note in her voice. "Anyway, I need to get to the cafe soon, so we better wrap this up."
"Yeah," I agreed. I had afterschool activities of my own, after all. We finished working our way down, with only a few extra corrections and a note to reduce the amount on henchmen culture among young people. Which, huh, was something my parents had been into. Weird. Why on earth did they think those tight outfits in contrasting colours had ever looked good? "So… I think it's looking okay-ish? Apart from the Golden Age-Cold War merger thing." I reached for the print out. "I'll take it with me and find all the other spelling mistakes and bits which need to be rephrased, yeah?"
Luci nodded, starting to stack up the books in front of her. "Yeah, thanks," she said. "You're way better at that than me."
"It's only fair," I said. "You've done more of the actual typing." Which was probably where a bunch of the mistakes had crept in, but I didn't say that out loud. She typed faster than me. Even if I was going to have to clean up the phrasing and spelling later on.
She huffed. "Yeah, that's true," she said. "Okay, so lunchtime again tomorrow?"
"Yeah," I agreed, reaching under the desk for my bag. I always kept it out of view where no one else could grab it, even in the library. I didn't put my coat on, though. I'd need it later, but right now it was actually pretty dry outside. The city's weather gets unpredictable in the spring. It's probably something to do with the shape of the bay. I turned to leave and all-but ran into someone.
It was Madison. Just my luck. Five foot four of false-adorable petite cuteness looked up at me with big eyes. I could taste blood and filth in my mouth. The raw evil bubbling off her must have been escaping the Other Place. Could anyone else taste it, or was it just me who knew how horrible she was?
She'd been right behind where I was sitting, I realized with a chill. What on earth had she been doing? Obviously she'd been up to something, but what?
"What?" I demanded of her. "What do you want?"
The lights in the library flickered and dimmed, leaving us both in the half-gloom. Slowly, piece-by-piece, the paint flaked off the walls, exposing the bare rotting concrete. Everything smelt of damp, soggy paper. Dark water crept up my trouser legs, chilling me to the bone. I could hear whispering in my ears. Screaming, pleading echoes. They sounded like my own voice.
I could taste the locker when I breathed in. She wore the smell of it like a cloak. At least she was alone. She didn't have Emma here. I just couldn't face Emma. She knew everywhere that hurt me most. She'd have ways of getting to me. I just had to run from her. But Madison couldn't hurt me, not in the same way.
"What's your problem?" she retorted, and things spilled out of her mouth. Crawling, glistening black shapes. Lies, so many of them, like flies. They hissed as they crept out of her mouth. No, her mouths - her second face she wore in the Other Place was taking shape, slowly. "I'm just doing my homework," she said, raising her voice over the buzzing of her falsehoods.
"Liar," I breathed. Oozing black smoke crept out of my mouth, reaching out to her through the Other Place. To do what, I didn't know. I just had to stop her lies. The whispers, the bugs, told me she was a liar. That she lied to everyone close to her. Not just about me. That she lied and lied and lied and lied. She had her pencil case in her hand. "You were going to jab me in the back of the neck with a sharp pencil again, huh?"
I had her there, I knew it. I could taste her fear even over the smell of rot and wet books. "Look, just, go away, weirdo," she retorted, backing up. She was taking shallow, gulping breaths even as her face twisted into its real shape. Leaning away from the spreading Other Place, it was like she could smell the filth all around her. Staining her hands. Staining her forever.
"You won't be able to keep on lying," I said. My own distorted voice begged me to tell her, insisted she had to know. "I know what you did. So will everyone else. What'll you do then?"
She shot me a brittle, porcelain smile. Patronising. Nervous. Put to lie by how she was still backing away. Always the little liar. "Look, go be creepy elsewhere. Some of us, h-have Lit essays to do."
I saw red, and nearly went for her. How dare she? Only the fact that I was in front of Luci held me back. That, and the library was a precious haven. People got banned for starting fights. If I hit her… I wouldn't be able to come back. I didn't know what I'd do then.
I couldn't do anything to her. I had to get out of here. As soon as the anger faded I'd start crying and I had to let the anger go or I'd be banned from the library but I couldn't cry in front of her because then she'd win so I had to hold onto the anger but if I didn't let the anger go I'd get kicked out and the loop ran over and over in my head.
I stormed off through the rotten, stinking little hell of the Other Place, through corridors filled with monstrous children. I didn't even need to deliberately create Isolation. It was already here, the rust-red butterflies flapping around. Keeping me safe like nothing else could. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't go home, not when there was even the smallest chance that Dad might see me in this state. I couldn't go to the teachers. No one would believe me if I told on her. They'd call me crazy. Say she might have been telling the truth about her homework.
She wasn't. She was a liar.
There was somewhere I could go, though. Somewhere she wouldn't find me. Somewhere no one would find me. Even if anyone would bother to look.
I didn't get a complete grip on myself until I was all the way down in my hideout. The pain of using a barbed-wire angel cramped up my gut, but it was a good pain. An honest pain. Barbed wire angels never pretended they weren't made out of spikes. I knew what I was getting into each time I used one. They didn't lie. I got to deal with them on my own terms.
Compared to them, it was much more painful to deal with people.
Hugging my knees, curled up in a ball among the long shadows cast by the glowsticks that hung from the ceiling, I let it all out. I felt better after that. It was what they meant when they said 'a good cry'. I blotted my eyes on my sleeves, and dug through the trash and scraps I'd accumulated to see if I'd thought to keep some tissues down here. It turns out I had, for dealing with my makeup. Yeah, I'd practically turned this dusty little space into a hidden home away from home. If the home in question was an abandoned, underground gym with a bare few amenities I'd managed to steal or very covertly buy.
I headed through into the canteen, which was the most 'homey' of the rooms. It had started off as an echoing hollow space with off-yellow peeling walls. They'd probably been another colour at some point, but time hadn't been kind. Some chairs had been left down here, and I'd arranged them around one of the floor-bolted tables. I'd even added some blankets and cushions, so I could at least make a token effort at being comfortable. Most of the lighting was from my sickly glowsticks, but I'd added a desk lamp to the table after I found out there was still power running through the canteen's sockets. I guessed they'd just hooked the power supply in the new building into the same circuits or something.
Paper was strewn across the tables. Better quality maps of the city. Smaller ones, which showed more detailed areas. Documents I'd printed out at school on the local PPD heroes. My project with Luci had actually been useful as an excuse there.
Pride of place was my 'Hero Diary', where I was recording everything I could about my powers. A lot of my experiments over the past few weeks had ended up there. Everything I could make my constructs do, everything I definitely couldn't make them do, all the things that hurt me when I did them, all the common themes in the Other Place and what they meant. I'd even made a few attempts at different names for the Other Place, but none had stuck.
It'd be nice if I could draw like Luci. That way I could include proper pictures of my constructs. I'd tried my best, but my best wasn't very good. My barbed-wire angel had wings, sure, but it was mostly a stick figure I'd shaded in grey and put spikes on.
A few other tables were covered in junk electronics from grey market shops, plus stacks of tape and glue and other design store stuff. I was building myself some gadgets. Some fake tinkertech. I was calling it Taylortech. It was pretty clever. Instead of showing off my powers, I'd use this technology to look like I had a team providing me with tinkertech gear. If they existed, they'd be outfitting someone else with gear, so they'd be more like a tailor than a tinker, and it fit that old rhyme, and my name was a homonym for tailor, so... it was pretty clever.
I raised a remote I'd wrapped in wire and painted black, and pressed a button. The red bead on the top lit up. That was going to be my 'emotion ray'. That kind of thing existed anyway. I'd seen it on TV. And if someone spent their time trying to get the remote away from me instead of trying anything else, the time I'd spent would have paid off.
After – ha ha – tinkering for a bit, I remembered to check my watch. I needed to get home soon. I'd told Dad that I was working at school because… well, I had been. It was easier than lying. But that excuse would only work so long, and I was getting hungry. And the time I'd spent doing hero things and thinking about other things than school and Madison meant I'd calmed down. It had been like leaning on a scab. A sudden spike of raw emotional pain. Now that I was away from her, things were better.
There was something I'd been wanting to try out for a few days. While experimenting, I'd found that I could only make corridors through the Other Place if I knew where I was going. I had to be able to sense it, to feel my destination with Sniffer's strange eyes. If it was beyond the reach of the flat, grey vision she gave me then I just couldn't do it, even with the help of a barbed wire angel. A corridor would start to form, but it always collapsed before it opened properly.
Still, I could make smaller rifts over longer distances using a cherub, as long as I had something to 'lock on' to. Wasn't that what I'd done with my flute, back when I'd just got out of hospital? The psych hospital, not the one I'd actually needed.
So if I couldn't reach that far with my corridors, it wasn't because the range was an innate limitation of my power. I'd tried a few other tests, but hadn't worked out anything concrete. Maybe it was just that the corridors stressed the Other Place more, just as much as they stressed my body? I was working with 'materials' that couldn't take the strain? If that was the case, then I'd just need to take things more slowly, and reinforce the corridor so it didn't collapse.
And if that worked out, maybe passing through a stable corridor wouldn't hurt me, either. That'd be nice.
The thought was enough to set me in motion. Grabbing a marker pen and a handful of green glowsticks, I headed to the old dance studio. It just felt right to try to try it in there. It was a big clear space, sure, but I was thinking about the mirrors. They were almost like windows, and you can climb out of a window. The way they reflected each other endlessly, over the grey floor – well, they looked half-way to the blank greyness of the Other Place corridors already.
"So," I told my reflection. The green light from the glowsticks cast long shadows over her face, leaving her looking macabre and skull-like and yes, a bit like the Wicked Witch of the West. "I want to make a corridor through the Other Place between here and…" I considered my options. A few of my test-runs had made me think it'd be easier if I was aiming at something similar. "Between here and the mirror on the closet in my bedroom," I decided. I smiled at myself, thinly, wishing I had a tape recorder going or something. "It's not quite Narnia but it'll just have to do."
Uncapping the pen, I made marks on the mirror for where the edges of the corridor would need to be, and then connected them up. The survival kit had come with a tape measure for some reason, so I could at least keep the lines straight.
It was… freaky. Yeah. That was about the best word I had to describe it, and I hadn't even entered the Other World yet. The pen marks were reflected in the mirrors, over and over again. I could see a corridor stretching away in the real world, into the green-grey darkness. It was just an optical illusion, two mirrors reflecting each other over and over, but that didn't persuade my brain. If it weren't for the glass against my hand, I'd think I should be able to walk through it already.
I couldn't, of course. Not yet. Now came the hard part. I cracked my knuckles – which I knew I wasn't really meant to do because it could give you arthritis but it made such a satisfying popping sound – and sunk into the Other Place.
The world never changed much down here in my lair. The only difference was that the writing on the mirror distorted and twisted. Nothing much.
…
No, I was wrong. Right now it was talking. To me. The writing was talking to me.
no fate no chains no ONE but you exists
slicE OPen thiS lyIng wOrld Taylor u r REAL
slicE OPen thiS lyIng wOrld Taylor u r REAL
Around it were butterflies drawn in red. Not blood, just red marker pen. Even more words surrounded them, written in red, in a different style of handwriting. My own handwriting, actually. My own, properly spelt, not-randomly-capitalised handwriting.
Why does Madison keep following me at school? What's she playing at? She was in the library today.
She has to be up to something. Not sure what. But something.
She has to be up to something. Not sure what. But something.
If my own handwriting disturbed me more than those crude rantings, maybe I was getting too used to the Other Place. Sure, it'd tried other freak-out games on me before, but that red text was the first writing I'd seen here which was… normal. It made sense, it was properly punctuated, it was even kind of relevant. The fact that it was my own writing just made it weirder.
I tried to calm myself down, practicing the breathing tricks they'd taught me in the psych hospital. There had to be a sensible explanation. And as soon as I thought one up, I'd realise there was no need to be freaked out by my own handwriting. After all, near as I'd been able to tell, the Other Place just reflected what people did – there had to be some kind of reason behind everything it did. Yeah, that actually made sense. It was just me. No one else could have been down here in years, so I was leaving my mark. And since it was isolated – and since I was the one with control over the Other Place – the signs of my presence would obviously be clearer. Maybe the text was only incoherent elsewhere because it was obscured by the 'noise' of so many other thoughts, all from different people?
See! A perfectly sensible explanation. Sure, it was a bit weird, but all of my powers were a bit weird. I'd come to terms with that. I didn't need to have a heart attack just because the Other Place looked like it was talking to me, telling me I was the only real person. I knew exactly what was going on.
I threw myself into making the corridor, cutting off any further thought. It was hard – harder than anything I'd ever done before, like forcing one of my strongest constructs to obey. It turned out one barbed-wire angel wasn't enough. I'd need two. One to tear open the hole in space, and another to shape the grey Other-stuff I breathed out, to give it a structure that wouldn't just fall apart. Could they even do that? Was that what they were for? Or would I need something more specialised? I'd developed Watcher Doll out of my porcelain cherubs – perhaps I needed something similar here.
Needles, maybe? Not the medical sort, the kind you used for sewing, to knit the walls of the corridor together, and stop them tearing apart at the seams. I let myself sink back into the shadows of the Other Place, and exhaled. A rough mound of mist condensed into a spidery hunchback, a woman made of wire with long sewing needles for fingers. I could see the similarities to my barbed-wire angels. That probably meant I'd made her right for what I wanted.
She clicked her fingers together, staring at me. Déjà vu squirmed in the back of my brain. I'd done something like this before – but I just couldn't remember when.
"Uh," I said. Fuck, I needed a name for her. I hated having to name my constructs. I wasn't very good at it. "Needle Hag," I said. "Hold the walls of the corridor together."
She hissed like a bellows, her chain-hair falling in front of her face. Clicking over to the mirror, she clambered in past the wire-angel, and started plucking out her hair with one of her hands. I winced. I couldn't imagine doing that. It was a good thing she was probably not exactly real. The other five hands worked to weave the hair into chain-cobwebs over the walls, holding the corridor together. She visibly degraded as she tore herself apart for raw materials, which meant I had to focus on strengthening her, breathing out more and more smoke to replace what she lost.
God, my brain must be a fucked up place.
By the end of it, my brain was aching and my throat felt raw. I felt like I was coming down with something, and I was sure I had a temperature. If not, I was just shivering uncontrollably. Annoyingly, I could feel abdominal cramps, although it shouldn't have been that time of the month yet. Still, it was done. I could suddenly see light at the end of the tunnel. Literally.
I forced myself to walk through it, step by step, as the chill of the Other Place sunk into my bones. It was much worse than normal, almost as bad as when I'd been carried by an angel. Surrounded by chain-coated walls, the door of light ahead was my only reminder me that the real world existed. My legs were feeling weak and the sheer stupid recklessness of what I was doing was nagging in my brain. I hunched in on myself as I moved, shrinking back from the spikes that bristled from the walls. God only knew what would happen if I snagged myself on this barbed wire.
Cold, shivering, aching, I stepped out of the corridor, out of the Other Place, and collapsed onto my bed. It took two tries for me to roll over, but I was just in time to see the corridor seal itself. The air was hazy and foggy for a few moments, but that faded too. All that was left was a dusty smudge on the mirror, but checking through Sniffer's eyes, I could see a scar on the world – and behind it, the tunnel was still holding strong. I could open it again with an angel. Good. I wouldn't have to go through all that again.
I spent whole minutes lying there, curled up into a ball, eyes shut against the evening sunlight, clutching my stomach. It was only the noise of footsteps downstairs that told me that Dad was home – he must have been home for a while, too. I hadn't heard his car.
Crap. I'd spent the last few hours in a dust-coated old cave, and I looked the part. I kept on meaning to clean the place up, but I never had. Instead, I'd tracked dusty footsteps on my carpet and my clothes were a mess. Especially my jeans, where I'd been sitting and kneeling.
I groaned. I'd need to clean up, or at best Dad would be asking some inconvenient questions. I'd need a shower, too. My hair was thick with dust. I just wanted to lie down for a little longer, but I had to snap to it.
After a shower and a change of clothes I was feeling much more human. I headed downstairs – slightly alarmed when I saw the time – and got stopped at the foot of the stairs by Dad.
"I didn't hear you come in," he said.
"Just tired," I said. "I was doing work with Luci in the library for a project. You know? Like I told you this morning." I sighed. "And yeah, it took longer than expected but she's working tomorrow and we had to get stuff done, you know?"
"Okay. But you still should've called me," he told me.
"I told you I'd be in the library 'till quite late."
"Yes, so you should've called me and told me when you were going to be back." He sighed, slumping slightly, and gestured me through into the kitchen. The lights were on and it was warm from the oven – such a contrast to my lair. Still, I'd rather have been down there than up here, facing a round of awkward questions. "Taylor?" my dad asked hesitantly. He coughed, and shuffled his feet. "Are… are you feeling okay?"
"Me?" I asked, rather stupidly.
"I don't think anyone else in the house has that name."
"Well, unless my evil hunchbacked twin brother escaped from the basement again," I tried. He just stared at me. "Sorry, was I not meant to know about him?" I tried again, looking to brush this all off. He frowned, so I guess I misread the mood.
"I'm being serious here," he said, shuffling around to block off the door like I wouldn't notice. "You've just been… I don't know. Distant."
Of course I've been distant. I've been 'distant' for years. And you didn't notice.
I didn't say that. Instead, I said "I'm fine".
"Have you been having any more trouble at school?" he asked, not moving from his position in front of the door. "It's just… I noticed that bruise on your wrist, and… it looks like someone grabbed you."
A bruise? I looked at one wrist, and then the other. Sure enough, there was a pink mark all around it, over the top of the scars. It did really look like a hand mark, too. It even had a thinner bit which would totally be the thumb.
Where the fuck had that come from?
I looked up at Dad, eyes wide. "I don't know," I said. I really didn't. Where could it have come from? I… I didn't have a clue. Had one of my constructs touched me there? That was the only thing I could think of. I hadn't been grabbed by anyone. Had it been the nightmares? I… I wasn't sure. I hadn't noticed it in the morning, but then again – I prodded at it – it wasn't hurting.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" he demanded, voice rising.
"I mean I really don't!" I protested. "It's not from school. You didn't see it last evening, right? And I didn't see it either." I thought hard. "I did trip over the kerb when I was walking and hit my wrist," I lied, "but… no, that wouldn't leave that kind of mark."
It had to be linked to my powers in some way, or to the pain and nausea which hit me when I pushed myself too far. I wasn't feeling great even after the shower.
"It doesn't hurt, whatever it is," I said thoughtfully. I worked my wrist. "It looks bad, but it's just pink. And itching a bit," I added, because it really was itching now. "Maybe it's from the wristbands." Yeah, I realised, I had put them through the wash. "Are you using a new washing powder?"
Dad relaxed. "Yeah, yeah," he said after a moment's thought. "Sorry. I found rust flecks on my shirts, so I put some cleansing agent in for a cycle. It was meant to come right out, it said on the box," he said sheepishly.
Rust. My blood ran cold and my breath caught in my throat. But no. It had to be a coincidence. This wasn't a new house. It couldn't be related.
I had to believe that.
"I hope I'm not getting… like, eczema or something," I said, trying to sound like I was only concerned about that. "That'd suck."
Dad mostly looked relieved at my genuine confusion. "Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah, that would." He frowned. "There was something I was going to tell you. Oh yeah, that was it. Phone call for you. From Sam. Girl-Sam, that is. It was about… uh, six or so? A bit after I got back."
"Did she say what it was about?"
"I think she just wanted to talk," Dad said. He leaned towards me. "You're going to call her back, aren't you?" he said, in the kind of question which wasn't really a question at all.
"Yeah," I said. I didn't really feel like it. I still felt pretty bad from the way I'd made the corridor. But if I didn't do it, Dad would totally be more of a pain about stuff and then he'd act all disappointed with me and that'd take far more effort to deal with than just calling her. "Let me just find her number…"
"I wrote it down by the phone," he said.
Urgh. I was going to delay things a bit. Damn. I grabbed the portable phone and sat down in front of the TV, playing with my still-damp hair. We who are about to die salute you and all that.
Actually, it mostly wasn't too bad, once I got over the tiny hot knot of nerves I tend to hit whenever I talk to someone on the phone. Sam was fine. Fine was a word which was used a lot. School was fine. The amount of catch-up work she was having to do was fine. She was getting on with her parents fine.
I was answering in much the same way, which raised the question of how much she was lying just like me. Probably less. After all, she was at Arcadia. Arcadia wasn't Winslow. Just by being in Arcadia one of my major issues would have been fixed.
There was a lot of um-ing and err-ing. God. I couldn't talk casually to girls my own age at all. Or boys, because – ha ha ha no. The closest thing to a normal conversation I had most days was with Luci, and that was about schoolwork.
It wasn't that I couldn't get on with Sam. I got on with her okay. The fact that we had almost nothing in common apart from the psych hospital actually worked out. It meant we could be… acquaintances. Not really friends, but I could handle this kind of 'occasional chat' level of interaction. Maybe things might be different if we went to the same school – but if we did, she'd have much more ammunition if she turned on me. And much more reason to.
"So, uh," Sam said. She'd obviously been dancing around this for a while. "Listen. Next weekend, I'm going to see Leah. Look. Uh." She took a breath. "Do you want to come along?"
My stomach tied itself up all over again. Objectively, I'd got on okay with Leah. And if I'd had anyone out there when I'd been in the psych hospital, other than Dad, I'd have wanted them to visit me. It was just…
… I didn't want to go back. Not at all. Not one bit. I wasn't crazy. I didn't need that place.
"Uh," I said.
"It'd mean a lot to her," Sam said. "I mean… like, you two got on pretty well, right? You… you could talk about books. And she's lonely there and… and… and I've been reading up and… and what she has… she's going to be in there for quite a long time, okay? She's going to get better, of course she is, but… it'd mean a lot."
The guilt and fear churned in my stomach. I… I didn't want to go back there. But I… I couldn't…
"I'll… um, s-see if I can make it," I stammered. "I'm not sure and… and I'll need to talk to my Dad and… um…"
"If you'd have problems getting there, I can pick you up," she said.
"I'll have to see," I said.
I scraped my way through the rest of the talk and then sat there, staring at the wall blankly.
I was really a horrible person. Such a… a fucking coward. Why was I scared of going back there? I wouldn't be going as a patient. Just to see someone who was sort of a friend.
Hugging my knees, I sighed. I knew why I was scared. There was the lurking fear that I'd go back and have to stay. It was the same fear which gnawed at me when I thought about Luci, and what she might think about me after Madison's little game in the library. People didn't target me in the same way at school, but only because I hid from them with Isolation. I knew what they must be thinking. I was the disturbed one. The kid who'd been outright committed for a while. They had to know. I bet Emma would have made sure everyone knew I was crazy. To defend herself if nothing else, because if I was crazy I couldn't be trusted.
But I wasn't crazy! I saw things, but they were really there! Hell, if I was crazy, I'd be able to see it in myself with my powers and I couldn't! Even if I did go insane, I'd be able to cut it out of me, just like I did with tiredness!
I'd show them they shouldn't be scared of me. I'd show them that I didn't have anything to be scared of. I'd be able to face a trip to a psych hospital as a visitor. I was a hero. I deserved to feel like a hero, not a scared little girl who nearly burst into tears at the sight of a bully.
So that evening, I told Dad I was going for a run in a park. Then I went and lurked around one of the nearby-ish National Guard posts. They'd knocked down two blocks and tarmacked over the rubble when they'd built the place, and put up ugly grey-green prefab buildings in their place. There were high barbed wire fences around the perimeter, and soldiers with guns at the checkpoint. They definitely didn't want people coming in.
It didn't stop me. By the time I headed home, I had some women's body armour and a crate of smoke grenades down in my secret base. I'd wanted flashbangs, but they didn't have any of them. Smoke grenades wouldn't hurt anyone, but they'd let me drive people out of rooms without needing to use my powers, and I'd have a great excuse to call firefighters on any building I wanted the police to investigate. I wouldn't need to go back and forth with evidence and photos and phonecalls if I found a drug den, not when I could have a cherub drop a smoke grenade on the roof. One emergency call later, and the firefighters would find the lab.
Yeah, this had been a productive use of an evening. I'd gotten over the unpleasantness with Madison entirely. It wasn't bothering me at all. I'd totally forgotten about it. She could just sit at home and do her meaningless petty things. She probably spent her evenings talking about boys or doing her nails.
I was a hero, making the world a better place. I was better than her.
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FinalPyre
Ennui Engine
That ending promises much fun, I fear. 
ven -> Even
I don't remember if using American English is desired here, and they are essentially said the same, but kerb -> curb
Extra periods, or one too few for an ellipsis.
As a fun out-of-story fact, this isn't actually true.
Nice to see this one again! I am not at all famlair with Mage, but I really like this writing style.
- Location
- Netherlands
...Taylor is such a fucking mess.
Also, I missed this story. Glad to see this updated!
Also, I missed this story. Glad to see this updated!
That does sound familiar...
I see Taylor's adventures in Omakeland left an impression, even if she can't remember them.
Sasha
Not the Leader
- Location
- The Ever After
I find it amusing that there was no mention of extra hands prior to this, even when she was first describing Needle Hag (which is such a mean name
).The Taylortech is a good idea, if one that could only be conceived by one as paranoid as Taylor (though that may include a large portion of SV).
It amused me that she stole a whole crate of smoke grenades from the National Guard. I do worry that she may have been caught on film though. Does Isolation work through video? I don't recall whether that issue has come up yet...
Going back to the psych ward, eh? I gotta wonder if Taylor will encounter the "S IX" girl again. It's kinda funny that the vague-yet-menacing government agents suspect Panopticon to be a S9 vector (though for all we know she may very well be) while, assuming "S IX" is connected to the S9, Taylor/Panopticon can seemingly detect them on sight in the Other Place.
All-in-all a solid chapter, though I hope to see more of Victoria/Glory Girl soon.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh dear. Did she just use her power on Madison somehow there?
And then she clearly uses her powers without conscious thought. Combines with the thing with Madison for some very worrying foreshadowing.
Of course, it's not like there wasn't already a ton of very worrying foreshadowing floating around.
Surely no-one will ever see through this ingenious ruse!
Also, good to see the Lair coming along nicely. No static-y tv's yet, but now we have the mirror-path and the room of papers.
Nine words per sentence, of course. And Nmage stuff poking it's head up. The world is a lie, and all that jazz.
If there we nines here, i missed them. The symbolism is also confusing. Do the butterflies symbolize isolation? If so, is isolation the way to "slice open this lying world", or a barrier to doing so? Perhaps someone with greater knowledge of Nmage or NWoD in general could say more.
And I almost gave the post a funny rating just for having Taylor's writing be error free. No one gets to make spelling errors around here! Not even "creepy otherworlds which display hidden truths about the world"!
And time to remind us why the fifth tag on this thread is there. After a line like that, a screw up is almost inevitable.
- Location
- The end of all things
I hope so too. She's already getting antsy. What if she gets too impatient and does something rash, like going out to try to fight crime without the guidance of a more experienced hero? What if her naivete gets innocents seriously hurt or even killed?
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Yes. I know. One of the little recurring things is doing things like that wrong, to show the more aware reader that Taylor isn't as smart or well-informed as she thinks she is. Hence, she recites little widely-believed-but-not-actually-true things like that on occasion.
Yes. Yes, she is. She's a ball of nerves with social anxiety and PTSD, and she's almost painfully introverted at times.
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
The problem is that the Other Place is always ominous. It sometimes leads to your sensor being swamped.
Jackercracks
In a British accent
- Location
- England
Taylor seems to have made a rather major mistake, and she's been making it for a while. She thinks because the Other Place shows a truth that it shows the truth. It shows easily verifiable facts about the nature of people and places, and so she has naturally assumed that it is showing their true nature, rather than just the negative aspects. The whole place is designed to introduce sampling bias, in that it only ever shows the worst things about people. She's never seen symbolism about someone helping stray cats or volunteering to help the homeless, but I bet she'd see plenty if someone went around kicking cats and lobbying to close shelters.
It might not seem so bad, but the problem is this mistake is the type of compound in on itself. The more she thinks she is seeing people's true nature, the worse she thinks everyone is, and then she can justify thinking everyone is terrible because clearly they're evil just look at their Other form. Then eventually she just ends up thinking humanity is awful and wretched apart from parahumans because they're her heroin who she can go heroing with. It's a self-reinforcing mental failure spiral. Not good.
Great update, as always. I love it how you describe Taylor falling apart in a very subtle way, showing it as a process that takes a lot of time...
"I don't need the psych hospital, I'm not like them..."
Great stuff.
"I don't need the psych hospital, I'm not like them..."
Great stuff.
The best part of this fic is the expressions on the faces of imaginary psychiatrists that hear Taylor saying these things out loud.
"Hell, if I was crazy, I'd be able to see it in myself with my powers and I couldn't! Even if I did go insane, I'd be able to cut it out of me, just like I did with tiredness!"
*scribbles on notepad* "And how often do you cut yourself, Ms. Hebert?"
"Hell, if I was crazy, I'd be able to see it in myself with my powers and I couldn't! Even if I did go insane, I'd be able to cut it out of me, just like I did with tiredness!"
*scribbles on notepad* "And how often do you cut yourself, Ms. Hebert?"
RazorSmile
ROB Used To Be A Knife Missile
Heh. Tailor is a heroine-addict.
... okay, not as funny as it sounded in my head. Oh well.
deadcrystal
Slaaneshi Cultist
- Location
- The Warp
Very pleased to see this update, only found it on SV after the, hiatus I guess? So I never had a chance to comment.
So I don't know all that much about Mage, so I can't speak to that, but...rather a lot of this is reminding me of Demon. Very very heavily reminding me of Demon, in fact. With Agents Butcher and Baker, which are exceedingly Demon names, to the stuff with the general rotting of stuff against the holy light stuff, and what may have been an Angel over the city...I'm q worried. The God-Machine is not your friend.
I'm also concerned that Taylor's powers may entirely literally making the world a fundamentally worse place.
So I don't know all that much about Mage, so I can't speak to that, but...rather a lot of this is reminding me of Demon. Very very heavily reminding me of Demon, in fact. With Agents Butcher and Baker, which are exceedingly Demon names, to the stuff with the general rotting of stuff against the holy light stuff, and what may have been an Angel over the city...I'm q worried. The God-Machine is not your friend.
I'm also concerned that Taylor's powers may entirely literally making the world a fundamentally worse place.
Jackercracks
In a British accent
- Location
- England
Yeah, I was trying to pun it up harder but I just couldn't see a way to work it in properly. They were all just so cheesy.