Goth Taylor and Chirpy Amy's Adventures in Brockton Bay
or
Boom!
Short Summary: In which...
or
Boom!
Short Summary: In which...
Boom (Worm, Minor AU)
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RavensDagger
Officially Infracted Speceist since 2019!
- Location
- Someplace Cold, Canada
Goth Taylor and Chirpy Amy's Adventures in Brockton Bay
or
Boom!
or
Boom!
Short Summary: In which the Taylor Hebert and Amelia Lavere of Earth Ceti travel back in time to save their world. Only instead of arriving in their own past, they arrive on Earth Bet, an Earth Bet already occupied by a Taylor Hebert and Amy Dallon who are nothing like them.
Long Summary: Taylor Hebert, bomb tinker extraordinaire with a wit as explosive as her ordinance, and her useless lesbian girlfriend/Nilbog impersonator Amelia Lavere, arrive on Earth Bet and try to fix everything through the combined powers of friendship, low-yield nuclear weaponry, zerglings and more friendship. Not a crackfic.
Warning: May Contain Useless Lesbians and Handholding.
If you want to support this and other strange writing projects, feel free to visit my Patreon at: This Link!
I'm in no way a great writer, so please forgive any foibles and errors I have made and will make in the future. If you have any questions you desperately want answered about the story, feel free to @ me and I'll answer to the best of my ability.
Comments are appreciated, criticism even more so, and attacks on my person or on anyone else will be reported. I'm here to write pretty words, not babysit a forum.
Bang 1.1
RavensDagger
Officially Infracted Speceist since 2019!
- Location
- Someplace Cold, Canada
Goth Taylor and Chirpy Amy's Adventures in Brockton Bay
Chapter One
***
Somewhere, deep among the forests in Massachusetts, in a glade surrounded by hickory and oak, came a flash of light, a bark of expelled air, and a great explosion.
Birds took flight, deer skipped away, trees rattled and the few leaves that had survived the soft winter lost their grasp and fluttered to the ground.
In a small clearing, at the very source of the blast that had disturbed an otherwise quiet morning, came a low groan. In the middle of this clearing, in a small crater surrounded by torn loam and singed plants, lay two young women and a small pile of backpacks, chests and duffel bags.
"Ouch," said one of the girls with all the colour and emotion one would expect from a particularly dull bit of grey paint drying on a concrete wall.
"You didn't say it would be that... twisty." The other young woman leaned forwards, only one arm holding her up while her free hand massaged her temple.
"Did you really expect anything else?" came the snarky reply of her companion. A companion that was very much pinned beneath the first girl, arms splayed out like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, only distinctly more dressed and somewhat more female. "You've only known me for two years, Amelia."
Amelia tilted her head to one side, crossed her eyes, then started counting on her fingers. She stared down at her companion, one eyebrow perked, letting her hair cascade down to form a curtain between their two faces. "Two years, Taytay?"
Taytay, or as she would more appropriately be called, Taylor, grinned. "Well, you need to take a few years off, what with the time travel and all."
Amelia giggled and rolled off Taylor before jumping to her feet. Wide, excited eyes took in the forest and she spun around once, her skirt flaring out as she whirled to take in her surroundings. "It's so pretty here," she declared. "The past sure is different from Brockton Bay. Are you sure you didn't overshoot by a few hundred years?"
"I wouldn't know," Taylor's acerbic reply came from the ground where she was still staring off into the cloudy morning sky. "Are you done with your Gone with the Wind impression or am I going to have to wait a while before you help me up?"
Laughing, Amelia moved to Taylor's side and extended a hand to help her up. "Come on, slowpoke. The day's just starting and our stuff is all over the place."
"I'm sorry, next time I produce a miracle out of the kind of junk you could buy in a Radio Shack I'll try to make it a bit more precise," Taylor said as she took Amelia's hand and rose to her feet. Her black combat boots, black studded cargo pants, black canvas jacket and black mesh shirt (with pretorn holes) were all covered in a fine layer of dust and mud from her visit to the forest floor. She scowled and tried to brush it off to little effect.
Amelia huffed as she tried to lift one of the chests, this one all black with silvery bands holding it together. All she succeeded in doing was to puff out her cheeks and make her blood rush to her head. "What do you have in here?" she asked.
Taylor shrugged. "Semtex." She frowned. "And a few nukes."
"Taytay, I thought you weren't allowed to make nukes anymore!" Amelia whined.
"I'll not be allowed to make them in the future. The law never passed now, so I can do what I want," she said while watching her friend trying to lift the rather bulky crate with both hands in her pockets. "Shouldn't you make one of your little friends?"
Amelia let go of the crate and turned wide, giddy eyes towards Taylor. "You're right!" she said before taking in their surroundings once more. "And there's so much biomass. I could create an army with all of these trees. A few hundred walkers, thousands of little biters, a million stingers. Oh, we could take over the East Coast with this alone. And I'd crown you the queen, and I could be, like, the princess, and we'd live happily ever after, and I could impregn--"
Amelia's excited rant cut off when Taylor bopped her on the head. "For the love of all that's unholy, Amelia, we've been here for less than half an hour," she said. "Wait for a bit before plotting world domination, would you?"
Amelia pouted, her eyes filling with tears as she gently rubbed the spot Taylor had smacked and tried her very best to make herself look pitiful.
It was not very effective.
With a huff of exhaled air, Amelia turned to the nearest tree and bit the tip of her tongue as she concentrated. "So, how many little babies should I make?"
"Enough to carry all our junk," Taylor said. "And make the sort that don't shake too much while moving. Some of my stuff shouldn't be jostled."
Amelia nodded, her head bobbing up and down like the tail of a resting dog. She placed both hands on the side of a tree and her tongue between her teeth. Her fingers moved in slow circles against rough bark, a dark, oily liquid appearing on the surface of the oak and eating into the bark with a sibilant hiss.
Backing up, Amelia wiped her hands on her skirt and smiled the satisfied smile of a biotinker that had just done something that would make the average god back up in revulsion.
The spots of bubbling liquid grew and a cloying, rotting smell started to fill the air around the clearing. Smoke poured out of the stained wood and the tree creaked ominously.
If a plant could talk, the oak would be screaming.
With a glorping sound most often associated with indigestion, the base of the tree exploded in a burst of plant-y gore, turning into a vein-covered bulb the size of a baby carriage and the rough shape of an egg. The top of the tree stuck out of the egg and towered above them, but anyone with a discerning eye could tell that it was slowly, inexorably, sinking into the bulb.
Amelia placed both hands on her hips and grinned like the cat that inherited the canary factory. "There you go. They should be ready in a few minutes," she said.
"Woohoo," Taylor intoned. "More monsters."
"Hey, these will be the first ones born on this planet." Amelia walked back to Taylor's side and sat on the chest she'd just been trying to lift. "And now, we wait!"
***
Had anyone other than the two girls been on the edge of Brockton Bay, far from the highways leading into the city and closer to the gravel roads and farms that leaned up against the urban sprawl, they might have found themselves a new reason to join a religion.
The horde of apocalyptic beasts was only visible when the light hit them just right, owing to their natural camouflage and their tendency to scuttle low to the ground. Only those with large spines on their backs, or the few whose breath came out as a toxic green haze were easy to spot in the brown on brown landscape of early spring. Spotting the invisible ones was right out.
Taylor and Amelia sat atop one of the bigger creatures. Amelia, being the shorter of the two, was the little spoon, doing her level best to cuddle into Taylor while the taller girl ignored her with well-practiced stoicism. "Are we there yet?" Amelia asked.
Taylor sighed. She reached into her pockets and pulled out a thin little device. To the uninitiated it might have looked like a cell phone. A really depressed cellphone that listened to a lot of David Bowie and wore heavy mascara. Across the top of the device were the words 'Amy Finder' scratched into the paint. It beeped and two dots appeared on its screen, one literally inches away and the other some few hundred meters to their east. "That way," Taylor indicated.
"This is going to be so weird," Amelia said. "I wonder what my younger self is up to?"
"Nothing good, I'll bet," Taylor said. She dug her feet into the horse-like creature's flanks, just hard enough that it picked up its trot and they started moving a little faster.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, minds wandering while they enjoyed the morning sun on their faces and the slight wind coming from the west. The clouds above were on the darker side, hinting at the possibility of rain in the near future, but it hadn't started yet, so neither of them worried.
It was as they crested a hill near a pasture where some cows roamed that they came into view of Brockton Bay in the distance. Their height and the clear air afforded them a great view of the city.
"Taytay," Amelia said as she took in the city of her birth. The crumbling infrastructure, graffiti-covered streets and sunken-boat filled bay and all.
"Yeah."
"I think your machine had an oopsie."
***
Ditching their things in an abandoned warehouse had been easy. Too easy even. The docks were about as popular as an ice cream truck in December, and stashing their things had only taken a few moments. Convincing Amelia to leave her little critters behind to guard their stuff had taken longer.
Walking through the streets of Brockton Bay was like exploring an alternate world where everything was just a little bit off. Amelia's attention shifted from one side of the street to another. There was graffiti everywhere, the streets were more pothole than asphalt and the air stank of rotting meat and petroleum. "Well, this place is cheerful," she declared.
Taylor snorted, but didn't disagree. Her attention going from their surroundings to the her Amy Finder. "She's not too far," she declared.
"You know, it might be confusing," Amelia said. "There's going to be two of me around to keep you company now. We might even get you to come out of your shell, maybe we'll even get you to wear something that isn't black."
Taylor looked at Amelia with one eyebrow perked up. "I don't just wear black. Sometimes I wear red."
Amelia rolled her eyes, but she grabbed Taylor's arm, shifted it around a little, then entwined her fingers with the taller girl's. "You're silly," she declared.
Taylor shook her head but she didn't pull her hand back. They passed groups of men stationed on street corners, at first they were all asian men who eyed them wearily, but as they walked deeper into the city those were replaced by balding white men in brown tank-tops and canvas jackets who sneered at the way their hands were joined.
Taylor ignored them with practiced ease and Amelia's only response to their stares was to smile and wave.
"She's in there," Taylor finally said. They had come to a stop in front of a tall building whose front sported four massive columns that rose up to meet an archway above its entrance. The words Bay Central Bank were carved into a stone plaque that has stood the test of time with only the slightest bit of fading due to wind and rain.
"Ohh, I wonder what younger me is getting money for?" Amelia asked.
"Probably another one of your disgusting pink dresses," Taylor said.
"Disgusting, huh?"
Taylor looked down at Amelia, noted the gleeful mischief in her expression and returned to staring at the bank. "Yeah. I wouldn't wear something so gaudy if you paid me."
"You do seem to enjoy taking them off me," Amelia said with an innocent lilt. Her grin only grew when she noticed the faintest hint of pink on Taylor's cheeks.
"C'mon, let's go see baby Amy. I can't wait to see her disappointment when she realises what a mess she grew up to be," Taylor said. She pulled her hand out from Amelia's grasp and started making her way up the steps leading into the bank. She also ignored Amelia's squak of indignation.
After holding the door open for a pouting Amelia, Taylor stepped into the main hall of the bank and paused to take in the scale of the room. There had to be three dozen people just waiting in line or sitting off to the side on a bench. The staff, all of them wearing a clean blue jacket-and-slacks uniform were milling behind the counters at the end. Money traded hands at the cash and gossip passed from mouth to ear in the line up. More than one head was turned down and focused on a cell phone or magazine.
Taylor ignored the low murmur of conversation and searched for a younger Amelia, only for her Amelia to spot the girl first. "There!" she said, pointing to a girl halfway down the line.
The younger Amelia looked off. Her shoulders were slumped a little more, the bags under her eyes were a bit more pronounced. Taylor assumed that she'd been up all night, probably playing with her own hoard of monsters. Other than being just a little shorter and not quite as developed, it was the same girl she knew so well. The smattering of freckles over a mousey hair were the same, and while her hair was a bit more dishevelled, this younger Amelia kept it just as long as her older counterpart. "Yeah, that's you alright," she said.
They were just starting to make their way over to the younger Amelia when a wall of foggy darkness rushed into the room. It stuck to the walls and windows, turning the bright, large room into a quiet mausoleum where screams of panic were muffled and where darkness reigned.
Then the fog cleared, revealing a group of five walking into the room as though they owned the place. One of them, a lanky girl in a black costume whose face was covered in an insect-like mask, took a deep breath and shouted. "Fifteen minutes. We won't be here any longer than that. Stay put, stay quiet, we'll be gone before fifteen minutes are up. You'll be free to give your statement to the police and then go about your day as usual. This isn't a TV show, this isn't a movie. If you're thinking about being a hero, don't. You'll only get yourself or someone else hurt."
Taylor turned to Amelia, one hand reaching into her jacket and coming out with a folded gas mask. "Go keep mini-Amelia safe, I'll take care of these meatsacks."
***
And so ends the first chapter of this absolute fustercluck.
I want to apologise to my mom and all my friends who supported me.
Big thank you to ChaoticSky for the help, and all the fine folks of the Taylor Varga Discord who help with the initial version of this mess.
Updates every day this week.
Chapter One
***
Somewhere, deep among the forests in Massachusetts, in a glade surrounded by hickory and oak, came a flash of light, a bark of expelled air, and a great explosion.
Birds took flight, deer skipped away, trees rattled and the few leaves that had survived the soft winter lost their grasp and fluttered to the ground.
In a small clearing, at the very source of the blast that had disturbed an otherwise quiet morning, came a low groan. In the middle of this clearing, in a small crater surrounded by torn loam and singed plants, lay two young women and a small pile of backpacks, chests and duffel bags.
"Ouch," said one of the girls with all the colour and emotion one would expect from a particularly dull bit of grey paint drying on a concrete wall.
"You didn't say it would be that... twisty." The other young woman leaned forwards, only one arm holding her up while her free hand massaged her temple.
"Did you really expect anything else?" came the snarky reply of her companion. A companion that was very much pinned beneath the first girl, arms splayed out like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, only distinctly more dressed and somewhat more female. "You've only known me for two years, Amelia."
Amelia tilted her head to one side, crossed her eyes, then started counting on her fingers. She stared down at her companion, one eyebrow perked, letting her hair cascade down to form a curtain between their two faces. "Two years, Taytay?"
Taytay, or as she would more appropriately be called, Taylor, grinned. "Well, you need to take a few years off, what with the time travel and all."
Amelia giggled and rolled off Taylor before jumping to her feet. Wide, excited eyes took in the forest and she spun around once, her skirt flaring out as she whirled to take in her surroundings. "It's so pretty here," she declared. "The past sure is different from Brockton Bay. Are you sure you didn't overshoot by a few hundred years?"
"I wouldn't know," Taylor's acerbic reply came from the ground where she was still staring off into the cloudy morning sky. "Are you done with your Gone with the Wind impression or am I going to have to wait a while before you help me up?"
Laughing, Amelia moved to Taylor's side and extended a hand to help her up. "Come on, slowpoke. The day's just starting and our stuff is all over the place."
"I'm sorry, next time I produce a miracle out of the kind of junk you could buy in a Radio Shack I'll try to make it a bit more precise," Taylor said as she took Amelia's hand and rose to her feet. Her black combat boots, black studded cargo pants, black canvas jacket and black mesh shirt (with pretorn holes) were all covered in a fine layer of dust and mud from her visit to the forest floor. She scowled and tried to brush it off to little effect.
Amelia huffed as she tried to lift one of the chests, this one all black with silvery bands holding it together. All she succeeded in doing was to puff out her cheeks and make her blood rush to her head. "What do you have in here?" she asked.
Taylor shrugged. "Semtex." She frowned. "And a few nukes."
"Taytay, I thought you weren't allowed to make nukes anymore!" Amelia whined.
"I'll not be allowed to make them in the future. The law never passed now, so I can do what I want," she said while watching her friend trying to lift the rather bulky crate with both hands in her pockets. "Shouldn't you make one of your little friends?"
Amelia let go of the crate and turned wide, giddy eyes towards Taylor. "You're right!" she said before taking in their surroundings once more. "And there's so much biomass. I could create an army with all of these trees. A few hundred walkers, thousands of little biters, a million stingers. Oh, we could take over the East Coast with this alone. And I'd crown you the queen, and I could be, like, the princess, and we'd live happily ever after, and I could impregn--"
Amelia's excited rant cut off when Taylor bopped her on the head. "For the love of all that's unholy, Amelia, we've been here for less than half an hour," she said. "Wait for a bit before plotting world domination, would you?"
Amelia pouted, her eyes filling with tears as she gently rubbed the spot Taylor had smacked and tried her very best to make herself look pitiful.
It was not very effective.
With a huff of exhaled air, Amelia turned to the nearest tree and bit the tip of her tongue as she concentrated. "So, how many little babies should I make?"
"Enough to carry all our junk," Taylor said. "And make the sort that don't shake too much while moving. Some of my stuff shouldn't be jostled."
Amelia nodded, her head bobbing up and down like the tail of a resting dog. She placed both hands on the side of a tree and her tongue between her teeth. Her fingers moved in slow circles against rough bark, a dark, oily liquid appearing on the surface of the oak and eating into the bark with a sibilant hiss.
Backing up, Amelia wiped her hands on her skirt and smiled the satisfied smile of a biotinker that had just done something that would make the average god back up in revulsion.
The spots of bubbling liquid grew and a cloying, rotting smell started to fill the air around the clearing. Smoke poured out of the stained wood and the tree creaked ominously.
If a plant could talk, the oak would be screaming.
With a glorping sound most often associated with indigestion, the base of the tree exploded in a burst of plant-y gore, turning into a vein-covered bulb the size of a baby carriage and the rough shape of an egg. The top of the tree stuck out of the egg and towered above them, but anyone with a discerning eye could tell that it was slowly, inexorably, sinking into the bulb.
Amelia placed both hands on her hips and grinned like the cat that inherited the canary factory. "There you go. They should be ready in a few minutes," she said.
"Woohoo," Taylor intoned. "More monsters."
"Hey, these will be the first ones born on this planet." Amelia walked back to Taylor's side and sat on the chest she'd just been trying to lift. "And now, we wait!"
***
Had anyone other than the two girls been on the edge of Brockton Bay, far from the highways leading into the city and closer to the gravel roads and farms that leaned up against the urban sprawl, they might have found themselves a new reason to join a religion.
The horde of apocalyptic beasts was only visible when the light hit them just right, owing to their natural camouflage and their tendency to scuttle low to the ground. Only those with large spines on their backs, or the few whose breath came out as a toxic green haze were easy to spot in the brown on brown landscape of early spring. Spotting the invisible ones was right out.
Taylor and Amelia sat atop one of the bigger creatures. Amelia, being the shorter of the two, was the little spoon, doing her level best to cuddle into Taylor while the taller girl ignored her with well-practiced stoicism. "Are we there yet?" Amelia asked.
Taylor sighed. She reached into her pockets and pulled out a thin little device. To the uninitiated it might have looked like a cell phone. A really depressed cellphone that listened to a lot of David Bowie and wore heavy mascara. Across the top of the device were the words 'Amy Finder' scratched into the paint. It beeped and two dots appeared on its screen, one literally inches away and the other some few hundred meters to their east. "That way," Taylor indicated.
"This is going to be so weird," Amelia said. "I wonder what my younger self is up to?"
"Nothing good, I'll bet," Taylor said. She dug her feet into the horse-like creature's flanks, just hard enough that it picked up its trot and they started moving a little faster.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, minds wandering while they enjoyed the morning sun on their faces and the slight wind coming from the west. The clouds above were on the darker side, hinting at the possibility of rain in the near future, but it hadn't started yet, so neither of them worried.
It was as they crested a hill near a pasture where some cows roamed that they came into view of Brockton Bay in the distance. Their height and the clear air afforded them a great view of the city.
"Taytay," Amelia said as she took in the city of her birth. The crumbling infrastructure, graffiti-covered streets and sunken-boat filled bay and all.
"Yeah."
"I think your machine had an oopsie."
***
Ditching their things in an abandoned warehouse had been easy. Too easy even. The docks were about as popular as an ice cream truck in December, and stashing their things had only taken a few moments. Convincing Amelia to leave her little critters behind to guard their stuff had taken longer.
Walking through the streets of Brockton Bay was like exploring an alternate world where everything was just a little bit off. Amelia's attention shifted from one side of the street to another. There was graffiti everywhere, the streets were more pothole than asphalt and the air stank of rotting meat and petroleum. "Well, this place is cheerful," she declared.
Taylor snorted, but didn't disagree. Her attention going from their surroundings to the her Amy Finder. "She's not too far," she declared.
"You know, it might be confusing," Amelia said. "There's going to be two of me around to keep you company now. We might even get you to come out of your shell, maybe we'll even get you to wear something that isn't black."
Taylor looked at Amelia with one eyebrow perked up. "I don't just wear black. Sometimes I wear red."
Amelia rolled her eyes, but she grabbed Taylor's arm, shifted it around a little, then entwined her fingers with the taller girl's. "You're silly," she declared.
Taylor shook her head but she didn't pull her hand back. They passed groups of men stationed on street corners, at first they were all asian men who eyed them wearily, but as they walked deeper into the city those were replaced by balding white men in brown tank-tops and canvas jackets who sneered at the way their hands were joined.
Taylor ignored them with practiced ease and Amelia's only response to their stares was to smile and wave.
"She's in there," Taylor finally said. They had come to a stop in front of a tall building whose front sported four massive columns that rose up to meet an archway above its entrance. The words Bay Central Bank were carved into a stone plaque that has stood the test of time with only the slightest bit of fading due to wind and rain.
"Ohh, I wonder what younger me is getting money for?" Amelia asked.
"Probably another one of your disgusting pink dresses," Taylor said.
"Disgusting, huh?"
Taylor looked down at Amelia, noted the gleeful mischief in her expression and returned to staring at the bank. "Yeah. I wouldn't wear something so gaudy if you paid me."
"You do seem to enjoy taking them off me," Amelia said with an innocent lilt. Her grin only grew when she noticed the faintest hint of pink on Taylor's cheeks.
"C'mon, let's go see baby Amy. I can't wait to see her disappointment when she realises what a mess she grew up to be," Taylor said. She pulled her hand out from Amelia's grasp and started making her way up the steps leading into the bank. She also ignored Amelia's squak of indignation.
After holding the door open for a pouting Amelia, Taylor stepped into the main hall of the bank and paused to take in the scale of the room. There had to be three dozen people just waiting in line or sitting off to the side on a bench. The staff, all of them wearing a clean blue jacket-and-slacks uniform were milling behind the counters at the end. Money traded hands at the cash and gossip passed from mouth to ear in the line up. More than one head was turned down and focused on a cell phone or magazine.
Taylor ignored the low murmur of conversation and searched for a younger Amelia, only for her Amelia to spot the girl first. "There!" she said, pointing to a girl halfway down the line.
The younger Amelia looked off. Her shoulders were slumped a little more, the bags under her eyes were a bit more pronounced. Taylor assumed that she'd been up all night, probably playing with her own hoard of monsters. Other than being just a little shorter and not quite as developed, it was the same girl she knew so well. The smattering of freckles over a mousey hair were the same, and while her hair was a bit more dishevelled, this younger Amelia kept it just as long as her older counterpart. "Yeah, that's you alright," she said.
They were just starting to make their way over to the younger Amelia when a wall of foggy darkness rushed into the room. It stuck to the walls and windows, turning the bright, large room into a quiet mausoleum where screams of panic were muffled and where darkness reigned.
Then the fog cleared, revealing a group of five walking into the room as though they owned the place. One of them, a lanky girl in a black costume whose face was covered in an insect-like mask, took a deep breath and shouted. "Fifteen minutes. We won't be here any longer than that. Stay put, stay quiet, we'll be gone before fifteen minutes are up. You'll be free to give your statement to the police and then go about your day as usual. This isn't a TV show, this isn't a movie. If you're thinking about being a hero, don't. You'll only get yourself or someone else hurt."
Taylor turned to Amelia, one hand reaching into her jacket and coming out with a folded gas mask. "Go keep mini-Amelia safe, I'll take care of these meatsacks."
***
And so ends the first chapter of this absolute fustercluck.
I want to apologise to my mom and all my friends who supported me.
Big thank you to ChaoticSky for the help, and all the fine folks of the Taylor Varga Discord who help with the initial version of this mess.
Updates every day this week.
Frozen Flame
Fragment of the Devourer
- Location
- The Darkness Beyond Time
You have my attention...
- Location
- Russia
The kabloobies are here!
- Location
- England, Smugsville.
Oh, I'm looking forward to this!
Also,
Also,
I feel as if this may be a lie.
- Location
- Villa Straylight, Freeside, Earth Orbit
Oh dear lord. This is going to end in a glorious mess and I am so excited for that potential!
Even playing the insanity you have set up straight I am not sure if the lines aren't going to blur a little. And I'm fine with that.
Even playing the insanity you have set up straight I am not sure if the lines aren't going to blur a little. And I'm fine with that.
- Location
- East
Right. How's that going to work
Love your writing, I'm excited to see you continue this!
Edit I love how there are three comments in a row doubting the credibility of the non crack claim but still very excited to see how it turns out
Last edited:
Alex Prior
We are Many
- Location
- A charming, foreign port
For some godforsaken reason, I don't believe you.
Unless of course you mean you aren't on drugs when writing, because that one I can believe.
dracklor
Beyond the Frontier
- Location
- Texas
- Location
- Untied state of America
Hand holding how LEWD!
RichardWhereat
Feanor did nothing wrong.
- Location
- Australia
Lewd. So lewd.
Darth.
Definitely a heretic
- Location
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Stop lying you little shit!
You're a great fucking writerDamn that's harsh TayTay
Zealot_of_Runes
[Verified Ziz-Bomb]
- Location
- New Hampshire, USA
This is beautiful and I love it.
Saphire
Lurking dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Nah, it will be a creature that looks like a fire extinguisher. Two of them! Or more.
- Location
- Sufficient Velocity, at the moment
See the problem here is that you've forgotten that the difference between a comedy and a tragedy is how much screaming is involved.
All jokes aside I took the Not a Crackfic disclaimer to mean that our insane protagonists have been dropped into a setting that won't mostly roll with the punches the way BB of HTTYE did. Which is good because while HTTYE probably would have been an actual tragedy if it wasn't crack, everyone being surprisingly okay with Pretty Soldier Sailor Simurgh limited the amount of material available to work with.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
Interesting.
We've got the daughter of Marquis here instead of Panacea, but Taylor's response to the heist is awful heroic...
I'm thinking Marquis tried to take Taylor captive, and from a cell she "accidentally" seduced his daughter.
We've got the daughter of Marquis here instead of Panacea, but Taylor's response to the heist is awful heroic...
I'm thinking Marquis tried to take Taylor captive, and from a cell she "accidentally" seduced his daughter.
Tawsnrrtsyip
Rick's Law Enthusiast
- Location
- Terra, Sol System, Orion Arm, Milky Way
- Pronouns
- Nice/Try/FBI/Pricks
This can either go well for a few people or horribly for anyone even tangentially involved. I'm not sure which one I want more.
On second thought, fuck it. Go with both.
On second thought, fuck it. Go with both.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
It can only go very very very badly for Bakuda.
It'll be like the Kid Win who's outside the bank vault right now fighting the monster covered in cannons that goes after the Nine with Weaver.
Bang 1.2
RavensDagger
Officially Infracted Speceist since 2019!
- Location
- Someplace Cold, Canada
Chapter Two
Taylor was as nervous as a praying mantis on his wedding night. She knew that anyone that looked at her for long enough would see her shivering and shaking in her shoes, so she masked it, hid the shakes by constantly moving, by focusing on the swarm that was even now tagging every person in the bank.
Then she raised her hand, letting the large spider resting there spin a web and dangle in the air for all to see. "If you're thinking about running, making a phone call or getting in our way, this is a good reason to reconsider. This little creature and her one hundred sisters that I just brought into this room are under my complete control. She's a black widow spider. A single bite has been known to kill a full grown human, or put them into a coma. You move, talk, try to find or kill the spiders I just put on your bodies, in your clothes, in your hair? I'll know in split seco--"
"Oh, for the love of all things black and spikey, would you just shut up?"
Taylor's mouth shut with a click of teeth on teeth. She focused on the girl in the middle of the room, one of the only people not currently on the ground and huddling in terror. She just stood there, arms akimbo and head tilted to one side to let her dark hair hide the part of her face not covered by her black gas mask.
"Christ, did you pull your lines from a Saturday morning cartoon? What's the next bit?" She shifted her tone so that her voice came out squeaky and loaded with sarcasm. "No one will be hurt if you all cooperate and let us sodomize you?"
"Oh shit," Brian said behind her. He raised a hand and darkness swept out to cover the woman in a matter of seconds. "Tattletale, when you said that there would only be a few Wards, I think you failed to mention the other supervillain robbing the bank today."
Taylor got more bugs on the girl, enough that she felt it as the woman searched inside her jacket for something. At first she feared the worse, that there was a gun hidden in there, but instead she just pulled out something round and roughly the size of a marble.
Lisa's face was turned down in a scowl. "I don't think she's here to rob the place. I didn't have time to get a read on he--"
Gas-Mask tossed the marble into the air. Lisa's words, whatever they might have been, were swallowed by the sudden windstorm that swept through the bank.
Taylor had to take a step back, her entire body being shoved by the shifting currents of wind.
Stray papers, a few purses and loose money took to the air, mingling with the ever-thinning remains of Brian's darkness. Her swarm was torn apart, bugs being flung across the room, heedless of any attempt to fly away from the wind.
As quickly as it began the storm ceased. The marble fell to the ground with a tiny clink that rang in the quiet of the bank. "Now my hair's all mussed," the woman complained as she raked her hand through her hair. She sighed. "Alright kids, how about you all just run off back home. You can rob the place later, I'll only be here for a few more minutes."
"She's a Tinker," Lisa said. She was holding a gun at her side and licking her lips.
"And you're a Thinker. Which is great, because you can't think you way out of a black hole," the Tinker said as she pulled out another device from her jacket, this one the size of a baseball. "Offer is still on the table, kiddies, piss off and I won't show you what it's like to be crushed until you can fit in a thimble with room to spare."
"Angelica," Rachel barked.
The dog's claws scraped on the marble floor of the bank, digging grooves in the stone as it raced towards the Tinker.
The woman shook her head and snapped her other hand out, another marble-like device appearing from within her sleeve. Then her hand spasmed and it fell on the ground between her and the dog. "Shit," she said.
The explosion sent Angellica flying back, her huge form crashing into one of the counters and sending the machines behind it tumbling to the ground.
The Tinker, meanwhile, was flung back to land in a roll that had her crossing half the bank's floor before she came to a stop by the doors.
"Taylor!" a woman screamed from the crowd. When she went to stand up she was pulled back down by a mousey, brown-haired girl.
Taylor blinked at hearing her name, but it had to be a coincidence because the girl that had screamed it rushed to the Tinker's side only to pause when the woman shakily got to her feet and turned a glare towards the Undersiders.
"Guys, I think we should think about retreating," Lisa said. "Bug, smother her."
Taylor only nodded once before sending every flier she had towards the Tinker. The swarm buzzed, a low thrum that sounded like something from the Old Testament, the wrath of an angry god.
The Tinker snorted just as the first bugs reached her. "Cute," she said. She dropped another marble to the ground. It popped with a sound like a can of soda opening.
Every bug in the room died.
Taylor reeled, almost losing her balance as the world suddenly shrank, as her senses tried to make sense of a world suddenly made so much smaller. "Oh god," she said.
***
Amy Dallon was having a rather strange day. Actually, that was wrong. Her day was perfectly ordinary up until a few minutes ago. She'd been about to withdraw some cash for a double date that Vicky had arranged. The kind of thing that Vicky was always pulling on her. Then things went to hell in a handbasket.
When the room started to fill with darkness and a pair of hands grabbed her and pulled her off to the side she'd almost lashed out, but the skin-on-skin contact told her a lot about the girl that grabbed her. She was a few years older than Amy, caucasian, in decent health, and had an active Gemma.
"Come on, mini-me," the girl said as she brought Amy around to hide behind one of the pillars lining the sides of the hall. She pressed her back against it and looked around the corner while keeping Amy low.
That's when the bug girl started to threaten the people in the bank and Amy realised what was going on. This was a robbery, and the young woman that had grabbed her was doing her level best to keep her out of the line of fire.
It was, she supposed, a nice gesture. Maybe this was one of the people she'd healed, or a family member of one of those. Maybe she was just a good Samaritan that decided that keeping the healer safe was important enough to risk her own neck. Maybe she was a hero out of costume?
Either way, Amy appreciated it. That was, until the woman squealed and pointed at the one person still standing. "Oh, look how hot she is when she's being all tough," she said.
Amy was still being held by the woman, so she could feel the building excitement, the adrenaline, the moist-- she cut that thought off with all the gentleness of a guillotine coming down.
Instead, Amy Dallon focused on the woman that had her saviour so... excited. She was tall enough, maybe in her late teens or early twenties and dressed all in black. Thick mascara, expertly applied, gave her a dark brooding look that might have been pretty if Amy cared for that kind of thing.
The girl bantered with the villains a bit, unleashed a storm that had Amy ducking down to hide from the biting winds, then told the bad guys to just leave. Either she was bluffing, or she wasn't able to fight properly with so many hostages around.
The explosion that pushed one of the monsters back was more evidence of that.
"Taylor!" the woman helping Amy had screamed before she rushed towards her friend only to stop when the girl, Taylor, stood up with the slow, lethargic motions of someone in a great deal of pain.
"I'm fine, Amelia," the Taylor girl said in a low whisper. Not quiet enough that Amy couldn't hear it though.
A swarm of bug so thick it blotted out the light came swirling around and zeroed in on the lone cape. Amy gasped. She knew what a few well-placed stings could do to a person. No amount of histamine would save someone from a thousand wasp stings.
Then the bugs all fell to the ground like a rain of chitin. "Cute."
"Of god," the one girl, the master controlling the bugs if Amy had to guess, looked ready to bolt, or maybe lose her lunch.
"Sorry, god isn't available right now," the Tinker said.
Then the doors at the front of the bank burst open and just about every Ward in the city rushed in.
"Oh, come on," the Tinker said.
***
Big thank you to ChaoticSky for the help, and all the fine folks my Discord who popped over to help with this mess.
You'll note that we got the same events happening from the perspective of different characters, I think I might do that a few times, or at least, I'll go back and forth in time as I change perspectives (though never more than a few hours, there's enough time travel in this fic).
Taylor was as nervous as a praying mantis on his wedding night. She knew that anyone that looked at her for long enough would see her shivering and shaking in her shoes, so she masked it, hid the shakes by constantly moving, by focusing on the swarm that was even now tagging every person in the bank.
Then she raised her hand, letting the large spider resting there spin a web and dangle in the air for all to see. "If you're thinking about running, making a phone call or getting in our way, this is a good reason to reconsider. This little creature and her one hundred sisters that I just brought into this room are under my complete control. She's a black widow spider. A single bite has been known to kill a full grown human, or put them into a coma. You move, talk, try to find or kill the spiders I just put on your bodies, in your clothes, in your hair? I'll know in split seco--"
"Oh, for the love of all things black and spikey, would you just shut up?"
Taylor's mouth shut with a click of teeth on teeth. She focused on the girl in the middle of the room, one of the only people not currently on the ground and huddling in terror. She just stood there, arms akimbo and head tilted to one side to let her dark hair hide the part of her face not covered by her black gas mask.
"Christ, did you pull your lines from a Saturday morning cartoon? What's the next bit?" She shifted her tone so that her voice came out squeaky and loaded with sarcasm. "No one will be hurt if you all cooperate and let us sodomize you?"
"Oh shit," Brian said behind her. He raised a hand and darkness swept out to cover the woman in a matter of seconds. "Tattletale, when you said that there would only be a few Wards, I think you failed to mention the other supervillain robbing the bank today."
Taylor got more bugs on the girl, enough that she felt it as the woman searched inside her jacket for something. At first she feared the worse, that there was a gun hidden in there, but instead she just pulled out something round and roughly the size of a marble.
Lisa's face was turned down in a scowl. "I don't think she's here to rob the place. I didn't have time to get a read on he--"
Gas-Mask tossed the marble into the air. Lisa's words, whatever they might have been, were swallowed by the sudden windstorm that swept through the bank.
Taylor had to take a step back, her entire body being shoved by the shifting currents of wind.
Stray papers, a few purses and loose money took to the air, mingling with the ever-thinning remains of Brian's darkness. Her swarm was torn apart, bugs being flung across the room, heedless of any attempt to fly away from the wind.
As quickly as it began the storm ceased. The marble fell to the ground with a tiny clink that rang in the quiet of the bank. "Now my hair's all mussed," the woman complained as she raked her hand through her hair. She sighed. "Alright kids, how about you all just run off back home. You can rob the place later, I'll only be here for a few more minutes."
"She's a Tinker," Lisa said. She was holding a gun at her side and licking her lips.
"And you're a Thinker. Which is great, because you can't think you way out of a black hole," the Tinker said as she pulled out another device from her jacket, this one the size of a baseball. "Offer is still on the table, kiddies, piss off and I won't show you what it's like to be crushed until you can fit in a thimble with room to spare."
"Angelica," Rachel barked.
The dog's claws scraped on the marble floor of the bank, digging grooves in the stone as it raced towards the Tinker.
The woman shook her head and snapped her other hand out, another marble-like device appearing from within her sleeve. Then her hand spasmed and it fell on the ground between her and the dog. "Shit," she said.
The explosion sent Angellica flying back, her huge form crashing into one of the counters and sending the machines behind it tumbling to the ground.
The Tinker, meanwhile, was flung back to land in a roll that had her crossing half the bank's floor before she came to a stop by the doors.
"Taylor!" a woman screamed from the crowd. When she went to stand up she was pulled back down by a mousey, brown-haired girl.
Taylor blinked at hearing her name, but it had to be a coincidence because the girl that had screamed it rushed to the Tinker's side only to pause when the woman shakily got to her feet and turned a glare towards the Undersiders.
"Guys, I think we should think about retreating," Lisa said. "Bug, smother her."
Taylor only nodded once before sending every flier she had towards the Tinker. The swarm buzzed, a low thrum that sounded like something from the Old Testament, the wrath of an angry god.
The Tinker snorted just as the first bugs reached her. "Cute," she said. She dropped another marble to the ground. It popped with a sound like a can of soda opening.
Every bug in the room died.
Taylor reeled, almost losing her balance as the world suddenly shrank, as her senses tried to make sense of a world suddenly made so much smaller. "Oh god," she said.
***
Amy Dallon was having a rather strange day. Actually, that was wrong. Her day was perfectly ordinary up until a few minutes ago. She'd been about to withdraw some cash for a double date that Vicky had arranged. The kind of thing that Vicky was always pulling on her. Then things went to hell in a handbasket.
When the room started to fill with darkness and a pair of hands grabbed her and pulled her off to the side she'd almost lashed out, but the skin-on-skin contact told her a lot about the girl that grabbed her. She was a few years older than Amy, caucasian, in decent health, and had an active Gemma.
"Come on, mini-me," the girl said as she brought Amy around to hide behind one of the pillars lining the sides of the hall. She pressed her back against it and looked around the corner while keeping Amy low.
That's when the bug girl started to threaten the people in the bank and Amy realised what was going on. This was a robbery, and the young woman that had grabbed her was doing her level best to keep her out of the line of fire.
It was, she supposed, a nice gesture. Maybe this was one of the people she'd healed, or a family member of one of those. Maybe she was just a good Samaritan that decided that keeping the healer safe was important enough to risk her own neck. Maybe she was a hero out of costume?
Either way, Amy appreciated it. That was, until the woman squealed and pointed at the one person still standing. "Oh, look how hot she is when she's being all tough," she said.
Amy was still being held by the woman, so she could feel the building excitement, the adrenaline, the moist-- she cut that thought off with all the gentleness of a guillotine coming down.
Instead, Amy Dallon focused on the woman that had her saviour so... excited. She was tall enough, maybe in her late teens or early twenties and dressed all in black. Thick mascara, expertly applied, gave her a dark brooding look that might have been pretty if Amy cared for that kind of thing.
The girl bantered with the villains a bit, unleashed a storm that had Amy ducking down to hide from the biting winds, then told the bad guys to just leave. Either she was bluffing, or she wasn't able to fight properly with so many hostages around.
The explosion that pushed one of the monsters back was more evidence of that.
"Taylor!" the woman helping Amy had screamed before she rushed towards her friend only to stop when the girl, Taylor, stood up with the slow, lethargic motions of someone in a great deal of pain.
"I'm fine, Amelia," the Taylor girl said in a low whisper. Not quiet enough that Amy couldn't hear it though.
A swarm of bug so thick it blotted out the light came swirling around and zeroed in on the lone cape. Amy gasped. She knew what a few well-placed stings could do to a person. No amount of histamine would save someone from a thousand wasp stings.
Then the bugs all fell to the ground like a rain of chitin. "Cute."
"Of god," the one girl, the master controlling the bugs if Amy had to guess, looked ready to bolt, or maybe lose her lunch.
"Sorry, god isn't available right now," the Tinker said.
Then the doors at the front of the bank burst open and just about every Ward in the city rushed in.
"Oh, come on," the Tinker said.
***
Big thank you to ChaoticSky for the help, and all the fine folks my Discord who popped over to help with this mess.
You'll note that we got the same events happening from the perspective of different characters, I think I might do that a few times, or at least, I'll go back and forth in time as I change perspectives (though never more than a few hours, there's enough time travel in this fic).
- Location
- Sufficient Velocity, at the moment
Truly Ravensdagger you remain the expert in teasing and cliffhangers, an author capable of leaving your readers every bit as satisfied as they are deprived; and I hate and love you in equal measure for it.
Zealot_of_Runes
[Verified Ziz-Bomb]
- Location
- New Hampshire, USA
'Sorry, God isn't available right now.' Is, and always has been, one of my favourite retorts. Just like this story is quickly becoming one of my favourites. Keep up the good work, I love it.