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.