- Location
- SoCal, USA
Don't know whether to laugh or cry about this one, but damn if it isn't accurate. She would have been a fantastic member of Cauldron if she'd triggered a couple decades earlier.
Boom (Worm, Minor AU)
- Thread starter RavensDagger
- Start date
- Alt. History Superhero
Don't know whether to laugh or cry about this one, but damn if it isn't accurate. She would have been a fantastic member of Cauldron if she'd triggered a couple decades earlier.
Jonn Wolfe
(Verified Sarcastic) (Not a Wolf)
- Location
- Beyond Sanity Since 1971
This is a laugh riot. :lol
Oh, and Carol? Thine Apple Cart. It Be Toppled.
Oh, and Carol? Thine Apple Cart. It Be Toppled.
Zealot_of_Runes
[Verified Ziz-Bomb]
- Location
- New Hampshire, USA
I lament for Vicky's bed- no, her entire room. I swear if Taylor and Amelia don't manage to break the bedframe, then they aren't taking things seriously.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A bed built to withstand an Alexandria package having a nightmare should be fine.
- Location
- Sufficient Velocity, at the moment
I don't know. I feel like you're seriously underestimating the sheer scale of what's about to happen. Given that Goth!Taylor has bombs for everything else I would be surprised if the walls survive.
- Location
- Sufficient Velocity, at the moment
I'm just hoping for the story equivalent of a smash cut to the morning. Seems like the best use of comedy balanced with the needs of posting.
Besides, if Raven decides to write lewds they end up as oneshots on QQ instead of story migration.
Besides, if Raven decides to write lewds they end up as oneshots on QQ instead of story migration.
Jonn Wolfe
(Verified Sarcastic) (Not a Wolf)
- Location
- Beyond Sanity Since 1971
Would that be considered a breach of the Fifth Wall?
Bang 1.7
RavensDagger
Officially Infracted Speceist since 2019!
- Location
- Someplace Cold, Canada
Chapter Seven
***
Vicky knew she shouldn't. It was that same little voice in the back of her mind, the one that told her not to take stuff that wasn't hers, the one that told her not to cheat on tests or wink saucily a guys to get what she wanted. It was the same voice that reminded her that there was a bomb Tinker just a door away from her that could do very bad things to her if she was caught.
But the temptation was too strong. She had to listen in, she had to grab that juicy, juicy gossip.
So she leaned forwards, slipper clad feet floating a couple on inches off the ground while her bed-hair covered head came to a hover right next to the door's keyhole. It was her bedroom, after all, she was certainly allowed to spy on anyone using it.
At first the talking that had initially grabbed her attention faded, then she heard an indistinct mumble. "Move your arm, Taytay, I need to get up," Amelia's voice said. It was easy to recognize and easier to mistake for Amy's own 'I'm not awake yet, where's the coffee' voice.
"What time is it?" came Taylor's voice.
"It's... urg, six thirty-ish."
Vicky heard the springs of her bed shifting as someone moved. "Where'd you put my undies?" Amelia asked.
"I dunno," Taylor replied with a yawn.
Vicky processed the question and what, exactly, it meant.
They had slept on her bed. Amelia, who was kinda sorta her sister, and her wife. Ew. Ew, ew, ew!
"We need to get up, sleepyhead. You need like, an hour to makeup yourself and I need to sort things out with my pretties." There was some thumping towards the door.
Vicky hopped back, zooming down the corridor backwards until the door swung open. She started walking forwards, attention on the far end of the corridor as if she hadn't heard a thing. She only paused when her eyes met Amelia's. She scanned her sorta-sister up and down, noting that she was only wearing an oversized t-shirt that hid everything important. Also, future Amy had nice legs. "Oh, hey," she said.
Amelia grinned. "Vicky! Good morning."
"You guys are up early," Vicky said. "Anything special going on today?"
"Yup," Amelia said while popping the 'p'. "Taytay and I are going to visit mini-Taylor today."
"That's cool." Vicky too another step until she was closer to Amelia, "Hey, do you intend to talk to Amy?"
"I didn't intend to not talk to her," Amelia said. "Why, is something wrong?" She frowned, the dimples in her cheeks disappearing as her mouth turned down and she leaned in closer.
"Not quite. It's just that this whole thing is really bothering her, you know? I think Amy is under a lot of stress, what with the healing and stuff. I try to help, but I think seeing that things turn out okay would help a lot more, you know?"
Amelia nodded. "I get it. Being a teenager sucked. Being a teenager with superpowers sucked more in some ways."
"Thanks. I'll try to find a time for you two to chat. And hey, maybe we can all hang out? I didn't see you guys carrying lots of clothes and stuff, so we might need to go shopping."
Amelia's smile was dazzling, a bright display that lit up the older girl's face and made her seem so much more alive. "That sounds awesome!"
***
Mark opened the microwave door, took the piping hot bowl of oatmeal out, and walked over to the island in the middle of the kitchen. Most would have to be careful not to burn themselves with something as hot. Most weren't Brutes.
He mixed the oatmeal with one of his spoons then added in a hefty spoonful of honey to the mash. It was only when he was done that he looked up and noticed that there was someone sitting across from him.
Amy, no, Amelia, was staring at him with a look he couldn't quite place. "Do you mind if I make myself a bowl?" she asked.
"Make yourself at home," he said while waving towards the fridge and pantry. Having an extra mouth or two to feed would hardly break the bank, and if he had to go out grocery shopping one more time that week, well, it wouldn't hurt either.
"Thanks, you're a sweetheart," Amelia said. She sauntered over to the cupboards and started searching, returning a minute or two later with a box of Carol's cereal and a carton of milk. She had to return for a bowl, only when she sat back down across from him she also had a frozen chicken which she placed next to her spot at the table.
Mark looked at the chicken. A bit of steam was leaking off the breasts as the ice accumulating on it started to melt in the kitchen's warmer air. "What's that for?" he asked.
"Hrm?" she asked over the sound of whole grain oats tumbling into her bowl. "Oh, well, Taylor and I brought a bunch of things over from home, but we couldn't just carry them around. So we stached them with some of my babies to keep them safe. I want to send a message to have them bring the stuff over here."
He nodded and took a bite of his oatmeal. He watched as she poured milk into her bowl, took a bite of her own, then started poking at the chicken with a knife. It only took a few seconds for her to poke a hole through the plastic covering the fowl.
Mark was fond of nature documentaries. Something about the smooth voice of the narrator calmed him, helped him escape for a while, and nature was always interesting. He had seen some weird things too.
He had never seen the frozen corpse of a bird bubble and hiss, bones moving in odd ways under rapidly thawing flesh. He added some honey to his breakfast while thin strands of what might have been bone poked out of the chicken and made the whole thing lift off the table like a Faberge egg on a delicate stand. Except instead of finely gilded gold and silver encrusted with gems, this egg was made of bone and gristle and covered in nightmares.
Carol walked into the room at a brisk pace, her business suit looking as if she'd just pulled it out of the drier and her hair still glistening with water. She stopped, eyes locking onto the egg on the island before snapped up to look at Amelia then Mark. "What is that?" she asked.
"It's a little baby messenger," Amelia explained. She poked the egg with the back of her spoon and it gurgled like someone who had nasty indigestion. "It's almost ready. Give it a minute."
"Get that thing off my table. In fact, get it out of my house!" Carol said. Then she saw the opened box next to Amelia's bowl. "And don't eat my cereal!"
Amelia stared at Carol for a bit then took another slow bite of her breakfast. "You're very loud," she said.
Mark knew his wife rather well. At least, well enough to know that she was about to explode. "Sweetie, it's okay," he said before turning back to the girl in front of him. "Will your messenger make a mess?"
"Nah, it's perfectly safe," Amelia said after swallowing.
The egg cracked, drawing everyone's eyes to it. The whole thing pulsed once, then twice, like a heart beating to an unknown rhythm.
"What's that?" Amy asked as she walked into the kitchen, eyes locked on the egg. Her normal bed hair was splayed out in all of its glory, like an octopus that had stuck a tentacle into a wall socket.
"Hello, mini-me," Amelia said. She waved with her spoon. "That's a messenger's egg. It's almost ready to hatch."
"It used to be a chicken," Mark added.
"How are you all okay with this?" Carol seethed.
Mark shrugged. "It's not doing anything bad," he said.
"How do you know that?" Carol pointed at the pulsing egg. "For all we know it could be some sort of, mind control thing."
"Can I touch it?" Amy asked. Carol's ire snapped to her as though she was a dog and someone touched her favourite bone. "Just to make sure it's safe," she said.
"Go ahead!" Amelia said. She pulled the egg, pedestal and all, off the table and moved it to the other side so that it was closer to Amy. "Vicky mentioned that you were a healer, right? I guess that's sorta almost close to my power. Do you make healing pods or something?"
"Healing... pods? No, I just touch people and then I can heal them."
Amelia puffed out one cheek. "That sounds lame. At least you can make a ton of cash with that. Man, dad would have freaked if I had that kinda power."
Amy didn't comment except to allow a line of drool to slip out of the corner of her mouth while glazed-over eyes rolled back into her head and she started to twitch. Mark stood up, chair screeching back as he moved towards his daughter, only to stop when Amy gasped, pulled her hand away from the egg, and coughed. "What the fuck?"
"Amy, language!" Carol snapped.
"You can do the whole 'I can see your biology' thing?" Amelia asked. There was an interested gleam in her eye, interested and calculating.
"It's, it's all... what the fuck?" Amy repeated. She stared at the egg with a look that honestly had Mark worried. If she had been staring at a boy that way--or maybe a girl, he supposed--then he would have been a very worried father. "You can't. I mean. And it still has traces of chicken!"
The egg shook, the sound ringing in the room like a the crack of a whip and freezing everyone on the spot. The shell, if that's what it was, wiggled a bit and an x-shaped opening appeared at the top, strands of some viscous liquid connecting the flaps together.
"Ohh, little baby," Amelia cooed as she reached into the egg with one hand and pulled out a ball of wet feathers as big around as Mark's fist. She rushed to the kitchen sink, turned it on with a push of her elbow, and started washing off the thing.
"Don't put that in the sink!" Carol screeched.
"Oh, don't worry so much, it's just a bit of placenta," Amelia said. She backed away from the sink, pulling a towel off the rack to dry off her messenger which she placed on the table next to her breakfast.
The Dallons all stared as a the bundle of cloth moved and, with a wiggle, the messenger pulled itself out of the towel. It was a bird insofar as it had feathers and wings. That's where the similarities ended. The front of the thing was taken up entirely by a mouth with long, blunt teeth and two oversized, terribly human eyes sat on top of the lopsided head.
The thing turned towards Amy. "M-mommy?" it said with a voice that sounded like a child's, a human child's.
Mark pushed his oatmeal to the side. He wasn't hungry anymore.
There was some thumping as someone climbed down the stairs, then Taylor walked into the room like a black whirlwind. "Amelia, you ready to go?" she asked.
"Yup!" Amelia said. She scooped up the bird thing in one hand and followed after her wife as she made her way to the entrance.
"Did it call me mommy?" Amy asked the silent kitchen.
***
We were supposed to get to Taylor this chapter.
Big thank you to ChaoticSky and Eshwartz for the help, and all the fine folks my Discord who popped over to help with this mess.
***
Vicky knew she shouldn't. It was that same little voice in the back of her mind, the one that told her not to take stuff that wasn't hers, the one that told her not to cheat on tests or wink saucily a guys to get what she wanted. It was the same voice that reminded her that there was a bomb Tinker just a door away from her that could do very bad things to her if she was caught.
But the temptation was too strong. She had to listen in, she had to grab that juicy, juicy gossip.
So she leaned forwards, slipper clad feet floating a couple on inches off the ground while her bed-hair covered head came to a hover right next to the door's keyhole. It was her bedroom, after all, she was certainly allowed to spy on anyone using it.
At first the talking that had initially grabbed her attention faded, then she heard an indistinct mumble. "Move your arm, Taytay, I need to get up," Amelia's voice said. It was easy to recognize and easier to mistake for Amy's own 'I'm not awake yet, where's the coffee' voice.
"What time is it?" came Taylor's voice.
"It's... urg, six thirty-ish."
Vicky heard the springs of her bed shifting as someone moved. "Where'd you put my undies?" Amelia asked.
"I dunno," Taylor replied with a yawn.
Vicky processed the question and what, exactly, it meant.
They had slept on her bed. Amelia, who was kinda sorta her sister, and her wife. Ew. Ew, ew, ew!
"We need to get up, sleepyhead. You need like, an hour to makeup yourself and I need to sort things out with my pretties." There was some thumping towards the door.
Vicky hopped back, zooming down the corridor backwards until the door swung open. She started walking forwards, attention on the far end of the corridor as if she hadn't heard a thing. She only paused when her eyes met Amelia's. She scanned her sorta-sister up and down, noting that she was only wearing an oversized t-shirt that hid everything important. Also, future Amy had nice legs. "Oh, hey," she said.
Amelia grinned. "Vicky! Good morning."
"You guys are up early," Vicky said. "Anything special going on today?"
"Yup," Amelia said while popping the 'p'. "Taytay and I are going to visit mini-Taylor today."
"That's cool." Vicky too another step until she was closer to Amelia, "Hey, do you intend to talk to Amy?"
"I didn't intend to not talk to her," Amelia said. "Why, is something wrong?" She frowned, the dimples in her cheeks disappearing as her mouth turned down and she leaned in closer.
"Not quite. It's just that this whole thing is really bothering her, you know? I think Amy is under a lot of stress, what with the healing and stuff. I try to help, but I think seeing that things turn out okay would help a lot more, you know?"
Amelia nodded. "I get it. Being a teenager sucked. Being a teenager with superpowers sucked more in some ways."
"Thanks. I'll try to find a time for you two to chat. And hey, maybe we can all hang out? I didn't see you guys carrying lots of clothes and stuff, so we might need to go shopping."
Amelia's smile was dazzling, a bright display that lit up the older girl's face and made her seem so much more alive. "That sounds awesome!"
***
Mark opened the microwave door, took the piping hot bowl of oatmeal out, and walked over to the island in the middle of the kitchen. Most would have to be careful not to burn themselves with something as hot. Most weren't Brutes.
He mixed the oatmeal with one of his spoons then added in a hefty spoonful of honey to the mash. It was only when he was done that he looked up and noticed that there was someone sitting across from him.
Amy, no, Amelia, was staring at him with a look he couldn't quite place. "Do you mind if I make myself a bowl?" she asked.
"Make yourself at home," he said while waving towards the fridge and pantry. Having an extra mouth or two to feed would hardly break the bank, and if he had to go out grocery shopping one more time that week, well, it wouldn't hurt either.
"Thanks, you're a sweetheart," Amelia said. She sauntered over to the cupboards and started searching, returning a minute or two later with a box of Carol's cereal and a carton of milk. She had to return for a bowl, only when she sat back down across from him she also had a frozen chicken which she placed next to her spot at the table.
Mark looked at the chicken. A bit of steam was leaking off the breasts as the ice accumulating on it started to melt in the kitchen's warmer air. "What's that for?" he asked.
"Hrm?" she asked over the sound of whole grain oats tumbling into her bowl. "Oh, well, Taylor and I brought a bunch of things over from home, but we couldn't just carry them around. So we stached them with some of my babies to keep them safe. I want to send a message to have them bring the stuff over here."
He nodded and took a bite of his oatmeal. He watched as she poured milk into her bowl, took a bite of her own, then started poking at the chicken with a knife. It only took a few seconds for her to poke a hole through the plastic covering the fowl.
Mark was fond of nature documentaries. Something about the smooth voice of the narrator calmed him, helped him escape for a while, and nature was always interesting. He had seen some weird things too.
He had never seen the frozen corpse of a bird bubble and hiss, bones moving in odd ways under rapidly thawing flesh. He added some honey to his breakfast while thin strands of what might have been bone poked out of the chicken and made the whole thing lift off the table like a Faberge egg on a delicate stand. Except instead of finely gilded gold and silver encrusted with gems, this egg was made of bone and gristle and covered in nightmares.
Carol walked into the room at a brisk pace, her business suit looking as if she'd just pulled it out of the drier and her hair still glistening with water. She stopped, eyes locking onto the egg on the island before snapped up to look at Amelia then Mark. "What is that?" she asked.
"It's a little baby messenger," Amelia explained. She poked the egg with the back of her spoon and it gurgled like someone who had nasty indigestion. "It's almost ready. Give it a minute."
"Get that thing off my table. In fact, get it out of my house!" Carol said. Then she saw the opened box next to Amelia's bowl. "And don't eat my cereal!"
Amelia stared at Carol for a bit then took another slow bite of her breakfast. "You're very loud," she said.
Mark knew his wife rather well. At least, well enough to know that she was about to explode. "Sweetie, it's okay," he said before turning back to the girl in front of him. "Will your messenger make a mess?"
"Nah, it's perfectly safe," Amelia said after swallowing.
The egg cracked, drawing everyone's eyes to it. The whole thing pulsed once, then twice, like a heart beating to an unknown rhythm.
"What's that?" Amy asked as she walked into the kitchen, eyes locked on the egg. Her normal bed hair was splayed out in all of its glory, like an octopus that had stuck a tentacle into a wall socket.
"Hello, mini-me," Amelia said. She waved with her spoon. "That's a messenger's egg. It's almost ready to hatch."
"It used to be a chicken," Mark added.
"How are you all okay with this?" Carol seethed.
Mark shrugged. "It's not doing anything bad," he said.
"How do you know that?" Carol pointed at the pulsing egg. "For all we know it could be some sort of, mind control thing."
"Can I touch it?" Amy asked. Carol's ire snapped to her as though she was a dog and someone touched her favourite bone. "Just to make sure it's safe," she said.
"Go ahead!" Amelia said. She pulled the egg, pedestal and all, off the table and moved it to the other side so that it was closer to Amy. "Vicky mentioned that you were a healer, right? I guess that's sorta almost close to my power. Do you make healing pods or something?"
"Healing... pods? No, I just touch people and then I can heal them."
Amelia puffed out one cheek. "That sounds lame. At least you can make a ton of cash with that. Man, dad would have freaked if I had that kinda power."
Amy didn't comment except to allow a line of drool to slip out of the corner of her mouth while glazed-over eyes rolled back into her head and she started to twitch. Mark stood up, chair screeching back as he moved towards his daughter, only to stop when Amy gasped, pulled her hand away from the egg, and coughed. "What the fuck?"
"Amy, language!" Carol snapped.
"You can do the whole 'I can see your biology' thing?" Amelia asked. There was an interested gleam in her eye, interested and calculating.
"It's, it's all... what the fuck?" Amy repeated. She stared at the egg with a look that honestly had Mark worried. If she had been staring at a boy that way--or maybe a girl, he supposed--then he would have been a very worried father. "You can't. I mean. And it still has traces of chicken!"
The egg shook, the sound ringing in the room like a the crack of a whip and freezing everyone on the spot. The shell, if that's what it was, wiggled a bit and an x-shaped opening appeared at the top, strands of some viscous liquid connecting the flaps together.
"Ohh, little baby," Amelia cooed as she reached into the egg with one hand and pulled out a ball of wet feathers as big around as Mark's fist. She rushed to the kitchen sink, turned it on with a push of her elbow, and started washing off the thing.
"Don't put that in the sink!" Carol screeched.
"Oh, don't worry so much, it's just a bit of placenta," Amelia said. She backed away from the sink, pulling a towel off the rack to dry off her messenger which she placed on the table next to her breakfast.
The Dallons all stared as a the bundle of cloth moved and, with a wiggle, the messenger pulled itself out of the towel. It was a bird insofar as it had feathers and wings. That's where the similarities ended. The front of the thing was taken up entirely by a mouth with long, blunt teeth and two oversized, terribly human eyes sat on top of the lopsided head.
The thing turned towards Amy. "M-mommy?" it said with a voice that sounded like a child's, a human child's.
Mark pushed his oatmeal to the side. He wasn't hungry anymore.
There was some thumping as someone climbed down the stairs, then Taylor walked into the room like a black whirlwind. "Amelia, you ready to go?" she asked.
"Yup!" Amelia said. She scooped up the bird thing in one hand and followed after her wife as she made her way to the entrance.
"Did it call me mommy?" Amy asked the silent kitchen.
***
We were supposed to get to Taylor this chapter.
Big thank you to ChaoticSky and Eshwartz for the help, and all the fine folks my Discord who popped over to help with this mess.
Timerider
That guy who really should get out more.
- Location
- The End of the World.
Yes it did.
Feels good, doesn't it?
OverReactionGuy
Verified Sanity
Damn it Amelia, you just made me think of the pod people.
Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
stashed
- Location
- London
Dalon family loses 10 sanity points. Unsurprising.
Jonn Wolfe
(Verified Sarcastic) (Not a Wolf)
- Location
- Beyond Sanity Since 1971
Carol is going to be a twitching mess before this is all over.
This chapter has made me wonder if Amelia ever made Russian nesting dolls abominations.
KaoticOverlord
(Verified Chaotic Overlord)
- Location
- Australia
I'm fucking loving this! 
Zealot_of_Runes
[Verified Ziz-Bomb]
- Location
- New Hampshire, USA
Wait, Raven has a Discord? Where?! I demand a link! So that I can better share my affections for this and every other story! Also, watching Amelia make everyone's life a bit more surreal was worth not getting to Taylor this chapter.
RavensDagger
Officially Infracted Speceist since 2019!
- Location
- Someplace Cold, Canada
I hand out Discord links (well, they're handed out automatically) to people who donate on my Patreon. And of course my beta readers all have links too. The Discord is very spoiler-y, as you can imagine.
Bang 1.8
RavensDagger
Officially Infracted Speceist since 2019!
- Location
- Someplace Cold, Canada
Chapter Eight
She shifted her backpack, trying to find a place where the bag didn't dig into her shoulder and dragged her down. It was heavy, the sort of weight that wasn't only physical, but also stamped onto her mind and soul, like hefting a gun for the first time and realising that the thing could take a life with only a few careless gestures.
She was ready for her morning walk to school, she just didn't know if she was ready for school itself.
Then the front door to her house opened up and a pair of girls walked in.
"No," Taylor said.
One of them, the older Taylor, looked around with an expression so flat it could have passed for Taylor's chest. "Hey Anne," she said.
"Anne?" the other woman asked.
"I had Taylor first, she can go by our middle name," Older Taylor said.
"Why are you here?" Taylor asked. She eyed the newcomer up and down. She was a plain enough girl, maybe a year or so older than her older self. Something about her was familiar but she refocused on her counterpart before trying to figure that out. "And who's that?"
"Oh, my, god," the older girl said.
"Amelia," older Taylor said with a note of warning.
Then Taylor was wrapped in a tight hug, an incoherent squeal of delight going off in her ear like a car that had locked its brakes. "Look how cute she is!" Amelia pulled back and suddenly Taylor found her cheeks being pinched. "You're so chubby-wubby."
Taylor shoved the girl away, not that she moved back much, and rubbed at her cheeks with a hand. "What are you doing here?"
"I told you I'd come by and see you today," the goth said. "And I said I'd bring Amelia. This is Amelia, by the way. I just want to point it out in case your two and a half brain cells were having a hard time puzzling everything out."
"Two and a half?" Amelia asked.
Older Taylor shrugged one shoulder. "She's past me, she has to be at least smarter than average."
Taylor took a long step back and a deep breath. She could feel every bug in a few block's radius buzzing with excitement and anticipation, ready for a fight. She tried to recenter herself, and when that failed she decided that going on the defensive would be her best option. "Can I ask you a few questions, please?" she started.
The two girls shared a look, the sort that communicated a whole slew of ideas with only the barest motion of brow and lip. Finally, Amelia spoke up, her voice calm, restrained, "She's confused, and probably afraid."
Taylor wanted to deny it, but then it wasn't every day that her future bomb tinker self barged into her house with her lesbian wife and that wasn't a sentence Taylor ever thought she was going to think. "Can I take that as a yes?" she asked.
Older Taylor rolled her eyes an expression that conveyed so much annoyance and exasperation that she suspected she went to the same school of bitchiness as Emma. "Yeah, fine. But we should probably head out. Wouldn't want you to miss out on school for our sake."
"You know where I go to school?" Taylor asked, her back straightening before she realized how stupid the question was. "No, nevermind. Okay, fine, you can escort me to school, I guess." The school wasn't to far, and if they wanted to keep their identities safe then they would break off before arriving there.
She was pretty sure that her older self didn't mean her any harm, and if she did, then there wasn't much she could do to stop her. Tinkers were a nightmare to deal with, Tinkers that knew everything there was to know about their target's life and habits were probably worse.
Her older self snorted and Amelia swatted at her arm.
Taylor hadn't seen the two interacting much, but it was becoming more and more obvious who wore the pants in their relationship. For all that her older self was brash and rude she bowed to whatever Amelia said. The fact that her older self was gay was... something Taylor was going to have to think about later.
She was pretty sure she wasn't gay.
Mostly.
Probably?
Taylor followed the two girls out of the house and noticed the key already in the door. She locked it, pulled out the key, and tossed it to her older self only for that Taylor to give it to Amelia.
She had already concluded, after a night spent with very little sleep, that the differences between her current self and her future self were pretty big. For one she wasn't a whiny bitch of an emo, and for another--as much as it pained her to admit it--she wasn't nearly as confident.
Had she been the one in older Taylor's shoes at the bank, there was no way she would have drawn attention to herself.
That, and the obvious difference in their powers, told her a lot. Mostly that they were entirely different people.
Which left one glaring question to be answered.
"Why are you here? Why are you meddling with me?" She tried not to make it sound like an accusation and mostly succeeded.
Amelia was standing uncomfortably close to her side, shoulder brushing against hers every few steps. Even with her admittedly stunted social abilities, Taylor knew that the older girl wanted to be even closer. It made her deeply uncomfortable. "Sweetie, we just wanted to see how you were doing. It's not everyday that you get to meet yourself."
"But I'm not her," Taylor said.
Amelia looked over one shoulder towards her wife, then looked back at Taylor, one eyebrow raised. "Well, obviously. You're much shorter and a bit younger and I'm willing to bet you're oodles cuddlier. Did you see how many spikes Taytay wears?"
"Uh," Taylor said. She shook her head and refocused. "Okay, so you don't care that I'm not her. Fine, whatever. I don't..." She was going to say that she didn't want to have anything to do with them, that she wanted to live her own life. That appealed to her on one level but at the same time there was something of a disconnect there. Taylor Hebert's life was shit on so many levels that introducing something new to it would, probably, not hurt. "I don't want to become her, I want to become me, I guess. That made more sense in my head, I'm sorry."
Amelia pulled Taylor into her chest, slowing down their forward progress while she tried to smother her to death. "You poor thing. Puberty's a bitch, isn't it?"
"That's not what I meant," Taylor protested as she pulled back.
She heard the older Taylor sighed. "Okay, this isn't working. I told you as much, Ames."
"Don't be a sourpuss."
Older Taylor shook her head. "Look, kiddo, we're here for reasons that have nothing to do with you. We're wasting time before the big bad shows up, and when it does we're going to blow it into its constituent atoms, literally. If it were up to me, Amelia and I would be off in a nice hotel minding our own business and giving housekeeping nightmares. But it isn't just up to me. Amelia is a saint, and she wants to help you because you're kinda me, and she also wants to help her younger self because the Dallon family looks like the result of tossing a dozen cats in a bag and then dropping it in a meat grinder."
Taylor took a while to process all of that. "You're Amelia Dallon?" she asked Amelia. "The healer?"
"No, that's Amy, I'm Amelia Lavere. The Amy from your world, this world, was adopted. Still haven't gotten to the bottom of that one."
Taylor nodded slowly. That didn't quite fit her mental image of the famous Panacea, but she didn't follow the cape scene as much as others and had never met the healer. So she skipped to the other important bit of news. They wanted to kill an Endbringer. That was... big. That was important. That was the kind of thing that was so heroic and capital G 'good' that it boggled the mind. "Can I help?" she asked, her mouth moving before she'd even really thought.
"Help? Kick an Endbringer in the sack?" Amelia asked. "Sure!"
"We don't need her help," Older Taylor said. "We did all the work already. We're just waiting for it to show up."
"Don't be that way," Amelia chidded. "Of course you can help."
"Ames, we're not here to be a charity for broken little girls," Older Taylor said.
Taylor narrowed her eyes at her older self. "The only relation you have with charity is the place you pick up your clothes," she sniped.
"Oh!" Amelia said. She bounced on the spot, laughing and clapping her hands. "Burn! Oh, she got you Taytay, she got you!" She punched on Taylor, wrapping her in the third hug of the day. It was more hugging than Taylor had received all year. "I can't wait to introduce you to younger me. You're going to get along like a house on fire."
"Whose side are you on?" Older Taylor asked.
"I'm on Taylor's side," Amelia said as she backed out of the hug and placed both hands on her hips. "I'm on all Taylor's side."
Taylor didn't quite know what she was feeling. There was still a current of antagonism even if her older self didn't know that she was the bug master that had tried to rob the bank. It reminded her a little of the rapport she was building with the Undersiders, what she one day hoped to have with the Wards, maybe.
Then they came to a pause, Amelia the first to stop. Taylor hadn't realised how far they had come until she focused on her swarm and the hundreds of students walking ahead of them. Busses were lined along one side of the road and the chatter of so many bodies in one place was just loud enough to reach them.
They had arrived at Winslow High.
"So, let's go meet your friends," Amelia said.
"My friends?" Taylor repeated. She looked between her doppelganger and Amelia, then back at the school. "Yeah, let's go see my friends."
Taylor spun on one heel and started walking away from Winslow.
***
Amelia is growing into a character all on her own. Which is fun, because that's not at all how I planned for her to be.
She was supposed to be a chirpy and happy anti-Amy, and instead she's got these... layers, for lack of a better word.
On the surface she's a happy young woman that's very much in love with her wife. The kind of insufferable young love that annoys normal people and probably leads to inappropriate amounts of sex all over.
Under that, though, she's got a cold and rather calculating outlook on life. She sees more than you'd suspect and she has a good read on people. What you'd expect of someone raised by a powerful supervillain like Marquis.
And under that, the third layer and the one closest to her heart, is the part of Amelia Lavere that is totally, head over heels in love with Taylor Hebert. I'm talking some Yandere level stuff here, and it taints everything about her.
I didn't expect her to come out the way she has. I thought it would appear like a happy character hiding some deep wounds. Instead she's just so very... wholesome.
Anywho, big thanks to ChoaticSky and Eshwarts
She shifted her backpack, trying to find a place where the bag didn't dig into her shoulder and dragged her down. It was heavy, the sort of weight that wasn't only physical, but also stamped onto her mind and soul, like hefting a gun for the first time and realising that the thing could take a life with only a few careless gestures.
She was ready for her morning walk to school, she just didn't know if she was ready for school itself.
Then the front door to her house opened up and a pair of girls walked in.
"No," Taylor said.
One of them, the older Taylor, looked around with an expression so flat it could have passed for Taylor's chest. "Hey Anne," she said.
"Anne?" the other woman asked.
"I had Taylor first, she can go by our middle name," Older Taylor said.
"Why are you here?" Taylor asked. She eyed the newcomer up and down. She was a plain enough girl, maybe a year or so older than her older self. Something about her was familiar but she refocused on her counterpart before trying to figure that out. "And who's that?"
"Oh, my, god," the older girl said.
"Amelia," older Taylor said with a note of warning.
Then Taylor was wrapped in a tight hug, an incoherent squeal of delight going off in her ear like a car that had locked its brakes. "Look how cute she is!" Amelia pulled back and suddenly Taylor found her cheeks being pinched. "You're so chubby-wubby."
Taylor shoved the girl away, not that she moved back much, and rubbed at her cheeks with a hand. "What are you doing here?"
"I told you I'd come by and see you today," the goth said. "And I said I'd bring Amelia. This is Amelia, by the way. I just want to point it out in case your two and a half brain cells were having a hard time puzzling everything out."
"Two and a half?" Amelia asked.
Older Taylor shrugged one shoulder. "She's past me, she has to be at least smarter than average."
Taylor took a long step back and a deep breath. She could feel every bug in a few block's radius buzzing with excitement and anticipation, ready for a fight. She tried to recenter herself, and when that failed she decided that going on the defensive would be her best option. "Can I ask you a few questions, please?" she started.
The two girls shared a look, the sort that communicated a whole slew of ideas with only the barest motion of brow and lip. Finally, Amelia spoke up, her voice calm, restrained, "She's confused, and probably afraid."
Taylor wanted to deny it, but then it wasn't every day that her future bomb tinker self barged into her house with her lesbian wife and that wasn't a sentence Taylor ever thought she was going to think. "Can I take that as a yes?" she asked.
Older Taylor rolled her eyes an expression that conveyed so much annoyance and exasperation that she suspected she went to the same school of bitchiness as Emma. "Yeah, fine. But we should probably head out. Wouldn't want you to miss out on school for our sake."
"You know where I go to school?" Taylor asked, her back straightening before she realized how stupid the question was. "No, nevermind. Okay, fine, you can escort me to school, I guess." The school wasn't to far, and if they wanted to keep their identities safe then they would break off before arriving there.
She was pretty sure that her older self didn't mean her any harm, and if she did, then there wasn't much she could do to stop her. Tinkers were a nightmare to deal with, Tinkers that knew everything there was to know about their target's life and habits were probably worse.
Her older self snorted and Amelia swatted at her arm.
Taylor hadn't seen the two interacting much, but it was becoming more and more obvious who wore the pants in their relationship. For all that her older self was brash and rude she bowed to whatever Amelia said. The fact that her older self was gay was... something Taylor was going to have to think about later.
She was pretty sure she wasn't gay.
Mostly.
Probably?
Taylor followed the two girls out of the house and noticed the key already in the door. She locked it, pulled out the key, and tossed it to her older self only for that Taylor to give it to Amelia.
She had already concluded, after a night spent with very little sleep, that the differences between her current self and her future self were pretty big. For one she wasn't a whiny bitch of an emo, and for another--as much as it pained her to admit it--she wasn't nearly as confident.
Had she been the one in older Taylor's shoes at the bank, there was no way she would have drawn attention to herself.
That, and the obvious difference in their powers, told her a lot. Mostly that they were entirely different people.
Which left one glaring question to be answered.
"Why are you here? Why are you meddling with me?" She tried not to make it sound like an accusation and mostly succeeded.
Amelia was standing uncomfortably close to her side, shoulder brushing against hers every few steps. Even with her admittedly stunted social abilities, Taylor knew that the older girl wanted to be even closer. It made her deeply uncomfortable. "Sweetie, we just wanted to see how you were doing. It's not everyday that you get to meet yourself."
"But I'm not her," Taylor said.
Amelia looked over one shoulder towards her wife, then looked back at Taylor, one eyebrow raised. "Well, obviously. You're much shorter and a bit younger and I'm willing to bet you're oodles cuddlier. Did you see how many spikes Taytay wears?"
"Uh," Taylor said. She shook her head and refocused. "Okay, so you don't care that I'm not her. Fine, whatever. I don't..." She was going to say that she didn't want to have anything to do with them, that she wanted to live her own life. That appealed to her on one level but at the same time there was something of a disconnect there. Taylor Hebert's life was shit on so many levels that introducing something new to it would, probably, not hurt. "I don't want to become her, I want to become me, I guess. That made more sense in my head, I'm sorry."
Amelia pulled Taylor into her chest, slowing down their forward progress while she tried to smother her to death. "You poor thing. Puberty's a bitch, isn't it?"
"That's not what I meant," Taylor protested as she pulled back.
She heard the older Taylor sighed. "Okay, this isn't working. I told you as much, Ames."
"Don't be a sourpuss."
Older Taylor shook her head. "Look, kiddo, we're here for reasons that have nothing to do with you. We're wasting time before the big bad shows up, and when it does we're going to blow it into its constituent atoms, literally. If it were up to me, Amelia and I would be off in a nice hotel minding our own business and giving housekeeping nightmares. But it isn't just up to me. Amelia is a saint, and she wants to help you because you're kinda me, and she also wants to help her younger self because the Dallon family looks like the result of tossing a dozen cats in a bag and then dropping it in a meat grinder."
Taylor took a while to process all of that. "You're Amelia Dallon?" she asked Amelia. "The healer?"
"No, that's Amy, I'm Amelia Lavere. The Amy from your world, this world, was adopted. Still haven't gotten to the bottom of that one."
Taylor nodded slowly. That didn't quite fit her mental image of the famous Panacea, but she didn't follow the cape scene as much as others and had never met the healer. So she skipped to the other important bit of news. They wanted to kill an Endbringer. That was... big. That was important. That was the kind of thing that was so heroic and capital G 'good' that it boggled the mind. "Can I help?" she asked, her mouth moving before she'd even really thought.
"Help? Kick an Endbringer in the sack?" Amelia asked. "Sure!"
"We don't need her help," Older Taylor said. "We did all the work already. We're just waiting for it to show up."
"Don't be that way," Amelia chidded. "Of course you can help."
"Ames, we're not here to be a charity for broken little girls," Older Taylor said.
Taylor narrowed her eyes at her older self. "The only relation you have with charity is the place you pick up your clothes," she sniped.
"Oh!" Amelia said. She bounced on the spot, laughing and clapping her hands. "Burn! Oh, she got you Taytay, she got you!" She punched on Taylor, wrapping her in the third hug of the day. It was more hugging than Taylor had received all year. "I can't wait to introduce you to younger me. You're going to get along like a house on fire."
"Whose side are you on?" Older Taylor asked.
"I'm on Taylor's side," Amelia said as she backed out of the hug and placed both hands on her hips. "I'm on all Taylor's side."
Taylor didn't quite know what she was feeling. There was still a current of antagonism even if her older self didn't know that she was the bug master that had tried to rob the bank. It reminded her a little of the rapport she was building with the Undersiders, what she one day hoped to have with the Wards, maybe.
Then they came to a pause, Amelia the first to stop. Taylor hadn't realised how far they had come until she focused on her swarm and the hundreds of students walking ahead of them. Busses were lined along one side of the road and the chatter of so many bodies in one place was just loud enough to reach them.
They had arrived at Winslow High.
"So, let's go meet your friends," Amelia said.
"My friends?" Taylor repeated. She looked between her doppelganger and Amelia, then back at the school. "Yeah, let's go see my friends."
Taylor spun on one heel and started walking away from Winslow.
***
Amelia is growing into a character all on her own. Which is fun, because that's not at all how I planned for her to be.
She was supposed to be a chirpy and happy anti-Amy, and instead she's got these... layers, for lack of a better word.
On the surface she's a happy young woman that's very much in love with her wife. The kind of insufferable young love that annoys normal people and probably leads to inappropriate amounts of sex all over.
Under that, though, she's got a cold and rather calculating outlook on life. She sees more than you'd suspect and she has a good read on people. What you'd expect of someone raised by a powerful supervillain like Marquis.
And under that, the third layer and the one closest to her heart, is the part of Amelia Lavere that is totally, head over heels in love with Taylor Hebert. I'm talking some Yandere level stuff here, and it taints everything about her.
I didn't expect her to come out the way she has. I thought it would appear like a happy character hiding some deep wounds. Instead she's just so very... wholesome.
Anywho, big thanks to ChoaticSky and Eshwarts
Jonn Wolfe
(Verified Sarcastic) (Not a Wolf)
- Location
- Beyond Sanity Since 1971
I love this story.
Now, I wanna see Amelia and Older Taylor rip Emma and Sophia to shreds.
They're gonna flip when they see Bakuda.
Now, I wanna see Amelia and Older Taylor rip Emma and Sophia to shreds.
They're gonna flip when they see Bakuda.
OverReactionGuy
Verified Sanity
So the only reason she wants to kill the Simurgh is because the Simurgh looked at Taylor funny. I get it, I get it.