Chapter 13 - Emmortal Combat
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TCGM
(Unverified God/Space Snek)
- Location
- Avalon
Fourth
Chapter 13
Emmortal Combat
Chapter 13
Emmortal Combat
I didn't even get the chance to get out of bed before Emma teleported downstairs. I heard the front door yank open and a confused Emma ask "Wha-"
And then a shockwave rocked the house.
I blinked. The fuck?
Before I could process what was happening, Emma roared out, a sound manipulation Shard giving her voice far more carrying capacity than it should have. Her extremely amplified voice shattered the morning calm. It echoed across the city as if a great beast had awoken.
"YOU BITCH!"
Her bellow was jarring, a sound that promised consequences. I cringed. Yelling that loud in the early morning wasn't just a friendly greeting; it was a declaration of war that even the sleepy neighbors might catch. It did not sound good. [It's the very early morning, which is not a time to be yelling so loud half the city can hear you, Emma!]
She didn't even bother to reply, just sending me what amounted to communications metadata that she'd seen the message.
"Not that I'm inclined to save your tormentor and ex sister," Ziz piped up from beside me, still cuddling with the giant owl I'd given her, "but Emma is currently trying to kill… Emma."
It took me a second to process that. "...Oh."
I had a hundred different ways of moving my body or otherwise interrupting what I then knew to be happening just there, on offer from my copy of Eidolon's searching Shard, and yet… I was finding it hard to care. My limbs felt heavy, my mind clouded by the same disorienting mix of emotions I'd experienced during my recent days. Was I even ready to intervene?
I was still getting over the reality of Sophia and what she… what the PRT thought she was, but still.
I should be stopping this, right?
I could also just send a direct command to my Friendbringer and she would have to comply. I never wanted to really use that command pathway on any of them… but this kind of situation called for it.
So why couldn't I bring myself to do… anything?
Ziz pulled her head up and peeked at me out of one eye. "...Are you going to stop her?" she asked, genuinely curious.
"I don't know," was the most honest answer I could give. I was extremely confused from the dream I'd just woken up from. My mind was still going over the data burst. And… I still didn't even know if I wanted to save her at all. The remnants of my dream still lingered - a fragmented cascade of data and half-formed memories.
...Wait, how could a dream give me a data bur-
Ziz just shrugged and laid back down, interrupting my thought process. "I'm driven to be a hero, not an idiot."
She had a point. Was Emma even worth saving? Sophia was just a bully, a thug. But Emma…
I had a new Emma. I didn't need the old one. And mine was better in every way.
Still…
"You're going," Ziz interjected.
I looked at her and ignored the rumble of the ground underneath my house. "Why?" I asked her.
Ziz lifted a wing out of nowhere and pointed out the direction I felt my Emma in. "Because 'Bad' Emma's still alive while facing the fourth most powerful person on the planet and you want to know why."
My eyes bugged out. I immediately turned my Shard senses towards the fight.
What I found shocked me to my core.
Emma was facing Emma, both flying, smoke and steam drifting off their forms.
Clothes untouched.
Most importantly though, they both had the same orange glow around their bodies and human Emma wasn't dead.
Suddenly my dreams came flooding back to me, the data burst crystallizing into a solid, perfectly ordered cluster of information and archived memories, and I remembered those last words it ended on.
I am sorry.
That wasn't my voice. It wasn't my mom's. It wasn't any of my Friendbringers', nor was it the voice of that otherworldly entity that had caused my new existence in the first place. No, she'd definitely been involved in my dream, but her voice was very distinct. It had far too many over- and undertones to be a match to the apology.
Then with the talk about a core, and whatever Genesis was?
I….. I think the apology was Queen Administrator's!
"Ooohhhhh this is so not good," I lamented, while the Emmas charged at each other again.
High in the skies, the two versions of Emma traded blows. "YOU TRIED TO KILL MY SISTER!" Emma bellowed, driving a punch into Emma's face which took the sound barrier as a suggestion.
"Our sister, she's ours!" Emma refuted, returning the energy right back at her counterpart, her voice raised in painful contradiction. The fight grew savage - a punch here, some hair pulling there.
Emma brushed off the clumsy attempt at a response and delivered a haymaker with both her fists to Emma's back. The human screamed in pain as she was punted straight down into the old asphalt that made up the Trainyard's outdoor pavement. "SHE'S NOT YOUR SISTER! YOU GAVE UP THAT RIGHT WHEN YOU SPAT ON HER EXISTENCE!"
Crawling back out of the dirt she'd eaten alongside remnants of asphalt, the fallen Emma struggled back to her feet. She stood tall and glared at her furious twin. "I was trying to make her strong!" She waved up at the still flying girl halfheartedly. "And it clearly worked."
That was the wrong thing to say, because Emma got a dangerous look in her eyes. "STRONG?!" she screamed. "YOU TORTURED HER! YOU BETRAYED HER, YOU BETRAYED MOM, AND YOU BETRAYED ME!"
She held up a hand and began gathering an ever brightening pulse of solid orange light within it.
"YOU TRIED TO FUCKING KILL HER! I DON'T HAVE HALF AN OUNCE OF THE STRENGTH TAYLOR HAS AND NEITHER DO YOU, AND THAT WAS BEFORE YOU DID ANYTHING!"
Emma winced at the harsh light cast from her twin's gathering attack and held up her own hand, mirroring it. "I know!" she called up, flinching at the sudden spike of pain one of her ribs sent her. "But you're living proof I was right!"
Emma's eye twitched, the charged air shivered as her attack intensified, and she stopped holding back.
Before Emma could even blink, the pulse in the flier's hand lashed out and burned her into the asphalt. The rock underneath, and the loose gravel, immediately melted into a bed of lava.
It wasn't her first jaunt into a pool of molten rock, but the other times she wasn't being pressed down into it by a constant bombardment of intense plasma. It was starting to tax her transfer rate.
The beam ended, and just as Emma was about to start attempting to extract herself from the small puddle of lava she found herself in, her own face appeared right in front of her.
Snarling.
"You want strength?" Emma's twin asked, eyes glowing a sickly orange. She reached up and grasped her chin in a vice like grip, pushing her down into the lava. Her voice was deadly still, soft and quiet instead of the overwhelming boom it had been before. "I'll show you how wrong you are."
Her hand began to heat up. It quickly went past flesh melting levels and eclipsed plasma ignition a moment later. The air around them started to ignite in turn, all while Emma struggled in the otherworldly grip and control of whatever Taylor had made to replace her.
She saw her own face twisted into an image intended to induce fear.
It bothered her tremendously. And, you know, also scared the shit out of her.
But it was the guilt that rose up that got to her. Especially the guilt. The guilt was always the worst.
Emma had to practice those looks in the mirror to pull them off. She wasn't very good at being malicious naturally. If she was honest with herself, she wasn't very good after training, either.
That's why she knew exactly what Taylor had seen. Her, like she saw herself now.
A monster.
She started to cry, but the tears evaporated in the plasma surrounding them. The other Emma brought her face a little closer to her and sneered.
"Aww, what's that?" she cooed mockingly, a fake pout to her lips. "Not stwong enough?!"
Another burst of temperature increase erupted across them.
Emma's clothes did not survive. Her power was barely able to keep her intact in the overwhelming inferno. Of course the other Emma didn't have either of those problems, and a small part of Emma not focused on survival remarked on just how unfair that was.
Emma's twin was pristine, of course.
Except for the ugly scowl on her face, marring the person who she used to be.
"You're…" she gasped, choking on the flames, "a- a monster."
Emma's face leaned in ever closer and she locked her eyes on the originals. "Oh Emma," she faux sweetly said, "this isn't me. A monster? That's what you are." She closed her eyes and shook her head, then opened them and smiled crookedly. "I'm just channeling Taylor's feelings for you. She's watching us, after all."
Emma's eyes went wide and she sobbed harder. "She's- she can see this?!"
Emma nodded, uncaring. "She can see the whole planet if she wants to. She's watching us right now." She leaned closer and almost kissed her twin, the swelteringly hot air being blown onto Emma's lips not helping her power in the least. "And she's doing nothi-"
"EMMA, STOP!" Taylor's voice interjected from the side, cutting off the monster from completing her sentence.
Taylor appeared almost like a specter, hovering at the periphery of the swirling heat and liquid fire.
The fight and drive seemed to vanish from Emma's eyes, their glow immediately dissipating. Her grip on Emma's chin slackened and the intense heat began to recede along with the plasma that their immediate surroundings had become. "What?" she asked normally, no evil face to be seen, "but!-"
Taylor crossed her arms, only barely visible through the slowly shrinking plasma maelstrom. "We are heroes, Emma!" she flatly declared, frowning. "Heroes don't do…"
She gestured around to the then melted to the ground Trainyard… or what was left of it. Emma and Emma were standing knee deep in a pool of boiling, bubbling molten rock, metal, and who knew what else. Taylor hovered over it, uncaring about the laws of physics, but she did not seem impressed with the pool either.
"This."
Emma sobbed again and took in the blazing light radiating from her sister. "T-Taylor-" she began to sputter, but found herself cut off.
Taylor looked at her with obvious disdain, but also somehow compassion. After everything she did to the taller… and now that Emma's attention was on her, much curvier girl, she didn't understand how she could possibly hold that for her, but was relieved to see it.
"I'm saying this out loud for your benefit, Emma," Taylor tersely informed her, arms still crossed.
Emma opened her mouth to ask what, but wasn't able to say anything after what Taylor said next.
"Photon Heatsink, disengage Ascension Protocols and give full control to host."
Emma didn't understand what exactly Taylor said, but she did notice when her power seemingly unlocked. The limitations she'd found it to have all vanished and suddenly she was capable of so much… more.
Her power also withdrew from her, in a way, and the constant light she saw around Parahumans… dulled. Lost its allure. Her mind cleared for the first time since she triggered in that alley, a fog she'd never even known was there lifting away.
She stared at Taylor, the sight of her sister looking very unhappy with her, and felt the presence of her twin like a lead weight.
…What did I do?!
The memories of exactly what she'd perpetuated, the torture and misery and anguish she'd inflicted upon her sister, rushed in. For the first time in a long time, it was entirely untainted by her own power. Overwhelmed by guilt, she collapsed to her knees in the molten lava.
"I'm… a monster," she whimpered, as a new wave of sobbed tears rushed forth from her eyes. The torrent of memories built until a crescendo of misery descended upon her… and she wailed.
...Aaand she started crying.
Great.
"Pick her up, take her home, and get her, or make her, some clothes," I commanded my Emma.
The authority in my voice cut through the lingering chaos. Despite the surreal battleground and the remnants of her cataclysmic power, my version of Emma hesitated only a heartbeat before obeying.
She was stunned by everything that had just happened, but her Shard-enhanced mind turned over it quickly. "Taylor, the hell?" she asked me. She did near instantly pick up the wailing, sobbing form of my ex… or who the fuck knew, now, sister, to comply with at least part of the command. "Photon Heatsink, that's her Shard-"
I cut her off by glaring daggers at her, feeling just the tiniest bit of satisfaction when she flinched. "Long story that I'm still trying to work out. Likely some extremely heavily modified Shard drives are responsible." I intensified my glare and pointed back across the city towards my house. "Go get her some clothes and take care of her. We will talk about this," I finished, waving around to the utterly flattened and melted Trainyard, "later."
Emma looked like she wanted to protest, but one look at my very unimpressed face had her bowing her head. "Yes, Taylor," she acquiesced, "I'll see you at home."
A moment later she pulled her and her original through a portal to my living room, and it was just me hovering above what looked more like a volcanic caldera than a rail yard.
"What a mess," I lamented, sighing. I shook my head at her actions. "Emma's never gonna stop making trouble for me, is she?"
Internally, I was torn. On one hand, Emma had been right, she was channeling my emotions about... Emma. Into trying to kill Emma.
The lack of easy distinction was already confusing, and it would just get worse.
Even now I had several threads dedicated to working out the negative feelings I had about and towards her. Since, well, clearly I fucking had to or else one of the weapons of planetary destruction linked to me would just go off on their own and try to work them out for me if I didn't. My anger for this particular destruction engine's defiant recklessness burned pretty hot, but not as hot as what I felt towards the original Emma.
Working out my emotions for her involved engaging in acts of violence against simulated targets, or in the case of the thread dedicated to repeatedly reducing the regenerating field of Emma clones (sans brains) on my Earth's Moon to ash every few seconds, not so simulated targets. In the millions.
I had a lot of anger for her. A whole heaping fuckton. And Emotional Management Shards were just that, management. They apparently did exactly jack shit for actually resolving the issues causing those emotions that needed to be managed.
There were zero therapy Shards. Or at least none that I'd found or encountered. Dad hadn't given me any, which one would assume he would if he had them, and the lack of their existence as a whole would explain Zion's less than stellar way of dealing with his wife's death.
And yes, his wife. Not my mom. If my dreams were to be believed, the echoes of the Shard I had taken over, then Eden was never my mom.
Those dreams had proven accurate with Emma, so I was inclined to start considering the possibility. Occam's Razor and all that. Usually that would present Eden being my mom as the logical assumption… but as of my new 'memories', the more complicated answer ironically enough now had less assumptions.
And that was the other side of myself, torn across the indecisive void I now found myself within. Emma… the moment I'd reset her Shard, her behavior had changed. She regretted what she'd done, she dropped to her knees, hell she was still wailing on my couch in the arms of a reluctant twin for crying out loud!
Could I really blame her for anything if it had all been the work of a Shard? Not even an enemy one, at that! Two of them, in this case, my own and the one my mom and my Shard hand crafted for Emma in the first place.
Now that was a shocker. My mom was not only a Parahuman, she was aware of my dad's true identity and one of the most infamous rogues in Brockton Bay history.
And, oh yeah, apparently the one that helped Administrator… or Queen Administrator, put together and activate what might as well be a superweapon level hacking and administrator's suite for Shards themselves.
I wasn't Eden's superweapon. I was my mom's.
Armsmaster was the first to get to what remained of the Trainyard. He found me hovering above it, clearly conflicted about his presence, and with my arms crossed.
With my previous impression of him, the false one, I'd have expected him to really screw up this situation. Instead, he tensed, examined me, then the still cooling blend of metal, asphalt, rock, and sandglass, before sighing.
He very pointedly stepped away from his frankly pretty awesome motorcycle and towards me. He did not bring his weapon.
"What happened here, Taylor?" he asked. Clearly, calmly, and with no room for misunderstanding.
I studied him for a few long seconds. I couldn't really figure out how I was going to answer that. Armsmaster didn't have the background needed to understand what the hell was going on with me. Shit, I barely knew. And he was also the leader of the Protectorate. The same people who called SOPHIA a Hero.
But. He didn't seem angry with me. And his first words weren't a demand to know what I'd done to the BITCH, or why, though a few Shards informed me he fully intended to.
Whether because of my power or because of his duty and honor, I couldn't tell. And it didn't really matter, in the end. He'd proven I was right to trust him personally before. My desperate need for a rock in all this, which my Dad was trying to give me to be fair, and experience as a true Hero (which my Dad couldn't) drove me to open up to him.
"My ex best friend and the Friendbringer I made on accident using a younger version of her had a fight."
Armsmaster's response to that was kind of obvious in hindsight.
"...What?"
I sighed and shook my head. "Come on, I'll explain properly," I declared while I gestured at a section of lava nearby him to force it to cool and form into heavy stone-metal mix chairs. "At least until the rest of the Protectorate get here."
Credit to him, he didn't flinch even when the chair flowed into form and cooled off with a theatrical flair of steam right in front of him.
"...Thank you for treating me like a friend, given… certain individuals and your experiences with them," he stated after I basically poured out my heart to him. He was a surprisingly good listener. "I hope you don't hold this over the Protectorate's head for very long."
I quirked an eyebrow as the PRT sirens drew near. "For very long? Shouldn't you be pushing me for not at all?"
Armsmaster grimaced and crossed his arms, clunking his suit against itself. "However accidental, we still screwed up. I screwed up."
My other eyebrow joined my first. "And you take that personally?"
"Of course," he declared.
I looked askance at him, amused. He really is just like everybody else, huh? "Has anyone ever told you that you take on way too much responsibility?"
"Many. Hundreds of times. But the way I see it is, if I don't, who will? And whether I like it or not, Taylor, I seem to be an icon. You yourself look up to me, and you're apparently one of the most powerful people on this planet. I would be remiss in my duty as a hero, no, as a thinking being if I allowed myself to not take that faith in me seriously."
I was stunned. This guy… damn, there goes my hero worship skyrocketing again. "It's stuff like that which makes us look up to you," I mumbled, looking away to try and hide the blush on my face. My tone softened as my eyes drifted to the approaching vans - the Protectorate's armored presence signaling the arrival of a new responsibility. "And here comes the party, I guess."
"Don't worry, Taylor," Armsmaster declared, though the teasing smirk on his lips told me he had definitely heard my muttering, "it'll be fine."
Armsmaster and I stood side by side to watch the PRT vans squeal into position around us, doors opening already and dozens of armored officers leaping out in full gear. I spied Miss Militia, Dauntless, and another Parahuman I hadn't yet nabbed a Shard from exiting a couple of the vans. While I wasn't exactly in the mood, a Shard's a Shard, so I copied hers too.
And added it to my quickly growing review list.
After that, and checking to make sure nobody had detected what I'd done, I turned and looked up at the stoic hero by my side, frowning. The PRT were on course for us, and although they didn't look threatening, I could practically smell the fear and nervousness leaking off them with my body's senses alone, much less with the many, many Shard-side sensors I had tuned on my body's location.
I didn't like where this was going, and the worry that I'd have to get serious was climbing. "How much do I need to worry about holding back against these guys?" I asked, but he knew what I really meant.
"None," he declared, shocking me, but not as much as what he said next. "They're not here for you. We were initially deployed to find out who was screaming across the city at the top of their lungs before we got rerouted to this area to check the… fireworks."
...Did he just make a pun?
The knowing grin on his face said yes. His total lack of reaction otherwise said no.
Damn. He's good.
His words were proven when the officers didn't pay me much mind other than a few nodding my way. The brave ones, anyways. Most of them gave me and Armsmaster a wide berth. If they did come close, the only thing that happened was them moving around Armsmaster's suited form, his bike, and our chairs to then go spread around the still cooling lava lake.
Miss Militia and the Parahuman I didn't know headed towards us while Dauntless took to the air, slowly, probably to get some kind of aerial view. I idly upgraded his power's increments to help him fly faster, and got a small giggle as I was the only one who could really see him tumble around at a higher speed in the air until he got a handle on it. It was basically the middle of the night after all.
He sent me a dirty, yet thankful look.
I gave him a smug salute. Lisa was great for practicing those on.
Armsmaster continued filling me in like he hadn't seen me act my age or heard Dauntless report in his power boost. "Director Renick was very clear. We are to, and I'm only telling you this because my opinion is you'll find out anyways, 'please for the love of this planet don't piss her off any more than we already have on accident, and if you have any ideas on how to ask her for help you do not need my approval.' I may be paraphrasing. He was quite lengthy about it."
… He was teasing me. Again.
What is it with the male authority figures in my life all automatically deciding to mess with me? Do I have something on my face?!
Only after a moment, and a giggle from Miss Militia, did I realize I'd grumbled that out loud.
"Yes," Armsmaster unhelpfully replied. "Your face when we do is adorably annoyed."
"...That-that was rhetorical!"
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