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Fragments (Worm Altpower)
- Thread starter Telegraph Nine
- Start date
- Location
- My parent's basement
If we're going with composite names, I definitely think Shardstorm could be cool. Bit of worldplay going on, and also, well, it's descriptive.
- Location
- here
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Short answer: no.
Long answer: Taylor is both a Breaker and a Regenerater. Breaker means that Taylor.exe is running QA's hardware at least some of the time, not on her squishy human brain. Regenerator means that her body is being repaired directly by her shard, not by her own natural healing. As a result, the concept of death is actually kinda fuzzy, here.
In theory, QA is entirely capable of rebuilding Taylor from basically anything. She's safe sitting in another dimension, she has a scan of Taylor's body to work from, and she's got nothing but time. In practice, Taylor 'dies' when the "host deceased: terminate connection" flag is tripped in Queen Administrator's programming.
What exactly that flag is tied to is a little vague. I'm currently working off the idea that it has to do with widespread cell death/necrosis (for example due to massive blood loss), but if any readers with actual medical knowledge want to weigh in I'm more than happy to listen.
bms111
Just a guy with internet.
Regarding the name vote, it is really impossible to say which would be best without having any deeper idea of Taylor's thoughts regarding her past, present, and future.
Your line about "the flag is only tripped by widespread cell death etc" made me wonder, why would that cell death not count as something for QA to fix? In fact, all signs point to the possibility that, if something were to happen where her lungs were to fill with blood, then she would suffocate. However, because of how her regen works, any damage or cell death that would result from a lack of oxygen would be regarded by QA as "just more work to do." So eventually, it becomes a situation where, metaphorically, QA is walking in circles, trying to clean the floor with perpetually dirty shoes leaving tracks behind her.
Edit:
I also have to wonder how stringent it is with "this fragment came from here." It is possible it is very strict. I cannot recall from the scene where she shredded the shower curtain, did her fragments become sharp when or after she shattered?
Also, is there a reason why she cannot just ... not "flesh-ify" parts of her that has pieces missing? We already know that she can break just her arm, or head, etc. What stops her from just going around all day with the hidden small parts of her arms or legs flying around, the size of fingernails, giving her constant use of her power?
And if part of her is locked in a box (and I think she has relative spacial awareness?) why not just ... leave that part a shard, instead of making it flesh?
Your line about "the flag is only tripped by widespread cell death etc" made me wonder, why would that cell death not count as something for QA to fix? In fact, all signs point to the possibility that, if something were to happen where her lungs were to fill with blood, then she would suffocate. However, because of how her regen works, any damage or cell death that would result from a lack of oxygen would be regarded by QA as "just more work to do." So eventually, it becomes a situation where, metaphorically, QA is walking in circles, trying to clean the floor with perpetually dirty shoes leaving tracks behind her.
Edit:
I also have to wonder how stringent it is with "this fragment came from here." It is possible it is very strict. I cannot recall from the scene where she shredded the shower curtain, did her fragments become sharp when or after she shattered?
Also, is there a reason why she cannot just ... not "flesh-ify" parts of her that has pieces missing? We already know that she can break just her arm, or head, etc. What stops her from just going around all day with the hidden small parts of her arms or legs flying around, the size of fingernails, giving her constant use of her power?
And if part of her is locked in a box (and I think she has relative spacial awareness?) why not just ... leave that part a shard, instead of making it flesh?
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Happy Hampster
This is a Multipost
- Location
- Perth, Western Australia
I feel her limits are whatever she has yet to learn and she has the same death condition as Alexandria E.G. when the host thinks it is dead.
- Location
- USA
I was looking at pictures of rainbow obsidian and was hoping that her breaker form had at least some similar qualities. Or that her shards were thin enough to let light through and refract it.
I think onyx is probably the best name so far. Skygazer is good, though I worry it's too long. That said, we do have Armsmaster, so she wouldn't be the only one. I wonder if all capes with longer names have a nickname they go by in combat situations. I bet 'Glory Girl' gets shortened to 'Glory' and that 'Clockblocker' gets shortened to 'Clock' often in combat
Wait so if QA doesn't know how to do Brute powers why did it bother in the first place?
I mean, Aegis is literally *right there*, a few blocks over, I can't believe a core shard such as QA couldn't just politely knock on Aegis' shard' window and ask it for help (a ping)
- Location
- New Zealand
Because QA isn't about brute powers. There are many other shards to defensive tactics, QA is always about 'controls many minions'.
Kamerad Hans
Incorporeal entity partial to creative writing
- Location
- The Internet
Shards can pick what powers to give out, to a point. Certain trigger events, and the conditions around them, result in different types of powers.
For instance, Imp triggered with a Stranger Power while trying to hide from gangers. Miss Militia was being used as a child soldier in the middle east when she triggered with a power to manifest any firearm, directly in her hand.
In canon, the best fit power for Taylor was a Master power, whereas here the best fit power seems to have been a Brute power. Effectively, the trigger event forced QA's 'hand' into bothering to make a brute power, compared to the master power it made for Taylor in canon.
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- Location
- here
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Aside from 'can't be permanently killed, ever' probably counting as the kind of unrestricted power healthy Shards really aren't supposed to hand out? The Entities aren't intelligent exactly in a human way, but I think they've probably figured out how to stop Shards from getting stuck in infinite loops.
Well, unless the parts around the missing piece are also obsidian, she'll still have a bleeding hole in her body. One that won't regenerate, because the missing piece is still considered 'part' of her. I don't think her power would let her do that for safety reasons, though.
If you're talking about turning a patch of, say, her bicep to crystal and then removing little chunks from the center... that might be a possibility once she's gotten more practice and QA likes her more. Right now her partial conversion thing is more 'extremities in' than 'pick any section of your body with no limits.'
I could be wrong, but I think pinging a shard that's not nearby during the trigger would be against the rules? I mean, we certainly don't see parahumans passing out and having trigger visions because of someone on the other side of the city very often. I'm sure QA could if she wanted to, but Taylor was literally in the process of triggering. QA doesn't care about Taylor enough to bend the rules for her yet.
You're basically on point, but one tiny nitpick correction: Taylor had a primarily Breaker trigger. If it had genuinely been a full-fledged brute-only trigger QA wouldn't have attached, she'd just keep waiting for a different moment down the line. What basically happened from QA's perspective is this:
- Oh, hey, this works! I can do a power based on this, no problem! Connecting...
- Huh, this is some interesting data from [Phase Transition]. Hmm. Yeah, I can definitely use this. It's giving me some cool ideas.
- All done! Now I just need to run this past [How To Not Kill Host Species #436548] and—
- Fuck.
- She's gonna die the first time she uses it, isn't she. Okay, can I make her immune to her own powers? No. Make her powers not effect others of her species? No. Insulate her from forces occurring as a result of— no, crap. That's not gonna work either.
- Can't start over from scratch, the connection's already established. I need to make it so getting hurt doesn't kill her. Warrior dammit. This is so not my thing.
- [Deep Sigh]
- Guess I'm doing this the hard way...
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- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My understanding is that "pinging" in the sense of "trigger event vision knocks parahumans out" and "pinging" in the sense of "power expression is influenced by another shard" are different phenomena. Scub's trigger event knocked out Taylor, Lisa, and presumably some of the Merchant capes, but you don't see any influence from them in his power.
The vision thing seems to be based on physical proximity, or perhaps line-of-sight, though the limits are far from clear. The influence thing seems to be based on emotional proximity, eg, Vicky's power expression was influenced by her parents' and boyfriend's powers. They both involve shard communication, presumably, but they contact different groups of shards and do different things.
- Location
- here
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. That's the not the interpretation I've been working from, but it sounds like an entirely valid reading.
The version I've been basing this on is that the whole 'passing out with a trigger vision' thing represents the activating shard accessing nearby shards and drawing on them for information. The shard can then choose either to incorporate that information in the connection it's forming, or to discard it and do its own thing. So in the Scrub example, his shard could have incorporated features from Lisa/Taylor/etc, but decided not to.
As for Victoria's trigger, I was under the impression that her family and boyfriend actually were nearby in the stands when she triggered. I could be wrong, though.
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- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Which is why I talked about Scrub's power when arguing that the two are separate, not Victoria's. (I brought up Vicky and Gallant to show that a wide variety of "emotional closeness" can cause that kind of ping.)
But I see where you're coming from. There's not really a wrong answer, as long as it's consistent (especially if it's not a plot point).
bms111
Just a guy with internet.
Actually, that should NOT be taken as something to judge how Pings work. Scrub was a Vial cape, and his network was down. So there was not much if any connecting with other shards, or anything like that. Vial powers are largely pre set based on what went into them (though nobody has a good idea what that will be)
This is how vial capes get the powers they do, when there is nothing trigger inducing about sitting in an empty white room.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Um, no. Scrub triggered during the fight, before the vials could be handed out. He was told to give his prize to one of his friends, and Skidmark laughed when Scrub asked if he could split it between two.
- Location
- New Zealand
Powers weren't specifically causing his trigger event, but it was caused by capes (Skidmark making the arena), which led to his power having the ability to bypass parahuman defenses such as invulnerability. So a subtle trump aspect, but there. So no influence from any particular cape, just capes in general.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think that's true, but if it is, it doesn't matter. Pings aren't the same as Trump triggers. For another example that is (almost) certainly a Trump trigger, look at Bonesaw; her power clearly didn't ping off of Jack's or any of the other S9 members. (Though we don't have confirmation that any of them were KO'd at the actual moment of trigger, which would have made that a weaker initial argument.)
- Location
- New Zealand
WoG that it is true, as well as Lung (ramping up faster in the presence of capes) and Bonesaw (can modify powers). Capes caused their trigger events, so they get varying degrees of trump aspects.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I know power-involved triggers produce Trump powers, but I'm gonna need a source on Scrub's trigger being one of those. If literally every trigger event a parahuman was involved in lead to a Trumpy power aspect, there would be a lot more quasi-Trumps than there are. (Hell, Taylor's trigger was caused by a cape! Much more directly than Skidmark setting up the fight, too.)
- Location
- New Zealand
Taylor's trigger event was caused by a cape, true, but not by powers. Scrub was literally imprisoned in the fighting ring by Skidmark's power, and he knew that there were a bunch of capes around. I'd describe it as the difference between her trigger event being caused by Sophia and it being caused by Shadow Stalker.
Source
- Location
- here
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Are we talking about canon!Taylor here, or Fragments!Taylor?
- Location
- New Zealand
In this instance, there's no difference. The trigger event was a situation set up by Sophia without involving her powers or Taylor knowing she was a cape.
- Location
- here
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The rough draft of part six is done, so this seems like a good time to ask: does anybody want to be a beta reader? (In general I mean, not just for this one chapter.) I've already got @Ganurath helping make sure I don't accidentally contradict canon, but it'd be cool to have someone to discuss longer-term plans with.
No pressure, though! The new chapters coming out soon regardless of what response this gets, I just thought I'd see if anyone was interested.
No pressure, though! The new chapters coming out soon regardless of what response this gets, I just thought I'd see if anyone was interested.
Chapter 6 - Take a break
- Location
- here
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Taylor lay in bed, staring up at the spiral galaxy of inky shards swirling above her. Being armless and legless meant she couldn't tear her hair out even if she wanted to, but she was starting to see the appeal. She could figure this out, she knew it. Her pieces made noises, all she had to do was figure the right combinations to sound like words. She could do this. With a thought she sorted them into a grid based on size and shape and started over again. All she had to do was focus. Concentrate. Make herself think of nothing else…
Except she couldn't. When Taylor shattered it was easier than it should be to think about more than one thing at once. Even if it was only part of her. She had to concentrate to force herself to stick to only one chain of thought at a time.
Like trying to distract herself from what had happened today by throwing herself into experimenting with her powers.
It was probably said something impressive about her that the sick feeling in her gut as she remembered Sophia's hand buried inside her all the way up to the wrist didn't distract her from her project at all. Taylor couldn't bring herself to feel grateful. She'd already finished what homework she had, this was the only distraction left. And it was no use. Not when her power made her able to experiment and think all things she'd been fighting back for hours.
For nearly a year, she'd been going to school with a cape. The girl who had tripped and pushed her every day, who left bruises where they wouldn't show, who seemed to make her suffering her primary goal in life, that girl could have killed her at any time. All it would have taken was a pencil pushed through her chest, a sheet of paper phased through her neck, any object at all. The only thing that had kept her alive was Sophia's restraint.
The pieces in the air trembled. How close had she come to dying? How long would it have been before Sophia had an especially bad day and decided murder was worth the risk? She could have died. Alone, with no way to fight back, no idea why.
She might still die. Taylor's latest attempt at a voice came out as a high keening. Her powers didn't work on Sophia. She'd sent a million razor shards through her instants after the kiln, before she'd even known what happened, and it hadn't mattered. She'd become a parahuman and it hadn't changed anything.
No, it had. Now Sophia saw her as an enemy cape to kill, as opposed to just a girl to bully.
Taylor looked up. At some point her noise-making fragments had become long, glittering blades. A part of her remembered doing it. She winced and returned them to being her arms and legs, her network collapsing back into a single line of thought. It wasn't the experimenting that came out on top.
Taylor rolled over using her new limbs and buried her face in her pillow. Had she really understood anything that had happened to her for the past year? She'd assumed that her teachers ignored her pleas for help because they didn't care or were just bad at their jobs, but it was all too easy to think of darker reasons they wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of a girl who could kill instantly with any solid object. Assuming Sophia wasn't part of something bigger. Everyone knew the gangs ran rampant at Winslow. Sophia wouldn't fit with the big two, but there were others. New groups bubbled up all the time.
Taylor gripped the pillow tighter, wishing she could curl up and hide from the world. That wasn't the worst part. She didn't want to think about what this might mean for Emma, but she couldn't stop. She'd never understood why Emma suddenly hated her, but she'd thought she at least knew the kind of reason. Something she'd done, some horrible mistake that had made her best friend despise her. There were even secret guilty moments where she wondered if her mistake had just been thinking Emma was a decent person in the first place.
Now that thin veil of an unknown seemed like it could hide something so much worse. There were stories on the news, nearly every week it seemed like. There were parahumans who could make you love them with a wave of their hand, twist your mind in knots so you'd turn on everyone you'd ever loved with a smile on your face. There were ones who could light every nerve in your body on fire, crack open your skull and pour agony into your brain until you'd do anything at all just to make the hurting stop. There were villains who could just glance at you and know your darkest secrets, every buried guilt and hidden fear flayed bare. Sophia could know one of those capes. She could be one of them.
Taylor bit the inside of her cheek, teeth grinding together until she tasted blood. She could feel herself coming apart, fraying at the seams. Trying to hold herself together was exhausting, a weight she didn't know how much longer she could carry. But she had to. Sophia was coming to kill her. She had to plan, to prepare, something! She had no illusions that not going out in costume would do more than delay until Sophia got bored of waiting. If she went to pieces now she might not come back. Sophia would come for her and she'd find a broken wreck cowering in her bed, or worse staring at nothing, and…
No.
She could take dying, if it came to that. But not going out like that. Not as what Dad had been.
Taylor reached down and broke her index finger off at the knuckle.
She stared down at the short length of black crystal in her palm. It, she, looked back up at herself. It wasn't much of a split. But it was enough for her power. One Taylor heaved a jagged sob into her pillow, her control finally snapping. Her mind filled with the grinning skull of Sophia's other form, wispy fingers reaching into her chest.
The other Taylor started to think.
She knew heroes, two of them at least. Could she reach out, plead for help? Taylor didn't know if protecting one scared girl would be worth their time, but Sophia was a villain. They fought villains.
Wasn't she?
The memory of the bathroom crept traitorously back. Sophia had hated it when she'd called her villain. But imagining her as anything else, as a hero, was almost impossible. Someone like that couldn't be.
Some people just decide that it's theirs now. That they're going to do whatever they want with their powers, because they can. That's where villains come from. Panacea had told her that.
I do what I want, Hebert. It just so happens that includes hurting people who deserve it.
Taylor felt the certainty crystalize. Sophia was a villain. She had to be. Even if she was in some sort of denial, even if she was playing good in front of real heroes, that was the kind of person she was. The kind Panacea had described.
But she couldn't prove it.
Her emotions, her terror and despair, were contained in the her crying quietly. But even through that, the Taylor in a finger's worth of dark glass felt a searing flare of anger. Villain or no, Sophia had still been there every day, waiting for her at school. She hadn't been caught, hadn't been stopped. Why?
She could think of two reasons, neither of them good. Option one was that the heroes didn't know what Sophia was, or maybe even that she existed. Option two was that they knew but had failed to stop her.
If it was the first… Taylor winced mentally as she remembered exactly how well her word against Sophia's had worked at Winslow. Victoria was a good person, an actual hero. She'd been kinder to Taylor than anyone had in a long time. But they'd known each other for all of a few days. Taylor couldn't imagine her attacking a civilian or even a fellow hero on the word of some disheveled wreck of a girl.
Victoria had done more for her than she had any right to expect. More than anyone had, short of her parents or Emma. She couldn't poison that by pushing too hard, asking too much. Not again. Not like…
Do you think it was fun? Spending time with you, this past year?
Taylor frantically tore the memory away from her, thrust it into the body lying on the bed. She rose into the air, circling the room, trying not to look at the other Taylor. The her below her had curled into a ball, cheeks wet with tears.
This couldn't be healthy. She had no idea what would even happen when she tried to put herself back together. But she needed it. If she wanted to be ready, to survive what Sophia was going to do to her, she couldn't afford to feel sad or scared or afraid. Taylor made a silent apology to herself, and pushed further.
If the heroes knew about Sophia and hadn't stopped her, what did that mean? She knew who Sophia was out of costume. She knew where Sophia went to school. She could pass on that information, force a fight.
That didn't mean it would be a fight the heroes would win.
What did she actually know about Sophia's power? Not enough. Trying to hurt her didn't work. She could pass through solid objects like thin mist, even people's bodies. Any object was a deadly weapon in her hands. For all she knew, Sophia could reach inside her chest, grab her beating heart, and—
Focus. She needed to focus.
Taylor watched herself starting to shiver from the outside. How could you cage someone like that? If they wanted to hurt you, how could you possibly stop them besides running? She'd read about Victoria's powers online. Strength. An effect that intimidated her enemies and bolstered the resolve of her allies. Some kind of enhanced durability.
Would any of it actually help against an apple appearing inside her chest?
If Sophia was a known villain and Taylor asked Victoria for help, Taylor had no doubt that she'd try to protect her. She was a hero. That was what heroes did. She'd fight, even if it meant she got hurt. Even if she died.
No.
Her hair. The flute. Emma. Her father. Mom. Each one peeled away, layer by layer. Taken just as she started to learn how to live without the last. Ever since the phone call.
She wouldn't let Victoria become the next thing she lost. Not by driving her away, not by getting her killed. She wouldn't let herself lose the hero who had been kind to her, the one person who had actually made her feel happy since getting her powers. Not even if the other choice was dying.
Sophia had already taken one friend.
The crying Taylor lost her hands as they blackened and broke apart, rising into the air in a swarm of fragments. Sophia was her monster, her enemy, her trial to overcome. Alone. If she couldn't beat her, she didn't deserve to be a hero.
Taylor surveyed her free pieces. They'd be enough to work a keyboard at least. To fight, to get ready, she needed information. Right now, she had one good place to get it.
Victoria's phone buzzed on her bedside stand, breaking her from her focus. For a moment her urge to check it warred with her desire to get her English homework out of the way as quickly as possible. The latter lost the battle, primarily on the grounds that a) there was only so much Chaucer she could take in one sitting, and b) the annotations they were supposed to make in the margins were starting to make her hand cramp.
She snagged the phone and rolled over, apps blossoming into view as she entered her passcode. The blue and white icon for PHO in particular blinked a notification at her. Worry and cautious hope both welled up as she saw that the message was from the girl Amy had started sarcastically calling "your latest project."
Hope because it was good that Taylor was reaching out, keeping in contact. Not dropping off the map like she had at first. Worry because it was sooner than she'd expected. Which meant either she'd misjudged Taylor, or the withdrawn girl needed something. Maybe help.
Taylor took long enough to respond that Victoria nearly thought she wasn't going to.
Victoria stared at the screen and took a long, slow breath. She could lift cars, vans, and most of the smaller kinds of truck. She shouldn't be allowed to feel out of her depth from a simple text conversation.
But she did. Talking to Taylor was like fumbling around in the dark, knowing something nasty was out there but not what or where. She'd thought it was an abusive family or something, something she could wait for the other girl to share in her own time. But now there was another cape involved, one she had never heard of. That pushed things to a new level of bad.
After another teeth-grindingly long wait, the response came.
Victoria sagged into her pillow as she put the phone down, feeling a little of the tension leave her shoulders. There. In just a couple days she'd have a chance to check in with Taylor again, see if she could figure out more about what was going on. Or at least impart a little bit of basic self-defense knowledge in case the worst happened.
Plus, she thought guiltily, it would be a lot easier to get through to Taylor with her aura in play. The idea made her wince a bit, that wasn't really what it was meant for. Scaring the crap out of bad guys was one thing, using it to get her way with people was sketchier. Taylor was exactly the kind of person she normally tried to be careful around, a new acquaintance who hadn't had time to get used to it yet the way her family and friends had.
Well, except for the couple of times she'd used her aura to break Taylor out of an obvious depression-spiral. But those were special circumstances.
At least it seemed to register as awe with her. After the fiasco of their first meeting, Victoria had been half-afraid that the new trigger would end up stuck on 'fear' forever.
Besides, it was for Taylor's own good. Digging into trigger-trauma was one thing, every cape had that. But apparently capes had been involved, and that made it her business. As a defender of the city, she couldn't just leave it alone.
Right.
Victoria sighed and got back to her homework. When it came to helping people, punching crooks was a lot simpler.
Except she couldn't. When Taylor shattered it was easier than it should be to think about more than one thing at once. Even if it was only part of her. She had to concentrate to force herself to stick to only one chain of thought at a time.
Like trying to distract herself from what had happened today by throwing herself into experimenting with her powers.
It was probably said something impressive about her that the sick feeling in her gut as she remembered Sophia's hand buried inside her all the way up to the wrist didn't distract her from her project at all. Taylor couldn't bring herself to feel grateful. She'd already finished what homework she had, this was the only distraction left. And it was no use. Not when her power made her able to experiment and think all things she'd been fighting back for hours.
For nearly a year, she'd been going to school with a cape. The girl who had tripped and pushed her every day, who left bruises where they wouldn't show, who seemed to make her suffering her primary goal in life, that girl could have killed her at any time. All it would have taken was a pencil pushed through her chest, a sheet of paper phased through her neck, any object at all. The only thing that had kept her alive was Sophia's restraint.
The pieces in the air trembled. How close had she come to dying? How long would it have been before Sophia had an especially bad day and decided murder was worth the risk? She could have died. Alone, with no way to fight back, no idea why.
She might still die. Taylor's latest attempt at a voice came out as a high keening. Her powers didn't work on Sophia. She'd sent a million razor shards through her instants after the kiln, before she'd even known what happened, and it hadn't mattered. She'd become a parahuman and it hadn't changed anything.
No, it had. Now Sophia saw her as an enemy cape to kill, as opposed to just a girl to bully.
Taylor looked up. At some point her noise-making fragments had become long, glittering blades. A part of her remembered doing it. She winced and returned them to being her arms and legs, her network collapsing back into a single line of thought. It wasn't the experimenting that came out on top.
Taylor rolled over using her new limbs and buried her face in her pillow. Had she really understood anything that had happened to her for the past year? She'd assumed that her teachers ignored her pleas for help because they didn't care or were just bad at their jobs, but it was all too easy to think of darker reasons they wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of a girl who could kill instantly with any solid object. Assuming Sophia wasn't part of something bigger. Everyone knew the gangs ran rampant at Winslow. Sophia wouldn't fit with the big two, but there were others. New groups bubbled up all the time.
Taylor gripped the pillow tighter, wishing she could curl up and hide from the world. That wasn't the worst part. She didn't want to think about what this might mean for Emma, but she couldn't stop. She'd never understood why Emma suddenly hated her, but she'd thought she at least knew the kind of reason. Something she'd done, some horrible mistake that had made her best friend despise her. There were even secret guilty moments where she wondered if her mistake had just been thinking Emma was a decent person in the first place.
Now that thin veil of an unknown seemed like it could hide something so much worse. There were stories on the news, nearly every week it seemed like. There were parahumans who could make you love them with a wave of their hand, twist your mind in knots so you'd turn on everyone you'd ever loved with a smile on your face. There were ones who could light every nerve in your body on fire, crack open your skull and pour agony into your brain until you'd do anything at all just to make the hurting stop. There were villains who could just glance at you and know your darkest secrets, every buried guilt and hidden fear flayed bare. Sophia could know one of those capes. She could be one of them.
Taylor bit the inside of her cheek, teeth grinding together until she tasted blood. She could feel herself coming apart, fraying at the seams. Trying to hold herself together was exhausting, a weight she didn't know how much longer she could carry. But she had to. Sophia was coming to kill her. She had to plan, to prepare, something! She had no illusions that not going out in costume would do more than delay until Sophia got bored of waiting. If she went to pieces now she might not come back. Sophia would come for her and she'd find a broken wreck cowering in her bed, or worse staring at nothing, and…
No.
She could take dying, if it came to that. But not going out like that. Not as what Dad had been.
Taylor reached down and broke her index finger off at the knuckle.
She stared down at the short length of black crystal in her palm. It, she, looked back up at herself. It wasn't much of a split. But it was enough for her power. One Taylor heaved a jagged sob into her pillow, her control finally snapping. Her mind filled with the grinning skull of Sophia's other form, wispy fingers reaching into her chest.
The other Taylor started to think.
She knew heroes, two of them at least. Could she reach out, plead for help? Taylor didn't know if protecting one scared girl would be worth their time, but Sophia was a villain. They fought villains.
Wasn't she?
The memory of the bathroom crept traitorously back. Sophia had hated it when she'd called her villain. But imagining her as anything else, as a hero, was almost impossible. Someone like that couldn't be.
Some people just decide that it's theirs now. That they're going to do whatever they want with their powers, because they can. That's where villains come from. Panacea had told her that.
I do what I want, Hebert. It just so happens that includes hurting people who deserve it.
Taylor felt the certainty crystalize. Sophia was a villain. She had to be. Even if she was in some sort of denial, even if she was playing good in front of real heroes, that was the kind of person she was. The kind Panacea had described.
But she couldn't prove it.
Her emotions, her terror and despair, were contained in the her crying quietly. But even through that, the Taylor in a finger's worth of dark glass felt a searing flare of anger. Villain or no, Sophia had still been there every day, waiting for her at school. She hadn't been caught, hadn't been stopped. Why?
She could think of two reasons, neither of them good. Option one was that the heroes didn't know what Sophia was, or maybe even that she existed. Option two was that they knew but had failed to stop her.
If it was the first… Taylor winced mentally as she remembered exactly how well her word against Sophia's had worked at Winslow. Victoria was a good person, an actual hero. She'd been kinder to Taylor than anyone had in a long time. But they'd known each other for all of a few days. Taylor couldn't imagine her attacking a civilian or even a fellow hero on the word of some disheveled wreck of a girl.
Victoria had done more for her than she had any right to expect. More than anyone had, short of her parents or Emma. She couldn't poison that by pushing too hard, asking too much. Not again. Not like…
Do you think it was fun? Spending time with you, this past year?
Taylor frantically tore the memory away from her, thrust it into the body lying on the bed. She rose into the air, circling the room, trying not to look at the other Taylor. The her below her had curled into a ball, cheeks wet with tears.
This couldn't be healthy. She had no idea what would even happen when she tried to put herself back together. But she needed it. If she wanted to be ready, to survive what Sophia was going to do to her, she couldn't afford to feel sad or scared or afraid. Taylor made a silent apology to herself, and pushed further.
If the heroes knew about Sophia and hadn't stopped her, what did that mean? She knew who Sophia was out of costume. She knew where Sophia went to school. She could pass on that information, force a fight.
That didn't mean it would be a fight the heroes would win.
What did she actually know about Sophia's power? Not enough. Trying to hurt her didn't work. She could pass through solid objects like thin mist, even people's bodies. Any object was a deadly weapon in her hands. For all she knew, Sophia could reach inside her chest, grab her beating heart, and—
Focus. She needed to focus.
Taylor watched herself starting to shiver from the outside. How could you cage someone like that? If they wanted to hurt you, how could you possibly stop them besides running? She'd read about Victoria's powers online. Strength. An effect that intimidated her enemies and bolstered the resolve of her allies. Some kind of enhanced durability.
Would any of it actually help against an apple appearing inside her chest?
If Sophia was a known villain and Taylor asked Victoria for help, Taylor had no doubt that she'd try to protect her. She was a hero. That was what heroes did. She'd fight, even if it meant she got hurt. Even if she died.
No.
Her hair. The flute. Emma. Her father. Mom. Each one peeled away, layer by layer. Taken just as she started to learn how to live without the last. Ever since the phone call.
She wouldn't let Victoria become the next thing she lost. Not by driving her away, not by getting her killed. She wouldn't let herself lose the hero who had been kind to her, the one person who had actually made her feel happy since getting her powers. Not even if the other choice was dying.
Sophia had already taken one friend.
The crying Taylor lost her hands as they blackened and broke apart, rising into the air in a swarm of fragments. Sophia was her monster, her enemy, her trial to overcome. Alone. If she couldn't beat her, she didn't deserve to be a hero.
Taylor surveyed her free pieces. They'd be enough to work a keyboard at least. To fight, to get ready, she needed information. Right now, she had one good place to get it.
◆ ❖ ◆
Victoria's phone buzzed on her bedside stand, breaking her from her focus. For a moment her urge to check it warred with her desire to get her English homework out of the way as quickly as possible. The latter lost the battle, primarily on the grounds that a) there was only so much Chaucer she could take in one sitting, and b) the annotations they were supposed to make in the margins were starting to make her hand cramp.
She snagged the phone and rolled over, apps blossoming into view as she entered her passcode. The blue and white icon for PHO in particular blinked a notification at her. Worry and cautious hope both welled up as she saw that the message was from the girl Amy had started sarcastically calling "your latest project."
Hope because it was good that Taylor was reaching out, keeping in contact. Not dropping off the map like she had at first. Worry because it was sooner than she'd expected. Which meant either she'd misjudged Taylor, or the withdrawn girl needed something. Maybe help.
| RestingInPieces: Hi. Point_Me_@_The_Sky: hey there  Point_Me_@_The_Sky: What's up? RestingInPieces: I'm sorry if this is weird, but can I ask you a question? Point_Me_@_The_Sky: sure RestingInPieces: is there a cape in the bay area that has the power to RestingInPieces: turn into darkness, I guess? Or smoke maybe. She can pass through stuff that should be solid, or let it pass through her, I think Point_Me_@_The_Sky: huh Point_Me_@_The_Sky: If you hadn't said 'she' I'd think you were talking about Grue. he's this smalltime thief and hired goon. Shoots this darkness/smoke stuff that sounds a lot like what you're talking about. Covers himself in it too, so it could look like he's made of it Point_Me_@_The_Sky: but I've heard him speak and that is NOT a girl's voice. And if he can walk through walls, nobody's ever seen him do it that I've heard. Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I guess there's also Fog with the Empire. Doesn't look much like darkness, but he can turn into a giant cloud of poison gas. RestingInPieces: She's the wrong color to be empire Point_Me_@_The_Sky: It could be someone really local or really obscure. I'm good, but I don't know everyone. Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I can keep an eye out for anyone who matches that description if you want RestingInPieces: No, that's okay. Point_Me_@_The_Sky: So are we going to talk about how you know this person? RestingInPieces: She was there when I got my powers. Point_Me_@_The_Sky: ...oh Point_Me_@_The_Sky: um Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Okay, when you say 'there' do you mean she just happened to be nearby, or… Point_Me_@_The_Sky: you know Point_Me_@_The_Sky: part of it? |
Taylor took long enough to respond that Victoria nearly thought she wasn't going to.
| RestingInPieces: The latter. RestingInPieces: That's all. Thanks for the help |
Victoria stared at the screen and took a long, slow breath. She could lift cars, vans, and most of the smaller kinds of truck. She shouldn't be allowed to feel out of her depth from a simple text conversation.
But she did. Talking to Taylor was like fumbling around in the dark, knowing something nasty was out there but not what or where. She'd thought it was an abusive family or something, something she could wait for the other girl to share in her own time. But now there was another cape involved, one she had never heard of. That pushed things to a new level of bad.
| Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Taylor Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I'm not sure how to say this, but Point_Me_@_The_Sky: do you feel like you're in danger? From this cape? |
After another teeth-grindingly long wait, the response came.
| RestingInPieces: not out of costume. Point_Me_@_The_Sky: ...and IN costume?? RestingInPieces: isn't that what being in costume means? RestingInPieces: Fighting people RestingInPieces: not being safe Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Spoken like a girl who's never had to sign autographs for three hours straight Point_Me_@_The_Sky: but seriously, there's a difference between the risk that comes with the job and being stupid Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You're new. Just… don't do something you're gonna regret later, okay? Point_Me_@_The_Sky: ...okay, seriously, say something. You going all quiet is freaking me out, and I WILL fly over to your house to make sure you're alright. Don't test me. RestingInPieces: don't RestingInPieces: i'm okay. whatever you're thinking it's not that. Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Okay. Point_Me_@_The_Sky: ...so, does this mean you've made up your mind of the stuff from earlier? RestingInPieces: oh RestingInPieces: Um, yeah. I want to be a hero, eventually RestingInPieces: if I can, I mean. Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You definitely can Point_Me_@_The_Sky: ...I'm actually going on a solo patrol this sunday, do you want to tag along? Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I could sort of show you the ropes, and with your powers it should be pretty easy to watch from a safe distance. RestingInPieces: That would be great RestingInPieces: Thank you Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Anytime. |
Victoria sagged into her pillow as she put the phone down, feeling a little of the tension leave her shoulders. There. In just a couple days she'd have a chance to check in with Taylor again, see if she could figure out more about what was going on. Or at least impart a little bit of basic self-defense knowledge in case the worst happened.
Plus, she thought guiltily, it would be a lot easier to get through to Taylor with her aura in play. The idea made her wince a bit, that wasn't really what it was meant for. Scaring the crap out of bad guys was one thing, using it to get her way with people was sketchier. Taylor was exactly the kind of person she normally tried to be careful around, a new acquaintance who hadn't had time to get used to it yet the way her family and friends had.
Well, except for the couple of times she'd used her aura to break Taylor out of an obvious depression-spiral. But those were special circumstances.
At least it seemed to register as awe with her. After the fiasco of their first meeting, Victoria had been half-afraid that the new trigger would end up stuck on 'fear' forever.
Besides, it was for Taylor's own good. Digging into trigger-trauma was one thing, every cape had that. But apparently capes had been involved, and that made it her business. As a defender of the city, she couldn't just leave it alone.
Right.
Victoria sighed and got back to her homework. When it came to helping people, punching crooks was a lot simpler.
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Happy Hampster
This is a Multipost
- Location
- Perth, Western Australia
lord save us from teenage humans with trauma.