Goddamn Teenagers (Worm, AU/time travel)

[dc2008]

Just before Coil could split the timelines again, a familiar portal opened in his office.

Shit.

The portal promptly disgorged the boogeyman and a second, older woman in professional attire and a domino mask. The boogeyman gesture at her colleague, "she speaks with our voice." The she thankfully fucked off, closing the portal behind her.

The other woman remained. She nodded to Coil. "That's the stick. Here's the carrot." She placed a case on his desk, opened it, and rotated it to face him. Inside were four neatly labeled vials, and an updated Thinktank report tailor made to lower Coil's threat level, and crediting his hard work undermining Piggot instead to Victor and the Empire.

Well, when the devil comes bearing such gifts, what else can you say? Heart pounding in his chest, Thomas forced his voice to portray a facade of calmness. "How can I help?"

---

Note:
I could write a bunch more about Taylor's grand master plan, but it ain't that kind of fic.

Why Coil? Taylor has a big stick (Contessa) and many carrots (nuggets of special info, Cauldron vials, etc.). Kenta is psychologically incapable of working with cocaine hat lady due to his trigger. Max is beholden to foreign masters and lunatic constituents. Adam and Sherrel are unreliable. But Coil, the chickenshit, will immediately fall in line. So even if Taylor wants to set him on fire, it's either him or an outsider who would be starting from scratch. (Sadly, Accord isn't an option because he's busy babysitting Blasto and the Teeth, although Taylor will likely consult with him)

 

[dc2008]

"Hey everyone," shouted Lisa with false cheer as she entered the loft. "We hit the big time!"

"What happened now?" Asked Grue, suspiciously. He had learned early to be wary of Lisa when she got like this.

"The big boss is giving a nice big pile of money to maybe not say mean things about him to the fuzz! And is terrified out of his mind! Oh, the money is severance pay"

"Lisa," Grue said, trying to maintain his calm. "Some of us were relying on the Boss for things. Important things."

Lisa waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, that is already getting sorted, now that he's not stretching things out to keep you loyal. But don't worry, someone likes us and leaned on the Boss so we're getting flipped to the light side as redemption stories."

"You talk too much," interjected Rachel. "Start making sense. What the fuck are you taking about?!"

Not for the first time, Grue found himself agreeing with Rachel.

---

Note:
This is directly after Lisa finished her initial chat with Taylor. Lisa might be just a small bit manic after in quick succession getting released by Coil and meeting the Very Scary PRT Lady.

Also, incidentally, the reason Jaded!Taylor tends to use the term 'white hats' instead of PRT or Protectorate is because if she gets in the habit of using the informal term, she is less likely to slip up and say the name of, say, a successor organization, or some other group that either doesn't exist yet or isn't important yet (she has been at least tangentially involved with basically every major hero or "respectable" villain organization over the past couple decades, the former generally as a consultant or troubleshooter and the latter as some sort of liaison and Lisa babysitter (when Lisa was still in denial about helping the white hats). Taylor also in her mind tends to view the PRT and Protectorate as just the same organization, which they very much are not, and notwithstanding Cauldron shenanigans there are people in both who have very strong feelings on the topic.

 

[dc2008]

"Let's say you have a tool. A hammer, shall we say. It is an amazing hammer, one of the best hammers in the world. It also, with creativity, can be used as a prybar. However, it will never be better than passable as a prybar. It is no fault of the hammer, but it is what it is. What do you do with it? Do you focus on using it to hammer the most difficult and challenging hammer things with or? Or do you spend a lot of time trying to use it as a prybar?"

Armsmaster answers immediately. "It's a hammer. You use the right tool for the job. You can use it as a prybar and in extremis maybe you even should, but it most efficient to use a tool for what it is good at."

"Excellent. Now, let's talk about something entirely different. You routinely collaborate with the best tinkers in the world, who consider you a peer. You also spend considerable amount of time on managerial and administrative duties relating to your role at ENE. What, precisely, are your personal and professional goals?"

---

Note:
One of Wildbow's strengths as a writer is to create characters who are tragically and believably myopic in ways that read as very real.

Colin is far from the only one who would immediately see the problems if presented with his own situation in the abstract, but who is so caught up in things that he can't see the forest for the trees.

 

[dc2008]

"I don't know why it didn't work!" Lisa exclaimed. "And now he's even more withdrawn and paranoid!"

Taylor have Lisa a look. "What did I tell you?"

"To fix it!"

"And to talk to me before acting."

Lisa scoffed. "It should have been easy, it was a great plan, and Power agreed!"

"Powers are like cars, they sometimes have a mind of their own. And unlike cars they learn from you as you use them. What, exactly, did Power tell you?"

"I don't remember," Lisa mumbled sheepishly.

Taylor nodded. "You will get better results if you pay very careful attention to exactly what your power says. For example, there is a big difference between 'this idea will work' and 'this idea is AWESOME.' It would, I'm sure, be inconvenient if you inadvertently got your power in the habit of viewing a bit of misunderstanding and social drama as a beneficial side effect."

"Oh come on! How is that fair!"

---

Note:
Lisa: [Is teenager]
Taylor: [Sighs]

 

[dc2008]

"Again," Lisa said in her serious voice, "I am really sorry I couldn't tell you the boss was fucking up the custody thing."

Brian sighed, and resisted the urge to punch something. They needed to present a united front to the PRT lady.

"Right, well fortunately that has been resolved."

Brian blinked at the PRT lady. "I'm sorry?"

"Custody. A recording was presented to CPS and the family court judge. It seems your mother offered to sign whatever custody papers were desired, in exchange for a substantial quantity of what she believed to be cocaine. The recording is of course thoroughly inadmissible in a criminal proceeding, but I believe the expression used by the family court judge was 'it will be a cold day in hell.'"

"You did what?!"

The woman smiled. "We merely presented the evidence to the proper authorities after it came into our possession. I'm sure we have no idea who conducted the sting."

 

[dc2008]

Taylor fidgeted nervously. On the one hand, the arrival of supposed alternate future her had sort of shocked her dad out of his shell somehow, and she guessed that was nice? He was trying at least. But on the other hand it made dinners lots more awkward, especially when other her was present.

Searching desperately for a topic to break the silence, she offered "so are you working with the PRT to get back home?"

The older woman frowned, and put down her fork. "After thinking about it, no. We have our peace, however tenuous, and, well, if we were able to build a door what else might come through? There are threats here that I wouldn't inflict on my world again, no matter how much I might want to go home."

Well, thought Taylor, I guess I am stuck with her… and I can't really blame her, I wouldn't want to inflict our suck on my friends either.

---

Note: A bit less funny and a bit more introspective. We also see Young!Taylor continuing to struggle with her new normal.

 

[dc2008]

"Now Taylor, regardless of whether or not you have powers, there are some important life skills to learn for living in the Bay."

Why does she keep trying to do bonding things with me, thought Taylor as she looked skeptically at supposed future her.

"Your father tells me you have been running, which is a good start."

Taylor zoned out for a bit. She did help with the bullying so she probably means well, but she's so old! Older than Dad! And keeps trying to relate to me!

The older woman was still talking. "Of course, that's just the basics, you will also want to learn basic grappling, I'll find you somewhere that will teach you to fight dirty."

Wat.

"… as I certainly wouldn't recommend you try to use a knife without first knowing what your doing, that's just a good way to get hurt…"

WAT.

"… we can in parallel get you started with range training and gun safety, I can get you into the PRT for that since some of the things you'll need training on aren't strictly street legal…"

Oh my God, are all PRT people like this?

"… Now, you have my number so if you get picked up by the fuzz call and I can get you out, but it would still be good for you to learn how to tell a proper sob story to the police, as a young woman it is amazing what you can talk yourself out of, especially once you learn to cry on command…"

---

Note: Remember, everything Jaded!Taylor knows about child-rearing she learned in post-apocalyptic hellscapes!

 

[dc2008]

"Thank you for agreeing to meet here, the PRT lady said. "ENE was shot through with bugs, spies and moles, and Armsmaster isn't sure he's got them all yet."

Brian sighed. This does not make me feel better about joining up. Still, he forced himself to smile. "It's not a problem. I've asked my sister to stay after at school so we can have some privacy."

She nodded. "Are you sure we ought not involve her in this? She may have views about the relocation opportunity, and I've not seen anything to suggest that she is unintelligent or unobservant."

Brian chuckled. "I wouldn't worry about it."

"Hmm," she said. And then she moved, fast, and opened the bedroom door, revealing Aisha. Eavesdropping.

"Oh, hi bro," she said shamelessly, "I got done early?"

---

Note: Being Brian is suffering.

 

[dc2008]

"You see the news, Max?" God was Krieg chipper in the mornings.

"No. I just got in. Which you know. Because you watched me just walk in."

Krieg did that stupid grin that he thought made him look like the master race but just made him look constipated. "The PRT has announced their grand victory over the Empire, with their arrest of an even ten moles."

"Shit," said Max before the number caught up to him. "Wait, what?"

"Yes! Ten"

"We had four," Max said slowly. "Four. Not ten."

"Apparently we also had a complex scheme to intercept and edit internal PRT communications, thus subtly undermining the morale and effectiveness of our caliber defenders. Oh, and we suborned an armory technician to commandeer official PRT gear, up to and including vehicles."

"What?" This was a nightmare. "I know we didn't do that. I don't even know how we would begin to do that."

"I've already checked with Victor and he didn't do it."

"Wait. Did they even get any of our guys?"

"They got three of them, we still have one left but he's spooked."

"Jesus, they can't do this! It's one thing if they catch our guys but we they can't pin stuff on us we didn't even do! There are laws!"

 

[dc2008]

"What am I looking at Rennick?" It had been a long week and Emily was not in the mood for games.

"Properly authorized exception paperwork for someone to anonymously send Calvert an otherwise impermissible package through our intra-office mail."

Emily just stared at him until he elaborated.

"Specifically, elaborately gift wrapped hand grenades. Properly safed, but still hand grenades. We've been authorized two hours overtime for an ordinance technician to assist with the delivery."

"Please tell me they are inert."

"One can hope, but the papers say to treat them as if they were live."

"Except for the part where we don't get to put whoever came up with this in the M/S tank."

"Yes, except for that."

Emily sighed. Yes, simply mailing Calvert a hand grenade had a certain undeniable appeal, true. If anyone deserved a good fragging it was that piece of shit. Still, this was a bit much. "Sit on it for now, and send up our visitor from DC, Dr. Weaver."

---

Note:
A couple decades being around uptime!Aisha has skewed Taylor's idea of "acceptable practical joke".

Also, Taylor is not as subtle as she thinks she is, especially since I realized that Emily may well be the closest thing in the Bay that Taylor has to a peer. Both are women with decades of experience dealing with parahuman nonsense, both are free from any illusions about how fucked the world is, and both have experience making hard calls.