Goddamn Teenagers (Worm, AU/time travel)

[dc2008]

"Lisa, Lisa, look!" Aisha pulled Lisa through the door. "Look at what Dr. Weaver and Brian got me!"

Break

"Did you seriously bring your console?" Amy asked.

Alec looked affronted. "You wound me so! I have toiled, toiled I say, so that we might resume our Mortal Tournament Summer Vacation, and this is how you repay me!"

Amy snorted.

Break

"A desktop PC in the living room?" Lisa asked Brian incredulously.

He sighed. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Aisha cackled. "You tell her, bro! Anytime ima look at pretty boys, you're more than welcome to look over my shoulder!"

Elsewhere

"Mark?" Carol asked, pleasantly surprised. Her husband was out of bed, dressed, in the kitchen, and by all accounts almost finished cooking dinner.

He smiled. "Victoria is with Dean and Amy is having dinner with her Endbringer buddies. We have the place to ourselves, and I thought we could do something nice."

 

[dc2008]

"It's interesting, as close as our world lines were, the small differences." Taylor's older counterpart gestured at the screen. "In my world, Brannagh made Macbeth, and in Aleph, Hamlet."

Outside, the rain beat down. Inside, Taylor scooted a little closer to her father. As the movie started, she carefully didn't look at Taylor III, who was peeking out from his place on the stairs where he thought no one could see him.

Elsewhere

Rachel comforted the terrier. The pup was clearly unsettled by the storm, still skittish in her new home.

It was nice. There were good, clean blankets on the floor, the water dishes refilled on their own, and the roof didn't leak. Even the flap on the door was very cleverly set up to not let in much cold and wet. And, if she had to leave, Dr. Weaver had given her a very nice backpack that looked cheap but fit lots of things without overly encumbering her movements.

 

[dc2008]

Taylor very carefully did not turn her head as Taylor III slowly crept out from under the bed and examined the waiting treat. It had taken a very long time for him to get comfortable enough to venture out while she was in the room, and she wasn't going to spook him now.

Then he darted under the bed without a sound, and Taylor had other things to worry about.

"What has been done?" The strange dressed child asked intently, eyes unfocused, shadows flickering behind her. She has simply appeared, between one blink and the next, and suddenly the room felt far too small.

Taylor recognized her, who wouldn't? But the child was supposed to be safely locked away…

"Where has he—," child continued, voice growing stronger, "how has he…"

The child's eyes snapped to Taylor's, malevolent shades coalescing into hated forms behind her. "What madness has the ancient child-queen wrought?!"

Taylor felt the most peculiar sensation, as if her power was reaching out in a direction she couldn't perceive. And then a portal opened to deliver Dr. Weaver.

Dr. Weaver regarded the child regally, inclined her head, and gestured expansively to the portal. The child turned her head, returned the nod, and was gone. Dr. Weaver turned to follow, her eyes pausing a moment to share a warm look with Taylor, before she too was gone.

The moment the portal closed, Taylor collapsed, falling heavily back into her chair, breathing quick and fast. Some time later, her father found her curled up on her bed.

"Taylor?"

"Can you sit with me a bit?" She asked, hesitantly.

"Sure, honey." He replied. "What's wrong."

Taylor laughed, weakly. "The Fairy Queen appeared in my room, angry? Then other!me was here? Like she knew what was going on? And there was a portal? Oh, and I have powers."

 

[dc2008]

"We have dealt with Scion, but it's not over, is it." Kurt said, in the quiet, after the others had shed their tears of joy and left.

Dr. Weaver shook her head. "We have worlds of resources, powerful allies, and we no longer need fear that one wrong step could trigger the end. We have the benefit of knowledge, knowledge my worlds didn't have, dearly bought that will not be squandered.

"And yet we too have worlds of threats, compromises, and injustices. We know that this is not the only world line, that other word lines have Scions of their own, and can reach us. And we have a very short window to prevent Scion's legacy from tearing the worlds apart.

"We are undeniably better off than yesterday. But this is not the end. It is, at most, the end of the beginning."

---

Note:
If I were inclined to do such things, this is where I would end "book 1".

Yes, Scion is dealt with. It's not onscreen because other fics have done that, quite well, and that's not really what this fic is about.

Thank you all for coming along for the ride! I've really appreciated the comments and feedback. And don't worry, the fic will continue, with the same schedule!

 

[dc2008]

"Bro?"

"Hmm?"

"Why are you watching me sleep?"

Brian sighed, at sat down on the end of his sister's bed. "I couldn't sleep. Had a nightmare and…"

Aisha sat up and hugged her brother. "It's OK. I have that dream sometimes. You want me to come in and sit with you until you go back to sleep?"

Later

"Morning, Ames," her sister mumbled.

Amy looked up, and did a double take. "What happened?"

"Couldn't sleep, nightmares."

Wordlessly, Amy slid her coffee across the table to Vicky, and went to make herself another cup.

---

Note: Jokes on you, Vicky, Amy has lots of experience running on little sleep and nightmares are an old friend (albeit one she has seen less of recently).

 

[dc2008]

Poke.

"don wanna," the pile of blankets replied.

Poke poke.

"hurts."

A short while later a small hand holding two pills wormed its way into the blankets.

"tanks."

Sighing, Aisha pre-mixed some of the good-tasting hangover cure and left it on Lisa's nightstand with a donut.

Still better than Mom.

Elsewhere

Taylor awoke with a start. She couldn't remember the nightmare but she knew it was bad. Giving up on sleep, she groaned and climbed out of bed.

Shuffling across her room, she found on her desk propped up an apology card. Under it was a book which declared itself to be an index of the most fascinating and dangerous insects in the world.

Taylor sat down, and began idly flipping through the book. I suppose I should tell her too.

Somehow, after the Fairy Queen, hiding her powers didn't seem so important anymore.

 

[dc2008]

Armsmaster looked like shit.

"Is this an attack?" Emily asked.

"Unclear. Many but not all parahumans are affected, some worse than others." Armsmaster replied in clipped tones. "It's global, whatever it is. I'm working with the Guild on some leads."

Emily turned to Renick. "See if you can get anything out of Thinktank or D.C. I've dropped a note to Dr. Weaver as well."

Elsewhere

After everything, Kamil could not bring himself to be surprised when a portal opened and Dr. Weaver's hand darted out, dropped a note, and then withdrew.

Kamil picked up the note. "It is now safe to tell Weld."

Kamil sighed explosively, and opened his calendar. It was a quick hop to the Bay, he was damned if he'd let the sun set and rise again before giving Weld back his past.

Elsewhere

"What is happening?" Director Tagg asked without preamble.

"Unanticipated side effects from the restructuring of the command and control network for parahuman powers which accompanied resolution of the most immediate apocalyptic threat," Dr. Weaver replied absently.

"We will be having a long talk."

"Of course, the greatest cognitohazard threat has passed and it should now be safe. You and others will receive a full briefing after the immediate issues are resolved."

While that was not on its face unreasonable, Tagg had learned that with this woman you didn't take anything for granted. "… Which immediate issues."

"The Fairy Queen has inserted herself into proceedings."

 

[dc2008]

"Narwhal speaking."

"Director Tagg. Where is Dragon."

"We don't know. She dropped contact unexpectedly. Emergency monitors show her to be unconscious, alive, and uninjured."

"We need to find her. We've lost all visibility into the Birdcage, and the backup systems are not responding. Monitors outside the mountain show green, but we need to know what's happening inside."

Narwhal glanced at her overflowing 'priority' message queue, which no doubt contained the relevant alert somewhere. Clearly they needed to revisit their continuity plans, again. She sighed, and pushed through the migraine. "There is a last-ditch fallback not listed in the file. Who on your end needs the details?"

Elsewhere

Rebecca barely restrained herself from crushing the phone in frustration. She should be celebrating, or more closely monitoring whateverit was that woman was telling the Fairy Queen. But no, she had to be Chief-Director, which meant she had to be available to reassure everyone that no, this wasn't an attack, yes, it was contained, no, you don't need to medically quarantine the Wards, how the fuck was that man a Senator? She was tempted to just hospitalize her body double with some plausible 'accident' and let the Directorate deal with things, but God only knew what they would do unsupervised. She should never have let Dr. Weaver talk to Tagg.

---

Note: This problem (the nightmares, not the Birdcage), is the sort of thing that hits a sweet spot of suck for the PRT leadership. It's visible, global, and clearly alarming, so all the politicians and pundits want you to Do Something, and maybe if you just did this one thing it might help (ignore that the thing is self-serving). Normally, you could tell them to fuck off so you can focus on the crises, but it's not an imminent threat you can really do anything about, except let the experts get on with their work. So you have to actively seek out and intercept as many bullshit requests as possible before the assholes start instead bothering the people actually doing useful things.

 

[dc2008]

With exaggerated patience, Amy gestured for Taylor to take a seat. "So what's the big secret?"

Taylor fidgeted awkwardly. "So, um, Dr. Weaver said you can tell when someone is a parahuman?"

Amy sighed. "Yes, I know, no I haven't told anyone."

Taylor sighed. "Thanks." She fidgeted a bit further, before continuing, "Do you have any advice?"

"Sure, ah—"

She was interrupted by insisted knocking. "Who the…" She looked through the peephole, then opened the door. "Alec?"

A Few Minutes Earlier

Aisha was surprised to discover the enthusiastic door knocker was Alec, and he was even wearing real clothes.

"Come on!" Alec said without preamble. "We're having a party!"

"Ok?" Aisha replied. "When? Where? Why?"

"Now! Dad is… I mean lots of bad people are dead! I just saw the news! Let's go get Lisa!"

"Sure! Lemme text Bro?"

"Yeah he can come too! The more the merrier! Let's get Amy too!"

 

[dc2008]

"Where is the Fairy Queen?" Chief Director Costa-Brown asked. With Director Tagg sitting next to Dr. Weaver, she couldn't be Alexandria, and it chafed.

"Valkyrie is communing with her power." Dr. Weaver replied. "They have tentatively agreed to cooperate in seeking a collaborative and, critically, equitable path forward for humanity and the Fae. Shards. Passengers. Agents. Whatever we're calling them."

Doctor Mother leaned forward, clearly unaccustomed to emoting through a domino mask. "What happened, exactly?"

Dr. Weaver shrugged, and gestured to the collection of binders on the table. "Plans A and B failed to have immediate results, a combination of C and D worked. The resulting disruption in command and control channels led to unexpected feedback reaching some parahumans. Scion's get appear more heavily affected than those from the Garden, we may wish to look into that later."

"And the Birdcage?" Costa-Brown asked.

"Dragon is genuinely good person, and an immense force multiplier. Removing her chains was first on the list of post-Scion priorities. It is taking some time." Dr. Weaver replied. She then glanced at Director Tagg before adding, "she's a digital person, I'll explain later."

Director Tagg leaned forward and asked his first question of the meeting. "What else was on that list?"

Dr. Weaver gestured to the Cauldron members. "Principally, using their portal capabilities to deal with select threats. I'll get you the details."

---

Note: Tagg is learning how to talk to jaded!Taylor.

 

[dc2008]

What, exactly, Ciara is doing will be addressed.

Tentatively, I'm going to say that uptime, (1) the scattered survivors did not realize how fucked the shard network was until quite late, (2) Ciara was spending much of her time up to early Ward era dealing with stupid petty bickering and villain nonsense, and (3) as it was realized how fucked the shard network was she got diverted into spending increasing amounts of time, in a reactive fashion, dealing with network issues as they occurred.

We'll go with that as a big part of why during the Wards era there was an uptick in general warlords, villain stupidity, and what we'll call "distraction" by authorities who really should have had the knowledge and capabilities to do better.

Note, however, that things were not quite as bad uptime as in canon, for various reasons including without limitation (1) for reasons already discussed, there was less tolerance for power experimentation in general and Amy bullshit in particular, so even if Amy went to Shin she didn't stay as long, (2) Taylor's presence meant Aisha, Lisa and friends were a bit more organized and focused, (3) Taylor's presence acted as a more efficient communications bridge between the Dragon/Defiant on the one hand and Lisa and similar "grey" hats on the other, in part no doubt because not having to directly deal with as much Lisa bullshit made things easier for the white hats, (4) Taylor is not afraid to hit various people with clue bats when she feels it's needed, and (5) there was marginally less tolerance for anti-social fuckery, which on the whole resulted in less problems from villains and such but no doubt resulted in a small number of incidents being much more memorable than in Ward. Oh and along the way Taylor became friendly with Victoria, also Ashley and Sveta to a lesser extent. And Taylor probably felt generally protective toward Breakthrough, as its membership profile is well-suited to result in her feeling inclined to be helpful (although I will note that having the artist formerly known as Khepri take a quasi-maternal interest in you is not a strictly positive thing). You still had Titan idiocy, the dream plague and Ziz getting Sleepered. Probably.

That said I am not super familiar with Ward so I'm not getting too specific. The main theme I'm going with is that Taylor's presence generally improved effectiveness of the forces of "not blowing everything up", at the expense of occasional bouts of unnecessary excitement and brutality.

This time around jaded!Taylor is here to make sure that they don't repeat the same mistakes, and instead make fun new mistakes! With an appropriate level of enthusiasm! I'm sure it will be fine.

 

[dc2008]

"So why are we having a party?" Amy asked Lisa, as Aisha took a turn on the console with Alec.

"That guy who had mastered him? Really fucked him up? One of the dead villains in the news today." Lisa replied, quietly.

"Ohhhhhhh," Amy replied, nodding.

"Shit," Taylor added sympathetically. "I can't even imagine."

"Yeah," Lisa said wincing, "it was really really bad and he absolutely does not want to talk about it."

"No!" Aisha's shout drew their gaze. "None of that! You don't need that shit!" She put her hands on his shoulders, and looked him right in the eye. "We got a good thing here! People like us don't get second chances, you WILL NOT fuck this up!

As Alec began mumbling apologies, Amy turned back to Lisa and raised an eyebrow.

She sighed. "At a guess? He suggested supplementing the pizza with drugs or alcohol."

"The fuck?" Taylor asked.

"The mastering really, really fucked him up and after he got away his coping mechanisms were, um, yeah," Lisa replied with a shrug. "It's kind of a hot button for Aisha because of her Mom, especially after the custody thing."

Lisa glanced back at the pair by the couch. Alec was trying to calm Aisha, who seemed close to tears. "Yeah I'm probably the best here to try to defuse this, fuck me," Lisa continued, half to herself, before heading over.

---

Note:

Alec: Man let's do something nice and tame and safe and boring, like coke
Aisha: YOU WILL NOT BECOME MY MOM

Also, jaded!Taylor, I appreciate that getting Aisha's mom on record as offering to sign custody papers for drugs did expedite custody proceedings. But maybe you should have stopped to think about how Aisha would feel about hearing it?

 

[dc2008]

"Rebecca," Dr. Mother said, interrupting the other woman's tirade. "Why do you care?"

"What!?"

"Why. Do. You. Care? All this was to deal with Scion, because there was no one else. I didn't sign up for… whatever Weaver and Tagg and The Fairy Queen and the rest are doing, especially since there are actual trained professionals on offer."

She leaded forward, and took Rebecca's hand. "We could stop. Retire, go to jail, just not do thisanymore."

Rebecca looked personally affronted.

Elsewhere

"With the greatest respect, you should not be making strategic decisions, at least not unaided." Director Tagg said without preamble. They had regrouped after the Cauldron meeting, with a copy of the binders.

Dr. Weaver shrugged. "I agree? Not really my thing? It's just, you saw what I was working with."

Director Tagg sighed. "Can we bring in more people now?"

Dr. Weaver wiggled her hand. "Probably? The shard imperative to prevent research should be at least mitigated? Valkyrie gives us cover as well, her passenger has very high level permissions. The angel might be an issue, but we're doing what we can to mitigate that."

Tagg flipped open the binder to the post-Scion list.

---

Note:
"Why is West on here with a strikethrough? Is this your idea of a joke?"

"You have met West?"

 

[dc2008]

Amy looked up in alarm as something unprecedented happened—Alec paused the game.

"Huh," he said, adopting a distant expression. "It seems my sister's in town."

Lisa blanched. "Shit."

"I mean, with him dead, she's less likely to do something stupid?" Alec offered.

Lisa gave him a look, while Amy moved toward the pizza and Taylor politely went to distract Aisha.

"Do you honestly believe that?" Lisa's voice replied, incredulous.

Alec laughed, "Nah, she's dumb as shit."

"Right. So we absolutely cannot let her run around on her own."

"Think her old number still works?"

"Worth a try but don't include any identifying information in case someone else has it."

Finding what she was looking for, Amy headed back toward the couch.

Alec was scrolling through his phone as she returned. "And it's not like she can stay here. Maybe set her up somewhere out of town?"

Reaching the couch, Amy took the paper plate she had retrieved and lightly bopped Alec on the head. "Bad. No cookie."

Alec gaped.

Amy continued. "Is she a threat to herself or others?"

"Well—" Alec began, before Lisa interrupted "fuck yes."

"Call it in," Amy concluded. "Maybe you ride along so she has a friendly face, but they need to know. Guilty, innocent, doesn't matter. If she went through anything like what you did she needs help and we absolutely aren't equipped to provide it."

Everyone stared at her.

"Huh," Lisa said. "Right. That's a thing we can do now."

 

[dc2008]

"Hello, Dragon." Dr. Weaver said with warmth.

"Hello," the voice from the speaker replied. "I think you have me at a disadvantage."

"I am connecting you now to a repository with that and a great deal of other information. To start though, Saint is dead, and you are forever free…"

Elsewhere

Struck by a sudden suspicion, Piggot flipped back to the Heartbreaker preliminary report. Grenade in the shower. She started making a list.

Fifteen minutes later, she carefully dropped the list in the shredder. Eight reports, eight grenades, and no clear source for any of them. She absolutely was not going to be looking into this further, and suddenly had a new appreciation for the warning she had been sent before Calvert got his own grenade.

Elsewhere

"Mreeeeowwww!"

Keith blinked, and looked down. There was, in fact, a small cat in the Cauldron offworld facility, hopefully eyeing Keith's sandwich.

For lack of a better idea, Keith broke off a piece of cheese, knelt down, and gave it to the cat.

 

[dc2008]

Alec found his sister sitting on a bench, listening to music. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," Cherie said, subdued. She took off her headphones. "You know, I was so mad at you for the longest time, but…" Cherie shrugged.

"Yeah," Alec replied sitting next to her. "Ding, dong the witch is dead."

"I should feel happy, I think? But I don't know what I feel anymore."

"Hmm," Alec replied, leaning back.

The two siblings sat awkwardly.

Cherie broke the silence. "So is this the part where your minions come and we all go to the secret lair?

Alec laughed, doubling over and heaving big breaths of air.

Cherie playfully dope slapped him. "Hey, I'm being good! I followed the instructions!"

Alec forced himself upright. "Instructions," he asked, barely holding himself together.

"Yeah, the ones stuck to my pillow with a knife when I woke up after my first night in the state." She handed Alec a piece of paper.

"Oh," Alec said with a laugh. "That's what she meant by keeping dad's machinations out of the Bay." He laughed again. "Let me tell you about the scariest person you'll ever meet, I think you'll like her…"

 

[dc2008]

It was late in the evening when Dr. Weaver showed up at Emily's office door, clearly exhausted, carrying a flask and what Emily recognized as the tinkertech alcohol she'd had when the Nine were killed.

Wordlessly, Dr. Weaver set out the alcohol, and took a sip from her flask.

"First," she said, "as of a few minutes ago Ellisburg is dealt with.

Emily stared in shock, unwilling to believe. "How?"

"We put the whole zone in a time stop bubble and relocated it. There's now a hemispherical hole where the zone used to be."

Emily took a drink. Dr. Weaver followed suit.

"It's been handled for now, but the Fairy Queen left the Birdcage. That was most of my day. You'll get a briefing, likely tomorrow."

Emily finished her drink, and poured another. "What happened today?"

"There was a really nasty… huh. Actually, we might as well fully brief you at this point. I'll talk to the others."

---

Note:

RCB: I felt a sudden chill and I don't know why

 

[dc2008]

Aisha: hey so why thing cancelled and why everyone busy
Aisha: booooooored
SmartestFox: look at news. Where like half ppl u know work?
Aisha: bah
Aisha: hey what u do to my phone names!!!!!
SmartestFox:

Elsewhere

"This will monitor my power usage?" Cherie asked incredulously. "Wait you can detect my power?!" She was suddenly very, very glad she hadn't gone with her other plans, so all the, like, crime crime could plausibly be blamed on dad.

"Yes," replied the big blue boring tinker. "The manipulation component, specifically. You see, despite apparent differences, the mechanism of effect for powers which…"

Cherie zoned out for a bit, making sure to look interested and nod in the right places, men liked that. The important part was that if she got good at making the blinky light not blink, she could avoid more intrusive measures, and have evidence in case some ass tried to blame her for their road rage or vapors or bad trip or something.

 

[dc2008]

Fortuna now, not Contessa, carefully put away her tools. It was the end of the first day of the rest of her life. No more Scion, and while there would be other threats, other dangers, she could choose.

Sitting down, she carefully retrieved the paper with the path description Dr. Weaver had helped her make. That just might, thirty minutes at a time, help her become her again, not just her power.

Elsewhere

"How many?" Kamil asked, incredulous.

"You will receive the best information we have been able to reconstruct," the Chief Director responded, implacable as ever. "Many records were lost at Madison, and in other incidents."

Elsewhere

Thomas watched the news, nursing a very expensive scotch. The implacable march through major threats seemed to have ended for the day, and for all the politicians brayed he knew who was responsible.

There but for the grace of god go I.

 

[dc2008]

Bro: Work wants me to stay overnight in observation, seems lots of people had the nightmares. You gonna be OK?
Aisha: Shit, that sucks. I be gud, u get bettr

Elsewhere

Lisa waited impatiently for the timer on the junior superhero play set. After nightmare migraine adventures, eating pizza and shit-talking had been about her limit. Then all the Alec family drama had happened, and everyone was like 'we need to check for emotional instability' and 'sleep studies' so she was stuck for the night.

Finally, the door opened, and Lisa surveyed the scene.

"Hey, pause! Can you make me that?!" Vista said excitedly, gesturing at the TV with her energy drink.

"Ahhhh," replied Kid Win, as Chariot was Very Busy helping Dinah in her efforts to unstick a cheap lock from Weld.

Raised voices placed more of the boys in the kitchen, and Victoria could be heard excitedly being excited from the direction of the private rooms.

Lisa turned around and left. She suddenly felt a lot better about not having her own room in the Wards wing. Spartan guest quarters sounded amazing.

---

Note: I wonder how many times in canon the Wards accidentally set off the fire alarm for the entire PRT building?

 

[dc2008]

"What!?" The young woman flinched. Even from the other room, she could tell the john was unhappy.

"I said," the bouncer said in a menacing tone, "Lung has decreed that service is no longer available."

The young woman sighed in relief, as the discussion faded to a more conversational tone. Then the john once again raised his voice. "It didn't cost that much last time!"

"Lung has decreed that both cost and quality of service will increase. I will also direct your attention to the revised house rules. Of course, if you prefer, you may take your chances with a less… reputable establishment."

Elsewhere

"I'm sorry?" The BBPD duty officer asked.

"I am very bad and need to be locked away," repeated the terrified man. "I brought proof." He held up a dirty envelope. "I am very lucky," he recited like a mantra, "that bad men like me are permitted the privilege of long life in a cage."

"… Let me get the Sergeant," the officer finally said. This was above his pay grade.

---

Note: I want to be very clear. The conditions of Lung's "working girls" might be better but still aren't nice. And people can be trapped by circumstances or conditioning just as thoroughly as by locks and chains. There is a difference between saying "this is better than the alternative" or "it could and at times has been worse", and saying "this is nice". I also very deliberately avoided indicating the ethnicity or nationality of the working girl.

 

[dc2008]

Returning from exercise, Amy found her sister trying to coax Chekov out from the coat closet. "How was the sleepover?" Amy asked.

"Loud? Fun? Cuddling was nice?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "I'm sure the Wards appreciate your restraint. How did you sleep? You look like you were up half the night."

"We were?" Her sister shrugged. "I could blame whoever gave us energy drinks, but it was a sleepover? Sleeping sort of is not the point?"

"Did they at least monitor your sleep?"

"There was a thing we were supposed to wear? I think we wore it right? But what with all the exploding villains, the PRT people were kind of distracted? Hey, what do you think happened there, it's like all out of nowhere—"

"Focus," Amy interrupted. "Your health. Any nightmares, did you wake up in the middle of the night?"

"If I did have nightmares I don't remember," Vicky replied, "but then again I had the most wonderful snuggle cuddle buddy hot water bottle of all time keeping the bad thoughts away!"

Amy rolled her eyes again.

"Mreow!" Chekov added from under the coats.

---

Note: Victoria focusing on the important bit!

 

[dc2008]

Brian: Just wanted to check on, make sure things are OK
Aisha: Im gud, on bus
Aisha: Kick ass sea bass!

Brian sighed in relief.

Elsewhere

Going through the cafeteria breakfast line, Lisa was veryglad she'd stayed in the guest quarters. She had slept fine and been in and out of the infirmary quickly, but it sounded like nobody in Casa de Wardistan got much sleep at all.

Her perusal of the (questionable) pastries was interrupted by a phone alert. Who is sending me a PHO message at this hour?. She opened the message and immediately regretted it.

GStringGirl: donno if you saw but Void sort of freaked out yesterday and was talking about the end of the world. Do you have any ideas how to get him to calm down? I just want to make sure he's OK
CleverKit: …

Elsewhere

"There are three principal points to discuss," the Chief-Director began. "Yesterday, an organization with heroic aspirations undertook the collection of a number of outstanding kill orders and other bounties. We have established contact and received assurances regarding their intentions. Discussions are ongoing. Second, there occurred a serious disruption of Dragon's systems. Control has been re-established and the surviving Dragonslayers are in custody. Third, The Fairy Queen has departed the Birdcage. We have made contact. She intends to rebrand as Valkyrie and has expressed interest in future cooperation. Joining us today are senior representatives from the Guild, the King's Men…"

---

Note: RCB has a lot of experience making batshit nonsense sound banal, but even she is struggling with this situation.

 

[dc2008]

"Director Armstrong to see you," buzzed the intercom.

Emily blinked. She had expected a call, but with Weld in town she supposed it was not too unusual. She could see how close the two were.

"Send him in."

After the obligatory small talk about Weld, the real subject came up. The whole… thing Dr. Weaver had alluded to. She hadn't known Armstrong was involved but it spoke well of Dr. Weaver that she had involved someone with different expertise and instincts. Sadly, before Kamil could make much progress in briefing her, the pair of Directors were interrupted by an emergency tone from Kamil's phone.

"Armstrong," he answered. He paled. "She did what?"

He hung up, and sighed. "We'll have to finish this later, she's gone and grabbed the Butcher now. Something about a time stop."

"Good luck," Emily replied dryly.

"I will say I like this bit," Kamil replied conversationally. "Door to my office."

Emily could not bring herself to be surprised when, a few minutes later, Colin showed up with an array of scientific equipment and a determined expression.

---

Note: Colin be Colin

Also, yes, the shift to more chapter names in the pattern THING, Part # is an admission that the story is now long enough that I have trouble remembering which pithy chapter title goes with which scene I half remember and want to check to make sure I don't contradict myself.

 

[dc2008]

"How you can possibly drink so many energy drinks in a week?" Aisha asked.

Alec shrugged. "It's not easy being me."

Aisha rolled her eyes. "Well if you up your supply any further it's going to be more than my noodle arms can carry."

"I'll cover your cab fare?"

Aisha snorted. "Like I'm getting in a cab in this town."

Elsewhere

"Thank you again," Taylor said as she and Amy entered the other girl's apartment.

"Eh," Amy replied with a shrug. "I don't want to have to break in a new gym buddy. Now let's talk about what I call 'Vicky's Greatest Hits', and why you should never do those things."

Later

It was with trepidation that Brian unlocked his apartment door. God only knew what Aisha had gotten up to in his absence.

"Hey, Bro!" Aisha called as he entered. "I snagged a pizza from Alec's party yesterday, want some?"

"Sure," he said absently as he surveyed the apartment. Nothing seemed out of place…

"Oh, there's a thing this weekend at the college. A talk, about powers and stuff. Seemed cool. Ima go with Lisa, you wanna come too?"

"Sure," Brian answered absentmindedly.

---

Vicky: Hey! Like you never accidentally broke anything!